"It doesn’t even seem like he believes it anymore than we do"

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The golden age of America begins right now. You've seen nothing yet. We're going to do better and better and better. This is the golden age of America. This is indeed the golden age of America. This is the golden age of America. I think that we can honestly say, and I think you're going to see it even more so over the next 12 months, that this is the golden age of America. If only, I think most of us would settle for silver or bronze at this point. Hi again, everybody. It's five o'clock in New York. Actually, judging by Donald Trump's tone, he's not even that into it anymore. Like, I don't even think he thinks it's golden at Mar-a-Lago. Any more than any of us do. Despite Donald Trump's claims, though, or the fact that that line is still in his speeches, more and more polls make clear that the vast majority of Americans, including many people who voted for Donald Trump, believe that the only goal they're seeing is all that stuff behind Donald Trump's head when he speaks to the country in the White House. As a record number of Americans are now reporting financial hardship due to Donald Trump's economy and blaming him and the Republican Party. for all that economic anxiety. New polling by Gallup finds that 55% of all Americans say that recent price increases have caused them financial hardships. And that's not getting any better anytime soon. That number includes 15% who say that hardship has been severe. A record number, 55%, say their financial situation. is getting worse daily. Gallup notes that this quote marks the fifth consecutive year. More Americans say their finances are worsening rather than improving. The only similar multi-year period when the larger share felt their financial situation was worsening was during the Great Recession. Voters are particularly angry about Donald Trump's rising gas prices due to the war with Iran. 81% of Americans say they have felt financial strain due to the increased prices at the pump. And if you thought that there was about to be some good news for Trump and the Republican Party, you'd be wrong. 63% of Americans place a good or great deal to blame on Donald Trump. That includes a healthy chunk of his own party. 32% of Republicans blamed Donald Trump for the rising gas prices. But amid all these flashing yellow and red warning signs that Americans... are really suffering and feeling real financial pain because of Donald Trump's decisions and holding Trump and Republicans accountable for it. What does that party do? Well, their plan is to try to get Americans to fork over $1 billion with a B dollars for Donald Trump's big, pretty golden ballroom. He thinks it's pretty. That's why he keeps carrying it around with him. The Republican Party's outright refusal to tell their emperor that he has no clothes, even as he drives their own voters away, is where we start the hour. Puck News, senior political columnist and national affairs analyst, John Heilman is back with us. Also back with us. Media Matters for America, President Angelo Carason is here. And joining us after a long time away, U.S.A. Today columnist, Kirsten Fowers is here. Kirsten is so nice to see you again. Tell me, this is your expertise. Like, where, where?

Where is the public on this? And to me, it feels cumulative, but that may be because I can sort of stack the plates on top of each other. Is this really sort of a product of people driving by and seeing those gas numbers in front of them in their face every day? Look, I think that's making it a lot worse. It is cumulative. This has been going on, as you said, for the last five years. And I think Americans have been feeling it. And it's been growing harder and harder. And then you have a situation where Donald Trump chooses to start a war that causes gas prices to go up. And you have 80% of people saying that this is making things difficult for them at home in terms of their budget. I mean, that's... That's kind of a shocking number. If you're the Republicans, you have to be very, very scared by that. The fact that people are so unhappy about the economy and gas prices are always bad news if you're in the incumbent party. You know, Don Heilman, the other piece of it is that there's no acknowledgement of what Kirsten just laid out, right? There's no, forget Bill Clinton's, I feel your pain, you know, and forget Joe Biden's not successful, but many, many attempts to communicate with the country about the economy. The Republicans' plan is to sneak in $1 billion for his golden ballroom. That's it. Well, you said it before, Nicole. I mean, there's a chance. There's a chance that what Trump meant when he said it was going to be the golden age of America. When he meant all along was he was going to have a lot of gold in the White House that he was actually just, he was never thinking about anything besides. Plenty chance. I'm going to have everything's going to be gold here at the White House. There's a chance. I mean, you know, he's, he's, you know, it like, you know, it would play. directly into the narcissism and the solipsism and the egotomania that is him. He can't, he never, can't really see anything beyond the nose on his face. So maybe that's true. I sort of jest, but yes, I mean, I would say, and people will get mad when I say this, because I've said it before, they always get mad. You know, there is, there was a period after which Joe Biden decided, you know, when he, he, he. started to become convinced of the notion that he had to sound a little bit more Clintonian to use your feel their pain rhetoric. But there is something, there was a period of time in that early part of the Biden administration where, you know, there were all kinds of discussions about how Bidenomics was working and about how, well, our inflation rate isn't as high as the rest of the world. There were a lot of citations of statistics. And Joe Biden is not the first. president who's tried to do that. He's said he's not the last because we're seeing Donald Trump do it even without the fakes, even without the statistics, they just keep trying to say that if we keep telling you that everything's better than it was before I came in office, that you'll believe it. And I think the biggest difference between Biden and Trump, right, is that is that Joe Biden did not run on lowering prices. Joe Biden was coming out of the pandemic. He ran on normalcy.

ending the reign of Donald Trump and ending the pandemic and getting past the pandemic. And people were, the attempt there as a message thing was to try to get people to understand that after a once-in-a-century pandemic, there was going to be economic pain, that there was going to be a period of transition. And all of that stimulus that went into the economy was going to have an inflationary effect. Donald Trump made this the center. We've said this 100 times. We've said it once. It's the craziest thing about it is that is not that he. It continues to call it the gold page, but that he doesn't seem to remember that this was the centerpiece of his campaign in 2024. And that raises the bar of how much acknowledgement you would need. You wouldn't just need to acknowledge that there was pain at the pump and that there was pain in the grocery stores and that mortgage interest rates are still too high. You would have to say... I know I made you this promise. I know this was the central thing that I ran on. But now let me try to explain to you why I haven't been able to deliver and why it's worth it. if he wanted to make that argument for the war in Iran. That is the thing that nothing, none of those pieces of the argument have been laid out, not an acknowledgement of the original promise, not the challenges of fulfilling the promise, not why it might be worth it to endure a temporary pain for long-term geostrategic or political gain. You know, none of those things have been made. And that is why, you know, I've been sent on the show for, you know, the last few months, at least since the beginning of the year. that the time between now and the midterms is shorter than it looks. And that once you got to Memorial Day, everything's going to be locked in, you know, with the possible exception of if you have a Martian invasion or something. But basically, like, the politics are locked in. Don't roll anything out of it. There hasn't been much legislating. Right. Well, yeah. Can you imagine Marco Rubio trying to repel the Martians from the White House law? And that would be quite a spectacle. Might be the only thing that could repair his reputation after today. You know, the reality is there hasn't been much legislating anyway, Nicole, and there's not going to be any going forward. Everyone's going to be focused on the politics starting, you know, at the end of this month. It's we're there, right? Yeah. This stuff is now locked in. And there's, and the fact that even if you were trying hard, changing the politics around this would be incredibly hard in the public perception, they are not even trying, which is why, again, if we put redistricting aside for a minute, why the wind and weather in the politics right now are so viciously against the Republicans who are going to be running for reelection this November. I mean, Angela, this, though, is where I feel like the historical parallels come up short. They're not trying to fix anything because they are part of a party where you can't acknowledge a problem. And in the same way that we actually have to, with a straight face, cover Donald Trump's war of words with the Pope, we have to cover his indifference to people's economic.

anxiety and suffering. And it is, it is something that he is a combination of oblivious to and disdainful of. He's oblivious to real economic anxiety and peril and choosing between groceries and prescriptions and choosing between, you know, a car road trip and staying home. Like, he has no ability to understand what that is like for, for family. He's also indifferent and a little angry that people are mad about that. because he's doing great and important stuff. So it's not just that they don't have the time to fix it. Donald Trump is at a personality level incapable of accepting it's a problem and working on its solution. I guess my question for you is, are all the betrayals now, back to sort of my stacked plays? Are there too many? Or do they have to just try to divert attention somewhere else? I think you said something earlier about the cumulative effect. And that's right. And there's some evidence for that. So, you know, Trump's numbers amongst the faithful, the diehards, have been around, you know, 88% or so for a while. There's now been a net 15% drop point there. So it's still pretty high, but amongst the faithful, but that's a big change. And it's the first time you're really seeing any indication that the edges are starting to fray. And that's new. That's a new twist. And if you then layer that in with what we're facing in front of us, and we can't ignore that. Because the reality is, today is the best day it's going to be for a while. when it comes to gas prices and costs. It's not going to get better in the short term. As people get prepared for their Fourth of July, as Trump is taking that brand new plane and people are thinking about their barbecues and all that Fourth of July weekend travel, gas prices are going to be worse. Costs are going to be higher, and Trump's going to be doing a gigantic UFC party in Washington, D.C. while riding around a brand new plane. It's going to be a really big disconnect. And so that little bit of sensitivity amongst even his faithful are now going to have to start wondering. Why is this guy so detached from us? And I think to me, the real question that I have, is when did people start blaming those? Because we already know about Trump. Everybody does, you know. And people, they knew that when they got in that he didn't really care. But they were on the ride because they were in it for the grievance and for the revenge and for the vibes, you know. And because they thought maybe he would do some things on the economy like Trump 1.0 that made them feel good. Like the rebates that some of them are getting now that are now been totally gobbled up by these increased costs. And I've been watching a lot of local news lately. And people are complaining about that. Money that they were expecting to have in their pockets as a result of some of these changes and tax cuts and rebates, they're gone. They're already been evaporated. And so they're disappointed. There's a lot of disappointment there. But I wonder why and when people will start blaming the rest of the Republicans, because they're still acting as if Trump's numbers have not changed. They're being just as coldly indifferent and terrible as Trump has been. And that their conspensary, they know they're heading into a bus saw, but for some reason, they have not done this normal reflex of politics, which is to say no.

I can't do that. I need to change. And they could have prevented this. They could have intervened at any point. But as you noted, they haven't just gone along with it. They're enthusiastically embracing all these nonsensical things like this new ballroom. And obviously, there's some force with Trump's some of these logistic plans and trying to drive in. And that's the part where I think we haven't seen that spillover effect yet. People know about Trump. They're there in that. I think those edges are going to continue to fring. You know, what happens once it starts, it continues unravel. He's not able to make it better. But when does it start to transfer to the rest of the Republicans? Because they are not feeling the heat. I am bullied that we're seeing some local news coverage that has been truly changed in the last few days. And I do think that's very notable. Well, I mean, Chris and Angela talked about the vibes. Like these are the vibes in the Oval Office with children. Let me show you what happened yesterday. Next year, I'm going to be trying to do powerlifting. Oh, wow. That's awesome. And you'll never compete against women in powerlifting. That's right? Did you see that they had a man in powerlifter? He decided to go the opposite direction, took a record, stood for 18 years. He beat it by 119 pounds. Okay. They put the little quarter of an ounce, quarter of an ounce. To 18 years he stood. This guy came, he was a failed power lifter. But he went on the other side and he decided that he wanted to go into women's sports and he broke the record by 118 pounds. I think that's fair? So I don't think we have to worry about you. How about you? What sport do you? I play volleyball, and in the summer I'm trying to get into soccer. Wow. And with your height, do you smash the ball, the volleyball? Do you get up high? Can you jump high? Not very. Soccer might be better. I don't want to do it. I'm just looking. I think she'd be a great soccer player. That's good. Good luck.

There may be some people who like that, but vibes-wise, I mean, the guy is just a walking liability wrapped in absolute off-kilter weirdness. I mean, again, this was not leaked audio. That was great. I wasn't quite sure what to say, and I think off-kilter weirdness pretty much nails it, Nicole. I mean, it's just so bizarre. Right? That this is the presidency of the United States and this is what he's choosing to have a conversation about with a child. Yeah, it's just like how many weird things can President Trump do is really the question because it just seems to be never ending. And there's no bottom. There's no bottom. And I guess, I mean, Angela, to your point, the power of Trumpism, right, was held up by. really by two things, the vibes, which you mentioned, and the truth never seeping out. You know, whether Epstein is the chicken or the egg, I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to figure it out. But through the betrayal over Epstein, they're realizing that the economic promises were a lie, no forever wars was a lie. You know, he's stuffing money in his pockets. He's enriching his family. Couldn't care less about gas prices. But the vibes are all off. I mean, that was really weird. And again, this is not secret video. This wasn't a gotcha. This was a open press event at the White House. And the president could not look more out of touch and bizarre. Yeah, and I think the so what of all that is that as you noted, that he needs to maintain this story and it's like the truth never gets out. And then you also carry water or backfill for his storyline so that you are sort of at least keeping people somewhat on the same page. And a lot of the people that were supporting him are in the larger right wing podcast space, the manosphere, they're not anymore. And they are actually letting some of the truth out. So they are complaining about gas prices. His own supporters are talking about it more. They're talking about costs in the economy, which is why then you're starting to see even his diehards, which people, and I've been one of them, and I still think, you know, there's always going to be people that are never going to move. But the idea that the edges are framed, that parts of his base are saying, okay, now this is too much for me, is a real inflection point that we haven't actually seen yet in all throughout this Trump thing. That's to me the so what of the vibes being off. It makes these weird moments, you know, and there's plenty of like short. fall for a political thing there, but the consequence of that is that there's a bunch of people that are like, I don't want to carry any water for him. I mean, how much street fighting do you see JD Vance doing right now? You know, that used to be his full-time job. The first year of this term, he was on Twitter every boom boom. Now he's not doing that anymore. He's not doing, he's not as aggressive. And I think that's a reflection of, like you said, the vibe is being off. All right, former President Barack Obama has entered the chat. We'll show you what that looks like. No one's going anywhere. Much more with the panel as Americans increasingly reject Donald Trump's claim.

that the country is in some sort of golden era. Also ahead for us more on our exclusive new reporting about how Kash Patel's FBI is being used to investigate journalists. We'll talk to a member of the House Judiciary Committee about what the FBI is actually doing. And later, what Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told the House Oversight Committee today about his interactions with Jeffrey Epstein. Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere. A good policy that I'd like to see followed is that the President of the United States shouldn't have a bunch of side hustles that those companies and foreign entities can invest in. How much of that is just jealous that you didn't think of selling a sneaker? Because your sneakers were flown. You know that, right? You would have banked coin. I just, I mean, I thought this was a pretty obvious principle. We're back with John Angelo and Kirsten. John Heilman. You know, Obama in his way hits on something that I think gets it why we, we in the media, are kind of late to hammer home how bizarre it is for Trump and his kids to be enriching themselves in gobsmacking gluttony. It was a normal principle to not steal from the taxpayers while you had the privilege of running the country. Trump has it all upside down. He thinks the privilege is ours to have him as president and that the planes from foreign countries. The East Room, which he bulldozed, the assets of the American people, the people's house are his. Yeah. And I think, you know, the mantra that a lot of Democrats have, I think, maybe not quite as forcefully adopted as they could, should, and maybe will, is this notion of the costs. chaos and corruption, right? And all of those are vividly on display. It's not just that they're issues, but they're things that people, and this is something you and I've talked about endlessly, right, which is there have been big visible symbols that have cut through. into normal downstream media consumption, not Bellway Media, not cable news, but where everybody knows about them. You just named a couple of them. And, you know, the notion of, I mean, I think people did not fully appreciate how many people had questions when they heard that he was taking a plane from... a replacement, a much more lavish replacement for Air Force One from a foreign country. I think that actually did cut through to a lot of people. I think obviously the White House ballroom, which when it first started...

When that story first broke, we thought, I wonder if this will really break through. But all of it, you know, the total destruction of the East Room, the fact that he continues to go on social media and try to justify it with his spare time. When he's not changing course on Iran on a dime for no good reason whatsoever, he's constantly going back. It's like an itch. He can't stop scratching. And every time he scratches it gets worse because now the absurdity of it, the ludicrousness of it and the obscenity of it. is even greater. Because now the one thing that he said, I'm not going to tear down the East Room, I'm not going to tear down the White House. He tore down the East Room. He lied about that. And then he said, well, the one thing you should take comfort is the fact there's going to be no taxpayer dollars involved. And now we're finding out that's going to cost taxpayers another billion dollars on top of the $250 billion, what we spent on this Iran war. All of those issues come together in various ways because the Epstein story is about corruption. The East Wing, and that's cut through as much as anything out there. The East Wing story is about corruption. They're all chaos stories. And then the cost stories kind of get intermingled because so much of the corruption, and this is what I think Obama's talking about. It's not just that the president has... Shouldn't have side hustles. Obviously, the president should not have side hustles. And this is one of the least well-covered things of the whole of Trump's two terms in office. But it's that he has these side hustles. He's doing them out in the open at a time when I go around up here in my upstate purple part of New York. I go around to drugstores and supermarkets. And all of a sudden, I'm seeing people like using coupons. in a way that I haven't seen in a really long time. You know, we're all familiar with seeing senior citizens who are Kupkin gutters, right? You know, coupons never went away. But now it's like I see, it's like every time I'm in a line for anything, literally today at the supermarket, everybody in line is digging through their pockets for coupons because they're so stretched financially until for those people, especially kind of slightly embarrassed like yuppies in their 30s and 40s who. I don't think have ever used a coupon before in their lives, but now they're trying to make ends meet and they're making all these cost tradeoffs because of how expensive everything is and how bad the economy is and how tenuous their employment is. And they look up and see the self-enrichment, the self-dealing, the crypto grips, the meme coins, the predictions markets that Donald Trump Jr. sits on the board of that people are clearly doing insider trading on. All of it. And then the Easter room is the kind of the cherry on the Sunday. I think it's not just that they think he's out of touch. They think he's like spitting in their face. And I think that is a sin. Out of touch is something you can fix. Contempt for voters is unfixable. And that's when you start to be in the terminal slide that you can never get out of when people start to think you're taking their trust and kicking them in the private bits. The nuts. I mean, I think, Angela, there were many profound points to Halman's answer. But one of them is the humiliation of economic desperation. And my earlier point that Trump didn't understand it is one thing, right? To become president, lots of people are in.

politics for a long time and you can end up out of touch. But, I mean, Halman named some of them, the crypto scam, the prediction markets, the meme coins, the new airport deal with Palm Beach Airport. He's going to start making like airport products, like I don't know, neck pillows. I don't know what that means. The ballroom, golf courses. I mean, self-dealing tournaments to his golf courses. The drone company that his son is on the board of that just got a Pentagon contract. And I made this list literally in the last 90 seconds. The self-dealing, the grotesque money grab from the American taxpayer at a time when people who, as Tom Homan's reporting, have never needed coupons at the grocery store, are trying to stretch their very dollar as far as it can possibly go. is politically criminal. I mean, what do you think the voter reaction and response will be if we have a normal and secure election? It's going to be intense, right? I mean, know that because, and this is, it's the inverse of what gave Trump a lot of juice and power to begin with, which is that he had a great story in some ways. You know, he represented American dream, you know, the idea that you could get all these, get fabulous, wealthy, you could be associated with it. And part of what made him so appealing to something that was what the apprentice is all about. And what made it sort of fun for people to participate in that is that it was still a possibility in your mind, even if it felt far off. It still felt possible. But when you create a living nightmare for people, that they're forced to be positioned in and then you get rid of it being an accessible dream and you're actually as you noted ripping them off and grifting off of them and so you're making their lives worse and simultaneously enriching yourself as a result of it that storyline breaks and i think that's when he's confused his relationship with people's perceptions about their futures is radically different than it was in the past and so but you know i think that in this moment When people are going to vote, yeah, there's been a lot of, you know, there's only so much Trump that people can deal with it. I get that in terms of like what he can manage in this moment. But this, the rejection will be intense because it's going to be a big crash off of a big high. And they're going to reject that exact dynamic. And this is the one way that they can do it authoritatively by voting, to some extent, against him, you know, against Republicans. I mean, Carson, this is where the Republican bet feels like it breaks bad, right? So they have not, I mean, I used to have, you know, pages full of signal messages from Republicans in Trump 1.0, you know, keep it up. Wish I could say what you can, which is ludicrous. Like, of course they could have about Access Hollywood or about good people on both sides. The thing that they have done, which is to keep quiet and go along, when it comes to his economic indifference, is the thing that's going to get them kicked out of Congress. Yeah, but we know that they don't want to stand up to him. They're afraid of standing up to him. And they have for this and, you know, ever since he's come into office the first time, they just always go along with him. And so I think, you know, they could have the attitude that, well, we're going to lose the house anyway because it's the first midterm, you know, for the president and usually the incumbent, you know, loses. But, you know, that, that's not an excuse because actually what we're talking about, what he's doing, it's immoral behavior, right?

You know, it's maybe technically legal. I mean, we'll, you know, we'll find out. But the fact is it's completely immoral behavior to be doing this, these kinds of things, enriching yourself, spending taxpayer money on things that are not needed while people are suffering, you know, extremely in this country. And, you know, and then I think we also have a have a question around, you know, why we could assume that people. are going to reject Republicans because of this, but are they really endorsing Democrats? Like, that's another conversation because the Democrats are up in the generic ballot, but they're not up as much as they should be, considering what's going on, right? And so there has to be, and this is something Obama talked a little bit about, about how Democrats need to interact with voters. There has to be something for people to vote for also, you know, not just against. Yeah, and the folks that are standing out that are, I think raising the most money and getting the most attention are the ones telling a very specific story, James Talarico, current mayor of New York City, and candidates like that. John Heilman, Angela Carousone, Carson Powers, thank you so much for starting us off this hour. When we come back, a member of the House Judiciary Committee will be here on MS Now's exclusive new reporting about the highly unusual move by FBI, Director Kash Patel, to open a criminal leak investigation into a journalist.

We want to get back to that exclusive new reporting we brought you at the top of our program today. It comes from our colleagues, Carol Lennox and Kandallan, about how the FBI under Kash Patel's leadership has opened a highly unusual criminal leak investigation into a journalist from the Atlantic, Sarah Fitzpatrick, wrote a story about Kash Patel. that he did not like. That Atlantic story was headlined. The FBI director is MIA, and Fitzpatrick spoke to more than two dozen sources to report on Kash Patel's unexplained absences and excessive drinking. According to our reporting, the investigation is, quote, highly unusual because it did not stem from a disclosure of classified information. and because it is focused on leaks to a reporter. Joining me at the table, Democratic Congressman Dan Goldman of New York. He is the former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He's a current member of the House Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees. Congressman, we covered the breaking news in the first hour, but Sarah's out with some new reporting that seems consistent with someone for whom drinking is pretty central to their identity, their Kash Patel branded bottles of... Bourbon or whiskey is that the same thing? Whiskey, whatever, that he gives out to people as gifts. And their answer is everyone does it. I cannot imagine Bob Mueller handing out bourbon. Whose answer is everyone does it? Kash Patel's answer to the new reporting on his sort of signature gift is everybody has gifts like this. Everybody has a... bottle of bourbon that has his initials on it. I mean, this is absurd. No big whoop. Look, I think what is shocking but not surprising is he's doing this again. When there was a story about how he was using the SWAT team to protect his girlfriend, he initiated an investigation into the reporter. Now, this. Very unflattering story comes out, but clearly, deeply, deeply sourced. And he is using the sort of typical Trumpian, I'm going to go on the attack, I'm going to misuse the and abuse my power. And what's crazy about this is what's the leak? What is the leak that some FBI official told a reporter that he was so drunk that he couldn't wake up and that his detail had to wake him up? I mean, that's not a leak of any criminal significance. There's no basis for this investigation. And he is simply abusing the power of his office to get retribution against someone who wrote something unflattering. And it's just more and more of the same politicized, weaponized stuff that Donald Trump...

Well, you can see, you know, it gets complicated because it has to be a clear quid pro quo for his personal interest for theirs. You know, we know the quick. Back where we started? Yeah, exactly. We're back to 2019 impeachment. But you would have to investigate it. It could be illegal. But there are ways of, you know, you support his inauguration and he leaves your company alone. Exactly. Are you optimistic as you're sort of out there talking to voters about all the damage he's doing in real time much more quickly than the first term? Am I optimistic about the Democratic Party's ability to sort of hold him accountable? I mean, he's got two and a half more years in office. It's a lot of time to do a lot of damage. Well, what I'm optimistic about is we take back the majority and, you know, people like Jamie Raskin and I will be leading investigations into into Trump's corruption, into all of the cabinet officials and this gross abuse of power. And we will get to the bottom of a lot of it. And we will reveal it and it will become transparent. And I think part of what people seem to think they give him a pass is because he does it all out in the open. Well, there's a lot he does not do in the open. And when that comes out, it is going to be very bad for him and very bad for the Republicans. And you've done it before. I've done it before. Thank you for spending some time. Thanks for stopping by. Thanks. Great to see your Congressman Dan Goldman. After the break, Howard Lutnick's connection to an interaction with Jeffrey Epstein is under the Congressional Microscope today. I'll tell you how that went. Next.

Quote, that was really embarrassing and, quote, part of the ongoing cover up, those are the reviews from House Oversight Democrats who heard testimony from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick today about his interactions with Jeffrey Epstein. Howard Lutnick sat today for a transcribed interview with the committee and our Capitol Hill reporter Michael Schnell is reporting that he told members he had just three meetings with Jeffrey Epstein and that he never saw him with young women. Howard Lutnick apparently did not remember anything about his visit to Jeffrey Epstein's Island in 2012, the one that yielded this photo, and he has denied any wrongdoing. Michael joins us now. Michael, did he have any explanation for why when he was testifying, he added that detail about going into the island with all of his kids and all of his nannies and, quote, leaving the island with all of his kids and all of his nannies? To our understanding, Nicole, it's unclear if he addressed that part specifically. Of course, what we learned from today's transcribed interview was just what we heard from lawmakers and sources in the room. Certainly something will look towards when the transcript of this comes out and we can look through the full scope of the conversation. But on that point, I mean, one of the matters that both Democrats and Republicans were most interested in during today's transcribed interview was the fact that back in 2005, Howard Lutnick had said that he didn't want to have a relationship. with Jeffrey Epstein anymore. He told the story about going to his apartment and seeing the massage bed, and then Jeffrey Epstein making an untoward comment, and he decided at that moment he didn't want to have a professional or a personal relationship. Well, during today's transcribed interview, I'm told by a source in the room that Howard Lutnick confirmed that he met with Jeffrey Epstein three times, two times after that moment in 2005. at his apartment. And one of the questions was, well, you said you weren't going to have a relationship anymore. So why did you meet with him? And what we are told from Rokane, a member of the committee, was that Howard Lundick made, quote, a farce of the English. language. Essentially, what Howard Lutnick was trying to do here was saying that when he said he wouldn't carry on a personal professional relationship, he meant one-on-one, right? If they were in a room together, just the two of them, essentially trying to make the argument that being on the island with his family, with the nannies, with his children, that was okay because it wasn't a one-on-one personal meeting. Now, Democrats lambasted that idea, saying that it didn't make any sense, saying that he was trying to twist words to make this. to sort of rationalize these visits. So certainly an interesting comment from Howard Lutnick, some others as well. But the news out of it today, him saying he didn't witness anything inappropriate with young women, but very notably noting that he did meet with Howard Lutnick three times. And I'll note on one of those times was, as you mentioned, that lunch on the island with the families, that photograph that you just showed, Howard Lutnick testified. Howard Lutnick testified that he found the invitation to go to that lunch unsettling. He said he had no idea how Jeffrey Epstein's assistant knew that he was on the Virgin Islands and potentially available for lunch. And so despite that, he still attended with his family. So certainly some interesting details from today's transcribed interview. I'm amazed at what island garb looks like. They all look like they're dressed the same. Michael, it's an incredible piece of reporting about...

a really opaque swath of society. Thank you for doing that for us. Quick break for us. We'll be right back. As we did today, we often lead this program with the latest polling. But sometimes the poll misses the heart of the problem. It fails to account for what people mean when they say the economy is important to them or what they want from their politicians. My guest in this week's episode of The Best People actually listens to voters and understands what they mean when they say they don't like how things are going, understands how they feel. Sarah Longwell is the publisher of the bulwark. She's the host of the Focus Group podcast. She's brilliant and she's offered me some much-needed hope about what comes next. Watch. Trump's failure, catastrophic failure, as a political figure, that should taint everybody who propped him up. And, like, that's the best outcome that we can look and say, no, you failed America when we needed you. And that they pay for that with a certain amount of shame going forward that forces the society to recalibrate around. better things. And I think what's why having good politicians come up? You know, the Democratic Party just is the organizing vehicle for the pro-democracy coalition, which means it's going to be big and multifaceted and weird and have a lot of strange bedfellows. I'm looking forward to the Democratic primary because my hope is that somebody fierce and kind is able to like feed the good parts in people and bring us up from there. I'm down for that, fierce and kind. We get into it about who that might be and a whole lot more, so you don't want to miss this episode. It's out now on YouTube. You just scan the QR code on your screen or download this episode wherever you get your podcast. One more break. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for letting us into your homes tonight. We are grateful. Say you've always wanted to have a backyard oasis. Here's the thing. If you get smart with your money, you can do things like that. With Empower, you can start making the most out of your money so you can go out and live a little. Isn't that why we work so hard to have some fun with our money? So use Empower and get good at money so you can be a little bad. Join their 20 million customers today at Empower.com. Not an Empower client paid or sponsored.