Trump vs Law and Order

How much legal trouble is Donald j Trump really enter? The walls closing in or are we about to find out that some people are in fact above the law? Welcome to the Bulwark cast. I’m Charlie Sykes. This is the third installment of our new companion podcast, the Trump trial that we will be feeding sharing every Thursday.

Look, we know the headlines, the federal and state prosecutors who may or may not be closing in on the former president, the civil suits, the discovery, the indictment. But today, we felt we needed to do something a little bit different. So in addition to my regular co host, Ben Wittis, We have an emergency cameo appearance by my colleague, Tim Miller, because we have to talk about the incredible shit show that America saw on CNN last night. So first of all, Ben, good morning, Tim. Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning, gentlemen. I’m gonna I have to put on my dog hair shirt today since last Friday I came on and was, you know, a little bit I just wanted to wait and see. I was hopeful that it wouldn’t be as much of a shit show as it was and I should have listened to your ism, Charlie Sykes. Because God, that was worse than, you know, even our our worst nightmares.

Yeah. I mean, you know, who could have possibly guessed? You know, they’re giving me indicted twice and peach coup plotting chronically lying sexual predator, an unedited hour and a half on live television that things might go badly. I don’t know. The the fact is it went worse than I thought.

And I I wanna make it clear. I am not blaming Caitlin Collins for this. I thought she did a, you know, as good a job as you could do. But this format this is the format from hell. This was set up to fail, and Trump just rolled over her.

You had the infected, the jobs, the Bulwark, the I mean, there were facts checkers. But, I mean, they’re they’re just they’re just left in the dust here. I love, you know, CNN anchor, you know, Jake Tapper says, he declared war on the truth And I’m not sure that he didn’t win. I mean, let me just run through some of the highlights of this before we get to any of the audio. Trump called the Bulwark law enforcement officer Fug.

He repeats baseless conspiracy theories about twenty twenty. He lies over and over again about the twenty twenty election. He lied about his call to terminate the constitution so he could be returned to power. He lied about his role on January sixth. I’m, like, only halfway through this list here.

He suggested he would pardon many of the January six insurrectionists. He insisted again that Mike Pence should have overturned the election He endorsed letting the country default on its debt even if it would bring on a cataclysm. He claimed the residents Chinatown in Washington DC didn’t speak English, and this is part of, you know, talking about some weird conspiracy theory about Joe Biden.

Would be news to the wizards and capitals players who play in Chinatown.

And all the people who live in the high rise apartment fancy condos there. I mean, that’s gotta be the least Chinese populated Chinatown in the country.

Do you would think so? Okay. He refused to back Ukraine against Russia refused to call Vladimir Putin a war criminal. Lashed out at Caitlin Collins as a nasty woman, and and the audience cheered that when he said that. And guys, this is not the worst stuff that happened.

This is not even close to the worst stuff that happened. This interview took place the day after a jury found that Donald Trump had actually abused, injured, defamed, maliciously lied about e, Gene Carroll, and Trump turns the whole thing into a joke. Insulting the victim and this crowd loved it. Let’s play the Bergdorf cut. I wanted you to listen to this.

And particularly look, Trump is same old same old. This is the moment. I in my newsletter I titled, you know, the moment that you knew. This is the moment you knew where we are, this moment in our culture, in our politics, listen to the crowd. Okay.

Let’s play

never met this woman. I never saw this woman. This woman said, I met her at the front door of Bergdorf Goodman, which I rarely go into other and for a couple of Charlie Sykes. I met her in the front door. She was about sixty years old then.

This is like twenty two, twenty three years ago. I met her in the front door of Bergdorf Goodman. I was immediately attracted to her. She was immediately attracted to me. And we had this chemistry.

We’re walking into a proud

of the partnership.

We had this great chemistry. And a few minutes later, we end up in a a room, a dressing room, a burgess Goodman, right near the cash register. And then she found out there are locks in the door. She said, I found one that was open. She found one.

She learned this at trial. She fell when it was open. What kind of a woman? Meet somebody. And brings them up and within minutes, you’re playing hanky pink.

In a dressing room. Okay? I don’t know if you she was married then or not. John Johnson. I feel sorry for you, John Johnson.

Just a president, can I?

No. But

think of it.

Take your time.

I know or recounting what she said.

Alright, Tim. You wanna you wanna take this one for the moment?

Well, the mister president thing really bothered me, that’s my one criticism of Caitlin Collins. I guess you feel like you have to do that, but you have to call in mister and she called in mister president a thousand times. And, like, after this he’s been twice impeached after this just despicable stand up comedy act from Reno about the sexual assault that he committed. We really need to give him honorifics anyway. The crowd is really it.

Trump has revealed over the last seven years, eight years, just how, you know, debased not only our political culture, but our culture is. And the idea that CNN would decide to allow them to stack this crowd with, apparently, the types of people that you go on tour for MAGorales or have their wedding reception at Mar a Lago. Just was an unbelievably moronic decision and set that up for. I think what you said to me in Slack last night, Charlie Sykes that this was unspeakably ghastly That was the unspeakably gasoline part. We knew what we were gonna get from Trump.

We hoped that, you know, Caitlin could do the best she could, and I think she did. I think we saw in with John swan, like there are times, there are occasions where you can get Trump going in a way that you give him enough rope to hang himself, and and you could imagine a situation where that is maybe a worthwhile endeavor. But to do it in front of a studio audience of fanboys, laughing at his most cruel comments, you know, laughing not only at the sexual assault comments, but laughing at, you know, when he’s calling the Black Capital East Office or a thug, you know, laughing during his January sixth stick, laughing during his insurrection stick. And that was the part that was the worst. And the one thing that I think I’m the only one that noticed just to give a context for how bad this crowd was, sitting in the crowd was a former colleague of mine, Chris Applegate, who’s a fundraiser, who’s a Republican fundraiser, saw him And then at the end, you see Trump say, good to see you woody, good to see woody, and imitate a football throw, which I think very clearly narrows it down the fact that his former head fundraiser, Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets was there.

So you stack this audience with paid Donald Trump supporters you know, who cheer his most grotesque arguments. I think there’s a lot to get into on the substance, but to me that was you know, the original sin of holding this event and that was what made this just so awful like worse than than anything we’ve seen really in years in

this count. So Ben, Ben, what do you think of this?

I think there’s another aspect of it too. I agree with that. But I also think you know, Trump is a two year old emotionally and you don’t give unstructured time to two year olds with cameras on, you know, it’s not gonna end well. And there’s just something about okay, if this were a highly responsible person. Let’s say it was Charlie Sykes.

You say, okay, we’re gonna give him an hour with an audience, and if he makes stake will correct it. But that doesn’t work with Trump because you’re just operating in a stream of lies environment, and also a stream of bullshit environment. And so you end up with this situation where you either have to have a shouting match with him. No. That’s true.

Not true. Yes. It is. And then you’re kind of dragged down or you kinda let him get away with it, and when you have that crowd, you’re gonna lose the shouting match. And you’re gonna get exhausted and let him get away with it.

And that was predictable. It was also predicted by you know, lots and lots of people. And so I I do think, you know, the original sin is letting the audience in, but it’s also just forgetting even for a moment that this is not a normal candidacy. This is not a normal person, and you can’t treat it like one.

You can’t. I’m gonna go to this excuse that well, you know, this is news and CNN has to cover him because he is the front running candidate. I get that. I get that they need to cover him. I get that he is news.

But what you saw last night was not journalism. I said this several times, you know, Jonathan Swan is journalism. This was entertainment programming. This was reality TV and what a surprise that he owned the format.

Yeah. He was alpha in the format. Right? And this is the same mistake that over and over again establishment republicans and establishment media made in twenty sixteen was thinking that they could put Donald Trump in a situation where, you know, he would act in such a way that would repulse them, and that that would repulse the broader electorate. Right?

Like that is the thinking. Right? The the you know, about the the giving of enough rope to hang himself strategy. That’s not how as we will see with that audience, the Donald Trump voter is processing this. Like, they are processing this as him, you know, again being this whatever victim who’s the one man that can fight back against this nasty woman, you know, against the all these mean questions and that he is the one that’s fighting.

They put him in this fighting stance, not into a defensive crouch. You know, that was the thing about the Swan interviews. Swann was on the offensive. Trump was cowering. Trump was on the defense of trying to defend himself.

This placed him as an alpha, calling him mister president over and over again, letting him set the narrative about the twenty twenty election again, you know, for this crowd. If you put yourself in the head of a MAGA supporter, I don’t know how you look at this and say, why would we go with anybody else? Like, everyone’s going against him and they stole it from him, and he’s making the case that he’s the only one that can do it. And say what you want about Trump. He might be demented.

You know, he he died down of ours all his marbles, but his performance skills are still really good. And it might not land for you this listener of a board podcasts. But for those listeners, it does. He has a good performance skill. And I I saw John Fabra tweet last night, and I agreed with this that Donald Trump talking about defaulting on the debt, not defending Ukraine, making fun of his victim for having a cat named vagina.

Like, this stuff is not gonna work for all the people that voted against him last time and voted against democrats in the midterm. Agree. But we got a lot of elections between now and then in this primary, and it does work for those folks.

Hey, folks. This is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast. We created the Bulwark to provide a platform. For pro democracy voices on the center right and the center left, for people who are tired of tribalism and who value truth and vigorous yet civil debate about politics and a lot more. And every day, we remind you folks.

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On the mocking of of Jean Carroll, Cara Swisher had a great Twitter thread. I don’t know if you guys happen to see it know how she would have handled it you know, and she said, look, she understands, you know, Trump won the audience is gonna no jar anybody, and it it’s easy to let it get to you, but it’s also an opportunity. To, you know, maybe, you know, win some people over. So anyway, she writes. When the crowd started snickering, laughing about Eugene Carroll, for example, I would have stopped the interview cold told Trump politely to sit still for a second, walked over to a man and a woman in the crowd who were laughing and said, do you have a daughter?

I do. She’s just three. Then in the kindest tone possible, ask them if they said they did have a daughter or a sister or a wife, ask them, if they thought that a man forcibly touching a woman genitals was actually funny, because I couldn’t imagine that they would think it’s funny since they, you know, that don’t look cruel. In any case, I would have interacted with the crowd a lot more as most tend to fold when you pull individuals away from the mob. It’s kind of interesting.

I mean, I am sympathetic with Caitlyn Collins, who was thrown into the deep end by her bosses under these circumstances. But there were moments to push back on a number of things, you mentioned some of the the highlights, lowlights of all of this. Here is the former president of the United States referring to Capital police officer, a cop, an African American law enforcement officer as a thug. This is the Ashley Bab story. Let’s play that.

And a person named Ashley Babbott was killed.

Yes.

You know what? She was killed and she shouldn’t have been killed. And that thug that killed her, there was no reason to shoot her at blank range. Cold blank range, they shot her, and she was a good person. She a patriot.

There was no reason there there was no reason. And he went on television to brag about the fact that he killed her.

That officer was not bragging about the fact that

he killed her.

But what person who

was Then the so this is the leader of the party that backs the blue. This is the leader of the party of law and order.

So let’s remember what Ashley Babot was doing at the moment that she was shot. The crowd had breached the capitol. A number of law enforcement officers had been injured, and they were trying

to get into

the barred chamber of congress, and she climbed up a sort of like a window portal and was trying to climb in where members were as the sort of, you know, vanguard of the crowd. That officer told her to back off, gave her a lot of opportunities, and then fired to protect members of Congress from a mob that was trying to come into the chamber. This is not a situation where this is a extreme use of force.

Yeah. Just the other thing on Ashley Babbath thing is again, he’s playing to the QAnon crowd. Like for a long time, it was not known which officer it was that killed Ashley Babot and there was this you know, kind of buzz started in conservative media world and mega media world, really, to be more precise, you know, that it was this black officer. Michael Bird. And so, like, his race became very central to, you know, the justice for Ashley movement.

If you kind of in lieu of fun, you decide to suffer through, you know, the MAGA message boards on this. And so for Trump, you know, to call him a thug, you know, and to get a crowd reaction out of that, you know, was very much, you know, a racial I would not call it dog whistle, a foghorn, you know, for the MAGa audience that is following the stuff.

Yeah. I I don’t think that’s particularly subtle. You know, before town hall actually aired last night, officer Michael Finone had a piece up over at Rolling Stone where he wrote, you know, putting Donald Trump on stage having him answer questions like a normal candidate who didn’t get people killed in the process of trying to end the democracy that he’s attempting once again to run. Normalizes what Trump did. It sends a message that attempting a coup is just part of the process that accepting election results is a choice and that there are no consequences in the media or in politics or anywhere else for rejecting them.

And then, of course, we saw this play out. But the Ashley Babbit story in calling the cop thug is also part of this very aggressive attempt on Trump’s part to do the revisionist history. Of January sixth. And then and I don’t know whether if people have been paying attention, they know that he has been suggesting pardons for the insurrectionists on a regular basis. I know that Amanda Carpenter has covered this extensively.

But last night, on CNN live, he was asked about what will he do and this is what he said. Let’s play Pardon clip.

My question to you is will you pardon the January six rioters who were convicted of federal offenses? I

inclined to pardon many of them. I can say for every single one because a couple of them probably they got out of control that, you know, when you at Antifa what they’ve done to Portland and if you look at Antifa, look at what they’ve done to Minneapolis and so many other so many other places. Look at what they did to Seattle and BLM.

There it is.

BLM. Many people were killed.

So, Ben, Later on on this podcast, we’re gonna be talking about the oath keepers. But, you know, the way that he is sending out these signals that hang on. I will give you a get out of jail free card to anyone involved in this, you know, with the exception of maybe, you know, you know, a handful of people that, you know, who are on on video. But what do you make of this in the middle of ongoing trials and investigations into the January sixth attack?

So I’m gonna surprise you here, Charlie. I think it’s great.

Okay.

I’m actually completely serious.

I’m

sorry. I’m sorry.

I just blacked out for a second. Did you say great?

I said great.

You said great.

Okay. I’m interested to hear that pitch.

You know, one of the problems with Trump is that he’s all vibe and he sends dog whistles and there’s plausible deniability about what he’s saying, proud boys, stand by, stand back, you know, that sort of thing and they’re vague, but the people to whom they’re directed know what they mean, but then he’s never accountable for it. Here, He has said directly over and over and over again, and this was just the most recent time. He said this before, that he’s inclined to issue what amounts to a general amnesty with maybe individual exceptions for people associated with January sixth. And I think that is clarifying and valuable. Basically, he’s saying, I think this was a legitimate expression of popular rage.

And this kind of thing organized by a president is no

different from, you know, black lives

matter, protests turning into riots or Antifa stuff in various cities, and though none of those people have been pardoned I’m inclined to issue what amounts to a general amnesty here. I think that is a clarifying thing, kind of like saying I support vaulting on the debt limit or I don’t support continuing aid to Ukraine. I think anytime Trump identifies his radical deviation from general decent thought, I think it’s helpful. I think it will be good for Joe Biden to be able to say, my justice department prosecuted the January sixth defendants, Because I believe in law and order, my opponent has promised to pardon them all or almost all. I put the Proud Boys in prison for Sadesh’s conspiracy, he will let them out.

I put the oath keepers in prison for Sadesh’s conspiracy. He will set them free. I think that kind of clarity is helpful, and what Trump is basically saying is if you commit acts of violence, in support of my fascist revolution, I will take care of you, and I’d like it that he’s actually saying it rather than hiding the ball.

Okay. So, Tim, I have the same emotional reaction the last night that you have. But this is a good point, isn’t it? That there’s so much ammunition that he laid on the table, you know, calling for a default, you know, the comments about Vladimir Putin. But also this one, you know, Joe Biden can really take that mantle of lawn or take the mantle of being opposed to this and say, look, here is on record.

So what do you think about that? I mean, Again, I’m still in the rubble of of just watching this complete shit show. So, you know, I’m pulling myself up. I’m not trying to be irrationally optimistic about this at all. But there’s a lot of damage that he did to Republicans and to his general election prospects there isn’t there?

I do think so. And I think a few things can be true at once. Right? The problem with that assessment though is that you know, we only get two tries of trying to get rid of this person. And this person revealed last night as plainly as ever.

It it was just as stark a reminder as ever that we need to do everything possible to make sure that this person is never in the White House again, and that is our number one, two, and three priority as a country and as a democracy right now in order to protect ourselves. And so you know, we only get two chances to stop him. And, yeah, what he did last night, I think probably harmed himself in that second chance in a general election. There are a lot other factors. A lot can happen.

Twenty twenty Joe Biden one handling the popular vote, but man, the electoral college was a little too close for comfort. For my perspective. And so I agree with that. I think he provided a lot of ammunition for the Democrats. I liked the Joe Biden tweet last night.

Those just If you don’t want that, donate here. I think that’s a pretty clear reelection message for him a lot better than maybe some of the specifics are for him in a reelection message. So I do concur with that. But while that is happening, he was juicing up the venom and the anger and the racial animal of his own base. Right?

And to specifically name Bulwark lives matter protesters and try to compare that to January six is again such a a racist foghorn And then, again, to show you the problem with having an event like this, Caitlyn, again, she did a formidable job of trying to fact check him, but he’s just he is a fire hose of live. And this is a situation where it requires somebody to interrupt and say, actually, the antifa and Black ice miners protesters that did violence were arrested. I don’t know what you’re talking about. They haven’t been pardoned by Joe Biden. There was law and order accountability.

There is this belief in pretty mainstream Republican It’s something I’ve discovered from interviews for the book and elsewhere. Not just in the mag of circles. This lie that, like, Antifa and BLM got away with everything because there’s this reverse racism and the feds are coming down really hard on January six people in in a way they didn’t. Like, that’s just not true. People that committed violence in other protests have been arrested.

But that narrative is baked in. That narrative is baked in.

Yeah. That’s true. But I I just think having somebody like this being able to spread that false narrative without any pushback, you know, again, I think that it positions him as an alpha in the Republican primary — Okay.

—

that

it further animates the Republican base in a way that’s unhealthy. And so, yeah, I agree. It also helps Joe Biden. Okay, Ben.

I agree with Tim. Look, I’m not saying that there’s anything good about this happening. And I don’t think CNN did right here. My point is simply as to his announcement, in this setting that he would pardon these people, I think that is much healthier than a dog whistle than that

I agree.

Whereas he used to say, you know, we’ll see what happens, or I’m very upset what happened to Paul Manafort He’s a good man. Roger Stone, we’ll see what happens if he’s asked whether he’s gonna pardon him. Now he just says, yeah, I’m gonna do it. And I actually prefer that.

You know, speaking of some of the other cases, because a lot of the other cases did come up, they talked about the investigation in Georgia, which we can took a little bit later. And also, here’s a good example though of how it went last night. Caitlin Collins is trying to ask him about the document case at Mar a Lago. And this is how it went leading to one of the more striking moments of the evening. Listen to this.

I you held on to documents, when you knew the federal government was seeking them and then had given you a subpoena to return them.

Are you

ready? Are you ready? Can I talk?

Yeah. What’s answer.

Can I do mind?

I would like few to answer the question. Okay.

It’s very simple to answer.

That’s why I asked it.

It’s very simple to you’re a nasty person. I’m telling you.

Can you answer why you why you held on to the document? I was

Again, to her credit, she is trying to get an answer, but the crowd was just totally jazzed up by the fact that he called her a nasty woman.

Charlie Sykes. You are a nasty Charlie Sykes, to point that out.

This is known. This is known. This is not controversial. But I guess, you know, part of this is the mind blowing context of twenty four hours earlier, he has found to have sexually abused someone. And what is he doing?

He’s doubling down on the access Hollywood video. He’s making fun of his victim. He’s calling Caitlin Collins, a nasty woman. And the crowd is just eating it up. Okay.

Because we have limited time. And I I really gotta bounce this off you because we’re talking about the political fallout of all of this. Alright? I wanna read you something. On CNN tonight, Trump spent an hour talking about the bullet points, what he did or did not do on January six two thousand twenty one.

Whether he will pardon people who harmed police officers, how the twenty twenty election was rigged whether he supports terminating parts of the US constitution or the whole thing because the twenty twenty election was rigged, The sex abuse case he was just found guilty in, a cat named vagina, his defense of his comments about grabbing women by their genitals. The federal investigation into his stash of taxpayer owned classified documents at Mar a Lago The investigation into his efforts to reverse his twenty twenty loss to Biden in Georgia, and then concludes How does this make America great again? Is that a Republican accountability pack? Is this the bulwark? No.

No, mister Miller. Tell our folks what I just read.

It was a tweet by the never back down super pack, which is Ron DeSantis’s official Super PAC run by a bunch of former Ted Cruz staffers.

That’s from the Ron DeSantis folks.

I agree with the content. So credit we’re due. Always wanna compliment Republicans when they say the right thing. It’s pretty confusing, though, since Rhonda St. Just never talks like that.

I don’t recall Rhonda St. Just ever expressing any concerns about January six about the election denialism. In fact, he endorsed Trump’s concerns about phony election fraud. I don’t remember. The stand is ever criticized.

I I guess you made that one halfhearted criticism about the Stormy Daniels case. That’s the only time I can ever recall him commenting negatively about any of Trump’s investigations. I think that this reveals one thing, which is there’s a really good book about this called why we did it. About how basically all these assholes that work on all these campaigns all agree with us on everything in private, basically, at least when it comes to Trump, maybe not on the issues, but at least when it comes to Trump, occasionally, it just slips out. Occasionally, it leaks out their true feelings.

The second thing though, which I think is the most telling is that they don’t know how to run against this guy yet. And they’re trying everything. The same pack tried to attack Trump for being moderate on guns and she’s like, really, on the one hand, you’re gonna You’re gonna have this pack out there, attacking him over guns, attacking him over his investigations, attacking him over January sixth. And then Ron DeSantis is just gonna do his weird bobblehead thing, and and talk about Fauci and Disney. Like that doesn’t work.

Like this is a strategy by two clever consultants this works in a house race. This is exactly what you do if you have a house of representative candidate that’s horrible and can’t carry a message and can’t talk and as a bad speaker, and you have a super pack run all the ads that carries all the message for them. That works in a house race because people don’t pay close attention to house races. People pay attention to what Ron DeSantis has. You can’t have it in a pack making fun of Donald Trump’s investigations and a candidate not doing that.

People sense it, it seems phony. And if anything, it plays right into Trump’s hands, this kind of authenticity issue that Ron DeSantis has, where Trump might be a liar, but at least he’s lying and telling you what he thinks. I know that that’s contradictory, but that’s how people feel about Trump that he’s giving you his authentic feelings even if they’re not true. You got Ron DeSantis out here being a phony baloney politician and his pack kinda sounding like the Bulwark. It just isn’t gonna work.

Yeah. It’s gonna be an issue how that plays. And I don’t know whether you whether you saw that, Ben, because I thought that was order, and I have to admit that I still am confused like, you know, what is this? Is Ron DeSantis actually been listening to us, which I think is very unlikely.

As wouldn’t be surprise if there is a change at the back. Anyway, we’ll we’ll that’s just something to keep our

eye on.

Tim, we’re we’re gonna let you go because we have to dive into the other trials of Trump because there are so many. So thank you for this this emergency cameo appearance the morning after.

We’ll see you next week in New York.

We will see you in New York. Okay. So we are now joined, by the way, in addition to Ben Whitis, editor in chief at Lawfair, were joined by Roger Parloff, senior editor at Lawfair, Washington based journalist who has been covering the oathkeeper and the Proud Boys case. So welcome back. To the podcast, Roger.

Oh, thanks very much.

So tell us what is going on with the oathkeeper sentencing because I One reason why we’re doing this podcast is there’s just so much stuff going on that, you know, we can focus on what’s happening with Donald Trump and the civil case and the criminal cases, but then you also have pennumbra of, you know, the ongoing January sixth cases. So DC jury last week convicted for Proud Boys for their roles in trying to, you know, prevent the trans for a power in the election. Now federal prosecutors are also same time are asking federal judge to set an oathkeeper leader Stewart Rhodes to twenty five years in prison. So give me your sense of how that is playing out. What’s gonna happen?

Yeah. He’s going to be sentenced next Thursday, a week from Thursday. I think that’s a bit high. The government is seeking sentences on the first nine oath keepers to go to trial and be convicted. And all of those sentences, they range from ten to twenty five years.

Mhmm.

Six of them, if granted, if imposed as the government seeks would be the highest sentences anyone’s received so far. I doubt that’s going to happen. Obviously, roads is the strongest possibility. What they’re doing is they’re seeking something called the terrorism enhancement. They’ve sought that only four times in January sixth cases.

And didn’t get it any time. But this is very different. Those were cases of attacking police but they were individual cases. They weren’t conspiracies. Roads, of course, is really accused of being the leader of About twenty seven people who have been charged with respect to January sixth, with respect to conspiracy.

And twenty two of those have been convicted of something so far. So he is in a good position to receive maybe the first terrorism enhancement. So, that would bring him up. The top for seditious conspiracy is twenty years, but there’s multiple offenses so you could tack a couple together as a consecutive. I doubt that will happen.

But I

wanna keep underlining this because this is saditious conspiracy that we’re talking about. This is not just a riot. This is not just a normal act of violence. You know, the process cuters argue this is according to CNN that these defendants attempted to silence millions of Americans would place their vote for a different candidate to ignore the variety of legal and judicial mechanisms that lawfully scrutinize the electoral process leading up to and on January sixth. And to shatter the democratic system of governance enshrined in our laws and in our constitution, And when they did not get what they wanted, they acted by together attacking the very people in place at the very time when those laws were in action.

That’s I think a very same statement. So we’re talking about seditious conspiracy. We are also talking about some of the folks that Donald Trump is signaling that he might pardon Roger, you shared some excerpts though of an interview with Stuart Rhodes’s estranged wife. Who is bolstering the prosecution sentence and request. Her name is Tasha Adams.

So this is an interesting twist that the former wife of Stewert Roads. This is what she is telling the court. Let’s play that.

I think the best thing for Stewart is to be in a place where he can’t harm anyone. Or he can’t manipulate more people. Stewart will never be someone who was radicalized but he will recognize others, and he will keep doing that. He is extremely dangerous. And I don’t I don’t wish horrible things on him, but I do wish simple consequences on him that he can’t harm others and he he will not stop.

He will regroup that he’s out in the world and Ron DeSantis start again and do something like this again. I’m almost positive that he does not believe the election was even stolen. I believe he saw that as an opportunity for chaos and and a good opportunity to get people to gather around him and to use it as an excuse for violence. Because he’s not in this for the politics. He’s he’s in it for the mayhem and the violence.

Siraj, if we make of that,

Yeah. You know, Rhodes is a smart guy, but it turns out that his wife is a smart woman. And she, in these tapes, gives some very devastating insight into the man she’s been with. I think for I sent since the early nineteen nineties and knows quite well. They’re very concerning.

They have to do with the incorrigibility of the man, and, of course, there is also domestic violence allegations. So I think it’s pretty powerful stuff. There’s actually one tape that I neglected to include in the ones that I tweeted out where she talks about how manic he gets when there’s an event that’s potentially violent. And he’ll say, this is what’s gonna kick it off. And when it didn’t turn into war, he fell into a massive depression.

And then the prosecutor asked her, what did he mean by kicks it off? And she says he was always hoping for a revolution of some type. So

That’s what they teach at the Yale law school where both Stuart Roads and Roger Parloff graduated.

Oh, you know, I had forgot you were not classmates were you?

No. No. I did not. Not with a man. I understand he did his dissertation on the enemy combatant law, he was upset with the way they were being treated, but his wife thinks that was you know, maybe because he anticipated one day being an enemy combatant.

But anyway,

Jeez. Yeah. I had forgotten that little detail, Ben. Thank you for reminding me that he is a Yale law school graduate. Roger, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast.

We will talk soon.

Great. Thanks.

Alright, Ben. It has been such a busy week. I wanna get a little bit more into detail in the Eugene Carroll case, but let’s talk about the George Santos indictment. I mean, you know, he’s been kind of an ongoing joke and an ongoing scandal. You know, we have these lies about, you know, his life story Bulwark history.

But Republicans have been, you know, keeping him close. He’s trying to reinforce his manga credentials. And now thirteen counts. Thirteen counts, wire fraud money laundering, stealing public funds lying on disclosure documents.

I’m devastated, Charlie. Yeah. I’m just devastated. I mean, look, I had waited for years for somebody to come along in our political system, whom I could really believe in and I thought I found it with George Santos. Who would have thought?

Who would have thought that a guy who made up a fake animal protection agency would be pocketing campaign money and using it for car payments. Who would have thought that a guy who made up a volleyball team that he was a star on and a university that he attended would also be engaged in illegal wire transfers of cash, and who would have thought that a man who made up his entire resume would, you know, lie to congress on his financial disclosure forms and lie to the unemployment office to get benefits he wasn’t entitled to. I I mean, I’m just shocked by the facts alleged in this indictment. It’s so unlike the man I thought we had all gotten to know as a society.

There’s so much disillusionment in our lives these days. So you you mentioned the unemployment thing. I mean, that’s one of those little details here.

I love that charge.

The applied, and he received more than twenty four thousand dollars in pandemic unemployment benefits when he was employed, he had a job. And as one Capitol Hill reporter, Jamie Duppreach, tweeted, I cannot make this up. And it gets even better because the house is slated to vote on a bill this week to help states recover fraudulent COVID unemployment benefits, and George Santos, of course, is a cosponsor of that bill. Of course.

Of course, I think we need to emphasize that when, you know, the Freedom caucus and George Santos talk about, waste, fraud, and abuse. They speak from experience. This is a waste, it’s fraud, and it was hits and abuse. So, you know, let’s listen to them when they talk about budget austerity.

Okay. So let’s talk about the big case of the week, the Eugene Carol verdict. We had talked about this last week, and you had just explained how you thought that her testimony was credible. Obviously, this case turned on whether or not the jury believed her. But let’s talk about the tapes that they played as well in including the access Hollywood video and his deposition taped.

He himself did not show up for the trial. He did not go under oath during the trial. But he was a major presence at this. Give me some sense of of how damaging you think that was in the jury’s eyes.

Well, it certainly didn’t help, and we don’t know obviously where the jury would have been but for those deposition tapes. That said, boy, if you had any wavering jurors who were like, well, you know, I’m not sure I believe eugene Carol about this. And then you played a tape where he says, oh, yeah. You know, people like me have gotten away with this for a million years, fortunately or unfortunately. What’s argument that it’s fortunate, by the way, I think he all but said the subtext of that was I didn’t do it.

And if I did, that’s sort of my right as a as an alpha male. And I think you could imagine a juror being very offended by that sense of entitlement. So I don’t think we know what impact it had on the jury, but it would have affected me.

I think it would have affected most people. But then we have this weird moment course where we have this jury verdict coming down that that I think would have ended the career of any major figure in business. Any major figure in entertainment, I think probably would have forced the resignation of pretty much anyone else in public office Do you disagree with me on this?

Oh, no. I mean, I mean, just look at what happened to Roger Ailes

—

Yeah. — or Bill O’Reilly. These are the closest things to Trump

—

Right. — in the entertainment and business sector. You can also look at Harvey Weinstein. That’s a little bit of a difference. Situation, but much of a different situation.

These are career ending sometimes prison involving type things. And for Trump, for some reason, he can go on CNN that night and make fun of her. And get laughs.

And make it a joke. Yeah. There is this process that we’ve seen in Trump or was it, you know, no. He didn’t do it. He absolutely didn’t do it.

It is a lot. Okay. Well, maybe he did it, but and then eventually, they get around to he did it so what. And we’ve seen this in real time, but it feels like it’s accelerating that it’s gone from no. I never said that on the tape to yes, I said it on the tape.

Yes, it’s true. And I don’t know this woman, but if we engaged in some hanky, pinky, kinda funny, I wrote the other day. This is like a flashback for me. To, you know, October of twenty sixteen when the access Hollywood video came out and people were shocked by it. But now we’re going through it again.

But the dial has been turned up because you can’t just rationalize it as as locker room talk. He actually this jury has found that he molested and injured and maliciously lied about a woman, and his folks are treating it as a joke. This is where we realize how much Donald Trump has coarsened our culture? I mean, what he has done to the rest of America. I mean, it’s one thing that Donald Trump is Donald Trump.

But what he has done in warping the reactions of millions of people who would never feel this way in any other context of life. Do you know what I mean, Ben? The people were laughing about this, would never laugh about this in any other context. If somebody was doing this in their church, somebody was watching this, you know, happening at a little league game or in their employment or in their family, they would never think that this is nothing. And yet, when it comes to Donald Trump, they’re willing to go, yeah.

Give back the nuclear codes. Who cares?

Yeah. I have no explanation for that. I can do a kind of mass psychological analysis as well or as badly as the next guy, but I continue to be shocked by it. And I do think it says something very dark about where a large segment of society is right now. And, you know, other than doubling down on truth and decency, I’m not really sure I have any great suggestions for how to counter it.

I do think it’s amazing and shocking. And in this case, it involves no small agree of dehumanization because this is a woman who, you know, made herself extremely vulnerable in order to bring these allegations. And probably if you had asked her what’s your nightmare about this, she might have said that a large group of people would laugh at me on CNN. Yeah. And that’s exactly what happened last night.

And so I I do think there’s a very not a very ugly side to it. It’s a very ugly thing.

It’s a very ugly side to it, and I don’t think that it’s going too far to say that what happened last night was revictimizing the victim. If you have somebody who has been sexually assaulted and they have been lied about, And, you know, once she’s been vindicated in court the next day, CNN provides a forum for people to mock and laugh about her and continue to say the same things that the jury found was a malicious act of defamation. Okay. So in the last week, There have been a lot of developments in other cases. We spent some time talking last week about what’s going on with Fanny Willis down in Georgia.

That investigation came up as well during the town hall meeting, and Donald Trump was asked about his phone call with secretary of state, Brad Raffinsberger. Let’s play what Trump said about that famous phone call where he asked the secretary of state to find him eleven thousand plus votes. He lied about it, of course.

With the secretary of state, Brad Raffensberger. Yes, sure. Given the fact that there are indictments expected to come in that case this summer, is that a call you would make again today?

Yeah. I called questioning the election. I thought it was a rigged election. I thought I’d had a lot of problems. I had had every, I guess, his secretary of state, I called, listen to this.

There are like seven lawyers in the call, many of them from there. We’re having we’re having a normal call. Nobody said, oh, gee, he shouldn’t have said that. Why? If this call was bad, I questioned the election.

You asked my notes.

I didn’t ask him to find anything.

Let me just We’ve heard the audio tip.

Mister president, there’s an audio

of you asking him to find

you because the election was rigged. That election was rigged. And if this call was bad collection and we have and when we it, make a call to question election results, then this country ought to just forget about it.

You weren’t just questioning the election results. I was questioning the election. Find you votes And I should note that there is no evidence of fraud. There is no rigged election in the state of Georgia. I wanna get back to the audience though, mister president.

Wow. So

Ben Yeah. So I think you’ve actually just seen a preview of what his defense in this case is looking to look like. So imagine that you’re a defense lawyer and you have to defend him in the Fanny Willis Georgia election interference investigation. You look at this and you say, okay, he keeps going on and talking about it. He’s not denying the facts.

There’s no way to change. The call is taped. There’s gonna be lots of people testifying about it. We have to argue that he genuinely believed that there was a serious problem that the results had been wrong in Georgia, and he was calling not in his capacity as a candidate. But in his capacity as president to ensure what he earnestly believed, which was that there were irregularities and that the votes had been counted improperly.

And I think that is gonna be one of the rubs, if this case ever gets to the facts, there’ll be a bunch of issues before that. But I think that’s going to be the factual rub of this case, and I think you just heard what’s really gonna be his defense. Which was that, okay, it may seem crazy to you, but he really believes this shit.

Yeah. That I think is going to be part of this. Okay. So what have we seen involving the Jack Smith investigation over the last week? We continue to see more subpoenas, more push have there been any developments that you think are significant that you wanted to highlight?

So there have been, as you say, another raft of subpoenas. There’s been some tantalizing suggestion that some of them may involve Trump’s arrangements or business arrangements with foreign governments, I don’t know what to make of that. I take it as very

— Fascinating. —

a very preliminary thing, but something to keep your eye on. I continue to think we are in the relative end stages of the Mar a Lago investigation probably a bit farther out in the January sixth case, But again, I don’t really have a sense of what end stage means in terms of time. I think we’re we’re not days away from charging decisions, but we might be weeks away. And again, if I were Jack Smith, I would not want to drag this out too much longer because once you get into the fall, particularly into next year, it becomes complicated and difficult to politically anyway, to actually bring cases against a candidate.

Okay. So my apologies. I was gonna raise this question a little bit earlier. Of, you know, doubling back on on the Eugene Carol verdict. I was struck by the reaction, the immediate reaction, not just by the CNN crowd, but by elected officials, including Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio, who have accepted what appears to be this another new narrative line on the right that any jury verdict from a place like New York is inherently questionable.

And that would apply to Georgia as well. Right? Won’t that be the line that any prosecution or any jury verdict from a blue state, whether it is Fulton County or whether it is New York will be considered to be illegitimate on its face. I mean, isn’t that people like Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham did not have to comment. On this.

I mean, doesn’t this strike you? You you don’t have to comment on a civil jury verdict and yet they felt it necessary. And again, you see where this pattern is going to go attacking any of the prosecutions and the indictments and even the convictions.

Yeah. So first of all, just as a matter of the way the jury system works, it’s wrong. The grain of truth to it actually cuts the opposite direction than they think. The way the legal system would look at that problem is if you think there is no jury in a given jurisdiction that would be fair to you, probably better to commit your crimes elsewhere. You know, if you don’t want to be judged by a jury in in Washington DC or in New York City, or in Fulton County, go elsewhere to commit your crimes.

There’s a heavy, heavy presumption about trying cases in the jurisdictions in which the crimes took place. Now, are there circumstances in which the local prejudice against the defendant is so extreme that you couldn’t find a jury you would be willing to seat in that jurisdiction? Yes. They tend to involve situations where the crime is so heinous and the saturation of local knowledge about it is so extreme that you can’t get people to put their revulsion aside it doesn’t involve the voting behavior of local people as a general matter. So you don’t get to say, hey, Charlie Sykes is a conservative.

Walkashaw County or or Madison, Wisconsin, is a liberal place. So he shouldn’t have his trial there, that’s not the way the system Bulwark. And Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio shouldn’t be saying that. And there’s actually a good piece by Roger Parloff in law fair a number of weeks ago about efforts to get some of these trials removed for these reasons and why they’re failing in the District of Columbia in the January sixth cases.

It doesn’t relevant here though to note that Trump’s lawyers signed off on that jury. Right? I mean, when you go through jury selection, I mean, at some point, the Trump legal team had to say, yeah, we’re okay with this jury.

Yes and no. So they have an unlimited number of strikes for cause. So if there’s reason why juror X is not okay

—

Mhmm. — with them, and they can justify that to a judge. They can get that juror dismissed. And then they have a certain number, and I’m not sure what it is in New York State Civil procedure of what are called peremptory strikes, which is you can just strike the juror for any reason like that they don’t seem like they’d likely to be sympathetic to you. And so, you know, At the end of the day, the jury is composed of people who are, in that sense, acceptable to both sides.

Yes.

Is there anything else that we should be keeping an eye on over the next couple of weeks? I was thinking of it. I was going through a list of the various, you know, trials of Trump and realizing they know they’re there are still fraud actions going on in New York from the attorney general. Is that correct?

I believe so, although I have not followed those. I mean, look, I I think the critical things to be following are Georgia, which I think is gonna come to fruition in July, August. Mara Lago, which could happen any day, the continuing development of the January sixth case, and of course developments in the already indicted case in New York. Those are the big four, and each of those four with the exception of New York has a million sub parts. Exactly.

Ben Whitis is editor in chief at Lawfair, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings institution. His books include Unmaking The President. He also writes dog shirt daily on Substack. And Roger Parloff, senior editor at Law Fair, Washington based journalist has been covering the January six trials. And, of course, Tim Miller, my colleague at The Bulwark.

I wanna thank everyone for joining us on this special edition of the Trump trials. Ben, we will do this again next week.

Looking forward to it.

And thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow and we’ll do this all over again. The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.

Dissecting politics with exclusive interviews, commentary, and humor, useful idiots with cue Katie Halper and Aaron Mate.

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