Showdown
Showdown Episode 63 5-16-24
[music] This is Showdown, I'm Mark Casen, and live from Cardinal Ritter College Prep. I'm Mark Casen, 15 minutes late, but better late than never. At least I'm not going to jail, like some people I know. And I can tell you that if nothing else, we're winding this thing down at the trial very, very quickly. In fact, we're down to final summations coming on Tuesday. No trial tomorrow, there will be Michael Cohen concluding cross-examination on Monday, probably some redirect by the prosecution, and then that's it. There's still some talk about a possible election official who would come in and talk about election law, but it seems like the judge thinks that that's kind of a waste of time, although it's not his call, and he, they say today, will be providing information about his instructions to the defense so that they can decide whether or not they really want to bring in somebody to talk about the election law, because the judge is essentially saying it probably is not going to be worthwhile to do that, but it's the call of the defense if they want to do it, and the judge is going to give them some information, and that will be the end of that story, although there is one more thing that we don't know for sure, but everybody is said to know for a fact, they claim that Donald Trump's possible testimony will be revealed today. In other words, either he's going to do it or he's not going to do it based on what they say today. It's 418 St. Louis time, 518 in New York, so we're pretty much down to the end of the day where there's going to be a decision according to the experts, according to Donald Trump's team, this is all what they're saying that the defense is going to decide today. This is going to be it. If Donald Trump does not decide today that he's going to speak up in his own defense in the courtroom, the story is that's it. He won't do it, and certainly the judge is taking the position that he's probably not going to testify, because if he were going to testify, Tuesday would not be a realistic day for summation, but that's where we are right now. It appears the Tuesday will be the summation on both sides, so this should be over by Tuesday afternoon and on the way to the jury next week after Tuesday. Now, apparently, the judge would like this entire thing wrapped up before Memorial Day, so figure it out. We're at 5/16, May 16 right now, and you add the days, this is common, so the judge wants it done by Memorial Day unless somebody has something compelling that they must do, that they convinced the judge needs to be done, and this thing gets pushed into another week. All of that aside, it looks like this is it. Donald is down to the final days. Now, what's really interesting to me, and I talked about this a little bit yesterday, and that is this whole business of Donald writing notes in the courtroom about what his "people" are saying outside the courtroom. So, you know, he's got all these Republican vice presidential wannabes, they are outside, they are talking in front of cameras, saying things which everybody agrees are things that violate the gag order. Well, in fact, it appears today from what the people inside the courtroom were reporting that Donald's writing notes that are then being delivered to his people outside the courtroom. So, when I said yesterday, absolutely holds, which is Donald's directing them. If he's directing them, and they are saying things that violate the gag order, then Donald is, in fact, violating the gag order. Now, I also said yesterday that if that's true, why would anybody even want to mess with him at this point? He's days away from probably being sentenced, and my guess is two to four years in jail, and under those circumstances, putting him in jail for a day or two or five isn't going to make any difference. The judge is not reacting emotionally, nor would anybody expect him to. So, what's going on here is that it would have to be the prosecution that would ask the judge to review the gag order and what Donald's doing, and they're not going to do that. They just want to move this on to the end of the trial. They feel like they've won, and they just want to get it done. So, with all of that in mind, again, this could be wrapped up with a verdict, and, in my opinion, a sentencing by Memorial Day. That could be the end of this whole thing, and Donald does not appear, in fact, it's clear. He is not afraid of anything, and probably is prepared to just go to jail. I think he knows, I think he has known that he was headed in that direction, and I guess the amazing thing is how many of his people are so number one unaware that that's the direction that this is going. Of course, they watch Fox, F-O-X. If you watch Fox, I guess all you're worried about is what the weather's like, and I can tell you right now here in St. Louis, it appears to be ready to storm this afternoon, not stormy storm. At any rate, the point is that's what Fox has to tell you. Now, everybody else is really looking at what's happening in the courtroom and looking at people's demeanor in the courtroom and outside the courtroom, and so let me say this about the six or seven or eight vice presidential wannabes who are outside the courtroom saying things which absolutely, under no circumstances, should anybody ever say, and I can tell you right now that those things are worse than even Donald, to me, than Donald writing the notes in that courtroom. The reason I say that is because the people outside know for fact that they're violating the law. These are governmental officials, these are senators, these are congressmen, these are people who are hoping to be the vice president of the United States, and they are outside of this courtroom, and they are saying things which they know for fact, are against the law. So it's one thing to know that Donald's breaking the law, it's another thing to go out and break the law on Donald's behalf and become part of this whole entire disgusting event, and for them, for those people outside the courtroom who are doing this, it's even worse than that, because it takes on a sort of an attitude of being pathetic, see that's the problem, they all come across as pathetic, and if you don't think it's pathetic, add in the fact that they're like a bunch of Donald Trump dolls all dressed up in blue suits with red ties like Donald Trump. What is that supposed to prove? I mean, is that supposed to be a way of saying that in fact they support him, or is that a way of being obsequious to the point of being pathetic? Again, I remind you, you may want to look up the word obsequious, but I think it would be very appropriate to use that word for the people outside of that courtroom, because they are cowardly and they are begging Donald Trump for approval. I mean, it's the only way you can see it, and first, all of them can't be a vice presidential candidate, maybe some of them think that if they don't make the vice presidential cut, then they'll simply make it to the cabinet. Well, I think they're really overdoing the entire thing, because the only vice president that they're going to end up with is vice president of the prisoners association, and perhaps Donald will want to set up a cabinet in that jail cell as well, and maybe these people would like to join Donald in the jail cell. I'm really not kidding. I mean, Donald is going to jail. I don't think there's really any doubt. The only thing that would save him right now is if there is one juror who is prepared to say, I just can't join in. So 11 to 1, and Donald would be saved for a minute. Would that get him elected? I don't think so. Would that be just another part of this entire pathetic event, allowing Donald Trump to think that he's got a chance? And I guess that's what it would do if there was a hung jury here, a mistrial would lead Donald to believe that in fact, he's got a path. I mean, that's been his whole story for so long. His path to the presidency, well, his path is not to the presidency. It's to Rikers. And everybody that talks about the case with any degree of knowledge having watched what's going on in that courtroom, they all agree that Donald is inches away from a conviction. And the only thing that's going to save him is a juror that would say, I just can't go along with this. And my conclusion is a little different maybe than some of the others, but this is mine. If you're in that jury room and you've got 11 people looking at you in a case that is so obviously going to have this giant effect on the country. And it's so clear to everybody that Donald Trump is done what the prosecution says he has done. It's going to be awful tough for somebody to withhold their vote from the rest of the group and to go off on a tangent leading Donald Trump to a mistrial. I just don't see it. It would just take way too much to get somebody to go that far. Again, I said before, unless it was a setup by somebody to do this. And I promise you that I do not believe that a setup is possible. So I'm just not a conspiracy guy. So I'm going to tell you that without a setup, Donald's not going to get out of this mess. And I don't believe that there's a chance for a setup. If a juror does manage to stand up against the majority and hang this jury and send this into a mistrial, I will still not say that this was a setup in any way. Because I just don't think in our system that that's possible. I really don't. And I don't think aside from the fact that Donald would do it, I mean, no question he would do it. But would somebody else participate in this on the other side? One of the jurors, I don't believe it. Not a chance. It's just not in the cards here. So I'm going to say, which I've said all along, Donald will be convicted. And apparently, based on Judge Mershan's timetable, Donald Trump will be convicted before June 1st. And I've said all along here that as fast as this thing was going, that a conviction before June 1st was a real possibility. And now I think it's more than a possibility. I think it's almost a certainty because the judge is moving this thing along so quickly. And he really doesn't want to waste any time. And he is telling everybody on both sides, let's get the summation done by Tuesday, Tuesday morning, Tuesday afternoon, both summations out of the way on the way everything done. That's the story. I know they're trying to yell over me here, but they're just not going to get away with it. They can try all they want, but I'm not allowing it. I'm moving forward, just like the courtroom. Everybody, we're moving forward, and this thing is going to be over pretty quickly. Now, in a minute, I'm going to talk about some great companies here, but I do want to point to something behind me that I'm really pretty proud of and excited about for next year. If you look over my left shoulder, and I guess if you're watching, maybe it's my right shoulder, but it's the map of the United States. And it's over my shoulder. On one side is the map of the United States, on the other side is the map of the world. And in the case of the United States map, you can clearly see that there's nothing written on it. It's empty. It's actually the same on the other side, too, because I wanted them to match. And the one on the right, or my right, maybe your left, that one, the world map, is going to be used for students to identify what the governments are in these different countries all over the world. We know we've got 193 countries that are members of the United Nations. Number 194 would be Palestine if anybody is able to put a deal together here, which people are working on. I can tell you, and including, I mean, the Biden administration wants this. They veto the deal, but they want Palestine to be a state. And they'd love to bring this about before the election, because they see this as a way of showing people in the country, our country, that we don't have our complete loyalty to the demands of certain people in Israel, but that we believe that a solution that would be good for Israel and for the United States as well, since it's our interests that count here, too, would be for a two-state solution. And I think Joe Biden would certainly like to bring that about. So having said that, the other map is the United States map. And before I get to the United States map, let me say that Michael, this is Michael Kason, in Arizona says that the St. Louis Suit Company, and that is correct, Michael, is sold out of red ties, because that's all these pathetic Republican soldiers or whatever you want to call them that are marching into that courtroom area outside the courtroom, and they're standing out there and talking to the media and saying things that they all know are illegal, but they're doing it anyway, and they're waiting for the report from the courtroom from Donald, who is sending them notes in order to tell them, this is what I want you to say. Hard to believe, sadly, hard to believe, but that's the story. Now, the other map I was talking about, the map of the United States, which is clearly blank, the other one's blank, too, but this one is clearly blank. And what's going to happen with that on August the 12th, for 12 weeks, is the students are going to identify exactly how many electors there are per state and begin to acquire information about the polling that has been done around the country, so that state by state, as we find polls, the students will update those polls with the electors on the map, so that as we move towards November, we'll be in a position to perhaps come up with our own guess, just ahead of the election, as to where it's going to be. So we will find out how the students do compared to some of the tremendous television personalities, Steve Krennaki over on MSNBC, one of the best there is, and he puts those maps on TV beautifully together, and anyway, it's so nicely done by him, and we're going to try to get this done with the students, and then have them come back and maybe talk to you all, both on my show in the afternoon, and also on Vic's show in the morning, so Vic and Lizzie, so I think Vic and Lizzie will welcome the kids to come in and tell them the kind of work that they've done, and then the kind of projection that they have right ahead of the election. I also have here where Michael says, "I have COVID on PAC's COVID." I hope that's a joke. I really, I hope that's a joke. I hope you don't have COVID, Michael. I hope you don't, but you can let us know about that. Okay, so it's time to talk about some business here, and the first thing I'm going to say is, you know, dinner, dinner at WENTIES. Now, today for me, that's going to be out of the question, because I'm going to be up here at graduation at Cardinal Ritter, and we'll be up here, I'm guessing, until about nine in the evening, and we'll be listening to speeches, and we'll be listening to presentations, but we won't be listening to crazy people lie, but at any, in any case, we will be listening to graduation speeches as well, and it's all, you know, pretty exciting for the young people who have worked very hard at our school. So, WENTIES, today I can't be there, but others can, and so I encourage you to get over to WENTIES at 18,000 Chesterfield Airport Road, and you can think about all the great food off. I'll be thinking about it. I'll certainly be thinking about the baby back ribs and the onion rings. You can be thinking about the wings, the smoked meat, the hamburgers, the cheeseburgers, the pizza, which people love, people love the pizza at WENTIES. So, you know, there's all kinds of great food at WENTIES. It's there today, even if I can't be there, so get yourself over to WENTIES, 18,000 Chesterfield Airport Road, and you might even catch Ben if you run over there in time. That's WENTIES in Chesterfield. Now, if you're thinking about jewelry, you need to be thinking about Hampton, 4506 Hampton, because that's Jules on Hampton, and of course, AJ and Al, father and son, Al will take you through anything that you want to see in the store, and I mean to tell you, there's a ton in that store. This is not a tiny little hole in the wall. This is a giant store with lots of great jewelry, and some of it is designs that are done by the Jules on Hampton people. Others, people sell their jewelry, and it's available there, but you may come in and say, look, this is what I would like to design, and they can do that for you, or you may just be interested in one of the Jules on Hampton designs. They're very creative. It's an excellent place. These are very friendly and fabulously good people who want to do business with you, for sure, but they show you that they want to do business by just being outstanding people, and you'll like them. You will. I guarantee you that, and then you could decide the rest. But meanwhile, if you've got a watch that needs to be repaired, you can bring that in to Jules on Hampton, and they'll take care of that for you as well. And that's at 45-06 Hampton Avenue, Alan A.J., father and son, Jules on Hampton. You'll love them. They buy and sell coins and jewelry, great prices, always the best prices, at Jules on Hampton. And then finally, my very, very good friends at St. Louis Suit Company, and I do want to say that at the St. Louis Suit Company, I think they refuse to sell blue suits with red ties. Now, they may sell you a blue suit, or they may sell you a red tie, but I think they're going to make you sign a document before you leave saying that you won't wear them together, and you certainly won't wear them together in front of the courthouse, and you certainly won't wear them in front of the courthouse, and then break the gag order at the direction of Donald J. Trump. Because I promise you, the St. Louis Suit Company doesn't disobey the law. They follow the law all the time. They believe in the law. They deal with lawyers and judges, and they do the right thing, and they sell beautiful new suits and the brightest and nicest looking ties that you can imagine for springtime. St. Louis Suit Company is on the corner of Forsyth and Central in Clayton. They've been there for 29 years. Now, you can imagine, if they're there for 29 years, it's got to be a pretty good place, and I'm saying 29 more. And there's probably just a slightly better chance that the St. Louis Suit Company will be there for another 29 years than the conviction of Donald Trump, because it's probably 100% that the St. Louis Suit Company is going to be there, and maybe Donald's only 99%, something like that. Well, we'll see. You know, we're so close to the end of this. What people say, "What are you going to tell us if Donald isn't convicted, Mark?" Well, guess what? He's going to be convicted, so don't worry about it. Yeah, don't sweat it. It's going to all be fine. Anyway, St. Louis Suit Company, Forsyth and Central, check them out. Get a suit. Here we are in the summer, so as we go in the summer, you can get a straw hat. If you want to buy an overcoat for the fall, you can get that too. Again, this is the St. Louis Suit Company, and they are great. Okay, so let me talk to you a little about Joe Biden. First of all, are you impressed, and you know that if you're a Trump lover, you'll never say that you're impressed by Joe Biden, but you should be, because Joe Biden has forced a debate that's coming up in June. This month, we are going to have the first presidential debate, and then there's going to be another one coming up in October, and these debates, the first one's going to be CNN, and these debates have rules. Now, we know that Donald doesn't follow rules, but this one's going to be tough to violate, because the rules on this one are pretty simple. As soon as Donald's time runs out, his microphone has to be turned off. Now, that means that he can scream his guts out, and no one's going to hear him. Oh, it'll be a little bit in the background, but it's not going to be like that public address system that you just heard a minute ago, you know, trying to blast itself over me. No, it's going to be nothing. He's not going to be heard, because Joe Biden's going to have his microphone, and he's going to be able to say whatever he wants. Now, when he gets to the end of his time, his microphone will be turned off. But of course, turning off his microphone is unnecessary, because Joe Biden won't break the rules. How do we get here? Well, anyway, however we got here, Donald will break the rules, and he'll scream and yell, and he'll dance up and down, and he'll throw a fit, and maybe he'll get on the floor, and pound the floor on top of it. But in any event, he won't be heard, because the agreement is that when he's done, the microphone is off. On top of that, there's no audience. So there's no audience to scream and yell, and there's no microphone for Michael to speak, or Michael Cohen is speaking today. And then next, yeah, don't worry about Michael. Worry about Donald. Donald is not going to be able to speak up in front of that microphone. Trust me, they will turn it off. They will shut him down. It's the rules. He's agreed to it. Now, some people have said today, even though Donald agreed to it, that maybe in five days, he'll say he didn't agree to it. And that wouldn't be a surprise, because that's how Donald does. But honestly, he has agreed to the rules, and if he does this, if he follows through and plays it straight, which, come on, what are the chances? But anyway, if he does, you're going to hear a real debate. And I fear for Donald, if he finds himself in that position. Now, the next question is, I wonder what would happen if he's convicted, sentenced to jail, and told that he has to go to jail? Because if that's the case, then the question is, would he do it from a jail cell, remote, sort of like what I'm doing? Because it's available. The technology is here. You can do these things anywhere you want. I could go halfway around the world and do this show, and it wouldn't make any difference because it would still be on the air in the exact same way as if I were in the studio. The only difference is, I don't have headphones, so okay, so I don't have that. I could have brought some headphones with me if I were worried about it. But in any event, Donald could do it from jail. That's one possibility. Now, it'd be really interesting if he would do it, maybe in jail. But if they would put up the bars in front of him, now that would be perfect. So you'd have Joe Biden on one side of the screen. And on the other side of the screen, you would have Donald Trump with the bars in front. I'll tell you, that would be a classic, and I would do anything to see that debate. In fact, I'd do anything to get there so I could go to the spin room. And I'm not sure what the spin room would look like in a jail cell, but that's another story. Anyway, I didn't mean to make fun of all of this. Donald's going to jail. That's another story. I don't feel sorry for him. The man's a criminal. And it's not even just what he's done here, because he's broken every law that anybody can ever imagine going back 40 years. He deserves this if for nothing else for what he wanted to do to the central part five. If it were nothing else, I'd say for that, put him in jail. But actually, it's more than that. It's for not paying the piano tuner. It's for not paying his bills ever. It's for telling everybody to negotiate down the bills because he's not paying. And in fact, if you can avoid paying at all, just don't pay. That's dumb. And then on top of all of that, this guy has broken laws. He has done everything he could. You know, insurance, fraud, bank fraud. We already know it's true. They found him libel, which means guilty. So we already know that he's done that. He's guilty of all kinds of fraud. You know, things that we haven't been able to pin on him, sort of like what we couldn't do to Al Capone. But it doesn't matter because Al Capone went to jail for evading his taxes. And Donald's going to go to jail for some what people are going to say. They're going to say, oh, well, this is just a minor election infraction. But not exactly, not exactly minor, maybe minor compared to the nuclear weapons documents he has stolen. Sure. Compared to that, it's minor. Minor compared to making a telephone call to Brad Raffensberger and telling him to go find 12,000 votes so that Donald could win. And then to tell the public that he recalculated and that Donald actually won in Georgia. Yeah, certainly not as damaging or damning as that. Or you could say that the capital insurrection, the case in Washington, D.C., is far more consequential than what we've got here in Manhattan. But see, that's not even the point. Because the point is that if he couldn't be gotten for other things that he and the rest of his mob did for 40 years and we only got him now on this election infraction case, well, that's just the way it is. That's how it works, Donald. Sometimes they could get you for something that you think is really not that bad, but you've done all these other things that are a thousand times worse. And so they're going to get you for that too. If you remember the movie with Lana Turner and John Garfield, the postman always rings twice. The final scene in the movie, where John Garfield has to go to jail for murder. And he's going to jail for the murder of his wife, Lana Turner. But it turns out that he's making the case for the fact that he would have never murdered her. That that's not what he did. And then Leon Ames says, hey, don't feel bad, because we came up with evidence that would allow us to put you on trial for the murder of her first husband who you did murder. And so then we've got the evidence and we try, retry you, and you'd still go to jail. So look, you're not going to jail for the murder of Lana Turner, you're going to jail for murdering her husband, which you did. So that's a way of saying that Donald is going to jail, not for whatever he did in the election case, but he's going to jail for everything that he's done for 40 years, including, and I mean, don't forget what he wanted to do to the Central Park Five. He wanted to burn them. And he knew that they were innocent. He knew that they had been proven to be innocent. And he still wanted to do it. And he tried to get other people to follow along, to force them to be executed for a crime they never committed. And that is as bad as anything that he has done, including stealing the nuclear secrets. And so listen, he's not going to jail for the murder of Lana Turner. He's going to jail for the murder of Lana Turner's father or husband, rather. And so guess what? It's just, it's al Capone all over again, and don't feel too bad about it, because the man deserves to be there. And I only hope that somebody considers, and maybe they could just do it on CNN, they could, they really should, actually, is if he's convicted. Even if he's convicted and not in jail yet, that would be great. I wonder if they could slip that in, where on one side they have Joe Biden on the other side, they would, they would have Donald just standing there on the stage, but they could put on the television set a set of bars in front of him that would sort of give you some idea of where Donald is headed. Just, just a thought, you know, it might be, it probably would be rejected by the Trump people, but hey, maybe they wouldn't know, and you could get through the whole debate, and then they'd scream, you know, why'd you do this to us? Well, listen, the man's going to be found guilty, and I'm saying June 1st, this guy will probably be on his way to a jail cell. On his way, I don't know the exact timing, but I think he'll be getting there. Anyway, I start off, I wanted to talk about Joe Biden, and I have, but I want to talk a little more about Joe Biden, and I'm going to say it this way. There are people out here who are insisting that Joe Biden is the worst president that they've ever imagined on the history of the United States landscape. You go all the way back to George Washington, no one's been worse than Joe Biden. Now, of course, the presidential scholars who actually go through the numbers on this every year, they came out several months ago and said that Donald Trump was the worst, and Joe Biden was somewhere around number 14, something like that. So not a bad showing, and especially given the fact that he's still in the presidency. I think Donald, I think Barack Obama was 10, not bad, but here's the thing. Joe Biden, and he's been talking about this in some of his ads lately, he's been talking about Social Security and Medicare, and I know this is all slipped through without much commentary simply because everything else in front of it is so salacious and kind of interesting to the public. But Donald Trump and his buddies are talking about dramatic changes in Medicare and Social Security. And when you ask them about it, they say, oh, no, not us. We wouldn't do anything like that. But then they come out and say that that's exactly what they want to do. And of course, Joe Biden makes the point that he is here to protect older people from having Medicare and Social Security removed. Now, I'm sure that the Congress would never go along with taking it away from existing people on Medicare and Social Security. But on the other hand, people who are getting close, 55, 60 years old, they could be impacted dramatically. And I don't think that there's any doubt that the Republican Party wants to do this. They want to stop to the extent that they can, Medicare and Social Security. And listen, if you think I'm crazy, remember that this is exactly what George W. Bush tried to do a number of years ago to end Social Security and create some kind of personal investment account. And naturally, the expert said, you could wipe people out in that situation, a dramatic decline in the stock market, and look where these people would be. So anyway, Joe Biden certainly give him credit for standing up for Social Security and Medicare, sounds crazy, but it's important. Also, give him credit for the child care bill that he passed two, three years ago. And then that was removed by the Republican Congress. Joe Biden is trying to reinstate that, because he believes that certainly it would be important to provide that kind of funding to families whose children are in child care. And when we talk about inflation, the cost of child care is enormous right now. It's a big cost. And Joe Biden is doing everything he can to bring that cost down for people who can least afford it. And the Republican Party is fighting it, and they've actually removed that child care provision. So that is important in looking at Joe Biden. And then finally, let me end with international relations. Joe Biden has done just a phenomenal job by holding NATO together, by expanding it to Finland and Sweden, by standing up to Vladimir Putin in a way that's just so essential as Vladimir Putin rampages through Ukraine in the same way that Hitler attempted to do in Europe and hope to do beyond Europe, eventually hoping to even be here. And in fact, I'll say this too, and then I'll be gone. There's an article in New Republic this week. I hope you'll read it. It's about Donald Trump as Hitler. And there's a great picture of Trump on the front of New Republic magazine, dressed out like Hitler. You can't miss it. Great article. Definitely you want to check that out. It's time for me to get out of here. It's five o'clock. I'm off to graduation this evening. It'll be a really nice event for the young people. And I certainly will have more young people on the air for you in the days ahead. In the meantime, for Wedties for the St. Louis soon company for Jules on Hampton. I'm Mark casein. This is showdown. Good