CREEPY Trump - Epstein Letter REVEALED: MAGA Cries Fake News

Saagar, Emily, and Griffin break down the WSJ reporting on an alleged letter Trump wrote to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday, the MAGA reaction and latest polling, and Stephen Colbert's Late Show cancelled for 'financial reasons'.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 1 (00:25):
We need your help to build the future of independent
news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Friday. We have an
amazing show for everybody today, a nice Friday lineup. We
got producer Griffin in the house as well as Emily Jishinski.
There's nothing going on, so I guess it's going to
be a short show, right. No, No, Actually, we have
some bombshell news that we're going to react to as

(00:48):
well as what's going on with the Stephen Colbert situation.
For those of you who are Premium subscribers, you're going
to get access to two very important stories. One is
the attack by the Israeli really defense forces on a
Catholic church actually in Gaza. It wounded the father actually
of that church, as well as a major reaction from

(01:11):
the global Catholic community, condemnation from the White House. Very
very interesting. And then there is going to be an
exclusive for our premium subscribers early, which is my interview
with Andrew Schultz and the entire Flagrant crew. I asked
them a lot of the burning internet questions. Do they
regret their Trump interview? Would they handle things differently? Does
Jdvans pass the vibe check? Is Dave Portnoy only Matt

(01:34):
about mom Donnie because of Israel? So a lot of
very interesting subjects. So I think people will like so
if you want to sign up and get access to
that Breakingpoints dot com. But let's go ahead and start,
guys with this Wall Street Journal story. I mean, this
is the central story around Epstein. Perhaps it explains a
lot of the behavior from Donald Trump over the last
couple of days. So guys, can we go ahead and

(01:55):
throw that up there? We have a new major revelation
here from the Wall Streetjournal. Now keep in mind, the
entire town has been talking about this for the last
couple of days that the Wall Street Journal or one
of the major three papers, was sitting on new information
regarding Donald Trump's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. It turned out
that as Trump himself, and we'll get to this later on,

(02:15):
has been trying to kill a story and called Rupert
Murdoch himself trying to quash this reporting. What they write
is that Donald J. Trump, according to them, submitted a
letter for Jeffrey Epstein's fiftieth birthday album. It was a
leather bound book which included remembrances and congratulations from many

(02:35):
of Epstein's friends, including Leslie Wexner and Alan Dershowitz. But
one of the people who included a letter in there
is Donald J. Trump, the current President of the United States.
The year was two thousand and three, and allegedly the
book was compiled by Galaine Maxwell. Now, the actual text
and description of the letter is very interesting because definitely,
if true, would show you quite a bit of open

(02:58):
recognition in the community at the time of Jeffrey Epstein's proclivity.
So here's how they describe it. It isn't clear how
the letter with Trump's signature was prepared. Inside the outline
of a Naked Woman was a typewritten note styled as
an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein, written in the
third person voiceover. There must be more to life than
having everything, The note began, Donald, Yes there is, but

(03:21):
I won't tell you what it is, Jeffrey, normal eyes,
since I also know what it is. Donald, We have
certain things in common, Jeffrey, Jeffrey, yes, we do, come
to think of it, Donald, Enigmas. Never eight have you
noticed that, Jeffrey. As a matter of fact, it was
clear to me the last time I saw you, Donald,
A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday. May every

(03:41):
day be another wonderful secret. So yeah, what do we
think of this? Guys? What do we think? Emily?

Speaker 3 (03:50):
So there's a lot to obviously, there's a lot for
us to untangle here, because the allegation is that Donald Trump,
in the Year of Our Lord two thousand and three
is doodling naked women and signed his name as the
to be crass. This is in the journal story pubic
hair on the Body, and then wrote this interesting. I
don't know what you would call it. It's not a poem,

(04:12):
it's not an I don't know what I don't know
how you described that.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
To a hypothetical dialogue, a play, you know, a play
in one act.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
I don't know it was a one act yeah, a
one man play. But so that is the allegation Trump
has been on a tear and I know we have
some of this, saying he is going to sue the
Wall Street Journal vociferously denying it. In the story. His
denial says, that's not my language. I never doodle women
something that I extent he does doodle. We do have

(04:44):
evidence that he's doodled. So basically, this dropped last night,
and the Internet immediately sprung into action, with some people
and who are already skeptical of Trump on Epstein actually
saying from Maga World, this looks like a fake journal
hip piece because the idea of Donald Trump doing anything
like this is so out of character. It just doesn't

(05:05):
comport with the version of Donald Trump, like he's making
doodles and writing fake one man plays like it's it
is all very odd. At the same time, Sager, I
know you dug into this reporter, and I think it's
worth noting, and we'll get into all of the previous
doodling evidence and the evidence of whether or not Donald
Trump would ever use the word enigma in just one moment.

(05:28):
But I think, Sager, one thing that's worth noting here
is the reporter's history on the Epstein case.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
She's got a good track record. Yeah. Actually, if you
want to go and put that up, Griffin, I have
it here. The element is titled track record. So I
went and I checked her byline. Her name is Kadida
Kadija Safdar, and she has two previous reports from twenty
twenty three about the Jeffrey Epstein case. She actually is

(05:55):
the person who published the Wall Street Journal report that
showed his calendar from September eighth, twenty fourteen, which detailed
quote meetings with some of the country's richest men, Bill Gates,
Leon Black, Domas Pritzker. But also inside that story was
about how Bill Burns, the CIA director under Joe Biden
at the time as he was leaving the Obama administration,

(06:16):
actually met with Epstein here in Washington, as well as
other high profile individuals. Keep in mind that all of
that was confirmed. There's not a single person in that
story who did deny it. She also reported in twenty
twenty three about how Jeffrey Epstein allegedly found out that
Bill Gates was trying to was having an affair, and
then appeared to try to blackmail him for financial purposes.

(06:37):
So all I'm saying is that you know a lot
of that reporting was actually accepted, and you know, even
Maga embraced at the time, and so it's important to
keep that track record while while we have it, you know,
just for who this person is. As you said, whenever
Donald Trump is basically saying this entire thing is fake,
I think specifically it's really worth Griff. Do you want
to read what Trump said from the story we have

(07:00):
in here somewhere from the journal. Trump denied writing the letter.
Go ahead, I'll let you read it out. It's from
the Wall Street Journal piece. It's in the first couple.

Speaker 4 (07:10):
Yeah, I got it right here.

Speaker 5 (07:11):
In an interview with the Journal on Tuesday evening, Trump
denied writing the letter or drawing the picture.

Speaker 4 (07:15):
This is not me.

Speaker 5 (07:17):
This is a fake thing. It's a fake Wall Street
Journal story. I never wrote a picture in my life.
I don't draw pictures of women. It's not my language,
it's not my words. I'm gonna sue the Wall Street Journal,
just like I sued everyone else.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Okay, and then grit that language and those are black
part is definitely his language. Let's go and put his
his true social post up please, which just shows his
initial reaction from the story, and basically it's it is.
By the way, this is a very useful picture into
how big media and all of that works with Rupert Murdoch.

(07:51):
Keep in mind, the Wall Street Journal is owned by
Rupert Murdoch, who owns News Corp. So here, I'll go
ahead and read it. The Wall Street Journal and Rupert
Murdoch personally were warned directly by President J. Trump the
supposed letter they were printed by Trump to Epstein was
a fake and if they printed, they will be sued.
Mister Murdoch stated he would take care of it, but
obviously did not have the power to do so. The
editor of the Wall Street Journal, Emma Tucker, was told

(08:13):
directly by Caroline Levitt and by President Trump that the
letter was fake. But Emma Tucker, keep in mind, Emma
Tucker is the editor in chief of the Wall Street Journal,
didn't want to hear that. Instead, they are going with false,
malicious and defamatory story. Anyway, President Trump will be suing
the Wall Street Journal News Corp. And mister Murdoch. Shortly,
the press has to learn to be truthful and not
rely on sources that probably don't even exist. President Trump

(08:33):
has already beaten Georgephanopoulos sixty minutes, etc. It has turned
out to be a disgusting and filthy rag. Writing defamatory
stories like this shows their desperation to remain relevant. If
there were any truth at all on the Epstein hoax,
as it pertains to President Trump, this information would have
been revealed by Comy Brennan, Crooked Hillary, and other radical
left lunatics years ago. There's actually a lot going on

(08:53):
here in terms of Trump's reaction, and the timeline matters
as well. So the White House was first approached for
story guys from the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. Now
keep in mind that's when we started hearing that this
was an Obama and a Hillary and a Comy hoax,
and also specifically that's when the term the Epstein hoax
was invented by Donald Trump ahead of all of this

(09:15):
story that was coming and dropping on Thursday evening. Gives
some important context to the President's comments. But again, like
we've got to stick with some evidence here, and I
also want to give some background in terms of how
big media works as well. Okay, so here we have
the Wall Street Journal printed a fake letter. These are
not my words, not the way I talk. I don't
draw pictures. I told Murdoch it was a scam. He
shouldn't prink this fake story, but he did. Now I'm

(09:36):
going to sue his ass off that out of his
third rate newspaper. Thank you for this attention to this matter, DJT.
So people are you know? First of all, it shows
that Trump has a power to call Rupert Murdoch and
basically try to order him around at will. But some
interesting background that people may not know is that when
the Pharaoh noose story was being reported in twenty fifteen,

(09:58):
Rupert Murdoch had personally invested hundred million dollars actually with
Elizabeth Holmes. Elizabeth Holmes called Murdoch and was like, dude,
you need to kill this story. It's going to kill
your investment as well as everybody else. And Murdoch was like, look,
I'm sorry. I don't interfere with the operations of the
Wall Street Journal. Just keep that in mind, you know,
in terms of how this story is able to move

(10:18):
forward even with Trump's immense pressure on the company, I
will say, Szger, fact, Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
Well I was going to say we should also mention
and maybe this is exactly where you were about to go.
Oliver Darcy, who is a media reporter, broke news in
a very medicense that the Wall Street Journal was working
on a bombshell story about Trump and Epstein yesterday afternoon.
The story was then forced to come to print in

(10:45):
all likelihood, I say forced to come to print. I
think that's likely what happened a couple of hours later,
which Sager, your read on this, I'm sure is the
same as mine. It indicates there was some type of
tussle at the Wall Street Journal and someone leaked that
they were working on story to force the hand of
the paper to go to print.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
Very very very soon. And yeah, there's actually a brand
new just tweet out right now. I look forward to
getting to Rupert Murdock to testify in my lawsuit against
him in his pile of garbage newspaper the Journal. That
will be an interesting experience. I mean, in my opinion,
Trump is playing with fire here because you know, lawsuits
have discovery, and discovery means that evidence needs to come out.
I will say, before we continue to dig into this,

(11:23):
the only mistake right now by the Wall Street journals,
they didn't just print the damn letter because then everybody
can just judge not only the doodle, but the actual
signature for itself. I mean, at the same time, they
do describe a letter here being signed in sharpie and
a heavy marker. I personally have never seen Donald Trump do.

Speaker 6 (11:38):
That, have I.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
But let's also get into some of the claims about
the doodling. So Trump says, I've never drawn a picture
in my life. So Griffin, could you want to go
ahead and put that up there where we have a
actual image of a doodle that Donald Trump.

Speaker 5 (11:52):
We've got images, We've got let's put the gallery image here.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
So these are multiple actual images and doodles that Donald
Trump drew of the New York skyline that he would
auction off in the year two thousand and four. And
actually what's interesting is Trump actually wrote about it in
one of his books about how he would often do
a quick doodle that only took him a couple of
minutes before he would kind of shoot them off. So look,

(12:19):
you know that's not necessarily out of the picture. We
also you know for.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
Me that one's beautiful.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
One of them's not bad. Yeah, one of them is
not bad.

Speaker 5 (12:29):
Yeah, I mean, I mean, if you think about it,
he did it probably in like under thirty seconds. Yeah,
so that's that's kind of impressive.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
That's the worst one. That's like a child.

Speaker 5 (12:38):
Because he gave up on the windows. Yeah, it is
consistent with window esthetic here.

Speaker 4 (12:43):
Some of them are filled.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
In casinos to build.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
Well said, all right, let's but let's stick with this
because he's making there's several claims for why this is
not you know, Donald Trump's authentic letter. He's never doodled.
That's just not true. There's also, let's put the enigma
thing up there, Griffin. There was some talk of like, oh,
it doesn't even sound like Trump. Trump has literally never
even used the word enigma. Actually, we do have video
of him using the word enigma from twenty and fifteen. Yeah,

(13:08):
let's gohe and play it. Let's play the audio please.

Speaker 4 (13:12):
Now, caution is an enigma? To me, I didn't say it.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
Okay, so that's twice that he says the word enigma.
Guess proving he does know the word enigma. I will
submit a couple of things. It is weird that it's typewritten,
very rare for Trump to give a typewritten thing. Usually
he writes things by hand, or he comments things and
kind of writes things on the margins. At the same time,
if you combine they of the Wall Street Journal reporters

(13:44):
record the fact that the doodle and by the way,
I forgot to even mention this. There are two other
notes that are described in the journal story. One from
Leslie Wexner, where he was like, Jeffrey, I'm just going
to give you what I've always what you always wanted.
It was literally a drawing of a of boobs of boobs.
And then the second one is from Alan Dershowitz, which

(14:05):
is some joke about the Vanity Fair article by Vicky
Ward that came out in March of two thousand and
three making fun of Bill Clinton. But my point is, though,
is that Dershowitz did not deny actually writing that. He said, oh,
it's been a long time. I don't even know what
I would have written there at the time. Wexner also
did not deny the report that he sent in there.
So look, I mean, I know MAGA is very wedded

(14:28):
to the idea that this is fake. So let's put
all of that just like purely in terms of the
report itself. But then let's look at the meta conversation.
I mean, this is the Wall Street Journal. This is
the most successful of the big three newspapers. Yes, I know,
it's owned by Murdoch, and I'm not saying, you know,
very often isn't used, especially the op ed page, as
a tool for Israel and for low taxes. But I mean,

(14:49):
if you consider the idea that the letter itself is fake,
then they burned the entire paper, because that actually would
be defamation. If you knowingly published something which you knew
to be fake or which in which you got hoaxed.
I mean, you, in a discovery process, will be found
out pretty damn quickly in my opinion, Emily, that this

(15:13):
is done. And you know, frankly, considering their track record
on I mean, think about it. They've had multiple reports
here about Epstein and his connections to multiple billionaire leon
Black Bill Gates, and none of them ever sued of
the Wall Street Journal, and presumably they would have if
it was fake. And you know, this is the big
question about kind of the source of this information. But

(15:33):
you know, I personally, I know this is going to
infuriate a lot of people. I think it's real. I mean,
I just think that combining the totality of the evidence
of the Journal report, the track record of the reporter itself,
the fact that the fact that they knew almost certainly
that this would face lawsuit and publish it anyways, you're
putting your entire reputation on the line. I think I

(15:56):
do think it's real. That said, I do think the
Journal has done a disservice and actually kind of granted
Maga a real out on the story by not just
releasing the entire thing in and of itself, which they
should have, Like, in my opinion, they should actually just
release a high resolution photo of every single page of
the book, because I want to know everybody who's sending
Jeffrey Epstein little body letters in a handwritten a thing

(16:18):
compiled by Gilaane Maxwell. Your guys's reaction.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
Well, it's possible. What they're doing, as people have pointed out,
is pulling at Jeffrey Goldberg right where they get Donald
Trump to make his denial and then he's on the
record denying that it's real. They then release a very
real looking document that was their source for the story
and let the public judge. And Trump has sort of

(16:42):
gone all hard in the paint, all out denial, saying
this is not real. Now, I suspect Donald Trump would
say that it was not real either way.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yeah, no matter what.

Speaker 3 (16:51):
Now. So the one thing that I want to point out,
and I know we have differing takes on the possible source.
We don't know the source of this. Obviously the journal
is cagey about how they ended up with this. I
think it is very worth noting, as you mentioned earlier, Sager,
that around the time we know Trump talked to the
Wall Street Journal because he was asked for comments on

(17:11):
this story they were working on. He starts pinning the
blame on specifically James Comy. Obviously he mentions Biden and
now Crooked Hillary is in the mix and all of that.
Maureene Comy is fired from the Southern District New York
Justice Department post Wednesday, could have had to do with
Diddy That she did not she botched the ditty case.

(17:36):
It could have been a long time coming from Pambondi.
All of that stuff could be possible. Also interesting though,
that Marine Comy leaves and she was a key prosecutor
in the Epstein case and the Galaine Maxwell case. And
this is around the exact same time that the Journal
has its hands on. This is the most important part.

(17:58):
What it says was part of the Justice Department's files
on Epstein. That is early in the Wall Street Journal story.
It says that this letter from Donald Trump, which did
not leak until right now, nobody ever saw it, nobody
ever leaked it was from the Justice Department. It was
among the Justice Department's files. So to me, that is

(18:19):
a very very interesting timeline. On the other Handsager, there's
also a possibility it's something of a warning shot from
Glinne Maxwell, as you and others have pointed out.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
I'm willing to submit to both because I mean, look,
I actually think a lot of this probably did come
from Glaine Maxwell, but it could have come years ago.
I don't think that all of it was necessarily leaked
to the Wall Street Journal by the legal system. I
will note, as you said, that it's very possible because
the cope I've seen for the last couple of days,
didn't Megan Kelly say this. She's like, well, there's like

(18:51):
indication that they were altered or assembled in a way
to point she.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
Said people, Well, this is what she said. People were
telling her that sources said, the administration we're trying to
sort of plant the seeds of that narrative.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Yeah, and I think, I mean, look, at the end
of the day, this is Trump's fault because if this
is a small part of the epstein, I mean, look,
let's analyze things in two directions. First of all, the
letter is creepy as fuck, all right, Like, there's no
getting around it. That's creepy. It's weird, grivn your muted.

Speaker 5 (19:20):
I think it's almost like romantic, isn't it between the two.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, it's weird.

Speaker 5 (19:24):
There's like some there's very flowery language here.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
Look, it's odd. And that's saying it kindly. What does
he say our wonderful secret? Yeah, it gives me the
fucking heby GBI's even just thinking about it. And then
the rest of these guys just joking about women's breasts
and all the sudden, the guys fifty to fifty year
old birthday creepy. Strange Again, combine it with Trump's on

(19:50):
the record quote to New York Magazine in two thousand
and two, I've known Jeffrey for fifteen years. He's a
terrific guy. He likes beautiful women as much as I do.
He likes him young. There's no doubt jeff he enjoys
his social life. That's on the record. Quote from Don
Trump two thousand and two to New York Magazine. And
then this is somewhat one year or so later between
the two. If you know, I guess they're positing that

(20:12):
it's just not real at all. But I mean, first
of all, just kind of demonstrates the extent to which
this kind of was an open secret amongst Palm Beach,
the Palm Beach, New York circuit, amongst Epstein and all
of his associates. But if we dig a little bit
further and we consider some more things like in the relationship,
this is Trump's own fault for not releasing the files.

(20:33):
Because if this is a small part of the evidence,
like this book, right, which is part of the grand
jury documents and the quote black book, client, you know,
whatever else you want to call it, then of course
people who are a partisan who have access to it
are going to be like, yeah, this is why he's
acting so weird and covering it up because at this point,

(20:54):
Trump has now said I don't want a special prosecutor.
You know, now, Griffin, let's put the Pambin thing up,
because this is kind of the latest attempt to try
and get ahead of it. This is where things are
currently moving in terms of them trying to appear as
if they're having more disclosure. So Trump tweets last night,

(21:14):
based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein,
I have asked Attorney General Pambondi to produce any and
all pertinent grand jury testimony, subject to court approval. This
scam perpetrated by the Democrats should end right now. But
let's actually linger on these grand jury documents, because this
is really important. First, First of all, these are not
the Epstein files, guys. The grand jury documents that they

(21:37):
are referring to are specifically the twenty and nineteen grand
jury or twenty nineteen indictment and grand jury documents that
were used to prepare the indictment against Epstein in twenty nineteen. Okay,
that is not the totality of all of the information
that the government has on Epstein. Let's also look very

(21:58):
specifically at the word all pertinent grand jury testimony. What
does that mean all pertinent granted? No, no, no, no
release all the grand jury testimony. So we're already kind
of scoping it. Second is that the reason that this
grand jury testimony in documents have not been released is
actually because Maureen Comy, whenever she was the SDNY prosecutor
on the case, went to the judge and said, hey,

(22:20):
this needs to remain under seal because Glaine Maxwell's process
continues to be under review and if this comes out,
it could actually violate Ghalaine Maxwell's right to do process.
And the judge actually agreed with her, at least partially
in that case. And so there's going to be all
kinds of legal wrangling around this because it actually could

(22:42):
put the Maxwell trial or the subsequent legal appellate stuff
that's happening right now in danger. It will take weeks,
if not months, for something like this to happen. You
can go to a judge, listen, I mean, does anybody
know how the federal court system works? Like people don't
just magically waive or release button. The thing that Trump
does have the ability to do is to declassify all

(23:03):
of this other information that allegedly they've been working on
now for six months. Remember cash Ptel said that they
had dozens of agents working on the case compiling information.
That's something that is under your purview that could be released.
And yeah, I mean, I just think that this is
another misdirect where you know, MAGA forces are trying to
be like, see, like we're getting transparency, and I'm like, guys,

(23:25):
this is just a I mean, to be honest, I'm
not saying it's a nothing burger. All information is good information,
but it's not the Epstein files in any way that
we're promised because remember that the government's case against Epstein
in twenty nineteen still only really focused on Epstein, Like
it's a very narrowly terror tailor charges that don't implicate
a broader circle, and they definitely don't get into the

(23:46):
source of his money and his finances.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
Yeah, that's right, Griffin. I don't know if you had
something to say, but I just wanted to add this
entire book is well worth the Wall Street Journal printing.
At this point. One of the things that's most convincing
about this document is that it's part of a larger
book in which the other notes appear to be well

(24:11):
within character and Trump should be furious at Pamp Bondi
because the only reason we are now mired in a
week plus long news cycle about Jeffrey Epstein is that
Pamp Bondy maybe Trump told her to do this, we
don't know that yet, but Pamp Bondy moved in the
most ham fisted possible way to close the case and

(24:34):
say quote no, further disclosures would be warranted. And if
Pamp Bondy had handled this with a modicum more just
pure like logic and competence from a public relations perspective,
and that's a very cynical way to look at it,
but it's from the politics. It's completely true. The only

(24:55):
reason this is now dogging Trump over the last week
or so is because Bondie said, literally like case clothes,
wrapping it up, nothing more to see here, which set
all of this off. So it's it's the understanding. The
truth of what happened is and always has been muddled

(25:16):
by the politics because people at the Wall Street Journal,
Rupert Murdoch have you know, important, powerful relationships with people
like Donald Trump and others who are potentially implicated in
the Epstein world. And that's just going to be interstrict
inextricably intertwined with our ability to know what the hell
actually happened, is that we are seeing this through the

(25:37):
glass of politics, and the glass is cracked and smudged
because people want it that way, and this is another
example of that. So it's hard to separate the two
at this point. But the letter in itself, I think
that's an important observation, saga is not it's extremely weird.
It's extremely weird. It's not directly criminating. Yeah, it's not

(26:02):
a smoking gun. It's weird as hell. It looks really
really bad, and it seems to be real. At this point,
Trump probably could have managed this without basically inviting people
to leak and prove him wrong.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
Yeah, all he had to do was release it and then, yeah,
maybe some of this would have come out. But you
know the I mean, I'm assuming that there's probably something
in there that's a lot worse for a lot of people,
especially with the financial transactions. I mean, one of the
things that I again I know, a broken record, but
it's very important to actually understand, like what quote Epstein

(26:35):
files should mean here. Let me try I'm a boomer,
but I'm gonna try my best to share my screen
because there was a big report yesterday by Ron Wyden,
and look I get it, Maga, Yes he's a Democrat,
blah blah blah. But you know, Ron Wyden has been
actually working on the Epstein case for quite some time,

(26:57):
and he is the Senate Finance Chairman. He says that
the government is sitting on secret bank filings showing one
point five billion dollars in suspicious wire transfers by Epstein,
involving some of the most powerful people in the world. Now,
as I said here, how about we release those So
the thing is, the story is extraordinary. And by the way,

(27:20):
because I know a lot of people in Washington do
listen to the show, if you are one of the
people who was able to review these documents, please contact me.
I've been dressfully trying to get into contact with you.
So the way that this all went down, apparently is
last year the Treasury Department allowed Ron Wyden and members
of the House or the Senate Financial Services Committee to

(27:40):
sit and review suspicious activities reports filed by four of
the biggest banks in the world. Those suspicious activities reports
detail one point five billion in suspicious transactions by Epstein
in and out of his accounts very often to Russian
banks to Eastern European women. It fits exactly with the
pattern laid out by the New York Findncial Services Department

(28:01):
in their fine against Deutsche Bank, except the totality of
the money is insane because we're talking about one point
five billion in wire transfers. The Treasury Department right now
is sitting on that information. Whenever they allowed the Senate
to look at it, they refuse to let them make
copies and only let them make handwritten notes in a
classified setting which have yet to be released. All we

(28:22):
know is the number of one point five billion. So again,
if you're one of the people who saw those, please
contact me. I would like to do if you're a
treasure But yeah, if you're in the Treasury Department and
you have at one point, I will protect your identity.
But the point is that the government is sitting on
that right now that is not subject to any private
like they could. They could release that today if they

(28:44):
wanted to. Same with the IRS, which has all of
this documentation around all of these trust accounts and other
things that were linked to them. Release even just one
or even review one of the guy's tax returns, How
did where did the money come from? It's all in there.
This is America, you were, I forget it's from the wire,
but it's something's like in this country, somebody's name is

(29:04):
on somebody's piece of paper somewhere. It just is okay,
And you can follow the paper trail if you want to,
if you're actually motivated. And in the words of Lester Freeman,
if you start to follow the money, you don't know
where the fuck it's gonna take you. And this is
one of those where what we're watching is a bastardization

(29:25):
of like what the alleged Epsteine files and all that were.
And then, like you said, politically, it's just pretty obvious
that this is entirely a fault of their own making.
Like they said, the case was closed, which reignited public interests,
which exposed a cover up, which then had people digging
even more. I mean, is there any reality where this book,

(29:47):
report or whatever would have come out if Trump had
actually released much of the information. No, it would have
been it would have been like a WikiLeaks dump. You know,
everybody would have gone deep into it. So yeah, I
think the whole thing is really but it is also
proof to me of how at the end of the day,
MAGA will fall in line. And I think that's important

(30:08):
as well for people to understand with the Iran thing
like this is gonna be a job of like people
who are actually independent minded. And yes, unfortunately now because
it's polarized, democrats and the mainstream media, like I don't
really see a way out of this. Yeah, exactly, Here
we have JD Vance's tweet. He says, forgive my language,
but this story is complete and utter bullshit. The Wall

(30:30):
Street Journal should be ashamed for publishing it. Where is
this letter? Would you be shocked to learn they never
showed it to us before publishing? Does anyone honestly believe
this sounds like Donald Trump? Follow up Griffin, He had
a reply there as well. I forget exactly what it was.
If you just scroll down, Okay, go ahead, if we
scroll down and look at it, Yeah, it doesn't it
violate some rule of journalistic ethics to publish a letter

(30:53):
like this without showing it to the victim of this
hit piece. Will the people who have bought into every
hoax against President Shump show an ounce of skepticism before
into this bizarre story? And so again, I mean, I
don't think that the I really don't think that the
Journal that the Journal did anything quote wrong, except for
not publishing it. And it's not even about showing it

(31:15):
to Trump. It's for all of us because in a sense,
they have just invited this reaction. Yeah, here example, Representative
Anna Pauline A Luna. Please don't show this to Wall
Street Journal. It's a hand sketch. They may think I'm
a sex trafficker. You know, I've seen even many people
who are extraordinarily critical of Trump's handling of the Epstein
files immediately just been like, Hey, this is complete bullshit.

(31:36):
There's no way this is real. It's obviously a hoax.
I mean again, look, I'm open to it. It would be
a pretty extraordinary journalistic scandal if it was. But at
the end of the day, the fact that they ran
with it and it went through standards and Murdoch and
the entire Murdoch empires putting their entire financial future on
the line, I guess it's possible they did it with dominion,
but you know, Trump's gonna have to prove it. I

(31:59):
just see, I see a bungling era of just epic
epic proportions.

Speaker 5 (32:03):
I mean, wouldn't it be like, wouldn't it be like
career suicide to like post this. I mean, you're you're coming,
You're coming at the King with birthday letters and you
best not miss I mean, I guess my question for
you guys is, like why haven't they not released it?
Like shouldn't they just turn it into like a coffee
book or something and start selling it, And like, you know,
on top of that, like it might even at this

(32:26):
point help Trump for it to all be released, because
it's not just Trump in there.

Speaker 4 (32:30):
There's like fifty other names in there, and there's like.

Speaker 5 (32:33):
A lot of other smoke and a lot of other
ways to kind of take it with with other letters
from other people. So like, I don't see, like it
seems like it would help almost both sides for it
to just all be released at this point, try and
release it.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
The Justice Department has it. I mean, that's the The
Wall Street Journal says it's part of the Justice Department
document document.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
Here is my theory and this is a quote from
the story pages from the Leatherbound album assembled from Epstein.
We're first arrested in six are a month. Documents examined
by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein in Maxwell years ago.
According to people who have reviewed the pages, it is
unclear if any of them are part of the Trump
administration's review. The Justice Department documents is so called Epstein files,

(33:12):
and who are in them are at the center of
the storm consuming that. But here's my theory. The Journal
doesn't have the book. The Justice Department has the book.
Somebody in the DOJ leaked a photo or a filing
of the book and the paper to the Journal. This
is just my theory. It's pure speculation that is the

(33:32):
source and why they had to print it by hand.
So like, for example, remember that whole Reality Winner scandal.
Whenever the NSA sent those docums, she sent those documents
from the NSA or whoever she was working for to
the Intercept, and the way that she got caught was
by distributing the screenshots of the print out. So very often, guys,
just to explain this, for classified settings or legal documentation,

(33:55):
they'll have distinguishing marks actually on the page themselves, and
that way, if that were to ever come out, it
would be easy to identify whoever leaked that, like a
unique identifier or something. Think about like a what's it called,
like a pagemark or something like that, you know, whenever
it's like not for public consumption, that type of thing.
That's my theory as to why they have not released

(34:16):
it a watermark, Yeah, exactly, that's my personal theory for
why it has not yet been released.

Speaker 3 (34:22):
I think that's a very strong theory. I think that's
me yeah, right, which means the Justice Department could could
show us the whole book right now.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
Right, And that's the thing about Trump is now, well
it sets up a very interesting incentive because now Trump's
like I'm an under attack by the deep state and
all this, and it's like, bro, you can just release it.
You know. It's like you could have just released it,
and again it would have just been one of many
different stories that are that are in there, and yeah,
it's the whole thing is very interesting.

Speaker 5 (34:52):
Yeah, kind of right, Like there's just so many other
people to look at here, and but it just seems
like Trump is having an credibly emotional reaction to what
seems like a very intimate, almost loving relationship with Epstein
to like a level that I don't think we've really
fully seen before. I Mean, we've heard about them being

(35:12):
best friends. We've heard about them playing like weird games
in an elevator I think from a woman in the past,
but this seemed to be just the most kind of
like they are partners in crime. I mean, it kind
of felt like a if I did it, OJ Simpson
type of moment, like it's where everyone's.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
Really you know, suspicious man. And I'm telling you, I
genuinely didn't believe most of the Trump. I thought, all right,
Trump is a sleazy guy, not a surprise to anybody, right, Uh. Trump,
you know, had the on the record quote. Trump is
a philanderer and for years bragged about his sexual prowess
with young women to the tabloids. So I was like, okay,

(35:52):
I mean, you know, I thought that was baked in.
And then to the extent that the whole apscene thing
is like, yeah, you know Epstein and all these like
pretty victorious secret models and all that Trump was involved
with the beauty pageant, but nothing beyond what kind of
was already out in the open. I was like, you know,
but the thing is now is his reaction is just
so sketchy and weird that it really kind of does

(36:13):
make me think that there might be something else there
because you have Elon saying it right. And then that's
another theory of mine, is that the reason that the
journey that the FBI and the Attorney General went so
hard in the paint about shutting things down was maybe
like a political response to Elon Musk. I think that's
very probable. Yeah, I'm not one hundred percent sure.

Speaker 3 (36:34):
Right, and that truck may have nudged Bondy to do
it that way.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
Yeah, and then like that's maybe why they did it.
But yeah, I mean, I mean, do we want to
play Griffin. If you want to go on YouTube, you
can find this. It's like a two thousand and two
no sorry, nineteen ninety two package of Trump NBC the
video of let me see if I can find it.

Speaker 5 (36:56):
Actually, yeah, yeah, while you're while you're looking for that.
And we talked a little bit about some of the
MAGA defense. We put up Anna Paulina kind of doing
a jokey drawing. But we have some new polling here
about the Trump's handling of this. Sixty three percent of
voters disapprove of the Trump administration's handling of the Jeffrey

(37:19):
Epstein files, Quinnipiac University National Poll finds nearly half of
voters would consider joining a third party, just not one
created by Elon Musk.

Speaker 3 (37:29):
Sorry buddy, Yeah well this This also contrasts with numbers
that Harry Enton was analyzing on CNN yesterday. There was
a new CNN poll and it's similar in the Quinnipiac
poll that shows Republican support for Donald Trump increasing two
to three percentage points, which is very close to the
margin of eron both of those polls. Over the course

(37:49):
of the Epstein The latest chapter in the Epstein saga,
so like the last week or so, and yeah, yeah,
go ahead and roll those.

Speaker 6 (37:56):
Griffin, And this one surprised me a bit because of
all these complaints online going after Trump and the Epstein files,
you might think is approval ratings were going down Republicans,
if anything, They're going up Republicans who approve of Trump.
Look at our CNN poll, the prior one eighty six percent,
the one out this week.

Speaker 4 (38:12):
Eighty eight percent with Republicans.

Speaker 6 (38:13):
How about Quinnipiac the prior poll eighty seven percent approved
of Republicans, this week out ninety percent with Republicans if anything,
Downald Trump's approval rating has gone up since this whole
Epstein saga started.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
Okay, so the margin of AA there was plus or
minus six. So if you're thinking about that, it means
there could be no movement, or there could have been
a slight drop potentially in the numbers. But this is
very easy to reconcile, like say, this is accurately gaging
Republican support for Donal Trump. It's very easy to reconcile
with the numbers in the exact same poll that show
sixty five percent of Americans don't support his handling of

(38:46):
the Epstein files, which is that to most Americans? And
this is always worth saying when you're talking about Jeffrey Epstein.
Do most people care about the Epstein story? Yes? Are
most people disgusted by the Epstein story because they believe
that it reflects a sick and corrupt ruling class. Yes?
Is it most people's top priority? No, it's many people's.

(39:07):
It's high up on the list of many people's priorities.
It's a very powerful proxy issue. It's a powerful symbol,
and there are substance of questions of justice that still
needs to be served in and of itself. But I
think it is always worth saying that this is a story.
People in media who know some folks that might be implicated,

(39:28):
who can think about this as a meta media story
at the same time, are always going to be more
interested in it than most members of the public. That
does not make the story unimportant though.

Speaker 5 (39:38):
Yeah, totally your point, Like Emily, Like even in that
Harry Entin poll there was only one person who responded
saying that it was like.

Speaker 4 (39:46):
A top priority issue.

Speaker 5 (39:47):
Not one percent, but just one person only said that
it was a top priority issue.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah. I would just caution this type of analysis though,
because it's like it's about a vibe. You can't quantify it.
It's just it all compounds on itself. It's like Epstein
Iran the Israel situation. You can feel it happening, and
yet you could say that that's stupid. But by the way, guys,

(40:14):
did Trump not get elected on a vibe? I think
he did. I mean, I think that was a huge
part of it. If you guys watch my interview with
Andrew Schultz that's for our premium subscribers early we talk
about this. I go, hey, did you guys feel like
you maybe voted on vibes and you didn't vote on policy,
and you know, I mean, it's not a call out.
I think most people vote that way. I'm just saying, like,

(40:36):
I think that was pretty important for this whole idea
of like the outsider versus the insiders and a new
way of doing business, and like this all just screams
just you know, very classic way. I also, you know,
I mean this footage is genuinely crazy, Like when you
watch this, this is archive footage from NBC at mar
A Lago in two thousand and two. I mean, just

(40:58):
like what you're wanting is Trump nineteen round with Epstein. Sorry, yeah, no,
ninety nine two. Yeah, nineteen nine two. But you could
see this is at mar Lago. But one thing I
also hate about Epstein is he's always dressed down. I
know it's a small, small complaint, but he always wore tracksuit.
It's it's one of his great sins. And by the way,

(41:19):
it just shows you that not dressing properly is often
a indication.

Speaker 4 (41:23):
Activities of moral ills.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
Yes, so everybody else there is dressed well, you could
see Glaine h there in the background and Jeffrey and
Trump having an animated conversation. But yeah, I mean, look there,
I knew that this all existed I always was like, yeah,
you know, they definitely knew each other. I don't think it,
you know, went beyond anything like too crazy. But it's

(41:49):
really the behavior of Trump since then that just has
me being like, I mean, it's mystifying. It really is mystifying.
But what's also important for everybody understand, as you pointed
out in that CNN poll, for all of that, mag
has got his back. All right, this is now a
media story. It's a hoax. There'll never believe it.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
Genuinely, it helped him internally in the Internet singe squabble.
It absolutely helped him because now it looks like he
is under attack. But they didn't print the picture. If
they had printed the picture would have been different. I'm
not saying the Wall Street Journal by any means should
dictate it to allow, you know, the politics of Maggot
had dictated in supporting Of course that's not true. But hypothetically,

(42:31):
if the journal had printed the story, it would have
looked obviously a lot less like a major media hit
piece on Donald Trump. That drove everyone back into Trump's
arms because he's in battled, which is exactly what he
has been trying to do all week brilliant on Trump's part,
I mean genuinely when he started saying that this was

(42:53):
coming from Camy and Biden and whomever Elsema Obama like yes,
all of us look at that, and we're like okay.
But he knew what was coming, which was a Justice
Apartment file that had been sat on for a while
that he can now say, Hunt, isn't that interesting? Uh,

(43:14):
it's coming out in the Wall Street Journal? Just me,
there's all these other people in the book. And so
he was cleverly obviously trying to point in that direction,
probably the best defense that he can muster, and it's
obviously still not good enough. But what it does do
is stigmatize people in MAGA who continue to raise questions

(43:36):
and make them like they're doing the bidding in the
Wall Street Journal.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
Yeah right, and that I mean, she's so stupid.

Speaker 4 (43:44):
But are you guys to change?

Speaker 5 (43:46):
But yeah, do you guys think that there would be
an outlet that they could have gotten this too, that
MAGA would have accepted more as opposed to like the
mainstream media, Like could they have gotten this to Rogan
or to some independent.

Speaker 4 (44:00):
They could, They could have may have made it land
a little bit better.

Speaker 3 (44:04):
They could have just dropped it themselves. I'm serious, Like
if Trump had said, the Wall Street Journal is about
to release the story on me writing a letter to
Jeffrey Epstein and as a joke, yeah, here, here's the book.
Here's the letter that the Wall Street Journal is trying
to make into some bombshell. Uh, and then it would
have looked way less.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
I think it would have looked locker room talk, locker
room talk two point zero. Here's all the sketchy Democrats,
here's all the other sketchy Democrat demoncrats who are in
the book. Done.

Speaker 4 (44:35):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 5 (44:36):
And then, like Sager mentioned that it's about vibes and
this hurts Trump's vibe. But you know, we're not in
like an election time unless we're thinking about a Trump
third term, So like, what does this really affect in term?
Does this affect Trump's governance over this current term? Like
does this affect his political power going forward? With like
other endorsements, Like, because if Sager, you're saying this hurts

(44:57):
the vibe, then what what does Trump need.

Speaker 4 (45:01):
The vibe for? At this point?

Speaker 1 (45:03):
Great point, it's about mindspace, So can we all submit
The Lewinski story was important, Like in terms of politics, right,
can we can we agree with that.

Speaker 4 (45:12):
We'll submit to that.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
All right, yeah, but it was fucking stupid at the
end of the day, like the entire investigation and the
country's obsession and all of that over Lewinski and the
all the details and the ken Star report and Congress,
Well what did that do? I mean, I've read multiple
accounts of Clinton's presidency. It consumed every moment of every day,

(45:36):
from the legal stuff to the subpoenas, to the spin,
to the press conference, to the extent that Clinton is
distracted in major meetings involving NATO intervention in Serbia, and
there's a lot of conspiracies that he actually bombs Serbia
to distract from the Lewinski scandal. So the point is is, like,
what do you need a vibe for when you're president

(45:58):
so you can govern? There's only so many hours in
the day. And by the way, this is a capricious
guy who's obsessed with cable television in the news, which
means he's going to be monitoring this and thinking about
nothing else. So every every moment of a president's time
is a zero sum game. Every single moment that a
president spends is time that he could be spending doing

(46:19):
something else, and it's the job of his staff and
of himself to keep himself well ordered. This is true
of any extremely highly powerful individual, and especially true in
the case of the president.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
Yeah, that's true. And to the point that Zacer was making,
I just want to this is what I how I
put it earlier this week, I wrote about it will
Epstein file has become Trump's cobble moment, And I think
that's the way I was thinking about it on the
vibe level is if you look back at the Biden presidency,
he never recovered after cobble, Like that's the moment that
his favorability like never ever recovered from. And I think

(46:52):
part of it is because he campaigned on being this
president for decency and bringing back like restoring the nation,
and Trump like ran on draining the swamp, and it
just this makes him look so weak that while it's
nobody's top priority. In the same way that nobody went
to the polls in twenty twenty two or twenty twenty

(47:14):
four and said I want to vote against the party
that boshed the Afghanistan withdrawal, almost nobody did that. I
don't think people are going to be going to the
polls for the most part in the midterms saying I'm
going to vote against the party that seems to be
hiding something on Jeffrey Ebstein. But what it does do
is make Trump look weak. It makes him political defense. Ye,

(47:35):
he's on defense. Yeah, absolutely. And all of that, by
the way, total enforced error because Bondi handled it, and
maybe she was handling it this way because of Trump,
but the way that it was handled put them on
defense because they said case closed, which was never ever
ever going to suffice or to be satisfactory. Period. And

(47:57):
just lastly, to sagur those of uh, those people out
there who who maybe right of center like we are,
just imagine and all honestly, if Joe Biden had a
pattern like this, how it would imagine that this was
a letter from Bill Clinton. Imagine? Seriously.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
Yeah, it's just be real, be honest, all right, and
and just listen to it.

Speaker 3 (48:21):
Listen.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
The case that I think I presented is one that
it's about the denial is I've never doodled. It's like, okay,
well here's all these doodles. It's I've never said the word.
It's like, well, here's the word.

Speaker 3 (48:31):
Well, he don't. Did he say that? He said it
was his language and then magnets my language, but other
people enigma. Yeah, and yeah he.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
Said you said he said it, all right, and then
you have to also, I mean, I know everybody you know, listen,
nobody hates the media and all those people more than me. Okay,
but uh I you know, because we're in this business,
you don't just publish it, like, especially when you're the
Wall Street Journal or others, you know, I would you
have to have them dead and stone hold on something

(49:01):
like this before you go to print. I've been involved
with much more minor stuff where oh my god, the
level of review and I mean, Griffin, you were here
for Signal Gate. Remember remember how much fucking sweat we
had to put into that.

Speaker 4 (49:15):
Yeah, it was so much homework. It wasn't fun at all.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
Yeah, it's it's not it's honestly not fun because you
have to sit there and like, okay, is it responsible?
You know, you see comment from the Justice Department, from
the Pentagon, you know, in response to this stuff, and
then that's just you know, a little breaking points. Okay,
this is this is one of the premier world newspapers.
So it's you know, they knew the date.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
The best lawyers in the world.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
Oh my god, like lawyers upon lawyers upon lawyers. Like
at the end of the day, when you hit publish
on something like this, there's an entire apparatus that is
going to back you up. It's like, okay, you want
to sue them, like fine, and don't forget. This is
probably a good segue to the Colbert thing. It's not
like Trump had CBS dead to write on sixteen minutes. Absolutely,

(50:01):
if sixteen Minutes had fought this in court, Trump was
the one who was gonna lose. They ended up caving
because they want their merger with sky Dance to be approved.
Let's be very clear. Same with ABC News and Disney.
ABC settled with Trump basically just be like, let's make
this go away. There is no scenario zero where any

(50:23):
of these people do not prevail in court. Their old
lawyers would tell you that they're gonna win one hundred
percent and Trump would have to pay their legal.

Speaker 3 (50:32):
I think the ABC one would have been that one
actually would have been more of a fight. But the
CBS Sun joke, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
I mean, come on, I mean that the bar for
defamation in life.

Speaker 3 (50:43):
Yeah, yeah, it's true. Yeah, looks he got over his skis.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
Yeah, look, the guy got over his skis. Fine, that's
not defamation, Like you have to be able to prove
that he knew what he was saying was false. Same,
we're saying damages like you can't do that.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
There's a but there's a magnitude difference between the bullshit
CBS one.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
And I agree. But what I'm more saying is like,
in every single one of these cases, it's every single one,
in my opinion, there's no way that they don't win. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (51:22):
You mentioned Monica Lewinsky earlier, which kind of leads me
to like my final question on the subject, which is
sort of like the culture and sort of how different
parts of Trump's cultural coalition are reacting to this. I've
got a clip here from Shane Gillis uh recently where he.

Speaker 7 (51:44):
Yeah, so good, Donald Trump wants to stage a UFC
fight on the White House lawn. The last time he
staged a fight in DC, Mike Pen's almost died.

Speaker 4 (52:00):
I had to do that. It was fine. I didn't
write it.

Speaker 7 (52:03):
Uh, we're supposed to be an Epstein joke here, But.

Speaker 4 (52:09):
As it got deleted, must.

Speaker 7 (52:13):
Have probably deleted itself, right, probably never existed. Actually, let's
move on as a country and ignore that.

Speaker 4 (52:22):
Let's move on as a country.

Speaker 5 (52:24):
So yeah, I mean, I guess my question for both
of my MAGA hosts here is, you know, I do
see a big.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
Difference that label on me, But go ahead.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
So sorry you can cause fascists just don't.

Speaker 5 (52:38):
Okay, Yeah, yeah to my two Groper hosts here, So
I would rather with you know there, I do see
sort of like a delineation or a schism between the
sort of MAGA influencers like you're Charlie Kirks versus the
bro Sphere, the Rogan Sphere podcasts that have been a

(53:01):
lot more confrontational about this subject. I see, you know,
Shane Gillis as joke. I've seen Rogan talk about it.
I've seen Theovaughn kind of demand for there to be
more so, like, what does that mean in terms of
Trump's like cultural coalition, in terms of what do you
guys think?

Speaker 1 (53:17):
Yeah, that's kind of what I was talking about with
the vibe. And that's also why that poll was really
dumb because it said it was about Republicans. It's like,
who cares about Republicans. There's not that many Republicans that
you think everybody who voted Republican is a Republican. No,
you think everybody who voted Democrat is a Democrat. No,
And it's very rare. There's a huge independent swing to
Donald Trump in the twenty twenty four election, and to

(53:37):
the extent that culture is being driven here and to
affect Donald Trump, those podcast reactions, in my opinion, are
way more impactful than the Charlie Kirk. I mean, actually,
I'll give Kirk credit. He has a young magot people
who listen to him. He's probably the only one of
that who actually has like a real young audience.

Speaker 4 (53:58):
But the rest of it goes to colleges. It's an
every college does is packed out.

Speaker 1 (54:03):
But the rest of you're just preaching to a bunch
of boomers. You love Trump anyway, I don't. Those people
are never going to stop voting for Trump. They're never
going to stop voting for Republicans. So that's why it's
important to distinguish exactly like who all these subgroups are.

Speaker 3 (54:15):
Yeah, the last thing that I just want to say
is I don't think it's implausible Soccer mentioned the Megan
Kelly reporting this week suggesting that people her sources inside
the administration said that the files had been left in
such a way that points to Donald Trump. I don't
want to discredit the possibility that there was some funny

(54:37):
business going on. What that doesn't do is negate the
veracity of the potential file itself. So two things can
be true at once, right, that the holdovers at the
Justice Department, and that the Biden era Justice Department, which
did have Marine Comy as part of it. And there
are all kinds of people who who have despised Trump

(54:59):
that were in career your positions at Justice and FBI.
We all know that it is not impossible that there
was actually some maneuvering behind the scenes to make it
more difficult for the Trump administration to release files and
to do their transparency without implicating Donald Trump. That's possible.
I have no idea what that would look like. Maybe

(55:21):
it looks like, you know, leaving the Trump page and
that book right at the top and moving the other
pages somewhere else. I genuinely don't know. But I just
want to say again to people who are listening to
that and are deeply suspicious of the intelligence community, two
things can be true, that the intelligence community was engaging

(55:41):
in significant funny business, and that the Trump letter is
real and massively suspicious, and that there are potentially other
pieces of information that the administration is sitting on that
do implicate Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 (55:56):
And lastly, the easiest way to get around that is
just to release it all and then nobody cares what's
on top or whatever. You know, you can reorder itever
you want to.

Speaker 3 (56:04):
And lastly, I know this is a probably a decent
teaser for the second half of the show, which is premium.
But the reason that we were talking about all of this,
and on the show we try to cover topics that
are not the sort of mainstream media outrage bait. The
reason that this is important is because there's substance of
justice justice questions, and also it could be affecting our

(56:25):
foreign policy literally right now, every single day totally.

Speaker 5 (56:29):
Yeah, well, may every new piece of information be a
new wonderful secret. You know, we were talking a lot
about all these lawsuits against news media organizations, and you
know that kind of leads us, I think naturally, to
this Stephen Colbert thing, which just announced last night that
the Late Show with Stephen Colbert has been canceled.

Speaker 4 (56:52):
Why don't we take a listen to what he has
to say right here?

Speaker 8 (56:56):
Oh hey, everybody, we got a great show feature night.
Senator Adam Schiff was my guest. The heart Heavin boss Road.
What a voice, I cried. But before we start the show,
I want to let you know something that I found
out just last night. Next year will be our last season.
The network will be ending the Late Show in May.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
And yeah, I share your feelings.

Speaker 8 (57:28):
It's not just the end of our show, but it's
the end of the Late Show on CBS.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
I'm not being replaced. This is all just going away.
And I do want to say I do.

Speaker 8 (57:40):
Want to say that the folks at CBS have been
great partners. I'm so grateful to the Tiffany Network for
giving me this chair and this beautiful theater to call home.
And of course I'm grateful to you the audience who
have joined.

Speaker 5 (57:53):
Us, and that audience has been growing small and smaller
by the day.

Speaker 4 (58:02):
You know a lot of people.

Speaker 5 (58:04):
I mean, I saw Elizabeth Warren, I saw Adam Schiff
after his interview say or question if there was political
pressure from the Trump administration behind this cancelation. What do
you folks make of this?

Speaker 1 (58:18):
I really don't know, because apparently the justification from CBS
is that it's no longer financially sustainable. So I'll read
here the genre has experienced a sharp decline in advertising
revenue in recent years. In twenty eighteen, network late night
shows took in four hundred and thirty nine million dollars
in ad revenue. By last year, the figure had dropped

(58:41):
to two hundred and twenty million, a fifty percent drop
in just seven years. The cancelation of the lay Show
raised immediate questions about the ties to the government's review
of Paramount's merger with Skydance or the recent settlement with
mister Trump. So I think both things could be true.
It's convenient to get rid of him. But also, I mean,
what was Stephen Colbert's salary at the Late Show? Probably

(59:05):
thirty million, that's my guess. It's got to be something
like that. Let's see, I can't find. Yeah, his annual
salary is about fifteen million dollars. So if we submit
that the total amount of advertising revenue is two hundred
and twenty million, how many late night shows are there?
There's the late Night, there's the Late show, There is

(59:27):
Kimmel I do k basically kil Mill fallon, So that's
three shows. But there's also Daily Show's Seth Myer. All
those people are all lumped in. So two hundred and
twenty million divided by all those shows. Obviously it's not equal,
but it's like somewhat dispersed. Fifteen million just for Colbert.
Anybody even know what the operating costs for a studio

(59:48):
and a staff size of twenty five people pull in
full corporate Benny's. I can kind of see it, right,
Like I could see a case where the show doesn't
pencil and where at the end of the day, like
kind is just not really worth it financially anymore. I
also could see, uh, you know, this whole thing. A
lot of people are saying that it is about Donald Trump,

(01:00:10):
but you know, shout out to like clipp and Stein
and others who were like, guys, I'm sorry, like he's
not funny, Like it's just a bad show, and I
think it's just bad.

Speaker 3 (01:00:20):
He is funny, but he's not funny anymore.

Speaker 4 (01:00:22):
Heartbreaking, you know.

Speaker 5 (01:00:24):
I mean, like the colbertopore was you know, cutting edge
at the time, and even before that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:33):
Candy that was cutting edge.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
I went to the rally to restore sanity into front
row seat. Yeah, I think I'm actually in a package
from Craig Ferguson because he was going around with if
anybody wants to pull that clip, I was there.

Speaker 3 (01:00:48):
So I don't know when I started doing this, but whatever,
it is. My like student stump speech when I'm trying
to explain what happened to the media, is literally druxtaposing
the Colbert Report with Johnny Carson, because I think it's
the story of media really neatly. It's like your perfect arc.
When Johnny Carson was the king of late night, You're

(01:01:10):
pulling a north of ten million people every night, and
in order to do that, you're competing with too well,
it depends. I mean, his tenure was very long and
the genre went through a lot, and so you're competing
with basically two other networks. And the way to maximize
your ad revenue is to appeal to as many Americans
as you possibly can. So Carson was not at all

(01:01:30):
a politically talked about politics all the time, but what
he was was not partisan. So that's because you you know,
Republicans buy sneakers too. As the saying goes for Michael Jordan,
and so at the time, that's the way to beat
your competitors is to just get the biggest, slightest of
the pie. Colbert was the number one host in late
night during the Trump era Trump one point zero, and actually,

(01:01:52):
right now, if you compare him, this is very interesting.
Gottfeld is beating him on cable, which would have been
unthinkable in the latter Carson era because first of all,
that was a new thing relatively and secondly, not everybody
had cable, So Guttfeld is actually pretty handily destroying everyone
else on a cable network. Colbert was number one in

(01:02:15):
Trump one point zero despite being the least funny and
the most political host. You heard him in that monologue
about the show being canceled that Adam Schiff was his guest.
A comedy show with Adam Schiff as the guest. Does
that sound appealing to you. No. But the way to
win the competition now is the niche. So if you

(01:02:37):
can get resistance wine moms coming back night after night,
you have the best shot at selling really specific ads
that are easy for the business people to understand and
maximizes the audience loyalty. All of that. So what's getting
buried in all of this is Colbert said that they're
actually retiring or CBS said they're actually retiring the late

(01:02:58):
night brand. They're retiring the show after he leaves, so
that can only mean one thing, Debra Vance is coming in. No,
I'm kidding, but that's what it's like. That's actually I
think even more significant than Colbert being pushed out is
that they're retiring the franchise of the show, and that
show is a staple of Hollywood culture. Griffin's literally in Hollywood,

(01:03:22):
so he can speak more to this. But I think
it's possible that Colbert was overpaid and was needling the
network over the settlement, and that's the straw that broke
the camel's back. But this is not about politics. It
has nothing to do.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
I totally agree. It's like, guys, it's an insane system.
It airs at eleven thirty five pm Eastern to watch
interviews live and Colbert's monologue and various sketches. Who the
fuck is watching that in twenty twenty five. I'm being serious,
like anybody who is remotely interested in comedy or to

(01:03:59):
the extent that it has any cultural cachet left at all,
people are watching it on YouTube or on Twitter the
day after they don't. No one is watching this live
like they're just not. Maybe some people in California at
a thirty whenever. It also happens to airlive. And there's
a great book I think it's called The Late Shift.
I read it a few years ago. It's the history

(01:04:20):
of late night television and specifically the war between Jay
Leno and David Letterman. And people need to understand that
it was a very specific moment in time pre Internet,
in which was the only way to get access to
comedy as a genre that everybody could experience. It was
the platform through which Leno and Letterman can have all

(01:04:43):
of these like guys on and to debut. It goes
back to the history of the Tonight Show in the
nineteen seventies. As like the Convening Ground, it also was
a really good way to get publicity out about a movie.
But effectively, like basically the moment YouTube and the Internet
and all that stuff starts to come around, these shows
just become obsolete overnight. I mean, in my opinion, the

(01:05:04):
greatest ever do it Conan he couldn't even make it work.
What is Conan doing now he's a.

Speaker 3 (01:05:09):
Podcast host and I'm very successful, and I love I.

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
Love Team Coco. It's a good show. It's pretty interviewing.
He gets good guests. But my point is, just like
that genre of like twenty five thirty people on your
staff staying up every night to do Joe, I mean,
even John Stewart, he's only on the air guys once
a week, right, once a week like this, That that
is just it was such a specific moment in time

(01:05:35):
that even I don't understand it. I can only read
about it for what it was like cultural. Yeah, that
post nineteen nine, that like nineteen nineties mass media culture,
right before the Internet and YouTube and all that came out.
And the only reason it even stayed around was because
of all this legacy advertising. But look, the world has

(01:05:56):
moved on. So yeah, if you ask me, that's the
main reason is you have to just keep signing these megadeals.
You have this massive burn rate, you know, on the show.
But I mean, I'm not going to be stupid and
deny that. It's an easy thing to hand to the
Trump administration to also get the sky Dance, to also
get the termount sky Dance Charger, so I think it's both.

(01:06:18):
But I think that a lot of liberals are really
ignoring like, but guys that the show was bad, Like
it was a.

Speaker 5 (01:06:23):
Bad Yeah, the ratings were bad, and like I was
thinking a lot, you know, you know, Emily mentioned that
he was a star in Trump one point zero, and
like we already knew, like before Trump won twenty twenty four,
that the talk show format was dying culturally. But even
I thought that Colbert would get like a shot in
the arm from Trump being back, that it would like
gin the resistance people back up. But you know, really,

(01:06:46):
in my view, like the age range now for the
Colbert audience is like sixties and seventies. Yeah, and like
and and but and you'd think that those people well
would still just be watching like cable and the old
things they're used to. But like, you know, I see,
like my dad who's in his sixties, I mean he's
he's looking at tiktoks, he's looking at Instagram reels. When

(01:07:07):
I go over to my dad's house, we're not watching cable.
He's playing me a YouTube video now. And I really
think that like even that age range of like sixties
and seventies just have so many more entertaining distractions and
watching a five minute interview like these really short bite
interviews with really boring people, or like some you know,

(01:07:29):
modern family actor is just not really hitting anymore. And
it really goes to show that these the but the
talk show format, I do believe people still like if
you may, if you revolutionize it, if you make it
interesting again. Like I'm looking at shows online like Kill
Tony is essentially a talk show that gets like hundreds

(01:07:51):
of thousands of life incurrents on YouTube.

Speaker 4 (01:07:52):
It's massive.

Speaker 5 (01:07:53):
I'm looking at people like the Adam Friedlin Show, which
is much styled in like a seventies talk show. I
do think people still something about the format, but you
have to keep it modern, you have to update it.
And you know, I look at an organization Sager mentioned
the twenty five employees probably on the writing staff, the
massive crew, and they saw the ratings go down for years,
and they refuse to innovate. I mean, I've worked at

(01:08:16):
a lot of media companies where the writing's on the wall,
it's they're the downward trajectory is obvious, and they just
don't they don't update, they don't modernize with the times.

Speaker 4 (01:08:28):
There was a way for them to save this show.

Speaker 5 (01:08:30):
They're like, they could have brought in new writers, they
could have cleared house, they could have made it interesting
and changed things. But when you're in that level of Hollywood,
like cemented tradition, you just it's almost impossible unless someone
gives you the mandate to go in and kind of
fire everyone, hire new staff and like challenge the format.

(01:08:50):
I think it was savable, but I just think people
I agree with how god there are way yeah right.

Speaker 1 (01:08:55):
I mean, this is the problem. They don't know how
to streamline, they don't know how to you know, innovate
or any of that for the future. And by the way,
this is they have it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:03):
I mean franchises sign that they are coming to it lately.

Speaker 1 (01:09:07):
I think it's too baked in, the burn rates too high.
For example, my prediction Saturday Night Live, it'll be dead
in ten years, that's my.

Speaker 3 (01:09:14):
B I don't disagree with that. I don't just mean maybe.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
If Lauren dies, like that's when it'll die. I just
think at this point NBC is just keeping it around
for whatever, say, I don't know, you know, like sort
of emeritis thing, and then when Lauren is gone, they're like, look,
let's just end the show. I mean, there's no more,
or it's not good anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:09:33):
It becomes a clip show. I mean it already has
become a clip show. Yeah, basically. But yeah, no, I
think they're realizing this a decade too late. And that's
why I think one of like my hottest takes ever
is that CNN Plus was actually a good idea. I mean,
they executed it.

Speaker 4 (01:09:47):
That's very hot.

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
It's a hot take. Understand what you're trying to say.
The concept of concept.

Speaker 3 (01:09:53):
Yeah, shouldn't have been abandoned. Because Fox News invested early
in Fox Nation, whatever you think about it, it's now
a huge, huge part of the Fox News business. And
that's because they were able to bring people in with
these documentaries and subscriptions and blah blah blah. That makes
up for the fact that even you know, okay, so
Guttfeld's trouncing Colbert. Okay, but that's three million people on

(01:10:16):
average watching Guttfeld a night. It doesn't compare to the
ten million or the five million that you would have
had on a late night show a long time ago.
So anyway, all that is just to say that a
lot of these networks are ten years too late and
are trying to adapt. They're just doing it in a
very poor way, and they're doing it late.

Speaker 5 (01:10:36):
And to the SNL point, just because SNL was mentioned,
and I am a sicko and I still watch every
episode of SNL. I watch every single sketch. There's at
least one good sketching episode. But you got to suffer
through a lot. I say, get rid of Lorn, bring
in Tina Fey, and let let Tina Fey revolutionize the show.

(01:10:57):
Let her update it for the next era. I do
think there's a ton of life there. Anyways, if you're
listening NBC thirty Rock, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:11:04):
Tina, if you're listening, we love you. Tina is on
the record, is having burner accounts, so in my incredible
she does listen.

Speaker 4 (01:11:12):
Incredible.

Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
I love Tina faith perhaps the most thing about me.

Speaker 3 (01:11:16):
Nothing nothing better than thirty.

Speaker 1 (01:11:17):
Rock, absolutely so to this day, greatish network show of
all time and Bali.

Speaker 5 (01:11:23):
It's just incredible, the entire chime on that. But yeah,
let's why don't we kick it over to the second
half now for premiums, folks, we're gonna be talking, We're
gonna be answering a m a questions we're gonna be
talking about a little bit.

Speaker 4 (01:11:35):
Of the Vatican and Israel.

Speaker 3 (01:11:37):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:11:38):
And we're also going to be releasing exclusively of first
for premium subscribers, a one on one interview between Sager
and Schultz that was recorded outside of the Schultz episode,
where Sager asks, Uh, does he regret voting for Trump?
The vibe check on jd Vance, and more. You can
check all that out by signing up at breakingpoints dot

(01:11:58):
com today and you'll get it in your email inbox.

Speaker 4 (01:12:01):
We'll see you on the other side