Trump's promise to exact retribution and revenge upon a possible
return to the White House
is not normal political speech either.
And yet it is become the central tenet of his
third presidential bid.
Joining me now Steve Bennett,
producer for The Rachel Maddow Show,
an MSNBC political contributor, also author of the book The
Impostors,
How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics.
Also with us is Molly Jung Fast,
special correspondent for Vanity Fair,
host of the Fast Politics Podcast,
and an MSNBC political analyst.
Good morning to both of you,
Molly. I guess we're trying to figure out,
because we've always tried to figure out what Donald Trump
he steps away from normalcy.
He goes farther than anyone else does,
and we wonder what that's supposed to mean.
And some people have become numb to it.
It's just Donald Trump doing what Donald Trump does.
Does it bother you? Does,
does anything about the way he talks now,
the physical mocking, the the,
the crudeness, the language he uses about immigrants,
the the discussions he has about bloodbaths?
Does does any of this trouble you more than normal,
or are you troubled the same?
The scariest part of Donald Trump's rhetoric now is that
he wants to root out enemies that are domestic.
So for a long time he focused on lies about
people from Mexico and lies about,
you know, immigrants and immigrant children.
By the way, he did a long tangent last night
about immigrant children not speaking English.
Well, he was slurring, which is both ironic and also
awful.
Umm. But the thing that strikes me as the scariest
is the part of his plan where he's going to
go after domestic enemies That is totally new.
It reminds me of the very scary McCarthy stuff in
the 50s,
and it could really open the door to some really
terrifying stuff for
for all of us.
I'm gonna send you and Steve some links to properties
that I've been looking at in Toronto.
Steve Bennett, Let's talk about some of the language as
it relates to to immigrants.
Just this week, I'm going to be talking to a
member of Congress shortly.
But just this week, Democrats helped keep Mike Johnson in
his spot
to avoid sort of more chaos in Congress.
And Mike Johnson immediately started talking about a bill to
make it illegal for undocumented immigrants to vote prior to
citizenship.
I don't know about you Steve,
but I I always assumed it was illegal for undocumented
immigrants who are not citizens of this country to vote.
So the the, the red meat continues all the way
down to Mike Johnson whom Democrats just saved,
right. Did you notice Ali what he said during that
those remarks on Capitol Hill?
You're saying that in his mind that intuitively he knows
that there are lots of anti
illegal immigrants voting in in elections.
Intuitively as if intuitively we shouldn't.
We shouldn't pay attention to what actually happens and we
shouldn't pay attention to election data and all the various
resources that are available to us.
We should just intuitively understand that right wing talking points
are true,
which is absurd. It happened the same week that Donald
Trump said that when it comes to election results we
should follow our hearts.
Not not election results. We should just believe what we
want to believe.
It reminded me a lot of Stephen Colbert's old Comedy
Central character.
We talked about truthiness. We shouldn't pay attention was true.
We should pay attention to what we want to believe
to be true.
And now we have. Instead of a comedic character,
we have the Speaker of the House and the presumptive
Republican Party presidential nominee embracing those same tactics and presenting
them to the public as if they were legitimate.
Right Molly. The the trial,
the Trump trial last week was,
was compelling. Stormy Daniels was on the stand.
She made for a compelling and and relatively relaxed seeming
witness in that kind of environment because she has been
one of those people who's been subject to scorn
and and and derision by Donald Trump.
But if you like what you saw last week,
this week is going to be much hotter.
Michael Cohen, who is now,
you know, he was fixer and now arch nemesis,
is set to testify for several days beginning tomorrow.
This is going to get very hot because Trump's folks
are all there to discredit
Michael Cohen, to say that he is an admitted liar.
The prosecution has to prove that whatever you think of
of Michael Cohen,
he's got literally receipts.
One of the things that they've done that I think
has been very smart in this trial is they started
the trial with David Pecker and David Pecker did not
have an axe to grind with Donald Trump.
He's still good friends with Donald Trump and he really
set the table for this case.
He showed that this was a catch and kill,
that this was something they did,
that he even knew it was maybe a campaign finance
violation because he had talked to his in house lawyer.
I mean, it was just one of these really good
examples of how
Donald Trump has a very sort of emotional way of
dealing with this trial.
You know, Candidate Trump and Defendant Trump are often at
odds.
And So what you saw with Pecker was that his
his people didn't go that hard on Pecker because Pecker's
his friend.
But Pecker really had him in a lot of these
facts kind of dead to rights.
So now we have Stormy Daniels.
Last week, Stormy Daniels again did not.
You know it didn't matter if there was sex,
right? That wasn't part of the case.
But because Trump's people went so hard on this whole
you're lying thing,
it ended up being part of the case.
And I think that was really unhelpful for Trump too.
For me, as a feminist,
what made me the most upset about the Stormy Daniels
situation was they just were so hard on her and
and in a really kind of misogynistic way.
Now we'll have Michael Cohen again.
This case I think has gone,
has gone worse for Trump because Trump has been involved
in sort of pushing his lawyers to do his bidding.
I think that's a very likely scenario.
Mr. By the way, is how this goes in the
Supreme Court.
It's one of those situations where it's like,
are the the lawyers who know the law in charge
of this,
or are they just trying to figure out ways to
get Donald Trump's not legal arguments into a legal setting?
Steve, this trial comes at a time when
polling does indicate that this election is very close.
Now, look, some people pay much more attention to actual
polls than I do.
I pay attention to trend lines
more than the actual poll,
but 538 at the beginning of May said fewer than
one percentage points separated Biden and Trump the same time.
Four years ago, Biden was up six points.
What's your take away from sort of the world we're
in,
the world Donald Trump is in,
and the upcoming election,
right? Well, there's good news and bad news for people,
no matter what your perspective.
I mean, if you're looking at this from the perspective
of someone who wants to see President Biden win a
second term and see Donald Trump lose,
you could take some solace in the fact that this
polls have been incredibly steady for months.
Donald Trump has a very narrow lead.
We're looking at possibly less than one percentage point when
you average the polls together and with six months to
go,
that's it's very easy to imagine the president,
the incumbent president being able to overcome that margin.
It's really, we're talking about half a percentage point.
But when you compare it against where we were four
years ago,
the picture is much brighter For Republicans.
Donald Trump trailed Joe Biden in head to head matchups
every month, every week, every day,
throughout all of 2020. That we're not seeing that right
now.
And so from the perspective of a Democrat who wants
to see them see Biden win and Trump lose,
it tells us that. It tells us that that party
has a lot of work to do between now and
November.
And if you're Republican, you have reason to be believe
that you're in a better position than you were four
years ago.
But at the same time,
threats remain. So watch this space
Molly. I want to go back to what you said
about Stormy Daniels and the the misogyny in the trial
was very obvious.
They were they were doing what people call slut shaming
her.
I I don't think it worked.
My my watching of it said it didn't work.
But what it did see serve to do,
including the part in which Stormy Daniels
brought up the discussion about about sex that didn't,
as you say, need to be part of the trial,
is it reminds people about who Donald Trump is.
On the most charitable side.
You could say he's a womanizer.
He has also been somebody who has been
credibly convicted of sexual assault.
So, you know, this that that part of the story
remains there for women who I think have a lot
to think about in this election,
particularly the fact that in half the country,
their rights, their reproductive rights are gone.
Yeah, it was a really stark moment,
I thought, when we saw her up on the stand
and we heard her talk about,
you know, what, the store,
the way she recounts the story is not,
does not sound very. I mean,
it's just a very dark kind of story.
And in the end, she says,
you know, I took responsibility for this and what happened
is,
you know, on me. But but to have this lawyer
on cross saying,
you know, well, since you're a porn star,
doesn't he just have the right to do whatever he
wants?
I'm sorry But as a woman like
and as a feminist and as a mother and a
daughter.
I mean it was just
a pretty horrific scene and and the fact that Trump
the presidential nominee is behind this and we know he
is because he has such a,
that kind of relationship with his lawyers
is in, in my mind.
Pretty darn. Yeah. And that will be a reminder to
everybody about the way he thinks about these things.
Thank you to you both.
It is fantastic to see you.
Hey Molly. Thank extra thanks to you.
We got to spend a little extra time on Friday
night in New York.
So thanks to. Thanks to you for that.