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June 14, 2024 17 mins

In this week’s episode, Michael and James dive into the escalating tensions surrounding Donald Trump’s potential jail time. What are the legal and political implications of Trump’s sentencing? How is the Secret Service preparing for this unprecedented scenario? And what does this mean for the future of his campaign? Tune in to find out.

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Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Trump at this point actually believes that Joe Biden will
not be the opponent really and believes he is hanging
by a thread in this race. And yet of course
he thinks Joe Biden is the weakest candidate, so that's
who he wants to run against. So therefore, don't do
any debate prep because he might be too good, and

(00:26):
if he's too good, that would force Biden out of
the race. Welcome to Fire and Fury the podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'm James Truman, I'm Michael Wolf. Michael. The question that's
been on my mind, as other people say, is what
happens if Trump gets to jail.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
The first question is probably can he go to Will
he go to jail? I'm not sure. I mean, that's
a big question. The sentencing is on July eleventh. What
if the judge says to jail, take him away, which
the judge could do on the spot, or you know,
you have twenty four hours forty eight hours to report

(01:18):
to jail. The likely scenario is whatever the sentence is,
jail house haressed some other variation would be stayed until
after the appeal. But Judge Mershan is clearly pissed off
at Donald Trump. Donald Trump clearly deserves to go to

(01:39):
jail under normal sentencing procedures. But I'm not sure even
if the judge imposes jail time that the Secret Service
would let him go to jail. So that becomes this
interesting more than interesting, this dramatic constitutional confrontation.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Excuse my ignorance. Who does the Secret Service report to
which department of government?

Speaker 1 (02:06):
They report to the Executive Branch, to the Treasury, but
they are mandated by Congress. And then it brings up
other questions about jurisdiction. This is a New York State case.
The sentence would be carried out by New York State.
Yet there's this federal branch of government that actually probably

(02:28):
supersedes the interests of New York State. We're in very
complicated lands here.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Is it the same Secret Service detail that's protected him
since he was president or do they rotate?

Speaker 1 (02:41):
They rotated, There are some of the same people. But
the interesting thing is that I have one particularly good
Secret Service source. This is the hot job within the
Secret Service. Everybody wants to be on the Trump detail.
I think it's regarded as where the action is. But
then there's some real rapport that these guys have with Trump.

(03:04):
He treats them well. They are certainly not extraneous to
his entourage. Donald Trump has always had security, and I
think that he gets along with these security guys. When
Keith Schiller was his longtime security man, that was essentially
his best friend. In a sense, Donald Trump is friendless,

(03:25):
but the security become extremely important to who he is,
how he feels, who he talks to. That may be
the strongest relationship in his life. I think that there's
a lot of these rich guys who kind of bond
with the people who surround them. I had once had
a friend who was kind of a serial dater of billionaires.

(03:48):
She said that one of the things that they all
had in common was that on a date, they would
always spend more time talking to their drivers than to her.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
I remember, also in succession, how Logan Roy ended up
in a dying with his bodyguard that turned out to
be his closest friend too.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
I don't know. I think his appealed to the police
is strong. I think his appealed to the military is strong,
and then very personally his appeal to his own secret
service detail. So that brings up another interesting question of
which they have more than a professional interest in defending him.

(04:24):
It becomes a personal interest in defending him.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
So what's the scenario look like where there's a standoff
between the Secret Service and the judiciary.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
I don't think anybody knows this. At one point in
the process of the indictments, I said to one of
the Trump people, is he going to be handcuffed? They said, no,
he's not going to be handcuffed because the Secret Service
will never allow that. And I said, yeah, but this
is relevant to the Atlanta indictment. And I said, yeah,
but what if the jurisdiction decides just to handcuff them?

(04:53):
And this Trump guy looked at me as though I
was totally out of it and said, it's the Secret Service.
If you try to do that, then they shoot you.
He said, you don't understand these Secret Service guys. They're
absolutely focused on one thing, the protectee.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
You get in the way of.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
That, then they literally have a license to shoot you.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Looking this is pure politics. Is it beneficial to Trump
for them to attempt to jail him or is it
better that he get probation. I mean, right now, it's
the persecution of sint Donald. It seems only to have
excited sympathy for him.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
Yeah, no, I think probably jail would be fantastic for him.
But Donald Trump, who has to win at everything, how
does he personally process this? How does he turn this
into victory? The answer is that he's raised an enormous
amount of money. The money talks. I mean, I don't
know what the numbers will turn out to be, but
he's quoting four or five hundred million dollars that he's raised.

(05:50):
This may well end up being the biggest boondoggle in
the history of politics. This is a zillion dollar a
VN in this casempaign, and they were running significantly behind
the Democrats, and this may put them significantly ahead of
the Democrats. This is small donors and big donors. Those

(06:11):
things are often mutually exclusive. This conviction has brought together
these two pillars of modern fundraising.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
Let's talk about the debates for a second. I mean,
there's obviously it's the opportunity for both sides to get
the knockout blow that they lack. How does each one
get that knockout blow and how do they prepare for it?

Speaker 1 (06:31):
I imagine Biden is prepared in very conventional ways. You know,
you do a mock debate and do it for as
many hours as you possibly can, so that you're prepared
theoretically for everything. Trump, on the other hand, doesn't really
prepare for anything, and even in the context of past debates,
it was always very much on the fly, let's prepare,

(06:53):
and then he would leave the room. And I don't
anticipate that being much different this time. But I also
understand that he has a curious rationale for not preparing,
which is that he doesn't want to be too hard
on Joe Biden because he thinks if he is, that

(07:13):
will contribute to knocking Joe Biden out of the race,
and he wants Joe Biden to be his opponent.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
Does this strike you as delusional thinking.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
It strikes me as someone who has probably spent his
entire life avoiding doing his homework and having to come
up with excuses. So this is the dog ate, my
homework excuse for not doing debate prep.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
You told a fantastic story I remember about the twenty
twenty election that Donald asked Chris Christy to be tough
on him and ask him questions that would be likely
asked at the debate, and Chris Christy came in and said,
what's your problem with women. Donald got so offended that
it ended their friendship, and that's why he never gave
Chris Christy a job.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
And also that was the moment at which he blamed
Chris Christie for giving him COVID.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Oh that's right too.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, now there's actually reason to believe that Trump gave
Chris Christy COVID. But of course, in the inverted Trump world.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Back to the debates, in which of the two do
you think is going to show more mental acuity or
less mental acurity?

Speaker 1 (08:16):
In fact, Trump doesn't have to show mental acuity. That's
already figured into the market that he will be Donald Trump,
which does not include mental acuity. Joe Biden, because he
exists in conventional political terms, goes into this now with
a very low level of expectation. So he has to

(08:36):
do better in the mental acuity department than the world
now expects him to do. That's a fairly low level.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
The Trump campaign thinks he was jacked up on speed
at the State of the Union.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
Right, Cocaine is what Trump thinks.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
Trump's regard for Biden is as dismissive as you can
possibly be.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
James and I will be right back after the break.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
If you spared a thought for Hunter Biden this.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
Week, I've only spared a thought from the Trump side.
But the interesting thing is Trump absolutely expected him to
be acquitted. So this becomes a kind of wrinkle in
the Republican catechism. The fact that Hunter Biden was convicted.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
Justice is fair. Yeah, I mean, I think the.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
Whole Hunter narrative has now become confusing to the Republicans
because that whole narrative was based on their view that
this was being covered up.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
Right, And it was significant that President Biden said he
would not grant a pardon to his son. You know,
it's significant and very pointed politically.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
So the question is does the good and true and
righteous and the moral win out over the opposite, which
I doubt.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
That's surely the question. So, Michael, any inside infom where
Trump might land with the VP.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
Choice vance Rubio Bergham, I would say those are the
three in the lead right now. He brings up Bill Haggerty.
He has basically had a series of categories. There are
the African Americans, there are the women, and then there
are what he calls the central casting people. Bill Haggerty

(10:25):
would be one of the central casting people. Burgham is
a central casting person, vance very much, Tim Scott significantly
less so. At least Stephonic no longer serious. Christy Nome
the Dog really finished that one off. Tom Cotton is
a late edition name that seems to pop up, But

(10:47):
a lot of these people are one week fads and
then they go away.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
Has the public brown nosing by these candidates? Is that
something Trump pays attention to? Is he that vulnerable to flattery?

Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (10:58):
I mean you could not do this without public brown nosing. Yes,
that's a requirement absolutely.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
I mean does Trump ultimately arrive at contempt for these
people who so prostrate themselves in public to get the position.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
I don't think it's quickly but eventually, yes, which is
an impossible position. You have to brown nose, but then
he holds that against you. I think everybody is ultimately
rejected for something other than family. Now, I think you
can get back in with Trump having fallen out if
you then renew your brown nosing at a really prodigious level,

(11:35):
like Kelly and Conway, who has fallen out with Trump
largely because of her husband, George Conway, who became this
virulent anti Trumper, and so Trump held that against Kelly Ann.
But Kelly Ann has gotten rid of George and is
now working on a pretty much I understand, on a
full time basis to re ingratiate herself into the Trump

(11:58):
camp and very likely will succeed. Bannon is an example
of someone who believed that he had Trump's year and
that he was Trump's brain. But Bannon has held on
and come back in many ways.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
In the conversations we've often had, you say, the thing
about Trump is he doesn't have a campaign. It has
no idea how to run a campaign. He's running some
kind of direct to consumer business. What then, does he
need five hundred million full.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
He needs it, first of all to make him feel good.
And there may not be anything more important in this
campaign than the care and feeding of the candidate. What
makes Donald Trump feel like he is? Donald Trump raising
lots of money, more money than anyone else in terms
of what he does with the money. It's interesting he
probably needs more money than other candidates, not because of

(12:51):
what it will buy him in the campaign world, but
because enormous amounts of this money gets wasted. In twenty twenty,
the Trump campaign and he was then the president, the
incumbent by August before the election, they were in the
whole two hundred million dollars. That's never happened in a
presidential campaign with an incumbent candidate. They were going into

(13:16):
the last weeks of the campaign out spent three to
one by the challenger, again, something that has never happened before.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Where did the money go?

Speaker 1 (13:24):
I think, generally speaking, the Trump grift because there are
no real controls on the campaign, or certainly there weren't
in twenty twenty. You had lots of people taking a
lot of money out of the campaign.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
Got it.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
But then the other thing with Trump is that he's
always top line focused. We have raised more money than
anybody else in the history of et cetera, et cetera,
and he demands that they do this. I want to
raise more money, raise me more money. Well, you can
always do that if you spend more money to raise
the money. In other words, if you spend a dollar

(14:00):
fifty to raise a dollar, that's a pretty good formula
for a losing money but also having a very rich
top line.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
So what state is his campaign in? Is there a
strategy there? All you hear about policy ideas is winging it.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
I don't think he cares about policy ideas. I think
that's completely irrelevant to him. But right now the campaign
is in kind of extraordinary shape. I mean, their numbers,
the money numbers are turning out to be fantastic, and
the polling numbers remain very good. Even with the conviction.
I mean, I think there was post conviction, a slight

(14:37):
shimmy downwards, but certainly not a dramatic shift. In every
one of the swing states. He is still ahead where
at a moment too. I mean, the next four weeks
are quite possibly the most serious inflection moment of the
entire campaign cycle. We have the first debate, one of two,

(15:00):
which is coming up. We have the sentencing on July eleventh,
and before that we have the Supreme Court decision on immunity,
so that will come up before the end of June
when the Court's term expires. And that's worth talking about
because the Court is under this enormous pressure right now. Obviously,

(15:24):
do they go in, do they give him this grant
of immunity, even partial immunity, or do they go the
safe way and say nobody's above the law. And then
after that he's going to have to pick his vice
president because the Republican Convention starts on the fifteenth of July,
so he'll have a vice president most likely before he

(15:46):
goes into the convention or the first day of the convention.
This is four weeks in which once again he dominates
the news again and again and again and again.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah, we're a week post verdict. What are the odds
look like to you at this moment.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
I think all the smart money now is that Donald
Trump becomes the next president of the United States. There
are many ways that that could yet change. This is
Donald Trump, who is perfectly capable of shooting himself in
the foot many times. But right now I think the
tenor out there is that he's going to win. Now

(16:25):
we're in June. Nothing stays static. So if he's at
a high point now, that high point will go down.
And then the question is whether it comes up at
the moment to meet the November fifth date. And anything
you think now is open to significant revision. But I
think it's worth putting a signpost in this that at

(16:48):
this point the middle of June, I don't know anybody
except Democrats who have their own vested interests or who
are on the payroll, believe that there's not the strongest
likelihood that Trump will be the next president. That's all
the time we have for today. Thanks for joining us.

(17:09):
We'll be back next week with a special episode all
about Malanga and her conspicuous absence from her husband's campaign
to retake the White House, Fire and Fury. The podcast
is hosted and executive produced by Michael Wolfe and James Truman.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
The producers are Adam Waller and Emily Marinov.

Speaker 3 (17:35):
Executive producers for Kaleidoscope are Mangesh had to get A
and Os Valaschian.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
Executive producers for iHeart On Nikki Ito and Katrina Noval.
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