Our inside source, who is also here tonight, not only served in the Trump administration as the National Security Advisor, he was also the Assistant Attorney General at the Justice Department before. Ambassador John Bolton is here. It's great to have you. Ambassador, when you hear this, what do you read into Jack Smith asking for more time from the judge to sort through this when he's actually typically been the one pushing to get this case in trial in court faster?

Well, I think it's less Jack Smith than it is dealing with the rest the Justice Department on two levels. First, I think this question of timing and what can be done or not be done pursuant to Justice Department policy before an election is going to take some time to resolve because there's never been a case like this. It's another piece of uncharded territory of how much they're actually going to be able to do in September, October. But I think the other issue is the Supreme Court decision on immunity is an extraordinarily broad decision. It's wrong in many respects, in my view. One respect in which it's wrong is that it's too simplistic in its assessment of how the executive branch works. I think within the Justice Department, you have a lot of components that have responsibility for protecting the executive branch, but also prosecuting criminals. Before Jack Smith plunges ahead with whatever his view of how to interpret that immunity decision is, the rest of the department has to come to agreement. I think there's probably a lot of discussion, and that's a big cause of the delay.

Yeah, it's remarkable to see it, especially given this is a case that revolves around after the election in January sixth. Then at that press conference today, we also heard Trump describing when he left the White House as a peaceful transfer of power. That's a quote from him. I'm not sure. Historians will see it that way. But as he was talking about what it looked like when he left the White House the last time, he also seemed to be laying the groundwork for the 2024 election and possible issues that we could see him trying to present should he lose this election. Listen to what he said when he was raising questions about Harris as the candidate.

But the fact that you can get no votes, lose in the primary system, in other words, you had 14 or 15 people, she was the first one out, and that you can then be picked to run for a president, it seems to me actually unconstitutional. Perhaps it's not.

Do you think a comment like that is Trump laying the groundwork to question the election results, claiming it's unconstitutional for her to be the nominee?

Absolutely. It's another demonstration how little of American history Trump knows. Whatever he did know, he obviously has disregarded. But we know one thing for sure, Trump never loses. If he's not declared the winner of 2024. As in 2020, it must be because he was treated unfairly yet again. It was stolen yet again. I don't think he knows exactly what his theory is going to be this time to explain how the election, he was denied winning the election, so he's trotting out a number of things. I think this is why people need to start thinking more now about how to deny Trump the ability the day after the election, if he loses, to try and throw the process into chaos again. I think this was a mistake in 2020. Trump was the cause of many Republicans not casting early ballots because he insisted they would be fraudulently abused by the Democrats. Well, in 2020, why weren't his lawyers in court in August, September, October, trying to stop all this vote harvesting, all this illicit activity? Because he didn't want to do something that might actually affect the election. He wanted to build the basis for an excuse to explain why he didn't really lose.

I definitely think that's what he's about.

Yeah. He was questioning mail-in voting today, even as his daughter-in-law at the Republican National Committee is urging people to vote by mail, saying that they should play that game. I do want something else that happened today in this very lengthy press conference? Something that we're going to show you what Trump said today and then show you what actually happened.

I was very protective of her. Nobody would understand that, but I was. I think my people understand it. They used to say, Lock her up, lock her up. And I'd say, Just relax, please. Folks, honestly, she's guilty as hell. I think she should be in jail. She should be locked up.

Not exactly relax, please, or as he phrased it today.

Look, Trump can't tell the difference between what's true and what's false. It's not that he lies a lot, because to lie, you have to do it consciously. He just can't tell the difference. So he makes up what he wants to say at any given time. If it happens to comport with what everybody else sees, well, that's fine. And if it doesn't comport with anybody else, he doesn't really care. And he's had decades of getting away with it. In his mind, the truth is whatever he wants it to be. That's what you heard today.

Yeah. I mean, you got to wonder how Hillary Clinton sees a first answer like that one. Ambassador John Bolton, thank you for being here.