A Front Row Seat to Trump's Trial

Why is it so hard to recruit? How's the Pentagon responding? And how are the voices of service members on social media shifting the balance? Listen to The Assignment with Audie Cornish wherever you get your podcasts.

And later, legal scholar and former White House ethics lawyer, Norm Eisen, our old friend, stops by to talk about his front row seat to Donald Trump's Manhattan trial and all the rest of the week's legal news. But first, Donald Trump used his one day off from sleeping at his criminal trial to hold two campaign rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan. Just one day after Judge Mershawn held him in contempt of court for violating his gag order and threatened him with jail time. Trump responded by calling the judge crooked and corrupt. He also said the trial is bullshit.

He did avoid attacking the actual witnesses, though, but he had plenty of other targets. He called Chris Christie a fat pig, said he might not accept the results of the 2024 election, accused pro-Palestinian protesters of being, quote, paid actors and characterized all of this as, quote, having a little fun on the campaign trail. Here's what Trump's idea of fun sounds like.

New York's finest. Crooked Joe is now reportedly planning. This is wonderful news for you people in Wisconsin to bring massive numbers of Gazans from the Middle East. All live to your American towns, your towns and villages, your towns and villages will now be accepting people from Gaza and various other places, Yemen, lots of other places. Joe Biden seems to determine to.

he's just determined to create the conditions for an October 7th style attack right here in America. It's going to happen. under no circumstances. Should we bring thousands of refugees from Hamas controlled terrorist epicenters like Gaza to America? We just can't do it.

All right.

An order must prevail. There's the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos. People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked. Let's be clear about this as well. There should be no place on any campus, no place in America, for anti-Semitism or threats of violence against Jewish students.

There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, whether it's anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans. It's simply wrong. There's no place for racism in America.

So that's that's his thoughts on Israel when he's asked. Now, though, in both Michigan and Wisconsin, at these rallies, he is making attacks on the protests, the protesters and Palestinians, a more central part of his message and sort of refugees and immigrants writ large. What do you think he's up to there?

Danger is coming to America, to your home. And even though you may not agree with everything I say or everything I do, you may find me uncomfortable in some ways, but I am the one person who is strong enough to protect you. And so the more he can bring the this image of chaos, of to to America, to this campaign, to put that in people's minds, he believes that will benefit him in this election. It's like, it's not subtle. It's incredibly racist.

It's incredibly dangerous to say that this is bringing an October 7th style attack to America, to demagogue refugees and talk and try to make them seem like scary terrorists, as he has done with immigrants, as he does on some other issues. But that's what it is. It is. And the protests dominating the conversation here have, I think, allowed him to fuse. sort of.

his world is dangerous and America is coming apart at the seams into one message, is why I think he's now taking the step to actually talk about it more. Because he has been worried about trying to navigate the two challenging parts of the Republican base, which is one, the very pro-Israel right wing, and then the America, the isolationism part. And the protests allow, sort of allow him to ally that conversation and just sort of weaponize it to his benefit.

And also, that's why he's connecting the in the weirdest way possible, the border with the protests. He was saying that the protesters are paid actors trying to distract us from the southern invasion of, you know, immigrants from the Middle East and China and Africa. And look, it is a. it's absolutely a, a political campaign move. He doesn't really care about Gaza or Israel that much.

He does care about people who are angry or afraid, or even just unsettled by all the protests. And he wants to tell them he's with them. He'll stop them by any means necessary. He thrives on creating an us versus them. narrative.

And them is always foreign invaders or treasonous radicals or liberals. Right. And so he's got to otherize people, which is what he's been doing with these protests, too. I mean, this is, it's his favorite thing. Right.

Like this is his absolute wheelhouse. But I don't think it's just a campaign. It's not just a campaign move either. I mean, he has, if you know, if you've seen footage of police arresting protesters, you know that some of these officers like don't really need encouragement from the president to get tougher. But they're going to get a lot more than encouragement from Trump if he wins.

He has talked about ordering police and military to shoot protesters, to shoot suspected shoplifters, not with rubber bullets, with real bullets. He wants mandatory stop and frisk in every city. He wants to withhold federal funding from police officers who refuse. He wants to send in the National Guard and the military to use against protesters and to hunt down immigrants. And we didn't play it.

But when Biden walked away, someone, you know, Mike Johnson, has been saying President Biden's got to send in the National Guard. The Congress has been, you know, other Republicans in Congress have been saying that clearly Trump wants to do that. Trump's planning to do that if he wins again. So that's on the agenda. And, you know, if you're upset with what's happening to the protesters right now, and some of the scenes are extremely upsetting, it can and will get much, much worse under Donald Trump.

And he's telling that.

He's talked about the Insurrection Act, upset that the military didn't, you know, shoot the protesters in front of the White House back after the George Floyd protests. So, like I said, these, these guys don't need more encouragement from someone telling them to to to knock some heads, you know. So what did you think about Biden's decision to give remarks on the protests? And like, how did you feel about the message?

It's just it just happened to be that. that's how I did it.

Everyone was mad about it. People were mad on both sides. And maybe maybe there was no. there is no message that could navigate all of that and keep everyone happy. Right.

Because there are elements of it. He used the word disorder, which many people disagreed with. And I understand why people have that disagreement, because civil disobedience can be disorderly and that it's different than violence and lawbreaking. But on its whole, I thought it was the right message. Now, the decision to do it.

I think the president was right to go out and talk. This is one of those, you know, so little breaks through to the public these days. We talk about this all the time. It's just there are those political junkies like us live in one world. The rest of the country lives in a completely different one.

This one is breaking through because it's happening on college campuses, because the elite media loves nothing more than to cover what happens on college campuses. In particular, if it's an Ivy League school, then they are deeply in on it. There's a lot of local press around this because even if the situations are not as well known or even as large as they are, maybe at UCLA or Columbia or elsewhere, there are protests on lots of colleges. And then on social media, these videos are everywhere. They're being pushed by both sides.

They're being pushed to show the level of dissent that is happening. There's being the responses. The police response went viral. And so everyone's talking about it. So it's right for the president to do it.

But ultimately, as you sit there, from the political strategist's point of view, if we are talking about this, sometimes you have to talk about things that aren't in your chosen issue set. And this is one of those moments. But another day of news about this is something that probably made the Trump campaign very, very happy.

But I do think, as you're sort of parsing the speech, it is a really tough line to walk, because I think the line between what counts as peaceful protest and what doesn't is a hard one to draw. Like violence obviously isn't peaceful protest. Threatening violence obviously isn't peaceful protest. Destruction of property is obviously against the law. Occupying buildings, encampments, like I think those are legitimate forms of protest and civil disobedience.

But if there are rules and laws against that kind of protest, and if you've been warned about breaking those laws, then part of civil disobedience is accepting the penalty for that. I mean, that's what Dr. King said, right? He said that you should accept the penalty and you should do so civilly, not uncivilly, right? That was sort of the foundation of his belief in the civil rights movement.

And, of course, the civil rights activists were not treated civilly, but certainly they acted civilly. Look, I don't think that means that cops should fucking fire rubber bullets at you or tase you or beat the shit out of you, but that's a whole separate problem. And so, look, I think that Biden needed to communicate to people that we need to have, like, the right of peaceful protest in this country is sacrosanct. And that's just very important. And people have strong feelings about this war.

And if they want to go put themselves on the line for those beliefs, then they absolutely should. And they should have the right to do that. And the fact that we have this militarized response isn't fucking great. But also, you can't look at some of the scenes of, not just the scenes of vandalism, because vandalism is vandalism, right? But this is unique.

This is unlike, I think, in Vietnam, the Vietnam protests, unlike the civil rights protests, where you basically have a marginalized group or people protesting on behalf of a marginalized group. That also, and we talked about this before, there's, like, you know, moments of anti-Semitism here, which is there's, there's another marginalized group is feeling threatened. Right. And I don't think we've seen that here for a while, based on the protest. And so that's why you see these like protesters and counter protesters.

And I do think that's why it feels so raw and why it feels so tough, and probably why Biden stepped in to speak today. And also, you know, he's going, he's speaking at the Holocaust Memorial next Tuesday, I believe. And he'll be talking more about anti-Semitism there. And I'm sure he'll probably have more to say about Gaza as well.

And so he's trying to take all of that and put it into one set of remarks. And, as you pointed out, the problem, the issue, the fundamental issue here, is a policy, one. Right. Until you address that, none of the words are going to address it. I think so.

This was a tough call. It was not an easy task. I think the president was right to speak about it.

And I don't think Joe Biden has used some of his leverage to get more aid in. And I know they're trying to work on a deal right now, but he has not used all the leverage that he has to to try to end this war. So I think when that happens and hopefully it does happen soon, that's when we'll start to see the protests actually go away.

At the Michigan rally, Trump also thanked the conservative Supreme Court justices for overturning Roe v. Wade. And in Wisconsin, he offered up an early take on how all these abortion bans are playing with people.

So much so that a few of them, a few of the Republicans in the Arizona legislature, just joined with Democrats in voting to get it off the books. Governor, Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs is signing that law today. That sound you hear is a relieved Carrie Lake holstering her Glock.

But but on the same day, Florida's six week ban went into effect, which was why Kamala Harris was there this week giving a speech where she mentioned Trump 21 times. And the Biden campaign also released a new ad called Prosecute. It's a, it's a seven figure ad buy that's running in all the swing states. And I guess this weekend during the Kentucky Derby, here it is tonight. Donald Trump's new comments on abortion, saying that some states might choose to monitor women's pregnancies to possibly prosecute women who violate abortion bans.

And that's Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

He has made a host of comments, some of the ones you just referenced, which suggests just how extreme he would be on abortion. He has said through his leave it to the state's policy that he is a de facto supporter of even the most extreme bans, like the one in Florida. And that if he were to be elected, you could, he would be a supporter of Arizona passing a similar law again. We also know that Democrats have a little bit of an uphill battle to try to make voters understand just how extreme he is on abortion. That was true in Arizona before the Arizona Supreme Court decision.

That was true after it. And it's true after the law was repealed. In the state of Arizona, I think there is some sense that that law really focused people's minds on the issue of abortion, that it was going to put that top of mind for lots of voters, that we believe that to be better for Democrats. I don't think this changes it that much, because there is very likely to be an abortion referendum on the ballot in Arizona under all scenarios. And so, as long as that is the case, I think abortion will be a incredibly important part of the political conversation.

And that Donald Trump and Carrie Lake will have to answer for that on a near daily basis.

And, like you said, the referendum is also going to keep it top of mind, for people. Love it. And Tim talked a bit about this on Wednesday's pod. But I would venture to guess that Trump saying in his time interview that he'd let states monitor women's pregnancies is a policy that probably doesn't land too well with the vast majority of voters in this country. But, you know, you are the host of Polar Coaster.

So what do you think?

Let's take a walk down memory lane for a second. Do you remember? in 2012,, the leading contender to be Mitt Romney's vice presidential pick was not Paul Ryan. It was a man named Bob McDonnell, who was the very popular governor of Virginia. He was very popular governor of Virginia.

And Virginia was at the point that was a huge swing state. If Obama could not win Virginia, it made the calculus to getting to 70 very challenging. So the thought was Romney would pick McDonnell. He would win Virginia. He would be president of the United States.

But in the run up to Mitt Romney making his decision, Virginia Republicans tried to pass a law. under McDonnell's leadership, tried to pass a law that would require every woman who wanted an abortion to have a, and I'm using their words, not mine, a transvaginal ultrasound before they can.

I mean, God bless the Biden campaign for going up as quickly as they are. This is exactly...

They're not.

It's all up to the states. It's all up to the states. So he cannot bring himself to weigh in in any way on the substance of this debate, this policy debate, because he has no fucking idea what he's talking about. And someone finally just got him to say, I leave it up to the states. And now he thinks that's that's his get out of jail free card.

And, you know, it's. then he lands in a situation like this, where he's now saying, yeah, sure. States can monitor women's pregnancies. Yeah. Great idea.

Unbelievable. Unbelievable. All right. With all the protests and abortion banning going on everywhere, you'd be forgiven for not noticing that Congress is back in session barely. And that's where we find our friend Marjorie Taylor Greene plunging ahead with her quest to topple Speaker Mike Johnson, despite having nowhere near the votes that she needs.

That's because almost no one in her party supports the effort, including Donald Trump, and because House Democrats have said they'll join most Republicans in voting to kill the resolution and save Johnson. On Wednesday, she held a press conference to explain herself and define herself against what she's calling the Uniparty. If this vote fails and the whole conference, the whole Congress, supports the Uniparty, let me tell you something. That is not a failure. It's a win for the American people, because that's a list of names.

You're on notice. Rest of Congress. Are we part of the Uniparty?

Just in any other world where she didn't do these things, she is a backbencher Congresswoman in a safe seat from Georgia. We would never know who she was. We'd never speak about her. No one could raise money for her, and she is staying in the spotlight. This is a short and long-term win for her, even if it is absolutely embarrassing, and it's uncomfortable for her colleagues, which obviously she doesn't really care about.

Go win yourself a House majority of other fascist CrossFit instructors, and they can elect you Speaker, and then you can get a whole bunch done.

The idea that you don't get your own way just because you're a loud asshole, that's how you're going to get your own way? That only works for Donald Trump.

So two questions on this. Can Marjorie Taylor Greene successfully define this election as MAGA versus MUGA? And separately, are you seeing any indication that Republicans are paying for their Ukraine vote with the base, since there were a lot of them that actually voted for funding?

MUGA. I am not seeing any real evidence that there is a revolt in the base. I think for a couple of reasons. The first and most important one is that Donald Trump is not inciting a revolt in the base. He basically tacitly signed off on this.

If he wanted to sink this building—.

And so there are other reasons for the Congress to get mad at people for doing and not doing things. And this is—like a reporter reached out to me and was like, how should Biden sell this? And I was like, I don't know that he has to. I think it's just—he got it done. And that's an example of getting something done, and that's worthwhile.

But it's not—you don't have to be out there selling the Ukraine aid bill.

And we're really grateful to everyone who's in that 34%. Thank you, guys.

Got a whole crew in there. It's great. Dan's in there. Amazing.

that's finally here. Head to Cricut.com slash store to pick up a shirt. When we come back, Norm Eisen.

You've read his op-eds. You've heard him opining on CNN as a legal analyst. You follow his scintillating Twitter threads. Perhaps you've read his excellent book, Trying Trump. And if you're Dan and me, you've definitely heard him tell you all the things you're not allowed to do as a White House staffer.

Please welcome back to the pod our friend, Norm Eisen. Norm, what's up?

The biggest takeaway from the trial is, number one, that you have the living embodiment of the American idea, as Donald Trump sits below the judge and on a lower level than the jury in that somewhat faded environment of Part 59, Judge Kwan-Mershan's courtroom. Our country was founded on the idea that we don't want a king, because no man, person, is above the law. Everybody is subject to the law. That's the American idea. And holding Donald Trump accountable for his original election interference, his 2016 effort to deceive voters to grasp power, is an expression of that idea.

It's sad that we've had a president, for the first time in our history, whose conduct has allegedly broken the law to a degree where he's criminally prosecuted. You do have Nixon. I've written in the New York Times. I think Trump's misconduct here is on a par with, or perhaps worse than, Nixon's Watergate transgressions, because he cheated. He allegedly broke the law, campaign finance, election and tax violations to win that election in 2016 and then covering it up.

So you have the American idea in action. You have the gravity of the offenses. And then, you know, you have the physical weight on Donald Trump. I can tell you that it is bearing down on him the trouble that he's in. I sit where I can watch him, mercifully, not where I can smell him, but where I can watch him.

And, you know, some days you almost feel bad for the guy because the judge chastised him one day for acting out. And, you know, Trump was like Peck's bad boy. He hung his head. He looked down in his lap. He's bowed over, more.

He's bent. It's almost like the scoliosis of justice. You know, as he comes in and out of the courtroom, you see him hunched over. So it is taking a profound toll and he's not happy about it. And, you know, he, when he saw me twice last week, he he expressed that in, you know, I was the target of his ire.

I was ejected from that transition, summarily with the Chris Christie crowd. So that's the second thing. But I think it's it's a combination of the first impeachment and and and his hate watching. He's reportedly a very dedicated hate watcher of CNN. So that's probably most of it.

Oh, great. I'm going on a barge tour of European canals. And I've got the room next to David Pecker and Keith Davidson. I mean, one guy, one guy is a preeminent sleaze merchant, Pecker. Second, perhaps only to Larry Flint, whose name came up because he was bidding for Stormy Daniels.

And, you know, Davidson is a leading purveyor of celebrity scandals and hush money. So if I'm the prosecution, it's a little bit like, you know, it's you, you know, will the jury believe those witnesses? That would be my anxiety. But, Dan, the prosecution has a very has built a very clever case in response to that, because everything in the case corroborates everything else. So you would have to believe that everybody's lying and all the documents are lying.

And we were listening to audio recordings today that those are fabricated and that Michael Cohen on his own paid for the Stormy Daniels story and was never reimbursed. And there's a pile of documents proving he was reimbursed. So I just I think the coherence of the case is going to carry the day with the jury. The other thing that I would be most worried about, I wrote about this for CNN. I'm doing a trial diary for them.

So I do a couple of entries a day. Donald Trump does not want to persuade 12 jurors. He wants to persuade one juror. He's searching for one angry juror and for a hung jury, which he will proclaim as a great victory. So that would be my anxiety, that there is, you know, a Trojan horse on the jury who's going to do what we call jury nullification, ignore the evidence, ignore the law in favor of Trump or one Trump supporter who just sees this proof differently.

So those are, those are some of the main anxieties. But I think the prosecution is solving for those.

So long, long decades in courtrooms. I've never had a jury with a higher educational level in any of my cases than this jury. Almost almost everybody has a college or higher degree and you've got lawyers on there. So it's a smart jury and it shows very attentive, unlike the defendant. We haven't talked about his other bodily function, his penchant for napping.

Unlike the defendant, they're awake and alert. You know, I'm not sure what the generationally appropriate television references are. But the trial by design is like a combination of Dynasty, of a primetime soap opera and Columbo.

They're writing and keeping track of things. And even in the more routine parts, you know, focus. So that's a good sign for a prosecutor, right? You don't want the jury to tune out. Now, what the jury doesn't know is the reason we have to go through all of these evidentiary rigmaroles is because Trump won't.

It's. it looks to me like he won't stipulate to anything. So all of the usual agreements that you have in a trial, he's forcing the prosecution to prove up every piece of paper, every email, every text. And that's unusual and can wear a jury down. But so far, they're hanging in there.

That's a very good sign for the prosecution. And obviously, it's a Manhattan jury. So no wonder Trump is risking gag order violations by criticizing the jury. He's very upset that a bunch of Democrats are likely Democrats are sitting in judgment of him.

It seems like the prosecution will have an easier time proving that it was from the voters in this case. Are there other sort of similarities in the case or other weaknesses in this line of or in this type of case that sort of worry? Like, what does the prosecution really have to prove here? And what did? what do you think is different about this than the Edwards case, aside from sort of the motivation for the hush money?

Pecker was particularly important for the prosecution to bridge this chasm, because he said, we entered an agreement at Trump Tower, me, Trump and Michael Cohen in August 2015, that we were going to catch and kill these stories. We were going to make payments to people to benefit the Trump campaign, to help the Trump campaign. Cohen will testify about Trump's intent, but you have Pecker, who is a corroborating witness, and the prosecution is carrying that intent forward. The difference with the Edwards case is the witnesses were weak. One of the key witnesses, Bunny Mellon, was too old and frail to testify.

Another witness had passed away and the witnesses they put on the stand did not give you this kind of devastating testimony that you got from Pecker. So in trials, my CNN trial diary I'm writing for today, the thing that we lawyers say to each other when a case is going on and you bump into the trial lawyer, how is the case coming in? We all have, as that noted, litigator Mike Tyson said, everybody has a plan until they're punched in the face. We all have plans when we go to court. How is the case coming in?

This case is coming in strong and it'll come down to Michael Cohen. But I think this jury, I've been studying this jury, I think this jury is going to believe Michael Cohen, as Judge Ingorn did in the civil fraud case. He's a character, he's a colorful New Yorker, but this is a jury that understands New Yorkers.

So I think the case is coming in well, and that's the big difference with Edwards.

. I don't know what properties he's going to have to sell to cover that bill. But he once again potentially violated by truthing and talking about Michael Cohen, apparently the person who all of democracy now depends on, based on your analysis here.

Is there any way in which Judge Marchand can actually get Trump to adhere to the rules of this gag order short of sending him to prison? Should he send him to prison? Should that be on the table?

For the record, my ethics training for Dan and Favs and about 1,200 others, I tried to train everybody personally, was liberally leavened with that kind of borscht belt humor.

Not for a long time, the judge saying, look, you're going to spend your evening in a jail cell, Mr. Trump. You're going to have an overnight with the Secret Service in a jail cell. And I think Trump is going to make a calculus. Does he benefit more or harm himself more by being stepped back?

Even if it's only for a short time, if there's a 15th alleged violation, there's been 14 alleged so far.

As he says, there's going to be a little bit of martyr action. He says he's going to be a modern day Nelson Mandela. And does he want to save that shot for a powerful impact, like when there's some moment in the case when he really wants to draw attention to it? I also think he's not keen to spend a night in a holding cell. That is not his desire.

But, you know, he certainly is not going to hold back out of respect for the jury, respect for the witnesses, respect for the court staff or respect for the rule of law. He's going to make a calculation. The fact that he hasn't aired again in the days since that second order to show cause dropped shows us that he's capable of holding back. The question is, you know, what side of the line will his calculations fall on? If I were betting, I would bet he's going to fire one more torpedo.

and, you know, take the consequences to make a point.

Not how that works. I don't have a legal degree, but I know that's not how that works. But it seems like there's. no, you can't imagine a universe where he testifies or Todd Blanche and his team, let him testify.

In fact, since you ask, perhaps this Blanche went full Trump this morning because in his argument on the gag order, he started out by attacking the press, saying it's their fault, they're writing about this. So he criticized the press. Classic Trump. He then turned on Michael Cohen, again. Trumpism.

And he ended by complaining about all the Democrats on the jury when he was defending Trump's attack on the jury, to which the judge basically said, come on. So I think that, you know, I'm not sure the lawyers will be able to stop him. But the comment today probably shows that he knows he will be demolished on cross and he's willing to take his chances, roll his dice on that one Trojan Trump juror. The one jury nullifier. He may think the case is, you know, he may think he has some candidates on that jury.

So not everybody on the jury is a Pod Save America listener, although I'll bet there's a bunch of them.

Oral arguments last week. What did you think of the oral arguments and what? what kind of? what are you reading from the tea leaves?

They've already approached the edge of complicity and they'll be over the edge if they delay this case much beyond May 20th. That would be the date on a par with the 14th Amendment case, Anderson, in which a decision was issued. Donald Trump was actually on the ballot. There was no rush. They didn't want any cloud on his candidacy.

I mean, how much more important is it for the American people to know if the man abused the office that he seeks to recover to commit crimes or not? So if they go past May 20, they will then have crossed the line of complicity. And then the other question is, are they going to remand the case in a way that makes it impossible to get to trial before the election by setting up some test and requiring the judge to do fact finding under the test? Or are they going to take Amy Coney Barrett's musings to heart and say, here's the test and we're applying the test May 20th. We're sending it back down and here's what's left of the case.

Go to trial.

You know, unfortunately, I think the court is profoundly compromised. Certainly four of the judges who didn't even want to talk about what Donald Trump is actually accused of doing.

Thomas, who shouldn't even be on this case. His wife is a material witness in the January 6 investigation. That's insane. Alito, who's completely off his rocker, who yelled at Obama in that State of the Union where he warned that the danger of Citizens United. Favs, I might have worked with you on that line in the speech.

Rahm called me the next morning. I thought early, early the next morning. I thought he was going to be upset with me. He's like, oh, my God. He's like, pour it on.

So that's what's at stake. And, you know, we'll see. I've marked that date on my calendar, May 20..

So I don't know her. I know a bunch of the others. But people who practice law with her said she was non-crazy. So we'll see. She was hopping mad in the abortion case, you know.

Norm Eisen, thanks for joining Pod Save America, as always. And we'll have to have you back as the trial continues. And we'll circle May 20 on our calendars, too, about the date for the immunity case.

And we'll be back with a new episode on Tuesday.

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