The MeidasTouch Podcast - Rep. Krishnamoorthi Responds to Trump’s Botched Cover Up

Episode Date: February 18, 2026

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Fox News panicking over Trump’s references in the Epstein as they try to distract with other stories and Meiselas interviews Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi about Trump digging the whole deeper for himself. 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 Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum with Dr. Steve Hassan: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan 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 On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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State regime media, which calls itself Fox is absolutely losing it as more information from the Epstein files are released with over 38,000 references to Donald Trump in the redacted files, potentially a million references in the unredacted files that we know about. And now we've learned that there are potentially 50 terabytes of information that remains missing. 50 terabytes of files. In other words, the million or three million records that were produced and unlawfully redacted for may only constitute 2% of the files. So what is state regime media which calls itself Fox doing? Well, hosts like Mark Levin, who hosts the Mark Levin show, who's just a full propagandist for Donald Trump. Here's what he posts.

Now, finally stop the bullshit trying to link POTUS to Epstein. the woke Reich grifters, congressional Democrat hacks, and media thugs continue to libel potis from Russia to Epstein. Weave a country to save from these reprobrates and others. That's what Mark Levins says. And he cites a former police chief who investigated Epstein in the mid-2000s told the FBI that he received a call from Trump at the time to say, thank goodness you're stopping him everyone has known he's been doing this that's not exculpatory you idiot Donald trump previously claimed he did not know what epstein was doing and the fact that after epstein was arrested donald trump said everybody knew what he was doing Donald trump was like

best friends with the guy says he's a great guy who liked women on the younger side and of course we saw all the other allegations and references to Donald trump in the files so that's what Mark Levin is saying, like implicating Donald Trump, apparently. And then you have Jesse Waters, along with Greg Gutfeld, say some of the most disgusting things to try to downplay the sex trafficking ring run by Jeffrey Epstein, which the Trump regime officials are in these files over and over again, whether it's Feline, the Navy Secretary, Lutnik, Trump, you name, Bannon, they're all there. Here's what Jesse Waters and Greg Gutfeld says. about Epstein. Let's play it. It looks like he's mostly just a fixer, a guy who advises. He helps people

with their problems. Sometimes those problems are, you need a girl. Or some penicillin. Or some, if you need it, he's got it. He's a sex rabbi. He should perform at the halftime show. The fact that that's how they're referring to child sex trafficking, that they're joking about it, They're laughing about it. They call them a sex. They call Epstein a sex rabbi and a fixer. That's what's going on on state regime media. So clearly, they needed to change topics right away, right?

So they bring on somebody named Katie Zakaria, who they say is a political legal strategist. Like, all right, what are we talking about? What are we talking about? Okay, Katie, talk about your hat. You wear a maga hat. You're at a gym and people were mean to you. And let's make that with everything that's going on in the country.

right now with everything that Americans are going through, we're gonna focus on the following story. Here, play this clip. Here we go, put the screen up on the thing. New York Post, why my gym cave to anti-maga bullies and how I fought back. Trump force Captain Katie Zachariah. They said at the gym, you can't wear it, and you said what?

I said, I can't wear this. I earned this in Michigan, Dearborn Michigan. We flip Michigan for President Trump, happy to be part of that. And he said, you can't come to my gym and wear this hat. this hat and because I have all these liberal women. The hell are they talking about. Let's bring in Democratic Congress member,

Raja Krishna-Morthy, you know, with all of these very serious issues going on as we learn more about the cover-up of the Epstein files. I mean, that's literally one of the top stories that they're talking about on Fox. I mean, it's ridiculous, Congressman. Your viewers already know this, but there were a thousand plus then-girls,

now middle-aged women who were victims of this child sex trafficking ring that Jeffrey Epstein and Galeen Maxwell perpetrated and conspired on for years. These middle-aged women have not had a single measure of justice in 20 years. And now we're finally, we're finally after having met them, after having heard their stories, you know, seeing some files being produced. but we learned that there's millions and millions of pages, more files that have not been produced, and the files that have been produced are so heavily redacted that it's very hard to tell what's in them. Now, I had a chance to actually review these unredacted files last week, and so I started that process. I'll be going back next week, I'm sure.

And I got to tell you, like, there's a lot of names in there of people who should come before our committee, who should be part of the investigation, who should be cooperating, because they could be co-conspirators. And we should, the whole public should be able to see who they are, actually. I heard from Congressman Walkenshaw, from Congressmember Goldman and Congressmember Raskin that there are emails that are sent from Trump's lawyers to Epstein lawyers that are in the unredacted files that are not public, that actually referenced that Donald Trump was allowing Epstein to remain in the club and that, Epstein was never actually even a member to begin with, but that he was a guest. And then

Epstein forwarded that email to Geelaine. And now the DOJ is claiming that there is a privilege, that this is somehow privileged and can be produced. Did you see records like that or document? What would you see like that? Well, I saw stuff that was, um, sometimes you couldn't tell if it was an attorney that was part of the exchange. Um, but one of the things, that I had a hard time figuring out was why things were even redacted. But what I also saw, which was really bizarre, is that there were certain pages in the quote-unquote unredacted form, which were redacted as well. And I'm still trying to figure out why that is. In addition, there are just all kinds of bizarre email chains. I think one challenge here is I don't understand.

the rhyme or reason behind the redactions because I can't figure out why certain emails would be privileged or have anything in them that would merit being redacted. There's just no explanation. So it's just a mess. But I also think that part of it is what I'm really worried about is they also unredacted victims' names maybe as a brushback pitch to kind of get them to see, well, look, you're asking for transparency, this is what happens when you get transparency. You know, then, you know, it's not just how Fox is covering, you know, the Epstein files that we

showed you. It's also what the Trump regime is doing in hoisting Fox up as their preferred state regime media, also hoisting up CBS as their backup state regime media. You know, and even what CBS just did to James Tolariko and Stephen Colbert and basically said, you can't do this interview with James Tolariko and the lawyers threatened Colbert and so Colbert had to play the interview on YouTube, which probably got more attention, frankly, than it would have anyway. If it aired on CBS, but I mean, that level of FCC intervention over you can't have James Tala Rico who's running for the United States Senate in Texas as, you know, as a guest. But then when Trump does these things, he like, you know, it's the Streisand defense.

or like he brings more attention to it. Everybody wants to watch the Tolarico interview. Exactly. People hate this stuff. They hate this. I think, by the way, this is one of those things that I personally think strikes a chord with many Americans. They don't want their government telling them what they can watch, what they can't watch in terms of this type of content, especially if it feels very political.

You know, remember what happened with Jimmy Kimmel. as you recall, when, you know, Trump didn't like what he said, he basically got the FCC to come down hard on Jimmy Kimmel, or it's his employer, I should say. And then, you know, Jimmy Kimmel went off the air. But then lo and behold, there's a huge groundswell of support for him, including even from certain Republicans and conservative circles. And that public pressure got the administration to relent. He was back on the air. I think that these types of things really backfire in the end, but we have to shine a light on them. You know, Congress is shut down right now or MAGA Mike sent everybody home until, I guess, the State of the Union at least. Department of Homeland Security is a partial government shutdown.

I feel like when you and I do these interviews, it's like deja vu. It's like, wait a minute, where are we just talking about a government shutdown like a few months ago and then a few months before that? And, you know, now you have Maga Republicans saying that it's non-starters for them to ever even consider a negotiation where ICE agents would have to remove their terrorist masks. The masks must stay on. That's a non-negotiable, they say. And also Republicans say it's a non-negotiable that you would require ICE and Border Patrol Gestapo to get judicial warrants. the administrative warrants that they basically fill out for themselves is enough. How dare you ask about judicial warrants? That's not feasible, like literally in our Constitution.

But what do you say to this moment that we're in before we go, Congressman, that that's where they're taking the stand. They got to have their masks. I mean, to me, my own view, I don't think the Democrats are going far enough on the Democratic negotiables. I want to see ICE and Border Patrol abolished and everybody processes. prosecuted. But, you know, Democrats are like, okay, judicial warrants, body cams, take off the masks, and don't go around polling stations. Republicans are like, no way. How do you even talk to these

people if they're like no way to those things? I think you hit on a great point. Those are very reasonable. Look, all, you know, one way of summarizing what I think the Democrats, at least at the bargaining table are saying is, look, ICE and CBP at least, at the least, need to abide by the same standards, rules, and regulations that local law enforcement do. And that means no mass, ID on, body cameras on, no warrantless arrests. There have to be third-party investigations of the use of force, and there can't be roving gangs of ICE and CBP agents who are basically stirring up trouble throughout the country. That's just basic stuff to me. And I also included in my list of demands,

and I think that the current list of negotiating demands reflects this, you can't have ICE and CBP agents at polling places because my fear is that they're gonna use ICE and CBP as paramilitary almost to discourage voting, to intimidate voters, and basically to monkey around with the 2026 elections. I want to remind people, you are running for the United States Senate seat there in Illinois. Where can people learn more about the campaign before we go?

It's R-A-J-A-F-O-R-I-L-R-I-L dot com. Check it out. Thanks, as always, Congress Member. Roger Christoamorthy, we appreciate you. Thank you, Ben. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers. Want to stay plugged in?

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