The Rich Zeoli Show- Full Episode (05/02/2024):

3:05pm- Did Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s “hush money” case against former President Donald Trump just blow up? Matthew Haag of The New York Times writes: “Defense lawyers for Donald J. Trump painted the lawyer who negotiated the hush-money deal at the center of his criminal trial as a serial extortionist, accusing him of taking aim at Mr. Trump before the 2016 election with a porn star’s account of a sexual liaison. The lawyer, Keith Davidson, spent hours on the stand describing how he received the $130,000 payment for the woman, Stormy Daniels, from Mr. Trump’s longtime fixer, Michael D. Cohen, and the mad scramble that ensued when the story got out anyway. The cross-examination quickly turned hostile: Mr. Trump’s lawyers sought to cast Mr. Davidson as a shakedown artist who took aim at celebrities including Tila Tequila and Charlie Sheen, while he fought back by suggesting they were using loaded language like ‘extortion’ to stigmatize legitimate settlements.” During his opening monologue Rich notes that during testimony, Davidson said he did not consider the payments from Trump to be “hush money.” You can read more here: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/02/nyregion/trump-hush-money-trial/trump-trial-keith-davidson-testimony?smid=url-share

3:30pm- Does anyone else think former Trump attorney Michael Cohen simply sounds bitter because he wasn’t selected for a prestigious position in the Trump Administration in 2016?

3:40pm- Drum Roll Please: Rich will be at Mulligan’s Shore Bar in Wildwood on Saturday May 11th from 5pm to 7pm for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s big campaign rally in Wildwood, NJ!

4:05pm- Listeners call-in and offer their opinions on the Trump “hush money” trial—but Rich gets sidetracked when he starts receiving compliments!

4:30pm- Former President Donald Trump spoke with the press briefly after court concluded on Thursday. PLUS, the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman claims that “Trump left the courtroom, squinting strangely at Lawrence O’Donnell, the MSNBC host, as he did.” Don’t forget, Haberman famously complained that Trump “glared” at her during a court appearance last month. Will Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Brag prosecute Trump for “glaring” and “squinting” next?

4:40pm- In a particularly bizarre segment from MSNBC’s Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough predicted that if Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential race, he will “arrest political enemies” and “execute generals that don’t follow his commands”—even using “SEAL Team 6 to execute political opponents.” Speaking of dictators, did you know that an estimated 16 million people are descendants of Genghis Khan?

5:05pm- After leaving court on Thursday, former President Donald Trump visited with the NYPD and FDNY—brining a mountain of pizzas with him!

5:10pm- While speaking with the press, a spokesperson for the UCLA anti-Israel protesters proclaimed that the university was “founded on colonialism,” calling it a “violent institution.” She went on to condemn the United States of America as being evil and called for the dismantling of the country’s institutions.

5:20pm- The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board writes: “Why pass laws when the Biden Administration ignores them? The latest example is a new rule that purports to codify permitting reform in Congress’s debt-ceiling deal last year. Instead, the rule creates a pocket veto for fossil fuels and public works while rubber-stamping green projects. Permitting reform for we, but not thee… The Administration’s new rule ignores the law by making it easy to kill projects that progressives oppose… Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer promised West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin he’d take up permitting reform in return for supporting the Inflation Reduction Act. But Democrats in Congress blocked significant reforms, and now the Administration guts even the minor reforms in the IRA.” You can read the full article here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/permitting-reform-rule-biden-administration-green-projects-fossil-fuels-environment-2396058a?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

5:40pm- Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestine demonstrators at Alabama University shared a brief moment of unity when both sides began chanting “F*** Joe Biden.” Who says we can’t all come together?

6:05pm- Amy Swearer—A Senior Legal Fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies—joins The Rich Zeoli Show to discuss a maddening story about an elderly Pennsylvania homeowner who has been arrested for defending himself during a home invasion. You can read more about the story here: https://reason.com/2024/05/01/this-elderly-man-was-arrested-after-shooting-a-burglar-in-self-defense-because-his-gun-was-unlicensed/. And you find Swearer here: https://www.heritage.org/staff/amy-swearer.

6:30pm- Did Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s “hush money” case against former President Donald Trump just blow up? Matthew Haag of The New York Times writes: “Defense lawyers for Donald J. Trump painted the lawyer who negotiated the hush-money deal at the center of his criminal trial as a serial extortionist, accusing him of taking aim at Mr. Trump before the 2016 election with a porn star’s account of a sexual liaison. The lawyer, Keith Davidson, spent hours on the stand describing how he received the $130,000 payment for the woman, Stormy Daniels, from Mr. Trump’s longtime fixer, Michael D. Cohen, and the mad scramble that ensued when the story got out anyway. The cross-examination quickly turned hostile: Mr. Trump’s lawyers sought to cast Mr. Davidson as a shakedown artist who took aim at celebrities including Tila Tequila and Charlie Sheen, while he fought back by suggesting they were using loaded language like ‘extortion’ to stigmatize legitimate settlements.” During his opening monologue Rich notes that during testimony, Davidson said he did not consider the payments from Trump to be “hush money.” You can read more here: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/02/nyregion/trump-hush-money-trial/trump-trial-keith-davidson-testimony?smid=url-share

6:40pm- Rich Lowry of National Review points out: “The Alvin Bragg case has gotten grander at trial, but also more ridiculous. The Manhattan DA has a meaningless business-records misdemeanor wrapped within a theory about an alleged Trump conspiracy to defraud the voters by denying them disparaging information before the election and obscuring, after the fact, the payments that were used to do so. Bragg is accusing Trump, in effect, of stealing the election. If this is the standard by which we judge elections, we need to go back and conclude that Bill Clinton wasn’t elected legitimately in 1992, either. The Arkansas governor’s political operation was, in part, an elaborate conspiracy to keep women who alleged to have had affairs with Clinton quiet. Hillary Clinton was an active participant in the schemes. And so, by Bragg’s logic, this Democratic power couple—dominant in the party for a decade or more and still honored today—comprises election thieves.” You can read the full article here: https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/04/remember-when-bill-clinton-stole-the-1992-election/