Alex Wagner: Team Trump Can't Get Its Epstein Story Straight

Transcript

Speaker 1 is Martha Stewart from the Martha Stewart Podcast. Hi, darlings.
I have a little seasonal secret to share. It's the new Kahua Duncan Caramel Swirl.

Speaker 2 Kahlua, the beloved coffee liqueur, and Duncan, the beloved coffee destination, paired up to create a treat that is perfect for the holidays. So, go ahead, treat yourself.

Speaker 1 Cheers, my dears.

Speaker 4 Must be 21 or older to purchase. Drink responsibly.
Kahlua Caramel Swirl Cream Liqueur, 16% Alcohol by volume, 32 proof. Copyright 2025 imported by the Kahlua Company, New York, New York.

Speaker 9 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family.

Speaker 12 with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 7 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 14 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 6 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 12 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 15 One thing's for sure: the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 16 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 18 Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
Delighted to welcome to the show, the host of the new podcast, Runaway Country from Crooked Media. I know those guys.

Speaker 18 She also writes on Substack, How the Hell with Alex Wagner. It's Alex Wagner.
Welcome back, girl. How are you doing?

Speaker 19 You know, no one says Runaway Country like you.

Speaker 19 You just, you just, there's a certain southern lilt that I really appreciate.

Speaker 18 I'm excited, I too. And it's just, I still love this country.
You know, I still got my George W. in me.
Yeah, you got it in you. You know, I still got it.

Speaker 18 I might not be a Republican anymore, but I still love this country.

Speaker 19 You have that conservative pronunciation, and I'm here for it, Tim.

Speaker 18 I am here for it. That is good.
I'm glad that you could notice. I'm glad that you could notice.

Speaker 18 I do occasionally

Speaker 18 the progressive listeners.

Speaker 18 Some of my word choice, it's just different.

Speaker 18 I'm just, I'm not, I'm still an immigrant to the to the coalition, you know, and sometimes I say a word, and I didn't realize that this is a sensitive word now or what we're not saying.

Speaker 19 It's a salad bowl, not a melting pot. You are who you are, and we appreciate you for who you are.

Speaker 18 I'm the peppers. I'm the spicy peppers.

Speaker 19 Cherry tomato.

Speaker 18 Oh, I love a cherry tomato. Okay, let's talk about Jeffrey Epstein.
Yeah, good segue. The pedophile.
I don't know who he is in the salad bowl. The Balsamic.

Speaker 18 We talked about this a little bit yesterday, but it was breaking right as Michael Fanone came on. So I think it's worth just kind of revisiting.
I want to talk about the Trump of it first.

Speaker 18 There's so much, though. After that, when we were on, it was was just kind of those three Trump emails that had been leaked.
And then there are like 20,000 pages that were leaked after that.

Speaker 18 I'm not going to pretend like I read all of them, but I read a lot. And, you know, we have some Bulwark nerds who were combing for me.
And so we'll get to some of them.

Speaker 19 We appreciate those Bulwark nerds. Yeah, we do.
And also reporters who are doing some impressive stuff.

Speaker 18 We do appreciate the reporters and the nerds both.

Speaker 18 The key ones, though, remain. He was spending hours alone.
Yesterday we were talking about this. The victim's name had been redacted, but it was Virginia Juffree.
And we saw in an unredacted email.

Speaker 18 He spent hours alone with her at Trump's home. It's important who she is for some of the reasons of the Trump spin, which we'll get to in a second.

Speaker 18 There also is the Maxwell Epstein email about how Trump knew about the girls with regards to the ones that he'd taken from Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 18 One that we hadn't got to yesterday, Epstein emailed Obama lawyer Katherine Rummeler. I'm still not sure why she and Epstein were such pals.
Kathy Rummler had a lot of correspondence. Yes.

Speaker 19 The White House counsel.

Speaker 18 Yeah. I don't know about that.
We'll get back to that. But Epstein said to Kathy, You see, I know how dirty Donald is.

Speaker 18 And he also said, I was telling a story in one email about how Donald was like, put his nose up to the glass because he was so excited to see all the girls that were running around.

Speaker 19 He almost walked through the glass door because

Speaker 19 he was young girls frolicking in the pool. Yeah.

Speaker 18 Wolf said to Epstein, you can hang him in a way that generates positive benefit for you. So a lot there.
I mean, no, no like

Speaker 18 whatever, smoking guns like, oh, like about directly relating to Trump actually, you know, doing anything sexual with an underage girl.

Speaker 18 A lot of smoking guns related to Trump knowing exactly what Epstein was up to, being around, being in that house for hours and hours on end, having a lot of baggage that Epstein's aware of, and covering up the details of all this so that we...

Speaker 18 we all wouldn't see it. So that seems bad.
What were your big reactions? Yeah.

Speaker 19 I mean, I think that, you know,

Speaker 19 if there's a not a smoking gun, but if there's something that is explosive in this, it's, of course, he knew about the girls, right? And there's no getting around that.

Speaker 19 And Donald Trump's feigned innocence and all of this.

Speaker 19 I think the immediate is kind of, first of all, what's going on with Ghelaine Maxwell, who's already gotten special dispensation from Trump.

Speaker 19 It's clear Ghelaine Maxwell knows more about Trump than she's let on.

Speaker 19 Some of the stuff dates from a period where Ghelaine Maxwell, you said he was a perfect gentleman, but then she's also on email with Jeffrey Epstein saying, Yeah, I've been thinking about the fact that Trump is a dog that didn't bark, right?

Speaker 19 That's that's Epstein's line, but clearly there's more there there.

Speaker 19 And the fact that we have we have someone in jail right now who's asking for, I believe, a full pardon from for Trump or commutation of her sentence, like this week.

Speaker 19 I mean, there needs to be a lot of scrutiny on that because I don't even think quid pro quo covers it. It's like so clearly an insider's deal.

Speaker 19 And to the degree that Democrats, I mean, we'll get to this later, I'm sure, can tie this to the overall corruption of this administration and the protection of the powerful and the wealthy.

Speaker 19 I mean, this is like the best case in point, something everybody understands. The enabler of one of Trump's, you know, sick party guys, a.k.a.
Jeffrey Epstein, is maybe going to get off for.

Speaker 19 heinous crimes because she has dirt on the president. I mean, it's like.

Speaker 18 Even if she hasn't gotten off, I have to Julie Brown about this earlier this week. Like, her situation is crazy.

Speaker 18 I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but I guess there was somebody at the jail at this club fed in Texas was like complaining that they're being treated like Glenn Maxwell's bitch, like the way that she's bossing them around.

Speaker 18 The warden is being very helpful to her and like getting emails out. She has access to a computer where she can contact people outside without oversight.
Her treatment is totally, you know,

Speaker 18 abnormal is like an understatement. understatement.
Like it's an anomalous. Like there's no example of somebody who has

Speaker 18 her type of conviction being in this prison at all, forget being in this type of jail and then also having this like special favors and access. She's signed for this commutation.

Speaker 18 And we're seeing here like the direct emails between her and Jeffrey about Trump. This is not everything, obviously.
There's more.

Speaker 18 Trump, at least you would think, knows what's in there since they they, you know, had been grummaging through these files and been flagging his name. And they say they have a share file about him.

Speaker 18 So I don't know. I don't think it takes a MacGyver to figure out whether there's a direct connection there.

Speaker 19 Well, yeah, like one of one of these people is dead.

Speaker 19 One is in the White House and the other one's in jail trying to get out. Like, let's look closely at the relationship between the two living people and see what happens this week.
Right.

Speaker 19 And then, of course, like, I mean, first of all, I mean, I don't think we've, everybody's combed through all 20,000 emails. There's going to to be more to come.

Speaker 19 Trump's handling of this makes no sense. The fact that their defense here was that the redacted name in the email, which we now know is Virginia Duffrey, that she said Trump was a perfect gentleman.

Speaker 19 It's like, she said that about Mar-a-Lago. She committed suicide herself.
She's not here to tell us more. And like just

Speaker 19 saying, oh, you know, this person once said something nice about me does not absolve Trump of clearly what is extensive. behavior.

Speaker 19 And by the way, extensive interactions with Virginia Duffrey because she apparently spent hours with Trump, not just at Mar-a-Lago, but at Jeffrey Epstein's house.

Speaker 18 I love that spin, by the way. White House Rabbit Response Account was tweeting it at my colleague Sam Stein, right?

Speaker 18 That was just like, well, here's an old quote of Virginia Jufree saying that Trump was a perfect gentleman. I was like,

Speaker 18 so what you're saying your spin here is, is that Trump spent hours alone with an underage girl who worked for you and then got... poached by Jeffrey Epstein as part of his child sex trafficking ring.

Speaker 18 And he was hanging out with her at the child sex trafficker's house for hours. And she said that he didn't do anything to her.
Well, okay. I mean, I guess it was just babysitting stuff.
I guess.

Speaker 18 I mean, were there other girls around? Like,

Speaker 18 maybe it was just because she was, you know, otherwise indisposed with Prince Andrew. I don't know.

Speaker 18 I guess it just, I've never been, you know, at a child sex trafficker's house with an underaged girl or boy hanging out for hours.

Speaker 18 Like that seems like a pretty incriminating situation, even if the child says you were a babe.

Speaker 19 And that he was just helping her with literally babysitting tips and babysitting leads because he's he's known to be a selfless person that's really engaged in child care huh

Speaker 19 also if it's all fake what a weird defense the white house wants to have it every which way and none of it makes sense anymore and nobody's going to believe donald trump even knows how to hire a babysitter let alone give people other people tips on babysitting gigs no who would want to be a babysitter for donald trump you could i mean i guess you could argue everyone in the white house is a babysitter for donald trump but i guess.

Speaker 18 I was thinking more like if you're a parent of a teen, would you, and Donald Trump was calling saying that he needed a babysitter for little Baron. I think that's like a do not send.

Speaker 18 That's a do not send. Ooh, sorry.
Sorry, Donald.

Speaker 18 New Fox.

Speaker 18 Little Lauren is not going to be available this weekend.

Speaker 18 You mentioned the White House response. Let's listen to it.
It's pretty, it's pretty both. When I say the White House, I mean Fox.
One in the same.

Speaker 19 Caroline Lovett fielded questions about the release of those emails from House Democrats related to President Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, calling it a manufactured hoax.

Speaker 19 So this administration has done more than any, and it just shows how this is truly a manufactured hoax by the Democrat Party.

Speaker 18 Manufactured hoax is what everybody's going with. You saw that a couple times on Fox yesterday.

Speaker 19 You could do one or the other. Gilding the lily.

Speaker 18 Yeah, which part is the hoax? Yeah. I guess the manufactured part is that they're doing it today.

Speaker 18 Like they thought that it was a politically the timing was manufact but it had to come out somehow well sure manufactured story is it a hoax but they are also saying like the people in question are these people but then if it's not real how could what yeah none of it the defense makes no sense he was a gentleman but it was but it's a hoax it's a total hoax he was also an fbi informant and a police informant and told on jeffrey epstein Can he kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago because he knew he was a creep, but it's a hoax, right?

Speaker 18 And Maxwell got moved.

Speaker 19 If it were real, he would have been a gentleman and kicked him out. But it's not real, but he was a gentleman all the time.
And they had the calendar girl.

Speaker 18 It's completely incoherent.

Speaker 19 Oh, can I just like, I am so obsessed.

Speaker 19 I'm so obsessed with the fact that, like, part of the reason we even know about Jeffrey Epstein is because Donald Trump made him part of his campaign, not like as a staffer, but as a narrative about like all these rich and famous Democrats who were, you know, in cahoots with Epstein, going to the private island, partaking of the girls, whatever.

Speaker 19 And all along, Trump knew that he was involved too, even if he wasn't doing anything illegal. He was apparently on the plane.

Speaker 19 He was at Mar-a-Lago, inadvertently part of the pipeline of sex trafficking.

Speaker 19 Again, potentially inadvertently, but nonetheless involved in this, going to parties with Epstein, going to Epstein's house.

Speaker 19 And with all of that knowledge, goes forward and is like, I'm going to make this a big fucking deal in my campaign.

Speaker 19 It's going to be totemic as far as the storyline of the elites fucking everyone over and having secret cabals where they do bad, bad things.

Speaker 19 I'm going to use this to my advantage and I'm going to call for the release of the Epstein files and then populate my upper echelons of my cabinet with people who believe in the release of the Epstein files, knowing the entire time that if and when the Epstein files came out, he was going to be all over them.

Speaker 19 It is the behavior of a madman. Like it's insane that he has put himself in this position.

Speaker 18 It's behavior of psychopaths, psychopaths, but also behavior of somebody that believes, I mean, the original text of Trump, the only text you really need to understand of Trump is the, is the audio from Nexus Hollywood tape, which is if you're a star, they let you do it.

Speaker 18 I do think that was his mindset.

Speaker 18 Like, I don't, who knows exactly what the worst possible thing that he did in the Epstein Fire is, but I think that it's legitimately possible that he thinks that he didn't do anything wrong.

Speaker 18 Because it's fine to have 18, 19-year-old girls around and fondle them. And like, that's just kind of one of the benefits of stardom.

Speaker 19 Then if that's that's true, then why did he go back on his promise, have Pam Bondi pull a hard Yui and like create this problem where now members of his own party have to defect and hold hands with Rokana.

Speaker 18 And like,

Speaker 18 maybe because he saw it, maybe because he saw it. Maybe it was one of those things.
I don't know. Have you heard of one of those situations? You're a good person.
I remember. Yeah, I was a bad kid.

Speaker 18 You're a good kid. And I was never doing pedophilia, but I was a

Speaker 18 bad kid. Sometimes I can imagine a situation where people are like, where I was like, oh,

Speaker 18 me and my buddies were doing.

Speaker 18 that wasn't that bad and then you go and then somebody shows you the text bro and then you look at them you're like oh no bro oh i don't want i don't want milania i don't want my i don't want my husband to see this maybe it's that right oh no this isn't just some random friend this is a person who is like you know i don't know a child sex trafficker um like solicited prostitution in Florida, like is a known entity and a bad dude.

Speaker 19 And like the relationship was years long.

Speaker 18 Yeah. I don't know.
It's definitely a self-deception of some kind. I like this.

Speaker 18 Yesterday, there was a moment. Yesterday I was feeling a little bored by this because I was like, and it's really bad.
And I feel horrible for the victims.

Speaker 18 I think that like some people who have like didn't pay attention to this for all the time, like are kind of titillated back because it is titillating.

Speaker 18 Like I was really titillated by this when I first learned about it. Well, it's been years.
Trump did. I mean, he was involved.
We know it.

Speaker 18 By the way, he also has two dozen other women that have accused him of sexual misconduct, right?

Speaker 18 Like, there's like some element of this that, like, the mystery mystery element is a little bit gone but how you phrase it it does bring a little mystery back which is just like

Speaker 18 why cover it i mean like if the hubristic point of this was just like it i'm uh you know like yeah people know it i'm a playboy i can go out on fifth avenue and do whatever i want i grab him by the post and so who cares i'm going to use this as a cudgel a campaign because i have teflon on this sort of stuff then why cover it up now

Speaker 18 and i mean who knows like maybe it's worse than he remembered Maybe it's worse than he realized. Maybe Melania started talking to him.
Yeah.

Speaker 18 Maybe, maybe it's the other people in there, which I want to get to in a second. And I don't know.
But that is a mystery.

Speaker 19 There are Easter eggs. There are some Easter eggs in there that suggest there's like a little bit more to the story, or maybe a lot bit more than we don't know.

Speaker 19 You put together, of course, Trump knew about the girls, the fact that he's spending hours, you know, at Epstein's house with victims, and the fact that he wrote that incredibly suggestive, very intriguing birthday message to him.

Speaker 19 And you just think, what was the relationship between these two guys?

Speaker 19 And if it was just like sleazy Donald Trump walking into glass patio doors because there were like girls in bikinis on the other side, I feel like that's something Donald Trump as a former like Miss America host would own.

Speaker 19 He's going out of his way to the degree that we have almost like a Watergate level scandal where the office of the Director of National Intelligence, the leadership in the House Republican Party, and the FBI and DOJ are all in cahoots to either distract or cover up what happened between Trump and Jeffrey Epstein leads me to think, well, I got some questions.

Speaker 19 Also, the death in jail, got a lot of questions about that, given who else is on these lists.

Speaker 18 I'm very sad on that. I don't know me.

Speaker 18 You know me. I like a good conspiracy every now and again.
You're interested. Do you think he killed himself?

Speaker 19 Well, I just think what we learn here in this latest tranche of information, setting even Trump aside, is like he's talking to the Russians. He's talking to the Israelis.

Speaker 18 Epstein, when you're saying he, Epstein, like, this is an episode that's crazy here. Epstein is just on the Russians.
We should mention this, just because.

Speaker 18 Epstein, this is in an email to the Norway envoy. He says, I think you might suggest to Putin that Lavrov could get insight talking to me.

Speaker 18 The exchange goes on and he says, I've already actually spoken to Vitaly Churkin, who is Russia's ambassador to the United Nations about Trump before Churkin died.

Speaker 18 And he said that he benefited from hearing my perspective. So, yeah, and he's talking to the Russians.
So

Speaker 18 on the Israeli stuff, like, obviously, the Ehud Barak is just in these emails everywhere.

Speaker 18 You know, he's like he can barely type this another shiny thing about this like he can't type like he he writes like

Speaker 19 existed in 20 in 2018.

Speaker 18 I mean, like the, the emails are like my second grade child has fewer grammar mistakes than Jeffrey Epstein does. And yet somehow he's brokering deals between Israel and foreign countries.

Speaker 18 I don't have it in front of me, like Mongolia. I forget what it was, but Israel and a couple of people.

Speaker 19 Talking to Bannon about how to make inroads to Europe and like what the European landscape dictates of people who'd like to be, you know, relevant in Europe and making kind of directing policy in Europe.

Speaker 19 I mean, just like literally everything that QAnon has been suggesting about this elite cabal that like orchestrates global affairs. Like here's Jeffrey Epstein in the middle of all of that.

Speaker 18 And then they have the meeting with Lauren Boebert yesterday. I'm sorry to get the, we're getting the string out in the court board right now, but it's like continuing the rush.
That's why we're here.

Speaker 18 The Israelis. He's dead.
We don't know. I mean, he died while Bill Barr was in charge of the Justice Department, which you just mentioned, not while Hillary Clinton was.

Speaker 18 And then they're covering it up, obviously. It's like, okay, maybe, again, it's something else.
Maybe it's Trump embarrassment.

Speaker 18 Maybe it's that Trump didn't know that there were women that called the FBI about him in relation to their, that's another thing that wasn't in these emails.

Speaker 18 That's another thing that's come out recently. One of the women had like contacted the FBI and said that like Epstein took her to Trump's office.
So maybe he was like, ooh, I had the FBI on my ass.

Speaker 18 I don't know.

Speaker 18 But then they're doing a final effort to stop the next tranche, which will, which we may or may not get, but that the house, that Rocana and Tom Massey are trying to get released with this discharge petition.

Speaker 18 And he's trying to get the remaining Republicans who have signed on to the discharge petition off of it. And he calls Lauren Bobert to the White House.
And they have a meeting in the situation room.

Speaker 18 Why was the meeting in the situation? I mean, you could meet anywhere. There's a lot of meeting rooms in the White House.
She has a meeting in the Situation Room with Bondi, Bobert, Rubio, I think.

Speaker 19 Again, it does not assuage one's paranoid suspicions, right?

Speaker 18 No, it did the opposite to me. I was like, why was this meeting in the situation room? That's one way to ratchet it out.
Classified information related to Epstein? And was it...

Speaker 18 And has Trump, Trump hasn't really demonstrated a lot of care in the past about

Speaker 18 classified documents. Like, you know, he had them in his bathroom.
He's leaking things about the Israelis.

Speaker 19 He's still on his personal cell phone.

Speaker 18 Like,

Speaker 18 Lavrov was in the the Oval Office. He's telling them about what the Israelis have on it.
But in this case, he felt like he needed a situation room meeting with Lauren Bobert.

Speaker 19 It's one of two things. One, there is actually classified information relating to like sort of the geopolitical landscape and Mossad and whatever else that

Speaker 19 dovetails with this or CIA, whatever, which is like,

Speaker 18 or

Speaker 19 he's trying to scare the shit out of Lauren Bobert and be like, Lauren, we're going to the red room.

Speaker 19 You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 18 Like,

Speaker 19 just like, I'm really fucking serious about this, Lauren. So serious, we're going into a room where you can't bring your cell phone.

Speaker 18 That's bizarre.

Speaker 18 Most holiday gifts end up in a drawer or the back of your closet or accidentally left at your cousin's house. Not this one.
Mint Mobile is offering unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month.

Speaker 18 That's their best deal of the year. The only holiday gift you'll actually use every single day.

Speaker 18 So with Mint Mobile's best deal of the year, you can get a three, six, or 12 month unlimited plan for 15 bucks a month.

Speaker 18 All Mint plans plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text on the nation's largest 5G network. You can bring your current phone and number over to Mint, no contracts and no nonsense.

Speaker 18 You know, what a lot of parents are going through right now is, you know, when do the kids get the phone? How do you deal with it? When do they jump on your plan? Do you give them a different option?

Speaker 18 I got to tell you, not for a seven-year-old. Not happening.
Sorry, girl. But

Speaker 18 if I needed this product, if there was an older kid in the house, this is what I'd be turning to. Something affordable, something you can manage, something you know there's not going to be overages.

Speaker 18 So it might be something to consider if you got a teen in the house. Don't get them socks.
Get them premium wireless for $15 a month. Shop Mint Unlimited plans at mintmobile.com/slash bulwark.

Speaker 18 That's mintmobile.com/slash bulwark. Limited time offer upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for a 12-month plan required, which is a $15 a month equivalent.

Speaker 18 Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only.
Over 35 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Capable device required.
Availability, speed, and coverage varies. CMintmobile.com.

Speaker 18 So where are you at on the political flaw out of this? I can't, do people retreat to their partisan camps? I mean, it's just, it feels like this is something that is now,

Speaker 18 you know, at minimum, if the Democrats win next year,

Speaker 18 there'll be a special committee to investigate all this, right? So, I mean, I feel like this is a story that's with us for years ahead still.

Speaker 19 I mean, it comes in dribs and drabs. There's a lot of correspondence.
I do not think that this will have this, unfortunately, because I think it warrants bipartisan interest and investigation.

Speaker 19 I just feel like the MAGA appetite, as it's become very clear that Donald Trump is actually involved in this cabal, the MAGA appetite for revealing the truth has lessened.

Speaker 19 And I think the reason it was resonant and the reason, you know, Trump was in a tailspin over it, not to say that he's not still in some kind of vortex, is because he felt like there was, it it was a real inflection point and he was really he the support for him at the base was eroding and i just you know though this should confirm everybody's suspicions about a global elite that was in fact including the president of the united states doing untoward and possibly illegal things though though that should you know spike an interest in the part of people who embrace conspiracy theories many of whom are in maga i just don't know that it will because it is such an indictment of trump given how much his name appears in all of this so like politically like i don't mean to sound craven about it because I, again, it's like, this is horrible.

Speaker 19 And by the way, like other people who were involved in this who are Democrats also are fucking awful and should not get any kind of, you know, pass on any of that.

Speaker 19 But, you know, I think the way that it even changes the political landscape is if Democrats can offer this as a data point in the larger argument about corruption in the Trump administration, right?

Speaker 19 Like it has to be part of a bigger thesis because otherwise it's just like another scandal involving women and Donald Trump, where there's no kind of clear, there's like some shadowy details and the narrative is going to be garbled by Trump and the White House is going to spin as it does.

Speaker 19 The victims' voices are never going to match the bolly pulpit of the president.

Speaker 19 And so, you know, I feel like unless and until it becomes woven in with a very established narrative that President Trump is really only out there for the benefit of his friends, the wealthy and himself, then I don't think it's politically that resonant.

Speaker 18 I don't know. I'm interested to see what the Joe Rogan show does.
It's not cracking Fox.

Speaker 18 And as we were joking earlier, but like, like Fox only talks about this in the context of how the Democrats are trying to use it as a political tool.

Speaker 18 Like that's how, that's the only frame in which it's discussed on that network. But the world is out there.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 18 Like Rogan, Candace, you know, like there, there's some rogue, that was not an intended pun, elements of the MAGA media world now in a way that there wasn't as much 10 years ago. So I don't know.

Speaker 18 That part's interesting. You mentioned the other people.
As you say, because I've lobbed old Bill Clinton in here a couple of times.

Speaker 18 One of the other emails I found was interesting was like Epstein specifically was emailing somebody else saying that Clinton has never been to the island.

Speaker 18 And I don't know why people are making these accusations about me and Clinton. So who knows? Epstein, not the most reliable source.
Some other Democrats, on the other hand, and other people.

Speaker 18 Larry Summers. Gross.
Obama, a cabinet member, head of Harvard, extremely gross.

Speaker 19 Economic advisor.

Speaker 18 Remember when the DOJ came in and they were handing out the binders to like DC Draino and all the

Speaker 18 MAGA influencers?

Speaker 18 influencers they're like here are the epstein files we're going to be looking at the manufactured hoax yeah of the manufactured hoax they're handing out the binders with the information about the manufactured hoax yeah when they're doing that part of that was like they're going to come after because they thought it was going to be all these democratic elites and they were going to come after them the department of justice is going to come after them i like larry summers has to be breathing a sigh of relief you know that donald trump is in the files so much because uh he's in there a lot one of the things though besides just the gross behavior can you wait can we just talk about the larry Summers of it?

Speaker 18 Oh, no, no. I want to just, I was going to read a couple of the emails

Speaker 18 because

Speaker 18 I was separating there is there's the gross and potentially complicit, certainly complicit in whitewashing Epstein.

Speaker 18 At minimum, Larry Summers is complicit in greatly whitewashing Epstein after he'd already been convicted of child sex trafficking. It's the minimum thing he is complicit in.

Speaker 18 In addition, though, he's pretty pathetic.

Speaker 18 The emails from the pathetic rich guys were, to me, almost outside of politics, the most most interesting takeaway.

Speaker 18 You know, if they weren't emailing the most notorious child sex trafficker in the world, you would almost feel sad for a couple of them.

Speaker 18 Here's Summers, 64-year-old man in 2019, asking Epstein for lady advice.

Speaker 18 Apparently, as him and another younger gentleman were pursuing the same woman, he said, I didn't want to be in the gift-giving competition while being the friend without benefits. Hmm.

Speaker 18 Epstein replies, encouraging him. Being annoyed shows caring, not whining shows strength.
I like, why are you going to Jeffrey Epstein for your advice?

Speaker 18 Jonathan Farkas, here's one other guy I just want to lump in with him: Trump friend, my ambassador now, uh, Malta, I think, 2017.

Speaker 18 Farkas, I'm a bit old and not tall enough, but she seems intelligent and kind. Epstein, careful, she's not trustworthy.
Farkas, a two-timer, Epstein, worse. Farkas, Jeffrey, please help me.

Speaker 18 Is she a hooker?

Speaker 18 It's like, what?

Speaker 5 What? Like

Speaker 18 these rich, powerful old men are like 11-year-old boys talking about the crush that they have, and they're asking Jeffrey Epstein for advice about this.

Speaker 19 I feel like this is the whole ballgame. It's all about sex and power.
And you have people like Larry Summers, who is a notorious, like,

Speaker 19 notoriously egotistical, kind of like dare I say douchebag like no

Speaker 19 you can bear here in this space but just known to be kind of like arrogant and then you see him on the flip side of this so pathetic like not completely at sea and I feel like this is it's like it's like so much of MAGA for example is built on the sort of reaction to this notion that men have been they're their beta cucks, that Democrats have destroyed masculinity, that they have, have, you know, emasculated the American male, and that it is all about reclaiming your manhood and your confidence.

Speaker 19 And like, this is such insight into how these wealthy, powerful men were so not even naive, but just incapable of navigating basic sort of romantic relationships and sexual relationships.

Speaker 19 I mean, I'm not in any way excusing it, but I think it also informs why they were preying on young girls too, right?

Speaker 19 In the most toxic expression of this sort of masculine inability to close the deal, they're like, oh, well, we're going to go after 14 and 15 year olds because they're easy marks.

Speaker 18 Like they give them a- Or because we're emotionally 14 and 15.

Speaker 19 We're emotionally 14 and 15. We don't know how to do it.
And like, we're playing at our level there.

Speaker 19 I don't know whether they're like consciously or subconsciously saying this, but of course they're preying on children because they're innocents and like they're not part of this game of gift giving and, you know, the complications of dating in the 20th and late 20th and early 21st century are too much for these men.

Speaker 19 They want something simple. They want to dominate.
They want to win. And like, they so obviously don't know how to otherwise.

Speaker 19 It's, I think it just gets at the central problem of like that, the masculinity that lays in like the heart of darkness, apparently in a bipartisan fashion with both Democrats and Republicans alike.

Speaker 19 But these big questions about manhood, virility,

Speaker 19 power, and love or lack thereof. It's really crazy to me.
Those emails, I think, just sociologically are the most revelatory.

Speaker 18 I'm getting increasingly radicalized against AI. And I'm like, I'm pretty concerned about the young boys and the porn and the sex bots and the whatever.
But

Speaker 18 maybe we need sex robots for old men.

Speaker 19 No, wait, Tim, that's the wrong answer.

Speaker 18 Don't think so. Maybe we want sex robots.
I think Larry Summers.

Speaker 19 What we need to do is cultivate Summers.

Speaker 18 I think we would have been better off if Larry Summers and Jonathan Farkas had a sex robot.

Speaker 19 Poor sex robots. No, I think it's more like we need to better cultivate human-to-human interaction.
Like,

Speaker 18 not go full digital.

Speaker 19 Like, I just think this is the sorrow at the root of so much grievance in American politics, a feeling of rejection or feeling less than and not feeling like you can be intimate with a person.

Speaker 19 Now I sound like Esther Perel, but I do think sex undergirds so much of the anger in American politics.

Speaker 18 Me too. People need sex.
But here's the thing. Can we, well, for the YouTube people, we'll pull up a picture of Jonathan Farkas for the audio.
You have to imagine it.

Speaker 18 This guy's not, who wants to have sex with this guy? Nobody when he wants to have sex with this.

Speaker 18 Someone does someone does but not any but not what he's hoping his expectations are out of whack for love okay you're a rich old you're a rich ugly old troll okay so that's okay nothing wrong with that we all go through our fate we all have weaknesses you're someone for everyone sure of course yeah you know what i mean look we all we all deal with aging and frailty i'm i'm here i'm a man i you know i get it wearing a fucking baseball cap looking like you're no day older than 32.

Speaker 18 yeah look exactly right i'm in a flat brim baseball cap like fucking peter pan over here like trying to keep my youth. All right.
Like, so I get it. I understand.
We're all fucking vulnerable.

Speaker 18 All right. But like.

Speaker 18 You got to deal with it better than this, you know, begging child sex traffickers for advice like a 15-year-old. And so I'm just trying to think of other solutions for this

Speaker 18 because they need validation.

Speaker 19 Child sex trafficking. I am just simply saying.

Speaker 18 I know you're not excusing. I'm just, I'm saying you're going against me on the AI sex bot.

Speaker 18 We're just brainstorming. What else could we do for the, what else can we do for Jonathan Farkas to make him happy besides a sex bot? Is a sex revelation?

Speaker 19 At this age, maybe it's just about the sex bot.

Speaker 19 What I'm saying is it needs to be directly addressed, especially when we talk about the manosphere, because otherwise this is the end expression of it, right?

Speaker 19 Is the fucking pathos and the loneliness is like so profound and the rejection, the fear of rejection. Jeffrey, please help me.
Is she a hooker? Like, oh my God.

Speaker 18 I don't want to be

Speaker 18 without benefits. I mean, Larry Summers.

Speaker 18 be a better person. Find somebody comfortable.
Find some validation, you know, find some fulfillment in life in other places. I don't know.
Garden. I don't know.
I don't know. It's so sad, though.

Speaker 18 And it's a problem. The men who need this validation.

Speaker 19 This is many men, even those we don't think need it, need it.

Speaker 18 I know. No, trust me, I get it.
Everybody's a central conceit of life. This is a pro-sex podcast.
Let's do a sex podcast. I'm down.
Yeah, okay. I'm down for that.

Speaker 18 Unfortunately, we have a lot happening in the news, but I'm interested.

Speaker 18 I'm just looking at this Larry Summers and Jonathan Farkas picture trying to figure out what we can do with future men like them. I don't know.

Speaker 19 Starts young. You got to start young.

Speaker 18 If only in college they were. This is another problem.
You know, they just got money now, and it's, but it's like too late. You know, that they were misaligned.

Speaker 19 But

Speaker 19 you don't deserve love and sex just because you have money.

Speaker 19 But you have to be as a decent fucking person.

Speaker 18 Yeah, they're trying to make up for lost time. Okay.
That went a little longer than I thought.

Speaker 18 It's good. It's good.
If you have sex advice questions for me and Alex Wagner, email us. Borgpodcast at Borg.com.

Speaker 18 We'll do a separate bonus pod in a couple weeks.

Speaker 19 We totally will.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive. to destroy them.

Speaker 15 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 20 We know no one's journey is the same. That's why Delta Sky Miles lets you do it your way.

Speaker 20 From earning miles on reloads for coffee runs, shopping, and things you do every day, to connecting you to new places and experiences, a Sky Miles membership fits into your lifestyle, letting you do more of what makes you, you.

Speaker 20 It's more than travel. It's the membership that flies, dines, streams, rides, and arrives with you.
Every great journey deserves a great story.

Speaker 20 And when you have a membership that's as unique as you are, there's no telling how your story will unfold or where that journey will take you next.

Speaker 20 Sky Miles is the membership that will be here for all your big and small moments. The membership that's there for every solo adventure or family trip.

Speaker 20 The membership that comes with the power of partnership from brands you love. The membership that moves with you.
Learn more at delta.com slash skymiles.

Speaker 18 Okay, shut down stuff.

Speaker 18 We're going to keep this fast. Great.
But I'm taking a victory lap. I know who you are.
You guys can all hate me.

Speaker 18 I had negative subscriptions. People were so offended by my take that the Democratic cave was on balance still pretty good and a win for the Democrats.
Like, not amazing.

Speaker 18 It wasn't like, oh my God, we've won everything. But it was like on balance, the Democrats did better on the shutdown than they would have otherwise.
People did not like that. Negative subscriptions.

Speaker 18 to that, which is okay. That's fine.
I appreciate your feedback. I just say this.
Here we are on Thursday, three days later.

Speaker 18 If the Democrats and the Senate hadn't caved, we wouldn't be able to be having all this Epstein talk. The House wouldn't be in session right now.
The discharge petition wouldn't be signed.

Speaker 18 Gravalia would not be, she would not be a seated member of the House. Grajalva.
People would,

Speaker 18 what's that? Did I say?

Speaker 19 You said Grevalia. It's Grija.

Speaker 18 Grahalva. I struggle with this name in particular.
Grijalva.

Speaker 19 It's okay. Thank you.
Miller's heart. Thank you.

Speaker 18 Miller is no Grijalva. Thank you, Alex.
Grijalva wouldn't be seated. People wouldn't have their snap benefits.
There'd be people that are hungry right now. Government workers wouldn't be riffed.

Speaker 18 If you were traveling, your flight might be canceled. My in-laws are trying to come for Grand Friends Day.
That was about to be canceled probably if the government was still shut down.

Speaker 18 Not that big of a deal, but just on balance, like a lot of people's lives would have been worse. And the GOP would have had like some decent talking points right now still.

Speaker 18 They'd be blaming the Schumer shutdown and blah, blah, blah. And I don't know.

Speaker 18 We're going to get to the poll here in a second next on how Donald Trump's doing. It's not great.
Kind of seems like things are pretty good.

Speaker 18 Kind of seems like Democrats won one battle, and now they're moving on to the Epstein battle. Then there'll be another battle in January and that's how you win.
Little bricks, one brick at a time.

Speaker 18 What do you think?

Speaker 19 I mean, yes, it's good the government is opened back up again. I think that that was going to happen at some point.

Speaker 19 I do think,

Speaker 19 do not get lulled into the notion slash strategy that this was really just about health care.

Speaker 19 First of all, I interviewed someone from my podcast, Runaway Country, who is going to have her premiums go up $800 a month.

Speaker 19 Like the pain that that woman is going to experience or the lack of health care for her debilitating medical condition is super real.

Speaker 19 And so there is, you know, obviously there is the primary fight about premium increases that Democrats rallied around. But ultimately, this is a stress test for how much and how far.

Speaker 19 Democrats are willing to go in the face of an authoritarian.

Speaker 19 Maybe if they had spun it differently, and I know you and Chris Hayes workshop some great alternative realities that Democrats could have been part of, but they weren't.

Speaker 19 If it had not been spun as a capitulation, like maybe we wouldn't be where we are. But they blinked at a precise moment where Trump is like

Speaker 19 was pushing as hard as he could to pressure them.

Speaker 19 And I think the upshot is that maybe the reaction both inside and outside the party has been so negative about the strategy to fold, with the exception of you, Tim Miller, that hopefully this re-energizes the party and makes them fight harder the next round.

Speaker 19 But I do worry that the signal it sent at a critical moment is not good.

Speaker 19 I worry that the actual people who are at the center of this, the 23 million Americans whose premiums are going to go up, are going to get fucked in a very specific way.

Speaker 18 But that was going to, we agree that was going to happen regardless because of the Republicans.

Speaker 19 Maybe.

Speaker 18 I mean, maybe. Do you think it was possible that Donald Trump was going to send an Obamacare subsidy extension? Come on.

Speaker 19 At one point, he said we have to do a deal. Like, I think if it had gone on longer, like, I don't know.

Speaker 19 I mean, I think we're in terra incognito insofar as there is a point at which Democrats Democrats or people interested in democracy are going to have to abide very painful things for the larger fight.

Speaker 19 And they didn't do that this time. And again, I understand to some degree, especially when you have food for 42 million Americans on the line at the beginning of the holiday season, right?

Speaker 19 That's just like we, we as a country have not traditionally starved our own people for political gain, right? Or for a principled fight.

Speaker 19 So I understand that the circumstances were conspiring to make it hard for Democrats, but I do think like

Speaker 19 this guy doesn't give a shit about anybody or anything. And his behavior over the last year.

Speaker 18 Which makes it hard to play a game of chicken with him. Yes.

Speaker 19 Of course.

Speaker 19 But you, you know, if anybody is going to try and curb his worst impulses, this shutdown fight was nominally about healthcare, but it was also about ice dragnets, the unlawful detention of American citizens, tariffs, economic pain, and someone who's running roughshod over the Constitution.

Speaker 19 And like, those are battles that still need to be fought.

Speaker 18 So, yeah, which I'm for, by the way. I think this is all like,

Speaker 18 I guess this is part of the reason why I was so adamant about trying to make this point is that I do think that like our politics gets flattened.

Speaker 18 And this is something that you try to deal with a lot, like when you're doing out in the road. It's part of formerly a country.

Speaker 18 Like your politics does get flattened where people are like bad and good, black and white, fight or don't fight. And I'm like, I'm for all the fighting.
I do think a lot of Democratic senators are.

Speaker 18 not up for the moment and and would be i'd be totally supportive of a couple of primaries for some of the folks like angus king who went out and decided to go on MSNBC and decided to talk about how strong Donald Trump was for some reason, right?

Speaker 18 Like there's certainly some

Speaker 18 weak soldiers. You know, not everybody in the Senate conference is democracy's strongest soldier, I wouldn't say.

Speaker 18 And so all those fights are needed and the fighting must continue and it is continuing today on Epstein. I just think that

Speaker 18 also you got to be smart.

Speaker 19 Yes. And in that way, signaling that you're just waving the white flag and allowing eight members of your caucus to go forward and freelance a solution.

Speaker 18 The message is

Speaker 19 that even how you run a party. I mean, and like, as you said, with Chris, tactically, they could have said, you know what, we gave them some time.
They fucking couldn't man up.

Speaker 19 We're going to take this to the ballot box in November. Like, that would have been one solution, but you would have had to have actual leadership and a coordinated message.

Speaker 19 And by the way, they should have followed up the deal with town halls and rallies across the country talking about health care, like signaling to the American people, we are not done.

Speaker 19 They gave up on you, but we haven't. And like, that needs to be part of the message going forward.

Speaker 18 They should still do that. I agree with that.
Point, Alex.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 20 From earning miles on reloads for coffee runs, shopping, and things you do every day, to connecting you to new places and experiences, a SkyMiles membership fits into your lifestyle, letting you do more of what makes you, you.

Speaker 20 And when you have a membership that's as unique as you are, There's no telling how your story will unfold or where that journey will take you next.

Learn more at delta.com slash skymiles.

Speaker 18 Again, on the other side, though, at where things are, I think he's in the worst political shape that he's been in right now today since January 6th, or like since at least that year after January 6th, when he was like in the dumps and when like the Murdoch were saying that it's that DeSantis is the future and stuff like that.

Speaker 18 He was in pretty bad straits. So he can come back from this.
He was in worse straits in whatever that was, 2021 than he is right now.

Speaker 18 But he's, I think, in his worst position, at least since he started running again for president right now. Navigator poll was in the field last week, came out this week.

Speaker 18 One in six Trump voters say they regret their vote. Another one in six say they're disappointed in him.
It's just one survey, thousand people.

Speaker 18 So, you know, there could be some margin of error here, but that's 32% together. So even if that's off by half and it's 16% regret or disappointed in their vote, that's significant.

Speaker 18 In the word cloud of what people say of where they're disappointed, why they're disappointed or why they regret, they say shutdown, immigration, economy, food stamps, prices, promises, ballroom.

Speaker 18 And that's a pretty good summary of how people feel, I think.

Speaker 18 These are people that voted for Trump, and they think that basically whatever you put promises in, there could be a lot of things. Like he's falling down on all of that.
And the economy is not better.

Speaker 18 Prices aren't better. Immigration stuff for some people is too much.

Speaker 19 They look disparate, but ballroom goes with food stamps, goes with economy, goes with shutdown.

Speaker 19 And this is the work of the left is to put it all together into a nice, easy to understand thesis of corruption and potentially kleptocracy.

Speaker 19 The ballroom thing, just like, if you turn the White House into the inside of Aladdin's lamp, people are going to fucking notice and like have an issue with it at the same time that you're trying to strip them of necessary food and medical care.

Speaker 18 Like,

Speaker 18 what in the fuck?

Speaker 19 I, um, I think, I agree with you. I think he's incredibly weak.
And I think actually the climate's going to get worse. Like, I don't think he has an instinct for any kind of corrective measure.

Speaker 19 His instinct is always to lash out against anybody who's critical of him inside or outside his own party. And the fact is he's a lame duck.

Speaker 19 I I mean, let's not, I think he wants to run for a third term, but constitutionally is prohibited from doing that. Like he is a man with diminished power by virtue of where he is in office.

Speaker 19 And he's doing everything he can to undermine his own salience and credibility with his own people. So like the iron is hot.
Like strike now. He's completely mismanaged the economy.

Speaker 19 The tariffs are only going to make pain worse. The holiday season's upon us.
People can't afford Christmas gifts. Food stamps and like immediate food assistance are taxed already.

Speaker 19 Though the government is opened back up, there are going to be disruptions.

Speaker 19 People's healthcare premiums are going to go up by two to three times in the course of the next year, which means everything gets less affordable. Those numbers are going to get worse, Tim.

Speaker 18 I agree. For sure, they're going to get worse.
I mean, the premium stuff isn't even baked in. There's not a ton of signs of economic turnaround at this point.
I think we're kind of at the beginning.

Speaker 18 I'll go back and forth. I don't play Trump's voice on here as much as possible.

Speaker 18 And you get tempted for the same reasons to play people like Candace or Tucker or Nick Fuentes where they're attacking Trump, but it helps them in the algorithm.

Speaker 18 So I'm not actually going to play them. But Fuentes was out this week and it was just kind of like, hate to hand it to Nick Fuentes, but he's right.
He was on the disappointed side.

Speaker 18 And he's just like, look, see, the crux of his argument was that Trump has

Speaker 18 abandoned the America first. principles in favor of the policies that are pushed by the donor class.

Speaker 18 Obviously, there's an anti-Semitic dog whistle and bullhorn in Fuentes' case, and how he talks about that. It is Nick Fuentes.
You look at it from a policy standpoint.

Speaker 18 His point is focus so much on the foreign policy stuff, whether that be Israel or Venezuela, or from their point, like still supporting Ukraine, right?

Speaker 18 Like, now, this is, I'm for what he's doing in a couple of those situations, but not Venezuela in particular. But from the American First perspective, killing fishermen.

Speaker 18 Yeah, from the American First perspective, it's like he's been focusing on what has he been focusing on?

Speaker 18 Those foreign entanglements, the BBB was tax cuts for rich people and his corporate friends, special deals for the Silicon Valley oligarchs who are his friends, and building a fancy ballroom.

Speaker 18 Did any of that help like the core MAGA base?

Speaker 18 The answer is obviously no.

Speaker 19 It's not just passively not helping them. He's actively undermining their household finances and making life worse for them on a very practical day-to-day level.

Speaker 18 And on top of that, he's not giving them the Epstein files, which they wanted. So there is a way to tie all that together.
So he's in tough straits.

Speaker 18 The question then is, can the Democrats message against it? And can the Democrats offer an alternative? That probably won't matter next year.

Speaker 19 I think it does. I think it does.

Speaker 18 We'll talk about that. Then I'll get into the bigger picture.

Speaker 19 Well, I was just going to say, I mean, I think they have several really important points to make all under the umbrella of the system being rigged against.

Speaker 19 normal everyday Americans, you know, like I just think all of it fits in there and they need to not think of it. I mean, I think the biggest problem, like affordability, yes, I get it.

Speaker 19 It really won big on Tuesday, but it's, it really is part of the broader thesis around Trump breaking the system for the wealthy and the elite. And that already is something people believe.

Speaker 19 You just need to hammer it home with examples and show people that Trump is a, it is a complete farce, his presidency, that it's in any way populist.

Speaker 19 It is all about the rich and the elite and the people who like gilding on the ceiling and can help him pay for it.

Speaker 19 You know, like it is a joke that he has been able able to ride into office and get back in there under the auspices of making life better and more affordable for the American public.

Speaker 19 And now the American public is going to see it in their checkbooks and at the kitchen table at night and when they try and go to the doctor.

Speaker 19 So like Democrats need to be on, first of all, they just also need to go out there and fight for it like on the ground, shoe leather politics, right? Like let's go.

Speaker 19 No more just being in Congress and doing pull-asides as you get on the little mini subway, but like go out there and have town halls, start talking to people. There is so much cannon fodder.

Speaker 19 There's so much they have to work with, and they need to start making a very simple, very elegant, and very compelling argument against Trumpism ahead of 2026 because that's going to lay the groundwork for 2028.

Speaker 18 I agree with that. And the micro in 2026.
That's tactical stuff. That's less about where I was going, which is like, could the Democrats actually put together a majority coalition themselves, right?

Speaker 18 Which is like more of a 2028 question in the long term.

Speaker 10 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 20 From earning miles on reloads for coffee runs, shopping, and things you do every day, to connecting you to new places and experiences, A Sky Miles membership fits into your lifestyle, letting you do more of what makes you, you.

Speaker 20 And when you have a membership that's as unique as you are, there's no telling how your story will unfold or where that journey will take you next.

Learn more at delta.com/slash skymiles.

Speaker 18 I wanted to bring that up because we last saw each other last weekend at Crooked Fest. Crooked Fest, which did pretty well.
And I was put on, what was intended to be the fun panel. You were grumpy.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 18 I was grumpy personally.

Speaker 18 Well, we're not going to get into it, but, you know, because my life is great. So I don't want to burden anyone with my random complaints.

Speaker 18 It was supposed to be the fun panel. I had fun, but there's a lot of disagreement on the fun panel.

Speaker 18 It was the panel that had the most fighting, which some people like, some people like fighting, which is fun.

Speaker 18 And so then it turned into kind of being the panel that represented, well, this is our big tent panel. Actually, it was going to be the fun panel, but now it's the big tent panel.

Speaker 18 And Atlantic wrote an article about it. People can go read if they want about these kind of questions of like, is a democratic big tent actually workable?

Speaker 18 And with like kind of using the panel I was on as a as a microcosm of that. And it was me and Jessica Tarlov kind of representing relative versions of moderate.

Speaker 18 Simone kind of representing kind of traditional Democrats. She'd worked for Bernie and Biden.
Yeah, she worked for both, right? And

Speaker 18 was talking a lot more about some of kind of like the identity politics stuff that you get from... big portions of the Democratic coalition.

Speaker 18 And then you had Hassan Piker on there, who's like an anti-capitalist who is in China right now, talking about how he thinks China's doing a pretty good job.

Speaker 18 So I guess the question is, can like former Republican capitalists and who, and not I'm talking about me necessarily even, but like voters like who live in the suburbs who started voting for Democrats because they hate Trump and like anti-capitalist like

Speaker 18 CCP interested

Speaker 18 Maoists, like is that a workable tent? Like, do you think, like, is that a

Speaker 19 tent? That's an exciting tent. I don't know if the flaps can hold.

Speaker 19 Listen, I've been thinking about this a lot in the context, not of your panel, which I unfortunately couldn't attend because I was hosting my own panel with Pramila Jayapal and Ruben Gallego and Brian Schatz, which did not devolve into a fight, but was spicy.

Speaker 18 It was spicy.

Speaker 19 I will say that I think what I worry about in the context of Tuesday's wins is I think Democrats are finally figuring out the secret sauce of, you know, an anodyne enough message that can work for a whole bunch of different kinds of candidates, right?

Speaker 19 So whether it's healthcare, reuniting the Democratic caucus in the shutdown fight, or whether it's affordability, uniting everyone from Abigail Spanberger to Zoran Mamdani, it's like, okay, we can all run with this idea because it's big enough and it's, you know, widely accepted to be strategically sound enough that, you know, everybody can agree on it.

Speaker 19 And we're each going to do it in our own different ways.

Speaker 19 But like short of this big thing that we all agree on, we have radically different ideas about both how to combat it, but like what else should be a part of the Democratic platform.

Speaker 19 I think Democrats are proving that they can win statewide elections, right?

Speaker 19 Governorships or mayoralties or, you know, state legislatures, because those candidates know the sort of ingredients required to win in that particular state.

Speaker 19 But my concern is what Democrats do when it's time for a national election. Because when you have a tent that big, I just worry that no one can be everything to everyone.

Speaker 19 And like if you are a, like if you are a believer in Zohar Mamdani style politics, which are, you know,

Speaker 19 first of all, very driven by a specific personality, very strong, very outspoken, very unapologetic. I could, you could say the same thing about Graham Plattner up in Maine.

Speaker 19 Then I don't know that the politics of Abigail Spanberger and Mikey Sherrill are going to appeal to you, nor do those candidates.

Speaker 19 And what you have to do in 2028 is agree on someone who's going to lead you nationally. And I do worry that with a tent that big that includes maybe Hassan Piker and Jessica Tarloff and you,

Speaker 19 like, how do you find someone that can that can weave all of that together?

Speaker 19 I mean, maybe maybe it's just the sheer force of personality, but that's going to require one fucking hell of a personality, right?

Speaker 19 Like, you could argue that Obama was able to paper over divisions within the Democratic Party because everyone just liked him so damn much.

Speaker 19 Maybe there's someone like that in the Democratic bench for whom there is just enough general adoration that.

Speaker 19 There are not too many questions asked about the specifics.

Speaker 19 But I do worry about the Democratic Party having the problem that Republicans had for a long time in the early 2000s and sort of mid-aughts, which was we're really good at the state level, we're terrible at the national politics.

Speaker 18 I worry about that too. Because, yeah, it was going to have to be a really damn good personality.
And I'm not really seeing it out there.

Speaker 18 I can imagine somebody that is enough of kind of like an outsider that gets maybe to the left of the traditional Democratic message on economics, maybe to throw some chum to the populist lefty Bernie, Hassan, Zoron, whatever you want to say, wing, but also, you know, doesn't share, you know, maybe some of the more eccentric foreign policy views of, or like, you know, views on other random issues, let's say, of, of, of Hassan in particular, but even Zoran.

Speaker 18 But like, who? Like, how? It's very challenging to do. I think, especially if there's a feeling that Trump is very weak and the threat isn't there.

Speaker 18 Like, man, and all you have to do is go into any online space to see. Like, there is some pretty bitter

Speaker 18 feeling.

Speaker 18 Like, just looking at the response of our panel, I mean, there are a decent number of people that are like, why would you even sit next to Hassan because he said this about October 7th or, you know, because he's an anti-capitalist, right?

Speaker 18 Kamala Harris was too conservative. You can't even support her because she is too conservative.
Right. Like that becomes tough to bridge, I think.

Speaker 18 And it's a 2027 problem, but I can imagine how somebody could do it, but it's tough.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I think it's like when you have the sort of Ezra Klein conversation about we need pro-life candidates who are on the Democratic side of the aisle in the South.

Speaker 19 It's like, yeah, okay, maybe you can win Alabama like that, but you're not going to be able to run that candidate or anybody that accepts that platform on the national level.

Speaker 19 Like, you just, like, I get the people, it's like, well, maybe we need to have more people that have guns in the Democratic Party.

Speaker 19 Well, yeah, but like, one of the huge motivating forces within the Democratic Party right now is like gun safety reform.

Speaker 19 And like, I just don't know how you square all those circles unless you have some.

Speaker 19 I mean, Trump has proved a useful, I think, anesthetic for the Democratic Party because he's so plainly evil and bad for the country. Everybody can amass against him.

Speaker 19 But when he's no longer there and you really do just have to discuss the sort of merits of the platform, the platform becomes somewhat incoherent if you expand the tent too big.

Speaker 18 Barnum and Bailey style tent. All right.
Right away, country.

Speaker 18 I want to hear about the pod, what you're trying to get out of it.

Speaker 18 One of the, I was kind of going back to some of the episodes, you know, maybe share just a little tease if you can go to the archive about your kind of conversation with the fired immigration judge, Judge Pettit, and her story was crazy.

Speaker 18 So may you just give us a little bit on the pod and on that episode, anything else you want people to know?

Speaker 19 I just, we talked about this in the show, this show earlier, which is the way in which the actual story gets lost. It becomes just kind of headlines that we digest and react to and then we move on.

Speaker 19 And I think that that's led to like a real numbness has set in with both the American voter and the news audience, right? Like it's just people are like, oh, it's really bad out there.

Speaker 19 Generally, it's a dark cloud has descended on this country. And like, let me know when it's passed.

Speaker 19 And one of the ways I want people to sort of like re-engage with the stories and also better understand them is by like being emotionally invested in them.

Speaker 19 And I think the way you do that is storytelling. So one of the things we do at the start of every show is have perspective from someone who's like directly involved in the story.

Speaker 19 And the judge that you mentioned is an immigration judge who's like in the courtroom trying to, you know, adjudicate these immigration cases.

Speaker 19 As ICE agents are in the courtroom and outside grabbing people, People are screaming.

Speaker 19 She explained to me what it's like to judge cases in that climate, the way in which the Trump Department of Justice has sort of flipped the script and is changing the way these cases are adjudicated.

Speaker 19 And then also firing the most qualified judges on the bench because they basically just want to bring in military lawyers and expedite all of this.

Speaker 19 And it raises huge questions about due process, but it also brings you into the courtroom and you can kind of understand, you know, we know that the immigration system is fucked up by virtue of the fact that there are these dragnets happening that are terrorizing black and brown communities all over the country.

Speaker 19 But like, once you actually get into the system itself, you have an even better perspective on the ways in which it's been adulterated and totally derailed intentionally by this administration.

Speaker 19 And it's told to you from, you know, a first-hand perspective, which I think is actually missing in the larger immigration story and just the larger story about the Trump administration.

Speaker 19 It's like, okay, what does it practically mean to live through this story? So that's what we're trying to do, trying to shake people out of their slumber a little bit.

Speaker 19 Sometimes you have to like really give people something that is happening in the world and a deeper perspective on something really seismic that's happening in the world that they may have become a little bit anesthetized to so that's what we try and do on runaway country in this nation we live in with no breaks It is absolutely needed.

Speaker 18 I would appreciate that. So I know the immigration thing, you're going to do it on that every week, probably.

Speaker 18 I mean, we got Adrian Kerskio with us doing the huddled NASA's newsletter, and every week he writes one. I'm just like, oh, my God.
It's just hard to keep track of all the stories.

Speaker 18 So anything else coming up? Any T's? Do you have a T's? Are you on the road? Are you going to?

Speaker 19 Well, this week, today's episode, we talked to Morris Katz.

Speaker 19 He was a senior advisor to Mum Donnie's campaign and to Graham Plattner's campaign, because I wanted to get a sense of what it was like to be in the center of a kind of insurgent fighting both the bully of Trump and Trumpism, but also the specter of the Democratic establishment and just what that fight is like in the context of the government shutdown, where it's like, oh, these centrists are railroading the real fighters and warriors in the party.

Speaker 19 What's it like to be on the front lines of the fight for like a new party?

Speaker 19 And then we pair that with Hassan Piker, who's talking to us about the war on the other side, which is Republicans basically figuring out how to deal with Nazism in their own party by either saying nothing or like getting on board.

Speaker 18 So you're asking about the Chinese.

Speaker 19 I did, you know, he told me a lot about the Japanese Communist Party towards the end of our conversation.

Speaker 19 The podcast is only so long, Tim, is what I found out with Hassan Piker.

Speaker 18 And he could have, I mean, hey, I'm worried about the Republican Nazis. As you should, it's a big problem.
We're all worried about it. No, the Chinese treatment of minorities

Speaker 18 has been that much better, I wouldn't say, wouldn't say. But, you know, that's just me.
More to come on that. Alex Wagner, I appreciate you so much.
This has been great.

Speaker 19 I appreciate you. Thank you so much for having me on this great podcast.
I look forward to our sex podcast debut.

Speaker 18 I do too. Everybody, send us your questions.
I think we'd give great advice. I mean, not always the same.
That'd be good. People should hear different perspectives.

Speaker 19 I agree. Let's do it.

Speaker 18 All right. That's Alex Wagner.
Everybody else, we'll be back here tomorrow. Hopefully, no discussion of Larry Summers' sex life on the podcast.
We have a more sober guest, but he's a favorite.

Speaker 18 So you'll enjoy it. We'll see you back here then.
Peace.

Speaker 18 ago.

Speaker 18 Well, you better not be out on the street, boy.

Speaker 18 Oh, oh, when those dirty boys pass by,

Speaker 18 they'll scoop you up and turn you into one of them.

Speaker 18 Just make one hit out of that pie.

Speaker 18 Oh,

Speaker 18 I'm a dirty boy.

Speaker 18 I think I'll turn it into a

Speaker 18 man.

Speaker 18 The dirty boys come out when you are sleeping.

Speaker 18 They collect a bunch of useless fucking shit.

Speaker 18 Then they throw it in a pile down there by the river.

Speaker 18 They smoke a bunch of meth under the bridge.

Speaker 18 Some say the dirty boys aren't even human.

Speaker 18 When they're born, they come out crawling from the mud.

Speaker 18 And they say that they don't sweat. Somehow they're always wet.
You can cut them, they've got gasoline for blood.

Speaker 18 Say I will, to the

Speaker 18 hour, to our

Speaker 18 baby.

Speaker 18 I'll fight us.

Speaker 18 I think I'll turn it into a terrible sword.

Speaker 18 I'll play the sea.

Speaker 18 I'll fight this son.

Speaker 18 I think I'll turn it into a dirty soul.

Speaker 18 I'll play this.

Speaker 18 The Bullwork Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 3 Our diets today are dominated by ultra-processed foods, packed with sugar, flow, and fiber, and cause issues like diabetes and high blood pressure.

Speaker 3 What if you could transform that processed food into real food that nourishes your body? That's what Monch Munch does.

Speaker 3 It absorbs excess carbs and sugars from the food you eat, blocking them from your body, so you can enjoy your favorite meals with fewer calories, more stable blood sugar, and better gut health.

Speaker 3 It's like turning apple juice back into apples. Visit MunchMunch.shop today and start transforming your food into fuel.

Speaker 22 When disaster takes control of your life, ServePro helps you take it back. ServePro shows up faster to any size disaster to make things right, starting with a single call, that's all.

Speaker 22 Because the number one name in cleanup and restoration has the scale and the expertise to get you back up to speed quicker than you ever thought possible.

Speaker 22 So whenever never thought this would happen actually happens, ServePro's got you. Call 1-800-SERVPRO or visit ServePro.com today to help make it like it never even happened.

Speaker 21 You ever sit there staring at your plate thinking, why can't this pasta be just a little healthier without ruining it? Yeah, me too. That's why I started using Monch Monch.
It's like a food wingman.

Speaker 21 It steps in when your meal's trying to sabotage you. It blocks extra carbs and sugars before your body gets them, adds fiber your gut actually loves, and keeps your blood sugar from roller coaster.

Speaker 21 So, yeah, I still eat the pasta. I just don't pay for it later.
Make your food work for you, not against you. Go to monchmonch.shop and see what your meals could be with a little backup.

Alex Wagner: Team Trump Can't Get Its Epstein Story Straight

Press play and read along

Transcript

More episodes from The Bulwark Podcast

Tommy Vietor: The 'Peace' President

Sam Stein: We Got Ourselves a Mad King

Jonathan Lemire: A Bubble-Wrapped Trump

Olivia Nuzzi Breaks Her Silence

Project 2025 Is Coming Back To Bite Trump