The Bulwark Podcast - Jonathan Karl: The White House Chaos Is Worse This Time

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

The White House leaks may be more contained in Trump 2.0, but the slavish loyalists who POTUS has surrounded himself with do nothing to keep him within the bounds of the law, ethics, or decorum. So in this round, the chaos is more consequential for the country. Meanwhile, the administration may be prepping to bury the Epstein files. Plus, the bitterness and resentment that drives Trump, the war on truth is winning, and the Bidens' animosity toward Obama. ABC's Jon Karl joins Tim Miller. show notes: Jon's new book, "Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America" TAKE THE SURVEY

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delight to welcome to the show, author and journalist. He's Chief Washington correspondent for ABC News. His latest book, Retribution, Donald Trump, and the Campaign that Changed America. He also is a co-anchor of this week with George Stephanopoulos. George, is that what we're calling him? It's Jonathan Carl.

Hey, how's it going, man? Do you have a nickname for George? No, no, just George. Just George for you? Yeah, yeah. Just George. Did you give him a finger wag over that, you know, for that faux paw that cost you guys $17 million or whatever it was? I think it was a little less than that, but no.

Okay. I stayed very far away from all that. Yeah, that's probably smart. There's a bunch of book stuff. I kind of want to do like a little bit of a potpourri of some of the random nuggets. it's in there. But we've got to do a little news first, particularly with regards to the Epstein files. We've this vote coming this week. I noticed you were on GMA yesterday, I think it was, and offering a little bit of skepticism about, you know, like this might be the big moment where

the damn breaks. And Donald Trump just says, okay, let's see it all. You know, warts and all. We'll show you everything. You noted the phrase in his bleat that they'll release everything that they're legally entitled to have. Ken Klipenstein noted that there's word unclassified in the discharge petition to cut his eye. Where do you think we're at? Like, what do you think the state of play is on this? I mean, there are multiple reasons to be totally skeptical of this.

First of all, let's just remember the base fact that if Trump actually wanted to release the Epstein files, he could do it right now. He could have done it a month ago. He could have done it six months ago. He could have let Pam Bondi do what she promised all those MAG influence. or so. Yeah, the binder. I mean, technically he already kind of started the release himself without a discharge

petition with those binders. You remember that binders? Oh, yeah. Those binders were in D.C. Drano and all the big journalists. You weren't invited, I noticed. But a lot of the other key journalists got invited for that. I wasn't. I wasn't.

That's one reason. But the other reason is, I mean, he's coming out and saying, oh, yeah, vote for it. After he has done everything in his power to prevent this vote from happening. I mean, obviously the Bobert display in the, in the, uh, in the situation room. obviously the phone calls. I mean, he actually made phone calls to Nancy Mays. Apparently she didn't take the call and to Bobert, her attacks on Marjorie Taylor Green. I mean, the house was out of session for seven weeks? I mean, why was it out of session? If not to prevent the discharge petition from going through it. So now suddenly, 218 signatures on the discharge

petition, the thing is going to pass. It's going to pass with, you know, 40, 50, maybe 60, maybe 100 Republicans voting for it. And that would have been the one big act of defiance that we have seen in the second term from Republicans. And he said, well, you know, why don't you all vote for it? I mean, they were all going to vote for it anyway. You know, I did point out that phrase legally permissible. That's kind of legalistic language for a Trump truth social, frankly. So, you know, it's the old ongoing investigation trick. You can't release anything that is subject to an ongoing investigation. I mean, it kind of reminds me, you remember the tax returns?

Of course. He really wanted to release the tax returns. He really wanted to release them. But that audit, is that audit still going? I mean, you got to finish the audit. I mean, you know, we keep mind. We should check with Howard Nutlick about that. It feels like they should bring a little more efficiency to the auditing program.

I don't know. With all those doge layoffs at IRS, maybe they just don't have the personnel to do it. I don't know. I guess the question is like, you. Could there be another reason that he folded, right? Or do we think that, like, they really have a sense that they're going to be able to control the release of this stuff anyway? And the initial plan here, let's just be honest, was like they were going to cherry pick stuff that was embarrassing for Democrats and start releasing that. Like, that was the plan.

That's what Cash Patel and then wanted to do. And so maybe they could go back to plan A. Yeah, I mean, he said Democrats were the ones that were friendly with Epstein. All of them. All of the Democrats. To be fair, when you think about it, back when Trump was really associating with Epstein, he effectively was a Democrat. Right. So, you know, he might have a point.

Mark Epstein, did you see that? He's been out there now, the Jeffery's brother. He's out on the trail. Have you chatted with him ever? No, I haven't. I haven't talked to him. He's out there and saying that, well, first, there's a thing going around the internet about Bubba. And that seemed like an obvious joke.

And we want to engage in that here with a serious journalist. But he's also out there saying today that, um, like that he has a source, I don't know why you would have a source, you know, what filing center, whatever it's called in Winchester, they're already going through and scrubbing, you know, anything related to Trump out of there. I mean, I think that the questions will remain, I guess, is my point. Yeah, I mean, look, even if they suddenly released everything in the DOJ files, are people really going to believe what they see? I mean, this is kind of actually a fundamental issue, not just trust with this Justice Department and this FBI, but just generally with any official sources,

believes anything. Yeah. You know, the, the war on truth that I know you were talking about, like, you know, almost a decade ago is like it's been almost successfully, you know, won by those that were fighting the idea of truth. Yeah, it's funny. I was looking at something not really that funny, kind of dark funny. I was looking at something that Candace tweeted. I'm just, I'm always right behind her in the podcast rankings. I like to monitor what the competitors are saying. She's number one in the world, right? I don't know she's number one, but she's up there. She's a a little ahead of me right now. And she wrote this. This was, I guess, a couple days ago. They lied about JFK, MLK, RFK, Matthew Crooks, COVID, Russia collusion, 9-11, the court, Iraq, Afghanistan,

Ukraine, BLM. But the good news is that she's being sarcastic, that everything seems to be above board about the Charlie Kirk assassination, which is like the most open-in-shut case I've ever seen, as far as I can tell. I mean, the person admitted it via text message and told people that he did it. But anyway, that is just to your point, right? Like, how do you deal with something? like that. Nobody's going to believe everything. And it's across the board. I mean, I, you know, since the book came out, you know, I've got that cover picture, obviously, of Trump at Butler. I mean, I can't tell you how many people believe that Butler didn't really happen, that it was staged, that it was, you know. Oh, I get that. I mean. Catch up. Oh, yeah. And that Elon Musk used

the satellites, Starlink. The wackiest of the 2020 conspiracy theories was the Italian spy satellites that were used to flip votes I don't know why the Italians would do this but you know I hear for real people not on the internet like on street Uber drivers it worries me honestly because it's like the inverse of 2016 like I remember we getting in a

probably would have been a taxi back then and you know the driver would be like what do you do I'm in politics oh you know who do you work for Republicans oh Obama was really born in Africa right like that was like a trajectory that would happen often and I'm getting the inverse now of oh wait the election

was really stolen right and I'm like I have to be like no I hate to disappoint people I'm like, it's important to sit with the fact that he won, actually. Yeah. Like, it's an important thing for everybody to deal with. You mentioned that Nancy Mace didn't take his call. I'm sorry, I just don't want to lose that. Yeah, this is before the 218th, the Hall of his signature was on.

Trump made two phone calls that we know of. One was to Bobert. Bobert did apparently take the call. Nancy Mace, either she sent it to voicemail or didn't take it, but that conversation. The call happened. It's pretty strange. Maybe she thinks he's trans now with all the makeup. I'm just scared to talk to him. I don't know. You're running for governor in South Carolina, you'd think you'd take Donald Trump's call.

That's noteworthy is. You know, I recently looked back. I did an interview with Nancy Mays back in the days when I had a podcast with Rick Klein. We interviewed her on January 6th before the attack on the Capitol, but in the morning of January 6th. And she sounded as rational and as level-headed as you could possibly imagine, condemning her colleagues who were planning to vote to against the certification of the election and talking about how dangerous that was. Maybe her and Marjorie Taylor Green did it like a freaky Friday. Has Marjorie flipped on the on the 2020 thing yet? I don't think so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

On Epstein, says you're in the White House pool from time to time, in the old days especially. did you see yesterday after he was getting Trump was getting questioned on the plane you know by a Bloomberg reporter a woman if there's nothing incriminating in the files why don't you release them she's trying to get that out and he looks at her and says quiet piggy you see that yeah yeah yeah I mean

it ceases to it actually ceases to even shock anymore it isn't even on the news isn't that kind of strange though like how do you I guess that's a real question how do you deal with that like at your ABC And at some level, I understand that this is dog bites man that the president of the United States calls a reporter Piggy. And it's kind of ironic, actually. She's asking him about why he's covering up potentially his involvement in illicit behavior with women at some level or at least sex. You know, we don't know exactly what.

And he looks at her and says, quiet Piggy. You know, I mean, my approach, just my personal approach to this, when I've been the subject, he's never called me Piggy, is I think that I've lost track of what I'm supposed to be doing if I'm getting. in a fight with him about what he's saying about me. So I ignore it. The one exception was the other day when he suggested him. I asked him about Pam Bondi saying she was going to prosecute hate speech. And Trump said maybe she'll prosecute people like, maybe she'll go after people like you. And because you've been so unfair. And the idea that the president of the United States is suggesting that a reporter can be prosecuted because the president thinks that they've been unfair is a pretty, that's beyond a personal insult that's actually talking about using the power

of government in a way that gets to the heart of what the First Amendment's all about. I mean, I remember back in the, you know, back in the first term, there would be some of my colleagues would get up and take real and ding, how dare you say that about my news organization? How dare you do? He wants to be in a fight with reporters. He wants the world to see reporters as his opposition. I mean, that's why he calls the, or he used to call the press the opposition party. If you can portray reporters as simply the same as Democrats, then everything that's reported, you can say, well, that's just, you know, not just fake news. Can I spitball another strategy back at you besides fighting with them?

That's kind of a fight. I don't know. Why hasn't he arrested you yet? Like, it feels to me like the Department of Justice is pretty weak. Like, why isn't it Pan Bondi doing your job? I might be a question you might want to ask him. I don't know why. I mean, you know, he's such a strong leader, and the press has been so tough on him,

and he's made a lot of threats recently about a lot of people that should be indicted, but I haven't seen anybody arrested yet. I mean, maybe that might be something you should ask him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll take that under advisement. You're not, that's not something that sounds good to you. It's not at the top of the time. I haven't you arrested me yet?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I mean, you do call him. You say in the book, you call and he picks up. That's strange behavior. I mean, that's kind of weird behavior, though, I would think. I mean, I guess you mentioned about how he does this with Biden. I know he did this with Jeb, right? Like, it's like you do say the nastiest thing imaginable. And then, and then he's chummy. So I guess it speaks to kind of the WWE nature of how he sees his job. But I don't know. I mean, that's, I guess, what do you make about the fact that he's trying to jail you on the one? hand and then he's chatting with you on the other. I mean, it's, it is very strange. In the, in that time where he invoked the idea of the Justice Department prosecuting people like me, he, in the very same answer to that question, I mean, he, because he does a little bit of the weave, you know, and he starts talking about Washington, D.C. And he said that I should take my beautiful wife out to dinner tonight. So you should take your beautiful wife out to dinner tonight. I was like, well, I mean,

what if I'm on my way to the clink, you know? The good news is, I guess, because of the National Guard, I'll be safe at dinner. But the bad news is, you know, on the way home, I mean, who knows what could happen. Well, it's a pretty crazy world out there, you know. You've got to sit here talking to Jonathan Carl hearing about the now chief of staff to the White House looking at battle plans. There are war maps that were stored in the then former president's bathroom in the Uday and Kusee suite in his club in Florida. and you start to think, boy, things are maybe a little out of my hands these days. It's hard to, I need to grab hold of something, you know, to ensure that I'm prepared for what might come.

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That's selectquote.com slash bulwark today to get started. That's selectquote.com slash bulwark. You see the conversation online about like, oh, you know, why aren't the journalists treating Trump the same way they talked about Biden's age? And, you know, they're like a million media criticism elements. You can get to that. We can just set aside. We talked about Biden's age plenty here. You actually talk to him. I don't. You know, our listeners don't. Yeah. Is he different from 2016? Like, do you feel him, like, the phone call you write about in the book is very, is pretty strange to me where he is like kind of browbeating you is the morning after the election and you call him to just congratulate him. And he's like

browbeating you about what you're congratulating him about. It seems like he seems angry. How would you assess what his private mental status is? I just started calling him during the last part of the election pretty regularly. And again, that is entirely, I've never done that with a major party nominee weeks or days before the election, let alone the day after. I called him Sunday morning, Sunday before the Tuesday election, and he had just watched me on weekend Good Morning America. I don't even know if my wife had watched me on Weekend Good Morning America. He was rather upset about what I said. And what I said was simply that even his own advisors are concerned that he is off message.

You know, he's got a, they have a basic message, which is effectively, you know, version of Reagan's, are you better off now than you were four years ago? Are you better off now than you were, you know, during my term? And instead, he's talking about, you know, shooting journalists or, uh, or about, um, what's his name, how he looks in the shower and all this, all this stuff. Arnold Palmer. And yeah, Arnold Palmer, thank you. Thank you. In La Trobe, Pennsylvania. I would, I could never forget any discussion of Arnold Palmer's manhood. Yeah, no, that was a high point. And he just starts, you know, he said, I watch specifically to see. And you just can't do it, Jonathan. You just can't do it. And I said, well, it's the weave, sir. It's a little bit of the weave. And he says, the we've got me elected president.

So he's like sitting there the Sunday before he's got this mass. He's doing four, five events a day. It's a couple days out. And he is not only sitting there, you know, watching. And I'm sure he's watching the others as well. He's got the TiVo and, you know, he's got his DVR and he's watching everything. and then taking time to brow me over that. It showed me that at times, the usual thing is to be nasty in front of the cameras and

do the attacks and then to be like, ah, you know, I'll take the calls and we'll talk nice. But sometimes he actually does rants privately as well. Is he different? First of all, I didn't do any of that in the first term. I never once called his cell phone. There were a couple times where you would do the trick of calling the White House switchboard. and you could get through to him that way. But I went through channels, basically, you know.

But you interviewed him. Yeah, no, I interviewed him. Yeah, no, no, no. I'm just saying that that was a different thing. I think it's kind of fruitless to speculate. People talked about his, you know, alleged mental decline a lot before he came to the White House. I mean, you know, 2016.

And certainly while he was in the White House, remember the, remember that time when he had to walk down that ramp at a military event? I mean, he's 70. years old. He doesn't really exercise. He likes to eat McDonald's. I mean, at some point, the speculation will, you know, will be accurate. But he's actually been pretty vigorous considering all that. He does a lot. He does a lot. He does way more than Biden. People don't like to hear that, but it's just like objectively true. And he's out there a lot. He doesn't sleep either. It's weird. He doesn't sleep. I mean, you read the shit. He doesn't, you know,

2 o'clock in the morning when he's on true social. He seems little adult. I guess. I guess, forget the mental of the calling part. Just like, at reading the book, you're talking about how you do this call, you mentioned the one before the action, but then you call me again after. Yeah. And it's hard to tell, like, is he fucking with you or is he actually mad? The morning after he won this just unbelievably improbable election, like, why is he browbeating you in a private phone call?

Do you think he's like, because that speaks to what your motivations are if you're mad the next morning? I think that it wasn't so much that he was angry. I think that he wanted to rub my face in it. Because I just said, you know, Mr. President, a lot of, I just wanted to say congratulations. And he said, on what? You tell me, Jonathan. On what?

And he just wanted to hear me say it. You know, hear me say it. I compared it to that scene in Breaking Bad, you know, where Walter White, the Brian Cranston character, says, say my name. Say my name. So I think it was as simple as that. And look, it's like you've just won this massive victory. Against all the odds, you had left the White House in disgrace, canceled a pariah to corporate America, pariah to, you know, most of the leaders in your own party, you know, impeached,

indicted, all of that stuff. And you managed to win it all and come back. You would think you could kind of bask in that. But it reminded me of 2016. He wins. And then the Saturday after his inauguration, he's complaining about people not giving him enough credit for the crowd size at his freaking inauguration. And I remember going to Sean Spicer, remember him? And I'm like, what is it? Why does he like, I mean, he's president of the United States. Why does he care what somebody said in a panel on MSNBC about how many people turned out for his inauguration? He's in the White House now. And Sean said something, but I don't remember. it because it didn't really answer the question.

Who cares? Because the question answers itself, right? It's like, it's a sign of somebody that has, I was asking Tapper, obviously, about this question, about the mental decline versus, and his line was so, like, like, Trump's at a different ward of the hospital. Like, he's not necessarily in the memory ward, right? Like, we don't need to be George Conway and, like, identify the exact, you know, type of narcissistic personality disorder. But, like, it's his particular element of mental derangement that he cares about this

stuff. You remember in the first term, when Mick Mulvaney became the acting chief of staff, he invited the White House staff to go to Camp David for a little retreat. And he gave them a reading assignment, which was a book called a first-rate madness. And a first-rate madness is actually an interesting book. It makes the case that the best leaders in history have had a touch of mental illness. And some of the worst leaders have been perfectly sane. For instance, you know, Abraham Lincoln, a little manic depressive, mostly depressive, Churchill, according to this guy who's a guy from Tufts University, medical school, said, you know, had a touch of man. I mean, and the sane, Neville Chamberlain was a perfectly sane man. And when you're dealing with madness in the world, a little touch of creative madness helps out. But I thought it was just interesting because he's basically giving this book out to say, yeah, Trump may be nuts, but that's a good thing. Yeah. The foreign policy, they say that. It's like the crazy, the unpredictability, you know, that's like they pitched that, right? Like the madman theory. The madman theory, right? Yeah, I say

that it's self-criticism a lot in people. It sounds like it, it sounds, now I'm going to sound like Trump. It sounds like an egomaniacal thing to say. But I'm always like, one of my big weaknesses, like, in campaigns and a bunch of different stuff was like, I was too rational. Like, I would look at other people who were like, who are bosses who would make totally irrational demands on their staff. I like, I just, that's not in my makeup. But, like, And then I would watch, and I'd be like, one out of ten times would work. Yeah. You know, like, the totally irrational thing they would suggest would work.

I'd like, see, I would have missed that one. Y'all, if you've even listened to me, you know, I just, I hate fallback. I hate the shorter days. I hate the darkness. I get sad, both in the literal sense and in the seasonal affective disorder sense. So if that's you or if you got a friend who's in that boat, it might be time to check in with them. And if necessary, think about ways which you can get a little extra professional help from our friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus

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I want to ask you just one more thing about present day. I felt like in the first term, you know, I wasn't like Wright was calling me all the time, but I was still much closer to Republican politics than I am now. You know, the only people to talk to me now are actually the insane ones. All of my old friends hate me. And so it's hard for me to tell. But like from the outside, like there are a few. fewer leaks, you know, that we have this time. We're not, we don't have the Javonka,

you know, Javanka tried to save us from that one leaks, um, happening. But like, it also, like the actual, the output seems great. Like, it's like even a bigger shit show, like a bigger mess. And I'm trying to like, is that, would you agree with that or I don't know, how would you assess like what's happening in there these days? On one hand, it is a much smoother running machine internally. That Susie Wiles has a kind of a handle on, you know, on how the staff functions. But there is nobody on that staff that is trying to keep him within the bounds of anything. So you have an administration that is moving at the whims of the president without any sort of process. I mean, I think that a couple of symbols is one is the White House Council. The White House

Council was Don McGahn early on. I mean, it was Pat Cipollone. And it was Pat Cipollone. And it repeatedly saw the job of the White House counsel's office as to, you know, keep the actions of the executive within the bounds of the Constitution, with the bounds of the law. And I recount in the book, a story of the, when they had that minerals agreement with Ukraine. This is a pretty major international agreement that was negotiated over time and, you know, involved the State Department, the Treasury Department, the National Security Council. And they're getting ready to, this is the day before Zelensky's to come, and somebody says, wait a minute, has White House counsel looked over this thing? And the answer was no. Dave Warrington hadn't even

seen the thing. So J.D. Vance, the vice president, says, well, just for people who don't know, just to emphasize your point, Dave Warrington is the White House counsel. Like, you know, like, this person barely exists. Yeah, I mean, would anybody, would anybody know? Yeah, yeah. And J.D. Vance says, well, why don't we have my wife, have Usha take a look at it? So the same. So the second lady of the United States, who, by the way, is a distinguished lawyer, Yale law grad, all of that, but not, you know, involved in the White, you know, the National Security Council or the White House counsel or anything comes in to take a look at the agreement. They don't even say, wait a minute, we can call Dave in now. I mean, I've taken Usha gave it the green light.

Yeah, yeah, believe it or not, she gave it the green light. Yeah, yeah. Kind of, I guess, we would have heard that story, I think, the second lady of the United States have been like, sorry, sorry, Mr. President. It looks like what you're doing here is outside the balance of the law. Farcical kind of to ask her in that way, not because she's not qualified. It's farcical to ask her because it's like, I mean, this is a rigged game that we're asking you to sign off on this. It's a good fact to know for future investigations. And you think about the so-called reciprocal tariffs and the shaky legal ground and they may get knocked down by the Supreme Court.

I mean, I imagine in a first term that might have gone through a more rigorous legal review rather than the thing where you just came out one day with like a chat GPT list of percentages of countries and how much we're going to tax penguins and all this kind of stuff. So yeah, there is plenty of chaos. It's just a different kind of chaos. And it's a more consequential chaos for the country than what you saw in the first term. You mentioned Susie Wiles, another former boss. We've mentioned a couple of my former bosses in this podcast so far, Sean Spice or Susie Wiles. How is Sean doing these days? You ever talked to him? You know, unfortunately, we've just kind of lost touch.

I mean, he's, I'm sure he's doing great stuff. He was doing, like, ads for, what was that? Car Shield? Life lock? I don't know. Who cares? That's interesting. You think, I mean, Corey Lundow?

Other people managed to stick around that didn't have the Survivor's instinct, I guess. Susie did. You have a thing in her book? Maybe this, had this been out there at all? No, no. No, it's had been out there all because I had not seen this. I'm pretty shocking. It was really to the classified document.

documents case. Why don't you just tell us? So I did a lot of reporting in this book. I worked with one of my colleagues, Catherine Falders, who has done just stellar work on the legal front. And we tried to kind of figure out what would have been in Jack Smith's final report if he had been allowed to release it. Because the classified documents case report was never released. It was buried. It's probably where the arc of the covenant is. At the end of Raiders a lost arc, you know, it's in that. We'll probably never see it. But we, learned that Susie Wiles talked to investigators, and we learned of what she said. And she said that she should have been more active and more proactive in terms of getting Trump to return

those documents that were requested back, and that she really didn't like the way it was handled. She basically blamed at the lawyers, not Donald Trump. But she said that she was not, she was not proud of how she acted. And it would have been very different if she had been more involved. He showed her a battle plan? Yes. And if you looked at the indictment, the indictment does make reference to a PAC official, a political action committee official being shown a battle plan and the official, you know, Trump says, I really shouldn't be showing this to you. And what we learned is that that was Susie Wiles. That information is coming from Susie Wiles. I mean, because Trump's not admitting that, right? So that that information is coming from Susie Wiles.

Yeah, staff now, I'm essentially admitting that he broke the law, or he's testifying that he was showing him as classified information that he shouldn't have had, or maybe she would think he should, you know, she'd maybe come up with some rationale, but like, I just, I'm on its face. I always thought it was, and no offense, Susie here, I always kind of assumed it was like a younger hot staffer that he was trying to show it out, like, because I remember that in the indictment, right? Because I kind of was like, to me, there was the more corrupt theory, you know, which is

that he was taking some documents that the South, you know, some MBSD of the Saudis, who the hell knows, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or there was, to me, like, always like the Occam's razor, which is like Trump likes trophies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Trump like, like, whatever. And it's like, he thought it was cool. Totally. And I assumed it was like, I don't know, you know, a junior press aide. Yeah. It was 24 or something. It was interesting that he felt he wanted to show off to Susie. Another one of the details that we learned about the classified documents is that he was using some of them as scrap paper so like in his in his office desk you know how cool is that you could write a note to somebody and like it's on the it's got that red class top secret you know i mean you could just

buy a stamp it says that i guess but i mean this is real man this is real see if this is why this is why you're you know you're a podcaster and he's president of the united states is why i'm limiting yeah well also why he's been indicted four times i haven't i guess Hey, y'all, we want to hear from you. What do you like of our offerings? I mean, besides me, of course. How do you watch or listen? Where are you tuning in from?

In the show notes, you'll find a link to an audience survey we're conducting to help us get a better sense of who you are and get your feedback on our shows. We're cooking up some great plans for 2026, and this feedback is going to be invaluable. So please, grab the link in the show notes. Thanks, advance, for your feedback. And it's okay if you like somebody better than me. You can tell us. The cold courtroom you were talking about, another thing in the book, and how at one of the hearings, the elevator was down at Trump Tower, but he didn't want people to know. And so it was the one time he showed exercise in the last decade.

I mean, this was just the wackiest story that I came across and reporting on the book. They're meeting before they have to go down to the Center Street courthouse in lower Manhattan in his, apartment at the top floor of Trump Tower. I think it's the 66th floor. And one of the two elevators goes out and the Secret Service, for whatever reason, says that we cannot take the own working elevator. We're going to have to walk down. And Trump walks the whole way without stopping. It's like some of his aides, like Boris Epstein's going down, I'm sweating. And like, you know, he goes all the way down. They get in the motorcade. And one of his aides says, God, that was incredible. You just motored down. Now, to be fair, it's on the 66.

floor, but it's actually only 55 flights because, you know, he lies about the floors at Trump Tower. It goes from, I think it goes from five to 15. And you're going down. Yeah, but actually, but if you ever try to go down that many flights, it's arguably harder. I mean, it's tough on the knees. It's like, I mean, it's, it is a lot. So one of this says, dude, that was incredible, because they're still running against Biden. You know, Biden's still the, uh, presumptive opponent. And it's like, we let, we should tell everybody about that. I mean, can you imagine Biden doing that. There's no way Biden could have ever done that. And Trump swears them all to silence. Nobody may speak of this ever because he's embarrassed that one of the elevators was out at Trump Tower.

But what's great about this, I didn't know that at the time, but I do know what Trump said that day. This is when he came before the cameras. It was towards the end of the trial. And he said, we're going to be resting soon. And he said, by resting, I mean resting the case because I don't get to rest. Nobody. Bitching. Pitching about the stairs. Yeah.

You mentioned Boris was walking on the stairs of them, Boris Epstein. For people don't know him, he's kind of like a big Italian fellow with like the droopy cheeks. Russian. Russian. Thank you. Yeah. Big rut. But he kind of, he gives off a mobster kind of vibe, which just want to tell you in my mind

with like the big jowls. There's a story that you were working on in others that he was. shaking people down for cabinet positions, including Scott Bessent, because Boris's been with him forever, you know, since the early days. I remember Boris first from being, you know, back in the green rooms where he was shilling for Trump and I was shilling against him back in the primary of 16. Yeah. So, Boris's been with him forever, been loyal, organized his legal team for all of his, you know, all the indictments against him. And so he's shaking people down once he wins for caddnet positions, 30, 40 grand a month. And at the time that seemed like that Trump

even like swatted them down publicly, which is a very rare thing. I was interested to read that like that, that seems to have blown over. Boris is still, Boris still around. That hasn't, this sort of corruption, not really bugging the administration. I happen to be down and down in Palm Beach and when, when all of this was going down during the transition, the, I mean, Besson went on the record, as did others saying that Boris had tried to shake them down to, you know, offer to represent him in the efforts to get into the cabinet. And Dave Warrington, who we just spoke about, is now the White House counsel, but back then was the campaign council and then counsel for the transition, actually wrote a memo detailing, you know, Boris's alleged transgressions

and giving specific examples. The description of Besson is particularly vivid. And I actually learned that, you know, Besson basically tried to entrap Boris to get evidence of what he had done by staging a phone call and saying to him, you know, so you said you could help me out. You know, and Boris gets mad at him, and this is like, this is as, you know, he's just about to announce his Treasury Secretary anyway. And Boris says, it's too fucking late. You know, I'm Boris fucking Epstein. And these quotes are in Warrington's memo. And the memo, which was described to me in detail, I quote the last three paragraphs of it, says that Trump should cease all contact with Boris Epstein. Says that he should be fired from his whatever position he has in the campaign, should not be brought into the administration. And the Trump should cease all contact.

And if you don't do that, we risk a major scandal or worse, you know, legal problems. And for about 36, 48 hours, Boris is on the outs. John Solomon is the one that breaks the story. You know, John Solomon very much kind of a, you know, conservative writer. Maga out. Sorry, MAGA writer. And so, you know, it's clearly like a leak from people that want Boris pushed out. And Trump actually, you know, gets on the first.

phone with Solomon is quoted in his story, saying, you know, it's a real shame. Sometimes, you know, people get close to you and they take advantage of you. It's a real shame. So Boris seems to be out. I happen to meet with Boris at this time. I knew these reports. I was trying to chase down the story. And I described this kind of crazy scene of me trying to get with Boris and he's running around and changing the times and canceling on me. And it's a, and then I finally meet with him down the hallway of a, that four seasons hotel in Palm Beach. It's a, it's this it's this crazy effort to try to try to get to the bottom of this. But what I had not realized was this is when he was actually on the outs and when he was clawing desperately to get back in

Trump. And amazingly, he gets right back in. And he doesn't come into the way. Is it amazing though? No, it's not. But in any other context, it would be amazing. But, you know, but Boris is a very important figure, even though he doesn't come into the White House. He's the one that orchestrated all the stuff with the law firms, you know, executive orders, you know, targeting the law firms and then getting the law firms to basically offer, you know, payment. I mean, you talked about the, you know, the godfather type stuff. I mean, you know, offering hundreds of millions of dollars in pro bono. And so he's still talking to Trump all the time. All the time. He's often on Air Force one. The other day I saw him, he was on Marine One. Do you know how few people go on Marine One?

I mean, it's like, that's like your body guy, the first lady, the chief of staff. I mean, it's like, there aren't a lot of extra seats on Marine One. And, you know, Boris is there. So, you know, with some of these people, you don't come on the White House staff because you're, you have one layer removed of any kind of possible oversight. But, you know, Trump doesn't, whether you're on staff or not. One observation about this is, and about something that feels different to me in a second term, I wonder what you think. and I think there will be a lot of reporting on this in the years to come is I think Trump genuinely didn't want people to make money off of him in the first term like I got Trump never did like this

was a thing about from him back and all you know going back ages now it does it feels like there's a little bit of a gold rush I like the boris story is is is I think instructive in that sense in particular the like he's able to you know as long as you're loyal I don't know feels like there's a lot of dealings happening out there I mean the let Nick kids are doing pretty well, the Whitkoff kids, the Trump kids, you know, Jared and Ivanka on the outside. It does seem like there's a lot more money sloshing around this time than last time. Do you think that's fair? There's definitely a lot more money sloshing around. I think that Trump still doesn't like the idea of people profiting off him if he's not, you know,

doesn't get a cut in some way, but there's just so much. And I think that one of the real stories of this administration, probably that it's going to take years after it's over to really get to the bottom of is just how much of it was going on. I mean, when you think about the firing of the inspectors general, the Office of Government Ethics, which is responsible for, you know, kind of policing very basic ethics rules, was entirely gutted. You know who was the acting head until recently of the Office of Government Ethics? I think Markov, probably. No, you're very close. It was Jameson Greer, the trade representative. So this at a time when Trump was talking about 200 trade agreements he was working on.

Didn't quite reach that number. But James and Greer, pretty busy guy on the trade front. Also had the second brief of being the head of the Office of Government. Anyway, he recently stepped down. We have a new acting Office of Government Ethics. It's Eric Euland, who is the Russ Votes deputy. So, you know, usually this is a pretty independent operation. Yeah, right.

So, you know. Have they blown the whistle yet, the Office of Government Ethics, Eulence, Greer? They're looking really hard. Okay. But when you have the president of the United States accepting a $400 million jet from the Qataris that is to be used as Air Force One, but then in January of 2029 to go to the Trump presidential library, when you have the crypto deals and everything else, you can imagine it sets an example for everybody else below.

So it's not that Trump is okay with it necessarily or even knows all that's going on, but I think this is going to be a story that will be covered for a long. long, long time. And in the crypto, like the UAE, like, these deals are crazy. And like this guy gets a pardon. I mean, it's like, you've been covering this stuff for decades. Like the gap between, look, there have been corrupt pardons forever. Like, the gap between Mark Rich and Spiro Agnew getting a paper bag and like there being a deal

between an under investigation Chinese crypto magnet and the United Arab Emirates that yields billions. What did Blagojevich say when he was trying to sell a. Obama's Senate seat, you know, this thing's golden. You think I'm just going to give it away? Yeah. So I think the pardon power, when the pardon power is the one power that is, you know, it's unchecked. I mean, he can do whatever he wants. I mean, who the hell knows what's going on. Do you remember the guy who paid match-flap $400,000 in pursuit of a pardon in the first term? And then the guy didn't get the pardon. I mean.

Did he get groped at least? I don't know. Didn't even give me a reach around after all that. All right. I have so much to get to. We're running out of time. Rapid fire, though. So after Trump wins, after J.D. had said, oh, we're not going to pardon the violent criminals from January 6th gets backlash.

Trump calls Julie Kelly, the blogger from American greatness, to ask her what he should do. And she overrules the vice president, basically. Is that the nuts of this? I mean, sort of. So the vice president was asked on a, I think on the Fox Sunday show, who would get pardoned. You know, the president's promised pardon for the J6 prisoners. And Vance says something that sounds entirely sensible and reasonable, which is, well, we're not going to pardon the people that beat up cops. You know, we're not going to pardon the ones that committed violence. And suddenly, Vance is hammered. The degree to which I didn't fully realize at the time, because I wasn't paying attention to that part of the, of the MAGA, you know, movement, but he was like, how could you say this? Everybody deserves a pardon, everybody that was there. And those that are accused of beating up cops, accused on the video, they were only defending themselves. They were provoked by the Capitol Police, and everybody deserves a pardon, especially those people. You know, Trump knows about that backlash, and he's getting ready to make

his decision. He wants to do it on the first day. So this is in late January before the 20th, but not long before the 20th, he gets this woman, Julie Kelly on the phone. Actually, Charlie Kirk is there. Charlie Kirk's the one that actually makes the call and puts Julie Kelly on speaker at Trump's in Mar-a-Lago and says, who do you think we should pardon? What should we do?

And even Julie Kelly, Julie Kelly is the one that she wrote a book about January 6th. She is the leading advocate for the, you know, what she calls the J-6 hostages. She's the one, by the way, is the first one to record the January 6 prisoners singing the National Anthem. Oh, the choir. Yeah, yeah, the choir, the J-6 choir.

She's the beginning of that. It later gets done an iTunes thing with somebody else. But she's like, she is there. Somebody else. You remember who it was? Tell me. I do. I think it was Ed Henry.

I think it was Ed Henry that was the producer of that. God, Ed went on to such great things. I remember him in his roll call days. So anyway, even Julie Kelly doesn't think that he should pardon all of them. Now, she wants the violent ones pardoned, but she has like a couple, like people that were there who had violated parole or something. But Trump goes in the direction she wants, which is virtually everybody. And then just decides, fuck it, everybody. The only thing Corey Lewandowski asked Donald Trump for was for Christy Nome, his very close friend, to be the head of Homeland Security, and Trump gives it to him.

Well, I mean, look, Corey was the very first campaign manager, total loyalist. He just wanted one thing. I mean, everybody has a request, right? I mean, some people might want passes to take family to the White House. I don't think that David Plup was going to get the secretary of Homeland Security pick. I mean, it's a big job, you know, especially when you're planning a mass deportation campaign. The Christie-None pick was an outside-the-box pick. Favorite of Corey.

And she was not on Lutnik's list of possible secretaries of Homeland Security. And there were a lot of discussion of various other people. And somebody, you know, was at Mar-a-Lago, like everybody else really surprised when it. By the only reason why it wasn't more, you know, controversial. It wasn't more noticed to it is that you had all this other stuff going on. The rest of the cabinet was so insane. Yeah, Gates and the Attorney General's cash.

Yeah, yeah. So did Trump ask Corey? Do you think about whether he had any personal engagements with the Department of the Secretary of Homeland Security? Is that vetting? Was that part of the vetting? Do you think? I think he actually keeps track of that kind of stuff pretty closely.

So I think he was probably fully aware with probably some details. But somebody sees Trump at Marlago. one of his aides and says, gosh, Christy Noe, how'd you decide on that one? It was pretty important for Corey to have her there because, I mean, there was, I don't know if you remember the police report where here is that the Benihana, at the Addiction Awareness Fundraiser where he is flirting with the wife of a Trump donor and talking about how he was, how he'd killed people, how he'd stabbed somebody back in the day. So you don't want somebody to investigate, you want to keep the, keep the part of DHS close,

if that's your background. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to skip over the Merrick Garland Apologia that you do. That's a hot tease. For any Merrick Garland fans out there, you're going to have to read Jonathan Carl's book. You're going to have to buy retribution to read the Merrick Garland Apologia. This wasn't in the book, but I had to ask you about it. I saw you.

I forget what you were on and I watched you talk about this. Obama and there is also a lot of Biden stuff in there. We purposely did not focus on this because breaking news for people listening tomorrow. We're going to have Kamala Harris on the podcast. I'm interviewing her tonight in Nashville. This is huge. Actually, before I get to your thing, what? You're a questioner.

What would you ask the former vice president if you or me tonight? This is immediately pops to mind and it's trivial and it's not the most important thing by long shot. But why the hell didn't she do stuff like this when she was actually vice president or when she was running for president? I mean, she was, I mean, I never got an interview with her, but I'm just me. But I mean, she didn't, she did precious few interviews until they realized that she was losing.

And suddenly she was like, you know, doing a bunch of interviews, but it was like, it was kind of a bubble-wrapped campaign, a bubble-wrapped vice presidency. And every interview she did was carefully, I mean, you're going to have, I assume, a fair amount of time with her. That one big first interview she did, which she waited weeks to do after, you know, Biden dropped out was with Dana Bash. And they were like, it's got to be 20 minutes, exactly. Walls has got to be there. We're going to. Walls was sitting in the chair that made him look really small. It was a strange setup. Then she didn't, couldn't do another interview until, you know, quite a while after that.

Anyway, it's not why she lost, but I found that very strange. Because, you know, I did spend some time with her when she was vice president. It was curious. You know, away from the cameras, away from it all, she can be very engaging, very... Maybe this is a pecte. This is very a jab trait as well. Awesome with a scotch and a table, you know, at the hotel bar after. Like, sometimes not, you know.

Okay. Well, if you have any other ideas, you're pretty good at this on the questioning. side if you have any other ideas between now and tonight text me i'll shoot you something yeah yeah i did want to ask you about one thing it wasn't in the book about that and you go deep into all the bide stuff you said that bruce reed i hear the small inner circle i needed done and mcdonland rachette and bruce reid basically and like one of the and hunter and jill and uh one of them said that they never even had a meeting about biden not running so that did jump to mind the other thing that i noticed is just you talked to hunter a lot and hunter's pissed at the obamas and we've all seen

now the Hunter interview with Channel 5, where he expresses all the people he's mad at. You were doing, I guess, an interview where you said that Joe Biden and Obama happened to be at Cafe Milano together in Washington, D.C., not together, at the same restaurant, at the same time, the same day, and they did not greet each other? Yeah, so I got wind of this that it was going to be happening. So I was a witness to this. Go to Cafe Milano and there are seats reserved at the bar, which is very unusual. It turns out they're reserved for Secret Service.

And Biden was sitting out. Biden's table was ready for him with the general population out in the middle of the restaurant. And Obama was to be in a private room right to the left when you walk into the restaurant. Biden gets there first, sits down. He's with a former senator, Mark Pryor, and an aide of his. And they're having their thing. And when I'm said a low, of course, he looks pretty good, actually.

He just rang the bell. finished his cancer treatment. And then his armored SUV is out front. And then I noticed that it has to move. And why does that have to move to make room for Obama's armored SUV? It's on a small street, this restaurant. Yeah. And Obama came in and went right into the room. And I don't know if either one of them, they even saw each other because Biden would have had a point of view on the, on the door to that room, but I don't know if he noticed when he came in. But no, there was no come over and say, how you've been, nothing. There's a lot of bitterness between those two camps.

I mean, one thing I report in the book, and I don't know if that's why they didn't meet. I can just tell you the fact. They were both there. They were in a restaurant. They weren't even that far apart at the restaurant, and their past did not cross. I mean, that's crazy. Yeah. That's, I mean, I don't know.

Like, I understand. Like, I'm kind of mad at Joe Biden. Hunter's mad at Hunter's mad at Brock Obama. But, like, he was his vice president for eight years. So let me just tell you something in the book related to this, which is after Biden drops out, calls Kamala, you know, and Kamala's off to the races and she's famously making all her calls to solidify her getting the nomination. Biden makes a bunch of calls that day as well to thank all the people. I mean, he's now his political career is over. So he wants to, like, tell his strongest supporters and the people that made it possible for him to be president of the United States.

he makes about 50 phone calls. Not one of them is to Obama. And I learned that Obama called him and Biden didn't take the call. By the way, Obama had also tried to call him in the week before he dropped out. And Biden didn't return that call either. So they eventually end up talking, but not until right before the convention. So weeks go by, weeks go by, and he doesn't talk to Barack Obama. You know, I mean, look, you hear it in Hunter. They think that Obama was effectively behind the George Clooney op-ed. They resent that viral moment where Obama is leading, you know, Biden off the stage at that fundraiser in California. They see all of those Pod Save America type guys are out there beating the drums that Biden has to get out. They think that Obama's coordinating

all that. Those are all former Obama aides. So there's a lot of resentment. But Joe Biden does not become president of the United States without Barack Obama. No. I mean, and obviously he doesn't become vice president, but I mean, it's... Yeah, again, look, be mad at me, be mad at pundits, whatever. You know what I mean? Like, be mad at whoever you want. Be mad at David Axelrod.

He's not mad at me. I'm just saying, like, people in my business. That feels pretty crazy, like, that the degree of animus would be at that level. And by the way, it's also with Pelosi, of course. I think that Mike Pence would... We actually know this because we saw it at the funeral. Mike Pence would say hello to Donald Trump. Donald Trump tried to kill him.

Karen didn't. And we honor Karen for that reason here. We honor mother on this podcast. But like Donald Trump tried to kill Mike Pence. They say hello. So anyway. I mean, to be fair, it was Donald Trump's supporters who tried to kill Mike Pence. I mean, Donald Trump himself.

And Trump kind of cheered a model. You know, he didn't condemn them. He rooted for it, I would say. Okay. Well, sometimes it's painful to go through all this. It was painful at times to read the book, but there are good nuggets in there. Obviously, you put a ton of work in. It's wonderful. And we live in the context of which we came before.

We didn't just fall out of a coconut tree. And so it's important to kind of remember. And look, I wrote it because I see people rewriting this history as we speak. So I wanted to, you know, I had some extraordinary access. And I witnessed a lot myself. And I thought it was important to, you know, write something, not just for today, but 50 years from now, somebody wants to know what the hell happened, how did that happen? Hopefully my book will just be on a bookshelf somewhere and they can, we'll still have books in 50 years, right?

I don't think so. But it's a nice thought. Jonathan Carl, I appreciate you, buddy. It's been too long. Good to see you. Thank you, Tim. And everybody else will be back here tomorrow with Kamala Harris. See you all then. Peace. Now that you focus, I'm glad that you notice. The realest nigger here is kind of chilly. Me and the coldness. Me and Timbo. that two-door, making our oldest, now witness the chosen, it's just different here. Monty Carlo Knights, let her throw the dice, play in paradise. All I know is white, get the powder gone, bitches love the shop, lever take the mall,

mattress full of money, let it break the fall. She used to fly on a buddy pass. They say when the money go, you hope that your honey lasts. I've been preaching since money cash holes. see you from where I am so hard to see you got money I've been different ever since maybe it's me and my arrogance who are you who are you anyway who are you who are you who are you we don't know you who are you who are you The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.