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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Law with June Grasso from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Bloomberg Law. I Bloomberg Radio. I'm Madison Mills
Speaker 3: in for June Grasso. This week former President Trump pleading
Speaker 3: not guilty in a Miami court Tuesday, this after becoming
Speaker 3: the first president in history charged with committing federal crimes,
Speaker 3: then heading up to New Jersey for some fundraising. Plus
Speaker 3: we're going to cover that Microsoft Activision deal later in
Speaker 3: the show, facing more headwhen this time in the United States.
Speaker 3: We're going to break it down with our senior litigation
Speaker 3: analyst from Bloomberg Intelligence. But first we got to kick
Speaker 3: it off with the former president. Moments after getting booked fingerprinted,
Speaker 3: he went back to campaigning, stopping at a cafe in
Speaker 3: Miami before heading to Jersey for that fundraising event. There,
Speaker 3: he said that President Biden is the one whose legal
Speaker 3: troubles should be in the spotlight. Take a listen.
Speaker 4: I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after
Speaker 4: the most corrupt president in the history of the United
Speaker 4: States of America, Joe Biden and the entire Biden crime family.
Speaker 4: Name a special prosecutor.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 3: So that was former President Trump speaking last night from
Speaker 3: New Jersey. So let's go to our fantastic politics roundtable.
Speaker 3: We've got Wendy Benjaminson here at Bloomberg News senior editor,
Speaker 3: and we've got Kaylee Lines, who was on the ground
Speaker 3: for us in Miami yesterday. So Kaylee, I want to
Speaker 3: start with you. First of all, where are you.
Speaker 5: I'm back in Washington.
Speaker 3: Okay, you're back in Washington. Just because we haven't had
Speaker 3: a chance to cover this on the show last week,
Speaker 3: give me a recap of what happened yesterday and how
Speaker 3: it was for you being there on the ground.
Speaker 5: Very hot, yes, very very hot. Indeed, that is my
Speaker 5: primary takeaway, and the rest of the day really frankly
Speaker 5: played out as we expected, at least from a legal perspective.
Speaker 5: President Trump in the early afternoon showed up to the
Speaker 5: courthouse and he was arrested and processed just like anyone
Speaker 5: else who has been charged with a federal crime. He
Speaker 5: had his fingerprint taken, not a mugshot, and then he
Speaker 5: appeared before the judge and he actually himself didn't talk
Speaker 5: very much, we understand, according to people who were in
Speaker 5: the room, but he pleaded thirty seven counts, not guilty
Speaker 5: to all of those. He then left the courthouse, as
Speaker 5: you said, Maddie, he met with supporters in Miami at
Speaker 5: Cafe Versai, a very popular Cuban restaurant, then went on
Speaker 5: to New Jersey. I think what was perhaps most surprising
Speaker 5: to me about the day was Miami's police chief had
Speaker 5: said they could see up to fifty thousand protesters there
Speaker 5: at the court house on arrarenement day. I saw maybe
Speaker 5: a couple hundred. It really was not the scene that
Speaker 5: I think a lot of us had anticipated going in.
Speaker 3: Well, it's always and you said this on the air yesterday,
Speaker 3: Kaylee's copying you, but it's always so funny when the
Speaker 3: media presence is bigger than the protest presence at these events. Yeah, recovering, Wendy.
Speaker 3: I want to bring you in here though, And I
Speaker 3: loved what you said yesterday too. You said He's stopping
Speaker 3: over for a coffee and a Cuban right after getting booked.
Speaker 3: I mean, what is your takeaway after having a day
Speaker 3: to kind of process this, what's the big takeaway for you?
Speaker 6: I think from a politics standpoint, the thing that's striking
Speaker 6: me the most is how this should be manna from
Speaker 6: heaven for the rest of the GOP field. In all
Speaker 6: the years I've covered politics and all of American history,
Speaker 6: which aren't all that different time spans, there is there
Speaker 6: is a you know, anytime, I mean, getting indicted is
Speaker 6: like the best thing that could happen to your opponent
Speaker 6: if you are running against him. In this case, they
Speaker 6: are trying so hard not to offend Trump's base that
Speaker 6: they are not really you know, going after him. It's
Speaker 6: not like he's chumming the water for sharks. He's still
Speaker 6: this guy They've got a tiptoe around, even though he's
Speaker 6: under federal indictment.
Speaker 3: Well, I also want to get your take not just
Speaker 3: on the response that we're getting from the other folks
Speaker 3: running for president here, but also the former Trump camp
Speaker 3: in Washington. Here's what Senator McConnell had to say yesterday,
Speaker 3: given that the former president is facing a federal indictment
Speaker 3: and these serious allegations, could you.
Speaker 4: Still support him if he becomes the nominee even if
Speaker 4: he's convicted.
Speaker 7: Look, the Republican campaign for the nomination is We've already
Speaker 7: been going on for six months, going to be going
Speaker 7: on for a year longer. And I'm just simply not
Speaker 7: going to comment on the candidates. We've got a bunch
Speaker 7: of them. Yeah, I'm just simply gonna stay out of it,
Speaker 7: all right.
Speaker 3: So he's staying out of it, Kaylee, talk to me
Speaker 3: about what the other responses are looking like, not just
Speaker 3: from again, the other folks running for president here, but
Speaker 3: the folks in Congress and the ones who previously were
Speaker 3: part of the Trump camp.
Speaker 5: Well, it really depends on where you're looking, because obviously
Speaker 5: you have Mitch McConnell and frankly a lot of people
Speaker 5: in the Senate who want to stay far away from this.
Speaker 5: They aren't stepping up to defend him in the same
Speaker 5: way you are seeing in the House, for example, with
Speaker 5: Speaker McCarthy and some of these other kind of hardline
Speaker 5: on the right side people stepping up kind of reiterating
Speaker 5: the messaging we've heard from President Trump repeatedly that this
Speaker 5: is a weaponization of the Justice Department, that there's a
Speaker 5: two tiered justice system. What I really thought was interesting, though,
Speaker 5: in terms of the twenty twenty four candidates, was former
Speaker 5: President Trump's own Vice president Mike Pence, who of course
Speaker 5: also is seeking the nomination, was on another network earlier
Speaker 5: this morning saying he cannot defend what is alleged, and
Speaker 5: I think that in particular is really striking.
Speaker 3: Right, really interesting to continue to hear his comments about
Speaker 3: it as well. Of course, I also want to get
Speaker 3: to what we heard from Trump last night. As we
Speaker 3: played earlier some sound from him, and the crowd started
Speaker 3: chanting lock him up alongside Trump last night, Wendy, does
Speaker 3: that become the defining campaign slogan for Trump in this
Speaker 3: campaign cycle?
Speaker 6: It sure seems like he's trying to throw all the
Speaker 6: attention back on Biden and this what about ism that
Speaker 6: you know, somehow these cases are similar when they're so
Speaker 6: simply completely different, and you know, nothing has been proven
Speaker 6: yet about Hunt, whether Joe Biden was involved in Hunter
Speaker 6: Biden's you know, schemes. But this is something the Republicans
Speaker 6: want to do. They just want to well, I should
Speaker 6: say Trump's base wants to do. They want and actually
Speaker 6: some of the Republican candidates who all are saying, yes,
Speaker 6: Trump did something wrong, but the Justice Department is too political.
Speaker 6: That's what they're going for. They're throwing it back on
Speaker 6: the Biden administration to say no, I'm not corrupt, You're corrupt.
Speaker 6: And you know, it's getting to be a little schoolyardy
Speaker 6: to be frank.
Speaker 3: Well, Kayley, speaking of the schoolyard vibes, this is not
Speaker 3: the last of Trump's legal battles. Talk to me about
Speaker 3: what else is going on with him.
Speaker 5: Well, of course, in this case in particular, we could
Speaker 5: see this drag on for a really long time. Things
Speaker 5: obviously formally kicked off in Miami yesterday with this arraignment,
Speaker 5: but now it moves from Miami to West Palm Beach,
Speaker 5: where it's going to be overseen, at least for the
Speaker 5: time being, by Judge Elen Cannon, who is a Trump
Speaker 5: appointee who had already been involved in this investigation in
Speaker 5: regard to the appointment of a special Master got a
Speaker 5: lot of flak for ruling in Trump's favor in that case,
Speaker 5: so it really will be up to her to decide
Speaker 5: how speedily this moves along, because we know that the
Speaker 5: former president has a reputation of elongating his legal battles,
Speaker 5: and he could very well run this up to November
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four or even beyond it. But of course,
Speaker 5: in the time in between, we also could see other
Speaker 5: indictments coming down. There is a non zero risk of
Speaker 5: that happening, because he's still under active investigation by both
Speaker 5: the special Counsel Jack Smith, who indicted him in this
Speaker 5: case regarding his involvement in January sixth the storming of
Speaker 5: the capital efforts to overturn the results of the twenty
Speaker 5: twenty election. He is also being looked at by the
Speaker 5: District Attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, again related to his
Speaker 5: attempts to overturn the results of the election in that state.
Speaker 5: We could actually see something out of that Georgia prosecutor
Speaker 5: as early as August, so less than two months from now.
Speaker 5: Unclear what the timeline is in terms of the other
Speaker 5: investigation by Jack Smith. But this just kind of goes
Speaker 5: to show you that his legal difficulties are stacking up,
Speaker 5: because of course he's already been indicted in Manhattan earlier
Speaker 5: this year and was found liable for sexual assault in
Speaker 5: a civil case as well.
Speaker 6: And if I could just jump in something that got
Speaker 6: missed in all the news yesterday was the judge and
Speaker 6: the aging Carrol case decided to let her proceed with
Speaker 6: a new in her ongoing attack. She wants more money
Speaker 6: from Donald Trump. Eugene Carroll does because he continued in
Speaker 6: the CNN town hall to repeat the same things that
Speaker 6: a jury had already decided were defamatory, and so she
Speaker 6: wants even more money from him every time he says
Speaker 6: those things.
Speaker 3: Well, and given that it sounds likely that that effort
Speaker 3: from her would be successful, Yes, Wendy.
Speaker 6: It could be. I just think what's going on here
Speaker 6: is like we're all trying to figure out how this
Speaker 6: will work, and I feel like we're all on a ship,
Speaker 6: you know, piloted by Christopher Columbus that's about to drop
Speaker 6: off the edge of the flat earth. You know, we
Speaker 6: have no idea. This has never been this has never
Speaker 6: happened before. We have no idea what it's like for
Speaker 6: a presidential front runner to be under federal indictment and
Speaker 6: possibly under multiple state indictments. We have no idea what
Speaker 6: it would be like for to elect a president who
Speaker 6: has been If he is I mean, if he's acquitted,
Speaker 6: then we go back to normal, the normal world. But
Speaker 6: while we're in bizarro land, you know, we have no
Speaker 6: idea what's how this will all play out. What if
Speaker 6: he's convicted and elected. It's highly unlikely, but who knows
Speaker 6: these days. It's just a very weird period in American history.
Speaker 3: Well, Wendy, I feel like I've asked you every day
Speaker 3: for the past two weeks. What happens if he is
Speaker 3: elected president? And Ken pardon himself? What happens if he's
Speaker 3: running from jail? Like the amount of what ifs that
Speaker 3: we never thought we would be asking ourselves and each
Speaker 3: other definitely never never cease to amaze me. Wendy Benjaminson,
Speaker 3: thank you so much for joining us Bloomberg News senior editor,
Speaker 3: and of course Kaylee Lines fresh out of that trip
Speaker 3: to Florida to cover this for us on the ground
Speaker 3: in Miami. Always great to speak with both of you.
Speaker 3: Things for making time stick with us here on Bloomberg Law,
Speaker 3: because coming up we're going to talk about that Microsoft
Speaker 3: Activision deal and the roadblocks still facing those folks. This
Speaker 3: is Bloomberg Law. I'm Madison Mills with us.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Grasso from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3: Him Madison Mills in for June Grasso. This week for
Speaker 3: Bloomberg Law. We've been focused quite a bit on former
Speaker 3: President Trump and his own legal battles, but we're gonna
Speaker 3: spotlight some of the battles happening with current politicians, specifically
Speaker 3: in the House of Representatives, because Republicans somewhat paralyzed amid
Speaker 3: in fighting stalling some votes. We're gonna get to the
Speaker 3: House GOP feud with Zach Cohen. He's Bloomberg Government's Congress
Speaker 3: reporter and he joins us by phone. Zach, thanks so
Speaker 3: much for hopping on with us. What's going on in
Speaker 3: the House. I've been so focused on Miami this week.
Speaker 3: I need an update on Washington.
Speaker 8: Yeah, no, and what is actually decent in Washington. There
Speaker 8: you go. They've managed to move ahead with sort of this,
Speaker 8: as you mentioned, sort of a disagreement or a feud,
Speaker 8: if you will, between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his
Speaker 8: leadership team and about a dozen House Republicans from the
Speaker 8: more conservative wing of the party that essentially for a
Speaker 8: week stalled any floor action on anything other than the
Speaker 8: most consensus of bills. And so that's been resolved in
Speaker 8: they're voting today. They are voted in today out a
Speaker 8: number of bills, key Republican messaging items that they were
Speaker 8: hoping to get done last week. And so now the
Speaker 8: question is can they sort of maintain that truth not
Speaker 8: just next week when they're still in session, but for
Speaker 8: the rest of the year and they'll lead up to
Speaker 8: the twenty twenty four elections when this Republican majority will
Speaker 8: have to defend that rather meager majority.
Speaker 3: Again, well, Zach, you cover Congress, You know this space
Speaker 3: incredibly Well did this feel unique to you or is
Speaker 3: this just politics as usual?
Speaker 8: It was very unique. The fact that members of the
Speaker 8: majority had the votes to sink what's called the rule
Speaker 8: on the House floor, which basically sets the terms of
Speaker 8: floor debate. That hasn't happened in twenty years before this,
Speaker 8: And so the fact that members of the party were
Speaker 8: able to stand up to their own leadership and say
Speaker 8: no we're not going to allow you to move the
Speaker 8: bills that you want to move today was rather extraordinary,
Speaker 8: and what it really boiled down to, these folks did
Speaker 8: agree with the actual substance of the bills that they
Speaker 8: were voting on, but they wanted another vote on a
Speaker 8: bill that would subject certain pistols to certain rifle regulations.
Speaker 8: And there's this ongoing negotiation around spending levels, which is
Speaker 8: something that they thought that the debt ceiling agreement that
Speaker 8: McCarthy had reached with the White House was a little
Speaker 8: bit too high, and so they wanted that number to
Speaker 8: be brought down and they got that, and so we'll
Speaker 8: see if they sort of continue to flex those muscles.
Speaker 8: But again, this is rather unusual.
Speaker 3: And it would you read it as sort of a
Speaker 3: referendum on McCarthy's leadership.
Speaker 8: There's this interesting new rule that basically says any member
Speaker 8: of the House Republican Conference can sort of unilaterally call
Speaker 8: up a vote that would subject McCarthy to another vote
Speaker 8: for speaker, which obviously we remember took a historically long
Speaker 8: time in January to get done. So we could see
Speaker 8: that happen again. If these folks really wanted to give
Speaker 8: McCarthy a hard time. I think what they're essentially saying
Speaker 8: here is, look, we could do that. Again. They haven't
Speaker 8: explicitly said that, but they're saying that they have the
Speaker 8: votes to really go up with the works if they
Speaker 8: don't like what McCarthy does. And so they're using really
Speaker 8: different tools in the procedural toolbox to make their message known,
Speaker 8: not just to McCarthy obviously, but to their own constituents
Speaker 8: who are looking for really conservative policies out of Washington.
Speaker 3: It makes me wonder, if you know this cohort has
Speaker 3: such a choke hold on McCarthy, is he kind of
Speaker 3: just a figurehead at this point that has to continue
Speaker 3: to walk this tight rope just to maintain his position
Speaker 3: as speaker.
Speaker 8: There's an old adage in Washington that leadership is followership,
Speaker 8: and this is something that obviously not just Kevin McCarthy,
Speaker 8: but you know, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, and Nancy Pelosi
Speaker 8: will all tell you that you're only as powerful a
Speaker 8: leader as a number of votes behind you within your party.
Speaker 8: And so McCarthy not only has to contend with this
Speaker 8: more conservative wing of his party, but he's also got
Speaker 8: a number of moderates who won really tight rate in
Speaker 8: twenty twenty two that delivered that majority, and you're not
Speaker 8: going to hear from them as much, but especially folks
Speaker 8: from maybe New York or California and somebody the bluer states,
Speaker 8: But they're also really critical to that majority, and so
Speaker 8: McCarthy has to find a way to balance between the
Speaker 8: two of them. And it just seems the conservative size
Speaker 8: is going to be a little louder about their demands.
Speaker 3: And to what extent, Zach, is this sign of what's
Speaker 3: to become increasingly worse, for lack of a better word,
Speaker 3: overtime in terms of the partisanship that we're seen in
Speaker 3: the country happening amongst our lawmakers inside Congress.
Speaker 8: It really does speak to a growing partisanship. I think
Speaker 8: you're right about that. There are members of both parties
Speaker 8: that have taken particularly strident policy positions and are willing
Speaker 8: to use the sort of tools of Congress in order
Speaker 8: to extract those concessions from the people who actually call
Speaker 8: the shots. And so obviously the conservative part of the
Speaker 8: House Republican Conference have been the most public about this,
Speaker 8: especially over the last six months. And I think the
Speaker 8: really key question, honestly will be over the next couple
Speaker 8: of months. If they do that on spending bills as well,
Speaker 8: the government does run out of money September thirtieth, and
Speaker 8: if that or rather authorization to spend money by the
Speaker 8: end of the fiscal year, and so if they don't
Speaker 8: come to some sort of agreement by then, you could
Speaker 8: see a government shut down in early October, and that
Speaker 8: will be where the rubber hits the road. Can you
Speaker 8: get enough support from both Democrats and Republicans on both
Speaker 8: ends of Pennsylvania Avenue from Congress to the White House
Speaker 8: to say, here's how we're going to spend our money
Speaker 8: over the next year, and that's where it's really going
Speaker 8: to be tricky.
Speaker 3: So that makes me think that we are going to
Speaker 3: have the same debt ceiling trauma that we just had
Speaker 3: over and over again, based on your description of the
Speaker 3: government shut down on spending as well.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I remember the debt ceiling is only raised until
Speaker 8: about twenty twenty five. Whether that's the second term of
Speaker 8: the Biden administration or the Trump administration, that deadline's going
Speaker 8: to come up again, and depending on the configuration of
Speaker 8: the government, could be a very different compromise than what
Speaker 8: McCarthy and Biden came to and that's spend decisions that
Speaker 8: government appropriations, which is being worked out right now in committee.
Speaker 8: That's going to come to the floor and come to
Speaker 8: a head sometime over the next few months. And that's
Speaker 8: going to you know, not just on you know, overall
Speaker 8: spending levels, but on really critical details, things like how
Speaker 8: much do you spend on border security or the military,
Speaker 8: or on healthcare services. You know, the Nancy Pelosi speaker
Speaker 8: Pelosi likes to say, show me a budget, I'll show
Speaker 8: you your values. And so it's it's sort of a
Speaker 8: very existential debate, especially because so much of what Congress
Speaker 8: does is spend tax payer dollars.
Speaker 3: Well, talk to me about what that budget and value
Speaker 3: system looked like with these bills that the GOP did
Speaker 3: end up grinding out. What did these bills entail.
Speaker 8: So the at least on the debt ceiling, the first
Speaker 8: bill that they passed out was a lot of many
Speaker 8: more cuts to especially domestic spending than what they ended
Speaker 8: up agreeing to between McCarthy and Biden. It ended up passing,
Speaker 8: but mostly with Democratic votes out of Congress. And so
Speaker 8: now what they're talking about is actually capping spending at
Speaker 8: fiscal twenty twenty two levels. Basically, in Layman's terms, spending
Speaker 8: the same nominal dollars that were spent last year on
Speaker 8: the next year. Now we all know inflation has been
Speaker 8: rather rampant, and so in real terms, it's a cut
Speaker 8: to basically everything. Part of the debt sealing compromise was
Speaker 8: that defense would at least get a three percent increase.
Speaker 8: But if they can't come to an agreement on either
Speaker 8: defense or non defense spending, there would be actually an
Speaker 8: across the board cut in both real and nominal dollars,
Speaker 8: and so that could mean government services, military preparation, all
Speaker 8: of that would probably take a hit. This pocket of
Speaker 8: the House Republican conference is more than anything else, concerned
Speaker 8: about debt deficit concerns. They're worried about the growing national debt.
Speaker 8: They're worried about how much is borrowed in the form
Speaker 8: of bonds that are sold both in the US and abroad,
Speaker 8: and so that is their top line concern and everything
Speaker 8: else is kind of secondary. But there if you ask
Speaker 8: members of Congress, okay, what should be cut in the interim,
Speaker 8: that makes it a lot trickier, and so Democrats will say,
Speaker 8: we need to be able to fund these programs. And
Speaker 8: that's the debate that's happening right now in these appropriations committees, both,
Speaker 8: I should say, in the House and the Senate.
Speaker 3: Final minute with you, Zach, what's the next shooter drop
Speaker 3: when it comes to the debate over this legislation and
Speaker 3: spending on that legislation. What's the next big site.
Speaker 5: Going to be?
Speaker 8: The House appropriations committees are meeting this week, I believe,
Speaker 8: on military construction, veterans affairs, things like that, and then
Speaker 8: they've got eleven other bills that they'll have to agree on,
Speaker 8: and the key question will be can they get those
Speaker 8: across the House floor? Probably not this week, and then
Speaker 8: they're gone for a two week recess, but maybe when
Speaker 8: they come back before the August recess. Those couple of
Speaker 8: weeks will be really critical to understanding whether the House
Speaker 8: Repoking Conference is unified as it goes into negotiations with
Speaker 8: especially Senate Democrats over general government spending.
Speaker 3: A lot to cover down there for us, Zach, thank
Speaker 3: you so much for joining us and taking a break
Speaker 3: from that coverage to walk us through all of it.
Speaker 3: That was at Bloomberg Government Congress reporter Zach Cohen. You
Speaker 3: can find his story about the House GOP floor feud
Speaker 3: on the Bloomberg terminal and at bloomberg dot com. Stick
Speaker 3: with us, This is Bloomberg