'That's a huge problem': Trump reloads his plan to deny election results

OK guys, this was another crazy busy week in this criminal case against Donald Trump tapes. Donald Trump got fined for violating the gag order. Another gag order hearing. A lot happened Tom. This morning. The judge kind of didn’t stick it to Donald Trump. But he made it clear because Donald Trump has been out there this week saying, oh, I’m not going to be able to testify because of this gag order. And the judge looked him square in the eye and said you absolutely can. Enough of this nonsense. One of the issues, though, is there are no cameras in the courtroom. Trump’s going to go right back out on the trail and say it’s the it’s the judge’s fault. How do you think this whole thing’s going? Well, I am still very worried that we have a prospect for a hung jury here. I am just very suspicious. One, very suspicious of jurors getting on there saying they don’t have an opinion of Donald Trump. I have never met a New Yorker who does not have an opinion of Donald Trump. There are two lawyers there and if any, if either of them are of a camp that favors Donald Trump’s future, that is something that is going to upset the normal dynamic of jury room, having two lawyers on the on the jury. So I I think the downside here is worse than the upside potential because the conviction here in this particular case I don’t really think is going to matter that much. When you look back at the Hollywood Access tape, which happened at a much more important time in the political career of Donald Trump and was at issue today in the trial that didn’t do it, I don’t think talking about the issues like this now are really going to upset Donald Trump’s election. Yeah, but if you’re Alvin Bragg, Bragg would say I’m not doing this for anyone to win or lose an election. I’m doing this because Donald Trump wrote the law. Well, that’s fine. But what we have to worry about is Donald Trump coming back as president and anything that would help his case and a hung jury here, I think he would scream for the rest of the campaign that I’ve been exonerated. He was exonerated. There was nothing here. It was a ridiculous case and New York prosecutors that couldn’t find anything better to do with their time. This is really an issue that I worry we’re going to have to confront, and is much more of a downside than the upside I see here. Damn. How do you think the prosecution is doing? I tend to agree with Tom. I think that there are a lot of people we’re going to talk about the Hope Hicks testimony in a little bit, a lot of people saying this was a slam dunk for the prosecution. I think Hope Hicks made a compelling case for the fact that, you know, Donald Trump also was concerned about Melania’s feelings. Now whether or not we believe that sister, please. But she, she put it out there. And if you have that juror who says, you know, I, I this, this calls into question this argument that the hush money payment was strictly a business engagement and an arrangement designed to help win the election. She provided a counter argument. What did you think about Hope Hicks testimony? Right. This is a woman who was glued to Donald Trump’s side, his entire administration. People very rarely heard her speak. There she was, didn’t even make eye contact with him, supposedly hasn’t spoken to him for a couple years. What do you think about it? I think it must have been very, very frightening for her. I think he’s, I think there are many accounts that he’s an intimidating person and he’s sitting, you know, as far apart as we are from her. And I imagine that she has some sort of emotional attachment to this phase in her life. I imagine there were some things that happened that were that she’s seen, that have, that have led her to not speak with him anymore. And I can’t imagine that it was easy for her to be able to give, like a completely honest, you know, accounting of what had happened without feeling like I need to, I need to impress him. And falling back into that way of being Ahmed, what did you think? Because Trump has been frustrated with his lawyers. He wants them to go tougher. He wants them to be like Roy Cohn, who was disbarred and disgraced. Yeah. I mean, I think on Hope Hicks, on the emotional aspect, I think that boosts her credibility. And On the contrary, crying boosts her credibility. Being fragile boost her credibility. No, I think. I think her essentially showing that this was an emotional moment for her to be on the stand underoath in front of Donald Trump. Like you said she has this emotional connection. She has this history. But it was actually compelling because I think she did give evidence that was helpful to the prosecution by saying that I under no circumstances did Michael Cohen do this under the goodness of his heart out of his own volition that he definitely, you know it came to that this was for Donald, right. This was for this was not something that that Michael would do in a benevolent nature. Right. And not only that, we have the David Pecker testimony really tying this to the fact that this is an election interference case, which I think makes it more compelling, indicating that this was an effort to keep information from the voting public. And I feel like that dimension of this could hopefully, I think that’s what the prosecution is trying to do, seep in to prevent a hung jury when you have some people see the severity of it and see that there was actually an intent to which Hope Hicks also said, and I’m going on. But she also said there was a crisis in the campaign after the Access Hollywood tape dropped. So that tells me that’s intent. You have that tape and now you need to conceal this information afterwards. The, the theater of how Donald Trump performs to me is more interesting than the evidence at trial, I think. But. But do you not think there’s any theater of Hope Hicks, right, like this? She was crying. She was fragile. She was a person one inch away from him all four years, right during child separation during Charlottesville after January 6. Like, I’m not sure I buy like this, this, this, this fragile, you know, ingenue up there. Like this is such a difficult moment. I didn’t see any difficult moment. She stood. She stood next to him. Ice, ice, baby. The whole damn time. Well, that’s why I think it is a difficult moment. Because you think of what she must have experienced, like willingly. Yes, but she’s silly, right? But that doesn’t mean a lot of people have trouble with, you know, a sort of, I don’t want to get into the like, cross this line, but like, you know, in an abusive sort of dynamic, a really tough you’re doing that. And maybe she was all in. Maybe, but why is she all in? I think ultimately Corey Lewandowski all in. Why is Stephen Miller all in, why she’s testifying against Trump and of all people to testify against Trump. She’s a good prosecution witness. But as I said, in the end of the day, I don’t think that’s what really matters here. It’s Trump theatrics. And I think what he was trying to do early on was provoked the judge into really hitting him with a contempt charge hard that might have involved going to jail. So for some hours. So he could really play the card of I’m being gagged here, I can’t speak. He can believe a judge would put former president United States in jail for speaking his mind. I think in the last couple days he may have backed off of the thought that that’s helpful. And the reason for that, I think has to do with what will talk about later. All the protests that chaos in in in in that world hurts Biden in his mind and he’s the guy who supposedly is going to be law, order control. Well, if you’re out of control yourself to the point that a judge has to jail you because you can’t behave in a way that’s within the decorum of the court system, then who are you to say that you’re the guy who’s going to bring control here? So I think bringing something deep, I really do think he is backed away from that provocation because of that. Well, my, the sort of nihilistic view of this is that does any of it even matter, Like whether it’s a hung jury, whether he gets convicted? Everyone’s just going to double down, as they always do. You have a few Republicans who are probably gonna be like, oh, this is such a problem, I’m concerned. And then 10 minutes later, ohh, they’re back down at Mar a Lago, you know, paying for their his meal. Like, it’s really just my fear is that like, none of it gets to anybody and people don’t have clear information access and it’s just very, very hard for people to get out there. Silo, OK, then I want to go to my fear. And Steph, I want you to comment on Wednesday, Trump in the day off of court, he was on the campaign trail and what did he do? He told reporters he will not necessarily accept the election results if he doesn’t like them, IE if he doesn’t win. I I get that. Maybe somewhere in the back of our mind like, oh, we assumed he’d do that. That’s a huge problem. But Trump always tells you what he is going to do. I mean you know the the, the Time magazine article pointed out everything he said he was going to do. People have been the the the 2025 project very clearly spells out exactly what is going to happen if there is a Trump administration. And similarly, when Trump says that he will not accept the results of the election, we should be prepared for the fact that he is not going to accept the results of the election. It it’s it’s plain as day he is going to do exactly what he says. And it will be a very different approach to election denial than it was last time. They learned a lot. And what they learned is you got to stay away from the courts. Can you deny elections and not have it subject to court review? And the big difference this time that everybody’s got to pay attention to, you’re telling me here, is that you have Mike Johnson as speaker, not Nancy Pelosi. And the fact that the Republicans control the House is significant in this respect. There’s a view that the House selection in terms of who takes control is going to be close, but the Democrats have a really good shot. But it is the previous Congress, our current Congress, that certifies House races, and it could be something, and I’m sure they’ve thought of this, if there’s some close races that the Democrats look like they’ve won, but it would turn control the House to the Democrats, they don’t certify. And then you end up on January 3rd with the Republicans in control. Come January 6th, you have the Republicans, and this is a huge issue, a parliamentary tactic, which would mean that the Electoral Count Reform Act, which was supposed to solve all this to make sure that an election couldn’t be stolen by Congress. One problem, those rules have to be adopted by the House. Meaning the Senate is a continuous body. It has its people who are 2/3 of the body continues every election cycle. The House? It’s a new House every time. If they don’t put the implementing rules before the House for election for adoption, do you have a situation where they could reject the vote in close states because they’ve now stolen the House to election denial? If we do not start serving vodka when Tom Rogers is here for nightcap, we’re all going down. This is really serious and has to be paid attention because they learned a lot from last time. OK then Ahmed. Then then our Democrats just a few months from now going to severely regret it if they end up saving Mike Johnson, right? Marjorie Taylor. Green is trying to oust Mike Johnson. And it’s Democrats who could be the ones who keep him in that position. If everything plays out in this deeply draconian way, the way Tom is predicting, are Democrats going to rue the day that they helped this guy? Well, you know, there’s always the risk of someone worse than Mike Johnson, if that’s even imaginable. But it, you know, that’s the risk. And I think that’s what they might buffer for and that’s what they could do. But really what it comes down to is I would like the point you make about how they’ve learned from last time. And what that’s a great point. Campaign is so much smarter and more disciplined, even if Trump doesn’t seem to be. His operation is exactly. And Congress takes office before J6. So whatever changes happen there, that’s going to essentially impact what happens next. And that true. Meanwhile, that transition team and waiting we’ve been talking about with Project 2025, they’ve essentially created like I know you had Sam Jacobs on a couple nights ago. He mentioned this ideological intellectual legal framework that Project 2025 is doing. You know, like that Keane peel skit how Obama had the translator. Like Trump has the reverse of that. Like they’re taking his ravings and they’re codifying it into calm, deliberate policy that can actually get achieved. They’re finding legal avenues to get this stuff done. And I know our last segment we’re talking about this dismantling of agencies and the purging of civil servants. They have the plans to do so. And that’s the other side of this. If they go this route to potentially try to steal the election now, right after you’re talking about taking office and then purging civil servants by reimplementing Schedule F and then pursuing this insane agenda that was outlined in the Time magazine interview that just detailed dystopian future every American should be aware of.