The following podcast contains explicit language by which we mean patitok.

It's Thursday, August 23, 2018. From Slate, it's the gist. I'm Evan McMarris,

Santoro of Vice News, sitting in for Mike Pasca. It's two days since Michael Cohen stood in a

federal courthouse and directly implicated President Trump in a federal crime. That's two days

for the Trump team to spool up the spin machine and try to get their guy out of this thing.

In a Fox and Friends interview that aired today, Trump offered this take and peach me at your doom.

I'll tell you what, if I ever got a peach, I think the market would crash. I think everybody would

be very poor because without this thinking, you would see numbers that you wouldn't believe.

And if it wasn't obvious from the fact that this appearance was on Fox and Friends,

Trump is talking to his base here. But instead of posturing as the golden boy who make America great

again, he's kind of doing the opposite. If it's not me in the White House, you guys are screwed.

Here's that clip again with Trump's final words. I'll tell you what, if I ever got a peach, I think the

market would crash. I think everybody would be very poor because without this thinking, you would see

you would see numbers that you wouldn't believe in reverse. In reverse. It's like Trump is the

local mafia heavy and the economy is your fruit stand. It'd be a shame if something happened to it.

It's important to remember that Trump thinks he's really good at this. With their

Republican party staring at epically bad poll numbers, just a few weeks before the midterm election,

poll numbers you don't need to be a statistician to blame on Trump. The president is actually promising

more public appearances, not less. Dozens of campaign stops between now and November.

That leaves Trump's allies with the unenviable job of making this pretty bad new cycle appear

a lot less bad. I'm going to talk more later about how Washington spins the unspinable in situations

like this. That's today's spiel. But first, I talked to three card carrying members of the so-called

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