Former and potentially future President Donald Trump is currently facing three indictments and will likely be facing a fourth in the coming weeks. He'll be dealing with the legal process as he's campaigning for president in the primary and if he indeed becomes the nominee. As Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) discussed in his Friday morning edition of his "Verdict" podcast, it's the Democratic Party's game plan to have Trump engaged in multiple trials going on, so that the headlines will constantly be about Trump, distracting the American people from the widespread bad press that President Joe Biden ought to be receiving.
When justice becomes a tool for politics, democracy suffers.
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) August 4, 2023
Join @benfergusonshow and I on the latest episode of #Verdict for a dissection of the Dems' attempt to shape the narrative, using indictments as a weapon. https://t.co/jNnrwjwXqc
To begin the podcast, Cruz also spoke about news coverage when emphasizing how he believes the indictment is "a political indictment" and "the latest manifestation of the politicization of the Department of Justice where the Democrats, every time there are bad developments, about Joe Biden, about Hunter Biden, they immediately turn around and try to overtake the news cycle with yet another attack on Donald Trump."
The timing is indeed curious, people have noticed, which includes, as Cruz pointed out, Trump's attorney Alina Habba. From outside the courthouse on Thursday, she went through the dates at length and spoke to how the indictments are "not a coincidence," but rather "election interference at its finest."
Co-host Ben Ferguson applauded the tactic from the Trump legal team, as they too had gone over the timeline on their program previously. "They're not even trying to hide how biased they are, it's like 'all right, you do something exposing the Biden crime family, we're gonna put Donald Trump in prison' for now, what is it, 576 years... if he's found guilty on everything," Ferguson said, making clear that that was not an exaggeration, given all the charges and their severity. "They're not hiding it at all."
Cruz also discussed what we have known for some time now, which is that Biden wants to be facing Trump in the general election. "Number one, they want Trump to win the primary. And they have recognized that every time they indict him, his numbers go up in the Republican primary," Cruz pointed out when speaking to the "political objective" of Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Biden's talked about how he's hoping to face Trump again for over a year now, as something that even encouraged him to run for reelection, and in March of this year even referred to Trump as the "maybe future president."
Biden regards Trump as the easiest to beat, and he's also looking for a rematch from 2020. That being said, such a hypothetical rematch is looking rather close, with Biden leading by only +0.9 according to RealClearPolitics (RCP), with 44.9 percent to Trump's 44 percent. RCP meanwhile shows him up by +2.0 against Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), with 44.7 percent to DeSantis' 42.7 percent.
Cruz then spoke more so to the bigger picture of why it is Democrats want him to win the primary, since they want Trump to have trials in September and October 2024, which would be right before Election Day. "They want ideally multiple criminal trials ongoing. They want Trump being prosecuted. They want all of the headlines to be about anything other than the disastrous Joe Biden record," Cruz pointed out, speaking once more to that news coverage.
The senator then spent nearly a full minute going over Biden's failures, including immigration "the trainwreck that is Bidenomics," the rising crime rate that Cruz attributed to "their assault on law enforcement and police across this country," foreign policy, "the shameful" surrender and withdrawal from Afghanistan, how our enemies are stronger, and how Biden "has weakened and undermine our allies across the country."
Rather, Cruz emphasized once more, "they want the conversation to be about... the criminal trial against Donald Trump." The senator not only brought up concerns about election interference in how the Biden administration is trying to jail his most likely opponent. It's also "an assault on democracy," Cruz explained, "because they don't trust the voters." He again spoke about Biden's record in that "they don't want the voters to vote on Biden's record. Because if we vote on Biden's record, Biden loses. Instead, they want to use the Department of Justice to steal the election," also speaking once more to news coverage in that "they're trying to steal it by dominating the headlines by bringing the full force of the federal government to bring case after case after case."
Even Democrats are concerned though, specifically Alan Dershowitz, an attorney and law professor who has defended Trump. He's spoken at great length about the indictment, including on Tuesday, the night it was handed down. As he told Newsmax's Greta Van Susteren, he's concerned about living in a banana republic, where "you go after your political opponents by indicting them... and denying your right to vote for him or against them."
Bringing the conversation back to the timeline also involved Cruz emphasizing how likely it is that Trump will get a guilty conviction in D.C. with this latest indictment, "a very real possibility," as the senator put it. This provides Democrats with "their perfect world," in which "they'd like that guilty verdict, maybe about October 20 of next year," which Cruz says "would be the Democrat dream scenario."
Cruz--as have others, including Dershowitz--pointed to how a guilty verdict would go on appeal and "is overwhelmingly likely to be thrown out" at the U.S. Supreme Court. And, as Cruz pointed out, this is something even the Democrats "know full well."
In 2016, the Court had unanimously overturned a conviction that Special Counsel Jack Smith had brought against former Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) in 2014.
When it comes to a further perspective on the trials, Matt highlighted an Axios report on Friday which points to how drawing out the trials in order to delay in hopes that he wins the election could be Trump's "ticket to freedom," especially if he were to pardon himself.
To summarize it all in a way, then, Cruz warned that what's going on is "election interference" and "is also ongoing news management." The senator also spent considerable time talking about the testimony from Devon Archer that took place on Monday in a closed-door meeting with the House Oversight Committee. Released takeaways from the Committee, as well as transcripts, revealed that, according to Archer, who is the former business associate of Hunter Biden, then Vice President Joe Biden was involved in his son's business dealings and was, in fact, "the brand."
It's worth mentioning, too, that NewsBusters' Bill D'Agostino highlighted how CNN and MSNBC chose to mention Trump 70 times in one hour on Monday, the day of Archer's testimony, with no mention of Archer. It didn't get much better throughout the day. "Between 6:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. eastern, CNN and MSNBC made a combined 759 mentions of Donald Trump, while at the same time mentioning Devon Archer just 48 times," a write-up further mentioned.
In later discussing the Archer testimony, Cruz offered the chilling reality that, assuming Archer is being truthful, "the biggest and most consequential thing that Devon Archer testified to, is that Joe Biden has been lying to the American people for years and the Biden White House has been lying to the American people for years."
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