Maddow's Softball Fani Willis Interview, and "Deadly Force" at Mar-a-Lago, with Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cooke | Ep. 798
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 17 minutes
Words per Minute
170.88542
Summary
In real news, new court documents reveal that FBI agents were authorized before they raided Trump's facility at Mar-A-Lago to use deadly force if necessary. Plus, Rachel Maddow gets the first interview with disgraced former Fulton County DA Fannie Willis.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
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Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Happy Wednesday, right? It's
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Wednesday. Starting to lose track now as we're getting almost at the end of the school year,
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right? Are you having that at all? It's like, what's happening? Who am I? Can't wait for school
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to be out. I don't know about you, but like, doesn't your life get a little easier when school
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is out because you don't have to like get up at the crack of dawn and get the kids all over hell
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and gone. It's like, you can just kind of like work on your stuff as your kids are asleep in their
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beds. It's so much easier. But then of course, that comes the day. Anyway, in real news, new court
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documents revealing that FBI agents were authorized before they raided Trump's facility at Mar-a-Lago.
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You remember a couple of August ago to use deadly force, to use deadly force if necessary. I'm the
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former president of the United States and those around him. His family, are you going to shoot
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Barron if he tries to stop you from getting a box? Was that the plan? The mainstream media just kind
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of shrugging, saying it's standard operating procedure for the agency. Well, that's true,
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but this was no standard operating raid. And they knew that. This is actually really outrageous
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that special procedures wouldn't put in place. They understood they already had another part of the
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government down there protecting the guy. Armed agents from the Secret Service. What did they
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think they were going to do? They were like a shootout at the OK Corral to get Trump's thoughts
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on Kim Jong-un? It's amazing. We're going to talk to our panel about it in a minute. Plus, Rachel Maddow
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gets the first interview with the disgraced Fulton County DA Fannie Willis, and then she proceeded to
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disgrace herself. What a joke. What a joke of an interview that was. Not one tough question. Not
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one. Shame on you, Rachel Maddow. Shame on you. Fannie Willis did win her primary. I know you're
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shocked. In Atlanta, Fulton County, last night, she's now going to go on to have a general election
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contest against a Republican. And guess who showed up to celebrate her big win?
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Hello, Nathan Wade. Ex-lover, they tell us. Do we believe it? We report, you decide.
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Joining me now, two of our favorites for NR Day. That's National Review Day here at the
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Megyn Kelly Show. Rich Lowry, who is editor-in-chief of National Review, and Charles C.W. Cook, who is
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a senior writer for National Review and host of the Charles C.W. Cook podcast. You can find all of
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their work by becoming an NR Plus subscriber. I am. I recommend it. You get rid of almost all of the
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annoying ads. And also, I get the actual magazine delivered to my house, which I like to leave around
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just so my kids could pick it up. Just start to thumb through it. That's how we sort of start to
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counter-program in other ways against the left-wing indoctrination of their schools. And you should do
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it as well. Rich, Charles, welcome back. Great to see you. Hey, thanks for having us.
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Thanks for having me. I heard somebody on National Review, I must have been on the editors,
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saying that they used to thumb through the magazine when they were young and start to take in the musings
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of William F. Buckley. And I thought, oh, that's smart. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that
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exact same thing. Mom's already read it all by the time it gets here, but the kids haven't. All right,
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so let's kick it off with, maybe we'll have to shoot Trump when we go to execute this warrant
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at Mar-a-Lago to get the documents that we believe he's withholding. And it turned out he was indeed
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withholding, but his defense is, I was working with you. I was going to get it to you eventually.
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Okay, that'll play out in court. And Rich, the thing is, it is standard operating procedure for
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the cops to have that sort of shoot of necessary permission, just because they don't want the FBI
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agents to get in trouble. But this was not a standard procedure. As I point out, it's a former
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president with Secret Service Protection at a very busy location, and they had authorized them to go
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door to door in Mar-a-Lago, banging on the doors to get documents. This seems really over the top.
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What do you think? Well, I'm generally a critic of all aspects of the lawfare campaign against
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Donald Trump, but I'd love to believe it'd be hilarious, among other things, that Joe Biden
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opposed the lethal raid on Osama bin Laden, but supported the lethal raid on Donald Trump or
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potential lethal raid. But this is standard operating procedure. The FBI was not going to
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shoot down Donald Trump. But if something crazy happened, they need the authorization and they
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have it in all searches because you are coming in. Maybe you're knocking down a door. They weren't
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going to do that in this circumstance. Maybe someone freaks out and does something that represents a
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threat and you need to be able to deal with it. But that clearly wasn't going to happen in this
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case. So I think this is Trump whipping up people with an all-capped Truth Social post that was
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not a faithful representation of the reality of the situation, in my view.
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Well, they were permitted to do it. That piece is real. Law enforcement officers of the Department of
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Justice may use deadly force when necessary. The FBI had a medic on the scene. They had identified a
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local trauma center for anyone injured during the raid and did have a plan to go room by room,
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including, you know, through the Mar-a-Lago residence and said that they will, the FBI,
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engage with the U.S. Secret Service per existing relationships. I mean, that's what's so nuts about
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this is this. I mean, what like what could have happened here? This could have gone south and
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quickly. They knew they were going to a place with armed guards who also work for the same federal
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government. And you really want to say it's just standard like, OK, it's fine. There were no increased
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risks. Well, I imagine this was de-conflicted, right, with the Secret Service. And, you know,
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what if Trump takes out a shotgun? I mean, we go down. I'm not sure. But you can come up with all
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sorts of crazy possible scenarios that weren't going to happen and didn't happen. So someone
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shoots the FBI. So are we supposed to say if someone shot at the FBI, we wouldn't want the FBI
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to have the authority to shoot back? No, but when it comes to dealing with the former president of the
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United States, there would have to be a carve out like that. What's that? There would have to be a
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carve out in dealing with the actual former president. Can I mean, just imagine what? I don't
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know. Here's the thing, Rich. But here's the thing. I don't know that the Secret Service was
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consulted and given a heads up. In fact, my belief is that they probably weren't. No, my belief is they
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probably weren't because what was happening, you can see in the motion practice leading up to this,
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the judge was getting increasingly irritated with Donald Trump and mad that he wasn't turning
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over the documents. That's how the prosecutor, the FBI was feeling, the prosecution. And so they
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wouldn't have wanted to give anybody around him a heads up. And so there really could have been a
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situation where the Secret Service was caught off guard on who was coming for the president. I mean,
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I just think this is all at a very high level. And so are we supposed to believe, though, that
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if someone, say an FBI agent is shot, they shouldn't be able to shoot back.
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You don't need a pre-authorization for that, Rich. You or I wouldn't need a pre-authorization for
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that. Neither does the FBI. What's the outrage? So what's the outrage then?
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Why? I think if anything, there should have been a special procedure. Go ahead.
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If they could have shot back anyway, why is it so terrible that they had no authorization to shoot
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back necessarily? Because it's a pre-green light. I mean, it's a pre-green light to go onto the
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property of the former president of the United States with armed weapons and the ability to go
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into all the private spaces of Mar-a-Lago, the guests, the private residents, the children's
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homes, where you know there are armed guards whose job it is to protect the former leader of the free
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world. I mean, the stakes are already going to be high. The tensions are going to be higher than
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your average raid. They knew all of this. And I think if they weren't coordinating with the Secret
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Service, then this is absolutely egregious. They endangered everybody down there.
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Well, that's the criticism of the raid itself, right?
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Rather than the raid being carried out under standard procedure, you're saying the raid itself
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I think you're both right. I think you're both right.
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Well, I think you're both right in that this is what government is.
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If you're going to use government, you're ultimately going to use force.
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Every government action is ultimately backed by force, which is why we should use it sparingly and why
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we should want limited government and rules that define and determine what the government can do.
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And I think ultimately the criticism here then has to be, why did they raid Mar-a-Lago?
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And I've wondered that myself. I think this is the strongest case against Trump. I've never been
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persuaded that this raid was necessary. I can't see it. And as you say, when you do this,
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whether you have pre-authorization or not, and Rich is absolutely right, that if you're going to go in,
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you're going to create that enormous risk. And even before this, there was a risk
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to this raid that was not necessarily to life, but to our norms. This was a departure. And when those
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departures are made, as sometimes they have to be, I want careful consideration in the buildup. And I've
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just never been convinced that there was that consideration. And this is another knock-on effect
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Yeah. Well, I do think it's a stretch to say, not a stretch, it's an outright lie to say, as Marjorie Taylor
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Green did, that they went down there to assassinate President Trump. That's not, that is not true.
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But there's no question that this decision endangered-
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They failed agreed to free, if that was the mission.
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Yeah, that's right. This endangered him, I think, unnecessarily, and those around him and those
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at Mar-a-Lago. And the government's, of course, been criticized for doing something we've never seen
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done before there, too. But the breaking of norms, hold on to that thought, which you just said,
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because we're going to get back to something that happened last night on Rachel Maddow with Fannie
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Willis, the breaking of norms. And who did it first, really, is kind of where we're going to go
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with it. Before I get to Fannie Willis, though, and there's a lot to discuss there, let's talk about
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the wrap-up of Trump's first trial. We haven't had closing arguments yet, but we're about to.
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Court's off today, but we're going to have them. And then we think the jury will get the case
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next week. So having watched everything, and I know you read everything, and I do, too,
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that Andy writes at National Review, and I love your podcast with him, Rich. I listen to that
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every week, as you know. How do you think the prosecution did, and how do you think it's going
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to come out? Well, whatever it's worth, my odds of a hung jury are higher than they were going in.
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I was maybe 20, 30 percent chance of a hung jury now. Maybe I think it's a 50-50 kind of a coin flip,
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because this is such a stretch legally. And Michael Cohen is obviously a liar, and he stole
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from the Trump organization. And yeah, he didn't lose his cool on the stand and freak out, but that
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doesn't reduce the fact or get around the fact that he's not a credible person. And I don't need to
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tell you just the legalities here. One, you need to say he falsified business records. Maybe he did,
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right? But there's a credible case that this was a legal fee, right? Cohen was acting as a lawyer
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when he forged this agreement with Stormy Daniels' representative. It's the kind of thing a lawyer
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does. He was continuing to be a lawyer for Trump, and it was booked as a legal fee rather than
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reimbursement. Obviously, he didn't harm anyone. He was plushed up so he could pay taxes on this
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reimbursement. And then there needs to be an intent to defraud. But no one was defrauded,
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right? The tax man wasn't defrauded. Nothing was stolen from anyone. So that underlying offense,
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there's nothing there. And that would obviously just be a misdemeanor that the statute of limitations
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had expired on, unless there's some other offense, which is supposedly stealing the election
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and violating campaign finance laws. But there's no reason to think that this was a campaign expense.
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If Trump sincerely thought it was a campaign expense, he would have paid
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the expense from his campaign, right? He's a penny pincher. He wouldn't have
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shelled out personally if he thought it was a campaign expense. Prior precedents suggest it's
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not a campaign expense. The FEC didn't pursue this. And then the larger theory that he somehow stole
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the election by booking this reimbursement falsely is obviously preposterous because that happened in
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2017 after the 2016 election. So there's no way that the way you account for this after the fact
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affects how people voted in 2016. And the hutch payment itself was not illegal. So this is
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ridiculous. It's completely preposterous. And I have enough faith, maybe naively, and a Manhattan
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jury to think that there's at least one or two people that are going to see through it. You know,
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if they don't, it's a travesty. It'll eventually be overturned on appeal. But it doesn't help Trump to
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win eventually in 2025 or 2026 when he's had to expend all the time and resources fighting this
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now, when he's going to have potentially a convicted felon label around his neck. Maybe that doesn't
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make a difference. I don't think it's going to make a big difference, but it could. You know,
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that's the whole point of it. And it doesn't help if, you know, you reverse it a year or two after the
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election. Charles, did we know that Rich was an optimist? Is this this is news? I mean, I know
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we know MBD. No, not. But so sunny. So, so up on the prospect of a fair jurist on that 12 person
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jury in Manhattan. What do you think? Well, I agree with everything Rich said about the trial. I just
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am a little more pessimistic when it comes to the prospects for the jury. This topic, in a sense,
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is related to our last one in that that raid and Mar-a-Lago was primarily contrived because
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the president wanted the image of Mar-a-Lago being raided. And this trial in New York,
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not federal, of course, now a state concern, was staged because its architects wanted the site of
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Donald Trump in a courtroom. They wanted these facts to be known. And they bent the law every which
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way to achieve it. If the jury agrees with the prosecution, that will be a bonus. But I think
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the chance of that's relatively high because I just think there are an awful lot of people in Manhattan
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who share the aim here, which is to put that big neon sign behind Donald Trump that says
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convicted felon, whether or not there is much scaffolding underneath it.
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Now, I will say, I do generally take an optimistic view. I wrote a piece recently,
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actually, in which I pointed out that one of the things that is working in America at the moment,
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despite all of the problems that we have, is the jury system. The vast majority of highly publicized
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trials that we have seen over the last five years have come out well. And the best part of them has
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been the conduct of the jury, which seems to have behaved really seriously. But last time I was on your
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show, Megan, we were talking about this jury and the indications, at least of those who got kicked
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off the jury or were not put on it, was that there are a sad number of people who do not take their role
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seriously. And I'm a little more worried than Rich that that number will be 12.
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And I also share Andy's concern that the judge is the father figure in the courthouse,
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in the courtroom. And if the judge wants a conviction, it's pretty easy for him to steer
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the jury toward a conviction, not necessarily just through his rulings on what's hearsay,
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what's in, what's out during the course of the trial. As we saw when Stormy took the stand,
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when Costello was on the stand, you know, he's very biased against the defense both times,
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nevermind Cohen, but in the jury instructions, which are already going the prosecution's way.
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They're not coming out. The final jury instructions, which will determine how this
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case breaks. Absolutely. Um, are not yet done. He's going to approve them as of Wednesday,
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but the rulings so far are not good. He, the judge right now, or the defense right now is trying to
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get the word willfully added to two places in the instructions, which is a part of the legal
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requirements. They have to show willfulness on the part of Donald Trump that he did these things
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knowingly, willfully. That's an element of criminal law. Um, and it's not a gimme. The judge
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has reserved judgment on whether he's going to put that in there. That's the central argument of the
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case, uh, that, you know, was Trump willingly doing something unlawful? And now he's basically
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siphoned it down to what the prosecution needs to prove is that Trump falsified business records
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to hide an underlying crime, but crime may be too strong rich because the prosecution is now
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arguing presumably in the wake of, you know, the weaknesses being exposed on this campaign finance
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allegation that it doesn't really have to be a crime. When they say an unlawful act was trying
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to be hidden. It could be a tortious act. It could be a breach of contract. It could be defamation.
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They're arguing right now it's crime or just generic unlawful conduct that, you know, that I,
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who knows, this is what Andy's been saying. Could be like a violation of what, like Russian law,
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you know, Sharia law. What are they talking about? Yeah. I mean, our whole system is based right on,
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you set out the crime really specifically, right? So everyone knows what it is and the defendant knows
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what it is. And this was an outrage from the beginning. The indictment didn't tell us what
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the supposed second offense was. And you kind of figured maybe, you know, by the time there was a
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trial or during the course of the trial, we'd know what the second offense is or is alleged to be.
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And we don't, they don't, you know, it's just, it's out in the ether there. It's something.
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So this, you know, whatever happens in this case, I do think this is one of the things,
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maybe again here, I'm being overly optimistic. Over time, everyone's going to realize this is
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a travesty. And I'm not saying like tomorrow, but, you know, 10 years from now when the histories
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are written. And just to be clear, I'm not, I'm not given, you know, for Rangers friends out there,
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a Mark Messier type 1994 guarantee that Trump's going to get off. I just think that the chances of
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him getting off, getting a hung jury are, are higher than I would have thought going in.
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You know, Charles, you guys have been, uh, you, you ran a piece by Brad Smith not long ago,
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this whole case, we've had him on the show, former FEC commissioner appointed by Bill Clinton,
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and he's been jumping up and down on this case. And thus the Trump team tried to call him as an
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expert witness and they were rejected twice. I mean, once at the beginning of the trial,
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and then once at the end of the trial, they're going to call him as a witness. And the judge so
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limited what he could say that it was pointless to do, but he had a great threat on X yesterday,
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trying to point out what an absurd position this judge has left the defense in. I'm just going to
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read you part of it. He writes, judge Marchand is so restricted my testimony that the defense decided
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not to call me. Uh, it's of course elementary that the judge instructs the jury on the law,
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but federal election campaign law is very complex to the point where even Antonin Scalia said,
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it's so intricate. I can't figure it out. Keeping, uh, going here with what Brad posted,
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he says, someone has to bring this specific knowledge of this act and what it requires and
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what it doesn't to the jury. Part of the state's case is that they wrongly reported the Trump team
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did what they knew to be a campaign expenditure in order to hide the payment until after the election.
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Uh, and then he says, but an expenditure made on October 27th, when the money was sent to
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Stormy Daniels lawyer would not under law be reported until December 8th, a full 30 days
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after the election to riches point a moment ago, even the payment, nevermind the documentation of
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it. None of it would have been happening, uh, until after the election. And he goes on to say,
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uh, the judge allowed Michael Cohen to go on at length about whether and how his activity violated
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the federal election campaign act. He let Michael Cohen essentially testify as a legal witness as
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an, as an expert legal witness. So effectively the jury got its instructions on this law from Michael
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Cohen with an exclamation point added by Brad Smith, concluding that this judge's bias is very
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evident. And now this jury is going to be going in there with nothing better than Michael Cohen's
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assertions when it comes to whether there was an underlying unlawful act in Trump somehow violating
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campaign finance laws. Yeah. Well, this is an example of what David French used to call Trump law.
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We're at no point in the process that someone stand up and say, you know, this isn't really how we do it.
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And at all stages in these cases, this one being another good example, I keep waiting for someone
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to intervene and say, no, but they don't. So you have this, this men's rare requirement,
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which needs fleshing out and the details of what is a federal law, not a state law that needs fleshing
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out. And you have a judge who is capable of insisting on a more classically liberal approach to the
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defendant, but hasn't. And I just don't know how to square that with the way that those who have
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brought this case and are cheerleading this case tend to see criminal justice matters. And if you were to
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describe what you just described to your average left of center Trump critic, but not mention that
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the case had to do with Donald Trump or anyone who'd been president for that matter, or anyone in public
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life, they would be outraged by it. The expert witness would be deemed mandatory. They might even
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argue that the constitution required the provision of expert witnesses. There'd be some penumbra in the
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Fifth Amendment that required it. But because it's Trump, once again, we just gloss over it. I think
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this is the big legal story of the last eight years, that so many people who call themselves liberals
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have abandoned everything they ever believed about the presumption of innocence, about the degree to
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which it's incumbent upon the prosecution to prove their case and provide juries with necessary
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information, the value of the right to remain silent, and so on and so forth. All of these things have just
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gone out of the window whenever it is Trump. And you read these sort of Archie Bunker-style screeds
00:23:55.780
in our elite opinion outlets from people who just would not adopt that worldview otherwise. And this is
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another example of it. And you said the judge is biased, perhaps. Bias, certainly inconsistent. I mean,
00:24:10.880
it is an inconsistency that is glaring and that galls me as somebody who has a real pronounced
00:24:17.720
soft spot for the defense. That's what's so different about, I think, you guys and the left.
00:24:28.620
National Review are not big fans of Trump. You know, the editorials and the writers. And there's
00:24:34.720
some who I think probably most of you will vote for him, but definitely not your first choice and
00:24:39.320
been openly critical about him. But you're sane. And you can see objectively through your opinion
00:24:46.340
what's right and what's wrong when it comes to the treatment of Trump. I can't say the same
00:24:52.020
for the left that hates Trump. There really is something called Trump derangement syndrome. I mean,
00:24:59.840
you see it, Rich. Like, they do get deranged when it comes to him, where they don't care about the
00:25:07.280
things Charlie was just talking about. The ends justify the means. And the end of stopping Trump
00:25:14.180
is the ultimate end above all ends. Yeah. So this case is so bad, there have been some
00:25:22.160
folks left of center who have said, ah, this is not a good idea. This doesn't stand up. This isn't
00:25:27.740
the way to go. But it's not most, right? The majority are just willing to go along because
00:25:32.280
they assume it will hurt Trump. And as we've seen Trump sort of tiptoeing through the raindrops and
00:25:37.540
probably getting most of these cases delayed, except for this one, you've had people on the left
00:25:42.120
frankly writing, openly writing, well, it was a really bad idea to rely on the criminal justice
00:25:48.500
system to stop them, which just shows that they're using it for political means, right? That was the
00:25:53.080
whole purpose, the whole purpose of all this, the whole rush to do it before the election. And with
00:25:57.300
the Bragg case, it has to be a 2024 thing, right? If he did it in 2023, it'd be old news by now. If he
00:26:03.840
does it in 2025, he either can't do it because he's elected president, or it doesn't really matter much
00:26:08.840
because Trump will presumably, if he loses, be mostly politically defanged. Who knows? I've said
00:26:14.000
that before, and it hasn't been true, but probably it would be the case now. So he has to do it now.
00:26:18.420
It's an election event, right? It's not a trial. It's an election event. And if nothing else happens,
00:26:23.660
again, the time spent in a courtroom, four days a week, a presidential candidate during a presidential
00:26:30.260
campaign, the cliche is a campaign's most precious resource is the candidate's time. He's trying to make
00:26:36.100
the most of it being there, right? He has press availabilities before and afterwards. But often
00:26:40.180
they're about to trial themselves. It doesn't look great, you know, behind steel barriers. And he has
00:26:45.080
some Republicans sort of backing them up, but he must better out there doing rallies where he can take
00:26:49.820
down names and organize and energize people. So if nothing else, for a month or more, Bragg has kept
00:26:57.020
a presidential candidate from doing what a presidential candidate should be free to do in a free country.
00:27:02.780
That itself is an outrage. But again, you'll, you know, there's almost no one on the other side
00:27:07.960
who will say, I don't like Trump. I don't want him to win. I don't think he should have done this
00:27:11.840
hush money payment. I think he's dishonest, but don't do it this way. That's where they're never
00:27:16.360
willing to go. They're never willing to say, but the process is too important. The legalities are too
00:27:21.580
important. The technicalities matter. Never, because the overriding goal is all they care about,
00:27:26.440
which is stopping Trump, which they're failing at.
00:27:28.320
And when they do do it, most of the people you mentioned, Rich, are arguing on a utilitarian
00:27:34.480
basis that it's not working. Not that they're devastated by the sight of it in a country where
00:27:41.920
we're supposed to prosecute crimes, not people. It's not working. People feel sorry for him.
00:27:47.700
The polls aren't shifting. Oh, this case might not come to fruition. It's not from the gut.
00:27:53.940
That's what I find so difficult. That's what's driving me nuts because I understand
00:27:59.140
and share in people's repulsion to what happened on January 6th. I completely understand that. We
00:28:07.320
had Charlie on, I think the day after Biden won and Trump was not spared at all, or the day after
00:28:13.940
January 6th, was not spared at all for the behavior that he engaged in and that some of the worst people
00:28:19.300
on Capitol Hill that day engaged in. But I also see how horrific what they're doing with our courts
00:28:28.260
and our justice system is with respect to a presidential candidate. And they are, as you
00:28:33.060
point out, they're open about it. It's on the nose. And so where's, where is their horror in response to
00:28:39.220
that? And also where was their horror in response to Stacey Abrams and Hillary Clinton? And, you know,
00:28:45.740
I got into this yesterday when Bill Maher was on the program and I'll tell you, you know, he sat down,
00:28:52.320
I appreciated him coming on the show, but as soon as he asked, he asked me explicitly whether I was
00:28:57.980
going to vote for Trump. It's not normally something I announce who I'm voting for as a journalist, but
00:29:01.800
I did the day that Biden with his pen redid title nine, uh, which is going to affect my daughter and
00:29:08.800
yours, you know, all three of us, all of our kids, it's the boys are, they have, they lost their due
00:29:13.780
process on college campuses. The girls lost their rights in their private spaces and well beyond that.
00:29:17.980
I mean, there's so many problems with him, but I said, I'm going to vote. I'm going to vote for Donald
00:29:21.940
Trump. And it's not that I love Trump. I don't love Trump. He's fine. I'm not like a fan of Trump's,
00:29:28.440
but I can see that he does good things and he does some bad things, whatever.
00:29:32.280
But as soon as I said it, you could see the shift, right? He, he looked angry and he actually
00:29:39.760
stopped looking me in the eye. Watch Hillary Clinton, of course, is the original election
00:29:44.360
denier. I'm sure you voted for her in 16. Well, she's not an election denier. She absolutely was
00:29:49.300
the OG election denier. She, first of all, she came out before the sun had risen to conceive the
00:29:57.420
election to Trump. And then spent the next four years saying he was illegitimate. He was an
00:30:02.400
illegitimate president. She, okay. First of all, saying, she didn't say he was an illegitimate.
00:30:07.500
Yeah, she did. Tell me exactly what she said. She said those exact words repeatedly.
00:30:12.940
Okay. I mean, she conceded the election, whether, whether you're interpreting her disappointment at
00:30:20.260
losing it as the same thing as Trump not conceding it. I don't know that that's where you're getting it
00:30:26.820
from, but again, it's a tremendous false equivalency. You could ask Hillary Clinton right now, who won
00:30:32.500
that election? She will tell you. Donald Trump won the election. Now she knows she has to because
00:30:36.940
of what Trump has done. She came out that night in her dark purple suit and conceded the election.
00:30:43.400
Correct. And then spent the next four years trying to convince us it was not legitimate.
00:30:48.020
All right. So just for the record, and our audience knows this and you guys, but just
00:30:51.880
for the record, let's play Saten. I do think that he knows that he's an illegitimate president.
00:30:59.100
I believe he knows he's an illegitimate president. He knows. He knows that there were a bunch of
00:31:07.140
different reasons why the election turned out the way it did. And as I've been telling candidates
00:31:12.740
who have come to see me, you can run the best campaign. You can even become the nominee
00:31:18.700
and you can have the election stolen from you. Joe and Kamala can win by three million votes
00:31:26.060
and still lose. Take it from me. So we need numbers overwhelming. So Trump can't sneak or steal his
00:31:34.520
way to victory. Okay. So why? Why can't a smart guy like Mar know that? I mean, he genuinely seemed
00:31:45.400
surprised to hear this from me. He doesn't, it's, I think it's just his true hatred for Trump, Rich.
00:31:54.820
Now he is his better than most. And I think he's, he's actually been fascinating and inspiring at
00:32:01.960
times to watch like the Harrison Butker thing. He's more reasonable on that culture stuff.
00:32:06.800
He's great on culture. Yeah. But one, they don't, they might not know this, right? They haven't
00:32:14.480
focused on it the same way. I think the distinction between conceding and not conceding is meaningful,
00:32:20.460
but they did not accept the legitimacy of the 2016 election. Right. And this, this caused the whole
00:32:27.980
Russia collusion hoax and all the rest of it. And he's still saying things like that today. Right.
00:32:33.400
And, um, if it's bad for one side to do it, it's bad for the other side, uh, to do it. And it totally
00:32:39.120
deranged our politics for years that that investigation, again, the root of which we had
00:32:45.560
Russia gate. She's the reason she sabotaged his entire first term with these allegations that he
00:32:53.260
stole it with the help of the Russians. She hired fusion GPS. She had her lawyers down there
00:32:59.520
pretending that there were some magic computers at Trump tower that were communicating with the
00:33:03.980
Russians. That's all tied to Hillary, but yeah, she's it's fine because she said the words he won.
00:33:11.720
I it's no, she is the OG denier. Right. And this is going to be much worse if Trump wins in November,
00:33:19.100
which I think is more likely than not. The, the reaction will be much worse than it was. And in 2016,
00:33:26.000
wouldn't surprise me if you see a BLM style violence in the street that people make excuses
00:33:31.820
for or say is mostly peaceful, they are going to be out of their minds. They, they already were,
00:33:38.780
but it's going to be, um, uh, several magnitudes worse. And, uh, uh, the, the end of an end of this
00:33:44.780
year, beginning of 25, if he wins. What do you think, Charlie? I think I'm fairly well placed to say
00:33:51.560
this as someone who's not going to vote for Trump and who has said that he should have been impeached
00:33:56.400
and still believe that and is still appalled more by what he did than what the rioters did on January
00:34:03.400
6th, which was to try to use the constitution and federal law to stay in office. The left has a
00:34:10.620
massive liability and it's total incapacity to see itself as guilty of many of the same crimes.
00:34:20.540
The very fact that I've said this, by the way, will probably get picked up and someone will write
00:34:24.560
and say, ah, false equivalents. They just can't see it. There is a reason why when you poll people
00:34:32.800
on which party represents the greatest threat to democracy or which party is a better guarantor
00:34:37.800
of democracy, it's about even. 49, 48, every poll seems to show. And this absolutely infuriates
00:34:43.980
people on the left because they point to Trump and they say, look at all the things he did.
00:34:46.660
And he did. I agree. I have written it over and over again. I say it again right here. I started
00:34:51.740
this segment by saying it. All of that is true, but they just cannot grasp that just because they
00:34:58.460
won't acknowledge it, as you saw in the segment with Bill Maher, doesn't mean that the public hasn't
00:35:03.420
seen it happen. The public heard Hillary Clinton say that over and over again. Jimmy Carter said it.
00:35:09.480
The public heard the Russiagate allegations over and over again and knows that they came to
00:35:17.220
absolutely nothing. And although it is not identical, I accept it. It is not identical. The public knows
00:35:24.020
that Joe Biden tried to steal nearly a trillion dollars from the Treasury for his student loan
00:35:30.140
bailout, despite his own party having said he couldn't do it. The public knows that Joe Biden
00:35:35.880
refused to say prior to 2020 that he was against packing the Supreme Court. The public knows that
00:35:43.180
when his party, Joe Biden's party, gets upset at gridlock in Washington, it starts talking about
00:35:50.060
abolishing the Senate. These are not identical. I can reiterate, if you like, all of the things
00:35:56.080
Trump did wrong is why I'm not voting for him. But what has happened here is that the Democratic Party
00:36:01.840
has decided that because Trump is a threat to democracy, as it sees it, our democracy, as it
00:36:10.120
sees it, is always a telling phrase, that whatever it does to try to get rid of Trump is therefore
00:36:15.240
legitimate. It isn't the same thing in different clothing. It is a defense of democracy. So while
00:36:21.840
we sit and we talk about these absurd trials that I think are a stain on the country, they
00:36:26.340
see that too as being a legitimate exercise of power to defend America from Trump. But not
00:36:33.880
everyone in America does. And so they get confused because they think, well, hang on a minute, we're
00:36:38.440
doing the right thing. Whatever mechanism we need to use to get rid of him. Another one I didn't
00:36:43.140
mention was trying to kick him off the ballot on the most absurd reading of the 14th Amendment
00:36:47.920
that was shot down 9-0 in the Supreme Court. They think, well, that's not the same because
00:36:55.380
Trump is bad. Therefore, whatever it takes to get rid of him is legitimate. But you know
00:36:59.960
who doesn't think that? Americans. They don't believe that. They think what Trump did was
00:37:04.540
appalling, as I do. They also think that trying to bend the system to get rid of him is appalling.
00:37:09.740
And the Democrats can't internalize it. So I don't know what Bill Maher thinks. I last
00:37:14.360
went on his show eight years ago. But I think you see some of that in the astonished reaction
00:37:20.580
that you get because they've never got past the first position, which is, well, we're on
00:37:25.700
the side of the angels. And then when people don't agree with that proposition, they sort
00:37:31.660
Mm hmm. But by the way, I got to follow up. Like, what are you thinking? Because I know
00:37:36.440
how you feel about RFKJ. Like Jill Stein? Yeah. Cornel West? Who are you going to write
00:37:42.080
in Rich? Who are you going to? What are you going to do, Charlie?
00:37:44.160
Well, I'm going to go and I'm going to vote for every other elected office. I mean, every
00:37:48.780
state representative and senators up in Florida, we have a Senate election. Rick Scott will be running
00:37:53.620
again. And 24. I'm just going to not vote in the presidential election. Look, I totally accept
00:37:59.500
people have different views on this. I just can't vote for someone who tried to do what
00:38:05.780
I get it. Honestly, I get it. I mean, I'm not going to pretend it. I didn't wrestle with
00:38:09.600
it. I mean, I voted for him last time, too. It wasn't easy. I know people people made
00:38:13.700
fun of me like, what do you mean it wasn't easy? Trump, Biden. But it's just I knew I
00:38:16.900
was going to vote for Biden. But there are just certain issues that are so important to
00:38:20.700
me. I want someone in there who's going to do the right thing on them. And, you know,
00:38:24.920
it does basically boil down to a binary choice. We, you know,
00:38:29.500
really are. My vote doesn't count in Connecticut. Neither does yours in Florida. You kind of
00:38:33.000
know how it's going to go at this point. Rich, you're in Virginia. Oh, no. Are you in Connecticut,
00:38:35.980
too? We're both out of luck. So, Rich, who are you voting for? Have you said?
00:38:40.820
I haven't said, you know, unless unless I have a change of heart, probably not for Trump.
00:38:46.360
My out is I don't live in a swing state, so I don't need to do it. There are many things I just
00:38:51.100
can't accept about about him and I find intolerable. But there are 100 things he's going to be
00:38:55.680
better on on policy. You know, Title IX is is among them. So I prefer him to Biden. It's just
00:39:04.380
I've never myself could be a Trump guy. Yeah. Yeah. And that's fine. Right. You. That's what
00:39:10.340
I say when people say, where should I go for real news? I've said I said like people like you have
00:39:14.900
gotten me through the past four to six years because I like to go to places who are not Trump
00:39:20.160
sycophants, but who can report the news fairly. Right. And that that's a very narrow window window
00:39:26.540
there, like where you don't love him and you can get past your hatred of him to actually report the
00:39:32.460
real news. I don't hate him. Yeah. I find him enjoyable in many ways. They're just aspects of
00:39:36.760
them that are deeply problematic. Yeah. No, I know. And January 6th is chief among them. I mean,
00:39:41.760
I realize it's not what the Democrats say. It wasn't an insurrection, but he behaved terribly and he did
00:39:47.040
his level best to corrupt the system such that he could remain in power and to not concede his loss.
00:39:52.900
But ultimately he did. He got out, which is something the left is missing. He did go.
00:39:58.520
They're predicting he never will this time around. All right. Okay. Stand by quick break back with more.
00:40:06.320
This just in this, this just in James Comey has a message for you guys and he wants you to hear it
00:40:12.340
loud and clear. Take a listen, Rich Lowry and Charles CW Cook. Watch this.
00:40:16.080
When you think about a second Trump administration, what do you think the implications would be for
00:40:20.540
the FBI? Oh, serious. For the Justice Department and the FBI, because Trump is coming for those
00:40:26.620
institutions. He knows their power. And I think he has regrets that he didn't work hard enough to
00:40:31.120
corrupt them last time. So he's coming for them. And that's a danger for all Americans. He's going to
00:40:36.620
put people in positions in those organizations. He didn't have all stars the last time. He'll have the
00:40:41.760
bottom of the barrel this time, but people who will want to do his will. And that should worry
00:40:46.000
every American. This election matters because of a reason like that. People have to participate.
00:40:52.800
You cannot sit on the sideline. I don't care how you feel about Joe Biden. You must vote for him.
00:40:58.140
You got it. He's talking to you, Rich and Charles and me too, I guess. But you guys are not even
00:41:02.400
filling in the bubble. So you're going to have some answering to do to James Comey, Rich.
00:41:06.800
Yeah. I mean, the law enforcement system might be distorted. If Joe Biden doesn't win a second
00:41:14.640
term, it would be shocking. Look, I don't like when Trump talks about retaliation and all that.
00:41:19.420
I don't like it. I don't think it's very likely to happen. But there could be a no kidding
00:41:23.880
investigation of Joe Biden. I mean, I think it's gonna be very tempting just to take the Robert
00:41:28.300
Hurd report and just scratch out the justifications for not charging him, you know, that he's a good
00:41:33.940
natured old man who can't remember things and just say, here's evidence of crimes. Let's look
00:41:38.800
into this. And as we've learned repeatedly in the Trump years, just being investigated itself is
00:41:44.280
a punishment, right? It causes you worry, sucks away resources. So I think there's gonna be a real
00:41:50.760
temptation to do that. But the fact is, when it comes down to like frank illegalities, people aren't
00:41:57.420
going to do it. You know, even if Trump orders it, they're not going to do it because they've seen
00:42:02.460
what can happen to you. So I think this it's unnecessarily a dire, unsurprisingly, take there
00:42:14.560
Has there been a man I'm curious for both of you? Has there been a man who your opinion of has changed
00:42:19.720
more dramatically in the past, you know, six, seven years from the beginning of the Trump presidency to
00:42:25.360
now than James Comey? I mean, for me, I think he might be like the number one who, who I either
00:42:31.800
always had wrong, you know, or just changed dramatically. What do you think, Charles?
00:42:36.980
Um, I mean, it's partly him. And it's partly the FBI. Right? You know, I think we should
00:42:47.860
abolish the FBI. I'm just not convinced it can be fixed. It is so politicized. And you have James
00:42:56.580
Comey speaking as if it is this great paragon of virtue. And anyone who suggests otherwise is somehow
00:43:06.880
a, you know, crazy right wing Trump lover. Well, I don't, I don't think that's me. So I've sort of
00:43:16.940
seen the two of them decline in the same way. I assumed that Comey was on the level and his
00:43:23.520
descriptions of the institution that he used to be in charge of were correct. But over time,
00:43:29.760
I found his approach to be farcical. And with it, the FBI, I just, I, I think it's one of those
00:43:37.900
great examples of an institution that actually, and I mean, in that case, didn't have a particularly
00:43:42.220
great history. But perhaps had a period in which it was trustworthy, and traded on that for a long
00:43:50.460
time, long after its role had changed. So it's not just James Comey, although he's symptomatic.
00:43:56.960
I think the whole thing is a problem. And I think we've sort of forgot, it's one of the great
00:44:03.540
tragedies, one of the many great tragedies of January 6, was that in one instant,
00:44:11.980
the Republican Party took this dead weight, and hung it around its own neck. When prior to that,
00:44:22.540
you had three or four years of crazy subversion and election denialism from the left. And in fact,
00:44:30.800
prior to the 2020 election, it was the left that was shouting about the prospect of the election being
00:44:37.500
stolen. Remember that great conspiracy theory in the summer of 2020? The postmaster general was
00:44:42.380
going to steal the election? Oh, yeah. That's right. That was a great one.
00:44:46.860
Well, in one moment, and I don't pretend that this didn't happen. It did. It was a choice made by Trump
00:44:53.700
and his acolytes. But in one moment, the conservatives said, nope, that's our reputation.
00:44:58.260
Now we will take that on, which was immensely stupid. Hold my beer.
00:45:00.900
Yeah, he was immensely stupid. But we shouldn't forget, just because the Republicans did that,
00:45:08.660
and they did do that, that the FBI absolutely disgraced itself for two or three years. And
00:45:14.060
James Comey did as well. If I had been James Comey, and I'll say this, and then I'll shut up.
00:45:18.700
If I had been James Comey, after that press conference, where I had to come out,
00:45:24.300
announce that the allegations that I'd been investigated weren't true, try and create a
00:45:29.640
new standard in American law that was essentially guilty, but we can't prove it, I would have
00:45:35.380
slunk away somewhere warm and sunny for the rest of my life. I wouldn't dare to show my face in
00:45:43.000
public. But he is now sitting trying to bully people in to vote for Joe Biden on MSNBC. I assume
00:45:48.280
that was MSNBC. It's something else. It's Comey's vanity. He can't stop himself. Something,
00:45:54.420
again, I didn't know about him. But I will give you a little look at his favorite candidate. And you
00:45:58.380
tell me whether this is somebody we should keep in the office for the next, well, I guess, all told,
00:46:04.120
four plus years. Take a look at James, at Joe Biden, addressing, let's see, where was he when
00:46:11.340
he made all of these errors? My God, the NAACP. Yeah, yeah, here it is in New Hampshire. Watch.
00:46:16.840
Or the NAAC, as he says. Oh, hold on, you'll, you'll see it.
00:46:21.520
And when I was vice president, things were kind of bad during the pandemic.
00:46:28.840
And what happened was, Barack said to me, go to Detroit and help fix it.
00:46:34.800
Folks, it wasn't vice president in the pandemic.
00:46:37.200
I just came from Atlanta, where I delivered a commencement at Morehouse College.
00:46:48.960
Our protected and expanded the Affordable Care Act, saving millions of families $800,000 in
00:46:58.940
And the erectionists have stormed Capitol Hill patriots.
00:47:06.860
There were at least nine corrections they had to make.
00:47:09.640
I got doubts about their chosen candidate, Rich, and I actually really have doubts that
00:47:17.720
I think there's some significant chance he doesn't.
00:47:25.480
Misspeaking at the level he does is another thing.
00:47:27.420
But the most disturbing of those gaffes that he just went through is not knowing when he
00:47:42.000
Not knowing the date and not knowing what was going on in his own life.
00:47:52.900
And it's just absurd to think that he's going to be president in the United States until
00:48:04.540
So if you I'll tell you, one person who's definitely not voting for Joe Biden is the
00:48:17.980
He's got forever employment or at least four year.
00:48:20.620
We'll get to Fannie Willis and Rachel Maddow right after this.
00:48:24.360
I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly show on Sirius XM.
00:48:28.920
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00:48:36.980
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00:49:15.700
That's SiriusXM.com slash MK show and get three months free.
00:49:42.220
And now she's going to face Atlanta based lawyer Courtney Kramer in the general, who is
00:49:47.620
First Republican to seek the office in more than two decades, inspired, no doubt, by Fannie's
00:49:58.140
The judge who ruled on this case and who is trying the case ultimately against Trump down
00:50:07.020
So Fannie Willis, I guess, fresh off her big win, decides to give her first interview post
00:50:12.040
her ethics scandal to Rachel Maddow, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, which night after night lectures
00:50:22.740
Trump is so bad because he attacks the press and journalists matter.
00:50:29.060
And asked zero, zero difficult questions of Fannie Willis.
00:50:41.380
Let me start by asking you about what your life has been like and how things have changed
00:50:53.940
I wondered what effect the sort of constant threat of violence that you've been living
00:50:59.780
with has had on on you and on your ability to do your work.
00:51:03.640
Do you feel like you've changed over the course of this term in office in terms of having to
00:51:10.020
develop new skills, new resources, develop a thicker skin than you might not have expected
00:51:21.020
Nothing about the odor of mendacity that the judge found lingered in the courtroom after
00:51:27.720
her testimony and that of those supporting her.
00:51:33.620
I'll just give you one more, Rich, and I'll give it to you.
00:51:35.800
Here's a little bit about how Rachel Maddow got into it.
00:51:40.020
Setting Fannie Willis up as really the unheard victim here, because no one is defending this
00:51:56.800
In a way that is underappreciated in this country.
00:51:59.620
They have created a maelstrom of political harassment and pressure, bringing it down to bear on this
00:52:13.220
This story for all of us, this is not a profile in courage.
00:52:30.540
And right now, they have no one defending them as they are being asked to bear superhuman
00:52:40.720
And there has been no significant countervailing pressure defending them.
00:52:45.240
And the history that we are making is that there's no one defending Fannie Willis but herself.
00:52:50.280
Who will defend them, the prosecutors, with all of the power?
00:52:58.420
Remind me again, Rich, why was it that Fannie Willis was so evilly targeted by so many?
00:53:08.680
I don't know whether it was this interview or a press conference, but Fannie Willis was
00:53:12.700
saying, all of a sudden, there's this oversight committee that's looking into me and other
00:53:17.500
prosecutors, it must be because they're now black DAs in Georgia.
00:53:21.620
It's because she was, frankly, corrupt and unethical in hiring her boyfriend to be her
00:53:31.420
Oprah would have done a tougher interview with Fannie Willis.
00:53:46.620
She's utterly predictable, total conspiracy theorist during the whole Russia hoax.
00:53:52.680
But the mainstream media treats her like she's the gold standard, right?
00:53:58.160
I think only Eric Wimple, the lonely media writer at The Washington Post, ever called
00:54:03.720
Rachel Maddow on any of her conspiracy theories during Russiagate.
00:54:11.740
In fact, MSNBC is a network entirely devoted to boosting these prosecutions.
00:54:16.620
I mean, Lawrence O'Donnell, the way he describes Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen as he's
00:54:26.380
I hate to see what his Saturday night looks like.
00:54:28.620
So, Charles, this brings me to the promised moment that we mentioned an hour ago, holding
00:54:33.940
on to the, you know, the left's obsession with the norms and just their complete blindness
00:54:39.580
to what they are doing, how we got to this place.
00:54:51.940
By the way, we're told that that committee, which is at the state Senate in Georgia investigating
00:54:57.020
Fannie Willis's behavior here now, originally was the Democrats idea that they wanted to
00:55:01.480
push after Ahmaud Arbery was killed and they they weren't satisfied with the prosecutor's
00:55:07.220
So this actually wasn't originally about black prosecutors.
00:55:11.500
At that point, only now have they taken a look at her, who she happens to be black because
00:55:16.180
of her ethical lapses, which have the odor of mendacity, according to the judge trying
00:55:21.860
But here is just a little taste, Charles, of Maddow and her indignation from the same
00:55:27.060
monologue, different soundbites than you just heard, about about what these evil Republicans
00:55:36.300
Republicans in the state legislature decided that for the first time in the history of
00:55:39.700
that state, they needed to give themselves a new power.
00:55:42.480
They needed to give themselves the power to remove prosecutors.
00:55:46.400
They have created a maelstrom of political harassment and pressure, bringing it down to bear on this
00:55:58.160
Because she brought this case against someone of their party, this is Republicans using their
00:56:04.680
political power to try to shut off the legal system, to try to shut off the rule of law here
00:56:10.520
so it cannot be used against their guy against Trump.
00:56:15.480
They are fundamentally changing the judiciary in the state, in the entire state, all to protect
00:56:23.740
this one powerful defendant in their own party.
00:56:28.820
Does that sound like anybody you know over the past year and a half?
00:56:31.900
I mean, it's a great glimpse into the Maddow extended universe.
00:56:38.980
Chris Hayes is also a narrator of this great fiction.
00:56:42.360
I love her analogies, but I think you played it twice, or she said it twice, but she kept
00:56:47.120
using as her analogy of great heavy pressure, a laser, which is not heavy, it's light.
00:56:53.820
She also seems to think that the prosecutor is the judiciary.
00:57:01.640
This is why I don't watch MSNBC, Megan, because it is a parallel universe.
00:57:11.980
It is an amusement park of nonsense, and that segment was extremely heavy on dudgeon and indignation
00:57:27.060
and extremely light on anything that comports with reality.
00:57:31.740
And if she and Chris Hayes and others presented themselves as entertainment or as a partisan feel-good provider, that would be fine.
00:57:50.720
This country has a long history of partisan journalism, much of which, 100 years ago especially, was awful.
00:57:59.000
But when you combine that with, as you referred to at the beginning of the segment, this saccharine, self-indulgent, self-congratulatory pretense
00:58:14.460
that Rachel Maddow and her confres are speaking up for the sanctity of journalism and American law,
00:58:30.920
And again, I don't know what Bill Maher thinks or doesn't think.
00:58:37.800
But you see in that segment why so many people on the left who consume MSNBC every day don't know anything about America.
00:58:50.380
I'm not blind to the fact that this exists on the right as well.
00:58:54.240
We can list the locations that provide the same service.
00:58:58.840
But I have been amazed in my work at the sheer number of otherwise intelligent people who just don't know what's happening in the United States,
00:59:09.640
who are shocked, as you showed in that Bill Maher clip, when you tell them that Hillary Clinton used the word illegitimate,
00:59:17.920
who are amazed when this case or that case doesn't go the way they want it.
00:59:24.060
But the Rittenhouse trial was a good example of this.
00:59:27.280
The parallel set of facts that I kept reading in the New York Times that had nothing to do with what that case,
00:59:38.260
By the way, Charles, Bill also told me that cops died, that a number of cops died on January 6th.
00:59:45.840
10,000 African-Americans are shot by cops every year is the media.
00:59:52.500
There was a poll that showed that the registered Democrats who watched MSNBC's conception of how deadly COVID was
01:00:06.100
And just quickly, Rich, he also told me, he also told me that Michael Cohen went to jail for three years
01:00:16.440
He also said that Trump's immigration numbers have been about the same as Joe Biden's.
01:00:25.200
Yeah, one of the most disturbing things to go back about to the Alvin Bragg case,
01:00:28.300
there's some significant chance that Judge Murchon is a Rachel Maddow viewer, right?
01:00:35.240
Unlike Charlie, he is watching and he's watching religiously.
01:00:39.100
Can I just say so just to highlight what was in that clip?
01:00:44.360
This is the first time in history that the legal system has been used this way.
01:00:56.180
Can one imagine that they're using political power to shut down the rule of law?
01:01:07.080
They're fundamentally taking apart the judiciary all because of one person and their hatred for them.
01:01:23.360
Republicans are taking new acts in response to your breach into brand new uncharted territory
01:01:30.300
that in almost 250 years we've never entered before.
01:01:38.280
And I just want to flesh something else on this because it's irritated me over the last three or
01:01:44.360
One of the reasons that I think progressivism is so damaging to America is that its core goal is to separate out a certain group of people and make them untouchable and untouched by the Democrat branches of government.
01:01:59.040
And so you see this and we saw it during the Russiagate hoax as well.
01:02:03.240
You see this in Washington where there is this conception that the Department of Justice and the FBI are somehow independent of the president, the one guy who is elected and in whom all of the powers of the executive are vested by Article two.
01:02:18.300
But what Rachel Maddow is saying there is another example of that.
01:02:23.500
It is true that the state is looking into Fannie Willis, but Fannie Willis is a prosecutor who works for the state and has power only at the pleasure of the state, who is able to execute laws only insofar as those laws are ratified by the state.
01:02:41.580
Here in Florida, DeSantis, a few years ago, removed a prosecutor who said he was not willing to enforce state law.
01:02:52.080
And there was this great outcry about this on the left.
01:02:58.560
But he also said out loud, I'm not going to enforce the law of the state from the power of which grants me my position.
01:03:08.080
And so DeSantis, who has the power under Florida law to remove prosecutors who don't do their jobs, did so.
01:03:14.860
If Fannie Willis gets kicked out from her role, despite being elected, it will be because she's corrupt.
01:03:21.500
It will be because she's violating the trust that the state has put in.
01:03:30.460
It's not the government coming into someone's private house and telling them what to do.
01:03:34.140
It is the government upholding its own standards.
01:03:38.160
So what Rachel Maddow is essentially saying there is the opposite of what she's pretending she's saying.
01:03:43.020
She wants Fannie Willis to operate with impunity.
01:03:46.000
She wants Fannie Willis to operate independently of the government of the state she's representing.
01:03:53.160
Yeah, and as you point out earlier, Rich, then Fannie Willis tried to blame it on her race.
01:03:59.160
Oh, it's just now that we have 14 minority prosecutors.
01:04:02.220
That's why the state's getting involved in overseeing.
01:04:10.680
Those other 13, I'm sure they didn't have affairs with their special prosecutor and pay them a higher rate than the other prosecutors were paid.
01:04:17.120
And then take the stand and, in my strong, well-informed opinion, lie about it.
01:04:28.900
And that's why his decision to allow her to stay on the case is being appealed.
01:04:35.680
Of course, you saw those loving, you know, smoochy Rachel Maddow questions to Fannie.
01:04:41.140
And Fannie had the following reaction to one of them, asking how she is.
01:04:45.520
That reminded me of another person who loves to play the victim.
01:04:51.080
Not many people ask about what is the personal journey.
01:04:56.640
And also, thank you for asking, because not many people have asked if I'm OK.
01:05:02.980
It could be a queen, princess, queen of Fulton County.
01:05:11.760
Yeah, look, I mean, this is the progressives always go to this.
01:05:19.060
And look, I mean, there must be some upstanding crusader against Donald Trump that they can
01:05:25.620
None immediately comes to mind, but there must be one out there.
01:05:29.220
But here they're taking this woman who lied and was unethical and making her into a heroine
01:05:36.840
and a victim solely because, and this goes back to what we were talking about a while
01:05:41.460
ago because she has, she's pursuing the right target, right?
01:05:49.120
Once you're through that and you're anti-Trump, it doesn't matter what your ethics are.
01:06:00.560
And it's because they consider Trump, you know, basically Hitler.
01:06:03.820
So most of us would have considered any means legitimate to stop Hitler anywhere along the
01:06:09.260
And that's the way they think about Donald Trump.
01:06:12.800
And it ends up distorting their worldview and how they operate and making them the baddies,
01:06:21.140
you know, the villains in a lot of these scenarios, but they can't, they can't see it.
01:06:25.160
So Charles, that's a perfect segue into Cori Bush, who is just a left-wing loon who is out
01:06:33.620
And she does this on the anniversary of Michael Brown's death in Ferguson.
01:06:38.300
And Michael Brown's would have been birthday in Ferguson over and over and over.
01:06:45.020
She keeps pushing this bill that she wants passed, which would, I'll give you a couple
01:06:54.060
highlights, recruit, hire, train, and dispatch mental health professionals and community health
01:06:58.100
workers to provide comprehensive mental health services to individuals who have suffered
01:07:01.500
traumatic experiences or are in grief, in bereavement, or at risk of suicide or violence as a result
01:07:07.060
of witnessing or experiencing law enforcement personnel violence, the death of a family member
01:07:12.220
due to law enforcement personnel violence, the death of a colleague or a neighbor due to
01:07:17.200
And this is how the bill defines law enforcement personnel violence.
01:07:20.280
Law enforcement personnel violence means a situation where a law enforcement agent uses force.
01:07:26.280
So now the taxpayers under this Cori Bush bill would have to pay for the mental health services
01:07:33.560
for anyone, anyone who is on the other side of a law enforcement agent using force, justified
01:07:44.080
And here she is announcing this bill once again, which has gotten no traction just the other day.
01:07:50.720
Michael Brown should have turned 28 years old, just 81 days after his 18th birthday, a Ferguson
01:08:01.100
In a just world, Mike Brown would be with his loved ones right now, dreaming of his future
01:08:07.820
as he blows out the candles on his birthday cake.
01:08:11.060
They were all left to live through the trauma police violence leaves in its wake to deal with
01:08:21.080
Police killings of unarmed black people are responsible for more than 50 million additional
01:08:29.560
Almost a decade has passed since we lost Mike Brown, but we're still on the front lines of
01:08:42.860
Michael Brown is dead because he attacked a police officer.
01:08:54.100
As you know, Shelby and Eli Steele made a documentary called What Killed Michael Brown.
01:08:58.140
You can still get it on Amazon, which tried to ban it for a time.
01:09:01.340
And they in the documentary take a deep dive on what killed Michael Brown.
01:09:08.060
And they had actors read actual testimonials that were given to the DOJ by the actual witnesses
01:09:16.560
to the moment that Officer Darren Wilson did shoot Michael Brown when he was charging the
01:09:24.520
Immediately after he did his body gesture, he came for force, you know, full charge of
01:09:31.040
He had he has his arms bent towards his chest and he's running like, you know, almost like
01:09:38.200
I heard him say, get down about two or three times.
01:09:40.620
I probably would have would have shot him instantly if you're charging me like that.
01:09:44.420
But when he was running back, he was screaming, stop, stop.
01:09:47.200
And the officer was backing up as he kept coming closer to him.
01:09:55.180
Well, I actually think there's something profoundly wrong with her.
01:09:59.540
And I don't say that facetiously, but she is somebody who has spent a long time trying
01:10:04.980
to defund the police, abolish the police at one point.
01:10:08.960
Now she's trying to pass this law, which is not a federal concern.
01:10:15.620
While spending quite a lot of money, up to $600,000 a year on private security.
01:10:21.600
And then when called on it saying, well, of course, I need private security, otherwise
01:10:27.860
I don't begrudge her private security, but it's incredible to argue indignantly that you
01:10:34.200
need private security because without them, you might be in danger while trying for a
01:10:43.220
So her logical reasoning skills are perhaps not what we would want in a federal representative.
01:10:52.440
I mean, this is really an offshoot of defund the police in the sense that it is a softer
01:10:59.960
attempt to imply that the entire, I won't say force, because there are hundreds of them
01:11:08.800
around the country, thousands of them, but the entire police apparatus of the United
01:11:12.820
States is irretrievably racist, which I don't think is true.
01:11:17.640
The presumption of the bill is every day police go out there and they harass and batter African
01:11:27.740
And it's so bad and so frequent that we need a federal law that deals with the consequences
01:11:35.180
And the irony of that is that while, of course, there are some bad police officers in America,
01:11:39.660
and while there are presumably some racist police officers in America, and while we have
01:11:43.300
occasionally, as is inevitable in a country of 330 million people, seen some incidents that
01:11:50.300
were regrettable in America, if she, as she said, wants to save black lives, the way you
01:11:56.540
do that is to train the police properly and fund them.
01:12:01.080
I've never read a single statistical analysis here that shows otherwise.
01:12:05.940
The way that you improve the outcomes for disproportionately poor African Americans in America is to make
01:12:12.200
sure that they have good, well-trained, well-funded police.
01:12:15.540
If Iber Max Kendi had any integrity about him at all, he would define defund the police as
01:12:23.060
His definition being that anything that disproportionately affects or hurts African Americans or minorities
01:12:30.180
Well, Cori Bush's approach to policing is, by his definition, racist.
01:12:36.680
And yet, once again, we see her on the screen insisting otherwise.
01:12:45.100
You know, we always look at the Washington Post, which now tracks the number of black men who
01:12:51.020
are shot, unarmed black men who are shot by cops each year.
01:12:55.280
The cops, they pull over or have interactions with tens of millions of Americans every year.
01:13:03.140
They didn't signal when you were taking a ride, whatever it is, a turn.
01:13:06.560
On average, they make between 7 and 10 million arrests a year in this country, between 7 and
01:13:14.060
And according to the Washington Post, the number of unarmed black men who, on average, get shot
01:13:23.900
For the past 10 years, I just pulled up the past nine, past nine years.
01:13:27.600
It's 174 in the past nine years out of some 7 to 10 million each year who get pulled over
01:13:37.880
And by the way, just to give you a feel for what's in those 12 to 19 per year, who they
01:13:43.020
consider unarmed men, one of the cases we just pulled, two Louisiana state prisoners, two
01:13:51.580
Louisiana state prison transport officers shot and killed a prisoner trying to escape.
01:13:58.560
So it's a prisoner trying to get away from them.
01:14:01.400
The second one is a four-year-old boy was killed by cops.
01:14:06.840
Because the cops showed up at a home where a woman had been stabbed multiple times in
01:14:13.780
And the suspect, who was the stabber, grabbed the little boy, pointed a knife to his throat.
01:14:20.920
And one officer, obviously fearing that the worst was about to happen, fired his weapon
01:14:24.760
to try to save the child, but struck them both and killed them.
01:14:31.280
And yet this moron is out there wasting my time and yours pretending that there's a massive
01:14:37.300
problem with racist cops traumatizing the black community.
01:14:40.680
And her exhibit A is Michael Brown, the poster child in the hands up, don't shoot lie.
01:14:53.360
There was never an epidemic of police shooting of unarmed black men.
01:14:59.060
You know, those 12 to 19 a year, whatever they are, they run the gamut from some that are
01:15:03.180
true outrageous and cops should be punished for and do get punished for to ambiguous cases
01:15:09.560
to just totally justified uses of force, even though the person, the target was, was unarmed.
01:15:16.940
And Megan, a month or two ago, they tried to make a big deal of this.
01:15:22.920
They tried to make an outrage of a case where a young man was pulled over, had a gun, defied
01:15:29.100
the orders of the police to keep his windows rolled down, yeah, and shot at the police first.
01:15:35.640
And they were trying to make him, you know, one of these victims whose names we supposedly
01:15:41.280
So look, Michael Brown's life was a tragedy, but the tragedy was everything that happened
01:15:45.780
before that interaction with the cop that led to him being so undisciplined, led him to
01:15:53.240
being such a bully, led him to having such pure, a poor impulse control and judgment such
01:15:59.960
that he tried to take that cop's gun and probably shoot him dead.
01:16:08.840
Took a long time to back down, you know, the, the counter case, you know, people were respectable
01:16:13.200
people on TV were holding up their hands, right?
01:16:15.700
Because they thought that that's what happened.
01:16:19.460
And of course she, she's going to do everything she can do to continue to perpetuate this lie
01:16:26.280
You know, what's amazing is that piece by Shelby and Eli, you know, they call it not who killed
01:16:34.160
Because if you look at it and it's so worth your two hours, so worth it.
01:16:36.940
They, they go into the history behind that moment in Ferguson, Missouri and Democrat policies
01:16:46.520
The, they document the uprising in, you know, um, socioeconomic uprising of the black family
01:16:52.840
and how well black Americans were doing in this area before the great society, before
01:16:57.300
these ridiculous welfare policies that Lyndon Johnson put in place.
01:17:01.360
And before the state decided to start quote, helping the black community there and the housing
01:17:08.540
projects that replaced their single family homes that they'd been living in and working in.
01:17:12.800
And just the whole history behind this is told, and those policies happened because of people
01:17:20.200
And as she still wants to get out of any responsibility for these left wing ruinous policies by pointing
01:17:27.480
the finger at innocent cops who in this case did not do anything wrong.
01:17:33.080
And in the vast majority of cases have done nothing but try to protect all communities, including
01:17:41.340
It's just, it needs to be called out when it happens.