12. “Joe Biden will be out of the race by the end of July”
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Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Politics US with me, Cathy Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. How are you, Cathy? Where are you today? I'm actually in Cyprus visiting family and there is only one topic of conversation here. Usually I come on holiday and I get thousands of miles away from Washington to avoid politics.

And the only thing anyone wants to talk about is, is Joe Biden going to stay in the race? And this is in Cyprus. So imagine, you know, I can imagine what the conversations are like back where you are. You look a little bit like you're in a kind of undisclosed location in a hostage video. So I hope you're OK. In our last podcast, I put my suit on because I felt like I was out of wake. Now I have such great information to share with our podcast listeners. I'm in an undisclosed location until all of this information comes out and then I'll

I'll come out of the hovel that I'm in right now. But there's some stunning things that are happening. We are going to talk, obviously, about Biden's future, what's happening in the campaign, what's happening amongst the donor class. If there are any polling data that we have, are the Democrats stuck in denial about his ability to serve as another term, and perhaps more importantly, to beat Donald Trump in the election in November? And then in the second half, we're going to be unpacking Trump's win in the Supreme Court and what this idea of

partial immunity for a president means for this election means for Donald Trump. But OK, sorry, I interrupted you, Anthony, and I'm desperate to know what's on that piece of paper. Well, I mean, listen, you're always welcome to interrupt me. Trust me, I like listening to you more than myself. But here's what I would say. And I'll start with the top line. I think Joe Biden will be out of the race by the end of July. So I'm going to make some speculation here on our podcast.

And I think there's a number of different ways to go where he says he's going to finish out his term, which I think is unlikely. And so I'm going to make the following speculation because some people inside the campaign have told me this will be the most consequential few weeks in American modern history. And so that implies that we're going to get a President Harris. Talk me through that because I'm hearing the same thing that everybody says this week and next week are huge in terms of American politics.

I'm hearing something slightly different on the trajectory. So talk me through the Harris link there. Okay. So again, this is some speculation. I'm not saying this is fact, but the thought would be that he resigns from office and she runs as President Harris. And there'll be some people that like that. There'll be some people that don't like that. We can talk about the racial divide in the country here.

and the tension. But that would help their progressive flank a lot. She is the first woman president in U.S. history. She'd be the first woman of color as president in U.S. history. And I think it also solves a lot of their campaign finance issues. And of course, they can shore her up with a very credible vice presidential candidate. And her poll numbers versus

Donald Trump are inside the margin of error, at least for right now. The Trump campaign knows this. They are running these very attacked fall ads. Again, I'm channeling George W. Bush and I will make up words here as I see fit. If you remember George W. Bush, mis-underestimated people, one of the best words that's ever been created. But I think Trump is going to viciously attack her, of course,

And as you and I said on one of our early podcasts, she is way better than people think. She's a former prosecutor. She's an incredibly intelligent person. She hasn't had her moment to shine. Others will push back and say she didn't do well in the 2020 campaign. I understand that. But she's been vice president now for three and a half years. This is a different Kamala Harris. This is a more mature Kamala Harris. And oh, how interesting it would be

if the orange maniac known as Donald Trump was beaten by her in the election. Okay. There's a lot of things about his fragile ego, but that's one where he wouldn't be able to take. So that's out there. And not a lot of people know that, which is why, Cady, I'm whispering to you this morning, and I am in an undisclosed location.

But I think the president, I'll just finish by saying this because you know I went to the fundraiser last Saturday. The president looked frail. Was he more together than he was on Thursday night? Yes. Was he more lucid? Yes.

But I want you to think about his intellectual insecurity right now. He's at a fundraiser with people that genuinely like him, and they're giving him tens of thousands of dollars to be at that fundraiser. Yet he felt more comfortable speaking behind a sort of a protection row and the teleprompter. And he spoke from the teleprompter for 15 minutes, and then he left the stage without taking questions. That's a very unusual thing.

for American politicians to do with his VVIPs at a very posh Hamptons oceanfront house.

And but that's what he did. And it's an indication that things are not well with him cognitively. Yeah. And I think there's a lot of questions in the Democratic Party about what Joe Biden would need to do now to reverse the tide for himself. And one of the things that most Democratic strategists are suggesting, he needs to get out there, do town halls, do unscripted interviews, and

And if he doesn't do those things, is it because he doesn't have the ability to do those things? The campaign is still saying publicly it was just one bad night. I think people that I am speaking to are getting increasingly irritated with the tone of the Biden campaign, which is sort of putting this on the media. Well, as Jen O'Malley Dillon, the campaign chair, came out and said, you know, if we see a drip in the polls coming out, it's going to be because of the way the media has covered his age and covered the debate.

I'm starting to hear Democrats, even Democrats in the House, get seriously irritated with that message because it sounds like they have their head in the sand. I mean, you are actually now starting to get some members of the House just in the last day or two come out and say publicly that he has to go. There are a handful of them and people are wondering, is that the beginning of the dam breaking? I mean, your scenario is interesting. Another scenario is

which is the one the campaign is putting out publicly, that the family all gathered at Camp David are still telling him to run, that the people who really advise Joe Biden, the ones I'm here count, are his wife, Jill Biden, his sister, Val Biden, his son, Hunter Biden, and they all want him to stay in the race for the moment and haven't turned against him. But the question is going to be when those polls come out,

that allow for a bit more of a considered response to the debate. And we know that a lot of people watch that debate. I mean, yes, it was down on some others, but 51 million people watched that debate. That is not a small number. And then you get all of the people, including all of my kids who are now circulating that

clip of him losing his train of thought. If the polls suggest that there's been a hemorrhaging of support for him in the swing states, then he would go. I mean, I guess your scenario of Kamala Harris taking over from vice president to becoming president now, being sworn in as president,

that gets the money because it's Harris-Biden money, right? So that makes it easy for her to take over the campaign finances. But will you get a lot of super pissed off Democrats in the kind of Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan, Andy Beshear, governor of Kentucky, field of governors who feel that actually she can't win? I mean, that it's still risky having Kamala Harris on the ticket. Will

when she's had such bad poll numbers. I mean, the risk is here, he stays in and Democrats lose, and that's terrible for him. He gets out and another Democrat runs, and they still lose, and that's terrible for him, right? I don't know, as a hedge fund guy, where do you put your money?

Are you shorting Biden at this point? Yeah, I think you have to short Biden at this point. You've got to get along a few call options in these other candidates. But let's talk about his legacy for a second. So his legacy would have been better served if last Labor Day, which would have been September of 2023, he said, you know, I've done a couple of years. He listed his accomplishments and said, but I'm not going to run. I'm going to be 81 years old. I'd be 86 years.

at the end of that term and I'm not going to run that. That's a very hard thing to do. A lot of our listeners have read Shakespeare and they know how hard that is to do. But if he had done that, he would have shored up his legacy because no one could have blamed him for that. And if they lost, you say, okay, what are you going to do? He didn't want to put up somebody that was getting older and was clearly missing a beat.

He's now got them jammed because he's got, you know, 50-ish days before the convention, 40-ish days before they've got to get out a name for the state of Ohio. And so to me, for his legacy, it would be better to open it up to the convention or to be better to open it up. Now, I just want to say three-

proud and he's got a bit of a chip on his shoulder and he hates the idea that he's being underestimated again. And that's why the campaign is being super annoying and dismissing all this. I hate this expression, bedwetters. It's so condescending to people who are thinking seriously about this and want Biden to win. Especially to us bedwetters, Katty. I mean, I've went to bed four times since this guy did that debate. So I don't feel like it's sort of condescending. The laundry's running overtime.

Yeah, I feel like it's condescending. I'm a self-proclaimed bed wetter. I feel like it's a little condescending towards me. I just I am not yet convinced that the Joe Biden who hates losing, hates being misunderstood, has a little bit of a chip on his shoulder, does not have much time for Barack Obama.

will come around to this and say, oh yeah, you know, you're right. I have to get out. Look, in 1988, Joe Biden quit the presidential race, partly because of allegations of plagiarism, but partly so that he could focus on making sure that Bork, who was the Supreme Court nominee, who he didn't like because he was a real conservative, didn't win. In a way, it's a similar situation. This

This is the choice facing Joe Biden. What does he have to do from his point of view to make sure that Donald Trump doesn't win? I mean, it's ironic that it's kind of similar, but I just don't know that he sees it that clearly. All right. So I've talked to several people. Just make a couple of points. Number one, I do think that the Bidens and the Obamas are close. And I think they're closer than the media thinks. And I'll just point out sitting in the front row of Michelle Obama's mom's funeral was Jill Biden. And

And they know, the Bidens know that the Joe Biden presidency does not happen without Barack Obama. He selects him to be vice president. Whatever tension there has been, of course, there's rivalry and there's egos and rock and roll bands. These people do have a lot of affection for them. Okay, so that's each other, I mean. So that's number one.

Number two, if the polls really start cracking, and this Siena New York Times poll, which is going to come out today or tomorrow, will really be the one that they're going to look at. These flash polls do not look good for the president. And so you have a situation now where he's down anywhere from six to nine in several of the important swing states. And so if that were to hold...

He's going to lose the election. And I'll submit to you that that will hold, in my opinion, because I do believe he's in cognitive decline. And I do believe that he can't do the things that you or I would recommend him to do, which is have an interview with Katty Kaye, go on Anderson Cooper.

do a live press conference from the White House Brady Press Room. All of this sort of high-level cognitive interactivity that we would expect from somebody that's leading the free world that has access to the nuclear codes, we would want this person to do, he's not going to do, Caddy. And so this is the thing that I'm concerned about. And I think as a responsible person, he's got to drop out of the race. So three quick things.

If the poll numbers crack, they're going to turn on them. And the poll numbers are cracking. And then the secondary thing is, well, what do they do? And I'm going to tell you something about these guys. They want to beat Donald Trump in the worst possible way. So I believe they're going to coalesce.

I believe they're going to unify. They've raised him a quarter billion dollars. And I believe that they're going to go out there. Once they figure out who is going to be the nominee, they're going to unify and they're going to coalesce. So that's my opinion. But I think he's coming out of the race. I think he's coming out of the race this month. And I think it's very likely that you get a President Harris because-

I know what I would say. I say, well, if he's coming out of the race due to cognitive decline, how is he up for the next six-ish months of the U.S. presidency? And the answer to that is, well, he's actually not. And we've made that decision. I have a couple of questions. One is that I'm hearing that donors are starting to shift money away from the Biden ticket to

to House races and Senate races because they are worried that if Trump gets elected, they need some kind of firewall against the Trump agenda. So they think we've got to make sure we hang on to the House. We probably won't get the Senate and Trump doing well bodes badly for the Senate. So the House really becomes your last resort.

wall of resistance. So money is starting to shift into House races. That's not a good sign for Joe Biden. But then the other question is, let's say he quit next week. Vice President Harris is sworn in as President Harris. I still don't get around whether the rest of the Democrats who could be the nominee and who may well think because of Kamala Harris's poor polling,

that they aren't pissed at this and find some way to say, hold on a second, you can't just anoint Harris. This has to be an open contest and we have to choose the person who has the best likelihood. And that would have to be done at the convention where Joe Biden could free the delegates up and you get a sort of

compressed competition, mini primary type situation at the convention. I mean, do you think the rest of the Democratic cohort who like to see themselves as the next nominee would go for that scenario? So again, there's two scenarios. He resigns and she becomes the presumptive nominee. She becomes the president. The second scenario is

in my opinion, based on everybody I talk to, is they do some kind of coordinated pre-nomination prior to the convention. I don't think they want to go to the convention in Chicago. An open convention. Just for our listeners, the last big Chicago convention was in 1968, and it was an absolute riot in terms of the people participating.

You could not make this election up. The fact that they're having this in Chicago again. Yeah, so if you go to YouTube and you punch up the 1968 Chicago election, you'll see riot gear. You'll see tear gas. And people think that Richard Nixon...

won the presidency as a result of the 1968 Chicago Democratic election. So these people are students of history. They're going to want to prepackage a nominee going into that convention. That's what I've heard. I just want to say two quick things. He is going to hurt them on the down ballot. A lot of those, what they call the blue wall, a lot of these senators were up.

There's a shot now that the Democrats could lose eight Senate seats. Donald Trump would control the Supreme Court. He would control the House. He would control the Senate and obviously the presidency. And I submit to you, Katty Kaye and our viewers and listeners that

that whatever your personal grievances are, your petty ego, the fact that you think you should be the nominee, every dog catcher, every person that's been elected dog catcher in the United States thinks they should be the presumptive nominee of their respective party to be president. You and I both know that. But I think people would put that aside

if they understood the risks here for the Democrats. You could get a lockup situation at a time when the Republicans are telling people openly that they want to radically change America. The president of the Heritage Foundation has said that this is the second American revolution and it will be bloodless. You can go look it up on YouTube. He's saying it national television. It'll be bloodless if the left decides to allow it to be bloodless.

So if that's not alarm bells that are going off in the Democratic Party, and that's not alarm bells going off for normal Republicans, you know, I think Gretchen Carlson came at me and a few other people said, we're no longer Republicans because I'm not with Donald Trump. Well, I would submit back to her. He's not really a Republican. This is sort of a Christian nationalist movement. It's not the Republican Party I grew up in or the Republican Party of Mitt Romney, but

which I still maintain that I'm a part of. Do you think that Kamala Harris would beat Donald Trump in November? It really depends on her. If you tell me, here's the thing I would say to you. Democrats do better historically with bold decisions. Jack Kennedy at age 43, youngest president to be elected. Teddy Roosevelt, the youngest president ever because of McKinley's untimely death. Barack Obama, age 47. Bill Clinton, age 46. Bill Clinton, yeah.

Okay, so the Democrats typically do better with younger candidates. Republicans do better with older candidates. So this would be a very bold move and it could rally them. It could coalesce them. Okay, you have to tell me how she's going to do on the campaign. If she is stilted and she's guarded and she is defensive as she was in the 2020 primary...

he'll probably eat her alive. If she comes after him in the way she used to come after people as a San Francisco prosecutor, she could shred him. Or the way we saw her in the Supreme Court nomination hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, where she exploded and was a kind of star in those hearings in the way that she went after Brett Kavanaugh in those hearings. So there are definitely two sides. And she's somebody...

She is an underrated politician and she's not good when she's scripted. I mean, she does not, unlike Joe Biden at the moment, who seems to do better when he has auto cue and prompter in front of him. She seems to do better when she doesn't. I know that she's had a lot of media training, but she doesn't manage that very well. I mean, look, there are three things, right? Three options. Okay. I'm going to interrupt you if you don't mind. So give us the three options and then give us the caddy K opinion of those three options. Go.

One, Joe Biden stays in the race and tries to turn this thing around and get over that last performance. Two, he gets out of the race, but it goes to a competition amongst Democrats, which happens regularly.

kind of between now and the convention and is decided at the convention. Three is the option you're talking about. Kamala Harris takes over as president before the convention. There is no competition and she is the nominee. I'm going to go more likely with the second. I've been told by people on the campaign that the chances of him getting out are 5%.

That was a couple of days ago. I'm waiting for those polls to come out that give us a more considered opinion. But I've also had people in the White House who have had a long history with Joe Biden talking about how all the conversations that need to happen

are happening around Joe Biden and that there really is no choice at the moment. So I'm of the view that he will have to get out. But I think I just, you know, the Democratic Party, Antony, they find it very difficult just to shoehorn somebody in. They feel they need to have that open process. What I do agree with you is that the next couple of weeks are huge. And not just in terms of American politics.

huge in terms of what happens in the rest of the world. NATO is at stake. The war in Ukraine is at stake. Taiwan is potentially at stake. What happens in the Middle East is at stake. The post-World War II era of American-led protection of Europe is at stake. I mean, this is a massive decision that is being made right now in American politics. Okay.

Okay. So I'm in general agreement. I'm going to say he's out of the race. The people I talk to must be more emotional than the people that you talk to, Caddy, because they're at 50%. Your people are at five. And I'm going to say he's coming out of the race. And I'm going to say that they're going to go with her.

because of their coalition. I don't think they have a choice. I think Clymer has said, guys, you can't do that to us. Okay, you picked her. You can't then say, well, think of the hypocrisy. Well, you know what? We picked her for identity politics. And that's the only reason why we picked her. She's a black woman. George Floyd got killed. We're going to pick her. And then the going gets rough and you don't deploy her. I think that's going to be really, really bad for them. Yeah, you have senior black

Democrats already saying, hold on a second, are you seriously not going with Kamala Harris? Right. You know, you have to think of the slap in the face of the African-American community. Problem here is I asked you once on this podcast, is this country racist? And your answer was, do you remember your answer? Yeah. Yeah. This country's racist. Okay. So now the real question will be, well, will this country elect or reelect an African-American woman who

And it'll depend on the African-American woman. If she if she comes after this more like a Condoleezza Rice, I think she's going to win it. I think it'll be historic for her. And but if she doesn't, we're going to be with Donald Trump and his minions. This country, as is almost every country I know.

has racism and sexism on its agenda. It just does. And it's very hard to get around that. And so for Americans to elect a black woman as their first female and second black president is going to be tricky. Okay. Wait a second though, before we go to the break, I brought a prop. Okay. Sort of a prop and sort of a quiz. Oh,

Okay. What does this say to you? 2882. Okay. Okay. So that's the year I graduated from high school. 2882. Yeah. I'm sitting here in Europe, which is meant to be the old world, right? I've been reading this great book, Adam Nicholson's book, Why Homer Matters.

after your recommendation about the Iliad. And he talks about the Iliad as being the poem of the old world with historic nostalgia for heroes and heroic action. And the Odyssey as being the poem of the new world of America with all potential and all the sense of possibility and searching that the new world represents. 28 could well be the age of the French prime minister. 82 could well be the age of the American president.

We have got this back to front. But first of all, it's fantastic. And I just say this because I'm channeling a little bit of Homer for us because there is a need right now.

for us to cut through things. And we have a tendency not to do that. The White House is telling some fibs. You know that. I know that. We all tell fibs to ourselves. We all tell fibs to each other. But what Homer would say that in a moment of great clarity, we have to get to the truth. And so just for our classical listeners out there, the Iliad is often called the wrath of Achilles.

because this great warrior who helped the Greeks win and beat down the Trojans, of

of course, he got his ego bruised by Agamemnon and Menelaus. And so he reparted to his tent and a result of which his best friend was killed and the war reversed on the Greeks. And so everything is in the Iliad, our pride, our ego, our egocentrism, but also our ability to handle the truth. And can we sometimes drop our egos and

and look at each other and speak truthfully about situations. And if we are, Katie Kay, Joe Biden is not up for the American presidency from age 81 to potentially age 86.

And so I hope he drops out for his sake and his family's sake. And you can be a one-term president and have a very good historic legacy, as some modern one-term presidents have done. Anyway, I was walking around the ruins of Curiam with my family last night, looking at the House of Achilles and all these extraordinary mosaics. And it occurred to me how the world is turned upside down when the new world is happening.

the country that is clinging to old leaders and the old world is the country that is ushering in, as we are seeing in France and in the UK, new and younger leaders. We are going to take a break and we'll be back to talk about the other big bombshell political news, which is the Supreme Court ruling on presidents having pretty almost total immunity for their official acts. We'll be right back.

Hey, we're invited to the Johnson Summer Pool Party this Saturday. Oh, Saturday? But that's when the Blinds guys come in to give us a quote. Oh, I already found everything we need at Blinds.com. They're totally online, so we don't have to wait around all day just to get a quote. And they're sending us free samples. Well, Blinds.com sounds like a no-brainer.

Shop Blinds.com now for summer savings up to 40% off site-wide. Up to 40% off at Blinds.com. Blinds.com. Rules and restrictions may apply. Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics U.S. edition with me, Cathy Kay. And me, Anthony Scaramucci. We're going to talk this half about the other huge political news of this week, and it was a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court which came to a decision about the 2020 U.S. election subversion case

with Donald Trump all at the center of it, of course. The case is just one of four that Donald Trump is being investigated for. It's one of the ones that doesn't include porn stars and doesn't include stolen documents with nuclear secrets on them. This case accuses him of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. through an attempt to overturn the 2020 election result, which led to the January the 6th Capitol riots.

And basically, the Supreme Court has ruled that former presidents are entitled to absolute immunity from prosecution for official acts taken while in office, but they have no immunity whatsoever.

from prosecution for any unofficial acts. And this has left everybody wondering when it comes to the January the 6th case, what are official acts and did all the things that Donald Trump did around January the 6th and before the January the 6th insurrection on Capitol Hill count as official acts

or were they unofficial acts? And this has all now gone back to the presiding judge, Judge Tana Chutkan in Washington, D.C., and she has to make her decision about what was official and what was unofficial. But bottom line, Antony, forget the legal weeds. This was another very good thing this week for Donald Trump. All right, so let's just talk facts here. Donald Trump had a fantastic week, Katty Kat. Yeah.

Okay. If you like Donald Trump, you are wearing your flag. You're like motorboating around Florida or whatever these people do. This is a fantastic week. Number one, the right-wing media and Donald Trump said that Joe Biden is in cognitive decline. They got pushback. Okay. The lie was told by the White House and the campaign that Joe Biden wasn't. And for 90 minutes, the American people in the world got shown that he was. Okay.

Number two, Donald Trump said that as president, he has immunity. And I read that entire thing because one of the weird things about me, Caddy K, is that I'm a constitutional law aficionado. I obviously took it in law school from a

professor at Harvard, Dave Lawrence Tribe. You could Google Larry Tribe and you can find him on X. And he's a brilliant scholar. He wrote the treatise on con law, at least from the modern era in the United States. And obviously he's very, very upset about this case. I read through the decision and there were three things I like about it. And there are three things I don't like about it. So quickly, what do I like about it? I like the fact that the president has

immunity on official acts. I think it's very, very important for that job. There's certain things the president has to do that are very, very hard. The second thing I like about it- Particularly around the area of national security, and that's always been a common understanding that you shouldn't be able to prosecute a president for a decision that he made to keep the country safe. 100%. The unofficial act distinction-

I do like as well because there's room there to take care of a malevolent actor. So I like that as well. And the third thing that I like is,

about this decision. If you really read the decision, Justice Roberts is leaving a lot of interpretation open to other judges about what is official and what isn't official. So he's like, we're going to have a group of umpires or a group of football refs have the ability to make these calls, if you will.

Can I be the annoying student in the class and ask Professor Scaramucci one follow-up question? On your second thing that you like about this, that bad actors could get prosecuted for their unofficial acts.

Do you understand that as a bad actor who say drinks a bottle of whiskey, goes out, has his car smash and run somebody over, they should be able to be prosecuted? Is that the kind of act that you're talking about? It's purely, purely, purely personal. Donald Trump takes out the gun. He shoots the person on Fifth Avenue that he's been talking about for the last seven years.

he can go to jail for that. But if that person is a congressman or a political opponent, maybe that becomes an official act. Well, okay. Well, see, that's where I think the left has gone too far, right? So the left is saying, and even Justice Sotomayor is saying, well, now you've given him all of this immunity. But if you really read the decision, he doesn't have that immunity. He can't

ordered the SEAL Team 6 to kill his political opponent. He can't do certain things. I just want to tell you what I don't like, and then I'm going to turn it back over to you. What I don't like about the case is that he can give speeches as president, and those speeches are protected by immunity. I've asked three or four different constitutional scholars. I can go to the Ellipse and

And I can say march down to the Capitol and beat the brains out of my vice president. I can say that from the speech. It's an official act of the president to give a speech. Now, if you go down there and you do that, you're liable. But I did not incite you. It's inside the circumference of.

of what is and what isn't an official act, his speeches. Okay. And so the best example I gave to a constitutional scholar last night is, well, what about insider trading in the Congress? And so for everybody that doesn't know this, Nancy Pelosi beats most hedge fund managers. Okay. And if you remember Alistair Campbell, I said to him, I'll give you a Bitcoin if you ask her that question. He couldn't ask her that question because it's a rude question, but

But she has insider information. Her and her family trades on it. They make a fortune off of it. But if she gave that inside information to me and I went to trade on it, I'm going to jail. Okay. So the president now has all of this wide ranging latitude to do and say things. And I just think, I'll just say this last thing. There's no space in this document, the constitution or this decision to

for bad actors who are not checked by their fellow leaders. You see, when you read the Federalist document, the Federalist papers, or you read the Constitution, there was always an implication that gentlemen, right? There were no women involved in this, let's just be honest, but gentlemen are actually gentlemen.

And if there's a bad actor among gentlemen, the other gentlemen will come in and hand check and screen out the bad actor. But what if you have a malevolent actor and you have a bunch of cowards in the room that can't hand check them? Okay. And so the great irony here is Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy could have put Trump lights out, put him right through the ropes. Yeah.

on the 7th of January. And Mitch McConnell is on Donald Trump's enemy list. Imagine that. He saved him. He saved him from being convicted from the second impeachment, but he's on the enemy list. I'm in the top 50, by the way. I'm a little upset about that, Katty. I want to be in the top 10. I don't understand how...

I haven't gotten into the top 10, but I'm working on it. That's like people who get upset about not being sanctioned by Russia, that if you haven't been sanctioned by Russia, you're not cool. Yes, I'm working on it. I'm not in Trump's top 10 yet, but I'm doing my part. We'll see if I can get there. But what's your reaction to the case? I'm sorry it's so long-winded, but this is something that's in my wheelhouse. I think it's very important. And I like the way you've really laid out the pros and the cons of this ruling, as you see it, from a pretty objective standpoint. Because-

You've got the left up in arms about this ruling, obviously saying that this basically makes it almost impossible to prosecute a president. And it makes for a very powerful chief executive who anybody would, any judge would find it very difficult to prosecute. Robert seems to be saying, and I think, and I have some sympathy with this, this is the first time that a prosecutor has thought to charge a president with lawless conduct and

And there's an implication there that the prosecutor may be at fault here and should be under scrutiny. The left comes back and says, well, actually, that's because it's the first time that a president has acted lawlessly. I have sympathy with those constitutional scholars. And I reached out to Jack Goldsmith, who's a friend of Larry Tribe, although on the conservative side at Harvard, because I wanted to get the conservative response to this.

And he was saying, listen, if we are going to do something as serious as prosecute a president of the United States for the very first time, it needs to go through an arduous legal process before we get there. We have to think very carefully about this. And in a way, I think what Democrats could take heart from this ruling is this isn't a ruling about Donald Trump. I mean, maybe it is political and maybe all the conservatives were just trying to get Donald Trump out of a jam.

But it also sets up the idea that any future president is also immune from prosecution for their official act. So were Donald Trump to be elected and try to prosecute Joe Biden, it would make it much harder for Donald Trump to do that. Am I right, Anthony? In a way, they're cutting the cycle. And I think that's a very useful thing. The last thing America wants is a cycle of retribution where a Democratic president comes in, prosecutes this Republican opponent,

A Republican gets in and prosecutes their Democratic predecessor. And I think this ruling tries to stop that from happening as far as I understand it. Yeah. And I'm impressed with your constitutional wisdom. I think that's a great part of the case.

And there's a distinction in here. I think we have to point out to everybody, Donald Trump took classified documents out of the White House. So definitionally, he's now a former president with classified documents. He no longer has the protection of the presidency and the immunity that was explained in that court ruling. Did he move those documents to Mar-a-Lago before he was president?

While he was still president or did he move them the day after? Okay. So this is exactly... Now you and I are in law school, okay? We're in a study group together and this is a really great hypothetical, right? So he's protected as president if he moved the documents, but now he's

He's no longer president. Mr. Former President, can you please put the documents back in the possession of the CIA and the FBI? No. Now he's in trouble. Okay. He can move the documents. He has all of this immunity that we just described as president.

But now he's no longer president. And those documents are now in breach of what his obligations are to the Constitution and to the oath of office and to him protecting our national security secrets. And so he's got Chinese spies roaming around Mar-a-Lago, Russians roaming around Mar-a-Lago.

And there is been implications to this. Many people in the intelligence agencies feel some of this information got in the hands of people that are adversaries and they've used these things against the interests of the United States.

And some of America's allies do not like the fact that there were secrets being kept in showers that potentially put their own sources at risk. Yes, exactly. So, you know, one of the big fears that our intelligence agencies around the world and the Five Eyes, MI6, et cetera, is that we protect our human resources. One of the big fights in the White House over the JFK disclosures was,

was lots of the information that was in those documents explained to people how we gather our human intelligence. And so you don't want to release all that stuff and, God forbid, put somebody at risk that's in the field that's sacrificing their life or acting as a great public servant to America and the cause of freedom. And so you have to weigh all of these things. And this is why you need smart people, intelligent people that really love their country and

care about other people in these offices, Katty Kay, not these self-serving lunatics. That would be my conclusion from this, from chatting to a couple of constitutional scholars, is that the message to Americans after this Supreme Court ruling is when you elect a president, you elect them with enormous powers. They can do pretty much whatever they want while they are president.

therefore Americans think very carefully about who you elect. And as Jack Goldsmith has just written, it's politics, not the law that can decide who should be running the country and decide the quality of the person running the country. And so this is, you know, as we are having this debate on both the Democratic and the Republican side about who is best fit to run the country.

I think it's very interesting that we had this ruling. It almost serves as a reminder to voters about the consequential nature of who should be the candidate on both sides and who they should cast their ballot for on both sides. But I don't agree with the left on this, that this was a...

I know Justice Sotomayor, I respect her, but I don't think we made anybody a king in this ruling. I think we have to protect that job. And to your point, we have to find actors that are going to act inside the circumference of what's appropriate. Now, we have a homewrecker, the orange maniac, the orange wrecking ball coming into the system. But I do think the system will withstand the blockade.

the blows of this type of thing. What I don't like about President Trump's return to the White House, though, is what we talked about two episodes ago, which is this whole Handmaid's Tale episode, the script that he wants to write for America, which I think is quite dystopian. It has been a massive week, and we know that there's lots of politics competing for your attention this week. So listen in. And we'll get to, you know, once we've got the results of the UK election, perhaps we'll touch on that next week, Anthony, what that means.

for the next US president as well. Where will you be in the world next week, Katty? I'm going to be in London actually. I'm going to be in London for the next couple of weeks. So I'm actually going to go in and meet our lovely colleagues and producers at Goldhanger who have done such an incredible job for us. So that'll be fun. Good for you. I'm going into the, I'm going to the home country. I'll be,

hiding out in Italy somewhere. You're checking out more refuges, more bolt holes that you can escape to. I am, Kay, because I'm right now in an undisclosed location because I think there's going to be a President Harris.

Next week, I'll be searching for my new home in 2025. Listen, if there's a President Harris now, you're fine. If there's a President Harris in December, you're fine. It's if there's a President Trump that we need to put out the appeal for Airbnb to kind of find you a new home. I got to tell you this story before we leave. So I'm on a field trip.

Okay. It's November of 2017. I've been blown from the White House, unceremoniously fired. I'm on a bipartisan field trip to Israel. And Doug and Kamala, now the first man or the second man and now the vice president, she's then Senator Harris. She's on the trip with me. And I'm in the King David Hotel with them. And we went to the Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial. We went to these other different sites.

And we're in the hotel lobby and the official photographer comes over to her and me and says, guys, could I take a picture? And Senator Harris looks over at the photographer. I'm not taking a picture with Mooch. I'm not ruining my political career. I look over at her. I said, that's really good judgment on your part. Okay. And so, of course-

I got the chance to see her when she was named vice president. I said, do you remember that scene in the King David Hotel? She says, absolutely. I said, see, you've got really good judgment. You didn't take a picture of me and look at where you are now.

You see that, Katty? So if we end up being in the same studio together, you probably don't want to take a picture with me. Just point that out. Can I just say that it had never occurred to me that I didn't want to do a podcast with you because it would ruin my broadcasting career. I'm thrilled that we're both here together. That was a nice little, nice moment. That's very nice of you. Thank you.

We will see you next week, guys. Thanks very much for listening to The Rest Is Politics US. Best of luck on the UK elections and happy Independence Day for our fellow Americans here. Go America.