Ep. 1316 - The Big Winners and Losers of The Republican Debate
Michael summarizes three hours of debate in 60 seconds, Jenna Ellis joins Michael in an exclusive first interview after her arrest, and America’s evil top hat tries to destroy Jordan Peterson.
Ep.1316
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Last night, President Trump hung out with Tucker Carlson and the rest of the GOP field debated in Milwaukee.
I am going to sum up almost three hours of chatter across two separate broadcasts in about 60 seconds.
Vivek Ramaswamy helped himself the most by doing well as an unknown candidate.
Mike Pence slightly exceeded expectations, which were low.
Ron DeSantis met expectations, which were moderate.
Chris Christie lobbed a few zingers, but they didn't land nearly as well as they did last time.
Among the lower-polling candidates, Nikki Haley and Tim Scott also met expectations and also did not move the needle.
Among the barely-polling candidates, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson exceeded expectations inasmuch as he did not trans a child on stage.
And soft-on-abortion Doug Burgum proved himself to be the single worst candidate in the race by virtually every measure, and also, somehow, perhaps the most likable.
They all did fine.
But in a race like this, fine just isn't good enough.
Not even close.
Not one of the candidates managed to break out in such a way that would threaten the frontrunner, who currently leads his most popular rival by more than 40 points.
Which means, after all that, That Trump won the night without even showing up.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
This episode is brought to you by Good Ranchers.
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We'll talk about the debate.
There are a few moments I want to talk about.
Then I want to talk about a more important story, which is that political dissidents are being rounded up in this country for nothing.
My friend Jenna Ellis has been arrested and booked and had a mugshot taken of her in Fulton County, Georgia.
For simply being the lawyer to the then president of the United States.
She's an actual political prisoner who's now out on bond.
She's going to be coming on whenever we can connect with her.
We're going to get Jenna on here.
This will be the exclusive first interview since she's gotten out of jail.
So we'll have Jenna in just a moment.
First, though, we'll get through this debate.
I enjoyed the debate.
It was everything I hoped for, which is the candidates all sort of sniping at each other.
Most of my predictions came true.
I wasn't terribly surprised by anything in the debate.
The big surprises to me were Vivek did a little bit better than I expected.
Not much better, but a little bit better.
I already had fairly high expectations for him.
DeSantis did a little bit worse than I expected.
His answers were all great.
His record is great.
He's a great guy.
I personally really like him.
The reason I say he underperformed Or at best, I would say maybe met the expectations which had been moderated down from the high expectations at the launch of his campaign is because he kind of disappeared.
He was at the center of the stage of the of the non-Trump candidates.
He was the main guy.
And he didn't he didn't really land a big punch.
Worse yet, he wasn't even really attacked by his rivals, so he just wasn't the center of attention.
The attention was focused much more on Vivek or on Mike Pence, oddly enough, or a little bit on Chris Christie.
So it didn't move the needle for him, and he needs the needle to be moved because he keeps slipping in the polls.
Again, I've said from the beginning, I don't really blame DeSantis for this.
I think he was in an impossible position from the beginning.
I think there's a line that Julius Caesar said when he crossed the Rubicon, which is, alia iacta est, the die is cast, that the circumstances now are such that History is going to unfold in a particular way because of just how the whole thing's been set up.
In the case of crossing the Rubicon, it was going to be violent conflict between forces in Rome.
In the case of Trump running for a non-consecutive second term, it meant that anyone who ran against Trump was going to be seen as the I don't know, the anti-Trump candidate.
They were going to attract the never-Trumpers.
They were going to raise theire of the people who were still loyal to Trump.
Even if DeSantis is the best governor ever, he's Trump 2.0, 3.0, bigger, better, faster, stronger.
Maybe let's say all of that were true.
Just the circumstances of the race and the high expectations he had from everyone who wanted an alternative to Trump meant that he was almost certainly never going to live up to those expectations.
And if I were the DeSantis campaign, I would say this is panic time.
Because what we've been told about the polls from the beginning is, yeah, Trump is leading by a lot, but just wait until DeSantis announces.
Once he announces, then it's all going to change.
Then he announced, and what happened?
Trump's lead increased.
But they said, well, forget about the polls.
It's silly season.
No one's paying attention.
Just wait until the debate.
DeSantis is going to totally crush it at the debate.
But Trump didn't show up to the debate, so he didn't get his chance to land a punch on Trump.
As it stands now, I'm not convinced Trump is ever going to show up to a primary debate.
In fact, some of the other candidates seem to get more of the spotlight.
So we'll see how the polls move after this debate.
I'm not convinced they're going to improve for DeSantis.
And so the question for the donors and for the campaign staff is, what are we waiting for?
Everything we've been told to wait for and then it's all going to change, that hasn't happened.
So I'm not saying DeSantis is totally dead.
I don't think he's totally dead.
But he has got to radically shake up what he is doing.
What he is doing right now is losing in a very gradual, dignified way, and allowing other candidates to jump up.
I guess the best performance of the night, inasmuch as he went from nothing, he went from a complete unknown to now a prominent American political figure, was Vivek.
And he was very, very bold.
I mean, Vivek came out and had the audacity to say on the stage that he was the only candidate not bought and paid for.
I'm the only person on the stage who isn't bought and paid for so I can say this.
The climate change agenda is a hoax.
Hold on, hold on.
I've had enough.
And we have to declare independent schools.
Listen, listen, listen.
Hold on, hold on.
I've had enough.
I've had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT standing up here.
And the last person in one of these debates, Brett, who stood in the middle of the stage and said, what's a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here was Barack Obama.
And I'm afraid we're dealing with the same type of amateur standing stage tonight. - Come over and give me a hug!
It's so easy that you caught at the end.
Well, then give me a hug.
And he goes on and he says, if I'm like Obama, then great.
Give me a hug.
You'll help elect me just like you helped elect Obama, which was a good.
It was a good hit from Christie.
Christie hit Vivek on his weakest points, which is he sounds very slick and he's young.
And he he did use a line from Obama.
So Christie got his usual zinger in there.
But it didn't land in the way that it landed on Rubio.
He was able to destroy Rubio on basically the exact same attack.
The chat GBT line against Vivek was the same thing as the here's the robotic canned 30 second speech line of attack against Marco Rubio.
It didn't really work on Vivek though.
Who knows, maybe he was a little too bold in the performance.
Maybe that turned off some more moderate voters, some more ordinary voters, just in the same way that it excited more of the online millennial type of GOP base.
But that boldness has paid off for Vivek every step of the way.
We're all talking about him tonight.
All the fire last night on that stage was aimed at him.
Fortune favors the bold.
If you don't take any big risks as a candidate who is way down in the polls, then you really don't have any shot.
You're just going to be a very pleasant, amiable loser.
You're going to be a really well-thought-of, put-together, respectable number two.
The next big, fiery moment of the debate was when Nikki Haley, who also did fairly well, Given that the expectations from the polls were very, very low, I think she sort of helped herself.
Nikki and DeSantis and Mike Pence all started sniping at each other over abortion.
Can't we all agree that we should ban late-term abortions?
Can't we all agree that we should encourage adoptions?
Can't we all agree that doctors and nurses who don't believe in abortions shouldn't have to perform them?
Can't we all agree that contraception should be available?
And can't we all agree that we are not going to put a woman in jail or give her the death penalty if she gets an abortion?
Can't we have a minimum standard in every state in the nation that says when a baby is capable of feeling pain, an abortion cannot be allowed?
You gotta do what you think is right.
I believe in a culture of life.
I was proud to sign the heartbeat bill.
What the Democrats are trying to do on this issue is wrong to allow abortion all the way up to the moment of birth.
They all had good answers.
I thought DeSantis' answer here was the best.
Nikki opens up and she says, and you couldn't hear it totally in that clip, but you see her alluding to it.
She's saying, look, we need some consensus here.
We don't have enough senators to really stop abortion at the federal level.
So we just need to work together and find some consensus.
Maybe it's 15 weeks, maybe it's however many weeks.
But let's just agree on this issue and stop demonizing it.
Pence comes out as the social conservative and says, what are you talking about?
You know, I'm a real pro-lifer.
You're not a real pro-lifer, Nikki.
I'm a real pro-lifer.
And we need to be much tougher on it.
And then Ron DeSantis comes out, and I felt he melded both worlds.
And he seemed the most sincere, which is he said, look, I just support life.
And so I passed a law about it, and I have no regrets about that.
I just think we need to support life any way that we can.
And I don't want to hear any BS about, well, you can't make an abortion law at the federal level.
It all has to be at the state level.
I don't want to hear that procedural nonsense.
And I don't want to hear, well, we need to just kind of reach a consensus and agree that we can kill babies before this time, but not after this time.
I'm pro-life.
I'm going to do whatever pro-life thing I can do practically.
So he brings in the practical part that Nikki was trying to talk about, but he brings in the principled and consistent part that Mike Pence was talking about.
I thought it was a good answer, but it just faded away rather quickly as, once again, the vague steals the spotlight and gets into a big spat with Mike Pence.
What we really need is a tonal reset from the top, saying that this is what it means to be an American.
Yes, we will stand for the rule of law.
Yes, we will close the southern border where criminals are coming in every day.
And yes, we will back law enforcement because we remember who we really are.
And that's also how we address that mental health epidemic in the next generation that is directly leading to violent crime.
We're not looking for a new national identity.
The American people are the most faith-filled, freedom-loving, idealistic, hard-working people the world has ever known.
We just need government as good as our people.
Mike, I think the difference is you might have, as some others like you may have on this stage, it's mourning in America speech.
It is not mourning in America.
We live in a dark moment and we have to confront the fact that we're in an internal sort of cold cultural civil war.
We're equating the American people with the failed government in Washington DC.
We just need government as good as our people again.
And then Vivek goes on and he says, look, I don't know what that line even means.
It's just, that's just a line that's recycled from the Reagan era.
And just like your thesis, you're trying to say, well, it's really, it's really morning in America.
Everything's hunky dory.
We just need to, you know, fix our attitude or something.
And Vivek is saying, no, we, we're in a cold cultural civil war.
He didn't say this explicitly, but I think the implication is.
Killing babies, they're transing kids, they're arresting the opposition leader and his lawyers and his supporters.
We're not in this happy moment, let's all just live up to our ideals.
We need to make structural political change to get back to a reasonable sense of American identity.
This was purely a generational divide.
I'm not saying one guy won and one guy lost this fight.
I think the boomers are going to be more likely to favor Pence's And I think the millennials and the Zoomers are going to be more likely to favor Vivek's view.
I thought this was one of the first actual generational conflicts that you've seen on any presidential debate stage.
Simply because the candidates just keep getting older and older and older.
So we haven't seen that injection of millennial or obviously not Zoomer talent yet.
Vivek's 38 years old, so this is about as early as a millennial could run for president.
But that is a big divide.
The boomers, the silent generation, they're still of the belief that, oh, actually, things are really okay.
We just got to remember who we are.
And the millennials are saying, man, things are not okay.
Maybe they were okay when you were growing up, but there are some serious issues that are not going to get better by wishful thinking.
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The question is, was Vivek too millennial?
Was Vivek too online?
Was Vivek too focused on campaigning to Twitter rather than to the moderate American voter?
This became especially clear on foreign policy when Vivek came out against funding for Ukraine.
Mr. Ramaswamy, you would not support an increase of funding to Ukraine?
I would not.
And I think that this is disastrous.
That we are protecting against an invasion across somebody else's border when we should use those same military resources to prevent across the invasion of our own southern border here in the United States.
We are driving Russia further into China's hands.
The Russia-China alliance is the single greatest threat we face.
And I find it offensive that we have professional politicians on the stage that will make a pilgrimage to Kiev, to their Pope, Zelensky, without doing the same thing for people in Maui, or the south side of Chicago, or Kensington.
I think that we have to put the interests of Americans first.
Secure our own border instead of somebody else's.
Okay, you hear Mike Pence trying to interrupt there at the end.
I actually kind of liked the Pence interruptions because the knock on Pence is that he's too boring and sleepy.
And even if the interruptions became tedious and were impolite, they did show that the guy was sort of fired up.
The consensus view, the neocon view, the GOP establishment view is that the American people still love the war in Ukraine and we want to support the war in Ukraine.
The very online, new right, emerging millennial Zoom review is that the war in Ukraine is a money pit, these foreign adventures are pointless at best and harmful at worst, and we need to pull back from our imperial ambitions overseas.
Vivek is obviously articulating that latter point of view.
It comes down on Ukraine because both sides point to polls to say that their side is winning.
The neocon types will point to polls that when you ask the American people, NGOP voters, do you support Ukraine in the war against Russia?
They'll say yes, overwhelmingly.
Millennial Zoomer view, which is we don't really want to be involved in Ukraine, they'll point to polls which ask people, do you want to continue to fund the war in Ukraine?
And the people overwhelmingly say, no, we don't want to fund the war in Ukraine.
So you're getting a little bit of a conflict there.
Both people are going to point to their polls.
This could be a real sticking point in the election.
Generally, people do not vote on foreign policy in presidential elections.
But for the first time in a long time, you're seeing a major fissure On the right, among the GOP, not just with fringe candidates, but with mainstream candidates, over the direction of foreign policy.
This is because of the election of Trump.
This is in part, I think, why the establishment hates him so much, is because for decades, no matter which party got elected, they might disagree over certain issues, but they would always agree on more migration, they would always agree on more free trade and outsourcing, and they would always agree on more war.
They would always agree on more bombing of the same old countries that both parties bomb.
And Trump comes in and he says, I don't want to do that.
I don't want to build up empires overseas.
I don't want to keep bombing the Middle East.
Occasionally I'll do it to tidy things up, but I don't want to get involved in nation building.
And I think that and those two other issues are a big part of the reason why the establishment has gone after him so hard.
It did become a big point of the debate last night.
It was where Nikki and Vivek both articulated their views the best and probably both gained a little bit among their base.
This guy is a murderer, and you are choosing a murderer over a pro-American country.
Nikki, I wish you well in your future career on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon.
You know, I'm not on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon.
But the fact of the matter, Boeing came off of it, but you've been pushing this lie all week, Nikki.
You want to go and defund Israel?
Under your watch, you will make America less safe.
You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows.
And you know what?
There's a foreign policy experience that you all have.
I love their border policies.
I love their tough-on-crime policies.
I love that they have a national identity and an Iron Dome to protect their homeland.
And so, yes, I want to learn from the friends that we're supporting.
And what puzzles me is, no, I want to learn from those and apply those to protect our homeland, Mickey.
That is the answer.
Wow, that is an amazing line there at the end.
So what Vivek is referring to, he says, I love Israel's border policies.
We should have those.
I love Israel's immigration policies and Israel's strong sense of national identity, and we should emulate that.
In America.
We also should have a sense of national identity.
We also should have strong borders.
And so he's clearly pushing the more new right foreign policy, the kind of foreign policy articulated by Tucker Carlson, the foreign policy at least hinted at by Donald Trump, the foreign policy that seems to be favored by younger conservatives, Zoomers and some millennials.
And it's not a new It's not a new right foreign policy in that that used to be the foreign policy of conservatives.
That used to be the old right.
That's the traditional conservative foreign policy in the United States.
By the middle to the end of the 20th century, the foreign policy in the United States of conservatives became a little bit more aggressive, interventionist, Wilsonian.
But that, in many ways, what Vivek is talking about is a return to an older, more traditional conservative type of foreign policy.
Nikki is pushing a foreign policy that's more typical of the last 20, 30 years, often called the neoconservative view.
She comes in and she says, Israel doesn't need America.
America needs Israel, which I think is a line she's going to come to regret.
First of all, because at least the first part is not true.
Israel needs America.
If America turned its back on Israel, that nation would very likely cease to exist.
Now, does America benefit from the relationship of Israel?
Perhaps.
Does America need Israel?
Perhaps one could even make that argument too.
But this is the strongest view of this nation-building overseas interventionist State Department establishment foreign policy.
And again, that policy might appeal to older GOP voters, and older GOP voters play a disproportionate role in the primary process, certainly over younger voters.
But this is the reason why I think foreign policy could be a point of contention here, because you're now seeing among the mainstream candidates a stark disagreement on foreign policy.
And you've got, because of the war in Ukraine, the prospect of the first major war in Europe since World War II, the threat of World War III because you're dealing with a proxy war between the global superpower and a nuclear former superpower in Russia.
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Alright, last thing I want to say about the debate, then I want to move on to the prosecutions and some other things that are going on.
Maybe we'll get Jenna on the line.
There was one moment in particular That was really tough for the DeSantis performance.
I thought DeSantis did fine.
The problem is doing fine is not good enough when you're down 40 points.
But he did fine.
It's not like he blew himself up on stage or anything like that.
He'll be at the next debate and he'll have to hope that he doesn't lose too much ground.
There was one moment that actually didn't go well for him.
And the moment that didn't go well for him, actively was bad for him, was when the candidates were asked to raise their hand if They would support Donald Trump as the Republican nominee if he were nominated, even if he was convicted of a crime in court.
So this is a very dangerous hypothetical.
No one on stage wants to answer this.
Here's how it went down.
I'll describe it for you if you're not watching, if you're just listening to the show.
Please raise your hand if you would.
Vivek's hand goes straight up, followed by Nicky, Tim Scott, Fergham on the end.
Then some of the guys... Mike Pence puts his hand up, eventually.
Christie puts his hand half up.
Asa Hutchinson doesn't say anything.
Now, play that clip again, because I want to focus now on this brutal moment for the guy who's at the center of the stage.
If this were a nine-person race, DeSantis would have been dead center, because it's an eight-person race in the second tier.
DeSantis and Vivek are dead center, and you see the stark contrast.
Vivek's hand shoots up first thing, way high.
DeSantis keeps his arm down, looks at Vivek, sees that his hand went up, and then puts his hand up at least halfway.
Horrible look.
And it's a horrible look not because of the substance.
I think DeSantis could have done well on this question, whether he raised his hand or not.
He would have done better had he raised his hand, but even if he had kept his hand down, The key to this answer was not the substance of are you going to support Trump or not.
The key to the question is the conviction.
The key to the question was the speed, the confidence with which you did it.
There's a line.
We were just talking about Israel.
There's a line that a Jewish friend of mine told me years ago in Yiddish that I'm going to butcher the Yiddish, but I'll try it anyway.
Anyway, I wrote it down.
Which means, you couldn't even have that translated through some kind of translation app, my pronunciation so bad.
What that line means is, if you're gonna eat pork, eat it until your mouth drips.
If you're going to do it, do it.
If you're going to do something that is transgressive, if you're going to do something that is dangerous, if you're going to do something that maybe you shouldn't do, then do it.
At least do it.
At least eat it until your mouth drips, okay?
And here, you've got something that candidates are not supposed to do.
They're not supposed to talk about supporting their rival in the race.
They're not supposed to talk about how they would let this guy get away with a criminal conviction and they would still support him in the race.
They're breaking rules for political candidates.
But the circumstances of this question in this unique primary campaign are such that it does benefit them to say that they will support Donald Trump, even if he's convicted, if he's the nominee.
They signed the pledge.
Now, I guess Trump didn't sign the pledge, so maybe they can wiggle their way out of it.
But they have They're already doing it.
And so if you're going to do it, look strong about it.
Look like you have a view.
Look like you've thought about this thing.
So Vivek's hand shoots right up in the air.
It's that, it's not even the hand, it's the look to Vivek was just seeding the ground, the hard-won ground that DeSantis has spent years as governor of Florida, making himself the alternative to Donald Trump, the leader in the race, other than Trump, who's far and away the leader.
But he's won that ground, and he seeded it last night, and he seeded it through just kind of fading into the background and letting other louder, more talkative candidates take the field.
All of which is to say, I watched the Trump-Tucker interview.
Love Tucker, love Trump.
It was just an interview.
That didn't move the needle at all.
But the debate didn't move the needle either, which means that by default, Trump wins the night.
So I want to get to something that's much more important than the debate, which didn't change anything.
I want to get to something that might change not only the 2024 election, but our entire political order.
Something that is so egregious that It represents, I think without hyperbole, an actual crossing of the Rubicon in the American political order, and it happens to involve a friend of mine, a personal friend of mine, along with a lot of other people who don't deserve to be persecuted in the way that they're being persecuted.
The liberals are rounding up conservative dissidents, and not just excitable Midwestern grannies who walked around the Capitol Rotunda on January 6th, the worst day in the history of this or any republic.
No.
They're not even just arresting the leader of the opposition.
So insane.
A former president.
So insane.
They're arresting his lawyers just for representing him.
For having the temerity to provide legal representation to the then sitting president of the United States.
That is for making oneself a dissident against the liberal establishment regime.
These people are now being arrested, including my friend, Jenna Ellis, who's coming to us.
Jenna, first of all, thanks for making the time.
I know you're busy.
We've been praying for you, obviously, and following this closely.
I think this is the first time you're speaking since you got out of jail.
It is, and thank you so much, Michael, for your friendship and your prayers and support.
This has been just an incredibly Insane experience to see that the left is not only weaponizing government, but they're trying to criminalize the practice of law.
Tell me everything that happened before.
This is so serious that it's either like you kind of laugh or cry.
I mean, it's so not even just because it involves you, but I just I never imagined this would happen in the United States.
We talk about political prisoners in evil regimes, Russia and communist China, North Korea.
You're a political prisoner.
You're out on bond.
We'll talk about that, too.
But you're a political prisoner, as simple as that.
I'm wondering which nation is going to have more political prisoners by the end of 2024.
Communist China, Communist North Korea, Putin's Russia, or good old U.S.
of A. The only thing I'll say to make a little light of it is, our pal Mr. Andrew Klavan did say you have the most beautiful mugshot ever in the history of prosecutions, but they They took your mugshot.
It's so crazy, and this is not an America that I recognize.
And you do have to keep a sense of humor through this, but also realize the gravity of this.
And the reason that I smiled yesterday was because the left wants to see us miserable and crying like they are, because they have a false worldview.
They hate this country.
They want to tear down our institutions of government.
They want to tear down the constitutionally protected right to obtain counsel.
They want to tear down the practice of lawyering.
And so I went in there simply determined to say, not today.
And I will face this with resolve.
And I will face this with the joy that I have in the Lord in my faith and with the great Christian history and tradition of being political prisoners of regimes.
And I am overwhelmed at Actually, I never thought in my lifetime I would stand shoulder to shoulder with some of those who have gone before me.
But I actually have this wonderful proof of incarceration that I was given that I'm going to frame to show that, you know, this is something that is very serious.
And so I had to surrender yesterday in Fulton County and I was taken back.
And, you know, you see in in the jail and you see in the movies kind of when they do that walk Of shame, basically, with all of the other prisoners that are behind bars in the cells together, like clamoring and catcalling.
That literally happened.
And so the woman who took me back, and I won't mention her name, but she was incredibly kind.
I thanked her afterwards because she stuck by me the entire time that I was in that jail.
I was taken into a place that was just the general population where there were other mostly men that were around that were catcalling me, that were saying vile things.
And she said, just look straight ahead.
Don't worry.
I will be right here by your side the whole time.
And she did her job and I respect her for that.
But this is what this has come to in the United States of America, that if you are willing to, as a lawyer, give legal advice and provide assistance of counsel to the leader of the political opposition, then you too will become a political prisoner and you will be targeted.
And so I spent the afternoon in the Fulton County Jail and now have to report to pretrial services, beyond bond, And they can control any aspect of my life if I still want to enjoy my freedom here in the United States of America.
And if this is not the biggest political issue that every single GOP candidate should have stood up strongly debate last night and said, then they don't get what is happening.
This is way beyond Donald Trump.
Yeah, this is at the very heart of American liberties and freedoms and our institutions.
I totally agree.
I can't tell you, I want to bang my head against a wall when I've heard GOP commentators and all the genius consulting class, they say, hey, we've got to move on.
Stop talking about 2020 and January 6th.
And let's just move on.
Stop talking about it.
They're rounding up the guy's lawyers.
They're rounding up GOP activists who had the audacity to question the most secure election ever in the whole history of elections going back to Pericles.
Give me a break.
If you raise any question about that, as the liberals do every single time they lose, even if they lose by a country mile, now you could be arrested and And lose your freedom, as you say.
Okay, you're out now.
You're out on presumably a pretty high bond.
$100,000.
$100,000.
Yeah.
So, what is the point of this?
$100,000.
Yes.
So what is the point of this?
So what is the point for the prosecution to put you into a jail with a bunch of men threatening you and catcalling you?
What is the point to take your $100,000?
What is the point?
I guess it's just to humiliate you and intimidate you and people like you?
It's to set us up as an example, to say that if you want to stand against the preferred narrative of the government, then look at what happened to anyone who is willing To stand with President Trump and simply represent him, have legal theories, and actually act as lawyers.
And notice, Michael, that they're not doing this to the lawyers who tried to use a novel argument through the 14th Amendment that Marjorie Taylor Greene, a sitting Congresswoman in Georgia, participated in a so-called insurrection.
There were lawyers that filed a case, and she actually had to go and testify.
They ultimately did not prevail, but no one is arresting them.
No one is coming after their bar licenses for trying to somehow interfere with an election or overturn the government in terms of her seat.
I mean, none of this ever applies to anyone else.
And any of the leftist lawyers can have any novel argument that they want to write in the Atlantic.
They can say anything that they want.
As long as it goes with the regime's narrative.
But if we stand up and actually say, no, we're going to fight for freedom, we are going to make sure to say that every legal vote counts and counts fairly, well then somehow now that makes you a political prisoner, that makes you opposed to America fundamentally, and that makes you worthy of getting indicted, arrested, and having to post a $100,000 bond in this country.
Where are you getting the money?
$100,000 is a lot of money.
It is, and thankfully there's a program where I only had to put up 10%, but still, I mean, $10,000 plus cost is a lot.
And so thankfully, you know, that was what I had to post, but I am not an independently wealthy person at all.
And interestingly, the Trump PAC, the RNC, none of these people who are supposedly our friends and on the same side are helping, to my knowledge, any of us with any of these legal fees.
So I am having to fundraise.
For myself, and thankfully, God's people, it's not even just the political party.
God's people and the Christians who understand what persecution looks like, they are rallying to my defense.
And I have a GiveSendGo.
It's givesendgo.com forward slash support Jenna.
And I've raised as of now almost $130,000.
I'm looking at having to raise probably close to half a million just to defend this, which is insane and ridiculous.
But I'm so grateful For the Christians and the conservatives who see that this is so much bigger than who we support in a presidential primary.
This is about the very fabric of freedom.
Well, that of course is the irony because obviously you were a lawyer for Donald Trump.
To my knowledge, you're not supporting him in this Republican primary, right?
So it's not even like they're just going after all the hardcore Trump acolytes or anything like that.
They're going after people who support other candidates.
They're going after Republicans.
They're going after people who, to quote Alan Dershowitz, a liberal who also worked as a lawyer for Donald Trump, who just support the Constitution.
And they're going to go get you anyway.
But that's the point, isn't it, Jenna?
Isn't the point, even if these charges are completely bogus, as obviously they are, well, you're still going to be out half a million dollars.
That might teach you your lesson, huh?
That might intimidate some other people who might have the gall to question the liberal regime.
Absolutely.
And that's why this is so much bigger than Donald Trump or the idea that this is just targeting him.
This is not going to stop.
Whenever Donald Trump is done with politics, this is about, and I stand with, all of the conservatives, all of the pastors who have been targeted with FBI raids, with all of the parents who are being put on domestic terrorism watch lists simply because they have the audacity to question what's in their child's state-funded school curriculum.
With all of the Christians who, like my dear friend and former client, Pastor John MacArthur, was threatened with jail time simply for opening up his church And opposing the COVID narrative.
I mean, this is beyond a political party.
This is all about destroying fundamental freedoms and liberties in this country.
So we have to, as conservatives, understand that bigger picture, that it is not about one political candidate.
It's not about one political party.
It is all about opposition to the regime.
And if we do not stand up now, And understand what they're doing, then we are losing our freedoms.
And when I was targeted for my bar license by this Democrat funded project, they specifically went on media and said the entire goal of this was to destroy lawyers' livelihoods, reputations, and credibility.
They don't care.
That is what they want to intentionally destroy.
So what are the charges?
As far as I can tell, the crime you committed is you just were a lawyer.
Last I checked, every client in America, not even just the mean old orange man, but even like murderers and rapists and serial killers, everyone is entitled to a legal defense except for conservatives.
So what is the charge they're trying to get you on?
Right.
So they they indicted 19 of us, including former President Trump, with the RICO statute, which is the Organized Crime Enterprise Racketeering Statute.
So we are all gangsters now, apparently, allegedly, according to the state of Georgia.
And then specifically, I only have one other count in there.
Some, including President Trump, have, you know, I think he has something like 14 or 17 counts.
And all of this Um, relates to, at least for the lawyers, simply being lawyers.
And you don't see any of this against the lawyers, for example, from the Bush v. Gore case.
Um, I think it was Alan Dershowitz who said if this same standard had been employed back in the year 2000, when ultimately, uh, Al Gore did not prevail and they tried to come after his lawyers in the same fashion, he said, then I would have been hit with a RICO violation.
And so this is, again, it's just showing the double standard.
So they're saying that you're a mob boss, basically.
Has the RICO statute, which I didn't know it could be applied to anything other than organized crime, has this ever been applied in the way that we're seeing it applied now to a politician's lawyers?
Not to my knowledge.
And you're right that the original intent of The RICO statute was to prosecute organized crime like drug rings and sex trafficking and, you know, some of these other, you know, obviously really violent crime that is a legitimate function of government.
And so while I can't really get into the specifics of my own legal defense and I'm very confident in my counsel, what I can say is that this is fundamentally taking and manipulating The law and trying purposefully to apply it to a scenario that lawyering clearly does not fall into.
I mean, if every law firm were organized crime enterprise simply because they're representing their client on legal challenges, then we would not have a practice of law or a right to counsel.
But that's exactly what they're targeting.
You know, Jen, I'm glad that you're confident in your council, and I hope it's a great council, but the Democrats, the liberals, always accuse us of the things that they're doing, and never has this been clearer than in this RICO nonsense.
The reason that I'm just a little worried for you, I'm not worried in the sense that we trust the Lord, you know, you do your best, God will do the rest, what else can we do?
Christians have danced and smiled while they were fed to the lions.
In the case of this RICO prosecution, they are behaving like the mob.
They're behaving like the five families in New York and the mafia, the way that they're pushing people around and intimidating people and acting in a totally lawless way.
And so I just fear, if they're willing to even bring these preposterous charges, how does one have any hope that justice will prevail?
Well, that's where I hope that we still have America as we once knew it and the America that was founded on the principles of freedom and liberty and opposition to tyranny.
And so if there is any truth and justice left in America, then I do believe that I will prevail because I am innocent of these charges.
But you're right, Michael.
We've seen throughout, particularly church history and Christian history, that justice in this life Isn't always accomplished.
But that's why my faith in my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is what is why I still have joy because it is possible that anything could happen.
We're not guaranteed to prevail even in a court of law, even when we are innocent.
But that's not what the Lord calls us to.
He calls us to trust him, have faith in him and fulfill the Great Commission, which is to teach the truth of the gospel of Christ throughout all the world and to stand resolute, trusting in his sovereignty.
And so that's what I am determined to do through this whole experience that I could have never contemplated would happen to me.
That come what may, I will trust in the Lord's sovereignty.
You know, Jenna, can I keep you around?
I've got to end the show here for all the unwashed masses in the Hoi Poloi.
We have a member block coming up.
I know they're going to have questions for you.
I've got more.
I've got more questions.
Before we switch over, givecengo.com support Jenna.
That's where you can Give to Jenna's legal defense, which I think is a really great thing to do.
The rest of the show continues now.
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