Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Epstein Letter Is Breaking His Base

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

Sam Stein and Will Sommer unpack the fallout from the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on a strange, possibly incriminating letter Donald Trump allegedly wrote to Jeffrey Epstein for his birthday. The discussion focuses on how this revelation is unsettling parts of the MAGA base, especially conspiracy-minded followers who have long seen Epstein as proof of elite corruption. Some are doubling down, claiming the letter is a deep state plant, while others feel betrayed and emotionally shaken by Trump’s dismissive response. They explore how right-wing influencers like Charlie Kirk and Benny Johnson are spinning the story, and how Fox News, tied to the same parent company as the Wall Street Journal, has gone suspiciously quiet. They float the idea that Ghislaine Maxwell could become a strange MAGA folk hero, with some already calling for her to be pardoned to “clear Trump’s name.” Ultimately, the episode questions whether this moment will be rationalized like Trump’s past scandals, or if it could genuinely fracture his base. 

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Now it's back. We need snack wraps. What's a snack wrap? It's the return of something great. Oh, so what you're saying is... Snack wrap is back. All right. Hey guys, me Sam Stein, managing editor at The Bullock.

I'm here with my partner, Will Sommer's author of what is it false flag? Yeah, false flag. Yeah, of course. I knew that it's it is the newsletter to follow in these tumultuous times. He's been writing relentlessly about Epstein in addition to all the other conspiracies and so it's been a big week for well, how you holding up? Good. I mean this this Wall Street Journal article obviously was quite a shock and that's kind

of stirred the waters in terms of the MAGA movement. What Wall Street Journal? We're going to talk about the Wall Street Journal article, but first subscribe to the feed. Okay, so let me just back up for a second. I was, and I think I said this to Tim last night, I was driving my kid home from a swim meet when the journal piece broke and I called you immediately because I needed to like just take your temperature about what was going on with the article.

And I want to know like as someone who is like followed this stuff closer than anyone and who sort of understands the story. When you initially saw the piece because everyone had been hearing rumblings about the piece, but when you initially saw the piece and you read the piece. What was your reaction? I Mean, it's pretty shocking. I would say like on You know when you kind of step back and like get away from like what's gonna mean the article whatever and then the idea that Trump Is writing kind of like what seems like a coded letter to a notorious pedophile about like, would maybe we have secrets together, you know, and obviously there's this drawing of this nude woman. I mean, it doesn't look good.

Right. We haven't seen the letter, so we don't really know. And he's of course saying it's all fake, but whatever. But yes, at face value, I think that's sort of getting lost in a weird way. It's like, oh yeah, he's writing Jeffrey Epstein and being like, enigmas never age. And you're just like, what the hell is going on here? This is, this is odd. Now that you've had like a couple hours to assess and probably survey the landscape,

like what has been the reaction from people in that? Not the I'm not talking about like Charlie Kirk's necessarily, though I want to get to the reactions. I'm talking about like the people who believe in the Epstein mythos and the Epstein conspiracies. What is the reaction that they've had? Yeah, I mean, I think the reaction we're seeing actually is, you know, I think maybe disappointingly for people who are not Trump supporters. I think there is kind of like a rallying, a circling of the wagons going on. Yeah, I mean, this this fits into much more of of like a trope we're used to for Trump Which is like damaging information comes out it maybe he's kind of pre salted the ground to say, you know There's something you know, there are a lot of fake documents out there And so now people are you know, they can attack the media they can say well this Wall Street Journal reporter You can't trust him, right?

But is that is that true? I mean, I know that's true of like, you know, Megyn Kelly and Charlie Kirk and Benny Johnson, all those people, but like, what about like the real people who like, live and breathe this conspiracy? How do they rationalize, or maybe you haven't seen yet, but like, how would they sort of compartmentalize

this letter into the grand sort of cabal conspiracy that they've concocted? Well, I think, yeah, as you said, number one, we are pretty early in it. And so we haven't like quite, you know, we're less than 24 hours out. But I do think we're starting to see, they are saying like essentially,

oh, this is almost like proof the cabal is real because they're planting fake documents to get Trump. So I think what we were dealing with for the past week and a half was, it was sort of like, dad won't let us have something. Dad won't let us have fun, right? He won't let us stay up late. Why won't he just let us see these files? He just doesn't get how important they are to us.

And then suddenly it got to this point where I was like, wait, if we keep pushing here, we might find out that's a pedophile, right? So we might have to back off. And so I think that's what we're seeing with a lot of these people is like, they didn't want to like undermine the entire Trump project. You know, they just wanted to have their fun

and presumably get the Democrats they imagined were on this list. But now it's like, whoa, we gotta be a little careful here. Well, I want to talk, part of the first phase of that, which is, you know, the sort of disappointment that dad is not letting them in on the secret. There was a clip that's been kind of making the rounds that at least was in my feed about a caller into Glenn Beck's program, who honestly sounded like he was on the edge of just having

a complete meltdown, like crying near tears. I want to play you that clip, not to like make fun of the guy, because I actually think there's something larger to it. But let's play the clip. And then I'm going to ask you a question on the other end. I feel really betrayed and I feel really really angry. We have a president who tells us to move on from Epstein because it doesn't matter. Are you guys still talking about this seriously? And yet he still talks about the 2020 election fraud.

He talks about the hunter Biden laptop. He talks about all this stuff from five, six years ago. And he tells us to move on from the trial or the Epstein case. I people like me will not stop talking about this. I feel so betrayed and so angry. This is not what I voted for. There's this guy, Travis from South Dakota, and he's like, you know, pretty being down by this seems honestly emotional about it and I don't know. I mean, this obviously predates the Wall Street Journal letter, but is that your sense?

Is that like an anomaly or is that the sense that you get that these people just feel totally betrayed? just feel totally betrayed. I think I mean it's gonna be a mix like with anything. I mean, I think sort of at the what the immediate reactions were seeing are very rationalizing and sort of saying trying to excuse it or saying oh that that dastardly deep state has done it again. On the other hand, you know, I think we can maybe overthink it and say, you know, I saw some people saying, you know,

this is good news for Trump or whatever. It's not good news. Good news being the journal story. Yes, to have because it because it kind of frames it in a much more kind of classic Trump denial framework. But it's just that I think we know in our guts, it's not good news to have like a little jokey note to a pedophile released that you did. And so I think overall, I do think it's going to start

sinking in with some people. Well, yeah. And I guess that's the thing so I think overall, I do think it's going to start sinking in with some people. Well, yeah. And I guess that's the thing. It's like, I can, if you squint and you honestly, you can make the case it's good news. I'm not like saying it's irrational to make the case that it helps him to have a foil here. He loves having foils and the press is a foil and he can charge and say it's fake news and it's all fabricated. can eat makeup shit like I've never seen my you know, Don juniors on Twitter I've never in my 47 years seen my dad doodle. It's like man It's like he was selling doodles, right? like you say you could just make shit up and create an enemy but to your point

One like if you step back, you're like, why is he writing in Jeffrey Epstein's birthday book? That's weird. But two, it just the more I guess the more it is in the cultural zeitgeist, the worse it is. And like having Shane Gillis talk about it at the ESPYs, right? Like, there is some sort of risk that it breaks through into a wider cultural moment that is harder for him to control. I think that's right. There's this, you know, clearly the administration is seeing that they have to provide a little more give here.

So now they're saying, well, we'll release the grand jury transcripts, which, you know, apparently don't want to get to that in a second. But go ahead. Yeah. I mean, so there's the sense of or maybe Trump says, well, maybe there could be a special FBI investigation, which sort of sounds like a special counsel, but isn't, it would still be presumably controlled by Cash Patel. So, you know, we're seeing some people like Benny Johnson is acting like this was all, oh, of course, this was a stroke of genius. Now we're finally getting the documents we demanded. So you can see that I think they're trying to bring this to some kind of resolution.

Yeah, but that's again, it's like they're telling their listeners and their audience to believe things that aren't true again. It's just like my dad never doodles. It's just not true, right? The grand jury testimony will like be what we need. It's not true, right? It's not going to be remotely the totality of the evidence in the Epstein trial. So we're at this place again and again and again about whether or not these people, the audience members, the MAGA types, are willingly going to be duped. And they have, or at least they've come up with a different conspiracy to overstate,

or to overwhelm their current conspiracy. But I don't know, you would know this better than me. Like, are they willing to get duped on this stuff? I don't know. This is a tough one. I mean, I think I know it's really tough. I think this I mean, I think this sort of along versus any other sort of kind of Trump thing they've been asked to swallow, I think is going to kind of sit there and kind of bug them. You know, this idea that idea that you know Trump just saying move on and then saying suddenly like oh my gosh like you can't trust these files that are about to come out.

I mean he looks really guilty and you know as we saw there was something in the files. I don't know and maybe I'm making a really bad analogy and it's not the same obviously but like there is an incredible pressure to have sort of like a partisan rallying around the flag moment here. I mean, when I thinking to like Bill Clinton, Paula Jones, like stuff like that, where it's like the evidence was fairly bad. Like there was, you know, Paula Jones had those tapes she played, I believe. And, you know, there was like a question about whether they were doctored.

And, you know, people ride around behind Bill Clinton, even though I think in their heart of hearts, they knew what he had done was scummy as hell. And, you know, again, Trump access Hollywood, it's like people rallied around the guy and there was literal tapes and he wasn't even you know, disputing them at first. So I mean, I do think there's an immense amount of pressure to just ride behind the guy. I don't know if this is going to be totally different. You know, the other aspect here that I think is unexplored is

what role Fox News is going to play here, right? Because it's owned by the same company, Rupert Murdoch News Corp. And we saw last night, Laura Ingram was winding up to say, okay, next, we've got an update on the Epstein thing from the Wall Street Journal. And then she never got to that segment. So they can't, Fox presumably can't do the thing every other conservative media outlet is going to do, which is, you know, slime News Corp and all these runaway journalists at the

Wall Street Journal, particularly if there's going to be a lawsuit. So they're they're presumably going to be silent on it, which at least I think in terms of Trump's narrative is going to be bad for him because then Trump, you know, they can't be sort of Is it bad for him that they're just silent on it? I mean, isn't that what he wants? He just wants it to go away? Well, that's true as well. And maybe maybe as a result of this, they'll just stop talking about Epstein entirely because you can't really talk about Epstein without talking about

this this aspect of it. And I guess the other question is, will another outlet, presumably one of the other print outlets that's apparently was chasing the story. Will they actually publish the letter? Will have to see. I mean, I'd like to see it. You know, I think she would like to see it. I mean, I want to see it too. I mean, it is interesting. You know, it obviously is very reminiscent of Signalgate, where you have this, this, you know, put it out there, we can't believe the story until we see

the documents, and then we'll see if we get them. You know, it, it is funny with the the exchange where it's like, you know, what matters most in life, or whatever. And you know, people are saying you saw Jack Mazobik saying like, this isn't how Trump talks. And it's like, well, it's not a transcript. You know, it's a sort of an imagined script. He looks at also doesn't talk like this. Yeah, I find that very funny too, because like, it sort of is

how Trump talks. Like, have you not here heard him like concoct a complete fabricated sir story with like, you know, a member of the military where it's like, sir, I do this and I and then he has his own voice and they go back and forth and he loves making up like conversations and then putting them out there in the public for consumption. So I don't know if that's not how Trump talks and we certainly know he's a doodler.

The other thing I was gonna say is that so we're starting to get like kind of the the takes and the the the rationales, you know, filtering out this morning. And Benny Johnson, favorite take. Well, Benny Johnson had this video this morning where he was like, if you read this, we're to understand that Donald Trump is a Renaissance mincing. I mean, he doesn't quite take Queen but like, he's like a mincing a feet Renaissance painter on the banks of the Seine River in

Paris. And, and he and he's so theatrical and all this, but you think about it and it's like, Oh yeah, Trump famously is like very catty. He's very like interested in things like, like the Vanity Fair Oscars party and like kind of these like New York. Yeah, exactly. So the idea that like Donald Trump does isn't interested in, you know, when he sees this kind of like the finer things in life is just crazy. He's the most cosmopolitan president we've ever had. He's a huge Andrew Lloyd Webber fan. What are we talking about? Yes. Well, you know, all right, what's like, what do you predict is the next shoot a drop here if you had to make a prediction?

Yeah, so I mean, obviously, as you said, you know, one of these other newspapers could release something, you know, the we'll have to see what's in the grand jury trot transcripts if they ever come out are not coming out, man. You don't even think those will come out? Well, there's going to be a huge legal fight over it. Isn't Maxwell still actually like, has she gone to trial? Or is there is she currently in trial for I forget what it is. She is she's appealing. And so this actually this is this is my prediction. So can they even put these? Can they put these transcripts out if she's doing an appeal?

Well, no, no, this is why the Justice Department is just like, I don't know, you know, in the Biden administration was like, we can't just be like putting this stuff out there. Where's my prediction? This is a little longer term. There will be a growth of a MAGA pardoned Galean movement. This is there's already that my argument is this. They're going to say Galean is going to exonerate Trump. You know, she's already like, I'm willing to, you know, I'm

willing to testify to Congress. And they're going to say, you know, this is a woman, Angela Stanton King, who received a Trump partner self is very connected in the pardon world. She said, well, you know, if, if, if, if, if I see you didn't do anything, why is Galean in prison? You know, I think we're going to start seeing this and she's going to be seen as like, who if as you didn't do anything, why is galane in prison? You know, I think we're gonna start seeing this and she's gonna be seen as like, who thinks Epstein didn't

do anything? Well, now that Trump said it was all a hoax, you know, that I do know, that's how he says it's a hoax. So now they think Epstein is actually innocent. This is fucking madness, dude. How do you? How do you walk around in this universe? What are we talking about? But I can see a part in being, I could actually see a part in being sort of floated out

there where it's like, give her a pardon so she could just, you know, spill the dirt on everybody and not fear for her life, right? Like that could be something. Damn. All right, Will Summer, thank you so much, man. Appreciate it. You've been doing yeoman's work.

But at the same time, as I said before, this is your Super Bowl and like you're you gotta you know, gotta get up for the big game. Everyone should subscribe to his newsletter, false flag, which is essential. We'll talk to you soon. I'm gonna put you on nephew. I've been hitting up McDonald's for years saying I need the snack wrap. What's up with that snack wrap? Is the snack wrap back What's up with that snack wrap? Is the snack wrap

back yet? Alright, Unc. When we get to the window, I got this. Welcome to McDonald's. Can I take your order? Miss, I posted and sent DMs every day. Now it's back. We need snack wraps. What's a snack wrap? It's the return of something great. Oh, so what you're saying is... Snack wrap is back.