 It's Wednesday. It's Trump week. I'm Jay Feidel. This is Think Tech. We're going to talk about Trump. We're going to try to connect the dots. Tim Apachele and me. Good morning, Tim. Hey, good morning, Jay. You had another great week. This has really been an interesting week. You know, we predicted this. Our job is to connect the dots. We saw the, gee, it was two weeks ago now. We saw the acquittal. And now we're finding out, you know, how that affects him. It's emboldened him in every which way. We predicted that he would attack the press, but it looks like that has yet to happen. Soon enough, he's going to be attacking the press, too. But for the moment, he's attacking his own government. He's attacking the Justice Department. And he's doing this trick to show who's boss by partnering with his people. So what you have is, aside from the individual events, the individual actions the president is taking, what you have is a larger picture. And the larger picture which we draw, bring this program, is that he's now emboldened. He's going to show you who's boss. Let's talk about the pardons. What did he do? And if you can, why? Well, I think the statement that he put out, I believe it was this morning, he proclaimed himself top cop. He's the top cop in the nation. Well, I always thought that was the attorney general. I didn't know that was going to be the president of the United States. He's proclaimed himself top of everything. Stable genius. Only I can fix it. And now he's the top cop of the United States of America. So what has he done? He has basically offered so many pardons for white collar criminals. It appears to me that he's trying to normalize white crime, white collar crime. Like many things he's tried to normalize. He's tried to normalize lying for over 16,000 lives from Donald Trump. He's tried to normalize kids in cages. He's tried to normalize hate beach groups. He's tried to normalize everything. Now it's white collar crimes and he's trying to let everybody off. And I think I have a reason. I know why he's doing it, but it would be a prediction more, more so than a fact. What is it? Well, what's the number one thing Donald Trump is really worried about? And especially in case he doesn't get reelected. There's a little place called the Southern District of Manhattan, somewhere in the New York area. And I think he's scared to death that someday they're going to file charges against him once he's out of office, once he's no longer president of the United States. And I think he's trying to normalize white collar crime. The things that he's been would be indicted for. And why would I be indicted if it's normalized? That's just my theory at this point. But you know, that wouldn't come true for either four years or in the next 12 months after he got out of office. So who knows how this is going to go? Yeah, well, you know what? You misspoke a minute ago to say white, white collar crime and funny that none of the, not that I know of anyway, none of the partners have been anybody but white and his friends. And let me offer another thought here. And that is that he's trying to normalize Roger Stone. He's setting the stage for Roger Stone, which is going to come Thursday. And he doesn't want to do Roger Stone, you know, as a one shot, one pardon arrangement. He wants to do Roger Stone in a bunch of, in a bunch of partners. And so this is the way he sets the stage and tries to normalize it for the benefit of Roger Stone. And my guess is that he will do exactly that because it is an outrage. And because he feeds on outrageous. He wants to outrage everyone. So he keeps on doing it. The outrage is really made complete by the fact that 1100 first 1100 prosecutors complained. And most of them. No, 1100 prosecutors signed a letter. And now it's double that double the number of prosecutors that signed that letter complaining about what he's doing in the pardons and his way of treating the Justice Department. William Barr, who I don't believe ever, said that if this makes it so hard for Trump, so hard for Barr to, you know, do his job that he may resign. I don't think he's going to resign. I think his drama is sort of the kind of drama you'd see in a reality show. Suffice to say, I think he's setting the stage. I kind of agree with you. He's setting the stage for more of this going forward to pay off his friends, even when they get prosecuted. All of his friends that got prosecuted are going to get pardoned, one by one or groups by groups. And it's because he's untouchable now. He believes that probably rightly so that the Democrats could never mount another impeachment proceeding. It's too close to the one that happened. And he can paste it as just another witch hunt and all that. So the bottom line is from now until the end of his term, hopefully that will be in November or at the end of the year, January 19th, January 20th, he is going to do this kind of thing. And we're going to see more and more of it because he's been exonerated in the impeachment trial. It won't be another impeachment trial. I think that's clear. And so he's taking advantage of that. And he's going to do my prediction is that he's going to do more and more of this going forward. It'll be outrageous, outrage upon outrage, as you can imagine. In fact, things you can imagine. And it's not only going to be domestic, it's going to be international. And furthermore, he's not going to do the right thing, only the wrong thing. You know, he hasn't done anything about the virus. This is a leader of the free world. This is the United States of America. This is the people who thought up the Marshall Plan after the war. These are the people who are charitable in kind. But we're not doing that. We're not stepping out. We're not stepping forward. We're not really helping anybody to beat the virus. He's busy. He's busy exonerating people. He's busy reveling in his own acquittal. So I think what we have here is a pattern. We're going to see him again and again, because he's doing it, because he can do it. What else is he doing? Tim, can you identify any of the other things this week? Well, let's talk about where this is coming from. I think it's all his friends and buddies in Mar-a-Lago. They have the Presidents here. You know, you have Milken, Michael Milken. He's been given an acquittal. And where did that come from? Out of left field. So he's taking the advice of friends and family, Roger Ailes and company. And he's, again, he's letting everyone off of the pass. And he's trying to normalize it just like we've been talking about. Now, where is this going to ultimately get him? I don't know. If this is a message for the judge on the Roger Stone case, I don't think he's helping Roger Stone. But maybe he's trying to send a message to the judge that, look, I don't care if you give Roger Stone 10 years or 15 years or eight years, I'm going to basically going to fight a pardon for him within the next 12 months. Maybe that's the message he's trying to send. I don't know. Bottom line is, what does the voter think about this? Is he trying to, I feel like sometimes he's trying to convert the country into his own little Gotham city where corruption is normalized and accepted. And people just don't question it any further. They just accept it as a reality. And I really do get the sense I'm watching a Batman movie here. And Donald Trump is the Joker. Oh, yeah. And, you know, right now his polls are up again. The more outrageous things he does, the higher his polls go. I can't believe him. I think it's 49 is and 51 against him. But that's pretty close. And it does not give you, you know, an optimistic feeling about the election going forward. A lot of people in this country like him. I don't understand why he hasn't really done anything for them. And he has threatened them, you know, with with cutting the budget on social security. That's awful. That's going to hurt all the people who rely on social security. And there's millions and millions and millions of them on Medicare. Same thing. And Medicaid. Same thing. So what you have here is he's putting their heads right in it, and they still support him. It's madness. It's Jim Jones and Jones Towns, a pope thing. And, you know, it was the thing on MSWC last night where one of the senior editorial reporter, a woman said, you know, this thing is going to catch up with him. He can't avoid, you know, some kind of consequences for what he's doing. Then one of the others, he was formally in the Obama White House, I think, he disagreed. He said, no, no, he can get away with this. He is getting away with this. And it's not at all clear. It's going to catch up with him because the more time that passes, the more judges will be judges that he appointed. And it's the new normal. And it's the new reality. And it's the new alternative facts and all that. And people don't understand it. All those people in the red states who support him, all those right-wing conservatives, lots of them, they give them money, they support him, and they don't understand that he's coming for them. It's the ghost of Christmas future. They don't understand that it's going to affect them, that a cut in social security is going to affect them. And I think people walk around saying, it's okay. It's all right. It's not going to affect me. But it is. So let's talk about that at the incredible time. Let's talk about that for a second. His voters in some of the red states, I assume that some of his voters are blue-collar workers. And a lot of them at an age where their bodies have been working all their lives and they're getting in their late 50s or 60s. And a lot of them, because they've been working in physical labor jobs, their bodies are worn out. What is going to be cut in the proposed 2020 budget? A lot of money off the social security disability. Now, I can see a lot of Trump voters who are still working but their bodies are worn out actually probably would qualify under current guidelines for social security disability. Well, guess what? He's going to cut out probably about 900-some-odd billion dollars out of this program. And won't that be good for those folks that actually need it and have the ability to apply for it? And there'd be a chance that they could actually be granted social security disability. Not under the 2020 budget, it won't. I don't understand. Back when, a couple of years ago, when people began to state their position on the issue, a certain number of people that I know said they supported Trump. It hasn't changed. I don't think I know anybody who was supporting Trump who said, I'm stopping. I'm not going to support him anymore. These things he's done get impossible for me to say. I don't know anybody who's actually changed. In fact, I think they're probably under the hood. There are a lot of people who've changed to support him. Even though we haven't done anything to the country, everything he's done overseas has been a mistake and a danger. I mean, the idea, for example, a couple of months ago, there were a couple of roadside bombs killed Americans. And so he attacked. Remember that? He attacked. And he moved planes and bombs and all those. He can't kill our people like that. Okay. Then we have fast forward till now. We have these ostensible negotiations, peace negotiations. They can deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan. And that's really strange because it was only several weeks ago where he said, I'm never going to make a deal with those people. They keep on killing our soldiers. So these negotiations going on right now, and two Americans are killed. And he says, well, okay, two Americans are killed, but I'm still going out into negotiations. The change of position depends on what he had for a hamburger that morning. This is quite extraordinary. And he's making a mistake after the mistake in terms of dealing with the Middle East. I can't tell you anything he's done right. We're dealing with Europe. We're dealing with the EU. We're dealing with China. We're dealing with North Korea and so on and so forth. We can spend the whole show just talking about his international mistakes, how he's lost it for the United States. But if you do that, they still like him. Okay. So here we go. We're in tonight. In fact, maybe happening very soon, a matter of hours. We're going to see the Democratic debate. And we'll for the first time include Michael Bloomberg. Very important because, you know, it's clear, I think it's clear to everybody that Bloomberg, maybe beyond all the others, can actually face Trump down. He's been around the clock. He knows the score. He's been the mayor of New York, which isn't easy. And he can face them down. He can answer them, you know, shot for shot. Who New York is going at it, you know? That'd be all right. But the Democrats continue to shoot at each other. They take snipes at each other all day long. They can't help themselves. And they are busting their own chops, shooting themselves in the foot. I'm really curious to see how this debate goes tonight. Where are we, Tim? And what do you think is going to happen? Well, it is a circular firing squad. And I always see the media trying to discount Michael Bloomberg. I think that Michael Bloomberg actually has a lot of appeal for those voters who are disenchanted with Donald Trump, particularly some of his past policies in New York. It's kind of right up their alley, like to stop and frisk policies. You know, that's something that Donald Trump would do. And they kind of like that kind of stuff. So Michael Bloomberg actually does have some appeal for disenchanted Trump voters. I also think that Michael Bloomberg has appeal for the fact that he used to be a Republican. Remember that. And though he's a Democrat now, but people remember him as a Republican. So he has a lot of things that, you know, he's not a progressive. They like that fact. And Michael Bloomberg may be that centrist of a candidate that Democrats are going to kind of have to be forced to go along with because they don't want Donald Trump to be a second-term president. But also he may be middle of the road, centrist enough for Republicans and the independents to say, okay, I can swallow his medicine. I can go with this guy. So that is a real threat to every candidate right now. And he's got the money and the resources to pull this off. He also has the hoodspot enough to stand up to Donald Trump, not be intimidated and throw it back in his face. So we'll see how this goes tonight. And I think he's going to probably do fairly well. I hope so. You know, I've noticed, I read the Washington Post every day. I've noticed that the Post has really let go on Michael Bloomberg. They've been criticizing him and, you know, putting negative stuff on him every day. In fact, I think it was the headline, the Post, maybe the Times, went into a book that was created about Michael Bloomberg years ago, decades ago, where he makes these, you know, remarks. And he's an absolute if not deleted, you know, remarks in the course of his business to his people, the people of employees around him. But, you know, what strikes me is that there's no rape charge. There's no claim that he violated the law. There are Supreme Court judges that have been off on their employees or have used, you know, explicit deleted craciology. And they got on the Supreme Court with consent. So, you know, I don't know what the big deal is. And so what you get in the Washington Post, anyway, article after article about how Bloomberg is a hard-nosed guy and he doesn't treat his people all that well. So what? Is that, is that a reason to disqualify him? But I don't understand is why the Democratic, you know, institutions are attacking him this way. They attack him for his money. They attack him for his choice of words. They attack him on every level they can. Why is that? What he is, in fact, as you say, a pretty viable entity. And they're attacking for spending the money. I can't believe it. Trump was claiming he didn't need any contributions in 2016. But now he's claiming that Michael Bloomberg is running on his own funds. I guess he's changed his view in that regard. So I guess if everybody is complaining about Bloomberg, then that means Bloomberg must be real threat to everybody through the Democrat candidates that are running with him and to Trump himself. It gets a good thing to be criticized because it means they care about you. Query, will the people care about Michael Bloomberg? Will all these complaints have a negative effect on his candidacy? I hope not, because I think he could win. And I don't think that Bernie Sanders can win. It's nice to know that all the young people, you know, support his left-wing, democratic positions. But I don't think that's going to get, I don't think that's going to win an election where you have 49 against 51%. And Trump isn't done with dirty tricks. Trump is not done with dirty tricks. And some of these articles, some of these threads you see on social media and the like against Bloomberg, I think originated with Trump and Mr. Putin. That's what I think. So what we have here is, you know, we're already close to the ninth inning with seeing this unfold, with seeing shakeouts, so to speak. A lot of Democrat candidates are going away or will go away. And at the end, it's going to be Sanders. And I don't think Biden actually, and hopefully Michael Bloomberg and who else? How is he going to unfold? Do you have a prediction? Yeah, I do have a prediction. And the prediction is very simple. If Bernie Sanders is the democratic nominee, Donald Trump will have a second turn. That's one prediction. Number two is Bloomberg is an outsider. Bloomberg has made some enemies. And as Winston Churchill best said it is, you've got enemies. That's good, because that means you've stood up at some point against someone. And having enemies is necessarily a bad thing. And I think he's got a shot at it. Let's not forget about Buttigieg and Kovachur. But, you know, again, I like Kovachur a lot. I think she's a centrist, but I just don't know if she has enough America, enough money, a number of a ground game to get her the nomination and then certainly be a affordable opponent against Donald Trump. So, you know, I see three candidates as viable. Joe Biden, I wish he was, but just losing steam. So we'll see how he does tonight. Maybe he resurrects his numbers. Maybe he resurrects some of his support and followers. And we'll see what happens after tonight. We'll certainly know if whether he's in or out by Supercute Day. So stay tuned as they, no news at 11, as they say. Yeah, well, we have a few minutes left. I want to return through the underscore point here where we started. And that is the demise of the Justice Department, the demise of the federal judiciary, and thus the demise of the country. You know, if you connected the dots with it, start a schematic on the wall about all the things that Trump has said and actually done, like a pointing bar to, you know, pull a rug out from under the federal judicial system and the Attorney General, the federal justice system, if you will. This is extraordinary. He's really made huge strides in that way. And he's done huge profound damage to maybe justice system in this country. And to say nothing of the damage he's done to Congress and how Congress is, you know, has been completely castrated, you know, in doing anything for all this time. You know, the government is falling away and Trump in declaring himself the Chief Law Enforcement Officer is telling us that he wants to be dictator like these other guys, like Putin, you know, like Kim Jong-un, like Xi Jinping and others. We live in a time when dictators have a chance and Trump is taking that. But what really, really troubles me is we spent 200 years plus in building this system and refining this system and putting, you know, moral overlay on this system. It works for everybody, just as the founders wanted it to. The country's built on that. And Trump is pulling the wings out of all of that every day. It's like we really need to stop him. That's why I was so happy to see those former prosecutors writing the letter. That's why I was really happy to see the federal judges have a conference call. I think that was scheduled for today. But what to do with a president who does command and influence not only in the military, that was improper, but with the federal judiciary calling the judges' names, telling them what to do, telling them to protect his friends. Somebody said, it's out of a banana republic. It really is out of a banana republic. And he's ripping apart, you know, the basic structures of our country, the things that people must be confident in for our society to continue. This is so critically important and so critically dangerous. I hope that people in the red states understand that whatever happens, if their particular silos are improved or not, you know, whether they really understand or not, you can't help but understanding the country is changing for the worse. The constitution is being essentially ripped up. I can't tell you how strongly I feel about that. And a lot of people I know, but we all seem so powerless to actually stop him. The only way to stop him is with a big election against him. And the problem is, he's going to cheat on that election. I am not optimistic about anything right now. How about you? Yeah, I am optimistic. And the reason being is because people have recognized how far we've gone in three years, how far the constitution, the rule of law has been stretched to its fifth degree. And I think there are people who are now engaged, even though they don't talk about it all the time. They're going to talk to their friends, they're going to talk to their families, they're going to talk to those who are never voted before or not registered to vote. There's going to be an effort. And I'm hopeful that that's going to win the days, particularly in the swing states. But let me just address one thing you said, Jay, as you know, he tries to normalize bad behavior, bad policies, the rule of law, as you said, castrate Congress. Should we be surprised when he could elevate a war criminal by the name of Edward Gallagher, the Navy SEAL that committed and convicted for war crimes? And he elevated them and tried to promote them as a hero? If he could do that to an Edward Gallagher, why is it funny for us? Or why is it not unique that he's trying to elevate criminals that haven't served their terms, that he's given all sorts of pardons out? He is, again, trying to normalize that, which we don't want normalized. And I think people are fed up with it. And I am hopeful for the election. We just got to get it right. Jay, it's great to stop him short of an election, but all these bad acts, even than cheating in the election, is to have proceedings going against him. Court cases. That means testimony. It means evidence. It means standing up and being courageous, like Lieutenant Commander Venman. What he wants to tell us by essentially retaliating against anybody he can find who testified against him is, you testify against me, you take action against me, and I'll find a way to get you. And that really dampens the possibility of stopping him. How else can you stop him but the election? You can't come out with pitchforks in the street, and the vote may be, this may be a set-up election, you know, with him and his friends in Russia. So what can we do is the problem. And Genman stands there as a 10-foot sign to everyone, you want to testify, you want to go against the president, even if you're fully entitled, it's not required to testify, it's going to get you. So what are our options if you had one minute? Well, our options were the same options in 1776. That is, those farmers who, you know, were loyal subjects of the crown, King George III, what made them and what motivated them to put everything on the line, risk everything, their farms, their livelihoods, their families, the livelihoods of their wives and children, what made them get up and grab a musket? And I'll tell you that it was one thing, because they were being oppressed. They were being severely oppressed, and they weren't given allowed a platform for grievances. And we are finding ourselves very closely to those days. Now, you don't want to pick up a musket, I hope, but I think they're going to pick up the dogs. I suggest violence. It offers a perfect opportunity for it. Another I think that what we have to do is we have to take the Vindman case, and we have to not be intimidated. None of us can be intimidated. We have to write. We have to have the program. We have to testify. We have to, you know, initiate civil actions. We have to cause our officials to initiate civil actions. We have to do this many, many, many times. And in that way, it'll be clear in the press. I know it's going to attack the press, but in the press and among everyone you know that we, that courage counts, and courage to speak out counts, hurry to call them out on this. That's what counts. That's what we can do. I want to make sure I get this out before the still is over. I said it's important not to pick up a musket. It's important to go to the ballot box, and that's how the democracy works. That's how we preserve the Republic, and that's what I hope happens in 2020 election. Amen. Thank you, Jim. Thanks, Jay. Thank you for the question. We're getting to do this. We're getting better at this. What can I say? I'm Jay Feidler. This is Think Tech. Trump Week. We'll see you next week. There'll be more. Aloha. Be it. Aloha.