Trump Arrest Fallout

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

Scott Galloway is off today doing bad things, I'm sure.

But today I'm joined by Alyssa Farrah Griffin, co-host of The View.

Welcome, Alyssa.

Thank you for having me, Kara.

I hope you know I'm a Pivot Super fan.

So that's

really good.

That's what we like.

That's what we like to have here.

And you are on the view.

You are the, what, the conservative on the view?

How do you explain yourself?

Yes, I fill the conservative seat on the view.

I joined in August and, you know, a lot of women have held that seat.

I've decided I'm going to make it my own.

I may not

be a Twitter right-winger, but I am a conservative and I've been enjoying it.

Good, good.

And it's supposed to be like a discussion, just like Pivot, where we don't get along and we try to talk things out.

And various conservatives have been different than others, and various liberals on that show have been different than others.

But it's essentially, you all talk out all the issues of the day, depending on what they are daily for people who don't watch.

But a lot of people watch The View.

Exactly, exactly.

I was joking with the producer before.

I think the nexus of Pivot listeners and The View may not be that big, but I am one of them, and my husband is one of them.

You'd be surprised.

You'd be surprised.

And you've been there for August.

How did you get there?

Because I'm sure it was like a bake-off, right, of conservative women.

It was.

The entire 25th season was basically the search for the new conservative host so you know a bunch of incredible women uh came out came on uh they had you know essie cup condoleezz rice at one point gretchen carlson fabulous women and i kept getting called back i think what they they liked um was i'm not just a professional opinion haver i've worked in government i've worked in high you know in politics as well um And it's a show that has to have chemistry.

Even if I totally disagree with my co-hosts at times, we all generally, genuinely genuinely like each other so that helps um like i never would have thought joy behar would be a friend of mine but here i am and she is she's hilarious

so you wanted to do it because why now you had worked for people don't know in the trump administration but you also spoke to the january 6th committee about your former boss yeah so i worked for in the trump administration at three different roles i was pence's press secretary i was the department of defense uh press secretary and then i was the final white house communications director and listen i i've been really open.

I didn't vote for Donald Trump.

I wasn't a fan of his, but I chose to go into service once he was president because I don't think you can give up on the American presidency for four years.

And when I joined him in the final stretch of the administration around the time of COVID, hoping to make a marginal impact on the way we were messaging it and trying to not politicize a virus that ended up killing over a million Americans.

And listen, what I saw in that White House was a disaster.

I I mean, it was worse than what we were reading in the headlines, the infighting, but fundamentally the lack of character of the former president.

So after he lost, I was the first senior official to resign and to acknowledge Joe Biden had won the election fairly.

There was no fraud.

It was not stolen.

And hadn't planned to become like a vocal detractor of his.

I was planning to just kind of move on with my life.

Right.

Because you wanted to stay in conservative politics, right?

Exactly, exactly.

And I mean, the safest thing to do is kind of sit back and just, you know, let him do what he does and, you know, pop up on Fox News and kind of ride the right-wing media train.

But after January 6th, I was just horrified.

I went on, you know, NBC, CNN, and Fox News the next morning and said he should resign.

He was unfit for office.

It was anti-democratic.

And I've joked.

I'm close with Liz Cheney.

I joked with her after the fact.

I was like, you know, I spoke out because it was the right thing to do, but I also assumed people were going to come with me.

And she was like, yeah, Lysa, think how I felt.

I I know.

Well, why didn't that happen?

Because there were a number of people who did spells, a lot of women, actually, which is kind of interesting.

Although there weren't that many.

There are men, but inside the White House, it was interesting to watch.

You're still conservative.

You wanted to work in conservative politics.

Is that possible if you're not a Trumper right now?

Like you had a long history, right?

Right.

I mean, I've worked for most big names in Republican politics now.

Mark Meadows, right?

Mark Meadows, DeSantis, McMulvaney, Trump Pence, and so on.

on i don't think i have a place in working in republican politics now but back to your original question um of why i wanted to do the view i never saw myself doing it daytime made no sense to me i actually didn't even want to i never planned to get into tv i kind of stumbled into it but it's a huge platform it's a lot of women um it's a lot of there are independence i think people there's a sense that the the show skews left but our data in the audience is there's a lot of undecided independence and my biggest goal and what I care the most about going into 2024 is ensuring Donald Trump is never president again.

So if I can use that platform to communicate why from my firsthand knowledge knowing him, I'm going to do that every day.

And the idea of what conservative politics is now, I mean, I went to Georgetown University.

It was a very active conservative group there.

It's very different than what it is today.

It was more, you know, obviously huge disagreements, whether it's abortion or whatever it happens to be, government size.

How do you look at the GOP?

And when you said independence, what do you mean by, like, do you think there's going to be another party?

There is one.

There's no labels party, I guess, that's starting.

But, you know, and the last one I saw was on Madam Secretary Tia Leone, won presidency as the whatever party, like the Independent Party.

That was great.

She was a great president.

But how do you look at that?

What happens to people like you who have been sort of, I knew a lot of people like you, George Conway, a whole bunch of different people who have different, don't know where to go.

There are a lot of us.

I think there's more than we realize, and who are just everyday Americans too, who aren't people with platforms.

Um, I'm still in the realm of I want to fight from within, I want to see the party course correct and change.

Others have left, I think George has, but my sense is this: I mean, when you look at the Republican Party right now, it looks like a 1990s Pat Buchanan version of the Republican Party,

protectionist, anti-globalization,

you know, anti-immigration, also leaning super heavily into the culture wars.

And none of that defines who I am, what I believe in, and what my values are.

And I think that's a, there are a lot of us, but we have to be willing to talk through what our values are and why they work better and why we want to be a party that frankly can win.

You know, we haven't won a popular vote in nearly 10 years.

We're talking about one that you haven't, the Wisconsin one was a big sign.

Chicago.

So, and again, though, I mean, a big part of this, you can't take Donald Trump out of the equation.

He's putting his finger on these elections, and we keep nominating people who are poor candidates.

I mean, the gentleman in Wisconsin was an extremist.

It was a good thing that he lost.

And if I could briefly tell you why.

We're going to get to it.

We're going to get there.

I'll save it.

We're going to get there.

Okay, save it.

So let's say

we're going to talk about today.

Donald Trump has been charged.

You might have heard about it.

The man from Queens was arrested.

We'll talk about it.

about what comes next for him and his opponents.

We'll also get to the 2024 race and make some predictions.

But first, it's been another bad week for TikTok.

The company has been fined almost $16 million by UK privacy regulators for failing to protect children's data.

The authorities said TikTok didn't do enough to check who was using the platform, allowing over a million children up to 13 to use the app in 2020.

That's not a surprise for people with kids.

And then another sting in the land down under, the Australian government says it will remove the app from all government devices.

This is a trend that's happening all over the world.

NATO has also reportedly banned the app on work devices.

I happened to be at a breakfast this morning talking to a congressperson asking me, what should we do, Cara.

I was like,

take it off your device, Representative.

But do you use TikTok on your phone?

I do not.

So when I was at the Department of Defense, we banned it on devices, and that was reason enough for me, the concerns over national security implications.

I believe I have an account that's managed by the View.

I have huge, huge concerns about TikTok first and foremost from the national security and data privacy side of things.

Let's talk about that.

I mean, listen, the moment to act on TikTok, by the way, was several years ago.

This came up in the Trump administration.

And what we, those of us who are proponents of banning it, said is the more people you get, once this becomes the most downloaded app in the country, it's so much harder to pull it back and to create some kind of a ban.

And the Restrict Act in Congress, it's a surprising moment of bipartisanship when we don't see a lot.

But I have concerns that's not going to move.

I've seen some right-wing detractors actually make valid points about how expansive this is with for the executive.

It gives them a patriarch.

It is.

It is.

There's worries about, so what could this be next?

What are we going to ban next?

But every American,

if you cared, I think Scott might have said this, but if you cared about that damn Chinese spy balloon, you know, getting American data, gaining intelligence on us, you've got that in your pocket if you have TikTok on your phone.

So let's talk about that bipartisanship because the original stuff started in the Trump administration.

Although I say I wrote about it three years ago, the problem of Chinese surveillance and propaganda.

But it started there.

Of course, they did it executionally incompetently, didn't, you know, were just trying to do these deals that aren't legal or anything else.

Got stopped by judges correctly because they did it wrong.

And it never went anywhere.

And of course, TikTok kept growing in size.

And it's turned out it's 150 million.

American users, which is much higher than they had originally reported, which we thought they were much bigger in terms of making more money.

Were you there during that time when they were doing sort of the TikTok screaming that

wasn't really effective?

Yeah, this was probably the tail end of the administration.

And I think the former president had concerns over any kind of an all-out ban.

There was this idea of, I believe, spinning off bite dance.

That's right.

Trying to have it.

It's a company, TikTok itself, the U.S.

Byte Dance is in China.

Yeah, and trying to do it where, you know, it's completely U.S.

based and that they could give you a little bit more.

you know, calm and sense of security that it would be based in the U.S.

And it just never really, it never got the comprehensive support that it should have.

But I will tell you, the Intel community and the national security community were always on the side of, aside from not having on-government devices, we shouldn't even be using it in the continental United States.

And what was the excuse?

Was the national security issues, correct?

Yes, it was all from the national security perspective.

And

now we know, I mean,

I'm not a parent yet, but I mean, I have huge concerns also from the mental health side of things.

That's just all of them.

That's all I think.

That's going to be any app, yeah.

It just happens to be.

Yeah.

But what national security issues are interesting because that's what they talked about in Congress.

And a lot of us watch that, except they don't have proof.

You know, they need to show that it's a national security.

Now, the Defense Department can just ban it, correct?

You can just say, we're not putting it on government devices.

And that's been super popular.

All the governments are doing that.

And many school systems are doing that, and they certainly can.

But the idea of banning something overall is incredibly difficult unless you had rock-solid proof that there was something going on.

And I think there's an obligation for the government to tell that story to the American public.

And

full disclosure, I intellectually am for a ban.

I don't know what that actually looks like.

I see the rationale for it, but when you have that many users on it, you have an entire industry built around TikTok.

You know, I hate the term creator, but you have

doing ads.

Have you seen their ads?

They're on DC TV, which is really interesting.

Well, they have a very strong lobbying effort.

I get reached out to by the TikTok lobbyists constantly.

Yeah, trying to drum up support of, you know, what do they say to you?

Hey, girl.

Hey, girl.

And actually, their big push right now is this, this argument that this is like the Patriot Act.

It's going to become more far-reaching.

You know, Rand Paul has made this case as well.

So they're trying to reach the right with that argument.

I'd be curious how they're approaching the left, although Patriot Act and surveillance issues, I think, are where the right and left can sometimes meet.

Yeah, a lot of it is also small business.

I've seen so many ads, TikTok.

I make soap.

I never thought I'd make soap, but here I am making soap and selling it on TikTok.

It's a really, they're being very persistent.

So you've been reached out.

That's interesting.

Let me move on to something else.

Tim Cook, speaking of children, himself is warning parents to limit children's tech.

And GQ Profile, the Apple CEO, said kids are now, quote, born digital, but should have what he calls hard rails on screen time.

Cook said Apple doesn't want people using their phones too much, saying we're not incentivized for that.

And that is correct.

They're not.

The profile also touched on his wariness of the data industrial complex, which Apple, of course, course, is a part of, although less so than a Facebook or a Google.

Though a reminder in 2021, the company implemented an opt-in or opt-out for sharing data on apps on your device.

It really hurt the bottom line of Facebook and Meta, or Facebook slash Meta, and Snapchat and several others.

What do you think of this idea?

Is it too preachy coming from a tech company?

Although Apple's done the most for privacy compared to the government, the government's done almost nothing.

They talk, you know, Trump again talked about this.

Biden talked about this.

They didn't pass the privacy bill.

They didn't pass the antitrust bill.

How do you look when a tech person says this?

On the one hand, it feels very like we created a problem and now we're encouraging you to solve it.

Sort of parallels some of these tech giants coming out,

raising concerns about artificial intelligence and calling for this six-month pause.

But at the same time, these are the experts in the field.

These are people who have such firsthand knowledge of the technology and what the implications of it are.

So I don't think we can tune it out.

I do think we have to listen to it.

And I mean, this is echoed in so many studies.

There's so much data that shows the mental health impacts of social media.

We have no idea.

I mean, it's the generation under mine that has come up in a world where this exists and they don't know when where it does it.

And we don't actually fully know how it's going to be impacting them, but it's not going to be good.

When you think about how the government thinks about why the government, you know, Trump tried to do this with Section 230.

Biden has tried to say this around Section 230.

They've tried to pass bills.

They never get passed.

Is it just when you're, you know, you're in communications, is it just like just say it and then do nothing?

It seems like this is what they do.

They hold a hearing, they get all angry, it's all performative, and then nothing happens.

And then the tech guys go home and get richer and richer.

In this case, Apple is a little different.

I would say they have done a lot of stuff around piracy, but it's not his job to be regulator-in-chief for the United States or the world.

No, you hit the nail on the head.

It is largely performative.

Listen, Congress hasn't enacted sweeping tech reform in ever.

Yeah,

ever.

And if you've ever watched one of these major hearings, whether it's TikTok, even Ticketmaster, we have a lot of members of Congress who don't even understand the basics of how the tech they're trying to regulate works.

I think that in, you know, in my experience, at least in the Trump administration, there were a lot of ideas that sounded good in theory, except, for example,

reforming Section 230 or even reversing it.

It's completely unfeasible, though.

I mean, that's just my personal perspective.

I mean, you, you kidding me.

Yeah, it is.

And I think it's something you can rail about.

So you sound like you're doing something, but Trump has no plans to actually take on big tech.

He has a lot of plan, a lot of plans to beat the drum of taking them on.

And Congress is to some degree in the same boat.

This has come up in Energy and Commerce.

Kathy McMorris-Rogers has been

talking about the reforms that need to happen, but I don't think I see something major.

Marshall Blackburn.

Marshall Blackburn, many others.

Is it a good thing from a cop to do this to say, oh, big tech, or is it just

do people not really care when you're

saying it?

So much of our policy making or lack thereof is simply throwing around buzzwords that we've made kind of pejoratives.

And big tech is something that plays very well on the right.

If you're going after, you know, the Googles of the world and so on, you, you know, that's interpreted as a righteous, you know, war that you're taking on.

But I don't know that there's really much plans to actually make changes.

And I mean, and you've seen it even with the Elon Twitter takeover, you know, Twitter was the enemy, but now you've got a far-right leader running it.

So suddenly Twitter's not the enemy of the right wing anymore.

And now they embrace it.

Now they embrace it.

He wasn't far right.

You know, only a couple of years ago, he was at this breakfast.

Someone said to, he was talking to someone

who had voted for a Republican or Bush or one of them.

And he goes, how could you have done that not voted for Obama?

He was mad.

I'm dying to know that like, villain origin story there because

I met him only once down

at NASA and seeing some of the incredible stuff that he's doing.

And it just, I, I, it's such admiration for him.

I mean, talk about changing the trajectory of humanity.

This is with the Defense Department when you were

actually with Vice President Pence because he was the chair of the National Space Council.

So Elon was, you know,

a kind of outside unofficial advisor.

And I just found him so impressive.

But I'm shocked that someone so brilliant could have so much time to engage in such unserious discussions.

Yeah, well, there you have it.

Welcome to my world.

Yeah.

Space Elon is good, Elon.

Tesla Elon is okay, Elon.

Twitter Elon is a really bad Elon.

There's a lot of Elons.

Anyway, let's get to our first big story, which you know a lot about.

Donald Trump has officially been charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

Trump reported to a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday to plead not guilty.

A trial won't happen until January, if it happens at all.

Trump's lawyers have previously discussed filing for dismissal, though they haven't said much since Tuesday, and it's unlikely it'll be dismissed from what I understand from most legal scholars.

The team Trump could haggle over evidence, venue, and statute of limitations.

They're not going to get it moved.

There's not going to be such a way.

It's going to trial unless they settle.

But in the meantime, the case will definitely be tried in the court of public opinion, obviously.

Let's review some facts.

The hush money payments happened.

There's no dispute there.

Trump's lawyer michael cohen had already pled guilty to making these payments and violating campaign finance law the company behind the national inquirer which is a sort of an interesting new wrinkle here has already paid a fine to the fec over one of the payments to a second woman trump doesn't deny making the payments but he said it was his money not campaign funds he does deny having an affair with either woman and says their requests for money uh were extortion except there's some facts where he says let's wait till after the election because he thought he wasn't going to win and then he wouldn't have to pay so that's another thing so talk to me about whether these people are debating this charges will help or hurt the Trump campaign.

I'd love you to sort of, you know, since you're in comms and community and how people are perceived, what is the perception game going on here?

Well, listen, the, yeah, happy belated Trump Arraignment Day to all who celebrate.

Like Tuesday was unequivocally a bad day for Donald Trump.

He is a man, despite many of his,

you know, out there bad actions, is a man who is consumed by legacy.

He cares about how he's perceived and how we'll be remembered.

And he will be remembered as the first former president to be indicted.

That's just a fact.

It was a bit surreal to watch.

And I say that, I mean, obviously, just because it's a historic moment, but this is a man who's in denial about the fact that he even lost the 2020 election.

He actually still has staff refer to him as president.

He's made his Trump Force One look like Air Force One.

So he's been living in this world in which he gets to kind of cosplay president still.

But that all ended the minute his plane landed.

He was in a much smaller motorcade than a former president.

And then the minute he steps into the courtroom, he's in custody and he's basically alone, aside from an attorney and an advisor.

And knowing him, I think that hit him.

You could see it on his face, that the pictures that came out of the courtroom,

there was a sobriety and it a somberness to that moment.

Apparently, he said to someone, you're really going to arrest me.

He couldn't quite believe it.

That's what one of the reporters said.

And cried.

I was like, yes, I am.

What to say?

Yes, I am.

But I do think that the campaign allegedly raised $10 million

over the past week.

And every prominent Republican, elected Republican, I should say, came out and essentially defended the former president, said, you know, these are trumped up charges.

It's a minor offense as far as it's a witch hunt.

And the one that stood out to me was Mitt Romney, who's a Trump detractor, has said he's unfit for office.

But even he said it felt political.

So, you know, my sense is this is going to be a boon to him in the polls.

I think significantly so.

And I think Ron DeSantis, who's been kind of nipping at his heels in the polls and is kind of having a moment, he had to come out and say, you know, he would, he wouldn't extradite him and this was wrong and is in a position where he's having to defend Trump.

When he was speaking at Mar-a-Lago after the arraignment, he

very clearly, it felt like a campaign speech.

And I think in some ways it was a stronger moment for his reelection campaign than the actual initials.

Which was a dud, which was a dud.

Total dud.

Right.

Were you there?

No, you weren't there.

You wouldn't have been there.

No, I was watching from CNN and we were just, we were all like, well, this is very anticlimactic.

Very low energy.

But so this was the energetic one.

This is what gets him going.

It is.

When he's defiant and he's on his heels, he's actually stronger with his base.

And I say all of this, though.

I think he is a very, very strong shot at getting the nomination, but an indictment does nothing to get you new voters.

Nobody is, nobody's coming around saying, actually, I changed my mind about the man who allegedly paid off a porn star and committed campaign finance violations.

So he's been through a lot of that.

People sort of have porn star baked into Donald Trump, don't they?

I mean, they've accepted it.

I mean, that's the fascinating thing: the deal with the devil that was made back in 2016 for a lot of Republican voters.

You accepted it then.

You decided, you know,

these things are probably true.

I'm okay with it.

I'm going to take that bargain.

So then it's hard to, I guess, for many of these people to feign outrage now.

So now a majority of Americans support the indictment after a search of Mar-a-Lago.

Trump-backed candidates didn't fare so well in the midterms.

Outside the courthouse, Marjorie Taylor Greene and George Santos tried to speak at a sparsely attended rally, driven out.

So it's kind of a mixed bag.

There's also things behind this indictment.

Georgia, the possible federal one.

There's a case in New York, the rape case, essentially.

So does this build up or does it just do people keep calling it political when it may not be?

So, my fear, I've been a bit concerned with this indictment coming down first.

It's my perspective as a non-attorney, more as a communications person who thinks about the court of public opinion, that it is the weakest of the cases.

And I say that because it is seven years old.

Cyvance chose not to take it up.

Although he says he would have had bar.

Anyway, it could be complicated.

That's fair.

I mean, there's, and listen, he couldn't take it up.

He couldn't take it up.

And then, you know, even this, this, this next hearing being scheduled for December 4th, so eight months from now, I think that there's a lot of folks who are going to hear that and they're going to be like, this doesn't seem like, you know, justice should move swiftly.

It's not.

This is going to drag on into, you know, the middle of a primary season.

I was February 5th.

And then if that's a hearing, the trial could be, you know, mid-late next year.

So I think most people don't think this is going to be Trump's, you know.

undoing,

but what is coming could be.

I've sat down with the Department of Justice in the January 6th investigation.

They're pulling a lot of important threads there, and it seems like they're moving quickly.

The Mar-a-Lago investigation, the documents, I mean, this is incredibly important.

These are national security secrets.

Had I walked out of the Pentagon or the White House with any one document marked, you know, TSSCI, I'd be in federal prison right now.

And then I think Fulton County is very interesting.

This is the infamous, I need just 11,000 votes.

So there's more coming for him.

I do worry about indictment fatigue with the American public, but he knows this is the beginning, not the end of.

And so when you say indictment fatigue, although it could be like, oh, it's this guy got indicted again.

To me, the weak one coming first is actually stronger because then the next ones get bad, like then they become more and more.

Or you could say maybe they're just out to get him, right?

That's the tack they're taking.

Yeah, my fear is the latter.

If I was still, if I had my hyper-partisan Republican hat on, I would say, you know, why are they waiting until right before the primary season to have the next hearing?

Well, he wants that too.

He wants it.

He could have asked for it to be expedited.

He could have.

And listen, Trump is actually one of his talents is the ability to spin very negative things in his favor.

And I think his campaign is going to be on overdrive to frame this as political and as a witch hunt.

And they're going to use this to try to undermine the other, in my opinion, much more serious investigations.

I see.

So if you were working for him, I'm going to put you on the spot.

What would you, to put your Trump hat back on?

What would you do to defend him?

What would be the messaging you would use?

You go after the DA, of course, let me be very clear, not in the horrific way that he has, which is highlighting his family and his daughter.

That is just outright intimidation.

You talk about the fact, you know, New York City, we do have growing crime here.

This is a DA who's downgraded a number of misdemeanors from, well, from felonies to misdemeanors, including, you know, trespassing, marijuana offenses.

So this is a guy who doesn't want to be tough on the actual crime that affects people, but is coming after someone over campaign finance.

Right.

That's a New York argument.

That's a New York public.

I mean, listen, nationally, he's going to pull the witch hunt.

It's a liberal DA.

They've been trying to come after me since 2016.

Soros, Soros.

Yeah.

With all the anti-Semitic undertones of the ongoing Soros attacks.

And that's effective, or just

what they're going to do.

Would you advise that?

Or is there some other thing, novel thing you would say?

It's hard because I'm so emotionally invested in him being held accountable.

I think he does need to try to frame it as partisan.

I think that's the only thing that breaks through with people who, the general average American who actually believes in the legal system, I don't like when it's, you know, he's had something, you know, truth social now, something about defunding the Department of Justice.

That stuff doesn't play.

Most Americans generally trust cops, legal, you know, law enforcement.

And so I think you try to knock away at the credentials of the district attorney.

All right.

On the other side, what's the way to fight it?

You criminal.

You fucking criminal.

You fucking criminal.

I know.

The most simple thing is, you know, Michael Cohen did time for this.

If Michael Cohen's going to get locked up for it, then Donald Trump is.

No one is above the law.

Minor offenses, if a court of law,

a grand jury of his peers decides to convict him, then he needs to serve just the way anyone else would.

So smoke fire.

Yeah.

You know, that kind of thing.

And this guy keeps piling on the, you know, enough is enough, would be, I would seem to me.

Is that worse?

Is that resident?

Because there is a weirdness of Trump himself.

There is.

I think, listen, Trump does himself no favors.

I mean, talk about the worst client for any attorney.

Or PR person.

Or PR person.

But part of why the arraignment dragged on for so long, the actual proceeding in the courtroom was because the judge took a moment to, you know, kind of.

encourage him to not be engaging in rhetoric that could amount to, you know, incite violence and other things.

And then he went on to attack Alvin Bragg and his family, as well as the judge.

So

I think he's going to make plenty of missteps that reveal his character and his rage that I think will influence people's opinion quite a bit.

Opinion, but not necessarily an actual case.

Now, if he is convicted, should he be banned?

Speaking of banning, banning TikTok, should he be banned from office?

Now, legally, he'll still be allowed to serve, but should he be?

So I think if it's a federal crime, yes.

I think if you're, you know, if you're convicted of a federal crime, especially these, these two, both the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation and January 6th.

So January 6th, if they're able to make the case, which I think is there, that he incited a violent mob to attack the Capitol and try to halt the democratic process, that should preclude someone from ever holding office again,

hands down.

And then on the Mar-a-Lago case, I mean, part of this is trying to try him under the Espionage Act.

Mishandling of classified secrets is not a small offense in any sense of the word.

He has no way of being able to claim that those documents couldn't have gotten in the wrong hands.

Just the chain of custody alone, them being moved, you know, there was a lock on the door.

There wasn't.

You've been there.

You've been to Mar-a-Lago.

Yeah.

Do you like it?

It is the tackiest country club I've ever stepped foot in.

It's got to be your thing.

It's got to be your thing.

Listen, it's pretty, but it's a weird place.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's right on there on the inner coastal.

It's very pretty.

Where it is is very pretty.

It's very beautiful.

But you know, a lot of Palm Beach is like that.

You're like, really?

People?

What are you doing down here?

But they like it.

They like it.

I shouldn't judge.

I am judging really hard.

I know.

I feel bad.

That's okay.

That's okay.

It's all right.

So one of the things that you mentioned is he brought a lot of people along with him.

So why is the Conservative movement having such a hard breaking up with him?

He doesn't win elections.

Trump pack Canadis lost competitive races in 2022, including Dr.

Oz.

They just lost these.

We'll talk about the ones they lost yesterday.

Trumpadour's Cannis didn't fare well in 2018.

His candidates lost two special elections in Georgia.

Of course, he lost 2020.

He has the legal problems.

He's got, you know, the civil suit, Net Worth, two law seats, as I said, by E.

Jean Carroll, accusing him of rape and defamation.

Why?

What?

I know.

We just can't quit him.

No,

it's a fear factor.

So on a more individual level, he...

He has the ability to destroy any Republican politician's career if he decides to turn on them.

He does have that hold on the base.

But then more broadly for the party, the fear is that if it's not him, he'll burn the whole thing to the ground.

The problem with Donald Trump, and I think my friend George Conway would agree with this, is he's going to burn it down anyway, whether he intends to or not.

And to rip off the band-aid is the only way to deal with him.

The folks who want to have one foot in Trump world and, you know, kind of appeal to him, think that they're going to keep his base on board, but then keep one foot in the world of people like me.

It doesn't work.

It didn't work for, you know, my friend and old boss, Mike Pence.

I see Nikki Haley, who there's a lot I really like about her.

It's not working.

You've got to,

I would rather go down in a blaze of glory, polling at 2%, saying the right thing and calling him out than, you know, just help glide him to the presidency again.

So people said there isn't anyone to do that.

No one, that someone, there's a real opening to do that, but nobody capable of doing it.

I think that probably the most capable person, but I don't know that I think he's going to get in would be Governor Chris Sununu of New Hampshire.

Mostly because he's just, he's not, he's not brash, but he can't throw a punch.

He has his own record to run on.

And unlike many of the candidates we assume are going to get in in the announced ones, he never worked for Trump.

So he's got his own thing to run on.

He's, you know, a popular governor in a purple state.

But he seems to be chomping at the bit to go after both DeSantis and Trump.

He's got some ideologically different views than DeSantis, like I do.

I just don't know that he gets in because he's also a young, highly popular governor.

He could coast and wait till another cycle to run.

Right.

But trust me, I'm waiting for someone to be the hero.

Right.

Nobody is.

All right.

We'll take a quick break.

When we come back, we'll talk about how Trump's rivals could use this moment and more about the media fallout.

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Alyssa, we're back with more on the fallout from Donald Trump's arrest.

Let's talk about the media coverage.

Trump thrives on it, good or bad.

We saw Tuesday networks gave this wall-to-wall treatment.

It was ridiculous at one point.

Like, now the car, the car, the doors, there's going to be doors.

They could open in this door and this door.

They made a joke of it on late-night television.

Talk about the media coverage without making him into the legend.

How do you cover a narcissist without feeding his ego?

Because literally, it was back.

I felt like I was back in 2016 again.

It really did.

It actually, I mean, honestly, parts of it remind me of OJ.

Like we have the aerial shots of the motorcade and the plane landing.

It's It's a tough balance, and I don't always know the answer because there's such a vital public interest there.

Like I found myself, I mean, I was sitting on set for most of it at CNN on a panel just watching, and I couldn't take my eyes off of what's going to happen next.

The unpredictability of Trump is excellent TV, but Rachel Matto went on a really interesting rant where she essentially said, you know, she's not going to cover Trump's full speech.

There's no news value in it.

It's the same airing of grievances.

And I think there has to be a balance of that.

This is a conversation we constantly have at CNN.

And

well, he's good for ratings.

People want to know.

They want to see.

But how do you not just boost his public persona the way that many in the media did in 2016?

And I don't know where that fine line exists.

But of course, you guys had wall-to-wall coverage, right?

You were on.

CNN cut out of the speech, which I definitely think was the right call.

And simply because, I mean, A, he's impossible to fact check.

We did, we aired a fact check afterward that wasn't even able to get to all of the untruths that he shared.

But it is, it was a historic day.

So I do tend to think that you've got to show it, but contextualize it.

And I really just shout out to some of my legal analysts at CNN, Ellie Honeg, you know, somebody who was able to offer insight of what this meant, why it mattered throughout.

The contextualizing and the fact-checking is key.

And except it's then about him, but I want to play a clip from Fox News, actually.

I won't set this up too much.

So let's listen.

So the government has a very, very strong case.

What is the crime here is the use of funds which were told under oath to the federal government that they were legitimate campaign funds in order to pay off someone, his mistress, to remain silent.

And he conspired with others, the people who contributed the money.

So he's facing two five-year charges.

The guilt, the evidence of guilt on both is overwhelming.

It is an incredible fall from grace for John Edwards.

And he

sounds familiar, right?

So that's Judge Andrew Neapolitano.

This is 2011 discussing the indictment of John Edwards, which people are comparing it to.

Now, of course, they were against John Edwards.

The Republicans were.

It didn't really work in general.

He managed to prove that he was doing it to protect his wife who was dying.

Trump has tried the Melania defense.

It's not quite as strong here.

When you look at stuff like this, this is the equalization.

Is that PR?

thing to do is equalization then brings down the argument of the other side, presumably.

I think so.

I saw a lot of folks invoking the John Edwards example.

And he did ultimately get off.

His political career was over, though.

His political career was over.

I know this is somebody who also never had that, you know, the staying power that Donald Trump does and, you know, being a former president.

My, my, my concern there, though, is everything with him defies norms.

This went, this goes further.

Like, and I just keep saying this is the least relatable crime, like paying off of porn star hush money to try to, you know, hide from both your wife, but the American public.

And I do think it's one of those areas where where your mind's made up about it, though.

You're either, you either have decided you're not with Trump or you've decided this is a witch hunt.

And I'm not sure I see this changing a whole lot of hearts and minds.

Can I ask you, Kara, though?

What do you, what do you think about the media coverage?

I think it's been terrible.

I think it's been terrible.

I have to say, it's once again, it's the same old, same old.

And they're just following the cars and the doors.

I was sort of like, you're kidding me.

We're watching his motorcade, right?

Why?

Him getting there?

Like, it was strange.

And then it creates, because they want to create a sense.

I know what they're doing.

They're creating a sense of tension.

And here it comes.

It's like a law and order episode, but it's not a law and order episode, you know?

And so it just was he coming out door.

What's he some of it?

Some of the coverage was, this is what's happening.

And that's absolutely news.

It's a historic event.

It is, because he's the first president to be.

criminally indicted.

And so that was important, but all the rest around it and the endless chit-chattery was really, I think, untoward.

I think it's just plays right into, I don't know if it'll get him elected, but it plays into this weird relationship that the United States has with this man.

And I think that's what it really is.

It's not just Republicans.

It's everybody has.

They can't quit him.

And so that was the media can't quit him.

And of course, there is financial benefit from it.

They're just.

Oh, of course.

They said it out loud a couple of years ago, but now they don't say it out loud.

No, it's undoubtedly a factor in, you know,

the 10 million that he's raised.

I mean,

he got close to that and earned media coverage in the past couple days.

100%.

And so, you know, whatever.

It's just, we're not talking about other things.

And speaking of other things, how should Presidential Hopeful, say you worked for them, manage this moment on the Republican side, declared Nikki Haley and Asa Hutchinson?

How would you handle it?

You don't beat Trump by not taking him on directly, hands down.

Listen,

if you could see the Grateful Dead, you're not going to go see a Grateful Dead cover ban.

So the kind of running is mini Trump's as I would say Ron DeSantis's.

People are going to want the original if that's what they're looking for.

So, you need to identify the voters who aren't looking for that and offer them something different.

I briefly got excited about Nikki Haley.

I liked her as governor.

I really liked her as U.N.

ambassador, but it's like she's running a traditional Republican campaign and ignoring the fact that the frontrunner is Donald J.

Trump, a man who defies every norm and takes up all the oxygen in the room.

DeSantis is trying to outstunt him, even though he's an undeclared candidate.

And Ace is, it's interesting.

I applaud him for at least being willing to say Trump is unfit for office and he wouldn't support him.

That's going where few elected Republicans or former in his case will go.

I have a hard time seeing how he could ever get significant steam.

I would, I'm, I'm holding out for, you know, some kind of a dream scenario where someone gets in and says, I want to, I want to go toe-to-toe with him on a debate stage.

But

at this point, it almost feels like people are running to be his VP.

Then yes, that's true.

So you have DeSantis

is the cover band, presumably.

Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, who may or may not run now, apparently.

And well, and the thing there that, and, you know, I worked for Pence, I think highly of him.

I'll always be grateful for his heroism on January 6th.

But he and Pompeo were in the same boat and to a lesser degree, Nikki Haley, where it's hard to run against someone who you served under and where a lot of the things you want to tower from their administration.

I do give quick props to Mike Pompeo, though.

I'm really disturbed by some of this anti-Ukraine sentiment that's jetting up on the right.

You know, we shouldn't be supporting them.

It actually goes further, but I'm not even going to echo the pro-Putin propaganda.

And he made a point to go to Ukraine and to express his unwavering support.

So it's a good juxtaposition, but it's not direct enough and it's not going to break.

Okay, what about Joe Biden?

What should he do?

What should Joe Biden do?

Just nothing?

Say, get alone to this guy.

I think he won by saying get alone to this guy a lot, right?

Well, okay, I'm going to say what he should do, which isn't going to happen.

If, and my apologies to my friends in the Joe Biden White House, if he decided not to run for reelection, he would go down in history as one of the most consequential presidents in the 21st century.

He became that stopgap that we needed at a time where our nation was helplessly divided.

He has a legislative record that Democrats can be proud of and some big bipartisan wins, chips, transport, infrastructure, I should say.

I think that would be powerful.

And knowing when to pass the baton is, you know, a lost art in American politics.

I don't think that's going to happen.

Washington did it and he did really well for doing it.

That is true.

He's comed down.

He's emulated it.

Yes.

No, nobody's emulated it.

Just him.

That was him the last time they did it.

So he should step aside and then get out of the way for a much more vibrant candidate.

That's my sense.

The problem is, is the Democrats have a strong bench for, let's say, four years from now.

I don't know that they have a strong one right now.

Like Westmore and Maryland is incredible.

They've got some of these rising stars.

I don't know that they have the heir apparent.

Respectfully, I do not think it's Vice President Harrison.

Many people do that.

Yeah,

she's just struggled to get a real policy portfolio and wins on the books.

And I actually expected her to be a lot more formidable than I observed she has been since being VP.

Not Newsom?

So I'd be curious, your thoughts on this.

I'm not sure I think Democrats can elect a wealthy cis white male in this era.

And Biden's an exception because he was Obama's VP, and he's so popular in somewhere like South Carolina.

But I don't know that the progressive left gets behind Newsom.

I don't know.

I don't know.

It's interesting.

He's super aggressive.

I like what he's doing in terms of aggression, you know, and sort of he's making a name for himself in that regard.

And he does run the state that's bigger than most countries, right?

So it's not like he doesn't have the experience.

And, you know, handsome, tall man, that never hurts.

You know, I hate to say it, but that's, you look at, that's who

Trump is tall.

People don't realize Obama was very tall.

You know, then there's Mitch Landro down in Louisiana.

That's another person.

I actually love him.

I saw him speak once.

He's hilarious.

He's a Biden.

He's a Joe Biden type of person.

Like, people love him down there.

Well, you know who I, my money was on a Buddha judge, like Buddha judge running, but he's had such a, there's so many, you know, infrastructure-related,

transportation-related issues.

Yeah, not his fault, but still his fault.

So that's the problem.

Exactly.

You own it if that's your title.

All right.

So the last one would be Joe Lieberman and Joe Manchin involved in the group No Labels.

They raised $70 million from undisclosed donors.

Could Republicans like you go over there or more centrist Democrats move over there who are irritated by the far left?

I would love to see a vibrant third party, but the problem is what it does is it tends, it would, it's going to boost one side or the other.

And I think that the fear factor, you know,

if Liz Cheney has talked about this before, is you run somebody to the middle and you actually risk taking more votes from Joe Biden and boosting candidate Donald Trump to the nomination.

I don't think we're in a place where a third party does much beyond raise a lot of money and create headaches for the existing parties without actually having a path to victory.

But what I would say is this.

Well, that's what Pat Buchanan did back when, if you remember.

That is true.

Yeah.

That's what he did.

Throwbacks your whole thing.

I have never forgotten Pat Buchanan.

Well, but I do think our primary system is doing such a disservice to the country in both parties.

Especially on the right, I mean, we nominate the least electable person in a general election, but someone like a Manchin, in a general, I bet could get 60% of the country.

I could vote for Joe Manchin.

There's things I disagree with him on, but I could vote for him.

You'd have a ton of Republicans who'd be willing to vote, especially if it's him against a Trump, but he'd never get through a Democratic primary.

It would have to be a third-party run.

So I'm going to push you one more time.

If it's Joe Biden, what would you do if you were him?

Okay, he's not going to resign.

Say he decides he's fit as a fiddle.

What would be his message?

He's got legislative achievements to run on, but he's got to do the I'm the president for all Americans.

I actually thought his inauguration was extremely powerful.

What he said.

I, as a Republican, have seen a little less of trying to reach the Republican side or the middle since he's been in office.

But I think reminding folks of there are certain American values that are more important than partisan politics.

Our democracy being number one.

You know, in the alternative, assuming it is a Trump, which hey, it may may not be, but it's going to be Trump.

The alternative is a threat to our underlying democratic values, to our institutions, and to the future of the free world.

You need to make it this time for choosing kind of moment.

I think he's capable of doing it, but

I mean,

the age factor is not a small deal.

And by the way, Donald Trump is a good thing.

Trump is old too.

They're both old.

Yeah, they should have new ones for everyone.

All right.

One more question.

The results in Wisconsin last week elected Democratic-backed judge Janet Protosiewicz for the state Supreme Court, giving the body a liberal majority for the first time in 15 years.

It was the most expensive campaign for a state Supreme Court in U.S.

history.

It's an important one.

The court is executed to rule on abortion rights.

The newly elected judge made women's rights a focus of her campaign and won the endorsement of Planned Parenthood.

She won by a lot.

It wasn't a little.

By roughly 11 percentage points.

That is a big win.

Many people, including a friend of Pivot, Rebecca Tracer, argues that abortion rights is a winning issue in these elections.

You've seen it happen all over the place.

You saw it in the midterms, possibly.

And not just that.

It was, I think, a surprise, same thing in Chicago, the more progressive candidate one.

That's not as much a surprise, I think, to most people because it was a close election in that case,

a law and order person versus a more progressive, socially expansive one.

So talk, what does Wisconsin mean if you're a Republican strategist?

It's a huge deal.

The loss.

I mean, first and foremost, candidate quality matters.

And once again, we ran someone so far to the right that they lacked the ability to have have that statewide appeal.

But there's

sorry to keep going back to him.

There's a Trump factor to this.

So in 20, I want to say 16 or 2017, Republicans held the Supreme Court in Wisconsin in a 5-2 majority, which was seen as insurmountable, that that would be a Republican-held Supreme Court for some time.

They've now lost the court in two governors' races.

So this is a swing state, a very important one, by the way, electorally in a presidential election that we are bleeding support in because of the kind of people that we're choosing to run.

But there's also something more important about this race.

So, my apologies if you don't follow like far-right leaders, but Ollie Alexander, this guy who was one of the January 6th organizers, and he's, you know, had to, he's under investigation for his role there.

He posted something, I believe, on Parlor that basically said the quiet part out loud after this, the results came in.

He said, We lost the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

I do not see a path to 270 in 2024.

So what he means by that is the reason that MAGA people, Trump people, want these Supreme Courts is they're getting ready to challenge the results of another election.

And they want favorable courts that are going to weigh in in their favor and say, yep, we're giving this to Donald Trump.

It's a big win for Democrats, unquestionably.

And so they will be able to

push abortion rights back to the front, but it's a winning issue.

It seems to be a winning issue because they've taken it too far.

Look at DeSantis in Florida, six weeks.

I didn't know I was pregnant till seven, eight, nine weeks.

Like, I don't remember, but it wasn't six weeks for sure.

I think the midterms showed us that

Republicans taking too extreme of an approach on abortion rights is

an unequivocal loser.

And I don't think that we've, I don't think we've properly measured the sentiment

around it.

I'd be curious, actually, as a Republican, to get some real data on how Republicans feel on this issue post-Dobbs.

Because I think in the Roe v.

Wade era, it was easy to, you know, I'm Episcopalian, so it's easy to be culturally pro-life.

You know, I'm against abortion.

That's kind of what we were taught.

But you said it knowing that it was a legal right that women were able to have, and that wasn't a discussion if they so choose.

It wasn't something that you were actually actively seeing being taken away in different states.

Now that that's changed, I mean, I'm constantly hearing from Republican girlfriends who are saying, you know, I'm concerned about this.

I think where the states should, I mean, I think where we should be is much closer to Europe.

You know, we actually had much more liberal abortion laws under Roe than a lot of European countries do.

It's unequivocally going to be

one of the most defining issues.

Which they didn't think it would be in the election.

Actually, Trump said that.

That's one thing Trump said.

What are you doing?

He was right on it.

He was.

And he probably understood it, given he probably knows a little bit about it.

Allegedly.

Allegedly.

Allegedly.

But I think he did understand that this is one of the biggest issues and it has a staying power that is not going away at any time soon.

All right.

When we get back, we're going to have you make a prediction.

So one more quick break and we'll be right back with Alyssa Farah.

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Okay, Alyssa, you have to make a prediction.

You can make a prediction.

I have a depressing prediction.

I predict, since we're talking politics a lot today, I predict Donald Trump is going to get the Republican nomination.

I also predict that Ron DeSantis is going to flame out in the next quarter.

Not completely, but he's going to lose his number two kind of spot.

And why?

He's charmless.

My feeling, charmless.

Nixonian.

Charmless.

There's not a whole lot of personality there.

I think you can't just live by, you know, govern by owning the libs.

And I think that's kind of been his approach.

He doesn't engage mainstream media.

So he doesn't take a lot of tough questions that are required to be able to defend your positions.

And some of the unforced errors, I mean, the mistake he made on Ukraine was incredible.

You saw a ton of prominent Republicans coming out and it looked amateur.

That said, he has an incredibly strong team around him and he's raised a lot of money.

But I just, I don't think the there is there.

Sharmless.

I find him to me.

He's not like.

He's like, you know, even they said about Hilary, she's likable enough.

He's not even likable enough.

That's my, he's not likable.

So who replaces him then?

If you, I'm going to make you for make that prediction more significant.

You know, you know what?

I think, um, wait for Pence to get in.

I think Pence is going to have a moment.

I think he does retail politics very well.

So when he starts hitting Iowa, South Carolina, which he's really going to prioritize, he likes to shake hands and kiss babies.

He knows how to talk to Republican-based voters because he's actually a true conservative, you know, unlike someone like a Donald Trump.

I think he'll have a moment.

I, you know, I don't think it's enough to pull it off, but I see him going up in the polls once he's in.

Anybody else?

Stick him.

I mean, I am just Chris Christie.

You know what?

Hey, props to Chris Christie because he does want to take on Trump.

But I think that moment would have been many years ago.

Yeah.

So anybody else, nobody else.

So that's it.

I'd like to say, I mean, listen, if Governor Sununu gets in, I think that could be a moment.

And, you know, Tim Scott's testing the waters.

I don't know.

I really think the only person I see breaking through in a significant way would be Pence.

Nikki Haley's going to be slow and steady, but I get the sense, and I hope I'm wrong, but that she's running to be Trump's VP.

Okay, I'm going to make you make one more prediction.

I'm going to ask you, VP of Trump, is it Carrie Lake or the one from Kansas?

The one from no, Iowa, the Iowa governor.

He, um, if it were up to him, it would be probably be Carrie Lake.

Um, but I do think smarter advisors, I think Susie Wiles, who's around him, is going to say it needs to be somebody who's going to appeal to moderates and to independents.

That's where I actually think Nikki Haley is central casting.

Um, woman Woman of color, personal story, you know, former governor, U.N.

ambassador.

Kim Reynolds is good.

I think Nikki Haley actually makes more sense and has more of a national profile.

But his instinct is going to be like Carrie Lake or Marjorie Taylor Greene.

And his people are going to be like, no, no, no, no.

It's got to be someone sane.

Wouldn't that be a gift?

Wouldn't that be a gift?

Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Any predictions on your end?

No, I think that I think he's not going to be the nominee.

How about that?

I love it.

Let's put some money on it.

Yes, let's put some money on it.

$100.

I think he's, I, let me just ask you, did you watch all the apprentices like I did?

I did for a while.

I watched a few seasons, but not to the end.

All of them.

Every one.

He has an ending.

He gets tired.

People get tired.

You're like, oh, him again.

I'm just telling you.

I hope that series finale is coming for America.

You know, if the right Republicans get to the primaries, it doesn't have to be just the craze.

You know, you don't have to leave it to the crazies.

If you want to take it back, you can move them to vote.

I I don't know.

Who do you think might be able to

sununa?

Yeah.

Oh, good.

I love to hear about it.

Sununa.

I was just in New Hampshire for a couple of weeks finishing my book, and I have to say they love him there.

They love him.

He's fantastic.

I love him.

He seems reasonable enough.

He seems, and he's interesting, actually, as opposed to, I know you like Mitt Romney, but Mitt Romney is also not interesting.

Yeah.

Well, and Sununu would be our first Lebanese president.

And as a Lebanese American, I love it.

Okay, on that note, that's the show.

Also, Pivot is nominated for a Webby Award, and you need to vote for us.

We'll put a link in the show notes.

Anyway, thank you, Alyssa Farrah Griffin, and we'll be sure to find you on The View.

Well, thank you so much for having me.

Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie Endrudat engineered this episode.

Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

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