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Speaker 1: Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 2: The courthouse was busy again today. Not else going on
Speaker 2: in town, but a buzz around the courthouse for some
Speaker 2: arguing and an important announcements on the trial date for
Speaker 2: the January sixth case. This is the one brought by
Speaker 2: the Special Council Jack Smith. The two first lines in
Speaker 2: the story on the terminal are everything. Zoe Tillman writes.
Speaker 2: Donald Trump's trial in Washington set from March fourth, Yes,
Speaker 2: I said March fourth, on federal charges that he conspired
Speaker 2: to obstruct the twenty election. That means the trial is
Speaker 2: set to start the day before Super Tuesday. Fourteen states,
Speaker 2: including Texas and California, hold their primaries that day. What
Speaker 2: could go wrong? The date announced by Judge Chutkin after
Speaker 2: hearing arguments. This basically was like a mini trial that
Speaker 2: they held in there. But of course there are no
Speaker 2: cameras in a federal courtroom, so I cannot bring you
Speaker 2: in there. What I can do is bring you. Sarah
Speaker 2: Forden from world headquarters in New York, Bloomberg's legal editor
Speaker 2: is with us. Hey, Sarah, we miss you in the Capitol.
Speaker 2: I'll say right off the bat, but hey, this trial
Speaker 2: date March four is not what Donald Trump was looking for.
Speaker 2: The next movie is going to be, yeah, absolutely, So
Speaker 2: what options does he have at this point to delay?
Speaker 3: Well, there could be delays, and maybe that's one reason
Speaker 3: why the judge set the date as early as she did.
Speaker 3: This is March fourth, as you said, before Super Tuesday.
Speaker 3: It's also before the March twenty fifth New York Manhattan
Speaker 3: case and the hush money trial. So there could be
Speaker 3: some some wiggle room here for her to you know,
Speaker 3: incorporate delays and requests for delays, but still bring it out.
Speaker 3: You know, before Trump wanted, which was you know, he
Speaker 3: wanted to delay it until twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: Yes, that would be a little bit extreme in the
Speaker 2: other direction here, So is this smart analysis somewhere in
Speaker 2: the middle.
Speaker 3: Could be somewhere in the middle, And there was very
Speaker 3: interesting back and forth between the prosecutor and the defense
Speaker 3: attorneys about how much time was needed, and the prosecutor
Speaker 3: for the DOJ, Molly Gassin, laid out the facts that
Speaker 3: they have turned over twelve point eight million pages of
Speaker 3: evidence in this case. But they've also delivered a sort
Speaker 3: of digital roadmap to the indictment where they have paired
Speaker 3: key pieces of evidence in the case with key paragraphs
Speaker 3: in the indictment. So it should be easy for the
Speaker 3: defense to parse, you know, how the case is being
Speaker 3: built against Trump.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what did we learn today from this set
Speaker 2: of arguments? It was almost to peek into what this
Speaker 2: trial might look like, the contours that might take on.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, obviously this is going to be the
Speaker 3: federal case about efforts by Trump and his allies to
Speaker 3: overturn the twenty twenty election. A lot of the sets
Speaker 3: are similar to the case that Fannie Willis has filed
Speaker 3: in Georgia in Fulton County, but we have key differences
Speaker 3: in those two cases, one being a state case cannot
Speaker 3: be pardoned if there is a conviction in that case,
Speaker 3: whereas a federal conviction could be pardoned if Trump, you know,
Speaker 3: were to either win or one of his allies were
Speaker 3: to win. In the presidency.
Speaker 2: John Laurel, Donald Trump's attorney called the idea that they
Speaker 2: get this going four months from now an outrage to justice.
Speaker 2: And I guess he was quite animated in the courtroom.
Speaker 2: Our reporting says he was raising his voice at times.
Speaker 2: Judge Chucking at one point had to ask him to
Speaker 2: take the temperature down. Does that tell us anything about
Speaker 2: the way Trump's legal team will comport itself in court.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting because we saw this sort of similar
Speaker 3: dynamic play out in the setting of the Florida trial date,
Speaker 3: which is going to be in May. That's in the
Speaker 3: classified document's case that the judges here are really trying
Speaker 3: to walk a far line between the legal requirements of
Speaker 3: making sure they handle all the evidence and you know
Speaker 3: they're they're running a fair and proper trial with the
Speaker 3: kind of the heat being turned up on the political calendar.
Speaker 2: There was another important court date today, the one in
Speaker 2: Georgia having to do with Mark Meadows attempt to have
Speaker 2: that moved to federal court. Even if that decision has
Speaker 2: been made, will we not hear an announcement on that
Speaker 2: for some time? Sarah, what's going on?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have a reporter in the court room We
Speaker 3: are waiting for the first news out of that hearing.
Speaker 3: We are expecting that Mark Meadows will be testifying about
Speaker 3: why he thinks his case should be moved to federal
Speaker 3: court rather than state court. And his argument is that
Speaker 3: he was acting in his duties as a federal employee
Speaker 3: and so that would justify a federal trial. The counter
Speaker 3: to that, you know, Fanny Willis has already filed her position,
Speaker 3: which is that there's nothing in the law that allows
Speaker 3: a federal e play to try to subvert fairly run election.
Speaker 3: And also she's argued that the Hatch Act applies, which
Speaker 3: prevents of federal employees from political activity while they're in office.
Speaker 2: Sarah, great to have you back, Sarah Fordon, who's got
Speaker 2: more plates in the air than most editors right now,
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Legal Editor, how'd you like that title? Right now?
Speaker 2: In Washington with six we're talking six it's a remarkable piece.
Speaker 2: Trials that could be underway over the course of this
Speaker 2: election cycle. We have to wait for several of them
Speaker 2: to be scheduled here, of course, but we want to
Speaker 2: bring in Jim Zyron, the former Assistant US Attorney for
Speaker 2: the Southern District of New York, He also hosts conversations
Speaker 2: with Jim Zyron on PBS and has been a voice
Speaker 2: of reason and trust here over the course of this
Speaker 2: entire saga of well now four indictments as many as
Speaker 2: six trials. Jim, it's great to have you back on Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: Let's start with the breaking news of the day here
Speaker 2: March fourth. Your thoughts on that, forget the political side
Speaker 2: of it in terms of primary season, but just in
Speaker 2: terms of being able to prepare. Donald Trump's lawyer, as
Speaker 2: I mentioned, says it's an outrage to justice. What do
Speaker 2: you think.
Speaker 4: I don't think it's an outrage to justice. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, we're living the digital age. It's not the
Speaker 4: way it used to be, where the lawyer had to
Speaker 4: go through of voluminous pages of discovery in order to
Speaker 4: prepare for trial. Now everything is digitalized, it's search friendly,
Speaker 4: and the government has said it's going to tie the
Speaker 4: various pieces of evidence to the charges and the indictment.
Speaker 4: And it's not just one lawyer, it's a team of
Speaker 4: lawyers and paralegals, and there will be searchable discovery. There'll
Speaker 4: probably be more to come. I don't know whether twelve
Speaker 4: point eight million may be modest number of pages, and
Speaker 4: I think that the lawyers really should be up to
Speaker 4: the task of trying the case on March fourth.
Speaker 2: Well, so how does a legal team do that? I'm
Speaker 2: just deeply curious. You get twelve point eight million pages
Speaker 2: dropped on you, you get four months, what do you do
Speaker 2: with that? You give you this up among the team.
Speaker 2: What's the exercise?
Speaker 4: Well, it's on discs and it's searchable, and the first
Speaker 4: you have to have a theory of the defense, and
Speaker 4: you will look for pages of discovery that might amplify
Speaker 4: the defense of the case. But they don't have to
Speaker 4: read every word of twelve point eight million documents. If
Speaker 4: they did, we'd all be here until never, which is
Speaker 4: the trial date that Donald Trump wanted.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, he still wants it, though, So what's the
Speaker 2: team going to do with that?
Speaker 4: Well, basic principle of constitutional law, no trial, no conviction.
Speaker 4: So if you can delay the trial interminably, or delay
Speaker 4: the trial until there's a Republican president who might pardon him,
Speaker 4: then he's home free, at least in the federal system,
Speaker 4: Sarah pointed out, not in the state system.
Speaker 2: Well, so sticking with this federal trial for a moment, though,
Speaker 2: of course the team's going to come back around with
Speaker 2: an attempt to delay. How likely is it this trial
Speaker 2: actually begins on March fourth, Well.
Speaker 4: I think is a realistic prospect of its beginning. They
Speaker 4: will undoubtedly make motions, and they will motions to dismiss
Speaker 4: motions for legal insufficiency. I think I don't know what
Speaker 4: the basis would be for those motions, but I think
Speaker 4: the judge would say there has to be a jury
Speaker 4: determination and will pass the determination on the motions and
Speaker 4: dismiss and until the trial occurs and the prosecutor's evidence
Speaker 4: is laid out before the jury.
Speaker 2: So what do you make of this idea? Knowing that
Speaker 2: we've got the criminal cases as well as a couple
Speaker 2: of civil cases as well. They total six. Could we
Speaker 2: be in a world in which six trials are underway
Speaker 2: in the balance of this campaign cycle.
Speaker 4: Well, it's conceivable the two civil cases will not require
Speaker 4: Trump's attendance. That would be the Tiss James's fraud case.
Speaker 4: She's the Attorney General in New York, her fraud case,
Speaker 4: the civil case that she brought in New York, and
Speaker 4: then also the e Gene Carroll two, which is the
Speaker 4: libel case that is before Judge Kaplan in New York,
Speaker 4: and that may not require a trial either because of
Speaker 4: the findings that were made by the jury in the
Speaker 4: first trial. We'll have to see how that plays out,
Speaker 4: but in any event, they will not require Trump's presence.
Speaker 4: That will be handled by the lawyers, and that should
Speaker 4: not be a distraction. But the other the two cases
Speaker 4: that going to be very important are the case in Georgia,
Speaker 4: of course, and in which Trump may find himself with
Speaker 4: the speedy trial of October of twenty three that his
Speaker 4: co defendants have achieved and although he's asked that he
Speaker 4: be severed from that aspect of the case, and the
Speaker 4: March fourth, which is I think a pretty hard date.
Speaker 4: But the really important thing to focus on is when
Speaker 4: we hear of speedy trial, we think, well, constitution says
Speaker 4: a defendant is entitled to a speedy trial, but as
Speaker 4: Judge Shutkin pointed out and the case law demonstrates, the
Speaker 4: public interest is entitled to a speedy trial. This is
Speaker 4: an issue that the public is entitled to have resolved
Speaker 4: with a jury verdict one way or the other. Trump
Speaker 4: is presumed to be innocent, but the evidence to be
Speaker 4: presented by the prosecutor, and should he be convicted, the
Speaker 4: public is entitled to know that he's been convicted by
Speaker 4: a jury.
Speaker 2: So with all of that said, we're going to be
Speaker 2: choosing candidates. You're going to be voting as soon as
Speaker 2: January fifteenth. That's Iowa Jim. So the political side of
Speaker 2: this is, my goodness, how does he do it all?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: He have to be in court for all of these trials.
Speaker 2: How is he going to run a presidential campaign at
Speaker 2: the same time as managing potentially six trials? Give us
Speaker 2: a sense of how much geography will be involved here
Speaker 2: when we consider all of these East Coast courthouses and
Speaker 2: how often he'll be required to show up in person.
Speaker 4: I think it's going to be his problem. It depends
Speaker 4: on the scheduling. As for the criminal cases he will
Speaker 4: be required to appear in court. I suppose he get
Speaker 4: a peer for an hour and then withdraw and waive
Speaker 4: his right to be confronted with the charges. I don't
Speaker 4: know what the Georgia procedure is, but basically all this
Speaker 4: litigation is going to absorb a tremendous amount of attention.
Speaker 4: In his part, he has lawyers to handle it for him,
Speaker 4: but he has to meet with the lawyers and confer
Speaker 4: with them, and they have to fashion the defense to
Speaker 4: the various charges, and that takes time. And if he's
Speaker 4: distracted from the political campaign, that's just his problem. He has,
Speaker 4: as a criminal defendant, no constitutional right to have personal
Speaker 4: or professional commitments. As Judge Chutkins said, he has to
Speaker 4: be treated like any other defendant.
Speaker 2: When we talk about a speedy trial, that obviously has
Speaker 2: to do with when the trial is taken up, but
Speaker 2: also the duration of the trial. Jim or these weeks long,
Speaker 2: months long, they're going to be underway when the election happens.
Speaker 2: Which is it?
Speaker 4: Oh, I think the DC case starts March four, it
Speaker 4: will end long before the election. I think you're talking
Speaker 4: about a four to six week trial here, even if
Speaker 4: it's a two month trial. And we've had significant criminal
Speaker 4: cases in the Southern District of New York, the conspiracy
Speaker 4: cases with multiple defendants and the trial took two months.
Speaker 4: I think, particularly because Jack Smith has peered it down
Speaker 4: in the District of Columbia to have one defendant, one defendant,
Speaker 4: Donald Trump, to prove this conspiracy that he charges actually
Speaker 4: three conspiracies. And he ought to be skilled prosecutor, and
Speaker 4: he ought to be able to present his case. And
Speaker 4: I don't know what the defense will be. I don't
Speaker 4: know whether Trump can take the stand. But the case
Speaker 4: really could be tried within the period of two months
Speaker 4: in my view.
Speaker 2: Two months. So do you feel that way about the
Speaker 2: other Special Council's trial as well?
Speaker 4: Oh, the one in Florida is somewhat more complicated because
Speaker 4: of the presence of two other defendants and also the
Speaker 4: presence of the classified document.
Speaker 2: But still before the election. I'm guessing you're Sam Jim.
Speaker 4: And yes, I don't really believe the Florida case will
Speaker 4: be tried before the election.
Speaker 2: All right, here you have it from jim 'siron. Great
Speaker 2: to have you back. Jimmy's the four assistant US Attorney
Speaker 2: for the Southern District of New York. He knows of
Speaker 2: what he speaks. How does that sound like for a
Speaker 2: little bit of a messy campaign calendar. We'll assemble our
Speaker 2: panel next. Brick and Genie are on the way. This
Speaker 2: is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Sound on podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: live weekdays at one Eastern on Bloomberg dot com, the
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Speaker 1: demand wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 2: Live from Washington, where there are many questions about how
Speaker 2: Donald Trump is going to manage these trials in the
Speaker 2: throes of a campaign season. Now that we have a
Speaker 2: date on the January sixth case, this is the one,
Speaker 2: of course, brought by the Special Council. I know it
Speaker 2: gets confusing, Jack Smith January sixth efforts allegedly to overturn
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty election is that's still allegedly thet is
Speaker 2: opening open to this. But either way, March fourth, the
Speaker 2: eve of Super Tuesday, is what we're looking at. And
Speaker 2: you know there's going to be an effort to slow
Speaker 2: this down. But it is quite a headline to read
Speaker 2: on the terminal, and it's a great piece of writing.
Speaker 2: By the way, Trump faces prospective up to six trials
Speaker 2: during primary season. We assembled our panel Rick Davis and
Speaker 2: Jeanie Shanzano or with us Bloomberg Politics contributors. Rick, do
Speaker 2: you think this actually happens the fourth of March? Well,
Speaker 2: something's going to happen on the fourth of March.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know you're going to be two days
Speaker 5: after the Idaho caucuses and and you know, it's the
Speaker 5: kind of thing where you just can't even imagine the
Speaker 5: taking out of the primary season so much time to
Speaker 5: you know, have try for your life. I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: this is really serious stuff for Donald Trump, and he's
Speaker 5: going to be completely you know, taken back by having
Speaker 5: to take time off the road, take time out of
Speaker 5: his campaign, focus on other things. And I think that
Speaker 5: it march forth happens, and there's no way to predict it.
Speaker 5: It will you know, you're an expert. After expert will
Speaker 5: give you a different opinion. But just contemplating this idea
Speaker 5: of having a federal trial in the middle of a
Speaker 5: primary season, it's just it blows my mind as someone
Speaker 5: who is obsessed over dates and where the candidate needs
Speaker 5: to be and how much time they need to have
Speaker 5: and what debates coming up next, and now you're going
Speaker 5: to enter into this kind of thing, and this is
Speaker 5: just one of six. It's it's just mind boggling.
Speaker 2: Twelve point eight million pages, Genie. If you put all
Speaker 2: the students at I own a university together, I wonder
Speaker 2: how long it would take them to get through that.
Speaker 2: Of course, there is a legal team here, but is
Speaker 2: this fair to say go to trial in four months
Speaker 2: when you have that much discovery.
Speaker 6: Students at IONA would get through it a lot quicker
Speaker 6: than those defense attorneys. Kidding you know, I do think
Speaker 6: listen Judge Chuck, and she was very clear today. She
Speaker 6: asked them to give her a reasonable timeframe, a reasonable date. Obviously,
Speaker 6: April twenty twenty six is not reasonable, particularly when you
Speaker 6: have somebody who is going on trial, who is posting
Speaker 6: the kinds of messages he is and tainting the jury pool.
Speaker 6: So she said, look, guys, gals, give me a reasonable date.
Speaker 6: They didn't, So she came back strong. And I think
Speaker 6: one of the things we have to keep in mind
Speaker 6: is this doesn't only impact Trump, and it impacts him severely.
Speaker 6: It also impacts the rest of the field because think
Speaker 6: about this. You're out there normally after Iowa who he
Speaker 6: I'm sure the field starts to winnow down. But now
Speaker 6: you've got the leading contender facing to ricks point six trials,
Speaker 6: four of whom are serious criminal indictments. Do you drop
Speaker 6: out now after a couple of caucuses and primaries or
Speaker 6: do you stick with it? Same for the big donors,
Speaker 6: they might stick with it, thinking we need a viable
Speaker 6: number two or number three, God forbid something happens to
Speaker 6: our number one. So the entire I think calendar is
Speaker 6: going to be blown up in this Republican field. Anybody
Speaker 6: who wanted consolidation probably not going to get it now.
Speaker 2: Well, we've, of course, we've got the matter in Georgia
Speaker 2: as well, and whether this is going to go federal
Speaker 2: or not for Mark Meadows. But we'll wait and see
Speaker 2: what happens with all of that. We heard from Alina Haba,
Speaker 2: Donald Trump's attorney on Fox over the weekend talking about
Speaker 2: this and kind of fascinating. You know, I guess he
Speaker 2: knows what he knows.
Speaker 7: These are not complicated facts. Look at Fanny, it was
Speaker 7: a phone call, a phone call that's been around forever
Speaker 7: that he refers to as the perfect phone call. What
Speaker 7: is he going to have to be prepped for? The truth?
Speaker 7: You don't have to prep much when you've done nothing wrong,
Speaker 7: so that I'm not concerned with.
Speaker 2: So it sounds like then we just go for it,
Speaker 2: rip off the band aid, and hit it. In March, Rick,
Speaker 2: if you were preparing a candidate for Super Tuesday, this
Speaker 2: again is on the eve of what would be a
Speaker 2: normal day before Super Tuesday. Suggest you know, in the
Speaker 2: world in which your candidate was not going to trial,
Speaker 2: where would you have him or her? What would they
Speaker 2: be doing? Well, you would.
Speaker 5: Start probably in the East coast and and and spend
Speaker 5: two days flying from the East coast to the West coast,
Speaker 5: with six to eight stops a day in that in
Speaker 5: that category, just to even set foot on a state
Speaker 5: that's that's voting, you know, on March fifth. So I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, you wouldn't be sitting in a courtroom worrying
Speaker 5: about your imprisonment. You'd be you'd be trying to figure
Speaker 5: out how to get so many rallies at airports that
Speaker 5: you create a little momentum for the states on Super Tuesday,
Speaker 5: and and so you know, that's you can't imagine how
Speaker 5: different it would be if someone walks into the campaign.
Speaker 5: By the way, you can't have the candidate on Super
Speaker 5: Tuesday or the day before because he's sitting in a courtroom.
Speaker 5: And you know, Washington, d C. I mean, we wouldn't
Speaker 5: even go to Washington to DC in a year that
Speaker 5: you're ever prim nevertheless having to repeatedly go there to
Speaker 5: stand trial.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, we've got some new polling data out here today,
Speaker 2: Genie I don't know if you saw the latest from Emerson.
Speaker 2: This is a poll of registered voters, which is something
Speaker 2: that we do want to flag as opposed to likely
Speaker 2: primary voters. But it's got Donald Trump at fifty rohnd
Speaker 2: de Santis at twelve. It's creating the headline at least
Speaker 2: that post debate and post indictments, that this gap might
Speaker 2: be narrowing. But can we even say that in a
Speaker 2: fifty to twelve race.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean we we are really stretching it to
Speaker 6: say he has dropped compared to the last poll about
Speaker 6: six points, but you know, you are still so far
Speaker 6: ahead that it's hard to know what to make of
Speaker 6: it at this point. And of course he did not
Speaker 6: show up for the debate. He was just indicted for
Speaker 6: the fourth time and turned himself in in Georgia. And
Speaker 6: can we just go back to the Alina Habba thing
Speaker 6: and say yes, she blows up his entire reason for
Speaker 6: extending the trial. She goes on national television and says
Speaker 6: he's set to go. He's telling the truth. He doesn't
Speaker 6: need to think about this or prepare for it. They're
Speaker 6: not worried at all. This is where the political and
Speaker 6: the legal and I think Haba has, you know, confused
Speaker 6: where she is. She's an attorney. She's trying to make
Speaker 6: a political argument about his ability to tell the truth
Speaker 6: and not prepare. Then why do they need until April
Speaker 6: twenty twenty six?
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, Absolutely, keep going, Jeanie does so.
Speaker 6: I thank you for cheering for me, Joe, I appreciate it.
Speaker 6: Get Zio, so, you know, I think we're going to
Speaker 6: continue to hear these conflicting messages. There are so many
Speaker 6: cooks in the kitchen and you have to have somebody
Speaker 6: take the lead. But now you've got people in the
Speaker 6: political realm who are saying far different things from the
Speaker 6: people in the legal realm, and they don't jibe. So
Speaker 6: you got a judge Calught in the middle saying, listen, folks,
Speaker 6: this is not reasonable. You're saying one thing, doing another.
Speaker 6: You're tainting our jury pool. We're going forward and he's
Speaker 6: going to be victimized in court for that, which is
Speaker 6: unfair to him as a defendant, but as a political figure.
Speaker 6: This is what his folks are saying publicly.
Speaker 2: Facts are the facts, apparently, Genie, and he knows the facts.
Speaker 2: According to Alina Haba, I will ask you both about
Speaker 2: Ron DeSantis in his weekend now, as I've invoked him already,
Speaker 2: whether she's looking better or worse. He had a tough
Speaker 2: weekend and that cheering, by the way, turned into booing
Speaker 2: in Jacksonville over the weekend. Of course, the scene of
Speaker 2: this terrible shooting that made news over the course of
Speaker 2: the weekend. He had to go back to Florida to
Speaker 2: a vigil last night. Here's what it sounded like. He's
Speaker 2: walking in with the first lady and it quickly turns
Speaker 2: to booze. This is a big group of people standing
Speaker 2: around waiting for this vigil to begin. He did attend
Speaker 2: that vigil, but it comes after his comments on the
Speaker 2: matter as well. He did hold a news conference following
Speaker 2: the shooting to talk about what they had learned.
Speaker 8: State and its people can the horrific racially motivated murders
Speaker 8: perpetrated by a deranged scumbag in Jacksonville at the Dollar
Speaker 8: General store. Perpetrating violence of this kind is unacceptable, and
Speaker 8: targeting people due to their race has no place in
Speaker 8: the state of Florida.
Speaker 2: We got a lot of criticism for that, and only
Speaker 2: the use of the term scumbag, but just sort of
Speaker 2: the nature of the delivery, the tone, Rick, is this
Speaker 2: a moment for Ronda Santis to show why he should
Speaker 2: be president?
Speaker 5: Well, certainly leadership matters, and his you know, sort of
Speaker 5: colloquial rhetoric related to this was you know, you could
Speaker 5: cut it both ways, but obviously some of the people
Speaker 5: there took issue at that or took issue in general,
Speaker 5: you know, with his leadership of the state. But this
Speaker 5: is reality descending upon presidential campaign that you know, to
Speaker 5: some degree operates in a bubble, and so pulling him
Speaker 5: out of that, taking him from South Carolina where he'd
Speaker 5: planned to spend the day, uh, take him home to
Speaker 5: uh to you know, uh preside over you know, a
Speaker 5: really disturbing set of facts, you know, is jarring and
Speaker 5: so uh you know, but it's a reality. He's a
Speaker 5: governor of the state. A lot of the campaign before
Speaker 5: he got elected re elected was how much time are
Speaker 5: you going to spend in the state, you know, being
Speaker 5: our governor? And and this is a musco you know,
Speaker 5: right on the backs of this is going to be
Speaker 5: a tropical storm that's coming to the state, and you
Speaker 5: know that's gonna that's gonna disrupt his h his campaign
Speaker 5: reality too. So you know, look, he doesn't have a
Speaker 5: he doesn't have you know, these horrific uh situation that
Speaker 5: Donald Trump does to have to go on trial throughout
Speaker 5: the course of the year. But this is a chance
Speaker 5: to show leadership. And you know, I think that I
Speaker 5: think that, you know, sort of you know, we're still
Speaker 5: looking for that breakout moment for him.
Speaker 2: Well, we're going to get into that a little bit more.
Speaker 2: It does appear that this storm is going to keep
Speaker 2: on to Santus off the trail for a bit longer
Speaker 2: than he might prefer. Rick Davis and Jeanie Shanzana will
Speaker 2: have more on the way that should be handled coming
Speaker 2: up next.
Speaker 1: You're listening to The Bloomberg Sound on podcast. Catch the
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Speaker 2: They're preparing for hurricane strength conditions in Florida, with an
Speaker 2: eye on Jacksonville. Governor Ron DeSantis spending time there following
Speaker 2: this terrible mass shooting over the weekend. Now dealing potentially
Speaker 2: with two prices at once in the throes of a
Speaker 2: presidential campaign, and as we heard over the weekend, it's
Speaker 2: going to mean likely some time off the campaign trail.
Speaker 2: Let's reassemble our panel for more on the impact of
Speaker 2: all of this. Rick Davis, Jeanie Shanza with US Bloomberg
Speaker 2: Politics contributors. Rick, I remember specifically the first day of
Speaker 2: the Republican convention. It was John McCain's convention, and by that,
Speaker 2: I mean it was your convention in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: Saint Paul, and there was a hurricane on the way
Speaker 2: to New Orleans and you had a decision to make
Speaker 2: on whether to run the program per usual that day.
Speaker 2: You also know what it's like to pull a candidate
Speaker 2: off the trail when you suspended John McCain's campaign at
Speaker 2: the threshold of the Great Recession, when of course everyone
Speaker 2: came to Washington to try to figure out a path forward.
Speaker 2: What would you do now for Ronda Santis And if
Speaker 2: it is removal from the campaign trail, how do you
Speaker 2: manage that?
Speaker 5: Well, first of all, you got to, you know, connect
Speaker 5: with the American people and tell them why and what
Speaker 5: you're doing. I mean when we canceled the first day
Speaker 5: of the Republican Convention in two thousand and eight with
Speaker 5: Hurricane gustav you know, coming down on Florida. You know,
Speaker 5: everybody at that time still remembered very clearly, you know,
Speaker 5: the disruption to the state and the failures of the
Speaker 5: Bush administration when it came to managing Hurricane Katrina. So
Speaker 5: that was very much in people's psyche when we made
Speaker 5: that decision. And how can you celebrate? How can you
Speaker 5: have balloons dropping from a ceiling, you know, when people
Speaker 5: in a key state like Florida, you know, or hunkered down,
Speaker 5: you know, hoping that you know, they don't have their
Speaker 5: lives taken away. So you know, at some point you
Speaker 5: have to actually be rational and say no way, you know,
Speaker 5: you can't do it. And we lost a night of
Speaker 5: television and activity, you know, as a result of that.
Speaker 5: But I think sometimes you're graded for what you don't
Speaker 5: do right, you don't make the mistake of celebrating at
Speaker 5: a time of national you know, mourning, or at a
Speaker 5: time when you know people are in danger.
Speaker 2: That's really interesting, Genie. Sometimes you're rewarded for what you
Speaker 2: don't do. Will Ron de Santis be rewarded for this,
Speaker 2: and how does he recover if you think it was
Speaker 2: even an issue from the way he handled the shooting
Speaker 2: in Jacksonville.
Speaker 6: He you know, I think we have to wait and
Speaker 6: see if he'll be rewarded. He has. He is the
Speaker 6: governor of this state. He had a mass shooting in
Speaker 6: his state, a horrific event, on the same weekend we
Speaker 6: were celebrating the March on Washington sixty years and he
Speaker 6: went back and of course, now you have this storm approaching.
Speaker 6: Let's be realistic as to why he was met with
Speaker 6: so much derision when he went back there. It's because
Speaker 6: this is somebody who has loosened gun laws in Florida.
Speaker 6: He has upset many people who care about civil rights.
Speaker 6: He has spent endless amounts of time talking about the
Speaker 6: importance of being woke. He has attacked critical race theory.
Speaker 6: He has attacked the teaching of our history and specifically slavery.
Speaker 6: So there are policy reasons that he wasn't met the
Speaker 6: way he was, coupled with the fact that he used
Speaker 6: language which was a little bit stunning when you hear
Speaker 6: what he had to say about the shooter himself. But
Speaker 6: you know, he is somebody who also by the same
Speaker 6: token as governor, has done a fairly good job handling
Speaker 6: crisis so far. So I think he made the right
Speaker 6: decision just politically going back there and being the executive
Speaker 6: he told us he is and would be, because he's
Speaker 6: going to be able to show that if Americans beyond
Speaker 6: Florida or watching to the American public, which if he
Speaker 6: does it well, he's going to help him. Certainly, the
Speaker 6: worst thing he could do would be go around the
Speaker 6: country campaigning while his state is dealing with all of
Speaker 6: these crises.
Speaker 2: I need to ask you both about the Viake Ramaswami
Speaker 2: and the latest controversy surrounding this presidential candidate. You saw
Speaker 2: him over the weekend defending his remarks about the KKK,
Speaker 2: more specifically calling Ayana Presley, the congresswoman from Massachusetts, a
Speaker 2: part of the modern KKK. He was asked about it
Speaker 2: yesterday morning.
Speaker 9: What I said is the grand wizards of the KKK
Speaker 9: would be proud of what they would hear her say,
Speaker 9: because there's nothing more racist than saying that your skin
Speaker 9: color predicts something about the content.
Speaker 7: He didn't just say that to say they would be proud,
Speaker 7: you said, these are the words of the modern grand
Speaker 7: Wizards of the modern kk.
Speaker 2: Standard bash on CNN. Of course, remember that Aana Presley
Speaker 2: was the first black woman elected to represent Massachusetts in Congress.
Speaker 2: She had said, we don't need any more blackfaces that
Speaker 2: don't want to be a black voice. Coming off the
Speaker 2: debate the other night. This is this is tough stuff here, Rick.
Speaker 2: It does appear that he's doubling down. Is he doing
Speaker 2: the right thing or not? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Look, I mean he's spent the entire weekend, you know,
Speaker 5: on these Sunday shows really sort of recreating history. I mean,
Speaker 5: whether it was a response like this on Aana Presley's comments,
Speaker 5: which by the way, deserves some derision on their own, right.
Speaker 5: I mean, like the idea that she can say these
Speaker 5: things and not be criticized for sounding bias is a
Speaker 5: little bit surprising to me. But look, Ramaswami has his
Speaker 5: own case to be made, and he got stuck in this.
Speaker 5: He got stuck in other comments he's made in his
Speaker 5: book that were, you know, diametrically different than what he
Speaker 5: said on the debate stage. So he's got some splen
Speaker 5: to do. And you know, you put yourself out for
Speaker 5: these Sunday shows and they're not going to be a
Speaker 5: piece of cake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, welcome to the NFL. Here, Jeanie, the big Ramaswami
Speaker 2: is now getting a sense of what it's really like
Speaker 2: to be a presidential candidate. Did he just step in it?
Speaker 2: Does this threaten his campaign?
Speaker 6: He did step in it, and it would threaten his
Speaker 6: campaign if people were listening. But you know, the fear
Speaker 6: is is exactly what he said to Dana Bash. If
Speaker 6: we listen carefully to that interview, what he said was, oh,
Speaker 6: I just said these comments to attract and incite a conversation.
Speaker 6: The reality is, we should have a conversation about this issue,
Speaker 6: but it should not be a conversation with a leading
Speaker 6: candidate or a candidate for the Republican nomination. Comparing a
Speaker 6: representative in Congress who happens to be the first black
Speaker 6: woman elected to a modern klu klux Klan member. It's
Speaker 6: absolutely outrageous. It's beyond controversial. But he admits right there
Speaker 6: he's doing it to spark controversy and conversation, and that
Speaker 6: is the problem. And the reality is this goes far
Speaker 6: beyond Ramaswami. It's the same tactic Trump is used, and
Speaker 6: I fear it's going to be something we hear more
Speaker 6: about if candidates than less because it attracts attention, it
Speaker 6: attracts money, and people sort of set aside the hypocrisy
Speaker 6: of something he wrote in a book eleven months ago
Speaker 6: and something he's saying on the trail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to be hearing more of that book
Speaker 2: recurgitated over the course of the next couple of weeks,
Speaker 2: and this should provide some very interesting conversation points for
Speaker 2: the second debate, which is September at the Ronald Reagan Library.
Speaker 2: Final thoughts from our panel straight ahead of course, Rick
Speaker 2: Davis and Jeanie Shanzano. I'm Joe Matthew in Washington. I'm
Speaker 2: the fastest show in politics. This is Bloomberg.
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Speaker 2: President Biden leaves the bubble. Well not really, Washington, You're
Speaker 2: always in the bubble. The book left the White House
Speaker 2: with the first Lady on what was the first day
Speaker 2: of school for a bunch of kids. I won't out
Speaker 2: the school They didn't put that on the guidance from
Speaker 2: the White House. All that said was they'd visit a
Speaker 2: public school to welcome students back to class, and indeed
Speaker 2: they did, remembering, of course, that doctor Jill is a
Speaker 2: teacher herself. Here's the president in the classroom.
Speaker 10: The hardest thing is to come back after three months
Speaker 10: of not doing any work, not doing any homework, and
Speaker 10: all of a sudden, you've got a lot to make.
Speaker 10: Everybody has a lot to catch up from what the
Speaker 10: end of the last year. And you all look so
Speaker 10: excited to be a math class on.
Speaker 1: Your first day.
Speaker 2: What's your hardest subject from school?
Speaker 1: Math?
Speaker 2: They said, their hardest subject in the school. But Jill
Speaker 2: Biden's an English teacher. Final thoughts from Rick and Jeanie.
Speaker 2: It's an interesting dichotomy here, Genie, you're an educator. While
Speaker 2: many Republican presidential candidates threatened to shut down the Department
Speaker 2: of Education, this one is going to school. Is that
Speaker 2: a good contrast.
Speaker 6: It is a good contrast. And I love the reaction
Speaker 6: of the kids. They were all giggling, they were all smiling.
Speaker 6: They one of them said, I'm shaking hands with the president.
Speaker 6: I remember my eighth grade return to school. No president
Speaker 6: met me. I think it's a very important contrast, and
Speaker 6: we have to invest more in our schools. And nobody's
Speaker 6: better equipped to talk about that than Jill Biden and
Speaker 6: of course her husband.
Speaker 2: He spent something like twenty minutes in the hallway shaking
Speaker 2: hands there, Rick, this is part of the job of
Speaker 2: being the president, right, what's the message? Why take the time?
Speaker 5: I actually thought he gave us a very clear message.
Speaker 5: He said, you know, we've just spent three months not
Speaker 5: doing anything. I think he aptly described the Biden administration
Speaker 5: and exactly why we're in the case we're in. So
Speaker 5: maybe he should get back to school and do a
Speaker 5: little something to help our economy. And you know, sperm
Speaker 5: up the support.
Speaker 4: For the war.
Speaker 2: And is Genie still there? I mean to lay the
Speaker 2: bait like that, Genie, I.
Speaker 6: Know, and look at Rick Davis going right in for
Speaker 6: the hill. Rick, inflation is doing better. You're celebrating Biden nomics.
Speaker 6: Be happy.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, we almost need another hour now with you too.
Speaker 2: We found something here. Rick Davis and Genie shanseo Bloomberg
Speaker 2: Politics contributors are friends that sound on the best panel
Speaker 2: in the business. Thanks for listening. To the sound On podcast.
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