 We are again with Trump Week. This is like the low point of the week in some ways, and in some ways it's the high point of the week. You know, it depends on how you look at it. I'm Jay Fidel here on Think Tech, and Tim Apichella joins me. Cynthia Sinclair is on assignment trying to recover from a cold. Good morning, Jay. Good morning, Tim. The best of times or was the worst of times? Exactly, but maybe it seems like the worst. Can I just, you know, make a sort of overall conclusory type of statement? The title of our show is, Sorry, but Don't Get Your Hopes Up Too High, because, you know, what we have is a couple of things that work against, you know, the grain. Sure, we have evidence. I think Adam Schiff is right in not taking or waiting for new evidence, because that wait's going to be a long time in succubate. You know, if you want new evidence, you're going to have to wait for the courts to rule, and the Trump camp will appeal it to the Supreme Court. We won't hear from them on any of this until the summer at best, and by then it'll be too late to do anything. So they've got to move with what they've got. You've got to make that call. I think the call is right. But even with that, no indication that the Senate's going to flip on this. No indication that, you know, the trial will be a legitimate trial, though. They'll try Biden and his son. That's the trial. That's what the trial will be about. It won't be about Trump. And of course, they'll quit Trump. So where are we then? In the meantime, Trump is spending, you know, many tens of hundreds of millions of dollars, and that'll increase as day goes by for social media, which is the way to influence his base. And before you know it, you know, his base will be just as solid as it can be, no matter what he does. Extraordinary. It's like group madness. And by the time we get to November of 2020, he's going to be all sucked in for the election, and there's a fair chance he's going to win the election. Even if he doesn't win the election, he's going to call it a rig job, and he's going to stay in the White House, despite what Bill Maher says in his show. So at that point, he's going to be in for second term. And don't get your hopes too high, because that second term is going to be a real disaster. He will do everything and anything that he wants, and no one will be able to control him in any way. Right now, you realize that most of the legislation, most of the governmental act, are his alone. That's what he does. Him and the stuges around him, the yes men that he has created in his government. Congress isn't doing anything, really. Rebuttal? Rebuttal. Your last name's Fidel, not Nostradamus. Okay. I do not think it's going to go the way you've kind of portrayed. I think that this is going to be a close election. There is a possibility he will prevail, but I don't think it's a given. And I don't want to be in that campus as it's a foregone conclusion. Let's assume he loses. What happens then? You think he's going to walk away from the White House? Yes. He's going to come up with this. It was a rig job. Of course, he can just, as he did in the last election before he got the nomination, he was decrying. It was a rigged election until it became a rigged election in his favor. So he was correct. It was a rigged election. It just happened to be, the Russians helped him out quite a bit. So my rebuttal is I think that there is going to be enough interest in voters that have seen this president for who he is. I think you're going to see hopefully some people who have never voted before say this is the matter of our country and the importance of our democracy and get out of their lazy boy chair and go to the polls. I think you're going to have those who've never registered before register and vote. From your lips to God's ears, the other wildcard here is the non-evidence part of the national conversation. For example, Bolton writes a book, and the book is highly critical of Trump and reveals things that are astounding, worse than we've ever heard before. It's not under oath. It's not in a Senate or rather a House or Senate hearing room. It's just a book. But it's in the national conversation. The press will cover it. It is as if it were an official pronouncement, and the result will be that Trump will take a big hit by a book like that. There'll be other books, other revelations, other criticisms of him between now and November. You don't think so? I think we're at the point where it doesn't matter. I think people are in their camps, they're in their silos, they get information that confirms what they already believe, be it Fox or MSNBC, they're entrenched in their silos. Now, we're talking about a very small sliver of those who are open to ideas, open to data information that is not one camp or the other. By the way, that's the percentage of people that if you want to defeat Trump, that's the target market you have to hit. Yeah, the independents, the swing votes. There could be some Republicans in there too that are dischanted with Donald Trump. So this is a very slim margin, but for the 40%, maybe even higher of the Republicans, they're in their silo. It's over. It doesn't matter. Again, the Fifth Avenue scenario. It's so interesting that there's so much disinformation around. So the polls actually show that most people would like to see him impeached and removed. 50%. Yeah. Latest poll. Yeah. But he says, that's not true. He says, actually, there are more people that think he should be acquitted. They think it's all a witch hunt. And he lies. It's not true. That's not true. But he repeats it. Every time he makes a statement, and the press let him say that. And I really think that the press are suckers through anything he might say, because it's all hot news. And they don't necessarily stop him and criticize him right on the spot. Maybe later. I don't know why they're covering it. It's not right on the spot. Because if you're going to correct something, correct it right away. Yeah. You don't do that. So it sinks in. And I think there are people out there that have heard it many times. And they say, oh, yeah, well, the polls must be favoring him, even though it's a lie. And these lies, that's another wild card. He's going to keep on doing the lies and the outrageous things. And people are going to buy into it because he repeats it. And repeating without immediate correction gets into the national consciousness. That's one of the most effective rhetorical techniques you can use. Yeah. An epititio martes studiorum. Look that up. Yeah. Me too. So what has happened lately? You made a list. Now, the thing with the Secretary of the Navy and the war crimes, very troubling. Very troubling. It goes back to the case of the deserter, where he said the deserter ought to be shot even though the deserter was tried. And I say, deserter, that's not the case. It hasn't really finished yet. So we couldn't even say that that was a conviction that would stick. But what happened is that he exercised command influence, which is not appropriate. And in this case, he pardoned a couple, three seals for murderous activities. And you say to yourself, where does that take us? Where does it take the seals? Where does it take the Navy? Where does it take our whole military? And where does it take the people we're fighting with when you make a war crime not a war crime? What do you think? Well, I think Richard Spencer said it best. He recently fired Navy Secretary. And that is, you are affecting the chain of command, both up and down, number one. And you are basically letting him get away with it. And these are things that will demoralize the ranks of all military branches. It's not just the Navy. When you can have a president intercede into the minutiae of this process and basically yank him out of it and say, he's my guy. He's a great hero. Well, he's not a great hero. He's done horrific things. It was a question whether or not he actually killed the prisoner of war versus he stabbed him after he was already dead. And he said, look at my knife work. This guy, by the way, Garrett's last nickname was Blade. So these are war crimes. And why would the president of the United States basically take someone like that and lift them up as a shiny object and put them on a pedestal? For his base, Tim, for his base. There are people out there that want to see that. Well, there's a lot of people in the military that are part of his base. I can't imagine anyone in the military thinking this is a good idea to take this deplorable individual who basically is guilty of a war crime and elevate them to the status of national hero. A lot of people in the military support Trump, whatever he does. Not just because he's technically the commander-in-chief, because they like his machoism. And this is machoism embedded in ignorance is what it is. But anyway, OK, that's a bad one. And that's going to get us in trouble with the enemy. Because the enemy is going to say, oh, there's no more war crimes. We can do what we want. Let's do what Trump pardoned. Because now fair game. It's all fair game. Remember, Trump in his campaign said, I support waterboarding. I support much worse than waterboarding. So you're right. He's basically throwing the Geneva Convention in the trash can. And would you like to be in an armed conflict, became a new choice of your own, become a prisoner of war, and be subject to some kind of treatment other than the Geneva Convention? Throw a lot of a bad movie, a bad movie. Anyway, that's very troubling on a legal point of view. It is. And on the Navy point of view, on the military point of view, and on a foreign relations point of view. OK, next one. Just to tag on, I'd be interested in the interview people who are veterans that are Trump supporters to get their opinion about this very subject and see what they say. Because there's a part of me that says they understand the chain of command. They understand the ethics of serving in the military and a code of honor and duty. And I'd like to get their opinion on what they specifically could think about this. You know, this could be a thing where he's dividing officers and men. I mean, West Point, for example, would never condone this. None of the military academies would condone this. But if he finds support, it's among the men in the field, the ones who are scared, who engage in whatever the rules of engagement. And the ones that may not follow orders to take them out of office? Yeah, I don't know. I'm being facetious right now. It's calculated for divisiveness also. OK, I guess we can't go too much further without talking about Ukraine. You know, Fiona Hill comes up with this conspiracy thing. And she says, watch out. Why? She was prescient. She knew what was going to happen. And it's really sad that it did happen almost immediately after she spoke. So now we've got Kennedy and others coming up with all of this stuff about how, in fact, Ukraine was the one who roiled the 2016 election. What are they talking about? It's made up. It's lies. Well, it is fascinating that the Republicans are carrying the water on this conspiracy, which they know is not true. Kennedy actually did walk back his statement about Ukraine's Ukraine. We really don't know who it is. And you don't know. Well, he walked back and said, you know what? I was wrong. I was wrong about that. It was Russia that interfered with the 2016 election. But then he still tried to cast doubt as we really don't quite know that we do know it was Russia. Yeah, could have been anybody. So why carry the water for Donald Trump on this issue, other than blind loyalty? And I'm not sure the correction means that much, because it's the first impression that people take away. They may not. It's like the correction in the newspaper. It's got one line at the bottom of the column where the headline was this, the correction was that. The same thing here that people know about the correction. He's already fatted into the conversation. And a lot of people just buy it, and that's the end of that. But we have more lies, more misinformation. I think I asked this in the last program we had is, what would Donald Trump's motivation to take this away from Russia's front door and dump it onto Ukraine's? Well, that's what Russia wants us to do. I mean, honestly, blame Ukraine. OK, so it goes back to what's the connection between Russia and Donald Trump? I mean, do we have a causal connection there? Do we have between Russia and Trump? Yes. You want a short answer on that? Yes. Yes. Yes, OK. I mean, it emerges more clearly all the time, but not to the Republicans. I'm sorry. OK, now it's amazing that he stopped this entire staff in the White House from testifying in these hearings. Even after the penis compelling them to appear, it's remarkable. It's never happened before. At the worst, in early practice, these people have appeared, and then if there was one question that they were concerned about, they would not answer that. Fifth Amendment would have you, privilege. We've never seen so much claim of privilege as we have these days. But now he's told them not to appear, not to turn over any documents. It's extraordinary. When it gets to the courts, at least to the judges who were pre-Trump judges, I think we have to see it that way, pre-Trump judges. Because judges, conservative judges who were appointed by Trump, and hundreds of them have, and McDonald's has like a factory, I'm sorry, Ms. McConnell has a factory confirming them immediately, same-day service. So now McGahn is told not to testify. They subpoena him with a congressional subpoena. And it goes to the federal courts. And the federal courts rule in his favor. I'm not sure, I don't remember whether it was this district court or the circuit court. But the federal courts rule in his favor. And of course, Trump will appeal to the Supreme Court. So where are we with that? Well, look at the statement from Donald Trump as soon as that decision was rendered. He goes, oh, I would love to have all of them testify. I support all of that. That's a lie. Of course it's a lie, because, but he says, but we're doing this for future presidents. Really? That's what he said. We're preventing this from happening for the benefit of future presidents. I'm not sure of that. You know, I would just wish he would remember that the Constitution was developed for future presidents, himself included. So yeah, the big lie is he wants Pompeo. He wants them all to testify. He's okay with that. Not true. What a lie. He's told them that they can't. And they haven't shown up. And we never get the first base. And it's remarkable that we never can bring them down. And it doesn't even solve the problem of what would happen if they said Fifth Amendment or if they said, you know, it was privileged whatever the law may be on that. Because if they said that and they refused to testify in a given question, we'd go back to court. We'd be in court forever. You know, litigating these objections to the question. What have you looked at? And so I think the democratic leadership is right. Don't press it. You're not getting anywhere with it because we can't spend our lives in court, especially with a ticking time bomb in the election in November. You look at the people who have declined you, who go to Congress and testify. It would be those individuals who had firsthand knowledge or interaction with Donald Trump as it pertains to the Ukraine bribery scheme. Yeah. It's shown to the satisfaction of a reasonable person, I think. And, you know, I think they will write up articles and they'll pass the articles and they'll pass it out to the Senate. That will be a correct decision based on the evidence that's available. But the other part of it is this horrendous obstruction. He obstructed everything in the Mueller investigation. You know, he answered written interrogatories with lies. He told people not to appear, not to respond, not to provide documents in the Mueller investigation. And Mueller let it go again. And I think he's probably right in that because it would have taken him forever to litigate all that stuff going forward. The Mueller investigation would still be going on for years litigating with Trump and his friends about what he could get or not get. So we have that now. Seems to me, though, that that is itself obstruction. That is absolutely obstruction. And you don't need a court to tell you that. You can make up your congressional mind that that's obstruction. If he doesn't like it, he can take it up. And if that's obstruction, it's an article. That is a huge article in these impeachment articles as far as I'm concerned. So the question is, what does it matter? I mean, we've got to persuade all the Republicans in the Senate, or a majority of those 22 of them, that have to vote in favor of the impeachment. Do you think if the testimonies of McVaney and Pompeo and Giuliani, if that was known and that evidence came out, do you think that would sway them? I don't think it would sway them, even if there was a causal connection, a direct connection between Donald Trump and the withholding of the $400 million for the arms for Ukraine, I'm not even sure that would sway them. Well, remember, even if they show up, they're not necessarily going to answer truthfully. They're not necessarily going to answer at all. They'll claim privilege. And if they give documents, how do we know those? You don't trust these people. How do we know those documents? They're all the documents, and they haven't been changed in some way. We've seen that, like those transcripts quote, or summary transcripts. We don't know what the real telephone call included. Anyway, what I'm saying is I agree with you. These guys show up. It doesn't mean that much, because we're not going to get legitimate testimony from them. On the other hand, I would say they do hold the keys to the kingdom. Otherwise, he would have let them show up before. That's correct. And I think if all be known, if Bolton writes his book and tells all, I'd be very damaging to Trump, and so for the others. But I wouldn't wait. I wouldn't hold my breath for any of that. So going back to the title of the show. Sorry, but you don't get your hopes up too high. Yeah, well, and then I subtitled Moving Into the Seventh Inning on Impeachment. We're at the Seventh Inning here, but I wouldn't get my hopes up too high. OK, let's switch a little bit to the court ruling on the tax returns. It's in the Supreme Court now. And I think it was Roberts wrote a one-liner saying staying temporarily, but he didn't say how long it was going to stay. It could be months and months. And the law is clear. He's got no exemption or anything like that. He's creating new law. And they are giving him a break on giving him temporary pass here. And I guess they realized that there must be something in there that's very damaging. So if they can, all of them, can hold it back from public disclosure until November, they can help him on the election. We'll see if I'm right. But I think that was not necessarily good news. You have two courts. There was a second circuit and a court of rather the federal district judge and the second circuit in New York. Both said, given the tax returns, the Supreme Court said, wait, this is probably an example of what we're going to see in the future. The Supreme Court has been turned, weaponized, politicized. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not feeling so well. It makes it worse yet. Before you know it, it'll be six conservatives and three liberals. And the Supreme Court will not be a reliable or an organization in which people can have confidence of their decisions or their clarity. So it troubles me what happened with that temporary hold on the second circuit. Well, what is temporary? I mean, there was no rationale behind the stay. I mean, I don't remember reading any particular rationale. Fiat to stay, that's all. And that was it. So what would be an appropriate time for that to be withheld? A decision on this. Only they know. Well, that should be scrutinized. Not a good sign. There should be some scrutiny out to what is the rationale. Well, the press should be watching that like a hawk. They should be, yeah. This is something they can't forget. Because I think those tax returns are going to reveal things that are going to be truly remarkable. Do you think we see them before the election? I hope we will. I hope we, the public, will see them. There's the possibility that we will never see them, that it'll only be with a subpoenaing power, which is the New York prosecutor of the New York District Attorney. So not clear. And there is a fair possibility that nobody's going to see them until after the election. Well, the state of New York has it. Do they not? No. They pay a tax, like a New York tax, based on your federal returns each and every year, just like Hawaii. That's true. But the subpoena is to the accounting firm. I understand, but there's more than one. I always tell them they can't go in the front, or go in the back door. If that's closed, go through the window. Yeah, that's a very good point. It's there. It's in the government's hands, the state government's hands. OK, I do want to mention that we're back in Syria with more troops than we had there before. And we're fighting now shoulder to shoulder with the Kurds. It's like double think. It's out of the Orwellian book 1984, which a friend of mine is reading. He said it's very, very hard to read it, because it's a play on what's going on right now. We should all read 1984 again. Double think. And here's double think. It's like a month ago, we were going this way, crazy, lurching, and now we're back doing this, but more, doubling down on what existed before we turned it upside down. What is going on here? What kind of foreign policy is this? Was the State Department consulted? Was the military consulted? Was anybody consulted? This is one man's sole proprietorship government. And it's worthy of great discussion in the press. I don't think it's getting enough discussion. I guess the question is, again, what's this impact on the military, the chain of command? And why do you have a joint chiefs of staff if they're not going to be consulted about this stuff? Maybe they were. Maybe they were, but no, no, no, for sure. Hasn't been reported or properly reported. So bizarre. And the guy in the field must be shaking his head. Just like that scene with the American troops leaving Syria on one side of the road and new troops coming up with American flags flying on the other side of the road. What? Anyway, the other interesting lie is that Trump said that Giuliani was not operating under his direction. That's kind of hard to walk back. But you know, that 38% will believe him wholeheartedly. I hate to say it. And they're in their silos, and they're in their information bubble. And they're drinking the Donald Trump Kool-Aid. They're 38% of this country. They'll believe every word of that. And I find that tragically sad, because he has said so many times, go talk to Rudy, or Rudy's my guy. And how many times have he said that Rudy's working for me here? And now he walks it back. To what point does Rudy Giuliani go, hey, wait a minute. You're not going to set me up for prosecution from New York or don't throw me into the bus. And he made a casual comment about, well, if he does try to throw me in the bus, I've got an insurance program. Now, that might have been for physical harm that being run over by a bus. No, I know, I understand. Or that could be, I got the goods on you, so watch what you're doing. Well, I could bring Trump down, I'm sure, right now, any day. But did we see that play out in front of us, that there was a threat from Giuliani back to Trump? No, not yet. I don't know. Yeah, hard to say. And I'm going to say, I really enjoy, I mean that upside down, I really enjoy the thing with Amazon and Microsoft. Amazon had the deal, $10 billion, and there's more to follow. And Trump got mad at Bezos because of articles in the Washington Post, again, his attack on the press. So he somehow switched it over from Amazon to Microsoft. Great blow to Amazon. And Amazon was the best qualified contractor. You were better than Microsoft for this. Amazon was prepared to hire 25,000 employees in a 10-year period in the Washington area. Now, Amazon had about 48% of the market share for the cloud technology, Microsoft 15.5. So Microsoft, it's why Amazon claims there was unmistakable bias in political intervention. So we'll see. They're lodging a complaint against it. I know, they sued. Yeah. Okay, but my favorite thing this week, I don't have time for all our points, I am so sorry. My favorite thing this week was the story about Amelia, Northern Texas, Northern Virginia. Remember, Virginia went blue in recent elections. Governor is now a Democrat. Lots of people in the legislature are Democrat. I think the Democrats control the legislature there. However, the story about this town, county, in the northern part of Virginia, which declared itself a Second Amendment sanctuary city, or county, rather. And then, as and when the governor, the new governor, who has sworn to adopt, to encourage the adoption of uncontrolled measures, tries to enforce those measures against this county, they won't enforce them. The sheriffs there, the law enforcement aid will not enforce them. And the people don't want them. So they say they're a sanctuary. They're not gonna do what the state does. Now that's bad. And that's a divisiveness within the state of Virginia. But in the article that reported it, it found out that New Mexico had the same problem. And in fact, the majority of counties, the majority of counties in New Mexico have likewise declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries. They're not going to enforce gun control. And I think it was another state, too. I wanna say Illinois. Same thing. Many, many counties in that state. And there are other states, too. So what's really frightening here is that we have a divisiveness on gun control. And there are people who don't want, affirmatively don't want gun control and who are not gonna abide by gun control. Where is this coming from? I mean, I think this is one of those divisive things that comes from Facebook. It's impossible without Facebook. People in rural areas, Facebook is their news. And it's sorta like Fox News. And we have a problem. It's the divisive of this. It's the gun control. And it's all Trump. This is the cultural war. And this is one aspect of that cultural war, that abortion, taxation. These are cultural war issues. And I guarantee you that, that one is never gonna go away soon. It's just not. So that's why Donald Trump, again, people don't always vote in their best interests for financial reasons. Sometimes they vote for cultural issues. And that's what I believe Donald Trump got in the office in the first place. And if he's going to remain, it will probably be over cultural issues and certainly not on sound policies. Some people believe the country's coming apart. I do. And so, when we met this morning, you told me, well, Trump did something good. Can you talk about that? Briefly, he signed in the law. House Bill 724, basically, outlying or being a crime to torture any animal or depicting video of the torture of any animal. So, good for him. But of all the things that we're involved with, was this a distraction? Or would this make good sense to do it? I'm glad he signed it into law. I'm pleased. I think that was a good thing. And I give him a thumbs up on it. But again, is it just to placate critics and show everyone what a great president he is? I don't have the answer for that, but I'm glad he did it. I'm very happy he did it. It reminds me of his vaping thing, you know? So, he came out against vaping. And I don't know if he's advancing legislation or what, but now he's made some statements. In the middle of all this mess we've been describing, he's gonna help make legislation or some kind of rules at federal level about vaping. Say to myself, what is that about? Does he care? Does he care about vaping? Does he care about animal rights? Does he care about that? I don't think so. In fact, is the world's coming apart? You know, he hasn't done anything about climate change. You have terrible news in the paper every day about how climate change is affecting everybody, everywhere, and he's doing vaping and animal rights. Well, a lot of animal owners. Yeah, well, it's political for the animal owners who they must get a thrill out of that, but the fact is the world's coming apart. And I just do not understand how people can be distracted. There's all distraction. This is his way of sort of a change up pitch. It's not sincere. It's not long term. It's not with the specific thing intended. It's something else. And so, I don't know if they've been taken seriously on that. The end of the line, the real bottom line here is that he's doing all these incredibly destructive things. And when he does something good, or apparently good, even for a small group of people, you say, what? What's this about? Well, expect a lot more between now and November 2020. That's all I think. And watch every week just more. Getting to be an application. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Jay. Watch out. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving. And we'll see you in the future. See you. Yeah, see you next week, I think.