You are right that it challenges what is animating peoples minds and discourse and the things they are hearing. I hope they hear more about the economic transformations as well. Come back anytime. Faiz shakir, one of my favorite people to talk about good news and bad news. Thank you for your time tonight. That is our time tonight. Now it is time for the last word. A fantastic discussion to end the week. Have a great show. Today was a special day for defendant trump, not because it was the eighth day of a historic criminal trial, the sorts of which has never been seen in this country. Today was also the birthday of Donald Trumps third and current wife, melania trump. She did not support her husband in court. Instead she stayed in florida. She had seven other days of this trial that were not her birthday and neither she nor any other member of the trump family have set with donald trump in the trial so far, but melanias birthday was such a big deal to donald trump that he used his first moments walking into court to complain about having to sit in court, rather than to be with his third and current wife on her birthday. In this text message went out to Trump Supporters. From trump, id love to be with melania on her birthday, but instead im stuck in court. The message went on to say, while i am away for my family, im humbly asking you to please Stand By My Side today. Stand by my side, in case you have not figured it out, is code for send cash. Today donald trump also repeated the lie he has told over and over. I am at the heavily guarded courthouse. Security is that of fort knox, also that maga will not be able to attend the trial. Again that is a lie. Just like Donald Trumps family, no one is preventing anyone from coming to the trial. Two tourists from alaska took time out of their vacation to sit in the courtroom after seeing the play, the enemy of the people, on broadway. If any of the 74 Million People who voted for donald trump in 2021 wanted to come to the manhattan courthouse, they could have. Donald trump would rather lie than admit that neither his supporters nor his family are showing up to his first criminal trial. Had any of them showed up, this is what they would have heard in court today as prosecutors called three witnesses to the stand. Witness david pecker largely stood his ground despite attempts by trumps legal team to undermine his testimony by claiming deals to bury stories like Karen Mcdougal and Stormy Daniels were standard operating procedure. The second witness, Donald Trumps former executive assistant, rhona graff, provided testimony that she entered Stormy Daniels and Karen Mcdougals Contact Information on the Trump Organization database. The third witness was gary farro, a former manager at the bank Michael Cohen used to obtain a 130,000 Home Equity Loan which cohen funneled to Stormy Daniels through a Shell Company. On friday, he authenticated bank records from that Shell Company, which prosecutors showed to jurors. Testimony will continue when the trial resumes tuesday morning. Prosecutors are using his testimony to authenticate documents related to the transaction. Gary farros testimony will continue when the trial resumes tuesday morning. Judge merchan also noticed that a Gag Order Hearing will take place on thursday to hear evidence about the new violations donald trump has committed this week. Leading up our discussion, he was in the courtroom today and will be every day. Former supervisor of the special prosecutions and civil rights unit of the Eastern District of new york. Good evening to both of you. Unlike a lot of donald Trump Supporters and family, you have been there, watching what is going on. Tell us what happened. We had three interesting pieces of testimony. We did and first and foremost we had the end of david testimony. This has been weeklong testimony that set the course of the trial and it is interesting to analyze why david pecker is there to start the case. Because it goes to the prosecutions broader theory that this was Election Fraud and it goes back to, his testimony today, he spoke about the 2018 nonprosecution agreement that ami, National Enquirers corporate parent, signed with federal prosecutors and that agreement did not go far enough to actually admit the campaignfinance violations, but david pecker did today and he did yesterday on the stand. He said we agreed that we committed Campaign Finance violations. He also said today, when asked directly by the prosecutor if that was his understanding back then, directly answered yes. Now we are on other witnesses. Once that you mentioned in the introduction, who are custodial witnesses. They are introducing pieces of evidence that are just data points for the jury that will put the pieces of the puzzle together for them. The Contact Information for Stormy Daniels and Karen Mcdougal. Why is that on the Trump Organization database . That will come into play later. We are starting to see the custodial records behind this byzantine way of funneling 130,000 in hush money to Stormy Daniels through a Shell Company and a lawyer and we are getting into the weeds on that and that is the jurors last impression. The issue with a story like this is that there is no question that it is very unusual how this 130,000 was handled, how these things happen, and some of that in itself is a violation of the way books have to be kept and records have to be kept. What is the challenge for the prosecution . They will probably be able to demonstrate that effectively, but ultimately having the jurors believe that this was in fact in furtherance of a different thing and that was to conceal something from voters that might have made them make a different decision. How difficult is that . You put your finger right on it. As the week started there were two dramatic competing visions in this case. The prosecution said this crime is about tipping an election in 2016. It is about donald trump desperately wanting to hide his relationship with thisstar, with other relationships that could have hurt him in the election. On the other hand the defense put forward a very plausible explanation that this is a minor records keeping violation. ExPresident Trump should not be indicted or tried on the Campaign Trail for Something Like this and most importantly, outright denied that former President Trump had his fingers on this at all. Made it clear that he would not know what small ledger entries are on his books and records, for example. So what happened with mr. Pecker this week is he made in inroads with the prosecution to show that trump definitely wanted to alter the selection. That these are important election crimes. He did not care about hiding this from his family, but he cared about winning the election. So that really buttressed the prosecutions case and now they go about the important, steady, less exciting work about linking up the transactions officially occurred and false records were on the books of trumps company. This office, by the way, is good at doing because they do that another places. Lets go back to the idea of david pecker. The defense team, the trump team was trying to make this come across as standard. This catch and kill idea is standard, happens to a lot of people. And pecker was saying this was actually in furtherance of something more serious. This wasnt the typical catch a story and kill it. There are probably reasons why you would take on a story, pay somebody for it and kill it, but pecker said the unfinished part and this was in furtherance of what donald trump was trying to achieve. Absolutely and that came across on redirect examination. What happened was the Defense Attorney has presented what one would call the casablanca defense. There is gambling. Ami does this over and over again, that they by people stories. Not unusual. In the prosecutor on redirect honed in on the differences. That there has never, even though they have, ami has quashed stories of celebrities and even political figures in the past, they have never been the eyes and ears of a president ial campaign. They have never identified sources of scandal and worked to silence the accusers who are bringing about that scandal. They have never had an admitted campaignfinance violation, which was said in no Uncertain Terms today and yesterday. So, systematically the prosecution on redirect confronted each and every defense that trumps Defense Attorney had presented over the past day. Faith, there has been a remarkable effort on the part of the Donald Trump Team to discredit Michael Cohen, who is central to this funneling of the money. Cohen said his piece. He will testify, but tell me about that part of the case. Because it was funneled and there were Shell Companies and a mortgage taken. Tell me how you make sense of that for a jury. In the end they need to understand that this money was managed to pay someone off for their silence. How hard is it going to be to connect that . You put your finger on it earlier. The government will go through and probably use charts and graphs in Closing Arguments to show where the money moved, dot by dot. Some of that will not be terribly interesting to listen to, but there will be jurors who care a great deal about seeing that the process links up. It is also incredibly important to link up the money trail, because Michael Cohen is going to need buttressing. He will be attacked like no witness in the case. He has been very consistent about the story he is telling, the testimony he is giving, but he will be attacked in terms of all of his untruthfulness. His participation in the crime. Cant prove a crime by having nuns and priests. You have to have someone who participated, but you need the upholstery of the transaction of the movement of the money around. I believe the government is doing exactly what they should do, which is probably putting them in the middle of a case. You want to set the stage about tom important this crime is through mr. Pecker and then put some of these witnesses around, again, for upholstery. You dont want the jurors, the last thing they hear, to be a bloody crossexamination of cohen, which is coming. I understand this case a lot better thanks to the interpretation you both have provided. We always appreciate having you on. Thank you for kicking us off tonight. Coming up, its hard to overstate how bizarre and unprecedented yesterdays Supreme Court oral arguments were. Our next guest says the very idea of the Supreme Court considering Donald Trumps claim of president ial immunity is, in and of itself, a bad thing for our democracy. Thats next. Migraine with or without aura and the preventive treatment of Episodic Migraine in adults. Its the only migraine medication that helps treat prevent, all in one. Dont take if allergic to nurtec odt. Allergic reactions can occur, even days after using. Most common side effects were nausea, indigestion, and stomach pain. People depend on me. Without a migraine, i can be there for them. Talk to your doctor about nurtec odt today. Smile you found it. The feeling of Finding Psoriasis cant filter out the real you. 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One could argue the timeline of selfinflicted harm to the Supreme Court began 201 years after the court first assembled in 1790. The year was 1991 and allegations of Sexual Harassment against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas spelled out into public view during Televised SenateJudiciary Committee hearings. Be on the scandal, it turned the high court into something of a joke, literally serving as punchlines on latenight talk shows and creating fodder for a Saturday Night Live Sketch Making Fun of the hearings. Further damage was done with the controversial decision in bush v gore that ultimately decided who had won the 2000 president ial election, paving the way for george w. Bush to take the Oath Of Office on january 20, 2021. 2001. In 2010 they undid a century of campaignfinance decisions. The Supreme Court effectively gave the rich more room to use their money to shape elections and manipulate who gets on the Supreme Court itself. In 2016, Mitch Mcconnell invented a rule that the senate cannot consider a Supreme Court nomination in an election year. That completely made up maneuver stopped president obamas nomination of Merrick Garland and politicized the court even further. The Trump Presidency then saw, incredibly, three Supreme Court vacancies during one president ial term, allowing the most legally dubious president of the modern era the ability to submit the courts conservative majority. For the third appointee, amy coney barrett, Mitch Mcconnell entirely thought about entirely forgot about his rule about electionyear nominations. They have taken away Abortion Rights with the Dobbs Decision and it may not stop there. Then there is what we heard from the conservative justices yesterday. The only words in the constitution that have to d