I was on the Andrew Wilkow Show talking about the GOP debate and the blatant politization of President Trump’s indictment. Watch:
Transcript
Andrew Wilkow
Welcome to the program. I am your host, Andrew Wilkow. We are through the first debate of the 2024 election cycle. And in the argument tonight, I guess I’m only allowed to use a total of three minutes–there is an embargo on playing clips. I’ve never heard of that before, but okay, we’ll run with it.
But today’s the day. Today’s the day. Today’s the day. Mugshot day. We didn’t get mugshots in New York. We didn’t get mugshots in DC. But we’re going to get mugshots today. We got them. We finally got them.
MSNBC is so excited. They’re going to see a mugshot:
MSNBC Speaker:
“I want to focus on the mugshot today because that’s a big deal. That is a big deal. That will be Donald Trump’s image throughout history. That one photograph will be one of the most important photographs in the history of this country. And we are a visual world. And think if you’re creating an ad or you’re writing a story, you just need to show that image. You don’t have to tell any other story. An ex-president with a mugshot. Of course, the outcome of the case is the important thing. But even that visual, that will stand through time. And once again, if I’m doing anything, if I want to do anything against Donald Trump, if I’m creating an ad, that’s the image I use. And Donald Trump, who’s a guy who’s so concerned with his appearance, the way he looks, his image, his legacy, this will be something that will just stick with him in the deepest, deepest gut.”
(Hours later):
Andrew Wilkow
Oh, Donnie Douche Bag. You don’t get it, do you? First of all, my Secret Service contacts tell me there’s going to be no publicized mugshot, but let’s say there is.
You don’t get it. It’s going to make Donald Trump….It’s going to be on T shirts. It’s gonna be on mugs. It’s gonna be splashed across the back of pickup truck windows.
……and he will keep raising more! Its “go time”!! pic.twitter.com/mSwwblrA6Z
— Spitfire (@DogRightGirl) August 26, 2023
You are out of your mind if you think this is going to negatively affect Donald Trump.
My first guest is a political analyst, commentator, and lawyer, author of “Right in the World”, my friend, Gayle Trotter. Welcome back to the program.
Gayle Trotter
Great to be with you, Andrew. What an exciting day.
Andrew Wilkow
However you feel about who won last night or where you are in this primary, if you think publicizing Donald Trump’s mug shot is going to adversely affect him and make his supporters not love him even more and bring more people to him, you are out of your mind.
Gayle Trotter
You’re so right, Andrew. The idea that that’s going to be plastered everywhere by his supporters and America has this tradition of liking the rebels and the people who are outlaws.
That was Donald Trump’s entire message to become president in the first place, was that he was not an insider.
And so, if anything, the mugshot is going to be a badge of honor that Donald Trump is going to use and his supporters.
I think that’s why we should have seen last night in the Republican debate, all of the Republicans come together and show this for what it is. It is Democrat engineered election interference.
These indictments are just the next step that the Democrats are trying to do to make sure that the country does not have the option of President Donald Trump again. That is something that all Republicans should rally around.
Whether or not you like Donald Trump, whether or not you want him to be president again, this abuse of power has to be stopped. If Republicans won’t stand up for it, how can they say they’re behind the rule of law?
Andrew Wilkow
Did we forget that as the Ken Starr investigation rolled on, Bill Clinton became more popular? In a former life, I was a music DJ. I was this guy. I was working my way up in radio.
I hadn’t gotten to the talk radio floor on the elevator, but I remember seeing a video of Bill Clinton asking to go to the bathroom at some point and Ken Starr being like, you know, we’re not done here yet.
I remember thinking, let the guy go to the bathroom, right? People started to feel for Bill Clinton at some point, like they were just dogging him. They were just trying to get him to get him.
I think Republicans and Democrats in hindsight, realized that the more they pursued Bill Clinton, granted it was in the second term, he wasn’t running for reelection, but the more they pursued Bill Clinton on the Monica Lewinsky thing, the more people actually started to sympathize with Bill Clinton. His poll numbers actually went up.
Gayle Trotter
I think that’s great analysis, and it’s very important to remember history as we go forward.
With Donald Trump, the Democrats do not want to challenge him on policy because his policies were very popular.
He had a booming economy. He had the lowest African American unemployment rate for a very, very long time. Women were making gains. He was making so much available opportunities to Americans that they had not had the opportunities for before.
So you see that Democrats do not want to run against that. They’re doing everything they can to stop him.
The Republicans who were on that debate stage last night, particularly Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, wanted to distinguish themselves by trying to jump on that Democrat bandwagon. And I would hope the party would reject that.
Anybody who’s not willing to stand up against this abuse of power–it’s not going to be used just against Donald Trump. We’ve seen it used in many other situations as well.
I think the Republicans who did the best on the debate stage last night engaged that issue instead of using that to position themselves and try to advance their political careers.
Andrew Wilkow
Isn’t it obvious that it’s “get Trump by any means necessary”. I mean, just silly.
I saw Mark Meadows turned himself in today. I didn’t know it was a crime in Fulton County, Georgia, to ask Representative Scott Perry for the phone number for the Pennsylvania Speaker of the House.
I didn’t know it was a crime for Donald Trump to tell people to watch TV.
It seems like Fannie Willis just put together a list of things that under normal circumstances, wouldn’t even be considered criminal, and she’s just forcing Trump to defend himself at this point. That’s what it seems like. This is the theme here.
And do we think this is not being coordinated with Barack Obama himself?
I mean, come on. Between Jack Smith, Alvin Bragg, and Fanny Willis,
I think we know that Obama’s running the show from his iPhone.
Gayle Trotter
I think there’s total Democrat coordination on this for sure.
Look at the charges, they’re 91 charges across four indictments. They are tenuous legal theories, things that have not been tried before.
They’re not going after him for what they say that he’s actually guilty of.
Like you said, going after Mark Meadows for making a phone call, going after all these people who are in Trump world.
The obvious answer is that they’re trying to make these people fear for their legal jeopardy, for their liberty, so that they will turn on President Trump.
But the good thing for President Trump is that there’s no there, there.
When you see this type of political persecution, it’s really lawfare against a political appointment opponent.
You saw this with the Democrats trying to impeach Trump and convict him on what they said was Trump going after his political opponent. They didn’t have evidence of that.
So yet again, we see the Democrats projecting what they’re doing onto Republicans, onto President Trump.
And Rudy Giuliani, when he was booked, he came out and said, they’re trying to criminalize practicing law.
If you can’t have lawyers have disagreements about what the political ramifications are of elections, then you really damage our system.
You’re basically saying that the only view that is allowed in the United States is the Democrat view, and that is certainly not the American way.
We should have heard that from every single Republican candidate on that stage last night, but we didn’t.
