The low support for President Joe Biden’s re-election bid is not due to his own record or age, but because former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party have “poisoned” the system — according to the Democratic governor of Minnesota. 

During his appearance on NBC News’s “Meet The Press” with host Chuck Todd, Governor Tim Walz (D-MN) brushed aside the lack of support for Biden and said the election will not be a referendum on Biden’s age, but on the importance of “the democracy.” 

“I think it’s our system. I think Donald Trump and the Republican Party have poisoned it to people,” Walz said when asked why fewer people want Biden to run again than former President Trump. “No one trusts our institutions, no one trusts Congress, no one trusts any of us, because all they do is attack our families do those types of things.”

Walz went on to say that if Democrats want “reproductive freedoms,” an aggressive climate agenda, and even “decency in the White House,” Biden is their man. 

During the 2020 campaign, Democrats often said electing Biden would be putting “decency” back into the White House, and Biden himself tweeted at the time that he would bring “honor and decency” back to Washington. However, during Biden’s term, cocaine was discovered in the West Wing and a transgender-identifying activist went topless on the White House lawn, drawing many to point out the hypocrisy in those promises. 

Walz said he spent last weekend on Mackinac Island in Michigan with Michigan Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Wisconsin Democrat Governor Tony Evers talking about how “to make sure that we win this for Joe Biden” in the Midwest. 

“The fact of the matter is, this isn’t about Joe Biden’s age,” Walz said. “This is about the democracy. And they’ll – as we get closer to the election, they’ll see that.” 

Walz also defended the president’s handling of the economy — an issue where Biden consistently polls low — brushing the issue off as a “global phenomenon” and placing partial blame on the COVID pandemic. 

“The Biden agenda has actually done more to tame inflation, to start to bring back manufacturing, to focus on high-tech chip industry, and to focus on climate change and infrastructure than any other country in the world,” Walz said. 

Despite this, just 36% of Americans approve of how Biden has handled the economy, according to an Associated Press/NORC poll. In that same poll, 42% of Americans approved of Biden’s performance as president overall. A Yahoo News/YouGov poll from July found that a majority of Americans don’t want Biden to run again — 53% of Democrats want Biden as the nominee, while 35% want someone else, the New York Post reported. 

Voters also aren’t as dismissive of Biden’s age as Walz appears to be, with 68% of voters in a June ABC News poll worried about the president’s health and 55% saying it was a “major” concern. 

A former federal prosecutor called the racketeering conspiracy indictment against former President Donald Trump and his allies a flawed case, claiming attempts to change an election outcome are legal and an actual criminal enterprise must be a continuing threat.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis launched a 41-count indictment against Trump and 18 co-conspirators last week, accusing the defendants of attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election result by allegedly violating the state’s version of the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act and soliciting an official to violate their oath of office.

Although Georgia’s RICO Act allows prosecutors to connect various crimes committed by multiple defendants, former Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York Andrew McCarthy wrote an opinion piece written for The Messenger pointing to “a giant hole” in the case due to “the lack of a clear crime to which Trump and his co-defendants can plausibly be said to have agreed.”

Racketeering conspiracy charges typically apply to mafia-type criminal organizations that engage in offenses you would see in an episode of “The Sopranos.” But because conspiracy charges require an agreement with two or more people to violate a criminal statute, McCarthy said that if there is no agreement about committing a crime, there is no conspiracy.

In the indictment, Willis alleges that Trump and the co-conspirators tried to keep the former president in power after the 2020 election results claimed otherwise by explicitly attempting to “change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.” Yet trying to reverse the election results without sharing an “overarching objective” is technically not a crime, McCarthy said.

He further alleges Willis is attempting to get around proof of the objective by using tautology in the charges, specifically noting on page 14 of the indictment that this was a “conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.”

“That is, the lawful objective of changing the election outcome somehow becomes unlawful because she invokes the apparently talismanic word ‘unlawful,'” McCarthy wrote. “But there is no crime of unlawfully trying to change an election outcome — not in Georgia law nor any other American law.”

McCarthy also said the RICO charge doesn’t fit the Georgia case because Trump and the co-defendants “did not intend or desire to belong to a group, or even see themselves as a group.”

“Their objective allegedly was to maintain Trump in power, not to participate in an enterprise,” he wrote.

Democratic State Representative Tonya Miller of Georgia, also a former prosecutor in Fulton County, told MSNBC on Sunday that the word “enterprise” under state law is defined broadly and includes one or more persons, legal or illegal businesses, and government agencies.

“RICO is particularly — in Georgia — particularly broad, more so than the federal version of RICO, because it isn’t just crimes that can form the basis of racketeering activity,” Miller said. “It can be acts involving crimes, threats involving crimes, so it really can get conduct that isn’t necessarily on its face criminal. We see that in this indictment.”

At the end of each act in the indictment, Willis alleges the defendants and other members and associates of the enterprise committed overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy.

Emory University Law Professor Fred Smith Jr. told the outlet that the act of conspiracy could count so long as the action was in furtherance of the same goal.

“Now, of course, there does need to be illegal activity, a pattern of illegal activity, which under Georgia law is two crimes that are listed in that particular state statute,” Smith said. “But all other actions that may not themselves be illegal, so long as they were in furtherance of that same scheme, that same illegal goal can qualify.”