Welcome to the Special Correspondents edition of Off the Record.

The Michigan reaction to the guilty verdict in the Donald Trump case.

On the panel, Chuck Stokes, Jordyn Hermani, Craig Mauger and Bill Ballenger sitting in with us as we get the inside out Off the Record.

Production of Off the Record is made possible, in part by Martin Waymire, a full servic strategic communications agency, partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and public policy engagement.

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And now this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Thank you very much.

Welcome to Studio C, and Off the Record o what's an incredible Newsweek.

Bill, What's the lead this week?

How will Michigan go vis a vis the Trump verdict?

Yeah, what do you got?

It's going to be a close race.

I mean, we know that this race is neck and neck.

The voters are very familiar with these two individuals, Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Anything small could impact the ultimate outcome in a state like Michigan.

And this is not small.

This is historic and significant.

Yeah, I mean, already all eyes are on swing states.

We are among some of the mos important of the swing states.

I'd argue.

It's no surpris that immediately after you saw a shar partizan comedown of Democrats saying that no one is above the law, we've heard that phrase a dozen plus times.

Are Republicans coming down saying that this was a sham trial, that this was that this is politically motivated, what not.

So, yeah, I mean, ho this is going to affect voters.

You already have polling coming out saying that people it' not going to change their mind.

They're still going to vote for Trump even with this verdict.

So, you know we we're in unprecedented times.

As much as I hate to say that, it really is the real reason.

Yeah, it's extremely unprecedented.

I have no idea where we're going from here, frankly.

Yeah, Donald Trump on trial, but also Michigan's on trial.

America's on trial.

And we're going to wait to see just what exactly is going to happen, which side plays this out better.

You know, I was fascinated just last night we got a text from the Michigan GOP at 92 and the headline was basically Trump guilty, 34 charges and 941 the guilty was out and the whole headline was changed in there and it was about a sham trial.

So, you know, each side is trying to figure out how to do this.

Kildee puts out a statement.

Congressman, Kildee.

You know, from the Democratic side, one thing I think we can say, it will help fuel money to both political parties already.

Fundraising on it.

Absolutely.

It was like moments after the verdict.

Each side side's going to use it to.

Democrats are going to say, look, they're going to rais a ton of money off this because this is how President Trump's going to use this.

We got to come up with money and Republicans are doing the exact same thing, that the system is rigged against us.

We need your dollars to be able to fight this corrupt Biden.

Quote: “I wish I didn't have to ask, but this will be a serious inflection point in our campaign.

Warm regards.” Elissa Slotkin It's a nationalized race.

I mean, what happens at the top of the ticket is going to affect every.

Fundraising news release.

Well, I mean, but sh she is a very smart politician and realizes how importan what happens at the top with Joe Biden and Donald Trump is to every race down ballot in Michigan and how voters view this.

Yeah.

Overall, it seems like a majority of voters are dug in on their candidate.

But along those margins, are there a few voters who look at this and say, yeah, it is kind of norm breaking to hav someone who's a convicted felon be president and maybe I'll rethink this.

Or are there are there voters that believe what Trump is saying about the judiciary?

Back to Chuck's point about this being, you know, a test for America.

You know, you see a lot of th same statements and tendencies playing out right now with wha Trump said after the election.

And how his allies were able to get peopl to distrust the election system.

And now what he's saying about the judiciary and how his case was handled.

If you look into some of the statements his allies are making about this case, they're just not accurate.

A lot of them are misleading about how they were, how it was handled.

But you're going to, I would guess, see polling that shows that there's increasing distrust in juries in the judiciary.

And what is the impact of that in all of these other cases that are playing out across the country Right now?

And that's the thing that I think is not being underscored hard enough to Craig's point is the concept of when we stop losing faith in these commonly agreed upon systems like elections, like courts, there's no puttin that genie back in the bottle.

Or if there is, it's going to come.

And I hate to sound catastrophic after likely something terrible happening.

I mean, we somewhat saw tha on January 6th where people were totally unaccepting of a fair and free election.

And now, you know, these Trump cases, he still has three more cases, two more in federal a federal court cases, one down in Georgia.

So this is not going to be the last potentially that we see.

I mean, even if Trump does win the presidency, there's already talks of him being abl to shut down the federal cases.

He does not have that same ability in Georgia, which is pertaining to the it's in Fulton County.

We need to find more votes, a phone call.

You know, that's still going to to continue.

What happens from there, though, if we're losing trust and faith in these systems?

I mean, yes.

And today it might be your candidate, but tomorrow, when it's not your candidate do those same rules still apply?

Do the Democrats in Michigan have to be careful here and not overreact?

They certainly don't want to be gloating about this decision.

Am I right or wrong?

You're right.

Democrats can't afford to be gloating.

Look, when you're opposition, if it's not destroying itself is at least caught up in a frenzy.

Just hold their coats and stand back, I would think is the better strategy for Democrats today not to become embroiled in piling on Trump and, you know, going overboard, accusing Republicans and Trump of corruption and blah, blah, blah.

To wit, I've been waiting fo the comment from the governor.

Have we had one?

She tries to say, How so?

I mean, of late she tries to stay out of some of the national back and forth over Trump.

I mean, she really it seems like recently that's what she's tried to do.

Is she going to be able to avoid that?

I know she'll have to answer for it at some point.

If there were 4000 reporters up on island and the last time I checked she was at the residence, did somebody find the governor and governor?

She won't be able to get off the island without answering this question.

She can.

Bring in the jet.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

But she hasn't yet she hasnt said anything.

But to Bill's point, which I think is is getting to somethin that's key about this election, Democrats have to offer voter an alternative that they want.

It's not to see the other guy is so bad, vote for my guy.

That' what our system system is about.

It's a choice between the people on the ballot.

You got to offer them.

Who's sitting out there this morning saying, I'm just not sure.

It's not a large group, is it?

Well, it doesn't have to be to make a difference in the electorate, particularly in the swing states like Michigan.

Yeah, this is going to come down most likely to Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

And it's that middle and no one's really talking about those independents, those moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats.

Sometimes they vote Democrat sometimes they vote Republican.

We don't know what they're going to do in November.

A verdict like this could tip someone one way or the other.

Forget about the far right, forget about the far left.

It's that middle portion, those so-called independents that most likely will decide who' going to get to the White House and be the next president of the United States.

And that's untested right now.

And by the same token, can Mr. Mr. Trump overplay his card?

Yes, I think he clearly can.

I think he has to be very careful about how he's going to do it.

We know that he's going to use this as much as he can to rally his base, that they need a whole lot, not just they.

Need this race, but but.

But he needs it to get more money in and he's going to use every tool that he can.

What I'm fascinated by is what's happening or not happening within the Republican Party, both here in Michigan, but also nationally where are the Barry Goldwaters?

Where are the Howard Baker to be able to go in and say, Mr. President, this is not good lon haul for the Republican Party.

Those people the party left decades ago.

As a whole focused in on this immediate win.

In November.

Nobody's thinking is.

Thinkin five, ten years down the line.

No one's thinking about the fact that this may have on the down ballot races and all that.

We don't have those type of leaders.

I mean.

It's quite orderly.

Trump's party, his his family members are running the Republican National Committee.

I had someone text me this morning and say, what's the Republican Party doing about this?

It's like it's Trump's party.

Trump's party is not going to call him out or say, all of a sudden.

Pete Hoekstra was right out of the blocks, picked up that, look, the president set the tone for everybody was listening here is the respons rigged a like a rigged verdict.

Okay.

So what does Mr. Hoekstra say?

It was a sham and it was a rigged trial.

And and he referenced the fact that when President Trump was here not too long ago, he said this election is going to come down to Michigan.

So he's using it both for the president.

But he's also using it as the party chair now to help solidify his party in the state and raise money.

And, of course, let's not forget he was endorsed for this leadership position.

He is now by President Trump.

So he's been loyal to him.

You ask where are these people, though?

I mean, took Craigs point obviously if they haven't left the party already, though, you have Nikki Haley running saying I'm the alternative, but then has inevitably bent the knee and is now, you know, supporting Trump, frankly.

I mean, when we go back to who are the people that can stop this, you're only as strong as the spine in your body, frankly.

I mean, if you're going to say that I am the alternative to Donald Trump, it's really undercut.

One month later, you say I'm actually endorsing him for president because the you don't have anybody, frankly.

I mean I mean, I'm envisioning Haley trying to come back out and say well, wait a minute, you guys, let's let's rethink having a can potentially.

Well, at that point at the RNC, he will be convicted.

His his sentencing occurs three day before the national convention.

I just I don't see anybody who has that ability to say I have stuck to my values this whole time.

I haven't or I've broken with the president publicly.

I haven't come back to seek his approval because to Craigs point, again, this is his party.

If you want to keep going.

Wer talking about Trump all the time and the Republican turmoil, what about Joe Biden?

I mean, stop and think his.

His poll numbers have been plummeting.

plummeting.

Well he wasnt convicted of 34 criminal counts this week, though?

The point is, his approval ratings have been plummeting because everybody was basically viewing the election as a referendum on Joe Biden and his administration.

Now all of a sudden, nobody's talking about that anymore.

Yeah, they're talking about Trump, at least for the time being.

But when they get back to looking at Biden and the alternative, this ends up being a confrontation between two men, a choice rather than a referendum on Biden's administration.

What are people going to conclude?

Do they say, we want this stability of Biden as opposed to the chaos of Trump?

Or does the chaos of Trump excite people more than the supposedly inept performance by the Biden administration?

You have to assume, as I said before, the base for Donald Trump is there no matter what.

Thats true.

Yeah, okay.

Those numbers, there are just so many people that you could squeeze ou of that coalition and hang on.

And he's got them.

So they have to be looking at these people that we're trying to describe who may be on the fence to get them i that case, a change in message.

Yeah I don't think it's necessarily the people in the political middle.

I think a lot of these people that are going to decide this election are hardcore conservatives.

Some of them might be libertarians.

But what's my response you go at the Libertarian convention?

Yeah, it's those types of people.

Are those type of type of people going to vote for RFK?

Are they going to stay home?

Are they going to vote for Biden?

They're going to vote for Trump.

They have four options.

And I think those people I don't thin a lot of them are in the middle.

I think a lot of them are, you know, pretty far right in their views, but they might just not be willing to go along with Trump here.

And Bill, Tim, to your point, Biden has to do a better job at shoring up what has traditionally been the Democratic base.

You see him starting to make that move.

To do that, will there be enough time?

Will he use all the resources that he has to do it?

I don't know.

He was in Philadelphia talking to African-Americans, making that pitch, saying you're going to be a whole lo better off with me than you are with President Trump even though you may not be 100% enthusiastic about some of the things that I've done.

He's going to be in Michigan a zillion times, I guarantee you, this summer, and particularly when we hit the fall and he's going to go for African-American women, which have been a true base of the Democratic Party, He's got to work on African-American men and he's going to have to work on the Latino vote as well.

Is there any question tha he will also show up in Michigan with a guy named Obama?

I think is a very real possibility, like he did last time whe they went over to Wayne State.

Bill I thin is the betting guy in the panel.

You got you got some money on that, don't you?

Yeah I think so.

A little bit.

Yeah.

I think I'm going to win.

All right.

Well, interestingly enough, this decision, this verdict comes right in the middl of a pretty interesting debate unfolding as a result of some survey data from the Detroit Regional Chamber that our friend Richard Czuba basically saying tha the democracy indeed is at risk and the question is, as a result of this, is it at a greater risk?

Let's take a look at the setup piece.

Would you please raise your hand if you believe in our democracy, if the polling data is correct, one third of you are not raising your hands.

What was an enormous surprise to m and I think to a lot of people was when we asked voter if democracy was the best form of government, only 67% of voters could say that.

For 40 years, Richard Czub has been taking the temperature of Michigan's citizens and he has never seen numbers like this before.

In the Detroit Chamber of Commerce survey, for example, 5% favor a dictatorship.

17% say the form of government doesn't matter.

For Caucasians, that number is 15%.

And for African Americans, it is 34%.

Part of what is driving thi disillusionment with democracy is the US versus them attitude in the electorate.

We are viewing each other as bigger threats to America than we are outside forces.

And on top of that, 5% of the citizens favor some form of violence if their person loses in November.

But Republicans outnumber Democrats on that front.

Amongst Republicans base Republicans, that number jumps to 13.

We can see in these numbers are fundamentally hurting democracy.

And we've got to do something about it because once a cut corrodes too badly, there may be not ther may be no coming back from it.

A sobering thought would you make of those numbers when you heard them, Chuck?

They're fascinating numbers.

Is it sobering?

It is soberin and it makes you really wonder where is the country right now?

What are the true values?

And have we been holding on to, quote unquote, false values?

I think that's all going to be tested in November, without a doubt.

And people are going to have to make some hard decisions.

And I still think there a decent number of people out there that just aren't sure how they're going to vote on this and which way they're going to weigh in.

And to my colleague's point, they aren't crazy about either one of these candidates at the top of the ticket running to become the next president of the United States.

And some of them won't vote.

Some of them will do of uncommitted vote.

Certainly Arab-Americans will say, I don't want either one of these guys and I' just not going to vote for them.

And there may be a decent number of people who just say, I'm going to sit on my hands and not vote at all.

I mean, it's just think about this.

You're called up to take a poll where someone's asking you about your opinion and you're saying, I think people like me should have less opinions in these elections and less choice.

I mean, that's what democracy is.

Everyone gets a chance to have their viewpoint, you know, included in a decisio on how our government operates.

And for a third of people to answer, maybe I don't think that that's the best way to do it.

I mean, that's just stunning.

We can't say it's anything less than that, bu it's not ultimately surprising because we have one candidat who's running for president on essentially a platform.

You saw in the statement he put out yesterday that the country is a divided mes and we are a country in decline.

I'm paraphrasing his statement, but he has been saying that over and over and over again.

And that's very unusual compared to what presidential candidates normally do.

It's usually a race to se who can be the most patriotic, I guess.

Oh, I was just going to sa the one thing that kind of did jump out to me, though, was when we did the the racial breakdown of individuals who said that democracy wasn't the best way to go.

You know, you saw that 34% African-American number.

But I guess to me that's not wholly unsurprising considering, you know, for a swath of this country, democracy hasn't benefited them, admittedly, for I mean, in recent memory.

Yes, obviously.

But you even go back to the sixties when we were fighting for civil rights.

You go back further than that when you had individual based on the color of their skin or your gender that you couldn't vote.

I mean, you do have this this precedent where, yeah, democracy hasn't always been the best for every single person in this country.

So it's not entirely shocking to me.

There are people out there who still feel that that way who still feel underrepresented.

And so I guess it's those individuals that I'm most curious about, whether this is just a sentiment that to your point, because the president has been harping on this, the former president has been harping on this, that this is just something that's more top of mind to people and they feel more comfortable speaking out about it now.

Or if, you know, this is, you know, new in any regard.

I think this poll just didn't quite go far enough.

If you push through a lot of those poll, those people who said we don't like democracy or we're not satisfied, it's just like she said, they're going to ask them, okay, what's the alternative?

Yeah.

I know.

Well 5% said a dictator.

5%.

I mean, think about.

You know, what he said.

You know what?

That sounds like a small number, but think about it.

5% is a good chunk of people.

If you multiply the times a million people.

You're always going, you could have taken this poll in 1897 or 1936 and I bet you would have had.

5%.

And Trotsky still would have won?

Yeah.

You know, look, you have Eugene Debs running for president in 1920 from a jail cell.

So this is an anomaly.

Well, I think it's basically people just saying we're dissatisfied with democracy.

African-Americans are going to have a higher percentage that say that democracy.

What has it done for us?

It's been a bad deal, but there's got to be something better.

You push them, you say, okay, what is it?

Well, we did this years ago.

We would make those confessions and then we would say to one another, let's find a way to work on this together and resolve it.

And that's what's missing.

And we're doing this .

Polling, people who have onl lived under a democratic system, they have not live under a dictator system.

Right.

So you're asking about something they have no experience with, which is why.

The 34 and if they end up choosing it.

They may look back five years from now and say, whoa, whoa, I wasn't thinking at all.

But this poll was also about, if you read the whole thing, misinformation and people having a misunderstanding of the economy for a year, you never.

61% believe there's a recession going.

So let's combine these two facts.

How many of these people know what a democracy you know, that's a question, too.

Do they know what a democracy is?

Do they know the repercussions of saying, hey, a dictator is better?

Do they understand what that means?

I mean, I think there were other questions that you could have asked t maybe get to the bottom of this.

You can't always do that in a poll, and that's understandable.

But but do you think all of them understood the implications of what they were saying?

That answer I don't know.

Probably not.

Yeah.

I don't think.

So.

Yeah, it was arguably, I'm at least guessing here.

It's something out of frustration.

I mean, especially if you're talking to younger voters who made their first presidential election.

My first presidential election was 2016.

This is all that I have known as a member of the voting electorate.

I imagine that I'm not alon in saying that, you know, that it's wild to think that this i all I've ever known as a voter.

And I can imagine that there are people out there who are saying, if this is it, I don't want any part of it.

I mean.

We live at a tim and this is probably not a road we want to go down at this point, but we live at a time that people have grave, misunderstood endings of how their government works, how elections works.

Because they're getting their news from Facebook.

Well, and other social media sites.

I mean, I mean, it's it's it's something else.

And and they can't alway explain why they feel something or they have a viewpoint and they can't explain the background behind it or the details behind it.

And it's incumben upon us as people in the media and the people who are out there consuming, you know, objective information to try to correct these things in an understanding way.

Well, there is a huge, huge generation gap.

Okay?

And the more you move up the age scale, the more I don't want to use the word intelligent, but more informed.

The people are am I just blowing smoke or not?

The more experienced you are in absorbing information you've been getting over a long period of time, but time.

It's not young people spreadin some of this stuff on Facebook.

I would just back on I would say that one mean spreading.

I'm not saying that young people don't spread misinformation.

I've obviously I've seen a ton of it on Instagram, on Tik Tok and stuff like that.

I will, however, say that there is a reason why there is the concept of the older individual who's just sharing thing on Facebook because they saw it.

Like, I don't think misinformation necessarily goes away.

It depending on your age.

And I don't necessarily think that just because the older that you are especially now when we do rely so much on social media that that doesn't necessarily necessitat you being a more informed voter.

The way it used to be.

Okay.

The way it used to be wise is that people would watch television news to get what the story was, and then they would buy a newspaper to find out really what the story was.

Okay.

Chuck, are those days long gone?

Yes, a lot of the younge because a lot of a lot of people don't even read the news very, very precisely.

Yeah, precisely.

We I mean, I had a moment this wee that really has stuck with me.

I've been covering the false electors preliminary exam in Ingham County District Court all week.

And I was talking to one of the electors kind of during one of the breaks.

And he said to me, I was asking him, where do you get your news from?

And he said, Well, I don't watch Fox News and I don't watch Newsmax because they're too liberal.

Yeah, yeah.

He said that to me.

ESSENC And what are you watching now?

And he mentioned, you know, some, some outlets that real America's Voice, some other outlets that, you know, I don't consume on a regular basis because they're primarily on the Internet and a lot of people don't.

But people have turned to thes alternative sites to get news.

There's little or no, you know, fact checking happen or when they make a mistake, do they correct the record?

I mean, this is this is where we're at now.

There's so many choices for people to go to to get their news and they're not getting the information right.

And they don't have one of their standards is not objectivity.

It's just not.

We were all in journalism school, taught read as many different sources as possible.

Okay, put it in the melting pot, discuss it, and then come up with a decision that apparently takes too much effort now.

Well, you need to say that they were reading newspapers.

Yes.

Reinforced what you saw on television 40 years ago.

But remember what Lyndon Johnson said about Walter Cronkite.

He said, if you lost Cronkite, you lost the country.

And that's when he thre in the towel on the Vietnam War.

And because well, because Cronkite kind of represented in television form what the newspapers were givin you in more detail, that with.

Respect, that's when there was respect for it, right?

Absolutely.

But there isn't anymore.

Everything is polarized.

It's all over the map.

And you got to go back to what you were just talking about in journalism school.

You got to just look a the whole panoply of information and put it all together in a melting pot and come up with a consensus for your fellow.

People who used to have a time where there was ABC CBS, NBC on the broadcast side, it was The New York Times it was The Wall Street Journal, and it was whatever your local papers were, that's where people were getting the majority of their information.

And now the media is so diverse and it is within the media so divided as well.

You got MSNBC on one end, you got Fox on the other end, and then you got CNN trying to be somewhat in the middle of all this.

But you could just go and watch Fox News all day or watch MSNBC all day.

And if that's the only wa you're getting your information, you're getting a very slanted view.

Well and it's reinforcing your view, which is why these people are watching this stuff.

Those guys are right.

I agree with that 1,000%.

All right.

Guess what?

Time out.

I can't believe it.

Thank you.

We were just getting started.

A good discussion.

We're going to continue.

But thank you for watching and we'll see you here next week.

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Production of Off the Record is made possible, in part by Martin Waymire, a full servic strategic communications agency, partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and public policy engagement.

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