Well, things are heating up here. And I’m not talking about the summer of 24. I’m talking about the election of 24. We’ve got a lot of huge moving parts. What’s going to happen with Biden? Is he going to be in, is he going to get replaced? How does it play out? What are the mechanisms for that sort of happening in between now and the Democratic National Convention? And then we’ve got all these moving pieces with Trump. Who’s his vp going to be? What’s going to happen with the July sentencing? Could he be in jail? There are so many moving parts.

And the man that we’ve got to get the opinion from is Jim Rickords. Jim is a former advisor to the White House, Pentagon, CIA, multiple New York Times bestselling author, and knows tons about all the topics that we’re covering here. So, Jim, we wanted to get your take. Why don’t you kick it off? What could happen here? I guess we start with Biden. What would happen here? How could he get out of the election? The mainstream starting to report on this, get us caught up. Sure. Yeah. The Supreme Court is not, it’s not like a presidential debate or election or anything like that.

It tends to be a little bit technical, but their decisions can completely transform the economy and markets as they have in the past, going back to the 1930s and the Roosevelt administration. It was the original court packing scheme where Roosevelt, FDR didn’t like what the Supreme Court was doing. But they have a huge impact, even if people don’t understand all the technical legalities. But just to kind of summarize, the Supreme Court has a term. The term goes from the first Monday in October until, I’ll say, end of June. There’s not a specific date when, hey, it’s over, but end of June.

Well, guess what? We’re at the end of June. And yesterday was supposed to be the last day for the Supreme Court term, but they controlled their own schedule and they extended it to today, and they have about 20 cases that are pending. We’ll see how they come out. But two of them in particular are hugely important, will transform markets and economy. We should expect to see them today. Now, I guess the Supreme Court could say, hey, we’re going to work through the weekend. See you Monday. But as of now, those decisions are supposed to be handed down today.

And two of them are, I would say, momentous. One is on the scope of presidential immunity. Now, everyone agrees that the president walks out of the White House, goes into Lafayette park, shoots somebody in cold blood. He can be prosecuted for that. No one thinks that you should be immune from that. But for official duties, which is very broadly defined, everything from, you know, war and peace to executive orders, open borders, you know, you name it, all the Steph Biden has done, those are all kind of official duties in one way or the other. The question is, should the president be immune from criminal prosecution in the conduct of his official duties? It’s never been litigated in quite those terms.

Cases of this type actually go back to Nixon, the Watergate, back in 19, 73, 74. So this is now in front of the Supreme Court. They’re probably going to decide it today. My expectation is that they will find that presidential immunity does apply, not across the board, not for everything, but certainly a broad definition of official duties, that there is such a thing as presidential immunity. It doesn’t mean the president’s not accountable. The court’s going to say there’s a remedy. The remedy is called impeachment. If you don’t like what the president’s doing officially, don’t sue him.

Don’t get some two bit prosecutor like Alvin Bragg to bring some crazy case, impeach the president and remove him from office. So there is a remedy, but the remedy is what I just described. It’s impeachment and removal from office, not a criminal prosecution. Interestingly, the Alvin Bragg Heshpani case, which was going on while the Supreme Court was considering this, the point I’m raising, by the way, was argued last fall or earlier this year. But the decision we expect to be handed down today, that hush money case was going on while the Supreme Court justices were deliberating and their clerks were researching all this? I can’t think of a better example of why the president should be immune.

I mean, did we really want presidents called into court and have to sit in court because some, you know, two bit prosecutor in some district decides to bring a made up case? Which is pretty much what happened in the so called Heshmoney case. It was an illustration of why the president should get immunity anyway. We’ll see what the Supreme Court says. But if the Supreme Court agrees or decides that there is presidential immunity for official acts, that could throw two of the criminal cases against Trump out of court. One of them is the so called January 6 case, which is pending in the DC district.

Again, the Democrat lawfare machine has picked these districts, handpicked the districts, handpicked the judges in such a way as to disadvantage Trump to the extent they can. DC, I think, votes 90 plus percent Democrat. It’s almost impossible to imagine Trump getting a fair trial in Washington, DC. Well, that’s why the case is there, because they don’t want him to get a fair trial. But that said, that case alleges that President Trump on January 6, 2021, and bear in mind, Trump was still president in early 2021, the election was in 2020, but Biden was not sworn in until January 20, 2021.

So on January 6, 2021, Trump was still president. So whatever he was doing, and that’s been greatly distorted, we don’t have time to go through all the facts of the riot and what happened and the allegations of insurrection that was all made up by the Democrats. Trump actually said to his supporters, protest peacefully. He used to work peacefully. And then later in the afternoon, he said, hey, go home. It’s a little out of control. Trump wanted to use the National Guard, but Nancy Pelosi shot it down. But the point being, if you actually look at the facts of the case as opposed to the media narrative and the media spin, it’s hard to see what Trump did wrong.

But he’s being indicted. He was indicted. He’s being tried criminally by a handpicked Merrick Garland, handpicked prosecutor who hates Trump on charges of, they don’t use the word insurrection, interestingly, but in effect, fomenting a riot, interfering with official business up on Capitol Hill. Well, whether you agree with that or not, it was, Trump was acting in his capacity as the president at the time. If the Supreme Court says the president has immunity for that, that case could get thrown out very quickly. And I said earlier the remedy was impeachment. Well, if you recall, Trump was impeached.

Nancy Pelosi impeached Donald Trump for January 6 after Trump left office. He was impeached in late January 2021 after he was no longer the president. That’s unprecedented, but it shows you how crazy the Democrats get when it comes to what they call lawfare. But we may see that January 6 case thrown out. If the Supreme Court decides the president has immunity, I would expect Trump’s lawyers to go in and move immediately to dismiss the case. The other case that could be dismissed again, same legal theory, different facts, is the so called classified documents case where the FBI broke down the door at Mar a Lago, raided the president’s midnight, it wasn’t even midnight, like 03:00 a.m.

whatever SWAT team raid with weapons at the president’s house in Palm beach, which is Mar a Lago, to seize boxes of so called classified documents. That case has all kinds of other problems, including whether Trump actually declassified them, which the president has the power to do, unlike Biden, who never at the time anyway, had the power to declassify anything. He took classified documents, stuck him in his garage. Next was corvette in Delaware. Trump at least had them locked up. He been in discussions with the National Archives and the FBI about the handling of it. But the FBI decided to pull the trigger, break the door down and go get those documents.

The prosecution had, by the way, same prosecutor, it’s the same guy who is pursuing these cases. But they admitted that they tampered with the evidence. The evidence where the actual boxes? Well, you’re supposed to, I’ve been involved in complex cases. You’re supposed to take those boxes, number everything, keep it in order, keep it in sequence, have witnesses who can testify that the documents were carefully handled and it was monitored. That’s how you basically create whats called a chain of evidence. They didnt do that. They took them out. They scrambled them. They put fake covers on them.

They took pictures of classified. Ive actually worked with classified documents. They have a little red border with stripes. You know, its classified. If youre handling a physical document, they took those, basically made them up and then put them on top of these piles for photo op. Those cover pages that Im describing were not in the, in the original documents. That was just for show. So they tampered with the evidence. They messed that up. The case might be dismissed for that reason alone. But again, this presidential immunity case comes down, says, sorry, you can impeach a president, you know, good luck, but you cannot criminally indict and try a president for official acts.

And, you know, taking documents out of the White House would have been an official act. So that’s a very big deal. We’ll see what happens. But the result could be that those two cases, classified documents and January 6 riot, get thrown out. So that’s a big deal. That leaves us with our friend Fonny Willis in Georgia. In that case, it’s probably going to get thrown out because of prosecutorial misconduct, hiring her lover as a prosecutor and going on exotic vacations. We’ll see. That case may get thrown out also. So ironically, after all these criminal charges against Trump, the only one that may stick, at least for the time being, is this basically invented hush money case in New York.

But, you know, that’s New York for you. That’ll get overturned. But maybe, but not yet. Maybe not before the election. The other case the Supreme Court is going to give a decision on involves a doctrine called Chevron deference. Now, Chevron obviously, is the big oil company. Deference means that I give you the benefit of the doubt. This was a case that was decided in the 1980s, and here’s why it’s so important. We have Congress, they make laws, we have a White House, they sign the laws and enforce them. That’s the courts decide disputes. So that’s the division of powers in the constitution.

But somewhere along the way, we created the administrative state, or what I call the deep state, what some people call the swamp. We have all these agencies, Federal Reserve, SEc, CFTC, DEa. I don’t have to list them all. And then even within the cabinet level departments, there’s a real department of Energy and the Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce, they have all these agencies that they’ve created. And Congress gets lazy. And what they often do is they pass a law. They say, here’s what we want to happen, and we, the Congress, delegate to the administrative agency the authority to write regulations, to kind of interpret it.

Well, regulations are the whole ball game. The interpretation is the whole ball game. You can look at the statute and read it five different ways. It’s not until you actually get into regulations. And by the way, there are far more tens of thousands of pages of regulations than there are laws. I mean, the United States code takes up a certain amount of space on your bookshelf, but if you had all the us regulations, I don’t think you could fit in the Library of Congress. But that’s where the real power lies. It’s in the swamp, in the deep state.

Well, anyway, these things get litigated, somebody agency comes out with regulation, some advocacy group or think tank or some legal foundation sues about the interpretation. The courts have to decide. In the 1980s, the court said, okay, we’ve got to sort these things out, but we’re going to give deference to the agencies. It’s called administrative deference or Chevron deference, because the case involves Chevron. And what it means is that the court kind of said, they’re experts, they know what they’re doing, they do this all the time. They’re acting in good faith. We’re going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

It’s a very high burden on a plaintiff to overturn a regulation because we’re going to give the administrative agencies the benefit of the doubt. That’s Chevron deference that has been criticized forever. But now there’s a new case where the Supreme Court may overrule the Chevron case. They may say, sorry, agencies, you’ve abused your power, you’ve gone too far. Does anybody think Anthony Fauci is an expert? He’s a fraud. They lied to us in Covid. They lied to us about climate change. They lied to us about the war in Ukraine. They lied to us about the 2020 election.

Does anybody believe that the deep state is operating in good faith or that they actually know what they’re talking about? And even people who aren’t lying don’t know what they’re talking about. I would look at the chairman, the board of governors, the Federal Reserve. I don’t think they’re liars, but I don’t think they know very much about monetary policy. Certainly Johnny Yellow doesn’t know anything about international finance. So the court may take away that deference. It doesn’t mean that an agency can’t write a regulation, but it does mean that if it gets to court, the court is going to weigh both sides equally.

They’re not going to assume that the deep state has expertise or deserves the benefit of the doubt because they know, let’s just take it at face value and go from there. If that happens in a litigation context, the plaintiffs are going to win people who are agencies who are, sorry, not agencies, but plaintiffs who are complaining about, why can’t you have a natural gas stove? Why can’t you have a washing machine that washes the clothes? Why can’t you have a dryer that gets the dryer dryer, you know, the clothes dry? Why do you have to buy an electric vehicle? You know, on and on and on.

All these things, they come from regulations. And so we may find going forward that plaintiffs win more cases, agencies lose more, and then it affects the behavior of the agency. Like, well, if I’m just going to get thrown out of court, I don’t want that either. So I’m going to temper my regulations. So this could completely transform and deep fang the deep state. Very, very big deal, the biggest case of its kind since the 1930s and again, overturning something that’s been around since the 1980s. So if you hear Chevron deference, don’t duck. It’s a geeky term, but the significance is what I’m describing.

So let’s look for that presidential immunity case. Let’s look for that Chevron deference case. They could both be decided in a matter of minutes, and they will transform the election cycle if those cases against Trump are thrown out, and they will be the beginning of the end of the deep state. So a very big deal. Wow. Yeah. And that can all happen today. Like jims saying were live here. Its about 1015 eastern time. And those Supreme Court rulings could come out at any moment. So thats what to pay attention to. Could be some big things that come out here on this Friday.

And we appreciate you keeping us up to speed live here, Jim. So let’s switch gears. We’ve got a bunch of questions coming in on the 2024 election. So let me run down real quick what we’ve got here, potential agenda. And then, Jim, I’ll kick it off. And you kind of go in what direction you want, but you’ve done videos on Trump’s vp pick. You’ve had very bold and accurate rate. Everyone agrees with them. We’re just kind of waiting for things to play out. You know, Biden may step down and then we’ve got all the different things happening with Trump and sentencing and the things that happen in the next couple of months.

So is there somewhere that you’d want to start with an update on the 2024 election and what’s most important and what’s happening? Sure. Let’s just jump in on the issue you raised, Matt, which is will the Democrats replace Biden as the presidential nominee or. Well, they replaced Kamala Harris as the vice presidential nominee. Now, we were one of the first ones, maybe the first one to raise this as an issue. We talked about this last September. Now, today, you turn on MSNBC or CNN or Fox, and you’re going to hear James Carville and David Oxarad and everyone else talking about it.

But again, we were one of the first ones. Maybe the first one to raise is a real possibility. If you look at the polls, and I understand polls are snapshots, they can change. I get it. I look at them all the time. But Trump is winning nationally. He’s winning in seven out of seven swing states, the so called battleground states that are actually going to decide the election. I mean, everyone knows that Biden’s going to win California and everyone knows that Trump’s going to win Florida. So you can take those pieces off the board. And when you boil down and say, what are the states that are actually going to decide this election? They’re the so called battleground states.

Trump’s ahead in seven out of seven. It actually is better than that for Trump because there are certain states that have not been considered battleground states. So like, oh, Biden’s going to win those. And people look at the polls like, hold on, wait a second, maybe not. And the two that come to mind are Minnesota and Virginia, which were not on anybody’s list of swing states. They are now, according to the latest polls, Biden is ahead, but only by about 2.4 percentage points, which is not a big lead, not quite within the margin of error. Close.

But the trend has been in favor of Trump. There were some polls in Virginia that showed Trump slightly ahead. So don’t be surprised if Trump not only wins all seven of those battleground states as we talked about, but maybe Minnesota and Virginia also don’t rule out New Jersey. I mean, New Jersey is kind of getting down to single digits at this point. Again, Biden is still ahead. He’s very likely to win New Jersey. I’m not saying otherwise, but I’m saying that maybe on election night, November 5, we shouldn’t be shocked if Trump picks up New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico.

I mean, this could be an electoral college landslide, meaning not 310 electoral Bush. You need 270 to win, but 330 now you’re getting into not quite Ronald Reagan territory, but you’re not too far removed. But that is a landslide. So we’ll see what happens. Trump’s ahead of all the polls. He’s ahead of the betting odds. He’s ahead. National polls, I always discount national polls and say, well, we don’t elect presidents nationally, which is true, we elect them state by state by state. You got to go each state, add up the electoral votes to get to 270, thats how you win.

But when Trump won in 2016, he was never ahead nationally. No surprise. I mean, the Democrats get 6 million or more extra votes in a place like California. I dont know whats going on in California, but you can barely break even or beat Biden in the popular vote because is California alone delivers 6 million extra votes, 6 million vote margin for in favor of Biden. But I point out two things. Number one, it doesn’t matter. You can only win California once. If you win by 6 million votes, you still only win it once. You only need one vote to win it.

So it doesn’t do you any good. And again, that’s not how we elect presidents. Having said that, Trump is ahead in the national polls, which he has never been. So that’s a huge, huge point in his favor if you’re trying to understand what’s going on at the state level. And as I say, Trump is winning all the battleground states and has created a couple new battlegrounds which don’t expect, obviously Minnesota and Virginia at the top list. Trump is also heading fundraising. So because of after he was convicted, they raised over Trump and the Republicans raised over $200 million in three days, everyone was like, they got $40 million in the first couple hours, which is true.

But the momentum continued over three days. It was $200 million. Now they got a $15 million gift from Tom Mellon. Okay, so Trump’s ahead in the polls nationally, battleground states, new battlegrounds ahead. Money. Uh, Biden can’t get into his car. Falling down steps, wandering off, being led back by foreign prime ministers. Can’t speak, babbles. Cognitively impaired, physically impaired. What kind of, what kind of race is that? So the Democrats are panicking. They won’t say it on tv, but they are panicking. They know that they’re probably going to lose. Most likely going to lose. So what can you do? Well, one thing they could do, and they would have to do this very soon just to kind of set the calendar.

Right now we’re at the end of the primary season. There might, there might be, like, one not very significant primary next Tuesday. There were a couple last Tuesday. So the primary season is over. The convention is August 19. So you have this window from the middle of June to the, toward the end of August where primaries are done. If you’re going to replace Biden, you don’t want to do it while the primaries are going on because it begs the question, well, should Gavin Newsom jump into a primary? Who knows? But when the primary is over, that question goes away.

You can’t do it at the convention because the last thing was an open convention. Open convention means everyone gets to the convention and nobody has a majority. And you actually do all the horse trading and backroom deals and smoke filled rooms and all that stuff from political legends. Well, that hasn’t happened since 1952. You don’t want that, and the Democrats certainly don’t. So we’re in the window now where if you’re going to replace Biden, you better do it fast while we raise the issue and while it is an issue, and we don’t want our readers to be caught off guard, we want our readers to understand that this could happen.

Having said that, every day that goes bye, it gets a little less likely. I mean, what if you’re going to do it, do it. What are you waiting for? Now, there’s not much advantage in waiting. Who are the potential substitutes? Just like a baseball manager, you pull the picture out and send in somebody from the bullpen. Who are the potential substitutes for Biden? Well, we know who they are. It’s Gavin Newsom, governor of California. Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan. Jay Pritzker, governor of Illinois. They’re the big three. Hillary Clinton still around? I think she already lost.

She had her chance. A little bit of a dark horse, but probably the best qualified, probably the most intelligent is Gina Raimondo. She’s the commerce secretary today, former governor of Rhode Island. I say Gina Raimondo. I know who she is. A lot of people go, who are you talking about? Who’s Gina Ramondo? Keep an eye on her. She, as I say, she’s unlike the others. She’s actually highly intelligent. I don’t give the other ones much credit. And I guess you’d have to put Jennifer Grantham in there. She’s the secretary of energy, far left, green, new scam, Looney.

But she’s out there. So you probably have five candidates. People talk about Michelle Obama, she has no interest. She’s having a good time. Much more interested in getting to the billion dollar net worth level. They’re well north of 500 million at this point. The Obamas are just racking up the bank account and getting fees. They don’t really want to get back into this other than behind the scenes. That’s different. So that’s your list of substitutes. Everything about money and polling and Biden’s declining mental health, declining physical health, says, get rid of this guy. You’re going to lose.

And even if you don’t lose, he’s not qualified to be president. It’s not a question of college credentials. Biden doesn’t have much in that category, but he barely knows his name. He doesn’t know where he is. He wanders off. If you read Annie Jacobson’s book called Nuclear War, about how a nuclear war would actually play out, by the way, that’s getting more and more likely by the day. And the president in a real world situation, not some star wars movie, but a real president in the real world, you’d have about six minutes to decide whether you’re going to wipe out humanity or not.

The idea that Biden in anything like that position, the book’s scary enough, I recommend. And Jacobson, nuclear war, the book’s scary enough as it is. Just as a scenario, the idea of putting Biden in that real world scenario is hard to think of anything more, more scary. Um, if we dig into that one, that one idea that is, is that Biden stepping down. So in between now and the, the DNC, is that Biden saying, hey, guys, I’m stepping down, or is there some other mechanism that could, can they, can, can some group that Democrats in general say, we don’t want you.

How, how does that work? How does it play out? Well, great, great question. I can’t. Biden has lost the decision, the capacity to make decisions. So I can’t say Biden say, jumps up. You know what, I had a good term. I’ll go down the history books. Why am I doing this? I can’t imagine that playing out. Not because it’s not a smart decision. It would actually be a smart decision. It would be like Lyndon Johnson 1968, withdrawing from the race, Richard Nixon 1974 presidency. They’re like, hey, game over. Okay, see ya. But Biden doesn’t have that mental capacity to actually be responsible for himself.

If he were not the president, he’d have a guardian and be like Britney Spears. I mean, you’d have a court appointed guardian because you can’t really control yourself. So who’s the real gatekeeper? I mean, it’s a great question about the real gatekeepers. Jill Biden, Doctor Jill. She thinks the word bodega is pronounced bodega. She thinks Hispanics are tacos. And she thinks sisa puede is a sisse pudo. I mean, she’s kind of a dope, but she’s in charge now. Could some delegation, I think this is where you were going with the question, Matt. Could some delegation down in Brazil, Dick Durbin, a senior senator from Illinois, Carlos Kamal clown, but some serious democratic players, maybe Chuck or Chuck Schumer.

So Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Donna, Brazil for the DNC. They go up to the White House to make an appointment, say, sorry, mister president is over. That could happen. That is what happened with Richard Nixon when he resigned. But nobody wants to step out. Nobody wants to be ostracized. Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of that trade. So I think they lack the courage or the leadership. So I don’t think that’s going to happen. So the question is, does Jill Biden, Doctor Jill Taco Jill, does she decide it’s over and tells her husband or not? And right now, even though we warned our readers about this a long time ago, right now it looks a little bit more like in the or not category.

I think they’re going to just go for it. They’re going to roll the dice. And by Biden’s theory, when he could still think, I don’t, by the way, Biden, I, some people say, well, look at the tape of him now. Compared to four years ago, you can see he’s deteriorating. Yeah. Compared to four weeks ago. Four weeks ago, he’s deteriorated. If you know anything about dementia, two things. One, it’s progressive just, it gets worse. It doesn’t get better. It gets worse. Two, there’s no cure. So why are we surprised? And, you know, the White House is trying to spin these things, you know, cheap fakes instead of deep fakes and all that.

The spin is not working. It’s like, it’s like the old Groucho martial. Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? Well, believe your own eyes, you know, so, so sticking on that same topic, there’s a lot of, uh, a lot of ideas swirling around. And again, you, you’ve been ahead of this. Like you said, you called in September of how this was going to kind of play out. And now the mainstream media is picking up a lot, a lot of other outlets. A lot of the dialogue now is saying, oh, they might do some sort of VP switch out with Kamala.

So then Kamala goes out and they put in a real, like a real presidential type substitute into the VP. How would that play out? Well, that’s a great question, Matt, and you’re right, that scenario is probably getting a little more traction than they’re just going to bet on Biden, so good luck with that. But I think a horse with three broken legs. But anyway, the VP. So think about the significance of the question. It’s a great question, but what you’re saying is Bidens going to die. Nobody wishes that. Nobody wants that or he may be out somehow.

Yeah, I dont know. He said, well, hes had two aneurysms and they were operated on in the 1980s at a time when the surgical techniques were not at all as sophisticated as they are. Brain aneurysm is a near death experience under the best of circumstances. But at least today the surgical techniques are a little better. A lot better. He had brain damage from those aneurysms which he never got over. And he wasnt too smart to begin with. The deterioration, I think he’s actually crossed a bridge, meaning it’s not just obeys a little slow or he garbles his words or he doesn’t know where he is or he walks off stage the wrong time.

That’s all bad enough, but now I think he’s actually beyond that. I just don’t think he really knows where he is. So we’ll find out on the 27th with the debates. Can you pump him full of drugs to get him through it? Remember the state of the union? Everyone was like, oh, he was robust, energetic. No, he wasnt. He was screaming. He was pumped up with some kind of stimulant amphetamines or whatever. And he was screaming, thats not robust. Thats not good rhetoric. So can they do that again? By the way, the president today is at Camp David.

Hes going to stay in Camp David for the next seven days prior to the debates. Probably go directly to the debates from Camp David. What are they doing at Camp David? He’s probably sleeping most of the time. You say gather his energy and then they’ll drug him up before the debate and we’ll see what happens in preparation, rehearsal. I understand that. I don’t know. I mean, can he fake his way through it or not? We’ll find out on live tv, but we’ll see how that goes. But even if he does, that doesn’t give me any confidence now.

So the theory is, okay, go with Biden, but we’re going to swap out Kamala for somebody. And then the question is whom? Probably that same list of presidential candidates I gave you, any one of them would step up and be the VP. But they’re talking about Hillary Clinton. And why would Hillary Clinton want to be VP? Well, the answer is because Biden’s going to die and she would finally get to be president, which she’s wanted since probably she was a kid. So keep an eye on that space. Now the question is, does Kamala Harris go quietly? She claims to be the first black, first african american VP.

Well, first woman VP. Thats true enough. But the first african American, her mother was born in Sri Lanka, which last time I looked at a map is in Asia, not really close to Africa. And her father was born jamaican. She grew up in Canada. So I dont know how you get african American out of that. But okay, she’s just not that bright. Biden is mentally impaired. She’s just not that smart to begin with. She’s kind of dunce and people know that also. But can you buy her off, make her, I don’t know what some university president, there seemed to be a lot of open seats in that area.

Ambassador to France, not a bad job. I don’t know what you could give her. But there’s something. And then put in Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton’s very popular. She lost to Trump. A lot of people dislike her. But she has her fan base. I mean, you can’t deny it. I know some people in that world have met at her. Yeah, she has her supporters and that could bring back some black votes as well who are draining over to the Trump side. So does a Biden Clinton ticket win? Don’t rule it out. So that’s a possibility. And again, why would she do it? The answer, she knows he’s going to die and then she would be president.

So, Matt, these scenarios sound like I’ve been reading too many comic books. I actually like comic books. I read them for years when I was a kid. But they’re all real. I mean, I’m not saying they’re going to happen in exactly the way I’m describing. What I’m saying is our readers should not be surprised if they do happen because they’re all in play. So, so keep an eye on that space. But if they don’t swap out Biden and Joe doesn’t allow it, they could swap out the BP seat and the expectation would be that Biden would die.

By the way, there is a 25th amendment. You can remove a president. Would the Democrats be cynical enough to say, okay, let Biden run because we think he can win with Hillary or somebody underneath. But after January 21, when he’s sworn in, activate the 25th amendment, remove him from office, make Hillary the president. And now you have a vacancy in the vice president and she could pick somebody else, maybe Bill. I don’t know, but it’s, these are not, they sound crazy, but these are, all, these things are in play and we’re watching all of them. Yeah.

All right, let’s switch gears and talk in the Trump camp. We’ve got a bunch of moving pieces there. Do you have any update for the Trump, Trump’s VP? Any, any inside scoop there? What are you thinking for his vp? Yeah, we all know the short list. So it’s Tim Scott, senator from North Carolina, Doug Bergram, governor of North Dakota, Marco Rubio, senator from Florida. You hear Elise Stefanik, she’s the senior, she’s number three woman in the number three Republican in the House of Representatives. But of course, she’s a female, so that would be a plus, I think, for the Trump ticket.

Very, very bright, kind of young enough of these 78 and 80 year olds. I sympathize with the younger generations that why can’t we have a 40 year old president? I mean, the presidents who were in their forties when they were sworn in, John F. Kennedy, Ulysses S. Grant, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, one of my favorite, James Knox Polk, he doubled the size of the United States of the mexican american war. Take your pick. But there were a lot of great presidents who were sworn in when their forties. When you’re in a major corporation, like a Fortune 100 Corporation, one of the Silicon Valley corporations, and you’re, you’re looking for a CEO, you want a CEO who’s like late forties, maybe 50, who can serve for ten years with a lot of vigor.

They’re not looking at 70. Nothing wrong with being 70. There’s a lot you can do creatively and otherwise. But the idea that we should have people near 80 as president of the United States is ridiculous. But that is where we were. George Washington died before he was 70. It was like in his late sixties. FDR died in his early sixties, but these were people who were president in their forties and fifties. That’s the right age for a job that demanding. But I don’t know how we got as a country got so far off track. But having said that, there are a number of younger Republicans.

The Republicans have done a much better job than the Democrats of cultivating a bench. I’m a baseball fan. Players on the bench, you can pinch hit pitchers in the bullpen that you can call them in, you get in trouble. I mean, that’s what they mean by the bench. And the Republicans have a lot of really strong candidates behind Trump. Democrats don’t. They just squash them off for all these years. So you hear Tulsi Gabbard every now and then. Christy Noem, probably off the list because she shot a puppy at point blank range and put it in her memoir.

Otherwise, you know, I’m not a dog owner, but it sounds pretty harsh. But I don’t know. We put it in your memoir, but she did pretty bad judgment there. So, and there are a few others. So that’s the list. But the thing with Trump, Trump’s, don’t forget Trump’s a showman. He’s like PT Barnum at times. He was, I don’t know how many seasons of the Apprentice. So he’s, I don’t know if Trump is decided or not. Maybe not. But I do know that he’s going to drag it out until the convention. So I can give you the list.

I can talk about the pros and cons. Every political writer out there is doing the same thing, but no one really knows. The only person who really knows is Trump. And Trump probably doesn’t know because he’s very mercurial. He can change his mind. So we do have, Ben Carson is another name you hear. So the short answer matters. This is a very strong list. I think they’re all good. I know Tulsi Gabbard. I know some of them. I mean, I think it’s a very strong list. I think Trump almost can’t go wrong. Marco Rubio would help with the hispanic vote, where Trump’s already doing very well, but why not? Tim Scott would help put the african american vote, where again, Trump’s doing very well, but why not? Hence that Lis Stefanik would help with women, which is white women in particular, are Trump’s worst demographic.

Trump dominates with men. He’s gaining a lot of traction with Hispanics, African Americans. Trump’s doing very well across the board, except for these, like, you know, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Loudoun County, Virginia, college educated white women. They’re like, they hate Trump. But, you know, maybe someone like Elise Defana could help there, so. Or Tulsi garbage. So he’s got a strong list. They’re the names I mentioned. You know, could be a couple others here every now and then, but I don’t expect that we’ll know until just days before the convention. Now, the convention is coming up. It’s July.

I gotta check the exact day, I think July 15, give or take a day, but. So we’re going to know in a couple of weeks. But I don’t think we’ll know before then because Trump likes the suspense. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. And that’s good insight as well. So we’ll keep an eye on it. Another thing that’s happened in July, we want to get your take on the Trump sentencing. Any update there of what could happen? Anything you’re hearing or seeing, July 11 is the sentencing date. There are three possibilities. Now, it’s interesting that there was another case, one of these contempt of Congress cases having to do with executive privilege, and the people who asserted it were Peter Navarro, Steve Bannon, and at least a couple other Trump associates.

By the way, just to be clear, the law fair campaign is not just aimed at Trump, it is aimed at Trump big time, but it’s aimed at Trump associates. If you had any association with Trump, they’re trying to penalize you. And the bigger game is to say to the world of talent, if you’re a lawyer, scientist, or energy expert or a trade expert or diplomat for any of those skill sets and you were thinking of working for a future Trump administration, forget it, because they’re going to come and get you. That’s how bad things are. But Peter Navarro is in jail right now in a minimum security federal penitentiary by the.

Who’s Peter Navarro? 73 year old Harvard trained PhD economist who was an advisor in the White House all four years of the Trump administration. Trump’s number one trade advisor alongside Robert Lighthizer. We can talk more about him, but Lighthizer and Navarro, Navarro were the two top trade advisors. And Trump had a lot of success with his tariffs against China. The chinese tariffs were the only thing that Biden didn’t change. When Biden came in, he had a pile of executive orders on his desk this high. He just signed them all, basically reversed every single thing that Trump had done by executive order.

One exception, which were the tariffs, because they actually work. But Navarro and Lighthizer were the guys behind that. So Navarro, I like his style. He says, I don’t want to pardon if Trump wins, I don’t want to pardon. I want my case to go to the Supreme Court, and I want to establish the precedent once and for all that executive privilege applies to communications between the president and his top advisors. And that was, again, this goes back to the Nixon Watergate days. So I like his style. Bannon has been ordered. We’ll see what happens. There’s some appeals still pending, but Bannon has been ordered to report to Danbury, Connecticut, which is a federal prison, but it’s not a minimum security prison, by the way.

I’ve counseled clients in, you know, prisoner in prison, basically pro bono work. So I’ve been to some of these, I’ve been to Allenwood and some of these federal prisons. They call it club fed because the minimum security, small fences, etcetera. But there’s no fun in it. It’s not a vacation. That’s nonsense. It’s a pretty grueling ordeal, but not as bad as going to Attica, I guess, or sing sing. But Danbury is a rough place. There are some violent offenders in Danbury. This is not club fed. This is not the minimum security prison. So ban is being treated very roughly.

I mean, he shouldn’t have been convicted, shouldn’t be sentenced to jail. Why do you get four months in jail for not following a subpoena from the Congress of dubious legality? Eric Holder did the same thing, was held in contempt, and nothing happened. So Eric Holder gets let go, and ban and Navarro end up going to the prison system. So we’ll see how that all plays out. But Trump’s sentencing is July 11. Now, there are three, probably 100 possibilities, but three broad categories. So, number one, this judge mercant, sends him to prison. What you can do, he’s been convicted of 34 felonies of each with a four year sentence.

So if he did it consecutively, that would be 116 years in prison, basically. Sorry, my mistake, 136 years in prison. So basically, 34 times four. So 120, 16 would be 136 years in prison. You could send some concurrently. Concurrently means you can serve all the sentences at the same time. So that would be four years in prison. You’d be serving all 34 sentences at the same time. So four years in prison. In Trump’s case, he’d go to Rikers island because this was not a federal charge, this was a state charge. And in particular, Manhattan, which is a county.

Well, New York county, but it’s just part of New York City. But Manhattan, New York county, convicts go to Rikers island, which is a hellhole. You can guarantee the president’s personal safety. It’s filthy, it’s got rats, corrupt administration, etcetera. So that’s one possibility. Don’t rule it out. I know it sounds harsh, extreme, but don’t rule it out. Second possibility is house arrest. Okay. I’m not going to send you to prison, but I’m going to send you. I’m going to send you to, whatever, two years, three years of house arrest, meaning you have to stay at Mar a Lago.

You’ll have a Florida probation officer. That Florida probation officer will report to a New York probation supervisor, and you can wander around the grounds, get a nice view of the ocean. You cannot travel without getting permission from your probation officer. Would you have to wear an ankle bracelet? Is he a puget flight risk? These sound like ridiculous questions. They are questions that come up in real sentencing hearings. But for a former and possibly likely future president of the United States, again, this goes back to the Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity. Why that’s so important? So that’s the kind of middle case, the most mild case would be probation.

So, okay, no jail time, no house arrest, two years probation. Report to your probation officer, but otherwise, you’re free to go. So my estimate, and I don’t know for sure, but this judge has proved to be completely radical, completely biased. His daughter, by the way, the judge’s daughter, is making millions of dollars out of anti Trump advertising and anti Trump fundraising. She’s a radical Democrat marketing expert who’s making millions of dollars supporting Biden and trashing Trump. The judge should have accused himself. I mean, that’s. I can’t think of a more clear conflict. I can’t think of a more.

I can’t think of a bigger ethics violation. That may all come to light. Some ethics claims have been filed, but they’re pending. They’re not going to get resolved soon. But that’s how bad this judge is. By the way, what I just said, what I just said to our viewers and our readers, Donald Trump can’t say, Donald Trump is subject to a gag order. He’s not allowed to say what I just said, which is the judge is corrupt because his daughter is making millions of dollars trashing Trump. But if Trump says that he’s somehow threatening the daughter or whatever, that’s how bad this whole situation is.

So my estimate is that he’ll do the middle case. He’ll say, okay, I’m not going to put you in jail, but I’m going to put you under, in effect, house arrest. You’re confined to Mar a Lago, and you got to ask a probation officer for permission to go. Now, bear in mind, it’s June 21. We are in the middle of a presidential campaign. It’s one of the most momentous presidential elections in us history. I know people say that every four years. Well, guess what? This time it’s actually true. Coming up, November 5, Trump’s thing is rallies, these big Biden, remember 2020, you got like ten cars that are driving, flashing their lights.

I mean, like ten cars. That was a Trump. So that was a Biden rally, the basement strategy. But Trump would fill stadiums like more than baseball games or whatever, 25,000 here, another 10,000 outside watching the big screen because they couldn’t all fit in, barnstorming. And I mentioned Minnesota and Virginia states that he’s put in play. Trump has put those on the battlefield because he’s Trump, because he’s popular and they’re trending his way. Imagine he couldn’t do any of that. All he could do is sit in Mar a Lago and maybe do a tv interview with Sean Hannity or something.

But it’s not Trump at his best. And so everyone says, well, Trump’s engaged in election interference. Come on. I can’t think of a worse example of election interference than a radical judge with a daughter who’s getting rich, trashing Trump, telling Trump that he can’t campaign because that’s what it would, that’s what it would amount to. When would the secret, when would the next appeal be? So say he gets sentenced to either house arrest or jail or whatever. When would the next appeal be? Well, the appeals are already flying, Matt, great question. At the end of the, when the trial was over and Trump was convicted and the jury went home and the headlines were over, Trump’s lawyers said, well, remove the gag order.

Why do we need the gag order if the trial is over? And Alvin Bragg, who’s the prosecutor, said, no, leave it in place. That was appealed to what’s called the court of appeals. Now it sounds like a middle level court in New York. State. The name’s funny, but the Court of Appeals is the highest court. What in other states, they call the Supreme Court. In New York, it’s called the Court of Appeals, but it’s the highest state court in the state of New York. They denied the motion. It was appealed up to the court of Appeals and they said, no, the motion stays in place.

So Trump is still subject to the gag order as of now, even though the trial was over a month ago or more than a month ago? Well, I guess about a month ago. So, yeah. Are they going to appeal the conviction? Yes. Is it likely to be overturned even in New York? I would say, yeah. This thing was so riddled with what’s called reversible error and constitutional violations in denial of 6th Amendment and Fifth Amendment, 14th Amendment, First Amendment rights. I mean, it was a disgrace. It’s embarrassing to call myself a new York lawyer. I used to be.

Used to be. You pat yourself on the back for that because it was a hard bar exam. But today it’s just an embarrassment because the New York judicial system has declined so far. But having said that, the appeals are underway, but they’re unlikely to be decided before the election, I think that’s the simplest way to put it. So Trump’s going to have to drag himself into election day as a convicted felon until the reversal comes through. But it could be worse than that. Now, to your point, Matt, let’s just say that the judge sentences Trump to house arrest, so called house arrest.

Could you immediately go to the United States Supreme Court? Now you’re dealing with the federal court, even though this was a state courtroom, say, sorry, timeout. This is a violation of. This is a constitutional violation. The Supreme Court cannot get involved in state law issues unless there’s a constitutional violation. Then that’s what the Supreme Court is for. Could you go into the Supreme Court for an emergency hearing to overturn the judge’s sentence on grounds that you’re violating 14th Amendment due process, first amendment, freedom of speech, etcetera, and interfering with the election process? The answer is yes.

I don’t know what the Supreme Court would say. I would hope they would take that case up, but it’s hard to say. But, yeah, it could come to that. So I would not. Short answer. I would not. All the appeals are underway. I would not look for relief from the New York state court system prior to the election. Whether they ultimately overturn it, we’ll see. But could you get emergency relief from the Supreme Court on constitutional grounds? Maybe, yes. All right. I said it in the beginning. Things are heating up this summer and I’m talking about the election.

The next two months are going to be huge as stated by Jim. Jim, thank you so much for your insight and everything that you unveiled today. Lot of moving pieces here and for everyone at home, we appreciate you tuning in here on YouTube. Go ahead, give us a like, subscribe to our channel right in the comments below. Um, it all helps us out here to keep things up to speed. And if you need anything or have any questions for Jim, go ahead and write it in there now and we’ll see you next time.
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