Third Crime's The Charm

Speaker 1 October brings it all. Halloween parties, tailgates, crisp fall nights.
At Total Wine and Moore, you'll find just what you need for them all.

Speaker 2 Mixing up something spooky?

Speaker 1 Total Wine and More is your cocktail central for all your Halloween concoctions.

Speaker 1 With the lowest prices for over 30 years, you'll always find what you love and love what you find only at Total Wine and Moore. Curbside pickup and delivery available in most areas.

Speaker 1 See TotalWine.com for details. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina.
Drink responsibly. B21.

Speaker 3 Hey, Ryan Reynolds here. Wishing you a very happy half-off holiday because right now, Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited.
To be clear, that's half price, not half the service.

Speaker 3 Mint is still premium, unlimited wireless for a great price.

Speaker 4 So that means a half day.

Speaker 3 Yeah? Give it a try at mintmobile.com/slash switch.

Speaker 6 Upfront payment of $45 for a three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. New customer offer for first three months only.
Speeds low under 55 gigabytes, the network's busy.

Speaker 6 Taxes and fees extra.

Speaker 4 See Mintmobile.com.

Speaker 3 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.

Speaker 4 I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Speaker 3 On today's pod, Ron DeSantis' reset isn't off to a great start. Republican candidates are climbing the polls in New Hampshire.
Joe Biden's campaign fires its first shots.

Speaker 3 And later, Mueller investigation prosecutor Andrew Weissman joins to break down our top story.

Speaker 3 Third time's a charm, Dan. Donald Trump is likely to be indicted again at any moment by a grand jury in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 3 for his most serious crime yet, a plot to overturn the results of the 2020 election that ended in a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Speaker 3 Trump truthed the news that he received a letter from special counsel Jack Smith on Sunday night informing him that he's a target of the January 6th investigation and has four days to decide whether he wants to testify before the grand jury, which Trump accurately said, quote, almost always means an arrest and indictment.

Speaker 3 The letter has been confirmed by multiple news outlets and reportedly mentions three federal statutes, quote, conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the United States, deprivation of rights under color of law, and tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant.

Speaker 3 We also get a big hint about what's to come thanks thanks to some trenchant analysis of Jack Smith's lunch break from our friends at CNN. Let's listen.

Speaker 7 Jack Smith going to Subway today is a message to Donald Trump. Donald Trump tries to intimidate people.
He tries to bully people. He tries to scare you away.

Speaker 7 That was Jack Smith with no words and a simple $5 sub in his hand saying, I'm here, I'm not going to.

Speaker 4 Yeah, the imagery was intentional and spoke volume.

Speaker 3 He did go with the tuna, which was an odd choice, which makes us think that perhaps he is going to file a superseding indictment.

Speaker 3 If he had gone with just a plain Italian sub, maybe there would have been other charges that we haven't considered.

Speaker 4 Was it really the tuna? Have you confirmed that? Because if it was the tuna, you know what that tells me? He's about to reel in a big fish.

Speaker 4 Oh, damn.

Speaker 4 You ruined everything.

Speaker 3 Here's the thing. John King and Dana Bash are two of the best political analysts.
on CNN and on cable television, which just goes to show you that it's cable news.

Speaker 3 Being on cable news for 24 hours a day, you just end up saying crazy shit like that.

Speaker 4 Well, there's not 24 hours of news, even when the former president of the United States is about to be indicted for the third time in five months.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, you put me on cable news all day. I probably start talking about Subway sandwiches too.

Speaker 3 All right, let's move quickly since Jack Smith is waiting for us to finish the pod before announcing the indictment, as he did last time. and all the times before that.

Speaker 4 What does your calendar look like after this? Did you block it out?

Speaker 3 It is very open. I will tell you that.
Yeah, I am, I will be prepping for offline tomorrow, but it is a big block that just says, here comes the indictment news.

Speaker 4 Because the last time this happened, I was getting in my car to drive to a meeting and I turned right around. So this afternoon is free and clear.

Speaker 3 Okay, good. All right.
So we're going to hear from a real lawyer shortly, but what else do we know about these potential charges that didn't just come from a guy's subway order?

Speaker 4 Well, a lot of this is very familiar because two of the three charges, the obstruction of an official proceeding and the conspiracy to defraud

Speaker 4 are the two that were recommended by the January 6th committee.

Speaker 4 The use of this civil rights charge that has gotten a lot of attention from a lot of very real legal experts as this sort of novel legal theory, this law from the post-Reconstruction period, was not in the January 6th thing.

Speaker 4 But, and I learned this from from reading and tweets, but also from talking to Andrew Weissman, you heard of Liz, that's a very normal charge. That is, there is nothing unusual about that.

Speaker 4 It very much is completely in line with what Donald Trump did. And we should not, as Weissman says to me, his friends in the legal community are overthinking this dramatically.

Speaker 4 And it is a very, there's nothing unusual about it. It makes complete sense.
It's perfectly in line with the evidence that we have seen for this thing.

Speaker 4 So I think people are overreacting that and they should not.

Speaker 3 A few other things. We also know that

Speaker 3 in March of 22, federal judge found that both Trump and lawyer John Eastman had likely committed felonies that included obstructing the work of Congress and conspiring to defraud the United States.

Speaker 3 So we have had a judge weigh in on what some of these charges may be already. And it does seem that the fake electors scheme is at the heart of what the charges may be,

Speaker 3 also pressuring Mike Pence to overturn the election, which are both connected, of course, right? So if you try to get a bunch of people to sign documents that say that

Speaker 3 they're the rightful electors for the presidential election, even though they are not, and then you submit those to Congress, and then you tell your vice president to obstruct the proceeding of what Congress was trying to do on January 6th,

Speaker 3 you can't do that.

Speaker 3 That's against the law. We've already had one judge say that.

Speaker 3 And we also have now testimony, we know, from reports from Mike Pence, Mark Meadows, who knows quite a bit, and Trump has been reportedly worried about about has flipped. Giuliani,

Speaker 3 Jack Smith has been calling secretaries of state and governors in the fake elector states, the states that submitted fake electors. So it

Speaker 3 doesn't look too good.

Speaker 4 I mean, the fake electors thing is wild. We just kind of keep saying, we've been saying it for two years now.
It's just fake electors. He had fake electors.
And it's sort of been...

Speaker 4 lost for obvious reasons compared to the images of people storming the Capitol. And those are the prosecutions we've seen about the people who stormed the Capitol and committed violence.

Speaker 4 But the fact that we have a political process in this country where electors are chosen

Speaker 4 and the Republicans didn't like who they were going to vote for because of what the popular vote says, that they just went and got a bunch of people to pretend to be electors and then tried to submit that to the state legislature is a wild, cockamime-y, complete bananas scheme.

Speaker 4 I mean, it's insane. And this was engineered based on what we know from the January 6th committee from the White House, from the president and his advisors.
It's insane. And we don't,

Speaker 4 this is one of those things that we just don't focus enough on because it's so fucking crazy.

Speaker 3 I think we don't focus enough on it because,

Speaker 3 you know, Mike Pence ultimately refused. But if Mike Pence did have the courage to do the right thing, in Donald Trump's words,

Speaker 3 basically that, look, Mike Pence would have sat there and said, hey,

Speaker 3 I know that the votes came in and there are electors for Joe Biden because he won and all the lawsuits failed and all that kind of stuff. But you know what?

Speaker 3 We have a bunch of states that actually say Donald Trump won based on absolutely nothing. And here are the electors and we're just going to swear in Donald Trump instead.

Speaker 4 That's what would have happened.

Speaker 3 Just like, and

Speaker 3 there was no judge in the country that said that that was correct. I mean, of course that's wrong.
But I think, I also think the insurrection at the Capitol may have overshadowed that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, I understand why that is but because of that fact i think we've just been sleeping on this other insane crime that actually came closer to succeeding than the violence itself yeah and i also think it's interesting that um the one one law that was not mentioned is like incitement to insurrection uh some people and and that was one charge that the january 6th committee i believe recommended and some legal analysts thought that jack smith might but he did not well at least if the letter is correct and you know there's no surprises if it ends up that Jack Smith does not charge him with incitement to insurrection, I wonder if it's just because that is a hard, more difficult charge to prove than this fake elector scheme, which does seem like a much easier charge to prove.

Speaker 4 Yeah, our friend Norm, I understand why Pete, we obviously want every book in the library thrown at Trump because he deserves it and that's how we feel.

Speaker 4 But our old friend Norm Eisen, the legal analyst who worked up in Congress for some of these,

Speaker 4 for the Trump, one of the Trump impeachments, did this Twitter thread where he went through what Trump could be sentenced to if he was convicted under the

Speaker 4 charges in the letter.

Speaker 4 And he will spend the rest of his life in jail.

Speaker 4 It is a long time.

Speaker 4 And so, whether we get all the charges we want or all the ones that have been talked about on legal Twitter or not, what matters is the charges that Jack Smith can prove and convict Trump of.

Speaker 3 So, Trump's first televised response to the news came during a withering line of hard-hitting questions from Sean Hannity during a Fox News town hall in Iowa Tuesday night. Let's listen.

Speaker 3 You look well, you look healthy, feel good, feel good.

Speaker 8 Let me ask you just a basic fundamental question.

Speaker 8 You have all of these never-ending attacks,

Speaker 8 and you released on Truth Social earlier today that they now, that you are a target of this January 6th grand jury.

Speaker 8 My first question to you is...

Speaker 8 It doesn't seem to bother you like I think it would bother so many other people. What is it about you that it doesn't?

Speaker 9 No, it bothers me. It bothers me for everybody in this incredible sold-out audience and

Speaker 9 it bothers you. I got the letter on Sunday night.
Think of it. I don't think they've ever sent a letter on Sunday night.
And they're in a rush because they want to interfere.

Speaker 9 It's interference with the election. It's election interference.
Never been done like this in the history of our country and it's a disgrace.

Speaker 9 What's happening to our country, whether it's the borders or the elections or kinds of things like this where the DOJ has become a weapon for the Democrats, an absolute weapon. And you know what?

Speaker 9 Until I got indicted, until I got indicted, I had such respect for the office of the president.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it showed.

Speaker 3 I just can't believe they would do that on a Sunday night when everyone knows that Donald Trump spends Sunday in church and then after he leaves church, he spends the rest of the day in thoughtful prayer because it is the Lord's Day.

Speaker 3 And to interrupt that with a letter saying that he's the target of investigation, it's just beyond the pale.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's never happened before for a good reason because we have norms in this society.

Speaker 4 I didn't fucking know.

Speaker 4 Write at the Sunday scaries.

Speaker 3 I love you.

Speaker 3 That is, that's some real Sunday scaries for Donald Trump. I will give him that.
I just love Sean Hannity.

Speaker 3 Like, you've been charged with a bunch of crimes, including trying to steal an election and overthrow the government.

Speaker 4 How are you feeling? You okay?

Speaker 4 How are you doing? I haven't gone back and researched this, but you and I have been doing this podcast together for so long that we've done,

Speaker 4 I mean, we've podcasted about Trump handing to town halls probably like 10 times.

Speaker 4 And I'm pretty sure the first question is almost always the same. How do you do it?

Speaker 4 Why are you so awesome? How are you so strong?

Speaker 4 Is it distracting to look in the mirror and see someone so handsome?

Speaker 3 Which, by the way, I don't know if you

Speaker 3 too many clips to play here, but I don't know if you saw the Megan Kelly thing from this week where she said that she ran into Trump after the Turning Points USA conference and they made up because, of course,

Speaker 3 they had a little tiff after the first debate when Donald Trump started yelling at her and accusing her of being on her period.

Speaker 3 Thing that happened, a thing that is common with presidential candidates on stage engaging with the moderator.

Speaker 3 That's usually an accusation that's thrown around. And Megan Kelly was like, you know what? I saw him.
We decided it was water under the bridge. And he looks great.

Speaker 3 He eats cheeseburgers and fries and he just looks so great. I want those jeans.
I want to know

Speaker 3 what he's doing. I want those jeans.

Speaker 4 Like, you are so fucking gross.

Speaker 3 This man demeaned you on national television and now you're like, God, he looks good.

Speaker 3 I'm on the Trump train again. I am there.

Speaker 3 It is like, so per usual, Trump gets a big round of applause for his crimes on the Hannity Town Hall.

Speaker 3 Hannity and the rest of the right-wing media, Megan Kelly, all of them, they've been sticking with their talking points about, you know, two-tiered system of justice.

Speaker 3 Same with the Republicans in Congress. Kevin McCarthy was out there, you know, saying this is horrible.
I can't believe this.

Speaker 3 This is, this only happened because Donald Trump's poll numbers are up and he's beaten Joe Biden and this is why this happened.

Speaker 3 This is the same Kevin McCarthy that after January 6th said that what Trump did was un-American, right? He's now changed his tune, of course.

Speaker 3 I don't think we need yet another conversation about how this third indictment will probably strengthen Trump's political standing with his biggest fans.

Speaker 3 But do you think it could be more politically damaging than the last two indictments with the rest of the electorate or same?

Speaker 4 I think when it comes to Trump, everything is only operating on the margins.

Speaker 4 Like, are there some potential small handful of swingish voters who are going to be disturbed by the fact that the president is facing criminal charges for trying to violently overturn the election?

Speaker 4 Sure. Like I want to live in a world where that is the case, but we just sort of know that everything operates in this very narrow band.

Speaker 4 Where I think this indictment is more problematic, it's not necessarily for Trump himself. It's not good for him.
I just want to stipulate it is not good for him and it is not going to be helpful.

Speaker 3 What a stake.

Speaker 4 But I think it's for the rest of the Republican Party.

Speaker 4 How Trump handles his documents really is not really going to affect other Republicans. How Trump, what Trump did with Stormy Daniels eight years ago is not really going to affect other Republicans.

Speaker 4 January 6th and the big lie, we know from 2022 is

Speaker 4 an anvil around the Republican Party's neck.

Speaker 4 There was a study, we've talked about this before, but there's a study from some researchers at Stanford that showed that candidates in 2022 who believed in the big lie and pushed the big lie did

Speaker 4 just about three points worse than other Republicans. And that's the difference.

Speaker 4 And so if Donald Trump, if let's say that Donald Trump is indicted, this trial either starts or is sort of running up to starting and it's dominating the news, and Donald Trump is once again centering January 6th, the 2020 election, he's forced to say that

Speaker 4 he's continued to push the big lie. That's going to hurt all Republicans.
Like that's actually more damaging.

Speaker 4 And so I think, and it'll be probably incumbent upon all of us as we head into next year and we're talking about this, is to hold all Republicans accountable for this, not just Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 Well, and that might be easier

Speaker 3 thanks to Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy. I don't know if you saw the news this morning.

Speaker 4 Did I see the news in Playbook? Come on now. You know my morning routine.

Speaker 3 I guess I was speaking to the audience.

Speaker 4 We know they're not everyone.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we read playbooks so they don't have to.

Speaker 3 No, so this is what happened.

Speaker 3 You remember a couple weeks ago, we talked about Trump was pretty angry when Kevin McCarthy went on a television show and said that he didn't know if Trump was the strongest candidate.

Speaker 3 And then Trump demanded an endorsement from McCarthy. McCarthy said, I'll give you the endorsement at some point, but not now.
Trump said, that's not good enough.

Speaker 3 So Kevin said, okay, well, what I'll do is I'll promise you that I will hold a vote before the August recess in the House to try to expunge both of your impeachments from the record, which is not really a thing you can do.

Speaker 3 He was already impeached. It's like in the congressional record, it's happening.
But anyway, but that's what Donald Trump wanted.

Speaker 3 So So now Kevin is faced with a bit of a conundrum because he has told Donald Trump that he will bring this vote to the floor, but all the Republican House members sitting in Biden districts do not want to be sitting there voting for to expunge Donald Trump's impeachment over January 6th, right at the time when Donald Trump is being charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States over his behavior on January 6th.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and leading up to it. There's probably not a majority of Republicans who would vote for that.
So he would fail.

Speaker 3 So it would fail, and then it would damage Republicans, just like you're saying.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 4 I will say there is a line that the Vin Diesel character, Dom Toretto, in the Fast and Furious movie says, which is, I live my life a quarter mile at a time. And that's how Kevin McCarthy operates.

Speaker 4 So like, that's a great line of movie. It's a terrible approach for a House speaker.
It's just like, how can I get out of this conversation?

Speaker 4 And I'm not going to think for one second about what happens after that.

Speaker 4 Like, obviously, if Kevin McCarthy had had paused while Donald Trump is yelling at him and thought about it, he would have known that would be an abject fucking disaster.

Speaker 4 But that's just not how he thinks. It's just like, wake up the next day and deal with it then.
And so he'll have yet another crisis that is going to make his life even harder.

Speaker 3 I'll say one more thing, which is, you know, I think in 2022, big lie candidates didn't do well in large part because the Democrats made it an issue from Joe Biden on down, paid advertising, all the rest.

Speaker 3 I also think the January 6th committee did a fantastic job.

Speaker 3 And we all had questions at the beginning, having seen two impeachment hearings and the effects of the political effects of those hearings, which were minimal, whether the January 6th hearings would have any effect.

Speaker 3 And I don't think they sort of like changed public opinion in a huge way, but I do think you could say that the hearings worked.

Speaker 3 You know, in June of 2022, according to Quinnipiak, 46% of Americans believed that Trump had committed a crime over the 2020 election. 47% disagreed.

Speaker 3 In July, after the hearings, 48% thought he committed a crime. 44% didn't.
So again, not a huge shift, but a meaningful shift on the margins when the margins matter a lot. So I do think that if

Speaker 3 we are hearing news all about January 6th for the next several months and through the election, it could damage him on the margins.

Speaker 3 Any other takeaways from the Hannity Town Hall? Sort of a mess. It just

Speaker 3 I know that you weren't able to

Speaker 3 join the Discord, but we had a great time on the Discord. Crooked.com slash friends.
Everyone subscribe, but it was really fun.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 I am sad. I missed it.
I had to watch the Town Hall later on YouTube at 1.5 speed. And the real vibe of

Speaker 4 the real vibe that a Hannity Trump interview gives off is someone interviewing their boss.

Speaker 4 He seems just very worried about getting fired at any minute there.

Speaker 3 I was watching and I'm like, because I don't watch a ton of Fox. I watch watch the clips that we talk about on this show.

Speaker 3 But you watch that and you're like, oh, yeah, this is why Republican voters who only consume right-wing media haven't turned on Trump. Like, it's just a

Speaker 3 feel-good, you know, safe space for Donald Trump and Republicans.

Speaker 3 And, you know, you got the, you get Hannity's Town Hall, and then you get to commercial break, and you get a few, you got ads for prostate medication, a couple of My Pillow ads, a couple other ads for old people, some gold.

Speaker 3 And it is just conspiracy after after conspiracy. The other thing I would say is like, you really,

Speaker 3 it was the kind of town hall where you had to have a PhD in MAGA to understand all of the various conspiracies and references.

Speaker 3 And it made me think that Trump was actually, I thought Trump was more on his game in terms of like message discipline. during the CNN town hall than he was with Hannity.

Speaker 3 Because when he's come, and one of the subscribers in the Discord made this point, that when he's combative with an interviewer, he can sometimes like go to, and you could tell because that was like his first big event after his launch, his first televised event or first televised sit-down interview, that his handlers were all like, okay, you got to be on message, bring it back to issues and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 And this one with Hannity, he's talking about like Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and the lovers and the, and Hunter, and Burisma, and he's just doing all the all the MAGA conspiracies.

Speaker 3 And I don't think he, like, I think if a general electorate had watched the Hannity Town Hall, it would not be very good for Trump.

Speaker 4 Fox has become

Speaker 4 really since they had their collapse after the 2020 election, it has become

Speaker 4 more dangerous in terms of radicalizing its current viewers

Speaker 4 and I think somewhat less potent at infecting the larger conversation because they became so nervous about losing fans that it's become fan service. Yeah.
We're not trying to get the town hall.

Speaker 3 The town hall was Trump fan service. That's exactly right.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 So Trump isn't the only one to get in trouble for his attempted coup this week.

Speaker 3 Michigan's Attorney General charged 16 fake electors with signing fraudulent certificates that claim Trump won the state in 2020.

Speaker 3 The group includes an RNC member, a mayor, a former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, all of whom face eight felony counts, each related to forgery and election fraud.

Speaker 3 What do you make of these charges? Big deal? Do we think other states with Democratic AGs or non-MAGA AGs where there are fake electors will follow?

Speaker 4 They should.

Speaker 4 The history here is a little interesting, which is originally Dana Nessel, who's the Attorney General of Michigan, decided that she was not going to investigate this.

Speaker 4 She ended her investigation because she thought it was more of a matter for the federal government. But then the federal government did investigate, so she opened it up again.

Speaker 4 But when she announced she was stopping the investigation, sort of handing it to the feds, she said these people have to be held accountable because if they are not, this is going to happen again.

Speaker 4 It's basically an open invitation for a similar scheme. And so it is absolutely, this is right.
This is why what the indictment we're all waiting for on Trump matters.

Speaker 4 It's why what is happening in Michigan matters is there has to be a match. This is an, as I said, we said earlier, this is an insane thing people try to do.

Speaker 4 It is the, I know we joke about norms, but they try to steal an election. They try to do it brazenly and openly.
They try to do it through loopholes and procedures. They try to do it through fraud.

Speaker 4 They try to do it through violence. And people have to be held accountable because if they're not, we're just going to do this again and again and again.

Speaker 4 And sort of the things that hold our society together in,

Speaker 4 especially when all of our elections are incredibly close, are going to fall apart in a way. We have sort of have one shot to walk back from the brink.
And this is it.

Speaker 3 And, you know, the excuse from some of these electors and other Republicans is like, now you're criminalizing free speech.

Speaker 3 These are just people who thought the election went a different way and wanted to lodge a protest. And it's like, that's not what happened.

Speaker 3 And then there was, then there was someone who's like, I just signed a sheet in a meeting. Just, I thought it was an attendant sheet.
It's like, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 There's all these texts that they have where they were like, we got to keep quiet about this, where the law says that we're supposed to show up in the Michigan state capitol, but we're going to show up in the Republican state headquarters instead, but don't tell anyone.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 all these texts being like, keep quiet about this. They all knew what they were fucking doing.

Speaker 4 Yeah, no one's criminalizing. You know who criminalized these things? The people who wrote the laws you broke.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 3 And there were a couple of fake electors who didn't show up who decided not to participate because they knew it was against the law.

Speaker 3 I guess that, and there's obviously there's an investigation in Georgia over this that we know, and there's also now an investigation in Arizona now that there's a new attorney general there.

Speaker 3 So, I think those two states, the way the law is written in those two states, you could see similar charges in those two states as well.

Speaker 3 I think for some reason in Pennsylvania, I don't think they went as far as they did in Michigan, the fake electors, and some of the other states, but I think Arizona and Georgia are the next ones to watch out for.

Speaker 3 And these are all on state level.

Speaker 3 We also know that Jack Smith in the special counsel's office has been talking to the people involved in the fake elector schemes and others in some of these states, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia.

Speaker 3 So it could be wrapped up into the federal cases.

Speaker 4 And likely to be part of whatever charge of the charges Trump is going to face. This will probably be a piece of supporting evidence for that, his role in the future.
Right.

Speaker 3 Yeah, which is why these are so important.

Speaker 2 Get to the heart of the action at the world's biggest soccer tournament. Fly into San Jose, just just eight minutes from the stadium and nine minutes from downtown hotels and parties.

Speaker 2 Fly, stay, play in San Jose. Go to sanjose.org slash play SJ26.

Speaker 1 Hey, welcome into Walgreens.

Speaker 4 Hi there.

Speaker 10 All right, hon, I'll grab the gift wrap, cards, and, oh, those stuffed animals the girls want.

Speaker 3 Great, and I'll grab the string lights and so.

Speaker 4 How about I grab some cough drops?

Speaker 3 This is not just a quick trip to Walgreens.

Speaker 4 I'm fine, honey.

Speaker 3 Well, just in case, you know what they say.

Speaker 4 Tis the season. This is help staying healthy through the holidays.
Walgreens.

Speaker 11 As a contractor, I don't pay for materials I don't use. So why would I pay for stuff I don't need in my mobile plan? That's why my biz plan from Verizon Business is so perfect.

Speaker 11 Now I can choose exactly what I want, and I only pay for what I need.

Speaker 12 Right now, with my biz plan, get our best price, as low as $25 a line. Visit Verizon.com slash business to get started today.
New lines only.

Speaker 5 Price per month with five plus lines. Includes auto pay and pay for free billing and promotional discounts.
Taxes, fees, economic adjustment charge, applicable add-ons prices, and terms apply.

Speaker 5 Guarantee applies to base monthly rate and stated discounts only. Add on prices additional.
Offers in January 5th, 2026.

Speaker 3 So there's apparently a Republican presidential primary still happening, though the candidates are once again finding it impossible to break through with anything other than whatever they're saying about the frontrunners' third indictment.

Speaker 3 And they can't seem to find anything to say about that. The guy that's beating them has been indicted three times, facing just dozens of felony charges, and they are just, their tongues are tied.

Speaker 3 Ron DeSantis certainly learned that lesson after CNN cut away from his first big boy interview with Jake Tapper after he answered a question about Trump. Let's listen.

Speaker 13 If Jack Smith has evidence of criminality, should Donald Trump be held accountable?

Speaker 4 So here's the problem.

Speaker 14 This country is going down the road of criminalizing political differences. And I think that's wrong.

Speaker 3 Criminalizing political differences. He does later say in that clip that

Speaker 3 he wants to be focused on the future. And that's also part of the problem here.
He wants to be focused on the future.

Speaker 3 And his first reaction to the Trump target letter a couple days ago, he was at some event and a reporter asked him, he said, well, he could have done more on that day to sort of stop what was going on on January 6th, but it wasn't criminal.

Speaker 3 It wasn't criminal. What do you think about that? It's really taking advantage of his opponent's imminent arrest, huh?

Speaker 4 He just has no idea what he's doing. He just does.

Speaker 4 Look,

Speaker 4 to be fair, I'm not going to do this often, but to be fair,

Speaker 4 all these Republicans are in a terrible situation, which is the voters they need love Trump. They don't think he did anything wrong.
The only way to get attention is to talk about Trump.

Speaker 4 And so you can either amplify his message and help Trump. or to say something negative about him, which would be the morally correct thing to do, but then we'll just make the voters like you less.

Speaker 4 So but you would have to be a very nimble, very talented communicator to navigate those strengths. And that's not how my boy Tiny D is doing here.

Speaker 3 Well, on that note, in a clip that CNN aired much later in Jake's show because they had to cut in with all the indictment news and the Michigan fake electorate news, DeSantis was asked why his campaign sucks so badly.

Speaker 3 Here's what he said.

Speaker 13 Some of your supporters are disappointed that your campaign has yet to catch fire the way they would want in terms of polling.

Speaker 13 One Republican pollster, one who is sympathetic to you, I was asking her about your campaign, and she said she thought the issue was you bumped up at the beginning because voters, Republican voters, saw you as a more electable conservative like Trump, like Trump without the baggage.

Speaker 13 But then they say as you go further and further to the right on some of these divisive social issues that could alienate moderates, suburban moms, et cetera, Republican voters see you as less and less electable.

Speaker 13 What do you say to that analysis?

Speaker 14 Well, I don't think it's true. I mean, the proof is in the pudding.

Speaker 3 Quick question.

Speaker 3 If your opponent recently ran an ad about your penchant for eating pudding with your fingers, might you try to avoid that word and an answer about why your campaign is failing?

Speaker 4 I just think that this is sort of the example of why Ron DeSantis is not excelling, which is a truly talented politician would take a weakness and make it into a strength. Lean into the pudding thing.

Speaker 4 Do for pudding what Mitt Romney has done for hot dogs. Get out.
Americans love pudding. It's a popular thing.
Be a normal American who loves pudding. Just go with it.

Speaker 3 Hang a lantern on your problems.

Speaker 4 Just say you're going to serve free pudding in the White House.

Speaker 4 They're going to be your jelly beans. Just make it a thing.

Speaker 3 I just want to know, what do we think happened here? Like, do we think someone that online didn't know about the pudding finger stuff?

Speaker 3 Is it possible that his staff was too afraid to tell him, hey, there's an ad about pudding

Speaker 3 in your fingers and pudding, and maybe you should stay away from, hey, just reminder before you go on doing this interview, this series of interviews, no pudding mentions.

Speaker 3 You don't want to, you want to stay away from the pudding stuff.

Speaker 4 I think you're overcomplicating this. I think it's pretty simple.
He's hungry. He loves pudding.
He's hungry.

Speaker 3 What are you going to do? You think he had a pudding cup after the interview?

Speaker 4 I think he was just going to be.

Speaker 5 They said

Speaker 3 good job on your first big boy interview with a real journalist. You get a pudding cup.
No, no spoons, no spoons, just how you like it.

Speaker 4 I think that there is a eager, slightly fascistic Ron DeSantis staffer who waits outside the door with a pudding cup. That's all he can think about was just to get his pudding.

Speaker 4 can we just make one point about this pollster who talked to jake tapper that is nonsense

Speaker 4 that is a non that is there is that is just absolute nonsense political argument do you think these people who all who love donald 70 of them love donald trump 70 who want to cannot like donald trump are like well i was for hunting antipathies he's become too extreme on abortion yeah i know that that that's that is that is bad that is dc pundit brain analysis it's certainly what happened with him in the general electorate.

Speaker 3 He's got like very high name ID now among all voters and is seen as almost as extreme as Trump among all voters. So that certainly hurt him with the general electorate.
But you're right.

Speaker 3 In the Republican primary, there's zero evidence that it hurt him with Republican voters.

Speaker 3 What happened in the Republican primary, or what's happening in the Republican primary, is people liked the idea of a potential Trump alternative who was Trump without the baggage.

Speaker 3 Instead, they got DeSantis. And there was a great line from Helen Lewis in The Atlantic.
He promised to run his Trump without the baggage. Instead, he's running his Trump minus jokes.

Speaker 3 Which I, I mean, it was interesting because I thought he would pick a fight with Jake.

Speaker 3 He didn't pick a fight with Jake because I thought that, you know, he would like get the base riled up by picking a fight and then say, I took on the fake news media and my enemies are your enemies.

Speaker 3 And that's sort of like what he does best.

Speaker 3 Use that word loosely. But he was pretty, he was boring and bullshitty at the same time during that interview.
And like, you could tell that he's actually

Speaker 3 somewhat smart

Speaker 3 in the sense that he was smart enough not to say anything in that interview that might like piss off any Republican voter. And so he just danced around every answer and just used a lot of word salad.

Speaker 3 But it was just, it came off as so boring. It seemed like the kind of interview you do

Speaker 3 when like a bunch of rich Republican donors who aren't super MAGA, who do like watch a lot of news and probably don't just watch Fox, but also watch CNN was like, oh, you know, he's got to seem more electable again.

Speaker 3 He's got to seem more normal. Let's put him, you got to put him on CNN.
You got to do some real interviews where he can show off his policy chops and show that he's a steadier than Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 And it seems like it was like that kind of idea. But

Speaker 3 if it were Trump and Trump was in this position, Trump would have picked a fight with Jake.

Speaker 3 And then Trump would have gone out and said, I picked a fight with the fake news media. And he would have made it a whole thing.
And he would have got the base revved up.

Speaker 4 And Ron DeSantis, it totally seems like a rich donor, which is the only kind of donor ron desantis has if you look at the fc reports a rich donor kind of strategy yeah it he did an interview on the third place network which has a a fraction of their smaller audience involves republicans with no plan i knew i actually never thought he was going to pick a fight with jake ron de santis is a coward and he knew he is there's not a chance

Speaker 4 like he the way he only fights when he already owns the power dynamic like from the podium to yell at a reporter there's no chance he's sitting across from jake tapper and going after him.

Speaker 4 Maybe they had that idea, but he was never going to pull that off or even try. He was too scared.

Speaker 3 I think he's a coward. I just thought maybe he would be desperate enough at this point because

Speaker 3 he's doing so poorly. Is he like, you're ready to try anything? I guess we're not in the I'll try anything stage of the Ron DeSantis campaign, but I'm guessing we'll get there.

Speaker 4 He should be there.

Speaker 4 He just doesn't know that yet. Right.
All right. So

Speaker 3 we got a debate qualifying poll out of New Hampshire this week from UNH. Trump is in the lead at 37%,

Speaker 3 which is down five points from their April poll. DeSantis has gained one point.
He's at 23%. Tim Scott has gained two points.
He's at 8%. Chris Christie has gained five points.
He's at 6%.

Speaker 3 My boy Doug Bergam's at 5%.

Speaker 3 Vivek Ramaswamy's at 5%. Nikki Haley's at 5%.

Speaker 3 And Mike Pence finishing up a big week with one whole percent from Mike Pence, former Vice President of the United States.

Speaker 3 Plenty to talk about with this poll what do you make of the overall trend which has trump down and a few other candidates up

Speaker 4 it kind of speaks to exactly how trump is going to win this which is it's too big a field without without a singular compelling alternative so trump goes down five points and that five points get to it gets distributed pretty equally among five candidates And that's just not a formula.

Speaker 4 There is not anyone there who, as of yet, has demonstrated the ability to be the vessel for some form of anti-Trump vote, which is, if that were to go to one person, there is theoretically in the math enough people to win.

Speaker 4 But right now, this is 2016 all over again with an even lesser group of candidates.

Speaker 3 How? How did it happen that

Speaker 3 we are reliving 2016 again?

Speaker 4 I think I've actually been thinking about this because one of the numbers in those polls is basically that almost all of Trump's voters have fully committed to they're not going to change their mind.

Speaker 4 And I think we...

Speaker 3 Or like 75% of the voters in that poll have said that they're definitely, their minds are made up.

Speaker 4 They're definitely voting for Trump, which gives him around a base of 30 which is that's a number he's going to win with in a field this size easily i think we've been thinking about that or maybe i have been thinking about this wrong let's say donald trump let's say this is 2019

Speaker 4 and all these people challenge donald trump we would see him as the overwhelming almost certain favorite he is not just a regular presidential candidate he is the incumbent republican president running in a primary and so like that is just like that we would just think about it differently i think think we have to alter our minds that for these voters, he is their president.

Speaker 4 And to move away from their president for some other Republican is going to take something really, really compelling, either about the other person or something devastating about Trump.

Speaker 4 And it's hard to imagine either things happening.

Speaker 3 Like what? Like, like he incited an insurrection? Well, it's got to be devastating.

Speaker 4 It's got to be devastating to them, right? That's not devastating to them.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, we are so close to the I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue.

Speaker 4 Oh, we're so far past that. You know what's worse than shooting someone on Fifth Avenue? Everything he's done.

Speaker 4 I mean, it's not even close.

Speaker 3 I know. I don't know.
You know, I did, I had a little hope at the beginning of this process. Like, maybe one of these jokers is charismatic enough to knock him off.
I just don't. I don't see it.

Speaker 4 I don't see it.

Speaker 3 I don't see it. I'd love to be wrong.
I'd love to be wrong, but I do not see it at this point.

Speaker 4 Like, we should just stipulate that anything can happen. Like, Trump could legitimately go to jail.

Speaker 3 He could drop dead.

Speaker 4 Yeah, either way. Yeah, he could go to jail.
And that might have a moderate impact on the race.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 we have put the world, especially Republicans, have put their hopes into Ron DeSantis as this person. And I wrote about this in message box today.

Speaker 4 But if you kind of look at it, Ron DeSantis is probably toast. It's probably over already.
It's just,

Speaker 4 he doesn't have it. You don't need a lot of it, but whatever it is, he doesn't have it.

Speaker 3 He does not have. He does not have it.

Speaker 4 There have been candidates who have started with a ton of buzz. They've sparked in the polls.
Like the big money donors love them.

Speaker 4 They have a great fundraising quarter and they fall flat on their face as soon as voters see them. Every once in a while, one of those candidates comes back.

Speaker 4 But I sort of did in my message box post today, I sort of looked at this.

Speaker 4 The examples of the people who come back are particularly talented communicators because once you fall flat in the polls, people stop giving you money. People start giving you money.

Speaker 4 The only way you can communicate is in the free media, either on social, cable interviews, speeches. John McCain's the example.
John McCain's campaign collapsed. He ran out of money.

Speaker 4 He had to fire all the staff. And he bounced back because John McCain is a historically great communicator.
Ron DeSantis, just look at that Jake Tapper interview. There's nothing there that would say

Speaker 4 without a gazillion dollars in ads to tell his story, he's going to be able to do it on his own. I mean, like I said.

Speaker 4 Is a comeback in the possible range of outcomes for Ron DeSantis? Sure.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 it's so much less likely than anyone is talking about. If you just look at the history of candidates and Ronda Samson's performance to date.

Speaker 3 And I really think the field and the number of candidates in the field is an even bigger deal than each one of their abilities individually right now.

Speaker 3 Because if you got to Iowa and New Hampshire and there were only two or three people in the field and Donald Trump, I could see a scenario where Trump gets taken down. Because I do think

Speaker 3 there are enough Republicans in the electorate, in the Republican electorate, who

Speaker 3 they all like Trump, but are willing to consider an alternative, right? So it's there. And I think we'll see Trump come down in some of these polls.

Speaker 3 We'll see some of these candidates rise, just like we did in 2016. And we'll see all that.
Someone will have a surge and all that stuff.

Speaker 3 But at the end of the day, if you've got this base of 30% that are with you ride or die, like Trump does, and you have a big field, they're just going to split the vote.

Speaker 3 That's the only, there's just, the math is the math.

Speaker 4 And there's one other element to that that I think is important. It's not just that he has 30% ride or die.
It's that 80% of all of the voters still like him. Right.

Speaker 4 So it's easy to, if you're not, if you like Donald Trump, but you have some concerns, it's easy to fall right back to the person you voted for in 2020

Speaker 4 if there's not something in some incredibly compelling reason to walk away. And no one's offering that compelling reason to walk away.
And there's no obvious vessel for that.

Speaker 3 You know who might be that vessel? Doug.

Speaker 3 Because Doug Bergham, he is headed to the debate stage. He has bought his way onto the debate stage.

Speaker 4 Did he qualify on the donor thing?

Speaker 3 He announced on Hugh Hewitt's show that he qualified. So it's not official yet, but he thinks he qualified.

Speaker 4 Were you just, did you tune in specifically for Doug or was it part of your regular listening to Hewitt?

Speaker 3 As you know, as you know, Tommy and Ben are the big Hugh Hewitt fans, so I just got the news from them.

Speaker 4 Okay, good.

Speaker 3 So, yeah, no, he,

Speaker 3 you know, he just bought his way there. He handed out $20 gift cards to everyone

Speaker 3 in exchange for a $1 donation to get him on the stage. And now we're going to get Doug.
And now he's at 5%. So he's spending a lot of money.
And that's where the 5% comes from.

Speaker 3 Mike Pence, let's just talk about Mike Pence for a second. Mike Pence has not had a week this bad since the first week of January in 2021.

Speaker 4 At least people cared about him back then.

Speaker 4 Now he'd walk down a street in New Hampshire and no one even wave at him. No one cares.

Speaker 3 He's at 1%.

Speaker 3 He has not qualified for the debate stage yet. He may not.
Imagine that. The former vice president of the United States may not qualify for the debate stage.

Speaker 3 Maybe he'll get there at the end, but so far he hasn't. Like, I don't know.
What do you do if you're Mike Pence? I think he could be like the one of the first to drop out.

Speaker 3 Because usually the first to drop out is not some like no name no one cares about because they have nothing to lose and they're just sort of in it for fun.

Speaker 3 But like Mike Pence is the type of candidate where the name ID is high enough and his position was high enough that like,

Speaker 3 you know, if you're not gaining esteem by the fall, like, what do you, and you're at 1% and he raised $1.5 million?

Speaker 3 What are you doing?

Speaker 4 Well, that would suggest a capacity for self-awareness and shame, which someone who took the job

Speaker 4 does not have. Like, you could, I'm not saying Ron DeSantis is going to drop out, but he is the sort of candidate who does because

Speaker 4 they have a future, theoretically, in their own minds, where it's like, I'm going to stop embarrassing myself. I'm going to get out.

Speaker 3 I'm gonna endorse trump now and i'm going to live to fight again in 2028 or whatever but mike pence what does he have nothing he's just sitting he was at dunkin' donuts this morning or yesterday there's a good video on twitter of him getting interviewed by his local boston channel at dunkin' donuts he's like one look at me and you can tell i'm a fan of dunkin' donuts it's not just the coffee

Speaker 3 Yeah, man, you look like a fan of Dunkin' Donuts. Yeah, that's, first of all, people don't call it Dunkin' Donuts anymore.
Second of all, this is your second time there.

Speaker 4 He's

Speaker 3 wild. It's sad.
It is sad. It's sad.
Poor Mike Pence of Hang Mike Pence fame. Let's talk about Tim Scott.
Tim Scott is now in third in New Hampshire.

Speaker 3 Just as the New York Times reported that he's got a super PAC reserving $40 million in advertising across New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina, the DeSantis campaign's leaked strategy memo from last week mentions Tim Scott as a potential threat.

Speaker 3 Do we owe an apology to Cricket's biggest Tim Scott fan, John Lovett?

Speaker 4 We could.

Speaker 4 We could.

Speaker 4 Every time,

Speaker 4 ever since 2016, every time I take a particularly strong position on something, I just mentally prepare myself for having it rubbed in my face for the next seven to 10 years.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I had that thought after you and I were talking to Tim Miller and I just heckled all of you, but particularly Lovett for the Tim Scott thing.

Speaker 4 So I think the most likely scenario is he is a nominee and next person states

Speaker 3 I think this money and just his candidacy in general, like he'll have enough staying power to, you know, help throw the nomination to Donald Trump as the rest of them are and you know, hope he gets VP.

Speaker 3 And I think that's like a possibility. Trump has said nice things about him.
He hasn't attacked him. Now he keeps going up in the polls and starts nipping at Trump's heels.

Speaker 3 Maybe Trump will turn on him like he does everyone else. But you could see him as a VP pick.
I could see that.

Speaker 3 You know, DeSantis wanted to be Trump without the baggage, and I think Tim Tim Scott is DeSantis without the douchebaggery.

Speaker 4 It's Tim Scott.

Speaker 3 People like him. You know, people like him.
They think he's charismatic. He's got a good story.
But like, he is not what the Republican Party wants. He is not what the Republican electorate wants.

Speaker 3 A small sliver of the Republican electorate that is like...

Speaker 3 Probably college educated, again, some rich donors who aren't too MAGA. That's why he has all the money.

Speaker 3 They want to believe in a Tim Scott candidacy because they want to believe that they still exist in the Republican Party of 2008 or 2012. And that is not the Republican Party anymore.

Speaker 3 And so I could see Tim Scott taking some of the DeSantis vote.

Speaker 3 I could see him taking some of the other non-Trump vote, maybe even a few Trump voters, but he's not, he's just not going to get the nomination.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 4 What do you think? No,

Speaker 4 even arguing that anyone other than Donald Trump has more than a 4% chance of getting the nomination is an absurd proposition at this point. Is there a world in which he could win?

Speaker 4 It seems hard to imagine, but sure, $40 million is a a lot. And I would say the other thing.

Speaker 3 It could be the world where Trump does go to jail or drop dead. I guess that is the thing.

Speaker 4 Like it would take an extreme change in circumstance. If it is not Donald Trump, who is it going to be? And once you get to that part of the question, Tim Scott is not a crazy answer.

Speaker 4 Like Ron DeSantis doesn't seem that awesome. Look at the rest of, like, what is Nikki Haley offering? You know, there's, it's just, once you get to that second part, any, almost anything is possible.

Speaker 4 There are a few things that are not possible, but Tim Scott is, at least, I think, a possibility in a world where Donald Trump is not the nominee.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I just don't know if he's Trumpy enough for the base. They just want, you know,

Speaker 3 they love the fighting. And

Speaker 3 Tim Scott's not a fighter.

Speaker 4 We're having, it's an absurd hypothetical because we're getting to the point where something has happened to Donald Trump in some way, shape, or form, where he's not the nominee. And so who knows?

Speaker 4 That would obviously change the entire political environment, right?

Speaker 3 Right, because then

Speaker 3 your favorite Glenn Youngkin gets in.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's right. Well, that's the the other point is that this is all in a world.
There are three parts to this.

Speaker 4 Donald Trump's nominee, Glenn Youngkin decides not to run, and then maybe it's Tim Scott. But yeah.

Speaker 3 I will say our friend Peter Hamby at Puck wrote a piece called the Tim Scott fantasy about why the Tim Scott thing's not going to happen. He sent it to me.

Speaker 3 He's like, wrote this one for Tim Scott fan Dan Pfeiffer. And I was like, did you not let, it's love it.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Hamby had you pegged for the Tim Scott fan. It's a great piece.
You should all read it. But yeah, no,

Speaker 3 it's a tough one to see happening. But I I do think he'll continue.
I think he'll have staying power, and I think he'll continue to rise in the polls and have his surge.

Speaker 3 I just, you know, like we've talked about.

Speaker 4 He is one of those candidates who will be able to, he will have money to run ads, but he will also be able to get free media and communicate without just ads.

Speaker 3 Yeah, because he's a good communicator.

Speaker 3 Finally.

Speaker 3 One group of people happily watching this week's Republican shit show unfold are the folks on Joe Biden's campaign.

Speaker 3 They took their first official shot at Donald Trump with a statement from the campaign that they gave to Politico about his, quote, softball town hall with Hannity and his failure to create manufacturing jobs in Wisconsin, where the RNC will be held a year from now.

Speaker 3 They also responded to Ron DeSantis' CNN interview with a statement mocking him for admitting that not everyone really knows what wokeness is.

Speaker 3 And Joe Biden himself tweeted out a video made by the DNC of Marjorie Taylor Greene making a pretty great case. for re-electing the president.
Let's listen.

Speaker 16 Joe Biden had the largest public investment in social infrastructure and environmental programs that is actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on.

Speaker 16 And Joe Biden is attempting to complete programs to address education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, labor unions. And he still is working on it.

Speaker 3 That was not AI. That was not a deep fake.
That was Marjorie Taylor Greene just giving the Biden campaign content for one of the better ads that I've heard.

Speaker 3 The music behind it was just that was the cherry on top. Good job, DNC on that.
That was very, very good.

Speaker 3 What do you make of the campaign strategy, the messages that they've chosen so far, and the timing of both the campaign putting out statements about Trump and DeSantis, and then, of course, the Biden retweeting the MTG ad?

Speaker 4 I think let's have some fun here. Let's get it, get punchy, get aggressive.
It's all good. It'll fire up our people.
It's just made me cringe as a former

Speaker 4 political operative when you said the safe took their first shot at Donald Trump by issuing a statement to Politico. Like I almost threw up in my mouth.

Speaker 3 And honestly,

Speaker 3 I just committed some plagiarism there. That was from the Politico story.
I should have said that.

Speaker 3 I don't talk like that.

Speaker 3 That was the line from the Politico story.

Speaker 4 That stuff is, I think,

Speaker 4 like downstream from the larger strategy of what Joe Biden should exactly be doing, which is using all the absurdities of the Republican Party to make his broader case against MAGA extremism, regardless of who the nominee is, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, et cetera.

Speaker 4 I think the video is worth focusing on because it is the essentially the platonic ideal of what digital communication should be, where

Speaker 4 you are.

Speaker 4 It is very, very, there's always this huge tension between the things you want to tell voters and the things that can actually break through in this media environment, right?

Speaker 4 It's why it's so hard for Joe Biden to tell voters about all the things he did to make the economy better because no one ever covers that. They don't tweet about it.
They don't write about it.

Speaker 4 It doesn't go viral. And so you can go viral by doing a bunch of things, but those things are usually at least,

Speaker 4 they're not counter to your strategy, but they're adjacent to it, right? They're sort of virality for virality's sake.

Speaker 4 So if you can find a moment where you can get a video to go viral or a piece of content to go viral that has your exact message you want to tell voters, that's what you want.

Speaker 4 And so like that should be, they should hang that up on, they should show that on the first day of press secretary school, the Democratic Party. Like that's, that is how, that is how you do it.

Speaker 3 I think it had 40 million views as of like last night when I checked, probably has more now. Do you think, do you think it's worth putting money behind that, making it an ad?

Speaker 4 Not really. Maybe.
I mean, it sort of depends on what you want to do with it. You could, are you going to put it on actual television?

Speaker 4 Most people will look at that and not know who Marjorie Taylor Greene is.

Speaker 3 I was wondering what her name ID is nationally.

Speaker 4 It's not just name ID, like to be able to get it, to fully get the impact of that, you have to kind of recognize her because the idea that you don't know the ads coming if you're just watching TV.

Speaker 4 So you may not see her name written there.

Speaker 4 So now you just hear a blonde woman talking about Joe Biden. It's kind of a tricky ad to do as currently constructed, but you could boost it

Speaker 4 on YouTube or on, you know, or some other social platforms.

Speaker 3 this is why it's perfect you don't have to because everyone is is sharing it on their own so it's free that's true I might I might take out an ad buy in Georgia and get another news cycle out of it

Speaker 4 yeah I mean if you wanted to take

Speaker 4 or just run it in her district just an ad just her district yeah I mean there there would be some small ad buys for the purposes of free press and additional virality you could do but terms of like is it pure

Speaker 4 probably not where I would spend a I wouldn't spend millions of dollars on it

Speaker 3 the you know the

Speaker 3 long campaign tradition since we were kids of putting out statements, issuing statements from the campaign, I don't think that's going to get you very far, but I was interested in sort of the substance of both statements because I think it speaks to, you know, everything done in a campaign or a lot of things like that, done intentionally in a campaign are strategic.

Speaker 3 And it was interesting they chose Wisconsin.

Speaker 3 Interesting that they chose an economic message about Donald Trump's broken promises to Wisconsin, said he was going to create a a bunch of manufacturing jobs, did not, hasn't gone to Wisconsin, was part of the statement about Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 This all happened when, you know, we saw a poll, a good decent poll out of Wisconsin the other week that has Biden leading Trump in Wisconsin.

Speaker 3 And it just speaks to what I think is, you know, they're going to... One of the messages that they are going to deploy against Donald Trump is that,

Speaker 3 you know, he promised you a great economy and he ended up screwing you.

Speaker 3 And Joe Biden is working hard to make your life better, which I think is interesting.

Speaker 3 And then the hit on DeSantis is they're gonna, they're not gonna be afraid of calling out the extreme culture war shit, which I think is interesting.

Speaker 3 And of course, left unsaid during both in both of those statements was anything about the indictment, which he can't. You know, Joe Biden's not commenting on it.
He can't.

Speaker 4 And there's a New York Times story about that.

Speaker 4 Yeah, they cannot do it.

Speaker 4 Yeah, there was a New York Times that says, like, Biden will poke fun at MAGA Republicans, but never mention indictments. Like, no shit.
Of course, he cannot do it. He will not do it.
He cannot do it.

Speaker 4 It would be just, can you just imagine the amount of pearl clutching that would happen in Washington, D.C. if like the deputy press secretary in the Biden, Oklahoma office tweeted about it?

Speaker 4 Like people would freak the fuck out of it.

Speaker 3 Well, guess what?

Speaker 3 We should all be ready because some field organizer somewhere is going to do it or someone who like once sat once has sat in a meeting at the DNC is going to do it and calls themselves like a Biden delegate from

Speaker 3 something that's going to happen. Yeah,

Speaker 4 somebody who put Biden advisor in their threads profile or something. I don't know.

Speaker 3 Or just like a fake bot is going to do it who's like,

Speaker 3 like it's going to happen, but it doesn't come from Joe Biden, then that's that. But yeah, you can't do that.

Speaker 4 One thing that I think is interesting is I have seen some

Speaker 4 research that was done by some pretty smart Democratic folks about the power of the broken promise message and that it actually does matter, that Trump proposed all these specific things for specific communities and then did not deliver.

Speaker 4 And that there's some. So it is, I take real note of the fact that that is showing up in Biden communications this stage.

Speaker 3 Two interesting pieces of data from this week. We got a Monmouth poll showing Biden's approval creeping up to 44%.
Quinnipiak poll showing him beating Trump 49 to 44%.

Speaker 3 Just noise, or do you think there are potential reasons the president's prospects may be improving?

Speaker 4 It's not noise in the sense that it's just random statistical fluctuation, but any movement in the polls at this point is noise.

Speaker 4 Like if Biden could go up two this month, four months later, he could be up seven. Two months after that, he could be down.

Speaker 4 He could be back to up two. It doesn't really matter.
What I think is notable, and you mentioned this

Speaker 4 in the Tuesday pod, is that

Speaker 4 how people are feeling about the economy is changing. Consumer confidence is at its highest level in a couple of years.
That usually is a leading indicator of where the polling is going to go.

Speaker 4 It front runs the economic approval and the polling and the political polling.

Speaker 4 And so I think it's very possible that Biden's maybe getting a little bit of a boost because people are feeling better about the economy.

Speaker 4 And that kind of makes sense because he's had some low-hanging fruit with Democrats to get back in some of these polls.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think that's right. And I also think we're seeing a couple of these polls.
Trump

Speaker 3 has his like lowest approval recorded in some of these polls. And so it's possible that these indictments are not helping him with the general electorate.

Speaker 3 And that the more people see of Trump and are reminded of Trump because now he's in their faces a lot more,

Speaker 3 they're remembering why they did not like him very much in the first place. So that's something to watch.
Okay, before we head to break, a few housekeeping notes.

Speaker 3 If you're in the LA area, Tommy will be joining Lydia Kiesling, the author of Crooked's first novel, Mobility, for a special launch at Dynasty Typewriter on July 27th.

Speaker 3 It's free, and you can learn more at crooked.com slash events.

Speaker 3 Mobility is a coming-of-age novel about navigating a world of corporate greed that's both laugh-out-loud, funny, and politically insightful. If you listen to this pod, this book is in your wheelhouse.

Speaker 3 Mobility will be released August 1st, Pre-order now, wherever books are sold. Also, for a quick and punchy take on the state of our world, look no further than Crooked Media's What A Day podcast.

Speaker 3 In just a few minutes, you'll be up to speed on the day's top news stories, as well as stories that may have gone under your radar. New episodes are out every weekday.

Speaker 3 Subscribe to What A Day Now, wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Dan talks to Andrew Weissman.

Speaker 11 As a contractor, I don't pay for materials I don't use. So, why would I pay for stuff I don't need in my mobile plan? That's why my biz plan from Verizon Business is so perfect.

Speaker 11 Now I can choose exactly what I want, and I only pay for what I need.

Speaker 12 Right now, with my biz plan, get our best price as low as $25 a line. Visit Verizon.com/slash business to get started today.
New lines only.

Speaker 5 Price per month with five plus lines. Includes auto-pay and pay-per-free billing and promotional discounts, taxes, fees, economic adjustment, charge, applicable add-ons prices, and terms apply.

Speaker 5 Guarantee applies to base monthly rate and stated discounts only. Add-on-prices additional.
Offers in January 5th, 2026.

Speaker 17 Extra-value meals are back for just $5.

Speaker 17 Get a savory and sweet sausage, egg, and cheese McGrittles, plus hash browns and a coffee. Only at McDonald's.

Speaker 4 For limited time only, prices and participation may vary.

Speaker 5 Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California, and for delivery.

Speaker 4 A massage chair might seem a bit extravagant, especially these days. Eight different settings, adjustable intensity, plus it's heated and it just feels so good.

Speaker 4 Yes, a massage chair might seem a bit extravagant, but when it can come with a car,

Speaker 4 suddenly it seems quite practical. The all-new 2025 Volkswagen Tiguan, packed with premium features like available massaging front seats, that only feels extravagant.

Speaker 4 While everyone on Twitter is once again pretending to be a legal expert, we brought on an actual one to join us on today's pod.

Speaker 4 Joining us now is MSNBC legal analyst and a former member of Robert Mueller's team that investigated Donald Trump, Andrew Weissman.

Speaker 4 Andrew also co-hosts the MSNBC podcast, Prosecuting Donald Trump, where he and veteran prosecutor Mary McCord discuss the cases against Donald Trump. Andrew, welcome back to the pod.

Speaker 15 Nice to be here.

Speaker 4 Okay, we've done this a couple times now with Donald Trump's various indictments. On the last one, his second indictment, the indictment came only a few days after Trump received his target letter.

Speaker 4 According to the former president, he received that target letter on Sunday Sunday night.

Speaker 4 What's your best guess on if and when we will find out about an indictment on Trump?

Speaker 15 Sure. I think that the biggest thing that I'm looking for

Speaker 15 is

Speaker 15 some reporting, some indication that his defense team has gone into the Department of Justice. to be heard as to why he should not be charged.

Speaker 15 You know, we had that reporting in the Alvin Bragg Manhattan criminal case. We had that reporting in the Mar-a-Lago documents case.

Speaker 15 In fact, we saw the defense team go out, leave the Department of Justice, if you remember those images. And we don't have any reporting of that having happened here.

Speaker 15 It is really standard practice for the department to give the defense an opportunity to be heard. You know, I don't think they'll probably say anything that

Speaker 15 the prosecutors haven't thought of already, but you never know.

Speaker 15 And you also just a matter of politeness, you give them that opportunity because there may be something that they say that causes you to rethink something. So, we don't have that yet.

Speaker 15 And to me, that is the piece that I'm waiting for.

Speaker 15 Other than that, if that were not the case, then all signs are that this could happen anytime after today, because the former president had said he was given until today to decide whether to go into the grand jury, essentially, or not.

Speaker 15 Obviously, he's not going to go into the grand jury.

Speaker 15 He didn't testify to the E. Jean Carroll case.
He didn't come in and talk to us in the Mueller investigation. There's no way that he is going to go into the grand jury and testify.

Speaker 15 And it would be malpractice for his defense counsel to not throw their bodies in front of that if he wanted to.

Speaker 4 In the classified documents case, did the meeting with Trump's attorneys happen before the target letter was sent?

Speaker 15 You know, we don't. I think the answer to that is no.
I think it happened afterwards.

Speaker 15 And I also think that there was

Speaker 15 a pretty significant gap between what we understand to be the time of the target letter and the time of the charges. I think by significant, I mean it was more than a few days.

Speaker 15 I think it was a couple of weeks where there was that gap. I'm not saying that that, I'm not sure that's a data point to say that will happen here.

Speaker 15 You know, Jack Smith is obviously feeling the time clock pressure given the upcoming election etc so you know he very well could say look if you want to be heard on appeal you need to come in by exit date in other words not leaving it open-ended so keeping this on a very short leash uh so again

Speaker 15 it won't happen today but it but absent that reporting i i just don't think it's going to happen imminently because i do think we're going to hear that they they you know made some sort of appeal to Maine justice.

Speaker 4 Reportedly, the target letter to Trump mentioned several statutes the former president may have violated.

Speaker 4 What do those statutes tell you about the sort of case that Jack Smith is putting together? And were you surprised by any of them?

Speaker 15 So the answer is no, I wasn't surprised by them. I do think this is one where

Speaker 15 my colleagues in the sort of legal analyst, you know, Twitter sphere, I think are kind of overthinking this.

Speaker 15 When I'm a prosecutor, when I was doing this, I sort of thought about what are the facts that I have? What can I prove beyond a reasonable doubt?

Speaker 15 And then you just think about all the different types of crimes that that triggers.

Speaker 15 Here, there's so many different types of crimes from obstruction of justice to civil rights violations to seditious conspiracy to false statements to the government.

Speaker 15 all of those could be applying here and i think there's just a lot of overthinking i mean for instance the civil rights case, people are sort of really overthinking this.

Speaker 15 Here's a really simple way to understand that.

Speaker 15 This was an effort to disenfranchise everyone who had voted for the current president by overturning the election. That is a civil rights violation.

Speaker 15 And just in the same way that the statutes were created to prevent the disenfranchisement of black and brown communities. So I just think there's, that's not what I'm sort of focusing on.

Speaker 15 I'm kind of, I am confident that Jack will bring this case. It will come in DC.

Speaker 15 It will be, I think, a broad case and that it's going to charge the conduct that we all saw and that the January 6th committee laid out in terms of all of the different aspects of the conspiracy, whether it's pressuring states, whether it's pressuring Mike Pence, pressuring the Department of Justice.

Speaker 15 All of that, I think, is going to be part of the charge. Because if you're going to bring a case like this against a former president, it's going to encompass what he did.

Speaker 15 I don't think we're going to find ourselves thinking, gee, why didn't he charge a bigger case? I think we're probably will find that the thing that

Speaker 15 is unusual is that just like the documents case, we learn a lot of new facts that fill in gaps in terms of just how much the president was up to. So that's sort of how I see it going forward.

Speaker 4 That's interesting about the evidence because, obviously, in the classified documents case, we learned a ton when the indictment came out.

Speaker 4 But what's different in this case is we had the January 6th committee hearings

Speaker 4 a couple of years ago that laid out in great detail and made a referral to the Justice Department. Based on, obviously, there could be additional evidence.

Speaker 4 There's likely to be additional evidence, but based on the evidence we saw there, how strong a case do you think this is against the president given the charges that are that are likely to be brought?

Speaker 15 I think this is going to be

Speaker 15 as devastating as the documents case. I mean,

Speaker 15 look, this is one where

Speaker 15 if you put politics aside and you're just looking at this objectively in terms of what we know from the January 6th Committee, I don't think there's anyone who could look at what the January 6th Committee turned up and say, gee, I wonder if he did it.

Speaker 15 I mean, there's just so much proof from so many different angles

Speaker 15 as to what was going on. And there will be, I think, a lot of insiders, meaning people who were Trump loyalists who will be witnesses.

Speaker 15 I think there are going to be people in the White House counsel's office who are going to be witnesses. Remember, they don't represent Donald Trump personally.

Speaker 15 They represent the office of the presidency.

Speaker 15 And just like the Mar-a-Lago case, I think lawyers are actually going to pay

Speaker 15 role in helping establish his criminal intent. In other words, that he was told what he could and could not not do.

Speaker 15 So I think it is going to probably be very strong, but I do think that even with the January 6th Committee, and you're right to point out that we know more

Speaker 15 here than we knew with respect to the documents case, but just remember the documents case, because we had information about the search warrant, we still knew a fair amount.

Speaker 15 I think there's a lot that the January 6th Committee did, but I think there's a lot that they couldn't do because rumor they didn't have grand jury subpoena power.

Speaker 15 They couldn't get people to testify about specific conversations with the president.

Speaker 15 But you can be sure that Pat Cipollone, for instance, who refused to give that information, was in the grand jury telling the grand jury exactly what he recalls about his conversations with the president as one example.

Speaker 4 I mean, we sort of understand broadly, non-lawyers like myself, understand broadly this seems like a big crime trying to overturn an election. And there's so much happened.

Speaker 4 January 6th has become this very big term that means

Speaker 4 the sort of the efforts to overturn the election starting after the election, the fake electors scam, the call to Brad Raffensberger and the similar call we now know about in Arizona, the efforts to encourage people, the use of the 25th Amendment,

Speaker 4 the use of the vice president to try to have people march on the Capitol. What specifically do you think, what elements of that are part of a case they're going to bring?

Speaker 15 I would add to that also the pressure on the Department of Justice where the acting attorney general said, we are not opening a fraud case so that you can then tout this as a reason not to count the votes.

Speaker 15 And then there was discussion that Donald Trump had about removing the acting attorney general and putting in an amanuensis to do his bidding to, just like he did with or tried to do with Zelensky, to say, look, just say that you're doing this investigation because that will be enough for me to use that.

Speaker 15 I I think everything that you said is what I think will be in this indictment. It is all part of a conspiracy.
And I do think

Speaker 15 there's an unfortunate misnomer is that we call it the January 6th case, but that's just the culmination. I think that

Speaker 15 I really thought that the gift of the January 6th committee was broadening that out to say that this is really a plan that actually hatched even before the election as sort of plan B, if I lose, this is what I'm going to do, do, and then continued up through January 6th.

Speaker 15 So I think it's going to include all of that. I think January, I think that

Speaker 15 Jack is a very thorough prosecutor. I think that the documents case shows that.
And I think that he's going to include all of that.

Speaker 15 I think that to me, the big piece that I'm thinking about is what judge in DC gets this, because that's going to be hugely important in the same way that we're all very focused on Aileen Cannon and what she's going to do with the trial date.

Speaker 15 And also, is there going to be another defendant? In the way that there was Walt Nauda in the documents case, are there going to be other people charged

Speaker 15 such as John Eastman, Cheesebrow,

Speaker 15 even up to and including Meadows, Giuliani? But will there be those people?

Speaker 15 I think those are, to me, those are the issues where I don't know the answer to that, but that's the thing that's most interesting to me.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that because obviously Donald Trump did not do this on his own. I mean, the man can barely put his pants on on on his own.

Speaker 4 And according to the reporting, and it's just reporting, the people who engaged with him in this effort, Eastman, Giuliani, others, have not received target letters from Jack Smith.

Speaker 4 Is the sequencing surprising there? Does it tell you anything?

Speaker 15 You know, it does

Speaker 15 because

Speaker 15 I have to say, I never... in my entire career, 21 years in the department, ever issued a target letter.

Speaker 15 It's not required. They used to be called heart attack letters

Speaker 15 because

Speaker 15 you get it and

Speaker 15 it's not something you wake up in the morning and go, I can't wait to open the mail and find out I got this.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 I've been a defense lawyer also,

Speaker 15 getting a target letter, not a good day.

Speaker 15 But there's no requirement in the justice manual that you do it.

Speaker 15 I do think in this case, one of the reasons for it is so that everything is extremely clear and

Speaker 15 there's a documented notice to the former president. So there can't be any questions that they followed every procedure and gave due process.

Speaker 15 So I do think that if it is true that they gave it to one, but not others, that would, I'd say, tend to support the idea that at least this indictment will be just against one person.

Speaker 15 Absent, of course, are not knowing about

Speaker 15 another person receiving a target letter because it's hard to sort of canvas everyone.

Speaker 15 And it is conceivable that people such as Rudy Giuliani don't really need a target letter because there's been so many communications with him and his counsel.

Speaker 15 So I wouldn't take that totally to the bank. It's just if in a case where you've issued one, it would seem a little unusual not to follow that procedure with respect to every proposed defendant.

Speaker 4 Any thoughts on what the timing in this case may be? Obviously, we're waiting for Judge Cannon's ruling on delay in the case.

Speaker 4 There's been a general view that the classified documents case could take after the election despite her ruling just because of the complicated logistics of a case dealing with highly classified information is there a shot this could kick off before the election or are we looking for afterwards do you think so are you talking about just the the the upcoming indictment just in january 6th case yes yeah presuming this indictment happens if not we got bigger problems as a country yeah yeah so

Speaker 15 just so people don't worry and this indictment is happening i mean look this is one where i don't this isn't one where i get a lot of people give me lots of credit for like my your predictions this is not one where that takes a real, like, it doesn't take a legal eagle to know that there's an indictment coming on the January 6th case.

Speaker 15 You don't have to know Jack Smith. You just have to have looked at the evidence.
It's going to happen.

Speaker 15 And it will be in DC. The sort of issues that there were before about where things would happen with the documents case,

Speaker 15 that was brought in the district where it happened. The January 6th case is going to be brought in DC where it happens.

Speaker 15 When the January 6th case gets tried is going to be a real function of the judge that they get.

Speaker 15 I think that there are a number of judges who will feel if they can bring this case to fruition before the election, that it is

Speaker 15 something that the voters are entitled to know one way or the other.

Speaker 15 It's not, it's meaning whether there's there, remember, it only takes one person to have a hung jury, and that would be a very good thing for Donald Trump. He would tout that as a huge victory.

Speaker 15 So I think that there will be a lot of judges who this could end up in front of who will really feel like they, if they can do it consistent with due process to the defendant, which is, you know, that is the number one thing in this country is the rule of law requires that the defendant give an adequate opportunity to prepare.

Speaker 15 But I do think that if it is, if this case is brought in the next couple of weeks, it is possible to bring the case, but it will be tight.

Speaker 15 You know, it is just not unusual for a case to take a year to come to fruition. I'll give you one example.
I did the Paul Manafort case, which had a lot of evidence in it, had overseas evidence.

Speaker 15 There was a substantial amount of electronic evidence. And that took 11 months to go from indictment to the start of the trial date in DC.
And that was a relatively fast schedule.

Speaker 15 Because again, I just want people to understand defendants are entitled to have an opportunity to make sure they can review all of the discovery, make motions.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 that delay, while it's frustrating, is actually part of what it means to be a country that abides by the rule of law.

Speaker 15 So, you know, that is going to be a tight timeframe.

Speaker 15 I think Jack Smith cannot be faulted at all for that delay. I think there's a very good argument that Merrick Garland can be in terms of the situation that we're in.

Speaker 15 Jack Smith, by all accounts, has really

Speaker 15 acted quickly.

Speaker 15 know, having been in this situation in various high-profile matters, I actually think it's kind of remarkable how much he has done and how quickly.

Speaker 4 Last question for you. If you were the one prosecuting in this case, what's the one thing that would keep you up at night?

Speaker 15 Jury nullification.

Speaker 15 I think

Speaker 15 what I have experienced is the problem in a high-profile case of jurors who want to get on the jury and who are less than candid, which is a nice way of saying lie

Speaker 15 in jury questionnaires and in being going through the four-dier process with a judge. You know, usually most jurors don't want to be on a jury.

Speaker 15 But in high-profile matters, you have that problem of somebody really trying to sneak on who is not intending to adhere to their oath of office as a juror.

Speaker 15 And again, remember, it only takes one juror to have a hung jury. There has to be a unanimous jury either to convict or to acquit.

Speaker 15 And so

Speaker 15 if you have 11 to one, that's the kind of thing that Donald Trump will claim that is a huge victory, if even if it's 11 to one for conviction. So that would be the thing that would worry me the most.

Speaker 15 The evidence seems incredibly strong. So that's the biggest thing that I would worry about.

Speaker 4 Andrew Weissman, thank you so much for joining us. And I'm sure we'll talk again as even more indictments may come for this former president.

Speaker 15 Thanks so much. Nice to be here.

Speaker 3 Thank you to Andrew Weissman for joining us. Dan, this is like your last pod for a couple weeks, right? You're going on vacation? Where are you going? You're going camping?

Speaker 4 Two weeks, a couple family trips,

Speaker 4 one with my family, one with Hallie's family. We're very excited.

Speaker 3 Well, enjoy your time off. We will miss you.
I'm sure there'll be a couple more indictments for you to talk about.

Speaker 4 I know. I'm really hoping this indictment comes today or tomorrow because it's going to be a real pain in my butt what happens Monday when I'm on an airplane with no Wi-Fi.

Speaker 3 It's going to be be tough. It's gonna be tough.
All right everyone, have a great weekend. We'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 4 Bye everyone.

Speaker 3 Pod Save America is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.
Our producers are Andy Gardner-Bernstein and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Speaker 3 Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis.

Speaker 3 Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Madeleine Herringer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support.

Speaker 3 And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Mia Kelman, Ben Hefcote, and David Tolles.

Speaker 3 Subscribe to PodSave America on YouTube to catch full episodes, exclusive content, and other community events. Find us at youtube.com slash at PodSave America.

Speaker 11 As a contractor, I don't pay for materials I don't use. So why would I pay for stuff I don't need in my mobile plan? That's why my biz plan from Verizon Business is so perfect.

Speaker 11 Now I can choose exactly what I want, and I only pay for what I need.

Speaker 12 Right now, with my biz plan, get our best price as low as $25 a line. Visit Verizon.com/slash business to get started today.

Speaker 5 New lines only, price per month with five plus lines.

Speaker 5 Includes autopay and pay-free filling and promotional discounts, taxes fees, economic adjustment charge, applicable add-ons prices, and terms apply.

Speaker 5 Guarantee applies to base monthly rated and stated discounts only. Add-on prices additional.
Offers in January 5th, 2026.

Speaker 17 Extra-value meals are back for just $5. Get a savory and sweet sausage, egg, and cheese McGrittles.
Plus, hash browns and a coffee. Only at McDonald's.

Speaker 4 For limited time only, prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California and for delivery.