Tamara Keith and Susan Page on the political impact of Trump’s legal issues

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• William Brangham:

  Former President Trump gets a reprieve and a trial date. Congress steps back from the brink, but might have triggered another speaker fight. And the Supreme Court takes up abortion again.

  It is a perfect time for our Politics Monday team. That is Tamara Keith of NPR and Susan Page of USA Today. Amy Walter is away.

  Welcome to you both. Thank you so much for being here. Good to see you, Susan.

• Susan Page, Washington Bureau Chief, USA Today:

  Great to be here.

• William Brangham:

  Tam, cannot overlook the fact that this was a big legal day for Donald Trump. He gets a reprieve on the bond that he has to pay for the civil fraud ruling.

  But there is going to now be a trial in the middle of next month. Donald Trump will have to be in that courtroom every single day. We are in the middle of a presidential campaign. I feel like I have asked you this before, and our — and Amna and Geoff have asked the same. We don't know how this is going to play out, but does this matter to voters or is this a baked cake?

• Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:

  We also don't know how that's going to play out.

  First off, his team will inevitably try to delay this. Maybe they will succeed a little. Maybe they won't. We will find out.

• William Brangham:

  This judge seemed very skeptical of delays.

• Tamara Keith:

  Yes. Yes, that is true.

  But in terms of whether this hurts him, with hardcore Republican based voters, the kind of people who are voting in primaries, none of this baggage hurt him in the primary. We are headed into a general election, where there are voters who say, if he is convicted of a crime, Republican voters who say, if he is convicted of crime, they would have a very hard time voting for him.

  But it's also possible that he's not convicted of a crime. This is a trial. And this — in terms of like what the experts think, this is the thinnest reed. This is one of the more flimsy legal theory and legal challenge that he faces.

• William Brangham:

  Right.

  Susan, the other big development was this reprieve that he got on this, the amount he has to pay and the timing he has to pay on this bond. Trump today afterwards said, I will pay this out of my own cash, although that is cash I would have liked to have used to fund my campaign.

  We know that there are some fund-raising totals that have been coming out there. When you look at those numbers between Biden and Trump, what do they tell you?

• Susan Page:

  Just let's note that Trump has not donated any of his own money to his campaign since 2016.

• William Brangham:

  Right.

• Susan Page:

  But, putting that aside, President Biden has several big problems, including trailing narrowly in battleground states and in most national polls. But he has a big advantage when it comes to campaign cash.

  He has about twice as much campaign cash on hand as Donald Trump does. And you talk about the repercussions of Trump's legal troubles. Maybe they're not political, but they're financial. We know now from numbers that we just released that the Trump people spent $10 million legal fees just this year so far.

  So that is a big drain for his campaign. Campaign money isn't everything, especially in a campaign where the two candidates are so well-known, but it is something.

• William Brangham:

  Right.

  What do you make of that? Is it an insurmountable gap?

• Tamara Keith:

  Well, what I would say is that his fund-raising appeal that I looked at the other day had 90 percent of it going to his campaign and 10 percent of it going to a political action committee that's been funding the legal challenges.

  So they are definitely still pulling money into this political action committee that is just basically spending money on lawyers. It is a big deficit that he faces now in terms of money. The question, though, is, up until this point, President Biden has been able to combine with the DNC and campaign — and state parties all over the country and raise huge sums of money from wealthy people.

  Donald Trump was not the presumptive nominee, didn't have control of the RNC and couldn't do that for the last many months. And now that he has control of the RNC, that spigot could open, but it depends on whether wealthy people want to give all that money. And also the small-dollar donations do matter too.

  And there's an element of fatigue there among his small-dollar donors.

• William Brangham:

  Right.

  Susan, tomorrow, the Supreme Court is going to take up its first abortion case since Dobbs. This is the mifepristone case. This case has enormous implications legally for women's health, for whether the FDA scientists can continue to approve drugs for all Americans.

  Separate from that, and regardless of how this comes down, this could also have enormous political implications.

• Susan Page:

  Yes, just look at the repercussions since Dobbs two years ago. It is what some Democrats — it really helped Democrats in the elections we have had since then. Some Democrats think it will have an enormous influence in this one.

  And this case goes right to the heart of the concerns many voters have about access to abortion services. Most abortions in this country are now performed with drugs, medical abortions…

• William Brangham:

  Yes, I think it's six in 10.

• Susan Page:

  … more than 60 percent. That's right.

  And you look at where Americans stand on this issue, there was a Gallup poll that showed 63 percent of Americans thought there should be distribution of abortion drugs, including 41 percent of Republicans. But if these conservative anti-abortion groups succeed in this legal case, that puts at risk not just the abortion drugs.

  It puts at risk IVF drugs. It puts at risk some forms of contraception. I cannot imagine that is a winning political issue.

• William Brangham:

  Right. No, it's incredible to watch how that's going to unfold.

  Tam, on Congress, it seemed like last week they stepped back from the brink, avoided a shutdown. Speaker Johnson did cobble this deal together, but Marjorie Taylor Greene holding this sword of Damocles over his head.

  What is your sense of how this is going to play out?

• Tamara Keith:

  Right.

  So, she introduced this motion to vacate, but she did not force a rapid vote on it. And so we don't really know how it will play out. What I do know is that members of Congress are tired. Certainly, there are Marjorie Taylor Greenes, there are other allies of hers, and other people who are similarly very upset and have sort of an absolutist view, very upset that Johnson would put something on the floor that did not have support of all the Republicans.

  But everyone's tired. And even Democrats are tired after the very long process to get Kevin McCarthy into the speaker's seat and then the very long process once he was booted. It is certainly possible that, if it were to come up for a vote, that Democrats would not be all united against Speaker Johnson in the way they were against Speaker McCarthy.

  That said, if you're Speaker Johnson, do you really want Democrats bailing you out? Probably not.

• William Brangham:

  Tamara Keith and Susan Page, thank you both so much for being here. Great to see you.

• Susan Page:

  Nice to see you.

• Tamara Keith:

  You're welcome.