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The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Trump’s Latest Indictment Is Also About the Future of the Country
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Trump’s Latest Indictment Is Also About the Future of the Country
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- [00:00]
A
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- [01:15]
B
Hey, dude. Hi, Susan.
- [01:17]
C
So sorry, Late breaking news. I don't know if you saw this, it just came out, but CNN has the transcript of the tape of Trump totally incriminating himself waving the paper and.
- [01:28]
B
Saying, I can't show it to you but because it's okay.
- [01:31]
C
Yeah, but they have the transcript and it is almost the definition of self incriminating. He even says at one point, he even articulates that he's showing it to these people, the secret documents. He says, oh, no, wait, okay, this is secret. This is classified. And then he also says, as president, I could have declassified, but now I can't.
- [01:51]
B
He says that now I can't.
- [01:53]
C
Yeah. The best part is where he says this is secret information. Look, look, look at this.
- [02:03]
D
Look, look. That's what they call the quiet part out loud, I think. Welcome to the political scene. I'm Evan Osnos. I'm here as always with my colleagues Jane Mayer and Susan Glasser. And we are here absorbing and digesting the the news really earth shaking news that came in last night. Donald Trump has been indicted on federal charges.
- [02:29]
C
Indeed it is. To me. It is an incredible example of a man who clearly is used to operating with impunity. It clearly doesn't even occur to him that he is putting himself in any jeopardy by breaking the rules, because it seems like such a casual thing for him to do. Why not show classified documents to Mark Meadows researchers if you never get caught?
- [02:51]
D
Well, that, in the end, is the meta theme that hangs over this entire case, because not only can you take things with you from the White House, but when they repeatedly tell you to return them and they itemize the things that you need to return and the reasons why they pose a national security risk, and you still don't do it, it is the essence and the definition of the perception of impunity above the law.
- [03:17]
B
That's les tat CES moi. That's Trump. But also, I mean, it was, you know, it's not just when you're president, they let you. But when you've been president, they let you do it. And also when you're a star, they let you do it. He's always thought he was above the rules, and that's what this is testing.
- [03:31]
D
So the question is, will they let you do it in the end? That's what we're now facing.
- [03:36]
C
Well, his tactic of turning everything into something fundamentally unserious and including, for years, weaponizing the courts on his own behalf, he saw justice as malleable because he used it against other people. And the idea that it's now being used against him is causing, literally, squeals of outrage.
- [03:56]
D
So I think we need to just acknowledge at the outset here that we've often used the word over the last few years historic more times than we probably thought we ever would. This is actually a historic moment. We now have a president who's been charged with a federal crime for the first time. And the truth is that this is not just about reckoning with his historical legacy. It's also about the future of the country because he is the front runner for. For the Republican nomination. I want to get your initial reactions to this moment and this process. Jane, how are you feeling about what we know so far?
- [04:34]
B
Well, I think you put your finger on it exactly what makes it different. I mean, we have had presidents who have disgraced themselves in office. We had Richard Nixon, and we had Bill Clinton, and both of them had special counsels who went after them, and both of them made deals with. With the prosecutors. We saw that Nixon resigned and Clinton gave up his law license. Now, but what they both did was they left the public stage at that point. There was a kind of accountability that then said, okay, they're gonna bow out. They've been shamed, they've shamed themselves, they're gone. The difference, what so feels unprecedented here to me is we have in Trump someone who says, this is bull, and I'm running anyway, and I am the front runner in the Republican Party at this, and I may be president again, and none of this matters. The law doesn't matter. That's the difference.
- [05:27]
C
Well, and the Republican Party is the difference. Today, what you have is a situation where a former president is facing very serious charges. And I think it's worth underscoring that for people as we wait to see the details unveiled. What we know is that there are seven felony counts here. They involve the Espionage act, according to Trump's lawyer. They involve obstruction of justice, according to Trump's lawyer. Very serious allegations that, by the way, carry with them the real possibility of prison time. Okay. And yet you have a situation where the politics. It's not just that Trump is denying things that CNN and others now apparently have him on tape confessing to, but I think even more significantly, from the point of view of our democracy, he has an entire political party of enablers, and he's using this to spread a particularly pernicious form of lies and disinformation. It's undermining, I think, in the same way that his attacks on the 2020 election did. It's undermining the legitimacy of the courts for a purely personal, arguably corrupt purpose, which is to say, to keep himself out of jail. And he has an entire political party basically saying, how dare they do it? How dare they do it, how dare they do it? And I think that's the crisis that we're looking at here. It's not just whether this one particularly troublesome man goes to jail. It's whether an entire political party is going to go along with the lies and disinformation that he's created, the stock screen around him.
- [07:12]
B
Right. And whether the voters will go along. I mean, it's basically a test of, you know, a big chunk of the American public and whether democracy is gon gonna work here as a form of accountability or if, even if they don't.
- [07:24]
C
Go along with it. That's the thing that I think Trump has taught me is that. So, fine, there's a majority in both of the last two presidential elections that didn't go for Donald Trump in the popular vote. There's a majority of the country that doesn't Go for him. But we're still in a crisis because one political party has refused to disavow these lies and disinformation. And that's the ongoing crisis. It's a crisis of the Republican Party failing to repudiate Donald Trump.
- [07:52]
D
Now, let's point out it's Friday morning. There is a lot that's gonna transpire over the course of the next few days. What we've seen so far is that you've almost immediately seen some of his ostensible opponents actually coming out and saying that Donald Trump is the one who's been wronged here. The Department of Justice has overreached, but this is the beginning of the process. And I think one of the questions before us is why or how or if not in any way is this indictment different? Because the fact is, on the most fundamental level, this is different than a Manhattan district attorney charging him in a hush money case, as serious as that is. And of course, he's denied those charges. This is a case actually of a federal prosecutor on a matter of national secrets about obstruction of justice. Is the difference between these two cases significant enough that it breaks through among his opponents and ultimately breaks through with the public?
- [08:49]
B
I mean, I think here, for my money anyway, there's a lot that is unknown that will make the difference in this. And among the things that I'm looking for as a reporter are what documents are we talking about here? Is this a trivial matter of an unimportant, you know, national security over classified document that didn't really make much difference? Are you talking about something that could hurt the national security? I mean, that makes a very big difference here to me. What he's trying to do and the people around him are trying to do is just say, this is the boxes hoax. That's now the phrase that they've used. And I think it's a very clever phrase because it. Cause who doesn't have a box of junk somewhere, Right. You know, it's about the container. But I think what really matters is the content here. And that elevates it from, you know, from just being about violating some kind of records act to hurting national security under the espionage act of 1917.
- [09:50]
C
Well, I mean, Jane, to that point, we already do know some things. For example, we already know in the context of this tape that CNN is reporting about that Donald Trump is waving around an apparently classified document of military options for us to strike Iran. That's not the kind of thing that you want to be showing book researchers for Mark Meadows, right? Probably.
- [10:11]
B
I mean, I wanna know. I still wanna know more, of course.
- [10:14]
C
Well, we all do. But I think the point is it's also a large volume according to what we already know. And I think that's very interesting. You're not talking about one or two.
- [10:24]
D
Things for people who haven't seen the details. What we know so far is that Donald Trump took about 13,000 government documents. Among them over 300 documents with classified markings. And these include some really sensitive secrets, things reportedly about missile program or foreign nuclear issues, China, the leadership of France, details on American allies. So this is not inconsequential material, right?
- [10:51]
C
Absolutely. And that I think is very interesting because it suggests there was a very purposeful thing. But to the point about what we don't know, we also don't know if other people will be charged, which it appears that that may be possibility. There could possibly be a conspiracy charge where it was Trump along with other people who conspired to obstruct the Department of Justice as they were looking to wreak reclaim these classified documents. And of course, in recent days, there's also, I think, the very important question of Mark Meadows, the former Trump chief of staff, who seems to have gone quiet. Trump seems to be worrying that Meadows has turned on him. Perhaps he's entered into some kind of an arrangement to testify with the prosecutors. Meadows was responsible for the frantic last minute packing up of Trump's materials. Remember, much of this does stem as well from the sort of failed non transition after the 2020 election. I think that's a very important context for people to remember, is that Donald Trump refused. He's the only president in American history who refused to concede his election defeat in 2020. And as part of that, he refused to allow his White House staff to prepare for the transition. He refused himself to pack up things. Then there was January 6th. And it's in that context that they're, you know, he's still saying he's the legitimate president and he takes his stuff.
- [12:15]
D
That's gonna get to the question of how he defends himself ultimately, because, Jane. Right. He's gonna have to come up with a version of this was not intentional. This is insignificant. This is inconsequential. I was responsive in a meaningful way. How do you see him in a federal courtroom? Look, that is a different moment than when he gets on Truth Social and says whatever he wants. We've already seen that there is a difference between what his lawyers will say in public and what they will say in court documents. You have not seen his lawy come out and say that he can magically mentally declassify things when it comes to what they are actually putting on the court record. How do you see him conducting himself in a court proceeding and will it be different than what we're seeing in public?
- [13:00]
B
Well, I mean, what we've seen of Trump in the past is that he is extremely agile when it comes to slipping the knot. And the reason is that he's very careful about what he says to his associates and he doesn't put his fingerprints or signature on many things. I think maybe one of the most important turning points in this pretrial period so far is Judge Beryl Howell's decision to breach the usual sort of attorney client privilege protections and order one of Trump's lawyers to turn over his own memo that explains what was going on behind the scenes. Usually with Trump, you don't have someone there who has a sort of minute by minute description. And in this case, it looks like it could be self incriminating in some ways of the way that Trump claimed that he had turned over all the documents, told the lawyers that they had complied with the subpoena, and then had not. Can I just say one thing, though, before we leave the question of what we don't know here. I think one of the most important things that's at least it's been bedeviling my thinking about this case since the start, and I am still waiting for an answer, is the motive. And I think it would make a difference. I mean, for instance, if there was any suggestion that Trump was planning to sell these documents, if he was gonna.
- [14:21]
D
Use them for leverage in some way.
- [14:23]
B
Use them in some nefarious way, it may be even it's just to satisfy his ego and show off, which is what it seems like perhaps in this CNN tape. Usually when you have an Espionage act violation, you have a motive, you have a spy, you have a leak, you have some sort of reason. So that's important. I'm hoping that at some point we get it's not required for him to be convicted or for the public to see him as a bad actor. But it would help understand this and explain it politically to many people who might be on the fence.
- [14:58]
D
I need to interject one thing, which is for the record, Trump denies everything, Susan.
- [15:05]
C
He denies everything without even being specific about what it is he's denying. And in fact, one of the things about Trump is that he tends to sort of engage in conspiracy theories in which there's all one long unbroken chain of persecution against him. He released a video On Thursday evening after the news, he broke the news himself that this indictment had come and this video, I defy you to sort of parse any particular actual sentence with a period in it. But it basically connects the dots between all of anybody being against him in anything.
- [15:43]
E
Very sadly, we're a nation in decline and yet they go after a popular president and they go after him on a boxer's hoax, just like the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax and all of the others. It's just been going on for seven years. They can't stop because it's election interference at the highest level. There's never been anything like what's happened. I'm an innocent man. I'm an innocent person.
- [16:09]
C
And by the way, to believe Donald Trump and Republicans charges of the weaponization of the deep state against him, you would have to believe basically that the most elaborate conspiracy theory in the history of the world had been undertaken that involved not only millions of people in the United States or thousands of people at least in the United States and overseas, rigging the 2020 election in exactly the battleground states that were needed for Joe Biden to defeat Donald Trump. Also connected to the FBI, the years long investigation of a nonexistent, as far as he's concerned, Russia, Russia, Russia story involves Ukraine, it involves, you know, so many people. It's the multi headed hydra of scandal. And now apparently Jane as well involves what documents were floating around the flooded Mar a Lago basement. But I do, to the question of motive, I would say, you know, when we were working on our book about Trump and the Trump administration, one thing that was very striking as a lifelong pattern for Donald Trump is the weaponization of information and the use of, of even little tidbits as advantage, as leverage over other people. And there's been some reporting specifically in connection with this case early on about why he might have taken classified documents that goes directly to that. Was he looking to have advantage over foreign leaders in the future? The transcript in this one suggests that it wasn't so much even bragging as that he wanted to use information to undercut his enemies as he saw them. And so I think that is probably a clear motive. It may or may not help in any way. That's a great point.
- [17:56]
B
You're so right. I mean, and for him, information is power and sometimes money.
- [18:02]
C
Yes, exactly right, Jane.
- [18:05]
D
One of the key figures at the center of this of course is Jack Smith, who is the prosecutor who brought these charges. What's significant about him and what do we know about his process here?
- [18:14]
B
You know I think he's kind of different in kind from the other independent counsels we've seen. Different from Mueller, who, Bob Mueller, who was the independent counsel against Trump in the Russia matter, and Ken Starr, who was investigating Clinton. Both of those guys were establishment figures inside Washington. They were kind of, you know, the graybeards, the wise men. Starr was a judge. Mueller was a top bureaucrat running the FBI. I think with Jack Smith, you've got a prosecutor's prosecutor. He's not well known unless you're a legal person. And he has made this his calling to prosecute public corruption. He ran the Public corruption Department inside the criminal division of the Justice Department. He's known, at least according to defense lawyers on the other side, as incredibly aggressive. We've seen him move fast here. This is about 7 months or less than when he was named, and we've got these charges already against a former president. And he's tough. I think sometimes people have said he's overcharged. He's also not a partisan. He brought a case against John Edwards, a Democratic senator, and he lost that case, notably.
- [19:30]
C
Well, you know, it's interesting, Jane, that you said he's a prosecutor's prosecutor. I actually ran into a former prosecutor last night as the news of this story was breaking, and he said to me a very interesting story. He said, you know, I was a colleague a number of years ago of Jack Smith, and I didn't know him well, but I did something really bad to him. I dumped a kind of a loser of a case on him at one point. And he said, you know, the thing that was amazing is the guy took that case. And according to my source's story here, he didn't have much in the way of evidence. And he said, and he got a conviction. And he just was absolutely the best in class, the best I've ever seen. And I thought that was a very interesting little sort of bit of anecdote. And then the other thing that's, I think, very notable is what does it say about the Justice Department? We haven't talked about that because actually, Jack Smith is not an independent prosecutor the way that Ken Starr was. He didn't have that law expired, so we don't have independent counsels anymore. So he is a special counsel, but he is appointed by and is accountable to the attorney general and to the Biden administration. And I had recently a conversation with a senior administration official who didn't have any at all direct knowledge of this, but said, look, I just know Merrick Garland, a very, very cautious, very Very cautious Attorney General. And it seems to me that the question of whether Trump faces charges or not really is gonna come down to, you know, how much of a cowboy is Jack Smith. So I think we have an answer here to that. It's probably driven by Jack Smith himself.
- [21:03]
D
Well, I wanna drill down on a couple of details that we do know about the process so far. About. We're gonna find out a lot more when these indictments are unsealed. But there have been reports that boxes of material were, in fact moved the day before the FBI visit it, that there was even a, quote, unquote, dress rehearsal for moving sensitive papers before a subpoena was delivered in May of last year. Jane, how do you think those actions figure into the mechanics of composing this indictment?
- [21:35]
B
Well, I mean, what's more important in a criminal case than what they call mens. Rea.
- [21:39]
D
State of mind.
- [21:40]
B
State of mind. Guilty conscience. Yeah. And again, it gets to whether or not trial. Trump would be able to say that this was just an oversight, and it makes it pretty hard.
- [21:51]
C
Well, one thing I notice, and we can talk about the politics of this more, but even just in the context of what does it mean for the Biden administration, the attorney General, to be charging the leading contender for the Republican nomination? And that is already a theme of what we're hearing from Republicans. Evan, I raised Mayor Garland and the attorney general, the role he played in this. How big of a deal do you think it is for the, generally speaking, fairly cautious Biden administration? For two and a half years, people have been wondering, are they gonna charge Donald Trump? Now we have an answer. What does it mean?
- [22:30]
D
Well, from the beginning, the Biden administration's been in an excruciating position, actually, because ideally, you don't wanna be in the cockpit on deciding whether or not indict a former president, the person you beat in order to get into the White House, but also now the person you are running against. And already you've seen that the Republican message machine has cranked up to say that this is, quote, unquote, Joe Biden's Justice Department seeking to put his political opponent behind bars. This is precisely the scenario that Biden and Merrick Garland wanted to avoid. But what you also saw them do was go through the traditional process of appointing a special counsel, of saying, we are not involved. You have not seen Joe Biden coming out there and talking about the political implications of this. You know, one thing is that there has been a disciplined approach on the part of the White House. Every time this question comes up in Any formal setting. Joe Biden doesn't talk about it. There is a risk, however, that as he gets out onto the campaign trail, this is now a live political matter. And one of the things that's gonna be important for him and for his campaign is to be vigilant about not producing any ammun. That allows his opponent and other Republicans to fortify the narrative that this is some sort of political persecution.
- [23:53]
B
I mean, the thing is, though, this also creates, if they don't speak to it, a vacuum that will obviously be filled and already has been filled by Trump, who's narrating his own story from the minute this thing broke. He's the one who gave us the news. So the question is, who's going to narrate this story if Biden doesn't? I think you could argue that. I mean, obviously they saw this coming from the middle. Minute Biden walked into the White House, we knew this moment was likely. And I think the choice of Merrick Garland, as both of you have said, is Biden chose a traditionalist, a very cautious person. There were people telling him to pick somebody much more aggressive. They talked. Somebody suggested that he pick Maura Healey as Attorney General, but he chose someone who with impeccable, careful, almost nonpartisan credentials to do this. And the question is, is this going to up?
- [24:47]
C
But there is a pretty long history of. There have been plenty of people who've faced charges similar to this. No president in American history has ever sought to overturn the results of an election in the way that Donald Trump did after 2020. He sent a mob of violent supporters to ransack our own Capitol. And that poses both a very unprecedented political test, but also unprecedented legal tests. And we still don't know the answer yet to how the Justice Department is gonna address that. And, of course, the clock is ticking ever closer to the next election. And that's the one, for me, that really matters.
- [25:25]
D
And I think what we now know is that Jack Smith in the documents case, in effect, screened out all of the commentary, all of the questions that people have been saying, well, can you really indict a former president on something like retaining documents? I mean, is this an injury to the American political fabric? And in the end, what he did is he lined up the facts and he to an indictment. It now seems increasingly clear that when it comes to the January 6 investigation, how could he not ultimately come to the judgment that the man standing at the top of the pyramid of this entire process that has produced hundreds of convictions and judgments in that case, that he was Somehow, not that he was not responsible.
- [26:08]
C
I do think that that seems to be the strong direction of travel, as they say. I do feel that having been willing to indict Trump once over the documents case, it does feel as though that sort of taboo has already been broken and now we're in totally uncharted territory. But to the point about the documents case, the misuse of classified information also does have a long history. And I have to point out that it was Donald Trump himself in 2016 who made a core theme of his campaign that his opponent, Hillary Clinton, had misused classified information. The reason that when he traveled around the country at his rallies and his crowds shouted, lock her up. Lock her up. Was because Donald Trump wanted them to lock up Hillary Clinton for her emails.
- [26:58]
D
He said it disqualified her from holding public office.
- [27:01]
F
Correct.
- [27:01]
D
Which is a phrase that now takes on a different meeting today. The political Scene will be back in just a moment.
- [27:13]
G
I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's global editorial director.
- [27:16]
C
Director.
- [27:16]
D
I'm Michael Kollori, Wired's Director of Consumer, Tech and Culture.
- [27:20]
C
And I'm Lauren Good.
- [27:21]
G
I'm a senior correspondent at Wired.
- [27:23]
C
And our show Uncanny Valley is all about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley.
- [27:29]
G
At Wired, we're constantly reporting on how technology is changing every aspect of our lives. So each week on the show, we get together to talk about one of the biggest stories in tech.
- [27:39]
D
Right. So whether we're talking about privacy, AI, social media, or a major tech figure, we will always explain the Silicon Valley forces behind the these stories and how they affect you.
- [27:49]
G
Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.
- [28:00]
D
I think we have to get into the political implications because precisely as you raise Susan, we're now at the moment where we have to figure out, well, how does the field respond, how do his opponents respond, how do voters respond? We're getting some early indications of it. I want to play a clip of Representative Nancy Mace on Fox News on Thursday night.
- [28:20]
F
And I do believe tonight that Joe Biden just secured Donald Trump's nomination for Republicans in 2024.
- [28:26]
D
You do? Why do you say that?
- [28:28]
B
Yes.
- [28:28]
F
Well, looking at the way that they're treating him in one way versus everybody else, Biden, every time that Biden comes under the microscope, every time we show corruption by Joe Biden and his family, there's an indictment on Donald Trump.
- [28:43]
D
Well, we know that Trump's base has long believed that he is being persecuted, that he's being treated unfairly. Here do you think that Mace has a point, Jane, that this might actually redound to Trump's political benefit?
- [28:56]
B
Well, we know from polling that the indictment in New York did not hurt Trump and in fact, it helped him a little bit. One of the early indications that was interesting to me was that. But on the night of the indictment, Mike Pence was bumped from Hannity's show. He was gonna do his announcement, whatever. And he gets bumped off the show after announcing that he was gonna go on. And I think what you're seeing is.
- [29:21]
D
Was it a self bumping, though, do you think? He just didn't wanna have to comment on it.
- [29:25]
B
They claim it was by mutual agreement. But I think what it does show you, if you step back, is once again, Trump is sucking the oxygen out of the room. Whether good or bad, everybody is talking about Donald Trump and it makes it very hard for the other candidates. There's a range of on whether this is, you know, a terrible weaponization of the state or whether it shows that Trump is, you know, truly not qualified. But whatever they're saying, they look small and uninteresting compared to the drama of Donald Trump. Again.
- [29:57]
C
Well, you mentioned Mike Pence, and of course, this was the week that Mike Pence announced his campaign with some surprisingly critical words for Donald Trump. It was his most strong condemnation of Trump for his pressuring of Pence, as Pence said very clearly, essentially to overturn the Constitution on January 6, 2021. And Pence said in his announcement speech in Iowa this week that that was disqualifying for Donald Trump to serve as president of the future. And yet there's always a with these people. And I have to say that actually this question of Trump's indictment is where you immediately see the game. That is because Mike Pence, if he's willing to take the fight to Donald Trump, you've got to be willing to participate in the fight. And Mike Pence is not. And in fact, even before the indictment was handed out, he already told us what he thinks. He already said, well, this would be too divisive in the country. We're here talking on Friday morning. He actually has just spoken to Hugh Hewitt on his radio show. And that's exactly what he said. He said that he thinks Attorney General Garland should appear before the press and take questions before the sun sets. He laments the politicization of the Department of Justice, and he vows to, quote, clean house if elected. And so even the critics of Donald Trump are so afraid of saying the obvious, which is, well, if he's proven to have done it, and he's guilty of doing this, then he should go to jail just like anyone else. And they won't and they don't say that. And the reason is not just, I think, the smallness of his opponents, which is important politically, but it's also an example where the overwhelming numbers of Republican primary electorate voters, and that essentially, that's who these people are speaking to. They've cut out the rest of the country. They don't care at this point what general election voters think. And I'm just amazed that the Republican Party, once again, given the opportunity. It used to be that if somebody was indicted and charged in certainly a serious case like this, even if they were in your political party, that's an easy pass. You get to say, well, I don't know all the facts, let the system play out. I believe in justice. That's how it used to work. And it's an easy way for a politician to avoid having to comment on this. And instead you have the speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy defending Trump, attacking the Justice Department before we've even seen the indictment unsealed. They're attacking a case that they don't even know what the case is.
- [32:36]
D
Chris Christie has come closest to what you were describing, Susan, when he said, let's wait until we see what the indictment details. And he, after all, is the candidate in the race who has identified himself as the one who is most likely to go after Trump in a full throated way. This is actually gonna be a test of whether he has, has the will, the capacity, the fortitude to do that. We don't know what he's gonna say over the course of the next couple of days. Asa Hutchinson, we have to note here, look, former Arkansas governor is the only person in the field who has now come out and said emphatically clearly, Donald Trump has no business being in this race and he should get out of it. Does this provide any opportunity for him or is he gonna be swamped by the dynamics that Susan was describing?
- [33:26]
B
Jamie? Well, it's at least given him an asterisk in history on this show, but.
- [33:31]
C
He'S also an asterisk in the polls between him and Chris Christie. I'm not sure they have 1%.
- [33:36]
B
I mean, I think this is also why you don't have people like Chris Sununu running at all. You know, the governor of New Hampshire, who might have been a credible candidate in many other ways, but they don't want to be part of this. They don't want to have to be choosing between voters and the rule of law. And that's where the rest of this batch seems to be. One of the things that I thought was symbolically interesting to me anyway, was there's a little colorful piece in the New York Times that describes how once Trump got the news, he was in Bedminster at his golf club, and he goes back in after getting the news from a lawyer on the phone, and the evening proceeds, and pretty soon he's deejaying his favorite songs. And among the favorite songs is James Brown music. And it seemed to me like, you know, when you think about James Brown, what is he famous for? Near deaths on the stage, you know, collapsing and then getting back up again and collapsing and all of this kind of, you know, near death experience. And I feel like that's what Trump is putting us through in the 2024 campaign. Here we go again.
- [34:46]
D
So we've talked about the effect in the Republican primary field, but, Susan, there is, of course, the question of the general election. And I think there are a lot of Americans who are not dying hard Trump fans. In fact, we know that most Americans are not die hard Trump fans. How do you think this indictment impacts his chances in the general election?
- [35:04]
C
Yeah, I mean, look, it's very, very hard to see even without multiple criminal indictments that Donald Trump is going to be making converts of millions of additional Americans, which is what he would need to have a chance to win. And so the question is, does at some point that sort of miasma of scandal and clouds around Donald Trump affect even this sycophantic Republican field? Right. So it's not even a foregone conclusion, despite what Congresswoman Nancy May said, he might not be the Republican nominee. That's certainly still a possibility, even if a slim one. And then more broadly, if he goes into the general election, remember, we also don't know the timetable of these cases. And that again, again, step back for a second, take a breath. It is an extraordinary and uncharted situation. We know that the New York case, they've set a trial date for March of next year in the middle of the 2024 primary season. We don't know how quickly they're gonna be able to do this federal case in Miami against Trump or the other possible cases. So you could have him on trial, you could have him convicted in the middle of the election season. We're in a situation without a political script here. Once again, Donald Trump has sort of blown up our politics.
- [36:27]
D
How do you go from a courtroom to the Iowa caucuses back to A courtroom, Jane? I mean, is this just going to be the ultimate Trump circus?
- [36:36]
B
I mean, I guess I do agree with Susan that this is a lot of accumulated baggage, and it looks like it's going to get heavier still. I mean, I think we. What's scary to me is if he can get through this, then there's really nothing holding him back in the future. And that, you know, this is a test of our legal system. It's a test of, as we keep saying, the rule of law, democracy, all of these huge things that are the features of our system. But we have seen, while in this country, we haven't seen it, we've seen this happen in other countries. You know, you have seen Berlusconi go from conviction back into power. It does happen in other places. And so you can't really rule it out 100%.
- [37:21]
D
I've been thinking about that a lot, because if we had found ourselves in the opposite position here, in which all of the reporting about Trump's mishandling of classified documents had been spilling out for months, how would it look to the rest of the world if, in fact the United States said, you know what, we're gonna convict people for this all the time at low levels, but we're actually just gonna decide that this guy is unindictable? What would that actually do to the reputation and credibility of American democracy? In some ways, I think that is at the core of how Jack Smith and Merrick Garland have to approach this question, because this notion that we're going to, as Mike Pence said, send a terrible message to the rest of the world about the United States by indicting a former president. Actually, no. Think of the message we would send to the rest of the world by not indicting a former president.
- [38:09]
B
Exactly. I think that's a great point, and I think we need to, as reporters, keep our eye not just on what's unprecedented about the prosecution, but rather what's unprecedented about the behavior that caused this prosecution. He's. What's unprecedented is the law breaking and the attitude of being above the law. And he's been so flagrant in it that they felt they had to move forward.
- [38:38]
D
This has been the political scene. I'm Evan Osnos. We had production assistance today from Alex d', Lea, Michael May, and Catherine Winter. Steven Valentino is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Allison Leighton Brown. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great weekend, and we'll see you next time.
- [39:03]
G
What the hell is going on right now, and why is it happening? Like this. At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis. And maybe you are, too. I'm Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview conversations are fun.
- [39:31]
D
I want a shark that.
- [39:32]
G
That eats the Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.
- [39:36]
D
So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginative, imaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability.
- [39:45]
G
Every week we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times, meaning and context. True or false? You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me, one day, at some point as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False.
- [40:03]
B
Tell me more.
- [40:04]
G
Listen to the Big Interview right now. Now, in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.
- [40:15]
B
From. PRX.