Chuck’s Commentary - Donald Trump Is Rattled By The Epstein Files + How The U.S. Government Fed Conspiratorial Thinking - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
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Hello there, Happy Monday, and welcome to another episode of

(01:24):
the Chuck Podcast. As you can see, I am not
in studio. I am traveling. I am in Miami. I'm
on a sort of a three city excursion here. I'll
be in Miami, I'll be in Charlotte. I got a
trip to New York all this week. I just came
from Austin. I want to actually give a report on that.
It was a participant at the Texas Tribune Festival where
I interviewed Wes Moore. Actually, a part of that conversation

(01:46):
I'm going to have in the feed later this week,
so you will get a full opportunity to hear that conversation.
But with that, let me get started with a quick
little take on where we're at at the moment in
our current politics, and where we're at is we have
a president who is in the midst of a feeding frenzy,

(02:09):
and it is a feeding frenzy that he can't control,
and he is flailing. We've been in these positions with
him before and he always navigates his way out of it.
But this time is different. As I said in our
previous episode, we've got a struggling economy, something that he's
actually reacting to that's fascinating and I want to get

(02:29):
to that also in this episode. But at the end
of the day, his what he's doing and how he's
reacting to this Epstein situation is not exactly the way
somebody who's innocent would be reacting it is. There's so
many aspects of this that are strange when it comes

(02:52):
to the way he's treated this story. I mean, I'll
go back to something and I know, just set aside
everything you know about the story, but think about it
in this way. Donald Trump has the ability to b
as his way out of you know, he lies, you know,
sort of the way water flows out of a faucet, right,

(03:13):
He's very comfortable doing that, and he'll say whatever it
takes today to put off something that may be coming tomorrow,
and if he's got to say something else tomorrow, I'll
say something else tomorrow. The big head scratcher here on
this one is why he has chosen to be so
lenient on Gallayne Maxwell. And to me, this is the

(03:34):
part I want to focus on first. And then I'm
going to get to what is clearly an overreaction to
Marjorie Taylor Green and Thomas Massey, and I'll get to
that in a second, But I keep coming back to
this Kallaine Maxwell. And again when you get when we
get to my time the time Machine segment today, you'll

(03:54):
see where I'm going. But the reason there's an assumption
lying about something is because there's so many politicians that
have preceded him over the last fifty years that have
always lied to protect themselves first, and eventually the truth
would come out. It just sometimes would take years and
in some cases decades. What's a head scratcher about the

(04:17):
way he has treated Gallaine Maxwell is he seems to
fear her, And the question is why does he fear her?
She's in jail number one, number two. She was convicted
of essentially helping Epstein traffic underage women. He could easily

(04:37):
be wanting to throw the book at her, and instead
of putting her in a club fed, he could have
been putting her in solitary or making her life even
more miserable, rather than trying to be lenient. And for
whatever reason, he really wants her not to say anything

(04:59):
bad about it, even though if she did, he could
just simply say she's lying. She you know that he
had a story that was plausible enough that would likely
have kept everybody on his side. Right. The story was
Epstein was being a creep, he was recruiting, He and
Glane were recruiting women from mar A Lago. He had

(05:21):
had enough, he kicked him out, end of the relationship.
Why is he keep pulling Glaine Maxwell back into his orbit?
And I'll just say this, there is something else in
his life. There's there There is something that she knows about.
Perhaps there's something she assisted him with. Maybe it's a

(05:43):
relationship he has or had with somebody. But there is
something that he has that hasn't come out that he
apparently is petrified of that she knows. Because there really
seems to be no other explanation, because he could be
behaving the exact opposite way and the fact that he
isn't is a head scratcher, and someday, maybe sooner, maybe

(06:09):
it'll take a while, we'll find out for sure. Maybe
she knows the origin story of his personal life, Maybe
she knows things that we don't know about the origin
story of his marriage. None of us know for sure.
His behavior is making it easier to go down conspiratorial lanes,

(06:31):
and it's almost like he is either purposely doing this
just to try to create more fog, which is not
totally out of character for him, or there's something that
Maxwell has that he just can't he just can't risk,
and so he's got to figure out. So we'll see. Look,
if he commutes her sentence and releases her, that will

(06:54):
be you know, not just one red flag, right, that
would be a thousand red flags. But let's go to
the other part of this story, which is his decision
to punish Marjorie Taylor Green unendorse her. We already know
he's sicked his political machine on Thomas Massey trying to
primary him. There's an interesting pattern here Trump. I'm trying

(07:19):
to figure out who is Trump dumped or pulled his
endorsement from, or tried to defeat in his side of
the aisle who disagreed with him on an issue of substance. Right,
he went after those that voted to impeach him after
January sixth, right, the ten, and he is he doesn't

(07:40):
want to forget those. He's still got vendettas against anybody
that voted to convict him in the Senate. Hence why
I think there's still no endorsement for Bil Cassidy, and
I don't think there will ever be an endorsement for
Bill Cassidy in his senatecy. But none of these he
is he is angrier at Massy and Green for simply

(08:04):
voting for transparency on the Epstein files. Then he's as
angry at them as he was against the ten House
Republicans that voted to impeach him after January six It
is it is if this is this, and the irony is,
he's got plenty of ways that they're likely going to

(08:26):
kill this. Right, he's got the Senate. We'll see. Look,
I think if there's a hundred or more House Republicans
that vote with the Democrats on this, and I think
there will be that many. I do think that once
this vote goes on the record, there's a reason Mike
Johnson wanted to try to just release the files as
a unanimous consent because he doesn't want to recorded vote.

(08:49):
There's a whole bunch of House Republicans that don't want
to have to vote against the President on this, but
they're more petrified of not voting to release files having
to do with a pedophile. So that's one. The second
way they could kill it is maybe in the Senate,
but if it gets one hundred or more House votes,
I think there are thirteen Senate votes. Now maybe leaders

(09:11):
Senate leadership just finds different ways never to bring it
to the floor. But somebody's going to bring this to
the floor. Somebody's going to be able to introduce it,
and then it's possible Trump could be to it. But
don't underestimate what the Justice Department just did with this
when Donald Trump railed Rented on social media demanding that

(09:31):
Pambondi started an investigation into Democrats in their relationship with Epstein.
Because here's what's likely to happen. If there's an open
investigation that the Justice Department is conducting having to do
with people and their associations with Epstein, then it's likely
they go to a court and say, hey, we can't
have these files released because it's currently a part of

(09:54):
an investigation. Right there's been a lot of conversation. One
of the knee jerk right wing talking points is, well,
the Biden folks could have released this, Well, they were
in the middle of an investigation, so they couldn't release
any files at the time. Now the investigation, in theory
is over. But if they're reopening an investigation, then suddenly
that is that likely will mean that will be used.

(10:20):
This quote open investigation will be used as saying, hey,
we can't release any of this material. It may matter
in an investigation and we don't want to have to
put all that out earlier. So it's there's a lot
of pads, I think for this to be to have
these files prevented from being released to the public. There's

(10:44):
a handful of ways. You can see how it could
be Senate leadership that does it. It could be that
President Trump vetos it, or it could simply be the
Justice Department goes to court to say they can't because
there's an open investigation. Because Pambondi agreed to open investigation
just to investigate Democrats in their relationship with Epstein. So

(11:05):
the point is it's how much, it's how rattled he
is on this, and when he's rattled, this is when
mistakes get made, and he's rattled at a time when
the other parts of his job aren't going very well. Right,
you have, it's pretty clear that this economy is not
working for people that don't have money. He is realizing

(11:29):
how badly the inflation issue is impacting, particularly his voters,
because he's doing something he said he'd never do. He's
getting rid of tariffs on food and coffee. Now, what's
interesting is how all of his surrogates went out on
the Sunday shows and they won't say that they're getting
rid of the tariffs, like they keep not trying to

(11:50):
use the word, or they keep saying, no, we're lowering costs. Oh,
you're getting rid of the tariffs. So the terrorists raised costs. No,
the terifts didn't raise any costs. But we're going to
lower costs on food. There's this weird they don't you know.
Donald Trump can't ever admit he's wrong. And the fact
of the matter is these tariffs. Foreigners didn't pay these fees.

(12:10):
You and I did. We've been paying this. If you've
bought a banana recently, you paid tariffs. So if he's
going to sit here and refund this to some people,
and we'll see if they're even able to do that,
we're going to find out soon enough. He's likely to
lose at least some of this tariff authority in court.
He probably will try to find another way in the

(12:31):
law to try to try to implement some of these tariffs,
and I think there are a few other levers he
can pull that he'll be able to do this. But
the reality is is that you know, despite everything he
claimed that somehow Americans weren't going to be paying this tax,
Americans have paid this tax. We have been getting more
tax on food, particularly fruits, vegetables, stuff that comes from overseas,

(12:56):
plus coffee. So the fact that they're dropping them shows
you that there's a bit of an acknowledgment that number one,
prices haven't calmed down, they've gone up, and number two,
he's been the reason why prices have gone up. And
then finally he's got to deal with this healthcare issue
and the fact that premiums are everybody now that is

(13:20):
is that is on the Obamacare exchanges, is seeing that
the premiums are about to go up if they were
getting some of these subsidies, it looks to me like
there's going to be an extension of these subsidies. Is
it a year, is it is it a year with
a few extra strings attached. I think all of those

(13:40):
things are possible, But I do want to highlight something
Rick Scott said. Rick Scott made it crystal clear in
a Sunday Show interview earlier that they were not going
to repeal Obamacare and that you know, there was not
going they were not that they that all insurance was
going you know, they weren't going to repeat or the
pre existing condition issue. Because the only way to save

(14:04):
money on this on on these insurance exchanges in OBAMACAREA
is if you let insurance companies essentially cherry pick who
they get to cover and if you don't have a
pre existing condition, and they can shift people with pre
existing conditions and make them pay higher rates but have
healthy people pay super low rates. That's you know that

(14:29):
that's the system we had before, which didn't work for anybody.
So the fact that Rick Scott is saying we are
not going to do that because you cannot have insurance
companies be able to not accept clients because of a
pre existing condition. This is why the system didn't work before.
But the talking point that is really bizarre to me,

(14:49):
as they're saying, well, they want to they don't want
to give this money to the insurance companies, are going
to give it to the American people. Well, where do
they think the American people is going to spend this money?
Can you get health insurance coverage without paying an insurance company?
I mean, I guess unless we're going to be doing
Medicare for all, is that the plan. I don't think

(15:11):
that's going to be the plan that comes from the
Republican side of the aisle. But if you don't want
to pay insurance companies, who else do you pay? And
if you would like to get rid of the insurance companies,
if you hate insurance companies, Bernie Sanders would love to
talk with you. He's got a plan, Republicans. If you
don't like insurance companies and you don't want to pay

(15:32):
insurance companies, He's got a terrific idea just do it
straight with the government. So it's a strange talking point
that they're using. But the point is they know this
is not good politics for them. They know that they
have to deal with this, and I think they're going
to deal with this soon. But this Epstein thing, it's

(15:54):
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the odorance was gross. You know, thankfully, you know, we
had such a we were so worried about the ozone
layer back then. They finally got rid of those things,
which is there's a whole bunch of us that are
thankful for that. That was just gross. You walk into

(16:17):
a gem and you'd always smell that sort of aerosol deodorant.
It was disgusting. But the Sure, I always said, never
let him see his sweat was sort of the tagline
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He is clearly nervous about all things up sent it
is his personal obsession. He is trying to enact political
and vendettas having to do with it. He is making
Marjorie Taylor Green a martyr. He is giving, he is

(18:28):
helping get her mainstreamed with independency. She is proudly calling herself,
you know, Maga without him, And that's the thing like
he is not. You know, I do think Thomas Massey,
who was a sort of America first Conservative before Donald
Trump ever showed up. Marjorie Taylor Green's beliefs clearly aligned

(18:49):
closer with a with a conservative that's more in line
with Massy than she is with Trump. Trump is always
as many a Trump advisor will quietly let me know,
he's always the least Maga person in any room you
walk into, wherever you go with maga, Trump's the least

(19:10):
Maga and he's become obsessed with the deal making overseas.
He's become obsessed with all the money he's making off
of his ac off of his influence in government. It's
pretty much the opposite of what the true believers in MAGA,
those that did want to go after the elites, who
thought the elites were using government to enrich themselves, And

(19:33):
what's Donald Trump doing using government to enrich himself. So look,
I wrote it in my substeck last week, and I
think that so far everything is playing out sort of
exactly how I sort of was laying it out, and
I think we're going to continue to see it. His
influence is waning more Republicans discover every day that he

(19:56):
will never be on a ballot again, and just keep
an eye on. So he's already gone after Massey, and
it's not really going that well. Thomas Massey's primary is
going is May nineteenth, and that's fairly early in the
primary season. There's a lot more though, you know, we
have a few states in March, couple states in April,
but most of the primaries are in June, than a

(20:18):
big chunk in August, and are remaining a few in September.
If Massy wins, and right now, I'd rather be Massy
than anybody else in that Republican primary. He's had a
hard time finding anybody. It's yet going to be another
reminder that the Emperor is losing his clothes. I'm not
going to say the Emperor has no clothes at the moment,

(20:40):
but I think the Emperor is starting to shed some
clothes at the moment. And if he is trying to
punish somebody and he can't do it right, he already
lost one big one with Brian Kemp. And remember why
he turned on Brian Kemp. He turned on Brian Kemp
over January sixth. In the election. He turned on Brian

(21:00):
Kemp because Brian Kemp wouldn't do an illegal act, right,
Brian Kemp wouldn't abide by his by Donald Trump's wishes.
So again this pattern. The only time Donald Trump wants
to punish a fellow Republican is when they won't go
along with something that just is bullshit. Right. They won't

(21:21):
go along on the Epstein files, they won't go along
on January sixth, they won't go along on the election.
And whether they're it's the only time he turns on folks.
He doesn't ever really turn on him over policy disagreements.
He only turns on him if he thinks other people
are going to embarrass them him because they won't keep
his lap. And when Massey wins that primary in May,

(21:47):
it's yet going to be another chink in the armor,
and it's going to continue to open the store and
everybody is. It's just getting easier and easier to separate
yourself from Donald Trump. And there's going to be these
different lease a little small. The Epstein vote is going
to be a step in that direction, and you're going
to see one hundred or more House members do it.

(22:10):
When the Supreme Court rules against his tariffs, you're going
to see a whole bunch of Republicans suddenly find their
free trade spines again, and they'll put out releases talking
about following the Constitution. So these little and then you're
going to see, you know, as people are upset about

(22:30):
the costs rising costs, you're going to see more in
Republicans look for ways to potentially separate themselves from the
White House, but certainly to more directly appeal to voters,
either in different ways to try to get rid of terrorists,
the lower costs, or to question big tech and what

(22:51):
they're doing to raise our electric bills with all these
data centers that are going up all over the place.
So I do think we are witnessing, like I said
before the beginning of the lame ducification of Donald Trump.
One other thing before we get to the interview that
I want to get to. So I spent Thursday and

(23:13):
Friday in Austin, Texas the Texas Tribune Festival. They have
it every year. I've been to it a few times.
They asked me to moderate a conversation with Maryland Governor
Wes Moore. I think I told you I was doing
that while I was there. I also it kind of
unofficially became a bit of a cattle call for twenty
twenty eight presidential candidates on the Democratic side of the aisle.

(23:36):
Wes Moore was there, Pete Bootage was there, Tim Walls
was there, Chris Murphy was there. So, you know, while
I'm not going to sit here and say it was,
you had a whole bunch of people looking for twenty
twenty eight candidates. I think they were there looking for
people to fight Donald Trump more than anything else. It

(23:58):
was interesting the various conversations that were had. Look, I
would say the attendees at the Texas Tribune Festival were
folks looking to fight Trump. These were folks that are,
you know, fall on the left side of the aisle.
They were there looking for They're looking for hope, you know,
looking for a stronger vision in the Democratic Party looking

(24:21):
in some cases, I think many of them probably were
a little further to the left than probably the average
rank and file member of the Democratic Party. And like
I said, the wes More conversation, you know, I was
intrigued by the sort of the tone he took. He

(24:43):
knew this audience was very liberal, and yet he didn't
try to play to the audience. He really hugged the
center lane in ways that I didn't fully expect him
to hug it. He made it clear that, you know,
he didn't view himself as tied to the Democratic Party.
He was a Democrat, but that didn't mean he would

(25:03):
abide by everything the Democratic Party was for. I thought
that was an interesting distinction. Always a little bit easier
for governors to say that than any other officeholder, but
he went out of his way to say that. I
thought that was intriguing, and I do think it's you know,
when he goes through I mean, his military experience is

(25:24):
you know, I think there's some you know, John Kerrey
used to get criticized by some who thought that he
used his military he went into the military for political purposes.
I don't care if somebody went into the military for
political purposes. That doesn't bother me. But some people think, oh,
you're doing it to check a box. That isn't why
Wes Moore joined the military, and that's what he got

(25:45):
in I you know, I I'm not going to sit
here and question the motive of somebody that chooses to
put themselves in a position where they could put themselves
in harms way because they think it'll look good on
a political resume. I'm not saying some haven't thought about
it that in those terms. But if you're willing to

(26:07):
do that, then I've got no problem with that. I
appreciate that you're trying to have a variety of experiences
in order to in order to be a better leader
if you do get a shot at being a small
d democratic leader of this country. So I don't think

(26:28):
it's a huge deal, but I do think his military
experience a little bit different right when you join at seventeen,
and he was already had gone to military school. So
I just think he's I don't think he's a conventional
liberal Democrat, is my point. And I didn't fully appreciate
that until you had, until you have this longer conversation,

(26:51):
I was intrigued by him. I thought it was I
thought some of his answers, his defensive capitalism was quite interesting. Again,
later this week, we're going to drop this into the feed,
So if you want to listen to this conversation, you
can listen to the whole conversation. I actually used it
also this week in my new sphere, so those of
you that are a member of Newsphere, you can check

(27:12):
out Sunday Night with Chuck Todd. That was a big
chunk of that interview appeared there as well. But there
was one other thing I wanted to bring up, because
both he and Tim Walls. I saw Tim Wall's conversation.
He was in conversation with Jennifer Paul Mary, a longtime
Democratic operative, and I asked both jen asked Tim Walls

(27:37):
a question about sort of what does Trump do well?
And I asked a question, what does Trump get right?
You know to wes Moore some version of it, and
they both said the same thing. You know, he acts,
it's moved, he moves quickly. I think Tim Wall said,
he moves quickly and he goes. You know one thing
Trump does well, what wes Moore said, is that there's

(28:00):
always action. Right. He doesn't wait around for a commission,
He doesn't have a committee to study something before trying
to implement it. A lot of times he tries to
implement things even when he doesn't have the authority to
do it. But he's always but the voter sees him
trying to do something, sees him trying to fulfill a

(28:24):
promise that he made, even if it ends up being
kind of an empty fulfillment, he still attempts to do it.
It tells me that the next Democratic president is if
there's one thing they're going to attempt to emulate from Trump,
you're going to see a lot more signing ceremonies, a
lot more public signing ceremonies, a lot more executive orders,

(28:46):
a lot more attempts at doing rather than studying, and
maybe even trying to do too much rather than looking back,
like I think many in the Obama years do and
wonder was that was the two years that he had
full where he had fifty nine to sixty Senate seats.

(29:08):
He had sixty for a while and it was back
to fifty nine a fairly large House majority. Was that
did he was getting healthcare? Was great? Should he have
just kept pushing the envelope, tried to get cap and trade?
Just pushed, pushed, pushed, and because no matter what there
was going to be, they were going to lose the
mid terms, no matter what. So you might as well

(29:29):
have done as much as you can. Because what's the
lesson Donald Trump has taken. Do as much as you
can while you can, because you really never know how
long you're going to be there. And I think the
fact that both Wesmore and Tim Walls that that's one
of the lessons those that's the initial and when when
they're asked what does Trump do well or what does

(29:50):
Trump get right? That both of them and I don't
think they talked to each other about this. I don't
think either. I don't think More the Wall said at first.
I think More heard Tim Wall say this. It didn't
really go viral or anything like that, So I don't
think he's alone and I've heard this from quite a
few other Democrats that that they get frustrated. They think

(30:11):
when you know, well, he's he's signing these executors they're
kind of meaningless. Yeah, ninety percent of them are meaningless.
But the message to the voters is he's trying that
he's making an effort, that he's doing something. Nobody ever
wonders whether you know. I think it's why Trump's erratic
health isn't hurting him quite yet as much as it

(30:33):
hurt Biden, because Biden didn't look like he was doing
as much. So then you wondered, why is an he's
doing as much? So it is it is. It was
just intriguing that that that that was singled out. But
again I go back. My big takeaway from Wes Moore
is that he is he is definitely not going to
be running as a mainstream liberal Democrat. I think he

(30:58):
is going to be running as something a bit differ.
And those that are thinking this is the second coming
of Obama, I would say, I think it's more likely
the second coming of Bill Clinton than it is Barack Obama.
For what it's worked, there's a reason results matter more
than promises. Just like there's a reason Morgan and Morgan

(31:18):
is America's largest injury law firm. For the last thirty
five years, they've recovered twenty five billion dollars for more
than half a million clients. It includes cases where insurance
companies offered next to nothing, just hoping to get away
with paying as little as possible. Morgan and Morgan fought
back ended up winning millions. In fact, in Pennsylvania, one
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(31:40):
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they win. Let's go into the podcast time machine. So

(32:24):
it's the week of November seventeenth through the twenty third,
And you know what I like to do, go back
in history, and we're just looking at this these seven days,
and believe it or not, this is quite I stumbled
onto what is conspiracy theory Week? In American history? Three
moments in particular have anniversaries this week. The Jonestown massacre,

(32:49):
the kool Aid drinking November eighteenth, nineteen seventy eight. There's,
of course, the jfk assassination November twenty second, nineteen sixty three,
and the eighteen and a half minute gap in the
Nixon tapes was revealed on November twenty first, nineteen seventy three,
three events that on their own would be enough to

(33:10):
bend the country's imagination, but together, stacked on the same
week of the calendar, I think they tell us something
a bit more profound about why Americans believe conspiracies and
why those beliefs are so durable. And by the way,
this is also the same energy right now fueling our
current national fixation on the Epstein files, where the fantastical

(33:32):
spreads faster than any known fact. But we only have
one type of person to blame, the elected American elected
official right, So let's get to the time machine. So
we're going to start with Jonestown. That's when conspiracy thinking
became catastrophic. It's November. We're going to go back to
November eighteenth, nineteen seventy eight in Jonestown. Now, a lot

(33:54):
of people think of Jonestown as a cult tragedy, and
it is, but it's also the story of how a
closed information system can destroy a human judgment. Jim Jones,
the cult leader, didn't just isolate his followers physically. He
isolated them psychologically, emotionally, and informationally. He convinced them that
outsiders were coming to kill them. He convinced them that

(34:16):
only he understood the truth. He convinced them that everyone else,
from the media to the US government was lying. Perhaps
he alone could fix it. But I digress. But here's
the terrifying part. The more erratic Jones became, the more
his followers trusted him. Because once you buy into total,
this sort of total narrative, once you build your identity

(34:40):
around a conspiratorial worldview, facts are no longer persuasive. Facts
become evidence of the conspiracy against you. Jonestown is not
a government conspiracy. It's the consequence of conspiratorial thinking, and
it becomes a template decades before so social media for

(35:01):
how a charismatic figure can sever followers from reality and
create a world where the fantastical is accepted without question.
It's why QAnon didn't surprise psychologists. It's why people fall
for online cults. Jonestown is a modern cautionary tale of
what happens when people choose narrative over truth. My god,

(35:24):
imagine how big Jonestown might have gotten with social media.
All right, let's to the second, the second big conspiratorial
event in our timeline. This week, the conspiracy the public
never accepted fourteen years earlier. The same week, November twenty second,
nineteen sixty three, John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas.

(35:47):
If Jonestown shows what happens when people buy into a
false conspiracy, the jfk assassination shows what happens when the
official story fails to convince the public. The Warren report
was assembled very quickly. The evidence was confusing. The single
bullet theory sounded well, pretty implausible to the average American,

(36:10):
and the result was a permanent fracture in public trust.
In fact, I always go back. I mean, if you
look at the original sin of when did you know,
if you look at baby boomers today, right, they grew
up with this. This was their coming of age moment.
Was government they believed lying to them about what happened
to their president. Right. And then just about every subsequent

(36:31):
generation would have a little bit more of the government
liing to them, and we'd chip away, chip away, chip away.
But this was a big one because the generation before
the Baby Boomers trusted their government. But for millions of Americans,
JFK's death marks the moment when they stopped believing the
government reflexively and started believing the government selectively, not because

(36:55):
they wanted a conspiracy, but because the government couldn't explain
the tragedy in a way that felt complete, transparent, or
sufficiently humble. This is where CIA theory is, mafia theories,
castro theories, LBJ theories, deep state theories. They all began here.
But the more important important point is this after JFK,

(37:18):
Americans no longer needed evidence for a conspiracy. They only
needed doubt. JFK didn't create the conspiracy culture, but it
created the psychological conditions for the next event that did,
and that brings us to a year that still feels
like a wound. It's nineteen seventy three. The Nixon tape gap,

(37:40):
the conspiracy that was well was a conspiracy, it was true.
Two weeks before Thanksgiving, November twenty first, nineteen seventy three,
America learns that there is an eighteen and a half
minute gap in one of Nixon's Oval office tapes, the
very tape that might have shown what he knew about Watergate.
This is the moment that permanently rewires American brain. After

(38:01):
years of being told trust us, after years of dismissing
accusations as partisan, and after years of insisting that critics
of Nixon were hysterical, here it was a missing tape,
not metaphorically literally an erased tape, Thank you, Rosemary Woods.
And the White House explanation was so implausible secretaries accidentally

(38:23):
leaning on pedals, fingers slipping, that it practically invited conspiracy.
The lesson for the American public was brutal and simple.
Sometimes the conspiracy theory is true, and sometimes the cover
up is even dumber than the crime. And once that happens,
once government credibility is broken in this specific way, you
don't get it. Back through press releases. You don't get

(38:44):
it back through official investigations, and you don't even get
it back through prosecutions. And of course we never did prosecute,
you know, I think when I first started my timecast
time Machine, one of the I started with the part
with Ford's pardon and a mistake. I think now we

(39:04):
see that was clearly I don't think it's it's even
a close call anymore, that that was clearly a mistake,
because we never did get justice for what was done.
But Watergate taught Americans that powerful people sometimes lie, and
institutions sometimes protect those lies. And once you know that,
you never unknow it. And then it just sort of

(39:27):
sits there, and it chips away and chips away, and
we wonder why we have a government we don't trust today.
So let's look at sort of the modern parallel, right
the Epstein files, fast forward to the present, and conspiracy
is the default, it's not the exception. Just look at
this Epstein moment. We're all living through. People assume elites lie,

(39:49):
people assume institutions are hiding things. People assume the truth
is always worse, and people assume if there is a conspiracy,
it's probably bigger and darker than anything the government admits. Now,
I'm an Ockham's razor person. I think if there was
something even darker, deeper, we there'd at least be a
leak about it somewhere. But we haven't gotten that. But
still conspiracies persist. But it's because of Jonestown, because of JFK,

(40:14):
because of Nixon, because of IRAQ WMDs, because of the
NSA surveillance revelations, because of January sixth. Americans now process
every new event through a lens shaped by generations of
government betrayal, government confusion, and partial truths at best. So
just look at what we did with Epstein. Right, the

(40:36):
conspiracy theory arrived first, the facts are we still don't
have all the facts, do we They're arriving later. The
public decides what it believes before the evidence even begins
to land. It's not that people want to believe in
sane things. It's that the factual world is moving slower
than the fantastical one. We have more information than ever,

(40:58):
but we have less trust than ever, and in that environment,
speculation fills every gap instantly. And then you look at
our ridiculous algorithms that sort of reward those that have
a new theory rather than those that have factual information. Right.
If I were to say, right now, boy, it's got
to be that Gallaine Maxwell knows the origin story of

(41:21):
Malania Trump and how Milani and Donald met, boy, the
algorithms would go crazy and this video could go viral
because I'd say, because I'd say that I have no
evidence of this. Okay, I certainly am trying to figure
out why the president is hiding so much of this
and why he seems to be so scared of Gallainne Maxwell.

(41:45):
So your mind wanders, and unfortunately, because of how poor
government's been about being transparent about things including the jfk
assassination being frankly exhibit A, how do you tell an
American not to go down that conspiratorial rabbit hole? This

(42:07):
is where we are. So what do we take away
from this in this week in American history? Here's the
common threat. We are conspiracy prone, not because we're gullible,
but because our institutions have repeatedly given us enough reason,
just enough reason to suspect that we're not being told
the full story. When leaders lie, even tiny lies, they

(42:28):
leave behind just enough ambiguity for our collective imagination to
go to work, and when institutions are slow, opaque, or
even arrogant, doubt becomes a form of self defense. When
information drips out instead of flows out, the vacuum fills
the narrative, and when the official story doesn't feel complete,

(42:48):
the unofficial ones become irresistible. So I'll leave you this.
We Americans can handle plenty of bad news. What we
cannot handle is missing news. Got you got to tell
us everything. Don't hold back, because if you do, if
we find out and you held back, it is so

(43:09):
much worse. The more than institutions give us half truths,
delayed truths, redacted truths, or contradictory truths or alternative facts,
the more this week in history becomes every week in
our political system. So there you go. Enjoy conspiracy Week
in the Todd Cash a time machine. By the way,

(43:31):
if you're looking for some good jonestown documentaries, there are
a ton of them out there. They're all fascinating. There
was a couple recently I think on Netflix that definitely
is worth your time. My friend Jeff Morley JFK. Fax
is a terrific substack. He goes through, he goes through
all the government releases the way you would want a

(43:54):
reported to do it. You know, yes, he has his theories,
but he separates the facts from the theories. I wish
I had a really good place for you to go
for all things having to do with filling the gaps
and Watergate. But in some ways, I think I think
we've filled we have between Garrett Graft's most recent book
about Watergate, plus everything Woodward and Bernstein has done, we

(44:19):
have a pretty decent handle on them. So you know
what this means. It's college football time. Okay, soa okay,
So Miami kept up its end of the bargain, had
a nice I will say I was pleasantly surprised. There's
nothing like a Hurricane's game when the defense sort of

(44:43):
sparks things and the pick six early set the tone.
The offense started to hum. Yes, NC State didn't have
the best of defenses, but the fact is Miami won
by a margin that they should win by. They covered
the spread. I think they doubled actually the actual spread,
So it was a It was a decisive victory. And

(45:05):
you know, some things went Miami's way as far as
you know, teams that needed to lose ahead of them
A few teams did Texas lost, that's a big one.
They're not you know, they're they're not going to get
in even a victory over Texas. A and M They're not.
A three loss team is not yet going to make

(45:27):
the playoff. A couple other things be Boston College had
Georgia Tech on the ropes. You know, I certainly would
like to see Miami be able to play itself into
the playoff, not having to wait to see if their
body of work will be considered better or worse than
the body of work of other two loss teams. But
I want to get to that here in a minute.

(45:47):
But for the look in fairness, I think it was
the best game Miami's played since Notre Dame and and
South Florida where too, probably the two most complete games
they've played all year. Even the Florida game, they didn't
play a great first half. It was the second half
that they sort of put that game away. But but
Notre Dame, they played three great quarters. They let they

(46:08):
let Notre Dame sort of make the game look like
it was a close game. And I think this this,
you know, they basically were ahead by double digits most
of the game. Notre Dame gets a lay touchdown and
so the game looked closer than it actually was. But
this was a pretty complete game they got. This was
the last home game Senior Day. They got two more

(46:29):
road games, Virginia Tech and then Pit. And let's talk
about Pitt because Notre Dame now got to face a
Pit team that did not chose to play an exhibition game. Now,
I'm not saying the players that actually played in the
game didn't play hard. They did, but the coaching staff
made a decision that they were not going to play

(46:49):
to win this game. Anybody that was fifty to fifty
on you know, could play, but you know, they'd rather
have them rest for the conference their last two conference
games Georgia Tech and Miami. They chose to do that.
The coach went public earlier in the week and said,
it doesn't this game was meaningless to them. This was
akin to a preseason game, an exhibition game. They could

(47:11):
lose by one hundred, it didn't matter. Their path to
the playoff did not go through Notre Dame. Their path
to the playoff went through making it to the ACC
Conference title game, and if they went out, they will
have a place in the title game, which brings me
to and then, by the way, same thing just happened
a week earlier with Notre Dame when they played Navy.
When Navy decided not to play one of their quarterbacks

(47:34):
in that game, Horvat saving him because he had been
somewhat he'd been dinged up a little bit. They wanted
to basically give him a week off before their conference
game against South Florida. By the way, that was a
terrific game. I watched a lot of that game that
was in my multibox. That was a fun game to watch,
and it was a shootout and somehow South Florida couldn't

(47:56):
stop Navy very often. Navies won that game, and they
still have a path to the college football playoff again
through the Group of five playoff slot. Again, the Notre
Dame game was meaningless to them in their attempt to
get to the playoff. So now Notre Dame and this,

(48:17):
you know, I saw that ESPN was promoting this win
on Pitt as if it was an impressive win that hey,
they they had. They made it part of their ticker lead,
and they made it seem as if that this they
played an exhibition game. Pitt did not take this game seriously,
and I do think the College Football Committee if they're
if this committee is serious and I am, I am

(48:38):
a huge skeptic given that three years in a row
they have made decisions that were not about football teams
that were instead about what ESPN wanted or what the
SEC wanted, which maybe won and the same right. We
go back to the decision not to put Florida State
into the end of the playoff when they were undefeated
after winning their conference title game, and they just chose

(48:59):
not to at Florida statea right. So if you're wondering
why I have have been so hard on ESPN and
the SEC about this, is because not that they might
do this, because they've already done it once and then
they arguably did it last year. Miami absolutely belonged in
that playoff, and they chose not to put Miami in

(49:20):
because they didn't want to put in a third ACC team.
They have decided the ACC isn't worthy of having two
or three teams on any given year. That's just a
decision they make, period. There is not I would argue,
not as many metrics that would actually argue for that
than others want to say but this is the decision. Yes,

(49:42):
or they're not going to put in two Big twelve teams.
Then they're going to try really hard not to put
in two ACC teams. We'll see if Miami can sort
of force the envelope. But explain to me, I mean
to me if you were to treat Notre Dame as
sort of instead of knowing that it was no, and
I just gave you the profile of team A, Team B,

(50:03):
Team C, Team D. Right, there is no way Notre
Dame is a playoff team. They don't have a good
Their best win is USC, who may or may not
be a competitor for a playoff spot. And then two
of their victories are against teams that chose essentially to
pull some of their starters so that they didn't face

(50:24):
the toughest version of PITT. Miami's going to face the
toughest version of PITT. They didn't face the toughest version
of Navy. South Florida faced the toughest version of Navy.
So you know, I I that that should matter. If
the head to head isn't going to matter now, obviously
the most important thing ought to be the head to head.

(50:45):
Notre Dame loses to Miami and they're both ten and two.
It's obvious what any actual tie breaking scenario in any
other league, the first tiebreaker is head to head. Now
they don't there is no there are no rules, right,
this committee has never said what the metrics are to
get into the playoff. They don't release a criteria. You

(51:06):
know what that means, because they make up the criteria
when they when it suits them, right, if it if
it's easier to make a case for a team to
get in because of their losses, they'll say, hey, they
have great losses. And if it's easier to make a
case for a team to get in because they have
great wins, and they'll say, hey, they have great wins. Right,

(51:26):
But they don't seem to have a standardized metric on
what matters more wins or losses when you're trying to
differentiate between a ten and two team or three ten
and two teams. In fact, we're gonna have a lot
of this, right, You're gonna have you may have ten
and two Oklahoma, ten and two, Notre Dame, ten and two,
Alabama and ten into a Miami And let's just take

(51:48):
a look at this. Okay, Alabama, one of their losses.
Is a team Miami B Do you think that's gonna
matter to the committee? Not naive, I know it's not
gonna matter. I'll give Alabama this. They have the best
win of the four because Alabama beat Georgia, so they
will get credit for that. Oklahoma has now Alabama is

(52:10):
their best win, right They lost to Texas, a team
that Florida beat, a team that Miami whipped before Florida
was giving up okay, before the whole firing and all
that business. And then of course when you compare Miami
Notre Dame, Miami beat Notre Dame. Obviously I'm singling those

(52:32):
four teams out because I am if that if they
all four ten and two and there's three slots for
those four teams, I know this committee is going to
try to keep Miami out. And if you looked at
him in a blind survey, Miami arguablyst this the second
best of those four. If you're going to do that,
let alone third or fourth. So I all'm I am.

(52:57):
I want to try to give the assume that some
people on this committee take their job seriously and are
simply trying to get the best teams. The fact is
Miami's probably got one of the three best rosters in
the nation, easily the combination best offensive and defensive lines going.

(53:17):
For whatever reason, the committee decided to overly punish Miami
for losing a gamed SMU on the road. They didn't
punish him as much for the first loss to Louisville,
but they punished him a lot for that SMU loss.
It was a way over punishment obviously in this idea
that when you lose somehow should should matter. And I

(53:41):
know this has always sort of been out there because
of the of the screwyway college football works. But again,
in the NFL, your record's your record, and if there's
a tiebreaker doesn't matter when that game happened, right. The
head to head is the head to head. So look,

(54:01):
Mimy's got to do its part. Yes, I'm still you know,
you know, the irony is that Miami should be undefeated,
shouldn't have lost either one of those games. Sort of
coach farted those games away, arguably, and they were both
winnable even at the very end, but they got coach

(54:22):
farted away. I think I'm going to try to use
that term going forward, coach farting. But We'll see what
the committee does. But the thing that I that I
want to see whether this committee is taking itself seriously
at all, is the fact that Notre Dame has two
teams on their schedule that decided not to play to one.

(54:45):
And this is the look Notre Dame should be dinged
for not being in a conference playing conference games. The
stakes are higher when you don't have a conference games,
there's no stakes. Yes, the stakes are higher, they have
to keep winning, but the conference game is so much

(55:05):
more high pressure. And whether your conference road game or
hosting a team that just you would make their season
if they beat you, which is just about every team
Miami plays in the ACC. Okay, you know what Miami
doesn't do. They don't storm fields because when you win
national titles, you don't worry about storming a field because
because it isn't a big deal to you until you

(55:27):
actually win the whole thing. But I tell you, I've
been to plenty of Miami games where the other team
storms the field because it's a big deal of them
to beat Miami in a regular season Notre Dame knows
this feeling. Plenty of teams when they've upset Notre Dame
on the road, they storm the field. But the fact
is Miami is playing more high pressure games. Shoot, Oklahoma's
playing more high pressure games us every one of the

(55:48):
power for because of how important this path to the
playoff is. These conference games are much more high stakes
and Notre Dame doesn't have any of them. And so
I actually think that Notre Dame not the arrogance of
Notre Name not being at a conference and still wanting
to be treated equally compared to what everybody else has

(56:08):
to go through with these conference schedules. I actually think
that these athletic directors that are on this committee, as
much as they want to do whatever they have to
do for ESPN for the ESPN Invitational here, at the
same time, are irritated that Notre Dame doesn't have to

(56:31):
go through this conference business. So at a minimum, Rhys Davis,
please ask whoever's going to be that I think it's
now the Arkansas ad who is going to be the
spokesperson for the committee. Please ask them whether the committee
is going to essentially downgrade the two victories that Notre

(56:52):
Dame had over Navy and pit They should be downgraded.
They did not face They faced an exhibition. They faced
two tens that treated the game as an exhibition. I'm
not saying the players themselves did, but the coaching staff did.
And when you say you don't care if you win
the game, you know your players hear it. So when

(57:15):
you're comparing not every ten and two record should be
treated the same. And I think clearly here Notre Dame
should be the one that's in much bigger trouble in
their playoff path right now because they have teams that
are not taking the Notre Dame game that seriously anymore
because of how important now the conference pathway is. I

(57:40):
have to say a few other notes on what I
saw over the weekend. I get more impressed at Texas
Tech all the time. I have no idea why anybody's
ranking Oregon as high as they are. I think Oregon
I have some questions about Oregon here. You know, yes,
they have one loss. I'll be this Oregon USC game
coming up up. It's a huge game to see if

(58:02):
the Big ten can get three teams into the playoffs.
But Oregon's best win is now Penn State. How good
of a win is that Oregon needs to blow out USC?
I think to justify they're certainly to justify how to
see them ranked as high a high as they are.

(58:25):
I got to give Texas A and M a ton
of credit, both A and M this week in Indiana.
Last week, when you should lose a game and you
figure out a way to win and you're one of
these undefeated teams, I am in some ways more impressed.
They didn't play their best game in the first half.
You know, I gave you that tip last week. I said, hey,
I had heard that with the new offensive coordinator, they

(58:46):
were they're worried about losing Lenora Sellers in the portal.
There's even rumors at Miami he may end up at
Miami that they were going to open things up a
little bit, And boy did they and he looked terrific
in that first half and shut them down and shut
everything down in the second half. So I have to
say A and M impressed me and impressed me quite
a bit. They don't have to win another game. They will,

(59:09):
but they don't have to win another game. I'm very curious,
and here's going to be something to see. Texas got
its third loss. What is that? You know, what's their
intensity going to be like for the rest of the season,
particularly for the A and M game at the end
of the year. It's exciting to see Texas Texas A
and M play. I think they're gonna be playing on
Thanksgiving weekend, which will be kind of nice that. And

(59:32):
then there's Vanderbilt. You know, they're still They're still sitting
there at eight and two, and you have Utah sitting
there and eight and two, both ahead of Miami. So
don't think I haven't. I don't have my eyes on
them on that front. I have a feeling if Miami
takes care of business and wins by margin in their
last two games, that they likely leap frog, because again,

(59:55):
Miami does have better wins I think than either of
those other two teams. But we shall see. All in all,
I am obviously nervous, I'm willing, I'm trying to will
every everything I have and making sure Miami is treated
fairly in this. That's all I'm asking is that Miami

(01:00:16):
is treated fairly, because I don't think the ACC in
general gets treated fairly in this, and frankly, until we
have a year where they are treated fairly, you're going
to have a hard time convincing any fan of any
team in the ACC that the that ESPN or the
College Football Playoff Committee or the ESPN Invitational Committee, whatever
you want to call it, is going to give an

(01:00:37):
ACC team a fair shot. But like I said, I
will I will pull back some of my critique of
the of the media company's influence on this committee if
I see some hard questioning of the committee chair on
this issue of whether Notre Dame's two victories over Navy

(01:00:59):
and Pitt ought to be downgraded. So with that, I
do enjoy trolling my friends that are Notre Dame fans
on this one. But in all seriousness, if I know
if somehow this could be used as a demerit against
an ACC team, this committee would be all over it.
It's a big name, Notre Dame that's doing it. Will

(01:01:19):
they have the guts to publicly call out Notre Dame's
victories on this one? We shall all right with that.
I hope you even had a good weekend. Hope you
enjoyed your weekend. I'm glad, since I'm traveling a lot
this week that all of the airports are up and running.
I thank those TSA agents and those air traffic controllers

(01:01:42):
who have been working without pay thank you for doing that.
Thank you for your service, Thank you for at least
doing what you can to keep a government that behaves
so dysfunctionally a bit more functional. And with that, until
I upload again,

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Chuck’s Commentary - Donald Trump Is Rattled By The Epstein Files + How The U.S. Government Fed Conspiratorial Thinking

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Chuck’s Commentary - Donald Trump Is Rattled By The Epstein Files + How The U.S. Government Fed Conspiratorial Thinking