Transcribe your podcast
[00:00:00]

The attorney who just defeated Donald Trump to the tune of $83.3 million is now speaking out about what happened behind the scenes, including a moment that sent the former President into a fit of rage. Roberta Kaplan was representing Eugene Carroll in her defamation trial that ended last Friday. During the lead up to that trial, Trump sat with her legal team for a deposition at Mar-a-Lago. I'll let Kaplan explain what happened when it came time for lunch.

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You could see the wheel spinning in his brain. You could really almost see it. He said, Well, you're here in Mar-a-Lago. What do you think you're going to do for lunch? Where are you going to get lunch? I said to him, Well, I raised this question with your attorneys yesterday, sir, and they graciously offered to provide us with lunch, at which point there was a huge pile of documents, exhibits sitting in front of him, and he took the pile and he just threw it across the table.

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That was on the podcast, George Conway Explains It All, and I'm joined now by George Conway. So please explain it all for us.

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I can't really explain it because I've never heard of anything like that before. It is a very common practice that when you are hosting a deposition, your counsel provides lunch for everyone else, and they provide lunch, usually in a separate conference room, so both sides can have confidential conversations. In this particular instance, the deposition was held at Mar-a-Lago for Donald Trump's convenience. So it would have been perfectly understandable, and it was perfectly understandable, that Elina Haba and the team of lawyers representing Trump ordered lunch for their adversaries. The same courtesy would be extended if the shoe were on the other foot. And he went bananas because of that. And he started screaming, as Robbie Kaplan describes, he was screaming at Elina Haba. Tough client there.

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There was this other moment as I was listening to this whole conversation, and it's obviously not just getting my attention, but also everyone else's. I want people to just listen to that.

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We come in the room and I say, I'm done asking questions, and immediately I hear from the other side, off the record, off the record, off the record. So they must have planned it. And he looks at me from across the table and he says, See you next Tuesday. You could tell they was It was a joke, again, like teenage boys would come up with. Yeah, that is a teenage boy level joke.

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Okay, George, this is cable, but we should keep it paging.

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Yeah, I'm not going to spell it out.

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But what did you think when you were sitting they're listening to that?

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I mean, it's just appalling. I mean, he's a pig, and the fact that he was present in the United States makes it all the more distressing. I mean, it was misogynistic. I mean, to call a woman that to her face and trying to be cute about it. I mean, it was just disgraceful. The indecent conduct that you wouldn't expect in any adult. I mean, it was just... I wouldn't even say it was teenage boy-level conduct. It was just utterly, utterly childish. It's not that surprising that Trump does this. We've seen him do all sorts of crude things over time. It brought to mind this incident incident that occurred in the Roosevelt Room, I think it was in the fall of 2019, where Donald Trump was congratulating a pair of female astronauts who had conducted an EVA, a spacewalk outside the space shuttle, and it was the first all-female EVA. And Trump made a mistake. He said, Oh, this is the first time a woman has ever been outside the space shuttle. And then the astronaut, the female astronaut, gently corrected him, and he clearly was taken in the back. It was a very gentle, very respectful correction.

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And he starts to touch his forehead as if to scratch an itch, but he used his middle finger. And there was this huge controversy. Was he really giving the finger to these astronauts? People gave him the benefit of the doubt, but I find it hard to give him the benefit of the doubt after seeing all of this conduct.

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George Conway, it was a fascinating conversation to hear from her on the behind the scenes. Thank you for coming on. Again, you are now a source Thanks for coming on tonight.

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Happy to be here.