Trump Eyes Jail, Biden Eyes Trial, Texas Eyes Tornadoes
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It's Monday, June 3rd, right now on CNN This Morning. You know, at a certain point, there's a breaking point. Donald Trump claims he's fine with going to jail, but he says his supporters may not be. Plus, Hunter Biden about to become the first child of a sitting president to go on trial.

And people in Texas waiting for daybreak to assess the damage after two tornadoes touched down like last night. And an historic election in Mexico. A woman has become president there for the first time ever. 6 a.m. here in Washington, a live look at New York City on this Monday morning. Good morning, everyone. I'm Casey Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.

Former President Donald Trump will be sentenced for his crimes on July 11th, just days before he's set to be nominated for president at the Republican National Convention. In an interview with Fox over the weekend, Trump claimed he's just fine with going to jail. But in one of the most volatile, divided moments in modern history, here's what he said about how his supporters might react.

I don't know that the public would stand it, you know. I'm not sure the public would stand for it. You think it would be tough for the public to take? You know, at a certain point, there's a breaking point. There's a breaking point, he says. I spoke to Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff about those comments over the weekend. Here's what he told me.

This is clearly Donald Trump once again inciting violence, potential violence, when he is sentenced. We see this pattern over and over again where Donald Trump communicates with his base supporters, making it pretty clear what he wants to see, and then his enablers try to explain it away. This is another dangerous appeal to violence, and it is yet another reason why Americans are going to decide they don't want a convicted felon in the Oval Office.

All right. Our panel's here. Let's bring in former federal prosecutor, CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams. Scott Jennings, he's a CNN senior political commentator and former special assistant to President George Bush, W. Bush. And CNN politics White House reporter Stephen Collinson is here. Gentlemen, thank you so much for being with us this morning. Stephen Collinson, I want to start on the big picture here because.

I really do want to spend some time with what Donald Trump had to say about his supporters potentially having a quote unquote breaking point. I mean, we are seeing our politics become incredibly just incendiary. And, you know, I think what immediately came to my mind and what Schiff was referencing in part was what Donald Trump said in a debate back in 2020, which was that his supporters should stand back and stand by. Let's watch that.

What do you want to call him? Give me a name. Give me a name. White supremacist and white supremacist. Who would you like me to condemn? White supremacist and white supremacist. Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. So he says directly, Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. So then let's look at what happens at the Capitol on January 6th.

Yeah, just for awareness, be advised, there's probably about 300 Proud Boys. They're marching eastbound in this 400 block of kind of independence, actually on the mall towards the United States Capitol. Who's free? Our streets! Who's free? Our streets! Who's free?

And we also had a proud boy tell the January 6th committee that membership grew, quote unquote, exponentially after Donald Trump made those stand back and stand by comments in that debate. I set this up this way to show that the words that Donald Trump uses have consequences in the real world. What do you see here? I think you're right to bring up that comparison.

this is what Donald Trump does. He says things which can be interpreted multiple ways to various audiences. Remember, he was quite constrained in that Fox News interview by the fact he's still under a gag order in the New York case. So he's choosing where he's making his inflammatory comments.

And in the light of what happened on January the 6th, every time the former president says something like this, you look at it in a different way. Having said that, Trump made some similar remarks heading into the trial and during the trial. He was complaining there weren't enough people outside and enough supporters outside. So you do have to question whether he still retains that power of mobilization to get his supporters out on the streets. A lot of them are in jail.

who responded to that call the first time. They've gone through a legal process. Some of the most aggressive ones in particular. But at the same time, at a time when tensions are so fraught, running into this, sentencing ahead of the convention, all it takes is one person to interpret that as a call to action, and that's what's dangerous. Scott, I also did ask Lara Trump about this, about what her father-in-law meant when I talked to her on State of the Union yesterday. Let's just watch what she said.

Well, they're gonna do what they've done from the beginning, which is remain calm and protest at the ballot box on November 5th.

So she's trying to turn down the temperature on this. What is your read on this? I mean, look, you had you worked for Mitch McConnell for many years. I mean, you know how he feels about what happened on January 6th. Obviously, he has sort of come around and tried to make his peace with Trump at this point to, you know, we don't we don't have to dig into the details of that necessarily. But how big of a risk do you think it is for the president to be out here making comments like this? Well, I think, first of all, people understand.

would be pretty angry if they try to throw Donald Trump in jail. I mean, let's be honest. I mean, it was a misdemeanor paperwork crime contorted into felonies. If they try to throw him into jail on the eve of his convention, as he's leading Joe Biden in the... I mean, you can see why people would be angry. That having been said, look how they reacted to the trial. He got convicted, and they got so mad that they went and donated...

$200 million online to his campaign or whatever it was. And so nothing has happened. I thought Laura Trump's comments there were appropriate. But make no mistake, Republicans are very unhappy, very united in their unhappiness. But I don't believe there would be

violence and riots I do believe there would be an uptick in political activism and we're already seeing that. So the Wall Street Journal editorial page is making this argument this morning under the headline why Republicans hate the Trump verdict and they quote Mitt Romney, Elliot, and they say Bragg may have won the battle for now but he may have lost the political war and this is the part of it that I actually thought was particularly interesting. Democrats think they can put out the Trump fire with oxygen

It is political malpractice. Put out the Trump fire with oxygen, meaning by fueling it more and making it worse. I mean, it's an interesting argument. Huh. You know, I mean...

I don't know if we're going to go back into debating the merits of the case and so on. Look, it's not a misdemeanor. It was a felony. Now, the foreign president will have every opportunity to challenge that on appeal. He's going to, even if sentenced to jail time in August, right before the convention. He's not going to jail before the convention. That's not going to happen.

He has the right to challenge that. Can you give us a sense of whether you think a jail sentence is appropriate in this case? I mean... The law allows it. Now... Sure, but does that mean that it happens in most cases like this, or does it not? Probably not. There's several reasons why. I think, number one, he doesn't have a criminal history. Number two...

Most people sentenced for a Class E felony in New York, which is what that is, are more likely to get probation or community service or something like that now. It still has a four-year statutory maximum, so you could go to jail for four years per count. Probably not going to happen. And moreover, his conduct, certainly post-conviction, still mouthing off, still talking, could work against him. But I think on balance, he's probably not ending up in jail. Can I offer a counterargument? Sure.

The core argument in this case was that he committed campaign finance violations that were so egregious that the New York state prosecutors were forced to charge him with these 34 felonies. So if you actually believe that it was bad enough to charge him with the felonies, which carry the jail time, and you believe that it might have actually overturned the outcome of a presidential election, if that's not...

something you would put someone in jail for than what is. I'm like you. I used to think... You were trying to make this argument on Sunday, too. I used to think, well, they're not going to throw Donald Trump in jail. Right. But...

But now that I think it through and I hear, you know, so what was motivating the case in the first place? They might. They might. Sure. The judge still has to be able to justify his sentence. Like he has to put on the record why he's sentencing a particular defendant to a particular amount of jail time. Right. And if it's so far out of line with how other people charged with the same felony, I

the sentences they've served, it'll be overturned. So this idea that the judge has this broad latitude to be reckless and just throw Donald Trump in jail for as long as he wants. Why would it be reckless, though? What do you mean, why would it be reckless? Didn't you just say earlier why it would be reckless to throw Donald Trump in jail? I'm trying to put myself in there. Because we're in a very combustible political moment. I know, but that's different than applying the law. If you...

We're a nation of laws. The people of New York elected a legislature that put these punishments in. I'm very confused how you are the one that is arguing that Donald Trump should be thrown in jail. I get what you're trying to do, I think. But what is it exactly? I'm trying to put myself in their shoes, which is to understand their motivations. And the motivations of bringing this case to me would also motivate possibly someone there to try to throw him in jail. I'm not arguing that any of this is a good idea. I'm just saying I used to think like what you're saying. Oh, they're never going to do it.

But now it's not that they're never going to do it. It's the law doesn't necessarily support a big jail sentence. And even if the judge wants to throw him in jail, that little one is presaged on the idea that the whole system is out. You are you are basically saying when you make this argument, well, the system was out to get him. Why don't they get him all the way? And this at the end of the day is a judge who has to make an independent judgment. So I just supported in law and supported. Right.

Right. An independent judgment supported by every other person who has come before. But it's an unusual situation. It's not a normal— Well, it's unusual if the president's on trial. But it's an unusual situation for local prosecutors to be arguing that we tried a case because we think this guy might have stolen an election. The prosecutors are going to say, put him behind bars, but that doesn't mean the judge is going to do it. All right, we've got to go on. Next.

Donald Trump rewriting history. What he claims he never said about Hillary Clinton. We'll roll that tape. Plus, a key setback for Hunter Biden just ahead of jury selection. And this. 14,000 acres burning in California. One of the five things you have to see this morning.

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All right, jury selection in Hunter Biden's federal gun trial is set to begin this morning in Delaware. The judge overseeing the trial dealt the defense two setbacks yesterday by blocking one of their expert witnesses and excluding a key evidence, key piece of evidence that the president's son had hoped to use. Much like Donald Trump's conviction last week, this too, a first for America. Never before has the child of a sitting president gone on trial. I asked Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, an ally of the president, about the Hunter Biden case.

You of course have said the public should respect this verdict against Donald Trump. Should the public also respect the verdict against Hunter Biden regardless of what it is? Absolutely, absolutely. And I think the president himself will respect the verdict. The anchor of our constitution is the fact that ordinary citizens get to decide how the rule of law is applied to even the most powerful in our country. That's something we should be proud of.

Our panel is back. Elliot Williams, let me give this one to you. I was talking to someone earlier, Jennifer Rogers, who seemed to think that this was actually potentially a likely conviction in no small part because there does seem to be quite a bit of public evidence around the reality that Hunter Biden was addicted in 2018. Some of it from him. This was from his audio book. This was in 2018. And again, he filled out this form where he got this gun, where he had to testify that he was not addicted.

addicted to drugs in the year 2018. Let's watch. I had returned that fall of 2018 after my most recent relapse in California with the hope of getting clean through a new therapy and reconciling with Hallie. Neither happened.

Now, of course, stipulating all addiction is a very difficult thing to battle. At the end of the day, this is at the heart of this case. Yeah, it's interesting seeing low-level charges that aren't commonly prosecuted based on intimate, embarrassing, sensitive, and often sexual conduct being

brought by a prosecutor and a judge that are of the different party of the person. Wait a second, that's not Donald Trump's trial. That's Hunter Biden's trial. And my point is, yeah, no, it is a likely conviction on account of this particular section of the law and what they have evidence here. And just to be clear, I have prosecuted this type of gun possession statute. Now, certainly not for addiction, mostly for felon in possession, which is another under the same section of the law. No, it's a likely conviction, I think.

think based on what seems to be public. Now, everything, as we saw in the Donald Trump trial as well, all depends on how credible the jury finds the witnesses, how strong they find the evidence. Does the defendant testify, which would probably be a bad idea here as well. But

publicly um again based on what's in the record and based on how simple these possession statutes are yeah i think you'd get a conviction here yeah i'm more worried about joe biden's behavior here actually i mean he was riding bikes with hunter biden yesterday hunter biden he is his son i know and he met with hallie biden last week joe biden did who's a witness and who helped hunter biden i guess admittedly get rid of the gun in the trash can by the school i mean

There's a lot of talk about respecting the judicial system and I don't try to put my thumb on the scale. I mean, he has been adjacent to Hunter Biden. I recognize they're related.

But this man is on trial for a gun charge this week and tax evasion in the future. And yet he gets to fly around on Air Force One, hang out at Camp David, sleep on the couch at the White House. I mean, what signal does it send to the rest of the government? But what would you do with your kids, Scott? I mean, I understand, but I'm not the president of the United States and I don't have the Justice Department tucked right underneath me.

And so I get it. I'm fully sensitive to the point you're making. He is different than every other American. He's the president. He sits at the top of our of our law enforcement system.

And he's influential. I mean, I assume people are watching him for his movements. Well, we will continue to cover this trial as it unfolds. Jury selection begins today. Coming up next here, what Donald Trump says about the idea of political revenge after his conviction. Plus, a massive funnel cloud forming in northern Texas. It's one of five things you have to see this morning.

23 minutes past the hour. Five things you've got to see this morning. Storm chasers captured this incredible footage of a tornado touching down in the Texas Panhandle near Silverton on Sunday, tossing out dust and debris. Only minor damage is being reported at this point. Thank gosh.

To Atlanta, where a massive water main break sent water into the air at this street corner. Parts of Atlanta's downtown were without water and a major hospital was forced to transfer patients. They are still working on fixing it. China's lunar probe successfully landing on the moon. It's one of the country's most ambitious space exploration missions and its goal is to return samples from the far side of the moon back to Earth.

Heavy rain causing massive flooding in southern Germany. Reuters is reporting that several thousand people have been forced to leave their homes and a firefighter has died trying to rescue people trapped by floodwaters. The Corral Fire burning more than 14,000 acres in San Joaquin County, California forcing residents in its path to evacuate. By late Sunday the fire was 50% contained. The cause still under investigation.

Time now for weather. More severe storm threats on the way for the central U.S. this morning, affecting millions from Texas to Wisconsin. Our weatherman Van Dam joins us now. Derek, good morning to you. This has just been relentless. What are we going to see today? Yeah, so severe storms and our ongoing wildfire threat across San Juan King County. This is the Corral Fire, and you can see the charred landscape across this particular area. And you know what? This is a byproduct of a very wet summer.

spring and winter. So above average precipitation, now we're heading into the drier months. The taps have been turned off and that vegetation that grew so abundantly has now started to dry out and that's a recipe for fire. And the Corral Fire, the good news here is that the containment has certainly gone up from yesterday, but it's all part of

the bigger problem here because the temperatures are really starting to skyrocket. We have excessive heat warnings and watches. Vegas, the mercury in the thermometer by later this week could reach 120 degrees. So several U.S. cities, particularly across the state of California, could reach record high temperatures. You can see triple-digit heat from Phoenix to Vegas, Palm Springs all the way to El Paso. And of course, riding that heat bubble is our severe weather threat today from Chicago all the way to Dallas once again.

All right. We're with a man, Derek Van Dam, for us this morning. Derek, thank you. I really appreciate it. Coming up next here, Democratic allies urging President Biden to lean in to Donald Trump's felony conviction. Plus, he doesn't deserve the respect of anyone in the Republican Party at this point. And the Republican Party versus Republican Larry Hogan. We'll have more from my interview yesterday with the RNC chair ahead.

I think it's ridiculous. And I think anybody who's not speaking up in the face of really something that should never again have seen the light of day a trial that would never been brought against any other person aside from Donald Trump. But does the RNC support his bid? Doesn't deserve the respect of anyone. He doesn't deserve the respect of anyone? Well, I'll have to get back to you

He doesn't deserve the respect of anyone in the Republican Party at this point. And quite frankly, anybody in America, if that's the way you feel, that's very upsetting to hear that. So are you willing to cede the Senate seat in Maryland to the Democratic Party and not support Larry Hogan? What I'll tell you is that we, of course, want to win as a party, but that is a shame. And I think he should have thought long and hard before he said that publicly.

Laura Trump, the RNC co-chair and the daughter-in-law of Donald Trump, slamming former Maryland governor and current Republican, Republican Senate candidate Larry Hogan during an interview with me on CNN's State of the Union yesterday. Why? Why was she so incensed? This tweet, which was posted by Hogan last week. Now, this was after we knew the jury had a verdict, but it was before the verdict was read. And what he said was,

Respect the verdict and the legal process, and don't pour fuel on the fire with more toxic partisanship. The Trump campaign quickly responded to Hogan's tweet with this. This is Chris LaCivita, who runs the Trump campaign. You just ended your campaign.

So after that exchange with Laura Trump, I pressed her on whether the Republican National Committee, again charged with getting Republicans elected, would financially support Hogan's Senate campaign in a blue state where basically he is the only Republican with any chance of actually winning statewide office. She said this. Are you willing to use Republican Party resources to support his bid or not? It sounds like you're saying you're not.

Well, I'll get back to you on all the specifics monetarily. But what I can tell you is that as the Republican Party co-chair, I think he should never have said something like that. I think that's ridiculous.

I'll get back to you. Scott Jennings, you have been very invested over your career in winning the Senate for Republicans. Does this help that? As I was saying about Hunter Biden. Right. No, look, here's the... That underscores how much you don't want to talk about that. Are we going to have to do this again? It's not good.

Could not support Larry Hogan. He is one of our best chances to literally retake the Senate. So here's the map. West Virginia is gone, so it's at a minimum 50-50. We've got to win one, Republicans I mean, and he may do it. He's the one guy who could do it, and to put Maryland on the map in a competitive way this cycle was a true gift to the Republican Party, and Democrats are freaking out about it. So that having been said, I'll put a silver lining on it.

It may not be the worst thing in the world for Hogan in blue Maryland to be in a feud

with the Trumps because the core of the Democratic argument is that, oh, he's just going to end up being a rubber stamp for Donald Trump's Republican Party. Obviously, that would undercut that argument. But you know, we're going back and forth. There's Trump supporters everywhere. I mean, the thing is that like Trump supporters we have seen, they listen to him when he says don't vote early. They don't vote early. Right. Like they they lost them to Senate seats in Georgia. And there are people who are very much Trump supporters in Maryland. My message would be that it would be better for Donald Trump if he were the president to have the

the Senate majority than not. And that strategic imperative should prevail. - Yeah, I mean, you're right. There probably isn't a Republican who could win a Senate race in Maryland, but if there is, that guy is Larry Hogan.

principally because he's very popular even among quite a few Democrats. His governorship is remembered quite fondly by many Democratic voters. Now the issue obviously here is, is he going to get all that turnout he needs in Western Maryland, which is pure Trump country. And some of those counties, they tried to join West Virginia. That's how Trumpy they are. You got it on the Eastern Shore too, in Maryland. So he can't really afford...

Trump voters to decide that they're not going to vote for Larry Hogan. It's not just the voters, it's the machine. It's the ground game and all that the RNC could bring with it. It's just funny. Well, and that's what she wouldn't answer. She wouldn't tell me, no, we're going to deny you that. We'll see about that. But that's incredibly valuable to the party. You know, what's interesting, just God, remember the days of Reagan's 11th commandment, thou shalt speak ill of another Republican. And it's almost as if the party is so broken, uh,

that it's about one guy as opposed to capital R republicanism nationwide. And I think you saw some of that playing out here, which is really fascinating, that it's about Trump and support for him, not necessarily the goals of the Republican Party. What was your point about winning the Senate being the critical goal? I mean, that seems like a foundational... I mean, your question about the money was right on because...

If the Republicans don't support Larry Hogan, then that means the Democrats don't have to pour resources in either. One of the great things about putting this on the map for the Republicans was it's going to be a money sponge for the Dems. They didn't want to have to spend money here. They don't want to put resources into a blue state like this. And so...

The party needs to stay with Larry Hogan. He has a real chance to win, and it's better to be in the majority than the minority. Just look at the last couple of years. And every single seat is going to matter for each side. So one other thing that I spoke to Laura Trump about, again, in her capacity as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, the question about Donald Trump's sentence has loomed. It is set for July 11th. The convention, of course, is the following week. So I asked her about...

scheduling, planning, and she actually was not as definitive as I expected that she might be. Let's listen. Are you planning or discussing any changes to the convention in programming or scheduling? Well, I think we have to be ready for anything as we've seen, all bets are off when it comes to Donald Trump. So yeah, we have to wait and see.

So I'll be candid with you, Stephen. I was a little bit surprised that she was willing to say that. She basically also went on to say, you know, whether we have to do it at Mar-a-Lago or at Trump Tower, which if we had run that clip a little bit longer, you would have heard, that suggested, like, maybe there's a world

where Donald Trump isn't at the convention. Yeah, I think it's in their interests to raise the possibility that Donald Trump might be sent to jail instead of going to the convention. We've seen how effective that has been from a financial and a fundraising perspective here. I mean, I do find it difficult to think that Trump's legal team honestly thinks, as Elliot said, that there's a possibility that the president could be jailed and couldn't go to the convention. But the politics of this really works for the Republicans right now. And...

We're gonna see this more and more heading into that. We've got the debate at the end of the month on CNN. Heading into the convention, into that sentencing is gonna get to an absolute fever pitch of political expectation. - And if he goes to jail, that's cutting off his own nose to spite his face because by going to jail, he waives his right to appeal. So all these questions about biased judge and Democrats and selective prosecution and the jury and the instructions, he can't make those. So he would not accept a sentence

because he has the right not to. He still is able to appeal, and it would be silly for him to do that. All right, so let's talk about the other side of the political argument. We've talked a lot about Republicans, what they're saying, how this potentially works in their favor or doesn't. But Democrats are also wrestling with how President Biden should be responding to this conviction. And I spoke with Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, Senate candidate in California, yesterday about this. This is what he said.

I think the president should be leaning into this going forward.

his competitor is a convicted felon. And you can only imagine if the situation was reversed, they would be going after Joe Biden with a vengeance. They're making those false claims about Joe Biden regardless. So I think not only the president, but Democrats need to be making the case forcefully to the American people. You want the country run properly. You don't want a convicted felon to turn the Oval Office and the federal government in some kind of a racketeering operation.

Stephen Collins, and this is a very interesting thing to wrestle with because you've seen the president be relatively restrained. Mitt Romney is arguing the opposite of what Adam Schiff is arguing. He's saying don't pour oxygen, don't give this oxygen. You give Trump oxygen, it's what he feeds on. It doesn't matter if it's good, it doesn't matter if it's good or bad.

It just seems to help him. Schiff is saying, and look, there is the argument, look, if roles were reversed, you think Donald Trump wouldn't be aggressively going after Biden? I mean, absolutely not. Right. I've heard some Democrats say that every time the word Donald Trump is mentioned in the campaign, it should be prefixed by the phrase convicted felon. So convicted felon Donald Trump.

The evidence of the last few days seems to suggest perhaps that might not work. If there's any political benefit so far from this, it seems to be accruing to Trump. Do you gather his supporters more around him? And I think we have to realize that it's quite possible the election is not going to be decided by Donald Trump's legal issues. There are a lot of Americans that are hurting from high prices. They can't afford to buy cars.

Any impression, and as much as the Biden administration has struggled to talk about this effectively, any impression that the Democrats are just obsessed with Donald Trump's legal problems could backfire against them. So it's a complicated message. Sure is. All right. Coming up next, did he or didn't he? Hillary Clinton, I didn't say lock her up, but the people would all say lock her up.

Donald Trump claiming he never said what I don't even know how many times I heard him say when I covered every single day of the 2016 presidential campaign. Plus, Dr. Fauci about to come face to face with House Republicans who accuse him of participating in a COVID conspiracy. From politics to pop culture and everything in between, CNN's Five Things brings you the five essential stories to get you up to speed and on with your day five times a day.

Hey there from CNN. I'm Krista Bowe with the five things you need to know for Wednesday. CNN five things. Listen now. Ad free with Amazon Music. All right. Forty five minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup. Mexico has elected its first female president. Claudia Sheinbaum is projected to win with nearly 60 percent of the vote. She is Mexico City's former mayor, also the country's first Jewish president.

Dr. Anthony Fauci faces a House hearing today. Lawmakers want to know whether government-backed scientists were fully transparent about controversial COVID research and whether a longtime advisor to Dr. Fauci dodged public records requests. The Biden administration is preparing to roll out a sweeping executive order on the border as early as tomorrow. Sources tell CNN it's designed to dramatically limit the ability of migrants to seek asylum at the southern border. And then this story.

is now on TikTok. It's my honor. Donald Trump joining TikTok and posting a video this weekend after attending UFC matches in New Jersey. He said it was an honor to be on the app, even though you may note he tried to ban it when he was president. Now this, Donald Trump, whose campaign has been branded with this message. I am your retribution.

Now fresh off 34 criminal convictions in an interview with Fox over the weekend, he seemed to leave the door open to the possibility of seeking political revenge on his enemies like this. Watch. It's a very interesting question. My revenge will be success. And I mean that. But it's awfully hard when you see what they've done. These people are so evil.

all right joining me now is a very special guest the senior political correspondent for the new york times maggie haverman she's also a cnn political analyst maggie i am so grateful you're up early today um to be with us thank you so much uh you have covered this guy for decades at this point and probably no more than anyone in the country besides the man beside the man himself

about the way he thinks, the way he operates, and how that actually plays out. Can we dig into this question of retribution, especially in the wake of this conviction, considering some of the things we've heard from Republican allies who say they should weaponize justice systems in other states to go after people?

Yeah, look, Casey, the question of retribution is not being posed very subtly by certainly Donald Trump's allies right now. If you look on Twitter, formerly known as Twitter, if you look at other social media, you can see Trump supporters talking about

you know, opening investigations and finding other ways to get back at Democrats. Trump himself has been trying to walk back his retribution language because his advisors are aware it's not helping him. It doesn't play well with swing voters. But does that mean that Donald Trump will decide he is going to put aside his desire for retribution, which is a lifelong thing that he has had? No, I don't. It's hard to imagine. Look, is it possible? Sure. But

There's nothing consistent with Donald Trump in his life that suggests he's going to say, this is fine now and I'm not going to look at ways to use the levers of government against the people who he thinks went after him. And I should note, Casey, he keeps insisting and his people keep insisting that President Biden is behind the Manhattan District Attorney's case against Trump. And there is absolutely no evidence for that.

Yeah, no, it's very, very important to underscore that. Maggie, we also heard him talk about he claimed he was OK with going to jail. I'm interested to hear you weigh in on that. But then he also said the public wouldn't be that there would be a breaking point. What did you hear in the framing that he had there? Obviously, it's already become a political back and forth about whether he meant violence. I'm curious how you heard it.

So two things. Number one, no, he does not want to go to jail and he's not OK with going to jail. There is nothing about his makeup that is. I understand that he has to feels like he feels like he has to say that because he believes in not showing any weakness. But no, he doesn't want to go to jail. And I don't know anybody who actually wants to go to jail. Number one. Number two, in terms of his language about people would be upset, it would be a breaking point. Number one.

I think it's true that there would be some kind of a reaction just based on what we have seen, although he has said things like that repeatedly, most notably in the lead up to the January 6th attack on the Capitol in 2021 by a pro-Trump mob. And we've seen less of that since. Remember when he was indicted in this case in 2023, he openly called on people to protest against this indictment. And the results were pretty mild because the

mass number of arrests that have taken place of people who were somehow involved in what took place on January 6th has been a deterrent. We'll see if that changes here, if he is to be sentenced to jail. I want to note one other thing, Casey, just since you were talking on this show about the

the possibility that Trump gets sentenced right, I mean, the sentencing is currently scheduled for right before the Republican National Convention. The July date for sentencing is a date that Trump's own lawyer sought. It is not as if the judge was like, oh yes, let's do this there. Todd Blanch asked for, he didn't mention the Republican National Committee, but he did ask for a mid to late July sentencing date. So that was his choice.

Very interesting. Glad you raised that. Maggie, I want to make sure we dig into this story. Anyone that's got a copy of The Times this morning can read it on the front page. You talk about New York City, which has been almost this...

partner character in Donald Trump's life as a place. You say New York City was once Donald J. Trump's playground, the place where he made his name and then plastered it everywhere he could. And now the city that helped make him rich and famous has become his battleground. And Mr. Trump keeps losing. What else? Dig in a little bit to this reporting and kind of what this means in the context of the man.

Sure. So one thing that was striking as we were working on this story is how, frankly, I think exhausted by by constant drama around Trump. A lot of people are, you know, this has been a running a running feud with Donald Trump and New York City for many years now. When he ran in 2016, when he went to vote in.

on the morning of election day he was literally laughed at by people who were at his polling place one man called out you're gonna lose I he he that he rejected the city back essentially you know I mean there was constantly this issue with what was going to be funded for New York City he ended up cutting the summit some of the the tax implications by which New York did well in his tax bill this there's just a running back and forth and then he changed his voting registration after talking to his tax lawyers

Since then, he has been investigated multiple times, and he is clearly very angry at the city. You saw him hold this rally in the Bronx, and it was a solid event. He got a lot of people. But he has been trying to troll the city back as much as he believes he's been trolled. That's, I guess, epic trolling, shall we say. Maggie Haberman of The New York Times. Maggie, so grateful for your time this morning. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Casey.

All right, also in that Fox interview, Trump was asked why he never went after Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State. I'm going to take an issue with that question because let me tell you, as someone who covered it day in and day out, that matter was brought up frequently through the 2016 election. Watch. They all said, and I felt, and I could have done it, but I felt it would have been a terrible thing. And then this happened to me.

And so I may feel differently about Hillary Clinton. I didn't say lock her up, but the people don't say lock her up, lock her up. OK, then we won. And I say and I said pretty openly, I say, all right, come on, just relax. Let's go. We're going to make our country great. So he points it up and he says, I didn't say lock her up. Yes, you did. For what she's done, they should lock her up. It's disgraceful.

Hillary Clinton has to go to jail, okay? She has to go to jail. You should lock them up. Lock up the Bidens. Lock up Hillary. Okay, they're the Bidens in there for good measure. So he's, I mean, he said it. He's trying not to say it. To a certain extent, we can, it's, I almost want to put it into the category of nothing matters because it seems like, you know, this is the thing we've been fighting with for so many years when Donald Trump has been on the stage. He did say it. Now he's trying to say it. He didn't say it.

But the reality, I mean, none of this is, like, none of it's productive. - Well, I mean, a lot of things are productive. You know, I just feel like I've seen before, you see it often with white folks convicted of white collar crimes, that the moment they get pulled into the system, all of a sudden it's biased, it's rigged, it's corrupt, I don't wanna pay my taxes anymore, I can't believe I'm a part of this, and so on. And I think you're seeing playing out here on a national scale, because this is a very high profile figure, someone who has been brought into the system now saying the system's broken, rigged, corrupt,

and I don't want to pay my taxes anymore. Yeah. I mean, Donald Trump has never said he doesn't want to pay his taxes. I just mean it's an argument brought by people because taxes fund prosecutors. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, he did obviously say it. I mean, so they didn't lock her up and they didn't go after her, which is interesting. If you talk to some Republicans out there, the hinterlands, they wonder why not. I mean, think about all those people at the rallies saying,

who were chanting that. I mean, there were some people who were wondering, well, why wasn't Hillary Clinton looked into more closely? But ultimately, they did not. I would just say, I mean, this is one of the examples, right? Like, the thing that we have seen with Trump is a slide away from the norms and general rules of democracy.

how business has been conducted in our country for decades. And this was one of those things that was different about Trump on the campaign trail. I mean, there were not other Republican. He was one of nearly a dozen Republican candidates who ran that time. And he was the one that brought this up.

Yeah, you know, this reminds me of something Trump once said. I think it was at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. He said to his supporters, what you see and what are reading is not what's happening. And sometimes I wonder if he just wakes up in the morning, tries to think of the most outrageous thing he can say and get away with, and he's sort of playing with us. And there's this challenge...

This morning we've been talking about incitement to violence and now we're talking about this and it's Trump flooding the zone and you have to decide which is the really the most important thing that you narrow down on. So

you know back to maggie's point retribution has been a driving force of trump's life it is a driving force of his political movement it's not everything about his political movement we're not talking about deplorables or anything like that but it's undeniable that trump has weaponized grievance and this is another way that he does it on who is trump supposedly who did he get

revenge on in his first term. I mean, he said these things. I'm thinking back now, like, who actually felt the brunt of it? I think that the argument and the question, and so, like, look, actually, this is a great excuse to read some Peter Baker. I always love reading Peter Baker, who's on the front page of the New York Times, right? There were people inside the first Trump administration. There was a Congress with more members of the Republican Party who were willing to stand up to him. There were people who had been in government. There were people like John Kelly, right? There were guardrails

there were people who felt like they had a duty to the country to serve and a lot of them came in for criticism afterward right paul ryan is one of those people but if you had private conversations with him ahead of of trump coming in he would acknowledge he felt a responsibility to

to stand with the country because he understood what was going on with Trump. So things have changed now, and this is what Baker writes about. So we are now at a point where the notion that 34 felonies is not automatically disqualifying and a convicted criminal can be a viable candidate for commander in chief upends two and a half centuries of assumptions about American democracy.

And Mr. Trump might be returned to office, we can all acknowledge, we can all read the polls, honestly he's ahead right now. Baker writes, quote, "If he wins, it means he will have survived two impeachments, four criminal indictments, civil judgments for sexual abuse and business fraud, and a felony conviction. Given that, it would be hard to imagine what institutional deterrence

could discourage abuses or excesses. And he goes on to note when he was president, Trump claimed the Constitution gave him the right to do whatever I want. So while I take your point about what may have happened in a previous Trump administration, there is there are serious questions about a second one. When I hear you read that paragraph, it makes me wonder if there are Democrats out there who think we have nominated the one guy

who might lose to Donald Trump. - Well, I mean, honestly, when you hear that-- - Yes, if you talk to, probably to Democrats, certainly they will say, they will hand-ring about Biden. - And I would say in response to the, who has he gotten retribution against, even saying in America, we should use the criminal justice system to blank, if it's anything other than prosecute the offenders, like the show Law & Order says,

Even that threat is frightening enough. And when when the former president is saying, you know, we need to use the system to go after these people who did this to us. The mere threat is sufficient. So even if Donald Trump has not yet prosecuted anyone or gone after his. You mean you mean you mean like when President Biden threatened retribution against the border guards who got caught up in that horse hoax? OK, wait. No, I'm asking because I agree with you. I don't think presidents and presidential candidates should do that.

But let's not pretend like there hasn't been some hint of I will use my power. I think calling for sanctions or prosecution against someone who is engaged in wrongdoing. Can I have a wide shot, please? Because this is what we're doing. All right, all right, sorry. I mean, Scott, the stakes are just much higher. The stage is much higher. We are in very new territory as outlined. Thank you guys very much for being with us. Thanks to all of you for joining us as well. I'm Casey Hunt. Don't go anywhere. CNN News Central starts right now.

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