The Megyn Kelly Show - Trump Trial Circus Begins, and Biden Foreign Policy Chaos Consequences, with Alan Dershowitz, Glenn Greenwald, Noah Pollak, and Josh Hammer

00:00:00.440 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:12.000 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, a truly unprecedented time

00:00:17.620 in American and world history. Two enormous stories unfolding right now that will have

00:00:22.660 implications for decades to come. The trial of a former American president,

00:00:28.400 now officially underway, and Iran's first direct attack on Israel. All these years of threats,

00:00:36.660 and finally it happened. At 10 a.m. this morning, a clerk inside of the Manhattan Criminal Court

00:00:41.940 in New York City called the case, the people of the state of New York versus Donald J. Trump.

00:00:48.820 The first criminal trial of former President Donald Trump officially underway right now as they begin

00:00:54.820 selecting a jury. At the moment, they are trying to deal with the prosecution's push to have Trump

00:01:02.800 held in contempt of court for violating, they say, the court's gag order, stopping him from criticizing

00:01:09.800 witnesses. Michael Cohen was all over MSNBC on the weekend criticizing Trump, but because of this

00:01:16.980 judge's gag order, Trump can't say anything about Michael Cohen. See, that's how it works. And Cohen was

00:01:25.200 truthed about in, you know, typical Trump style, where he leveled a couple of accusations against

00:01:32.320 him, calling him a liar and a convicted felon. And now they're trying to seek to hold him in contempt.

00:01:38.180 What will happen to Trump? If you get thrown in contempt, normally you go to jail. You sit there for a day or

00:01:43.640 two. What's this judge going to do? We'll get to that. We're watching it. I've been following

00:01:48.340 developments on this ongoing saga since the hush money story first broke in 2018. And I remember

00:01:56.420 sitting there on the set at NBC. Can I tell you, it happened to be a day when I brought my daughter

00:02:01.360 with me to work because she had school off. And she was writing in like a little journal while we

00:02:07.120 were discussing the case. And she said something like, they're talking about Donald Trump in his

00:02:11.800 underwear. I remember seeing her little diary after the fact. This is now made its way into a criminal

00:02:20.340 case against the president. It's surreal what's happening. Before he went inside this courtroom

00:02:27.580 today, Mr. Trump addressed the cameras saying this trial is, quote, an assault on our country,

00:02:34.380 but that he's, quote, honored to be in court today. Watch.

00:02:38.920 This is an assault on America. Nothing like this has ever happened before.

00:02:45.320 There's never been anything like it. Every legal scholar said this case is nonsense. It should

00:02:51.160 never have been brought. It doesn't deserve anything like this. There is no case. And they've said it.

00:02:57.380 People that don't necessarily follow or like Donald Trump said this is an outrage that this case was

00:03:03.440 brought. This is political persecution. This is a persecution like never before. Nobody's ever

00:03:09.380 seen anything like it. And again, it's a case that should have never been brought. It's an assault

00:03:16.000 on America. And that's why I'm very proud to be here. This is an assault on our country.

00:03:21.500 And it's a country that's failing. It's a country that's run by an incompetent man who's very much

00:03:27.820 involved in this case. This is really an attack on a political opponent. That's all it is.

00:03:33.860 So I'm very honored to be here. Thank you very much.

00:03:36.640 This trial will not be televised, but don't let that stop the thirsty anti-Trump media from making

00:03:41.320 it into a circus. Take a look at the scene outside the courtroom today and what will likely be the

00:03:45.780 scene for the next six weeks, at least could be longer, probably will be while this trial takes place.

00:03:51.500 Our friend Mike Davis capturing these scenes on the ground. We are following these developments and

00:03:57.480 I have to tell you, to me, this is a sad and disgusting day. I talked about this with Glenn

00:04:03.720 Beck on his show earlier. I woke up today feeling unsettled, feeling down about this case. It's not

00:04:13.800 that I love Trump. As you guys know, I'm not a Trump lover. I'm not a sycophant and I'm not a

00:04:18.460 Trump derangement person either. I'm sad for our country and I am sad for Trump that he's being

00:04:23.500 put through this. What's he accused of doing? Paying off. Yes, she's a porn star, but let's just

00:04:29.180 be honest about it. Net net paying off a lover to keep quiet about an affair and then not writing

00:04:36.440 down in the books. I paid off a lover to keep quiet about my affair. They've ginned up that moment

00:04:41.540 into 34 felony counts. Yes, there's other stuff around it and I'll talk about that. But at its

00:04:48.920 essence, that's what this case is about. For that, they broke nearly 250 years of precedent

00:04:55.980 and indicted a former president. It's a disgrace. It's a humiliation for us, the United States.

00:05:06.660 Forget Trump. Alvin Bragg, he's humiliated himself and he's brought us down with him.

00:05:14.820 I said to Glenn, it's as if they took someone like Princess Diana and made her into a street whore.

00:05:20.440 That's America and what he's reduced us to today with this mockery of our legal system.

00:05:28.240 In all of the get Trump efforts, this one is the most offensive. There isn't even a colorable basis

00:05:36.300 to be bringing this claim. You guys know what it is about at this point. He didn't document the hush

00:05:42.760 payment properly in his books. And they claim that that was, in fact, not a misdemeanor,

00:05:49.780 but a felony because it was allegedly done to cover up an underlying crime, which elevates it from

00:05:55.920 a misdemeanor to a felony under New York law. They're trying to this is trying to go after

00:06:00.740 companies, big companies that cook their books to falsely document or hide underlying fraud

00:06:09.700 on taxes, et cetera. That's not what this is. The underlying felony that elevated this,

00:06:15.000 that resurrected the dead claim, which was a two year misdemeanor into a felony. Well,

00:06:19.840 it was a campaign finance violation. So says D.A. Alvin Bragg. That claim was rejected

00:06:25.700 by the feds who are actually in charge of such prosecutions as a loser. Why is it a loser?

00:06:34.960 Because all the campaign finance officials to look at this say that payment to Stormy Daniels was not a

00:06:39.680 campaign finance violation. It was a man trying potentially or at least in one way to stop his

00:06:45.660 wife from hearing the gory details of an affair. And if it has any sort of dual purpose, any purpose

00:06:51.620 other than to get one elected, then it doesn't come within the realm of campaign finance.

00:06:59.460 That's the law. That's the law. That's why the fed said we're not interested. It's why this D.A.'s

00:07:06.680 office said, yeah, we're not interested either. And only when Alvin Bragg, who ran on the promise

00:07:11.040 of how many times he'd sued Trump and promised to do it again, once he got at the helm, it became

00:07:17.440 a case. I'm disgusted. I'm disheartened. I have very low hopes for fairness toward Trump during this

00:07:24.760 trial, either by this judge who clearly can't stand him and shouldn't be trying the case at all,

00:07:29.240 or by the jury, who, if you play the odds, is going to absolutely loathe Donald Trump,

00:07:33.820 as 87% of New Yorkers do. They voted against him. He used to be loved when he was just a businessman

00:07:39.200 and full of color and swag. Well, things change when you get political. We all know that.

00:07:47.520 It's a dark day for America. Alvin Bragg ought to be ashamed of himself. And I understand

00:07:53.020 what Trump was saying when he said, I'm proud to be here. He's got to spin it.

00:07:57.700 You know, he's taking this legal bullet and testing the system because he must.

00:08:05.780 And also because he's, I'm sure, horrified at what's being done. This thing has motivated so

00:08:12.640 many Americans to side with Trump, even though they don't like his personal conduct. They're not

00:08:16.420 in favor of extramarital affairs, which Trump denies. They're not even in favor of Trump's behavior.

00:08:21.900 And they weren't even going to vote for Trump. But now they will. Because this bastardization

00:08:28.320 of the legal system. So I understand what he's saying. I'm proud to be here. But make no mistake

00:08:33.640 about it. Today could be the game changer in the 2024 presidential election. This is a before and

00:08:39.020 after moment for America, both when you look back 250 years and when you look forward.

00:08:43.620 This could be the thing that changes November. And if you think I'm kidding, go look at the polls.

00:08:51.240 Half of independents, one third of Republicans say if he's a convicted felon, it changes my vote.

00:08:57.200 Do they mean it? We don't know. We talked about it last week. What if they do?

00:09:00.760 What if they do mean it, you guys? It's not gonna be hard for Alvin Bragg to get a conviction with a

00:09:05.760 New York jury. It's not 100 percent guaranteed, but it's not going to be hard. It's not. The odds are

00:09:13.040 Trump did not document his hush payment accurately and that they'll be able to prove that and that

00:09:18.660 this jury will say, yep, they got him. And that could make the difference in an electorate already

00:09:25.340 somewhat on the fence about whether they want Trump 2.0. That's the whole goal. It's the whole

00:09:34.520 goal behind this whole thing. Now it officially gets underway today, notwithstanding repeated

00:09:38.860 efforts for that I can count as of late by Trump to delay it. And now they'll draw out the jury

00:09:45.040 selection, I'm sure, as long as possible. Delay works in Trump's favor. They're saying it's six to

00:09:49.280 eight weeks. That's two months from now. Let's say that's a June verdict. If there's any way he could

00:09:54.200 stretch it out longer, he will. But he's not going to stretch it past November, not unless something

00:10:00.120 unforeseen and catastrophic happens. And therefore, what happens today may have an effect on

00:10:06.560 certainly Trump's personal life, potentially his freedom, though I doubt they put him behind bars

00:10:12.160 for this. It's potentially on the table. And the future of this country, the border, health care,

00:10:20.140 the economy, fairness in girls sports, due process for men on college campuses.

00:10:25.680 There's so much at stake. The security of America, our policy toward Israel, the Middle East,

00:10:33.760 Ukraine. Where do we spend our dollars and cents? What's the future look like? Does Iran

00:10:40.240 become more bellicose? All of this potentially laying in the balance here

00:10:45.120 as this New York jury gets selected and soon sworn in. In just a bit, I'm going to be joined by

00:10:52.740 Alan Dershowitz. Very happy to have him today. And Josh Hammer. Remember, Josh went to, I think,

00:10:58.060 Duke and then Chicago Law, University of Chicago Law School, which I think right now is number one.

00:11:03.420 And he's been following the developments in all the Trump cases very closely. And we're going to

00:11:07.340 talk about what we can expect this week as jury selection begins. What kind of juror is best for

00:11:14.300 Trump and what kind of juror is best for the prosecution? And we'll get into why some are saying,

00:11:20.400 hey, you know, hold on. This may not be a slam dunk for the Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg.

00:11:26.860 But as we watch all that in lower Manhattan and keep in mind, there's neither audio nor video

00:11:32.020 from the courtroom, but we are getting a live, live updates, tweets, and so on from reporters who

00:11:38.380 are either in the courtroom or in the overflow room. And our team is monitoring those by the second.

00:11:43.400 So when we hit hour two and we get to the Trump case, we'll have all the very latest of what's

00:11:50.040 happened. But we've got to talk about the possibility of world war. That's also big.

00:11:58.360 We're witnessing a very tense situation overseas in the Middle East, as you have undoubtedly heard.

00:12:03.480 The world now awaiting Israel's next moves. Israel leaders have said they will respond

00:12:10.560 to the attack they suffered at the hands of Iran this weekend. But the Biden administration has

00:12:16.760 warned that while the U.S. helped defend Israel from the barrage of missiles on Saturday,

00:12:22.300 America will not support any counterattack by Israel. But how much responsibility does President

00:12:27.360 Biden himself bear when it comes to the chaos we're seeing in the region? Because just as

00:12:33.480 Trump's prior behavior will play out in a New York courtroom today, Mr. Biden's priors should play

00:12:40.880 out against him over the next six to seven months and will play out against us all as the Middle East

00:12:46.880 becomes less and less stable. Some steadfastly believe the United States should stay out of this

00:12:54.640 as far out as we can get. And our friend Glenn Greenwald will join us in a moment with that take.

00:13:01.100 But we start today with Noah Pollack. Noah is a political writer specializing in issues

00:13:06.240 concerning foreign policy, Israel and the Jewish people. He's a contributor for the Washington Free

00:13:10.700 Beacon, and he believes after this weekend, the United States is one step closer to former

00:13:15.560 President Barack Obama's dream, he says, of a U.S.-Iran alliance in the region.

00:13:21.980 Noah, thank you so much for being with us today. There are a lot of concerns amongst regular

00:13:30.120 Americans today about we want to support Israel, but we do not. We don't want another war. We don't

00:13:35.140 want the United States getting another involved in another war, and we certainly don't want a World

00:13:38.460 War III. So just start at the 30,000-foot level and tell us, like, where are we on that scale?

00:13:44.540 Thanks for having me, and great to see you again. And I think the talk about World War III is a

00:13:49.800 little overblown here. The Iranians are not a nuclear power. They don't have a conventional

00:13:55.480 military. They don't have an air force. They have basically what we saw over the weekend is,

00:14:02.860 for the most part, the extent of their military capabilities. Now, they can shoot more drones

00:14:07.760 and ballistic missiles and things like that. But I think there's some people who are being a little

00:14:12.800 loose with the facts and with the reality here by claiming that we're risking World War III. I mean,

00:14:18.240 obviously, if there was some risk here of, like, a Russian or Chinese entrance into this,

00:14:25.040 that would obviously be a different scenario. But the idea of Israel counterattacking here

00:14:30.760 against Iran, that's not going to cause World War III. In 1987, when the Iranians were screwing

00:14:38.320 around in the Gulf and they had mined the Persian Gulf, Ronald Reagan did something called Operation

00:14:42.840 Crane Manus, which is over the course of a couple of hours, he put most of the Iranian Navy on the floor

00:14:47.300 of the Persian Gulf. And that was that. The Iranians are big, blustering bullies. And they don't

00:14:55.780 actually have a whole lot behind all the bravado other than what we saw over the weekend. There's

00:15:00.220 no World War III that's going to happen here. What were they doing? Because we saw the Iran strike

00:15:06.940 of the Iranian, sorry, the Israel strike of the Iranian leaders on April 1st. And they took out,

00:15:13.420 they said the men directly responsible for 10-7. So that was a retaliation by Israel after it was

00:15:21.000 attacked. Then Iran comes back and acts like it is the initial victim and says, all right, we're

00:15:28.400 attacking you. But I've read it two different ways. They're feckless and they kind of are not very good

00:15:36.820 for some of the reasons you just outlined at warfare. And they tried, but Israel was too strong

00:15:43.260 with Iron Dome and Arrow 3 and all these defense systems. Or was it, no, no, no, they can do much

00:15:49.580 better. It's not that they're feckless. It's that they intentionally struck things they knew Israel

00:15:55.180 could defend against because they too don't want to escalate.

00:15:58.400 Yeah. I mean, it's almost beside the point. I mean, they launched 300 projectiles,

00:16:03.920 including ballistic missiles, the size of school buses at Israel, at another country. And that is

00:16:09.700 an act of war. As far as this game over like the tit for tat, I find this to be ridiculous. Like

00:16:14.800 Iran has been chanting death to Israel, death to America since 1979. They have pursued a strategy in

00:16:21.560 the Middle East that they call the ring of fire, which is surrounding Israel with their terrorist proxy

00:16:26.080 groups. This has been going on for decades. They fund arm train Hamas, Hezbollah, the Shia militias in

00:16:33.220 Syria and Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen. Israel is literally surrounded by Iranian proxy terrorist

00:16:39.800 organizations that are funded and armed by Iran that shoot missiles and commit terrorist attacks on

00:16:45.680 Israel on a constant basis for decades. The idea that Israel bombing this fake diplomatic facility,

00:16:53.340 which was not a diplomatic facility, it was an IRGC base. And the IRGC is a US designated terrorist

00:16:57.960 organization, by the way. They eliminated several very high value targets, guys who were overseeing

00:17:05.640 the ring of fire strategy. These were the guys who were like the liaisons with the terrorist groups and

00:17:10.820 helping get them arms and money. These are the guys that helped Hamas plan October 7th. And taking out

00:17:16.460 those, those are the most legitimate military targets in the history of military targets.

00:17:20.960 And the idea that this is some like tit for tat, oh, you know, Iran has been at war with Israel since

00:17:27.960 1979 and Israel is finally responding. And the people who claim that there is some like equivalence

00:17:35.180 here, it's just, I think they, I think they know what they're doing and they're not being honest.

00:17:39.620 There isn't, there isn't, but now what, right? Because now Iran's done what it did. Israel defended

00:17:46.700 against it with the help of the United States, the UK, um, France. And now there's a question of,

00:17:54.180 is it, is that piece of this done? Because Israel saying it's not done, that they will respond,

00:18:01.460 that they have to. And the United States is saying, we're out. Do you know, if you're going to do that,

00:18:06.680 I'm not going to support it. And we're not going to support what happens after it.

00:18:09.620 The Biden role here is so shameful. Um, the, the only thing he cares about is his reelection

00:18:15.880 and, and it's not so much, you know, votes in Michigan. This is the interest of his

00:18:22.640 administration is, is, is to not have to run for reelection with a war going on in the

00:18:26.920 background that enables Donald Trump, uh, to point out the very obvious thing that I think everyone

00:18:31.580 sees, which is that during the Trump administration, there was peace treaties breaking out in the

00:18:35.920 Middle East and during the Obama, uh, during, well, okay. This is kind of the Obama administration

00:18:39.840 during the Biden administration, there is war breaking out in the Middle East all over the

00:18:44.440 place. And the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Um, and the eating we have here is war.

00:18:50.680 This is Biden's worst. This is because Biden has distanced the United States from Israel.

00:18:56.280 He has pursued the Obama Iran deal strategy of Iran can do no wrong. Um, there's like Obama's law,

00:19:03.000 which is that Iran is allowed to attack anyone they want, but no one's allowed to attack Iran.

00:19:07.140 And this is enforced now by the Biden administration. Um, these are Biden's wars that he caused. And now

00:19:13.540 his administration is desperately trying to figure out a way, um, to not have to run for reelection

00:19:18.600 with these wars going on in the background. And so what he does is he basically goes to the

00:19:22.580 Israelis who depend on the United States and value an alliance with the United States and value

00:19:28.160 friendship with the United States. And he basically says to them, I'm going to, I'm going to hold your

00:19:32.500 arms behind your back. So you can't respond because I don't want there to be a war going on, uh, while

00:19:37.120 I'm running for reelection. And that's actually what's going on here. And it actually is bad for

00:19:40.880 the United States. It makes the world more dangerous. It makes the Middle East more dangerous.

00:19:44.140 The Iranians correctly read from this, that they have a free hand and that the United States will hold

00:19:48.860 back its own allies. Um, and everyone in the Middle East, this is not just about the Jews in Israel.

00:19:54.800 This is the Gulf Arab state, Saudi Arabia, UAE, our allies, U S allies, oil producing countries are in

00:20:01.580 the crosshairs. The Iranians want to go after these guys. They hate those regimes. There's a reason they

00:20:06.760 were making peace treaties with Israel is because they want to be united against Iran. Um, Biden is

00:20:13.380 playing with fire here. Um, and now that the fires are burning, he is just basically telling the people

00:20:19.940 he has influence over, which is the Israelis. You're not allowed to fight. Let's back up because

00:20:25.880 you said Biden helped create this. Like this is on him. What's happened to begin with. That's why he's

00:20:30.800 so desperate to make it stop before November. Of course he accused Trump of having set the stage for

00:20:37.360 all of this. He, he warned us that Trump was the one back in 2020 who was going to get us into war

00:20:43.800 with Iran. I'm going to play that. And then I want you to explain what you meant. Like what exactly did

00:20:48.040 Biden do that led to this moment in your view here to here's soundbite seven first though. Watch

00:20:52.120 the world has changed because what Trump has done and the American people, including independents and

00:20:58.360 some Republicans know how bad he is, know how much he's misrepresented, know how he's getting close to

00:21:04.920 getting us in a war. I said, there's a wall's closing in this man. I'm worried he's going to

00:21:09.280 get us to war in Iran. Unfortunately, I may have been right. The fact of the matter is there's a lot

00:21:14.920 at stake in this election. Wow. It's unbelievable to hear under the circumstances. So go ahead.

00:21:21.800 Look at how lively and coherent he is. My God, it's only four years ago. Like the contrast is enormous.

00:21:27.800 It's terrifying. Look, Biden, we, you know, there's an old line about if you seek peace,

00:21:36.300 prepare for war. And it's true. It's thousands of years old. And it's a very simple concept,

00:21:42.100 which is that when you're dealing with people who wish you harm, if you act weak and if you indulge

00:21:49.340 them and if you give them goodies, hoping to buy them off, typically they're going to end up seeing

00:21:53.360 that you're weak and they're going to attack you even more. And then there's the alternative to that,

00:21:57.440 which is you actually have to be tough and look tough. And if you, if you walk around looking

00:22:00.940 tough, odds are you're not going to actually end up having to fight. That is exactly what Trump

00:22:05.700 showed. He was right. His foreign policy was actually a huge success in the Middle East.

00:22:12.260 Foreign policy is very simple. You reward your friends and punish your enemies. And then you'll

00:22:16.220 have more friends and you'll have fewer enemies. It's actually not that hard. And what Biden has been

00:22:21.340 doing and what Obama started was rewarding our enemies and punishing our friends. That is the basic

00:22:27.120 dynamic of Obama-Biden policy in the Middle East is anyone who's pro-American, you screw them over.

00:22:33.980 So the pro-American people in the Middle East are the Gulf Arabs and the Israelis. And Obama was always

00:22:40.660 trying to help the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestinians. Biden has continued this with Iran.

00:22:45.160 And I don't, I have my sort of theories about why this may be. I think Democrats, especially left-wing

00:22:54.460 Democrats kind of like the, I like these guys who don't like America because progressives don't like

00:22:58.940 America either. So there's like a, you know, but it's, it creates more conflict. And I think that the

00:23:06.560 Obama people or the Biden people are incredibly bad at their jobs. They're deeply unwise and mediocre

00:23:12.620 people who really do believe that they're like chess masters here when in reality, foreign policy

00:23:20.380 is rarely has an opportunity to play chess. It's much, usually much simpler, which is you stand

00:23:24.680 with your friends and you oppose your enemies. To your point about these progressives, like not

00:23:30.260 liking America, there was an event with it by this anti-war committee in Chicago. And this was filmed

00:23:37.380 before the attack by Iran on Israel began, but boy, it really, it really gives you a feel for what

00:23:43.380 you're saying. This Shabir Rizvi in the clip we're about to show is teaching the anti-war demonstrators

00:23:52.560 how to chant death to Israel and death to America, which is a fun little lesson. I mean, I, you know,

00:24:00.920 I remember when I was young, we learned Spanish. We, maybe at your typical anti-war demonstration,

00:24:07.180 you'd be chanting something about love. You wouldn't be chanting in America, in Chicago,

00:24:13.060 death to America. Here it is in Sat 17.

00:24:15.420 Mark Bar Israel! Mark Bar Israel! Mark Bar Israel! Mark Bar Israel! Mark Bar Israel!

00:24:23.680 Thank you. What does that mean? Oh, so, it has, uh, it has, uh, it has two meanings, depending

00:24:32.920 on who it is. It can mean left to or down with. So, can we get a Mark Bar Amrika? We can get a Mark Bar Amrika,

00:24:40.980 yes we can. Mark Bar Amrika! Mark Bar Amrika!

00:24:45.420 Okay, first of all, it's America. So, if you're going to wish for our death, please get it right,

00:24:51.160 sir. Um, second of all, that's one microcosm. It's Chicago. Hello, it's Chicago. But it's happening

00:24:58.060 in more and more places because the, the number of chants I could play for you right now of pro-Iran

00:25:04.420 and anti-Israel in America is stunning to me. So, what do you make of it, Noah?

00:25:10.320 I, I, I, I hate to say this, but, you know, I think a big part of the energy and the vibrancy

00:25:19.060 and the aggressiveness that you're seeing from over the, especially over the past six months

00:25:22.860 of the, the, the, the explicit pro-Hamas, pro-Iran, pro-terrorism activism on U.S. campuses

00:25:30.540 and in some of these cities. Um, these are oftentimes, um, Muslims. They're recent Muslim

00:25:37.740 immigrants. They're the children of Muslim immigrants. There is a real problem. We know

00:25:41.180 this from polling both in America and in Europe. There is a real problem in which, um, Hamas and

00:25:47.780 Iran and terrorism and kind of fighting, uh, an unending war against Israel, um, is shockingly

00:25:55.200 popular, um, among Muslims. And obviously there's huge numbers of Muslims who don't believe those

00:26:01.420 things, um, and are patriotic Americans. But I, something that's been troubling to me over

00:26:06.420 the past six months is the avoidance of, um, being honest about what, where this is coming

00:26:13.260 from. Um, I, I have a feeling that most of the people in those audiences who are learning,

00:26:18.100 you know, death to America, death to Israel chants are not, uh, from the local Episcopalian church.

00:26:25.200 Mm-hmm. There was, um, there were chants of hands off Iran, uh, as well at this team,

00:26:31.020 certain teamsters union headquarters in Chicago. And it was like straight out of central casting

00:26:35.400 from what we're hearing. It's like with the pink masks and the right service poodle and the

00:26:41.680 pro trans t-shirts. Yeah. I mean, you could, all right, but I want to ask you this because in a

00:26:46.700 minute, Glenn Greenwald's going to come on and we're going to talk a little bit about, you know,

00:26:50.680 sort of this other sentiment that we, the more isolationist sentiment is just short form it,

00:26:55.780 right? Like we shouldn't, we don't want anything to do with this. And, um, I don't put Glenn

00:27:00.180 necessarily in this following category, but let me just say this on this show. I really had no

00:27:06.060 appetite whatsoever to platform people who were defending Hamas's attack against Israel on 10 seven.

00:27:12.080 And I still don't, none, but now that it's turned into an ongoing conflict and Israel has exacted

00:27:18.600 some measure of whatever you want to call it, you know, justice against Hamas. And it's,

00:27:26.160 it's ongoing. I can see how there's growing criticism and now it's evolved into a debate about,

00:27:32.440 you know, how long can it go on? How much of a role should we play? And I have a very open mind

00:27:38.600 on that debate. I'm fine with that debate and we're about to have it, but I think Glenn is going

00:27:42.460 to make the case that, you know, America and the pro-industrial military complex are always pro-war

00:27:49.440 and they never really do much pausing about whether we're going to get involved. And that means my kids

00:27:55.960 and, you know, your kids and his kids could potentially, you know, and, and there is that

00:27:59.340 concern for Americans out there, like Israel's done what it needed to do. It hasn't completely eradicated

00:28:04.900 Hamas, but it's done a lot. And is this the point at which we actually should encourage them to,

00:28:10.760 as president Trump said, time to wrap it up now? Look, I'm, I'm all for wrapping it up. Um,

00:28:17.800 the Biden it's, it's funny that it's, it's really one of the ironies of the Biden foreign policy here

00:28:23.000 is that for an administration that doesn't want this war to happen, they're the ones who continuously

00:28:29.080 delay it and prevent the war from reaching a resolution. This is like one of the major tenets of

00:28:33.500 the Biden doctrine is that no one shall be allowed to win or lose a war. He just freezes these conflicts

00:28:38.920 in, in sort of in perpetuity. Um, and that's what he's done with Israel. I mean, if you think that

00:28:44.040 the, the, the reason Israel hasn't gone into the, they have the ball on the 10 yard line in Gaza and

00:28:49.040 in, in the next, the final operation is Rafa. And if you think the reason they haven't done that yet

00:28:54.200 is because like the Israelis got cold feet, it's Biden has been threatening them. He's been threatening

00:28:58.380 them to cut off, uh, munitions resupplies. Um, so I am all for war being decisive and short

00:29:05.680 as possible. Um, what I think the isolationists get wrong and the people who, who, who, who look at

00:29:11.880 the, the, the messiness and the complexity and all of the bad actors out in the world and say to

00:29:16.660 themselves, we are blessed, which we are to live here in America, insulated from all of that by two

00:29:23.120 giant oceans. Um, and by two neighbors, frankly, who are wonderful neighbors to have in geopolitical

00:29:29.020 terms, you know, Canada and Mexico. Um, and why can't we just kind of ignore all of that and just

00:29:34.880 stay out of it? Um, the problem is, is that, um, there is never, it's never a question of whether

00:29:42.360 someone is going to dominate, um, whether or not someone is going to dominate. The question is always

00:29:47.820 who is going to dominate because someone will dominate. And so when it comes to the Middle East,

00:29:51.780 if the United States does not have a leading role there, an influential role there, um, we will have

00:29:58.460 a serious war between the, the next tier of powers, which are Iran and Israel. Um, the way you actually

00:30:05.900 have a peaceful Middle East is by the United States at very low cost, simply providing arms and military

00:30:11.820 flexibility to its ally Israel, which will then handle its own problems. The United States, the Israelis

00:30:18.360 don't want the United States getting involved in their wars. The United States has never gotten

00:30:22.300 involved in Israeli wars other than resupplying arms. There's never been American soldiers who

00:30:27.800 have fought for Israel. And it is in fact completely, the Israeli war doctrine is completely opposed to

00:30:34.140 any foreign power, um, assisting it's in, it's in a conflict that Israel fights by itself for itself.

00:30:41.420 And all they ask for is help with weapons. Um, this is good for America. This is by the way,

00:30:46.800 classic realist foreign policy. It's called offshore balancing where you arm a reliable ally

00:30:52.740 to keep order in their part of the world so that you don't have to. So if you're an isolationist and

00:30:57.640 you don't want America to have to have soldiers in the Middle East, the policy you should favor

00:31:02.160 is for the United States to arm and back Israel so that there can be peace. Um, that policy actually

00:31:09.240 has, was the policy, uh, that started really, and I don't want to go into a whole sort of rabbit hole

00:31:14.660 on the, but after the Yom Kippur war in 1973, that was kind of what the United States pursued.

00:31:19.980 And since 1973, there has not been a state versus state war in the Israel's part of the Middle East.

00:31:26.980 Whereas before there had been numerous state versus state wars in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973,

00:31:33.180 every few years, there was a major state versus state war. That was because Israel was weak. And as soon

00:31:38.900 as the United States started providing arms, it stopped state versus state war. Now there's been

00:31:43.640 terrorism, but terrorism is much different than state versus state war. So supplying Israel with

00:31:48.660 arms is actually a really low cost way for the United States to, um, get things that it wants

00:31:54.520 out of that region and do the right thing at a very low cost. Um, the idea of just throwing

00:31:59.700 everyone, we were more involved militarily in this past strike by Iran in terms of stopping the missiles

00:32:04.780 from coming and with some destroyers sending in some cover, but that was defensive. It was,

00:32:09.520 it was, and that was also intentionally designed. It was intentionally designed to create leverage

00:32:15.980 for the Biden administration to then be able to say to the Israelis, and now you're not allowed to hit

00:32:20.260 them back. That was the whole reason they did that. It was totally cynical. We're dealing with deeply

00:32:26.180 cynical people here. Um, the problem is, is that if the United States doesn't play some role,

00:32:32.120 I don't want the United States to be militarily in the Middle East, invading countries and doing

00:32:36.760 regime change and things like that. That is not a role that we need to play. However, it failed.

00:32:42.860 Right. Like that didn't work out. Um, especially the sort of democratization aspect of it. But if you

00:32:49.400 want to see real war in the Middle East, which we're seeing now more and more, it is precisely because

00:32:55.400 the United States has withdrawn its support for Israel and the Biden administration has been so

00:33:00.520 critical. The Iranians think that they have a free hand now that the Americans have turned against

00:33:05.260 their, their allies and they're not actually that wrong. Um, and you will get more war. Um,

00:33:12.020 okay. This is, I, I don't, I don't understand the motivations of, of someone like Glenn Greenwald

00:33:16.620 on this. Um, because to me, like, and I think the record of history is pretty clear, um, that if you

00:33:21.860 want to keep the peace, you have to have some level of strength. You can't just ignore everything

00:33:26.180 and hope. Okay. If we don't have some involvement with Europe, Russia will own Europe. If we don't

00:33:30.700 have some alliance with Japan and South Korea and countries in the Pacific, China will own the

00:33:35.660 Pacific. And then we will live in a world in which horrible, evil regimes like communist China and

00:33:41.380 Putin and the Iranian regime dominate whole parts of the world. And then our oceans will not seem so,

00:33:47.240 uh, so, so, so, so able to insulate us from, from trouble. And we will not like the world we live in.

00:33:52.480 Hmm. Noah Pollack, great to see you. Thank you so much for being here.

00:33:57.020 Thanks for having me.

00:33:58.500 Up next, Glenn Greenwald, response.

00:34:02.360 Mr. President, what is your message to Iran in this moment?

00:34:05.840 Don't.

00:34:06.880 Our American personnel laugh at that risk, Mr. President.

00:34:11.140 Mr. President.

00:34:12.180 Okay. That was President Biden warning Iran not to attack. Guess what? It didn't listen.

00:34:17.780 Joining me now, Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and host of Rumble's

00:34:21.280 system update. Is anyone surprised that Iran did not listen to President Biden, that no one listened

00:34:28.480 to President Biden and that the many don'ts he's offered over the past seven months have been

00:34:34.120 entirely empty threats? Yeah. If you don't mind, I'd love to answer that in the context of a couple

00:34:39.460 of points I just wanted to make from your last segment, from what you and Noah Pollack were talking

00:34:43.600 about. Yep. I think we have to remember the U.S. and the Israel and Iran have had kind of a

00:34:48.600 low-grade war going on for a long time. Iran supports Hezbollah, which they see as a defensive

00:34:54.260 force against incursions into Lebanon. But a lot of the world, including the West, sees Hezbollah

00:34:59.640 as a terrorist organization. Israel attacks Iran in all sorts of ways with devastating cyber attacks.

00:35:06.800 They murder nuclear scientists on Iranian soil. That has been going on for years. What happened on

00:35:11.760 April 1st, though, was a massive escalation in how these two countries engage in this

00:35:18.000 low-level combat, which is Israel did something that no other country would do, which is they flew

00:35:24.180 over an Iranian consulate, an Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, and bombed it and killed senior

00:35:30.880 military leaders. And I think if we were to ask ourselves if another country flew over an American

00:35:37.440 embassy or an Israeli embassy, bombed it, killed our senior military leaders, how would we respond?

00:35:44.880 Probably a lot more aggressively and severely than Iran did. I mean, there's no country in the world

00:35:49.620 that can have its embassy bombed and not respond in some way. So I do think-

00:35:56.100 Can I just speak to that, Glenn, because they said that what they bombed was the headquarters of the

00:36:02.000 Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the IRGC, which is a terrorist organization. And they took out actual planners

00:36:09.240 of the 10-7 attack. And that's why they say it was fair game.

00:36:14.320 I mean, that's always what Israel and the United States says, that we've heard for 25 years. Anytime they do

00:36:19.500 anything, we torture people, we imprison them without charges, we drone them to death.

00:36:24.640 But I mean, what they're trying to say, I don't think I asked her, but I think their argument is,

00:36:29.080 I'm going to give you the floor. If we found bin Laden after 9-11, but he was next to a consulate

00:36:34.500 where we normally don't attack leaders, we'd bomb him. We would have bombed him. We wouldn't

00:36:38.420 have had any qualms about bombing him. And I think that's Israel's defense.

00:36:42.000 I'm not sure that's true. And there have been really extreme instances in the past. I mean,

00:36:47.160 Julian Assange was inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where the US firmly believed he was

00:36:51.840 radically harming national security. They could have easily gone into that building and taken

00:36:55.940 him. But they respected the inviolability of embassies. Embassies have been used in all sorts

00:37:01.320 of ways. I can't remember a time when a country bombed the embassy of another country. The last

00:37:06.560 time, I think, was during the war in Yugoslavia when the US accidentally bombed China.

00:37:11.280 Okay, forgive me. I just want to get this thing because we have a short time. Why wouldn't Israel,

00:37:14.500 even if that's true, right, if it's an irregular thing to do, why would they have any qualms about

00:37:18.800 doing it when Iran was behind the 10-7 attack where their babies were getting murdered? That's

00:37:23.560 also against the rules of war. I don't think we'd have any qualms whatsoever. You've broken every

00:37:29.000 rule there is. So we're going to break one in return to take out the guy who helped plan this

00:37:33.160 thing. The US was attacked on 9-11 in all sorts of horrible ways. We did a lot of things that

00:37:39.500 many people regret, invading Iraq, invading Afghanistan, overthrowing the government in

00:37:44.160 Syria, overthrowing the government in Libya. I don't think we ever bombed an embassy.

00:37:51.200 And even if you want to justify it with this terrorism narrative, we definitely killed a lot

00:37:55.720 of civilians. But even if you want to justify it with a terrorism narrative, the fact is that no

00:38:02.200 country in the world would refuse to respond. It was, of course, something that was going to provoke

00:38:07.480 an Iranian response. But the main point I want to make here, Megan, is this, which is,

00:38:13.820 I think NOAA radically minimized the extent to which the United States is involved in Israel's

00:38:20.500 wars and the extent to which the United States supports Israel. We give Israel $4 billion every

00:38:26.300 year. Much of that, but not all, is used to buy arms from American arms dealers, but it's still a

00:38:31.960 transfer of wealth to Israel, $4 billion by far more than any other country gets over decades,

00:38:37.900 even though millions of Israelis have a higher standard of living than millions of Americans.

00:38:43.180 On top of that, we don't just provide them with arms. We also pay for their wars. We often involve

00:38:48.920 ourselves in their conflict. You pointed out that yesterday or the day before, we did send fighter jets

00:38:55.400 to take down missiles. It was defensive, but we are involved that way and also by bombing Yemen.

00:39:01.080 And we isolate ourselves diplomatically to protect Israel. All the time, there are U.N. resolutions

00:39:07.120 supported by almost every country in the world, and we use our veto power to protect Israel. And many

00:39:15.060 leading military officials like David Petraeus have said that a major reason why we're so at risk in the

00:39:20.840 Middle East, why our service members are, why our assets are, is because that region perceives that

00:39:26.300 we are always tied to the hip with Israel. And I think it is a legitimate question to ask. It goes

00:39:32.520 far beyond a normal alliance. Why it is that we pay for Israel's wars, we arm Israel's wars, we give

00:39:38.060 them $4 billion a year, we sacrifice our soft power and standing in the world to protect them. And if we're

00:39:43.880 going to do that, and I think it's really worth asking why, why can't Israel pay for its own wars,

00:39:48.620 then of course we also have the right to say, look, we're paying for your wars, we're giving you the

00:39:53.720 weapons. There are things that we don't want you to do that harm our interests, like doing a major

00:39:59.420 retaliatory attack against Iran that could very well drag us back into another Middle East war that

00:40:05.460 Americans overwhelmingly don't want to be involved with. And I think that's the key to the U.S.-Israeli

00:40:10.720 relationship is that we are tied to them in ways that we are not tied to any other country in the

00:40:16.960 world. We arm them, we pay for their wars, we do everything to protect them. It's a very unique

00:40:22.560 and peculiar relationship. What about the fact that, you know, I mean, if we leave Israel to its

00:40:29.160 own devices, we're worried that something like, you know, an Iranian attack will happen. We certainly

00:40:34.300 don't want to see Iran emboldened. One country's chanting death to America since 1979, as Noah points

00:40:40.700 out. One country isn't. One country is an ally that is aligned with us on its views of democracy and what

00:40:48.300 peace looks like in the world. Like, why wouldn't we do everything we can to shore up Israel, which,

00:40:52.680 as Netanyahu and others have said, lives in a very tough neighborhood?

00:40:57.300 Israel is a nuclear power. They have an arsenal of nuclear weapons. They have one of the most

00:41:01.480 sophisticated militaries in the world. They have a thriving economy. They have the Middle East,

00:41:06.440 Silicon Valley. Why can't Israel take care of itself? Why can't Israel pay for its own wars?

00:41:13.420 I think that's a big question. And when we tie ourselves to Israel, it does harm American

00:41:19.540 interests in all sorts of ways. The potential to be dragged into another Middle East war is

00:41:23.920 obviously significant, but also the anger and hatred toward Israel gets directed at the United States as

00:41:30.620 well. I get that. And I cede that point. But I also feel like they hate us. They hate like the

00:41:39.380 Iranian, not the Iranian people, but like the leaders over in Iran. They're going to hate us

00:41:44.160 less if we don't back Israel. I don't buy it. Hell no. They hate us because of our principles,

00:41:49.240 because of our constitution, because of the way we live, because women walk around in tank tops.

00:41:53.200 We could go down the list, but it's not, it's not going to go away if we stop supporting Israel.

00:41:57.680 Megan, this was the debate about 9-11. Like, why did they hate us? Why did they attack us? And

00:42:04.340 the neoclon narrative was, oh, they hate us for our freedoms. And bin Laden repeatedly said there

00:42:09.780 was that letter that recirculated that was banned from TikTok. We are angry at America because they

00:42:15.640 are constantly insinuating themselves into our region. They imposed a sanctions regime on Iraq that

00:42:20.340 killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. They put troops on Saudi soil. The reason Iran hates us,

00:42:26.840 and I'm not justifying it at all, but I think it's very important to have an open,

00:42:31.860 open eyes about your own country, is that in 1954, we overthrew their democratically elected

00:42:37.720 government, the CIA did, and we imposed on them for the next 25 years, one of the most savage and

00:42:43.740 brutal dictatorships in the world, the Shah of Iran. And so when Iran had its revolution and finally

00:42:50.120 deposed their dictator, the Shah of Iran, of course they knew the United States was responsible for his

00:42:55.160 imposition on them for all those decades. And so they had a lot of animosity toward the United

00:43:01.940 States. There are all kinds of countries in the world, Korea and Japan and Brazil and Norway that

00:43:06.920 have all the same freedoms as we do. Yeah, but Glenn, I mean, you're looking at a country, Israel,

00:43:12.100 Israel has a sense of due process and fairness, and Iran is hanging people from cranes. Iran is stoning

00:43:19.720 women to death for not wearing the damn hijab. How the hell are we going to have a relationship

00:43:24.180 with them? It's a no. Megan, we have relationships with the most savage dictators on the planet,

00:43:31.340 our close allies in Saudi Arabia and our close allies in Egypt. Okay, but you have Saudi Arabia,

00:43:37.500 Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, all of which are American allies that are among the most brutal

00:43:43.620 and savage dictatorships in the world. We're fine with having relationships, good relationships and

00:43:49.380 alliances with countries that are extremely repressive as long as they do the bidding of

00:43:54.760 the United States. One of the reasons is their hatred of Iran and vice versa. I mean, those two

00:44:01.360 groups are Shiite versus Sunni, and there's a longstanding hatred between them. One of them wants

00:44:06.320 to completely annihilate Israel, and one of them was actually open-minded to doing a deal with Israel

00:44:11.300 and getting to a better place when we were backing Israel under Trump, when we were helping making it

00:44:16.060 stronger. And these other allies, Saudi Arabia and the others, were starting to look at it like,

00:44:20.160 you know what, maybe we are going to have to deal with this country. We're moving toward peace.

00:44:25.220 It's true. The dictators of Egypt and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf state regions understand that there can

00:44:30.840 be economic benefits from a relationship with Israel. They don't represent the people of those

00:44:34.240 countries. These are dictators imposed by military coups that the United States propped up.

00:44:38.640 And all I'm saying is, we're very tribal as human beings. We always like to see things through the

00:44:44.100 perspective of our side to believe that we're the morally superior ones. We're the victims. They're

00:44:48.500 the aggressors. They're evil. I understand the appeal of that narrative. But you were just talking

00:44:53.200 about the multiple wars that we fought in the Middle East. We invaded Iraq and destroyed it.

00:44:58.500 That strengthened Iran by strengthening the Shiite militia. Saddam Hussein was a vehement

00:45:03.560 opponent of Iran. We created the vacuum out of which ISIS emerged. Even Tony Blair says that. We

00:45:09.680 were in Afghanistan for 20 years. We've been bombing that region for a long time. I think on

00:45:14.360 some level, we have to take some responsibility for why there's anti-American resentment in that

00:45:19.600 region and ask whether that's worth it.

00:45:21.880 I agree with that. I don't disagree with you at all on that. And I'm very open-minded to

00:45:27.460 the growing strain of isolationism, for lack of a better term, in the Republican Party. And

00:45:32.680 you're not a Republican. But I mean, this country was sort of born into isolationism. That's how we

00:45:39.100 were through the lead up to World War I. We didn't want anything to do with any of this. And we get

00:45:44.440 sucked into these conflicts. And those two, as the T-shirt reads, back-to-back world champions,

00:45:49.440 world war champions. And things have gone south for us ever since. Every war we get involved in.

00:45:55.660 Exactly. Exactly.

00:45:56.060 Yeah, I get it. And so I'm not this bellicose pro-war neocon at all. I just, I see the value

00:46:02.560 in aligning with Israel. I see how evil the Iranian regime is. And I have absolutely no tolerance for

00:46:07.740 the fucking bin Laden letter. Zero. No, I'm not saying the bin Laden letter is good. I'm just saying

00:46:13.500 it expresses the reasons why so many people in that region are anti-American sentiment. It's not

00:46:18.840 because they love our freedoms. I don't believe we should take bin Laden at

00:46:20.420 his word. No, but you go to anywhere, you go to anywhere in that region and you ask people

00:46:25.700 why they have anti-American. There are all kinds of free countries around the world that people in

00:46:28.940 that region don't hate. You know, I said they don't hate South Korea. They don't hate

00:46:33.020 Japan. They don't hate Holland. They're not the leader of the free world.

00:46:35.940 Oh, please. I can't compare any of those to America, but okay, keep going.

00:46:39.680 No, but you're saying that the reason they hate us is because we're free. And I'm saying that a big

00:46:44.140 part of the reason they hate us is because we've been bombing that region for decades. We've been

00:46:50.000 interfering in their government, overthrowing their democratically elected leaders, imposing

00:46:53.900 dictatorships on them. If we stop tomorrow, if we stop tomorrow, they will still bomb us.

00:46:59.220 They will still try to get into the New World Trade Center. They will try to get into Wall Street.

00:47:03.040 They will send ISIS. They will continue coming for us. It's over. There's no mending the fences with

00:47:08.340 the radical Islamists who chant death to America, even if we don't support Israel.

00:47:14.140 There are, of course, radical groups in the Middle East that are just psychopaths like ISIS.

00:47:19.900 But to assume that they're all just these primitive people on the warpath of violence without any

00:47:24.480 rational cause or any irrational reason, I think is a mistake. The two things I just want to say is

00:47:30.120 the two documents I just want to say that I think are crucial to understand this context. One is the

00:47:35.800 farewell address of George Washington when he said the whole point of our republic is that we're not

00:47:39.800 going to have any enduring alliances with any country or any enduring amity to any country as

00:47:45.620 well. We're going to avoid international conflict that way. And then Dwight Eisenhower, when he

00:47:50.200 oversaw the war machine in the military industrial complex in the U.S. security state throughout the

00:47:54.640 1950s, when he left in 1961, he had nine minutes on national TV to give his farewell address. And what he

00:48:00.440 chose to use it for was to warn us about the grave dangers of the influence of the military industrial

00:48:06.640 complex, this permanent faction in Washington that exerts its own interests, higher and more powerful

00:48:12.500 than even our elected representatives. And what they always want is work because that's how they profit

00:48:16.960 and get power. And I think we have to be very much more alert to that danger than we have been.

00:48:24.040 I totally agree with that. I've heard you talk about that on System Update on your show on Rumble,

00:48:27.320 which I enjoy. I like hearing your point of view on these things. And I think that's one of the

00:48:32.660 reasons why RFKJ has become so popular, because he's sounding the same alarm. And we do need to be

00:48:36.780 conscious of that, that we have this machine that pushes us, pushes us into war after war. And that's

00:48:41.420 how we got here. Whether that's happening here or whether those are the reasons to stop it,

00:48:46.720 that's a bigger question than what I'm trying to get to. But Glenn Greenwald, always worth listening

00:48:51.720 to. You're brilliant. Thank you so much for coming on. Always great to talk to you, Megan. Thanks for

00:48:56.120 having me to have these divergences. It's great. Appreciate it. Bye-bye. To be continued. See you

00:49:00.420 soon. Okay. We'll be right back with more on the Trump trial. We are now a few hours into the first

00:49:07.400 criminal trial of former President Donald Trump. So far, it's motion practice where they're arguing

00:49:11.980 over procedural items. And no jurors, we're told, have even entered the courtroom for voir dire.

00:49:18.180 The way it works, having served as a ... I actually got selected and served as an actual juror on a

00:49:23.800 case, a criminal case in New York State Supreme. I can tell you exactly how it works. I've been

00:49:27.860 called down for the jury pool many, many times. And you just sit there. You guys have done it

00:49:30.840 probably in your own jurisdictions, your own districts. You sit in this enormous room. When

00:49:36.140 you get registered, you get a little video, which includes all sorts of justices, like from the New

00:49:40.220 York's highest court, the Court of Appeals, and one that features Chief Justice John Roberts telling

00:49:44.800 you everybody serves. By the way, he actually did serve. It's one of my favorite law stories. He didn't get

00:49:49.980 selected for the jury, but he had to go down and apparently went actually into voir dire and got

00:49:54.760 questioned by one of the defense lawyers who asked him, like, profession? Well, I'm the Chief

00:50:00.180 Justice of the United States. Perhaps you've heard of me. Anyway, didn't get selected. But that's what

00:50:05.100 you do. And then you get questioned. You go in and sort of groups of, let's say, 40 into the individual

00:50:11.000 courtrooms where the trials are happening. And you sit there and then the defense and the prosecution

00:50:15.520 get their chance to see whether you're a jury for a juror for them. And they either strike you

00:50:21.780 or you get selected. And so none of that's even started yet. I think they're all still

00:50:26.880 sitting in the pool room because the lawyers are in the courtroom arguing about procedures.

00:50:33.460 Outside of the courtroom, the media and others are in a feeding frenzy. Here's just a quick sample.

00:50:39.580 Have our cameras high in the sky watching the president's motorcade as he arrives in downtown

00:50:47.280 Manhattan. An unprecedented moment playing out here in lower Manhattan. The former president's

00:50:52.200 motorcade just arriving here at the courthouse as he sets to go in for day one of what will be a

00:50:58.120 historic moment for the country. On the air for a moment never before witnessed in American history,

00:51:03.900 a former president on criminal trial. So no, he's not been abided by the gag order. And we're going

00:51:09.860 to have an important moment soon to see whether the D.A. or the judge does anything about it. So

00:51:13.500 first thing out of the D.A.'s mouth should be judge. He violated the gag order. If you tolerate this,

00:51:17.360 it's like raising a child. If the child breaks a rule and you let it go, you've lost them.

00:51:22.220 Is history happening right before our eyes? We're just getting our first look at images of

00:51:28.840 Donald Trump inside the courtroom. There are historic images there. The first time a former

00:51:33.860 president sitting at a defendant's table at the beginning of his own criminal trial.

00:51:40.080 As we've also explained, many honest brokers, including legal scholars on the left, the right,

00:51:44.520 and center do view this particular case as a joke, as completely empty calories,

00:51:51.820 and is something that should never have been brought or allowed. That's regardless of one's

00:51:57.440 feelings about former President Trump. Many people who can't stand Donald Trump have come down

00:52:01.560 with this same opinion. Meantime, inside the courtroom, reporters are describing fairly dull

00:52:06.500 discussions so far. In fact, the New York Times' Maggie Haberman suggested that Mr. Trump himself

00:52:12.320 fell asleep. That's amazing. If true, that's amazing. But there have been a few key moments

00:52:22.360 already today, including the judge denying the prosecution's request to introduce the

00:52:28.660 allegations against Trump that emerged following the Access Hollywood tape. You know, grab him by

00:52:35.020 the P word. The judge calling that tape or the allegations around it complete rumors,

00:52:40.940 complete gossip, complete hearsay. The New York Times reports that this keeps prosecutors from,

00:52:46.600 quote, telling the full story they wanted to about how his campaign was fearful of losing votes

00:52:52.940 from women. Wow, we're going way down deep in the rabbit hole. Joining me now to discuss,

00:52:58.480 Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of the books,

00:53:02.520 Get Trump and War Against the Jews. Very timely books. Also with us today, Josh Hammer,

00:53:07.820 senior editor at large of Newsweek and host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, in which he takes

00:53:13.140 a deep dive on all trials against Trump. Alan, Josh, welcome back to the show. Wow, what a day.

00:53:19.020 So let's just start with that latest news that it appears that the judge is going to refuse to allow

00:53:26.540 the Access Hollywood tape to be played for the jurors, but says the comments that Trump made

00:53:32.060 could be introduced as evidence, I guess, of how women hated him. And that's why he needed to pay to

00:53:39.640 bury this tape with Stormy. Alan, what do you make of it? I think it was the right ruling. I think the

00:53:46.080 tape itself should not go in, but anything he said is an admission. Look, it's so obvious that

00:53:52.700 he had mixed motives in doing what he did, paying the hush money. Obviously, one of his motives was

00:53:58.440 to protect himself from hatred from his wife and protect his family and his business and his friends.

00:54:06.500 But another one of the motives may have been to enhance the possibility of getting elected.

00:54:12.560 You don't prosecute people for mixed motives. You don't try to psychoanalyze a man running for

00:54:19.020 president. They tried to do that, obviously. In the Edwards case, they failed. Sixty years of teaching,

00:54:25.680 practicing, and writing about criminal law, I've never seen a weaker case. But if you listen to CNN,

00:54:32.320 this is the strongest case possible. This is a murder case where there's a confession and a videotape.

00:54:38.420 But, you know, it's just not true. This is an extraordinarily weak case requiring the state

00:54:47.140 to speculate that the reason he failed to indicate the fact that he paid hush money was motivated by

00:54:58.340 this desire to violate a federal statute, though the feds didn't prosecute, and though they haven't

00:55:04.020 really focused and specified what the federal felony is, this is such a contrived case, you'd think if

00:55:10.740 you're trying the president for the first time, a former president, you'd come in with a really,

00:55:16.500 really strong case. And indeed, the feds didn't prosecute him for this. Initially, the DA's office

00:55:23.380 didn't go after him. But then radicals in the office, left-wing Trump haters, pressured Bragg to bring

00:55:29.300 this case. And, you know, he had promised he was going to get Trump. And so this is his attempt to

00:55:34.500 get Trump. But of course, in New York, notwithstanding the weakness of this case, it's very possible that

00:55:40.580 a jury will will convict him. It's a jury that is probably going to be comprised of lots of people

00:55:46.660 who voted against him. And the jury questionnaire is one of the dumbest questionnaires I've ever seen.

00:55:51.780 They asked the jurors if your hatred or negative feelings to a Donald Trump will prevent you from

00:56:01.060 rendering a fair verdict. What potential juror is ever going to admit that he can't give a fair trial,

00:56:07.060 except if he wants to get off the jury? It's an invitation to perjury.

00:56:12.500 Yeah. Well, they're going to because they're going to want to get on this trial. I mean,

00:56:16.420 most people would love to be on this trial. Let's face it, they're all probably going to wind up

00:56:20.340 writing books. They're going to be the next. What's her name? Hutchinson, Cassidy Hutchinson,

00:56:26.420 with their insider's take on whether Trump was or was not asleep. They're going to lie to get on the

00:56:31.540 jury. And that's the problem. Like, you don't want an eager juror. And this is a district,

00:56:38.500 Manhattan, that went 87 percent for Joe Biden, Josh. So they've you know, this is why Trump asked to move

00:56:44.820 to move this case to something like Staten Island, which is much more Republican.

00:56:49.060 Why? If Alvin Bragg's case is so strong, why can't he make it in front of a jury

00:56:52.980 that's potentially more right leaning?

00:56:56.180 Well, I mean, the question answers itself, Megan, because as the esteemed professor rightly says,

00:57:00.580 this case is one of the most farcical things that any of us who follow legal proceedings have seen

00:57:05.060 really in our entire adult lives. I mean, you know, just to try to kind of step back a moment here.

00:57:09.380 So Trump has basically six current trials, you might say, four of which are criminal prosecutions.

00:57:14.820 And those criminal prosecutions are the two state prosecutions in New York and Georgia and then

00:57:18.660 Jack Smith's two federal probes in D.C. and Florida. Look, I am a fairly open conservative.

00:57:24.260 I'm going to vote for Donald Trump this fall, but I will be intellectually honest and concede to you

00:57:28.180 that I think at least the Florida case has at least some legal merit here.

00:57:32.020 They're prosecuting under the wrong statute. The Espionage Act there is ridiculous.

00:57:35.700 But all that to say that I'm trying to assess this on my show America on Trials intellectually honest

00:57:39.940 as I can. This case in New York City, Megan, as the professor just discussed, I mean, this is an

00:57:45.380 absolute joke. So the SDNY, the federal prosecutor's office, looked into these exact charges.

00:57:50.660 They passed on prosecuting Alvin Bragg's predecessor in the Manhattan DA's office, Cy Vance Jr.

00:57:56.260 He looked into this. He passed on it. There are too many issues here to count. So the underlying charge,

00:58:01.620 fraudulent bookkeeping in New York state. First of all, last slide, Chad, that had a two year statute of

00:58:06.500 limitations. So the statute of limitations should have told a long time ago. Now, Alvin Bragg's

00:58:10.660 theory of the case, the way that he purports to get around the statute of limitations problem while

00:58:15.140 simultaneously upping this thing from a misdemeanor to a felony is that his theory of the case is that

00:58:20.180 the fraudulent bookkeeping, meaning the internal accounting books at the Trump organization,

00:58:25.300 because they said the Michael Cohen stuff was legal services. It was actually a campaign contribution.

00:58:30.260 He's saying that it's in furtherance of the campaign in 2016. But as Professor Dershowitz just

00:58:36.180 said, it seems fairly obvious that at best, at best, there are mixed motives when it came to

00:58:41.700 Donald Trump's reasons for wanting Stormy Daniels to pipe down there. Now, look, Donald Trump, you

00:58:46.740 know, say what you will about him. Again, I'm planning on voting for him this fall. But you know,

00:58:49.780 he's not exactly a Jerry Falwell moral majority figure. I mean, at his penthouse in Trump Tower,

00:58:54.500 he's got the Playboy magazine covers there. This is not the kind of guy who would necessarily

00:58:58.820 feel the need to go above and beyond to kind of keep this porn star from speaking out there. So

00:59:03.540 surely I think any reasonable juror who's not a left wing zealot should be able to conclude that

00:59:08.340 indeed there were at best, at best, mixed motives here. But they're going to get a very biased jury

00:59:13.540 pool, Megan. You're making a very astute observation is that the incentives here are deeply, deeply

00:59:18.260 perverse for people to want to get on that jury to go sell the book, go do the CNN, MSNBC talking

00:59:23.780 circuit there. It's going to be a total circus. And the most important point is that this is a point of

00:59:28.500 no return for the American Republic. It is just so sad, I think, for those of us who call ourselves

00:59:33.060 constitutionalists. Many of us rude the day that this would come and it's finally here and it's

00:59:37.620 really quite tragic, I think. I agree. That's how I feel. I feel sad today. I don't, you know,

00:59:42.420 I listen, Trump and I have had a weird relationship and it's not like I'm his number one fan, but I feel

00:59:48.580 sad. I feel sad for him and I feel sad for us. We made it almost 250 years without doing this. And now

00:59:54.180 we cross that barrier for what, for this, for Stormy Daniels, for not documenting a hush money

01:00:00.980 payment, which, you know, Alan has said many times on his show that defies the whole nature of the

01:00:05.300 hush money payment. If you have to write it down and say, this was to pay off a porn star, so she

01:00:09.540 didn't tell everybody. But I do want to get into the specific allegations and to the jury pool and

01:00:13.860 the jury selection, because that's what's happening today. It's very interesting to me. Alan, you've been

01:00:18.100 involved in countless numbers of jury selections. This is where you win or lose the case. You know,

01:00:22.340 we just saw, in fact, speaking of you, um, we just saw one of, uh, one of these clips resurfaced

01:00:27.140 from the OJ trial. And this woman was one of the jurors. She happens to be black. And she was

01:00:31.460 talking about how she kind of openly was into the jury nullification. She knew she was going to, uh,

01:00:36.740 vote in his favor, even though she believed he did it. Just as a reminder here, here's that sound

01:00:40.980 bite. Uh, it's not 50 from ESPN. Do you think that they're members of the jury that voted to

01:00:47.300 acquit OJ because of Rodney King? Yes. You do? Yes. How many of you think felt that way?

01:00:55.220 Oh, probably 90% of them. 90%? Did you feel that way? Yes.

01:01:04.420 That was payback. You think that's right?

01:01:15.300 She shrugged. So the jurors do it. They like to get on the jury for all sorts of reasons,

01:01:20.420 and they might come to certain conclusions for all sorts of reasons. And the defense lawyers

01:01:24.020 and the prosecution's job is to figure out what those motivations are and either get them on or off.

01:01:28.180 So you tell me, if you were advising Trump's team, what's their ideal jury look like?

01:01:35.300 Well, first of all, let's go back to the OJ case for one second. It was the prosecution

01:01:39.780 who decided what the jury pool would be. They could have tried the case in a suburban white area,

01:01:44.500 but they decided to bring it downtown. They decided to have nine black women jurors on the theory that

01:01:50.580 they would be more sensitive to their role as women than as black. They made every mistake in the

01:01:58.820 book. Anissa Aschenbach, the white juror, decided to acquit, even though she thought he probably did it

01:02:05.220 because she believed the police tampered with evidence. So there's lots of reasons why jurors

01:02:09.620 would either acquit or convict. But I agree with you. Jury biases is one of them. The jurors I would pick,

01:02:15.700 if I had my way, would be obviously policemen, government workers, ordinary hard workers.

01:02:26.180 I would try to get non-college graduates. I would try to avoid the elite, kind of left-leaning,

01:02:34.100 typical upper west side, I hate to stereotype, New York jurors. But it's not going to be easy. Remember,

01:02:43.460 you only have a certain number of peremptory challenges. And this judge seems utterly biased

01:02:48.340 against Trump. And I don't think he's going to allow challenges for cause. Apparently,

01:02:54.820 what I heard, at least this morning, he's not going to allow follow-up questions by lawyers if a juror says,

01:03:02.100 well, I think I can be fair, even though there are facts that suggest maybe they couldn't be fair.

01:03:08.660 Look, if I were the defense attorney, I would insist that no juror be asked, can you be fair? It's an

01:03:13.540 absurd question. You should be asked, what have you ever said about Donald Trump? What has anybody

01:03:19.300 ever said to you about Donald Trump? What have you heard about him? What radio shows do you listen

01:03:25.060 to? What TV shows? What newspapers do you read? I would try to get the facts, but I wouldn't allow the

01:03:31.300 juror to express a view as to whether he can be fair or not. As I said before, that's an invitation to

01:03:39.380 perjury. And so I think we're going to see a lot of perjury committed. And I don't think we're going

01:03:43.620 to see a judge who's going to try very hard to get an absolutely fair jury in this case. So I think it's

01:03:51.700 very likely in the end there'll be several jurors who will have disguised their strong bias against

01:03:57.540 Trump in order to get on the jury and convict him regardless of the evidence.

01:04:02.660 Josh, who is your nightmare juror? Like who's the juror you would absolutely say zero chance we're

01:04:09.000 letting this person on the jury for Trump? I mean, I think it has to be kind of, you know,

01:04:14.160 you're basically what Alan was saying, you know, you're stereotypical, you know, MSNBC, you know,

01:04:18.580 binge watching, you know, progressive who was shouting at the top of their lungs out January 6th was

01:04:23.440 an insurrection. And, you know, the orange man is the next coming of Mussolini and Hitler.

01:04:28.600 Anyone who shows up with a mask, I would say like, truly, this is, let's be honest. I've selected

01:04:35.760 juries. You go back and you discuss all the things you're not supposed to discuss. You know, you're not

01:04:40.920 technically supposed to be making these decisions based on certain and unchangeable factors, but you

01:04:46.200 do. Like they're this, that, they're the other thing. And the mask will play a role or, I don't know,

01:04:52.360 like if you've got someone who looks just like Rachel Maddow, like a woman with the short,

01:04:56.960 short haircut, with zero makeup, with like a bitter face, I would say not a Trump. I would tell,

01:05:03.020 am I wrong, Josh? So you're not wrong, Megan, but that's the kind of thing that only you can say.

01:05:07.140 And I probably can't get away with saying, but, but you're definitely not wrong. Look, I mean,

01:05:10.680 I mean, the mask is a decent proxy. I mean, there's any number of other proxies you can,

01:05:14.040 you probably don't want, want someone in there who's got purple hair or pink hair or anything like that.

01:05:18.380 But ultimately you do want to actually like learn some questions there and where they get their

01:05:22.600 news from is a very valuable source of questions. But, you know, the jury questions that the judge

01:05:27.380 here, Mershon, the one whose daughter is, is fundraising off of the fact that, that her

01:05:31.500 father is prosecuting Trump, it's a whole circus. It's a total mess. But the judge, the jury questions

01:05:36.720 that he approved last week, at least that I saw, they're trying to ask these jurors whether or not

01:05:40.420 they're supporters of the Proud Boys or QAnon. I mean, it's very, very, very weird stuff there,

01:05:45.240 but I can't underscore the basic rudimentary point enough here, which is that Manhattan

01:05:49.360 went roughly 87%, if I'm not mistaken, for Joe Biden in 2020. I mean, math is math, Megan. At a

01:05:57.480 certain point there, you can try to strike jurors the best you can there, but this is about as far

01:06:01.600 left, left-leaning in jurisdiction as you're going to get. I hate to say it, but I hope I'm wrong,

01:06:06.880 but I have a hard time believing that if it ultimately gets to a verdict prior to November,

01:06:11.000 that this thing's going to come out any other way than guilty, at least on some of the charges.

01:06:14.180 Well, no, this is New York. It's the paradigm of a fair place compared to District of Columbia.

01:06:20.680 District of Columbia, much, much. And for me, the paradigm juror that I don't want is somebody

01:06:26.320 who went to Harvard or somebody, particularly somebody who went to Harvard who was on the

01:06:30.400 Harvard faculty. I mean, at a place like Harvard, you can't even speak up in class and say anything

01:06:40.160 positive about Donald Trump. I mean, they think he's Hitler. As you know, people stopped talking

01:06:46.700 to me. I didn't even vote for Donald Trump, but I defended him on the floor of the Senate and lost

01:06:53.280 all of my connections to Harvard friends, to Martha's Vineyard friends, to New York friends,

01:06:59.260 and people like that. Do you really expect anybody like that is going to give a fair trial to Donald

01:07:04.820 Trump? I mean, they will tell you in the privacy of their home, even if you were innocent, anything

01:07:10.000 we can do to stop him from being president, we will do. And the polls show that a conviction of

01:07:15.580 a felony could influence enough independent voters to turn this, obviously, very close election

01:07:21.900 against Donald Trump. This is election interference personified.

01:07:26.100 All right. Let's talk a little bit about the charges. We brush by this campaign finance

01:07:32.480 alleged violation. That's the underlying felony that somehow erases the two-year statute of

01:07:39.860 limitations on the misdemeanor of cooking your books. So cooking the books, writing the wrong

01:07:45.700 thing down for this payment. He called it a legal expense to Michael Cohen, when in fact it was a

01:07:49.800 payment to Stormy. They couldn't have brought that. It was a two-year statute of limitations,

01:07:54.700 and it expired. And this underlying campaign finance violation is the reason they were able

01:07:58.980 to resurrect it. Because, oh, you mess with your books to cover up a felony. That was a felony.

01:08:04.060 You guys have both mentioned it. I want to play it for the audience. We had former FEC,

01:08:07.820 Federal Election Commission official Brad Smith on the show, appointed by Bill Clinton,

01:08:12.240 all right, appointed by a Dem, who served for many years, talking about what would make it

01:08:17.180 a campaign finance violation and what wouldn't. It's very hard. It's very, very hard to show.

01:08:22.900 Here's a little bit of that from April 5th. It was episode 522. Watch.

01:08:29.460 Let's suppose I decide to run for Congress and I say, you know, I need to be in a debate and I

01:08:34.880 need a really good suit. So I go out and I spend, you know, $2,000 on a suit, which I would never

01:08:39.900 otherwise do, right? It doesn't make it a campaign expense, even though my purpose was to do it to

01:08:46.320 influence the election. Or suppose I'm an individual and I have a messy divorce in my background and I

01:08:52.120 decide I'm going to run for office. And I say to my lawyer, can we seal those records? And I pay my

01:08:56.920 lawyer to try to seal those divorce records, even though I'm doing it for the purpose of influencing

01:09:00.780 a campaign. It's not a campaign expenditure. And he went on to explain guys that under the relevant

01:09:07.840 laws, it has to be something, a payment that could only ever be to support your campaign.

01:09:16.300 So a suit wouldn't work. Burying bad info on the internet wouldn't work. And paying off a lover

01:09:23.720 not to go public with your extramarital affair wouldn't work. That's from a guy who does this

01:09:30.540 for a living. That's why this thing shouldn't be here at all. But Alan, that should have been dealt

01:09:36.260 with on the papers, right? Like that's never good. That argument doesn't go to the jury.

01:09:40.960 No, I agree with you. The judge ruled essentially that the jury could conceivably find that it was

01:09:50.240 the only purpose. You know, under this theory, Alexander Hamilton would have gone to jail for

01:09:55.600 paying hush money to prevent his affair, adulterous affair. Both he was married and the woman was

01:10:02.200 married. And there was an allegation that he used treasury money to pay it. And eventually,

01:10:08.520 initially, he denied it. Certainly, he didn't put it on any forms. Eventually, he was forced by

01:10:14.180 Jefferson's cronies to write a book, a little pamphlet, which I actually own, in which he admits

01:10:21.780 the affair. But never in the history of the United States, and I would submit never in the history of

01:10:26.660 the world, has anybody ever been prosecuted for failing to disclose hush money. As you said,

01:10:33.460 I said from the beginning, why would anybody pay a nickel in hush money if they knew they had an

01:10:39.180 obligation immediately to disclose it? It's not hush money if you have to disclose it. This is the

01:10:45.360 most absurd case. And I would think a good jury could appeal to the common sense of at least one

01:10:51.120 juror and say, would you ever, ever pay hush money if you knew it would be exposed? And, you know,

01:10:58.340 the idea that you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the only purpose that he did this

01:11:05.740 payment, the only purpose was to influence the election, is to expect proof of something that's

01:11:13.160 just impossible ever to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. I agree with you. This case would have been

01:11:17.280 dismissed, should have been dismissed by a decent judge. But look, what judge wouldn't want to be

01:11:22.900 every day in the press. One other point I want to make, it's an outrage that this case is not on

01:11:28.460 television. The first case involving a total prosecution, a weak case, why are we not entitled

01:11:35.280 to see how bad this case is on television? Why do we have to listen to an analysis of it by CNN,

01:11:42.640 MSNBC, and the New York Times? In the OJ case, there was a poll that was done. People who actually saw the

01:11:49.460 case on television every day were not surprised at the verdict. It's people who read about it

01:11:55.180 from the New York Times or from Toobin on CNN who read about it or heard about it through biased

01:12:01.960 reporting that were absolutely shocked at the result. For example, they didn't report on the

01:12:07.920 fact that a sock had been tampered with and blood had been poured on it by Officer Van Adder

01:12:12.840 because they didn't want to do, they didn't want the public to know that. And if you didn't see it

01:12:18.020 with your own eyes, you would say, oh my God, how could these jurors have acquitted? But when you saw

01:12:22.800 it, you would then understand why jurors after, four or five of them afterward, said, we didn't

01:12:29.100 think he was innocent. We thought the police tampered with the evidence and we couldn't trust the

01:12:34.740 evidence. That's why we acquitted. That's why this case should be on television. It's an absolute

01:12:39.560 outrage, a violation of all of our rights, not to see every moment of this case, not to see the judge

01:12:46.000 on trial, the prosecutor on trial, as well as the defendant on trial.

01:12:50.240 Yeah. At a minimum, they could release the audio the way the Supreme Court does on the big cases.

01:12:55.640 The Supreme, there's no body that hates cameras more than the U.S. Supreme Court. They hate the

01:12:59.100 media and they have no obligation to give us anything. But even on the big cases, they release

01:13:04.040 the audio, understanding that they're ultimately public servants. They work for us, as does Judge

01:13:10.280 Mershon. And, you know, we have a very high public interest in this case, for all the obvious reasons.

01:13:17.420 Continuing forward with the actual charges, Josh. So we talked about the underlying campaign finance

01:13:23.820 violation that got us, you know, a resurrection of the expired, you cooked your books allegation.

01:13:30.700 Now, we're going to spend most of this trial neck deep in R-rated material, right? It's going to be

01:13:39.020 a parade of witnesses, we expect, that are rather unsavory. From Michael Cohen, who is a convicted

01:13:46.500 felon. He was Trump's longtime lawyer who paid Stormy Daniels this $130,000. To Stormy Daniels herself,

01:13:53.740 we think, a porn star. There's a former playmate of the year, 1998, Karen McDougal, with whom Trump

01:14:02.780 allegedly had an affair, who also was paid off to keep her silence. She was part of the AMI slash

01:14:09.860 National Enquirer catch and kill scheme, which I do want to talk to you about. Some interesting

01:14:13.560 developments there. But I'm just going to give you this first, because Stormy Daniels talked a little

01:14:18.660 bit about whether she expects to be a witness when she went on The View, promoting the documentary

01:14:23.280 about her. She's everywhere, everywhere. But Trump can't say anything about her in Stop 40. Listen to

01:14:28.860 this. I'm absolutely ready. I've been ready. I'm hoping with all of my heart that they call me.

01:14:34.700 No one, I don't need someone to speak for me. And I would, I relish the day that I get to face him

01:14:39.920 and speak my truth. Okay. She's going to speak her truth, her truth. Josh, she's going to go on and

01:14:47.260 speak it. And that's what's interesting to me, is like, I don't even know if it's necessary,

01:14:52.520 right? It's like, I mean, maybe Stormy, but like, do we really need to go down the rabbit hole of

01:14:57.060 potentially the Trump Tower doorman who apparently made up out of whole cloth the allegation that

01:15:03.940 Trump had a love child in Trump Tower with one of the employees there, which was, he was proven

01:15:08.400 later to be, you know, full of lies. Anyway, that's what the people at home are going to see. And you tell

01:15:14.640 me, but I think it's by design. Those Republican women who used to vote GOP, who don't like Trump,

01:15:20.300 they're going to have six to eight weeks of R to X rated material around President Trump

01:15:27.080 to talk about at the dinner table each night. And I do think it's all by design.

01:15:32.580 So it's a very interesting hypothesis, Megan. I guess what I would say to that is that if that

01:15:37.380 were really their goal, they probably would militate in favor of what Professor Dershowitz is

01:15:41.660 saying and actually televising it all. Because if you really want to kind of instill into the minds

01:15:45.080 of the suburban voters that Donald Trump is, is a misogynist, he's so terrible to women,

01:15:49.880 look at him, he's sleeping with these porn stars, then you might actually want to see the porn stars

01:15:54.020 and when they sound like the way Stormy Daniels just sounded in that view clip.

01:15:57.600 Au contraire. Au contraire. When you see Stormy Daniels or hear her and you see Michael Cohen,

01:16:04.500 you have the opposite reaction. I mean, it's much better for them to have

01:16:07.920 Nicole Wallace, you know, cleansing it, you know, basically whitewashing the testimony as,

01:16:15.280 you know, she was like Mother Teresa up there with her allegations against Trump. Keep going.

01:16:20.180 No, fair enough. Point well taken. So look, I mean, that definitely might be part of the

01:16:24.700 Democratic calculus. I mean, obviously, all this amounts. And again, we're kind of now I'm zooming

01:16:28.720 out a little bit here and focusing on the broader picture. A lot of this does amount just to straight

01:16:32.420 up election interference. I mean, that is the term that a lot of the Trump campaign is using. I think

01:16:36.340 that they're on very solid ground for doing so. Again, this underlying charge, we can't emphasize

01:16:41.380 this point enough. Both Alan and I have made this point. Both the SDNY and Alvin Bragg's predecessor,

01:16:46.080 Cy Vance Jr., looked into these charges and dismissed it because it was too frivolous.

01:16:50.420 Alvin Bragg. I know all that. You already said that. Yeah, he's a sorority. I want to keep it

01:16:54.640 moving forward. I want to focus on the testimony that we're expecting and the evidence that's likely

01:16:58.460 to go up on that stand. And that leads me to my next point, which is it's not just going to be the

01:17:02.840 Stormy Daniels thing, Alan. It's it's a broader allegation about Trump paying off media and potential

01:17:10.860 witnesses before the 16 election to keep, I guess the theory is women happy with him or at least not

01:17:19.540 unhappy with him. And something interesting happened over the weekend. A reporter, Lachlan Cartwright,

01:17:26.700 who used to be second in command at in the AMI universe, the National Enquirer, owned by David

01:17:34.780 Pecker, run by Dylan Howard, and he was Dylan's number two, came out with this sort of tell all

01:17:40.620 piece. Then he moved on to the Daily Beast, Lachlan Cartwright. Now I think he's a Hollywood

01:17:45.500 reporter contributor and and New York Times contributor as well. OK. And he says, I think

01:17:52.660 I don't know, he might get called as a witness. He's talking about the so-called catch and kill

01:17:57.560 scheme that I think we're going to be hearing about because Bragg mentioned it. And when he

01:18:01.300 indicted Trump about how David Pecker at AMI loved Trump. He if you were a friend of Pecker,

01:18:08.020 it was FOP and you would be protected. And that's how they got this Karen McDougall story. They paid

01:18:13.580 her allegedly, I think, one hundred thirty grand to give them and only them her story so she wouldn't

01:18:19.120 go to a competitor and broadcast this stuff about Trump and their affair. And they ostensibly wrote

01:18:24.080 gave her the money to write a fitness column. You know, she was talking about how that was a

01:18:27.680 nonsense. There was McDougall. There was the doorman. He gets deep into what they did. He says,

01:18:33.880 here's a little bit of what he it was. And a writer then read Lachlan's piece aloud for the

01:18:41.940 daily podcast yesterday. Here's a clip. It's about 32. In August, Howard told me he had met with a

01:18:49.600 former Playboy playmate named Karen McDougall, who said she had an affair with Trump. Howard told me

01:18:56.840 that Pecker bought her story for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but that it would never see

01:19:02.000 the light of day. It was the second catch and kill on Trump's behalf that I heard about. Late in the

01:19:08.980 afternoon, on the Friday before the 2016 election, I received a call from Lucas Alpert, a Wall Street

01:19:15.620 Journal reporter. Did I know anything about a woman named Karen McDougall? I froze. I told Alpert I would

01:19:23.840 call him back. This was a catch and kill, I told Alpert. I went on to explain the tabloid practice of

01:19:31.100 buying stories to bury them. And Alan, the allegation is that they did this over and over

01:19:36.900 and over to interfere with the 16 election. So I think that's what we're looking at here. What do you

01:19:42.980 make of it? It's common. It's very common practice. Happens in the legal profession, too. Occasionally,

01:19:49.980 people try to hire me not because they want me to represent them. They want to make sure I don't

01:19:55.420 represent the other side. So it's a version of catch and kill. Catch and kill has been a very,

01:20:02.040 very common, commonly used tactic by very wealthy people to buy stories so that they'll never be

01:20:08.980 published. So it's credible. I think it's true from everything I've heard.

01:20:14.320 I know that my reaction to the same thing, Josh, was, yeah, I believe every word. And I guess we're

01:20:19.900 going to hear from David Pecker, who's going to cop to all of this, because I think he's already

01:20:23.520 been interviewed by the feds and all that. But who cares? Like, why wouldn't you, if you could

01:20:29.260 shut somebody up from going out there and saying terrible things about you, do it for what for Trump

01:20:34.240 is petty cash? Yeah, I mean, where is the crime here? I mean, where exactly is the crime here? I

01:20:39.840 mean, look, the late great Justice Anthony Scalia famously said that if your view of the Constitution

01:20:44.720 or to, you know, to use that here, if your view of the law in general, you know, perfectly mirrors

01:20:49.700 your personal idiosyncratic preferences, then you're probably not being a very honest assessor

01:20:54.500 of the law. It's not like the law is going to criminalize literally every action out there that

01:20:58.880 every single person views in his or her own capacity as icky or immoral or otherwise wrong.

01:21:05.180 But as Alan says, so-called catch and kill, based on my surveying of what I've read, has been common

01:21:09.860 practice for a very, very, very long time. Donald Trump is obviously a wealthy man. He has the capacity

01:21:14.700 to do that. And again, why would he not do so? But Megan, if I may, I want to emphasize something

01:21:19.800 as well, which is we didn't spend enough time, I think, on that very illuminating Brad Smith

01:21:24.180 commentary, the former Democrat FEC commissioner. What he's saying there, as you said, is that you

01:21:29.560 have to show that the only sole and unequivocal motive was for legal election campaign finance

01:21:37.340 that there was nothing else in the world that could possibly factor into this. Again, what I say to

01:21:42.540 that is that, you know what, maybe if the candidate were like a Mike Huckabee or Rick Santorum or

01:21:47.100 someone who presented it as a very conservative Christian, he had something to cover up. Okay,

01:21:50.920 maybe in that case, Donald Trump is someone who everyone in the right mind knows has been around

01:21:57.160 the block when it comes to women. He has led a very glamorous and glitzy life for a long time.

01:22:01.060 It's all baked in. It is all baked into the equation. The guy who said two Corinthians,

01:22:05.600 not second Corinthians back in Iowa in January, February 2016, the guy with the NBC News,

01:22:10.140 Billy Bush tape. I mean, no one knew or no one thought that this guy was was necessarily kind

01:22:15.220 of, you know, a daily pew attendee in church or anything like that. So it just doesn't make sense

01:22:20.760 based on the fact that all this is baked in to begin with. That's going to be an interesting job.

01:22:25.580 And so it's going to be an interesting job. You're absolutely right between us. But is the defense

01:22:30.900 going to put on the facts that he's a lothario and he's not a good guy and everybody knows he's a

01:22:38.660 runaround? Is the defense going to put that on? Because that could cut both ways in front of a

01:22:43.660 jury. Juries don't think the way you and I think logically, legally about everything. And so the

01:22:50.280 defense attorneys are going to be sitting around making a very hard choice about how much of that

01:22:55.880 to put in front of the jury. I think in the end, they ought to put it in front of the jury.

01:23:00.000 But we'll see whether Donald Trump wants them to put that in front of the jury.

01:23:03.780 It's a very interesting legal defense by suggesting an immoral person, an immoral legal defense.

01:23:14.440 But again, this is New York and we all know Donald Trump for decades now. We've all kind

01:23:19.880 of grown up with him. I'm a lifelong New Yorker, not New York City, New York State, but New York for

01:23:24.360 itself for 20 years. You know, we all have memories of Trump. He needed help. They put out the bankruptcy

01:23:30.420 cans at the coffee shops to help Trump with his money. Like he's been a playboy. He's been a

01:23:35.820 bomb vivant. So I don't think that will shock any of the jurors. But yeah, you're right. Actually

01:23:41.320 offering testimony to it. And I don't even know how they do it because while Trump says he's going to

01:23:45.500 testify, we all have our doubts. And that's where I'm going to pick it up next. I'm going to squeeze

01:23:48.960 in a quick break and we're going to come back with that question. Will he, should he take the stand?

01:23:53.680 Alan and Josh, stay with me.

01:23:55.080 I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM. It's your home for open,

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01:24:58.460 So Trump is saying he definitely will testify. Alan, do we believe that and should he?

01:25:05.560 Of course he won't testify. 100% certainty his lawyers will tell him he can't testify.

01:25:11.160 If he were my client and he didn't take my advice and decided to testify,

01:25:14.860 I would have to quit the case. Why? The first question on cross-examination will be,

01:25:20.460 did you have sex with Ms. Daniels? There are three possible answers. No, which gets him indicted for

01:25:28.460 perjury. Perjury, a really serious case. Yes, which is obviously not helpful. Or I don't remember.

01:25:36.080 I've had sex with so many porn stars. I really can't. There is no possibly good answer to that

01:25:43.380 question. In the O.J. Simpson case, he wanted to take the stand. I told him I would quit the case

01:25:48.800 if he took the stand, that I could not watch on the witness stand being asked whether he beat his

01:25:54.800 wife, because we knew he did. There was pictures, and he would deny it. And he didn't take the stand,

01:25:59.860 and then he won. And when he did take the stand in the civil case, he lost. So I can tell you with

01:26:05.600 100% certainty his lawyers will tell him not to. And I think they will persuade him. Now, he will

01:26:11.380 want to take the stand. And in the end, he has the right to take the stand. By the way, the judge may

01:26:16.520 have to, under New York law, if he doesn't testify, may have to call him up and say, you know you have

01:26:22.480 a right to testify. Even if your lawyers tell you they don't want you to testify, you have a right to

01:26:28.280 testify. It's your right, not your lawyer's right. But prediction, he won't take the stand.

01:26:35.220 He's saying he will. He's a strong personality. By the way, he's just reentered the courtroom.

01:26:39.660 They broke for lunch. He did testify, right? Say again, Alan?

01:26:46.560 How does he answer the question about Daniels?

01:26:50.120 Yeah, good question. I don't know. But Trump has a way of being kind of slippery with the truth.

01:26:56.920 It's different when you have a good cross-examiner there and you're forced to give clear and concise

01:27:02.500 answers and they can really box you in as lawyers are trained to do, Josh. I do think Trump would

01:27:08.080 have his hands full. And he's not dumb. He's brazen and somewhat narcissistic, like all presidential

01:27:14.820 candidates are, presidents. Not somewhat. He's definitely narcissistic. But what do you think?

01:27:20.240 I mean, he doesn't want to get convicted. So will he listen?

01:27:23.120 Yeah, I think he will. Look, Donald Trump is definitely contrarian. He definitely, I think it

01:27:28.620 is fair to say, a narcissist. I mean, most presidents, as you say, are. But if you look

01:27:33.020 back at Donald Trump's presidency, Megan, he actually oftentimes did listen to the people

01:27:37.320 around him. So he signed the First Step Act, the Criminal Justice Reform Bill in 2018, which I think

01:27:41.380 went against his instincts. But those around him, such as Jared Kushner, wanted to see that bill sign.

01:27:45.620 Back in 2017, you had, and I'm getting the weeds here a little bit, but just briefly,

01:27:49.220 you had the UAE-Bahrain-Saudi embargo on Qatar. Trump's instincts were actually to support the

01:27:54.180 embargo. He was talked down by Rex Tillerson. So there's a lot of examples back to his presidency

01:27:58.220 of him actually getting talked down from his instincts from the people around him.

01:28:02.500 This is the first criminal prosecution he's ever faced in his entire life. He's been famously

01:28:05.880 litigious. He has been in court many times. He has never been the defendant in a criminal

01:28:09.660 prosecution. I think for any human being that is going to militate in favor of some deference

01:28:15.460 to your defense attorneys who have been here before with other clients in the courtroom.

01:28:19.740 So overall, I definitely do concur with Professor Dershowitz.

01:28:23.420 Look, I can give you an example of him listening to me on one occasion. He called me once and said

01:28:30.160 that his son-in-law was pressing him very hard to recognize Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights.

01:28:37.000 And he was having real doubts about that. And I made some very, very strong, both legal

01:28:42.420 and military and other arguments in favor of it. And thankfully, he did listen to me on that.

01:28:50.200 He also listened to me on some matters relating to his impeachment. He was actually quite a good

01:28:56.540 client when I defended him in front of him.

01:28:58.420 Okay, but Alan, if Trump is going for jury nullification, because as you know,

01:29:03.620 you would have told all your clients, indicted twice by Jack Smith, the documents case,

01:29:07.960 which is serious obstruction, you would have said, shut up. Stop talking about this. Stop

01:29:13.840 mentioning it. Rally, stop talking to reporters about it. And he didn't listen. So what's to stop

01:29:21.480 him from thinking, I'm going to get on the stand. I'm going to be me. And I'm just going to say what

01:29:27.340 I want to say because I have a bigger audience I'm trying to speak to. I don't really face jail time

01:29:32.100 in this proceeding. And I'm going to do my thing because this is about jury nullification and sort

01:29:37.240 of speaking past this jury to the American people. By the way, I would not have told him if I were his

01:29:43.780 lawyer to be quiet outside the courtroom. I would make a sharp distinction between what he says outside

01:29:49.760 the courtroom and what he says in front of the jury. I think he's done the right thing in front of the

01:29:55.720 court of public opinion. This is a political trial. This is election interference. He has the perfect

01:30:00.100 right to say it. He has the perfect constitutional right to insult the witnesses. I agree with all

01:30:06.280 that. But you do really think you should you think you should have sat down with somebody like me and gone

01:30:10.560 through what documents did you have there? Do you think you had the right to CIA agency document like

01:30:15.460 that? No lawyer would advise him to do that. No, nobody who's guilty should ever sit down with you. Let me be

01:30:22.280 very clear about that. If you're innocent, I sat down with you when I was accused of misconduct. I

01:30:30.540 volunteered to sit down with you because I was completely innocent. If I were guilty, you're the

01:30:36.380 last person I would want to have cross-examine me. You're so damn good at getting at these issues. So no,

01:30:42.360 he was a fool for sitting down with you. But he was not a fool for going in front of large crowds and

01:30:48.780 saying election interference, the judge is this, the judge's daughter is that. He had a right to say

01:30:53.780 that. You fight fire with fire and you fight a political persecution with political answers. But

01:31:00.100 once you're in the courtroom and you know you can be asked questions that you would otherwise not be

01:31:05.460 able to be asked, namely, did you have sex with Ms. Daniels? No, you don't do that because he's going to

01:31:12.220 end up being cited for perjury. The only way, and look, maybe he didn't have sex with Daniels. That would

01:31:18.460 change everything. If he never had sex with Daniels, then he can testify. But if he did have

01:31:23.800 sex with Daniels and she's credible about that particular issue, then he really does risk his

01:31:29.600 freedom if he says that he didn't have sex with her. Because I would not ever believe that the DA or

01:31:37.700 the attorney general or the feds would not come after him for perjury if he did. Yeah, because if you're

01:31:45.460 Trump and you lie under oath in a New York state Supreme Court house, they'll come for you for

01:31:50.120 perjury. But if your name is Fannie Willis or Nathan Wade, then you have nothing to worry about. They

01:31:55.140 won't. It's different for you. I've got to make this point, Josh. Per Reuters, Joe Biden this week,

01:32:01.620 over the next week, is scheduled to make three stops in Pennsylvania. Joe Biden won Pennsylvania in

01:32:07.700 2020 by less than 1.5%, roughly 80,000 votes. Trump will be sitting in this courtroom because he's

01:32:16.600 required to because he's a criminal defendant. Already, it's beginning, right? To your point of

01:32:23.220 it's obvious election interference.

01:32:25.480 Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is obvious election interference, Megan. I mean, and the American

01:32:30.460 people, I think, have enough common sense where they can see this dichotomy of one man on the

01:32:35.920 stump and the other in courtroom and start asking some obvious questions as to, hmm, you know, why is

01:32:40.100 this the first time that a former president who happens to be a major presidential candidate once

01:32:44.500 again, why is he sitting in this courtroom? You know, earlier today, I saw Judge Mershon say that

01:32:49.180 Trump's going to have to be there every single day this trial is going on, Megan. And what Mershon actually

01:32:53.980 said in court today is that if he's not there, then Trump's going to get arrested for failing to

01:32:58.480 appear. Well, what's going to start happening if multiple of these other trials start getting

01:33:02.320 underway? And perhaps Judge Aileen Cannon down in Florida is going to start that classified

01:33:06.300 documents case in July. Right now, it's actually May 20th, which is probably going to delay it further.

01:33:10.760 How is he going to be in two places at once? Trump's probably going to have very little time on the

01:33:14.940 actual campaign trail this year. And that is obviously a massive advantage for Joe Biden, because

01:33:19.960 guess what? Trump's rallies are actually hugely inspiring for a great many number of Americans

01:33:25.120 who are deeply dissatisfied with the current state of the Republic and the current state of the Biden

01:33:29.380 regime in power there. So I think it is stark and obvious for people who are actually going to look

01:33:33.900 at this and start asking the next question, which is, why are we here? Why are we at this point where

01:33:38.560 one guy is on the campaign trail trying to persuade independent voters while the other guy is stuck in

01:33:42.960 courtroom with an obviously biased judge whose daughter is working for a company, Authentic Campaigns,

01:33:47.960 who that is fundraising 90 plus million dollars off of the fact that her father is trying to prosecute

01:33:53.180 the first president in American history? I agree. And he should bring it hopefully to the Supreme Court

01:33:58.780 saying that his right and our right to listen to him under the First Amendment is being interfered with.

01:34:05.720 And these trials should be postponed. By the way, you're talking about Pennsylvania. I'm going to make

01:34:09.880 a prediction here. Biden is going to lose Pennsylvania. He's going to lose Florida. He's going to lose

01:34:16.360 Arizona. And he's going to lose Nevada if he continues to move away from Israel. He's making

01:34:22.400 a stupid mistake. He's trying to win Michigan, which he'll never win because the people who are

01:34:27.700 now screaming and yelling, death to America, death to America, will never, ever vote for Biden.

01:34:36.140 He'll never satisfy them. And as a result of trying to win the 12 votes of Michigan, he's going to lose

01:34:41.760 60 electoral votes in places where pro-Israel voters are going to vote against them. And they

01:34:47.140 should if he continues to move away from Israel. So Biden's making not only an immoral decision if he

01:34:52.940 moves away from Israel, but a really dumb political decision. I mean, to your point, John Fetterman has

01:34:58.680 been as big a supporter of Israel as we have. And his numbers have only shot up in Pennsylvania. He's

01:35:04.140 got something like a 70 percent approval rating there, which is like amazing for a politician.

01:35:07.620 One of the things that I was thinking about was this morning that both counsel were talking about

01:35:12.600 dates. They're taking every Wednesday off of this trial. They're going to take, I think, a couple of

01:35:16.560 like pre-scheduled religious holidays off. And the defense, Josh said, can we have off this one day

01:35:22.440 because it's Barron Trump's high school graduation and Trump would like to be there? The judge didn't

01:35:27.780 grant it. He's like, we'll have to see. I mean, it's just you can you can feel this guy's disdain for

01:35:33.500 Trump right from the get go. And I think we're going to have to get used to a whole lot of rulings

01:35:38.580 going just like that. And that really is a thumb. Like the fact that the judge clearly doesn't like

01:35:43.040 Trump could make all the difference in this case. 100 percent. Yeah. The fact that the judge is not

01:35:48.940 like Trump, the fact, again, that you're an 87 percent Joe Biden voting jurisdiction like New York

01:35:54.480 County, New York. I mean, in my opinion, Megan, my opinion, Judge Bershon should have recused himself

01:35:58.700 in this case. I saw personally from my surveying of the evidence, more than enough evidence

01:36:02.520 indicated the fact that he was grossly biased with his daughter in her current position there.

01:36:06.720 The fact that he was so adamant in doubling down there. You know, the left for so many years has

01:36:11.320 decried Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginny, for being this power couple where Ginny is the

01:36:15.680 activist and Clarence Thomas is. Well, do you guys actually believe in conflict of interest or do you

01:36:20.320 only believe where the judge or the juror happens to be right of center? I mean, the question obviously

01:36:24.760 answers itself here. But unfortunately, we live in a day and age where there are two standards and there

01:36:29.200 are two tiers of justice. And look, again, I just find it very tragic that we're in this place to

01:36:33.560 begin with as an American patriot. I really just genuinely hate it with every fiber of my being.

01:36:37.740 I agree with you.

01:36:39.100 Got to go.

01:36:39.920 Absolutely. No doubt that that his daughter will make money if Trump is convicted.

01:36:46.520 And that means he should not be on this case. All right, you guys. Great discussion. Thank you

01:36:51.180 both so much. Alan Dershowitz, Josh Hammer. And before we go, I want to tell our viewers tomorrow,

01:36:55.180 our friends from the Ruthless program, return. We'll see you then.

01:37:02.440 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:37:25.180 Thank you.

01:37:32.440 No BS, no BS.

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The Megyn Kelly Show - April 15, 2024

Trump Trial Circus Begins, and Biden Foreign Policy Chaos Consequences, with Alan Dershowitz, Glenn Greenwald, Noah Pollak, and Josh Hammer ｜ Ep. 766

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