I adore Trump and I don't care what you think.
>> Where does he rank in terms of other presidents?
>> He's number one.
>> Ahead of Franklin Roosevelt, who won world War II, ahead of Abe Lincoln,
who won the Civil War and freed the slaves?
>> Number one.
>> He ranks up on the top, right now he's number one.
>> I think he was the best, and I think Biden is the worst.
Now they said all of this even though when I would mention what Abraham Lincoln had
done, what George Washington done, what John F Kennedy had done,
what Franklin Roosevelt had done.
They don't care, in their view, regardless of their knowledge, lack of
knowledge about history, one person said, we are in a different kind of war.
All that stuff that Abraham Lincoln did, that was great, but we are in a different
kind of war, that's a more important war that Donald Trump is leading us in now.
And for that reason Cenk, they say he's number one.
What do you make of it?
>> Look, I have a conclusion on Trump voters, that's now definitive.
And it is, your interviews with them,
which everybody should check out at Rebel Headquarters, they're amazing, okay?
David interviewed them on a great number of topics, you guys,
it's fascinating, but it was the straw that broke the camel's back for me.
I'm gonna come back to that in a second.
But one of the amazing details in those videos, David was,
when the person told you, no, Trump's number one,
because no other president had to deal with a divided country like this.
And all those slings and arrows against Trump, Lincoln was shot.
So I'm pretty sure he had to deal with slings and arrows and
actually bullets, and a divided country.
It was a civil war,
we were literally killing each other in a war dug in with trenches and cannons.
So [LAUGH] they're amazing, they're amazing.
Which goes to my point.
David, I realized, no, there's no convincing them.
None, No, I know we've talked about it before, but
I realized watching your interviews, whatever Trump says,
even if it contradicts one another, it actually helps.
Because one of them picks one excuse, the other one picks the other excuse,
the third one picks a third excuse, none of them match, they don't care.
And so, it's not hyperbole, I don't get the sense, and
I'm curious cuz you've talked to a lot of them.
I don't get the sense that they care at all what reality is,
they just have a feeling.
They feel that Donald Trump is one of them, and they love him for
protecting them in their minds, and they don't care if he robs them,
they don't care if he stole documents, they don't care about any of it.
They're finding a convenient excuse to excuse whatever action he did
because he's one of them, it's 100% about their feelings,
and I think they are incapable of being convinced.
>> I think you're absolutely right.
And one of the things that struck me is, a lot of people want to go to these rallies,
they say, be careful.
I mean, it's dangerous.
And the fact of the matter is, 90% of the people who believe this stuff,
they're actually very friendly and polite and smile, because they think that they're
in on the secret and we're the ones who don't know what we're talking about.
That, you guys don't know the research about all this God's language and QAnon,
and all this sort of crazy stuff they spout.
And they're so happy that they know it and we don't, and
that they're in on the explanation for a very confusing world.
It becomes less confusing with this crazy stuff that they believe.
And as a result, it's very easy for them to say, even in the same interview, well,
the reason that I don't like immigrants is because they violated the law.
And then two sentences later you ask about the documents, no,
there was no law broken in taking classified documents.
And that takes us to another part of this story, Cenk.
And that,
there's sort of a contrast between what's going on with some of these supporters and
what Tonald Trump is saying to them, and also what his lawyers are saying.
And what's happening in the classified investigation is that, the Trump
defense again, is a little bit different now than what is being said publicly.
And it all seems, at least in terms of the documents,
which is something that we asked about, we'll bring it up in a second.
The lawyers seem to be engaged right now in this effort to try to slow things down,
to create some sort of effort to delay the investigation.
And their latest filing to the special master judge, Raymond Dearie,
the Trump attorneys have said they cannot find a vendor to scan all of the documents
in time.
And the reason is because the 11,000 document contained a lot more pages than
they were expecting, quote, when plaintiff's counsel referred to
either 11,000 pages or even 11,000 documents during the status conference.
We're still waiting the transcript.
The government chose not to interject with an accurate number.
In conversations between plaintiff's counsel and
the government regarding a data vendor, the government mentioned
that the 11,000 documents contained closer to 200,000 pages.
The estimated volume, with the need to operate under the accepted time frame
supported by the government, is the reason why so
many of the government selected vendors have declined the potential engagement.
This is a filing by the Trump lawyers.
Consequently, the plaintiff respectfully suggest that your honor and the parties
will best be served by having to retain vendor convey a supportable timeframe for
scanning 200,000 pages into a platform.
And also provide a breakdown of rollout quantities and proposed deadlines.
But is it conceivable that there were really some 200,000 pages of material that
is bolstering Donald Trump's argument that everything needs to be slowed down.
Well, the size of a standard sheet, 8.5 by 11, there's 500 sheets fresh off
the production line, when you talk about something that's two inches deep.
In the famous photo of the documents arrayed on the floor of Mar-a-Lago,
you can see a banker's box containing frame photos of Time magazine covers.
A banker's box is about 10 inches by 12 inches by 15 inches.
It can hold about 10 reams of paper.
Meaning that if all of the material seized from Mar-a-Lago were compressed into
ream-sized bundles it would take 40 banker's boxes to hold 200,000 pages.
And the FBI removed only 27 boxes.
So here again, an effort perhaps by the Trump legal team to throw all kinds of
crazy stuff that may not even be true, against the wall to see what will stick in
terms of delaying the proceedings and slowing things down.
But as for the Trump supporters,
when you ask them about Donald Trump taking classified documents and
the declassification process, the responses are all over the map.
There is no coherence to any of them, and some of them are just downright crazy, but
they're connected by the belief from these Trump supporters,
that Donald Trump can do no wrong, watch.
>> And he didn't pack that up, other people packed it up.
He didn't pack it up.
>> But, did he declassify it?
>> He said he declassified all of it.
>> By thinking about it.
>> I don't know about that.
>> What are we talking about here?
Why is something being made more of a narrative that has to have a negative and
he did something wrong?
Cuz at the end of the day, it was nothing but a trap and they fell for it.
[LAUGH] >> Who's who's they?
>> The FBI, dear.
>> Doesn't he have to sign something or tell people he's declassifying something?
>> Is this like left wing news?
>> Why would Donald Trump though wanna take these documents to Mar-a-Lago?
>> Well, I mean, why not?
There are no actual rules.
I mean, there's guidelines, but there's no hard rules.
He has the ability to declassify whatever he wants.
>> He said the other night, just by thinking about it, that he can declassify.
>> I believe that could be the case.
>> Think about it, and people said, yeah, that's fine,
Donald Trump can declassify anything he wants however he wants.
And then when we would ask about, well, you talk about the importance of the law,
what about the lawsuit that Donald Trump is a businessman?
We have a number of people say,
I like Donald Trump because he was outside the political establishment,
he was a successful businessman.
We follow up and say, okay, well, as a businessman,
he's now being sued by the New York Attorney General for
over inflating assets to the tune of getting loans for more than $250 million.
I mean, one guy who said, well, that's fine, that's okay.
And I said, well, tell me the name of your bank, and
he proceeded to tell us the name of his bank in Indiana.
And I said, let's suppose that I wanna get a loan from your bank, and
I've got $100,000 of assets, but I tell them I've got $10 million in assets,
that's how much I want in terms of a loan.
Would you be okay with your bank giving me their credit, their money,
because I make up a bunch of nonsense?
And he says, everybody does it.
And that's how they justify this, Cenk.
>> Yeah, well, actually that last one is more honest than a lot of them,
because I think that the right wing mind thinks, yeah,
I'm allowed to do it, I just don't want you to do it.
And I don't think that they think that that's hypocrisy.
I'm not sure they consciously think it through, but their actions and
everything they say, it's always, no, no, it's okay when Trump does it.
It's okay when we do it, it's okay when Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Tucker Carlson,
whoever it is does it ,when you do it, you're a goddamn criminal.
Because it's just about, Dave, and and we talked about this in the context of
America too, its just they think differently than us.
We think America is a democracy, and we love that it's got a constitution,
a constitution that protects rights of the majority and the minority, etc.
And its balance is, no, they think of America as me.
I'm America, and all the people I know, white right wingers, Christians,
we're America.
Everyone who doesn't look like us is not America.
I don't know what you're talking about, this gobbledygook about rights.
So in this particular case,
I counted at least five different excuses they gave you in that one video.
The longer video is on Rebel Headquarters.
And then I realized, as I was telling you earlier,
David, Trump throwing out things against the wall, right?
We look at him, we laugh, we go, ha, that's so funny,
how could he say that he didn't have the documents, but he had kept them in better,
cleaner shape when they showed the picture of all documents on the floor.
Well, that means you did have the documents.
No, for his audience, a certain percentage think, good, he didn't have the documents.
Another percentage think, see, he kept them in better shape.
See, the FBI planted them.
See, he never had them.
He's just giving them whatever is going to make them feel good about
whichever excuse they like better, they don't care about the hypocrisy.
It's a post truth world.
When you see David's interviews, it's amazing to watch,
because you see it live in action.
And David, I agree with you, when you talk to real people in the real world,
right wingers, I talk to them all the time, I travel across the country,
they're not demonic, they're not evil,
they're not like, you I'm gonna attack you or whatever.
No, they're largely good to their own family, their community, etc,
etc, but they just haven't us versus them mentality.
And even in the real world though, when they realize that I'm not Bob Smith,
I'm Cenk Uygur, as they would say, a name that's not pronounceable.
If I tell him a Muslim, etc, you see a little bit of recoiling,
like, he's not one of us, not from everybody, but from some folks, right?
I remember talking to a guy from Indiana, it's a funny coincidence, on a plane, and
I said, I'm an atheist, he's, God damn it, we were having such a good time, right?
And he's like, that's a damn shame.
I said, well, I used to be Muslim.
He's like, well, okay, at least you wound up going in a better direction, okay,
just give him a southern accent.
He didn't have a southern accent.
[LAUGH] And then back to the actual legal trouble
that Trump is in, in the real world.
200,000 pages of documents, what a hilarious excuse, right?
They're like, it's gonna take forever to sort out all these things that he stole.
Well, you guys are the ones who wanted the special master,
who wanted these extra legal proceedings, and
you guys are the ones who said, he didn't take much, he didn't take anything.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Now you're like, he took so much, it's gonna take forever to sort through, right?
And David, one other important factor here, and this is the first time this
happened, Trump hired a lawyer, an actual lawyer, Christopher Kise.
And he's a deep Republican, representative Santis before, etc, but
he's a professional.
He's an actual lawyer, right?
Unlike Bob off the street and Sally that just got out of the asylum,
that Trump is hiring for his lawyers now.
But he wouldn't do it unless Trump gave him $3 million in advance.
And so, since Trump desperately needed an actual lawyer, he did it,
he gave the guy $3 million.
He's not in the case anymore, just a month later.
Now, nobody knows why, and as a lawyer you're not allowed to say, but
I guarantee you this, Trump told him to lie, like he tells every lawyer to lie.
That guy is like, no, I'm not gonna lie for you.
Because remember, as a client, even for the criminals,
you're supposed to talk in ways where you say, well, if it were to
have me this case scenario, would that be more helpful to my case, right?
But Trump probably told him, yeah, of course I took it, I stole it.
I sold it to this guy and that guy, now go say that it was Biden who did it.
What?
No, I can't do that, I'll be disbarred.
[LAUGH] So I don't know the actual conversation that they had,
but I know that the guy he paid $3 million dollars to, the only real attorney he has,
did not show up for those proceedings and his name was not on the documents.
He's not on the case anymore, and that's amazing.
>> One other thing that I have found amazing, Cenk, that you've been sending me
out there now for a year, and that certainly I've at least detected, and
this is anecdotal, a bit of a change in that.
A year ago, the people who would wear the shirts that say, f and spell it out Biden,
I mean, they would wear shirts and say, let's go Brandon,
they were sort of ashamed.
Or they didn't wanna be caught on camera using the F word, and
the people who believed in QAnon, they didn't want to give interviews and
they didn't want to talk about it.
Now, the number of people who are willing to wear the F Biden t shirts,
far more abrasive than just, let's go Brandon.
The number of people willing to talk about QAnon, and they, drinking blood out of
children's heads, that they say, that the elitist cabal is doing to make drugs.
It's a stark number of people who are now willing to talk openly about it.
It's as if this is getting a bit sort of scarier and
they're getting more willing to say this stuff.
And I don't know if it's a function of just, well, a number of people have left
Trump, and the people who are remaining are the real hardcore crazy ones.
Or whether it's just, they're more and more comfortable with each passing week,
with each passing month, to say this stuff out loud.
>> Yeah, and David, I'll end on that.
So, look, it's become a self affirming circle here, within the MAGA world,
and it's not a small number, they're not a minority of Republicans,
they are clearly a majority of the Republicans.
So if you care about just the politics of this, so
that we don't lose the country to fascists that don't believe in democracy, etc.
It's super important for democratic politicians understand, although it'll
take them decades to understand and by that time, I'm worried it'll be too late.
Look, in politics, in the old days, you try to reach everyone, right?
Especially Democrats, we're gonna get the Republicans in the suburbs,
you ain't gonna get them, okay?
So it's super important, with your limited resources and limited bandwidth, to focus
on the things that will actually win you elections, you must turn out your base.
That's why Republicans win.
They turn out their base fantastically.
Yeah, they're murdering children, they're snapping their necks and
drinking their brains.
People, God damn it, we've got to save the children.
They turn out, they turn out.
We can actually turn out our base for things that are actually true.
But of course, Democratic Party never does that.
And yes, independence can still be convinced, and you should focus on them.
But spending one minute trying to convince MAGA chat
heads that Trump did something wrong is a complete and utter waste of time.
They're never ever going to be convinced, constantly saying,
Trump's a bad guy, Trump's a bad guy, has literally zero effect on them.
So move on already.
David, and maybe this is the most important part.
In the long run, the only way to penetrate what is about,
and by the way, it's true in every country,
about 25 to 30% of every country has folks who just don't care about truth at all.
Whatever religious leader or an authoritarian leader says, yes, yes,
I don't want to hear any thinking effects.
The only way that you could ever penetrate that group,
is by delivering actual results for them.
Cuz one of the women that you talked to said, well, maybe JFK's number one, right?
And I told the story before, I know some Republicans, some older
school Republicans, and they still love FDR, and they still love JFK, why?
They said, well, FDR gave me security,
and they think JFK gave them Medicare, but it was actually in the Johnson.
So when you deliver for them, that stays for decades, anything else,
just calling Trump a bad guy, is just never going to work.
>> I agree, my experience was, these people would not give an inch,
there was one person out of the 30 on camera interviews, who said, look,
some of Donald Trump's personality, I don't like, but I like his policies.
And I'd say, what about his personality?
I don't wanna talk about it.
But at least he would acknowledge there were certain things about
the Donald Trump's personality, that Donald Trump, occasionally, would lie.
But for the most part, most of these people,
they will not give a single inch on anything related to Donald Trump.
>> Yeah, because they don't view him as a political figure,
they view him as a prophet.
>> Yes.