former president trump is expected back in new york city as soon as next week he is due to give a deposition in his other new york investigation. this one pertaining to attorney general letitia james $250 million civil probe into his real estate business practices. sources say that it is possible this deposition along with the previous one that he gave last summer could be used instead of an actual in-person appearance at the trial which is set for october. meanwhile, the new reality of an indicted and arraigned donald trump is giving democrats some political pause with the party now facing a choice. cha capitalize on the front run s legal problems or stand back and watch it play out. nowhere is that more evidence than in the white house where president biden has not a single mention of his predecessor all week long. let s bring in digital white house reporter peter nicholas, and staff writer at the atlantic, mark leibovitz, an
msnbc political contributor. welcome, guys, good to have you both here. pe peter, i m going to start with you. you re right about how there s no guide book, the first former president facing criminal charges, and thus how democrats are quote feeling their way through a fraught moment that presents both opportunity and peril for all sides. so walk us through the details here so we have an unprecedented situation in american history. we have a former president facing criminal charges. as you mentioned there, president biden has offered to keep silent, he wants to let the legal process play out trump is innocent until proven guilty so that s the posture that he s taken. but there is a whole ecosystem of democratic outside interest groups, strategists, operatives, and they re weighing what to do in this moment and there are some who want to really capitalize on trump s misfortune here. they would like to send out e-mails. they want to place digital ads
and showcase trump s legal perils, thinking that this is an opportunity to help biden in a likely reelection campaign there are others who are holding back and their feeling is, you know, trump, they want to take a cue from joe biden they want to see the legal process play out, and maybe just highlight biden s accomplishments in office, and the thinking is that trump s predicament is getting so much coverage, they don t need to amplify it in any way. that s sort of the attention we re looking at. i m curious, mark, what you make of this wait and see strategy out there if you look at the numbers, trump using his indictment to raise $8 million he has made end roads with voters who believe the justice system has been polarized and politicized. as democratic pollster points out, trump faces a major issue pertaining to just the simple math of it all he can t get elected without attracting new voters who didn t vote for him in 2024 so do you think dems are being wise to bet that trump is n
write, the gop s ongoing willingness to fuse itself to trump s deranged and slippery character has been its most defining feature for years the question is why it continues after all of these embarrassment and election defeats and why republicans at long last don t use the former presidents s mounting milestones of malfeasance as a means of setting themselves free from their orange albatross i think you wrote that before the indictment how do you explain, mark, the party s reluctance, still, not just to abandon trump but for most of them, not even speak ill of him yeah, this speaks to what dasha just said which is that, yes, quietly, i think there were a lot of republicans who will publicly support him, but wish, you know, again, off camera, that this would be the kind of development that would steer republicans away from supporting him, and, you know, on the opposite, it looks like it is
believe that this is only going to help him in the primary they believe that this is going to help galvanize his support among the grass roots, among some of the voters they were hoping to potentially steer away from trump and towards another candidate like desantis. at this point, this is sucking all of the oxygen out of the room the former president knows this. we see how his campaign is trying to capitalize on this we continuously receive those fundraising e-mails, the indictment swag. they re sellingt-shirts with a fake mug shot on it, that i hear from sources in the campaign is selling very well. they re telling me now they re up to $12 million in fundraising since the news of the indictment dropped, so politically, this is a moment that they are capitalizing on and doing so successfully so far, chris. i want to bring in mark leibovitz, a staff writer for the atlantic, and msnbc political contributor. you have a great article, you