Kirk backed into a corner, now carrying the permanent stain
of a criminal conviction. Donald Trump is proving that a
tiger
believe never changes its stripes.
Responding to his guilty verdict in the election interference hush
money trial like any mob boss would or wannabe autocrat
with more threats and intimidation.
The same person who sent a violent mob to the
US Capitol.
A mob that nearly killed his own vice president said
this about the very real possibility that he could be
sentenced to house arrest or even prison.
I don't know that the public would stand it.
You know, I don't. I'm not sure the public would
stand for it
with a tried house arrest for I think,
I think it would be tough for the public to
take.
You know, at a certain point,
there's a breaking point.
Now to avoid prison or harsh sentence.
Donald Trump might have taken the other path,
right? He could be showing remorse for his crimes,
at least publicly. He could back off the frequent near
daily attacks on the judge overseeing his case,
Judge Juan Marshawn, as well as Judge
Marshawn's daughter. He could stop testing the limits of the
gag order imposed on him.
But of course, this is Donald Trump we're talking about.
One former prosecutor tells The Washington Post this quote,
he's almost daring the judge to do it.
What are you going to do about it?
Instead, though, Trump and his allies are challenging the most
basic principles,
not just of our democracy,
but any democracy, the rule of law.
The near daily attacks about a weaponized justice system are
happening while the Biden Justice Department puts the
president's own son on trial.
Starting today, he's on trial on gun charges that are
rarely brought and his constitutionality has been questioned in news
reports in The New York Times and other places.
The Bulwark puts it this way.
Quote. In all likelihood, in fact,
Trump got more process than he was due.
Nobody in the history of the American criminal justice system
has had access to his election donor funded trial defense
team,
his supplicant band of congressional Republicans attacking the rule of
law and the criminal justice system on his behalf.
His Truth Social megaphone of lies and his compliance Supreme
Court majority
who effectively excised section three of the 14th Amendment from
the Constitution on his behalf and punted the January 6th
criminal trial until after the election in order to craft
criminal immunity for him, one of his biggest allies from
the so-called Red Tie Brigade.
The Red Tie Brigade was there almost every day of
his trial and someone who appeared in court with the
defendant is the current Speaker of the House,
Mike Johnson. While Johnson is now asking for the Supreme
Court already handing Trump a gift in the January 6th
case to do him a solid in this one.
Listen to that.
I I do believe the Supreme Court should step in.
Obviously, this is totally unprecedented and it's dangerous to our
system.
This will be overturned, guys.
There's no question about it.
It's just going to take some time to do it.
Really.
There are signs that this dark vision from Earth Two
is butting up against plain old common sense from those
of us over here on Earth One.
Not everyone is buying Team Trump's desperate attempt to spin
the first ever criminal conviction of an ex president and
presumptive presidential nominee.
Here's a dose of much needed reality from the rather
surprising corner of the culture media universe.
Sports talk host and self-described political moderate Colin Cowherd.
Donald Trump is now a felon.
His campaign chairman was a felon.
So is his deputy campaign manager,
his personal lawyer, his chief strategist,
his national security advisor, his trade advisor,
his foreign policy advisor, his campaign fixer and his company
CFO.
They're all felons
judged by the company you keep.
It's a cabal of convicts.
If everybody in your social circle is a felon,
yeah, I don't think it's rigged.
I don't think the world's against you.
And to get people to agree on anything,
34 counts O for 34.
I mean, that's a that,
that's, that's a batting slump.
Even the New York Mets could be impressed with
O for 34.
In politics, we call that breaking through.
It's where we start today with some of our favorite
experts and friends with us at the table,
former top official at the Department of Justice,
MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissmann's back.
Plus former US Senator Co host of
MSNBC's How to Win 2024 podcast,
Claire Mccaskill's at the table.
Also at the table, former lead investigator for the January
6th Select Committee,
Tim Hafey's here,
Tim Hafey. That Bulwark poll,
the one that is the gut punch always.
This is Supreme Court entertaining immunity so that what just
happened in New York doesn't happen in Washington to hold
Trump or to adjudicate Trump's conduct around January 6th.
Yeah. We're waiting with baited breath,
Nicole, for the Supreme Court to rule whether they reject
outright the immunity claim or issue some sort of partial
verdict of dispositive effect on the January 6th case.
I've always thought that was the case,
sort of the most serious case in terms of the
relative culpability of conduct,
subverting democracy, preventing the transfer of power.
That is sort of the headliner here.
And it's getting increasingly unlikely as time passes,
with no opinion from the Supreme Court,
that that case could be adjudicated by the election.
It's interesting, though, to see Mike Johnson sort of ride
the wave of,
yeah, they did us a solid on this,
Let's do a solid on that.
It's like saying it's not even the quiet part out
loud.
It's the loud part at the top of his lungs.
Yeah, the Supreme Court's not supposed to do anybody a
solid.
They're supposed to do justice.
And look, give them the benefit of the doubt.
They saw this as an issue of significance,
of constitutional magnitude that needed to be decided by the
Supreme Court.
But the fact that it took them a while to
make that decision,
It took them a while to make,
but did it need to be decided by the Supreme
Court?
Didn't the appeals court, they could have said,
we agree with the appellate court,
which would have been speaking right,
which would have been deciding that issue of constitutional magnitude
without an argument,
without a Supreme Court opinion,
it would essentially loud the DC Circuit opinion to go
into effect.
Given the benefit of the doubt that they were,
they believed that some sort of written opinion was appropriate
here.
But the fact that it's taken a long time to
schedule it for argument,
to brief it, then schedule for argument,
and now weeks after the argument to be decided increasingly
looks like it is going to delay the ultimate adjudication
of those cases.
And that does, in effect,
do the defendant a solid When you've got a member
who flew two flags flown at the insurrection above their
house,
do they deserve the benefit of the doubt?
No. There's an A clear appearance issue.
I won't go as far as to say Judge Alito
is a supporter of insurrection or aid in an abetted
insurrection.
It just doesn't matter. That's not the standard.
The standard is, is there an appearance issue?
And if a Supreme Court Justice is flying symbols that
were waved in anger at the Capitol above his residences,
it absolutely creates an appearance.
So for confidence in the court,
which is an important value that the court and the
justices themselves have to promote,
stepping away would obviously be the most appropriate thing to
do.
What's interesting to me and,
and, and the reason I,
I pressed him on that is that
in smearing the rule of law,
they have diminished the people that they perceive to be
on their side as well,
right? Because the public, I mean,
Gallup asks everybody and the other,
the other group that's been asking,
I can't think of the pollster,
but both institutions have support for the Supreme Court at
40 or below of the public.
People who think they're doing a bad job is over
60.
And the near daily assault on the rule of law
is harming even some of the people they perceive in
their heads to be their allies.
Yeah, I'm not sure that they are hurting them as
much as the Supreme Court has hurt itself.
Right. The ethical transit, they they own all the ethics
problems that was not foisted upon them.
But you're right that the folks who are following Trump
down this dead end alley,
that our justice system is fatally flawed
don't realize what's at the end of that alley.
And that is that everyone's rights are impacted.
And the thing when they all came out and said,
well now the red state DA's
need to go after Democrats.
It's like they don't understand how this process works.
Why haven't a bunch of Democrats been charged since Trump
was convicted?
Why didn't they Gen. up a bunch of charges?
Because people who do these jobs know you have to
have evidence.
And evidence is not a Democrat or a Republican.
Evidence is evidence, and no one is going to bring
a charge with no evidence.
First of all, they could lose their law license.
Secondly, they've got a judge they've got to answer to.
3rd, there's juries that are selected with the input of
the defense.
So the whole system is set up to protect
people's individual rights through a system of checks and balances
within our justice system.
And part of that is the state system in the
federal system,
which you see in play in these cases where you
have a state system where Trump can't be pardoned if
he's re elected.
So it, it, it's worked so well
and it has been the envy of the world.
And I'm going to hold out hope with these two
guys because we both believe,
we all three believe in it very much.
We've all three been a part of it.
That it they're not going to destroy it.
They are putting it in jeopardy in a way that
I think every American should be frightened about.
Well, and, and what's Trump talking about in the public
is,
I mean, did Lindsey Graham say that Lindsey Graham's calling
and wants his fox sound bite back?
He said that already. And the
country's still standing. Well, oh,
the, you know, if you,
if you do this, the,
the, the public won't stand for it.
I mean, first of all,
this is like we, we managed to actually hold that
trial.
There was a, you know,
there were days that we were down there and,
you know, there was like one,
you know, kind of somewhat,
let's just say not totally,
let's say a sort of representative New Yorker who you
might see on the subway was there.
There was one guy when I was there.
I mean, this huge space for protesters,
of which there was one person with a cross and
a cowbell.
And I was thinking, it's very New York.
Yeah. And I was thinking,
oh, kind of like taking the subway.
And so, you know, we managed to get through all
of that without huge protests that,
you know, this justice system prevailed.
I have to say, I want to go back to
just your opening because the
the contrast of somebody who is basically saying
not basically who is saying I don't believe in the
rule of law.
I don't believe in a system where facts matter,
where that we act out of principle.
And what is before us is a president who is
living
the rule of law. He is living it in the
most
in the in the most personal way.
He is not telling DOJ to stand down,
which you know is his power to do.
It is a norm that it is that he the
reason he's not doing it.
He could tell the Department of Justice,
this is what you need to do.
He is not pardoning his son,
which he could do. These are federal charges.
He is not doing that.
That is a power. He has a power for both
of those.
He is not doing it because he is living
what it means to have a rule of law in
this country.
And then is it isn't.
I mean, if you want to know if he believes
it,
you, you could actually see what is happening with his
own son.
I mean, I mean, I'm not saying that he should
get credit for it because it is the right thing,
the norm, but Trump is beneath it.
Yeah, exactly. It's that you,
you the idea that you can't see it.
Or is that really what's going on?
Or isn't he telling the Department of Justice to go
to get a state prosecutor to bring a state case
when you can see
the what he is actually living by is his own
son is being prosecuted and he is
allowing the norms that are required to live in a
democracy to go forward,
you know?