Trump Finally Wins Popular Vote: Convicted On All Counts
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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the ramifications of Donald Trump becoming a convicted felon - from the possibility of jail time to the affect it will have on the polls. They also touch upon new revelations of racism on the set of The Apprentice.
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I'm Nick Hauselman, the co-host of the Muckrake podcast, and I wanted to let you know we're releasing the entire live episode we recorded last night on all the platforms instead of our normal Friday teaser of the full Patreon episode.
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Thanks!
Hey everybody, welcome to a live Weekender Taping of the Montclair Podcast.
I'm Jerry J. Sexton.
Hey Nick, how are you doing, bud?
I'm good.
Are you allowed to twist off a top or a beer?
I don't think that's legal.
We can't get into that.
We can't.
No, no.
We have too much to talk about, Nick.
This is a...
Well, we're talking about the law, so I just want to make sure, you know... It's a conversation for another time.
Oh man, you just lost everybody who is tuning in to this special edition of the Montcraig Podcast.
I doubt you haven't heard the news already, but in case you haven't, in case you've been doing something else, maybe you've been in a deprivation chamber.
Maybe you've been sitting there wrestling with your own demons, working on your healing, working on your presentness.
Donald Trump, the former president of the United States of America and the current Republican nominee for the presidency, was convicted on all 34 felony counts in a New York City courtroom today, becoming the first president of the United States of America to be convicted of a felony.
This, of course, was a side effect of the hush money scheme back in 2016 to keep Stormy Daniels from talking about their Interactions?
I'll leave it at that.
Let's go ahead, Nick, just, you know, for posterity and for our own health and for S's and G's, spoofs and goofs, let's hear the news being broken on Fox News.
Now it looks like we have Some of the verdicts coming in.
It is quickly coming in here.
From inside, we are starting to hear that there are guilty.
There are guilty verdicts.
From our producer inside, we're hearing guilty on 1 through 5.
1 through 12, we have now 13, 14 guilty.
15 guilty.
You may hear there are a split of folks here who have been protesting on both sides of this case.
Some cheers, some boos, as we are now getting the information from the jury.
We're up to 18 counts, 19 guilty.
Remember, we have 34 here, 20 guilty.
And again, these counts were very similar, what they were looking at.
It was different occurrences, essentially, of the same crime, a misdemeanor that was elevated by being linked to a felony.
To an underlying crime.
We are now 24 counts in all guilty from inside.
This is what we are hearing from our producers.
Up to 26 guilty.
Now remember, each of these counts could maximum have four years in jail.
President Trump would be considered a first-time offender.
These are non-violent crimes.
So it seems that it is unlikely the judge would sentence him to prison.
A first, a quote-unquote first-time offender.
Of course, this is the first time outside of a sexual assault charge that Trump has actually been held accountable for his actions.
Nick, we'll get into the specifics of this.
We'll answer the questions.
By the way, anybody who is watching this in our Patreon livestream, feel free to ask questions.
We're going to be answering that, having a conversation, recording this episode.
We'll get into those particulars in just a second, what this means, where it's going, what I found in my early research, what you found in your early research.
But Nick, what is your initial reaction to Donald Trump being found guilty on 34 felony counts?
Of course!
Like, I didn't think he was not going to get convicted.
You know, it seemed like the arguments on the merits were just obfuscation and sort of like pointing at people, but they never really did anything much to debunk what the accusations were.
Can I offer some free legal advice?
Or rather, can I offer some free crime advice?
How did you know I needed it?
If you are, let's just say theoretically, let's say that you are an organized crime boss who happened to be the 45th president of the United States of America.
Uh-huh.
Let's say that you have committed multiple felonies.
Let's say that there is a huge paper trail of checks and vouchers and notes for the love of God that is all out there.
Do you not think that the dirty lawyer that you had in your employee, the one who did everything for you, intimidated people, ran the checks, ran the money, You should probably try and keep that guy on your good side, because the moment that that guy gets out from underneath your umbrella, you're screwed.
You are nailed straight dead to the wall.
And like you said, Nick, they had him dead to rights.
This thing, there was no way to get around this unless political ideology got into it.
Donald Trump was guilty of these crimes, obviously, and he was found guilty of these crimes.
Well, they also brought another lawyer on who was part of the defense, a witness for the defense, who ended up being so belligerent to the judge.
Remember, the judge and the jury are kind of like in the same boat here.
They're like sort of on the same side.
The judge talks to them very nicely.
He's like he's like the father figure in this thing.
And so when you have a guy who is going to like, You know, yelling at the guy and trying to control the courtroom and look like a clown, it's really going to hurt your case.
So I suppose if you're a defense lawyer, you know, you might want to tone that kind of stuff down too.
And so they're ineffectual.
They knew that they weren't going to have any kind of a case that would actually defend anything.
So they're trying to do this in the public opinion.
You know, he's already on Fox News.
He was on Fox News within half an hour or an hour of the verdict.
And that's what they're going to try and try this, quote unquote.
But it was really it was a very open shut case.
It didn't seem like it was going to be that convincing, a lot of convincing to do for a jury.
I will say, I'll just take issue with the idea that a judge is a father figure for the jury.
From my time being in courtrooms in Georgia, I have to tell you, that is an adversarial relationship very often.
Yes, but what you brought up, I think, is actually very pertinent in this, which is that the Trump defense just absolutely turned this into a shitshow.
They made it a belligerent attack constantly, just on the legitimacy of the court.
Which, by the way, I don't think that Trump is going to serve jail time.
I'll go ahead and throw that out.
I think you and I are on the same wavelength there.
For those who don't know, the maximum penalty on all of these convictions is four years in prison, which would be served concurrently.
So, you know, he would be in for four years, give or take, depending upon whatever else happens.
I do think that it was a bold strategy to go ahead and insult the judge and claim that the judge was not impartial and also on the take and also part of the deep state and to basically violate every warning from him and gag order from him.
Even have your friends from Congress come in and wear matching ties and carry out the things that, you know, saying the things that you can't say anymore because you're under a gag order.
Bold strategy to go ahead and go after this guy.
Although, as we've talked about, not only from a sports standpoint, but also from a legal and political standpoint, working the refs oftentimes involves impugning the refs and basically daring them to show you that they're impartial.
So we'll see how that works out.
But this was this was a mess, top to bottom.
He was, again, caught dead to rights.
He should have been convicted.
I also want to say cheers to the jurors.
Who did what no one else in this country was particularly interested in doing.
And I'm putting political leaders in there.
I'm putting attorney generals in there.
I'm putting all of them.
These 12 people got in a room and they said, listen, the evidence says that he is guilty.
I don't care how much harassment we're going to take.
And do not get me wrong, those jurors are going to be harassed.
They're going to have to deal with a lot of things.
And from there, like, we'll see where the chips fall.
But like, cheers to those people for taking this on themselves.
For sure, and it might actually have an effect on the other juries because they'll see.
I won't be surprised.
I think, remember we saw an interview with one of the grand jury panel people on one of the local news where she was like, yeah, it's pretty bad.
They're going to get an indictment on him.
Remember that?
I would imagine that, again, when you actually put on that case in Florida or in D.C.
or Georgia, The reaction is going to be the same.
This is unbelievably immutable evidence that will result in everybody on the jury agreeing, which is hard to do.
So, you know, the thing you have to be worried about now in New York, at least, is that they can appeal.
And they could stretch this thing out for a long, long time.
And, you know, it's funny, like, even though it's a local, you know, New York trial, you know, I'm not a legal expert, but I'm kind of envisioning if Trump can win and appoint his own attorney general, who then can get rid of Attorney General at like a best he and why.
And then that one can simply decline to continue the appeal process.
So it's possible he could get off of this one too, I think.
We need to confirm that.
But, you know, obviously the more they delay this, the more, the better it is for him.
So we're never really going to maybe get that, that, what's the word I'm looking for?
The catharsis.
So we're looking at, you know, from this in necessarily of him either, you know, I guess paying a huge fine or being in jail.
Well, and here's, I want to get into that catharsis of it.
Before we do, I just want to go ahead and get a couple facts straight on this.
First of all, his sentencing is scheduled for July 11th.
Chances are that the Trump team is going to try and delay that past the election, because of course they are.
What you just brought up, you know, a lot of this is fungible.
We want to pretend that the legal system and the way power works in this country is like completely, you know, black and white, like things get screwy and weird.
On the topic of catharsis, Nick, I just want to say a few things before we get into Trump's reaction, the reaction out in the political world and where we see this going and what it looks like 30,000 feet up.
First of all, does this feel good?
Hell yeah, it does.
Thank God Donald Trump committed an obvious crime and he was held accountable in a court of law.
It does feel good.
You know what else sucks?
To live in a country where a former president is a felon.
I've been on the record multiple times.
I think presidents should be tried for crimes, particularly while they're in office, all the time.
I think once you get out of office, you should probably be tried, to be honest.
But it feels bad, you know?
Like, we can celebrate this, and we can look at Donald Trump, the bad orange man, and say, look what he got.
He got what he deserved.
Absolutely, he did.
This feels bad, deep down at the heart of the catharsis.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, we know 2016 sucked.
We know that he committed multiple crimes in an effort to get elected in 2016, not least of them probably light treason, if you want to be charitable.
But also, it just feels awful in general, but it's wrapped up in other good feelings.
And we've needed catharsis, and this does feel cathartic, but I will also say, because it's my job, Nick, I know who I am.
I know what my job is.
I know that I'm a buzzkill when it comes to this stuff.
This increases the temperature in this country.
It does.
And everything that I've seen, and I'll get into the particulars in a little bit, this does turn up the possibility for violence.
This does lead to more radicalization because the Republican Party is not going to back away from him, regardless of what happens.
They're in for a penny.
They're in for a pound.
This is their entire fate.
This is It feels good, but if you actually want to look at this from like a mature and also analytical standpoint, it isn't good.
It's not a good thing for the country in general because we had a felon as president.
Now we have a former president who's a felon.
It also, meanwhile, also puts us in a dangerous place.
Nick, speaking of, would you go ahead and cue up what former President Donald Trump had to say following his conviction?
Okay, give me one second here.
Of course, he was mature.
Here's Donald Trump.
Looks like he's a... There he is.
This was a disgrace.
This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt.
It's a rigged trial, a disgrace.
They wouldn't give us a menu change.
We were at 5% or 6% in this district, in this area.
This was a rigged, disgraceful trial.
The real verdict is gonna be November 5th by the people and they know what happened here and everybody knows what happened here.
You have a sole respect DA and the whole thing.
We didn't do a thing wrong.
I'm a very innocent man and it's okay.
I'm fighting for our country.
I'm fighting for our Constitution.
Our whole country is being rigged right now.
This was done by the Biden administration in order to wound or hurt An opponent, a political opponent.
And I think it's just a disgrace.
And we'll keep fighting.
We'll fight till the end and we'll win.
Because our country's gone to hell.
We don't have the same country anymore.
We have a divided mess.
We're nation in decline.
Syria's declined.
Millions and millions of people pouring into our country right now.
From prisons and from mental institutions, terrorists, and they're taking over our country.
We have a country that's in big trouble.
But this was a rigged decision right from day one with a conflicted judge who should have never been allowed to try this case.
Never.
And we will fight for our constitution.
Okay.
Alright, good for him.
I just want to point out a couple things before we react to it, just to give it a little bit of standards, because Trump has a real penchant for saying a lot of bullshit, and it's just collecting and collecting and collecting, so let's go ahead and let's make sure that we get a couple things on the record.
First of all, the entire Republican right-wing playbook is a narcissistic viewpoint that they are victims and martyrs.
It doesn't matter what they do.
It doesn't matter what crimes they've committed.
It doesn't matter when they are in the wrong and when they have responsibility.
If something bad happens to them, the entire world is on fire.
The country is in decline.
Which, by the way, the country is declined in a different way besides what he's saying.
On top of that, Nick, what was squeezed in there?
George Soros funded DA.
You want to tell the people at home who we're talking about when we're talking about George Soros?
What are we wink-wink, nudge-nudging there?
That the old Jews are in control of everything.
Yeah, the Jews are in control of everything.
They did this.
They made sure that your favorite president of all time was convicted of this.
On top of that, Nick, it's a country in decline because George Soros and Joe Biden have made sure that immigrants are taking over.
We have a little bit of nice white replacement theory going on there.
Basically, what is being said is what we've been expected and what people don't want to talk about, which is this is a far-right authoritarian movement and everything goes through that lens.
Period.
I mean, I love the fact that he thinks it is the big reason why this is a rigged thing is that they wanted the venue change because of polling numbers.
Last time I checked, the jury of your peers doesn't have to require any kind of polling of who they vote for or not.
The peers appear.
I thought that was hilarious.
And then You know, I think they actually filed for a mistrial yesterday or today because Stormy Daniels was too detailed in her sexual encounter with Trump.
I mean, that's what they've gotten down to, is what they're trying to throw against the wall.
I think that the judge gave 30 bucks to a general Democratic fund in 2020.
You know, that's the evidence they have of him, you know, being some sort of donor to Biden.
Is there a law against that?
Uh, there is not a law against that, but you know... Oh, that's weird!
Oh, okay.
So, like, if you fly a flag that supports an insurrection and a coup attempt, I guess that somehow or another is better than that.
But that's okay.
That's cool.
No, but by the way, there is not necessarily an equivalency, but there is something to that.
Like, if I were a judge in this position, I wouldn't be giving money to any, uh... I wouldn't.
I wouldn't either.
I wouldn't either, but we also live in the United States of America, and here we go.
You know?
Yeah, and I have faith, even if it was the other way around, that if a guy gave money to Trump and he was a Trump, you know, well, except unless your name is Aileen Cannon, because that is really troubling all the procedural things that she's doing that fly in the face of what you're supposed to be doing as a judge.
But I don't know.
I would imagine most of the people on the Democratic side would be railing against some other judge if they had given money to Trump and he was the presiding.
Probably not.
Well, Nick, I want to hear in a minute what you saw on Fox News, because, I mean, like what our jobs are, you go and check out Fox News and I go check out the most right-wing cesspools that you can imagine, so we'll deliver our reports.
I just want to give three quick reactions on this, Nick.
First of all, Tucker Carlson, probably the most influential right-wing personality that we have right now.
Tucker reacted by saying, quote, import the third world, become the third world.
That's an interesting way to start a reaction to Trump's conviction.
That's what we saw.
This won't stop Trump.
He'll win the election if he's not killed first.
I mean, we're just checking boxes off now, but it does mark the end of the fairest justice system in the world, which what a statement that is.
I would love to talk to the people in the incarceral state, but whatever.
Anyone who defends this verdict is a danger to you and your family.
Let's break that down very, very quickly.
Again, white replacement theory, which is obviously what they're doing.
And for the record, I think that we're getting a glimpse into what is going to be said over the next few weeks, if not months, which is white replacement theory.
We have a bunch of immigrants coming in this country.
It's a Jewish plot.
They won't say Jewish.
Also, this won't stop Trump.
He'll win the election if he's not killed first, which we covered the other day.
This is the new conspiracy theory du jour, which is that Trump's life is in danger, which creates an existential problem, right?
It does mark the end of the fairest justice system in the world.
That is wild.
Anyone who defends this verdict is a danger to you and your family.
What do you do if someone endangers you and your family, Nick?
You want to murder them before they murder you.
Yeah, you probably want to go ahead and murder them before they murder you.
That's a lot of fun from Tucker Carlson.
I just want to let people sit with that.
Mike Johnson, who we'll talk about in a minute, my statement on President Trump trial verdict.
Today is a shameful day in American history.
Democrats cheered as they convicted the leader of the opposing party on ridiculous charges predicated on the testimony of a disbarred convicted felon.
This was a purely political exercise, not a legal one.
He says that the Biden administration has weaponized the justice system and that the American people see this as lawfare and they know it is wrong and dangerous and Trump will win.
Good to see that the highest ranking Republican official has gone ahead, got his marching orders after leaving the courthouse probably to hang out with Donald Trump.
Reporting for duty, sir.
I mean, are you wondering if he wants to be thrown into the hat for Vice President?
I mean, why not at this point?
I mean, it's, you know, whatever at this point.
I can't wait for all those sycophants to jump in front of Trump and lick his boots.
Also, Stephen Miller and the entire Donald Trump campaign calling for money.
Yeah, that's what it is.
I found out on Fox News that their website crashed, where they donate money to Trump.
I suppose it's because so many people were rushing to give him money.
So there is something to that.
I mean, it could have been...
Well, the problem here, Nick, and this is something that you and I have covered for years.
First of all, if this had been found out when the crime was actually committed, like if the news about Stormy Daniels would have like actually come out, I don't know that it would have made a difference because they were already so deep into, you know, Trump fealty.
But knowing where it's at now, like, it's a deep state plot.
It doesn't matter to these people.
I don't think it's going to keep people from voting for Donald Trump.
I think it's only going to make his supporters more radical and probably, again, increase the possibility for violence.
I mean, they even, somebody on Fox News was even trying to say that they didn't think it was a political witch hunt because everybody knew how positive this is going to be for him politically, which is an interesting take.
But, you know, here's what I just thought of this.
Don't be surprised if there is an assassination attempt on Trump and he grabs the gun out of the guy's hand and punches him across the face and then gets him down because it's all, you know, they staged it.
Don't be surprised.
Someone is going to do that and stage something like that to like, you know, again, rally everybody, get them all excited.
That was my first image.
It just suddenly appeared of what the future holds for us.
I don't think it'd be that crazy.
Well, one of the things, and I, man, I, before I went over to the really, really extreme, like right wing, I'm not going to say which mediums I was on because I don't want to dox myself in my research.
Before I did that, I paid a lot of attention to what, like, Alex Jones and that assorted sort of universe was getting into.
And people need to understand.
That Alex Jones is more or less coordinating people through sort of semantic games.
He's always suggesting that there's going to be quote-unquote false flags that are going to be carried out by the deep state and the deep state's going to do it to make conservatives look bad.
So as he's saying, nobody go out there and do this, nobody go out and do that.
For months he's been talking about somebody going after Donald Trump and somehow or another that's going to go into the deep state thing.
There are staccatic signals that are being sent out right now.
The right is telling people, particularly these provocateurs, like people like Alex Jones, they are telling people, hey, the environment is right for this stuff.
And while saying don't go do this, they're actually putting into people's minds the possibility of doing it.
So I would not be shocked if not only would we have violence, but that we could have the type of sort of reverse violence, if that makes sense.
And that's how weird things are going to get, I think, before this election is over.
By the way, I just want to remind people, we're in May!
It's May of the election year.
We have a long ass way to go and things are only going to get stranger and stranger.
Oh, you want to get strange?
Let's get strange, Jared.
Judge Jeanine's insides are, quote, so angry.
Woah!
Oh, I mean, they're making, they're conflating this with the pee tape and they're trying to make all, I mean, you know, anything they can do to sort of, um, to knock down the trial and the, and how, uh, the, that there was a whole bunch of lies.
Like, so the Michael Cohen testimony, remember, was just sort of like icing on the cake.
They didn't dare bring him up and answer any question that wasn't already verified with a paper trail.
So that is why he was convicted on all these counts, because it wasn't even Michael Cohen's testimony.
It was the fact that they had hard evidence that they could prove all the way along.
Otherwise, they never would have called him to the stand because of that issue of him being already a guy who served time and wouldn't necessarily be trustworthy.
I believe at this point, because Cohen has gone through all this, I don't think he has much reason to lie at this point.
disgruntled employee whatever but they he would then risk going to jail again for perjury so um so that's what they're trying to attack hugh hewitt is disgusted at all the people who are cheering the verdicts that's just disgusting jared and and and how dare you how dare you celebrate something from a misfortune of another an elderly man i'm sorry yeah i he he is ruben Marco Rubio called in, Jared.
Very excited.
He was very excited.
Marco gave a little ring?
Marco was like probably walking around back and forth.
He sounded very hyped up.
He was very energetic.
Looking for water wherever he could find it.
And by the way, speaking of who wants to try and be the next vice president, he basically was like, they just elected Trump president.
That's his take.
It's a lot of their takes.
Oh, OK.
All right.
Man, Marco Rubio is not talented at this.
So I'm shocked, Nick.
I thought Fox News was like the biggest supporter of law enforcement in our judicial system and nothing was wrong.
So you're telling me that they didn't just simply wash their hands and say, justice has been done.
We don't like this, but we'll respect it.
Yeah, no, that's not happening at all.
But they're also beyond that.
They're just already ready, like, they know there's going to be an appeal, and they know that's going to be put off for a long time, probably because they're hoping, again, like, somehow this can get dismissed.
So, you know, they're not taking it like it is any kind of indictment on him at all, really.
And it's just another example.
And by the way, once you convince people of things like, and listen, we have a problem with our justice system, right?
We know that.
It's corrupt top to bottom, yes.
Yeah, but mostly top, right?
Mostly to the people who are, you know, the wealthy people.
And so, you know, as they destroy the notion of what democracy is and whether it works in our minds, you know, they're destroying this part, too, on purpose to welcome in the authoritarianism of which they're trying to warn you is going to happen if, you know, Biden gets elected.
It's a vicious circle.
You're never going to get out of it.
Well, we have to hold two things in mind at once, which is, it's difficult.
America does not reward us for holding two nuanced ideas at once.
First things first, America's legal system is corrupt top to bottom, and I mean local to Supreme Court.
I know that's shocking to everybody.
I know that everybody at home is like, wait, wait, wait, I haven't heard about this Supreme Court corruption.
This seems so alien to me.
And by the way, it was from the very beginning because the founding of America was based on protecting capital and the interest of the wealthy and the white and the powerful.
So it has, there is a reason to not trust it.
The problem is that what you just brought up is correct, Nick, which is that the Trump witch hunt, rigged game, George Soros, DEA, all of this, The point of it is to so corrupt in people's minds in a way that the justice system actually isn't corrupt.
Because again, for the record, Donald Trump was caught dead to rights committing felonies here.
34 that were able to be proven, probably many more that were not, right?
That didn't, you know, get presented here.
He was caught dead to rights doing this.
The Republican Party, because they are an authoritarian front, are trying to do exactly what you're saying, which is to go ahead and create an amount of unearned distrust, right?
That what they're actually doing, it's not that the system is corrupted since the beginning, through liberal democracy.
The problem is that it is now being weaponized to be used against people like Donald Trump and all the people that he stands in front of.
So what they're actually doing is they're delivering this doubt in order to create a need for a strongman or an authoritarian to go ahead and put this thing to right, which would be the final death blow to liberal democracy, which is what the right has always wanted.
Is there a reason to distrust our legal system and the foundation of the country?
Absolutely there is.
But the reasons that they're giving are skewed and slanted for a very specific political aim, which is something we need to keep in mind as this happens.
Well, you know, what's sad is that a lot of the, you know, the wealthy people in the Republican Party who want to bring this about think it's going to benefit them immensely, you know, with their wealth and power.
But we've already seen what happens in these kind of countries to people of wealth and power who don't, you know, if they wear the wrong shirt one day or they just casually say the wrong sentence here or there on somewhere, you know, some of these people will fall out of windows.
And from a high, very long, you know, high heights.
So this is, they don't want this.
They don't even, they haven't even wrapped their head around what they think that they want.
And that's the power that Trump has and that he's been able to create this false sense of future of what it's going to be, of which the Republican Party has been doing for all these decades anyway, right?
They've been trying to convince them and they, you know, after enough time, you know, what's left of your party will be, will believe all this stuff that they think that their policies are going to bring about.
So, that is what's so strange about this whole thing, and we talk about this all the time.
It's not even in their best interest.
Well, what's wild about it is that every single one of them thinks that it wouldn't be them falling out of the window.
It would be the people who were rude to them in venture capitalist meetings, and the ones who maybe said something shitty to them on a tweet.
Right?
They would be the ones pushing people out of windows, and that would be good for the country.
That's the way that they view it.
Real quick, before we talk about where we see this going and the ramifications of it, I just want to set the table with some information that I think is important for people.
Again, Donald Trump would probably, if made to serve a maximum amount of jail time, it would be four years.
That would be concurrent years of all the things.
I don't think you or I expect him to serve jail time.
On top of that, this does not keep him from running for president, nor would jail time keep him from running for president.
I would like in a minute to talk about not just like what that means, my feelings on on what it means for the ramifications set out for felons in the presidency, but also again I need to give a report on what I've seen from the far right.
But You need to understand that this is not the end of things.
We didn't get him, folks.
Right?
You can feel good about this, but Donald Trump is still able to run for president, even if he went to jail, which I don't think he will.
You don't either.
Although, you know what?
Four months.
Maybe this gets like four months.
That'd be nice.
There's a real possibility that he could be made an example of because of what has happened.
I will say that the judge, Merchant, I don't know what's going to happen.
I can't even imagine having to hold that fate in my hands.
That is a really hard thing to think about what's happening in the country.
We'll see.
We'll see how it goes.
Before we get into whether I think felons should run for president, which I want to comment on, I just want to give people the report.
I've spent the time in the cesspool.
Since this came down, I've been looking.
And Nick, I gotta tell you, it is a strange thing.
To see what the reactions are to this, because you would think that the far right would be pissed off about this, and some of them are.
Some of them see this, and of course when I talk about the far right, I'm talking about a white supremacist authoritarian group of people.
A lot of them, you know, see this as like a white president got brought down by the deep state, and of course the replacement theory and anti-semitic conspiracy theories.
A lot of them are celebrating, Nick.
A lot of them are very happy about this, and here's the reason why.
They think that this is an excellent moment to radicalize who they would refer to as normies, right?
These are the people who are watching Fox News.
These are the people who aren't necessarily... They're radical, but they're not actively radical.
There has been disagreement about how to do that, whether to let it take its natural course, whether they need to push something forward.
I've seen people sharing schematics of power grids, talking about vulnerable soft targets.
I don't know if this is going to lead to violence, but it's ripe for it.
And so this is one of those things that you see from time to time, and the pitch of it turns up in moments like this, you know what I mean like they're always talking about this stuff, but when you start to see these sort of these sort of not so weirdos start to come together in these spaces and discuss things.
You start to realize that, like, some of the people have fantasies of committing violence, and moments like this give them permission to and give them a window to.
So what I am seeing is kind of what I expected, maybe even on a level that I didn't expect, which is the call for violence and the possibility and imagination for violence has been turned up, and it is absolutely in play.
And now you know why Judge Marchand probably won't send him to prison.
Right?
Because it could be very well a threat on his life if he did that.
So this is how we operate now.
You don't want to stand up for the rights or do what you're supposed to do constitutionally because you're afraid someone's going to kill you.
And that is certainly going to be part of his calculation as he decides what the penalty is going to be in July.
By the way, I saw an interesting tweet that was talking about the number of people in the country who actually thought he would be convicted.
And so among the Republicans, it was 61-21 nationwide thought Trump would not be convicted of anything.
So this is a surprise, right?
This will be a little bit of a shock to a lot of the Republican Party, which could be a good thing, right?
It might be one of those wake up moments to some degree for some of them.
And remember, You know, it's going to be like three states or four states.
It's going to be 10,000 people here and 20 there.
And so that's what you have to, I guess, hope is that this will have a negative effect.
I kind of think it will.
Ultimately, people didn't pay attention to this trial much.
They don't really know a lot about it, but they certainly will recognize the word guilty.
They'll know what that is and they'll know that that's what Trump was, you know, Consider it so.
There is some, on the edges here, some possibilities that enough votes could be lost that could cost, you know, just enough to make Biden squeak through.
There is a question of whether or not some Trump-curious people who have been turned off by Biden's administration or are anti-incumbent, which we see.
You know, I've been doing a lot of research recently on the people that I would, again, would call Trump-curious.
And there are a lot of people, and by the way, they're not always the people you would expect, right?
I think when we talk about sort of the swing voter, a lot of people, again, imagine, you know, A woman in Dayton, Ohio, who is liberal, you know, liberal in terms socially, but also is a little bit uncomfortable with like race relations.
I'm seeing a lot of it from young people and people of color, actually.
And that's the thing, is we don't know how this election is going to shake out.
If I had to guess right now, I would say it would be supernaturally close.
And so like you have to wonder whether or not this would turn some people off or other people are going to go out and actually start to vote for this.
Nick, I have a quick question before we get into where we see this going in the sort of larger picture, because Rob brought this up and this was something I was planning on talking about.
Do you think felons should be allowed to run for president of the United States of America?
Well, the problem is, you know, can felons vote?
Are they allowed to vote?
Now, if you pay your dues to society and served your time and get out, I think you should be able to vote, right, at that point, if you've done your time.
So, I suppose I would have to be consistent.
I would have to say, well, if a guy was a convicted villain, served his time, and then finished his sentence, then yeah, I guess he should be able to run for president again.
How does that change the question you're asking me?
It doesn't.
Do you think that someone should be allowed to run for president from a jail cell?
No.
Okay.
I do.
You do?
I do.
I do.
I think convicted felons should be able to run for office.
I think someone should be able to run from a jail cell.
I don't think you can see it in the camera that I currently have, but I have a picture of Eugene B. Debs behind me, who was a labor leader who got thrown in jail because of his efforts, and also ran for president while in a jail cell.
I think, and first of all, Nick, I know that I rail on this all the time, Our benevolent, brilliant founders who put together just the most amazing government that we could ever imagine.
They never considered this, really.
Do you know what I mean?
Because they were so, like, a bunch of white, wealthy men.
None of them are gonna do this, right?
But I do think that it is good that we live in a country where people who maybe would be jailed for political crimes, or maybe would be seen as political dissidents, that they could go ahead and run for the presidency.
I happen to support that.
And that is largely because we live in an unfair world where people do have the legal system used as a weapon against them.
Not Donald Trump.
He was caught dead to rights doing these crimes.
So I happen to support that.
So, Nick, long term, I have my thoughts on this.
How do you think this is going to play into the 2024 election?
How do you think things are going to play out over the next few months?
I think there's a lot of different branching paths here.
Yeah, I mean, this doesn't really rally the left at all.
I mean, everyone's probably some version of happy and thankful that it worked on this one.
I think you already kind of described these, you know, the curious Trump people.
Again, I think that there might be an overall net negative.
It might be like a point, it might be half a point, something like that, whatever.
But I think ultimately it'll be a little bit of a negative for Trump.
And so, you know, will it affect the election?
You know, again, will it affect election in Michigan and Arizona or whatever in Pennsylvania?
Like, you know, maybe just enough.
So I have hope that it will actually happen, but I really think that'll be almost negligible ultimately when all is said and done.
I before I give my thoughts on this, do you want to bet a Coke on what the polls are going to look like the immediate polls after this?
What do you what do you think?
Because we'll cover this on the show.
We'll cover the fallout of this.
What do you think?
What do you think the polls are going to look like?
I will put my Coke where my mouth is.
And that sounds doesn't that's where I think it's fine.
I think that's a lovely saying.
That's where you put your coke.
I'm going to go for a two-point dip.
So I'm going to do that.
I will say that he will see a, I mean, I guess a one, I'm going to go for a two point dip.
Hilder is going to be a two point drop.
I think a two point drop is not outside the realm of possibility.
I would say it's going to be negligible, if not one point maybe equal.
What I would say, and this is, I can see the articles already, I think those who were planning on voting for Trump are going to feel even more emboldened to vote for him.
I think that's what we're going to see.
I think it's going to shore up his base.
I think we're going to see a lot of people who said that they were considering Trump, that they were going to go with it.
I don't think we're going to see a ton of Republican defectors who say that they need a new candidate.
I don't think that's going to happen.
In fact, I think Donald Trump is going to fundraise and campaign, calling himself like enemy number one or something like that.
You know, I think they're going to lean into this.
I don't think it's going to cause, like, a big jump one way or another, which I happen to think that that's an indictment of our system and our current environment.
Yeah, right.
I mean, because, right, in theory this should be a 10-point drop, but this should be over for him at this point, right?
It should be done.
It should be done, but it's not.
It's not.
I mean, right, because the worry is that all the coasts go out the window because he gets a 10-point bump from this, right?
Like, that could happen.
And, you know, I don't know.
I mean, all I know is that it was nice of him to stay awake for the sentencing.
Because it sounded like he wasn't.
By the way, all the things that they did made it clear to me the details of that, but the jury hated him and clearly would have felt he was guilty.
To be clear, what's not to hate, Nick?
What's not to hate, Jared?
Absolutely.
What's not to hate?
By the way, a couple of things while this story was breaking, because we had an entirely different show that we were going to talk about.
There are a couple of stories that people are not going to hear about now.
One of them is that Joe Biden has quietly approved the use of US weapons inside of Russia with the Ukraine war.
But also, Nick, and this is...
I can't tell people how bad of a day this is for Donald Trump, or what bad of a day it should have been.
Bill Pruitt, a producer on The Apprentice, has come forward since his non-disclosure agreement has fallen to the wayside.
He's published his recollections from the set of The Apprentice on Slate.
He has corroborated what we have heard for years.
It's been one of those sort of quiet rumblings and rumors.
That Donald Trump, in a meeting with Apprentice producers and caught on tape, apparently Mark Burnett supposedly doesn't, has these but won't share them or maybe has destroyed them, who knows, that they have a recording of Donald Trump using the n-word.
In reference to a finalist on The Apprentice.
On top of that, talk about this in a second, Pruitt talked about how they had to edit Trump to make him look capable.
I think this ties in nicely to this entire trial, everything that's going on with the Republican Party.
But it's incredible that a claim from a person in the room that a presidential candidate used, you know, the top dog, worst slur you could imagine, that he used this and this isn't even going to get on the front page today.
Right.
And by the way, that kind of news, you know, they're touting the fact that the that black people are going to vote for him in like 15, 16 percent, you know, numbers, which is what we had heard in 2016 as well.
And it was ended up being way off.
So you would think that that would have a direct effect on that voting bloc as well.
And it might it might still.
And again, I don't think he would get much more than what he got in 2016, which I think was like eight percent or tops.
So that will hurt him.
But yeah, it's very strange days that that comes out and it won't even make a ripple.
No one will even pay attention to it.
Yeah, no one's even talking about it.
And the reason I wanted to talk about it, first of all, is because the record should show that Donald Trump did this and that this is the type of person that he is and what he represents.
But I also want to go ahead and remind people, after this conviction, 2024 is not the year to stop Donald Trump.
And 2024 is not the year to have stopped his influence over the Republican Party.
That cake is baked.
You know what I mean?
It's done.
These people are in with him.
They have a religious devotion to him.
The Republican Party is completely tied to him.
Back then, like, and by the way, going back into The Apprentice, I mean, this took place in 2004, Nick.
That was the period where Donald Trump was rehabilitated by NBC, by The Apprentice, by Burnett, by all of these people.
They took a complete and utter failure.
And we've talked about it on the podcast.
He's one of the biggest failures that we have in the wealth class in the United States of America.
A period of time, the biggest loser in terms of money and business deals and all of his imaginations.
They failed.
He sucks.
He's incompetent.
But what happened?
Was that in the interest of entertainment, in the interest of profit, this mythology of Donald Trump was created that made it possible, through reality television and through this doctoring and editing, in order to make it possible that this guy could become the nominee of the Republican Party, eventually the president of the Republican Party, and now a Messiah-like figure.
And this entire thing, for people who haven't read it on Slate, I invite you to go read it, to hear about how much work they had to do to make Donald Trump look competent, And to give this mythology of him the problem here, Nick, and this goes with what's going on right now with this trial and where we are and the fact that his career is not over and he could still be president of the United States of America.
They made him a load-bearing wall in American culture.
In order to talk about money and power and influence, they had to take a complete and utter loser who inherited all of his money and squandered it.
You or I could have gotten his money and put it in a savings account.
And we would have been better off than where this asshole is.
They took it and they had to make him into a metaphor for American meritocracy.
And this took place prior to the 2008 financial collapse where we all started asking questions.
And we said, hey, I think something weird's going on here.
I don't think the meritocracy exists.
I think something is off with our economy and our culture and our political sphere.
And so here we are now in 2024, and you and I, everyone watching this, and everyone in America is now suffering the consequences of those choices.
Yeah, and it also lays a blueprint for how you want to be president in the future, which is really frightening.
You know, it's like either make a name on social media or, you know, reality show or something like that and build up that brand independent of your character or what you believe in or not believe in, you know, or any of that.
It's that's it'll continue to get worse.
I mean, listen, we've seen in other countries that, you know, Zelensky is a good example of that, too, where he was a TV show star and, you know, and who played a guy who was going to be president of Ukraine and then Life imitates art.
It's kind of weird, and that's going to keep happening for sure.
And again, Donald Trump is a symptom of a larger disease.
A lot of people were looking for answers, looking for messiahs and heroes, and that's where we are.
And so as a result, they have a cult-like devotion for him.
And the problem, Nick, is that it doesn't stop there.
Mike Johnson, who I talked about, the Speaker of the House, has already created an omnibus package to go ahead and push forward at least a quarter of the Project 2025 plan, which of course was created by the Heritage Foundation.
We're talking about tax cuts being made permanent for the wealthy, even furthering them.
We're talking about mass deportation that is fascistic in character and action.
Purging of government, getting rid of the Affordable Care Act, making sure that more people aren't able to get healthcare.
Meanwhile, Nick, while they're going ahead and putting this in place, he's getting convicted of a felony, and unfortunately, we don't see anything on the other side of the aisle that even remotely looks like this.
We don't have some sort of a democratic package that looks towards the future, but the Republicans are going full speed ahead.
They're staying with him.
They're not leaving him.
It doesn't matter that he got convicted.
It doesn't matter who he is.
He's been shown to be incompetent and awful and a felon.
This stuff is already in the works, and it doesn't matter because it's beyond Donald Trump.
Right.
Well, it's interesting.
Donald Trump was able to tap into a huge electorate, or not huge, but enough people that hadn't been in a part of this process before, that that's why the Republicans are so greedy to keep him on board, is because they know that when Trump leaves, I bet you a lot of people won't have the team to cheer for like that anymore, and the guy who like... Well, it depends on who the VP is and who takes over the helm.
Interesting.
Right.
Although, you know, we've seen like, you know, someone like DeSantis try and redo the Trump playbook.
And, you know, because he's not Trump, it was as miserable of a failure as you can imagine.
So that is all.
But it is concerning because you're right.
In theory, another possibility could be that all those people that were like just like Trump are in part of that, the cult of Trump.
Maybe they hang around after he's gone.
Right.
And they continue to just keep voting.
Well, I voted for the Republicans before.
I don't care if it doesn't not my best interest.
I'm going to keep voting for them.
Because I can't be wrong.
So you're right.
There is something to that too, which is I'm sure what the calculus is for all these other GOP people.
They probably figure, oh, Trump is going to be gone at some point.
We'll just be able to continue that participation.
I don't think it's a given, but either way, it's just going to make people compete to be worse.
Worse and worse.
And you're right.
One good thing, the Democrats, you know, it's worth it to condemn Trump.
And there was a White House statement about that.
But they really got to start focusing on what their plan is, what they're going to do to continue to further the art of the country, and really start to get back to a little bit more of that progression that they've completely lost sight of.
Yeah, it needs... and by the way, what do you think are the chances that Trump goes ahead and announces his VP candidate in the next couple of weeks and that the media just goes ahead and jumps on that and talks about that?
Why do you think that's the real possibility?
Well, wasn't he supposed to do this a while ago and then I'm sure they... Yeah, but he doesn't want to give up the spotlight.
That's the problem.
Yeah, yeah.
And that spotlight won't go, you know, it'll be on, it's still on him, even though it's his, the running mate, um, and that won't last, you know, the running mate won't get much, you know, more than like, what, a two, two or three day cycle, tops, two days.
Yeah, but you also, but you know as well as I do, that like, our media, who basically interact with the world like goldfish, will move on from this conviction very quickly.
And they're gonna be like, oh my god, uh, JD Vance is like the, the, oh, did you know he has a beard?
Yeah, right.
So either that's going to get announced, changing the narrative, or there will be an assassination attempt on him and that he will fork.
I'm telling you.
And to go along with this, I want to point out, and I say this all the time because I know that we have a bunch of strategists and Democratic people in power listening to this podcast.
It's not enough to say Donald Trump is a convicted felon.
Vote for Joe Biden.
Donald Trump is a convicted felon.
Don't trust him.
Trust us because...
Blank.
Give people some... This is your opportunity, if you really want to try and reboot this thing and gain some points, you have to start by saying, here's where we go.
Well, yeah, but like, trust me, because I'm not a convicted felon.
I hope they don't go that way.
That's a start!
That's a start!
I mean, and also go ahead and, you know, ethnic cleansing.
I actually, we talked about this recently, about like, what I was hearing from Democratic strategists, and I heard from one of them that they shared our podcast with a friend of theirs, and apparently it caused a pretty big rift.
So, solidarity and cheers.
Best of luck, Democrats.
That's all I can say.
Wait, are you saying that they're not friends anymore after they listened to us?
I think maybe there's a possibility for them to work things out, but probably the Democratic Party needs to realize that they need to try something new and it's not enough simply to say that Donald Trump is a convicted felon.
It doesn't do it.
It doesn't do it for people.
I'm sure it was what you said, not me.
No, I think we both pissed him off, so congratulations on that.
Yeah, I mean, listen, Nick.
Welcome to the left, my friend.
Yeah, thank you.
You made it.
Yeah, well, I got too many things to be part of.
I don't know if I can add another one.
Alright, well, on that note, Nick, before we sign off on this thing, tell the good people what you're watching.
Well, two years ago yesterday, a movie was released.
A movie that was a sequel to another movie that had been released a long time ago.
That movie was Top Gun Maverick.
And I decided to watch it again in honor of the anniversary of its release.
And I gotta say, third time's a charm.
Okay, so you got into the jingoistic military-industrial complex propaganda and you enjoyed it.
Yeah, listen, I saw it twice in the theater, man.
I'm a huge Top Gun fan, the original, so yeah.
Can we talk very quickly, because I enjoy Top Gun Maverick and I enjoy Top Gun.
One of the reasons why propaganda, the military-industrial complex, works is because it does engage sort of a part of yourself that isn't always comfortable to be engaged.
Yeah, fair.
Yeah, but what they also channel, obviously, is a really human story of... I'm not gonna ruin this, but everybody knows what happened to Goose, right?
So, you know, Goose's son and Maverick and having... There's a lot of things going on, a lot of emotional, you know, stuff happening.
Penny Benjamin, too, like with his relationship, which we had heard about in Top Gun.
Almost in that way.
Remember when Obi-Wan Kenobi talks about the Clone Wars when he first meets Luke and he gives him this lightsaber?
And then, and I remember, we talked about this, I was like, I want to see that movie.
That sounds amazing.
Well, just when he talked about, you know, Penny and Benjamin, you know, in the Top Gun and you hear them at the flyover or whatever, then we get to see that.
A lot of emotional baggage, a lot of emotional waves that are flying through this movie.
So it isn't just the propaganda of stuff.
And the left turn it takes in Act 3, as it becomes like a Mission Impossible movie, was fun.
It was just fun.
It was great.
It was kind of weird to see like Maverick in that role like that.
But again, I enjoyed it.
I put some speakers around so I got a little, you know, surround going, you know.
And by the way, you know what happens after the movie is over and you don't touch anything on the screen, right?
No, I don't.
It just starts playing Top Gun, the first one.
Oh, okay.
Well, why not?
Go for it.
Yeah, so I had to kind of watch the first, you know, half an hour, 45 minutes of that, and that was having a great time.
Although, there's a lot of stuff happening in the first one that we could talk about, but would probably get me in trouble.
Well, there is, again, letting something like a Top Gun roll over you like so much warm water.
Like, it feels good, you know, to not call into question the military-industrial complex.
You know, it's like that moment in Top Gun Maverick where it's like, the enemy.
Like, it doesn't say what country they're from.
It doesn't say what they're doing.
All we know is that there's a threat and it needs to be taken care of.
And there's something very visceral about that.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's hard.
But isn't that, like, woke?
Because they didn't want to single out the Russians or... No, no, no!
There's a variety of reasons why they didn't want to single out another country, which is because the movie-making corporations don't want to alienate a country!
They want all the countries to buy tickets and watch it and all that.
Right, well that memory, and we talked about that, it's one of the reasons why corporations are are woke, or while appear to be woke, for the same reason.
So yeah, you know, and it seemed like there was another, they paid more attention to that, which is probably what this modern movie making is anyway, in general, compared to what it was in the 80s.
So nonetheless, it was fun.
I enjoyed it.
And, you know, I now need to couple that with Civil War next.
So we can talk about that.
Yeah, I watched Civil War.
It was a long time coming.
I just want to give a quick report on this thing.
First of all, like a fine thing to watch.
I'm fine with the dystopia, you know, a gritty sort of a view of what would happen in America if all of a sudden, you know, live fire started erupting everywhere.
Alex Garland made this.
He made it very clear as he was going on tons of interviews in which he said, you know, I just think extremism on all sides is dangerous, which is a red alert of what's going on.
The politics in civil war don't make any sense, which is actually kind of shitty.
You know, it's kind of a cowardly decision, and by not being political, you're being political.
There's a lot of tricks that take place.
Like on one point, a character says, you were there at the Antifa massacre.
Well, okay, did Antifa get massacred or did Antifa massacre people?
Like, there's like little tricks like that.
Yeah, it was fun to watch competent filmmaking and battles and, you know, firefights and all of that.
Kind of lame in a lot of other different ways, but also just like a Rorschach test.
You can see whatever you want to see from it and you move from there.
In that way, it's entertaining.
But it's not a totally effective piece of art.
It doesn't have a perspective.
It doesn't have a point of view outside of Nick.
I know this is gonna be shocking.
War is hell!
Yeah.
Can you believe it?
War is hell.
I believe it.
Oh, war is hell!
Oh, Alex Garland, don't take too many chances saying that war is hell.
Like, what a controversial statement.
But basically, it's the idea that we should all calm down and be totally fine, which is in and of itself an act of cowardice to not really take a side and talk about what's actually happening and who's actually causing the problems and the radicalization.
So, should I not rent it and watch it?
I kind of was going to.
No, you should!
I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
Okay, yeah, I'm gonna do that.
I'm gonna do that ASAP for sure.
By the way, I want to share with you a quick screenshot I saw on Fox News.
Can you see what the Chiron says?
Real verdict!
The real verdict in November.
So that's, by the way, good.
That's pretty good workshopping of a phrase.
So, and I suppose it'll be true.
I mean, they want it to be true.
And, yeah.
Man, it is, uh, it's quite the day.
I just want to say, to put it into perspective, and just because I'm feeling a little fuzzy, Nick, it's really nice that over the course of the years we've been doing this podcast, like, when these major things have been happening, we talked the other day about the The night of January 6th that you and I needed to go live and talk about it as it was happening.
I have appreciated in major moments like this that we've been able to get on here, talk about things, be with the community and sort of process it as it comes.
I don't want to be a buzzkill.
I wish I could say we got them folks and that's the end of it.
But yeah, it's not.
And they're not wrong.
That's the problem is Fox News and Trump are not wrong.
The real verdict actually is in November.
And unfortunately a former president being convicted of 34 damn felonies is not the end of the case.
It's not but it's a it's a start and that's what we that this is the best possible outcome you could get.
It was, and here's hoping that we don't have violence in the near future, and yeah, we can go on to the next thing.
Everybody, thanks for tuning in.
We really, really appreciate you coming to an unscheduled live show.
We will be back with a regular Muckrake podcast on Tuesday.
In the meantime, you can find Nick at Can You Hear Me?
