Donald Trump, once again, coming off yet another very bad week where really almost every day,
things just seem to get worse for him. So joining me now to talk about the latest developments that
have happened within just the last seven days is Heather Digby, pardon? From salon.com. Heather
always wonderful to have you here on ring of fire. Welcome back. Um, lot of stuff, right? I mean,
my goodness, every day, every day, there is some new development in this document scandal. And
at some point, you know, you gotta wonder what is Trump's end game? How does he even navigate
any of this? Because every day it's just so much worse. You wake up and it's so much worse for him.
Well, absolutely. Thanks for having me, first of all. Um, and yeah, I, I went on vacation thinking,
oh, it's the dog days of August, you know, not much happens. Congress will be in recess.
It's all, you know, and you know, the li blew off of everything, um, with Donald Trump down there in
Maralago and you're in Florida, so you're right, you're right in the middle of all that stuff. Um,
and it's an astonishing story. I mean, even by Donald Trump's standards and we've seen a lot,
I mean, the man's, he was impeached twice. He led an insurrection and a coup, but even after doing
all those things and being, you know, voted out of office, although he won't admit it, I think
he knows that he was, he still absconded from the white house. When he left with hundreds, literally
hundreds of classified documents, it appears. And the national archives very, you know,
gently tried to get them back. They sent them him letters. They tried to cajole him. They said,
you know, we really need them over and over again, they tried, I mean, this has become clear just
in the last few days, how much the, the national archives really treated him with kid gloves in a
way that that would never happen with anybody else who had a bunch of classified documents in their,
in their storage room. Um, but they did. And then, you know, finally they had to get the department
of justice involved it because he wasn't being forthcoming. They ended up subpoenaing him
to get the documents. He still wasn't being forthcoming. He gave a few back,
but you know, up held onto a, a number of others, which they knew. I mean, I think the national
archives had some awareness of what he had and they knew that he hadn't given them all back.
And there also appears to have been some kind of a witness, um, who, you know, talked to the
department of justice about what they knew about all this. And then finally they did this search
at the beginning of August. And then ever since then, you know, Trump has been treating this,
like, this is just a great thing for him. It's just terrific because he is collecting some money
from the rubs who are, you know, willingly giving this billionaire money all the time, which I'll
never understand. Um, and so he, he thinks this is really working out great for him. And it really
is not, this is not a good story for Donald Trump. It really isn't, although they're trying to spin
it that way, the Republicans and Trump, you know, oh, this is a terrible abuse of power. And
it's the gustapo knocking, you know, storming Marlo to take the documents, whatever.
It really isn't a good story for him. And on some level, even his people have to know it. I mean,
these are people after all who spent the last five years, chanting, gleefully lock her up
about Hillary Clinton, who they found literally three classified documents in the documents that
were turned over, that, you know, that she cooperated with the, with the department of
justice and gave them, and they were low level classified documents and nothing like what we're
seeing now. I mean, from what we heard from the New York times this week, there are 700
classified documents in the cash that he took out of there. And some of them, the highest
level of classification that exists. So, I mean, this is not a story that I think, I mean,
I really, and I didn't, I was confused when it broke about the fact that all everybody was going,
oh my goodness, Donald, Trump's really gonna benefit from this one. I'm going
you people crazy. I mean, yes, the country's gone mad, but they haven't gone that now , you
know, that this is, this is okay. So yes, this is an amazing story. And I think it gets Wilder by
the day as the more we find out the, the crazier it gets as is per usual with Donald Trump. Yeah.
And you know, what's interesting, uh, along that point too, was I think a day or two, after it
happened, you had Cassidy Hutchinson who of course was, you know, the star witness over the summer.
She actually came out and said, congratulations, you just handed the next election to Donald Trump.
And, and sure. I mean, there was probably a few hours, right, right after it happened, where,
where a lot of people thought, oh no, this is gonna create the sympathy. But then when just
even a little bit of information started coming out, we immediately did see the shift in the
polls where most Americans say, oh, actually I do support that independents say, yeah,
I support this. No, I don't support attacking the FBI. Even I think about 50% of Republicans
say, yes, I'm okay that this happened. So whatever little bump Trump got from this, you know,
thinking, oh great, no publicity is bad publicity. Right. Um, that really washed away after about 24
to 48 hours. But he doesn't realize that no, he, he still thinks this is the best thing to ever
happen to him. And it's, it's really not. It's looking worse and worse by the day. And we're,
we, we're seeing these big shifts in the polling data, just from all of this too. So it ain't
working out the way they think it is. And if they continue to pretend otherwise, Hey, that's
probably gonna help the Democrats in the end to Get this full interview and access to the
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