Hillary Clinton’s Night of Schadenfreude Before Donald Trump’s Second Arraignment

On the night before Donald Trump’s second arraignment, Hillary Clinton appeared in her element. Former Barack Obama aide Jon Lovett was interviewing Clinton in a downtown Manhattan auditorium; a liberal New York audience welcomed her with a standing ovation. “Republicans have taken to the airwaves in response to these charges,” Lovett said of Trump’s federal indictment, “and they’ve come to one conclusion: we must prosecute Hillary Clinton.” The audience laughed. “When in doubt,” Clinton replied, to roaring applause. 

The interview was for a live taping of Pod Save America, the podcast Lovett and three other alums of the Obama White House—Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor, and Dan Pfeiffer— founded in 2017. This night, however, it was also for the Tribeca Film Festival. MSNBC’s Alex Wagner guest co-hosted, with special guests Clinton, New York Attorney General Letitia “Tish” James, and comedian Roy Wood Jr. At one point, the now infamous image of boxes of classified documents stored in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom from the indictment—which also ran on A1 of the New York Times over the weekend— was projected behind them on stage. “It isn’t shocking, but it is, I think, bracing to see in print just what a shambolick, small time, two-bit fucking criminal this guy is,” said Lovett, the comedian of the group. “If there’s one place in which, I have to say, I am sympathetic to Donald Trump, it is this: he would rather go to jail than clean out his closet,” he joked. The 913-seat theater was sold out to a mostly middle-aged audience, but I did spot some teenagers. One, an apparent Pod Save superfan there with his mother, sat next to me, howling and cheering as the hosts—and Wagner—sipped red wine out of plastic cups and discussed Trump’s growing legal woes. It was a night for communal, and unabashed, schadenfreude; the episode was titled “Re-Indicted And It Feels So Good (with Hillary Clinton!).”

Clinton’s appearance Monday night marked her first public response to Trump’s Florida indictment. “Did you have any reaction to the news, or are you keeping your powder dry in case you get jury duty in New York?” asked Lovett, who worked for Clinton before serving in the Obama White House. “You know, Jon, I have a lot of reactions to it, and I think the best reaction publicly is, you know, let’s see it unfold and see what happens,” she said. Lovett said this was a perfect transition to the Crooked Media merch that they’d brought her: a t-shirt that read, “Totally Impartial Potential Juror.” Clinton checked out the Crooked logo underneath the graphic. “You even put his nickname for me down at the bottom,” she laughed. 

Republicans, apparently looking to change the subject from Trump becoming the first former president to face federal charges, have returned to their attacks on Clinton’s emails in recent days. “I do think it’s odd, let’s just say, to the point of being absurd, how that is their only response,” she said. The GOP’s efforts to defend Trump are “truly beyond anything that I ever thought possible in this country,” said Clinton. “It is so profoundly disturbing how this could have been the break. This could’ve been the opportunity to say, you know, thank you so much for everything you’ve done for us, we really appreciate it, but this is kind of serious, so we’re not going to continue to defend you. But no, they’re all in again. The psychology of this is so hard for me to fully grasp.” 

At times during the event, the hosts struck a more sincere tone. There could be more instances where Trump—who prosecutors allege intentionally hid top secret documents (including on U.S. nuclear programs) in his personal residence, boasted about having them to people without security clearance, and obstructed an investigation into his possession of them—shared classified information beyond the instances captured on tape, they said. “We know that he showed off the secret Iran plan to some journalists, we know that he bragged to a guy from his PAC about what we think was probably a classified map of Afghanistan,” Vietor, who in a previous life was Obama’s National Security Council spokesperson, said. “We may never know what else got out there. I think that’s the thing that freaks out the intel people the most.”

James, meanwhile told Wagner and Pfeiffer that she’ll be watching Tuesday’s arraignment in the context of her own $250 million civil lawsuit against Trump, his children and the family business, in which she alleges the family engaged in more than a decade of fraud to rake in hundreds of millions in illegal gains (Trump has denied all wrongdoing). “In all likelihood, I believe that my case, as well as DA Bragg and the Georgia case, will unfortunately have to be adjourned pending the outcome of the federal case,” she said. 

James wouldn’t talk about Trump’s most recent deposition, aside from that “he did attend, and he did answer the questions. But he did not look at me.”