100. Epstein and Trump: What's Really Going On?

Welcome to The Rest is Politics US with me, Catty Kay, in London, still.

And I'm Anthony Scaramucci.

I'm still Anthony Scaramucci, thank God.

So, Catty, what are we talking about today?

Well, we did debate, Anthony, whether we should do some other subjects today, but there is so much happening around the Epstein scandal that we are going to spend the program talking about that.

We will look at all the latest news news there.

We've got the Department of Justice visiting Ghillene Maxwell in prison.

We've got the new Wall Street Journal story saying that Donald Trump's name is actually in the Epstein files.

We'll discuss what that actually may or may not mean and that he has known about this because Pam Bondi told him about it back in May.

We've got the House suddenly going on holiday a day early in order not to have to take a vote on the Epstein files.

So lots of little bits.

And then in the second half of the program, we'll talk about about how the Democrats are responding to this.

But I thought it was worth starting, Anthony, to remind people that at the heart of the Epstein scandal, and we speak a lot about the politics of this, but at the heart of the Epstein scandal are hundreds of girls, children who were raped by Geoffrey Epstein over many years.

And I think sometimes their voices get forgotten in all this because obviously this is a big political story, right?

And we'll talk about the politics of this, but it's partly also a big political story because of the awfulness of what Jeffrey Epstein did.

And last night on MSNBC, actually Lawrence O'Donnell on his program read some of the transcript of the deposition of Ghillene Maxwell, who was the kind of cohort, the associate of Jeffrey Epstein on his program.

And it was actually the federal prosecutor Maureen Comey, who is the daughter of Jim Comey.

We will talk about that in a second because she's just been fired, who was questioning the witnesses.

So we are going to talk about the testimony of some of the victims.

And I want to preface this with a warning that these are descriptions of sexual assault and they are very difficult to hear.

I think it's very valuable, and I think it's valuable for our viewers and listeners.

Okay, so this is

the questioner is Maureen Comey, who was the prosecutor for the prosecution in the trial of Ghillane Maxwell.

Now, Jane, I want to ask you, did there come a time in your life when you met someone named Jeffrey Epstein?

Yes.

What year was that?

1994.

Did there come a time in your life when you had sexual contact with Jeffrey Epstein?

Yes.

How old were you when that first happened?

14 years old.

There's another bit I want to read you from another witness, too.

And this is when a young girl is brought to Jeffrey Epstein's house.

When you walked into the kitchen, what happened?

We were greeted by Ms.

Maxwell.

Did Mr.

Epstein touch you during this first massage?

No.

After that ended, what happened next?

I was paid.

In total, approximately how many times did you go over to Mr.

Epstein's house to give him massages?

Over a hundred.

About how often did you go over to his house to provide those massages?

Two or three times a week.

About how old were you the first time you went over to his house?

14.

And about how old were you the last time you went to his house?

18.

When you interacted with Maxwell, what, if any, conversations did you have with her about your family?

About my upbringing and things that were going on at the time?

What did you tell Maxwell?

That my mum was an alcoholic and I had been molested and just random personal things.

What conversations do you remember having about with her about sexual abuse that you'd experienced?

I remember telling her that I'd been raped and molested by my grandfather starting at the age of four.

After you told Maxwell you were 14, did she continue to call you to schedule massage massage appointments with Jeffrey Epstein?

Yes.

During how many of the massages you gave Jeffrey Epstein, did he masturbate?

Every single time.

During how many of the massages you gave Jeffrey Epstein, did he touch your breasts?

Every time.

During how many of the massages you gave Jeffrey Epstein, did he touch your buttocks?

Every time.

Were there ever massages you provided Jeffrey Epstein where nothing sexual happened?

No.

Something sexual happened every single time.

Why did you stop going to Jeffrey Epstein's house?

Because I became too old.

How old were you?

18.

I don't know about you, Anthony, but I find that hard to read.

These were girls.

These were children.

And he did this repeatedly.

His lawyer says that he did this almost every day to these women.

And of course, now they're having to live through all of that trauma all over again.

I have such intense emotions about it.

And my first reaction is great sadness.

But like you, I have a beautiful daughter.

I have a wife.

I have a sister, a mom, friends like you, Caddy.

I would never want to see a child put in a position like that.

It absolutely breaks my heart.

And the people, unfortunately, are now still in the cauldron because of the political situation.

Yeah, I mean, I think, obviously, this is a political show.

We're going to talk about the politics of this, but it's worth, I felt it was worth a moment to remember exactly what these girls went through and to remember also Ghillaine Maxwell's central role in procuring these girls for Jeffrey Epstein and the fact that a bit like the Catholic priest story, Anthony, which I'm sure, you know, you were aware of and covered a lot when that story broke, she deliberately preyed on girls who were vulnerable.

right she went after a girl whose mother was an alcoholic who had already been sexually abused and she knew that that girl had that background, and yet she still brought her into a situation in which she was going to be abused again and again and again by

Jeffrey Epstein.

So we raise that because it ties into why this story is important and why so many people are so focused on it and why the politics of this matter.

I find it hard to listen to.

I'm sickened by it.

I guess what I would say to you from a political perspective, this fits the vein of MAGA.

And I think it's important for us to explain the vein of MAGA, the central artery system.

And the vein of MAGA is there are pedophiles at the top of the food chain.

They control the earth.

They do things to harm young men and young women.

And they found a pedophile by the name of Jeffrey Epstein that has this web of connections into bank CEOs, technology CEOs and billionaires,

U.S.

broadly CEOs, I would say, and also tremendous amounts of politicians.

And again, I think it's worth repeating.

I did say it earlier in one of our shows that

the attorney general that prosecuted him in the first case before he returned to jail in 2019, Alex Acosta, who went on to become Trump's labor secretary, told people that Epstein was part of an intelligence operation, an intelligence compromon operation, a result of which we've caught him doing all these things, but go easier on him.

He had a fairly lenient sentence given the

deposition that you just read.

So a couple of things, okay?

Was he or was he not at Trump's wedding?

Well, the answer is yes.

Did he or did he not introduce Melania Trump?

who was

known in the circles of New York to be cavorting with the likes of people like Epstein.

Did he

introduce her to Donald J.

Trump, now President of the United States?

The answer is yes.

How close were these guys?

Well, self-proclaimed best friends for 10 years.

Donald Trump called him a terrific guy.

And at the time Donald Trump called him a terrific guy, this is what Jeffrey Epstein was doing.

Okay, so now

the question from a political point of view,

what are the Democrats going to do?

And I say that they're very weak.

And what are the Republicans going to do?

Well, the Republicans are going to go on lockdown.

There's some rumors out there that Cash Patel and Dan Bongino are very upset about all this.

Are they leaking to the Wall Street Journal?

And so I've done some work on that in preparation for this podcast.

They are not, but I've got friends that are very close to them.

I mean,

and by the way, Caddy, as close as you and I are in terms of their closeness to Cash and to Dan, they're very upset about it, but they're not the leakers.

They're just trying to figure out how they can reconcile the MAGA position with their spiritual leader now in deeply involved in this situation.

And so the United States citizens, even the people that hate Trump, they have a high tolerance for Donald Trump's behavior, Caddy.

Have a high tolerance.

And so then the question is, is there anything in there that we're going to see that comes out of the five or six sigmas statistically into some really bad, and I mean really bad stuff?

Is there photography?

Is there a woman that's going to come out?

Is there something?

And I maintain that so far that hasn't happened.

And the Republicans are...

smarter than the Democrats.

And the Democrats can be pissed at me for saying that.

Let me rephrase it.

They're more conniving than you guys.

And they're in lockdown right now, trying to figure out a way to save the orange maniac.

And so I think he survives it.

And you may be right.

Push back, push back and tell me where I'm wrong.

Before I do that, I think it's worth going through all the things that have happened and why I think this is a bigger story that has more legs.

I don't know if it brings Donald Trump down.

I don't know what impact it has on the midterm elections.

A lot of things can happen between now and the midterm elections.

But I think that this is a story that is at least going to last through the summer.

And I want to go through the different elements of the story that have happened since we last recorded, because a lot has happened in the last few days and you raised lots of bits of it.

So we've got...

The reason I wanted to read some of that testimony as well is not just to remind people about the victims, but to remind people about the role of Ghilaine Maxwell, who is sitting in prison at the moment and is getting a very unusual visit from a political appointee in the Department of Justice and whose brother has said that she has fresh testimony that she is prepared to talk about.

Now, obviously, Ghilaine Maxwell desperately wants to get out of prison.

She is down in prison in Tallahassee.

She hates being in prison in Tallahassee.

I've spoken to a constitutional law professor who says this is very unusual to have a political appointee effectively because there is no firewall anymore between the Justice Department and the White House, basically a White House appointee going down to interview her.

It smacks of the possibility of corruption.

Will she say something about Donald Trump to exonerate him in order to get her sentence released?

I think the fact that the DOJ has also just fired Maureen Comey, who is the woman who was asking those questions in that transcript, is also interesting.

But I think it's one of the things, and we can run through them, the Wall Street Journal, where Donald Trump now is named in the Epstein files, whatever that means, you can be named in a file.

without having done anything wrong or any suggestion.

He could just, his name could come up.

It could be in his contact books.

We don't know what it is.

And then the Congress being sent home early.

I just think these are the things.

Each of these elements keeps this story going longer than we thought it would go for on Monday.

I don't know.

I mean, what's your reaction?

For a start, let's talk about Maureen Comey and Ghillain Maxwell being visited in prison.

I mean, what's your reaction?

You're the lawyer, not me.

Yeah, well, but let's take the steps here.

Okay, so let me be nefarious and let me be conniving like the Republicans, and then we'll talk about what's realistic and what isn't.

So I'm going to fire Comey, Maureen Comey.

You know, it doesn't really have to do with James Comey, by the way.

We'll make up that it does, but we're going to fire Maureen Comey because of the privileges associated with confidentiality around this case.

And this will put Maureen in a lockbox where she's not going to be able to go to a microphone.

Which makes it look like we're hiding something, right?

I mean, it makes it look, even if it's not, you're not, it makes it look like you are.

But, Caddy, this is the most brilliant part of the story.

I used to say to people, oh, no one's going to be able to get away with anything anymore because of the world of social media and all the microjournalists out there and the photographers.

Nobody can get away with anything anymore, but not Donald Trump.

You left out the shameless.

The shameless can get away with anything.

And so Trump is doing it right in your face.

Remember what John LeCarre said about the KGB?

Their best operatives are right in your face.

Their best operatives are spying out in the open.

And the best cover-up is: listen, this is what I'm going to do right to your face.

I'm going to fire Maureen Comey.

We're just going to put her in a lockbox verbally.

I'm then going to send my bud, who's the deputy AG to just lane, and I'm going to go interview her.

And I'm going to say, listen, if you keep your mouth shut and you do this and you do that, you know, in six months' time, we're going to commute your sentence or whatever we're going to do and blow you out of this seat that you're in right now.

If you want to go go full, you know, bore on us, we're going to make your life very, very difficult.

And so look, look, to me, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but you're telling me there are three minutes missing from a tape.

I'm also going to tell the people listening to this podcast, he didn't hang himself from a rafter.

Okay.

And if you're telling me that Jeff Epstein is the kind of guy that would do that to himself,

having this level of compromise.

Hold a second.

You're talking here from the point of view of somebody who believes there is a conspiracy or you yourself are asking these questions, Anthony.

I know.

I'm asking the questions.

I don't want to be a conspiracy guy, but I'm just saying to you, we've got three minutes of taking.

There are too many questions, yeah.

And he had already tried to hang himself, right?

The reason he was on Suicide Watch is that he'd already attempted it once and he was meant to have somebody in his cell the whole time with him, another prisoner, and he didn't.

This is a story with lots of holes in it.

And lots of fat, powerful people, and clearly all of us.

His brother's saying they made up that story, what you just said.

His brother says says he, I talked to him.

He never tried to hang himself.

They said he tried to hang himself to position it that way.

But let me keep going because I know these sons of bitches because I work on Wall Street.

I know these ruthless MFs.

This guy is not a guy from a profile perspective, personality-wise, gonna hang himself.

I got a lot of information on you.

I've got a lot of compromise on you.

I've already been to jail.

You put me in jail a few years ago.

You got me back in jail, but I got the goods on you.

Last time I was put in jail, you let me out leniently.

Likely going to let me out leniently again.

Which is what his lawyers were telling him.

I mean, he didn't go into this thinking he was about to get a life sentence in solitary confinement.

Okay, so now

so that's the Epstein piece of this.

Gislaine knows all of this.

They'll send the, what's his name?

Todd Blanche, yeah.

Yeah, you are going to try to suppress her, and you're going to try to contain that information to protect your principal.

Or you're going to try and get her to say Donald Trump had nothing to do with this.

By the way, by the way, if I went to Hollywood with this screenplay,

they throw the screenplay out.

They put it in a paper shredder.

They'd say, dude, this is not even realistic, what you're saying.

So let's throw it in a paper shredder.

But listen to me.

They're very organized.

So step one, we're going to end the Congress a couple of days early, a day early.

Step two, we're going to try to contain the information.

Step three, we're going to try to intimidate Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal.

He keeps dropping dimes on them.

He keeps dropping dimes on them.

We spoke about this on when we recorded on Monday about the fact that the Wall Street Journal had just been sued for $10 billion.

And what is Murdoch's response?

To have another Wall Street Journal story drop saying that Trump's name is in those files and Trump has known that his name was in the files since May.

So clearly, he is not going to be intimidated.

And by the way, great branding for the Wall Street Journal.

If you're Rupert Murdoch, you're kind of loving this because everybody is talking about the Wall Street Journal as a profile encourage and reading, waiting breathlessly for what is the next story that the Wall Street Journal has.

I think if you're Rupert Murdoch, you're not unhappy with how this is going.

And you're not going to settle if you're Rupert Murdoch.

You're going to wait for Trump.

Oh, I mean, Rupert Murdoch does not give, like, you know, Rupert Murdoch does not give a shit about Donald Trump.

Okay.

Just give everybody a news flash.

Oh, you don't think, you don't think he loves him?

I don't think he loves him.

I think he tolerates him.

And again, I told the story about how much they could not stand him in 2016.

I was at Fox at the time, and I could share those stories.

But here's the thing that people have to know.

The anti-MAGA crowd, these are the people that hate Trump, buddies of mine like George Conway.

I could list a whole group of people.

They're hoping and praying there's a smoking gun in there that knocks him out of the box and we get a president, J.D.

Vance.

That's what they're hoping.

Okay.

And you're shaking your head.

And I'm telling you that that's not going to happen.

And if I'm wrong, then I can eat crow.

I can let Alistair throw, you know, you know, we'll be at the amusement park.

Alistair could throw something out.

Both of us.

Yeah, and I can dip into the, I can dip into the shameful pool.

If there was something like that and the Democrats had access to those files all the time that Joe Joe Biden was president, you don't think the Democrats would have released found a way to get that information out already.

So let me play the counterdoe to that, though.

There are Democrats in the file.

So you're not going to, so you bring the thing to Biden.

He's looking at the thing.

He's like, okay, we got the smoking gun here on Trump.

Oh, wait a minute.

There's 27 other bodies.

If I let out the Trump stuff, there's 27 other people that are going down.

16 of them are on my team.

Okay, listen to this.

One of the testimonies.

What names do you recall them mentioning to you when they would tell you about their social circle?

Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, mike wallace people at some that i didn't know so yes there are definitely democrats in there too yeah of course but because because if if if what alex acosta said is true the guy was trying to honey trap and bag a lot of people he's a very evil very nefarious guy but evil nefarious guys like jeff epstein to me i'm not a detective i'm not trying to play one on this podcast but i know these types of people because i've worked on wall street 36 years they don't they don't off themselves nonchalantly, Caddy.

They just don't do it.

So maybe he did.

I'll give the government the benefit of the doubt.

Two guards were missing.

Everybody was asleep.

Three minutes of tape erased.

We'll give the government a benefit of the doubt that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself.

But Justlaine Maxwell is still alive.

In the immortal words of Elon Musk.

So if the whole thing is a hoax and there's no list, why did Epstein kill himself?

And why is just Slain Maxwell in jail?

But the irony of everything that I'm saying to you, and the great frustration that people should be feeling, is that this cover-up is happening in the open.

Have you said to me, oh, we could do this in the 1940s?

No problem.

Less social media.

We're only operating with radio, frankly, and a few newspapers.

Could we do this in the 1980s?

Possibly.

In 2025, we're doing this right out in the open.

And I think these people are going to get away with it unless you tell me that there's something there that we haven't been able to see in the last six to nine years related to Jeff Epstein.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break and come back and talk about everybody's different reactions to what's happening, Donald Trump's reactions to what's happening, what he's been saying this week, the Republican Party and Mike Johnson, we alluded to that, and then also to the Democrats.

And we'll dig into that when we come back.

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Okay, welcome back.

And in this half, we're going to talk a little bit more about the politics of all of this.

Putting aside, you know, what this means to Donald Trump in the long run, I think it's interesting this week to see Donald Trump, I mean, it just feels like they're kind of flailing Anthony, which is so rare for Donald Trump.

He's usually in lockstep with MAGA.

And this has been the only time I can think of where he is out of step with the culture wars.

So he is not leading MAGA at the moment.

MAGA

has a bit of a life of its own.

Now, this may not last.

It may not have any impact in the midterm elections.

It may die because other things may happen.

But just watching him this week try and distract attention from this by talking about almost everything in the book, by talking about President Biden, by talking about President Obama and threatening to kind of investigate him and arrest him, by talking about Hillary.

He's spoken about Harvard.

He's spoken about immigration.

He's spoken about the comedian Rosie O'Donnell.

He's been speaking about the Washington football team, the Washington Commanders, and saying it should go back to being called the Washington Redskins.

I mean, you can just see him on his social media feed in the last couple of days, trying to get back in front of kind of MAGRA and the culture wars by distracting from everything else.

And so far, I take your point.

So far, he hasn't managed to knock this story off the front pages of the papers, right?

And then the question is: can his detractors keep it on the front page?

So

let's go back into strategy mode, Caddy.

Yeah.

You hate Trump.

You want Trump to leave office.

And you have raised money for your project to try to get Trump out of office.

And now we're like a proverbial dog with a bone.

You've got the bone.

What do you want to do?

How are you going to influence his base?

How are you going to trigger and help the Democrats organize to lift Trump out of office?

Okay, go.

So

you can kind of look at what some people have done just this week alone, the Democrats themselves.

I mean, you have Nancy Pelosi, who's gone from, we're going into the summer recess, right?

You have this long period of time when members of Congress are home and they've all been sent their marching orders.

So you're...

at the top of the Democratic Party and you are telling members of Congress, you're going to go back home.

This is what you're going to talk about to your constituents.

Until about two days ago, Democrats were being told, you're going to go home and you're going to focus on the big, beautiful bill and you're going to focus on the cuts to Medicaid and you're going to make this an economic story about how Donald Trump is looking out for his rich friends.

And that was the line.

You literally heard Nancy Pelosi say on television, the Epstein story is a distraction.

We've got much more important things happening.

You've got to focus on the economics.

And what's she now saying?

Just in the last 24 hours or so, she's saying, oh, actually, you know what?

This is a big story.

There's something nefarious going on.

There is potentially a there there.

In other words, you know, Donald Trump may be implicated in some way, and we should absolutely have everything released and investigated.

So I think that the messaging to opponents of Donald Trump has changed from

we're Democrats and we don't want to be involved in a conspiracy theory to actually, you know what, maybe there is something in this and we want to keep this story alive all through the summer.

And the reason I think that this could work for Democrats, not necessarily in the wrong run, not necessarily in the midterms, although you've got retiring Republican Senator Tom Tillis saying this is going to be an issue in the midterms, is because things are going to happen, right?

You're going to have, you've got Ghillaine Maxwell being interviewed again.

You're going to have now the files being released in September, potentially.

This is going to drag on through the summer.

And I think nobody thinks that sending Congress home a day early is necessarily going to stop this from being a summer story, right?

I mean, I think you tell, if you're the strategist, you tell opponents of Donald Trump to keep this story alive and keep saying to people, but we should know.

And you raise the story of the victims of what happened and how awful this is.

And shouldn't you want to know whether there were any more powerful people who were involved in this?

I guess that's how they strategize on this.

They've clearly decided that they're going to try and keep this story going through the summer.

Let me just, I want to have a follow-up question for you, if you don't mind.

The culture,

could the culture turn on them while that's happening?

So, I'll give you an example.

South Park, which is owned by Paramount,

just signed a $1.5 billion deal with them, multi-year deal, to continue that comedy animation series.

And they landed yesterday with a very big punch on Donald Trump.

They've got him cavorting around naked in the White House, and then he's getting in bed with Satan.

And they're basically saying in the skits, sue us.

Bring the suit.

We want to get sued by you.

And this is while paramount and cbs are struggling with donald trump to get this merger deal done and to pay donald trump whatever money i guess the bribery money extortion money that he's trying to get from 60 minutes uh it's okay when fox news edits donald trump's mallaprops out of his interviews and all of his misconfigurations but when 60 minutes did that for vice president harris that's a lawsuit and worth 15 or 60 million dollars and they're going to capitulate but paramount also owns south park and south park's punching away caddy i'm just i'm just wondering if something happens here where 10 or 12 percent of maga defects uh like i i can say this to people that i live in a maga area i live in nassau county it's white it's a you know blue collar area working class area for the uk listeners listening in and maga flags are down uh people have taken their uh bumper stickers off.

Okay, one of my cousins who's a clammer, who's a die-hard Trump supporter, red meat eating, you know, 60 pull-ups a day, you know, alpha male,

die-hard Trump supporter, is I'm done with Trump.

Is that recently, Anthony?

That's just, you mean just like recently?

This is in the last 10 days.

Wow.

Okay.

And I'm talking about flags are coming down.

They said Trump 2028, bumper stickers are getting removed.

I'm saying it's not everybody, but I think people are like, wait, wait, wait, what?

Woah,

you told us you were going to do this, but you're actually part of it.

And by the way, that letter, which you and I skirted over a little bit, I just want to bring it up again.

The letter on the 50th birthday, there's a lot going on in that letter, including the naked drawing.

And the Wall Street Journal.

Katie, you're a great journalist.

You think the Wall Street Journal said, hey, we found this letter.

We can't confirm the veracity of it.

let's fire up the letter and throw it at donald trump or do you think they were diligent in their forensic detail of authenticating the letter what do you think it was they were diligent and the lawyer for the victims one of the lawyers for the victims says that book of letters and that letter exists in the hands of the lawyers representing Epstein's estate and that those lawyers would be very happy to hand it over.

All they need is a subpoena saying, hand over that book of birthday well-wishes, which, by the way, some of the victims say they helped assemble and were asked to help assemble, and that that could come out.

I mean, all of this, right?

Donald Trump could release all of this.

Donald Trump denies that that letter exists, but we could find out.

There's an easy way to resolve this.

There's a very easy way to resolve this.

Well, guess what?

That's what happens in discovery in the United States.

So, okay, you're going to bring the lawsuit.

Okay, that's great.

Now we're going to have discovery, and both sides are going to have to to produce documents to confirm the veracity or the inauthenticity of something.

But my follow-up question to you is really related to the culture.

You have the anti-maga forces, which are many.

You have the Democrats, which I think are out to lunch and disorganized, but they could eventually gel and get their you know what together.

And then you have the culture.

And I guess what I'm wondering is those three currents hitting Trump at the same time, is that enough?

Or is he the rock of Gibraltar and is he indestructible?

I don't know that it's enough, Anthony.

I don't know if he's the rock of Gibraltar.

I don't know what impact this has in the midterm elections.

All I can say, and I think what you say about what you're seeing anecdotally up in Long Island is so interesting.

All I can say is that this is more serious.

for the White House and for Donald Trump when we are recording this on Thursday than it was, I think either of us thought on Monday.

There is more here.

And I think you can see that in the elements of fear.

I mean, you've got Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, being asked by a reporter, are you afraid of what's in the files?

And here's what Mike Johnson said.

There's no fear.

There's no fear.

There's no fear.

Now, I don't know about you, but when somebody says there's no fear, not once, but three times.

I'm kind of thinking now protest is too much.

I mean, little facts that are coming out, reminders of what happened, like the fact that when Ghillaine Maxwell, after her trial, was was sentenced to prison, Donald Trump actually came out and said he wished her well.

Ghillaine Maxwell is the only person in this whole story that Donald Trump has ever wished well.

He has never said a word of sympathy for any of the victims.

Never.

He's never said, I wish those girls well.

The only person he's wished well, Ghillaine Maxwell.

And I think that's the kind when those details, the kind of transcript we read at the beginning, the fact that Donald Trump wished Ghillaine Maxwell well, the fact that Speaker Johnson seems to be riddled with fear at the moment, so much so that he sent the House home a day early.

I do think that has the potential to change the culture.

I think at that point, it's interesting what you say about bumper stickers coming off or flags coming down.

I'm not in the States at the moment, so I haven't seen it.

And anyway, in DC, I wouldn't see it, but I would out in Virginia, where I go a lot.

It's when somebody becomes tainted, it's hard to shift that.

It's like a kind of bad smell starts hanging around somebody, right?

I don't know.

I don't know how that's not very eloquent political science way of describing it, but is that a little bit what we're talking about?

The culture shifts because people become thinking, oh, that's not super savory.

I'm with you, and I'll be sure to wear cologne when I'm around you.

But let me just say this: let me just say this.

I'm going to read you some things.

Ready?

185 days in.

Trump has a right now, his net number is minus 15.

Okay, so his approval rating is 40%, 55% disapprove.

This is the six-month polling dump that's just come, right?

Yeah,

six-month polling.

Okay, so Biden was plus five at this time.

Obama was plus 10.

In his first term, he was right around here.

He was minus 14.

So he's not polling well.

70% of the people say not enough being done on inflation.

64% say that the tax bill benefits the wealthy.

Well, we know that, right?

38% of those people were for the bill, 62% against, right?

People don't like, by the way, as well, the immigration, even that, he's starting to be underwater on because people don't like what they're seeing around some of the tactics.

They don't like the cruelty around the deportation.

So, so what gives, Caddy?

So again, I maintain for our viewers and listeners that the best thing Donald Trump has going for him are the Democrats.

By far the best they have going for them.

Because if you had somebody, you had a great general on the battlefield for the Democrats could knight the party, or he or she, and they looked at this data, they'd be like, okay, we can take this guy.

Yes, he's got an indestructible brand.

Yes, the United States, the citizens have high tolerance for his bad boy behavior.

But what he's doing to the society is generally not liked by the society.

We can take this guy.

Yet I submit to you, Caddy K,

no one, and I mean no one is on the field.

No one is on the playing field.

Let's say that you and I are general managers for the American football team known as the Democrats.

And we've got to draft a captain now that's going to take us to the

World Cup club finals.

Our captain is who, Gatty Kaye?

Who's the captain?

And the answer is nobody.

But you tell me if you have a better answer than that.

Okay, that is for episode 596 of the Rest is Politics U.S., which will happen after the midterm elections.

And then we will see if they manage to get somebody.

At the moment, you're right.

There isn't a captain.

It's still possible that we get through the midterms and they manage to come up with something.

The American primary system is kind of a genius primary system at elevating some people.

It didn't happen always.

John Kerry did never become President John Kerry because he was not good enough to become president.

But it's possible that there is somebody out there.

Anyway, I think...

The long-term implications of all of this are hard to determine.

What we can say is that Congress has just suddenly disappeared from Washington, D.C., which will make Washington a nicer place when I go home next week.

And they have done so thinking that the Republican side hoping that they can kill this story, the White House hoping that they can kill this story, and the Democrats saying there's still something to see.

Katie, in the meantime, all of this is going on with Epstein.

There is, as I always talk about, there's good Trump and bad Trump.

There's a few very good people in this administration, David Sachs, Sharam Krishnan, who have figured out what the Americans need on AI policy.

And they put out an amazing document this week on AI policy.

So much so

that Jensen Wong from Nvidia said that the president is helping the AI community here in the United States more than anybody.

He's been a secret weapon for them.

So you have all of this bad stuff going on.

And then there is still, because we have to be objective on this podcast, there's still some things that are going on inside the administration that you're like, okay, that's good policy for the country will lead to good outcomes for the world.

And of course, we can address more of that in our founding members' question and answer session.

Yeah, I love that you raised that.

We will talk about that more because you're right, government is still happening and things are happening.

And that is such an important story, not just now, but for the future of the country.

Do join us as a founding member, therestispoliticsus.com.

If you're not a member already, sign up and you'll get those question answers.

We'll talk about that more in that session.

Thanks for joining us.

Goodbye, guys, and thanks for listening.

We'll see you next week.

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