July 15, 2025 • 51 mins
Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick examines the final fallout from the latest Supreme Court rulings.
The Bulwark’s Will Sommer details the extreme levels of cope coming from MAGA World as they twist themselves in knots over the Epstein client list.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and the consumer price index rows two
point seven percent from one year prior as the global
trade war started to rage. We have such a great
show for you today, Slates. Dahlia Lethwick stops by to
(00:23):
talk about the fallout from the recent dramatic and dramatic
Supreme Court's rulings. Then we'll talk to the Bulwarks. Will
Sommer about the extreme amounts of kopham coming from Maga
world as they twist themselves in knots over the Epstein
client list. But first the news.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
My Emil Bove, a man who judges don't like. I
think is right up there with Stephen Miller and being
a person where when you know him, you're not a fan.
This is evidenced by dozens of judges have called for
it a letter to be unfit for the bench. As
the Senate votes to confirm him. What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1 (01:05):
So this is one of these confirmations where the Senate
is looking at him. People cannot stop leaking and sending
letters and their whistleblowers. He's up for a lifetime appointment
on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals if confirmed by
the Senate, and literally everyone in the world is coming
forward to tell them stories of alleged misdeeds, including a whistleblower.
(01:31):
He was also this is another person, and they're a
bunch who are who were Trump, who were Trump lawyers
who then were put into the Justice Department to serve
as tru Trump Hedgeman Trump henchmen. And so this is
another one. I mean, what I think is the most
interesting about both Vey is that he looks so much
(01:55):
like Roy Cohen.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
It's so funny you said that. I literally was thinking
that yesterday. I'd never heard anybody say that.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
He looks just like Ray Colan. And he has that
same thing that Stephen Miller has where he's not very old.
I mean, I don't know, maybe Jesse will figure out
how old he is, but he's not very old, but
he looks like he has really been through it, just
like Steven Miller.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
He's younger than us.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
He's younger than us, right, and he looks like he
could be our dad. And that is not to say
anything bad about his looks, but just to say that
the acts of whatever it is those guys are doing
for Trump AGCO. Just like Stephen Miller is like a
decade younger than we are.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
He's probably going to make People's Sexiest Man Alive list
this year.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
He'll be telling you, certainly, if Trump propaganda is any
if they have any way with the propaganda, they will
be They both be on People's Sexiest List.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So, speaking of people doing things for mister Trump, Linda
McMahon will begin the process of dismantling the Education Department
after their Supreme Court win.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
So it's worth remembering this is another like we have
to end everything good Jimmy Carter did. FEMA is another
creation of Jimmy Carter. There is a theory floating around
that the reason Trump became so stuck on undoing the
legacy of Jimmy Carter is because Jimmy Carter died and
it was in the news cycle, and he got thinking
(03:15):
about Jimmy Carter and he wanted to undo a lot
of the carterisms. By the way, Jesse, I'm sure when
you saw this year, the same thought I did, which
is this is all right out of Project twenty twenty five, right,
dismantle the Department of Education, give the money back to
the states. This will mean you know, the Department of
Education famous for Title one funding for poor schools, so
(03:39):
that's schools in run districts where state taxes are low,
so they don't get as much money. And the other
thing that you and I both often talk about is
that the Department of Education handles pelgrants. Pelgrants are college
scholarships for children who are our neediest kits. Right, you
(04:00):
can technically use these grants to go to college. It's
interesting to me to see this is one of the many,
many ways that you see the Trump administration just declaring
war on people who don't have money. But it's also
besides declaring war on people who don't have money. What
these things do is they make it harder and harder
for people in the sort of lower income range to
(04:22):
get more education, make more money, and get into a
higher income bracket. And so what this does is it
creates more of a cast system. It makes it harder
for people to move up and make more and have more.
It creates more financial inequality, which is something that this
country is already being crushed under. And I just want
(04:44):
to point out that you know, as bad as dismantling
the Department of Education is and you know where it's coming.
After they dismantled USAID and they dismantled the parts of
the State Department. And this is like doing that but
to our show. And it's worth realizing a Elon Musk
is out. So this is really just Trump's Republican Party
(05:07):
doing this, So don't let them try to blame anyone else.
And then the other thing is that we're going to
see basically the goal here and we've talked about this
before with Project twenty twenty five. The goal here is
to make it so the federal government does nothing. Really,
it does very little for the people, and at some
point people are going to say, well, why why why
(05:27):
even have a federal government, And that's what Republicans want.
It's trying to provide people with less and less services
from the government. So it's infuriating. Linda McMahon is just
you know, she has an opportunity here to not do
the worst possible thing, and she is in fact going
to just do what Trump tells her to, just like
everyone else in this administration.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Speaking of walking lockstep with dear Leader, everyone is just
twisting themselves and knots to block the release of the
Epstein files. And now we have all these mega Congress
people who just blocked the release of the Upstein files.
And I will tell you the funniest thing to watch
in the last forty eight hours is how many of
these people who do content we're trying to cover up
(06:08):
for Trump. And now they're like, nope, we're going to
go out the side of the people. They should release
the Epstein files because they are seeing the wrath of
the MAGA who really want this released. And they don't
realize Trump and Epstein were real close friends.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Well, I mean House Republicans they block the release of
the Epstein files. I'm just going to read you a
post from one Donald Trump Junior, the intellectual beating heart
of the MAGA movement. Show us all the Epstein client
lists now. Explanation point. Explanation point, explanation point, why would
anyone protect those scum space bags? Question mark? Ask yourself
(06:43):
this question daily and the answer becomes very apparent. Explanation point,
explanation point, not apparent, but very apparent. Yeah, Well, I
asked myself this question. Maybe not daily, but I ask
myself this question, and I see that two hundred and
eleven Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to block
(07:05):
the release of the Epstein files. I wonder what they
why they're doing that. That's weird. That's weird. I was
I was told the deep state was going to be ended.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah. Well, the funny thing is is this is going
to bleed a lot of their base from trusting demon.
It's another nail in their coffin that I won't be
crying over. But I will be crying over, Molly. Yes,
inflation because Trump's tariffs are driving it up. As we
got a new economic forecast from the Consumer Price Index data.
And thank you Bureau of Labor Statistics for giving us
(07:39):
the bad news.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I'm going to tell you a story here. The one
good thing about this is that at least the Bureau
of Labor Statistics is not lying to us yet. That
was when I said, I was like, Oh, I guess
they're not being controlled by Trump. Good job. Trump is
trying to fire to roam pal right. He's doing everything
he can to try to get rid of Jerome Powell
(08:01):
so we can lower interest rates, so that he can
completely fuck up the economy. He doesn't realize that's what's
going to happen. But that's what's going to happen. I
just want to say, tariffs are taxes paid by the consumer.
Trump is all about cutting taxes, but he's not cutting tariffs,
and this inflationary it's stupid. So much of what's happening
(08:23):
right now is just Donald Trump playing stupid games and
winning stupid prizes and all of us suffering. So the
good news is your strawberries are about to be eight
hundred dollars. And the bad news is no, that's the
bad news. Dalia Luthwick is a senior editor at Slate
and the author of Lady Justice, Women, The Law, and
(08:45):
the Battle to Save America. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Dahlia.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
II, My this has ravaged me, in case you're wondering
what she looked like. Ravaged me like being eaten alive
from inside by biole and fury and injustice.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
It strikes me that the Supreme Court has really just
done a lot of bad stuff to put, not to
speak into specific a way, but there's certainly a big
thing we need to talk about, which is the Department
of Education, and I want to talk about them first.
But in the back of your head start thinking about
(09:24):
all of the other incredibly fucked up things they've done
when I think about the birthright citizenship decision and why
they took that and what that means. But first, let's
just talk for a second about this most recent decision
where the Supreme Court basically said Trump can do it,
(09:45):
yet again said Trump, do you want to do something
because we want to help you do stuff. Part of
the I think.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
The term of legal art I'm looking for is like,
bitch of this decision is that they actually didn't tell
us a thing. Like it's another in a long string
of and I know we've talked about this a bunch
on your show, Molly, but like this is the most
I think egregious example of something that comes out on
the shadow docket, which means.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Which Deepen Vlatick wrote a whole book about.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
And I know your listeners know what it is, but
it's just worth Like the frame that I'm trying to
use is like, if you think that the Supreme Court
term ended on the last day of the term when
birthright citizenship and all those other horrendous cases came down,
like you sell, hook line and sinker for the story
(10:37):
they want to tell about themselves, right, which is that
they you know, only work from the first Monday of
October till the end of June and then they go
off on vacation. And that's just not true. We've had
a series of emergency orders on the so called shadow docket,
each of which has been like as gobsmackingly awful as
(10:57):
stuff that was happening on the merits docket. And so
I think the reason, like you want to start at
the Department of Education isn't just what they did, but
how they did it. And the fact that like you know,
and I say this on your show, and I'll just
say it again, like they have one job, which is
to explain why they are doing what they're doing. It's
(11:19):
just not good enough to say because we say so
and then swawn off to like, you know, wherever they
go Cote Dessert or whatever.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Right, summer trips was conservative.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Donor show your work and explain to us why you
just allowed Secretary McMahon to fire half of the employees
at the department and you don't tell us why. And
so this is another in a series of like I'm
trying to think of it as kind of like front
stage backstage stuff where like if you're only paying attention
(11:52):
to the sixty sum cases that were on the merits
dock that were argued and briefed and that the court
issued aions and as crap as all that was, and
it was, like, to be sure, a very very bad term.
What you're missing is that they're getting away with in
case after case after case after case, giving Donald Trump
(12:12):
everything he wants without explaining why, without giving guidance to
the lower courts about how to proceed, without telling the
parties how they could possibly fix us. They're just doing
these back of the napkin like because we say so.
And what's shocking, in addition to the decision itself, is
just I think we need to understand that the court,
(12:34):
you know, used to use its emergency docket for actual emergency,
and the emergency wasn't. Donald Trump didn't get what he wanted,
and now you know, case after case after case after case,
and he wins in like eighty some percent of the cases.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah, that was actually what I was going to ask
you next, was we have seen in this court, not
exactly in the same makeup, but pretty much was more
than happy not to take Biden administration so they would
not take any of that stuff. So it's partially the
way they're doing it. It's partially what they are doing,
(13:11):
and it's partially their obsession with enabling Donald Trump to
grow executive pow.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
So and you're that's such a good way to sort
of layer the cake. It's you know, what they're doing.
What they're doing is without explanations, saying that this administration
that came into office saying we're going to eviscerate the
Department of Education and brought in a Secretary of Education
who was like, I'm turning off all the lights and
(13:38):
locking the door. I'm the last one, and who said
that over and over and over again, right straight out
of Project twenty twenty five playbooks, you know anyone, And
you know now they're saying, oh, we're not gotting the
Department of Ages, We're just streamlining it. And so entire
departments who are in charge of financial aid, who are
(13:58):
in charge of uage instruction, who are you know, who
disperse money that has been appropriated by Congress for the
department that was established by Congress and by statute cannot
be dissolved willy nilly by the president. And they're saying, oh, no,
he's not dissolving it willy nilly, even though that's what
he says, and she says.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
They're just streamlining it.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
And so then we've got these just buckets and buckets
of money that there's nobody to effectuate the will of Congress.
And so what's shocking is that the court, you know,
if you compare this to when President Joe Biden, who
wanted to do loan forgiveness, and that that's what I
was like, Yeah, oh shocking. You know, you can't do this,
(14:41):
and we don't know who has standing, and let's sit
on this, but let's not enjoying it. Let's see like
you know, or you know, we let's let the injunction
stand and let's just like wait and wait and wait
and wait, and then let's like invoke the Major Questions
doctrine and say this is a made up doctrine that
doesn't allow Joe Biden to do what he wants when
he's president. And now we are, and it's like, oh no,
(15:05):
this is really exigent that Donald Trump has to be
able to We can talk about the hardship. This is
going to just unloose on millions and millions and millions
of students around the country, you know, particularly with you know, English,
non English speaking kids, particularly kids who have any sort
of special needs. Like it's massive, massive hardship, and this
(15:27):
is just an immense amount of money that's been appropriated
that I guess, you know, just doesn't get forked over.
But the language that is used by the Trump administration
is like cynical to the point of psychotic, like, oh, yeah,
we're not closing the department, and for the court to
just be like, well, we just got to take them
(15:47):
at their word. And then just to your last point,
which I think is probably the most important point, when
President Biden tried to do anything by executive order, when
President Biden tried to do anything that would put his
vision of the presidency into power, he was rebuffed by
the court. And yet now so I think it's the
(16:10):
like both the cynicism of taking them at their word,
but also the cynicism of just nakedly, nakedly giving this
president a maximalist executive authority to do whatever he wants,
even though it's clearly unlawful to do this, it's not permitted,
And the cynicism of not allowing Biden an inch by
(16:32):
the same exact lights. And I think one of the
things that sticks in your craw about all of this
is that not just that real people are going to
suffer immense hardship, but that Kutanji Brown Jackson keeps writing
these descents. The dissent in this particular education case comes
from Sony Soda Mayor. It's signed off on by Justices
(16:53):
Kagan and by Justice Jackson. But I think that by
and large, every time one of the these liberal justices writes
a dissent that says, look at what you just get there,
look at what you're doing here, look at what they said,
look at what they promised, and look at the affidavits
in this case that show that if you eliminate entire departments,
(17:15):
there's nobody to do the work that Congress has authorized,
and that nobody wants to even look at it much less.
It is veri in a discent because the majority opinion
has no law. So this is like the Bad v. Bad.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
One of the things that I'm struck by is so
much of legal scholarship is about picking other cases that
back up your point, And here is the Supreme Court
that is, you know, a year later, behaving towards a
president in a completely opposite way that they did to
the previous president.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Right, it's reverse engineering every single decision and using whatever
doctrine it needs to do that in order to get
the outcome at once. And like you say, there isn't
even the patina of trying to you know, square the circle.
Like there's no attempt to say and this is exactly
the same as you know, when we kneecap President Biden,
(18:16):
or you know when Biden said, wait, you know universal injunctions,
those are hobbling my ability to be the president. Twice Yeah,
the CORP was like, no, that's not an issue we
want to take up. And like five months into the
Trump presidency at like v burning judicial question. And so
I think there's a way in which and this is
(18:38):
just tricky Molly, like blinkering yourself to the politics of
the world is supposed to be like a judge's superpower, right,
Like I'm not going to pay attention to the you know,
all of the extraneous political things because my job is
to like go into the laboratory and like pour justice
into the two test tubes until it smokes and then
justice appears. And so there's this partly it's that the
(19:01):
strength of the judicial project, which is that politics isn't
supposed to get in the way of that is also
the weakness of the judicial project, which is what you
have Justice Jackson being like, that's not how any of
this works. Yeah, and why you have Justice Sotomayor saying like,
it cannot be the case that we're falling for this
over and over again. It's way outside the four corners
(19:23):
of the opinion, and it's enraging not just the conservative justices,
but like the commentariat that they're talking about, like, how
can you not see the patterns here? How can you
not see that Trump wins all the time. But they're
just doing the thing that is hard for judges to do,
which is like, look at what the world has brought us,
(19:44):
you know, look at what the world has brought to us.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
So Alino and Thomas, you give up, right, those guys
are never going to do They're going to just Trump
can do anything. He's a god king. Gorsic and Kavanaugh
are basically the younger versions ultimately really with the exception
of Native Americans, right. For Gorsic, Yeah, Roberts pretends to
(20:08):
be normal, but obviously isn't because of all these decisions,
and then you do have this one smart conservative justice,
right just as Amy, who is by no means in
any stretch of the imagination, a liberal. She's very religious
and comes from very very religious stock, and she you know,
(20:29):
was at uh she practiced taught at very religious you know.
But she is smart, because we know that from the
oral arguments. I mean, so I just wonder you think
that she just sort of is like, I'm just going
to go along with this anyway because the numbers aren't there.
I mean, what do you think the calculus there is,
or do you think that she's not. Ultimately she's just
(20:51):
a partisan like every like the others.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
You and I spoke on several occasions this year where
Justice Barrett was like hiving up and some times with
John Roberts right being the center of the court, sometimes
even with Brett Kavanaugh. That's been a pattern we've seen
the last couple of years. You know, there were a
lot of people who were prepared to say that the Barrett,
who was joining the liberal justices in several important cases
(21:17):
here sort of represented some new you know, two point
oh Amy Cony Barrett, and we had a lot of
theories about why that was. I don't know that it
was about smartness. I think it was just that there
was a sense that she and John Roberts were pretty
temperate and at minimum were institutionalists, at minimum didn't want
to sit on the last Supreme Court in American constitutional history,
(21:40):
and that they were sort of modulating what they might
have done at the ballot box or what they might
have done if we weren't in a crisis, because they
understood the moment we're in, and they understood that the
far right flank of the Court is, you know, all
in for Project twenty twenty five and Stephen Miller and
Steve Bannon and who that Amy Cony Barrett not in
(22:03):
evidence At the end of the term. These were six
three decisions on everything that mattered, with few exceptions. Justice
Barrett voted in lockstep with the Conservatives. She was given
the opinion in birthright Citizenship, which is right USA arguably
the most important case of the term, and she kind
(22:23):
of made their dreams come true. I mean, she wrote this,
like Cuckoo Banana's originalist reading of nationwide injunctions, that you
did what the majority wanted her to do. So I
don't think I'm prepared to say anymore that that center
of the court that we have seen mostly manifest in
(22:45):
Barrett and Roberts in some really important issues, and certainly
at the beginning of this term, I don't know where
they are, but they're not here as to the why
of it. I think you're probably right, Molly, like some
of it is like this is the stuff they of, right,
maximalist readings of an executive theory of power in which
the president is all powerful unless there's Joe Biden, and
(23:08):
you know, a sort of constriction on voting rights and
on civil liberties, and a constriction on an awareness of
racial injustice and LGBTQ rights, and then of course, you know,
swing for the fences on religious liberty for certain kinds
of religions. That's the project in some sense, that's why
they were put on the court. And so I don't
(23:29):
know that there's a lot of light between their own
views of the world and the doctrine that they were
pulling from. I guess what changed for me and what
mystifies me, And I think this is your question is
are they not aware of the peril that they are
putting both the court in and the country in and
(23:50):
that they are kind of making a bargain with the devil,
and that you can give Trump every single thing he wants,
and the minute you say no, he's going to take
it any way. And I thought they were savvy enough
to understand that you can't accommodate this and you can't
(24:10):
barge with this. But you know, at the end of
the day, I think they genuinely feel that they are
protecting the Court's power and the Court's prerogatives and the
Court's supremacy by essentially being in this kind of weird
codependent relationship an imperial presidency in bed with an imperial court,
(24:32):
and that this is the way to protect the institution
and to protect the presidency. And I guess, you know,
the really sad code of the coda to that story
is at the end of the term in the you know,
in the birthright citizenship case, they recapped the rest of
the Article three judiciary to get that. I mean, they
(24:53):
really went after explicitly district court judges who are just
doing their jobs, who have been the bulwark, the single
most effective check on a runaway president. And they went
after those judges without any regret or without any sense
that what they were doing in making themselves an imperial
(25:15):
court was throwing the rest of the Article three judiciary
on the dumpster.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
So let's talk for a minute about what it means
to even take the birthright citizenship case up, because I
think that that is a case that has had some
coverage problems. Can you just explain a little bit for
(25:43):
our listeners about that case. It was big case, and
I think it has more meaning than maybe we think.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
I mean, I think it was probably the case of
the term and in some sense it checked every box
of how Donald Trump's going to do stuff right by
executive order right, which is not the way we make change.
And essentially on the first day in office again, campaign
(26:10):
promise fulfilled just kind of like taking a sharpie and
like scribbling out section one of the fourteenth Amendment that says,
if you're born in this country, you are an American
and doesn't matter, you know, with narrow exceptions like if
you're the kid of a diplomat or an invader. Those
are the exceptions. That was the intent. This was meant
to correct for, you know, the egregious sins of slavery
(26:35):
and what it meant to be right stateless in some
states if you were born in some states and not
in others. It is perfectly clear what section one of
the fourteenth Amendment conferred on people. It has been ratified
in case law from the Supreme Court, it has been
ratified in statutes. This is not a question. And Trump
(26:56):
just took it upon himself to say, Nope, we are
going to distort the language subject to the jurisdiction thereof,
to mean that unless your parents are either citizens or
they are you know, Green card holders or other lawful
permanent residents, if you are born here, even if your
parents are both on student visas, you're not a citizen.
And don't care what the case law says, don't care
(27:19):
what the statutes stay. And in a normal world, a
no president would attempt to do this. And in a
normal world what would happen is what happened, which is
in three different district courts, judges said, this is bonkers.
This is not the way the parting Amendment has ever
been read. No serious person reads it this way, and
(27:41):
we're enjoining it across the country, and appeals courts all agreed.
And in normal world, the Trump administration, if they genuinely
wanted to have this fight, would take it to the
Supreme Court and say, decide this on the marits. Does
Fortique Amendment mean what it says it means and what
everyone who has reviewed it.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
A hundred years agree.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
They didn't do that. They didn't ask that question of
the court. They just said, we want to take this
narrow question of whether a single judge in a single
district can enjoin a policy across the country, and we're
going to take that to the Court, and that's the
only thing we're going to ask the Court to deal with.
And to be fair, we kind of said this earlier.
(28:26):
Nationwide injunctions were a huge problem for President Biden, huge
problem in the first Trump administration, problem for Obama. Right,
you take a case to Judge Matthew Chasmeric and Amorial
and techn where you have a one hundred percent of
getting Judge Matthew Chasmeric and he'll go ahead and say
that mefipristone has to be taken off the market. So
(28:48):
this is a problem for both presidents, right, It has
been a problem for years. The problem is that when
Joe Biden was faced with nationwide injunctions, for instance in
the student relief cases, he said, hey, Supreme Court This
is really problematic. This single judge can enjoin a policy
around the country for everyone, and the Supreme Court had
(29:10):
no interest in taking that question. Was no interest, right,
They had opportunities to resolve this burning problem, and they're like, nah,
we're good. And five months into the Trump administration, here
we are. This is the exigent question. And so again
it a little bit goes to the lies you have
to tell yourself as a jurist about we can have
(29:33):
a bracing, difficult conversation about whether single judges should be
allowed to enjoin policies around the country. The fact that
we didn't want to have it Haven's months ago, and
we need to have it right now, and the answer
has to be noe. That a judge cannot do this
feels like the most cynical thing in the world. And
when you kind of couple that with the ways in
(29:56):
which this administration has been running every single case that
they lose up to the Supreme Court and being like me, me, me, me,
mister relief, and the Court's just like, yes, my son, yes,
my son.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
There's no such thing as a political question doctrine. That's
only for Joe Biden, right, There's no such constraint on
this president. And so I think what you're seeing is
not just the court given the opportunity to answer a
question which, by the way, Molly, I think the answer went.
If they ever take Section one of the fourteenth Amendment,
(30:31):
does it confers it is chip on everyone born in
the States. I think the answer will be yes. It
is going to be very hard for them to find
otherwise the choice to not decide that in this case.
The choice instead is a real choice to hobble the
district court judges, who again are the only thing restraining
(30:52):
the only check that exists right super in Congress and
hollowing out the rest of government is these district court
judges in to turn on them and be like, who
are these self aggrandizing lunatics? You think they know everything?
And that's you know what's frightening about this is the
contempt for judges.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Yes, Dahlia, I love you and I never want to
cut you off because you're amazing. Thank you, thank you,
thank you, Dahlia.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Mollie, take good care
of yourself.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Will Sommer is a reporter at The Bulwark and the
author of Trust the Plan. Welcome to fast politics, Will.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Sommer, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
We cover a lot of stupid crap. Not to put
too fine a point on it, but what is happening
right now with Ebstein bringing down Donald Trump not in
the way you thought he would, is pretty amazing. So
talk us through sort of how we got to this very,
very stupid moment in American history.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
Okay, so let's take it back to the early George W.
Bush administration. There is a guy on the scene, let's
say to that too. There is a mega rich guy
named Jeffrey Epstein who is inexplicably wealthy. He has some
financial connections. He worked there. He's like a hedge fund guy,
but he's way wealthier than that. Then makes sense. I
mean he has homes in Palm Beach, a huge home
(32:15):
in Manhattan, a ranch out West. I mean, he's all
over the place. And he's also friends with a lot
of really wealthy people, powerful people like Bill Clinton, Bill Gates,
and notably Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Right, Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
Bill Richardson, And he takes and he's known Trump at
one point, I think he's done, Trump says. The late eighties.
Trump says that in two thousand and two, and there
are these videos of him and Trump paleling around. They're
kind of like at the side of a dance floor,
and they look kind of like they're like picking out
which women they want to pursue, and Trump in two
thousand and two, in a profile of Epstein, says, you know, essentially,
(32:52):
Jeffrey is a very a kind of a man about town,
and he likes women, maybe even more than I do,
some of them very young. So it seems almost like
Trump already knows Epstein's deal, and then they kind of
drift apart. Epstein catches these charges for basically offering young women,
like for offering girls like sexual massages in exchange for money.
(33:13):
But then he gets this weird plea deal from the
federal government that basically lets him skate on nearly all
the charges, and then in he sort of rejoins this
high powered world. And then in twenty nineteen he's indicted
on federal charges for the first time, and then that
summer he's found dead in his prison cell in Manhattan.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Right and fast forward to magworld in general has long
fanned the flames of conspiracies. Pretty much everybody in that
world has had some different conspiracy theory they've ran with,
from QAnon to you know, Sandy hook being you know,
I'm thinking of Alex Jones. I mean, all different members
(33:55):
of MAGA world have fanned the flames of conspiracies, including
Donald Trump his first administration, when he said things like
he said where we go, one, we go all? He
retweeted lots of q and on stuff. They played a
q and On song. At one point, didn't he have
do some sort of homage to QAnon?
Speaker 4 (34:14):
You know, he was asked, can you dissuade these quanon
crazy people that you're pursuing the pedophile cabal? And he said, well,
you know, maybe they're right about that, and you know,
would that be such a bad thing?
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Right?
Speaker 1 (34:24):
So, at every point when Trump has been able to
sort of squash this idea that there's a deep state,
he has in fact just encouraged it.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
Yeah, and you know he's promoted it. I mean, I
think he saw the idea of like this kind of sinister,
shadowy force that's out to get him as very advantageous
because then he could chalk up any criminal prosecution he faced,
or really any opposition as sort of this sinister force
that's out to get him unfairly.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
So it worked well until it didn't. Yes, So he
comes back into office, he's, you know, we're going to
release the Jeffrey Epstein stuff. Then we see Pambondy, who
is you know, his ag brings a lot of MAGA
influencers to the Justice Department.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
Oh no, Mollie, it's actually a little crazier. It was
not for a meeting with Pambondi. So this is late February,
roughly around February twenty. First she's asked, do you have
the EPSTCEN client list? She says, it's on my desk.
I'm going to review the Epstein case for release. Then
six days after that, a bunch of right wing influencers
Jack Pisovic, Mike Cernovich lives of TikTok are visiting the
(35:32):
White House and she in sort of a and they
they're therefore meetings with administration officials. It's not supposed to
be an Epstein thing. And then she shows up with
Cash Betel and these binders that say Epstein, you know,
we release phase one and hands them out and then
disastrously they pose for pictures with that as sort of
like you know, big smiles with the human trafficking evidence.
(35:52):
It all turns out to be public info anyway, It
blows up in everyone's face.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
And I want to point out that was stage one,
so theoretic, so you don't put numbers on things unless
there are going to be other stages, right.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
Yes, that's a right, So you would think there's a
stage two at least to come.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Right, but there has not been a stage two.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
There's not, And the pressure kind of ramps up that
then you know, she starts saying she gets caught on
tape bragging about all the videos they have, and then
so then she has to come out and say it publicly,
and so they're kind of getting pushed towards more and
more disclosure. And then Elon says, you know, well, the
reason you're never going to get the Epstein files is
because Trump's in.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Them, right, Which was a pretty amazing moment because I
think that was the moment when Elon said that about
Trump and Epstein. I think that was the moment where
it became clear that Elon was never going to be
invited back into the White House. Do you think that's fair?
Speaker 4 (36:44):
That was the moment, I would say, cat to her
truly lost faith in Elon. You know that was when
the like, you know before it's kind of like it
was like I believe Jack was Zobac said, you know,
before Elon mentioned the Epsteine stuff, he was like, you know,
this is how two alpha males fight, like in a
very fallous way, like the Big Boys loved a rough House.
And then as soon as the epstein stuff hits, people go, whoa.
(37:05):
I mean, because you know he's calling Trumpet pedophile and
so in fairness, at that point, you know, there's no
coming back from that.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Yeah, that was the moment Elon decided that he didn't
want that huge base of supporters anyway. Bondi releases stuff
that turns out to be nothing. Magelworld gets furious. They're
on a Monday, so about a week ago, a little
more than a week ago, the Trump DOJ releases a
(37:34):
statement which basically says, there's nothing to see here.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
This is so weird. There was no sense of we're
going to have the decision that comes out by X
date or you know, we're going to review it. They
just Sunday night. I believe that it was the long
July fourth weekend. They leak to Axios that you know, okay,
we're closing it up, and it says very specifically, it
says Epstein killed himself. There's no one else to charge.
(37:58):
We're not putting out any more documents. It's a right.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
You could see a federal government doing that, like they
did that on JFK ultimately the JFK assassination, and then
they kept stuff, you know whatever. But the brass tax
here is that you can't release information about private people
unless you are going to pursue legal charges. Right. The
federal government is not a publicity. I mean, with the
(38:24):
exception of some things that have been leaked by members
of Trump world and Biden world too, But you can't
just release stuff that implicates people if you're not going
to press charges.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
Right, I mean, that's theoretically at least, you wouldn't be
putting that out there, you know. Obviously the Trump administration,
I think it is more into a sort of accusing
people randomly without charges, right.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
Trump himself likes to do that.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
If they had some file that said, you know, X
guy was with epstcene that wasn't substantiated, they wouldn't want
to release that exactly.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
And one of the reasons why you don't do that
is because you can be sued, right, the federal government
can be sued, like if they say whoever was on
Epstein's place and then it's not true or there's no
backup or whatever, they can theoretically be.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
Sued for that, right, I mean exactly if they just
started accusing people, you know, willy nilly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
So Trump then is asked by a reporter about the
Epstein stuff. It's like one of the first times I've
ever seen him have no sense of what the base wants.
So talk us through sort of how Trump has dealt
with the fallout.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
Sure so, so on the Tuesday after the release of
the memo, Trump's asked about it and they said, you know,
what's going on with this? Why are you closing this up?
Is nothing else going to come out? And he just
goes stop talking about Epstein. No one cares. The I
can't believe you're still talking about Epstein. We're trying to
talk about all my great womins. This is unbelievable. Move on,
and so is that kind of thing that that sort
of language I think really antagonizes the bass, as you said,
(39:47):
just saying, you know, don't believe your own eyes, just
go over.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
It, right. And it's also the case for him getting
back in office was that he was going to solve
this you know q a non child trafficking lie that
doesn't exist exactly.
Speaker 4 (40:06):
I mean, so that was you know, JD. Vance was saying,
you know, we got to release the the Epstein list.
Cash Fattel was saying, you know, the FBI director controls
the list. I mean, there was this idea that there
was going to be I mean when people talk about
like the corruption, you know, when Crum's worries talking about
the corruption, often really what they mean is like the
pedophile cabal, and you kind of like prod them a little.
(40:28):
And they are talking about like like green energy contracts
that are gone awry or something. I mean, that's what
they're talking about. And so this, I think, this idea
that Trump was going to like you know, purge the
government of all these villains, you know, was a big deal.
And now he's just saying, oh, you know, let's just
move on, right, right.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
I was going to purge the government of villains. But
now I am just going to not do that. Sorry, sorry, folks.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
And there's gonna be no explanation. It's just you know,
we're done boring.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Tell us how magaworld has reacted. And so many of
these people Trump elevate. I mean, Laura Lumer would not
be Laura Lumor without her relationship with Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (41:05):
No, I mean she would be. And we've seen what
Laura Lumor's like when Trump doesn't care about her, and
you know, she's kind of lost in the wilderness in
Flora and chaining herself to Twitter headquarters. So in this case,
the reaction was really negative. And there's a unique thing
going on here because the Epstein case is so emotionally
resonant that when Trump does something that they care less
about in MAGA, like let's say he has a credible
(41:27):
azadors believe these heavy things like giving weapons to Ukraine
or bombing Iran. I mean, these are not as intense
issues as Epstein is, and so people can kind of
get in line on these other issues. But with Epscene,
I mean they're really risking in terms of these like
right wing media figures. They're really risking their relationships with
their audience because there's tape, there's hours of tape of
them talking about how important Epstein is.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yeah, and we saw a lot of people in Trump
world freak out about this. The one that I think
is sort of the most interesting is Lara Trump. So
Lara Trump is the one member of the Trump family
that is making a calculus about running for office, and
so she says more is going to come out. So
she's decided at kicking the can is the only way
(42:10):
to do this. And I'm a little bit surprised that
Trump didn't do that. Why do you think Trump didn't
do that? What do you think is happening here?
Speaker 4 (42:17):
Have some theories. I think you're right. I mean, we
had this sort of weak, nine day, real blow up
about it, and I think what's going on here is
the administration is trying to get back to the sort
of like strategic ambiguity about like who knows when the
files will be released, but we aren't saying they won't
be released. And you might say, well, why did they
ever put out this memo closing the case that started
all this trouble?
Speaker 1 (42:37):
Yeah? Why did they?
Speaker 4 (42:39):
I wonder if it's because Elon was saying Trump's in
the files, and then Trump just got to he was like,
I'm sick of hearing about these damn files. Just put
you know, perhaps because he's you know, embarrassed or implicated
in some way, or you know, who knows there's somebody
he doesn't like in the files, and so he says,
you know, we are going to just shut this down,
and we're going to signal to the base that it's over.
You know, this is done. I think the reality is,
(43:01):
you know, I think perhaps he overestimated or his henchmen,
you know, or the administration overestimated his sort of hold
over the messaging on the base.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Yeah. I mean, clearly someone forgot that the base that
they're not zombies, that they in fact have believes that
have been stoked that you're now telling them no longer exist.
When I think about Trump world this, you think about
these people who have personally suffered for Trump, like the
January sixth people, or the people who have you know,
lost things because of their devotion to Trump and trump Ism,
(43:35):
and those people did that because they thought that Trump
would ultimately provide them the things that they needed to
gratify their worldview. Is this as sort of coming down
from that. I mean, here he's just saying, no, none
of that is real.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
I think it is a case of Trump just saying,
you know that these people have to live in reality,
which or at least you know who does. That's certainly
what he's claiming is going on, and that's not something
they're really used to hearing from him. I mean they're
used to him saying, you know, you can have everything
you want, and you know, we're going to pour all
these people you don't like, and then your rent's gonna
go down. Food's going to be cheap. And this is
(44:13):
the one time where he's saying, you know, kind of
grow up. This is the situation, get over it, and
you know when it comes. I think if that was
about another issue, that'd be one thing. But I think
when you're saying that about get over what you believe
in what we've told you is a pedophile cabal, I
think that's very difficult.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Yeah, it's like a fundamental disconnect with what he's been
doing this entire time. So he just came out, I'm
going to break a little news here. I don't know
if you saw this. Jesse just sent it to me. Jesse,
can we play this clip that is happening as we
are talking, because I think, well, we'll have something to
say about it.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
You know, these files were made up by Komi. They
were made up by Obama, they were made up by
the Biden from.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
You know, and we went through years of that with
the Russia Russia Russia hooks. I really do not like
James Comy because I find him he's too tall, number one,
and then also he writes these terrible plot boilers, and
also he made it Hillary Clinton lose the election. But
(45:16):
I don't think he created the Epstein files discuss.
Speaker 4 (45:20):
Yeah, I think the challenge Trump is facing here, like
you can, this just seems like someone was like make
up a conspiracy theory on the spot, go go go,
like he's flailing. I mean, we saw this with the
cabinet thing, where you just had just shut up, you know,
we get over it. A lot of these things when
you have kind of like a counter narrative, like, for example,
the sort of right wing counter narrative to the Russia investigation,
(45:40):
you have to have like some kernel of truth, like
you have to have emails where FBI agents are talking
about how much they dislike Trump, or with Ukraine and Biden,
you have to have Hunter Biden actually having a weird
board seat with Barisma. But in this case, I mean,
there's no connection between Comy and Epstein or Obama and Epstein,
and this thing has been hyped up. I mean, Jade
(46:01):
danced just a few months ago. I was like, I
can't wait to see the client list. And now you're saying,
are you saying Jade Vance is a dufis who doesn't
you know, know what he's talking about? So it just
is completely different than like all the groundwork that's already
been late.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
I would like to blame James call mey for something
he made Hillary Goton lose the election. Isn't that enough?
It does feel like panic. It does feel like Trump
is sort of flailing on this. We've seen a bunch
of MAGA influencers. We see Charlie Kirk is now throwing
the line. Some of them are coming back saying there's
nothing to see here. But in some ways I think
(46:36):
that's made the problem a little worse.
Speaker 4 (46:39):
I agree with you. There's this sense of you know,
you're talking about we're talking about this in the Epstein,
the thing that the idea of like this very sinister
cabal that controls everyone and it's rending the truths from
getting out. And then suddenly you have people like Charlie
Kirk or Dnesh Jsuza, who are taking like what counts
in their world as like a relatively brave stand is
(46:59):
standing up to Trump and then suddenly they go, you know,
never mind, you know, right, but forgive me, you know,
and you get this sense of this like hid in hand.
And you know it's reported that Trump called Charlie Kirk
and said, hey, cut it out, and so I agree,
it does look like I think that fuels it even more.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Yeah, it is. What would happen in a conspiracy, right,
is that people would get.
Speaker 4 (47:21):
Silenced exactly, and people would suddenly say, oh, you know,
I have too much to lose here, I need to
stop talking about what I genuinely want to talk about
or what my audience cares about. It's a real meth
and you know, they're trying to kind of square the
circle by saying, like Charlie Kirk and I think Banna,
they were complaining that why isn't the media asking Trump
more questions about Epstein? So Trump knows how important Epstein
(47:42):
is to us and we'll really go after it. I mean,
it's like they're trying to blame these people that really
aren't culpable.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Yes, it is once again the media's fault. Thank you,
fellow member of the media, Will Soma, thanks.
Speaker 4 (47:55):
For having me.
Speaker 5 (47:58):
No moment, Jesse Cannon, I have to tell you, I
usually find the petty squabbles between states of like California
and Florida and Texas to be silly, but this one
popping the popcorn.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
Like as Governor Abbott threatens redistricting to get less congressional
districts and potentially get rid of Jasmine Crockett's district, Gavin
Newsom's fighting back.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
So this is interesting. Here's what's happening. I'm going to
say something here that I think everyone knows and maybe
we're not talking about. Gavin Newsom is running for president. Yeah, okay,
he's running for president. He can say whatever he wants.
My man is running for president. Now, you and I
are both very cynical because we live in politics world
(48:43):
and so we see everyone at their worst. But what
Newsom is denial here, no denial. What Newsom is doing
here is he is pushing real hard. And as someone
who has seen a lot of Democrats really disappoint over
the last couple of months, even if right, I mean
(49:04):
really really disappoint And we know you guys, our listeners
are as irritated as anyone about what's happening with Democrats.
And we know that because you guys turn off when
we have a lot of different Democratic electeds. We know who.
We get it, man.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
We see what you don't listen to a certain episodes.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Exactly. There's no secret here. But what Gavin is doing
is he is fighting really hard and that's what all
of us wanted. So Texas is Greg Abbott wants to
redistrict because look, Republicans don't want to lose the house.
You know why they don't want to lose the house.
Can you guess Donald Trump is going to get impeached again?
Maybe once, maybe twice, maybe three times. I mean, how
(49:45):
much time do we have because Trump is doing crimes.
So they don't want to lose a house, and they're
trying to figure out any which way do not lose
the house. And the thing they've decided is they're going
to draw new maps. But here's the thing about that.
New California is a big state, right, Texas big state.
California is a biger state. So Newsom wants to meet
(50:06):
Abbot where he is and look these people an Abbot,
I think this is certainly true, and newsome I think
this is also true. Bohletys really want to be president.
But I don't care why they're doing it. I want
them to do it because it is the only way
that any of this is going to stop is if
Democrats say, if you're going to do that, we're going
to do it too. Because what's happened for the last
(50:28):
decade is that Republicans have done stuff and Democrats have said,
when you go low, we go high. And the reality
is it's got to be when you go low, we
go low. So you stop going low. That's the only
way to do it. So as much as this may
be out of a lot of our comfort zones, as
the quote unquote good guys that has not worked for
the last eight years, that ship sailed, yeah, I think
(50:50):
that we got to just remember that we're trying to
protect democracy here and this is what it is man.
Speaker 4 (50:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
I think another interesting thing is Gavin news really wasn't
reading the room well at first with his podcast bookings.
Now it seems he's reading the room a lot better,
and I hope a lot of other democratic politicians learned
to read the room.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Yeah. I mean, I also think you don't need to
just go on other people's podcasts. You don't have to
start your own podcasts. Man, just govern, how about governing? Yep,
that's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
(51:31):
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and the consumer price index rows two
point seven percent from one year prior as the global
trade war started to rage. We have such a great
show for you today, Slates. Dahlia Lethwick stops by to
(00:23):
talk about the fallout from the recent dramatic and dramatic
Supreme Court's rulings. Then we'll talk to the Bulwarks. Will
Sommer about the extreme amounts of kopham coming from Maga
world as they twist themselves in knots over the Epstein
client list. But first the news.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
My Emil Bove, a man who judges don't like. I
think is right up there with Stephen Miller and being
a person where when you know him, you're not a fan.
This is evidenced by dozens of judges have called for
it a letter to be unfit for the bench. As
the Senate votes to confirm him. What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1 (01:05):
So this is one of these confirmations where the Senate
is looking at him. People cannot stop leaking and sending
letters and their whistleblowers. He's up for a lifetime appointment
on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals if confirmed by
the Senate, and literally everyone in the world is coming
forward to tell them stories of alleged misdeeds, including a whistleblower.
(01:31):
He was also this is another person, and they're a
bunch who are who were Trump, who were Trump lawyers
who then were put into the Justice Department to serve
as tru Trump Hedgeman Trump henchmen. And so this is
another one. I mean, what I think is the most
interesting about both Vey is that he looks so much
(01:55):
like Roy Cohen.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
It's so funny you said that. I literally was thinking
that yesterday. I'd never heard anybody say that.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
He looks just like Ray Colan. And he has that
same thing that Stephen Miller has where he's not very old.
I mean, I don't know, maybe Jesse will figure out
how old he is, but he's not very old, but
he looks like he has really been through it, just
like Steven Miller.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
He's younger than us.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
He's younger than us, right, and he looks like he
could be our dad. And that is not to say
anything bad about his looks, but just to say that
the acts of whatever it is those guys are doing
for Trump AGCO. Just like Stephen Miller is like a
decade younger than we are.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
He's probably going to make People's Sexiest Man Alive list
this year.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
He'll be telling you, certainly, if Trump propaganda is any
if they have any way with the propaganda, they will
be They both be on People's Sexiest List.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So, speaking of people doing things for mister Trump, Linda
McMahon will begin the process of dismantling the Education Department
after their Supreme Court win.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
So it's worth remembering this is another like we have
to end everything good Jimmy Carter did. FEMA is another
creation of Jimmy Carter. There is a theory floating around
that the reason Trump became so stuck on undoing the
legacy of Jimmy Carter is because Jimmy Carter died and
it was in the news cycle, and he got thinking
(03:15):
about Jimmy Carter and he wanted to undo a lot
of the carterisms. By the way, Jesse, I'm sure when
you saw this year, the same thought I did, which
is this is all right out of Project twenty twenty five, right,
dismantle the Department of Education, give the money back to
the states. This will mean you know, the Department of
Education famous for Title one funding for poor schools, so
(03:39):
that's schools in run districts where state taxes are low,
so they don't get as much money. And the other
thing that you and I both often talk about is
that the Department of Education handles pelgrants. Pelgrants are college
scholarships for children who are our neediest kits. Right, you
(04:00):
can technically use these grants to go to college. It's
interesting to me to see this is one of the many,
many ways that you see the Trump administration just declaring
war on people who don't have money. But it's also
besides declaring war on people who don't have money. What
these things do is they make it harder and harder
for people in the sort of lower income range to
(04:22):
get more education, make more money, and get into a
higher income bracket. And so what this does is it
creates more of a cast system. It makes it harder
for people to move up and make more and have more.
It creates more financial inequality, which is something that this
country is already being crushed under. And I just want
(04:44):
to point out that you know, as bad as dismantling
the Department of Education is and you know where it's coming.
After they dismantled USAID and they dismantled the parts of
the State Department. And this is like doing that but
to our show. And it's worth realizing a Elon Musk
is out. So this is really just Trump's Republican Party
(05:07):
doing this, So don't let them try to blame anyone else.
And then the other thing is that we're going to
see basically the goal here and we've talked about this
before with Project twenty twenty five. The goal here is
to make it so the federal government does nothing. Really,
it does very little for the people, and at some
point people are going to say, well, why why why
(05:27):
even have a federal government, And that's what Republicans want.
It's trying to provide people with less and less services
from the government. So it's infuriating. Linda McMahon is just
you know, she has an opportunity here to not do
the worst possible thing, and she is in fact going
to just do what Trump tells her to, just like
everyone else in this administration.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Speaking of walking lockstep with dear Leader, everyone is just
twisting themselves and knots to block the release of the
Epstein files. And now we have all these mega Congress
people who just blocked the release of the Upstein files.
And I will tell you the funniest thing to watch
in the last forty eight hours is how many of
these people who do content we're trying to cover up
(06:08):
for Trump. And now they're like, nope, we're going to
go out the side of the people. They should release
the Epstein files because they are seeing the wrath of
the MAGA who really want this released. And they don't
realize Trump and Epstein were real close friends.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Well, I mean House Republicans they block the release of
the Epstein files. I'm just going to read you a
post from one Donald Trump Junior, the intellectual beating heart
of the MAGA movement. Show us all the Epstein client
lists now. Explanation point. Explanation point, explanation point, why would
anyone protect those scum space bags? Question mark? Ask yourself
(06:43):
this question daily and the answer becomes very apparent. Explanation point,
explanation point, not apparent, but very apparent. Yeah, Well, I
asked myself this question. Maybe not daily, but I ask
myself this question, and I see that two hundred and
eleven Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to block
(07:05):
the release of the Epstein files. I wonder what they
why they're doing that. That's weird. That's weird. I was
I was told the deep state was going to be ended.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah. Well, the funny thing is is this is going
to bleed a lot of their base from trusting demon.
It's another nail in their coffin that I won't be
crying over. But I will be crying over, Molly. Yes,
inflation because Trump's tariffs are driving it up. As we
got a new economic forecast from the Consumer Price Index data.
And thank you Bureau of Labor Statistics for giving us
(07:39):
the bad news.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I'm going to tell you a story here. The one
good thing about this is that at least the Bureau
of Labor Statistics is not lying to us yet. That
was when I said, I was like, Oh, I guess
they're not being controlled by Trump. Good job. Trump is
trying to fire to roam pal right. He's doing everything
he can to try to get rid of Jerome Powell
(08:01):
so we can lower interest rates, so that he can
completely fuck up the economy. He doesn't realize that's what's
going to happen. But that's what's going to happen. I
just want to say, tariffs are taxes paid by the consumer.
Trump is all about cutting taxes, but he's not cutting tariffs,
and this inflationary it's stupid. So much of what's happening
(08:23):
right now is just Donald Trump playing stupid games and
winning stupid prizes and all of us suffering. So the
good news is your strawberries are about to be eight
hundred dollars. And the bad news is no, that's the
bad news. Dalia Luthwick is a senior editor at Slate
and the author of Lady Justice, Women, The Law, and
(08:45):
the Battle to Save America. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Dahlia.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
II, My this has ravaged me, in case you're wondering
what she looked like. Ravaged me like being eaten alive
from inside by biole and fury and injustice.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
It strikes me that the Supreme Court has really just
done a lot of bad stuff to put, not to
speak into specific a way, but there's certainly a big
thing we need to talk about, which is the Department
of Education, and I want to talk about them first.
But in the back of your head start thinking about
(09:24):
all of the other incredibly fucked up things they've done
when I think about the birthright citizenship decision and why
they took that and what that means. But first, let's
just talk for a second about this most recent decision
where the Supreme Court basically said Trump can do it,
(09:45):
yet again said Trump, do you want to do something
because we want to help you do stuff. Part of
the I think.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
The term of legal art I'm looking for is like,
bitch of this decision is that they actually didn't tell
us a thing. Like it's another in a long string
of and I know we've talked about this a bunch
on your show, Molly, but like this is the most
I think egregious example of something that comes out on
the shadow docket, which means.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Which Deepen Vlatick wrote a whole book about.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
And I know your listeners know what it is, but
it's just worth Like the frame that I'm trying to
use is like, if you think that the Supreme Court
term ended on the last day of the term when
birthright citizenship and all those other horrendous cases came down,
like you sell, hook line and sinker for the story
(10:37):
they want to tell about themselves, right, which is that
they you know, only work from the first Monday of
October till the end of June and then they go
off on vacation. And that's just not true. We've had
a series of emergency orders on the so called shadow docket,
each of which has been like as gobsmackingly awful as
(10:57):
stuff that was happening on the merits docket. And so
I think the reason, like you want to start at
the Department of Education isn't just what they did, but
how they did it. And the fact that like you know,
and I say this on your show, and I'll just
say it again, like they have one job, which is
to explain why they are doing what they're doing. It's
(11:19):
just not good enough to say because we say so
and then swawn off to like, you know, wherever they
go Cote Dessert or whatever.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Right, summer trips was conservative.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Donor show your work and explain to us why you
just allowed Secretary McMahon to fire half of the employees
at the department and you don't tell us why. And
so this is another in a series of like I'm
trying to think of it as kind of like front
stage backstage stuff where like if you're only paying attention
(11:52):
to the sixty sum cases that were on the merits
dock that were argued and briefed and that the court
issued aions and as crap as all that was, and
it was, like, to be sure, a very very bad term.
What you're missing is that they're getting away with in
case after case after case after case, giving Donald Trump
(12:12):
everything he wants without explaining why, without giving guidance to
the lower courts about how to proceed, without telling the
parties how they could possibly fix us. They're just doing
these back of the napkin like because we say so.
And what's shocking, in addition to the decision itself, is
just I think we need to understand that the court,
(12:34):
you know, used to use its emergency docket for actual emergency,
and the emergency wasn't. Donald Trump didn't get what he wanted,
and now you know, case after case after case after case,
and he wins in like eighty some percent of the cases.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah, that was actually what I was going to ask
you next, was we have seen in this court, not
exactly in the same makeup, but pretty much was more
than happy not to take Biden administration so they would
not take any of that stuff. So it's partially the
way they're doing it. It's partially what they are doing,
(13:11):
and it's partially their obsession with enabling Donald Trump to
grow executive pow.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
So and you're that's such a good way to sort
of layer the cake. It's you know, what they're doing.
What they're doing is without explanations, saying that this administration
that came into office saying we're going to eviscerate the
Department of Education and brought in a Secretary of Education
who was like, I'm turning off all the lights and
(13:38):
locking the door. I'm the last one, and who said
that over and over and over again, right straight out
of Project twenty twenty five playbooks, you know anyone, And
you know now they're saying, oh, we're not gotting the
Department of Ages, We're just streamlining it. And so entire
departments who are in charge of financial aid, who are
(13:58):
in charge of uage instruction, who are you know, who
disperse money that has been appropriated by Congress for the
department that was established by Congress and by statute cannot
be dissolved willy nilly by the president. And they're saying, oh, no,
he's not dissolving it willy nilly, even though that's what
he says, and she says.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
They're just streamlining it.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
And so then we've got these just buckets and buckets
of money that there's nobody to effectuate the will of Congress.
And so what's shocking is that the court, you know,
if you compare this to when President Joe Biden, who
wanted to do loan forgiveness, and that that's what I
was like, Yeah, oh shocking. You know, you can't do this,
(14:41):
and we don't know who has standing, and let's sit
on this, but let's not enjoying it. Let's see like
you know, or you know, we let's let the injunction
stand and let's just like wait and wait and wait
and wait, and then let's like invoke the Major Questions
doctrine and say this is a made up doctrine that
doesn't allow Joe Biden to do what he wants when
he's president. And now we are, and it's like, oh no,
(15:05):
this is really exigent that Donald Trump has to be
able to We can talk about the hardship. This is
going to just unloose on millions and millions and millions
of students around the country, you know, particularly with you know, English,
non English speaking kids, particularly kids who have any sort
of special needs. Like it's massive, massive hardship, and this
(15:27):
is just an immense amount of money that's been appropriated
that I guess, you know, just doesn't get forked over.
But the language that is used by the Trump administration
is like cynical to the point of psychotic, like, oh, yeah,
we're not closing the department, and for the court to
just be like, well, we just got to take them
(15:47):
at their word. And then just to your last point,
which I think is probably the most important point, when
President Biden tried to do anything by executive order, when
President Biden tried to do anything that would put his
vision of the presidency into power, he was rebuffed by
the court. And yet now so I think it's the
(16:10):
like both the cynicism of taking them at their word,
but also the cynicism of just nakedly, nakedly giving this
president a maximalist executive authority to do whatever he wants,
even though it's clearly unlawful to do this, it's not permitted,
And the cynicism of not allowing Biden an inch by
(16:32):
the same exact lights. And I think one of the
things that sticks in your craw about all of this
is that not just that real people are going to
suffer immense hardship, but that Kutanji Brown Jackson keeps writing
these descents. The dissent in this particular education case comes
from Sony Soda Mayor. It's signed off on by Justices
(16:53):
Kagan and by Justice Jackson. But I think that by
and large, every time one of the these liberal justices writes
a dissent that says, look at what you just get there,
look at what you're doing here, look at what they said,
look at what they promised, and look at the affidavits
in this case that show that if you eliminate entire departments,
(17:15):
there's nobody to do the work that Congress has authorized,
and that nobody wants to even look at it much less.
It is veri in a discent because the majority opinion
has no law. So this is like the Bad v. Bad.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
One of the things that I'm struck by is so
much of legal scholarship is about picking other cases that
back up your point, And here is the Supreme Court
that is, you know, a year later, behaving towards a
president in a completely opposite way that they did to
the previous president.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Right, it's reverse engineering every single decision and using whatever
doctrine it needs to do that in order to get
the outcome at once. And like you say, there isn't
even the patina of trying to you know, square the circle.
Like there's no attempt to say and this is exactly
the same as you know, when we kneecap President Biden,
(18:16):
or you know when Biden said, wait, you know universal injunctions,
those are hobbling my ability to be the president. Twice Yeah,
the CORP was like, no, that's not an issue we
want to take up. And like five months into the
Trump presidency at like v burning judicial question. And so
I think there's a way in which and this is
(18:38):
just tricky Molly, like blinkering yourself to the politics of
the world is supposed to be like a judge's superpower, right,
Like I'm not going to pay attention to the you know,
all of the extraneous political things because my job is
to like go into the laboratory and like pour justice
into the two test tubes until it smokes and then
justice appears. And so there's this partly it's that the
(19:01):
strength of the judicial project, which is that politics isn't
supposed to get in the way of that is also
the weakness of the judicial project, which is what you
have Justice Jackson being like, that's not how any of
this works. Yeah, and why you have Justice Sotomayor saying like,
it cannot be the case that we're falling for this
over and over again. It's way outside the four corners
(19:23):
of the opinion, and it's enraging not just the conservative justices,
but like the commentariat that they're talking about, like, how
can you not see the patterns here? How can you
not see that Trump wins all the time. But they're
just doing the thing that is hard for judges to do,
which is like, look at what the world has brought us,
(19:44):
you know, look at what the world has brought to us.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
So Alino and Thomas, you give up, right, those guys
are never going to do They're going to just Trump
can do anything. He's a god king. Gorsic and Kavanaugh
are basically the younger versions ultimately really with the exception
of Native Americans, right. For Gorsic, Yeah, Roberts pretends to
(20:08):
be normal, but obviously isn't because of all these decisions,
and then you do have this one smart conservative justice,
right just as Amy, who is by no means in
any stretch of the imagination, a liberal. She's very religious
and comes from very very religious stock, and she you know,
(20:29):
was at uh she practiced taught at very religious you know.
But she is smart, because we know that from the
oral arguments. I mean, so I just wonder you think
that she just sort of is like, I'm just going
to go along with this anyway because the numbers aren't there.
I mean, what do you think the calculus there is,
or do you think that she's not. Ultimately she's just
(20:51):
a partisan like every like the others.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
You and I spoke on several occasions this year where
Justice Barrett was like hiving up and some times with
John Roberts right being the center of the court, sometimes
even with Brett Kavanaugh. That's been a pattern we've seen
the last couple of years. You know, there were a
lot of people who were prepared to say that the Barrett,
who was joining the liberal justices in several important cases
(21:17):
here sort of represented some new you know, two point
oh Amy Cony Barrett, and we had a lot of
theories about why that was. I don't know that it
was about smartness. I think it was just that there
was a sense that she and John Roberts were pretty
temperate and at minimum were institutionalists, at minimum didn't want
to sit on the last Supreme Court in American constitutional history,
(21:40):
and that they were sort of modulating what they might
have done at the ballot box or what they might
have done if we weren't in a crisis, because they
understood the moment we're in, and they understood that the
far right flank of the Court is, you know, all
in for Project twenty twenty five and Stephen Miller and
Steve Bannon and who that Amy Cony Barrett not in
(22:03):
evidence At the end of the term. These were six
three decisions on everything that mattered, with few exceptions. Justice
Barrett voted in lockstep with the Conservatives. She was given
the opinion in birthright Citizenship, which is right USA arguably
the most important case of the term, and she kind
(22:23):
of made their dreams come true. I mean, she wrote this,
like Cuckoo Banana's originalist reading of nationwide injunctions, that you
did what the majority wanted her to do. So I
don't think I'm prepared to say anymore that that center
of the court that we have seen mostly manifest in
(22:45):
Barrett and Roberts in some really important issues, and certainly
at the beginning of this term, I don't know where
they are, but they're not here as to the why
of it. I think you're probably right, Molly, like some
of it is like this is the stuff they of, right,
maximalist readings of an executive theory of power in which
the president is all powerful unless there's Joe Biden, and
(23:08):
you know, a sort of constriction on voting rights and
on civil liberties, and a constriction on an awareness of
racial injustice and LGBTQ rights, and then of course, you know,
swing for the fences on religious liberty for certain kinds
of religions. That's the project in some sense, that's why
they were put on the court. And so I don't
(23:29):
know that there's a lot of light between their own
views of the world and the doctrine that they were
pulling from. I guess what changed for me and what
mystifies me, And I think this is your question is
are they not aware of the peril that they are
putting both the court in and the country in and
(23:50):
that they are kind of making a bargain with the devil,
and that you can give Trump every single thing he wants,
and the minute you say no, he's going to take
it any way. And I thought they were savvy enough
to understand that you can't accommodate this and you can't
(24:10):
barge with this. But you know, at the end of
the day, I think they genuinely feel that they are
protecting the Court's power and the Court's prerogatives and the
Court's supremacy by essentially being in this kind of weird
codependent relationship an imperial presidency in bed with an imperial court,
(24:32):
and that this is the way to protect the institution
and to protect the presidency. And I guess, you know,
the really sad code of the coda to that story
is at the end of the term in the you know,
in the birthright citizenship case, they recapped the rest of
the Article three judiciary to get that. I mean, they
(24:53):
really went after explicitly district court judges who are just
doing their jobs, who have been the bulwark, the single
most effective check on a runaway president. And they went
after those judges without any regret or without any sense
that what they were doing in making themselves an imperial
(25:15):
court was throwing the rest of the Article three judiciary
on the dumpster.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
So let's talk for a minute about what it means
to even take the birthright citizenship case up, because I
think that that is a case that has had some
coverage problems. Can you just explain a little bit for
(25:43):
our listeners about that case. It was big case, and
I think it has more meaning than maybe we think.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
I mean, I think it was probably the case of
the term and in some sense it checked every box
of how Donald Trump's going to do stuff right by
executive order right, which is not the way we make change.
And essentially on the first day in office again, campaign
(26:10):
promise fulfilled just kind of like taking a sharpie and
like scribbling out section one of the fourteenth Amendment that says,
if you're born in this country, you are an American
and doesn't matter, you know, with narrow exceptions like if
you're the kid of a diplomat or an invader. Those
are the exceptions. That was the intent. This was meant
to correct for, you know, the egregious sins of slavery
(26:35):
and what it meant to be right stateless in some
states if you were born in some states and not
in others. It is perfectly clear what section one of
the fourteenth Amendment conferred on people. It has been ratified
in case law from the Supreme Court, it has been
ratified in statutes. This is not a question. And Trump
(26:56):
just took it upon himself to say, Nope, we are
going to distort the language subject to the jurisdiction thereof,
to mean that unless your parents are either citizens or
they are you know, Green card holders or other lawful
permanent residents, if you are born here, even if your
parents are both on student visas, you're not a citizen.
And don't care what the case law says, don't care
(27:19):
what the statutes stay. And in a normal world, a
no president would attempt to do this. And in a
normal world what would happen is what happened, which is
in three different district courts, judges said, this is bonkers.
This is not the way the parting Amendment has ever
been read. No serious person reads it this way, and
(27:41):
we're enjoining it across the country, and appeals courts all agreed.
And in normal world, the Trump administration, if they genuinely
wanted to have this fight, would take it to the
Supreme Court and say, decide this on the marits. Does
Fortique Amendment mean what it says it means and what
everyone who has reviewed it.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
A hundred years agree.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
They didn't do that. They didn't ask that question of
the court. They just said, we want to take this
narrow question of whether a single judge in a single
district can enjoin a policy across the country, and we're
going to take that to the Court, and that's the
only thing we're going to ask the Court to deal with.
And to be fair, we kind of said this earlier.
(28:26):
Nationwide injunctions were a huge problem for President Biden, huge
problem in the first Trump administration, problem for Obama. Right,
you take a case to Judge Matthew Chasmeric and Amorial
and techn where you have a one hundred percent of
getting Judge Matthew Chasmeric and he'll go ahead and say
that mefipristone has to be taken off the market. So
(28:48):
this is a problem for both presidents, right, It has
been a problem for years. The problem is that when
Joe Biden was faced with nationwide injunctions, for instance in
the student relief cases, he said, hey, Supreme Court This
is really problematic. This single judge can enjoin a policy
around the country for everyone, and the Supreme Court had
(29:10):
no interest in taking that question. Was no interest, right,
They had opportunities to resolve this burning problem, and they're like, nah,
we're good. And five months into the Trump administration, here
we are. This is the exigent question. And so again
it a little bit goes to the lies you have
to tell yourself as a jurist about we can have
(29:33):
a bracing, difficult conversation about whether single judges should be
allowed to enjoin policies around the country. The fact that
we didn't want to have it Haven's months ago, and
we need to have it right now, and the answer
has to be noe. That a judge cannot do this
feels like the most cynical thing in the world. And
when you kind of couple that with the ways in
(29:56):
which this administration has been running every single case that
they lose up to the Supreme Court and being like me, me, me, me,
mister relief, and the Court's just like, yes, my son, yes,
my son.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
There's no such thing as a political question doctrine. That's
only for Joe Biden, right, There's no such constraint on
this president. And so I think what you're seeing is
not just the court given the opportunity to answer a
question which, by the way, Molly, I think the answer went.
If they ever take Section one of the fourteenth Amendment,
(30:31):
does it confers it is chip on everyone born in
the States. I think the answer will be yes. It
is going to be very hard for them to find
otherwise the choice to not decide that in this case.
The choice instead is a real choice to hobble the
district court judges, who again are the only thing restraining
(30:52):
the only check that exists right super in Congress and
hollowing out the rest of government is these district court
judges in to turn on them and be like, who
are these self aggrandizing lunatics? You think they know everything?
And that's you know what's frightening about this is the
contempt for judges.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Yes, Dahlia, I love you and I never want to
cut you off because you're amazing. Thank you, thank you,
thank you, Dahlia.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Mollie, take good care
of yourself.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Will Sommer is a reporter at The Bulwark and the
author of Trust the Plan. Welcome to fast politics, Will.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Sommer, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
We cover a lot of stupid crap. Not to put
too fine a point on it, but what is happening
right now with Ebstein bringing down Donald Trump not in
the way you thought he would, is pretty amazing. So
talk us through sort of how we got to this very,
very stupid moment in American history.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
Okay, so let's take it back to the early George W.
Bush administration. There is a guy on the scene, let's
say to that too. There is a mega rich guy
named Jeffrey Epstein who is inexplicably wealthy. He has some
financial connections. He worked there. He's like a hedge fund guy,
but he's way wealthier than that. Then makes sense. I
mean he has homes in Palm Beach, a huge home
(32:15):
in Manhattan, a ranch out West. I mean, he's all
over the place. And he's also friends with a lot
of really wealthy people, powerful people like Bill Clinton, Bill Gates,
and notably Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Right, Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
Bill Richardson, And he takes and he's known Trump at
one point, I think he's done, Trump says. The late eighties.
Trump says that in two thousand and two, and there
are these videos of him and Trump paleling around. They're
kind of like at the side of a dance floor,
and they look kind of like they're like picking out
which women they want to pursue, and Trump in two
thousand and two, in a profile of Epstein, says, you know, essentially,
(32:52):
Jeffrey is a very a kind of a man about town,
and he likes women, maybe even more than I do,
some of them very young. So it seems almost like
Trump already knows Epstein's deal, and then they kind of
drift apart. Epstein catches these charges for basically offering young women,
like for offering girls like sexual massages in exchange for money.
(33:13):
But then he gets this weird plea deal from the
federal government that basically lets him skate on nearly all
the charges, and then in he sort of rejoins this
high powered world. And then in twenty nineteen he's indicted
on federal charges for the first time, and then that
summer he's found dead in his prison cell in Manhattan.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Right and fast forward to magworld in general has long
fanned the flames of conspiracies. Pretty much everybody in that
world has had some different conspiracy theory they've ran with,
from QAnon to you know, Sandy hook being you know,
I'm thinking of Alex Jones. I mean, all different members
(33:55):
of MAGA world have fanned the flames of conspiracies, including
Donald Trump his first administration, when he said things like
he said where we go, one, we go all? He
retweeted lots of q and on stuff. They played a
q and On song. At one point, didn't he have
do some sort of homage to QAnon?
Speaker 4 (34:14):
You know, he was asked, can you dissuade these quanon
crazy people that you're pursuing the pedophile cabal? And he said, well,
you know, maybe they're right about that, and you know,
would that be such a bad thing?
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Right?
Speaker 1 (34:24):
So, at every point when Trump has been able to
sort of squash this idea that there's a deep state,
he has in fact just encouraged it.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
Yeah, and you know he's promoted it. I mean, I
think he saw the idea of like this kind of sinister,
shadowy force that's out to get him as very advantageous
because then he could chalk up any criminal prosecution he faced,
or really any opposition as sort of this sinister force
that's out to get him unfairly.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
So it worked well until it didn't. Yes, So he
comes back into office, he's, you know, we're going to
release the Jeffrey Epstein stuff. Then we see Pambondy, who
is you know, his ag brings a lot of MAGA
influencers to the Justice Department.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
Oh no, Mollie, it's actually a little crazier. It was
not for a meeting with Pambondi. So this is late February,
roughly around February twenty. First she's asked, do you have
the EPSTCEN client list? She says, it's on my desk.
I'm going to review the Epstein case for release. Then
six days after that, a bunch of right wing influencers
Jack Pisovic, Mike Cernovich lives of TikTok are visiting the
(35:32):
White House and she in sort of a and they
they're therefore meetings with administration officials. It's not supposed to
be an Epstein thing. And then she shows up with
Cash Betel and these binders that say Epstein, you know,
we release phase one and hands them out and then
disastrously they pose for pictures with that as sort of
like you know, big smiles with the human trafficking evidence.
(35:52):
It all turns out to be public info anyway, It
blows up in everyone's face.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
And I want to point out that was stage one,
so theoretic, so you don't put numbers on things unless
there are going to be other stages, right.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
Yes, that's a right, So you would think there's a
stage two at least to come.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Right, but there has not been a stage two.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
There's not, And the pressure kind of ramps up that
then you know, she starts saying she gets caught on
tape bragging about all the videos they have, and then
so then she has to come out and say it publicly,
and so they're kind of getting pushed towards more and
more disclosure. And then Elon says, you know, well, the
reason you're never going to get the Epstein files is
because Trump's in.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Them, right, Which was a pretty amazing moment because I
think that was the moment when Elon said that about
Trump and Epstein. I think that was the moment where
it became clear that Elon was never going to be
invited back into the White House. Do you think that's fair?
Speaker 4 (36:44):
That was the moment, I would say, cat to her
truly lost faith in Elon. You know that was when
the like, you know before it's kind of like it
was like I believe Jack was Zobac said, you know,
before Elon mentioned the Epsteine stuff, he was like, you know,
this is how two alpha males fight, like in a
very fallous way, like the Big Boys loved a rough House.
And then as soon as the epstein stuff hits, people go, whoa.
(37:05):
I mean, because you know he's calling Trumpet pedophile and
so in fairness, at that point, you know, there's no
coming back from that.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Yeah, that was the moment Elon decided that he didn't
want that huge base of supporters anyway. Bondi releases stuff
that turns out to be nothing. Magelworld gets furious. They're
on a Monday, so about a week ago, a little
more than a week ago, the Trump DOJ releases a
(37:34):
statement which basically says, there's nothing to see here.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
This is so weird. There was no sense of we're
going to have the decision that comes out by X
date or you know, we're going to review it. They
just Sunday night. I believe that it was the long
July fourth weekend. They leak to Axios that you know, okay,
we're closing it up, and it says very specifically, it
says Epstein killed himself. There's no one else to charge.
(37:58):
We're not putting out any more documents. It's a right.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
You could see a federal government doing that, like they
did that on JFK ultimately the JFK assassination, and then
they kept stuff, you know whatever. But the brass tax
here is that you can't release information about private people
unless you are going to pursue legal charges. Right. The
federal government is not a publicity. I mean, with the
(38:24):
exception of some things that have been leaked by members
of Trump world and Biden world too, But you can't
just release stuff that implicates people if you're not going
to press charges.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
Right, I mean, that's theoretically at least, you wouldn't be
putting that out there, you know. Obviously the Trump administration,
I think it is more into a sort of accusing
people randomly without charges, right.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
Trump himself likes to do that.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
If they had some file that said, you know, X
guy was with epstcene that wasn't substantiated, they wouldn't want
to release that exactly.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
And one of the reasons why you don't do that
is because you can be sued, right, the federal government
can be sued, like if they say whoever was on
Epstein's place and then it's not true or there's no
backup or whatever, they can theoretically be.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
Sued for that, right, I mean exactly if they just
started accusing people, you know, willy nilly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
So Trump then is asked by a reporter about the
Epstein stuff. It's like one of the first times I've
ever seen him have no sense of what the base wants.
So talk us through sort of how Trump has dealt
with the fallout.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
Sure so, so on the Tuesday after the release of
the memo, Trump's asked about it and they said, you know,
what's going on with this? Why are you closing this up?
Is nothing else going to come out? And he just
goes stop talking about Epstein. No one cares. The I
can't believe you're still talking about Epstein. We're trying to
talk about all my great womins. This is unbelievable. Move on,
and so is that kind of thing that that sort
of language I think really antagonizes the bass, as you said,
(39:47):
just saying, you know, don't believe your own eyes, just
go over.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
It, right. And it's also the case for him getting
back in office was that he was going to solve
this you know q a non child trafficking lie that
doesn't exist exactly.
Speaker 4 (40:06):
I mean, so that was you know, JD. Vance was saying,
you know, we got to release the the Epstein list.
Cash Fattel was saying, you know, the FBI director controls
the list. I mean, there was this idea that there
was going to be I mean when people talk about
like the corruption, you know, when Crum's worries talking about
the corruption, often really what they mean is like the
pedophile cabal, and you kind of like prod them a little.
(40:28):
And they are talking about like like green energy contracts
that are gone awry or something. I mean, that's what
they're talking about. And so this, I think, this idea
that Trump was going to like you know, purge the
government of all these villains, you know, was a big deal.
And now he's just saying, oh, you know, let's just
move on, right, right.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
I was going to purge the government of villains. But
now I am just going to not do that. Sorry, sorry, folks.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
And there's gonna be no explanation. It's just you know,
we're done boring.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Tell us how magaworld has reacted. And so many of
these people Trump elevate. I mean, Laura Lumer would not
be Laura Lumor without her relationship with Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (41:05):
No, I mean she would be. And we've seen what
Laura Lumor's like when Trump doesn't care about her, and
you know, she's kind of lost in the wilderness in
Flora and chaining herself to Twitter headquarters. So in this case,
the reaction was really negative. And there's a unique thing
going on here because the Epstein case is so emotionally
resonant that when Trump does something that they care less
about in MAGA, like let's say he has a credible
(41:27):
azadors believe these heavy things like giving weapons to Ukraine
or bombing Iran. I mean, these are not as intense
issues as Epstein is, and so people can kind of
get in line on these other issues. But with Epscene,
I mean they're really risking in terms of these like
right wing media figures. They're really risking their relationships with
their audience because there's tape, there's hours of tape of
them talking about how important Epstein is.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yeah, and we saw a lot of people in Trump
world freak out about this. The one that I think
is sort of the most interesting is Lara Trump. So
Lara Trump is the one member of the Trump family
that is making a calculus about running for office, and
so she says more is going to come out. So
she's decided at kicking the can is the only way
(42:10):
to do this. And I'm a little bit surprised that
Trump didn't do that. Why do you think Trump didn't
do that? What do you think is happening here?
Speaker 4 (42:17):
Have some theories. I think you're right. I mean, we
had this sort of weak, nine day, real blow up
about it, and I think what's going on here is
the administration is trying to get back to the sort
of like strategic ambiguity about like who knows when the
files will be released, but we aren't saying they won't
be released. And you might say, well, why did they
ever put out this memo closing the case that started
all this trouble?
Speaker 1 (42:37):
Yeah? Why did they?
Speaker 4 (42:39):
I wonder if it's because Elon was saying Trump's in
the files, and then Trump just got to he was like,
I'm sick of hearing about these damn files. Just put
you know, perhaps because he's you know, embarrassed or implicated
in some way, or you know, who knows there's somebody
he doesn't like in the files, and so he says,
you know, we are going to just shut this down,
and we're going to signal to the base that it's over.
You know, this is done. I think the reality is,
(43:01):
you know, I think perhaps he overestimated or his henchmen,
you know, or the administration overestimated his sort of hold
over the messaging on the base.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Yeah. I mean, clearly someone forgot that the base that
they're not zombies, that they in fact have believes that
have been stoked that you're now telling them no longer exist.
When I think about Trump world this, you think about
these people who have personally suffered for Trump, like the
January sixth people, or the people who have you know,
lost things because of their devotion to Trump and trump Ism,
(43:35):
and those people did that because they thought that Trump
would ultimately provide them the things that they needed to
gratify their worldview. Is this as sort of coming down
from that. I mean, here he's just saying, no, none
of that is real.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
I think it is a case of Trump just saying,
you know that these people have to live in reality,
which or at least you know who does. That's certainly
what he's claiming is going on, and that's not something
they're really used to hearing from him. I mean they're
used to him saying, you know, you can have everything
you want, and you know, we're going to pour all
these people you don't like, and then your rent's gonna
go down. Food's going to be cheap. And this is
(44:13):
the one time where he's saying, you know, kind of
grow up. This is the situation, get over it, and
you know when it comes. I think if that was
about another issue, that'd be one thing. But I think
when you're saying that about get over what you believe
in what we've told you is a pedophile cabal, I
think that's very difficult.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Yeah, it's like a fundamental disconnect with what he's been
doing this entire time. So he just came out, I'm
going to break a little news here. I don't know
if you saw this. Jesse just sent it to me. Jesse,
can we play this clip that is happening as we
are talking, because I think, well, we'll have something to
say about it.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
You know, these files were made up by Komi. They
were made up by Obama, they were made up by
the Biden from.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
You know, and we went through years of that with
the Russia Russia Russia hooks. I really do not like
James Comy because I find him he's too tall, number one,
and then also he writes these terrible plot boilers, and
also he made it Hillary Clinton lose the election. But
(45:16):
I don't think he created the Epstein files discuss.
Speaker 4 (45:20):
Yeah, I think the challenge Trump is facing here, like
you can, this just seems like someone was like make
up a conspiracy theory on the spot, go go go,
like he's flailing. I mean, we saw this with the
cabinet thing, where you just had just shut up, you know,
we get over it. A lot of these things when
you have kind of like a counter narrative, like, for example,
the sort of right wing counter narrative to the Russia investigation,
(45:40):
you have to have like some kernel of truth, like
you have to have emails where FBI agents are talking
about how much they dislike Trump, or with Ukraine and Biden,
you have to have Hunter Biden actually having a weird
board seat with Barisma. But in this case, I mean,
there's no connection between Comy and Epstein or Obama and Epstein,
and this thing has been hyped up. I mean, Jade
(46:01):
danced just a few months ago. I was like, I
can't wait to see the client list. And now you're saying,
are you saying Jade Vance is a dufis who doesn't
you know, know what he's talking about? So it just
is completely different than like all the groundwork that's already
been late.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
I would like to blame James call mey for something
he made Hillary Goton lose the election. Isn't that enough?
It does feel like panic. It does feel like Trump
is sort of flailing on this. We've seen a bunch
of MAGA influencers. We see Charlie Kirk is now throwing
the line. Some of them are coming back saying there's
nothing to see here. But in some ways I think
(46:36):
that's made the problem a little worse.
Speaker 4 (46:39):
I agree with you. There's this sense of you know,
you're talking about we're talking about this in the Epstein,
the thing that the idea of like this very sinister
cabal that controls everyone and it's rending the truths from
getting out. And then suddenly you have people like Charlie
Kirk or Dnesh Jsuza, who are taking like what counts
in their world as like a relatively brave stand is
(46:59):
standing up to Trump and then suddenly they go, you know,
never mind, you know, right, but forgive me, you know,
and you get this sense of this like hid in hand.
And you know it's reported that Trump called Charlie Kirk
and said, hey, cut it out, and so I agree,
it does look like I think that fuels it even more.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
Yeah, it is. What would happen in a conspiracy, right,
is that people would get.
Speaker 4 (47:21):
Silenced exactly, and people would suddenly say, oh, you know,
I have too much to lose here, I need to
stop talking about what I genuinely want to talk about
or what my audience cares about. It's a real meth
and you know, they're trying to kind of square the
circle by saying, like Charlie Kirk and I think Banna,
they were complaining that why isn't the media asking Trump
more questions about Epstein? So Trump knows how important Epstein
(47:42):
is to us and we'll really go after it. I mean,
it's like they're trying to blame these people that really
aren't culpable.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Yes, it is once again the media's fault. Thank you,
fellow member of the media, Will Soma, thanks.
Speaker 4 (47:55):
For having me.
Speaker 5 (47:58):
No moment, Jesse Cannon, I have to tell you, I
usually find the petty squabbles between states of like California
and Florida and Texas to be silly, but this one
popping the popcorn.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
Like as Governor Abbott threatens redistricting to get less congressional
districts and potentially get rid of Jasmine Crockett's district, Gavin
Newsom's fighting back.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
So this is interesting. Here's what's happening. I'm going to
say something here that I think everyone knows and maybe
we're not talking about. Gavin Newsom is running for president. Yeah, okay,
he's running for president. He can say whatever he wants.
My man is running for president. Now, you and I
are both very cynical because we live in politics world
(48:43):
and so we see everyone at their worst. But what
Newsom is denial here, no denial. What Newsom is doing
here is he is pushing real hard. And as someone
who has seen a lot of Democrats really disappoint over
the last couple of months, even if right, I mean
(49:04):
really really disappoint And we know you guys, our listeners
are as irritated as anyone about what's happening with Democrats.
And we know that because you guys turn off when
we have a lot of different Democratic electeds. We know who.
We get it, man.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
We see what you don't listen to a certain episodes.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Exactly. There's no secret here. But what Gavin is doing
is he is fighting really hard and that's what all
of us wanted. So Texas is Greg Abbott wants to
redistrict because look, Republicans don't want to lose the house.
You know why they don't want to lose the house.
Can you guess Donald Trump is going to get impeached again?
Maybe once, maybe twice, maybe three times. I mean, how
(49:45):
much time do we have because Trump is doing crimes.
So they don't want to lose a house, and they're
trying to figure out any which way do not lose
the house. And the thing they've decided is they're going
to draw new maps. But here's the thing about that.
New California is a big state, right, Texas big state.
California is a biger state. So Newsom wants to meet
(50:06):
Abbot where he is and look these people an Abbot,
I think this is certainly true, and newsome I think
this is also true. Bohletys really want to be president.
But I don't care why they're doing it. I want
them to do it because it is the only way
that any of this is going to stop is if
Democrats say, if you're going to do that, we're going
to do it too. Because what's happened for the last
(50:28):
decade is that Republicans have done stuff and Democrats have said,
when you go low, we go high. And the reality
is it's got to be when you go low, we
go low. So you stop going low. That's the only
way to do it. So as much as this may
be out of a lot of our comfort zones, as
the quote unquote good guys that has not worked for
the last eight years, that ship sailed, yeah, I think
(50:50):
that we got to just remember that we're trying to
protect democracy here and this is what it is man.
Speaker 4 (50:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
I think another interesting thing is Gavin news really wasn't
reading the room well at first with his podcast bookings.
Now it seems he's reading the room a lot better,
and I hope a lot of other democratic politicians learned
to read the room.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Yeah. I mean, I also think you don't need to
just go on other people's podcasts. You don't have to
start your own podcasts. Man, just govern, how about governing? Yep,
that's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
(51:31):
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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