The David Pakman Show - 9/1/25: Trump European humiliation as Epstein scandal blows wide open (EPISODE FROM JULY 28, 2025)

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

LABOR DAY / CLASSIC EPISODE FROM JULY 28, 2025 -- On the Show: -- David hosts a Substack Live with Heather Cox Richardson -- Donald Trump faces mounting fallout from the Epstein files as comparisons to Watergate raise questions about his legacy -- Donald Trump delivers a rambling and incoherent rant about windmills and whales during a global press appearance -- Tulsi Gabbard lashes out after her attempt to reframe Russiagate with declassified documents fails to gain traction -- Donald Trump fumbles basic questions and dodges Epstein inquiries in what might be his most disastrous press conference yet -- Donald Trump appears unwell and rants about nuclear dust while dodging questions on Gaza and free speech -- Senator Markwayne Mullin is fact-checked live by Jake Tapper after falsely blaming Obama for Epstein’s 2008 plea deal -- Benny Johnson’s explosive subscriber growth on YouTube raises major red flags about possible artificial inflation strategies -- On the Bonus Show: Trump caught cheating at golf, Pete Hegseth ordered to stop lie-detecting staff, Lauren Boebert defends her son over child abuse allegations, and much more... 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman 🔊 Babbel language learning: Get up to 60% OFF at https://babbel.com/pakman-- Become a Member: https://davidpakman.com/membership ⚠️ Ground News: Get 40% OFF their unlimited access Vantage plan at https://ground.news/pakman -- Subscribe to our (FREE) Substack newsletter: https://davidpakman.substack.com -- Get David's Books: https://davidpakman.com/echo -- TDPS Subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/thedavidpakmanshow -- David on Bluesky: https://davidpakman.com/bluesky -- David on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow

Hey, this is David Pacman, inviting you to enjoy a classic episode of the David Pacman show today. We will return with new shows before you know it. Welcome, everybody. We start today, thinking back to Watergate. Let me explain. As Donald Trump's second term now is really getting swallowed up by the growing scandal around the Epstein files, it is really really. time to ask a serious question. Is this the thing that finally breaks Trump? Now, not his presidency. I'm not

pretending Trump's going to be kicked out, depending on what's in the Epstein files, but does this break Trump's legacy? And does this break the future of MAGA? I'm always honest when Frank with my audience, this scandal is not going to end Donald Trump's term. There is not a realistic path to removing Trump, really no matter what is in those files, but it is sort of seeming like the Epstein files could end up really defining how history remembers Donald Trump. And if we look at past scandals, the parallels really feel familiar. We have new polling out, Trump's approval ratings down to 37, and the drop is significantly driven by independence and even by some Republicans who increasingly believe Donald Trump

is indeed covering something up with regard to Epstein. And so Trump was already an unpopular president, but he's getting more and more toxic as a result of this. And what's fueling it as often is the case is Trump's response, the White House's response, the leaked reports of DOJ meetings with Gillesne Maxwell and the frantic deflections and the perception that not only is Trump covering something up, he's willing potentially to hand out a pardon to Jelaine Maxwell to try to keep covering it up. So if we zoom out a little bit and look at the historical playbook, we of course look to Watergate, the sort of gold standard of scandals, and Nixon didn't fall because of the crime. It really, in a way, it started with a break in at the DNC,

but it was the cover up that was the issue. Two years of investigations that uncovered abuse of presidential power, obstruction, paranoia, and secrecy inside the White House, and ultimately Republicans turning on Nixon, being forced to resign to avoid impeachment, which seemed clear was going to happen. And we have other examples. You look at Andrew Johnson in 1868, impeached for defying Congress during reconstruction, survived by one vote, but was a total lame duck with no political power after that. That could happen to Trump. You look at Reagan and the Iran-Contra affair, where money was funneled to Nicaraguan

rebels illegally. Reagan claimed ignorance, accepted responsibility. He was allowed to hang on, but it really heard his legacy. Clinton's impeachment was different. He had this affair with Monica Lewinsky, survived impeachment for lying after a law, after lying about it because the public really saw it as personal, not presidential misconduct. And Clinton's approval ratings actually went up during the whole thing. By the way, side note, Clinton who left office decades ago is still younger than Donald Trump right now. Clinton's a few

months younger than Trump. We then look at Joe Biden's exit in 24, which really wasn't a scandal in the traditional sense. It was a moment, right? The June 27th debate, where Biden, Biden unraveled, took less than a month for him to go to, I am the from I am the best shot to beat Trump to I'm getting out. And Biden's presidency was very successful, but that final 28 days has really become a lot of Biden's legacy, at least at the moment, and we'll see where it shakes out historically. So then it brings us to Trump. Here's why the Epstein scandal is different from other Trump scandals.

Number one, it won't remove him, but it could destroy what's left of his legacy. If it indeed involves child sex trafficking in any way as connected to Trump, these are allegations that really have a sort of moral weight beyond partisanship. And importantly, even Republicans seem rattled and upset with Trump based on what's going on. So the scandal right now is really tracking this classic arc of presidential scandals. You've got the revelation. The story breaks. It's often through reporting. That part has happened. You then have the cover up. The administration starts to scramble. There are denials and distractions or maybe worse. That's where we are right now. We don't yet know what's at the end of this. And then you get

to accountability. And that's what we're waiting on. Either the president is able to weather the storm or he, isn't. So if we go back to the original question, is this Trump's watergate? What history tells us to watch is, number one, where are Republicans on this? Nixon was fine until Republicans abandoned him and it became clear he would be impeached. If Republicans continue going the direction they've been going, it could be bad for Trump. Second, public opinion, sustained low approval will give Republicans permission to say we can't stay behind him. Three, are there new revelations, right? Sometimes it's not a bombshell, but it's the drip, drip, drip of information that will tip the balance. And we don't still know. We still don't know what's in the Epstein files.

And then finally, what's the institutional response? Does Congress do the courts, do career officials look the other way or do they hold the line? So the next few months are going to be crucial. Trump is trying to get everybody to move on. Will Trump? end up in the history books next to Nixon primarily remembered for the Epstein scandal? Will it be more of a Reagan or Clinton scenario? It's almost never the crime that ends the presidency or destroys the legacy. It's the cover up and the lies and that's where we are right now. This was supposed to be a moment of global diplomacy for Donald Trump and instead,

Trump used his time on the world stage to deliver a completely unhinged tirade against windmills. We are going to have extensive coverage of the current European trip of Donald Trump. But these few minutes of video, Trump alongside European leaders speaking in this video alongside the EU's von der Leyen, Trump drifted into a barely. coherent monologue mixing completely fabricated numbers about immigration, unprovoked rants about bird deaths, bizarre claims about whales losing their minds, and it made even seasoned diplomats look around and say, what is happening to this guy's brain? Take a look at this.

I will say this, you know, they did ask me when I got off the plane. immigration Europe has a tremendous problem. We do too, but we've sealed our borders. We have nobody coming in and we have hundreds of thousands of people being taken out and the bad ones first. And I think we're doing a very good job of that. But we had, I mean, it literally registered zero people last month. You probably said that nobody. And Europe has a very similar problem. I think they're going to end up in the same place. You might as well go there quicker. And the other thing I say to Europe, we will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States. They're killing us. They're killing the beauty of our scenery, our valleys, our beautiful

planes. And I'm not talking about airplanes. I'm talking about beautiful planes, beautiful areas in the United States. And you look up and you see windmills all over the place. It's a, it's a horrible thing. It's the most expensive form of energy. It's no good. They're made in China, almost all of them. When they start to rust and rot in eight years, you can't really turn them off. You can't bury them. They won't let you bury the propellers, you know, the props, because there are a certain type of fiber that doesn't go well with the land. That's what they say. The environmentalists say, you can't bury them because the fiber doesn't go well with the land. In other words, if you bury it, it will harm our soil. The whole thing.

is a con job. It's very expensive. And in all fairness, Germany tried it. And wind doesn't work. It's ever, you need subsidy for wind. And energy should not need subsidy. With energy, you make money. You don't lose money. But more important than that is it ruins the landscape. It kills the birds. They're noisy. You know, you have a certain place in the Massachusetts area that over the last 20 years had one or two whales, Warshishaw. And over the last short period of time, they had 18, okay, because it's driving them loco. It's driving them loco. Driving them crazy. Now, windmills will not come.

It's not going to happen in the United States. And it's very expensive. And I would love to say, I mean, today I'm playing the best course I think in the world, Turnbury. Even though I own it, it's probably the best course in the world, right? And I look over the horizon and I see nine windmills. It's like great at the anybody ready to surrender end of the 18 I said isn't that a shame what a shame you have the same thing all over all over Europe in particular you have windmills all over the place some of the countries prohibited but uh people want to know that these these windmills are

very destructive they're environmentally unsound just the exact opposite because the environment is they're not really there's like you know 20 more seconds but we're going to we're going to We have to stop. And if you're eating, I apologize as Donald Trump with another failed, failed attack, a brutal attack on the English language, a failed attempt to communicate. So that was not about policy or energy. That's a man unraveling in real time, drifting between personal grievance, fantasy golf courses, conspiracy theories about whales that are loco and deeply confused commentary, I guess on soil composition.

That was a decompensation. Trump's obsession with windmills has always been weird, but this is an entirely different thing. Rambling, tangential, factual errors, emotional outbursts. If Biden ever said one-tenth of this nonsense, it would be a week of headlines and hours of panels on CNN about whether he's fit for office. But it's crickets when it's Trump, five minutes on camera saying windmills are. are making whales. They're going loco. And the windmills rust and rot in eight years. You can't turn them off. The soil fibers are not the right ones. This is sort of the privilege of being

pathologically erratic, which is any one unhinged outburst doesn't get that much attention. People stop reacting. But this isn't just embarrassing. This is dangerous. And we know that cornered people will lash out and often their faculties suffer, the more cornered they are. And that is exactly what is happening with Donald Trump. Tulsi Gabbard is angry again, not about Russia, not about disinformation. Tulsi's mad because the media isn't giving her latest Nothing Burger conspiracy theory the attention she believes that it deserves. Now, let me catch you up, catch you up as to what's going on here. As director of national intelligence in Trump's administration, Tulsi Gabbard just last week, miraculously at a time very convenient for Donald

Trump, concocted a conspiracy theory, a sort of right-wing fantasy, that Russia Gate was a deep state hoax carried out by Barack Obama and Hillary. And it was all meant to do a coup against Trump. No one is covering it really because it's completely unbelievable. And Tulsi's mad. Why won't anybody cover my conspiracy theory? Why? Thanks, Rachel. Thanks for continuing to bring this story to the forefront because of the magnitude of the implications of it. It's been interesting to see how the mainstream media has either refused to cover this story at all, the headlines or the lack of thereof of newspapers washington post new york times and others in the days following this release have have actually been quite deafening in their lack of coverage oh and it's interesting

no one's fallen for my conspiracy theory why seem to see how when they do cover this they don't actually cover the revelations that these intelligence reports and the evidence uh that that that we released actually conveys to the American people. They simply talk about their criticisms of it or convey Democrat politicians criticisms of it, but none of them actually dealing with the truth that has been revealed. And to me, we're going to get to that truth in a moment. There's two reasons for that. Number one is they don't want the American people to know the truth, but also they recognize the mainstream media's complicity in this, that they were fed early lines from this manufactured false intelligence assessment that President Obama ordered

that John Brennan and James Clapper created without any vetting, without any actual journalistic integrity of looking at what they were being fed. They received it and they printed it almost immediately. And then they went on to double down and triple down on this over the next several years. I look back at, you know, the Iraq WMD, manufactured false intelligence to support an action to go to war in another country. And I went back and looked at the mainstream media's complicity and that and how many, did they ever admit that they were wrong, that they failed as journalists? Really, they didn't. They gave, a couple of them gave some lame excuses, but there's a lot of parallels here for us to take a step back and look at, again,

the magnitude of what has been revealed. You know, what's really funny here and sort of sad is that Tulsi's saying there's an analogy here. There's an analogy here between the media ignoring her revelations that Obama concocted the steel dossier and all of this stuff and the case made for war in Iraq on faulty claims of weapons of mass destruction. She almost got it. This is classic Tulsi.

By the way, she's rebranding herself again, right? It's a new Tulsi once again. The real analogy is their attempt to distract from the Epstein files with this concocted conspiracy is analogous to the false case about WMDs in Iraq that was made. The truth is that the Russia investigation resulted in dozens of indictments, prison sentences and clear evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 election. That's fact. Now, Tulsi is conflating two different things, which is Russia's ability, interest, and and, uh, um, wherewithal to carry out hacks on our election systems, which we assess they did not have the ability

to do in 2016 compared with did they prefer Trump over Hillary and do things on their own to try to make it more likely that Trump would win. And now what she's trying to do is retroactively justify every lie that Trump told along the way at a moment in time that would be convenient to take attention away from the Epstein fiasco. And because the media is not playing along with her, because it's an obvious nothing burger, she lashes out at them. She wants to pretend that she's whistleblowing, but she's just laundering propaganda through

a government office. And it's not working. The media isn't really biting. Even Fox News didn't quite know what to do with this rant. No one's trending the clips. No one's suddenly declaring her the new Edward Snowden or whatever. She expected and hoped for a firestorm that would take attention away from the Epstein scandal.

But no one's looking away because we're not falling for it, Tulsi. Tulsi wants a scandal and headlines. And what she has is a folder full of vague documents, a desperate need to stay relevant and re-engratiate herself with Donald Trump as Trump is running out of distractions. Nobody's falling for it. And that's what's really pissing her off. We're going to have more about this on our YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash the David Packman Show.

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I think you will too. Head over to sheathunderwear.com slash Pacman and get 20% off with code Pacman. The link is in the description. Was this Donald Trump's worst press conference ever? And it happened on foreign soil. Donald Trump is in Europe. He is claiming to be negotiating. He is claiming to be making deals. But it is one global humiliation after another. A reporter asked a very astute question. Are you rushing to get these deals done so that you can knock the Jeffrey Epstein story out of the news? Trump gets irate, which to me means that is exactly what he is doing. You know, on August 1st and beyond, okay? Mr. President, it's part of the rush to get this deal done. So, no, you got to be kidding with that.

No, had nothing to do with it. Only you would think that had nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with it, except it basically probably did. Now, another interesting moment came when Donald Trump was asked a very clear question in English. couldn't hear it the first time. The second time, it seemed he didn't understand it. And it seems that he simply doesn't understand it. The question is, should Israel be doing more to allow food into Gaza? Trump disoriented and confused. Should Israel be doing more to allow food into Gaza?

Now notice that that was an, that's not even a British accent. Oh, maybe Trump struggles with British accent. That is American unaccented English. food into Gaza. Say it? Should Israel be doing more to allow food into Gaza? What did she say? Should Israel be doing more to allow food into Gaza? Well, you know, we gave $60 million two weeks ago,

and nobody even acknowledged it for food. And it's terrible. You know, you really at least want to have somebody say thank you. No other country gave anything. We gave $60 million two weeks ago for food. for Gaza. As Ruth Ben-Giatt told us, these authoritarian strongmen, they need to be thanked. They want to be thanked.

They will demand that they be thanked. Now, there are really like three stories here. Story number one is authoritarian Trump demands thank yous. Classic story of authoritarianism. Go back to 20th century authoritarians. You will see it. Why haven't I been thanked? Why aren't people being grateful to me?

Story number two, again, Trump doesn't seem to know what he's being asked. Is it a hearing issue or is it a comprehension issue or is it both regularly needing multiple clarifications of questions? And then number three, he doesn't actually seem to have understood the question because the question is, should Israel be doing more to allow food into Gaza? The answer is, of course, you've got Benjamin Netanyahu there also, uh, uh, a, uh, a, uh, behaving the way we have come accustomed to these right-wingers behaving. And the answer is, of course, all else aside, all other opinions aside about what's going on there and Hamas and all these

other things, of course Israel should be doing more to allow food. And Trump goes well, but we sent 60 million. They're not even thanking me. The topic of incompetent Democrats came up because Trump brought it up. And again, incoherent, angry, lashing out. Blaming others. Going into our country, and I think it's the hottest. And by the way, one year ago, our country was dead. We had a dead country because of an incompetent president and incompetent Democrats. All they know how to do is talk and think about conspiracy theories and nonsense.

If they'd waste their time talking about America being great again, it would be so much nicer, so much easier, be very successful. If these Democrats could just get out of the way. And then finally, and we looked at just this little bit earlier, ultimately it's all about Trump. Trump hates windmills. So he attacks the fact that there are windmills visible from his golf course. And of course, everything is superlatives. Everything is hyperbolic. The best golf course in the world happens to be Trump's. I would love to see. I mean, today I'm playing the best course I think in the world, Turnberry. even though I own it, it's probably the best course in the world, right? And I look over the horizon and I see nine windmills.

It's like great at the end of the 18th. I said, isn't that a shame? What a shame. You have the same thing all over. All over Europe in particular. You have windmills all over the place. Some of the countries prohibited, but people ought to know that these windmills are very destructive. They're environmentally unsound, just the exact opposite.

Because you know, when I look out there and by the way, he's talking about wind turbines, not windmills. Windmill is a different thing. You can find a lot of pictures of windmills from the 1800s, but Trump's talking about wind farms, wind turbines. When I look out and I see those and they're relatively common in the northeast of the United States, I say that's really cool. We're not burning and pumping carcinogenic fossil fuel, uh, uh, particulate into the atmosphere. we're just harnessing the wind for electricity. That's phenomenal. But Trump gets angry and he's

always angry at other people and everything is always everybody else's fault. But if you think this press conference was bad and it was, you should see what happened this morning with bagpipes. Let me explain. Donald Trump authoritarian maniac this morning reiterated as bagpipes play in the background that he needs to be thanked for sending food aid to Gaza. Listen to this. It is beyond parity. This is, dare I say Kafkaesque, the bagpipes play as Trump attempts to demand thank yous as authoritarian's are want to do. Because you have a lot of starving people. You have people that, you know, the United States recently just a couple of weeks ago, we gave $60 million. It's a lot of money. No other nation gave money.

I know the prime minister would have you knew about it. And he really knows about it now because we're going to be discussing it. But we gave 60 million. Nobody said even thank you. You know, thanks. Somebody should say thank you. But other nations are going to have to step up. When I spoke to Ursula yesterday, she said that the European nations are going to step

up very substantially too. Why aren't people thanking me? a trip of potentially globally diplomatic, significant global diplomacy, if Trump were capable of it. And he's whining that he hasn't been thanked enough as bagpipes play in the background. How much embarrassment can a country take? Asked a question about a possible ceasefire in Gaza. Trump somehow ends up ranting about nuclear dust.

I kid you not. Do you think a ceasefire is even possible, Mr. President? Yeah, ceasefire is possible, but you have to get it, you have to end it. You're talking about, with Israel's, you're talking about there, because we have many ceasefires going on. The whole world is, if I weren't around, you'd have right now six major wars going on. India would be fighting with Pakistan. You see what we just did yesterday with two nations that we're trading with. And during the trade, I said, I'm not going to do any trade.

deal unless you guys settle your differences. And we got it settled in 24 hours. I mean, they just announced it was settled, which is a tremendous thing. But Serbia, Kosovo is another one. We have many hotspots that were at- Remember, the question was about a ceasefire in Gaza. I think a very big one was India and Pakistan, because you're talking about two nuclear nations. That was a very big one. And we get help from the UK. The prime minister's helped. We have cases. where we specifically need the help because somebody comes from here that you're aware of. And, you know, when you come from a country, you can do things and I call up the prime minister and all of a sudden, he's able to do things. True also with other presidents and prime ministers.

But we've done it. Nobody's ever done what we've done. We have six different major look. If you take a look at Rwanda. Just a reminder, the question was ceasefire, Gaza. Congo, Republic of the Congo. They've been fighting for 31 years, 8 million people dead. It was going on. Nobody could go to that part of Africa. They were being killed if to even walk there being killed with machetes. And it was a violent situation. And I was able to, they liked Trump. They wanted to make a trade deal with Trump. They wanted us to take their rare earth. They want to give us their rare earth. And I got to know the leader of the Congo. I got to know both of them indirectly. And I called him. I said, let's end the war. I don't want anything until you end

the war. And we ended the wars. You know, the foreign ministers came up two weeks ago. And the leaders are going to be coming very shortly to Washington, Rwanda. And reminder, the question was ceasefire, Gaza. And Congo. I mean, that's another one that we did. So we've, we've done a lot. It's an honor to do it. It's not hard for me to do it. And I use, not in all cases, but I use a combination of knowing them a little bit, or in some cases knowing them a lot. I knew, you know, the leaders of Pakistan and India, I know them very well. And they're in the midst of a trade deal, and yet they're talking about nuclear weapons. I say, this is crazy. So I said, I'm not doing a trade deal with you guys, and they want the trade deal. They need it.

I'm not doing a trade deal with you if you're going to have war. And that's a war that spreads to other countries. You'll get nuclear dust. We'll all get nuclear dust when they start using nuclear weapons. That is the weave, folks, also known as completely falling apart and losing connection with time and space. Ceasefire in Gaza, you're going to end up with nuclear dust everywhere. Finally, exhaustingly, Trump says free speech is important.

And Kier Starrmer goes, we've had free speech here. What is Trump talking about? Can you just have the importance of free speech today? Well, free speech is very important. I don't know if you're referring to any place in particular, perhaps they are, but we've had free speech for a very, very long time here. So we're very proud about that. The guy suing media outlets over what they say is now going around the world saying we've

got free speech, but not everybody does. hard to think of a more embarrassing diplomatic global trip. We're going to dig into the implications of this on our substack, which you can get at substack.daidpacman.com. Heather Cox Richardson joins me next. Are you planning any exciting trips? I've got a couple lined up. And one thing that I've learned is that being able to speak even a little bit of the local

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I just arrived with a little confidence that I can navigate a new place with some basics without having to pull my phone out every five seconds. Babel also has advanced speech recognition, which helps to fine tune your accent as you go. It's like having a tutor in your pocket. And Babel is giving my audience 60% off subscriptions at babel.com slash Pacman. The link is in the podcast notes. Rules and restrictions may apply. After dozens and dozens of requests from you, we finally did it. Heather Cox Richardson and I had a phenomenal conversation about this moment in American politics, about independent media,

about so many things. This aired live on my substack. Make sure you're subscribed there, substack. David Pakman.com. Here is that full conversation. Welcome, everybody. I am live once again today with Heather Cox Richardson. This is really, we've been trying to line this up for a while, and I'm so interested to talk to you, Heather, not only because I love the substance of what you write and so many people write to me and they say, David, you've got to have Heather Cox Richardson it on, but also because I'm so interested in talking to you really as a sort of pioneer in the substack space, which I see as a very interesting space and different from the space I've occupied for a while now. So this is great, and I really appreciate you doing it.

I'm looking forward to it, and it'll be fun to kind of chase down what's happening in the media, because your own media story is a really interesting one. And in a funny way, I think you when I both got into this kind of sideways rather than head on. Is that accurate, you think? Yeah. I mean, I got into this through boredom in college and, you know, saying I want to do something on a microphone is really like the start of the journey. And then I'm curious to hear from you about, you know, one of the things people often ask

me is to what do I attribute the growth of my show? and a lot of it is just timing and odds in the sense that if I were to start now, a lot of the platforms I'm on are to a degree a lot more saturated than they were. And so when I started on YouTube, there weren't as many people doing left-leaning politics. And so I think I had the benefit of timing in a sense. and that's not something you can really manufacture, you know, it's just what are, what's going on in your life when the opportunity presents itself? And it might be a good time. It might not be a good time. Yeah, I would say the same thing, that timing is everything. But that being said, one of the things that always jumps out to me is that, you know, I think, I guess I'm going to speak for both of us. We're both pretty good at what we do. But at least for me, I look out the world and see there's, there's thousands of people who could do what I do just as well as I do. and that one of the roles that I have going forward is trying to highlight their voices. And that, because one of the things that I've found coming up through the years,

especially as a woman in the political sphere, in writing, the gatekeepers really didn't want to give me a lot of room. And being in a position now to open doors for other people is pretty cool. And it's its own kind of jaw as well, I think, and important to carry forward in this moment where everything is changing so quickly. And I don't just mean media. I mean ideas and the way we look at the world. We need as many new voices as we can possibly have rather than the same people who've been writing for, you know, 642 years in the same newspaper.

Well, that's really interesting you mentioned because one of the things that I think about is, okay, so I have a public-facing content creation apparatus. And, of course, part of it is you do it for an audience. I do it as a creator of content for people who are looking to consume the content. That's number one. Layer two is because of the space that I'm in and I'm just giving my genuine, authentic and passionate view about the world and how I think the world might be better. I'm also trying to create, I don't know if I would call them activists, but certainly involved citizens who say, ah, okay, I understand the connection between what David's talking about

and why I can or can't afford health care or housing or how education is. So I'm certainly going to vote and figure out what other ways I can get involved. But then layer three, and I think this might be what you're driving at a little bit, is I also want to encourage more people to become content creators. And so even though there's often this 80, 20, you know, 20% of the creators get 80% of the views, and it might even be more skewed than that, I think we are better off if there are a thousand, 10,000, 100,000 people doing what I do. And yes, some people will have larger audience and some smaller. But I think the ecosystem and society is better off. The more people that I can

convince not just to get involved in your community, but even to think about creating content as well. I don't know how you see that. Yes, except I agree with you, except my project is something very different. And the first thing I would say is that it is my observation that the most powerful thing anybody can do is actually to produce content. You know, so much of what is out there is filler, and it makes me crazy to, you know, to try and listen to somebody and they do what I call throat clearing. It's like, once you're alive, tell me something that I don't know, because my time is really very short. And I think what really rises to the top are people who are giving you good, new information. And that is really, to me, really, always really exciting. But the other piece for me is

that I, you know, I write the letters every night, and they are really a record of what's happening in the United States of America in this fraught moment. And so they're kind of different from journalism or anything else. They are really a record. And I do write them with the idea that these are things that in 150 years, a graduate student is going to look back and be able to use quite literally, because when you write history, there are key diaries that we go to to see what happened in a certain moment and nothing makes you more frustrated than when you're like, oh, I can't wait to see what George Strong had to say about this battle or that battle. And you get there and he's like, ah, took the day off. You're like, no, no, you can't take the day off, which is one of the reasons.

I always try and cover everything in a, you know, either in a day or if I take a day off. But that's different than what you and I are doing here and what I do on my webcasts is one is certainly sharing information because I believe you have to have good access to good information in order to make good decisions about your life. But also, in those circumstances, then I am indeed trying to get people involved in changing the country, both by providing good information, but also by telling people how to change things, how to get involved, and so on. And those weirdly, for me, are two entirely different projects. They often overlap in the content, but they, you know, people get very frustrated. Every day I get people saying, please write about this

in your newsletter, whether it's a rally or something they want people to organize around. And I will say, I can't because that's not what that project is. But I'll be happy to talk about it on social media. And it's a very different project across all my platforms, actually. There's like two or three things there that I think are maybe 10 or 15 minutes from now in our conversation. But before we get to those what's your approach in terms of there are people who create content who write etc who when you ask them what's your strategy what are your tactics they have 10 15 20 different things they've thought about the time of day that they publish they've thought about the style that they write in they have a very crafted perspective on you know when i write this number of words it does way better

than when I write that number of words. My instinct is, and I'm curious to see you either say yes or no, my instinct is you don't think about any of those things. I am sitting here amused beyond belief. It never occurred to me that anybody did that. Although I can certainly tell you, you know, I, the sweet spot for writing on social media is 800 words. And when I write, you know, I used to have a history magazine. I always aimed for 800 words. I don't think about any of those things, except that I know. that on rare occasion, only very rare occasions, will I go beyond, I think of it in terms of Google Doc pages. My sweet spot is two and a quarter Google Doc pages. I wrote on immigration recently, and that went to four Google Doc pages, but that was a very comprehensive look at the history of the U.S.-Mexico border in the 20th and 21st centuries, and you just couldn't do it in fewer words. But no, I don't give any thought to any of that at all. I know that I get a lot more readers if I publish before midnight Eastern time in the U.S. The number of times I've actually managed to make that deadline, probably you could count on two hands. I don't give that any thought

at all because I'm actually not in this as a creator who is trying to create a job around it. I'm in it as somebody who is trying desperately to keep the record accurately. And if that takes me all night, so be it. And if that means I can publish early, so be it. And I never think about the words, except that I have a really, really, really short attention span. So if I'm bored, I quit because I figure if I'm bored, everybody else can be bored to. So do you do that? Which part of it? The part of like planning all that stuff out. No, it's not. So the way it works in my space is since I do this every day like you do for many years, you develop an intuition that is less about sitting down, but I know that my audience is mostly active after 3 p.m. Eastern time.

We just published almost everything after 3 p.m. Eastern time. I know that my audience prefers content that is salient to domestic politics more so than foreign policy. You kind of just build up a picture through a combination of doing it, getting the feedback very quickly, and then also comments. And this was something that I wanted to talk to you about. This may come as a surprise to you or not, but half of the people I hear from despise me, despise what I say, anti-submitted comments, go back to Argentina, you know, just horrible, horrible stuff

to which you just kind of have to develop a thick skin. There's no other way around it. I have friends who do very different types of podcasts, for example, and they go, everybody loves what I do. I only, everybody I hear from says what I'm doing, is absolutely fantastic. Because what you do is tangential, but really quite different from what I do, I'm curious in terms of the feedback. Do you hear from what we might call haters? Oh, every day, every day, a lot of them. But you know what's really interesting is I don't think

of what I do in a way as media. I think of it as a classroom. And to that end, oh, I lost you. Yeah, that was true. I lost you for a second. Okay. To that end, anybody is welcome. And that does not mean you have to have any kind of a political slant or anything. Anybody is welcome so long as they come with facts because that's the whole point of my enterprise is to encourage the idea of the free exchange of ideas with the concept that really sparked the enlightenment or pushed the enlightenment that this is how you achieve sort of an understanding, a better understanding of the world. You want to be pushed back, you know, and I love to argue. I was trained in a, in an educational system that urged us to learn to argue based on.

on ideas, and that is still my favorite thing in the world to do. But here's the trick to that. I operate by what I call my, sorry about this, but the pee on the rug principle, anybody is welcome in my classroom, just like anybody is welcome in my house. But if you're going to pee on the rug, I'm going to ask you to leave. And then, you know, you've given up your right to be included in a polite conversation about whatever's at stake. And it's really interesting to me because I get people who come in to comments or especially comments, but who are furious when they can't just start making ad hominem attacks and so on. They're like, you know, you have no right to silence me. I'm like, pee on the rug principle. You are welcome to be here engaging, but you may not come in

and pee on the rug. So I get those, but then I also get a lot of ad hominem attacks on my email. And those are really interesting to me because, like I say, you know, I have friends across the political spectrum. And you are more than welcome. And I've learned a ton, especially about military strategy from friends who, at least in the past, would have been far right now. They're centrist compared to where the mega Republicans are. And I quite enjoy that. But in the comments when people are angry at me, what I get is simply, you're an idiot. You're dumb. You're a left wing, whatever. And my favorite of all time was after I'd written something, I got an email that. said, and I will quote it in its entirety, you are dumb.

And I was like, oh my God, my life is over. I'm like, you know, that just doesn't move any ball forward at all. You just got to ignore that and figure that's just a knee jerk. I don't like what you're saying, so I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears and go, la, la, la, la, la, so I don't have to listen to it. What do you think right now? Because as you said, you write about a different, you know, pretty significant breadth of topics. there are those who right now believe that the key sort of overarching important narrative

is about authoritarianism right now. There are others who would say it's about misunderstandings and bad ideas about how economies should be organized, for example. You know, I'm sort of like riffing here, but there is not widespread agreement even among those who believe that this is sort of a critical point in American history, an inflection point potentially. There's not necessarily agreement about on what basis is this such a critical point. Do you have a strong feeling in these kind of broader buckets or overarching categories? Looking at what's going on today in the context of other historical periods that you've studied, what would you expect to be the big story, as you say, in 150 years when people look back at the country right now?

All right. So I will answer that if you will answer it after I do. Okay. Fair enough. Okay. So, yes, remember, I'm a historian and I am what we call an idealist, which means that I believe ideas change society. And the way you change society is you change the way people talk about ideas, which you cover so well in the echo machine. And that means that what I am constantly looking for is the way people are thinking and talking about what's going on around us. So there are a lot of really important stories out there right now, but the larger tides, if you will, the larger waves, look to me like we are reaching a crisis point, not a surprise, that is showing us the rise of authoritarianism in the United States, in part because we had a political party get taken over by an oligarchic elite that began to

use the political system in order to serve themselves rather than serving the good of the American people. Now, what's happening in this moment, though, that is so interesting, of course, and this could go either way. They could win, and we could end up with full-on authoritarianism, or they could lose. And what's interesting to me in the larger, let's say this moment, as in the last several weeks or months and going forward looking at the same period of time, is it looks to me very much like the late 19th century, when in the 1880s and the 1890s, you got the rise of the robber barons. You got their takeover of the White House and the Senate and the Supreme Court and real inroads on the House of Representatives. They get new states, all sorts of things that

add up to them controlling the United States of America. And yet, within that, there were people who clung very tightly to the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the idea of human self-determination. In that case, within the Republican Party, so they ended up getting elected as Republicans and yet turning the country on a dime to give us the progressive era. And that was people like Theodore Roosevelt. Now, I'm looking, so that's sort of what I've been watching for. And I think you are starting to see it in a number of places with the new voices coming up in all these different areas, not just in the media, but in art and in music and, you know, all the different ways in which people are engaging with the world in new exciting ways. But in the moment that you and I are talking,

which is July 17th or 16th, 16th, I guess. 16th, yeah. I am absolutely fascinated, fascinated by the extraordinary power of the Epstein files to have derailed Donald Trump. Because I've been watching this guy like a hawk now for almost exactly six years. And before that, I was engaged as well. But, I mean, I have lived in the news for six years. and his hallmark has always been, no matter what went wrong, he managed to marshal his forces and literally the next day,

it was almost like a seesaw. Things are bad, things are good. Things are bad, things are good. Now it's been over a week, and he cannot get his feet underneath them, and he is essentially now turning against his followers. So if you go from the very broad thing, broad tides to the waves, now we're down to a splash, and this moment, This moment that we are in feels, again, and that's not scientific, it feels different to me

because the push against Trump is coming from within MAGA rather than from without it. So that's the big to the small. How about you? Okay, so it's interesting. You don't think Donald Trump not getting a Nobel Peace Prize is the story of our time. That's very, I'm surprised to hear that. No, I'm kidding. No, listen, as a non-historian,

It seems to me that this time is unique because so many of the things that for several hundred years now have been sort of bedrock American principles are a little bit of a question mark when we talk about should the winner of an election get to hold the office to which they were elected. That's something which in 2020 with Trump's claims about the election, it started to be sort of a question mark. Is the judiciary to be received and court orders followed. Like, do we have law order and due process or don't we? Are Americans, American, or on a whim, can we denaturalize people, whether it's Rosie O'Donnell or, you know, a free press? Do we have a free press or do we have an administration that says convenient reporting gets to do whatever if we are getting antagonized or? or critical reporting or whatever, all of a sudden we want to clamp down.

So all, to me, all of this is under the umbrella of authoritarianism and just the basic principles on which the country was built. My cautious optimism is that this is going to be an inflection point where we're kind of getting close to moving away from those things, but then we actually recognize their importance and go back to them.

And it's funny you bring up Epstein because I have not been like a, Epstein Truther who follows the Epstein story. I find it interesting only because that split that we're now seeing, Steve Bannon saying, if the files don't come out, Republicans will lose 40 seats in November of 26. Trump's saying that the story is BS and even some of the Republicans got duped. It's such a relatively minor story, but it, because of the timing, I guess I would say, it seems to have the potential to actually take this inflection point and point it a little bit back in what is hopefully a better direction is my cautious optimism. I don't know how you see it. So just to be clear,

I think you misspoke there. It's a minor story in terms of politics, but a very major story for the people who lived through it. And I know that's what you meant, but just because I'm going to save you some hate mail tomorrow. Oh, I might have misspoken there. Yes, I think you misspoke. So a couple of things that I think reflect back on where you started. And that's that we are certainly in a period in which people are not honoring the principles that were articulated at the beginning of the establishment of the American nation. But even then, of course, they were honored solely in the breach. And so when we look at this moment, which is terrifying, of course, for all of us,

we can point to a lot of places that looked a lot like it. And what's jumping to mind here is the 1920s when, in fact, we had the rise of the Ku Klux Klan for a second time in the United States. And it was really taking over governments in a number of states. It started in Indiana, but it spreads all across the country. And a lot of people jump into the KKK at that point because it is not just anti-Black in the American South at the time. It's also anti-immigrant across the entire rest of the country. And the reason I bring that up is it looks in some ways. like this moment with Epstein. That is, a lot of people grabbed hold of the rise of the KKK in that

period because they believed that the KKK was going to be protecting white womanhood from, you know, immigrants especially because, as I say, it really takes off in Indiana. And, you know, it's big in Maine. I mean, it's important in a lot of places. But what happens is it, people start to turn against it because it's corrupt, but they're not really obviously turning against it. And then the leader actually ends up raping and murdering a young white woman. And the KKK just explodes because what it had been about at heart was this idea that people who had felt that the modern world was leaving them behind could reassert what they thought of as their community values on the country through this organization, only to find out that they had been used. And if you look at the degree to

which QAnon was important in the re-election, first the support for Trump, but then the re-election of Donald Trump in 2024 and the number of people who really believed that he was going to tear apart this cabal of Hollywood actors and Democratic politicians and so on who were raping and cannibalizing young girls, young white girls, to have him now say, oh, forget about it. that's not important, you're watching them turn on him. But to go back to where you started, that is all very important. But what really managed in the 20s, but also in the 1890s and the 1850s and so on to turn the ship of state around back to democracy was the articulation again of those American principles and the people who fought and died for them. And you know,

you talk about that in the echo machine, but the idea of honoring our history, not just the wars or not just the movements or not just the many times in which we got things wrong, but also the defense of the bedrock principles of human self-determination and the American democracy that enables people to live that self-determination. That's what people jumped on board. Those are the value, you know, we might not agree with each other about how to repave the roads, but by God, we can agree that we don't want to turn our government over to an oligarchy or to an authoritarian. And that's the other piece, I think, of what you and I do. I want to get your, really your advice about a question I get often in this moment that we've just described from people in my audience, that I sort of struggle

to feel really good about how I answer it, but I'll tell you how I do, and then maybe you can give me some feedback, which is people will call me. This is an example call, and they'll say, hey, I have a trans daughter and I live in Mississippi. I'm thinking of, do I leave the state? Do I leave the country if I'm able to do it? And my reaction to these sorts of questions is sort of twofold. It's at the 40,000 foot level, I know that if the good influences leave, either the states that are doing it wrong or even leave the country we're sort of seeding control

to the people with the worst instincts and those who can't afford to leave or are not in a life position where they can leave they're getting screwed right in a way if the right instincts all go for you know greener pastures it's a problem at the 40,000 foot level

and simultaneously how can I tell someone who says I have a practical problem David here's the laws as they are changing in my state and I'm in this particular situation how could I possibly help someone you're wrong for doing what you've calculated is the best thing for you and your family.

So I can't criticize you if you do it, but someone needs to stay also because otherwise we're kind of giving up in a sense. How would you advise people in this general situation in the United States right now? Okay, so I'm not in the business of giving people advice in general, but I will tell you what I would say were I in that position. One is that you got to protect your kids. You know, that's, do you have children?

I do. Yeah, I mean, if your parents aren't going to stick up for you, who is. So that's number one. You've got to stick up for your kids. So you make the decisions that are best for your children, whatever that looks like. Now, that being said, I have kids as well, by the way. So that being said, so I'm going to change the equation a little bit and say that in this moment, when we have the population distribution the way we do, this is the moment where people like me, especially older white women, who are the least likely to be attacked by ICE, for example, should be standing up for those people and are standing up for those people. And this is the advice I often give to young black men or young men of color when they say they feel like they should be out in the streets.

And my answer to that is only if you let people like me go in front of you because this is our time to reinforce those things that we believe in. And absolutely we need all hands on deck. But the thing that I try and do is get people like me out to show solidarity and to be out in front. front because we are the ones who have the least to lose in some ways. And I don't mean to limit that just to older white women. We need older white men out there too, but we need a lot of them. Because again, one of the tricks that authoritarian use, especially in countries like the United States, that has a long history of racial conflict, is they look at people of color, especially young people of color or black Americans, and call them communists or suggest that they are

gang members or that they are somehow anti-American, it's a lot harder to look at somebody like me or somebody who's in a wheelchair or somebody who's 90 and say, that's it, you're about to knock over a bank. So, yes, we do need people to stand up in those areas, but we also need people like me to stand up. And I think you're seeing it. I think that's one of the things that was so important about the No Kings rally is that a lot of those rallies were in Republican-dominated states and small towns. And they were older white people. And so, you know, it's a funny movement in this moment because so often we think of movements. We think of the civil rights movement in its latest phases where it was really driven primarily by young black women and young black men.

This might be a movement that needs to be driven by older white people. And, you know, it's our time. Last thing I want to ask you about, and it does relate pretty directly to this, which is I right now have a sense and also have five or six different data points to suggest that I don't think the Trump administration is going to come after me per se. But only during this presidency has an official rapid response Twitter account attacked pieces of my content, for example. Only under Trump have, I mean, you know, Don Juno. year once weaponized his base against me, et cetera. So I guess my question is, for someone in your

position right now, one of the largest substack followings, and this is not trivial stuff that you're writing about, it's hugely consequential from a policy and sociocultural standpoint. Do you have a personal sense that you could be targeted by this administration? Oh, sure. I mean, we all do. But, But, you know, the way I even got involved in this, I'm not sure you know this story. The way I got involved in doing what I do was after Trump was elected in 2016, I had been, many years ago, I was put on what was called a terminate list. Theoretically, somebody wanted to terminate my job because, although obviously the name was unfortunate, because of something that I had written in a children's magazine. about Lincoln trying to work within the Constitution when he was president, which is just established as a historical thing.

You can agree with it or you can not agree with it, but we have the documents on that. I've never given it any thought, but it certainly appears that when he created his professor watch list, Charlie Kirk, who later became the person directing Turning Point USA, reached back to that list, and he put me on that professor watch list. And I, I, I mean, there'd never been any complaints about how I teach, you know, I'd been asked by the conservative organization, students' organization, to advise them as well as by the young communists, because I just, you know, that's, that's, as you know, in a university, your political leanings, if you're teaching right, shouldn't really matter. And I don't think they did. So I, um, I remember coming downstairs. And all of a sudden, my, phone and my Facebook and everything was exploding over having been included on this list. And I was concerned for my children who were young at the time. And I said to my kids, I said, I can shut up if you want. And I feel like I should because I'm worried about you. And my son said to

me, if we can't trust you to speak up, mom, who can we trust? And for me, that was a really big deal. I was like, well, you know, expletive it. I'm going for it. You're not going to shut me up. And so I wrote back, you know, I wrote a post on Facebook saying that America was, that I was not going to shut up, that America was worth fighting for, and it went viral, and one thing led to another, and they kind of created me. And the end of the day, we need to, people like me, who at this point have very little to lose compared to, as you say, somebody with a trans child in Mississippi, people like me have to have to live the country that we expect to see and if something happens to me an older woman whose children are grown and all that I'm not suggesting other people

should put themselves out there like this that's itself a part of history as well and that being said also people like me are not stupid that is I do expect that I certainly could be a target But if I am, I have not put myself in this position lightly or without pretty serious coverage. That's amazing. You know, my daughter is too young to even understand what I do right now. But I hope that when she does understand it, that she would have that same reaction. That's a really poignant thing to hear. Heather Cox Richardson, I can't thank you enough for doing this.

For my viewers and followers, absolutely subscribe to her substack, one of the best. If I'm the one who's new to you and you're one of Heather's followers, I would be flattered if you subscribe to my substack as well. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time and I hope that we're able to do this again. I'd love to. That'd be fun. Thanks, David. All right. Thank you so much. Take care. Bye. Donald Trump has already packed his second term cabinet with loyalists. He's threatened deportation as political punishment. He's expanded executive authority in ways we have not seen in modern history.

These are real changes that are happening right now. And what's even more alarming is that a lot of the media is either glossing over the worst of it or they're reframing it. So it all sounds a little more palatable. And that is why I use ground news. This is a news comparison tool. Doesn't just feed you headlines. It shows you, here's how different outlets left, right center, are covering the same story.

And this is one of the few tools I know of that can really help you detect the political spin, the bias, catch stories that your usual sources might downplay or not cover at all on everything from immigration policy to economic shifts. If you want to get a bigger picture, a broader picture of what's being reported, ground news is an invaluable source to keep you informed. and Ground News is offering my audience 40% off their top tier Vantage plan. You'll only pay five bucks a month. Go to ground.news slash Pacman or enter the code Pacman in the app to get started.

The link is in the description. One approach that people can take when they get called out for lying or for having the facts wrong is to say, you know what, you're right. I misspoke. I was misinformed. I have the wrong information. A different approach that people can take when they get called out for either lying or having the facts wrong is to just steamroll and to go, I don't care what you said. I don't really

care what you claim the facts to be. I'm right and I'm sticking with it. And that is exactly what happened to Republican Senator Mark Wayne Mullen. He was on CNN. And part of the play that Republicans are pushing is to try to associate either Obama or Biden or Obama or Biden with Epstein related stuff. And one of the latest ones is arguing that Epstein got this sweetheart deal from a prosecutor under Obama. The dates don't line up for that. That non-prosecution agreement was made in 2008 when Bush was president.

And importantly, Alex Acosta, the U.S. attorney who made the deal, ultimately went and worked under Donald Trump. Mark Wayne Mullen is confronted with this reality. He doesn't care what the facts are. And that's why Attorney General Bondi was saying for one. Well, then tell me why for much she was saying that she's going to release the information tomorrow. We made the assumption that the judges were to release the order and allow the evidence that they had that it could be heard. But it's all been sealed. And so if it's been a sealed case, we can't release it until the judges allow us to release it. And you would think common sense would play. That's why they asked for transparency. We want transparency. We want the judges to have transparency in this too. But remember,

there was a plea deal that was struck in 2009. Way before I was in office, way before Trump was even considering to be in office, way before Pam Bonnie was office, way before Cash Fettel was a director, 2009, there was a sweetheart plea deal that was made underneath the Obama administration with Epstein. That's not right. That's not. That sweetheart has not been exposed. It was 2000. I was not? Well, when was the case? It was 2008.

It was the U.S. attorney at the time was a guy named Alex Acosta. He was a Bush appointee. He went on to become President Trump's Secretary of Labor. It all took place. That is all absolutely correct. In 2008. Who was in office at the time? 2008, George W. Bush was in office at the time.

George W. Bush. No, 2009 is when the case came out, and Obama was in office at the time. It's not true. would think that Mark Wayne Mullen might go, oh, you know what? Maybe I do have the facts wrong on this. Maybe I have the timing wrong because indeed Epstein's plea deal was in June 2008. Bush was president. It was overseen by U.S. attorney Acosta, who later went to work for Trump. Obama didn't start till January 2009. But Mark Wayne Mullen just doubles down. He doesn't want to accept the truth. Even weigh in on that.

And by the way, notice how here Mullen shifts to when the documents were sealed, which I'm going to come back to. But this is what's called moving the goalposts. I'll go back to what you're saying by it wasn't true. The case was sealed in 2009. That's absolutely true. It was heard in 2008. It was sealed in 2009. The point is that the sweetheart deal, which was completed in 2008, was under the Bush administration, U.S.

attorney Alex Acosta. That's why Alex Acosta resigned in the first Bush administration, because the Miami Herald had written this story in 2018 about how Epstein got away with so much. And then in 2019, the U.S.

attorney, under President Trump, Jeff Berman, in the Southern District of New York, then brought charges against him. So, I mean, there is stuff to say that you could point to that say, like, President Trump did this or President Trump did that. And remember, in 2019, President Trump and his administration called for it to be unsealed at that time, too.

It went silent and not a word was said during the Biden administration, not a word, nothing was said during the Biden administration. People can look it up. The sweetheart deal was 2008 during the George W. Bush administration. But I always appreciate it. So notice how Mark Wayne Mullen shifts in this second clip. He thinks, okay, maybe Jake Tapper is right about the timing of that. Let me just focus on when the documents were sealed.

And of course, when the documents were sealed has nothing to do with number one, who made the deal. Number two, who was president when the deal was made? And number three, which president did Alex Acosta ultimately go and work for? And it was Donald Trump. If you are conspiratorial, if you want to find meaning in all of these different shiftings of loyalties, the natural conspiracy would be Trump rewarded Acosta for doing that deal. Because by doing the non-prosecution of Epstein, it prevented Trump.

Trump's name from coming out as having been associated with him. That's if you want to create some kind of meaning in all of this. And Mark Wayne Mullen just doesn't even accept the facts. This is the problem that I write about in my book, by the way, when we aren't even arguing as to the meaning of the facts because we've not even gotten them to acknowledge what the facts are. I want to talk to you today about the most suspicious thing that I've ever seen on YouTube. And it has everything to do with a YouTuber named Benny Johnson. Now, I published a piece on substack about this where I go into even more detail, but let me explain what this is about. I've been publishing political content to YouTube for a very long time. If you dig way back,

you'll find videos from 2009. They make me cringe, yes, but after 15 years on this platform, you learn a few of the things that are just reality. Number one, video performance is unpredictable. You think a video will do well. It doesn't. You think a video will do okay. It blows up. You just sometimes don't know. Number two, if you talk, talk about politics, half your audience will hate you, at least the ones that comment. And this is the key part for us. New subscribers track closely with video views, unless something weird is going on. To get more new subscribers, you have to have more video views. If your video views go down, you're going to have fewer new subscribers, except if something very weird is happening. And this

Welcome, everybody. We start today thinking back to Watergate. Let me explain. As Donald Trump's second term now is really getting swallowed up by the growing scandal around the Epstein files, it is really time to ask a serious question. Is this the thing that finally breaks Trump? Now, not his presidency. I'm not pretending Trump's going to be kicked out depending on what's in the Epstein files.

But does this break Trump's legacy? does this break the future of MAGA? I'm always honest when Frank with my audience, this scandal is not going to end Donald Trump's term. There is not a realistic path to removing Trump, really no matter what is in those files. But it is sort of seeming like the Epstein files could end up really defining how history remembers Donald Trump. And if we look at past scandals, the parallels really feel familiar. We have new polling out, Trump's approval ratings down to 37, and the drop is significantly driven by independence and even by some Republicans who increasingly believe Donald Trump is indeed covering something up with regard to Epstein. And so Trump was already

an unpopular president, but he's getting more and more toxic as a result of this. And what's fueling it as often is the case is Trump's response, the White House's response, the the leaked reports of DOJ meetings with Jelaine Maxwell and the frantic deflections and the perception that not only is Trump covering something up, he's willing potentially to hand out a pardon to Jelaine Maxwell to try to keep covering it up. So if we zoom out a little bit and look at the historical playbook, we of course look to Watergate, the sort of gold standard of scandals, and Nixon didn't fall because of the crime. It really, in a way, it started with a break-in at the DNC, but it was the cover-up that was the issue.

Two years of investigations that uncovered abuse of presidential power, obstruction, paranoia and secrecy inside the White House, and ultimately Republicans turning on Nixon being forced to resign to avoid impeachment, which seemed clear was going to happen. And we have other examples. You look at Andrew Johnson in 1868, impeached for defying Congress during Reconstruction, survived by one vote, but was a total lame duck with no political power after that. That could happen to Trump. You look at Reagan and the Iran-Contra affair where money was funneled to Nicaraguan rebels illegally. Reagan claimed ignorance, accepted responsibility.

was allowed to hang on, but it really heard his legacy. Clinton's impeachment was different. He had this affair with Monica Lewinsky, survived impeachment for lying after lying about it, because the public really saw it as personal, not presidential misconduct. And Clinton's approval ratings actually went up during the whole thing. By the way, side note, Clinton who left office decades ago is still younger than Donald Trump right now, Clinton's a few months younger than Trump. We then look at Joe Biden's exit in 24, which really wasn't a scandal in the traditional sense. It was a moment, right? The June 27th debate

where Biden unraveled took less than a month for him to go to I am the from I am the best shot to beat Trump to I'm getting out. And Biden's presidency was very successful. But that final 28 days has really become a lot of Biden's legacy, at least at the moment, and we'll see where it shakes out historically. So then it brings us to Trump. Here's why the Epstein scandal is different from other Trump scandals. Number one, it won't remove him, but it could destroy what's left of his legacy. If it indeed involves child sex trafficking in any way as connected to Trump, These are allegations that really have a sort of moral weight beyond partisanship. And importantly, even Republicans seem rattled and upset with Trump based on what's going on.

So the scandal right now is really tracking this classic arc of presidential scandals. You've got the revelation, the story breaks, it's often through reporting. That part has happened. You then have the cover up. The administration starts to scramble. there are denials and distractions or maybe worse. That's where we are right now. We don't yet know what's at the end of this. And then you get to accountability. And that's what we're waiting on. Either the president is able to weather the storm or he isn't. So if we go back to the original question,

is this Trump's watergate. What history tells us to watch is number one, where are Republicans on this? Nixon was fine until Republicans abandoned him and it became clear he would be impeached. If Republicans continue going the direction they've been going, it could be bad for Trump. Second, public opinion, sustained low approval will give Republicans permission to say we can't stay behind him. Three, are there new revelations, right? Sometimes it's not a bombshell, but it's the drip, drip, drip of information that will tip the balance. And we don't still know. We still don't know what's in the Epstein files. And then finally, what's the institutional response?

Does Congress, do the courts, do career officials look the other way or do they hold the line? So the next few months are going to be crucial. Trump is trying to get everybody to move on. Will Trump end up in the history books next to Nixon primarily remembered for the Epstein scandal? Will it be more of a Reagan or Clinton scenario? It's almost never the crime that ends the presidency or destroys the legacy. It's the cover up and the lies.

And that's where we are right now. This was supposed to be a moment of global diplomacy for Donald Trump. And instead, Trump used his time on the world stage to deliver a completely unhinged tirade against windmills. We are going to have extensive coverage. of the current European trip of Donald Trump. But these few minutes of video, Trump alongside European leaders, speaking in this video alongside the EU's von der Leyen, Trump drifted into a barely coherent monologue mixing completely fabricated

numbers about immigration, unprovoked rants about bird deaths, bizarre claims about whale losing their minds, and it made even seasoned diplomats look around and say, what is happening to this guy's brain? Take a look at this. Hey, this is Dan Harris, host of the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm here to tell you about a new series we're running this September on 10% Happier. The goal is to help you do your life better. The series is called Reset.

It's all about hitting the reset button in many of the most crucial areas of your life. Each week will tackle a topic like how to reset your nervous. system, how to reset your relationships, how to reset your career. We're going to bring on top-notch scientists and world-class meditation teachers to give you deep insights and actionable advice. It's all delivered with our trademark blend of skepticism, humor, credibility, and practicality. 10% happier self-help for smart people. Come join the party.