Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Suebsaeng: Always good to be on the pod, man.
Suebsaeng: Well, isn’t it funny which conspiracy theories they decide could institute as official government policy and doctrine and what they, just out of political convenience or whatever reason, would like the MAGA base to move on from. When it comes to the anti-democratic lies that the 2020 election was stolen by Joe Biden from Donald Trump, all of those authoritarian lies are being cemented right now into government policy across multiple branches and agency. They have no problem with that, even though it’s complete lie and the exact opposite is true.
Sargent: Trump unleashed this furious rant on Truth Social. I’m going read from it, “Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker. They haven’t learned their lesson … even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years. Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work … I don’t want their support anymore!” So Swin, I think the way to read this is almost like an ultimatum. He’s saying, You don’t get to be my supporters anymore if you keep talking about my own government’s failings here. It’s making me feel uncomfortable. Stop, otherwise you’re out.
Nevertheless, the president of the United States is trying because he’s trotting out over and over again this completely manufactured talking point that Obama wrote the files, crooked James Comey wrote the files, crooked Hillary Clinton wrote the files, and they did it in part to try to get Trump. This is something that came out of nowhere, and I don’t think anybody except for Donald Trump was saying or is saying right now. And when I talked to various administration officials or people who have known Trump for a long time who were working on the outside of the federal government right now over the weekend, a leading concern among them was they were saying that the way the president is conducting himself right now and the way he’s talking about this publicly is making it very difficult for even some of his biggest supporters to at least not privately suspect that maybe he might be in the Epstein files in some incriminating way.
Sargent: Right. So Trump unleashed a rant about this to reporters that really underscores your point. Listen to these excerpts from it.
Sargent: Swin, Trump’s own people fueled this conspiracy theory. Just a reminder, Patel and Bongino were big-time MAGA influencers. They played a huge role in telling MAGA that once the lid was ripped off the deep state, the cover-up of the Epstein files would be revealed. Now they’re deep in the deep state, and they failed to deliver on their own conspiracy theory. And now to make it even more perfect, Trump is attacking MAGA voters as stupid for believing his own top people on this. Swin, this is a level of abusiveness toward members of the Trump cult that’s almost shocking. Swin, do you think that Trump might be in the Epstein files? What’s your sense of it?
And it is a matter of public record that multiple American presidents, including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, were in and out of his social order and universe over the years. That’s not a controversial thing to state. That’s just a fact. And if that ended up in the notes of an FBI agent or investigator and it were in the file, that actually is a completely innocent explanation of how President Trump’s name could be in there. The problem is we are light years away from finding that out one way or the other because the Trump administration seems very determined right now to be not transparent about these issues.
Suebsaeng: Isn’t it spectacular in the worst, most “hell world” possible ways that Trump and his top lieutenants are sustaining significantly more political damage and blowback right now for how they’re handling the Epstein files than Trump did last month when he literally bombed Iran? If you know anything about the extremely online parts of the MAGA base or the MAGA influencer community, such a statement actually maybe isn’t that surprising. If you know about how they work and what their priorities are and what their pathological obsessions and fixations are.… However, objectively speaking, it’s, as I mentioned earlier, very much a “hell world” scenario.
Suebsaeng: All those amazing, very morally upstanding people as you say, yes. Well look, I think the main takeaway from our reporting at Rolling Stone about how this week from hell, this Epstein-shaped hole in the wall just completely engulfed the highest levels of the Trump administration in really perversely comical ways. The thing that I took away from it the most as we talked to more and more administration officials and other people close to Donald Trump is the degree to which Trump, his senior staff, and other heavy hitters within the federal apparatus threw a gigantic amount of resources, time, and outreach effort to try to contain the fallout within MAGAworld particularly—both within the government and also well outside of it that President Trump and his people incurred immediately starting after the DOJ and FBI release of the now infamous Epstein memo and video that went along with it.
Sargent: Right. This is what I just fundamentally don’t understand about this. When Trump and JD Vance and top people in the administration go out to MAGA influencers and beg and plead with them to not talk about this, how does that not pique MAGA’s suspicion even more? In other words, if I’m MAGA and I’m on the receiving end of this full court press that you’re talking about, I’m going to ask myself, Why don’t they want me to talk about this? I thought this was supposed to reveal all sorts of perfidy by Democratic elites. Why are they trying to shut me up? Is that happening in MAGA? Are they saying that to themselves about this?
Sargent: I think maybe what we’re looking at here, Swin, is a war in MAGA between two impulses. One is the one you’re talking about there, which is the unchecked conspiracism, the really crazed desire to believe that there are these really dastardly things that Democratic elites have done, such as pedophilia. So that’s one force. But the other force is everything needs to always help Trump at all costs. And so when Trump and Vance go to the influencers and say to them, Look, guys, this is not helpful, they’re really saying prioritize the second one of those over the first one. Both of them are extremely unhealthy to the point of deep derangement. And they’re at odds with each other, which makes the whole thing even more combustible. Does that make sense?
Sargent: Swin, where does this all end up? Just play this out and let us know how much longer we’re going to have to endure this craziness and where it leads.
He keeps going before the cameras, taking the bait when reporters ask him questions, including when he’s meeting earlier on Wednesday with the leader of Bahrain. And he keeps, without anybody making him, posting to Truth Social over and over again things that make him look especially to a very conspiracy minded individual very, very guilty of something. So again, Mr. Trump, if you’re listening, you keep telling everybody to stop talking about Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, heal thyself dear leader.
Suebsaeng: It’s always great to talk to you. I would also like to remind your listeners that I am definitely not in the Epstein files.
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