And the Hi this is the Josh Marshall podcast with Kate Riga. This is our first episode of

2024. Second week but first episode we had a by week the first Wednesday of

2024 but we're back and we've got a fair amount to talk about.

There's a relatively packed news environment which is a little I feel like a little different than what it was at the end of last year and everything seemed to sort of be

slowing down and wasn't wasn't totally clear what was what was going on in the news. That's sort of expected at the end of a calendar year, but as we know, it's not always the case because the news it if it ever operated on a on some sort of

predictable schedule it doesn't do it anymore so we're gonna jump right into it

because what we have seen over the last, well yesterday, but building to that

over the last few days is this immunity case hearing for former President Trump.

And before we get into it, I want to mention something

that our executive editor has mentioned a number of times and it really is

important to keep this in mind as a way to frame or bracket what this hearing was about.

Because there were a lot of headlines of people saying,

oh, you know, the judges weren't hearing any of it, went badly for Trump, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But the reality is the claim that Trump's lawyers were making here.

Certainly the claim in its totality,

and it was a totalizing claim,

is just an absurd claim.

And we can say that a lot of things that Trump claims are absurd. But I guarantee you that

whoever the quasi adults are in Trumland would have told you if you could if you could

speak to them privately there's no way we're going to win on this absolutely no way it's

a delay tactic so the real question here is how much it serves them in delay terms.

So keep that in mind as Kate and I go through this that's what that's what this is about.

...