Politics the former president s pardon play. Donald trumps lawyers make a hail mary request for an april 2026 start to the 2020 Election Trial and try to make sure the case never sees the inside of a courtroom. Plus a game of risk. New reporting outlines how republicans plan to conquer a trumpless debate. How another republican warns his party appears poised to fulfill the textbook definition of insanity. President biden invokes the whole enemy of my enemy is a Friend Theory of Foreign Policy today pushing two neighbors to put aside a generation of bad blood and send a message to the country a couple blocks away, china. Im Phil Mattingly in for dana bash. Lets go behind the headlines and inside politics. Were going to start with this up first. Two questions. Do you know what youre doing on monday . Do you know what youre doing in april, 2026 . The answer is no for me on both of them. Donald trump, though, has plans for both. More specifically mr. Trump knows where he wont be on monday and what he hopes he wont have to do more than two and a half years from now. We start our coverage with cnns sara murray in washington. Lets start with monday. What wont mr. Trump be doing . Sadly for him he has canceled this Press Conference he wanted to have where he could talk all about the baseless allegations of voter fraud especially in a state like georgia. He was encouraged not to go through with this. Obviously he has a number of pending legal matters that this would not look great for. Here is what he said on social media. My lawyers would prefer putting this i believe irrefutable and overwhelming evidence of Election Fraud and irregularities in formal, legal filings. Now of course we will wait to see whether his attorneys actually do include any of what he calls irrefutable evidence thats been refuted many, many times in these Court Filings but i think there is a lot of concern about the former president going out there with this pending case in georgia as well as the federal election interference case. Im not an expert but i am picking up skepticism about the content of the proposed monday Press Conference that is no longer. I want to ask though trumps attorneys filed the request last night. It more or less makes clear they never want the federal election case against their client to see the inside of a courtroom. What date are they laying out and why . They are suggesting april 2026 for this trial. Youre not hearing the year wrong. The federal government doj had suggested January Of 2024 as a trial date and in this court filing last night trumps attorneys raise a number of issues. They point out, one, he has a lot of other legal matters on his hands which is certainly true. He obviously has the criminal case when it comes to the maralago retention of documents, the manhattan hush money case, also this georgia case that he is juggling but they also lay out just the amount of evidence that they have to go through, the amount of discovery they have to go through related to this case, they say 11. 5 million pages of documents, and included a very handy visual aid in their court filing of what those 11. 5 million pages of documents would look like if printed out compared to the is statue of liberty, the first little block you see there, then the Washington Monument the second little block you see there. Again, it is up to the judge to decide when the trial date is going to be but this is how the trump team is framing it in their filing last night. As a reporter in your former life at the Wall Street Journal the show dont tell aspect here is, you know, you appreciate that. We love a visual aid. Thanks so much. Here to share their insights Cnns Kaitlan Collins and a former lawyer for the January 6th Committee and cnns evan perez is live for us in washington. Tim, i want to start with you and what was pointed out. You read through the actual filing and it says even assuming we could begin reviewing documents today wed need to proceed at 99,760 pages per day to finish the governments initial production by the proposed day for jury selection, the entirety of tolstoys War And Peace 78 times a day every day from now until jury selection. Good writing to some degree. I appreciate that. But i think it is a valid point because while 2026 seems a little bit perhaps long in terms of the timeline this is a real issue in terms of their ability and the ability for a fair case to be able to proceed in terms of the defense team having the opportunity to do what they need to do. Is that accurate . What is accurate is there is a large amount of documents to review. It is not i think fully accurate to think about each specific number of pages because lawyers are well versed in handling large amounts of discovery. This is what we do all the time. Lawyers also have targeted reviews geared toward the actual evidence that is going to be admissible at trial and relevant to their case. What is important here is donald trump and his team have been aware of The Con Tours of the case for a long time. The committee will be put on trial to the American People with this same evidentiary, our hearings and report laid out the details of what jack smiths case is really going to look like. I think the idea this is all coming afresh is not quite an answer here. But totally undercuts the graphic. I think to some degree you watch how this has proceedd in terms of what special counsels office put out for their date, what trumps lawyers put out for their date. I work under the assumption there is probably a middle ground here Everybody Knows would be the more likely date. Is that accurate . Yeah, look. If they get the split the baby approach from the judge they still win right . There is a lot of time between next january and april of 2026. That is not where this judges head is at. You can tell from what she has been saying from the bench she does not think this needs to be delayed that much. And so i think one of the things youll hear is shell point out that for instance that graphic as snazzy and beautiful as it is is just deceptive. Right . Because a lot of those pages are email headers. A lot of them are not really relevant to the case. A lot that was produced are not things theyll use as part of the trial and they know that. So that graphic is kind of bs for the purposes of really trying to make your argument to the judge. Right . I mean, the fact is that there is a very small number of pages that are going to be relevant for this case and they know where to find those. As a matter of fact the Justice Department will provide a road map for ha and they dont have to buy it because they already know a lot of the allegations and testimony from some of the witnesses. So it is going to be a lot less difficult for the judge to cut through that i think. Kaitlan, we heard from the former president yesterday. He had a Sit Down Interview with larry kudlow. I want to play some of that. Take a listen. They have four of them now if you look. I mean, this is not even possible. Four. Over the next last couple of months. And frankly, it discredits everything. And they are all very similar in the sense that they are, there is no basis for them. Its a disgraceful thing. And republicans cant let them get away it. Republicans have to be tough. Im less interested in his actual comments themselves than what is happening behind the scenes with his legal team in particular how they view the four indictments and whether there is a basis for them i think the one they are the most worried about actually happening next year is this case in washington. Theyve seen how judge chutkan has handled this and know she is moving pretty aggressively. So as ambitious as jack smiths january 2024 trial ask was, they are also doing that and making an aggressive move with the april request. They know it is not going to happen in april, 2026. They looked at not just the discovery here and the level of evidence evan was pointing to but at other cases and how long they took. The circumstances of this are different in the sense of it is the former president. Hes on trial. He is also running and is the republican frontrunner right now. So i think theyre worried that she is going to set a pretty aggressive timeline. To the point about the attorneys know what is coming, the attorneys that are handling this are pretty new to the team. The two that had been handling it had been new to the primary ones working on january 6. They departed the team over the summer so it is fresh faces on trumps legal team. Are they using that to their advantage . Yes probably. Do they also know what they signed up for . I assume so to some degree i think a lot of attorneys some people wonder why attorneys would represent trump given his history with attorneys. I think a lot of attorneys look at it as the opportunity of a lifetime because it is a former president , it is an historic case whatever happens here. He is a very difficult client as evidenced by the News Conference he canceled on monday. On the legal side of things, what trumps lawyers did not put in their filing was anything related to trying to push this past the election explicitly because of the election. There is no question and kaitlan has had a ton of reporting on this his team is not unaware of that fact. Listen to what bill barr said when asked about this. They might accommodate a few days here and there but i dont think that should govern the schedule for pursuing these cases. You dont get immunity for two years in a run up to an election just by saying hey im a candidate. You cant try me. The idea here, kaitlan makes the point, there is no precedent for this, nothing in history you can point to for this. As a lawyer if you are a prosecutor in this case how are you looking at this given the fact it runs smack head into the political schedule . I think first i would start with the content of the speedy trial. We often think about a speedy trial as a defendants right. But the public also has an interest in a speedy trial. I think here when youre dealing with a former president who is seeking high office again the publics interest in that trial happening before the election i think is extensively high. That would be my Starting Point there. As far as whether to consider the election and what the court thinks about that i think judge chutkan has made clear if anything that would push her to make it happen faster not slower. And pushing this trial out allows more time to influence potential jurors. It allows more time to intimidate potential witnesses. I think she has made it clear that if anything, all of these factors lean toward making the trial happen faster not further out. It will be fascinating to watch. Thanks for coming in. Evan, appreciate your time as always. Kaitlan, you are staying with me whether you like it or not. Up next brand new cnn reporting on an inside look at how the 2024 hopefuls are preparing with five days to go until the first primary debates. Details after the break. I even found new ways to save. All right here. Free. And fast. See all you can do with the free experian app. Download it now. Before planning the big trip you were limping thanks to a bad knee. Then, you heard about mako roboticassisted knee replacement. It starts with a ct scan to pinpoint the problem. That becomes a personalized, 3d plan to guide your doctor during surgery. Mako can help lead to better outcomes, like less pain and shorter recovery times. The lifetime of a knee implant is limited, and revision surgery may be required. Individual results and recovery times vary. Risks of surgery include pain, infection, heart attack, stroke, death, and other serious risks. Ask your doctor for important safety information. [camera shutter] to find a doctor who uses mako visit makocan. Com psst psst ahhhh. 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It is really up to us to ensure that the 2024 election is a referendum on what actually matters for this countrys future. It is time to fire joe biden. It is time to fire merrick garland. It is time to fire christopher wray. We need to clean out the entire doj. You know i always stood loyally by President Donald Trump until my oath to the constitution required me to do otherwise. My differences with the president go far beyond that fateful day. I hope to have a chance to debate them with him. Six candidates total are set to speak at the twoday event hosted by radio hosts and frequent trump critic erick erickson, the theme is forward, which way . While the 2024 hopefuls largely focus on their aspirations, agendas, the Top Republican in the state did not. Trumps litany of legal woes prompted this warning from georgia governor brian kemp. Democrats want us to be focused on things like this so were not focused on joe bidens record. Its insanity were having to deal with this. It should be such an easy path for us to win the white house back. We have to tell people what we are for. And then we have to have a candidate that can win the election. We should note the governor says he may be compelled to testify in trumps upcoming trial. And now brand new cnn Reporting Peeling back the curtain a little bit revealing exactly how the 2024 hopefuls are spending final precious moments preparing for next weeks first republican primary debate. This from cnn. What more are we learning about how were getting ready . Reporter phil the memory of Donald Trumps past debate performances forcing these candidates to prepare for all manner of scenarios when it comes to trump. Mike pence for example has been holding mock debates that include trump and ones that dont. If trump does not show the Desantis Camp believes he will become the focal point of the debate. Yes, we have talked to candidates, Strategy Teams who suggest they have been studying up on the florida governors record in the Sunshine State as well as his lesser known time in congress trying to show a different side of the republican governor than perhaps most voters are used to. For desantis this is a new experience. He does not have a past debate performances that are anything like what he is going to experience in milwaukee, and i am told he is working with One Of The BestDebate Coaches in the industry Brett Odonnell who coached several past republican president ial nominees. One of the things theyll be working on is desantis mannerisms on stage. He has a tendency to have some visual tics when getting a question he doesnt like. He can gnash his teeth, sometimes feign a smile, and those can be amplified in front of a national audience. I am told that is something theyll work on Going Forward. For the other candidates as much as desantis has tried to make this look like a twoperson race the fact remains he is much closer in the polls to the rest of the field than he is to trump. For someone like tim scott or Vivek Ramaswamy who have seen a little boost in the polls this is an opportunity to continue on that momentum and potentially carry them into the fall. For candidates like pence and others polling in the Single Digits theyll have a wide and large audience for one of the first times during this cycle and this might be their last and best chance to not only get on the next debate stage but even continue their campaign. A great point. Thanks so much for the reporting. Here to share their reporting and insights, my guests. Kaitlan is back with us. Lets start with the elephant in the room to probably i guess that was bad sorry. Maybe not in the room. Maybe in the room maybe not in the room. That is the point right . The former President Truthing on the debate, many people asking whether i will be doing debates. All americans have been clamoring with a president with extremely high reagan doesnt do it. Neither do i. People know my record. One of the b