 all the King's henchmen and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty back together again. And what we have here is everything seems to be coming apart, be compensating. And the second point is that more and more impeachment seems the only course of action for the country. It's Trump week! By the Wednesday with Tim Appichella. Hi, Tim. Morning, Jay. Nice to see you. Nice to see you again. Oh, what a week it's been, just in the short seven days since we last met here at the spot. Yeah, wow, wow. I mean, it's like another world already. You know, just in a few days' time, impeachment is the big I word and he hates it. And we should examine today where it is, whether it's real and how he is reacting to it and what we can learn from his reactions. But clearly he's not doing well and neither is the country. Yeah. No, he's falling apart. He's disintegrating before our very eyes. He's, well, more so than normal on Twitter. I mean, the number of tweets, the, you know, just the rantings of his tweet messages. And again, he doesn't have the bookends of General Kelly or General Mattis to keep him within the guardrails. Those advisors, they're gone. And now he has only his loyal followers, his loyal heads of the cabinet that dare not criticize him or give him advice. Well, let's talk about the big three and how they are helping him react in his completely irrational way. One, we have the Secretary of State. You know, the history, the culture around that particular office. It's really important in the cabinet. And this guy is just a stooge for Trump. That's all he is. And we find out that he's involved, directly involved in what happened about the Ukraine. And furthermore, he lied about it. Well, the networks have him lying. Martha Rattage on ABC asked him the question, what do you know about the phone calls? And he said, he just completely deflected and said, you just tell me about the whistle-ballers complaint. And this is the first I'm hearing about it. Oh, the fact that I was on the call? That didn't come out during that answer. How can you trust the Secretary of State who lies in public that way and stupidly lies? He knows he's going to get caught ultimately, but he lies anyway. Well, remember the old adage when you're in a hole, stop digging. So, what is he doing to further dig in the hole? You say that no one's going to show up without the state attorneys, the State Department attorneys. That's a form of witness intimidation. He's going to start refusing these subpoenas. These are things that he's, Adam Schiff now has warned him that these kind of, to ignore subpoenas and or documents will constitute, as did, when they're to Nixon, articles of... Impeachment for that office. For obstruction, for obstruction for the impeachment. For obstructing this investigation, and he's a critical principle witness to it, if not a party to it. So, what's interesting is that in the bottom of Congress, of the Capitol building, there is a jail, you know. And theoretically, they have the power to jail people who are in contempt. They haven't done it, not in a long time. But, you know, the question is raised now, how do they enforce congressional investigations? Because Trump has blown them off on many occasions and you know he has told people don't testify. Well, we know that through Robert Miller investigation certainly a number of counts of obstruction in that. But that's not gonna be brought up in this. It's too convoluted, too complex. This is very simple to understand. Let's keep it simple. Let's keep it simple. And right now, they're just adding more to the charges because if they do not show up for testimony or they do withhold documents, it's a slam dunk. And you know who's causing it. Let's look at the other guy, the attorney general of the United States. May I say that again, the attorney general of the United States, one of the highest positions in the cabinet, he's about justice. He's about truth. He's about enforcing the laws. And here the guy is breaking the laws. He's on junkets. He's on junkets talking to run Trump's agenda about coercing these nation leaders to do Trump's bidding. Again. Again. So, I mean, I feel that he should never have been confirmed that Congress bought a bill of goods on him as they did on Pompeo. And unfortunately, it's hard to get rid of him. You have to impeach him and Trump will back him up. And that'll be a distraction, a digression. The real target here and should be is Trump himself. Do you remember during the hearings, Kamala Harris asked Barr, have you ever been instructed to initiate an investigation from Donald Trump? And he hemmed and hawed and he went around and around trying to define the term, you know, investigate. Oh, it was something else. That serves as a real reminder that that question and that answer was right then and there. He had been asked to do these things. Right. He lied. He lied. Yeah. And you know, the other thing is, aside from this Ukraine issue, he's been out there doing these phony baloney counter investigations for Trump, right? Correct. He's investigating Comys, investigating McCabe. I don't know how many, the whole Hillary Clinton thing he's investigating. What kind of a crock is that? I mean, it's just, it's bare distraction. We all know that it has no substance at all, any of it. And it's just Trump doing his thing and this man is a stooge too. We called this six months ago. As soon as Mattis and General Kelly left, we called it, we called it perfectly. He was going to solicit those who are loyal, those that will do his bidding. He has completely twisted the missions of these, you know, the Department of Justice. He's twisted now the State Department to do his personal bidding. As you said, a sole proprietorship of government, Donald Trump. And these unwilling lackeys, you know, they weren't perceived as lackeys before, but they certainly are now. They get to go in the ash heap of history as being loyal lackeys. Taya, you know, the thing about it is, he's not the only one who should be prosecuted, Trump. There are so many others that he has created, yes men, and people who advise him to do these things and tell him it's okay. There are so many people in his cabinet and his government who have told him it's not okay and they get fired. Let's talk about the third henchman, Giuliani. Now, is Giuliani acting as Trump's attorney? Therefore, you know, has, you know, that confidentiality to preserve? Or is he acting as a non-government employee, not attorney, and he was just doing it, according to Giuliani, on direction of the State Department? So, which is he? The attorney for Trump or not? And his actions of, you know, going to Ukraine and getting into these conversations? He's directly involved with it, up to his eyeballs. He's up at his eyeballs. He's just like an attorney for himself yesterday. Yeah, right, and well, he should. I mean, I think he's a great risk of going to jail for all the obfuscation and the lying and the obstruction that he's engaged in. You know, it's funny up to a point because he's a buffoon. You know, when I think of how he was in his reputation after 9-11, it was pristine. He was one of the leaders, you know, law enforcement, and he was the mayor at the time of New York. Now, how far he's come down. His epitaph is gonna read like mud. I just don't understand why he did this to himself. Everything Trump touches dies. It's true. It's true. I mean, he hasn't helped the country. None of his initiatives have been meritorious or helpful to anyone. He's hurt so many people. He's crushed careers in every direction. He's crushed initiatives. He's crushed relationships all around the world. You know, I keep thinking of, you know, they call it, I think the press has to get on him about this. They call it the trade war with China. It's not a war. It's just him attacking them again and again and again. So I think we have to, you know, call it like it is. Trump is wrecking, he's a wrecking ball and he wrecks in every direction. It's unforgivable and really he has to go. And you and I have talked about this over the past. I don't know how long it's been, six or eight months. And it becomes more and more clear that he has to go to save ourselves. We have to make him go away. And I, you know, I hope Nancy follows through and quickly, but let's talk about that. Yeah, let's talk about that because that is a very delicate balance. I mean, if it's too fast, okay, everyone's gonna say, oh, you had your guns cocked and ready to load it and ready to go and you're just looking to be an assassin. You didn't like him getting elected in 2016. You have only agenda, you're only agenda is to get rid of him from day one. He's gonna say that anyway, no matter what he already has. He's already, you know, he's already attacking everybody in the room, calling them names like traders, punishable by death and, you know. Spies. Spies. They ought to punish these traders the way they used to and like to shoot them. But if you give them too much time, okay, if this inquiry takes too long, Trump is using his bully pulpit very effectively, calling them traders, calling them spies, turning his loyal base and others to convince them that this really is, as Trump loves to say, witch hunt. Over and over and over again. Again, repetition is very powerful. Incredible that they buy that. Well, it's very powerful. Repetition is a rhetorical technique that works. And it just buys him more time to further, if you will, poison the water. Well, he knows about the press. He knows the press moves on. And there'll be, you know, every news cycle, every distraction that's created here from the time this inquiry started until, well, until every distraction takes us further away, confuses us more, makes it less likely that we can focus. Right. So do you think there is going to be a vote before Thanksgiving? Vote in the House? It's hard to predict, but I really hope. Nancy, are you listening? Nancy, you've got to go to a vote before Thanksgiving at the latest. We need to move on with this. Every time is working against you. You know, he is going to think of the, he's in a position to create distraction every 10 minutes and the public will be distracted. In many ways, it's the public that operates on this. You can't let him distract and confuse the public. Only way to do that is move quickly and don't worry about his criticism that you're moving quickly. Don't worry about that. The much greater risk is if you move too slowly because your whole initiative will fall apart. We were talking about the henchmen. We forgot one, Mitch McConnell. Were you surprised? Were you surprised that he didn't parse words? He didn't, you know, he didn't waffle or, you know, weasel through the fact that if there is an affirmative vote in the House that the Senate must have the trial. Well, I understand that the people in Congress are seen to be unified on the fact that he has to. He has to have a trial. It's not, it could have been the Maryland Garland type thing. He could have, you know, said, well, I don't see it as so close to the election that, you know, Maryland should be nominated as a Supreme Court. No, that's true. I mean, and I was worrying about that, but people in knowledgeable places have told me that he has to legally and politically. He has to. Of course, he could take his time and he will take his time, guaranteed. And if he has a trial, my guess is it'll get started late. It'll be at a slow belt. And when we get to a result, all alone behold, it's an acquittal. You know, and it's a witch hunt or something. The question really is whether the Republican Party has anything left, any moral situation, any moral character at all. And that will test the Republican Party for all time. Because what's being, you know, reminded to us, like every day, is that Trump is, well, let me say one comment in the course was, the cheese has slid off the zucchini. It wasn't the zucchini. The cheese has slid off the zucchini. He's going nuts. He's decompensating. He's unraveling before our very eyes. Let me just bring up one thing that really concerns me about this unraveling. And that is the tweet that he retweeted about Civil War. This was written by a pastor, Robert Jeffress. And this was reported on September to the 29th, 611 p.m. If the Dems are successful in removing the president from office, which they will never, which will never be, it will be like a civil war. You know, a fraction of this nation and our country will never heal. Okay, I don't know if Trump liked that. He thought it was a trooper. Yeah, he retweeted it, okay. I'm concerned about him coming up with other horrible, horrible comments that really is inciting his base. Well, we talked about this, you and me, it's messaging. When Trump makes statements or retweets statements like this, he's messaging to his base. He's messaging to the white supremacists. He's messaging to the Trumpers. He's calling them to action. He does this on a regular basis. And you know what? He knows how to do it and they respond to it. Let me just read a couple because this is the one that really gets me. Trump said this yesterday, as I learn more each day, I'm coming to the conclusion, what is taking place is not an impeachment, it's a coup. Okay, and then the other one is a real gem here, is the investigation is intended to take away the power of the people, their vote, their freedoms, their second amendment, religion, military, border wall, their God-given right as citizens of the United States of America. Okay, these are serious things that he's now alleging that this- It's complete demagoguery. Complete, but he's basically poisoning the water to say this impeachment inquiry and or vote is nothing more than to remove me from power. It's a coup d'etat, which by the way it's not, it's in the constitution that, they can draft articles of impeachment. This is the messaging that you're referring to. Yeah, he's lying. He's lying, but the people who get those messages- This will potentially incite violence. This will potentially incite violence. Yes. Look at the Coast Guard guy that they caught with a cache of weapons, a hit list of media personnel with politicians. They caught him before he enacted. There are others like that. And these statements will not go unnoticed by them. Yeah. So this is a real concern for me. Yeah, and it should be a concern for the whistleblower and any other whistleblowers out there. He's dampening the possibility of whistleblowing. I mean, at first, he incited somebody to offer a reward to identify the guy. That's one thing that's really strange. And then he said, he called him a traitor and said that we have to deal with traitors- Like spies of the old days? Like we used to. What does that mean? That means- Those firing squad. That means put him to death. Yeah, it was a firing squad. And then now he wants to interview the guy. A presidential interview, if you will. Oh yeah. Once he's revealed there will be people out there who want to kill him. He said, I deserve to meet my accusers. Well, first off, I didn't think about 25 women who are his accusers that he should meet first. But what we have here is the demagoguery is flowering. The lies are flowering. And we begin to understand that the people in his government around him are all stooges. They take his instructions, they take his messaging, implicit or explicit, and they do what he wants. And the government is not functioning. He's a unitary government. Congress is stuck except for this. Certainly the Senate is completely belongs to him. I hope that breaks down, but right now that's the way it is. And the courts, he's packed the courts at all the levels and appointing hundreds of judges who are conservative and who are going to be loyal to him. He's undone the constitutional checks and balances. I mean, not if, when the article's of impeachment. I don't think there's going to be that many. I think there's going to be obstruction and abuse of power. I think they're going to try to keep it short, sweet, to the point. Problem is that they're going by the book. They want to avoid being criticized by the Republicans, I guess, for not following the book, not following the Constitution, such as it is stated. But Trump is like a terrorist. He doesn't follow the book. He makes it up. And he lies about it. The lies are incredible. And so the Congress and Pelosi and Schiff and Schumer and all those guys are under tremendous disability. They got to play by the book. And he's not playing by the book. And he has all these opportunities to derail their process. So they really have to work hard. This is the most important thing that ever happened in the country. They've got to get through all the barriers that he is going to set up for them, the distractions he's going to create for them. It's going to be very hard, and he's going to work hard at it. You and I were identifying all the things that he's done, all the lies and all the obfuscations in the past one week. And it's a ton of things. He's doing this war against the country. He's in the bunker right now, absolutely in the bunker. Remember, he said, well, I'm not going to worry about it if the polls are less than 50% on favorability for impeachment. Well, as we know, the recent polls are 55%. And that went from 37% to 55% in a relatively short time. This is an acceleration of a shift in the movement of independence, potentially. And certainly some Republicans that really weren't very happy with him. This is a huge shift. You know, our only hope is that he shoots himself in the foot. He makes all these really crazy statements. And even Trumpers say, what did he just say? I mean, there's so many bizarre things, bizarre statements that he's made. A perfect phone call. A perfect phone call. How many times did he say this was a perfect phone call? My god, he is decomposing in front of us. It really is. So the question to me is, what's left in the government? The damage is already profound, the damage in terms of credibility of the courts, the damage in terms of credibility of Congress. The presidency has been damaged. All these departments have been damaged. The intelligence community has been damaged. Our relations overseas everywhere has been damaged. They may go along with him, like the president of Ukraine, because he bullied them into it. But the bottom line is that they're scared of him. And they consider him a dangerous clown. How can we ever recover our national pride, our national trustworthiness? Well, I think abroad, internationally, we can do that. It's going to take time. It's going to take a very sincere president. And not apologetic, but very sincere on trying to reestablish the credibility of the United States, that we're a solid partner. Now, domestically, remember after Nixon resigned, the trust for the federal government was near zero for a lot of folks. Nixon had his hit list of the enemy's list. And he's misusing, like Trump, all these agencies to basically break the Constitution. And so the level of trust for our government was very, very low for a solid decade, and to some degree, that's never recovered. Yeah, I think it's a stain that continues. It continues. And the other thing that I think we should worry about, which people tend to forget, but when you think about it, you always have to factor it in. And that climate change, climate change is roaring along. I mean, there are these storms. There are these changes that affect not only the weather, but the agriculture, the crops, disease, name it. It's affecting the world in general. Our whole planet is being affected at an accelerating rate. And as the leader of the free world, he has monkeyed up the world's attempts to deal with climate change. Nobody can convince me otherwise. If he says, I don't care about it, then a lot of countries, they don't care about it. They get soft on it. And Greta Thunberg can tell us that we're all wrong and that we have to do something. But he is telling us not to do anything. So when, and I don't say if and when, I say when we get a nasty blow from climate change, whether it's disease, whether it affects food or water, whether it affects weather, which that'll come first, all of a sudden people are going to say, gee, this is pretty serious. And he is responsible. I don't know if he realizes that people are going to blame him when this happens. Well, he's done everything to unwind everything that's protecting our economy. And then they're going to say, we can't have this guy in the White House. Everybody's going to come to that conclusion, I think. Well, all the Democratic candidates do have, as far as their platform is concerned, is climate change is way up there. And that was a surprise. I didn't think that was going to happen. The crucial part is, will this impeachment business get out of the way before January? And then we have basically from January to November to focus in on issues of climate change, focus in on health care issues, focus in on the issues of immigration and reform. If this thing lingers in languages, it's going to be difficult to get the time and energy to focus on those things. I only care about one thing in this election, anybody but Trump. Anybody but Trump. And if they are rational and moral people, I'll vote for any of them. By the way, Sanders is probably out of the race. You heard him. He had to have some stent or something and he got in hard troubles. So that leaves, what does that leave? This puts the focus back on Joe Biden. Biden. Look at Biden's age and his, yeah. So guess what? This is like the John McCain syndrome. Now that Bernie Sanders has had this medical difficulty, that puts the emphasis on Biden. What is his health like? More importantly, who would his VP pick be? Because if Biden has a similar issue or a hard event. Yeah, and the race is what happened to Sanders raises that possibility with Biden. You can't help but think, oh, this could happen with Biden too. And then we'd be in further trouble and that leaves Elizabeth Warren, but she is way left. And I personally like her. I support her and I think the country needs her. It needs some drastic changes and she's wrapped around great policies and plans. But a lot of people in the middle are not gonna buy that. I agree. And this works in favor of Trump. I mean, assuming he stays rational. Yeah. That's a big assumption. Well, if he can just, I'm not advising him. If he can just hold on to a last piece of rationality, you know, he can coast in. Not gonna happen. Because the Democrats, you know, can't reach the middle this way. It won't happen. You can't stay rational. He'll become more and more bizarre as we get closer to the election. Obviously he's not gonna be impeached and thrown out of office. I guarantee you he's gonna become more and more bizarre and not palatable for the middle or even Republicans that want to vote for him, but they won't. So there are two with him, you know, fighting the campaign. With him, there are two possibilities. One is get impeached. And there are those pundits who say, well, impeachment fails. I think we can assume that it'll fail. And there are some people that feel that a failed impeachment helps him, makes him a martyr, a hero, and that'll send him home on the election. That'll get him elected. The other way, which I think is really right, is that even people who liked him before are gonna say, gee, there must be some fire with this smoke. He's gotta be bad. Even if he didn't get impeached by the Senate, which supports him on everything anyway, there's something really wrong here and we can't continue to have him. And if we have a viable Democratic candidate, I mean, who is not alienating the whole country or scaring them, you know, then he loses on that. Well, a viable Democratic candidate who can articulate what this party's for, not what they're against on Donald Trump. Exactly, exactly. But I still would vote for really any Democrat because I think the damage that he is doing will be multiplied if he wins the 2020 election. He will see that as a mandate, mandate to do more and worse all the time. Anyway, going back to your point about the decompensation, I think he will decompensate. I think he's a nutcase and I think these things are gonna get more screwball all the time. The more he feels embattled, the more he feels that he's the object of some witch hunt, the more crazy things he's gonna do and it will be apparent. You know, the savior for the country and in a way the world is the press. The press has gotta keep on keeping on. The press has gotta report these shenanigans and report all the things they find and not be in any way soft on him. The press can't be, you know, well, we have to be balanced kind of. Gotta report what he's doing, gotta report the decompensation. Gotta stand behind this whole effort to unzip him and the press, we gotta count on the press. I agree. I think the big difference between what Donald Trump was in his private life is he always got out of his pickles. You know, he always had attorneys and money to pay for attorneys and get out of it. But because we have a press and because we have the Constitution, he's finding out he can't just willy-nilly bend every law to his will and get what he wants. He called Nancy Pelosi before she decided to have this impeachment inquiry and he basically said, do we really need to do this? Is this really necessary? And the answer is yes, it is. So here's a case where Donald Trump isn't getting what he wants. What happens to that man when that happens? He unravels even more because he's not getting what he wants. He's had a whole lifetime of getting what he wants. And when he can't get what he wants, it really, really uncorks him. Yeah, so one fork in that road is he doesn't get what he wants. He reveals himself and the press reveals him as a nutcase or worse. He's doing that now. Or worse, he succeeds in his efforts to beat them back and he takes draconian steps, dastardly steps to beat them back and is successful. That's scary. We gotta cover this again. Okay, sounds good. Thank you, Tim. Next week. Next week. A whole new barrel of fish to explore here. Every week is a strong week. Thank you for having me. Aloha. Bye.