 And we're back with Trump Week, the show you love to hate. True. Very true. Jim Appichella and Cynthia Sinclair. What's the lay for, Cynthia? I was awarded a scholarship for school next year from the American Business Women's Association. Congratulations. Good resolution. Thank you very much. It was pretty special because it's my second year in a row for winning the same scholarship. Boring. Boring. No, pretty special because they don't... Apparently, this is like a really rare thing that never happens that they actually award the scholarship to the same person over and over again. I know the scholarship reflects the intensity of your education and thus the intensity of your participation here. That's right. So, let's talk about Trump Week this week. We're entitling this show on leashing the misogynists in the base having to do with all these statues, incredible footage on TV about the legislative, you know, actions and the immediate signatures of these bills by the governor is immediate. Nothing moves that fast in any state. A footnote. You know, there was a really interesting article that I saw this week about how, you know, the states where the base is most concentrated, those states are the worst states to live in. Right. You know, they don't have social services, they're poor, you vote on suppression, all the worst things. You'd never go to those states. You don't want to live in those states. And those are the states where all these terrible things happen. People are hurting themselves, they're shooting themselves in the foot. Okay, the subtitle is, It'll Be Much Worse After Roe v. Wade Is Gone. And that's often an article in The Times yesterday, today where this fellow, he looked at Roe v. Wade before Roe v. Wade, how the abortion practice worked, what was happening in the country over abortions. And then, you know, life after Roe v. Wade is life with these statutes that were just adopted this week. It's going to be much worse for women. Much worse for women. I'm so sorry. Okay, Tim. What happened? Well, what happened was this is all part of the chess game. These strategies are all being put in place. They're starting to actually move the chess pieces. Because before you put in, you enact laws like this in, be it, you know, Georgia or Alabama or whatever, you've got to have the judges in place. So that was the first part of the chess game. And now they're in place. It's a step transaction, then. Yes, a step transaction. This is more of a strategy. Yeah. And Kamino was the bookend over here, and now we got, you know, these various little, you know, killing by a thousand cuts that they've been doing for the past several years. And now, they got arrogance, they got confidence, and they are putting these statutes through. And the men in these legislatures are happy to pass them immediately. What? Governors are happy to sign them. What great hubris. And I can't think of a better lightning rod issue between now and 2020 election than this one to awaken the apathetic voter, be it male or female, to get out of their chair and say, enough is enough. We are going to vote this election. I can't think of a better lightning rod issue than this. In the meanwhile, if you get involved in an abortion on either the medical side or, and this is not like it was before Roe v. Wade, on the, you know, the pregnant woman's side, you can get to go to jail for life, you know, like 99 years. You're a doctor. You're a doctor. Or a woman. I mean, really, you said, what did Trump say he wants to punish the women? Punish the women? No punishment for the father. None. But for the woman, there has to be some kind of punishment when he was asked if they should go to jail. And he said, yeah. Let's put that in context, though. Comment come out. And that was before the election with Chris Matthews' interview in one of the forum interviews, the townhouse forum interviews. And that raises a really interesting point. I put it to both of you. So is Trump responsible for this? Is he somehow foment? We know he made the appointment on Kavanaugh. And he has never taken a position against, actually years ago, he was pro-abortion. Now he's been anti-abortion. And the question is, all these statues that we saw this week, has Trump somehow encouraged them? Yes. I believe so. What's your idea? You got on the phone. Called up each governor's here. Let's make this happen. Well, I don't know. I believe that it was him specifically. We've got kind of a silent manipulator behind him and the vice president. And Pence has been rabid about anti-abortion. And anti-LGBTQ and all of these things. And so I think Trump relies a lot on what somebody else tells him to do. And what the main Republican panel of old white guys is what I like to call them, right? What they want. He's like, okay, I'm your Republican president. So they're kind of like inclusion together, I think. I think, you know, Trump has the buck stops with Trump. He's the one who makes these ideological decisions and all that. And then you see these decisions being implemented by others around him. Who are yes men? You know, and that's what's happening with, what's his name, the attorney general. Barr. You know, he's merely an agent for Trump. He's a stooge. Right. And I think we have to recognize that going forward. It's Trump and stooges. But at the end of the day, it's always Trump. He's the one creating this policy. Absolutely. People are doing the mouthpiece, including the vice president. Right. There's been behind the scenes work. We just don't see it. Our news has been with so many distractions and, you know, being entertained with so many different events that Trump puts out there every day, they don't have time to follow Pence and find out what he's doing behind the scenes. Right. And I'm certain that this didn't come to play all of a sudden. This is a planned strategy, in my opinion. Yeah. The one thing that I'm absolutely just appalled about is that there's no provision for rape or incest. Think, what kind of animal would not want to allow someone to have access to an abortion if that's what they want to do if they've been raped? Or there's a story of a 12-year-old girl who's... It's telltale. It's telltale. Because, you know, even if there were an exception for rape or incest, it's still an anti-abortion bill. Right. It still puts people in jail for abortion. It still squashes the possibility of abortion in that state. So, you know, I mean, it goes 99.9, but the fact that it doesn't have rape or incest exceptions doesn't mean that much to me. No, this was known to be the law that's passed that's going to go to the Supreme Court. That's what they're planning to do. That's all they want to do. They've already announced that's what we intended to do. Right. Wouldn't you think that they would want to take out the rape and incest portion of that and get the bill in front of the Supreme Court without the right... Without the right... Without the right... I mean... Well, they want these bills to be outrageous. That's why there are no exceptions for rape and incest. Totally outrageous. But if you wanted to... Leave it to the Supreme Court. Leave it to the Supreme Court to carve that out, you know? Apparently, there's a small little addendum in that whole thing that they're putting together also that is going to inhibit any kind of reproductive, you know, pill, any kind of protection, anything like that. Right. And it's anything done by the mother, other than abortion, to damage the fetus. Right. Right. And that includes the morning after pill and all that stuff. Right. Well, what about this thing in the box? It is. Oh, damn it's a fetus. I don't know what the more... I'm sorry. But I mean, you know, it's intended to be as broad as it can possibly be, address any possibility, cut all the options off for the woman. Right. My goodness gracious. Well, you know, Georgia is trying to, we were just talking about this a few minutes ago. Georgia is going to try to pull out all of its, the entertainment industry is going to pull out all of its stuff down there in Georgia, because they've got a really big movie making machine out there in Atlanta. So like I said, this is a lightning rod issue and you're going to see economic boycott of those states. Certainly you're going to see this reflect itself when it comes to, you know, re-election time for these state senators and congressmen in Alabama and Missouri and... Don't you feel this is kind of a revolution, a civil war, a grand divide? On social issues. On social issues. This is, for those states, Georgia, Alabama, others, Missouri, do this. It's just a tremendous divide in the population as if the whole country is fighting with itself. We are in total divisiveness. Well, you remember, you've mentioned Huey Long, several shows, and this is right up Huey Long, governor of Louisiana. This is right up his game plan of social issues that separate populations. They're divisive and it's just what they need to get the attention off of other issues, number one, but also galvanize their support base. And it's doing just that. It's tearing the country apart. Yes. It is. Absolutely. Okay. I mean, people say, well, it'll be okay. It'll be okay. It won't work out. It's not going to work out. Let's go to Congress for a minute. You know, my great concern is that the administration is denying Congress anything it wants. Right. It's not turning over documents. It's not appearing to testify. It's stopping Mueller right now. Mueller has no... There's no date for Mueller to testify. Right. Congress is like being marginalized. Congress is being sent away with nothing. They can't do their duty. They can't even find out what happened. And it reminds me so much of the Enabling Act of 1933 in Germany. Absolutely it is. The Reichstag was marginalized, cut off, neutralized, you know, they've no effect. That's what's happening in Congress. Congress has been, what do you want to call it, vestigial, since his administration began and it's getting worse? Comments? Well, the 12-page letter that was sent from the White House to the committee basically says the Dems are looking into embarrass the President. That's one of their, you know, one of their basis of why we're not going to play ball with Congress. They're looking to embarrass them. Number two is no do-overs. You know, you're not going to get another do-over. So that's why we're going to prevent anyone from testifying and that's why we're not going to give out records. I don't know if that's, you know, legal provisions to deny a subpoena from Congress. It doesn't seem to be to me, but that's the game they're playing. And I think if you look at it is they don't want to embarrass the President. And they're saying, well, you know, the Democrats want to carry this investigation on all through the, you know, the 2019, 2020 to have this drip and drab out and hurt the presidency and chances for reelection. Well, I remember a thing called Benghazi hearings. That went on for years to damage Clinton and, you know, so it's very hypocritical in my mind. And by the way, if they would have, if Barr would have shared the redacted portion of Mueller's, you know, report, maybe they wouldn't have to subpoena all these people. You know, maybe they, the answers would have been there, but they have no choice because you didn't give us the redacted portion of that report. And so what are we going to do? Just sit and go, oh, well, shucks. I guess that's okay. No, of course not. And now Flynn. Oh yeah. Flynn, who was actually approached by someone in the Trump administration to try to change his story. Yeah. Well, that's obstruction. I mean, there is obstruction here. They have a, I mean, Flynn even turned over a recording, a voice recording of Trump's lawyers calling his lawyer, leaving a message about how, you know, is there a way we can change this, you know, Donald really loves them and blah, blah, blah. But you know, what they're saying, and this is the interesting part, in a place through the press, which I think you said it was naive, the press, that, you know, that they're not well-motivated. We are going to claim that all these guys who want all this information don't have a purity of thought, that their intentions are wrong, and therefore we're not going to give them anything. Now, you can apply that to anything, you know. If you can get that through, if you can confirm that as a reason not to respond to subpoenas and requests for appearances and the like, then you can stop, you can stop Congress. We have no rule of law then. And then you become a king or an emperor or a dictator or whatever you want to call it. Let's review it. You know, Congress is unable to do anything, not only because he's not responding to them, but you have this divisiveness within Congress, being the Senate and the House. The only thing that's really interesting, the only thing he can get through is in the Senate alone, which is advice and consent on judicial appointments. And he's putting all these students' judges, may I say that? Judges who agree with him, who he believes are, you know, a conservative side, it was one appointment the other day, and it sort of slid in. A woman, Vitter, I think, was a woman. Well, the woman who wouldn't even... She's anti-abortion. And she wouldn't even say whether or not she was. But the paper reported she was anti-abortion. Of course she is. Well known to be. But refused to say it when she was being interviewed. She neutralized. That's the important part. All Congress is doing is confirming, you know, these judges that he'd been at a rapid rate. We don't hear about all of them. Right. So, you know, what you have is Congress to neutralize. The judiciary is being neutralized or they're being made. Yeah. And we reorganize completely to support him, and we're going to see that when these cases like Roe v. Wade get up in the Supreme Court, well, actually in the lower courts too, because little by little it's turning into a Trump court system. And of course Trump is, you know, he's in charge of everything, running his sole proprietorship government, where everybody speaks his word and if you duck, you're out. So, gee whiz, I mean it's the end of constitutional government here. How can we recover? How can we retire you? How can we make America democratic again? I said it. You could say it. I've said it before and I'll say it again. If the courts are not going to play ball, or they'll play ball, but the deck has already been stacked, so to speak, it will be up to the individual voter to get outraged and call their congressman, senator, and say, this is how I feel, this is how I want this to stop. And only if they get flooded with protest calls, may they now stand up and say, okay, the legislature now needs to act, we need to act, but that's very rare, you know, that's a very rare concept. If I were going to send a message to all the democratic legislators, I mean in Congress, I would say, we stop making every email you send me, ask for money, ask for my support. Ask for my vote. Ask for my petition. Ask for my vote. The money, you know, it can do it once in a while, but not every single, so it's a turnoff and people don't respond to that. But if they would simply say, check the box or leave a short message and sign a petition, no money, just sign a petition, then I think they get much, they get that kind of popular, you know, upswell of opinion and that would help. And that we're losing a lot of people who might check the box because we're always asking for money. And that's the problem when you hire consultants. You know, the organization has a mission, you lose or you diminish the message when you hire consultants when they're professional fundraisers. And somehow they get at the head of the table and they set the agenda for that organization. I couldn't agree with you more because there's nothing that a bigger turnoff than 20 messages in two weeks about you need to, you know, campaign. Money. It's always about money. They would just ask me my opinion. I'm happy to give it to them. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, let's move on to Congress. I mean, Congress is in big kimchi here. Can I say one last thing first, though? You made a comment a minute ago about how Congress can't do anything because they don't have the unredacted report, they don't have the supporting documents. I disagree with you. I think they have plenty enough to do what? To raise an impeachment and start it now. The minute they do that, it opens their ability to access records better. That's true. They can easily step over this. We're not going to do anything. I hope you're listening. I hope you're listening. It's not true. It's very true. And it's true. They don't have any to that. But right now they don't have impeachment and they have 27 count and 27 investigations going on. That's built for delay. It is. For no result. It's all it's about. Nothing, Berger. Right. In the end. I agree. But they have a perfect intention, so to speak. If you want to look at their intention in asking for documents, we have an impeachment process going on. Right. And we're going to ask for these documents and you can't say no. Of course I'll go. Of course the judge can go. Well, yeah, I can. Well, they have more than plenty enough to start it. That's what they do. They have more than plenty enough to start it. You have resisted the notion of impeachment. I have. Are you changing? Are you coming along? Well, every week is a new brew here. And so if you stay with the old brew and stick to it, then what's that say about you? Yeah, we have the right to look at developing situations here and go, I need to kind of reconsider where I stand on this position. I agree. I still love the idea of a censor, but you know what, if the Constitution is going to be thrown in peril and risk, then find the reason to get the documents and there's no getting out of it. And if that means an impeachment hearing, so be it. The censor would not allow that. So I'm there. I'm there. All right. Brian, welcome to the club. And it's only because you need to get those documents and you can't stop Congress from their obligation, their constitutional no-duty. So that's why we need to get out of the crisis and by doing so, the impeachment will get us there. So even if they're not able to actually impeach them, it's okay. Let's get this all turned up so we can get on the right path anyway. Right. I think Nancy Pelosi is wrong. We can demonstrate. Exactly. That the Democrats can do stuff. Yes. Because they're not. Right. Right now it's not clear they can do stuff. I'm sorry. Because they're doing stuff. They're putting stuff to the Senate, but it's not going anywhere. So it looks like they're not doing anything even though they are. Here's the problem with Democrats. And that's what's frustrating for me. Here's the problem with Democrats. They assume that impeachment will be that akin to what happened to Bill Clinton. They really should look at the impeachment to say, what was this more like? That was Richard Nixon. Yes. Exactly. And that's why they're shaking in their boots because they remember that the poll numbers with Bill Clinton, 66%, that's what he had from the start through the end of his impeachment process. Likeable guys. 66%. Part of the reason why is because you know, when Clinton was done with his terms, we were in the black. The country was in the black. We were not in the red anymore. That's true. Now, Trump has got us what trillions of dollars in the first year, six months, I mean even. I think we were trillions. Well, there are two factors I think that we got to follow as threats. Number one is the economy. Right. The economy is pretty good now, you know, and he's taking, well, he meant this big speech in Louisiana. That's where U.E. Long used to live in. This big speech in Louisiana about how wonderful the economy was and that he was responsible and everybody should appreciate that. The economy may not really last. I think, you know, because of the tariff thing. Both sides, you know, our side and the China side, may create global problems and, you know, then he may not have that as an argument. We should watch that. I think that's why he's rolled back on his tariffs to Canada and his tariffs to Mexico because he's trying to make up for the fact that he has just screwed over a whole lot of people. Yeah. Well, ultimately. And ultimately, it's going to come back on us. The other factor, the other process we have to work, and you wanted to talk about this, is the Middle East and, you know, his diplomatic relations. I mean, you could say that it's only a trade war with China, but it's affecting our diplomatic relations with China, too. And there's a connection there. And of course, what he's doing with Iran is beating drums for war. I really worry about that. This whole thing could go up in a tinderbark. This sounds like the guns of August, you know, in World War I, it's a trip hammer and it's a chain reaction kind of thing, and it's very risky what he's doing. Yeah. Well, what Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney was for the stage craft to get involved with Iraq, Bolton is for Iran. Absolutely. It's well known that he's been itching to get it on with Iran for a decade or more. And so Trump seems to have, you know, that maybe that's why he picked him, you know. I don't know why. I'm sure that's true. Yeah. I agree. I think that's why he picked him. Yeah. I mean, we got the tail that wags the dog here. Yeah. You know. Representative Jim Hines, he's a Democrat from Connecticut on the Intel Committee, he made a list, and I thought it was really comprehensive, and it is Trump's administration's actions towards Iran. He would draw us from the Iran nuclear deal, then he reimposes sanctions, then he, this is for me, I think the most important and explosive and igniting thing that he did was designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. This is, wait a minute, their main army, and he's calling them all terrorists. Well, they designated our army as a terrorist organization. Right. Well. Within a few days they did the same thing back to us, but they're doing worse things than that. Oh, yeah. This is only beginning now. Yeah. Oh, yeah, because then it goes next to him. Then we move the U.S.A. Blinken to the Middle East group, then 120,000 troops he's talking about. And what it is, is what this representative anyway said was that, you know, it's dangerous because it forces them to adopt an aggressive posture, which Trump can then say, oh, look, they're being aggressive. Well, let's go. Even though he forced them into it, right? If it's them or someone else, somewhere else in the world, who knows where he can generate violence? He can do it. Well, it's like, you know, he generated these bills in the South. He can generate all these negative, hateful things. And so moving on to 2020, we get closer to that election, and you keep on thinking of Michael Cohn's warning, you know, he's not going to leave easily. Right. Or he's not going to, in my view, he may not have an election at all, put the election off. Kick it down the road. Go back to 2012. If we're at war, if we're involved in some, you know, some, some fisticuffs or maybe multiple fisticuffs, I can see him saying, we have a national emergency here, and I don't think we should have an election. We're not going to have an election. Who would stop him? Can you have an election if the president doesn't come? You know, I'm really worried about that. And I think both of those threads are going to play out between now and 2020. We've identified long time ago that, you know, potential wars in Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, these were the shiny object distractions that he needed to get away from the Mueller report. So it's still beneficial for him to keep these conflicts on a plate, spinning by a long stick, and have multiple of them doing it at the same time as we progress to the election in 2020. It serves his purpose to have potential conflicts always spinning in the air. Then he can just bring one down and use it. Absolutely. We had an election earlier, and I think we should have a little discussion about this before we close. And that is the press. How is the press reacting to this? In a funny way, they're naive. In a funny way, you know, they don't seem to be recognized, the emergency of it. I mean, for the country, for the Constitution, for our future as a democracy, Frank Bruni wrote a great piece. I agree. I sent it to you guys. That was good. I'd already put down a quote from that piece. It was so good. Yeah. You want it? Sure. You want me to? And the title, I love it. The title is Donald Trump is not America. It says he envies Orlan Putin and their ilk. They don't have to deal with so much disrespect and dissent. They just crush it. His designs on Independence Day, have you heard about this stuff? Oh, yeah. He wants some big deal, right? The parade. Oh, yeah. So, like, McCruller, right, he wants to be like the French. His designs on Independence Day call to mind those sorts of leaders. Their vanities, shameless, an equation of national interest with self-interest. And you know, for this whole thing with Iran, there are British generals, there are so many people, if I can come up with this, see other officials, Europeans, Iraqis, members of both parties in Congress, and some senior officials within the Trump administration that say that Iran's moves are defensive and not aggressive. And lastly, forget immigration. Oh, gosh. He said, I think it was this morning or yesterday, he said he had an immigration claim. We didn't know the details, any of the details. That was going to make America the envy of the world, really. So far, it's more like the laughing stock of the world. But anyway, I want to get back to the press thing. So the press, in general, has a big part in all of this process we've been talking about. I agree. Had they been doing a job, what should they do that's different? Thoughts? They diversify the reporting. And I'm sorry, but 80% of the reporting is on the constitutional crisis, the obstruction of justice, and the inability for Jerry Nadler and Congress to get these subpoenas fulfilled. Stop spending 80% on that. Maybe give it 40%. You've got to cover these other issues. And they just don't have enough time, airtime, to do it. They don't. When you watch MSNBC for one, they've got all these shows back to back, yet all the shows are saying the same thing. Same thing. You know, it's like you've got time. And they're repeating themselves. Over and over. And they're repeating themselves over and over. And it's like every once in a while, Rachel's pretty good about saying stuff that nobody else is saying. She does a lot of research. Yeah, she does a lot of research, and she says stuff that not everybody is saying, which I think is important. But you know, one of the things that the press is doing that I think is good is they're showing these clips of 2012 when Trump was saying he was accusing Obama of starting in a war with Iran, specifically, so that he could get reelected. And I thought, is he trying to take his own advice here? And that's what he's trying to do. He, you know, accuses, and we go back with the projection thing, you know, whatever he's accusing someone else of doing is the thing that he is going to do or wants to do. So I try to judge everything that comes out of his mouth with that view of projection. When you offer a thought, what we need is a countervailing group or person, a countervailing leader, somebody can call him, call him on all this stuff, including, for example, his failure to get involved in the group that's trying to do, you know, terror, terror reduction in New Zealand, you know, led by New Zealand. And that crown is involved in that. But for some reason, well, I know the reason that Trump and the US is not involved, incredible, incredible. Incredible. What are we saying? You know, it's OK. It's OK to walk into a church and shoot people. Very fine people on both sides. Very fine people on both sides, including the ones who are dead. You know, extraordinary. So, you know, I guess the question is who can respond to him if there are 23 candidates out there who are democratic and they have to distinguish themselves against the others. So by definition, they have to undermine the other candidates who can speak at the same level or at hopefully a nearby level to answer what he's doing and to hold him accountable. It's not happening in Congress and it's not happening among those candidates. And Elizabeth Warren is getting pretty vocal. I've seen her kind of stepping up. She's always been very vocal. They have to think differently, I think. The candidates have to say, look, we all concede that A and B, whoever A and B are, will be our candidates. We're going to make a choice. We're going to make a consensus, a pact, a pact. And those will be our leaders in the party and in this campaign. And we all get behind them, whoever they are, and they will speak for all of us, and they will respond and hold him accountable on every single thing between now and the election. I agree. I agree. I think that's the only way it's going to happen, because if they start turning each other apart and by the time you get to the general election, you're, you know, your final candidate's been so tarnished and beat up that they may not do all that well in the general election. Provided the election is even safe and secure anyway. Two counties in Florida were hacked, we know for sure. And why didn't they tell us? Why didn't they tell us? And then I saw an article about this big hacker convention thing. They had a group of children, right? One 11-year-old hacked the voting machine in less than 15 minutes. And the rest of them, all of the group, they all were able to do it within an hour. You've got to tune in next week, because my observation is these shows get more interesting because what's happening gets more interesting. Yeah, no break, we didn't even have time for a break. It threatens us more, it hurts us more, but we need to do it. And I really enjoy you guys doing it. And next time maybe you'll tell us how you really feel. We'll try. We'll dig it up. I don't remember doing that. Thank you, Aloha. Aloha.