The Megyn Kelly Show - Historic Arrest of Former President Donald Trump, with Alan Dershowitz, Charles C.W. Cooke, and Ric Grenell ｜ Ep. 521

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00:00:31.000 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest and provocative conversations.

00:00:42.500 Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:45.880 America's 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump,

00:00:48.800 turning himself in today to be formally arrested and arraigned on criminal charges

00:00:54.440 by a Democrat D.A. who ran on the promise of him being an aggressive anti-Trumper,

00:01:02.980 was touting the number of cases he had brought against Donald Trump.

00:01:06.320 And true to his word, though, he originally rejected these charges, as did the feds.

00:01:12.980 Alvin Bragg brought them today.

00:01:15.600 There's a lot to dissect regarding the legal ramifications, the political fallout,

00:01:19.160 and the onslaught of media coverage.

00:01:21.680 Ahead, we're going to hear from Rick Grinnell, as we know, one of Trump's closest confidants,

00:01:26.460 and he will be with the president tonight.

00:01:28.920 Charles C.W. Cook is here with a warning to the media.

00:01:31.720 But we begin the show with Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School

00:01:36.840 and author of the new book, which we featured not long ago, Get Trump,

00:01:40.740 The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law.

00:01:44.440 You can order it right now on Amazon.

00:01:45.920 There may be a backup, but order one anyway, because as usual,

00:01:49.380 Alan's been prescient on what things, how things were going to unfold when it came,

00:01:53.580 comes to Trump legally.

00:01:55.080 Alan, great to have you back on the show.

00:01:56.380 So I heard you say on your podcast, The Dershow, that you'd been texting with Trump

00:02:01.440 post-indictment.

00:02:03.740 What did he say?

00:02:05.200 Well, only he texts me.

00:02:07.240 I've never texted him.

00:02:08.400 I don't have his text number.

00:02:10.360 He called me and then he texted me.

00:02:13.280 He said, Alan, getting ready to leave for New York.

00:02:15.720 This was yesterday.

00:02:16.940 And can't really believe it. 0.93

00:02:18.140 These maniacs want to destroy our country. 0.98

00:02:20.140 So sad. 0.96

00:02:20.840 Nothing on Hunter or Biden and the crimes are so bad.

00:02:23.780 Anyway, your words are very important.

00:02:25.560 Save America, Donald Trump.

00:02:27.980 P.S.

00:02:28.880 Congrats on the book.

00:02:30.300 Doing really well.

00:02:31.780 Well, I appreciate that.

00:02:33.540 Look, the timing for the book couldn't be better.

00:02:35.880 The title, Get Trump, is not original with me.

00:02:38.420 It comes from the campaign promise of Letitia James, the attorney general of New York.

00:02:43.480 She used those words, I promise, to get Trump.

00:02:46.760 Bragg didn't exactly use those words, but he used that concept.

00:02:50.120 And when he first got into office, he looked at the evidence and he said, no, it's not there.

00:02:54.380 It's just not there.

00:02:55.360 And the New York Times on Sunday reported that he got tremendous pushback, tremendous opposition.

00:03:01.180 Two people in his team quit and the pressure was too great.

00:03:04.760 Nothing changed.

00:03:05.600 There were no new witnesses.

00:03:06.940 There was no change in the law.

00:03:08.560 The statute of limitations didn't get extended.

00:03:11.060 But the pressure was too great for him to resist.

00:03:14.000 And I understand that because I was under similar pressure.

00:03:17.660 You know, when I defended Trump in 2000, before that, I was the most popular person on Martha's Vineyard.

00:03:24.040 I was the one who was asked to perform weddings and speak at funerals.

00:03:27.880 Once I defended Trump, no one would talk to me.

00:03:30.700 Caroline Kennedy would walk out on a dinner party, etc. 0.99

00:03:34.020 If you think that's great, that's one-tenth the pressure that a judge in Manhattan would get if that judge ruled in favor of Trump.

00:03:41.580 They would never again be appointed, never again be elected, never again be included in social scenes.

00:03:47.700 And if a juror ever said, I'm the juror who caused a hung jury or I'm the juror who caused an acquittal, their lives are over.

00:03:56.140 And you don't expect judges and jurors to be able to resist that kind of social pressure.

00:04:00.500 Maybe you expect a professor to do that.

00:04:02.520 And I did at great cost to my family.

00:04:05.400 But the emotional pressures on people of New York, 85 percent of New Yorkers hate Donald Trump's guts.

00:04:13.100 How does he get a fair trial here?

00:04:14.480 He can't.

00:04:15.760 So he's saying that he wants his case moved to Staten Island.

00:04:18.460 I actually I think it'd be a brilliant move because there you get a Republican leaning jury.

00:04:22.240 The odds are.

00:04:23.980 And let's see what they do.

00:04:25.440 Let's see.

00:04:25.940 I mean, if Alvin Bragg is so confident in his case, why not put it in front of people who are more right leaning

00:04:31.180 and see if you can convince them?

00:04:33.220 Isn't that closer to jury of your peers?

00:04:36.620 Absolutely.

00:04:37.240 It was my idea originally.

00:04:38.560 I came up with the idea quite some time ago.

00:04:40.580 I said, eat a Staten Island because the pizza is much, much better there than in Manhattan

00:04:44.460 or Rockland County or upstate New York.

00:04:48.020 But let's get it out of Manhattan.

00:04:50.060 You cannot have a fair trial in Manhattan.

00:04:52.580 And I told that to President Trump and he agreed with me, although his lawyer the other day said they

00:04:57.500 hadn't made up their mind.

00:04:58.500 I think they made up their mind.

00:04:59.660 They have to move it out of Manhattan.

00:05:01.580 That's an absolutely essential thing.

00:05:03.680 And they have to move quickly for a ruling on the statute of limitations.

00:05:07.660 Remember the argument.

00:05:09.120 Let me ask you about.

00:05:10.000 OK, can I ask you about let me ask this statute, because I had a debate here on the program

00:05:13.140 yesterday.

00:05:13.940 Arthur Idala, who I know you, you know, and like, and another lawyer, state state attorney

00:05:18.600 from from the district that covers Mar-a-Lago and Palm Beach.

00:05:23.220 And and they were saying they weren't that moved by the statute of limitations argument.

00:05:28.500 And I know you love it.

00:05:30.640 And so just just for the viewers who are listening now, it's basically we believe we're speaking

00:05:36.140 at a time at which the indictment has not yet been unveiled.

00:05:38.180 We don't yet know exactly what's in those 34 counts, but we still understand it has to

00:05:41.920 do with the Stormy Daniels hush money payment and that that Trump didn't record it properly

00:05:46.660 on his business records.

00:05:47.600 He made it look like a legal payment to Michael Cohen, who paid it one hundred and thirty

00:05:51.080 thousand.

00:05:51.940 And that's not in and of itself necessarily problematic, but that would normally be treated

00:05:57.320 as a misdemeanor.

00:05:58.060 He's elevating it to a felony by saying it was used to cover up an underlying crime, which

00:06:01.800 would have been an in-kind contribution during the election run up.

00:06:06.060 It's a long and convoluted thing.

00:06:07.600 So which dumb it down for people who are not lawyers.

00:06:10.500 What is the statute of limitations problem?

00:06:13.100 Yeah, the statute of limitations is very important.

00:06:16.420 It goes back to the origins of law.

00:06:19.120 And there's a two year statute of limitations on the misdemeanor, five on the felony.

00:06:22.680 The theory behind the statute of limitations is it doesn't run when the person is an escapee.

00:06:27.680 He's running away.

00:06:28.420 You can't find them.

00:06:29.700 And so the statute has an exception.

00:06:31.560 If you can't find them, if he's a fugitive or if he's out of the state continuously.

00:06:37.480 Now, why can't you indict him if he's out of the state?

00:06:40.420 I have the best proof.

00:06:41.500 Nobody could ever beat me on this argument.

00:06:43.580 Of course, you can indict him when he's out of the state.

00:06:45.500 What's the best proof?

00:06:46.500 They indicted him when he was out of the state.

00:06:48.840 This indictment came down last Thursday.

00:06:50.700 He was in Florida.

00:06:51.720 If they could indict him while he was in Florida, why couldn't they have indicted him

00:06:55.400 while he was in Washington?

00:06:56.780 Why couldn't they have indicted him while he was in Florida the last two or three years?

00:07:00.440 So the policies behind the statute of limitations are clearly violated.

00:07:04.840 There's no good reason they didn't indict him earlier, except that nobody wanted to indict

00:07:08.540 him earlier.

00:07:09.040 DAs, U.S.

00:07:10.500 attorneys, federal election officials said, no, we're not going to indict him.

00:07:14.220 The statute of limitations requires you indict somebody as reasonably quickly as you can

00:07:20.040 within the terms of the statute.

00:07:21.740 Now, there is a New York Court of Appeals decision, very wrongly decided, which basically

00:07:27.080 defines the word continuously as continually and says that every day that he's out of the

00:07:32.560 state doesn't count. 0.93

00:07:33.720 That's ridiculous.

00:07:34.860 The policies behind the statute of limitations are clear. 0.93

00:07:38.860 He should not be allowed to be tried.

00:07:41.460 He's been denied a speedy trial, a fair trial, a trial in the right venue.

00:07:46.360 And the misdemeanor is the made up misdemeanor.

00:07:49.760 Here's what the misdemeanor basically says.

00:07:51.600 It says that when you pay hush money to hide an adulterous affair with a former porn star and you pay $130,000 to make sure your wife, your family, the voters, the business associates don't learn about it.

00:08:04.300 You must immediately record that in your public corporate records.

00:08:08.700 You must stay in your corporate records.

00:08:10.040 I paid the money to keep it quiet, but now I'm telling you I paid the money to keep it quiet and it'll be on the Megyn Kelly show tomorrow.

00:08:17.940 Has anybody ever truthfully described what a hush money payment was for?

00:08:22.940 Has anybody in history ever been indicted for that?

00:08:25.680 If you don't have that, you don't have anything because you can't get the felony without first getting the misdemeanor.

00:08:32.440 There is no misdemeanor here.

00:08:33.860 So all of this is very important because Alan accurately points out if this stays in Manhattan, Trump will not get a fair trial.

00:08:40.780 This will almost certainly be a political witch hunt brought home.

00:08:44.000 And so what we're talking about now is a potential guilty finding by a New York state jury.

00:08:49.120 I mean, we're jumping ahead.

00:08:50.260 But Alan is one of the most accomplished, if not the most accomplished appellate lawyers in America, especially when it comes to criminal law.

00:08:56.060 And you're already looking ahead to the appeal because then it would go up on appeal to a more stable body of lawyers, judges who would have to take a look at this and ultimately potentially to the New York State Court of Appeals, which is our highest court, to take a look at whether these issues like statute of limitations, issues of law could have been decided and whether this ever should have gotten to a jury.

00:09:20.000 That's right.

00:09:50.000 If you're going to indict somebody who you've promised to get and who is a member of the other party and he's running against the head of your party, you better darn well have a strong case.

00:10:01.380 This case is like Michael Cohen going in front of a grand jury and saying, I, with my own eyes, saw him rip the tag off a mattress in 2006.

00:10:13.280 And it says clearly on the mattress tag, ripping off that tag is in violation of the law.

00:10:18.980 But nobody ever gets prosecuted for that.

00:10:21.100 Duh.

00:10:21.660 Nobody ever gets prosecuted for misreporting a hush money payment.

00:10:27.460 This is the first of a kind.

00:10:28.860 Even the New York Times will do anything to see Trump convicted.

00:10:32.640 Acknowledges this is a novel, novel. 0.99

00:10:36.120 Novel is a euphemism for it's a crap case. 0.94

00:10:39.620 It doesn't exist. 0.99

00:10:40.700 It should never have been brought.

00:10:42.920 It absolutely violates the rule of law and vindicates those who claim, tragically, that America is not a system of laws anymore.

00:10:51.460 It's a system of people. 0.95

00:10:52.820 Look at what happens with Stanford University and Yale University, how they treat judges like trash.

00:10:58.920 That's what we're turning out, law students and lawyers and prosecutors and sometimes judges who put politics over law.

00:11:07.400 It's not it's not what I was teaching when I was in Harvard for 50 years.

00:11:12.240 It's a scandal.

00:11:12.900 One of the other things you've been railing about justfully, I think, is the possibility of a gag order in this case.

00:11:19.740 And these guys yesterday thought it was potentially likely that perhaps they'd give Trump some some leeway to start.

00:11:27.380 But that if he keeps going off, as he has been all day on Truth Social, that he might try to muzzle him.

00:11:33.980 Now, he hasn't yet faced the judge at this at the time of this recording.

00:11:38.180 But they were saying as soon as he gets in front of the judge, he will no longer be able to criticize the judge.

00:11:42.600 He will no longer be able to criticize the prosecutor and could potentially be slapped with a gag order that stops him from talking about the case.

00:11:49.520 You have strong thoughts on gagging Trump.

00:11:52.200 Well, that would be a clear violation, not only of his First Amendment rights, but of yours and mine.

00:11:58.200 Justice Marshall once said, wrote in an opinion that the First Amendment has two elements, one, the right of the speaker to speak, but just as important, the right of the listener to listen.

00:12:07.720 So I would immediately put together a group of the best First Amendment lawyers on a voluntary pro bono basis, representing you and me and everybody else in America and take the case as far up as we can to the Supreme Court on the issue of the gag order.

00:12:23.900 The gag order would so clearly be unconstitutional.

00:12:26.500 Having a democratically appointed or elected judge tell a Republican candidate for president that he can't campaign for president and a judge telling anybody he can't criticize the judge.

00:12:39.180 What could be a greater violation of the First Amendment than a judge telling a defendant that you can't criticize me?

00:12:46.320 Free speech for me.

00:12:47.620 Can I tell both of my lawyers yesterday and I said what you're telling me that today, this morning, he can criticize the judge and the D.A.

00:12:54.920 But after the arraignment tomorrow, he's not allowed to.

00:12:58.060 And I haven't looked up.

00:12:58.780 I was admitted in New York.

00:13:00.140 I'm now retired as a New York lawyer.

00:13:01.920 It's been a long time since I actually practiced.

00:13:04.140 I don't remember there being some ethical rule that says you cannot criticize your judge publicly or the D.A.

00:13:10.500 coming after you.

00:13:11.720 They seem to think that would be a no no as soon as we had an arraignment.

00:13:15.740 I don't think there's any chance they're going to be able to stop Trump from doing that.

00:13:19.820 And they shouldn't.

00:13:20.920 And I will defend his right to speak.

00:13:22.800 And even if there is an ethical rule, the ethical rule applies only to lawyers.

00:13:27.220 Last I looked, Donald Trump wasn't a lawyer.

00:13:29.720 That's what I said.

00:13:30.080 That's what I said.

00:13:30.840 He had the absolute right to walk out of that courtroom and say the judge should be impeached. 0.50

00:13:36.020 The judge is terrible.

00:13:37.540 He can say whatever he wants about that judge.

00:13:40.580 Don't ask me.

00:13:42.000 Ask Hamilton and Madison and Jefferson and Adams.

00:13:46.960 Ask all of them whether you can criticize a judge.

00:13:50.660 Jefferson spent half of his life criticizing judges, including his own cousin, John Marshall.

00:13:56.660 And, you know, you can't impose those kinds of restrictions, especially since the case will almost certainly not be tried in Manhattan.

00:14:04.580 And if it's tried, it's a year.

00:14:05.880 Why do you say that?

00:14:06.680 Why do you say that?

00:14:07.840 They'll move to change the venue for sure.

00:14:09.980 So the Trump team will move to change the venue to Staten Island or upstate New York, where I'm from, or potentially Long Island.

00:14:15.720 There's a few, some districts.

00:14:17.080 Not the Bronx.

00:14:17.440 Not the Bronx.

00:14:18.400 Not the Bronx.

00:14:19.300 No, no, no.

00:14:19.940 Not Brooklyn.

00:14:21.900 Right.

00:14:22.440 But that's where you're from.

00:14:24.180 So they'll move.

00:14:25.180 But won't this judge knee jerk say, no, we're not doing that? 0.60

00:14:29.120 It's not a matter of knee jerk.

00:14:30.620 The judge has to go home at night to dinner.

00:14:32.820 The judge has to meet his friends tomorrow.

00:14:35.320 He has to spend weekends.

00:14:36.460 No judge in New York City has the courage to give a verdict or a ruling that benefits Donald Trump.

00:14:44.780 They will be called, as I was called, a facilitator of Adolf Hitler. 0.90

00:14:50.100 So you're going to change the venue.

00:14:52.040 You're saying the judge, he won't even give him a change of venue because of the same backlash.

00:14:57.060 He won't give him the time of day.

00:14:59.500 He will give him no gag order only because he knows he's going to be reversed.

00:15:03.660 You know, normally judges are afraid of being reversed.

00:15:05.620 He's not in the Trump case.

00:15:07.800 The judge doesn't care.

00:15:09.120 He'll blame it on the appellate division.

00:15:11.100 He'll say, hey, I wanted to put Trump in jail.

00:15:14.360 I wanted to prevent him from running.

00:15:15.980 Don't blame me.

00:15:17.360 Let me ask a couple other questions.

00:15:19.200 Lots to get to.

00:15:20.840 Trump's railing about the judge suggesting his daughter worked for Kamala Harris.

00:15:25.620 A quick review.

00:15:26.660 We haven't found it solid.

00:15:28.340 Saw something from Gateway Pundit suggests she may have.

00:15:31.800 She may indeed have worked. 0.94

00:15:32.800 The judge's daughter may have worked for Kamala Harris.

00:15:35.000 That's not relevant.

00:15:36.640 OK, then secondly, there's a report by Paul Sperry in The New York Post.

00:15:40.240 He's a very good reporter, very in-depth investigative reporter who says that Bragg, we know that

00:15:45.100 he campaigned on all the times he sued Trump and so on.

00:15:47.820 But Paul Sperry reports that, quote, before recently locking her account, Alvin Bragg's wife, Jamila Pontenbragg, even bragged on Twitter that her husband was going to nail Trump on some unspecified felonies.

00:16:00.540 Why?

00:16:01.120 Because she felt Trump was racist.

00:16:04.240 Is that grounds for getting rid of this DA?

00:16:06.420 Yes.

00:16:06.900 But getting rid of the DA, what good will that do?

00:16:11.420 There'll be another assistant. 0.66

00:16:13.320 They'll persist in the case.

00:16:15.140 You have to get rid of Manhattan.

00:16:17.100 Manhattan is what can't be the locus of the DA, the judge or the jurors.

00:16:23.940 It can't be Bronx.

00:16:25.320 It can't be Brooklyn.

00:16:26.240 It has to be a place where the hatred of Trump is not so great that it will make people quite deliberately violate the law.

00:16:36.020 People have written to me saying, we know you're right on the First Amendment.

00:16:39.140 We know you're right on the Constitution. 0.96

00:16:41.260 Please shut the F up because you're helping Trump. 0.58

00:16:45.300 That's more important that you're helping Trump than the Constitution. 0.98

00:16:48.760 And I say, no, defending the Constitution is more important.

00:16:52.120 Megan, this is different than any case I've ever been involved in in my life.

00:16:55.180 Different than the O.J. Simpson case, different than Leona Helmsley case, different than the Klaus von Bülow case.

00:17:00.780 People didn't like me for those cases.

00:17:03.320 This is not like that.

00:17:05.380 People do not want to associate with you in any way if you perceived as doing anything that favors Donald Trump.

00:17:13.340 They think it's like favoring Adolf Hitler in the 1932 election.

00:17:17.420 That's the mindset.

00:17:18.860 People call it Trump derangement syndrome.

00:17:21.240 They are absolutely right.

00:17:23.240 I think the most rational people, the most rational people, let me give you an example.

00:17:26.820 Let's hypothetically consider that the judge is opposed to a gag order.

00:17:31.780 Who would be the first person you would go to to object to that?

00:17:34.460 The American Civil Liberties Union.

00:17:36.260 Do you think they're going to get involved?

00:17:37.720 You know how much contribution they lose if they actually went in there and defended Trump's right to free speech?

00:17:43.240 I have to tell you, I think they might have to do it.

00:17:45.340 But boy, they would do it with their nose closed.

00:17:47.600 They would do it losing sleep and they would do it losing money.

00:17:50.960 But that's the atmosphere, the toxic atmosphere.

00:17:54.680 And we have to recognize this.

00:17:56.880 The closest I come to this is the 1970s when I spent time in the Soviet Union defending Sakharov and Sharansky and dissidents.

00:18:05.180 And I saw what happened to lawyers who defended anti-Soviet dissidents.

00:18:10.640 They got locked up in the gulag.

00:18:12.020 They got deported.

00:18:13.420 They lost their jobs.

00:18:14.720 You mentioned O.J. Simpson and some of these, like, let's say, you know, with Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer when they were on trial.

00:18:20.220 The public absolutely believed in the case of like a Dahmer. 0.63

00:18:23.380 Yes, he did it.

00:18:24.060 We understand he did it.

00:18:25.060 He's got to have a fair trial.

00:18:26.260 But it's different because whether he did it is actually the very core of the question.

00:18:30.480 And you have to screen for jurors who have an open mind, at least, on proof.

00:18:34.080 What is the standard of proof?

00:18:35.100 Did they meet it?

00:18:35.920 Here, Trump walks into the jury with hatred of him, irrespective of whether he did this.

00:18:43.480 They'll already hate him.

00:18:45.720 That is a very unique circumstance.

00:18:48.660 I mean, maybe it's not unprecedented.

00:18:50.060 I'm sure you could find some defendants who were loathed upon walking into the jury room.

00:18:54.720 But this is a very strange and unprecedented situation.

00:18:57.980 This is also a vote for whether he's to be the next president.

00:19:03.720 And it's so tough.

00:19:05.640 I just want to say one word.

00:19:07.280 My book was the number one, number two bestseller on Amazon over the last two weekends.

00:19:12.300 You cannot buy a copy in an independent bookstore.

00:19:15.480 Try to buy Shakespeare and Company.

00:19:17.940 Try to go to Books and Books.

00:19:19.460 They will not sell a book called Get Trump, even if it's number one or number two on Amazon.

00:19:25.980 And that means it can't get on the Times bestseller list because the Times bestseller list requires that you have independent bookstores.

00:19:33.420 So it's the hatred goes beyond voting.

00:19:37.360 It goes beyond juries.

00:19:38.840 It goes beyond reading books.

00:19:41.040 You know, seders.

00:19:42.700 I'm going to a seder on Wednesday night without members of my family because they will not eat with me at a seder because I defended Donald Trump.

00:19:52.280 And you openly say you're not a Trump voter like you.

00:19:55.800 You've openly said many times you're not voting for Trump.

00:19:57.960 You didn't vote for Trump.

00:19:58.880 You don't want Trump to be president again.

00:20:00.600 You defend the Constitution.

00:20:01.460 All right.

00:20:01.560 But enough of that, because we've had that conversation many times.

00:20:03.360 I want to keep going.

00:20:05.300 There's an article today and there have been a lot of articles like this, but this is just one.

00:20:09.640 I think this is from The Atlantic.

00:20:10.660 Yes.

00:20:11.120 By David Graham.

00:20:12.260 Don't take your eye off Jack Smith.

00:20:14.220 Who's Jack Smith?

00:20:14.840 He's the special prosecutor appointed to look into the Mar-a-Lago documents and whether Trump obstructed justice in withholding those documents and on a broader level, whether he committed some crime in connection with January 6th.

00:20:26.560 That's what Jack Smith is investigating.

00:20:28.400 This is based off of The Washington Post reporting yesterday that said, according to The Washington Post, Trump was a lot more involved in preventing documents from being turned over to the National Archives and to the DOJ.

00:20:41.420 than we knew before, that Trump was telling others to mislead the government officials and that after the subpoena came in, Trump ignored multiple requests from the advisers to return the documents and actually went down there and looked himself and made sure documents were not turned over and so on and so forth.

00:20:59.560 Now, what this Atlantic article argues is, number one, this is not like Joe Biden with his documents in the garage and in the university setting at the UPenn or Mike Pence having some documents.

00:21:11.880 This is not like that because, number one, the documents Trump had are, quote, extremely sensitive, reportedly covering nuclear secrets and programs aimed at China and Iran.

00:21:21.080 That may matter because it is tougher to declassify nuclear secrets, even if you're a president, according to what I read.

00:21:27.240 Second, when the government asked Trump for the documents, he, unlike Biden and Pence, quoting here, refused to hand them over.

00:21:33.580 This truculence is why the FBI ended up making the unannounced search.

00:21:37.060 And then they talk about what he did even after the subpoena hit him.

00:21:40.160 He reportedly tried to obfuscate.

00:21:42.700 The Democrats are excited about this case and kind of like they're interested in brag, but they love Jack Smith and they love the Mar-a-Lago investigation.

00:21:50.820 What do you think of that?

00:21:51.640 Yeah, well, they're absolutely right.

00:21:53.720 The Jack Smith investigation is a much, much, much more serious one.

00:21:57.400 It's the only one where if the facts are as they believe them to be, then there is a crime.

00:22:02.700 Jack Smith must be furious at Alvin Bragg, though, for bringing the weakest case first and leaving the strongest case for last.

00:22:11.540 Look, I am not a Trump supporter.

00:22:13.380 If Trump committed any crimes that anybody else would be prosecuted for, he should be prosecuted.

00:22:19.880 He's not above, he's not below the law.

00:22:22.280 The problem with the Mar-a-Lago case is Trump may claim, his lawyers haven't said it in court, but they may claim that all of this was declassified by Trump before he left office.

00:22:31.980 That becomes a question of fact.

00:22:33.900 But I have no doubt that the Mar-a-Lago case is the strongest.

00:22:37.340 In my book, Get Trump, I go through all four of the cases and I rank them in order.

00:22:41.700 Bragg's is the least serious.

00:22:44.540 Mar-a-Lago is the most serious.

00:22:46.020 After that comes Washington, D.C., which he'll win on because he used the words patriotically and peacefully, and that puts him within the First Amendment.

00:22:56.980 The Atlanta-Georgia case, he'll win because he used the word on tape.

00:23:00.820 Fine.

00:23:01.340 Fine doesn't mean manufacture.

00:23:02.780 It means it's there.

00:23:04.160 Look for it.

00:23:05.020 So the strongest case clearly is Florida.

00:23:07.700 The weakest case clearly in New York.

00:23:10.000 Weakest case goes first.

00:23:11.740 It taints all the rest of the cases.

00:23:14.140 And so I think the only defenses he has in Florida are, first, did he declassify?

00:23:20.140 And second, he will make the argument that, although there may not be similarities between what Trump did and what Biden did and what Pence did,

00:23:29.240 you can't indict one former president for classified material unless you go after the others as well.

00:23:36.100 That's a political argument.

00:23:37.880 I'm sorry, but what about Hillary Clinton? 0.96

00:23:39.440 I mean, Hillary Clinton destroyed, destroyed information, federally subpoenaed emails and devices to hide evidence. 1.00

00:23:48.880 So it's like, I know it's you get mocked.

00:23:51.120 What about Hillary? 0.99

00:23:51.780 What about Hillary? 0.99

00:23:53.280 She destroyed documents under subpoena and there was she was given a total pass.

00:23:59.200 If we want to do this, Alan, I get it with the book.

00:24:03.200 Put that down.

00:24:04.220 If we want to do this, we can do this all day long.

00:24:08.400 And there's an you know, in that piece by Paul Sperry, he goes through.

00:24:13.140 Let's see what a D.A. in Tennessee might do.

00:24:15.600 Let's see what a D.A. in Arkansas might do to the Clintons right now with their you know, many people believe this is a corrupt operation.

00:24:21.780 The Clinton Foundation like I I get it's bad to ignore a subpoena, never mind not comply with it or say you have when you haven't.

00:24:30.080 But why didn't anybody give a damn when she did it? 0.95

00:24:32.540 Keep going.

00:24:33.540 No, look, I agree.

00:24:34.800 I have a chapter in the book.

00:24:36.000 I had an op ed in The Wall Street Journal called What About Ism?

00:24:39.760 What about ism?

00:24:40.680 It's a good argument.

00:24:42.320 What about ism?

00:24:43.200 What about Hillary Clinton?

00:24:44.740 Hillary Clinton was walking around with a hat, basically saying what about ism?

00:24:49.180 That's a legitimate argument, particularly when a man is running for president of the United States against politicians who are trying to prosecute him.

00:24:57.240 What about ism is a good argument.

00:24:59.740 I make it.

00:25:00.320 I make it very strongly in my book, Get Trump.

00:25:02.580 That's an argument that doesn't work legally.

00:25:05.040 It only works politically.

00:25:06.160 You can't win a case by going to court and say they didn't prosecute somebody else.

00:25:09.860 But it really works politically.

00:25:11.680 And I think in my book, I pose two tests before you can prosecute a presidential candidate or a former president.

00:25:19.520 One is the Nixon test.

00:25:21.020 The people in his own party want to see him prosecuted.

00:25:24.000 They did with Nixon.

00:25:25.060 The other is the Hillary Clinton test.

00:25:26.960 If they didn't prosecute Hillary Clinton, they ruined her chances of becoming president. 0.99

00:25:31.860 When Comey got up and made his ill-advised statement, but in his ill-advised statement, he said she was careless and reckless, but nobody else has been previously prosecuted for that.

00:25:42.260 That's the standard.

00:25:43.520 If it doesn't meet that standard, you can't apply it to Donald Trump.

00:25:46.800 That's the thesis of my book, Get Trump.

00:25:49.200 What about ism?

00:25:50.100 You have to have to compare some comparisons when you're going after the president and a future president.

00:25:56.700 I know you've been raising that point, too, which is very good, which is not only is it the first time a former president's been indicted, but this is the presumptive nominee almost at this point.

00:26:06.900 I mean, he's certainly the leading candidate for the next presidential race on the GOP side.

00:26:12.040 That's what's made and being indicted by an opponent, a political opponent, somebody who's on the other side.

00:26:16.860 So but here's my last question, you know, because as somebody who's, I mean, truly one of the most respected lawyers in America, how bad is that?

00:26:24.480 How I worry.

00:26:25.720 I'm scared right now.

00:26:26.820 I'm worried for our country.

00:26:28.340 There's a reason nobody's ever crossed these lines.

00:26:30.420 And it's not that no other president or leading candidate for the nomination has ever come close to a legal line.

00:26:37.740 That's not the reason this has never happened before.

00:26:39.860 They have sicked so much firepower on Trump from the moment he got elected from the impeachments and Russia, Russia, Russia, and the number of lawsuits that have been brought against him.

00:26:51.160 And then since he left office since January 6th, then all the special special counsel and local counsel and D.A.'s looking in.

00:26:57.260 There's no question they'd find something and they would have done that on probably Barack Obama and certainly Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and so on.

00:27:05.340 So I'm really worried about where this is going, and yet I can't say it would be foolish for the Republicans to do it, to respond in kind.

00:27:15.380 Well, I hope they don't do it.

00:27:17.140 The greatest attorney general in American history and one of the greatest justices was Robert Jackson, our chief prosecutor at Nuremberg.

00:27:24.140 He was as scared as you are.

00:27:25.760 He said any prosecutor can rummage through the hundreds of statute books and the thousands of regulations and find something to pick on somebody with, and that would be the end of the rule of law in America.

00:27:41.240 He knew because he was at Nuremberg.

00:27:44.020 He knew because he prosecuted people during the worst times of American history and during the Second World War.

00:27:52.200 He served in the Supreme Court.

00:27:53.440 Listen to Robert Jackson, a centrist conservative, a Democrat to be sure, but he warned about this day, and this is a day that I never thought in my 60 years of practicing law I would ever experience in America.

00:28:09.820 I am scared for America.

00:28:12.080 I am 85 years old.

00:28:13.660 I'm going to devote the rest of my life to defending the Constitution against my friends, fellow Democrats, liberals and leftists, because they are the ones today who are the new McCarthyites, who are posing the greatest danger to liberty, freedom and democracy. 0.59

00:28:30.560 And that worries me greatly.

00:28:32.200 And I'm glad you're on my side, Megan.

00:28:35.400 85 years young.

00:28:37.220 I always listen to you, and I think this is how you stay young.

00:28:40.460 You keep your mind active.

00:28:42.160 Keep yourself active.

00:28:43.280 You turn out a book every couple of months.

00:28:45.060 You stay talking.

00:28:46.340 You stay interested and interesting.

00:28:49.500 You're a role model, Alan Dershowitz, in many ways.

00:28:51.920 Thanks for being here.

00:28:52.600 Thank you so much, Megan.

00:28:55.220 Up next, National Review's Charlie Cook, who's no Trump fan, but has got some serious problems with what's going down against him right now.

00:29:04.080 Stand by for that, and later, Rick Grinnell.

00:29:06.440 Your business doesn't move in a straight line.

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00:29:39.760 Welcome back to the Megan Kelly Show.

00:29:41.400 Here with me now, Charles C.W. Cook, Senior Writer for National Review and host of the Charles C.W. Cook Podcast.

00:29:48.100 Charles, we are awaiting the actual arraignment at this hour, but we expect it to be a 34-count indictment based on all the alleged falsifications of business records.

00:30:00.920 We still believe at this hour that it stems from the Stormy Daniels Hush money that was paid by Michael Cohen.

00:30:07.560 Trump has said before he didn't know about it, and Michael Cohen's word is going to be very important in this investigation.

00:30:14.480 He's a convicted felon and not a reliable man.

00:30:18.580 We've heard reports that they're going to have business documents that may support Michael Cohen's word,

00:30:22.820 but the other star witness is a porn star who's been completely lionized by the media now.

00:30:27.380 But so far as I can tell, Stormy Daniels' greatest accomplishment has been several movies whose names I cannot repeat in polite company.

00:30:33.760 And this is a person who slept with a married man and then threatened to expose him right before a presidential election and then took a payoff to keep quiet about it.

00:30:44.440 So she's the hero. Michael Cohen, convicted felon, is the hero.

00:30:48.080 And Donald Trump is going to be the villain, both in Alvin Bragg's telling of this whole thing and in that of the media.

00:30:55.400 So how do you how do you see what's going on today?

00:30:58.200 Well, I think it's a profound mistake.

00:31:01.380 I think it's a mistake specifically for Alvin Bragg to have brought this case.

00:31:07.300 And I think it's a mistake more broadly for a prosecutor who belongs to and is backed by one of the two major parties in the country to have given in to pressure and sought this indictment.

00:31:23.640 A great deal of the conversations that I have heard about this take place at this abstract level.

00:31:32.860 Are you pro-Trump? Are you anti-Trump?

00:31:36.540 Should Trump or any other former president or prospective president be above the law?

00:31:43.620 But those aren't really the right questions to ask.

00:31:47.340 The right question to ask is, is this a strong case?

00:31:51.180 Would this case have been brought against anyone else?

00:31:54.700 And I think that the answer is obviously no.

00:31:59.060 I wouldn't say that if there was sufficient evidence that Donald Trump had committed a serious crime, that he should be let off because he was president. 0.93

00:32:08.040 That would be ridiculous. That would create a bizarre incentive structure.

00:32:11.760 But this case, which has specific facts and is circumscribed by specific laws, is weak.

00:32:18.980 And I think we all know it.

00:32:22.100 The predecessor to Alvin Bragg, Cy Vance, dropped this case because it was weak.

00:32:29.660 In fact, the New York Times reported that the same people, the same office that has brought this case against Trump, considered for a while bringing a case against Stormy Daniels on the grounds that she was extorting Trump, which she did.

00:32:46.280 Both sides actually did what they've been accused of here morally.

00:32:49.000 Donald Trump did cheat on his wife with this porn star, and this porn star did extract money from Donald Trump to keep it quiet.

00:32:57.880 The question is whether it is the sort of crime for which a normal person would be prosecuted and whether the case is likely to stand up in court.

00:33:07.920 And I think the answer is no.

00:33:10.240 So there are statute of limitations problems.

00:33:13.100 The legal theory on which this is based, it's really convoluted and, I think, pretextual.

00:33:19.660 So, you know, do you want to open this Pandora's box for this rinky-dink crime that may well be thrown out? 1.00

00:33:28.660 The answer to me is obviously no.

00:33:30.980 It's open. Pandora's box is opened.

00:33:33.320 It's official.

00:33:34.320 It's happened.

00:33:35.220 The indictment, now the arraignment, the official charging, the fingerprinting, the arrest.

00:33:41.320 It's happened.

00:33:42.380 And there's no turning back now.

00:33:44.400 There's no turning back.

00:33:45.660 All we have left is the restraint of Republican prosecutors at the state and federal level.

00:33:53.420 That's it.

00:33:54.680 Because if they don't exercise that restraint, and I'm not even sure, Charlie, how I feel about whether I want them to.

00:34:00.120 So these Democrats don't tend to learn lessons unless you punish them, unless they exercise the kind of restraint Alvin Bragg refused to.

00:34:10.000 It's all bets are off when it comes to the judicial harassment of one's political opponents.

00:34:15.760 Yeah, I mean, we have had instances in our past in which a sitting president has used the law to imprison one of his rivals.

00:34:32.960 Woodrow Wilson did this using the Espionage Act to Eugene Depps, who was a socialist candidate in the 1910s.

00:34:41.500 But we look back, or at least I hope we do, on that incident with a great deal of regret.

00:34:47.960 It's one of the arguments against the Espionage Act.

00:34:51.420 It's actually still on the books, but presumably would not be used quite in that way.

00:34:59.160 The fact that we are back in this place is regrettable, and it is worrying.

00:35:06.340 And I'm in two minds on your point about retaliation, Megan.

00:35:11.920 On the one hand, I'm with Alan Dershowitz, your previous guest.

00:35:15.540 I hope that we don't enter into a cycle of retribution here.

00:35:19.940 I hope this stops here.

00:35:22.780 But it cannot be the case that this is now a factor in our politics that is only used in one direction.

00:35:33.220 We've seen a great deal of that over the last 40 or 50 years, that only one party gets to use this law or that law or this tactic.

00:35:44.680 And after a while, the other side rationally says, well, no way, which was, of course, why Arvin Bragg shouldn't have done this in the first instance.

00:35:54.720 A good example against my instinct, against Alan Dershowitz's instinct, would be the special counsel law, which was only repealed, I believe, once Republicans had used it against Democrats in the late 1990s.

00:36:15.120 That did demonstrate to both sides that there were flaws in that approach to federal law enforcement and led to a bipartisan effort to get rid of it.

00:36:29.600 But, you know, we don't want to live through that, even if that would be the right course, even if the only point at which this will become obvious to everyone involved in our politics is for some sort of retaliation.

00:36:41.720 And we're not going to enjoy living through that. And I really wish we hadn't started this process.

00:36:46.400 I just, you know, it's like I. I remember when Trump first got elected, there was this Twitter account that I then followed that would document the norms he was breaching.

00:36:56.660 You know, some of them actually were breached and some of them were made up.

00:36:59.660 And you look at what these Democrats have done in terms of the norms, right, trying, trying to get rid of the filibuster in the Senate, trying to add extra states, right, trying talking openly about packing the Supreme Court with extra justices and disobeying Supreme Court rulings that they choose not to follow because they find them upsetting.

00:37:22.720 You know, the Merrick Garland sicking the DOJ on parents who showed up to object to covid protocols or critical race theory and then leaking it to The New York Times, leaking, you know, private details about criminal investigations and so on to The New York Times while trying to maintain a moral high ground.

00:37:38.820 These all these things that they that they've changed, all these norms that never should have been crossed, that have been crossed.

00:37:47.940 And now this and now this. And I just think, you know, what look at what happened on the judicial filibuster.

00:37:54.040 They're talking about the Senate filibuster. Now, the Democrats want to get rid of the Senate filibuster.

00:37:57.160 But look what happened on the on the, you know, with respect to legislation.

00:38:01.100 Well, look what happened with judges. The Democrats got rid of it under Harry Reid for for lower federal court judges.

00:38:05.840 Judges. And you remember Mitch McConnell standing up there and saying, you will rue the day you did this because you will not always be in charge of this chamber.

00:38:14.100 And it was exactly the right warning. That's exactly right. And sure enough, when the Republicans took control, they got rid of it for Supreme Court.

00:38:20.800 And that's that's that's how Mitch McConnell got three justices under President Trump on there.

00:38:24.820 Like it's the only thing the Democrats understand. Now, it hasn't led them to stand down.

00:38:30.580 It's because it's gone even more escalatory to where they're not talking about getting rid of it on the Senate and legislation.

00:38:35.840 But I don't see what's the answer for Mitch McConnell to have sat back and said, OK, I'll be the one.

00:38:40.680 I'll be the adult in the room. You know, we're in kind of the same position right now.

00:38:45.800 Well, you're speaking my language now, because as you said at the top of the segment, I am not a fan of Donald Trump's.

00:38:52.340 And I've been as willing as anybody to call him out for his excesses and his breaking of norms.

00:38:57.880 What drives me absolutely crazy, though, is the idea that if you do that, as I have, that you are supposed to remain blind to the many norm breaking activities in which the Democratic Party and its intellectual adherents have engaged in as well.

00:39:18.040 I mean, again, I agree with Alan Dershowitz here, the willingness to violate constitutional provisions and constitutional norms that we have seen as the direct result of Donald Trump having been legitimately elected president has been absolutely astounding.

00:39:37.960 The number of times I have heard people who are supposed to be liberals, who call themselves liberals, arguing that, say, to plead the fifth is a sign of guilt, which they would not have been caught dead saying in, say, 1990.

00:39:54.560 The number of federal institutions that I have seen targeted over the last five or six years, the Electoral College, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the filibuster is nothing short of astonishing.

00:40:09.980 And even with this president, the current president of the United States, Joe Biden, it is not an excuse.

00:40:19.040 It is not exculpatory to say, but Donald Trump, if the president of the United States, as he has, repeatedly ignores Congress.

00:40:30.120 Last year, the president of the United States issued an executive order to forgive student loans without Congress.

00:40:40.540 This was a flagrant violation of separation of powers.

00:40:43.720 And I assume and I hope it will be upheld as such at the Supreme Court.

00:40:47.300 But Donald Trump does not enter into it.

00:40:50.300 The year before, President Biden was told by the Supreme Court that Congress had to manage any eviction moratorium.

00:41:00.080 He did it anyway.

00:41:01.480 This has been a pattern with him.

00:41:05.600 So, yeah, we do not have a problem with just one party or just one person with norm breaking in this country.

00:41:11.820 And it's just bizarre to me that when this is pointed out, these violations are deemed somehow magically different.

00:41:21.240 And not just norm breaking, law breaking, law breaking.

00:41:25.280 You know, we could go back to Hillary Clinton.

00:41:26.700 I did that briefly with Alan.

00:41:28.300 But just you don't even have to go back that far.

00:41:30.640 You know, take a look at the response to the BLM riots and the total pass that was given to those law breakers.

00:41:37.300 In fact, cities like New York are now cutting those people checks to apologize for the law enforcement that did manage to take place during those riots.

00:41:47.120 You know, you could go down sanctuary cities. 0.94

00:41:49.860 Complete, complete ignorance.

00:41:52.960 The decision to ignore federal law on people who cross our border illegally and are found living in these cities.

00:42:00.260 They just won't obey.

00:42:01.460 They won't obey the law.

00:42:02.260 They won't cooperate with federal law enforcement.

00:42:03.920 So no one's going to look at them as this party that actually deeply cares about upholding the law.

00:42:11.220 The only reason they suddenly care about upholding the law is because there's a man named Donald Trump who right now is crushing the polls on his way toward becoming the Republican nominee for the second time.

00:42:22.620 And there's a faction of the Democratic Party that believes if we indict him, he won't be able to do it.

00:42:29.700 And there's a faction of the Democratic Party that believes if we indict him, it'll make him more likely to be the opponent to Joe Biden and we can beat him more easily.

00:42:37.880 The motivations are not entirely the same.

00:42:40.900 But as Alan Dershowitz says, there is one thing they're unified on, and that is get Trump.

00:42:45.100 Yeah, and I think it's important, the point you just made about lawbreaking and ignoring the law to this case.

00:42:57.000 Alvin Bragg is quite famously the sort of prosecutor that lets all manner of crimes that I think most Americans would want to see harshly prosecuted go.

00:43:07.060 Now, if we were talking here about someone who had come in and was an adherent of, you know, the broken windows theory and said, all of the laws on the books will be enforced.

00:43:17.620 In all circumstances, I am going to go after alleged criminals.

00:43:24.040 Nothing will be left alone.

00:43:27.220 Fine.

00:43:28.600 I would still think this case was extremely weak, but it would be comprehensible.

00:43:35.000 Alvin Bragg is the opposite.

00:43:37.060 You know, I mean, I joked the other day that, ironically enough, if Donald Trump had actually shot someone on Fifth Avenue, his famous line from 2015,

00:43:47.740 Alvin Bragg probably wouldn't have indicted him.

00:43:50.500 Alvin Bragg does not seem particularly bothered by violent crime.

00:43:54.660 He does not seem particularly bothered by serious crime.

00:43:59.540 And yet he's brought this case, a case that was rejected by his predecessor, a case that is so weak that I've been reading about,

00:44:06.960 about its weakness in the New York Times and listening to people talk about its weakness on NPR.

00:44:14.920 And I think that does breed and should breed a certain contempt towards the law and towards the way that figures such as Alvin Bragg see it,

00:44:25.740 which is as a means to single out certain people and make their lives pretty difficult.

00:44:34.820 Alvin Bragg ran for his current position, promising to get Donald Trump.

00:44:41.340 He didn't say for what.

00:44:43.680 That is a Soviet mentality. 0.80

00:44:46.880 Again, if there is a strong case against Donald Trump in any state or the federal level, in any circumstance, so be it.

00:44:56.160 I hold no brief for him.

00:44:57.720 You said he's likely to be the next Republican nominee.

00:44:59.860 I sincerely hope not.

00:45:02.080 If anything, my incentives run the other way.

00:45:04.500 I should not be on your show defending Trump from Alvin Bragg. 0.96

00:45:08.220 I should be here saying, yeah, look, the guy's a criminal. 0.97

00:45:10.960 Drop him. 0.87

00:45:11.980 But I don't want to live in a country that hues to Lavrenti barriers line.

00:45:17.420 You show me the man and I'll show you the crime.

00:45:20.060 I want to live in a country that is truly neutral on this question.

00:45:25.240 And what Alvin Bragg has done here is not neutral.

00:45:27.580 The stats we pulled him yesterday, Alvin Bragg has downgraded 52 percent of the felonies in New York City to misdemeanors.

00:45:36.180 Fifty two percent he's downgraded from felonies to misdemeanors.

00:45:39.960 In this case, he's taken an alleged misdemeanor and upgraded it to a felony.

00:45:44.220 Of the felonies he did choose to try to prosecute, he only won convictions in 51 percent of the cases.

00:45:51.940 Forty nine percent of the cases he failed to win a conviction.

00:45:55.680 And by the way, a conviction is also considered one when you enter into a plea.

00:46:00.160 So you don't actually have to win in front of a jury.

00:46:02.200 You just have to get a plea deal.

00:46:03.600 He was unable to do that in forty nine percent of the cases brought.

00:46:07.320 But it's because this guy doesn't put any elbow grease into it.

00:46:11.140 His heart is not in prosecuting crime unless, again, your name is Donald Trump.

00:46:16.040 Now, Jack Smith, the special prosecutor, he's looking into Trump in Washington, D.C.

00:46:19.640 If he decides to bring charges on Mar-a-Lago, that's going to go before a D.C. jury.

00:46:24.140 Guess how that's likely to go?

00:46:25.560 I mean, it's I just think that even Trump's critics are going to understand there's something really fundamentally unfair about what's being done to him.

00:46:35.940 I think, Charles, it's why they now the Trump campaign is now saying they've raised eight million dollars since charges were announced on Thursday, since they said they had an indictment, eight million.

00:46:48.540 And they're having people, brand new donors, huge portion, I think 25 percent of those are from brand new donors who have never donated to Trump before.

00:46:55.480 He's been in politics now how many years officially since 15 when he declared that this is stirring up sentiment, even from people who aren't naturally inclined to support this guy.

00:47:08.780 Yeah, and that case bothers me as well, just because it seems that the enforcement of that law is selective.

00:47:17.440 And I would counsel people against saying Donald Trump has been targeted by Alvin Bragg, therefore he should be the nominee.

00:47:26.100 I mean, as a human being, I do understand the screw you instinct.

00:47:30.660 But what Trump did in this case, although it's not criminal, is still morally reprehensible.

00:47:36.760 And I think he denies it.

00:47:37.760 We should say that for the record.

00:47:39.260 Well, he denies it, but he also paid her off.

00:47:42.180 And if you had said to any Republican in the late 1990s, you're more or less likely to vote for the guy who slept with a porn star while his wife was at home with their child, I think they would have said less.

00:47:55.700 And I think they would have been right to say yes.

00:47:59.020 So I think there's a logical jump to therefore we should have Trump.

00:48:04.240 But people should be outraged by this decision, certainly.

00:48:06.680 I want to talk to you about the politics of it, because the shift is noticeable.

00:48:12.300 The ground is shifting beneath our feet by the second.

00:48:16.160 And actually, Trump is also moving by the second.

00:48:19.200 He's on his way right now.

00:48:20.620 We're an hour away from the arraignment, and he should be departing for the courthouse within moments.

00:48:27.300 We'll bring it to you, and we'll talk about the politics with Charlie.

00:48:29.880 And we're going to take a stab at some of the media reaction, which has just been absurd, the coverage of the past 24 hours.

00:48:37.100 We'll go there next as Charlie stays with us and then Rick Grinnell up in just a bit.

00:48:45.700 It's now one o'clock Eastern time at the time we are doing this show live.

00:48:51.100 It'll be recorded.

00:48:51.960 It'll be released later as a podcast.

00:48:53.400 Trump is getting ready to leave Trump Tower and to head downtown to the New York State Supreme Courthouse, where he will be arrested.

00:49:01.860 We are told he will be fingerprinted.

00:49:03.800 We were told by Michael Isikoff in reporting for Yahoo that he will not have to do a mugshot.

00:49:10.100 There are reports that that actually is standard in a case like this in which he doesn't actually have to turn himself in.

00:49:16.540 So not sure if that's special treatment in the way you might consider it.

00:49:20.940 We are already told that he's not going to be handcuffed.

00:49:24.320 Of course, this has all been arranged between the Secret Service and local authorities, and there's no reason to handcuff Trump.

00:49:30.040 It would be actually dangerous for Trump to handcuff him as the former president of the United States.

00:49:34.040 People actually do want to take out presidents sitting informers.

00:49:37.800 So in any event, he'll be under good protection by the Secret Service.

00:49:40.580 He'll head from Trump Tower.

00:49:41.660 There's a gathering, as you might imagine, outside of Trump Tower.

00:49:44.500 Now it's growing by the second.

00:49:46.160 An ambulance is up front.

00:49:47.240 That's standard, just in case.

00:49:48.520 And he'll get into a motorcade and head south.

00:49:51.880 The traffic's going to be absolutely brutal.

00:49:53.940 Hopefully, he'll have some sort of a pass on the traffic.

00:49:57.180 They'll let him go on the shoulder because he's really got an important date to keep.

00:50:02.920 Man, I just had a flashback to when I went to meet with Trump nine months after he began his weird attacks on me.

00:50:09.600 And just getting to Trump Tower is such a nightmare on a regular day.

00:50:11.940 The Trump Tower traffic all around it.

00:50:13.880 It's right smack dab in the middle of shopping, the shopping district on Fifth Ave.

00:50:17.420 He can't get in and out easily on a regular day.

00:50:20.180 Never mind a day like this.

00:50:22.080 Downtown at the courthouse, he'll walk into that New York State Supreme Charles.

00:50:26.100 And I practiced there many times, for many years, while I was a New York lawyer.

00:50:30.280 And they have chiseled in the marble above the columns the following.

00:50:37.480 It's actually sort of a messed up, but it's an attempt to quote George Washington.

00:50:41.080 And it reads, the true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government.

00:50:46.900 The actual George Washington quote was the due administration of justice.

00:50:51.460 So they'll walk in and we'll see whether this is the true administration of justice, whether this really is a case that Alvin Bragg would have brought against anyone.

00:51:00.160 A case he previously had rejected himself, whether Trump can get a fair trial in front of a Manhattan, not just New York City.

00:51:08.720 That's five boroughs.

00:51:09.560 This is the borough of Manhattan, which went 87 percent for Joe Biden, whether he can get a trial in Munster in front of a jury of his peers and whether the judge and the jurors ultimately who will sit for this case if asked.

00:51:22.000 Can put aside partisan politics and the enormous pressures that come when you have anything to do with Donald Trump, when you come into his orbit at all to actually do the true administration of justice or whether that firmest pillar of good government has already taken a serious ding thanks to Alvin Bragg and is headed for many more.

00:51:42.680 Um, can we spend a minute on media?

00:51:47.480 They're back at it.

00:51:48.980 They're back at it.

00:51:50.160 It's Trump wall to wall on CNN, on MS and elsewhere.

00:51:56.080 And I get it.

00:51:56.860 This is a big story.

00:51:57.760 So, you know, to some extent, I'll give him a pass.

00:51:59.940 But even last week, you know, they had started it.

00:52:02.780 They see an opportunity to grow their failing ratings, CNN in particular.

00:52:06.120 And we've put together just a slate, just a short montage, giving you a flavor of how the coverage went yesterday as he got in his plane and traveled.

00:52:17.060 Watch.

00:52:18.600 I think that looks like the president's plane.

00:52:21.280 We are seeing former President Trump's plane land here.

00:52:24.360 We see the Trump plane taxiing now.

00:52:27.080 There he is.

00:52:27.940 So there he is.

00:52:28.760 He looked like such a solitary, somber figure there.

00:52:33.880 What does that tell you, that body language?

00:52:35.520 Much more resigned.

00:52:37.020 As we watch Donald Trump's limo drive on the FDR.

00:52:41.940 This is actually the street where we expect the former president to drive.

00:52:45.740 He will go in through that door.

00:52:48.120 Once he enters those doors, Jake, he is under arrest.

00:52:53.300 They really did try to turn it into the O.J. Simpson white bronco.

00:52:57.700 You know, we've got him.

00:52:59.100 They hired a boat to sit on the Hudson.

00:53:01.880 Or maybe it was the East River to try to get a picture.

00:53:04.760 And they did of his plane.

00:53:06.600 It's beyond.

00:53:09.460 Yeah.

00:53:09.760 And I think there's a couple of things going on there, Megan.

00:53:12.980 And the first one is that the press understands and has always understood that Trump is ratings

00:53:19.640 gold.

00:53:21.200 And I think this is one reason why many of us just don't believe that they think of Donald

00:53:30.120 Trump, what they say they think of Donald Trump.

00:53:34.380 Because if you really, truly believed that he was a threat to the foundation of the Republic,

00:53:41.540 from which it could never recover, you would not do what the press has done right from the

00:53:47.140 moment he came down, that escalator, which is to obsessively cover every single thing that

00:53:52.820 he does, to the point at which they were in 2015 and 16 covering, sometimes for up to an

00:54:00.140 hour, an empty podium.

00:54:02.540 Yep.

00:54:03.160 The second thing here is that the media is hugely biased.

00:54:09.520 There's no point pretending otherwise.

00:54:11.480 All of the surveys confirm this.

00:54:15.120 All of the donation and contribution reports that are put out by the FEC confirm this.

00:54:22.640 It is located in urban areas.

00:54:26.840 And it is, by and large, full of people who have wanted to see this for a long time.

00:54:33.960 Now, again, there is nothing per se wrong with a president or prospective president being

00:54:39.960 indicted.

00:54:40.440 It is not in and of itself the sign of a banana republic, but there are many people in the

00:54:45.480 press, as there are many people in the Democratic Party, whose view is that the United States

00:54:51.940 or one of the states or cities within it has to get Trump on something, and it doesn't particularly

00:54:57.620 matter what it is.

00:54:59.280 There was a freestanding, free-floating desire to see the guy booked, to see him arrested,

00:55:06.500 to see him in handcuffs, to see him in an orange jumpsuit.

00:55:10.540 And most of that's not going to happen, literally.

00:55:13.440 But figuratively, it is now.

00:55:15.440 And these people are very excited about it, because they've wanted it for years.

00:55:20.460 And they've wanted it independently of the details.

00:55:26.360 They wanted it long before they knew about this case.

00:55:28.780 They wanted it long before Trump did what he did after the 2020 election, which was a

00:55:33.060 profound disgrace for which he should have been impeached.

00:55:35.820 They wanted it 10 minutes after he first sat down in the Oval Office.

00:55:39.980 The first two years, we sometimes forget this with all this happened since, but the first

00:55:43.960 two years of Trump's tenure were marked by this fantasy that he had colluded with Vladimir

00:55:51.540 Putin to steal the 2016 election, that this would be discovered, and that he would end

00:55:57.040 up in Alcatraz.

00:55:59.700 And finally, albeit on the flimsiest and most dangerous of pretexts, it's happening.

00:56:05.600 At least it's happening in part.

00:56:07.300 And the press cannot contain itself.

00:56:08.760 And they are, if not likely, they are at risk, and I say that sardonically, of making

00:56:16.440 him the Republican nominee once again as a result.

00:56:19.620 Yes.

00:56:20.120 I want to get to that.

00:56:21.300 It occurred to me, watching the press just salivating over this, that they are as out of

00:56:26.200 touch with the mood of most Americans as Bud Light is with the desires of its customer

00:56:33.300 base. 0.98

00:56:34.300 This is ridiculous. 0.98

00:56:35.500 Dylan Mulvaney cans being released. 0.74

00:56:38.060 I think the ABC News poll showed 60% of Americans are not in favor of this indictment.

00:56:44.780 All those who are, are Democrats, hard partisans, and the few Republicans who consider themselves

00:56:50.740 never congress.

00:56:51.820 Sorry to interrupt you.

00:56:52.420 Can I just add something that was fascinating about that poll?

00:56:55.120 Was it 60% of Americans were against this, but 72% of Americans thought that it was nakedly

00:57:00.700 political, which tells you that there are some Americans who are in favor of this who think

00:57:04.900 it's nakedly political.

00:57:06.220 And that's the problem, isn't it?

00:57:07.380 Yeah, they're all about getting Trump.

00:57:11.240 It's the theme of the show.

00:57:12.700 So let's talk about what they're doing.

00:57:14.780 There was a very interesting article in Politico today in which it was sort of a warning, I

00:57:21.940 thought, to Democrats, to media that's getting drunk again on the Trump wine.

00:57:26.600 It tastes so good.

00:57:27.800 The numbers are going back up.

00:57:29.980 CNN was in the basement.

00:57:31.180 I mean, it still is on its ratings.

00:57:33.500 And here's their savior.

00:57:34.880 He's back.

00:57:36.000 So Politico, a couple of quotes I wrote down, uh, the rights of an uneasy deja vu has set

00:57:43.120 in.

00:57:43.660 We've seen this story before quoting some top Democrats, uh, that the Democrats believe

00:57:49.000 Donald Trump will win the nomination and that he's the easiest to beat.

00:57:53.440 So, yay.

00:57:54.800 However, they go on to point out he did win more votes in 2020 than he won in 2016.

00:58:03.140 Joe Biden is about to turn 82 years old.

00:58:07.040 Kamala Harris is extremely unpopular.

00:58:09.940 Uh, and then a quote in there, I think it was speaking of never Trumpers, a guy from

00:58:14.660 the Lincoln project, uh, Rick, uh, what's his name?

00:58:19.680 Klein.

00:58:20.220 What's Rick's last name?

00:58:21.040 The guy in the Lincoln project in any event, Wilson.

00:58:23.140 Thank you.

00:58:24.680 Media.

00:58:25.320 The media is covering Donald Trump wall to wall.

00:58:27.700 The Democrats are overconfident.

00:58:30.880 Trump's opponents are struggling with how to handle him in their messaging.

00:58:35.400 I think all three of those are fair points, Charlie, and we're walking down a path that

00:58:42.620 feels very familiar if you lived through this in 2015, 16.

00:58:47.840 Yes, I agree.

00:58:49.320 And I'll say it again.

00:58:50.340 If you truly believe that Donald Trump were a threat to the Republic, um, then you wouldn't

00:58:56.540 behave like this.

00:58:57.300 And you certainly wouldn't hope that he would be the nominee.

00:58:59.680 We have a two party system and that means that anyone who manages to secure the nomination

00:59:05.380 of one of those two major parties has a reasonable chance of being president of the United States.

00:59:11.960 I don't want the Republican party to choose Donald Trump.

00:59:14.640 I don't want them to choose him because I think he'll lose, but mostly I don't want them

00:59:18.440 to choose him because of his conduct while he was in office, uh, while he's been out of

00:59:23.680 office, his lies about the election and so on.

00:59:25.520 I don't need to go through it all for your listeners.

00:59:27.160 They're probably familiar with what I think.

00:59:28.700 I think to bet on the idea that Donald Trump would, as a matter of certainty, lose the 1.00

00:59:36.900 2024 election were he to be nominated would be idiotic. 0.99

00:59:41.060 I mean, as you said, Joe Biden is, uh, nearly 82 years old. 0.96

00:59:45.960 Um, Donald Trump won more, uh, votes in 2020 than he did in 2016.

00:59:53.240 Um, also we may have a recession next year.

00:59:56.520 When Joe Biden won in 2020, uh, it was in the midst of a once in a century pandemic, uh,

01:00:04.720 his opponent was, um, erratic to the point at which Biden could benefit from being seen

01:00:12.240 to be quiet, really hiding throughout the election.

01:00:16.320 Um, that dynamic might not play out the same next year.

01:00:19.840 Uh, if that is the matchup, Donald Trump is nothing, if not energetic, Joe Biden is going

01:00:25.220 to be under more scrutiny from the electorate.

01:00:27.920 There won't be the excuse of COVID to keep him in his basement.

01:00:30.980 He will seem old and frail.

01:00:33.260 Kamala Harris will continue to be unpopular.

01:00:35.680 And the problems with the country will not be blamable on the incumbent president, Donald

01:00:42.140 Trump, but on the incumbent president, Joe Biden, who will still be presiding over high

01:00:47.900 inflation, inflation that under his leadership has reached a 40 year high, will still be presiding

01:00:54.440 over high gas prices, may well be presiding over a recession.

01:00:59.600 Uh, you don't want to roll that dice if you're an anti-Trumper and what do I see the press

01:01:06.940 doing?

01:01:07.480 I see them rolling that dice once again.

01:01:10.820 They can't help themselves.

01:01:11.840 They're, they're mercenary really at the end of the day.

01:01:14.280 And they understand that putting him on TV leads to ratings, whether it's the empty podium,

01:01:19.180 the plane flying over the river.

01:01:21.720 And how about the absurd comment by Gloria Borger?

01:01:24.500 Like he look at it.

01:01:25.740 He looks somber. 1.00

01:01:26.920 He looks like a damn ant figure. 0.99

01:01:28.480 You can't see anything about him, imputing motive and mood onto the guy. 1.00

01:01:33.620 Like, what are you saying?

01:01:34.920 It's just her weird projection, I guess, of what she'd like to see or what she's feeling

01:01:39.560 herself.

01:01:40.180 I have no idea, but that's, it takes me back exactly to the irresponsible coverage that

01:01:46.280 the press did in the 2016 race.

01:01:49.880 And the thing is, I've been thinking about this because we recently had on Rick Leventhal,

01:01:53.420 my old pal from Fox News.

01:01:54.480 You remember Rick and a great reporter.

01:01:57.260 And he is the one, Charlie, who was there when Hillary Clinton stumbled at the 9-11 memorial

01:02:02.440 right before the 16 election.

01:02:05.100 She was there and he was there.

01:02:06.800 And, or he got a, he got a text from a good cop source who said she just almost fell like

01:02:12.480 out of her shoes into a car.

01:02:14.600 And then we wound up seeing that video and it really did hamper her electoral chances. 0.54

01:02:20.120 People were very concerned about what we were seeing because there'd been questions about

01:02:23.860 her health already.

01:02:25.360 Joe Biden's 82.

01:02:26.760 All it's going to take is one of those.

01:02:28.960 One.

01:02:29.840 He's already walking slower.

01:02:31.360 He's mumbling all the time.

01:02:32.880 He's confusing words and sentences and ideas all the time.

01:02:36.360 Can't keep legislation straight.

01:02:37.960 Thinks the dead person is alive and thinks the alive people are dead.

01:02:40.980 I mean, he's made mistakes in both directions.

01:02:44.060 And so it really is very precarious.

01:02:47.160 I do think Kamala Harris as the potential next president will motivate even Trump's detractors

01:02:53.980 to pull the lever for him.

01:02:56.280 And she is loathed in a particular way.

01:02:58.840 I don't have to tell you that.

01:03:00.260 So, you know, these Democrats who are like, elevate Trump, let's do what we can to get

01:03:05.220 Trump, you know, be careful what you wish for.

01:03:07.960 Yeah, I don't want to overstate the case because I do think the Democrats, unfortunately, have

01:03:14.720 a pretty good shot in 2024.

01:03:17.940 But Joe Biden and Kamala Harris really have the worst of both worlds in one sense.

01:03:23.860 There was a poll I saw a week ago that showed that Joe Biden's approval rating had dropped

01:03:31.260 seven points since the Silicon Valley bank collapse.

01:03:35.240 And what that told me was that what has sometimes been one of Joe Biden's strengths, that is that

01:03:42.220 he's milk-a-toast, that he doesn't inspire great anger or joy in people, is also a weakness

01:03:48.460 in that he is a hostage to fortune.

01:03:51.140 People are, by and large, apparently willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, to

01:03:56.940 see him as an unthreatening caretaker, providing things are OK.

01:04:01.220 And so when it started to look as if inflation was going down a little bit and employment

01:04:07.160 was steady, then his approval rating jumped up to 43%, 44%, 45%.

01:04:12.100 But then we had a bank run and it went down to 37%.

01:04:17.300 Well, the problem with that, if you're that sort of candidate, is there's not much you can

01:04:21.760 do about it.

01:04:23.080 And your personal attributes can only make it worse.

01:04:27.680 So again, if we have a recession next year and the economy doesn't look great and Joe

01:04:32.940 Biden looks old, or maybe, and look, I hope to God this doesn't happen, but maybe falls

01:04:38.620 off a stage in the way that Bob Dole famously did in 1996, those numbers are going to drop

01:04:44.260 through the floor.

01:04:46.020 Because there's no real Joe Biden movement in politics.

01:04:50.860 Barack Obama had a movement.

01:04:53.700 Donald Trump had a movement.

01:04:55.660 Joe Biden does not.

01:04:57.660 Which brings us to Kamala Harris.

01:04:59.680 Suppose that Biden doesn't run for whatever reason.

01:05:02.340 Perhaps he gets sick.

01:05:03.500 Perhaps something happens to him.

01:05:04.720 Perhaps he just decides that it's all too much.

01:05:07.440 She inspires people in a way that Trump does.

01:05:11.340 You know, she inspires people to vote against in a way that Trump does and that Barack Obama

01:05:18.080 did.

01:05:18.920 And that's not going to be great for the incumbent party either.

01:05:21.620 So, you know, we're not looking here at the sort of election that we had in 2012, where

01:05:27.520 whatever Mitt Romney's advantages or disadvantages, he was running against an extremely talented

01:05:34.020 person who had a following and had his own movement that would sustain him, even if the

01:05:39.320 economy wasn't great, or bad things happened in the world.

01:05:43.400 Biden doesn't have that.

01:05:44.540 And I just find it incredible.

01:05:47.020 The confidence with which Democrats, not making this up myself, I think it was in the New York

01:05:52.700 Times today, Nate Silver pointed it out on Twitter, Democrats are starting to say, we

01:05:57.060 want this guy because we can beat him definitely.

01:05:59.640 Well, don't count your chickens.

01:06:01.580 Be careful what you wish for again.

01:06:03.600 And that's, here we are April 4th.

01:06:05.820 By the way, it's Abby's birthday.

01:06:06.880 Happy birthday, Avs.

01:06:07.680 I got you a Trump indictment and also huge leaps for him in the polls.

01:06:11.620 So whichever way you're going, there's something for you.

01:06:15.180 So it's April 4th and he hasn't, Joe Biden hasn't made an announcement about running for

01:06:20.320 re-election.

01:06:20.940 We were told it's going to happen in February.

01:06:22.620 It's April 4th.

01:06:23.240 He hasn't done it.

01:06:23.960 And there's some speculation beginning that maybe they're trying to run out the clock so

01:06:27.900 that if by chance he's decided not to do it, it'll make it too late in the Democratic

01:06:32.800 Party to sub in anyone other than the sitting vice president, Kamala Harris.

01:06:37.960 So all of it's very interesting.

01:06:39.540 I do want to ask you about polls.

01:06:42.160 Good gracious, the polls.

01:06:44.060 They're fascinating.

01:06:45.020 As you know, I was with you at the National Review Ideas Summit last Thursday in Washington.

01:06:50.180 It was great to see you in person.

01:06:51.740 And our pal Michael Brendan Doherty interviewed me on stage.

01:06:55.100 It was super fun.

01:06:55.820 I loved seeing the whole gang.

01:06:57.100 I only ever see you guys over Zoom.

01:06:58.820 So I enjoyed the whole thing.

01:07:00.960 And we talked, this is hours before we would find out that the grand jury had indicted Trump.

01:07:04.820 We talked about Trump, his electoral fortune and so on.

01:07:08.580 And I said the following, and I'm setting myself up now because we do have real data coming

01:07:14.000 in.

01:07:14.200 But here's what I said.

01:07:15.920 If I were Trump, I'd be on my little altar every night praying that Alvin Bragg indicts

01:07:20.580 me.

01:07:21.440 Please, please, Lord, let Alvin Bragg convince that grand jury.

01:07:25.840 So he should beg because he does well when he's being persecuted and he gets out there

01:07:30.700 as like the strong man saying, I'm going to take everybody on.

01:07:33.460 And if I were DeSantis, I'd be praying for the opposite, that they leave him alone.

01:07:38.460 So then there was never to say it'd be good for the country, but that it would be good

01:07:42.480 for Trump politically.

01:07:44.200 Well, now here we are just a few days later and we have real data, polls taken after the

01:07:48.940 announcement of the indictment.

01:07:50.100 And my God, right now, it's a bloodbath, Trump over DeSantis.

01:07:55.100 And I know you like DeSantis a lot and you live in Florida and you're not a Trump supporter,

01:07:58.360 so I want to get your take on it.

01:08:00.760 Trafalgar, Trump over DeSantis by 33 points.

01:08:05.820 March 22nd to 25th, it was Trump over DeSantis by 14.

01:08:10.280 All right, now it's 33.

01:08:12.680 YouGov, Trump over DeSantis by 31 points.

01:08:17.120 In February, he had just a 10-point advantage.

01:08:21.540 McLaughlin, Trump over DeSantis by 30 points.

01:08:24.840 In February, it was 16.

01:08:27.780 Trump over DeSantis right now in New Hampshire by 13.

01:08:30.640 Trump over DeSantis right now in Massachusetts by 24.

01:08:34.680 Some poll named Fabrizio, which I never heard before, 538 rates at B slash C level poll.

01:08:40.960 Trump over DeSantis by 30.

01:08:43.080 I could keep going.

01:08:44.760 So not only are they huge leads, but they're essentially more than double what Trump had

01:08:49.780 over DeSantis within the past few weeks.

01:08:52.220 There's no question the indictment was a political gift to Trump.

01:08:56.500 And my thought, my question for you is, is it recoverable, right?

01:09:01.500 Can Trump play the persecuted victim from now through November 24?

01:09:05.400 Or can DeSantis recover?

01:09:08.240 And, well, let me start with that.

01:09:11.000 Let's start with that.

01:09:14.160 Well, I think there's two ways of looking at this, and I'm obviously not quite sure which

01:09:19.240 one is true.

01:09:20.620 And those are as follows.

01:09:22.740 The first way of looking at it are that this is going to be 2015-16 all over again, and we'll

01:09:29.100 write about it and analyze it and shout about it.

01:09:31.580 But in the end, Trump will just run through like a steamroller.

01:09:33.920 And win a plurality of the vote and become the nominee.

01:09:38.340 And that what we have seen in the last few days is the beginning of that.

01:09:43.480 The other way of looking at it is that we're seeing the fluctuations that you would expect

01:09:50.080 in a very early primary cycle where people have different levels of name recognition and

01:09:55.260 are being celebrated or vilified for what's going on in the news.

01:09:59.740 I mean, Ron DeSantis is the governor of Florida.

01:10:02.300 He has not announced yet.

01:10:03.520 I think it's almost inevitable that he will, but he hasn't announced yet.

01:10:07.440 He doesn't have 100% name recognition.

01:10:10.980 So, you know, what has changed over the last six months?

01:10:15.160 What has pushed Trump up in the polls before the indictment that came down last Thursday?

01:10:21.340 If you go back to November, Donald Trump was being, I think, reasonably blamed for some

01:10:28.320 of the losses that Republicans had suffered in the Senate, while Ron DeSantis was, again,

01:10:33.860 reasonably being praised for having won what was until about 10 minutes ago a swing state

01:10:38.060 by 20 points.

01:10:39.020 And you saw some pretty good polls for DeSantis, especially as an undeclared candidate.

01:10:44.900 Over time, both the blame that Trump had absorbed and the celebration that DeSantis had engendered

01:10:53.200 started to diminish a little bit.

01:10:55.420 And Trump started to recover.

01:10:57.340 And now he is the main story in the news.

01:11:00.880 Trump is the main story in the news again.

01:11:04.720 And so you're seeing people back that way.

01:11:08.180 What will be important is whether or not that changes once DeSantis gets into the race.

01:11:14.780 If DeSantis gets into the race and nothing happens, and Trump just sticks with 10, 15,

01:11:20.620 20 point leads across the country, then I think Trump's going to win the nomination.

01:11:25.900 But if DeSantis gets in, is on an equal footing, is standing next to Trump at debates, is actually

01:11:31.300 going after Trump for his shortcomings and making the case for himself as a candidate, and

01:11:36.320 you see movement in the polls, well, that will be encouraging.

01:11:40.400 I know this is wishy-washy on the one hand, on the other hand, sort of answer.

01:11:43.920 But I genuinely don't know.

01:11:45.740 I can make a case for both of these.

01:11:48.720 I obviously have my preference.

01:11:50.220 I don't want to get sucked into motivated reasoning.

01:11:53.940 You know, I would say, on the other hand, the less pro-Trump argument is that DeSantis has

01:11:59.720 done pretty well for somebody who has not declared.

01:12:03.080 He's done a lot better than any other candidate was doing at this time in 2015, 16.

01:12:09.860 He's sort of the second frontrunner, if you will.

01:12:13.920 It's tough to know.

01:12:16.060 I personally just find it completely bizarre, the idea that people would say, because this

01:12:21.560 candidate has been indicted, I'm therefore more likely to support him.

01:12:27.040 I think that is just as much of a non-sequitur as to say, because I don't think this is a

01:12:32.000 strong case, you know, I'm going to oppose him.

01:12:37.160 It's just the two sections aren't linked.

01:12:40.900 But you're right.

01:12:41.700 That's what we're seeing.

01:12:43.100 I think it reflects anger.

01:12:44.480 You know, the other point I was going to raise, but I'll save it for Rick Grinnell, who's up

01:12:46.960 next, is how long can DeSantis wait?

01:12:49.760 Because eight million dollars over four days is a lot.

01:12:55.980 And if Trump's doubling his already substantial lead over Ron DeSantis in these state after

01:13:01.960 state and on a national basis and the funds are pouring in and that's only on one indictment,

01:13:07.080 we could have three.

01:13:07.820 Um, it does make me wonder whether DeSantis needs to change his timing, you know, move

01:13:14.300 it up, do something to stop the bleeding.

01:13:17.280 Um, I'm sure he'll have a lot of money in his coffers as well.

01:13:20.120 I don't know.

01:13:20.540 I'll give you a quick thought on that before I toss to Rick.

01:13:23.440 Well, I don't think that DeSantis is going to want for money.

01:13:28.040 I mean, I saw a reasonable estimate recently that said he may have 300 million dollars.

01:13:32.520 The question is whether it matters.

01:13:33.900 So one of the things that Trump has been good at historically is winning without spending

01:13:38.340 as much money as his opponents.

01:13:39.660 And it was true in 2015, 16, all the money was with Jeb Bush.

01:13:43.360 It was true in the 2016 election.

01:13:46.460 Hillary Clinton massively outspent Donald Trump and he still won.

01:13:50.640 So, you know, if he's going to win the primary and even the general, then he's going to do

01:13:55.260 it the way he did last time, which is to just defy all of the conventional wisdom and prevail.

01:14:02.000 And he will be speaking.

01:14:03.400 He did not speak when he exited Trump Tower.

01:14:05.580 We're told that we should expect him to make some brief remarks after he exits the courthouse

01:14:11.340 following the arraignment.

01:14:12.660 He is at the courthouse now.

01:14:14.040 And then we know tonight he'll be speaking at Mar-a-Lago more at length.

01:14:17.840 And that'll be very fascinating to listen to.

01:14:19.340 We'll have that cover for you tomorrow.

01:14:21.160 Charles, thank you so much for being here.

01:14:23.600 Thanks for having me.

01:14:25.180 Rick Grinnell is up next.

01:14:26.300 He will be at Mar-a-Lago tonight for Trump's speech and has a lot of thoughts on what we are

01:14:31.680 seeing on this day.

01:14:36.500 Joining me now, Rick Grinnell, a close confidant of President Trump.

01:14:39.760 Rick served as acting director of national intelligence and U.S. ambassador to Germany

01:14:44.700 in the Trump administration.

01:14:46.560 He's currently in Florida at Mar-a-Lago, where he will be in attendance at Trump's Mar-a-Lago

01:14:52.280 event tonight as well.

01:14:54.280 Rick, great to have you.

01:14:55.380 Let me get your reaction as we await the actual release of the indictment.

01:15:00.700 We have some idea of what to expect, and we certainly have some idea of how things are

01:15:04.900 likely to go in New York State Supreme for any Republican, never mind one named Donald

01:15:10.620 Trump.

01:15:11.400 Your thoughts on this day?

01:15:12.860 Well, look, Megan, I'm not a lawyer.

01:15:15.360 I'm just an everyday American.

01:15:17.880 And I'm watching what's happening to our country.

01:15:20.340 I have to say, you know, I have a lot of friends who are first and second generation Americans.

01:15:25.400 I love hanging out with older people who've got wisdom.

01:15:29.720 It's kind of my personality.

01:15:31.660 I love to hear stories from immigrants who love America and who talk about America.

01:15:37.560 And I think if you talk to these groups, older Americans and first and second generation

01:15:43.060 Americans, they're like the canaries in the coal mine for the rest of us. 1.00

01:15:46.080 And they are screaming loudly that this is un-American what's happening.

01:15:51.080 You can't have the ruling party go after the guy who's running against them.

01:15:57.880 We've watched this in other countries for years.

01:16:01.540 You know, I've worked at the State Department for 12 years.

01:16:03.560 I know you know that.

01:16:04.880 And I have become an expert at calling out dictators and others who try to manipulate

01:16:11.860 the powers of government to go after their political opponents, whether it's through sanctions

01:16:16.340 or through phony charges.

01:16:18.820 And they try to, you know, come up with all sorts of crazy ideas to go after their political

01:16:25.460 opponents.

01:16:25.880 There's one difference that's really bothering me, because in other countries, there is usually

01:16:31.500 a pack of media surrounding the dictator who literally just say whatever the dictator

01:16:39.300 wants, and they have cozy relationships with the dictators. 0.88

01:16:43.260 They get big dinner party invites.

01:16:44.880 They probably get money and contracts in other countries.

01:16:49.240 But we've always been the United States of America, where we don't have a media that allows

01:16:55.660 this type of situation to happen.

01:16:57.600 I believe that the reason why the Democrats are way overreaching, why the Democratic Party

01:17:03.720 under Joe Biden, is going after their political enemy and trying to arrest him, the leader

01:17:09.960 of the opposition, the overwhelming leader of the opposition.

01:17:14.640 The reason why they're getting away with this is because we've got all the newsrooms in Washington,

01:17:18.840 D.C. that are fanning the flames.

01:17:21.100 They're not stopping this.

01:17:22.300 They're cheerleading it.

01:17:23.860 And that is a low point.

01:17:25.960 I'll just finish with this, Megan.

01:17:27.860 Many great civilizations have lasted roughly 250 years.

01:17:31.940 They've all imploded from within.

01:17:34.960 I fear what's happening to our country.

01:17:37.380 I think if you're listening to this broadcast, if you are someone who is interested in foreign

01:17:43.320 affairs, but you're not an activist, you got to stop voting for these Democrats.

01:17:47.640 They're totally woke left.

01:17:49.560 And it doesn't matter who is in charge.

01:17:52.620 It could be future President Ron DeSantis, future President Nikki Haley, future President

01:17:57.800 Ted Cruz.

01:17:58.760 They will all be indicted.

01:18:00.320 They will all be have their homes raided by this type of fascism that we're seeing in

01:18:07.760 the Democratic Party.

01:18:08.600 It's not your father's Democratic Party.

01:18:11.160 We've already seen the articles saying Ron DeSantis is even worse than Trump and these

01:18:16.920 attempts to smear him as, you know, a pedophile because he taught English.

01:18:20.680 I don't know.

01:18:21.040 They will do to DeSantis.

01:18:23.280 This is what Trump said in one of his true socials when DeSantis said, you know, I don't

01:18:26.920 know anything about paying off a porn star.

01:18:28.620 And Trump was quick to respond like, you just wait.

01:18:31.540 You don't think they're going to do this to you.

01:18:34.120 You just wait.

01:18:34.880 Look, I personally have been debanked.

01:18:39.480 I had a bank.

01:18:40.840 My bank came to me and said, you can't bank here anymore.

01:18:45.100 And at first they said, oh, it's because we don't let intelligence officials, you know,

01:18:51.240 bank here.

01:18:52.160 And I said, I'm a former intelligence official.

01:18:54.740 I'm no longer with the government.

01:18:56.480 And they came up with some other excuses.

01:18:58.640 And I really put them in a corner when I said, is it because I'm a Trump supporter or 0.56

01:19:03.040 because I'm gay?

01:19:03.780 Which one is it that you're really coming after me for?

01:19:06.860 And of course, then I had, you know, the leader of the banking department call me, the

01:19:13.920 manager and say, oh, Mr. Grinnell, it's not about that.

01:19:16.880 And yet they still didn't want me banking with them.

01:19:20.720 And I think that what we have in this country is a reckless, out-of-control power base, whether

01:19:28.000 it's government, the media, the big fortune 100 companies, our universities.

01:19:36.220 If you want to be counterculture, you got to be a conservative these days.

01:19:41.120 You got to go up against the big man.

01:19:43.100 You got to be fighting for the people.

01:19:44.640 You got to be a conservative.

01:19:45.880 And that's why that place in Washington, D.C. that keeps growing every time you go there,

01:19:49.360 there's a new huge crane building, another big building, and the deficit is another trillion

01:19:54.900 dollars.

01:19:56.120 That's why that place is out of control.

01:19:58.500 We got to stop voting for these people and stop rejecting that power base in Washington,

01:20:03.060 D.C. because it's ruining our country.

01:20:05.220 I just got this from my team, Rick.

01:20:08.100 Trump, just truth social doubt, heading to lower Manhattan, the courthouse, seems so surreal.

01:20:14.300 Wow.

01:20:15.320 They are going to arrest me.

01:20:17.460 Can't believe this is happening in America.

01:20:20.080 Make America Great Again.

01:20:21.460 I read this and I feel sad.

01:20:23.900 I feel sad for our country.

01:20:26.380 I sat there at that presidential debate in August of 15 and I threw A-plus level questions

01:20:32.640 at Trump and the others because that's my job as a member of the media.

01:20:37.380 Trump didn't like some of them.

01:20:38.480 Some of the others didn't like some of them.

01:20:39.600 But that's how you raise contentious issues with candidates and let them show the country

01:20:44.800 whether they're up to the job.

01:20:46.260 Then the people decide.

01:20:48.660 That's our process.

01:20:50.060 This, what's happening to him by people who are angry about his popularity with Americans

01:20:58.240 right now, angry that he was elected in the first place, is un-American.

01:21:02.620 This is, we really have crossed an ethical, legal, historical, foundational line that is a before

01:21:12.340 and after moment for America, Rick.

01:21:14.020 It's a red alert.

01:21:16.880 It is a red alert for this country.

01:21:18.880 And I am saddened to think about what has now happened.

01:21:24.340 This is a Pandora's box.

01:21:26.420 We will never, ever be able to go back.

01:21:29.980 I fear what future conservative Republicans are going to do to get back at them.

01:21:37.380 I fear that.

01:21:38.920 I think that we're in this situation where we're delving to the bottom.

01:21:43.400 Where are the Democrat thoughtful leaders?

01:21:45.760 Why are they not stopping this?

01:21:47.540 Why are they not rising up?

01:21:49.520 They are literally afraid of the ruling party.

01:21:53.020 And let's be honest, Joe Biden is that figurehead.

01:21:56.100 He's like the puppet.

01:21:57.500 But the people behind him that are doing this are the comfortable ones, are the ones who are

01:22:02.320 not getting media scrutiny, who have big jobs, big power.

01:22:05.920 They made a lot of money after Obama's, you know, they went on Netflix boards and media boards

01:22:12.880 and made millions and millions of dollars.

01:22:15.380 Now they're behind the scenes and they're crafting all of this stuff.

01:22:19.300 This is un-American. 0.73

01:22:21.020 And I just say, you know, for all these people who want to say, oh, I don't like the mean tweets,

01:22:27.060 you're going to lose your country if you do not realize what's happening.

01:22:31.760 And that's why I've been very upfront and I've been candid about saying that I think Nikki Haley

01:22:37.480 and Ron DeSantis and others should immediately drop out.

01:22:40.860 They should recognize what's happening in our country.

01:22:43.400 This is not a normal situation.

01:22:45.400 And by the way, I say that I think Ron DeSantis has done a good job as governor, but it's the

01:22:51.520 governor of Florida.

01:22:53.380 He's he's not been in Washington, D.C.

01:22:56.080 I did not agree with him when he said, well, I haven't had any leaks in Tallahassee.

01:23:01.860 So that means the bureaucracy really is going to like me.

01:23:05.540 That's naive.

01:23:06.800 When you go to Washington, D.C., it's a different game.

01:23:09.080 Um, I'm just not so sure that he's ready yet.

01:23:13.020 He needs more time.

01:23:14.660 Um, and, you know, the other thing I like Charles Cook, I was listening beforehand.

01:23:20.160 I like him.

01:23:20.620 I respect him a lot, but I haven't seen him out on the campaign trail in all of these swing

01:23:26.820 states listening to voters.

01:23:28.900 And if there's one thing that Rick Grinnell knows, it's the swing state voters.

01:23:32.640 I've been all over constantly paying my own way to go and listen and go to all these rallies

01:23:39.500 and help our candidates on the on the right.

01:23:42.340 And I have to say that there is no question in my mind.

01:23:46.220 Donald Trump is the nominee.

01:23:47.860 You just have to talk to regular voters.

01:23:50.020 You don't have to talk to blue mark, blue check marks on Twitter.

01:23:53.660 That's a whole different conversation.

01:23:55.280 But the people who are showing up and calling, uh, in every single county across this country,

01:24:02.760 the activists, there is no possible way they are going for anyone other than Donald Trump.

01:24:09.280 He's won this nomination.

01:24:10.580 I said to that, I said to the national review crowd last week, Rick, I said, don't let, cause

01:24:15.160 this is, they're more DeSantis, you know, backing as you know, they're not big Trump fans over

01:24:18.940 at NR.

01:24:19.260 And, uh, I said, you, you guys should not let the fact that you are done with Trump blind

01:24:25.340 you to the reality that the country may not be, you know, you have to keep an open mind.

01:24:31.260 We're in the midst of a presidential race and yes, DeSantis hasn't declared.

01:24:35.100 We all know he's likely to.

01:24:36.280 So, I mean, of course he has to be factored in, but I'm not sure.

01:24:40.140 I'm not sure.

01:24:40.960 Yeah.

01:24:41.160 You think you might not.

01:24:42.100 I, I, I think that, um, he's never made that decision yet to do it.

01:24:47.660 I think there are a lot of people making a lot of money on the super PACs and, and, you

01:24:51.640 know, how the, that whole crowd, the political crowd loves to make money off candidates.

01:24:56.060 So there's no question that all of that is happening.

01:24:58.840 I'm not sure that, um, he's running.

01:25:01.560 I never have been sure that he was running.

01:25:03.380 I think now when you look at the polling, um, you know, Trump is surging, the money is

01:25:07.980 surging.

01:25:09.080 Um, he's under, uh, some scrutiny and attacks.

01:25:12.320 Um, I, I gotta believe that the few people around him that are making the political decision

01:25:17.800 are looking at it and saying, Ooh, I'm not sure we may ruin ourselves with the MAGA crowd

01:25:21.480 even for 2028.

01:25:23.320 Um, maybe this isn't, maybe, yeah, maybe this isn't your, well, that's an interesting, uh,

01:25:27.500 thought because I, I have heard that DeSantis' plan right now is to focus on winning over

01:25:34.520 core MAGA.

01:25:35.540 Like he knows he's got the NRs of the world.

01:25:38.120 He knows he's got the more establishment Republicans rooting for him, the Lincoln project.

01:25:42.920 They are not gettable by anybody affiliated with MAGA.

01:25:46.200 So he's focused, I'm told on trying to win hardcore MAGA voters over to him.

01:25:51.440 And there is a real question about whether they're gettable, whether, whether the best

01:25:56.300 way of doing that is just to wait, just wait until Trump's not in the way.

01:26:00.060 And MAGA is not mad at you for interfering with his chances and so on.

01:26:04.060 But before we spend more time on DeSantis and Trump, let me take you back to something

01:26:07.240 you said about the Democrats, their response to all of you say, where are the party leaders?

01:26:11.160 Where are the people to stand up and say, this is wrong?

01:26:13.040 I mean, we're going after maybe a misdemeanor on bookkeeping that they're trying to create

01:26:18.200 into a felony based on an underlying alleged campaign violation that even the feds didn't

01:26:24.400 charge and in which there was also no victim, no victim at either level.

01:26:28.920 What are we doing for that?

01:26:30.420 We cross the Rubicon.

01:26:31.480 What?

01:26:32.260 So where are the Democrats?

01:26:33.500 And their response so far has been, no one's above the law.

01:26:37.400 No one's above the law.

01:26:38.700 No one is above the law.

01:26:40.800 What do you make of that as a longtime guy who understands Washington better than most?

01:26:45.920 They created sanctuary cities.

01:26:48.040 They're going to tell us no one is above the law.

01:26:49.820 They created entire cities where you get protection for breaking federal law.

01:26:55.060 I mean, come on.

01:26:55.800 We were born at night, but not last night. 0.68

01:26:57.720 This is ridiculous that for any Democrat to say no one is above the law is a joke.

01:27:05.940 We all know that they have protected people who surge across the borders.

01:27:12.240 I mean, there's countless examples of people who are absolutely above the law.

01:27:17.960 I wish that no one was above the law, but let's go back and look at what they've done.

01:27:22.400 They've tried to impeach Donald Trump.

01:27:24.080 They told us for four years, just get his taxes.

01:27:26.600 You get his taxes.

01:27:27.420 You'll prove he's not a billionaire.

01:27:28.900 You're going to embarrass him.

01:27:30.160 You're also going to see he didn't pay his taxes.

01:27:32.120 That story went away in six hours.

01:27:34.300 As soon as they got his taxes, it dropped so fast.

01:27:38.460 So all I'm saying is, is that this is all politics.

01:27:42.020 And I get it.

01:27:43.060 I'm a big boy.

01:27:43.760 I get politics.

01:27:44.760 But we should have a media that calls out this phoniness, that calls out these fake arguments.

01:27:52.800 And the reason why the Democrats keep, you know, making things worse, the reason why they keep going for even crazier ideas is because they are not being stopped by the media.

01:28:04.880 There's no check.

01:28:05.580 There's no nobody who's pushing back.

01:28:07.740 And and again, I know a lot of these reporters.

01:28:10.480 I have a lot of friends who are Democrats.

01:28:12.800 They'll privately say to me, oh, gosh, this is not good.

01:28:16.120 We're going to really ignite the Trump people.

01:28:19.980 And also, I think independence.

01:28:21.700 It's now it's no longer just about the base.

01:28:24.260 I live in California.

01:28:25.400 I live in Los Angeles, California, where there are a lot of soccer moms who always vote for Democrats that are my friends. 1.00

01:28:34.340 And it's something has happened with them.

01:28:36.620 They're seeing, you know, their 401k go to a 201k.

01:28:40.220 They're watching as their kids are literally having to call people different genders in school.

01:28:47.080 They're watching as some of their I have a situation where I live in Manhattan Beach, where a young girl is literally contemplating having her breasts removed.

01:28:57.640 Now, I think that her parents should be arrested.

01:29:00.100 I think anybody who is allowing a minor, someone who's under 18, who, by the way, has to have a card to go to an R rated movie.

01:29:09.220 But we're going to give them hormone blockers and we're going to let them change their body like that when they can't even get a tattoo. 1.00

01:29:16.180 But now they're going to have their breasts removed. 1.00

01:29:18.360 I mean, all of this is mounting.

01:29:21.040 Common sense has evaporated.

01:29:23.160 And that is because the Democratic Party is allowed to go crazier and crazier by the media.

01:29:29.220 And I think that it's a tipping point.

01:29:31.120 I think a lot of independents are watching this and saying, I didn't like the mean tweets, but gosh, he had a lot of common sense and the world was better and my 401k was better and we wouldn't have had these wars.

01:29:42.080 Quick point on above the law.

01:29:43.720 And then I want to ask you about what's happening in Trump fundraising and donors and some of the Jason Miller information he put out.

01:29:49.640 There was a great piece on National Review.

01:29:52.240 Dan McLaughlin authored it and it reads when a Democratic president was above the law.

01:29:57.320 He goes into what happened during Bill Clinton's impeachment and points out that these same senators and lawmakers who are now saying we're a country of laws.

01:30:05.420 No one's above the law.

01:30:06.280 Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer and others are all the same people who back when Bill Clinton lied under oath in connection with that whole Monica Lewinsky scandal defended him.

01:30:17.200 There was no question he lied under oath and they were told these same people were saying he should not be prosecuted.

01:30:22.980 He should not be impeached.

01:30:24.380 They all every single one of the Democrats in the Senate voted for acquittal on all charges.

01:30:29.280 So it was when it was their guy on the line.

01:30:31.620 They saw above the law very differently.

01:30:34.200 They said, oh, it's just about sex. 0.86

01:30:35.580 It's just about sex. 0.95

01:30:36.800 Well, hello, Stormy Daniels.

01:30:38.840 By the way, I did look up some of the Stormy Daniels star of Happy Endings and Summer Hummer.

01:30:43.620 That, too, has its roots in sex, but we're hearing a very different message.

01:30:50.060 OK, let's talk about fundraising, because it sounds like this has been a boon to Trump 2024.

01:30:55.420 Jason Miller says they've raised another one point one million just today, eight million since the indictment and counting, and then points out over 25 percent of the donations.

01:31:05.120 This is an Axios over 25 percent of the donations came from first time donors, quote, this is to Jason.

01:31:13.740 There's a whole new group of Trump supporters who are angered by what they see as a political persecution.

01:31:19.000 The campaign tells Axios 16000 plus volunteers signed up on his Web site in just 24 hours.

01:31:25.940 So talk to us about what you're seeing in Trump land in terms of new, new enthusiasm, new MAGA volunteers and so on.

01:31:33.260 Look, what we're seeing is that that people are outraged at losing their country and having the ruling party do these things to the opposition leader.

01:31:44.020 And so you've got a lot of first and second generation Americans who are getting off the sidelines.

01:31:48.820 I think you've got a lot of just normal working people who have seen the death of common sense from the left.

01:31:55.920 And they're realizing that it doesn't matter who's president from or who's the nominee from the right.

01:32:03.320 They see the debanking issues.

01:32:05.620 They see the cancel culture. 0.69

01:32:07.180 They see what's happening to their kids.

01:32:08.880 They see what's happening to our schools.

01:32:10.420 They know that the death of common sense is real.

01:32:14.400 And so they decided that that guy who is trying to change Washington and who is literally the enemy of Washington, D.C., they think he's the one to do it.

01:32:26.700 They see him fighting, getting every accusation and still standing and not backing down.

01:32:33.540 They see the the support rising.

01:32:35.700 And so we see a lot of first time involvement.

01:32:39.620 You know him.

01:32:40.100 You've been with him.

01:32:40.820 You've talked to him.

01:32:42.040 You're going to be there tonight.

01:32:42.880 Is he, quote, somber as the psychoanalysts over at CNN gleaned from his two steps they watched him take?

01:32:53.060 What's his mood?

01:32:54.360 And what do you think we're going to hear from President Trump tonight?

01:32:58.180 Well, I just talked to him a couple of days ago, and I think what is really clear is that he sees what is at stake.

01:33:03.600 And what he said to me is, is that this is not about me.

01:33:07.300 This is about who they're coming for.

01:33:09.520 And he's just in the way.

01:33:10.660 And I know that is a statement that he's made publicly, but he believes it and he sees that he is the guy that they're coming after, but that he represents a whole bunch of other people.

01:33:21.560 I think the onus is now going to be on us here at the Trump campaign to be able to articulate what that means.

01:33:30.440 What are we fighting for?

01:33:32.560 What's at stake?

01:33:33.680 And I do believe that this indictment has fundamentally shifted not only America, but even what we are going to see and say on the Trump campaign.

01:33:46.000 And so the onus is on us.

01:33:48.340 We've got to make sure that we keep all of these new voters focused on what's at stake and what the issues are.

01:33:55.320 And so time will tell.

01:33:57.580 I'm confident, though, that President Trump sees this for what it is.

01:34:01.660 And all of those around him realize that this is not just about Donald Trump.

01:34:06.700 We're in a huge moment.

01:34:09.480 We are three years away from that 250 year mark.

01:34:13.960 And prayers for America are very much in order.

01:34:17.280 Rick Grinnell, thank you.

01:34:18.540 Thank you so much for being here.

01:34:19.560 Good to see you.

01:34:21.100 All the best.

01:34:21.620 Here we are, 151 Eastern time.

01:34:25.660 Trump will be formally arrested and arraigned shortly.

01:34:28.900 The former president of the United States, the leading candidate right now to take on the sitting president of the United States in the next presidential election.

01:34:36.740 We are likely to see we will see the exact charges against him in that 34 count indictment and learn much more about where Alvin Bragg plans to go with this.

01:34:46.340 And then we will learn about Trump's response expected to make some remarks after the proceeding.

01:34:50.300 And then, of course, tonight, a more robust response from Mar-a-Lago, where he will return to, to which he will return after the indictment and the arraignment conclude.

01:35:00.360 We will have full coverage of all of this for you tomorrow.

01:35:03.500 As always, thank you for trusting us on these big days.

01:35:05.780 We greatly appreciate it.

01:35:07.680 And we'll pick it up again tomorrow.

01:35:13.400 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

01:35:15.300 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:35:20.300 Don't be blaring.

01:35:22.560 Bye.

01:35:23.020 Bye.

01:35:23.540 Bye.

01:35:24.200 Bye.

01:35:24.660 Bye.

01:35:24.960 Bye.

01:35:25.300 Bye.

01:35:26.080 Bye.

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01:35:29.220 Bye.

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01:35:48.180 Bye.

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 04, 2023

Historic Arrest of Former President Donald Trump, with Alan Dershowitz, Charles C.W. Cooke, and Ric Grenell ｜ Ep. 521

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