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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everybody, it's Sarah Matthews here with the bulwark, and I just got off msnow with Nicole Wallace, where we covered plenty of topics. First off, we talked about Todd Blanche's nomination for Attorney General and how it remains in jeopardy because of that pesky little $1.8 billion slush fund that would reward January 6th insurrectionists that Trump wants. Trump said today that it was dead, but yet he also said that he wishes it weren't. And he also has gone on about how these insurrectionists were victims of government abuse and then went on to say that he him been treated the worst in the history of America. Pretty absurd, if you ask me. Then we got into who is actually the head of the ODNI right now. Is it Jay Clayton, who was confirmed by the Senate but has yet to be sworn in, or is it Bill Pulte, who's the acting dni? Both showed up to Trump's Cabinet meeting today, and if you ask me, both are just equally unqualified. So I don't know if it matters who's actually in charge right now. And lastly, we talked about Trump's cratering poll numbers and what that means for the upcoming elections and whether it will give Democrats that's the chance to retake the Senate.
- [01:06]
B
Spokesperson for the Home of the Brave campaign, Sarah Matthews is here. Sarah, I have been quoting you. I hope your ears have been burning every day this week for being the person who said in your January6 testimony that Donald Trump, you heard him say, I can't believe I lost to this effing guy. I've quoted in the context of Jay Clayton not being able to utter the word w o n 1 when it comes to Joe Biden in 2020. But it reminds me of this, this phony impasse. This isn't an impasse. Donald Trump refuses to put the confirmation of Todd Blanche ahead of a slush fund for the insurrectionists and brought immunity for himself from the IRS.
- [01:45]
A
Yeah, it's because he sees that the January 6th insurrectionists did nothing wrong. He actually likes that they were fighting for him. And just hearing him say that they're victims of government abuse and then him going on to say that he actually has been treated the worst in the history of this. Not just historically inaccurate, it's downright offensive. Look, America has a long history of injustices. You look at things like the Trail of Tears, Japanese internment, slavery. I mean, the list goes on of things that we could look at where I'm pretty sure those Americans were treated a lot worse off. And I look at the treatment of the January six defendants specifically. And I think that they got the treatment they deserve because they were criminals. They defiled the Capitol, they brutally beat police officers. And so you know what real victims in this instance where you look at the 140 police officers who were brutally beaten that day, but Donald Trump doesn't see it that way. And for a party that likes to claim that they back the blue in law enforcement, it's really annoying to see only Tillis and Cornyn being the ones sticking their necks out on this issue. So I will give them credit where credit sue, but shame on all of those other senators, particularly the ones who were in the Capitol that day who aren't speaking up about this.
- [03:02]
B
You know, Sarah, I wonder if you can weigh in. I mean, here's just some of the instances. He did it today at a cabinet meeting, but here are all the instances where he finds it important to defend again, convicted felons. In a lot of instances, the violent insurrectionists on January 6th,
- [03:26]
C
those J6 warriors, they were warriors, but they were really more than anything else, they're victims of what happened. All they were doing is protesting rigged election. That's what they were doing. And then the police say, go in, go in, go in. They were treated like the worst criminals in history. And you know what they were there for? They were protesting the vote because they knew the election was rigged and they were protesting the vote. Some of those people went down to the Capitol. I said peacefully and patriotically, nothing done wrong at all. Nothing done wrong. We didn't have guns. The others had guns, but we didn't have guns. And when I say we, these are people that walked down. This was a tiny percentage of the overall which nobody sees and nobody, nobody shows. But that was a day of love, Sarah.
- [04:15]
B
There are lots of public facing proof points of his decline, performatively, perhaps cognitively, I don't know. This feels like the inability to stop talking about an event again that took place on live television where it was his supporters who were beating the cops, where there was no love. Certainly that was obvious to anybody watching the crimes take place on live television. They also had their days in court. I mean, everyone that was convicted was convicted. Not by Democrats, not by the Biden administration, not by Merrick Garland, but by juries made up of their peers. And the vast majority of them pleaded guilty to receive lighter sentences. Why do you think he can't stop talking about it?
- [05:03]
A
You know, I, I think that Donald Trump has always been a broken man, but I do think that him losing the 2020 election, fair and square to Joe Biden, permanently broke his brain. I don't think he's ever been able to recover from that because he looked at someone like Joe Biden and thought, how could I lose to this guy? I mean, he called him, you know, Sleepy Joe. And then obviously it affected him because he's a narcissist. His ego won't allow him to see the facts for what they are, that there was no election fraud and that it was Biden who was the winner of the 2020 election. And so he's been fixated on this topic and talking about the election, talking about the January six rioters, because he saw them as fighting for him when he felt like no one else was fighting for him. I was in the White House during that time, the post election, up until January 6, and there were advisers telling him he lost, that there was no evidence that everything he was trying in court was going to fail. And he refused to believe it. And when he stopped taking the advice of those people, he surrounded himself with enablers who told him what he wanted to hear. And I do think that if you tell yourself what you want to hear and surround yourself with sycophants like that, eventually you start to believe it yourself. I do think that, you know, he did slip privately and admit that he lost, but I think now so much time has passed that he actually thinks that he was wronged and he believes that he's the victim here. And you know what, it makes me me laugh when you have all these MAGA people who think that Trump is some alpha male. No, he's the weakest, most thin skinned baby of all time. I mean, he can't accept the facts for what they are. And I think that the American people are not fixated on January six or the 2020 election. They have pushed that aside and move past it. You know what they are focused on? They want to be able to afford a home. They want lower health care costs. They want to be able to fill up their gas tank and not have to decide between doing that and putting food on the T for their families. Those are the kitchen table issues that they are focused on. And they don't want to see him keep relitigating this. And all it's going to do is hurt Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections if he keeps forcing January 6th and the 2020 election into the conversation.
- [07:17]
B
Sarah, I wonder if you can shed some light on how those, those two different, let's just call them different stripes on the goats of the different big cats running around adoption.