Trump falls into trap at State of the Union

23:04Norm Eisen:Thanks, Brian. Great to be back with you.

23:06Brian Tyler Cohen:So Alex, you have been speaking to a lot of people on both sides of the aisle and especially about the Epstein files, because this is one of the principal issues that everybody's talking about right now. I'm curious, especially among your right leaning guests that you have on air, does there seem to be a way for these people to avoid talking about the Epstein files? Or does it seem like this is just an issue that's going to dog them from now until midterms and possibly even beyond?

23:31Norm Eisen:I think it depends. I mean, there are some folks on the right who are really concerned about the Epstein files and have called out President Trump for it. And we've seen that on the air. And there are other folks who I think find it in their professional best interest to defend President Trump no matter what. And they'll pretty much say whatever he wants them to say. Now, in terms of whether it will dog President Trump, I think we don't know that yet because we haven't seen all the files. So based off of what has come out so far, there is no smoking gun that, you know, implicates the president in any sort of criminal conspiracy.

24:10Norm Eisen:There's sort of lots of things that folks on the left are concerned about, but there's nothing big. I still contend that the issue that is the biggest potential problem for President Trump is the economy. Right. And the cost of living. That is what most people deal with on a day in, day out basis. And that is an issue that nobody, Republican or Democrat, can lie to people about because when they go to the store and they see the prices, the price is what the price is, not what some politician tells you the price is.

24:42Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, on this issue of we don't know, you know, we don't know whether there's any smoking gun. I mean, you obviously have covered Trump, you know, for the last decade. In fact, you've spoken with him personally. You've had the opportunity to ask him questions when when he's come to California to do press conferences or whatever it may be. you know that this guy would not voluntarily subject himself to the news cycles that he's subjecting himself to right now if what was in these files wasn't worth hiding and so how do you think about that aspect of it because he knows the media better than any other you know president ever has he knows the media better than most people could could imagine and so he understands that if if, you know, if he is subjecting himself voluntarily to this media narrative, it has to be for a reason.

25:35Norm Eisen:Probably. It's probably true, but we don't we don't know that for sure. And so, you know, based off of the way we do things, we have to do it based off of facts and things that you can prove. We do know, for example, like there were years of speculation on Russia stuff. And there was not at the end a whole lot that was provable against him. And so there are folks that are his supporters who would say there's a lot of media hysteria over things which sometimes turn out to not be true. And there's nuance when it comes to the Epstein files, too. Some people who just are in some ways mentioned in emails are not necessarily the same people who were having sex with underaged women.

26:18Norm Eisen:There's nuance to it as well.

26:19Brian Tyler Cohen:Yeah, and I know in one of those situations, we're talking about Casey Wasserman, who is in charge of the Olympics here in Los Angeles in 2028. Can you speak on that story a little bit?

26:30Norm Eisen:So Casey Wasserman is the head of LA28, which means he is the person overseeing the Olympic Games coming to Los Angeles, which obviously is gonna be a huge world story. He helped bring them here about 10 years ago. He's been working on this project. Very, very influential in Los Angeles as a talent manager. He owns a talent agency called Wasserman that does a lot of folks in entertainment and in sports. So his name was invoked in the Epstein files. He exchanged flirty emails with Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's girlfriend. and we don't have any evidence of him exchanging emails even with Jeffrey Epstein.

27:12Norm Eisen:We have no evidence of all of him ever going to the island or doing anything with anyone underage. Casey Wasserman was married at the time, so kind of a scumbag thing for your wife to be exchanging flirty emails with another woman, but that would not be a fireable offense if you owned a company in terms of HR, just because somebody flirted with somebody else. But his name is associated with Jeffrey Epstein now because it's in this tranche of email. So the board who hires and fires him so far have stood with him, but some politicians have slowly started to call for him to be out calling him a distraction, so much so that he decided to sell his talent agency and say that he was a distraction.

27:59Norm Eisen:So now there's an effort to get him out of LA-28. We'll see what ends up happening with that or not. But it's sort of proof of a bigger thing. Like, for example, there's a guy named Steve Hilton who's running for governor of California. And there's an email that mentions him that says that he was interested in setting up a meeting with Woody Allen to talk to his boss at the time, David Cameron, but it was in the tranche of email. So some of the Democrats that are running for a California governor have said, Steve Hilton is in the Epstein files. He should drop out of the race. And when you dig a little deeper, you're like, really?

28:39Norm Eisen:So some of it, I think that the name Epstein is getting associated with people and it's become like a scarlet letter and a bunch of politicians are reacting, but not every story is the same. And when you look at the facts of somebody like Prince Andrew or former Prince Andrew, or what he's involved with and accused of much, much, much more serious. Or even you look at somebody like Deepak Chopra, who has been a spiritual guru for so many, and you look at the emails and him wanting Israeli young women and all the rest of that is just really gross. So I don't think it's one size fits all when it comes to the three million plus documents associated with Jeffrey Epstein.

29:19Brian Tyler Cohen:But isn't it interesting how people's threshold for those who are involved in the Epstein files is so sensitive, and in most cases, as it should be, and yet this administration doesn't seem to be carrying that burden. Like we're seeing foreign governments, basically, like like people who are engaged in in in the UK government or or in northern Europe. I mean, this is having such a massive effect on on those people who were in any way implicated with Epstein. And they're all, you know, anybody who was involved is getting ousted from their positions. And we're seeing that all over the world. And yet for this administration, it doesn't seem to be having any impact whatsoever.

30:01Norm Eisen:Well, in fact, the opposite. They seem to be going out of their way not to even address it. When Pam Bondi's had an opportunity to even look at Epstein survivors during a testimony, she chose not to do it. Yeah, it is interesting seeing the way that the world reacts to things. It was also interesting, Brian, just this past week, I was anchoring live and in the middle of our show, we went to South Korea where there was an incident where the former president was convicted of inciting an insurrection and potentially sentenced to life in prison. Now, we know how that went here. America couldn't even charge them.

30:44Norm Eisen:And now they're potentially investigating Jack Smith for investigating President Trump. So it is interesting to see around the world, there does seem to be a different threshold when it comes to the government and to going after high profile officials. I mean, to be to go after the former president of a country and convict him of something or to go after Prince Andrew. I mean, the king's brother, you know, no royal has been prosecuted for a crime in hundreds of years. And the fact that he's, you know, now potentially going to face justice is really something if you think about it.

31:17Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, it's kind of it's kind of these these two stories may seem disparate, but but they're one in the same. I mean, this is the same story of, you know, our inability to hold this criminal cabal of pedophiles to account is not dissimilar to our inability to hold the ruling class politicians to account when they've done something wrong. And ironically enough, it's happening at the hands of the same person. Like Trump has the ability right now to release the Epstein files and his DOJ has the ability to hold these co-conspirators to account. And of course, Pam Bondi will say, oh, there's we don't even know if there are no co-conspirators, which has already been disproven.

31:52Brian Tyler Cohen:We've already seen pictures disproving as much. We know that there are at least six co-conspirators who Ro Khanna and Thomas Massey have uncovered within two hours of just looking at some of these files when they had the opportunity to do so at at at the DOJ. And so, you know, that whole talking point has fallen on its face. But then Trump himself is the one who was able to evade prosecution, you know, in all of these four cases where he was indicted. And so, you know, this is somebody who has shown whether it's, you know, pedophiles or the ruling class elites, that Trump does not value this idea of holding a certain tranche of people, a certain elitist tranche of people to account.

32:32Norm Eisen:And that's sort of, I do think, actually some of the political danger for Donald Trump, because the way that the Epstein files for the MAGA base has been for years is this idea that there is a different set of justice for people in power. And the way that they're seeing this play out kind of makes that point. I mean, you hear somebody like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has now had a public break from President Trump over this issue, articulating that point. And it also goes back to the affordability issue. I actually think those two things are tied together as well, because the argument was you're going to fight for us.

33:13Norm Eisen:You're not going to forget about us. You are going to deliver for us. And if that's not really happening and the prices aren't really lower, but but they see the rich folks who clearly did something wrong getting pardoned because they know the president or they're they're rich. That doesn't play great. It doesn't look great that you're saying we're going after Venezuelan drug boats and other things because you're concerned about narcotics. And then you pardon a former leader who has a bunch of criminal convictions for drug offenses. You know, some of this stuff doesn't look great. And I do think that there's a danger in that.

33:56Brian Tyler Cohen:And of course, the midterms coming up in November are going to be a referendum in large part on exactly that point. And, you know, we can talk about the broader midterms. But I think while I have you and while I have this opportunity, it's worth talking about the California gubernatorial race, because this is something that you've been especially focused on as somebody who's obviously been the principal reporter out here in California. So how is the California gubernatorial race looking? Because from my vantage, it seems like a lot of Democrats have jumped in. No one's really caught fire. And in fact, there is some risk that because of the way our jungle primary system works, we could see not one, but two Republicans advance to the general election.

34:40Norm Eisen:Yeah, I mean, the primary is kind of nuts. I mean, if you think about it, so this weekend there was a convention in San Francisco. All of the Democrats were there. Matt Mahan, the mayor of San Jose, got in too late to be considered for the endorsement. To get the party's endorsement, you need to get 60 percent of the state delegates to be behind you. Eric Swalwell was closest to 60 percent at 23 percent. Yeah, not too close to 60 percent. So that gives you a sense of the party leaders. They're not ready to coalesce behind somebody. There are a bunch of people running that are all sort of crowded up against each other.

35:19Norm Eisen:We are starting to see some trend lines in the race. Eric Swalwell seems to be doing pretty well, especially with a lot of the anti-Trump people. Tom Steyer, the billionaire who ran for president, a lot of people remember him, climate change activist, spent a lot of money to try to impeach Donald Trump. He is spending a lot of money. He's already put in$27 million of his own money. He's kind of the only person with ads on TV, and it is starting to work. You're starting to see him pick up some steam. He is interestingly going as the billionaire who's going for the working class person. So he's trying to be the populist candidate and going after labor unions, which traditionally have a lot of power in California.

36:00Norm Eisen:Katie Porter, who a lot of your audience is gonna be familiar with, of course, she's been struggling since those videos of her came out. You start to see her down in the polls a little bit. But there is this phenomenon of potentially two Republicans. It's unlikely. The top data status scientist in the state who runs simulations of this and kind of is the go-to said it's about a 12 % chance based off of where the polls are right now. But 12 % is not 1%. I mean, that's an insignificant thing. And if you think about the potential result of that, that California then would have a Republican governor and there wouldn't even be a Democrat to vote for on the general election, which could have a huge impact down ballot on all these close congressional races and other statewide office races as well.

36:52Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, to that point, I mean, have have these candidates been asked at a certain point when it becomes clear that you're not going to be in the top two or three? Are you willing to drop out so that we don't end up in a situation where we've got one or even two Republicans at the top of the ticket?

37:08Norm Eisen:I guess the question is who asked them, though? I mean, that yes, I think I think I think we will get to that point. I'm not sure when we will get to that point, but a lot of these folks don't really have anything to lose. So they may not listen. Right. Right. And we'll see. There really has not been a lot of advertising so far. That's going to come. We're still a bit of a ways away from it. You know, the primaries in June. So we have a little bit of time. But but who knows? I mean, stranger things have happened. There's a lot of egos in that race.

37:40Brian Tyler Cohen:I'm curious on the Katie Porter front. It feels like we're in a political environment, thanks to Trump, that nothing sticks to anyone ever. Like everything that feels like it would have been a career ending scandal, you know, five, 10 years ago, just comes and goes like a fart in a hurricane right now. And so why do you think that in a situation where Katie Porter was, was extraordinarily rude to, to her, to one of her staffers, which again, in an in, in like the before times would have been a big scandal, but now we're in the Trump era. Why do you think that that stuck?

38:15Norm Eisen:Well, I mean, the worst thing in politics can be a visualization of something that people already think about you. And so Katie Porter has never been the most popular person in the Democratic Party in California. I mean, she got into major fights with Nancy Pelosi when she was in Washington. When she ran for U.S. Senate against Adam Schiff and Barbara Lee, you know, There's 40 plus members of the congressional delegation. One of them endorsed her, one.

38:45Brian Tyler Cohen:Wow, I actually didn't know that. That is not a lot.

38:47Norm Eisen:Yeah, Robert Garcia was the only one who did. So she didn't have a lot of friends to back her up to begin with. And that was part of the issue. When she ran for Senate statewide, she didn't do that well. I mean, she finished a distant third, not as well as was expected. So maybe there wasn't a huge base there, but there's still time, you know? I mean, she's a really smart and effective messenger and she could end up being the one, who knows? She though tried to get attention at the convention this past weekend. She took out her famous whiteboard and she wrote simply fuck Trump and held that up and tried to lead a chant of fuck Trump because apparently the F word has become the rallying cry for the democratic party.

39:32Norm Eisen:And she tried to capitalize on that moment to try to give herself something that would potentially go viral.

39:38Brian Tyler Cohen:Now, another California politician, obviously, is Gavin Newsom. You know, we have seen him pretty much dominate the conversation as far as 2028 is concerned. I'm curious, like, as we look at this process play out, I've seen the ebbs and flows online where at first, you know, thanks to not just him, but also his governor's office account on Twitter, basically, you know, he says holding up a mirror to what Trump is doing by tweeting like him, you know, that caught a lot of attention. It was it was celebrated by a lot of folks on the left for finally, you know, pushing back on Trump and being willing to fight back against Trump.

40:18Brian Tyler Cohen:And of course, Prop 50 was an actual instance of him fighting back and winning against Trump. And then, you know, there were more progressives who came out and and they have taken up this cause of of trying to ensure that Newsom doesn't become the nominee in deference to a more progressive nominee. How are you thinking about this? Do you think that Newsom has peaked too early by having so much of the attention on him right now? How are you thinking about Newsom's inevitable presidential run?

40:45Norm Eisen:Well, it was interesting. He was on with Dana Bash this weekend, and he said that his son doesn't want him to run for president. And that's weighing on him and said, we're too young. We want to spend more time with you. So that was the first time he at least publicly expressed some concern from his family, potentially gave himself a way out. We'll see if he's able to convince his son going forward. I don't look, does he, has he peaked too early? Who knows? We don't even know who's going to be in the field, right? I mean, we're so far away from that primary process that, you know, we don't know.

41:22Norm Eisen:Is it better to have grown a base and to have raised a ton of money and to have your name ID really high and to have people describing you as a front runner than the opposite? Sure. I mean, who wants to be the other position? So I think Gavin Newsom really helped himself in the last year. He's going to be kind of everywhere in the next week or two on his book tour in cities, interacting with people. A lot of the book tour cities just happen to be primary states. It's interesting how that works. He's going to be on stage with a lot of folks doing, you know, podcasts like this one. And basically every single Democratic place you could have.

41:59Norm Eisen:And his message is going to be in the next two weeks, probably to what? 150 million people. I mean, if you think about all the different shows and add them all up and he's doing you and he's doing Midas stuff, he's doing all these other places and be on all the network shows. I mean, it's going to be Gavin Newsom, all Gavin Newsom all the time. And I don't know how many governors, even the governors that are thinking about running for president would be that in demand. Right. I mean, is there that much demand for Josh Shapiro when he's on his book tour? Yeah. At the same level right now, probably.

42:29Norm Eisen:I mean, there's gonna be a lot of demand and I hope to talk to Josh Shapiro and I think it'd be interesting to learn more about him and all that. But I mean, Gavin Newsom is, is a bonafide political celebrity at a time in our culture where people really like celebrities. And he does seem to, at least right now have that sort of alpha energy that I think a lot of people are are hoping to see in the Democratic side.

42:57Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, you you rightly pointed out the fact that he's at the top of these these polls, but oftentimes he's number two and it's just behind Kamala Harris. You know, you've obviously spoken to her quite a bit. You've covered her for the entirety of her career and watched this election, as we all did, where she obviously lost to Trump. But but now there's this open question as to whether she's going to run again. Given what you've seen, is there any indication one way or the other whether you think that she's going to throw her hat in the ring? And I ask because, look, she obviously decided against running for governor of California.

43:30Brian Tyler Cohen:And she, you know, there is a particular I don't know how to say it other than to say like a stink attached to you when you've run for president once and then lost. and especially in this last election cycle where I think people view the politicians that enabled Trump's rise through a particular lens, whether that's gonna have some impact on their decision to run again or more importantly on Americans' decision to vote for them again. So what are you thinking as far as Kamala Harris is concerned?

43:59Norm Eisen:Well, she named her book 107 Days for a reason. In some ways, that's like an excuse in itself, right? This idea that I didn't get to do a full run And if I would have done a full run, I would have done it differently. And so don't blame me for this loss. Blame the old guy. Right. I mean, so there's some of the rationale to say, don't think of me like the other Democratic nominees who lost. Democratic Party doesn't like to go back to losers. Republicans traditionally have far more often. and given people a second chance that have run or even gone for the nomination and given them. Democrats really don't do that.

44:38Norm Eisen:I mean, I don't think the Democrats have re-nominated somebody since Adlai Stevenson, who lost. And that was before the era of television, really. So, you know, that's the rub against her. Positive for Kamala Harris is she's, you know, politics is about name ID and she's got like 100 % name ID. People know who she is. The other big thing we don't know, Brian, is we don't know what the order of the primary states are going to be yet. The Democratic Party is still trying to figure that out. And if, say, South Carolina goes first, that's a huge boost to Kamala Harris, where black women are the most important part of that voting block.

45:16Norm Eisen:So if it's like Nevada going first or North Carolina going first or Michigan going first, that could really change up the game for her. And what are they going to do about New Hampshire, which might be a state that doesn't do as well? So I think those are open questions. In terms of her not running for governor, she didn't run for governor because she doesn't want to be governor. But you know what she does want to be? She wants to be president, which is why she ran for president. And then she ran for vice president. And then she ran for president again because she wants to be president. So do I think that knowing Kamala Harris, if she sees a clear path or even a almost clear path to run, Will she run?

45:58Norm Eisen:Yes. If she really doesn't see a path, is there a possibility where she says, I don't want to be embarrassed and I don't need that shit? And she steps out. That's also very much a real possibility.

46:10Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, it'll be interesting to see what happens over these next few months as we head toward midterms. Then of course. Yeah.

46:16Norm Eisen:But it's interesting also, Brian, that this week, you know, Gavin Newsom is going to be on the road doing this book tour, as we just mentioned. You know who else is on the road this week? Kamala Harris is going to be doing speaking engagements and stuff on stage with different people in different states all around the country all week, which she timed just in time for Gavin Newsom's book launch.

46:36Brian Tyler Cohen:Yeah. So we're going to see a lot of like a lot of people trying to counter program a lot of other people as they jockey for position right now, both in 26 and 28. I know that you're covering all of it. So for folks who are watching and listening right now, where can they see and hear more from you?

46:51Norm Eisen:Yeah, so you can watch our new show. The story is on CNN. It's 9 to 11 p.m. on the West Coast, midnight to 2 a.m. on the East Coast. You can also check out youtube.com slash Alex Michelson. That's where a lot of my videos are. We have a really interesting interview recently with Bernie Sanders. We had an interesting interview with Bill Maher that got a lot of attention. And best of all, our recent debates featuring Brian Tyler Cohen and our conversation about his amazing interview with Barack Obama, which was the biggest interview of the year. So congratulations to you on that.

47:24Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, I appreciate it. I'm going to throw the link to your YouTube channel right here on the screen for everybody who's watching, listening right now. Highly, highly, highly recommend that you subscribe to Alex's YouTube channel. This way you can catch all of those interviews, whether it's with Bernie Sanders or any other candidates, both left and right. You're one of the few people that's able to to speak to everybody, which is why I think the show is particularly interesting. Yeah.

47:44Norm Eisen:Well, thank you. And so people can check out. We did an interview about your Obama interview, which people can watch there. The other thing they can watch is this recent debate you did with Katie Zachariah, which got a lot of attention all over the world. And interestingly, after that debate, Katie Zachariah was named as the new spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security. So you can get a sense of who's coming to that department as well, if you check that out.

48:10Brian Tyler Cohen:What was particularly interesting about that was I remember during the show, like asking her, I think, were we having a debate about, uh, about, about ICE? Was that what it was about where she was defending, uh, defending what happened with these ICE agents? Was that what it was?

48:24Norm Eisen:I think that was the previous debate that we had, but yes, we've talked about that with her.

48:28Brian Tyler Cohen:There was a point where I asked her like, or maybe it was Epstein. I'm not sure. I asked her like Obama ape video. That's what it was. That's what it was. It was the Obama ape video. And I asked her like, why? Like you don't have to do this. Like you Apparently she did. Apparently it worked out because she got a job as spokesperson for DHS, which I would imagine seems like the single most politically toxic job on earth right now. But lo and behold, they clearly like what they saw. When I asked her why she was doing this, inherent in that was the fact that a job was waiting for her on the other side.

49:04Brian Tyler Cohen:And so I guess that's why she had to do that. We didn't know that.

49:08Norm Eisen:She's a very, very nice person. She is very sweet to both of us. So congratulations to her. Obviously, that's a big deal for her to be in that position. But it was interesting to see that. And now she's going to be in a big, powerful role, as were you. And then a week later, after we debate Obama's apes, you're interviewing Obama, talking to him about that video. And then the video that goes around the world about the aliens, which you've now made a thing. So when the X-Files are released, it's all going to be because of you.

49:37Brian Tyler Cohen:Yeah, well, you know, just one more thing. I'm joking here.

49:44Norm Eisen:There's nothing more important than the No Lie podcast, changing the world, not only this planet, but beyond. That's it.

49:50Brian Tyler Cohen:Perfectly put. We'll leave it there. Again, I'm going to put a link to Alex's YouTube channel right here on the screen and also in the post description. If you're not yet subscribed, please go ahead and hit the subscribe button. Alex, as always, thanks for the time. Thanks, Brian. Thanks again to Norm Eisen and Alex Michelson. That's it for this episode. Talk to you this weekend. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesley, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating and a review.

50:20Brian Tyler Cohen:And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to briantylercohen.com to learn more.