Pod Save America - Trump Heads to Tribal Council

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

The world gets some clues about the "special project" that's keeping Lovett away from the show, Nikki Haley abandons her principles and endorses Trump. With head-to-head polling showing a race locked in place, Trump and Biden spar over who deserves the support of Black voters. Then, former prosecutor Andrew Weissmann stops by to talk with Jon and Dan about where Trump's Manhattan trial stands ahead of closing arguments and jury deliberations. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Donald Trump caps off another crazy week of chaos with a rally in the South Bronx in an attempt to show strength with voters of color in a deep blue city. Joe Biden spent his week taking on Ticketmaster, canceling more student debt, and helping more veterans get health care. But he's still running a few points behind Trump with less than six months to go. We're going to talk about why.

Sam Alito is in trouble for a second MAGA flag hanging at his second home. And later, former prosecutor Andrew Weissman stops by to give his take on the Manhattan trial as the case heads to the jury. But first, we have an update on the infamous reality show star who dominates all of our political discussions and will soon face judgment from a jury of his peers. Let's listen. Every survivor story begins with an empty page. begins with an empty page. It's up to the players to leave their mark.

People look at me as an underdog. That's Miss Delaware, whatever. She has nothing more to her. And I'm like, I'm a big dog. I have no outdoor skills. What am I doing here? I went camping as a Cub Scout. I threw up and went home.

Eat, pray, love it. There it is. John Lovett. John Lovett appears to be on this season of Survivor. Based on all the information we have, that seems to be the case. I would just say that- Wow. Yeah, what do you got, Dan? I would just say many people have argued that in a critical election year where democracy

hangs in the balance, the best place for love would be on an island with no access to the internet. Dan, I'm sure he is busy doing some deep canvassing. No doubt every other contestant is from a swing state. He's just out there trying to get every vote. Sure, for the Tribal Council, but also for Joe Biden. Also for Joe Biden. Yes.

And look, we are more than happy to hold down the fort until and if he gets back. We don't have not a lot going on. It's just a new baby in the Vitor household. A couple of pods to do, a little political news, company to run. Other than that, we're good. You have a relatively new baby? Yeah, you know, it's a chill time.

I've done Pods of America Monday, Wednesday, Friday this week, which I think you've probably done before, but that's called hitting for the cycle. The full Ginsburg. I have spent more time at this microphone than I have in my own bed. That's what I'm doing. But you know what?

He's probably sleeping in the forest right now somewhere. I don't know. Where do they sleep? On the beach? I'll admit something. I have never seen the clip of Lovett was the first second of Survivor I've seen in my life. I've never seen a single moment. I am so excited to start.

I can't even tell you, but... Yeah, I know. I watched the first season back when I was in college. You mean a quarter century ago. That was a quarter century ago. In my mind, Survivor is Richard Hatch, the first winner. Is that the nudist? Who knows? nudist i i don't know i can't yes i'm getting yes from we have some survivor fans uh it's part of our pod fans so when this uh when this started going around last night this broke

there's obviously you could imagine there's a lot of activity in the cricket slack and um everyone was joking about all the the comments on twitter and everywhere else and the discord and friends of the pod go sign up but the comment of the night goes to our fearless pod save america producer olivia martinez who said r.i.p love it you would have loved watching everyone react to you being on survivor which you know that is that is the toughest thing. He's just, he's not here to see all the reaction. But anyway, we're pulling for you, pal.

We know you can do it. Good luck. Okay, back in America. I presume you all remember the Republican presidential candidate who made it all the way to the final tribal council this primary season. As a refresher, here's some of Nikki Haley's toughest criticism of Donald Trump over the last year. He is not the same person he was in 2016.

He is unhinged. He is more diminished than he was. If you don't know the value of our men and women in uniform, if you don't know the sacrifice that they go through, why should I, as a military spouse and all our military families, trust you to know you're going to keep them out of harm's way? And it's a pattern of losing that everything he touches, he loses. We saw it in 2018. We saw it in 2020. We saw it in 2022. How many more times do we have to go back to the same person and say and then finally decide maybe he's the problem? Because I know he's the problem. Of course, many of the same politicians who now publicly embrace Trump privately dread him. They know what a disaster he's been and will continue to be for our party.

They know what a disaster he's been and will continue to be for our party. They're just too afraid to say it out loud. Well, I'm not afraid to say the hard truths out loud. And what's that hard truth now, you may ask? So I will be voting for Trump. So that was Haley on Wednesday at the conservative think tank she's running these days. She's always made it fairly clear that she won't be, you know, showing up at an endorsement event with Joe Biden. But she had other options.

She could continue speaking out about Trump. She could have said she was going to write in some other Republican. She could have not said anything at all about who she's voting for. But, you know, I guess in the end, she just wanted to be part of the unified Reich. Dan, why do you think she did it? She was always going to do it. She just was. I mean, just I know briefly to varying degrees amongst the four of, deluded ourselves to think she may do something different. But she said a lot of this very similar stuff about Donald Trump in 2016 and then joined his cabinet.

Voting for him is frankly the least she could do. But it's just – the reason this is going to happen is because she is a Republican. She wants a future in Republican politics. That doesn't necessarily mean that she will run for office again, although I'm sure she's deluded herself into thinking she may do that. But if she does not vote, no matter what happens in 2024, if she does not vote for Donald Trump,

it makes it very, very hard for her to have any sort of say in what happens with this party next, right? Running for something, being in charge of something, being on a board of a company run by Republicans, being in think tanks, this is the price of admission.

And so this is what she was going to do. It's very fitting with what we have seen from Nikki Kelly over her whole career, other than this brief three-month period of fleeting courage and integrity. I mean, and I will say though, even then, she said right between, I think, New Hampshire and South Carolina, she was asked about this. So this was before the South Carolina primary. And she said, I have a lot of concerns about Trump regaining the presidency. I have even more concerns about Joe Biden being president. So that was a bit of a tell right there.

Like, so I never thought that she was going to, like, endorse Joe Biden. I mostly thought this was going to happen. I do think there was a small chance she would just, again, not say anything. Or done the, like, you know, what we find annoying, but it was like the I'm writing in, you know, Ronald Reagan or something like that. Like, she could have done that, too. It's just like, and it makes me think, let's just put the politics aside. Let's say we're just too cynical about her political motives, which I don't think we're being too cynical about. No, we're being overly generous, probably, yes.

As a thought exercise. Look, I do think she might genuinely believe that she has more concerns about Joe Biden than Donald Trump. And if she does, that to me is like a core part of the problem with so many of these Republican politicians like your Chris Sununu's and Nikki Haley's and all the rest. It's like they have either deluded themselves into thinking that mainstream Democratic policy, which is what Joe Biden represents, he is a mainstream moderate Democratic president, that that's more dangerous than a lunatic who may never leave the White House. that that's more dangerous than a lunatic who may never leave the White House. Or they've deluded themselves into thinking, you know what? Donald Trump, he's not that bad. He's bad, but he's not that dangerous. But either way, she has said basically the opposite throughout the course of the whole campaign.

Yeah, like is she full of shit now or was she full of shit then? That's the question. Right. But at one point, she she full of shit now or was she full of shit then that's the question right but at one point she was full of shit if you call someone unfit unqualified to be president united states like i just don't know how you come back from that yeah i'm gonna vote for them because because why they're unfit but you you don't like joe biden's policies it's pathetic it's pathetic one point she said every single thing that donald trump has said or put on tv has been a lie okay trump would side with a dictator who kills his opponents trump's gonna side with a madman who's made no bones about the fact that he wants to destroy america he's got my vote he's got my vote it's just it's unreal so even though she's been out

of the race for a few months now um she's still getting obviously 15 to 20 percent of the vote in the Republican primaries. We still have Republican primaries, all primaries. They're still happening. Do you think her announcement makes it any harder to convince the Haley primary voters to vote for Biden? I think every time a former critic of Trump comes out and says he's going to vote for Trump, it makes it that much harder for people who have concerns to break with their party, right? Just regular voters, right? Whether that's Nikki Haley, Bill Barr, Chris Sununu. It creates more of a permission structure for some of these Republicans to just give in and go with the flow. Having said that, there is no Nikki Haley movement in this country, right? Have you ever seen a single Nikki Haley bumper sticker or t-shirt in your life? No, never. There are people who are voting for Nikki Haley, but they are not Nikki Haley voters, right? If their two choices presented to them were

Donald Trump and a tin of spam, spam would get like double digits. Like it's just, that's what it is. She is a imperfect vessel for anti-Trump sentiment. So those voters are still available. We're not in a world like you were with Bernie Sanders, right? Those are Bernie Sanders voters who were voting for him, right? And what he said to them mattered. His endorsement of Hillary Clinton mattered. When he came in for Hillary Clinton, it mattered. Hillary Clinton, there were Hillary Clinton voters in 2008 when he ran as primary. Nikki Haley, many of her voters couldn't go. So we will go. It's not going to work that way. But I still think, and our friends in the Bulwark still along with me at this point, that every time a Republican does this, it makes it easier for other Republicans to fall in line. So that's negative. But those voters, those Haley voters that are still showing up are still available to Joe Biden. They're still in his persuadable universe, no matter who Nikki Haley

says she's going to vote for. Well, and not only are they available to Joe Biden, I think what gets overlooked is a lot of these voters could be Republicans who did already vote for Joe Biden in 2020. And they still want to be Republicans, right? They still want to register Republicans. They still want to vote in a Republican primary because, you know, there's every time that Nikki Haley wins 15, 20 percent in these primaries, there's like this good news for Democrats. Does Donald Trump have real problems with, you know, he's not getting 20% of the vote and stuff like that. And A, there's some who will just

automatically go and vote for Donald Trump like much like Nikki Haley is now doing. There were probably in the open primaries, there were probably a few Democrats

who jumped in. But a lot of independents under all circumstances. A lot of independents in the open primaries as well. But even in the closed Republican primaries, like there's just a,

there's a segment of Republicans, registered Republicans who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 in every single swing state. So like, why wouldn't those people vote for Nikki Haley if they're still registered in the Republican Party and not voting in the Democratic primary? by state, and it's a primary electorate versus a general election electorate, but the percentage of primary voters who are voting for Nikki Haley is larger than the percentage of Republicans who voted for Joe Biden by, in some cases, a factor of two or three in some of these states. This is not to say there's been lots of studies that looked at this, like there is a trend, even with more stable candidates than Trump, of these sort of zombie candidates he's carrying on, people sort of expressing their opposition, But there is something there, and that is an available universe of voters for Joe Biden

because people who are Republican primary voters who voted for Joe Biden, those are the people that he needs to get back, right? He has lost some of those people. And so that is not a just assumption they're going to vote for him again. He needs to get them. In fact, The Wilderness is back this weekend.

We're going to have two episodes drop on Sunday, May 26th. And the second episode is all about soft Republican voters, two-time Trump voters who are down on Donald Trump. Some of them voted for Nikki Haley in the primary. And we're going to have none other than Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell on to talk about how to persuade these voters to vote for Joe Biden. That was an excellent organic plug. Wasn't it a good organic plug? I might do another one. If I'm feeling good, I might do another one later on.

I have one for you later on if you don't nail it. So don't you worry. All right, perfect. Yeah, so no, but the point is, I do think there's like a lot of the excitement is, I think, a bit misguided because I think some of these are already Biden voters. You're right. He needs to get them. He needs to keep them. We don't need the other voters. We just need the Biden voters. Well, yeah, we're going to lose some voters, too. We have to replace the ones we lost, but yes.

Yeah, I think there's a small percentage of those Haley voters who are still not where Nikki Haley is and are not quite ready to vote for Donald Trump again, but are not quite ready to vote for Joe Biden either. And I think that's going to they're going to be they're going to matter a lot in some of these swing states. All right. Let's talk about the guy Nikki Haley called unhinged and unqualified. Fresh off the latest instance of Trump playing footsies with Nazis. He teamed up with Marjorie Taylor Greene to float a conspiracy that Joe Biden tried to have Trump assassinated. He also claimed on Thursday he'll be able to get his pal Vladimir Putin to release Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich from prison,

but only if Trump wins. Vote for me and Evan will come home because I'm buddies with Vladimir Putin. And also, outside his Manhattan criminal trial, Trump said that Justice Juan Merchan hates him because the judge was born in Colombia, which really teed up the Thursday rally in the South Bronx that was part of the campaign's outreach to Latino and black voters. The Biden campaign tried to pre-butt the rally with a new ad targeted at black voters. Let's listen. I'm Joe Biden, and I approve this message.

Of course I hate these people. Donald Trump disrespecting black folk is nothing new. He was sued for refusing to rent his apartments to black families and called for the execution of five innocent black and brown teenagers. And it's more than anger. It's hatred. It's why Trump stood with violent white supremacists, warned of a bloodbath if he loses the next election, and if he's president again, vowed to be a dictator who wants revenge on his enemies. Now, who do you think that is? Of course I hate these people.

So that line, of course I hate these people, comes from a 1989 interview that Trump did with Larry King about the Central Park Five, who were the wrongly accused men of color whom Trump said at the time should be executed. Lots to unpack here, Dan. With all the things I just mentioned that he has said over the last couple of days. Do you think anything Trump said or did this week could cause him problems with voters? In theory, yes. In practice, no. Yeah. Well, in theory, yes. I mean, yes, it should. In practice, most people who have not made up their mind are not going to hear any of those things, right? That is the world in which we are living. That is the stage of the campaign we're in. And so could it be a problem? Absolutely.

Is it we're going to see it like show up in the polls? No, no. I do think like politics aside, just so people know what happened with the assassination attempt conspiracy. So Trump said he was shown reports that Biden's DOJ authorized the FBI to use deadly force when they raided Mar-a-Lago for the nuclear secrets he stole, that he's now not going to face any accountability for, because of course, because he installed a Trump judge who's now just letting him off the hook. Anyway, then Marjorie Taylor Greene went a step further and accused Biden and the FBI of planning to assassinate Trump. None of this is true.

The report that Trump and Marjorie are referring to is the DOJ's standard policy limiting the use of force during searches. It was the same exact policy they used both at Mar-a-Lago and at Biden's home. Same policy. So I guess Biden was just like, you know, he was authorizing the FBI to also assassinate him, I guess. both at Mar-a-Lago and at Biden's home. Same policy. So I guess Biden was just like, you know, he was authorizing the FBI to also assassinate him, I guess. And so I don't, you know, like you said, I'm sure most people will not hear about this.

It is fucking dangerous, right? Telling your followers who have committed political violence in the past, remember January 6th, that the president, the government, has planned to assassinate you? Like, it's pretty fucking dangerous. Look, I would say I answered your question in maybe a little of a- I asked about the politics.

Yeah, you asked about the politics. I answered it in the context of persuadable voters. But there is consequences for all of these things, right? There is a consequence for the statement about the Wall Street Journal reporter, right? Like, how does Russia interpret that? Does that mean now that they're just going to wait because they think they can get something for him in next year if Trump wins, right? So that means that he will stay in a dangerous situation in a Russian prison for longer because

Trump can't keep his yap shut. Accusing the Biden DOJ of trying to murder him is something that could very obviously lead to violence, as we have seen on so many occasions with the things Trump says. And so will that move the polls? No. But does it make America more dangerous? Yes. Is it yet another example of why he should not be allowed within 100 million miles of the White House? Absolutely. So I'd love to get your thoughts on that Biden ad. There was also a radio ad as well that they put out. I thought it was interesting that they went back that far to 1989 in the Central Park Five in the ad, just because I think there's just a wealth

of horribly racist, both shit that Donald Trump has said and sort of he has four years of a presidency where I don't think he the presidency was very good for or to black Americans. I was also interested in both the radio ad and the television ad. They hit the bloodbath remark. They hit the dictator stuff. I don't know. I thought that was just, that must be polling well with them, I guess. The Biden people must see that that's polling well. Maybe. I think, I would bet that that video ad, we don't yet know where it's airing or if it's airing, it probably seems like a digital ad, is more a media play for this specific rally in New York. The reason to do the Central Park Five is because it is New York. One of the Central Park Five is now a city councilman in New York. If this ad were running

in another part of the country, it may not mean anything. But in New York, this is one of the biggest stories of the last 50 years and continues to be talked about this day because of Yousef Salam and his role in that and now his role in the city council. But ultimately, the message feels a lot like the message that Democrats have been using against Trump since the beginning of the 2016 campaign that has not shown any impact. And in fact, the numbers with voters of color have gotten worse over time, not better. And so I'd be interested to know what the strategy behind some of the specific mentions in there, maybe the dictator thing polls, but the calling out Trump. Trump's racism should be called out. It should always be called out. But that is a necessary,

but not sufficient argument to win over voters of any stripe, I think we've seen. Yeah, for sure. And I imagine that as the campaign goes on, that some of the ads that they'll put real money behind, especially if they're trying to target black voters with those ads, will talk about Donald Trump wanting mandatory stop and frisk in every city in the country. the military to shoot protesters in the legs who were protesting George Floyd's murder. He wants to make sure police officers can never be sued for killing unarmed black people or anyone. And then also, of course, like if you, you know, if you ask black voters what they care about most, it's much like all voters, right? Cost of living, right? And Donald Trump wants to take away health care, wants them to pay more for prescriptions, pay higher taxes, just like he does white Americans, just as he does Latino Americans, Asian Americans. So I would imagine that they're going to probably make those arguments as the campaign goes on. The Biden campaign actually has a track of ads

they've had up. I don't know if they're up right now, but they've been up multiple times this year, targeted at black voters. And it's a lot of economic stuff, and particularly things Joe Biden has delivered for the Black community, lowest Black unemployment in history, additional funding for historically Black colleges, universities, a whole bunch of things, including the Affordable Care Act. We're recording this before the rally, but what'd you think of the Trump campaign's decision to organize a big crowd in a deep blue neighborhood that's majority non-white? That's kind of scary smart.

Yeah. I was going to say, like, I wonder, it'll obviously get, it's going to get press attention, right? I mean, that's a, and it's New York, so it's going to get a lot of attention. Apparently, the Young Republican Club and the various Republican organizations in New York City, which, by the way, we've talked about this before, but they're as right wing as they get. Very fascist adjacent. They have been like working overtime organizing like every Trump supporter they can find in New York to get to this event. So I wouldn't be surprised if it was a big crowd. But yeah, it seems like it's a smart thing to do. It's like politics is about identity, right? And about, and people really want to vote with their peers. And if you create this impression that there are large

numbers of, it's a false impression, even based on the polls. But if you create this impression, there are large numbers of black voters and Latino voters who are saying, I am for Trump. That is creating an environment that makes it more welcoming for others who may be angry at Joe Biden for some reason, disenchanted with politics more broadly, mad at the Democrats or whatever it is to give them a reason to think more seriously about going over to vote for Republicans, something that seemed absolutely impossible not too many years ago. Yeah. It made me think that Joe Biden should go to small towns and rural areas with both white voters and black voters who are often in rural areas and do you would never expect to see someone named Barack Hussein Obama, right? He spoke at a megachurch in 2008, even though most of the people in the room did not agree with him, probably wouldn't vote for him to send a message that his campaign was open to them. All right, so this is the part of the show where we note that despite all the latest Trump craziness, if the election were held today, he would probably win. He's got a one-point lead in the national polling average.

He's got a slightly bigger lead in the swing states. A lot of new high-quality polling came out this week, and basically the race hasn't moved, even though it's now late May. Trump is on trial, and Biden is on the air in every swing state. This has unsurprisingly led to another round of punditry that I'm sure the Biden team is super excited about. Lots of smiles in Wilmington overall last week, I'm sure. Trigger warning, we're about to mention Ezra Klein's latest column in case any of you feel the need to skip ahead.

You want to just skip right to the Sam Alito second flag. No worries. We're going to talk about Ezra Klein. I thought it was interesting because Ezra offered seven theories about why Trump is currently ahead. One, the polls are wrong.

Two, it's the media's fault. Three, it's a bad time to be an incumbent. Four, voters are angry about high prices and high interest rates. Five, voters think Biden's too liberal. Six, voters think Biden's too old. And seven, Democrats aren't defining Trump in the most effective way. Ezra doesn't believe every one of those headings, but that's sort of the theories that he threw out there that are being talked about. And it's true, those conversations are conversations about some combination of those theories are taking place among Democratic operatives, activists, strategists, all trying to understand what is driving Trump's battleground advantage at this stage in the campaign?

What did you think of the piece? And did any of those theories stand out to you? Yeah, I thought it was interesting because it really was the summary of the ongoing conversation that we've been having with each other on this podcast off with other people we know from politics. Everyone is trying to figure out what the hell is going on here because it is – if you just kind of like take a step back and you just like wrote it as a political science 101 midterm question, right? You have a candidate trying to violently overthrow the election. He's currently on trial for a felony and is facing 88 federal felony indictments.

Should that candidate be up by one? The answer is no, right? So it's a hard thing to explain. And I do appreciate that Ezra kind of knocked down some of the, what I think are the coping mechanisms that some Democrats have used, the idea that the polls are wrong. I mean, maybe they are, but there's no evidence of that. And in the past when the polls have been wrong in presidential elections, they've been wrong in a way that's not good for us. they've been wrong in a way that's not good for us right there's that and i also think look i mean the polls in 2022 i know everyone's like oh broadway the polls in 2022 were more accurate than any cycle since 1998 now that's a midterm what about a presidential the last two presidentials the polls have been off like you said they have been overestimating democratic support uh for hillary clinton and and Joe Biden, not under. But who knows? Maybe they could be off again.

It's presidential races, different, different electorate. But the polls for Democrats not named Biden are quite good right now. That's the challenge. And so some of the same polls that are showing Joe Biden behind are showing Ruben Gallego, Tammy Baldwin. Pick your Senate candidate. Pick your governor ahead. And so that that's the challenge with the polls. Again, though, polls, of course, could all be wrong. There could be a systemic error that's something that has to do with just Donald Trump and just Joe Biden.

Who knows? But I don't know if we should all hang our hats on that. It's possible. And there is – like there's a sense that they're all over the map, right? We had a poll. We had the New York Times poll which had Biden up double digits in Nevada. We had a poll, a Bloomberg Morning Consult poll that had it tied in that state. But there is an internal logic to all of them. When you look at all the polls,

it's very clear that Trump is doing a little bit better nationally than he did before with a certain set of number of groups, and that's kind of consistent across all the polls. So whatever the margin is, we kind of know where we are and it's not where we want to be, right? It doesn't mean we can't get to a better place. That's where we are. I think we have massively overcomplicated this election in our head. Like if this was Joe Biden running against Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio, Ron DeSantis, pick a random Republican, we wouldn't even bother trying to explain it. It'd be so obvious. People aren't happy with the economy. They cite the economy and inflation in particular as the number one issue deciding their vote in the New York Times poll. Three times as many people

pick that issue as any other issue. And Donald Trump has a 20 point advantage on the issue. Like that's it. Like that is the explanation. All the other things, as we mentioned, like, yes, is Biden's age, does that not help things? Absolutely. Is being an incumbent at a time where people really want major change and are obsessed with the country a problem? Absolutely. Is that fueled by people being mad about inflation? Absolutely.

But I think it's like the polls are telling us very clearly what the problem is, but it's because Donald Trump is such a unique and odious figure that we sort of have to complicate it in our head. It's people are mad about the economy. They're mad about high prices. They're blaming the incumbent and they think the other guy is better. And he has an advantage because he is not a blank slate to them. He happens to be the person who was in charge of the economy by pure chance when eggs were cheaper. Like that's what it is, right? economy by pure chance when eggs were cheaper. That's what it is, right? And I want to dig into the economic theory too, because it's popped up every now and then,

but I have seen a very popular theory is that the media has screwed this up. And it's the media, and Ezra talks about this, that it's the media's fault is one explanation that I've seen a lot of Democrats and media critics sort of glom on to. And, you know, there's two flavors of this. One is the media is not adequately communicating to people the threat that Donald Trump poses. Right. of where the economy is, the complaint is that the media is not giving Joe Biden enough credit for all of the objectively good economic statistics out there. And there are many, right? Unemployment, low, stock market doing great, right? So there's plenty of, and inflation has come down. But on the media, and Ezra makes this point, and we cited this poll back when it came out. It was an NBC poll. Biden leads by 49 points among people who get most of their news from newspapers.

20 points among people who get most of their news from network television news. 10 points among people who get most of their news from digital news sites. He is winning by huge margins, those voters. Where is Joe Biden losing? People who get most of their news from social media, from cable news. I'm sure Fox is a big part of that. Google, YouTube. And he's losing by the biggest margin of all among voters who don't follow political news at all. Trump is winning people who do not follow any political news. Do not look at the horrible headlines that the New York Times has decided to run with or or some, you know, CNBC on the economy. Twenty six points.

Trump is winning those voters by. And I do think that the incumbent issue and the the economic issues are also tied together because you know and ezra sort of isn't as convinced about this because he's like well you know incumbent democratic governors are really popular right now but i think that that's not a real apples to apples comparison with joe biden i think the best apples to apples comparison is joe biden and other world leaders and other world leaders other who are incumbents are very unpopular right now much like joe biden and and that's it doesn't matter like what political persuasion they are what party they are in their country it's it's because they have all been incumbents through the inflationary

backlash we got to covet to the pandemic and so inflation didn't just hit the it hit everywhere. And every single, most incumbents all over the world are struggling with their popularity because of inflation. And that's not because the media told people that didn't tell people that the economy was good enough. It's because prices are still high. And when you notice the prices are high, not just in the grocery store, but housing and cars, which are like two of the biggest purchases people make, that's going to annoy people. It's just going to. And I don't understand why it's a big mystery to people why so many voters are upset about the economy, but it seems to be. Yeah. I mean, several things can be true at the same time, right? It can be true that the media is not giving Joe Biden enough credit for the economy

and has a lot of bad headlines. But it's also true that- You've got to separate that from how much effect it's had. Right, exactly. And it is also true that Joe Biden has done a phenomenal job on the economy. He inherited an absolute shit show from his predecessor. We are doing better than the rest of the world in terms of growth and inflation. And because of a lot of the decisions Joe Biden has made, the things he was able to accomplish, but that does not change the fact that people are still unhappy. And we are now at a point, we are less than six months before the election, that this is the environment this election is

going to take place in, is this political environment, right? A few months ago, there was a sense that maybe the economy was feeling much better. People were feeling better about it. A few months ago, there was a sense that maybe the economy was feeling much better. People were feeling better about it. We were going to be sort of on an upswing as the election happened. Maybe that could still happen, but we can't assume that, right? We should assume that this is what it's going to look like six months from now. We have to have strategies that account for that. Did you talk about any of these polls on Polar Coaster this week?

What do you think? We did not talk about these on Polar Coaster. I'm so glad you brought up. We talked about a couple other things. One thing we talked about is a very fascinating poll about which celebrities would be most influential with young voters. That was a wild list. Yes. I sent you the list. You should check out. It is, it really runs against what a lot of people think and really fascinating numbers on Taylor Swift. We talked about a whole bunch of different polls. The other thing we did talk about is we got a lot of questions from people who were basically looking at the New York Times poll, the polls that we just talked about saying, is it all

over? Are we screwed? Panic, panic, panic. And I made my best case for why Democrats should have optimism going forward, a realistic sense of optimism. But this went through what the numbers say about what the path forward looks for Democrats and why Joe Biden has a very clear path to win this race. Maybe a narrow path, but it is a very clear path. So that's what you should check out. And I will say, you know, when I first started reading

Ezra's column, the headline made me think that he was going to give a lot of advice on how to turn this around. He did not give as much advice, which, you know, he's not a Democratic strategist. Everyone's got advice for Joe Biden and his campaign. I'm sure they have plenty of it. We've given it to. I actually think that like what's more important at this stage is what we all do on this. Like we have agency to you say this all the time. And again, I'm going to get this is my second organic plug. This is what we're doing on the wilderness this season uh is that hopefully all of you listening first of all hopefully you've all signed up at votesaveamerica.com slash 2024 and are gonna go volunteer and i'm gonna talk to voters and you know you'll get lists of voters to talk to from the campaign

whether it's texting on the phone or knocking on doors But also one of the most effective ways of persuading people is to persuade the people in your life, because those are the people who trust you most. And so what we're going to do is go through each sort of demographic group of voters that Biden needs to win over, or at least is like, you know, on the edge of the winning 2020 coalition and talk to you about what the most effective messages are to actually persuade them based on, you know, a lot of focus groups and polling that a lot of really smart strategists and pollsters are doing all the time. That's just not getting out to most people. So that's what we're going to do, because I think, you know, we can give all the advice we want to the Biden

campaign. There's only so much we can control. It going to be up to joe biden it's going to be up to his campaign but that does not absolve us of the responsibility to do whatever we can to save democracy and talk to as many people as we can because uh you know it's a future that we're gonna all have to live through much longer probably than uh joe biden and donald trump so it's like you can talk well and our kids right like our kids will live through it longer than i will i hope okay all right just move on it's like transition to the next topic it's just not like so much of this is through the lens of like i want to punish joe biden or joe biden fucked up this election because he did this or i'm out or even i don't want i want to punish donald trump or what really not about them. It's about us. It is about us and our future. And it's about the

people, you know, and the future they're going to have to. So get out there and get working. And, you know, well, hopefully we can help with the wilderness. Hopefully the polar coaster can help and and also vote Save America can help as well. So. All right. Before we get to Andrew Weissman's take on the end of Trump's criminal trial, we need to talk about the news that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito got caught again flying a different January 6th related flag at another one of his homes. I have to laugh because what else are you going to do? This flag is called the Appeal to Heaven flag that appears to have been flying in front of his New Jersey vacation house last summer. The flag dates back to the Revolutionary War. And for Tommy and the other philosophy nerds out there,

it invokes John Locke's theory of revolution against unjust government. Just a little fun fact for you. But the equally relevant context is that multiple January 6th rioters waved it, waved this flag at Trump's Stop the Steal speech and during the siege of the Capitol. It's also been used by right-wing militias and Christian nationalists, and now a Supreme Court justice. So no comment on the latest freak flag from Sam Alito or his wife, Martha Ann, or the Supreme Court. What do you think? Like, is there anything else Congress can do or anyone in a position of authority? Or should there be an investigation?

Or is this just like something to keep in mind as we're talking people about their vote choice in November? I think we should investigate it. Absolutely. Let's have a hearing about it. Right. Dick Durbin doesn't seem too high on that. Dick Durbin's like, yeah, it's crazy. It's awful.

But I don't know. I don't know what a hearing is going to get us. You know, attention. That's something that's got value. We should remind people that we have a guy flying a Christian nationalist insurrectionist flag over his home while deciding cases that allow the insurrectionist former president to avoid going to prison for said insurrection. I don't know.

That seems like something to talk about. Seems like it seems, it seems notable. It seems notable. He's got a lifetime appointment on the Supreme court. And, uh, and if Donald Trump wins,

we could get a couple more Sam Alito's on the court. So young Sam, maybe we get Ginny and Martha and just to make sure that there's more women on the court. Their, their grandchildren, their granddaughters will be out there. That's true.

Yeah, right. They're way too old. We don't want the wives on there. We want the kids. The great grandkids. We want 30-year-old people who can fly flags. Oh, my God. It's unbelievable.

All right. Before we get to Andrew Weissman, two quick things. You may have heard the news that British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a snap election for July 4th that will determine whether Labour can win control after 14 years of Conservative Party rule. So this is what I was talking about. Rishi Sunak. He's, you know, he's a right wing politician. Very unpopular.

Very, very unpopular. We're still not in the predictions business, but here at Crooked. But that would certainly make for a happy independence day our friends nish and coco have recorded a special episode of pod save the uk to break down why this election is so critical and what we should expect from the next six weeks of campaigning listen in the pod save the uk feed available wherever you get your podcasts also this saturday marks one month until the release of the book that Lovett, Tommy, and I wrote, Democracy or Else, How to Save America in 10 Easy Steps. Democracy or Else is a guide for anyone who wants to get involved in the 2024 election and all of the elections that come after, if there are any. It's a quick read.

We made it easy for you with lots of jokes, illustrations. There's some jokes, by the way, this is a plug for the book there's some jokes that are i cannot believe made it into the book they're that crazy i would buy the book just to just to read some of these jokes you buy the book to read the edits i made that were not accepted which was mostly taking out some of those jokes dan yeah dan tried i tried so you know the i'll tell you the person who wouldn't let the jokes be taken out Well, he could be at a tribal council right now We don't know But anyway, I just got

The hardcover came yesterday It's a good feeling, right? Yeah, it's great It was like, wow And you know what? It feels thin enough for people like me Who don't read a lot of books That it wasn't intimidating

Which is even easier. That's good. So we are getting closer and closer to our pre-order goal in hopes of landing on the New York Times bestseller list, which will in turn help more folks discover the book and get inspired to get off the sidelines and get involved. And also, again, we don't want Kristi Noem and her fucking dog killer book beating us. We don't want whatever else. I don't know whether right wing loonies are out there with books, but we don't want them at the top of the uh the new york times bestseller list we want democracy or else up there you don't want me beating you think of all the shit i'm gonna give you the three of you can't do better than i did oh my gosh well you know

crickets donating the profits to support vote save america and 2024 campaigns so you're making a difference just by pre-ordering it's, that's the thing that you order a book, you get to read the book and you get to know that your money is going to vote. Save America. So win, win, win democracy or else is out June 25th, but you can pre-order now at cricket.com slash books or wherever books are sold. When we come back, Andrew Weissman. This week in Donald Trump's Manhattan election interference trial,

the prosecution and defense rested their cases. Summations will happen next week after the Memorial Day break. And here to guarantee us that Donald Trump will be held accountable and justice will be served is friend of the pod and former prosecutor Andrew Weissman, host of the excellent MSNBC podcast, Prosecuting Donald Trump. Andrew, welcome back. Nice to be here. I'll see if I can fulfill that promise. No pressure.

It's only democracy hanging in the balance here. So I'm going to be rendering a verdict at the end of the podcast. Okay, perfect. That's how we set this up. That's what we're looking for. Yeah. Actually, you know what? I have another.

I think I'll save it for the prosecuting Donald Trump podcast. So we can tee it up, but then. Fair. You can tease it here. That seems fair. Yeah. Which is a podcast, by the way, I never miss. I was just listening to it this morning.

Mary McCord is the best. You guys are great. You really are, both of you. All right. So we know the jury won't start deliberating until next week, but before they can deliberate, the judge needs to give them jury instructions, which the lawyers are supposed to get from the judge any moment now, maybe by the end of today, which is Thursday. Can you talk about what jury instructions are, why they're so critical, and what we know so far about the jury instructions for this case based on sort of some of the arguments we heard when the lawyers were going over the potential instructions with the judge? Yeah. So this is the part of the case that when you're a trial lawyer, it's the most boring part of the case. And all you're thinking about is your summation and putting that together and

crafting that. And then just before you have to do that, you have to meet with the judge and go over jury instructions. And if you're an appellate lawyer, you'll love it. And what it is, is both sides are trying to convince the judge to recount the law in the way that's most favorable to their position. So let me just give you an example from this case. A lot of people have talked about, well, there's different and slightly conflicting testimony about, was Donald Trump doing this because he was concerned about the 2016 election and that's why he was engaged in this sort of catch and kill scheme? Or was he concerned about the reaction of Melania? Well, the law actually answers that because if the judge instructs that you 100% have to show that he was only thinking about the campaign, then that's a really hard standard. And that's what the defense would want. And what the DA wants is something that says, you know what, you can have dual motives.

By the way, that is the law. So that is what I expect we're going to find out either late today or certainly early tomorrow from the judge. So that's why the law matters, because it tells the jury what it is they would need to find beyond a reasonable doubt in order to find Donald Trump guilty. Are there any unresolved questions around jury instruction that you're most interested in hearing where Justice Mershon comes down? Not really. Okay, so you think it's gonna be pretty clear cut? This is one where, like, I've seen people like pearl clutching for the last two days. I've never seen so much interest in jury instructions as you know, in the last couple days, and obviously it is important. And obviously around the edges, they're little things, but I don't expect any surprises. I don't expect any surprises. And this is when, first of all, the DA isn't going to have brought this case if he wasn't confident in just settled, middle-of-the-road law being given. And even when you see the DA asking for certain things or the defense asking for certain things, the judge is pretty clear from the oral argument he heard that he's going to go with standard jury instructions. You know,

every court has standard jury instructions. And I think that's what he's going to give here. So I'm not that concerned about the edges because the main part of the law, I think, will be pretty clear. I'm a little concerned about there are two lawyers on the jury. So, you know, that could lead to sort of hyper technical, not to denigrate lawyers, but, you know, that's what we do. We sort of overanalyze things. So, I'm more worried about that than the actual charge that the judge gives. We haven't covered the defense case much on this podcast. What did you make of their case? And why did they call Robert Costello? What were they trying to achieve with that witness?

So, you know, I'm not sure I'd call the defense case a defense case. I think it was actually a prosecution case. I've gotten that sense not ever have come from the defense lawyers. You do not call Robert Costello if you're a trial lawyer. I know Susan Nicklaus. She's excellent, and she just wouldn't do that. Okay, but to answer your question, what were they hoping to get? If Robert Costello had presented himself differently, and in my view, sort of swore up one side and down the other that he had no

information about Donald Trump paying Stormy Daniels at the time that essentially this is all fabricated and that he had a huge incentive to say something because I, Robert Costello, told him that this whole case could go away if you essentially could use Donald Trump as a meal ticket. And so I think those were the two things that, if believed, would help undermine Michael Cohen's credibility. And so I think that's why, that would be the reason to call him. There are many, many, many reasons not to. I think we saw some of those in action. Yes. Would attorneys with a more cooperative client have called different witnesses? Or was the bulk of their case trying to they're trying to achieve that on cross with Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen, most importantly?

You know, that is one of the things that's hard when you are an outsider. And certainly when I was doing these cases, it's really hard to judge the first part of your question, which is who else would you call? So we don't know the options they had. We don't know, for instance, would Keith Schiller have been a good witness? You know, he obviously could have said, I never had this, you know, this famous phone call on October 24, where Michael Cohen says, I, Keith Schiller, got a call and I handed it over to the president, then candidate Trump. And he could say that didn't happen. He could say, Stormy Daniels, you know, Stormy Daniels said he was outside the room. He actually, he was the one who invited her to dinner, the dinner where she didn't get dinner, says Keith Schiller is the one who invited me. He was outside the door. Keith Schiller could have said, you know, that didn't happen. he, what that didn't happen. Um, we don't know the reason, uh, why they didn't call him and instead they chose Costello. You know, my own two cents is if, if the best they had was Costello, it makes you think Schiller must've been even worse. Um, which by the way, it's hard to imagine just,

just, you know, the problem with Costello was not just his demeanor and what he was doing on the stand and the sort of disrespect and the outbursts and the jury seeing all of that. And there's somewhat of his misogynistic tone and cracked to Susan Hoffinger, the DA who was asking questions. But also he had all these black and white emails that made it absolutely clear that he was doing this on the part of Rudy Giuliani and the president of the United States, exactly what Michael Cohen had said. So he sort of had two huge problems. So making the prosecution's case is not what you want in a defense witness, huh? Yeah, exactly. in the U.S. Attorney's Office when I was the criminal chief, I would go into these impromptu closings. Someone would come in and they'd present a problem who was like a junior AUSA, and I'd be

like, here's what you're going to do. And you just start immediately going into closing argument. So one of the things, just to pick up on Costello, is one of the things I think you have to do is I think he is so much affirmative proof that you want to make sure that the jury doesn't do what I think sometimes a juror has an inclination to say, oh, that's the defense case. I don't believe that it was bad. And they move it aside as if it's not a proof that they can use affirmatively in their case. And I think you definitely want to, that's a small point, but you want to make sure that you've integrated it in and actually just say that to the jury. I think there are sort of two big things.

I think that they need to make sure that the jury is looking at all of the proof together. in every trial, what happens is the prosecution wants to make sure that the jury is thinking about all of it and the unlikely nature of the defense position that all of these things could be happening. And the defense wants to sort of isolate pieces of proof and look at a little leaf and say, well, that leaf isn't a tree and that leaf isn't a tree. proof and look at a little leaf and say, well, that leaf isn't a tree and that leaf isn't a tree. And so the strength of the government's case here is the constellation of witnesses and documents and then the argument that how does Allen Weisselberg and Michael Cohen know about the scheme and not tell Donald Trump? What would be the possible argument for that, and then to walk

through all of that. The second thing I would do is I would almost isolate Michael Cohen and talk about the whole case before you even get to Michael Cohen. And in some ways, the way that the case was structured, the order of proof makes that really easy. And I think it was deliberate that they're going to say, let's look at all the proof before you even get to Michael Cohen and how strong the case is. And then here's icing that you have from him. And having followed the case as closely as you have, what do you think the defense argument will be? Michael Cohen is indispensable to a conviction, and no one in this room would possibly in a million years say, even if you say, you know what, I think he seems like I sort of believe him on certain things, no one would ever say that he is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And they called him because they knew they needed it, And he provides pieces that they need. He provides the piece about the direct knowledge of Donald Trump to the false business records. And there's a reason that he was

there. And that is why you need to acquit. I mean, he is obviously a very fallible witness. I think the state just will flip that and say, the reason he is, all of these things you're hearing about him being such a louse is why he would never in a million years fork over $130,000 of his own money out of the goodness of his heart, as Hope Hicks said. And so I think you're going to see a lot of sort of flipping of the script on that by the state, which goes, by the way, the way it works in the state court is the defense goes first, the state goes second. Oh, that's interesting. Walk us through what happens after closing arguments. I know this is a unique case, but how long do juries normally take to deliberate?

I mean, not to put pressure on you, but we have a podcast schedule to try to adhere to here. As does Andrew. Yeah, exactly. No one knows how long it takes. really interesting. But the defense goes, the state goes, the judge then gives jury instructions, and then the jurors go back and deliberate. They can send out notes. They can have questions about the law. They could ask to hear some testimony back. And with respect to each of the 34 counts. For each count, there is a verdict. It takes 12 on each count to convict. It takes 12 on each count to acquit. You can't have an acquittal without all 12. You can't have a conviction without all 12. And if you're somewhere in between, it's called a hung jury. Sometimes a jury sends out a note and says, we just can't reach a verdict. And the judge sends them back

saying, you know, do your best, give it the old college try. You can also have what's called a split verdict where they reach a verdict of acquittal on some, a conviction on some, or an acquittal on some and a hung jury on some, or a conviction on some and a hung, you know, mix and match. One of the things to keep an eye out, one of the ways that I think you could have a split verdict here is the checks that Donald Trump himself signed versus the ones that his sons signed. And so the first 10 of the 34 counts are not ones that Donald Trump himself signed. So you could have this very nerve-wracking moment where the first 10 counts are not guilty, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be not guilty for all 34 because the test will be count 11, whether on that one.

So that's, you know, because I could see a jury saying, you know what, maybe we'll give him the ones where he didn't personally sign because that way we can't, you know, each check was that the false invoice was attached to it that he could easily see that it was fake. And you could see them thinking, okay, I'm going to convict on those, but not the others. I'm sure social media would handle that really well if there was a 10 not guilty. Headlines will be up in the New York Times and everywhere else before we even get to count 11. Oh, yeah. Like shit show. Yeah. That's the legal term. It seems appropriate in this case. Look, we don't do predictions on our show, but obviously you can. And I know you may be saving this for your podcast, which everyone should subscribe to.

But give me your best guess what you think is going to happen here based on how closely you've watched this case, what the prosecution has done, what the defense have done, the evidence presented, et cetera. So you're going to be really disappointed. So I'm going to give you two answers. Neither are going to be satisfactory. One, every single trial I did as a prosecutor, I thought I would lose. I was the most pessimistic person. And every single note that a jury would come out with, I would read it with the, trying to figure out the most disadvantageous view. I'd be like, oh my God, we've lost. Even with notes that were unbelievably favorable, like, you know, in order to convict,

is it enough if we found two counts against him? You know, I'd be like, okay, that's a problem. That's generally my approach to politics, so I appreciate that, yes. That's true, I was gonna say. Yeah, so that's sort of one sort of issue. And I just think the other is that I just don't know. There's so many things in this case that are unknowns. If this was a normal case, if it didn't involve a former president where I'm concerned about the jury unconsciously

thinking that there has to be more proof and more direct proof, even though circumstantial proof is just as good as direct proof under the law. But I could see some jurors thinking that. I could also imagine, having been in high-profile matters, that there will be a juror who doesn't want to deliberate, who has a strong view one way or the other. But if it was a normal case, and I was assessing this as a prosecutor saying, should I bring the case? I would think, oh, this is an incredibly strong case. I mean, I was surprised how strong this case was. From the moment it started with David Pecker, I thought, okay, David Pecker was an incredibly good witness for the state and answered the question, which I think a lot of us had, which is, why bring this case? I was like, okay, maybe it's a down

scale media outlet, but you have this media outlet with a secret agreement to help a political candidate, both by catching and killing and disseminating intentionally false stories about his adversaries. I was like, okay, if I were a juror, I'd be like,

I understand why I should care. Yeah. Last question. We'll let you go. So we had our pal Norm Eisen on uh has said that may 20th was the date he was circling as to the uh whether the supreme court would hand down the decision on uh whether trump is immune from prosecution uh in the january 6th case and he thought that after that date it would be very very difficult to difficult to have a case before the election.

Do you think the window has closed for a case before the election on the January 6th charges? Yeah, I mean, I thought it had closed just in the way that they handled the case vetoed by people who seem to have a penchant for flying all sorts of flags around their homes and beach homes. there is, is that in whatever standard they may come up with, that it allows Judge Chutkin, the trial judge, to hold a hearing on that issue about sort of what is official conduct, what is private conduct. Because if she can hold a hearing, she doesn't have to wait to do that. She can just... And that, by the way, when I say a hearing, I mean a factual hearing where the prosecution can say, you know what, Mike Pence, hop on the stand. So I think that's the, to me, that's the only remaining possibility in terms of having an additional factual presentation that the American public would be able to not see live, but they would be able to experience before the election. Andrew Weissman, thank you so much for joining Pod Save America. We'll put you down for guilty on all 34 counts.

Tweet that out, social team. Everyone check out Prosecuting Donald Trump with Andrew and Mary McCord. And thanks again for joining us and have a good one. Thanks so much. Thanks to Andrew Weissman for joining the show. Everyone have a fantastic weekend. And I think we are off on Monday because it's Memorial Day. But then, you know, just a million pods we'll have from us because we're here.

Bye, everyone. Before we go, I also want to say happy birthday to Kyla, who turned six today. Kyla, happy birthday. That is fantastic. Yes, six years old. It's wild. Happy birthday, Kyla. If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more,

consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends. And if you're already doom-scrolling, don't forget to follow us at Pod Save America on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more. Plus, if you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review.

Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Olivia Martinez and David Toledo. Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farah Safari. Kira Wakeem is our senior producer. Reid Cherlin is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.

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