The 34 guilty verdicts against Trump on May 31, 2024—including hush money payments to Stormy Daniels ($130K) and Karen McDougall ($150K)—expose his long-standing "capture and kill" tactics, where Michael Cohen’s loyalty was betrayed despite his legal jeopardy. With sentencing looming (July 11), Judge Merchan faces appeals and Secret Service jurisdictional clashes, while Trump’s supporters double down on disinformation, like Rep. Mary Miller’s false claim about jury unanimity. State-level charges predate his presidency, but federal election laws could complicate appeals, leaving his eligibility as a felon-candidate legally murky despite Hochul’s refusal to pardon him. The verdict underscores how Trump weaponizes legal battles and media manipulation to evade accountability, even as his own strategies unravel. [Automatically generated summary]
And we're back with Truth Unrestricted, brought to you today by the number 34.
34.
Yes.
Yes, the number 34.
I saw a meme yesterday, just to time stamp this.
We're recording May 31st, the day after the verdict that everyone will be talking about for a long time until there's another verdict maybe that they talk about more.
Where there were 34 counts and there was someone, a court reporter who was outside the courtroom reading off the individual counts and their thing.
And they were like, oh, Sesame Street's great today.
Yeah.
Counting all 34 individual charges.
Yeah.
That was my alternative idea on how to start was just opening by saying, one up.
Two.
But I thought that might go on a little bit too long.
I would have.
34 guilty counts.
34 guilty verdicts.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, so that's the intro.
David did it today just to mix things up.
And we are talking about another update on the monstrously encompassing U.S. election and its process.
And we already planned to talk today and then that happened.
And it's just, it's sometimes you just get lucky.
Yeah, usually it's the other way.
Like last time we did an election update and literally, you know, we talked about things that might happen.
And the next day it happened.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's like, oh, these predictions aren't predictions anymore.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But you can't always just postpone just in case something else happens.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
So what do you want to start with first, David?
Do you want to start with the obvious thing?
You want to save the obvious thing for last?
Well, why don't we talk about the last time we did a just a couple of things from last time first.
Oh, yeah.
Because I had predicted, and I don't think it was that huge a prediction that Shanahan would be named as RFK Jr.'s vice presidential candidate.
And indeed, he named her as such before the podcast even went public.
So, you know, there was that.
And she has since shown that she's as insane as he is.
Yes, she is.
She is full of conspiracies, just as full as he is.
It's interesting to watch from an anthropological perspective, but it's sad that he's polling at nationwide across the U.S. about 10 to 12%-ish.
Yeah.
It's all.
Speaking of insane.
Yeah.
And, you know, we won't, I think, talk about it today, but you and I, of course, have discussed and debated a little bit.
Like, who is he pulling from?
Is he pulling from Biden?
Is he pulling from Trump?
Is he pulling from people who wouldn't have otherwise voted?
We just don't know.
As crazy as he is, and especially with the anti-vax stuff and the conspiracy.
I mean, he has gone full-on right-wing conspiracy nut.
Oh, he is like we talked about audience capture in the aspect of attempting to capture another influencer's audience.
And to me, it looks like he's doing, trying to do exactly that.
He's trying to be as much like Trump as he possibly can.
And I think we brought him up in that episode as well.
Right.
Right.
And what's interesting is Trump is trying to be more like RFK Jr.
Because Trump, who always had some anti-well, I say always, for a long time had some anti-vax tendencies, then was trumpeting, no pun intended, the fact that he got, or I say he got, he was claiming that, you know, he was claiming success for the COVID vaccines.
Got booed off stage for that almost.
And yeah, so now he has switched to anti-vax rhetoric.
And now he's doing things like making promises, which he can't keep anyway, but that any school that has a vaccine mandate will not get federal funds.
Yeah, that sounds like it should be on the list of things RFK Jr. promises, right?
But that came from Trump.
Yeah.
So they're stealing from each other at this point.
Yeah.
And so it's just, so that's why I feel like most of the people who are voting for him are people who are of that leaning, of the Trump leaning, but they just can't bring themselves to vote for Trump for, you know, obvious reasons.
And, you know, if RFK Jr. were to suddenly step aside, which he's not going to do, he's not in it to win.
He's in it to spread his ideas and grift.
But if he were to suddenly step aside, or if like the worm ate the rest of his brain, then where would those votes go?
I don't know because these people have already made a determination that they weren't voting for Trump, even though he's the closest to Trump.
Maybe they would go back to Trump.
Maybe they just wouldn't vote.
I don't know.
And yeah.
It's, you know, in the great dice tumbler of life, it's going to be difficult to tell how this goes.
But just so like, I just want to be make it more clear of kind of set the table for this discussion.
I mean, you just mentioned we're not going to go into it, but we're going to go into it, David.
Yeah.
Because I was actually kind of poo-pooed in another space for proposing this exact same idea.
And really, I mean, this is sort of how the Canadian electorate gets divided.
And I'm sure a lot of people in the U.S. are not very familiar with the Canadian system.
They think it's kind of strange, whatever.
But it's possible for us to have a prime minister that does not have a majority of the seats.
And they govern just the same.
They just have they have to work with other people.
They have to shake hands more often with people across the aisle.
And so this division of the electorate between more than just two participants happens every election.
It's been happening every election for 70, 80 years that we've had a third party strong enough that they actually affect the results.
So the idea that I have, when I think about it, I think that RFK Jr., first of all, it's hard to apply things like mathematical game theory to irrational actors.
It's meant to be for rational thinkers, rational players inside each of the thought experiments of game theory.
But each person involved thinks they're rational.
So depending on what RFK Jr. wants and what RFK Jr. thinks is happening, he has the possibility of running his campaign right to the election date because it hurts Biden more.
Or he has the option of quitting within weeks of the election because he might think that the people voting for him might instead vote for Trump.
So he, and this is just an example where he, you know, in our scenario, wants to want a Trump victory.
He might want a Biden victory, but the same logic would apply the other way.
If he thinks he's holding votes back from Trump and helping Biden win, then he might do that.
And he, you know, if he thinks that they would vote for Biden instead of Trump if they weren't voting for him and he wants Biden to win, he could quit weeks in advance and he would get the, you know, have a greater opportunity of getting the result he particularly wants.
Ordinarily, this wouldn't happen if a person was a member of a party because they owe that party allegiance and the party would just run another candidate, but he's an independent.
So that's another thing to keep in mind is that he doesn't have a party that is pushing him and making him, you know, do this and that would run another candidate if he quit, which makes him different than everyone else in this scenario.
Yeah.
And yeah, so yeah, some people don't think that it's a thing that he could do.
And it might be that it never crossed his mind.
And I hope he never hears his podcast because I don't want to give him real ideas.
But, you know, he is an irrational actor and he knows he can't win.
And if he's doing this all for attention and he quits on October 15th, he's pretty much already got all the attention that he's likely to get from the campaign.
It's going to be over on election day, regardless of whether he wins or not.
Well, I'm not sure about that because I don't think he's doing it for campaign attention.
I think if he quits, then some of those big money donors that he's brought in, including Shanahan, may look at him and say, well, wait a minute here.
We thought you were doing it for the cause.
And we're not going to keep funding you if you're just going to walk away.
Right.
So I think he's, I mean, you know, he talks about Trump and Biden being old.
He's not much younger.
So when I'm about to say he's playing the long game, I mean, he can't play the too long game, but, you know, whatever length of time he's looking at, you know, continuing in all this, I think he's doing it for that.
Now, could things change?
Could Trump, you know, through back channels, promise him that they'd make him, you know, head of the Department of Health or whatever.
You know.
Yeah.
There's a lot of QAnon people that are championing the possibility of a Trump Kennedy ticket, Kennedy being the vice president.
I don't think that's going to happen.
He hasn't kissed Trump's ass nearly enough for that.
No.
And so Trump doesn't share power.
Right.
But he could maybe be persuaded by someone to offer him a position and a donation.
And, you know, then maybe he does it.
But the thing is, if you're one of Trump's people looking at that possibility, you also have to remember they were propping up RFK Jr. to begin with and still donating.
I mean, if you look at the, there's huge overlap between, you know, who dollar overlap.
There's clearly a perfect circle between the people that are giving money to Trump and people who are giving money to RFK Jr.
Yeah.
So in this scenario, David, just a moment, if there might be you, you say that you don't think that it would be, you think that it would be counterbeneficial to him to quit because it would, you know, if he was doing this for a cause or whatever, then he would be betraying that cause.
But what if he quits reluctantly for a reason that they understand?
They already found a dead worm in the man's brain.
If he, you know, quote unquote, finds a live worm in his brain.
Right, right.
Jokes aside, though, if they find another health problem between now and then and they already found a health problem already and he, you know, grits his teeth and goes, sucks air through his teeth.
Yeah, sorry, but I just have to take care of my health.
It comes first and I just can't continue.
How many of those big money donors reluctantly understand and say, well, I guess Trump's our guy.
Let's push for him in the last weeks.
Hope that this works out that way.
I guess it depends if they trust him or not, because even his claims are true.
I mean, even his claim about the worm has come under scrutiny, as easy as it is to make jokes about, as easy as it is to accept.
It was during his divorce proceeding and used as a reason that he shouldn't have to give money to his ex-wife.
You know, so was that real?
Was it not?
It's a very strange, very strange thing to suggest, but.
Yeah.
But he's a very strange person.
So, you know, mark this down as my prediction.
He will not quit.
Okay.
All right.
No, that's fine.
You have a David, you're right poster right above your right shoulder.
I see it.
And I take that, you know, I've seen you be right enough times that I respect that.
You're not right every time, but you do have a history of making strong calls that have come true.
And that shouldn't be discounted.
Well, let's talk about another one very quickly here.
Nikki Haley.
I said she would eventually bow down and kiss the ring.
And just a few weeks ago, she did exactly that.
Yep.
She held her nose and endorsed Trump.
Yeah, just before he got convicted.
Good timing there, Nikki.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, she, like all these other people, and I know we're going to talk about the, you know, the convictions in a minute, but it's this almost unanimous wall of Republicans echoing the same thing he has said.
And, you know, while Nikki Haley hasn't gotten quite that much, she has said, I am going to vote for him.
Yeah.
And, you know, a friend of mine asked me and said, well, nobody knows how you actually vote.
Could she be lying?
I said, well, it doesn't matter if she's lying.
It's not her vote that matters.
It's the vote of all the people who supported her and who she had previously said, no, don't vote for this man.
And now she says, yes, do it.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah, that's, I didn't hold out a lot of hope that Nikki Haley would have a spine and stick to her principles.
Oddly enough, the person who, you know, among this group, the few people who have stuck to their principles, I, and, and these are, I'll turn my phone off.
These are people like Mike Pence and Chris Christie, who still, to the last of my knowledge, haven't bent to kiss any rings and doesn't look like they will.
I mean, you know, Pence is probably worried if he bends to kiss a ring, someone will slip a noose around his neck.
So, yeah, but even he, while he said he's like not endorsing him, I think he, I think he has come out the way he said it is like, I don't know who I'm voting for or something like that.
I don't remember the exact situation.
I do remember seeing that.
Yeah, that he that he wouldn't commit to voting for anyone.
It's, it's a little bit of a cop out.
Yeah.
But I'm not that surprised that the man cops out at this point.
He's not shown a great deal of courage in most scenarios.
Really, he did show at least some on January 6th.
But yeah, it's not great.
Along with that are the list of people who have supported Trump who have been directly asked if he loses the election, if they will support the result or if they would denounce any potential violence.
And there's been resounding silence on that question, a lot of dissembling, a lot of distraction to other scenarios, a lot of people just insisting that they don't have to worry about that because Trump is definitely going to win.
And that's not great.
After January 6th, that's not great to hear guys like Ted Cruz to go on these on these programs and say that he's not going to say for sure that he would be on the side of nonviolence in this situation.
The people who, and in this case, the U.S. citizens need to pay more attention.
I think they're already paying a lot of attention, but really more.
And you really need to, you know, show your strength at the voter box this time around.
You're not enumerated.
They're not a card waiting for you.
Go there anyway.
Sign the affidavit.
It'll get counted in the weeks that follow.
You're in a state where it always goes the other way anyway.
Doesn't matter.
Go there anyway.
Make it that much closer.
Make it resoundingly clear which side you're on.
Pick that side now.
Make it clear.
I can't stress that enough.
Yeah.
That this guy cannot make it back in.
We are in so much, everyone, not just the U.S., everyone in so much trouble if that happens.
Yeah.
Of course, before we get to the trial also, I do want to at least mention, you know, he went seeking an endorsement at the Libertarian Party National Convention.
Yes, the Libertarian National Convention happened and RFK Jr. and Donald Trump both went to seek the nomination.
I don't know what would happen if you got nominated by two parties.
I don't know if there's anything in the Constitution about that, certainly.
I think you mentioned parties in the Constitution.
I don't know because someone, okay, so I should, so let right.
Wait, hold that thought for a second because so obviously people know by now he got booed off the stage.
He was made fun of.
He was laughed at.
All the libertarians I listened to cheered that their party did that.
Yeah.
Yes.
And then he came out with this whiny little statement of like, well, I chose not to file the paperwork to ask for an endorsement because, well, one of the reasons is you can't actually have the endorsement of more than one party.
And immediately, all over social media, I saw things popping up from people like, funny, because back when he ran previously, he was not just the endorsed Republican candidate, but like the conservative party candidate.
And some other things like that.
And I think even Biden had more than one endorsement.
So maybe it varies state by state.
And maybe it doesn't matter.
You know, the name just appears once.
And I don't know how that would work.
But the point is, of course, that he was lying because he claimed, you know, oh, yeah, they loved me there.
And it's like, no, you know, anyone with two eyes and two ears or one of each or, you know, one at all could see that, no, that's just not the case.
And, you know, but he doesn't care.
He will say anything.
It doesn't matter.
You know, it's truly he is the person who, if he says the sky is blue, you better go to the window and check.
Well, but he might just say it's green or purple.
And he would be insulted if you did check, right?
Right.
Well, and, you know, all the MAGAs would instantly come out and say, yes, it is.
And it's green because of chemtrails that Biden is putting into the air.
You know, I mean, it would just, it would just go from there.
And they would never bother to look up at the sky, mind you.
But, you know, just like I'm sure they didn't look at the Libertarian Convention.
And I do want to mention, I may have mentioned this before on a podcast.
I actually attended the Libertarian Convention 30 some years ago.
A friend of mine was a delegate, a friend I had met online.
And so me and a couple others, it was in Chicago.
So we drove up to Chicago and we just hung around.
Now, this was before the Libertarian Party was batshit insane.
Like there was one in the, in kind of the vendor type area, there was one anti-abortion table and everybody was mocking.
Like, seriously, this is the Libertarian Convention.
You know, we're talking about women being able to have control over their own bodies and you're having an anti-abortion table here.
Now, obviously, things have changed and the Libertarian Party has gone severely right wing, but even they have enough sanity and morals to say no to Donald Trump.
Well, we can only hope that that continues toward November.
The Libertarian Party Convention did occur.
They selected a guy named Chase Oliver.
I think I've heard his name somewhere before, but I can't remember where.
I don't think it was in relation to any crime.
So there's that.
But I don't know anything about this guy.
If it looks like he as a candidate can affect the overall results, we'll report on him again.
Otherwise, he's going to be on the ballot likely.
Yeah.
Or at least in some states.
I'm not sure if they get listed in every state or not.
I don't know.
It depends because that was one thing that one thing that happened here in Illinois back when I was in college was it used to be that, and I think it still is, but the two major parties automatically were on the ballot.
Any other parties could only get on, well, I say automatically.
They needed a certain amount of signatures.
But that number of signatures was significantly lower than the number for other parties.
Yeah.
Unless you got more, any of your candidates got more than 5% of the vote, something like that.
I'm talking off the top of my head from something that was three decades ago.
Some percentage in a, you know, in an election.
And then the next election, you would go down to the lower level.
And so another guy I knew ran for like the University of Illinois trustee position as a libertarian.
And he got more than 5% of the vote.
And so the next time up, the Libertarians only had to get this lower number.
So you know what the governor and the legislature of Illinois did?
They made the trustees for the University of Illinois appointed in the future, and they changed the law so they would not be elected anymore.
So people could not use that as a way to get that percentage of the vote.
Yeah.
Well, politics is a dirty game, I guess.
Yes.
Yes.
So if we're tracking other small-time candidates, because, you know, they can shave points off a close election, and that might happen this time.
We'll see.
But there is a thing called the Green Party.
They had a person named Cornell West who was running to be the candidate for that party.
He has since dropped out.
But Jill Stein is still campaigning for that.
And it's widely reported that she's likely to become that candidate again, eight years down the line after the 2016 election when she got something somewhere in the range of about 2% of the overall vote.
Just enough.
Just enough to screw over the country.
Well, yeah, it was felt that most of the people voting for her would have voted for Hillary if they if they voted.
It's like I say, it's it's difficult to say to retouch all those dice, but you know, there was exit polls and they have some numbers and they have at least some data to back that up.
It was an extremely close election, despite what Donald Trump will say against Hillary.
Yeah.
And a lot of people feel that was enough to tip the scales.
But this time we'll have there was also a Libertarian Party then, but I don't think they got enough of a percentage of any votes to look like it might noticeably change anything.
Yeah.
In that election.
But who knows?
This time we'll have five, looks like five different options in most states.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So two major candidates.
Joe Biden, again, still is the presumptive candidate, will be the candidate as soon as they have their convention in, I think it's in August.
Maybe sooner.
Democrat one.
They might hold it sooner.
Well, they might formally nominate him sooner because Ohio has a law that says that's never been enforced before, by the way, that says the candidate must be nominated, like, I think it's 90 days before the election or something like that.
And this falls two weeks into that period, roughly.
Oh, yeah.
And so in previous elections where this has happened, the legislature and the governor just changed law, you know, for that election.
Right.
This time, the legislature, which is made up of, you know, vast majority right-wing Republicans said, no, we're not going to change it.
Now, to his credit, the right-wing Republican governor said, come on, guys, this is the presidential election we're talking about here.
Right.
We're not really going to do this.
If Colorado can't keep Trump off the ballot, why can Ohio keep right?
But they I haven't seen any indication, but I have seen some speculation that there will be some sort of like online official nomination instead.
And then they'll just have the big party in Chicago.
Yeah, it's a foregone conclusion who they're going to pick.
So it's not like it's not like the outcome's in doubt.
Yeah, that was one thing.
I saw someone saying like, oh, it'll make it somewhat, you know, less meaningful.
I'm like, it's already not meaningful.
You're just getting together to have a big.
It's a rally.
It's a week-long rally.
Yeah, it's a rally.
It's going to be a point for people to protest.
Other than that.
It's where you bring out all the celebrity endorsements and all the other politicians endorsing people and getting behind their candidate.
Yeah, it's just a rally.
Yeah.
I think actually maybe my memory is a little faulty on this, but I think that's where Obama first showed up, was making a big speech at the Democratic National Convention.
I could be wrong about that, but that is in the back of my memory.
So I think we're done with all the other candidates and we're ready to dive into the really, it's not that much happening really with Trump's campaign, right?
Three.
Ah, ah, ah.
Four.
Ah, ah, ah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So usually when we talk about Trump in the last two times we've done this, we list off a huge number.
We list off all the different areas that he is currently being prosecuted because that's usually the big news.
We'll handle the ones that are less consequential first.
So we have the Georgia indictments.
They are sort of on hold for now.
We have the Florida set of indictments.
They are also on hold, waiting for an answer from the Supreme Court.
Well, more waiting, more because the judge is doing everything she can to delay it.
Yeah, she's also doing that.
In that case, there are the indictments in Washington, D.C. that are directly related to January 6th.
They are also on hold waiting for the Supreme Court decision.
And we have quickly down the line here before we get to the big one.
Florida, the Letitia James fraud indictments are still in the same state they were the last time we talked about them, which is that he's negotiated the amount that he's going to owe to a smaller amount.
Maybe we hadn't covered this last time, but he has negotiated.
It was about 450 million.
He's negotiated that to a smaller package.
Last time I checked, he still hadn't paid it.
So he can't do an appeal yet.
But there were some billionaires offering some money at some point, probably because they want their name in print somewhere.
Billionaire fragile egos.
I think they did guarantee it and put it out there.
But then the prosecution, and again, I'm drawing on memory here because this is a little older news.
The prosecution questioned whether they really did have the financial backing to make those statements.
So they're probably off on like a side quest at this point to figure that out.
Yeah, good use of gaming terminology there, side quest.
I like that.
Yeah.
So really, I don't know why the court would accept a guarantee.
The guarantee would have to be, you know, quite a bit larger than the actual amount.
He's already negotiated to a smaller amount.
They should just wait till they have cash on the barrel head, in my opinion.
But they can do what they like, I guess.
They're their own branch of government, I'm told.
Right.
Completely separate.
Apparently, completely separate and subject to no oversight.
Yeah, right.
So the Supreme Court is subject to no oversight.
All the other courts are, but.
Yeah, but not by Congress.
Well, I don't know.
Congress seems to think they are.
Certain Republican Congresspeople seem to think so because, you know, it's not to jump ahead here, but it's really strange how many people from the Congress have showed up outside the trial to proclaim that it's unfair.
And afterwards, during and afterwards, claiming that Judge Merchan, and I may be pronouncing that, mispronouncing that, is conflicted because his daughter works for a digital campaign consulting firm that does unrelated work for Democrats, among others.
But Supreme Court justices can have their own.
They're not conflicted because they're wise.
They're officially involved in schemes to replace the electors with a different slate of electors, and that's totally fine.
Yeah.
Or showing support by flying flags.
Upside down.
Upside down.
And then the justices lying about the series of events that led to that.
And, you know, but those are two totally different situations.
Obviously, we should not hold Supreme Court justices to any standard, but anyone of those same people who don't want to hold those justices to any standard can attack this New York judge because of his daughter's job.
Yeah.
In the same way that Congressman Jim Jordan can totally disrespect a congressional subpoena and suffer no consequences and yet sit on committees where he enforces subpoenas on other people.
Right.
And this is somehow not in the least bit hypocritical.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
So on to real events that are really happening right now.
So I stay up last night and I put together some info and I just want to go through it as quickly as possible, just as a brief summary on how we got here.
So I'm going to try to do this briefly.
Okay.
So that's that's his way of saying, David, be quiet.
Yeah.
Well, you know, grab a cup of coffee, maybe.
I don't know.
So way back in 2006, Donald Trump gives, is married to a woman named Melania, still married to her, surprisingly.
And she gives birth to a boy named Baron Trump.
And very, very shortly after that, Trump has an affair with Stormy Daniels.
Like we're talking like, I don't even think she's left the hospital.
Like he's already slipping into bed with someone else.
And shortly after that affair, in late 2006, across to early 2007, he has an affair that lasts for several months with a former Playboy model named Karen McDougall.
So we highlight these because their names have come up during the trial.
There were others.
There were many others.
This isn't like two lone stars in the night or anything like that.
There's a whole night sky filled with stars.
And those are just the two that are used in this particular, in this particular case.
Because what else would you expect from someone endorsed by so much of the evangelical community?
So at the time, Trump was not a politician.
He was not, I mean, he was famous, but he wasn't like, you know, affecting the greater world sort of a position.
So Donald Trump starts his campaign in 2015, in which case all the wheels start rolling.
He shortly after that, he has a meeting with Michael Cohen and a man named David Pecker, who is the CEO of the company that runs National Inquirer.
And they have a meeting that directly discusses National Inquirer's role in this, which is to do what's called capture and kill scenarios on negative stories about Trump.
And, you know, they really, they just openly discuss this.
This is, I mean, this is really conspiracy stuff, right?
Getting together to have this kind of meeting.
2016, Trump becomes a nominee in July.
September of 2016 is when the National Enquirer officially pays Karen McDougall $150,000 for her story about the affair with Trump.
They pay that much to get it as an exclusive story.
It's not useful if the story isn't exclusive, meaning she can't tell anyone else about the story.
And then they just don't run it.
That's how capture and kill works.
You become the source that, you know, you say you'll tell everyone the truth about everything.
People come to you.
You pay them for the exclusive, and then you just never tell anyone.
The story never gets out.
Right.
So October 7th, it's not directly involved, but it's sort of like if you're going to tell the story about a river, sometimes you have to tell the story about a prominent rock that the river has to flow around.
October 7th is when the Access Hollywood audio is made public.
And this was, to my mind, the last time that this sort of objective reality reached Trump's core campaign numbers.
It did have a downward turn right at that moment.
And that was the last time that any news like this at all effectively, negatively affected him at all.
But it did.
And his numbers started going down.
And they were already in the works to capture and kill other stories.
But this is a thing that causes Stormy Daniels to come forward with her story.
And then through discussions with the National Inquirer, she gets paid by Cohen for her story, $130,000.
So that story gets sort of squashed.
There is some right like talking like days before the election, there's some story that runs that indicates there was, I think it might have been the Washington Post, but don't hold me on that, that had some kind of story that related to this, that this might be happening, that these payments might be happening, but they didn't have all the details.
And they just said it's fake news.
And it was just days before the election.
And then I was concerned about her emails anyway.
You know, that was obviously much more important.
Well, yes.
In the story of how Donald Trump became president in 2016, James Comey has a part to play.
Oh, yeah.
Right.
But that's a whole different story.
History will tell that story.
This is just the story of the trial.
And that stuff is a rock to the side of the river instead of in the middle.
So Donald Trump becomes president in a very, very close election, as we mentioned earlier.
All that work seems to have paid off.
Michael Cohen attempts to get paid by Donald Trump reimbursed for all this money that he's been putting out to pay people for hiding these stories.
Trump does what Trump does and neglects to pay him, maybe pays him eventually.
It's, you know, the details in what I could find last night are Little scattered.
There was many times he attempted to get payment.
I think he eventually did get some money, but it wasn't the amount that he was promised.
The whole thing made Michael Cohen very unhappy.
I'm sure in the offing, I'm sure this, I also think this, these weren't the only two things that he had to pay money out to squash.
They were just the ones that they got caught for.
Right.
And so time moves on.
2018, the Wall Street Journal reports hush money payments.
So this is when this starts to break.
January of 2018, the real part of the story starts to become unfolded to the public, right?
February, Michael Cohen tells the New York Times that he personally paid the money and it didn't have anything to do with Trump.
Of course, that puts him in legal jeopardy because that's a campaign contribution that's from his person, which is far more than the personal amount that he's allowed to give.
So he goes way out on a limb to save his guy here.
And his guy doesn't do anything at all to help him because people are supposed to be loyal to Trump.
Trump doesn't need to be loyal to anyone else.
Right.
So a lot of things happen at once here.
Stormy Daniels starts talking about her story.
Michael Cohen tries to sue her to prevent her from talking because of the agreement.
She obtains a lawyer and her and that lawyer counter sue to be allowed to speak because turns out that the NDA, the non-disclosure agreement, was not signed by Trump.
It's hard to say how that came about.
Michael Cohen's a lawyer of whatever standard he should have known that that has to happen.
Maybe Trump just refused to sign it because he wanted to protect himself.
It's difficult to say.
But this, as far as I can tell, this was the real reason why Stormy Daniels got the right to speak about this without having to go through further legal jeopardy.
So then more details come out.
March, a lot of things happen in March, but the biggest one is that Stormy Daniels gives an interview to 60 Minutes, reveals a lot of intimate details about this.
And Cohen again tries a cease and desist letter.
That doesn't help.
April, the federal court, Southern District of New York, opens a case against Cohen in New York.
And on April the 8th of 2018, he gets raided famously by the FBI.
Dual raid, one to his office, one to his home simultaneously.
This was a big deal.
And they were looking for the official case was related to corruption, public corruption in general.
And they had a specific thing they were looking for, but their warrant was for everything that related to public corruption.
So they got what they were looking for.
And then they also got a whole bunch of other stuff related to other forms of public corruption, including details about all these payments.
So they had to wait some time because they had to hire a special master, a judge, a retired judge who comes in and looks through all the individual files and determines which ones are protected by attorney, client, attorney, client privilege, which ones aren't.
And then tells the FBI they get to use the ones that are not protected.
And then they finally get to really move on this.
In the meantime, in May 3rd, Rudolph Giuliani goes on Fox News, tells Sean Hannity that Trump reimbursed Cohen for the hush money payments.
Like this is like bonehead unforced error time.
I mean, this is that this is admitting to the game, right?
I mean, one imagines this is to save Cohen because if Cohen made the payments just on his own, then it's campaign contributions that are far outside what he's allowed.
This kind of saves him from that, ostensibly, but it kind of throws Trump right under the bus, right?
Because he suddenly he knows he paid money for it.
I mean, and everyone asks the question, why would he pay money for it if he didn't do it?
You're saying Giuliani said something without thinking about the repercussions?
That is shocking.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I know.
Since that time, I've become less and less shocked.
Bankrupt.
You know, yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Rudy Giuliani might eventually get his own made-for-TV movie about his life.
I don't know.
It would be a wild ride, man.
Yes, it would.
That's what I was just going to say.
It would be an interesting show.
But the fact that we'd have to pay him for the rights would probably squash that deal.
Do they have to?
I don't know.
I mean, his life is publication.
It's true.
His life is public enough.
So moving on, August, they charge Michael Cohen with this.
He pleads guilty to charges related to hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels.
The National Inquirer in September admits to being involved in capture and kill scheme involving hush money payments regarding Trump affairs.
December of 2018, Cohen sentenced to three years in prison, begins his prison term.
Trump is president this time.
These are federal charges.
Trump could have pardoned him, didn't do it.
Unforced errors.
Yes.
We can only guess why.
A lot of people say he must have been angry at Cohen, whatever.
I don't know, but he didn't do it.
He could have done it.
He had the power.
And no one, like, you can question when a president pardons someone, you can certainly the public can question it, but the president has absolute powers over the federal pardon process.
They don't need to get that approved by anyone.
Congress doesn't get to look at it and say, I don't think so.
Nothing like that.
The president just signs a piece of paper and it's done.
Yeah.
All you could do is it could be used against him in the next election.
Yeah.
The public opinion can work against him.
But that's the only measure.
Right.
Right.
On that power.
There's no other, he could have just signed it away and said, no, Cohen stays out, but he didn't.
So July of 2019, the hush money documents are released to the public and the press.
Trump is still president at the time.
Moving forward, there's not a lot that happens with this case until January 2023 when the Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, convenes a grand jury about this issue.
So he's got the documents from the FBI.
A lot of them were made public, but not like everything.
But he got the documents from the FBI, continued his own proceeding and pursued it himself.
So grand jury indicts on March 30th of 2023.
In April, Trump is arraigned in Manhattan.
He pleads not guilty.
July of 2023, Trump tries to move the case to federal court, but is denied.
So I go through all these points because already in the weeks leading up to this and already like the huge wave of Twitter lit up last night of attempts to cope,
attempts to justify why this is happening to them and to avoid any part, any indication that their guy is in any way culpable in this.
It's important to recognize all the pieces that went together for this and why it took so long to do because it took long to get all the documents moved from one office to another and all of these points.
And this was a case where they certainly think someone's guilty when they charge them.
No DA or crown prosecutor in Canada ever makes a charge when they don't actually think someone's guilty.
But they're not guilty until they're judged as such, which is why they're alleged to have done these things until they're charged.
So by the way, Trump is no longer an alleged felon.
He's a felon now.
He's a felon.
As of yesterday afternoon, a little less than 24 hours ago.
So keep that in mind as you say these things, as you use words with people to form what is going to become the truth for you in your mind.
That's the truth in the court.
You can think it's something else all you like, but the court says he's guilty.
And so it is in the courts eye.
So and I'd like to point that out because during the trial, let me try to find it here.
During the trial, Trump said something.
He had many press conferences where he tried to say things, but he said, I wrote it down here.
I have so many notes.
He said that the judge was very corrupt, that the process is very corrupt, and that there are many, many things that have happened that show the corruption.
I'm paraphrasing here right now because I can't find the correct, but that's pretty much exactly what he said.
Right.
So in that statement, you can see he hasn't said anything specific.
He said there are things and he hasn't said what they are.
And he's tried to shortcut straight to the interpretation that he wants people to have when they listen.
The interpretation he wants is that they're corrupt.
And he hasn't said anything specific to support that claim.
And this is common among people who are attempting to distort reality.
What that person says is real and I know it because of things.
And then when you ask them specifically for the things, you never get those things.
I mean, he did specifically like attack the judge's daughter.
He also did a lot of other things.
And he got he was told that he wasn't allowed to talk about the case by the judge, which he then tried to spin into the idea that he wasn't allowed to testify, which is ridiculous.
He was certainly allowed to testify.
Well, and then after, you know, I mean, to jump a little ahead, he has since whined that the judge was against him.
And if he were to testify, he would have to talk about every little thing.
And then he used an example, like if he remembered a day being sunny, but it was actually rainy, then that would be used again, which is total BS.
It is, it isn't.
It is, it isn't.
Because he would be available for cross-examination, which is undoubtedly what they wanted to avoid.
Well, yes.
And he was making it sound like it was these minor ticky-tack details, which interestingly enough, if Biden were to say it was rainy that day, you would have all the Republicans saying, We have weather reports that show it was sunny and therefore that means he has dementia.
Yeah.
You know, and so that's the go-to move.
Yeah.
Right.
But he also did some stuff, again, during the trial and, you know, like where he and his minions would just spread blatant disinformation, like whining, why is it that the prosecution gets to go last in this trial?
It's attacking Trump and there's no way this should be allowed.
And it's like, it's in New York law.
Yeah.
They have very specific rules for how these trials happen.
And they're following these rules to the letter.
I guarantee it.
Yeah.
And so, but of course, it's, it's not a manner of, again, it goes back to the sky is green.
It's not, he doesn't care if he gets called out as a liar.
No.
All he cares about are that his supporters get enraged.
Right.
And they're not getting enraged based on facts.
They're getting enraged based on the idea that they won't get the outcome that they want.
Right.
And so, like, you know, again, jumping ahead, but since we're talking about this, there's a representative in Congress here in Illinois, a little, you know, a little bit away from me, but she represents a rural Illinois district.
Her name's Mary Miller.
She has in the past, like quoted Hitler and stuff like that.
And she posted after the verdict, I sat in this trial.
She was one of the ones who made the trek to sit at his feet and bow down to him.
And she said, I sat in this trial for a day and it was a complete sham.
The Democrat quote unquote judge, as if he's not really a judge, instructed the jury to find President Trump guilty if only four out of 12 of them agreed on a crime.
The anti-Trump witnesses admitted to lying under oath.
The corrupt prosecutor was sent by the Biden DOJ.
Literally none of this is true.
There is zero truth to any of this.
And so I was happy to see a local reporter by the name of Brendan Moore.
He works for Lee Enterprise News.
And he tweeted and said, this, of course, is false.
And quite frankly, it's irresponsible for an elected official to amplify.
The jury must be unanimous in agreement that the defendant committed a crime to render a guilty verdict.
And so there was only one thing.
I mean, she was spreading a fire hose of disinformation.
Oh, yeah.
And, you know, the rest of it is all BS.
And so it's just, this is what all of the, you know, the Trump spokespeople, otherwise known as Republicans at this point, are spreading and spread during the trial and then continued to spread after the trial just to, because again, facts don't matter.
No, no.
But we need them to.
Right.
Yeah.
And, you know, then they say things like that lots of them have said, well, they can do this to him.
They could do it to anyone.
And if anyone breaks the law, then yeah, they can, they right.
That's kind of the point.
As many people have pointed out, yeah, that's kind of the point that everyone is subject to the laws of this country.
But also in this particular case, you know, I responded to several people who said this and they're public figures, so they're never going to respond back to me.
I, you know, I said, well, you know, yeah, anyone who cheats on his wife with a porn star and then pays her off to keep quiet while cooking his books to hide that payment during an election.
Yes, if that's what you mean by anyone, then yes, they can do it to anyone.
But yeah, it's, it's just, like I said, the disinformation flow from all corners of the Republican Party are just, you know, just insane.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, so the last part of the story is, uh, so I just want to say before I note the last part of the story that I personally hope that we're able to talk about this calmly, rationally.
And I don't say this jokingly, that we're able to do it without a sense of glee or haha, I told you so, or anything like that.
Some people are definitely happy about this.
Are you saying we, like you and me, or the world, like, the world in general?
Because I think that, you know, the fact that people on the right in general, and they have very generally attempted to slur and slander their way across the political rhetoric over the past eight-ish years since Trump became a real candidate.
I hope that it doesn't cause too many of the people on the opposite side of them to try to do the exact same thing back to them, because that builds the trenches deeper and keeps us in a heightened state for longer.
If we're able to, like, nothing, no, how do I want to say this?
Expressing this as a point and laugh moment might give people who have suffered the slander and the slurs and all that for so long a sense of personal gratitude that they get to do it back.
But that's, I think that's fleeting.
Yeah, I don't think it's a point and laugh moment, although I can certainly understand people who do it.
But I think it is a pointed out moment.
And I'm going to certainly point it out.
Yeah.
I want to go to another elected official here in Illinois, and that would be the governor, Governor Pritzker, who has been very vocal in his opinions about Trump, in part because I think he just doesn't like the man, and in part because he probably wants to run for president next time.
But he put out a after the verdict, which I know we keep going to the future, or I say we, I keep going to the future, but he put out a press release, and in part it said, justice has been served after facing a jury of his peers.
Donald Trump is exposed as the liar and fraud that he is.
Trump evaded the law to deceive voters, and today the law caught up to him.
Donald Trump is a racist, a homophobe, a grifter, and a threat to this country.
He can now add one more to his list, a felon.
I mean, it gets the point there.
It doesn't, you know, he's not dancing with glee.
Right.
He's making all the points, plus one more that coincidentally happened like the day before or the same day as the trial, which maybe we'll have time to get to, maybe not, which is the apprentice producer coming out and saying, hey, my NDA is over.
I can finally tell you what a racist piece of crap this guy is.
Yeah, that's also a thing that happened.
Yeah.
Right.
And a lot of people are almost inured to this.
A lot of people already felt it was true regardless.
They'd heard rumors and they weren't surprised.
But I just want to say quickly about this, getting back to it, is that lest we bring up the Nazis too much, but during Nuremberg, one of the comments that Göring said that he attempted to mock the allies with was that in a way, the Nazis won because they made the Allies come down to the level that the Nazis were at.
Now, I don't think that's true.
No.
But I think it's something that you have to be careful of.
It's certainly something that Göring wanted to mock the Allies with, that you're no better than me sort of thing.
But if the urge to make the other side sting the way they made you sting is so great that you become no better than them, then we're in a spot, aren't we?
Right.
And I think that we are better served by, yes, absolutely, stick to sane, sober things.
And if those sane, sober things are that he's a fraud and a liar and a transphobe and a homophobe and a racist, all those things, and you can show them absolutely.
I don't have a problem with that.
I call them those things.
Right.
But if your intent is to make someone who supported him embarrassed to have done so, I don't think you're helping anything.
I think it's not going to work.
Right.
I mean, it's also not going to work.
It's convincing a cult member that the cult leader is bad when the whole, literally the whole narrative of the cult is they're going to try to convince you that the cult leader is bad.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
They're sort of predisposed to, you know, not listen to that at all.
But their side already thinks that this side is going to just mock them because that's what they do.
Right.
I mean, they literally, there's literally a flag flying in my neighborhood.
And I may have mentioned this before that says, you know, Trump 2024, make liberals cry again.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Like, that's the reason that they're promoting to elect Trump is to make liberals cry.
Right.
Yeah.
And so when I see TikTok videos today, this morning, where, you know, they're grabbing a video capture of a person who supports Trump crying about the verdict and then mocking them for crying.
I get no joy from that.
I think that we should try to, you know, maybe it's been overdone, but what Michelle Obama said, try to take the high road a little more or the or the low road's going to win.
I know.
I don't want the thing is, I agree with you.
Yeah.
But I also don't want to police how other people feel.
No, no.
And I, like I say, I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to do that either.
Right.
That's an important point is that I'm not going to mock anyone who does that mocking or try to say that they're doing it wrong or whatever.
I just think that everyone and the future will be better served if we can handle this more like adults and less like children because it's their side that wants us to act like children.
It makes it easier for them to mock us the next time something comes around.
The problem is that it's not just their side that needs to grow up.
It's the media.
And this is something that I've seen.
It's like, so certainly now all those newspapers that, you know, put out articles saying Biden's too old and should not run again, certainly they're going to run articles that say Trump is a felon and should not run again, right?
Right.
And you know, they're not.
I mean, there's been a few, but no, you know, they're not.
And they just treat it all differently.
It's like you said about the apprentice thing.
Everybody knew already.
You know, there was this big story.
And first of all, it was bad that it happened on or right near that day, you know, so that it kind of got buried in the verdict.
But also, there were already rumors circulating about him using the N-word on production.
This was just a different time and a more specific reference to it.
Yeah.
And yeah, there was a big article on Slate from the guy who did it.
And, you know, if the information had been released before 2016, then I could see it having an impact.
Now, people know who Trump is.
And what's interesting is the biggest part to me isn't that he used the N-word.
It's the way production made him seem smarter and more successful because that's what they needed.
Now, they didn't know that they were grooming a con man to run for president.
So I'm not suggesting we, you know, say, oh, you terrible people, you did this.
They were making a TV show, an entertainment product.
Yeah.
And, you know, but did it make him seem much better in the eyes of the public?
Yes, it did.
And that contributed.
But at this point, everyone knows who he is and what he is.
And new stories coming out, they just don't have an impact.
You're either a Trumper or you're not.
And yes, there are some people, as an example, there are some people who have claimed in polls.
And I know we still haven't even technically gotten to the verdict yet in your timeline here.
Everyone knows the verdict already.
Yeah.
But there are people who have said in polls, hypothetically, would you vote for Trump if he were convicted of felonies?
And some number, the number that sticks in my head is about 17%.
But every poll is going to be a little different.
So let's, whatever it is, it's an impactful number have said, no, they would not.
But that was theoretical.
And although I have seen certain Democrat type accounts, not official Democrat accounts, but like Angry Staffer on Twitter, which has a big following and he was clearly involved in politics for a long time and knows, has inside information about what's going on.
He posted and said, see, now they're going to lose votes.
And I'm like, are they though?
Is he?
Because there's not a hypothetical.
And then there's the reality.
And it's one thing to say, oh, yeah, I would never vote for a convicted felon.
But if they buy into the whole narrative that he's not really a convicted felon, because he's still got his appeals and it was all a sham and this and that.
I mean, is he going to lose a few votes?
Probably.
A few, a very few.
But if you needed a court to show you that Trump was a con man and a fraudster and a criminal, then you were already deluding yourself.
Yeah, it's been pretty obvious for a very long time.
So, yeah, maybe we should just get to the last of this here.
As you mentioned a couple of times, we skipped ahead, but that's fine.
Everyone understands what verdict happened yesterday.
The jury deliberated for a day and a half.
They started Wednesday morning.
On Thursday morning, they asked the judge to repeat the jury instructions to make them clarify they needed one more time.
So there must have been something going on Wednesday night that some part they were deliberating on.
And then they also asked at the same time for the right to stay a little later in the day if they needed to, which is interesting because by the end of the day, I don't know the exact time, but I think it was sometime around 2 o'clock Pacific, 5 o'clock Eastern or so.
It was right around the time when I heard the news that was guilty on all 34 individual counts.
Yeah, I didn't hear the part about them requesting to stay later in the day.
I had heard the judge was about to inform, well, he had informed the attorneys, hey, I'm going to let the jury go at 4.30.
And so, you know, 4.15 rolls around and all of a sudden they hit the button that says we have a verdict.
Everybody's like, what?
What?
Yeah.
And then they needed time to fill out the paperwork, apparently, because filling out the paperwork on 34 charges is a lot.
And so that took them past the 4.30, but, you know.
Yeah.
So as far as people who will attempt to claim something about this trial that they say isn't true, that you mentioned that a person said that only four of the 12 were needed, which is false.
All that's going to be in the court record.
The court keeps track of all of it completely in multiple places and it can be checked later.
It's pretty much the most documented place on earth is a Western courtroom.
To say that something happened there that won't appear in the record is ludicrous, completely ludicrous.
But that doesn't stop them.
I mean, we won't stop them.
No, but Representative Mary Miller is completely ludicrous.
But when you encounter these people, don't feel the least bit hesitant to just tell them they're wrong.
Be kind about it.
I managed to do that most times.
Be kind about it.
But I tell them that's not true.
I'm not happy that you're wrong about that, but you are wrong about it.
And sorry, but that's reality.
Reality is the thing that should be guiding us.
It's not completely, but it should be.
And that's what I hope people go to.
It's just, it's just reality, man.
It does, you know, it doesn't need to be like sticking a knife in and twisting it or anything like that.
It's just, it's just, it is what it is.
He was found guilty.
They did the trial the right way.
He was found unanimously guilty and he had to be, it had to be unanimous.
It's a unanimously guilty by 12 people who were essentially agreed upon by both sets of attorneys.
That's right.
Including, I believe, one who said he gets most of his information from like Fox News or, you know, Truth Social or something like that.
And so, yeah, I mean, all it took, all it would have taken was one juror to hang the jury.
Yeah.
And so when I heard that they had a verdict this quickly, I knew it wasn't a hung jury.
Yeah.
I was surprised, pleasantly, that it was guilty across the board.
But that's how convincing the evidence was against him.
These are just 12 average citizens who did what all these Republican elected officials wouldn't do.
They're too busy kowtowing and, you know, kissing his ass, and they won't stand up and say he's guilty.
Yeah.
The prosecution called 20 witnesses.
They included Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen, and David Pecker.
And the defense called two witnesses.
It took less time for the defense to lay out their defense than it did for the jury to deliberate.
That seems fairly significant.
A lot of people wondered why Trump didn't testify.
Trump says that Trump's essentially like when I hear him say things like what you said he said, I'm hearing that he doesn't want to get caught in a lie.
Right.
And he doesn't, you know, he's saying it's going to be a lie about the weather, but cross-examination is for real.
If you are getting sworn in and then you're just going to try to lie on the stand, well, they're going to impeach you on that and impeach you on that.
And they're going to bring it up and they're going to show it in court.
It'll be evidence in court.
As soon as you try to lie about it, they can bring that into evidence.
And that's been sort of the holy grail of a lot of these trials is what if Trump gets on the stand, what will he say?
Is he even capable of telling the truth?
Well, and is he capable of putting two sentences together?
I mean, we've all seen the video of what happened when the teleprompter went down at the NRA convention and he just stood there.
Yeah.
You know, and they're making up excuses.
Oh, it was a dramatic pause.
It wasn't a dramatic pause.
He had no idea what to say.
They brought him out, printed out papers to read at his press conferences outside the courthouse.
Anytime he tries to go off script, he just goes off.
And in a cross-examination, oh, I mean, he would only make himself look guilty.
Yeah, there wouldn't be any kind of, you know, indicator in his ear to remind him where, how to stay on track.
There wouldn't be any teleprompter to keep him on task.
There would be nothing like that.
And he would be at the mercy of very well-trained attorneys who really, I mean, there's a reason why we compare attorneys to sharks.
In a courtroom, I'm sure they seem a lot like that when they're asking questions of a person, right?
And then, you know, he also, you know, as far as the witnesses, he claimed afterwards that a lot of the key witnesses weren't called.
Okay.
If you held defense, you could have called them, except you didn't actually want them to testify and be cross-examined.
Yeah.
I did hear his attorney this morning in an interview say this where someone asked him why certain key people from this weren't weren't called as witnesses.
And the attorney said, well, it's the prosecution's responsibility to call them.
It's not our responsibility to make the case for the prosecution.
But as soon as I hear that, I think, well, that means that those people won't help the defense.
Right.
They would push it further.
Yeah.
If you're saying it's what you're really saying in that case, you're saying it without saying it.
Someone has to interpret it.
But that's the interpretation is that those witnesses won't help you.
Should call every witness that will help you to avoid a guilty verdict.
And if you didn't call them, they either wouldn't have helped you or you didn't think of it.
Really, those are the only true reasons why that should happen that way.
Right.
And they called only two witnesses, and Trump wasn't one of them.
Yeah.
So there will undoubtedly be an appeal.
So we should get to the last few things.
So yesterday was a verdict.
It's May 31st now.
There will be a sentencing on July 11th.
Yes.
And, you know, the judge has full reign over that.
Right.
There's sentencing guidelines and there's limitations, but there's 34 individual charges here.
Yes.
We don't know how that'll go.
Right.
And already, you know, the news networks have been parading the experts out.
Yeah.
The problem is if you talk to two experts, you're going to get three opinions.
Yeah.
And, you know, they've gotten a range of answers as to whether or not he'll likely get jail time.
Yeah.
NBC linked to an analysis of thousands of cases that showed very few people charged with the same crime received jail time.
Now, I don't know what they call the same crime because none of the people in that database or analysis did those crimes to help win the presidential campaign.
Yeah.
So, you know, how do you compare to that?
None of them had, you know, violated a gag order multiple times over.
Yeah.
You know, and so all, you know, none of them behaved in the way that Trump has behaved, both in the charges and in the court.
Here's what I think will happen.
Okay.
I think that this is a situation.
I think we may have talked about this before where someone tries to appear unbiased, but ends up biasing themselves in the opposite direction.
And I think we've talked about this when it comes to the media.
You know, the media is like, well, we don't want to seem like we're against, you know, we're only picking on Trump, so we'll pick on Biden.
Yeah.
And I think the judge, he knows he's been attacked for being supposedly biased.
He knows everything about this case will be appealed.
He knows Trump's attorneys will probably ironically use the attacks against him to say that he went too hard on Trump because of those attacks.
So I think he will give no jail time because he will look more reasonable and it will be less likely to be overturned on appeal in his mind.
Because it'll be harder to say, oh, look how terrible and biased he was.
Even if under normal circumstances, Trump would totally deserve it.
I also think another reason is Trump, as the former president, is protected by the Secret Service.
How do you protect someone in jail?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a question a lot of people have asked before.
The Secret Service is hired by a branch of the government, and the police in Manhattan are hired by a branch of the government, but they are under no obligation to work together.
The closest comparison to this situation occurred in November of 1963 when President Kennedy was assassinated in Texas.
In Texas law, a murder that occurs in Texas is investigated by Texas authorities under Texas jurisdiction.
And the Texas police were sent to collect the body for autopsy.
And they were denied access by the Secret Service who scooped him up, brought him on a plane.
And it was an armed standoff in a little room as they're trying to leave a hospital to, you know, the Secret Service trying to take him to Virginia and the Texas police trying to stop them.
I mean, that was a real thing that really happened, a real moment in history.
And each side had their own goals.
Their goals conflicted.
And each one just, they didn't care what the other branch of government, what the other guys wanted.
They want what they want and they will fight each other for it.
And so if you had a situation where the judge gives him jail time, you now have a jurisdiction that will ask him to be surrendered.
And you'll have an area of government, whoever pays the Secret Service, I'm not even sure, but someone pays their paychecks and they give him orders and their orders is to protect this guy because he's former president and now presidential candidate.
And what do they do?
Did they just deny the police the opportunity to arrest them at every opportunity?
Do the police just eventually bring more and more people?
Like no one knows what happens in this scenario.
Right.
But here's another couple pieces of the puzzle.
So things to note for sure.
People have asked.
There's we didn't even cover it, but we covered it last time.
It was an oh, we overlooked it a little bit.
But really, I just wanted to kick it to this moment.
The Supreme Court of the United States, about three weeks ago, a month ago, they officially had the hearing in which they were hearing the arguments for Trump's immunity status as a president.
And they are mulling over that.
They're talking about decisions.
I'm sure we know what at least two of the judges are deciding.
They're not mulling or talking.
They're delaying.
Well, I'm sure that's got to be a big part of it.
They don't want to be the referee that calls it, right?
Right.
Right.
But that doesn't affect this according to how it's set up right now.
These are state-level charges.
And they occurred before the election.
So we can't claim presidential immunity.
Right.
It's very difficult to claim presidential immunity for things that occurred before your president.
But these are also, it wouldn't even matter about that.
These are state-level charges.
Right.
Like if they were federal charges, you could have a situation where he could claim that he granted himself immunity after he was president for things that he did before.
It could get muddy.
But this is not that case.
It's a governor of the state of New York that would have to give a pardon here.
And she has basically indicated she's not going to.
Kathy Hochle.
Yeah, she's not.
Right.
And I mean, it's not quite as simple as saying they're all state-level charges because there are federal election laws that were brought up.
And I'm, you know, it's a state court.
It's the state court, but that's part of the appeal is saying this never should have come.
This never should have been done in a state court.
That will be part of the appeal.
You know, but that only applies to some of the 34 charges.
Well, true, but that should have come up in the, when, when Trump went to ask for this to get moved to a federal court, then that should have been brought up then.
And those, I would think those arguments should have been brought up then and then adjudicated at that time, which at that time they were chosen to not move it to federal court.
So, yeah, it seems like they covered a lot of their bases here on this.
And the other thing to note is that a lot of people, I think, probably today are sobering up to the possibility that they felt that as a felon, you couldn't be a candidate for president.
But there's nothing in the Constitution that says that.
There are restrictions on who can run for president.
You have to be a natural born citizen.
You have to be over 35 years old.
You have to have been a resident of the United States for, I think it's six or seven years or something.
But you don't have to be not a felon.
It's not a thing they listed.
Maybe it's an oversight.
I don't know.
I mean, they didn't think anyone would be insane enough to elect a felon to vote for a felon.
So it's extremely unwise to support a felon for president.
Yeah.
Because he's probably going to have to surrender his passport.
Yeah.
And there's a bunch of countries that won't let you in if you're a felon, including Canada.
Right.
And Canada is not going to give a shit about any other factor.
They're like, no, that's our rule.
Yeah.
You know, he, he can't even vote for himself in Florida.
Well, I did look that up.
He, Florida will, if you're a felon from a different state, they will follow the rules in that state.
Oh, okay.
So if you're not incarcerated at the time, and I, the rules get a little vague.
Like, I think the incarceration includes time on parole.
Like if you're, if you're sentenced to 10 years, you did five years, you have five years of parole, and you're living in Florida, you were incarcerated in New York.
For some reason, you're allowed to do your parole in Florida for reasons I don't know, but you are.
I think that includes like you're on parole, so you can't vote because you wouldn't be able to vote then.
I'm pretty sure.
But Florida does follow, would allow him to follow the New York laws on this matter.
So if he's not sent to prison, then in just given like probation or whatever, then he would be allowed to vote in Florida.
One vote for himself there.
Yeah, one more.
Right.
Yeah.
I did read, you know, he won't be allowed to become a barber if, you know, felons cannot get a barber license.
So if you're going to hold a razor that close to someone's face, I think that's a good law, personally.
Yeah.
But if he's not allowed to, you know, hilariously, but still a thing, if you're not allowed to own a firearm, should you have access to the nuclear football?
Yeah.
That thing that follows the president around everywhere as a, as a, just in case you got to retaliate nuclearly, you can do it immediately and not have to wait for you to get to a spot to communicate.
Right.
Yeah.
Some people said that you can't be president if you're a felon because you can't serve in the military if you're a felon.
Well, the president's not a member of the military.
Right.
Despite the fact they're commander in chief, they're not actually a member of the military.
And that's also a rule that's come up in different situations where people say whether someone, you know, it came up a lot with Obama, whether or not someone saluted Obama or Obama saluted them or whatever.
Right.
You're not required to salute the president.
The president is not required to salute you.
I don't know.
You know, Trump was walking around in the NASCAR NASCAR race, the Coca-Cola 600, saluting everything.
Like he saluted the planes.
He saluted God bless America or what else?
There was some other song that was not even a patriotic song.
He just was walking around saluting everything almost as if someone with dementia who just walks around and undoes that, you know.
And there's no rule against that, David.
He's allowed to salute anything he likes.
He's allowed to.
He just looks like a fool.
Whenever there was a picture of Obama and he wasn't saluting some Marine that he's walking past, he's not required to salute them.
Sometimes he took the time to do it.
Sometimes he didn't, depending on what's happening that day.
And sometimes the Marines didn't salute him because they're not actually required to salute the president.
Surprisingly, I looked it up, but they're not.
It's a sign of respect and they almost all uniformly do it, but they're not required to.
Well, the other thing is, sometimes you're busy and you're not thinking about it.
And there's, you know, as the president, you're walking past a lot of people at any given time.
As president, you might have a lot of things to do that day.
Exactly.
I don't know if anyone pointed that out.
It's just a thing.
I mean, not Trump.
He doesn't know, you know, he's not going to be able to do that.
Watch Fox News.
So that's our entire coverage for the U.S. election update.
Yes.
Where can people find you, David?
People can find me mostly on Twitter for stuff like this, where I'm at David Bloomberg.
You can find all of my different accounts on Linktree, where I'm linktree slash David Bloomberg with a dot before the EE in the URL there.
And I'm on Blue Sky and Threads as well at David Bloomberg on Blue Sky at David Bloomberg TV on threads.
And you may wonder why is that TV there?
And that is because it's linked to my Instagram and for Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.
I am at David Bloomberg TV, though I do not do anything political on the video channels.
I just do mostly pretty much reality TV stuff, which, you know, links back to The Apprentice, you know, which I used to cover.
I used to cover The Apprentice.
And who knew?
Who could have predicted it?
It would reach here.
Yeah.
I hold you responsible, David.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I literally stopped writing my column on The Apprentice because it was based.
My column talked about why each player that he fired got fired.
But after a few seasons, the reasons became so ridiculous and capricious, I could not assign a logical reason to them.
So I had to stop writing the column.
Yeah.
Well, again, prediction.
Yeah.
It fits.
It's a piece of the puzzle that fits perfectly in with the thing we're looking at right now.
So, so yeah.
Um, this podcast, if you have any questions, comments, complaints, concerns, you can send that email to truthunrestricted at gmail.com.
And I can be found on Twitter, mostly arguing with people who are going to be denying the reality of this verdict.
Yeah.
Time immemorial.
Yeah.
I saw you've been blocked by some of them.
I got blocked by a longtime follower.
Yeah, but I got blocked by someone who's not denying reality.
I got caught in a crossfire where.
Oh, I saw that one.
Yeah.
I saw that one.
I guess it was related to something that she feels very strongly about.
And I didn't, I had no idea.
I just, I just was like, it's actually worse than what you're saying.
And I thought I was like agreeing with her, but harder, but she didn't take it that way.
I've had the same thing happen.
There's another major skeptical podcast that I am blocked by one of the co-hosts because on your record.
Yeah.
Yeah, because I didn't even notice it.
And then one day I realized it and went back to look.
And it was just, yeah, there was a discussion going on.
And somehow I said something that she misinterpreted.
And a lot of people like that, especially with very large followings, they're not going to bother having an in-depth discussion or try.
They're just going to hit the block button, which is good for their sanity.
Don't get me wrong.
They're just going to do it.
And if I ever meet this person, I may say to them, hey, by the way, just so you know.
And then there's other people.
I got blocked by a local state news source.
I mean, it's a single person operation, and I couldn't figure out why.
And it's because in his bio, it says, I will block anyone who uses profanity.
And at one point, not in responding to him, but responding to someone else, but he was on, it was an ongoing conversation with him.
I used a profanity because it deserved a profanity.
And I think people singling out words as reasons to block someone is ridiculous.
And so I looked back at it and found it.
And I said, oh, well, this must be the reason.
And yeah, I think that's preposterous.
But I was blocked most recently by a longtime follower.
She rarely interacted with me.
But after this, after I posted about what we were just talking about, she basically came out and said, well, I don't really pay attention to politics, but what about the horrible things Biden has done?
And then she went into a bunch of discredited.
Right.
Right.
And she, you know, and I pointed out all these different things.
And then other people jumped in.
And she then proceeded to try to lecture me on my media sources.
And I responded back and said, it is insane that you claim not to know anything about politics, yet you echo far-right talking points.
And then you try to lecture me.
And then she blocked me.
Yeah.
So, but it happens.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It happens.
Twitter is still a scorched hellscape.
Yes.
That we very long trench in which we fight.
So yeah, I'm Spencer G. Watson on Twitter.
You can come just Jane Goodall That if you like, just observe or whatever you like.