David Priess: Why Trump Did It

Book do the Bullework Podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes, and it is Thursday. There’s a lot of things that we’re keeping our eye on, including the health worries about the the queen. We do not know at this point what her condition is. We don’t wanna get ahead of ourselves, but to say that that her passing will be the end of an epoch.

Seems to understate it. Then, of course, we’re joined today by David Priest, our good friend, the chief operating officer of law fair. So David, I I don’t know what to say about the the the queen at this point. Except you think about the historic sweep of her reign, she’s outlasted twelve US presidents. And I What was it?

The the fifteen British prime ministers? It’s just an extraordinary story. The stunning statistic that gets me, Charlie, is that she is approaching thirty three percent of American history. That is she’s right around thirty percent now. But if she if she lives a little bit longer, she could approach one third of all of American history, which is just stunning.

Well,

I’m I’m looking at some of the reporting from they’re actually old reporting from the Guardian. Anticipating what will happen when when the queen actually dies. That was a fantastic

article from about five years ago. It’s absolutely stunning talking about the actual process has been laid out for this. London bridges down the secret plan for the days after the

queen’s death. She is venerated around the world. She has Alaska twelve US president, she stands for stability in order, but her kingdom is in turmoil. This is five years ago. And her subjects are in denial that her reign will ever end That’s why the palace has a plan.

Let me just read the first paragraph. In the plans that exist for the death of the queen and there are many versions held by Buckingham Palace, the government and the BBC. Most envisioned that she will die after a short illness, her family and doctors will be there when the queen mother passed away on the afternoon of Easter Saturday in two thousand two, at the Royal Lodge in Windsor, she had time to telephone friends to say goodbye and to give away some of her horses. In the last hours, the Queen’s senior doctor will be in charge, but he will look after his patient control access to a room and consider what information should be made public. The bond between sovereign and subjects is a strange and mostly a noble thing.

A nation’s life becomes a person and then the string must break you know, and obviously this would mean that Charles would become king, but the — Mhmm. — the the signal that will go out will be London Bridge is down. At the BBC, they’ve apparently suspended all of their coverage for the day. They’re gonna do this wall to wall and

all of the anchors are wearing black ties. I think you can read, you know, something into that. So it’s definitely something that’s historic because she is such a unique monarch, and it also gives us a window into something that that we don’t do quite the same way here. Obviously, a a passing of a president is something that we’ve noted. And obviously, we haven’t had a currently serving president who has died in office in quite some time, but even a former president there’s a lot of attention.

There’s there’s a whole lot of planning that goes into before the death of how are they going to do the service? How are they going to do the the showing in the capital, things like that. But that doesn’t compare to what they’ve been doing for decades to prepare for the queen’s death. So there’s a lot of people who are ready many moving parts, a lot of people who know what to do, but it is still going to be I mean, think about the world when she took took over in the nineteen fifties compared to today, especially in terms of the British empire, but also in terms of everything that’s happened through the Cold War, nine eleven, we’ve got such a different world, obviously, entering the United Kingdom into the EU and then exiting out of it again. So She’s she’s lived through quite a lot, and I think it is going to be important to reflect on her reign when she does pass.

And

not just the history, but also the values that she embodied. I mean, she is really a figure from from another century — Yeah. — putting the values of of duty ahead of everything else, which, of course, put her for very, very cross wise, with the culture, it had many times, which was more comfortable with with the the celebration, if that’s a word, of the royalty. She was always of that very, very old school. And it’s hard to imagine future generation being able to embody that, but maybe that’s maybe I’m being too pessimistic.

I mean, Charles will have a a rain that will last, you know, you know, perhaps several decades and then we’ll pass on to new much younger generation. And and and Prince William seems to get that older culture, but able to update it a little bit. I’m getting ahead of myself now. You

and I are old enough to remember when Prince Charles married Diana, and everybody was talking about this, this young person who is changing the face of the monarchy, and it sure doesn’t seem that way now. Prince Charles is in in some ways more of a a laughing stock for some of his alternative science views and other things. But you really do see him as a transition monarch, very much because he is already, what, seventy three years old. If I recall correctly, and his reign could be very short, could be a couple of decades. We don’t know, but William has a different connection with both the British people and with with the world and modern times.

And I think Charles will be in a sense seen as just a continuation of his his mother’s reign in some ways and who knows he may even choose to abdicate and just pass it on to his son, which would be welcome in many quarters. It

would be just think for a moment. I’d be interested to seeing a statistic what percentage of living Britons and living Americans have known no other monarch other than Queen Elizabeth. That’s right. No. She you know, I I am not a spring chicken, believe it or not.

And she’s been queen longer than I’ve been alive. And I’m I’m guessing that the vast majority of Britain’s gonna wake up one day and realize that something that’s always been a fixture in their lives — Right. — is

gone. Yeah. And that that is that is something that will be a psychological shock even though people have been preparing for for quite some time and when the queen mum died, they had almost a preview of what would happen. But yeah, it’s it’s definitely an interesting chance to reflect on history and to see how the British culture and identity is evolving certainly differently than it is in the United States. Well,

I want to move ahead. I want to get your thoughts about what’s going on with Lago documents the recent decision by a federal judge, Aileen Cannon to win a special master and the latest reports about the nuclear data and, of course, other things that are going on in this ongoing fight for democracy. But can I just mention a story that I’m I’m personally a little bit obsessed with. It just and it may not be on most people’s radar screen. This story out of Las Vegas over the last twenty four hours.

Where a very well known investigative reporter for the Las Vegas Review Journal named Jeff German who had been exposing corruption in malpeasants and local government, was murdered earlier this week. He was stabbed to death. Jeff German was stabbed to death. I mean, with all all the controversy reporters in this country are are seldom murdered. But it turns out that police have now arrested a prominent political figure in Las Vegas Clark County Public Administrator Robert TELUS who was arrested on suspicion of murder last night in the fatal stabbing of this reporter.

And German had been investigating, TELUS had written a lot about. They public administrator, which I think it may be a county executive in in other states. He had exposed TELUS’ mouth seasons, which resulted in him, Robert TELUS being defeated in the primary. And so, you know, this comes after, you know, police that asked for public health in identifying a suspect in the case that they did this early morning search of of the public administrator’s home, and it provided, you know, the indication that the killing which was last Friday, you know, might be related to German’s work exposing public wrongdoing. And apparently, this reporter was pursuing a potential follow-up story about TELUS in the weeks before he was killed.

So, I mean, you have, you know, the top one of the top officials in Clark County, Nevada government, who apparently went out and stabbed an investigative reporter to death. It’s amazing.

The more news you read about it, the more disturbing it is. And and I don’t know what to do with it because I don’t know the background to the story well enough other than the reports that that you’ve also characterized there. I I find myself fighting the instinct to put it in the context of the larger political environment that we’ve had increasing political violence in increasing rhetoric around political violence. It’s been building up for some time now, but recently it has been much more dramatic, and we have all of the experts warning. This is kind of what we see in other countries when things go downhill.

Let’s not normalize political violence. Now, this isn’t necessarily that, but that’s immediately where I go to that. It falls into that pattern of thinking for me that as a country, we’re in a place where this news comes and maybe you and I are shocked by the details, but I think most people see it and and just shrug. And that makes me very sad. Well, and and one of the

reasons why I’m I’m slightly obsessed with this story is that I had a very, very close friend some years ago who was a Wisconsinite who moved out to Las Vegas and became at that time Las Vegas’s number one investigative reporter. His name was Ned Day, and Ned has passed away of of natural causes. But Ned was a very, very aggressive reporter in in the very way that they described this Jeff German. And I remember that he was always concerned about the question of violence. Actually, he was completely fearless.

But back then, I think he was more concerned about the mob. Obviously, which has which has a little bit of clout in Las Vegas, and he really liked exposing the mob bosses. And I remember, you know, having conversations with him about that and he sort of had a certain bravado about it, but but it was very real. And he took it he took it seriously, although it did not it didn’t phase him in any way. So, you know, to pick up the paper today, metaphorically speaking, and to see that, you know, one of the successors of my good friend Ned in fact, was murdered by one of these corrupt local officials is is kind of stunning.

So that’s that’s my personal connection to this story. Okay. Speaking of flashbacks, You and I were chatting about this right before we started. In my newsletter today, I lead off with with something that our good friend, Christian Vanderbrook, reminded me of that I had completely forgot if I ever even knew it. You remind us that back in two thousand twelve, after Mitt Romney lost a Barack Obama, Donald Trump went on this mad tear calling for a revolution in this country We should march on Washington stop this travesty Obama’s reelection.

Let’s fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice So again, and maybe it’s not breaking news that Donald Trump has this long career of election nihilism and lying. But you go back and you read this about the two thousand twelve election and it’s word for word what he has to say about the twenty twenty election. Including the calls for marching on Washington. And, of course, his facts are complete bullshit, and he makes stuff up. He has the numbers all wrong.

But again, the details don’t matter for Donald Trump because they are all pretext. He will never ever under any circumstance acknowledge legitimacy of any electoral defeat. If he runs for president again and he loses any Republican primary, Republicans guy have to have to understand this, you know. They’ve been riding this tiger. He will never acknowledge that.

And if he loses in twenty twenty four, there’s no way that he will ever regard it as as legitimate. But did you remember that he went off on this terror calling for a revolution and you know, our nation is totally divided. Let’s fight like Helen stopped this great and disgusting. And did you remember that he was doing that back in twenty twelve? I did not remember because I doubt that

I even knew it in the first place. Yes. I’m politically aware in listening to political discourse, but Unlike some untold millions of Americans, I was not watching the apprentice. I did not give a shit about Donald Trump as a Celebrity TV show host, former dealmaker. He was not in the top thousand people that I was paying attention to what he was saying.

The key. Oh, he could have been tweeting these things out, and it looks like you brought the receipts in your newsletter. You you lay out exactly what he said. Just a a complete rant to diatribe against the twenty twelve election, which as you and I recall, was not exceptionally close. And yet, he was claiming that it was a disgusting injustice.

The world is laughing at us. We need a revolution. People should march to the capital. I’m not surprised that it happened because I don’t think that the January sixth insurrection and the incitement of it We certainly saw the clues to that long before. It was not a surprise when he he had already said that he was not willing to accept the results of the election unless he won.

It doesn’t surprise me that it goes back ten years. And in fact, we may find evidence that it went back before then that he simply just says if I lose, it’s because of fraud or cheating. If I win, it’s because that’s what was supposed to happen. And that mind frame, that mindset has probably been established for a long, long time. It’s just now people are paying attention to it.

I think it goes back to arrested development.

This is a man who basically he can never lose, you can only be betrayed or cheated, and this is, you know, built built into all of this. Mhmm. So but, you know, to your point, you know, I don’t remember this. You don’t remember this. Nobody remembers this because nobody was really paying attention to Donald Trump back then.

And no one could have imagined back then that this would morph into what we’re facing today. This is one of those things where it was there, but it was this tiny spot on the horizon. We didn’t think that it was gonna be this massive hurricane aimed at all of us. So, I mean, all the clues are out there. It’s one of the reasons why, you know, one of the lessons I think I’ve learned from the last decade is even though you’re tempted to sort of dismiss some crackpot out there on the fringes.

What we’ve seen again and again is if those things are not challenged, they grow and they spread And before you know it, we’re all in the shit.

It brings a really good point there. We’re in the place now and we’ll probably end up talking, I don’t know, a little bit today about things like marl logo documents and reporting about what they are. We’re in a place now where we’re getting, like we did with the Mueller report, we’re getting law or after lawyer coming on cable news explaining the fine points of this statute or this statute and whether it actually applies and the prudential issues of charging a president. That that’s all good. We we have to do that.

But let’s go back a step. Let’s go to the bigger picture. In twenty twelve, We had a human being tweeting these things about an election that as far as I can tell, nobody anywhere near a position of power thought was in any way fraudulent or worthy of a revolution at all. We had we had this human being out there saying these things and going on what seems to be a deranged rant about it. And then, we kind of forgot about that when twenty teen came along and decided that, oh, well, this man is constitutionally suited to be commander in chief.

So, you know Yeah. We need to look at the details of the the legal picture and all of that. But let’s go back to that first fundamental assessment of character. Is somebody is somebody able to be president of the United States or frankly any elected office from the school board up to the commander in chief, do they have the core ethics and principles? Whether you agree with their policies or not?

I may disagree violently with people over marginal tax rates or certain social policies. But do they have the fundamental character and temperament to hold public office. And it’s evident from this tweet stream in twenty twelve that he did not, and yet that was all just brushed aside in twenty sixteen. And we seem to lose sight of that, that we have the ability to judge someone unfit to be even considered for public office and we need to, you know, treat them as worthy of the scorn that they bring upon themselves for men’s like us. Yeah.

Well, I mean, some of us tried and we know how that all turned out. So now we fast forward to the day. And let’s talk about these with what’s going on with the with the Marlago documents. We we had the Okay, I I talked about this yesterday. I find it fascinating that Bill Barr, the former attorney general, who was one of the most zealous and I would say disingenuous defenders of of Donald Trump who was responsible for I think distorting and and frankly lying about the the Mueller report.

I mean, this guy really was prepared to torch his entire legacy and and reputation. And yet since then, has decided that that in fact, there were red lines. He he was not willing to to cross. He wasn’t willing to go along with a big lie about the election. And then we have this Trump appointed federal judge, Aileen Cannon, who issued the decision the other day that appointed a special master, and I think more importantly, we’ll get into this, block the Department of Justice from continuing to investigate any of the documents including the the most most most secret documents that they recovered from Muralaga.

And here is Bill Barr. Talking about that decision. I wanna get your reaction to this. Let’s let’s play that opinion.

I think was wrong, and I think the government should appeal it. It’s deeply flawed in a number of ways. I don’t think the appointment of a special master is gonna hold up, but even if it does, I don’t it fundamentally changing the trajectory. In other words, I don’t think it changes the ballgame so much as maybe we’ll have a rain rain delay for a couple of innings. But I think that the fundamental dynamics of the case are said, which is the government has very strong evidence of what it really needs to determine whether charges appropriate, which is government documents were taken, classified information was taken and not handled appropriately.

And they are looking into, and there’s some evidence to suggest that they were deceived. And and none of that really relates to the content of documents. It relates to what the fact that there were documents there. And the fact that they were classified and the fact that they were subpoenaed and never delivered, but they don’t have to show the content you know, the specific advice given in a memo, for example, in order to prevail in this case. Okay.

So David, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

Because there’s Bill Barr who is that he’s he’s he’s making sense and he’s being very aggressive, I think. And not only challenging the ruling, but suggesting the DOJ has a pretty solid case there.

Yeah. He’s reading it correctly here and he’s in line with ninety nine percent of of analysts who look at this case, and it proves that Bilbar can read and think, which we all suspected he could, but was questionable with the what he did with the Mueller investigation. In this case, as I mean, we we have a difference, right, is here we have the redacted affidavit. We have the information that has come out about it. It’s it’s a much more limited set of circumstances than the Mueller investigation.

So it is harder to spin. The facts are much easier to digest than the Mueller report was. But that’s not to excuse Bill Barr. What he did at that case was unconscionable and unworthy of of an attorney general and he should have been forced to resign at a minimum at that point. In this case, he’s just right.

He’s he’s looking at it and saying there is no rational justification for what this judge is doing. Now, doesn’t matter? No. Bill Barr did not stand with the president after January sixth, and I have a feeling that his words mean nothing to the former president and the people, you know, around him. And frankly, it’s interesting to us.

I also chuckled when I when I saw that, but I don’t think we wanna pay too much attention to it because it’s not as if he has fully come around and repented for what he did during the administration. So the fact that he’s right kind of falls for me and that metaphor of a broken clock. Right? It’s still gonna be right twice a day, and this is just one of those times when Bill Barr has to call it that way.

Yeah. I’m not looking to rehabilitate Bill Barr.

Let me

just point out that how extreme the story is about the dogs. So let’s go back to the let’s go back to the, you know, the the the underlying story here. And and this this question feels foolish because I know what the answer is and I don’t generally like to ask, you know, just the the most predictable question. But but David, priests, you have been you’ve dealt with sensitive information. You are familiar with the world of intelligence.

If you had documents like this in your bedroom at home, what would happen to you?

Wow. You know, it’s interesting. I’ve I’ve been having this debate with with several people who’ve dealt with legal cases involving people who had government documents in their home and not all of them are prosecuted. Sometimes there are just administrative sanctions if it’s a current employee Sometimes there’s the threat of indictment or other criminal activity, but it doesn’t happen. But that’s often when there’s something like one inadvertent document and sometimes something that isn’t even classified that is being taken outside of government spaces.

We’re not talking about that.

We are

talking about something that is much larger than anything that has ever happened in a case like this. The only comparisons are something like an inward snowden case. Right, where somebody takes a bunch of material and scorns with it. There are some important differences there. But there’s also some important similarities just in terms of the mass amount of materials that are taken and the damage that they could do.

This we’re talking hundreds and hundreds of pages of classified material in various, it appears various different compartments. That could sacrifice untold amounts of intelligence collection and expose sources and methods. If I were to have one one hundredth of this material in my house. In the first place, they would definitely come, take it and almost certainly pursue some kind of penalty against me. If they said, we suspect you have something and I turned it over and then they found I had something else, then I think the gloves would be off.

I think the deference being shown to the former president is admirable up to a point in order not to antagonize to give him every benefit of the doubt to try to come forward and give up these materials. But at a certain point, you have to think, would anybody other than the former president be treated this way and given this much time to produce eighteen months Charlie, some of these materials were in a country club in Florida that is unsecure. Eighteen months of some of the most sensitive secrets the US government has this is not something that that would be afforded to anybody else. So the report yesterday in the

Washington Post that some of the documents included information about the nuclear capabilities of another country. We don’t know whether it’s a it’s a friend or a foe, what do you make of that? And and is that in a different category than all the other top secret documents we’re talking about.

Yeah. I read that report very carefully, and the first two paragraphs are really key. And the first paragraph they refer to a document that detailed a foreign government’s defense planning, including nuclear capabilities, with no further details. Presumably, that means a country that has nuclear capabilities, although it’s possible that they’re talking about a country with nascent capabilities, that is a program, but it’s still a very limited set of countries that they’re talking about. That piece alone is disturbing because Unlike a report that says the former president has classified information, that could refer to a hundred and ninety seven different countries around the world and various transnational groups and individuals.

But now you’ve limited the set of countries to very few that now know that something was exposed for eighteen months at Maruhlago. If you’re that country and we don’t know which one it is, but if you’re any of those countries, This is a chance to review your security procedures, to take extra measures, to change your codes, to do all the things you might do if you expect that some of your security around your nuclear capabilities has been compromised. So there’s a high likelihood that intelligence collection on whatever country this is is is going to face some challenges because of that one single issue. Now, The second paragraph does something different. And they the the authors of the piece write it up slightly differently.

They say that also within the c’s documents or among the c’s documents are some very highly compartmented things things that only a few people get to see and only people like the president and a few cabinet areas can authorize others to read. It’s not clear that that also governs that nuclear report. These could be two separate things they’re talking about, but that part is just as disturbing because some of these SAPs, the controlled access programs there. These sometimes have just a few people who are allowed to see the material because it is so sensitive, it was so hard to collect the damage to US national security if exposed is so grave. That disturbs me.

Because I know the great efforts it takes over many years and sometimes at great personal risk for both collectors and the spies we recruit. To get that information, If some of that was exposed to somebody during eighteen months at Mar a Lago, there’s a whole lot of time and effort that went into getting that information that is now foreclosed because they will have no choice, but to give up that intelligence collection method at this point.

So there’s been a lot of, I would say, slightly unhinged speculation about why Trump has those documents. You even had Fox News host of all people suggesting that he might have wanted to sell them. His former attorney, Michael Cohen, I believe, was on one of the cable shows yesterday suggesting that he was keeping them in order to blackmail the government to essentially or the the the federal government, you know, if you do x to me, I am prepared to do y. I think that is again, you know, complete speculation, but it’s still leaves the question hanging, why do you think he had all those documents? What was this about?

Yeah. I’ve been thinking a lot about this Charlie and

I’ve been asked a lot about it lately and I’ll give you one caveat and then I I will do some light speculation. So the caveat is trying to get inside Donald j Trump’s head space is is challenging and — Oh, it’s a dangerous endeavor. — risky. So there’s that. With that caveat, let let me lay out a theory for you and I wanna I wanna hear what you think of it.

Mhmm. So it is possible. I cannot rule out that he kept these materials for the purposes of of blackmail, either of the US government or of other governments. I can’t rule out that he had this material because he wanted to sell it and make money off of the presidency. It’s it’s possible that these things happened.

We don’t have enough evidence to rule them out. However, I go to the simplest explanation, which is based on what we already do know about Donald Trump and his personality. We have evidence going back decades of his shall we say fondness of collecting things set about himself. He wants to keep reports of what is written about him. He would have people literally clipping newspapers for articles about him.

He would you know, fetishize magazine covers that featured him and even manufacture them. He wanted to collect stuff about him and around him. So what is more likely that he was playing some version of eight-dimensional chess and getting documents that in some future scenario he could use to blackmail someone if something happened or that he there was just some cool stuff that either mentioned him or had to do with some meeting he had that he thought was great, and he just kinda threw it in a drawer because he collects that kind of stuff. I I gotta go with the latter as the first explanation until proven otherwise because a narcissistic personality who is known to collect material about himself or about things that he thinks he’s done. That is a very simple, elegant explanation for why he just habitually as he’s done for decades, gathered a bunch of stuff that was about him and kept it because that’s what he’s always done.

Yeah.

There are other reports suggesting that he was keeping documents that that he thought would show that there was a deep state plot against him that he wanted to keep certain quote unquote, Russia gate documents that or other pieces of information that he thought that he could use to defend himself against you know, whatever or or to spin. That also seems to be consistent with the sort of the narcissistic, you know, paranoia that you see from him. That if he thought he had a document that he could use for leverage or to look, this is a president. I think it’s safe to say who will never write his memoirs. This is not going to happen.

So I’m not sure how he would use it, but considering that he’s probably been plotting a return to the the presidency, you know, since, you know, before January sixth. Obviously, he was keeping documents that perhaps he thought that he could weaponize in some way, politically, legally, historically. I don’t know. He doesn’t think historically, so let’s leave that off. Yeah.

I I can’t

rule anything out. I have to go back to my intelligence analyst training at this point and say, we don’t know. We don’t have enough information to know what the purpose was. But you know what? That’s why we want a robust and full Department of Justice investigation into this.

To figure out what happened, what do we know from interviews of people around, what do we know from any other clues we have what was he going to do with these or even worse what had he already done with these other than keep them in a desk drawer, keep them in a carton, in a closet. But unfortunately, we have an investigation that has been stalled. And these are very important questions. We’re not talking about some material that perhaps was over classified or material that should not have been classified in the first place. We can have a conversation nationally about that later.

The classification scheme we have probably is broken in some fundamental ways. But when you’re talking about the kinds of documents that are being reported, secrets about another country’s nuclear capabilities. Nobody doubts that the United States, number one, should be collecting on that, and number two, that that should be tightly protected. If that’s what we’re talking about, then you know what, we don’t have any issue about whether this was properly classified and whether I had the right to keep it. That’s an open and shut case.

This is something the former president should not have. No other former president ever tried to keep tons of government documents after the Presidential Records Act came into effect. There’s a system for processing this during the transition. They work to make sure that all of the government papers, the presidential papers, are taken away by the archivists. And something got in the way of that We need this investigation now to figure that out before something that happened during these last eighteen months continues to cascade.

So as we’re discussing this, there is a new news hour merit poll that finds that sixty one percent of Republicans say they want Trump to run for president in twenty twenty four even if he is charged with a crime. Now, I talked about this before in this podcast because I was asked the question. So, well, if Donald Trump was indicted, you know, would he still be able to run? Would he still win nomination. Would Republicans still nominate, you know, someone who has been charged with a felony?

And my answer was, yes, they will. And here’s a poll showing nearly two thirds of Republicans say, yeah, it doesn’t bother us. If he is running for president, while he is under federal indictment.

There’s your new political normal. The only head twisting rationalization I can I can put on that is that the assumption among many of those people responding to the poll is that it would be an unjust investigation and an unjust indictment because it is simply irrational for somebody to say, if it actually is a reasonable indictment reasonable investigation leading to a reasonable indictment that this person should be considered —

Yeah. —

to be president of the United States. It’s it’s it’s patently ridiculous. Yeah. This is why

it’s so important for Trump to delegitimize any critic. I mean, delegitimize the media, delegitimize the FBI, delegitimize the, you know, the Mueller investigation and the Department of Justice, and they’ve been very, very effective doing that. I also just wonder I mean, it’s a, you know, just a question, you know, since there is always, you know, pulling in conventional wisdom out there. Is is there a distinction possibly between what people will tell a poster because right now it’s like rallying around the guy. Yeah.

Absolutely. I’m not abandoning Trump and all those bastards. I’m not gonna versus what would actually be the political environment if he faced these criminal charges. I mean, I wonder whether there’s a little bit of you know, bravado among the people being pulled here just saying, yeah, it doesn’t matter what you say or do about him. I’m with him.

But there’s a voice in my head saying, you know, indictments are a VFD and they would matter. But maybe we’ve already passed this tipping point. Mean, it’s very possible, isn’t it? You know, we keep saying

what is the tipping point? Maybe we already are. Maybe we are. The closest the closest data we have to it is the twenty twenty election. Right?

When we didn’t have an indictment, but we did have plenty of information out there from the Mueller report, from the Ukraine, scheme and then from the unwillingness to say that he would accept the results results of the election. There was plenty of evidence of the president acting in ways that were dramatically different than than his predecessors. And you had the polling and the voting pretty much showing the same thing. That is voters saying that they would support Trump, and then they did go out and vote for Trump. So you didn’t have a big divergence in the polling.

So the the question you’re asking is whether knowing all of that, knowing all the issues of character, knowing all the previous scandals, people were still willing to both say they would vote for him and then follow through and do it in in largely the same numbers. Your question is, would an actual indictment change that?

Yeah. The poll

suggests, I think, somewhat yes because if you said what? Sixty three percent? Is that the number you cited? I think sixty one. So sixty one percent well, that’s sixty one percent.

That’s not seventy one, eighty one, ninety one percent. So maybe it is reflecting that there already is some slippage. But of course, sixty one percent of people saying, yes, that’s perfectly fine with us. Even if that holds, that’s disturbing. I I don’t know a way of disaggregating it, but I suspect you’re right.

I suspect that there would be some additional slippage if there were an actual indictment. Certainly, if there were a a conviction by the time an election came up. Yeah. But you know what? I have learned over the last few years that there really is no bottom for a vast swath of the US population And it’s sad, I don’t want to admit that, but there are going to be some people who would be even more motivated to vote if he is indicted.

There would be people who are even more motivated

to

to vote if he were convicted. And I don’t know what that percentage is. I think it’s dramatically less than sixty one percent, but I can’t be confident saying that it is down around twenty or thirty. It might actually be more than that But you make an interesting point here. And I I think that it’s sort of easy to catastrophize

the number, which is which is embarrassing. It’s beyond troubling. The sixty one percent of Republicans would think he should run for president despite the indictment. But as you point out, sixty one percent is not ninety one percent and we’ve talked been talking a lot about that three percent of swing voters who are not hardcore maga, write them off, but there are people who might have gone along with him voted for him for a variety of different reasons. And if if you peel off, you know, ten percent of Republican voters, that’s devastating in a closely divided country.

That’s right. When you are looking at the possibility of nearly forty percent Republicans are going, yeah, the indictment thing is not that good. We’re not that into that. That’s also a big number. And it’s worth keeping this in mind.

Okay. So me talk about it. You just bounce another hot take I saw in one of the national news magazines saying that, you know, all of these headlines coming out of Mar a Lago were good for Donald Trump because it is pushing the January sixth investigation off the front pages, so all of the attention to that, you know, has now been erased. Which struck me as as a real, what is the disease of, you know, pranditus, you know, like, overthinking things. Yep.

Because I I think that you also get this cumulative effect because you know the January sixth of is coming back. I don’t see it though. I actually thought that Carl Roeve had an interesting point when he said, you know, this is just not good for Republicans because the longer we talk about Mar a Lago, the less likely they are to be able to get their message out on the issues that frankly favor them in the midterm election. So I think there’s a lot of hot take punditry out there — Mhmm. — that assumes that we know a lot of stuff that we don’t know.

Yeah. I think your

station yesterday with Mike Murphy really brought this out — Not talking about that. — anytime that you have candidates out on the trail who are are talking to potential voters who aren’t hearing in the news primarily about, you know, inflation or about border issues, whatever it is that the Republican candidate wants to talk about, then it it does favor the democrats, the the opponents to those republican candidates. And listen, it’s not as if in the last month. That there would have been a steady stream of January sixth, the news. The January sixth committee is not holding hearings now.

They had their burst of activity and they’re going to resume again soon with some additional information. But the last month has been a relatively quiet period anyway. So Anyway, it’s an odd little bit I don’t wanna say disingenuous. I just think maybe it’s just undercooked analysis thinking that this is somehow bad because it’s distracting from the narrative of the January sixth committee. Guess what?

The the narrative of the January sixth committee is disrupted about twenty four hours after their most recent hearing because the attention moves elsewhere anyway. So this in no way I think is this positive for the former president, especially, you know, thinking about the presidential run because it it is putting back on to people’s radar the fact that this is controversial, the fact that this is drama, the kind of thing that got Joe Biden elected, was not for action for Joe Biden. The thing that got Joe Biden elected was America can’t can’t keep this up. This this level of negative drama in this spiral that we’re in. We need to get out of it.

And guess what? This is bringing all of that up again. And then the January sixth committee will kick in again later this year, and that will come back too. It’s like a tag team.

Yeah. So, you know, one one last one last comment about the midterms, and we’ve talked about this before. I don’t think there’s any way to overstate the potential impact of the Dobbs decision. But here’s a a follow on effect of of the Dobbs decision, which is really quite remarkable that senate negotiators right now are pushing award a a vote to codify same sex marriage later this week. There’s a group of senators led by Tammy Baldwin from from Wisconsin, Susan Collins.

Scrambling to get ten Republicans to support this measure. And this is clearly a reaction to the court’s willingness to overturn fifty year precedent with of of Roe versus Wade and Clarence Thomas suggesting that you know, if we apply this logic, we would also overturn the gay marriage ruling. So this could actually happen in a bipartisan way, which, you know, we get sort of get numbed about how dysfunctional everything is. But that would be pretty ordinary, wouldn’t it? If if you actually had a filibuster proof majority, but it codified same sex marriage because neither party now can really be that confident that they know what the supreme court will do or its adherence to precedence.

And I think we are close to that filibuster proof majority based on the tea leaves I’ve seen because you’ve got people talking to their own constituents. You’ve got people talking to at least hundreds of thousands depending on their state and maybe millions of people who now are in a position where if something were to change. It would change their marital status. And that’s something that senators see differently than something that’s theoretical or potential. They have people coming to campaign events who are telling them, I I am married now.

I have the full protection under the law of the state for that marriage. And that is at risk and that is now my number one voting issue. That speaks to some of these senators. I think you mentioned Susan Collins wouldn’t surprise me if Rob Portman and others like that are are in this category of people who realize not only is it the right thing to do, which I I think is is still undervalued in politics these days, but it actually is the rational thing to do for a candidate who who’s in the right political environment. So I am positive on this.

I actually think that there will be agreement to do this, that enough Republican senators will join the the Democratic senators to codify this in law. And that will not by itself change the dynamics for every race in the fall, but it does show that, yes, people people can come together on certain issues like this, which is something that Biden has honestly surprised a lot of people with what he’s been able to do to get enough votes on enough measures, some with Republican support, to get things passed. And this would be quite a step towards doing even more of that before the midterms and, of course, before the next presidential election.

Well, it would. And, you know, speaking of, you know, Tammy Baldwin, who is senator from Wisconsin, the senior senator from my state, Ron Johnson has executed a complete flip flop on the issue early on. He was saying he saw no reason why he would simply, you know, not go to to to to codify something that is right now the law of the land. In fact, that’s a very, very easy boat when you think about it. However, he got pressure from the right, you know, social conservatives on the right here in Wisconsin and has now flipped flop.

Suggesting that he’s not gonna vote in favor of everybody. He’s working with Mike Lee on a religious liberty amendment, which may or may not be a good idea. But But my colleague, Tim Miller makes an interesting point. Usually, when you have flip flops, you have candidates flipping toward the more popular position rather than away from the popular position — Yes. — to the toxic position.

Yeah. So here again is twenty twenty two where you have Republicans who feel that they have no wiggle room that they have to take, you know, really toxic positions on very divisive social issues right before the election. It’s odd to me because

that that’s what you normally see before the primaries. Right? And Yeah.

You’re not in the primaries anymore. We’re not in primaries anymore.

Right. So the the that poll to the extreme to to get the the bulk of that primary vote and then the the reach turn to the center, the regression to the mean there. It’s it’s not happening and I can’t explain it. You you could say that It’s actually true belief, but I don’t believe that in most cases. I feel like they’re getting messages, and I don’t know what Ron Johnson’s supporters such as they are.

Are still saying to him, but they may be hearing when they’re out and around that people just won’t show up to vote unless they’re energized and he needs to take this strong stand or he loses the turnout in the places that he absolutely has to have turnout to to make up for the losses he’s gaining in, you know, one counties and everywhere else. I I don’t know that, but that seems to me likely.

Well, I I think what happened is you had the loudest voices, you know, who were basically saying you you can’t move on this but but this is a classic example of where if if Johnson would have said, yeah, I’m going to vote for this. Because it is the law of the land and people should rely on the law. They would have been griping, but he would have lost zero votes. Zero votes. He would have pulled it off because there’s no way that social conservatives are not gonna vote for him anyway.

And in fact, he might have softened his image with those suburban voters who right now are thinking he’s too extreme, too crazy, too embarrassing. He is at risk in the wild counties because of the Dobbs’ decision, this would have been a hey, wait. Let’s give, you know, Ron Johnson a, you know, a a second look you know,

let me play the opposite card early. I’m gonna I’m gonna make exactly the opposite argument, which is if he would have said yes I I am in defense of this bill, and I think this is something I have to stand behind. I don’t think there would have been that many people saying, you know what? After everything we’ve been seeing and reading and hearing about Ron Johnson in the last few months and last few years, I’m gonna vote for him simply because of that over somebody that could probably be better. And yet, I think he would lose some hardcore I hate even to say social conservatives because I think it’s beyond that now, but I think he would he would lose some cultists who would say, you know what?

If you’re not with me a hundred percent, then you’re against me. And I’m just not going to show up. And guess what? He can’t win this election unless he has really high turnout among that group. So I see it the opposite way that he made a calculation that In fact, he was better off doing this because he absolutely has to have those votes.

Yeah.

Well, that was a calculation he made. Okay. So one last note, I I said that was the last note, but I continue to be absolutely fascinated by what’s happening in Ukraine and UK intelligence, you know, reporting just a little while ago, Ukrainian forces continue to launch offensive operations in the Qursan region. And the defense ministry, the British defense ministry said Ukraine’s systematic precision targeting of vulnerable crossing points is likely slowing Russia’s ability to deploy troops and resupply from the east. So there were a lot of people who were a little skeptical that they could, you know, mount this kind of offensive, you know, they have car keys now, Kershun, so you have two local operations.

And apparently, you know, some showing some success. So Again, this war is, you know, kind of seems to be bogged down in a little bit of a stalemate, but it does seem, and I always try to separate out the the wish asking that they that the Ukrainians have a little bit of momentum.

What do you think? Yeah. Two things to keep in mind. First of all, the proverbial fog of war Yeah. — is we’re getting remarkable disclosures from the Ukrainians, but they have an interest in telling the story one way.

We’re getting nothing reliable from the Russians. The UK has been leaning forward on trying to make its assessments public, but we don’t know the sources of of their information. So let’s take all of this with with some grain of salt just because you don’t know what’s actually going on. There does appear to be progress, but this war is a slog. This is not a move like the invasion of Iraq where it was swift and it was decisive let’s not talk about the aftermath, but the actual movement in was quick.

That’s what I think is in the at least the American mentality now for what a warriors. A warriors quick, decisive, combined operations that take out all the things the Russians didn’t do, frankly. And what that’s led to is a huge amount of territory here that is just bogged down and the movements we’re talking about are not hundreds and thousands of square miles of territory moving each week with progress. I mean, we’re talking very small amounts of land in progress. So yes, the trend is a positive one.

All of the military analysts I keep in touch with are saying the signs they’re getting are that yes, this the the Ukrainians are pushing back and having some successes, but we should not be overoptimistic that in the coming days or even weeks maybe even months that we’re gonna see some dramatic turn in the war. It’s a shift in momentum It is not necessarily a path to a quick end to this. David Priest, thank you so much for your time and

for coming back on the podcast. We always appreciate it. Always a pleasure. The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio production by Jonathan Seary. I’m Charlie Sykes.

Thank you for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. We’ll be back tomorrow. Do this all over again.

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