Bulwark Takes - LIVE: Trump’s Epstein Timeline Collapses Under New Scrutiny | Bulwark on Sunday

Episode Date: July 20, 2025

Sarah Longwell joins Bill Kristol to break down the unraveling Trump–Epstein timeline, the shady cover-up tactics, and why this scandal may actually stick. From a cryptic birthday card to MAGA influencers turning defensive, they connect the dots the media missed.

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If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex 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, Bill Crystal here. Welcome to Bullwork on Sunday. Very pleased to be joined by Sarah Longwell. I'm sure you're all familiar. We are at an undisclosed location.

This is why the backdrop is different. Sarah, you're at a regular location. I am also undisclosed though here, which is why the backdrops different to Sarah's Sarah's you're in a regular location So I am also undisclosed though. What's that also undisclosed? Yeah, exactly. Well, that's that's wise probably So we eight days ago on Saturday, we did a kind of an emergency Video and podcast about the Epstein situation you and I had been bullish on it. Bullish is the right word That's not quite fair appropriate. We you and I thought it was a big deal from the first. Yes. We had some internal debates about this with our colleagues.

Saturday began as we actually did our conversation after Cash Patel's little attempt to stifle things. And before Trump's long, crazy, truth social post. But we did have the instinct that things were blowing up. And they have since, obviously. And this was all before the journal piece. So you've been following this closely. What's where? Where do we recap thing? Where

do we stand? Where do we stand? I mean, since we first spoke, basically, everything's happened. I mean, Trump has protested in to such a degree and at such length in his truth social posts that thou gets a real, you know, thou doth protest too much, feeling from all of it. There's a lot of weird things that are coming out. And actually, I think I'd start by saying that when something like this happens, when you have sort of an anatomy of a scandal, how does it break down? The number one thing is do people sort of take a piece and move

on from something or do they dig in and start looking further? And I think the evidence this weekend of finally we're starting to get independent reporting from the mainstream media, right? We've got the Wall Street Journal this weekend, we've got some, the New York Times has done now maybe like five stories over the last few days that are things like the timeline of their relationship between Trump and Epstein, you know, the relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell. And I got to tell you, the reason that these things end up sticking is even me, I was never I never went super deep on the Epstein stuff because it a when I read the story, the very first story, the one that Julie K Brown did,

and I watched her excellent talk with her last weekend, it's hard to read. Like it's filled with stuff that's really gross. You know, Epstein was clearly a disgusting person. They were constantly, you know, going around slaying Maxwell, procuring women as young as 14, I'm sorry, and I shouldn't say women, they were girls, young girls. And taking them to Epstein's Island or to his house,

and then they would make him, they would make the young girls give him massages and in various states of undress him, them. And it was all, and so I'm learning all this stuff that because I sort of read that and was like, this is disgusting, but I never really believed that Trump, I sort of felt like if Trump was really involved, if he had been on the island doing these things,

I mean, we're talking about two presidential campaigns. Like the idea that this stuff wouldn't come out in some ways seemed unlikely to me. And so the way that, and also the way that the MAGA folks got ahold of this story and were going super deep on it, like Bill Clinton was involved and they were gonna expose this ring of Democrats. You know, the problem was is that the MAGA right

has done so much sort of pedophilia-based conspiracy stuff, whether it's QAnon, whether it was the Comet Ping Pong underground sex ring that led a shooter to show up there. There was a lot of sort of crazy, ridiculous stuff that sort of made you put this in the same bucket. But not the MAGA folks. They were the ones who pressed this. They're the ones who talked about it all the time.

And when Epstein killed himself or was killed, it was the MAGA folks that were the ones saying Epstein didn't kill himself. They believed that the left, someone in the, you know, the Clintons probably, that they were the ones who wanted to have this guy killed. And somehow the Epstein thing blows up on the right without any of them ever looking hard or saying to themselves, boy, Donald Trump knew this guy for a really long time. There's lots of pictures of them together. There's lots of evidence of them flying on planes together. And I'll just say, to me, putting together this timeline, the story

starts to make actually more sense. And I'd like to walk you through it if you don't mind, because it will, I think a few things clicked for me that had not previously clicked for me. So one is, is Trump and Epstein really knew each other over a about 15 to 20 year timeframe when I think they were between kind of their early to mid 30s to about 50. Epstein and in fact the Wall Street Journal's reporting is about a 50th birthday card, right? That's what Trump is, where he wrote this sort of very cryptic, weird, we share the same interests stuff. That was for Epstein's 50th birthday party. And so they're falling out. The two of them ceased to be friends in 2004. And all of the reporting around the end of their friendship is because they got in a competition over a house that they both wanted to buy, that they both bid on, that I guess Epstein ended up winning that and sort of purchasing some home. And that was the falling out. Although Trump also did sort of publicly then accuse him

of being a creep of some kind. But it was Trump who introduced Epstein in the vein of in 2016 when he was running against Hillary Clinton. He brought up Epstein really for the first time in relationship to Bill Clinton, right? And like that Bill Clinton was going to have problems because of this island. But if you look, and I don't, I honestly, I really don't know about the Bill Clinton stuff. I do know Bill Clinton's denied ever going to the island. There's no evidence Trump ever went to the island. But what Trump did do is in those first sort of 15 to 20 years, they partied all the time together.

Like that's where all this evidence is. The evidence is that these two guys were hanging out all the time and there was the Dallas cheerleaders were there, they were constantly inviting very, now this is more like in the public stuff, it is more young women, sort of 19, 20, but like young, considering these guys are in their 40s and late 30s and eventually, you know, even older. But it's, it's, so what's clear to me is that Trump and Epstein were hanging out all the time and were wingmen. And he flew on Epstein's jet seven times, the private jet back and

forth to different places. And so they have a deep, like Epstein says Trump's his best friend. They're not acquaintances. They're not people who know each other a little bit. They're people who know each other quite a bit. Then they have this falling out, and the falling out is like, then you're really an island territory. And so what I think is most likely is that Trump never, it's never visited the island, was not doing that part of it, but may very well have been done all kinds of things that were still very gross, maybe with very young women, we don't know.

But like, it seems like there has been not enough scrutiny on that particular part of his life. And the thing that's happening right now is almost mind bogglingly, there is right now is almost mind-bogglingly there is right now for the first time real scrutiny on that era of their relationship. Which means that you can see why some people are like this is all so long ago. I mean Trump is almost 80 years old and so like if you think about it, his falling out with Epstein is 25 years ago, like the falling out in 2021 years ago. So it's been a long time. And he's not thinking to himself as he's running for president

or whatever that the Epstein stuff is going to come back. But now that Epstein is dead, his slain is in jail, it's all sex trafficking, Trump is probably looking back on the exploits of that 15 to 20 year period and going, there's a lot of stuff there if people start talking about it. And that's what the media needs to be looking at. So that's really terrific. And I have a couple of thoughts, a couple I had already, a couple you provoked actually,

just to really almost fore footnotes what you've been saying Hey falling out that was around oh four or five It looks like Trump says sort of oh four, but I thought clear that it was oh five Oh six oh six is when the serious investigation of Epstein begins. Maybe begins at oh five I don't know. Maybe they have the census coming. Maybe Trump's told by someone this guy's risky I feel like that the timing is convenient. If I were Donald Trump and I had a million things going on, including being in the back of my mind, political ambitions, the time to cut relationship with Epstein

would be around 05, 06. Actually, it worked if you think about it this way. I mean, what if Trump and Epstein were still, you know, cavorting together in 08 when Epstein's actually indicted by the Justice Department? So I think I kind of agree with you that it's interesting that on that time, we will maybe we'll learn more. Secondly, the MAGA obsession with pedophilia and pizza game, all this kind of crazy stuff, Israel, I would be more worried and say if Epstein were similar, it was based only on that as it were, if the Epstein. If Epstein was a conspiracy theory to the others, well, I'd say you've got to be awfully careful here. There's a lot of just pure invention and craziness.

Epstein was indicted by the Justice Department in 2006, I guess, if I'm not mistaken. They had that very bad, disreputable plea bargain in 2008. Epstein's busy pressuring everyone to use the most minimal sentence. He's investigating the FBI people, he's investigating him, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The case is okay, then it's thought to be- He goes to jail though.

He goes to jail for 18 months. No, he's on like, but not in jail. He's in like- But he's in country club jail. Cold detention or something. But he's convicted. I mean, no, he plea bargains. I mean, so it's not like this.

So the Justice Department of the United States and his own lawyer, Epstein himself, admits that there was something there. They don't admit to the whole scope of the thing. It's reopened not because of Pizzagate. And Epstein was always part of the QAnon, Pizzagate stuff, because it was a famous case of a sex trafficker not getting punished the way he should have.

But they didn't actually. It was part of it. But the thing is reopened not because of them screaming. It's reopened because Julie Brown, who is not a Miami Herald reporter, who I had a week ago, who's been, you can all read her book and her own, you know, which she's currently writing about it. She investigates really courageously, intelligently as to what happened. Why didn't anyone care about the victims? Why didn't they interrogate all these people? This was a massive sex trafficking ring. It wasn't a kind of little defense that you've given this minor punishment for.

And that's what leads to the Justice Department reopening the investigation, I guess, late 2019. 2019, so 2019 is when he goes down. You can read the indictment, it's public, and it's very compelling. And they obviously being typical prosecutors, right, you pick the three instances that you have the best evidence, most airtight case for, they don't bother going through the other thousands, honestly. But they do have a very good case on these. It's pretty, and anyway, so Julie writes the book. So Julie Brown is why we know about this, not MAGA.

I think it's an important point to make. MAGA seizes on it. You might want to give them credit. I don't even object to that for kind of keeping it more alive by the files and for putting pressure certainly on the justice department and the FBI. That part is more MAGA. Though Julie agrees with a lot of that.

There's also a complaint. And incidentally, the victims have filed lawsuits saying, why can't we get more information? This is not simply a MAGA generated phenomenon. I guess that would be one point I would make, which I think is important. On the cryptic, just a second on that, the cryptic 2002 birthday card, 2003 birthday card, 50th birthday card, that's not even worth getting. I have various theories about, you cannot read that. I mean, as a serious grownup person, knowing Epstein's background and knowing Trump's background, leave aside underage, but you know,

only 19 year olds that he's bringing to casinos, you know, and not think they are joking about very, well, about behavior that would be at best, you know best unattractive and gross, but certainly feels like they might both have realized, slid over the line. Doesn't mean Trump personally was involved. Doesn't mean it wasn't incidentally. I was very annoyed about 10 days ago doing various other podcast interviews, not our own, not bulwark stuff, but other things.

Of course, no one's saying Trump's personally involved in this. It's like, I don't know. We don't know. Why not? Like, 1,000 other people weren't. There were 1,000 girls who were sexually trafficked. Let's just make it up and say there were 500 customers, 300. I don't know. A lot of people were involved in this.

And why do we assume Trump wasn't? But we don't know. So to be fair, we don't know. But that card, you read that with any kind of kinds of people they were and what they're, it's a wink and a nod. And very much for me, compelling evidence, Trump knew what was going on. He may have chosen to turn a blind eye to what Epstein was up to. Maybe in 2000, you were sort of suggesting 2004 or five, the blind eye became too inconvenient

and he decides to cut ties. Doesn't mean he's guilty of a crime. That's a murky thing. Are you obliged to report suspicions? Maybe not. But it's extremely bad. And I do think that card is, there's no innocent, really, explanation of that card. Well, that's why he's saying it's not him.

Like, if he just wanted to say, it doesn't mean what you think it means, he could say that. And this is where this whole story- That's such an important point, just draw it, because that's what the Billy Bush tape, I think he tried for like 12 hours to pretend that maybe he was doctored or something.

But basically- He said, it doesn't sound like me. He said, it doesn't sound like me. That was the original, and that's the excess Hollywood tape. That's right. And then they showed it to him. He denied it at first saying, it doesn't sound like me. It doesn't sound like something That's right. And then they showed it to him. He denied it at first saying, it doesn't sound like me. It doesn't sound like something I would say. And then they showed it to him and he said, well, that's me. But then he retreats to locker room talk.

Locker room talk. Which, you know, again, since there was no one exactly coming forward, when there were people coming forward, but anyway, since it was the conversation between two other, him and the younger guy, whatever, he's boasting, maybe he's just boasting, he doesn't really do that. That's how he managed to, so unbelievable, obviously, he managed to skitter away from that. But that's how he did so. But this is very different. This is him too FC, right? This is not a third party. This is not Trump saying to it, I guess the equivalent. So it's not locker room talk. It's it or co-conspirator talk would be would be the point, I think. And I think it is worth, and just on the card for a second,

this gets to know that would be the scandal. Zero chance the journal publishes the piece. And I say this as someone who never anything at this level but edited a magazine for a while. I mean, zero chance they're going to publish it without utter confidence in the authenticity and providence of the card. Which means it was given to them by, well, it means they've seen it.

I don't even think a copy would quite do it unless maybe you could authenticate it, make sure it isn't a, you know, digitally altered copy, but you'd probably want to see the card. You might want to have it in your possession. You'd probably want to test certain things from it in terms of it's from 2003. It wasn't written in 2023 by some, you know, as kind of a Dan Rather type, you know, the Bush forgery type thing, right?

You know, they're careful. They're not idiots. They knew about, they knew that Trump had drawn things sort of like that at around that time. That all came out on Twitter and so forth later, but I'm sure the journal had done its own research. Yeah, right. When you say, I've never written a drawing in my life and everybody's like here's all the drawings

They were confident in the in the authenticity and this is a province which means they were dealing with someone they thought Had it would have had good reason that it's not like a fifth party someone shows up Hey, I got a friend of a friend of a friend and he gave me this car You know that is zero chance of that. I mean, this is someone who would have had reason to have access to this. They trust as a legitimate person in that world of whatever it was, right? And people haven't thought enough about that,

which means that person might have access. This gets to the anatomy of the scandal. Wouldn't this person have access to other things when they went through all these files? Well, this is the thing when you dig into the story, you realize how many tentacles go off in different directions. So just take one, for example,

that I didn't know that much about. I remembered reading it at the time early on because it's one of the young women, her name is Virginia, I think it's pronounced Guffrey or Jeffrey. And so there is a picture of her with Prince Andrew with his arm around her next to Ghislaine Maxwell. This is the thing that made Prince Andrew, okay, what is the nephew of the King of England stepped down from his public duties. Okay, so there was real fallout from this. This was covered extensively in England.

That woman, the young woman, the girl at the time, Virginia Guffrey, killed herself not very long ago. Now, she did have an illness that left her quite debilitated, I believe, renal failure from a car accident. But it's again, she was only 40, 41 years old, and she had publicly talked about the fact that Ghislaine Maxwell had met her at Mar-a-Lago, at Mar-a-Lago, had met this young girl and recruited her from there to become a masseuse, a private masseuse for Jeffrey Epstein when she was only, yeah, 15 years old. And so, meets her at Mar-a-Lago. Is that a place? And then this woman goes on to publicly out. Now here's the thing though,

and this is where it's interesting. So far you don't have a lot of sort of smoking gun testimony around Trump. Although when I was reading the stories, I was a little bit surprised. And Trump has so many sexual assault allegations against him that it's hard to keep them separate. And it feels like we litigated this all once

and we sort of never came back to it except for the E. Jean Carroll case in which he was convicted. But some of these women tell similar stories in these cases where they met Donald Trump in the company of Jeffrey Epstein and that Trump assaulted them, sexually assaulted. Like it is wild that this stuff just exists out there,

and we as a country or as a media ecosystem have not followed every path. So just take one of Epstein's most high profile public victims, now dead by suicide, and was recruited from Mar-a-Lago. That feels like a link worth pursuing. The idea of this birthday card, the birthday card thing,

that was a compilation that was Jeffrey Epstein's. Something that was in Epstein's presence, which means, do you know how much stuff there is likely out there? There was a reason that Donald Trump isn't saying, hey, here's an alternate explanation. I mean, he kind of is now with the grand jury testimony, which he knows has nothing to do with him, so he thinks we'll keep him out of it.

The fact that he has been, Trump has done more of this to himself than anybody else in his, this is boring, why are you still talking about this? He doesn't want them to get into any of the particulars of it because he knows there's lots of connective tissue. Even if it's not that you find out Donald Trump was doing exactly what Epstein was

doing on the island, he knows there's a lot of smoke in that space, a lot of things that can come out. And finally, the media is pursuing it in such a way that new details can come to light and can be significant about their relationship. And that even though, so here's the thing that's being sort of debated in our circles right now, which is, well, you know, they are rallying,

MAGA is rallying to Trump's defense in the face of this horrible attack by the Wall Street Journal. And many of our favorite anti-anti-pundits like Molly Hemingway are out, I am canceling my subscription. You would think Rupert Murdoch wasn't personally involved with this decision, that he wasn't shown what they had before he went forward. Like, and there's a reason they chose the Wall Street Journal and not the New York Times or some other thing. The MAGA folks, yes, Trump is trying to shut it down with all the influencers.

He's calling them personally, telling them to let it go, telling them to knock it off, telling them, and this is a whole side story that I would love to talk about at some point about the media ecosystem, he's also saying, I made you. I made you. I made you. Your whole career, Benny Johnson, Charlie Kirk, Megyn Kelly, you owe it to me, so shut up and stop pursuing this. Now, they can try that.

And I think that it will work with some of them. And it's pathetic, and it should destroy their credibility. But the base, like the real wandering base, the people who want to know this, maybe let's not even call them Trump's base, let's just call them the people who are Epstein-focused Trump supporters. They've got to grapple with all this new information

and I doubt they're gonna let it go. I think that's very important, several important points that everyone, yes, I agree, some in our world are into the, I think not necessarily correct. This, the journal thing helps Trump it makes it Trump versus the media it makes it a classic fight where you have to rally to Trump there'll be some of that and there's some of that but I totally even if some paid off media figure if media figures influences can be either

pressured influenced bribed or whatever, just, no, I'm okay, I'm on board. I'm going to ruin your career if you don't get on board. I mean, God knows what's being said privately by Trump people to these people. It doesn't mean that everyone who reads Charlie, who thinks he's following Charlie Kirk, who's a member of TPUSA, is necessarily reassured. And suddenly everyone keeps talking about the base. There are a lot of Trump supporters, not really part of the base, not really into QAnon stuff. They managed to put out of their head the access Hollywood tape, they put out of that some of these other things they just don't want to think about. Some of these other grown women, they should have known what they were

doing. You can imagine all the rationalization, right? In kind of business worlds, you know what I mean? Coldplay CEOs who take their HR people to, uh, to concerts, you know, can rationalize the Trump behavior. This is a little different. All right. It's more than a little different. This is a different, it's one of those I got, there's a post piece the other day. It was, I don't want anymore tech about it.

It was an earnest account of what was happening kind of on the Hill more as I recall, and then it deviated, they got into the Trump things causing problems for Speaker Johnson on the Hill. You know, and the fact that Trump's involved in the accounts of Epstein's sexual escapades. Is there not an editor at the Post or the Auditor-Porter herself, I think it was a woman herself who,

like that is not, they were massive sexual crimes. And I think it's again, to 100% of the Trump, oh, that's the bridge too far, no. To 10, 15, 20% think suddenly, I don't know, I was willing to rationalize it until now, but this is a problem. So I think people are under-estimating, my view is people think it's a story of the MAGA base,

MAGA base turned against Trump, and this is what you and I talked about a week ago. So it is an important story. It fractures his base, that's a very bad thing in politics, that could have real effects. But there's also just the reality, the world. The reality is being presented in a pretty stark way now that he was successful in muddying the waters about

earlier. Maybe he will be this time. Maybe not. I would say on that, two quick points. On the scandal side, you and I have seen a bunch of scandals. I've seen wars. I'm older. In Washington, there are always moments where it looks like, OK, I guess points on the scandal side, you and I've seen a bunch of scandals, I've seen more, I'm older in Washington, they always, there are always moments where it looks like, okay, I guess that's the scandal, I think they'll survive. That was true in Watergate, that was true in Iran,

Contra, that was true in Clinton's thing. People, in retrospect, when you hear about it 10, 20 years later, you read a quick account in a history book, it's all like one dimensional, right? This thing began and it was, you know, that's not how it is. And so of course they're gonna be like moments where Trump seems to have a bit of a day, you know, Trump's revaliating. He's got six agons to defend him. The hill isn't, the hill Republicans aren't discerning him. But I do feel like what you said about this scandal

has too much truth in it. I mean, let's just be honest. Why did Watergate, Iran-Contra, Monica Lewinsky, ultimately, why couldn't they put them to bed? Which, you know, that sort of matters. Some of the others were more nebulous. They were kind of iffy. Did Reagan mess around in the 80 election with Iran? You know, there's a lot of like third-hand stuff. These are very hard to put to bed. The one thing that now that this doesn't happen, those scandals had, and I'm curious what you think, I mean, is they, and I remember some of them decided it was fairly, that guy, not too close to them,

but I had friends who were dragging the other stuff, from a contract. They had prosecutors, in each case, really a special prosecutor or a special counsel, going after the scandal. So there were two forces. There was the defense against the scandal, which often included the White House,

to the Justice Department at times, that's a kind of more to get there. But they were people with actual law enforcement ability and subpoena ability and ability to compel someone to go to the courts on the other side. We do not have that. We have, this will be an interesting test. We have Trump, his Justice Department, his FBI,

his White House, his media, all on one side. And that's where I get a little worried. I mean, the mainstream media can do a fair amount, but you need to, I mean, as this journal piece, this, with all due respect to the journal, it's a very fine investigative reporter who is the main reporter on the piece. They didn't really dig this up. I mean, I'm just going to say, did they find this somewhere? They were trusted enough by someone who wanted to give them this document, which is not nothing. Believe me, that's important.

And they handled it, I'm sure, extremely professionally. And they made sure of its authenticity and so forth. But I'm worried that there's no, and the Democrats don't control Congress. I mean, there's not a big institutional force on this, you know, to the truth. There's the truth, and there's a lot of people looking for the truth and Maybe that will be enough though. Well, you can feel free to

Tell me i'm crazy on this particular one But I do think that democrats Should say going into 2026 That they will make sure the Justice Department is being straight with the American people. And that they're gonna hold Pam Bondi to account. And that they are gonna make sure

that this administration stops covering things up. And I do think that the Democrats can get so myopic about, like you gotta be able to run a two track situation. You gotta run on kitchen table issues, you gotta help people understand you're gonna make things cheaper. But also, also, the ability for people to lock in to a story that it's not just about the revelations in the story.

It's about what it reminds you of about the person at the center of the story. I have seen more clips of the Access Hollywood tape in the last week than I've seen in six years, right? Like it doesn't, people sort of feel like, oh, the Trump being a gross guy who like probably was way over, you know, what did Megyn Kelly say? Too handsy, you know, that kind of stuff.

And like, you know, then they discredit E. Gene Carroll or they discredit this person or that person in some way. So people don't take it that seriously. Or a lot of this stuff was a very long time ago. But when you dig in and you start looking at it and you're like, look at this scumbag. Like this is a guy, it's not, this isn't a story about infidelity.

It's not a, it's all the things,idelity. It's not a story. It's all the things, right? It's not, he cheated on all his wives. He was out, he was married during all of these things. He was out, you know, sleeping with all these people. He paid a porn star, right? He paid a porn star, somebody who was in adult films. And that was like right after his wife had a baby. Like there was, you know, like so that and that stuff's all known. And I think that this is what's interesting to me is societally, I think we've hit a point where, and this is where I think Trump got off. I was reading some of the old stories and they all refer to both him and Epstein as playboys, right? There was a genre of page six stuff where this stuff was like, six stuff where this stuff was like not celebrated exactly, but certainly it was entertainment for people.

These people socialize. And the idea of them as playboys was a way to say like they break all the boundaries and norms around sort of sexual morality. Now, you get to Epstein and you get a criminal child pedophilia, you know, child trafficking ring. Okay? And like the line between we have a bunch of 18 and 19-year-old girls who are cheerleaders and aspirational movie people and socialites and they're all at these parties and we're all, and I don't know, maybe Trump didn't do drugs and drink, but like most people are doing drugs and drinking and all kinds of lascivious things are happening

and it's being covered by the newspapers with fun pictures and we're all in them. Like you go sort of then one layer down, like it's funny because that part celebrate and the Manosphere always likes this about Trump. Trump has sex with beautiful women. I always said, I thought it was, I really hated that the Stormy Daniels lawsuit was

the one that got brought. And the rest of them didn't move. Because the one thing Stormy Daniels, people were not, A, people knew about it. People were not mad at Trump having sex with Stormy Daniels or porn stars or whatever. That was just baked into who he was. And also, it made them think of him as somebody,

because he's a very old man, as somebody with sexual vigor in a way. He still was old enough to have these, or still was young enough to just have sex scandals from recent memory. I think though, the layer deeper though, the one where it's a child, pedophilia, sex trafficking ring,

like that is the worst stuff you can do. And the line's not so, so great between the life Donald Trump was living in that. Now legally it's a whole different, and I think it is the difference between what could destroy him now versus what everybody thinks is baked in. And so pursuing it and figuring out how Trump's relationship worked with this guy, what his justice, what Acosta may have done. Acosta, this is one of the things like people forget that Alex Acosta, who is his secretary of labor resigned from that job because it came out that he had given this sweetheart deal to Epstein and even weirder despite the fact that Trump does not need seem to know when he was president

He was president when Epstein killed himself his people were around when Epstein killed himself in terms of the justice system So like there's so many different avenues in which even if what happened was Trump just knew this guy really, really well, they got into all kinds of things, some of which maybe Trump looking back is like, boy, I don't want that out there, wouldn't want anybody to know that. And so he started engaging in certain kinds of cover ups or pushing people to do this or that. And like, those are the things he fears now that he wants the conversation stopped. We don't know what it is, but people should zealously figure this out.

They should zealously report out what was going on. And dig in to find out more. So I just modify, I think it's excellent. And so I think one of your point really, the key point is that this was really criminal in a way that the other stuff was, I mean, the Sir Daniels charge was that he didn't report some stuff in 2016. There was a payoff to shut her up, but that was, he was a private citizen. He was our president too, but he paid

her off. It was, it wasn't an election kind of crime. I mean, that's wildly different from what we're talking about here. That was consummely consensual. I mean, again, we're talking about child rape and I do feel like we need to get to that. And maybe he didn't participate in it. Maybe he did, we need, but we don't know. And that card is pretty, it was, as you say, close to him and so forth. So very close to this really horrible, really horrible, massive criminal conspiracy, which is certainly was covered up for years, and at least didn't want to go after other elites. And that's also part of the story that I don't think people who are serious about this need to shy away from. This is not a, we don't have to say why didn't the Biden administration

take a look at this and 20 after they died and convicted a Maxwell. Good for them. But there was a lot of evidence floating around that maybe other people might've done things at the statute of limitations. Right now from, I don't know that there's a statute actually for just for child sex crimes So anyway, and there were other people involved. There's a massive conspiracy at the JV Nadeau had seven co-conspirators who were convicted of things or played guilty and then many others listed I mean these conspiracies don't have Maxwell and Epsom didn't arrange everything by personally, right?

I mean, some other knew what was going on at the house. Other people made it possible. Other people arranged for transportation. And not all of them were guilty. They didn't quite know what was happening. The pilot on the plane didn't, can't be held responsible, I suppose, for knowing that he was transporting 16 year old girls

to the police. It was, hey, he's my corporate client, Mr. Epstein, you know. But still, there are people in the middle at our whole management level, let's my corporate client, Mr. F-seen, you know, but still there are people in the middle at our management level, let's just call it that. And then there are the people who raped these girls and none of them has, almost none has been indicted. Some of their names have come out. So there's that side of it, let's call it the criminal side.

The other side is the cover-up. And here's, I think this is an important point, I think. Trump covered up a ton of things when he was a private citizen. He routinely paid people off and all this. This is the Justice Department of the United States, which seems to be, which is engaged in the cover-up, or can be said to be covering it up until they release the documents.

And I talked with a couple of lawyers this weekend. This is the part that kind of intrigued me. Everyone's saying, well, of course, very difficult to release these. I sort of wanted to do this little, these documents, redactions, this, that, innocent people. So it turns out there are, I'd love to release the victims names.

These guidelines about not releasing everything up in FBI investigations, obviously, those people do get dragged in. On the other hand, that's not a big leap. A lot of that is norms and custom, not even norms, just kind of customs. And most people don't want to know anyway. I mean, most people don't want to know what's in the files,

but there hasn't been this massive cover-up involving now, well, now being directed by the president of the United States. And also, can we dispense with the fiction, as Marco, you still like to say, that Bondi and Patel just decided to do this on their own. I mean, they were talking to Trump. So Trump wanted it covered up. I think it's important therefore to pursue both the crime side of it, which you've been focusing, and the cover-up side of it. And I've talked to a couple of lawyers, the demand to release the files is less simple minded than people think in the sense that it is legitimate. You know, someone's,

if I mentioned in these files, third party says you heard from a fifth party that the editor of the Weekly Standard was never there. You know, was it, fine, release it. It wasn't, it's not true. And I'll just say, of course it's not true. There's no evidence that some party with gossip, they confuse the names.

Anyway, I'm not saying literally release every day and all this, but the idea that they can't release a ton of information legally is false. They can release a lot. I've talked to enough lawyers and these are lawyers who normally are on the other very reticent about being careful, you know, civil liberties. I mean, they're not saying it because of Trump, honestly. And Trump, you know, they can release a lot of stuff that's not about Trump, obviously, they need to need to they should in fact I don't think I think it's a mistake to It was incident like it was bondi who ordered the Justice Department lawyers to go through looking for Trump right to surface flag Each mention of Trump. I think our position should be really is release the files

Not releasing every mention of Trump in the files release the files and we'll make our own mind up about whether Trump was large character Close friend of Epstein who didn't quite get involved in the most criminal stuff the files and we'll make our own mind up about whether Trump was our character, close friend of Epstein who didn't quite get involved in the most criminal stuff, someone who should know and someone who didn't know, right? I mean, I think, so I think the cover-up side of it has punch. So I was thinking about the other issues. There's no Access Hollywood. There's no government coverup, right? I mean, even the Russia, the legitimate campaign stuff was during the campaign. I mean, this is the Justice Department of the United States,

Bondi having said, we're doing it all, we're doing it all, Patel having said, we're doing it all, we're gonna release it all, now at Trump's order, not releasing stuff. I feel like that's the Watergate side of it and the Iran, to some degree, the Iran-Contra side of it. But, and that's very, that goes right to, and then Trump is ordering Vande, if it's up to do it.

So it goes right to Trump. Yeah, and so I just keep asking myself, why would Donald Trump, rather than, because I mean, the amount of misdirection it feels like they could engage in, to send people down different rabbit holes or release some stuff. But then I'm like, that's what they tried to do with the influencers with the first things. The influencers called BS because they're like, we already know this because people do go really

deep on this and they know a lot about it. And so like, this was all publicly available already. This is not you releasing what we need. And then she of course was like, yes, yes, this is just phase one, there'll be a phase two. And that has stopped. And Trump is not saying, yeah, we're going to give you some things. I mean, they might have to do that now that they're getting bullied into it. But like you can imagine right now what they are doing is friends in a frenzied way, trying to figure out how to backtrack from nothing to see here to, okay, we're going to give you some stuff. What can we give them that doesn't send people down more rabbit holes about the world?

That's the fake grand jury offer, which is literally offering, we don't quite know what's in it, but it's testimony from Maxwell's trial about particular cases they indicted her on. And most of that testimony is to understand how grand jury's work would be restricted to those cases. The grand jury doesn't need to know about the thousand girls, a thousand, you know, they wouldn't. So that wouldn't be there. So that's a total fake. And I do

think people have called. Do you think people I think the media is pretty good at calling that out. Yeah. Well, and this is where to your point earlier about and this drives me crazy about both sort of pundits and Democrats is everybody's sitting around being like, but is this a distraction? And should we be talking about and like, let's debate the particulars of all this stuff? No, go find the truth. Americans care about this.

And Donald Trump clearly doesn't want to talk about this in a way that is spectacularly weird. Spectac, it's just so strange how he is behaving to the point where he's throwing temper tantrums, telling, threatening that his own supporters, he will not, like he will lose their, he won't support them anymore back. Like he's freaked out about something and the media.

And I was glad to see like Dick Durbin, you know, put out a statement and he's been basically pressing on the fact that here's a bunch of statements you guys made, including while you were in office, Attorney General Pam Bondi, that you now say aren't true and there's nothing there and I'd like you to square this circle for me. That is good. Press on those things. And part of what here's part of to me what is crazy is that Pam Bondi could just do this. I mean, I did comms for a million years.

If what happened was they lied to everybody to gin them up, okay, on the Epstein stuff. So Cash was lying, Bon Gino was lying, JD Vance was lying. They all were out there saying, this thing stinks to high heaven. She could come out and say in a way that like hold a press conference and say like I'm gonna release this stuff here's the thing guys

we thought there was more to this and it's just not there like there's no smoking gun here there's no Bill Clinton and we thought there probably would be the way that this but like it's not there and like take their medicine on that. But they're like not doing that. Well, that's what they tried, but without releasing anything. But without releasing anything. Yeah, so that was like,

well, that was nice of you to say now. I mean, they didn't really take their medicine and didn't really apologize. They just sort of said, oh, we've done the review, there's nothing there. And that was the Patel. Yeah. That was the thing we reacted to last week,

eight days ago. And it's what the Bondi Patel statement from I guess two weeks ago now says, but there was no evidence. So you can't do that. I mean, it's right. Right. Well, eight days ago. And it's what the Bondi-Pattel statement from, I guess, two weeks ago now says. But there was no evidence. So you can't do that. I mean, it's my. Well, we were wrong. Sorry to misled you.

They don't even say sorry, of course, right? They don't say a word about it. They give me like, when we got the documents, here's what I saw. And there's so little information they're putting out because they don't want any more questions. They don't want to open that door. That's right.

Now it's really, I think the combination of the horribleness of the crime and the completeness of the, and inexplicability of the cover-up unless it's Trump doesn't want stuff coming out. Though that combination could be very, could be devastating. You say they may not, we may not learn that much with the Justice Department and the FBI just stone wall. There's a limit to what the media can do perhaps over the next 15, 18 months. But even so, running on the fact that we've had this be then be the most massive cover up in US history for all, you know, by the Justice Department and the FBI. It's also, those things aren't so easy to pull off.

There are a lot of people who have worked there, worked there, you know, feel that the truth should come out. I suspect that anyway, that's what we don't know. But yeah, the dynamics of scandals, scandals are dynamic. Usually, they don't just freeze, you know, it's like, okay, we've got one document, nothing else is gonna happen. So they need to use the word cover up about 100 times a day. Of course day. That would distract people from the true kitchen table issues of inflation being at 2.6% instead of 2.4% this month. Say we don't think Epstein killed himself, and inflation is way too high. I don't care.

Just I mean, like, I'm sure. It's driving me crazy, the kitchen table. It's so ludicrous. People literally are sitting at the kitchen table talking about this. You know what I mean? And it's like, we only can talk about kitchen table issues. I don't know. What do they think, you know, what are Americans talking about?

Well, I mean, so, no, look, here's the thing. I do grant. I grant. This is what I get for doing all the focus groups. That the inflation matters a great deal to people. No, no, I don't mean to. Like when you're talking to voters and you're like, why do you think things are going in the country? They don't say like bad because of Epstein. They say bad because of inflation and that's fine,

but they feel inflation. That is like a direct personal consequence that they understand and you should talk to them about it. And I especially think you should campaign on it. But I also think you should get to the bottom. This is about everything about Trump. This is about if he,. This is about if he and this is just one other piece of this that makes it distinct from every other thing from Russia,

from the impeachments. This was not put forward by people who don't like Donald Trump. It was put forward by people who love Donald Trump, who work for Donald Trump, okay, they're the ones who made this the big issue. And so if you're going to live by Epstein, you're going to go down by Epstein. Like that just is what's happening here. And you I think that because it wasn't an issue that generated like that that organically started with maybe Democrats, they think that it's not like they just have to be bystanders about this. And that is not correct. It's the opposite.

Just let you go. It's the opposite of correct. The strongest scandal, I'm thinking now the history of these scandals, they don't start with the opposition party. The opposition party starts something in a way that already takes a little bit of the edge off it, right? They start with people inside Butterfield and John Dean

in 1973 on Watergate, Iran became important in the Middle East. It wasn't the Democrats who found out about it. And then people investigated. The Democrats don't matter that much in a funny way. They need, but they accept they are members of Congress. They have a right and an obligation to say, this is a disgraceful cover-up. And we need to see the evidence. That's all they need to say over and over and over and overup. And we need to see the evidence. That's all they need to say over and over and over and over again. And hopefully they will. Hopefully they will.

Let's go guys, come on. Good work today, Anzara. Thanks for joining me today. We'll work on Sunday. And thank you all for joining us. Thanks, Bill. See you guys.