Trump's Trials - An inconceivable summer — what comes next?

Episode Date: August 31, 2024

For this episode of Trump's Trials, host Scott Detrow takes a look back at an unbelievable summer in politics. NPR's Domenico Montanaro looks ahead at what to expect over the next 66 days of campaigning.Follow the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify for new episodes each Saturday.Sign up for sponsor-free episodes and support NPR's political journalism at plus.npr.org/trumpstrials.Email the show at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

It's Trump's Trials from NPR. I'm Scott Detro. We love Trump! This is a persecution. He actually just stormed out of the courtroom. Innocent to a proven guilty in a court of law. We got used to a certain word this summer. Unprecedented.

Sure, it's been in style and been pretty accurate for a lot of the politics of the past decade, but we have never seen a political summer like the summer of 2024. It started in late May. Former President Donald Trump has been found guilty on 34 felony counts, the charge falsifying business records in the first degree. When a New York jury found former President Donald Trump guilty on criminal charges tied to his 2016 campaign for president. Never in American history has a former president or a major presidential

nominee been found guilty on criminal charges. And yet, over the next month, Trump would grow stronger and stronger in his repeat bid for the White House. First came the late-June debate between Trump and President Joe Biden. It was unprecedented as well. Biden stumbled. He trailed off. His mouth hung open for long chunks of time. Making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible

for what I've been able to do with the COVID, excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with... with dealing with everything we have to do with, look, if we finally beat Medicare. To many voters and many other Democratic officials, Biden just seemed too old, painfully old, for another term. Party leaders like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pressured him to do something, and yep, here's that word again, unprecedented, to step aside, despite the fact the convention was weeks away and the primary season had already run its course. It's up to the president to decide if he is going to run. We're all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short.

As this played out, Trump scored legal win after legal win. The Supreme Court granted broad criminal immunity for actions taken by sitting presidents. The decision effectively froze two of Trump's criminal cases, and meanwhile, the third criminal case awaiting trial would be dismissed weeks later. This is an absolute win for Donald Trump. This effectively grants Donald Trump blanket immunity because it makes

it impossible for a trial to go forward either in the classified documents case and the January 6th case. And then came July 13th. On the eve of a convention that would nominate Trump for a third election in a row, the emboldened candidate held a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Take a look at what happened. We are bringing you some breaking news right now. Former President Donald Trump was just rushed off the stage during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump appears to have been injured

based on video footage of the rally. Video shows him bleeding from the ear as Secret Service led him to his SUV. A would-be assassin had climbed onto a nearby roof and fired several shots at Trump and the crowd with an AR-15. One of the bullets grazed Trump's ear. If I had not moved my head at that very last instant, the assassin's bullet would have perfectly hit its mark, and I would not be here tonight. We would not be together.

As has been the case throughout history, the failed assassination attempt seemed to make Trump politically stronger. And then we saw President Trump get up. You could see blood on his ear. He was clearly shaken, but enthusiastic and kind of indicating to indicating everybody he was okay. The images of Trump's defiant raised fist instantly became iconic.

Then less than 48 hours later, federal judge Eileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, threw out the federal criminal case centered around classified documents Trump allegedly took with him after he left the White House and refused to return to the government. The criminal case, viewed by many as the most open and shut prosecution in terms of the hard evidence, was gone. In a matter of weeks, Trump seemed to have escaped all three serious remaining criminal cases he was facing. And by the way, sentencing had been delayed in that New York case.

At the Republican convention, Trump and running mate JD Vance seemed unbeatable, especially with so many Democrats doubting Biden. It felt like a coronation, but then came another weekend news bombshell. President Joe Biden has just announced that he is dropping out of the 2024 presidential race. President Biden has just announced that he is ending his re-election bid.

President Biden withdrawing from the 2024 race, stepping off of the ticket and endorsing his vice president Kamala Harris. Biden was out and Vice President Kamala Harris quickly consolidated support from party leaders. Harris had had an at times rocky vice presidency. Many Democrats had doubted her political strengths but she quickly leaned into her prosecutor past. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump's type. By late July, Harris took charge and took off. Her campaign reports it has raised more than $100 million since President Biden stepped

aside on Sunday and endorsed her. She and her campaign were suddenly viral. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context. And quickly, the inevitable Trump second term didn't feel so inevitable. Trump struggled and flailed, resorting to racist attacks. She was always of Indian heritage,

and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black. With Trump reverting to his old ways, Democrats found a new mantra. These guys are just weird. Thanks to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a man who quickly found himself on the Democratic ticket as Harris' running mate. By late August, against all odds, Democrats were gathering at their convention,

feeling just as optimistic as the Republicans had a few weeks earlier. In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man. But the consequences, but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious. So here we are, Labor Day weekend. Biden is gone, replaced with Harris. Trump's main storyline has changed from convicted felon to would-be political martyr to runaway frontrunner to flailing and unfocused. Special counsel Jack Smith has submitted filings to get the two federal criminal cases against Trump moving again.

And polls show Harris with narrow leads nationally as well as in many of the key swing states. There are 66 days left until election day and another debate less than two weeks away. Certainly more time for more unprecedented political news. When we come back, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro tries to predict the future. Support for this podcast and the following message come from WISE, the app that makes managing your money in different currencies easy. With WISE, you can send and spend money internationally at the mid-market exchange rate. No guesswork and no hidden fees. Learn more about how Wyze could work

for you at Wyze.com. If you think the economy makes no sense right now... You are probably right, because even economists can't explain it lately. But our podcast, The Indicator from Planet Money... We're a little dose of clarity on the biggest economic questions of the day. And about the forces that affect your life. In 10 minutes or less, every weekday, The Indicator from Planet Money from NPR. Here at Shortwave Space Camp, we escape our everyday lives to explore the mysteries and

quirks of the universe. We find weird, fun, interesting stories that explain how the cosmos is partying all around us. From stars to dwarf planets to black holes and beyond, we've got you. Listen now to the shortwave podcast from NPR. And we're back with senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.

Domenico, how's it going? Oh, good, Scott. Good to be back. Always good to talk to you, especially when it's not one in the morning. Yeah, well, we are available to cover the news when it happens and where it happens. So Domenico, look, we just recapped this unpredictable, unprecedented, wild summer of political news. Turning the page, looking forward to the fall, what are the big things you're watching for

as the campaigns head into high gear in these final few months? Well, this past month, you know, with Kamala Harris getting into the race, it was really about defining Kamala Harris or the attempt at defining her on either side. You know, you had, you know, Harris's team wanting to build out her biography

and make people really kind of sympathize and connect with her. Right? And that was the goal. And understandably, the Trump folks who had been running an election against somebody else for a year and a half or so want to focus in on her time as a prosecutor in San Francisco because they can paint her as a San Francisco liberal. And there's one particular ad that has been running almost more than any other ad, $25 million behind it, doing just that. Now, looking

ahead, because they've done so much on biographical work on both sides to define Harris, now what's going to happen is that the Harris campaign is going to pivot to contrast with Trump and hope that views of her are a little bit more solidified, a little bit more locked in. And, you know, of course then there's issues, right? So the backdrop of this election, of course, is prices. And are there any sort of changes at all when it comes to views of the economy? And are Democrats able to turn out people on abortion rights? Or are Republicans able to turn out, you know, moderate voters on something like immigration

and crime, which is what they're pushing on. Nat. Jensen A lot of focus on the trend lines of the polls over the last few weeks. My question to you about polls is, is what the big picture story is they're telling us about the strengths and weaknesses of both candidates? Nat. Jensen Well, the bottom line is that Kamala Harris is doing better than Joe Biden did, right?

When President Biden was the presumptive nominee right after his debate, you started to see things slip a little bit in the swing states. So compared to Joe Biden in that time frame, Kamala Harris is doing much better. On average in the swing states, she's gained about four to six points. That is a huge shift considering our hyper polarized environment. And what that's meant is that in the polls within the margin of error, we should say, and everyone still expects very close election in the three blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, she's now taken narrow leads, which is pretty big deal because if she's able to win everywhere she's supposed to win and pick up those three, she'd be exactly at 270 electoral votes that she needs to become president of the United States.

And she's closed the gap entirely in the four Sunbelt states of North Carolina and Georgia in the East and Arizona and Nevada out West. Let's talk about the criminal cases, which, you know, been our favorite thing to talk about over the past year. It is Trump trials after all. It is really interesting to me that on one hand, Harris and the Now Harris campaign is being much more pointed than Biden and his campaign ever were about the criminal cases, calling Trump a convicted felon. And yet, at the same time, these cases feel less politically relevant than ever before.

Yeah. I mean, they obviously are less politically relevant than ever before because there isn't going to be a trial before the election. That's just simply a product of the fact that Trump's lawyers have been successful in being able to delay some of these cases. At the same time, you're right about Kamala Harris. She's really leaning into her days as a prosecutor to be able to say that she was able to take down fraudsters and draw parallels between Donald Trump. So she's been much more explicit than Biden has because she's trying to also frame her prosecutorial record.

Now she's not just focusing on Trump's convictions. She is talking about a vision for the future, which is also different than Biden. All right. Domenico Montanaro, thanks a lot. Hey, you're welcome. And a quick note to listeners. When we launched this podcast last year, the goal was to help you make sense of all of the overlapping criminal cases that Trump was facing as he mounted another bid to the White House.

Our regular listeners know that, as we laid out here in this episode, many of those cases are now in a state of limbo. Two of these cases directly stem from the actions that Trump and his advisors took after the last election, their alleged attempts to overturn the results of a race that he lost. So, with this next election approaching fast, we are going to expand our scope of coverage. When there is big news coming out of the criminal cases, we will still cover it here, but we will also keep you informed on all of the legal battles about this upcoming election that are already underway in the key states that will decide who wins the White House.

So keep checking your feeds for new episodes because there's going to be a lot to sort through. This show is produced by Tyler Bartleman, edited by Adam Rainey, Krishnadev Kalamar, and Steve Drummond. Our executive producers are Beth Donovan and Sammy Yenigan. Eric Maripotti is NPR's vice president of news programming. I'm Scott Detro. Thanks for listening to Trump's Trials from NPR.

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