182. Trump Vs Comey - The ‘86 47’ Feud Explained

0:04This episode is brought to you by Whoop. Whoop is one of my favorite all-time products. It's clear we're living through pretty stressful times right now. It's easy to underestimate how much that can affect our sleep and ability to stay focused day to day. Yeah, avoiding burnout can feel like a full-time job in and of itself. Whoop helps with the bit people miss. That shows what actually is going on beneath the surface, Caddy. It's a screenless wearable device that monitors your sleep, recovery, lifestyle, and stress. Yeah, and this matters to me. It even looks very elegant. Did you hear that, guys?

0:43Whoop is so stylish that even Caddy K will wear the Whoop. It's the little gold clasp. I like that. I'm telling you, I had no idea how much my old routine was impacting my health. But since using Whoop and making those small adjustments, I've already started to feel the difference. Better sleep, clearer thinking, even more energy. Head to join.whoop.com slash politics to get started with Whoop today.

1:20Anthony Scaramucci:Hello and welcome to The Rest is Politics. U.S. I'm Katty Kay, sitting in the kingdom of Washington, D.C., where everyone is fawning over royals. Anthony, you love us. You want us back. Well, it's sort of like Hamilton, right? You'll be back. You'll be back. But, you know, I'm going to send a battalion to show you my love. But Trump posts, just to irritate everybody, on Truth Social, two kings, Katty Kay. What do you think about that? Yeah, of course, he likes it. And then the other thing that Trump posted after making nice with the king, just to make sure he's not being too nice for those of you who can't see it on YouTube.

2:01Anthony Scaramucci:No more Mr. Nice Guy. So we go from the decorum of the king, and we'll talk about that in the second half, to Trump back to good form. Before we get to the King's speech to Congress and how all of Washington seems to have fallen in love with King Charles, including Republicans, sort of, we are going to talk about the charges against former FBI Director James Comey over an alleged threat to Donald Trump's life. Jim Comey, the former FBI Director, has been indicted by the Justice Department for the second time. And I just thought it'd be worth reading people the indictment because I spoke to a prosecutor who said to me, this is the most embarrassing paragraph ever written in a Justice Department indictment.

2:48Anthony Scaramucci:So let me just read to you. This is what it says. James Bryan Comey Jr. did knowingly and willingfully make a threat to take the life of and to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States. Sounds serious, right? Sounds really bad. In that he publicly posted a photograph on the Internet social media site Instagram, which depicted, drumroll, seashells arranged in a pattern making out 8647, which a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret as a serious expression of intent to do harm to the President of the United States. They are dangerous things, seashells, Antony, dangerous things.

3:33Anthony Scaramucci:And Jim Comey is now using a picture of seashells, allegedly to try and threaten the President of the United States. This must be one of the more bogus indictments that the Justice Department has ever launched, But it's probably a very good job application for the acting attorney general. What say you, Mr. Lord Professor? Well, the tweet is everything, right? No more Mr. Nice Guy. We're going to knock a domino into Jimmy Kimmel.

4:00Katty Kay:We couldn't fire him last time. We're going to fire him. We're now going to launch an FCC investigation into the licenses of Disney and ABC. We couldn't get the indictment done last time. In America, I took criminal procedure 40 years ago, and I was told you could indict a ham sandwich, but not Trump's Injustice Department. They could not indict Tish James. They could not indict James Comey the first time. And so, you know, here we are. It's going to get thrown out. You know it's going to get thrown out, and I know it's going to get thrown out. I bet it doesn't even make it to a jury. No, yeah.

4:41No, the judge right now is punting. For those of you that don't follow American football, whichever judge is getting assigned to this is stretching their hamstring and is going to punt that document as far as they can out of the court. But Katty Kay, you're the genius on this podcast. So please explain to everybody why Donald J. Trump is doing this. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Donald J. Trump, why is he doing this?

5:11Anthony Scaramucci:Well, first of all, two things. The acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, is doing this to prove that he is more of a pit bull than his predecessor, Pam Bondi, who was thrown out of office in part because she could not enact a campaign of retribution against Donald Trump's enemies. Donald Trump is doing this because he has a campaign of retribution and he wants it enacted and he wants his political enemies to be punished. And he also likes the distraction and he also wants to be front and center of the news cycle. And it is a heck of a lot better to be talking about Jim Comey and his seashells than it is to be talking about gas prices, the war in Iran that is not going so well, the Epstein files that have not been opened.

5:56Anthony Scaramucci:And it's a way of dominating the conversation. He genuinely does, I think, believe in a campaign of retribution. He has talked about my FBI, my generals. He believes he controls the government. And when he has a director of the FBI, Jim Comey was his director of the FBI in the first Trump administration who he disagrees with, he feels that he should be able to punish them for disagreeing with him. Do you have another theory? Have I missed anything? I sort of have a little bit different of a theory. Just going to add a few paragraphs.

6:27Katty Kay:I agree with everything you're saying, but I'm getting to the midterms, and I need to punish as many people as possible before those midterms, and I need to scare the daylights out of everyone. I want Jimmy Kimmel's wife pillow talk in the Kimmel household. Hey, Jimmy, knock it off. Okay. dial back on Donald Trump. He's more powerful than you. I want to intimidate Bill Maher, Steve Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, a White House correspondent. I want to pummel them into submission. Because that's his MO, right? I mean, that's what he's always done. Yes. He cares about the overlording power over these people.

7:14Do you see what I mean?

7:15Katty Kay:And so now I'm going to come after this man because I need to send a message to people. Look out. Okay. Oh, by the way, the Jerome Powell, I'm coming after you. And we had to drop it because finally one Republican stood up to me and I couldn't get something done because of procedure in the Senate. So Jerome Powell, that was a message to Kevin Warsh. You don't do what I want. I'll be suing you. I'll be suing your family, and I've got willing, willing support. Now, one more question, if you don't mind. You are the spiritual and moral advisor for Todd Blanche and Janine Pirro. How much are you going to pay me for that role, by the way?

8:04Can I just say, can I ask for a pay raise straight away if you're putting me in that position? You're going to need all of Goalhanger's revenues. Let me make a personal service. Like Gary Lineker, if you're listening, she's getting your money too. Okay. You're getting all of our revenues, Gaddy. You're in the room now with Janine Pirro and Todd Blanche. You're having tea. You've read the King's speech for inspiration, okay? Charles's speech. And now in your delicate English way, you're going to say WTF to these people. And what are you thinking? And how crazy are you people? Go ahead, go. I want to hear.

8:40Yeah. Do you have a hope in hell, Janine Pirro or Todd Blanche, of managing to make a convincing case that the government can persuade a jury that they have proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Jim Comey intended with that photograph to do harm to the United States?

9:00Anthony Scaramucci:And by the way, both of you just calm down a little bit because we know what 86-47 means. It is used in restaurant language 86 for killing an item on the menu. So there are no more pork chops. 86 the pork chops. We haven't got any more of those. It doesn't mean go out the back of the restaurant and take an AK-47 and shoot the pork chop. That is not what that phrase means. So calm down, Mr. Blanche. You've got acting attorney general. That's pretty good. He'll probably give you the job, but you don't need to disgrace yourself because in about six months' time, this is going to be a lame duck president.

9:37Anthony Scaramucci:And in two and a half years' time, he will not be president anymore. And you have been in law enforcement, both of you, your whole life. Do you want to have it on your legacy that you were the person that wrote such a fanciful indictment as to suggest that a photograph of seashells is beyond reasonable doubt intent to cause bodily harm. I don't know if I was very soft and touchy-feely with them, though. I'm not sure I did quite enough spiritual guidance. No, you were great. My grandmother would have taken the wooden spoon. For all you Italians listening, my grandmother would have taken the wooden spoon.

10:16She would have bit her finger like this and ran into the room and clobbered the two of them.

10:21Katty Kay:But I now have to ask you another question because now I'm on the street and I'm walking. Someone says hello to me. I like your podcast, but I think you're dead wrong, Anthony. I'm dead wrong. What am I dead wrong about? You're talking about letting things go and you're talking about not going after these miserable SOBs. How do you say that? Don't you feel that these people should be prosecuted for their corruption, for their wrongdoing and for all of the different things that are going on in the Trump administration. And what I'm worried about is the Lula-Bolsonaro situation, right, where we build jailhouses and jail cells for each of our political adversaries, and we go back and forth.

11:11Lula's in jail, comes out of jail, wins the presidency. Now he wants to put Bolsonaro in jail, and you're going to go back and forth building jail cells for each political adversary that you have. But, Katty, should the Democrats, if they take power again, annihilate these people? So, look, I think that I actually had a really interesting conversation with somebody about exactly this this morning. And I think they're going to have to be careful to resist the calls from the base to go after everybody, particularly people in the Trump family. Now, Donald Trump's already said he's going to pardon anyone who has been in spitting distance of the Oval Office already.

11:51So we know he's going to pardon all of his family. He's going to pardon all of his mates. So you're not actually going to be able to do very much to do with Trump and his family. I think this calls for a real review and may well do after the midterms of the presidential pardon, because I suspect we're going to see an awful lot of people getting pardoned. But they're going to have some choices to make.

12:12Anthony Scaramucci:If they go after everybody blanket, it's going to look like this is just a continuation of the witch hunt. Look what it did for them when Joe Biden was out of office. And by the way, is it dumb of Jeanine Pirro? Is it done of Todd Blanch purely from a legal scholarly point of view to launch these indictments? yeah, this doesn't read like serious law legal issues, but it's not illegal of them to do this. What they're going to have to figure out is where to subpoena people, I think, focusing on one big issue, and that's the corruption. Do they go after people for corruption? And do they go after people who have clearly committed crimes?

12:49And do they go after people they can actually have an impact on because they're going to have to watch out for who Donald Trump has indicted? But I think if they go after everybody and they spend the whole of the next two years not focusing on affordability for Americans and trying to do something about that ahead of 2028, and not focusing on corruption, which I think is a valid area for them to focus on, the corruption of the oligarchy, then I think they're going to be in problems. They can't start going after Todd Blanch for having committed a crime. This isn't a crime to launch this investigation, this indictment.

13:23It's an indictment that's not going to go anywhere, but it's not a crime on Todd Blanch's behalf, right? No, it isn't.

13:31Katty Kay:But it is overreach. It's prosecutorial overreach. It's unethical. He could be disbarred. He's in the realm of unethical behavior and you could bring him up on ethical charges. Someone could file a formal complaint against him and say that this is completely unethical and you're not supposed to do unethical things like this. It doesn't help him that Donald Trump put the quiet part out loud when he sent out that post saying, I want you, Pam Bondi, to go after my political enemies, which he'd meant to send her in private and then send her in public. That doesn't help Todd Blanche's case. I would also, I mean, it is gross hypocrisy.

14:11There you have J.D. Vance waltzing around Europe, accusing the Europeans of having a lack of freedom of speech at the same time that you have the FCC and Todd Blanche trying to clamp down on freedom of speech here. But I don't think hypocrisy is a crime.

14:26Katty Kay:So, Caddy, the 86, just so everybody knows American slang, it's a rhyme with nicks. You know, like apples and pears means stairs in a Cockney accent. So when you say 86, you mean nix. So if I say 86, 46, I want to nix Joe Biden. And guess who was selling merchandise on their website, Katika? Who was selling that? Matt Gaetz, who was the initial candidate for attorney general of the United States.

14:59Anthony Scaramucci:Is the Justice Department now going to go after Matt Gaetz, the conservative MAGA commentator, Jack Pasebiak? Is that how you say his name? He's also been out there with tweets saying 86, 46. So then you have to go after everybody. Neither of them, I think, would make it in court in either case.

15:17Katty Kay:But my point is, how are you going to go after everybody? Gates also said, this is a new Republican Party. We've 86ed different old school Republicans out of the Senate, like Mitt Romney and stuff like that. Is he calling for the death of them? okay i mean what do you what are you guys doing i don't understand it me personally i am very frustrated by it and i'm going to say something that i really wish won't happen is that the democrats take the playbook and they do the same thing i hope to god that doesn't happen people are mad at me somebody stopped like i said somebody stopped me on the street oh no we have to prosecute and and we have to drive them as crazy as they're driving us or driving the republic no we have to create new process caddy and we have to create new regulation and laws and perhaps even some greater independence of the justice department away from the executive branch now to clean this up do you agree or disagree with that look i agree that the democrats in the House, if they take back the House, which we're all assuming they will at this point, will be under enormous pressure to launch subpoenas left, right and center all over town against Trump and the people who've been making money around him and against people in his Justice Department.

16:45We know that they want to subpoena Pam Bondi already for being in defiance of the Epstein Act, for example. I think one of the things that you and I have spoken about on this podcast when it comes to really trying to understand what the lasting implications of this Trump presidency are on the United States. One of the things that I have been most concerned about is the breakdown of the firewall between the White House and the Justice Department and expansion of presidential powers that the king made a little reference to in his speech, and that whoever comes in next, whichever Democrat is elected in 2028, is going to come in and think, I would be stupid not to take some of those powers for myself because the Republicans have done it to us and now we have to do it to them.

17:32And they will sell this as we need to restore law and order. And we have to do that by showing that we will prosecute people who have broken the law and by going after people that have broken the law. And if we don't, we are not enacting a campaign of law and order ourselves.

17:47Anthony Scaramucci:The biggest damage that Trump has done will be tested by whoever takes over from him. And if that person assumes they have to act the way Trump has done, or if they have to act in a way that is more driven by commitment to the country and purpose and civility and respect for the norms and traditions of democracy, not just the laws of democracy. and I can see whoever is being elected as a democrat thinking wow look at all that power you can grab if you have no respect for the traditions of democracy and if you are shameless and I would be a mug I would be a fool politically not to use some of that power myself and I think that's I hope that doesn't happen but I can see that being the debate that plays out in 2028.

18:41Katty Kay:Katty, do you think Todd Blanche and Janine Pirro are going through the vendor list on Amazon.com right now? And if you just search up 8646, which is obviously the reference to Joe Biden, are they going to now prosecute and indict every one of those merchandise vendors that are selling hats and T-shirts and stickers that say 8646? Is that going to happen, Katty? No, they're only going to go after Donald Trump's enemies. They know full well this doesn't have a chance. I don't think it even gets to a jury, let alone going to a trial. I think this gets thrown out. And I imagine Todd Blanch and Jeanine Pirro know that.

19:24Anthony Scaramucci:But it is extraordinary how a year and a half into a presidency where the economy is being tanked, where we are at a war that we don't know how to get out of, where the president's approval ratings are now heading towards the low 30s. the power that he has over members of his administration and still over the Republican Party so that people will go against their better instincts and all of their knowledge and all of their expertise to make him happy. It's still pretty striking. As you've said, Anthony, he's a lamed up president. He is months away from being a lamed up president. But if you look at the way the Republican Party and his administration is behaving, you sure wouldn't know that.

20:10They haven't got that message yet, right?

20:12Katty Kay:No, they don't have the message, but I'm going to make some predictions here. He is going to eventually turn on Mondani. I don't know when that's going to happen, but there will be prosecution against Mondani before the two years are up. That will happen. He will likely go after one of the big Democrats. So it'll be Gavin Newsom, or it'll be Gretchen Whitmer or it'll be Pritzker. Something will happen and they'll try to bring a lawsuit. He's going to go down a list of people that have wronged him. He's talking to Dan Scavino right now and he's saying, go on people's X accounts. Here's the high profile people that hate me and see what you can find on there.

20:58Katty Kay:And let me bring specious and intimidating criminally, from a criminal procedure perspective, completely invalid lawsuits because it turns out that the Trump family law firm, which is now the Department of Justice, has unlimited money. It's the federal government has unlimited resources. And now James Comey is going to have to hire somebody to defend him in court to get this case dismissed. And that's what Trump does. There's a friend of mine, Trump put his father out of business. He painted lots of the condos in Trump Tower, and then he presented Trump with the bill, and he said, no, I'm only paying you 10 cents on the dollar.

21:40Katty Kay:And I said, well, that doesn't even cover the paint. Forget about all the labor. Well, you know what? Go sue me, because you see all these people standing outside my conference room. They're on my payroll anyway. I don't care. Go sue me. Maybe you'll get 15 or 20 cents on the dollar, but it'll cost you millions of dollars to sue me. Bye-bye. And so the guy had to bankrupt the company, foreclose on his house, move into an apartment and restart his business. That is Donald Trump. That is Donald Trump. So that's what he's going to be doing to these people. We should probably flip over and talk about something optimistic like King Charles III here, But I'm just saying to people, get ready.

22:23When he's putting out a tweet, no more Mr. Nice Guy, get ready for more of this.

22:30Katty Kay:And, Caddy, when you have that meeting with Todd Blanche and Janine Pirro, report back to us and say, geez, what are you guys doing exactly? Janine Pirro, I've been on her radio show. I've been on her Fox News show. She's not a dummy. Janine, are you really the Nadia Comaneci of morals now? Are you really doing a backflip on the moral balance beam for Donald Trump? You know, it's crazy. And by the way, all of these Fox News people were praising the crime fighter James Comey prior to the arrival of Donald Trump. And the Clinton people would tell you that Comey made Trump in the first term. Yes, by reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails.