Speaker 1: Everyone, welcome to the David Parkman Show.
I'm producer Pat Forde, filling in for David today as he is traveling in California.
We're going to have guest host for the remainder of the week.
So some pretty big news on the Donald Trump indictment front happened over the weekend.
Donald Trump was interviewed by Brett Becker on Fox News and he couldn't get through the
20 minute or so exchange without incriminating himself multiple times, admitting to doing
the very things that he's been accused of in this federal indictment.
Donald Trump has been doing media interviews.
He's been doing these rallies where he talks about the criminal charges and basically admits
to the fact that he had these classified documents in his possession and obstructed justice thereafter.
This is, of course, a terrible idea for any criminal defendant, any counsel.
Defense lawyers would advise you not to speak about the case.
But because Donald Trump is running for president and he needs to at all times appear like he's
a fighter, he believes he's smarter than everyone else.
He is deciding to just do it anyway, to talk about the case.
And what he's been doing really is giving himself more and more rope to hang himself
with.
And that's because, generally speaking, the prosecution can use such statements that you
make in the media to establish your guilt or to try to undermine your defense arguments.
And legally, it can get more complicated, of course, because you get into a conversation
about what is and what isn't admissible in court, what does and what doesn't qualify
as hearsay.
But there's a strong case that these media interviews, like the one we're about to look
at by Trump, will end up being used as exhibits in his upcoming trial.
So the bottom line is, this is why you stay silent.
I think it was Ron Phillip Koski on Twitter who said that if the 500 best lawyers in the
entire world told Donald Trump to stay silent on this matter, he would disregard them thinking
that he was smarter than all of them.
And then MAGA would use that as justification to vote for him because they would think that
that's some sort of qualification for being president, even though that would actually
make him the worst possible choice to be president.
Zero in on the most damaging things that Donald Trump said during this interview, Trump admits
to taking the documents down to Mar a Lago with him and that he had these boxes of documents
in his possession that they were interspersed with his personal possessions.
And this is all going to the charge of willful retention of national defense information.
He's admitting to the whole thing here.
Let's take a look at the clip.
Speaker 2: Why did you have this very sensitive national security defense documents like the
war plans for a strike on Iran?
So like every other president, I take things out.
And in my case, I took it out pretty much in a hurry.
But people packed it up and we left.
And I had clothing in there.
I had all sorts of personal items.
And they're much, much stuff.
I have every right to have those boxes.
This is purely a presidential records act.
This is not a criminal thing.
In fact, The New York Times, we've all had a story just the other day that the only way
Nero could ever get this stuff, this back would be Please, please, please, could we
have it back?
Because they have No, we didn't ask for it.
No.
And they said you have the documents and we would talk.
And then they said they went to DOJ to subpoena you to get them, which they've never done
before.
Right.
And it all, why not just hand them over them?
Because I had a boxes.
I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things.
And I don't want to hand that over to Neri yet.
And I was very busy, as you've sort of seen.
Yeah, but according to the indictment, you then tell this aide to move to other locations
after telling your lawyers to say you'd fully complied with the subpoena when you hadn't.
But before I send boxes over, I have to take all of my things out.
These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes.
There were many things I would say were much, much more.
Not that I know of, but not that I know of.
Speaker 1: So it's hard not to laugh when Trump is talking about his golf shirts and
his shoes that he had to take out before sending the boxes back from Nara.
But I think that the key takeaway from the entire statement here is that he does admit
to taking the documents.
He admits that he was in contact with NARA about sending them back, and his defense was
essentially that he was too busy.
He didn't have time to get around to it, even though he was subpoenaed in this case.
And once you receive a subpoena, you're supposed to realize, oh, this is actually serious.
If the fact that you were in contact with authorities before the subpoena wasn't enough
of a message to take this thing seriously, this subpoena should have done it for you.
But he decided to continue to ignore it and to have his lawyers lie to the authorities
about what exactly he had in his possession.
Remember, that key in this case is the charge of willful retention of national defense information.
That's what, 31 of the 37.
Hinge on.
And he's saying, Yeah, I did it.
It wouldn't matter if his golf shirts were also in there or if they weren't in there
or if he had time to get around to it or if he didn't have time to get around to it.
He seems to be guilty of these crimes.
Now, let's move on to the audiotape.
This is something that prosecutors have in their possession, tape of Donald Trump while
he's showing a guest of his who presumably doesn't have a security clearance, classified
material.
And he admits that he could have declassified it while he was president, but he didn't.
And now he doesn't have the authority to do so anymore.
So therefore, it is still classified.
Trump's arguments surrounding his right to have these documents depend on him saying
that he could have declassified whatever he wanted to as president telepathically even,
Right.
Well, this isn't true because we've heard from experts about this.
There's this process that you have to go through to declassify information, particularly when
it comes to things like nuclear secrets and other top level confidential information that
the government has.
But even if it was true, this tape that prosecutors have completely undermines the argument.
Right?
Because we know for sure that Donald Trump didn't even attempt to declassify the documents
by declaration, telepathically or otherwise, and now he can't because he's no longer president.
He admits to this.
So this is among the strongest pieces of evidence that the prosecution has.
It's really what could end up doing him in.
And Trump is doing himself no favors by talking about this very specific piece of information,
of evidence that the prosecution has.
And he provides just the absolute worst defense that anyone could possibly come up with, falling
right into the trap of talking about it, because Brett Baer happened to bring it up.
Speaker 2: According to the indictment, you were here at Bedminster on July 21st, 2021,
after you're no longer president, and you were recorded saying that you had a document
detailing a planned attack on another country that was prepared by the U.S. military for
you when you were president.
The Iran attack plan.
You remember that?
Ready?
You were recorded in the document?
I had lots of paper.
I had copies of newspaper articles.
I had copies of magazines.
I said specifically in quote, You're quoted on the recording saying the document was secret,
adding that you could have declassified it while you were president, but, quote, Now
I can't you know, this is still secret, highly confidential.
And the indictment cites the recording and the testimony from people in the room saying
you showed it to people there that day.
So you say on this tape just the opposite, that you can't declassify.
So why have it?
What I said when I said that I couldn't declassify it.
Now, this because I wasn't president, I never made any bones about that.
When I'm not president, I can't declassified.
That's what you said.
You just said that.
But I said, no, no.
I said I couldn't do that.
Classified document read.
There was no document.
That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things.
And it may have been held up or made up, but that was not a document.
I didn't have a document per se.
There was nothing to declassify.
These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and article.
I'm just saying what the indictment says.
Speaker 1: So, number one, Donald Trump does not deny that the recording exists or that
the conversation happened, which is interesting because I've been hearing in many right wing
circles on right wing programs that the audiotape was clearly artificial intelligence.
They can't come up with any sort of reasonable excuse for why Trump would be saying this.
So they're saying, okay, it must have been a deep fake.
You can do a lot with AI these days.
But Donald Trump himself is not using that excuse.
Right.
He's not even disputing the fact that the conversation took place.
He's disputing what the conversation was about, but he's not disputing that it happened or
that that was him in that conversation.
So we can put to bed now this week excuse that the right has come up with that.
That must have been a lie and not actually Trump on the recording.
Furthermore, Trump says that these weren't documents that he was showing his guests,
but instead they were newspaper clippings and articles.
And I don't know how Brett Baer didn't pick up on this in real time, but this is a totally
nonsensical statement, right?
How could newspaper clippings and articles be considered government classified documents
by their very definition?
Newspaper clippings and articles are meant for public consumption, whereas government
secrets are kept as these private documents.
And Donald Trump says on the tape, it's classified him not supposed to be showing you this.
So Donald Trump really just digging himself his own grave, and he's had plenty of time
to come up with a proper defense when it comes to the audio specifically, that's the most
damaging piece of evidence seemingly against him.
And this is all he can do, just kind of stumble around.
And again, all of this stuff can be used against him in court, presumably.
So obviously, this is a unique case.
I don't think he's going to take a plea deal or anything like this because he has to show
that he's a true fighter.
But with all of this stuff and with all the damaging things that he's said to the media,
all the times that he's implicated himself, that would be the best course of action for
him.
He's not going to go through with that.
Most likely he's going to.
Go to trial.
And I'm sure he's banking on the fact that he has this right wing judge that he appointed
presiding over the case and the possibility that because the trial's being held in South
Florida, there'll be enough Trumpists on the jury to get him the not guilty verdict or
maybe give them a hung jury.
I think that's what he's trying to do here.
And I understand how he feels as if he has to talk about the case because of the politics
of it, because he's running for president again and he has to look like a fighter.
But it's just not good strategically from a criminal prosecution standpoint if you're
trying to stay out of prison.
And one more clip I wanted to show you from this Brett Baer interview.
Brett Baer talked about how he, Trump, has to bring new voters into his camp in order
to defeat Biden in 2024.
And so Brett Baer asked the question, if you're speaking one on one to an independent voter,
how are you going to convince them to vote for you in 2024 if they didn't vote for you
in 2020?
And without missing a step, Donald Trump goes right into conspiracy theories about the 2020
election.
The question wasn't even about the 2020 election specifically and whether Trump won or lost.
But Trump has to jump right in and say that he actually won the election, even though
this was not being disputed at the time.
Brett Baer So let's take a look at this.
Speaker 2: And to the female independent voter in the suburbs who struggled with family financing
because of inflation, she's now against Biden, disapproves of Biden, but wasn't with you
in 2020 and so far is a hard no for you in 2024.
But what do you say to that?
The right path?
What do you say to that female independent suburban voter who feels that way to win her
back?
First of all, I won in 2020 by a lot.
Okay, let's get that straight.
I won in 2020.
You know that if you look at all the tapes, if you look at everything that you want to
look at, you take a look at truth to vote, where they have people stuffing the ballot
boxes on tapes or let's go to a recent tournament.
Let's go to recent FBI Twitter.
Let's go to recent the 51 agents.
All corrupt stuff understand about Thunderbird now.
But that's your thing.
But that's cheating when they lost the 2020 election.
Brett, you take a look at all of this stuff, ballots, you take a look at all of the things,
including things like the 51 intelligence agents recounts in all of the swing states.
There was not significant.
What we're tried to get recounts, real recounts, not numbers of votes, widespread corruption.
There was not a sense of that.
There were lawsuits, more than 50 of them by your lawyers, some in front of judges,
judges that you appointed, look at Wisconsin, came out with Wisconsin and a spread.
Wisconsin is practically admitted it was rigged.
Other states are doing the same right now and it's continuing.
This is a very interesting case of voter fraud in six battleground states, and they found
fewer than 475 cases.
So why?
Because they didn't look at the right thing.
Okay.
Are you going to be counting?
They were counting ballots, not the authenticity of the ballot.
The ballots were fake ballots.
You had this was a very rigged.
Are you going to go this is how are you going to tell that independent suburban woman voter
who will vote for you after winning an election?
And I think we're winning very well.
I got a poll just recently.
I have it here.
I'm not sure I know.
Speaker 1: Okay.
So it's not even worth going through Donald Trump's claims.
They're one by one.
We've done that ad nauseum over the years.
And Brett Beyer does a decent job at fact checking him in real time.
But I thought that Bear especially did well at the end there by emphasizing the fact that
his question was about how do you win over an undecided female independent voter who
didn't vote for you in 2020?
And your response has been to complain about voter fraud, even though the public is tired
of hearing about this issue?
It's not a winning issue for you.
It's not a voting issue for people, independents especially.
It's not policy.
You're not being convincing when you talk about this.
It's uninspiring.
And then Trump tries to course correct.
But instead of doing it in the standard way of talking about, you know, the normal policy
issues, the economy, the border, guns, even culture war stuff, if you want to get into
it.
Instead, he diverts into talking about how he's winning in all the polls.
So people should vote for him because he's winning.
Like, how does this add up?
How does this follow logically?
So Trump's appeal to the independent voter who didn't vote for him in 2020 is number
one.
The election was rigged in 2020 and it was unfairly stolen for me.
Therefore, I deserve another term.
And number two, I'm winning in the polls already, so you should vote for me because I'm winning.
So I got to say, this guy doesn't look like his normal self.
He seems a little bit rattled.
I'm sure he's worried about the possibility of serving time in prison.
I'm sure he's worried about the possibility of not winning an election again because it
devastated him so much the last time that happened.
Maybe I'm looking too much into the body language.
Maybe I'm looking too much into the facial expressions.
But to me, this seems like a very concerned man who doesn't have the poise and the confidence
that he normally does.
That's Donald Trump.
For you right now.
Not feeling his best, I got to say, and not getting the best end end of this exchange
with Brett Baer.
All right.
We're going to go to a break now.
We'll be back with much more of the David Pakman show on
the
other side.