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June 7, 2024 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
30:34
20240607_donald-trump-vows-revenge
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
Rigged Elections and Stolen Verdicts 00:09:48
In this country, we don't have a tradition of locking up the leading political candidate, no matter who that candidate is, or no matter what party they're part of.
That's not part of our tradition.
This is Stalinism.
I remember Donald Trump leading chance of locker up about Hillary Clinton.
Does that make him a Stalinist?
That's a lot of nasty things that Hillary said about Trump, Trump said about Hillary.
The actions of a major political movement in the country right now is to lock up the leading candidate for president five months before an election.
Joe Biden is suffering some form of dementia.
I'd much rather the people around Biden making decisions than the sycophants Trump would put around him, which with no offense at all are sort of versions of Benny Johnson, by the way.
Just a personal recommendation from your boy Benny.
Go to a country that's a Stalinist country, because that's clearly the tradition that you're from.
You should go to Cuba.
You should see what life's like there.
North Korea would be fun.
Former President Donald Trump's bombshell guilty verdict is shaking up the race for the White House.
Trump's campaign has raised tens of millions of dollars in an outpouring of popular support.
But some polls show the public mood could be shifting against him.
There are many unanswered questions.
Could he go to jail?
Was this equal justice or political persecution?
Will the Republicans seek judicial revenge?
And of course, can Trump still win in November?
What drawing me out of the debate is the political commentator that Benny shows Benny Johnson, host of the David Pacman Show, David Pacman, former Trump attorney and Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Deshowitz, and the progressive activist Nomaki Construct.
Welcome to all of you.
Alan Dershowitz, let me start with you.
From a pure legal perspective, how sound was this verdict?
From 1 to 10, it was a below 20.
It's the worst legal verdict I've seen in 60 years of practicing, writing, litigating cases.
It's now days since the verdict.
I still don't know what he was convicted of.
Was he convicted of intending to cheat on his taxes two years later, although he didn't take it as a deduction?
Was he convicted of defrauding voters who obviously knew that he was a sexual scoundrel?
Was he convicted of seeking to make an illegal campaign contribution, although the contribution didn't have to be listed until after the election?
I have never seen a case where even after the verdict came down, we don't know what he was convicted of.
No one in history, in history, has ever been convicted of failing to disclose hush money payment paid to somebody.
Why would anybody pay hush money if they had to disclose it?
This is a case where the prosecutor simply decided to get Trump.
I'm not a Trump supporter.
I voted against him.
I'm a liberal Democrat, but I care more about the weaponization and distortion of the criminal justice system than I care about what impact this will have on the election.
Two more quick questions for you, Alan.
First, do you think he's going to get sent to jail?
No, absolutely not.
He will get a two-year jail sentence, I predict, suspended, or conceivably a two-year or three-year jail sentence postponed.
But he will, on election day, not be in prison, although he will get a sentence of imprisonment because the judge wants to send a signal about how serious this non-crime really is.
And given what you said about less than minus 20 on the scale of sound judgment, how likely then is it that he will win on appeal?
He will lose on appeal in the appellate division of New York, which are Manhattan judges, who have the same problem that jurors in Manhattan.
They don't want to be pointed to, this is the man who allowed Trump to be president.
So he will lose in the appellate division.
He may well win the New York Court of Appeals, which reversed the Weinstein conviction on grounds similar to those grounds that would be alleged here.
And if the Supreme Court were to take the case, he would almost definitely win in the Supreme Court because the instructions violate clear, clear directives from the United States Supreme Court.
But the question is, if he wins, will he win in time for the election?
Remember, they rushed him to trial because, as Jack Smith said, the public has the right to know that he's a convicted felon before the election.
The same public has the right to know that that conviction has been reversed, if it's going to be reversed before the election.
The tragedy would be if Trump were to lose the election, then win the appeal, then we would be back to where we are today.
Election denial, half the country would be dissatisfied with the result.
That's the worst possible result.
Losing the election, winning the appeal, and the appeal is won after the election is over.
So I hope avoided.
Okay.
David Patman, I saw you smirking quite a lot during what Alan was saying, but Alan, as he said, he's not a Trump supporter, and he is one of the most eminent lawyers in America.
Does it not concern you that the glee that currently is spewing out from every Democrat paw might be tempered by a pretty hard reality shock if it plays out the way Alan suggests?
Well, I agree with much of what Alan is saying and not all of it.
He's a lawyer.
I am not.
And to some degree, I don't even know why I'm here, but we can discuss that part later.
But I think Trump's going to lose either way.
And why do I think that?
Because Republicans have lost everything since Trump won in 2016.
2018 was a disaster.
Trump lost 2020.
The red wave of 2022 led to Democrats getting a bigger majority in the Senate.
The 2023 special off-year elections, every abortion-related referendum, it's been a disaster.
So Trump's going to lose regardless.
I don't know how much of an impact this verdict is going to have, but we know what he was found guilty of.
You can say, well, I don't know that they should have brought the case.
There is prosecutorial discretion.
Hopefully we'll talk about that with regard to Hunter Biden as well.
You can say the judge should have recused himself because he made a $35 donation to Act Blue.
But to succeed on appeal, you have to point to something the judge actually did that's problematic.
And the lawyers I've spoken to can't really point to anything.
So I think Alan makes some good points.
I just don't see this as the crazy controversy that some are making it out to be.
Well, let me explain why I think it might be, is that I can just see how this plays out, is that if Trump was to lose, last time in 2020, he went on a ridiculous campaign of trying to say the election was stolen.
He's never produced any evidence to corroborate that.
It was ludicrous.
This time, he's going to have, and by the way, we have the backdrop of the Hunter Biden case going on, where the laptop story, which was suppressed by social media, let's not forget, which could have had a material impact on that election, that is all going to get reminded into people's heads that actually, yeah, you know, that story was suppressed and shouldn't have been and could have had an impact.
So you're going to have that as the backdrop for this.
But if Trump was to lose it by a marginal amount, which it often tends to be these days, and I'm not even sure he'll lose, by the way, but if he does, he's going to sit back and go, well, it was literally stolen by this ridiculous prosecution.
And I've been asking Democrats the same thing the whole time, really, which is when you look at this in the round, you've got Bill Clinton, who, while he was president, had sex with an intern in the Oval Office.
You've got Bill Clinton who paid off Paula Jones $850,000 for settling a sexual harassment case while he was president.
It didn't happen while he was president, but he paid her off while he was.
None of that led to a criminal prosecution.
And I would think many Americans, if they're just out of the toxic tribal loop, would go, well, surely even the Paula Jones one sounds a lot worse than a consensual fling with Stormy Daniels 20 years ago.
So they will see a double standard and they will shout a double standard and Trump will martyr himself at the altar of double standard.
And he will have, I would say, a really compelling case where a lot of people who didn't agree with him about 2020 being nicked are now going to look at him and go, he's got a point.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The flaw is that there was nothing illegal about Bill Clinton settling that lawsuit and they were not campaign contributions disguised in this way, which was determined to be criminal.
I think Trump will make himself a martyr either way.
He's a victim of the system of elections being rigged.
He's a victim of the justice system being rigged.
He's a victim of the media rigging his microphone and the temperature and the debates.
He's always going to be a victim of everything.
They've lost everything since 2016, Piers.
Of course he's going to be the victim because he can't just admit for the last eight years, I've destroyed this political party.
We've lost everything since I became president.
Let him lose legitimately.
Well, that's what I was about to say, actually.
I was about to say, in that case, if it's so inevitable he's going to lose, why go down this route of really over-inflating a state misdemeanor about a fling 20 years ago and then a bit of paper shuffling?
Why do that with all the potential fallout and blowback?
You've already seen Trump's raised $200 million since these verdicts came in.
That can only help him.
I just don't understand why Democrats would do that.
Now, Benny, let me bring you in here.
Playing Politics with the Jury 00:14:55
There is a but here.
Yes, he's raising a ton of money, but also I saw a poll in Reuters saying that 10% of registered Republicans are less inclined now to vote for him.
25% of Independents indicating they might be less inclined to vote for him.
Now, it's the first poll really that's shown that.
But if that starts to be a trend, and that is the effect of this conviction, that's going to be a problem for Trump.
Yeah, I think there's a much bigger problem at play right now, Piers.
And I'd really like to clear the table here as we have this conversation, because we need to actually talk about what's happening, because what's happening here is not normal in America, not in this country, in this country.
We don't have a tradition of locking up the leading political candidate five months before the election, no matter who that candidate is or no matter what party they're part of.
Not if you're a Republican, not if you're a Democrat, not if you're Green Party or Libertarian.
Doesn't matter.
That's not part of our tradition.
That's not normal.
We need to establish that.
There is a tradition, however, that my fellow panelists may be part of, and that's called being a Stalinist.
If you like this kind of thing, you're a Stalinist.
You're a show me the man.
I'll show you the crime kind of sycophant, psychotic, dictatorial tyrant.
And this is the type of nature that has overtaken what used to be called the Democratic Party.
Alan Dershowitz is part of it.
This is Stalinism.
Say it and mean it.
And there's some bravery to actually admitting that you're a Stalinist.
Hold on.
There's a bravery to admitting that you're a Stalinist because you're an evil person.
This is your argument.
This is your argument.
Hold on.
You don't care about what's true.
You just care about maintaining power.
And that's, I mean, it's a brave thing to admit that.
I think it's morally repugnant.
I think most people believe that, but you would be the same type of person who'd be celebrating in the street when Nelson Mandela got locked up.
You're the same person who'd be applauding when they put Gandhi in prison.
You're the same person who would be proud that Daniel King went to jail 27 different times.
You're young as heard that prosecutor.
Hold on.
Okay, let Benny finish, then I'll bring you in.
As long as the, I will not interrupt you.
Do not interrupt me.
As long as the person stands against your power, you are the kind of succubus, sycophants for power, simps for power, who always coddle the Stalinist mantra, do anything, lock up anyone, and you'd be gathering firewood for Joan of Arc bonfires.
Okay, Benny, I have one more question for you, Benny, before I go to Namiki.
It's this.
I remember Donald Trump leading chance of locker up about Hillary Clinton.
Does that make him a Stalinist?
So did that happen?
Is the question.
Yeah.
He would be at rallies.
He'd be at rallies and says, hang on, hang on.
Lay a finger on Hillary.
My turn to say hi.
Lay a finger on Hillary.
My turn to say half a speech.
My turn to say hang on.
I love you, buddy.
I have seen video for this.
There's a lot of nasty things that have been said about that.
There's a lot of nasty things that Hillary said about Trump.
Trump said about Hillary.
Let's look at actions.
I really, I'm old enough now that I just don't care about your words.
I care about your actions.
The actions of a major political movement in the country right now is to lock up the leading candidate for president five months before an election.
He's 77 years old, Piers.
He's been around for a long time.
He's never faced a criminal charge.
No, never been found guilty of anything in 77 years of public.
I'm going to jump in.
And now they lock him up.
That's called Stalin.
Benny, I don't disagree with you, but I do want to play a clip because Trump has denied ever saying lock her up about Hillary.
Here's a clip.
Crooked Hillary, anyway.
Crooked that you should lock her up, I'll tell you.
For what she's done, they should lock her up.
Lock her up is right.
Lock up the buns.
Lock up Hillary.
It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.
Because you'd be in jail.
Now, by your yardstick, Benny, by your yardstick, that makes him leading Stalinist, doesn't it?
Yeah, no, no, no, because I judge a man.
I judge a man by his actions.
Like, did he act on that?
Did Donald Trump lay a finger on Hillary Clinton?
Did anyone direct any special counsel to ever look into Hillary Clinton?
Well, he certainly expressed a desire.
Sure, that's called freedom of speech.
This is called playing politics.
A lot of people say a lot of things in politics.
Joe Biden just explained that his uncle was eaten by cannibals.
Okay.
Okay.
A lot of people say a lot of things.
That's called freedom of speech.
I want to bring in Namiki, but let me go to Alan quickly.
You want to say something, Alan.
There was a special capital on Hillary Clinton.
The Whitewater Council was directed against Hillary Clinton.
And yes, there were many actions taken against Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton.
Don't overuse the term Stalinist.
Reserve that term for people who really want to put people in the gulag, want to execute them.
Don't become a Stalinist denier, like a Holocaust denier.
What Stalin did was first.
I'm not on the side of people who were trying to get Trump, but I would never call them Stalin based on that action alone.
Okay, let me bring in Namiki.
You've been waiting very patiently.
A lot of facial expressions from you suggesting you don't think this is a reasonable argument.
So do you feel comfortable about the fact that any American president, but happens to be Trump, becomes the first one to be dragged through a criminal court on something so comparatively trivial?
Had it been one of the other three cases, I think there wouldn't have been such a furori about it.
But they chose the most trivial one.
They upgraded a real misdemeanor offense to a felony so they could basically try and nail him.
Do you feel comfortable that the legal systems be weaponized in that way?
Well, I think what's interesting about this case is it's not just that it was a misdemeanor, a traditional misdemeanor for falsifying documents, that it was falsifying documents in relation to an election.
And so just like they're going after people for sending out robocall that were AI saying a different election date or different vote for a different candidate or whatever, that's interfering with an election.
And that is a very serious crime, especially when you're running for the president of the free world.
Now, if we want to talk about weaponization of the legal system, Mr. Jerseywood, hang on a second.
We want to talk about weaponization of the legal system.
Just this week, you have Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Laura Loomer, Laura Loomer saying, we should be going after everybody and giving them the death sentence.
Steve Bannon saying Republicans should be using every single option on the table to investigate, to subpoena, to go after Democrats or anybody who stands in the way of Donald Trump.
But that's my point.
But that's my point, Nimiki, because of course they're going to.
And once one party does this, the other party will now spend all its time, effort, and money trying to return the favor.
And the loser actually is America and is standing in the world and the American people who have elected these people to do a job for them.
And all they're trying to do is get each other put in prison.
I think it's damaging to America.
I agree with you.
I think it's damaging to America that Donald Trump has been on a mission to deconstruct any sort of institutions that keep our democracy alive.
I think it's damaging to America that he played these games and he was giving money back and forth to different lawyers and different folks and paying off folks to do his dirty work.
It's damaging to America that he does not respect the institution and the system that gets people elected.
So yes, are Democrats supposed to sit back and let him play games with our Democratic institutions?
Of course not.
He wants to dismantle NATO.
You're wrong, Alam.
You're wrong about what he was convicted of.
If the judge had instructed, ladies and gentlemen of the jury to convict him, you have to conclude beyond reasonable doubt that he intended to impact the election.
You would be right.
But he didn't that.
He gave them multiple choice.
He said, well, maybe he did that in order to save on taxes.
Maybe he did that for this reason, that reason.
We have multiple choice.
We don't know that this is an election case.
That will be brought up at the appeals.
And that is the one argument that the that is the one argument that the Trump team is going to put forward.
And it may impact sentencing, as you mentioned.
But that does not mean that it is a winning argument.
Great argument.
The one argument he has.
But again, you know, we're looking for loopholes in something that appears on the surface very dark.
He did, no matter what, he did this.
And that does not look good to the American people.
It might gin up his base.
Hang on, Benny.
It might gin up his base.
I gave you guys time.
Let me just say one thing.
It might gin up his base and his base is dangerous, but they were always going to be ginned up.
It's that portion of America, these little margins that we're winning by now, that feels like this is a disgusting action, whether it's one case, two cases, three cases.
That jury found 34 counts him guilty.
And that jury had lawyers on it, people who voted for Trump.
So clearly, they made a strong case, Mr. Dersworth.
You cannot deny that.
I can deny that, and I will deny it.
Let me give you another argument.
So the prosecution argued that it was, as a matter of fact, an illegal campaign contribution.
As a matter of fact, they had a witness, Trump, who is the FEC expert, who said, I will testify, as a matter of fact, that it was not a campaign violence.
And it's done all the time that nobody has ever been prosecuted for.
It was perfectly legal.
And the judge kept that out.
The judge denied the jury the right to hear from the expert that it wasn't an illegal campaign contribution because the prosecution argued, yes, as a matter of fact, it was.
That's clear reversible error.
If we had another two hours, I could go down 30 reversible errors.
I've never seen a case.
Well, maybe you should work for Trump again.
He needs your help.
He has an appeal coming up.
These are great arguments back.
But it didn't hold up last week.
That's the point.
To have the appeal decided before the election.
And then I'll shut up.
You know what?
I think last year.
Let me bring in David.
Let me bring in David.
I do think that's an interesting point that's been raised by various members of the panel: actually, wouldn't it be fair to have that appeal before the election?
Yes.
I think it'd be completely fair.
I would have no problem with that.
I'd love to have it all wrapped up.
It seems unlikely that that's going to happen.
And I have very little control over it.
Me saying I would like what me agreeing to it really does nothing.
What I do think is interesting is that there's so much moving of the goalposts here in every case.
Your other guest here, Mr. Johnson, whose work I'm not as familiar with as I would like to be, but he seems extremely high energy.
He comes out shot out of a cannon saying Stalinist this and that.
And nobody else was saying lock up.
And then you play the montage of here's six times Trump said it.
And he goes, Well, he didn't act on it all of a sudden.
He changes his own argument as they always do in every single one of these cases.
Whatever they can get away with, you give them a piece of tape, peers, and then they go, oh, but my argument's actually something different.
That affects the sort of fundamental nature of this.
And it's pathetic.
Benny, I want to play you a clip.
Benny, before you reply, Benny, before you reply, we'll play you a clip of Kamala Harris on Jimmy Kimball last night.
Let's think about this.
A jury of 12 people, peers, over the course of six weeks deliberated on the evidence and facts and unanimously determined guilt for 34 felony counts.
There was a defense attorney who actively participated in selecting that jury, who actively made decisions about witnesses to call, witnesses to cross-examine, and the jury made their decision.
And, you know, I think that the reality is cheaters don't like getting caught and being held accountable.
Benny, your reaction to that.
No, I don't know if Kamala Harris is talking about her personal life there and her history, her long history in the California political system.
Cheaters don't like getting caught.
She would definitely know how to rig a jury, considering what she did as a California attorney general.
But I'll say this when it comes to cheating, and it's very interesting.
She says, cheaters don't like getting caught.
So here's my question to my fellow panelists here.
And I ask it respectfully.
And I hope that we don't interrupt each other.
I love the vibrant conversation and debate on this program.
Was Joe Biden cheating or engaging in interfering in an election when he sicked the current Secretary of State, his name's Anthony Blinken, on rounding up members of the Intel community to declare that his son's laptop, which is 100% real and holds within it at least 400 federal crimes, was actually fake and Russian disinformation.
Now, that happened right before an election.
Far, far, far closer to an election.
Let's just start off with he wasn't the president.
And most importantly, Donald Trump wasn't a president.
Please let me finish.
Donald Trump wasn't a president when allegedly this payment happened.
You're right.
He was cheating.
You're right.
So is Joe Biden cheating?
So, because yesterday, just really quick, just yesterday, because something remarkable happened in Delaware.
The federal government introduced Hunter Biden's laptop against him as a piece of evidence that they have confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt is Hunter Biden's.
So Joe Biden knew he was not a son.
He's treating both sides equally.
That is the point.
You're saying that he's a victim, Donald Trump's the victim, and they don't go after the Democrats.
But now we're getting, you gave yourself an example of how the federal government, the dust justice system under Joe Biden, is going after Joe Biden be charged for this.
No, he didn't have the.
It was his son.
That's the problem.
The guy who did it is Secretary of State right now.
The guy who organized the Russian disinformation letter is the Secretary of State.
The people who signed that letter, there have been zero consequences.
They knew they were lying to the American people.
Mental Health in a Presidential Race 00:03:53
They were rigging an election.
But can you admit that now?
Stealing an election.
They're trying to treat both sides equally.
You said just a few minutes ago, oh, Donald Trump, the Republicans, you know, they're always being prosecuted.
They're Stalinists.
But here's an example of the Biden justice system going after his own son.
Can you admit that this justice system is treating both sides equally?
Not so clear.
Not so clear.
They're trying him in Delaware, where he has all the tremendous advantages.
And they tried Trump in New York, where he had all the disadvantage.
We'll see what the outcome of the case is.
Also, where they were based.
Okay, let me ask, let me ask David a question.
This is about the Wall Street Journal big report today about Joe Biden's cognitive decline.
They spoke with 45 Republican and Democratic lawmakers and staffers.
It was pretty unsettling reading, I have to say.
It seemed pretty clear by the time I finished it that Joe Biden is suffering some form of dementia.
That was a clear conclusion from those who've been around him.
And we see enough in public to suggest that may be the case.
How comfortable are you that he is going to be fighting this election and potentially being president for four more years?
Well, worst case scenario, they both are struggling cognitively, in which case I'd much rather the people around Biden making decisions than the sycophants Trump would put around him, which with no offense at all are sort of versions of Benny Johnson, by the way.
And the audience, I'm sure we could have a beer together, Benny, and have a great time, but it's not like I necessarily want the government run by people like you.
So I think worst case scenario, they're both struggling.
You know, at this point, I've interviewed four medical and mental health professionals, two from mental health, two from the neurology side.
So far, they've all told me Joe Biden is experiencing age-related aging that you would expect for someone of his age.
Trump seems to be seriously cognitively struggling where he doesn't realize he's saying things that don't make sense.
He doesn't realize that he's getting names completely wrong, stories that don't make sense, doesn't know who he ran against, doesn't know who he's running against, doesn't know who he ran against in 2016 or who's president right now.
I mean, a level of confusion.
And again, I'm neither a neurologist nor a mental health expert.
This is what the mental health experts have told me.
Now, I will say, I read the article.
Some of the sourcing is people that MAGA Mike Johnson talked to.
That's not super compelling to me.
However, I do think Annie Linsky is a trustworthy reporter.
I am not pretending this story isn't out there and I cover it on my show today.
I think it's a serious story.
If Donald Trump came out and said that his great uncle had been shot down and then eaten by cannibals, and it turned out that he hadn't been shot down or eaten by cannibals, you would probably lead a cry of this man is not fit to be president, wouldn't he?
Yeah, maybe I would.
I mean, Trump has made stuff up about his uncle developing nuclear weapons or something just as ridiculous.
And so I think we have examples of both.
I don't know that they're super compelling one way or the other.
Okay.
That's why the presidency here is more important than any election since Franklin or Roosevelt in 1944.
Because whoever is the vice president will be the next president.
Right.
And if I were the Republicans, I put up the strongest, most presidential person, Nikki Haley, for example, or somebody like that, to run.
If Trump tends to pick somebody just who is somebody helping get president, help him get elected, but wouldn't be a good president, that would be a terrible mistake.
This is a race who's going to be the next president, not only who's going to be president.
Okay, Benny, I'll give you the last word because Sienna Miller, the actress, has said she has already fled the United States, partly due to avoid Donald Trump.
Stalinism and One-Way Tickets 00:01:56
She said, I was living in New York for seven years till last summer.
It was time to come home.
Obviously, got a little baby.
It's a better quality of life.
And there is no Donald Trump.
I couldn't handle another election.
We are, I think, heading to that familiar rodeo of a lot of famous people saying they're either leaving or have left the country to avoid Trump.
What do you make of this?
Good.
Fantastic.
Like, why not?
We live in a free country.
Go where you please.
But just a personal, a humble recommendation from your boy Benny, go to a country that's a Stalinist country, because that's clearly the tradition that you're from.
You should go to Cuba.
I've gone to Cuba and done documentaries.
You should see what life's like there.
North Korea would be fun.
Perhaps you could fly into mainland China and try and live under a social credit system.
See how much your activism, see how much your activism gets you, how far your radical, intersectional, feminist ideologies get you in, I don't know, the Mideast or in an African nation.
Try it.
Go.
I beg of you.
And more importantly, make sure you book a one-way ticket.
Make sure you book a one-way ticket.
You don't want any.
You don't want any, you know, I mean, the defense that you have for Donald Trump and anything to the left of Donald Trump, including Nikki Haley, is a Stalinist.
So, you know, wait till you learn how much of a support people like for eight years, they're desperate.
I'm in eight years.
This is great.
Keep talking like this.
I'm desperate.
Okay.
Yeah.
I'm saying when you lock up, when you show me the man, I'll show you the crime, lock up my political enemies.
That's Stalinism.
All right.
That's fascist.
We began with Stalin.
We're ending with Stalin.
Thank you to my panel.
A fascinating debate.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
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