George Conway has been making regular appearances on podcasts in recent months. He is a great source for keeping up with Trump trials, but not for political strategizing, unless you want ignorant attack ads and further division to continue dominating conversations.
In this diary, I’ll link to a few YouTube videos with George Conway interviews, and pull out a few quotes to share his knowledge of Trump’s trials, as well as, to point out how the politicking he encourages has contributed to bringing us crazy Republicans like Trump, and which will bring us more crazy politics if that is how we focus our campaigns.
A good source for keeping up with Trump trials has been George Conway Explains It All To Sarah Longwell, which is available on YouTube. Two of these podcasts are linked in this diary.
First, is the recent effort from Sarah and George posted March 25, 2024, George Conway Explains: Trump's Legal Stall FAILS Miserably!
Since it is most recent, and they covered Trump’s many trials, I will quote from it most extensively. Go to the listed times in the video to hear the conversation. Transcripts are from YouTube, with my editing for punctuation and clarity of Conway’s presentation, as I hear it.
Hush Money Criminal Case
6:30-- He's not just a criminal. I mean, you represent a a guy who's guilty of something, but he's an unreasonably difficult criminal who won't follow directions, and is likely to get you, and, you know, other lawyers into trouble, because he lies to you, and he
encourages you to lie to other people, which is what happened in in so many instances previous to this, including in the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation. He's just trouble, and he doesn't pay his bills, and he does things that just sort of make everybody around him look bad. I mean, it's like what Rick Wilson, Rick Wilson's
book everything Trump touches dies.
10:45-- I don't think there are any other cases that were likely to be tried in this next, in in this window...We're going to still be waiting on the Supreme Court probably. Throughout most of this trial we'll be waiting on the Supreme Court's decision in the immunity case on the January 6th um indictment from DC. And if the Supreme Court rules sometime in June, that case could be tried, but in September or October...I don't think the Fani Willis Case is going to get tried this year. I could be wrong. And I don't think the the Mar-a-Lago documents case is going to get tried this year.
18:10-- The only time he really you can depend on him (Trump) to say something truthful is when there's some malevolence involved
Civil Fraud Trial
22:40-- if he's not going to be able to bond the 464, why not give him a chance to bond some significant portion of it? And, at least
that way he will, you know, he will have had the chance...you will appear to have given him a chance, and, you know, I I I would have done it frankly. That's why I tweeted the other day, I said, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if they gave him a break on the bond.
Classified Documents Trial
34:55-- Government documents that are in the president's possession, have to turn, have to be turned over at the end
of his term to the National Archives and Records Administration, which is what he did not do with a boatload of documents. And it's just a completely meritless argument. It doesn't deserve the time of day. And he made a motion to dismiss in front of Judge Cannon based upon this B***S*** argument, and judge Cannon was express, expressed some skepticism about it, and then she issued this a crazy order basically saying I want you guys to write me jury instructions, and one of the possible jury instructions I might give would be to say the president gets to decide under the presidential records act that these are personal records...If that were the law, then we wouldn't have a trial. We she should just dismiss the case now. But, it was just utterly bizarre, and and and
she got completely completely excoriated by it, by, from everybody, everybody under the sun...What I said was kind of mean, but I think well do deserved. I've been giving her the benefit of the doubt...I was thinking, well, okay, she got ahead over skis a little. I think she'll want to do the right thing. And, she's, maybe
she's just a little inexperienced, but this is just off the wall. I mean this is just, I, there's something seriously wrong um in Fort Meyers...Fort Pierce, Florida, yeah, wherever she is
39:10-- If she (Judge Cannon) were in Miami she could at least consult some more experienced judges and she can't do that and again that's that's assuming she's acting in good faith isn't trying to isn't trying to help Trump in any way but it's clear that she is the the one thing that I am absolutely dead certain on now is that she is in way over her head and that's that's not good for the that's not good for the case that's not good for the prosecution it may not even be good for Trump at the end of the day um but it's not good for the country
40:05-- Right now it is scheduled for sometime in the summer but it's I don't think that's going to be a realistic trial date as she falls more and more behind. I think at some point it's going to be worth Jack Smith making a motion to get her off the case
In the January 17, 2024 episode of George Conway Explains It All (To Sarah Longwell), they discussed the E. Jean Carroll trial, along with some points relevant for opposing Trump.
4:10-- I saw Jean Carol's original story, and then I saw this interview in the New York Times where she it was clear that she had told two people, two other people almost immediately after it happened. And, to me, that's a very, very, very, very compelling circumstance when it comes to these me too type cases. The two things that I think are the most compelling, if you follow um the work of Ronin Farrow, and in the recent last few years of of of stories coming about about bad men doing things to women, the two factors that you really have to consider are: did the guy do it to other people, and were there contemporaneous witnesses.
11:25-- Everyone needs to mock Donald Trump, because he is so mockable. And it it it's just he has to be taken seriously, because he's a danger to The Republic. But you can't ever lose sight of the fact that he's a complete buffoon.
22:15-- He doesn't believe in rules or laws unless they're applied to other people, and unless he's making the rules and laws up as he goes along...He's always been in a continual battle against the legal system, and this is just part of it, and um it's not going well for him, and it won't, it will continue not to go well for him
31:00-- He has figured out, I'm sure people have told him, that, if he becomes president, I can not, at the civil cases, you can't, it won't help him, but um, basically, if he were in jail on, at noon on January 20th, uh 2025, um having been convicted of something or other this year, um and he had been, he gets 270 electoral votes, well they're going to have to spring him, I think, under the Constitution, which wouldn't be great, uh but you know, that's that's his best play, and that's what he's trying to do, among others
Next is a December, 2023 Lincoln Project podcast in which Host Reed Galen is joined by George Conway, a Lincoln Project Co-Founder, attorney, contributing columnist for the Washington Post, and Board President for the Society For the Rule of Law.
Progress is evident when Conway and Galen acknowledge that the Republican party has been lying for decades. But, he can’t admit that Democrats cut deficits and has to both sides it with a falsehood easily debunked by simply looking at the Democratic proposals for fair tax rates to pay for what we need and owe. Plus, in this podcast, they remain in favor of attacking Trump all of the time, and idolize Rick Wilson, without considering that decades of divisive attacking that has set the conditions for Trump’s ascension in American politics.
11:50— It goes back to the the old idea that um you promote growth by cutting taxes, which you do, but...you don't get it all back...I mean it's a long-term proposition, and you have to accept that fact, and you have to cut the spending. I think it's better
to have the spending in the private sector generally speaking...There were a lot of lies involved. That one I think of the most. There are others... The whole immigration thing...Yes we do have a problem controlling our borders. Absolutely, we do. I don't think anybody could deny that. But... what practical real solutions did did Donald Trump come up with? He didn't want solutions.
He'd have to compromise and get a solution but he didn't want it. The Republicans want the issue more than they actually want to fix the problem, because you can't build a wall. It's not physically possible...Well they're not interested in governing now
30:15 You see it in his (Trump's) face when he sits there at the trial in New York. You could see it in his unhinged truth social posts, which are worse than ever...These clips that people need to see. And I'm glad to see that the Biden campaign is actually starting to do make use of them...We need to go after his ego...The audience of one strategy needs, I mean it's great that the Lincoln project is
doing it, but we need everybody to do it...And, it's not expensive...How it all came about...It was before we formed the Lincoln project, I got had lunch with Molly Long-Fast and Rick Wilson, and I I had remembered from the 2016 campaign, Brad Parscal coming in to talk to my wife, my then wife, and saying he f**** up because...he was spending money on cable networks in the District of f***ing Columbia in order to reach people out in Fairfax County, which is insane. It doesn't work that way...I realized at that point, oh yeah, you could just basically buy you local local slots and...I told Rick, I said hey, just run ads to drive him nuts. Find out what the cable provider is for for the White House or for Mar-a-lago. And and and when you guys did it? It was unbelievable...And here's the thing about it is, it doesn't cost a lot of money...It's great when you have some a Geniuses like like Rick doing it...It just pops out of his brain
That’s right, the board president for the Society For the Rule of Law is advocating that everybody take up Rick Wilson style attack advertising. Maybe they believe it will be a special case just for Trump. Others among us can see that it doesn’t end there. That is the politics that are being pushed moving forward, whoever runs for whatever office.
To finish, here is Unfit, a documentary from 2020 that remains relevant today.
Rather than quoting from George Conway from Unfit, I will post this from Anthony Scaramucci.
40:10 Anthony Scaramucci it's an anger-based vote and you have to work on policy solutions to fix that, you have to heal that because when you create a breach in the social fabric of the society, you create a systemic rise of populism and you get all of these unintended, or unexpected political outcomes. I didn't see it myself, but Trump saw it
Conway and Galen join with others in warning about the extreme danger of Trump in political office. The first Trump term ended with near complete turn to anti-democratic strongman attempted tyranny. A second would start that way.
We agree. Trump must be defeated. I split from Conway in stating my belief that we have to do more than Rick Wilson style attack advertising. Rick Wilson didn’t start it, but he is good at it. We need a lot more good people supporting good government and unified actions. We need to come up with solutions. That is the real hard work we can’t avoid if we want this republic to live on.
