Lisa Rubin is an MSNBC legal correspondent who's been watching
from inside the courtroom.
Andrew Rice also in the courtroom today.
He's a writer in your magazine where he just profiled
Trump's defense attorney Todd Blanche in a new cover story.
And they join me now.
Great to have you both here.
We just start top line impressions from the day-to-day,
Lisa. I think my top line impression is that David
Pecker has a whole lot to say.
One of the things that he said at the very
beginning was he was asked how often he communicated with
Trump.
And he said after Trump became a candidate,
their conversations increased, not decreased.
You would expect a presidential candidate.
We get so busy that they wouldn't really have time
for their old friend David Pecker.
And yet they still found time to meet once a
month,
talked on the phone roughly once a week and sometimes
more.
We heard about two of those conversations today bookended sort
of the beginning in the end of the testimony that
August
2015 meeting that you talked about
and that phone call during
2016 about Karen McDougal having been vetted and what Trump
wanted to know about that conversation.
I have to assume there are a lot more conversations
that David Pecker had directly with Donald Trump and that
the prosecution is going to elicit testimony about them in
the ensuing days. Andrew, what do you think?
I mean, I thought the most relevant thing to,
to watch was actually sort of the,
the ongoing dichotomy between what's going on inside the courtroom
and what's happening outside the courtroom.
And, and I think that it came into relief really
when at the beginning of the day,
when there was a hearing about whether Donald Trump was
going to be held in contempt for some of the
things that he had said untruth social about witnesses,
even about a juror in that case.
And, and, and Todd Blanche,
the, the guy that I,
that I profiled in the story,
got up and said, you know,
that, that our, our client has a right to talk
about the two systems of justice that are being shown
here in this courtroom.
And I think this is something that we're going to
see a lot,
which is basically Donald Trump is not
if he can win an acquittal or if he can
win a mistrial,
that's great for him, but he's running against the system.
Well, OK, let me a follow up on that because
Blanche also at one point says to Michelle,
and we're going to talk about this in a second
and more in greater detail when he says like he's
doing his best or something,
or like we're trying our best.
And that's when Rashawn says,
like, you're losing credibility. Like,
come on, buddy. What is
Blanche's angle here? Like it is the case that your
understanding of Trump's approach to this is not
primarily as legal, that it's primarily about this sort of
making this broader case in the court of public opinion.
Is, is Blanche on board with that strategy?
Well, I think that Blanche is ultimately trying to,
and they've been made it very clear they're hoping to,
to find a juror, 1 juror really who will,
will hold out and won't vote to convict Donald Trump.
And
they're hoping for a mistrial.
And if there is a mistrial,
of course Donald Trump will,
will go out on the courtrooms,
courthouse steps and say, I've been completely exonerated even here
in New York.
And, and, and so that's,
that's their strategy. Ultimately the the back and forth with
the judge,
which is happening outside of the presence of the jury
has not bled into the trial right too much.
But it's going to be an interesting dynamic to watch.
Yeah. In terms of this,
you know, the the the Pecker testimony and the notion
of like a mistrial.
And one of the things that
just going back to the transcripts is just sort of
striking me again.
And maybe this is such an obvious point,
but just indulge me for a second,
is like, you know, sometimes you'll have like in a
classic sort of mystery courtroom drama,
there's a question of like,
was it that person driving the car?
Did this actually happen in this case?
It's like it's clear as day.
All this stuff happened. It's clear as day.
Like, is there any real doubt that David Pecker met
with Michael Cohen and Donald Trump that they set up
the catch and go?
I mean, I guess you could think that peckers lying
and that Michael Cohen's lying and that all the but
the basics of the story that's being presented here just
seemed to me like pretty much bedrock solid.
But let me push back on that a little bit.
I think that one of the things that the prosecution
has to establish and was surprising to many people in
the courtroom is the extent of Donald Trump's own involvement
here, which of course, as the bar here,
yes, Yeah, right, is necessary not only contextually but to
prove the crime.
The other thing is we all know about what I'll
call the antecedent story,
the setup of the hush money payments.
The thing that the prosecutors have to really prove though,
to show falsification of business records as a felony is
that there was a cover up with the intent to
commit or conceal a crime.
And tying Donald Trump expressly to that,
I think is something that none of us have really
seen their evidence about yet.
And we're all looking for it totally.
But I guess my point is that on this part
of it,
right, which is not the criminal part.
It's just like, did this arrangement happen?
It just seems clear that it did happen.
I mean, again, I'm not in the jury,
but just from the reporting we have from the testimony
from.
And I also wonder also because I can't quite get
it from the transcript.
From the transcript, Pecker seems pretty comfortable and forthcoming as
a witness.
How would you describe it?
I thought that it was,
you know, maybe maybe I'm naive,
but I but I thought
it was pretty shocking to hear him talk with such.
Yes, exactly. That's how it
comes up nature of the of the relationship that he
had with,
with Donald Trump. And he actually can't quite candidly said
on the stand that this was not normal.
This wasn't this even by the standards of the National
Enquirer.
These transactions were not normal.
They had a very special relationship with Donald Trump
that they had forged. And
Donald, they wanted to see Donald Trump
elected president and they were acting sort of as an
adjunct arm of the campaign.
And that, I mean, this is has nothing to do
with
the criminal child per SE.
But just as disclosures go,
the part about the seating negative stories like he would
just send us stuff and we like that is shocking
and would be in any other league media enterprise,
an unbelievable scandal. And also gives you a little sense
of how Donald Trump projects his view of the media,
like, his view of the media being like they all
function like that.
Because that's what the Inquirer did for me.
Yeah. And I think the other thing that sort of
was lost until today is what is David Pecker getting
out of this?
And in complimenting and praising Donald Trump,
that's what made his testimony so damning.
He said he was the top celebrity among Inquirer readers,
that he was knowledgeable about his business,
that he was detail oriented,
micromanagerial. All the things that he said about Donald Trump
that were complimentary are eventually going to be his doom
as Pecker tells his story.
And also there's a little bit of a time machine
thing about going back to The Apprentice as a hit
show and like I'm trying to sell magazines,
man, and this guy is got a big show and
we're and he moves product.
So correct. We need to be close to him.
Lisa Rubin and Andrew Rice,
that was great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you.