130. The Truth About Trump's Epstein U-Turn

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Speaker 2 Welcome to the is Politics with me, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us in substitution of the great Caddy K is the legendary Stephen Sacker.
Now, Stephen had joined us earlier in the year.

Speaker 2 You're backed by popular demand, Stephen.

Speaker 2 And just want to point out to people, after decades as a BBC journalist, now an independent like many of us, and you're also writing a great book, which I'm looking forward to reading, about independent journalism worldwide, including here in the United States.

Speaker 2 Welcome to the show, Stephen.

Speaker 3 It's great to be back on the show. I love that line about backed by popular demand.
I think that's code for you couldn't find anybody else, but nonetheless, I'm absolutely delighted to be here.

Speaker 2 You were a fan favorite. I'm not making that up.
Trust me, this is a very commercial organization, Stephen Sacker. We don't mess around here, but I want to talk about a couple of things.

Speaker 2 I'm going to channel my best Caddy K

Speaker 2 impersonation here. So, what we're going to talk about today is the Trump-Epstein U-turn and then the GOP fractures.
Think people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Representative Massey,

Speaker 2 also called Rand Paul Jr. So it's obviously Rand Paul.
They were all breaking from Donald Trump. So we'll do that in the second half.

Speaker 2 But I want to go to the first half of the show and talk about what happened late on Sunday night. Trump urged Republicans to vote to release the files related to Epstein.

Speaker 2 The vote's scheduled for Tuesday, Stephen.

Speaker 2 But for the last several weeks, he's been jawboning representatives to block the release of the files. So I want you to square this circle as a journalist.

Speaker 2 We're going to release the files as the campaign pledge.

Speaker 2 They release haphazard nothing.

Speaker 2 Then his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, says there are no files and Epstein, nothing happened. Of course, we know that's not true.
And now caches of emails are coming out from the Epstein estate.

Speaker 2 And Trump has a finger in a dam, but the dam has already broken. So he's reversed course.
What's your analysis of all this?

Speaker 2 What do you you think he's doing and thinking?

Speaker 3 I guess to put it crudely, Donald Trump hates, absolutely hates losing.

Speaker 3 And he could see, certainly by the weekend, that he was losing in this effort to block and thwart a House vote on the so-called Epstein

Speaker 3 Files Transparency Act. The numbers in the House were no longer working for him.

Speaker 3 And it became plain that if he continued to demand that his party stand up and fight on this, it was going to be a losing battle.

Speaker 3 And rather than take the loss in that formal sense, he decided to declare that in capital letters he no longer cared.

Speaker 3 And that as far as he was concerned, the House could go ahead with the vote and the files, all of them that the Justice Department hold could be released.

Speaker 3 So as you say, it's a massive fundamental U-turn.

Speaker 3 All of that guff that he's been giving us about the Epstein hoax and why it would be completely wrong and unreasonable to release all the documentation, all the files.

Speaker 3 All that is now out of the window and he's saying he simply doesn't care and that he just wants to focus on the people's business and that this is nothing more than a distraction.

Speaker 2 So one of the things we said last week, Katy and I were talking about this.

Speaker 2 I felt like Trump is off his game. I felt like this was the right move from day one because the best move is with Trump is always to be offensive.

Speaker 2 He could say, release all the files and then anything that comes out that's damning related to him, Stephen will say, well, that's fake news. It's AI generated.

Speaker 2 And then, of course, his base would say, well, he asked for a full release of it. So obviously all this stuff that they're generating is fake and nonsensical.

Speaker 2 Why do you think he didn't go in that direction in the beginning?

Speaker 2 I'm going to submit to you that I think the reason is he's tired and off his game. I think it's really that obvious.

Speaker 2 But what do you think were some of the reasons why he didn't go in that direction in the beginning?

Speaker 3 Well, I think he's become so used to the idea that he ultimately can control events in the Congress that it took him till far too late to realize that on this one, he probably couldn't.

Speaker 3 You know, Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, seems to have been telling him for a long time that, you know what, we have the capacity to delay, delay, delay, delay on this.

Speaker 3 Obviously, there are a few key moments. There was that special election in Arizona, which saw a Democratic congresswoman elected.
She made it plain she would support the release of the files.

Speaker 3 That changed the mathematics somewhat, and Speaker Johnson was clearly beginning to lose the battle to hold back the tide.

Speaker 3 And of course, you know, Donald Trump had lost some key members of the MAGA movement. I'm sure we're going to talk about Marjorie Taylor Greene, but it wasn't just her.

Speaker 3 There was Lauren Boebert, there was Nancy Mace.

Speaker 3 And of course, there was a very effective rebel leader for the Republicans who wanted to see the files released in Thomas Massey from Kentucky.

Speaker 3 So, as I say, Trump, who's so used to bullying and bulldozering his way through the Republican Party, came up against some opponents on this particular issue who would not be bullied.

Speaker 3 And he is very definitely not used to that.

Speaker 2 So, one of the thoughts here is that because there's an ongoing investigation, he's going to go to Cash Patel and Pam Bondi, and he's going to have them specifically because of criminal procedure block the release of the evidence.

Speaker 2 He doesn't want the evidence out there because it could unduly influence a jury or

Speaker 2 unduly influence a judge.

Speaker 2 But there are risks to that. You know,

Speaker 2 some of it may come out, some of it may not.

Speaker 2 What do you think his next move is on the chessboard, Stephen?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think the one you're alluding to, the sort of legal maneuvering, get the Justice Department involved in specific investigations to restrict what can actually be released, even if the Congress now votes for a full release.

Speaker 3 I think that's going to look to the American public like yet more games playing.

Speaker 3 And I'm getting the sense on the Republican side that there are now significant numbers of generally loyal people who want the games playing to stop.

Speaker 3 And it was interesting that over the weekend, Thomas Massey, as I say, the congressman from Kentucky, who was the leader of those few Republicans who wanted the full release of the Epstein files, he was saying that he believed up to 100 of his party colleagues were now minded to back him and go against the wishes of the president.

Speaker 3 So I think if Trump and his team in the White House still think they can game this out by working in the Senate and then playing with procedures according to, as you say, the law and the Justice Department, I think that's going to really make things look worse yet again for Trump and his team.

Speaker 3 My guess is they won't do that now. You know, it's not clear.
We don't know. Anthony, you don't know and I don't know exactly what is in these thousands of documents that have yet to be released.

Speaker 3 Chris Murphy, the Democrat senator, said something interesting. He said, Look, Donald Trump is not a selfless guy.

Speaker 3 The reason why he's been trying to block the release surely is something to do with him. He's not trying to protect others.
That's not the kind of guy Donald Trump is. He's trying to protect himself.

Speaker 3 So it may be there will be some more significant damage done to Donald Trump himself in the documents yet to be revealed.

Speaker 3 Or it may be, frankly, they're a bit of a damp squib when it comes to Trump himself. We don't know, but I think it is clear now that his stand in recent weeks and months has been damaging.

Speaker 3 And I reckon even he now realizes it's time to change the tune.

Speaker 2 One of the most fascinating things about all this is the cult around Donald Trump, where he says no more forever wars. He starts bombing people.
We're for the bombs. We're for the bombs in Iran.

Speaker 2 We're for the aircraft carriers off the coast of Venezuela. He says we're going to disclose the Epstein documents.
They're for it. Then he says it doesn't exist.

Speaker 2 And they're saying, oh, that's okay too.

Speaker 2 He's calling it a hoax.

Speaker 2 And now he's saying, release everything, I guess, release everything from the hoax. So

Speaker 2 get in the mind, if you can, of a red hat-wielding MAGA

Speaker 2 participant in the Trump cult.

Speaker 3 How do they square all this?

Speaker 2 Tell me what goes on. Like this is the shooting on Fifth Avenue and being able to get away with it.
So tell me how he does it, Steve.

Speaker 3 Yeah, well, you say how do they square it off? I say some of them can't square it off. Some of them are squirming.

Speaker 3 And I think some of them are actually deeply embarrassed about the position that they find themselves in right now.

Speaker 3 I mean, all they can do right now in terms of defending Trump and his U-turn and his inconsistencies and the position that seems to make no sense, all they can do is say, you know what, wait till it all comes out and you will see that there is nothing damaging, no proof of any kind of any illegality or any terrible wrongdoing by Donald Trump in relation to Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 3 But, you know, the American public heard Donald Trump for so long on the campaign trail saying that these Epstein files were symptomatic and symbolic of something deeply important.

Speaker 3 That is the rot, the dirt, the corruption that had polluted the American elite and that the American public had a right to know all about.

Speaker 3 The fact that he then shifted once in power to saying it was all a hoax and the American public shouldn't be told what was in all of the files and the documents, that was one heck of a position change, which I don't think a lot of Americans, even on his own side, will easily forget.

Speaker 3 And I think there are people close to him who have begun to realize just how corrosive this whole thing has been to the Trump project, the Trump second term.

Speaker 2 So, Stephen, it feels like the Republicans are shooting Trump from inside the tent. How do you think the Democrats are going to

Speaker 2 use that? We've got an upcoming election, the midterm elections.

Speaker 2 You know, it's a while away, but it's still, you know, they're going to start setting their sights on it in the first quarter of 2026.

Speaker 2 I feel like the Democrats are behind a step here.

Speaker 2 Do you believe that's the case? And if you don't believe that's the case, what do you think they're going to do?

Speaker 3 Well, so far, you know, we've been talking about Epstein, the release of the Epstein files, because that is so front and center in the news right now. But I would think...

Speaker 3 And my opinion is that if the Democrats go too hard and too focused on this over the next few days and weeks,

Speaker 3 they're making a mistake and they're missing a political trick.

Speaker 3 Because I think if you look deeper into what's happening to Trump, and I like your idea that Trump is off his game right now and seems somewhat unbalanced by recent events, I would say that the even greater evidence than his U-turn on the Epstein files is how right now he's mishandling some of the fundamentally important debate about affordability in America, the cost of living, the crunch that ordinary folks are feeling with their pocketbook, the fact that inflation has not been conquered.

Speaker 3 In many different sectors of the economy, Americans are still struggling. I think Donald Trump is off his game when it comes to addressing that.

Speaker 3 And I think that's where Democrats have the political traction. I mean, we saw it in the off-year elections, in the governor's races in New Jersey and in Virginia.
Obviously, we saw

Speaker 3 the Mandani win in New York as well, but that had its own special factors. But the bottom line is the affordability question is hurting the Republicans right now.

Speaker 3 Donald Trump in recent interviews has suggested it's a con job, it's hype, and that Americans have never had it so good.

Speaker 3 And it's just the Democrats trying to persuade them that things are bad when, in fact, they're great.

Speaker 3 And that, I don't think, is a great place for Donald Trump to be when Americans do actually feel the affordability crisis. So that's where, if I were a Democrat, I would be putting my focus right now.

Speaker 2 I'm wondering about the bad judgment. I feel, again, this is just,

Speaker 2 I'm going to take this argument

Speaker 2 over from last week

Speaker 2 because,

Speaker 2 again, these are just my instincts, Stephen. I feel like he's tired.
I feel like he's distracted.

Speaker 2 I feel like his economic team has come to him and said, hey, the prices, you can lie about them all you want. They don't say it like that to him.
They say, well, Mr.

Speaker 2 President, yes, some of the prices are down, but the prices are astronomical. You know, if you go to buy a pot roast out here on Long Island, it was $9 three years ago.
It's $38 US dollars today.

Speaker 2 I mean, you're going to choke on it. I have friends of mine.
They go buy a bag of groceries.

Speaker 2 It's $300. They've got one dinner in there.
Everything else is just the supplemental stuff that they need for their kitchen.

Speaker 2 So I think he's really on his back foot. Let me make one other point.

Speaker 2 He tariff, tariff, tariff. They go to him and say, why are you tariffing things like coffee that we don't produce here in the United States? He says, doesn't matter.
We're going to blindly tariff.

Speaker 2 50% tariff in Brazil leads to a 22% price increase in coffee at the supermarket and coffee at the Starbucks. He's now rolling that back.

Speaker 2 And so I don't understand why the Democrats are not framing the narrative differently by saying, hey, everything we said he was doing, we predicted. Now he's obsessed with this Epstein thing.

Speaker 2 Why are they missing the narrative? Unless you don't think they are missing the narrative.

Speaker 3 Why are they missing the narrative? I absolutely think you are right.

Speaker 3 I couldn't comment on the Scaramucci family's pot roast situation, but it

Speaker 3 sounds a little grim. But there are other ways in which I again feel that Trump's not singing the right tune right now.

Speaker 3 For example, I think a few days ago, he suggested that Americans ought to get used to the idea of 50-year mortgages to address the affordability of housing that so many Americans are now experiencing.

Speaker 3 And, you know, for most folks, the idea that you're going to be in hock to the bank for the best part of all of your adult life simply to own a home,

Speaker 3 it is not an attractive idea. And I don't know why Donald Trump started to peddle it.

Speaker 3 And just one other, you know, you alluded, sort of hinted at the degree to which Donald Trump has been distracted by foreign affairs, which I do think a lot of MAGA folks feel in recent months.

Speaker 3 One interesting interconnect between foreign affairs and domestic was in Argentina when Trump suggested that, you know, to bring beef prices down, the U.S.

Speaker 3 might start importing shedloads of Argentinian beef. And you can imagine what that meant for America's cattle and beef farmers.
Again, it was just bad politics.

Speaker 3 It looked like he was more concerned about the interests of Mr. Millais in Buenos Aires than he was the farmers out in the American heartland.

Speaker 3 So I don't, I can't tell tell you exactly why this guy who over his whole career has had this sort of incredible visceral ability to understand how to reach Americans who are not from his economic group, but he could understand how to reach them.

Speaker 3 At the moment, I think that gift is deserting him.

Speaker 2 I agree with all that. I guess the last question before we go to the break.

Speaker 2 Somebody like me, I would just tell you, I would not be comfortable. I think I have an element of a shame gene.
I think Trump has no shame gene. He's mentioned 1,600 times out of 2,324 email threats.

Speaker 2 And just think of the pressure on him and think of the nefarious behavior around him. How does he do it, Stephen? You've met a lot of these world leaders.
How does he do it?

Speaker 2 How does he pull it together?

Speaker 3 Yeah, well, he doesn't have shame. I mean, if he had shame, he'd have quit politics an awful long time ago, and he's still in the White House.
So shame isn't a problem he has.

Speaker 3 I think though, again, if we stick too closely to the Epstein files and what they might mean for Trump over the coming days and weeks, my hunch, my guess, and it's nothing more than that, because like I say, you and me, we don't know what's in the rest of those files.

Speaker 3 But my hunch is there's nothing in there that is going to come close to bringing Trump down.

Speaker 3 And do not forget, Anthony, that a lot of the bad stuff, and and there's loads of bad stuff for Trump in there, in the phrases we've already seen about, you know, Trump knowing about the girls and the fact he spent hours alone, according to Epstein, inside Epstein's home with one of the young women.

Speaker 3 Bad stuff, but none of it criminal, none of it pointing to actual illegality.

Speaker 3 Do not forget that a lot of the other bad stuff is about Democrats.

Speaker 3 You know, a lot of the embarrassing stuff, the sleazy stuff, this sort of idea of a network of men who were familiar with what Epstein was up to, but didn't care or look the other way.

Speaker 3 It involves very senior Democrats. And you don't need me to mention them all now, but we all know who they are because we've been discussing them for the last few days and weeks.

Speaker 3 So I don't think the Epstein files are a simple Trump problem. They're an American elite problem.

Speaker 3 And, you know, I therefore don't think we should be looking to the next few days and weeks, whatever happens with the full release or not, to think that, hey, you know what, this could be Trump's demise.

Speaker 3 I, for myself, don't see that. And of course, Anthony, we always have to remember and to say that Trump absolutely denies any wrongdoing regarding Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 3 And he tells us that he broke the relationship long before. Jeffrey Epstein was convicted or did that plea bargain in a court in Florida back in 2008.

Speaker 2 I agree with you. It's very important to bring that up.
I think he gets out of this. I don't think he gets out of it unscathed.

Speaker 2 We're going to take a break here in a second, but when we come back from the break, we're going to talk about why he's not unscathed, that there are fractures in his coalition now and what that potentially means to him as we head into the midterms.

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Speaker 2 Welcome back to the Rest is Politics US with me, Anthony Scaramucci. And joining us in lieu of Caddy Kay is Stephen Sacker.
Stephen, there are some MAGA fractures.

Speaker 2 Marjorie Taylor Green is clearly broken from him, although she says she hasn't. She's still America First, but she's gone after him on prices.
She's gone after him on Epstein.

Speaker 2 They've tried to coerce her. Now they're calling her Marjorie Trader Green.
He always comes up with a cute nickname. There's other riffs, though.
Thomas Massey, Ram Paul.

Speaker 2 But under the surface, Stephen, because unfortunately or fortunately for me, I still talk to a lot of these people. Under the surface, they are getting ready to break from Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 The midterms are coming. He is a lame duck.
Even if he puts out Trump 2028 hats and hands them out to Syrian leaders. It really doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 What say you about the current rift? Am I exaggerating the fissures here? Or do you think that there's something here that's real that Trump should be concerned about?

Speaker 3 There is something very real here, and it's called political mortality.

Speaker 3 You know, we use that phrase lame duck, and it gets wheeled out in the second term of every presidency, but it persists as an idea because it has real weight behind it.

Speaker 3 Donald Trump, you know, defies political wisdom in so many different ways, but he cannot defy the fundamental. He is in his second term.
He's already had pretty much the first year of it.

Speaker 3 And inevitably, people start to look to what comes next. And Steve Bannon might say, hey, you know what? The Constitution's a little bit fluid on this, a little bit vague.

Speaker 3 We can engineer a little tweak to it to give Donald Trump Trump the chance to run for a third term, but that ain't going to happen.

Speaker 3 And I do think that we are now at a point where many people in his own party, even the MAGA factions in his own party, are beginning to think about what comes next.

Speaker 3 And that is a form of political gravity that even Trump cannot defy.

Speaker 2 Let me play GOP strategist for a second, and I'd like you to react to this. So

Speaker 2 I'm an old school Republican. I have submerged and submitted myself to MAGA populism.

Speaker 2 But I don't think there's any personality, any figure out there that can galvanize that movement as successfully as Donald Trump. And I'm going to make a move here, Stephen.

Speaker 2 I'm going to try to restore large swaths of the old philosophical tenets of the Republican Party.

Speaker 2 Now, from your distance, which I think is a very very interesting and objective vantage point, am I going to be successful in doing that? Or am I going to be rebutted? And is this now Trump's party?

Speaker 2 And this MAGA movement's going to last several decades.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I

Speaker 3 think that this is Trump's party.

Speaker 3 And then we've got to talk about J.D. Vance and the extent to which it may become his party.

Speaker 3 I got thinking about what you're referring to with the death of Dick Cheney and all of the thought and reflection on what has happened to the Republican Party, even the hawkish right wing of the Republican Party since Donald Trump's MAGA movement essentially took the party over from within.

Speaker 3 And those people who are absolute hardcore small C conservatives want small government, they want lower taxes, they want less government.

Speaker 3 These people, you know, of whom Dick Cheney was a leading proponent, these people who

Speaker 3 feel that way but cannot stand Donald Trump's populism, I think they don't really have traction in the Republican Party right now.

Speaker 3 It has been hollowed out to a massive extent by all of these years of Trump-ism, if we can create it as an ism.

Speaker 3 And therefore, I think in the short to medium term, those who inherit Republican power

Speaker 3 will be of the Trump movement. And that's why I think we have to talk about J.D.
Vance. And J.D.

Speaker 3 Vance, I think, is trying to, and it goes back to what we were talking about in the first half, about Trump being off his game, about not really messaging in a way that the American public appreciates on the economy right now.

Speaker 3 J.D. Vance is trying to do something...
quite subtle. He's trying to stay loyal, but he's also, I think, trying to indicate that he gets the affordability argument.

Speaker 3 He gets the crisis of sort of well-being and economic well-being that Americans are feeling right now in a way that his boss maybe doesn't.

Speaker 3 You know, while his boss is busy putting the bulldozers into the White House to create a new incredible sort of gilded ballroom, I think J.D.

Speaker 3 Vance is trying to use language that suggests he understands what's going on back home in his own

Speaker 3 part of America, which was a very poor white working class part of America.

Speaker 3 So that's my analysis, that no, there won't be the return of that sort of mainstream conservatism that looked down its nose at Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 I think that the inheritors will be MAGA-related, but they'll try and shift the messaging away from the grandiose sort of persona, the dominant persona of Donald Trump himself.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you know, see, it's interesting. I actually

Speaker 2 believe that Vance

Speaker 2 is saying MAGA, MAGA, MAGA, and he's being a little subtle, And I do agree with you about the affordability issues.

Speaker 2 But if he were to instantly become president for some reason, I think he's a tech brolegark president. I think he switches the entire script and he adheres to the Peter Thiel, Elon Musk

Speaker 2 ways of operation away from pure populism. Do you agree with that? Or do you think he's going to take the mantle of Trumpism and carry it forward?

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 I guess I think, think, like a canning politician, I'm not really sure because

Speaker 3 there's two parts to his political character right now. And I guess we've quite effectively summed them up.
One is that he's still

Speaker 3 the guy who feels the pain of the white working class and will never forget it.

Speaker 3 But he's also the guy who's reached the top of politics by forging incredibly strong and deeply financially useful relationships with some of the richest tech bros, not only in America, but in the world.

Speaker 3 So, you know, in the end, which way will he use his political capital when it's really his to spend?

Speaker 3 If he gets to that point, when we're saying that Donald Trump is pretty much out the picture and we need to know where J.D. Vance would take America, I think right now he's...

Speaker 3 he's sort of hedging his bets. He's not telling us precisely which way he would go.

Speaker 3 He want my opinion.

Speaker 3 I think that the next election will absolutely be difficult for him to win if he is seen to be the guy whose politics is being driven by Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and others like them on the west coast of the United States, or it doesn't really matter which coast they're on.

Speaker 3 But that kind of billionaire money power and information power

Speaker 3 being the key driver to a presidential candidate, I think will be problematic.

Speaker 2 And of course, if you want more J.D. Vance discussion, I know so many of you guys are loving the series by our very own podfathers, Alistair and Rory, which is available to founding members.

Speaker 2 You can sign up at the RestisPoliticsUS.com. Okay, so play Trump strategist now.

Speaker 2 Trump, let's assume that he's stung and he's weakened a little by the Epstein files, but he's very survivable. We're now into March or April of 2026.
The midterms are looming.

Speaker 2 The typical American president at that moment really only has five or six months of vitality left because once he jumps the shark into the November timeframe after the midterms, most of these presidents, at least the last several presidents, have gone lame duck in their second term.

Speaker 2 But be the Trump strategist now.

Speaker 2 What does he do from a patronage perspective? What does he do

Speaker 2 from an adherence of loyalty? How does he keep everybody in the boat going in the direction that he wants to go, despite this looming political mortality that you described earlier?

Speaker 3 Well, I think that arguably of all the political challenges that Donald Trump has faced, this coming challenge of how to avoid the weakness that comes with evident political mortality may be the biggest and most difficult challenge of all.

Speaker 3 What presidents tend to do is look for grand achievements on the international stage as well as on the domestic stage. And we know that Donald Trump would love to, you know, be the global peacemaker.

Speaker 3 He didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize last year, much to his chagrin, but maybe he believes he can win it next year, which means that he's got to deliver and got to still spend time and political capital on stuff that the MAGA movement frankly doesn't care that much about, whether it be Israel-Palestine over the Gaza problem, or whether whether it be Russia-Ukraine and trying to get Putin to the peace table in a way which Putin doesn't appear willing to play ball, or whether it be, for example, trying to tell Americans that he's conquered the narco-terrorist Maduro in Venezuela and cut off that, as he would put it, key drug supply route into the United States, which is damaging

Speaker 3 American health and well-being. Those are achievements he might look to, but the problem for for him is that even if he were to achieve those things, and frankly, that's a very, very big if,

Speaker 3 that wouldn't really satisfy many of the people who voted for him last time around, because what they really care about is the home front, not the international front.

Speaker 3 So where does he build new alliances to

Speaker 3 shore up his MAGA movement? It's got to be turning the economy around. You know, he keeps telling us that the economy is in great shape.
That doesn't appear to be the experience of most Americans.

Speaker 3 So he's got a short period now of, let's say, the next four, five, six months at most, where he's really got to see the economy and in particular things like the inflation rate under control.

Speaker 3 You know, inflation, I believe, and you know much better than me, Anthony, is still running at around 3%. He needs to get that down.

Speaker 3 He needs those American shoppers whose shopping baskets are still so expensive to see some alleviation of that problem.

Speaker 3 And that, to me, is the only really important way in which he can try to, you know, hold back the tides of political power draining away.

Speaker 2 You know, it's interesting because he wants the Nobel Peace Prize. He

Speaker 2 has this

Speaker 2 weird love affair. He says it's hate, but I think it's love with Barack Obama.
I think he's ennabbered by Barack Obama's popularity.

Speaker 2 But he killed 80 people. He murdered 80 people off the coast of Venezuela without any due process.
Now, maybe all of them, let me stipulate, maybe all of them are drug dealers. I don't know.

Speaker 2 But I'm going to channel my Ram Paul here for a second. They deserve due process.
Okay.

Speaker 2 The most embarrassing thing I can say about my country right now, Stephen, and there's lots of embarrassing things, but the thing I really dislike is we're number seven on the human rights watch list now as a result of doing these things.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 you think he could win the Nobel Prize?

Speaker 3 No, I'd be amazed.

Speaker 2 We're in agreement on that. There's no effing way this guy's winning the Nobel Prize.
I just thought I would ask the question.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'll tell you a little thing. Every year for about 18 years, I've gone to Oslo to interview the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Speaker 3 So over the years, I've gotten to know the people, the committee that hand out the prize pretty well.

Speaker 3 And I can tell you that if Donald Trump is next year's Nobel Peace Prize winner, I will try to eat this laptop that I'm talking to you on because I think it's so unlikely that that

Speaker 3 laptop is not going to get behind.

Speaker 2 I'm going to serve you one of those get-me-out of there menus of like worms and cockroaches, okay? But I've got you at a 0% chance of eating that. Before we go, I just want to test this out on you.

Speaker 2 So if I was Trump's advisor, which thankfully I'm not, I would be like, Mr. President,

Speaker 2 you got to make your last two years here about the America first movement. And you've got to go out there and find candidates that believe in your movement.

Speaker 2 The problem is your movement is somewhat ambiguous because you've told people that the policies are whatever you say they are. There really isn't a definitive platform.
But if I'm him,

Speaker 2 I'm going to go full on with all my money, all my resources, all my media influence to try to dislodge all of these players inside the Republican Party that are against me.

Speaker 2 What say you on that strategy?

Speaker 3 I say you, if he goes all-out sort of mafia boss and tries to destroy all his enemies, that's a one-way ticket to a hellish last three years of his presidency. I would, if I was so sort of

Speaker 3 pompous, I would give one piece of advice to Donald Trump, which I know he would never take, but I'll give it to him anyway for free.

Speaker 3 I would say, Mr. President, listen to Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Speaker 3 Now, there are lots of reasons not to listen to Marjorie Taylor Greene, but in the last 72 hours, she's said some really interesting things.

Speaker 3 She said that she owns up to being part of a toxic political culture. She's expressed regret for some of the things that she said in the past that were so deeply,

Speaker 3 offensively partisan and personal towards her opponents. She says America needs a different kind of politics.
But interestingly, she says she still wants to be on Donald Trump's side.

Speaker 3 It's not that she's given up on the MAGA movement, on the idea that we need to restore American greatness, we need to concentrate on the home front, we need to disentangle ourselves from overseas affairs where you know, where American money is being spent in ways that are deeply unwise for the American people.

Speaker 3 She's not given up on any of that, but she clearly has reached a point where she thinks that the style of politics needs to change.

Speaker 3 And for me, if the MAGA movement is to evolve into something that goes far beyond Donald Trump's second term, I think it's going to have to evolve too.

Speaker 3 And while I don't for a minute think that Donald Trump is going to listen to the woman he calls Marjorie Trader Green, I think actually all of us ought to be listening a little bit to what she has said in the recent past.

Speaker 2 I think it's very well said, Stephen. I think your point about prioritizing affordability is going to be a big issue for Republican popularity going forward.

Speaker 2 This is something that the Democrats can really seize on because they did, they left Trump with a fairly decent economy.

Speaker 2 And what we're going to learn by the midterm election is that these tariffs and the push-pull stopping and starting of the tariffs and the insanity around them have actually done exactly what Jerome Powell said that they would do.

Speaker 2 It would create economic uncertainty. It would stall capital allocation to capital equipment in factories.
It would slow down the marginal employee in terms of employment gains.

Speaker 2 And then lastly, it would increase prices. So all those things are happening right now, which is why you're seeing this course reversal from them on tariffs.
But I...

Speaker 2 I greatly appreciate you being here.

Speaker 2 And before I let you go, tell me about the book.

Speaker 2 When are we going to see the book that you're publishing?

Speaker 3 Well, the book is the bane of my life life in that I'm spending hour upon hour in my little study room trying to crank it out.

Speaker 3 I have promised the publishers it'll be done by March of 2026 to hit the bookshelves in the UK and the US and around the world in the autumn of 2026.

Speaker 3 And I do have to say, Anthony, I think it is pretty timely because what I'm looking at is the past, the present and the future of independent, fully independent truth-telling journalism.

Speaker 3 I think we're in a very dark place for journalism right now.

Speaker 3 I think for all sorts of reasons to do with technology, the information landscape changing, but also the rise of different brands of authoritarianism in different parts of the world.

Speaker 3 It's a tough time, but I do want to write a book which is not only reflecting how tough times are, but I think there still can be a very bright future for independent journalism.

Speaker 3 And that's what I'm going to try and paint in the book.

Speaker 2 Before we go, Caddy did leave me the task of shouting out our brand new newsletter where our founding members get exclusive content, behind-the-scenes gossip.

Speaker 2 We're spilling a lot of tea in the newsletter. Anyone can sign up and stay in the loop with U.S.
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Speaker 2 Go on, sign up, so I can report back to Katty that I nailed this plug. It's therestispoliticsus.com.
Become one of our newsletter members. All right.

Speaker 2 Well, thank you again for joining us on the Restis Politics US.

Speaker 3 It's a real pleasure.

Speaker 2 All right. God bless.

Speaker 6 We'll see you soon.

Speaker 3 See ya.

Speaker 5 Hey, it's David from the Restis Classified. Here's that clip we mentioned earlier.

Speaker 5 You have Genny Progozhin, restaurateur to Vladimir Putin, co-founder of the infamous Wagner Group, who a couple of years ago led a mutiny, which was the closest Vladimir Vladimir Putin has ever come to being toppled from power.

Speaker 3 He's one of Russia's richest and most powerful oligarchs.

Speaker 2 He knows what people want.

Speaker 5 Progozhin brings this entrepreneurial streak to violence.

Speaker 3 And then the Kremlin calls on to do its dirty work. He is moving into a space that really only Putin should be in.
The government depends on Wagner for its survival.

Speaker 5 At the moment of the peak, he's going to fly too close to the sun.

Speaker 2 The world watched as the Wagner group turned on Russia's military.

Speaker 4 Yevgeny Progozhin was enraged by what he says were Russian strikes on his troops in Ukraine.

Speaker 5 This is the moment where you go,

Speaker 5 civil war.

Speaker 6 Putin's the ultimate apostle of payback, so I would be surprised if Progozhin escapes further retribution for this.

Speaker 3 If you crush Putin,

Speaker 3 the likelihood is you're going to die.

Speaker 5 To hear the full episode, listen to the rest is classified wherever you get your podcasts.