Hello everyone and welcome to the focus group podcast I'm Sarah

Longwell publisher of the bulwark and this week I'm bringing you a show many of you have

waited for for years it's the one about Donald Trump's felony conviction

so unless you've been living under Iraq you know that Donald Trump was convicted

on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records in a New York State case.

Now, I want to temper your expectations. This isn't a massive earthquake that's going to deliver Joe Biden a landslide in November.

He's still 81 years old and voters still don't like that.

But as I've been saying to anyone who will listen, we are not building a pro-Joe Biden coalition. to American politics. And as we're going to hear today,

being convicted of 34 felonies

puts Trump's deficient character

right in the middle of people's consciousness,

instead of being tucked away on truth social

as it has been for quite some time now.

My guest today is Laura Barone Lopez, White House correspondent for PBS News Hour,

with all kinds of insights into Biden world, who also sat in on this focus group with us the day after Trump's

conviction. Laura, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Okay, so you've

actually sat in on a handful of our focus groups in recent years.

This is something people might not know

that we oftentimes allow reporters to sit in and watch them.

So anybody who's like, you are rigging these focus groups.

And like, oh, okay, but we have people sit and watch them all the time.

It would have gotten out by now if we were rigging them or making them up.

...