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Welcome back to the Lincoln Project. I'm your host, Reed Gaelin. Today, I'm happy to welcome back to the show, Hugo Lohm.

Political Investigations reporter for the Guardian covering Trump and the Justice Department.

He also regularly appears as a political analyst for MSNBC, Peacock, and a variety of other outlets.

Today he's coming to us from New York City. Hugo, welcome back.

Hey, thanks for having me.

All right, so a week ago, Trump put out a truth social thing saying, or maybe it was Monday of last week,

saying that he would be arrested on Tuesday by the Manhattan District Attorney or the police or whatever the case might be.

And even after almost eight years, Hugo, we all fell for it. He didn't have any evidence of it.

Alvin Bragg's office didn't say anything official. Here we are now a week later, and he did it to us again.

And I could tell you, like, I should know better. I've been doing this for a long time, Hugo, but the guy has a mystical power to get everybody to focus on him exactly when he wants them to.

The way in which Trump took over the new cycle last week and already this week is extraordinary.

So I think the post came on Saturday. By Saturday afternoon, most reporters on the Trump beat already knew that that was based on nothing.

And the new cycle was still what it was.

And I think we all, like, actually a lot of us reported it that way saying, hey, look, Trump saw the report on NBC on, I think it was Friday.

That said, no one for some was gearing up to figure out security in case of an indictment and Trump really lost this circle just went off.

And everyone did fall for it. And I can't tell if it's because, like, the networks, this kind of coverage, I don't know if the networks think that audience want this kind of coverage.

I don't know if it's because reporters are like, high on this stuff, but it is quite extraordinary and to see it unfold in real time.

And then now looking back on it a week later and seeing how we all got totally duped by Trump is kind of embarrassing.

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