How Broke and Desperate Is Donald Trump?

Transcript

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Speaker 15 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.

Speaker 16 I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Speaker 15 On today's pod, Joe Biden makes another big push on climate and student loans. Democrats try to keep voters of color from defecting to Trump.

Speaker 15 And later, strict scrutiny's Leah Lippmann stops by to catch us up on all the Trump legal developments, as well as the border war between Texas and the federal government. But first,

Speaker 15 Donald Trump's first full week as the presumptive Republican nominee has not gone as well as you'd think for the famously disciplined political savant. And you don't have to take our word for it.

Speaker 15 A senior Trump advisor told the staff it had been a bad press week for the campaign. This is according to Politico.

Speaker 15 Since clinching the nomination, Trump has floated cuts to Social Security and Medicare, teased a national abortion ban, promised to pardon violent insurrectionists who he now salutes at his rallies, said that some immigrants, quote, aren't people, and claimed that any Jewish person who votes for Democrats, quote, hates their religion.

Speaker 15 He also hasn't yet won over Nikki Haley's voters, as evidenced in this week's primaries by the nearly 20% of the vote she got without even being in the race. And Trump's got some cash issues.

Speaker 15 We found out this week that his campaign in the RNC raised less than half of what Biden and the DNC did last quarter.

Speaker 15 And his super PAC has now spent more than $50 million on his legal fees without much to show for it because Trump is currently scrambling to find someone, anyone, who will help him out with the $464 million bond he has to put up for the New York civil fraud case judgment.

Speaker 15 He doesn't have the cash, can't find an an underwriter, doesn't want to sell his assets, and is reportedly worried about the political perception of declaring bankruptcy.

Speaker 15 So where will he get the money? Here's one of his lawyers on Fox.

Speaker 17 Is there any effort on the part of your team to secure this money through another country, Saudi Arabia or Russia, as Joy Behar seems to think?

Speaker 18 Well, there's rules and regulations that are public. I can't speak about strategy that require certain things, and we have to follow those rules.
Like I said, this is manifest injustice.

Speaker 15 Props to Joy Behar for getting that out there.

Speaker 16 Noted investigative reporter, Joy Behar.

Speaker 16 Woodward Bernstein of the Generation.

Speaker 15 Just asking questions.

Speaker 15 It's working.

Speaker 16 They're good questions to ask, I'll be honest with you.

Speaker 15 They are.

Speaker 15 I know Leo will break down the legal issues involved here, but from a political standpoint, it certainly doesn't seem ideal to have a president who's desperate for cash wherever he can find it.

Speaker 15 Do you think Trump is right to be as worried as he seems about this bond?

Speaker 16 Yeah, I think he should be quite worried for a whole host of reasons. Now,

Speaker 16 like his attorney who was just on Fox, I also don't know the rules and regulations about taking money from foreign entities, but if you were to do so, that would seem quite bad politically, right?

Speaker 16 If you are in hockey to Saudi Arabia or a Russian oligarch or something like that, that seems quite bad politically.

Speaker 16 Being in hockey to a Wall Street bank or a giant insurance company also seems quite bad, right?

Speaker 16 Because one of Trump's bullshit appeals to some segment of voters is this idea that because he's this wealthy man, special interests don't own him, right?

Speaker 16 He tricked, he lied repeatedly in 2016 about how he was going to fund his own campaign.

Speaker 15 I can't be bought. I can't be bought.
I'm not going to owe anyone anything. And once I'm in office, I don't need to repay any donors with favors.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I can't be bought, but I can lease all of my possessions to one entity to keep me out of prison, basically.

Speaker 16 And then finally, bankruptcy

Speaker 16 would be a disaster for him politically because

Speaker 16 his brand is successful business person, right? I mean, that's bullshit too.

Speaker 16 His true brand is reality TV host, but this idea that he is a successful business person who understands the economy, all of that has the potential to collapse if he has to file for bankruptcy six months before the election.

Speaker 16 And I mean, so all of this is very bad for him and is clearly

Speaker 16 impacting his conduct on the campaign trail because he is acting like the old school Trump lunatic that he was before.

Speaker 15 Yeah, no, it's a very good point you make about

Speaker 15 sort of his brand and some of his political appeal coming from seeming rich and successful. That's also where his part of his perception of strength comes from.

Speaker 15 And if he's broke and desperate, he looks pretty weak. The Washington Post ran a story about how Trump doesn't want to declare bankruptcy.

Speaker 15 And one of the people close to Trump told the Post he'd rather have Letitia James show up with the sheriff at 40 Wall Street, which is where Trump Tower is, and make a huge stink about it than say he's bankrupt.

Speaker 15 He thinks about what is going to play politically well for him. Bankruptcy doesn't play well for him, but having her try to take his properties might.

Speaker 15 I don't care if this ends up being politically good or bad from him. I just, I want to see Letitia James show up with the sheriff.
to seize Trump Tower. That's just my most resistancy take on this.

Speaker 15 I'm going to enjoy it. I think we all deserve it.
I just want to see it. Whether it's politically good or bad, I don't, whatever.
We can figure out that later. We, I mean,

Speaker 16 we have been podcasting about Donald Trump for going on seven millennia now. And one of the ongoing themes is the idea that one day we would see him frog march to prison.

Speaker 16 We went through multiple impeachments, multiple criminal trials. off-the-lay criminal trials.
It would be a nice little just amuse bouche to see her take Trump Tower. Take Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 16 Take the golf club, right?

Speaker 15 Take the plane.

Speaker 16 Take the plane.

Speaker 15 Yeah, take whatever. I don't care.

Speaker 16 Just repossess the plane. Yes.

Speaker 16 It would just be, just give us that. We deserve that.

Speaker 15 I know you and Leah are probably going to talk about what can save Trump here legally, but it does seem like

Speaker 15 Truth Social to the Rescue here

Speaker 15 that

Speaker 15 he might end up making a bunch of money from his fake Twitter website because he snowed a bunch of Trump fans into

Speaker 15 investing.

Speaker 15 That would be annoying.

Speaker 15 That's probably what's going to happen.

Speaker 15 I mean,

Speaker 16 even then, I mean, he has a lot of money from that, but it's not all liquid. That's his problem.
He obviously has less money than he tells everyone, which is why he was originally convicted of fraud.

Speaker 15 But even then. Also, something that's bad.
We forgot that part. You know what else is bad politically? Having been held liable for fraud.

Speaker 16 I mean, one would would be hope.

Speaker 15 It should be.

Speaker 16 Maybe. Time will tell.
I don't know.

Speaker 16 But he also just does not have the money. Like he would have to sell his properties to do that, which he obviously is unwilling to do.
So maybe she'll take them and then sell them.

Speaker 16 Leah and I talked about this is, and you will hear it, but it's be very amusing if that happens. I'd say that.

Speaker 15 It sure will. All right.
So let's talk about the entire week. Polling is a lagging indicator, so it's still unclear whether all of this shit will move the numbers at all.

Speaker 15 If you squint, squint at the polling, you might be able to see a little movement, maybe a little, but it's early.

Speaker 15 But one challenge we've always had with Trump is figuring out which of his political problems to focus on. What do you think after the first full week of Trump as a presumptive Republican nominee?

Speaker 16 I think that there is a larger story to tell about his chaotic, narcissistic style that he is that is like one of the things they we say this in all the polling that there is this retrospective nostalgia for Trump's presidency right people have sort of memory holed what it was felt like to have Donald Trump be president to live on the edge of our seats with this sort of insanity and so just the fact that he's in the news all the time is good and all the things he's doing are all about helping himself right so that so that's why so that's the that's the larger story like you need a larger narrative what are the of the crazy shit he said this week, what are probably the most politically impactful ones?

Speaker 16 To me, it is pretty obviously putting cuts to social security on the table and proposing a national abortion ban. Those are two issues that go at the core of

Speaker 16 the Social Security goes at the core of his working class base and his working class appeal, as bullshit as even that is.

Speaker 16 And abortion is the thing that drives turnout among Democrats and has helped power our victories in 2022 and 2023.

Speaker 16 And we know from the polling as well that there's so much work to do to convince voters that Donald Trump is as far right on abortion as we have been able to convince them that the rest of the Republican Party is.

Speaker 16 He gets a pass because he is a New York wannabe Playboy cad who cheats on his wife's. And, you know, we've said this before in focus groups.

Speaker 16 Sarah Longwell said this once in her focus group podcast: that people proactively will bring up the idea when you ask them if Donald Trump is anti-access to abortion or anti-choice, they will say, of course, he's not personal.

Speaker 16 He's probably paid for abortions. And so we have work to do there, and he gave Democrats the opportunity to do that.
So those are the two things I would hammer.

Speaker 15 I do think that your first point about telling a larger story is very important

Speaker 15 because almost by definition, if we're trying to persuade voters who haven't made up their minds yet, they are at least open to voting for Trump or have voted for Trump in the past.

Speaker 15 And I do think, you know, you can, even though we rolled our eyes at it when they said it, but like Chris Christie or Nikki Haley, and they're like, yeah, at one point, Donald Trump was maybe fighting for you or said that he was going to fight for you or whatever, but he is now running for president solely to save himself and punish everyone else who disagrees with them, right?

Speaker 15 Like he will say or do literally anything to keep himself out of jail and keep himself from going broke. And he doesn't like anyone who's not for him and anyone who's not for him as a target.

Speaker 15 Doesn't like Nikki Haley Republicans if they're not for him. Doesn't like Jewish people if they're Democrats.

Speaker 15 Wants to shoot people who are protesting against him, but pardon people who storm the Capitol. Like that it's all about him.
And if you don't like him, you're screwed and he's going to screw you over.

Speaker 15 And if you're for him, he still might screw you over because he really only cares about himself.

Speaker 16 Yeah, he is a weak, insecure loser who is running for president to avoid going to jail to help himself, reward his rich friends, and punish his enemies.

Speaker 15 Yeah, and I think you got to just tell a story to people who are like, well, I didn't think the first term was that bad, or I kind of like the economy, or we survived the first term.

Speaker 15 And I think the turn is he is now desperate to save himself. And he is even more narcissistic than ever before, right?

Speaker 15 Because that's that we're going to have to actually persuade people of this who are still on the fence. And there are a number.

Speaker 16 And narcissistic is a stage direction, not a word we're putting in the ad, just to be clear.

Speaker 15 So

Speaker 15 Trump's loyal subjects in the House of Representatives didn't make life any easier for him this week. On Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson and most of the Republican caucus released their 2025 agenda.

Speaker 15 They want to raise the retirement age for Social Security, privatize Medicare, get rid of Obamacare, cut disability benefits, cut Medicaid, cut children's health insurance, and pass a national abortion ban that could also eliminate access to IVF, all to pay for huge tax cuts.

Speaker 15 to alleged billionaires like Trump, who could really use one right about now.

Speaker 15 The Biden campaign jumped all over this, as they should, and they said the budget is, quote, Donald Trump's Project 2025 roadmap. Obviously, this is an aspirational document.

Speaker 15 How do we make it matter to voters?

Speaker 16 I mean, it's his, this is the agenda if Trump wins.

Speaker 16 It's not even, this is not like what the right does sometimes or they take something that may be unpopular with swing voters that some, maybe a progressive member of Congress says and they just attribute it to Joe Biden.

Speaker 16 Donald Trump included cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his budget every single year he was president. He says he supports a national abortion ban.

Speaker 16 He tried to gut many of the programs mentioned here while he was president. There is a roadmap here.
He has said these things this week. And so I think you just have to attribute it to him.

Speaker 16 And because this is the reality, because if Donald Trump wins, he's almost certainly bringing a Republican House and a Republican Senate with him.

Speaker 16 That's just how these things tend to go in presidential years, especially given what the map is.

Speaker 16 This year, it's hard to see a world where Donald Trump is winning Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Michigan. or one of those states and Democrats are winning Ohio and Montana.

Speaker 16 Like that's just, it's not, that's, that would be, that would be highly unlikely.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I was going to say the most, the most unlikely situation is that somehow Donald Trump becomes president and Democrats win the Senate. That's just not happening.
That's not happening.

Speaker 15 If Donald Trump wins, Republicans control the Senate. Like just the House possibility that Democrats could still keep the House, but I think it's a lower possibility.

Speaker 16 This is Mike Johnson's plan. This is the plan of whichever person succeeds Mitch McConnell.
This is Donald Trump's plan, and this is what they will put into place. And we have to tell everyone.

Speaker 16 Like, that is ultimately what you have to do is you have to shout from the rooftops.

Speaker 16 And here's the thing. You don't have to convince them today.
You have to convince them tomorrow.

Speaker 16 to you have six months to convince people and we're all going to have to do it individually because the press is going to be so fucking annoying about this they're just going to be like just throwing pinocchios left and right oh like oh it's donald trump once didn't say this and oh it's the republican study committee not not the freedom caucus or not the caucus like fuck that this is what is going to happen and we have to we have to drive it and we're all going to have to do it ourselves to our friends and family on this podcast through vote safe america all of that like i think this is a huge opportunity to help explain to people that the future Trump presidency is to a lot of people right now something that feels a little more orderly than what they feel right now and lower prices or a return to 2019 prices at the grocery store.

Speaker 16 And we have to explain that it's so much more. And here is a perfectly laid out way to do that.

Speaker 15 And I do think, I'm actually surprised that, you know, it's been a day since this plan was released and the Trump campaign has not.

Speaker 15 responded to try to put themselves at arm's length from the plan as they have done with some other sort of extreme right-wing things because there's a few people running the campaign who might know something about politics.

Speaker 15 But I do think it's an opportunity for reporters should the Trump campaign or Donald Trump himself ever venture out of his right-wing media bubble and take some questions from real reporters to ask him about not only whether he agrees with this plan, but if he says he doesn't agree with some parts of this plan, ask him why most of this plan showed up in his budget every year when he was president of the United States?

Speaker 15 So that would be something good to ask. So while Trump's been

Speaker 15 sulking at Mar-a-Lago all week, begging for cash, Joe Biden has been barnstorming the country to sell his economic agenda.

Speaker 15 In Nevada, he talked about his plan to build more housing and make it more affordable. In Arizona, he announced a grant that will help bring back thousands of microchip manufacturing jobs to the U.S.

Speaker 15 The president also relieved student debt for another 77,000 borrowers this week, where now over 4 million Americans helped, have had their debt relieved by Joe Biden.

Speaker 15 He also announced a new climate rule to help ensure that two-thirds of all new cars in this country will be hybrid or electric vehicles by 2032.

Speaker 15 Pretty big deal,

Speaker 15 especially the EPA rule on electric vehicles. Trump and Republicans have been running against EVs, saying they're more expensive and will cost American auto workers their jobs.

Speaker 15 What do you think about the politics of Biden pushing electric vehicles? vehicles?

Speaker 16 I would say I was feeling pretty great about it until I tuned into the Wednesday podcast this morning and I heard a Disu D'Amisi say that he was worried about it.

Speaker 16 And I figured if a Disu's worried about it, I'm worried about it. Yeah.
I should be worried about it.

Speaker 15 I did that and then I did some did some Googling on the polls. So yeah.
But here, here's the thing.

Speaker 16 This is the right, put the politics aside, this is absolutely the right thing to do. 100% have to do it.

Speaker 15 Necessary, necessary transformational, like we're fucked with if we just have

Speaker 16 to do this.

Speaker 15 Gas cars for the next century. We're fucked.

Speaker 16 So yeah. And I think the politic, the good of this outweighs the negative.

Speaker 16 I think being bold on climate is absolutely essential if he's going to reconstitute the coalition of young voters who put him in office the first time. He absolutely has to do this.

Speaker 16 But there's obviously risk to it. And one thing that Trump is very skilled at is finding a way to make people believe that the country is changing and that change is bad for them.

Speaker 16 And if you were someone who was in the auto industry, you worked in the auto industry for a long time, you have survived massive transition, right? Globalization, changes in technology.

Speaker 16 The auto companies almost went bankrupt in 2009. And

Speaker 16 this is one more threat, right? And Trump, this is all of what MAGA is about is that a bunch of liberals, people in California, elsewhere are changing the country. That change is bad for you.

Speaker 16 So we're going to have to push back on that. And I think what doing Biden, his relationship with and endorsement from the United Auto Workers is a great pushback to that idea.

Speaker 16 And so I think he can be very aggressive and push forward, but it's an argument he's going to have to win for sure.

Speaker 15 Yeah. And I think, like,

Speaker 15 I'll just talk about some of the polling. So, Ipsos did a big poll in the fall, I think it was in October.

Speaker 15 So, on one side, you get a majority of Americans are supporting government programs to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Great, right? 54% approve that.
That could be higher, too.

Speaker 15 But they also support government incentives to encourage electric vehicle purchases. 52% approve of that.
And that gets support among Democrats, 69%, and 72%

Speaker 15 of Independents, and

Speaker 15 even like a plurality of Republicans. So like if you're going to help people, if the government's going to help people be able to afford electric vehicles, they like that.

Speaker 15 But support for the phasing out of new gasoline vehicles is only at 30%.

Speaker 15 And support for government restrictions on the sale of new gasoline vehicles is at 21%.

Speaker 15 So

Speaker 15 that's the mandate part, which is really tough. That's why they keep calling it a mandate.
Now, of course, it's not, it's like a slow phased in process to 2032, right?

Speaker 15 So that's, you know, what, 12 years from now?

Speaker 15 Hopefully we still have a country by then.

Speaker 15 But

Speaker 15 in a planet, yeah, planet would be good too. Country, planet, which will go first.

Speaker 15 So, so yeah, but that's just, it's just, it's important to know what the politics are before we go into this.

Speaker 15 Having said that, it is extremely important to do do and good that Joe Biden has done it because we absolutely need to make this transition if we are to prevent the worst climate catastrophes from happening.

Speaker 15 But we have work to do on the politics. It's just the case.

Speaker 16 It's almost comforting to know that given the massive political period of transition and chaos that we live in, that it is still true, what has been true for 100 years, that is the government giving people money to do things, popular.

Speaker 15 Popular.

Speaker 16 Government telling them not to do something, unpopular.

Speaker 15 Or yeah, or taking away something that people have. No, they don't like that.

Speaker 16 And I feel like we're backing gas stove hell. They're not, the government is not taking your gas car.
No. They're just regulating how many new gas cars can be made.

Speaker 15 Drive it till it doesn't drive anymore, just till it

Speaker 15 breaks down in the middle of the road. You drive as much as you want.

Speaker 16 But you can drive that gas car as fast as that gas car will take you, as the oceans are coming after you as

Speaker 16 the icebergs melt.

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Speaker 15 All right, so most polls show Biden struggling with young voters. Two of their top concerns, along with the war in Gaza, are the climate crisis and student loan relief.

Speaker 15 Do you think these policies that we talked about this week, both the EV policy and more student debt relief, do you think this can help Biden with young voters?

Speaker 16 I absolutely do think it can. And John, I'm so glad you asked this question because you're not going to believe this.

Speaker 16 But this this week, I mean, this week on Polar Coaster, the subscriber exclusive podcast for Friends of the Pod that I host that you could subscribe to by going to crooked.com slash friends, I talked to John DeLavolpe,

Speaker 16 an expert in the youth vote and a pollster, about this very issue. And what he said was really interesting.

Speaker 16 One of the points that he made is that one of the huge struggles that Biden has is there's a massive knowledge gap with young voters.

Speaker 16 between what they want Biden to do and what Biden has actually done.

Speaker 16 And that the only way to get those young voters back in the fold is going to be to talk to them from people they trust about what Biden has actually done and what he is planning to do.

Speaker 16 So I think these are, this is huge. All of these things we've talked about today, the bad stuff about Trump, the good stuff about Biden is ammunition to use to try to go make a case, right?

Speaker 16 These are data points we can use and these are really important ones, I think.

Speaker 15 I'm glad you said that. And I also think that

Speaker 15 young activists and organizers can really help here, organizations that do this kind of stuff. As we were preparing for this, I read the story in Politico that was in prep.

Speaker 15 It ran in a couple of weeks ago, I think in February, about young climate activists. And it talks about the Sunrise Movement.

Speaker 15 And they, you know, a couple of months ago, they protested at Biden's headquarters, campaign headquarters, because he hasn't yet declared a climate emergency.

Speaker 15 And they keep saying he's going to lose if he doesn't.

Speaker 15 And their spokesperson acknowledged Politico in the piece that, you know, protests like that could make Biden appear weak and help Trump, but that, quote, it's hard to say right now exactly how we'll walk that line.

Speaker 15 So first of all, on a climate emergency, a climate emergency would be Biden using sort of, you know, how you declare a national emergency if you're president for natural disasters or the pandemic or other things.

Speaker 15 It would basically,

Speaker 15 as I understand it, free up some money in different agencies to pursue more climate resiliency, to sort of stop more oil drilling, to stop more projects, to stop crude oil exports.

Speaker 15 So it can definitely make a difference. It will certainly not make as much of a difference as any of the steps that Joe Biden has already taken on climate.

Speaker 15 It would make some difference, but anyway, so they're very upset about that. That's fine.

Speaker 15 Like, I realize that even though Joe Biden spent his political capital on passing what is objectively the biggest climate bill in history, there are going to be climate activists who wish he'd go further.

Speaker 15 I realize that even though he has now canceled student debt for over 4 million Americans, there's going to be progressives who wish he'd go further. And like, that's okay.
Keep pushing, keep fighting.

Speaker 15 But like, we only get the chance to do more if Joe Biden wins.

Speaker 15 And one way to think about it is: your vote isn't about grading Joe Biden's presidency, and it's not about punishing or rewarding Joe Biden or Donald Trump.

Speaker 15 It is about what kind of future you want for yourself.

Speaker 15 And Joe Biden was not progressives' first choice in 2020. He won.
Progressives kept pushing.

Speaker 15 And this guy, who's been pretty moderate for his entire life, decades in politics, ended up passing passing some of the most progressive legislation in history.

Speaker 15 And if he loses, perhaps you'll have proved a point, but you will also have done deep damages to the causes that you profess to care about.

Speaker 15 And I think that's like really important because a lot of young people and a lot of just voters in general are not paying as close attention as we are to politics.

Speaker 15 I say a million broken record on this. And they're going to take cues from, as you said and you talked with John about, people that they trust.

Speaker 15 They're also going to take cues from organizations and activists and volunteers that are out there.

Speaker 15 And so if you are part of these organizations, it is not contradictory at all to criticize Joe Biden, say he needs to do more, and then get out there and tell people it is vitally important to the cause of climate change to make sure that Joe Biden and not Donald Trump is president.

Speaker 15 That's my that's just my thing on that, Dan.

Speaker 16 I like this new segment of the pod where you just become the Grandpa Simpson meme of old man Jeff the Clouds.

Speaker 15 I wasn't good when I missed the politico story. I'm glad that the team put it in prep.
Thank you.

Speaker 15 And then I was just reading it last night. I was like, what? Come on.

Speaker 16 Come on.

Speaker 15 And I also look, and I know the Sunrise movie, like, I follow them on Twitter and they have like very strong feelings about Gaza and I totally get that too. I have strong feelings about Gaza as well.

Speaker 15 But it's like, what you guys want is a president who's going to be forward-leaning on climate and do a lot of work. And that's what you got in Joe Biden.
Is it enough? No, it's not enough.

Speaker 15 But like, the way to deal with that is to keep pushing and make sure he's back in office and you can keep pushing him to do more. I don't know.
I don't know. Sorry.
I just went on another rant.

Speaker 16 That's great. People love it.

Speaker 15 Another goal of Biden's campaign swing when he's out in Nevada and Arizona was to shore up support with Latino voters, who the poll show he's also struggling with, despite winning 60% of Latinos in 2020.

Speaker 15 On Wednesday's episode, Tommy Nedisu talked about the interview where Biden said that Trump, quote, despises Latinos.

Speaker 15 And they also mentioned that his campaign released this ad targeting Latino voters.

Speaker 23 For our abuelos, insulin that costs $35

Speaker 16 or hundreds.

Speaker 23 That is the difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. For women, the freedom to control our own bodies or doctors going to jail for an abortion.

Speaker 15 This is the difference between Joe Biden or Donald Trump.

Speaker 19 Only one choice is right.

Speaker 23 And the difference between them is your vote.

Speaker 16 I'm Joe Biden, and I approve this message.

Speaker 15 So I feel like we'll be talking a lot about the Latino vote between now and November. I know that when Tommy and Odiso talked about this yesterday,

Speaker 15 they made the important point that you have to make at the beginning of any discussion of the Latino vote, which is that the Latino vote is not at all a monolith.

Speaker 15 Just like white voters, Latino voters' political views depend on where your family's from, where you live, how old you are, all that.

Speaker 15 So with all that said, what is your take on both Biden's interview and the ad and just sort of the general outreach to Latino voters that sort of launched this week?

Speaker 16 It's obviously essential, right? And we'll get into what some of the polling says about Biden's struggles here or potential struggles here, but

Speaker 16 you cannot win the presidency without doing well with Latino vote. Like that is, there is, there's no margin of error.
And this is the hard part about talking about this election is.

Speaker 15 Youth voters. True with everything.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 16 Young voters, black voters, Latino voters, women voters, voters named John, like any group, you can lose no people, right? So it's like, so that, that is true here, too. I thought,

Speaker 16 you know, I've seen some and I've heard some critique of the ad that people maybe thought it was boring, didn't love it.

Speaker 16 Here's one thing I say, because John, as you know, I also host a very popular YouTube show. called Political Experts React, where we react to campaign ads.
Yes.

Speaker 15 Are you going to do a second organic plug here?

Speaker 16 Wait till I get a message box plug into the section of Latino vote.

Speaker 15 I'm just kidding.

Speaker 16 But anyway, one of the things I'm not subscribed to the Posse American YouTube channel. But anywho, the

Speaker 15 watch is on paternity leave and you're still doing that.

Speaker 16 You don't think he's not texting me to plug the shit?

Speaker 15 So

Speaker 16 you're tweeting crazy things when you have a baby in your hand. He's just trying to plug crooked stuff.

Speaker 16 All right. Anywho, he one of the things that I think is worth noting on any ad is we all judge them from like a as if we're Roger Ebert, right? Like it's not that interesting.

Speaker 16 And we're the camera angles and all of this. And just we have to remember always that the campaigns test the living shit out of these ads.
And so it obviously works with some group of voters.

Speaker 16 Otherwise, they don't run it.

Speaker 16 But I think it goes to a point that Edissu made, which is, especially with the Latino vote, simply talking about issues and what you're actually done and going to do for the country and the community is incredibly important, right?

Speaker 16 So it's going to be not as exciting as a Lincoln Project ad about, you know, Donald Trump's father not loving him or January 6th. It's just like, this is blocking and tackling.

Speaker 16 We've seen it in the polls. It's not just true.
Latino community is people love the idea of $35 insulin and no one knows that Joe Biden did that.

Speaker 16 So you got to tell them, even if it seems boring at the time. So I think that's the right approach.

Speaker 16 You know, I think the, I like the ad better than the interview.

Speaker 16 And I think getting, because the interview, I think, doesn't get to those issues in the same way, but outreach is important, just being out there, showing up.

Speaker 16 And it's, you're not going to win back voters today with one ad and one interview, but you have to keep doing it. So I hope that I imagine this is going to, these ads will be up the whole time.

Speaker 16 I hope that this sort of public outreach, you know, focus on Latino media continues all the way through the campaign.

Speaker 15 I also think the despise Latino comment, he despises Latinos, clearly Donald Trump has said any number of things that are extraordinarily racist and xenophobic in his time.

Speaker 15 But I do think I would use the opportunity to,

Speaker 15 if I was asked that question, to say,

Speaker 15 look, I just don't think that he fights for Latino voters. I think he doesn't have a record when he was in office of fighting for Latino voters.

Speaker 15 And I don't think he's going to do it now for the following reasons, right? Because I just think if you,

Speaker 15 again, the only people you're trying to persuade here are people who are like open to voting for Donald Trump or for a third party.

Speaker 15 And if they are open to it, then just saying, oh, no, no, he despises you is not, is not necessarily the most persuasive argument.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 16 I mean, we have been, Donald Trump is a racist. Like, I don't think that is a question.
He says racist things. He very clearly holds tremendous racial animus.
I mean, he's a bigot across the board.

Speaker 16 But one thing that we just have to come to terms with as Democrats is we made that case from 2016 to 2020, and he showed dramatic improvement.

Speaker 15 With voters of color.

Speaker 16 Yeah, right. He showed real improvement with voters of color over that period of time.
So it's possible that that's not the best argument with the voters who are who are open to voting for him.

Speaker 16 And so I understand why Biden said that, but I think it's going to, you're going to win them back by more showing what you've done and what you will do and what Donald Trump would do that is bad for your community.

Speaker 16 And it's not just immigration. It's cut, it is repealing the ACA.

Speaker 16 In 2012, when Obama did so well with Latino voters, the most important issue with the Latino voters in our polling was not immigration. It was Romney's support for repealing the ACA.

Speaker 16 So it's going to be that sort of stuff.

Speaker 15 And it's why he talked about housing when he went to Nevada, which because it's true in Nevada and it's true almost everywhere with every demographic group.

Speaker 15 When you ask them about cost of living and they complain about cost of living, they mention housing more than any other issue because

Speaker 15 it's what people spend the most of their money on. And so when you ask people just when you don't give people a list of issues, but you just say what's on your mind, housing comes up all the time.

Speaker 15 So for nerds like us, there has been a raging debate among pundits and political operatives about just how much Biden and the Democrats have been struggling with voters of color over the last decade.

Speaker 15 This is based not only on polls, but on actual election results, though the results definitely show a smaller shift away from Democrats than the current polls.

Speaker 15 And so this debate ranges from some people saying it could just be a polling issue to others saying we could be in the midst of a full-blown racial realignment. And it is true.

Speaker 15 If the polls right now and the sub and the crosstabs demographic groups that we're seeing in the polls, if this is correct, then it probably would be one of the largest racial realignments. Big if.

Speaker 15 Big if. But anyway, what do you think? What do you think of this whole debate?

Speaker 16 This is going to be one of those times where we have to hold two separate but true thoughts in our head at the same time.

Speaker 16 One is the polls are all over the map, and they're particularly all over the map with Latino voters, right? They're showing gigantic swings that would be a

Speaker 16 massive, like you said, historic realignment. We're seeing smaller shifts.
But so that's point one. So who knows what the polls are going to say? That's point one.
Point two is

Speaker 16 even if you just take all the polls and you average them together, they're all kind of showing the same thing, which is that Biden is doing less well with voters of color and Latino voters in particular than he did in 2020.

Speaker 16 And so whether the polls are right, the polls are wrong, which polls right, which was wrong, is largely irrelevant in my view from the perspective of activists, organizers, campaigns, operatives, because What are we going to do differently, right?

Speaker 16 What are we going to do with this debate? We're just going to say, oh, everything's fine. Let's do nothing, right?

Speaker 16 We're going to have to go get every single one of those voters, whether the polls are right or wrong. And so that's ultimately what I think the Biden campaign is doing.

Speaker 16 But there we have seen, and the reason why people are so worried about this is Trump made real gains. Those gains mostly held in 2022.

Speaker 16 We didn't see a snap back to 2016 numbers with voter, with Latino voters, but we didn't see. it worse, but Trump wasn't on the ballot.
So what's going to happen this time?

Speaker 16 And if the polls are correct, especially the higher end polls like the New York Times Senate poll, which show a dramatic shift, there's no math where Democrats can win elections any time in the future.

Speaker 16 You can't do as poorly as we do with white, non-college voters and not just crush it with voters of color.

Speaker 16 And if you're looking, and if working-class voters of color are starting to perform like working-class white voters, that's the ballgame.

Speaker 16 Like there is, you can't win it, you can't win a national election that way in the electoral college.

Speaker 15 It's just not mathematically possible.

Speaker 15 Yes, if we are a party of college-educated white, black, brown, Asian voters, that is not a party that will ever win a majority anywhere in this country except for like the deepest blue states.

Speaker 15 Because there's just way, way more non-college educated voters than college educated voters in this country.

Speaker 15 That is just that's and not saying that's where we're, we don't know that's where we're headed.

Speaker 15 Like we are still getting a good, good chunk of non-college educated voters, especially non-college educated voters of color in terms of the results.

Speaker 15 Most of the actual election results we have, if you just put the polls aside, show that voters of color who switched from Democrat to Republican over the last several election cycles tend to be people who had always held more moderate or conservative views, but were still voting for Democrats based on either a historic attachment to the party or because they thought that the party was more welcoming to voters with more moderate or conservative views.

Speaker 15 And so some of this is ideological sorting. So if you had a black Democrat who's conservative or a Latino Democrat who's conservative or even more moderate, maybe they voted for Barack Obama.

Speaker 15 And then as the Democratic Party, as they think they saw the Democratic Party get a little more progressive or a little more like ideologically polarized, and then certainly the Republican Party become more ideologically polarized, they even either started voting Republican or what's happening a lot is some of these voters are saying, I'm not, neither party speaks to me.

Speaker 15 And this is also why you are not seeing as much attrition among older voters of color, both Latinos and black voters, especially like older black voters are still like the men and women, like strongest demographic group for Democrats.

Speaker 15 And that has been true the last several election cycles. And that really hasn't changed that much.

Speaker 15 But younger voters of color, especially younger black voters too, do not have the same attachment to the party, Democratic Party, as the Party of Civil Rights as their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents did.

Speaker 15 And so that's part of what we might be seeing as well.

Speaker 15 And I also think that there is a, it's like a more of a populist streak among younger voters of all races and voters of color who are just like very anti-establishment, anti-institution, sort of like angry about economic inequality and maybe a lack of attention to economic inequality by politicians of both parties.

Speaker 15 So there's a lot of different stuff going on here that could be going on.

Speaker 15 But at least in terms of the election results, you are seeing that some of this is more ideological sorting than it is anything else.

Speaker 16 There's one more piece of this I think is important, which is it is we tend to analyze all voting groups as if they are static from election to election. When

Speaker 16 a significant portion of the shift from 2016 to 2020 is not so much people who voted for Hillary in 2016 voting for Trump in 2020.

Speaker 16 It is more conservative Latino voters who did not vote in 2016 or maybe even vote in 2012 voting for for Trump in 2020. For whatever reason that is, part of its ideological polarization.

Speaker 16 I mean, there have been some theories around

Speaker 16 COVID and all kinds of whatever the reason is you're bringing new people out as opposed to moving them from Democrat to Republican, although there is some persuasion happening there.

Speaker 16 And it's just like my answer on this is prepare for the worst, hope for the best, right?

Speaker 16 Which is let's just, let's operate like we're in the middle of a historic racial realignment, invest all the resources and time and energy and intellectual capital we can to stop it from happening.

Speaker 16 And if it turns out we did all that shit and the polls were just wrong, guess what? Joe Biden still won, right?

Speaker 15 Yeah, I think it's worth knowing, and I'm sure the campaign is trying to figure this out, and it's good for all of us to know too, is the why, like to the extent that there is drift and defection, why is it happening?

Speaker 15 And, you know, there's also, there's also has been evidence that non-white Democrats have more moderate views than white Democrats, especially on some social and cultural issues, which would surprise a lot of people.

Speaker 15 And I think as we are all out there doing our persuasion and volunteering, knowing why

Speaker 15 certain people, certain voters of different demographic groups are either concerned about Joe Biden or concerned about Donald Trump, again, their concerns are not necessarily going to line up with your concerns about Joe Biden and Donald Trump, right?

Speaker 15 They already will not. They almost certainly will not.
Yeah, but again, by definition. And so knowing exactly what those concerns are.
will help you try to figure out how to persuade them.

Speaker 15 And I do think that's why it's important. This debate is important.
It's not necessarily as important like, are the polls going to be right or wrong?

Speaker 15 Like that doesn't matter as much, but why this is happening, if it indeed is happening, I think is very important in terms of like how we persuade people to come this November.

Speaker 15 Okay, a couple of quick things before we go to break. Well, you already did polo coaster.
Just one quick thing before we go to break. But anyway, I'll do another polo coaster plug.

Speaker 15 Go sign up for crooked.com slash friends. I'm listening to Dan talk to smart people and have smart conversations about the polls.
It's great.

Speaker 15 We are also about to talk to Leah Lippmann, one of the hosts of Strict Scrutiny. And we are thrilled to announce that all the Strict Scrutiny co-hosts are doing a special live show in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 15 on June 22nd at the Howard Theater. Head to crooked.com/slash events to grab tickets to this show or see if Pod Save America or Love It or Leave It are coming to your city.

Speaker 15 When we come back, Leah Lippmann.

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Speaker 16 John and I are definitely not lawyers, and we didn't take the LSAT like John Lovett, but here to help us understand the latest updates of Trump's trials is an actual lawyer and constitutional scholar, and perhaps most importantly, co-host of Crooked Strict Scrutiny, Leah Lippman.

Speaker 16 Leah, welcome back to the show.

Speaker 19 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 16 I will tell you, John and I were talking about what we're going to do on this show. Obviously, we felt like there was so much legal news.
We tried to read the stories. We read them.

Speaker 16 We tried to understand the stories. We failed.
And we said we had to get someone from Strict on this show immediately. So here you are.
So

Speaker 16 you have to help us and our listeners walk through everything that's happening because there's a lot happening. And from what I can tell, none of it seems great.

Speaker 19 So none of it seems great. And also some of what Judge Cannon is doing is truly inexplicable.
So there are some things even I cannot explain. Okay.

Speaker 16 Well, I'm going to, I'm going to ask you to try at least. So that's a good place.
Let's start with Miami.

Speaker 16 So.

Speaker 16 In the classified documents case, which as you mentioned, is being overseen by a Trump-appointed judge named Eileen Cannon, she has issued an order this week, giving the defense and prosecutors two weeks to file submissions that outline proposed jury instructions based on two different scenarios involving the Presidential Records Act.

Speaker 16 This has people, seemingly like yourself, confused and alarmed. To whatever ability you have, try to explain what is happening here and why people are so alarmed by it.

Speaker 19 Okay, so I'll try to explain what jury instructions are supposed to be and then explain

Speaker 19 what these are not.

Speaker 19 Okay, so jury instructions are things judges tell the jury in order to help them understand how the law works so the jury can make their designated decision about what what actually happened and whether the defendant is guilty of a crime.

Speaker 19 So a jury instruction might explain a super complicated crime that contains like 17 elements and tell the jury, you know, if you find these three things, you don't have to find this other thing, you know, and things like that.

Speaker 19 Or it might explain to the jury like who bears the burden of proof on certain defenses or whatnot.

Speaker 19 Judge Cannon's proposed instructions basically tell the jury, if the president did it, it's not illegal.

Speaker 19 Like it just utterly eviscerates the Presidential Records Act and the charges that Jack Smith actually brought here, because what her jury instructions convey is, I mean, again, essentially, like the president can basically declassify things with his mind.

Speaker 19 So the jury instructions say, look, you need to define and decide whether something is personal or presidential, but essentially a president's categorization about whether something is personal or presidential is authoritative and a president can categorize categorize something as personal, you know, after he leaves office and basically doing whatever they want.

Speaker 19 And that's just not how the law works. And so the concern is the jury instructions tell the jury to basically acquit, and they do so without a basis in the law.

Speaker 16 Okay. I have a lot of questions about this.
One, even if we were to adopt this completely original, made up from whole cloth interpretation of the Presidential Records Act,

Speaker 16 once the FBI asked for the stuff and Trump refused to give it to him and got people to lie for him, wouldn't that also be a crime, no matter what happened here? Like, is he also vulnerable on that?

Speaker 19 So there's still the additional obstruction charges, and those could come into play.

Speaker 19 But I think the concern is that if you tell the jury, look, these documents were essentially Trump's to do with what they want, that that could color their assessment of some of the other charges as well, such that even if Judge Cannon didn't essentially direct the jury, you know, fine for the defendant on obstruction, they would be viewing the obstruction charges through the lens of the government had no basis to be asking for these documents anyways.

Speaker 19 And that might inform their consideration of the other charges.

Speaker 16 And so what happens next? The defense and prosecutors file their competing jury instructions and then she picks them out of a hat. Like, where does it like, how does she make a decision?

Speaker 16 And what happens if she makes the wrong one?

Speaker 19 Honestly, at this point, her picking a jury instruction out of a hat seems like the best case scenario because, you know, what is going to happen is both sides will file proposed instructions and then she will evaluate their arguments and ask, you know, what is the legally correct, you know, best jury instruction that actually channels the jury's decision-making process to reflect the law as Congress wrote it.

Speaker 19 If, right, she was doing that in good faith, I think she would realize that her proposed scenarios and instructions were pretty far afield from the law.

Speaker 19 But we don't yet know how she's going to respond when Jack Smith presumably is going to tell her those proposed instructions are completely nonsensical.

Speaker 16 And if she picks the ones made up of whole cloth that don't actually interpret the law correctly, what recourse does Jack Smith have? Can he appeal this?

Speaker 19 Unfortunately, it's very limited because these are not final judgments in the case.

Speaker 19 That is, they don't effectively resolve the case and they're not subject to an immediate or what's called an interlocutory appeal.

Speaker 19 So, you know, Jack Smith could, if he wanted, seek an extraordinary remedy from the Court of Appeals, a a writ of Mandamus, you know, and it's possible, right, that a Court of Appeals would say, this is so far, you know, across even a legally plausible border that, you know, we're going to intervene.

Speaker 19 But it's really tough to get a Court of Appeals to intervene in a kind of interim stage of a case, you know, with an extraordinary remedy like Mandamus. And the 11th Circuit is a pretty conservative.

Speaker 19 court of appeals.

Speaker 16 And I've seen some fears, and this is going to just reveal how dangerously little information I know, that one of the concerns here is that the way she's doing this, what could set Judge Cannon up to be in a position because of, and if I get this wrong, we will edit it out of the podcast, but Rule 29,

Speaker 16 which would mean that if she were to dismiss the case, I think, is this right, after the jury is selected, then that is not appealable in federal cases?

Speaker 19 Yes.

Speaker 19 So there are all sorts of procedural maneuvers that I feel like are just ticking time bombs in this case.

Speaker 19 You know, remember, she just made an earlier ruling in which she said she was not actually going to decide whether to dismiss some of the charges against Donald Trump on the ground that the federal law under which he was being prosecuted was unconstitutionally void for vagueness, essentially potentially deferring a ruling until later in the case.

Speaker 19 And so, there are a bunch of things she could potentially do that would pull the rug out from under the prosecution, delay it more.

Speaker 19 And again, given everything she has done in this case to date, there is every reason to be concerned that more trouble is in the works.

Speaker 16 Is she,

Speaker 16 I know this is kind of a harsh thing to say, but is she an inexperienced judge or is she a partisan judge? Does it seem like she is doing Trump's bidding care?

Speaker 16 Because there are like there are liberal judges, conservative judges, and maybe, but this is not.

Speaker 16 something that's happening on a this is not on the federal society uh entry questionnaire right this is something that's very specific to helping donald trump uh so what's your take based on what you've seen yeah so i should say she is a graduate of the fine law school that I also attended and where I now teach.

Speaker 19 I cannot say go blue in this context.

Speaker 19 But

Speaker 19 so, you know, I think the answer, I don't know her. I didn't know her.

Speaker 19 From what I've observed is probably both, right? Like she did not have a ton of experience when she was nominated and then confirmed in the lame duck session to be a judge.

Speaker 19 She has very limited criminal experience now.

Speaker 19 It's been reported that two of her law clerks, you know, quit under what circumstances, circumstances, we don't really know over the last year, although she's fully staffed now.

Speaker 19 So I think some of it probably is inexperience.

Speaker 19 But I think it is really hard to say all of it is when she has gone so far over the line, you know, earlier stages in the case, essentially saying Trump had like a personal interest he could assert in the documents that would prevent the government from actually, you know, conducting an investigation and proceeding forward with the case where she got unanimously reversed by some of the more conservative judges on the 11th circuit.

Speaker 19 So I i think it's probably both

Speaker 16 there was some talk when judge cannon was first assigned to this case that maybe it would be jack smith's move should be to try to get her off the case is is that still an available option to him or is that for the same reasons you cited about the the circuit court not really a viable course for him to take it's not a viable course for him to take um you know and i think asking would just undermine his own credibility before the 11th circuit in the event that he tried to make some emergency appeal to them on some other grounds.

Speaker 19 Because here, right, the fact that she's made some rulings that have been reversed, even really bad ones, is not a sufficient ground to disqualify a judge.

Speaker 16 It would have to be like an actual conflict of interest.

Speaker 19 An actual conflict of interest or her doing something that was pretty close to illustrating explicit evidence of bias.

Speaker 19 So, you know, judges in other cases have been disqualified when they've made like discriminatory marks that reveal animus toward like one of the litigants, you know, or, you know, one of their characteristics.

Speaker 19 And she hasn't done that.

Speaker 16 All right, let's move to New York State and Donald Trump's problem securing money.

Speaker 16 So as we've talked about on this podcast before, as part of the New York State case against Trump's businesses, he received a $454 million fine.

Speaker 16 He has filed a appeal to try to get that, to get a reprieve on having to secure a bond by next week.

Speaker 16 He said in that that he's tried with multiple companies and it's, it's, quote, a practical impossibility for him to do that.

Speaker 16 Attorney General Tisha James asked the appeals court not to grant Trump that reprieve. What happens now and what happens if he can't find the money?

Speaker 19 So if he can't find the money, then I think Tish James could start attaching his properties and using that to potentially satisfy the judgment against him.

Speaker 19 This is what happens when defendants can't pay. Then you have the state actually seizing their property and selling it in order to,

Speaker 19 you know, raise the money that the defendant owes them. So I think that is a potential next step is Tis James tries to seize control of Trump Tower.

Speaker 16 Does that, I mean, like takes control of it, like repossesses it or just takes some of the money from it?

Speaker 16 Like, is she garnishing his wages or is she repossessing his car to try to bring this down to non-billionaire levels or non-fake billionaire levels?

Speaker 19 So the way it works is you repo the car

Speaker 19 and then you sell the car and you use what you gain, right, to satisfy the judgment. And any remaining assets would go to the defendant.

Speaker 19 But there is a world in which he actually does lose ownership of some of his properties.

Speaker 16 And then I saw, it's always hard to tell with these moves, like what's real and what's not, but that she did something in Westchester County today, which suggested that maybe she's putting herself in a position because he has a golf club.

Speaker 19 uh in westchester county is that is that would that be the next step to begin to move the case or move aspects of the case there so that she could go after those properties well so um what you do is you essentially file a notice of attachment on certain property, and you would do that in the location of the property.

Speaker 19 So it's not like she's like moving the case from like one location to another, but instead asserting, right, I am going to lay a claim to this property in order to satisfy the judgment of the case and doing that in the jurisdiction where the property is actually located.

Speaker 16 And

Speaker 16 I think you explained this to John and I just a few weeks ago, but because our brands are Twitter infected

Speaker 16 porous mesh or something. Can you explain how the bond works again?

Speaker 16 And I'm particularly curious about this because there was a clip of one of Trump's attorneys today on Fox News dodging questions about whether he could seek funding from Russia, Saudi Arabia, or another foreign entity to secure the bond.

Speaker 19 Yeah. So, you know, in order to get a bond, you have to put up a certain amount of money.

Speaker 19 Now, as to where he would get that money, he would be potentially putting up, I don't know.

Speaker 19 I think that is a question that, you know, Michael Cohen, among other people, has suggested that maybe he would try to approach a foreign country and get some money from them in order to put up money in order to secure a bond.

Speaker 19 But I don't think we know a lot about what exactly is going on behind the scenes. You know, I think the attorney general has said she's not totally convinced that he can't get a bond as is.

Speaker 19 And so we just kind of need to see how it plays out.

Speaker 16 And that's essentially like how someone, how a typical defendant would get bail, right? Would they put up a percentage and then someone else would take responsibility?

Speaker 16 Like if he fled to to Russia, whoever secured the bond would be on the hook for the rest, or how would that work?

Speaker 19 Yes.

Speaker 19 So you put up a certain amount of money and then the bond company essentially guarantees that they and you are good for it, such that if you do not do your part, the defendant doesn't do their part, then the bond company, right, is responsible for the amount of money.

Speaker 19 And it's a way of basically deferring enforcement of the judgment. So that if a bond is posted, you know, it basically tells the court, you know, this person could satisfy the judgment.

Speaker 19 And so like they are allowed to continue to litigate whether they have to pay up or not.

Speaker 19 But they know they're good for the money again, either through them or through some combination of them and the bond company.

Speaker 16 And will we know, let's say he secures a bond. Will we know who financed that?

Speaker 16 Will he have to disclose that publicly?

Speaker 19 I don't know.

Speaker 19 I,

Speaker 19 yeah, I just don't know.

Speaker 16 Okay, that's because that just that seems to,

Speaker 16 if it is a publicly disclosed thing, from a political perspective, it seems to hinder his options, right?

Speaker 16 It makes it a little more challenging to, you know, find a Russian oligarch or the kingdom of Saudi Arabia to do it

Speaker 16 as opposed to, you know, if

Speaker 16 it has to stay secret, although nothing with Trump stays secret forever.

Speaker 19 Right.

Speaker 19 Again, like, even if, right, it is formally secret for some time being, it is always possible that people would file requests for public information requests, you know, as to where they got the money.

Speaker 19 And so that's why, you know, we don't know whether it could become public, even if there is kind of a normal rule under which it wouldn't otherwise.

Speaker 16 All right. Continuing our tour of Trump's legal troubles, let's move to Manhattan, where the case for involving the hush money payment back during the 2016 campaign was supposed to start.

Speaker 16 It seems to be delayed because of an issue around discovery.

Speaker 16 Help explain what happened there.

Speaker 16 And then my understanding today is DA Alvin Bragg said that the documents being requested were mostly not germane and that so that there's a sense that maybe the trial can move forward.

Speaker 16 Just help us understand what's going on there. And are we going to get to see Trump at a defendant table sometime soon? Because we've been waiting a while now.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 19 So the documents were disclosed because prosecutors have an obligation to disclose to the defense not only information that inculpates the defendant, but also information that exculpates the defendant, right?

Speaker 19 Is potentially relevant to their innocence.

Speaker 19 And included in that category of evidence is evidence that undermines the credibility of any witness that the prosecution intends to call against the defendant.

Speaker 19 So here, obviously, the prosecution is going to call some people who have had some run-ins with the law.

Speaker 19 And so there is potentially information, you know, within the federal prosecutor's office, within the Southern District of New York, that is relevant to those individuals' credibility.

Speaker 19 And so I think there were some concerns that among this vast amount of documents that were turned over, there were going to be things that potentially change the nature of the witnesses or potentially change the nature of the prosecution's case against the defendant.

Speaker 19 And again, based on kind of

Speaker 19 credible people who said they have looked at the thousands of pages of materials and, you know, DA Alvin Bragg, it doesn't seem like that is the case.

Speaker 19 That is, it doesn't seem like there is anything that the SDNY turned over that really alters the nature of the charges or the nature of the case or the nature of any of the witnesses against Donald Trump.

Speaker 19 And therefore,

Speaker 19 the case might proceed. Now, of course, the defense is going to say we need more time to look at this.
Maybe they think or they will say there were some leads in there that we need to chase down.

Speaker 19 But it's not clear, you know, as to whether the judge will actually force them to go to trial, you know, pretty close to to the original date or initially after the 30-day deferral, you know, that D.A.

Speaker 19 Bragg gave

Speaker 19 Trump. So, you know, as to whether we should see it soon,

Speaker 19 maybe, but, you know, everything that has unfolded in all of these cases has always felt like Lucy and the football where you think it's going to happen and then it never does.

Speaker 16 I know, as people who work in content, we're just trying to plan podcasts and things like that. And they keep just moving these things around.

Speaker 19 Wait, this is supposed to be Trump trial season. And instead, it's wait on the Supreme Court and Judge Cannon and SDNY season.

Speaker 16 No, no, not, not, not, this, which is a lot less fun for everyone and the rule of law generally. So, all right, let's end on a pellet cleanser.

Speaker 16 Uh, just the very light subject of the Fifth Circuit and immigration law. So, Texas has this law in place.
Supreme Court said it couldn't stay in place. The Fifth Circuit could do something else.

Speaker 16 Help explain what the hell is going on. Can Texas start deporting people as if they were the federal government? And if you want to just rant about the Fifth Circuit for a while, feel free.

Speaker 16 This is a safe space.

Speaker 19 Okay, so we are going to do a deeper dive on this topic because it is so horribly messy.

Speaker 19 And the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court are truly messing with just the enterprise of law as we know it in the process.

Speaker 19 But the short answer to your question is: no, Texas cannot just start deporting people, including people, by the way, who have lawful status under federal immigration law, which is what the Texas law purports to authorize them to do, they cannot begin doing that because the injunction against the Texas law went back into effect after a court of appeals,

Speaker 19 funnily enough, the Fifth Circuit panel dissolved a stay of that injunction that a previous panel, the Fifth Circuit had put into effect.

Speaker 19 But basically, the Fifth Circuit had previously suggested that Texas could effectively be immigration law as we know it, and that runs afoul and violates every basic principle of constitutional law, flies right in the face of the Supreme Court's previous decision in Arizona.

Speaker 19 But this is what the Fifth Circuit has kind of been set up to do.

Speaker 19 You know, Mitch McConnell and Republican senators have blocked, you know, Democrats appointing judges in states with Republican senators by abusing the blue slip, thereby guaranteeing that Republican presidents could fill that and other circuits where there are Republican senators with people who are so unhinged.

Speaker 19 They think Justice Antonin Scalia is a Democrat. Like they think that guy is basically a communist.

Speaker 19 And so they've started citing the writings of Robert Borg, who was Ronald Reagan's like failed nominee 40 years ago, because they're like, that's the guy who like we want to treat as the authoritative guy on this subject.

Speaker 19 And so the Fifth Circuit has just completely gone off a loose cannon. And it's not just the immigration case, right?

Speaker 19 That is the circuit that gave you the injunction that barred the Biden administration and the federal government from even talking to social media companies about content moderation.

Speaker 19 This is a circuit that gave you the medication abortion ruling that effectively slapped on a bunch of additional restrictions on medication abortion that the FDA deemed medically and scientifically unsound.

Speaker 19 This is the court of appeals that just said Texas could enforce a law that gave parents the ability to prevent their minor children from accessing contraception beginning the next wave on attacks on contraception.

Speaker 19 This is the court of appeals that greenlighted SB8, the notorious bounty hunter law that nullified abortion rights and Roe in Texas before the court formally overruled Roe.

Speaker 19 This court is just where hope and law and dreams go to die. And they are just pushing the Overton window so far off of this galaxy that they are making this Supreme Court look less insane.

Speaker 19 And I think that is part of the game.

Speaker 19 And, you know, they came close again to allowing Texas to enforce a federal immigration law that allows a state rather than the federal government to deport and remove people, which is not how any of this has worked for the better part of 200 years.

Speaker 19 But, you know, this court is just going to keep on pushing the boundaries of this because this Supreme Court is not inclined to really rein them in.

Speaker 16 I hope that was cathartic because it was at least very informative for us. But I hope you feel better after having gotten that off your chest.
And I encourage everyone to.

Speaker 19 I need like 75 minutes of uncontrolled screaming, just what the fuck over and over.

Speaker 16 That sounds like a bonus episode to me that would

Speaker 15 do quite well. Yes.

Speaker 16 Leah Liman, thank you so much for being with us again on Pod Safe America. As always, great to talk to you.

Speaker 19 Likewise.

Speaker 15 Thanks to Leah for joining us today. Everyone, have a great weekend, and we'll talk to you on Tuesday.
Bye, everyone.

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Our show is produced by Olivia Martinez and David Toledo.

Speaker 15 Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farah Safari. Kira Wakeem is our senior producer.
Reed Sherlin is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 15 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglu and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.
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Speaker 15 Matt DeGroote is our head of production. Andy Taff is our executive assistant.
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