Jeffrey Epstein is causing a Trump-MAGA rift

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0:39BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. OK, so here's the thing. MAGA, Donald Trump's Make America Great Again base, is not happy. In particular, they're upset about files relating to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein that the Trump administration has promised to release. So why are they unhappy? and is the president losing his base? Let's talk about it. Welcome to AmeriCast.

1:28Like, this is not America. This is a terrible nightmare. This is what victory feels like. Yeah!

1:45Hello, it's Anthony here in Washington, D.C. in the BBC Bureau. And it is Mariana, a.k.a. Misinformation, in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London. Oh, stop. Stop. And we have an exciting guest who is not in the worldwide headquarters with me, a guest presenter. And we're welcoming the brilliant Nomiya to AmeriCast, one of the BBC's correspondents for the first time. Hi, Nomiya. Hi, I'm really nervous. No. I don't know why. No. I know you both. Yeah, you shouldn't be. It's just a chat. But maybe our listeners don't know Nomiya Iqbal, although I'm sure they've seen you on the channel and you're writing online.

2:24She has been a correspondent here covering America for, gosh, how long? Since the end of the first Trump term? I think it's coming to five years. Yeah, that's a long time. That is a big stretch. Anything else you want to tell us about yourself, Naomi? What can I tell you about myself? I don't really know. You've been working with me for like nearly five years, Anthony. What do you think people should know about me? Oh, gosh, I don't know. I mean, you do. You've covered such a range of different topics here in the U.S. And it's not just American politics. It's culture. It's social issues. you bounced around from tragedies to historic events.

2:57I know you're going to Texas here just today, later today, I guess, to cover the flooding there. So it's an exposure to kind of America and life and culture. So, I mean, you have such a wide range of experiences. I always think the politics just in D.C. is intense, but actually when you get away from that and you go out into America, it's just endlessly fascinating. I'm not just saying this because I'm a correspondent here, but I think it is my favorite country in the world. No. All right, well, then you're good to be here on AmeriCast, where it's all about America. So let's start this episode.

3:31As I mentioned before, we're going to be looking at U-turns in Donald Trump's White House and his presidency, some U-turns that have been kind of upsetting to Trump's base, the Make America Great Again base, on things like Jeffrey Epstein, which I'm sure, Mariana, you could talk about in depth, and on Ukraine. But, you know, it's the Epstein thing, I think, that his hardcore loyalist base, they're kind of up in arms about. Marianne, fill us in on, first of all, who Jeffrey Epstein is for anyone living in a cave for the past five years, but also why this is back in the news now. So Jeffrey Epstein is a disgraced financier, someone who was kind of really well connected in the world of celebrities and politics and everything else.

4:15And he was awaiting trial for sex trafficking charges. This was back in 2019 and he died in the prison cell where he was in New York. And when he died, it spawned a whole range of conspiracy theories on social media in particular with people questioning, did he actually take his own life? Or was this part of a cover up? Were they trying to protect his very powerful clients or other people who could be connected to him and part of these sex trafficking allegations? And when Donald Trump was running to be president, he made a big deal of this. and various people who are now part of his top team also have spoken about this and had, I don't know if indulged the conspiracy theories as the right word, but at least said, well, we want answers to these questions.

4:57And now that they're in power, it is different. This U-turn you mentioned, Anthony, has happened essentially because now it's back in the news, the US Department of Justice and the FBI have concluded that Jeffrey Epstein didn't have this kind of so-called client list that could implicate people and that he did take his own life. And a lot of Donald Trump's team have also stood by that and said, OK, right, let's move on now. But MAGA online in particular are not feeling like they want to move on. They are so angry about it. I remember back in 2016, all those years ago, when Donald Trump said, I will give you everything to his supporters.

5:39I think it was like towards the end of his campaign. And this was like one, you know, like all these sort of conspiracy theories. He was very much all about like tapping into that. I think he did indulge it a bit. The Jeffrey Epstein thing has always fascinated me because MAGA can't get let go of that. And now we're at this stage where MAGA is saying, OK, show us the files and what have you. And Pam Bondi is interesting because she is a real MAGA loyalist. And she has been endlessly saying, you will get the truth. And she was saying it earlier in the year. I think it was even back in February.

6:12she pledged to release a lot of names related to Jeffrey Epstein and that was in an interview on Fox News. The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients? Will that really happen? It's sitting on my desk right now to review. That's been a directive by President Trump. I'm reviewing that. I'm reviewing JFK files, MLK files. That's all in the process of being reviewed because that was done at the directive of the president from all of these agencies. So have you seen anything that you said, oh, my gosh? Not yet. OK, well, we'll check back with you. And so here we are now this week and the under pressure, the White House and Pam Bondi has released further information.

6:55But there was no client list. There is no sensational list of names of influential Americans who who had been connected to Jeffrey Epstein and the allegations of a sex trafficking ring, a pedophilia ring he was running. And so that brought up the cabinet meeting on Tuesday where a reporter directly asked or tried to ask Pam Bondi for more information about these files and the allegation that there was a missing one minute clip from a video feed that they had released in connection with these documents. And here's how she tried to respond and actually how Trump stepped in. Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?

7:35This guy's been talked about for years. you're asking we have Texas we have this we have all of the things and are people still talking about this guy this creep that is unbelievable do you want to waste the time and do you feel like answering I don't mind answering I mean I can't believe you're asking a question on Epstein at a time like this where we're having some of the greatest success and and also tragedy with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration. But you go ahead. OK, I agree. He's so angry. I know that answer is not going to quell the conspiracy theories and questions that his base has.

8:17I mean, the fact that he got angry and dismissed it and then, you know, interrupted Pam Bonney, who is the attorney general of the United States, it should be remembered. She's the one in charge of the Justice Department. She's the one who's in charge of all of these files and probably should be answering this question. But Trump didn't seem to want to talk about it at all, Marianna. No, and it's interesting, you know, you look at X, Elon Musk's platform, where much of the discussion about Epstein and certainly lots of the conspiracy theories have been thriving, not least because Elon Musk, who owns X, posted very specifically about this when he had his first spat with Donald Trump, when the bromance came to it's sort of quite abrupt end.

8:57And he mentioned this and therefore a lot of his followers and some of the MAGA supporters who have very big and quite influential profiles on X, those are the people who are very much kind of criticising Donald Trump and all of his team. You've got someone like Laura Loomer, who's a right wing influencer, who's saying that Pam Bondi must be fired. And then you've got other commentators. So Rogan O 'Hanley, for example, saying, quote, this is a shameful cover up to protect the most heinous elites. And the problem is, is that Elon Musk came out essentially to say, look, Donald Trump's kind of in on this.

9:26He later kind of went back on it a little bit. And Donald Trump was very critical of the remarks he made. But this does nothing to quell that kind of new conspiracy theory, which is, oh, no, the reason they're not releasing this stuff now is because Donald Trump is somehow complicit in it. Again, there's no evidence to support that he's related to any of these sex trafficking allegations. He has been photographed with Jeffrey Epstein, as quite a lot of people have before. But nonetheless, this has just added fuel to the fire. And that memo that came out basically to say, look, this was suicide, move on.

9:57They are pouring over and sharing and not happy about. And perhaps the moral of this story or the lesson is that if you indulge in or flirt with conspiracy theories, you very much can find yourself a part of them. So you've got the FBI director, Kash Patel. You've got the deputy FBI director, Dan Bongino. And these are two men who really stoked that conspiracy theory when they had a mic and they had their podcasts and really going on about the Jeffrey Epstein thing. And we will tell you what's going on. We will give you answers. Unlike the Biden administration, we will expose the deep state. And now they find themselves in a position of government.

10:37It's like suddenly it's not conspiracy. Suddenly it's nuance. Suddenly they're like, well, actually, no, there's no evidence and what have you. And if there was, I'd show you this. And so maybe, Marianne, you know way more about this than certainly I do. But it's almost like once you get into these powerful establishments, you realize there probably isn't a conspiracy. It's probably just a bit of incompetence. It's probably, you know, I always laugh when people think there's a cover up going on in an establishment because I think, well, half the time the printers don't work here. You know, like things don't work.

11:10Like we're not capable of being, we're not competent enough. So it's really interesting to me now these people are in power. They're finding actually it's not that easy to govern. I think that when it comes to so many of these conspiracy theories, like powerful people do bad things. Jeffrey Epstein is a very clear example of that. But the problem is, is when people always want there to be more and they always want, you know, and this is the way so much of this kind of conspiratorial conversation happens. A genuine thing will then be extrapolated into a kind of sprawling conspiracy theory where everyone is complicit somehow.

11:44And Donald Trump, to some extent, and people that he works closely with have benefited from that kind of culture online because it's very much about, you know, mobilizing everyone against what could be considered the kind of, in his campaigning at least, the kind of corrupt, like inefficient, faceless, bad, kind of almost cabal of people who are thwarting the American people. And yet, actually, then when you're in power, those conspiracy theories don't have the same benefit to you in quite the same way, because you are the powerful people that the conspiracy theorists are rallying against, sometimes misplaced rallying, but nonetheless rallying.

12:20Yeah, that I think gets to the heart of it. This is what Donald Trump has been all about. Us against them, the people in power versus the people who have been exploited by those in power. And conspiracy theories just kind of feed into that. And it wasn't just the Epstein files. Remember the whole drone thing that we had towards the end of the Biden presidency, where there were sightings of drones up and down the East Coast and people said, you know, oh, they're Chinese and there's some mothership just off the coast. And there was the whole the truth about January the 6th. There you go. Whatever that may be.

12:49Yeah, there was insiders, FBI plants who were causing all of the violence. Oh, and we can't forget about JFK either, which is the nonstop conspiracy, I think, in the U.S. They said they were going to expose all those files. Yeah, and then with the drones, they ended up saying, no, there wasn't anything to it. It was just people with drones. So, I mean, this is a bit of a challenge for Trump to, as you mentioned, Marianne, to traffic in this sort of thing and then get in there and say, Actually, we looked into it now, no big deal. That gets us to a question from Eddie, who is in London and sends us this.

13:26Donald Trump said during the election campaign that he would release the much-talked-about Epstein list if he became president. Now, Trump's Justice Department has just announced that the Epstein list does not exist. What is going on? Why was the Trump and MAGA circle so happy to make a big song and dance about the Epstein list, but now so shortly after it's been suggested that Donald Trump is on it, they have dismissed it as non-existent. Is this all just a coincidence or something more? It's interesting how MAGA has reacted to it because I don't know if you both found different, but they tend not to blame Donald Trump directly.

14:03They sort of blame everyone around him. Oh, it's Pam Bondi's fault. Like Laura Loomer, who is very close to Donald Trump, worships Donald Trump, is basically calling for Bondi to be fired, not Trump and thinks that somehow he's been influenced in a bad way. It's like they change their principles on the fly. I remember back in last year on the campaign trail, we were at the Republican National Convention, and I remember saying to this one woman, what's your red line? I always ask that question, like, you know, what's your red line on Donald Trump? And the Epstein thing came up. Like, we want the truth to that.

14:37And so I wonder, like, if I got back in touch with her, what she would say. And I imagine she wouldn't blame Trump. She would say, oh, it's everybody else around him. So, I mean, I suppose that's more of answering, will this impact Trump? But I don't know why. MAGA are sort of quick to move on from it. There might be some that are unhappy about it, but he doesn't tend to get blamed, I think. And there's no evidence that Trump is on the Epstein list or that there is even an Epstein list. You know, the Trump administration now is saying there isn't. But it seems like it's hard to find Trump supporters ever pointing the finger at Trump.

15:13I mean, it's an article of faith that Trump is right and everyone else is wrong. And so when they disagree with something that the Trump administration is doing, as you mentioned, it's because he is being misled or deceived or the people around him are in on the conspiracy, but not Trump himself. The root of this really is that it's not really about what people believe. Like if it wasn't the Epstein files, it would be something else. It's like the why they believe it and why they want to believe it. And fundamentally, it's this belief that in this case, powerful people do very bad things and then they cover up for each other, which is totally true in some cases.

15:47But in this case, they're kind of clutching at straws when it comes to Donald Trump. Like there's no evidence right now that he was involved in that way. But that kind of doesn't matter really. And I think that this could be the sign of the thing that we've chatted about a bit on America's, but that could be the thing that ends up being a problem for Donald Trump. because it's like all of these narratives about powerful people doing bad things and kind of rallying against them and making America great again work well when you're not the powerful person that people are rallying against those ideas.

16:16OK, so if a more conspiracy minded segment of Trump's base is upset about the Epstein files, I'd say a different portion of his base, one more focused on foreign policy, is upset about something else, which is Donald Trump's shifting views on the Ukraine-Russia war and Russia in particular. Here he is answering a question about Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, during that cabinet meeting on Tuesday. We're not happy with Putin. I'm not happy with Putin. I can tell you that much right now because he's killing a lot of people. We get we get a lot of thrown at us by Putin for you want to know the truth.

16:53He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless. Okay, so a little bit of context on this. What had happened was there was an announcement over the weekend, or actually the end of last week, that the United States was suspending weapons transfers to Ukraine, particularly missiles and anti-missile defense systems, because the United States needed them here at home and the stockpiles were running low. That was the explanation, at least. Donald Trump was asked about this and he said, no, no, I didn't order that and we're going to be giving them again. He had a conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

17:28So it's kind of a handbrake turn on supplying aid to Ukraine. And he's back now criticizing Vladimir Putin, you know, in an obscenity-less tirade. The last time we heard that, he was talking about Iran and Israel also expressing frustration about a foreign policy issue that was maybe going the wrong way for him or in his view. So that has gotten some people in his base upset because they actually want to see arms cut off to Ukraine. They don't want to see American money spent supporting Ukraine. And they would rather see closer ties with Vladimir Putin, who I think a lot of people, or at least there's a segment of the base, actually admire.

18:05Yeah, they're pretty pro-Russian, some of the base. Also, he's always claimed he's the no-war president, right? That's like when you speak to his base, it's one of the things they love about him, doesn't want to drag the US into any wars. He said earlier this year in Saudi Arabia, that era of foreign intervention, all that sort of stuff and so whenever there's any kind of move by him to get involved in a foreign conflict they do get really really angry and they and they feel they're already angry about the u.s strikes in iran but then as you see with maga they change their goalposts often they go okay well fine it was just a one and done won't happen again i guess people wonder don't they will his base ever turn on him over all these u-turns right so on right on the walls on on epstein and even on immigration, we're seeing there's a few U-turns he's making on farm workers in Iowa, for example.

18:59I think he cares about it, though. I think he is conscious of his audience because the White House put out a post recently saying there's no amnesty for immigrants because they were worried that that was the message that was getting out. So I think he cares what his base thinks, but he says he's not running for a third term. So I don't know how much he cares about what is Baser thinking. Yeah, and also we have to remind ourselves social media is not real life. And what we see amplified on social media does not necessarily reflect how his rank and file voters feel. And actually, I think Steve Bannon, the former advisor to Donald Trump, was kind of making that point on his War Room podcast earlier talking about this whole issue, not just Ukraine, but also Epstein and everything else.

19:44Let's not curl up in the fetal position. Let's not get in the mumble tank, right? Oh, my God. It's, you know, he's he's going to, you know, go to war in Iran. He's going to be sucked into Ukraine. He's got amnesty. It's Epstein. Yes, it's all of those and maybe more. That's OK. You're in the fight club. Donald Trump always says, trust me to his base. He always says, trust me. And I do think that they do. I don't think he'll lose his core base. And I'm not sure he will necessarily change the way he's doing things either. I think there's a risk for Donald Trump that if that world, well, if that social media world and the extreme fringes bits kind of turn on him and that in turn influences like alternative media influencers who do have a big reach and do have a big reach among younger people, younger men, the kinds of people that Donald Trump really benefited from winning over this time around.

20:35And that's, I think, when the problem could come. And I think it's interesting that actually his U-turns on big policy points that probably will have more of an impact on people's day to day lives. They just don't cut through the same. But it's the other stuff like the Epstein files or like stuff around JFK. It's that stuff, I think, that that could actually be the thing that kind of impacts him. But then again, does it just upset a small, loud group of people online? And actually, the average person thinks, oh, I didn't really care about that that much anyways. The other thing I'll say, because there has been plenty of talk about Donald Trump losing his base in the past.

21:09I mean, we've been talking about this for 10 years. And has he finally gone too far? And has he stepped out away from the base? Is that one of Donald Trump's strengths is that he's very in tune to his base. And not just in social media, but also in, say, the rally situations and his public appearances and his personal contacts. He has a good idea for what plays and doesn't. And if you watch him in the rallies, he'll say things and then kind of judge what the crowd does afterwards. He was talking early on in his recent presidential campaign, boasting about the vaccine and Operation Warp Speed and everything great about that kind of as an accomplishment that he was he was proud of.

21:46And he sensed from the audience very quickly when they started actually booing the vaccine, that that was not something that they were they were interested in or supported. And that was a huge accomplishment. Yeah, it was a huge accomplishment. But he never talked about that after that. I mean, very quickly realized that that was something where he was out of step with his base. He is someone who's conscious about his legacy. You are in your second term. And so he will, I think you're right about he is sensing where his base are. I mentioned before, he's sort of making these kind of concessions for immigrants who work on farms in Iowa after talking to farmers.

22:25And that has really upset a lot of people in MAGA saying, well, you promised to kick people out. And so they are saying that he's giving an amnesty. And so he's starting to sort of put these things out on the White House social media page saying it's not an amnesty. It's not an amnesty. He is tuned in to what they're saying. And then once he's said to them, no, it's not that, then they kind of sort of go, OK, we believe you. We trust you. So he is conscious all the time of maybe not for a third term, but if that ever happens, but certainly for his legacy, I think he cares. Yeah. Governing is hard and it's hard to keep everyone in your coalition happy.

23:06He managed to do it in his first term, even when he was out of step with his base. And there were points of conflict where he was doing things that they weren't totally thrilled with, like lockdowns during during COVID. they forgave him and moved on, which is why I think my instinct here is that they just are going to forgive him. And the support is not just about policies, maybe not primarily about policies. It's about the man, and the man can do no wrong, or at least the benefit of the doubt, as you've said. The benefit of the doubt is with him, and it's going to take a whole lot for him to alienate that core 35 percent of the American public, like 30 to 35 percent that makes up his base.

23:49And I'll be watching the poll numbers and I'll be looking to see if if they do drop. That is what's going to tell me that he is he's got a real political problem on his hands and motivating these people to vote in the midterm elections, which when he's not on the ballot, they don't do normally. So that could be that could be a problem next year if these people are like, well, we like Trump, but whatever on the Republican Party. But that's that's a problem that's a year from now, not right now. His supporters always, when I'm out and about talking to his supporters, they always say the same thing to me.