Trump goes FULL PANIC as Epstein news bears down

I'm joined now by the anchor of The Beat with Ari Melber.Ari Melber.Ari, thanks for joining me.

Great to see you.How are you doing?

So, Ari, we have seen very recently Donald Trump's effort to kind of skirt his involvement in the Epstein files by, of course, firing Pam Bondi and replacing her with Todd Blanche, who just got his big promotion as he was nominated for attorney general in a permanent capacity.So can you talk a little bit about what you think in terms of Trump being able to kind of insulate himself from any accountability as it relates to Epstein by putting in place somebody who has shown that he is shameless if nothing else when it comes to burying any of Trump's involvement or running cover for Trump as it relates to Epstein.

I think Epstein is a huge piece of this and we've both covered it.Blanche was running the exact program that everyone has criticized, including many conservatives and Republicans, because they weren't transparent, they weren't honest, they buried and hid a lot of stuff.in any normal environment you don't promote that person because it looks like you're rewarding obscene secrecy which you are uh... but here donald trump is shown again and again i think it's interesting to see is approval numbers crash because more of his supporters either realize it or just over it uh... that he's not it he's not into public interest and so someone who actually went that far against the political wins including on the right to just save him protect him and do obscene secrecy whatever it is they're hiding That to him, to Trump, is a win.And so, again, I think it's the type of thing that has legs because plenty of his supporters have woken up to this.And Blanche's signature was on the initial misleading documents.He was on the letters to Congress that oversaw materials that had redaction errors, that cared more about hiding Trump than hiding the real victims and others who Trump had claimed he cared about.

So I think all of that hangs over this, and it's documented.

Do you think that this has an impact?And I ask that because there are, I mean, countless issues every month.There's another kind of discourse du jour or story du jour where we were like, okay, there's no way he can wriggle out of this one.And then of course, lo and behold, he does.Obviously the Epstein thing has a lot of legs because this was an issue that was championed by, uh, Trump and his acolytes themselves.And so this obviously has more potency than just, you know, kind of an issue where both sides can retreat to their partisan corners.

This one was really elevated by by the right.But with that said, like we had watched as Trump kind of has been able to kind of keep a floor in place.Granted, it's been chipped away at recently.But in terms of the the potency of Epstein as a persuasion issue, do you think that it's going to make an impact one way or the other?

I think it already has made a huge impact because it broke the dam in the votes and was the first big revolt that was a veto -proof revolt.So you had a supermajority on that issue.And then after that, you had pushed back on other things, not all as important, but it was only after the republican revolt epstein you got pushed back on the budget bigger ice uh... cutbacks you've got pushed back on the ballroom even by some republicans and now just this week you had a war powers vote which yes was mostly democrats were republicans joined massey led that so the epstein tormentor to to donald trump uh... has now being more than once on the house floor that that's not a usual thing so yes i think it's a cascade Then there's the other point you made, which I think is smart, and I think people online who follow this stuff independently get it better sometimes, call it better than in D .C., because D .C.

bounces between the two parties.That's kind of its thing.And when it comes to Trump, I think both parties have made mistakes.The Democrats have run repeated campaignsjust on saying you don't like him, as if that's a winning message you need to sell, when more often than not, I could show you the charts, the country's already there, they don't like him.But whether they bring him back in and compared the alternative is a different question right just like you could dislike a teacher or a lot and then they bring in a substitute is so bad that you say i still like that teacher but man we prefer him to this new one and so that's the democrats mistake the republicans mistake is that they've constantly tried to say oh you counted him out and he connects with real america because he had these surprising comebacks that's not real math uh... he got fewer votes in sixteen he got wiped out in the blue wave in eighteen and he lost in twenty with fewer votes right?

We all know that.They underperformed in 22, including after the big Supreme Court abortion decision.So the only time he ever got more votes was 24.That's a one -off, actually.And we'll see how he does in 26.I think Senate Republicans are reminded or waking up to how hard he is to run with.

So the comeback narrative is a D .C.narrative.It's not really a comeback if you were never liked.He won once.And unlike some other people, call it fair and square.

I covered that election.There was a big high participation.He won 24 once.

You know, I think what's interesting about all of this is like he is quietly doing his work behind the scenes where he just rids the party, excommunicates the party of anybody who was willing to come forward and support the discharge petition for the Epstein Files Transparency Act.Like, it might not seem so overt because this is kind of the the the slow running machinations of of the electoral process.But like, Thomas Massie is out.He co -sponsored the Epstein -Fowles Transparency Act.Lauren Boebert was forced to run in the 4th congressional district in Colorado because she wasn't going to be able to win in the 3rd, certainly without the support of Trump, who'd been busy calling her dumb and low IQ.to be successful whether it's still going to be as easy for these Republicans to buck Trump, recognizing that every time it happens, whether it's on Epstein with those four that I just mentioned, whether it's Bill Cassidy, who of course had voted in favor of his impeachment, John Cornyn.

I mean, the guy was so far up Trump's ass, he could touch the back of his teeth, posting pictures of himself reading the art of the deal.Even he wasn't loyal enough to get the endorsement over Ken Paxton.So there is that back of, okay, you can speak out for something that you agree with, that flies in the face of what the White House's stance is, but your job is gonna be on the line.

Yeah, I mean, that makes me think of two things, one on Epstein and one on this type of politics.For Epstein, given how much has come out that already makes Trump look bad, and I'm always careful to say as a legal journalist that I'm an attorney, we have not seen criminal level evidence.We've seen stuff that is embarrassing.Many people would say disqualifying.But unlike some other individuals, the material that's become public about Trump and Epstein doesn't currently implicate Trump as a criminal.So that makes you say, OK, but that's already out there.

he already took the lumps what else is he hiding right and I'm not the type you know me I'm not the type to say well if it looks that bad it must be that sometimes and I've covered stories like this that look one way and they change but it doesn't look good it doesn't make sense logically basically to have this much come out and then have Trump still be acting like there's something else to hide now does that mean that it's the worst thing that someone could think of no it could be malfeasance in how i've seen was dealt with as a prisoner foul play uh... in the jail cell which is something the whole congress has now legitimate it start out people so it was that a conspiracy you read the files uh... legislation is i'm sure you have an amateur some reviewers have one of the enumerated items is all the additional information about the treatment of epstein under the control of who trump d o j in the bureau of prisons now by the way with that alone be a huge scandal if there were foul play i think so which is again what i'm saying is a different explanation if you're hiding say some earlier illicit conduct but whatever it is he is acting like someone who was going all that way to have something to hide that's on its men on the politics on the one hand what everything you said is true and explains why even when trump could be pulling in the thirties the power he has in republican primaries and over that base which is not even the whole republican party let alone the whole country in the electorate that's our gerrymandered system which a partisan supreme court is made worse helping republicans that still gives them power even when he's basically lame -duck do a politically yeah and then on top of that he's willing to do something other presidents out it's still a type of weakness i think brian that he spent with his allies more on a single house primary it'sfrom a point of weakness, right?It's like if you get into a dispute with someone and you come back and you bring 20 hired security, right?One of these billionaires, you say, oh, what do they do?Yeah, they could hire a lot of off -duty cops with guns.And on the one hand, you say, well, you're not going to beat them up today, right?

Literally.

On the other hand, wow, they must be really scared.And that is a lot of firepower that they bought.

More on that race than any in american history i mean that tells you a lot about the fear and the power that massie built up which then yes house member versus president you know that's usually not a fair fight I think that that's a really good segue into another topic that I wanted to talk about because as far as Trump operating from a place of fear is concerned, he wouldn't need to move to consolidate so much support in the media space if he was able to, you know, convey his message by virtue of how he was governing.Like, if he was doing a good enough job, he wouldn't need to level all these attacks and buy up all of these media outlets.We've seen him either sue or have his allies kind of Seek to be as heavy handed as they can within the media, you know, whether it's whether it's CBS or, you know, imminently CNN.We've also seen him sue ABC, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Meta.I mean, you name it.We just recently saw Scott Pelley get fired at 60 Minutes.

And, you know, the the fate of that institution obviously is in doubt.I think what you guys do at MSNOW is is really important because it's one of the few if not the only legacy media outlet left that's willing to actually buck Trump and criticize him when it's necessary to do so.And so, you know, from your vantage, recognizing that Trump has gone after everyone, really, I mean, he seems to be just takinghis way down the list.How does that make you feel about your obligation, your responsibility to speak out?And also beyond that, like, you know, it feels almost inevitable that once he's done with CBS and CNN, attacking MSNOW is gonna be next up on the list.

And so, just, it's not gonna be easy.when the person with the biggest megaphone in the entire country sets his sights on either your network or on you individually.And so just kind of planning out for something like that.How have you thought about that?

Yeah, I mean, it's a fair question with what's going on with CBS, which remains the highest rated news program.We can all talk about how the Internet's changed a lot and some for the good, but 60 Minutes competes with NFL football.

Yeah.

For the largest audience, highest ad rates.And does it with, as we've seen, because you just saw them stand up to this incredible internal corporate magnet pressure, does it with independents?I firmly believe, based on what I know and being in this business, that if a radical socialist went after 60 Minutes with somehow, and you got to really do a lot of legwork here, but got ahold of the state control of the company, I think they would go up against leftist intervention just as much as magnet intervention.Those are serious people.The problem for Trump is, Those serious people, non -partisan, are calling him out.And that's because of the plays they're trying to run to abuse their oversight of the media merger system in order to get favorable coverage.

And if you could prove it out enough, if you had an independent investigation, which you're not going to get from this DOJ, you'd have to investigate whether they've crossed the line into pro quo bribery and other crimes.Because it is illegal for government officials to say, I need X from you to do Y in the government.And usually it's softer, right?We have all the campaign donations.It's softer.It's hard to prove.

If that happened, that's already that.Second to your question, we're going to continue to stand on business and be independent.And, you know, sometimes it's like I'm posting about my show or I'm promoting myself here.I'm not really about me. I'm really fortunate to work with people like Rachel, and Nicole and Lawrence, who stood up, by the way.Lawrence has clashed with Donald Trump for 15 years, stayed on the air, faced the threat.Now it's heavier for the reason you state.

So we're led by those people and a team.We're more independent than we were before because we're now a fully independent company versus we trade as our own company.Most people aren't interested in all the details, but the bottom line is we're more independent than we were a few years ago.So that's what we're doing.We're standing up.The wider point, though, that you made is really important.

When you're up 20 in the fourth quarter, You're not really doing a lot of cheating, even if you sometimes cheat, right?It makes no sense.He is sliding and crashing.And yes, he has a probably an emotional vendetta against media.And I think all in all honesty, if he were doing better, he might still be complaining and attacking Kimmel and that type of stuff.But the extreme way that they are trying to censor, mute and control the press going into these midterms and Presumably they're not going to stop going into the big, the big presidential election shows how weak they think they are without that kind of, of pressure or cheating.

As we watch the DOJ and the FCC be so heavy handed in what they're trying to do.like obviously Brendan Carr has a huge hand in all of this and of course we were just talking about Todd Blanche how he is basically I mean look the guy's violating the law because we still have three million Epstein files that haven't been released he's made it clear that he has no intention of releasing anything else and so he's participating in this government cover -upthe same time, violating, uh, violating existing law.You know, as we move forward, I think we looked at what happened in the aftermath of Joe Biden winning in 2020 and installing Merrick Garland as attorney general.And I think there was this sense in retrospect, misguided, I think, where it was more important to protect the, you know, to prevent against the optics of politicization and to get back to normal politics and just calm everything down.And obviously that didn't work.

And in fact, the unwillingness to hold these people to account for what they'd done, Trump specifically, kind of emboldened him to recognize that he could do it 10 times, 100 times faster and harder than he had done before.And now we're in a situation where The corruption is so egregious, like people are selling, you know, shorting stocks and buying, buying stocks that just make them turn them into millionaires.Ten, ten, you know, ten times over.We're watching this massive pay to play scheme.You know, we just had this report come out, I believe, in The Washington Post like a day ago that showed that a number of the companies that had donated money to Trump's ballroom were then granted government contracts that were worth far more than what they had donated.And so, like, we have reached full Banana Republic levels of corruption.

How do you think that the next Democratic attorney general should take this stuff into account, recognizing that there are going to be those people who say, you know, let's put the politics of retribution behind us.But then there's also going to be people who say an unwillingness to actually uphold the law is the exact thing that emboldens criminal behavior in the future.And so what do you think, you know, what do you think should be the move moving forward, especially from somebody who has a lot of experience in the legal realm?

I think you describe it accurately.I think any honest future Justice Department must deal with the corruption, the looting, the revenge prosecutions that have basically infected multiple parts of the government.I mean, we have the housing partisan warrior in Pulte, who was, based on what we can tell, misusing access to information there to go after opponents that's like secret police stuff and now he's gonna run the intelligence services for a little little temporary status with trump said so it's at at the oj it's at housing it's at f b i they were visiting georgia voting voting And now it's at Intel.He oversees CIA.I mean, this sounds like a movie when you say, wait, CIA director is going to meet with the guy who's already been caught misusing information to go after domestic opponents, right?It's bad.

So you have to completely go in after all of that without fear of favor.And I say that and people will say, oh, I'm sounding potentially naive.But that's any honest non -MAGA administration.Obviously, that would hopefully include the Democrats.That's what they're telegraphing.But if you had an honest John McCain style Republican, I don't know that they're going to win the nomination, but I would expect a McCain -style administration to also do this.

I've seen, it's very fashionable now to say everyone's the worst, but I've seen and covered Republican administrations where the DOJ was much more independent.

Yeah.

And nonpartisan in this one.

So we are not.We we just what we watched Joe Biden's DOJ prosecute his son, like prosecute the president's son.The notion that that investigation would even be allowed to be open, much less go to prosecution, go to and go to go to conviction would be just I mean, it's it's laughable at this point.The notion see Don Jr. get prosecuted.

And Reagan Bush, according to legal experts or law schools, the Reagan Bush DOJ are not held up as some high watermark.But again, if we're talking aboutproportionate, they had open probes into their own administration, including Iran -Contra.And by the end, there were deals and pardons.I just want to be clear, this administration doesn't allow anything like that.And they didn't have the level of revenge prosecutions we have right now.

So history has helped that way.So I would say any non -MAGA honest DOJ has an obligation to do this first and do it in strongly and that means looking at what's always hardest in washington which is you know you have all this this pro -wrestling and then you have a helluva lot of people who they go in and out of office you say why does it seem like the democrats are giving it and i find that hard and then you look up at two years later the guys who were fake fighting on the senate floor in the same lobbying shop and other crap like that and so the deal j has to really fully and what they sometimes see as their contemporaries which is all i knew that guy when we were doing a ten years ago you know what we don't care if he was covering up the Epstein files, or helping Todd Blanche make up stories, or going into grand juries to help make it a slightly less severe revenge prosecution, I don't care.If they broke the rules of the law, they should be disbarred, investigated.And if they, if they committed a crime like anyone else, I don't care that you knew them back when they were different and worked in a different DOJ.So we have to deal with that.And if we don't, you know, there was a writer I quoted when I did a piece about January 6, who said, a failed coup without accountability becomes a training exercise.

Yeah.Well, boy, have we seen that?And we're going to see more of that.And then the corruption, they're looting.The last point I would make is, you know, I when I'm trying to report and get people's attention, I use analogies because I feel like you're the only thing about the thing.We only know what you think about the thing.

So let me compare it to another thing.OK, a heck of a lot of conservative minded people and some people were sympathetic to Trump or maybe they voted for him once and they regret it.They look at that looting that you see sometimes where a city, you know,has a blackout or burned down buildings and people go in and they, you say, God, these people, they got the opportunity and in one hour they started taking TVs.You say, that's wrong.What about the local store owner?

Okay, insurance pays for it, but it's still stealing, right?And those types of folks will say, gosh, you know, that looting is wrong.And you gotta deter and round those people up.Okay, that's less than 1 % of the scale of the premeditated first degree long -acting looting including of the pentagon and places where we would care about our security so yet you cared about that when you should care about this looting it's trump family looting it's allied companies I don't predict the future, man. I would tell you if we don't deal with it as a society, it will get worse, not better, even if even if the politics change a little bit.

Well, you know, the ultimate irony of that is like that was a message that resonated with Trump's voters from Trump himself.And the first thing he did was install Elon Musk, who promised to like eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.And what does he do with his power?Fires all of the people.who serve as the watchmen of all of their respective departments and agencies.And then Elon went on after all of the inspectors general were fired and basically eliminated any barriers to the companies, uh, the agencies that regulate his companies and then awarded himself a bunch of government contracts.

And so right there, all of that, that trust was just completely decimated.But the extent to which we're seeing it now has become so overt and so egregious and, and almost like, I mean, they're almost like proud of it to, to come out and say, I'm going to sue my own federal government for $10 billion.And then think that it's some gift to us to say, you know what, let's just compromise with a $2 billion slush fund to turn each one of the 1500 insurrectionists into billionaires, but also will give me tax amnesty for myself and my family forever that could also cost the government.$100 million in funding that would get paid to the federal government and now won't.I mean, the corruption in that sense, it's almost like the administration is kind of poking its finger in the eye of the American people, because this is the exact kind of stuff that Trump and Fox would have had a field day with.

Well, I think you're making a subtle point about, if I may, the culture of their degradation of our system.They think it's a flex to say, see what I can get away with, see what I can steal.I mean, the fund that is in so much trouble now, I'll remind folks, it is already paused in court.It was paused, which is a procedural step under review, but if you have a fully obviously legal thing, they don't pause it, okay?There's plenty of stuff the government does it doesn't get positive early fatal a judge already positive a separate judges looking at whether the whole deal is a fraud as you mentioned uh... so that's how it covers the fund If you're watching this in America, it's your money.They're seizing and stealing your money.

They don't claim that it was appropriated by Congress.They don't claim that there's any reason.They think that's a flex.Now, on some of these issues, more and more Republicans don't.And a lot of people, when they learn the details, don't.But they think it's a flex in the same way that autocrats take a kind of pride in getting other people, even you'll see this in senior cabinet meetings in Russia or whatever, to say that up is down and red is blue.

Because it shows, oh, look, this person will embarrass and debase themselves, their sense of reality, for our power.That's how much power we have.I would observe that there are other people who have power in a way that I think is better long -term leadership.I can list off other leaders who are different.But yes, it's a type of cynical.They think it's cynical.

I think it's cynical.They think it's a kind of flex.It's alook what we can get away with.

Ari, last question here.Nicks in how many?

Five.

Is that a good answer?That's a good answer.

I'm in New York.I've lived in New York more than any other place.I can just tell you, I live in Brooklyn walking around.Everyone's going crazy.Everyone's into it.So I want to support.

I don't want to say seven.And then it sounds like it's going to be too tough.Yeah, just on that level as someone who's been in New York this long, the energy, I mean, you walk near Fort Greene where there's the Spike Lee's, there's a bar he likes to go to and it's really community because people know each other and it's like, people are going nuts.So it's definitely a fun time to be in New York in the summer.

Well, it's cool because like, look, I'm from, born in New York, I grew up in New Jersey originally.So all of my sports teams are New York sports teams, diehard Giants fan.I've been a Yankees fan since I was, you know, five years old.Living out in LA, I've been out here for 15 years and like we have, first of all, the city is so sprawling.So there's never a ton of people, like you can walk down the street in New York and you're just, there is a mob of people wherever you go.LA just isn't like that.

So you never feel like you're immersed in like a mob of people in the same way.And we also have, you know, the, Dodgers are in LA.We have the Anaheim Angels that are just an hour outside of LA.It doesn't have the same feel within the city.We have a lot of sports teams too.There's a lot going on.

And it just doesn't it doesn't take over the city like we don't have, you know, even when the Kings, I mean, the Rams are Super Bowl champions.Previous year, the the our hockey team was was NHL champions.You can you you can walk through the city and not know that that happened.I feel like the same thing isn't isn't going on in New York, which is which is really cool.And so, you know, I'm not a you know, I get a hundred.

I mean, and not not to make it political, but, you know, a lot of times, you know,America, it's the places where there's very little diversity and not many immigrants.And that's where people are like, Oh, my God, the immigrants, right?And you walk around New York.And it is for folks who sometimes feel like, Oh, is this whole American experiment?Is this thing breaking down?

A lot of places?It's not you walk around.And first of all, they got a new mayor in they got new stuff they're trying.But also, you walk around and you got such diversity, and when they're rooting for the Knicks, if you want to make it an American thing, great, they're rooting for America.It's in English, yada yada, if that's your cup of tea.But also you see people who moved here, came here, and they're sharing something geographically, culturally.

I love that.

Yeah, that's awesome.highly recommend for anybody who's watching right now.First of all, check out Ari on The Beat on MSNOW, weekdays at 6 p .m.Eastern, but also I'm gonna put a link to Ari's YouTube channel right here on the screen and also in the post description.If you're listening on the podcast, I'm gonna throw it into the show notes.

This is the kind of thing where we all have to come together and support any media that is willing to tell the truth about what's happening right now.That takes the form of folks who are doing good work, and pushing back on legacy media, which has been Donald Trump's focus in censoring since the beginning of this administration, all the way down to independent media folks and Creators, but it's it's a group effort here to make sure that we elevate these voices who are willing to to do the work So I'm gonna put that link right here on the screen and also in the post description if you're not yet subscribed Please go ahead and hit the subscribe button Ari.Thank you so much for taking the time, man. I appreciate it Thank you.

Thanks to all your viewers and listeners Stay informed stay hydrated.Stay at it.Peace everyone