Speaker 1: We are looking at count one guilty, count two, guilty,
Speaker 1: count three guilty, account four guilty.
Speaker 2: From Schwartz Media. I'm Ashlin McGee. This is seven.
Speaker 1: Am count seven guilty, count eight guilty. I know there's not.
Speaker 2: Much that surprises anymore when it comes to Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Count eleven guilty, count twelve guilty, count three.
Speaker 2: But just stay with me for a moment, because today
Speaker 2: we're at the point of talking about the logistics of
Speaker 2: a former president potentially running an election campaign from a
Speaker 2: jail cell, which of course begs the question where would
Speaker 2: the Secret Service sleep?
Speaker 1: Twenty one guilty, count twenty two guilty count twenty.
Speaker 2: We're not there yet. Trump has been convicted of falsifying
Speaker 2: business records to cover up an affair with a porn star,
Speaker 2: but he may escape jail when he's sentenced in July,
Speaker 2: and he's promised an appeal. Today's senior researcher at the
Speaker 2: Australian Institut to doctor Emma shortis on the mind boggling
Speaker 2: logistics and the risk of violence and disorder in the
Speaker 2: fallout from.
Speaker 1: The verdict thirty one guilty, count thirty two guilty.
Speaker 2: It's Monday, June three, and.
Speaker 1: Thirty four guilty. That is Donald J. Trump defendant in
Speaker 1: New York versus Donald Trump found guilty on all thirty
Speaker 1: four felony counts. That is the verdict here in this case.
Speaker 2: Emma, Donald Trump is now a convicted criminal. Paying me
Speaker 2: a picture of some of the reactions we saw after
Speaker 2: this pretty stunning verdict came down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is stunning. Look their reactions, Well, they've been
Speaker 3: almost exactly as you would predict them to be. So
Speaker 3: Trump has of course talked about a weaponized system of justice,
Speaker 3: that this is an unjust political trial. He's had his
Speaker 3: surrogates out as well saying much the same thing, particularly
Speaker 3: the candidates for his running mate, so for the vice
Speaker 3: presidential candidate, have been in doing the rounds of social
Speaker 3: media and American TV saying exactly the kinds of things
Speaker 3: in support of Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Well, I think, question Abby, this is their weaponization of
Speaker 2: the justice system against their political opponent.
Speaker 1: This is a justice system that hunts Republicans while protecting gimmockants.
Speaker 3: Was not law, This was not criminal justice.
Speaker 1: This was politics.
Speaker 3: This was a political smear job.
Speaker 1: This was an attack job. This is what you see
Speaker 1: in banana.
Speaker 3: Republics and a quintessential show trial.
Speaker 2: This is what you see in communist countries, this is
Speaker 2: what I grew up.
Speaker 3: Interestingly, the Biden administration has been pretty quiet. They've actually
Speaker 3: issued a statement saying something along the lines of we
Speaker 3: support the rule of law and won't be making a
Speaker 3: further comment. And that's very much in line with their
Speaker 3: efforts to keep distance, I suppose between the White House
Speaker 3: and the Department of Justice. That's not going to fly,
Speaker 3: of course, with Donald Trump supporters who are utterly convinced
Speaker 3: that this is a conspiracy to stop Donald Trump from
Speaker 3: being did and you know, as he has for a
Speaker 3: long time, he's been very successful at weaponizing that narrative.
Speaker 1: He just killed our country.
Speaker 2: You just fucking c by China.
Speaker 3: So Trump has been running these lines about this is
Speaker 3: a political case, this is Joe Biden coming out to
Speaker 3: get him. It's part of the deep state conspiracy that
Speaker 3: has been in place from the start.
Speaker 4: And the whole thing, we didn't do a thing wrong.
Speaker 4: I'm a very innocent man, and it's okay. I'm fighting
Speaker 4: for our country. I'm fighting for our constitution. Our whole
Speaker 4: country is big rigged right there. This was done by
Speaker 4: the Biden administration.
Speaker 3: And if you listen to the reaction in Australia, not
Speaker 3: not just about this particular case, but about Donald Trump
Speaker 3: more generally. I think you can see, particularly in the
Speaker 3: Liberal Party, elements to the first right in the Liberal
Speaker 3: Party being emboldened by Trump and by his support and
Speaker 3: starting to use the same kind of language that Trump uses.
Speaker 3: You know, we've heard Peter Dutton talk about the rise
Speaker 3: of woke politics in Australia and what that might mean
Speaker 3: with lines kind of directly imported from the United States.
Speaker 3: So I think that's something we should watch just given
Speaker 3: what's going on in that right wing universe.
Speaker 2: Take me to the actual verdict, Now, what was found
Speaker 2: and just how significant is it?
Speaker 3: Sure? So this case has been it's kind of been
Speaker 3: dubbed the hush money case, I suppose, and it's this
Speaker 3: argument that Donald Trump sought to suppress a bad news
Speaker 3: story about his affair with an adult film star because
Speaker 3: he was worried. He and his team were worried that
Speaker 3: it would affect the outcome of an election. So essentially
Speaker 3: they've paid this person off to stop her from going
Speaker 3: public with a story because they were worried that it
Speaker 3: would mean Donald Trump wouldn't win the election. And so
Speaker 3: it has been originally framed, I suppose, as just kind
Speaker 3: of sleazy case, like more of a sex scandal case
Speaker 3: surrounding Donald Trump. But what if it's actually about is
Speaker 3: an effort to influence an election result, and I think
Speaker 3: forms part of an established pattern now of efforts to
Speaker 3: that end. So this happened before the twenty sixteen election.
Speaker 3: And then, of course the other criminal cases that Trump
Speaker 3: is involved in, the other three are about similar patterns
Speaker 3: of behavior throughout his presidency and afterwards. And interestingly, this
Speaker 3: case was often framed as the weakest of the four,
Speaker 3: you know, the one that had the least significance, where
Speaker 3: actually the evidence was the weakest. And so the fact
Speaker 3: that he's been found guilty so quickly round him by
Speaker 3: a jury of every single count, so it's thirty four
Speaker 3: separate felony counts, is really hugely significant and I think
Speaker 3: potentially at least established as a pattern for those other
Speaker 3: three criminal cases. With the caveat, of course, though, that
Speaker 3: the other three cases have been delayed by a number
Speaker 3: of appeals, that some of the questions have been elevated
Speaker 3: to the Supreme Court, and so it's actually pretty likely
Speaker 3: that this case is the only one that's going to
Speaker 3: be even close to being finalized before the election in November.
Speaker 2: So, Emma, there's been a lot of headlines around about
Speaker 2: how Donald Trump can in fact still be president even
Speaker 2: as a convicted felon. Talk me through how that's possible
Speaker 2: and how that would work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's wild. So he can't can't vote as a
Speaker 3: convicted Hellen, but he can run for the presidency. I
Speaker 3: mean it's true. Again, like, this is a completely wild
Speaker 3: situation that the United States has never confronted before. So
Speaker 3: there's no precedent for it. But there's actually nothing legal
Speaker 3: to stop somebody running for president even if they've been
Speaker 3: convicted of the crime. Theoretically, even if they're in prison,
Speaker 3: you know, they can still run a campaign and still
Speaker 3: be president. It is a wild thing to contemplate that.
Speaker 2: Here we are, I want to get into a little
Speaker 2: more of the detail around that. So logistically, if he
Speaker 2: were to be jailed, and that's not a certainty, but
Speaker 2: if he were to be jails, how would he be
Speaker 2: sworn in? How would he govern? What would it you know,
Speaker 2: what would a campaign look like? Talk me through all
Speaker 2: of those logistical details.
Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I mean I suppose the first thing I
Speaker 3: would say is that sentencing is expected on the eleventh
Speaker 3: of July. And I'm not a legal expert, but the
Speaker 3: general consensus is that jail time is unlikely. It's more
Speaker 3: likely to be a suspended sentence or a fine or
Speaker 3: something like that. But the logistics even of that are
Speaker 3: pretty wild to contemplate, because if he is on probation,
Speaker 3: for example, he will have to seek permission to leave
Speaker 3: New York to campaign. He probably get that permission, you know.
Speaker 3: In terms of the potential for him to actually go
Speaker 3: to prison, which is certainly possible, nobody really knows.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: There's all these questions about he has a secret service
Speaker 3: detail as a former president, for example, that goes with
Speaker 3: him everywhere, So like where do they go? Are they
Speaker 3: in prison with him, or like next door or outside?
Speaker 3: And actually nobody has answers to any of these questions.
Speaker 3: How do you run a can paign from a jail
Speaker 3: cell given, for example, you know how many phone calls
Speaker 3: you are allowed to have a day. You can't have
Speaker 3: cameras coming in all of the time. And actually, this
Speaker 3: is what leads me to suspect that there will be
Speaker 3: a reluctance to impose a prison sentence with this verdict.
Speaker 3: I do think, though, the more likely outcome is that
Speaker 3: all of this will be delayed indefinitely. You know, Trump
Speaker 3: is so good and his legal team are so good
Speaker 3: at dragging all of these things out with appeals. He's
Speaker 3: been doing it successfully since the nineteen seventies. The likelihood
Speaker 3: is more that, you know, he dragged it out for
Speaker 3: as long as possible, and then if he wins an election,
Speaker 3: ignores the sentence, or you know, the United States is
Speaker 3: in such chaos that it's unenforceable somehow. So maybe I'm
Speaker 3: suggesting that an inauguration from a prison cell is not likely,
Speaker 3: but I don't want to make that prediction. In case
Speaker 3: it does happen, I wouldn't rule it out.
Speaker 2: After the break, criminal convictions could actually boost Trump's electoral prospects, Emma,
Speaker 2: in terms of Donald Trump's bid for reelection, How does
Speaker 2: this play out? How does it affect it?
Speaker 3: I think at Galvanizer the base, you know, it works
Speaker 3: sinto his narrative really well in terms of you know
Speaker 3: that this is a conspiracy against him, and all that
Speaker 3: standing between Donald Trump and his supporters is him, and
Speaker 3: that's a line he's been running for a really long
Speaker 3: time quite successfully. Look, there has been polling that suggests
Speaker 3: that a criminal conviction will affect the way more independent
Speaker 3: voters or undecided voters feel about Donald Trump, that having
Speaker 3: actually had a conviction, that people would reconsider his I
Speaker 3: guess his how fit he is for the presidency. So
Speaker 3: we do have that information, but I think we should
Speaker 3: be pretty skeptical about that, because, you know, we keep
Speaker 3: predicting that support for Donald Trump will fall off. You know,
Speaker 3: people couldn't possibly keep supporting him after he's got a
Speaker 3: criminal conviction, and those predictions, you know, keep falling over
Speaker 3: as well. So I wouldn't necessarily imagine that support drops off,
Speaker 3: especially given that President Joe Biden's approval rating is still
Speaker 3: so low. You know, we haven't really spoken about that,
Speaker 3: but that is an extraordinary situation to contemplate, where you
Speaker 3: have one candidate who's actively anti democratic, who's now a
Speaker 3: convicted criminal, facing a current president and then being in
Speaker 3: polling effectively neck and neck.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Some of the most recent polling done by the New
Speaker 3: York Times all bit before this result, of course, suggested
Speaker 3: that if the election was held tomorrow, Trump would win,
Speaker 3: you know, he would win those critical swimming states.
Speaker 2: And as we talk, Emma, I've just tried to access
Speaker 2: Donald Trump's donation website, not to make a donation, but
Speaker 2: it's down. What's that about.
Speaker 3: The consensus is that it's because there's been so much traffic.
Speaker 3: You know that this result has confirmed in that right
Speaker 3: wing universe that you know, they're at to get Donald
Speaker 3: Trump and he needs his supporters to donate, and certainly
Speaker 3: the campaign would be heartened by that because actually those
Speaker 3: small donations, so the five to ten dollars repeat donations
Speaker 3: that come from supporters, are really critical to raising money,
Speaker 3: and that's been dropping off for Trump. So that's the
Speaker 3: reason we've seen in the news recently that Trump has
Speaker 3: been courting billionaires, for example, that he's been trying to
Speaker 3: convince the billionaires to give him money. He's been making
Speaker 3: them promises, for example, been making some promises to oil
Speaker 3: barons about what he'll do if they donate money to
Speaker 3: his campaign. And we know another one of the billionaires
Speaker 3: that Trump has been at least attempting to court is
Speaker 3: Elon Musk, of course, and anybody who's still on Twitter
Speaker 3: or x will have seen Musks. I'm not sure if
Speaker 3: it's a dissent or a revelation I suppose of his
Speaker 3: politics into some pretty extrame views and lots of noise
Speaker 3: about those kind of woke politics. That fits really well
Speaker 3: into Trump's narrative. And I think Trump certainly has an
Speaker 3: interest in in courting Musk and his money, and so
Speaker 3: watching it how that plays out and where Musk in
Speaker 3: particular falls along those lines will be I guess, another
Speaker 3: indication of the strength of Trump's fundraising power, which, of course,
Speaker 3: in American politics, has a huge impact on presidential outcomes.
Speaker 2: And we've already seen how American voters can see two
Speaker 2: really different realities. So now we've got Trump as a
Speaker 2: convicted criminal, him on the other hand, denying that there
Speaker 2: was ever a fair trial and that he's been stitched up.
Speaker 2: What does that mean for the risk of disorder or
Speaker 2: violence as the campaign rolls on.
Speaker 3: I mean, American politics has always been violent. You know,
Speaker 3: the country was nearly torn apart by a civil war,
Speaker 3: and so you know, I've said that political violence has
Speaker 3: been increasingly normal, but it's always been there, of course,
Speaker 3: But as we've seen over the weekend, the potential for
Speaker 3: that to you know, explode, be it into particular incidents
Speaker 3: or something more is really really high.
Speaker 1: What does on what goes on?
Speaker 3: You know, I predict there will be a revolution in
Speaker 3: this country. Does if this doesn't get cleared up and
Speaker 3: cleared up well, the closer it gets to November, of course,
Speaker 3: depending on what happens, the potential for that unrest increases.
Speaker 3: You know, there has been a normalization I think of
Speaker 3: political violence in the United States, and I think, especially
Speaker 3: in the case that the election result is close, which
Speaker 3: it looks like it will be, the likelihood I think
Speaker 3: of a repeat of that kind of violence is really
Speaker 3: really high. But it's something I think that we should
Speaker 3: all be especially in Australia, given how close we are
Speaker 3: to be the United States. It's something that we should
Speaker 3: all be deeply concerned by because that normalization of political
Speaker 3: violence is a really scary prospect, I think in the
Speaker 3: most powerful country in the world.
Speaker 2: If you stop for a moment and think about what
Speaker 2: we're talking about, it's quite the moment in history, isn't
Speaker 2: it a former president presidential candidate being convicted. What is
Speaker 2: it about all of this that strikes you the most?
Speaker 3: Look, I think for me, it is, you know, it's
Speaker 3: really easy to get caught up in the day to
Speaker 3: day news cycle, you know that this next unprecedented, extraordinary
Speaker 3: thing has happened again. But for me, the striking thing
Speaker 3: is the long threads of American history that have led
Speaker 3: us to this point. You know, the United States has
Speaker 3: never been united. There have always been multiple versions of
Speaker 3: the United States, going back to the Civil War, and
Speaker 3: those contradictions and tensions between those different versions of the
Speaker 3: United States have never been reconciled. You know, they've never
Speaker 3: been united. What we are facing now, I think is
Speaker 3: the consequences of that of the unresolved issues of the
Speaker 3: Civil War, of the unresolved issues of the civil rights movement,
Speaker 3: for example, in the nineteen sixties, playing out in real
Speaker 3: time with really dangerous political consequences. And so the only
Speaker 3: way I think for the United States to move forward
Speaker 3: is to actually confront those foundational issues rather than the
Speaker 3: specifics of Donald Trump. Because he didn't come from nowhere.
Speaker 3: His is in some ways, I think, the logical conclusion
Speaker 3: of many of those historical contradictions and understanding that I
Speaker 3: think is the only way to understand that Trump phenomenon.
Speaker 2: Emma, thanks so much for your time, my pleasure.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Also in the news today, the Australian Electoral Commission's new
Speaker 2: boundaries for a series of seats in Victoria and Western
Speaker 2: Australia could mean they'll be more likely to change hands.
Speaker 2: Labour's Peter Khalil will see his margin on paper cut
Speaker 2: in half, with his seat now including stronger Green's leaning
Speaker 2: booths in Melbourne's Inner North, while Liberal Keith Wallahan's seat
Speaker 2: of Menzies is now notionally a Labor seat, and the
Speaker 2: A and C, the party of Nelson Mandela, has suffered
Speaker 2: its worst election results since the end of apartheid in
Speaker 2: South Africa and the first democratic elections were held. Once
Speaker 2: the dominant force in South African politics, the A and
Speaker 2: C has now been forced into coalition talks to form
Speaker 2: government for the first time. I'm Ashlin McGee. This is
Speaker 2: seven am. Thanks for your company. We'll see you again
Speaker 2: tomorrow morning.
Speaker 3: You