 Welcome back to Think Tech here at 11 o'clock on a given Friday morning, and we have Tim Apicello and Cynthia Sinclair, and we're doing Trump week, which we do every Friday and 11 o'clock in the morning. It's sort of, it's on my calendar, you know, it's a very important item. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Dave. Appreciate it. Thank you. Good morning. So, Tim, why don't you lead off? What's the hot news this week on trying to understand the Trump administration? Okay. So, let's drink from the fire hose. For me, you know, obviously the two topics, main topics are the response to the national emergency from the House of Representatives, and then of course the Michael Cohen testimony. I think the national emergency resolution that was passed 245 votes to 182 was very telling in a lot of ways. Number one, there's complete solidarity amongst the Democrats. There is no waxing or waning. But most importantly, there's 11 Republicans, who in my opinion, they're standing up for the Constitution of the United States, and they should be commended, particularly, we have a gentleman by the name of Justin Amash from Michigan, and he cosponsored the resolution. He's Republican, and one of the things he said was very, very poignant to his fellow Republicans. If your faithfulness to the Constitution depends on which party controls the White House, then you are not faithful to it. Good point. Hair, hair. I like that. Good point. We had 11 Republicans take heed to that notice and those words and vote it for the resolution. Now. Yes. Soon to the Senate. The other shoe, so to speak. The other shoe. The Senate has 18 days from the passing from when the declaration was declared. They have 18 days to respond. It's a right to a floor vote. That's correct. And there's actually some noticeable opposition from the Senate for this national emergency, particularly those who are vehemently opposed to it is Collins, Bartalski, Rand Paul. We're going to have probably enough votes to send it on to the President's desk from the Senate. It's a long haul, isn't it? First, you have to get through the Republicanism in the Senate, and then you have to get through the veto, and then it's going to have to come back for an override. None of those three steps are sure. No, they're not easy. But we will say that right now Senator Tom Tellus from North Carolina, he's probably a strong vote for it in the Senate. We know Susan Collins will be from Maine. We're pretty sure Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, as far as the fourth vote that's required, it will either be Cory from Colorado or Joni Erst or perhaps Lamar, Alexander. Okay. What are your thoughts about this, Cynthia? Well, we know it's going to be veto. We think it's going to happen. Whether it goes to the Senate or not, it's going to be veto. We know it's going to be veto. We know it's going to be veto. Because we know it's going to be vetoed. Okay. He has already said, I'm going to veto it. Yeah. So, you know, and then it's where do we go from there? So it's like, we already know where it's going to go here, but in the future is what I'm wondering about. We may potentially have a 67% override in both the House and the Senate. We're not nice. I mean, I think there is enough concern from even our Republicans that we've accused of being, you know, blind to what's been going on and their self-interest of being re-elected. But what have the Republicans stood for for so long? And that is a separation between the executive branch and Congress. I mean, they, and to some degree, they had some concerns and rightly so about the executive powers that President Obama exercised in his administration. Well, he wasn't getting any cooperation from Congress. That's why he did it. That's right. He could basically be in a gridlocked situation in those days. So he's getting total cooperation from the, well, near total cooperation from the Senate. Right. This would be a test of the Senate. It would be a test of the Republican Party. I think they've already failed the test in my mind. You don't think, you don't think they're going to override. I think they've already, whether they do or not, in my mind, they have already failed the test. Every test down the road from the beginning. And I don't see how the Republican Party can possibly survive this unless they stand up now. And that's their own, and talk about the fact that they should have stood up before, especially after the kind of testimonies that we've had during the week this week. But we've had, we've had glimmers of where the Republican Party did stand up. Remember the sanctions. Oh, right. Okay. That they, right. 98 to two, you know, voted for. So we've had very small pockets of resistance to those very small pockets. Small pockets. Very small pockets. And believe me, I am not defending the Republican senators. Yes. Not what I'm here for. The bottom line is that we have seen some resistance, and this may be one of those issues that they do stand up for. I hope so. On an override of the veto, because the veto is coming. You're right. I hope so. But it would happen with the gun bill that just went through. It failed, right? And that was, Democrats kind of jumping on that one. And I don't know all the details of that one. I was hoping one of you guys- They're still in the house, didn't it? I think so. And then it died in the Senate, right? I'm not really sure. I shouldn't have brought it up because I don't know the details. I was hoping one of you guys might know the details of it. But that's a point to make though, Cynthia. A lot of these initiatives, you give credit to the House because they passed it, including some Republicans. I mean, I heard stories on NPR this morning. Some fellow was talking about how well the House had done, and the Republicans in the House went along with it, and these were progressive initiatives, but he didn't talk about the Senate because in the Senate, it often dies. And so you can't get legislation without both houses, I'm sorry. And so that's an incomplete, a huge incomplete, and I was saying to myself, how come he doesn't talk about the Senate? So we can't talk about the House in a vacuum. No, of course not. It's the Congress. Right. It is my prediction the Senate will pass the resolution. They'll have their four votes, that we need four Republican votes to pass that and send it on to the President's desk. I predict, here and now, it will pass. I think he's going to veto it, and then it's going to come right back, and then we have to work on getting enough people. Isn't it a larger margin? Will we get that emergency undone? I don't know. I don't know. I'm sorry. I can't make predictions for this administration anymore, or the way things are going. Well, we could be in a different job making a big paycheck, and we can accurately predict we're not getting that paycheck. Well, the reason that you guys are reluctant to predict and commit in advance like that on a veto is that we know what's going to happen tomorrow. We know what's going to happen today. This is what he called a reality show, and it's a surprise. All we know is that the first 20 articles in the major newspapers, all about him. All we know is that the television is all about him, and everybody is thinking about him, although a lot of people won't talk about him. What I'm saying is it's hard to predict what is going to happen when you can't predict all the factors and circumstances around it that drive those decisions. Look for those senators that are up for reelection in 2020 that are in purple states or slightly blue states. You'll see them capitulate a lot, a lot more than their counterparts that are in solid red states. Absolutely. Absolutely. Great. Oh, my gosh. Jared got a security clearance. I think it was top security clearance. And that's all in the circumstance in the context of Trump wants him to be a major player in foreign policy and everything that the White House does. And he's the son of the law. We really haven't seen that kind of nepotism before. And I wonder how this thing with the intelligence agencies saying, Trump, don't do that. He's not qualified. He may be working for the Russians, you know? And nevertheless, Trump orders the intelligence agencies to give them this top-secret clearance. What are your thoughts about that? Well, partly they thought that one of the reasons he wasn't a good candidate for this security clearance was because of his family's financial ties all over the world, not just Russia. So the skeptical way that they looked at him and some of the reasons why they did not want to give him that clearance was because of these things. They're in debt by a lot to a lot of different countries. That puts him at risk to blackmail or favors. First, if you do this for us, well, yeah, he's very, very vulnerable. And they were very clear about that on top of the fact that he lied on his forms about Russian contacts. And then first he blamed it on his assistant, right? Or it was their fault, right? I didn't really mean to do it. But he lied in a storm. But then it didn't happen just once. Had it been just the assistant, okay, so you'd correct it once. He had to correct it like three times. Multiple times he had to correct his forms. So we know that both General Kelly and McGahn, the White House lawyer, wrote memos about the fact that Trump encouraged, well, pressured them to go ahead. So what is this all for? I mean, he still has a security clearance. He's still walking around. And he's in the Middle East right now, right? In the Middle East right now. So what does this mean in the larger context? Well, again, let's look at Donald Trump. First, saying I had no involvement with the clearance process. That was demonstrated. Yeah. And he's not going to lie. Dad had zero to do with it. Yeah. That might not have been 500 twice their life for this administration. Right. So it's like, oh, another lie. It's no big deal. Right. Because it does. Except that some people, and I mean some people in the elevator that I meet and I ask them about this, some people believe the lies. Right now they don't have cognition on that fact. I don't know what to believe people say. I don't know what to believe with the lies. Yes. All right. Beyond that. Well, beyond that, let's look at the fact that why would General Kelly and the White House McGahn have to write their own memos on this very topic to cover basically a CYA in the future. Yes. Because they knew this was a bad idea to let this gentleman get clearance and he got it. Yeah. And so they did a CYA. What about the nepotism aspect of it? I mean, it's kind of creepy. We have your son-in-law working in such a high position. Well, Ivanka too, she has the clearance. Same thing. Right. And Ivanka has said dad did zero, had nothing to do with money, or experience in government. He's the one of them. Right. Well, that's the biggest thing that they're talking about. And I think is important too, is right now, he doesn't have full clearance. Right. So there's some stuff he doesn't know. And he's out there talking with heads of state, talking with, you know, presidents and royalty and all these, and furthering our position on peace and whatnot, trying to, you know, netting out who is right. Let's look at history. When Richard Nixon left the administration and resigned, what did the legislature do to address many of these shortfalls of that administration? All sorts of new laws were enacted. And the two that come to my mind would be the neptoptism issue that has to be addressed in the form of new laws, and also the emollience clause. You know, the fact that he's getting compensation while he's being president, you know, all these, and not segregating all his businesses. So it's not completely got all together, isn't it? It's all together. So I think, I think what you can see when this administration is done and dusted, you are going to see an effort by the legislature to address many of these things that have cropped up in the last two years at least. We'll see. We've got to recover. Our democracy is in great danger here. Let's go to a very favorite, Michael Cohen, and the testimony that he gave in public on Wednesday. Here! At this point, Cynthia takes out her notes and she's got seven pages of it. It was eight hours of testimony. At least seven pages is appropriate. Yeah, I agree. Right. Can I start with the thing that I think is the most important? And I was the most moved by, and that was Chairman Cummings' closing remarks. When he says, we're better than this, and he's been saying that for a long time, we are better than this, and we need to get back to normal. But mostly at the very end, when he said that when we are dancing with the angels, and what will the question be? In 2019, what did we do to make sure we keep our democracy intact? Did we stand on the sidelines and say nothing? I think that's really important. And for all the flack that I get for being on this show, I'm like, I'm doing something. And I don't, you can go ahead and give me all the flack you want. And that, I swear I started crying when he said that. But that was very funny. It was moving, yeah. Yes, it was. How about you, what are your high points on that? Well, the high point was in my mind that the comments that Roger Stone did make a phone call with Donald Trump in the office about his connections to Assange and WikiLeaks. That is a huge point of this testimony. And I'm not sure people really grabbed onto it the way they should, because that's huge. Yeah, it shows he knew ahead of time. Beforehand. And then there's another one. My high point was, I shouldn't say high point, my low point, was where Cohen actually said that he didn't think that in 2020, if Trump lost the election, there would be a peaceful transition of power. That was big. What he was talking about, and there have been various commentaries about this since Wednesday, was a coup. He was talking about a coup, a violent possibly, where Trump stays in office no matter what. Well, that's where they... Trump has alluded to that in the past. Well, we've had echoes of it. That's where the national emergency puts us at risk, because it gives him extra power where he can manipulate things so that we don't have this election. Yeah, I'm going to defer the election. Yes. Or I'm going to defer the inauguration. Exactly. You know, I'm going to somehow pull the radio out from under. I mean, one of the interesting points that happened in 2016, as we went toward the election and the campaign, Trump was saying, if I win, it's an okay election. If she wins, it's rigged. It's rigged, right? So he's going to do the same thing. That's what I think. He will? He's going to refuse to leave the White House. He's going to say it was a rigged election. It was all wrong. We're going to have to hash this out in some other way. In the meantime, I stay president. You know? On the other hand, if he wins, he doesn't make any money out of that. To what degree is that incitement? Well, for violence. Yes. And, you know, there is some federal laws that, you know, prohibit that. But to what degree is the president of the United States potentially going to incite for riot? Well, what you're saying, I think, is to what degree, to what avenue would the president go down in order to, you know, undo the election? Right. Okay. And one of them is it was rigged and started an investigation. Another was to find a way to declare a national emergency. Right. And, you know, incite a riot or a series of riots across the country. Right. Claim a national emergency. You see that Congress is mixed on this. Not necessarily going to stop him. Right. Okay. For the national emergency. He goes one step further and says, well, you know, it's a rigged election. It's not the right time, he says. It's not the right time for me to step down. We need me to be here. Right. So, you know, we need to realize a war. He can incite a war. There's so many ways, you know, that he's leading up to that around the world by, you know, doing things that make people hostile and angry. We have allies. He's making malnourished enemies of our enemies. Nations are closer to war now than they have been. Right. If he triggers a war around the time of the election, he could claim G.Wiz, we're in a national emergency virtue of a war. And, you know, you can't change presidents while you're in a war. And it's sort of similar to the domestic riot. But, you know, there are lots of options. There's a lot of options. And if he's in bad faith, and we know that he's not capable of good faith, you know, then what you have here is the possibility of a coup. Yeah. Thoughts? I think he's going to. I think I've been afraid of that from day one. And I've been talking about it from day one to two. The national emergency is just one step closer to the martial law that I've been talking about all this time. And that's all he needs to do. And then he can stay. Okay. Well, that's happy news. Let me bring that second point on this Cohen testimony, because I think it was very, very effective of this particular House representative to do. We heard the Republicans really didn't bring their best game to the committee here. They didn't do anything. They didn't. They didn't bring the best game. They didn't really do their homework. All they could do is try to discredit Michael Cohen and say that no matter what he says, it's not credible. And he shouldn't even be here at testify. This was a mistake. That for eight hours, that's all we heard from the Republicans. Fire, fire, pants on fire. Yeah. The big poster. The big poster. Number one gentleman today. He is a gentleman. He's indigenous. Representative Gerald Conley, Democrat for Virginia, who very, very carefully resurrected the ghost. Of Joseph Vellachi. Now Joseph Vellachi. Was a mobster. He was a mafia. So Costa Nostra back in the 30s. He was a murderer. He was you name it. He would, you know, he was all these things he testified in 1963 before the House committee. What about the Costa Nostra? They didn't know what the Costa Nostra was. So he went into detail about all the things that were going on in the Costa Nostra, but he made this point. He was a liar. Had we not used liars and people within the filtration of the organization, how would we ever, ever get convictions via the RICO Act? Right. And the fact that you call him a liar, but we can't rely on his testimony is a false argument. Right. Therefore we're going to listen to him and we are going to follow up on his testimony. On credibility, you look and see whether the person is speaking against his own interest. In this case, I think Cohen made it clear he's going to jail. He's admitted criminal activity. You know, can we get, he has no reason to lie. Not just no reason to lie, but no reason. He has plenty of reasons not to lie. In other words, he could have a higher sentence of what happened to Manafort when he didn't stick to his plea agreement. He has to tell the truth. He's accused against Hulachi back in 63 where President Trump labeled Cohen a rat. Now if you're going to prison and you've now been labeled by the president and all your loyal people who may be imprisoned too, you've labeled him a rat. That is very serious when you're going to prison for a number of years. One of the things I like to make about that hearing, and this many points to make, was that some of the representatives there, representatives there, especially including Republican representatives, made speechifying. And they went on and on and on, grandstanding and not asking cogent questions, not even making cogent points and wasting time. Here's a valuable witness, a witness that could establish a roadmap for Mueller and the Congress to find out what really went on. Instead they're making speeches and trying to criticize him and whatnot. It had nothing to do with seeking the truth, really, but Alexandria Ocasio is to be complimented. Yes, she is. If I was worried about her youth and a lack of experience before, not so much. I saw the video that she was asking cogent questions that were prosecutorial. Follow up, who do we talk to? Who can tell us the answers? So she was a star beyond any of the others as far as I'm concerned. I agree. She stood up for me. Well, thanks to her questions. The name Weisselberg, the CFO for Trump Organization, came to light. Now, he's been the CFO, the accountant for Trump Senior for all these decades. How did they finally get the phone? All his heinous crimes, they got him on tax evasion. And they got the accountant. But once you have the accountant, we're going to see, particularly what Cohen testified to, is the underinflation or the overinflation of his real estate assets. Under the statement for tax purposes, over the statement for bank loans and insurance purposes. That was one of the things he claimed specifically for a Deutsche Bank loan. So it was very specifically, so there went straight to Deutsche Bank and started a follow-up. For the Congress to follow. Right. I think it was very valuable testimony. What I worry about though is that Trump has the power, and nobody seems to be arguing about this power, seems to be an absolute power to pardon and commute sentences. Manafort will be the beneficiary of that, probably, and maybe Weisselberg will too. I know it will be subject to great criticism, but they can hold back, get convicted, and then be excused. Yes? Not from the Southern District. Not from the state. That's true. Only from federal charges, but not state charges. Southern District, well, you don't mean the Southern District. Manhattan. The Southern District is federal. Manhattan, yes. So it's a federal sentence. Yes. It could be commuted or pardoned. Right. But a state sentence cannot. Right. So it's up to the states. It's ironic that it's up to the states. And they're moving ahead rapidly on very parallel things that Mueller has been working on. Yeah. I'm not convinced that these dangling hardens are going to serve anyone well. No. And if he does that, he's going to be criticized to beat the band. So, okay. So we'll step further. Everybody is saying that I thought was really important at the hearing was when Mark Meadows brought that gal out and had her stand there, that black woman had her come out and just stand there while he talked about how he can't be a racist because, look, she works for him. Yeah. I was just like, my jaw hit the floor. And then this is the part, though, that really struck out to me is when he's professing his innocence after those two other Democratic representatives kind of lit into him about it and how terrible it was because it really was horrible. That's like saying, I have a black friend. I'm not racist. I have a black... It's basically the same thing as that. Let me go on to the next point, Cynthia. Okay, go ahead. We only have a couple minutes left. Oh, okay. Oh, gosh, we're serious. So that is, you know, where are we in terms of... Mueller, where are we in terms of the possibility of impeachment? There's been a lot of talk on the media lately, you know, everybody is assuming that Mueller's coming in soon, but also Mueller's going to be a short report, a roadmap report, sort of like Cohen was, rather than, you know, an indictment per se. And Mueller's going to leave it up to other authorities to actually proceed on the facts he finds, which could be, you know, astounding, which I think will be astounding. But then, you know, you get into the question of, and there's a lot of discussion about impeachment. And this morning on National Public Radio, there was a call in, do you think Trump should be impeached? And I wasn't keeping notes on, you know, who said what, but my sense of it was maybe two-thirds of the people that called in said, open poll that way, you know, informal, said, yes, he should be impeached. There's good reason we got to do it now. Another third said, well, you know, the election in 2020 is so close and, you know, we have so much work to do to get Congress to, you know, do progressive things. And it seems like Congress might do progressive things. So we should attend to that instead of an impeachment, which will suck all the oxygen. So I just wonder what your thoughts are about, A, the national mood, and B, you know, if there is a move to impeach him in the house is where it would start. You know, what will happen? Cynthia? I think it's going to change rapidly over this next week or so. When Cohen comes back, when we start getting the results of the investigations and the trails that the house has followed, Adam Schiff came out after the closed session and said it was very productive. It shed light on their core parts of their investigations. So I think in this next week or so, we're really going to see a lot of changes. We have to follow that next Friday. Yes. What about you, Tim? There is, I think, now is the time to impeach based on what the information is at this time. Premature. It's just too premature. When the Mueller results come out, then let's start looking at it. And I think you will see, you will see the American public and Republicans included go, wow, this is more than what I really thought. Now, there will be that 35% that says, you know, Donald Trump can shoot someone on the middle of Fifth Avenue and we won't do a thing about it. There might be that 35%. You will see, independents, you will see Republicans that do care about the Constitution that are conservatives and they do love their country. And I think they're going to, they're going to, they're going to wake up. Yeah, that was the reason that most of those two-thirds gave. And we can't wait. The Constitution is being damaged right now. We have to repair it. And repairing the Constitution, getting back to a constitutional democracy is more important than any single initiative, even healthcare. And we don't even know if the Mueller report is coming out. Be remiss if we didn't mention very briefly what happened in Vietnam. Just give me a one-line reaction. I'm going to take his word for it. That's it. I'm going to take him at his word. Oh, about the killing. Yeah, telling Kim that he's going to take him at his word. I'm not talking about, though, I'm talking about the, it was, you know, a nothing burger. It was a nothing burger. Nothing happened. They didn't do their homework. Yeah. Well, I think the idea is, it's a tremendous naive take on the part of Trump to think that he can do personal diplomacy without using his staff. His self-inflated idea of himself, that the power of his personality will win the day. Yeah. And, you know, let's go back to Ronald Reagan when he went to Iceland. He and Gorbachev, they thought their personalities were dazzling enough that it would get the agreement about nuclear, you know, desire moment. And it didn't work. Okay. And this is no different. Okay. We have to follow that because right now the nothing burger, you know, rules the field. Cynthia, Cynthia Sinclair, Tim Epichella. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you, Jim. Thanks, Jerry. Thanks, Friday. It's a date. You got it. Thanks, Friday. All right. Hello. Trump week.