Bulwark Takes - The Epstein Story Is Bigger Than the Elites

Episode Date: December 14, 2025

Tim Miller joins Katy Tur on MSNOW to talk the complexities of the Epstein files being released as more photos of the rich and powerful become public, and Trump’s continued support among his most faithful beginning to see cracks. Watch Katy Tur Reports on MSNOW

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and people delivering all of that power where it's needed. They're part of almost 300,000 jobs BP supports across the country. Learn more at BP.com slash investing in America. Hey, everybody. Tim over from the bulwark here. I was on with Katie Turrey yesterday. We got into something a little serious, a little heavy for daytime cable TV. And I want to expand it in a little bit. In the second segment, you can stick around. We cover kind of this unraveling that we're seeing of MAGA and how Trump is losing supporters from multiple parts of the coalition and how there's some bad signs for him. And I covered a lot of that ground with Lysa Farah as well, if you miss that. But we talked a little bit in the first segment about Epstein. And some of my, my co-panelists, Susan Glasser and Anand, we're getting into an argument about what Epstein says about the elites and whether the power elite is an unsaid where, you know, it was a signal that the power elite, you know, we're all corrupted. You know, the Epstein case is the best example of this notion that all of the regular folks out there are really united against the elite. And there's a bipartisan elite that are they're trying to divide us. You know, I think that is a story that feels good to say because there's a lot of good reason to be upset with our elite. And I think that it feels good to try to think that maybe the solution to our problems is the whole country can kind of unite with only these like bad guys at the top as the foes. The reality, what I tried to get into, what I have seen from both the Epstein case and the Trump era broadly is not so much.

that there's as bipartisan-el-leave. Like, there is, right? Like, but they're corrupted in different ways, right? And I think the manner in which the right is corrupted by Trump is very unique and separate from the type of stuff we're seeing with, like, Bill Clinton and Larry Summers hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein. What I see when I look at the Bill Clinton and Larry Summers and Bill Gates and Woody Allen and Noam Chomsky and Steve Bannon and Trump all hanging out with Epstein, what I see is, a broad cultural issue that we have where people in this country are reticent to draw moral

lines anymore, particularly if them or their side stand-up benefit. Let me give you some examples. How did Epstein get in with these guys? He offered them money. He offered them access. He offered them opportunity. I see that a lot in my everyday life, like people who are not in the power elite, making small concessions of their integrity because they want to get free stuff because they want to get opportunity. And I get it. I understand that. We all understand that. I succumbed to that. I wrote a whole book about this. You can go read if you want and search for it why we did it. So I understand this impulse. Maybe because I succumb to it, I'm attuned to it in a particular way. And I see it in a lesser way that people are defensive of those who are on their

political side when they make these moral sacrifices. You know, when I talk about Clinton, sometimes on here on Epstein, I get response from people, I get emails, like, well, Clinton doesn't do anything like Trump or, you know, and obviously you see this with Trump. I mean, like, this is just writ large. Everyone who's gone along with Trump has basically made a moral sacrifice of themselves and said that they're going to be Machiavellian at some level, and that because Donald Trump gives them something they want or punishes somebody they hate, they're willing to go

along with it. And so what I see in this Epstein case is like the elite succumbing to the same failing that so many of us have succumbed to, which is that we are unwilling to be the person that says no. We're unwilling to be the person that says, no, this is too far. I am not going to go along with this. It's hard to be that person. It's hard to be the scold. It's hard to be the one that's like this actually goes against our. our moral values set.

And so even though it's going to bring me money or opportunity or feel good, I'm going to say no anyway. It's hard to be the one that says in a group of people, a group of people says, yeah, let's do it. And this is like this is a childhood morality story, right? Like it's hard to be the one in the group that says, guys, I don't want to go along with this type of trouble making. And, you know, the real crimes of Epstein, of course, are the child sex trafficking

and the gruesome treatment of these young women. And that is like obviously front and center. But this secondary crime or fault that you see with people hanging around him who maybe weren't doing, I think some of those men that I mentioned were also doing child sex crimes and they should be held to account. But like there are others that like were hanging out with him

for the money and the celebrity. And that is like, that is something that we all need to stare at. and call out as something that we all, as a culture, need to push back against, resist, this notion that it is okay to go along with evil if it advantages you or your political tribe or your group. And that's something that's going to be very hard to overcome, I think. And I think it's something that is deeply rooted in an American society. I would love America, but we have unique opportunities and unique goodness in America.

We also have some unique faults. And I think this is one of them. And I think the Epstein story shines like a really bright light on it. I think it's a little bit of a cop out to be like, this is just an example of the elites going along with us. I think that we see a lot of people in our country. Like I just said, basically everybody voting for Donald Trump, but not just them. I see a lot of people going along with evil doing. We see a lot of people going along with things that they know are bad.

It's maybe a better way to say it because they rationalize it because they justify it. And that is a flaw in all of us, not just the power elite. And if we're going to fix things as a country, we need to recognize that this is a rot that is deeper than the top and that we're all going to have to try to find people to unite with. potentially, you know, across religion, across race, across sex, across party identification, who want to resist it and who want to say, no, we can aspire for better. So anyway, sorry to get heavy on a weekend. We got really heavy on for daytime cable. But, you know, it's just a spark that I thought, as you can tell, I'm kind of wrestling

with it myself. So we'll obviously take feedback from people. It is something that is complicated, you know, and it's something. that we all struggle with, I think, at some level. And so, you know, I'm still processing and developing my feelings on it. But I just, I, I think it's important to kind of have that conversation, the hard conversation, while we have a more easy conversation, which is condemning these fucking pricks that did horrific things to young girls and, and hopefully finally getting account for them. That's not that easy. Obviously, it's taking this long, but it is something that

there's much more broad recognition of. So anyway, stick around, me, Katie Tarr, the rest of the crew, having that conversation. We did get new images from Epstein's estate. Democrats say they have 95,000 new photos, and they released a handful of them today, including some disturbing ones, which the ranking Dem on House Oversight says are not even the worst of it. It's not clear if those other images are going to get released, but so far what we have received are more shots of very powerful people that Epstein called friends, including images of former President Bill Clinton, Steve Bannon, Woody Allen, Bill Gates, and President Donald Trump. We don't know the full context of these videos or when they were taken. Some of them had been previously released publicly. We also don't know who the women in some of these photos are, or if they were very much.

victims or survivors of Epstein, what we do know is what these images only serve to underscore. Again, that Epstein was praying on vulnerable young and underage women and girls while he was enjoying a social circle of the most well-connected, rich, and influential people in the world. It's just a wide array of powerful people from a wide array of corners. Yeah, it's depressing. No doubt about that, Katie. And the thing that strikes me that makes me think about that is a little bit different

from the institutional question, which is a real one, is what it says about our culture right now and particularly in the second Donald Trump term, that people, you know, the revealed preference of people in this country going back, at least COVID and now with these Epstein stuff, going back further, is that people don't like to have to hold themselves to moral professional standards, people don't like scolds, you know? And maybe we all have that a little bit in us. Like, nobody wants to do the person. It's like, oh, I can't do this, go along with this thing because this person is, you know, this other person is so bad. I'm going to wag my finger. And obviously, the Jeffrey Epstein case is a big, it's like such an extreme example of this.

And he was one of the most horrid people, you know, in the world with the scale of his child sex trafficking. But I see something that you see like across the board in Trump world. There's Like there was nobody on those emails that's like, you know, maybe we shouldn't be taking money from Jeffrey Epstein to our university. Or, you know, maybe we shouldn't be going, you know, going on these, you know, junkets funded by Jeffrey Epstein. Or maybe I shouldn't let this guy connect me with another person that might advance my political career. And you just don't see it anywhere in the emails. Everybody just goes along with it. And I think that, you know, I feel that way a little bit about Trump.

You know, there just weren't a lot of people that were willing to say, no, this goes too far. And I think that there's something kind of inherently, inherent to our culture that has yielded that, like, it's some deeper questions, you know. It was so interesting about an interview I did a moment ago with Mike Bohocheck out of Indiana, one of the state senators who voted no and said he was voting no because he was done with Donald Trump's meanness using the R word. He just found it just a bridge too far. He had had enough. And the reason why I thought he was such an interesting person to talk to is you just sort of. rarely hear that, somebody who's not going to go along with what's going and with what's happening in a political party, you know, especially with the Republican Party. I was listening to a

great podcast today. Tim Miller was the host of the podcast. He was talking to David French. Second only did the podcast I heard between Tim and Susan last week. But Tim was talking to David French. And it was on a topic that I think dovetails so nicely into this conversation, which is the weird and uncomfortable coalition at the heart of Trump's support and how it is not one that is stable and potentially won't be one that lasts when Donald Trump is gone.

He mentions Tennessee 7 and the fact that Afton Bain came so close to not losing terribly. I mean, she only lost by nine points instead of 22 points, which Donald Trump won that district by. But I would also, Tim, bring in what happened in Indiana. And this is an example of the more traditional Republicans saying no to a desire of Donald Trump's to redistrict.

And then the newer base of Republicans going after those traditional Republicans, threatening them, sometimes physically, bullying them, and it completely backfired. Yeah. I just think there are a couple of points that show how he's in a different political moment now. from the past couple of weeks. You mentioned that with Indiana. As you mentioned, this comes from the more traditional establishment wing of the party. I wouldn't say establishment anymore. I guess MAGA is the establishment, the pre-Maga establishment of the party.

And these Indiana Republicans, maybe with some support from Mike Pence behind the scenes, rebuffed him. It is the first time since, that I could think of since Brad Ravinsberger and Brian Kemp in Georgia when Trump was trying to steal the 2020 election when they said, no, they weren't going to go along with that. That's the only other time I can think of, you know, in the past five years where more traditional pre-Trump Republicans said no to him and came out, went and came out victorious and won. And I think that is meaningful about how he's sort of losing ground in his political standing. On the other side of the coalition, that clip that you play in the intro, Ivan Reklin, for you don't know him, the Maga Marauder, he called himself. He was one of Trump's biggest cheerleaders, this guy that had the enemies list. He was collecting the enemies list.

There's a big Washington Post profile on that about who they were going to go after once Trump got in charge. What it says to me is if people like Rayclan, if people, you know, like others in the MAGA media, feel like they can now criticize Trump without losing their audience. That says to me something about the audience, right? Like these folks are not dumb, you know? And so they know that Trump is not only that Trump is losing ground with that core base of support. Now are they ready to be Democrats? No, Democrats have a ton of work to do to reach. any of these people but like it is meaningful that that maga media now is feeling comfortable

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