Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: Today, we have a special crossover bonus episode for you
Speaker 2: where I talk to Talking Feds Harry Litman live from
Speaker 2: this weekend's Texas Tribune Festival.
Speaker 3: I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 1: I'm Harry Littman of Talking Fits. I'm really pleased to welcome.
Speaker 1: I want to say Malli john Fest. But I keep
Speaker 1: reading that it's a reverend.
Speaker 2: Something.
Speaker 1: I think your first name is a reverend? Were there
Speaker 1: many kids in school who have? When did you become a.
Speaker 3: Reverend?
Speaker 2: Is such a weird thing to have as a describer?
Speaker 4: Do you think it's not? Until you think it's like
Speaker 4: a little shade.
Speaker 3: Let's take no reverence. Great, I've been called much worse.
Speaker 2: Even today, we're in the middle of like a million
Speaker 2: different legal like just everybody is in legal jeopardy right
Speaker 2: we have. I mean, Trump is the main event, but
Speaker 2: there are a lot of other satellite events. What case
Speaker 2: do you think right now seems most open and shut
Speaker 2: to you?
Speaker 4: Oh, open and shut?
Speaker 1: That's not where I thought you were going, because I
Speaker 1: don't know if it'll open and shut in the time
Speaker 1: we want.
Speaker 4: But the most open and shut I actually think is
Speaker 4: the mar Lago case. The document, the doc it's so
Speaker 4: straight forward.
Speaker 1: The law is so clear. All it has to be.
Speaker 1: You have classified documents. We know that it says that
Speaker 1: I'm you take this man. You know you're not supposed to,
Speaker 1: and you know it just gets stronger and stronger every day.
Speaker 4: Killer evidence.
Speaker 1: So it's like a weird time that where you know,
Speaker 1: teeny little things, pieces of knowledge you've acquired over twenty years,
Speaker 1: have all some political significance, removal and burden of proof,
Speaker 1: but it actually matters. So here this witness who came
Speaker 1: forward to who we learned about a couple days ago, right, Michael,
Speaker 1: she's going to bury him because he's the she is unimpeachable.
Speaker 1: Tried to stay with him, nicely, well presented and will say,
Speaker 1: oh yeah.
Speaker 4: When he found out it's going to talk with the FBI,
Speaker 4: I said, you don't know anything about those documents. You
Speaker 4: can like the.
Speaker 1: Majurial, right, and that's we We focus on stunning the
Speaker 1: Bullgravano or me Parkment. But but they'll have bruising cross examinations.
Speaker 1: I think John Laurel will just weep and say, no
Speaker 1: further questions.
Speaker 4: What are you gonna do with the with it?
Speaker 1: So so mar Alago, Okay, now I got one for you.
Speaker 1: I'll stick with the irreverent themes.
Speaker 4: So this can a little is it a little more
Speaker 4: meta and reflective?
Speaker 1: See as, because you know, truth be told, you're very
Speaker 1: sort of susbanative and trenchant.
Speaker 4: But through the prism of irreverence.
Speaker 1: What do you see as the kind of role of irony, wit,
Speaker 1: humor and actually the you know, the the mission of
Speaker 1: journalism of you know, not just imparting facts, but giving
Speaker 1: the kind of point of view that hopefully will make
Speaker 1: people see the stakes.
Speaker 3: Here the goal is always honesty, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm on the opinion side, which gives me
Speaker 2: a lot of freedom. I don't have to not say
Speaker 2: what I think, whereas like a straight reporter needs to
Speaker 2: be able to tell a story without I mean, of
Speaker 2: course we always know, right, but without their own personal bias,
Speaker 2: Whereas I don't have to do that. But I do
Speaker 2: feel like there's even more impetus on me to be
Speaker 2: honest and to be honest about when I'm looking at
Speaker 2: a case because I'm on the opinion side, and also
Speaker 2: because the goal here is always honesty, right, So it
Speaker 2: might be funny that there's nothing we can do about
Speaker 2: the fact that the world is so deeply insane. I
Speaker 2: think if it were less insane, it might be less funny.
Speaker 2: You know, you have to laugh to not cry. The
Speaker 2: thing is right, the Republican front runner has foreign indictments
Speaker 2: and a superseding indictment and he can't stop winning.
Speaker 3: But I mean it's preposterous.
Speaker 2: But on the face of it, like imagine, think of
Speaker 2: gour Vidal writing about that.
Speaker 3: I mean, he wouldn't believe it. He wouldn't. I mean,
Speaker 3: I was listening.
Speaker 2: To some of his writings on the plane on the
Speaker 2: way out here, and he was talking about how George
Speaker 2: Bush was so beyond the pale George but it thought
Speaker 2: of as like now a statesman, I mean, not by me,
Speaker 2: but you know, as a painter in a.
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon's the best thing that ever happened, right, I mean.
Speaker 2: So I think that the sort of preposterousness of American
Speaker 2: politics lends itself to humor in a way that it's
Speaker 2: still very serious and we always have to be serious
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 3: But it is I mean, remember like think about right.
Speaker 4: I mean John Patty right, Okay.
Speaker 2: Think about yesterday is like big or the day before
Speaker 2: big breaking news about Rudy Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani sexually harassed
Speaker 2: or in a very inappropriate sexual contact with a young
Speaker 2: girl Mark Meadows.
Speaker 1: You know with that Cassidy wild Trump is making this
Speaker 1: watch at the right and Johnny through clearing that right now,
Speaker 1: it's like at a Hoeronymous spot, right, Yes.
Speaker 2: Truly a horrendous, horrendous scene from a different century. But
Speaker 2: I want to point out, like we could talk about
Speaker 2: Rudy Julian and look back at Rudy Giuliani's time in
Speaker 2: the Borat movie?
Speaker 4: Will you did this game the right?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: The Borat Movie supposed to be a satire.
Speaker 2: I say, sorry, so, I mean, it's just I wouldn't
Speaker 2: be so irreverend if everything wasn't so insane.
Speaker 1: Right, and in fact, if the if the actual touchstone
Speaker 1: is truth, then it really how do you get out
Speaker 1: at a time where even that's up for grass?
Speaker 4: But I shouldn't have said that because it's your turning over.
Speaker 3: Yes, wet all right. So Laurence O'Donnell was on my podcast.
Speaker 3: Yeah he's my body.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he said that a very very very high number
Speaker 2: of jury trials end in guilty verdict like ninety percent plus.
Speaker 3: Is that true?
Speaker 1: And why, well, a very very very high percentage of
Speaker 1: criminal press acutions and in guilty verdicts, although they're usually
Speaker 1: by plea.
Speaker 4: But you know, I'm here to tell you.
Speaker 1: So I went to law school kind of last refuge
Speaker 1: of the amateur. Like a lot of people, I thought
Speaker 1: I might be a defense lawyer. It's just by way
Speaker 1: of saying, I'm not a fire in the Valley prosecutor.
Speaker 1: But it's just a fact, like there's you know, like
Speaker 1: facts we were just talking about. To the prosecutors choose
Speaker 1: their their cases. Defendants are honestly mostly guilty. I have
Speaker 1: whenever I've gotten close to like it's just true and
Speaker 1: it could be some solid maybe they have a good
Speaker 1: legal claim. I don't mean, and I totally respect defenser,
Speaker 1: But whenever I get close to defense, I always say, like, over, so,
Speaker 1: have you.
Speaker 4: Ever had like someone who didn't do it?
Speaker 1: And they're you know, I think the sky in twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen maybe, so you know, the evidences, So they choose now,
Speaker 1: of course in the incredible it really and it should
Speaker 1: be sort of reassuring because I know some people, especially
Speaker 1: in the age of Trump, have such fundamental mistrust for
Speaker 1: law enforcement. It is, you know, as of course, said
Speaker 1: the competitive business affairity on crime.
Speaker 4: Once you're one, you're engaged. You don't want to lose.
Speaker 1: But in any professional office, somebody there's a lot of
Speaker 1: cases out there and somebody who you're going to have
Speaker 1: trouble proving or god forbid, you're not sure did it
Speaker 1: unless they are themselves and you know, for independent reasons.
Speaker 4: A real plague on the community.
Speaker 1: So you really want to dig dig card kind of
Speaker 1: an al capone situation, you go to the next guy.
Speaker 1: So it's really the case. Now, trials are different because
Speaker 1: beyond a reasonable doubt, you only need one shit happens.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking of this Fulton County trial that's
Speaker 1: coming up.
Speaker 4: She charges a rico.
Speaker 1: We're going to have two people sitting there supposedly for
Speaker 1: four months, while what a week of the evidence concerns
Speaker 1: them directly, you know, twelve real people sitting on your
Speaker 1: might think what.
Speaker 4: The how am I doing here?
Speaker 1: And there sort of human reaction, et cetera. So that
Speaker 1: can happen, especially if you count a mistrial. But the
Speaker 1: short answer to Lawrence so O Donald, he's got a
Speaker 1: real vantage point. He's I don't know if you read
Speaker 1: his book about the big criminal case and stuff.
Speaker 4: But the real answer, don't shoot the messenger.
Speaker 1: It's a fact almost all charged criminal defendants, certainly in
Speaker 1: the federal system, are gilly my turn.
Speaker 5: Interesting you said recently, I'm kind of terrifying, which is
Speaker 5: the media is giving us flashbacks to twenty sixteen. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, I think there's a sort of overarching question
Speaker 5: of this festival of you know, where do we stand
Speaker 5: after sort of eight years of Trump is?
Speaker 1: And how much is an in root and branch and
Speaker 1: how do you purge it? And I've asked this question.
Speaker 1: We had a journalism panel with Jacob Weisberg and Johnny
Speaker 1: Cobb and Katie Benner, and I just spoke with the
Speaker 1: Major Garrett about this indictment, and everybody said, you know,
Speaker 1: guilty is charge of journalism back then for giving Trump
Speaker 1: so much airtime as if they were like to calling
Speaker 1: in too, and then they take the call kind of
Speaker 1: as if you know, he's this. I think there was
Speaker 1: a sense of which he was always a kind of
Speaker 1: attention gathering buffoon, but the joke was sort of on us, right.
Speaker 1: So when I hear you say you're getting flashbacks, that
Speaker 1: suggests to me that those grievous and consequential errors are
Speaker 1: being replicated.
Speaker 4: Is that how you see it.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I wrote in that piece,
Speaker 2: which I think is is really as i've you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes I write something and I'll look back and I'll
Speaker 2: be like, oh.
Speaker 3: That was not no. I usually I think, oh that
Speaker 3: was stupid, that's not right, but or it'll haunt me.
Speaker 2: But this I actually think was right, which was I
Speaker 2: said that Trump was treated as a joke and Hillary
Speaker 2: was treated as a peto complay. She was sort of
Speaker 2: going to be it, and he was really like a
Speaker 2: Joe candidate. So if you covered him, the stakes were
Speaker 2: low because he had a twenty percent chance of winning.
Speaker 2: Right after he won and we were grappling with how
Speaker 2: to cover an autocrat that was a different story. There
Speaker 2: is some feeling now, right Biden is he won once
Speaker 2: against Trump. I mean, what's so interesting about being a
Speaker 2: writer and being on the opinion side is that I
Speaker 2: see these anxieties boil up. And sometimes they are the
Speaker 2: anxieties of straight journalists and politics editors, and.
Speaker 3: Sometimes they are the fantasies.
Speaker 2: Right And last night at this talk that I was at,
Speaker 2: Chris Hayes said, he said something brilliant.
Speaker 3: He said.
Speaker 2: The age issue is a great issue if you don't
Speaker 2: know anything, right, Like political journalists love it because it's meaningless. Right,
Speaker 2: you can say he's old, and you have to say, yes,
Speaker 2: he's old, and the other guy says yes, still right,
Speaker 2: and Trump is three years younger than Biden. Like fundamentally,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just so meaningless. But the child tax
Speaker 2: credit and the nuances of legislation, something that Trump has
Speaker 2: never been guilty of legislating, is more substantive and harder
Speaker 2: to write about, which is true.
Speaker 1: What you're seeing the flashbacks of Twoentown sixteen are not
Speaker 1: the sort of slavish attention to Trump, but the simplicity
Speaker 1: of storyline narratives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's just and it's also just this
Speaker 2: sort of way that the media. And again I don't
Speaker 2: want to blame the media, because the media is super
Speaker 2: important and we're part of it, right, like the idea people,
Speaker 2: right when they call out the mainstream media and they're
Speaker 2: in it, it's very annoying. So I would say, I
Speaker 2: think the thing that I worry about is that there
Speaker 2: seems to be stories kind of come from groupthink and
Speaker 2: sort of go around and sometimes they influence real like
Speaker 2: sometimes they're meaningless and they go away, right like you know,
Speaker 2: but they influence voting and sometimes they actually create themselves
Speaker 2: into being. And I think of like the Hillary email story, right,
Speaker 2: like she was sloppy with her emails?
Speaker 3: Is she a criminal mastermind? Now? Was she treated like
Speaker 3: she was a criminal mastermind?
Speaker 2: Well, there was a question, and that's for example, like
Speaker 2: the Hunter Biden gun charge, right like he didn't dispose
Speaker 2: of the weapon like a federal gun charge. Okay, now
Speaker 2: we go to your question. How usual is what Hunter
Speaker 2: Biden was charged with?
Speaker 1: The choices are a very unusual, be non existent, and
Speaker 1: I can go in with b in this. You do
Speaker 1: have to understand DOJ policies because that crimes on the books. Right,
Speaker 1: they'll occasionally have recourse to it. But those occasions are
Speaker 1: because of an X factor, right for example the president. Well, no,
Speaker 1: that's that's the Y factor here, the Z factor, the
Speaker 1: B factor. But no, it's like the guy who lied
Speaker 1: on the form used the gun to commit another crust.
Speaker 4: The guy who lied on the form was a straw purchaser.
Speaker 1: The guy we happened to know is responsible for twenty
Speaker 1: never though, just a free standing charge literally, and I've
Speaker 1: really plumbed the depths. I can't find a single case.
Speaker 1: And you know, as you say, it's not simply didn't
Speaker 1: have eleven days unloaded in the in the dumpster.
Speaker 2: He throws it out, the girlfriend throws it out, and
Speaker 2: then they call the FBI.
Speaker 3: They wouldn't have even known about it exactly.
Speaker 4: So I'm calm and I've written you know this.
Speaker 1: He he was charged with his offense as being the
Speaker 1: you know it was his last name, So.
Speaker 3: That would you john question.
Speaker 1: I just want to transmnd my gratitude because, like many.
Speaker 4: Question, here we go the book.
Speaker 1: I remember almost every scenario in the frame.
Speaker 3: This is great. Oh good, So talking about my mother.
Speaker 4: It was so exciting.
Speaker 3: But I mean I just things I.
Speaker 2: Like more than talking about So I'm going to ask
Speaker 2: you about polling. No, so, oh yeah, you're my life
Speaker 2: is talking about my mother sexual I mean.
Speaker 1: I literally found the book on the third floor.
Speaker 3: All right, well let's talk about pulling. I feel like
Speaker 3: we could talk about pulling. Here's my I love this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know. I just will you please from yes.
Speaker 1: Gratitude for her elevation until fifteen year old boy?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: All right, really, I can't wait to have that conversation
Speaker 3: with her.
Speaker 2: I'm counting to a Sidebard, Yes, I forged it.
Speaker 1: Okay, pulling, so I this vexing question of finance, fine
Speaker 1: stewardship of the economy and all these things. But besides that,
Speaker 1: compared to what and the Autocrat ninety one count criminal
Speaker 1: I think you've written and I think thought quite a
Speaker 1: lot about yes, And I think there's.
Speaker 4: A sense in which the sour.
Speaker 1: Mood of the nation, I think of Groucho Marx and
Speaker 1: horse feathers and whatever it is. I'm against it and whenever,
Speaker 1: So when you say Biden, you're gonna get trapped, you
Speaker 1: know you're gonna wind up with a tie, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't really augur a tie electorate. And yeah, because of
Speaker 1: polling and the mood of the electric today.
Speaker 3: Thoughts okay, so national polling is bullshit and it's.
Speaker 4: Mental national national.
Speaker 3: Am I allowed to curse you because I don't think.
Speaker 4: Of a word we haven't said on but I can't.
Speaker 3: National polling is bullshed.
Speaker 2: We don't elect with a popular vote number one, number two.
Speaker 2: National pulling in twenty fifteen one polls were more accurate
Speaker 2: because we had more landlines, had Hillary Clinton at a
Speaker 2: ninety three percent chance of winning the presidency.
Speaker 4: So remember that day seven.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I still from looking at that needle. So
Speaker 2: number one, that is just a meaning syndicator. I think
Speaker 2: polls are you look at polls for trajectories. You look
Speaker 2: at obviously if somebody drops in polls, you know, in
Speaker 2: a in a sort of stratospheric way that you look
Speaker 2: at that. But I think that we've seen really again
Speaker 2: and again that polls tend to underrepresent, underrepresent really the truth.
Speaker 2: And I think of the Lauren Beaupert Adam Fresh runoff
Speaker 2: that you know that was a congressional seat. We had
Speaker 2: him on on my podcast in twenty twenty one, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two before the midterm election, and everyone said, you're crazy.
Speaker 3: He lost by five hundred votes. That matter. You know,
Speaker 3: a producer has real PTSD when he's like five hundred.
Speaker 3: But the money.
Speaker 2: If he hadn't had those bad polls, he would have
Speaker 2: raised more money and he would have won by seven hundred,
Speaker 2: five hundred votes whatever.
Speaker 4: So he polland what you said, what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Than Paul, there you go, all right, getting.
Speaker 4: Ahead of contact. Such a pleasure.
Speaker 3: What it is?
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 2: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
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