98. Trump, Epstein, and The List That Won’t Die

41m
Why do Trump’s MAGA followers care so much about the Epstein Files? Is there a list and would it ever be released? Is Trump being played by Putin?

Join Katty and Anthony as they answer all these questions and more.

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Transcript

Welcome to The Rest is Politics US with both of us, Catty Kay and Anthony Scaramucci, in London together.

After a very fun evening, Anthony.

Nice to be here.

And a beautiful river ride home from the Indigo Theatre last night.

I thought that was a lot of fun, too.

Where we had our first London show together.

And a big shout out and thank you to the people that were there last night.

It was really a lot of fun.

It was fun.

A lot of founding members came and we got a lot of questions which was great and we sold a lot of mooch 2028 oh my god hats which your wife is not gonna like mooch 20 the the slogan will be lose half your net worth in new york state in 2028 yeah that would be in divorce filings everybody

but i will say this it was a great time

and We tried to get the non-founding members into a separate room to listen to our advertisers.

On a loop.

But they were not having it.

So they stayed for the second half.

Yeah.

Anyway, and then we ended the evening, which was spectacular.

Our producer, Izzy, had organized a boat to come from the O2 Stadium to Westminster.

And we both felt like we were in a kind of James Bond movie.

10 of 10.

So that was about the most glamourous thing.

We're going to go back to Epstein.

Yeah, so we talked about Epstein a little bit on the podcast last week.

I'm glad we did so because it was starting to bubble up and we kind of jumped on that then.

But this week, we're going to talk about what is happening in the MAGA movement with the Epstein files, why MAGA is so unhappy about this and what this all means for Donald Trump.

And then in the second half of the show, we're going to talk about Ukraine and more specifically about Donald Trump's kind of changing relationship, as it seems, with Vladimir Putin and discuss that a little bit.

But let's start with the Epstein file revolt that is happening in MAGA world.

Just to lay out those who don't know what is happening, Peter File and accused sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, who was sent to prison, killed himself, or possibly didn't kill himself in prison, is at the center of a huge.

You say pedophile, I say pedophile.

I do.

Okay, I wondered what that was about.

That little book was about tomato, tomato.

There's a big furo

in MAGA world

about

whether there were powerful people

who were wrapped up in Jeffrey Epstein's world, did nefarious, possible illegal things.

And are those powerful people's names on a list?

And why have we not seen that list if there is such a list?

And

is this a sign of, I think, what they're so upset about, which is sort of the basis of much of the MAGA movement, which is there are powerful people protecting powerful people.

And the Epstein issue, that is what is the foundation of MAGA.

You've lived in Washington for 30 years, 25 years.

Is that true?

That there are powerful people who protect powerful people.

Of course, there are powerful people that protect powerful people.

So we both know that.

I have a little, you know, how you always quiz me.

I have a quiz for you.

Okay.

I'm going to read the following from my phone, and then you're going to tell me who said it.

Ready?

Show us all the Epstein client list now.

Exclamation point, several times.

Why would anyone protect those scumbags?

Question mark.

Ask yourself this question daily, and the answer becomes very apparent.

Now, who said that on July the 8th, 2023?

So I'm i'm gonna go with donald trump so you're very close so you know what if we were on jeopardy as the judge i would go ding ding ding you've got that right who is donald trump is what i would say okay but it's actually who is donald trump jr

so donald trump jr

heartbeat yeah this is the point he's the heartbeat of the maga movement and what is the heartbeat of the maga movement the deep state is after you yeah the deep state only cares about itself the deep state is who we're going to demolish now i don't know the math on this, Gatty.

We could probably do some research on this.

There's a very large percentage of core MAGA that believes that.

Marjorie Taylor Greene and her constituents are an example of that.

So this is a schism.

This is a schism.

You can't sew it back up.

And now I have to ask you the question I was dying to ask you all morning, which is Donald Trump said, you're a weenie if you don't support me on not disclosing the list.

And quote unquote, I no longer want your support.

So, what is that about, Gaddy?

Is he going to get away with that?

So, I think Donald Trump, as you say, this is a schism in MAGA, and it's really, I think, the first major test of Donald Trump's control of the MAGA movement that we've seen since the inauguration, possibly actually ever.

We haven't seen MAGA revolt like this after he has specifically asked them in a huge long social media screed, he asked them to let this go.

he asked them to say he fueled this conspiracy theory i mean let's be completely honest about this fueled it he had a flamethrower i mean he had like there are flame logs he was throwing them everywhere he took the tank he you know did the flamethrower created the conspiracy theory led directly into q anon and this whole idea that elites who are pedophiles are running america i mean where have we heard this before pizzagate right hillary clinton was a paedophile who had children locked up in a basement of a pizza parliament.

Some guy goes and shoots up.

And this is which was Russian propaganda, by the way, just for everybody's point of view.

Totally.

Our intelligence community feels true, guys.

Our intelligence community believes it was created by Russian propaganda and then fueled by social media influencers in America that were paid by Russia.

And by the way, it's stuck, Caddy.

There's 15 to 20% of the people on social media that actually buy into it.

And here's an issue, Caddy, and just address this for me.

marjorie taylor green is going after this issue it pulls well for her and trump as i continue to repeat on this show

tick tick tick he's a declining political asset she's got to get reelected in 26 he's on his way out and she's sticking with the epstein story how is that going to impact donald trump i mean i think the question is how long this story lasts and how much impact it has in the midterms But I think to understand how long it lasts and why it's blown up so ferociously and why it's caused this schism, you have to also get back to the story's kind of origin roots, which is this deep belief in MAGA world

that this is real, right?

That there are paedophiles at the top of government, that there are powerful people protecting other powerful people, that there were people associated with Jeffrey Epstein's whose names have never been released, many of them they believe are Democrats, and that the system is protecting them.

And of course, Donald Trump, when he was out of power, called for the release of all the Epstein files.

Pam Bondi said, there is a list.

The Attorney General, there is a list.

It's on my desk.

Could you survive that in any?

Say you went on television.

So I cannot survive.

I wouldn't be able to survive.

If you went on television and said, I've got the list on my desk for review.

There's an extensive list.

And you've invited people into the White House West Wing and you handed them these big loose leaf binders with Epstein Epstein information in them, and they're all walking out of there, showing them.

And then, six, eight weeks later, you say, there's no list.

There's nothing more to see.

We'll make that announcement on the Independence Day holiday on a Sunday when you're trying to drive home from the beach.

So, God, you survive that.

And by the way, you can survive that.

She is the nation's top law enforcement official, which generally means you're going to speak the truth.

So, I don't know if she's lying or not lying, but at some point, she seems to be obfuscating.

And it's like they're doing a kind of Jedi mind trick here.

There is no list, nothing to see here.

We told you there was a list, but there is no.

But these men in black neuralizers.

Everybody get in front of the TV.

We're going to flash your brain and erase your memory.

Everything we have ever said about it.

And everything we stand for, by the way.

We stand for Pizzagate.

We stand for...

Pizzagates them, taking out the powerful, taking out the vested interests, the elites.

This is the ultimate kind of rotten elite story.

But can I do another quiz with you?

You get that very good quote.

Here's another quote.

Let me give you this one.

I found it.

This was a fun one.

Okay, who said, it's even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.

Well, okay, so that is Donald Trump Sr.

But let me just add 2002 in an interview with New York magazine.

But let me add an anecdote.

And you wonder why they're now a little nervous about the Epstein files.

Of course, let me add an anecdote to that.

He was going up the escalator at Trump Tower one day, and a young girl below the age of majority was coming down.

And he said, oh, look at you.

I'll be dating and married to you someday as he was going up and down the escalator.

Now, they've done everything they can to stop that video from coming out.

Now, they've tried to submerge that in every algorithmic way possible.

But who knows?

I'm not here to throw rocks at anybody.

I'm just here to point out if you start a conspiracy theory and you have this conspiracy theory burning brightly and you promise people that you're going to divulge a list and you're going to open up the worms, the can of worms in the deep state and kill all the worms.

And then you say, oh, by the way, there are no worms.

I think you got a problem.

I think you have a problem with your base.

So I went out last night before our show and I called people in the media.

I called people at Fox.

I called people at CNN, former CNN, MSNBC, et cetera.

Is this going to finish him?

Did we find something?

where it's going to schism MAGA and this is going to finish him.

So, Gaddy, 15 of 15 people that I spoke to said no.

I agree with that.

What say you?

So, we're now 16 of 16.

So, I'm 17 of

17.

So, does that mean as a Wall Streeter, when everybody's in agreement,

that means we're possibly wrong?

Okay, so because that's what

you're on Wall Street, but this is at Wall Street, though.

He's going to be three weeks from now, we're going to be moving on to something else.

He'll drop a bunker buster bomb, he'll start a fight with Putin, something will happen where this will go away.

Am I right in saying that?

I broadly agree with that.

And we've been doing this on Morning Joe all week, too.

It's been the kind of main topic of conversation.

We should talk about how the Democrats are handling this and how kind of liberal media is handling this in a second.

But I think what it does point to is

a problem within MAGA of ideology and schisms and splits that are held together at the moment because Donald Trump is there.

But once Donald Trump leaves the scene, such a good point.

I mean, that is when you start seeing there's schisms over aid to Ukraine.

There's schisms over whether you should have bombed Iran.

There's schisms over whether you should cut Medicaid.

There's schisms over free trade versus protectionism.

There's schisms over whether they should do something more about the Epstein files.

And it reminds me of a family where you have a very powerful patriarch.

And once that patriarch dies, the kids will start fighting with each other.

Or, you know, to go back in history, Yugoslavia, you take away Tito.

What happens?

You have the Bosnian war, right?

I mean, you have a country held together that can no longer be held together.

And I think we should be looking at this as an indication of the future.

Not while Donald Trump's around.

He survives this because Donald Trump is stronger than MAGA at the moment.

He's going to keep telling them, let this go.

And he's had a bit of success with that.

Some of the people who he told, drop this, Laura Ingram, she actually dropped it.

He told Charlie Kirk, the influencer, to drop it.

He's kind of revived it again now.

But I think he survives this because I think in three weeks' time, you're right.

He'll invade Greenland or drop another bunk of Boston and, you know, actually impose tariffs on a whole bunch of countries and we'll move on.

But it gets to unhappiness in the family.

And I see Donald Trump in a certain way.

So I'm going to make a statement and ask you to react to it.

I see Donald Trump as a person who has almost a fixed volatility.

And what do I mean by that?

He is president.

He got back to the presidency.

He's entitled to that job for the next four years.

If he's not impeached and convicted, his own party won't do that to him.

So there's a bandwidth of volatility where he could be slumping a little in approval ratings or going up a little but it really doesn't matter he's a fixed asset until it's time for him to go and so these things are not going to really have major consequence to him is that your opinion or you differ from that no i think this doesn't have major consequences for him i mean i think it's you know it's not i mean

because it caused him

let's play out one scenario This causes him problems in the midterms or something causes him problems in the midterms.

He loses the house.

the house begins impeachment proceedings, they try to have him for everything that they've got on him, corruption, etc., etc., etc.

Worst case scenario, he gets impeached, he gets tried, he goes to prison.

I also think all of that's a very remote scenario, but I suppose anything that plays into the prospect of him losing the house in 2026 increases problems potentially for him.

But I agree with you and the 16 other people that we've spoken to and all of the people that I've spoken to on Morning Joe who say, yes, this is a problem, but it's not a problem, particularly for Donald Trump in the short term.

What do you think about how the Democrats are handling this?

Is there any

list?

I mean, that's the problem.

There is no list, Anthony.

There's no list.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, okay.

Let's step back for a second.

I'm not saying Epstein had a client list.

Okay.

But I just clarify.

But I am saying that there were people that hung out with a guy, flew on a plane with the guy.

Sure.

We know that he was a known pedophile.

Just Maxwell.

If it's all a hoax and there's no list and nothing happened,

why is she in jail?

I think stuff happens.

She's in jail for sex trafficking.

Isn't that why she's in jail?

And it was

and the answer is there were executives and there were politicians that they were sex trafficking to.

And oh, by the way, let's not forget Alex Acosta.

And for those of you that may not know who he is, he's the former labor secretary.

He worked in the Justice Department and he prosecuted Jeff Epstein in Florida.

And he said to people, I was told that he was part of an intelligence operation and I needed to lessen his sentence and punish him, but get him out of jail quickly and make sure he was in a minimum security jail.

He returned to jail in 2019.

But I'm just saying, are we going to wash over all that?

If we're going to wash over all that, that's fine.

It's a little bit like the Panama Papers.

You remember the Panama Papers?

We don't talk about them anymore, but it was rife with self-dealing and it was rife with corruptible behavior.

So, if we're not going to talk about it, it's okay.

But see, the thing you can't get away with in my mind, I'm coming after the deep state, but it's like the horror movie where the call's coming from inside the house.

By the way, I am deep state.

You see that?

Yeah, and I don't think that's going to fly with the Marjorie Taylor Green quadrant.

So, your insight, which I think is a brilliant one, and I just want to expound upon, there's going to be a major civil war post-the patriarch's demise.

I think we can't overemphasize that

enough, and that's a great point.

And I think we should start looking for that because I think it's brewing.

And I think the splits within, we've spoken a lot about the splits in the Democratic Party, and they are sort of almost traditional ideological splits between center and left.

The splits between the Republican Party are more widespread, and they're more weird, and they're more deep-founded because of Trump and they're more emotional.

They're not just policy.

And this is definitely one of those emotional ones.

I'm not saying there were not people who did things with Geoffrey Epstein.

And we know that we're sitting here in Britain in the royal family that seems to be missing one member because of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Bad things happened with Jeffrey Epstein, and an awful lot of powerful people spent time with him, went on his plane with him, went down to his parties with him in the Caribbean.

And the chances of some of those people having been caught up with people who are women who are underage, I think is reasonably high.

I think the fact that there are questions about where's the missing two minutes or whatever it is from the camera that was outside his cell on the night he died, why were the guards asleep oddly, you know, at the moment he was committed suicide or said to have committed suicide, I think all of that is weird.

And you can see how it definitely fuels conspiracy theories.

I mean, there's so many gaps in the story that I can understand.

I mean, why I would like answers to all of those things.

Or when I say there's no list, I think there's enough of that.

Donald Trump Trump Jr., he wants those answers.

He wants those answers.

So does Marshall Taylor?

Quiet about that.

I'm just curious.

Why is Donald Trump Jr.

quiet about this?

Having been so?

Because I think his dad doesn't want the story to be talked about anymore because this is not helping him.

He wants to get back to the big, beautiful bill.

He wants to get back to the things that he says he's achieved.

And he doesn't want the distraction of this story.

As he said to MAGA, stop fighting among yourselves.

You're not helping me.

30 seconds on Vance.

I think this is important.

Vance is going to get destroyed and so if you're listening to this podcast and sometime in 2026 or 27 and vance has been meleeed like elon musk you'll remember that i said this because he's going to get destroyed because he doesn't know where to go because they because trump says do this and he goes and does that he goes on the theo vaughn show and says we got to get the list out Now he's saying, do that.

He's over here.

They're going to put him.

You know, I said the wood chipper, but I actually think they're going to put him in a blender first, like a food processor.

That's disgusting.

And then pour him into the blender.

That's a kind of Sarah Palin image.

Okay, I'm just letting you know that's what's going to happen.

You can talk about the Democratic Party right now, but I'm just letting you know.

Bye-bye.

Okay, well, forget the gore for a second.

Dumb Vance, just

something Vance.

And anyone who thinks Vance is the kind of patriarch that can keep this fractious MAGA movement together

is dreaming.

They're on my way to the movie.

One other thing, and for the younger people listening, because I know you guys see these memes of Vance all fat and like round-faced on Instagram.

No chance to be president when you are round-faced and fat and just blowing all through the Instagram channels and so forth.

So I'm just like, you know, and by the way.

Excuse me, we have a president who is a little on the overweight side.

But they don't meme him like a blow-up doll, like a cabbage patch kid from 1984 with a beard.

They don't do that to him.

They do it to J.D.

Vance.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye, J.D.

Vance.

Okay, go to the Democrats.

So the Democrats now, of course, are jumping on this.

They are, it's, you've got this irony of the Democrats saying, crying conspiracy theory about something they said there was no conspiracy theory about and trying to kind of make hay of this.

I think you can see that as totally cynical.

Of course, it is.

That's what the Democrats are going to do.

They see a political opening.

They'd be fools not to take it.

And I think they have a couple of opportunities.

One is they have internal polling by this Democratic polling company called Blue Rose that shows that 61% of Trump voters do think that law enforcement is hiding information about powerful people so they can see that this is a movement, an issue.

Do I think law enforcement is hiding information?

I don't know in this case.

I'm not in the kind of there's a deliberate conspiracy to cover up about powerful people.

Okay, but you said earlier.

But I think I want to know.

And I want to know answers to that.

Yes, I think that's true.

Powerful.

Powerful people protect powerful people by passing legislation that gives powerful people massive tax breaks.

They do it all the time.

Rich people protect rich people in that way.

We've just seen it happen in the United States.

I don't know in this instance.

But here's the irony of what you just said.

By the way, I completely agree with you, but I want to explain this to people from a social engineering perspective.

And then I'll get back to the Democrats.

But it's been proven, okay?

You protect rich people

by burgeoning the middle class.

Okay, Teddy Roosevelt understood that.

Henry Ford understood that.

Henry Ford said, hey, I'm going to pay these people enough money to buy the product that they're producing.

I'm going to make sure they're in single-family houses near the factory so they don't come after me in my mansion with tiki torches and pitchforks while I'm carving up my steak and eating my caviar.

And so, this nonsense that we're doing in this generation, where we're regressively shifting the tax code to favor the rich to try to get us a few trillionaires, is going to blow back on us, Caddy.

It's going to be a really bad thing.

That's why we were asked about whether there could be a revolution in the show last night.

I thought it was a very nice thing.

thing you gotta fix i think the other thing it does for democrats and then we are definitely going to take a break one last thing is that it gives them the opportunity to show that trump is a flip-flopper and american voters generally don't like flip-floppers it was what sunk john kerry in his candidacy remember in 2004 when literally at the republican convention everyone was up there i was there at that convention holding flip-flops because john kerry had flipped his position on the war it's not something that americans tend to like and they can say look he's flip-flopped on this and look at all the other lists of things.

I'm going to push back on it.

Okay.

Because yes, I hear you.

And the flip-flops and so forth.

But John Kerry lost that election because he was a wooden Ichabod crane.

And that's why he lost the election.

Okay.

And the only thing people saw of John Kerry was his Adams apple.

And that's why he lost the election.

And so you could disagree with me on that, but we do a lot of flip-flopping in this country.

We had Reagan as a Democrat.

He went through to be the Republican.

I can name every single candidate that that has flip-flopped on almost everything.

And politicians, whether we like it or not, do flip-flop.

So I don't think that's it.

I think where the Democrats could really make headway is if they expanded the tent of that party and they said, okay, hey, guys, these MAGA people are nuts.

Or, you know, in my neighborhood, they said, goo-guts.

You had a chicken running around in your head.

You're the googuts.

And what you got to do is widen the party, strengthen the democracy, strengthen the system.

And my friend Gavin Newsom, which you pointed out in last night's show, is finally switching the narrative on California, pushing back on people and saying, hey, California is tech, California is Hollywood, it's culture exporter.

71% of America's GDP.

And it's also $83 billion of money getting exported from California on a net basis to the federal government.

It's minus $71 billion for Texas.

And kudos to Gavin Newsom for finally pointing that out.

We've kind of drifted away from Epstein.

But anyway, that was a very nice ending to the first half.

We'll take a break and come right back.

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okay welcome back everybody Anthony and I still in London recording this and in this half we are going to talk about Ukraine where there has been an arc of change in the president's message towards Vladimir Putin recently.

I think we can both say that, where he came out clearly very frustrated with Vladimir Putin, potentially because Melania Trump had told him she didn't like bombs being dropped on Kyiv.

And

for the fifth time, by my count, this year, Donald Trump has issued an ultimatum to Vladimir Putin and said he has 50 days

to agree to a ceasefire, or there will be tariffs and secondary sanctions put on those countries that are dealing with Russia.

And also, more importantly, he has said that he is going to send Patriot missile systems to Ukraine, which they desperately need.

He says it's going to be billions of dollars worth of weaponry.

Sitting in the Oval Office with the Notice Secretary General Mark Rutter, he said that he made it very clear that these were not, it's not going to be American money.

European countries are going to pay for these Patriot

systems.

They'll be American systems, but they will be sent to the Ukrainians.

When he announced this, Antony, what I heard from Kiev was that there was euphoria in Kyiv, but it didn't last very long.

So as the details and the realization of what this actually meant came out, or rather the lack of details, because everybody wants in Ukraine more defensive weapon systems and potentially even offensive weapon systems, there was initially some speculation that there'd be offensive weapon systems in this package.

Now that's gone away.

He's made it clear there aren't going to be offensive weapon systems.

We don't know how big this package is going to be.

Is it going to be when he says billions, does he mean 10 billion?

Does he mean 2 billion?

10 billion will probably be significant.

2 billion won't last them terribly long through what is seen to be a Russian summer offensive.

And this idea that the Russians have just been given 50 days carte blanche to do what they like before Donald Trump does anything.

And even then, will he actually do anything, given that he's threatened four times already this year to do something and then hasn't done anything?

So there's been, I think, since that Monday meeting, when initially this was seen as a real change of Donald Trump's towards Russia, there's been something of a kind of little bit of cold water thrown on this in Kyiv.

And they're a bit more concerned that this may or may not happen.

They don't know how big it's going to be.

And anyway, can they really rely on this being a long-term thing from Donald Trump?

Go to your sources in Washington for a second.

You know, because I've been told, and again, I don't know if this is true, but I've been told that lots of senators got together with Trump and said, hey, I'm just letting you know, you got to knock this off.

I've had the same thing.

You have.

Okay, so the rumor inside Washington is several senators went to Trump and said, listen, we've let you do all this, but you got to knock it off.

If you don't knock it off, we're going to pass a resolution that we're coming for Putin and we're going to go help Ukraine unilaterally without your help.

And I think that that's the thing that really stopped Trump.

And then

he deflected that with the Melania story to make it look like Melania is compassionate towards the citizens of Kyiv.

But I guess my question for you.

She may be.

I've always liked Melania.

I had a very nice relationship with her for a year, very cordial.

She's always very nice to me.

And so I will always give her the benefit.

And by the way, she is from Eastern European origin.

She is going to feel this war more intensely than Donald Trump feels it, I imagine.

I'll give her the benefit of the doubt, and I'll accept that as true.

But the central question I have for you is will he ever do anything

to knock Vladimir Putin in the nose?

Or will he let Vladimir Putin use him as an orange doormat?

I think the reason you heard the tougher language this week and Donald Trump saying he talks nice to me, but then I go back home and Melania says, look, yeah, but they're bombing people and I'm fed up with that.

I think the reason he changed his position on Monday with Mark Rutter in the Oval Office is partly because of this Senate resolution saying there were going to be 500% sanctions on

Russia, but also partly because he felt personally humiliated that

he has come out in public several times now and said to Vladimir Putin, you have to stop or else.

You've got to stop, Vlad.

You can't keep bombing.

You're pissing me off.

And he was genuinely felt that he had been played for a fool.

And one thing donald trump doesn't like is being played for a fool right he doesn't be like being made to look like he's an idiot i think the problem with this is that you've got important bits of american foreign policy being made by one person's emotional insecurities about how they look in public rather than being made by teams of professionals in the state department or the national security council which has been gutted anyway i mean where we need need experts right now in the National Security Council to try and figure out how to best resolve this war, there aren't experts.

So you have the politics of whimsicalness, right?

You've got the politics of humiliation playing out.

You've got Donald Trump feels like he's been played for a fool.

So let's change the policy.

And that's not a way to make sustainable foreign policy.

It just, it doesn't mean very much when there's no thought process and structure and system behind it.

You know, I like to role play on this podcast.

So we're going to have a role play.

Okay, you're the

doormat.

No, no, no, no, not ever.

God forbid.

You are the MI6

intelligence analyst.

And we're having a meeting.

We're a closed-door meeting.

And I come to you, and I am a British foreign officer.

Could even be the,

what do you guys call it?

What's your Secretary of State called?

The Chancellor.

Foreign Secretary.

Foreign Secretary.

I'm the Foreign Secretary.

I come to you.

You've studied this.

And I say, Caddy Kay, MI6 genius,

what is up with this relationship, Caddy?

And you say.

It's complicated, Mr.

Secretary.

We're spending billions of dollars on intelligence.

Come on, tell me what you tell me.

Tell me what you got.

I know where you're pushing this.

You're pushing this into, do I think there is some kind of compromat that Vladimir Putin has on Donald Trump?

I don't know that.

I don't know if there's a pee-pee tape or some other kind of tape.

Peep tape wouldn't do it.

There's nothing about a pee-pee tape that's going to affront Donald Trump at this point in his life.

Some other kind of sexual tape, which people who have studied Donald Trump and journalists who have reported on Donald Trump for a long time think there might be.

I think there could be something from all of the loans.

You could follow the money on this one, Mr.

Secretary.

And it could just be that there were a whole load of money that was given by the Russians.

Miss MI6 analysts, Miss MI6 analysts.

Why would that be a big deal?

This guy is Mr.

Corruption.

He made $3 billion in the last four months as the president.

So let's say they were funneling money to him.

And let's say Vladimir Putin tonight goes on Russian national television, shows all the money that he funneled to Donald Trump.

You know what Donald Trump will say?

Remember when they were talking about the taxes?

And he said, I don't pay any taxes.

Or when he was going to get the Qatari airplane.

Yeah.

And he said, I'd be stupid not to take it.

Not to take it.

Of course, you take the Give Me in a golf game.

And so, what are you talking about?

They were offering me all this money.

Mr.

Trump, excuse me, President Trump.

It's illegal to take the money.

well i took the money and i got away with it is it aren't i the genius that's how people talk about that you used to think it was money excuse me you did you used to say

but now i know what you're thinking and i know you think there is something nefarious really bad and it's sexual of some nature and that actually it's interesting that you're getting me to play the british because i know that you think that the british are aware of this i do um but i don't know i can't tell you anthony because I haven't seen the tape.

I'm not inside MI6 or the CIA at the moment.

The relationship is weird.

The degree to which he falls over to appease Vladimir Putin is odd, has always been kind of inexplicable.

And then when he says something like this, that's why the 50-day thing, when he initially said, I'm really pissed off with the Russians and I'm going to give more Patriot missile systems to the Ukrainians, because that is not somebody who is in the pocket of Vladimir Putin.

Why would he be giving more patriotism?

Because he's got a gun to his head by the United States Senate.

You think he cares about the United States Senate?

He controls the Senate.

I think he does care a little bit.

I think they are breaching from him.

I think you're going to learn over the next six to 12 months that they're going to want some separation from him.

They've got to win re-election.

And they just passed the big, beautiful spending bill that has a 38% approval rating in the country.

And they took 17 million people off of the healthcare system.

And it's going to come home to roost for these guys, and they're going to want some separation from them.

But having said all that, because you are the more rational of the two podcast people here in this room,

you think that there is something, or you think there is nothing, and that Trump just likes big, bad Vladimir Putin?

I don't know.

I don't know is the honest answer.

All right, fair enough.

We'll leave it there.

You think there is something, but you don't know there is something.

I don't know what it is, and I'm never going to say that I know what it is.

I've always felt that the relationship with Vladimir Putin suggested they had something on the bottom.

I thought it was money, and now I'm thinking it probably isn't money because Trump is a resilient guy.

He would survive money.

It could be something more damning than that.

But it's something that worries Trump.

There's something in the back of his mind that he's like, I really can't cross Putin.

If this comes out, it's going to be really, really bad for me.

And by the way, again, Trump is a masterful politician with great political instincts.

He's now looking around saying, hmm, I've got a schism here.

I went after the core.

I went after the core of MAGA.

And the core of MAGA was deep state, anti-pedophilia, going after all the mean guys in Washington, crunching down the deep state.

And I just sent them a signal that I'm not doing that because guess what?

I am part of that, so I can't do that.

And they don't like it very much.

So there's chips in the system.

And if there's a Molotov cocktail that the Russians could throw at the White House right now to hurt Trump, he's worried about it.

That's what I really believe.

And so, we'll have to see how this unfolds.

But he's not going to do anything to really help Zelensky.

And he's not going to do anything really to hurt.

Putin.

And the person that knows that more than anybody else is Putin because he shrugs off everything.

And you pointed out last night on our show, you pointed out that after Trump made all this nonsense, the Russian stock market, where did it go, Katty K?

It went up by 3%.

There you go.

Almost 3% to 2.7, but the market rose.

Because I think there's also a realization that they're not going to put massive secondary sanctions on India or over Russia.

They're not going to drive up energy prices, which is what would happen colossally and have Americans suddenly paying again $5, $6 a gallon for gas.

That would make Trump massively unpopular.

So they're not going to do that.

That's why in Russia, they shrugged that off.

And that's why in Kyiv, following a day of thinking, wow, we've got Donald Trump back on side and we've got a new American commitment to defending ourselves and potentially even to being able to attack the Russians, they've realized this whole deal looks a lot more hollow than it did at the beginning.

Let me tell you what I really think Trump is doing.

Because I really think he's scared shit of Putin.

It's so stupid that he could be, right?

Very rich guy, running the most powerful country with the most powerful military, scared shit of putin who's had his economy shrink now it's below the size of italy and i looked this up last night it's down 14 to 15 percent over the last three years in terms of the contraction and the inflation has gone haywire in the country and a lot of unhappy people economically in that country but yet he's scared of them but i think he's gone to and you know how to pronounce his name rutta is that how you pronounce his name

so he's gone to him he likes him and he's in the oval office with him and i know privately without the press gaggle, he's like, is there any way we can get this done through NATO without my hands on it?

Because I'm afraid of Vladimir Putin.

He's not saying that exactly to Mark, but he's more or less saying that.

And that's the real question.

I don't think you can do that.

So this will be a stalemated situation because the Germans and the French,

it's a tough neighborhood, Eastern Europe, and it's very close by to the UK and Germany and France.

And they're not going to let this go.

They're not going to let Putin take Ukraine when they have air superiority over the Ukrainian state and they have better technology than the Russian military.

They're not going to let it go.

And so this could get stalemated through the 2028 presidential election because of this nonsense with Trump.

I'm reading this book at the moment, an amazing book on the First World War, Testament to Youth by Vera Britton.

And it's a huge long book and it's a constant reminder of the kind of brutality of that war and and this, the number of lives that were being lost over in trench warfare, like we're seeing in eastern Ukraine, for a few miles here and there, a few yards here and there.

And it's a kind of, it just reminds me.

It's weird reading it at the moment, but there's horrible reminiscences of these people.

It's good insight.

It's a good insight and good analogy.

I think it's hard for the Ukrainians.

They have to wait for the Europeans to rearm.

I've heard that's about a three to five year project, which probably, right, takes us through the 2028 election, we could still be in this position.

We're going to wrap it up there.

Caddy, we're wrapping it up.

We'll wrap it up there.

You're going to make your founding member pitch or no?

You mean if people would like to become founding members, that one where I say you can go to the restispoliticsus.com to become a founding member, that's the pitch that you want me to make?

Okay.

We could make that pitch.

If you'd like to become a founding member, go to therestispoliticsus.com and you can get ad-free listening and extra bonus material and ever.

Wall Street salesman that never was.

Caddy Kay, ladies and gentlemen.

The great loss.

No question.

Thank you, everybody, for listening.