Pat (Producer Pat), Unknown last name

Like, he doesn't seem like that loyal of a guy to me to want to do that.

Well, yeah, it becomes a political calculation, right?

Because he may want to protect those figures and he feels as though those figures are important to his movement.

But we know that his own base is turning on him over this very issue.

So it may get to a point where Trump figures, I'd rather have the base than those loyal people by my side.

And he goes along reluctantly with releasing the list or at the very least, he doesn't stop it from happening.

Yeah, I mean, I understand why companies would pay out the settlement, right?

Because they're making a mathematical calculation and they figure if we don't fight this, if we just give the president what he wants, then ultimately we'll make more money in the long term.

And these corporations are often amoral.

They're just figuring what's going to make them the most money.

And they're not concerned about these other things like protecting democracy or protecting free speech.

All that is not important to them.

What's important to them is making money.

So if anything, it should be incumbent on the government to not try to influence these companies, right, to stay out of what businesses are doing when it comes to this sort of thing and let them do what they want.

There should be more regulation when it comes to this.

We should have more protections of companies from political lawsuits and prosecutions and this sort of thing.

The fact that we don't have that means that we're in a situation now where Trump is free to do all this stuff and he's making a hell of a hell of a lot of money from it.

Yeah, so it's influence peddling when the companies decide to settle the lawsuits instead of fighting them.

And to me, this seems to undermine Trump's point about how he loses money when he's president.

He would be making so much more if he was running his own businesses.