Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Wake that answer up in the morning.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Breakfast Club Morning, everybody is DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne
the Guy. We aret a breakfast club. We got a
special guest in the building. Yes, indeed, got a thing
called welcome, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
How's it going.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
How you feeling I'm feeling great. I'm feeling great. It's
great to be here.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Toe of people who Jonathan call lived if they don't know.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I'm the chief Washington correspondent for ABC News. I covered
the White House for more than a decade as the
Chief White House Correspondent, including all of Obama's second term,
all of Donald Trump's term. I've written three books on
that guy on Trump, and I'm the co host of
This Week And.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
How did you get into politics? So people that don't know,
how did you your life? Say, you know, I want
to do politics. When I was a kid, you know,
how did you get into that?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I mean, you know, I got to tell you. I
mean ever since I was like a little kid, I was,
you know, fifth grade, I was like grabbing for the
New York Times sports section first, you know, which was
pretty lame at the Times, and then the op ed
page to read the op Eds. My mom and my
stepfather went out to South Dakota at about that time
(01:07):
and we went to Mount Rushmore and they ended up
doing a project. And by the way, neither one of
them went to college. My stepfather had been a cab driver.
He was working running a factory in Stanford, Connecticut. We
went out there, we ended up moving to South Dakota,
and then went on this project to interview all the
people that worked on Mount Rushmore. There were three hundred
and some people, most of the miners who built that
(01:29):
freaking you know, you know, sculpture, that mountain, and that
was like journalism. I went, I missed a lot of school,
ended up going to school to town with three hundred
and fifty people out there for a couple of years,
and so I think that was the beginning. I never
really looked back.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Who was better for business? Obama a Trump? You know,
we're just talking about the business nothing now, it's just
the business of what you do. Who was better for Okay?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
So I'll tell you this being at that White House
for the transition, and by the way, I was in
the Oval Office the one and only time that Barack
Obama and Donald Trump met, and that was on November
tenth of twenty sixteen, two days after Trump won, Obama
invited him in, and you know, seeing the two of them,
(02:19):
I mean, we've never had two more different presidents, of
course in American history together. The one time I saw
Donald Trump in a room where he was not in charge,
because you know, Obama was the president and it was
Obama's meeting. Obama invited you know, me and the other
press in the for the little photo op. At the end,
Obama made the first comment, invited Trump to speak, and
(02:40):
Trump almost seemed humble for a moment. He even said
some nice things about Obama. Lasted for about thirty six hours,
still kept on saying some nice things about how well
he was welcomed by missus. Oh and you know the president.
But sort of who who's better for business? Let me
answer it this way with the advents of that. From
(03:02):
that moment on, the interest in what was going on
at the White House was completely off the charts. And
I'd been in there. I first worked. I was at
CNN for eight years before I came to ABC Bay
during the Clinton year, so I did a little bit
of White House work in Clinton. I was there for
fair amount of Bush. But you knew that the world
(03:25):
was watching what you were doing, and it was reflected
in the ratings and the business for sure. But you know,
I've got kids, they were at that point, they were
in middle school, high school, and their friends would come
home and they would want to ask me questions about
was that never happened before? They weren't asking me about,
you know, what was going on in the Obama White House.
So is that good? I mean, I guess it's good
because the ratings are high. Is it good for the country,
(03:45):
You know, that's a whole, entirely different question.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
It was unprecedented, right because I mean it was the
executive producer, celebrity as a notorious eighties nineties celebrity becomes
president of the United States of America.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah yeah, I mean, and he and it was a show.
I mean, that's why my first book I wrote was
front wrote at the Trump Show and this is what
it was. And he cared, He tracked the ratings, he
beat up on the critics. You know, he programmed. He
was the executive producer. That's why he went through so
many communications directors and press secretaries and all that, because
he was he was the chief of staff. He was
(04:19):
the spokesperson, he was the executive producer, he was the director,
and every day he was thinking how can I get
more attention?
Speaker 3 (04:27):
You know?
Speaker 1 (04:27):
One thing, you know that the Twitter thing was obviously
something that defined the Trump years. But he would do
this little parlor trick. Sometimes we had people coming to
the dining room off the Oval office where he spent
most of his time, had a big TV is to
watch this and he would tweet and then count the
minutes until the tweet was on the cables.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Wow. Really, But that's the other thing too.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
He's also probably, yeah, probably the first president that had
the full benefit of social media. Like social media and
it's full of form as we see it now. He
had full advantage of that for since twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Do you know how how many times the Obama campaign
tweeted in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Once it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
It it was a new thing, they tried it out.
It was like, so, yeah, it was. And Obama made
a lot of use of social media, to be sure.
But Trump would do another thing, which is he had
this guy Dan Scavino who was actually he had been
his caddie, you know, and he met him, met him
at one of his golf courses and been with him,
the guy that's been with him the longest outside of
(05:28):
his family in that White House. And you know another
thing Trump would do, we'd have somebody and I witnessed
this myself. You know, he'd come into the Oval office
and you can see how we're doing. He's good, Dan,
what's the number? And then Dan would come out from
this little office or outside and tell him the number
of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram followers he had, the combined number.
(05:49):
He was tracking that by the minute.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
I feel like Donald Trump has changed politics forever. And
I think he's actually if he's changed them in a
sort of good way if other politicians are willing to adjust,
meaning that you don't have to be perfect, you know,
you can be a flawed elected official like I think
(06:12):
he shows that the American people, you know, don't need
their politicians to be perfect, They just need them to
be effective. How come it seems like the Democrats haven't
gotten that memo?
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Well, you know, one one thing that he did along
those lines is there was and and by the way,
this is for good and for bad and mostly frankly
for bad. But there were instance where clearly was beneficial.
It's kind of totally break down the bureaucracy and the
bureaucratic process, you know, because presidents, you know, the old
thing is but by the time a decision gets to
(06:43):
the President's desk, it goes through you know, god knows
how many and and and it's a it's a decision,
and and it's made. But that process can take forever.
The Abraham Accords, which was one of you know, the
actual true successes of the Trump White House that brought
together you know that that had between Israel and and
and and and and three Arab countries happened because they
(07:06):
basically bypassed all of the national security process. I mean,
there was no the State Department didn't really have any
input on it. It was basically you know, uh, you know,
Jared had had a big roles on along. I had
no real formal process in that and no role in that,
and it got done. I think that would have been
caught up under Bush or under Obama. It just never
would have gotten out of the out of the starting gates.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Do you think Biden could beat Trump? And if you
do feel that way, what does he have to do
to make sure he has the support of the people
out there.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Uh, I actually think that Biden is probably the front runner,
even though it doesn't look like that in the polls.
Right now, why do you feel Trump has Uh? And
I document this and and in my I had a
book out a few months ago, I'm tired of winning
and I and I kind of go through. Trump does
(07:56):
a great job of convincing everybody that he is the biggest,
the most powerful, the greatest winner of all time. He's
actually been a tremendous loser in politics. He's won one
election and that was twenty sixteen, and he led the
Republicans on a series of losses. And primarily you can
track the losses. Almost all the major defeats can be
(08:16):
tracked to something Trump did. Either. He was the one
that basically chose the candidate. He meddled, you know, inserted
himself in a way that was not active. So he
doesn't have a good electoral track record at all. Now,
he did just run through the Republican nomination in what
turned out to be a very weak field. Most of
the candidates he was running against didn't even want to
like criticize it until it was way too late. Yeah,
(08:39):
Chris Christie, who had one fundamental flaw Christy had us.
He was the guy that basically helped Trump win in
twenty sixteen. But so I think that Trump comes into
this election with far more negatives than he had in
twenty sixteen when he won, and certainly then in twenty
twenty when he lost. The whole experience of what happened
(09:02):
through January sixth, and then what he did after he
left the White House, and this is what I spent
and I spent a lot of time documenting. I mean this,
this does not look like a former president of the
United States, let alone somebody that has a chance of
coming back the You know, he wallowed in these conspiracy
theories for more than two years that he had won
(09:23):
the election, and he actually believed and this is this
is nuts, but he believed that he could be put
back into the White House before the next election. He
believed that the world would see what had really happened
in twenty twenty and Biden would be basically evicted and
they would put him back in. You know, Dinner with
(09:43):
Kanye and Nick Fuentes, you know, white supremacist a week
after he announces his campaign selling NFTs, you know, these
digital trading he looked like a look like a guy
just trying to make some money off the whole thing.
So now he's leading in the poll, and he is
consistently leading in the polls, and most importantly in the
(10:04):
in the polls of the battleground states. But I truly
think that most Americans have kind of checked out. And
you know, for all that intense focus on what I
was doing when I was the White House correspondent, that
I felt at the Trump White House, who's paying attention
to what's going on in the Biden White House? You know,
in the in the public at large? And who is
(10:25):
really the media's fault?
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Though I say that all the time because you know,
every single thing Donald Trump does, the media amplifies, but
you have to search to see what the Biden administration
is even doing.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
What Trump does is front page news headlines.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Every yeah, a crazy tweet gets like dominant network.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
And that's what bugs me out about the left so much.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
I expect that from the right they should push the
narrative of the of the person that they want in
the White House.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
But the left, why do you all respond to the
right all the time.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Well, we're not the left or the right, But but
but I I mean, I see, you know, look, I mean,
so much of it is driven by what people are
interested in. I remember, like I had this like kind
of righteous position that I was taking when when Trump
came in. It was like, we're not going to pay
attention to the bullshit. We're going to talk about what
he's doing, not what he's saying. It's kind of like
(11:18):
the way the way I the way I looked at it.
And one day he tweeted about Mika Brzhinsky, this horrible
tweet saying that she had blood coming out of her face,
remember this whole thing that, you know, suggesting that she
had had plastic surgery, and she was, you know, when
they came to visit them at more a Lago, and
I said, you know what, We're not going to cover this.
(11:39):
I mean, this is this doesn't matter. This doesn't matter
to anybody's life. And I made that case internally and
it worked for a little bit, and then the next thing,
you know, within a few hours, the Speaker of the
House is making a statement condemning the Republican Speaker of
the House is making a statement condemning what Trump has said,
and all these other people are coming out and she's
responding and you can't and what are you gonna do
(12:00):
just ignore a story that's like I mean, in the end,
I was covering it too.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, but yeah, it's it's.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Look but Biden, I don't think that he is going
to win because suddenly the world is going to look
at his accomplishments as president, and there have been considerable accomplishments,
some failures too. Obviously. I think that the reason that
he is slightly favored, in my view, in this race
is because they will just tear Trump down methodically. I
(12:34):
mean that there's so much material for them to use.
When this campaign gets going, it's not going to be
so much.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I don't think people.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Could Jonathan, because it's been the same He's been the
same guy since twenty sixteen. There's nothing Trump is going
to say are due frankly over the next five to
six months that's going to make people all of a
sudden be like, you know what.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
He's a terrible person. The people who support him support.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Well, the people that support them support him. What percentage
of the country is.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
That, I mean, it seems like fifty percent.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
I think you've got thirty five to forty percent. That
really really support him, and you have another and we'll
see if it's ten percent or it's more. Who says
you know what, I think that I was better off
four years ago. You know, I didn't like all the
stuff Trump did and said, but you know, the country
was better infulation was lower. And that's where the battle
(13:24):
will be is those people. And part of what a
big part of what the Biden people will do is
try to remind those people what Trump is all about,
because I do think there has been a bit of
a there has been some amnesia. I don't think that
people truly remember what he was all about. And my
point in this book is it's not what he was
about when he was president last time, it's how this
(13:47):
time will be different. And I truly believe it would be.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
I believe that wholeheartedly.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
But do you think it's a good strategy to play
the decency card?
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Though?
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Like Joe Biden is more decent than Donald Trump. I
don't think those people who cares.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
When you hear it, Yeah, I don't think that's going
to get very But.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
That's all I see him banking on that he's more
of a decent man. They don't care about that.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Yeah, this man. He got elected after he said I
grabbed you by the pussy. But they don't care about decency.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
When it was right frushing people trust people.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
I don't understand. I don't understand that that that that logic.
I don't think that's a good strategy.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and especially with if you if
you watch any Fox News, they'll they'll make it seem
like the Biden family is the is the is the
main crime family in the country. I mean, so, so
the other side is trying to tear down that sense
of decency, and they have been methodically for four years,
more than four years. I mean, it's been going on since.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
And the other thing the right does that I think
is great is that they will constantly talk about things
Trump has done. Whether they say, they'll say the border
was safe for under Trump. They'll talk about the economy
under Trump. You know, yeah, they'll talk about it.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
I remember signed I remember, like that was unbelievable. When
is the present.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
First step back? But I'm saying, they'll talk about all
the things he's actually done. Meanwhile, on the left, they'll
just talk about how terrible of a person.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
He Yeah, yeah, and this is this is a challenge
because I you know, I mean I see it. I
see what the what the Biden campaign will be, and
it's going to be it's going to be a very
negative campaign. And and and frankly, Trump doesn't talk about
his accomplishments very much. All he talks about is ripping down.
I mean, I mean it's you know, I mean, it's
(15:34):
like this is going to be not the most uplifting
and you know, inspiring next six months.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
What do you think about the effects of some of
the celebrities like Steven A. Smith saying that he's relatable
because of his arrest, or him sitting down with people
like Kanye West and all these other artists that are
going for him. Do you think that is a big
influence to help him out or do you think it
had hurt him?
Speaker 1 (15:57):
You know, I I I don't think I don't think
Kanye particularly helped him. I thought it was that whole
episode was so bizarre.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
I mean it sales millions of records, had a number
one record, So I know people hate him, but somebody
supporting him.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah, And it's interesting because he you know that that dinner,
which and what did Kanye say afterwards that he was
offering Trump to be his vice president. But but he
he he brings Nick Flentese. This is a guy who
is like, you know, most people didn't know him until
they saw the stories about this. But this guy is
like an actual white supremacist. I mean that that's his
(16:33):
that's his brand. And Kanye has a thing for Adolf Hitler,
which is really strange. And and so Trump gets you know,
everybody condemns this meeting. Trump to this day has not
criticized either of them and hasn't said like, maybe I
shouldn't have done that, or if I you know right,
(16:55):
or I did it, I'll meet with anybody, but I
don't believe in what they believe in. He hasn't done.
He hasn't not not not a hint of criticism. So
he clearly senses that this is good. I think Trump.
The other thing that he's done is he is he
is afraid of alienating anybody who is he sees as
his supporter, even even if they're totally off the deep end.
(17:18):
So that's why he David Duke. He didn't get around
to condemning David Duke until, by the way, after the
Louisiana primary in twenty sixteen. But I mean only after
it really became I there's a crazy story that I
talked about in Front Round the Trump Show about how
you know, RAN's previous and Chris Christi and all these
people that were around him were basically like just pleading
(17:38):
with him and begging him to just disavow the endorsement
of David Duke because David Duke Hauld endorsed him, and
Trump didn't want to do it, didn't want to do it.
Finally he got browbeaten into doing it. By the way,
that's the stuff that he's not going to get brow
beaten into doing anymore.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
No, that's normal. Yeah, why did the Grand Old Party
come to an end?
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Well, I think you alluded to it when we started
this conversation. I think that the Republican Party is the
Trump Party now. I mean there are elements and there
are you know, little bits and pieces of the Old
Party out there. I mean, look at look at the
this debate over Ukraine. So this big debate of whether
or not we're gonna you know, support Ukraine, continue to
support Ukraine in the war against Russia, and it passed overwhelmingly. Eventually,
(18:20):
you know, when when the when the Republicans finally agreed
to have the vote overwhelming in the House, overwhelming in
the Senate, but in the House a majority of Republicans
voted against it. I mean, this is the party of Reagan,
not anymore. It's the party of trumpture of.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
The Republican body.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Well, I think the Republican Party has a real challenge once,
you know, I mean when when Trump is gone. I
think that he's done such a good job of basically
decimating what was there before. I think that they've got
they've got some you know, some real definitional problems. What
do they stand for? What? What does make America Great
(18:58):
Again mean? Because if you look to remember what the
what the Republican platform was in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
And twenty make America Great Again?
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, there was no platform except for that for that statement.
There was no platform usually Like I mean, I've been
covering conventions, right, you know, you have all the detailed
what we stand for in domestic policy, foreign policy, you know,
the cultural issues. Nothing. It was just like Trump's make
America Great Again plan? So you know, what do they
standing for? You know, when he's gone? Now, look, there
(19:27):
are the Democrats have huge problems and you see, I
mean the fact that we see more Hispanic voters than
we've seen voting Republican and in the reflection in the
polls supporting more black voters. It's still you know, Democrats
dominate both groups. But the fact that they're losing the
fact that Democrats are losing supports among blacks and Latinos
(19:51):
to Donald Trump is a sign that Democrats have some
problems too.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Yeah, I think that I think that might be a
little overstated, though. When I look at the numbers that
they're saying for black people, it's like this, it's like yeah,
it's like, yeah, twenty two percent. I'm like, I don't
see that.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
No, no, but but it's but it's definitely you know,
it's up from near zero.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
When you talk about what a Trump White House will
look like if he gets back into White House, can
you can you talk to that?
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Can you speak to Project twenty five? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (20:19):
So this is this is really important and I don't
think people understand and this is something that I think
people have to understand before they go and vote when
Trump comes back in, if he comes back in, the
first test for anybody in a position of authority and
power is going to be loyalty to Donald Trump. I
(20:41):
spent a lot of time reporting and documenting the work
of a guy named Johnny McEntee, who was the guy
that carried Trump's bags. He was actually one of the
first guys I met on the Trump campaign in twenty fifteen.
He'd been like a very junior. He was a kid
just out of Yukon. He'd been a college quarterback. He
came to volunteer for the Trump campaign right after Trump
announced the first time around, and ended up carrying his
(21:03):
bags for much of his presidency. He came back in
twenty twenty. He had been briefly thrown out of the
White House by the way, because he had issues related
to his gambling that were flagged by the FBI, so
John Kelly, Trump's chief of staff, fired him. After Kelly
was gone, McAtee came back and was putting charge of
Presidential Personnel, basically the HR Department for the whole, you know,
(21:25):
executive branch of the US government. And he went about
in the beginning of twenty twenty to try to do
a series of loyalty tests interviews. He sent his people out.
Most of his buddies, like these are kids in their twenties,
he was thirty years old at the time, to interview
from cabinet secretaries on down, you know, testing their support
(21:46):
of Donald Trump. And he engineered the biggest thing he
engineered was the firing of the Secretary of Defense right
after the election, Esper. Remember Esper was the one that
opposed the use of the use of the Insurrection Act
to bring active duty troops in American cities during the
George Floyd protests. Fired top four people the Pentagon fired
(22:07):
replaced by people devoted to Donald Trump. So now mcintee
is part of this thing called Project twenty twenty five,
which is to create a list of who can serve
in the next Trump White House. And you're not going
to have people. Trump brought in some people of real stature,
General Baddis, General Kelly, his White House Council Don McGann,
(22:32):
later White House Counsel Pat Sibaloni, you know, later Bill Barr,
people that had served in previous administrations or were top
military figures who ended up standing up to Trump and
refusing his demands to break the law. Essentially, those people
and people like them will not be back. It'll be
people that Johnny mcintee and his and this group have
(22:54):
decided are truly loyal to the king.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
And what type of threat to democracy? Think that pulls?
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Well, Look, do.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
You think it's overstated when people say that that he's
a threat of democracy.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
I don't think it's overstated because he actually tried to
bring down a presidential election, so he has done that.
But I think that underappreciated. Is you heard the Supreme
Court arguments on this idea of immunity. And by the way,
when Trump talks about immunity, and he talks about it
(23:28):
a lot in his campaign rallies, he's not talking about
acts tied to his official duties. He's talking about immunity.
He's talking about shoot him on Fifth Avenue immunity. And
so you have somebody who is making the case that
the president is above the law, who is running to
(23:49):
be president again. I think that raises real questions about
what does the rule of law means. You know, there
is a theory, the unitary theory of the executive branch.
It is put forward by some serious legal you know,
constitutional scholars that basically says that that the president is
the law. So the way Nixon put it, you remember
in his interview with David Frost after you know, after
(24:09):
he had resigned. It's not illegal if the president does it.
I mean, there's a whole theory that goes along with that,
and that's what essentially Trump is putting out there. So
I worry. You know, there was a big question that
that that I explored after January sixth about what would
have happened if Mike Pence had done what Trump wanted
(24:33):
and what Trump really wanted. By the way, it was
Pence to just throw out those electoral votes and and
and and declare him president.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Didn't he didn't have the power to do that though.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Well, absolutely not. But who had the power to stop him?
And this is a very this is like, this is
somewhat this is a mind blowing thing. And by the way,
the law has been changed now to be clarified. But
who had the power to stop him? Some people say, well,
the Supreme Court would have Stoppedhi. Well, first of all,
it's not clear at all that the Supreme Court has
(25:03):
any jurisdiction over the rules of Congress in counting electoral votes.
But so let's say the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court
in what army? I mean, there was I talked to
you know, you know Judge Luttig who testified in the
January sixth Committee. I talked to him about it, and
he he said, look, this would have plunged us into
the greatest constitutional crisis that we have ever seen, because
(25:25):
it is it is we didn't Pence did not have
the power to do that. But basically it's unclear if
anybody had the power to stop him.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
You think, to jam it, what the hell does that mean? Though?
Speaker 4 (25:36):
So that means that there's no system in place to
prevent things like that from happening to chooses to do it.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
It means that we have a system of laws that
also depends on there being people of honor and responsibility
to enforce those laws. Wow, and and it it's you know,
you can if you have somebody who was in charge
(26:06):
of the entire system who was willing to just say
screw it, it's unclear what you do about.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
It, which he did. I mean, well, he at least
asked for it.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
He said, we should, you know, get rid of this,
terminate the constitution and overdoor the results of an election.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
I asked John Kelly once way before twenty twenty. So
it was like while he was still Chief of Staff
twenty eighteen or so, what would happen if Trump refused
to leave? I mean it turned out to be kind
of a the would become the question. But I was
just asking hypothetical, and he's like, oh no, no, no,
He's like, there are people that will make him go.
(26:40):
It's like, what do you mean there are people. It's
like he could chain himself to the Resolute and there
was somebody, there would be people that would come in
and cut the chains and escort him out. But I'm
not who.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Yeah, I don't believe it. Yeah yeah, yeah, who Yeah,
especially if they're on his side. But you know, some
people do feel like presidents should be immune from certain crimes.
Like there's people that a point to what's going on
in New York and they'd be like, that's nothing to
take a guy. Yeah, that's nothing to have a president
on trial for my co Holts here says he feels
like he should be immune to some some crimes.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
I don't say that. I just said I don't. So
I said I don't think a president will go to jail.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
That's not what you said.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
What I said, Yes, I said, I said immune from
some crimes.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
I don't think he will go to jail. That that's
my whole thing.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
I don't think. And as I was gonn asked, do
you think he'll go to jail.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
I don't think Trump will.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Go to jail. Even if he's fould guilty on all charges.
I don't think he'll go to jail. Let me let
me take the first part of that. Is there a
case for a president being immune from some things? I
think there is a serious argument on this, and that's
why you had a Supreme Court debate in there. And
this is it's something that's net the Supreme Court is
never defined and the Constitution doesn't give you any any
guidance on you know, the example of Barack Obama taking
(27:50):
out on Alackey in a drone strike, ordering the drone strike.
He was an American citizen. He was also an al
Qaeda terrorist. So you don't want a situation where Obama
leaves office and then he's you know, brought up on
charges for killing an American with a drune strike. So
the so there are there is gray area here. By
(28:12):
the way, what and this is not the constitution, it's
it's uh, it's what they call an OLC memo. It's
it's the Justice Department has established policies going back to Nixon, Uh,
that you cannot prosecute a sitting president. They have to
wait and which which kind of makes sense because you
don't want the and and and and. By the way,
let's say, just to take your hypothetical a little further,
(28:34):
let's leave aside this New York case, which is a
little strange, but the Georgia case, which would mean real
jail time, this case might not mean in jail time,
even if he's guilty, probably won't in New York. What
do you do if a guy is because the Georgia
trial is going to happen, you know, not this year.
It's gonna it's it's gonna it's gonna be put back
a while. But are they gonna do it? If Trump
(28:56):
gets elected and he's president and and and Georgia sentences
him to fifteen years in prison, what is the Georgia like, Uh,
you know, the state police going to go up and
uh and handcoff them. No. No, So I think that
I don't think we'll ever see Donald Trump actually behind bars. Now.
He may be convicted, and there may be you know,
(29:17):
if if you were trying to imagine what would be
best for the country. You can imagine a situation where
he's convicted and the president pardons him. He expresses That's
what I was saying.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
I was saying, I can't see a sitting president or
a president of the United States going to.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Jail house arrested mar A Lago.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
I just can't see that happening, not here, not how
it would look to the world. I just can't see
that happening.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no I I And and then what
does the Secret Service do? Because the Secret Service is
responsible for protecting a former president. Are they sitting in
the cell or maybe outside the cell or what's it?
I mean, it's it raises some really strange question.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
Yeah, America didn't prepare for any of this. America never
thought they would see. We never thought we would be
here with you know, former president are a potential future president.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
I mean I've been covering politics for a long time,
and some of the most memorable speeches that I've ever
seen political speeches were speeches that were given by people
who lost. And one of them that I is like
burned in my brain is because I covered every minute
of the campaign was al Gore. After the Supreme Court
(30:30):
shut down the Florida case, the election was over, Gore
gave the best speech of that campaign, and it was
gracious and it was generous. He was bitter. His people
were ready to his people were ready to storm the
you know, maybe not break into the Capitol, but they
were I mean, I mean the anger among Democrats all
over the country. And he was angry, and people were angry,
and some of them didn't want to even you know,
(30:51):
to wanted to continue to challenge the Supreme Court. And
he came out and he said it's over. And not
only is it over, but I offered or whatever I
can do to help George Bush be a successful president.
And then the other another there have been several of these,
but another one that really sticks to me was John
McCain when he lost to Obama and he congratulates Obama,
(31:13):
and the people in that crowd start booing, and he says, no, no, no, no, no.
So what we do We not only congratulated and wish
him well, but we must all work with him to
make him a successful president. And then that's what we
that's what we've come to be used to, you know,
is an idea that there are hard fought campaigns and
then for a minute at least before the next campaign,
(31:33):
you know things are over. But we've never had a
situation or even consumplate a situation where somebody would refuse
to accept the results of an election.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
Do you feel if al Gore would have fought back
in two thousand that might have presented prevented what we're
currently seeing now, because there's plenty of people who feel
like that that that election was stolen from alga.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
I mean, I don't think he had a He had
a constitutional or illegal avenue to do it, which is
why he conceded. So I think that that I think
that would have backfired by the way I was when
when Bush was inaugurated on January twentieth, Gore was of
(32:14):
course up on the stage and you know, as they
always do, it was a really bitter and cold, you know,
winter day in January, and I was on you know,
they do this thing if you ever watched the presidential inauguration,
there are a couple of flatbed trucks that go in
front of the presidential limo and you usually have you know,
(32:35):
network correspondent to network correspondents on each one and we
kind of we follow along, we do commentary, and we
have the cameras that you I was it was like
it was a frightening ride actually because there were more
protesters on the on the parade route than there were
Bush supporters, and at one point they started to throw
eggs at the presidential limo, and you know, you did
(32:56):
feel for a moment like the country was a little bit,
a little bit on edge, and Gore, to his credit,
I think, kept it, kept it steady. No, I think
the thing that would have I mean, we're getting off
this is a totally different subject. But the thing that
would have prevented where we are now was what that
president did two years later, which was, you know, invade Iraq.
(33:17):
I mean the you know that the Iraq War, which
leads to I mean, you probably don't have a President
Obama and you don't have a President Trump either if
that hadn't happened.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Oh, you think that Obama was a.
Speaker 4 (33:30):
What would you call that, like a I want like
a reaction from people like I want to dig, an
extreme reaction, Like.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
It wasn't that he was an extreme reaction, is that
he was one of the few Democrats who were adamantly
opposed to that war from the start, and that's how
he made his name. If you remember, like all the
you know, that war was supported by Hillary Clinton, by
John Kerry by I mean that that vote, it was
a very bipartisan vote in favor of the invasion of Iraq.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Ooh.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
So with that said, you know when this upcoming election,
you see all of these kids on these college campuses. Yeah,
and you know, they're very anti war, like, they're very
against you know, all of these various wars that are happening.
You know, you know Joe Biden funding Israel's military, you know,
funding Ukraine. Like, they're just against war. Well, how do
you think that's going to have an impact in November?
(34:21):
I think neither one that the presidents are against.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
No, no, I mean you know they certainly, Uh, Donald
Trump is not going to police these people more than
more than Biden. I think it's a real problem for
Biden and for the Democrats, Uh, for two reasons. One
is that he needs he needs he needs support from
(34:45):
core Democratic constituencies. In one of those is young voters,
and young voters have turned decisively against him almost entirely
because of and and he can say, look, we've forgiven
student loans. That's not what they I mean, they're they're
fired up about this. If they either stay home or
you know, vote for a you know, Bobby Kennedy or
(35:06):
or you know, you know, vote third party, that's a
major problem. Uh was on a.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
Cluck Atlanta campus Friday, and a lot of those kids
say they voting for our kid junior.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and and and that's that's that's a
real problem. But the other thing is the feeling of it.
We'll see where these protests go. But you know, the
the wall to wall coverage that you're seeing on you know,
cable news, and you get the sense like things are
falling apart and it's lawless, and and that place right
into Trump. It's like, look, this is Biden's America. Look
(35:40):
at these people.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
Just the images.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Just the images.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
Yeah, and I wonder, you know, when when you rile
all of these kids up and then you tell them, okay,
but in November, we're gonna need you to turn around
and vote for Biden.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
How are you gonna flip that switch?
Speaker 1 (35:52):
So far?
Speaker 4 (35:53):
Are even what's going on in Michigan where you're telling people,
you know, go right in non committed or whatever, I
can't remember. How are you gonna flip the switch come November? Yeah,
after you've gotten him so energized to go against Biden.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
It's it's interesting. So you've had like all these numbers.
You had it in Michigan, but you also had it
in Minnesota, in North Carolina, in Virginia where Democrats were
not voting for Biden in a primary where he had
no opposition. Sometimes it was noncommitted. Sometimes they were voting
for you know, you know, no name candidates. And at
the same time, you've had Trump running without any opposition
(36:27):
now and Nikki Haley is still getting upwards of twenty
percent of the vote, which she did in Pennsylvania, and
she's not running. So twenty twenty had massive turnout, twenty
sixteen had massive turnout. Trump really turned people out, both
in terms of for him and people opposed to him.
What's this election going to be? I mean, this could
be a very different situation.
Speaker 4 (36:49):
Whose votes do you think are going to be the
determining factor? Like will it be women because they're they're
they're fired up that Roe v. Wade got overturned. Is
it going to be African Americans? Is it gonna be Latino,
it's gonna be you voters, like, who do you think.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Look, you've got six, maybe seven battleground states, and if
it's if it looks anything like the last two elections,
it could be a matter of one hundred thousand votes
spread across those states or maybe even less. So any
one of those groups can be decisive. But certainly suburban
women are a huge group of voters. It turned pretty
(37:25):
decisively against Donald Trump in twenty twenty. And we're more agnostic.
I mean, he didn't win them in twenty sixteen, but
they turned decisively against him in twenty twenty. I think
that's probably the most important, you know, single group. But
any I mean you could have I mean Georgia, I mean,
Arizona states were it's just a matter of a few
(37:46):
thousand votes.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
Yeah, you went to the White House courtspondent then this weekend. Yeah,
and Joe Biden said he was frustrated with how the media,
you know, covered him, But he just made me put
out a challenge for the media to do better when
they're talking about you know that Trump is what'd you
think of it?
Speaker 1 (38:03):
You know, I I think there's something to that. I
never put too much stock into presidents criticizing the media
because they they always do it. It's it's it's the
easiest thing.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
You know.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
If only they were covering what I was doing better,
I'd be you know, I'd be out of a seventy
five percent approval rating. I don't think that that's the case,
but I do think that this is this is a
really difficult election for journalists to cover because it's not
like any other election. It's not even like twenty or
twenty sixteen. This is different, you know. And if we
(38:38):
are simply like doing horse race coverage and who's up
in the polls and who's it down, and what the
latest side by side policy differentially, you're not getting at
the point, and the point Biden was getting at is
that you know, Trump is in a real way running
on an anti democratic agenda. And it's not just what
(38:59):
happened on January, but it's all this talk of using
the power of the federal government for retribution and revenge
against anybody who you know has crossed him. Uh, it's
it's it's a it's a different election. It can't really
be covered in the same way.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah, none of this is normal. So why do we
act like it is.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
It's it's not normal. And I worry in some ways
that the country seems to be kind of sleep walking
towards you know, something that nobody's really come to terms
with because they're you know, this, this is, this is
And by the way, you made a point when we
spoke a few months ago about you know, the kind
(39:39):
of cried, crying wolf notion that we have seen. And
for how many cycles have we heard people say this
is the most consequential election of our lifetimes. You know,
Mitt Romney is like, and I destroy America if he's elected.
I mean, I mean, now you're getting to an election
that actually is the most consequential of our lifetimes. And
people are like, Okay, I've.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Heard this before.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Yeah yeah, yeah, wow, Well this book is out right
now tired.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
You could definitely pick Donald Trump at the end of
the Grand Party.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Hey, thank you.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Absolutely, We're gonna.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Need you back up here when we get closer to
that November.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Anytime.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
I'm up here, I'm up here a lot. So this
is fun. It's good. And you're right up the road
from gm A.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
So Jonathan, call ladies and gentlemen. It's the breakfast club,
good morning
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Wake that ass up in the morning breakfast club
Wake that answer up in the morning.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Breakfast Club Morning, everybody is DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne
the Guy. We aret a breakfast club. We got a
special guest in the building. Yes, indeed, got a thing
called welcome, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
How's it going.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
How you feeling I'm feeling great. I'm feeling great. It's
great to be here.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Toe of people who Jonathan call lived if they don't know.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I'm the chief Washington correspondent for ABC News. I covered
the White House for more than a decade as the
Chief White House Correspondent, including all of Obama's second term,
all of Donald Trump's term. I've written three books on
that guy on Trump, and I'm the co host of
This Week And.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
How did you get into politics? So people that don't know,
how did you your life? Say, you know, I want
to do politics. When I was a kid, you know,
how did you get into that?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I mean, you know, I got to tell you. I
mean ever since I was like a little kid, I was,
you know, fifth grade, I was like grabbing for the
New York Times sports section first, you know, which was
pretty lame at the Times, and then the op ed
page to read the op Eds. My mom and my
stepfather went out to South Dakota at about that time
(01:07):
and we went to Mount Rushmore and they ended up
doing a project. And by the way, neither one of
them went to college. My stepfather had been a cab driver.
He was working running a factory in Stanford, Connecticut. We
went out there, we ended up moving to South Dakota,
and then went on this project to interview all the
people that worked on Mount Rushmore. There were three hundred
and some people, most of the miners who built that
(01:29):
freaking you know, you know, sculpture, that mountain, and that
was like journalism. I went, I missed a lot of school,
ended up going to school to town with three hundred
and fifty people out there for a couple of years,
and so I think that was the beginning. I never
really looked back.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Who was better for business? Obama a Trump? You know,
we're just talking about the business nothing now, it's just
the business of what you do. Who was better for Okay?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
So I'll tell you this being at that White House
for the transition, and by the way, I was in
the Oval Office the one and only time that Barack
Obama and Donald Trump met, and that was on November
tenth of twenty sixteen, two days after Trump won, Obama
invited him in, and you know, seeing the two of them,
(02:19):
I mean, we've never had two more different presidents, of
course in American history together. The one time I saw
Donald Trump in a room where he was not in charge,
because you know, Obama was the president and it was
Obama's meeting. Obama invited you know, me and the other
press in the for the little photo op. At the end,
Obama made the first comment, invited Trump to speak, and
(02:40):
Trump almost seemed humble for a moment. He even said
some nice things about Obama. Lasted for about thirty six hours,
still kept on saying some nice things about how well
he was welcomed by missus. Oh and you know the president.
But sort of who who's better for business? Let me
answer it this way with the advents of that. From
(03:02):
that moment on, the interest in what was going on
at the White House was completely off the charts. And
I'd been in there. I first worked. I was at
CNN for eight years before I came to ABC Bay
during the Clinton year, so I did a little bit
of White House work in Clinton. I was there for
fair amount of Bush. But you knew that the world
(03:25):
was watching what you were doing, and it was reflected
in the ratings and the business for sure. But you know,
I've got kids, they were at that point, they were
in middle school, high school, and their friends would come
home and they would want to ask me questions about
was that never happened before? They weren't asking me about,
you know, what was going on in the Obama White House.
So is that good? I mean, I guess it's good
because the ratings are high. Is it good for the country,
(03:45):
You know, that's a whole, entirely different question.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
It was unprecedented, right because I mean it was the
executive producer, celebrity as a notorious eighties nineties celebrity becomes
president of the United States of America.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah yeah, I mean, and he and it was a show.
I mean, that's why my first book I wrote was
front wrote at the Trump Show and this is what
it was. And he cared, He tracked the ratings, he
beat up on the critics. You know, he programmed. He
was the executive producer. That's why he went through so
many communications directors and press secretaries and all that, because
he was he was the chief of staff. He was
(04:19):
the spokesperson, he was the executive producer, he was the director,
and every day he was thinking how can I get
more attention?
Speaker 3 (04:27):
You know?
Speaker 1 (04:27):
One thing, you know that the Twitter thing was obviously
something that defined the Trump years. But he would do
this little parlor trick. Sometimes we had people coming to
the dining room off the Oval office where he spent
most of his time, had a big TV is to
watch this and he would tweet and then count the
minutes until the tweet was on the cables.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Wow. Really, But that's the other thing too.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
He's also probably, yeah, probably the first president that had
the full benefit of social media. Like social media and
it's full of form as we see it now. He
had full advantage of that for since twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Do you know how how many times the Obama campaign
tweeted in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Once it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
It it was a new thing, they tried it out.
It was like, so, yeah, it was. And Obama made
a lot of use of social media, to be sure.
But Trump would do another thing, which is he had
this guy Dan Scavino who was actually he had been
his caddie, you know, and he met him, met him
at one of his golf courses and been with him,
the guy that's been with him the longest outside of
(05:28):
his family in that White House. And you know another
thing Trump would do, we'd have somebody and I witnessed
this myself. You know, he'd come into the Oval office
and you can see how we're doing. He's good, Dan,
what's the number? And then Dan would come out from
this little office or outside and tell him the number
of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram followers he had, the combined number.
(05:49):
He was tracking that by the minute.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
I feel like Donald Trump has changed politics forever. And
I think he's actually if he's changed them in a
sort of good way if other politicians are willing to adjust,
meaning that you don't have to be perfect, you know,
you can be a flawed elected official like I think
(06:12):
he shows that the American people, you know, don't need
their politicians to be perfect, They just need them to
be effective. How come it seems like the Democrats haven't
gotten that memo?
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Well, you know, one one thing that he did along
those lines is there was and and by the way,
this is for good and for bad and mostly frankly
for bad. But there were instance where clearly was beneficial.
It's kind of totally break down the bureaucracy and the
bureaucratic process, you know, because presidents, you know, the old
thing is but by the time a decision gets to
(06:43):
the President's desk, it goes through you know, god knows
how many and and and it's a it's a decision,
and and it's made. But that process can take forever.
The Abraham Accords, which was one of you know, the
actual true successes of the Trump White House that brought
together you know that that had between Israel and and
and and and and three Arab countries happened because they
(07:06):
basically bypassed all of the national security process. I mean,
there was no the State Department didn't really have any
input on it. It was basically you know, uh, you know,
Jared had had a big roles on along. I had
no real formal process in that and no role in that,
and it got done. I think that would have been
caught up under Bush or under Obama. It just never
would have gotten out of the out of the starting gates.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Do you think Biden could beat Trump? And if you
do feel that way, what does he have to do
to make sure he has the support of the people
out there.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Uh, I actually think that Biden is probably the front runner,
even though it doesn't look like that in the polls.
Right now, why do you feel Trump has Uh? And
I document this and and in my I had a
book out a few months ago, I'm tired of winning
and I and I kind of go through. Trump does
(07:56):
a great job of convincing everybody that he is the biggest,
the most powerful, the greatest winner of all time. He's
actually been a tremendous loser in politics. He's won one
election and that was twenty sixteen, and he led the
Republicans on a series of losses. And primarily you can
track the losses. Almost all the major defeats can be
(08:16):
tracked to something Trump did. Either. He was the one
that basically chose the candidate. He meddled, you know, inserted
himself in a way that was not active. So he
doesn't have a good electoral track record at all. Now,
he did just run through the Republican nomination in what
turned out to be a very weak field. Most of
the candidates he was running against didn't even want to
like criticize it until it was way too late. Yeah,
(08:39):
Chris Christie, who had one fundamental flaw Christy had us.
He was the guy that basically helped Trump win in
twenty sixteen. But so I think that Trump comes into
this election with far more negatives than he had in
twenty sixteen when he won, and certainly then in twenty
twenty when he lost. The whole experience of what happened
(09:02):
through January sixth, and then what he did after he
left the White House, and this is what I spent
and I spent a lot of time documenting. I mean this,
this does not look like a former president of the
United States, let alone somebody that has a chance of
coming back the You know, he wallowed in these conspiracy
theories for more than two years that he had won
(09:23):
the election, and he actually believed and this is this
is nuts, but he believed that he could be put
back into the White House before the next election. He
believed that the world would see what had really happened
in twenty twenty and Biden would be basically evicted and
they would put him back in. You know, Dinner with
(09:43):
Kanye and Nick Fuentes, you know, white supremacist a week
after he announces his campaign selling NFTs, you know, these
digital trading he looked like a look like a guy
just trying to make some money off the whole thing.
So now he's leading in the poll, and he is
consistently leading in the polls, and most importantly in the
(10:04):
in the polls of the battleground states. But I truly
think that most Americans have kind of checked out. And
you know, for all that intense focus on what I
was doing when I was the White House correspondent, that
I felt at the Trump White House, who's paying attention
to what's going on in the Biden White House? You know,
in the in the public at large? And who is
(10:25):
really the media's fault?
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Though I say that all the time because you know,
every single thing Donald Trump does, the media amplifies, but
you have to search to see what the Biden administration
is even doing.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
What Trump does is front page news headlines.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Every yeah, a crazy tweet gets like dominant network.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
And that's what bugs me out about the left so much.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
I expect that from the right they should push the
narrative of the of the person that they want in
the White House.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
But the left, why do you all respond to the
right all the time.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Well, we're not the left or the right, But but
but I I mean, I see, you know, look, I mean,
so much of it is driven by what people are
interested in. I remember, like I had this like kind
of righteous position that I was taking when when Trump
came in. It was like, we're not going to pay
attention to the bullshit. We're going to talk about what
he's doing, not what he's saying. It's kind of like
(11:18):
the way the way I the way I looked at it.
And one day he tweeted about Mika Brzhinsky, this horrible
tweet saying that she had blood coming out of her face,
remember this whole thing that, you know, suggesting that she
had had plastic surgery, and she was, you know, when
they came to visit them at more a Lago, and
I said, you know what, We're not going to cover this.
(11:39):
I mean, this is this doesn't matter. This doesn't matter
to anybody's life. And I made that case internally and
it worked for a little bit, and then the next thing,
you know, within a few hours, the Speaker of the
House is making a statement condemning the Republican Speaker of
the House is making a statement condemning what Trump has said,
and all these other people are coming out and she's
responding and you can't and what are you gonna do
(12:00):
just ignore a story that's like I mean, in the end,
I was covering it too.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Yeah, but yeah, it's it's.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Look but Biden, I don't think that he is going
to win because suddenly the world is going to look
at his accomplishments as president, and there have been considerable accomplishments,
some failures too. Obviously. I think that the reason that
he is slightly favored, in my view, in this race
is because they will just tear Trump down methodically. I
(12:34):
mean that there's so much material for them to use.
When this campaign gets going, it's not going to be
so much.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I don't think people.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Could Jonathan, because it's been the same He's been the
same guy since twenty sixteen. There's nothing Trump is going
to say are due frankly over the next five to
six months that's going to make people all of a
sudden be like, you know what.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
He's a terrible person. The people who support him support.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Well, the people that support them support him. What percentage
of the country is.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
That, I mean, it seems like fifty percent.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
I think you've got thirty five to forty percent. That
really really support him, and you have another and we'll
see if it's ten percent or it's more. Who says
you know what, I think that I was better off
four years ago. You know, I didn't like all the
stuff Trump did and said, but you know, the country
was better infulation was lower. And that's where the battle
(13:24):
will be is those people. And part of what a
big part of what the Biden people will do is
try to remind those people what Trump is all about,
because I do think there has been a bit of
a there has been some amnesia. I don't think that
people truly remember what he was all about. And my
point in this book is it's not what he was
about when he was president last time, it's how this
(13:47):
time will be different. And I truly believe it would be.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
I believe that wholeheartedly.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
But do you think it's a good strategy to play
the decency card?
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Though?
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Like Joe Biden is more decent than Donald Trump. I
don't think those people who cares.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
When you hear it, Yeah, I don't think that's going
to get very But.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
That's all I see him banking on that he's more
of a decent man. They don't care about that.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Yeah, this man. He got elected after he said I
grabbed you by the pussy. But they don't care about decency.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
When it was right frushing people trust people.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
I don't understand. I don't understand that that that that logic.
I don't think that's a good strategy.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and especially with if you if
you watch any Fox News, they'll they'll make it seem
like the Biden family is the is the is the
main crime family in the country. I mean, so, so
the other side is trying to tear down that sense
of decency, and they have been methodically for four years,
more than four years. I mean, it's been going on since.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
And the other thing the right does that I think
is great is that they will constantly talk about things
Trump has done. Whether they say, they'll say the border
was safe for under Trump. They'll talk about the economy
under Trump. You know, yeah, they'll talk about it.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
I remember signed I remember, like that was unbelievable. When
is the present.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
First step back? But I'm saying, they'll talk about all
the things he's actually done. Meanwhile, on the left, they'll
just talk about how terrible of a person.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
He Yeah, yeah, and this is this is a challenge
because I you know, I mean I see it. I
see what the what the Biden campaign will be, and
it's going to be it's going to be a very
negative campaign. And and and frankly, Trump doesn't talk about
his accomplishments very much. All he talks about is ripping down.
I mean, I mean it's you know, I mean, it's
(15:34):
like this is going to be not the most uplifting
and you know, inspiring next six months.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
What do you think about the effects of some of
the celebrities like Steven A. Smith saying that he's relatable
because of his arrest, or him sitting down with people
like Kanye West and all these other artists that are
going for him. Do you think that is a big
influence to help him out or do you think it
had hurt him?
Speaker 1 (15:57):
You know, I I I don't think I don't think
Kanye particularly helped him. I thought it was that whole
episode was so bizarre.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
I mean it sales millions of records, had a number
one record, So I know people hate him, but somebody
supporting him.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah, And it's interesting because he you know that that dinner,
which and what did Kanye say afterwards that he was
offering Trump to be his vice president. But but he
he he brings Nick Flentese. This is a guy who
is like, you know, most people didn't know him until
they saw the stories about this. But this guy is
like an actual white supremacist. I mean that that's his
(16:33):
that's his brand. And Kanye has a thing for Adolf Hitler,
which is really strange. And and so Trump gets you know,
everybody condemns this meeting. Trump to this day has not
criticized either of them and hasn't said like, maybe I
shouldn't have done that, or if I you know right,
(16:55):
or I did it, I'll meet with anybody, but I
don't believe in what they believe in. He hasn't done.
He hasn't not not not a hint of criticism. So
he clearly senses that this is good. I think Trump.
The other thing that he's done is he is he
is afraid of alienating anybody who is he sees as
his supporter, even even if they're totally off the deep end.
(17:18):
So that's why he David Duke. He didn't get around
to condemning David Duke until, by the way, after the
Louisiana primary in twenty sixteen. But I mean only after
it really became I there's a crazy story that I
talked about in Front Round the Trump Show about how
you know, RAN's previous and Chris Christi and all these
people that were around him were basically like just pleading
(17:38):
with him and begging him to just disavow the endorsement
of David Duke because David Duke Hauld endorsed him, and
Trump didn't want to do it, didn't want to do it.
Finally he got browbeaten into doing it. By the way,
that's the stuff that he's not going to get brow
beaten into doing anymore.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
No, that's normal. Yeah, why did the Grand Old Party
come to an end?
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Well, I think you alluded to it when we started
this conversation. I think that the Republican Party is the
Trump Party now. I mean there are elements and there
are you know, little bits and pieces of the Old
Party out there. I mean, look at look at the
this debate over Ukraine. So this big debate of whether
or not we're gonna you know, support Ukraine, continue to
support Ukraine in the war against Russia, and it passed overwhelmingly. Eventually,
(18:20):
you know, when when the when the Republicans finally agreed
to have the vote overwhelming in the House, overwhelming in
the Senate, but in the House a majority of Republicans
voted against it. I mean, this is the party of Reagan,
not anymore. It's the party of trumpture of.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
The Republican body.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Well, I think the Republican Party has a real challenge once,
you know, I mean when when Trump is gone. I
think that he's done such a good job of basically
decimating what was there before. I think that they've got
they've got some you know, some real definitional problems. What
do they stand for? What? What does make America Great
(18:58):
Again mean? Because if you look to remember what the
what the Republican platform was in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
And twenty make America Great Again?
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, there was no platform except for that for that statement.
There was no platform usually Like I mean, I've been
covering conventions, right, you know, you have all the detailed
what we stand for in domestic policy, foreign policy, you know,
the cultural issues. Nothing. It was just like Trump's make
America Great Again plan? So you know, what do they
standing for? You know, when he's gone? Now, look, there
(19:27):
are the Democrats have huge problems and you see, I
mean the fact that we see more Hispanic voters than
we've seen voting Republican and in the reflection in the
polls supporting more black voters. It's still you know, Democrats
dominate both groups. But the fact that they're losing the
fact that Democrats are losing supports among blacks and Latinos
(19:51):
to Donald Trump is a sign that Democrats have some
problems too.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Yeah, I think that I think that might be a
little overstated, though. When I look at the numbers that
they're saying for black people, it's like this, it's like yeah,
it's like, yeah, twenty two percent. I'm like, I don't
see that.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
No, no, but but it's but it's definitely you know,
it's up from near zero.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
When you talk about what a Trump White House will
look like if he gets back into White House, can
you can you talk to that?
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Can you speak to Project twenty five? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (20:19):
So this is this is really important and I don't
think people understand and this is something that I think
people have to understand before they go and vote when
Trump comes back in, if he comes back in, the
first test for anybody in a position of authority and
power is going to be loyalty to Donald Trump. I
(20:41):
spent a lot of time reporting and documenting the work
of a guy named Johnny McEntee, who was the guy
that carried Trump's bags. He was actually one of the
first guys I met on the Trump campaign in twenty fifteen.
He'd been like a very junior. He was a kid
just out of Yukon. He'd been a college quarterback. He
came to volunteer for the Trump campaign right after Trump
announced the first time around, and ended up carrying his
(21:03):
bags for much of his presidency. He came back in
twenty twenty. He had been briefly thrown out of the
White House by the way, because he had issues related
to his gambling that were flagged by the FBI, so
John Kelly, Trump's chief of staff, fired him. After Kelly
was gone, McAtee came back and was putting charge of
Presidential Personnel, basically the HR Department for the whole, you know,
(21:25):
executive branch of the US government. And he went about
in the beginning of twenty twenty to try to do
a series of loyalty tests interviews. He sent his people out.
Most of his buddies, like these are kids in their twenties,
he was thirty years old at the time, to interview
from cabinet secretaries on down, you know, testing their support
(21:46):
of Donald Trump. And he engineered the biggest thing he
engineered was the firing of the Secretary of Defense right
after the election, Esper. Remember Esper was the one that
opposed the use of the use of the Insurrection Act
to bring active duty troops in American cities during the
George Floyd protests. Fired top four people the Pentagon fired
(22:07):
replaced by people devoted to Donald Trump. So now mcintee
is part of this thing called Project twenty twenty five,
which is to create a list of who can serve
in the next Trump White House. And you're not going
to have people. Trump brought in some people of real stature,
General Baddis, General Kelly, his White House Council Don McGann,
(22:32):
later White House Counsel Pat Sibaloni, you know, later Bill Barr,
people that had served in previous administrations or were top
military figures who ended up standing up to Trump and
refusing his demands to break the law. Essentially, those people
and people like them will not be back. It'll be
people that Johnny mcintee and his and this group have
(22:54):
decided are truly loyal to the king.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
And what type of threat to democracy? Think that pulls?
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Well, Look, do.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
You think it's overstated when people say that that he's
a threat of democracy.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
I don't think it's overstated because he actually tried to
bring down a presidential election, so he has done that.
But I think that underappreciated. Is you heard the Supreme
Court arguments on this idea of immunity. And by the way,
when Trump talks about immunity, and he talks about it
(23:28):
a lot in his campaign rallies, he's not talking about
acts tied to his official duties. He's talking about immunity.
He's talking about shoot him on Fifth Avenue immunity. And
so you have somebody who is making the case that
the president is above the law, who is running to
(23:49):
be president again. I think that raises real questions about
what does the rule of law means. You know, there
is a theory, the unitary theory of the executive branch.
It is put forward by some serious legal you know,
constitutional scholars that basically says that that the president is
the law. So the way Nixon put it, you remember
in his interview with David Frost after you know, after
(24:09):
he had resigned. It's not illegal if the president does it.
I mean, there's a whole theory that goes along with that,
and that's what essentially Trump is putting out there. So
I worry. You know, there was a big question that
that that I explored after January sixth about what would
have happened if Mike Pence had done what Trump wanted
(24:33):
and what Trump really wanted. By the way, it was
Pence to just throw out those electoral votes and and
and and declare him president.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
Didn't he didn't have the power to do that though.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Well, absolutely not. But who had the power to stop him?
And this is a very this is like, this is
somewhat this is a mind blowing thing. And by the way,
the law has been changed now to be clarified. But
who had the power to stop him? Some people say, well,
the Supreme Court would have Stoppedhi. Well, first of all,
it's not clear at all that the Supreme Court has
(25:03):
any jurisdiction over the rules of Congress in counting electoral votes.
But so let's say the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court
in what army? I mean, there was I talked to
you know, you know Judge Luttig who testified in the
January sixth Committee. I talked to him about it, and
he he said, look, this would have plunged us into
the greatest constitutional crisis that we have ever seen, because
(25:25):
it is it is we didn't Pence did not have
the power to do that. But basically it's unclear if
anybody had the power to stop him.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
You think, to jam it, what the hell does that mean? Though?
Speaker 4 (25:36):
So that means that there's no system in place to
prevent things like that from happening to chooses to do it.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
It means that we have a system of laws that
also depends on there being people of honor and responsibility
to enforce those laws. Wow, and and it it's you know,
you can if you have somebody who was in charge
(26:06):
of the entire system who was willing to just say
screw it, it's unclear what you do about.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
It, which he did. I mean, well, he at least
asked for it.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
He said, we should, you know, get rid of this,
terminate the constitution and overdoor the results of an election.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
I asked John Kelly once way before twenty twenty. So
it was like while he was still Chief of Staff
twenty eighteen or so, what would happen if Trump refused
to leave? I mean it turned out to be kind
of a the would become the question. But I was
just asking hypothetical, and he's like, oh no, no, no,
He's like, there are people that will make him go.
(26:40):
It's like, what do you mean there are people. It's
like he could chain himself to the Resolute and there
was somebody, there would be people that would come in
and cut the chains and escort him out. But I'm
not who.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Yeah, I don't believe it. Yeah yeah, yeah, who Yeah,
especially if they're on his side. But you know, some
people do feel like presidents should be immune from certain crimes.
Like there's people that a point to what's going on
in New York and they'd be like, that's nothing to
take a guy. Yeah, that's nothing to have a president
on trial for my co Holts here says he feels
like he should be immune to some some crimes.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
I don't say that. I just said I don't. So
I said I don't think a president will go to jail.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
That's not what you said.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
What I said, Yes, I said, I said immune from
some crimes.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
I don't think he will go to jail. That that's
my whole thing.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
I don't think. And as I was gonn asked, do
you think he'll go to jail.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
I don't think Trump will.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Go to jail. Even if he's fould guilty on all charges.
I don't think he'll go to jail. Let me let
me take the first part of that. Is there a
case for a president being immune from some things? I
think there is a serious argument on this, and that's
why you had a Supreme Court debate in there. And
this is it's something that's net the Supreme Court is
never defined and the Constitution doesn't give you any any
guidance on you know, the example of Barack Obama taking
(27:50):
out on Alackey in a drone strike, ordering the drone strike.
He was an American citizen. He was also an al
Qaeda terrorist. So you don't want a situation where Obama
leaves office and then he's you know, brought up on
charges for killing an American with a drune strike. So
the so there are there is gray area here. By
(28:12):
the way, what and this is not the constitution, it's
it's uh, it's what they call an OLC memo. It's
it's the Justice Department has established policies going back to Nixon, Uh,
that you cannot prosecute a sitting president. They have to
wait and which which kind of makes sense because you
don't want the and and and and. By the way,
let's say, just to take your hypothetical a little further,
(28:34):
let's leave aside this New York case, which is a
little strange, but the Georgia case, which would mean real
jail time, this case might not mean in jail time,
even if he's guilty, probably won't in New York. What
do you do if a guy is because the Georgia
trial is going to happen, you know, not this year.
It's gonna it's it's gonna it's gonna be put back
a while. But are they gonna do it? If Trump
(28:56):
gets elected and he's president and and and Georgia sentences
him to fifteen years in prison, what is the Georgia like, Uh,
you know, the state police going to go up and
uh and handcoff them. No. No, So I think that
I don't think we'll ever see Donald Trump actually behind bars. Now.
He may be convicted, and there may be you know,
(29:17):
if if you were trying to imagine what would be
best for the country. You can imagine a situation where
he's convicted and the president pardons him. He expresses That's
what I was saying.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
I was saying, I can't see a sitting president or
a president of the United States going to.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Jail house arrested mar A Lago.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
I just can't see that happening, not here, not how
it would look to the world. I just can't see
that happening.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no I I And and then what
does the Secret Service do? Because the Secret Service is
responsible for protecting a former president. Are they sitting in
the cell or maybe outside the cell or what's it?
I mean, it's it raises some really strange question.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
Yeah, America didn't prepare for any of this. America never
thought they would see. We never thought we would be
here with you know, former president are a potential future president.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
I mean I've been covering politics for a long time,
and some of the most memorable speeches that I've ever
seen political speeches were speeches that were given by people
who lost. And one of them that I is like
burned in my brain is because I covered every minute
of the campaign was al Gore. After the Supreme Court
(30:30):
shut down the Florida case, the election was over, Gore
gave the best speech of that campaign, and it was
gracious and it was generous. He was bitter. His people
were ready to his people were ready to storm the
you know, maybe not break into the Capitol, but they
were I mean, I mean the anger among Democrats all
over the country. And he was angry, and people were angry,
and some of them didn't want to even you know,
(30:51):
to wanted to continue to challenge the Supreme Court. And
he came out and he said it's over. And not
only is it over, but I offered or whatever I
can do to help George Bush be a successful president.
And then the other another there have been several of these,
but another one that really sticks to me was John
McCain when he lost to Obama and he congratulates Obama,
(31:13):
and the people in that crowd start booing, and he says, no, no, no, no, no.
So what we do We not only congratulated and wish
him well, but we must all work with him to
make him a successful president. And then that's what we
that's what we've come to be used to, you know,
is an idea that there are hard fought campaigns and
then for a minute at least before the next campaign,
(31:33):
you know things are over. But we've never had a
situation or even consumplate a situation where somebody would refuse
to accept the results of an election.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
Do you feel if al Gore would have fought back
in two thousand that might have presented prevented what we're
currently seeing now, because there's plenty of people who feel
like that that that election was stolen from alga.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
I mean, I don't think he had a He had
a constitutional or illegal avenue to do it, which is
why he conceded. So I think that that I think
that would have backfired by the way I was when
when Bush was inaugurated on January twentieth, Gore was of
(32:14):
course up on the stage and you know, as they
always do, it was a really bitter and cold, you know,
winter day in January, and I was on you know,
they do this thing if you ever watched the presidential inauguration,
there are a couple of flatbed trucks that go in
front of the presidential limo and you usually have you know,
(32:35):
network correspondent to network correspondents on each one and we
kind of we follow along, we do commentary, and we
have the cameras that you I was it was like
it was a frightening ride actually because there were more
protesters on the on the parade route than there were
Bush supporters, and at one point they started to throw
eggs at the presidential limo, and you know, you did
(32:56):
feel for a moment like the country was a little bit,
a little bit on edge, and Gore, to his credit,
I think, kept it, kept it steady. No, I think
the thing that would have I mean, we're getting off
this is a totally different subject. But the thing that
would have prevented where we are now was what that
president did two years later, which was, you know, invade Iraq.
(33:17):
I mean the you know that the Iraq War, which
leads to I mean, you probably don't have a President
Obama and you don't have a President Trump either if
that hadn't happened.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Oh, you think that Obama was a.
Speaker 4 (33:30):
What would you call that, like a I want like
a reaction from people like I want to dig, an
extreme reaction, Like.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
It wasn't that he was an extreme reaction, is that
he was one of the few Democrats who were adamantly
opposed to that war from the start, and that's how
he made his name. If you remember, like all the
you know, that war was supported by Hillary Clinton, by
John Kerry by I mean that that vote, it was
a very bipartisan vote in favor of the invasion of Iraq.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Ooh.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
So with that said, you know when this upcoming election,
you see all of these kids on these college campuses. Yeah,
and you know, they're very anti war, like, they're very
against you know, all of these various wars that are happening.
You know, you know Joe Biden funding Israel's military, you know,
funding Ukraine. Like, they're just against war. Well, how do
you think that's going to have an impact in November?
(34:21):
I think neither one that the presidents are against.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
No, no, I mean you know they certainly, Uh, Donald
Trump is not going to police these people more than
more than Biden. I think it's a real problem for
Biden and for the Democrats, Uh, for two reasons. One
is that he needs he needs he needs support from
(34:45):
core Democratic constituencies. In one of those is young voters,
and young voters have turned decisively against him almost entirely
because of and and he can say, look, we've forgiven
student loans. That's not what they I mean, they're they're
fired up about this. If they either stay home or
you know, vote for a you know, Bobby Kennedy or
(35:06):
or you know, you know, vote third party, that's a
major problem. Uh was on a.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
Cluck Atlanta campus Friday, and a lot of those kids
say they voting for our kid junior.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and and and that's that's that's a
real problem. But the other thing is the feeling of it.
We'll see where these protests go. But you know, the
the wall to wall coverage that you're seeing on you know,
cable news, and you get the sense like things are
falling apart and it's lawless, and and that place right
into Trump. It's like, look, this is Biden's America. Look
(35:40):
at these people.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
Just the images.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Just the images.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
Yeah, and I wonder, you know, when when you rile
all of these kids up and then you tell them, okay,
but in November, we're gonna need you to turn around
and vote for Biden.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
How are you gonna flip that switch?
Speaker 1 (35:52):
So far?
Speaker 4 (35:53):
Are even what's going on in Michigan where you're telling people,
you know, go right in non committed or whatever, I
can't remember. How are you gonna flip the switch come November? Yeah,
after you've gotten him so energized to go against Biden.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
It's it's interesting. So you've had like all these numbers.
You had it in Michigan, but you also had it
in Minnesota, in North Carolina, in Virginia where Democrats were
not voting for Biden in a primary where he had
no opposition. Sometimes it was noncommitted. Sometimes they were voting
for you know, you know, no name candidates. And at
the same time, you've had Trump running without any opposition
(36:27):
now and Nikki Haley is still getting upwards of twenty
percent of the vote, which she did in Pennsylvania, and
she's not running. So twenty twenty had massive turnout, twenty
sixteen had massive turnout. Trump really turned people out, both
in terms of for him and people opposed to him.
What's this election going to be? I mean, this could
be a very different situation.
Speaker 4 (36:49):
Whose votes do you think are going to be the
determining factor? Like will it be women because they're they're
they're fired up that Roe v. Wade got overturned. Is
it going to be African Americans? Is it gonna be Latino,
it's gonna be you voters, like, who do you think.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Look, you've got six, maybe seven battleground states, and if
it's if it looks anything like the last two elections,
it could be a matter of one hundred thousand votes
spread across those states or maybe even less. So any
one of those groups can be decisive. But certainly suburban
women are a huge group of voters. It turned pretty
(37:25):
decisively against Donald Trump in twenty twenty. And we're more agnostic.
I mean, he didn't win them in twenty sixteen, but
they turned decisively against him in twenty twenty. I think
that's probably the most important, you know, single group. But
any I mean you could have I mean Georgia, I mean,
Arizona states were it's just a matter of a few
(37:46):
thousand votes.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
Yeah, you went to the White House courtspondent then this weekend. Yeah,
and Joe Biden said he was frustrated with how the media,
you know, covered him, But he just made me put
out a challenge for the media to do better when
they're talking about you know that Trump is what'd you
think of it?
Speaker 1 (38:03):
You know, I I think there's something to that. I
never put too much stock into presidents criticizing the media
because they they always do it. It's it's it's the
easiest thing.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
You know.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
If only they were covering what I was doing better,
I'd be you know, I'd be out of a seventy
five percent approval rating. I don't think that that's the case,
but I do think that this is this is a
really difficult election for journalists to cover because it's not
like any other election. It's not even like twenty or
twenty sixteen. This is different, you know. And if we
(38:38):
are simply like doing horse race coverage and who's up
in the polls and who's it down, and what the
latest side by side policy differentially, you're not getting at
the point, and the point Biden was getting at is
that you know, Trump is in a real way running
on an anti democratic agenda. And it's not just what
(38:59):
happened on January, but it's all this talk of using
the power of the federal government for retribution and revenge
against anybody who you know has crossed him. Uh, it's
it's it's a it's a different election. It can't really
be covered in the same way.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah, none of this is normal. So why do we
act like it is.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
It's it's not normal. And I worry in some ways
that the country seems to be kind of sleep walking
towards you know, something that nobody's really come to terms
with because they're you know, this, this is, this is
And by the way, you made a point when we
spoke a few months ago about you know, the kind
(39:39):
of cried, crying wolf notion that we have seen. And
for how many cycles have we heard people say this
is the most consequential election of our lifetimes. You know,
Mitt Romney is like, and I destroy America if he's elected.
I mean, I mean, now you're getting to an election
that actually is the most consequential of our lifetimes. And
people are like, Okay, I've.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Heard this before.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Yeah yeah, yeah, wow, Well this book is out right
now tired.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
You could definitely pick Donald Trump at the end of
the Grand Party.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Hey, thank you.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Absolutely, We're gonna.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Need you back up here when we get closer to
that November.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Anytime.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
I'm up here, I'm up here a lot. So this
is fun. It's good. And you're right up the road
from gm A.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
So Jonathan, call ladies and gentlemen. It's the breakfast club,
good morning
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Wake that ass up in the morning breakfast club
The Breakfast Club News
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