Breaking News from Pod Save America - Trump and Republicans TERRIFIED as Pressure to Release Epstein Files Grows

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

Trump scrambles to distract from the Epstein files by pushing a wild new conspiracy theory—this time about Barack Obama. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Love it. Welcome back. It's good to be back. I missed two weeks of nonstop Epstein news. And the story now careens into a third week this morning facing increasing pressure after she at first said that the Epstein files were on her desk and then said no such lists exist. Pam Bondi's deputy, Todd Blanche, put out a statement saying, justice demands courage for the first time the Department. of justice is reaching out to Jelaine Maxwell to ask, what do you know? At Pam Bondi's direction, I've contacted her counsel. I intend to meet with her soon. No one is above the law and no lead is off limits. Now, Dan, I was surprised to learn that this would be the first time

Maxwell would have been contacted by the Department of Justice, given that she's currently in federal It seems like at some point during her arrest trial, they could have asked her what she knew. Right. I just usually have to ask a couple questions about what you know before your sentence to years in a federal penitentiary, but I'm not a lawyer. Also, just would flag that this trial, that Maxwell was charged when Trump was president. That's when these charges were first released. She was ultimately, I think that she was convicted when Biden was president, but it began in 2020.

Dan, there's a kind of like head spinning quality to all of this, which is like they're going to get to the truth, but we already have a lot of the facts, but they've spent a long time claiming that there's a grand conspiracy and the truth isn't being uncovered, even though they'd be the ones who were covering up the truth. And now it seems as though they are genuinely now trying to cover up the truth because it seems Donald Trump is more intimately involved in Jeffrey Epstein's past than we previously knew. Where is your head at here in week three of this?

I have some questions about the top-blanche statement. What is the courage that is required here? why is it a brave move to get to the bottom of a sex trafficking ring unless one of the people involved in the sex trafficking ring is your boss or at least somewhat associated to be fair with the sex trafficker himself who might be mentioned in the files is your boss like I don't understand what the courage is how to your point someone has obviously already asked her and she assumed refused to answer what she knew and what what happens that conversation is I assume the first thing that her attorneys will do is ask for some sort of partner commutation in exchange for information. The other part of this is that, like, she was convicted of these crimes. Like, there's already been a public record of what she was, what, of her, of her complicity in what Jeffrey Epstein was doing. And so I, I just find the whole thing at this point, like, like, I don't, I just genuinely don't know what they're doing. I don't think they know what they're

doing. Like, I don't think Pam Bondi knew what she was doing. doing when she did the phase one binders. It's hard to understand where the, the, like, malevolence ends and the idiocy begins. Well, I, I, the way, here's my theory on this is, the people around Trump have always, for a variety of reasons that have to do with firing up the mega base, being conspiracy theorists themselves, getting high on their own supply, really want believe that there is some sort of broad conspiracy that involves Democrats, Hollywood people, Silicon Valley people, Wall Street people at the heart of the Epstein controversy. They came in office believing they should release all these records.

That was a campaign promise. They're following through on their campaign promises. At some point, and through that all those process, if you really listen to what Donald Trump said, he was way less enthusiastic about this than the people around them. Right. Right. He's like, get the JFK things out there, get the alien stuff out there, get their Martin Luther King stuff out there. Yeah, the Epstein thing.

I don't know. There could be some people's names mentioned in there. be unfair. This process proceeds forward. People, they hand those binders out. And at some point, they recognize two things. One, it's harder to release files of something like this than they thought. But also, at some point, Donald Trump becomes concerned that this is going to blow back on him. And the process stops. And now they're trying to do everything they possibly can to appear transparent without possibly uncovering something that involves Donald Trump. Right. There are reports now that they have FBI agents combing through the records to flag anytime Trump may be mentioned. That's also

a little bit confusing because that's something that a computer could do. And then today, in part because Pam Bondi put out this statement from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump was asked about this in the Oval. He referred to it, I think for the first time, he decided to apply the phrase witch hunt, which is always incriminating when Donald Trump uses that. term. And then he tried to change the subject again. It's sort of a witch hunt, just a continuation of the witch hunt. The witch hunt that you should be talking about is they caught President Obama absolutely called Tulsi Gabbard. Who should the DOJ target as part of their investigation? What specific figures in the Obama administration? Well, based on what I read, and I read

pretty much what you read, it would be President Obama. He started it. And Biden was there, with him and Comey was there and Clapper. The whole group was there. The leader of the gang was President Obama. Barack Hussein Obama. Have you heard of him? This was treason. This was every word you can think of. They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election. They did things that nobody's ever even imagined, even in other countries. So now he's saying, I'm not, I'm, enough about Epstein, we got to arrest Barack Obama. That's sort of his new distraction in addition to saying that the commander should change their name back to the Redskins and releasing the Martin Luther King files. And I think he also said that the Cleveland Indians should apparently go back to

that name, even though they're now the Guardians, which is something I forgot about. I didn't know that had happened. As a longtime Cleveland baseball fan, I'm sure this was hard for you. Well, I just remember the movie Major League. It does, it is important in the film Major League. It is almost plot relevant in that timeless film that I'm sure if I went back and watched would be horrifying. It has not aged well in many ways. I assume that was not right for my soft child brain. So President Obama felt obliged to put out a statement about all this. Here's what he said. Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a

response, but these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. Nothing in the document issued last week. This is referring to the Tulsi Gabbard memo that claims to have uncovered some kind of conspiracy. Nothing in that document undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee led by then Chairman Marco Rubio. We talked, John Tommy and I talked about this yesterday on POD Save America. There's no, they were there. That was a statement from President Obama's spokesperson to be clear.

Dan, what's your, what was, we haven't talked to you about this. What's your reaction to the Tulsi Gabbard memo and Donald Trump saying that, Barack Obama needs to be arrested. It's like so much about Donald Trump's that it's so absurd and so ridiculous that you want to laugh about it. But let's just take a step back. Donald Trump has now, Donald Trump's in the middle of a scandal involving his relationship with a known sex trafficker of minors. He is blocking the release of records that could shed light on the nature of that relationship. And he has now, either implicitly or explicitly directed the intelligence community to concocting

a report that accuses the former president of treason to try to distract from said scandal. If that was anyone other than Donald Trump, this would be a political scandal on par with Iran-Contra or Watergate. Because it's Donald Trump and it's being executed by such buffoons, we sort of laugh about it as absurd. Also, what is the conspiracy to steal the election, the one where the FBI investigates Donald Trump but tells no one about it before the election, but does also investigate Donald Trump's opponent and announces it right before the election? One part of this that I had sort of blocked out of my mind because it was so frustrating at the time. Do you remember there was this moment where one of the hinges of the debate

was about why Russia was interfering in the election and whether or not it was fair to say it was to help Donald Trump because there was some kind of report that claimed he was that Putin and Russia were only trying to undermine our democracy more broadly. and that the claim that it was to help Donald Trump was in some way, like spurious or taking the, taking the information too far. Like, that was the level of like, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, kind of obtuseness we had about what Russia was doing when, of course, we now know. And as the statement makes clear, as the intelligence reports makes clear, as the Republicans in the Senate make clear, Russia involved themselves in the election. They didn't hack votes, but they tried to help Donald Trump win.

And Marco Rubio is the person who put a big stamp on it, saying that the conclusions were justified, that there was no pressure on analysts, that it was a fair report. And I do think, I'm glad they put out that statement because it does seem at some point Marco Rubio is going to have to answer a question about this. I'm sure as a man of longstanding integrity who would never compromise his values to cuddle up to Donald Trump. He will stand by the findings of that report, which he signed. I was thinking about this, which is how does he find a way to not not stand by the report while sounding like he is supporting Tulsi Gabbard, right? Yeah, it's very hard. Seems like a pickle.

It is, it is, but he's going to find the, I mean, unless he just, I guess anything's possible with Marco Rubio at this point, he could just abandon the position he took in the past. But it's going to be something like, you know, the media has claimed the election was illegitimate that the election was stolen. We said in that report. There is no evidence the election was stolen. That is what the criticism is. That is what has been so ridiculous. And frankly, that's been what's so damaging to our democracy. And a lot of these Democrats, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I bet Stacey Abrams name could come in. She could catch a stray during this. Yeah. I've been like trying to, you know, not having been a part of the day to day kind of turns of the Epstein story over the last two weeks. What it's reminded me most of is the Karen Reed trial. Now, one of the theories in the Karen Reed trial, and I'm not an expert, you know, the red string Bostonians can correct me in the comments. But one of the theories around the Karen Reed trial is that she was responsible, but the boneheads who were furious about it tried to, I, uh, uh,

kind of frame her for a crime she actually committed. And so two things were true. There was a conspiracy, but also she was involved. And I can't but think that like what we're looking at is a situation where was there this sort of Pizza Gates style international child sex ring run by Democrats in Hollywood based on fear and loathing in Las Vegas and adrenachrome. Like, of course, that's always been just like a bunch of influencers kind of stoking the base. But at the same time, will we learn that Epstein was given preferential treatment because of his

connections? Like, of course. And will it turn out that one powerful person that was really connected to Epstein for this entire time has been Donald Trump, and that even though the conspiracy theory that the right has had was never really based in reality, it turns out actually, yes, we're now watching what is a cover-up of the evidence in those files. That to me feels like what we're seeing. Yeah, it's, you know, you refer to this as a head spinning moment.

And it's like everyone is so close to this story that they can only see the trees and they're missing the forest. Because we, like, EFSI and has been the, it's like almost a cultural. like meme now. Even before this happened this last three weeks, it's like Epstein Island, it's been the punchline in jokes, it's a right-wing conspiracy. Liberals make fun of the right-wing conspiracy. Communians make fun of the conspiracy. You know, sort of like even Republicans who know better kind of pantomime the conspiracy. But if you take Epstein and all the adrenicron and all this stuff out of it, if we knew nothing, no, did not know who Jeffrey Epstein was or

anything like that. And we just found out that Donald Trump in the 90s and early 2000s, was known to party with a sex trafficker, someone who sex trafficked minors, who they had such a close relationship that Donald Trump was writing very cryptic, anyigmatic birthday cards to, and that now Donald Trump was using the power of the president to block the release of records that would shed light on that relationship. That would be a massive scandal. Because it's Epstein, it's like, we're all like wrapped around the ax about what's really going on here. The basic core obvious truth here is that Donald Trump either strongly believes or knows there's something in those files that is worse for him politically than what he's going through right now. What he's going through right now is very bad. So the question that everyone needs to ask is what does he think might be in there.

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Well, I hope you like my little song, book direct at storeshills.com. Yeah, I think that's right. And, you know, you look at the, like, the card and this bound book of disgusting notes that apparently Donald Trump's in, apparently Bill Clinton's in. other other people are in and like part of what is happening right is that like this was a scandal in the open right like this was that that in the same way that like bill cosby was doing material about like drugging people and like the there were jokes about Harvey Weinstein at awards shows like this that like we had a reckoning and a lot of what people were participating and

or joking about in public was actually part of like monstrous crimes. Like these were monstrous crimes. And that's like, that's been part of what I think is so that I struggle with with this. Because like, yes, okay, there's some collection of files somewhere and they have information, maybe names, maybe names we haven't seen yet. Maybe, maybe, maybe not. We don't know. We have no idea.

We have no fucking idea. But, but like these were, there were plenty of people that were around these crimes, including the victims who were girls but are now women and are able to tell their story. Like Julie Brown did a ton of reporting about this. There has been a lot of reporting about this. And sometimes there is this idea that if it isn't a secret, if it isn't buried in some government documented, it isn't like the arc of the covenant at the end of Raiders, then it's not real or it's not legitimate. And Donald Trump bangs on that, right?

That's part of why he can get away with all this because he does it out in the open. You're right. If this had been a scandal in the Clinton era, the Obama era, the Reagan era, the Bush era, it would be an administration defying one. But they would have tried to cover it up. And instead, he's doing this all. Like he kind of, he does his scandals in front of us. And that kind of makes it seem less terrible.

No one knows how to, the press in particular does not really know how to handle crimes committed in the open. It's like, because in their mind, the way scandals were found out is like deep throat in the parking garage to Woodward and Bernstein. if the things that Donald Trump has tweeted over the years, if those were secret memos uncovered by Maggie Haberman, they'd be blockbuster news. But because he tweeted, you know, basically an instruction to the Department of Justice to prosecute a political opponent, that's just a tweet. And everyone has it. So it lacks the like the secret juice that makes something a true scandal.

And we're a decade into this. And people have still not figured out really how to deal with it. And the Epstein one sits in between because there is this. private stuff that no one knows that people want to get their hands on. But the allegations have been out there for so long that, like, I really do, like, I think that this is, like, I don't know what Donald Trump is guilty of or not guilty of, but I think that the scandal here is much bigger and more serious than all of us, the press, us, myself are like really thinking it's like, really, like the core of this is, like the way everyone talks about and treats. It's like,

you know, it's hypocrisy. Donald Trump, he campaigned on releasing these files. Now he doesn't want to. And so he's breaking a campaign promise. And that's the crime here. We don't know what the crime is. Well, all we know is that there's like some really, really shady stuff and he's preventing us from finding it out.

And if it, like in the worst case scenario is incredibly devastating and dangerous. And but because we're, like, it started as a joke. Like, it's like, how look at these fucking fool. who thought they thought they were doing this they were the dog that caught the car but it's actually much more serious than that and congress shut down for a month because they can't do it they can't pass a bill and they're actually have to fund the government by the end uh like in 60 days or something and they right as of right now unless they're not work because they are frozen over having to vote on the epstein files an entire branch of government is shut down over it health care costs may go

up the government may shut down because of the abstein files over and over again Donald trump is a joke that becomes so serious and dangerous. We can't possibly, like, we can't really accept it. Like, Donald Trump being president is a joke. The fact that now his administration is being unmoored, not by the fact that they just added $3 trillion to the deficit to raise health care costs and cut Medicaid and shut rural hospitals, but because of a conspiracy theory that they, that became a joke,

but they're now making real. That is amazing. That is an amazing irony. So, Dan, I guess that's where we'll leave it. You know, who knows what the next twist of this knife will be. Tommy, Vitor, our Epstein correspondent, will be at the island soon enough with his metal detector and his spulunking gear.

And we'll bring you with whatever he finds. And in the meantime, do us a favor. subscribe to this channel. Dan, they just put out a report of the fastest growing YouTubes. And I think calling them YouTube's is probably not the best thing. But it was, tell you something, we're not on it. Danny Johnson's on it. Fox News is on it. A bunch of right-wingers are on it. Some great people on the left are on it, too. But we're not. It's a problem.

So subscribe to this channel. We really appreciate it. We're trying to build Pod Save America. We're building a progressive counterweight to the right-wing misinformation machine. Click like, click subscribe. It helps us. Dan Pfeiffer. Good to see you. Good to see you, buddy. Let me tell you the secret of how to look like you know what you're doing. Use mushrooms. Tossamine eggs, noodles, boom, it's delicious. It's not magic. It's mushrooms.

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