Donald Trump vs The Wall Street Journal

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0:58It's bit.ly, that is bit.ly, and then forward slash AmeriCastFeedback, all one word. bit.ly forward slash AmeriCastFeedback, all one word. For now, though, time for another episode.

1:16Donald Trump has a really familiar playbook for how he handles difficult or unflattering news stories. First of all, he declares it all to be fake news. Then he says he's being targeted by the mainstream media because he represents a threat to their established order. And he persuades all of his supporters that he's being victimized by these agents of the establishment and the deep state who are out to get him personally. And normally this works a treat. They all rally behind him. But for the first time, it's proved to be really ineffective over this Jeffrey Epstein story that just will not go away.

1:56His own base are furious that his administration are refusing to publish the so-called Epstein files. And the latest reporting from the Wall Street Journal is that he's been told his name appears multiple times in those files. So there's a suspicion that maybe that's why he's not publishing all of this material. He's launched a huge libel lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and its owner, Rupert Murdoch. It's a real battle between the president and the press. For the first time, we're going to see who comes out on top. Welcome to AmeriCast. AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. You're gambling with the lives of millions of people.

2:40You're gambling with World War III. President Trump's message is very simple. We are done being taken advantage of. Mr. President, in the name of our God, have mercy upon the people who are scared now. Are you supportive of these onesies? I'm supportive of vaccines. What is happening? Like, this is not America. This is a terrible nightmare. This is what victory feels like. Yeah!

3:13Hello, it's Sarah here in the BBC's Washington Bureau. And it's Anthony right next to you, Sarah, here in Washington. So, Anthony, yet again, we're going to be talking about Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and the story that the White House just cannot get away from. I mean, I'm kind of amazed by this because normally it's Donald Trump who's setting the news agenda. He's so good at that. But no matter what he does, even accusing Barack Obama of treason, he just can't get away from this story. It is remarkable. This thing has developed legs and a life of its own in a way that, honestly, I didn't foresee happening.

3:45I thought this was kind of a sideshow, something that happened years ago and that Trump would be able to move the story on. But a combination of the White House bungling the handling of this from the get go and reporting from major news outlets that has advanced this story, a kind of a drip drip, particularly by the Wall Street Journal in recent days. That has really boosted this into a full blown controversy that is disrupting Washington and creating real headaches for the White House. Yeah, the first bombshell story the Wall Street Journal had was at the end of last week, wasn't it, when they said that they had seen a copy of a lewd letter that Donald Trump had sent to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday.

4:25And that it even included mentions of secrets that they shared. And at that point, we then saw quite a traditional move from Donald Trump, which was to lash out at the media, declare it all to be fake news and launch a really huge lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, his sometime frenemy, I guess, for$10 billion he wants from that. $10 billion with a B. Yes, exactly. And at that point, you know, that's a fairly familiar script. Here's the establishment press attacking the MAGA president. His supporters will get behind him saying he's just being victimized by the establishment, by billionaire Rupert Murdoch.

5:04You know, we're going to fight for our guy. But that even that doesn't seem to have worked. And then the Wall Street Journal have another story that they drop. Yeah, exactly. It came out overnight last night that Donald Trump was told by Pam Bondi, his attorney general, months ago when they were doing their initial investigation into this, that Donald Trump's name was among many in these so-called Epstein files. And and Donald Trump just in July, earlier in July, had denied that he had been told by anyone that that his name was in there. And so it's I think it's another one of these instances where a new revelation also indications of maybe a cover up.

5:46That story also talked about how Kash Patel, the head of the FBI, was going around telling other people that Donald Trump's name was in these documents. So it wasn't it wasn't a closely held secret within the administration, which raises a question of how many people knew about this ahead of time, knew about this when Donald Trump denied it to reporters who were asking. And how did they handle all of this when it was when it was kind of bubbling around before it became a story? I think we should maybe just pause here for a second and describe what we think the Epstein files are. There is things that we've actually had revealed or leaked, which is Epstein's address book, address tome, really.

6:25I mean, it's thousands of names of people that Epstein had contact with, whether it was a physical therapist in Boca Raton or Donald Trump, whose name is in this document, Ehud Barak, the former prime minister of Israel. I mean, it's a who's who of influential people around the world and then some kind of random people that Epstein had interacted with. So right there, you know, that could be what we're talking about here, that Donald Trump's name is in here. We also know that Donald Trump, he has said that he flew on Epstein's jet. We don't know the breadth of the documents here. We know there are grand jury transcripts from interviews.

7:03But it's a trove of information because we don't know exactly what's in it and what it could contain. What were they found at all of these residences that Epstein had? It is fruitful grounds for conspiratorial theories. Yeah, and the conspiracy goes, there wasn't just an address book, there was a client list, basically a list of men to whom Jeffrey Epstein had supposedly supplied young women for sex, and that he could use this for blackmail, maybe was using this for blackmail, because these were often powerful and influential people who knew what was being covered up and what he was manipulating these people into doing.

7:37And that spawned this great conspiracy theory, basically, about a kind of worldwide deep state cover up about child sex abuse and all of these powerful men. And that's what MAGA supporters were waiting to have revealed, wasn't it? That's what they wanted to see. And the Justice Department then a couple of weeks ago turned around and said they were not going to see because actually there wasn't really very much in it at all. Yeah. And it's not just documents, printed documents. Apparently, there are DVDs and DVDs with labels like Young, Name Redacted and Name Redacted, which also, I mean, you could let your imagination run wild about what could be contained in there.

8:14And that is also one of the reasons why officially the Justice Department is saying and Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, who is kind of squashing attempts to subpoena or request this data for a congressional inquiry, saying why this can't be revealed, because it does contain personal information about some of the victims in this crime and possibly child pornography related to some of these crimes. and they can't just dump it all out there on the public domain. It could be very harmful for the people who live through this. The suspicion is going to be, isn't it, that with this story that Donald Trump's name is mentioned, even though we already know from other documents that his name's in them, that he personally is trying to cover something up.

8:57Now, that is not inferred in the Wall Street Journal story, but that's what's going to get into people's minds who are already eager to see this information and disappointed that it's not being released. Right. And part of it is the way Donald Trump has handled this. We've talked about this before, his quick move to cut off a question on Epstein at a cabinet meeting that was directed to Pam Bondi, I think. His denial of being told by Pam Bondi and the Justice Department that his name was in these documents, which if you believe this Wall Street Journal account, it was not true. You know, we have had some pretty firm denials from the White House that this is there's anything here.

9:39I think Stephen Chung, who is the White House communications director, said that this is another fake news story referring to the Wall Street Journal, just like the previous story by the Wall Street Journal. They've denounced all of this. Trump has gotten very defensive about this, pointing the finger at Barack Obama and Joe Biden and former FBI director James Comey, saying that all of these files have been made up by then. And there there might be anything that comes out is clearly a hoax that is designed to damage him in the same way he says that the Russia investigation was a hoax designed to damage him.

10:13He wants to paint this as one big conspiracy to disrupt his presidency, which, as you mentioned before, has worked in the past to rally his base around him. And it seemed like maybe it would help this time once that first Wall Street Journal story came out. But that hasn't been the case. The story has continued to grind along. Now, when the Wall Street Journal story dropped yesterday, I'm sure you were as surprised as me. And it happened quite late in the day when we were all preparing our sort of evening reports. And what we have to do in those circumstances where one news outlet has got an exclusive story like that is work out whether or not we're going to report the fact that they've got it.

10:52How credible does it seem to us? You know, have they listed the sources and how they found the story? Can we read between the lines and see how certain this is and basically whether it's worth mentioning on our bulletins before we're able to verify ourselves independently? Because sometimes the story is just so big. Once it's out there, you've got to mention it, even if you haven't bottomed it out yourself, with all the caveats that we would put around that. And my first thought was, wow, Donald Trump's already launched a$10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal for a story they published last week.

11:24They've got to be really, really, really sure about this one before they would print it. Right. And before they printed that first one, because we had already had a track record of major media companies being sued by Donald Trump and them being forced to settle rather than take it to trial because of all the different kinds of pressure Trump can bring. And, you know, we've never had a decision on the merits of these lawsuits Trump has bought. But clearly the corporate ownership of, say, CBS, which is Paramount, that's looking at doing a merger, and ABC, which is worried about regulations, they decided that it was cheaper to just pay the$15 billion or thereabouts in each of these cases than to have to drag this out in the court of law.

12:07And there could be a feeling on the Trump side and a concern among the Wall Street Journal side that a similar dynamic would play out here. But the fact that they went through with this and published it, even though Donald Trump made a call to Rupert Burdock, whose news corp owns the Wall Street Journal, urging him not to publish the story and then very quickly launch this lawsuit. The journal must must have checked all of their evidence, dotted all their I's and crossed their T's to make sure that they had an ironclad case to go forward, because it's no surprise that that this lawsuit came and and that Donald Trump was pushing forward.

12:45although there are concerns if Donald Trump actually pursues this lawsuit. He might be deposed, asked about what he knew about Epstein, you know, why this letter was fake, which he's alleging. All of that could open up a can of worms that I don't know if the president wants to go into. It's a window also, though, into the long term relationship between Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch. They're kind of symbiotic relationship. I mean, it feels to me like They're men who both need each other. And they've fallen out at various times. And Rupert Murdoch hasn't always been entirely supportive of Donald Trump's candidacy or presidency.

13:20But they can't get away from each other. And largely because Rupert Murdoch, of course, owns Fox News, where so much of Donald Trump's base gets its information. And it also has been more and less supportive of him. But I think it shows us Rupert Murdoch's a newsman first, isn't he, who will print a very, very good story if he has one, even if it does damage his relationship with the president of the United States. And also that this is someone Donald Trump can't push around. He can't control him. Remember when Trump first ran for president in 2015 and that first debate, it was Megyn Kelly, who at the time worked for Fox News, that really came after him on his history of misogynist statements, pushed him on that.

14:01One of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don't use a politician's filter. However, that is not without its downsides, in particular when it comes to women. You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals. Your Twitter account is several - Only Rosie O'Donnell. No, it wasn't. Trump later on would skip a Fox News debate, primary debate, before the Iowa caucuses as kind of retribution for that. Then Trump became the nominee and Fox started more kind of positive coverage of the president and throughout his first term. Then in the aftermath of the 2020 election and Trump's attempts to to question the legitimacy of his loss, it was very complicated for Fox News or it divided the newsroom.

14:52The hard news people didn't want to touch any of that. Some of the people who who were talking heads like Sean Hannity were very much in favor of boosting what Donald Trump was saying. You know, it led to lawsuits that exposed all of this. When Trump ran for reelection in 2023, at first, Fox and some of the Murdoch Empire outlets like the New York Post really were not positive about his his attempts to seek office again. They backed Ron DeSantis, a lot of glowing coverage in the New York Post of Ron DeSantis early on, like he was going to be the one that they threw their support behind. when DeSantis flamed out, they had to do a very quick pivot to supporting Trump again.

15:36And once again, he had positive news coverage from all of Murdoch's empire on Trump. And now that he's back in the White House, it seemed like they were supportive. But this is clearly going to create a very major break between Murdoch and Trump, one that as long as the Wall Street Journal keeps pushing ahead, it's going to be hard to recover from. It's fascinating how, to me, how the personal dynamics of this can work. I mean, the way you've laid that out, it sounds like, you know, a bunch of political and corporate decisions, which is, you know, what they were. But there is a personal dynamic in this.

16:08These are men who speak to each other, who've known each other for decades, I assume. And we've seen Robert Murdoch around recently. He was in the White House sitting on the edge of the Oval Office at one event a few weeks ago. I remember seeing him. And I think he was in the FIFA box with Donald Trump at the final of that football thing, soccer thing, whatever it was the the world club championship yes um club world cup i'm told in my ear um what a shame justin's not here to fill us in on all the soccer person though he's rugby he knows less than us about soccer um anyway we digress i mean so obviously they do still socialize together although that's probably not going to happen anytime soon so i mean we and what will that mean then for coverage of Donald Trump on all of these Murdoch-owned outlets if they're going through this massive libel battle?

17:02That is really, really fascinating. Yeah, I'll be curious to see what kind of pressure the administration tries to bring on News Corp, because legally it seems like Wall Street Journal is on firm grounds publishing this. It would be very difficult for Donald Trump to pursue this lawsuit without it. One, giving the story even more legs, keeping it in the headlines, but also risk exposing things about Donald Trump's relationship with Epstein that he may not want to get out there because they did have a relationship. And there was CNN had new footage that came out earlier this week of Epstein at Donald Trump's wedding to Marla Maples in the 90s and them at a Mar-a-Lago club later on in the 90s.

17:47They traveled in the same circles and they did seem to be friendly with each other. So that's the kind of stuff that I don't think would help Trump coming out politically. But is there a way for Trump to put the screws to News Corp and Rupert Murdoch in a way that he did with Paramount as well, where they have other things they're worried about and they want to just make this go away? But again, the Wall Street Journal went into this clearly with clear eyes. They knew what was coming. Murdoch had a phone call from Trump. he knew what was coming and they did it anyway. So, I mean, that is kind of the big plot twist here that this story is being driven not by CNN or some liberal news outlet.

18:26This is being driven by the Wall Street Journal, which is very difficult to paint as some sort of leftist rag. And you mentioned a couple of the other lawsuits that Donald Trump has taken against journalists, essentially broadcasters. And it's probably worth just reminding our AmeriCast is what's happened there, because a lot of people are worried that it is having a chilling effect on corporate owned news entities, essentially. So we've got ABC News. He was suing them because one of their news anchors, George Stephanopoulos, said that he had been found liable for rape in New York. Now, it wasn't technically rape.

19:02It was a sexual assault, because that's the way the law is written in New York. But in many other places, exactly what he was found responsible for doing would be characterized as rape. So a lot of people thought that was a highly defensible case, that ABC could go to court and defend that. But instead, they chose to settle and pay Donald Trump$15 million. And then you were mentioning there was one with CBS as well. Yeah, the CBS one was a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, Vice President Kamala Harris, which Trump alleged had been selectively edited. And we've talked about this in more detail in the past.

19:37But again, editing, editing an interview is part of a editorial process that news organizations do. And it's the lawsuit was alleging that this was some sort of a false, false business practice and sued in a Texas court with a conservative judge. But Paramount also was at the time is still is involved in a merger that they need the federal government to approve. And so the pressure was on from from the corporate managers, overlords, whatever you want to call them, to make this go away or Trump may not settle the lawsuit. And we saw that they agreed to give a 16 million dollar settlement to Donald Trump's library.

20:20Also, we just found out in a true social post recently from Donald Trump that it may be more than 16 million dollars. He says that they anticipate receiving 20 million dollars more from the new owners of CBS for public service announcements, advertising and similar programming. So this is not just I mean, this could be up to thirty six million dollars to to shape what's showing up on CBS. And it's not just that, too. I mean, we've had some other news from CBS and some other speculation that this pressure might have might have come with another string attached. Yeah, I don't think you have to have a conspiracy theorist tin hat on to see a connection here, because, you know, it was pretty shortly after they had reached that settlement with Donald Trump that there was a surprise announcement from Stephen Colbauer, the host of The Late Show on CBS, that it's being cancelled, essentially, that he's being taken off the air in May when his contract runs out and that The Late Show itself will no longer exist.

21:23And that was really, really surprising to hear from him. This is what he said. Before we start the show, I want to let you know something that I found out just last night. Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending The Late Show in May. And...

21:47Yeah, I share your feelings. It's not just the end of our show, but it's the end of The Late Show on CBS. I'm not being replaced. Dramatic announcement. And The Late Show has been around for 30 years. It's CBS's flagship late night talk show. Colbert has been the host of it since David Letterman, who was the original host of The Late Show, retired. And Colbert had hosted a late night program on Comedy Central before then. had a very loyal following. I will say he has been critical probably of all the evening or late night comedy and guest shows. He was the most critical of Donald Trump and the Republicans over the course of the past 10 years or so.

22:34I think that clearly is one of the reasons why people look at this and say, OK, well, here is Trump trying to silence one of his biggest critics on late night, the one who was always kind of a thorn in his side. Yeah, and Trump was celebrating this himself. He was posting about it, saying how delighted he was that Stephen Colbert had been cancelled. And a lot of people immediately leapt to the conclusion that this was some kind of censorship, that CBS didn't want on its air somebody who was being that critical of Trump and his administration, that it wasn't going to do good business for them. And they've been pretty roundly criticised by a lot of the other late night TV hosts and things for doing this.

23:14It hasn't reflected very well on them, although, of course, they say this was purely a financial decision, which is interesting because The Late Show is actually the most watched program in that slot. All the major channels have a late night chat show hosted by a comedian. A lot of the celebrities go on there to promote their films and music and all that kind of thing. And they used to be a really, really must watch feature of American television. I'm sure you grew up watching them, Anthony, but they kind of aren't anymore, are they? Kind of not. Yeah, I mean, I grew up watching Johnny Carson and The Tonight Show.

23:49That was the biggest show. It was the only real after the late-night news program that you could watch. And he kind of dominated that late-night space. We are back. On the show tonight, we have Sean Connery, we have David Brenner and Bert Mustin. and this gentleman, whom I consider a friend and a mighty fine actor, and his latest film is called The Man Who Would Be King, opens here in Los Angeles on the 19th of this month. Would you welcome, please, Michael Caine.

24:24And it was only after Johnny Carson retired that CBS tried to get into the fray with its own late show, but Colbert actually went on and talked about what you just mentioned, that this was about more than just finances in his view. Over the weekend, somebody at CBS followed up their gracious press release with a gracious anonymous leak saying they pulled the plug on our show because of losses pegged between$40 million and$50 million a year. $40 million is a big number. I could see us losing$24 million, but where would Paramount have possibly spent the other$16 million? Oh, yeah.

25:06$16 million being the amount of that settlement that CBS paid to Donald Trump. It's an interesting idea, though, isn't it? The number one rated show in that slot that used to be such a must-watch thing is losing money like that. And I guess it must be because everybody's now watching it. The clips on social media, they're watching it on YouTube, they're reading about it in the newspapers. They're not watching it when it goes out live on TV. Now, I'm not watching it because it goes out far too late at night. I'm not up after 11 o 'clock at night watching television. But I feel like I know what goes on in these shows because the New York Times, the Washington Post, will give you a digest of it the next day with links to clips.

25:46It pops up on my Instagram feed. You can see it on TikTok. It's everywhere. It's culturally in the ether. And it's a shame because often it is the host of these shows, the comics who do it, who sum up the day's news absolutely beautifully with quite gentle humour. I mean, it's not vicious satire that they're indulging in. It's usually quite kind of fun and friendly, but it's just a lovely way of poking fun at the pomposity of people in public life, the hypocrisy of what's being done, and not just with Donald Trump. They did the same with Joe Biden and with everybody else. But it's a lovely way of kind of rounding out a news cycle with their take on how ludicrous what's happening in this country can be.