November 12, 2025 • 38 mins
A new tranche of Epstein emails have been released, exposing more details about one of the most notorious scandals in modern politics - and putting fresh pressure on Donald Trump. All this in the week that Donald Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion for ‘defamatory’ statements, plunging the BBC into an existential crisis.
On this week’s episode of TrumpWorld, Matt Frei and Anushka Asthana explore how the revelations are reverberating through Washington and Westminster, unpack what the Epstein revelations could mean for Trump, and discuss his relationship with the media. And we speak to former Washington Post editor Martin Baron about what this moment reveals about the future of journalism, and accountability in the age of Trump.
The White House has responded to this release of emails by House Democrats.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says: “The Democrats selectively leaked emails to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump.
"The ‘unnamed victim’ referenced in these emails is the late Virginia Giuffre, who repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and “couldn’t have been friendlier” to her in their limited interactions.
"The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club decades ago for being a creep to his female employees, including Giuffre.
"These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
For all Trump saying no one cares about this, it's a
distraction. Perhaps the reason that he
doesn't want these emails being released is because he once was
a close friend of Jeffrey Epstein, and there are worries
about what it might implicate. Hello and welcome to this
edition of Trump World. I'm Matt Fry in London.
(00:21):
I'm Anish Kristana in Washington, DC.
And Anishka, some breaking news today.
Bring us up today, please, aboutEpstein.
Yeah, so we woke up this morningwanting to talk about Trump and
the media, Trump and the BBC, but also a lot of the media here
in the US. We didn't think there was going
to necessarily be a huge other story, but this is Trump world
(00:41):
and this is how things change. And this is quite a bomb that
has dropped. For some time.
Donald Trump has been telling everyone that the push to
release the so-called Epstein files, we think over a million
documents related to Jeffrey Epstein and the powerful people
that he spent time with was something that was a Democratic
(01:06):
hoax. And Donald Trump said no one
cares about it. It's not interesting.
He once said he himself believedthat the files should be
released. But since being president a
second time, he's very clear that he didn't want that to
happen. And we sort of getting an
impression this morning of why that might be.
The House Oversight Committee has had a lot of information on
Epstein and has been putting bits of it out.
(01:28):
And here's the bomb, a number ofemails from 2011, which was
after Epstein had been to jail already once for a case.
And it's the the real difficult one.
Here is an e-mail from Jeffrey Epstein to Gilane Maxwell, who
is in jail at the moment. And.
In a nicer jail closest. Confident and nicer jail because
(01:51):
she's been moved to a nicer jailand now apparently is asking
Donald Trump to commute her sentence.
And here's what the e-mail says.I want you to realize that the
dog that hasn't barked is Trump.Then there is a redacted
victim's name spent hours at my house with him.
He has never once been mentioned.
And and Matt, that is like a bomb, isn't it for the White
(02:16):
House in terms of, you know, suggesting that for all Trump
saying no one cares about this, it's a distraction.
Perhaps the reason that he doesn't want these emails it
being released is because he once was a close friend of
Jeffrey Epstein and there were worries about what it might
implicate. He was a close friends.
Then they fell out with each other.
(02:36):
And the tone of that e-mail thatyou just read out looks as if
that was, you know, written whenEpstein had very much fallen out
with with Trump already. But it it gives the impression
at least that that there might that in itself is potentially
really damaging because Trump said that he never spent any
time, you know, with any underage girls.
You know, he denies any, any involvement in the kind of
serious side of the Epstein sphere.
(03:02):
I have your statement about the new Epstein emails that have
been released by House Democrats.
Separate from why you believe the emails were made public, can
you address their substance? Did the president ever spent
hours at Jeffrey Epstein's housewith a victim?
These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that
(03:23):
President Trump did nothing wrong.
But also what else is out there?I mean, you know, a million
documents, as you said, thousands of emails and and
whatever ever else, the dangers that all this stuff will be a
massively embarrassing data dumpfor Donald Trump at some stage
if the House votes in to do so. And they might do that once the
(03:43):
lockdown has finished or rather the shutdown, which will happen
anytime soon. So it could be a very nasty
Christmas surprise for Donald Trump.
And, and it's worth remembering this is not just a problem for
Trump in terms of the wider perception in the American
public, which has already becomepretty negative as approval
ratings have have dipped really quite low recently as a result
(04:05):
of, you know, the government shutdown, the problems with the
economy and inflation, the effect on tariffs, going after
immigrants too aggressively, etcetera, etcetera.
But the the neuralgic point for Trump, which doesn't play well,
you know, with the people in themiddle, the so-called
independent voters, but also importantly with his base, with
the MAGA base is Epstein. We saw pictures just a few
(04:27):
months ago of MAGA supporters, the Bros burning their MAGA
hats, you know, on funeral pyresof MAGA.
Shame because Trump refused to do what he said he would do,
which is to release all the files.
His attorney general, Pam Bondi,at once.
They said the files are in my desk.
All I need to do is open the desk and and release the files.
And she hasn't done that either.And they're really upset about
(04:48):
this. And if you listen to Steve
Bannon, if you listen to, you know, people in the Magosphere
have been very loyal to him. Marjorie Taylor Green, you know,
the the congresswoman from Colorado, they are absolutely
adamant that this stuff needs tocome out.
So Trump's got a problem here. Yeah.
And and just to read you anotherof the emails that's come out
this morning, this was to Michael Wolff, the author and
(05:09):
also from Epstein. And again, parts of it are
redacted, so we're not quite clear exactly who they're
talking about in terms of victims and so on.
But it's talking about Mar a Lago to some extent.
And and the e-mail says Trump said he asked me to resign.
Never a member ever. Of course, he knew about the
girls as he asked Gillane to stop.
(05:31):
And and again, that is going to be a very difficult one for
Donald Trump to answer on. I mean, the reason in a way that
his mega base have been so obsessed about Epstein is
because they did think that thiswas a scandal that was going to
explode for the Democratic Party.
Epstein had so many powerful friends.
One of them was the former Democratic President Bill
(05:51):
Clinton. And, and that's what they
thought would happen. But obviously, since he's been
in power, the lens has turned somewhat to Donald Trump
himself. And, and as we've repeatedly
said on this, this is not going away from him.
As you say, we've been in the middle of a shutdown.
The federal government has not been operating.
That has meant that they haven'tbeen able to push this vote
(06:12):
forward. And there was an extra
Democratic congresswoman electedin Arizona who actually gives
them the numbers in order to force the vote, but the
Republicans wouldn't let her take her seat, which could have
actually happened whilst the shutdown was ongoing.
But now we have the situation where we both have this evidence
(06:34):
and the shutdown is coming to anend.
And why do the why do the Democrats suddenly get the
majority to release these files?Because 4 Republicans have are
going to vote with the Democratsin order to get a majority in
the House for the files to be released.
And those 4 Republicans include the aforementioned Marjorie
Taylor Green Massive alarm bellsthere for Trump.
(06:56):
Now, all this, of course, you know, comes in the context of
Trump's talent for distraction from the stuff that he doesn't
want you to talk about. And he really doesn't want us to
talk about Epstein. And so that may mean that his he
will double down on his war withthe BBC.
I remember Friday, I think is the deadline for his $1 billion
(07:17):
lawsuit that he will file if theBBC doesn't offer a full
retraction and an apology. And that they've they've already
issued the apology, but not the retraction and pay him some kind
of undisclosed amount of money. And I think again, I think we
have to just stand back a littlebit and, and appreciate the
weirdness of the fact that Donald Trump, who's very, no,
(07:39):
very well known for being litigious and has taken on, you
know, media companies, newspapers and television
companies left, right and centre, including late night
comedians, is now picking a fight with the, the, the the
public broadcaster of supposedlyone of his favorite countries.
I mean, he was just here for thehistoric second state visit in
the summer in Windsor Wonderlandand, and absolutely loved that.
(08:03):
And when you, when you consider how important the whole question
of that panorama is to his own self esteem and his view of the
world that the big election and that the election 2020 was the
big steal, that actually Joe Biden never won it, that it was
Donald Trump who won it, etcetera, etcetera.
I think you know this, I think there's a, there's real jeopardy
(08:23):
here for, for the BBC, frankly. And there's also obviously some
jeopardy for Donald Trump, not so much in the, in the, in the,
in the detail of, of January the6th, but the broader context of
all these other things that are beginning to assail Donald
Trump, whether it's the economy or the Epstein question, you
(08:44):
know, all the, you know, being too harsh with, with immigrants
and riding roughshod over the Constitution.
I find this kind of bizarre situation when you think about
Donald Trump suing lots of different media organisations
because look, clearly there are things in the memo that leaked
about problems within the BBC which are genuinely problematic.
(09:08):
I actually think lots in the memo looks like it's coming from
somebody with a very strong political slant.
But if we talk about that Panorama documentary, just for a
moment, there was an edit in there which did make it look
like Donald Trump said somethingdifferent to how it was actually
said on the day. I think the frustrating thing
for a lot of people is that theydidn't need to make the edit to
(09:31):
make the same point. If they'd actually just played
what he said in a kind of fairerway at the beginning and at the
end, actually the bigger point would have probably still stood,
which is that he has since been actually found by, you know, a
committee of the House here to have been pegging on the January
the 6th protesters to go to the capital and carry on with what
(09:53):
happened. But but as a journalist, we've
both worked as journalists for many years.
You know, you think about whether the person who you're
writing about who isn't well known or isn't the president or
the Prime Minister might sue youfor a certain thing.
But when you're commenting on politics or when you are
reporting on what a government is doing and you're trying to
(10:17):
hold them to account, politicians don't tend to sue
people in those situations because it's a completely
different type of commentary. The idea that holding a
government to account is the sort of thing that you might get
sued for just seems to me we've crossed some sort of quite dark
line. What's a novel about Donald
Trump as he's that he has decided to pick a fight, a very
(10:40):
personal fight with a whole range of companies.
I mean, he attacked the New YorkTimes and took them to court.
I can't remember how many billions of dollars he wanted
from them for, you know, defaming him.
And then the the judge threw it out and said, this is such a
wishy washy case, you know, comeback to me with something much
more focused and and much more specific and then we can talk.
(11:02):
But as it stands at the moment, this is nonsense.
He took the Wall Street Journal to court for $10 billion for
publishing a page from the yes again, Jeffrey Epstein birthday
book of 2003, which we've talkedabout as well, in which Donald
Trump, you know, was praising Jeffrey Epstein.
And then his his signature was in a, in a place where you would
find, you know, female pubic hair.
(11:25):
Again, he said that never happened.
I never wrote that this is a lie.
He took them to court. This is a, you know, fairly
right wing newspaper, The Wall Street Journal that often agrees
with Donald Trump's on, on not on everything.
They've been pretty robust, but on some things they do owned by
Rupert Murdoch, it took them to court, even though actually some
of the other people whose whose pages appeared in the birthday
(11:45):
book, including our our former ambassador, Lord Mandelson said,
yeah, that's me. That's my page.
I wrote that. So what's so odd about this
Anushka and I think very novel for Americans is that this is a
country that used to really worship the 4th estate.
I mean, think of all the movies made about journalists, you
know, fighting government or fighting corporations.
(12:06):
Whether it's the Insider with Russell Crowe about, you know,
big tobacco intimidating CBS notto run that 60 Minutes piece.
Whether it's, you know, good night, goodbye and good, good
night. And good luck with Ed about
Edward Armaro taking on Senator John McCarthy during the Red
Scare, You know, whether it's spotlight.
And we're going to talk to the editor of that newspaper at the
(12:28):
time, The Boston Globe, and thenthe Washington Post later on,
which won an Oscar. You know, whether it's the most
famous one of them all or the president's men about the
Washington Post, again, America worships or used to worship the
4th Estate. And Trump has declared war on
the lot of these once hallowed institutions.
And to some extent, that is a function of the Internet, the
(12:48):
democratization, the fragmentation of the media
landscape. But to a large extent, it's also
down to Donald Trump not being afraid to pick a fight and then
weaponizing this combination of corporate greed, you know, big
companies that own these, these very famous newspapers or TV
organisations having to make a deal and needing the federal
government to sign off on it. Yeah, if we just run through
(13:11):
some of these, some of the casesare so baseless, it's almost
unbelievable. So the CBS case was that they
did a big interview with Kamala Harris, and he didn't like the
way they edited it. He thought it made her look.
Better, which is such last? Year, yeah, before the election,
which is such a subjective pointanyway.
I mean, the idea that a court isgoing to particularly judge on
(13:32):
that and, and yeah, this is the sort of extraordinary thing
about it, was that the parent company, Paramount Global,
suddenly told us it was gonna settle paying $16,000,000 to
Donald Trump's library. And so the case doesn't go
ahead. They don't say there was
anything wrong with the interview, but obviously the
implication of a massive payout is we accept we were too kind to
(13:55):
Kamala Harrison in that. And yeah, it turned out that
Paramount was trying to get through an $8.4 billion merger
with Skydance. It needed the Federal
Communications Commission to OK that.
The Federal Communications Commission is led by one Brendan
Carr, who is a Trump appointee. Now, even if the case in Florida
(14:15):
will never get heard, but the BBC not to, I find it very hard
to imagine that they will just you know, that Trump will just
take, you know, a retraction, you know, you know, per SE and
say, OK, fine, I forgive. No, not I forgive you.
But let's let's park this one. Let's kick it down, you know,
the into the long grass. I find it hard for Trump to do
(14:36):
that because also his base, again, the same base that is
upset about Epstein and also really wants him to pick a fight
with the BBC, because the BBC intheir view is the embodiment of
the globalist media. And, and they've never liked the
BBC. And you know, if you listen to
some of the right wing podcasts which I've been doing in the
last few days, they're really gunning for the BBC.
(14:58):
And I, I think Trump will hear that and he might even think
that a fight with the BBC will distract from all the Epstein
stuff that is coming down the pipe in the next few days.
So, you know, there's the legal side of this, there's the
political side of this. And, you know, if I was ABBC
boss, looking at how much money they've got in the coffers to
pay for any of this, I'd be veryworried indeed.
(15:19):
And by the way, this will of course.
Taxpayer taxpayers, Can you imagine?
Can you imagine if the British taxpayer has to pay Donald
Trump? There are 300,000 license fee
payers who are not paying their license fee, you know, as an act
of protest. And one of them, by the way, is
our former Prime Minister, BorisJohnson.
Imagine how that will play, especially in a year when you're
(15:41):
talking about charter renewal. I think, I don't think Keir
Starmer can pick up the phone toDonald Trump and say lay off the
BBC. And Starmer himself, I think is
in a very, very delicate position here of having to
defend as the culture secretary did yesterday, you know, the BBC
as a, as a, as a shining light on the hill and a great national
institution that we all cherish.That's going to be quite tricky
(16:02):
with Donald Trump. You know, in that suppose a
special relationship, who's gunning for the BBCI suspect.
The only person who can pick up the phone and tell Trump to lay
off, who knows what's going on, is the king.
The king might say, please, Donald, my dear friend, lay off
this great, if flawed national institution.
Because if you go after it, that'll be all sorts of trouble
(16:24):
for us. And you know what, if you if you
lay off, then who knows? There might be a third, even
more historic visit to Windsor Wonderland at some stage down
the road. I'm just putting that out.
It is worth saying that some of those cases are carrying on.
Not everyone is settling. The Wall Street Journal case is
ongoing. I I can't see a position in
which the BBC is going to offer British taxpayer money in order
(16:45):
to settle a case with Donald Trump.
Florida, of course of. Course.
Yeah, you have a Florida judge or a Florida jury.
And remember, Florida is a pretty RedState.
It's it's Trump's own state now.I mean that is that is full of
parallel and risk for the BBC aswell.
But you know, either way, I mean, I think you know, for its
and remember also the BBC in America has actually increased
(17:07):
its footprint significantly. So they they've got a tie up
with PBS, the public service broadcast in America.
They do more news from America about America than ever before.
And of course there's BBC America, which is a separate,
you know, commercial arm that really doesn't do the news used
to when I when I was there, but not anymore.
But still, you know, the BBC has, you know, a much bigger
(17:29):
presence not just in the American media landscape but
also in the imagination of Americans.
And it's highly trusted by the American public, as you said
earlier, you know, that that egregious edit, you know, and it
was an egregious edit. It falsified what that speech
was about, you know, strictly speaking according to the words.
But of course the impression thespeech gave was, you know, was,
(17:53):
was, was different to people, you know, and, and of and of
course the whole thing was subject to, you know, very
heated debate in Congress. You know, did the president of
the United States incite insurrection in order to reverse
the result of a, of an election that he called the Big Steel?
So the context was deeply incriminating of the context was
(18:15):
deeply incriminating of Donald Trump.
They didn't need to go the extramile with that edit.
You know, that was unnecessary. And so that was.
But there was also an impeachment vote that agreed
with the outcome. So we've now in this bizarre
situation where a a clumsy edit or whatever you want to call it,
it now allows the president to argue the opposite case that
(18:36):
many have said before. Obviously, there is a difference
between what we're talking aboutnow and whether or not there has
been a liberal bias in the media.
Whether or not the media has dropped the ball when it's come
to understanding Donald Trump properly enough and including,
you know, in our own reporting in the UK, whether we properly
interrogated the forces that ledto Brexit, for example.
Whether there has been, you know, big news operations that
(18:59):
are based in big cities here on the east and West Coast, perhaps
in London in the UK that therefore are full of people
with more of a liberal slant. I I think that debate is there
to be had. I think at the BBC, there's a
lot of senior political voices from the BBC that went to work
for Conservative governments. So whether or not that's true or
not, I'm not entirely convinced,but I do think like striving to
(19:23):
to make sure that what we reportand how we reported isn't seen
through some metropolitan liberal lens is incredibly
important. And I just would like people to
know that we always strive to doexactly that.
Let's bring in our guest. Well, joining us now is Marty
Baron. He was editor of The Washington
(19:46):
Post for the better part of a decade, including while Trump
had his first term as president.And before that, he ran the
Boston Globe. And while he was there, the
paper won a Pulitzer Prize, in fact, quite a few Pulitzer
Prizes for its coverage of the Catholic sex abuse scandal.
And also the character that played in the star of the movie
Spotlight, which, by the way, won an Oscar, was about the
(20:06):
same. Sergeant Marty, it's good to
have you on Trump World. Great to be with you.
So let's just start with the with the story.
I mean, once a journal, always ajournal.
What did you make of the thing that's just dropped on the New
York Times? This is an e-mail exchange
between Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell where Epstein
basically describes President Trump, then of course not
(20:28):
president, spending hours with one of Epstein's alleged
victims. Yeah.
Well, you know, two thoughts occur to me since I, I really
just read it. 1 is that, you know, this administration has
claimed that it's the most transparent administration ever
and it's clearly not being transparent at all, particularly
(20:49):
about about this case. The second thought that occurs
to me is the the level of control that Trump has over the
Justice Department in the past in this in this country, the
Justice Department acted with full independence and or pretty
close to full independence. And it would have thoroughly
investigated this case in a way that was sort of separate and
(21:11):
apart from the president's wishes.
That clearly is not occurring. And it's kind of extraordinary,
isn't it, how his position on Epstein has changed so
dramatically from when he was inopposition and it was very clear
that his own base, his MAGA base, wanted answers on this to
the way they've behaved since they've been in power.
Yeah, because he was claiming then that that it would disclose
(21:34):
all sorts of information about his adversaries in the
Democratic Party, particularly Bill Clinton.
And he said that the all the files should be released and
that he would have the files released if he became president.
Well, as soon as he became president, president, he didn't
want the files released at all. And, and that's exactly what the
Justice Department is is abidingby, is his wish is not to have
(21:55):
those files released. So they clearly are not engaging
in a truly independent investigation of the facts.
Before the Epstein story dropped, Marty, the, the thing
that we were going to talk about, and that's what we're
going to talk about now is Trump's ongoing battle with the
media. And, of course, the latest
iteration of that battle, which you know, about in the United
States and it's been going on invarious forms for years, is, you
(22:18):
know, him taking on the BBC. He's threatened to sue them for
a billion U.S. dollars, you know, if they haven't issued a
full retraction and an apology, you know, by by Friday evening,
I think our time. So let's see what happens there.
But, you know, but what's reallyfascinating is how Donald Trump
has declared war against his critics, you know, whether on
(22:41):
late night television or in the newspapers, you know, or indeed,
you know, television news. So tell us about how novel this
is. I mean, there's plenty of
examples of American presidents unhappy with the coverage
they're getting. But what Trump is doing is
different, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think it goes well beyond what other presidents
have done. Clearly presidents in the past
(23:01):
have complained about about coverage of them by the by the
American press. And there's always been an
adversarial relationship betweenthe press and, and the
presidency that's just built into the into the nature of the
of the relationship and the workof the of journalists, which is
to hold powerful individuals football.
So that's built into the relationship between the press
(23:23):
and the and the president. That's the way it goes.
Clearly, during the administration of Richard Nixon,
he was very harsh on the press and sought sought to penalize
them in a variety of ways. But Trump has gone a well beyond
that. He has talked about freedom of
expression. That was his first executive
order, but he doesn't actually believe in that.
He only believes in freedom of expression for himself and his
(23:44):
allies. So, you know, he's cynically
invoking the First Amendment forhimself, but he schemes to
withhold those rights from from others through baseless
lawsuits, through regulatory reprisals, through malicious
investigations, and of course, always vilifying, vilifying the
press in the most sadistic possible way.
(24:05):
So that is is his, that is his manner.
That is what he is doing. He clearly is working to weaken
the press, weaken it economically, weaken its legal
position and accelerate it's thedecline in public confidence in
the traditional media. On all of this, what what we're
seeing is we're seeing the mediacapitulate to him in a lot of
(24:27):
cases, cases where, as you say, the the legal case may be
completely baseless, But firms owned by companies that are
facing, you know, decisions by the FCC when it comes to mergers
are paying him millions and millions of dollars or paying
his library or whatever it is, millions of dollars in order to
(24:48):
capitulate to him because they're scared of him.
And actually, it links back to the story we're talking about at
the beginning of this, which wasEpstein, You know, which places
that you've edited in the past have had a huge role in outing
what's been going on here or other public interest stories?
What? To what extent do you worry that
the chilling effect of what he'sdoing is actually making news
(25:10):
organisations scared of holding the government to account?
Well, I am worried about what some of the owners are doing.
Clearly, some of the owners are capitulating and agreeing to pay
him enormous settlements just tosettle his lawsuits and to make
sure that they're no longer thatthey're no longer at odds with
the president of the United States, who's the most powerful
person in this country and clearly the most powerful person
throughout the world. They need him for to approve
(25:34):
mergers. They need him to approve other,
other sorts of things for the networks.
They need the Federal Communications Commission's
approval for their licenses, or at least for the licenses for
the stations that are affiliatedwith them.
But I think the frontline journalists are doing a very
good job. They have not capitulated.
And I admire them for sticking to their guns.
(25:54):
I admire them for digging into what this administration is
doing with regard to the Epsteinfiles.
They have been very aggressive on that, on that front.
Every day there are revelatory stories about other subjects as
well. And so I think the reporters and
the editors who work directly with them are very determined to
continue to do the work that they're supposed to do.
They're expected to do under the1st Amendment, which is the
(26:16):
reason we have a First Amendment, which is to hold
politicians and other powerful individuals and other powerful
institutions to account. And that is what the front line
journalists are doing. But clearly the owners are point
of vulnerability and we'll have to see how that plays out over
the intermediate term and over the longer term.
You know, your own newspaper that you edited, The Washington
(26:38):
Post, has gone on a bit of a journey, if I can put it like
that. We all remember the days of
Katherine Graham, the legendary owner of The Washington Post at
the time of the Watergate scandal.
She gave cover to the editor of the time.
And then, of course, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.
They were able to do their award-winning government
changing work. And then further down the line,
(27:00):
just last year, you had Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon,
who's also the owner of the Washington Post, deciding very
late in the day, not or or his people deciding very late in the
day not to endorse a candidate in the presidential election of
last year. Tell us about that journey and
tell us about that particular decision of late last year.
(27:21):
Jeff Bezos became the owner of The Washington Post early in my
tenure there. It was announced only about
seven months after I got there, and then it closed about nine
months after I got there. And during the period of time
that I was the editor of the Post up until February of 2021,
he never interfered in our news coverage.
(27:41):
And as far as I know, he didn't interfere hardly at all, if, if
at all, in the editorials either.
In fact, he praised the editorials of the paper.
He praised the editorial page editor.
He praised me for our news coverage.
He did so on numerous occasions,and he did so profusely.
He continued that policy, I would say, up until the moment
(28:02):
that you mentioned, which was the decision on whether to
endorse in the 2024 election. So 11 days before the election,
he made the decision to kill an endorsement that had been
drafted by the editorial page editors, the editorial board of
The Washington Post. They would have endorsed Kamala
Harris, but he killed that, killed that editorial, and he
(28:24):
then announced that they would not be making an endorsement at
all. In fact, they would never make
presidential endorsements in thefuture.
And then he followed up that that decision with with a book a
variety of behaviors that I think we're deeply concerning.
He was clearly posing up to the president of the United States.
He appeared at the president's inauguration right there on the
(28:44):
stage, which was a bad look for a newspaper that strives to be
independent. Certainly, where the journalist
there strives to be strive to beindependent.
Subsequently, Amazon subsequently made a deal to
purchase Melania Trump's so-called documentary for $40
million, which is nearly three times the price of the next
highest bid, and she gets a hugechunk of that money.
(29:08):
Subsequent to that, Amazon agreed to buy the rights to the
television series The Apprentice, that which in which
Trump starred. And and then of course, he
announced that he was changing the opinion pages completely,
that the opinion pages of the paper would be dedicated to, as
he put it, personal liberties and free markets, without
(29:31):
defining what he meant by that. But what was meant by that
became clearer later. And that was that they purged
pretty much all of the columnists who were left of
center from the opinion pages. And they then hired a bunch or
retained a bunch of columnists who were right of center.
And the editorials themselves have been definitively right of
center. And that's where he's taking
(29:55):
things. But I have no evidence that he
has interfered in the news coverage.
In fact, I do not believe that he has.
And the the news coverage itselfis is testament to the fact that
he hasn't because it's been quite aggressive.
And I think they've done an admirable job of covering this
administration. And, and if you just separate
the kind of two sides of this ina way, which is on the one hand,
(30:17):
you've got what looks like a bitof an authoritarian playbook
coming from the White House whenit comes to the media and the
treatment of the media. But on the other hand, you have
the argument, the underlying argument that some make, which
is that the media has skewed liberal for years and has failed
to listen to right wing voices. And I mean, I question how on
(30:40):
true that is. We have the same debate in the
UK, for example, over Brexit, but most of I'd say more than
half of UK newspapers actually did support Brexit, were on the
right are very, you know, anti woke when you think about the
current narrative. But but on that kind of
argument, you know, is it true that newspapers like The
(31:00):
Washington Post have historically had this skew and
and is that true in The Newsroom?
I know, I know. I actually worked for three
months at The Washington Post in2006 as part of the and part of
a fellowship where you get 1 British journalist every year.
And I remember speaking to Leonard Downey at the time, who
was the executive editor and he,I, I actually came back from
(31:21):
that. He said he hadn't voted in an
election since 1984 in order to try to not be biased when it
came to news coverage and editing and so on.
And I actually came back as a CUP reporter at the time to the
UK. And I decided not to vote in
elections because I was quite inspired by that.
And I do think it helps you to then not think about the outcome
(31:43):
of that election and therefore report on it in a different way.
So my question, sorry, after a very long bill, is it true that
there has been a liberal bias? And if so, how did you as an
editor try to deal with that? Well, look, people on the staff
have their own opinions. I never gave a litmus test to
the people on the staff. I never asked them what their
opinions were. I know there were people who
were conservative on the staff. I mean, I would guess that the,
(32:05):
you know, majority of people on the staff leaned left of center
but not extremely left of center.
And but within The Newsroom, I would say that there was a
strong commitment to just getting the facts.
I mean, the real battle today isnot over people's opinions.
The real battle today is over facts.
You know, what happened in the election of 2020 in the United
States? Was there fraud?
(32:25):
Was it a legitimate election or wasn't it?
There is no evidence that it wasan illegitimate election, that
it was fraudulent in any way. And and all the evidence points
to the fact that Joe Biden was elected legitimately.
What happened on January 6th of 2021?
Were those patriots or were theypeople trying to reverse the
results of an election? And essentially what was an
(32:46):
insurrection? Were they in fact beating up
Capitol Police? Yes, they were.
We could see that all for ourselves.
Is that patriotic? I'm not.
I would not describe that as patriotic in any, in any
fashion. Do vaccines cause autism?
You know, all of the evidence suggests that they do not cause
autism. That's all of the scientific
research, all of the medical research.
(33:07):
Those are the kinds of battles that that are really the real,
the real battles today, not whether somebody has an opinion
about this policy or that policy, that sort of thing.
So I think that that is and, and, and with regard to the
Post, look, if if Jeff Bezos wants to take the editorial page
in a right of center direction, well, fine.
That's his prerogative. He's the owner of the paper.
(33:29):
He should never interfere on thenews coverage.
And I don't believe that he has.But I also think that on the
opinion pages, they should have a wide range of opinion.
You know, this is a paper that has as its motto Democracy Dies
in Darkness, excluding certain opinions from the opinion pages
simply because they are left of center.
Purging those columnist is an anti democratic move and it goes
(33:50):
against everything that Jeff Bezos himself has said in the in
the past. So and also I think with regard
to the editorials themselves, they need to be fact based.
They can't be and they can't just exclude information that is
really relevant because it mightirritate Donald Trump.
And I think that that is the case right now is that they
often don't mention something orthey they temper their language
(34:13):
in a way so that they don't offend Donald Trump.
And that that concerns me. They will not call.
They do not seem to be able to call an abuse of power an abuse
of power. They seem to call it overreach.
So they're always using this this sort of more moderate
language to describe something that is really measures that are
truly autocratic in their very nature.
(34:35):
And I mean, there's been a lot of focus obviously about this
now notorious BBC Panorama edit of the speech that Donald Trump
gave on January the 6th, just before the insurrection, before
the riot took place. But the bigger picture that you
just alluded to, which is what was the intention of the speech,
the overall intention, What was the result of the speech on
(34:58):
January the 6th? What were those people trying to
do? What was the context of what
Trump called the big steal of the election, which he still
maintains to this day? He won even though all the
evidence suggested that actuallyit was Joe Biden who won the
election. That's that bigger picture has
been completely drowned out, hasit not, by the noise about this
one particular edit? Well, I gather it has.
(35:22):
I mean, I think that it's important to, well, first of
all, it's important for the BBC and any other media outlet to
Get the facts right and not to, not to engage in editing that
distorts the actual words of thepresident or anybody else for
that matter. So we have to do our jobs
properly. We have to get things done
right. We have to make sure the context
is, is right. We should be, we should be
(35:44):
critical of ourselves in that regard.
We should not be making mistakesof, well, mistakes of fact or
mistakes of judgment. And when we do, we should
acknowledge them and acknowledgethem quickly.
And I don't believe that happened in this case from what
I can, from what I can tell. That said, you are right that
clearly Trump incited the peoplewho were there.
(36:05):
His language was inciting. He invited people to Washington
by talking about having a wild day.
Ultimately, he used the words toto use the word fight.
You know, he has his own. He offers now a different
interpretation of that, but clearly the people in the
audience who were, who were listening to him interpreted in
a certain way and they were riled up and he didn't do
(36:26):
anything while he was in the White House watching all of this
happen. I think that's important to
remember afterwards. And not only that, when he
became president again for his second term, he pardoned all of
those people, which means that he felt that what he has called
them patriots, he called them political prisoners, hostages,
whatever. He used a whole variety of
language to describe them and, and he has treated them as if
(36:49):
they were patriots. And which means that he
approved. I mean, the import of that is
that he essentially approved of what they were doing.
And so Ecolian cited them. He's approved of what they were
doing. He let them off the hook and I
think that's just a obviously that's just a terrible thing.
(37:11):
And do you think that the court case, if it happens in this
case, is something that the BBC should fight?
I think that they should fight that.
I don't think that that's defamatory.
There's clearly no damages. He was elected president of the
United States. He hasn't suffered at all for
it. Nobody even knew about this
until more recently. And his reputation is not, is
not hurt in any way by it. So yes, I would think that would
(37:35):
be appropriate for the BBC to fight that even as acknowledges,
acknowledges that it it it should have, it should not have
edited the the remarks that way.Marty, thank you so much for
joining us. That was all really, really
fascinating. Thanks, Marty.
Great. Great.
Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.
Well, that that was really fascinating.
And, you know, Marty Baron, evenin retirement is thinking very
(37:57):
deeply about, you know, these issues which are coming up all
the time. And, you know, I just
relentless, especially as, you know, stories like Epstein keep
breaking and then Trump keeps, you know, deflecting and, you
know, trying to steer us in another direction.
These battles are very much ongoing.
That's it from this edition of Trump World.
For all Trump saying no one cares about this, it's a
distraction. Perhaps the reason that he
doesn't want these emails being released is because he once was
a close friend of Jeffrey Epstein, and there are worries
about what it might implicate. Hello and welcome to this
edition of Trump World. I'm Matt Fry in London.
(00:21):
I'm Anish Kristana in Washington, DC.
And Anishka, some breaking news today.
Bring us up today, please, aboutEpstein.
Yeah, so we woke up this morningwanting to talk about Trump and
the media, Trump and the BBC, but also a lot of the media here
in the US. We didn't think there was going
to necessarily be a huge other story, but this is Trump world
(00:41):
and this is how things change. And this is quite a bomb that
has dropped. For some time.
Donald Trump has been telling everyone that the push to
release the so-called Epstein files, we think over a million
documents related to Jeffrey Epstein and the powerful people
that he spent time with was something that was a Democratic
(01:06):
hoax. And Donald Trump said no one
cares about it. It's not interesting.
He once said he himself believedthat the files should be
released. But since being president a
second time, he's very clear that he didn't want that to
happen. And we sort of getting an
impression this morning of why that might be.
The House Oversight Committee has had a lot of information on
Epstein and has been putting bits of it out.
(01:28):
And here's the bomb, a number ofemails from 2011, which was
after Epstein had been to jail already once for a case.
And it's the the real difficult one.
Here is an e-mail from Jeffrey Epstein to Gilane Maxwell, who
is in jail at the moment. And.
In a nicer jail closest. Confident and nicer jail because
(01:51):
she's been moved to a nicer jailand now apparently is asking
Donald Trump to commute her sentence.
And here's what the e-mail says.I want you to realize that the
dog that hasn't barked is Trump.Then there is a redacted
victim's name spent hours at my house with him.
He has never once been mentioned.
And and Matt, that is like a bomb, isn't it for the White
(02:16):
House in terms of, you know, suggesting that for all Trump
saying no one cares about this, it's a distraction.
Perhaps the reason that he doesn't want these emails it
being released is because he once was a close friend of
Jeffrey Epstein and there were worries about what it might
implicate. He was a close friends.
Then they fell out with each other.
(02:36):
And the tone of that e-mail thatyou just read out looks as if
that was, you know, written whenEpstein had very much fallen out
with with Trump already. But it it gives the impression
at least that that there might that in itself is potentially
really damaging because Trump said that he never spent any
time, you know, with any underage girls.
You know, he denies any, any involvement in the kind of
serious side of the Epstein sphere.
(03:02):
I have your statement about the new Epstein emails that have
been released by House Democrats.
Separate from why you believe the emails were made public, can
you address their substance? Did the president ever spent
hours at Jeffrey Epstein's housewith a victim?
These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that
(03:23):
President Trump did nothing wrong.
But also what else is out there?I mean, you know, a million
documents, as you said, thousands of emails and and
whatever ever else, the dangers that all this stuff will be a
massively embarrassing data dumpfor Donald Trump at some stage
if the House votes in to do so. And they might do that once the
(03:43):
lockdown has finished or rather the shutdown, which will happen
anytime soon. So it could be a very nasty
Christmas surprise for Donald Trump.
And, and it's worth remembering this is not just a problem for
Trump in terms of the wider perception in the American
public, which has already becomepretty negative as approval
ratings have have dipped really quite low recently as a result
(04:05):
of, you know, the government shutdown, the problems with the
economy and inflation, the effect on tariffs, going after
immigrants too aggressively, etcetera, etcetera.
But the the neuralgic point for Trump, which doesn't play well,
you know, with the people in themiddle, the so-called
independent voters, but also importantly with his base, with
the MAGA base is Epstein. We saw pictures just a few
(04:27):
months ago of MAGA supporters, the Bros burning their MAGA
hats, you know, on funeral pyresof MAGA.
Shame because Trump refused to do what he said he would do,
which is to release all the files.
His attorney general, Pam Bondi,at once.
They said the files are in my desk.
All I need to do is open the desk and and release the files.
And she hasn't done that either.And they're really upset about
(04:48):
this. And if you listen to Steve
Bannon, if you listen to, you know, people in the Magosphere
have been very loyal to him. Marjorie Taylor Green, you know,
the the congresswoman from Colorado, they are absolutely
adamant that this stuff needs tocome out.
So Trump's got a problem here. Yeah.
And and just to read you anotherof the emails that's come out
this morning, this was to Michael Wolff, the author and
(05:09):
also from Epstein. And again, parts of it are
redacted, so we're not quite clear exactly who they're
talking about in terms of victims and so on.
But it's talking about Mar a Lago to some extent.
And and the e-mail says Trump said he asked me to resign.
Never a member ever. Of course, he knew about the
girls as he asked Gillane to stop.
(05:31):
And and again, that is going to be a very difficult one for
Donald Trump to answer on. I mean, the reason in a way that
his mega base have been so obsessed about Epstein is
because they did think that thiswas a scandal that was going to
explode for the Democratic Party.
Epstein had so many powerful friends.
One of them was the former Democratic President Bill
(05:51):
Clinton. And, and that's what they
thought would happen. But obviously, since he's been
in power, the lens has turned somewhat to Donald Trump
himself. And, and as we've repeatedly
said on this, this is not going away from him.
As you say, we've been in the middle of a shutdown.
The federal government has not been operating.
That has meant that they haven'tbeen able to push this vote
(06:12):
forward. And there was an extra
Democratic congresswoman electedin Arizona who actually gives
them the numbers in order to force the vote, but the
Republicans wouldn't let her take her seat, which could have
actually happened whilst the shutdown was ongoing.
But now we have the situation where we both have this evidence
(06:34):
and the shutdown is coming to anend.
And why do the why do the Democrats suddenly get the
majority to release these files?Because 4 Republicans have are
going to vote with the Democratsin order to get a majority in
the House for the files to be released.
And those 4 Republicans include the aforementioned Marjorie
Taylor Green Massive alarm bellsthere for Trump.
(06:56):
Now, all this, of course, you know, comes in the context of
Trump's talent for distraction from the stuff that he doesn't
want you to talk about. And he really doesn't want us to
talk about Epstein. And so that may mean that his he
will double down on his war withthe BBC.
I remember Friday, I think is the deadline for his $1 billion
(07:17):
lawsuit that he will file if theBBC doesn't offer a full
retraction and an apology. And that they've they've already
issued the apology, but not the retraction and pay him some kind
of undisclosed amount of money. And I think again, I think we
have to just stand back a littlebit and, and appreciate the
weirdness of the fact that Donald Trump, who's very, no,
(07:39):
very well known for being litigious and has taken on, you
know, media companies, newspapers and television
companies left, right and centre, including late night
comedians, is now picking a fight with the, the, the the
public broadcaster of supposedlyone of his favorite countries.
I mean, he was just here for thehistoric second state visit in
the summer in Windsor Wonderlandand, and absolutely loved that.
(08:03):
And when you, when you consider how important the whole question
of that panorama is to his own self esteem and his view of the
world that the big election and that the election 2020 was the
big steal, that actually Joe Biden never won it, that it was
Donald Trump who won it, etcetera, etcetera.
I think you know this, I think there's a, there's real jeopardy
(08:23):
here for, for the BBC, frankly. And there's also obviously some
jeopardy for Donald Trump, not so much in the, in the, in the,
in the detail of, of January the6th, but the broader context of
all these other things that are beginning to assail Donald
Trump, whether it's the economy or the Epstein question, you
(08:44):
know, all the, you know, being too harsh with, with immigrants
and riding roughshod over the Constitution.
I find this kind of bizarre situation when you think about
Donald Trump suing lots of different media organisations
because look, clearly there are things in the memo that leaked
about problems within the BBC which are genuinely problematic.
(09:08):
I actually think lots in the memo looks like it's coming from
somebody with a very strong political slant.
But if we talk about that Panorama documentary, just for a
moment, there was an edit in there which did make it look
like Donald Trump said somethingdifferent to how it was actually
said on the day. I think the frustrating thing
for a lot of people is that theydidn't need to make the edit to
(09:31):
make the same point. If they'd actually just played
what he said in a kind of fairerway at the beginning and at the
end, actually the bigger point would have probably still stood,
which is that he has since been actually found by, you know, a
committee of the House here to have been pegging on the January
the 6th protesters to go to the capital and carry on with what
(09:53):
happened. But but as a journalist, we've
both worked as journalists for many years.
You know, you think about whether the person who you're
writing about who isn't well known or isn't the president or
the Prime Minister might sue youfor a certain thing.
But when you're commenting on politics or when you are
reporting on what a government is doing and you're trying to
(10:17):
hold them to account, politicians don't tend to sue
people in those situations because it's a completely
different type of commentary. The idea that holding a
government to account is the sort of thing that you might get
sued for just seems to me we've crossed some sort of quite dark
line. What's a novel about Donald
Trump as he's that he has decided to pick a fight, a very
(10:40):
personal fight with a whole range of companies.
I mean, he attacked the New YorkTimes and took them to court.
I can't remember how many billions of dollars he wanted
from them for, you know, defaming him.
And then the the judge threw it out and said, this is such a
wishy washy case, you know, comeback to me with something much
more focused and and much more specific and then we can talk.
(11:02):
But as it stands at the moment, this is nonsense.
He took the Wall Street Journal to court for $10 billion for
publishing a page from the yes again, Jeffrey Epstein birthday
book of 2003, which we've talkedabout as well, in which Donald
Trump, you know, was praising Jeffrey Epstein.
And then his his signature was in a, in a place where you would
find, you know, female pubic hair.
(11:25):
Again, he said that never happened.
I never wrote that this is a lie.
He took them to court. This is a, you know, fairly
right wing newspaper, The Wall Street Journal that often agrees
with Donald Trump's on, on not on everything.
They've been pretty robust, but on some things they do owned by
Rupert Murdoch, it took them to court, even though actually some
of the other people whose whose pages appeared in the birthday
(11:45):
book, including our our former ambassador, Lord Mandelson said,
yeah, that's me. That's my page.
I wrote that. So what's so odd about this
Anushka and I think very novel for Americans is that this is a
country that used to really worship the 4th estate.
I mean, think of all the movies made about journalists, you
know, fighting government or fighting corporations.
(12:06):
Whether it's the Insider with Russell Crowe about, you know,
big tobacco intimidating CBS notto run that 60 Minutes piece.
Whether it's, you know, good night, goodbye and good, good
night. And good luck with Ed about
Edward Armaro taking on Senator John McCarthy during the Red
Scare, You know, whether it's spotlight.
And we're going to talk to the editor of that newspaper at the
(12:28):
time, The Boston Globe, and thenthe Washington Post later on,
which won an Oscar. You know, whether it's the most
famous one of them all or the president's men about the
Washington Post, again, America worships or used to worship the
4th Estate. And Trump has declared war on
the lot of these once hallowed institutions.
And to some extent, that is a function of the Internet, the
(12:48):
democratization, the fragmentation of the media
landscape. But to a large extent, it's also
down to Donald Trump not being afraid to pick a fight and then
weaponizing this combination of corporate greed, you know, big
companies that own these, these very famous newspapers or TV
organisations having to make a deal and needing the federal
government to sign off on it. Yeah, if we just run through
(13:11):
some of these, some of the casesare so baseless, it's almost
unbelievable. So the CBS case was that they
did a big interview with Kamala Harris, and he didn't like the
way they edited it. He thought it made her look.
Better, which is such last? Year, yeah, before the election,
which is such a subjective pointanyway.
I mean, the idea that a court isgoing to particularly judge on
(13:32):
that and, and yeah, this is the sort of extraordinary thing
about it, was that the parent company, Paramount Global,
suddenly told us it was gonna settle paying $16,000,000 to
Donald Trump's library. And so the case doesn't go
ahead. They don't say there was
anything wrong with the interview, but obviously the
implication of a massive payout is we accept we were too kind to
(13:55):
Kamala Harrison in that. And yeah, it turned out that
Paramount was trying to get through an $8.4 billion merger
with Skydance. It needed the Federal
Communications Commission to OK that.
The Federal Communications Commission is led by one Brendan
Carr, who is a Trump appointee. Now, even if the case in Florida
(14:15):
will never get heard, but the BBC not to, I find it very hard
to imagine that they will just you know, that Trump will just
take, you know, a retraction, you know, you know, per SE and
say, OK, fine, I forgive. No, not I forgive you.
But let's let's park this one. Let's kick it down, you know,
the into the long grass. I find it hard for Trump to do
(14:36):
that because also his base, again, the same base that is
upset about Epstein and also really wants him to pick a fight
with the BBC, because the BBC intheir view is the embodiment of
the globalist media. And, and they've never liked the
BBC. And you know, if you listen to
some of the right wing podcasts which I've been doing in the
last few days, they're really gunning for the BBC.
(14:58):
And I, I think Trump will hear that and he might even think
that a fight with the BBC will distract from all the Epstein
stuff that is coming down the pipe in the next few days.
So, you know, there's the legal side of this, there's the
political side of this. And, you know, if I was ABBC
boss, looking at how much money they've got in the coffers to
pay for any of this, I'd be veryworried indeed.
(15:19):
And by the way, this will of course.
Taxpayer taxpayers, Can you imagine?
Can you imagine if the British taxpayer has to pay Donald
Trump? There are 300,000 license fee
payers who are not paying their license fee, you know, as an act
of protest. And one of them, by the way, is
our former Prime Minister, BorisJohnson.
Imagine how that will play, especially in a year when you're
(15:41):
talking about charter renewal. I think, I don't think Keir
Starmer can pick up the phone toDonald Trump and say lay off the
BBC. And Starmer himself, I think is
in a very, very delicate position here of having to
defend as the culture secretary did yesterday, you know, the BBC
as a, as a, as a shining light on the hill and a great national
institution that we all cherish.That's going to be quite tricky
(16:02):
with Donald Trump. You know, in that suppose a
special relationship, who's gunning for the BBCI suspect.
The only person who can pick up the phone and tell Trump to lay
off, who knows what's going on, is the king.
The king might say, please, Donald, my dear friend, lay off
this great, if flawed national institution.
Because if you go after it, that'll be all sorts of trouble
(16:24):
for us. And you know what, if you if you
lay off, then who knows? There might be a third, even
more historic visit to Windsor Wonderland at some stage down
the road. I'm just putting that out.
It is worth saying that some of those cases are carrying on.
Not everyone is settling. The Wall Street Journal case is
ongoing. I I can't see a position in
which the BBC is going to offer British taxpayer money in order
(16:45):
to settle a case with Donald Trump.
Florida, of course of. Course.
Yeah, you have a Florida judge or a Florida jury.
And remember, Florida is a pretty RedState.
It's it's Trump's own state now.I mean that is that is full of
parallel and risk for the BBC aswell.
But you know, either way, I mean, I think you know, for its
and remember also the BBC in America has actually increased
(17:07):
its footprint significantly. So they they've got a tie up
with PBS, the public service broadcast in America.
They do more news from America about America than ever before.
And of course there's BBC America, which is a separate,
you know, commercial arm that really doesn't do the news used
to when I when I was there, but not anymore.
But still, you know, the BBC has, you know, a much bigger
(17:29):
presence not just in the American media landscape but
also in the imagination of Americans.
And it's highly trusted by the American public, as you said
earlier, you know, that that egregious edit, you know, and it
was an egregious edit. It falsified what that speech
was about, you know, strictly speaking according to the words.
But of course the impression thespeech gave was, you know, was,
(17:53):
was, was different to people, you know, and, and of and of
course the whole thing was subject to, you know, very
heated debate in Congress. You know, did the president of
the United States incite insurrection in order to reverse
the result of a, of an election that he called the Big Steel?
So the context was deeply incriminating of the context was
(18:15):
deeply incriminating of Donald Trump.
They didn't need to go the extramile with that edit.
You know, that was unnecessary. And so that was.
But there was also an impeachment vote that agreed
with the outcome. So we've now in this bizarre
situation where a a clumsy edit or whatever you want to call it,
it now allows the president to argue the opposite case that
(18:36):
many have said before. Obviously, there is a difference
between what we're talking aboutnow and whether or not there has
been a liberal bias in the media.
Whether or not the media has dropped the ball when it's come
to understanding Donald Trump properly enough and including,
you know, in our own reporting in the UK, whether we properly
interrogated the forces that ledto Brexit, for example.
Whether there has been, you know, big news operations that
(18:59):
are based in big cities here on the east and West Coast, perhaps
in London in the UK that therefore are full of people
with more of a liberal slant. I I think that debate is there
to be had. I think at the BBC, there's a
lot of senior political voices from the BBC that went to work
for Conservative governments. So whether or not that's true or
not, I'm not entirely convinced,but I do think like striving to
(19:23):
to make sure that what we reportand how we reported isn't seen
through some metropolitan liberal lens is incredibly
important. And I just would like people to
know that we always strive to doexactly that.
Let's bring in our guest. Well, joining us now is Marty
Baron. He was editor of The Washington
(19:46):
Post for the better part of a decade, including while Trump
had his first term as president.And before that, he ran the
Boston Globe. And while he was there, the
paper won a Pulitzer Prize, in fact, quite a few Pulitzer
Prizes for its coverage of the Catholic sex abuse scandal.
And also the character that played in the star of the movie
Spotlight, which, by the way, won an Oscar, was about the
(20:06):
same. Sergeant Marty, it's good to
have you on Trump World. Great to be with you.
So let's just start with the with the story.
I mean, once a journal, always ajournal.
What did you make of the thing that's just dropped on the New
York Times? This is an e-mail exchange
between Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell where Epstein
basically describes President Trump, then of course not
(20:28):
president, spending hours with one of Epstein's alleged
victims. Yeah.
Well, you know, two thoughts occur to me since I, I really
just read it. 1 is that, you know, this administration has
claimed that it's the most transparent administration ever
and it's clearly not being transparent at all, particularly
(20:49):
about about this case. The second thought that occurs
to me is the the level of control that Trump has over the
Justice Department in the past in this in this country, the
Justice Department acted with full independence and or pretty
close to full independence. And it would have thoroughly
investigated this case in a way that was sort of separate and
(21:11):
apart from the president's wishes.
That clearly is not occurring. And it's kind of extraordinary,
isn't it, how his position on Epstein has changed so
dramatically from when he was inopposition and it was very clear
that his own base, his MAGA base, wanted answers on this to
the way they've behaved since they've been in power.
Yeah, because he was claiming then that that it would disclose
(21:34):
all sorts of information about his adversaries in the
Democratic Party, particularly Bill Clinton.
And he said that the all the files should be released and
that he would have the files released if he became president.
Well, as soon as he became president, president, he didn't
want the files released at all. And, and that's exactly what the
Justice Department is is abidingby, is his wish is not to have
(21:55):
those files released. So they clearly are not engaging
in a truly independent investigation of the facts.
Before the Epstein story dropped, Marty, the, the thing
that we were going to talk about, and that's what we're
going to talk about now is Trump's ongoing battle with the
media. And, of course, the latest
iteration of that battle, which you know, about in the United
States and it's been going on invarious forms for years, is, you
(22:18):
know, him taking on the BBC. He's threatened to sue them for
a billion U.S. dollars, you know, if they haven't issued a
full retraction and an apology, you know, by by Friday evening,
I think our time. So let's see what happens there.
But, you know, but what's reallyfascinating is how Donald Trump
has declared war against his critics, you know, whether on
(22:41):
late night television or in the newspapers, you know, or indeed,
you know, television news. So tell us about how novel this
is. I mean, there's plenty of
examples of American presidents unhappy with the coverage
they're getting. But what Trump is doing is
different, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think it goes well beyond what other presidents
have done. Clearly presidents in the past
(23:01):
have complained about about coverage of them by the by the
American press. And there's always been an
adversarial relationship betweenthe press and, and the
presidency that's just built into the into the nature of the
of the relationship and the workof the of journalists, which is
to hold powerful individuals football.
So that's built into the relationship between the press
(23:23):
and the and the president. That's the way it goes.
Clearly, during the administration of Richard Nixon,
he was very harsh on the press and sought sought to penalize
them in a variety of ways. But Trump has gone a well beyond
that. He has talked about freedom of
expression. That was his first executive
order, but he doesn't actually believe in that.
He only believes in freedom of expression for himself and his
(23:44):
allies. So, you know, he's cynically
invoking the First Amendment forhimself, but he schemes to
withhold those rights from from others through baseless
lawsuits, through regulatory reprisals, through malicious
investigations, and of course, always vilifying, vilifying the
press in the most sadistic possible way.
(24:05):
So that is is his, that is his manner.
That is what he is doing. He clearly is working to weaken
the press, weaken it economically, weaken its legal
position and accelerate it's thedecline in public confidence in
the traditional media. On all of this, what what we're
seeing is we're seeing the mediacapitulate to him in a lot of
(24:27):
cases, cases where, as you say, the the legal case may be
completely baseless, But firms owned by companies that are
facing, you know, decisions by the FCC when it comes to mergers
are paying him millions and millions of dollars or paying
his library or whatever it is, millions of dollars in order to
(24:48):
capitulate to him because they're scared of him.
And actually, it links back to the story we're talking about at
the beginning of this, which wasEpstein, You know, which places
that you've edited in the past have had a huge role in outing
what's been going on here or other public interest stories?
What? To what extent do you worry that
the chilling effect of what he'sdoing is actually making news
(25:10):
organisations scared of holding the government to account?
Well, I am worried about what some of the owners are doing.
Clearly, some of the owners are capitulating and agreeing to pay
him enormous settlements just tosettle his lawsuits and to make
sure that they're no longer thatthey're no longer at odds with
the president of the United States, who's the most powerful
person in this country and clearly the most powerful person
throughout the world. They need him for to approve
(25:34):
mergers. They need him to approve other,
other sorts of things for the networks.
They need the Federal Communications Commission's
approval for their licenses, or at least for the licenses for
the stations that are affiliatedwith them.
But I think the frontline journalists are doing a very
good job. They have not capitulated.
And I admire them for sticking to their guns.
(25:54):
I admire them for digging into what this administration is
doing with regard to the Epsteinfiles.
They have been very aggressive on that, on that front.
Every day there are revelatory stories about other subjects as
well. And so I think the reporters and
the editors who work directly with them are very determined to
continue to do the work that they're supposed to do.
They're expected to do under the1st Amendment, which is the
(26:16):
reason we have a First Amendment, which is to hold
politicians and other powerful individuals and other powerful
institutions to account. And that is what the front line
journalists are doing. But clearly the owners are point
of vulnerability and we'll have to see how that plays out over
the intermediate term and over the longer term.
You know, your own newspaper that you edited, The Washington
(26:38):
Post, has gone on a bit of a journey, if I can put it like
that. We all remember the days of
Katherine Graham, the legendary owner of The Washington Post at
the time of the Watergate scandal.
She gave cover to the editor of the time.
And then, of course, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.
They were able to do their award-winning government
changing work. And then further down the line,
(27:00):
just last year, you had Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon,
who's also the owner of the Washington Post, deciding very
late in the day, not or or his people deciding very late in the
day not to endorse a candidate in the presidential election of
last year. Tell us about that journey and
tell us about that particular decision of late last year.
(27:21):
Jeff Bezos became the owner of The Washington Post early in my
tenure there. It was announced only about
seven months after I got there, and then it closed about nine
months after I got there. And during the period of time
that I was the editor of the Post up until February of 2021,
he never interfered in our news coverage.
(27:41):
And as far as I know, he didn't interfere hardly at all, if, if
at all, in the editorials either.
In fact, he praised the editorials of the paper.
He praised the editorial page editor.
He praised me for our news coverage.
He did so on numerous occasions,and he did so profusely.
He continued that policy, I would say, up until the moment
(28:02):
that you mentioned, which was the decision on whether to
endorse in the 2024 election. So 11 days before the election,
he made the decision to kill an endorsement that had been
drafted by the editorial page editors, the editorial board of
The Washington Post. They would have endorsed Kamala
Harris, but he killed that, killed that editorial, and he
(28:24):
then announced that they would not be making an endorsement at
all. In fact, they would never make
presidential endorsements in thefuture.
And then he followed up that that decision with with a book a
variety of behaviors that I think we're deeply concerning.
He was clearly posing up to the president of the United States.
He appeared at the president's inauguration right there on the
(28:44):
stage, which was a bad look for a newspaper that strives to be
independent. Certainly, where the journalist
there strives to be strive to beindependent.
Subsequently, Amazon subsequently made a deal to
purchase Melania Trump's so-called documentary for $40
million, which is nearly three times the price of the next
highest bid, and she gets a hugechunk of that money.
(29:08):
Subsequent to that, Amazon agreed to buy the rights to the
television series The Apprentice, that which in which
Trump starred. And and then of course, he
announced that he was changing the opinion pages completely,
that the opinion pages of the paper would be dedicated to, as
he put it, personal liberties and free markets, without
(29:31):
defining what he meant by that. But what was meant by that
became clearer later. And that was that they purged
pretty much all of the columnists who were left of
center from the opinion pages. And they then hired a bunch or
retained a bunch of columnists who were right of center.
And the editorials themselves have been definitively right of
center. And that's where he's taking
(29:55):
things. But I have no evidence that he
has interfered in the news coverage.
In fact, I do not believe that he has.
And the the news coverage itselfis is testament to the fact that
he hasn't because it's been quite aggressive.
And I think they've done an admirable job of covering this
administration. And, and if you just separate
the kind of two sides of this ina way, which is on the one hand,
(30:17):
you've got what looks like a bitof an authoritarian playbook
coming from the White House whenit comes to the media and the
treatment of the media. But on the other hand, you have
the argument, the underlying argument that some make, which
is that the media has skewed liberal for years and has failed
to listen to right wing voices. And I mean, I question how on
(30:40):
true that is. We have the same debate in the
UK, for example, over Brexit, but most of I'd say more than
half of UK newspapers actually did support Brexit, were on the
right are very, you know, anti woke when you think about the
current narrative. But but on that kind of
argument, you know, is it true that newspapers like The
(31:00):
Washington Post have historically had this skew and
and is that true in The Newsroom?
I know, I know. I actually worked for three
months at The Washington Post in2006 as part of the and part of
a fellowship where you get 1 British journalist every year.
And I remember speaking to Leonard Downey at the time, who
was the executive editor and he,I, I actually came back from
(31:21):
that. He said he hadn't voted in an
election since 1984 in order to try to not be biased when it
came to news coverage and editing and so on.
And I actually came back as a CUP reporter at the time to the
UK. And I decided not to vote in
elections because I was quite inspired by that.
And I do think it helps you to then not think about the outcome
(31:43):
of that election and therefore report on it in a different way.
So my question, sorry, after a very long bill, is it true that
there has been a liberal bias? And if so, how did you as an
editor try to deal with that? Well, look, people on the staff
have their own opinions. I never gave a litmus test to
the people on the staff. I never asked them what their
opinions were. I know there were people who
were conservative on the staff. I mean, I would guess that the,
(32:05):
you know, majority of people on the staff leaned left of center
but not extremely left of center.
And but within The Newsroom, I would say that there was a
strong commitment to just getting the facts.
I mean, the real battle today isnot over people's opinions.
The real battle today is over facts.
You know, what happened in the election of 2020 in the United
States? Was there fraud?
(32:25):
Was it a legitimate election or wasn't it?
There is no evidence that it wasan illegitimate election, that
it was fraudulent in any way. And and all the evidence points
to the fact that Joe Biden was elected legitimately.
What happened on January 6th of 2021?
Were those patriots or were theypeople trying to reverse the
results of an election? And essentially what was an
(32:46):
insurrection? Were they in fact beating up
Capitol Police? Yes, they were.
We could see that all for ourselves.
Is that patriotic? I'm not.
I would not describe that as patriotic in any, in any
fashion. Do vaccines cause autism?
You know, all of the evidence suggests that they do not cause
autism. That's all of the scientific
research, all of the medical research.
(33:07):
Those are the kinds of battles that that are really the real,
the real battles today, not whether somebody has an opinion
about this policy or that policy, that sort of thing.
So I think that that is and, and, and with regard to the
Post, look, if if Jeff Bezos wants to take the editorial page
in a right of center direction, well, fine.
That's his prerogative. He's the owner of the paper.
(33:29):
He should never interfere on thenews coverage.
And I don't believe that he has.But I also think that on the
opinion pages, they should have a wide range of opinion.
You know, this is a paper that has as its motto Democracy Dies
in Darkness, excluding certain opinions from the opinion pages
simply because they are left of center.
Purging those columnist is an anti democratic move and it goes
(33:50):
against everything that Jeff Bezos himself has said in the in
the past. So and also I think with regard
to the editorials themselves, they need to be fact based.
They can't be and they can't just exclude information that is
really relevant because it mightirritate Donald Trump.
And I think that that is the case right now is that they
often don't mention something orthey they temper their language
(34:13):
in a way so that they don't offend Donald Trump.
And that that concerns me. They will not call.
They do not seem to be able to call an abuse of power an abuse
of power. They seem to call it overreach.
So they're always using this this sort of more moderate
language to describe something that is really measures that are
truly autocratic in their very nature.
(34:35):
And I mean, there's been a lot of focus obviously about this
now notorious BBC Panorama edit of the speech that Donald Trump
gave on January the 6th, just before the insurrection, before
the riot took place. But the bigger picture that you
just alluded to, which is what was the intention of the speech,
the overall intention, What was the result of the speech on
(34:58):
January the 6th? What were those people trying to
do? What was the context of what
Trump called the big steal of the election, which he still
maintains to this day? He won even though all the
evidence suggested that actuallyit was Joe Biden who won the
election. That's that bigger picture has
been completely drowned out, hasit not, by the noise about this
one particular edit? Well, I gather it has.
(35:22):
I mean, I think that it's important to, well, first of
all, it's important for the BBC and any other media outlet to
Get the facts right and not to, not to engage in editing that
distorts the actual words of thepresident or anybody else for
that matter. So we have to do our jobs
properly. We have to get things done
right. We have to make sure the context
is, is right. We should be, we should be
(35:44):
critical of ourselves in that regard.
We should not be making mistakesof, well, mistakes of fact or
mistakes of judgment. And when we do, we should
acknowledge them and acknowledgethem quickly.
And I don't believe that happened in this case from what
I can, from what I can tell. That said, you are right that
clearly Trump incited the peoplewho were there.
(36:05):
His language was inciting. He invited people to Washington
by talking about having a wild day.
Ultimately, he used the words toto use the word fight.
You know, he has his own. He offers now a different
interpretation of that, but clearly the people in the
audience who were, who were listening to him interpreted in
a certain way and they were riled up and he didn't do
(36:26):
anything while he was in the White House watching all of this
happen. I think that's important to
remember afterwards. And not only that, when he
became president again for his second term, he pardoned all of
those people, which means that he felt that what he has called
them patriots, he called them political prisoners, hostages,
whatever. He used a whole variety of
language to describe them and, and he has treated them as if
(36:49):
they were patriots. And which means that he
approved. I mean, the import of that is
that he essentially approved of what they were doing.
And so Ecolian cited them. He's approved of what they were
doing. He let them off the hook and I
think that's just a obviously that's just a terrible thing.
(37:11):
And do you think that the court case, if it happens in this
case, is something that the BBC should fight?
I think that they should fight that.
I don't think that that's defamatory.
There's clearly no damages. He was elected president of the
United States. He hasn't suffered at all for
it. Nobody even knew about this
until more recently. And his reputation is not, is
not hurt in any way by it. So yes, I would think that would
(37:35):
be appropriate for the BBC to fight that even as acknowledges,
acknowledges that it it it should have, it should not have
edited the the remarks that way.Marty, thank you so much for
joining us. That was all really, really
fascinating. Thanks, Marty.
Great. Great.
Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.
Well, that that was really fascinating.
And, you know, Marty Baron, evenin retirement is thinking very
(37:57):
deeply about, you know, these issues which are coming up all
the time. And, you know, I just
relentless, especially as, you know, stories like Epstein keep
breaking and then Trump keeps, you know, deflecting and, you
know, trying to steer us in another direction.
These battles are very much ongoing.
That's it from this edition of Trump World.
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