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May 31, 2024 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
01:04:25
20240531_donald-trump-guilty-the-debate
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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First President Convicted 00:01:50
Former President Donald Trump is a convicted felon.
Those are the words you're going to hear over and over again between now and November's election.
He's the first former president in American history to be criminally convicted.
He may soon be the first sitting president in American history with a criminal conviction in no small part because of what happened last night.
Trump's enemies were of course quick to dance on his legal grave.
Miracle is too strong a word, but a really a day for celebration.
Your defense was weak because you were weak.
They had no argument because there is no argument.
You were too scared to testify because you knew Donald.
You know you're guilty.
Guilty as sin.
Donald Trump is a felon.
Donald Trump is a criminal.
Donald Trump may not vote for himself.
Donald Trump may not own a gun.
Thank you.
Is anything going on today?
Well, they might live to regret all this glee to another side of the king in this case was a mess.
The style witness, Michael Cohen, admitted stealing thousands of dollars from the Trump organization during his testimony, a bigger offense than the one that Trump was on trial for.
Cohen himself is a convicted felon, whose compulsive lies are a matter of public record.
But the fact is that Trump was found guilty on all counts by a jury of his peers, and now America has to face up to the consequences.
And the biggest casualty may be public faith in their judicial system.
This time, many people will agree with the former president's own assessment.
This was a disgrace.
This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt.
The real verdict is going to be November 5th by the people.
A Rigged Judicial System 00:14:49
And they know what happened here, and everybody knows what happened here.
We didn't do a thing wrong.
I'm a very innocent man.
Our whole country is being rigged right now.
This was done by the Biden administration.
Well, Donald Trump's unfounded election denials undermine the American people's faith in the democratic process, something I've criticized him to his face for.
But the hush money trial will be no different in the scale of its impact on the public's trust in their institutions.
And I suspect it'll be no less damaging.
This verdict doesn't show that everyone's equal under the law, as many are now arguing.
It shows that anybody, even a former president, could be convicted for a relatively trivial offense if the full weight of the establishment is brought to bear against them.
The prosecution had to perform judicial gymnastics just to make this a felony case.
The district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is a car-carrying Democrat.
He's made no secret of his feelings about Donald Trump or his desire to nail him legally.
And ask yourself this.
Would any other businessman have found themselves in court on felony charges for this?
If the answer is no, then self-evidently not everyone is equal under the law.
This could open the legal floodgates to political prosecutions motivated by revenge and spite, and plenty of the Democrats now celebrating could soon find the prison boot ends up on the other foot.
I never thought I'd live to see an American president convicted on felony charges.
It's an extraordinary moment in modern history.
But I always imagined if it did happen, then the case might be about something like a deadly illegal war, an act of treason or corruption on a grand scale.
In the end, it was nothing like that.
It was a tawdry overreach designed to humiliate and discredit a political leader involving a payoff to a porn star for an alleged one-night stand 18 years ago.
And for that, they dragged an American president through a criminal court for two months when he should have been campaigning for the election.
This, I'm afraid, will go down as a sad and shameful and frankly ridiculous day for America.
Well, that's my view.
Joining me to discuss this is Young Turks founder, Check Uger, commentator Vincent Ashana, former Republican Congressman George Santos and host of the News Agency USA podcast, the gloriously veteran journalist Emily Maitland.
So welcome to all of you.
Emily, I can see you nodding furiously throughout my monologue there.
So off you go.
Look, my view, as I said there, is I think of all the four cases that he was facing, this was by far the weakest.
I think it was a massive stretch to try and turn it into a felony.
And I think because of that, because Bragg is clearly such a partisan guy, that it's playing right into Trump's hands to play the martyr and it will galvanize his base.
We saw last night that the funding websites were literally breaking down because people were donating so much money.
Could this not have the complete opposite effect that at the moment gleeful Democrats hope, which is that it might propel him back to the White House?
Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there, I think.
Starting with the end, of course it could propel him back to the White House.
And of course, his fundraising is likely to have gone up through the roof, skyrocketed since the verdict came out.
I think I'd agree with you that it's the weakest of the four cases.
I think when we first heard the charges from Alvin Bragg, a lot of us were kind of raising our eyes at the number of them.
You know, 34, it was actually consistently the same charge, but brought on on sort of different dates.
And I think that still remains.
It is the weakest of the four charges, but it is still the one that was before the courts.
And it is still the one that was before the jury.
And essentially, you're giving us the New York Post monologue, Piers, which I think is that if you decide that the whole thing is rigged, which Trump has been doing way, way before these cases even came to court, way, way before the 2020 election was fought, he's used the word rigged against them the whole time, then clearly you're just going to propel that narrative to a place where you're feeling happy with it.
I think that what happened in the court yesterday was that a jury who had been selected independently, gone through the ringer pretty much to assert their nuances and their leanings and all the rest of it, unanimously came to the conclusion that with the evidence put before them, including documentary evidence, he was guilty of those charges.
Now, I think America will decide what they do with that.
But I think if you're going to start undermining the rule of law, you set yourself against the American people.
You set yourself against the people who have decided that they want to believe in the rule of law, even, yes, even for presidents.
Okay, Check Hugo, you were also not nodding vigorously through my monologue.
Here's the point I would put to you on the back of what Emily just said.
You know, I remember Bill Clinton having sex with an intern in the Oval Office while he was president.
I remember him paying off another woman, I think, $800,000 over harassment allegations she made against him.
What I don't remember is Bill Clinton, despite all that, ever appearing in a courtroom and being criminally prosecuted.
And I think this is the problem that Democrats are now going to face, which is the apparent obvious double standard.
It's not to defend anything that Trump has done.
It's simply to say, why is he the one who's been singled out for this treatment, given that Bill Clinton and others on the Democrat side were never treated this way?
Yeah, Piers, I'm bilingual.
I speak both populace and establishment.
So in this case, I think that both sides have a point, but often misstated.
So first of all, does the establishment target people that challenge its power?
Yes, it does.
So it'll go against populist left and populist right.
It'll try to do cancel culture.
Whenever it wants to target someone, it'll dig and dig and dig.
So I've been the victim of that.
A lot of people have been the victim of that.
But in my case, for example, they dug and dug and found absolutely nothing.
So they had to go to jokes from 19 years ago, jokes.
So that's when you know someone's as clean as a whistle.
But the minute you dig under Donald Trump, just a giant number of crimes spring up because he's a lifelong con man and he's a lifelong criminal.
So I think that what, but at the same time, MAGA has an instinct that isn't wrong.
So let me explain that because the people in the establishment and Democrats can't understand this for the life of them.
Look, guys, and MAGA gets a part of it wrong too, which is that Donald Trump actually wasn't going to be charged with any of this stuff as long as he didn't run for president again, even though he did all of these crimes.
Taking those top secret documents home is mental.
It's insane.
Of course, his biggest crime is that he had the false elector scheme to do a coup against America.
And in this particular case, did he do this crime?
Indisputably so.
That's why it was so easy for the jury.
And you mentioned that Michael Cohn is a convicted felon.
Yeah, he was convicted for this same exact crime.
They're co-conspirators.
This is a serious case, falsifying business records.
Alvin Bragg has, you asked me.
You're not answering my question, which is why is it one rule?
Why is it one rule applied to Trump, but a very different set of rules applying to Bill Clinton, who committed, well, I would argue far worse offenses, frankly, than what Trump did in the Stormy Daniels case.
No, Piers, what you're misunderstanding is that there's two different sets of rules for the powerful and the powerless.
So the powerless will be convicted.
It will be tried on all these crimes.
The powerful are never tried on any of these crimes.
What MAGA and you are complaining about is, oh my God, Donald Trump is being treated like a normal person instead of one of the elites.
If you want to go to the bottom of the street, I'm sorry to push the board.
You're allowed to break all these laws.
Jay, you're not listening.
That's not what I'm putting to you.
I'm putting to you.
That's exactly what you're saying.
No, I'm asking you why Bill Clinton was never put through a criminal court minster, given what he did, many would argue, was worse.
Not even close to worse.
That's a shit.
Look, Piers, you have to...
Having sex with an intern in the overload office and then lying about it to the American people?
No, no.
Paying off Paula Jones hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle a harassment case?
You don't think that's bad?
That's not even close to illegal.
Trump had a one-night stand with a pulsar 18 years ago.
Who cares?
He wasn't running for president then.
Of course.
He was a business guy.
Piers, you're not.
Okay, listen.
Back when Clinton was being impeached, et cetera, I was a Republican.
But as always, I was unbiased.
And I said, what are we, we started on a real estate deal.
It turns out he didn't do anything wrong in the real estate deal.
Now we're going into his personal life.
And then you dig and dig.
It's, oh, well, you did.
You didn't, you denied the affair when you actually had the affair.
Oh, what was he going to do?
Admit it?
And I was like, guys, this is a fishing expedition.
But what I'm trying to explain to you, Piers, is that if you go on a fishing expedition on Trump, which I think they did, they weren't going to because he was one of the elites.
They were going to, Merrick Garland protected him for two and a half years.
The whole time I'm screaming, will you try him already?
He tried to coup, you idiot.
And he let him stay there for two and a half years.
But when you go on a fishing expedition with Donald Trump, you come back with a lot of fish.
You come back with whales.
Yeah, but trust me, Check.
You can't stop the law.
Okay, but when you go on one with Bill Clinton, you catch a lot of fish too.
Let's bring in George Santos.
No, you didn't.
No, you didn't.
Yes, you did.
You didn't.
Yes, you said that he, oh, he paid off Paula Jones.
That's not a crime.
That's not even close to a crime.
Okay, clearly not if you're a Democrat.
That's just settling a case.
Okay, so when Trump settles the case, it's a crime.
When Bill Clinton does, it's not.
But that's not, wait a minute.
Even though Bill Clinton's in his case, even though Bill Clinton's case, hang on.
Even though in Bill Clinton's case, you know he falsified business records, right?
In Bill Clinton's case, it was for sexual harassment.
In Trump's case, it was simply a payoff to keep a porn star quiet.
Again, I say that the allegation was more serious.
No, listen, you're wrong on the facts.
Settlement is not a crime.
It is equal to Donald Trump.
It's committed to Donald Trump, falsifying business records is definitely a crime.
34 other people went to jail for it under Alvin Bragg.
So why should Donald Trump be above the law?
Pierce, you're literally saying, even if you were right and Bill Clinton was quote unquote above the law, you're saying, well, Donald Trump should be above the law.
He should be able to break any law he likes.
No, I actually wanted the elites.
Okay, I'm going to come to George Santos.
I don't think it serves the American national interest to see a president, one of the 46 people to hold this incredible office, dragged through a criminal court over something so comparatively trivial that would normally just be a state misdemeanor and has been trumped up to be this huge felony.
And it's a deliberate attempt to stop Trump winning the election.
I mean, it plays right.
You agree that his other people are not going to be able to do it.
Let me bring in George.
Let me bring in George.
How about a coup?
Is that a bad enough crime?
A coup?
He's facing other charges, which, in my view, are more serious.
George Santos, your response to all this.
Well, look, Pierce, it's very clear.
This is nothing more than a misdemeanor type of a case.
They had to trump it up, no pun intended, in order to even bring the case to create relevancy.
I've heard, and we've heard from pundits on both the left and the right for the last two months that this was the weakest, the most full of flaws.
The fact that the process alone that the judge set forward was so convoluted, we still don't know what crimes President Trump is found guilty of.
And he's convicted.
So the reality of the case is it's it's it's no, we don't, not per se.
And it's falling, it's going to fall apart in appeals, and we all know that.
But here's the reality.
America today doesn't have the moral ground to talk about Venezuela, to talk about Russia and Putin, because we're doing the same thing.
We're persecuting our political opponents.
Next step is we're going to start killing them because the reality is what took place.
Well, the one thing I would say, the one guaranteed thing, and I'll bring in Vincent here.
The one guaranteed thing is that now the benchmark has been set by the Democrats to politically prosecute.
Well, Joe Biden better buckle up because I'm about to say that, is that now they set the precedent for doing this?
You don't think the Republicans are going to do exactly the same thing to the Democrats?
Of course they are.
And that's why I say it's not in America's interest.
It's not in national interest.
Wait a second.
Wait a second.
George Santos is talking about moral ground.
I think I'm going insane here.
The man who just got expelled from Congress for lying, repeatedly lying, you're trying to tell us what the moral high ground is here.
I think, George, honestly.
Well, here's the difference.
You can't do that.
You may be a creation.
Well, I don't, first of all, we'll start this way.
I don't care what you think, but I'll say this.
My expulsion from Congress was arbitrary in its nature, right?
Because if you look at the process, it was also skewed.
But I'm not going to, I'm not here to debate that.
I'm here to debate President Trump.
I'm just saying.
If you want to talk about moral ground and if you want to give your opinion, I didn't come on the panel to hear your opinion.
No, I'm just saying this is how it starts.
I think, George, you're probably like the son of the heir to Trump.
Trump goes forward, he shows people what he can do, he gets away with it.
Then the next thing you know, the legislators are coming in, they make up CVs, they lie to death, they just sit it out, they then turn it into a movie.
You are a creation of Donald Trump.
It seems to me really obvious that this is the same thing.
I would argue, I would argue that Joe Biden, Joe Biden is the creation of lying in politics.
Joe Biden is top of his class in law school.
Joe Biden had to drop out of an entire presidential run for plagiarizing.
I mean, come on.
You can't make that argument and ignore Joe Biden, the sitting president of the United States.
Who's the lying commander in chief?
Okay, let me bring in.
The biggest liar to ever be president of the United States.
Thank you, George.
Just bring in Vincent.
You've been waiting patiently.
Vincent, your view of all this.
Patiently, but I'm imploding inside because of hearing all this freaking nonsense.
Like as I'm in here in this van, Piers, I'm picturing Lady Justice, and I want to believe that she's still standing tall in the greatest country in the world.
But yesterday, her blindfold was ripped off, her scales were tipped, and the snake at her feet won.
Okay, this was a humiliation.
As much as Chank and whoever that lady is wants to talk crap about you, he's not humiliated.
He has the toughest skin out of anybody that I've ever seen as a president because he's a New Yorker.
Heated Political Debate 00:10:48
And guess what?
He doesn't give two dams.
You know who was embarrassed?
You know who was embarrassed?
The country.
Okay, but you know what, Piers?
Nobody's asking why.
Why, since the day this man announced that he was going to run, the left, everybody, the swamp, all these deep state, they all turned on him.
Everybody, you know, from the DOJ Obama with spying on his campaign, from Hillary with 2016 with her BS dossier with the Russia collusion, the two fake impeachments, the January 6th setup, Chank, you and this coup BS that you keep spewing with all the FBI agents in the crowd inside the Capitol.
You're talking nonsense, Chank.
Okay.
And then now this law fair, it's ridiculous, okay?
It's humiliating to the world.
And I want to say, Donald Trump in 2024, I can't wait, okay?
I cannot wait for him to come in.
And that November is going to be from day one, a day of reckoning.
And I hope he comes after all the Democrats.
Because by the way, Hillary Clinton, and you mentioned Bill Clinton, rape, sex allegations, rape, Hillary with her emails, Benghazi, how many charges?
How many trials, Piers?
Zero.
Well, that's the point I've been trying to do.
Well, okay, I was actually going to ask Emily quickly on that point, because you wrote a powerful column today about how the women have all shown themselves to be very strong with Trump and the men have been spineless all around him, which is a perfectly reasonable argument to make.
But again, that point, which the Republicans keep making, the double standard when it's applied to Bill Clinton in relation to Trump.
You know, when you have a president, an actual sitting president who had sex with an intern in the Oval Office and then lied to the American people and paid off a woman for sexual harassment, hundreds of thousands of dollars, but was never brought to any accountability in a criminal court for any of that.
A lot of Republicans say, well, hang on, why not?
Why has Trump been singled out for what in the end is just a similar version to what Bill Clinton did?
It's a payoff to someone to get rid of a story you don't like.
Yeah, okay.
So the Trump conviction was not about the payoff and it was not about the sex and it was not actually about the women.
It was about the falsification of campaign funds.
It was falsifying his business deals.
You can make of that what you will.
And actually, I think I would feel very similar thoughts if Bill Clinton's case were around today and we were discussing that.
But I think that you're wrong to say that this is a Republican talking point because the Republican talking points have really been set in stone for the last, what, four years.
We were hearing from Donald Trump in, I remember August, September of 2020 that the election was rigged.
That was before anyone had been out to vote.
He was already imagining that he would lose an election.
He was preparing to tell the world that the thing that he was going to lose was rigged, so it wouldn't sound as bad for him.
He's just a big fat liar and a loser.
And it's really sad to hear people four years on still with the same narrative.
I'm sorry, Emily, Emily, you know.
You don't get it.
You think he did not say that in August?
He did.
He did.
He went on.
Emily, Emily, where do you live?
Before you went to the street, Emily, I'm just curious.
Where do you live right now?
You're clearly not paying me.
Emily, I'm very curious.
Emily, I'm very curious.
Where do you live right now?
Where do you live?
Are you coming for me?
I live in the UK.
No, I'm not.
I'm asking you.
Hey, I'm asking you where you live.
Because if you live in the United States of America, this past four years has been a complete shit show.
Okay.
Trump can do, grab him by the vagina.
Whatever the hell.
I would much rather have the mean guy with the mean tweets and kicking ass economy, closed border than what's happening right now.
I don't care about this stupid porn star for 20 years ago.
It's about America.
And people like you and people like Chenk are just butthurt because you guys hate Donald Trump.
You hate him because he loves America.
Get over it.
Okay.
We have two case studies.
Donald Trump, Donald Trump for four years, Joe Biden for four years.
All right.
You guys are delusional if you want Joe Biden.
All right.
Delusional.
Okay, hang on.
Hang on.
Hang on.
We've got joined by the eminent pollster, Frank Luntz.
Frank, you've been, thank you for joining me in the studio here.
Things get a little heated, as they often do.
Let me just ask you, on a strict polling perspective, what has been the kind of instant fallout from all this?
I mean, has there been an impact either way for Trump's chances of winning the presidency?
We did two focus groups last night, but I need to preface it.
I don't know if this makes you proud.
I'm watching them yell at each other and act like idiots, all sides.
I know that the American people are more divided than they've ever been.
I actually care about this.
You're both British and American in what you do.
God help the British if they become like the Americans.
You think that the average American looking at this will be proud?
I actually think the whole debate around Donald Trump has become a bit like the Brexit debate in the UK.
So toxic and so tribal.
And so many people just lose their minds when talking about Trump.
And that's why I always try and bring it back to, if I can, a sense of perspective and fairness, which is, has he been treated how other presidents have been treated for their own situations, like Bill Clinton with Paula Jones to pay off, with Monica Lewinsky and so on.
So the question there is in asking the undecided, the swing voters, people who vote Democrat and Republican.
First, they do not believe these charges should have been brought.
They don't think this is a big deal.
The other cases are significant.
This one is not.
Second, they think Trump was guilty of this.
The public does think that Trump was wrong.
Third is that nobody wants him to go to jail over this.
They don't want him.
This is why the American people want to change in who the nominee is.
They look at one candidate and they say, my God, he's so old.
They look at the other candidate and they think, my God, he's so dishonest.
And that's why over 70% of Americans don't want this matchup.
The truth is, both sides, Democrats and Republicans, are trying to defend something that the American people don't want.
And as someone, you and I have had a few conversations like this, this used to break my heart.
Now I'd say to them, cut, and I'm not going to even say shut up because then I'm playing their game.
Cut it out.
The damage that this is doing to the democracy, to the belief that democracy doesn't work, that no one's listening, that they'd rather have a food fight than actually get something done.
In the end, inflation is more important than this trial.
Immigration is more important on the Democratic side.
Abortion is more important and health care is more important.
We're having this shouting match, this food fight, when in fact Americans believe that Washington doesn't get anything done.
Should have been prosecuted for this vote.
They don't think so.
I can't answer that because I'm a pollster.
I can tell you what the impact is, and it is awful.
And if you love your country as these people say that they do, they'll stop behaving this way.
It really is that bad.
Has it improved or diminished his chances of winning, though?
It, well, it's raised him more money in one day than any ever before.
That's what happened.
And his base is even stronger.
Here's the problem.
The public is afraid that it's now made it more likely that after the next debate or the next trial, we're going to see violence.
The public now believes that it's less likely that we will come together when the election is over.
Piers, this stuff matters.
We are at the precipice of blowing ourselves up.
We can replay this whole thing right now, six months from now, and say, my God, we saw it happening and we didn't do anything to stop it.
You're the only one who has an American and a British audience, an American and a British sensibility.
I know this is good for ratings.
I know that people get a kick out of this.
It's entertaining.
But I'll tell you guys something right now.
You continue to behave that way, making faces, insulting each other.
You're destroying the tenets of democracy and we have to stop.
Well, let me ask the panel.
Let's get them back up and let's get their reaction to that.
Cheng, you guys are all part of the problem.
Yeah, yeah.
So look, I actually agree and disagree.
So when Frank says that, hey, 70% of Americans don't want either one of these candidates, I totally agree.
I'm with the American people.
So when George Santos says that Joe Biden's a liar, he's right.
That's one of the rare things he's right about.
Joe Biden's a huge liar.
He lied about getting arrested with Nelson Mandela, fighting apartheid.
That is a giant, giant lie, let alone the fact that almost all of our politicians are liars.
The reality is they take campaign contributions and then they do exactly what their donors tell them, corporate Democrats and corporate Republicans.
So that's why I'm a populist.
I agree with the American people.
But on the other hand, here's where Frank is wrong.
So, brother, what do you want me to do?
These guys come on and they say absurd things like, oh, it's okay to invade the Capitol.
Trump has thick skin.
He has the thinnest skin I've ever seen.
He's a little child.
Trump breaks law after law.
He used to hire undocumented immigrants.
He's cheated and lied throughout his entire life.
So what do you want me to do?
Not fight back?
I'm not hiring.
Oh, you're right.
Everybody is bad.
So Trump should be allowed to break all the laws.
Okay, your point is a good one because George is just going to sit and talk over you.
And I know that you can't get heard.
But the better approach to this, and we've tested this, is literally silence.
Now, Piers will be upset because that doesn't get ratings.
But everyone knows what George's background is.
It's a fair comment to say that he was literally tossed out of Congress.
But why do you respond in kind just because he's going to yell over you?
And the gentleman with the tie, I saw you making those faces and waving your hands and all that.
Would you, exactly?
Would you want your kids to behave that way?
Would you feel good?
Hold on a second.
Well, first of all, first of all, I don't know who this pollster is, but I'm going to say something right now.
But he's one of those in the world.
For you to call me an idiot.
Yeah, well, he loves his polls.
They always work.
But for someone that doesn't know me to call me an idiot, this is coming from a guy that dyed his hair and it doesn't even match his beard.
So let's not start insulting each other.
I'm a United States Air Force.
Eventually, I am just proving myself.
I'm just going to make a point.
Hold on, let's go.
No, no, let's all go over each other.
You want to call me an idiot?
Hold on.
You don't know me.
You don't know me.
You call me an idiot.
So now, just like with Trump, you guys can talk all the shit you want to Trump, but Trump can't fight back because that's what you want.
You want silence.
Grounds for Appeal 00:06:36
We're not going to be silenced anymore.
I'm a United States Air Force veteran.
My parents are legal immigrants.
My brother's a veteran.
My sister's a veteran.
We are sick and tired of staying on the sidelines and just being nice.
Enough is enough with people like you just sit there and let the left get away with murder to hell with that.
Okay, let me bring in.
Hang on, George.
Hang on.
I want to bring in Michael Van Der Veen.
He's been waiting patiently, who is one of Donald Trump's former lawyers and has actually been in a legal action against Donald Trump.
So he's been on both sides of the fence with him.
Let me ask you, Michael Van Der Veen, first of all, are there grounds for appeal here?
People say this will definitely go to appeal and Trump may well have all this turned over.
Is that likely?
Well, it's very likely that an appeal is going to be filed.
In almost every criminal prosecution in the United States, there's a finding of guilty, an appeal is filed.
The likelihood of success of the appeal is a different matter.
I think there are some legitimate and righteous grounds for appeal here.
He wasn't allowed to use the professional advice defense.
I think there were some difficulties with the injury instruction.
You know, as far as change of venue and veneer, Manhattan isn't a cross-section of all of New York City.
It's one of the five boroughs.
And we did polling for the jury pool in the trial that we did.
And eight and a half out of 10 had very strong negative opinions about the president.
And the other one and a half just didn't like him.
So, you know, it's a legitimate concern.
And it's the kind of pool that, you know, really a court should consider changing the venue or changing the veneer.
When you change a venue, you actually take the case and move it to another jurisdiction.
When you change the veneer, you take people from another jurisdiction and bring them into that courthouse.
I mean, it seems to me.
It seems to me there are two real, I think, questions here.
One is whether the verdict was correct from a legal standpoint.
And secondly, whether it reaches the bar, which legitimizes taking an American president through a criminal prosecution like this, with all the humiliation that followed, and with the fact it suspended his own ability to campaign for the election in November, which if Trump ends up losing that, we know what he'll do.
He'll just say, well, this is why there was a deliberate attempt, once again, he'll say, to stop me winning it.
You know, I've been watching the show the last 30 minutes or so when I was waiting to come on.
And I understand your point about, you know, this is kind of small potatoes for somebody who is so impactful on the country and is really in the middle of a historic election.
But, you know, justice, she's blind and Lady Justice is blind and the prosecution brought was political.
That's just that's right, but that's my point, that that's not justice being blind, it's justice being partisan, right?
And that's the problem.
You have a Democrat appointed guy in Bragg, and he's brought this prosecution, having already said, I want to nail Trump legally.
And at the end of the day, I just don't think this is a big enough thing to have dragged the president through this humiliating process.
And I just think it's going to fuel all Trump's martyrdom.
It's what he does best.
I agree with all of that.
I agree with you 100%.
But the fact is, justice isn't the prosecution.
Justice is the process and the result.
I think that this process has appealable issues.
But I think the jerky, you know, their biases aside, I think when jurors go into the jury room, I really think they try to be as impartial as they can.
A lot of us can't overcome our partialities, but they try to do the best job they can in there.
The appeal really isn't what the jury did, it's in what the prosecutors did and rulings that the judge made.
There are probably very solid appeal grounds there on the issues that I highlighted.
And I don't think that'll be decided before November.
Let me ask you, just from a legal point of view, where does this leave Donald Trump to be a convicted felon for felonies of this nature?
In other words, is he allowed to fly out of the country?
Is he allowed to vote?
Things like that.
He is.
You know, first of all, his case isn't over.
His conviction is not final because he hasn't been sentenced.
But so from now until July 11th, you know, he's out on a bond.
He can go anywhere he wants.
He can do anything he wants.
Really, his only condition is that he not commit a crime or have contact with the law.
He can go out of the country if he wants.
After the sentencing, he'll be considered convicted.
His case will then be in a box.
Well, what do I think?
No, no, no.
If he is convicted, if sentenced, I mean, if he's sentenced and is then a convicted felon, and whether he goes to jail or not, he's now sentenced.
Is he then able to fly?
Because I've read on social media that he may have restrictions.
You know, it's interesting, Piers.
Probably the courts here would not restrict him from going out of the country, but countries that he wants to go to may not receive him.
And, you know, in Canada, if you have just a driving under the DUI in the United States, Canada won't let you in.
So being a convicted, and that's a misdemeanor.
Being convicted of a felony, you know, there are going to be a number of countries that are going to say he may not be allowed in or he's going to have to go through a process to get in.
That's just a conviction.
Hang on a sec, Michael.
Because it's not that it's been politicized, and the public does believe that.
What they're upset over is that they believe it's been weaponized.
And it's that weaponization, the idea that you can't get a fair trial or that the justice for political purpose.
Exactly.
But the fact that you can now use it to punish your enemies.
Yes.
God help Hunter Biden right now.
Weaponized Justice 00:14:39
That's what I see as the major problem here.
By choosing something so relatively trivial to take a massive mallet to smash someone over the head with for stealing a carrot, right?
What you're basically going to end up with is tit for tat going on now for a long time and increasingly damaging, I think, to America, its national interest, and the respect for the judicial process.
So the key element is consequences.
What are the consequences?
And no one's thinking about that.
They think of what they say.
They don't think of what comes back to them.
And that's a real danger for our democracy right now.
Yeah.
Michael, is he going to get a prison sentence here?
What's the likelihood?
I don't see that happening at all.
I think it's the lowest class felony in New York, but they call a class C felony.
Typically, he would get probation if he was treated like anybody else.
I think that a sentence of incarceration would clearly be appealable.
And he's likely to get probation.
But to be clear, he's surprised if he didn't.
Right.
But under the U.S. Constitution, he is able to continue running for president and be president, even if he was sent to prison.
Absolutely.
That's absolutely our constitution.
We've had in our history people elected to Congress from prison and serve in Congress from prison, but we've never had this situation, of course, in the executive office.
But Piers, you know, I want to say you're absolutely right.
You know, this is political.
We're seeing in our country right now, a tit for tat.
It's really hurting the foundations of our country.
And, you know, frankly, Washington's broken right now.
I was down there in the Senate with all 100 of them.
And, you know, they really need to start focusing on representing the people who put them there rather than their own interests and their own platforms and everything else.
You know, the American people deserve, but our country needs a lot better than we're getting right now.
Well, I fear this is going to, this is just throwing a bunch of fuel on the fire, I'm afraid.
Michael Van Der Veen, thank you very much indeed.
Let's go back to the panel.
I mean, Check, this is my concern about this, is that it is absolutely inevitable that the Republicans are now going to try and do this to Democrats, to Democrat presidents, to whoever they can get their hands on for retribution.
How does any of this help America?
I mean, looking at this from across the pond, I think everyone's lost their minds in America.
To do this, like I say, over something so relatively trivial, to take it to the place where a president sits there in election year for two months listening to tawdry details of a one-night stand with a porn star.
It just, to me, the bigger picture here has been completely overrun.
Yeah, listen, you know, I'm a rare guy who's on the Democratic side who understands all the things that you guys are saying, but I think you're wrong on a couple of critical elements.
First of all, the powerful have been doing this for a long time and targeting people.
So for example, Elliot Spitzer was the sheriff of Wall Street.
He was actually taking on the big banks and trying to protect the average American.
So what did they do?
They targeted him.
There's a whole movie about it.
They admitted they brag about it.
They said, oh, we're going to try to get him on anything.
And so they targeted him and they found him in his case with a prostitute.
And then they embarrassed him and got him out of office.
So this is something that the powerful have been doing for a long time.
But the critical thing that you guys are missing is the powerful were actually protecting Donald Trump for two and a half years when he's actually broken countless laws.
I mean, the fake university that he ran, he paid a $25 million fine, but he could have been brought up on criminal charges on that.
He could have been brought up on criminal charges on his charity, but they protected him because he was one of the elites.
And yes, you guys are right.
The establishment doesn't like him.
So two and a half years in, when they finally realize he's going to run again, they brought up these charges.
But the reality is they should have brought up the charges earlier because he did do these crimes.
That's why he was convicted.
You guys can say, hey, I hate the system and I'll agree with you.
And I'll hate the way that the powerful target people that are not in favor of the establishment and I agree with you.
But don't defend a guy who's an obvious con man and an obvious criminal.
Why don't you pick someone who's anywhere near clean so that you could have the moral high ground?
But they didn't do that.
Look, MAGA's not wrong about how corrupt this system is.
They're taking millions of dollars from donors and doing exactly what the donors want.
But you're wrong in that you picked a guy who's running a three-card Monty scam on you.
It's so obvious.
As a person who's a fellow populist, I'm trying to stop you from losing your money, losing your mind on the wrong guy.
Yes, but the focus is not about criminality.
The focus is how do we afford housing and health care?
How do we afford food and fuel?
How do we get control of our border?
How do we make sure that women have the right to choose?
How do we do these issues that protect people in their day-to-day lives?
Yelling about this doesn't fix anything.
And it's why the public hates Washington, hates Congress, hates the elected officials, now hates the Supreme Court.
They're asking for results.
They're asking for getting things done.
And they're not seeing it because of debates like this.
Okay, George Santos, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, the left is willing to destroy our republic to stop Trump and keep their power.
On November the 5th, let's show them we won't let them get away with it.
Michael Cohen, today is an important day of accountability and the rule of law.
While it's always been a difficult journey for me and my family, the truth always matters.
And Anthony Scaramucci, think about the moral cowards in the Republican Party.
We know the GOP elected leaders hate Trump, yet they will cowt out a convicted felon under the ruse of something wrong with our system.
So, you know, there's a lot of views on all sides here.
It's just, to me, all it's done is cement the polarization.
It has whipped up the tribes.
It's made the toxicity even more extreme.
And as we've seen throughout the year, the more that people have come after Trump legally, the more powerful he has seemed to get in terms of his electability.
I'm going to have to concede and agree with Frank.
Frank's a talented pollster.
He knows what he's doing.
He's been doing it for many years.
Despite his opinion of me, I really don't care.
But I'll always defer to him.
He understands the pulse of how this is going to affect.
It doesn't affect me as a voter.
I know it's not going to affect the base as a voter.
But the concern that we have is with that big middle of America.
And politics is a zero-sum game.
If you're losing, you're losing.
There's no way you can change that.
So this does impact in a way your middle-of-the-road independence moderates.
This is definitely going to be an impact.
And we need to measure this and see how much it's going to impact.
But I also see a lot of Americans looking at this and saying, wow, the weaponization of government has become so outrageous that not even a former president is being spared.
So there's two sides to that coin.
Obviously, I'm not going to pretend here to be a pollster.
Frank does that for a living.
I'll defer it to him.
But the reality is what happened to Donald Trump is absolutely unbecoming of the process.
All right.
Vincent, let me ask you, is there anything Trump could do that would dent your support for him?
I mean, he joked about being able to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
Is there anything he could do?
Because many people think that to MAGA supporters, there is nothing he could do that would dent that support.
And thanks for asking, thanks for the question, Piers.
There's a misconception.
The whole COVID warp speed, everything, I'm not a fan of it.
Rushing the vaccine, not a fan of it.
Saying he was going to close the border, didn't do it.
I'm a hard critic.
But for Chenk and everybody that voted for Biden, with everything that you're complaining about Trump, would you rather have the policies and where we were four years ago or what is happening right now?
And you can't compare it.
And this is their game plan, Piers.
You know what they do?
They try to kill and destroy your reputation.
Then they go after your money.
They've done that.
There's only one other option, Piers, and that's the biggest fear that I have.
The only other option is to get rid of him.
If this was November 1963, guess what?
You don't think they would have tried to take Trump out?
You know what I mean?
You know why they can't, Piers?
Because everybody's recording and the world is watching.
It's not just one camera and a Zapruder.
Okay, this guy loves America.
He's been saying it since the 70s.
I don't understand what people don't understand.
Since the 70s, on Oprah, on Larry King, Donald Trump, I love America.
Everybody's crapping on our country from China and everybody.
I want to put us first.
They hate him, Piers, because he loves the country.
Plain and simple.
Like, Chenk, do you want to go back?
Like, which one would you rather live in?
Well, I would ask Chenk a different...
Are you happy with where we are now?
I would ask Chenk a different type of question, which is what's extraordinary is that you've had Trump facing nearly 100 criminal charges this year, and yet his poll numbers against Biden get stronger and stronger.
And he's now ahead in many swing states to the extent that the Democrats, separate to all this, have been panicking.
There was a big piece, I think, in Axios or one of those sites this week about the internal panic going on by the Democrats that they just don't think they can beat Trump.
And if I was a Democrat, I'd be pretty concerned that having seen the scenes last night, having seen the strength of the reaction, the galvanization of Trump's support and the extraordinary fundraising that was going on, I would be thinking that these poll numbers are probably going to get worse against Biden, not better because of this, which makes no actual sense other than he is the master martyr victimhood political exponent.
Yeah.
So I think the Democrats and Republicans are wrong, but in different ways.
So you make a good point in that the Democrats have just two game plans, right?
One is call Donald Trump a criminal, and the other is call Donald Trump a racist, sexist, and all sorts of mean names.
I got it.
In my opinion, he is those things.
But is that a right way to win the election?
No.
Why don't you try doing something for the American people?
I know that comes as a shock to establishment Democrats.
Like, but wait, we have to serve our donors first.
Look, if Biden had passed anything, Jesus, public option, universal healthcare, he didn't even propose it.
Do the simplest little things like make marijuana legal.
These are all layups, overwhelming support for so many of these things, paid family leave.
But the Democrats want to serve their donors, so they don't do the things that would actually make them popular.
Instead, all they want to do is attack Trump.
On the other hand, the Republicans are wrong in that they think, oh my God, Donald Trump is this special little victim, lifelong criminal.
Piers, you know that he cheated and lied and never pays anyone back.
Six bankruptcies.
Why?
He's like, well, I'm not a sucker.
If they gave me the money, I'm going to keep it.
I'm not going to pay it back.
He's a con man and everyone outside of MAGA knows it.
Pick a different guy.
And I say the same thing to the Democrats.
Joe Biden is a feeble old man.
He didn't do any of these things that he promised.
Yeah, I know he passed some laws, but again, the donors benefited the most.
So they're both wrong.
The reality is, can someone please serve the American people?
Donald Trump, Vincent, he's not on your side.
He says, oh, I'm for America, but he's only for himself.
And then he says, let's rip up the Constitution and the Constitution shouldn't apply.
I should be dictator.
He says all these crazy things because Donald Trump only cares about one man, himself.
Democrats, please wake up and serve the American people so you can beat this monster.
But if all you do is that he say he's a bad guy, it's not enough to win this election.
That's why they're losing.
Okay, let's just have a little bit of light relief for a few seconds.
This is just some of the reaction from the memes and the late night shows to what's been going down in the last 24 hours.
I paid push money because I've had a lot of fun.
And I fought the law and the law won.
I'll be taking naps until it's all done.
And I fought the law and the law won.
Somehow I'm still allowed to run.
And I fought the law and the law won.
And I fought the law and the law won.
Take me home, mommy.
This is too tough for me.
Now, you see, we're laughing, right?
Because I find that funny.
I can laugh on all sides of this.
But of course, there will be MAGA supporters who find that incredibly offensive.
And there will be people who hate Trump, who think it's hilariously funny.
But ultimately, where does this leave the country?
We have a problem that both sides created and neither side's willing to do anything about it, which is the debt.
We're going to have an explosion, and it's going to happen in the next year or two.
We do not have the money to pay our bills.
We're promising we're spending so much right now.
You can blame Trump, you can blame Biden, but we don't have the ability to solve it.
And we don't have any cooperation between senators and congressmen, between Republicans and Democrats, progressives and conservatives.
And it's going to wreck us.
So I appreciate that.
I thought that was funny.
I thought it was a good song.
I'm going to steal it for my speeches.
I should pay you a royalty.
But it glosses over something that's really serious.
We are mortgaging our kids' futures.
We're doing real damage to them.
And it's getting to the point where we cannot reverse it.
We're going too far.
Vinny, let me bring you back in here.
I mean, look, there's a lot of people thoroughly reveling in what happened to Trump.
But I also see his base getting very fired up and the money pouring in.
You know, this is one of those situations where, okay, it's bad news if you support Trump, but it might end up being good news.
I mean, last night, Piers, we did an emergency podcast.
We had 66,000 people watching live.
It was the most watched live YouTube in the world on the PBD podcast.
And we tried to go on the website.
All of Trump's websites crashed because everybody, left, right, Democrat, Republican, gay, everybody and their mother was donating to this man because they know what is going on.
And let me remind you, Piers, you remember Chuck Schumer back in the day when he warned Trump about the intelligence community.
They got six ways to Sunday to come after you.
Trial Impact on Election 00:13:53
This was complete proof besides the intelligence agency, everybody, the judges, the courts, everybody.
It's a really, really sad moment in America.
And when I get angry, Piers, I think, and people are like, what?
Why are you so upset?
I think the problem is there's not enough people getting upset.
I'm sick and tired of people standing on the sideline just watching as a country goes down to shit.
And I hear this guy's warnings of the economy and everything.
All this stuff is coming.
Everything that's happened in this past couple years with Trump, it's unbelievable.
And I get it, Cheng.
I respect the fact that you just hate the guy, but talk about the country, the state of the country.
It's undeniable.
I'm not one of these blind MAGA hat worms.
No, no, it's just facts are facts.
And we were way better off.
No wars in the Middle East.
No wars.
The economy was booming.
The border was closed.
Now we have terrorists coming in who warn us on camera.
Remember that terrorist that came over, Piers?
He goes, one day you're going to know what my name is.
That explosion of the economy, there's going to be other explosions.
There's going to be a Matt this next coming year.
It's only going to get worse.
All right, you wait and see.
Let me bring in John Bolton, the former United States Ambassador to the UN and United States National Security Advisor under Trump from 2018 to 19.
John Bolton, thank you for joining me.
First of all, your reaction to the conviction of the first conviction of any American president in history.
Well, it's obviously one of the most unhappy historical events we've had in a long time.
There's a lot that can be said in criticism of this whole trial.
I said the day this indictment came down that if Trump won in November, it could be because of this indictment.
But the fact is now you've had 12 ordinary citizens, nobody can say they're part of the deep state, who found Trump guilty.
And I think that it's certainly the case that the immediate reaction is to fire up Trump's base.
Of course, the campaign was ready for that and wasn't entirely spontaneous combustion.
The question for November is whether non-Trump-based people, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, care enough about not electing a convicted felon to the presidency not to vote for him.
And we just don't know the answer to that question.
And anybody who says they know the answer is really making it up because we're in totally uncharted territory.
There's a quote from Victor Alban, of course, a president of Hungary.
I've known President Trump to be a man of honor.
As president, he always put America first.
He commanded respect around the world and used his respect to build peace.
Let the people make their verdict this November, keep on fighting.
Mr. President, there will be a lot of support for him around the world, and there'll be a lot of people who will be not feeling very good about the fact that the next president may be a convicted felon.
From an international perspective, how do you think this will play out if Trump was to win?
Well, I think internationally, if I were in the Kremlin or if I were in Beijing, I'd very much want Trump to win because they think he's such an easy mark.
And this may, in fact, make him easier because a lot of people will be convinced that this trial was legitimate.
Maybe some of the others will be too.
And that that will inhibit him from really being able to act effectively.
We just don't know at this point.
Should it have been brought at all, this case, given the relative triviality of it?
Ultimately, it's about paying hush money to a porn star for an alleged one-night stand nearly 20 years ago when he was a TV star and real estate magnet, not a politician.
If the bar is set that low for dragging an American president through a criminal prosecution and making him sit in the courtroom for two months, inevitably Republicans are going to want to return the favor and do this to the Democrats.
How does any of that going forward help America?
Well, the crime that he, the underlying crime, is cooking the books of his company.
That is the financial fraud involved.
To me, that is a statement subhovina, isn't it?
I mean, really.
I mean, you could construct an argument.
For example, when Bill Clinton paid off Paula Jones over sexual harassment allegations, he's doing that to protect his reputation.
That could have a material effect on an election.
I mean, once you take that argument, you're pretty much...
You're confusing crimes together.
You're confusing crimes together.
No, I'm just saying that...
There's a point I want to make.
If you pay people off.
Can I make my point?
Yes, that's not the...
Yeah, why don't I hang on?
I've been waiting for 40 minutes to get on here.
You know, what this shows is not the criminal conviction point, but the lack of character point.
I don't think there are many American voters who have ever even seen a porn star in person, let alone slept with them, let alone paid hush money.
And I think when they think of their children and grandchildren, this is not the model they want for the generations coming along.
That is the impact, quite apart from the conviction, of having this sleazy, tawdry lifestyle of Donald Trump out there in front of the American people.
And do you think having sex with an intern in the Oval Office and paying off a woman who accused you of sexual harassment, is that any better?
Of course not.
What a silly question.
Well, Bill Clinton was never prosecuted for any of that.
Yeah.
Look, he was also impeached, and they failed to get a conviction.
But he wasn't put through a criminal.
That's a clear mistake.
He wasn't put through a criminal trial.
That's my point.
And that's where the double standard is.
Well, isn't that too bad?
So, look, there are plenty of double standards out there.
You know, there's an interesting question of Democratic theory.
The district attorney in Manhattan is elected, and he campaigned, Alvin Bragg campaigned that he was going to get Trump.
And the people of New York elected him.
They gave him a mandate to do it.
If you believe in Democratic theory, you know, if you don't, I understand.
Well, yeah, look, a Democrat city appointed a Democrat guy to take down Trump in a court that was probably dominated by Democrat thinking.
Democratic theory point, the Democrat theory point has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans, conservative or labor.
It has to do with the voice of the people speaking.
And they did speak and they elected this guy.
But, you know, a lot of the critics of this decision have challenged the jury's objectivity.
And this is a very serious matter because there are many kinds of biases that juries all across the country could display.
Ethnic, racial bias, gender bias, political bias, religious bias.
Every jury in America in every criminal case is told, put your personal feelings aside, judge on the basis of the facts that you see reported in court and the laws the court instructs you.
And if you don't believe that system works, then you don't believe in the jury system.
And that's what Trump's supporters are attacking here with no evidence.
All right.
John Bolton, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
Go back to the panel there.
I mean, Cheng, look, it's all been a very interesting debate.
I'm not entirely sure it will move the needle very much.
I think pretty much everything here was baked in.
It's really a question of, well, I think for both parties, for the Republicans, do you continue to stand by Trump?
Do you verify his nomination later in the summer and pin all your hopes on this guy?
And if you're the Democrats, do you think that given how wounded your opponent is, is Joe Biden the right guy to back them?
I mean, it seems to me both parties have a pretty big decision to take.
Yeah, so listen, the Paula Jones point you're making drives me crazy.
So let me address that real quick and then I'm going to say that, answer that question.
Paulo Jones was a lawsuit.
It was settled.
There was no hiding the money and paying it off through Michael Cohen or someone else.
Pay her off.
Yeah, but that's a normal settlement.
But why did he pay her off?
He took the campaign finance violence.
Why did he pay her off?
Because he didn't do a campaign finance violation and he didn't do business fraud.
If you're saying, hold on.
But if you're saying they were both immoral, sure, of course.
I don't care.
And by the way, I also don't care about their immorality.
I don't care that Donald Trump slept with a porn star at all.
No.
That's his personal business.
The problem is the campaign finance violations and the business finance.
I understand my point.
But my point, just on that, is that the similarity is that they both paid off women to protect their political reputations.
That's similar.
But I don't care about that at all.
I don't care that either one of them did it.
I only care about the public.
But my point is one got taken to a criminal trial, and yet the other one, Bill Clinton, to me, didn't do anything criminal in paying off Paulo Jones.
That's the most normal settlement in American history.
By the way, there's other people that did do things wrong in the Clinton era.
Sandy Berger stuffed national secrets into his socks, and you know what they did to him?
They tried him.
And Donald Trump took national secrets, and they're trying them.
If you break the law, you get tried.
But to your question about the politics of this, look, the giant difference between the Republicans and Democrats is that the Republican voters picked Donald Trump.
And I respect that.
I think they picked the wrong guy.
And I think that they're the mark.
Donald Trump's a con man, and the mark isn't the Democrats.
The mark is the Republican voters.
But nevertheless, he ran a successful con on them, and they selected him.
On the Democratic side, the voters didn't select anyone.
Party leadership selected Joe Biden.
And they pretty much closed off the primaries.
As you know, I ran against them.
RFK Jr. ran against them and they pushed everyone out of the party and said, no, we're going to protect Joe Biden because he's the dear leader.
And that is a terrible idea.
That's why he's losing to Donald Trump, despite all of Donald Trump's problems.
Biden said, look, guys, if you're a Democrat and you can't beat Donald Trump, there's something wrong with you.
Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate.
Joe Biden is a terrible candidate.
The Democratic candidate should be up 10 points on Donald Trump.
If you're not up 10 points on Donald Trump, you suck at this.
Joe Biden has been a good person.
I mean, he's not even in summer swinging.
He's a terrible candidate.
One point.
Very quickly.
Yeah, George, very quickly.
How about of the fact that two points I want to make, Cheng, to you?
And the FEC, the Federal Election Commission, decided not to move on this case with Trump.
They did not see a campaign violation.
The DOJ decided not to move in, but Alvin Bragg in New York City had the wherewithal to move on it.
And then to a second point you made, the reason Donald Trump is up on Biden isn't because Trump is bad and Biden is good.
It's because Biden's leadership sucks.
Americans are far worse today than they were when Donald Trump was in office.
That's a fact.
The economy is worse.
National security is a concern.
We have war all over the world.
The problem that we're facing is that Americans now have buyers' remorse on saying, well, we can't do four more years of Trump.
Mind you, that the last impression of them is President Trump having to manage a once-in-a-generation pandemic.
Now, we can disagree on all the things.
You don't like Trump.
I don't like Biden.
But we can all agree on one thing.
We want this country to thrive.
And this country is not thriving today, Cheng.
Okay.
With policy.
That is why Donald Trump is up.
Here's what I would say.
We're just hearing the Daily Mail's reporting that Trump may have raised nearly $40 million last night, smashing all records.
So, I mean, Vinny, it seems to me the people.
The Democrats are probably raising equal money, Piers.
Well, they may well be.
It may well be.
They're probably raising equal money.
Well, maybe.
We'll see, but that's a lot of money.
Vinny, I mean, what do you think is going to happen in November?
Do you think Trump's going to win?
To be honest with you, Piers, if the things that Christopher Wray and Tony Blinken are warning us, because they keep telling us something bad's going to happen.
China's here.
You know, our infrastructure, unless there's something catastrophic that happens to either Trump or the country to keep people from voting, I think he's going to win in a landslide.
And when Cheng talks about, you know, Trump is Trump in these documents.
Cheng, what about Joe Biden?
Joe Biden, same crime, same crime, but you know what they say for Biden?
He's old.
He didn't know he had these documents.
And Jack Smith taking photos with the FBI, that case would just dismiss.
Then nothing's going to happen to Trump.
I'm telling you right now, he has a chance, and I'm so happy.
Think about that, Piers.
$50 million in a couple of hours, that's from everybody.
The people are fed up with this personality politic BS.
Cheng, you just don't like Trump.
You never even thought of Trump till he said he was running.
You never thought of him.
The only time you thought of him was on The Apprentice.
Now he's racist and he's, how is he racist?
Nobody knows.
I won't hear him.
He's Hitler.
He's a good person.
He's not going to say it.
I'm not going to hear Trump criticized for The Apprentice because he chose me as his celebrity apprentice and that showed a very astute.
Damn right, Piers.
Very astute judgment.
You were amazing on it.
Very astute judgment.
Frank, let me end with you.
Trump is giving a press conference.
Trump is speaking.
I don't think we can predict the kind of narrative it'll be.
It'll be doubling, trebling, quadrupling down.
The money is pouring in.
You've got to assume that that's going to help him in some way.
How does this all play out?
Where are we going to be in November, do you think?
The Political Prisoner 00:01:46
I think we're going to be such a broken country.
He calls himself a political prisoner.
There is a definition of who is a political prisoner.
He's prepared to use whatever language gets the most attention, gets the most eyeballs.
And all the work that we're doing is work to help people disagree better, to find stability, to find unity, to bring people together.
And your show and the communication that we had is simply symbolic of how bad things have gotten.
And we're going to have that, you and I are going to have this conversation six months from now.
And we're going to wonder how we got here.
Well, we'll know how we got here, but we're not going to know how to get out of it.
And I'd like to think that I'm a patriot, but I'm not sure.
I'd like to think that the American democracy is the best ever.
I don't know.
I do know that we're sick.
I do know that we're divided.
I do know that it's toxic.
And I know that among people over 65 years old who saw Vietnam, Watergate, oil embargoes, the assassination of Kennedys and Kings, they think this is the worst that they've ever seen in America.
I do pay attention to them.
I'm going to Normandy.
Our young men fought and died for this great democracy.
And I think that we have to live up to that.
And I'm not convinced that we will.
A sad end to a lively debate.
But Frank, thank you very much indeed for coming in.
To Cheng, to Vincent, to George, to Emily, who could only stay half an hour.
So we're very grateful for her joining us earlier.
And to John Bolton and Michael Van der Veen.
Thank you all very much indeed.
I appreciate it.
Thank you, Piers.
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