MAGA Turns On Trump Over Handling Of Jeffrey Epstein Files

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Tamara Keith.

I cover the White House.

I'm Stephen Fowler.

I cover politics.

And I'm Domenico Montanero, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent.

Today on the show, we're talking about the backlash President Trump has gotten recently over the FBI's investigation into disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein died by suicide in prison in 2019.

Stephen, let's back up for a moment and talk about who he was, who was Jeffrey Epstein, and why has he become a focal point of so many conspiracy theories?

He was a registered sex offender.

He died by suicide while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking.

He had a lot of associations with a lot of powerful people across the political and ideological spectrum.

And after he died, there were a lot of conspiracies that Epstein didn't actually die by suicide, that somebody murdered him, or that there was a black book, so to speak, of all of the clients that he took to his island and that did nasty, horrible, unspeakable things.

And so we got to a point in Trump's second campaign where Epstein and the conspiracies around somebody being in a position of power and using it to hide unspeakable things was kind of part of the rallying cry and part of the DNA of Trump 2.0's call to dismantle the deep state.

And Trump himself said on the campaign trail that he would probably release the Epstein files, as they're known.

So he definitely gave his supporters hope that the truth would come out if he was elected.

Domenico, how did Trump and others in his administration fuel interest in this conspiracy, both before he took office and, frankly, once they were in office as well?

During the campaign, it was talked a lot about on the right.

You know, Dan Bongino, who's now the deputy FBI director, was really known as a podcaster.

He's a former Secret Service agent, very pro-Trump.

And he talked a lot about the Epstein files on his podcast.

You know, as we know, Trump was asked about it and talked about it in that interview, giving hope to

his supporters that he would release these files.

And it all has roots in this idea going back to QAnon, this other conspiracy theory that cropped up on the right, that there were people deep in the government running child pedophile rings.

That's sort of the stew in which all of these people then came into the government and attempted to explain that there was nothing to see here.

So Stephen, can you just catch us up on why this has become such a big deal right now in MAGA world?

Yeah, so Tam, there have been a lot of things about Trump's return to Washington that have been a little bit like the dog catching the mailman.

And this is one of the more prominent ones here because in the last few months, you've had Attorney General Pam Bondi and Dan Bongino and then Cash Patel, the FBI director, all who have had various stages of conversations about revealing the truth of the Epstein files,

kind of step on a bunch of rakes of their own creating.

Pam Bondi, for example, held an event with right-wing influencers at the White House where they were handed binders that said Epstein files part one, and the part one is

just a lot of redacted documents that were mostly already public.

And you have her speaking on a Fox News interview where she was asked about the Department of Justice maybe releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein clients.

And they're like, is this going to happen?

It's sitting on my desk right now to review.

That's been a directive by President Trump.

I'm reviewing that.

I'm reviewing JFK files, MLK files.

That's all in the process of being reviewed because that was done at the directive of the president.

And that's something that she had to walk back later, especially when the FBI and the DOJ released a two-page memo saying there are no Epstein Vials client lists, and Jeffrey Epstein did, in fact, kill himself.

And, you know, it's not just Bondi that took a lot of heat for this.

Patel and Bongino had to do this sit-down joint interview on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartaromo and Fox Business Network back in May to tamp down a lot of attacks that they were getting from the MAGA base for this.

You said Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide.

People don't believe it.

Well, I mean, listen, they have a right to their opinion, but as someone who has worked as a public defender, as a prosecutor, who's been in that prison system, who's been in the Metropolitan Detention Center, who's been in segregated housing,

you know a suicide when you see one, and that's what that was.

He killed himself.

Again, you want me to get?

I've seen the whole file.

He killed himself.

So, Tam, there's this central tenet of Trumpism right now where he was telling people, and his allies have been telling people that there's this shadowy cabal of figures protecting pedophiles and unsavory people.

They run the government and they hinder Trump's policy, and that they're going to root them all out.

And that there's people who use their power to cover up misconduct and tell the public not to worry.

Now, you have Trump administration officials and President Trump using their power

to tell the public not to worry about something that they previously said was a pretty big deal.

So that's a little bit of the abbreviated long and short of this situation.

And there was a lot of blowback on that DOJ FBI report from within Trump's base.

So President Trump ended up getting asked about it in his cabinet meeting last week, and President Trump was kind of like, make this go away.

Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?

This guy's been talked about for years.

You're asking, we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things.

And are people still talking about this guy, this creep?

That is unbelievable.

Over the weekend after the controversy blew up even more on Friday night into Saturday, President Trump went on Truth Social and he called for his supporters to not waste time and energy on Jeffrey Epstein.

So does it seem like Trump's supporters have accepted his calls to let it go or not not really?

This is something that I think is a little bit different than the wide latitude Trump's base has given on a lot of other issues over the years that he has changed his mind on or said something that's different from the typical conservative stance.

I do think though that it's really something that people in that base, in this sort of influencer sphere of the MAGA movement, are most obsessed with.

They know it's something that's driven a lot of the numbers in their podcasts.

Conspiracy has driven a lot of what the right has been obsessed with over the last decade as Trump has come up.

But what we have seen is this sort of threading of the needle that some of them are trying to do to not necessarily blame Trump, but blame people in his administration, much more so, for example, someone like Pam Bondi.

So we've seen some of that where they're trying to thread this needle and point the finger at Bondi and allay some of the blame from Trump.

But

clearly Trump doesn't want to be having to talk about this anymore with all the other things that are going on in the world.

All right, we're going to take a quick break and we will have more on the political implications of this in a moment.

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And we're back.

And today, Democrats in the House of Representatives are trying to get a vote on a bill that would require the preservation and release of the Epstein files.

So, Dominica, what is up with this?

Well, clearly, Democrats want to be able to keep this in the news and troll Republicans, troll the president in particular, and bring up the fact that President Trump had an association with Jeffrey Epstein himself.

There have been these videos and pictures of them partying together.

That's all that we have ever seen of that.

There's no evidence that he's tied to something grander or something like that.

But Democrats are perfectly happy to have this continue to be front and center, especially because it's been something that's been dividing the MAGA movement.

Yeah, and I do want to talk a little bit more about something that Stephen mentioned before, which is

the evolution, the movement from absolute outrage over the weekend to now

the outrage is becoming tamed among the MAGA influencer crowd, people like Charlie Kirk, who over the weekend was saying this was a really big deal

and now is saying something more like this.

Everyone knows my opinion about the Epstein thing, the messaging fumble.

I would love to see the DOJ move to unseal the grand jury testimony.

I think that would be a big win.

And I'm going to trust my friends, Cash Patel, Dan Bongino, my friend Pam Bondi, all these guys,

Todd Blanche, I'm going to trust them to solve it.

Ball's in their court.

I think that there was plenty of, let's say,

speeches that were directed towards this topic this last weekend.

So we don't need to spend our valuable time on this program relitigating it.

And that, of course, came, though, after Trump called him.

And, you know, clearly, this is Trump is the center of the universe, of the MAGA movement.

Charlie Kirk is somebody who's had deep ties to the Trump family.

He was Don Jr.'s assistant during the first Trump campaign.

He's somebody who's benefited financially from the Trump Republican National Committee, which has helped funnel millions of dollars to his group, Turning Point USA, to try to get turnout, to try to turn out voters.

So, you know, there are direct ties that a lot of these folks have to trump that they need to stay in his good graces and trump is clearly making a lobbying effort to get these influencers to kind of back down off of this because kirk had said something very different you know a little bit earlier in talking to megan kelly the former fox news host who was essentially saying that she felt it was pam bondi's fault and the entire crowd uh saying that they believed more damn bongino in this than uh pam bondi So really kind of creating this internal conflict, setting the two of them up as these two characters and making Bondi be the fall person.

But clearly here, Kirk, after talking to Trump, says he's going to let it go.

And this comes after Turning Point had an event in Florida over the weekend.

It's the Student Action Summit that Domenico was talking about.

Even in those speeches, there was a difference between the Capital G government and the head of said government, Donald Trump.

And so it's a situation right now where

Even when Trump is saying something that they don't agree with, it's not Trump saying that.

It's insert person here or insert institution here or insert deep states or Democrats made me do it here, rather than occasionally saying, hey, you know what?

Donald Trump may be not right on this one.

Yeah, or as they were saying over the weekend, Donald Trump probably just doesn't realize how important this is to his base.

This is the NPR Politics podcast, of course.

So if you could, can you walk us through what you think the political implications might be for President Trump, his base, and for Republicans from this whole thing.

You know, in 2018 and 2022, when Trump wasn't on the ballot, Republicans struggled in the midterms.

And I think it's always been a question: who would be the person?

Is there somebody who could pick up the flame, who could carry the torch forward of the MAGA movement to be as central as someone like Trump?

Because so far, it doesn't appear to be that there's anybody in particular who can really do that.

And I think it's going to be a big test in next year's midterm elections to see if Republicans can, you know, be able to do well, even though Trump is not going to be on the ballot and he's not running in 2028.

All right, well, uh, we are going to get into more of that later.

I'm Tameron Keith, I cover the White House, I'm Stephen Fowler, I cover politics, and I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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