A jury in New York City convicted Donald Trump on 34 felony counts, and now he faces up to 4 years in prison. What does this mean for the future of the Trump presidency? Is this a good thing or a bad thing? What will happen next, and what will the American people do now that Donald Trump is no longer the President of the United States? Alex Blumberg explains why this is a travesty of justice, and why Joe Biden should be a hero for bringing this case to trial in order to get Donald Trump behind bars. Alex also explains why he thinks this case was a political hit job on Donald Trump and why this should be seen as a victory for Joe Biden and why we should not be surprised that a man who is likely to be re-elected in November is the one most likely to take Donald Trump down as a criminal. Alex's full reaction to the verdict and what happens next, including the possibility of Donald Trump going to jail, and if so, how long he will serve time in prison, and whether it will be a good or bad thing for the President and the country. Alex's analysis of the verdict, and the implications for Donald Trump's future in this case, and how it could impact the upcoming sentencing hearing, and a possible appeal to the Supreme Court case, in this episode of Alex's new book, What's the Deal with Donald Trump? and much, much more. (Part 1 of a two-part series on the Trump v. Trump and the Trump case. Part 2 will be out soon, coming soon, part 2, coming up next, Alex's final thoughts on the case and much more! Subscribe to Alex's newest book, "Trump's New York Times article, "The Biggest Scandal," out soon! . and his new podcast, "Myths and Myths, Myths and Legends: The President's Most Powerful Man in America's Most Influenced by Trump's Most Successful Life in the 21st Century." Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Subscribe and Subscribe on Podchaser and Subscribe to his Insta-Friendship? Learn more about your ad-free version of The Five Guys podcast? Subscribe on iTunes and more! Subscribe on Audible Download MP3 and leave us a review on Podcoin? Subscribe in Podcasts & Shoutout to Tomahawk Subscribe & Share on Podcasts by Tomahawks on Podcrush?
00:00:00.000Late on Thursday afternoon, American democracy came under extraordinary threat when a New York jury, 12 New Yorkers, decided to convict Donald Trump.
00:00:08.000He's been found guilty by the jury on 34 separate felony counts.
00:00:15.000If he is sentenced to jail time, that jail time could be up to four years of all the sentences run concurrently.
00:01:33.000It is currently 2024, and the case that New York just made is effectively that Donald Trump violated election law in 2016, falsified business records in 2017, and somehow, despite the fact that the statute of limitations has run already, this is now a Class E felony in the state of New York, lengthening the statute of limitations.
00:01:56.000The number of hoops they had to jump through in order to manufacture this case is extraordinary.
00:02:00.000The number of pretzel-like contortions the prosecution had to drag the jury through was extraordinary.
00:02:06.000But in the end, did any of that matter?
00:02:08.000In the end, was this ever about the legality of the case or the evidence presented by a porn star, Stormy Daniels, or a convicted perjurer, Michael Cohen?
00:02:19.000If you get Donald Trump in front of a jury of his supposed peers in New York City, one of the bluest places in America, and you charge him with anything, if you charge him with jaywalking, they will convict him.
00:02:49.000I think the backlash on this is going to be extraordinary because this is so obviously a manufactured case.
00:02:55.000It's so obviously a stupid case that has nothing to do with Donald Trump's supposed violations of law.
00:03:01.000I don't think the American people are going to stand for this.
00:03:04.000I think that if Joe Biden believes this is going to somehow redound to his benefit rather than appearing as a politically motivated hit job on his political opponent in an unprecedented prosecution of the man most likely to take him out of office in November, I think he's got another thing coming.
00:03:18.000I think this makes Joe Biden a hero in his own mind.
00:03:20.000I don't think the American people are going to react quite that way.
00:03:25.000Now, as to what happens next, as to what happens next, there is a procedure and there is a process as to what happens next.
00:03:33.000But it is quite possible that Donald Trump could end up in jail because Judge Merchen has been out to get Trump this entire time.
00:03:41.000From the gag order to the allowance of evidence, Judge Merchen has made clear he wants Donald Trump convicted.
00:03:48.000I think he's going to make clear he wants him behind bars.
00:03:53.000Well, there's now a sentencing hearing.
00:03:55.000That sentencing hearing will be within two or three months of the verdict.
00:03:59.000So we're going to get weeks and weeks of speculation about whether Donald Trump is going to go to jail.
00:04:04.000Trump's attorneys presumably will attempt to appeal to the judge and hope to postpone the sentencing beyond the election.
00:04:11.000Merchant is almost certainly not going to go along with that because obviously the reason that he has structured this trial in this way is to convict Donald Trump and put him behind bars or at least sentence him prior to the election.
00:04:22.000Now Trump is going to be dragged to jail today.
00:04:24.000That's not the way this works because it's a non-violent felony.
00:04:27.000He will not be detained pre-sentencing or forced to post bail in all likelihood.
00:04:32.000Instead, in the next few weeks, he'll be dragged over to the dingy probation office at the New York City courthouse.
00:04:39.000According to the Washington Post, the probation office would put together a pre-sentencing report for Judge Murchin.
00:04:44.000As part of that process, Trump would be required to participate in an interview with the probation officer, who would produce a biography of him of about four, five, or six pages, legal experts said.
00:04:53.000Such documents are confidential, intended only for the judge and the lawyers.
00:04:57.000The court could agree to state Trump's sentence pending an appeal, That process would last beyond the November 5th presidential election.
00:05:04.000But again, I highly doubt that they're going to stay Trump's sentence pending the appeal.
00:05:09.000The only plausibility there is that if there were a sentence that were so short, that it would actually be shorter than the appeals process itself.
00:05:16.000Maybe you delay the sentencing until after the appellate process goes forward.
00:05:30.000It is highly likely the merchant will move forward with the sentencing hearing.
00:05:35.000Merchant could impose a financial penalty, require him to do community service, undergo counseling.
00:05:41.000He could also impose home confinement, which would mean that Donald Trump would basically be confined to doing events in and around Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
00:05:51.000It's also possible that he could just throw him in jail.
00:05:55.000And no one knows what the hell happens then.
00:05:57.000According to Forbes, in New York, classy felony sentences for offenders who have not been convicted of a felony within the last ten years, which would be Trump's situation, are doled out concurrently in thirds, such as one to three years, meaning that Trump could theoretically even if sentenced to the maximum here, which would be about four years, be eligible for parole, but only after a year.
00:06:15.000If you were sentenced to a year or less, you would serve out his sentence in a city jail like Rikers, and then he would be eligible for parole after serving two-thirds of the sentence.
00:06:23.000If he's sentenced to more than a year, the State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision will determine which of the 44 facilities he is sent to.
00:06:30.000Secret Service has been gaming out this possibility, apparently, for months, as the New York Times reported.
00:06:35.000If he ends up in prison, Secret Service would, theoretically, have to keep him separate from all the other inmates that have to screen his food and his personal items.
00:06:41.000There'd be a detail of agents on him 24 hours a day.
00:06:48.000The fact that we are even considering this is totally and utterly insane.
00:06:54.000Again, we keep being told by the media the merchant is unlikely to sentence him to any jail time because he wouldn't want to be the man who puts the chief Republican candidate in prison.
00:07:31.000And that's presumably what we are talking about right now.
00:07:35.000When we talk about the idea that a Manhattan DA, a politically motivated Manhattan DA, could go into his job with the purpose of convicting Donald Trump, that's what we are talking about.
00:08:07.000Normally in a criminal case, if somebody commits a really, really dire crime
00:08:09.000and they show no remorse, you can see why people would want them to be in jail.
00:08:13.000But in this particular case, it's a catch-22 for Trump.
00:08:16.000If he shows remorse for a crime he did not commit, then Biden just hammers him on that
00:08:22.000And if he doesn't show remorse, then Merchant says, he committed a crime, I had to put a gag order on him, and then he didn't show remorse, so I'm throwing him in jail.
00:08:32.000There is a very real possibility here that come November 5th, Donald Trump is sitting in Rikers while the American people are voting.
00:08:42.000And if that's the case, the American people should vote for him all the more.
00:08:47.000Because once again, this was a politically motivated prosecution.
00:08:51.000The evidence was not there to support a conviction.
00:08:55.000In fact, the charges were not even there to support a conviction.
00:09:01.000That's why Merchant had to come up with this bizarre theory whereby four jurors could vote for one underlying crime, four jurors could vote for another underlying crime, and the last four could vote for a third underlying crime, and they could combine all of those into one giant felony that would serve as the predicate for the Class E felony for falsifying business records.
00:09:22.000There's a high probability that this will be reversed either in the state or in the federal system.
00:09:27.000It's certainly a violation of law in the state.
00:09:30.000It's probably a violation of law federally because using the Federal Elections Funding Act to convict a guy in state court is bizarre.
00:09:40.000Whatever the case, the Democrats just set the country on fire.
00:09:43.000Alvin Bragg just set the country on fire.
00:09:47.000I'm absolutely astonished that this trial was ever allowed to go forward.
00:09:52.000I'm not particularly astonished at the verdict, but the consequences of this are extraordinarily dire, because play this one all the way out.
00:09:59.000Let's say for a second that Donald Trump is sent to jail by one merchant, and let's say That while he is in jail, the election goes forth.
00:10:11.000And under those conditions, he then loses the election.
00:10:14.000If you think he was claiming rigging back in 2020, wait until you hear about 2024, when the Democrats charged him with a bunch of garbage, and then got 12 like-minded jurors to throw him in jail under the auspices of a glory-seeking judge, and took him completely off the campaign trail, and smeared him as a felon in advance of the election.
00:10:37.000I mean, all the same people who are crying about Trump will be a tyrant.
00:10:41.000Trump will, he will undermine the rule of law.
00:10:43.000We cannot have a country with Donald Trump who will certainly destroy democracy.
00:10:49.000It is hard for me to think of anything less democratic than trumping up a charge on your political opponent to jail him during an election cycle where you are currently losing, which is what Joe Biden is doing right now.
00:11:16.000He was a third-party candidate with no shot of winning.
00:11:17.000Donald Trump is currently leading in the polls.
00:11:20.000He's the most likely person in America to be president of the United States right now.
00:11:28.000Where do we go from here as a country?
00:11:31.000Well, what the polling shows, by the way, is that a huge percentage of Americans will not change their vote based on this.
00:11:36.000Certainly, Trump is not going to lose any of the Trump vote based on this.
00:11:40.000Nobody is going to start shifting their vote away from Trump if they were already voting for Trump based on this.
00:11:48.000A conviction would likely change very little.
00:11:53.000According to Fox News, a new poll shows That regardless of whether Trump is found guilty or acquitted, the verdict would have no impact on voters' perception of the 2024 rematch.
00:12:04.000Two-thirds of registered voters nationwide questioned in an NPR-PBS NewsHour Marist National Poll released on Thursday said that a guilty verdict in the trial would make no difference to their vote in the presidential election.
00:12:15.00017% said a conviction of Trump would make them less likely.
00:12:18.00015% said they'd be more likely to support Trump at the ballot box.
00:12:24.000Again, only 9% Said that even if he was acquitted, they'd be less likely to vote for him.
00:12:31.000Now, this is a really narrow election.
00:12:32.000That's what makes this so astonishing.
00:12:34.000I mean, it's astonishing for a thousand reasons, but one of the things that makes it so unbelievably astonishing is that this is an election that's going to come down to tens of thousands of votes in a handful of swing states again.
00:12:45.000Right now, Donald Trump is leading outside the margin of error in Nevada, which means all he has to do is win Michigan or Pennsylvania and the election is over.
00:12:55.000This thing could easily come down to two, three, 4,000 votes in one swing state.
00:13:01.000And if Donald Trump were to lose in November, while serving prison time on a trumped up charge, the response in the United States will be absolutely explosive.
00:13:12.000You want to talk about an illegitimate president at that point?
00:13:14.000The American people will see a Democrat elected under those auspices as illegitimate.
00:13:21.000There's no other way to even see that.
00:13:25.000Honestly, Joe Biden is going to come out, I am sure, and presumably he is going to make comments about the law having been done, no one being above the law, while simultaneously the DOJ attempted to broker a deal to save his own son from jail.
00:13:43.000He himself was spared a prosecution on mishandling of classified documents because he was supposedly a doddering elderly man.
00:13:50.000And he's going to lecture us about how the justice system just worked?
00:14:36.000We've seen a lot of people coming out here to support President Trump.
00:14:40.000And now it's a lot of people, of course, who are very, very happy that he's been convicted.
00:14:45.000People are calling it a victory for democracy.
00:14:49.000But I think something that is unmistakable is that today is a We've got a moment in our history right now that I think we're going to look back on with a lot of significance.
00:15:03.000And everybody's turning now towards November to see what will this mean for the election?
00:15:09.000What will this mean in this matchup against Biden?
00:15:12.000Of course, that question is still one that has yet to be answered, but we're seeing a mix of emotions here on the ground in New York.
00:15:21.000So Spencer, are we expecting to hear from the Trump camp sometime in the near future here?
00:15:26.000I would assume that the parties are variously leaving the courthouse.
00:15:29.000Trump obviously was not arrested inside the courtroom.
00:15:31.000They have a sentencing hearing that's happening in about six weeks is what we are hearing.
00:15:34.000Has there been any word where you are on when Trump will emerge and if he's going to say something to the press, which I assume he will?
00:15:43.000I haven't heard anything regarding the specifics of the Trump comment or what he'll say.
00:15:48.000But we do know that he's been very vocal throughout the course of this case.
00:15:52.000He's been very vocal on his social media platform, through social.
00:15:55.000And I believe we can expect him to continue to be very vocal.
00:16:00.000Now that this case has ended, I believe he'll be speaking, I'm sure, before long.
00:16:06.000But we're still awaiting the specifics on exactly when that might be.
00:16:20.000All right, so coming up in a little bit, we're gonna have Harmeet Dhillon, constitutional lawyer.
00:16:26.000She's done work with the Trump campaign as well to comment on what happens next, the impact on the election, the nature of this particular case.
00:16:56.000Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain.
00:17:00.000But today's verdict does not change the fact the American people face a simple reality.
00:17:04.000There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office, at the ballot box.
00:17:07.000Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.
00:17:10.000The threat Trump poses to our democracy has never been greater.
00:17:13.000He is running an increasingly unhinged campaign of revenge and retribution, pledging to be a dictator on day one, calling for our constitution to be terminated so he can regain and keep power.
00:17:20.000A second Trump term means chaos, ripping away Americans' freedoms and fomenting political violence.
00:17:24.000The American people will reject it in November.
00:17:28.000So definitely calming the waters right there by suggesting that tyranny is at hand if Trump is elected after Democrats, motivated by politics, jailed, are moving to jail.
00:17:39.000The former president and possibly future president of the United States.
00:17:44.000The Biden campaign suggesting that this is no one is above the law while Joe Biden sits there having been let off the hook by his own DOJ with his son.
00:17:54.000They attempted to let his son off the hook, his DOJ.
00:17:58.000Him sitting there and suggesting that Trump poses the threat to our democracy while a Manhattan district attorney pushes to jail This was a disgrace.
00:18:07.000This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt.
00:18:10.000that the threat to our democracy is from Trump is totally insane.
00:20:09.000Joining us online to discuss is Harmeet Dhillon.
00:20:11.000She, of course, is the managing partner of Dhillon Law Group, and she's done work with the Trump campaign, particularly with regard to election law.
00:20:17.000Harmeet, obviously this is an extraordinarily dark day in the history of the American Republic, unprecedented for a local prosecutor in Manhattan to pick up what really is a felony federal charge that was never tried, try to spin it into a state law charge, charge it 34 times, And then receive a conviction.
00:21:00.000The federal prosecutors, these state prosecutors previously, the FEC, Every agency that could have charged these crimes rejected them as not being crimes.
00:21:12.000This is a Frankenstein case put together and life breathed into it by a judge who rigged it.
00:21:19.000I'm not surprised when I heard that the jury came back with a verdict.
00:21:21.000I knew what the verdict was going to be because the best case scenario here would have been that one honest juror would have looked at this steaming pile of dung and said, no, I cannot participate in this farce.
00:21:32.000But the way the judge put blinders on the jury, the way the judge gave grossly improper jury instructions,
00:21:40.000the way the judge refused to recuse himself, allowed prejudicial evidence to be had
00:21:45.000and generally rigged this from day one.
00:21:48.000This was a foregone conclusion almost.
00:21:50.000And so, you know, what we have to do here is pray that the appeals process goes forward.
00:21:55.000However, I do think that from a political standpoint, Ben, this has backfired bigly, as President Trump would say.
00:22:02.000He is now more popular than he was at the beginning of this prosecution.
00:22:06.000And I hope that the American people see this for what it is.
00:22:09.000And we cannot let this stand in our country.
00:22:15.000It reminds me of places where they don't have the rule of law.
00:22:18.000And this is really a dangerous day for our country.
00:22:22.000You know, Harmeet, this is obviously a kangaroo court situation.
00:22:25.000We've all spent a lot of time following this trial.
00:22:28.000The truth is that I personally didn't spend a lot of time on it because it's pretty clear as soon as they brought charges, no matter what it was, that Trump was going to get convicted.
00:22:34.000I mean, this is simply picking a jurisdiction where people hate Donald Trump, bringing him up on literally anything.
00:22:39.000Manufacturing some charge or another to spin it into a felony and then and then charging him with it.
00:22:44.000And that was pretty clear from Judge Merchant's jury instructions, which when you go through in detail, I've never seen anything remotely like this.
00:22:49.000I mean, you had a situation in which you had a misdemeanor that had run the statute of limitations with regards to falsification of business records.
00:22:57.000That was kept alive by spinning the idea that that was a falsification on behalf of a second unspecified crime.
00:23:03.000There were three theories that were put forward as to what that second unspecified crime was.
00:23:07.000And Judge Murchin then informed the jury, they didn't even have to agree on what the underlying crime was, that the falsification of business records was supposed to be hiding, that they could actually divide 4-4-4 on those various crimes.
00:23:20.000What I compared that to is that's sort of like saying that in a felony murder case where the murder is imputed to a person who didn't commit the murder based on the underlying felony that everybody was committing together, like robbing a bank, that there are actually like five felonies that are charged.
00:23:33.000The jurors don't have to agree on what the felony was.
00:23:35.000It could be like one of five different felonies and they could vehemently disagree, but you could still charge somebody with felony murder.
00:23:40.000I've never heard of unanimity by aggregation.
00:23:44.000That seemed like a weird concept to me.
00:23:56.000And in a case, and there's a United States Supreme Court precedent that says that where there's a crime that requires a predicate act, the jury has to agree unanimously on what the predicate act is.
00:24:05.000And in this case, there is no case, period, if there isn't a single felony that the jury agrees on unanimously.
00:24:12.000What's also clear in this case, Ben, I mean, you know from being a lawyer yourself, that judges are normally embarrassed to be reversed.
00:24:21.000That's one sort of social check that keeps them in place.
00:24:24.000They're embarrassed that they might have a record that looks bad on appeal.
00:24:29.000But in this case, the judge, I think, is fully aware that he's committed numerous acts of reversible error.
00:24:35.000I think the endgame for this judge is a lucrative book deal, TV slot with CNN, MSNBC.
00:24:42.000His daughter continues to get big multimillion dollar payouts from her company.
00:24:47.000And it's just upside for a political hack of a judge.
00:24:52.000You know, that's the problem is that the normal breaks and social barriers that apply and speed bumps that apply in our country have been degraded over the last few years in this get Trump effort.
00:25:02.000So, you know, I've been a lawyer for 31 years and I really question, you know, when you go into a court and you try to explain to a client how it's going to go, can you predict that anymore?
00:25:12.000Because this is not a predictable outcome of a just legal system.
00:25:17.000So, Harmeet, I think the big question on everybody's mind now is whether he's going to actually be sentenced by Judge Merchant to jail time.
00:25:23.000I'd be shocked if he is not, considering the way that this trial has proceeded, considering what a mess the charges were in the first place.
00:25:29.000It is obvious to me that if Merchant stops short of sending him to jail, he wouldn't be going all the way.
00:25:34.000If he wants that lucrative book contract, he has to be the guy who sent Donald Trump to jail.
00:26:59.000But then you have to look at whether we have a fair election or not.
00:27:01.000I don't think we had a fair election in 2020.
00:27:03.000And so, you know, the rigging is going pretty deep here in our country.
00:27:07.000I'm sorry to say that as an American, but I think I have very serious concerns about the justice system at this point.
00:27:13.000And by the way, these judges at the state level are also the ones who determine elections.
00:27:18.000And so if it happened in New York and Manhattan, you know that they're able to get to judges in other places as well.
00:27:26.000So, Harmeet, what is the process for Trump's legal team now?
00:27:29.000So, presumably there will be state appeals.
00:27:31.000If this is a reversible error, I don't know what is.
00:27:33.000There could be theoretical federal appeals based presumably on the idea that they charged a federal crime in a state court, which you're not supposed to do.
00:27:40.000I mean, that's effectively what they convicted him based upon.
00:27:43.000How do you see the appellate process playing out?
00:27:44.000Do they try to go straight to federal court and try to get this to the Supreme Court?
00:27:47.000Do they try to move through the state courts, which are typically rigged on behalf of Democrats in the state of New York?
00:27:53.000Yeah, I mean, the normal process would be to go up to the Intermediate Court of Appeals in New York and then the Supreme Court of New York.
00:27:59.000So there's two levels of appeal there.
00:28:01.000We already have a hint from the fact that the campaign, the president rather, appealed the judge's failure to recuse himself, which he was statutorily required to do, given the personal financial interest of an immediate family member.
00:28:15.000And the Court of Appeals let the case go forward under this judge.
00:28:18.000So that's not a good sign for the intermediate level Court of appeals.
00:28:22.000And typically, you're only able to take a federal appeal after you've exhausted your state remedies at the highest court, which is not going to happen, in my opinion, as a lawyer before the election.
00:28:32.000You know, there are other things you could take extraordinary writs of habeas or such.
00:28:36.000But, you know, until until they've got him in custody, I don't think they're going to be looking at that.
00:28:40.000So, you know, I think it's going to wind its way through the system.
00:28:43.000And eventually, if there are some honest judges along the way, this should get reversed on A dozen grounds.
00:28:50.000I think that was I saw a reversible error on a daily basis following this trial.
00:28:54.000So, you know, I think it makes him more popular, frankly, politically, putting back my political hat.
00:28:59.000But this is a shameful day for American history.
00:29:03.000And, you know, young people who are thinking about law school are going to look at this and say, do I want to be part of this system?
00:29:08.000And, you know, so I think that's really degrading the rule of law and people's respect for law throughout the country, not just with respect to this case, because if you're willing to weaponize the entire That's Harmeet Dhillon.
00:30:34.000He didn't, he didn't activate his DOJ to go after his political opponents.
00:30:40.000And then, and by the way, that was after an election cycle in which the Obama FBI was literally investigating the Trump campaign.
00:30:48.000Every weapon at the disposal of the federal government has now been launched at Donald Trump.
00:30:53.000From the FBI in 2016, going after Carter Page, going after the Trump campaign, laundering Fusion GPS nonsense reports into the public eye, all the way up through the 2020 election cycle.
00:31:09.000And now you have the justice system being mobilized by Democrats, motivated partisan Democrats to get Donald Trump.
00:31:36.000We're now living in the insane asylum.
00:31:39.000If you're waiting for politics to cool down, well, you picked the wrong time to be alive, apparently.
00:31:45.000Joining us on the line is my quasi-friend Michael Knowles, who's been watching all of this with, I would say, a sufficient amount of outrage, given his Twitter account.
00:31:53.000Michael, I've never, obviously, seen anything like this.
00:31:56.000No one's ever seen anything like this.
00:31:58.000It's truly a horrifying day for the country.
00:32:12.000Supposedly, according to the left, to fly such a flag that was raised by George Washington and made by Jose de Camp, that makes us the insurrectionists and the threat to democracy.
00:32:23.000You, of course, said it very, very well.
00:32:24.000I think most people are going to look at this and say, the Democrats are the real threat to our political order.
00:33:05.000One of the reasons we've not done it is that it is not possible to have an impartial jury when you're talking about the top politician in the country.
00:33:16.000This is a man who, in his person, represents the country and the spirit of the people.
00:33:21.000So it can't happen, and it's always going to be kind of a kangaroo court, which is why, from the beginning, I think we all knew this was a kangaroo court.
00:34:08.000If that person is pro-Trump, and I looked through, the New York Times did a little biography of each of the jurors, and I said, Well, that person says that she listens to religious podcasts.
00:34:25.000I think Trump got about three votes in Manhattan in 2020.
00:34:29.000The whole thing was a setup from day one.
00:34:31.000And what's so sad about it is Trump might get a little political boost here in the sense that people are going to recognize this is unfair.
00:34:39.000There was one poll on the federal case.
00:34:41.00062% of Americans view the federal charges as being primarily politically motivated.
00:34:48.000But from the historical perspective, you can't put the genie back in the bottle.
00:34:53.000235 years almost of an agreement not to behave like a banana republic, a tin pot dictatorship that is out the window.
00:35:02.000Democrats did it and it can't be undone.
00:35:07.000Well, President Biden apparently will not address Trump's conviction tonight.
00:35:09.000So apparently they weren't able to get a hold of enough Adderall to get him up and in front of a TV.
00:35:14.000He has made a statement, as we mentioned earlier, in which he talked about how now everyone is being accountable before the law, which is an incredible statement from a man who clearly violated classified documents law himself and was openly held to have done so.
00:35:27.000By the DOJ lawyer, Robert Herr, who literally said the only reason that he didn't prosecute him is because he's a senile old dodder.
00:35:34.000And now he's out there saying that, obviously, the real threat to democracy is the guy who is being convicted of crimes that don't exist in a Democrat courtroom.
00:35:43.000This is the part that is truly astonishing.
00:35:46.000And I think that you are going to see An enormous consolidation around Trump, certainly people who are lukewarm on Trump.
00:35:54.000Maybe the people who supported Nikki Haley at the end of the primaries or people who are DeSantis supporters and we're still kind of waiting to jump all the way back on the Trump bandwagon.
00:36:15.000I think this is quite good for Trump because one of the things is that Trump likes to talk about Trump.
00:36:19.000I mean, that's just the reality of who Donald Trump is as a candidate.
00:36:23.000Well, there were only really two topics on which he was speaking in the past few months.
00:36:28.000One was the January 6th, 2020 election stuff, and two were the trials.
00:36:33.000And the trials, it's fine for him to talk about.
00:36:35.000That is a fine political thing for him to talk about because there you are talking about the serious issue of one party mobilizing the instruments of government in order to victimize members of the opposing party.
00:36:45.000And that is a much better campaign for him to run than anything related to 2020.
00:36:49.000I mean, if they get to a debate and Joe Biden says January 6th was a threat to democracy, Donald Trump should say, and I'm sure he will, you mobilizing every piece of the Justice Department from state to federal in order to convict your political opponent in advance of an election you're losing, that seems to be much more of a threat to democracy than anything that I've done.
00:37:07.000I mean, I think the door is wide open on Biden and team because of this conviction.
00:37:13.000I mean, this is the astonishing point here, is that they really thought that by convicting Trump, they were going to finish his candidacy.
00:37:21.000And instead, all they've done is create just another label they can throw at him.
00:37:24.000But what they've really done is shape Americans' perceptions of them.
00:37:27.000Like right now, I want to get your take on this, Michael.
00:37:29.000I'm hearing a lot of people out there on the right, and they're like, well, you know, Republican D.A.
00:37:37.000Because I think the American people don't like what they're seeing.
00:37:39.000If the American people were fine with what they're seeing, I think that that's totally right.
00:37:43.000Because I think what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
00:37:45.000But I actually think that this is a political win for Republicans in the sense that they're not the party tearing down democracy right now, it is the Democrats who are inciting their political opponents, dragging them up in blue areas where they don't even live, and then threatening them with jail time.
00:38:33.000What worries me, though, is how brazen this is and how increasingly brazen the Democrats have become.
00:38:40.000That can have a positive political effect for them as well, because it can demoralize conservatives.
00:38:46.000So, yes, conservatives are going to rally around Trump, and independents are going to rally around Trump, and everyone's going to be outraged by this, but they did it.
00:38:53.000They did it, and they're getting away with it, at least for now, just like they got away with changing a lot of election rules.
00:38:59.000Uh, in some cases in contravention of state constitutions, let's say like in Pennsylvania.
00:39:04.000Just like they got away with spying on the Trump campaign.
00:39:06.000Just like they got away with undermining his administration and arresting some of his associates.
00:39:11.000Just like they get away with this and that and this and that and they never pay a consequence for it.
00:39:15.000We were talking about the crimes that Joe Biden has apparently committed.
00:39:19.000Just two days ago, he visited Hallie Biden, the widow of his son and former mistress of his other son.
00:39:25.000This was days before the Hunter Biden gun crimes trial.
00:39:30.000Hallie Biden is going to be an important witness in the gun crimes trial because allegedly she seems to have helped him to commit those crimes.
00:39:40.000Any reasonable person looking at that meeting says, that's witness tampering.
00:39:44.000One of the things that you're accusing Donald Trump of doing, you, sitting President Biden, are doing yourself.
00:40:17.000I mean, we have now, but this is not glass that goes back in place.
00:40:21.000I mean, the reality is that he is now running to basically keep himself and his son out of jail.
00:40:26.000So you now have a political system in which people who are running for the presidency have to first consider whether they are going to be unfairly brought up on charges, and then they have to consider that if they lose, there's a good shot they go to jail.
00:40:40.000I mean, that is where we currently sit.
00:40:42.000Now, listen, there are other democracies around the world Where there have actually been sitting politicians who have ended up in jail after losing office, after being elected to high office or whatever it is.
00:40:53.000But in those particular cases, those cases happen to be incredibly well-founded.
00:40:57.000What makes this such a travesty is that it was so incredibly not well-founded from the very get-go, from the beginning.
00:41:03.000This was the weakest of any of the cases being brought against President Trump.
00:41:07.000And what it really says is that if you get the January 6th trial in Washington, D.C., he'll get convicted there.
00:41:12.000If you're down in Florida in the classified documents trial, probably a hung jury.
00:41:16.000If you're over in Atlanta, depending on the jury selection, probably gets convicted.
00:41:20.000This is now a game of simple forum shopping.
00:41:23.000This happens all the time in civil litigation.
00:41:25.000You try to find the forum where the jury is going to be most available to you.
00:41:29.000But if you're a national candidate like Donald Trump, and you're being brought up in four different jurisdictions on four different sets of charges, It's completely dependent on the nature of the population in the area in which you are being charged, which makes a mockery of justice.
00:42:37.000And I don't think any person today, even the most partisan Democrat, would be able to look you in the face and tell you sincerely that Lady Justice still has her blindfold on.
00:44:37.000The corruption and subversion of our institutions by the left.
00:44:41.000This is the Democrats' entire strategy to confine President Trump to a dirty criminal courtroom and keep him off the campaign trail.
00:44:47.000And this is going to be the theme for Trump the rest of the election cycle.
00:44:50.000So here's what you've got if you are Joe Biden.
00:44:52.000You have a DOJ that has beclowned itself in a thousand ways.
00:44:57.000You have two separate courts of law in the state of New York that have put forward absurd, absurd verdicts.
00:45:03.000Absurd verdicts in this particular case and absurd verdicts in the civil case that was brought by the woman that he supposedly defamed and was sentenced to $500 million or something ridiculous in terms of defamation.
00:46:06.000Joe Biden is obviously a political actor.
00:46:09.000Governor of Rhonda Sands of Florida put out a statement He says, it is often said that no one is above the law, but it is also true that no one is below the law.
00:46:16.000If the defendant were not Donald Trump, this case would never have been brought, the judge would never have issued similar rulings, and the jury would never have returned a guilty verdict.
00:46:24.000Ironically, Donald Trump once bragged that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
00:46:29.000Ironically, in the city of New York, he would be more likely to get away with murdering someone on Fifth Avenue than with a minor supposed business misdemeanor.
00:46:39.000Because murder in New York is presumably okay.
00:46:42.000You can throw somebody on the subway tracks in New York.
00:47:07.000The top issue in this election has now become should administrations and political parties target their political opponents for destruction?
00:47:16.000This is open Watergate is what this is.
00:47:19.000Watergate is considered the worst scandal in American political history because the Nixon administration, the Nixon campaign, Greenland, the bugging, of the George McGovern offices in 1972.
00:47:30.000What if Nixon had just said, I get to do whatever I want to George McGovern, include bringing him up on charges that are completely specious and then brag about how he's a convicted felon.