Emergency Podcast: Trump Is Indicted
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Yes. And we got, we got requests for good use of pulling bad use of pulling. I have to put my foot down somewhere and that's where I put it down. Okay. Like I'm so glad to know. We can't say cat turd on the podcast.

Hello and welcome to this emergency edition of the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Drew. All eyes have been on the court for days, but Thursday evening, actress Gwyneth Paltrow was found not at fault in a 2016 ski accident. That concludes a very public trial in which Paltrow countersued for $1 and was awarded that $1. And attorney's fees. And attorney's fees. That's the part she wanted.

Folks, former President Donald Trump was indicted Thursday evening by a Manhattan grand jury in a case regarding alleged hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. As we've talked about actually for years now on this podcast, this indictment is historic. It's never happened before to a president, current or former, and it also may not be the last Trump indictment.

The reality is that at this very moment, we still don't know that much more than when we last recorded a podcast on this topic last week. So side note, if you want a primer on Trump's legal jeopardy, scroll down in the feed to the episode that's titled Will Voters Care If Trump Gets Indicted? And you'll have all the information there.

The indictment won't be unsealed until Trump appears in court, which is expected to be Tuesday of next week, although reporting suggests that Trump is facing more than 30 counts related to business fraud. So today's podcast is not going to be too long because, you know, we got to wait to see that indictment unsealed. But I wanted to get people's reaction nonetheless, and we'll be back with more next week. So here with me to discuss Editor-in-Chief Nate Silver. Hey, Nate, how's it going?

Hey, everybody. Also with us is senior reporter Amelia Thompson-DeBeau. Hey, Amelia. Good morning. And senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Hey, Nathaniel. Good morning, Galen. Thanks for having me. It's great to have you. So, Nate, you were not on last week's podcast where we talked about Trump's legal jeopardy. So I'm curious to get your take now that this indictment has actually happened. What's your initial reaction?

My initial reaction is that I am sick and tired of Donald Trump being the center of American politics. And this kind of probably assures that he'll be the center for another couple of years. I don't know. Nate, this podcast is about the listeners, not about your personal hopes and desires and frustrations. So in service to the listeners, what's your political analysis about how this indictment shapes our country's politics?

I mean, look, I think the default is actually not a very sexy answer, which is that we don't know. And the default is that it's probably all fairly priced into the system, right? If you look at, like, actually...

The Scottish Teens, meaning the betting markets. We haven't referred to the Scottish Teens in a while. I had someone come up to me on the street the other day and refer to the Scottish Teens, right? They're like, I told my wife a joke about the Scottish Teens and she didn't get it. So I don't know if I was being credited or blamed. Our joke is that the Scottish Teens bet on...

political betting markets, right? But they are basically unmoved. If anything, Trump has like declined a little bit since the indictment came out, right? As opposed to the kind of pundit conventional wisdom that, oh, this is kind of great for Trump. It'll cause a voter backlash. I think we don't know a lot. I mean, we kind of know from like the Hillary Clinton FBI stuff, she was never actually indicted of anything, right? But like just seeing those words in the headline was kind of bad for Clinton.

You know, people, I think their eyes like do glaze over a little bit and they're like, maybe not that interested in this Trump news per se, but like, you know, if he gets ones of getting arrested, it may or may not actually be publicly his arrest photos and so forth. But like, I think we don't, we don't know that much. If like, if there's a trial and he is not convicted, then,

That seems good for Trump, right? I'd say that, right? Then he kind of gets the best of both worlds where you're charged with something. You can say it's political and then you're found innocent. Like that would be good news for him, right? Apart from that, I think the political fallout is pretty uncertain. Uncertain doesn't mean zero, but I don't think it's safe to speculate too much.

Yeah, I think everyone's searching for tea leaves, for scraps of information about how voters might be reacting, how politicians are reacting. Our colleague Mary Radcliffe pulled out some polling from Echelon Insights this morning that suggested maybe it hurts Trump in the Republican primary, which is, you know, when asked the hypothetical Republican primary voters vote.

without information about an indictment from this Manhattan grand jury favored Trump by 25 points over Ron DeSantis. And then when asked the question, you know, consider that Trump is indicted by this Manhattan grand jury, how would that change anything or who would you prefer? And that was halved to about a 12 point lead over Ron DeSantis, which would be another piece of information in support of this idea that like the conventional pundit wisdom that this will help Trump is not necessarily true.

Is that, in this case, a good or bad use of polling? I mean, I'm not a huge fan of hypotheticals. I guess this is no longer hypothetical in polling, right? But the kind of, the what if question. When conducted, it was a hypothetical. Okay. And you see like, you know, like Ron DeSantis was like the George Soros-backed prosecutor entitled to Trump, right? So the way that other GOP hopefuls reacted was,

suggests they do not think it's a point to press an advantage, and that's maybe an asset for Trump, right, based on the way that they're moving around the issue. But I don't know. I mean, we don't know if he's going to, like, actually be convicted, right? We don't know exactly what the charges are. We don't even know if he's going to appear in court. Presumably he will. But if not, then you have another, like, rule of law type of issue, and that could take on its own life of its own. So I don't know. I mean, look, my default is that it's

mildly helpful to him in the GFP primary and mildly hurtful to him in a general election but those are weekly held priors yeah Nathaniel and Amelia before we dig into what legally happens next and some of the responses does that initial reaction match your own

Yeah, I agree that it's a very uncertain situation. So I just published an article on the website that kind of laid out an argument based on the data we do have for kind of each of the three scenarios, which is that it will hurt him, that it will help him, and that it would not make a difference. And I think, you know, you can make a case for all three. So in terms of hurting him, there's obviously the fact that scandals hurt candidates. We know this empirically. We also know that, you know, Republicans are not actually like

totally immovable off Trump. A lot of them also like Ron DeSantis and say, you know, Trump voters say that DeSantis is their second choice. So it's not crazy to think they could move off him. In terms of the helping, you know, you could see kind of something similar to a rally around the flag effect where, you know, Trump is this

Republican standard bearer that a lot of Republicans identify with. And when he comes under attack, there might be a natural inclination to rush to his defense. In addition, as Nate mentioned, the fact that other Republicans are based, even his like Republican rivals or would-be rivals,

or rushing to his defense and attacking the prosecutor suggests that they are not going to be using this issue to their advantage. And a big part of rally around the flag effects is when your political opposition kind of goes silent and when you don't have that kind of, you know, the push and the push and pull that can affect the game of tug of war, so to speak. But then finally, I think just if I'm personally making a bet, you know, don't gamble on politics, kids. The

the argument that no you totally should on politics gambling is good absolutely no it's not gambling is awesome gambling politics though absolutely yeah gamble as much as you can on politics it's so much better than yeah if you have a gambling addiction please come talk to me not me call any of 21 numbers yeah

Anyway, I personally I think the the the argument that it won't have much of a difference is probably the strongest. You look at some of these the closest precedents that we do have, like Trump's impeachment, like the raid of Mar-a-Lago, and these things barely moved his numbers, both kind of his favorability among Republicans and among Republicans.

Democrats as a whole. As Nate mentioned, you know, this is not new information. The fact that Donald Trump is plagued by scandals has been baked into public opinion of him for, you know, six years. So that's kind of my default expectation. But honestly, none of the three scenarios would surprise me. I think mainly at this point, I want to see the charges because one of the big questions in this case has been

what is the case that the Manhattan DA is presenting? Because as we discussed on the last podcast, falsifying business records, which it seems like the Manhattan DA has a fairly strong argument that Trump did in this case involving the payment to Stormy Daniels via his lawyer, Michael Cohen, that's a misdemeanor. And they're going to want to try to elevate this to a felony, but they have to connect

connect it to a second crime. And so the theory has been, and we don't know if this is the case, we have to see the charges, that they would be connecting it to a violation of election law. But that raises all kinds of questions, you know, about what New York election law could Trump have violated if he was running as a federal candidate.

This is a pretty novel legal theory. So it's possible the judge just doesn't buy it. Again, so I think the charges themselves are going to be really important. And then the other big question for me is if this is the first indictment we see against Trump in the coming months

or if it is followed by an indictment in Georgia and potentially even by federal charges. I think

the situation becomes a lot more complicated for Trump, both politically and just logistically, if he is involved, embroiled in multiple criminal cases in multiple jurisdictions while he's also trying to run for president, especially because, as we've discussed on the podcast, the other issues which have to do, some of them, with Trump's attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election may revolutionize

resonate as more serious issues with the public than a hush money payment in the 2016 election. So that's a really big unanswered question. We may be getting charges out of Georgia soon. That's something where we've just been waiting. And it seemed like the prosecutor there, Fannie Willis, has been about to decide what the charges will be for a while. And I think that's going to be a really crucial test of what the political impact will be on Trump.

Yeah, Amelia, to back that up with, again, the same polling from Echelon Insights, asking, you know, Republican primary voters themselves how seriously they take the different buckets of potential charges against Trump. 19% said that, you know, paying hush money to an adult film star, Stormy Daniels, to cover up an alleged affair, that...

a criminal charge would be justified. 26% said that it would be justified in a charge attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state of Georgia. So amongst Republicans themselves, it seems like that case is seen as more justified.

I wanted to follow up on what you were saying about us waiting for the charges to be unsealed, fully endorse, you know, we're going to have to meet back up again once that actually happens because this has all been speculation. But one of the new pieces of information for me last night when this was all coming out is that the cable news channels and New York Times, et cetera, started reporting that there were more than 30 counts involved in this indictment.

And the talking heads were reacting with surprise to this because of how many that is. Are you gleaning anything from that? Like, again, this is all speculation, but like, is your thinking, okay, this could be more serious than what we had previously discussed on, you know, last Thursday's podcast.

I mean, that was always a possibility. The proceedings at the grand jury are secret. We don't know what's been happening. We generally have a sense of which witnesses have been testifying. But the reality is that process--

prosecutors do not bring cases in general that they think they can't win. And I would hazard that this is a case where if you were a prosecutor, especially an elected prosecutor, um, you would especially not want to bring this case if you didn't think you could win. So there's always been the possibility that there was evidence that we weren't aware of, that there was a case that, that might be stronger. Um,

I was also a little surprised by the number of counts, but I really just want to see what they are at this point. Yeah. I mean, the number doesn't matter, right? If anything, it's like when someone has like a 30 post Twitter thread, probably 28 of those posts suck, right? There's like one and a half good arguments supported by 28 pieces of like bulls**t, right? So I think the number...

But no, but Amelia is right that like the fact that he chose to pursue this case. Right. And the grand jury chose to indict. There's some information there. I mean, it's just a majority that has to vote. I mean, that's important. It's so it's it's just just under two dozen people on the grand jury. And it's just a majority. So it's not like all of them had to agree. But.

But I guess I'd say like, you know, the flip side of that is that even if 28 of the counts are, you know, Trump isn't going to be convicted on, like if he gets convicted on two of them, then... That's two felonies. Right. I mean, like, or, you know, I mean, or two misdemeanors, which is also like not great for him, better than a felony, but...

So, you know, I think that there is a way in which lawyers will often just kind of throw a bunch of theories at the wall and see what sticks. And so if they have a bunch of different theories, then, you know, maybe that increases. That's why I don't like lawyers. I don't like lawyers. Well, I'm married to a lawyer. Are you currently facing legal challenges, Nate? I take the fifth. Where is this coming from? I don't like lawyers. I think lawyers are bulls**ters. I'm in. What do you think about politicians? Yeah, I know. I like politicians.

A lot of politicians are lawyers. Nate, who do you like? Gamblers. Athletes. Definitely not bullshitters. Sure. Neymar. Neymar. No, I like both. Yeah. I like gamblers. Do you like public statisticians? Sure. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Nate, you really brought the fire this morning.

Next question here is basically, we're going to wrap up soon, but how folks are responding. I think you've said so far that Republicans have essentially had Trump's back, even Republicans who hope to beat him in the Republican primary, most likely. I mean, Nikki Haley is really the only one who's announced so far, but we're assuming that Ron DeSantis and Tim Scott and others will get in. So is there anything more we should say about Republicans? And if not, what are Democrats saying?

I mean, the response from Democrats has been pretty muted. It's just a lot of, you know, like Trump should respect the rule of law. Let's see how this process unfolds. So I mean, I don't know, is there something I've missed there that's that's fierier? I think Democrats are just sort of trying to say, like, this is a legitimate process. Let's let it proceed and see what happens. Did Hillary tweet about it? Did she say like law and order? Or am I making that up? Was that like a fake AI generated tweet?

Nate, I think what you're referring to was like a totally fake account because definitely something from Hillary Clinton did go viral last night, but it was like, see you in jail. I don't think she said, I'm going to guess she didn't say that. Although you never know. I would, I would have respect. Oh no, sorry. It was not that it was, it was lock who up and it got, uh, wait, wait,

30 more than 30,000 likes. Um, and the name is, Oh, the account has been suspended now. Uh, but it got 12,000 followers in the course of that. And it was Hillary Clinton spelled Hillary. And then Clinton was C one, one N T O N. Uh,

So I think that might be what you're referring to, Nate, but that is not real. Okay, any real responses from Democrats that anyone wants to mention? No, I think Democrats, I mean, there's no point in, look, if he's convicted, you can say something, right? There's like no point in like,

getting ahead of the story when we don't know what the charges are if you're a Democrat and we don't know if he's going to be convicted or what the consequences are, right? Like, no, I think Democrats were, I mean, Democratic elected officials were fairly muted, right? There was like a fair amount of, I'm going to go have some drinks tonight, right? A lot of like somewhat, I don't know. What was like the Mueller stuff, right? Didn't someone say like Robert Mueller liked candles? There was like that kind of crew was like,

I think. But Democratic elected officials, people with an official way to respond were mostly pretty muted. Seems correct to me. OK, so what happens next here? We have to wait to see these charges unsealed. That's the most important piece. But like, what's the timeline here? I mean, could Trump be the president of the United States when this goes to trial? I mean...

The legal system moves slowly. I don't think it moves that slowly. So he is, I mean, the next, the immediate next steps is that he is treated like other people who are arrested in New York. So, you know, it's kind of like the stuff you see on TV. He's going to get his fingerprints taken. He's going to have the photographs taken. There are some questions apparently about whether he will be handcuffed or

like whether he'll be handcuffed in the front or the back, which I didn't realize was a distinction, but apparently is something that matters. And then, you know, he's not going to be held on bail. This is a nonviolent offense. So he's, he's going to be released. Um, and then, you know, I mean, it's like, it's possible he takes a plea deal. I don't think he will. Um, but then we'll see the, the timing kind of unfold from there.

All right. Well, meet back here approximately same time next Monday, although we still won't have unsealed charges on Monday, presumably. What we will have to talk about is actual elections in Wisconsin and Chicago. So we'll see you back here on Monday. I should also mention before we go, Nate, we have a live show in Brooklyn on April 19th. We do. Are you excited? I am. I like the live shows. They're pretty good.

They're pretty fun. We're gonna have special guests. I think I'm not even gonna tell you. Once I book the special guests, I'm just gonna... I think I'm just gonna surprise you. Oh, s***.

Okay. And, you know, we'll get to see your reaction in real time. But folks can get tickets at 538.com slash live show. Again, that's April 19th in Brooklyn at 730 at the Bell House, 538.com slash live show. That is it for today. Thank you, Amelia, Nathaniel, and Nate. Thank you, guys. Thanks, Galen. Thanks, Galen.

My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is in the control room and also on video editing. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or wherever you listen to your podcasts, or you can tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon.