Trump trial update, terrifying Time interview and a Republican dog killer

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This week, Donald Trump gave an interview to Time magazine, confirming fears many have long held about exactly what he would do were he to win back the White House in November.

A deportation operation to remove millions, letting red states monitor women's pregnancies, firing U.

He somehow found the time to lay out his vision of a Trump 2.

Residing Judge Juan Marchand found Mr. Trump in contempt for nine violations of his gag order.

In a story about a potential running mate for Donald Trump, admitting that she once killed her puppy. The attempted removal by Republicans of the Republican Speaker of the House, again. And a wave of Gaza protests on American university campuses. And you have quite the week. But what does any of it mean for the 2024 election?

Anyone who's read that interview was a little shocked, if not very shocked.

Nikki McCann-Ramirez is a politics reporter for Rolling Stone magazine.

The phrase that really summed it up for me was that Trump is looking to create a quote-unquote imperial presidency. What really stands out to me is that the interview shows that Trump, his circle of advisors, his attorneys, really did learn from their quote-unquote mistakes in their first stint at the White House. And this time around, would be prepared to do whatever it takes to break down the checks and balances that restrained him during his first term. I think we can also see this very clearly in the arguments recently presented by his lawyers before the Supreme Court on the question of presidential immunity.

The Declaration of Independence held certain truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal. Is that equal before the law, neither above it nor below it, or should former presidents be immune from prosecution? Not just lawsuits while in office, but consequences for crimes even afterwards. That was the question before the Supreme Court in Washington today.

Where, in their view, the president exists, above and outside of criminal law in this country. The interview really gives a sense that this is going to be a revenge presidency.

All of those things leapt out at me too. This notion of the imperial presidency, a phrase used back in the day about Franklin Roosevelt when he massively expanded presidential powers, was to me a sign of just how much the Republican Party has changed in the Trump era. It's hard now to remember, but this was meant to be the party of small government and wanting to shrink government and get it out of your life, and instead now talking about huge powers of the federal government in Washington DC under an imperial president. But let's just get into that particular point about the Supreme Court, because this argument that's going there, at first people thought he was taking a wild shot there by claiming presidential immunity for pretty well everything. And yet the signs we have from the Supreme Court, those judges last week suggested, certainly the Republican-appointed conservative judges, they're pretty sympathetic to this idea that the president can, you know, get away with whatever he likes.

Yeah, it seemed throughout the arguments that the conservative judges were not outright opposed to what Trump's lawyers were presenting to them.

If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office.

is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes?

the functioning of our country as a democracy?

I think it is important to point out that the justices did push back on some of the more absurd proposals and hypotheticals brought forth by Trump's attorneys. They were questioned regarding whether a president who attempted to commit a coup could be criminally prosecuted. And isn't that the nature of the allegations here? He's not doing them, doing these acts in furtherance of an official.

responsibility. He's doing it for personal gain.

I agree with that characterization of the indictment, and that confirms immunity, because the characterization is that there's a series of official acts that were done for an unlawful— No, because immunity says even if you did it for personal gain, we won't hold you responsible. And their answer was only if he was impeached, which would basically mean that the only way a president is able to be held criminally responsible for actions that violate the Constitution would be if he first goes through a political process where his own party would likely have to affirm that what he did was a crime or constituted a high crime and misdemeanors in the eyes of the Constitution.

And we know how that worked out from what happened three years ago.

Absolutely. A president has never successfully been removed from office through impeachment. So even if the Supreme Court doesn't grant Trump and future presidents blanket immunity, there is the possibility that they recalibrate these immunity statutes to be a little more encompassing for presidential powers or really attempt to define what sort of process Congress would have to go through to implement or revoke immunity for presidential actions. And we won't really know until June, but in the Trump campaign's view, even if they don't get a win on this, the fact that this might delay some of his ongoing criminal trials, they see that as a victory in itself.

Yeah, and they're probably right to. A lot of people have thought that the conservative judges on the court are very deliberately giving him at least that favor, that they know that the longer they draw this out, the less likely it is that any of those cases will be heard this side of the election. And of course, if he wins it, he can then just essentially pardon himself and make them go away. The only exception is the New York case. We'll come back to that.

What was clearly observable, not only in Trump's first term, but throughout his career as a private citizen and real estate and in the aftermath of his presidency, that he values loyalty above all else in his advisors, in his staff. And what we see now is that the closer we get to the election and in the three years since he was removed from office, he has surrounded himself with a cadre of diehard MAGA Republicans who are unquestioning of his goals and visions, who see Trump as a vehicle to further their own ultra-nationalist, ultra-conservative ambitions. But the problem there is that the people who will feel the brunt of this retaliatory reshaping of executive powers will be everyday Americans. And the long tail of the damage will extend far beyond his time in the White House. And who knows if we'll be able to rebuild the institutional checks and balances that he plans to undo.

One of the news lines out of this Time magazine interview was where he talked about, he said it before, he would pardon those convicted, or would consider it those convicted over the January 6th riots. He always calls them hostages rather than prisoners. But in that same section, he didn't himself rule out the use of political violence.

He says, I do think we're going to win. If we don't win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of the election.

People have been worried about Donald Trump on exactly these grounds, but there he is, out of his own mouth, saying these things.

Yeah, I think, now that Trump has managed to push the entirety of the Republican Party into a mindset where political violence is not only acceptable but can be excused, the barriers to stop him from going bigger and badder in 2024 are gone. And with the proposals he has for gutting the Justice Department, rewriting the way crime is prosecuted in this country, the way special prosecutors can go after elected lawmakers for participating in events like January 6th or fomenting that kind of political violence, he knows what he's doing. And whereas in his first term, you can kind of say that they were blundering about trying to figure out how to do things, that they still had a semblance of checks and balances. A lot of those barriers are being eroded.

I mean, one area of lasting impact, of course, is the change which he brags about to the Supreme Court itself, which allowed the overturning of the constitutional protection of a woman's right to an abortion, Roe v. Wade. That's now the law of the land. It's now up to the states. He, in the interview, talked about that, and this has been an issue we've talked about on the podcast, where he's in a difficult place because the general electorate, the people voting in November, the wider American public, are not with him on this issue.

Yeah, it's incredibly dystopian, and I think that word gets thrown around a lot in contexts where it doesn't necessarily apply, but that is incredibly dystopian. The idea that a pregnant woman should have to fear surveillance from the government, should have to worry that any healthcare decision she makes regarding her pregnancy might involve intervention by state parties that are sort of watching her to see, oh, did you step out of line? Oh, we don't necessarily agree with this. Why do you need this procedure?

Yeah, and worth remembering in the 2016 campaign, he said then that he believed women who have abortion should be punished. Yeah. And this has a real echo of that. Last thing we'll just say about this interview was about the border. Border is going to be a massive issue.

wouldn't it? Oh, absolutely. And I think he also has mentioned, and his advisors have mentioned, that they are looking into ways to legally build detainment camps, essentially concentration camps, where they can hold migrants before deporting them. And we've already seen the slew of human rights issues at many of the existing immigration processing centers within the United States. To scale that up in the manner in which the Trump administration is proposing, knowing the way in which they already view migrants and the inhumane outlook they have on immigration, it is going to open up a black box of humanitarian issues, of civil rights issues.

Now, if anyone that is hearing you talking about vengefulness and revenge and thinks in any way that's over the top, I do urge them to go back to Donald Trump's own words, in which he says to his supporters, I am your retribution. So what you're saying? there is only what Donald Trump himself says. All right, putting the interview aside, when it came, as Donald Trump spent yet another day in court fighting those 34 charges against him for falsifying business records, this all relates to the alleged hush money payment that his then lawyer, Michael Cohen, made to Stormy Daniels to keep that out of the limelight during his 2016 presidential campaign. That's the accusation that he's facing in court, all the things related to that.

So Trump was placed on a limited gag order by Judge Juan Merchant that basically prohibits him from publicly discussing witnesses in the trial, jurors, prosecutors, and court staff. This came after Trump repeatedly attacked the daughter of Judge Merchant.

And just on this to clarify, attacking the daughter on the grounds that she had political views that would make the father biased.

Absolutely, that was the gist of the argument. And the attacks also got incredibly personal. He was publishing photos of her. It was, again, a tactic that Trump commonly uses. So the judge basically implemented this gag order, saying you're not allowed to attack court staff, witnesses, jurors, people involved in the case, or publicly comment on them.

What do you think has been the standout bit of evidence or testimony so far? And what do you think we should all be watching out for as the trial unfolds?

So, for me, the most standout piece of evidence we've seen so far is David Pecker's testimony, the former head of the National Enquirer. Pecker, detailed meetings with Trump and his then attorney, Michael Cohen, saying he would be Trump's, quote,

eyes and ears on any negative stories.

surrounding Trump during the 2016 cycle.

As we enter the latter phase of the trial, where heavy hitters like Cohen and Stormy Daniels will likely take the stand, we already have this web of conspiracy built up for the jury by the prosecution. Pecker testified that he had a meeting with Trump in like 2015, where Trump and Cohen basically asked him, what can you do for the campaign? And Pecker promised to lend them the aid of his magazines, act as eyes and ears for the campaign. He testified at length about the payment he made to former Playboy model, Karen McDougal.

Yeah, because Pecker, the publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, admitted that he was buying up these stories not to publish them, but to keep them quiet, so that, as he put it, he didn't want this story to embarrass Mr. Trump or embarrass or hurt the campaign.

Pecker did say at one point that he felt the McDougal payment was likely a campaign finance violation. And now the prosecution just has to slot in the major players and say, we've already proven that this plot existed.

And we said at the top of the show that the question we were going to address was what impact this has on the 2024 election. Now, before all these cases came to court, this is the first one, the argument was all about, you know, what does a verdict do, a guilty verdict? What does that do to his chances? You know, for reasons we were saying before, it's unlikely any of those other cases are going to come to trial before the election. This one, there might be a verdict before.

I think one of the biggest ways that this is affecting the campaign and the road to the 2024 election is the fact that Trump has to spend time, money and energy on this trial. Time because, as a defendant, he is legally required to be present in the courtroom. That means he can't be on the campaign trail doing multiple rallies and appearances a day. Money, because obviously he is spending a ton of money on all of these court cases. We've seen that he and his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, have suggested pushing off some of that financial responsibility onto the RNC.

We have to move on to the dog killer, Nicky. This is a story that was not in the script for 2024.. It comes out of the fact that Donald Trump has kept a mystery, kept us guessing about who will be his running mate, the person who is nominee, in effect, for vice president. It's obviously not going to be Mike Pence like last time. They fell out extremely badly after Donald Trump essentially encouraged people holding banners saying, hang Mike Pence.

So this was originally reported by your lovely publication, The Guardian, South Dakota Governor, Christine Noem, who is a star MAGA governor, is publishing a book soon. And The Guardian obtained a copy of the book. And in it, she recounts the story of killing a 14-month-old hunting dog. Noem says her puppy Cricket was untrainable, dangerous, and worthless as a hunting dog, according to excerpts obtained by The Guardian. I hated that dog, she writes.

Romney loaded his dog into a pet carrier and strapped the carrier to the roof of the car for the entirety of the 12-hour trip. Romney today told me the dog loved it. But HEDA, the people from the Ethical Treatment of Animals,

today called it torture. And it was a national outrage cycle. Lyndon B. Johnson also once got heavily criticized because he was photographed holding one of his dogs by the ears to restrain it. So I don't even think it's necessarily a matter that Trump is outraged by the killing of this dog.

I think so too. I think she bragged about it. I think she put it in because she thought it would make her sound tough in a kind of party of hunters and all that. And I think she just completely misread the room for all the reasons you've said. So a couple of last things from this very packed week to talk about with you, Nikki.

We have new developments on Capitol Hill. Sources telling CNN. House Republican leaders are planning to kill a motion by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene to oust Speaker Mike Johnson. Today, Greene announced that she's going to force a vote to remove him next week.

We talked about Mike Johnson, who made it in in a kind of squeaker as a replacement for Kevin McCarthy. He's now in this strange Catch-22 situation where, on the one hand, he has to keep the right of the Republican Party happy. And, at the same time, House Democrats have said that they will back him if a vote comes to remove him. And so he needs to keep them happy, as well as his kind of insurance policy. How on earth does he get out of this bind?

I think he'll be around for at least another while. Primarily because I think the majority of House Republicans have absolutely no interest in repeating the debacle they faced removing Kevin McCarthy. Because, frankly, it was humiliating for them. It made them look incompetent, unorganized, incapable of coming to a consensus. We know that the push to oust Johnson is being led by Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Well, talking of distractions, and certainly one that could have a big effect on the election in November, these protests in universities across the United States, these encampments of solidarity with Gaza, demanding a ceasefire, and demanding their universities divest. You have to start in Columbia, but it's with big scenes, violent scenes at UCLA, in California and elsewhere. Donald Trump stepping forward to compare them to the neo-Nazi rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he famously said there were good people on both sides. He said Biden was to blame. There are Democrats who are worried by these, because student protests, or even just pictures of unrest when there is an incumbent Democrat president, have often caused trouble.

Oh, they could absolutely have an impact in November. I likely think they will. Like we said, this is going to be an incredibly tight election. Biden is heavily attempting to court the youth vote. We see this in his policies, like debt forgiveness for student loans, his anti-junk fee platform, and young people aren't dumb.

That is certainly true. Nikki McCann-Ramirez, of Rolling Stone magazine, thanks so much for joining me once again on Politics Weekly America.

Thank you so much, Jonathan.

And that's all from me for this week. Now, for any listeners to our sister podcast, Politics Weekly UK, you might like to know that The Guardian is introducing new episodes with Pippa Crera, The Guardian's political editor and political correspondent, Kieran Stacey. As we brace ourselves for a UK election later this year, the pair will be bringing you all the insight you need from Westminster to kick off your week. The first episode is out this Sunday, May the 5th, when Pippa and Kieran will be discussing the fallout from this week's local election. So if you haven't already, subscribe to Politics Weekly UK wherever you get your podcasts.

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