 Trump Week. It's so hard to live in this country these days and be faced every day with the risks and the craziness of this president. Every day something. It's a reality show that covers our whole lives. And I think that people are really, A, they're getting tired of it, they're getting fatigued, and that's understandable. But B, I think they're getting kind of depressed about living in a country where the future is so uncertain, and the truth is so elusive. Anyway, okay, today I was driving in and there's Trump on the radio, and I come into the studio, there's Tim Apachele, Cynthia Sinclair, and listening to the same Trump on the radio. We are on the same page, you guys. What was the context, Tim, of the talk on the radio? From my initial impression as he's going down to litany of accolades for himself and his administration and his brilliant performance at the UN meeting, it was almost like a state of the union speech, a validation of this administration and the critical need to keep it in play for the nation and the future of this country, and barely, barely acknowledging this very serious, gravity-laden impeachment charge against him, and he's barely scratching the surface of that. I also noticed that he's throwing the whistleblower under the bus, and he's throwing the media under the bus, a classic strategy to damage the credibility of the media that reports this, damage the credibility of the whistleblower that's going to provide the evidence against me. Start, you know, doing what I can to damage their credibility. That's job number one in any kind of, you know, poisonous rhetoric. At the same time, I have friends everywhere. I have friends in every country in the United Nations. They're all my buddies. We send sweetheart letters to each other and all that stuff. We've had all these wonderful, quote, perfect meetings, end quote, and we're going to make all these big deals. No deals are made, you understand. We're going to make all these big deals. And one remark that I, well, myself, I said, wait a minute, where's Congress on these deals? I mean, doesn't Congress approve this stuff? He can go off and sell off to the sunset and make deals with 35 countries and be proud of it and nobody knows what it is. Wow. Cynthia, what did you think of the speech? Well, I just heard him say that he doesn't need Congress. He can talk to these people himself so that when you ask the question, where's Congress? That's where he thinks Congress should be anyway. Congress is non-existent, involved, involvement-wise with this whole thing that he's got going or that he thinks he's got going. To me, I was really surprised by the timber of his speech because I've never heard him sound so in control and careful and each word was placed just right. Usually he's going off of this way and I've got this and it was at first my first thought was, oh my gosh, he sounds like he's on drugs because he was talking so slow and metered. And I'm sure it was that same he was trying to make it sound. We couldn't have seen him because we might have seen the teleprompter. But you know, I disagree with you. We did see him. I totally disagree with you. I'm sorry, but we did see him because he was looking and he was looking down at speech. Oh, he was. Okay. Yeah. He was rambling. Yes. He was making all kinds of strange characterizations about people. As Tim said, he was attacking everybody who isn't on his team. He was talking about his cabinet and well, those in his cabinet who were the biggest stooges in his cabinet. He was talking about Larry Cudlow. That's my favorite. He's economic. What? Advisor? What? And he was talking about them in first name. In first name, like it's a family. We love each other, you know. We hate anyone who doesn't agree with us, but we love each other. I also felt that he was repeating himself. I also felt that rather than it being a state of the union message, it was a pure political appeal to his base. But let's talk about that. I mean, so he has serious problems. There isn't any media, including Fox News, that doesn't understand. He has serious problems. They may find different issues than CNN and MSNBC, but serious problems. So here's Trump coming out of the box. First thing is, he spends time at the UN. You know, I find that fairly remarkable, because, you know, the UN is all about climate change and climate action on climate change, and he gave that one 12 minutes or something. You know, this is all political for him. But the question is, isn't this what's happening in the last two now three days of his machinations at the UN? Isn't this all a response to his problem with the whistleblower? What is he doing here, and how does he intend it should affect the national public opinion on whistleblowing and impeachment? Impeachment. Yesterday, impeachment. Well, since this program first went on the air, and certainly years before that, what has come out of our mouths time and time again is his ability to distract the silver, shiny object. This speech is nothing more than a distraction, trying to divert attention away from the seriousness of this impeachment vote, or excuse me, the impeachment inquiry. And the bottom line is, we know how good he is on distraction. And I've got 14 points right out of the gate on this speech to distract us from this seriousness of this impeachment inquiry. Were the points he made true? I kept thinking, wow, the newspapers are going to have a good time with this. You know, in truth versus lies, they're going to be able to find a lot of lies in there. Well, here's the one I like is that, you know, there's no president but me that has changed things around and make America number one. And the people will need to realize that if I'm not around or whoever the next president will be number two or number three, he said, I have brought trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars into our economy. China has lost trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars and lost millions and millions of jobs. This is hyperbole at its finest. Not true. Not true. That's what hyperbole is. Great lie. And there are people out there, I hate to say this, whose educations take them to believe what he says. They believe that they accept it. And I heard one lie after another. I hope the Washington Post, he called them the Amazon Washington Post. I love that. Conflating everything about everybody. They're all bad. They're all in a conspiracy against me and just another, you know, witch hunt against me and it's a hoax, he said. How do you react to that? I mean, what do you see from all of this as his MO in dealing with the crisis he has on his plate right now? Well, right now I see him providing cover for the fact that Rudy Giuliani was in Ukraine and was poking around and he has no reason to be. Now, suddenly he says he was sent by the state and the state does not support that. So they're trying to make it that he's there for a different reason. He's there to investigate the Russia hoax. And so it's like he's just trying to provide cover for things that are going to be coming down the pipe that he can see. So many lies. This reminds me of the discussion that Jared had about adoptions. Adoptions in Russia. It's a lie. It's happening, you know, you have to be a fool to accept it. And you know, there are people who will accept it. I'm sorry to say in this country, but the press, at least the press I read will not accept it. He's going to get called on it. Let's look at historical perspectives. When Richard Nixon was at towards the end of his presidency, the approver rating for Richard Nixon was 38% 39% from the American public. So this will be no different. Donald Trump will have his 35 to 40% loyal base. It doesn't matter if he's cut shooting someone down on Fifth Avenue, he will have a continued loyal base. So let's not be surprised on his support. No, I mean, you know, there was a piece recently in the last couple of days about how his ratings have grown up his base ratings, the base numbers have gone up, which is very, very troubling to me. He made a quote on that he's reaching them. And he's he's sort of making it come true that if you get if you get impeached, if you are spacing impeachment, there are more people that like you, you can capitalize on and make self even more popular incredible demagoguery. Yes. Well, his quote here during the speech was any poll you see about Donald Trump add another 10 points on top of it. He goes, I don't know how that happens. But it does happen. And it's happened for me. You know, so he's you know, he's conflating numbers. He's he's creating a reality out of the ethereal atmosphere. And I don't know how he gets away with it, but he seems to be pretty successful. So he's getting away with it. Well, let's see what happens in California. California he's withholding billions from their public works project that were already appropriated already in the pipeline. Now he's withholding because he's mad at them. He's mad at them. Does this sound like the manipulation that's going that did go on is going on in Ukraine? You know, it's playing with money, manipulating people using money, dangling carrots and sticks. By the way, $391 million. These events took place 90 days ago with the whistleblower, he still didn't get the money. Well, the conversation haven't come through. Well, I mean, listen to the transcript for the conversation. One minute, the, you know, they're talking about anti tank missiles. And then Donald breaks into you can do a favor for us. You know, you can do a favor for us. We've the United States been very good to you. That's so much we crane good for us. And you know, the president says, from Ukraine says, Well, we buy your oil. This is like something out of the godfather of one movie. Hey, it's out of the Michael Cone testimony. If you remember, he said in so many words, Trump never told you specifically what to do. But he found a way to communicate it by innuendo. And he went through a whole MO thing about how Trump works. And it's replaying right now in that whistleblower complaint. By the way, we have a summary of the telephone call one telephone call that was apparently another one. Trump said he'd make the first one available. I'm interested. A summary, though, it's a summary by the people who were listening in on the line. And I guess they write it down. It's imperfect. Where's the tape? Where's the actual we've been talking about transcripts now for three days or more since the weekend? Where where's the transcript? We have a summary. We don't have the transcript. Here we go again. Here we go again. Thank you. That's exactly right. Yeah. And then you think about all the different reasons that they have and the different committees once Nancy finally came out and said, yes, this is a formal impeachment inquiry. You know why she did that, by the way? Why do you think she was listening to us here at Trump? Is that what it was? Thinking it out. That's right. There we go. Help you understand our influence. Yes, even though I was slow coming to the party. Yes. We finally wore you down and brought you around. What made her turn? I think she was waiting for just the next big thing that she could use. I really is what I think he was waiting for. Because they were still going on with she was supporting all the investigations. She wasn't holding anything back. She was saying she wanted to see him in shackles. You know, I mean, she was not being light on him at all. But I think she was waiting for more groundswell from the people. And I think this brought it up for her a little bit. For me, it's very clear. This was easy to understand. It's short. It's sweet. It's simple. It's easy to understand. People can see black or white situation here versus the Mueller report, 400 plus pages convoluted. No one ever read it really the report and bottom line is this was something they can get their arms around say this is a clear abuse of power, presidential power. This is a violation of his oath of office. And we can do this in one page. You get a chance read Frank Rooney in today's Times. He has a newsletter, but he's also in the Times. He has a really wonderful opinion piece on this. One of the things he said, one of the things he talked about was the the Mueller report and how it really didn't get home. It didn't have any effect on anybody outside of the people, you know, who who's who would always have seen it as an attack on Trump. People who didn't see it, people who like Trump were not affected at all. So it really didn't have the effect we hoped that it would have. This as you say, Tim, this may have that may have that effect. So we didn't we didn't get the we didn't get the transcript. And there was something in the summary that said this may not be accurate, which I found very interesting. And then we didn't get the first transcript of the first call or a summary of the first call from said he would do that. And then we haven't seen them whistleblower complaint yet. They're still they're still stonewalling. We don't have it yet. Maybe today, somehow, I don't know, the guy supposed to testify in Congress, the whistleblower wants to come forward, the himself even, and he's tried to go through formal channels to make it happen in a safe way. And they're blocking him at every, at every turn, they're not giving him the information that he needs. In this speech, this press conference that just took place. The sixth point was, I have instructed everyone to be totally transparent on the release of these transcripts. But I also want Joe Biden and his son to be transparent on all the millions of millions of dollars he's gotten out of the Ukraine, the millions of dollars he's gotten out of China. So he has coupled this agreement to be transparent. And I don't know if there's a quid pro quo with I want to see what the Biden's come up with. I don't know if he's trying to strategize it that way, or he's actually going to not stand in the way to have this transcript released. As soon as you find him out, he turns it back on you. And he says, No, you think I did something wrong. Look at what they did, you know, changing the focus. That's why he always does it. He's across the board defense here. I mean, if we isolate, let's take a moment and isolate all the things he's doing. One is he still is stopping. One is we don't have the actual transcript or recording. Two is it's there. I'm sure. Two is we don't have the whistleblower report. We don't we haven't heard from the whistleblower. Three is and this just came out. I know if you guys heard this, but the National Intelligence Person, the National DNI DNI said to the Washington Post, he was going to quit. If Trump forced him to change anything in his in his action on the whistleblower, he's going to quit. And this was published this morning or yeah, I think it was this morning in Trump's speech. You caught that. What do you say? He said this is a total fabrication from the the media. He never would ever quit. He would never resign. And he is loyal. And he's not that's not what he does. Well, he got the guy to write up this paragraph saying, Oh, no, no, I would never quit. I'm not a quitter. Yeah. And that's what he announced. That's what he announced. And you know, that's part of the defense, you know, the defense strategy here. You compromise that guy. Now he's questionable. Who said who knows what he said, but he's of questionable credibility now. He's on the one side of the other side. So it's it's mushing it mushing things up. As you said, he turns he turns the criticism and he's getting back on those who criticize him. He always does that. One of the first questions is a meeting with the president of Ukraine at the UN this morning and his whole kissy face. And he goes to see these 30 35 40 people and claims that he's got great great relationships. And he makes this speech today. I'm sure I'm not catching it all. But you can see a strategy emerging in desperation about what is happening to him, what Nancy is doing, what Congress is doing, or least the house is doing. And you know, this is never your point. This has never happened before. He's never reacted like this. He's in full tilt route right now. And you can see it by the desperation of all these moves. We can see it anyway. And the newspapers, the good ones can see it. I'm not sure that the base can see it. They're going to believe what he has to say. USA. I was going to say something about that the whistleblower thing that we don't know for sure what's in the whistleblower's complaint. We don't know if it's about this one call. If it's about more than just this one call. Maybe it's a pattern of behavior that the whistleblower has seen. And he doesn't know that yet either, does he? I'm sure he knows it. He must know it by now, right? That's why he's so desperate. And he's probably got the attorney general all over it. Bar, our friend. And who knows what we're going to get instead of that. We don't have it yet. It's still being held under wraps. It should have been transmitted to Congress a long time ago. This was filed weeks and weeks and weeks ago. It's not months. The day after Mueller appeared in Congress. Right. But yeah, so where I was going with that is we don't know for sure what it is. But Trump did release that little bit saying well, when right after the the president of Ukraine, Zelensky, President Zelensky asked for extra missiles, anti-tank missiles, the very next thing that Trump says and he's going to release this, which is what doesn't make a little bit of sense to me. He says, okay, well we need a favor. You need to look up these guys. You need to go after the Hillary emails and you have to go after Biden in the very next response to when he says, and this is what Trump has released to us as the... And the context is interesting because he had already held the money up. I forget how long a week or two or something. He already held it up and the Ukrainians were saying, what happened to the money? We're supposed to get to the money. Everybody in Congress and everybody in the government said we're going to get the money. They don't get the money. And it's that context where this telephone call makes place and Trump called him. Trump called him. So obviously there was a message. The words of Michael Cohn ring in my ears. The innuendo is so clear what he wanted out of this. Well, you used a term and it's actually a very... A term used when it comes to rhetoric and persuasion. That is dangling carrots hanging swords. And that call was one in both. You know, here's the carrot. There's your money. The sword is you're not going to get the money unless I... You help me out. You should do this favor for me. I need a favor from you. Very specifically use those words. So there's a system going. There's a procedure going. What has to happen before you get to impeachment? That's some committee meetings and then somebody has to draft articles of impeachment. The House Judiciary I think has to look at it. And then it goes to full vote on the floor. Right now there are not quite the necessary votes. Five short. It's 2.13 and it needs to be 2.8. Who must be the last guy not to vote for it? I'm going to go up again and one more number after I looked at it. Yeah, recently. One this morning turned. Yeah. So it's close now and you know the momentum is obviously going that direction. And Trump isn't going to stop. Trump is campaigning like crazy. And we haven't seen all of his strategical moves yet. There'll be distractions. As you said, there'll be distractions I guarantee to try to get the subject to change. You know, he knows the news cycle changes every what 24, 48 hours. And he's going to try to change it with something else. You know what I'm saying? I made my statement of the United Nations. I made this long-winded rambling speech with all the lies and the obfuscations. Now I've made my statement. Let me see if I can distract them with something else bigger and better. Who knows? Watch what happens. Iran? Which one happens? Something else? The fight with San Francisco, with California? Something. You know, in the speech he goes to that raw meat thing. It's not just, you know, specific issues. He was talking about the wall and how great the wall is. He's doing 400 miles with the wall. He hits something again that goes to the heart of America. America and the Americans. And that doesn't matter if you're Republican, independent, or Republicans. And that is, I'm the one who's going to I'm the one who's going to preserve your freedom. The Democrats have forgot about the American people. I won't forget about the American people. So he's hitting really hard on these these nerves. And he's saying, and you're preventing me from protecting the American people by bringing up these these allegations of them, you know, of my impropriety and impeachment inquiry. Yeah. And he's blaming them for what they should be blaming. I mean, this is a mom and apple pie stuff going on here. Yeah. When they asked him one of his first questions after his long rambling speech, right, was a very specific what about this whistleblower? What does this mean? Do you think it's right for a president to behave in this way? And he immediately says, well, Obama did it. That was the very first thing out of his mouth. It was, well, Obama did it. And it's like, no he didn't. But, you know, like you said, turns it on someone else. Well, I'm very concerned that he's going to be relentless about this. Yes. And he's going to be focused about it. And he knows how to play the press. He knows how to play his base. And he could actually escape this as possible. On the other hand, there seems to be plenty of momentum going now. And if Nancy can just hold it together, if those horrified people, you know, in the house can hold it together, and they they draft articles of impeachment that are worthy and meet, you know, public opinion or at least rouse public opinion, then we could have a house impeachment. That would be really interesting. And then the Republicans will be tested. Republicans, by the way, this is another part of Trump's strategy, including your friend Mitch McConnell. My friend? Oh, no, no. Yes. Let's give them this summary. Yes. Let's give them the document really. When did they do that before? They've been they've been holding everything. Stonewall. Stonewall. Everything. All of a sudden on this, well, clearly that's part of Trump's strategy, right? Let's soften it up. Let's make the Republicans look good, and then we'll, you know, be able to soften the public opinion. But I wanted to get to one other thing about this. You know, nevertheless, while this is all going on, and it was in his speech, and it will be, these things will be on the flip side in those articles of impeachment, you know, I doubt, I mean, they've been thinking about these articles a long time. They've been smart guys drafting these articles. These articles are not going to be just about this event with the whistleblower. They're going to be about a lot of things that are, you know, not consistent. The monuments, yeah, we both start. The monuments is a good one, yeah. There was about that on them, we could just go right in. At least have it doesn't come to mind right away. I mean solid, not solid, just speculative, solid. And so those articles are going to be, you know, raising all the issues or all the major issues that we've been dealing with here on Trump week and right thinking people in the country, I must say. Meanwhile, and this is the point I wanted to ask you about, meanwhile, Trump has to stop doing his, his craziness. I mean, here we are with heat waves and climate change every and the threat of it. Here we are with Greta Dunberg making that fabulous speech. Isn't that great? It was great. How dare you? She says, how dare you? I loved that. Troubling about this speech, by the way, footnote, is that they applauded. It would have been better if they would have, you know. And I'm, yeah, applaud me. And you guys can do the same things you've been doing all along. I'm glad you appreciate me, but how about doing something? And she didn't reach Trump at all. There was this really incredible picture of Trump ignoring her and her giving him stink eye at the United Nations. That was stink eye. I saw that. Do you want to see definition of stink eye? That picture in the dictionary. I don't know if the base realizes it, but he is, as the leader, as the president of the United States, plus the, you know, the functional leader of the world, he has ruined global attempts to deal with climate change. You know, China's not doing anything. India's not doing anything. A lot of the countries in NATO are not doing anything because he has discouraged, he put it down lower on the priorities. Nobody cares. Nobody wants to spend the money. And so what we have is stasis on climate change. That's just one thing. When you think about all the other environmental and regulatory and social safety net things that he's doing every day, while this is going on, you know, in the United Nations, he's been really busy. You really look at it. It's like he has popularized that taking care of this planet be it water, air, anything is a very liberal thing to do. And why would any good conservative Republican ever want to be part of that? So he's really polarized taking care of the planet as a liberal activity. Yeah, dims. It's a dim thing. And all this, I don't know. How does this fit this against, you know, Biden's popularity and Biden's possibility of winning? Does it help him? I'm not sure that it does. And does it help any of the others? I think it might help. Elizabeth Warren and Elizabeth Warren came out of Iowa above Biden. And my own opinion is I think that Biden is too good of a man. He's got too much class to raise to the level of what it's going. I don't think he would do well head to head with Trump. I think that Elizabeth Warren would do better against him. Because I think she's got more power as a woman. And I don't think she would. I don't know. I guess she wouldn't balk at some of the things that he says. I think she'll just charge right in. Whereas I think Biden would be like, ah, man, I'm not even going to lure myself to that place. You know what I mean? How do you deal with it with a psychopathic person? Exactly. How do you deal with a psychopathic person? I don't know. Usually you want to get away from him. It's very hard to deal head on with him. What do you think? Right. Well, I forgot. I mean, I literally have so many thoughts going on in my mind right now. And I'm back in the context of this whole how rapidly this impeachment inquiry has taken place for where we were a week and a half ago. Right. Or a week ago. I don't know about you two, but I felt profound sadness. And it's a sad day for us to be in this position right now. And what makes it sad for me is that the guardrails, even though they've been there, they haven't been utilized by our Congress. And that means Democrats too. I know they've stood up and they've shouted. But not enough. And what worries me is we're looking at situations that we don't want any president to be in. And that is a president should be able to have a conversation with a world leader and not have those transcripts out there because that's going to inhibit all world leaders to talk with our president if you know that every transcript is going to be available. But here we are. And it's required and it's necessary now to have this transcript given to us and examined. And that's a sad day for this country and our government. I don't think it means that they have to get every transcript. Just the one that came from the whistleblower that the whistleblower has called attention to. Tim is right. This changes things. Yeah, once you set that precedent. Yeah, and we're there. And we're there. And it's not optional. It's required now. We need this transcript from a conversation with the president of the United States to the president of Ukraine. And what a sad day that is that we require that transcript. It's one of many, many things that are sad about Trump's presidency. How he's divided us. Even another president, even Biden, a much sweeter guy, could he fix that? Would he make all those divided camps come together again? Not right away. And what about all the countries that he's divided and the allies that he's cost us? Can Biden put that back together again? Not clear. What about the damage he's done in the Middle East and in North Korea, China, South America? Can somebody put that back together again? It took us World War II to create this leadership and all the years thereafter. Imperfectly sometimes for sure. But the fact is that it's not like we have it presumptively. We had to earn it somehow. And just because we have some money, which may be going away with Trump's trillion dollar deficits, you know, we may not be able to get it back. So this affair, which could, should cost Trump his presidency, is so important. And I join you, Tim, in the thought that the Democrats have not done a good job at dealing with him up till now. Thank you. They had the majority since January in the House. They could have done stuff, and they didn't do it. And now the question is whether they're akamai enough, whether they got the political will enough to carry this forward. The test is on them. And if they don't do it, and if he disregards it, or distracts us, or finds something to upstage it, which he will try to do, the country is in trouble. It's not just Biden. The country is in trouble. And for that matter, the world is in trouble. The world is in trouble. I was happy to see Nancy come out with that somber kind of an attitude. She wasn't all, Whoopie, let's go get him. There's nothing to celebrate here. There's nothing to celebrate here. And that's why I was really, I was really glad to see her come across that way and to present it to the public in that manner. I thought it was really important. Thank you, Cynthia. Cynthia Sinclair, Tim, Tim Appichella, thank you so much. Thank you, Jay. We're going to do this next week. Now that we're back together again, right? Back together again. Back together and being sad. Yeah. And being sad. All right, thank you. Thank you so much.