Bulwark Takes - Is Maxwell Making a Deal with Trump?

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

Will Sommer and Andrew Egger join Ben Parker to take on Trump, not ruling out a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell—and the MAGA media’s bizarre efforts to rehabilitate her image. They dig into the mounting evidence of a slow-motion cover-up, the right-wing distractions around Obama and the Russia probe, and Trump’s increasingly absurd defenses, including his latest claim that someone may have forged a letter to Jeffrey Epstein in his name.

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Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Ben MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hi everybody, Ben Parker from The Bullwork here with my friends and colleagues, Andrew Egger, author of our Morning Shots newsletter, and Will Sommer, author of our False Flag newsletter. And guys, how do we describe what happened this morning when Donald Trump was taking questions as he was about to board Marine One outside the White House about whether or not he might pardoned, he a pardon or a commutation for Helan Maxwell if cooperating with him?

It's something I haven't thought about. It's really something. But you recommended it. It's something I'm allowed to do it, but it's something I have not thought about. But you wouldn't rule it out, sir. I have. A pardon or a commutation? Well, I don't want to talk about that.

What I do want to say is that Todd is a great attorney, but you ought to be speaking about Larry Summers. You ought to be speaking about some of his friends that are hedge fund guys. They're all over the place. You ought to be speaking about Bill Clinton who went to the island 28 times. I never went to the island. Okay. So Todd, in that sentence, for those who aren't keeping track at home is Todd Blanche, who is the deputy attorney general of the United States and also Trump's former personal lawyer. And he just this week went and met with Ghislaine Maxwell in prison in a private meeting to

discuss who knows. Will, you wrote your latest newsletter about this and about how MagaWorld is maybe changing their mind about this convicted criminal. So what the hell? You know what? This is, you subscribe to false flags, subscribe to the bulwark, you get this stuff before it happens. Yeah. So I was detecting these tremors for a few days, uh, that basically the groundwork is being laid to rehabilitate Ghulain in Maga's eyes. I mean, look, this is someone who, and I was thinking about this earlier, obviously as a reporter, who tried to be objective, but this is a pretty universally

agreed upon, reprehensible person. I mean, you look at the transcripts from her trial. I mean, she was basically being used to get these underage girls comfortable with these weird sexual situations because they'd say, well, here's this grown woman who seems to think this is all normal. I mean, so this is, and I would also say, someone who's very untrustworthy, who has a history of lying. And so someone who, I think, if you said a month ago that Donald Trump would be making an alliance with Galen or considering a pardon, we would say,

that's crazy, and yet here we are. So I think we're starting to see, you know, Newsmax in particular, where Alex Acosta, who was involved with the F-Team plea deals on the board, they're saying, well, maybe Kalane was a victim here or maybe these were overzealous prosecutions and could you really get an honest defense in the height of MeToo? And so they're really, they have to prime the pump here. I think if Trump came out with a pardon today, the audience would be, his base would be really upset, but I think they have to, you know, give it a month or two. And I think this might be a possibility.

Yeah. I'm old enough to remember when groomer was an epithet that the MAGA types used against anyone who they didn't like. Now you have an actual real life groomer, someone who did groom minors to be sexually abused. And that's apparently MAGA's new best friend. Andrew, you've been writing about this day after day in the Morning Shots newsletter, and the way it's slowly eroding the Trump administration it looks like. What do you make of it? Yeah, it's so strange.

And I go back and forth, because one thing that the Trump administration has been doing a lot of right now is trying to get people to pay attention to anything else, specifically with this story they're trying to trot out about Barack Obama in 2016, and how supposedly he, in an act of great malfeasance, caused the Russia investigation to be launched into Trump. That's had me thinking about the Russia investigation a lot. I think one of the lessons that we all learned or should have learned from the Russia

investigation back in Trump's first term is that just because Trump is acting guilty as sin does not Necessarily mean Trump is guilty of like all of the worst things that he's been accused of right I mean like that was kind of the that was kind of the takeaway from the Mueller investigation is like no he wasn't like Really aggressively actively colluding with Russia in the way that a lot of people suspected, but he was taking all kinds of like insane justice obstructing acts during that investigation and things like that. And I think, and so that's, that's what I've been trying to wrap my brain around here is

like there is so much smoke about this story all of a sudden. And Trump himself keeps creating more and more and more with all these bizarre, totally psycho moves because he just he's just an repetitive guy, right? He just he he doesn't want to talk about this story. He doesn't want to be associated with this story. He's mad that his name keeps coming up. You got that in the clip there. He's like, why are you guys talking about all the other, you know, Epstein Associates? Why only me, the current president of the United States? Why is that the newsy one? But and and and look, there's like a ton of circumstantial evidence.

We've been talking about this all over the place. He was really close to Jeffrey Epstein for a long time. And he is now actively trying to spike this story, to cover it up, sweep it under the rug, get people to talk about anything else. So yeah, there could be like totally insane stuff in the files. There could be a truly insane cover up that's going on up to the point where maybe Kalei Maxwell gets pardoned to keep her from spilling more of the beans, if seen some speculation that maybe that's where the Wall Street Journal got the letter to Epstein a little while ago, stuff like that. Or it could very well just come out that there isn't that much more in the Epstein files

than we have already known about Trump for a long time, which is that he's kind of a gross man, who's gross around women and paled around with other people who are gross around women, including Jeffrey Epstein, who was not just gross around women, but gross around girls. And because of Trump's sort of insane way of going about things, it's not necessarily clear that he acts differently at this moment, regardless of which of those two stories it is. So it's a little hard to say. Yeah, I think that's right. I do think it's a great point that he keeps on saying his own strategy out loud, which is I want you to pay attention to something else. He said

it in that clip we watched. Why aren't you talking about this other thing? He also said it the other day. He wrote about this in the morning newsletter in the Oval Office, where he said like, here's this other thing you should be paying attention to, to the media. And, you know, Will, it sounds like at least certain parts of the right wing media are following his orders and saying, okay, we're going to focus on something else now. Is there a divide happening? Do you think this is going to coalesce on one side or the other? What's going on there? Yeah, I mean, I think some people are following this. Obviously, the biggest distraction being offered here is the idea that Obama committed

treason and we're gonna kind of reheat our rusticate nachos or what have you. And I think some people are getting into that, but it is, you know, I mean, as someone who kind of consumes this stuff both professionally and for fun, I just have to say it's like kind of like, there's so many twists and turns and it's really boring. I just don't think that the average consumer of news politics is like, wow, I really want to hear about this, like 2016 intelligence assessment. Maybe it wasn't totally fairly assembled, whatever.

But, you know, I think the Epstein stuff is still very hot. I mean, we're still seeing people like Meg and Kelly. They're still talking about Epstein. I think they've toned down the criticism of Trump for trying to close the case. And so I think, you know, this is clearly headed towards the administration doing some kind of limited hangout where they can say, well, we tried to get the grand jury files, they wouldn't release them. And then what does Kalei have to say? And, you know, if I can just lay just lay out I mean we all kind of think this is headed towards You know, we'll see what happens But I mean it looks like Todd Blanch who was also Trump's defense attorney is gonna meet with galane or it has met with galane She's gonna maybe accuse some people not named Donald Trump and then they say wow I think you so much for cooperating or she'll clear Trump's name and then they'll give her some kind of cooperation deal that reduces her Sentence or a pardon or something like that. And at the point where you have Trump saying, well, I don't know, I can do it.

I mean, that's sort of what he says right up until he does something. Yeah, he says, I haven't made a decision, but I have the power to do it. And if I did it, it would be great, which is certainly what he's saying now. I do wonder, we should get one of our legal experts to talk about this, but if Ghislaine Maxwell is pardoned, she would still be subject to state charges in any state in which she committed these crimes, right? I don't know if there are statutes of limitations or whatever, but I'm not sure she exactly has the get out of jail free card that she thinks she does. Now, she's currently in Florida, so that might make some extradition issues.

But that's a whole mess coming up. Andrew, anything more to add on the story? Yeah, I did a whole shaggy dog talking about way too many things a minute ago. So let me just be really simple and straightforward here and just circle back around to how truly insane this moment is that Donald Trump, who in the opinion of his base, in the view of his base, is like the chosen one, the savior, who's gonna sweep into office and pull back the curtain on this vast, you know, elite satanic pedophile conspiracy

of which Jeffrey Epstein was sort of the tip of the spear. And he's going to reveal it all. He's going to give it to us. He's going to do the thing. We're like teetering on the brink of that, that now, just a few months later, he is actively not ruling out pardoning the top living associate of Jeffrey Epstein, like Epstein is dead. And the only like, his his right hand person, Ghislaine Maxwell, now Trump appears to be at least, you know, playing footsie with the idea of letting her out of prison. And that's just shocking. That's

remarkable. And, and it is hard to imagine how the base would swallow this thing that cuts so deeply into kind of like this one of these central foundation myths of Donald Trump. And yet, I have every confidence they'll figure it out. We will see. We will see how it all goes. But they've swallowed some tall ones before, so we'll see. Yeah, the deep irony is that for people who have spent years really investing their time and energy in these conspiracy theories, well, it almost seems like, and I'm including here

people like Cash Patel and Dan Bongino, they are now apparently in on the conspiracy. Like they are the conspirators now. And the theory is that we are now the conspiracy theorists in a weird sort of way because they are obviously having these backroom closed door conversations about what information to put out because it's reported in the newspaper. So the world is upside down. Completely. I mean, the idea that there's this establishment network that protects powerful pedophiles, I mean, that sort of seems to be what's happening here. Like they're trying to potentially spring the lane from prison. Um, you know,

the thing I would note here too, is that the, uh, the Galean Maxwell, the free Galean campaign is almost going to look supposed to succeed, uh, in spite of itself. I watched Galean's brother on here's Morgan's kind of like Thunderdome show. And it was a Republican audience. They had Lauren Boebert, Benny Johnson, Mick Mulvaney, and one of these like kind of Patrick bet David minions. And these guys were like shocked

at how badly Ghislaine's brother did. He looks like this kind of, you know, like an old British drawing room character. And Piers kept saying like, but your sister's innocent, right? And he said, well, I think my argument is that Epstein's sweetheart deal to not be prosecuted should have applied to her too.

It's like, well, wait a minute. So I don't know potentially that the Ghulain side is not holding its end of the bargain in terms of the PR campaign thus far. All right, so before we head out, there is one more clip. And this is not as important, but it is really stupid. So just wanted us to chat about it for half a second. Do we have that one more clip, Jared?

I don't even know what they're talking about. Now somebody could have written a letter and used my name, but that's happened a lot. All you have to do is take a look at the dossier, the fake dossier. Everything's fake with that administration. Everything's fake with that administration. Everything's fake with the Democrats. Take a look at what they just found about the dossier. Everything is fake. They're a bunch of sick people.

Okay. So, uh, of course we've got the distraction, the dossier from like 10 years ago, whatever. The part that stood out to me was it's possible. Okay. So the, the Wall Street Journal story was, Ghislaine Maxwell invited a bunch of Jeffrey Epstein's friends to write him letters that would be combined into this book for Epstein's 50th birthday party. And Trump's story is it's possible someone else wrote a letter pretending to be Trump, forged Trump's famous signature. How did this person get

the invitation from Gillian Maxwell? Who knows? That's not explained. Apparently this has happened all the time. People are constantly writing letters to other people as if they were Donald Trump, just randomly. It's funny because I was thinking, I was like, I don't remember the forged letter in the Steele dossier. No, I don't remember that. It does make me, you know, it makes me think like, you know, if I was unsure if the letter the journal reported on actually existed at all before, I am less unsure now. The fact that Trump is like, oh, well, maybe someone forged it.

Why would he say first it doesn't exist? When Trump talks about this stuff, when he says, they faked it, when he says witch hunt, when he says, steal dossier, he's not stringing thoughts together. I mean, this is like aromatherapy, right? It's like these terms are supposed to just put you in a certain state of mind as the audience to just disbelieve whatever's been put in front of you.

Like, oh, steal dossier. That's right. Yeah, they lie about Trump. Oh my gosh, witch hunts. Yeah, that is what they do to Trump all the time. And it doesn't go a whole lot deeper than that. But yes, it is very funny that Donald Trump, who famously was doing all these little doodles at the time,

as has been reported, who famously is like a huge fanatic for sending people mail and just like little clip outs of news clippings and stuff that he signs and he's like, he's done this his entire career and who also himself, he's the one who more often than not would be the one who is pretending to be other people, right? Remember the whole John Baron side of things? Yeah. And now it's the other way around. Now it's, you know, I don't know who, anybody could assign that thing, which is so funny because it totally, I mean, they, they know it's out

there, right? They know it's going to come out. They, they seem to think it's going to come out at some point in time. So like, it's, it's not, it's not enough to basically just be like, or it's, it's, it would be unwise to say this letter never existed. They're totally inventing it out of whole cloth. People are just lying about me. They have to do these other conspiracies to kind of like, but that is, was his initial defense. And now it's now it's that it's a forgery. Okay, guys, I'd love to talk about this with you more, but I have to go grab my Sharpie and start forging some letters to some people. Will Summer, Will Summer, guys, go and subscribe to false flag, subscribe to this channel, like the video, become a

bulwark plus member, you get so much great stuff and you get to support our work and you get to join our community which is so great. Andrew Egger, read the Morning Shots newsletter, that one is free every day and it's fantastic. It's a great way to start your day or end your day if you want to save it for later. Guys, thank you so much for joining me. See you next time.