The Fearless Robbie Kaplan

Roberta “Robbie” Kaplan is a renowned civil litigator and trial lawyer with decades of experience in commercial, higher education, government regulation, civil rights, and employment litigation…but is perhaps best known for her recent triumph defending her client E. Jean Carroll against Donald Trump. In both 2023 and 2024, Kaplan took on Trump in court and won both cases, securing two unanimous jury verdicts against him. Kaplan has been described as the kind of “lawyer that you don’t want to see opposing you” and has been consistently ranked as one of the top litigators in the country. Kaplan also famously argued before the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of LGBT rights activist Edith Windsor in United States v. Windsor - which resulted in a landmark decision that invalidated a section of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and required the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages. Kaplan was formerly a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison before starting her own firm in 2017. In 2018, she co-founded the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund. Kaplan recently started a new firm in 2024 and is currently a partner at her firm Kaplan Martin LLP. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:36Alec Baldwin?

  This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. In 2023 and 2024, author E. Jean Carroll faced Donald Trump in court and won both times. My guest today is the attorney who took on Trump in both cases and secured two unanimous jury verdicts against him. Roberta, or Robbie Kaplan, is a renowned civil litigator and trial lawyer with decades of experience in commercial, higher education, government regulation, and civil rights litigation. She has been consistently ranked as one of the top litigators in the country.

• 2:16Alec Baldwin?

  Kaplan famously won at the Supreme Court on behalf of LGBTQ rights activist Edith Windsor in a landmark case that required the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Kaplan attended Harvard University and Columbia Law School. But before settling in New York City, Kaplan studied Russian history and briefly lived in Moscow, I was curious what it was like living in Russia.

• 2:44Speaker 05

  In a lot of ways, I think it shaped my view of the world more than anything else in my life. It was 1987, I'm very old, and Glasnost had been announced, Gorbachev was the head of the government. Glasnost had been announced, but it was still the old system. And so I got, you know, a semester of seeing what it was like to live in a totalitarian, authoritarian regime, and it was insane. We had, we would go into our classrooms, and there would be these bugs at the ceiling, and sometimes the bugs would break, and you'd hear like all this static coming out, and everyone would just act like it was normal. The teachers all had to be Communist Party members, and so they had a class on, the

• 3:29Speaker 05

  Russian word is strana viednia, I guess it would be like Customs of the Country, and they would say things like, "Oh, you know, we have the comsmol." And then one of the American kids would raise their hands and say, "Oh, we have the same thing, it's the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts." And I'd be like, "What are you talking about?" Like, it was just terrifying to see how if you put people, even Americans, I guess we're seeing that today, but if you put Americans in that environment, they kind of succumb to it. It gave me, I'm sorry to say, gave me a very negative view of human nature, which probably isn't such a good thing, although it's good for a lawyer.

• 4:01Alec Baldwin?

  I often tell myself that, you know, all these societies, ours included, you can't judge them by their political leadership, meaning the people might be completely different.

• 4:11Speaker 05

  Right.

• 4:11Alec Baldwin?

  Are the Russian people very different from their political?

• 4:14Speaker 05

  Well, I, the people I knew and hung out with were, like, I was crazy there, hung out with all these dissidents and refused ex-Jews who had asked to leave and had been refused, and you couldn't tell one group of friends about the other group of friends because that would make them Paranoid and it was very kind of cloak and dagger-y, K G B E. But the people I were friends with was great and you would, this is actually interesting. You would hang out all night and drink vodka and talk about Russian literature. And then when I came back here, I was like, what's wrong with Americans? Like, we're all so shallow. I had a little bit of a breakdown. I was like, what's, our society is just so surface as opposed to the Russians.

• 4:49Alec Baldwin?

  Did you come from a, like a super legal minded family?

• 4:54Speaker 05

  No, not at all.

• 4:55Alec Baldwin?

  What did your dad do?

• 4:56Speaker 05

  My dad had a roof coating business.

• 4:57Alec Baldwin?

  Really? Did he really? Where?

• 5:00Speaker 05

  In Cleveland.

• 5:01Alec Baldwin?

  You live here from Cleveland?

• 5:02Speaker 05

  Which was my mom's dad's business, so. I don't want to sound very Cleveland. In Cleveland it's pronounced roof coating. I understand in New York it's roof coating.

• 5:06Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 5:07Speaker 05

  But he had a factory and I, in the summers, I worked there.

• 5:08Alec Baldwin?

  I'm a, I'm a-

• 5:09Speaker 05

  I would load five gallon pails with-

• 5:11Alec Baldwin?

  No.

• 5:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:13Alec Baldwin?

  You have any siblings?

• 5:14Speaker 05

  I have a younger brother.

• 5:15Alec Baldwin?

  And he was in the business as well?

• 5:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, he got to do the fun stuff because he could like drive the forklift.

• 5:18Alec Baldwin?

  Now, when you decide to go to law school, what, what inspired that decision?

• 5:25Speaker 05

  So, originally I thought, I was so into Russian history from college. I thought I wanted to be a Russian historian. And, but I soon realized that if you're going to be a professor, you don't really have any control about where you live. And I knew from the time I was a very young kid that I wanted to move to New York. My mom had a subscription to New York Magazine and I would read it and I would read all the new journalism and Gail Greene's restaurant reviews and Tom Wolfe and I was like-

• 5:50Alec Baldwin?

  Nick Pileggi?

• 5:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. This is for me. So, once I realized that I could end up like at Wisconsin or wherever as an academic, I was like, I'm going to do the law. And I went to law school, still not 100% sure, but then I kind of fell in love with the, not so much the school part of law school, but the courtroom part because I would go and watch trials and stuff.

• 6:09Alec Baldwin?

  And when you are there, what year do you enter Columbia Law School?

• 6:14Speaker 05

  So, I entered Columbia Law School 80, I graduated college in 88. They used to call me straight through.

• 6:19Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 6:20Speaker 05

  I should have taken time off. I didn't take your time off.

• 6:22Alec Baldwin?

  So, you go, you started Columbia Law School in 88?

• 6:24Speaker 05

  Up by Columbia, the crime was incredible.

• 6:26Alec Baldwin?

  Well, the reason I ask that is because what was law school like for a woman back then? Did you find it was different than it is now? Has to be.

• 6:34Speaker 05

  Well, now I teach there. I just taught my class yesterday. Yeah, I mean, it was, there were much, many fewer women.

• 6:42Speaker 05

  In the firms for sure in New York, there were a lot, you know, when I went to Paul Weiss, there was one woman litigation partner who's now a judge. And they made me partner a year early with another woman because they didn't have anyone, partly because they didn't, they need to get some woman partners quick. And there weren't a lot of role models out there, that's for sure.

• 7:01Alec Baldwin?

  I read where you had your clashes with people in the firms you worked in. Was it a situation where it's like with men do it, it's fine, but if women do it, they're a pain in the ass?

• 7:11Speaker 05

  Oh, for sure.

• 7:12Alec Baldwin?

  It was that?

• 7:13Speaker 05

  For sure. He's passed away, so I can say this. I had the former head of my firm tell me one day that I was a bulldog. And first of all, I felt like saying, well, maybe you meant Bull Dyke. Like, I'm not sure what you meant here with bulldog.

• 7:23Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, rethink that.

• 7:24Speaker 05

  I said, but second of all, like, I'm a litigator. Like, what are you saying? That's what we do. So that was definitely an issue throughout the profession. It's gotten better, for sure.

• 7:32Alec Baldwin?

  Right. When you decided to go to law school, when you were done, was it worth it? Did it turn out to be satisfy this thing you wanted about dwelling in courtrooms?

• 7:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I think the idea, I mean, the great gift of being a lawyer and having the kind of career I've had and being able to work at firms with all their problems, but who taught me so many things, is the ability to actually change things in our society in a way that very few people can. I mean, you can really make a difference, not only to your clients, but to causes in the United States if you bring the right case at the right time.

• 8:06Alec Baldwin?

  Marriage equality.

• 8:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, Winter's the perfect example. So, you know, in Paul Weiss, where I started, really, that culture was so strong in the litigation department. Arthur Lyman and Marty London were the great heads of the departments, and that's how they practiced, and that's how they taught me how to practice.

• 8:22Alec Baldwin?

  When you take a case, what makes you decide you're going to take the case? What do you look for?

• 8:28Speaker 05

  So, if it's a case where I think it's very likely to go all the way to trial, I mean, it's probably not that different than what you look at. Very much thinking about how is this witness going to appear? How is she going to, is this person going to appear as a witness? How credible is their story? What do they have that corroborates their story? What are the weaknesses of the story? And I kind of put it all together in some weird.

• 8:51Alec Baldwin?

  Some instincts you have.

• 8:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:54Alec Baldwin?

  Well, I mean, E. Jean did this show.

• 8:55Speaker 05

  Right.

• 8:56Alec Baldwin?

  And she would be, as I've heard referred to in like movies of the 30s and 40s, she would be a flibbertigibbet. She's a very kinetic woman.

• 9:04Speaker 05

  You can say that again.

• 9:05Alec Baldwin?

  And, yeah, she's like a bird out of a cage. And she's all over the place. What were your concerns about that in terms of her as a witness?

• 9:12Speaker 05

  So she came in, there were two things that immediately I thought that they were on the plus side. One, I don't have to tell you, I mean, she's this beautiful woman. So when you have a woman who's alleging that someone assaulted her, I mean, it was totally credible that Donald Trump would find her attractive. So that was good. And she was very articulate, and I thought she'd be able to be charming in the courtroom, which she ultimately was. The other thing that struck me was that the story was so kooky. Like, the details of it, that she went into Bergdorf Goodman, and he said, "Let's go shopping." And they went up to the lingerie department in the evening, no one was... The stories, if you wanted to make up a story about Donald Trump sexually assaulting you, that would not be the story you would make up. And then, of course, she told to her two close friends within the next 48 hours.

• 9:57Speaker 05

  The downsides, of course, were, A, it was Donald Trump. B, it's generally very, very hard for women to prove sexual assault, especially one that took place, pretty sure it was the spring of 1996, so it was many years ago. C, she is a very kinetic human being, and we had to work... I mean, I thought she was great in the courtroom, but we had to talk and work with her about kind of how to testify as opposed to how to kind of talk as a journalist. She has a tendency to become a journalist all the time and to ask people questions. And we had to keep saying, "Oh, no, no, you have to answer questions now. You can't ask the questions." I think she doesn't want to talk about herself, so she'd rather be a journalist. I have to say, my colleagues at the time, no one thought it was a good case other than me. They were very worried.

• 10:42Alec Baldwin?

  And what was their logic?

• 10:43Speaker 05

  So long ago, there wasn't any physical evidence. I mean, she'd have this dress, but the likelihood that there was anything that was going to be...

• 10:51Alec Baldwin?

  It wasn't the black dress like Monica Lewinsky.

• 10:53Speaker 05

  Well, she actually... Well, it wasn't, it wasn't. She saved her dress, but not to prove anything. She saved it because it was a Donna Karan black, very expensive dress. And she was like, "This is too good of a dress. I'm not getting rid of it."

• 11:05Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 11:05Speaker 05

  So she put it in the back of her closet, and she never wore it again.

• 11:07Alec Baldwin?

  Right. Now, of course, I'm of the school, having done this whole Trump shtick on SNL for quite a while, for four years, that first four years. For me, everything that could be possibly said about Trump has already been said, and anybody talking about Trump anymore, other than in actual facts and journalism, is a waste of time. When you're in there, he was in the courtroom. And you got to examine him?

• 11:31Speaker 05

  Not in the courtroom, I examined him at Mar-a-Lago.

• 11:34Alec Baldwin?

  You did. You did a deposition with him?

• 11:36Speaker 05

  In Mar-a-Lago, yeah.

• 11:37Alec Baldwin?

  Which was a deposition, so he never testified in a trial?

• 11:39Speaker 05

  He had the option to. The judge gave him until, to just change his mind until 5 o'clock. First, the judge said 10 o'clock on Sunday.

• 11:46Alec Baldwin?

  But you can't make them testify? I thought in civil cases you could.

• 11:50Speaker 05

  No, it was up to him. I was able to use the deposition video, though, because he didn't testify. We were able to play some of the most telling, I would say, excerpts of the deposition for the jury who saw them.

• 12:02Alec Baldwin?

  And when you had, and you questioned him for how long in Mar-a-Lago?

• 12:05Speaker 05

  Probably seven hours.

• 12:07Alec Baldwin?

  Really? In one session or a couple sessions?

• 12:09Speaker 05

  One session. I did it twice. One, it was another case I had against him, a fraud case that ultimately didn't survive.

• 12:15Alec Baldwin?

  Right. And then the case with her, how did you find him in terms of, because he's obviously very cagey.

• 12:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:24Alec Baldwin?

  He's a guy that has sidestepped a lot of serious problems with his wits and his guts and his madness, perhaps, but how did you find him?

• 12:32Speaker 05

  So, I had a strategy, which I learned, actually, as a young lawyer, kind of being in a minority and having people think about you differently as a woman, which I call the spider strategy. What I mean by that is, I kind of act like I don't know what I'm doing, and then for a long time, and then often at the end, I'll kind of pounce.

• 12:48Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 12:49Speaker 05

  And so with him, I was very polite. I spent the first two hours asking him questions that he could brag about. So, for example, we know it was a Thursday night. It happened for two reasons. One, that's when Burd Durkman stayed late one night a week back then. And two, that's when the writers' table met at Elaine's. And the truth of it is, E. Jean was going to go to dinner there afterwards, and I know the whole thing began, she's admitted this, because she thought it would be a great story. Oh, I'll tell my friends a joke, a story about how I helped Trump shop for a gift. And so I got him to say, I said, oh, you used to like going to Lanes, yes, you went there with Ivana very often, yes, and you must have sat at the writer's table, didn't you? And he's like, oh, yes, sat there many times. Like, you could get him to say, same thing, like, he'd been on Saturday Night Live, you know, Eugene wrote for a season

• 13:34Speaker 05

  of Saturday Night Live, you were on Saturday Night Live a lot, yes. You could kind of get him to admit, I don't think he understood what I was doing, but that he was, he had every reason to know who Eugene was. Like, he, they overlapped in certain ways, in New York society, in ways that he definitely knew who she was. So, and I kind of just lulled him into it.

• 13:52Alec Baldwin?

  And she was a woman in terms of her physical

• 13:55Speaker 05

  Right.

• 13:56Alec Baldwin?

  ...composition, that certainly he's, she would, he would make it his business to meet someone like that.

• 14:00Speaker 05

  Correct. And as he said at the thing, he identified her as Marla Maples. They did look a lot alike, the truth is, back then.

• 14:06Alec Baldwin?

  When you have a contingency case, in my cases, my civil cases we've had, there are support expenses, photocopying, all this stuff, paralegals, I mean, they're, they're, the, the

• 14:21Speaker 05

  Fortune.

• 14:22Alec Baldwin?

  Say again?

• 14:23Speaker 05

  It's a fortune.

• 14:24Alec Baldwin?

  Well, the person who was my attorney, we had a contingency arrangement, but not for those expenses.

• 14:28Speaker 05

  Right.

• 14:29Alec Baldwin?

  So they're handing you, even though you're not paying the major bill,

• 14:31Speaker 05

  Right.

• 14:32Alec Baldwin?

  You're getting handed hundreds of thousands of dollars of this, of this stuff. Now, with you, did you do that? Did you have to pass on to her?

• 14:39Speaker 05

  No, we had very lucky

• 14:41Alec Baldwin?

  You ate it all?

• 14:42Speaker 05

  No, not that either. It's become very controversial. It's, Trump is obsessed with this. Reid Hoffman stepped in and agreed to pay the outside expenses.

• 14:50Alec Baldwin?

  And he was?

• 14:51Speaker 05

  He's the guy who started LinkedIn.

• 14:52Alec Baldwin?

  Oh, right, right.

• 14:53Speaker 05

  He's a tech

• 14:54Alec Baldwin?

  And he did why?

• 14:55Speaker 05

  He thought it was a good case, and he thought it would be, you know, it was important for people to see what happened. And so he agreed, he had a foundation that was doing kind of Trump stuff, and they funded almost all of the asset costs, the most expensive of which were security, of course.

• 15:11Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 15:12Speaker 05

  Because when every time we went to court, we needed bodyguards and all that stuff.

• 15:14Alec Baldwin?

  For her?

• 15:15Speaker 05

  For her.

• 15:16Alec Baldwin?

  Wow. So, it's to be assumed, because you got 5 million in one judgment, and 83, whatever, in the other one?

• 15:22Speaker 05

  She's about, I think she's, I'm gonna knock on wood, I think we're gonna get the first five.

• 15:27Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 15:28Speaker 05

  And we've waived our contingency on that. So she will get the whole entire 5 million.

• 15:30Alec Baldwin?

  Right. And you, and then it's down the road whether you're gonna get the 83.

• 15:33Speaker 05

  Correct. That's a little bit of a bigger bet.

• 15:34Alec Baldwin?

  When you do a contingency, is it Assumed that there are times you don't win.

• 15:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:41Alec Baldwin?

  And you have to eat that cost.

• 15:42Speaker 05

  For sure.

• 15:43Alec Baldwin?

  Months and months of trial.

• 15:45Speaker 05

  And there's a lot of these firms that take on these huge contingencies that last years and years. They have to fund it all that time. Sometimes they have this thing called litigation finance where you can...

• 15:53Alec Baldwin?

  Right, people invest in the case and they buy a piece of the case.

• 15:56Speaker 05

  I've never done that, but I...

• 15:57Alec Baldwin?

  You've never had... What's your opinion of that?

• 15:59Speaker 05

  I think it can be very helpful. I just, I would rather get the whole thing at the end, so I'm willing to bet on my own risk.

• 16:04Alec Baldwin?

  Right. I'm gonna pivot to Me Too Times Up. You know, if Trump weren't president, if he weren't someone who was empowered politically by so many people, he'd probably be in jail right now, don't you think?

• 16:18Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, it's not 100%. I mean, certainly, the special prosecutor would have put him in jail for sure, had that happened, because, I mean, he's been testifying today and he's incredibly powerful. Jack Smith. Look, I think E. Jean, it would be surprising to me, let me put it this way, that E. Jean was the only one. I know other women have said that he assaulted them. I assume it's true. I assume there are women out there who are just too afraid, for good reason, to come forward. I was actually down at the Manhattan DA last night until 10 o'clock with a client, terrible story of domestic violence. And I was talking to the young prosecutors and I said to them, you know, E. Jean was right not to go to you guys in 1996. Like, they wouldn't have done it. And he was like, no, you're right.

• 17:01Speaker 05

  They wouldn't have done anything in 1996. But sooner or later, I would have caught up to him.

• 17:06Alec Baldwin?

  Apropos of Me Too Times Up, there are tremendous successes, in my opinion, and overdue justice on behalf of people in terms of the Me Too Times Up, which, you know, Harvey is the ultimate.

• 17:20Speaker 05

  Obviously.

• 17:21Alec Baldwin?

  But how do you rate what the Me Too Times Up campaign has accomplished?

• 17:26Speaker 05

  So, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. And how it crashed and burned at the end, and why it crashed and burned at the end, and really, and then, kind of the bad publicity that I got and others involved got. Look, on the one hand, there were people like Harvey and others who deserved everything they got. But I do believe, and it actually goes all the way back to Russia, that we reached a kind of Robespierre period, and it actually helped reelect Trump, where it was just after collecting heads, rather than exercising judgment, seeing like the differences, understanding nuance, etc.

• 18:06Speaker 05

  There definitely was a kind of guillotine aspect to it at its height, and that was a mistake. There's no question that people were hurt. There's no question that people who were guilty, again, as I said, got their just desserts. I've thought a lot about what we could have done to change that. Part of me thinks that's human nature when these things happen, but it's terrible. And it's terrible because people who were hurt, Brian, it's terrible because, again, I think it had a huge impact on reelecting Trump the second time. The other thing I think about a lot is that at Times Up, we were dependent on celebrities for our power, and that was great. It gave us great power. But what we failed to realize is that, and this is understandable, celebrities don't

• 18:50Speaker 05

  have a lot of tolerance for controversy, right? So the minute things started to get a little iffy, you know, people started fleeing the ship very, very quickly, and it was hard to hold it together.

• 19:00Alec Baldwin?

  I remember seeing people, individual people, meeting with them, meeting them with, in studios very much like this, Keeler, Charlie Rose. Not everybody was pressing a button to lock the door of their office at NBC to prevent you from getting out. There were gradations of this. And I felt that a lot of people got washed up in the sweep there unfairly. There were people who didn't deserve to be canceled. They needed some counseling.

• 19:27Speaker 05

  Right. The Times tried to cancel me. So two summers ago, there was a reporter at the Times who spent 10 months, literally 10 months, calling everyone who's ever worked with me, everyone I know, saying, "What's the dirt on Robbie Kaplan?", which is pretty insane because I'm kind of boring. There's like, not a lot of dirt on me. And she wrote this very nasty piece, and it really gave me, I have to say, it was a very painful period, but it really gave me an understanding. of the damage that can be done. I mean, it was at the second Trump trial, I'm standing there, closing to the jury. I have Trump seven feet to my left, and I have this New York Times reporter seven feet to my right. And I was like, I don't even know what to look. I was like, this is insane.

• 20:08Speaker 05

  So it gave me a lot more sympathy and empathy for how damaging that can be. Again, I think we've moved away from it, but the problem with social media is it just, it encourages it.

• 20:24Alec Baldwin?

  Lawyer Robbie Kaplan. If you enjoy conversations with lawyers representing controversial clients, check out my episode with Dean Strang, the defense attorney featured in the documentary Making a Murderer.

• 20:38Speaker 06

  This happens, a client comes in, potential client comes in, you meet with him, he lays it all out, and, you know, my reaction is, look, you're cooked. They've got you, and they're going to want you to cooperate against others, and you probably should. That's probably your best option at this point. And I don't do that. I'm not the right lawyer for that.

• 21:03Alec Baldwin?

  To hear more of my conversation with attorney Dean Strang, go to here'sthething.org. After the break, Robbie Kaplan tells the story of taking her seven-year-old son to the White House and his interaction with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

• 21:59Speaker 07

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by breakout singer-songwriter Alex Warren.

• 22:19Speaker 08

  I'm like a kid when I play music and I make music and I'm constantly asking questions. You know, whether it's an instrument I haven't played, or it's a melody that seems foreign. You know, this, every night you play a show and it's the same set, but it's not the same show. At a certain point, your brain kind of goes on autopilot. When I'm in the studio, or if I'm making music, that's where that curiosity kind of comes back, you know? I haven't lost it yet, but I'm also on my sophomore album, so, and you, you obviously are an expert here.

• 22:45Speaker 07

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 22:57Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is Here's the Thing. Robbie Kaplan received her graduate degree from Columbia Law School and went on to join the law firm, Paul Weiss. While at the firm, Kaplan would eventually take on her alma mater as a client. Today Kaplan teaches a yearly seminar at Columbia University's Law School as an adjunct professor. I was curious how her experience with Columbia has changed over the years, and how she would describe law students today.

• 23:29Speaker 05

  Well, I just started my new class yesterday.

• 23:32Alec Baldwin?

  What do you teach?

• 23:33Speaker 05

  It's a very sexy topic, advanced civil procedure.

• 23:35Alec Baldwin?

  I have a question for you.

• 23:38Speaker 05

  People that actually, and someone actually signs up for that.

• 23:40Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 23:41Speaker 05

  I think they're more serious than we were for sure.

• 23:43Alec Baldwin?

  Really? Why? Because the world is so grim?

• 23:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:47Alec Baldwin?

  Really?

• 23:48Speaker 05

  That's the sense of it.

• 23:49Alec Baldwin?

  Do they express that to you in some ways?

• 23:50Speaker 05

  A little bit. I mean, it was just the first class yesterday, but last year I taught it too, and they seem, I mean, we had some interesting discussions about it, but they seem, there's not a lot of hope for them about, it's sad, about what they can achieve. Even talking about courts and cases and kind of how the system has changed over time is a little bit depressing. You want to hear my best White House story?

• 24:09Alec Baldwin?

  Go right ahead.

• 24:10Speaker 05

  So after Windsor, we get invited to the White House for a, it was a Hanukkah party, I think. And I said to my, our son was about seven or eight. And I said to my wife, like, should we bring him? He was pretty hyperactive as a kid. I said, we'll bring him. I said, we'll probably never get invited to the White House again. So let's bring him. And so I said to him, his name is Jacob, I said, Jacob, listen, we're going to go, you're going to have to go through all the security. If it gets to be too much for you, I promise you, we can leave. So he was like, fine. We went and he did fine. He had a little tie on, he was adorable. He did fine for about the first hour. And then it did start to get super crowded. And he said, okay, you told me we could go. And I said, fine. So as we're walking out, Justice Ginsburg is walking in.

• 24:54Speaker 05

  And I said to Jacob, I said, okay, let's go over and say hello to Justice Ginsburg. And I am not exaggerating. Jacob had a temper tantrum on the buckles of her Ferragamo shoes. He's literally on the floor, on her feet, having a temper tantrum. I have a look on my face like, I'd rather this happen to anyone else on the planet other than you, Justice Ginsburg. And she looked at me, it was the kindest thing on the world, she said, listen. She said, I have a son, he's exactly your age, his childhood was, he acted like that when he was a kid. She said, but he's now a professor at Chicago and he's married with kids, and don't worry at all, it'll be fine.

• 25:31Alec Baldwin?

  My kids are in a phase now where, we went shopping for ski coats. And we're buying them, and I say, well, I think this one looks good. And my kids, one of my sons turned to me, goes, what do you know? You're from Long Island.

• 25:42Speaker 05

  Oh, my God.

• 25:44Alec Baldwin?

  They're all born and raised in the city. He goes, what do you know? You're from Long Island.

• 25:47Speaker 05

  My son's version of that is you're from the last century. Oh, that happened in the last century.

• 25:50Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, civil procedure, in terms of the type of civil law you would attend to, don't you think there's some need for some reform to streamline that process and allow judges to sit there and go, hey, mister, you're full of shit, get out of here? Why can't we streamline that process?

• 26:07Speaker 05

  It's exactly what we talked about yesterday, actually, in the first class of my seminar. And I do think that. You know, what happens is we keep making procedural rules to kind of screen out the bad cases, and then there are unintended consequences to those rules, and they don't end up achieving what we want them to achieve. Good judges, and there are many good judges, especially in New York, especially federal judges in New York, kind of do it on their own. You know, especially if they've been on the bench a long time, they have a very good sense of what's a good case and what's not a good case, and what are the weaknesses in a case, and they will kind of maneuver the case, I think appropriately, if it's a bad case to get it dismissed, and if it's a good case to push it along. People have debated different ways to do this. Should

• 26:50Speaker 05

  we have different courts for different kinds of cases, different judges only do one kind of case? Should we have different courts based on how much money is at stake? In federal courts, all you need is $75,000, which hasn't changed for decades and probably is way too low.

• 27:04Alec Baldwin?

  $75,000 for what?

• 27:06Speaker 05

  Bring a diversity case in federal court, there's people from different states, it has to be, you have to be from different states, and you have to seek more than $75,000.

• 27:13Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 27:14Speaker 05

  When that was first passed, $75,000 was a lot of money.

• 27:16Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 27:17Speaker 05

  Today, it's not, and there's been no kind of way to update that, or Congress hasn't. But, sure, I mean, it's something that needs to be thought of. We have a lot of other legal problems to deal with and that Congress has to look at, but that would be one on my agenda as well. And the courts are overwhelmed.

• 27:31Alec Baldwin?

  Do you find you have a talent for reading juries?

• 27:34Speaker 05

  I think I've gotten good at it.

• 27:36Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 27:36Speaker 05

  It's hard, and the minutes before a jury, like, you know, when they say they've come in with a verdict, when you're waiting, every time it happens, I think I'm going to have a heart attack right there.

• 27:44Alec Baldwin?

  Right, you do.

• 27:45Speaker 05

  I can't stand it. We had, I did this big case against the guys who were responsible for the violence in Charlottesville, the rally in August 2017. It was during COVID, and it was very hard to read the jury in that case, because they, everyone had to wear masks. The juries were sitting kind of where the audience would sit, like, two jurors to a bench. But there was one guy in the back, there were very strict rules about wearing a mask, and he constantly, his mask would constantly go down, and I would say to the judge, without him there, like, the guy's not following the rules, and then the guy must have figured it out, because he would kind of give me nasty looks. And the best thing that ever happened is the morning we were driving over to the court to find out, for them to start deliberating, the judge said, it turns out a kid at this guy's school

• 28:30Speaker 05

  got COVID, the guy wasn't vaccinated, and the judge said, "I'm letting you go." And I was like, "Oh, thank God." So, things like that really matter. Actually, whether people are vaccinated is a great indicator of whether...

• 28:43Alec Baldwin?

  You're allowed to ask that?

• 28:44Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, in New York, you are. Well, I don't know if you are now, but you were for the last several years.

• 28:48Alec Baldwin?

  And, and, and proof that they were vaccinated indicates what to you?

• 28:51Speaker 05

  Rationality.

• 28:54Alec Baldwin?

  Okay.

• 28:54Speaker 05

  Honestly.

• 28:54Alec Baldwin?

  I'm gonna remember that.

• 28:55Speaker 05

  Honestly.

• 28:56Alec Baldwin?

  I'm gonna remember that when I go to New Mexico in a couple of years.

• 28:58Speaker 05

  You don't want unvaccinated jurors, trust me.

• 29:00Alec Baldwin?

  You don't want unvacc-- okay. Often, these cases settle. And preferably they settle.

• 29:07Speaker 05

  The vast majority cases.

• 29:07Alec Baldwin?

  The vast majority. And so, how many of the settlements are spurred by the judges themselves or by your opposing counsel, or both? Does the judge ever say to you, "Hey, let's cut the shit. You settle this now."

• 29:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, a lot of judges do that. And I think that's a good thing. I think judges should be doing that.

• 29:22Alec Baldwin?

  Now, when you are in settlements, what's the strategy? Meaning, how did you get to 83 million with Trump? That was a jury verdict.

• 29:31Speaker 05

  That was a jury verdict, but that's all his fault. I mean, he sat in that-- so, the first trial, he didn't show up at all. He was in Scotland at his golf course. So, the second trial, he did show up, because that one was about money. But he acted like a 14-year-old delinquent, the whole trial, and the jury saw it. And then every day, he would leave the courtroom, go to, I think he was going to some office downtown, at some Trump building, and he would give a press conference, and he would defame Eugene again. So, I would walk in next morning, I'd say, "He did it again, Judge. Here's the video." And it just--

• 30:02Alec Baldwin?

  Who was that judge?

• 30:04Speaker 05

  His name is Kaplan, no relation.

• 30:05Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 30:06Speaker 05

  But he really, every penny of that 80 million dollars--

• 30:08Alec Baldwin?

  What's his name? What's Kaplan?

• 30:09Speaker 05

  Louis Kaplan is his name.

• 30:10Alec Baldwin?

  Not the one that adjudicated the Steve Donziger case with--

• 30:14Speaker 05

  Yes. Same judge.

• 30:16Alec Baldwin?

  Ooh.

• 30:17Speaker 05

  Same judge.

• 30:17Alec Baldwin?

  Donziger's a friend of mine--

• 30:18Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 30:19Alec Baldwin?

  Who's on this show.

• 30:20Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 30:21Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah. Anyway, okay, no comment there.

• 30:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 30:23Alec Baldwin?

  But he was--

• 30:24Speaker 05

  I'm a big fan of Judge Kaplan, so--

• 30:25Alec Baldwin?

  Right. I wish I could say the same. But the-- I find people-- I was at a dinner party, and at the table with us was this guy that was a judge, a federal judge, and I tried, and I did, I rested myself from asking him a lot of questions, like, "Don't you feel just a suffocating burden to judge people and to make decisions that are gonna change their lives? What's the psychological training? What's the emotional or behavioral training they give you in school to master that, where you're gonna go in and say--

• 30:57Speaker 05

  None, zero.

• 30:58Alec Baldwin?

  None?

• 30:58Speaker 05

  Zero training.

• 30:59Alec Baldwin?

  So, I wonder if some people, that must drive them nuts.

• 31:01Speaker 05

  Well, it's interesting. So, we-- one of our young associates just put in, we asked for their comments, and they said, "Look, I think there should be some training on this." And I was like, "You know, she has a good idea." So, we're actually bringing in-- A psychologist, I think in the next couple of months, to talk to our people about dealing with these cases where the people have experienced great trauma, and that itself is hard to do.

• 31:19Alec Baldwin?

  I have a job I created for myself.

• 31:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:22Alec Baldwin?

  And I'm only half kidding. But I'll watch TV and they'll show a segment of a trial and I'll go, you gotta be kidding me. You went to law school and you studied the law and that's how you present your case in court? I want to be the acting coach for your litigators.

• 31:35Speaker 05

  You'd be amazing.

• 31:36Alec Baldwin?

  I'm not kidding.

• 31:37Speaker 05

  You'd be amazing.

• 31:38Alec Baldwin?

  I want to say to them, I want to take their speeches, I want to take their summations and say, okay, you want to motor through this, only take the earned pause. You go, you go, the audience is way ahead of you. Ba-da-boom, ba-da-boom, ba-da-boom. It's like a horse.

• 31:48Speaker 05

  That would be amazing.

• 31:49Alec Baldwin?

  Ba-da-boom, ba-da-boom, ba-da-boom. Stop. And then you lay this line out real slow, you squeeze it. Because I see people who speak in court and they're horrible. Their acting skills are dreadful. And it is a bit of acting.

• 32:00Speaker 05

  Yeah. It's as close as I get to being a coach. So, in the Carol case, she told these two people right away, one, her friend Lisa Bernbach, and then a couple of days later, another friend. Remember Carol Martin, the old newscaster?

• 32:11Alec Baldwin?

  Yes, her friend.

• 32:12Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, Carol had some texts that she had to produce where E. Jean was getting on her nerves. And she's talking to her daughter about how E. Jean's getting on her nerves. And they thought these were great, the other side. And so, during my closing, I raised the issue of the texts and I said, I looked at the women jurors, I said, you know, sometimes it's just the way we talk about our friends. And they got it. Like, they got it immediately. That's just how people act sometimes.

• 32:35Alec Baldwin?

  Lawyer Robbie Kaplan. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend. And be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Robbie Kaplan tells us how being too honest on a form prevented her from becoming a prosecutor.

• 33:06Speaker 09

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• 33:35Speaker 07

  Hey, it's Nile Rodgers, host of "Before the Moment", a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by my friend, John Legend. How does music actually enter your mind?

• 33:57Speaker 10

  I'm not sure why or how the music comes to me, but I think people who love music and write music, our brains are just filled with music. Like, we have listened to so much music, we've been a part of so much music. I think of the story that I want to tell, the mood that I want to create with the music, start playing chords, see where they lead me.

• 34:18Speaker 07

  Sometimes, I'm just not even thinking about music, right? And I hear this little thing, and I go, oh, that could be this.

• 34:29Speaker 10

  You know, you just have to be ready for when the inspiration hits.

• 34:33Speaker 07

  Experience "Before the Moment", a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 34:45Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is "Here's the Thing". Robbie Kaplan was a partner at the law firm Paul Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton, and Garrison for 18 years. At the firm, she represented clients ranging from J.P. Morgan Chase to Edith Windsor in the landmark Defense of Marriage Act Supreme Court case. I was curious why, after 18 years and much success, Kaplan decided to leave Paul Weiss and start her own firm, and if this was always her plan.

• 35:16Speaker 05

  So I had an early date with my wife. We just met each other and we're having dinner at some cute bistro in the village. And I start telling her that, oh, you know, when the retired people get to a certain age at Paul Weiss, they move their offices to like smaller offices, but I think that would be okay. I'm 30 telling her this. And my wife looks at me like, have you lost your mind? Like, you're 30 years old, you're thinking about what office you're going to be in when you retire at Paul Weiss? I thought I'd spend my life there.

• 35:42Alec Baldwin?

  What changed?

• 35:43Speaker 05

  The business of law. Firms like Paul Weiss and such as Paul Weiss, all the big firms, got bigger and bigger. The corporate departments got bigger and bigger. Paul Weiss, that's been quite dramatic. And what that meant for the litigation department is the kinds of cases they were able to do got narrow and narrower. So it got to the point where the only cases that Paul Weiss was really wanted to or able to do are these huge cases with five partners and 30 associates. And I could do those cases, I did plenty of them, but I wanted to be able to do more, have more diversity, both in the size of case and in the kind of case. I told this guy, my mentor, Marty London, who was an old partner, that my goal is to have his practice. And I think I finally got it, it's taken me a long time.

• 36:27Alec Baldwin?

  Well, you had your own firm for how long?

• 36:28Speaker 05

  Well, I've had two versions of my own firm, so since 2017.

• 36:32Alec Baldwin?

  Well, the first one you started when you left Paul Weiss.

• 36:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:35Alec Baldwin?

  Which you then left that as well.

• 36:36Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 36:37Alec Baldwin?

  Why?

• 36:38Speaker 05

  Got too big.

• 36:39Alec Baldwin?

  So again, you created a firm, so was that an inevitability in the business?

• 36:42Speaker 05

  No, I was just like focused on my work and really honestly not paying attention to the firm itself that much. And it also became too big and too white collar. And I don't do white collar work, so it didn't make a lot of sense.

• 36:54Alec Baldwin?

  So you then, then the third iteration was you started another firm?

• 36:58Speaker 05

  With, with a bunch of people from the second firm.

• 37:00Alec Baldwin?

  From the second firm. How's that going?

• 37:02Speaker 05

  It's fun, because everyone I know, known a very long time, all the partners, we have this incredible group of young lawyers working for us. They're amazing, our cases are amazing. We're having a lot of fun.

• 37:13Alec Baldwin?

  When you're in court, this is, this is relates to the Question about the jury. Can you read a judge too?

• 37:20Speaker 05

  Oh, definitely.

• 37:21Alec Baldwin?

  Or you probably have had a history with them. You know them from before.

• 37:23Speaker 05

  The most important thing in any case is who the judge is. I hate to say it, but this is true. And you know, if it's a judge, you know, you know how they approach to things, how they practice, what their attitude is going to be. It's incredibly important. It's not even that important what it is. It's just important knowing what it is, right? Because then you could advise the client as to how things are likely to progress.

• 37:41Alec Baldwin?

  And without naming names, obviously, are there judges where you're slightly terrified that you have to go into that courtroom? Or concerned, let's say?

• 37:48Speaker 05

  In New York, not that many. We have really good judges in New York. I was, this is crazy. So during this second trial, Alina Haba, who was the lead lawyer, who was the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey for like seven minutes, stood up in court, I think it was the second day, and held her arms like this and said, Judge Kaplan, I just want you to know, I really don't appreciate the way you're speaking to me. And I literally almost had a heart attack. The idea that you would say that to a judge.

• 38:16Alec Baldwin?

  Lecture him.

• 38:17Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, if I had said it, he would say, you're getting put aggro.

• 38:20Alec Baldwin?

  Why do you think there's all that decorum with the judge? Why do you stand and call him your honor? We're not in 18th century England here.

• 38:28Speaker 05

  I think it's a good thing because on the surface, you're showing respect to that judge, but fundamentally, you're showing respect for the rule of law. And I wish we had a little bit more respect for the rule of law right now in our country.

• 38:39Alec Baldwin?

  You've seen that dwindle in your time?

• 38:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it's terrible right now. I mean, the DOJ used to be this great institution. Right, that always told the truth and always took the right position and always cared about consistency, and none of that's true anymore.

• 38:53Alec Baldwin?

  Well, when Trump got into office, I made note of the fact that, to a degree or in some metric, I wasn't prepared for how many other bad people would come with him. I didn't realize.

• 39:04Speaker 05

  Especially this time.

• 39:05Alec Baldwin?

  Well, the second term, forget it. But in the first term even, I remember saying to myself, I didn't know there were that many bad people out there who were on some political operatives' Rolodex. And now with the second term, it's like.

• 39:16Speaker 05

  I mean, how many prosecutors have quit in DOJ because they've been asked to do things that they know are wrong? I mean, it's terrible. I wanted to be a prosecutor, I wanted to write a funny story. So I got an internship when I was in law school to be prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, and this was Bush won. And you had to fill out a form for security. And the form had a pot question. So I go to see the professor at Columbia and I said, so, give me advice, what should I do? And he said, you're supposed to say experimentally. So, the first question was, have you smoked pot? I wrote, yes, semicolon, experimentally. The next question was, how many times? And I wrote 12 plus. And the government said, sorry, we're withdrawing your offer. And I went to the professor to tell him the story. He's like, what in the world were you thinking?

• 39:59Alec Baldwin?

  Right. 12 times experimentally.

• 40:00Speaker 05

  I said, I didn't want to lie. I said-

• 40:02Alec Baldwin?

  My continuing experimentation.

• 40:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was very thorough with my experimentation.

• 40:06Alec Baldwin?

  Well, you didn't want to lie, but you realized that if the question is silly, like you say, yes, experiment, how many times? Twice. You know, you should have lied. You should have lied in that because you're too much of a girl scout to do that.

• 40:17Speaker 05

  I want to get my hands on that form somehow. I'm going to try to foil it.

• 40:20Alec Baldwin?

  What kind, yeah, you should. What kind of work does your wife do?

• 40:23Speaker 05

  So she's been in democratic politics most, but she was, is the Democratic State Committee person for downtown Manhattan for 20 some years. And has worked on a whole bunch of anti-fracking, a whole bunch of policy stuff. She's starting to think that maybe it's time for a change, but that's what she's devoted her life. She was an activist when I met her, and then she kind of did a lot of policy throughout our marriage.

• 40:45Alec Baldwin?

  A lot of fracking going on in New York?

• 40:47Speaker 05

  No, she stopped it.

• 40:48Alec Baldwin?

  Right. Oh, wow.

• 40:49Speaker 05

  With Governor Cuomo.

• 40:50Alec Baldwin?

  I was in, Trump was elected. I went to do that crazy and silly Trump shtick those four years on SNL from 2016 to 2020.

• 40:59Speaker 05

  You may say it's crazy and silly, but it gave a lot of people-

• 41:01Alec Baldwin?

  Well, people would say that to me. They'd say, oh, right.

• 41:03Speaker 05

  A lot of, not just pleasure from watching, but a lot of comfort.

• 41:06Alec Baldwin?

  Right. They wanted to have some laughs about, what do you think? Let's say we win the midterms. And to me, that gives me hope, yes, that we can come back to some degree. It's never going to be the same.

• 41:19Speaker 05

  No.

• 41:20Alec Baldwin?

  Like they were saying, you saw the guy from Canada said that the-

• 41:22Speaker 05

  That was a great speech.

• 41:23Alec Baldwin?

  The Americans as the leader of the free world is over. It's not damaged, it's fractured, it's over. And I thought, wow, what a disturbing. I mean, I didn't necessarily need the United States to be the leader of the free world, but I thought, I'd like the United States to have the option to be the leader of the free world if it was not- Necessary and if we could keep things together. And do you think we're ever going to be able to put it back together to? We just don't know yet.

• 41:48Speaker 05

  I've been thinking about that a lot since Davos, obviously. Look, I think first of all, we have to put things back together domestically. So we have to kind of redo all the Watergate reforms, but in a way that works.

• 42:00Alec Baldwin?

  What way?

• 42:01Speaker 05

  All the rules about independence and stopping corruption and disclosures, like we had them, but they were, they're too, they were too easy to get around. So I think all of that has to change and I, I have great respect for President Biden. I think he did a good thing, but I don't think he was tough enough on that stuff. And then I think, and once we fix our own house, which is going to take time, we also obviously have to repair our relations with our allies. I mean, one thing I know from the time I was in Russia is that, you know, the Russian government then and now is not, it's not a good thing. And what they're doing in Ukraine is tragic and we need to have countries that can work together to fight against that. We can't have them go take Ukraine and then Belarus and then Poland. That would be horrific.

• 42:45Speaker 05

  We're not going to relive, as my son would say, the last century.

• 42:49Alec Baldwin?

  Without getting into details, what's a case you're working on now?

• 42:52Speaker 05

  Oh, so this is interesting. I tell you, this is public. So this is nuts. This is all about, everything we talked about rolled up into one. So we have a, I have a client for many years. His, his name is Imran Ahmed. He runs a not-for-profit called the Center for Countering Digital Hate. And he's a big critic of tech and he's written a lot about problems on Big Tech and failure to moderate content, et cetera. Elon Musk does not like him very much. He sued him four years ago. I represented Elon in that case. We got it dismissed. It's still on appeal. And X recently got sanctioned by the EU for not, for failing to comply with their digital privacy law.

• 43:32Speaker 05

  And Elon got very angry and got the State Department, we believe, to say that my client's green card should be revoked. They announced this on December 23rd in the afternoon. We go, I say to my client, get your tush to New York. We file papers on 5 o'clock on Christmas Eve saying you can't do this. This is about his speech. The guy hasn't done it. You're not allowed to just kick people out of the country because you don't like what they say. And he's not, he's criticizing American company. Since when is that a problem? Like, people criticizing American companies all the time? And we got an injunction 12:30 a.m. on Christmas Day. So my team didn't have the easiest holiday, but it's a great case. It's ongoing. Right now, they can't do anything to him, but we're going to see to litigate it.

• 44:17Alec Baldwin?

  What do you think about that judge that smuggled the presumed terrorist out of the courtroom and just got convicted?

• 44:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, she got convicted.

• 44:23Alec Baldwin?

  She got convicted. Boy, boy, that seems like a tough thing to do. For a judge to sit in judgment of another judge who they believe has made a poor decision. It was a poor decision.

• 44:33Speaker 05

  Probably. If that's, those are the facts. It was. I mean, that's why our client is so different. There are, you do have rights to revoke visas for people who support terrorists, things like that, but criticizing X? Like, that makes no sense.

• 44:44Alec Baldwin?

  Right. I've been saying the same thing. Unlike the people who are the faithful in this issue of campaign finance reform, the ones I've worked with over the years for many years, this is my issue, other than plastics pollution and wanting to ban single-use plastics around the country. Campaign finance reform is the linchpin of all of our problems in this country. We, what passes for leadership now that is able to get bought and sold by the local business community, if Cash's speech, then he with the most, Cash's speech the loudest was the line they used.

• 45:15Speaker 05

  Which is true.

• 45:16Alec Baldwin?

  We, if we don't, if we don't change this Citizens United and get that overturned, I doubt we'll, we'll ever be able to get off the path we're on. I really don't think so.

• 45:25Speaker 05

  I agree with that. And which leads to the Supreme Court, which is a whole nother headline.

• 45:28Alec Baldwin?

  Well, let's ask, let's go out on that question.

• 45:30Speaker 05

  Look, I mean,

• 45:31Alec Baldwin?

  Six to three.

• 45:33Speaker 05

  As someone who really believed in the system and the rule of the law, The idea of Supreme Court reform was hard for me to kind of get my arms around. But I'm now at the point, and we'll see what they do on tariffs, we'll see what they do on the Fed. I think, I think he's going to lose both of those. But this idea that they just, you know, so easily overturn precedents, not Roe v. Wade and others that have existed for decades, is not good. It doesn't give, it's, there's no faith in the system.

• 46:00Alec Baldwin?

  But if it's settled law, Roe v. Wade, what do they say? What do they say when they change it? What is their

• 46:06Speaker 05

  They basically said it was wrong, Alito. It was wrong when it was decided, and reliance doesn't matter, essentially is what he said. But it can't be that people have so little faith in the Supreme Court. I know, I'm assuming the Chief Justice is worried about this. I think he needs to be more worried about it. I think we have to restore that faith as well.

• 46:28Alec Baldwin?

  My thanks to lawyer Robbie Kaplan. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeese, and Victoria DeMartin. Our engineer is Isaac Kaplan-Wulner. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.

• 47:38Speaker 11

  This is Jason Timp from Hoops Tonight with Jason Timp. Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra. Two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. Built on a reputation for quality and reliability, Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which can mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 48:09Speaker 03

  Breathe in and reset with Lincoln Rejuvenate. An available multi-sensory feature in the 2027 Lincoln Navigator SUV. Experience the luxurious massage, visuals, and sense to help you relax in the driver's seat. It's your time for a reset. Visit lincoln.com to learn more. Lincoln Rejuvenate does not operate unless the vehicle is in park. When the vehicle is off or if any doors open, do not use the feature in a closed garage or in other enclosed areas. See owner's manual for important operating instructions. Lincoln and Navigator trademarks and forward or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

• 48:41Speaker 12

  What's that?

• 48:42Speaker 13

  My fresh detector.

• 48:43Speaker 12

  Uh, your what?

• 48:44Speaker 13

  There it is.

• 48:45Speaker 12

  What is it detecting?

• 48:47Speaker 13

  Fresh produce? Fresh meat?

• 48:49Speaker 12

  Okay, what happens if it detects something really fresh?

• 48:55Speaker 13

  Apparently we celebrate.

• 48:57Speaker 14

  At Food Lion, you can count on fresh food at fresher prices when your fresh detector is going off. Head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.