Trump's Perfect Interview (plus Jake Tapper!)

Hunter Biden strikes a plea deal with a Trump prosecutor. RFK Jr.'s anti-vax, anti-Wi-fi candidacy gets a boost from Joe Rogan and Elon's VC fanboys. And Justice Sam Alito is mad that we all found out he got free rides on a billionaire's private jet, whose hedge fund he later ruled in favor of. Then CNN's Jake Tapper stopped by the studio to talk to Tommy Lovett and me about Trump, CNN, Fox and his new novel, All the Demons Are here. First, a few quick housekeeping notes.

Crooked's award-winning podcast, This Land is back with a bonus episode. It's going to be out this Friday. That delves into the recent, surprisingly good Supreme Court ruling on the Indian Child Welfare Act. Host Rebecca Nagel discusses this pivotal court case in most of season two of This Land. Which reveals how the far right is trying to use native children to chip away at American Indian tribes in their sovereignty rights. In this case, they failed, which is great, and you can find out why this Friday on this land, wherever you get your podcasts.

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All right, Dan. Lots of news to the Republican presidential frontrunner. Got himself a court date to stand trial for 37 felony counts of violating the Espionage Act and obstructing justice. It's August 14th of this year, just a week before the first Republican primary debate that Donald Trump is threatening to skip. Though. We should note that most legal experts expect Judge Cannon to move the date back, due in part to complications that come with any case about highly classified secrets. CNN has the first post-indictment poll to show that Trump's support among Republican voters has declined in the last month. 47 say he's their first choice for president, which is down from 53 in CNN's poll in May.

His favorability rating among Republican voters has gone from 77 to 67. And now about a quarter of Republican voters say they won't vote for him under any circumstances. That's up a few percentage points from their last poll. Trump is navigating these legal and political challenges like any careful criminal defendant would by going on television to confess his crimes. Here's a clip from Trump's two-part interview with Fox's Brett Baier. Because I had boxes, I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out.

I don't want to hand that over to Nary yet. And I was very busy as you've.

I would say much, much more, not that I know of, but not that I know of.

Iran war plans? Not that I know of, not that I know of, but the golf shirts were in there. You can't look. I realize the government sends out subpoenas sometimes, but you don't have to cooperate with law enforcement if you have a box with your golf shirt in there.

Everyone knows that.

This part gets less attention. But then when Brett Baer says that, according to the indictment, he told his aides to hide the boxes and then lied to the FBI about it. He does not deny it, he just asserts he had to do that because the golf shirts and the pants and the shoes were still with them. It's wild, I love it.

It's great.

By the way, I don't have to cooperate with law enforcement because I'm Donald Trump, that's it, that's his defense. It's also interesting that he basically seems to be trying to do his own defense and convince potential jurors in the court of public opinion. It seems like his legal strategy is to just do as many interviews as possible and convince as many potential jurors in South Florida. That this is all bullshit. And he's going to do his own defense, and he's going to do it on TV.

Because people who follow the law, people who think that the rules apply to them, they're suckers. You know, that's his, that's his whole deal. So Trump said plenty of politically damaging things as well in this interview. Here's a sample. Your vice president, Mike Pence.

You mentioned Attorney General Bill Barr says you shouldn't be president again, calls you the consummate, narcissist and troubled man you recently called Barr a gutless pig. Your second defense secretary is not supporting you.

Called you irresponsible this week, you and your White House called your White House chief of staff John Kelly, weak and ineffective, and born with a very small brain. You called your acting White House Chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, a born loser. You called your first Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, dumb as a rock, and your first Defense Secretary, James Mattis, the world's most overrated general.

You called your White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany Milquetoast, and multiple times you've referred to your Transportation Secretary, Elaine Chao, as Mitch McConnell's China loving wife.

You know, the whole, we did a tremendous job on that. But we had a vaccine. You know, you have different, you have different Covids, you had Covid-19, and then you have different Covids. But we had original was Covid-19, which was the roughest one.

I said, I really don't want to talk about it because as a Republican, it's not a great thing to talk about. Because for some reason, it's just not for some reason. Yeah, for some reason, because people love the vaccines and people hate the vaccines. I focused on nonviolent crime as an example, a woman who, you know very well, was in jail.

She had 24 more years to serve, she served for 22 years, she had Alice Johnson Alice.

She was in the Super Bowl, high quality. I said, how many years? And she was on a telephone call and they were involved in selling marijuana, mostly marijuana, and she got like, 50 years in jail.

But she'd be killed under your plan as a drug dealer. No, no, no, under my. oh, under. That. It would depend on the severity.

They just listen to him, they just listen to him, or they read his tweets, which are now truths, and they made up their mind. And this is why the more Trump wants to talk, the more he wants to do interviews, the more people on TV. I'm completely fine with that, because, you know, all you have to do is ask him a few questions. I mean, we can get into the bread and butter of it all in a minute. But, like, all you have to do is ask him a few questions.

They don't even have to be that pointed. And he will just do that, do what we just heard. No one does a better job of making.

It's also just what he says.

He was president then, he's not now. Like, that's just how people think politicians are really thinking, and he just says it out loud, and that is mildly helpful for him.

But the rest of it, that is a small silver lining, a very dark cloud of idiocy surrounding all these interviews. Yeah, it's.

And how it would work with the with the death penalty for drug dealers policy that he is now pushing. And I do think that that is like him getting caught up in that. I think that's a little that's problematic for him, like because he's got to take one, taking both sides of a position in the same.

Without thinking it through, he went in to the execute. All drug dealers, including nonviolent drug dealers, including the ones that he gave clemency to as a way to overcorrect for.

Actually, we should do that. Perfect base will love that all right. Second question about this Will you admit that you have been wrong about Brett Baier and that America's greatest newsman didn't deserve your typical?

He did one good interview, which I would state is his job, he is a journalist, that's what he is supposed to do. And I will just say, every Democrat so excited about this, talking about how, this is how journalism recovers, this is how we bring down Trump.

Go take a cold shower. We do not need a Republican savior like, that's what every I don't know why, so Democrats want that. It's like the Lincoln Project we got.

BreTt BAIER Now probably gonna start selling Chris Christie Merch in the crooked store. Just slow down people. He did, he did a good job, I will give him credit for that.

That does not erase 30 years of being a propaganda beard for the.

I just don't think it's like, necessary. The debate. Is it like, why did Brett Baier do one good interview? I don't know. Maybe he felt, maybe he felt some level of shame after all the Dominion shit came out.

Maybe he just wanted to get back in the good establishment. Republican friends, who knows, who cares? He did the interview.

That's great Chris Christie. Did he do a bunch of horrible things? And up until 2020? Yeah, of course, now he's kicking the shit out of Donald Trump.

That's awesome, great. We don't need to give these people profile and Courage awards or even debate whether they should get them. They're just they're just tools to help us defeat Donald Trump, which is what we're trying to do here.

Let's see if he really is going to try to pretend to be a real journalist for the next period, next several years, we'll see. Maybe he changed, maybe he hasn't, let's see.

That is fucking, first of all, let's talk about the political value in that. Yeah, maybe think about the fucking content value.

I should just be saying that, I should just be having this conversation directly with Elijah. But last question about Trump I don't want to make too much of a single poll. But do you see anything in the overall trend that makes you think Trump's political baggage might be catching up to him? After you read that CNN poll? I think there is.

If you want to look for some possible signs of weakening, there's also a Quinnipiac poll out today. Real Poll pollers out here. But that shows that 79 of Republicans think that it would be a serious problem if someone showed classified information to someone who did not have a top secret clearance. Boy, do we got news for them? Yeah, wait till they read the indictment, and so it could be. If that becomes something that is proven in court, then yes.

The big thing about Trump and these polls and the indictment is, I don't think we should expect that the mere fact of the indictment is going to hurt Trump. He has framed on his terms. It's something like less than 20 of Republicans in the Yahoo poll thinks he should be prosecuted for these crimes. Most people think he didn't do very much wrong. It will be if the full weight of all of the indictments and all of the images of him getting arrested, getting arraigned, sitting at a defense table add up to change the electability equation for Republicans. Maybe that will change.

But right now, he's still, he's sitting pretty strong in the Republican primary for a man just charged with 37 felony.

Yeah, like, I'm talking about Republican voters who have an open mind about who they're supporting in the primary. There's obviously the MAGA fan base, which is like locked down at 35 40 of the Republican party. But then we know there's a bunch of voters who might end up with Trump, but they're looking around, and I think for those voters again, just more Trump the better.

Let's hear it straight from Trump. I also think what's notable in that CNN poll is what Trump lost in favorability and support did not go to Desantis. Desantis did not gain in that CNN poll. It sort of went to the support kind of spread around to different candidates in the field. Which might tell you that there's a bunch of candidates out there now. Voters and I'd love to see some Iowa and New Hampshire polls. But Republican voters are now being exposed to other candidates and campaigns, and they're hearing from them. So it also might be a function of just.

The field is pretty full and people are looking around and that's that. But I think we're still in status quo territory right now. One more thing before we move on. Just this morning, a former Texas representative, Will Hurd, announced he's running for president. He's now probably the most moderate Republican running. And he criticized Trump in his announcement video, called him a lawless, selfish, failed politician.

What do you make of a will?

I will, just, I'll tell you. Like, Will Hurd, I wish we lived in a country where Will Hurd was like the center of the Republican Party, right? Like, that's, I don't agree with Will Hurd on a bunch of issues. But like that would be, that'd be a good country, you know? But like that video, man, was that boring? The problem is, like all of these other candidates, that who are not Donald Trump, and to a lesser extent, not Ron DESantis. They need a theory of attention, like, how are you going to get attention for your candidacy?

And, you know, the other one of the other anti-Trump candidates in the primary, Chris Christie? He's got a theory, which is he's going to, like, go out there and kick the shit out of Trump. Even will Hurd's attack on Trump, which is like, just him calling him, you know, a lawless, selfish, failed politician? Even the way he said it was just boring, you know, and let's do this like, quiet, boring video. I'm like, dude, no one's who's going to, who's going to pay attention to.

Yes, no.

Yeah.

And and also just basically how Obama reconciles his own hopeful rhetoric about this country and racial progress.

With, you know, the realities of what we're living through, and basically, Obama said, like, people like not only people like Tim Scott and Nikki Haley. But even his own rhetoric about this has to be undergirded with, like, an honest accounting of our past and present. So if there's a Republican who doesn't have a plan to address crippling intergenerational poverty, then, you know, people may not believe that rhetoric. And that's all Barack Obama says, and it has caused a furor on the right. Nikki Haley, Tim Scott. They're going around saying, like, Barack Obama, he doesn't. He used to believe in racial progress in America.

Now he thinks the country's racist and bubble. And they're doing this because this is like the only way they can get any sort of attention for their candidacy. Well, I have bad news for them because this is the first I'm hearing of this. Really. Wow.

This is my terminally online moment. Yeah, I knew that.

This is what, and this will hurts. Gonna have the same problem. Doug Burgum, My boy, Doug Burgum, he's got that problem. Doug Burgum at least has untold amount.

I.

All right, in other news, Donald Trump and his MAGA pals are furious that one of the U.S. attorneys he appointed struck a deal with Hunter Biden. Where the president's son will plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges for failing to pay his taxes on time and avoid prosecution. On his illegal handgun purchase by agreeing to remain drug free for two years and never own a firearm again. The five-year investigation by the Trump appointed prosecutor will result in no jail time for Hunter. Which, of course, led to this reaction from the party that thinks stealing nuclear secrets isn't a crime. When you look outside the Capitol, you see the Supreme Court and see a statue of Lady Justice. She has a scale that's supposed to be equal, but she's wearing a.

Those people that have known about these Biden crimes and sold our country out, they should be held accountable, too. The scary thing for me is it's not just about the president going after President Trump, it's going after parents and school board meetings. If you're a pro-life Catholic, you're an extremist, if you're a journalist, for goodness sake.

Yeah, I was going to say, like Trump would say, I wouldn't have let that happen, but Trump's kids? He probably would have let that happen. He would have protected Ivanka.

But Eric and Tiffany, he would have let Merrick Garland haul them off a long time, maybe in Gitmo right now, if he thought of it. You want to explain the truth of what happened here for people? Yeah, we should be very clear. Five years ago, a Trump-appointed U.S attorney began a wide-ranging investigation into everything having to do with Hunter Biden, including his international business dealings. How he made money. And at the end of that process, and even after Joe Biden was elected, the Trump-appointed U.S.

Attorney stayed on the job to continue on this investigation to ensure there was no political interference. Now that the father of the subject of that investigation was now the president of the United States. And at the end of that, they didn't find any of all the conspiracy theories, all the things that Jim Jordan and Jim Comer and Donald Trump and Fox News have been talking about. What they found out was that he failed to report some of his income and therefore underpaid on his taxes. And there was a gun crime involved from the time in which he was dealing with problems.

I know, yeah, you could do a whole other thing on gun laws and whatever, but on your honor, I don't intend to commit a crime with this gun on your honor. Yeah, you just gotta, that's it. That's all we need. We just need you to fill out this form and you know what? I'm sure the NRA is trying to get rid of that form altogether.

Wow, we should not make people go through the process of having to fill out this cumbersome form. Give them the gun when they walk in anyway. And so at.

But because of the potential conflict of interest, Merrick Garland said, This guy is in charge, he gets to make all the decisions. Appointed by Trump started the investigation under the Trump administration. I'm sorry, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kevin McCarthy that he didn't charge Hunter with a bunch of crimes that comport with the conspiracies. You've come to believe. Because your heads are stuck in the fucking MAGA media echo chamber with a whole bunch of conspiracies about how Hunter did all these international crimes with China and Burisma and everything else. I know that's what you think he did, but we had actual investigators who were not. Democrats, in fact, are Trump-appointed Republicans. Look into it. And they didn't find anything. So, like, someone should ask them like, what would you have done?

Would you have just made up charges for Hunter Biden? Yes, that's what I would have done. What kind of question is that? But like, someone should ask that, that's a good question from a reporter.

All right, we'll see if Bret Baier does it.

Our only hope, our only hope. Also, guess who would have gotten a similar deal to Hunter Biden had he just pled guilty or made a deal with prosecutors? Donald fucking Trump, who is, you know, being tried for crimes that are a bit more severe than Hunter's stealing nuclear secrets? And a lot of legal experts were saying that. If Donald Trump struck a deal with the prosecutor, he could have avoided what's about to happen to him as well. But he doesn't want to because he doesn't listen to his fucking lawyers.

He listens to, you know, Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton. That's who Donald Trump listens to. Also, I.R.S lawyers have said like that, this is typical of what happens to people who don't pay their taxes on time, one I.R.S lawyer told Politico. Like, if we prosecuted for failure to pay taxes, the jails would be full.

Oftentimes, they don't even prosecute cases like Hunter's. So that's why there was a deal. And a lot of people say, oh, weapons charge, that, you know, people do time for weapons charges, a first-time weapons charge like this.

That doesn't involve any violence, which is just, you know, lying to buy the handgun. This is what you usually get. And by the way, if the judge really thinks this is some sweetheart deal, like Kevin McCarthy says, like all these Republicans are accusing him of. The judge doesn't have to approve the plea deal, the judge can say, Oh, no, this was a sweetheart deal. I don't want to do this, so we'll see.

We'll see what the judge does, but I'm sure whoever the judge is, even if it was a Trump-appointed judge. You know, they'll get attacked as just some Biden stooge, because that's their deal, that's what they're doing. Where does the story go next, politically and legally?

Is this the end?

There are going to be hearings. Jim Comer, the famously incompetent chair of the Government Oversight Committee, has promised to dig deep into this. There's this F.B.I. whistleblower who seems to be a complete fraud. There is no chance that the Republicans are going to let go of their conspiracy theories and just say I was wrong. Good for justice.

And so this will continue to be part of it. We'll see it all the way through the election. But for the vast majority of people who live outside of the MAGA bubble, this is probably resolved, which is politically. What?

Government of quote knowingly poisoning kids because of a debunked conspiracy that vaccines cause autism. He accused Dr. Fauci of launching a quote coup against Western democracy because he promoted Covid vaccines. He claimed school shootings happen not because of access to guns, but because of access to antidepressants, he said. Chemicals in the water are turning boys trans, that AIDS might not be a virus, and that gay men in the 80s actually died from poppers.

And here's what he told Joe Rogan last week about the dangers.

Yeah, now you've.

Up to that point, the expertise was vast and deep. Yes, yes. The effects of Wi-fi on our blood-brain barrier. Um, he went on to call it a leaky brain. Look it up.

Leaky brain. And then Joe Rogan has, like one of his producers, Google, and then he got some Google. Oh yeah, I'm seeing right here on the Google, yeah.

You get leaky brain, it's a real problem. And then Joe Rogan's like, we should get the Wi-Fi out of this studio, Yeah, I mean.

Yeah, it's tough. I don't even know why RFK Jr. was in there. He's putting his blood-brain barrier on the line for this race.

Good, great work. Uh, do you agree? And what, if anything, should the Biden campaign and other?

The press is bored with it, they're going to cover it. Biden's political adversaries are going to use Robert Kennedy as a cudgel to try to make Biden look weak. It is important to note that one of the people that Robert Kennedy talked to before he got the race was Steve Bannon. And Steve Bannon encouraged him to run. Because Steve Bannon reportedly thought that RFK Jr. would be a chaos agent in the Democratic primary. The reason the I mean, it's wild.

These anti-Biden VC Yahoos supporting Robert Kennedy are these guys make all their money in tech, and they are they are pretending to elect a guy who thinks that Wifi should be banned should be president of the United States. Think about that for a second. So it is going to be a pain in Joe Biden's. Like the year before the presidential election. Start is always a huge pain in the ass for a largely unopposed president like Biden. Because there's just mischief to be had, right? The press needs something to cover. Kennedy's got a famous name.

He becomes someone who becomes this manifestation of whatever struggles Biden may have among Democratic voters. As a way to cover that story, what should Biden do?

Do the work he was going to do, whether Robert Kennedy was running or not, which is, he has to spend this year strengthening his standing among Democratic voters. We know from polls, there's a percentage of Democratic voters who were concerned, a shockingly high percentage. Who think he shouldn't run, who are concerned about age, who don't know enough about what he has done or what he plans to do. And the advantage of being an incumbent is you spend that off year, strengthen your base. You do that through ads, you have through campaigning, you do that through using the bully ball. But he was going to have to do all of those things, I think he would do those things.

Robert Kennedy was a subject of New York Times. Stories or not. How does President Biden strengthen?

8 speed is not an hour and a half.

He's got the authors, he's got the papers, and he does this whole. Like, look, don't take my word for it. I think it's bad when you just take experts word for it, or politicians or whatever else. Just look at the science, I'm for science, and I think you should look at the science and this is what it's saying.

By the way, corporations are out to get everyone, and this is a conspiracy. Because he started as an environmental lawyer and he went after a lot of corporations that were poisoning people.

Corporations are irresponsible, right? They are out for profit. And so he's sort of using people's skepticism with corporations and corporations bad behavior in the past to then make people think, well. Then also pharma would do this to vaccines and all this other kind of conspiracy, and these companies would do this with wi-fi and all this shit. And then everything's dangerous and everything's a scam, and everything's sort of a conspiracy. And you know, he doesn't sound, except for the clips we played, he doesn't sound crazy all the time, right? And so I get why some people could be like, Oh yeah, maybe he's making some sense, maybe I should start googling some of this stuff. So I do think it's something for Democrats to take seriously.

I also think that if we act freaked out or worried about his views, or start freaking out about it. That will sort of play into people feeling like, well, I should be able to make my own decisions and form my own opinions. I think the most effective way to deal with this is to just make sure people understand what his views are. What he has said and what he is saying now and what he will do. Like, I think that's important, just information to get out to.

We've talked about this a bit, but you know if Joe Biden is not on the ballot in Iowa and New Hampshire? Because Iowa and New Hampshire will continue to put their primaries first. Even though Joe Biden and the DNC have decided that South Carolina is going first if New Hampshire and Iowa decide to hold their primaries anyway, and Joe Biden does not participate, because that's the rules. But RFK Jr does, and Marianne Williamson does, so you could have RFK Jr winning the first two primaries. Now again, is that an actual threat to Joe Biden's candidacy?

No, but will that suck for a couple weeks for the Biden campaign? Maybe, I don't know. With that, we can, let's put a pin in that and come back to it later.

Yeah, we'll put a pin in that. So, one concern is that RFK Jr. could run as a third-party candidate once he loses the Democratic primary. He's not the only one political activist.

Cornel West, who's been a prominent Bernie Sanders supporter in the last few elections, has said he's running for the Green Party nomination. The Green Party is on the ballot in 16 states, including swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin. The grifters at No Labels have raised tens of millions of dollars to run a bipartisan ticket that Joe Manchin is flirting with. They are on the ballot so far in four states, including the swing state of Arizona. How much of a threat are these potential third-party candidates to Joe Biden's re-election?

So it is a big problem. I made this point in a message box. Nate Silver really decided to take that on and say I was wrong about that. He said that if Joe Biden loses, it will not be because of a third party, but because of health, age problems, health problems or the economy sucking. And sure, that's all true.

If everything's going swimmingly, wow, you got silvered, huh? Yeah, it's just like, Is that a verb? Now? I just decided it was.

I guess you could get coned too, I guess that's another option. But of course, if everything is going swimmingly and Joe Biden has really high approval ratings and the economy's roaring, then a third party won't matter. But in a close election, it matters. And we know this because Data for Progress released a poll yesterday, which showed that in a head-to-head race between Biden and Trump, Biden wins 47-45..

In a race between Biden, Trump and a generic, moderate third party challenger, the race becomes 44-44 immediately. And if it's 44-44 nationally, that probably means in the battleground states Donald Trump, which skew a little more Republican in the country, Donald Trump wins Electoral College.

You're helping Trump become president, that's it, and you can say, oh, well, it's Joe Biden's fault, he did this or that. No, no, no.

It's your decision, you get to decide whether you want to help Donald Trump become president or you don't. And if you want to help him, then you should vote for Cornell West, or you should vote for Joe Manchin and his no labels ticket. Or you can vote for, you know, RFK Jr. If he decides to run third party. But if you don't want to help Trump become president, you got to vote for Joe Biden.

That's it, very simple. Now. I think messaging to voters who might actually make this decision is probably a little different, I would say, because....

Like, I do think you need to explain why these candidates would not be good candidates for president. I really do, and I think we could get tripped up in that. Because I think, if you are one of these voters and you hear a bunch of people yelling at you to vote for Joe Biden. And because you have to, I don't think it's going to be very effective. And I think you have to say why RFK Jr. is not a good choice.

Why Cornell West is not a good choice? Why Joe Manchin, whoever it may be, is not a good choice. So that is something that I think Democrats are going to have to figure out in the next year. Finally, another week, another corruption scandal for the Supreme Court. Here is the ProPublica headline.

Justice Samuel Alito took luxury fishing vacation with GOP billionaire, who later had cases before the court. Yikes. Here's what happened. In 2008, hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer flew Alito on his private plane to Alaska, which the justice did not pay for nor disclose, as he is required to do by law. In 2014, Alito cast a vote in a case that awarded Singers hedge fund two point four billion dollars.

Alito refused to respond to ProPublica. Instead, he ran to the Wall Street Journal before the story was even published. And got them to run a whiny pre-bottle op-ed where he argued that he wasn't actually required to disclose the private jet ride that he never discussed business with singer. And besides, the seat on the plane would have otherwise been unoccupied, so no big deal. Look, the guy is just trying to fill empty seats on private planes. This is a public service.

Disclose it and recuse when it comes unbelievable, I mean, it's also, it's just. It is exceedingly rare for Supreme Court justices to write op-eds at all. Let alone what is basically a glorified letter to the editor. Bitching about a story in another publication. It's just a temper.

What do you think is that one good to run on?

Therefore, if we have an agenda to address the corruption in that court, we should take it on immediately. It should be a central part of our campaign. I think court reform. Obviously, I support expansion. The country is not there yet, but the broader court reform agenda, including term limits and ethics.

We should make the Republicans vote against it, we should attack them for voting against it. There's also another benefit here, which is we need to put more pressure on John Roberts to do his job. Because he is the administrator of the court, he is the person in charge of how the Supreme Court runs. He has allowed the reputation and trust in the court to be absolutely damaged by the conduct of his justices.

He's refused to speak about it, he's refused to do anything about it. He could get involved here in some way, shape or form.

We have seen before how efforts at court reform dating back to the days of FDR have influence in how the Supreme Court runs itself. I think this.

There's no reason for that. The Constitution says about the Supreme Court that those judges and all judges should keep their jobs. Barring bad behavior, basically, that's it, that's all it says. this is bad behavior.

It doesn't say anything about how.

I think Roberts and some of these justices are like, Oh, Congress has no role in regulating the court, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, Well, it doesn't say that in the fucking Constitution, it does not say that Congress cannot pass laws affecting the court. In fact, like you said in the new deal era, they did.

Many other times, they've changed the makeup of the court.

Of course, Congress can regulate the court. yeah, they can add justice to the court that's in the constitution either. Anyway, I'm all for the ethics legislation, but now I'm really eyeing the term limit thing now because I think that....

And look, do I want to expand the court? do I want to change the? Yeah, I'm all for that, too. But I think in the short, not the short term, but maybe the medium term, the most doable reform that I think would actually have the biggest impact is term limits. Because we are going to be fucking stuck with Amy, Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh for most of our lifetime.

This is another thing we should put a pin in because.

There's a real. I spent a lot of time researching this for when I wrote Uncharming America, which talked about court expansion and court reform. And the term limits thing is fascinating. The constitutional questions around....

We should do this with strict scrutiny one day. The constitutional questions around it are fascinating. They are, they are, and yeah.

But one way around that would be to say, once you've hit your term limit, you go on senior status. And either you go to an appellate court or a federal court. If you're a Supreme Court justice. Or you just do what a lot of judges on senior status do now, which is just sit back, you're still a judge, you're just not involved in cases, yeah, you sit back and you wait until.

Here to talk about his new political thriller, All the Demons Are Here, which is out in July.

I don't think I was. Is that where it came from? That's where it came from, that came from. I asked, because I said that Jake and I were both just two straight shooters.

Save America, Holy Smokes. I know it's been a long time. Hillary's going to win, right?

She's got this, everybody cool it. I mean, speaking of that. So last few weeks have made it pretty clear that the Trump show's back. It sure is. I don't know if it ever went on hiatus.

Yeah, it's different in this season. Yeah, I was going to ask, this is now your third presidential campaign, you've covered where the former president is a candidate.

The difference now is he's been indicted twice, possibly more on the way, related to his role in trying to overturn the last election inside a violent riot. How are you feeling about going?

Then, on occasion, you have a Nikki Haley or Mike Pence talking about these charges. Then, of course, Donald Trump giving these interviews and talking in front of audiences in which he admits everything, everything strange. Legal strategy.

Not to mention Chris Christie, I should say, I mean, but that's not, I guess, not as much of a surprise. But yeah, I mean, it was always throughout so much of this. It was always like, Well, who is going to speak? who in the Republican Party is going to speak against this?

And it would be in 2016.

Well, early on everybody spoke against it and then he started winning and then they all shut up. And then it's just odd seeing the because. It's like, once you criticize him, it's almost like you then get put in a category as a Republican and a category of, oh, well, you're just a Trump hater. I'm not saying it's fair, but by Trump and by the base.

So they stop listening to Liz Cheney as if she's some flaming liberal. Same thing with Mitt Romney, same thing with Adam Kinzinger, and on and on and on. But so it's always like, now we see who are the people who are now going to try to say something.

And boy, I don't know if it was the Bulwark. Somebody did a list of, like everybody who had served with Donald Trump in his administration, who had come out against him one way or another.

Same thing with Joe Lieberman, but this is not that, obviously.

He's a narcissist. I mean, psychological names, Bill Barger said. He's a narcissist. I mean, I'm not disagreeing with the assessment, but like,....

Why did he take these documents? Stephanie Grisham said Oh, he's like a little boy and he has his toys. Mine, mine, mine. And then Michael Cohen had a much more conspiratorial way of looking at it, like, No, he wanted to do something with these, whether it was money or this, but he was going to....

I don't mean conspiratorial in a pejorative sense. I just thought there was actually a conspiracy of some sort. And I asked Esper what he thought, and he said both were legitimate possibilities. Like, think about that, because the Michael Cohen thing, he's a little aggressive. Even when it comes to the spectrum of people who used to work with Donald Trump and have now disassociated themselves.

He's even on the more aggressive side of that. But even Esper was like, Oh, it seems like that's a credible possibility.

He called himself a fixer. I don't know that he fixed much now. He's like a resistance hero, but he does know how the guy operates.

And if he thinks sincerely that Trump might be selling secrets to somebody or leveraging them for some sort of economic gain? I mean, it's interesting, it's worth listening to. Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

Bill Barr is someone who went through a cycle of this covering for Trump around the Mueller probe, right, and now has done a full reversal.

You've interviewed all of these people, many of whom have been on both sides of being defenders of Trump and then antagonists to Trump. What do you find describes the moment that some of them have shifted? Is there anything that any connection you make between who has a line and where they draw it?

I can't really explain it. I mean, obviously personal experience plays a big role. A lot of these people think, and I understand why they think or thought, well, this is the situation. He is the president.

So I'm going to try to steer the ship and so the country doesn't go to war or whatever, and I understand that.

I can't explain Bill Barr's position. Because what is it about the national Secrets? That is so beyond the pale that so many other things were not beyond the pale? He didn't. January 6th, I would think would just be like, okay.

Yeah, it was before they looped it, that's it. They showed it once, and I'm like, Okay, we've seen it, but you guys know how cable works. It's like, we have these live new pictures, let's just keep showing them.

And before they started looping, I'm like, Okay, we got the news value out of that done.

Right, how do you decide when it's worth showing your viewers what Trump is saying and doing, and when it's not?

And I was kind of surprised and not really sure what he was doing, and I was watching it in real time and figuring it out. And I just think, as a general rule, obviously, there's a difference if somebody is the president of the United States, whether it's Joe Biden or Donald Trump, or whomever. Because they're the president. And inherently, it's important what they do. Which is not to say that we cover every single public thing that anybody does, including President Biden. I just think that our bar has to be pretty high.

And if they say something, that?

We did cover his speech that night, but we had discussed it and we were not going to cover it live. And when he said something, we were going to find a chunk. Bring it to people, put it in context before show the clip, put it in context again and then discuss it. But I just think we're in an era now where a there are a lot of candidates running and we have to think about fairness, and b. He's incited violence. And it's not just theoretical.

We saw it on January 6th and the death threats have always been going on, but we've seen actual violence and bloodshed. So I just think it's something all of us in the media have to think about.

I would ask you this.

Do you think that town halls, having a candidate take questions from voters are worthwhile just as a general?

Okay, do you think that the person who is the number one in the polls by far for the Republican presidential nomination, forget Donald Trump? For one second? Just whoever that person is should be included in that.

Would you not have done it live?

Caitlyn Collins was not great. The live part. I don't have a strong feeling.

Don't be hooting and hollering during the whole thing. Maybe that would have been better. Other than that, I don't know that there was anything else you guys could have done.

She had really done a good job with them and they were cheering for her, but they were cheering for what she was saying. Which was not belittling somebody who had accused her of sexual assault and won in court, and not.

You know, I mean, it was just, I think what people reacted to was the fact that.

A lot of Republicans are still enthralled with this guy. Yeah, and I think that's really what, honestly, what people were bothered by.

I mean, there is just sort of a focus and concern about the way he's covered. That doesn't apply to the other candidates. I mean, I think one of the things that people.

Look, I don't think there's any easy answers to any of this, but I don't think. Pretending he's not the Republican, the leading Republican candidate for president, and that he has a decent chance of being the next president again, I don't think that solves anything. I think Caitlyn fact-checked him a ton, she knew a ton about the classified documents investigation. I feel like she was way ahead of the country because all of a sudden now we're all experts on classified documents. But Caitlyn was there, fact-checking him, knowing all the details, and he said a bunch of stuff that wasn't true.

Then I don't know. I mean, I'm not going to pretend any of this is easy. It's bewitching, I mean, it's troubling, but he is the leading....

The fact that he'll go up and tell all those lies, I would rather he go up and be calm and normal and talk about his policies.

That would be much.

Poor Pence. So I assume they'll try to get Joe Biden to do one. Do you think? Yeah, everybody? Tim Scott, Ron DeSantis.

Do you think, on the Democratic side, you would do a town hall with someone like?

Because he spreads dangerous misinformation about childhood vaccines. And I had a personal experience with him in 2005 when he became, well, a professional experience personally with him in 2005 was when he began in earnest his anti-childhood vaccine campaign. He wrote a story for Salon..com that was jointly published with Rolling Stone, both of which have since....

Rescinded it right, retracted the articles, and Rolling Stone just completely disappeared it. It was like it never happened. Salon has a page where they acknowledge what happened and et cetera, et cetera.

But Rolling Stone, it's just like, you know, it's like, Hoffa, I don't know what he does, he's gone under the J, it might be.

It might be so the I get it, it's a death reference, I'm going to answer.

So anyway, I just dealt with him and he was so dishonest in that experience, and since then, he lies about the experience frequently. As an example of how the media is co-opted by Big Pharma. It was I did a story about the piece that he did for Rolling Stone. This is in 2005, when all this vaccine stuff was still kind of new.

All these lies about vaccines causing autism in kids, and it's completely discredited, and it's not true at all. But anyway, we did a story about it. I called him and told him, we're going to hold it a day, we're going to hold the story a day. And we were going to just do some more due diligence on his claims.

And then we ran the piece the next day. In his retelling of the story, he and I were working closely for three weeks on a terrific documentary about his discovery. And corporate America killed it, and I called him up and I said, It's never happened to me before that I've had a piece killed. I can't believe this. And again, none of that's true.

And he literally just said this the other day on a podcast. It was like a minute 45 piece. It ran on World News tonight with Peter Jennings. The next night, I had had a million pieces killed.

I was a new ABC.

I'd been at ABC News for two years, I'd had a thousand pieces killed by ABC News, and it's just like, he's so.

Now we're in 2023.

There's this RFK boomlet, 20 of the country. Democrats apparently like him because of his last name, but you have Jack Dorsey, a billionaire founder of Twitter, propping up RFK. You've got Aaron Rodgers.

Yes, the bunch of Republicans are propping him up because they view him as a valuable foil to attack Biden. But you've got Aaron Rodgers propping this guy up, you've got Elon Musk and David Sachs doing these spaces with him. And there's no filter or layer in between these credible sounding lies and anecdotes and stories that Robert F.

Kennedy Jr. riffs off. And an audience of people who are believing they're true. And I'm just wondering, what you as a journalist, how you feel about that, what you think people can do about it. Because, to your point, there have been resurgences of measles, diseases, that-.

And he went to the island and he propped them up, and then there was an epidemic of measles, kids died. Yeah, and I don't know what there is to do about it other than do what I do as effectively as possible. Which is just fact check and make sure people understand what he's saying isn't true. He's still out there claiming that thimerosal was his preservative.

That was in some of these vaccines, and there was false accusations that this had some of that. But it's been out of vaccines since, like 1999, and the rate of autism continues to climb. A lot of this is just people being more aware of diagnosis. But there might be some chemical, I don't know all the reasons, but it's not thimerosal in vaccines.

Anyway, I think he's dangerous, and when I say he's dangerous, I don't mean like his ideas make me afraid. No, I think he's dangerous. Because he tells parents not to get their kids vaccinated and the kids get sick and die.

And I get why he's both dangerous and why some people find him convincing.

Read the Science.

And then Joe Rogan's like, Hey, can you google what he just said there about 5G causing leaky brains?

There has been naval gazing around CNN and its management, and the ideology being represented on its shows. But that is a tiny conversation taking place as this massive shifts take place. And it feels as though the power of an institution like CNN, MSNBC, major news outlets, that that power itself is all collectively shrinking as the gate....

There are fewer gatekeepers around information. And everyone in those legacy outlets are chasing the lies and misinformation that are being spread all the time by people like RFK Jr.

By Trump, by any of a number of figures. And you just said, I don't know what I can do except go on television and try to correct it and be accurate. But-.

There was the whole secret settlement to the family of Seth Rich. I mean, there's more stuff coming with SmartMatic and other, and they're just other than the financial penalty. There seems to be actually no punishment. There's no disincentive for these networks that just openly lie to their viewers for ratings. I mean, that's what we had here in the Dominion. Texts and emails was an open admission that Fox was lying, not just giving a conservative spin on something, but lying.

We are lying because we don't want to lose these viewers, because they're going to Newsmax because they want to be lied to. And there was a $787.5 million disincentive structure, I guess, but I mean, who lost their job? I mean, I don't know if Tucker losing his job was part of that or not. There's whispers that it was, but I don't know.

I don't know where the disincentive is for these people who have just openly decided to.

Exploit the freedom of the press and the freedom of speech that we have. It's depressing, and this is not me trying to make an awkward turn to my book. But it is one of the reasons why one of the subtext, or one of the plots of the book, is about the rise. Because the book the world in the 70s. Because that's when it happened.

Why was it legitimate? why was it responsible or appropriate for a White House to say that about a credentialed news organization? That was the question.

Did Bobby Gibbs take it well? What did he say?

He said, you should turn on, and then he alluded to when Glenn Beck's show was on. He said, Turn on, whatever. And I'm like, I'm not saying why....

And this transcript's out there for anybody who wants to read it. But I'm not saying, why would you not say that show, I'm saying you label the whole thing. And also the other context is, who was the White House, who was it? Major Garrett, who's a legitimate journalist with CBS News now, was the White House correspondent for Fox at the time.

They always have a beard.

I think that the Fox of 2009 is not the Fox of 2023.

I understand why Obama and the White House were going on the campaign. I still think it a fine question for a reporter to say, why is it appropriate to do this? If I were in the White House Press Corps now and you guys were doing it and whatever, I don't think I would ask that.

The opinion stuff you get, but just the coordination, just admitting that it's for money and ratings, I mean, it was wild and no journalistic standards at all.

The source for all that stuff was some crazy woman who talked to ghosts.

It would never even occur to me to think it was appropriate for me to reach out to the decision desk. But in that wild world where, like, let's just say that, I want to reach out to the decision desk. I wouldn't even know how to do it, like there is such a firewall, I wouldn't even know the first way to do it. I would never want to do it. It's crazy to me.

And then that same anchor said that he told them to slow roll the Nevada call. I just like, This is crazy stuff to me.

Now and again, I really felt like I was kind of standing up for Major Garrett, who I thought was a really good reporter and a friend and was a colleague. And the other reporter, the other White House reporter was Wendell Goeller, who passed away in the last year. I mean, rest in peace also, just like....

I can't say straight shooter without looking at you and laughing, but like, just a.

I'm open to the argument that the Wall Street Journal News Organization and the Wall Street Journal Opinion Pages can co-exist. And I'm open to the argument that you can have like a serious news division or news shows, and then like opinion shows at night, I'm open to that argument. What has changed? Or maybe I'm just....

I don't know, maybe I'm just more aware of it, but it seems worse is just the degree to which it's just based on. Lies, just lies, not conservative opinion. This is how I view the world because I'm a conservative, but just lies. For instance, MSNBC is opinion. At night it is.

I and either Rachel or Alex, and then Lawrence, and then Stephanie. It's opinion, generally.

And I don't.

You could argue like, I don't know that. It's the healthiest thing in the world to have preaching to the choir television. But it is based in fact.

And what they?

I hear the way Hannity attacks me or goes after me, and I don't. I'll hear about it like a day or two later or whatever. And he says things that just aren't true, it's just insane.

And I don't.

You can't even combat it, there's no even attempt to try to get anything in the.

And you made a comment that you don't have to be a genius to stage a coup in a foreign country, and he got offended by that. No, I said, you don't have to be a genius.

And he took offense to the.

I didn't really know what to say. Yeah, you want to be more specific, like where?

Let me tell you someone who's staged a few coups. It takes some serious preparation. Yeah, that was an odd moment. That's just like the perils of, or the perils of the opportunities and perils of live TV, where people just say things and like, what?

Roll that back, yeah. And sometimes you don't necessarily catch it or even know how to react to it because it's so bizarre. And you might come back to it like 30 seconds or a minute later, because your brain is still kind of like, I don't think I followed up immediately, I think I followed up like a minute or two later.

I think I had to be like, could we go back to something? You said, like a minute ago? Because my brain in real time was like, wait a second. I think he just admitted that he did a coup. It was odd. I will say that if you look at the way that Donald Trump attempted to undo the election, it wasn't for lack of planning. There was a lot of different avenues.

He went right, I mean, he did the challenges and the election boards, then the courtroom cases, then the state legislatures. I mean, there was a whole bunch before they got to the violent overthrow, there was a whole bunch of. So, I mean, I don't think there was a lack of brainpower there.

They were trying all sorts of ways.

In 2000.

Either 2021 or 2022. And something Adam Kinzinger said was really interesting. And I don't know if he made it up or what, but it was the first time I ever heard it was from him.

It's like you see a guardrail that a car has hit and it's all mangled, but it's there and you're like, okay. So it held, it held, but that doesn't mean it's going to hold. The next time when a car hits it. The next time it's been battered so badly, it might actually break, I think about....

Is that helpful? Do you need a second metaphor, you think?

I like the guardrail one better.

First of all, I don't know how many pickles you're consuming at your home, but it does seem like you're arguing a lot to your certain other person.

It was June 2016.

He was going off on how it was the Trump University case, and Judge Curiel couldn't be fair because Judge Curiel's a Mexican.

Talk a little bit about your strategy with someone like Trump, is it? I've got to just keep asking follow-ups and even if I sort of go off my plan and don't get enough questions in, I've got to get him on this one thing.

I mean, I think that's the most effective way. Not just him, but anybody who is a difficult interview, anybody who doesn't come to actually answer questions and does a lot of.

I mean, there are other people I've interviewed who are like this, but he's definitely a quality unto himself. But just like the filibuster, the change, the subject, the insult, the interruption, I mean, he does it all, and it's a challenge, it's a real challenge.

It's tough to do. Yeah, I mean, I mean, you saw it, like, So you saw the Bear interview?

He interrupts, Bear the whole time, over and over and over, and this is part of what you get.

And then, after the outpost, I wrote this book about Afghanistan, called The Outpost, which was nonfiction. It was so meaningful to me, and then people the publisher wanted me to write another nonfiction. I said, like, that book was so intense and it meant so much to me to tell the story of these soldiers. If I find something I care that much about, I will, but it really, it took so much out of me emotionally.

And then this was just, honestly, it was just like, I've been thinking about a plot for The Hellfire Club, the first book in the series, and it was just fun. It was just an escape, and I think I started writing in 2015 2016. It was really nice to get out of it.

And also, the first book takes place in the McCarthy era, and Joe McCarthy's a character in it. And I felt like I could say something about the era we were in by looking at Joe McCarthy. Just like in this one, all the demons are here, I felt like I could say something about.

Charismatic demagogues and mobs, and yellow journalism and tabloid journalism today by making something up fun about the past. And you go into a room and you start.

I don't have a computer in front.

I can't really explain it. I know that I'm very driven and it's kind of crazy. I can't really explain it. I know my staff gives me shit about it, like, how do you have time to do this?

How do you have time to do that? All I can tell you is I find it enjoyable, I find it fun. What kind of coffee is that right there? Just a nice coffee, black?

Evel Knievel is a big character in the book, Elvis Dies Summer of Sam.

He's a horrible motorcycle rider, just not talented, but....

They hit the swans and then crashed into the Hudson. That was cool.

He would die for us.

Jake Tapper Thanks guys, come back again soon.

The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producers are Andy Gardner-Bernstein and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Madeline Herringer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft and Justine Howe for production support.

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