Trump’s Empire of Fraud

Welcome to the Bulwark podcast, a new episode of Trump trials with our partners from Law Fair, and we, of course, are joined by the editor in chief of Lawfair, Ben Willis, who joins us from the, is that a hammock studio? You’re actually in a hammock, a hammock inside the house band.

Beginning of the pandemic, I ordered this hammock from Latvia It is handmade. I said, if I’m gonna spend, you know, the next I didn’t know. I thought it was gonna be three months, but it turned out to be two years. In this room. I’m doing it in a hammock.

I’ve done, you know, lots of shows, lots of podcasts from this hammock. And all my meetings. I make no apologies.

Was not asking for an apology. I was just asking for a I’m feeling a little bit, you know, jealous of all of I mean, obviously, I mean, does it does it make you more chill? I mean, is what what is the effect?

Well, it it makes me chill. It also allows me to move around. And, you know, the other thing that the hammock does is, it allows when I’m wearing a dog shirt, which I’m not, the eyes are particularly protruvant in the Hamwich studio. So which which sends all the right people.

Okay. So for those podcast listeners who don’t realize we’re now doing this on YouTube, so you can actually check it out. Okay. So I have a lot of notes today for the Trump trials. It’s been a rather extraordinary week and Let’s just jump right into all of this.

George Conway explained this, yesterday that this partial summary judgment by this New York judge Arthur. I’m gonna pronounce it. And Gordon, is the equivalent of the corporate death penalty for the Trump organization in the state of New York, which seems like a B FD to me. This is the AP story. A judge ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump committed fraud for years.

While building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame, under the White House and ordered some of the former president’s companies removed from his control and dissolved. This is a part of this lawsuit brought by New York attorney general Latitia James, and found that Trump and his family and his company deceived a banks. This was the fraud of the group. Deceived banks insurance companies and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating in his was inflated by as much as, two hundred million dollars, transplanted to have an apartment time from that power size, was deflated by a bunch of five hundred million dollars. Trump claimed that it was three times its actual size.

Who knew that that would be a problem?

You know, there’s a lot of square footage between friends.

That’s right. I mean, it’s just it’s bigly. You just have to think about it. He claimed that Mar a lago was worth about six hundred million dollars the judge found. No.

Actually, more like twenty seven million. And so the judge agreed with the New York attorney general who said that Trump had inflated the value of his properties by as much as two point two billion dollars. And I guess I wanna talk about this in terms of sort of the granular significance of putting Donald Trump out of business in New York. I mean, this business, death penalty, but also the larger picture that I wrote about in my newsletter this morning, that the art of the deal was always based on this swindle. It was always based on this fraud.

It is the throne, the golden throne of fraud. That Donald Trump has been pulling off and getting away with for years and years and years and may only be an asterisk going into twenty twenty four. But, Ben, let’s just talk about this. You know, the judge said that the evidence was so overwhelming. That it didn’t even need to go to trial or to hear evidence.

I mean, because there’s no facts to be dis decided. I mean, this is rather extraordinary this kind of a remedy, isn’t it, in a case without a trial? Just on summary judgment, your thoughts?

With a bunch of these civil cases that we’ve talked about, in the past. I’ve said, hey, you know, this is optically significant, but from Trump’s point of view, it’s just money. It’s just the cost of doing business. As sympathetic as I am to Eugene Carol. That’s the way Trump regards these judgment.

I think.

RAP is just the cost of doing business.

RAP is just the cost of doing business. Defirmation is just the cost of doing business. This is not just the cost of doing business because it really affects your ability to do business in the future. And, you know, one of the consequences of this is that these companies are being removed from his control. They’re being dissolved removed entirely.

And eventually, you start losing the asset. Which in Trump’s cases is two things. One is the branding rights. I think that’s probably something that you can’t really take away from him. But the other is the buildings.

Right? And I do think you’re reaching the point some of these litigations where they really materially affect the Trump organization. It’s really a cluster of organizations. Ability to function at least in the state of New York. And, you know, that’s a significant thing.

Now whether it’s a significant thing to voters or not, I I will be very much doubt. But, you know, in the sense that there are really three drivers of Trump’s you know, wealth and prosperity. One of them, the original one is this real estate quasi empire, The second one is the brand and the third one is the brand as implemented through fundraising in the political environment. Right? And this really does start kicking the leg out, one of those three legs out from under it.

And I don’t wanna say this is the thing that’s gonna end Donald Trump because we’ve all said that a hundred times, and it’s been wrong a hundred times. It’s not trivial, though. And and I do think that the idea that the empire is built on fraud built on tax evasion, is something we’ve all known for a long time and yet having it you know, validated by the New York court system in a fashion with genuine sequences for Trump, albeit in the financial, not in the lock him up kind of space, is no small thing.

No. It’s no small thing, but it it’s not going to be the tipping point for Donald Trump. We know this. I mean, on earth two point o, this sort of thing would be shocking. It would be disqualifying for someone running for any office.

But for Donald Trump, this is just an asterisk. I mean, a lot of this stuff has been known in the Republican Party and it’s, you know, great faustian deal with Donald Trump. Essentially acknowledging. He’s kind of a fraudster. He’s a he’s a con man.

He’s a serial liar. We we we know all that, but we can go along with him anyway. But on the other hand, you know, it is interesting to sort of put this in context and that, you know, before everything that happened, everything, I’m waving my hands here. There was this fraud, you know, the Daddy’s money, the the assets that were built on paper, this, you know, elaborate swindle con game that was going on David Kay Johnson, who’s been writing about, Donald Trump forever, won a Pulitzer prize wrote yesterday. I marveled at people who do not realize that Donald is and always has been Conman who lies cheat steals and got away with it using threats of ruinous legal action, etcetera.

And then he goes through what this means. He says the effect of this ruling is that Donald Trump is no longer in business. Worse, he writes, the self proclaimed multi billionaire, may soon be personally bankrupt as a result stripped of just about everything because for years he engaged in calculated bank fraud and insurance fraud by inflating the values of his property a judge ruled on Tuesday. His gaudy trump tower apartment, his golf courses, his Boeing seven fifty seven jet, and even Mar a lago could all be disposed of by a court of appointed monitor, leaving Trump with not much more than his pensions as a one term president and a television performer. K.

This raises all kinds of questions for what does it say about the due diligence of the banks in the insurance companies? The fact that this has been going on, and it’s been kind of an open secret for a very, very long time. What does it say about the people who are willing to hand out money to Donald Trump? And what does it say? About law enforcement officials in Manhattan, in New York, in the Southern District of New York, who have looked the other way for decades.

As Donald Trump has been doing this.

Those are very different questions.

Yes.

And let’s take the bank example first. And I am no expert on real estate financing. So, you know, take this with a grain of salt, but it seems to me that the story that we’ve learned over the last decade has been that banks, more respectable banks pulled away from him. Right. Over time.

Yeah. And so that there is a degree to which the kinda mainstream system was self correcting in this regard. And that left him to do business with a group of much shadier banks, particularly in most famously Deutsche Bank, which took crazy risks on him and presumably got higher interest rates as a result. Now what does it say about them? It says that there are people in every industry who are willing to bend the rules if you suck at their jobs.

If you upped the price a little bit. Or a lot. And that also, by the way, put him in bed with some of their other clients I e, shady, Russian mobster types. And so there is a, I think, an important relationship between the real estate fraud issues that this case deals with and some of the darker you know, non real estate fraud, you know, why is Donald Trump constantly doing business with you know, Russian oligarchs kind of question. The question of law enforcement is a really interesting one, and I don’t think we know the answer to it.

So we know that Trump’s tax returns have been under audit repeatedly because he’s said so. I don’t think we know why those audits haven’t picked up any of these issues. Or if they have, I also don’t think we know why some of the same issues, you know, the New York Times did that exhaust of study of Trump’s tax returns? Tax fraud. Yeah.

Exactly. Why that has not created law enforcement action at the federal level and why some of those issues were invisible to state law enforcement earlier. So I do think there’s a real law enforcement question here. There is one potentially very disturbing answer to this, maybe there’s more than one, which is that this sort of activity is so common in the New York real estate world that it’s not actually that exceptional, which is, you know, I hate to sound like Trump but a kind of everybody does it. Yeah.

But is that a defense? Is that an actual defense, though?

Absolutely not. But it may be an explanation as to why you know, we all cross the street Will Saletan nobody gets, you know, cited for it, and there may be some of that going on in New York taxes.

And there could have been some favoritism too. There could have been favoritism and the fact that, you know, sometimes, you know, this whole notion that nobody’s above the law, which, of course, is just simply not true. If Right. If you’re wealthy and you’re famous, you are going to be treated differently. So the judge in this case, I mean, he called bullshit on Donald I mean, this is just dropping the hammer.

I mean Yeah.

It’s just one of those democratic judges though, Charlie. So it doesn’t count.

But, I mean, the language he used, I mean, you know, he called the Trump’s, you know, explanations in the defense bogus and deceptive that his denials were straight out of fantasy world. So the trial next week will just be about you know, he’s basically been found guilty. I mean, he’s basically lost the case. Right? It’s just a matter of, you know, how much of his ill gotten gains is yet to discourage?

Is that what’s gonna be decided?

Exactly. It’s not wholly dissimilar from the Eugene Carroll situation where you kind of decide as a matter of summary judgment that it’s a certain amount of it, but there are residual questions.

We were talking before about the the political fallout from this, which I I think is somewhat predictable because, I mean, look, I think it’s baked in. If you supported Donald Trump, you’ve kind of known a lot of this has been going on. I mean, it’s you’ve you’ve noticed that you have these business failures, etcetera. But also, As I wrote this morning, there’s something almost quaint about this kind of grift and graft compared to the string of horribles we’ve been seeing with Donald Trump, you know, and and the rising threat that he poses to the American constitutional order. The problem is the zone has been so flooded.

With Donald Trump that even in the week in which he calls for and I keep coming back to this because I do think this is relevant What it calls for the death penalty for the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff suggests that he would use government power, you know, to retaliate against media outlets that that he doesn’t like. When all of that is going on, it’s kind of like hard to know where to look. And I do get the sense. And I and I know that, my colleague Tim Miller wrote us and Nik Cataggio over at the dispatch, there’s this danger that we’ve just gotten numbed to all of this, that we are all the boiling frogs that Trump continues to up the ante, become more outrageous, more dangerous. I mean, there’s still people out there who will accuse us of suffering from Trump derangement syndrome.

And some of them are now looking around and going, why? Why has nobody, you know, done anything about this? This is just crazy. There is that danger, that sense that right now, that we’ve normalized so much of this behavior that he knows that simply lying about the value of your property. If you’re willing to accept January six, if you’re willing to accept the calls for the termination of the constitution, If you’re willing to accept the attempted extortion of the Ukrainian president, if you’re willing to accept all of the rest of that stuff and his embrace of conspiracy, there’s You’re not gonna go yes, but really he overvalued Mar a lago.

Right? I mean, the thing about it is he keeps upping the ante.

I actually disagree with you on a subtle point here. I don’t think the problem is that we’re all frogs in boiling water. I think the majority or about half of the country shrieked and jumped out of the water a long time ago.

Okay.

And I think about forty percent of the country actively enjoys the bath. That this is a spa to them there’s some part of this that the more outrageous he is, the more fun it is for them. And I think there’s a heavy element of this that involves transgression and that involves people living vicariously through his varyacious appetites and outrageousness. And the more of a criminal he is, the better.

I think that’s true.

And then there’s a small group of people who are the frog and the boiling water. And It’s a certain group of people who are actually not into this stuff, but they’re really susceptible to the argument that, you know, the Dragcreen story hour and Joe Biden being old and inflation are so bad that they have to tolerate it anyway. And those are the people for whom the ever increasing temperature of the water get is not enjoyable. You know, they’re not like the people who were into the transgression and who find it exciting and and amusing. They actually don’t like it, and they’re the people who were quietly whispering in your ear I feel the same way you do, but I can’t say it publicly, but they’re so offended by the comparatively minor x successes of the left and center left and their genetic Republicans and their that they find it less uncomfortable to deal with the rising temperature than they do to feel the discomfort of abandoning the pot.

Tim Miller and his PC yesterday. Sort of imagine going back in time to twenty fifteen or so, and getting together a group of Republican worthies, and then showing them the headline from January six. You know, mob storms capital. And then tell them that, you know, they would think, well, you know, if that’s gone too far, you know, surely There’s no way that people will still support him. And then you’d explain to them that every one of you will, in fact, be on board this guy with the exception of, say, Liz Cheney, we would blow their minds.

And that’s the boiling frog syndrome. Is that many of them, you know, I mean, they made small compromises. They made transactional compromises. They said, okay. The pussy grabbing That doesn’t bother me.

That’s locker room talk. Okay. So the Ukraine thing. And what happens is after a while, you realize that you have become completely morally and intellectually corrupt. And at that point, you’re like in.

Unless you’re at Cassidy Hutchinson, you have sunken costs, and this is the choice you have made. Right? This is the life. This is the business they have chosen.

I think that’s right. But that’s a relatively small percentage of the electorate. Right? Those Republican elites, the much larger percentage of the electorate And I think this is disturbing is people who actually get off on it and who are genuinely, you know, thirty five percent of the country are hardcore and they enjoy this. So here’s what I have a hard time reconciling.

I don’t know whether you’ve had this experience. You we we get out of our media bubble. We get out of the, you know, political bubble, and you go out into the world, you go to soccer games, you you meet people at tailgate parties, you know, at baseball games, and you go to church, you you go to the farmers, marking everything. And you meet Americans. And you’re reminded, these people are are pretty decent.

They’re not stupid. They raise their children, to be, you know, good men and women. They have strong moral values. And I have a hard time reconciling how do you who are so moral and honorable and smart in other areas of your life, how are you willing to buy into this when it comes to politics? Is is there a complete disconnect between our politics.

And I do wonder those people, is there some point the temperature where they go? Okay. I don’t like Democrats. I don’t like the welfare state. I don’t want, you know, the inflation.

I’m I’m concerned about the border and crime and all of those other things. I don’t like Drag Queen’s story are, but damn. It is just look around. It is too freaking hot here. I can’t take this.

But I think we know from all kinds of stuff that there is a difference between personal decency and political decency. And the number of people who are perfectly lovely in their ordinary lives and willing to contemplate at a political level, things that are appalling, things that should be unacceptable, undiscussable. Why is that?

I mean, you’re you’re right, but, I mean, I’m thinking about people, okay, in in the context of our discussions with Donald Trump and his lying in his frauds and everything. There are millions of people who are gonna vote for Donald Trump, but would never lend him money, would never let him babysit their kids, would never let him walk their dogs. They would not hire him for any position in their business but they’re willing to make him president again. What is the dividing line in people’s heads that say, I wouldn’t tolerate this behavior from my kid’s soccer coach. I would not buy a car from this man.

I would not go into business with this man, but I’m willing to, give him the nuclear codes and put him back in the Oval Office.

The answer is that he’s a cartoon character. And, you know, if you if you replace the name Donald Trump, there with the name, choose your, you know, your lovable villain cartoon character. And you say, do you like, I don’t know, Donald Duck. Right? And people say, yeah, I like Donald Duck.

And then you say, would you lend him money?

I’m not making Donald Duck commander in chief, though.

But that’s the stretch. Right? The cartoon character becoming president. I don’t think the stretch between what would your personal engagement with would you trust Peppy Lepugh with your kids?

Is it more like the that some people just kind of get off on the anti hero? So, for example, if you’re watching Game of Thrones, and you go, cersei Lannister, really kinda rooting for her, kind of like her. She’s evil. She’s terrible. Exactly.

Kind of her thinking, Is she gonna get away with this? And have you ever noticed the number of times you’re watching a movie or a particularly television? And you realize, wait, I am actually rooting for the worst person in the world. Exactly. And I wonder

this is exactly what I’m saying. And maybe maybe your Cersei lannister example is better than my cartoon character example. But if you think of these as a sort of two dimensional screen character, we root for bad guys all the time. And we allow people to do horrible, horrible things as long as we’ve decided that they’re the people that are on our side in the fight. And that’s the way people react.

And by the way, when those characters when they do that, the more transgressive they are, you know, swooping in on dragons and incinerating people, we think that’s cool.

Yeah. Right? Yes.

And that the effect that he has on a very large number of people. It’s much more than the frog in in the ever increasing temperature. We’re actively into or at least those who are actively into it. But the flip side is that the other half of the political spectrum jumped out of that pot of water a long time ago. Yeah.

Early in twenty sixteen, most of us were like, wow. This is disgusting. I don’t want anything to do with this.

Yeah. By the way, that’s a dragon, and it is incinerating an entire city here. And so I I I was about to say the first time I realized this, but I don’t know if it was the first time. I was well into this sort of process, but I remember watching, since we’re on TV here. Watching House of Cards and watching the president who’s a bad guy and realizing that I’m rooting for him.

I am rooting for he’s just killed somebody, and I’m thinking I wanted to get away with this. And I was like, okay. I do wonder whether there’s there’s kind of a a crossover, but I’m not gonna I’m not gonna get too deep into this. But, I will confess that I did actually root for the bad guys.

Like, house of cards before Kevin Spacey turned out to be a real bad guy in real life Right. Was

But Timmons, but he was perfect. You know, he was the perfect villain.

Very great actor. Yeah. And I think that analogy is really the way a lot of people experience Trump with one really important exception. Which is Kevin Spacey in the House of Cards does not purport to be fighting for you. He does not purport to be your tribe’s hero against No.

The heathens or whatever. And Trump combines that sort of lovable rogue, bad guy, antihero thing.

I don’t get the lovable part.

Well, I don’t either, but we’re not on his team. With the idea that that he’s the champion of our team, and he’s fighting for us against the hoards of barbarians that are invading our town with trans people.

So here’s the great divide. You have, Democrats who think that the world is like the West Wing. And that that Americans want, you know, that kind of a president. And it turns out that tens of millions of Americans kinda want Kevin Spacey president. I I I guess.

Okay. So going back to the suggestion that Mark Millie be, executed, by the way, I do think it’s worthwhile pointing out how this rhetoric is escalating. The normalization of violent rhetoric can lead to the normalization of violence. In twenty sixteen, it was all about locking Hillary Clinton up. Now that has evolved to hanging Mike Pence and, you know, putting General Millie up against the wall and shooting him.

I mean, this is this is dangerous rhetoric. So he’s making these threats at the very moment when judge Chuckkin is going to have to decide what is she gonna do about Jack Smith’s demand for a this narrow order that has been, I think, unfortunately colloquially referred to as a gag order. Of course, Donald Trump is playing that card, saying, This is outrageous. You’re trying to gag me. You’re trying to take away my first amendment rights.

But Judge Shutkin has a very narrow I mean, she’s on a tight rope here, isn’t she? I mean, talk to me about how you see this whole issue of the protective orders playing out with Judge Shutkin and what her options are.

Yeah. So as I said, I think last week, the main point here is not to get the order. The main point is to start a discussion with Judge Chuck in in which you’re laying out the record, and you’re keeping track of it, and maybe that leads to some limited order, or maybe it leads to her giving a stern admonition that next time, you know, you better cut this out or else, or maybe it leads to some acceleration of the trial, which is the threat that she dangled early on, but your trying to establish the record that there is an ongoing attempt to corrupt the system by intimidating witnesses and by affecting the jury pool.

Which is very real and not theoretical.

It is not theoretical. You know, if you look at what happened to the Georgia’s special purpose grand jurors. A lot of whom have had harassment issues, and Georgia has a genuinely crazy open this rule that has allowed their names and locations to become public. And, like, I think there’s a real set of concerns here.

So one of the interesting things about Judge Chutkin and and these other judges is they know that the threat real, they are accompanied by security all the time. They know this is not theoretical. This is real and that it is escalating We know Donald Trump’s willingness to use, rhetoric. We know the fact that many of his followers do take it both seriously and literally

there was a woman indicted and arrested for threatening judge Chuckkin. Yes. You know, these are not theoretical issues. And look, if you’re a judge in that court after the years of January sixth cases, There have been security issues associated with that court that are nontrivial, and that’s not a new thing. There is something different about this.

And, you know, I I go to that court quite a bit for a lot of different reasons. And It’s a tricky building to secure. It’s got multiple entrances. It’s used by a large number of people. And the marshals have a very tough job in making that place secure.

And so, you know, all of this will be on her mind as she considers this. And, you know, she’s never had a defendant that has his own social media site before.

Well, she’s never had a former president of the United States who’s running for president. I mean, there’s no you can’t go to the manual. How do you handle cases like this? Because No one ever envisioned we would be in this moment.

None of that is before her in this motion, but the motion is pregnant with all of that. And that’s the subtext of it. When when Jack Smith comes to her and says, hey, I want a a a limited order restraining the president’s ability to do this stuff. It’s limited in one sense, but it puts everything on the table in another sense it’s gonna be a very big deal and how she rules in it will be, really, really interesting to watch.

It is gonna be a very big deal. And it will have real, consequences. So we got the response from Trump’s lawyers this week, you know, arguing that the special counsel’s office trying to limit Trump’s first amendment rights to silence, Joe Biden’s top political opponent. And I think it was, CBS’s, Scott McFarlane who tweeted you can hear Trump’s own voice in the latest motion filed by his defense in the twenty twenty election conspiracy case. The motion has lines like this.

The proposed gag order is nothing more than an obvious attempt by the Biden administration to unlawfully silence its most prominent political opponent who has now taken a commanding lead in the polls. Also, keenly aware that it is losing that race for twenty twenty four, the prosecution seeks to institutionally silence president Trump. I don’t think it’s a leap to say that does sound like Donald Trump, because I’m trying to imagine his lawyers thinking that that is a good way to persuade judge Chuckkin. So you have two tracks here. Right?

Actually, though, I I wanna, in defense of Donald Trump, I wanna point out that John Laurel, one of his lawyers, has persistently and in court, referred to the prosecution as the Biden administration and talked in similar language. So this may be turning the It

could be a lawyer.

I was surprised that John Laurel talked that way in the courtroom, but he did And so whether this is the lawyers or Trump or the lawyers channeling Trump or kind of collaborative exercise. I really don’t know.

But who is this addressed to? Like, I mean, this is like a two track because if you’re the lawyer okay. Let’s say the lawyers wrote this. That clearly are not writing this in order to persuade judge

It’s addressed to no. It’s addressed to Samolito and Brett Kavanaugh and justice Thomas. You think so. Because the the strategy works like this. Eventually, she’s gonna do something.

Yeah. Whether it’s on this motion or on some motion down the line, she’s gonna do something because you know that your client is gonna push her to do something. The DC circuit, depending on the panel, could be a friendly or unfriendly forum, But whatever happens with this motion, you’re eventually gonna take it up. And you’re gonna take it up as far as you can go, the DC circuit one way or another is a way station. And so the question is, do you have four or five votes for the idea that the justice department can’t do x to Donald Trump.

And the more you’ve pounded the table, the more that maybe you’ve created your own record before the appellate judges whom you are most relying on.

That’s a really interesting point. I I was thinking that the two track was aimed at you know, voters in public opinion, but I think you are obviously right. You know that the audience of, you know, San Melito and and Clarence Thomas will pay attention to that. And we’ll probably, think that those are serious arguments. Okay.

So there are developments in some of the other cases, including down in Georgia that are less interesting. I wanted to get your take though. Any other big legal case of the week, which is the Bob Menendez case, which is kind of the old fashioned old school crook, the guy with the cash stuffed into his clothes and the gold bars. And

It’s old fashioned in that sense, but it’s got this new angle, which is, you know, the foreign government involved. Egypt. This is a heart attack level serious indictment. I mean, it’s unusually full of really awful stuff. It’s really trump like, except for the the cash and the gold bars and stuff.

And the Mercedes?

Yeah. Trump would never drive a Mercedes. The indictment basically alleges at its core that Bob Menendez has this girlfriend who’s now his wife who is in league with a group of businessmen who are representing effectively the government of Egypt. And they are showering the girlfriend slash wife and through her Bob Menendez with cash, gold bars, jobs, Mercedes, other stuff. And he, in return, is doing favors for them and the government of Egypt.

As chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, so it’s not a trivial position

Correct. Including passing information about local and US employees of the of US and egypt. By the way, I’ve been to US embassy Egypt. You wanna talk about a facility that’s hard to protect, giving the Egyptian military details of who’s working there. He’s intervening with the department of ag culture to protect a halal foods monopoly that one of these business interests own.

He’s pushing for US military aid to Egypt. So this is a kind of it’s not a spying indictment, but it is a foreign interference indictment.

He’s acting as an agent of a foreign government. I mean, he’s been bribed to act as an agent of a foreign government on their benefits. So you’re right. I mean, at one level, it is sort of, you know, the comic opera on the other level. Keep poses a real national security threat.

I mean, this is this is a big fucking deal.

It reminds me a lot of the Mike flynn situation. Mhmm. Different country, Egypt instead of Turkey and Russia, but this is a the oldest style national security threat, when the founders thought of a national security threat, they were talking about you know, our officials in pay of or in league with foreign governments, and that’s exactly what this is. So I just wanna say to, first of all, to all anti Trump people, don’t want about this. This is seriously bad.

It’s exactly the sort of thing that we’re afraid of in the trumpest context. The fact that Menendez has done not the foreign government thing with but the cash bribes, gifts thing before. There was a hung jury. They didn’t retry him, but he was He

learned no lessons there.

Well, you learned the lesson that you can get away with.

Gear. Right. But it didn’t make him more prudent or more cautious. I mean, that’s the thing that blows my mind. He knows they’re looking at him.

They’re watching him. They’re prepared indict him. And he’s still, apparently, you know, stuffing the hundred dollar bills into his, his clothes.

And so the only thing that you can say that mitigates this. And it mitigates it substantially, but not from menendez. Is it does appear to be a highly isolated thing to Menendez. It’s not Right. Unlike the Trump thing.

There’s not a cabal of them. Right? Trump who has a relationship with Russia

Right.

Hiring Paul Manafort, who has a relationship with Russia with Mike Flynn, who has a relationship with Russia. Right? Like, you don’t have the problem of I’m just gonna say this bluntly a fifth column cabal in the administration and in the campaign you have a major league corrupt individual senator, but there’s no reason to think at least not that I can tell that anybody else other than the the small group of people who did this are involved in it. And so I I do think that mitigates it from a Democratic party point of view, but they really need to get rid of this guy.

They really do. In the politics, or, of course, very, very interesting Democrats. First of all, they have not been defending him. That they haven’t been rationalizing. It it there’s no progressive media that’s providing air cover or Menendez or saying that he that he’s being treated unfairly or the victim of

Or attacking. No one’s attacking the justice department for.

But with the exception of Republicans who and, again, this is what a weird moment we’re living in, where Republicans are kind of giving him a little bit of cover, like, you know, the Tom Cottons of the world. I mean, I do think that Democrats were slow as of yes day morning when I first wrote my newsletter that there had been only four Democratic senators had called for his resignation. I think the damn kind of broke over the last twenty four hours. A Courtney Booker may have been his fellow New Jersey Senator may have been the the tipping point. We’ll see what, the Biden White House says.

The Senate’s a very clubby environment. New Jersey Democrats are completely freaking out about this because they understand what a disaster it is. If Menendez stays in office and is, is on the ballot. So that calculus is there. It’s relatively easy for Democrats to take the high road here because they know that if Menendez resigns, if he’s forced out of office, that the Democratic governor of New Jersey will immediately appoint another Democrat But it is this weird transvaluation of, you know, Trump world giving him kind of a little bit of cover because They can’t really acknowledge that being indicted is disqualifying.

So you are seeing the the law and order party kind of lining up somewhat sympathetically Behind the criminals. Behind the criminals.

Yeah. It’s not just that they can’t acknowledge that being indicted is adequate grounds for resignation. It’s that they can’t admit that being inexplicably at the whim of foreign governments is, you know, to acknowledge that menendez is not just outside of the bounds, but but so far outside of the bounds, then how do you explain Trump’s relationship with Putin? Yeah.

Right.

How do you explain the weird solicitude that Trump has for all these dictators Once you say that if you’ve taken gratuities from hostile or adversarial or run by dictators, foreign governments, and you’re doing them favors in office. Well, how is it different to say once you’ve done real estate deals with Russian oligarchs and you’ve tried and tried to have you’ve had this universe in Moscow and you’ve traded nice things. You’ve tried to do a business deal with her Trump Tower, Moscow with Dimitri Pescoff and Vladimir Putin. Once you’ve done those things, and they’ve intervened in the election on your behalf. Like, exactly how do you answer that question?

You don’t really wanna raise any doubts that that maybe there’s something questionable about that behavior. So what’s more likely? One of engagements from rank, rock, gratuitous, speculation now, Ben?

Yeah. Absolutely. Can we do irresponsible in there?

Yeah. Yeah. This will be totally a response. What is more likely? That Bob Menendez does the right thing and resigns or that Bob Menendez announces sometime in the next few weeks that he’s switching to republican party and endorsing Donald Trump for reelection.

I I think it is See

where I’m going?

Yeah. I do. That there there’s a home for people like Bob Menendez, and it’s that’s the Republican party. Look, I don’t think he’s gonna resign

Yeah.

Because the only leverage he has is being a senator. Once you step down once you’re

little people.

Your little people. Once you’re not in that office anymore, why will anybody return your call? You’re just an indicted criminal. And I think, you know, the same reason that George Santo is still representative George Stantos, at least for another few weeks. I think that’s the only card he has to play.

So I don’t think he will resign. Right. I do think it is really important for Democrats to give him no quarter. And last time they gave him quarter, for a couple reasons. One was that the governor was Chris Christie, and they didn’t want a Republican appointed, but the other reason was that That was kind of garden variety graft.

Right. So, though, let’s see what the jury does.

It wasn’t quite as bright a line as this. It was not quite as

It did it did not involve a foreign government. It didn’t involve

long time friend, you know?

Long time friend. It was gift. It was it was look, it was really bad. I think he should have been convicted, but it wasn’t threatened the Republic bad. And it wasn’t bad in the same way that we have all spent five years saying what Trump is doing is unacceptable.

And we can’t tolerate this in a democracy having foreign governments intervene in our politics. And that’s what this case is about. And they need to just draw a big bright red line and say, I mean, they drew a big bright red line with Al Frankin, and that’s what needs to happen here. Whether it needed to happen there is a different question. But

Right. And then they need to do it very, very quickly. So, you know, you you’ve raised the point, though, that we we at least need to to flag, which is that there there is that cynical element in politics and that this whole thing would be playing out very differently if Bob Menendez represented a closely divided swing state with a Republican governor right now.

Let me just say since I raised that, if the Senate would flip if Bob Menendez resigned and a Republican governor of New Jersey appointed a trumpest US senator I would take exactly the same position. And I would do it with a heavy heart, but there can be no place in public office for this kind of behavior. It’s not voluntary. It’s not optional. It’s not something you negotiate about, and it’s not something that that depends on who it helps and who it hurts.

He’s gotta go.

I agree with you, but I think we also acknowledge that, not all member of the political world would have the same calculus as as just with the Republican Party. So, we don’t have time to talk about it, but there is a Republican debate tonight republican presidential debate. I hope they all lose. Well, they probably all will. It does seem to be a debate for second place at this point.

And I and it’s interesting that Fox they’ve actually slashed their ad rates in half because they realize that people are losing interest because Donald Trump’s gonna be a no show again. And here’s part of the new abnormal. He’s paid no price for ditching the his own party’s debates and, you know, being too cowardly to show up on the stage. In fact, It is arguable that he was the big winner of the first debate. I mean, he’s gone up since the first debate.

He’s paying no price for it whatsoever. So we’re gonna get to see the also rands picking it one another. And I can’t imagine how it changes the dynamic of the race very much, except that if Ron DeSantis does as badly as he has done, And I think that there’s a good reason to believe that he’ll continue being Ron DeSantis that this may be, you know, the end for him Nikki Haley.

I don’t know. Should they start a band called the also Rams?

I think they already have that band. It’s like, you know, me too.

Yeah. What’s AI for if you can’t make a video of, like, Ron DeSantis as the lead singer of the also rands with Vivec on base and and Nikki Haley playing keyboards.

Oh, man. I I just think that at to this debate, somebody ought to, you know, hand a cell phone to Ron DeSantis and say, hey, here’s Scott Walker’s number, and you ask him how how this works. Where you go right now? It is September.

Oh.

Alright, Ben. Thank you so much for the latest episode of the trump trials. It is always a pleasure to talk with you. I am very, very jealous about the hammock. I am jealous about the hammock.

I’m thinking about the hammock. I want you to know that. Lafayette, man. And we will do this again next week. Okay?

Cherio.

Alright. And thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes, and we will be back tomorrow with our coverage of this debate for those of you that are not planning on watching, we will do it so you don’t have. Over contest is produced by Katie Cooper, and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.