Trumping history: 'Never had a president put his own interests' above the office of the presidency

FRANCE 24 English

Visit our website: http://www.france24.com  Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/France24_en

Transcript

00:00 get more analysis. Our next guest is the lawyer Stephen Dreyfuss joining us from

00:04 New York City. Stephen thanks for being with us here on France 24. We appreciate your

00:07 time sir. Your sense of what's happening here with other guests I've mentioned

00:11 the word unprecedented regarding Trump many times and we're in that realm again

00:16 aren't we? This is the first, well it's history making what's happening. It's

00:20 history making but I think we have to recognize that the reason it's history

00:26 making is because we've never had a president who has been willing to put

00:31 his own interests against those of the responsibilities of his former office

00:36 and this bizarre insistence on continuing to exercise the powers of the

00:45 presidency after he has been defeated has led him to a completely

00:51 self-inflicted wound here and I think that you know you showed the clip of his

00:59 former lawyer talking about weaponization of the justice process

01:04 anybody who did what he did would have been prosecuted for it and quickly. The

01:12 fact that he's a former president and did this outrageous kind of conduct is

01:18 the reason why he's being prosecuted but I don't see where the problem lies in

01:24 terms of weaponization. He has weaponized the system against himself by so

01:30 blatantly violating the law and then worse trying to cover it up trying to

01:36 cause other people to cover it up trying to cause other people to make

01:40 misrepresentations to the authorities and now he's reaping the whirlwind of

01:45 that. Weaponizing the system to shoot himself in the foot might be a way to

01:49 put it I suppose and that idea of covering things up of obstructing the

01:53 investigation to recover those documents that will in some people's opinions

01:58 count very heavily against Trump what do you think? Indeed I mean as lawyers one

02:05 of the things that we will say to a criminal defendant who we're

02:09 representing is you can't do anything about what has already happened but you

02:14 can make it worse and you can make it worse by trying to cover it up by making

02:20 misrepresentations by tampering with witnesses or tampering with evidence and

02:24 that seems to be according to the allegation precisely what he has done

02:29 even to the extent of tricking his own lawyers by removing documents before his

02:38 own lawyers came to inspect the premises so that they could make a representation

02:42 to the government that everything had been turned back over to the government

02:46 this is the lengths that he has gone to and it's it's really quite inexplicable

02:53 but I think it has to do with the fact that he's a seems to me as a lawyer not

03:00 a psychiatrist to be a narcissistic individual who cares only about himself

03:05 and not about anybody else or about the laws that govern the rest of them. How

03:09 long will this case go on for Stephen in your in your legal estimation and just

03:15 sort of get into the realms of political analysis what effect will it have on

03:18 Trump going forward politically? Well paradoxically or it may seem

03:24 paradoxically I think he will want this case to keep going for a long time and I

03:31 really through and after the election because Trump runs on grievances

03:38 everything that he does politically is based on the premise that he is being

03:43 victimized that he is being singled out and he argues to his supporters that I'm

03:49 I'm taking the I'm taking the weight of this for you it's you they really they

03:55 whoever they is really want so he will want this to go as long as possible and

04:02 his lawyers will be filing motions trying to make all sorts of arguments

04:07 about improper prosecutorial conduct about the evidence that ought to be

04:13 suppressed and not received in court with the goal of allowing him to run on

04:18 his persecution throughout the campaign and in his view if he gets the

04:22 nomination and if he's reelected allowing him then as president to

04:27 dismiss all the charges so he never has to face a trial. Whether the judge will

04:32 permit that remains to be seen. We have two quotes landed in the wire service

04:37 here from Trump we have a rigged country he says a country that's corrupt and

04:41 then he adds we've got a government out of control. Quick comment on that one

04:45 Stephen. Yeah I would take country and government out of it and insert Trump

04:52 and I think he'd be accurate. We have a we have an individual former president

04:59 who is out of control who does not seem any longer to know the difference

05:03 between the truth and a lie and is determined to perpetrate a fiction upon

05:09 the American people and I think that the the judgment we need to make about our

05:14 country today is that we have come a very long way in a very short time

05:22 contrary to the values of our country contrary to the belief in truth and

05:26 proof into the realm of baseless allegations and mythology and that

05:33 seems to be the coin of the realm of politically on the Republican side today

05:38 and I think we are beginning to see leaders of the Republican Party who are

05:44 willing to stand up and say this is not what our party ought to be and we can

05:49 only watch and hope that this continues. Stephen Dreyfus thank you as ever for

05:56 joining us in France 24. We always appreciate your time and thank you this

05:59 particular moment to for bringing us that clarity into the situation as we

06:02 are seeing evolve in front of us Stephen Dreyfus lawyer. Thank you sir very much

06:07 indeed great to see you.

Category

Transcript

Recommended