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00:02:53.760We are together on the same day that Todd Blanche and others are up there on Capitol Hill.
00:03:02.280I don't know if you've had a chance to watch any of the hearing this morning.
00:03:06.000And I know there's a break right now, a little bit.
00:03:08.780What's, you know, you've got obviously such a history and reverence to the Department of Justice having worked there and focused on corruption.
00:03:18.280And we can talk a little bit more about that past and some of the work.
00:03:22.180but what do you, what do you make of his chances? What do you make of the hearings today? What are
00:03:26.840the, what, what are your expectations? Well, I don't think he helped himself with Cornyn this
00:03:31.000morning. I mean, you know, look, um, I did this, as you know, for seven years as the U.S. attorney
00:03:38.540in New Jersey, we were the fifth largest office in the country at the time. And, and, you know,
00:03:44.020to have a guy who's the attorney general of the United States enter a settlement agreement with
00:03:48.640the President of the United States on behalf of the United States, which says that the agreement
00:03:55.400can only be changed in writing. But then to admit to Cornyn, well, yeah, no, the $1.8 billion is
00:04:01.900dead. Well, have you changed that in writing? Have they consented to that? And he couldn't
00:04:08.240answer it. And I think you and I both know why he couldn't answer it. It's because the President
00:04:13.980the United States won't agree to it and won't sign and change the agreement. And look, he's got
00:04:20.820his own personal lawyer right now as the attorney general of the United States. What happens if six
00:04:25.600months from now, a year from now, he says, I'm enforcing that agreement and I want the 1.8
00:04:30.940billion. And Todd Blanche has already been confirmed. If I were, and Cornyn seemed at the
00:04:36.920end of his questioning, he got interviewed afterwards and I saw him say like, I'm not
00:04:41.640satisfied i have real concerns now he didn't commit which way he was going to vote but as you
00:04:47.000know on that committee one republican defects he can't go so and i think cornyn's got other
00:04:52.900political incentives to all that as well um so you know um my view on it is that that blanche
00:05:02.060is not out of the woods um and i think if cornyn and tillis because tillis also was hot about the
00:05:10.100pardons to the January 6th defendants who actually were convicted of assaulting police officers,
00:05:15.560which I think makes perfect sense. So, you know, I think those are the two votes at risk. If I had
00:05:23.520to bet on who is more likely to vote no, it would be Corning. It would be Corning.
00:05:31.140And is that the core for you, that 1776, the $1.776 billion deal? Is that the disqualifying issue with Blanche, or do you think it's broader than that?
00:05:45.820It's broader than that. It's broader than that. Look, you can't be taking direction from the President of the United States on who to criminally prosecute.
00:05:53.400And, I mean, look, I'll give you an example, Gov. In seven years that I was in the Bush administration, I never once got a call from John Ashcroft or Alberto Gonzalez, let alone the president of the United States, saying, do this case, don't do this case, go after this guy, leave this guy alone.
00:06:13.900never what Ashcroft told me after I'd been confirmed was he said your job is to make every
00:06:22.560decision with integrity and he said some of your decisions I may agree with some of them I don't
00:06:30.540he said but if as long as they're not in violation of a policy that the president has set out like
00:06:37.580um I you know we had a couple U.S. attorneys who really didn't want to do gun cases
00:06:42.860and President Bush had set up Project Safe Neighborhoods,
00:06:46.440which was the gun project to get felons in possession of guns off the street
00:07:12.860But I think Blanche being the way he's been, the indictment of Comey, the indictments against Letitia James, I mean, these are so obviously baseless and motivated purely by the mistake, true social post that he put out publicly that he was meaning to send as a direct message to Pam Bondi when he said, let's go, Pam.
00:07:39.740And you really think that was a mistake?
00:07:41.520You think that was legitimately a mistake?
00:07:53.180I think he intended it as a private pressure using that vehicle as a way of saying to her,
00:07:59.640if you don't do this now, I'm going to do this publicly.
00:08:02.680I think it was going to be a two-step.
00:08:04.420He may have eventually wound up doing it publicly, but maybe in a different way.
00:08:08.360And having known him all these years, that's the way he operates. And so I think, Blanche, when you look at, I would say three things. Yeah, the settlement. Yes, taking direction on criminal prosecutions on individuals.
00:08:26.480And then third, firing people in the Justice Department, both as prosecutors and the FBI, for having done work on cases they were assigned to do.
00:08:39.340Like, look, when I was U.S. Attorney, Gov, if I went down the hall to a prosecutor and I had 140 of them working for me when I was U.S. Attorney, if I went down the hall and said, hey, Jim, new file we've got, I want you to work on this.
00:08:56.480And he looked at it and said, you know, I have a philosophical problem with this and I don't want to do it.
00:09:02.740I'd be like, well, Jim, we call that private practice.
00:09:06.920You can now go to private practice and you can have whatever philosophical, you know, objections your employer would let you have.
00:09:14.560But here, if the boss asks you to do a case and there's not an ethical, this is not ethical, right, Jim?
00:09:24.360okay can't do that instead it's like he went to these people they they did the job they needed to
00:09:32.420do and then he fires them subsequently because they just did their job and you know they did
00:09:41.140what they needed to do on that I don't think it was appropriate but they pardoned all the January
00:09:46.0406th people he pardoned everybody that he felt you know got a raw deal on that I disagree with it but
00:09:53.320he did it that's a presidential power so why'd you have to fire the prosecutors
00:09:58.120it just did their job so i think blanche permitting that the settlement and then
00:10:05.720absolutely directing people about individuals who should or should not be prosecuted
00:10:10.500to me those three things are are in combination disqualifiers and you're less concerned about
00:10:17.260being a private attorney for the president united states i mean i i heard a little bit of
00:10:22.560Senator Kennedy making the point, obviously reminding us of a prior Kennedy administration, appointing a brother, obviously members of law firms that were partners, et cetera.
00:10:31.400I mean, that's as unbecoming as that may be, that's not necessarily a threshold, a line that is being crossed necessarily.
00:10:39.340No, I wouldn't say that's a line, because I think it's how you conduct yourself once you're there.
00:10:44.260Because let's face it, yeah, Bobby Kennedy is an example.
00:10:46.460John Mitchell is an example on the bad side, right?
00:10:49.560And look, a lot of people could argue Eric Holder was that too, but was a real personal friend and had handled things for then Senator Obama, and he made it the AG. So look, I have appointed people when I was governor, because unlike your state, that's why you want to be governor of New Jersey in one respect, Gavin, because I appointed attorney general, you know, and everybody else, nobody gets elected except for the governor in New Jersey.
00:11:16.960interesting you know and so i appointed the ag and i appointed people who have been friends of
00:11:21.560mine who i practiced with over time never someone who was my lawyer but someone people that i was
00:11:27.240friendly with of course but they understood and i explained to them that you're never going to get
00:11:31.980a call from me about a criminal case as governor and i don't ever want to get a call from you
00:11:35.960like i don't want to know you want heads up though you want heads up at the end well once but then
00:11:42.800it's over they've decided to make a charge decision right yeah so that way i can't have
00:11:46.520any influence over it like if they say hey tomorrow we're indicting mr x okay i need to
00:11:52.660know that so i can comment on it appropriately when i get confronted with it but i don't want
00:11:58.060to know anything before that and never did so i'm okay with the personal relationship part of it as
00:12:03.380long as you conduct yourself differently now given the positions like you know once a good
00:12:10.500friend of mine was attorney general he couldn't like you know give me heads ups on stuff that
00:12:16.280were still you know percolating not appropriate and he knew that that was the way i wanted to
00:12:22.200conduct myself and by the way any ethical lawyer who took that job would know it too
00:12:26.560because right now i think we have a justice department that is um completely untrusted
00:12:35.000by the American people. And to me, the Justice Department and our judiciary are the things
00:12:41.660that distinguish us from every other democracy in the world. And I think the next president
00:12:47.040of the United States, Republican or Democrat, whoever it is, if they're serious about fixing
00:12:55.180the Justice Department, they should find a person of the other party that they trust in and trust
00:13:01.560in their integrity and appoint them attorney general. Because it won't fix it completely,
00:13:07.660but it will drain the immediate assumption that, oh, well, this guy or this woman is only going
00:13:14.600to do things that are in the benefit of their own party and against the other party. I think
00:13:19.620it would be a great symbolic move. Now, it has to be someone who has integrity and who you trust
00:13:24.740to do the right thing and who will follow policy positions of the president,
00:13:28.820even if they maybe wouldn't be the way they would do it.
00:13:33.200But I think the bigger goal would be to restore trust in our Justice Department,
00:13:38.020because right now any objective observer can't say that these guys are doing the job the right way.
00:13:42.940And if you're, you know, if you're subjective and you're Team Trump,
00:13:46.940you're saying we're just, you know, we're rebalancing things from the abuse,
00:13:53.000the lawfare of the prior administration where they were out of control.
00:13:56.940They ran roughshod. They, you know, so we're just, you know, even if we're not rebalancing it, we're playing the same playbook.
00:14:06.780Well, I would like to have a president who was above that.
00:14:10.160Now, if you believe that that's what Joe Biden and Merrick Garland did, and that's what certainly a large cadre of Trump supporters and the president himself believes.
00:14:21.400You know, my mother taught me two wrongs don't make a right.
00:14:25.020You know, and that if you're going to conduct yourself in the same way, if you believe that Joe Biden, that the prosecutions under the Biden administration of Donald Trump were politically motivated and wrong, if you believe that some of the treatment that Hunter Biden initially got was favoritism and wrong.
00:14:45.220So you go you go in as the next guy in charge and say, OK, well, I'm going to do the same thing for my friends and the same thing to my opponents.
00:14:52.920you know our country's better than that our people are better than that and just because
00:14:57.960we have a president right now who isn't better than that and who some people argue that president
00:15:03.080biden wasn't better than that at some point someone in my view if you aspire to be president
00:15:08.820united states has to break the cycle and say i'm not going to be that person yeah sure i think this
00:15:15.240or that was unfair maybe i would have done it differently but you know what what we're going
00:15:19.140to get back to is fair and objective evaluation of the facts and the law. And we're going to hold
00:15:26.720everybody accountable, whether you're a billionaire or whether you're a person who has no means at
00:15:32.120all, whether you're politically influential or whether you don't know a thing about politics.
00:15:36.040If you violate the law, you're going to be held to account. And look, when I was U.S. attorney,
00:15:40.740we did 130 political corruption prosecutions against both parties, and we did not have one
00:15:46.880defeat. We were 130-0. And what I used to say to people is, that's because we made the decision
00:15:52.600based on the facts. We never made a decision based upon politics. And it was about 60-40
00:15:57.960Ds to R's, which is about what our registration is in New Jersey. And that wasn't something I
00:16:05.800planned, but the natural course took effect. And when you continue to convict people, I say to
00:16:12.420people all the time. If you thought that any of my prosecutions were political, I'll address that
00:16:17.660with a line of acquitted people. And there were none because we did it the right way. We did it
00:16:24.580based on the facts. I think the American people would be really, really hungry for that type of
00:16:33.260approach to give them confidence again that the FBI and all the other agencies under DOJ are
00:16:39.100working for them, not working for the guy or woman sitting in the Oval Office exclusively.
00:16:45.120So you don't buy Blanche's argument that he's a member of the cabinet,
00:16:48.780he's part of the executive team, and to the extent that he's carrying out the vision and
00:16:54.600direction of the president, that's completely appropriate on the basis of the constitutional
00:16:59.060framework. And nothing's deviant in that respect. Gov, I buy it, as we talked about before,
00:17:06.940from a policy perspective. So like if you're the attorney general and the president of the United
00:17:11.920States says, look, I got elected and I ran on the idea that we're going to be very aggressive on gun
00:17:17.680crime. Well, then you're a member of the cabinet and the president's giving you that direction.
00:17:23.380That's appropriate. But if you're the president of the United States and you say to your attorney
00:17:27.400general, I ran in part on the basis that I was going to convict every lousy Democrat I could
00:17:33.460find who had said a bad thing about me i say no thanks i don't want the job there you go and if
00:17:40.760i've already had the job and you take that position then i say no like bill barr by the way
00:17:46.600said no at the end of trump's first term what he wanted bill barr to bring matters on the
00:17:51.400what he called the election rigging and and bill barr as it's been reported uh said this is all0.97
00:17:58.540bullshit to the president of the Oval Office. Well, guess what? As attorney general, you have0.98
00:18:03.160an obligation to do that, to look at the president of the United States and say, no, sir, this is
00:18:08.300unethical and it's wrong. So I believe Blanche's theory to the water's edge. Yes, on issues of
00:18:17.540broad policy of where we are going to spend our law enforcement resources, the president absolutely
00:18:24.420has the right to set those priorities but he does not have the right to tell me who to prosecute
00:18:30.440and who not to prosecute because once you go over that line you're lost you got it lost and then
00:18:35.840it's all politics and it's not right yeah i mean any impossible to argue with you what what what
00:18:42.920do you make a bar by the way supporting blanche's nomination bill bill bar's a company man and he's
00:18:51.120making these judgments i think based in part by his status within the party and the legal community
00:18:59.840and and i think you know i i know bill barr have great respect for him i think he was
00:19:05.360a very good attorney general both times but um on this one he and i just fundamentally disagree and
00:19:12.340i think um he of all people should know better right having been subjected to it yeah what what
00:19:19.580What happened with Pam Bondi? I mean, obviously we talk about that true social, but I mean,
00:19:23.900was that indicative of that? Was that revelatory of what the real issue was? Was it competency
00:19:28.840or was it just incapacity to actually deliver on the vendetta or at least direction?
00:19:34.620I think it was a lack of competency to execute on his agenda. So it's both combined. But the
00:19:42.780lack of competency, he wasn't concerned about the lack of competency on anything else. It was like,
00:19:47.120you can't deliver on my agenda because you can't pull the levers of power in a way that give me
00:19:53.260what i want and i also think that she got very careless in the beginning on the epstein issue
00:19:59.280you know she said a lot of things she got on fox and she thought you know she said whatever the
00:20:03.920hell she wants oh yeah i've got the i've got the list the client list on my desk yeah you know and
00:20:09.020then it turns out there really isn't the client list well now how do you how do you convince the
00:20:12.820conspiracy theorists that that's true and and it upsets the president i think appropriately so
00:20:18.940that if he's got his attorney general out there saying stuff on that sense of an issue to the
00:20:23.320victims of this guy um that they want justice against the men who engaged in this contact with
00:20:30.160epstein that they have every right to be upset about that so i think the competency piece reared
00:20:35.560its head in the epstein stuff because she was very careless with the statement she made and i think
00:20:41.400didn't completely appreciate the importance of the words that come out of the mouth of an attorney0.99
00:20:45.760general of the united states blanche on the other hand is much more careful in that way much more
00:20:52.320competent in that way and some might say more dangerous as a result in that way if he's guided
00:20:58.500by the president's stuff now you know i mean he made he made the slip up today uh when when uh i
00:21:05.900think it was kennedy you asked him are are you friends with the president yeah he said well i'm
00:21:10.500his lawyer and he goes i mean i was his lawyer you know that was one of those times where todd
00:21:17.140blanche he's usually very careful about that stuff that wasn't a good one and i guarantee you
00:21:22.300if you and i watch some some cable news tonight um we're going to see that one repeated over
00:21:27.720and over you're not going to see much else from senator kennedy's cross-examination because there
00:21:32.100wasn't one i mean just layups layups t-ball in the vernacular of the mets senator brit senator
00:21:37.580Britt I I was watching some of that that was all I have um Senator Schmidt I mean you know look
00:21:44.040they're gonna vote the way they're gonna vote they're they've been elected the United States
00:21:47.740Senate they have the right to do that but don't try to sell me on the fact that this is an
00:21:52.200objective examination like if you've made up your mind and you're in the tank okay you know you'll
00:21:58.480be judged by your voters on that basis at some later date but you know don't try to tell me that
00:22:03.680like you're being objective about it i think kennedy just kind of um he was trying to set up
00:22:09.300the jfk rfk yeah comparison and never thought that blanche would actually trip over that one0.90
00:22:16.360yeah so kennedy's like damn man i'm trying to be i'm trying to help you here0.90
00:22:21.100what are you doing when you look objectively at the epstein files and i don't want to go down0.96
00:22:27.320too much down the Epstein lane, but are we ever going to know the facts or do we know the facts?
00:22:34.480Are we all just sort of, I mean, do you feel satisfied with the millions of documents that
00:22:39.000are out and the millions that are not out? Then do you buy the argument? They're just tangential?
00:22:44.420No, I don't, I'm not satisfied with it. I think if you're going to release it,
00:22:49.160release everything that's there because of the way, quite frankly, everyone has politicized this
00:22:55.800issue. You know, both sides have used it to their benefit. Like, I didn't hear a whole lot of
00:23:02.640Democrats on Capitol Hill when President Biden was there, you know, pounding the table to get
00:23:07.880the Epstein files out, right? So, you know, I think both have played it for their own political
00:23:12.760purposes. And obviously, President Trump had a personal element to it as well, because he knew
00:23:17.420he was going to be in there a bunch. So he didn't want that out there either. But here's my problem
00:23:22.840with it i remember i was in office when this happened at the justice department when he got
00:23:29.520the first sweetheart deal you remember that first sweetheart deal for epstein was a federal
00:23:35.260prosecution that sentenced him to a state charge ultimately that put him in county jail but he
00:23:44.260only had to go at night he slept there and they would get out in the morning and go and do whatever
00:23:50.100he was going to do and then went back at night um i remember at the time um and and by the way
00:23:56.420that was alex acosta was the u.s attorney then a name which became familiar because he wound up
00:24:01.700in president trump's cabinet in the first term as the labor secretary but that's the part i want to
00:24:08.960know because all of us at the time we're talking to each other other u.s attorneys saying what the
00:24:16.120hell is that deal like what's Alex doing down there like where did that come from and you know
00:24:23.180that's what I'd like to know is because that was the original sin because if the guy had been
00:24:30.340sentenced to a significant amount of time of federal jail time I think a lot of these people
00:24:34.400would have backed away from him and I think his ability to be able to do what he did would have
00:24:39.840been lessened if not eliminated but instead he gets what it looks like a slap on the wrist
00:24:45.280which makes people think he probably didn't do it or maybe he didn't do anything that was all that
00:24:49.640bad and it renormalizes him so i'd love to find out what the hell was going on in alex acosta's
00:24:56.580head who put the arm on him who influenced him to make that kind of sweetheart deal because i can
00:25:02.920tell you at the time there was a whole group of us inside you know individual u.s attorney's
00:25:07.640offices around the country who watched that one and when we would not be at our conference we'd
00:25:11.820be like what the hell's why would you ever do that like to me if you're going to give a guy
00:25:18.340that kind of deal just dismiss the case because that means you didn't have anything but if you1.00
00:25:23.380have stuff which we now know they did they had serious crimes against underaged women
00:25:29.720um how could you do that that one i'll never understand and that's the answer i'd like
00:25:35.000on on all of this stuff i care less about like who was on his plane and all the rest of that
00:25:41.160that's a little prurient, I would really want to know, where did the justice system fail
00:25:47.700in Bush 43 on that issue? And why didn't anybody, Obama, Trump, Biden, try to fix it?
00:25:58.780And I think they all have to answer for that.
00:26:01.660There was a sense that Blanche was trying to fix something, wasn't it? When he visited
00:26:06.680Ghislaine Maxwell in the federal prison, and then she miraculously has shifted to a much nicer
00:26:13.140facility. What the hell did you make of that? Well, I never saw a deputy attorney general in
00:26:18.800my time go and individually interview a witness, any witness. That's not what you do. The deputy
00:26:25.980attorney general is essentially the chief operating officer of the Justice Department.
00:26:29.560and and his or her job is to run the day-to-day operation of the Justice Department for the
00:26:36.820Attorney General as a U.S. attorney my direct report is the Deputy Attorney General
00:26:41.820so all the U.S. attorneys report directly to the to the DAG as they call them right it's the the
00:26:48.820DAG doesn't have time overseeing the FBI all these other things all the U.S. Attorney's offices
00:26:56.020Yeah, I'd like to go interview a witness.
00:26:58.320That was like one time when I was U.S. attorney and I told my staff I wanted to try a case.
00:27:04.020Because I'd been a trial lawyer in the private sector.
00:27:36.700And then when you have that interview where she says nothing but glowing things about the president, and then she winds up getting into a better federal institution.0.96
00:27:54.580Like, and I'm sure, look, if I were her defense attorney and they asked to interview her, I'd say, well, no, but if you want to, we need this, this, and this.
00:28:08.840And I'm confident that that's what happened.
00:28:10.780They made a deal just to get a chance to interview her.
00:28:13.560And I'm sure that her desire to get to a more comfortable place influenced the nature of her testimony.
00:28:24.580yeah so yeah and speaking of human nature you a few people know donald trump better than you
00:28:31.540and and i let's i want to close on this and move off from epstein but
00:28:35.280of all the things donald trump has confronted i mean the physiology his temper um his sort of
00:28:43.840insistent this epstein thing seemed to rub him the wrong way in a profoundly consequence i mean
00:28:48.840it just seemed to me very different uh the fact that they interviewed gillaine maxwell just
00:28:53.940everything about this it just it does beg the question what the hell else is there this is not
00:29:02.800just typical trump this was seemed you know again you know him yeah look i think i'll tell you what
00:29:09.060i think of i think at a minimum he is profoundly embarrassed by his association with this guy
00:29:17.260there are very few things that really truly profoundly embarrassed donald trump in my
00:29:22.080experience. And I think this is one of them. I think he looks back on this. And you've been to
00:29:28.960Palm Beach, Florida. I've been to Palm Beach, Florida. It's a different culture down there.
00:29:34.680It's a very wealthy culture that where everybody wants to be buddies with everybody else and whose
00:29:40.360status is where. And my guess is, you know, Epstein was a big player down there and Trump
00:29:44.560always likes to be with the big players. And I don't think he really, you know, and this is the
00:29:49.420best case scenario for him is that he got associated socially with someone that he now
00:29:54.080looks back on it and says oh man like that's that's horrible and he's horrible and what the
00:30:00.460hell was I thinking obviously I wasn't thinking that's the best case scenario for him it could
00:30:06.740be worse I haven't seen any evidence of that yet that make me convinced that it is yeah but I do
00:30:13.580But I will tell you that the two times in my relationship with him over the last 24 years where I've seen him genuinely embarrassed were this Epstein stuff and when the Access Highwood tape came out.0.56
00:30:30.620Now, he recovered from his embarrassment on that.
00:30:34.260But I will tell you, at the time, I was in the room with him when he saw that tape for the first time.
00:30:40.220and he was grossly embarrassed by the things he was saying and you could tell just looking at him
00:30:50.880and his reaction to it and he got very quiet and shaking his head and he was embarrassed
00:30:58.000because sitting there with us you know were his son-in-law you know Kellyanne Conway
00:31:04.320hope hicks i mean there were women in the room who he knew and respected
00:31:11.200and who respected him and then we're having to sit and listen to this and he looked to me that day
00:31:20.180as embarrassed as i've ever seen him so he has the he has the capacity to be embarrassed
00:31:25.880but it's got to be pretty bad for that to come out um you know it's not you know not that he
00:31:33.380says a word he shouldn't say it's it has to be something that's as bad as the stuff he was saying
00:31:38.160on that access high with tape um and and and that and this epstein stuff i think i've seen the same
00:31:44.300kind of reaction well canadian women are looking for more more to themselves their businesses
00:31:50.200their elected leaders and the world around them and that's why we're thrilled to introduce the
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00:33:18.880Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here.
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00:35:16.560Listen to Sweet 305 with Lele Pons as part of my Cultura podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:35:26.32024 years, you know, and a son-in-law whose father served 24 months, Charles Kushner, and was pardoned by the president, became ambassador to France.
00:35:41.960Well, certainly not when I brought the case in 2004.
00:35:44.880I guarantee you that if you had told me in 2004, well, once he gets out to ultimately be pardoned and become ambassador to France, I would have referred you for counseling.
00:35:56.660So no, when you have a guy who hires a prostitute for $25,000 to pursue his sister's husband, seduce him, videotape it, and then send the videotape to your own sister on the day of her son's engagement party, an engagement party that you're going to attend, that to me is not the resume of an ambassador to France.0.97
00:36:26.660Um, that to me is what I've called him, which is he is the most, um, disgusting defendant0.67
00:36:35.320that I prosecuted in the seven years I was there.
00:39:39.080And she looked at me and she said, Chris, if this is something that will get you in trouble, don't give it to him because he can't keep a secret.
00:45:12.500In April of 2016, they were informed by the White House that you needed to designate a chairman of the transition, that this was by statute.
00:45:26.160You had to designate chairman transition and they had to start to engage in meetings with the White House to, you know, to begin the plan for an orderly transition.
00:45:37.300And both sides had to do that. Once at that point, by April, there were both nominees apparent in in Senator Clinton and Donald Trump.
00:45:46.080and the first meeting he sent cory lewandowski to the first meeting at the white house and cory
00:45:55.060came back and was like this is way over my head like i i i you know i can't do this and and so
00:46:03.740then trump called me i was sitting governor at the time and he said look you know how to do this
00:46:11.800stuff you know government like i don't know this stuff nearly as well as you do like would you do
00:46:18.100this would you chair the transition for me and i actually at the time thought to myself this is
00:46:22.540great because like i really don't want to be leaving my state and going out and campaigning
00:46:26.540um for him i i wanted to continue to do my work and i was like good this is a good way for me to
00:46:33.000do something that's productive for him but it's not going to take me out of state and so i said
00:46:39.820I said, so all right, I'll do it. The day he's going to officially give me the job was the first
00:46:47.060day I ever met Jared Kushner. I'd never met Jared before this. And all of a sudden, Trump's in the
00:46:52.720office telling me that he wants me to do this, et cetera. And like stealthily in the seat next
00:46:59.660to me comes Jared Kushner making the argument to Trump that he shouldn't give me the job
00:47:04.720in front of me in front of you oh yeah bad person uh he said you know uh the governor
00:47:14.800should never brought that case against my father that was a personal matter to be handled by the
00:47:19.880rabbis and the only thing i said during this entire presentation was i said i didn't know
00:47:27.080that the rabbis had jurisdiction over title 18 of the u.s code but okay you learn something new
00:47:32.420every day. And I just let Jared go on and on and on. And Trump is sitting there listening to all
00:47:37.040this. And Trump's actually defending me. And he's saying, well, if you were a U.S. attorney, you
00:47:41.640would have brought this case, Jared. I mean, this was a layup. It was a slam dunk. I mean,
00:47:46.940what are you talking about? And he kept arguing. And finally, Trump looked at me and goes,
00:47:51.980aren't you going to say anything to defend yourself? And I said, no. I said, if you want
00:47:56.920to believe the stuff he's saying and you think that disqualifies me from doing a volunteer job
00:48:01.540for you then don't give it to me i'm okay i'll live and he said no no i want you to do this
00:48:09.320and um jared said well you're going to regret it to donald and he got walked out so yes that's how
00:48:17.480i became chairman of the transition that was in april we we set up my former chief of staff
00:48:22.620became the executive director of the transition we set up a transition that had 200 people working
00:48:29.080for it mostly in Washington, D.C. I would go to D.C. once a week to engage in the activities in
00:48:37.280person, but then the rest of the time I was in New Jersey doing it remotely. On the Friday before
00:48:43.480the election, we presented Donald with 11 volumes of transition plans. We had suggested people
00:48:55.920for every, at least four, for every cabinet position. I had a group of former U.S. attorneys
00:49:02.580who volunteered to do the vetting of all those people and provide initial vetting on all those
00:49:09.760folks. And that was all given to them on the Friday before the election. And then he won.
00:49:15.960I ran the first two transition meetings after the election, the day after the election,
00:49:20.820and then Thursday. And then on Thursday, late afternoon, Steve Bannon said he needed to talk
00:49:29.360to me about something. And I went into Bannon's office at Trump Tower after the meeting was over,
00:49:33.820the transition meeting was over. And he said, we're going to make some changes to the transition.
00:49:37.220I said, okay, what are we going to do? And he goes, you. Wow. And I said, who made this judgment?
00:49:44.040And he said, I'm not going to tell you. It's just, it's been done and that's it. And I said,
00:49:48.060okay well then i'm going to go downstairs to that bank of cameras i'm going to tell all of them that
00:49:52.220it was you and then you can deal with that and you know no no no it was it was the kid he called
00:49:59.620jared the kid he said the kid's been taking a meat axe to you ever since i got here which was
00:50:05.500in the summer of 16 and he said and and the old man finally just gave in he couldn't take it anymore
00:50:10.360wow but he sent bannon not he didn't call you directly he sent bannon to do the the
00:50:16.280No, and the worst yet, he called me that night and asked me what happened.
00:50:45.600He offered me Secretary of Labor. I turned it down. He offered me Secretary of Homeland Security. I turned that down. And then ultimately in 2018, when he was firing John Kelly, he offered me White House Chief of Staff. And I turned that down as well. Because I knew I couldn't work for him. I didn't want to work for him. And so I turned those jobs down.
00:51:06.260So, you know, once you fire someone two days after, you put together what objectively, and Michael Lewis wrote a book about it afterwards, what objectively was an outstanding transition document for him.
00:51:19.140And literally, they took all of it, Gov, and threw it out.
00:52:04.660but i mean i'd have to go back and look at it it's been a long time but oh and rex tillerson
00:52:11.100his name was on the list at state but other than that yeah no but you so you stayed you stayed
00:52:19.300close to him despite all of that enough that again as you suggest you had this opportunity
00:52:24.200to come back in into the white house as chief of staff after kelly uh what in fact by the way just
00:52:31.040Just an aside, I'll never forget being in Marine One with Kelly, Kushner, and Trump, where Trump starts telling me the story about Kushner dating Ivanka and how upset he was about it because he really wanted Kushner out of the picture, and he wanted Ivanka to return Tom Brady's phone call.
00:52:51.780And he's saying it right in front of Kushner, talking about his father in very negative ways, emasculating the poor kid right there in front of us.0.97
00:53:02.280And I remember getting out of this after all this bullshit.1.00
00:53:04.620And it was just, you know, legendary Trump bullshit.0.99
00:53:07.420And Kelly going to me goes, you know, none of that necessarily was true.0.99
00:53:35.960Well, what kept me in the orbit was I kept thinking, if I stay on the outside and I'm not answering to him, I have access to him and I can try to make things better.
01:05:08.660So he came to me and I said, you know, something to the effect of that's, he couldn't possibly know that this election was stolen. There's no evidence that it was. And even if there were, he couldn't know it at this point. He's undermining the democratic process in the most important election that people participate in for the president of the United States. It's absolutely unacceptable. And it's beneath the office he holds.
01:05:34.060we then went to commercial and eric trump called me and said we're watching what are you doing0.99
01:05:42.480how can you say that you're going to made to be made to look really stupid when we0.98
01:05:47.060uncover everything that's gone on here and i said i'm more than prepared to be to be made to look0.99
01:05:52.900stupid i said but what he did is wrong you don't say any of that stuff until you have absolute
01:05:57.980evidence of it and i said and i don't think you're ever going to have that but to the extent you do0.99
01:06:26.120And I said, there's really nothing else to do, Mr. President.
01:06:29.820I said, you need to call Biden, congratulate him, invite him to the White House, shake his hand.
01:06:34.820And I said, if you do that, I said, you'll have a good reputation with the American people and
01:06:41.200whatever else you want to do with your life, it'll be wide open to you. If you don't do that,
01:06:45.560and this is where I was wrong. I said, if you don't do that, I said, all that's over.
01:06:50.120And he said, well, I'm not going to do that. What else you got? And I said, I don't have
01:06:55.560anything else? And he goes, then I have nothing to talk to you about. And we have not spoken since.
01:07:01.940Wow. Two days after election 2020, we have not spoken since. January 6th just further convinced
01:07:09.800me that what I had decided on election night was the right decision. But my decision, and really
01:07:16.880when my contact ended with him, was two days after the election. And we have not spoken since
01:07:22.560two days after election night did you get a sense i mean that he really believed it i mean is this
01:07:28.240i mean was this since no i don't think he believed it i think he ultimately convinced himself
01:07:34.140but i he he was telling me i know this it's it's i'm not gonna win what should i do he wasn't saying
01:07:43.900at that moment it was chris it was rigged i got all this evidence here's what it is
01:07:48.260No, I don't think he believed it. But I think he has said this any number of times to me. If you say something enough times, it becomes true.
01:07:57.400Yeah, come on. And and and I think that's really where he got to with the election.
01:08:03.280And when you look at even today, I saw Jay Clayton unwilling to answer at his confirmation hearing to answer who won the 2020 election.
01:08:13.600I mean, I'm going to answer it. Right. And I know Jay Clayton. He's a smart guy. And I've always gotten along well with him. Like, I couldn't believe it when I saw that, that he was refusing to answer that question. But it's what that's why when you go back to even what my instincts were back in 17 and 18 and why I didn't take any of those jobs.
01:08:36.400It's because I know I can't do that.0.98
01:08:39.840My personality is not such where I could go in there and, you know, just absolutely believe a pile of bullshit from the president and then go out and sell it.0.98
01:08:51.260Like, look, we've all been in politics for a long time.0.97
01:08:54.220There are times when you spin certain things and whatever, and it's not lying.
01:08:58.740It's like putting the best face on something.
01:09:01.440What Jay Clayton did today was just refuse to tell the truth.
01:09:05.700And I knew I could never do that, and that's why I never accepted any of the jobs.
01:09:08.620The only thing I would ever do for him, I did the Opioid Commission, because of how much I care about that issue, how much we had done in New Jersey on it.
01:09:18.660There was really no interaction with him.
01:09:20.780I went out with Charlie Baker and Roy Cooper and Patrick Kennedy, and we did hearings around the country.
01:09:26.360We came up with a report that formed the basis of the No Pain Act that Congress did, and I'm really proud of what we did there.0.56
01:09:33.520but that's because and and he actually he's you know he's not dumb as you know like he
01:09:39.680when he called and offered me that job he goes I'm going to offer you something that you can't
01:09:45.120refuse even you won't say no to this and he offered me the opioid thing and I said you're
01:09:51.260right I won't say no to that it's too important he's good go do it for me and make it and make it
01:09:56.060make it good if you make it good i'll i'll work to get it done and to his credit he did
01:10:01.900he did and he got that thing passed amen um and i remember that with patrick too i you're reminding
01:10:09.460me i remember you guys going around the country that uh well done on that and uh look tomorrow
01:10:15.660night you know we're taping this and uh tomorrow night the president's allegedly i mean it seems
01:10:20.740to be going back and forth who knows what there are all kinds of leaks about what he is expected
01:10:25.120to say a primetime speech and some networks suggesting no, Mr. President, may not be a
01:10:29.960primetime speech because it's suggested this is about election denialism. Once again, going back
01:10:34.980and relitigating that election. What do you make of that? I mean, is this just a part of the
01:10:39.620stubbornness, part of the belief now that he's convinced himself of? What do you make of this?
01:10:45.200Or is this a preview of November? I think it's much more cunning. I think he's trying to change
01:10:53.660the subject from from iran from inflation from all the things that are going on right now that
01:11:03.400are not good for him right and he needs his base to be fired up and show up for an election that
01:11:09.920right now it doesn't look like they're going to show up with great enthusiasm to so i think if
01:11:16.120he does what's been rumored it's much more cunning it's like okay i gotta distract them
01:11:22.820from inflation. I got to distract them from affordability. I got to distract them from Iran
01:11:27.800and that I'm bombing nightly over there again. And the Strait of Hormuz is closed and, you know,1.00
01:11:34.460I got to distract them from all that. So what do they really, really believe? My core believe
01:11:40.260that the election in 2020 was stolen and that it was not only stolen at the presidential level,
01:11:45.460but it was stolen in the special elections in Georgia for the Senate thereafter. And so if he
01:11:52.380does it it will not be just that a stubbornness although stubbornness is an element of everything
01:11:58.640he does it will be because he is tactically looking at this and going this is not going
01:12:05.780well for me and I got to change the subject and this is about all I can probably get away with
01:12:12.820trying to do that will also fire up my base and try to get them ready to come out in in November
01:12:18.540Well, right now, I'm sure he thinks there's not there's not the level of enthusiasm because of the affordability issue, because a lot of his base is very upset about Iran, as you know.
01:12:29.080So, I mean, I think it's not just independents or Democrats who are upset.
01:12:33.700It's core, you know, MAGA folks who voted for him because he said no more wars.
01:12:40.060And now they see him engaging in a war that they believe is purely of choice, not of necessity.
01:12:45.260Do you, as someone who's known him, student, and obviously out there as a pundit assessing every day this country, do you buy his, and there's a lot of deep politics in this, but that he's the same guy?
01:13:05.180I mean, talk about, you know, we started with baseball.
01:13:08.460I mean, obviously, he's not Clemens throwing or Ryan throwing 100 plus.
01:13:13.800I mean, it seems like an 80 mile hour fastball.
01:14:33.920And I think that, you know, Vice President Harris, when she spent so much time in that campaign in the fall of 2024, talking about him as a threat to democracy.
01:14:44.320Like, look, the people who believe that were already voting for her.
01:14:49.000The people she needed to get were the people who didn't really like Trump and didn't really like Biden.
01:14:56.260And they were looking for something different.
01:14:59.340And here she comes and had an opportunity to say, here's where I'm different than Biden. You know I'm different than Trump. She refused to do that. And I think for Democrats now who are considering running for president, it is going to be so important for them to show the country a third way.
01:15:19.900and you know that no i'm not joe biden um and i and i just said here's where i disagree with
01:15:28.000the things joe biden did here's where i think he failed both as a as a leader of our party
01:15:33.680and as a leader of our country on the other hand you know here's who i am and here's how i'm
01:15:41.740different and how i'm different than the republican whoever that nominee is how i'm different than
01:15:49.080our last nominee in Joe Biden and his substitute in Vice President Harris. Because I think
01:15:55.960people are growing weary of this. They know what they believe about Trump. And for the people who
01:16:03.260really like him, they're not voting for you anyway. Don't waste your time. You're not going
01:16:08.440to convince them. As logical as you may think you sound, it doesn't matter. Take my word for it.
01:16:45.160And that's the point I'm making, is that there are guys like that who believe that Trump's not great for the country, but the Democrats in their rhetoric has so martyred him that they feel like if I'm still a Republican, if I still even have a stripe of red on my shirt, this voter, he feels like I have to do this to fight back against the Democrats who I fundamentally disagree with.
01:17:09.020so i i just think that as we go forward here for the country's sake there has to be a different
01:17:18.420approach to this race yeah donald trump do of course he will but he shouldn't be the issue
01:17:24.620yeah i get it and i look i i i deeply appreciate all of us wanting to turn that page at the same
01:17:31.620time i mean you've made the point about the corruption the 1.4 billion just on the the
01:17:36.300crypto alone. And, you know, that this is quote unquote Putin-esque, which I thought, you know,
01:17:41.080I mean, spot on governor. I mean, the, and what's happening, you know, talk about Jared, but you
01:17:46.420know, Whitcoff family, the Kushner family and board of peace, which appears to me, they want
01:17:51.020a piece of the middle East and every trade deal and tariff seems to have an attachment to some
01:17:56.720tower or golf course or a new, you know, I don't know, a drone company or critical minerals
01:18:02.120couple that i agree with gov i was responding to you talking about his faculties and all the rest
01:18:07.980of that in that respect shouldn't be discussed but the corruption stuff i think has real legs
01:18:14.260politically forward yeah all right and but and how about democracy are you i mean this guy's
01:18:23.020not letting up i mean we're the you know that we can hyperventilate about mass men around polling
01:18:28.760places. But, you know, I saw what they did just, you know, with our Prop 50 on election morning,
01:18:33.340they sent out the Bortak teams at Dodger Stadium to chill, you know, I mean, to make it, you know,
01:18:39.160they were sending a message to our diverse communities. The Truth Social that came out0.91
01:18:42.640before the polls were open saying the election was rigged. He sent out the DOJ and then they
01:18:47.000filed the lawsuits hoping to get up, saying to get to the Supreme Court, saying the election was
01:18:51.400rigged, going after the vote by mail. Obviously, California's front and center and all this,
01:18:55.300um they're trying to get our voting rolls and purging them obviously what will happen tomorrow
01:19:00.100night i mean seems to me fair game on democracy and sanctity of elections no or is that like his
01:19:08.420health from your perspective are we hyperventilating on this it's how you do it i think it's about
01:19:15.180a precision missile not carpet bombing more give me more explain that what i would say is
01:19:24.080when he does things like says, we're not going to mail mail-in ballots out unless you give me
01:19:31.260your voter rolls. Bang. That's one to hit on because people understand that. They go,
01:19:37.620wait a second. I vote by mail. What do you mean I'm not going to get my ballot just because the
01:19:42.580governor says I'm not going to give all the private voting information of all the citizens
01:19:47.360of the state of California to the federal government, which they have nothing to do
01:19:51.420with the election anyway i think it's about they're tired of hearing he's a threat to democracy
01:19:57.340they need to hear why why specifically and not why just because he's a tyrant and he's a
01:20:03.940they're like either they believe that or they don't and nothing you say i think now after
01:20:09.960donald trump being on the scene for 11 years is going to change that that's right i appreciate
01:20:14.940They will be offended if they're like, wait a second, my mother, who is 85 years old and doesn't want to go out to the polls, can't vote?
01:20:28.280I think, and we could probably come up if we sat here for a couple minutes with three or four other examples that I would say to you, yeah, like this speech tomorrow night.
01:20:36.800If the speech is what it's rumored to be, then you can have a lot of fun with that.
01:20:42.500like and and people will look at that and go i can't believe we're still hearing about this
01:20:48.000six years later right and he got re-elected in the interim like what are we doing so it's got
01:20:53.240to be i think precision stuff because the overall he's a threat to democracy he's a tyrant he wants
01:20:59.220to run in 2028 even blanche today said no he can't run in 2028 and so when when you have people
01:21:06.780saying that stuff on the democratic side they you that you diminish the more important argument
01:21:12.500The more important argument is twofold. One, here are the specific things he's doing that will impact your ability to vote for who you want to vote for, whoever that is. And two, where are we going as a country? What's your children's future?
01:21:28.800Why can't we educate our kids? Why can't we stand up in this country and make sure that everybody has a right to vote and do so unimpeded and fairly? You start going through those issues. What's our future going to be? What are we going to look like? Who do you want us to look like?
01:21:49.340like as as a candidate and as a voter i'm asking you who do you want us to look like
01:21:55.240and to me that's the more important stuff i think in the end him being him
01:22:01.520whatever the democrats can get out of that that the the juice is already squeezed out of that
01:22:08.400orange yeah well said uh we take back the house you think the senate is there's a real shot i
01:22:15.000you've been making the case texas i mean you think there's a real shot i think there's a chance i
01:22:19.580think what happened in vain is really harmful to the cause um because everyone says well platter
01:22:26.100will be gone and i was with david axelrod this week and he said well platter will be gone new
01:22:30.760new person will be in and that'll make it better people don't forget that you screwed that up
01:22:34.960you know they don't forget that you actually nominated a guy who at least has been accused
01:22:40.520of sexual assault and a whole bunch of other things right so it hurts the democratic brand
01:22:45.760in maine and and as you know the road is littered with the corpses of people who thought they were
01:22:53.120going to take out susan collins like a bit of a different animal and we've all seen folks like
01:22:57.740this over our career who you look at them in a particular state and they're like how the hell
01:23:02.460do they do it but they do so i think maine's really important in this whole equation but i
01:23:09.400will tell you this like I think Ohio is in play I think Alaska is in play North Carolina I think
01:23:16.520is yeah the layup I I've never seen Roy lose in an election I don't think he's going to lose this
01:23:22.420one um and we all know how boringly competent Roy is and I mean that with him as a friend like
01:25:46.400I think that when you're talking about presidential politics, to the extent that the DSA becomes more and more prominent over the next two years in the Democratic Party, it's a problem for the Democratic brand and that people will be more apt to want to vote for a Republican if they think they're going to get a very heavily socialist-influenced Democratic Party.
01:26:12.620um you know the headline today um in new york is about the number of billionaires that have left
01:26:20.700new york and that we have you know the the lowest percentage of billionaires in new york city that
01:26:27.440we've had in a certain number of years i remember exactly what it was but it's a long time like you
01:26:32.960know people see that and yet they don't want more billionaires necessarily but they understand the
01:26:39.340role that they play in paying a lot of taxes and they don't want that but you know the bigger
01:26:46.480problem is i think for the dsa is going to be what can they show they accomplish for instance in new
01:26:53.540york city with mayor mamdani he is an incredibly charming guy and he's a really skilled politician
01:26:59.460really i've watched him now up close that's my media market for the last six months and the guy's
01:27:06.160very good gave a great speech at the knicks rally after the parade even that that was
01:27:11.620right he did all the right things but you know this and i know this in an executive position
01:27:20.640at some point two things are going to happen one they want to see results on the things you promised
01:27:25.460and two some crisis is going to come it's going to challenge your ability to manage a crisis
01:27:31.560and at 34 years old, never having had a real job before.
01:27:37.040I say to people all the time, like, forget the socialism stuff.
01:27:40.380I don't think he's going to be able to accomplish most of that.
01:27:43.540But what is he going to fail to be able to do for New York City
01:27:47.500because he's not competent enough to do it
01:27:50.140and doesn't have enough competent people around him?
01:27:52.460So I think the DSA thing is multilayered.
01:27:56.140I wish for the sake of your party, but not for the sake of mine,
01:28:00.560that Bernie Sanders would just go away.
01:36:58.540And if he wants to see me about something that could be legitimately helpful to the country, I don't think you refuse to see the president of the United States.
01:37:08.520But if he either says something that, like, I have no interest in, that I don't think is good for the country, or when I get there, he asks me to do something that I can't do, then I say, it was great seeing you again.
01:38:00.780If you wanted me to come down and talk to him, if I thought I could be helpful to making his presidency better for the country, I would go down there and do my best.
01:38:09.760But I will tell you this, I'd be skeptical because I've tried that before and as a woman.
01:38:16.220Governor Chris Christie, it has been a lot of fun.