 It's August the 19th. It's Wednesday. It's 11 o'clock. It's Trump week. I'm Tim Appichelle, your host. And with me is a round table. Actually, there's no round table, but there's a a plethora of guests that we have with us today. And I'd like to go right into the introductions with us today is Jay Fiedel, Stephanie Dalton, Cynthia Lee Sinclair and Winston Welch. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Trump week. Thank you for, thank you for attending. Let's just roll out the roll out with the agenda. And that is the first item is the United States Postal Service. The title of this show is Deploy's Plot to Slow the Mail Will Fail. I think it's already starting to fail. But here's the deal. This gentleman, Louis D. Joy, is an actually an ex CEO of a logistics company which he sold I believe in 2017 for about $6.2 million. And the company was a logistics company. So the fact that you don't have a logistics company unless you understand logistics. And of course, the post office delivery of mail is nothing but logistics. So when he gave the order to have mailboxes removed off the street and the dismantled disassemble sorting machines, that's all about logistics and what it takes to slow the mail, not improve the mail's delivery service. So Jay, let me go to you. What do you think about Mr. Joy's efforts to slow the mail down within 85 days of an election? And particularly, do you think he took any instructions from our our present Donald Trump? Yeah, it was sabotage, plain and simple. I don't know how else you could describe it. And there's no question from the sequence of events that he did it on Trump's instructions. But what's more interesting right now is his statement that he's not going to do any more of that. I don't remember the exact words that he went out with, but it was trick words. And what it told me was that he wasn't going to make new sabotage efforts, but he wasn't going to reverse the old ones either. So he's already damaged the postal service. We don't know to what extent he actually has been successful on that. We hear we hear statements from postal workers that yes, things have slowed down dramatically. We see photos on the news about bins and large bins of boxes and mail that's been sitting there for nine days. We see those images, but we really don't know to what extent. I think it's clear that he removed 671 sorting machines from around the country and dismantled them. They're no longer online. They process millions of items of mail every day. Now those have to be done manually. He cut off overtime. I'm not sure if he's going to reverse that. And he took a lot of postal boxes off the street. I'm not sure he's going to put him back. So he's already done extraordinary damage on the postal service query whether it can, you know, meet its obligations in November. It's not clear and it's not clear that he's telling the truth. And it's not clear that he is going to reverse the damage he did. I think he's going to meet in front of the House committee about this. I believe on Saturday, I suspect they'll get a better idea of what he has done and he'll have to testify on the oath of what he has done or what he hasn't done. Do you think there's going to be any kind of a legal injunction or any kind of legal action that says he is required to restore that which he dismantled? I think I think there is or will soon be exactly such a suit. But you know, how many days is it to the election? That's that's going to be a matter for for legal process that may take some time and the order that's issued may take some time to implement. So yeah, it's the right thing. Theoretically, it could resolve the problem. Although, you know, how do you put 671 sorting machines and their multimillion dollar sorting machines back in place and get them operating again? I think there's going to be a problem even if there is an injunction. Alrighty, Stephanie, this obviously has an impact not only for the election, but right now currently there are lots of veterans, lots of people who get their prescriptions in the mail. There's a lot of people that depend on the mail in the smaller towns, the smaller rural communities. And it's not only Democrats that have shouted very loudly that this was a completely inappropriate thing to do, if not illegal, probably is illegal. But I think the administration is hearing it from both sides. And particularly Donald Trump has this one has stuck to him because he openly admitted that he he wants to starve the United States Post Office of money, and therefore the Democrats won't get their way with the ballots. So he's pinned his name to this whole debacle. Was this an overreach from the administration to think that no one was going to notice? No one was able going to do anything about it and it would just have its quiet subtle effects on the election. Stephanie? Well, I'm so sorry to have to clarify the situation. And in spite of it, you're mentioning it being an overreach what I heard last night on talk radio was that don't we all understand that this is something that couldn't have occurred just spontaneously. This planning has been in the works for a long time. And it is long before this new postmaster was put in place. So this is a long term plan to solve some of these issues in the post office that with the mail and with people having opportunities to do bad things with the mail. So if this is a long term if this is a long term plan, didn't they think of the short term long term consequences of it? Republicans are screaming as loud as Democrats are screaming that you know, their prescriptions are in the mail are being slow. These are people with with serious illnesses that need and require those prescriptions. Well, you have to understand that there's been a lot of work going on in this plan to make sure the post offices is the best it can be. And that's why it started long ago. And this is just the time when it went into effect. And so now there there's a chance for reconsideration. But this wasn't anything that had to do with interrupting the the the mail for the election or anything like this. This is just about good business. So that is what I'm still having trouble closing my mouth this morning about. So yes, agreed. I mean, certainly the outcry which I would have liked to have seen the first couple of days because I was very anxious because but fortunately Nancy Pelosi pulled them back and we have some things happening to get in the way. And if their long term plan to do this is now informed by the outcry and the concerns expressed, this is a very good thing. But one of the streams of information disinformation that are head and on out there. Tim, let me add let me add that I wrote to Louis DeJoy a few days ago, I wrote to him because his email address is on the web, you can write to him too. And I told him how I felt about this. And I copied the delegation. And of the foreign delegation, one responded to me and that was Ed Case. And he feels pretty much the same way about the attack on the post office. Well, let me ask you this. Do you think that Stephanie, her statement that this has been a long term plan just didn't wasn't cooked up in the middle of night. You know, you brought on the post the postmaster who's the next CEO of a logistics company. And by the way, I stand corrected, he sold it 2017 for $612 million, not $6 million. You know, if you're a CEO of a logistics company, you pretty much know what you're doing when it comes to logistics. Oh, he's a Trump or man. He was appointed by Trump. He's loyal to Trump. He gave millions of dollars to Trump. Trump said that he had a problem with mail in votes. This is an obvious maneuver by Trump. It's an obvious loyalty, loyalty maneuver by DeJoy. No question about it. There have been financial problems with the post office. You don't think about the cost of a stamp. It doesn't cover the cost of sending the mail. But that's not the problem. Congress can support that. It's one of the most important institutions in the country. No, I think this was a midnight escapade and it still is. And I don't believe in what those guys say about it. This is a conspiracy to undermine and sabotage the post office in order to improve Trump's chances on the election. That's my view. Well, let me one quick thing. Let me follow up on, did they not realize what kind of blowback they were going to get from from the communities, be it Republican or Democrat communities, red states, blue states about slowing down the mail? Did they not realize those consequences? It wouldn't be the first time they didn't examine consequences before they did something draconian. What happened here is the most important thing is to screw up the election. He is trying to create chaos. This is a really good way to create chaos. I'm sure they realize there would be blowback. But the important thing to Trump is to win the election at all costs, cheating or otherwise. Okay, thank you, Jay. Hey, Cynthia, the post office, one of the arguments that Republicans are using about the post office is it's not profitable. It's not self sufficient. Isn't the post office one of those basic things that government should supply and offer, and our taxes should pay for that we have a reliable post office, whether it's profitable or not? I can't think of how many other agencies or services that the government provides, it does not provide or does not present a profitable balance sheet. Isn't the post office one of those things? And should the post office be profitable, or just let it run efficiently. And yes, taxpayer dollars will will subsidize it. Absolutely, it's in the Constitution. It's not just something they came up with, you know, on a whim and didn't put together in a very serious way that is protected by the Constitution. And that's, you know, the part that I think is being missed by everybody. And yes, sure, I agree with Tim. Sure, they had problems that maybe needed to be fixed and needed to be worked on, especially with this, you know, new glut of mail that's going to be coming because of the pandemic, not just for the the ballots, but for all things that people are getting their groceries and their and their medicines and all of these things that I haven't got my social security check. It's already a week and a half late, things like that that I really count on it. And how many other people are like me that count on it? Now you guys have heard me talk for a long time about how he's going to cheat. Well, I think he had it all set to cheat with the electronics with the boat tabulation software. But then suddenly when all this mail and ballot stuff started, he had to change up his approach. And I think that's an important thing to remember. The timing is so indicative of the fact that he did this on purpose intentionally. And then we have his own words to go by. He has come out and said it in so many words that that the mail needs to fail, that we need to do something to interrupt this mail and voting because it's, you know, fraud with fraud and all these other things that he's claimed. But, you know, he's cheating right in front of our eyes. And that's the part that worries me the most and bothers me the most. And so I'm very glad that Nancy Pelosi has called back the house for this weekend. The fact that they left to begin with just made me so angry at this point in time to choose that for us. You know, let's just go on our regular summer recess. When the world is falling apart and America is definitely falling apart. They need to stay in their seats and do their job, in my opinion. Okay, well, now it's up to the Senate to get their tails back into the Senate chamber. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Cynthia. Hey, Winston, you know, I was kind of playing around and toying in my mind what the title of the show should be. And part of it was the ghost of Benjamin Franklin whispers in Donald Trump's ear, go ahead, make my day. But it was too long of a title, so I couldn't do it. What do you think Nancy Pelosi is going to do? What do you think the house is going to do when they come back? What do you think they're going to say and do this Saturday when Louis D. Joy sits in front of them and provides his testimony? What do you think what ramifications can a politician or the body of politicians do in this situation? Well, I mean, do we honestly believe that there's going to be truthful forthright testimony from Mr. D. Joy or any member of the administration on any topic? Something called perjury, you know. It doesn't necessarily have to be perjury to say I don't remember or I don't recall or just to say I think I've already answered that question or whatever and there's no repercussions for it. We also have to remember that half the nation is believing that somehow has been told that voting by mail is going to end up in fraud unless you live in the states of Florida or Arizona, apparently, where Donald Trump says, OK, you should vote by mail in those states. How they are different than the rest of the U.S. Postal System, I haven't quite figured out yet. I don't think there's going to be. There's obviously a huge uproar about this. It was. But as Stephanie has said before, a lot of trial balloons being floated all the time. And as Cynthia pointed out, he's been very transparent about saying, I don't want this to happen because it will ruin my chances of re-election. And he said before that if there if we voted by mail, there would be no more Republican party or something that effect, if I'm remembering correctly, you know, a while ago. So the threat is there as Cynthia was saying the machines were going could be changed, but you got paper. Paper has a trail. People can be audited. And it gets more people voting. Look what happened here in Hawaii. I went double the number of people voting by mail. So people do want to vote for mail, vote by mail. But they also this is a critical essential service for people. People get their medicines from the mail. And I think it doesn't matter whether you're a Democrat, Republican or independent or none of the above. You still like to get your medicines in the mail. Well, let me let me go to Jay's point that he made. And that was a lot of damage has already been done. To what degree does that damage do we restore the post office as far as the sorting machines and are the the replacement of the mailboxes that were taken from communities. Does that happen between now and the election? Does does that restoration take place? No, it won't take place. And you know there's this is just part of the entire modus operandi of this of this administration, which is to discredit institutions of our of the federal government unless it serves the purpose of this particular administration. So we're not going to see that. But what we might see in a lot of states is some sort of emergency measures that say we're going to set a ballot reception places all over the place so that you can drop off your ballot if you're not feeling like it's going to get into the post office or you're going to have a lot of states say mail this two weeks early or three weeks early or the day I see proactive measures now being taken. But let me press you on this. Is it a lack of authority to restore the damage been done or is it a matter of apathy or both? No, I think people want their mailbox. I mean you know where if you if you have a secure thing and you're worried about someone taking your mail you know where the blue bin is in your neighborhood and if that's suddenly gone you know that's a loss of think about what the mail is. The mail is that is the ultimate sort of federal presence in our lives. It comes to our door every single day. The postman is or the post post lady of postal workers they are agents of the federal government. They can confirm your identification for a passport. They do all sorts of things as agents of the federal government. So the need is there that's not going away. I think as far as the issue of subsidies or what not you know double our rates raise the rates on Amazon. Those are all reasonable things to do but not taking away sorting machines not take not purposely sort of the subterfuge of the post office. It's completely unacceptable and Americans are realizing I kind of like my post office to deliver. I think a lot of Americans like their post office. Okay thank you Winston. Hey before we move on to the next item Jay what was the response of Ed Case to your inquiry to Mr. DeJoy? He wrote me a letter expressing his position and it's the same as my position. I wrote back to him and said how about coming on Think Tech and doing a show on this because he's been going to the media you know he was in civil beat this morning and they read to do a show we had we're in the process of nice something. Very nice. But let me add this one thing Tim you know what can people do? What can the country do about this mail problem? Bringing the house back is not dispositive it's just the house. I don't know what kind of legislation they could do that would be binding. You know legislation requires the Senate too and it requires the president to sign off or fail to veto. That's not going to happen. The other thing is if Trump succeeds in creating this chaos and sabotage for the mail service and if he then wins trust me no one will be punished there'll be no there'll be no response at all. He will completely have gotten away with it. That's a real problem. I would agree to that point until we hear what the results are on November the 3rd. That might be justice and punishment enough. When you know one more thing. They haven't talked about yet in regards to DeJoy. He has lots of money invested in UPS and FedEx so he's got a really serious conflict of interest in making the post office fail. His you know the companies that he's invested in will end up. Why wasn't that why wasn't that discovered before he got the position the appointment? Well I'm sure it was but we in the Senate they just shoved him through. I think this is a last-minute attempt to destabilize the post office at the last minute here before the election and I don't know as he'll be able to reverse any of the stuff that he's already done. Look at it also Tim that all of the heads of the administration and so many departments are exactly have stated positions to dismantle those those organizations as we understand them. So this is not why Well I say it's a political suicide run then because if you look at the polling numbers America loves its post offices both Republicans and Democrats and independents they all do. So go ahead dismantle it and find out what that results like in November the 3rd. Okay just remember that there'll be a lot of people frustrated from voting on November the 3rd and he could get away with it without any accountability if he can stop the people who would vote against him. All right for all people watching the show get out there and drop them off put an election depot as you get your ballots vote early. Jay we had a thousand page report from the Intelligence Committee which is primarily a Republican you know it was a Republican report about the involvement of the administration in 2016 and to what degree they were involved with Russia quite a scathe report and I think the thing that caught my eye was the fact that Donald Trump in a written response to Mueller basically said he had no knowledge or no involvement with discussions about WikiLeaks and the release of WikiLeaks emails with Roger Stone that now has been pretty much flushed out that he did have direct involvement and direct knowledge isn't that called perjury? Yeah this is astounding even caught in a lie the question is whether the public has enough stomach to go back into that whole thing about his manipulation of foreign powers and his encouragement of Putin I think it's clear what happened everybody knows at a sort of fundamental level what happened this is not that much of a surprise actually and I think a lot of people are sort of tired of it what's interesting too is that Michael Cohen was writing this book it should be out any day this is also going to put the light of Trump about his project in Moscow his big hotel project and he specifically lied on that one too and Trump is he's and Michael Cohen is going to put the light of him on that too this is all going to come out between between now and the election it should do damage to him but I'm not convinced that his base is going to turn about it you have many surveys exactly what Jay is saying that if his supporters say if he was shown to have been helped by the Russians or anybody else to get into office does it matter nope doesn't matter happy he's in thank you could we get off the shiny objects please who cares okay what we need to do is exactly what Hawaii did and it is doing and Hawaii can step up and lead the nation we need orange boxes all over everywhere and forget the post office if it works it works if you get it in early get it in otherwise get those orange boxes out there and there'll be legions of volunteers to pick them up and um all right good point good point Stephanie yes let's get to the resolution of this the remedy to get us over the bridge please yes all right thank you okay Jay one last question here is Paul Manafort in this report was identified as a grave counterintelligence threat um you know here's a former general the United States aren't me here is the you know was an esteemed military figure and and now his legacy as he's been labeled a grave counterintelligence threat a spy if you will an underwitted administration is that tolerated and ignored for the most part well this has characterized the Trump administration from the outset God knows what kind of midnight calls Trump has had with Putin and he's got all these people around him who have been identified as much too close counterintelligence threats is not only Manafort in my opinion so you know what's happened is we have we have seen the Mueller report go much further we have seen Trump's connection with Russia go much further and we have seen Russia's efforts screwing up the 2016 election and this one they say this one what they're doing and this one is worse and yet to go back to the point with Winston does that change the base does that flip the base there are a lot of people feel well that's fair it's a part of the ball game you can do that even though to to the people I know it's cheating it's not only cheating it's espionage it's not only espionage it's treason what we have here is treason okay well isn't there shouldn't that be a call to arms that we want to know all these multiple calls over the last couple two three months that Donald Trump has had with Putin isn't it even more important now to find out the nature of those calls and the disclosure and the transparency of those calls yes but how is that going to happen exactly I mean this is useless do not deter to distract from the main issue we're not going to get anywhere with that even if we had time so why is it that we're not focusing okay so we throw up our hands we say oh it can't happen it won't happen oh dear oh me oh my Cynthia let me go to you on this is that what we do as a nation say you know he's had all these planned destined calls with Putin and in light of this thousand page report we just say oh well a la di da what's your point what's your position on that I would like to see Nancy Pelosi bring that up like now just why I was kind of mad that they left that should be our every single representative and senator that we have should be talking about this this was a bipartisan report and I don't care if we're 80 days or 20 days away from the election I think every bit of this report should be broadcast throughout this country to really steal the wool of each and every Democrat or every independent or anybody who's maybe on the fence and even some of these Republicans they need to know because I'm sure they're not okay most are not okay with him dealing with Russia inviting Russia into our elections we've been fighting against that very thing for how many decades yeah we may be burned out by it but I agree with you okay Winston you get the last comment here we're almost out of time Winston does it take more blowback as it was with the post office debacle that the American public actually took arms and and contacted their congressman and said enough's enough with the post office is this a similar situation where Americans will say I want to know what Donald Trump's been saying to Putin for the last two to three months does that happen or do we just move on from this you know both we educate ourselves as best as we can about what's out there we look at what the what types of news the other half of the nation is getting because they're not getting this news we try and address their issues as best as we can but the reality is it's not going to make a difference and if it did make a difference it would probably be perceived positively by half of the country so I don't think it's it's like Stephanie said it's a shiny object let's focus on the goal which is to have a very resounding defeat of Donald Trump at the polls to restore the soul of our nation so that we can get back it's like a hurricane has hit us earthquake something and we need to move on and just pick up the pieces and start rebuilding again all right thank you you get the last word on that I'd like to thank you Winston I would like to thank you very much Cynthia Stephanie Jay thank you for joining us on Trump Week I'm Tim Apachele your host we'll see you next Wednesday 11 o'clock much aloha to all of you