Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Jennifer Rubin: Nice to be here.
Donald Trump (audio voiceover): And by the way, I never went to the island, and Bill Clinton went there supposedly 28 times. I never went to the island, but [former Treasury Secretary] Larry Summers, I hear, went there. He was the head of Harvard. And many other people that are very big people, nobody ever talks about them. I never had the privilege of going to his island, and I did turn it down, but a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island. In one of my very good moments, I turned it down. I didn’t want to go to his island.
Rubin: It’s really unbelievable. I want to go back to something that we shouldn’t lose sight of. The number two man in the Justice Department, Trump’s personal lawyer, went to go see Maxwell in prison. There is no universe in which that is acceptable. There’s no purpose for it. If they wanted to get more information or they wanted to discuss some aspect of her case, the line prosecutor would be the person to do it. The only purpose of sending Todd Blanche there would be something nefarious, which is exactly why I believe he was sent there. So we say it and we know it’s wrong, but we just want to never forget how utterly corrupt, how utterly inappropriate this entire thing is.
Sargent: Well, it’s just so unbelievably absurd that Trump is trying this. I really think it’s sometimes worth stepping back and stating the obvious about the Epstein files, which, to clarify, are the bulk of material that law enforcement gathered in the process of investigating Epstein’s sex trafficking, Trump is saying two things about this whole scandal. First, that the Epstein files are a dem hoax, that they’re actually filled with dirt on elite Democrats. And second, he won’t release the Epstein files. Now Jen, if the first were true, he would release them. It astounds me that Trump presses ahead with this nonsensical argument, which actually refutes itself and is damning to him. And we again saw it with that rambling quote.
But what he is protecting are the men who were involved, are the names of those people. We have lots of questions. How is all of this financed? Where was the money going? Are there in video tapes of any of this? A host of really important questions. And when people say, Well, bad stuff might come out about the Democrats, fine, let them out.
Rubin: If there’s bad stuff about Bill Clinton or anybody else, I don’t care. It should all come out. And this notion that suddenly, the Trump people have finally figured out that a hoax and that a scheme of QAnon that everyone in the Democratic establishment is a sexual pervert and a sex trafficker.… Suddenly, that whole thing comes back to roost because in fact, he is at the center, not because we know he’s done any criminal activities, but because he holds the documents that would reveal one of the largest sex trafficking, largest sex exploitation rackets in modern American history.
Rubin: I don’t think it is sustainable, and the reason is because Republicans have panicked. They realize they look like fools. You have Mike Johnson, the toadiest of them all, the chief toady, who basically says, No, we’re not going to. We should not be granting a pardon to this woman. And yes, he finally agrees as do a bunch of Republicans that the document should be released. I don’t know how this is sustainable. And you know someone is feeding information to The Wall Street Journal. You don’t have to read between the lines to figure out that someone gave the journal that disgusting note that other information is being leaked. And the reason is because they had a thousand FBI agents pouring through these files.
Sargent: Well, since you brought up House Speaker Mike Johnson’s response to this scheme involving Maxwell, let me play that for people.
Mike Johnson (audio voiceover): If you’re asking my opinion, I think 20 years was a pittance. I think she should have a life sentence at least. Think of all these unspeakable crimes. And as you noted earlier, probably a thousand victims. It’s hard to put into words how evil this was and that she orchestrated it and was a big part of it. At least under the criminal sanction, I think is an unforgivable thing. So again, not my decision, but I have great pause about that as any reasonable person would.
Rubin: Absolutely. When you have something like 75 percent of Americans saying, We smell a rat.… Seventy-five percent of people you can’t get to disclaim UFOs or disclaim that Elvis is not alive. We are so divided, but on this, Americans could actually agree. This is utterly unacceptable. It’s grotesquely perverse. And it’s not a trivial matter. People tend to think, Oh, people are just raising it because it’s a political issue. This is the height of authoritarian corruption, when you use the mechanisms of the state to protect the dear leader at the expense of the most vulnerable people, that’s this. There is no better explanation of the abuse and of the authoritarian mentality that drives this entire MAGA movement.
Rubin: I think they have backed themselves into a corner entirely of their own making. Whatever metaphor you want to use, they have created the politics of conspiracies and of really obscene accusations, and now it has turned back on them. And if it takes them down, well, that’s a fitting end to their entire perverse movement.
Rubin: Well, that’s distinctly possible. It’s like a smash and grab operation. He’s trying to smash the country and grab all the wealth that he possibly can to wring out every dime, every crypto coin he can finally make off with. And perhaps at some level, what, he owes loyalty to the Republican Party? He’s never been loyal to anybody by himself. So it’s distinctly possible that he just doesn’t give a damn and is going to leave and take his billions with him that he has corruptly come by during all this time. But I do think that there is a fundamental principle that these Republicans are going to have to live with, and that is these people confirmed the Pam Bondis, the Kash Patels. They are responsible for this mess as much as Trump is. And for them to now turn around and say, We try, we didn’t know that they weren’t going to do this stuff, is not going to cut it. And by the way, for those people who say, Well, Joe Biden could have released all of this, you know what? I am not going to defend anything that Merrick Garland did or didn’t do. And you can argue, and you may be right, that there were many opportunities for them to have done this. Listen, Joe Biden was not the perfect president—but you know what, who is the president right now is the guy who has control of them, and that’s Donald Trump. And him using the government to protect himself is beyond reprehensible. And if we still had a Supreme Court, if we still had the rule of law, offering to give someone a pardon in exchange for exoneration of heinous crimes would in the old days have been called a bride, would in the old days have been called an impeachable offense. I guess we don’t have those anymore, so we’ll just have to call it a Monday in the Trump administration.
Rubin: We’re going to continue to see—and we haven’t even spoken about it, thank goodness—the game of distraction. Suddenly, Barack Obama is guilty of treason. Suddenly, Beyoncé is going to be prosecuted for something. We’re going to have men from Mars land on the White House lawn pretty soon. So you’re going to see an uptick in all of these ridiculous nonsensical conspiracy theories, which in and of themselves are an abdication of the rule of law. To have the president of U.S. spinning such nonsense and threatening people is wholly unacceptable. You’re going to have the continuing dialogue and Trump is going to continue to play this game of, Well, it’s up to the FBI. They have to make a decision. And I think this thing is going to go on and get dragged out and get dragged out and maybe some of the documents will come out. But you know what? Ultimately, the backstop for this and for every other horrible thing—most horrible things that have occurred up to this point—are the midterms, and it just is going to shine a giant spot on how critical that is.
Rubin: No, you’re not. I must say that although we got a little questioning, I was aghast at the press conference that he held, if you can call it that, on Sunday. There has to be a much more confrontational attitude from the press themselves. They let him spew on this stuff without follow-up, without pinning him down, without pointing out exactly what you just said. And there’s really no excuse other than cowardness and access journalism for this passivity in his presence. And it does great harm to the Republic. It erodes further what’s left of the credibility of many of these legacy media operations. And if they wanted to reestablish their credibility, what’s the matter with getting into it with the president of the U.S., claiming who he has no control over this or perpetuating this giant cover-up? My God, isn’t this time for them to wake up?
Rubin: Exactly. Exactly. And there is no answer to that, and you’ll get a discourse on the golf course, on windmills, on the greatest golf course ever built, and a host of other things. But once again, the media should be able at this point to bring it back to the question, re-ask it, and re-ask it until they get an answer.
Rubin: Absolutely. My pleasure. Take care.
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