Bill Kristol: Has Trump Trapped Himself?

Speaker 2 We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

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Speaker 49 Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
I'm lightly tanned, unrested, unready, but I'm going to make it through on some Oasis endorphins.

Speaker 51 And it's Monday, so I'm here with Bill Crystal, who can carry me on a post-vacation hangover. How are you doing, Bill?

Speaker 52 I'm fine. How was your vacation, Tim? How was Oasis?

Speaker 53 Oasis was so incredible.

Speaker 13 It was biblical, as they say. Mad for it.

Speaker 56 It was really something.

Speaker 57 You know, they were on a 16-year hiatus.

Speaker 58 We were in their hometown of Manchester.

Speaker 57 Very few Yanks there.

Speaker 6 As soon as I opened up.

Speaker 52 Manchester, England, not Manchester, New England. Some of us are very parochial.

Speaker 56 I spent a lot of time in Manchester, New Hampshire. Let me tell you.

Speaker 60 I could tell you about the bar scene there.

Speaker 61 It's pretty rough.

Speaker 11 It was my first time in Manchester, England, which has kind of like a British Detroit feel to it.

Speaker 58 One of those working, you know, industrial towns.

Speaker 56 It's kind of being revitalized.

Speaker 38 And we were out in their big city par, Keaton Park, and 80,000 people.

Speaker 23 All these Limeys knew every word to every song, the B-sides,

Speaker 67 everything.

Speaker 55 They came out.

Speaker 68 And

Speaker 69 I had British strangers hugging me.

Speaker 66 It was really quite the experience going to see the Oasis Reunion in Manchester.

Speaker 24 So that was good.

Speaker 70 Madrid was great.

Speaker 31 Amsterdam, going from the Spanish to the British with the Dutch in between, I felt like I was whispering the whole time in Amsterdam.

Speaker 71 Like it's one of the most much more modest people in Amsterdam.

Speaker 36 But it was wonderful.

Speaker 63 I have to warn the audience, it might be a two-week vacation next year.

Speaker 36 I could have done a couple more days, but it was really good.

Speaker 74 How are things here?

Speaker 52 Well, it was tough without you. We held down the fort.
Actually, we seem to have done pretty well. I did the podcast with our friend Cam Kasky there in your absence, and I went pretty well.

Speaker 52 Has he talked to you? Yeah, I was worried about that. The fact that you're going to be moved aside a bit, and it's going to be, you know, the grandfather relationship is really

Speaker 52 with a 24-year-old.

Speaker 60 One of the original name ideas, one I still kind of like the best, frankly, for FY Pod, was Boomer Zoomer.

Speaker 25 And so you could just move me out and have it officially be Boomer Zoomer.

Speaker 52 It's your, you and he, you and he have a lot to talk about, but like Oasis.

Speaker 56 I called him like an older brother on the way to the airport.

Speaker 9 And I was like, I'm not going to have my vacation fucking screwed up because

Speaker 76 you do something crazy.

Speaker 67 So behave.

Speaker 75 So I'm glad to hear it worked.

Speaker 52 He behaved. And then we had an interesting week in politics, culminating with Epstein this past weekend.
And Oasis sounds great. Yeah, I don't know much about Oasis.
I don't really hugging strangers.

Speaker 5 You don't know Wonderwall?

Speaker 52 Hugging strangers, hugging strangers at some big, in a big event. I don't know.
I'm not really big on that.

Speaker 52 Last time I think I hugged a stranger was in Fenway Park in 1975 when Carlton Fisk hit the walk-off home run in the 12th inning of the sixth game. The greatest moment I've ever seen in baseball.

Speaker 52 And everyone in Fenway Park was hugging each other. So that's my Oasis.
You know, my Oasis is the World Series 50 years ago.

Speaker 49 Noel walking back out

Speaker 56 to the hometown, telling them that don't look back in anger is up next, was kind of like the Carlton Fisk, I think,

Speaker 79 of the moment.

Speaker 78 It's great.

Speaker 6 It's great that you read a good time.

Speaker 66 Folks can look at my Instagram if they want to just see me in pure bliss.

Speaker 80 But now,

Speaker 14 not as pure bliss, I guess.

Speaker 72 Though we had some good things happened, it seems like.

Speaker 6 Well, actually, let me ask you, what did I miss the most?

Speaker 72 I did this.

Speaker 41 I read nothing.

Speaker 30 I read nothing.

Speaker 63 Anytime I would receive a text from someone about something and I would admonish them to not

Speaker 56 follow up.

Speaker 58 I didn't want any more information.

Speaker 51 I was essentially totally black with a few bad apples like Tommy Vitor texting me.

Speaker 82 And other than that,

Speaker 83 I was black.

Speaker 63 So what did I miss?

Speaker 51 What was the most important thing, I think, that happened?

Speaker 52 That's a good question. I don't know.
There was a lot of news. I have to go back and look at Morning Jean to see what we all covered.

Speaker 52 I mean, Epstein took it over beginning around a little bit Sunday, which was right after you left with the release of the Joint Justice Department FBI statement.

Speaker 52 But then when Trump butted into a question on Tuesday at the cabinet meeting and took the question that was intended for Bondi, really, and said, oh, why does everyone care about Epstein?

Speaker 52 It's so ridiculous. He's a dead guy.
Whatever.

Speaker 52 I mean, that did drive the mega base crazy. And then, and then a lot of people, and I'd include myself in this, said, you know what, what is going on here?

Speaker 52 And is there like a reason why we don't know a little more about what this horrendous, grotesque, horrible sex criminal did over years?

Speaker 52 And he was a friend of Trump's, and we could talk more about that. Sarah and I did this little podcast on Saturday afternoon, kind of last minute.
Everything was in the news.

Speaker 52 We both had opinions about it, which were that it was a legitimate issue, basically. But neither of us had followed it at all closely.
We're not really into conspiracy theories.

Speaker 52 So we did this 20-minute thing, no, you know, not on a regular slot or anything like that, obviously. Saturday afternoon, I just looked at it this morning.

Speaker 52 It seems to have gotten over half a million views. Honestly, it was fine.
It was fine, but it wasn't like scintillating, brilliant, hilarious, insightful,

Speaker 52 nothing you could

Speaker 52 not know otherwise.

Speaker 52 And then I did this thing with Julie Brown, the really fantastic reporter who broke the story again and forced, in a way, the second indictment of Epstein in 2019, when she wrote these pieces for the Miami Herald in 2018.

Speaker 52 And that's gotten also a lot of attention. And what that tells me is these are not MAGA people, I'm going to guess, watching the Bulwark, watching me and Sarah, right?

Speaker 52 Our people, if I can put it this way, are interested in it. It is a very interesting...

Speaker 52 horrible in many ways, of course, but I mean, interesting story about many things, our criminal justice system, our elites, Trump, New York financiers, unfortunately, sex trafficking.

Speaker 52 So, anyway, I'm now slightly obsessed with Epstein.

Speaker 74 Okay, great.

Speaker 14 I've been there for a while.

Speaker 72 So, I was happy. Is that right?

Speaker 48 Oh, good for you.

Speaker 84 Yeah, it's nice.

Speaker 55 You had an eight-day catch-up.

Speaker 75 I did a Julie Brown interview.

Speaker 85 She is great.

Speaker 61 And I was happy you did the Sunday show.

Speaker 65 We did it back when I was doing the next level Sunday interviews, which feels like a lifetime ago.

Speaker 56 So it must have been two or three years ago. And I'll put a link to the show notes.

Speaker 49 The gist was kind of like,

Speaker 12 there's something weird here still, and like I

Speaker 61 was like, you, I hadn't been paying that close of attention to it, and I was like, I want you to educate me, basically. And so it was long form, kind of went into the origin story.

Speaker 63 She talked about the victims a lot, and we talked a little bit about the Trump of it at the time.

Speaker 51 So, if people, if people are just catching up and want to kind of get that backstory, Julie K.

Speaker 86 Brown has been the reporter on this, I'll put the link in the notes here.

Speaker 72 But, you know, the Trump part of it has continued to nag at me for a while because, mostly, I mean, partly because of the troll, but also just because of the

Speaker 41 it is pretty wild.

Speaker 88 I mean, like, the coincidences are pretty extreme.

Speaker 31 And the death, uh, suicide, if you will, did happen when Trump was president.

Speaker 18 And, like, and so I was more obsessed with like kind of the meta narrative about this.

Speaker 2 Like, how did this become a right-wing coded conspiracy theory?

Speaker 88 Like, Trump was friends with the guy, Acosta, who was in his cabinet, gave him the sweetheart deal initially.

Speaker 62 He died under the Bill Barr Justice Department.

Speaker 69 There are also some Bill Barr connections to Epstein.

Speaker 56 Maybe there's nothing here, but if there is something here that's related to Trump, the comparison I have now to this situation that I'm wondering how you'll react to this is that it's a little reminiscent of the Harriet Myers thing from the

Speaker 2 beginning of the Bush second term, where you and maybe it's just the Laura Ingram clip I'm about to play you because I remember Laura Ingram being very going very hard against Bush in term two over the Harriet Myers thing.

Speaker 65 And essentially, the right-wing media kind of asserting itself and saying that he had gone soft.

Speaker 88 Trump has never experienced that, and he's experiencing this now.

Speaker 12 We are in day eight since that memo came out.

Speaker 34 Here's a little audio mashup I put together from the Turning Point USA festival this weekend that includes Laura Ingram and Dave Smith and Charlie Kirk and some others.

Speaker 52 Let's just take a listen.

Speaker 95 I will not rest until we go full Jan 6 committee on the Jeffrey Epstein files. And every single client

Speaker 95 that was associated with this thing has an FBI agent at their door on their phone going after them the same way they went after the Jan 6ers and the peaceful patriots and the praying grandmothers that were on those steps.

Speaker 95 That's how we should go after every single person that was in

Speaker 48 this client list.

Speaker 96 How many of you are satisfied

Speaker 72 you can clap?

Speaker 96 Satisfied with the results of the Epstein investigation?

Speaker 74 Clap.

Speaker 96 Okay, I told you to clap. You guys aren't listening.

Speaker 96 I'm not going to grade you on a curve.

Speaker 96 So I was going to get to that. How many of you are not satisfied with the results of the investigation?

Speaker 98 I think the DOJ should immediately move to unseal all the Epstein documents in the Southern District of New York.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 96 Everything.

Speaker 99 Listen, guys, I'm a free American. I supported Donald Trump in this last election.
Yes, he did just actively cover up a giant child rapist ring, and I'm going to criticize him for that, okay?

Speaker 63 I mean, the crowd reaction is notable.

Speaker 52 It is striking. So, I mean, I think people like me, I want to say Ross, probably didn't pay as much attention to this once it became such a part of MAGA world conspiracy theories.

Speaker 52 How that happened, I agree, given that Trump is the guy who was so friendly with Epstein, there's all the video, Trump praised him in 2002, et cetera.

Speaker 52 How that happened, maybe it has to do with QAnon, and they were so obsessed with the massive pedophile activity at the highest levels of the U.S. government and Pizzagate and all.

Speaker 52 And once Epstein re-emerges, thanks to Julie Brown, who is not a MAGA type, but thanks to her really courageous reporting and indefatigable reporting, against many obstacles, incidentally.

Speaker 52 And he gets reindicted, recharged into 2019, and then dies. And then Maxwell's charged in 2021, I think, and convicted.

Speaker 52 Somehow that was fine, but that was different from the MAGA world obsession with it, which I do think was, don't you think, pretty QAnon related?

Speaker 63 Yeah, I mean, obviously that there was a tie between the kind of QAnon element of this and that Trump was the one stopping the pedophile rings and the he'll end up Pizzagate.

Speaker 52 Yeah, and then Biden's president and nothing, they indict Epstein, nothing which happens. And that's, and then...

Speaker 74 And Maxwell.

Speaker 52 And Maxwell. I mean, I'm sorry, they indict Maxwell, not Epstein.
And Epstein's dead at this point, and

Speaker 52 convict her. But I will say this, just now that I've looked at it and talked to Julie especially,

Speaker 52 I don't know, if you have a massive, I kind of, whoever was on that audio, if you have a massive conspiracy, two people get charged. I mean, are they the only people who knew what was going on?

Speaker 52 Are the only people who helped make it happen? There was money sloshing around. There were arrangements being made.
Galore.

Speaker 52 Now, not every person who, I don't know, flew Epstein's plane necessarily knew what it was for.

Speaker 52 And maybe said, you wouldn't go necessarily charge all those people, but there are a heck of a lot of middle-level, upper-middle management people in this conspiracy, as there are in others in Sonella.

Speaker 52 You think about Madoff, think about these others. My impression is, I've researched this honestly, but more than one person gets charged in these cases.
Sometimes they turn state's evidence.

Speaker 52 Maybe they don't get punished as severely, but they're just kind of, you know, didn't quite understand what was happening, maybe. But anyway, a lot of that didn't come out.

Speaker 52 And the original deal in 2008 was a total disgrace.

Speaker 52 And so the notion that the elites took care of themselves, the elites didn't want this rock to turn over this rock too much. They reluctantly went after him.

Speaker 52 I think how reluctant it was, they went after this repulsive creep.

Speaker 52 They give him a plea deal in 08. By 06, I think they felt they couldn't ignore it.
There was so much talk about it. They give him a plea deal in 08.

Speaker 52 Julie Brown personally gets them to finally indict him again 10 years later. He dies, and then they do Maxwell.
They get her convicted, and then it's all just dropped.

Speaker 52 I don't know, maybe all these guys didn't know.

Speaker 67 They didn't know how old the girls were.

Speaker 52 They didn't realize they were being sex trafficked. They just thought this was kind of a thing that happens in elite circles in New York and Palm Beach.

Speaker 52 It's minimally, unbelievably, well, creepy is not even the word. I mean, it's just horrible.
And hard to believe there were charges that could have been brought against those people.

Speaker 52 Now, maybe they couldn't prove them. It's whatever, prosecutorial judgments.

Speaker 52 So that's one side. So I think what's happened, if you want the Harriet Myers analogy, the right turned on Myers because they thought she was a squish sort of on abortion and other issues.

Speaker 52 People like me and David Frum criticized Myers a lot, and I think probably made it more legitimate in a sense for some of the more moderate Republican senators to say, we're not going along with this, because we just thought she wasn't up to the position.

Speaker 52 It wasn't appropriate for us, a Supreme Court nominee. And so the equivalent, I'd say, was this is Magus going after Trump, which causes trouble in Trump's base, which is good politically.

Speaker 52 But also, I do think a lot of people, I'll say this about myself, you know, sort of been reawakened to just how much of an outrage the whole thing is.

Speaker 52 And then the Justice Department, it's Trump's Justice Department, so we should stipulate that. I'll come back to that in a sec.

Speaker 52 But the Justice Department of the United States puts out a one-and-a-half-page statement with the FBI that just says that nothing to see here. Doesn't explain.

Speaker 52 I mean, I was thinking about this: Comey and Hillary. Let's go back to emails for a minute.
So he decided not to prosecute. But you know what? It was a big story.
It was a big concern.

Speaker 52 And he put out a statement. He had a press conference.
He explained. People didn't like the explanation.
They did like it, whatever.

Speaker 52 But I mean, it was like they felt some obligation to explain to the public why they were doing a certain set of things in this very controversial and a case that had a lot of attention.

Speaker 52 Nothing of that here. So even if it weren't the Trump Justice Department, it's kind of bad, I think.
And of course, Trump was a very good friend of Epstein. We have a lot of evidence of that.

Speaker 52 I mean, they both say it, so that's not even. He's in the files.
We know that. He's in the airplane logs already.
We've seen that. He's got to be in the files.
I mean, he was close to Epstein.

Speaker 52 How could he have not come up in a bunch of interviews? Should they put out unredacted, unvetted files? Well, if some person says, I hear Donald did that, no, that's not right.

Speaker 52 Obviously, the criminal investigation. There's a million things that shouldn't be shared.
But he is the president of the United States. Should there be some account of

Speaker 52 his involvement or non-involvement? Maybe

Speaker 52 that would be worth knowing. And finally, while you were gone, there was all this publicity about Bongino.
Is that how we've pressed it?

Speaker 52 And obviously, Attorney General Pambonte and Cash Patel, they're fighting. They're unhappy.
Bongino's unhappy. Bandi's taking the hit and all this.
It's all ludicrous.

Speaker 52 This is the one thing Sarah and I really both, I think, independently came to is we talked about it Wednesday or Thursday and thought, this is ridiculous. It's Trump.

Speaker 52 Pam Bondi is not deciding how to handle the Epstein files without consulting Trump. Maybe she's careful and doesn't formally schedule a meeting with him and there's an indirect communication.

Speaker 52 Trump's kind of good at that kind of stuff. It is inconceivable that Trump didn't sign off on these things, maybe order the decisions that Bondi and Patel came to.

Speaker 52 And anyway, they believe in the unitary executive, so he's responsible for it. I mean, he is literally responsible for it, right?

Speaker 52 Just the way, you know, he doesn't get to walk, you know, to say, oh, that's Bondi Patel. I don't know anything about it.

Speaker 52 So Trump decided to slam the door shut on the files of this sexual predator whom he was a good friend of and who is probably mentioned in many of these files. That's kind of a big story.

Speaker 94 And depending on what you, if it's a really big story, depending on what also you mean by files, like

Speaker 24 there are other Trump accusers.

Speaker 18 And Julie points this out, right?

Speaker 101 It's not like there's just one secret black book where he listed all the men that raped women, right?

Speaker 88 Like the files encompass all the investigations, the videos.

Speaker 61 You know, they like they went into Epstein's home and took out a lot of tapes.

Speaker 6 We don't, people don't know what's on what is on the tapes.

Speaker 50 You know, there are other accusers.

Speaker 45 It was Stacey Williams, I believe, that accused Trump of groping her in an Epstein-involved situation.

Speaker 65 There's another woman who did as well, attached to Epstein, the Michael Wolfe book.

Speaker 92 Now, I'm a little kind of iffy on Michael Wolfe, but like he says that Epstein showed him pictures of women on Trump's lap, topless women.

Speaker 28 Were they underage?

Speaker 11 I don't, you know, I don't know.

Speaker 58 So the point is that like any legitimate investigation into Epstein would have included like running down these types of accusations.

Speaker 34 And so he would be in there at some level.

Speaker 105 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

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Speaker 2 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 4 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 6 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to.

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Speaker 60 I want to talk about why I think that this

Speaker 63 has, I don't want to, you know, get over excited that this is going to be the thing that breaks MAG or whatever, but I want to talk a little bit about what the real risks are with MAG in a second.

Speaker 16 But since you brought up Bongino, that first, he took a mental health day on Friday.

Speaker 84 He took the day off and apparently reported that he has gotten a screaming match with Susie Wiles.

Speaker 92 CNN over the weekend says that he's told multiple people he's considering resigning over this.

Speaker 9 Who knows, right? Is that a face-saving thing?

Speaker 55 Is that Bongino doesn't like having a real job?

Speaker 14 Is it that Bongino doesn't like how it was handled? That he knows something.

Speaker 72 But again, that brings legitimacy.

Speaker 41 That is a real news item.

Speaker 67 Like the deputy director of the FBI, Trump named him the deputy director of the FBI.

Speaker 81 He might be a clown, but like it's a pretty, it would be a pretty major story in any administration if the deputy director of the FBI was like, I'm going to resign because I think that my boss is covering up a pedophile ring.

Speaker 52 Totally. That's very well said.
And I really, I just want to emphasize that point. I mean, it's the idea that this is, oh, we should, I was on

Speaker 52 various conversations over the weekend. I want to bore you with them.
And, you know, various liberal friends in Washington and elites and lawyers and so forth types. And they were like very abashed.

Speaker 52 I'd have even been discussing it. I don't know, Bill, is that really a thing? I said I was doing the podcast with Julie Brown, Sarah and I

Speaker 52 and stuff, and I was just going to write something about it this morning. I thought.

Speaker 52 Oh, this is not kind of, I guess you have to. It probably hurts them politically, but you know, it's kind of, we got more important things to talk about and all this.

Speaker 52 The deputy director of the FBI, as you say, Trump's personally hand-picked appointee, possibly quitting the administration five months in over a cover-up that Bongino will say is Pam Bondi's, but must therefore be Donald Trump's.

Speaker 52 That's a very big story, right? It doesn't take away Trump. That's a story in any administration.
I couldn't agree more. So it really is absolutely legitimate to cover.

Speaker 52 And since the Bongino reporting is so broad-based now, and in fact, half of it's by people whom Bongino is probably telling it to, right? Laura Loomer. I mean, who's the source for Laura Loomer?

Speaker 52 You know, you follow some some of these maga characters a little more closely than i do do we not think that bangino is personally the source for laura lumer at like a 75 chance of that i don't know i mean so it's not like this is just third-hand disreputable gossipy stuff clearly as you said he took that day off he's he's very unhappy so that's a story i i i absolutely agree Here's like also, I think, the big picture political element of this that relates to that turning point USA video and the response of the crowd, relates to kind of the response from the manosphere.

Speaker 66 We've seen some of this from some of these less political, less

Speaker 56 guys that jumped on board the Trump train that did care about the Epstein issue.

Speaker 70 Like,

Speaker 122 given what has happened, like, they put out this statement that says that there's nothing there.

Speaker 56 Like, the implication of that is one of two things.

Speaker 50 Either essentially all of the deep state conspiracies are fake.

Speaker 121 If there's really nothing to the Epstein case, then there's nothing to any of the cases that they've got, that they have gotten all excited about that has driven MAGA media for years or trump is covering up pedophilia on behalf of the most influential people in the world including himself like that's kind of it like if there's nothing here like those are the options like either take it at face value there's nothing there and that all of these conspiracies that you've been spending all this podcast time in over the years amounts to nothing or like trump is involved in a massive cover-up on behalf of the elites.

Speaker 15 And I think that like the first one is

Speaker 60 important because when you think about the risk to MAGA, you know, because, you know, I think that probably a lot of liberals would just default to the first one, which is probably the first one, right?

Speaker 85 Like, it's probably just that these guys are all a bunch of conspiracy theorists and there's nothing there.

Speaker 17 But

Speaker 76 there will be a reckoning for that, if that is true, on the right.

Speaker 101 Like, if you take what they've been told at face value in MAGA world, like, and you look at the Pam Bondi Cash Patel record so far, there have been no arrests of the Biden crime family, no arrests over 2020 election fraud, no arrests over the Russia hooks,

Speaker 60 no arrests involved with Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 121 How could that be acceptable to these people?

Speaker 31 I don't understand.

Speaker 88 I don't think it is.

Speaker 29 And I think that you will see the backlash.

Speaker 69 And I think that they are almost as vulnerable to delivering nothing as they are to a cover-up.

Speaker 78 I mean, obviously, covering up Donald Trump being complicit in this would be a bigger story, but I think it's a real political vulnerability.

Speaker 52 You know, I think Trump senses that, which is why, in that kind of insane, long truth social post of 5 p.m.

Speaker 52 on a Saturday afternoon, he turns it in a way which is both crazy, but in a way, consistent with what you're saying. This was invented by Obama and Clinton.
And I mean, he goes on, right?

Speaker 52 The document, he almost seems to say.

Speaker 72 I have it in front of me. Let me just read it really quick.

Speaker 75 What's going on with my boys?

Speaker 63 And in some cases, gals?

Speaker 60 They're all going after Pam Bondi, who's doing a fantastic job.

Speaker 100 We have a perfect administration, the talk of the world, and selfish people are trying to hurt it all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 58 For years, it's Epstein over and over again.

Speaker 85 Why are we giving publicity to files written by Obama, crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the losers and criminals of the Biden administration who conned the world with Russia, Russia, Russia, the laptop from hell, and more, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 63 So that's what he's trying to lump it in with.

Speaker 52 Which is literally almost crazy. That is six days before his own Justice Department and FBI had a statement that, as I said, must have been signed off on by him.

Speaker 52 I've said, look, we've gone through all. I hadn't really realized realized till I read the statement personally.
They go into a little bit of detail, not much, but a couple of paragraphs.

Speaker 52 We've gone through all these files, all these videos, extensive, many agents and investigators have looked into this.

Speaker 52 Who knows if they're telling the truth, but they say they went through all this stuff.

Speaker 52 They say nothing about the files being cooked up or invented by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or anything like that. And they say, but there was nothing there.
There's not enough there.

Speaker 52 There's no conspiracy. There's nothing to charge, not even no conspiracy.
It would be inappropriate to release any new information. That's what they say.
But the files are legit.

Speaker 52 Suddenly, Trump, realizing that he's got the problem that you sort of specified, which is, well, wait a second, if the files are legit, okay, well, let's hear something about them.

Speaker 52 The files are made up, which is, in a way, typical Trump, kind of shrewdly just trying to totally change the topic so he doesn't even have to address it. And he denies everything, right?

Speaker 52 He denies Dory Daniels. He denies everything that

Speaker 52 he did. Basically, he's unashamed about lying, to say the least.
But in this case, he's now gotten himself into sort of weird contradiction.

Speaker 52 I mean, none of his people believes these files were made up. None of the MAGA world thinks the files were made up.
It shows a kind of panic, in my view, on the 5.21 p.m.

Speaker 52 long truth social post that you read some of on Saturday afternoon. That feels to me like a little realization that this is spinning out of control.
I don't know when that booing was.

Speaker 5 Yeah, same time. It was around the same time.

Speaker 52 Yeah, you know, he's hearing about this and he's sort of, I'll go to my

Speaker 52 go-to play. It's all invented by Obama and Hillary as a decoy.
But these people have been talking about this this for years, and no one said it was invented, including Patel, Bondi, or Trump himself.

Speaker 52 No one said this problem was invented by Hillary or Obama, right?

Speaker 52 I mean, that would be consistent if they said other things. You know what I mean? The Russia hoax is the consistent fake news item on Trump's part, right?

Speaker 52 It was invented by Mueller and Obama, and now it's been invented eight years later. But so what's he going to do?

Speaker 52 I mean, I think what he'll do is, and he says this sort of at the end of that long truth social thing, he's going to go after, redouble his efforts to go after everyone he can go after.

Speaker 52 Forget about Epstein, but I'm indicting, you know, Comey. I'm indicting, God knows, I'm reopening the Hillary investigation.
I'm reopening this. He'll come after the Bulwark.
I don't know.

Speaker 52 I mean, he'll desperately try to get his people focused on the malefactors who, you know, he wants them focused on. But that's difficult in this case.
This was, as you say, 2019 was under Trump.

Speaker 52 2000, he didn't complain. You know what I mean? Trump wasn't complaining about the settlement in 2008,

Speaker 52 so far as I know, under the Bush administration. So anyway.

Speaker 61 I think that's a sell that works for like the real, the news max watchers, you know, if you're a 70-year-old MAGA person who leaves OAN on all day long, like, sure, like whatever is going to work on you.

Speaker 65 Like eventually Charlie Kirk will get in line, you know, on side, right? Like Fox Primetime eventually gets on side, right? Like you can only talk about this for so long, probably.

Speaker 36 But

Speaker 10 that nexus of people that were drawn to Trump because he felt like he was a finger, tiny little finger, in the eye of the elites, you know, and that that's what they liked about him, that he was anti-establishment, he was different, that he, you know, wasn't going to get us involved in the wars.

Speaker 40 Like you hear that from like the young men that got along with him.

Speaker 100 I think that the credibility is unrecoverable on this.

Speaker 62 Like these guys are

Speaker 38 wired to believe that there is a conspiracy, whether or not that there is.

Speaker 26 You know, like the idea that you can tell them that the Jeffrey Epstein thing was just nothing, actually,

Speaker 62 is just laughable.

Speaker 87 I don't think the credibility is recoverable with them, which is meaningful.

Speaker 52 It's so evidently more something than all these other, quote, conspiracies. I mean, actually, Epstein was not a conspiracy theory, exactly.
It was a criminal case.

Speaker 52 He pled guilty in 08. They gave him a very soft punishment.
It was reopened, as we've discussed.

Speaker 52 They indicted him. Those documents are public.
I actually some of them, I just looked at it this morning. So it's not a kind of pizza gate.
Oh my God, the deep state. They weren't covering it.

Speaker 52 They indicted him. Then they indicted him.

Speaker 60 Yeah, the suicide part is like, I guess, the conspiracy to extract you.

Speaker 8 Yeah. Right.

Speaker 63 That he didn't really kill himself.

Speaker 68 But then again, they released the video.

Speaker 35 There's like a one-minute gap.

Speaker 21 It's like, why is there a one-minute gap?

Speaker 81 And then again, on stage, and this is how you end up eating your own young.

Speaker 43 On stage, it was not one of the clips I played, but at Teep USA, Charlie Kirk, even Kirk is like,

Speaker 5 can you just tell us who else was on the floor?

Speaker 54 Right. It's like, you know what I mean?

Speaker 14 Like, what other prisoners were on the floor?

Speaker 63 So we can look to see if any of them might have connections or, you know,

Speaker 125 you start putting the pins against the wall with this, with the string.

Speaker 124 But I mean, I think that that part of it, you know, is, I guess, the quote-unquote conspiracy, but also

Speaker 36 it is odd. It's unusual.

Speaker 6 You know, raises some eyebrows.

Speaker 52 What do you think about the sort of the soft Trump supporters? I guess they can just, the world's, I'd be interested to see see what the Wall Street Journal says and stuff.

Speaker 52 I mean, will they just sort of dismiss it?

Speaker 52 Harrietton reported on, CNN, I don't know how reliable a thing this is, that an indicator this is. I assume what he said is true.
There's a wild surge in Google searches for Trump at Epstein.

Speaker 52 And I take it that sort of feels to me like us getting half a million views out of Sarah for this 20-minute video.

Speaker 52 Let's say normal people, not necessarily, maybe Trump supporters, but not MAGA world.

Speaker 52 They're not, you know, are just like, well, what is the story here? What are the facts?

Speaker 52 And the more people get to a sort of Julie Brown level, obviously not exactly at her level, but a simplified version of a Julie Brown level of understanding, well, what happened over these 20 years?

Speaker 52 And what happened over the 15 years before that when Trump and Epstein were great buddies? And, you know, what is the real story?

Speaker 52 I think that hurts him in a slightly different way from the way you're describing with MAGA World, but in an additional way. It's sort of like the Myers thing.
It hurts him.

Speaker 52 The bass didn't like it because she wasn't fervent enough.

Speaker 52 And like legal, you know, scholar types sort of thought, I thought he was going going to like, I thought the new conservative legal originalism was John Roberts and it was serious people, you know, and it both can hurt, right?

Speaker 8 All right.

Speaker 28 Well, we'll, we'll continue to monitor.

Speaker 49 I feel pretty happy.

Speaker 61 I'm kind of giddy and vindicated about the whole thing because I've been, I was so fucking annoyed the whole time that I was like,

Speaker 67 how is this a right-wing conspiracy?

Speaker 15 It's like, if anybody killed this fucking guy, it's Bill Baar and Trump.

Speaker 22 And I don't know if anybody did, maybe he killed himself, but it's certainly not Hillary Clinton.

Speaker 21 How was she going to do it from Chappaqua walking walking through the woods?

Speaker 52 I mean, good for you for being on this earlier. And I think it is

Speaker 52 important. I mean, one point that Julie made, and I want to also just the victims here do deserve a word of concern and God knows sympathy and justice,

Speaker 52 some justice, at least, as far as they can get justice for what happened to them, terrible things that were done. It never even occurs to Trump to say that.
I was very struck by that.

Speaker 52 Or really to Bondi or Patel. They have one half sentence in that two-page memo that's sort of about doing justice to the victims.

Speaker 52 But in their actual statements, in their tweets, there's nothing about that. And that's somehow to me very, very revealing.

Speaker 52 Trump went out of his way to say he wished Maxwell well when she was arrested in 2020. Remember that from the White House podium? Yeah.
But he's never said anything about the victims.

Speaker 52 What does that say about Trump? Trump thinks about it as, I knew Jeffrey. He was a good friend.
Maybe I had a falling out with him, whatever. I'm sort of involved.

Speaker 52 Other people I know could well be involved, other Trump donors, other God knows who else, right? I mean, in those circles. And we got to keep the lid on this.

Speaker 52 And there's not a moment of thought that there were hundreds, maybe a thousand or something like that, underage girls were victims of this monster.

Speaker 78 Yeah, it's horrible.

Speaker 56 Yeah, I talked to Julie a lot about the victims during that first combo because it was a little bit outside of like kind of a political frame.

Speaker 17 We do a little politics.

Speaker 78 So again, people can go can go listen to that because her stories are really

Speaker 86 just

Speaker 97 astonishing and tough to listen to, important to listen to.

Speaker 112 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

Speaker 107 This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Speaker 104 Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone.

Speaker 112 We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

Speaker 107 After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

Speaker 118 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center, that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 112 Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 4 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 7 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 9 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

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Speaker 23 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 35 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress and the truth you've relied on for decades they'll continue to cover the day's news ask the tough questions and explain how it impacts you same mission new name ms now learn more at ms.now

Speaker 69 where do we want to go next i have i have a series of other things that have been happening i i guess i'll i want to start with immigration while i was gone in macarthur park in los angeles So I come back last night and I'm like, all right, I'm going to start reading about what the fuck happened this past week.

Speaker 33 And this story, I forget, you know, I'm like going through different newsletters and, you know, going through the old morning shots and all acting and reading through what happened.

Speaker 34 I was reading this one and I clicked on the PBS story.

Speaker 65 Dozens of federal officers in tactical gear and about 90 members of the California National Guard were deployed for about an hour Monday to a mostly empty park in a Los Angeles neighborhood with a large immigrant population.

Speaker 61 Mayor Karen Bass, who we Bullard subsequently did an interview with about this, what I saw in the park looked like a city under siege, under armed occupation.

Speaker 22 I was reading that story and I was like, wait, the military is still in Los Angeles?

Speaker 72 Like, why is the fucking military still in Los Angeles?

Speaker 72 And this morning, as I was trying to get to catch up, I was like, what, what have they been doing for the last week?

Speaker 6 It is truly crazy that the federal government is still taking control of the California National Guard and has deployed Marines to Los Angeles to just hassle people.

Speaker 52 Right. I think they were supporting the Border Patrol people who, you know, were

Speaker 52 proudly riding through on horses. It was so third world and so horrible to see.

Speaker 52 I mean, incidentally, Los Angeles is not on the border. So we have the Border Patrol plus the National Guard in a park in LA where kids literally, it was a Monday, were like there for their camp.

Speaker 52 They go to the park to play soccer or something like that. I mean, that's who was there.
I mean, it really brought home the kind of semi-fascism of the whole thing, honestly.

Speaker 52 It brought home, I think, the warnings of some of us that this wasn't going to stop once they began this deport. the deportation thing just accelerates, right?

Speaker 52 And your point is so good about the Guard and the Marines.

Speaker 52 I think Toronto Marines are now being sent to Florida to help out with that horrible camp in the Everglades or to help, I don't know what, protect the ICE people, not that they're being attacked.

Speaker 52 They're picking up 70-year-old people. You know, I mean, remember, we all, I will say on this, called attention to this.
That original executive order, the original justification was all open-ended.

Speaker 52 It wasn't only for LA. It wasn't only for California.
It was for any troops he needs, wherever there could be a problem, wherever they had intelligence, there might be protests.

Speaker 52 I mean, Miller laid the groundwork for this, and they're going ahead with it. Now, there is a pretty big reaction, I would say.
You asked what you missed during the week.

Speaker 52 A few people were like, a little, really? This is not where we are?

Speaker 52 Plus, there's some business reaction, farmers' reaction against all the harassing of hardworking people, and a little more Trump voters saying over and over, this is a JVL obsession.

Speaker 52 Of course, you know, I didn't vote for this, even though they had mass deportation, you know, printed up placards placards at the republican convention but they didn't think they were voting for this i suppose so anyway that's yeah and here's the thing though so

Speaker 100 there's this fascistic and scared well always with fascism there is like a clownishness involved with it so like there's the clownish side of it too clint clippenstein was reporting on that raid they they gave it a name operation excalibur yeah and it was just like a totally botched laughing stock like that he had some sources of the national guard he's like we were there for like 20 minutes nobody knew what they were doing we all had different code names you know it's like the border patrol is pepsi and and the marines were coke and ice was a and w rupee and it was like the whole thing was ridiculous like it was just a farce you know at some level there's that but and and like these errors like are adding up just like i was kind of trying to clean up on a couple of the stories that i talked about this uh narquiso baranco that was the father of the three u.s marines that was violently tackled and beaten up in la

Speaker 65 uh he is supposed to be released today donna Kashani is the Iranian woman that was gardening here in New Orleans, had been here for 60 years.

Speaker 78 She got released. I was gone after a couple of weeks.

Speaker 26 Last night, this guy, George Redis, I don't know if we've talked about him, but he's this disabled U.S.

Speaker 82 veteran and U.S.

Speaker 5 citizen that was like violently detained for several days in one of these raids.

Speaker 123 He got released after about three days.

Speaker 37 There's some other examples of this, but you see like the problem developing, right?

Speaker 22 Which is that the Congress just

Speaker 76 gave tens of billions of more dollars to ICE to go out and find and detain people?

Speaker 9 They're having to hassle, you know, and harass and detain people that are not violent criminals or major risks like already before all those other resources.

Speaker 50 So, like, I mean, to me, that augurs ominously for like what is coming down the pike.

Speaker 34 And it seems like the best case scenario is that we just spend billions and billions of dollars to have a bunch of guys sit around with their thumbs up their ass, which might be what's happening right now in L.A.

Speaker 52 I mean, that would be good, but they are deporting a lot of people.

Speaker 52 They are way beyond capacity in terms of the current detention capacities and capabilities, and they're building, as in Florida with that Everglades thing, they're going to now spend all this money to build many more detention centers and to spend money to get them out of the country, including now, because the courts have given them a sort of green light on this, to third countries where they have no relationship and don't even speak the language and the South Sudan thing.

Speaker 52 So, I'm pretty, Tom Homan, the

Speaker 52 sort of million deputy in in effect on this, was like, we're going to preside over the largest mass deportation in history. You can bet on it.

Speaker 52 So I think the clownishness is real, as you said, it is characteristic of a lot of these kinds of movements, political movements, but the

Speaker 52 fascism is real too, if I can put it this way. And I, they, yeah, I mean, will there be enough of a backlash that at some point Trump says, hey, I mean, this is getting a little out of hand.

Speaker 52 It is pretty unpopular. There was that one immigration poll that came out while you were gone.
Do you see that? Where

Speaker 52 numbers have changed pretty radically across the board on immigration, actually, but presumably in reaction to this stuff, particularly in terms of your general views of are you favorable or well disposed to immigrants or not?

Speaker 52 And it's like shot way up. And do you think we have too many of them? Too little,

Speaker 52 too little has gone up, too many has gone way down. So I don't know.

Speaker 52 Does political reality hit at some point? Or is this just, or is this the one thing they're going to do? And they don't care.

Speaker 52 And Homan and Miller are going to just, our friend Aaron Reichel Melnick, we've both done podcasts with, said months ago, they're going to have trouble hiring all these people because here's how the procedure works.

Speaker 52 And, you know, there's all kinds of qualifications and vetting. But I mean, he did at the time said, of course, these procedures are kind of at their discretion.

Speaker 52 I mean, I think Coleman and Miller, they will hire every tough guy, thuggish guy, proud boy, you know, someone who got fired from a sheriff's department for beating up, you know, someone whose skin color we didn't like.

Speaker 52 They'll be an, I mean, I hope not, but I very much worry that they'll be ICE agents six weeks from now.

Speaker 52 And so I'm slightly on the side of being super alarmed about where this goes, not reassured that they kind of are going to screw it up so badly.

Speaker 124 And Garrett Graff, who I might try to get on in the next couple of weeks, wrote about this.

Speaker 56 He was covering this the last round.

Speaker 83 And he covered essentially the story of like the CBP officers.

Speaker 73 Like there was a big

Speaker 63 hiring spree back then when they were pretending to build the wall or whatever

Speaker 63 on border agents.

Speaker 54 And, you know, one of the things he came away from it is it's like,

Speaker 91 it's messy.

Speaker 34 It's not like the FBI.

Speaker 57 There's not like that kind of vetting system.

Speaker 100 You know, they made some really bad mistakes, like they hired people that had criminal records.

Speaker 63 And, you know, they hired people that weren't prepared for this.

Speaker 70 And

Speaker 56 that was small compared to what they're trying to do now.

Speaker 65 Just one more thing on the Everglades.

Speaker 63 Because it's in America, not in El Salvador, some Democratic members of Congress have been able to get in there.

Speaker 27 And, you know, I was watching Debbie Wasserman Schultz's press conference talking about it, talking about how the conditions are very poor.

Speaker 45 And Maxwell Frost was echoing that.

Speaker 63 The Miami Herald got the files of who is in the Everglades detention center.

Speaker 65 Hundreds of immigrants with no criminal charges are being held there.

Speaker 73 Maybe about a third of them have no criminal charges or 260 with pending criminal charges, 240 with criminal convictions.

Speaker 36 So it's like...

Speaker 17 Are there bad people that are being caught?

Speaker 60 Yes, great.

Speaker 85 But like, does the manner in which they're doing this mean that like we are holding people who have done essentially nothing in like in cages and making them like lay next to violent criminals and shower next to them and eat, you know, like, yeah, like that, like both are happening.

Speaker 52 And I mean, I don't know enough about the law about exactly what, I mean, obviously at the border, it's a different situation than internally, but you can't arrest people and just hold them indefinitely in the United States of America.

Speaker 52 At least I didn't think you could.

Speaker 52 And you can't normally, and the New York City Police Department can't, and they can hold you you 48 hours, and you call your lawyer, and if they don't have charges with witnesses and the whole apparatus of a legal system, you get leave and you can also get bail.

Speaker 52 I mean, none of this here, right? They just hold them. And I guess at some point they're going to ship them out based on their own determination.

Speaker 52 I mean, there's some provision for some legal help sometimes, it seems like, but they've taken laws that really were designed for the border, right? Someone sneaks across, he's half a mile across.

Speaker 52 They're not going to have a, we're not going to have a whole U.S. style apparatus before we send that guy back to Mexico, right? I mean, so that would be crazy and impractical.

Speaker 52 But they're taking those kinds of rules and applying it to people who are gardeners in Florida or in California. It's really terrible.

Speaker 52 I mean, in that respect, the corruption it's doing to the country.

Speaker 52 I mean, I feel bad for the people, obviously, who are being detained above all, but the general corruption to the notion of the rule of law and all that is quite great as well.

Speaker 63 Michael Tomaski pointed this out.

Speaker 89 I think potentially there's some political opportunity here for Democrats because, because, yeah, I mean, the poll numbers have changed in immigration, but there, you know, maintains, you know, I think wrong-headed concern among some Democrats about like whether this is a good issue and maybe they should stay away from immigration as much.

Speaker 65 He framed it in a way that I think is interesting that might allow some Democrats to get into this issue on a more, you know, comfortable and favorable turf.

Speaker 10 In 2023, the federal government spent $12.8 billion to build new affordable housing for people.

Speaker 83 And the bill that passed a week and a half ago now has 45 billion on detention centers.

Speaker 65 So like when you think about like the most fundamental issue that people have concerns about, like housing costs, cost of living in this country, like the government is prioritizing by about 4x,

Speaker 69 you know, putting immigrants in detention centers, what they are prioritizing on providing housing for people.

Speaker 10 Like that kind of stuff, I think, really can resonate

Speaker 56 and get you into kind of the more economic side of this stuff.

Speaker 52 Especially when there's so many stories about the people who are in these centers, as you say, have no criminal record or trivial, you know, one driving offense kind of record, and literally are working, you know, are being hired on their way to jobs or having checked in as they are supposed to do legally to update their status each month or, you know, whatever, right?

Speaker 52 It's one thing if, I mean, if you told people you've got to spend $40 billion because there's so many violent criminals in this country, it's the only way to keep us safe, they'd say, okay, you know, it's expensive to have, you know, law law and order, but that's not the case here.

Speaker 52 So I think the combination is probably pretty effective.

Speaker 13 Even Drew, even in that situation, it's like, do you want to live in a country where you're spending four times as much on prisons as you are on housing for people?

Speaker 75 And all of a sudden, I'm about to start sounding like a democratic socialist over here.

Speaker 17 But I do think that there are,

Speaker 79 I think that there is an economic populist way to get into this.

Speaker 112 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

Speaker 107 This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Speaker 104 Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone.

Speaker 112 We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

Speaker 107 After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

Speaker 118 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 120 Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 4 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 7 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 9 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 14 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 23 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 31 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 36 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 40 Same mission, new name, MS Now.

Speaker 43 Learn more at MS.now.

Speaker 91 The floods in Texas, also horrible.

Speaker 79 I've got more to come on this with some guests coming later in the week and maybe next week over kind of what's happening with FEMA and what's, you know, happening with the cuts to the National Weather Service and what is ahead.

Speaker 42 But just kind of a brief word, like, A, just the tragedy.

Speaker 66 And again, like the resource allocation questions.

Speaker 64 like we we've got you know a soldier standing outside the federal building in los angeles guarding nothing and you know meanwhile there are people dying in kern county and texas uh because of these floods you would think that maybe there'd be a better way to allocate resources but um it seems to me just to be a pretty real failure particularly with the texas local government which is kind of the point in these sort of situations.

Speaker 87 But I don't know if there was anything that struck you about Texas.

Speaker 52 No, I agree.

Speaker 52 And it does seem like it was true that they FEMA was slow getting there because Christine Ombud insisted that she sign off personally on every hundred thousand dollar expenditure or something.

Speaker 52 And in fact, when FEMA really goes to a place, they always spend a fair amount of money getting people there. Obviously, they got to buy plane tickets.
And so

Speaker 52 I I don't know. Again, it's it's been there's been a lot of contradictory reporting and correctly people are more focused on the horrible tragedy for now.

Speaker 52 But it seems like neither the federal government nor the Texas government, state government have distinguished themselves in this, unfortunately.

Speaker 17 Yeah, more to come on this.

Speaker 63 I want to talk with you about trade stuff.

Speaker 11 So,

Speaker 9 you know, Trump now, after tacoing and untacoing a million times, is now it's now August 1st is the big day on the reciprocal tariffs for Europe.

Speaker 85 I'm just reading a big kind of New York Times takeout of this about how the EU is still negotiating and drawing up, you know, any retaliation that they're going to do.

Speaker 87 But really, more are just, you know, trying to reorient the trade map and the plans and figure out how they can kind of move forward without having to deal with

Speaker 124 the mad king in America when it comes to economic deals.

Speaker 27 And so you have that on the EU side of things.

Speaker 61 And then we have decided to have a tantrum and put a 50% tariff on Brazil because Trump doesn't like the treatment of Bolsonaro.

Speaker 56 I've got a pretty hilarious clip of Kevin Hasse trying to defend that that I want to play in here in a second.

Speaker 75 But do you have any big, big picture thoughts on the latest latest on the trade side of things before I do?

Speaker 52 I mean, it's pretty bad. And somehow the markets have held up and the economy's mostly held up.

Speaker 52 But you do wonder, I don't know, people I trust who are sensible economists and not even fantastically anti-Trump necessarily, just think this he's the risk is getting greater and greater.

Speaker 52 And I guess if you think ahead politically, if you combine some of what we've seen on Epstein and some of what we've seen on immigration with some real faltering in the economy, the housing starts also down a lot.

Speaker 52 Some of this is immigration-related incidentally. I don't know.
I feel like, yeah, they could be heading for a rough time here politically because of that.

Speaker 24 Yeah, the economic thing is hard to kind of figure, right?

Speaker 61 Because, you know, there are a lot of mixed signals.

Speaker 35 The market has been resilient.

Speaker 63 The U.S. economy is big and dynamic and complex.

Speaker 100 And right.

Speaker 85 And it's like, you know, you have these like little pockets of areas where you're seeing negative signs, new people come out of college, new hiring is tough right now, certain industries, right?

Speaker 36 But not like right after the Liberation Day where there were signs that maybe there was going to be a widespread economic downturn.

Speaker 52 Aaron Powell, Jr.: I mean, trade is something like, what, 12% of the U.S. GDP? I mean, these things, they're slightly overhyped in a way.

Speaker 52 How would just destroy everything overnight?

Speaker 52 We can trade a lot with some of these countries. It's not going to matter much.

Speaker 52 On the other hand, it does add up. Supply chain,

Speaker 52 what do I know? But I feel like people I think who are sensible are much more. bearish for three, six, nine months from now.
It is, we're such a big economy.

Speaker 52 We had pretty good momentum coming out of the Biden years, if I'm allowed to say that. We had not to get into the phrasing.

Speaker 52 We should forget about Biden coming out of the previous administration, you know,

Speaker 52 that Trump was able to coast on that for a while. But I got to think all this is doing real damage.

Speaker 68 Your old friend Kevin Hassett, I do just have to play a little bit from, he's on TV.

Speaker 56 For folks who don't know Hassett, he was, I guess, an economist in good standing, maybe a little hackish during the Bush years, but

Speaker 82 fully went in with MAGA and the more, whatever you want to call this, protectionist economic plan.

Speaker 61 He was on with John Carl, and John Carl was just trying to get him to explain what is the legal basis and what is the rationale for a 50% tariff on Brazil, a country that we have a trade surplus with and no national security concerns related to.

Speaker 36 And I'd like to play for you the exchange.

Speaker 126 On what authority does the president have to impose tariffs on a country because he doesn't like what that country's judicial system is handling a specific case?

Speaker 52 Well, I mean, how is that?

Speaker 128 he thinks it's a national defense emergency or if he thinks it's a national security threat, that he has the authority under AIPA.

Speaker 126 So how is it a national security threat that, you know, how Brazil is handling a criminal case against this former president?

Speaker 127 Well, that's not the only thing.

Speaker 60 That's not the only thing.

Speaker 126 So what is it? I mean, I've asked what it is. I mean, it seems that that's what President Trump's talking about.
He's talking about his anger and his frustration.

Speaker 126 He's been quite candid about it with the Bolsonaro case.

Speaker 127 Right.

Speaker 128 Well, the bottom line is that what we're doing absolutely collectively across every country is we're onshoring production in the U.S.

Speaker 128 to reduce the national emergency that is that we have a massive trade deficit that's putting it at risk should we need production in the U.S. because of a national security crisis.

Speaker 128 And this is part of an overall strategy to do that.

Speaker 126 But again, as we've just established, we have a trade surplus with Brazil, not a deficit.

Speaker 126 And we've had a surplus with Brazil for 18 years.

Speaker 35 How do you live with yourself?

Speaker 40 I mean, that is humiliating.

Speaker 52 Yeah, no, it is. Well, he's a hack, and I guess, you know, it's nice to see the hacks have to be even more self-evidently heckish than sometimes in

Speaker 52 defending these things. But it is,

Speaker 52 and how Congress, I mean, not to get back to one of our favorite themes, but I'll just say it for 30 seconds that Congress has authority over tariffs and trade. Congress could stop this tomorrow.

Speaker 52 They could stop the Brazil tariff. They could actually pass a law saying you can't use IEPA, which is misusing anyway.

Speaker 52 If we have an actual surplus with a country, that you're using it to justify, you know, using a trade deficit to justify these extraordinary measures. But of course, it all should be illegal.

Speaker 52 Maybe we'll see if a court does, one court did find some of it illegal, but Congress is the one who could snatch back authority.

Speaker 52 I mean, do the Republicans on the Hill, the combination of these things, does it ever, ever, ever lead them to break a little bit?

Speaker 52 I mean, with Hat with Myers, which I was slightly involved in, to get back to you, I hadn't really thought of that analogy. It was the Republicans.
It wasn't me and David Frum or Laura Ingram.

Speaker 52 It was the Republican senators, finally, I think Corner and maybe and others like that who had some stature on judicial matters saying, oh, no, we can't do this. We shouldn't do this.
I don't know.

Speaker 52 Does anyone ever do that in the era of Trump?

Speaker 8 I don't know.

Speaker 112 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

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Speaker 34 Maybe only on this final issue, Ukraine.

Speaker 82 I mean, a lot of damage, a lot of death, a lot of unnecessary death in Kyiv and other places throughout the country because,

Speaker 63 you know, Russia has continued to bombard them while they pretend to do peace deals while we don't provide them even defensive weapons.

Speaker 25 But there's, you know, credible seeming reporting today that there might be an announcement that the U.S.

Speaker 92 is going to be providing new weapons either to Ukraine or selling them to Europe and having them give them to Ukraine.

Speaker 86 We'll see exactly how that works out.

Speaker 28 What do you make of that?

Speaker 85 I know I've got some thoughts, but

Speaker 8 what do you think?

Speaker 52 I mean, it's good. It's too little, too late.
And so for

Speaker 52 little, but it's too late and it's better than nothing. And yeah, as you say, Ukraine is the one issue where the Republicans, even last year, were willing to thwart, go against Trump.

Speaker 52 And I think there's some genuine belief there, really. They care and they think it's a disaster not to help Ukraine.
So I hope they go ahead with it.

Speaker 52 And maybe this reversal of Trump, I don't know politically, if it helps Trump or hurts Trump or people don't really care.

Speaker 94 I think it's interesting because,

Speaker 74 look, we've got,

Speaker 68 I don't know, how many a thousand days left with this guy, at least.

Speaker 52 Three and a half years.

Speaker 59 Whatever that makes up. It's 11, you know, 1,200 days, something.

Speaker 74 It is important to just be like real and like clear-eyed about like what we're dealing with.

Speaker 57 And I think that sometimes in the anti-Trump world, like people dip a little bit into kind of fantastical thinking about it.

Speaker 61 And like, this isn't like the Russia thing is a prime example, right?

Speaker 125 Because there have been two theories of the case always.

Speaker 63 Like one is like what I will call the Krasnov theory that Trump is a Russian stooge and that Trump is doing whatever Russia wants and that we are going to slowly reorient ourselves to be an alliance with Russia.

Speaker 45 And, you know, who the hell knows what else, what other implications come with that.

Speaker 82 And the other that I've always preferred frame is that Trump like

Speaker 35 is

Speaker 22 a man child that like think that like wants you know that's dad didn't hug him enough and that he wants to be respected and he thinks that Putin is his friend, and he thinks that the other people were mean to him over Putin, and that Putin was really nice to him.

Speaker 32 And that finally,

Speaker 92 far, far, far too late, he's starting to be like, wait a minute, maybe Putin's not nice to me, actually.

Speaker 63 And like, maybe this is wrong, you know.

Speaker 31 And Zelensky comes to meet him two weeks ago, puts on a suit, and God love Zelensky for doing this sort of shit.

Speaker 69 Having to suck up to Trump, I couldn't fucking do it.

Speaker 41 So puts on a suit, you know, butters him up.

Speaker 89 And

Speaker 35 we'll see.

Speaker 90 Maybe that works. You play it out.

Speaker 68 But like, I combine that with like, I was watching his interview with Lara Trump on Fox.

Speaker 20 She's real North Korea type shit over there.

Speaker 64 They have a future Senate candidate, maybe daughter-in-law, interviewing her father-in-law about how great he is.

Speaker 49 And she was asking him about his legacy.

Speaker 70 An interesting question to ask with three and a half years left in the term.

Speaker 125 The first thing he says is, I want people to think I'm a good person.

Speaker 15 You don't want to overread any random sentence that comes out of Trump's mouth.

Speaker 48 But I,

Speaker 69 for me, it was just one more data point towards like, I don't know, man, this humans might be like a sad, pathetic person that like wants to be respected and liked and wants to be on Mount Rushmore and wants people to butter him up and treat him seriously.

Speaker 39 And in that like view, it is rational to do that.

Speaker 63 to do all the stupid shit that I refuse to do, but that these other guys have to do in order to kind of get him to come around and like say, okay, fine, we can give some patriots to Ukraine.

Speaker 85 And if that happens, I just think that will be an important data point to assess and to like think about how to, you know, kind of process and deal with this fucking lunatic for the remaining time we have.

Speaker 52 I mean, I think the foreign leaders have really learned this and have internalized it. And I, as sort of like you, I don't blame them, especially not someone like Zelensky whose

Speaker 52 nation is on the brink. But you're the head of NATO, did that ridiculous suck up text that Trump made.

Speaker 52 They're defending real, and they have real reasons, you know, of their responsibilities to their citizens to do this. I don't begrudge them this.

Speaker 52 That's very different from people at home strengthening him for the next three and a half years, which is sort of the Republican Congress thing. But yeah, no, no, it's interesting that you're right.

Speaker 52 He's less, maybe a little less ideologically committed to destroying everything good in the world. He's still like ridiculous, you know, the weakness is itself a huge problem, obviously.

Speaker 52 It's not like Putin couldn't suck up to him for a week or something like that.

Speaker 52 And he does prefer dictators. That's the final point I'd make.
I mean, the Bolsonaro Putin stuff, he just, that's where his, that's what he admires, you know?

Speaker 52 So it's not, it's not good, but it may not be quite as good.

Speaker 18 No, it is not good. I don't want to say that.

Speaker 52 No, I know, I think, but it's not quite as bad as some of our friends may sometimes have thought.

Speaker 59 Yeah, I just, you know, I keep assessing, you know, I'm always like, I go back to that conversation I had with Chris Hayes on election night where he was like, where we were like, he's like,

Speaker 68 the band of outcomes is the widest possible.

Speaker 65 Like, it was literally like Trump could just golf and do nothing for four years and let the status quo go on and be happy he's not in jail, or we could have nuclear winter, right?

Speaker 61 Like the band of outcomes was so wide.

Speaker 78 And I just, if the Ukraine weapons thing does go through,

Speaker 56 you know, it'll just adjust me back one tick towards away from the, away from the worst possible outcome.

Speaker 97 That's all. Right.

Speaker 52 And my little modification might be, I think the band of outcomes could be a little better than one might have feared in foreign policy for certain reasons that are unique to foreign policy.

Speaker 52 If you want to be a success, you do have these other nations.

Speaker 52 I do think at home, on the other hand, don't you think of the first six months, we've been on pretty close to the red zone in the band of outcomes.

Speaker 52 I mean, deportations and politicization of justice and the whole just destruction of, you know, our scientific research. I mean, it's that stuff has been really

Speaker 72 bad. Yeah, not great.

Speaker 59 Close to the red zone,

Speaker 15 but I don't know.

Speaker 8 Okay. Well, we need a meter.

Speaker 28 I need to create a meter, you know?

Speaker 52 Yeah, I was thinking, I said the red zone thing. I was thinking of like one of those, you know,

Speaker 52 I don't know what I was thinking of exactly. They were those meters, right?

Speaker 20 Yeah, what do we do during the DHS?

Speaker 60 Now, I know you want to get rid of DHS now, but in the original days of Tom Ridge, we had the threat assessment, you know, the orange and the yellow.

Speaker 93 And we can,

Speaker 86 we'll have to go back to look at that.

Speaker 74 All right.

Speaker 41 Thanks to Bill Crystal.

Speaker 49 He'll be back next Monday. You and me, well, we need each other.

Speaker 73 So we're going to be back here tomorrow with another edition of the Bulwark podcast.

Speaker 49 I'll see you all then and every single day this week. Don't worry about it.
No holidays, no vacations.

Speaker 80 Bye, Pete.

Speaker 80 I don't know what it is that makes me feel alive.

Speaker 80 I don't know how to wake the things that sleep inside.

Speaker 80 I only wanna see the light that shines behind your eyes.

Speaker 80 I hope that I can say the things I wish I said.

Speaker 80 So sing my soul to sleep and take me back to bed.

Speaker 80 We want to be alone, and we can be alive instead.

Speaker 80 Because we need

Speaker 80 each other.

Speaker 80 We believe

Speaker 80 we won another.

Speaker 80 And I know we ain't gonna walk over.

Speaker 80 We're sleeping in our flow

Speaker 80 because we need

Speaker 80 each other.

Speaker 80 We believe

Speaker 80 in one another.

Speaker 80 I know we're gonna walk over,

Speaker 80 we're sleeping in our soul.

Speaker 80 We're sleeping in our soul.

Speaker 80 There are many things that I would like to know.

Speaker 80 And there are many places that I wish to go.

Speaker 80 But everything's dependent on the way the wind may blow.

Speaker 80 I don't know what it is that makes me feel alive.

Speaker 80 I don't know how to wake the things that sleep inside.

Speaker 80 I only wanna see the light that shines behind your eyes.

Speaker 34 The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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