 Good afternoon, Jay. Good week. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech. Every Wednesday we do Trump Week and we call this show The Big Week for Trump Week, namely that there's a lot of material to cover. So I'm remote today and so is Tim Apachele. Tim is in fact in Tahiti and he's by phone and I want to say hi to him and thanks for the effort of making the connection from Tahiti. Hey, good afternoon, Jay. I appreciate it very much and I'm glad to be here and what a day, what a day we just witnessed with the vote and lots to talk about. Yeah, a lot has happened since our last Trump Week. I guess we should talk first about the most recent things, but we have miles to go here. So let's talk about, gee, let's talk about the State of the Union last night. What did you think about it? Well, Donald Trump was the ringmaster. Donald Trump got exactly what he wanted. He wanted this reality TV show to play and he wanted to play for the introduction for the 2020 election. He used the State of the Union, a very kind of solemn occasion, for his campaign kickoff and boy, was it a kickoff. It was like a rally. It was like a campaign crowd where everybody went wild, at least on the left side of the aisle. The Republicans were hearing every single sentence. I've never seen that before and certainly Congress has never seen that before. They stood up and gave him a standing ovation every time he finished the sentence, any sentence. What was remarkable about it was that these sentences were lies or exaggerations right on through for a 78 minute speech. Extraordinary, how many, he added to his quota yesterday in remarkable terms and told us more fibs than you could ever imagine. I guess that's what happens with him. He can't help himself. What's more important is that he'd be a showmaster or a ringmaster and run for office and fool everybody. You know, it reminds me of Huey Lawrence. He was fooling at least some of the people all the time. Well, were there any notable statements that he made that are worth mentioning, Tim? Well, of course. Well, first off, before I talk about the statements, let's look at the action. What was the action? What was the show? What was the reality show that he portrayed? Well, number one, he gave that girl a scholarship. I mean, it's almost like watching an Oprah Winfrey show. You know, I want to get something out of this game show. Number two is he wanted Rush Limbaugh, a Medal of Freedom. Rush Limbaugh, you know, that's what he has been for all these years and he's been, you know, I'm sorry, but he's been passed and loose with the truth. I mean, if you remember, Rush Limbaugh was the very person who was after the Bertha Movement. Okay? This is Black History Month. The Bertha Movement and the Medal of Freedom, the Rush Limbaugh, seems to be at odds with one another. He also, you know, he talked about the military officer with his family, that reunion. That was strictly out of a game, so laces kind of, let's get the point on the viewership here and let's see what we do with that. I'm sorry, but it was just too much. It was too much for me. It was all props. Then there was the Black Tuskegee Airman, who was 100 years old, who he promoted to general right there. That was really kind of gross, I think. A lot of drama, a lot of the reality show. In fact, the whole thing was a show. And so, but the people loved it. They loved it, and the Republicans came in, you know, carloads of, you know, compliments, and they agreed with everything he said, and they applauded everything he said. It was really remarkable. And it's just right in the middle of an impeachment, right in the middle. And that goes on. And P.S., did he mention the impeachment at all, Tim? No, of course not, and he was told not to. And quite frankly, I didn't think he was going to follow instructions, but he did. You know, the one thing that was missing out of yesterday's speech, the Union speech, was them handing out baskets of bread like it did during the Roman times, during the gladiator games. I mean, to keep the masses happy, that's the only thing that was missing out of the yesterday's show. It was that. It was a show. And it was strictly for his base, and to keep them, you know, keep them energized and keep them happy and keep them moving forward with the 2020 election. It was a disgrace as far as I'm concerned. And let's not forget that he did overly avoid the shake Nancy Pelosi's hand. He did it on purpose. And what message did that send? Well, and her message back to him was she whipped up his speech, which I thought was a pretty clever thing to do. I would have done that. I thought about it. You know, the whole notice of all the women, all the Democrat women were wearing white. There was a message there, and they were sitting throughout, only on the message. The message there was the 100th anniversary of the right to vote. The women did wear white on that. And to make that known, that women are the voting population of this country. But remember that. Well, this was supposed to be a state of the union. For most presidents, it has been a statement of union. This was different in the sense that it was not a state of the union or a statement of the union. It was a statement of the disunion. This president has been so divisive, even right there in the state of the union. He was divisive by ignoring Nancy Pelosi. And it's very clear from what happened with the Republicans standing up and applauding everything he said that going forward, when they have that election, I think it's today, the vote is, you know, on the impeachment. There's no way, there's no way that Trump is going to get impeached. Because he was making his case, this was effectively his testimony about what a great president he was, and the country needs him. But there are very few Republicans, senators, that are going to vote against him on this, and he will sweep into an acquittal, don't you think? Well, I agree, and that's why I almost fell out of my chair when I read and heard the words of Mitt Romney as to why he was going to vote guilty on the abuse of power, the charge, the impeachment charge against Donald Trump. He basically said the following, guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust. And he said, you know, I'm a very religious man, and therefore I'm voting my conscience, my religious conscience. But he did say three reasons why he didn't agree with the several Republicans. And the first three reasons was that the number one reason that the Republicans thought that this impeachment was invalid is because there was no statutory crime. Well, we all know that high crimes and misdemeanors does not need to have a statutory crime provision in it. That's not how the Constitution was written. Number two is he cited both Joe Biden and Hunter Biden as a basis for why this was important, that that should be brought in. But although, you know, maybe Joe Biden overlooked you and his son was doing in the sun gathering this money, that might not have been appropriate. It certainly wasn't illegal. So that was, you know, he came out against that argument. And last but not least is the reason not to impeach according to Republicans is leave that to the voter. Well, Mitt Romney correctly cited the purpose of the competition. That's not the voter's right. Power of the Senate, that is the provision of the Constitution. And that would be the power to be exercised at that moment is not to leave this for voters, but to have the Senate decide. And if those three reasons are why Republicans failed to impeach, they were falsely reasoned. And Mitt Romney, I think, accurately described that. And what did you think of Adam Schiff? I, you know, his closing argument the other day was so good, I said to myself, this is really more than a litigator. He's a philosophy litigator. He's thought it all through. He understands, you know, the nation. He understands the Constitution. He understands the social science that underlies our democracy. And his closing comments were, as all of his comments really, throughout the impeachment trial were so excellent. What did you think, Tim? Well, I'd like to just read a direct quote from Adam Schiff because it struck my heart. And I think it was dead on. And I think Mitt Romney actually might have listened to Adam Schiff. And Adam Schiff said the following, Truth matters to you. Right matters to you. You are decent. He is not who you are. Is there any one of you who will say enough? If any father say every single vote, even a vote by a single member can change the course of history. It's said that a single man or woman of courage makes a majority. Is there any one of you who will say enough? Well, I think Mitt Romney heard those words. And I think that's probably maybe what Mitt Romney was thinking as he decided to take a very unpopular possession that he was going to vote against Donald Trump. That Romney will be ostracized, as he mentioned in his speech today. He will be ostracized beyond belief. Yeah, he will. Because that's the kind of thing that is Trump's calling card. But you know, I was so impressed as you with Adam Schiff's remarks. They were Shakespearean. They were poetry. And they struck right to the heart of it. He really understands what's happening. And he portrayed that so well. And you'd think that the Republicans would listen more than just Romney, but lots of them would listen. But they didn't listen. And they won't listen. And they did not listen on the motions. So the eight motions that were made early on at the beginning, they voted as a bloc against anything that Democrats came up with. And they voted as a bloc to stop witnesses and to stop any further testimony or documentary evidence. It's extraordinary. And then they did ignore and will ignore Adam Schiff's remarks, brilliant remarks. You know, one thing though, and from the part you read, it reminded me of Shakespeare, it was in Julius Caesar, I think, is where, you know, the speaker misstates what's really going on. Because he wants to put it in relief. He wants to show you how absurd it is. You know, he's telling the Republican senators, you know better, you are good people. You don't do this. You would not acquit. You would convict based on the evidence. You would have a fair trial. But they wouldn't. They haven't. And they won't. And so I think he was, he was maybe appealing to them at some level, but more likely he was just showing that they're not good people, that they're not, you know, conscious of constitutional limitations, that they don't understand. That was really the message. And in that regard, it was Shakespearean what he did. All of his comments were brilliant, but that part really stuck out of me. I thought that it was intended to get them to come over, but it had virtually no chance of success. And we'll see. Because I think they'll vote, you know, as a block on acquittal. And you're right. I agree that Romney will get punished. And anybody who votes against Trump will get punished because that's what he does. But what we have here is this strange Jones down, you know, June Jones kind of affair with these people, you know, who you would assume are better people are really getting down in the gutter and voting for everything that Trump wants, everything that Trump does it. It's the politics of fear. It's the politics of irrationality. It's the zombie politics, as one writer called it. So I'm, you know, I'm wondering what you think, Tim, of the social psychology in politics here. How did he get all these people who voted against those eight motions? How did he get all these people to vote against further events was so obvious that that should happen. How did he get them to stand up on every sentence he gave yesterday and to cheer him and send his praises? And how is he getting them to vote right down to, you know, a block again for acquittal? What is it by threat, but express threat of their midnight phone calls? Or is it by implicit threat? Or is Mitch McConnell calling them in the middle of the night and threatening them in his own way? Do you have any idea about how you could get rational people to do that, to go along with irrationality? How does this happen? Yeah, yeah, I do. I actually do have some thoughts. And these are the thoughts that we've been talking about since we started Trump week, bit by bit, slowly, movement by movement, a violation of this law, that law, slowly, he's worked his way up to this point. It didn't happen with a life switch. He has slowly been eroding their independence of Congress with a wall and the national emergency. You name it, he has slowly eroded their authority and he's convinced them that whatever he says is the only way, the Trump way, in which to proceed. So I do not think this happened all of a sudden. I also think that the threat of imprimaring them out, their concern for their own jobs, their own position in the Senate, has mightily influenced their vote and their ignorance and their ignorance of the Constitution and the rule of law. They don't see that anymore. They have walked away from their oath of office and that's why I shout out to Mitt Romney again, is that he cited this oath, if I don't mind me, that he was gonna follow the Constitution and the preservation of the Constitution. And he cited that specifically in the very first part of his speech. So, you know, Mitt Romney is really a patriot in my mind on this. I know he's gonna be, again, he's gonna be hated. He's already been disinvited from CPAC and I guarantee you he would be stripped of every vestige of his office and he will be despised. And he has another long five years ago as Senator. And I guarantee you, Mitt Romney, that he knew well knew this, so about, you know, Trump's outrageousness. And it's sad that he's been reminded of the Enabling Act of 1933 where Adolf Hitler, Hitler got the Reichstag. Both houses vote a majority or better who allow him to make all the legislation going forward. How far are we away from that now? These guys would find, will follow Trump anywhere on any issue. Again and again and again, the Senate has surrendered any discretion they might have had and as you say, they have completely breached their oath of office and violated the Constitution in the process. So, you know, how different is that? We have an emerging dictator now because that's so many commentators that said, if he is acquitted, it is quite our encouragement for him to do the same thing again. It was a discussion this morning in the Times, I think it was, where, you know, some Republican senators said, he understands he won't do it again. The impeachment itself was enough to dissuade him from doing it again. You can fool me on that. I think the impeachment and the acquittal is a clear message to him that it's fine to do it again, do it all the time because it's been found legal. You know, whatever happened here has been found legal and sure enough, in the way of good pathology, Trump's the kind of guy who's encouraged by this and will do it again and worse. And so between now and November, you can watch for it because it'll happen again and again and again and it will affect the election. Let's move on to the election for a moment. You know, at the same time he was making his, you know, remarks in the State of the Union, Iowa was coming apart. Would you care to comment about that, Tim? Well, this was Donald Trump's dream come true because what he's gonna do is say, let's say six months from now, the polling numbers are showing Trump not as high as he would like, or he's gonna show that, you know, he's losing. He's gonna start using that rig election mantra as he did in 2016. And what perfect time now he uses evidence to election the rig by the Democrats because in Iowa it happens. That's the conspiracy theory that he's gonna, you know, he has a perfect example of how that could be happening because right now people don't really know what happened. They were given an explanation that it was a theory to always have something better than that. And in this case, because they was an effort to push Joe Biden out or bottom line is Donald Trump will make great hay out of that. Well, we certainly moved ahead on that in terms of a mess by the Democrats. But then, you know, the Democrats are a statement of democracy. You know, what did the talkfield say, that you know, democracy is tumultuous. And certainly we have plenty of that. Iowa was tumultuous. Whatever the reasons were, the fact is they couldn't handle it. And the newspapers are now saying they should not be treated as a leader and an exemplar in these caucuses for purposes of selecting a candidate. And I agree with that. Both Iowa and New Hampshire are small. They neither want to have big cities, neither want to represent modern America in terms of its diversity. Let's move on from that. This was not a good experience for the Democrats or for the country. And if you were beginning to lose confidence in the Democrats or the country, this would enhance that. And it would certainly work in Donald Trump's favor. And here it is now. Today is already Wednesday. That election was held Monday night. We still not know for sure all of the ballots cast and who actually totally won in terms of the results. It's unbelievable. You can blame the app or the programmers who, you know, who programmed the app who are probably headed to faraway places right now. But the fact is it happened and it is a bad statement about how things work in Democratic primaries and courts. Anyway, so what happens now? What happens now? So ultimately it's gonna be Bernie or a voter judge on the top. And I think they're going to New Hampshire and see what they think. And then we'll have, what is it? It's a Tuesday, whatever. And I see what a number of other states think. And ultimately we're going to settle on some candidates for the query of the likely winners of the likely candidates from the Democratic side will be able to beat Trump. Because I mean, take somebody you can face as a socialist. There's a lot of people in the country are not going to vote for him. Take somebody who was an, you know, a gay, you know, admitted gay, open gay, a lot of the country's not going to vote for him. Even if it's highly qualified. So I mean, it doesn't look that good that Democratic, you know, community and field candidates who will beat Trump, you think? Well, I think a lot of things. So number one is we could use that argument like we would a judge doesn't likely gonna be able to make the grade. But I would say the same thing about Barack Obama. I really don't think that a lot of people thought an African-American could become President of the United States and he did. And I like to the judge. I think he would make a great person. He's a little young, probably lacking a little bit of the more natural experience. But the bottom line is he's smart. He knows how to bring people together. He's not divisive like Donald Trump. I think people are starving for that. They're tired of this polarization. And I think who the judge could possibly do that. As you stated though, he has, he has medicine. He's paying, he's living, he's married to another man. And you know, middle America, conservative America, they may have a real problem with that. But guess what? Conservative America, middle America also had an issue with Barack Obama. And he was elected because of the United States. So the chance of this can happen. I think, you know, again, we'll see what are the polls for in the future. Just one note about the Iowa caucus bill. This was about the popular vote. And good at judge did an excellent job of gathering those delegates. And those delegates, he got, you know, persuaded to come to his side. CNN always shows it as a percentage of votes in the count of the votes coming in. Those are two different things. So I think good at judge really did a great job in his on the, on the ground game. And he did well and it shows in his, his numbers. I saw him last night on, you know, one of the channels and they asked him, you know, what do you, what do you, what do you think about what happened in Iowa? And his answer was masterful. It was careful. It was diplomatic, you know, because the full vote's not in. It was, it was a certain modesty to it. And his remarks were poetry. It was really good copy and it was off the cuff. Not like Trump reading, you know, a 78 minutes of, of, of the teleprompter. Wooded judge is really, really smart and he's really articulate and he's consistent and he's honest. And I think, you know, that the bright side of this is if a guy like that gets the candidacy, then maybe we all get around him. Maybe we get over the gay thing. Maybe we get around him and he becomes a kind of JFK or an Obama and everyone follows him because he is obviously a noble individual and he has vision and he is, as you said, he is a uniter, not a divider. So maybe, maybe the good news is that this is all, this whole is bashing between, you know, the various contenders, democratic contenders is destructive for now. When it gets resolved and there is a candidate, and I hope that soon, you know, we can, maybe we can find our way to all get together and support that candidate and have a real election instead of a Trump runaway. But, you know, Trump is gonna, as we said before, Trump is gonna try every dirty trick. He now is liberated and he can get Putin, he can get anyone he wants in the world, any country and force them, you know, using aid and whatnot and geopolitical leverage to help them with all kinds of mischief. And I think he's gonna do that. Why not? He's liberated. So at the end of the day, you can expect more of that. We expect more of Putin's divisive, you know, tweets or misinformation, disinformation. And we can expect the social media to get right along with it and to republish that stuff. And we can expect all kinds of events that are very divisive. So at the end of the day, I'm very worried about the honesty of the election. And even without talking about, you know, gerrymandering, without talking about voter suppression, which are also factors that are gonna play in this election, I'm very worried about misinformation to the people and divisive issues among the people and third parties overseas or in this country, spreading the wrong message and confusing everybody as they certainly are, as the Republican Party would certainly like to see them. So it's a matter of confusion between now and November. So even if a voter judge or a burning standards, you know, comes out with a clear mandate and a clear candidacy query, will they have the opportunity to make their case? Are we gonna get through this or not, Tim? We have no choice. We went forward ahead. And I think Nancy Pelosi said it best last night. It wasn't just regarding the State of the Union speech by Donald Trump. She stated it really well and that it was, he shredded the truth, so I shredded the speech. And how long has he been shredding the truth for the last three years? So I think Americans, I think most independents, Democrats, some Republicans who are fed up with Donald Trump, they're gonna see the rhythm of that statement because I think we're all getting tired of this over 6,000 lies. And I think it's up to 6,500 lies. We're tired of it. We're tired of the divides of this. We're tired of his grandiose three-ring circus mastery. We're tired of all these things that Donald Trump has brought this little last few years. I think we're looking for a little sanity placed back in the office of President of the United States and the prestige of the office itself. And I think the Buddha judge, Slovachar, Joe Biden, any number of candidates, we're going to have to get behind that person and move this forward and beat Donald Trump. Good, so, okay, so we had a very interesting week. We didn't cover everything, there's more to go, but let me just ask you what's gonna happen next weekend. And let's assume for the moment, I think it's a good assumption that he will be acquitted. Then he gets back to doing his regular thing. And we have that to speculate about. Certainly on front week, we'll cover it week to week and connect the dots, dot to dot. But what do you think is gonna happen after he's acquitted and as we go forward? Or it's so many, what do you call it? It's so many animals in the ring, so many issues in the circus. It's really hard to pick stuff. But what do you think is gonna emerge as his next, as his next direction? What we direct, direct? Three things, let's look at two things for sure. Let's see what this vote, there's 53, 47 votes to acquit him. Let's see what that does for the senators in the purple state. What kind of fallout are they gonna start getting? Maybe it will be known, maybe most of them will be unknown. But how does that gonna impact their ability with a constituent? That's number one. Number two is, what is the long-term effect of this vote? There's acquittal of senators, Republican senators, and on how they continue to follow or not follow Donald Trump to the very word and letter of 50 cents to LB. So I'm looking to look for those two things. There's the fallout. We'll look at how he responds and to see whether or not those Republican senators say, okay, you're crossing the line again. And to see if they put any brakes on his unbridled progression towards 2020. Yep, lots to watch, lots to come. And we cannot really anticipate or predict all that much of it, but we will follow it. We'll follow it next week and the week after. Thank you so much, Tim. Tim Apichella, Trump Week. Thank you. Mr. Jay, Aloha, and thanks for having me. Aloha. Aloha. Take care.