 It's our high point on Friday. Possibly our high point of the week. It's Trump week, okay? With Tim Appatella and me on a Friday at 11 o'clock. So much. And today our show is about chaos. All over the board, but nothing good. Or no good can come of it here on Trump week. So the first thing I want to mention, get your reaction is, what is this sentence for Manafort? That's kind of strange. He was bad all the way, was bad with dealing with authorities, bad with dealing with the court. And he gets a 47 month sentence. That's peanuts. And the world is looking at it as peanuts. A lot of complaints all around the country. A lot of people are, you know, again losing confidence in the institutions of our American democracy. What do you think? First off, salutations. Good morning, Jay. Good morning to you. Good morning. What I think about, you know, all the newscasts say, this is a big surprise, big surprise. Why is a big surprise? It shouldn't be. Judge Ellis from the very get-go was challenging the prosecutors about everything they brought to the table. Again, you know, about Manafort. And he was, you know, disputing things right from the get-go. It was down on the mother people. I remember that. Of course, of course. So, a 47 month sentence, to me, wasn't that surprising. But, yeah, I mean, I think it was on the extreme low end. But you know, the bottom line is we're going to see what the Washington D.C. judge, Judge Amy Jackson, she's going to basically sentence for his pleas of guilt regarding witness tampering and breaking the agreement with the investigation team. So we'll see what number she comes up with. My prediction, 36 more months. Okay. So that's three years plus four years is seven years. He's 69. But he served nine months, so you get to subtract that out. So take a year off. And so that's six years on top of the, six years from now, he'll be out at 75. And I didn't see anything about a fine. Was there a fine they were talking about? Yes, he has to make millions. It's a $50,000 fine, but there was, I want to say it was 20 million that he has to pay back. But the fine itself was $50,000. Okay. So a lot of millions of money has to be paid back. Good, but not to the court. Good, but not great. You know, this was not the kind of thing that makes your heart throb. It's not the kind of thing where you feel that the checks and balances are working. Well, when was the last campaign fine manager thrown in jail? John Mitchell. Yeah, that goes with the Nixon administration. So this, it's a, it's a, it's a forerunner of other things to come. And consistent with, you know, our thing about nothing, nothing good will come of any of this. Okay, huge trade deficit, huge $891 billion trade deficit, worse than expected, worse than before, even in the light of all this, you know, stomping over, over the tariffs. What happened, Tim? Well, if you look at the irony, irony of it, when he came into office, what was he complaining about vehemently? The trade deficit. Yeah. So it was an ironic that now he's been in office for two years, and the trade deficit through his tariffs and great negotiation with China and the rest of the world, Mexico and Canada. Gee, the trade deficit is extremely, extremely high and far, far greater than when it was when he entered office. Yeah. I find that ironic. Ironic? Well, I hope, I hope his base understands the damage he's done, because not only has he increased the deficit he was supposed to reduce, but he's wrecked our diplomatic relations with so many countries. Just what I read this morning, that Europe is now requiring visas from American travelers, because the immigration service is requiring visas from European travelers. I mean, we're a step further away from our earlier relationship with all of Europe. What a guy, he's doing a great job, isn't he? If you're Europe, why would you not? Tit for tat. You want to treat us this way, we get to treat you that way. So, I mean, it's just, this gamemanship is spiraling down. Great negotiator. So, yeah, we got, and we had this really interesting nothing burger negotiation. You and I spoke about it last week with Kim Jong-un in Vietnam just last week, where nothing happened. And he came away trying to make it sound like he did the right thing. In fact, he was unrealistic. He wants him to give up all the nuclear weapons when the nuclear weapons are their cause celeb. That identifies them, that gives them leverage and voice in the world. They're not going to give that up. So, it was an unrealistic expectation. It was a personality diplomacy, single person diplomacy, which never works. And it was a failure. And since that time, the most incredible thing is Kim Jong-un is back building nuclear facilities. And it was not two days after that meeting when the, I guess the NSA or one of the intelligence agencies advised us that they had photos now showing that there was a renewed construction of nuclear facilities in North Korea. Wow, what a deal. I wonder what his base thinks about that. Well, let's not forget also the tag onto that. And that was giving Kim Jong-un a pass on any involvement with the death of that young American who died in the hands, basically died at the hands of the North Koreans while being incarcerated. And the social impact and the damage to Donald Trump was tremendous on that. So you have no advancement of nuclear disarmament or the stopping of their program, but you also had this horrible thing and he gave them, like everyone else, he gives them a pass. Yeah, all the dictators get a pass from him. That's because he admires them, wants to be a dictator himself. So is there a need for another meeting at this point? No. Since they didn't do their homework at all and they didn't realize of how entrenched North Korea was in their desire to retain this technology. He pulled the rug out from his own negotiators. He's decimated the State Department. Our Secretary of State doesn't know which end is up. Our Secretary of State recently took a position against the award, an award to a journalist in Finland, I think it was, somewhere in Scandinavia, because she had written anti-Trump things and they pulled that support. Social media accounts and it wasn't complimentary. They were retracting, but the official response is it was an error of announcement. She was wrong name in the wrong slot and that's how they're trying to sell this one. I don't believe that. Of course not. Anyway, so now he's got a meeting ostensibly coming up in a few weeks with Xi Jinping. And I think Xi Jinping knows everything that you and I say. Maybe Xi Jinping watches the show, who knows? He's not going to get anywhere with Xi Jinping either. Xi Jinping has learned to live with the tariffs. Xi Jinping is running the One Belt Road Initiative all over the world, developing other markets, other opportunities, other investments, right under Trump's feet. And Trump has isolated us and we're not participating in that. So I'm not sure that it means a whole lot to Xi Jinping to try to satisfy Trump about anything. If I were to lay out a theory and that is Donald Trump makes the assumption that because he's won over a fairly good percentage of population through his cult of personality, that he can do that with other foreign countries. Right. Right. And it's not working. It's not working, thank you. It's not working. And it's not going to work with Xi Jinping as he's a smart guy and whatever you want to say about his repressionist moves, he's in control of the country and most Chinese like what he's doing. Even the social scores, they like that. They feel that it helps to discipline people in China and seek excellence. That's their view of it, I think, a lot of them. Okay. The likelihood of reversing the emergency. So we've had the House say let's reverse the emergency. There were some Republicans in the House that voted against that. 11. 11. They were amazed that the Republicans are holding the ranks. They've had some defectors but mostly they're holding the ranks. On the stupidest, most unconstitutional move that Trump has made so far. The most damaging move to the United States that he's made so far. Now it goes to the Senate. And the Senate hopefully give it, take one vote or so. The Senate will also reverse the emergency. Then it goes on Trump's desk. I think it's going to happen. Well, he's already proclaimed he was going to veto it. It'll come back to see if there's an override. If there's enough votes for the override. There's a lot of senators, Republican senators that have expressed their disdain for this. But they haven't officially come out for it. So we'll see how many votes will actually get close to an override of that veto. And it's, do I think it's going to happen? Unfortunately not. I wish it would. But I just don't think they'll have 67 votes in there. Yeah. We can all be mad at the Republicans about that. But the more potent result of it is that our democracy has been damaged and calculable damaged by letting this guy do a national emergency when there is no national emergency. It leads to dictatorship. And we'll all be very sorry about it in the years to come. But right now the Republicans don't see any of that. Let me ask you a question. Okay. So if it doesn't, you know, there's not an override the veto, it will go to the courts, the Ninth Circuit, the Fifth Circuit. Does that allow, while it's in court, does that allow Donald Trump the funds that he wants to pull from either the Army Corps of Engineers or wherever? Does that allow him the funds to begin this wall? Somebody is going to have to issue an injunction. Nobody has yet. It's pending how many states are up on it. 16. Yeah. Somebody is going to, some judge is going to have to issue an injunction against the application of those funds. And it hasn't happened. I'm getting less confident about this all the time because it's all under the shadow of a Supreme Court that has been politicized. Nobody is confident that Supreme Court will do the right thing here. And so we, you know, we don't think it'll be an override in the Congress. And we are really not certain of the Supreme Court. And, you know, the government is in a really bad place. The balance of power isn't working. The separation of government is not working. And this goes through the question of the census. You've heard about the census. Correct. There are two courts, East Coast, West Coast, that have ruled that the Secretary Wilbur Ross. Yeah, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Right. In making citizenship a question on the census questionnaire, violated the Constitution. And in my view, he did violate the Constitution. So two courts have said, that's not acceptable. This is unconstitutional. And now with the government, the federal government, Trump's federal government will take it, you know, his Attorney General will take it to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court will decide whether that question is unconstitutional. But it remains that the Republicans, over the past few years, have done everything they can to suppress voting. Right. And reapportioning. Because they can't win any other way. Right. So, you know, the question is, how are guys like Kavanaugh and Roberts going to vote on that? You know, the court is turning conservative. And they're turning Trump. That'll be another, you know, another earmark of where we are. Well, Kavanaugh is a question mark. Roberts, I think he has voted against administration. He is certainly on the Affordable Care Act. He is, you know, it's not like he's in lockstep with the administration. He has looked at the law and has opined and actually ruled that was contrary to the Republican Party. Well, the Louisiana abortion case. Yeah. He ruled, you know, in my view, the right way. He ruled to overturn the losing. I don't want to make the assumption that just because they are appointed by Donald Trump or George Bush that they are in lockstep. They're Supreme Court justices. And I'm going to put out hope and faith that they will follow their mission and their oath and look at the law and respond to it that way versus a blind allegiance to a conservative ideology. Well, we'll see. We'll see how politicized they are. We'll see. Two cases coming along. The docket keeps building. Yes, it does. One is the emergency case. Right. And the other is the census case. Okay. Let's take a short break. I think my head hurts now. Okay. We'll come back and we'll see if we can get Cynthia Sinclair in here to join us. All right. We'll be right back. Hey, loha. My name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii airing every Wednesday here on Think Tech Hawaii, live from the studios. I'll bring you guests. I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe, your coworkers safe, your family safe, keep our community safe. We want to teach you about those things in our industry that, you know, may be a little outside of your experience. So please join me because security matters. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Wendy Lo and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at two o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii. And on our show, we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about, whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means. Let's take healthy back. Aloha. Aloha and welcome to At the Crossroads. I'm your host, Keisha King. I'm live at five every Wednesday where we have entertaining and educational conversations that are real and relevant, both here in Hawaii and across the globe. I'll see you at the Crossroads. Aloha. Okay, we're back. We're live. You will notice there's a change in our composition. Cynthia's here. Welcome, Cynthia. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. So during the break, we were talking about CPAP and Tim reminded me that CPAP is not the right word. That's when you, that's to prevent you from gagging in the middle of your sleep. That's not happening yet. Okay. But you know what? CPAP could also, you know, help you gag in the middle of your sleep. So, okay, so let's talk about it. So next week I'll be wearing a CPAP and see who will I? Maybe so. I bring my team. Depends on what happens. Okay, CPAP. What happened and why should we care? We should care because, again, if this show is trying to connect the dots, if you really watched a two hour speech, we're going to connect some dots on this one. So what's the first thing he did? They're playing Lee Greenwood, you know, proud to be an American. Well, they played that for the last, you know, 10, 15 years. And, you know, it's quite effective. And of course he came in and people say that he hugged the American flag. I thought he groped the American flag. It was not a pretty visual and I wanted to take a shower after I saw that visual. So, but what, what the importance was that he, he actually knows how to get his loyal 35% and even more. And it's, it's partially due to a couple of things. One is he has tapped into this national feeling that rural Republicans, rural Americans have been ignored and dismissed by the elite West Coast East Coast cities. And he's tapped into that. And he has them. He has them, no matter what he says, what he does, they will follow him because he understands that they've been ignored and dismissed and disrespected. And when we talk about, where's the connection? When we talk about how can these people follow him with all these horrible things he says and does because he remembers them and he has given them assurances that he won't forget them, even though he has, was trade deficit, you know, trade tariffs and things like that. So there's actually a book out there called Dignity Seeking Respect in the Back Rural of America by Chris Ornod. And he, he writes to this point that the Democrats need to understand this, get on board with it and start paying attention to this very serious, serious polarization between urban and rural America. And they don't seem to really get into that. They don't. Well, they don't want to because they, there's a point to be made about it. And they don't want to admit it. They have to admit it. They're going to, if they want to win, they're going to have to admit this polarization. And then the connect the dot, one thing was, you know, back in the 2016 election, we had a candidate by the name of Mitt Romney. If you watch CPAC and you watch all the things that he said, Mitt Romney came through, his words came through three years later and I'm going to just quote him very quickly. Mitt Romney said, here's what I know. Donald Trump is a phony. A fraud. He promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He's playing members of the American public as suckers. He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat. And a big trade deficit. Big trade deficit. And a destruction of the Constitution. Right. For the national emergency. What a bargain, hey. Yeah, we're being, we're being damaged every day. What's going on? So, you know, those words from Romney sound like the words from Michael Cohen. Yeah, they do. What happened with Michael Cohen this week? Seems like his testimony last Wednesday was not the end of it. No, he's been in front of the closed sessions twice, right? Mm-hmm. And apparently he showed up with lots of paperwork and documentation and they asked for it and he brought it. Apparently they, I guess that they had sent it back to him and returned it to him and then he went through it and found things that back up his story. Okay. Which I think is really remarkable. That's coming back to me, really. Right. Exactly, I think that's a lot. This is the talk about how maybe Michael Cohen was trying to get a pardon. Where did that go? Well, I don't think it was unreasonable in the very, very early stages before his office was rated to dangle that out there and have his attorneys contact their attorneys. Well, and that's all it was, is the attorneys. But it was certainly well before his office was rated. Yeah. Well, now he's saying I would never ask for a pardon. I don't want a pardon. I wouldn't ask and I wouldn't get. Well, and his lawyers said that they did talk to him. Back in the day. Yeah. Right, back in the day. Which I think is normal. I don't think that changed their testimony. I don't think it does either. But now Trump is saying he asked me personally. He tweeted this morning that he, that Cohen asked him personally for a pardon. But who do you believe? I certainly don't believe Trump. And I, it's hard to know but I think that's the biggest thing, right? You know, we have seen altogether too much of this. I don't, I don't, in my lifetime I've never seen a president who would pardon an obviously guilty criminal person. Okay, for political reasons. Not carrying one whip, whether the guy was guilty, whether the guy received a fair sentence and all that. The idea that he would hang out with that sheriff in New Mexico. Arpaio. Arpaio. The idea that he would, you know, flaunt the pardon in so many ways, so many circumstances, not for legitimate pardon purposes, but only for political purposes. And now again, this conversation about whether Cohen might have been pardoned. Cohen's a criminal. Yeah. He pleaded guilty. You're going to pardon him? What? You're going to pardon Manafort? Let's see what happens. You watch. You watch. I think that'll happen. I don't mean to disagree but I remember a president by the name of Gerald Ford. And he had someone that admired that he did pardon and that was Richard Nixon. And Richard Nixon was a bigger crutch. True shay. True shay. But this is sort of different. We had a guilty plea. That's the difference. Yeah, a guilty plea and it's not just one large person. I think he did it out of, maybe there was an underhanded deal there but he did it out of some kind of humane purpose. In this case, it's just to let his friends off the hook. Yeah. And it's not honest. It's not fair. It's in your face. And I don't think the base or most people in the country understand just how wrong it is to pardon our apio. Apio, yeah. To pardon Manifold if he does, to pardon, to even think about pardoning Cohn. What is going on here? He's manipulating the justice system. And how can people feel confident of the government if the president can manipulate the justice system? Like a crooked sheriff in the wild west. Well, I think when he pardoned our apio, it was a big statement that, look, you can be racially bigoted down there at the border. You can go after as many Hispanics as you want. You can hurt them. I don't care. Go do it. I really think that's kind of what he was saying in that process. Okay, let's move on. Let's see. To women's day? Oh, sorry. The poll. Yes. Because this ties into what we were just talking about. Yeah. And that's the national poll that was taken out. And I thought it was very interesting that 64% of all voters believe that Donald Trump committed crimes prior to becoming president of the United States. Wow. 24% did not and 13% not sure. Now, if you ask that same question to just the Republicans only, interesting results, 33% think, yes, he did commit crimes before becoming president of the United States. 48% no and 12% not sure. The point is, that's a high percentage for the Republicans. It is. But it's what's the takeaway from that? If 33% Republicans thought he committed crimes before the office, are those 33% still going to support him? Yeah. You know what troubles me? It's the same thing as pardoning people. This guy, he did crimes. We all know. Whether he admitted or not. He did crimes. I remember the bus thing. Remember the bus thing that was something Hollywood on the bus? Oh, oh, oh, right. His video. Yeah. Planet Hollywood. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's that he did really bad things. People, religious people could never condone what he did and yet religious people support him. The base supports him. And that's a new one, isn't it? A new one that we keep on supporting a guy who we know has committed wrongdoing, all kinds of wrongdoing. And what does that say about the government and the way that people feel about the government? It's a personality issue that we talked about 10 minutes ago. That is, he is tapped into this polarization of the rural America, the Republican conservatives, and the quote, unquote, the elite West Coast, East Coast city politics. And he's tapped into it. And so they're willing to look past the rule of law. They're willing to look past all these horrible things he says, the racist things, the misogynistic things he says. They're willing to look past all of that. Why? Incredible. Well, because of the cult of personality issue. Yeah. Well, we can't. Okay. Anyway, so part of that is the, what's it going to say, security clearance for Jared and what's their name? Ivanka. Okay. So he gave, there's no question in my mind, he gave security clearances to both of them at the top of the run. Okay. Complaints now. People from the intelligence agencies coming forward and saying they advised him not to do that. And that there's risk and danger in that. But you know, we talked about it last week, but you know, you know, he's doubling down on it. Right. They still have their security clearances. They are still employed by the federal government. They are still doing his thing. They're still in the White House. He knows a turnstile for all those people in and out, like Bill Shine now, left as communications director. One of many, it was something I think in the Washington Post recently about all these changes. It's really astronomical about all these people coming and going, but not for Jared and Ivanka with their phony security clearances. I just don't understand how the government can get along with this revolving door kind of mentality. Well, we know that Jared is closely connected, as in good friends with Netanyahu. We know that Jared is very much the one that was behind moving the embassy to Jerusalem and moving the capital there and all of that stuff. So I think with his security clearance, he has done a lot of things that have caused a lot of issues in the Middle East. And I don't think it's right. Intelligence agencies losing confidence. I mean, they've lost it already. They've lost any relationship with him, zero relationship. And the military and the State Department rank and file, not the Secretary of State, but the state rank and file. And the people have no confidence in the system around security clearances. And this takes me to the last point of our discussion because we don't have any more time, but foreign policy. We have one person doing foreign policy. And, you know, he's doing something with Venezuela, which I don't think is constructive at all. You can't do foreign policy with Twitter. That's not the way you do it. Thoughts about what's happening in Venezuela now. It seems to be decompensating completely. It's going to be in a state of nature, certainly. And, you know, Trump has done nothing to help that. But let's not re... Go ahead. The Venezuela has been lights out now for a couple of days, and Maduro is blaming U.S. interventions in it. So he's down there just really causing trouble and blaming it all on Trump. Yeah. And I say let's not have a repeat of history where Venezuela becomes the new Cuba, where Russia and China now have already, you know, sided with Venezuela, this current administration in Venezuela. And let's not have that conversation in that conflict because we don't need another conflict. And we don't need it in Venezuela. Yeah. And, you know, we don't need Russia to start, you know, putting their nuclear weaponry in Venezuela. It's already there. Yeah. But we don't need any more. We don't need any more. That's right. You know, this is a very timely show every week. You know, if you wonder about whether it's going to be timely in any given week, no problem, it's always timely. And it's going to be timely next week. But can you look into the future for me, you guys? I ask you this every week and tell me what you think is going to come up next week. Are we going to have any good news or bad news next week? I think more things are going to happen with Manafort because, remember, he's got to go in front of the judge in Washington now. And she's not as accommodating, I should say, as the other judge in Virginia. So I think we're going to see quite a bit more explosions from that. I think we get more discussion about the override of the veto regarding the national emergency. That'll fill them. That'll fill the airways, for sure. And I think you'll see Republicans jockeying for position on this, particularly those senators from purple states, blue states, that they need to think about the 2020 election. And you'll see them out for sure, given their opinions and why they voted for or against. So I guess next week we have to think of another title for next week's episode. It'll be something like the emergency sucks out all the oxygen. And the first 20 articles in all the major news papers are all about that. And we will cover it. Yes, we will. Cynthia Sinclair, Tim Appichella, thank you so much. Thank you, Jay. Appreciate it. See you next week. Trump's week. Lo Ha.