the potential trial will look like. the fulton county d.a. fani willis made clear she s ready to go to trial now. she asked for an october 23rd, 2023 trial date yesterday. that s two months from now and incredibly aggressive timeline for her. trump made clear yesterday through his lawyers that he really does not have any intention of having a speedy trial. he wants to play this out, delay as long as he possibly can, so we ll have to litigate those elements of the case going forward, but as of now, the first step is almost there, we have 17 of 19 defendants who have surrendered and can look ahead to how a particular trial might play out. zachary cohen for us outside the fulton county courthouse, thank you. with us, cnn senior legal analyst elie honig. what a week it has been. and there is so much ahead. let s begin with these efforts to look, so many. let s begin with the efforts to some of them move their case to federal court, because that s the hearing on monday. that s what th
massive numbers of republicans think he s been pursued, hounded, politically persecuted, whatever you want to call it. they have no intention of supporting him ever again. they do believe that. there is an undercurrent of that already. but the people who decide elections are sort of, you know, independent, center right independents in the suburbs around atlanta, around phoenix, around raleigh and other places. they do they are not going to vote for a convicted felon. they re not going to do it. this election cannot be a referendum on whether it is okay to be a convicted felon and the president. if you want to win, every republican i know wants it to be a referendum among biden. i have the same thought as you. the goal posts keep moving. it was, well, he s been impeached but not accused of a crime and now he s accused of a time. what will be said if he gets convicted, let s say the conviction is in april, let s say any of them, the response is going to be, well, he still has his app
if he is convicted of a felony in any of these cases, it is going to cause a fairly sizable cohort of republicans to say i do not want to associate my franchise with this person any longer. despite what we saw at the debate, with six of the candidates holding up their hand saying they would support him even if he s convicted. i m reading the polling. simple political consultant. 70% i m just a caveman. 70% of the american people say a felon should not be president. including 58% of republicans. so when the jury by the way, juries are not political actors. a prosecutor can be vilified as a political actor and they have been, but a jury is ordinary americans, your peers. so, we re talking earlier about ken buck, a republican lawmaker, who said this yesterday on that front. we don t have it. he basically said i will not vote for a convicted felon, whoever it is. the question was about trump. you re very close to mitch
landed, and, remember, we talk about the word defiant, that came directly from a campaign adviser and that is something they like to say time and time again after each of these indictments and arraignments, that trump is defiant. but as we know two things can be true at once. when it comes to that mug shot, you know, comes to leaving the jail, they were very happy with how that turned out. as you said, they already started fund-raising off of it, started making t-shirts, he posted for the first time on x, formerly known as twitter, as a way to take control of the media narrative. he knows that people have been waiting for him to get back on twitter or x for literal years. and taking control of the narrative is what former president trump is very good at. but we also know that he is increasingly agitated by all of these charges, by these continuing arrests, and particularly by this case in georgia. i have spoken to him, at various times about this case, and other cases, but you can see
going to be not always, but before the election, always going to be some other step. the frog is also addicted to a drug called donald trump and we may have to crash and burn as a party. we may have to really see how bad bad gets. what does that mean? the judge is very conservative, legal scholar, said to us the other week, there is no republican party anymore. what does crash and burn look like? there is, right? if you look at the polling, 35% of folks are addicted to donald trump and seem to be running the party. there is still 65%, 50 million republicans that are wanting to ask tough questions and want genuine leadership and to your point, they want to go beat joe biden. by the way, the most easily beatable president maybe in history right now and we just don t seem to want to wake up to the easy facts. and still 35 points ahead of his closest rival in the primary. elie, scott, geoff, thank you so much. if president trump s arrest steals the spotlight from some candidate