 Have we overestimated Mueller? That's the subject, one of the many subjects of our show this morning. Trump week, I'm Jay Fiedel, this is Think Tech, Tim Appichella, Cynthia Sinclair. Hi, guys. Good morning. Good morning. On the way in, I was listening to NPR and they're talking about a report from the Senate Intelligence Committee or to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Can you tell me more about the fact that the Russians hacked all 50 states. In 2016, the year that Trump won, the age of Trump, the age of hacking, it's all the same. Partially hacked, but mostly they've been basically walking by the storefront, waiting to case the place, so they can break in. So these weren't successful, they weren't successful hacks into the voting machines, but they were, they were definitely targeted for hacking all 50 states. And they got the voter registration information. Yeah, they got, they got all bunch of information. They got the whole country, they got the voter information. This is scary, because as you say, it's in 2016, arguably, and we don't know everything yet. They're still working on this. It's elusive at best. They have the, they have the voter registration and that means they're preparing for something else. You know, walking by the storefront in 2016 and 2018 and 2019 and 2020, we're going to have more. The operative point in this, Jay, was it's not so much that they can change the votes, they could just get rid of the database of voters. So if you select areas where there's a high African American population and just exclude that database of voters, you've successfully hacked, hacked into it and then eliminated most likely a democratic vote. How do you do that? How do you do it? Yeah. Couldn't begin to tell you. This is what these guys do. Is this scary or what? I'm terrified by all of it. Absolutely. What they do is they just remove them from the role. So when they go into vote that day, they can't vote because they're not registered anymore. And Trump said that he was inviting help from other countries. Right. And so, I mean, what I get from that is he had plenty of help from Russia in 2016 and he knew it, called for it. You know, I mean, they don't have a smoking gun in him actually doing this, but personally, I believe, I morally believe that is exactly what happened and he's trying to do that again in 2020. Erdogan, there has been no action by Congress to protect against this in the 2020 election. And in fact, what happened? There was a bill and the bill got stopped. More than one bill. And McConnell has stopped it. And the Republicans aren't sparking up because there's no pressure for them to spark up. They're absolutely no political pressure from their constituents about this. So Mother says the one thing that he was clear about, there were not too many things he was clear about, was one thing he was clear about is that the United States has to do something about its voting system. How do you feel about that, Cynthia? And why don't we do anything? I don't know why we're not doing anything. And I have been crying for election security from the very first time I was ever on this show. And down in the South, where I've just been for the last three weeks, they could care less. They think everything's just fine. Everything is fake news, except for Fox News. They're going to vote for Trump again. I'm getting nauseous. I'm slightly nauseous. I may have to take a break after a while. We just started. You can't take a break. No, you can't. OK, Mueller. This is the week of Mueller in large part. That's why we titled the show, Have We Overestimated Mueller? We don't see him any closer to impeachment. That's sort of collapsing it. But the fact is that Mueller, to me, was a disappointment. How do you feel about it? Well, it wasn't a disappointment, because it's exactly what I expected. Have we overestimated? No, I didn't. There was possible. You knew this was going to happen. There was predictions that Mueller wasn't going to be an exciting witness testimony. They knew that he was going to stay within the four corners of his report. They knew he was dry and factual and very hurt in his responses. This is no surprise. And I don't know who thought this was going to be the John Dean moment for this presidency in this administration. But it clearly wasn't anyone who thought it was going to be. The estimates vary from anywhere from 125 to 200 questions that he failed to answer. And I was looking at it as a lawyer and a litigator to try to understand why he, an excellent litigator, a man with a long-term career in litigation, and if there's one thing that defines a litigator is get the answer to your question. He wasn't giving answers. He was dodging question after question. I was really disappointed with that, because I thought if there was one thing that would happen here, is he would be an honest responder. He wasn't. Well, in my view anyway, as I was watching him, he responded to all the Democrats' questions almost completely, except for the things that are still being investigated right now. And he was clear to state that that is a current investigation. The thing that I noticed, what may be part of those 200 that he didn't answer, all the Republicans, because all they wanted to do was talk about the Pfizer warrants and the Steele dossier and all that stuff. And he's like, I'm not going to talk about that. I'm not going to talk about that. So more, what I noticed was that he didn't answer the Republicans' ridiculous questions. And he did answer. Every time there was a part of the report read to him, he answered with, yes, that's correct. This is consistent with what you said, Timmy. He was going to stay within the four corners of the report. I mean, I don't want to call it a nothing burger, because there were some benefits out of it. I think there were. But modest. What were the benefits? Well, they were succinct questions to respond to with succinct answers. And they were yes and no, but Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff were able to state, really within the five first minutes of each session, the questions that needed to be asked and the answers were obtained. For example, did the Russians interfere with the election? Yes. Were there contacts from administrative staff to the Russians? Yes, 127. So the salient points in a 448 page document was capsulized within five minutes of the first session and within five minutes from Adam Schiff in the second afternoon session. Everything else, as far as I'm concerned, could have just been eliminated. Well, the problem is that when you have some jewels among some mush, the public and the press doesn't really get the jewels so well. So are we closer to impeachment? Since you commented on that, I only what your view of it is. Oh, are we closer? No, not at all. In my mind, if anything else, it's taken the air out of the balloon because I think there was an expectation and your title says it perfectly, there was an expectation that this was gonna be an aha moment and it just didn't appear in this. And again, we have a five hour testimony here. You know, the attention span of the American public has gone from the days of Watergate where it was days and days and days of fascinating testimony to now five hours and they can't digest that. So you need the executive summary on everything going forward and if you don't have an executive summary, don't bother. And if you have an executive summary from William Barr, you have lies. You have lies and not only that, but he did a great job of taking his lies and basically portraying them to sway the American public, in particular the Republicans. Well, Cynthia, is impeachment dead? No, I don't believe it is, but I'm very frustrated with Nancy Pelosi because she seems to be dragging her feet and the fact that we are in this much of a crisis in our country and they're going on break just angers me completely. Yeah, how could they go on break? How could they go on break when our country is in a state of where it is? It's just insane to me. It makes me wanna fire all of them, hire all new ones and, because it's just, to me, that's just outrageous. See that building behind us, nothing going on. That's what it is. And on a daily basis, we pay millions and millions of dollars to have those guys legislate, but they're not legislating. Well, Jackie Spear, who's on the Intel Commission Committee, excuse me, she basically said, if this doesn't happen by September, it not going to happen. And she also said, stop talking about like we might do something, we either do it or not do it because right now they look weak and indecisive. They can't make a decision. And there's nothing worse than having one of the greatest churns of seats in the house in the 2018 election to basically hire a bunch of indecisive, no nothings. Right, who fight among themselves. Yeah. That was not very promising. Not, it was promising at the time but it's not promising now. Okay, so let's talk about, this is your point, wiping Afghanistan off the map. What's going on here? Well, I mean, it was a bizarre Monday of this week. It was a very bizarre turn of events where you had the Prime Minister, I'm Ron Kahn, who's the Prime Minister of Afghanistan sitting, you know, in the chair next to Donald Trump and Donald Trump says the following. I mean, it's really, really, I mean, before I say what the quote is, here's an example where we've become so accustomed to outrageous behavior that with something like this is mentioned, it's not even newsworthy. We barely hear about it because we're in, you know, we've just been normal. It's a new deplorable normal and we've been desensitized to outrageous words and behavior. So here's the quote. Donald Trump on Monday. If I wanted to win the war, win the Afghanistan war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of this earth. It would be gone. It would be over literally in 10 days. I just don't want to kill 10 million people. Now, if this was the- That's commendable. If this was the Obama administration, the Bush administration, the Clinton administration, the Bush administration, come on. I mean, this would be like a- Outrage. An outrage of what are you saying? Well, you know, how could the President of the United States talk like that? Well, because he's got some mental issues and he's going to keep on doing these things. And it goes to the answer you just gave about impeachment. You know, if there's a fair chance, he's going to do something really crazy before we get to the 2020 elections. I mean, and it's going to be so crazy, even crazier than his comments about Afghanistan that maybe Nancy will change her mind. Let's talk about the British tanker in the Gulf of Hormuz. So we're supposed to be defending. We're supposed to have ships and planes and whatnot over there to defend the shipping lane in the Gulf of Hormuz. And yet, these guys with a relatively small boat or the Iranians are able to take a British tanker. I mean, a tanker, this was not a big tanker, but it was nevertheless a tanker. And they were on the radio talking to each other. They could have been spotted by any number of radar and sensor technologies, but we let that happen. Why do we let that happen? What's wrong with us? Well, if you go to YouTube and just write hijacked tanker, you'll see a live video footage of 50 caliber machine guns stationed on many of these oil tankers, most of them. And these hijacks don't take place. I guarantee you it's a very graphic, it's a horrific demonstration of what 50 caliber machine guns can do to an oncoming boat. Why this tanker wasn't protected is beyond me. Why didn't the U.S. step in? This is our best ally. This is an ally that Trump sees as his best. And now that, what's his name? Johnson is involved, Boris Johnson. Gee, I mean, don't you think the U.S. could have stopped that attack as rhetorical? Well, if the proximity of the ships were there, I'm not sure they could have. Well, they are there. You would think so, you would hope so. Remember, Donald Trump said something, he goes, you know, we don't have a big interest in the Strait of Hormuz anymore. We're producing enough oil in the United States for us to take advantage of. So, fold up, that's what it is. Every time you get a chance to be nationalistic and, you know, isolationist, then fold up. That's what happened, I think. Basically what he said, not long ago. I am sure to a moral certainty that he knew about this attack, that the Navy knew about this attack and could have done something, but the military chose not to, or was instructed not to. Really too bad. And now the British look weak and so do we. Okay. Well, they didn't look weak when they confiscated Iranian's tanker previously. Okay, and that was a major tanker. Tiff for Taff. Well, no, no, no, no, it wasn't Tiff for Taff. They confiscated a major tanker, the one that Iranians took was a little baby tanker. Okay, that's right. Let's get our facts straight. So who was winning the Iranian confrontation? Well, Iran, because of the world of popular opinion. Yeah. You know, they're being picked on by these superpowers and they were, you know, trying to implement the agreement in which they were, you know, engaged in and the United States pulled out of it and the United Kingdom is following suit to back up the United States. So it's, they're being bullied. Do we have a chance of having a war there? I think we do. Oh, there's a chance of winning a war there. Well, if you ask Trump, he'll just wipe it out, wipe out the whole place, right? So he thinks he will, and I believe he will if we do go to war. He will use nuclear weapons if we go to war. One of our earlier shows was entitled So Glad We're Not at War. That was on the Trump Week OC16 show we just put up for broadcast. So if, you know, if there's a war, what's gonna happen? How would the US fare in such a war? How would that affect our relations with other countries? How would that affect, you know, this country and the views of the people in this country? I believe that he will use nuclear weapons and it just like that, as fast as it starts. And then who knows where we'll go from there but more nuclear weapons will come at us and it will be, that's what I'm really scared of. One thing leads to another. Yes, exactly. Well, that would break every agreement, international agreement we have about using any nukes anywhere, anytime. Yeah, but he doesn't stick to the rules. He doesn't stick to the rules, he rewrites them in his own way. This is a good point. And this actually pertains, this is gonna take a quick turn to back to the Miller thing, because he talked about Article II and his executive powers. This is a direct quote. And this will be the overall umbrella of to why he does what he does when he does it. And it's the quote is this. I'll do whatever I want as president. I have the right to do whatever I want. Now he means that. Now I don't know if that's through the advice. That's not the law. No. That's his perception of Article II. So let's get back to breaking all international treaties about the use of nuclear weapons even if it's small dosage nuclear weapon. That's his guiding principle right there. And I believe he wants to, I believe he's wanted to go to war since he came into office because he's been picking fights with everybody all over the world. Because a wartime president is easily reelected. Right. Happens over and over. A wartime leader in any country. It's a great way to get elected too. You need me. You need me to prosecute this thing. You can't stop now. But let me shift a little bit and talk about the kinds of things that happened behind his back. While you get these headlines and while everybody's focused on the mother and all this, he's busy with other things that sort of slide by, okay? How about through William Barr, a change in the policy on the death penalty. Oh yeah. We're going back to the 12th century, rapid speed. They want to put some guys to death. A change in the federal policy would apparently let them do that with federal victims. I shouldn't say victims. Federal felons, federal convicts. So what about that? Where does that fit? What does that tell us? And in light of the fact that he calls for his adversaries to be jailed, where do we go from there? And he's got an attorney general who does his bidding and who causes prosecutions or doesn't cause prosecutions at Trump's instructions. This is very scary in terms of who he might arrest, who he might prosecute, who might be convicted, and who might be put to death now. We've answered this question many times on this show. Donald Trump is the sole proprietorship of this government. That's, I mean, that and the quote I just read about, I'll do whatever I want when I want. And there are no checks and balances until we get these things into the court. Now, he just got blocked in the court. What did he get blocked on? Wasn't it for down the south of border, some issues about re-trying to define asylum? Okay, so here's a case where a check and balance did work. The asylum redefinition that he was attempting to do was blocked by the court. But until it gets to the court, it's whatever I want when I want. Yeah, and meanwhile he's stocking the courts, stacking the courts left and right. So that decision may not be the same in a year or two. Very scary, because of course, it filters up and all his candidates, his judges, presumably are loyal to him. That's what he wants. That's what he asked of them. And so we could have a different result next time this comes up. Well, we basically have a year and a half left of this administration. If there's another four years on top of that, you will see a great change in the composition of all the judicial court appointments. I think we'll see it already. We don't have to wait for another four years. But how much more will take place in four years? Oh no, it will be radically changed. Four more years. I don't know if it will be able to be fixed and brought back to normal, because if we have an extra four years, it will be so radically changed that it will not be able to be fixed again. I agree with you, Cynthia. You know, one thing I want to say about Barr and Mueller, and I know it's kind of off the topic here, but to go back to, you know, everybody's been complaining about how Mueller was very, you know, he was confused and blah, blah, blah, all this other stuff, like he was confused at all. But he wanted to make sure when he answered that he was answering what exactly they were referring to. So I was thinking about it while I was watching all these people, you know, just, you know, complaining about how Mueller was so hesitant and confused. And I was thinking about Barr when he went for his hearing and how he did all of this acting like he didn't know, acting over and over like he didn't know. And only he was acting, right? Yet nobody said anything about that. How hesitant he was and how much he put on this big show. And the same thing going back, you see lots of people that are coming forward for him that when they're asked a question, they don't want to answer. They act like they're confused. Well, he turns out to be a complete instrument. Yeah, exactly. You know, in case it was a question, hearing those confirmation hearings, there's no question anymore. I think you've answered what I was going to ask you. Let's move on. Can I just get one point about Barr? Because as we know with his executive summary before the report was released, the Mueller report, he did all the damage he needed to do. He got on the choir to say, I've been exonerated, no collusion, no obstruction. Those are the only three things he had to do, you know? So the bottom line is there's a great quote from the representative, Sean Patrick Maloney in Democrat in New York. It's a great quote because it matches exactly what Barr had done. And that is, a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth puts its shoes on. And that's what exactly Barr did. That's what is happening over and over again in this administration. Let's talk about Powell and the Fed. You know, Powell, the Wall Street banker. Powell, at first, it seemed to me that he was independent. It was a Trump appointee. He was independent. He wasn't, he was gonna determine the interest rate as he saw the need to and the Fed to control the economy and incentivize the economy. And he was gonna take it up and take it up because the economy needs to be restrained at that point. Things are good, apparently. But now he's saying, no, he's gonna take it down. And the operative piece in the middle is that Trump is criticizing him bitterly because Trump wants to take it down. Trump wants to speed up the economy. It's a cheap speed kind of thing. He wants to speed up the economy, get some more out of, squeeze it for more. Okay, and he thinks he can do that by forcing Powell to reduce the interest rate. And now Powell is exceeding to that. So he's changed his mind here. So just as Barr is an instrument, I'm beginning to question Powell. I'm beginning to question everyone in the Trump administration as taking instructions from Trump even when they shouldn't be. What do you think? My first thought is, how does this happen? How do independent agency leads, particularly the Fed, which has nothing to do with following the President of the United States and what it ought to do, how does that happen? How does health start to play ball? I will say one thing, though. I mean, there has not been the indicators of inflation. I mean, why does the Fed tighten money supply? Because inflation starts to rear its ugly head. For whatever reason, that's not happening. And so that, I don't think that's a case for reduction of interest rates, but I think it's a case of leaving them where they're at. Well, we'll see what Powell does, but it scares me because if you reduce them now, and this economy really isn't what it seems to be, then it's gonna crash and burn. I mean, we have a serious problem in the FISC here. We had the Tax Reform Act of 2017. It did not do what they promised. It went right through the Congress, which was all Republican at the time, without a single hearing, without any real transparency to the public. And now, as Ryan said, like a week after it was passed, Ryan said, oh, too bad, we don't have enough money. And indeed, we have a huge deficit. The Republicans, they're not supposed to do this. The Republicans have turned around completely and have created this huge deficit. That is a problem. That is gonna catch up with us because we are not sustainable that way, but not resilient that way. Anything goes wrong if we need money for anything, maybe a war, we won't have it, but we'll have to go into huge deficit, even bigger and more and more trillions. So, yes, in other times, leave it alone, but Powell's an inclination a little while ago is we better put some stops on this. I'm very concerned about the economy. You mentioned something up front in that comment, and that is once you keep reducing your interest rates, you've removed a very important tool from the toolbox when an economy hits the skids. Now you have only this much of dropping of interest rates you have left in the tank. Where do you go from zero? Yeah. Okay, let's talk about, I love this one, climate change for a minute. Is there any question, Cynthia, that we are having climate change on a visible, increasing basis, like every day this summer? There is no question at all. There's so much scientific data that's coming in. We were just this morning even, and I saw some scientists going up to Stuart Glacier up in Alaska, and I've been there. I know what it used to look like. It seems like it's reduced by half. I mean, it's just crazy. They're walking on ground that used to be covered by 300 foot glaciers. I think he said a mile in. A mile in. It used to be ice, and now they're a mile in before the ice begins. Yeah. A mile. It's everywhere. So it's, you know, the Arctic is falling apart. The Antarctic is falling apart. The oceans are rising. The storms are more frequent and more extreme. The heat waves are killing people. You know, this week in Qatar, you know, in the Middle East, it went up to 62 centigrade. I went and got a, you know, a converter. That's 143 degrees Fahrenheit. Oh my. You wear Zories on the pavement, there's Zories melt. The bumpers melt off the cars. 143 is like it's getting to boil. That's what we got now. That has not happened before, and that is clearly climate change. And what is the government doing about that? Can I ask you guys? Nothing. Nothing. Short answer. Nothing. I'll do whatever I want as president. I have the right to do whatever I want. I'm gonna keep going back to that quote because it's the beginning of all things. Right. Right. Exactly. We have a little time left to talk about what's gonna happen next week. You know, I feel that he's been relatively quiet in the shadow of the mother, you know, the mother testimony this week and all the press commentary about it. But I think it's time for him, just in the, in the sine curve of Trump activity, it's time for him to blow something up for us. And so I suggest to both of you guys, next week he's gonna do that. We're gonna have another shocking resumption of another super negative thread, maybe the border, who knows? And we're all gonna be fascinated with headlines about Trump's agenda. Because he's gonna take the agenda back next time. What do you think is gonna happen next week? Well, I believe that the whole Epstein thing, because he's directly connected to this guy. And so now, at least in the, in some of the media anyway, we're seeing the 13-year-old coming out that he raped and that she's starting to be believed a little bit more now that they can make those connections between Epstein and him. And so I'm thinking that's gonna keep growing. So you're right, he has to do something to explode so that we won't pay attention to the Epstein business. Yeah, I mean, it might be a thread that he's played with before, the racism card, the border card, who knows what? Something really super negative so we can be a real wise guy and get on the front page again, what do you think? Okay, so what's the round robin here? What haven't we heard from lately? Venezuela, with Korea. So he'll just pick, well, what haven't I talked about and created havoc with? Oh yeah, Venezuela, I've done that one for a while. That's what I think's gonna happen. Why do you say that? Because there was a piece on NPR as I drove in about Venezuela, about how Trump has been completely unsuccessful in dealing with Nuzero. And what is very interesting is that one of the big oil companies had a permit from the US to operate off or in Venezuela and the permit was gonna expire. Now if Trump really wanted to have an effect on Venezuela which makes a lot of money from oil, right? He would not have extended that permit. He did, he extended the permit. Quietly. Well, he wasn't so quiet on it to your heart. But you know, I mean, he's not doing anything about Maduro or Venezuela or Guido, nothing. Well, and the plight of those people. Right. We're starving. Except for making it more difficult for them to come to apply for asylum. Right. Yes, that they can't do. Very helpful. Well yeah, so we'll see, we'll see. That's a good prediction, you guys. Next week it'll be something international, something global. Something international. North Korea, maybe something in Europe, Afghanistan, who knows what, it'll be another fantastic distraction. Maybe he takes a boat ride with Boris. Yeah, Boris. Okay, we should put bets on that. Okay. Jim Appichella, thank you so much. Hey Jeff. Cynthia, welcome back. Thank you very much. So nice to see you. I miss you guys. Aloha. Don't forget next week. Aloha. I won't forget. Aloha.