Trump’s Indictment, and a Brief History of Election Dirty Tricks

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

Barack, Washington, Wickenden, News, Obama, Politics, Wnyc, Lizza, President

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2023

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A grand jury in Manhattan voted on Thursday to indict former President Donald Trump for his involvement in a hush-money payment, of a hundred and thirty thousand dollars, to the adult-film star Stormy Daniels. In the final days before the 2016 election, the payment was covered up. In the first part of this week’s political roundtable, the New Yorker staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos look at what the unprecedented indictment means. “I think that banana republics are getting a bad rap right now,” says Osnos. “If you want to know what really makes a banana republic, it’s not going and prosecuting a former President. It’s allowing certain people to live above the law.”

But the Daniels case is about more than hush money. It’s also about suppressing news before an election. In the second half of the show, our roundtable explores the history of preëlection dirty tricks in the realm of foreign policy. In 1968, Richard Nixon’s campaign quietly worked to sabotage Vietnam War peace talks before voters went to the polls. More than a decade later, allies of Ronald Reagan are reported to have meddled in hostage negotiations with Iran in order to influence the results of the 1980 election—a claim resurrected by a recent New York Times report. And Donald Trump, of course, was impeached for attempting to extort the President of Ukraine during the infamous “perfect phone call.”

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1:11.8	So this is another day in which you save the front page of the newspaper. It seems like
1:18.4	there's a lot of those. Every time this happens, you think, okay, I'm going to save the impeachment
1:22.0	front page. Now you say I'm going to save the one that says Trump indicted. And then they
1:27.1	start piling up and you can't believe that events have even superseded the last unbelievable event.
1:34.5	I mean, it's creating an incredible stack in this period.
1:39.5	You know, Donald Trump always wanted to be one for the history books.
1:43.1	Well, first twice impeached president, first twice acquitted president, first president to refuse in American history to concede an election he lawfully lost. And now first president indicted. Amazing. And the details, no matter what, are going to titillate schoolchildren from here on out.
2:04.1	I mean, how are you going to, you're going to have to use the word in every history book,
2:08.1	something to do with hush money and porn star.
2:11.1	I mean, for me, anyway, one of the things that is most interesting and jarring is to see a man who has, he revels in being in power
	...

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