1. From White House To Courthouse: Trump On Trial

0:00Some days call for working up a sweat, working on your passion, and endless action. Ditch the glitch with Liquid IV's new energy multiplier sugar-free. Refreshing flavors like strawberry kiwi and blackberry lemonade. Scientifically formulated to support physical energy, hydration, focus, mood, and social stamina. Liquid IV's new energy multiplier sugar-free. Hydrating energy. Tap the banner to learn more. At New Balance, we believe if you run, you're a runner.

0:39however you choose to do it. Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way, you're free to discover your way. And that's what running is all about. Run your way at newbalance.com slash running.

1:06Welcome to The Rest is Politics U.S. I'm Anthony Scaramucci. I'm the former White House Communications Director for Donald Trump, fired after 11 short days, but worked on his campaign for nine months and had been involved in presidential politics primarily as a fundraiser and donor for the last 25 years. And I'm Katty Kay. Hi, I'm a US special correspondent for BBC Studios. I've been covering American politics for 25 years. This will be my sixth US presidential campaign. This is the first ever episode. I want to explain a little bit about what we're going to do every week when we release these shows on Fridays.

1:44We're going to start by talking, of course, about the news of the day. We'll get to that in a second. And then we want to broaden out to bigger cultural issues and what Anthony and I are observing in this incredibly complicated, fascinating country and how it all ties in, of course, to the 2024 election. We're going to start with the news of the week from New York City and that Manhattan courtroom and Donald Trump on trial and how terminal might this be for his campaign? What's the problem for his campaign here? Of course, all of you will remember that this is the hush money trial that is taking place in New York.

2:18Donald Trump has actually been indicted in four separate criminal cases. One of them is a civil fraud case. And this is the one of the four that is coming to trial in New York. And it all surrounds the adult porn star, Stormy Daniels, and whether he paid her off in order to keep her story about him having an affair with her quiet so that he could get elected president of the United States. It's all kind of fabulous sort of sleazy stuff that is taking place up in New York. He, of course, denies all of this. And it's actually a sort of technicality because it was their falsification of business records that took place to disguise a campaign payment to the wonderfully named Stormy Daniels.

3:05And we're going to take a look at what that means for his political campaign. I mean, one of the things that interests me about this trial is what this means for Donald Trump. And I want to hear your thoughts on this, Anthony, because you worked for Donald Trump in the White House for a few days, but you spent a lot more time with him on the campaign trail. Even though we knew Donald Trump was going to be a defendant in this case, watching him day after day, having to sit in this kind of dingy courtroom and being treated like any other defendant, looking bored, nodding off occasionally, looking irritated.

3:39I mean, I don't think I've ever spent so much time thinking about the psychological impact of being a defendant in a criminal trial and how exhausting that must be, particularly for somebody like Donald Trump, who has tons of energy, loves to express his opinion all the time, wants to talk all the time, wants to be the center of the attention, wants to control events. And as much as anything, I find this trial fascinating for what it's doing to him every single day up there in New York. Well, for starters, I just want you to imagine somebody that has gotten away with everything for six decades.

4:12And so he's pushed the envelope. He can bully people. He can say things about people that nobody else can get away with. As an example, he'll say that he likes his POWs, his veterans not captured versus captured and in a way denigrating somebody like John McCain. So he's gotten away with everything. And he thought he was going to get away with this. And what was interesting about this case is that one person, one of the witnesses on the case, Michael Cohen, who I know very well, has gone to jail already for this case. Now, someone will say, well, he went to jail specifically for the perjury caddy, but he went to jail effectively for the sleaze in the case and for the obstruction that the case caused.

4:56And so now Donald Trump is sitting there on trial for something that one of his minions already got caught doing. And so I think the psychology of this is, whoa, wait a minute, six decades of getting away with everything. This may be the time in my life where I've come to the end of my rope, but I'm not going to get away with things. And so one thing I would just say to you is that he's not actually being treated like other people that are being prosecuted in a criminal court. If someone like you or me, for example, or someone listening did the things that Donald Trump has done in the courtroom, he would already be thrown in jail, mega fines, silenced immediately.

5:39Because of the gag orders, you mean? Yeah, because of the gag order. So what's interesting here is he's at the end of his rope, not getting away with certain things, yet he's going on these radio shows, attacking witnesses, threatening witnesses, and definitely you're not allowed to do that in our courts, but he's getting away with it. So the real question is, and I push it back to you, 25 years of observing this? Is he going to get away with it again this time? Will he be exonerated? Is there one MAGA witness in that 12-person group of witnesses that's going to allow him to get off come hell or high water?

6:17Yeah, I think that's the question for him. Does he get acquitted outright? Do the members of the jury, all of them, say, we, the jury of his peers, find Donald Trump not guilty of falsifying his business records in order to interfere with the 2016 election? Or does he have a hung jury? One member of the jury says, actually, you know what? I don't think the prosecution has enough evidence to show that he was intending to falsify his business records to cover up this hush money payment, Stormy Daniels. Or is he found guilty by all 12 members of the jury. And I think all of those have different implications for the 2024 election, right?

7:02If he's found not guilty, then that plays into his argument that all of this is just a political witch hunt and the government is overreaching and he is being attacked by the deep state, just like you, my MAGA supporters, are being attacked by the deep state. If it's a hung jury, I think he gets some of that benefit. I think he can still go and say, you see what? I wasn't found guilty. A member of the jury decided that actually I was innocent. If he's found guilty, then I think that's more problematic for him in terms of his ability to go out to the country. And remember, we're going to hear the next four weeks hearing about porn stars and the fact that he is accused of having an affair with a porn star when his wife had just given birth to a child.

7:49Now, I've had a few children. I would not have loved it if my husband went off and had an affair with a porn star after I'd just given birth. I mean, that's just like, there's a ton of suburban mothers out there who might say, guys, this is not great behavior. So the impact that this could all have, just hearing the testimony, whatever the outcome is from the jury, just hearing this testimony day after day after day, I wonder what kind of impact that's going to have on suburban women voters. Well, listen, I went to law school and I only learned one thing in law school, Katty, and that was don't be a lawyer.

8:21I think that was the most obvious thing I learned in law school. But I have a lot of friends that are DAs. I have friends that actually work in the Southern District. The Southern District, which is the federal courts in the United States, has a 99 % conviction rate. So if they take a case and you want to go to trial with them, it's 99%. Sam Bankman-Fried, an example, the cryptocurrency fraudster, he took the case, they convicted him on all counts. The Southern District of the United States and the federal courts did not take this case. I think it's important to express that to our viewers and listeners.

8:57When you ask those guys who are buddies of mine, well, what are the likelihood of the prosecutors winning this case? They say 60 to 70%. So there's a two thirds chance that Trump gets convicted. Okay, well, what if he gets convicted? I've asked prosecutors before the show. What do you think happens? Well, he's the former president of the United States, so he's likely to get a fine, potentially some home confinement, but he's not going to go to jail. Could he have an ankle bracelet on him? Would he have to campaign remotely for a period of time and beam himself into his rallies? Possibly. So this is not, in my opinion, the election killing case if it goes to full fruition and they actually get the conviction that they're looking for.

9:44But it is gnarly and it is something that the Democrats should exploit, particularly as you say, as it relates to the suburban women. There's an interesting kind of money side of this though, isn't there, Anthony? Because of course, while he's stuck in that courtroom, which he just looks like he is stuck in a theme Park kind of place you'd love to be, but which I would hate to be in. He looks like he's not having a good time. He's not a happy camper. And one of the reasons he's not a happy camper is he can't be out on the campaign trail while he's stuck in Manhattan courtroom, raising money for his campaign, part of which, of course, goes to pay for his legal fees.

10:18But I wonder what impact this has on the campaign more generally. I mean, when you were with him on the campaign in 2016, and you're flying all over the country, and you're holding rallies, and you're raising money and going to fundraisers. How much does the fact that he can't be doing that at the moment impact his campaign and his campaign's prospects, do you think? Listen, on the margin, I think it does affect him. On the margin, I think it's demoralizing to his staff. The glaring obvious thing here is no Melania in the court, no Ivanka in the court, no family members in the court. So they're obviously upset at the facts of the case.

10:57I think there's another thing lingering here, Cady, and I'll push it back to you. I think everybody knows this is true. So he did this. There's no question about it. I mean, in the immortal words of the great Mormon Mitt Romney, another person I also worked for, you don't pay$130 ,000 for somebody not to have sex with them. That was a very good line from Mitt Romney. You know, Mitt, okay, if I had to put all my money on Mitt has never had sex outside his marriage, all my money's going on that. Okay. So, so, you know, this is true. And so the result of it's, do the American people really care? You know, one of the things we learned on the Romney campaign is that Americans like bad behavior.

11:39You know, Mitt was a model citizen, you know, I mean, he got mad at me once because, you know, he said, well, what do you think's going wrong for me? I said, well, you know, you look like a Ken doll. And I said, that's going wrong for you. He said, well, what do you mean? And I said, well, Mitt, when you pull the pants down on a Ken doll, you're flat in front. You follow what I'm saying? You don't have enough balls going on here. And strapping his dog to the roof of his car, that was not enough bad behavior, clearly. Well, I mean, I think that hurt him too. But the over-perfection probably hurt him because most Americans have a tattoo.

12:11Most Americans are overweight. Most Americans have problems in their marriage. Most Americans have issues. And so when they look at Trump and they see those flaws in that bad boy behavior, I think they've chosen in Trump's case to ignore it. He's the first politician that has broken all the taboos, Caddy. 30 years ago, Bill Clinton said that he smoked pot, but he didn't inhale pot. That was a big taboo to say something like that, right? Now these guys are going on the Bill Maher show smoking pot with them. My point being is the entire world has changed. Trump has changed that world, whether we like it or not.

12:51He has dented and shifted the discourse in the American political society. He's made it coarser. He's a bully. And he's given license now to way more bad behavior. I agree with all of that. And I'm going to do a yes, but, which my husband always hates it when I do a yes, but. But I'm going to push back a bit because I wonder whether actually what the American public is feeling right now is not the titillation factor of some bad boy behavior, Donald Trump versus super pristine Mitt Romney. It's a complete exhaustion factor. And that they look at this. Look at the fact that there's no one out there in New York.

13:28Where are the crowds? Where are the demonstrations? Where are the people chanting his name outside the court? House. Everybody's bored. They're bored of the Donald Trump show. They're exhausted by the Donald Trump show. We've been hearing about Stormy Daniels. We know even that Stormy Daniels' name comes from the fact it's the name of her first dog and the street she grew up on. We know way too much about Stormy Daniels. I think it's kind of like, I don't know that we want to watch this movie again. My sense of the American public at the moment is that there's a kind of feeling that this is yet more chaos and that this is the chaos that comes if Donald Trump is reelected.

14:03And more than that, just exhaustion with the election generally. And it's not just with Donald Trump. It's also with Joe Biden. And people are turned off by the whole thing. And I think this trial, if anything, it's kind of revealing some of that. I mean, maybe the public's exhaustion is going to be Joe Biden's secret weapon because they're going to watch this trial and think, actually, you know what? Reruns. We in America, we don't like reruns. We like new shows. Come on, Hollywood, give us something new. And Donald Trump drove up turnout like crazy in 2016. He drove up turnout in 2018. He drove up turnout in 2020.

14:35He drove up turnout in 2022. But there was an NBC poll out this week that showed the enthusiasm for this election as at its lowest level in 40 years. If anything, that probably plays to Joe Biden's advantage because some of that lack of enthusiasm comes from watching Donald Trump sitting in a courtroom and talking about porn stars and hush money payments. Well, listen, I think it's a brilliant and insightful analysis. But what I'm more impressed about is that you know the origin of Stormy D 'Angelo's stage name. I do have to think, though, that my first animal, my first pet was called Dog. We had a dog called Dog.

15:10And I lived on a street called London Road. So my stage name would be Dog London, which just, it doesn't work, does it? Dog London doesn't work, but it could work, though, you know, because that's how brands are. It could work. And this case, by the way, Anthony, just has the most, you couldn't make them up. It's the most extraordinary names. Well, I mean, Stormy made up her name. I give her credit for that. But God gave David Pecker this name. All right. Is this the best that we have the chief witness for the prosecution? The guy's last name is Pecker. I mean, do you love this? Or I personally love it.

15:43I feel like there are no coincidences in the universe, Caddy. And this is God's way of letting us know that you should be having a little bit of fun in sports, religion, and politics. Yeah. If you were writing this in Hollywood as a screenplay, probably your editor would say, Don't be ridiculous. That's not possible. But you're saying something that I think people need to understand and to really open up the hood of what is going on. The engine is misfiring. And so I know people say, he worked for Trump. They got into a spat. He doesn't like Trump, blah, blah. It's actually more than that. I've tried to be objective about Trump.

16:19I want to be fair about his political instincts. I want to be fair about how he's moved the political zeitgeist in the society, how he is shaken to the core of the Republican Party. But there's something going on underneath all of this that I think people need to understand. He's sputtering. He's running out of money. His legal fees are through the roof. His campaign donations are going towards the legal fees, not to the field offices. And Cady, I submit to you, and I want to get your reaction to this. these are two people running for the presidency that are well known by the American public for five decades.

17:00Both of these people are known entities. This is not like a Barack Obama introduction tour circa 2008. These are known entities. Therefore, people have made a decision, the man or woman on the street, who do you like and why they've made the decision. so I'm suggesting that this is a get out to vote election and Joe Biden's going to win the popular vote. You know that, I know that, even the Donald Trump people know that. So the way Trump wins this is through the electoral college. He came close in 2020. He lost only by 40 ,000 votes. And so now what is at stake here is how many field offices are going to be in these swing states.

17:44And the former president doesn't have enough money to put as many field offices in as the current president. Which is why all the money is going to be important. But I think all this trial is contributing to the sense that things are off kilter. The tension is high. The rhetoric is hot at the moment in America, not just around Donald Trump and not just around these trials, but we're seeing it play out a few miles north of that courtroom where he is in some of these university college campuses in New York. And we're going to talk about that and what's happening on these college campuses? Is it really about Gaza or is something else going on?

18:20And we're going to talk about that after the break.

18:25This is a paid ad for BetterHelp. In moments of stress, we tend to turn to whoever's in reach, that flatmate in the kitchen, the barista on a slow morning, the stranger who simply asks you how you're doing. It can help, but being heard isn't always enough. And the more confidently people speak, the more we mistake it for wisdom. But if you're dealing with anxiety or loss or something that's been weighing on you, what you need isn't noise, it's actual experience. Somebody who really knows their craft. BetterHelp has spent over a decade helping people find that match. A short questionnaire sets your preferences and they'll connect you with a therapist who fits.

19:01It's completely online, it's fully flexible and if your first counselor doesn't really feel right for you, you can switch at any time. There's no pressure, no extra cost. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp gives you access to credentialed mental health professionals with a wide range of expertise. Our listeners get 10 % off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash TripUS. That's BetterHelp.com slash TripUS. This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless, while being a part of legendary nights, from backyard jams to sold-out arenas.

19:43There's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org. Jack Daniels and Old No. 7 are registered trademarks. Tennessee Whiskey, 40 % alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small, From improving emergency response times to protecting against cyber attacks, local, state, and federal governments are innovating with Google AI. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American Innovation.

20:22Welcome back. In addition to everything that's going on in the world of Trump and Biden, we have a big spillover into our nation's campuses where there's a lot of people protesting, Katty. Tell us, set the scene there for us. Yeah, so we want to take a little step back and look at some of the kind of broader cultural and social issues that are happening in the country. And when you look at American college campuses, you've all seen the pictures of them and the protests that are taking place with students embroiled in this Israel-Gaza battle that is taking place thousands of miles away, but which seems to now have landed squarely in the middle of American universities.

21:00We wanted to kind of look at what that might mean as well for the politics of the country, for the race. So what happened is that last week, the administrators of Columbia University had to go before the Senate and testify about what they have done on campus since October the 7th in order to protect Jewish students who have been the victims of anti-Semitism and who say they don't feel safe on American campuses. This followed a previous testimony from the presidents of MIT and Harvard and Penn University, which led to two of those presidents after those hearings having stepped down. And so the administrators of Colombia were very aware of what might happen.

21:45They knew their jobs were potentially on the line and they went before this Republican controlled committee in the House of Representatives and they were much more in favor of restricting students who were trying to threaten Jewish students. So they were much more on the side of the Jewish students and much more kind of firm about what constituted unlawful violence on campus. As a result of that, they got kind of, you know, some applause from the Republican members of the committee who said, yep, you've done a good job. You've made us satisfied. but then they went back to campus and all hell broke loose because the faculty and the students said that their right to free speech had been trampled on and they were furious and they started protesting again on campus and camping out in the middle of the campus quad.

22:38And actually now what we see, Anthony, is this kind of spreading around the country. It's disrupting classes. Classes have gone back online at Columbia because students say they don't feel safe. I know kids at Columbia University have just gone home because they say the atmosphere is so tense on campus. And you've had a whole load of congressmen in the last few days also turning up at Columbia University, Republican congressmen saying, we stand with the Jewish students and the president of the university should resign and the administration isn't doing enough. I mean, what do I think? I think I am so glad that I am not part of a university administration in America at the moment because you have so many conflicting pressures.

23:16You've got pressures from the students saying that this is a free speech issue. You've got pressure from the faculty. You've got pressure from these very wealthy donors who are often alumni of the colleges who are saying not enough is being done to protect Jewish students on campus and threatening to withdraw their donations, which these universities depend on in the United States. It's a mess. I get what you're saying, Anthony. I do think this in some ways reflects the tone and the heat and the temper and the violence and the anger in the American political system more broadly. I mean, you know, America's become dysfunctional and things can't get run.

23:54Whether you're at the college level or you're at the congressional level, things are pretty dysfunctional at the moment. Listen, I'm going to say something that's going to probably offend everybody, but I'm going to say that the American people did better when their political leaders came out of the military. And if you go back, we had conscription in the United States during the Second World War, First World War, Korean War, et cetera. And we had 85 % of the Congress was tied to the military. And most of the business leaders, teachers even, were tied to the military. And there were certain standards and protocol that was put in place.

24:32So people are not going to like me for saying all this, but that's the case. And even a George McGovern could fight with a Bob Dole. They were on opposite sides of the spectrum, but they both fought for freedom and the constitution in World War II. And so there was more decorum. And because we don't have that anymore, in my opinion, there's a fraying overall in the society and it's spilling over into a lack of protocol. And I'll just point this out. In 1984, there were protests at Tufts University. They raided the administration building. I was a sophomore there at the time and they were protesting South Africa and apartheid and they wanted a divestiture.