Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 91 ｜ What Now？

00:00:00.000 Hello, relatable listeners. Welcome to the podcast. It is Wednesday, which means that it's

00:00:05.040 news day and we do have a lot of news to cover. If you have been alive at all this week, you've

00:00:11.440 probably heard at least murmurs of what's been going on. And of course, if you listen to the

00:00:15.560 podcast on Monday, then you heard me at least briefly summarize Attorney General William Barr's

00:00:20.920 summary of Robert Mueller's report on his investigation into Trump and his campaign,

00:00:26.740 possibly colluding with the Russian government to steal the election from Hillary Clinton.

00:00:32.180 And in fact, you didn't have to just be alive this week. If you just had a pulse for the past

00:00:36.700 couple of years, you have heard this narrative spun by every single media outlet, probably besides Fox

00:00:43.820 telling you that Donald Trump, yes, definitely, probably, absolutely colluded with the Russians

00:00:49.140 because they cannot get over the idea that not just a Republican beat a Democrat. I think that

00:00:54.920 was astounding enough for them, but that Donald J. Trump, this guy who had an Access Hollywood tape

00:01:01.980 come out just, I think it was a month before the election saying that he wants to grab women by the 0.96

00:01:07.940 genitalia that he beat Hillary Clinton, who really does have all the experience in the world. So now 1.00

00:01:13.000 they are having to reconcile with the reality that they should have reconciled with a long time ago,

00:01:17.960 that Hillary Clinton was such a terrible, unlikable candidate that she could not win. It's not that

00:01:25.260 Donald Trump was awesome. I don't think it's not that he was such a strong candidate. Hillary Clinton

00:01:29.680 did win the popular vote, but that she wasn't likable enough to enough people in the right places to win. 1.00

00:01:36.740 They're finally going to have to come to terms with that. Now, whether or not they will come to terms

00:01:41.440 with that, it's really hard to say. We haven't seen the media take a step back and choose humility

00:01:49.000 in their wrongs in a really long time. And this is definitely an example of them kind of doubling down

00:01:55.900 on something that they have pushed for the past two years. Okay. And so as you already know, Attorney

00:02:01.100 General William Barr's summary outlined what Robert Mueller found and did not find and what Robert Mueller

00:02:09.100 did not find was collusion or any grounds for indictments for obstruction of justice.

00:02:16.960 So here are the big takeaways from this summary, from what we know from Robert Mueller's report or

00:02:22.840 the summary of Robert Mueller's report by Attorney General William Barr. The special counsel employed

00:02:28.200 19 lawyers, that's Robert Mueller, 19 lawyers assisted by a team of 40 FBI agents, intelligence,

00:02:35.220 intelligence analysts, forensic accountants, and other professional staff. The special counsel issued

00:02:41.000 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, and obtained more than 230 orders for

00:02:51.140 communication records, issued almost 50 orders authorizing use of pin registers, made 13 requests

00:02:58.740 to foreign governments for evidence and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses. $25,215,853 were spent by the

00:03:13.080 special counsel's office in investigating Donald Trump and his campaign for colluding with the Russians

00:03:19.920 and possibly obstructing justice. And after all of that, all of that time, all of that effort,

00:03:26.540 all of those questions, all of our taxpayer money, they did not find anything. Now, it is important

00:03:33.460 to say that this summary doesn't necessarily exonerate the president. It doesn't mean that the

00:03:38.980 president didn't do anything wrong. But what we know, at least from what we can tell from this summary

00:03:45.320 of the report, there was no collusion, which is the thing that we've been looking for. And there was

00:03:52.240 no grounds for indictment for obstruction of justice. But we don't have people taking this

00:03:59.160 very well. And we'll get to that in just a second. So the report outlines that the Russian effort to

00:04:04.160 influence the election in documents, and it documents the crimes committed by persons associated

00:04:09.220 with the Russian government in connection with those efforts. And so the report does say that Russian

00:04:14.860 efforts were successful in hacking the DNC and getting certain emails and then disseminating those

00:04:21.200 emails. The special counsel did not find, though, as we've said, the Trump campaign or anyone

00:04:26.660 associated with the Trump campaign. Not a single person associated with the Trump campaign conspired

00:04:31.980 or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 campaign. This is a quote.

00:04:38.220 The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with

00:04:43.300 the Russian government in its election interference activity. So the Russian government did interfere

00:04:48.280 in our election, which should be a huge concern for us. I mean, that is the integrity of our

00:04:53.880 republic. We should care about that. But Donald Trump, nor anyone associated with his campaign

00:05:00.840 did anything to conspire with the Russians. Yet this is what we have been hearing for the past two

00:05:05.320 years from the leftist media, from pundits and of course, Democrats in Congress saying that not only

00:05:10.620 not only might this have happened, but this definitely happened, this absolutely, probably 100 percent,

00:05:19.340 maybe we don't have all the facts, but totally happened. Donald Trump is guilty of this. I mean,

00:05:24.820 you've had people say it like it is the gospel truth. And now now they're not taking a step back

00:05:31.920 and saying, OK, maybe we jumped the gun. They're saying, well, well, and we'll get to all of that

00:05:39.140 coverage in just a second on the full Mueller report. This is a quote, the schedule for processing

00:05:44.520 the report. So this is this is Barr responding in the summary of Mueller's report. This is this

00:05:53.900 is Barr responding to Democratic and even Republican requests to make the report full because that's the

00:05:59.880 thing or make the report public. That's the thing that Democrats have been asking for. They've been

00:06:04.240 asking, OK, we need to see the full report. We don't just want to see the summary by AG Barr.

00:06:08.960 This handpicked attorney general is something that Elizabeth Warren and other people on the left 1.00

00:06:14.720 have been saying, because, of course, the the thing that they're connoting there is that he

00:06:19.620 might be telling a lie, that the summary of the report might have huge discrepancies between the

00:06:24.780 report itself. And so they have been demanding that the report go public. But Barr says in his

00:06:30.940 summary, the schedule for processing the report depends in part on how quickly the department can

00:06:35.820 identify the 6E material that by law cannot be made public. I have requested the assistance of

00:06:42.880 the special counsel in identifying all information contained in the report or all 6E information

00:06:47.860 contained contained in the report. Separately, I must all I must also identify any information that

00:06:53.620 could impact other ongoing matters, including those that the special counsel has referred to other

00:06:58.700 offices. As soon as that process is complete, I will be in a position to move forward expeditiously

00:07:04.700 in determining what can be released in light of applicable law, regulations and departmental

00:07:09.740 policy. So basically, he's saying, I am going to release the report in its fullest form that

00:07:15.800 legally I can as quickly as possible. But y'all just got to be patient because we have to go through

00:07:20.860 a particular process in order to make that happen. But this is the talking point that we're hearing

00:07:24.980 from Democrats over and over again, that we cannot trust Attorney General Barr and that we need to see

00:07:30.260 the full report. And you know what we're going to hear once we see the full report and we see that,

00:07:34.420 yes, in fact, Barr was telling the truth, which is just a ridiculous idea that he wouldn't tell the

00:07:39.180 truth and risk his job and his reputation that much, knowing that the report is probably going to be

00:07:44.480 made public as fully as possible. They are going to say, they're going to say, well, can we even trust

00:07:53.340 Robert Mueller? Robert Mueller is a Republican. Can we really trust that he did a full and thorough

00:08:00.420 investigation? Yes. Tens of millions of dollars were spent. Yes. Twenty eight hundred subpoenas

00:08:05.740 were issued. Yes. They investigated for almost two years. But can we really trust him? No, we're going

00:08:13.260 to have to investigate this ourselves. Just wait. That's going to be the talking point. So we know that

00:08:18.960 the left has been obsessed with Mueller investigation for a long time. It has been the

00:08:23.000 road that they've decided to go down to say that this is an illegitimate president. He's not my

00:08:27.880 president. We heard for a really long time and that we need to make sure that he is impeached and we

00:08:36.040 need to reinstate the rule of law that has been the Democrats talking point for a while. Here is

00:08:42.940 Beto O'Rourke, Andrew McCabe, a former the former FBI director, chairman of the House Intelligence

00:08:48.660 Committee, Adam Schiff, John Brennan, who is the former CIA director and DNC chair Tom Perez in this

00:08:55.300 order, all saying that collusion between Donald Trump, his campaign and the Russian government in

00:09:01.380 the 2016 election for sure happened. You have a president who, in my opinion, beyond the shadow

00:09:07.500 of a doubt, sought to, however, hand-handedly collude with the Russian government, a foreign power

00:09:14.500 to undermine and influence our elections. Do you still believe the president could be a Russian 0.98

00:09:20.780 asset? I think it's possible. I think that's why we started our investigation. And I'm really

00:09:26.740 anxious to see where Director Mueller concludes that. I think there's plenty of evidence of collusion

00:09:31.860 or conspiracy in plain sight. Well, I called his behavior treasonous, which is to betray one's trust

00:09:36.980 and to aid and abet the enemy. And I stand very much by that claim. And over the course of the last

00:09:42.520 year, we have seen, I think, a mountain of evidence of collusion between the campaign and

00:09:49.140 the Russians to basically affect our democracy. So that is an amazing compilation. And that just 1.00

00:09:55.980 scratches the surface of how definitively, definitively people on the left have been speaking

00:10:02.140 about this whole Russian collusion scandal. And after two years of investigations and tens of millions

00:10:07.340 of our taxpayer dollars, no collusion was found, no obstruction of justice was found, nor is there any

00:10:14.780 possibility of further indictments to the left's dismay. David Brooks is an opinion writer at the New York

00:10:22.380 Times, and he wrote an article entitled, We've All Just Made Fools of Ourselves Again. And here's a quote 0.75

00:10:28.340 from that. Democrats might approach this moment with an attitude of humility and honest

00:10:33.340 self-examination. It's clear that many Democrats made grievous accusations against the president that

00:10:39.440 are not supported by the evidence. It's clear that people like Beto O'Rourke and John Brennan owe

00:10:44.360 Donald Trump a public apology. If you call someone a traitor and it turns out you lacked the evidence for

00:10:51.200 that charge, then the only decent thing to do is apologize. Of course, this is true. Of course,

00:10:57.380 this is true. If you're a mom and your kid accuses his sibling or accuses his friend of of doing

00:11:05.680 something, punching another kid in the face of breaking a lamp, whatever it is, and that turned

00:11:12.300 out not to be true. And that kid was lying. He was basing his allegation on something that was actually

00:11:19.460 false or that he didn't know. You expect that kid to apologize. Why? Because that's a rude thing to do.

00:11:24.080 And the kid who was accused was probably going to get in trouble and get punished for something that

00:11:28.740 he didn't do. It's the same principle here. We know that, of course, when we're parenting our

00:11:35.140 little toddlers, that's something that we teach them from an early age. But apparently we forget it

00:11:41.280 when we become adults and enter into the halls of power. Are we going to get an apology from people

00:11:46.780 like Beto O'Rourke and John Brennan? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And that is revealed

00:11:51.620 by someone like Cory Booker, who is a Democratic candidate for president. He said that he now

00:11:58.180 suspects, he now suspects, Cory Booker, Spartacus, that the attorney general and the special counsel

00:12:04.080 may be wrong in their findings of the specific, quote, fact pattern. Here's a video of him saying

00:12:10.300 that. When I have a attorney general who, in my opinion, is suspect filtering a report that I have

00:12:17.020 not seen, I'm not willing to conclude anything yet based upon a letter that he wrote. This is an

00:12:22.400 issue for Congress. Let's look at the fact pattern. Let's look at the report and come to our own

00:12:27.320 conclusion. Okay, Cory Booker, you're right. You're right. You probably know more. Now, to be perfectly

00:12:33.600 fair, if it came out that Robert Mueller, that he did come out saying, okay, there's going to be further

00:12:40.460 indictments. And yes, there was collusion. And yes, there was obstruction of justice. You would have

00:12:44.820 Republicans saying Robert Mueller isn't right, that after this long investigation, this isn't right

00:12:49.280 because Republicans have been calling this a witch hunt for a long time. And now all of a sudden that

00:12:54.300 it kind of went in our favor, you have Republicans who were calling this a witch hunt saying, well,

00:12:59.300 Robert Mueller, of course, is trustworthy, which I'm not even sure that's hypocritical. I think you 0.61

00:13:03.940 can simultaneously say that this was a witch hunt, that this investigation never should have happened

00:13:08.120 in the first place because there wasn't even just cause to investigate and still agree with the

00:13:13.860 findings of the Mueller report. But that said, you would definitely have Republicans if this did not

00:13:19.820 end in the president's favor saying, well, no, Mueller is absolutely wrong. And you would have

00:13:24.980 Democrats and people on the left laughing at Republicans saying, wow, you just, you're so post

00:13:30.120 truth. You don't believe in facts. You don't believe in this investigation. That's what Democrats would be

00:13:34.860 saying if this went the other way. But now that the shoe is on the other foot, you have Democrats saying,

00:13:39.100 well, this guy, Mueller, that we've hailed as a hero for the past two years and have said is going

00:13:44.600 to save the Democratic Party and save America from the wily and evil Donald Trump. Maybe not. Maybe we

00:13:52.860 need to spend more taxpayer money. Maybe we just need a little more time. And maybe, maybe we in Congress,

00:13:58.220 maybe we need to take this on because Robert Mueller, now that I think about it, probably can't be

00:14:03.460 trusted. So here's Democrats strategy going forward besides not, not apologizing and not, um, and not

00:14:12.140 showing any humility whatsoever. By the way, I do think maybe not with their base, but I do think that

00:14:18.880 if someone like Beto came out and said, you know what, I said this at one point and I've been proven

00:14:25.260 wrong. Uh, and I actually regret that because I wouldn't like it if someone accused me of something

00:14:30.960 that wasn't true. I personally think that that would gain you a lot of integrity points and that

00:14:36.660 that could work well for you, but maybe not with the Democratic base. I mean, the Democratic base is

00:14:40.820 so deranged. Some of them, not all of them, some of them with their hatred of Trump that they probably

00:14:46.140 wouldn't respect that little bit of humility and honesty. I personally would, but I'm not voting for

00:14:52.300 Beto O'Rourke anyway. So I guess it doesn't really matter, but here's Democrat strategy. Number one,

00:14:57.280 like we already said, they're going to beg for the full report. Uh, the, the Democratic committee

00:15:01.740 chairs wrote a letter to the attorney general saying to the extent that you believe applicable

00:15:05.820 law limits, uh, limits your ability to comply. We urge you to begin the process of consultation

00:15:11.280 with us immediately in order to establish shared parameters for resolving those issues without delay.

00:15:17.340 Well, Barr already said that he was going to do that. He said that in the summary, this is just a

00:15:22.240 talking point for them. This is a way to show that they're pushing back against this to

00:15:26.100 show the Democratic base that they're not going to take this lying down. But attorney general

00:15:30.540 Barr already said that that's exactly what he is doing. He is working within the parameters of the

00:15:34.940 law to make sure that the fullest extent of the report that is legally possible to be exposed

00:15:40.700 is exposed or is, is made public both to Congress and to the American people. And so this is just

00:15:46.220 kind of a waste of time. Like he is already going to do what they're saying, but again, this is just

00:15:50.340 a fighting tactic. This is not something that's actually going to have any real effect or change

00:15:55.240 anything. And then their second strategy is to insist that the president, uh, wasn't fully

00:16:00.880 exonerated for obstruction of justice, which yes, this summary doesn't, um, that's not the purpose of the

00:16:07.800 summary to, uh, exonerate, to exonerate someone. But it does declare that the report from Mueller

00:16:17.800 doesn't say that there is any justifiable cause to charge him for obstruction of justice. So I'm not

00:16:26.680 really sure how Democrats are going to make this case. Well, here's Charles Blow from the New York

00:16:31.520 Times. He said that it report did not, however, exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice. I submit

00:16:37.440 that we witnessed that Trump obstruction, obstructed justice in open view from the white house and on

00:16:42.740 social media. Okay. So this is kind of the Cory Booker take that Robert Mueller must not really

00:16:48.040 know. Oh, he's old. He doesn't get Twitter. I mean, we all, all of us, Twitter, Twitter warriors,

00:16:53.800 we know better. We, we journalists fighting out here for truth. We know that Trump obstructed justice.

00:16:59.380 Oh, Robert Mueller in the past two years must have missed the tweets. He must've missed that. He

00:17:04.720 probably just wasn't thinking about that. You know, he probably spent all this taxpayer money in the

00:17:09.340 past two years and he's probably realizing that he probably woke up in the middle of the night last

00:17:13.840 night, Charles Blow and said, Oh my gosh, I totally forgot to look at Twitter. Thank you, Charles Blow.

00:17:19.340 Thank you so much. We need your investigative expertise. I mean, this is just all ridiculous.

00:17:24.880 All of a sudden, everyone's an expert. All of a sudden, no one on the left trust, trust Robert Mueller. 0.72

00:17:31.800 Jeff Zucker is the CEO of CNN. He, uh, he said, because, you know, the media has been really

00:17:38.240 suffering a really big blowback from this completed total failure of reporting for the

00:17:42.580 past two years. Uh, he said that he was entirely comfortable. That's a quote with the network's

00:17:47.700 coverage. He stated, we are not investigators. We are journalists. And our role is to report the facts

00:17:53.900 as we know them, which is exactly what we did, but that's not what they did. That's not what they did.

00:17:59.000 Some of the clips that I just played you were on CNN, uh, we're on CNN, CNN's primetime shows. I mean,

00:18:06.480 these are discussions that have been happening over the past two years that Donald Trump definitely

00:18:11.780 colluded with the Russians and that it's such a scary time to be alive. And it's such a scary time, 0.72

00:18:17.120 uh, to be in America. Zucker later said in an email, a sitting president's own justice department

00:18:22.420 investigated his campaign for collusion with a hostile nation. That's not enormous because the

00:18:27.460 media says so that's enormous because it's unprecedented. Yes, you're absolutely right.

00:18:31.520 And if that's all you said, if that's all that was said about this, if those are all the facts

00:18:37.260 that you reported, or you truly only reported on the facts as they came out, okay, then you could

00:18:41.900 say this, you could say this justifiably, but that's not actually what happened. And yes, journalists

00:18:47.560 are supposed to investigate for the fact. So you're just telling me that what the CNN hosts, and I don't

00:18:53.980 think this is true, but is, is this what Jeff Zucker is saying that CNN hosts just like read

00:18:59.340 mother Jones and the Washington post and say, I'm not going to investigate that any further.

00:19:03.060 I don't know if that's factual. I'm just going to report what I read. Um, I would like for

00:19:08.100 journalists to actually investigate what's true and what's not. Wouldn't you? I mean, I don't want

00:19:12.620 them to learn secondhand about something and say, well, that sounds about right. That fits into the

00:19:16.340 narrative. So I'm just going to keep going. But look, this was never a good look. I don't think for

00:19:21.620 the leftist media. And even if I were a Democrat, I think that I would be saying the same thing.

00:19:26.620 I think, although it's of course impossible to put myself in that kind of crazy, crazy

00:19:31.040 position, but I don't think this was a good look for the left. Uh, you notice that over

00:19:36.320 the past few weeks, Nancy Pelosi and other people have started to say that impeachment, 0.99

00:19:40.300 maybe not so much. Now, if they really thought, if they really thought that Donald Trump colluded

00:19:46.640 with the Russian government to steal the 2016 election, then of course he should probably be

00:19:51.540 impeached or if he obstructed justice, uh, he obstructed this investigation into collusion,

00:19:56.720 then of course you would want him impeached. But now, uh, over the past few weeks, she and others

00:20:02.420 have been saying, oh, maybe impeachment isn't the best, isn't the best thing. Maybe we have

00:20:07.060 more to worry about. So that tells me they didn't really think that there was going to be anything

00:20:11.260 that came out in these findings. I mean, James Comey had this whole op-ed that said, you know,

00:20:15.700 even if nothing comes out here, the things that we should still care about. So you wonder

00:20:19.260 how, for how long some of the people in the know, some of the people in Washington knew that there

00:20:26.720 was really nothing that was going to come out of Mueller's report. And so they've been backtracking,

00:20:32.540 uh, ahead of time, coming out in front of it and saying, oh, you know, impeachment, impeachment,

00:20:39.260 maybe, maybe not so much. That tells me that they know that collusion, uh, didn't happen and

00:20:44.540 they're wasting their time. At this point, they look like crazy people. I mean, there's just 0.99

00:20:50.500 nothing more to prove. The number of Americans that are hanging on to this story that really care

00:20:56.120 about this story anymore and really probably ever cared about this story is so small. I just don't

00:21:02.820 think it's going to win Democrats an election. And with that logic, I would say, okay, keep going

00:21:08.560 then. If this is what you want to run on, that is, that's totally fine. But I do feel badly

00:21:14.200 really. I do. I feel a sense of pity for the people who have spent so much mental energy over

00:21:22.480 the past two years, insisting that this happened and putting these pieces together in this grand

00:21:28.120 conspiracy theory to insist that Donald Trump is an illegitimate president because of this

00:21:32.720 collusion. I really feel bad for them that maybe they sometimes woke up at night and thought that

00:21:37.860 they found another clue that some of these people probably have padded rooms where they have,

00:21:42.360 put all of these different pictures and articles up on the wall and they have strings attached to

00:21:48.760 different thumbtacks trying to weave this large complex web of collusion with Russia and Donald

00:21:57.700 Trump's campaign. I really, I really feel bad for them. I really do. And they really thought that they

00:22:02.660 came up with something. And now, of course, they're going to become these crazy conspiracy theories for

00:22:06.920 the next like 75 years. And they're going to say that Robert Mueller was really working for Donald

00:22:11.940 Trump this whole time. And it kind of makes sense. Like they don't want to believe that this thing

00:22:16.760 that they have put so much hope in is wrong. But the reality is this is a good day for America.

00:22:23.380 It is. It's a good week for America. It is a good week for the rule of law. Shouldn't you be happy?

00:22:29.520 And a lot of people have said this. I'm certainly not the first person to ask this question. But

00:22:33.360 shouldn't you be happy that the president of the free world or the president of the United States,

00:22:37.480 the leader of the free world, wasn't in cahoots with the Russian government to seal the election?

00:22:41.760 Like, isn't that a good thing? Shouldn't that give you peace of mind? Shouldn't you have a sigh of

00:22:46.660 relief? Now, like I said, I don't think a lot of people have been holding their breath for the past

00:22:50.320 two years. Like, I don't think a lot of people have really cared about this. I mean, you got to put

00:22:53.580 food on the table. You are worried about your kids, about your family, about your job. You're probably

00:22:57.940 happy that the economy is doing well. Like, you're probably not wondering what Robert Mueller

00:23:02.340 is is up to. And so there's been a lot of people that have been saying, oh, this totally changes

00:23:08.160 how the country thinks about the president. I think a lot of people didn't think about this.

00:23:11.920 Now, there is a radical base of Democrats, again, that have cared about this, who are going to keep

00:23:16.420 pushing for this. But do those people really matter? And do they represent the rest of the country?

00:23:21.460 I don't think so. You know, I've always wondered, I've always wondered if a guy was going to this is

00:23:27.660 what I kind of asked myself in the very beginning and then decided, OK, I really don't want to think

00:23:32.000 about this until I know the results of the investigation. But the question I asked myself,

00:23:36.640 if a guy was really going to go through all of the trouble of stealing the election, don't you

00:23:41.080 think he would have tried to swing the popular vote? Like, if you're really in collusion with the

00:23:45.700 Russian government to win in 2016, don't you think a guy like Donald Trump would have been like,

00:23:50.840 oh, we need the popular vote, Putin? Like, I'm not just going to win the electoral vote. Like,

00:23:55.280 do you think that that's been fun for him over the past two years to say he lost the electoral vote

00:23:59.740 by or the popular vote by something like three million votes? I just feel like if you're going

00:24:04.820 to cheat, you might as well go all the way and get the popular vote, too. So it never just it just

00:24:09.340 didn't make that much sense to me. And plus, Democrats, Democrats have other things to be

00:24:15.160 concerned about. I mean, they have a very winning platform of killing newborn baby socialism and open

00:24:22.380 borders. I mean, that is a winning message. Why would you why would you ever need to talk impeachment

00:24:27.740 when you've got things like killing babies and opening opening the borders and confiscating

00:24:33.580 private property to run on? I mean, come on, Democrats, you don't need this. Some people

00:24:38.620 have taken a satirical spin on the whole situation. The New York Post recently published their own

00:24:45.220 bracket of March Madness, but this time it's called Mueller Madness, the media pundits who got it most

00:24:50.640 wrong. That's really difficult game to play. Who got it most wrong? I would say it was the people who

00:24:56.840 were most confident that this happened no matter what. But here's what Donald Trump needs to do.

00:25:03.260 Here's how he needs to use this. I think it would be better for him if he did not let this go away.

00:25:08.220 I think he should hold on to this because Democrats are going to pretend once the president is totally

00:25:13.860 cleared, once they feel like, OK, they've gotten the full report to its fullest extent, which,

00:25:18.320 by the way, they're going to say that they never got the full report because it's going to be redacted.

00:25:21.940 And they're going to claim that the parts that really indict Donald Trump are going to be the parts

00:25:25.940 that are redacted. But once we see, again, reiterated, confirmed as much as possible that

00:25:32.200 Donald Trump didn't collude, didn't obstruct justice, Democrats are just going to want this to go away

00:25:36.920 because it's embarrassing. CNN, these other outlets are going to want it to go away because

00:25:40.700 it's embarrassing. But Donald Trump needs to hold on to this. He needs to go in on this during the

00:25:46.320 debates and in on the campaign trail. He needs to say that Democrats hate America so much,

00:25:52.440 so much that they wanted to believe that their own president was guilty of obstruction of justice

00:25:57.400 and collusion. And Democrats think that you this is also what he needs to say. Democrats think you

00:26:03.780 American people are so dumb, are so stupid and so naive that you are willing to believe a narrative 1.00

00:26:10.400 that is not based on fact. They hate America and they think that you're stupid. Now, I don't think 1.00

00:26:16.420 that it's true that all Democrats hate America and think that you're stupid. But if Donald Trump were 1.00

00:26:21.540 going to use a line and use this whole narrative spun for the past two years as a foundation for that,

00:26:30.220 then if that's effective, then that's probably if that's what he wants to do, if he wants to go down

00:26:35.480 that road, then he needs to hang on to this to prove that point. They're going to Democrats are

00:26:43.880 going to just go back. I think they're just going to go back to the tactic of calling President Trump

00:26:50.020 an evil bigot. They're going to go back to the kids in cages stuff. They're going to go back to

00:26:54.540 saying Republicans hate all minorities. Well, look, unemployment for Hispanics, for black people and 0.98

00:27:01.300 for women. They're at an all time low. This is a good time for every single person in this country, 1.00

00:27:07.160 no matter who you are, where you come from. In general, of course, people have their own

00:27:10.860 personal issues and things like that. But in general, statistically, this is a good time to be an

00:27:16.000 American. But Democrats, they they can't accept that because then they have really nothing to run on.

00:27:21.760 So you're going to see them painting continually this dark picture of where America is. This is what

00:27:27.600 AOC does. So poignantly, they're going to say that we are going back to the times of slavery and the

00:27:34.980 Jim Crow South. They're going to capitalize for the next couple of years or the next year and a half on 0.96

00:27:40.240 every single tragedy that occurs from now until the election, every single mass shooting, every single

00:27:46.640 so-called hate crime, every single instance of Islamophobia, racism, sexism, whatever it is,

00:27:51.860 they are going to harp on this stuff until the cows come home so they can say, look, we live in a 0.98

00:27:57.100 scary country because of Donald Trump and white nationalists and white supremacists are winning.

00:28:02.640 And if you have any ounce of compassion in you, then you need to vote Democrat. That's the road 0.94

00:28:07.460 that they're going to go down. They're not going to be able to use this Russian collusion stuff

00:28:10.540 anymore. And so they're going to try to make you very, very scared, very scared of living in the

00:28:15.860 country. This is their tactic. It's one of bullying. It's one of emotional manipulation and it's one of

00:28:20.920 fear. Now, do Republicans also employ fear in their campaigning? They absolutely do because fear

00:28:26.800 objectively is an excellent motivator. It is. That's part of why I voted for Donald Trump and

00:28:32.060 not Hillary Clinton, because I was afraid of what the country would look like under four more years 1.00

00:28:36.780 of a radical leftist. And yes, I do believe Hillary Clinton would have governed like a leftist. 0.79

00:28:42.380 She is seen as by a lot of Democrats as more moderate. But no, I think that she would have

00:28:47.340 been just as left if not even pushed it further to the left than Barack Obama if she had been elected 1.00

00:28:52.440 to office. But yes, Republicans, they do use fear. One example is the border crisis. Democrats say

00:28:59.520 that the right just stirs up outrage and stokes fear about what's going on at the border. But the

00:29:04.560 difference is illegal immigration is a real problem. But the idea that this is the most racist and

00:29:10.240 horrible and scary and frightening time that America has ever been in is not a real problem.

00:29:16.240 That's just not true. That's not reality. So right now, you can probably bet that Republicans

00:29:21.700 or Democrats are pulling their teams together to go over their talking points. They're going to say,

00:29:27.400 OK, what's going to be the message going forward? They don't have any positive messages. Really,

00:29:32.360 socialism is like the only policy position that they've got right now. So I say, sure,

00:29:37.060 run on that. But right now, right now is a good week for Republicans from the perspective of most

00:29:43.480 people. So here are a few other things that happen. This is according to The New York Times.

00:29:47.180 On Monday, Patrick M. Shanahan, the acting defense secretary, authorized the first transfer of

00:29:52.960 Defense Department money to fencing construction. That's a border wall at the southwestern border up

00:29:58.100 to one billion dollars from military personnel funding toward the construction of 57 miles of

00:30:02.640 border wall, improving roads and adding lighting to Yuma, Arizona and El Paso, Texas, according to a

00:30:08.600 letter sent to the Department of Homeland Security. And so a lot of people are seeing this as a win.

00:30:12.380 Now, you probably remember that there was a fight in Congress over President Trump's emergency

00:30:17.380 declaration to build the wall, both Republicans and Democrats. Some Republicans, all Democrats had

00:30:22.940 a problem with that. So we'll see where this goes. You've got a lot of people pushing back on this as

00:30:27.120 well. But right now, it looks like this one billion dollars was authorized for the building of a border

00:30:33.360 wall. This is a win in the eyes of a lot of Republicans. And then you also have a story about

00:30:38.860 Obamacare. The Justice Department sides with court ruling Obamacare is invalid. So here are the points

00:30:43.600 on that. The Department of Justice on Monday announced that it is siding with the district court that

00:30:47.760 found the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. This is a move that is an escalation of the Trump

00:30:53.380 administration's legal battle against the health care law. Judge Reed O'Connor ruled in December of

00:30:59.120 last year that the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate is unconstitutional and the rest of the law is

00:31:04.980 then invalid. A lot of legal experts are saying that legal precedent shows that even if the mandate

00:31:11.480 is ruled unconstitutional, that the rest of Obamacare should remain unharmed. That is what

00:31:17.200 Congress voted to do in the 2017 tax law that repealed the mandates penalty. But we'll see what

00:31:22.260 goes on there. People have been saying on the right that Obamacare is unconstitutional for a long

00:31:26.500 time. They have been saying repeal and replace or just repeal period for a long time, and they haven't

00:31:31.580 been able to fully do that. And so this could be, um, they're hoping, you know, a step in that

00:31:36.900 direction. Of course, there is going to be pushback on that, but that's another, that's another win.

00:31:42.440 A lot of people are saying for the right. And here is just a beautiful, a beautiful example of what

00:31:48.700 goes around, comes around in some cases. So remember Michael Avenatti, you might want to close your kids

00:31:54.480 ears for just a second. I don't know if you permit them to say this name, or you might just want to

00:31:58.300 hit that 15 seconds forward. But Michael Avenatti is known as the creepy porn lawyer, um, at least by

00:32:05.620 Tucker Carlson on his show, he represented porn star Stormy Daniels. Um, when she said that, uh,

00:32:13.980 you know, she slept with Donald Trump and they paid her hush money, all that good stuff. Michael Avenatti,

00:32:21.160 real standup guy. He was on the circuit, MSNBC, CNN. He was a good friend of the leftist

00:32:28.280 media, partied with them. They took him seriously when it came to, uh, his attacks on president

00:32:34.040 Trump. And of course he was the one that represented Julie Swetnick. That is the woman who came forward

00:32:38.940 and said, Oh yeah. Uh, Kavanaugh was part of this gang rape crowd at all these parties that I went to

00:32:45.180 in college. And Oh yeah, he was definitely there gang raping people. And then she went on, I think it 0.99

00:32:52.660 was MSNBC and said, Oh, actually, I'm not really sure. I don't really know if Kavanaugh was a part

00:32:58.200 of that. Well, Michael Avenatti represented her and insisted that she was telling the truth. Even

00:33:02.660 after she said she wasn't telling the truth. Also, I think that she and he need to be a charge for

00:33:08.080 that. I mean, that's absolutely ridiculous, but he has now been charged by federal prosecutors,

00:33:12.980 uh, for extortion and conspiracy. This is according to the wall street journal,

00:33:17.240 um, federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged Mr. Avenatti with extortion and conspiracy alleging

00:33:22.500 he told lawyers for Nike that he and an unnamed co-conspirator would release damaging information

00:33:28.860 about the company. If Nike didn't pay them to conduct an internal investigation and to settle a

00:33:34.580 client's claim, according to a complaint unsealed Monday. Uh, there was also a separate criminal

00:33:40.680 complaint. Uh, the U S attorney's office in Los Angeles alleged that, uh, Mr. Avenatti embezzled a

00:33:46.200 client's money to pay his own expenses. Uh, that was then used to defraud a bank using phony tax 0.61

00:33:52.620 returns. Uh, Michael Avenatti was arrested in a steam operation conducted by the FBI alongside of

00:33:58.660 Nike where both Avenatti and his co-conspirator, Mark Gragos, I think that's how you say his last

00:34:03.900 name. He is by the way, a CNN legal analyst that also represents Jesse Smollett. Uh, they were both

00:34:10.280 taken into custody. I mean, this is just all so crazy. Uh, Avenatti could be facing up to

00:34:15.500 107 years in prison. Okay. Uh, however, in a statement he made late Monday, he believes that

00:34:24.740 he will be fully exonerated. This is what he all, this is what he always says of all charges involving

00:34:30.080 the extortion and bank and wire fraud charges. He was released on $300,000 bond on money on Monday

00:34:36.640 night. Oh my goodness. And so this guy is obviously in a lot of hot legal water. I mean, I I'm not

00:34:46.740 rejoicing in this. I truly hope that Michael Avenatti comes to know Jesus and then he is

00:34:52.000 redeemed and that his life has changed. He is a slimy guy and there is joy and found found in, uh,

00:34:58.140 justice being served. And he has tried to ruin the lives of so many people by false allegations.

00:35:03.240 He also had a scuffle with Tucker Carlson. I mean, this guy, he is just, he is no good. He's no good.

00:35:09.940 So it doesn't surprise me at all. And by the way, Stormy Daniels even came out with a statement saying

00:35:13.760 that this stuff doesn't surprise her. It doesn't surprise me at all. This is happening. And I do

00:35:18.260 look forward to justice being served. It doesn't matter who it is or what side of the aisle that

00:35:22.680 they're on. I mean, this guy was going to run for president of the United States on the democratic

00:35:26.020 ticket. That's really amazing. And now he's going to jail for extortion and fraud. Wow. Wow. I I'm

00:35:32.760 glad that the truth is coming out. And, um, I hope that he is given a just sentence, of course,

00:35:39.760 that the punishment fits the crime, but maybe he will learn that being sketchy, being a, um,

00:35:47.080 creepy porn lawyer doesn't pay not for very long. Um, so there's a lot that has happened this week

00:35:53.660 in the news. And a lot of people would say it's a good week for Republicans. If you think Democrats

00:35:57.860 are going to let all of this last, uh, you're crazy. I mean, there are very few weeks though,

00:36:03.900 that things like this happen back to back to back and the media actually covers them. And so we kind

00:36:09.520 of just need to soak it in just for a second. There's just a lot of payback that seems to be

00:36:14.660 happening right now. And I'm not saying that vengeance is good. It's just that truth has come

00:36:20.160 out in a lot of different ways. And of course, Republicans feel like the constitution is being

00:36:25.560 unheld with, um, the, with the department of justice saying that, uh, Obamacare is Obamacare

00:36:34.520 is unconstitutional. And a lot of Republicans think it's a win that the $1 billion was transferred for

00:36:39.520 the building of the wall. And so we'll just see what happens with all of this. But for right now,

00:36:43.780 Republicans, Donald Trump should just take the win, try not to gloat, keep going, keep working for the

00:36:49.320 American people. Democrats are not going to, uh, let you wallow in this for long. And so just enjoy

00:36:56.100 it while it lasts. But that is the news that we are covering for today on Friday. Uh, I have an

00:37:01.940 awesome, an awesome conversation with Eric Metaxas. He is the author of Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther,

00:37:08.680 as well as like 10 other amazing books that you've probably heard of as well as if you can keep it,

00:37:14.400 that's another book that I have by him, but it's a great conversation. We talk about, uh, his,

00:37:19.320 his, uh, faith and his coming to faith in the Lord and just the intellectualism that he has been

00:37:24.640 able to contribute, uh, to Christianity over the past few years and throughout his career. It's

00:37:29.720 really a fascinating conversation. He's a great, uh, a great person to talk to. So I hope that you'll

00:37:34.180 tune in for that on Friday morning and I will see you then.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - March 27, 2019

Ep 91 ｜ What Now？

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