Best of the Daily Blast: Trump Epstein Mess Worsens as MAGA Cracks Up: “He Lame-Ducked Himself”

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“This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic,”

produced and presented by the DSR network. I'm your host, Greg Sargent. [MUSIC] On Friday, former Attorney General Pam Bondi testified to lawmakers behind closed doors about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. What Democrats said afterwards strongly suggests that this mess is not going away for Donald Trump,

and very likely we'll get worse next year if Democrats take back the house. This comes amid other signs that the Republican lines of defense are on Trump are crumbling on many fronts. And Trump himself may be to blame because it's his mounting on popularity that's driving it all. As one Republican put it, Trump is laying ducking himself. We're talking about all this with the story in Nicole Hammer,

who's one of our go-to people on Epstein and the right wing, a topic she's written several books about.

Nicole, always nice to have you on.

Lovely to be back, Greg. So Pam Bondi, the former AG was on Capitol Hill as part of the house's ongoing investigation into the Jeffrey Epstein files, which are the investigative materials gathered as part of DOJ's probe of Epstein's sex trafficking. One of the big things that happened in her testimony was that she essentially threw acting AG Todd Blanch under the bus. Listen to Representative Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee,

or counting what Bondi said. In that interview, and what she's saying here in her words and remarks is that it was Todd Blanch, the curing acting AG, that was leading the Epstein investigation and quite frankly, all of the mistakes that we saw, the redactions, not protecting survivors. She continues to push that back onto the acting AG Todd Blanch,

who, by the way, was Donald Trump's former personal lawyer. So Bondi apparently blamed Blanch for just about everything that's gone wrong, the lack of transparency, all of it. Nicole, what do you make of that? It's an interesting move.

You know, Pat Bondi is in such a different position at this point than she was when she was first subpoenaed to give this testimony.

She used to be the attorney general. Now, she's been forced out. And she is shifting all the blame onto her presumed successor. Blanch is going to have to go through confirmation hearing soon and she has just made that very difficult for him. Epstein is going to be the focus of conversation when Blanch goes up for confirmation.

What's interesting about it and kind of surprising about it is that. Pam Bondi only has herself to blame for being the face of the Epstein scandal within the Trump administration. Who said that she had the files on her desk. She called in all of those right wing influencers to come parade around with their binders. And so it's a little too little too late.

“But I think that it plays into her hand and into Democrats hands for her to push the blame on Blanch.”

She was not only going up to be attorney general, but also is Donald Trump's personal lawyer. And so she's making his life difficult probably because she was forced out of her position. Well, yes, and I think we should remind everybody just sort of related to what you just said there that MAGA for many, many years really wanted to know what was in the Epstein files. It was a huge obsession on the far right. It was a huge obsession among all these influencers to the degree that she actually brought them in to say, "Hey, we're going to really blow this thing open for you guys.

You know, you put us in charge and now we're going to make it all right." And then, of course, as soon as Pam Bondi and Cash Fatel, the FBI director got to look at what was in the Epstein files. They were just like, "Uh, no, we're not doing that anymore." And you just sort of talk about that big history and context.

Well, that history is really important because so many of the people who were put in place in this second Trump administration were put in place because not only because they were Trump loyalists,

but because they had a lot of support from the MAGA base that they built on this idea that the Epstein files needed to be released.

And so, I think Bondi thought early on that she could score a lot of points with the Trump base by pushing the Epstein story to the very front of her time as Attorney General.

“This was going to be the thing that she was going to make her name on because it was so important to the base.”

And she immediately put herself between a rock and the hard place because the base really cares about these Epstein files. They really care about this scandal. And Donald Trump doesn't want anyone talking about it. And so Bondi saw herself suddenly serving two masters, the MAGA base and Donald Trump, and there was no way to satisfy both of them. And I have a feeling that Lance is going to be in the same position. They're all the crushed by this untenable position, which is you cannot.

Disabuse the MAGA base of the Epstein scandal. They're not going to drop it. And you cannot force Donald Trump to talk about it because he's also unwilling to engage it. Right. So let's listen to a little bit more of representative Robert Garcia talking about what Bondi said in this private testimony. Listen. I also personally asked the former AG five times and five different questions about her conversations with President Trump. Whether he directed her any any given time on the Epstein files. What he knew what he asked her to redact or not. And she refused to answer any questions about President Trump.

In fact, she said that she would not speak or respond to any questions that anything to do with President Trump. So clearly, Pam Bondi is trying to insulate Trump a bit here while throwing Todd Blanch on to the bus instead. But I think if anything, this is actually damning to Trump because Bondi could have said, Oh, Trump didn't really try to control what we released. He wanted us to put stuff out. And she didn't say that. Remember, Trump himself at one point when the heat got very intense tried to look as if he wanted the Epstein files out.

He basically said, release them. I'm all for transparency.

But now, what Bondi said will only wet the appetite of Democrats more to find out about how Trump conspired to cover them up, right?

“Well, that's so that's what's so interesting about what Democrats are reporting that she said.”

Because on the one hand, it looks on its face like she's tried to protect Trump, but actually she's putting a target on him. Well, I can't talk about it. And the thing is, she was not under oath. She was supposed to be under oath for this conversation, but instead of being a deposition, it turned out to be a transcribed interview. And so she could have said anything in that moment. And she chose to highlight that she just couldn't say anything about Donald Trump. And I think that puts Trump in a tough position, but also it puts Blanch as Trump's lawyer in a particularly tough position.

Because he goes into his confirmation hearings, looking like someone who's covering for Trump. So Nicole, we should probably clarify, we don't know exactly what's in the files about Donald Trump still. We do know that Trump appears thousands of times in the files based on what's been released. There's been a bunch of sort of salacious, but not verified claims that have floated around.

It seems like the key thing that people still don't really know yet is what Donald Trump knew about Epstein and when, which seems critical.

Can you talk a little bit about what we still need to know? What do we know? What's out stand? So we do know that Donald Trump had a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. We know that he knew about Epstein's preference for underage girls. And this is something that the birthday drawing poem that Trump sent to Epstein revealed, right? So there are things that we do know, but a lot that we still don't know.

First of all, we don't know how many mentions of Trump still haven't been released. There are still files that are unreleased. We can't know what they say yet.

“And that's why they're still pushed to continue to release the rest of the files.”

We don't know whether or not Donald Trump is implicated in any criminal activity. At the moment, we have no evidence that he was involved in criminal activity with Jeffrey Epstein. We know that Trump and Epstein talked a lot about their personal sexual predilections. We know that Jeffrey Epstein was involved in the trafficking of underage girls. We don't know what Donald Trump knew and when he knew it as you were saying. And that goes to the extent that Trump was covering up for Jeffrey Epstein.

And that's what people want to know.

And honestly, Greg, I think it's something we never will know the full extent of.

even if they were to release every single piece of paper that they have unredact everything. But people would still think that something else is hidden, something else is being covered up. This has become an unfalsifiable sort of conspiracy about Trump because of the stonewalling. Right. And we're going to get more because Democrats are now saying that they're going to push for Todd blanch. Just testimony under oath. They've been armed with this new set of claims by Pam Bondi,

throwing him under the boss basically saying he ran the cover up.

She didn't put those words, but that's basically what she said. Todd blanch ran the cover up. I didn't. So I don't know how far this effort to get blanched to testify is going to get with the Republicans control the house. But guess what? And like eight, nine, ten months Democrats might control the house.

“Then you're going to really see an effort to subpoena blanch. And also, I think FBI director Caspatel, if he's still there.”

What do you think will happen? Then Democrats are going to really try to pin down precisely what Trump ordered his underlings to do in terms of the cover up, as well as trying to fair it out whatever else is in there about him, right? That's right. I think when, if and when Democrats are in control of this investigation, they are going to turn much more of their focus to this question of a cover up. What did Pam Bondi know? When did she know it? What did Blanch know? When did he know a Patel Trump?

What did all of these people know? And when did they know it? And what lengths did they go to to ensure that the American people never saw these documents?

To what extent did they fail to follow the law that was passed forcing the Trump administration to disclose the files related to the Epstein investigation? Those kind of cover up questions, I think, are going to be much more the driver of the investigation under Democrats. And Pam Bondi basically laid out the bread crumbs just to go a little broader here.

“It seems like Republican defenses of Trump are crumbling across the board.”

We just saw a judge put Trump's corrupt slush fund for January 6th insurrectionists on hold. Republicans have turned on him over that. They're also not willing as of this recording to support taxpayer funding for Trump's ballroom. Both those things have badly alienated Republicans. Now you've got sort of whatever effort they were making to protect Trump from further inquiry on Epstein. That doesn't seem to really be working, especially if Democrats take back the house, the Republican defenses are going to more or less vanish.

What do you make of the moment we're in right here? It sort of seems like there's a split screen of sorts. On the one hand, Trump still has this iron grip on the Republican primary electorate in the sense that he can just sort of snap his Twitter fingers or truth social thumbs or whatever. And just have someone get knocked off in a primary for crossing him. So he's got that. He's able to control Republicans to that degree. But on the other, more and more, you're seeing the party as a whole as the elections approach.

“Start to worry more about voters outside the MAGA bubble.”

And so all that control he wields over Republican primary voters isn't translating into control over the party. I wonder what you think of this moment. It's a fascinating moment because of all of the cross pressures.

Cross pressures that we didn't necessarily see in the first Trump administration.

So on the one hand, you have the cross pressures of the base. Donald Trump has not been serving the interests of the base in a number of ways. The Iran war, his relationship with Israel, the Epstein files. These have caused a real split in the MAGA base. It has led to a number of right wing personalities to openly question and criticize Donald Trump more than they had in the past. And then you have this pressure on members of the party, at least members of the party who are from purple districts.

They're plenty of Republicans who are going to be running in deep red districts. They're completely safe once they win their primary with Trump's backing. There's just not a scenario in which they're going to lose that seed. But you are going to have purple district Republicans. Suddenly, again, cross pressured because as Trump's popularity goes down, they're going to need to win centrist and Democrats in order to win their election.

That is going to lead them to criticize. And in an ideal world, maybe even vote against Trump on a couple of different bills. So you see all of that, but I do think we have to reckon with still the reality that he does have this hold on the base and even on his critics. You will listen to Megan Kelly, say, and Tucker Carlson, say the worst possible things about Donald Trump. And then, and with, I mean, I'd still vote for him if the option is a Democrat.

Yeah, and you sort of see that schism inside Pam Bondi in the sense that, you know, he absolutely screwed her royally.

She got tossed out as soon as she was no longer useful. And we should recall that Donald Trump basically commanded her to do something impossible, which was, you know, run the Epstein cover up, and that just wasn't ever going to really succeed in any major way. But then when she failed to be corrupt enough for Donald Trump, he just tossed her out, basically. I want to switch to something a Republican-centered advisor said to the Atlantic, because it's quite a quote. It's about Republicans generally. He said this quote.

The problem is Trump has nobody around him who's willing to tell him, sir, the stuff you are talking about is not possible, and you are shooting yourself in the foot every time.

He essentially has lame ducked himself in pursuit of retribution. Close quote. Nicole, I kind of think that's a striking quote. On the one hand, yeah, right, like he is asking for the impossible, but on the other, you knew that about him. This is none of this is new information.

Right, I mean, for years, he was telling them to do the impossible for him and throwing people out when they failed, you know, the death pot in some way. And now they're essentially fed up, but I do think it's a real thing on the other hand how fed up they are.

“He really has lame ducked himself. And I think, in some sense, there has been a threshold crossed where Republicans are just somewhat, maybe not enough, but somewhat less likely to just fall on the sword for him. Do you feel that way?”

I do to a certain extent, certainly there has been a growing frustration among Republicans and even within parts of the base when it comes to Donald Trump, to the extent that he has lame ducked himself, fantastic term. The extent to which he's lame ducked himself, it is, but by his own making, right, it's not just that he goes off and says crazy things, he started the war in Iran, which sent gas prices and inflation through the roof.

It was a deeply unpopular war, he never tried to garnish any public support for it, and he knew it was an issue that would fracture his base, because he was supposed to be the no new war's president.

So you have all of that and you're like, okay, this is a man who has shot himself in the foot, he's thrown away the final few years of his presidency.

“So all of that, I think we have to take, take in and to a certain extent, celebrate because it's a weakening of Donald Trump.”

And here's my caveat, my caveat is, Donald Trump is not somebody who's ever believed in majorities, he's not somebody who believes in democracy, he's not somebody who believes that Congress has to give him the say so for what he does, he's not somebody who respects courts or congressional investigations or impeachment hearings. So in a certain sense, he is still quite dangerous as somebody who holds the presidency and has a diminished base of power, because it invites him in his mind to use executive power to the health and to break laws, damn the consequences.

Well, you've been observing the right for a long time, and I think what all this adds up to is the following, we all know that the real story here, the thread running through everything is that Trump is on his way out. What we're looking at is a MAGA movement that knows that it's losing the one unifying force that held it together, the one thing that brought it into existence, the one thing that has sustained it, every other effort to create a new MAGA Republican leader has failed miserably, look at Prondesantis and look at JDVans, he's struggling mightily with this, can you just reflect a little on the future direction of MAGA.

“Now that Trump has number one, essentially, you know, screwed the movement in every which way betrayed the movement in every which way number one and number two is going to be gone soon. Where does this all go?”

Right, I mean, even though Trump is sort of positioning himself as a competitive authoritarian leader, he still has an actuarial clock, like even if he tries not to leave the office, like the man is approaching his 80s and there's a finite amount of time that he's still going to be with us. I'm so Trump will leave the stage at a certain point. He might still make his feelings about politics known, but there isn't a charismatic leader to pick up his pick up his torch. But he has helped to continue the commitment of the Republican party to minorityarian politics. He didn't invent this, but it has accelerated rapidly under Trump. We've seen this with the Supreme Court rulings on Jerry Mandarin.

And that actually kind of works in the favor of this very unpopular Republican party. They are going to lose the sort of focal power of Trump and his ability to pull together his particular coalition.

But he is also leaving behind a politics that doesn't require them to win majorities.

“And I think we should be happy that there is not a charismatic authoritarian leader posed poised to take Donald Trump's place.”

And we should be worried about the minorityarian politics that he leaves behind because even the Republican party that's not entirely bought into Donald Trump at this moment is 100% but into ruling as a minority.

And that's something that I think we should be keeping our eye on.

“Yep, it's sure alarming when you think of it that way. Those tendencies are going to be with us for a long, long time. And as I've said a million times on here, I think after Trump's gone, our politics gets even crazier.”

Nicola Hammer, it's always enormous pleasure to talk to you. Thanks so much.

Thanks for having me, Greg.