The MeidasTouch Podcast - MAGA Mike Panics in Public as GOP Senate Betrays Him

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Republican Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson panicking and trying to run away from the press as GOP Senators betrayed him and betrayed Trump by immediately passing the vote to release the Epstein files by unanimous consent and Meiselas speaks with investigative reporter Ken Klippenstein about MAGA Mike’s next plan to work with Trump to invoke national security concerns to avoid turning over the files. Go to https://Superpower.com and use code: MEIDAS to get $50 OFF your annual Superpower subscription. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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long now? Nissan Blackfri month? Does that work? It's the Nissan Blackfri month event. On remaining 2025 Rogan Centra, get zero percent financing. Plus, get $1,000 Nissan bonus on kicks models. This Black Friday, you've got a whole month to catch all the exclusive offers waiting for you. See your local Nissan dealer or Nissan.ca for details. Conditions apply. Any reaction to Leader Thune, are you seeing the bill without adding amendments or changing it? I am deeply disappointed in this outcome. I think I'm told I've been at the state dinner. I don't know.

I was just told that Chuck Schumer rushed it to the floor and put it out there preemptively. It needed amendments. I just spoke to the president about that. We'll see what happens. So is he, do you think he made veto it? You say you spoke to the president? I'm not saying that. Is he supportive of it in its current form?

We both have concerns about it, so we'll see. I was staying in with the Crown Transmit involved. Are you frustrated in the majority leader? Are you upset with the majority leader? Run, Maga Mike, run. You see Maga Mike, they're panicking and running through the halls of the Capitol building yesterday after he was caught off guard when the Maga Republicans in the Senate

refused to object to the unanimous consent, to release the Epstein files that was put on the floor in the Senate. So we know that earlier in the day, the House passed the resolution to release the Epstein files via vote of 427 to 1.

The one MAGA Republican who voted against releasing the files was MAGA Republican Clay Higgins. It then went to the Senate. Maga Mike thought that he was having a productive conversation with the Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune and that they were

to add amendments to basically derail and kill the release of the Epstein files in the Senate. And Maga Mike was telling Donald Trump through a back channel that this isn't going to pass in the Senate, don't worry. And then the Democrats outmaneuvered the Republicans, Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, goes on the Senate floor. He requests unanimous consent to release the Epstein files. not a single Republican objects to it because which Republican wants to be the guy

or the gal who objects to the release of the Epstein files and therefore the Epstein files resolution in the Senate was deemed to have passed and the Senate therefore voted to release the files. So now it's passed in both the House and the Senate. What's supposed to take place next is Maga Mike's supposed to transmit the resolution from the House,

to the Senate which has already passed it and then it will immediately go on Donald Trump's desk and we can call Donald Trump's bluff to see if he's actually going to sign this thing or how he and Maga Mike are planning on derailing it. But Maga Mike thought that he had this thing rigged and wired and that the Republicans in the Senate were going to have his back and they did it. That's why Maga Mike is panicking right there. I'll just show you what Maga Mike was saying at a press conference that he held earlier in the day where he said, look, the Senate has all of these issues and the Senate's going to be objecting to these things. And I think the only reason I'm voting yes is because I've heard in the Senate that we're going to add some amendments to this because

Maga Mike thought that that would derail the release of the Epstein file resolution. Watch what Maga Mike said during a press conference earlier in the day. I'll tell you, there's a handful of Republicans, Judiciary Committee members, and a few others, who are really struggling as I have been about whether or not they could even vote yesterday because of this, because we don't have an absolute guarantee that this will be fixing the Senate. I have a high degree of confidence in that. And that's why, you know, that's why I'll be voting yesterday. So now what Maga Mike's fallback is, is that Maga Mike and Donald Trump plan to invoke national security in order to avoid. releasing the Epstein files. We'll see ultimately if Donald Trump vetoes the Epstein resolution on that basis. But you heard the reporter ask Maga Mike. Is Trump going to veto it? I can't talk about it. I'm not going to talk about it. But you see they didn't rule it out. But what they're prepping for right now is a way to invoke national security in order to block

the release of the Epstein files. Now Maga Mike when he was speaking on the floor yesterday, before the resolution to release the Epstein Files was voted on. He mentioned the term classified information, national security concerns. Remember what he said yesterday? Here, play this clip. Number five, national security concerns, okay? The discharge requires the Attorney General

to release within 30 days, quote, classified information to the maximum extent possible. This ignores the principle that declassification should always rest and always has rested with the agency that originated the intelligence. Why? So that they can protect their critical sources and methods. It is incredibly dangerous to demand that officials or employees of the DOJ declassify materials that originated in other agencies and intelligence agencies. Now take that and also look what Maga Republican James Comer, who leads the House Oversight Committee, what he said to lower

Ingram a day or so ago where he said, basically, we already have pretty much everything, 65,000 files. And he said, they, being the Trump regime, released all they could release, all they could release, in essence saying, we have everything that they were legally obligated to turn over. Here, play this clue. So why not just release the files? I mean, if there's nothing in there, who cares? Why not for transparency sake? And the administration, obviously, the administration said they were going to be released and then some were released but not all of them the president said go ahead and release them so just get it out there and have it done with well that's what i've encouraged the white out to do and they're working with us they've released what they can

legally release now you heard what he said there they released what they legally were required to release and this also coincides with Donald Trump's social media post where where he said, as I said on Friday, they could release the files and the House Oversight Committee can have whatever they are legally entitled to. Okay, these words are not just happenstance. They are being picked specifically. Now, the piece of paper that Maga Mike was holding was a document labeled the flaws of HR 4405 could re-victimize Epstein victims, create new victims, and damage the damage the

judicial system. By the way, when they talk about creating new victims, what Mag and Mike is suggesting, as disgusting as it sounds, is that the rich and powerful men who are in these files, they would now become the victims. And so he says, we need to protect them. I know it's sick, but that's what he means. But you go through this document, you go to subsection six, and it says national security concerns. HR 4405 requires the Attorney General to complete the release of information within 30 days, including to declassify classified information to the maximum extent possible. This raises two concerns. First, it may not be feasible to properly undertake such an extensive review in such a short

period of time. Second, it ignores the principle that declassification should rest with the agency that originated the intelligence so as to protect sources and methods. It is incredibly unwise to demand that DOJ declassified materials originated by other agencies. H.R. 4405 should be amended to direct relevant intelligence agencies to work with the Attorney General to declassify in a reasonable time frame. That brings me to Ken Clippenstein's article from yesterday. Epstein bill passes as top officials circulate plan to block transparency. An official document warns of national security concerns. I want to bring in Ken Clippenstein,

who authored this incredible piece on Substack, Ken, it's great to see you again. We're all trying to figure out what steps Donald Trump and Maga Mike have up their sleeve next to block the release, even if they pretend now they're supporting it because they know they were going to lose the vote. It seems where they're going, national security, and then they may raise other objections, but that they're going to say national security issues. Talk to us about your piece, Ken. Yeah, so it seems clear that.

the Trump administration is going to exploit people's concerns about national security generally, of which the president has all kinds of authorities and privileges, he's going to invoke those powers to prevent as much of the Epstein files from being released as possible. And that's clear from not just Mike Johnson, Speaker Johnson's comments that you played earlier, but also a document that, as was described to me, was being circulated on the hill as sort of talking points that they wanted to try to stress, it sounds like a lot of the Republicans didn't listen to it. I think they're under so much pressure, not just from their base, but the general American

public. There's polling suggesting 90% of Americans think that all of the Epstein files should be released, not just certain ones, all of them. So they're under enormous pressure. And because of that, I think we saw pretty much one guy echo the concerns laid out in that document, which listed what it described as five different, they called it flaws with the legislation that ironically ended up passing with Speaker Johnson's vote. So for whatever reason, he was able to get over those flaws. But number five on that is exactly what you were saying

just now, national security concerns. And the argument they make is that by publishing these things, who knows what's going to, you know, impede American interests? He mentioned sources and methods. That's a reference to the, you know, human sources, spies that the intelligence community relies on for its information, methods, things like NSA, wiretaps, signals, intelligence. But when you look at what the Justice Department of FBI pulled together in relation to Jeffrey Epstein, 300 gigabytes of information according to their own press release several months ago, to say that that is going to constitute anything close to a majority of that information is absurd.

I mean, maybe there's a little bit of that, but there's no way that's most of the information they've pulled together, you know, surveillance of Epstein and whoever is associates might have been. And it's like all this hand-wringing about something for which there's clearly overwhelming public interest. And this is coming from an administration where do you see hand-wringing when they want to slash the federal budget with Doge? Do you see hand-wringing when they want to deploy federal troops to American cities that don't, whose governors don't want them? Do you see hand-wringing when they want to blow up ships in the Caribbean? No, you don't see any of this legal hand-ringing. Suddenly, they're like attorneys worrying about all these potentialities.

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because of liquidity issues. What are you talking? He's making all. You're the guy who's saying there's $22 trillion invested. And now you're saying there's liquidity issues. So a legal analysis says you can't give SNAP benefits. And so anyway, I don't want to. We'll talk more about the Epstein files now, though.

It seems like it's a massive game of hot potato. You go back to February, the hot potato was with the DOJ, Pam Bondi, Cash Patel, Dan Buccino. They did the whole fake Epstein file binders. They had the influencers show up. It seems like decades ago, right? But that was back in February. The hot potato then basically left the DOJ, FBI, Patel,

and they kind of threw it and made it a MAGA Mike and Congress issue. Maga Mike then tried to throw the hot potato quickly to the Senate. Senator Thune and the MAGA Republicans there were like, we ain't touched in this. Schumer would go do your unanimous consent. We don't want anything to do with this, just pass this freaking thing. And now it's back with Donald Trump. and basically one of the the thesis of your article is that now Trump didn't get the help he was looking for in the House and the Senate.

Now it's back at Trump. We'll see what he does if he signs it or doesn't sign it. I'm sure there will be delay and, you know, I doubt it will happen instantaneously, but who knows. But even when he signs it, then the hot potato goes back to the DOJ, and now they're going to look for their contextual reasons not to turn it over. and they're going to say national security, ongoing investigation, rolling production, victims, renew victims. Those are their arguments, and they'll probably drip, drip, drip, a thousand documents a month, and then, look, we gave you this, we gave you that, and they're going to do everything

they can to avoid producing those documents that have Trump's name on. That's kind of what I think you suspect is happening. Yeah, exactly. Hot potato is a good word for it. This is something that maybe most of the country wants. It's hard to think of something that there's broader support for. I mentioned the 90% support that a CBS UGov poll found for releasing all of these things, not just some of them, all of them.

But it must be the only dozen or so guys who don't want to do it. It all happen to be in the Trump administration. Because not only have they pulled all these things together, and as was reported at the time, tasked, I think it was 1,000 FBI agents with going through all the different field offices and pulling together any relevant. information they could. They have it all centralized in one location. There's no more work that needs to be done. Literally all they would need to do is release that, redact whatever victim information they would need to. So in a sense, the hard work has already been done. But once

they finished that, they released a two-page summary of what the documents were. And the attorney general, Pam Bondi, said that, you know, we have all this stuff. But unfortunately, none of it is able to be released. And it's kind of like, I could see an argument for, you know, wanting to harm victims, that kind of thing. But to say that that's literally, like, you couldn't find anything. There's nothing in there, nothing in a years-long investigation into not just Epstein, but people associated with him. And according to that Justice Department release, a thousand victims affected.

This was a big investigation. And the size of that document, the size of those documents that they pulled together, the 300 gigabytes that I mentioned before, that speaks to the size of the investigation. So there's a lot there. And I think it's very hard to believe. believe that any substantial portion of that is going to involve state secrets or even victim information. Because it's not like they're just looking at victims. The FBI, as was described to me, they have investigators doing things like electronic surveillance of Epstein's home. They

have human intelligence to the form of informants. They have, you know, I mentioned camera. I mean, there's all kinds of ways that they collect intelligence. And to say that most of that, much less all of it is something that people can't see. It's just absurd. And it's not how they've approached other things. For instance, when I mentioned the boat strikes in the Caribbean, it's like minutes after those that they just blast out camera footage of it. And you're going to tell me that's not sensitive? We're getting that footage from drones. I mean, it's like actual killings that they just post to Twitter. But suddenly, oh, no, there's nothing we can release. It just, it seems absurd on its face. Right. No national security issues when it comes to release.

drone footage of war crimes and action. Yes, national security issues as it relates to Epstein sex trafficking ring, CERC 2000 to 29th. I mean, it absolutely doesn't make sense. But look, let's just say this before we go. The Trump, the emails from the Epstein estate, if you were to do like those word clouds or those word trees, like what name comes up the most? It would be Trump's.

I mean, it was unbelievable. I mean, I think Wall Street Journal did the analysis. that there was 23,000 emails, about 2,300 email threads, and over 1,600 of the threads somehow involved Donald Trump or Trump's name in it in disgusting, grotesque, odd, weird, and all sorts of ways. So we know that. So to the extent they produce a subset of documents again, and Trump's name's not on it, it's obviously going to raise red flags right away,

and this is just going to continue, right? It's just going to be like, we know. Because how could it be that these emails have Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump? He's like the main character. And then all of a sudden, the files don't when we know that when we know that Bondi and Patel told Trump his names like all over these things, I'll give you the final word. Yeah, I think it's worth stressing just how important the information that this legislation is going after that is the Justice Department of FBI holdings. Because those are going to be much more, provide much more insight into what. what Epstein was up to, then what we've seen, what was released about a week ago was very insightful

and you see people still tweeting out and discussing the emails. But that was pursuant to a subpoena to the Epstein estate. And so that would be what's in possession of Epstein's estate. But when you talk about the FBI, that's all the intelligence and information that they've, that they collected over the course of their investigations that I was describing before. So this is a completely different animal, not just larger, but I think would be more incisive to the, you know, intent, in activities that Epstein and whoever he knew was engaged, which, which again, a thousand victims, that's the Justice Department's finding based on all that information. So I think it is very clearly in the public interest that this stuff get released.

And again, the polling shows that that's something that an unusual degree of American degree on, which feels unusual these days. Ken Cleoppenstein, the Ken Clippenstein substack. Thanks so much for joining us. Good to be with you again. everybody hit subscribe here let's get to six million subscribers love this video support independent media and unlock exclusive content add free videos and custom emojis by becoming a paid member of our youtube channel today you can also gift memberships to others let's keep growing together