Donald Trump’s Epstein Files Reversal

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And he'd tried everything else up until this point. You know, the GOP had tried very hard to short circuit this in other ways. They set up this House Committee oversight probe saying, look, we're already doing an investigation on this. We don't need to release all the files. That didn't really stop this handful of Republicans who wanted to sign the discharge petition. Really, there were four of them in the beginning. Donald Trump did try to arm twist them individually. That didn't work. He tried to put pressure on the caucus as a whole. but it now looks this vote is likely to happen Tuesday afternoon. And now that the dam is broken, there will probably be dozens of Republicans who vote to release it in the end because they feel as though their base wants them to. So in this regard, they're willing to thwart the president. So now he's going to be on their side. I think it's probably smart, Paul. Politically, you potentially tamp this down and you put this behind you. And you also, if Donald Trump is correct, and from everything. we've seen up until now he's not been proven wrong that there isn't anything damning in any of this evidence against him he has insisted he never did anything inappropriate there could be some embarrassing things in there but i guess he's probably placing his thoughts on the fact that Jeffrey Epstein traveled far and wide, and there'll be plenty of things in there that are embarrassing to Democrats as well, too. So let's just throw it all out there. Well, this means that in that House vote, Kyle, I guess estimates are now where it had only been a handful of Republicans who would vote for Democrats for this discharge petition. It's going to be a stampede. And all the Republicans will want to get on the so-called populist side of this. So they'll pass the House with big margins. And then it goes to the Senate, presumably. And hard to see Republicans standing up here to stop this. So it becomes law. Then goes to the president's desk. But that doesn't mean that all these documents are going to be released, right? Because some of this is grand jury testimony, which a judge presumably will have a say on. particularly if it's mere assertion and guilt by association with people. That's why we keep grand jury, raw grand jury testimony secret. And then you're already hearing, inevitably, I guess, oh, well, the Justice Department is just going to essentially scrub all the names of Republicans and Donald Trump references from these documents and just make sure that it's just Democrats who get out. And I mean, there's no way of knowing you can't. prove whether that happened or not. If you're in the Justice Department, it'd be stupid to do that. And I don't think they necessarily will. But in this environment where conspiracies, our theories are rampant, you can almost never disprove. something like this. You always have the next conspiracy. Right. The other thing you're hearing a little bit, too, is now that the Southern District of New York, U.S. Attorney's Office is supposed to be investigating some of this, that maybe there will be some privileges invoked to keep some of this information inside that investigation and not publicly disclosed. But that's the problem of fanning these kinds of populist fires in the media as some of the members of the administration, including Kash Patel before he was FBI director.

back when he was going on these podcasts talking about just tell us who the child predators are. The Biden administration is covering it up. Then they're now in power. And they've been sold a bill of goods, that there's this grand conspiracy. And people expect the current administration to get to the bottom of it. I generally agree with Kim's assessment that the Trump position here is just basically based on the politics. He was standing in the middle of the road trying to stop this parade from coming and decided that it was more politically advantageous to turn around. and pretend he's actually leading it. Who knows what is in all these files? Who knows how credible any of the information is? But the worry is that there's going to be a lot of damage potentially done to people, including victims maybe of Epstein, who might be identifiable, even if their names are not in the documents that are publicly released. Accusations against people that are unverified or unverifiable, a hearsay, stuff like, I was on this Epstein plane, and I think I saw this guy, but I'm not really entirely sure. It could have been him. It couldn't have been him. But just the mere fact that that name is in there is hugely prejudicial. And so that is why the classic MO of the Justice Department is to do the investigation internally, keep all that stuff private, and then bring charges or not. Well, that could be one of the real unfortunate outcomes here is guilt by association, drive by accusations that damage reputations when it's not deserved. But we shall see on this. The question is, will it have any big impact long term on the Trump presidency? My own suspicion is not. Now, obviously, that is contingent on what we learn from the documents. But I suspect not. All right, we are going to take a break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about some of the political fissures emerging inside the mega movement when we come back. Think all wealth managers are the same? Fisher Investments is clearly different. As a fiduciary, Fisher always does what's best for its clients. They don't sell commission-based investment products or make commissions on trades. Their fees are structured so they do better when clients do better. That might be why many of their clients come from other wealth managers. Visit fissureinvestments.com for more. Investing in securities involves the risk of loss. This podcast is brought to you by ReliQuest. Cybercriminals are constantly attacking. They want your data. They want your identity. They want your innovation. RelyQuest fortifies your business with agentic defense, AI that detects, contains, and eliminates cyber threats in minutes. It helps your security team move faster at the work that matters most to protect the business now and delivers insights to help them predict what's next. RelyaQuest. Agentic Defense for the Enterprise. Learn more at ReliQuest.com. That's R-E-L-I-A-Q-U-E-S-T.com. Welcome back on Paul as you go here on Potomac-Watch, the daily podcast of WSJ Opinion, and I'm here with Kim Strassel and Kyle Peterson. All right, let's turn to the fissures in the mega movement. All political movements have their disagreements. Political parties are designed to be large enough tense to contain those disagreements. But there are some notable signs now that mega is beginning to fracture somewhat. And Trump is facing opposition from some of his mega supporters on legal immigration, for example.

on foreign policy, and of course, on releasing the Epstein files. In particular, he's broken with Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican, who used to be his fast friend. Trump denounced her as disloyal on the weekend with through his election endorsement. Let's listen to Congresswoman Green. talk about her disagreements with Trump on CNN. I can say that promoting H-1B visas to replace American jobs, bringing in 600,000 Chinese students to replace American students' opportunities in American colleges and universities, those are not America first positions. And continuing to... really travel all over the world doesn't help Americans back at home. I really, and I said this. to him, and I will say it out loud. I would love to see Air Force One be parked and stay home, and there be nothing but a constant focus in the White House on a domestic agenda that helps the American people once and for all. Well, Kim, I almost hate to put her on a clip since she is so out there on so many issues. I mean, the idea that the president just park that Air Force One baby home and stay there. Maybe you can say here for four. years, see how that works out with American interests around the world. But what do you make of the split between Green and Trump? So my theory on what's actually happened since Trump lost the White House in 2020 over the last five years is that you began to see a lot of younger other politicians on the right, decide that they were going to model themselves after him, not just in terms of this kind of fight and aggressiveness, but that they were going to decide that they were going to triple down. for lack of a better word on this. populist agenda. You know, you put it in quote marks. I'm always careful with that word. But they weren't going to just triple down on trade and triple down on the border, but also go far beyond what Trump ever did in his first term to adopt deeply isolationist views, to become very anti-corporation, to buddy up with big labor, to embrace national industrial policy, all of this in a quest for what they think the working man might want, which is now, you know, the new quest for the Republican party is to win the working man vote. And that's become the rise of this new right or nationalist conservative movement. And

Marjorie Taylor Greene is a poster girl for that movement. So she's constantly berating Trump for spending too much time overseas. Her most recent conspiracy theory is that Israel is the one pressuring Trump to cover up the Epstein files. Domestically, she's been leading the charge for the GOP to extend or actually increase those Obamacare subsidies that the Democrats shut down the government over. So she's very much on the Democratic side of that. She's... criticize domestic executive orders from the administration on issues like environmental concerns, et cetera. And so, She's sort of become much more of almost kind of Bernie Sanders left. And as you note, this crack was always going to come, at least if Donald Trump wanted to try to stand up for his own beliefs. He's allowed himself to be pushed that direction from people who are in his administration, including his vice president, on some of these issues. But there seems to be a wall at which he does not want to go past. And he's beginning to push back on some of this. And he lost it with her this weekend, said he was unendorsing. her and called her out. And it's a very interesting term, but one I think that was almost inevitable, when you start to tell the guy who actually began MAGA, you're not MAGA enough, and you don't know what it means to be America first, you are courting the likelihood that he's going to at some point really take exception to that. Yeah, this is, in some sense, kind of... melodrama politically, Kyle. But there are substantive discreements here. And I point to the legal immigration division on the mega right. I mean, Trump has made his political mark, of course, opposing illegal immigration. But he's always been somewhat supportive about legal immigration because he understands that we need foreign workers in this country because there really is a shortage of workers for employers. Every survey of employers shows that. Trump himself must know this because he hires foreign workers for his hotels and golf courses. So he's sympathetic to some kind of legal immigration. But that is running up against the opposition from some of his mega base who want no legal immigration at all. They want zero. Or they want much less, as JD Vance even has said publicly because we need, in JD Vance's words, to have a much more unified culture. We need a society that... that doesn't have so many divisions, and he thinks immigration fuels that. But that's also a break in the mega coalition between the employer wing. not just big business, but also small business, and the restrictionist wing on immigration. And that is going to be a longer-term policy disagreement that runs right through 2028, I'm sure. Right. And one thing that I think is going on here as well is the difference between being an outsider throwing critiques of the administration and being the person who is actually trying to make some kind of sensible policy, you know, it is easy to be a bomb thrower, backbencher in the house saying,

And Kanye yesterday could have dinner, and he brought Nick. I didn't know Nick at the time. And he did. He came along with a few other people. He brought a few people with him. Meeting people, talking to people for somebody like Tucker Carlson, that's what they do. You know, people are controversial. Some are, some are. Well, Kim, was Trump siding here with Tucker Carlson in interviewing Nick Fuentes, as Steve Bannon and some others think? I think he's not really taking a position, Paul. I think he's dancing around this, which I think is unfortunate. There's been a lot of voices in the GOP that have come out and condemn this and pointed out that, you know, look, even if you're a rabid defender of free speech and you might defend Tucker Carlson's. decision to put this guy on and give him a platform that he at least had an obligation to push back and to be critical of his views. And Tucker Carlson didn't do that at all. And so it was a pretty disgraceful episode all around. I wish that Donald Trump had said this. I think here's a little bit difference when you come to the Fisher. This is the big. difference I see out there is Tucker Carlson has always been very, very clever. And when he does these interviews, he'll put people on that very much espouses Samarica First View, often have conspiracy theories wildly divergent, incorrect views of history. And he lets them speak. But he's pretty careful himself not to criticize the president. And that is what the president cares about, right? I mean, this is one reason he's going after Marjorie Taylor Greene, that she has dared to name him and call him out and criticize him, this is the president seeming to want to not break that relationship with Tucker Carlson, who is influential among a certain group of people. Again, I kind of wish he'd have taken the side that more of the conservative party is taken, which is that we cannot afford to be playing footsie with this kind of really unpleasant crew of people because there is anti-Semitism on the rise and we do need some moral. clarity on this issue. Well, yeah, the Tucker Carlson method is have somebody on no matter what their views, like a historian who says that Winston Churchill was at fault in starting World War II, for example. Yeah. His thing says, hey, hey, look, I'm just asking questions, man. You know, okay. Well, then ask questions of Nick Fuentes, if you have him on that are more than, you know, kind of a... Well, you know, I think you ought to get your message out more, you know, this sort of thing. It was a disgraceful interview. And look, there are some views. I mean, Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson could do what they want. Nobody is censoring them in the least. Right. The question is whether or not the Republican Party and the conservative movement, conservative intellectuals, real or imagined, are going to say, hey, that's fine. No worries. Let's have a representative of the brown shirts on. See what they have to say. Maybe they have something good to say. Hey, let's have somebody from the Red Guards on. You know, they're a serious movement. These kids, maybe they have something to say. There are some ideas you shouldn't mainstream.

particularly if you want to be a political movement that can gather a majority and say you represent the American people. In Nick Fuentes and increasingly Tucker Carlson traffic in anti-Semitic tropes in particular. And that's dangerous. And I don't think the president is at all ill-spirited in any of this. I don't think he's an anti-Semite. I don't think he has, frankly, a racist bone in his body. The guy grew up in Queens and he's been dealing with all people of varying races and creeds and ethnicities this entire life. I think the problem, though, is, as you say, Kim, he doesn't want to get on their bad side. He doesn't want to alienate them. And now when you're talking about these kinds of poisonous views is dangerous, Kyle. Yeah, I mean, it would be nice to see the president take a harder line, though it is good to see that there are others on the Republican side of the aisle who are doing that. Ted Cruz notably standing up and saying that this stuff has no place on the right in the Republican Party. another part of the dynamic here that's going on, not only on this, but these other splits in the MAGA movement and the GOP, part of that also, I think, is related to the fact that we have or will soon have a lame duck president. And there is some jockeying, I think, to figure out what the MAGA movement is supposed to become. after Donald Trump hits his two-term limit and leaves the political scene or at least elected office because he may not leave the political scene. He's probably not going to put down his true social account. But I do think that's part of this dynamic too. I mean, I think Ted Cruz is right about what he says and he believes it. But I also think he's setting himself up to make the argument that, look, it's 2028 and we need to lead the Republican Party back toward a party that can get the mainstream of America. Some of these competing figures maybe in the 2028 primary are too far toward the fringes. Well, we shall see where this goes. I think one other thing that is happening here is that this is all about 2028. And you brought up Ted Cruz, who's, I think, sees an opening here to run against JD Vance, who is very close to Tucker Carlson and has been notably silent so far about the controversy over Tucker Carlson's interview with Nick Fuentes and others. And I think he's going to be reluctant. to criticize Tucker Carlson at all. And we'll see where this debate goes as the race for 2028 unfold. And this is only the early maneuvering, but I think you can see the outlines of how some of this is going to go. All right. Thank you, Kim. Thank you, Kyle. Thank you all for listening. We are here every day on Potomac Watch. Planning for retirement and all the things that go with it can be stressful. That's why Fisher Investments partners with you to understand your unique goals and needs so that they can build a tailored plan that helps you achieve a comfortable retirement. Whether you need help with financial planning, estate planning, tax optimization, or social security, Fisher has specialists to help. Fisher Investments. Now that's clearly different wealth management. Learn more at Fisher Investments.com. Investing in securities involves a risk of loss.