New Trump federal election interference indictment aims to satisfy SCOTUS | The Excerpt
On Wednesday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: There's a new federal election interference indictment against former President Donald Trump. Paste BN Trump Campaign Reporter Zac Anderson reports on some of the latest TV ad spending by Donald Trump and whether Florida could be in play this fall. Donald Trump adds Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard to his 2024 transition team. An Israeli hostage has been freed following a "complex rescue operation" in southern Gaza. Paste BN Wellness Editor Leora Arnowitz talks about neglect at Yale Fertility Center.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Wednesday, August 28th, 2024. This is The Excerpt.
Today, a new indictment charges Trump after the Supreme Court immunity ruling. Plus, could Florida be in play this fall? And how patients were neglected at a major fertility center.
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The prosecutor and former President Donald Trump's federal election interference case secured a new indictment against Trump yesterday. The new superseding indictment is meant to deal with the Supreme Court's decision earlier this summer that Trump had broad immunity from charges relating to official acts as president. The new indictment distinguishes Trump's private actions, which could face charges from public duties, which would be immune from prosecution. For example, the indictment alleged his false statements about election fraud and social media posts and during his speech near the White House on January 6th, 2021 were campaign related and therefore private instead of official.
One of the major changes in the indictment removed allegations against an unindicted co-conspirator, Jeffrey Clark, who was then an assistant attorney general. Clark helped Trump pressure other Justice Department officials to overturn the results of the 2020 election. But a number of references to the department and that effort were removed from the indictment. The Supreme Court had ruled that Trump could not be prosecuted for that conduct because the Justice Department is part of the executive branch that he oversaw as president. For his part, Trump called the new indictment ridiculous in a post on Truth Social and said it should be dismissed.
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Could Florida be competitive this fall? I caught up with Paste BN Trump campaign reporter, Zac Anderson, who joined me from the Sunshine State to talk about some TV ad spending and to put the race there in context.
Zac, thanks for making the time.
Zac Anderson:
Tay, thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So Zac, just tell us about this latest TV advertising Donald Trump has purchased in Florida.
Zac Anderson:
Yeah, so it's not a big purchase. It's $48,000 worth of ads that are going to run in one specific media market, in the West Palm Beach media market, which happens to be where Trump lives. The West Palm Beach market includes Mar-a-Lago, which is Trump's primary residence. And so yeah, this is a foray by the Trump campaign into some Florida advertising.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah. Does this show Florida is competitive, Zac? And what might a close race there mean for the election this fall?
Zac Anderson:
Democrats in Florida are claiming that this shows that the state is competitive, that Trump is nervous about Florida, which is why he's spending money here. But it's a very small purchase of advertising compared to the millions that he's spending in battleground states. I think we would have to see a lot more spending by the Trump campaign to signify that they really felt like they needed to do some advertising in Florida and needed to shore up their support here. It might simply be that the campaign is advertising for an audience of one. Trump is known to watch a lot of TV and might be asking his advisors why he isn't seeing his campaign ads on TV when he turns it on. But it's hard to say. I mean, the Trump campaign in a statement said that they try to have a robust campaign all over the country and they say they don't take any state for granted, even though they think that Florida is deeply read.
Taylor Wilson:
Zac, can you remind us how Trump did in Florida in 2016 and 2020 and just how Florida has landed historically in presidential elections?
Zac Anderson:
So Trump won Florida by 3.3 percentage points in 2020, which doesn't sound like all that much, but it happened to be a huge increase. For many years, Florida was largely decided by a single percentage point or less in presidential races and statewide races for governor and things like that. It was considered America's largest swing state battleground state. Trump's 2020 victory, he tripled his margin of victory from 2016 in Florida, so that was seen as a pretty big increase. And then Governor Ron DeSantis actually won Florida by 19 percentage points in 2022, and that has led a lot of people to think that Florida was trending pretty strongly red. But what we've seen in some polling recently is that 19 percentage points is probably a high watermark for Republicans that polls show that right now Trump is leading Kamala Harris by between five and three percentage points, which would be larger than his margin of victory in 2020, but not blowout margins, although in Florida that's still a pretty hefty lead.
Taylor Wilson:
And Zac, nationally, I want to just get a better sense of how these campaigns are approaching advertising. We talked about ads at the top. How many TV ads have we seen nationwide backing Trump compared with Vice President Kamala Harris, or before her, President Joe Biden? And how does the spending compare here?
Zac Anderson:
So nationwide, from mid-July, there's been about 44,000 ads aired promoting Trump compared to about 33,000 ads aired promoting Kamala Harris or Joe Biden. Those numbers go back to when Biden was still in the race, according to the Wesleyan Media project. But Democrats have actually outspent Republicans on advertising in the presidential race, 63 million to about 49 million. And we're really seeing that spending concentrated heavily in the swing states as you would expect.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, interesting findings. Zac Anderson covers Donald Trump and Republicans for Paste BN. Thank you, Zac.
Zac Anderson:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
A pair of former Democrats who have endorsed former President Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and Tulsi Gabbard are joining his transition team. Kennedy ran against Trump initially as a Democrat before switching to Independent. He suspended his campaign Friday and endorsed his rival.
Gabbard ran for president in 2020 as a Democrat, but left the party in 2022. The former congresswoman from Hawaii endorsed Trump earlier this week during a National Guard event.
As Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign has surged in recent weeks after she entered the race, Trump has turned to alliances with Kennedy and Gabbard to try and broaden his appeal. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.
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Israeli special forces have recovered an Israeli hostage from a tunnel in southern Gaza according to the military yesterday. Israeli officials said 52-year-old Kaid Farhan Al-Qadi, a member of Israel's Arab Bedouin minority was freed after a complex rescue operation. About 250 people were taken hostage during the Hamas-led attack last October, and more than a hundred of them remain in the hands of militants, though many are believed to be dead.
Meanwhile, negotiations for a ceasefire that would include the release of some or all of the remaining hostages are moving from Cairo to Doha Qatar. In Gaza, Israel has issued several recent evacuation orders, the most since the beginning of the 10-month long war prompting an outcry from Palestinians, the UN, and relief officials over the reduction of humanitarian zones and the absence of safe areas. The death toll in Gaza has passed 40,000.
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Patients at Yale Fertility Center say that signs of neglect were there all along. I spoke with Paste BN wellness editor Leora Arnowitz for more.
Leora, thanks for hopping on The Excerpt today.
Leora Arnowitz:
Yeah, I'm so excited to be here.
Taylor Wilson:
So Leora, unfortunately, this is a disturbing story. Would you just start by telling us about Lauren Rosenberg and her experience at this clinic?
Leora Arnowitz:
So Lauren Rosenberg was 40 years old and she desperately wanted to become a mom. She had just lost her twins at 20 weeks to a life-threatening complication. She was scared, she was devastated, and she wanted to become a parent. She saw a doctor after the loss of her twins who told her IVF could be an option, so she thought she would go to the best, biggest name place she could think of, which was Yale. But she was very disappointed with the care that she received.
Basically, when Lauren went to Yale, she went in for an egg retrieval. This is something that's pretty standard. Plenty of women go through it. She wasn't expecting anything super painful, but when she did her procedure, she was convulsing on the table. She kept telling the nurses and those in the room, "I'm feeling everything. Is this normal?" And she was basically told to stop fidgeting. She'd always considered herself to be pretty tough. And after the procedure, she was confused and almost ashamed that she couldn't withstand the pain. She told us, "When you get an egg retrieval, you're in stirrups, you're in a vulnerable position. They have you strapped down so you can only move so much." She felt super vulnerable and she felt everything and she couldn't figure out why that had happened.
Taylor Wilson:
And another woman written about in this piece, Angela went through a similar experience. What can you tell us about her and her story with this clinic?
Leora Arnowitz:
She wanted to become a parent. She and her wife decided to try IVF. And when she underwent the procedure at Yale, she said it was 45 minutes of living hell and just absolute torture. She remembers being told that she maxed out on pain medication, but maybe the doctor could retrieve more follicles if she could push through. And she really wanted the best odds, so she forced herself to continue, even though she was in an immense amount of pain. And again, similarly, she couldn't quite figure out why. In both cases the women were traumatized and in a lot of pain, but later decided to go forward with additional retrievals, egg retrievals because they knew that the success rate with IVF can be a little bit on the low side. And so because they wanted to become mothers, they opted to go through it again, even though it had been so painful and traumatizing.
Taylor Wilson:
Wow. So each woman then got a letter from Yale after these experiences. What did they discover here?
Leora Arnowitz:
Yeah, so these letters came way later right around winter break time. So that made it difficult when they tried to call to get more information. And the letter basically let them know that a nurse had been replacing fentanyl with saline solution. So suddenly their pain, the tears, everything made sense. They had gone in for what they expected to be a pretty regular procedure and wound up in unexplicable pain, and now they could finally understand why.
Taylor Wilson:
Wow. So Yale Fertility Center now faces a lawsuit over this. What do we know here? What's that issue in this suit?
Leora Arnowitz:
Yeah, so this nurse had been stealing at least 75% of all the fentanyl housed in the clinic and self injecting it, and she was later charged with a crime and pled guilty. She was replacing these vials with saline solution over at least a five-month period. There are of patients, along with the women that we spoke to for this piece, who experienced severe pain during their fertility procedures and are suing Yale as a result, and that's ongoing.
Taylor Wilson:
More broadly, Leora, what does the story tell us really about the importance of medical professionals trusting women patients about their pain and symptoms?
Leora Arnowitz:
Yeah, so I'll say as a society, there are certain things that we think of as more female traits, like more vulnerability or showing emotion, maybe dramatics and crying. These things can cause providers sometimes to believe that women have a lower tolerance or are exaggerating the severity of their conditions. And that's actually been shown in some studies. In 2019, there was a study that reported that one in five women felt that their symptoms were overlooked or disregarded by a healthcare provider. And 17% of women believed they had been treated differently because of their gender compared to only 6% of men. So I think that tells us a lot.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, excellent insight into a troubling story here. Paste BN wellness editor, Leora Arnowitz. Thank you so much.
Leora Arnowitz:
Thanks.
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Taylor Wilson:
Ascension to the role of president of the United States has to be a heady experience. But what happens when the term runs out? Stepping down from the American presidency is clearly a major career pivot. How did these leaders decide what's next and what can we learn about identity and self-fulfillment from the choices they made? Bestselling author Jared Cohen joins The Excerpt to talk about Life after Power, his book about how seven presidents moved into the final chapter of their lives. You can find the episode which originally aired earlier this year after 4:00 PM Eastern time right here on this feed.
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And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. And if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.