Donna Brazile, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin | Moderated by: Betsy Fischer Martin

[Music] okay so let's dive in um get some perspectives on where we are where we go from here with some of the the top Minds here um obviously headed into an election where I think it's safe to say that the greatest democracy in the world that we ended up with two nominees that not a lot of people are super excited about um 20% of Voters are sort of the the double haters don't like either their side passionately um Maggie start us off um give us a sense yeah no pressure here but um start us off in where we are at this stage in the cycle sure first of all thank you for having me um I'm so excited to be here I wasn't able to be here last year this is amazing amazing amazing amazing um and this is an incredible incredible crowd um so with that um we are entering uh the longest general election that I've ever covered and I've been doing this for 20 years um I I realize that doesn't sound that long but I feel pretty old um and I as you said it's two nominees um who the country is not especially excited about I think there's a number of people in both parties who don't believe that these are going to be the two nominees which is part of what you're seeing reflected in the polls um I spend most of my time covering Donald Trump uh and the Republican and on that side of the Ledger um you have a presumptive republican nominee who uh until yesterday was about to go on a felony trial in Manhattan on March 25th Yeah March 25th less than two weeks um now that's delayed we don't know for how long I expect we will know imminently how long it's delayed uh but that's just one of four indictments that he's facing uh the cases are you know I think very hard for voters to keep track of he has had uh three civil cases that he has faced in the last year in change he has by March 25th to come up with a uh roughly $450 million bond to deal with the Judgment in one of those civil cases it's still not clear whether he can or where it will come from um but so that is all the backdrop for one of the two people who is uh is poised to potentially become the next president on the other side is an incum and and he a former president and so you have this situation where there's effectively two incumbents running against each other right um which is it's not entirely novel but it's certainly novel for the last more than a century and then you have President Biden who is the oldest uh president that the US has had and uh this continues to come up questions about his age um you know there's a a lot of frustration for Biden folks that they feel that he has been a very effective president they don't think that he's got the credit that they believe he should um on the other hand you know only they can really sell that record uh and so we're entering a huge period of uncertainty we know there will be conventions but we don't know how many if any trials there will be before election day we don't know if there will be any presidential debates uh and so we're just looking at a a very strange cycle Donald let me ask you if if you were running this campaign as you have for so many you're like hard path you know the good news the good news is I'm no longer in the line of succession to become DNC chair I've been chair I've been chaired twice uh I have seven presidential campaigns under my belt 55 Congressional both uh you know House and Senate 19 state and local campaigns I've worked in 49 states one more state I'm I will become Miss USA without the Pini so but you know as a native born Louisiana you know a girl who grew up right here born at Charity Hospital um Donna and I went to Grace King High School Grace King King and I'm sure there's some hudats here some LSU people I saw my English teacher from my freshman year I was hesitant to ask if she gave me an a uh I give my students A's why not uh but look uh some of you don't like Dej Vu you don't like to to relive the past you don't want to see yesterday because you're focus on today and you want to get to tomorrow the fact is is that both two old political parties have decided to put you know in contention the nominee of the last Democratic uh you know primary and the nominee of the Republicans so you have to go back to 1956 to see the the type of rematch of course you can go all the way back to 1890s if you want to see a president who lost come back and then try it again but he hasn't conceded the last one so I don't know if he fits that bill so here's what I would do first of all don't moan don't complain and all of this bed wetting I mean with the cost of depends I don't know who in the hell has time to bed wet or walk wet okay so stop the bed wetting it doesn't matter if you live in a Battleground or a non Battleground State this is your choice your vote and your voice your voice matters so everyone must participate number two this election is Jonathan Maggie you too my good friend Betsy everyone knows it's going to come down to six or seven states and less than 100,000 votes so don't sweat it you have relatives in Arizona colum Georgia column North Carolina of course the blue wall Michigan Pennsylvania and Wisconsin Nevada matter call them it doesn't matter and if you have young friends or young children or young students like I do shake the out of them say what the hell are you thinking I mean what the hell are you thinking I mean I told my nephew the other day I said if you go in that booth and vote for Donald Trump when you come out you're gonna get a good ass withen it's some of us can't afford four more four years of Donald Trump some of us want to go beyond that so you got to get out there register voters use all of the social media tools that my ex boss Al Gore invented when he inspired the internet and we got to tell our story over and over and over again because it's a great story a story that started with a president who saw a country in decline because the number of people were dying from covid a president who saw 18 million people unemployed who wanted a to get back in the job market so whether you approve of his age look I want to get to be 81 or 82 hell I'll take 90 cuz as y'all know we going to let the good times roll so Boton stop you know he's the he first of all I got invited to lunch with him on Sunday so I'm going check him out again you know it's it's for Catholic so y'all know I got to be there I already got my beads you know and I'm going to go show myself up and I'mma look at him and then I'm going to do a one two one two and if he can do a 34 34 I'm getting out that door and telling all y'all that man got that man got peping his [Applause] step okay so if there are some leaks from that lunch that some senior Democrats encourage Joe Biden to withdraw and pass the Baton at the summer convention that did not come from you right that was not okay good okay um so first of all a point of personal privilege um let me just say thank you um to my wife bety for moderating this unruly Bunch um also um a shout out to Walter and Kathy isacson and Mion Cheryl Andrew who overnight have really made this bookfest into an incredible event so amen amen than guys Walter right there um and uh it's just become a a fantastic event a real Landmark event here in New Orleans and um uh do buy books before you leave I think all three of us have books uh on sale and so we'd be grateful if you could um pick one of those up before you go I think the short answer for why we're in this rematch is Donald Trump um and what do I mean by that well Donald Trump is the biggest force in American politics in both parties he effectively controls both parties it's obvious that he's the leader of the Republican party for almost a decade now he has run the GOP REM made it in His image it's the most extraordinary story of our time by a um but he also controls the Democratic party and here's why because the Democrats are so consumed with Donald Trump that he is their best organizer motivator unifier fundraiser and mobilizer they they wouldn't know what to do without him he is the figure that unifies a coalition that stretches from AOC over here to Joe Mansion over here and if you want to include Liz Cheney why not so this is the AOC Liz Chene Coalition she's next here by the way exactly I'm giving her a shout she has a book like too I think and um so what unifies AOC and Liz Cheney well like not the Iraq War but what does unify them is trying to stop Donald Trump right and so Trump keeps Democrats unified but he also keeps them petrified and that's where Joe Biden comes in the reason why Joe Biden faced no real challenge for renomination the reason why no Democrat went to the White House and said Mr president here's your gold watch thanks for your service enjoy Rehobeth you've been a patriot the reason none of them did that is because they didn't want to do anything to weaken their incumbent and help Donald Trump you can't as a a a Democrat you cannot say or do anything about your tribe because if you do that you help the other guys you help the bad guys right you can't call Joe Biden old and say that he's lost a step because you sound like Fox News and by the way you you can't criticize Donald Trump if you're a Republican and say he's unfit for office because then you sound like MSNBC right so that's why we're stuck in this tribal CAC I do I do think there is an important asterisk though uh and agree with absolutely everything you just said um in the case of Donald Trump um what the Republican party has been increasingly pushed to not criticize is not about age although that's certainly one aspect because Donald Trump is is uh uh almost as old as Joe Biden but don't criticize the attack on the capital by a prot trump mob on January 6 2021 don't question Donald Trump's liwes about the election and in fact endorse them um basically the Republican party and this is where the party one of the ways in which the parties are not the same the Republican party has basically become it stands for whatever Donald Trump wants it to stand for that's really not the case with the Democrats well and Trump is trying to remake the Republican Party taking over the actual apparatus right with his daughter-in-law and yep and and and is taking and look I mean there is an argument that some of his advisers make that he should have done that in 2016 when he became the nominee and that in some ways some of the cleaving that you saw between him and the the vestages of the old Republican party that have obviously gotten much smaller they were louder and bigger then um was because they didn't fully take over over the RNC because they didn't expect to win because they didn't understand uh sort of the the the apparatus he has a more a more sophisticated team around him as an as a an opposition figure right now and that's part of it um but certainly putting his his daughter-in-law there and and she's not the first relative of a president I think there was a Reagan relative who was at the RNC Mar Reagan right but but um given that Donald Trump has um used donations to pay his legal fees given that the RNC at one point did pay for some of his legal fees when he was out of office in the Manhattan district attorney case that has raised all kinds of questions well and you started off talking about those cases no one know more about Donald Trump than you what does these you know criminal cases civil cases all of this mean for him it was one thing during the primary in terms of maybe it was a little he seemed to embrace it in a sense right how does that play in the general election and he's obviously having to spend a lot of time a lot of money that you alluded to what is the Practical effect of all of that in this campaign it's a great question and I bet Donna has smarter thoughts about it than I do but I mean I I am struck that look he he used the indictments to great effect in the primary there's an argument to make that he was never quite as weak as he seemed right when he was out of office I think there was this moment of vulnerability in November of 2022 when so many of his candidates lost and when Republicans did not make the gains they expected but there's also the reverse side which is that he was stronger than it seemed when Mitch McConnell did not vote to impeach him and when Kevin McCarthy within two weeks of January 6th went down to Mara Lago because he was afraid that Donald Trump was going to attack house incumbents and we saw that Trump went after one by one the House Republicans who voted to impeach him and for the most part he was successful in picking them off I think there's if I can jump in there's two key periods in recent American history that I think are Foundation that explained the present right one is the period between January 6th and Donald Trump's acquit in the US Senate six weeks later um that's a really ripe opportunity for the Republican party to cut ties with Donald Trump constitutionally you you convict him of impeachment charges he can't seek office again in the future that's a missed opportunity because Mitch McConnell was not willing to try to rally the votes to convict Donald Trump in January and February of 2021 the other period I think is really important that Maggie just alluded to is in both parties the weeks after last year's midterm elections I think that November December period of 2022 is so crucial in both parties Donald Trump candidates are humiliated the Red Wave never comes once more the Republicans pay a price for for Donald Trump and Democrats uh you know capitalize on Trump and Republicans uh don't move against Trump in fact they wait for Ronda Sanz and then keep waiting and keep waiting he never gets in the race at the same time Democrats outperform expectations to all these Democratic Governors and Senators who were willing to have the gold watch conversation with Joe Biden say oh my God so like he just had a really good midterm I can't go to the White House now and tell the president it's time for him to retire the other guys should do it and Joe Biden buys a measure of it was emboldening to him as well totally can can I say something you know how difficult it is to sit here and watch Donald Trump destroy the very fabric of our democracy we have more than enough votes this is a home game here huh oh no we have we have more than enough votes to pass emergency legislation to fix the problems at the border we have more than enough votes to keep the United States government operating next week we we need Congress to come back and go ahead and approve the rest of the appropriation bills which include defense and state department why because Donald Trump doesn't want Joe Biden to get credit for signing a bill into law that's just utter nonsense so I understand I'm a Democrat and you know um I understand why Republicans want to stay with somebody who has a loud mouth who consume all of our news um thank God the guy is not an athlete because I would I would really be in bad shape uh just having to watch him both on my news channels my cable channels and then of course my sports channels but the truth is is that he is running the United States Congress okay the majority Republicans so speaker Johnson proud Ellis your graduate come on declare your Independence do what in the National interest not just in your party's interest can can I just go back to the question you asked though about um to your question about the the legal trials and the general election I I I just don't want to have us go past that um the polling all shows that a lot of it depends on whether he is convicted in a trial and so we just don't know if there's going to be a trial and and Trump's advisers believe that the one that was scheduled start of March 25th is the least problematic for him um they don't see it as a weighty issue it involves falsifying business records to cover up hush money porn star in in the 2016 election it is actually an election interference case that is actually what the indictment was when when it was first made against Michael Cohen as a campaign finance charge um using campaign funds for well well or or trying to keep it from becoming part of yeah it wasn't campaign funds but it was trying to keep it from becoming part of uh it was essentially an ink kind contribution right right and so I I think it's just an open question whether there is a trial even if there isn't a trial um and there's a real question as to whether there'll be a federal uh trial on the January 6th related charges and Trump's election lies you are going to see President Biden's folks re talk about this a lot um you are going to see a lot of focus on something that we haven't talked about yet on the stage but which I know Jonathan and I have talked about a lot over the last few years which is um threats of political and so that is one of the the huge changes in our political Fabric in 2024 um and so I don't think even if Trump is not on trial I think the fact that he has been indicted in connection with a moment that I don't know how strongly it's in the public Consciousness right now it's certainly strong for for reporters um but I think that voters will hear more about it going forward and you know I don't want to take anything away from Liz Cheney who I admire greatly but can you imagine being in Washington DC on January 6 you know what it felt like I mean we were basically told we could not leave our homes we had people roaming around our Capital looking for trouble and here the mayor of the District of Colombia you know requested to the president to call out the National Guard and they started foot dragging it was the president who had that responsibility it took the governors of Maryland and Virginia to send in their state Troopers to protect 700,000 taxpaying Americans so the notion that Metropolitan Police and the capital police who were beaten you saw him you know I was on Fox News I was a silver fox back then and I was flabbergasted and as they reached the Capital One of my colleagues said oh my God they're on the steps of the capital of course me being someone who knows how to organize and organize me events at the capital I said but they don't have a permit that's illegal yes it is yes it is and now they want to be clad hostages for the damage they caused to the Citadel of our democracy for the injuries they caused to over 140 police men and women they want to be declared hostages they tried to take away our democracy and if we don't stand for it now then we're going to be like Russia Today say that the people in Russia don't have a choice I want to have a choice in who is elected not just president but down ballot as well so we're gonna pass the Hat later if you guys could get we'll take fives 10 20s if you're feeling generous no just give me a to go cup when I'm done some that herb say gumbo thank you B I love that din uh so Jonathan you were actually in the capital on January 6th I was and I want to go back to that because you mentioned Mitch McConnell earlier and you write in your book a story about running into Mitch McConnell and interviewing him right after January 6 and I think it's timely now since we have seen Mitch McConnell not running for leadership right um obviously it's no secret he dislikes Trump but has essentially endorsed him as a lot of other Republicans have but at that pivot point of January 6 he was singing a very different tune yeah so thanks for the book plug my co-author Alex Burns and I um write uh almost an entire chapter about just that one day of January 6 and and what happened in the capital that day and it it culminated at about 1:30 in the morning when uh I was leaving the Capitol uh that day or that night and um I just the old the old saying it's better to be lucky than good um I took a guess as to which elevator McConnell would be coming down um to leave in hopes that maybe he was still in the capital hadn't left himself and sure enough there was nobody else left in the hallway and he came out of the elevator about 1:30 in the morning with just his security detail and um we talking to him and I said how are you feeling today he said I feel exhilarated and I said well that's I didn't say it out loud but in my head I said how in the hell could you feel exhilarated after what you just saw here and I said well what do you mean by that and he said that guy put a gun to his head and he pulled the trigger Trump is finished Trump is finished he told me he said it was a Liberation day for McConnell here this guy get got me a tax cut in three Supreme Court Justices but he was a pain in the ass and he was embarrassing my party but it's over now and we can now move on and I'm still Senate leader and he's leaving the presidency in disgrace and he said if they try to come at us in the 2022 midterms we'll we'll kick their ass every single Senate race worked out well yeah and here we sit three years in change later Mitch McConnell has endorsed Donald Trump as the next uh president of the United States uh Trump still has a grip on the party and and and McConnell's grip on his own Senate caucus obviously is loosened uh uh you know noticeably in the last year and so I think for McConnell it was jarring this is somebody who comes from the the Reagan ER I can't believe this has happened to his party and he's watched this time and time again um but as you mentioned earlier you know mconnell had a chance to finish Trump himself and he didn't try to find the 17 the 17 Senators that they would have needed on the Republican side to get the conviction in February of 21 to ensure Trump couldn't run for office again and I think that is going to go down as perhaps one of the biggest regrets of MC's career I I I want to just add to what you just said McConnell's rationale was in the speech that he gave on the senate floor he when he condemned Trump but ex actually it was after this I don't remember if it was on the sen floor right after the vote but he he excoriated Trump I mean it he gave basically all of the reasons you would think somebody would be explaining why they were voting to to convict to impeach while explaining why he wasn't and basically the answer was the criminal justice system is what should take care of this and there's this um there is this inviting the indictment of the former president sure which and then then the doj proceeded to take a very very long time um you know the investigation in filton County also took a long time um it was a surprise to many that Alvin Bragg the Manhattan district attorney actually did indict Trump and so none of that happened until last year the brag indictment was the first one it was March 30th 2023 there were four after that three after that excuse me um but there has been this sort of pervasive sense that um dispatching with with Trump is always somebody else's final obligation um and and you have seen that play out any number of ways whether it was his primary Challengers this time who just like in 2016 with the exception of Chris Christie who had previously backed Trump which was a complicating factor for Christie um you know Nikki Haley didn't want to attack him for a very long time she finally did at the end when he was attacking her Rhonda santz let Donald Trump Define him for three months before he finally got in the race and even then he didn't want to engage right away um it we it's pretty clear what Donald Trump's going to do um and so at a certain point these are choices people are making and and now it's just put off one to the voters too as well it's like well the voters well and there's an argument look I mean there's SED him as there's an argument that you hear from from Republicans which is that's where it should be right and you hear that over and over again um you know but that's the cover line of some members who don't want to endorse him they say the voters have spoken right and they don't want to weigh in on and they don't want to weigh in on the indictments they don't want to weigh in on things that they don't want to talk about but at the end of the day uh this you know the the the other piece of this that we haven't talked about is that Trump has this strategy legally of just delay delay delay delay yes with all of these cases um and and he has benefited from some missteps by prosecutors in certain cases um most particularly in Fulton in in the Manhattan case it's actually not the fault of the Manhattan district attorney the southern district of New York delayed giving him documents which then led to this delay um but either way Trump is just using whatever leverage he has and he's he's leveraging these cases against one another and he may Le leverage them past November so we've talked about Trump we talked about Biden but Donna I want to ask you about the possibility of a third party something you experienced close to home in 2000 with Ralph nater and the impact it made on that election talk to us a little bit about the threat of a third party and what that would mean for Biden in this election well I think you have to go back to 68 and George Wallace uh to take a look at the the short and the longterm view of this yeah you have to be concerned about third parties I mean they are bright shiny objects I mean RFK junior is saying put another Kennedy in the White House and and his family every time he says that they say oh no not this one uh you know and and and then you have Jill Stein who wants to remake the green party into you know I I sometime think of Godzilla and Hong Kong and uh King Kong and I'm like Gio come on by the way she's also Donald Trump's age you know if they all went to the same high school like we did I was a senior and you were a freshman I mean Donald Trump would have been a freshman and Joe would have been a you know a junior senior I mean come on I'm not going to play that that that game but the truth is is that yes third parties Carnell West if he gets on the ballot uh no labels if they put a candidate uh jool liberman uh my good friend sent an email out today I have to read it because that's one of my topics this Sunday look we have to be concerned about every Everybody the most important thing I would focus on is talking to the American people where they are you know America loves a good story we're optimists and yet over the last 20 years we've experienced this fear this fear of the unknown fear of the future the uncertainty the chaos and we need to tell our story how we have come back from a the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression from the largest pandemic where 3,000 people were dying every single day we don't tell our story which is why I love coming home because you know what when you're home you hear the stories of how people came back how they rebuild and how we continue to rise yeah we still have problems we going to fix them but we cannot fix the problems of the future if we're so damn divided you know I tell my friends I my sister I'm number three my sister number six we in we don't even make the same kind of Gumbo my R is my R is a little darker she adds Sometimes some some things that I don't add in my gumbo okay yet it's delicious my gumbo is outstanding she's a republican man a tough room yeah I am a Democrat and I guarantee you before the end of this evening we G to break bread and drink beer and we ain't going to talk about nothing political now I'm not going to tell you how she's going to vote but I guarantee you when I see her after the election I know I'm going eat her gumbo cuz she's going to vote for Joe Biden third parties are a threat is like anything they will charge it up they will drive you crazy but don't ignore them we we not only ignore them in 2000 because the posters I kept telling people you see Louisiana girls we just don't see you we can smell you okay and I said Ralph Nat is here no he's not in 2016 the high command of Brooklyn that was the Clinton campaign they didn't seein the threat of Jill Stein and remember these are states those the states are listed that you can win and lose by 10,000 11,000 votes don't forget Al gour 537 no that's the threat is the and they're now but they're taking it seriously now they are they are yeah no I mean I think they've very much so I wrote a column about this last month that uh the threat was not no labels as much as it was Jill Stein Cornell West and Bobby Ken if Joel Stein gets the Green Party Line in Michigan Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that's a mortal threat to Joe Biden's reelection because if she gets 15 to 20,000 votes in those States that's a hell of a lot of votes well and to your point the the margin in this handful of states in 2016 was was 880,000 in 2020 it was 40,000 um I talked to some democratic strategists who think it could be even tighter this time um which is which is why this is so significant on the No Labels front there has been a very aggressive effort by um allies of the incumbent president to try to they know they can't stop it um but what they can do is keep anybody who wants to have a political future from running on that line and who they think that they can have some sway over and that's been pretty effective so far we'll see if that continues right um Maggie I wanted to also ask you about some of the other issues we talked a little bit about immigration but what about abortion um and how that is going to play in this camp campaign um the Republicans now um the issue of IVF coming full circle here in Alabama um what are your thoughts on the issue of abortion and the role that that's going to play in this campaign um the repeal of roie Wade was enormously significant uh in the 2020 uh to midterms um one of the people who who realized early on that the dubs ruling that undid roie Wade was going to be a problem for Republicans was the man who installed the three Supreme Court Justices that undid it Donald Trump who was telling people privately this is bad for republicans and he turned out to be right um he has a problem which is that he keeps saying publicly that he's proud that he undid roie Wade while also privately telling people this is a bad issue for republicans and then privately having conversations with people about liking uh a 16-week uh Federal abortion ban although he hasn't said uh publicly what he's going to do or what he'll back um all of that I think is going to be animating for Democrats it's not just to your point it's it's all of these related issues it is criminalizing women seeking abortions it is the IVF ruling it is um uh you know broader E I was about to say broader efforts if if Trump comes into play by his allies who are planning to try to crack down um on legal contraception um on abortion pills and so forth and so you know I talked to some Republicans who say we don't think this is going to be as big an issue this time I've seen no evidence that this is abating as as an animating issue I think abortion and I think that um fears of political violence slash talking about January 6th are still going to be pretty animating I think if Biden wins the reelection this November I think we'll look back uh at the abortion rights issue as the most significant issue that helped him uh turn back Trump once more there's just no tradition in this country of giving rights and then taking rights back and especially ones that are so personal and also it comes at a time when like everything else in American life has sort of been destigmatized you can gamble online you can smoke a joint walking down St Charles Avenue I would uh really haven't recently but I've heard um you know and then so and we'll try it today and then but and then suddenly you know you outlaw this right that women have had for half a century it's jarring and I think politically Republicans have not figured out a way to talk about it Maggie is right though that that Trump knows the politics of it or bad it's going to be see what he it's gonna be I think his biggest test policy-wise Trump will be the dexterity on this issue can he go six months and not alienate his core supporters um by talking about what a bad political issue it is or just he alert that out eventually you know it's amazing that Trump's two biggest accomplishments are issues that he's now embarrassed about he can't talk about operation Warp speed which got the vaccine in record time and helped hasten the end to covid and he he can't talk about the three justices that he installed that overturn a legal abortion in America right I'd add one more to that it's really hard for him to talk about the tax cut bill which was actually one of his first significant legislative achievements and they're going to expire not a not a great moment to be talking about tax cuts that help wealthy corations exactly at the risk of of um poor Donna maybe falling off the stage here Maggie I wanted to ask you about what a never fall off the what a trump 2025 what a trump second term essentially would actually look like yeah I'm sorry Donna I'm glad you I'll be I'll be brief um and I'm glad you asked that uh my colleagues uh Jonathan Swan and Charlie Savage and I have actually done a lot of work on this and on a series we've been calling Trump 2025 um and it focuses on the couple of things that we we definitely know Trump wants to do then there's a bunch of sort of almost allart ideas that allies of his have come up with at um Center for renewing America at the Heritage Foundation and so forth but the things we know Trump is focused on is um uh eroding the post-watergate norm of doj Independence he has openly talked about appointing a special prosecutor on day one to quote unquote go after President Biden and his family uh we know that he wants to make massive changes to the Civil Service rules uh which have been in place for decades and decades and decades which ended the spoils system he essentially wants to make it easier to fire people to get rid of people who might not do what he wants and to put in place close allies um on NATO there is a there were I should say there had been a question of what he was going to do because he had stopped talking about it and he's more recently not only revived talking about you know forcing people to pay more for defense but said that you know talked about some conversation he claimed to have had I don't know know if he actually had it or not it really doesn't matter um that if if a NATO Nation didn't pay their their um member fees that it would be you know not only would he not defend them he would say let Russia do whatever the hell they wanted and so and he's saying this with the backdrop obviously of the Russia and Ukraine uh conflict and so uh and he wants to do I'm sorry one other on immigration they're talking as he did in 2016 about Mass deportations um and and more aggressive crackdowns he's also talking about using the Insurrection act at the border um it's not a huge break with who he is that what I would argue is that if people want to know what a trump 2020 25 and onward presidency would look like look at what he was planning for the final year of 2020 before Co changed a lot of it and what he was planning was schedule F this executive order to change the Civil Service um he was planning on putting people in the white house uh who were not going to stymy his agenda um as he as he believed had happened um he was trying to dig in deeper to the roots of the investigation into his campaign and Russia um and he was talking openly about payback uh after he had been impeached the first time so payback is a recurring theme in Donald Trump's life I don't think 2025 and onward would be an exception and what does the VP Pi look like for Trump well that's I mean is Mike Pence an option yes it's a great question um uh I think that um if Donald Trump was left to his own devices he wouldn't have a VP I'm not sure that he see thinks that they're necessary um I don't think we're going to have Clarity on that until June um and I think the guessing game around what he's going to do um can make your head spin yeah well let me can I say one last because I see we've been told to go home and get out to we're getting the hook here yeah we at the Apollo we're getting March is women's history month and by any real meaning of having you know one month dedicated to talking about issues of importance women of achievement women who are history makers Trailblazers you name three here you know um thank you appreciate that boo thanks but I want to encourage the women in this room and of course the men who love us to use your power stand in your power our bodies are not the property of a political party or a group of zealot who think that they are going to tell us what to do stand in your power use it and go out and vote thank you so much thank you everybody thank you thanks