Donald Trump has been charged with racketeering and conspiracy to commit racketeering in Georgia, and 18 other alleged co-conspirators. This is the most ambitious and sweeping case brought up against the former president, and is likely to pose unprecedented legal challenges both for Trump and for the prosecutors. In this episode, Alex Blumberg and Vanessa Grgurich break down the charges and what they mean for Trump s chances of winning the case. They also talk about why Georgia's RICO statute is different from the federal RICO law, and what it could mean for the future of the case and the possibility of a federal trial. And they discuss whether or not the case should be moved to federal court, and how this could affect Trump s 2020 presidential campaign. This episode was produced and edited by Rachel Goodman and Annie-Rose Strasser. Our theme song is Come Alone by Suneaters, courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Build Buildings Records, a production of Native Creative Commons. Additional music by Ian Dorsch and Mark Phillips. We'd like to learn more about you, the listeners. Please take a few minutes to leave us a rating and review our podcast on Apple Podcasts! Rate/subscribe in iTunes, and we'll be looking out for your thoughts in the next week's mailbag! Subscribe, review, and subscribe to our newest podcast episode on the podcast! Subscribe to our new episodes of "The Dark Side of the Street" on Podulars and "The Good Fight Podcast! on Podcoin Subscribe on iTunes, Podcoin, and The Good Morning America? and The Badger Podcasts on Strava Subscribe and Subscribe to The Good Fight Club? Learn more about your ad choices? Subscribe & Review our new podcast recommendations! Leave us a review on iTunes! and more! Thanks for listening to our podcast in the Badger Talk Podcasts? and subscribe on iTunes. - The Good Life Podcasts by The GoodLife Podcasts by The Badge Podcasts & The Good Hustle Podcasts Outtro Music by The Pizzazz by John Rocha? by The Good Side Podcasts outtro by John Good Morning Outtro by & The Bad News Outtro by Sarah Kasperson Thank you for listening and Reviewed by , The Good Lady of the Good Life
00:00:00.000Alrighty, so this RICO prosecution in Georgia is, of course, the headline of the moment.
00:00:05.000It is also the largest legal barrier that Donald Trump faces going forward because it is a state-level case, which means that if he is convicted in the state of Georgia, he cannot pardon himself even were he to be elected President of the United States or even were a fellow Republican to be elected President of the United States.
00:00:19.000The current governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, does not have the power to unilaterally pardon Donald Trump on a state charge that has to go in front of some sort of pardon review board.
00:00:26.000So the bottom line is that Donald Trump is going to be slugging it out in court with Fannie Willis.
00:00:31.000He's going to be joined by 18 alleged co-conspirators.
00:00:33.000And so today we're going to go through in detail.
00:00:36.000The indictment against Donald Trump and what it actually means.
00:00:39.000So as the Wall Street Journal points out, the indictment in Georgia against Trump for racketeering and a dozen other alleged offenses represents the most ambitious and sweeping case brought up against the former president and is likely to pose unprecedented legal challenges both for Trump but also for the prosecutors.
00:00:52.000The case, brought by Fannie Willis, centers on allegations that Trump, along with 18 others, participated in a criminal enterprise to change the 2020 presidential election in his favor in violation of the state's anti-racketeering law.
00:01:03.000That Georgia law is modeled on the 1970 RICO Act, that's the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which was really designed to go after the mafia.
00:01:11.000Georgia's law is, in some respects, broader than the federal version.
00:01:15.000Georgia's RICO statute allows the prosecutor to tell a lot of the story, apparently, according to, for example, Gwen Keyes Fleming, former DeKalb County District Attorney, who's now at the law firm DLA Piper, which is a major law firm.
00:01:27.000Willis' indictment is this long, sprawling thing that encompasses Donald Trump's activities with relation to legislators in Pennsylvania, with relation to various members of his own administration, with members of the DOJ, with his lawyers.
00:01:41.000The 98-page indictment is basically just an entire narrative story about Donald Trump's attempts to intervene in the 2020 election.
00:01:49.000But it doesn't answer the key question, which is whether Donald Trump actually engaged in what would be a criminal enterprise, and that has an actual legal definition, is whether this was a criminal enterprise or not.
00:02:01.000Now, as we say, Willis also faces some challenges here.
00:02:04.000She says she wants a trial date within the next six months.
00:02:41.000And if that happens, that would be a big win for Trump because that would mean that he can select from a broader jury pool.
00:02:46.000One of the things that Fannie Willis is counting on here is that the judge presumably won't kick out her charges.
00:02:50.000We'll talk about whether that will happen or not in just a moment.
00:02:53.000Also, she's counting on this being a Fulton County jury as opposed to being a broader pool of counties that are included in the jury pool.
00:03:01.000Okay, so let's talk about the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act.
00:03:06.000So, it was really designed to go after the mafia, as I say.
00:03:09.000It was designed for criminal enterprises.
00:03:11.000Now, one of the reasons I think that Fannie Willis is charging this, as opposed to, say, just the crime of conspiracy, Conspiracy is an actual crime.
00:03:19.000You can charge somebody with conspiracy to commit a crime.
00:03:21.000So if you and I, we make a plan to go rob a bank, we don't have to get charged under RICO.
00:03:26.000We could just be charged with a normal conspiracy statute.
00:03:28.000That is a criminal conspiracy because you and I are getting together to pursue a crime.
00:03:33.000RICO was written for the shadowy gray area.
00:03:36.000Where they know that we're kind of hanging out together, but they're not really sure that I gave you an order or that I made an actual organized plan to go rob the bank.
00:03:41.000They just know a lot of banks are getting robbed, and I'm benefiting in some way, and you're benefiting in some way, and some orders were given at some level.
00:03:47.000This was always the trouble for the mafia, was the plausible deniability.
00:03:51.000It was the ability for the person at the top of the food chain to say,
00:03:53.000I never knew what that hit man was doing.
00:04:40.000So when you charge a mafioso with the RICO violation, you're not charging him with this specific murder.
00:04:47.000You're charging him with being part of a giant organization that is responsible for a wide variety of crimes up to and including murder, for example.
00:04:53.000And then by proxy, he's also included in those charges.
00:05:02.000One, it is not particularly clear that Fannie Willis actually has the hard evidence that Donald Trump told people, I want you to overturn the election knowing that it's false.
00:05:18.000Well, that's always been the big question for Trump.
00:05:20.000As I've been saying, you know, as long as he's been under the legal gun, establishing intent for Trump is a very difficult business, legally speaking.
00:05:27.000Because, presumably, you actually have to find some sort of through-line.
00:05:30.000You have to believe that he doesn't believe the things he's saying, that he's actually lying about those things.
00:05:52.000The government need not prove the defendant agreed with every other conspirator, knew all of the other conspirators, or had full knowledge of all the details of the conspiracy.
00:06:00.000All that must be shown is that the defendant agreed to commit the substantive racketeering offense through agreeing to participate in racketeering acts, that he knew the general status of the conspiracy, and that he knew the conspiracy extended beyond his individual role.
00:06:12.000So that means that Donald Trump would not have had to have specific intent to corruptly overturn the election, knowing full well that the election had been decided against him.
00:06:23.000As long as somebody in his orbit knew, as long as Rudy Giuliani knew, as long as Sidney Powell knew, as long as one of the co-conspirators knew that Donald Trump had lost and then was pursuing this legal strategy, if you consider it a criminal enterprise, as a criminal enterprise, then Donald Trump could be implicated in those crimes without actually having to express the intent.
00:06:39.000This is how Fannie Willis is attempting to end around the general requirements of criminal law, like you have to have intent to commit a crime in order to be held responsible for that crime.
00:06:49.000Now, there's another problem for her which we'll get to in just one second.
00:06:52.000First, you know a company is looking out for you and they actually upgrade your service and don't charge you for it.
00:06:56.000This is great news for new and current PeerTalk customers.
00:06:59.000PeerTalk just added data to every plan and includes a mobile hotspot with no price increase whatsoever.
00:07:03.000If you've considered PeerTalk before but you haven't made the switch, take a look again.
00:07:06.000For just $20 a month, you'll get unlimited talk, text, and now 50% more 5G data plus their new mobile hotspot.
00:08:22.000It involves a wide variety of offenses because it's a criminal enterprise.
00:08:26.000Is Donald Trump and Sidney Powell a criminal enterprise, or should that theoretically really be charged under conspiracy to commit a criminal act, but then that raises the question of what exactly is the criminal act?
00:08:35.000Because Donald Trump can say it's not a criminal act for me to pursue a specious legal strategy.
00:08:39.000A specious legal strategy is not a criminal act, that's free speech.
00:08:43.000And this is why Fannie Willis is charging it under RICO and not under conspiracy.
00:08:47.000Again, if the scheme was formulated in order to keep him in office.
00:08:51.000If the scheme itself was a crime, she would be charging conspiracy, but she knows the scheme itself isn't a crime.
00:08:55.000So instead, she's trying to charge it under RICO, claiming the entire kit and caboodle is a criminal enterprise.
00:09:01.000So she's sort of doing the in-between.
00:09:03.000She doesn't have to justify that crime actually was intended, and she actually doesn't even have to establish that there is a criminal enterprise if she gets away with all of this.
00:09:12.000It's a real mischarge, or at the very least, it's a big stretch.
00:09:15.000Now, the thing about a stretch charge like this against a president of the United States is that once you break the glass, the glass is now broken.
00:09:24.000I'm not against the idea that presidents, ex-presidents, pretty much anybody should be held, should not be held accountable for violation of the law.
00:09:32.000The thing that I really am against is the belief that a partisan prosecutor gets to decide who goes and who stays.
00:09:39.000One of the big problems that we have in this country is that the only way that somebody gets indicted is if that person is the political enemy of the people in power.
00:09:48.000And this goes all the way back to, for example, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.
00:09:52.000So, I said this about Donald Trump with regard to the classified documents.
00:10:00.000They have him basically dead to write on those charges.
00:10:02.000I mean, he literally said on tape, Folks, legal advice, never do the criming on tape.
00:10:07.000He literally said on a tape, here are classified documents, I could have unclassified them, I didn't declassify them, you should look at them, right?
00:10:13.000I mean, that is doing the crime on the tape.
00:10:17.000Well, in any normal circumstance, the answer would be yes, sure, why not?
00:10:21.000Of course, if you commit a crime, you should be prosecuted for the crime.
00:10:23.000The problem is, once James Comey let Hillary Clinton off the hook for crimes, at that point, the answer becomes no.
00:10:30.000And the answer becomes no, because if only one side has to play by the rules, then the rules are not rules, they are just a double standard.
00:10:37.000And the same thing is happening right here.
00:10:40.000So, back in 2014, I actually advocated for a full-scale Use of RICO to go after politicians.
00:10:47.000Because I said, listen, what I would like is actually widespread use of RICO to go after various criminal enterprises run by politicians.
00:10:54.000I wrote an entire book called The People versus Barack Obama, in which I suggested that Barack Obama had very likely engaged in, by Fannie Willis's definition, RICO violations.
00:11:07.000The IRS scandal, Barack Obama and his minions went out in public and repeatedly said that it would be amazing if the IRS audited and removed the tax exemption for pretty much every conservative group in America leading up to the 2010 election.
00:11:18.000And then they actually went and they did it.
00:11:34.000How could you possibly suggest something like this?
00:11:36.000And my answer was, you know what, maybe if we finally started holding politicians accountable for their various criminal enterprises, they would stop doing the criming.
00:11:46.000And then they ignored Hillary Clinton.
00:11:47.000And they're currently ignoring Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.
00:11:49.000By the way, very solid case that the sort of RICO violations that we are currently talking about with regards to Donald Trump and election of 2020, Those far better fit the criminal violations committed by Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.
00:12:02.000You want to talk about a criminal enterprise?
00:12:03.000You want to talk about like a RICO criminal enterprise?
00:12:05.000Like a fam- Let's say that you had a family.
00:12:15.000And that family sent a bag man to foreign countries to pick up cash on behalf of every relative of the Vice President of the United States while the Vice President was presiding over foreign policy in those countries.
00:12:27.000I mean, does the plausible deniability there sound sort of like a mafia situation?
00:12:33.000When Joe Biden was literally calling into Hunter Biden's business meetings and saying, how is the weather over there?
00:12:40.000Doesn't that sound exactly like what a mafioso would do?
00:12:43.000You get the Don on the line and tell the local bartender, how's the weather down there?
00:12:47.000And then everybody knows pretty clearly that if the bartender doesn't pay off the mafioso, then the place goes up in flames.
00:12:56.000I mean, that looks a lot like a RICO violation.
00:12:57.000I mean, if you're going to talk about RICO violations, you can find RICO violations pretty much anywhere.
00:13:43.000I mean, this is sort of the case that I'm making, is that we've become so comfortable with the executive branch of the government abusing its citizens and violating our rights, and violating what they're structured to do under the law, that we've just become used to it.
00:13:56.000And if we start treating them as criminals, maybe they'll think twice before they act so criminally in the future.
00:14:25.000If you're going to use RICO to go after Donald Trump, you better damn well use it to go after Hillary Clinton and the Hillary Clinton Foundation.
00:14:30.000You better damn well use it to go after Barack Obama and Barack Obama's involvement in a wide variety of scandals under his tenure.
00:14:36.000You better damn well use it to go after Hunter and Joe Biden, which looks more like a RICO violation than anything that Donald Trump has done here.
00:15:09.000Through Balance of Nature's advanced cold vacuum process, the vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients of the fruit and vegetables are preserved, so you can get that vital nutrition in every capsule.
00:15:16.000Balance of Nature is a whole food supplement with no additives, fillers, extracts, synthetics, pesticides, or added sugar.
00:15:21.000The only thing in those capsules is pure fruits and veggies.
00:15:23.000Balance of Nature sent a bunch of their product down to the studio for my team to try.
00:15:55.000What will end up happening is there will be motivated Republican prosecutors who do bring recall violations against Joe and Hunter Biden, for example.
00:16:03.000All there needs to be is a prosecutor with courage in a local jurisdiction to do this.
00:16:07.000That's all that really needs to happen here.
00:16:11.000And now we can play this game all day long because they broke the glass.
00:16:14.000The case that they were making against me, and I'll admit that it was at least a case, is once you break the glass then everyone will be prosecuted.
00:16:46.000One of the predictable results of this is that people who have families, people who have a sense of shame, people who do not wish to see their lives dug through, are simply going to stay away from politics.
00:16:56.000That's the actual natural effect of all of this, is that the best will not go into politics anymore.
00:17:00.000It'll be people who are pretty much willing to slug it out in court every single day because that's what it's going to take from here on in.
00:17:08.000So I'm not sure the Democrats understand the They've been saying for a long time that Donald Trump, he's not normal.
00:17:15.000It's just not normal that he was president of the United States and his behavior is not normal.
00:17:19.000And I won't be the first to admit that I think that Donald Trump has behaved in ways that are not typically associated with the word presidential.
00:17:24.000But in terms of the behavior that he's currently being indicted for, the notion that it is unprecedented for a president of the United States to engage in borderline criminal activity in RICO-violating ways, that obviously is not true.
00:17:39.000And Donald Trump is not an exception in this way, and he will not be treated as one for very long if Republicans have their wits about them.
00:17:47.000And it may be that we've now entered the era of mutually assured destruction.
00:17:49.000The only way to go back to something resembling normal is to absolutely go up against, for example, Hunter and Joe Biden, and not just pursue something like impeachment, but pursue criminal indictment in some sort of state law against Hunter and Joe Biden in exactly the same way that a local Georgia RICO violation is being pursued.
00:18:11.000I promise you there is something there with regard to the Bidens that looks a lot more like a mafioso family than anything that Donald Trump did with Rudy Giuliani at the Four Seasons Gardening store or something.
00:18:20.000Okay, meanwhile, Donald Trump is responding to all of this, pledging that he is going to give an irrefutable report on Georgia election fraud.
00:18:28.000Now, I assume that the reason that he's doing this In terms of law, now, I don't know that he's listening to his lawyers.
00:18:34.000Donald Trump's not famous for listening to his lawyers.
00:18:38.000As I've said before, one of the hardest jobs in America is being Donald Trump's lawyer.
00:18:41.000But I assume one of the reasons that Trump is doing this is to reestablish that he legitimately believes that he won the 2020 election and that Georgia was stolen from him.
00:18:49.000Because if he can establish that he didn't have intent to commit a crime, he just had an intent to, for example, actually uphold his rights, that takes away the intent part of the crime.
00:18:59.000Now as I mentioned before, Fannie Willis may be intending to kind of go around that by charging him with a RICO violation.
00:19:04.000With that said, Trump's best defense here in terms of the actual crime of all of this is to say, I never had the requisite intent.
00:19:10.000This is just me pursuing a legal strategy, all you think is specious, but I thought was worthwhile because it was apparent to me that I was being jobbed.
00:19:18.000in which he said, quote, a large, complex, detailed, but irrefutable report on the presidential election fraud,
00:19:22.000which took place in Georgia, is almost complete and will be presented by me at a major news conference at 11 a.m. on
00:19:28.000Monday of next week in Bedminster, New Jersey.
00:19:30.000Based on the results of this conclusive report, all charges should be dropped against me and others. There will be a
00:19:34.000complete exoneration. They never went after those that rigged the election.
00:19:37.000They only went after those that fought to find the riggers.
00:19:40.000So, again, as I say, I actually think this is smart in terms of just pure legal strategy.
00:19:45.000I think there's a reason that Donald Trump is doing that.
00:19:49.000Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, he immediately responded by saying, yeah, this is bullcrap.
00:19:53.000He immediately said the 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen.
00:19:55.000For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward under oath and prove anything in a court of law.
00:20:01.000He says, our elections in Georgia are secure.
00:20:04.000Accessible and fair and will continue to be as long as I'm governor.
00:20:07.000The future of our country is at stake in 2024 and that must be our focus.
00:20:10.000Again, what Trump is doing here I think has very little to do with whether or not there was fraud in Georgia and a lot to do with establishing that he didn't have intent to violate the law.
00:20:19.000He had intent to uphold his rights under the law.
00:20:22.000Okay, in just one second we'll get to the actual formatics of Trump's arrest.
00:20:25.000There's question as to whether he'll even get bail at this point.
00:20:28.000First, are you tired of feeling uncomfortable in your underwear and loungewear, especially during those scorching summer months?
00:20:32.000Thanks to my friends over at Tommy John, you can have the perfect blend of comfort and breathability.
00:20:36.000When you wear Tommy John, you're so much more comfortable that you can do everything better.
00:20:39.000Their underwear has dozens of comfort innovations, like breathable, lightweight, moisture-wicking fabric with four times the stretch of competing brands that can keep you seven degrees cooler than cotton.
00:20:48.000Tommy John also sells its loungewear with a level of softness that honestly cannot be paralleled They're incredibly soft loungewear designed to envelop you in a world of pure luxury.
00:21:35.000The formatics of this situation for Trump are really troubling, obviously.
00:21:39.000There's serious question now as to whether Donald Trump is actually going to get bail.
00:21:43.000According to certain attorneys, Georgia's legal provision on bail could actually pose a dilemma for the judge because Georgia basically says that you are not allowed to release somebody on bail who may then pose a risk of intimidating witnesses or otherwise obstructing the administration of justice.
00:21:59.000So if a judge were to find that Donald Trump could theoretically tamper with witnesses, Or that he'd call up his co-conspirators, or anything like that.
00:22:07.000Or if a judge finds that him tweeting things out, in sort of coded messages to witnesses, could amount to some form of witness tampering.
00:22:14.000There's a possibility that some state judge who wants to get his name on the map, or her name on the map, could theoretically deny bail to Trump.
00:22:20.000I mean, totally cra- I can't imagine that's how this is gonna go.
00:22:23.000But, I mean, we are in an unimaginable place right now.
00:22:28.000Meanwhile, they've already announced in the courthouse in Fulton County that Donald Trump is going to end up having to do a mugshot, which is pretty absurd because typically a mugshot is done in order to establish the identity of the criminal.
00:23:02.000Obviously, you see that there's a bit of an ego trip happening in Georgia where they're saying that they're going to force him to have a mugshot.
00:23:08.000The purpose of a mugshot is when you don't recognize someone, you think there's a flight risk.
00:23:12.000This man is the most famous person in the world, the leading candidate right now.
00:23:19.000But, you know, everything has gone sideways so many times here that it's hard to tell what's going to happen next.
00:23:23.000Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is still out there making the rounds.
00:23:26.000Doesn't matter that the Hillary Clinton Foundation was a complete sham.
00:23:29.000Does not matter that Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton probably got away with taking bribes in order to pay off pardons so that Hillary could win her Senate race in New York in 2000.
00:23:37.000Doesn't matter that Hillary engaged in full-scale destruction of classified information.
00:23:44.000And this is the reason why the indictments against Trump Could both be somewhat well predicated, particularly in the classified documents scandal, and also are completely removed from the reality of our modern day politics in which Democrats apparently get off scot-free while Republicans are the only ones who find themselves prosecuted.
00:24:02.000Here's Hillary laughing about all of this.
00:24:04.000All over the country right now, people are wondering what Hillary Rodham Clinton is thinking watching things unfold in Georgia.
00:24:11.000She's the former Democratic presidential nominee, U.S.
00:24:14.000Senator from New York, and Secretary of State.
00:24:15.000I should tell you, she has a new essay out in The Atlantic on the well-being of Americans and our democracy.
00:24:21.000It's called The Weaponization of Loneliness.
00:24:24.000Madam Secretary, fancy meeting you here.
00:24:48.000She's obviously very deeply disturbed and saddened by what's happening, or she's just chortling at you and at the rest of America because she got away with it.
00:24:57.000This is the lady who, after Trump got indicted on the classified documents stuff, put out a tweet of herself wearing a hat that said, but her emails.
00:25:06.000And then you wonder why Republicans are so all-fire pissed about the double standard.
00:25:09.000You wonder why so many Republicans, including people like me, who want even-handed administration of justice, look at something like this and we say, this is not even-handed administration of justice or anything remotely like it.
00:25:19.000Meanwhile, you have legal experts on MSNBC.
00:25:22.000Claiming that race is going to be a central component in Trump's trial, which is just insane to say.
00:25:27.000I mean, by the way, that's totally crazy.
00:25:28.000This is supposed to be about whether Donald Trump attempted to deny people the right to vote or some such.
00:25:34.000What in the world does this have to do with race?
00:25:36.000But here's a Georgia State University professor named Eric Segal explaining that actually race is going to be the central component here.
00:25:43.000With that many defendants, do you think that everyone on that list is going to want to play hardball with prosecutors?
00:25:50.000Or how likely is it that someone would want to cut a deal?
00:25:53.000I think it's extremely likely that there's going to be a deal cut.
00:25:56.000And I want to make one more point, if I may.
00:25:58.000Unlike the other cases, race is going to play a central role in this case, in all kinds of ways.
00:26:06.000We all know Donald Trump is probably a little more sensitive to Race is going to be a central component.
00:26:11.000My God, just saying the quiet part out loud right there.
00:26:13.000Jerry Poole is going to be largely African-American if it stays here.
00:26:17.000So I do think there's an undercurrent of race in this case, especially given that it's Georgia,
00:26:22.000that's going to make it a little bit different than the other three cases.
00:26:24.000I do expect some of those witnesses to turn and to testify against the president.
00:26:30.000Race is going to be a central component.
00:26:31.000My God, just saying the quiet part out loud right there.
00:26:35.000This, again, it's so much of this is politics.
00:26:38.000Now, speaking of politics, one of the big questions here is whether Republicans are going to nominate Trump in the middle of all this.
00:26:44.000Again, I understand the emotional knee-jerk reaction, which is nominate him just to say, screw you to these people.
00:26:50.000But you may be giving them exactly what they want if Joe Biden gets reelected.
00:26:54.000I said on yesterday's show, I don't see one iota of data that President Trump's legal troubles are hurting him in a primary or that they are helping him in a general.
00:27:04.000And that seems to be what the data show right now.
00:27:06.000Trump has a record high lead in the GOP primary polls.
00:27:09.000According to FiveThirtyEight's national polling average of the primary, Trump has a near record high advantage of 38.7% over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
00:27:17.000That is up from a lead of 15 to 20 points in late March.
00:27:20.000But his favorability rating has been falling steadily after his second indictment.
00:27:24.000In terms of favorability rating, after the indictment on the hush money charges, according to FiveThirtyEight, Trump's net favorability, which is his favorability rating minus his unfavorability rating, rose 0.7 percentage points among Republicans in the next couple of weeks.
00:27:37.000His June indictment was a different story.
00:27:39.000In the two weeks after that, his net favorability rating fell from 57.1% positive to 55.3% positive.
00:27:46.000And his net favorability rating among all adults fell from 11.9 percentage points negative back down to almost 15 percentage points negative.
00:27:55.000So it may be worse when it comes to the general election.
00:27:58.000Imagine an entire election cycle run entirely on Donald Trump.
00:28:01.000It'll allow Joe Biden to run the campaign he wants.
00:28:03.000He can go back to that basement in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
00:28:42.000What this really amounts to, I would bet dollars to donuts, what you're going to see actually here, is, aside from Trump strengthening in the primaries, in the 2024 race, you're going to see more support going to third-party candidates like RFK Jr.
00:29:17.000The vast majority of Americans care much more about their pocketbooks and about the fact they're paying hundreds of dollars more per month every month now, thanks to Joe Biden, than they do about any of the legal foibles that are currently taking place in Fulton County.
00:29:28.000Trump isn't talking about that stuff because he can't.
00:29:36.000is going after Biden on inflation, which is what normal candidates would be doing these days.
00:29:41.000So there's no money for poor Americans and the people that I see are living because of the inflation and because of what's happening at this with this desperation.
00:29:50.000The average wage in this country is now $5,000 less than the cost of basic goods of food, transportation and housing.
00:30:03.000So half of Americans are Making up that gap by putting it on their credit card bills.
00:30:10.000And this week, we passed 1.1 trillion dollars in credit card debt.
00:30:16.000That's the first time in history most of that, or 330 billion of that, has been in the Biden and Trump administrations.
00:30:23.000Two men were saying, you know, I'm helping America.
00:30:27.000The trillion dollar in credit card debt, and those people are paying 22% interest.
00:30:32.000If the mafia did that, it would be called loan sharking.
00:30:37.000But what's more important is he's talking about an issue that when's the last time you heard a candidate talk about inflation?
00:30:42.000Joe Biden isn't going to talk about it because he's doing it.
00:30:44.000But Donald Trump isn't talking about it because he's busy.
00:30:47.000And Ron DeSantis hasn't really been talking about it.
00:30:49.000Or if he has, it's been obscured by the fact that Donald Trump has been indicted.
00:30:53.000So the entire conversation for the two main parties is not about the thing that most Americans care about, which means there actually is a lane, not for RFK Jr.
00:31:19.000And then this election really is up in the air, despite everything else that is going on.
00:31:23.000Again, RFK is the only person who's talking about issues right now.
00:31:27.000That I think most Americans are concerned about.
00:31:30.000I think they should be concerned about the weaponization of the justice system, but I also think that Donald Trump is the most politicized figure of our lifetime, bar none.
00:31:37.000So most Americans, again, and I think rightly, are concerned more about how they put dinner on the table than they are concerned about Fannie Willis and the details of the RICO Act.
00:31:47.000Okay, in just one second, we'll get to the fact that credit card delinquencies are jumping.
00:31:51.000First, let's talk about the fact that as the economy begins to waver, as the Chinese economy prepares to go down, central banks in countries like China, India, and Australia are transitioning to digital currency and the Federal Reserve is contemplating the same for the United States.
00:32:05.000With a digital currency, the government can track every single purchase you make.
00:32:08.000Officials could even prohibit you from purchasing certain products or easily freeze or seize part or all of your money.
00:32:14.000These are some of the reasons concerned Americans reach out to Birchgold.
00:32:16.000They want to have a physical asset like gold that's independent of the American dollar.
00:32:19.000You can protect your IRA or 401k by diversifying with gold from Birchgold.
00:32:23.000Historically, gold has been a safe haven in times of high uncertainty, which is like right now.
00:32:27.000Learn if gold is right for you as well.
00:32:30.000They'll send you a free info kit on gold with an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, thousands of happy customers, countless five-star reviews.
00:32:36.000I trust Birch Gold to help you diversify into gold.
00:32:38.000If a central bank digital currency becomes a reality, well, at that point, you'll be happy that you diversified into, you know, an asset that has never been worth zero and is not subject to government manipulation.
00:32:47.000Again, text Ben to 989898 to get started with my friends over at Birch Gold, ask all your questions, and then see if you're interested in investing with my friends at Birch Gold.
00:32:55.000Also, Whether it's trying to change the definition of words or trying to convince you that 2 plus 2 equals 5, well it sometimes feels like the culture is doing its best to make you stupid.
00:33:43.000The new The rate of new credit card delinquencies has surpassed its pre-COVID level, clocking in at 7.2% in the second quarter per report out this month from the New York Fed.
00:33:52.000Auto loan delinquencies were at 7.3% in Q2, also higher than pre-pandemic levels.
00:33:56.000Mortgage delinquencies remain low at this point, but that's largely because mortgages were put off for a couple of years, so people saved some money on that one.
00:34:03.000Even as inflation declines, Americans are increasingly relying on credit cards to make their budget work.
00:34:08.000Again, we are going to see the effects of easy money petering out pretty quickly here.
00:34:14.000And it's going to be a problem that's going to be exacerbated by China's economy, which is actually in really bad shape, but they're hiding it by lying about the stats.
00:34:21.000According to the Wall Street Journal, China's authorities responded to another burst of dire news on the economy with a well-honed playbook.
00:34:26.000They cut interest rates and withheld some potentially embarrassing economic data.
00:34:30.000The trouble, say investors and economists, is that lower borrowing costs and greater opacity aren't what China needs to reignite growth and restore vanishing confidence in their economy.
00:34:38.000China's economy is staggering under an array of challenges including a drawn-out real estate crunch, worsening relations with the U.S.-led West, and difficulties in nurturing a consumer-led expansion while the usual growth engines of investments and exports misfire.
00:34:50.000Well, if China's economy goes down, we are fairly well intertwined with them.
00:34:54.000You're going to see the price of goods go up again.
00:34:56.000You're going to see the supply of goods go down again.
00:34:59.000This is going to be a bit of a problem for consumers who are already getting smacked by inflation.
00:35:04.000As those costs go up, some bills are going to go unpaid.
00:35:06.000When those bills go unpaid, then some debts are going to go bad.
00:35:08.000When the debts go bad, that could lead to things like foreclosures.
00:35:12.000It leads to serious economic problems.
00:35:15.000Joe Biden's been whistling past the graveyard on the economy for quite a while.
00:35:18.000I'm not sure that that's going to last all that much longer.
00:35:20.000Meanwhile, in Hunter Biden news, the lawyer representing Hunter Biden in plea negotiations to end a five-year DOJ investigation into taxing gun offenses stepped down early on Tuesday, saying he intends to testify as a witness on behalf of the president's son.
00:35:32.000The decision by the lawyer, Christopher Clark, is the latest development in the long-running negotiation between the DOJ and Biden.
00:35:38.000The department has said a substantial part of the plea agreement no longer stands and they've suggested in court documents they could indict Biden.
00:35:43.000Clark is now contending that Biden will need him as a witness to prove the department is seeking to back out of a legally binding deal.
00:35:48.000So he's stepping down so he can be a witness and say that Joe Biden's DOJ lied.
00:35:53.000Now again, to review briefly, Joe Biden's DOJ cut a sweetheart deal with Hunter Biden's attorney.
00:35:58.000That sweetheart deal basically wiped away all future charges against Hunter Biden in exchange for a slap on the wrist.
00:36:04.000A judge found out about it, and then the DOJ lied and said they never cut the deal in the first place.
00:36:08.000Now, Hunter Biden's lawyer is coming out and he's saying, I may have to testify in court that the deal was already cut.
00:36:14.000This week, Abby Lowell, a veteran lawyer in Washington who has represented a wide range of clients, according to the New York Times, filed court documents indicating he now represented Hunter Biden in the case.
00:36:24.000Again, this is just another sign that this case is going south very quickly for Hunter Biden, but will they continue to try to push a cover up?
00:36:33.000Now, speaking of avoiding the law, I have to say it is pretty impressive how the Biden administration is just spitting directly in the face of the Supreme Court of the United States.
00:36:39.000So you'll recall that the Supreme Court banned affirmative action policies to any sort of institution that gets federal money.
00:36:46.000It said it's a violation of the Equal Protection Clause, which it pretty clearly is.
00:36:50.000Miguel Cardona, the Education Secretary, who—these are—remember, these are the rule of law people.
00:36:54.000These are people who must establish rule of law, folks.
00:36:59.000Also, we don't like what the Supreme Court did, so we're just going to pretend they didn't do it.
00:37:02.000Miguel Cardona said nothing in this court's decision denied the value of diversity in education.
00:37:06.000Institutions can continue or start to do targeted outreach and recruitment in underserved communities, collect and consider demographic data, and run programs to consider the retention and success of students of diverse backgrounds.
00:37:17.000I'm not sure how that isn't affirmative action.
00:37:19.000Isn't that just making decisions on the basis of race?
00:37:22.000Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said, quote, colleges and universities can and should continue to ensure
00:37:26.000their doors are open to those students of all backgrounds, including students of
00:37:29.000color, who possess the characteristics necessary to succeed and
00:37:34.000Described by officials from the Departments of Education and Justice as a guide to the
00:37:39.000current legal framework of the use of racial diversity, the resources released on Monday
00:37:42.000clarify and expand on the Biden administration's interpretation of the Supreme Court's decision.
00:37:46.000They say, quote, institutions of higher education remain free to consider any
00:37:50.000quality or characteristic of a student that bears on the institution's admission decision,
00:37:54.000such as courage, motivation, or determination, even if the student's application ties that
00:37:58.000characteristic to their lived experience with race.
00:38:01.000So, basically, they're no longer going to be able to ask, are you black or white on the application?
00:38:05.000They're just going to rely on you to write in your essay that you've had it really tough because you're black.
00:38:09.000And then they're going to wink, and they're going to nod, and they're going to go ahead with exactly what they were doing before.
00:38:14.000Now, again, is the Supreme Court going to let people get away with that?
00:38:17.000I think it's going to be very difficult for them to get away with that.
00:38:20.000If it turns out that black students are on average still getting into Ivy League universities with SAT scores two to three hundred points below those of Asian and white students, I do not see how the Supreme Court doesn't come back and slap down what the Biden administration is trying to do here.
00:38:33.000But they're so invested in racial discrimination that they're spitting directly in the face of the Supreme Court.
00:38:39.000The Education Department's guidance on Monday also encouraged colleges and universities to increase access for underserved populations and noted universities could re-examine whether policies for legacy admissions run counter to efforts to promote equal opportunity.
00:38:51.000If you want to get rid of legacies, that's fine with me.
00:38:54.000But can we stop pretending that you guys actually care about legacies?
00:38:56.000What you actually care about is continued Racial discrimination.
00:39:00.000Meanwhile, speaking of actual discrimination, real discrimination, the state of Massachusetts has now essentially barred anybody from adopting in their state if they have traditional values.
00:39:12.000According to William McGurn, writing for the Wall Street Journal, The Massachusetts Department of Children and Families' decision to deny Michael and Kitty Burke's foster care application comes less than a decade after the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which, of course, suggested that same-sex marriage was enshrined in the Constitution of the United States.
00:39:29.000In a dissent, you'll remember Justice Alito raised a red flag saying that, basically, this is going to be used to vilify all Americans who don't buy into the new orthodoxy.
00:39:38.000He says, quote, in the course of its opinion, the majority compares traditional marriage laws to
00:39:41.000laws that denied equal treatment for African-Americans and women. The implications of
00:39:45.000this analogy will be exploited by those who are determined to stamp out every vestige of dissent.
00:39:50.000The Berks are a loving couple who sought to adopt through the state's foster care program.
00:39:54.000Berk, Mr. Berk, deployed to Iraq as a Marine.
00:39:57.000Mrs. Berk is a former paraprofessional for kids with special needs.
00:40:00.000This is like a pretty good background for kids, for parents who want foster care.
00:40:04.000They're willing to accept children of any race, culture, or ethnicity, as well as some special needs.
00:40:12.000Because it says that Kitty and Mike are devoutly Roman Catholic and not only attend church with regular frequency, they both work for local churches as musicians.
00:40:19.000This meant that they could not be trusted with children.
00:40:22.000The author of their license study said that they are lovely people, but she said their faith is not supportive, and neither are they with regard to LGBT issues.
00:40:29.000Ultimately, the license review team concluded the Brooks quote, would not be affirming to a child who identified as LGBTQIA, and the Brooks were then rejected.
00:40:36.000So, just to get this absolutely straight, if kids who've been abandoned by their families and are living in orphanages, and instead of giving them to a loving foster care family with a two-parent family, The father was a veteran, and the mother is a professional who deals with special needs kids.
00:40:52.000You're gonna leave that special needs kid in the orphanage because the special needs kid might, in fact, be gay, and then the parents are gonna be mean.
00:40:59.000That is what we are now saying in the state of Massachusetts.
00:41:15.000There has to be some common standard of good, particularly when it comes to kids.
00:41:18.000Any state that says that the measure of good parenting is whether you believe the left's newest nonsense with regard to same-sex marriage, that is not a moral standard at all.
00:41:32.000Basically, the state of Massachusetts says it is now better for a child to have no mother or father than it is to have a Roman Catholic couple adopt the kid.
00:41:41.000So remember, in the state of Massachusetts, they basically had to shut down all Catholic adoption agencies in the state of Massachusetts because they weren't giving out kids to same-sex couples saying a child deserves a mother and a father.
00:41:51.000Now we've come so far that a mother and father can't adopt a child if they say a child deserves a mother and a father.
00:41:57.000This is how far we've gone in the state of Massachusetts.
00:42:00.000According to the left it is because it's much more important that kids be indoctrinated into the new cult of LGBTQIA plus minus divided by sign than that they have an actual stable family situation with a mom and a dad.
00:42:12.000So Beckett Law is now suing the state.
00:42:16.000I assume the Brooks will win their case, but the chilling effects wouldn't be fully mitigated by the victory, said David Rivkin, a constitutional lawyer who has served in the DOJ and the White House Counsel's Office.
00:42:24.000This is what's so bad about these policies.
00:42:27.000So, you know, we kept hearing over and over again, over and over again.
00:42:30.000How does a same-sex marriage affect you?
00:42:59.000Having successfully settled my case with ESPN Disney, I decided to leave so I can exercise my First Amendment rights more freely.
00:43:05.000I'm grateful for so many wonderful experiences over the past 16 years, and I'm excited for my next chapter.
00:43:09.000You'll remember, she was suspended by the network in 2021 because she did not want to take the COVID back.
00:43:14.000She was also admonished for talking about Barack Obama's lineage and for speaking out about how too many women dress in today's society on a podcast with Jay Cutler.
00:43:23.000She suggested that her bosses were taking away high-profile assignments, that they were basically censoring her.
00:43:28.000According to AJ Perez, ESPN offered Sage Steele a $500,000 payout to settle the lawsuit.
00:43:33.000Steele's attorney, Brian Friedman, celebrated the victory.
00:43:35.000He said, Disney and ESPN clearly admit their liability by offering to pay Sage more than
00:43:39.000half a million dollars for taking away her right to free speech. The offer misses the point.
00:43:42.000Disney can't purchase their employees' constitutional rights no matter how powerful
00:43:46.000they think they are. That is correct. They've now parted ways, but Sage is going to be much
00:43:52.000better off for this just as a human being because she's now going to be able to speak freely.
00:43:55.000Good for Sage Steele, who's taken an enormous amount of crap, particularly for being a black woman who does not toe the traditional left-wing line.
00:44:03.000Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
00:44:09.000Alright, so, article from CBS News Today.
00:44:27.000I love when the media acts all shocked about things that are not only perfectly predictable, but are well within the absolute necessity of the situation.
00:44:36.000According to CBS News, after two years of attempted talks with the Taliban aimed at lifting its bans on secondary and university education and work for women in Afghanistan, the UN is proposing a plan to pressure Afghanistan and incentivize the Taliban to reverse course.
00:44:47.000Over 2.5 million girls and young women are denied secondary education.
00:44:51.000That number is going to increase to 3 million in just a few months.
00:44:54.000So apparently they are going to go to the ICC.
00:45:27.000is the mobilization of Education Cannot Wait, a U.N.
00:45:30.000emergency education fund, which has launched a campaign called Afghan Girls Voices.
00:45:36.000The plan also asks for visits by delegations from Muslim-majority countries to Kandahar and to offer the Taliban-led government funding to finance girls' return to school.
00:45:44.000Yeah, I'm sure that that money is going to go right there and not to, you know, the Taliban.
00:45:52.000All this gets obscured for years on end because, of course, it would be embarrassing to point out that Joe Biden committed one of the worst human rights violations in human history by pulling out of Afghanistan the way that he did.
00:45:59.000But, you know, I'm glad that the media are noticing now that the Taliban are mean to the ladies.
00:46:06.000Nordstrom's got knocked over the other day in Los Angeles.
00:46:10.000According to the Daily Wire, video captured dozens of masked and hooded suspects ransacking an LA Nordstrom department store on Saturday in a brazen smash-and-grab heist, stealing up to $100,000 in merchandise.
00:46:19.000Between 30 and 50 people stormed out of Nordstrom at the Westfield Topanga Mall in Canoga Park around 4 p.m.
00:46:25.000after taking clothes, handbags, and other expensive accessories, according to the LAPD.
00:46:30.000Well, these sorts of organized shoplifting events I mean, it's truly an amazing thing when you now have giant gangs of people who are just going and committing massive crimes in these really quite beautiful malls.
00:46:44.000By the way, we used to spend an awful lot of time at this particular Westfield Mall in Topanga Canyon because my wife did her residency at Kaiser Permanente in that particular area.
00:46:54.000So I used to take the kids there all the time.
00:46:55.000There are a lot of people who are at these places, obviously.
00:46:58.000A security guard was sprayed with mace, pepper spray, or bear spray, likely by a suspect within the Mob of Thieves, who eventually escaped in several vehicles, including a Beamer and a Lexus.
00:47:07.000So, you know, this stuff is worth money.
00:47:09.000The good news is that all of these cities continue to elect left-wing DAs, and then they have to recall them, according to Politico.
00:47:18.000The top prosecutor for a San Francisco Bay Area county was playing defense as she absorbed criticism from furious residents of its largest city, a tense meeting that felt like a proxy for a mounting recall fight.
00:47:27.000People packed a church in an affluent Oakland neighborhood in late July to demand progressive Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price's answer for disturbingly pervasive carjacking and assaults, often shouting questions over her answers.
00:47:38.000I voted for you, but I don't feel safe here, said a woman described as being pulled out of her car at gunpoint on a recent morning.
00:47:49.000I mean, maybe you guys should stop electing attorneys who have been approved by George Soros.
00:47:59.000Maybe that would be the way to do this, guys.
00:48:02.000I mean, I'm amused that you vote these people in and then you are shocked when they do precisely the thing they said that they were going to do.