'It's crazy!': George Conway slams Trump 'lying, lying, lying' about 2020

[0:00] Joining us, conservative lawyer and president of the Society for the Rule of Law, George Conway, [0:06] New York Times reporter covering the Justice Department, Glenn Thrush, and chief political [0:10] reporter at the Atlantic Journal-Constitution, co-host of the Politically Georgia podcast, [0:16] and MSNOW political contributor, Greg Blustein. Greg, we just got word that John Ossoff, [0:21] the senator down there from Georgia, has an emergency news conference. He says it will [0:26] be brief and it will be starting soon. Do we know what it's about? Yeah, well, it's about these [0:32] pending comments from President Trump. We don't know exactly what the president is going to say, [0:37] but we know in Georgia the sentiment for a lot of people, Republicans and Democrats, is here we go [0:42] again. I mean, this is the state where it seems like we cannot get out of the shadow. Is there [0:46] any state more in the shadow of 2020 than Georgia is with this ongoing federal probe of ballots and [0:52] Georgia's biggest Democratic stronghold with folks who have worked to overturn the election [0:59] in the middle of Georgia politics on the Republican side? And of course, now the prospect of this big [1:04] Trump speech in 2020 in the middle of the midterm election that could decide control of the U.S. [1:10] Senate. All right. So, David, what does your reporting tell us about what Donald Trump might be [1:14] trying to claim on Thursday? David's not there. Excuse me. Sorry about that. Glenn, my bad. Glenn, [1:26] what is the expectation regarding the speech? Donald Trump has always claimed 2020 was stolen, [1:33] was fraudulent. Do we know if he's going to make specific claims? [1:39] I think he's definitely going to make specific claims. Look, I mean, if you're not getting a [1:44] Groundhog Day vibe off of this, you know, you should watch the movie. Look, a couple of things here. [1:52] The people who will be standing with him on the stage, particularly Bill Pulte, [1:56] have very interesting back stories. I mean, Pulte has been a person who has been agitating [2:03] for all kinds of maximalist efforts at the Justice Department to go after Trump's enemies. [2:12] Pulte is an unacceptable pick for Senate Republicans to be permanent ODNI. So now you have Jay Clayton, [2:21] who is actually going to be testifying tomorrow on Capitol Hill, who is likely to be the permanent [2:28] person in that job. But in general, we're talking about an issue that Trump can't forget. He cannot let [2:36] go of. Just to invoke Lindsey Graham, about five years ago, I and my colleagues did a really long [2:43] piece on Graham. I spent a lot of time with him. In one of our interviews, we were talking about [2:48] Trump's fixation on 2020. And Graham said, the thing I say to him over and over again, the thing [2:52] I keep bringing up to Trump, let it go. If you don't let go of this obsession, it's going to destroy [2:58] you. I don't think it has destroyed Trump thus far. I think it has impelled him. It impelled him [3:07] politically to seek office again. But I think we are getting into an area right now where Donald [3:12] Trump is polling generously in the high 30s. We saw a poll earlier this week that had him as low [3:18] as 35 percent. We're seeing issues of extraordinary importance in terms of people being concerned about [3:24] food prices and the economy in general and this forever conflict now that we seem to be engaged in [3:30] with Iran. There are so many issues that he has to be dealing with. The notion that we're talking about [3:35] this is is remarkable. And he is not talking to voters. He is talking to a mirror. Yeah. And you've got [3:44] this great reporting on Todd Blanche that you've just put out there regarding what he's doing in justice [3:49] and the way he's wrangling all the forces to to prove Donald Trump right and to go after the people [3:54] that went after him. Give us give us your reporting on that, Glenn. Well, Blanche is his confirmation [4:01] hearings are at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning before the Senate Judiciary Committee. And Blanche has some [4:07] real challenges. You know, a few months ago, really six months ago, a justice nominee could go before [4:14] the committee and not really have much of a problem. But the atmosphere is changing. The gravitational [4:18] pull, the midterms is hitting. And there's just been so many prosecutions that have floundered. [4:25] Most recently is this the seashells prosecution against James Comey. Blanche is Blanche is somebody [4:34] who has tried to skirt the line between running the Justice Department in a conventional way and executing [4:39] President Trump's desire for retribution and to support his enemy, support his allies. One of the things [4:46] that we got, we obtained a tranche of emails through a through a watchdog group, about 400 emails that [4:53] showed the back and forth about a year ago between senior Justice Department officials over the creation [4:58] of this anti weaponization working group inside the Justice Department that actually hasn't amounted to [5:03] much. But what is really instructive is that Blanche himself, Blanche at that point was Deputy Attorney [5:10] General. He controlled a staff of approximately two dozen attorneys, top political appointees in the [5:17] department. And Blanche made very sure that he would install his people to control key lanes in that [5:26] inquiry. January, the January 6th defendants, presumably, this working group was looking into whether or not [5:34] the Biden Justice Department had violated laws, committed any, engaged in any wrongdoing. So he, Blanche [5:43] himself personally, and this is the first time this has been reported, Blanche himself personally oversaw the [5:49] assignment of lawyers in his own office to look into Jack Smith, to look into purported coordination between the [5:56] Manhattan District Attorney and federal prosecutors. So I think Blanche is going to be asked about his [6:02] participation in weaponization by Democrats and perhaps some Republicans. I think this is going to give them some [6:07] fodder to ask some more questions. [6:08] Yeah. And it seems like these two things are locked together. Donald Trump's desire to get back at anybody who's wronged him [6:16] and also his desire, his need to prove that he's not a loser, George. He can't let either one of those things go. [6:24] Right. And there's also another motivation. This is an attempt to undermine faith in elections [6:28] generally in advance of an election that he is likely to lose one or both houses of Congress. [6:35] And as Glenn said, I mean, this is really, he is just looking in the mirror. He is just talking to himself. [6:40] This is actually exhibit number, I don't know, 55,299 of Trump's fundamental mental unfitness and moral [6:48] unfitness to be president. If he actually, you know, if he doesn't believe this and he's just saying this to be manipulative, [6:54] that's psychopathic. If he actually believes any of this, he's psychotic. He may well be both. [7:01] And it's just classic Donald Trump. I mean, just lying, lying, lying without regard to the facts, [7:07] making new things up, even if they don't make any sense and even if they don't connect up to things in the real world. [7:13] And you have to sit here and wonder. So is he saying that the one election where he was president [7:21] was the one that he lost because there was election interference and he didn't know that in 2020 he was [7:29] president in charge of the intelligence apparatus of the United States and he didn't know that and he [7:34] didn't present the evidence then as it was happening? That's nonsense. The only two good elections we had [7:40] were 2016 and 2024 when the Democrats were president. It's crazy.