So a lot to get to with our team.
National politics
team leader
for Bloomberg,
Mario Parker with us at the table,
along with political reporter
for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
Patricia Murphy,
former Manhattan
Assistant District Attorney
Jeremy Salant, and CNN contributor
and former Georgia
state senator who also testified,
we should note, in this probe
for the grand jury.
Jen Jordan, great to have everyone
Appreciate you being here, Jen.
But just sort of full circle for you.
You were a state lawmaker in the room
when people like Rudy
Giuliani came down and
perpetuated lies and falsehoods
about what happened in Georgia,
then your testify before the grand jury
and now you see Trump arrested
both mug shot Surreal.
Well, it feels a lot better.
Real well,
feels a lot better on this end
than it did in the beginning.
I mean, the real part was when
they actually came down to Georgia
and presented
basically a false narrative.
And so now, you know,
it feels like for two years
there's been kind of this
national gaslighting
that what you saw wasn't real.
Know, I didn't say that.
But but the video doesn't lie.
And we all know what we saw
and what we heard.
And I was just glad
that the grand jury agreed
that there were laws broken.
And now
he's actually going
to be held accountable.
And no matter what happens with respect
to a jury trial,
at the end of the day,
he's been indicted.
That is a huge thing.
Is such a big deal for the prosecutor
to have
to have even brought this case
and took an immense amount of courage.
So it is very real.
And it's something
that we need to keep watching.
But yesterday was a really historic day.
And not and not in a good way. Right.
We should note,
there is a presumption of innocence
for any.
Absolutely.
Before they go through a jury trial.
Of their peers.
And Mario,
this morning,
there will be news anchors
around the world
reading over that
mug shot
in a myriad of languages
reading that inmate number.
And the president's
campaign there exploiting it
or selling it,
they are making some money off of it
because he will need it.
Put the photograph into context for us.
Yeah, well,
they're going to try to wring
as much juice out of this
as they possibly can and signal
at least to their supporters
that he's fighting for you,
that this is a political
there's a there's a double standard here.
This is election interference.
He needs your help.
He needs you to galvanize
and get behind him as well.
So, again, the campaign is taking lemons,
trying to make lemonade out of this.
Try to
I mean, this is the hand
they've been dealt.
So they're trying to use it
for whatever they can.
It's just try to capitalize off of it.
And so far it's been working.
If you look at the polls, at least to
I think our colleague Stephen Collinson,
as he always does, frames this so well.
Let me read people
part of his column this morning
for a man who built his legend
through paparazzi
snap in New York gossip columns
and who prizes
Time magazine bearing his face,
the Georgia mug shot
for all its
indignity represents yet
another new frontier of notoriety.
But for a nation
still entangled in recriminations,
and fury whipped up by Trump,
the photograph with flat,
which flashed immediately
around the world, represents
a special kind of tragedy.
Why didn't juxtaposition of then and now
Yeah, it's incredible.
And it's just another piece of this story
that I think many of us
never expected to see.
It just feels so surreal,
having covered
the Trump campaign's in 2015
his early support
how much his crowds just adored him.
But then watching the complete chaos
that followed here in Georgia, in 2020
because of the actions of Donald Trump
and the Trump campaign.
Seeing this mug shot
feels like another chapter
in a book that just will not end.
The campaign is not ended here in Georgia
for the last three years.
Obviously we see it's going to continue.
But in terms
of how iconic
that photo is, we now have his supporters
in Georgia
Photoshopping themselves into mug shots,
Fulton County mug shots,
putting those on Twitter
and calling them MAGA mug shots
and saying now it's on.
So he has galvanized
the supporters even further.
That's going to be a huge problem
if he makes it to a general campaign.
But so far right now,
his base is sticking with them
more than they ever have.
We could put one of those up.
Marjorie Taylor Greene,
she tweeted out
a Photoshopped mug shot
with the hashtag MAGA mug shot.
Jeremy, you've been shaking your head
as I was described.
What do you what are you thinking?
It's deplorable.
It's a mockery of justice.
It's shows the insanity of,
for lack of a better term,
of people
who are so lost in their obsession
with Donald Trump and his theory
that the election was stolen.
And I saying
pathetic is not strong enough.
It's just really sad.
He as you pointed out, Poppy,
he's innocent until proven guilty.
That's not the issue here.
But to stand behind
in such a way
to make excuses in such a way blindly,
that's not what this is about.
Hold the prosecution to the burden.
But don't don't just jump
on the bandwagon for a political
future gain.
All of the focus,
understandably, is on Trump.
Yeah. Right.
And the mug shot, etc..
Mark Meadows to an extent after that.
But let's not forget that
Jeffrey Clarke surrendered overnight to
and he was working
at the Department of Justice
and within government,
the Department of Justice
and yet is accused of working to
perpetuate these lies and undo what
the voters had done.
That that is treason for real.
That is not what he's charged.
No, no,
that's not going from
just a general thought process here.
Yes.
You know, again,
everyone's innocent until proven guilty.
But now that he's at that point
where he has to face
these charges, he's trying for removal
as well to get this to federal court.
And as we discussed earlier,
yes, he was a federal officer
at the time that he's alleged
to have committed these acts.
But the next question is, is what he did
was that in furtherance of his role
in the Department of Justice.
And the argument is that it was not,
therefore, it sins of the state
and it can be prosecuted
in this case for a larger RICO crime.
So we heard from and comptroller,
let me know if we have the sound of
the former president
describing his terrible experience.
Ready.
And Jen, I'll bring that to you.
I want you to listen to what
the former president said
about while he was there. At Rice Street.
And then we'll talk about
contrasting that
with the experience
of some of the people he targeted over
these last several years. Let's play it
terribly experience.
I came in.
I was treated very nicely, but
it is what it is.
I took a mug shot,
which I never heard the words
mug shot that wasn't in.
Teach me that at the School of Finance.
And I have to go through a process.
It's election interference
He was in and out in 20 minutes.
But if you contrast that
with some of the people,
he focused on the individuals.
Ruby Freeman
Shea Moss over the last several years
who said that
they could not go to grocery stores.
They were afraid to go out.
People came to their homes.
What do you hear there in the president's
description of his experience?
I just don't think he gets it.
I think, you know,
when we see the Marjorie Taylor Greene
Maga mug shot,
there seems to be a real disconnect
from reality.
Look, Rye Street is is a jail.
That is awful.
No question.
People are dying there
because the conditions
are so absolutely deplorable.
So the fact that he basically got this
this great treatment,
he comes in 20 minutes in and out.
Right. Done and done.
And somehow that was awful and bad
when the reality is people
that get booked every day there
and that have their mug shots taken in
that actually have to be in jail there.
This is very, very serious.
And so, you know,
for all of these people
doing these MAGA mug shots,
for whatever reason, they're doing it
they just have no understanding
what this really stands for.
I mean, this this is not good, right?
He is in significant legal trouble.
And so whether he thinks
this is more
of a political thing
that he needs to massage
or not as a lawyer,
he needs to stand down
and really focus on his defense
because he is facing serious allegations
that could end him up
with serious time in prison.
In that mug shot,
it's not going to really mean anything
at the end of the day if he's locked up.
Because you know Georgia
so well, if
if Trump is convicted on these charges
in state court,
if it doesn't get removed to federal,
would he go to that jail first?
Yeah, that one.
Yes, he would be he would be held there
until they send him to whatever prison
he is. They take some time.
If he got jail time. Thank you.