Donald Trump's hush money trial Day 2 takeaways | The Excerpt

On Wednesday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: A second day of former President Donald Trump's criminal hush money trial is in the books, and jury selection is going quicker than expected. USA TODAY Congress, Campaigns and Democracy Reporter Karissa Waddick looks at President Joe Biden's push for blue-collar voters, and what several congressional districts won by Donald Trump might tell him. A second GOP lawmaker backs the ousting of House speaker Mike Johnson. USA TODAY Domestic Security Correspondent Josh Meyer talks about a new DHS program to combat child exploitation online. Warm oceans are devastating coral.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it.  This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Wednesday, April 17th, 2024. This is the Excerpt. Today we move closer to opening arguments in Trump's hush money trial, plus a look at Biden and blue collar voters. And how the Department of Homeland security aims to push back against the exploitation of children online.

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The first ever criminal prosecution of an ex-president continued yesterday, seven jurors were seated in former President Donald Trump's hush money trial. That's despite early predictions that it would take weeks to seat 12 unbiased jurors. At the current pace, five more jurors and six alternates are expected to be seated in the coming days. Yesterday's proceeding saw the presumptive Republican presidential nominee warned by Judge Juan Merchan over potential juror intimidation. While several possible jurors were confronted with social media posts that Trump's lawyers showed bias against the one-time reality TV star. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, hit Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a six-figure hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. Opening arguments could begin within a matter of days.

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President Joe Biden wants to win back blue collar voters. And several congressional districts won by former President Donald Trump in 2020 may offer some clues.

I spoke with USA TODAY Congress Campaigns and Democracy reporter Karissa Waddick to learn more. Karissa, thanks for hopping on the Excerpt today.

Karissa Waddick:

Yeah, thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

Taylor Wilson:

So Karissa, would you just start by telling us about Tony Milidantri and his friends? Who are they and what are their priorities this election?

Karissa Waddick:

Tony and a group of retired veterans who live about 20 to 30 minutes east of Scranton, Pennsylvania, they live in this area called Lake Ariel. And they go to a diner every morning and they sit there and they chat about politics, about the main issues they're facing right now. All of them are older, probably about over the age of 70. These are men who for the most part worked in unions for most of their lives. They're now retired. Tony especially was a union Democrat. And in 2016 he started seeing some trends. He didn't feel like the Democratic Party really represented him. Something that we heard echoed by a lot of the people in this diner that we went to, and around this area of Pennsylvania where President Biden grew up. Tony and his friends this election year are more concerned with economic issues as opposed to some of the more social issues. They cited immigration and the economy as the two big things really influencing how they are looking at the world right now, how they're looking at US politics.

Taylor Wilson:

How important is it to both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump to win over these voters this election? And also Karissa, what role did blue collar voters play in the last couple presidential elections?

Karissa Waddick:

So blue collar voters are extremely important in this election, especially when you look at the map of swing states across the country, and three of the big ones are Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. I'm sure a lot of people remember hearing about these three states in 2016 and again in 2020. And that's because they've had a major role in the past two elections, and they're likely to play a major role in this election too. They have a lot of these voters like Tony kind of Union Blue Democrats, former Union Blue Democrats, Donald Trump won these states in 2016. That was the first year that a Republican had won these states in the presidential election since 1992. They had been considered democratic strongholds, something called Blue Wall states. And in 2020, Biden was able to win these states back. That trend was also reflected across a number of what we call swing districts across the country, congressional districts that flip from Democrat to Republican.

These areas have a similar demographic, similar history to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. And they show these same trends, voters in these areas, blue collar voters, they swing based on the status of the economy. And Trump was able to win these voters over because they had felt like Democrats had left them behind. Biden in 2020 kind of touted his blue collar roots and then really leaned into his economic messages to win these voters back. But some of the other swing districts, he didn't win them but he narrowed the margins. In 2024 I talked to some experts and they said, it's great that Biden narrowed the margins and was able to win because of that in 2020. In 2024, he might need to do more than that. He's going to need to win back substantially more of these voters to continue on with the second term.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah. In your story, Karissa, you point to some Democratic representatives who have managed to win over Conservative voters in working class areas. How have they done so and what lessons can Biden take from them?

Karissa Waddick:

We looked at three districts, Pennsylvania's eighth district, which is represented by Matt Cartwright, who's a Democrat. We looked at Ohio's ninth District, which is in the northwestern corner of that state, includes Toledo and a few other areas. And then Maine's second district, which is in the northern part of Maine and that is represented by Jared Golden. And these three representatives really, really focus on the economic issues that impact their districts. They in Congress almost exclusively focus on bringing back earmarks and bringing back funding to their districts, talking infrastructure projects, bridges, things like that that impact their constituents. One of the other reasons that these representatives have held on in their districts, even though Trump has won these districts in 2020, was because they're seen as kind of locals. They understand that they come from a similar background as them. That ability to relate to voters one-on-one has really helped them.

So the major lessons for Biden, I think that can be taken from these folks is that in these blue collar areas, it really is maybe less of a focus on the cultural issues that Democrats have been focusing on this election so far. Abortion is an incredibly important issue and we've seen it be a salient issue across the country. But in some of these blue collar areas it might be less so, the economy might be the issue that really stands out.

Taylor Wilson:

Karissa Waddick covers congress campaigns and democracy for USA TODAY. Thank you, Karissa.

Karissa Waddick:

Thank you, Taylor.

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Taylor Wilson:

Another conservative hardliner has publicly come out in support of forcibly removing house speaker Mike Johnson from the job. Congressman Thomas Massie joins Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene in calling for Johnson to resign from the post. If he doesn't, they're threatening to call up a vote on the house floor that could supplant the speaker and create another leadership hole in the chamber. Johnson took the job putting him second in line of succession for the presidency after a handful of Republican rebels last fall voted to remove speaker Kevin McCarthy from the role. Massie's support for what's known as a motion to vacate or a procedural vote to remove the speaker, puts Johnson's job in jeopardy since Republicans control the house with a razor-thin majority.

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Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will today announce the launch of an initiative to fight online crimes against minors. I spoke with domestic security correspondent Josh Meyer to learn more about what he told USA TODAY in exclusive interviews. A warning, the following deals with sexual violence against children. Josh, thanks for hopping on as always.

Josh Meyer:

Thanks, Taylor.

Taylor Wilson:

eSo Josh, a disturbing story here, just how bad has online child exploitation gotten and what kinds of harm are we talking about here?

Josh Meyer:

The crimes that we're talking about here run the gamut. I interviewed multiple DHS officials from a frontline agent in Tennessee to top transnational organized crime fighting supervisors at DHS. And we're talking about live-streamed sexual assaults and even rapes of toddlers. We're also talking about predators grooming unsuspecting children on popular online gaming sites like Roblox and others, would be molesters targeting their underage prey on social media, Instagram, Facebook and so on. And then using geolocation apps to show up in person at their schools and meet them. Some of the crimes are so violent and troubling that in my exclusive interview with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Mayorkas told me, "I don't think I should get into the specifics. Let me just say that it is beyond most people's imagination."

Taylor Wilson:

One aspect to this, Josh, was this idea of financial sex exploitation of minors. Can you talk about that as well?

Josh Meyer:

Yeah, that's something that's been really a problem that's surfaced just in the past couple of years and it's growing very quickly. What happens is very savvy cyber actors, many of them in West Africa are targeting American teenagers and pretending to be their counterparts, young kids. Even sending them sexually explicit pictures of themselves and then asking for pictures in return. And then when the kids do that, they blackmail them and say, "I'm going to send this to all of your friends if you do not pay me 500 or $1000. And they even walk them through how to pay it through money apps and so forth, or they threaten to expose them online. And some of the DHS officials I've talked to said that some of these kids pay, but some of them have committed suicide because they feel that their life is over, their friends aren't going to like them. It's a really troubling trend, and it's something that DHS is trying to fight as much as it can.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah, awful stuff, Josh. So what is this new DHS campaign then aimed at combating these heinous crimes?

Josh Meyer:

So this is something called Know2Protect. They call it K2P. And really what DHS is trying to do is bring a whole of government approach to this, or at least whole of DHS approach to this problem. Partnering federal investigators from various elements within DHS on the cyber side, on the law enforcement side and so forth, partnering them with nonprofit organizations, private sector companies and state and local law enforcement officials to combat what Mayorkas says is an alarming rise in these horrific online crimes against minors.

Taylor Wilson:

Josh, often this type of exploitation stretches outside US borders. How complicated does that make this issue, and how does the DHS hope this plan might offer solutions there?

Josh Meyer:

It's true. Mayorkas told me that these crimes know no borders, and so they're working with authorities around the world, including the Five Eyes, which is the key US Allies, Canada, Britain, Australia, and so forth, but European Union, other government agencies and nonprofits overseas to really make this a global awareness campaign. One of the things that they're doing is learning how to recognize the signs of this crime in its many forms, what they can do to prevent it, how they can report it to law enforcement whether it's overseas or here, and how they can support survivors. Homeland Security Investigations does have a presence overseas in many of our embassies, and so they're going to be working with authorities over there to go after some of this stuff, including child sex tourism, which is this horrible phenomenon where people from this country go overseas to have sex with minors.

Taylor Wilson:

It's a disturbing story. Josh Meyer covers domestic security for USA TODAY. Thanks for your work on this, Josh. Appreciate it.

Josh Meyer:

My pleasure. Thanks, Taylor.

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Taylor Wilson:

Massive coral bleaching across the world's oceans. During the past years, warm water temperatures was labeled a global coral bleaching event by federal officials on Monday. It's the fourth global coral bleaching overall and the second in the last 10 years with extensive bleaching and heat stress across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. That's according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Coral scientists around the world say bleaching is growing worse and becoming more frequent as climate change sends temperatures higher in the world's oceans. A bleaching event does not mean all the coral will die necessarily, but scientists say it's difficult for the coral to recover when such events occur more often. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.

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And be sure to stay tuned to the Excerpt later today for a special episode, as actress Melissa Gilbert joins USA TODAY Life and Entertainment Managing Editor Laura Trujillo, to talk about the cultural impact of Little House on the Prairie as it turns 50. You can find the episode right here beginning at 4:00 PM Eastern Time.

Thanks for listening to the Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for the Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, back tomorrow with more of the Excerpt from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Donald Trump hush money trial Day 2 takeaways | The Excerpt