Law and Odor: Trump Trials

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Erin Ryan.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Thank you all for coming. Thanks to the LA Times Festival of Books for having us. And thanks to everyone who's already pre-ordered our book, Democracy or Else? How to Save America in 10 Easy Steps. We'll be talking a bit more about the book later.

Don't clap until we have a verdict.

Right. So, New York Times reports this morning that the prosecution is planning to call former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker as their first witness. It could be as early as tomorrow, if opening statements are quick enough. Pecker is expected to testify about his agreement with Trump to buy and hide stories that would be politically damaging to him, which is known as catch and kill. There was plenty of drama last week in the trial, which ended with a man who tragically lit himself on fire outside the courtroom, while inside, several potential jurors broke down in tears over the risk of serving.

just to show you how much more unfair it is.

I have a lot to say to you, and I'm not allowed to say it. And I'm the only one. Everyone else can say whatever they want about me.

They can say anything they want.

They can continue to make up lies and everything else. They lie, they're real scum.

But you know what? I'm not allowed to speak. And I want to be able to speak to the press and everybody else about it.

So why am I gagged?

It's so unfair that the judge won't let that guy speak, because now we have no idea what he thinks about stuff. It's just brutal. So Trump has nonetheless spent the weekend accusing Judge Mershawn of having a conflict of interest, calling the district attorney corrupt, and threatening to prosecute Joe Biden if he wins. Tommy, do you think Trump is helping himself here legally or politically? You can pick either.

Sure, I'll take both, John. 500.. We could do a whole episode on this farting allegation because it is hilarious. It is believable. It's probably not true, or at least not confirmed in any way.

Yeah. It feels too early to tell, but I do wonder if anytime voters turn on TV or read the news and see Donald Trump just, like, whining like that about a gag order, like, at some point, I don't know if that helps him. Like, you know, some people could say that the trial is unfair, but it's the middle of a presidential campaign. It's going to go on, for, you know, six to eight weeks. And if all we get from Donald Trump is just him complaining about the trial, I don't know.

I don't want to think about him farting. I truly don't. I think that I've seen enough Mueller time T-shirts out in the wild that now are mysteriously vanished that I am not counting on the justice system to deliver any. we got him kind of a moment. The first week of the trial did kind of make me worry about the safety of the jurors, as a lot of jurors were worried about their own safety.

He was doing little fist bumps if you read Art of the Deal, too. Yes.

Oh, God.

According to The New York Times.

One thing that I am a little bit worried about is that this is a great event for, like, New York media, because they know where it's happening and it's in New York and it's easy for them to cover. And I just don't want this to suck all the oxygen out of the room, when we should be also talking about, like, what a nightmare it would be if he were reelected and how low-quality GOP candidates are across the country.

Yeah. Dan, our friend Anant Shankaraswario has a new piece in Slate titled The Trump Trial is Already Influencing Public Opinion. And she's got a polling memo that finds a majority of voters already see this trial as evidence of Trump engaging in a, quote, long-term criminal conspiracy. Do you think that damage is already being done here, or do you think it's sort of too early to tell?

You're not going to ask me a fart question?

I mean, that was going to be my follow-up, Dan.

Okay, sorry. Sorry, I didn't read the script this week.

Also, apparently he was farting because he was falling asleep. We know he's falling asleep, right? That's, like, Maggie Havenman reported that. That's true. And the rumor is that, as he was nodding off, then, I think he was maybe, you know, farting.

Yeah, but who does that? Who farts as they're falling asleep? Is that a thing?

Oh, let me tell you. I mean, look, I talked to Maggie today.

Maybe wake yourself up, you know.

I talked to Maggie today.

Oh, wow, you did some reporting.

I did some reporting on this. She told me she could not confirm that gas was passed at this trial. So it seems to be potentially fake news. Dan, you had something smart to say.

Some resistance account got hashtag odor in the court trending on Twitter.

That's pretty good. I'm not going to lie.

Does that love it?

Could be worse. Could be worse. Anyway, sorry. Did I steal your pun?

What was the question again?

Do you think the damage is already being done?

Yes. Yes, damage is being done. Right? I think ultimately, and Aaron is right to be worried that the media is going to focus on this trial to the expense of so many other very important stories in this campaign and in this country. Like.

Are you saying he doesn't comport himself well?

Yeah. I'm saying he is not his best messenger, per se. And, you know, there's an irony to that, because Donald Trump won the White House for the first time by dominating media. And he may win it a second time by not being in front of the cameras all the time. Or at least living in a media environment where being in front of the cameras is a less dominant experience than it was before.

Yeah. I do think, I mean, this was, of the four trials, the one that people thought was the weakest case. Doesn't mean it's a weak case.

I mean, it just also speaks to how severe the other crimes were, that this is the weak one.

Right. It's like, wait, which election interference trial is this? Oh, this was the 2016 one, not the 2020 one. Right.

But also just, if you say this paragraph to yourself out loud, that the presumptive Republican nominee is on trial for a felony crime of falsifying business records to cover up an extramarital affair with an adult film star weeks before the election. And you're like, oh, that's not as serious as the other two criminal trials? Yeah. It's wild. Right.

And it seems like David Pecker, the National Enquirer guy, testifying, you wonder if also part of that conversation or part of that testimony will be the allegation that Donald Trump was able to basically write fake headlines about his opponents, such as Ted Cruz's father killed JFK. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly, fake.

Prove. it didn't happen, Tommy. Right.

So, I mean, it's just.

Typical, typical liberal media guy here. Donald Trump definitely farted, but maybe Ted Cruz's father didn't kill him.

It would be a fascinating look into the way that organization worked.

Yes. All right. So, Dan and I talked on Thursday's pod about Biden world's decision to steer clear of talking about this trial, other than a few jokes and puns here and there. Last week, the president was out in Pennsylvania, as Dan mentioned, contrasting his plans to help middle-class families with Trump's plans to help the rich. He was doing the Scranton Joe versus Park Ave Trump thing, which I think is great.

I think that all you have to do is take a look at election results since Dobbs to find that that is not the case. Abortion has been kicking ass in the ballot box. And it's an extremely important issue to a lot of people. I think it's a motivating issue to some people who would otherwise not be excited about voting for Joe Biden. We're seeing polling that shows that, since Dobbs, people are still just as mad about Dobbs today as they were the day that Sam Alito's smug ass handed down that opinion on the Supreme Court.

Like, I don't think these people should be making rules.

And it is something that a lot of people are seeing more clearly now. Exceptions don't really in any practical way work.

It has been wild watching some of these Republicans, who are now backing away from their more extreme anti-abortion stances that they've had in the past. Almost tumbling into the pro-choice position. Like Carrie Lake. Who had said that she supported the 1864 Arizona ban. That was a complete ban.

I'm not sure it'll be 90-10 by the end of this campaign. But I'd be willing to bet that at the end of this election, the issue that the Biden campaign will have spent the most money on will be abortion, and it probably won't be close. And I think the reason for that is exactly what Aaron said. It is a motivating issue for a lot of voters. And ultimately what campaigns are about is trying to, everything they do.

Yeah, I also want to jump in and add that I think something the Biden administration hasn't been hitting as hard as they should is that if Republicans take the White House, the House, and the Senate, we will get a federal ban. That affects us in California. That affects people in the bluest blue states who think they're safe, who, after Dobbs, were texting their friends and saying, oh, it's so terrible what's going to happen over there. No, it's happening here. And there are a lot of races here in California that could determine the balance of the House of Representatives.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think, obviously, you want to fill a vacuum, and Trump's not on the air. He doesn't have as much money. This is the time to pressure him. I mean, there are a couple other reasons for this, too. One is voters do not think, they think Trump's extreme, but they don't think of him as extreme in a religious, right sort of way.

Just because he compares himself to Jesus Christ. being persecuted doesn't necessarily mean people see him as so religious.

But even all, like, no, there's not a person alive, not an evangelical, not anyone else who believes Donald Trump when he talks about his favorite Bible verse, or he's selling Bibles. It's all wink, wink, nod, nod, right? But the other thing is, and this is something that's very interesting that happened since Dobbs, is. Dobbs really was a singular tectonic shift in American politics. And one thing it shifted was, if you talk to people who are working on 2022 races, the thing that Dobbs, Democrats have been talking about, this mag-extremism argument for a long time, mag-extremism, mag-extremism, we want to paint the Republicans as extreme.

On that note, Tommy, the AP just reported that, ever since Dobbs, complaints have spiked that pregnant women facing medical emergencies are being turned away from ERs in states with abortion bans, even though that's against the federal law. Do you think stories like that have the potential to broaden the conversation? The coalition of voters who might choose Trump or Biden based on this one issue.

Yeah, I think what those stories show is that having a patchwork of state-by-state abortion bans that include laws passed in the 1860s puts all women, all pregnant women, at risk. And the story Donald Trump wants to tell about abortion, literally, is he says Democrats want to abort babies after they're born, which is...

It's illegal. It's already illegal. It's called murder.

We're talking backstage. Murder? Murder, yeah. Can't do that. That's the narrative he wants to portray about Democrats.

Yeah, and I do think, I mean,

Yeah, I agree. I also think two things. First of all, abortion isn't always a complicated decision. Sometimes it's the right decision and it's obvious, and it's no going back. But if you're going to an emergency room and the treatment that you need might include abortion, then it is almost certainly a complicated and heartbreaking decision.

Yeah, what I was sort of trying to get at is, for a long time the line from Democrats on abortion was safe, legal, and rare, which I understood the messaging politically, but it made it sound like this was a choice that people were making, that we wanted to prevent that choice from being made through whatever policy. And I think that that is just wrong because, like what you were saying, often it's a medical necessity. And it's often someone whose life is at risk or someone who needs abortion care, because if they don't get it in that moment, then they won't be able to have another kid in the future. And as someone who has sat through an ultrasound where, you know, you thought there'd be a heartbeat and then there isn't, to take that moment and then deny a person medical care is so unbelievably cruel to me that I almost can't fathom it.

All right, so we have two fun things to end the news section. It's because you've all been so good.

I brought the tone up. I wanted to light it up for you guys.

The abortion disco siren.

We get some serious, we get some funny. It's the show. All right, the first, Tommy, pick this clip out. It's a clip from Republican Congressman Tony Gonzalez, who basically, I think, cut one of the best ads for the Democratic Party that I've seen this year. So he was on CNN Sunday talking about how the House of Representatives beat back the MAGA hardliners like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz to pass aid and support for Ukraine, Israel, the Palestinians, and Taiwan with a huge bipartisan majority.

I served with some real scumbags. Look, Matt Gaetz, he paid minors to have sex with him at drug parties. Bob Goode endorsed my opponent, a known neo-Nazi. These people used to walk around with white hoods at night. Now they're walking around with white hoods in the daytime.

I mean.

It's a Republican.

Republican.

Well, not to get ahead of our next segment, but.

Yeah, that was wild. That was wild. Great clip. Good for Tony Gonzalez. We've seen that in battleground districts before long.

Do you think there should be exceptions for rape and incest, for example?

And I think that every state's going to look different. That's what's different, Dana. Is that I've constantly looked at. we rely in South Dakota, on the fact that I'm pro-life, and we have a law that says that there's an exception for the life of the mother. And I just don't believe a tragedy should perpetuate another tragedy.

if you get the joke about Kristi Noem's new teeth, you reach a certain level of political junkie. that's very impressive.

She cut an ad for the.

veneers company.

She's hawking veneers. Is that what happens? I don't know. Anyway. Dan, what do you think?

I promise you, those would not be the same people.

That's why it's last on the list. That's why it's our fun segment. Yes, that's right.

I mean, it certainly meant who becomes Vice President certainly matters. Particularly for a candidate like Donald Trump, who can't stay awake in court.

And the answer is, voters with veneers.

People with insecurities about their teeth. I think you would look at the place where, at least in the polling thus far, Trump has had the most success bringing over, or at least separating from Biden, are men of color. So, I would be looking at a black or Latino man as my running mate. Now, there are some constitutional complications to this. But if you really wanted, I think, the pick that would be most impactful, you would pick Marco Rubio.

Wow.

And now, this would require Marco Rubio to resign from the Senate, because he would have to change his residency to somewhere else, because they can't both be from the same state. I mean, we can applaud for Marco Rubio resigning from the Senate, but he would be replaced.

No, no. But then you don't pick him, and it's hilarious. I love this plan.

So, I think you would do that. Or you would do Byron Donalds, I think. The congressman.

Who would also have to move. He'd also have to move.

Less consequent.

I think thinks.

I think this is where you get to who Trump would actually pick. I don't think Tim Trump... Let me make the case for Marco Rubio. from Trump's perspective, at least. Trump loves a power dynamic.

Yeah.

I think when push comes to shove and you need someone to overthrow the government, I think he knows Tim Scott's going to turn to his Bible, like Mike Pence, and not be there for him.

You can't have a VP that bows to a higher God. You know what I mean?

There's only one God Trump wants him to worship.

Only one God.

You don't want a VP pick who people would trust to babysit their kids.

So, there was more reporting on the Marco Rubio possibility, especially because, apparently, he could raise a lot of money because he ran for president and has a network of donors, some of whom are still on the sidelines, whatever. But, to the point where they were talking to Trump about what they do about Florida and they were like, well, it's easy for Trump to just change his residency to Bedminster in New Jersey, where he's got a golf club there, or Westchester or any of these places. And, apparently, Trump was like, I will not do that because I don't want to deprive the citizens of Florida from having me as a resident.

Or, he would prefer to deprive the state treasury of New York of the additional tax dollars that would cost him to be New York president.

What was your idea about, Tommy, this is a prank for Rubio?

Oh, yeah, no. You tell Rubio to resign and then move and then you don't pick him. It's hilarious.

Honestly, someone needs to get that idea to Donald Trump, because I think that's fantastic. Erin, what do you think? What are your thoughts on this?

Well, okay. So, Trump needs money, right? And, he never has any original ideas. Everything is sort of derivative. Even Make America Great Again was stolen from what, like Charles Lindbergh?

Paul Ryan,

good at raising money. Somebody else already had the idea. It's like the perfect Trumpian. It's the perfect Trumpian pick. I think that he has bandied about the idea of picking a woman as VP because I think that he thinks, I don't know, there's a whole, like, I'm not a psychologist, but I need one to break down all the reasons why he would pick this type of woman.

Hope Hicks?

I don't know. It's weird. I think he's going to pick somebody who looks like someone who would be in a Miss Universe.

pageant. You think it will be a woman?

I think it will be a woman, because he needs a woman to go out there and be his attack dog on this losing issue of abortion. He needs a woman to be the one speaking out in favor of common sense bands, which we all know are not common sense. I think he's going to pick. if there is a Christy Gnome approximate type, he's going to pick her.

That's why Katie Britt would have been great until she did the union response and scared the hell out of.

people.

Although now I think, because Alabama was where the horrendous IVF decision went down, he probably is maybe a no on Katie Britt.

Carrie Lake is out too because of the Arizona thing. All the Miss America ladies are just one by one getting knocked out of the semifinals.

Nancy Mace. What's that? Nancy Mace.

She's a liar though.

That's a good thing for him. That's a selling point. Tommy, last time we talked about this, you had an outside the box idea with J.D. Vance. Since then, there's been a lot of reporting that Trump is moving closer to actually doing the J.D.

I think, if he just wants to bro out, he'll go. J.D. Vance. I thought the one that was the most interesting in terms of just the narrative and the story you get to tell is Tulsi Gabbard.

That is a great segue to my question for you about the RFK Jr. story. What do you make of this whole RFK Jr. saying yeah, the team called me, he wanted to pick me.

I believe it. I really do believe it.

You've never disbelieved a single thing. RFK Jr. said.

it could have been a prank call. Somebody could have been doing their Donald Trump impression and called RFK Jr. and he was like, yeah,

that's Donald Trump. He just completely buys it. He's like, DTaP vaccine? Why would anyone take that? I'm like, write that down.

Yeah.

All the little right-wing influencer types who used to have him on their shows, Charlie Kirks of the world, etc.

Do we really want someone with such strong Leland Palmer vibes? second on the major party ticket? All the Twin Peaks fans, all five of you, laughing at that.

Dan?

I don't know what you think, but I would be scared, shitless, of a Trump-Kennedy ticket. That'd be very worrisome. If you listen to... I would encourage people who are sleeping too well at night to listen to the Focus Group. Sarah Longwell, the bulwark, has a Focus Group podcast where she listens to Focus Group.

Oh, wow. Oh, wow. That's a good one.

That would definitely be the burn-it-down ticket. You could see a lot of people, especially young people...

That's what I would worry about. In an election year where probably more people than usual are sick of both parties. and when you start polling voters who haven't showed up in previous elections and they're Trumpier or they're more willing to go third party, and you wonder at the end of the election whether those voters are going to stay home or turn out and you could see if it was Trump and RFK Jr., you could see a little bit of those voters peeling off. Okay. When we come back, we're going to talk about democracy or else, how to save America in 10 easy steps.

Okay. We are here at the LA Times Festival.

Okay. So trees had to die for this.

That's a good question.

We recorded the audiobook.

We recorded the audiobook and I had to read a lot of jokes that Lovett wrote, and it's not going to end well for me. Let me tell you. Oh my God.

So, talk to us a little about the process of writing the book. John, you're a speechwriter. Lovett was a speechwriter. Tommy, you've done a lot of writing. How did you divide up work here?

Well, since Lovett's not here, I'm going to talk about the real process. So we worked with a fantastic writer as well, Josh Holloway. Josh, are you here? Yeah, there he is.

He's handsome too. There he is.

Josh is a real comedy writer. He writes for Jimmy Kimmel. So we had a ringer. So basically, we came up with the 10 steps because we know we wanted it to be a guide and we wanted it to be useful for people. And then, I think, I'm trying to think of the process.

I think you nailed it, John.

You know what I mean? You sit back and relax.

My podcast, Hysteria, I have a co-host, Alyssa Mastromonaco, who's written a couple of books.

I think we got it all in there.

There's nothing. I fought for that I wish had gotten in. The minute the PDF is locked is when you start thinking of far better stories than you thought to include in the moment. That's the kind of agita I have now. It's not that we didn't include it.

There's 10 steps on what you can do to help improve politics and save democracy. And then we have a lot of personal stories.

Save America. The entire enterprise.

It's right here, people.

Save the whole thing.

We have a lot of personal stories from both our time in the campaign and the White House. We also interviewed a lot of the people that, if you've listened to the pod, you've come to know and love. We talked to Latasha Brown on why organizing matters and Congressman Maxwell Frost on how to persuade voters and Ben Wickler on state parties. We included a lot of those interviews in there, which was great. But it was hard figuring out which stories from all of our funny stories, which we don't find as funny anymore.

Now, 10 is a very round number of lessons.

I think we actually had 9 and we needed an extra. That's not true.

The original sketching out of it was literally,

It was an actual edict. You would know this, Tommy, from working in Iowa, that round numbers are not real numbers. If anyone ever comes back from canvassing in their report that I talked to 100 voters, you know they're lying. It's never 100.. It's 101..

It's 97. 19 steps to save democracy. You're right. That is more believable.

You know, as you were talking, I just had a thought. What if the Constitution started off as a Boy Scout manual?

How to.

democracy in the colonies.

That's probably pretty close.

Do you consider yourselves equivalent to the founders based on that question?

We do talk about the founding a little. We write about the different parts of the political system and talk about how easy it is to change each part of the system. The whole purpose of the book is really for people to focus their time and energy on what is going to be most useful and most likely to make a difference in politics. And so, can answer questions. like, you know, is it realistic to expect that we'll ever get rid of the electoral college?

Speaking of 2016,. if you had written this book in 2016,, how would it have been different? What have you learned since then that you included in the book?

I mean, the one theme that I think we tried to get through the book is, the goal of politics isn't to make you feel better about how right you are. The goal of politics is to get other people to see things your way. I think when 2016 started and we were all sort of shell-shocked from Trump winning, and scared, and wondering what comes next, there was a lot of, and I know because I engage in this too, there was a lot of sound and fury, and people went online and they were yelling about this. What we have learned over the years is the most important thing that you can do in politics, the best way to change the system is to change people's minds. Whether that means, whether you're persuading a Republican, an Independent, a Democrat who's sort of sick of politics right now, or someone who hasn't ever voted before or might not want to vote, figuring out the best way to bring them to our side, to welcome them in, to give them the grace to change their mind, that is probably the most important thing you can do in politics.

We were serious about inviting Carrie Lake to partake.

Correct. Bring that soft.

gauzy filter you use on all your web videos.

Okay. If you are, as you should be, freaking the fuck out about this election, and you are trying to find ways to channel that anxiety into productive action along the ways John said, buy this book. I have read this book. I've read it twice. It is excellent.

A lot of drawings. Dan likes it because he's referred to as a sex symbol.

Which is the one edit of mine they actually took in the process.

So, yeah. Please buy our book. Democracy or Else, How to Save America in 10 Easy Steps. Crooked.com slash books. Thank you for coming out today.