Support The Bulwark and subscribe today.
  Join Now

Tim O’Brien: For Trump, It’s Always about the $$$

September 26, 2022
Notes
Transcript

Letitia James aims to shut down the Trump family operation in New York, which means he’d have to unload his skyscrapers in a fire sale. Plus, Trump will sell anything — he’s sold underwear, water, and steaks. Why wouldn’t he monetize nuclear secrets? Tim O’Brien joins Charlie Sykes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:02

    This
  • Speaker 2
    0:00:02

    episode is brought to you by GMC. The new GMC twenty twenty four Sierra heavy duty features the first ever Sierra HD Denali Ultimate, offering an enhanced six point
  • Speaker 3
    0:00:12

    six liter Duramax Turbo Diesel V eight to deliver turbo charge towing capability. Taking premium capability to amazing new places. Available spring of twenty twenty three. Visit gmc dot com to
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:25

    to learn more.
  • Speaker 4
    0:00:37

    Happy Monday. And for those of you who celebrate happy Rasha Shonna, I’m Charlie Sykes, and we are back. We spent the weekend in we by by that, I mean, Tim Miller, Amanda Carpenter, and I spent the weekend down in Austin, Texas at the Texas Tribune Festival, and we tape I described it as a live podcast. Obviously, all podcasts are taped, but it wasn’t in person webcast with Tim on Friday, which you can check out online. And I wrote a little bit about some of the things that happened over the weekend, including What I thought was kind of an interesting moment with Liz Cheney on Saturday night and and another podcast I was actually cheating on this podcast.
  • Speaker 4
    0:01:16

    Another podcast I appeared on called Talking Fed, where we speculated about what the Department of Justice might do with with Donald Trump. I was actually in the theater when Evan Smith was interviewing Liz Cheney and asked her the question whether or not she would actually vote for campaign for Democrats. And and and she said yes. And I have to admit, I I was a little bit surprised. And I was kind of wondering whether or not that was that was the first time that she’d ever said that, and I think it was.
  • Speaker 4
    0:01:48

    So I I talk about that in our morning newsletter morning shots as well as something that I said about lawyers and democracy, so you can check that out on morning shots. So our guest today On this Monday, Tim O’Brien’s senior executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion political analyst at MSNBC, a former editor and reporter for The New York Times, And this is always gonna be in your resume, Tim. Author of Trump Nation, the art of being the Donald, And the reason why that’s so memorable and just sort of evergreen is that that book was published way back in the four times in two thousand and five. But Trump filed a five billion dollar lawsuit against Tim. Trump was actually seeking two and a half billion dollars for compensatory damages, two and a half billion dollars for punitive damages.
  • Speaker 4
    0:02:37

    And of course, the suit was like so many of Donald Trump’s suits. Was dismissed in two thousand and nine. So, Tim, happy Monday. Good to be here, Charlie. We got a lot to talk about, I think, today.
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:49

    I
  • Speaker 4
    0:02:49

    think we ought to start with the most important and relevant story of the day. The Green Bay packers winning down in Tampa, That’s
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:57

    so pathetic, Charlie. You know, Charlie knows I’m a Chicago fan and I’m a bears fan. You know, I have a residual findings for the packers because it’s the Midwest, but I also find your kind of loyalty to the brewers and the packers to be disturbing.
  • Speaker 4
    0:03:13

    Well, no. Of course, there is loyalty. Although, I I have to say that that my my fandom for Aaron Rogers is being tested. It’s it has been stressed. And I have to say, I I kinda wonder about what they must be serving in the locker room to packer a quarterbacks because this Brett Farb story has just gotten so toxic.
  • Speaker 4
    0:03:31

    I mean, I
  • Speaker 1
    0:03:32

    Well, it appears that they’ve been serving a big helping of fraud.
  • Speaker 4
    0:03:35

    Yeah. No kidding. Yeah.
  • Speaker 1
    0:03:36

    I mean, that’s a it’s that’s an amazingly kind of craving fraud if all the facts bear out according to the lawsuits.
  • Speaker 4
    0:03:44

    Well, and interesting, he’s being dropped from local radio stations. I see SiriusXM is suspending his show, and after all, I mean, the guy survived the whole dick pics thing, you know? And he probably figured, hey, I’m I’m Teflon. I can do any of this stuff, but this This is very bad
  • Speaker 1
    0:03:58

    brand new channel money from the poor into my own speech payments.
  • Speaker 4
    0:04:02

    And then put it in text
  • Speaker 1
    0:04:03

    messages. And then put something do a biotech startup. It’s such crazy.
  • Speaker 4
    0:04:08

    It is crazy. The other big story more seriously are these elections in Italy where the the far right party appears to be poised to take power. I don’t know that you could describe them as fascist, perhaps semi fascist. Certainly, the most far right government in Italy since don’t know Benito Musolini. Give me your your sense of what’s going on because it does seem as if the European right is resurgent at the moment.
  • Speaker 4
    0:04:35

    Do we have to kind of connect the dots between what’s been happening in places like Hungary and and Poland and even Sweden.
  • Speaker 1
    0:04:42

    And, Liz Truss’ government in the UK. I would not call out a fascist government, but it’s as bad as hard right as you can get. And I think to me the big philosophic lens and all of this is the ongoing dislocation of post industrial economies across the globe and working people feeling unrepresented and disadvantaged. And that’s playing out in unpredictable ways politically because I think blue collar voters are leaving their traditional stewards in, you know, the Democratic Party in the United States and and their equivalents elsewhere because no solutions are being offered. And, you know, my view of this is that conservatives have offered false solutions.
  • Speaker 1
    0:05:27

    They haven’t really gotten a core programmatic, economic policies that that lift all votes. And I think that that’s that’s been decades in the making. And I think we see that channel through in the election of people like Donald Trump or Bolsonaro in Brazil or Victor Orban in Hungary. I think more recently, one of the interesting things to me is you have this massive COVID relief spend. And the ducks are coming home to roost from that.
  • Speaker 1
    0:05:55

    Inflation is spiking, and and and markets are becoming tremulous. And voters are electing politicians who essentially see government as part of the problem, if not the problem. So on the one hand, people want the government to enter into their lives in an emergency, support the bond market, support average working people with enhanced unemployment benefits. And then when the, you know, when the effects of that come home to roost, when the bills have to be paid, you get dislocation. And I think that it’s very clear around issues like immigration and addressing the inflation scare and related matters that I think the right has been plucking more emotional heartstrings than the left has.
  • Speaker 1
    0:06:43

    And And I think that’s one reason you’re seeing this resurgence. But the problem with it is the politics where they exist of some of those candidates are are in conflict with the needs of the economies and the needs of workers. And the UK, I mean, the UK is a perfect example within days I mean, within hours, frankly, on Friday, of Liz Truss laying out her tax and fiscal policies UK markets when a wire is in the hay wire, the pound crashed. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in Italy.
  • Speaker 4
    0:07:16

    You mentioned immigration. And immigration seems to be a through line. One of the things that the far right party in Italy was pushing was, you know, a real hard crackdown on illegal immigration. And, you know, as I was as I was reading a lot of the commentary about what’s happened in Italy and these other countries, I keep coming back to something that David Frum rode in the Atlantic where and and and I know he stepped on some toes. He said, look, If we don’t control immigration, if we don’t control illegal immigration, then the voters are gonna turn to the fascists to do it.
  • Speaker 4
    0:07:49

    And this does seem to be one of those issues where the far right parties have grabbed onto this huge influx of refugees immigrants into their country. They’ve weaponized it and that the mainstream parties have not come up with a sufficient response to it. Well,
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:07

    and and, you know, you mentioned Sweden. That’s I think the far right surge in Sweden has been fueled by that. It was obviously an issue that Donald Trump wrote into power on. And I think I think there are there are useful and un useful ways to think about that we do have to get, I think, our borders under control. I do think the borders have to be monitored and policed.
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:31

    Migrants who are refugees need to be properly supported, migrants who we would want to come into our economy because they add value to the job market. Should be able to come into our economies. And I think you can’t just turn your back on that problem and let it fester because it does. And And I don’t think Biden has fully addressed that in the United States. I don’t think Trump did.
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:55

    I think Trump exacerbated it. I think I think the Biden administration is hoping it will go away, I guess, because they’ve I think they haven’t taken concrete steps to really tackle this. There’s a policy construct around immigration. There’s also a a false flag, I think, discussion around immigration, which is that your economic woes voters come from the fact that immigrants are coming into your country. Right.
  • Speaker 1
    0:09:20

    Yeah. And I think that’s I just don’t think that’s empirically true. But it is a very devastatingly effective campaign platform. But
  • Speaker 4
    0:09:27

    given how devastatingly effective, you know, demigodging on immigration and refugee has been around the world. What do you make then of the calculation that Greg Abbott and Rhonda Sanders are making, that their stunts shipping refugees off to so called sanctuary cities might be a political winner for them. Even though the evidence would suggest they’re using human beings as pawns and that they defraud with them speaking of big dollops of fraud, that they misled these immigrants. But still, they probably feel don’t they that the wind is at their back, that this is something that is going to be politically potent for them.
  • Speaker 1
    0:10:07

    I I mean, I think they must. The scientist one is far as to ship migrants from Texas. They weren’t even in his state to ship them north. That’s how craving Rhonda Santos is. But desantis has been very shrewd about what issues to land on, I think, in furtherance of what’s going to be a presidential campaign.
  • Speaker 1
    0:10:27

    It’s not clear to me yet how the total political fallout of that is gonna play. Charlie, you may have a clear sense with an idea, but You know, I think for example, Charlie Baker, Republican governor in Massachusetts, brought the state apparatus to bear to support the migrants whose DeSantis shipped to Martha’s Vineyard. And I do think it was a demonstration of the power of positive policy when it doesn’t break your budget, and when it doesn’t break the well-being of of your local residents, which I think it was in that case. If this escalates, I think it could wind up having the kind of fault lines that Eastern European countries had around Syrian refugees. Right.
  • Speaker 1
    0:11:10

    You know, there were gestures of welcoming refugees. And then when it became a tidal wave, there was backlash. You know, there’s no indication yet that it’s gonna become a tidal wave yet with the with the numbers being shipped north. And there is evidence that voters are disgusted by what the scientists is doing, but they’re probably not his voters anyway.
  • Speaker 4
    0:11:30

    So one last comment on the election in Italy and watching the reaction here domestically. You know, you and I are both old enough to remember when American conservatism and was very easily distinguished from European national front type right wing politics. Very, very different very different values, very different vibes, very different use of language that American conservatism was about American exceptionalism, but it was also about limited government, it was more libertarian or at least in the rhetoric, libertarian oriented, whereas national front conservatism was more blood and steel. And watching the enthusiastic support for the far right victories in Italy among American conservatives, it underlines this evolution or devolution of the right in the con in this country that really, you know, there is kind of a coming together of American right wing politics in this European Nativeist, hyper nationalist politics. And you’re seeing, like, the president of the Heritage Foundation and others, saying how wonderful it is.
  • Speaker 4
    0:12:34

    You know, it’s us versus them and it’s the same essentially saying it’s the same sort of us versus them politics in the United States as it is in Italy. And some would go even further and say as as in Hungary. I
  • Speaker 1
    0:12:45

    don’t think you can discount the extent to which social media has also given global communities of all forms left or right or interest groups around non political issues, you know, social media is a great enabler of conversations. It’s also a great enabler of fanaticism. Great. And it’s a parent, I think, you know, to anyone anywhere now on the far right what works in terms of cultivating power and building off of that. And it’s it’s an expressly emotional and propagandic tilt.
  • Speaker 1
    0:13:19

    It isn’t about policy, as you pointed out. It’s not about cutting taxes in a more conservative supreme court and hawkish foreign policy. It’s about the idea that that the other, however you wanted to find the other by race or gender, whatever it might be, is out to get you. And that and that any form of sort of public involvement in our lives is is bent. And and, you know, if if you were a real, I think, craving policymaker, so I would equate that with Mitch McConnell, then you sort of say, all of that’s okay.
  • Speaker 1
    0:13:56

    Even if I’ve been a traditionally someone who supports a certain kind of policy platform, Maybe we need shock therapy to get government out of our lives and this is the price we pay or this is how it looks.
  • Speaker 4
    0:14:07

    So you raise an interesting ability that because of social media that right wing politics has been globalized, that they are all globalists now in terms of ideology.
  • Speaker 1
    0:14:17

    Absolutely. This
  • Speaker 2
    0:14:21

    episode is brought to you by GMC. The new GMC twenty twenty four Sierra heavy duty features the first ever Sierra HD Denali Ultimate, offering an enhanced six point six liter Duramax X Turbo Diesel v eight to deliver turbocharged towing capability, taking premium capability to amazing new places. Available ring of twenty twenty three. Visit gmc dot com to learn
  • Speaker 1
    0:14:45

    more.
  • Speaker 4
    0:14:49

    Alright. So the reason I wanted to talk to you today is because you are demonstrably one of the world’s leading experts on Donald Trump’s decades long gift in New York. So let’s talk about the Leticia James lawsuit and and and where that’s going. I mean, this is the lawsuit that accuses the Trump organization. Trump and his kids of financial fraud arguing.
  • Speaker 4
    0:15:10

    They had misled investors, falsely inflated the values of their assets. I think people now know what that’s about. You wrote Trump, a wildly insecure man has spent most of his seventy six years inflating his wealth achievements and abilities but let’s just say James civil lawsuit more than two hundred eighty pages long is the first time his Carnival esque business practices have exposed him to existential legal consequences. So let’s talk about how big a threat this lawsuit does pose and what you mean by existential legal consequences?
  • Speaker 1
    0:15:43

    Well, I don’t I don’t think her suit. It’s a civil suit, so so Trump and his children aren’t gonna wind up in jail because of this, but she has made two federal criminal referrals out of it to the IRS, and to the US attorney’s office of the southern district of New York. So you know, those will have to play out. But, you know, Donald Trump is a creature of the New York real estate market. His father built a a large fortune in the New York real estate market, and Donald inherited that and and built his own his own persona and business dealings out of it.
  • Speaker 1
    0:16:19

    If not for that, Donald Trump wouldn’t be in our lives. And there’s a possibility now that Latisha James is going to shut down the Trump family operation in its entirety in New York, and that will be the end of that. Most of his wealth is tied up in a handful of skyscrapers. I think about five of them, four of which are in New York City. She’s seeking to revoke his business license for doing business in New York.
  • Speaker 1
    0:16:45

    If that happens, he’s gonna have to sell those buildings. And no one in the real estate market is going to think of this as anything other, I think, than a fire sale. So it’s unlikely that he’s going to get top dollar for those buildings. They’re heavily mortgaged as all of his stuff is. He always has lots of debt.
  • Speaker 1
    0:17:02

    He’s always been cash core and property rich. So she could put him out of business in New York, his finances could get hobbled, and then the family legacy gets blown up. And those are all very real things. However, much Alan Trump says he doesn’t care about that stuff. He cares about it deeply.
  • Speaker 1
    0:17:19

    And I think the I think the other thing to bear in mind, however, is that she’s got a tough case to make. Because she’s gonna have to prove that these poor bankers were so unsophisticated. They didn’t know Donald Trump was trying to be ESMA. And that’s a hard standard to overcome. I think it would be easier to say that about the tax authorities than it would about Wall Street Bankers.
  • Speaker 1
    0:17:42

    Having said that though, whether or not they knew they were being duped isn’t the only evidentiary hurdle she needs to you know, sat down here. If the mere fact that Trump and his his eldest three eldest children contemplate to try and do that might be enough, but she’s gonna have to convince a jury of that.
  • Speaker 4
    0:18:00

    So this is one of the most interesting questions that you’ve raised, I think, because it is no secret that he has been lying about his wealth. He’s been inflating his value for years, his lawsuit with you was exactly on the point where he had been claiming to be worth as much as six billion dollars and you were one of the first reporters who pointed out, no, not even close to all of that, and the evidence would suggest that you were right about this. But this has been going on for decades. So my first reaction was listening to literature, James, saying, you know, no one is above the law, etcetera, etcetera. And, yep, for decades, hasn’t Donald Trump been living proof that that some people are about the law?
  • Speaker 4
    0:18:40

    Why was he able to get away with this sort of thing? Four years and years decades, lying about the taxes, engaging in these things, Just give me your your your sense of that. Is there a double standard? Or is this just the way business is done in New York?
  • Speaker 1
    0:18:57

    Well, I mean, most white collar criminals in the United States never faced the kind of consequences. Blue collar criminals face. You know, a a kid stealing candy out of a seven eleven sometimes has a higher possibility of getting incarcerated than a white collar criminal who steals millions because why color criminals can afford better lawyers. So that’s been baked into things for a long time. In Trump’s case, Charlie, you know, he’s always had these sort of rings of fire around him that have protected him from the consequences of his own behavior.
  • Speaker 1
    0:19:33

    The first obviously was his family’s wealth. His father just bailed him out of his academics, snafus, and his screw ups in business. Because his father had the money to do that. And then Trump became a celebrity, and he had this insulation that comes with celebrity. He got away with behavior people might have otherwise scorned or dumped him for.
  • Speaker 1
    0:19:53

    And then, of course, he he gets into the White House, and he gets all of the the armor that comes with the President of the United States. And and because of that, I think he’s never had to deal again with the consequences of his own behavior. So essentially, Donald Trump is a seven year old grown old. And I think in the past, because he was just another real estate developer, a a famous one, but just another one, people didn’t see him as a threat to the well-being of American democracy in a constitution, but they did as president. And I think that’s forced people to focus on him in a new way.
  • Speaker 4
    0:20:27

    So his relationship with with the prosecutors, he gave an interview with, I thinking, correct me if I’m wrong about this. One of the interviews he gave to Maggie Haberman when she was writing her book, where he’s bragging about the close relationship that he used to have with the former Manhattan DA Morgan Thaw, that he was his friend, that he never would have done anything
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:47

    like this. Well, remember that Donald Trump gave massive contributions to the police athletic league or say, let’s say, large contributions to the police athletic league, which was one of Bob Morgan Thaz, you know, core charities. And there had always been a question in Manhattan as to whether or not Bob Morgan Thaur who was a great public servant, and a very vigilant observer of financial fraud went lightly on the real estate community because the real estate community helped get him elected. So as always with Trump, when he sort of says these people left me alone, he’s also exposing himself because the reason I left him alone is possibly because they were co opted. And, you know, the reason he got through two impeachments was because he had co opted the GOP.
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:35

    And what’s happening now is there’s a number of legal actions around him where he doesn’t have leverage, whether it’s in the state of Georgia, or the Fed’s looking at the at the documents at Mar a Lago, Manhattan DA, New York AG, and possibly, ultimately, Marek Garland, though that’s yet to be seen. But in all of those cases, He’s got no leverage over them. So it’s it’s it’s just so pathetic when he says, yeah, these other prosecutors didn’t care. And well, there’s bad reasons for why they didn’t care.
  • Speaker 4
    0:22:04

    So stick with the DA’s office. Because, I mean, Robert Morgan thought it was kind of a legendary figure. I mean, you know, former US attorney in the southern district of New York serve, like, forever, nineteen seventy five until two thousand and nine is New York DA. He succeeded by Cyrus Vance, famous name, who began the grand jury investigation into Trump and then was succeeded
  • Speaker 1
    0:22:25

    Low Charlie. Yeah. Low Charlie. Even so Vance left the Trump’s go on something that was a pretty — Mhmm. — pretty tough case where they were selling condominiums.
  • Speaker 1
    0:22:36

    And one this tower and misrepresenting the sale price of previous condos and how briskly they have been sold and there was a question as to whether or not they had defrotted prospective condo buyers by misrepresenting how well the building was selling. And there was an investigation. It was Ivanka. I think Don Junior and Donald. And Xivance got heavily criticized for letting that one go in the years before Trump became president.
  • Speaker 4
    0:23:00

    Yeah. So there’s there’s a long patterned you know, obviously, perhaps reasons for the Trump’s to think that they were Teflon. So in the end near the end of his career, Xivance sort of got religion and seem to be moving moving ahead. He retires. He’s replaced by Alvin Bragg about whom I know virtually nothing.
  • Speaker 4
    0:23:19

    And yet, Alvin Bragg has had a big question mark over his head because it certainly looked like he was gonna take a dive on on this case as well. So what’s what is I mean, yet yet prosecutors resigning from the office. So, what’s going on there?
  • Speaker 1
    0:23:33

    Well, look, the brag is that got a criminal prosecution afoot. It’s a much tougher case to make than the civil prosecution that Tish James is overseeing. In a criminal prosecution, you have to prove intent. So you have to prove that the person you’re prosecuting knew that they were breaking the law, knew they were doing something wrong, and did it anyway. And so that’s a very high standard you need an evidentiary trail that’s robust and it has to be as airtight as possible so a jury believes you.
  • Speaker 1
    0:24:00

    There was a sharp divide inside Bragg’s office that he inherited by the way from Saivans. Mhmm. Saivans might have tried to resolve this himself before leaving office rather than leaving his big bad sandwich on Alvin Brad’s desk, but he did it that way. But there was a split in that office, I think, among some prosecutors who felt the evidence hadn’t risen high enough, but it was airtight enough to go after a former president on on criminal charges. Others in the office thought there is enough there to to indict and and we could use the indictment and the process itself to get further information to nail things down.
  • Speaker 1
    0:24:40

    And you know, There’s reasonable, prosecutorial arguments you make on both sides of that, but the office itself wasn’t unified. Bragg inherited that. Okay.
  • Speaker 4
    0:24:50

    So I have one last question on on these cases. So there there was an ongoing case against the Trump organization. The guy that knows everything. Ellen was at Weisselberg — Yep. — has played guilty.
  • Speaker 4
    0:25:03

    And
  • Speaker 1
    0:25:03

    he’s going to get sentenced, pending, how much he cooperates with Alvin Bragg’s office. This is Alvin Bragg’s office that prosecuted Weissburg.
  • Speaker 4
    0:25:12

    Okay. So my question about this was it’s a plea deal. And the first reports that I saw about this was that he was pleading guilty as part of the plea deal, but that the deal did not require him to testify against Donald Trump. What
  • Speaker 1
    0:25:24

    kind of a deal was that? I I actually think that misrepresented a little bit because because he has to the judge said he would withhold the sentencing until he had made a determination about how effectively Weisselberg cooperated. So, of course, they’re gonna ask him questions about Trump. Nothing happened that I am Weitzelberg was Fred Trump’s accountant. And then he became Donald Trump’s chief financial officer.
  • Speaker 1
    0:25:52

    He knows where every financial body is everything. Yeah. And it’s in his interest to get a lighter sentence to cooperate as robustly as possible. He’s looking at a difference of, say, one to three years and five to fifteen. And so of course, I think he’s going to cooperate and inevitably that’s going to involve offering testimony or evidence about things Donald Trump did at the Trump organization.
  • Speaker 1
    0:26:16

    So I think that was I think there was some spin there on Weisel Bird’s lawyers. I think the fact pattern suggests that he is gonna most likely offer evidence against Donald Trump.
  • Speaker 4
    0:26:31

    Okay. Let’s switch gears because you’ve you’ve written also extensively about the documents down in Marlago. What’s going on down there? So okay. So, Tim, Why did Donald Trump take all that stuff in the first place?
  • Speaker 4
    0:26:46

    What do he think?
  • Speaker 1
    0:26:48

    Because he could, Charlie, And secondly, you know, usually the easiest answer on that is a dollar sign. I think he saw Steve Mnuchin getting you know, two billion from the Saudis and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner getting two billion from the Saudis. And, you know, this is just projection on my part. I I I this is complete supposition, but I think I think he undoubtedly thought he could possibly monetize some of the things he took out of the office. Out of the White House.
  • Speaker 1
    0:27:18

    I think how? By selling them, I mean, even market Sure. Of course. He’d sell anything. He would sell absolute he and he has.
  • Speaker 1
    0:27:27

    He’s sold underwear, mattresses, water, stakes, ties, clothing, and all sorts of other garbage games, pizzas, name it. So why wouldn’t he sell nuclear secrets? I mean, This is not a sophisticated man. He is he’s a carnival barker who loves cash. So I think that that’s a reasonable thing is to think that you thought about selling things on the open market.
  • Speaker 1
    0:27:51

    I think another possibility is that he wanted to cover up the trail reputationally. Is there was there anything in there about his communications with Zelensky in Ukraine? The the stuff that he got impeached for. Possibly, I don’t know. But containing reputational damage is also I think a reasonable thing to wonder about.
  • Speaker 1
    0:28:12

    And then lastly, and it’s the least damaging thing is he just likes toys because he’s a little kid. And he likes the
  • Speaker 4
    0:28:19

    cool doodads.
  • Speaker 1
    0:28:20

    Yeah. He likes to do that. The models of Air Force want them, you know, and framed pictures of the meeting of world leaders on the southern crutch. Letters with Kim Jong un. Like, he thinks it’s neat.
  • Speaker 1
    0:28:31

    So that’s a factor in all of this for sure, but I don’t think it’s hardly the most nefarious one.
  • Speaker 4
    0:28:36

    No. I when you wrote about this possible motivations, including the fact it was for money, you you wrote really love this paragraph. Unfettered greed has motivated Trump his entire life. He didn’t get into the casino business to beautify Atlantic City. He didn’t propose a mega development on Manhattan’s West side because it would have made New York more livable.
  • Speaker 4
    0:28:56

    He didn’t start Trump University to educate students, and he didn’t host the apprentice to tutor entrepreneurs he didn’t originally run for president to revitalize democracy, money money money. This is kind of the the core understanding of what motivates Donald Trump aside just his his endless insecure ego. Right? I mean, it’s these are the three lines.
  • Speaker 1
    0:29:18

    And I think it’s why some of the supporters love him because he just says, yeah. I like women, and I like money, and screw you. And this is how I live, yeehaw. And and there’s a lot of people who respond to that, you know, but the and and there’s a there’s part of that where he can sort of, I guess, revel in his enthusiasm for it. But the downside is he’s corrupt and craving and damaging.
  • Speaker 4
    0:29:42

    So is he running? Is there is there any doubt in your mind that
  • Speaker 1
    0:29:45

    he’s running? No. I think he’s gonna run. I don’t think he wants to. Really?
  • Speaker 1
    0:29:49

    I think he’s a period of time where he didn’t want to, but now I think reality is is convincing him that it’s in his best interest to run because it keeps him in the spotlight. It keeps him, you know, on top of the Republican pyramid and
  • Speaker 4
    0:30:06

    he can monetize it. Is there anything that would convince him not to run? And obviously, I’m thinking of these legal threats again.
  • Speaker 1
    0:30:14

    He’s not in jail other than jail? Yeah.
  • Speaker 4
    0:30:17

    Yes. Oh, well, wait. Wait. Wait. No.
  • Speaker 4
    0:30:19

    I mean, including jail. Is there anything including indictment and or jail that would convince him not to run?
  • Speaker 1
    0:30:26

    I don’t think so. You know, I I you know, we might have been on some of those same shows together in November of twenty twenty. You know, well, I think people have this sort of wish that after election day, he might just appear. I
  • Speaker 4
    0:30:38

    do remember that.
  • Speaker 1
    0:30:39

    And I was saying, I think between election day in January six, he’s gonna try to bring the house down. I don’t think he’s going away. And because that’s not in his nature. I mean, I didn’t know that he was formatting a coup, you know. Like, I didn’t think it would be that purposeful.
  • Speaker 1
    0:30:54

    I just thought he would try to disrupt everything. And I think that’s still where he’s at now. He’s Donald Trump is not someone who’s gonna go gently into that good night.
  • Speaker 4
    0:31:03

    Well, you know, you were obviously right if you said he’s not gonna go away that that and and I think it was easy to predict knowing Donald Trump that he was never gonna concede defeat because Donald Trump can never lose. He can only be cheated. He can only be betrayed. Right? On the other hand, you used an interesting phrase that he would try to burn the house down.
  • Speaker 4
    0:31:21

    And in retrospect, it does appear that he was prepared to pull the entire EFS down around him. If he did not win, AND YET HE HAS POLITICALLY SURVIVED THAT SO FAR. HE HE HE HE HE HE HIGUED THAT POSSIBLY IT’S ENHANZE
  • Speaker 1
    0:31:37

    TO HIS STANDING. And it’s kind of astounding to me when you look at the array of people in the GOP who condemned it around January sixth from Kevin McCarthy to Mitch McConnell who then basically got with the program. And the ones who came down the hardest not him within the GOP. People like Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger are exiled yeah, I mean, that’s the other thing is that he knows how to turn disadvantage into a message that ultimately is advantageous for him?
  • Speaker 4
    0:32:10

    So first of all, do you think that Department of Justice will indite him before the twenty twenty four election? You
  • Speaker 1
    0:32:16

    know, I don’t know how they don’t indict him on the fact pattern alone, but I don’t think their issues are legal. I think their issues are political. They’re gonna worry about the fallout of indicting an ex president in a way that looks partisan. But I think Trump wrote the law and I and I think Trump formatted a coup. And I think he has to be held accountable if our institutions and laws mean anything.
  • Speaker 1
    0:32:40

    But but
  • Speaker 4
    0:32:41

    I don’t know if Mary Garland led that same, you know, perspective. Yeah. I I I suspect that he might, and I I agree with you. I think the the president that would be set by not indicting him would would would hang over us for for a decade. So if he is indicted, would the Republican party still nominate him.
  • Speaker 4
    0:32:59

    Would the Republican Party nominate a person facing federal criminal charges to be president of the United States? Would they do that in twenty twenty four?
  • Speaker 1
    0:33:07

    Wow. You probably know the answer to that better than I knew, Charlie, but wouldn’t it be amazing? I mean, it would — Yes. But it would not be, I guess, out of kilter with where things have been headed, with institutional conservatives globally in the last few years.
  • Speaker 4
    0:33:24

    No. See, I I think the answer to that is yes, which again is astounding. It is astounding, but these are the times we live in. Wrote something this morning that I I didn’t find pleasant, which was that, you know, democracy is too important to be left to the lawyers, but here we are. I mean, they’re sort of left
  • Speaker 1
    0:33:41

    to the lawyers.
  • Speaker 4
    0:33:42

    Well, because all of the other, you know, guardrails bulwarks of democracy that we’ve counted on, you know, are I’ve been unreliable. You know, I included the media, not because the media hasn’t done a good job. But because, well, there’s a lot of different kinds of media. But also, Donald Trump has succeeded probably beyond his wildest dreams in insulating himself against any negative reporting, any investigative reporting. I mean, there is
  • Speaker 1
    0:34:06

    no ways to go beyond around the media. You know, in social media and his own his own persona?
  • Speaker 4
    0:34:13

    Yeah. I mean, all of the Republicans who had served in the administration who’ve spoken out about how unfit for office he is. I mean, I don’t know who, you know, who else we’re waiting for. That hasn’t had an effect. Congress has clearly decided that it’s gonna abdicate its responsibility.
  • Speaker 4
    0:34:28

    I threw in the electorate because, obviously, a good chunk of the electorate likes this sort of thing or doesn’t care about this sort of thing, and it’s certainly possible in twenty twenty four that Donald Trump could lose by ten million votes and still be back in the Oval Office. So what are we left with the churches, you know, give me a break on all of that. The Republican donors obviously are completely okay with this so far to the extent which They care about it. In fact, the role of the donors appears to become more toxic with time. So really, even though the system was not designed, to, you know, rely on prosecutors with their, you know, limited, you know, tools.
  • Speaker 4
    0:35:08

    That’s kind of where we’re at right now. Right?
  • Speaker 1
    0:35:11

    Which means it’s the end of the American experiment.
  • Speaker 4
    0:35:14

    You think so?
  • Speaker 1
    0:35:15

    Yes. I I worry about violence, Charlie. I I I really worry about these elections being contested so deeply and viciously and people unfit for office getting elected quote unquote, that we end up with violence, and we end up with a kind of historical end point for what we’ve all tried to build here over the last two hundred plus years.
  • Speaker 4
    0:35:42

    I worry about that two hundred, but I all so worry that maybe we’ve already crossed the tipping point and we’ll recognize it in retrospect, but that it we’ve already passed it. There’s a point of no return and I know that we’re never supposed to engage in both sidesism, but it’s hard to imagine an enduring situation where one side says, no, we’re we’re going to play by Marquise of Queensbury rules if you flout them all. At what point does it become kind of this chaotic free for all in which neither side is gonna accept the results of the election. And and and again, I am not saying that there’s any symmetry here clearly, it is Republicans have decided they’re not gonna accept the outcome. But if if this election turns out the way that it could, it really does make you wonder whether or not our our experiment has been a failure.
  • Speaker 1
    0:36:30

    I agree a hundred percent. I I think I think we are headed potentially if people don’t stand up and do the right thing across a lot of US institutions. And I think primarily Law enforcement and the GOP right now, I think we’re headed for a chaos. We haven’t experienced here for a long time.
  • Speaker 4
    0:36:49

    Yeah. It may not be the form of a civil war, but I think there’s a failure of imagination to think that that we couldn’t have this breakdown. I mean, you’re starting to see the, you know, the red versus blue divide. So, again, I I try to stay out of the business of of predicting, and I’m very very skeptical of all the polls at this point. What is your sense about the midterms right now.
  • Speaker 4
    0:37:08

    There was some exuberance among Democrats that they were making a comeback, and then we had some polls over the weekend that would suggest No. The winds are still very much at the Republicans’ back. The abortion issue continues to be this incredible wildcard and, of course, the economy, the stock market, I haven’t even looked
  • Speaker 1
    0:37:27

    today. What what is your sense of where we’re at right now? I think the bumps that the Democrats got after the job’s ruling is real. I don’t know though that that has enough momentum to overcome bread and butter issues like jobs and inflation in the economy, which I think usually motivates voters more powerfully than anything else. That might be an exception in this midterm.
  • Speaker 1
    0:37:51

    I don’t think we’ll not rule of voters in. But you know, I think Democrats’ chances of holding on to the house, you know, really rose and fell on inflation and jobs in the economy. And we’re we’re in another certainly right now this week is going to be a very telling week because you have a global problems in the currency markets, stock market, bond market, and I think how that plays out will be a really big factor. I I don’t think I mean, ironically, you know, the dens may have a stronger hand to play in the senate. Than they would have thought of a year ago.
  • Speaker 1
    0:38:26

    But I it’s not clear to me that they’re gonna hold on to the house. I I think GOP is gonna is going to take over the house. Howard Bauchner: Yeah,
  • Speaker 4
    0:38:34

    I think that’s a that’s a reasonable projection. And then, of course, we’ll see what happens in the Senate because, of course, is even Mitch McConnell has acknowledged they have a candidate quality issue. However, even the craziest candidates appear to be competitive, which which ought to be a kind of a red flag if there’s a remote possibility that Hershel Walker may someday be sworn in as United States senator, it tells you where we are as the country doesn’t attempt.
  • Speaker 1
    0:38:59

    And and get a seat on, like, the Senate for a relations committee or something. You know, when when he can barely identify some of the key issues facing the country on the seat amazing. Tim
  • Speaker 4
    0:39:10

    O’Brien, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. I always appreciate it. Thank
  • Speaker 1
    0:39:14

    you for having me, Charlie.
  • Speaker 4
    0:39:15

    Tim is senior executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion, the political analyst at MSNBC and his book, which is still a relevant classic Trump nation, the art of being the Donald The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio production by Jonathan Seres. I’m Charlie Sykes. Thank you for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. We’ll be back tomorrow. Do this all over again.
  • Speaker 1
    0:39:44

    You’re worried about the economy. Inflation is high. Your paycheck doesn’t cover as much as it used to, and we live under the threat of a looming recession. And show you’re doing okay, but you could be doing better. The
  • Speaker 3
    0:39:55

    afford anything podcast explains the economy and the market detailing how to make wise choices on the way you and and invest.
  • Speaker 1
    0:40:01

    Afford anything talks about how to avoid common pitfalls, how to refine your mental models, and how to think about how to think. Make smarter choices and build a better life. Afford anything wherever you listen.
Want to listen without ads? Join Bulwark+ for an exclusive ad-free version of The Bulwark Podcast! Learn more here. Already a Bulwark+ member? Access the premium version here.