 Welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel and this is Trump Week. You know, we were talking Tim and I a few minutes ago about the possibility of not covering him. Maybe that's what ultimately the press should do, not cover him, not be the object of his agenda. That would be pretty good I think, and it would probably tone things down a little bit. But we here at Trump Week, at least for the moment, we will continue to cover him. Hi, Tim, good morning. How are you? Good morning, Jay. I couldn't be any better. Thank you for having me. Let's talk about the coronavirus because that's what's on everybody's mind. And of course, that could be a liability. It could be an opportunity for Trump. What do you think? Oh, definitely, it's a liability. It's a liability because right now, market forces are reacting to the possibility that trade and transportation will shut down worldwide. And the market is aptly responding to it. In fact, I've been wondering when this was going to happen. Yeah, me too. You remember when it about a month ago, the market did tank for about 400 points, and then it came back up again and it hasn't dipped ever since. So I think market forces now are starting to realize that this is a real deal. And the thing about the coronavirus is that you can transmit the disease without without having zero symptoms. What a perfect storm that is. And that's why I think it's going to be a pandemic. We had a show with Governor John Whyay and current Lieutenant Governor Josh Green, a doctor on Monday. And one interesting thing came out is this. So yeah, we've been assuming that the incubation period is 14 days. Give it a take. Some people think it's longer. But what happens during the 14 days is you put people in a quarantine and incubation, you know, an incubation type quarantine, they don't all get it on day one. They may get it on day 10. That's when they're infected. So for them, the incubation period is just starting on day 10. And therefore, the incubation period for the group that's quarantined is longer than 14 days. And it goes on and on. So you don't really know how long it takes to infect that group. But it's reasonable just logically to assume it's going to be a lot longer than 14 days. And that's what happened on the princess cruise in Japan, I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Anyway, does Trump understand this stuff? Is Trump operating on a full deck here? He comes in, he says, don't worry about it. That's very helpful. Then he does nothing. He's already pulled the wings out of the CDC and the, you know, the crisis team there comes around all of a sudden a couple days ago and says, I'm going to put in 2.5 billion, which is a third of the cost of the wall, by the way. He's not taking it out of the wall. He's taking it out of somewhere else, you know, in his decimated health department. So, query, is that enough? Does that reflect the knowledge on his part or the part of his staff of what's going on or what needs to be done? Or is that just political talk as so much as all of what he says is? Oh, strictly, it's political talk. Donald Trump knows that if the market forces start to dow, you know, dow to tank because of the realities of trade and transportation issues, he knows that the dow, which he depends on, which he's staked his whole success on for being President of the United States will be severely compromised. So, he's going to say that everything's airtight. Well, you know what? I got to ask the question, how are everything airtight when 50 states, only three of them, can test accurately for the coronavirus? All the other states that receive the kits from the CDC were found to be ineffective as the ability to determine whether or not a patient has coronavirus. So, out of three states that have it, how does Donald Trump know so confidently and to say that we got things handled and things are locked, you know, down airtight? It's political battle. It's double speak. Yes, I agree. Not doing anything. He says he'll put 2.5 billion in. But how? And who? You know, the other thing is just look at the talk versus the action. If you went around to the stores in Honolulu and try to, you know, get some hand lotion, sanitize hand lotion, you can't find any. There's nothing there. So, why doesn't he supply it? Why doesn't he take steps to, you know, accelerate the supply? What about masks? You can't get a mask, an N25 mask or any other kind of mask right now. I'm not sure that masks are all that, you know, all that much to crack up. They're not effective. They're not effective. But, you know, if people want them, they can't get them. So what else can we do? We can educate the public. That's that's about as much as we can do. We can tell them to wash their hands and use sanitizer, which they can't get. You know, I'm not sure that the country is prepared in an article this morning. I think it was the Times saying, is the country prepared for this onslaught? And the answer is no. Why is not prepared? We worry, perhaps, and we talk about what we might do in the future. But we're not doing a whole lot right now. And that goes for the country in general, and that goes for Trump's country, make America great again, but the countries are doing much better than we are. So I think you're right, it's coming down the pike. And we are going to find outbreaks hither and yon across these United States, including in Hawaii. It's inevitable. There's really no action to, you know, to stop it right now in this country. China, in its own way, even with a, you know, huge numbers of deaths and disease is doing better in terms of taking action on things. The answer ultimately is probably containment more than anything else. And that requires not only a lot of, you know, carefully devised rules, but it requires compliance with those rules. We got to watch the numbers. If we watch them in China, then maybe the rules that China has devised will be applicable here. But right now, I think we're threshing around. Well, I think more, more harm is being done by them trying to alleviate the fears of Americans by giving them a false sense of security. Look at Lawrence Kudlow and his statements trying to calm the markets down. He doesn't know the condition of this virus and where it's at. But he's trying to do his best to keep the markets calm. Look at the most recent recipient of the Medal of Freedom Award, conservative's favorite friend, Rush Limbaugh. If I may, I'm going to read a little quote here because what he's saying is really very detrimental to having proper alarm bells go off about this virus. And I'll read the following. He said this yesterday on the show. It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump. I'm dead right. And this is the coronavirus is just a common cold, folks. Well, there you have it. There you have it. Maybe the virus knows more than we think it knows. Maybe this virus was devised to bring down Donald Trump. I can see guys working a laboratory in Wuhan devising a virus for him. Anyway, okay, so that's that's number one on everybody's mind. Let's go to number two. What do we got on him this week? We got, for example, we got his his tweets, his action, his attack on the Supreme Court judges, two of them, two women, Sotomayor and and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, he's attacking them. He's asking them to recuse themselves. Is that ridiculous or nauseating? I can't make up my mind. How about a combination of both? It's well, you forgot the other recipe, absurd. To ask them to recuse themselves is absolutely absurd. Again, another example of Donald Trump fails to understand the Constitution, the separation of powers, and how the executive office is not the only office that there are two other forms of government that work consistently together and opposed to each other. He doesn't get it. I don't think he's ever going to get it. And if he were given another four years and as President of the United States, he won't get that even in the next four years, just won't get it. The principle that he's articulating is if they ruled against me, they must be against me. And anybody against me, you know, I have to pull the rug out from under. So I'm going to attack them. I'm going to undermine their credibility and thus undermine the credibility of the Supreme Court of the United States. That's what he's doing. Talk about balance of power. Imagine undermining the credibility of the Court of the Supreme Court of the United States for his own gain for his own for his own agenda. Awful. Now you and I know better, we're not going to accept that for a minute. However, there are people possibly millions of people in this country that take him seriously and now believe that two, at least two of the judges on the Supreme Court can't can't render an impartial decision and that they're against Trump. They're never Trumpers. And therefore, the Supreme Court itself cannot be believed. I don't think they're going to recuse themselves, Tim, but what he has done is extremely detrimental, extremely damaging to the country, not just the Supreme Court, but the Constitution and the country. And we'll see more of that, because he wants to he wants to have the courts on his side. And that takes us to his lawsuit, which reported this morning against the New York Times. He sued the New York Times for libel for reporting that he has been involved in causing other countries, namely Russia to interfere in our elections. Some great concern because we know for a fact that that's exactly what happened. We know from watching his lips move to the press that he has called for that. But he is suing them for libel because they said it, they reported it. What does this mean in a larger sense? Well, in the larger sense, if we connect this with his attack on the Supreme Court, Sotomayor, and Judge Ginsburg, it's whatever decision that comes down the pike that may be slightly against Donald Trump's whims and wishes, those decisions should be discounted or those decisions should be questioned and challenged that they were tainted by biased judges. And in this case, this allegation that Russia has entered the 2020 election, that's been tainted by the New York Times. So everything's to be questioned. Everything is rigged. If it doesn't fall exactly in the pathway of Donald Trump, everything's to be suspected. It's rigged and it's unfair and we need a do-over. Yeah, well, Trump unbound after his acquittal and let me ask you a question. Didn't we predict this? Didn't we predict he would step up his attack on the press just not two weeks ago? Isn't that true? Yeah, after the State of the Union speech called it exactly dead on. And here it is. But he's sued the media many, many times before. So this is just keeping in good old-fashioned form of what he's accustomed to doing. Anyone that disagrees with him, he files a lawsuit against him, either A, to tie him up in court and keep it quiet, or B, tie it up in court to keep it quiet. Or tie him up in court and cost him a fortune defending themselves and cause them to use their staff, their resources to defend themselves. This is a way that you discombobulate the other side. And that's what he's doing as part of his strategy. But let's talk some more about courts. Let's talk about pardons. Let's talk about Roger Stone. What's doing on Roger Stone? Well, the number one thing that's doing on Roger Stone is the poor juror who's being basically ostracized and called out by the president of the United States. How dare he? I mean, here you have a juror who's not an employee of the federal government, who isn't being compensated by the federal government, who is, like all citizens, asked to serve their civic duty and become a juror. And again, the second that the decision against Roger Stone doesn't go to the favorability of Donald Trump, he calls out a juror and puts the juror in a negative light before all his followers, many, many millions of followers. And, you know, right now the judge is even concerned for the juror's safety and had to call that out. You know, and it's more than just intimidating the one juror. It's more than just intimidating the judge as he did a few days ago, Amy Berman Jackson, whose decision, by the way, to give Roger Stone only 40 months in jail, I'm not happy with that. I think that was way less than Roger Stone deserved. But that's another question. But you know, what Trump is doing, it's not only that he's going after these individual people. In doing so, he's going after the system. He's going after the federal bench. Every single federal district judge is being attacked, you know, by this process. And every juror and prospective juror is being attacked by this process. And every person in the country is being attacked in the sense that he's undermining, again undermining the confidence of the American public and the American judiciary. This is crisis. It's constitutional crisis for the president to attack the very system on the basis of which he is the president. And it's getting worse and worse. And one of the things that, you know, you and I were talking about before is, is the media shrill enough? Is the media calling us out for what it is? Or is the media sitting by and saying, well, we're just observers here. We'll just report the news as it sees, as we see fit. Is that still appropriate, Tim? Of course not. However, again, if you're a true media, you are reporting the facts. Now, you're going to have to bring, and they have been bringing on experts in constitutional law on some of these programs. And those attorneys and public defenders, they've all been brought on to some of these shows to say, hey, to say exactly what you're saying is, this is totally inappropriate for the president of the United States to be doing this sort of things. Those shows are taking place. But because they're editorial shows, if you will, or commentary shows, they're not being held with a whole lot of weight. They're being passed off as if we're watching Fox News. So these are shows that are on MSNBC, and yeah, they're newsworthy, and they do provide this kind of insight and this kind of commentary, but they're being passed off as just that, their commentary. Yeah. Well, that's the real deadly aspect of Fox News. Fox News is an outrage. But Fox News is counterbalance, arguably a counterbalance to CNBC, make that MSNBC and CNN on their views. So what you get is one side is being reasonably accurate, and the other side is being intentionally inaccurate. So, okay, boys will be boys. There are two sides of the question. You know, some of my best friends are skinheads, that sort of thing. And so what you get is a balance that isn't a balance at all. And I'm concerned that the American public sees this. A lot of people believe in Fox News, Trump News, and they are not getting informed. And it's not just a matter of the facts. It's a matter of the relevance of those facts. It's a matter of connecting the dots and saying, wait a minute, this is an outrage. This is constitutional crisis on a daily basis. Do people understand that? I mean, how many times can you say that before it gets old? The problem is that people don't understand constitutional crisis. They don't connect the dots, and ultimately they don't realize that this is going to affect them. It's coming for them. At the end of the day, all of our lives will be impacted by what he is doing and how the government is changing and the strange policies that are coming out of his tweets. So, I'm very concerned. What can we do about this, Tim? Well, what we can do about it, Jay, is get up out of your armchair and vote on November 2020. I mean, I don't think there's many remedies left. I don't think all the sage advice and the wisdom from government officials or pundits or anybody else is going to change the white noise background. It's set. The soup has been set and now it's time for soup. No one's going to change their opinion about this. We're all in our silos basically. So, now we're basically looking at what's detracting us from the machinations of Donald Trump and now it's the democratic nomination process. And, you know, we're deep in politics on the democrat side and I'm sure Donald Trump isn't happy that attention has been taken away from him and it's the media coverage now is on, you know, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden and Bloomberg and company. I'm sure he's not happy about it but that's where we're at on the media right now. Well, he must be happy in the sense that when they attack each other they're really giving him fodder. Every time one of them attacks the other one, well, that's that they're attacking, you know, a prospective candidate and he'll use that later. He'll use all the facts and figures. They throw at each other and it's really sad. You know, my question, I suppose, is do they have to do that in order to run a democratic campaign and prime and convention? Do they have to attack each other or can they get alarmed by attacking him? You know, if I were a candidate, if you were a candidate, I spent all my time saying, look, my dog, Ty, is in better shape to be president than this guy so you should vote for me. You're talk Ty, okay. Yeah, my dog Ty lives in a shoe. However, he'd be a better president, you know, and any one of them would be a better president, but why do we attack each other? Can't they get together and just decide what they want to do? Can't they get in a room, decide who should be the, you know, the president candidate and who should be the vice president of the candidate? They don't do that. Everybody wants the brass ring. So I'm disappointed in the democratic party. I don't see leadership there. I see pandemonium and it's hurting the democratic party and it's hurting the nominee, whoever that may be, and it's hurting the country because we really have to get this guy out of office one way or the other. It's really important that we, that we be a friend to candidate who can do it. And I don't think we've really done that. What do you think? Well, I think Senator Klobuchar said it best the other day, and I'm going to paraphrase what she said. She said, if we don't stop destroying ourselves, meaning one candidate against another candidate, we'll allow Donald Trump the opportunity to destroy the country in the next four years. And I think it's accurately. But you know, I think we're not to the point where we were, you know, a couple years ago or even four years ago or eight years ago. I think where we're at right now is we've become desensitized to attacks. I mean, Donald Trump from the last three years has been nothing but attacks and the American public has kind of gotten used to it. And so that, which used to be severely outrageous, is now kind of just yawning material. You mean people just kind of yawn at it. So the attacks on fellow Democrats, I don't know if it's having the impact that we think it is. I don't know how much it's going to hurt them in the general election against Trump, because again, for the last three years, or actually four years because of the year leading up to the election in 2016, we've become desensitized to all this kind of craziness. And Democrats aren't really doing a focused campaign on him. You know, among themselves they're fighting. But on him, all they say is bad president and all this. I mean it'd be so easy for them to get up and say, look, you want to hear some terrible policies? Here they are, ABCD. My platform is, I'm going to reverse all of them, all of them. They're all bad. Anyway, let's go some more of your points, Tim. What else have you got on your magic list for our discussion today? Well, we really do need to talk, speaking of elections, I think we have to look at how Donald Trump has absolutely refused to acknowledge or allow anyone else to acknowledge that once again Russia is interceding in the 2020 election. That's a very serious thing because he's basically right where he was back in 2016. Even though he's asking for Russia's help, he's denied that Russia helped. Where do we go from there in 2020? And he's also throwing everyone who says a word or the intelligent agencies that, yes, Russia has been caught doing this again. He's throwing them out of office and bringing in loyal new staff, new agency heads. Because the temporary agency heads, how dare they speak the truth about the fact that Russia is sticking its nose back into our election. Yeah, it takes me back for a minute to the intelligence agencies who testified in the impeachment. You know, they all pretty much said the same thing. They all proved the case against him. And it's really remarkable that the this country, a rule of law country, you know, ignore that evidence and did nothing about it. And then, predictably, given what has happened before with him, he saw it as a huge victory, a vindication, an exoneration. And well, he's now in Trump unbounded. And it's been a whole sequence of things like what happened in the Mueller report. That unbounded him. What happened in this impeachment certainly unbounded him. And if he wins the election in November, let me tell you that will completely unbound him. There'll be no stopping him then for four years to follow. We'll see one guy running the government, sole proprietorship government, Congress inconsequential. The courts go along with him. A one branch of government, just him. And that's where this is going. Everything where every issue, every proceeding, every investigation, every decision where he wins is another element of his unbinding. And right now, I think he's unbound. He's unbound himself from the intelligence agencies. He's unbound himself from the notion that foreign countries, yes, right now, today, are interfering with our election. And voter suppression is happening. It hasn't stopped. How could the average guy on the street being halfway Akamai about these, you know, these developments in the country feel confident of the result of the election? I mean, you saw what happened in Iowa. Does that lead to confidence? I mean, I think the most important pillar in the administration of justice and justice means government in this context is public confidence. We are losing public confidence in the system. Thank you to Donald Trump. Yeah. Jay, let me let me pose a question. If Cynthia Sinclair was with us, I know this would come up her mouth right at this time right now. Where is the media talking about election security? It's not happening. No one's talking about it. Well, you know, he knows, Donald Trump knows how to play the media. He knows how to set the agenda. He does it every day. And going back to the point I made at the very inception of this show, it would be a good idea to have sort of a quiet day once in a while and just not cover him or not cover events that are inappropriate. We reflect inappropriate activity and conduct and remarks on his on his part. But her point is certainly well taken because the needle moves on the fickle finger of the media moves on. And there are other things where he dominates the media. And this falls down to the bottom of the stack. So election security, still a huge issue, still happening, still a great threat to the country. We aren't covering it. And he isn't talking about it. Well, not only covering it, but we're getting nothing but denials that election security is an issue. And not only is it an issue, but I'm not getting any help from Vladimir Putin. So leave it alone. And then the media seems to be okay with that. It seems to be leaving the topic alone. And I think it's inappropriate. We should have all spotlights, as Cynthia would agree, we should have all spotlights on election security and what's being done to ensure that all 50 states are going to have a proper accounting of the votes for Donald Trump and who's going to be the Democratic nominee. Yeah. And that on top of the fact that so many states, so many right-wing organizations are creating legislation that suppresses voting. So one thing and another, how can you have confidence in that? But it also, what you say also goes to the question of Congress. Congress is dysfunctional, non-functional, really in terms of any of the issues that occupy our time and thought it's not doing anything. Congress is dysfunctional. And so the result is when you have a vote of suppression issues, when you have election security issues, it hasn't passed a bill. Well, yeah, if I can clarify a little bit, I mean, Congress is doing something. The House of Representatives have produced many bills for election security and they haven't gotten off Mitch McConnell's desk. So when we say Congress, let's just say Mitch McConnell hasn't done anything. You know, I get email from so many organizations and people every day about how I should give money to this cause or that cause or this candidate or that candidate around the country to try to upset the Republican apple card. And it's very, very confusing as to which ones are legit and which ones I or anyone else getting these emails should give money to. But it doesn't give me the sense, honestly, all taken together that we will be able to upset the Republican apple card, that we will flip Congress or the Senate anyway. In fact, I worry about the right-wing side of things, flipping the House. What do you think? I mean, are we safe on the House? And do you see any real chance that we're going to flip the Senate? Oh, I think the House will flip to the Republicans and the Senate will stay Republican. And if Bernie Sanders is our nominee, I hate to say it that way. I don't have anything personally against Bernie Sanders, but if he's the Democratic nominee, we're not going to lose the House. The Senate will stay Republican. And you'll see a lot of state legislatures also switch around. People cannot and will not tolerate Bernie Sanders. And it's not at all clear, not at all clear that if he becomes the nominee, he will win against Trump. Because Trump doesn't take prisoners. Trump lies. He won't. Doubles downs on lies. So, you know, the result is we'll have a big Fandango. It will not work in the Congress. There's a fair chance Trump will be elected president again, whether by a legitimate vote or an illegitimate vote. And we'll have him for four years more. And as I said before, we'll have a one branch of government. And you won't like it. It will come for you somehow. Well, thank you very much, Tim. I'm sorry that we are so exacerbated about this. But I think it's the sign of the times. And we have to keep on discussing this. And we have to keep following week to week and see how these things advance and how these dots connect. Thank you so much, Tim. Thank you very much, Jay, for having me. And we've been doing this for over a year now. And I guess frustration is part of the menu here. So we'll have more frustration next week. Okay, aloha. Aloha. Wash your hands.