 Think Tech Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. On a given Friday, I'm Jay Fidel, and this is Trump Week. And our episode today is in a week of national madness. This is the week of the big reveal, okay? And we have Tim Epicella and Cynthia Sinclair going to talk about what happened this week in Trump Week. Let me offer a starting point, and we talk about the meeting of three. And I guess Pence was, you know, invisible for that meeting. Yes, he was. This was remarkable. I was getting emails from all over the country. You got to look at this. You got to see this. You got to see Pence, yeah. You know, this was about, you know, the government shutting down, and Trump was taking responsibility. That was madness too, but Nancy came out pretty well. She did. And so did Schumer. But you know, he was mad. He lost his cool. Schumer lost his cool. He got exactly what he wanted. Yes, he did. He got Trump to take responsibility. And everyone got what they wanted. Very good. Donald Trump got what he wanted, because his base ate that stuff up. Right. And they really did. And I think he was doing it. So no matter where you were, you saw what you wanted to see in that what I call an afternoon with the Bickersons. I'm telling you, everyone got what they wanted. If you're an independent, you're going, this is madness. But if you're on either side of the equation, Republican or Democrat, you saw what you wanted to see. I kept watching Pence, and he wasn't even turning his head to look at the right person while they were speaking. He was looking at Trump while Nancy was speaking. And he's looking at Nancy while Trump is speaking. And I'm thinking, okay, he's looking for reactions. No. And then it was like, there was no rhyme or reason to it. He was just thinking, well, I better turn my head now. It was weird. He was a national mannequin. He was. What I saw was Trump's thinking to himself, excuse me, Vice President Pence thinking to himself, if I just don't move and I don't say anything, they won't know I'm here. They won't know I'm here. That's what it looked like. That's what it looked like. Right? So the upshot, was the upshot. He took responsibility. He's determined to get his wall. Is there going to be a shutdown or not coming soon? He won't get support from his Republicans on this. He won't. That's what they're saying anyway. That's what I've heard the last couple of reports. So we said like two weeks ago, he's not, I don't think he's going to get it. Because it's just bad optics. Right. It's a useless decision. I mean, anyway, that he had, and he's sticking with a really ridiculous proposition. It's nobody, nobody's saying it's going to go along with that. Well, you know, Schumer was trying to get him to admit to the fact that the last time it got closed, it got shut down and everything happened, that, you know, Trump tried to blame it on the Democrats, whereas they had offered him everything he wanted, but he wanted more. He decided he wanted more. He wanted to blame them. And so he walked away and said, no, I'm not going to do this deal the first time. Who knows what will happen between now and then, because we may have the dreamers become part of this negotiation again, and who knows what might be resolved. And I doubt it, but it's, you know, that possibility is always out there. Well, I think that's why he kicked it back was because the DACA stuff that was in the proposal, so that's why he said, no, I'm not going to do it. And you heard about the child, the seven-year-old, who's retired. Yes. And how does it, how does it play with the public? Well, I know that I watched United Methodist Bishop being interviewed. There was a number of religious leaders that were arrested during a protest down there. And she was talking to Tucker Carlson on Fox News, and I was appalled at what I heard Tucker Carlson say. He said, so if I give you money and tell you to put it in the plate, then does that mean that I get better, something from God, then he'll listen to my prayers better because I put money in the plate? And that's what you're doing by not paying taxes as a church, a non-exempt church, right? As an exempt church, I mean. So he was trying to say that the United Methodist Church is a pariah against society because we don't pay taxes. And so she was trying to tell them every single United Methodist pays taxes not to mention the fact that they have uncor, which is just as big as Red Cross and just as big as, probably as big as FEMA even for the stuff that uncor does all around the world. And so for him to say that, I just was appalled that somebody could say that on television. And the guy is popular, people on Fox News that watch Fox News love him. And they think, wow, I'm sure he can't call himself a Christian. You know what I'm saying? No. One of the reporters from Fox News is going to be Ambassador to the United States. Oh, my gosh. I know I heard that. That's really extraordinary. Yeah. No real experience or confidence. So regarding the death... So regarding the death... Well, I guess to... You know, I just recently heard about it. So the question, I saw the director of Homeland Security, she said that, you know, this was an unfortunate circumstance, you know, this is what happens when you cross, you know, the border and you don't have, you know, the right provisions and these sort of things. So I don't know if the answer was, was this individual, this seven-year-old girl in our custody? Yes. Yeah. If she was in our custody... She was in our custody. Then that is a serious, serious problem. It's a negligent homicide. But she made it sound like she... This all happened while she was crossing the border and she became dehydrated and, you know, the whole thing. But if she was in our custody, U.S. custody, that's not a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the second death that we've seen in the past week. Remember that truck driver who ran a blockade there and they shot him? I don't care about that one. That was the second incident of lethal... Well, they've admitted that these retention centers were basically designed for males, not families, certainly not children. Yet that's who we've surrounded and incarcerated is families and children, with males as well. But this is a mess. Yeah, it is. It's a mess. That's what it amounts to. Immigration is a mess. Okay. Let's go further. Let's talk about the... I think everyone agrees that we need, you know, immigration reform, but not this kind of extremism that's going on. I think, you know, every Democrat even believes that we need reform. And I get that, but not like this, not where people are dying. It's an attitudinal thing. It's a moral thing, too. Right. It's a thing about mothers and children. Right. And it's a nationalist, populist thing, which is very regrettable. Well, this is the third thing that's bad for optics. Remember the first one was ripping children away from their parents. Yes. Okay. A few weeks ago, where you had tear gas going off in the crowds. Yes. You had children barefoot running with their parents in tow. You really need to do that. And now we have this death of this seven-year-old child. So these are just bad optics. And I would think, and I know, even the Republicans go, this isn't good for our votes and our confidence in our party. And they can't find people to be border patrol agents. Or chief of staff. Or chief of staff. Well, you know, Jared's on the list. So he might be next. I didn't mean to derail the conversation, but it's the same thing. I think they're leaving under protest, they're quitting under protest. Right. And nobody wants to take those jobs because it's too ugly. And that really makes a statement. Some people will take money over ugliness. Well, remember, you're going to have a future after this administration. You know, you're going to probably want to stay in the, you know, and have a career in politics or, you know, I don't know, for how many years after you quit this job if you're working for the administration, bottom line is, what are you going to do? The worst, the worst thing, though, is that so you lose a good man. Let's say Kelly is good. I really don't know enough to know to say that, but let's say he's good. He leaves. And now Trump can't find anybody to take this place. Even Christie turned him down. I was surprised. That's interesting. As of this morning. I heard this morning that Christie turned him down. I wouldn't call Christie really competent or good for this job. But anyway, so now, you know, you keep looking and you lower your, you lower the bar, lower the bar, lower the bar, then you find somebody. And you do this, you know, all over the place. You do this in lots of agencies around the White House and around the departments. And what you're doing is lowering the bar for the whole government. People leaving and you're either not replacing them, which leaves a puka there, or you're replacing with somebody less competent and less moral. Well, you have the one criteria that is required. Loyalty. Loyalty. And the result is you get a whole government of people like that. And people in high places are, they're loyal, but nothing else. And it's sort of the brown shirts taking over. This is a very scary business. Trump is remaking the government. When you can't find somebody to replace Kelly, you know what's going to happen. The government is going to be remade and worse. Anyway, let's move on to one thing you found, Cynthia, Paul Ryan. And the hidden Yemen, the hidden Yemen acorn there in the farm bill. In a farm bill of all things. I know. I thought you sleazy guy, you, how dare you try to sneak it in on, because the farm bill is something that's really needed right now. So what do you sneak in? What it was is he was trying to protect the Yemen, the things that we are doing to support Saudi Arabia in Yemen. He tried to protect it from having anything be able to come. And he put that in the farm bill. And he put it in the farm bill. Is this the public real confidence in Congress? Oh, gosh, no. It doesn't. It doesn't even, even in the Senate, the Senate, well the Senate found out about it and they decided to come forward and undercut him so that before the farm bill was even voted on, he put forth something else. And I thought it was Bernie Sanders that put it forth, right? Yeah. He did. It was a proud moment for the Senate, and particularly for the Republicans that they stood up and they said in a vote of 56 to 41, we want a acknowledgment that Khashoggi was murdered by MBS. They got that. Yeah. They got that. And then secondly is we need to pull out of our support for reconnaissance, surveillance, midair fuelings, all those things that we're doing behind the scenes to support this war in Yemen. What about the arms deal? Well, I think that's going to be part of it. But down the road, down the road. It wasn't written into this one, but I think it is part of it. Congress has to approve his arms deal, his $10 billion arms deal with the Senate. Good to know you used the War Powers Act on that, right? I don't know. Yeah. That's a 45-year-old... I hope that was in the Senate bill because that's the real kernel of this problem. Yeah. I don't think it was. But you had to give acknowledgement that the Republicans finally did something and stood up against the President of the United States. And I took note of that. Yeah, I think the whole country did. It's really remarkable. I'm not sure it's going to have the effect that you hope for, but at least they made a statement on the point. What's interesting is the House could not do anything because it's not the end of the year yet. Right. And Paul Ryan says it's not coming to the floor. So we have to wait until next year to see what the House does. So right now it's only one chamber of Congress. And then you'll have a remix of who's in the Senate and do they subscribe to this kind of bad behavior of our support for Saudi Arabia? Yeah. It could change some minds. Yeah. Anyway, it was a bright light for a moment. Okay, Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen. When I said the week... Oh, my God. The week was a big reveal. I was thinking of him. That's the big deal. What does it mean? What does it mean? And by the way, don't forget the last thing he said. I think it was in the morning paper and the Times reported that, are you kidding me, the president didn't know he knew? Of course he knew. Right. Because that's what Trump is saying. He didn't know. Right. Well... He's pretty guilty to what? Is it six different things? And one of them was paying off these women in order to affect the election. Specifically, you said that. Well, first off, let's go back in the timeline. I don't even know these women. Oh, yeah. Number two, on the plane, April 2018, I don't know who paid. I mean, you'd have to talk to my attorney, Michael Cohen. I couldn't imagine why he paid them. I have no idea. Now is, forget his first name, Mr. Pecker from the National Choir, plus Michael Cohen in the same room, and according to them, providing testimony that they were being directed for these payments. And so he's like, okay, well, yeah, but it wasn't illegal. My attorney did it. My attorney directed those payments. And he didn't tell me it was illegal. He's the one who's my attorney. And he didn't tell me. He didn't tell me. Attorney should know everything. Why didn't he tell me it was illegal? I don't know the women. Okay, I don't know the women. I don't know who paid it to now, yeah, we paid it, but my attorney did it and he didn't say it was illegal. It was evidence in there. Sounds kind of like Jimmy Kimmel's thing last night. Well, we'll see how the invoices go. We'll see how the invoices go. Which makes it worse for him, actually, because he reimbursed Cohen. So it actually makes it worse. That sounded so much like the thing on Jimmy Kimmel last night. I love watching the news now. I mean, in the late night TV, because they really hit all the high points, but they do it with that little bit of comic twist, because it can get a little depressing sometimes watching the news all the time, right? So I like watching it. But that's what Jimmy was saying. First, didn't have sex with those women, then I never paid those women, now I assumed it was legal to pay those women, and now I didn't even know they were women. That's what will happen tomorrow. That was Jimmy's thing. Well, in order to have sex with them, you have leads know them. So he didn't even know them, who they were. He didn't even know they were women, that's why he asked them to take off their clothes. That's what Jimmy said. Last night. Cone is lying about everything. Sad. Sad. It makes your head hurt. But we're becoming immune to it, as we talked about in previous shows, we're becoming calloused and immune and desensitized to the over 6,000. I'll take a break and I'll tell you that this morning, on the way in around 10 o'clock this morning, there was a piece on National Public Radio where they were calling various people a kind of a thumbnail survey. I wasn't making a book on how many people were on one side or the other, but it sounded like about half. About half of them were saying, oh, no big deal. All these reveals this week, all the stuff that's coming out and these proceedings. It happens. It happens. I don't mind. That's the way it works. The government is all like that, so he shouldn't be impeached or anything. He's still my man. He's still my man. You mean Senator Orrin Hath said, I don't care about his criminal allegations. Yeah. Yeah, Orrin Hath said that. But the people on the base side, and it really seems like an awful lot of them responded on this NPR telephone survey, still back them up. Nothing that has happened in a week of the big reveal has changed their minds. This gives me a royal headache because it's not rational and it's not the duty of a citizen. A citizen should be evaluating these things, participating rationally. The Democrats should be calculating this strategy, and we could talk about it after the break, but the Democrats should be looking at this and not jump the gun, so to speak. Don't fire to see the whites of their eyes, and we're prematurely speaking about impeachment and the Democrats should not be doing that. Not at this point. Even though there's enough to do it, there's only one thing worse than an impeachment. That's a failed impeachment. Think about that. Think about that for one minute. Then we're going to come back. You'll see. We're coming. We're leaving now. Aloha. This is Winston Welch. I am your host of Out and About, where every other week, Mondays at 3, we explore a variety of topics in our city, state, nation, and world, and events, organizations, the people that fuel them. It's a really interesting show. We welcome you to tune in, and we welcome your suggestions for shows. You got a lot of them out there, and we have an awesome studio here where we can get your ideas out as well. I look forward to you tuning in every other week where we've got some great guests and great topics. You're going to learn a lot. You're going to come away inspired like I do. I'll see you every other week here at 3 o'clock on Monday afternoon. Aloha. Okay. Well, Cohen said he was not going to be Mr. Nice Guy anymore. He's not going to protect Trump anymore. I don't know what that means. Does that mean he's got more information? I think so. That means he gave more information? What about all the tapes and things that they recovered from his office and his home? All of those are going to be coming forward. We've only heard one tape that pins Trump to it, but you know there's more, and Mueller has come out very specifically and said that he was very cooperative and helpful. I think that says a lot. There's other things that are buried in the evidence. Well, if you're Donald Trump, you're thinking, what's going on with all my loyal capos? You know, they're all falling in a domino-type style and pleading guilty and willing to cooperate. So that's going to be very unnerving. I'm going to jail for me. I'm going to jail. Yeah. I think Cohen still has an opportunity within the next year to provide more, and hopefully that gives him a full kind of, I forget what the term is, but it's basically a carte blanche on the sentencing recommendation. It's a lot more aggressive, and he still has a full year to say, well, you know, I've thought about this and I want to provide more information. Yeah. Yeah. There must be more that Mueller can bring against him. Well, he has all the answers. He's just waiting for Cohen to fill in the blanks, you know. Right. OK. What about the National Inquirer now? This seems like a really, it's a treasure trove over there. Again, you know, to manipulate the election in violation of campaign spending laws to kill stories left and right, and apparently there were other media in the room, which makes it worse. It wasn't just Mr. Pekker. Right. There was other media in the same room, and so you have multiple witnesses. Well, how many other catch-and-kill stories has Mr. Pekker and the National Inquirer has, you know, captured and we never saw a light of day on those stories for how many years were there catch, you know, capture-and-kill type stories about Donald Trump? Yeah. This might be this tip of the iceberg if Mr. Pekker starts really revealing all the things that he's done for Donald Trump over the years. Stories themselves. Stories themselves. No reason why they can't come out. Like the big stories about the first wife that accused Donald Trump of raping her? Oh, gee whiz. It came out for five seconds. This is many, many years ago, of course, but it came out for five seconds and then got killed. That story about catching-and-kill, that's one of them. Well, remember though, these stories are not, you know, these are not criminal. These are salacious stories, probably. We don't know to what extent they tie into Mueller's investigation. So, you know, what I'm concerned about is that we water down the importance and the significance of what Robert Mueller is going to come out with. If we keep loading the airways with all these salacious stories and say, oh gosh, how bad that is, we're going to become desensitized when the real stuff comes out. And I think that's what Donald Trump wants. Yeah. He wants us to be desensitized over this drinking out of the fire hydrant scenario or syndrome. And I think by the time the real stuff comes out, he's going to say, everyone's going to desensitize. It doesn't matter. Right. Moving into a new normal. A new normal. A new normal. Realities. So, I'm always a little concerned about what's coming out of, you know, these salacious stories. Yeah. Okay, let's go to Maria Boutina, a nice-looking woman, actually. She's better with red hair. Yeah, she apparently changed her hair color several times. Yeah. She had brown hair, not red hair. There are a lot of good-looking women in this reality show. And she's one of them. Well, that's been part of spycraft since the 1940s. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Find a pretty girl. Dress her up and go see who she can pull away at the moment. But it also brings in, now we're talking about Russia. Now we're talking about the NRA in Russia. I will never forget. I think we talked about it here, where I think it was the New York Times went to, and other publications, they went to these gun shows in the South. They said, what do you guys think about, you know, Russia? Just Russia. And, you know, here are people on the right side of the right wing, they say, oh, yeah, Russia's okay. This kind of thing happens with Russia. You know, we should be friendly with Russia. You know, a few years ago, it was communist pinkos. We hate them. Now it's different. And somehow the NRA has been compromised, and Maria Butchino was part of that, I suggest to you. What do you think? What do you think about Maria Butchino? I agree with you that she is part of the reason. The thing though that sort of sticks for me, the NRA in Russia, there's no guns in Russia. They don't get freedom of having their arms, they don't get any of that. There's no NRA in Russia. So for her to be saying she was part of the NRA in Russia is the lie to start the whole thing to begin with. Yeah. There's no NRA there. So she came over with this big thing. Are you trying to say there's a big lie involved here? Yeah, funny thing. Remember Russia's disinformation campaign, and one of the tenets of the disinformation is the big lie. The big lie. Speaking of Russia, this is a footnote, you know, to the asterisk, OK? Seems like there's a problem in Venezuela, OK? Member of the United States pulled out of the arms control treaty with Russia. So now we're in a free-for-all, OK? We're in an arms race with them, OK? That's who's building a big, what is it, military base and bringing nuclear bomber-type aircraft into Venezuela. Oh, my. Russia. Russia is going to have a base and nuclear-capable bombers in Venezuela, which is only a few. Oh, my gosh. It's not a Caribbean, you know? That's like nothing. It's not that far away. No, it's not very far away at all. So, wow. What do you think about that? And the Maduro is the dictator there. He loves it. He loves Russia is going to give him money. Russia is going to make deals with him, sell him arms, whatnot. The whole thing is degrading because of Trump's failed diplomatic policies, international policies. Because of his failed policies on nuclear armament. So now we have somebody at our doorstep. The one thing you could say about all the trouble in South America, south of the border, up till now is there were no Russians there. Now there are Russians. Now there are Russians. Well, I think what's more disconcerting is there's potential nuclear weapons there. Yeah. We, if you remember 1961-62, we had this thing called the Cuban Missile Crisis. Sure. OK, I know that was only 90 miles off of Florida's shores, but, you know, Venezuela isn't that much further south. Right. I was just kind of surprised to hear that that's one of the proposals that nuclear weapons would be going down in South America, particularly when you have unstable dictatorship-type governments down there. The Russians will be in control. But the Russians are, you know, they have their own problems. Putin is a very aggressive man. He's reliving the Cold War. We are in the Cold War. This is an example of it. This is not the kind of thing that helps you sleep better. No, it's not. OK. Didn't know that so hard. OK, the inaugural committee. Boy, this is a ritual. Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. The inaugural committee. This is really interesting. $103 million that was based. 107. 107. Excuse me. Oh, I had seven and then someone else said three. So 107 million raised. And so now they're being investigated by the committee. Well, I heard Rachel Madden about this last night and she said she was trying to get a copy of that audit report, the audit report that said it was clean. The money was raised clean and spent clean, but she never could get it. And then it was others in the government and in the rest were trying to get it. They could. They could. Never get it. Nobody knew who did the audit. Right. They didn't even know what they found. What they found. Now, I know campaign laws, you know, oh, there's so many campaign laws. Let's just decriminalize all of them according to Rand Paul, Senator Rand Paul. Right. Now, it seems to me that wasn't there a statute or a very important law that says no foreign government shall contribute to a United States campaign. Right. Wouldn't that be interesting if that in fact did happen? I don't know. I think we're going to find that out for sure. I think we're going to find out. Find out the NRA, you know, those pass-throughs on the NRA and how many other things. We're going to find that out. I think it's going to be central in Mueller's report. There's going to be criminal indictments on that. That's going to be the whole Russian apparatus was pushing money into these dummy organizations and these organizations were contributing to Trump and the Trump knew it. Let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. What do you think the loyal base or those that are not quite on the loyal base, but they're supporters, what do you think they're going to think if they really find out that some foreign entity or, you know, other governments were actually funding some campaign funds for Donald Trump's election? They may rationalize it. They may try to rationalize it in the same way that they're being desensitized to all of that now that by the time it does drop like he was saying, they're going to be so desensitized to it that they will justify it just like the people did for Nixon. There was Nixon had a 30% approval rating when he got impeached or when he stepped down. But so, you know, I think even then they knew there was proof, there was all kinds of proof, but his supporters still stuck by him. And I think that'll happen again. Not all of them, but I think it will happen. Let's go to the whole point about new normal, the whole point about being desensitized, the public being desensitized. These things, they get worse, don't they? Yeah, they do. But the question is whether they will get so much worse when Mueller releases his, you know, his final report or whatever he's going to release that people will not tolerate it. That it will take it over. Well, when you say people, are you talking about senators and congressmen or their constituents? Because there's a big difference. If the senators and congressmen don't hear a peep from their constituents that this is outrageous, what's their motivation to say, well, I vote for impeachment? They won't. But they get flooded, their office are flooded by people saying this is outrageous behavior, our president is not following his oath of office. Then maybe they will stand up and say, OK, I want to be reelected, so I better act. The people will have to get very excited to get reelected. And that's the question. Have they been desensitized to the point where they're not going to stand up? And part of that is how Mueller plays it and when Mueller plays it. And what Trump does in response to how he plays it, Trump is very good at this, diminishing the consequences. See what else we got. Justifying all of his things with some excuse or another. Well, it was Cohen's fault, he didn't. He should have told me, that's his job, to tell me. Yeah, it's not my fault. It's not my fault. I didn't know it was highly, I didn't know it was a felony. When you're being audited by the IRS, don't you say, talk to my accountant, I don't know anything about it. Yeah. Well, you've got to get out again. Even though I told my accountant, I want this deduction, some hell or high water. He's probably got a list of all the defenses and machinations and distractions he's going to pull on us when Mueller comes up. Oh, I'm sure he does. So, I mean, it's a real question that you raise. I agree. So, whether anything will happen, even in a worse case, worse for him, worse case analysis. I worry about that a lot. So what's going to happen next week? Do you think Mueller will come out next week? No. Not yet. Why is he still going to come out? He still has, he can't, he still gets more leads, if you will. And so he's got to follow up on the leads. I'm sure he wants to find out what's going to happen with the investigation into the campaign financing, because if he can find some Russian money there, boy, it's been troubling. Well, and I think it's not just for the campaign financing. I think there's a part that's been left off the table that's starting to creep on to the table, and that is, to what degree was Russia money used or private money used in Russia that helped finance Trump's empire? Right. To what degree was that potentially, you know, laundering of monies? Or to what sphere of influence did that money and those loans that Donald Trump received have on him in the office of President of the United States? Right. Right. This is really awful. I mean, I've seen, one of the things I think Trump could do, will do, will do, when all of this pops out in a way that it could push him over the tipping point, push the people over the tipping point, is create this huge distraction, like a war. Like a war. Like a war. He's wanted a war since he got in office. I mean, after all, the whole caravans are an invasion, you know, so you heighten public concentration on those things and, again, distract them from the reality and from the problems in his office and administration. Well, there's a lot of rich opportunities, the Sea of China with the China, you know, in that one island, there's certainly the North Korean opportunities. There's a bound, you know, limitless opportunities for him to seize a conflict to get the attention off of these issues. Yeah, OK. I've been worried about that since the very beginning, is that he wants a war. And even a small one in our own country, it's like he tries to incite people. And then, and we've talked about this before, it's what I think he wants more than anything. And that is to be able to declare martial law. If there's all these big riots in the streets, then he can declare martial law. If he declares martial law, nobody, there are no checks and balances for him after that. I'm sure that's on the list, too. So, you know, you find a scapegoat externally or internally, you make a fuss. And then you get everybody's attention and you take all the oxygen out. OK, Cynthia. Cynthia Sinclair, Tim Appachella, thank you so much for coming down. You're welcome. Thank you. Next week the same, yeah? Next week. OK. Trump week. Trump week. Who knows what we'll have next week, right?