What did we learn about Epstein from the Clintons?

0:00Anthony:This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:00Listen now or search for Good Bad Billionaire wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

1:10Anthony:We've had a text from Amanda in Devon. She says, I know there's so much happening in the USA. I know it's hard to cover everything. I wonder if you might find time to do a podcast on the topics that fall under the radar. Good idea, Amanda. And we do, of course, occasionally do this. So what else is going on in America apart from the war with Iran? And what other important news stories are we overlooking? Anthony and I are going to delve into some of them in just a moment. Just to give you a taste, though, there's been this hugely important primary election in Texas for both the Republicans and the Democrats.

1:40Anthony:Could have a real impact on who eventually wins the Senate seat there in the midterms. Plus, what's going on in Minneapolis after all the violence there? We talk about the Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, being really grilled in Congress over her handling of the immigration crackdown. And actually, since we recorded this episode on Wednesday, maybe partly because of the grilling she received, maybe partly because of the episode, Noem has actually been sacked by Donald Trump from that job. And another subject as well. What is going to happen to CNN, the global news network? Is it finished?

2:18Anthony:Welcome to AmeriCast.

2:50Anthony:Hello, it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London, England. And it's Anthony, back in my home state of Texas. I'm in Dallas, Texas. Just before we get going, Anthony, we should say we are going to talk a lot about Iran on the podcast this week. We will get back to the war tomorrow. And if you want to hear those episodes, do go and find them on BBC Sounds, wherever you get your podcasts. But let us start today with where you are, because we've already talked about Texas. We've whetted people's appetites and we've got news for them. Well, you have. We have news. We have results, at least in one of those closely watched Senate primaries here in Texas.

3:26Remember, the Republicans currently control the U.S. Senate by three seats and Democrats desperately need to flip a seat in a state like Texas in order to take back control of that chamber. Well, we had primary votes yesterday. And on the Democratic side, James Tallarico, he's the young 30-something state legislator, former Christian seminary, former school teacher who had been preaching unity and moving beyond partisan divisions and anti-corruption. He defeated Jasmine Crockett, the Texas congresswoman from here in Dallas, who had been much more confrontational, had been on cable news all the time, picking fights with the Republicans.

4:09So at least in this race, we can say that voters here in Texas opted for the big tent candidate, one who is trying to expand the party's reach rather than one who was trying to drum up support from the base and turn out the diehards.

4:26Anthony:Let's hear what he had to say on Monday night when it became obvious that he'd won.

4:56Anthony:of young people who showed up to vote in this election is unprecedented. The number of Texans who have never voted before but showed up in this election is unprecedented. The number of independents and Republicans who voted in this Democratic primary is unprecedented. This is proof that there is something happening in Texas. And just before we get to what that something might be, Anthony, just to make it plain. So he's saying lots of people voted in the Democratic primary in Texas who were not necessarily Democrats, and that is because they are allowed to in Texas. This wasn't some fakery going on, was it?

5:38Right, exactly. You don't have to register for partisan affiliation in Texas. You can go and show up and vote at whichever party primary you want. And so in the early voting numbers, I saw about 400 ,000 people in Texas were voting in a Democratic primary for the first time.

5:56Anthony:That's a lot, isn't it, for a primary? Yeah. Overall, we had more than a million people, a million and a half, I think, voting in the Democratic primary, more voting for the Democrats in that primary than voted for the Republicans in the Republican primaries, which is the first time that's happened since 2020. And And you remember in 2020, there was a very active, ongoing Democratic race, primary race for president where Donald Trump was the clear nominee for the Republicans. So the interest and engagement on the Democratic side was much higher there. Here we had two contested Senate primaries and still more Democrats showed up and voted than Republicans.

6:36So if you're looking for signs of voter enthusiasm and talking to Democratic activists and politicians over the past few days, they will certainly say this. There were signs that Democrats are engaged and that they are turning out. This isn't the only data point we've had so far, but it's now one of the bigger ones.

6:54Anthony:And the choice that they made is interesting, isn't it? Because we compared the two candidates when you and I talked about them before, and they both got their strengths. But she, Jasmine Crockett, much more of a firebrand, much more on the progressive left of the party, much less in a way likely to appeal across Texas. I think that's a fair point to make about her. And him, the complete opposite, much more of a kind of middle of the road appealing candidate, isn't he? And the primary voters who want the Democrat to win have opted for him. Yeah, the first thing I'll say is that when I was talking to voters outside of polling places yesterday, Democratic voters, one thing they would tell me almost universally is they liked both candidates.

7:35They like Jasmine Crockett. They like that she stands up for principles that she takes on Republicans in Washington. They also like the message that Tallarico presented, one of reclaiming religious values from the evangelical right, of reaching across to disaffected Republicans and centrists. Clearly, the argument that Tallarico might be more electable, that having a fresh face, a different kind of candidate, that won over more voters here in Texas, particularly suburban voters, affluent white voters, college educated voters, but also rather pivotally Hispanic voters. If you look at the Rio Grande Valley, if you look in San Antonio, if you look in areas that had large Hispanic populations, Tallarico did much better than Jasmine Crockett.

8:30But the decision by about 53 percent to 46 percent overall, the decision of Texas Democrats was that Tallarico is the candidate that they think is the one who could win in November.

8:42Anthony:And the decision of Texas Republicans is to have a runoff, essentially, and an expensive one and a bloody one, potentially, and shoot themselves in the foot before they've even got started. Yeah, there's a Republican strategist I've spoken with before here in Texas who compared this primary campaign to the red wedding scene in Game of Thrones, which is a very famous scene from a television series where everyone got slaughtered at the end. And it has been an ugly primary where John Cornyn, the incumbent who has been serving in the Senate since 2002, took to the airwaves with a record amount of campaign spending,$70 million on a Senate primary, and just savaged Ken Paxton.

9:31Anthony:Word of caution for Democrats, though. And I say this with some credentials, given that I spent quite a lot of time chasing a guy called Beto O 'Rourke around Texas years ago. when he was the great hope and everyone said, oh, he's so handsome and lovely and he's going to appeal to all Texans and he's moderate and middle of the road. And in the end, and he ran for that Senate seat, didn't he? And in the end, it kind of petered out. I mean, he came close-ish, but it didn't quite work. So if they do select Cornyn in the end, the Republicans, it's by no means a slam dunk, is it, to put it mildly, for the Democrats.

10:09after all these years to win statewide in Texas? Yeah, I think that Democratic hopes hinge on Paxton winning that runoff because beating an incumbent is just hard, full stop. And I think a lot of Republicans would come home to Cornyn if he's the nominee, albeit maybe grudgingly, but they'll pick him over someone like Tallarico. But if it's Paxton, with all that baggage I mentioned And the contrast between him and Tallarico, the seminarian who talks about anti-corruption and moving beyond partisan divisions, that's a contrast I think Democrats like. But you're right. When I was listening to that little clip we played of Tallarico, it sounded a lot like Beto O 'Rourke.

10:58And it has been 32 years since a Democrat won statewide in Texas. And I can think of multiple times where people here on the left told me, oh, you know, this next year is going to be the year we do it. And every single time they come up short. So maybe this time will be the difference for Democrats. There's certainly some hope here now. But, you know, I've seen this movie before.

11:21Anthony:Well, what then if the Republicans do pick Paxton? What is it about Paxton that makes him so so beatable or makes the Democrats think he's so beatable? A lot of it is the political baggage he brings in. He is going through a messy divorce and there have been allegations of multiple infidelities. His wife has talked about him abandoning her. That's the grounds for the divorce. The indictment that he had for fraud charges, although ultimately he settled that indictment in 2025 without admitting guilt. It's still hung over his head. And he's the attorney general. He's the top law enforcement official in Texas.

12:00And then that impeachment, the impeachment that took place in 2023, it flew through the state legislature, which was controlled by Republicans. So it was his own party, Republicans in his own party who who wanted to kick him out on on this obstruction of justice and bribery and not upholding the the office of attorney general. They were the ones who wanted to kick him out. And it was only after Donald Trump weighed in and offered his support for Paxton and and people rallied around him. Some Republicans rallied around him in the Texas Senate that he was acquitted and stayed in office. But but it was by no means a slam dunk.

12:45And again, this would the knives had come out for him within his own party. So there are a lot of people in Texas, even Republicans who are not Ken Paxton fans. Yeah.

12:55Anthony:And just final brief thought, I think you believe that Trump now weighs in basically to put this to bed, as it were. Is that likely, do you think, goes for Corning just to say, OK, that's enough, boys? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, because it's so close, it's still not clear who's going to win this. I mean, Paxton will have the win that is back in a way because these runoff elections, it only draws out the hardcore conservative voters, the people who are most fanatical about their candidate, the people who are the most anti-establishment. And I think those are the kind of voters that will support Ken Paxton.

13:29So Paxton was up in New York when Trump was under trial. Paxton has been a loyal Trump soldier now for quite some time. He filed a brief calling for the Supreme Court to step in and stop the 2020 certification of Joe Biden. So that may be another reason why Trump would be reluctant to come in and tip his hand and support Cornyn, because he likes punishing critics and enemies and rewarding those who have been loyal through and through.

13:57Anthony:Right. Enough Texas, Anthony. I could talk about this all day. we've got we've had a lot of questions um about minneapolis um and we ought to get to some of those or at least work out what's going on because actually there is in a sense a development in the story so the the killings of alex pretty and renee good by ice agents in minneapolis earlier in the year christy noem the homeland security secretary has been testifying hasn't she before uh a senate Committee. We should explain, Anthony, why she is under so much pressure, what actually happened, and why it is that it's coming to rebound on her particularly.

14:40Right. Well, she was one of the faces of this big immigration crackdown in Minnesota, where there was a surge of thousands of immigration enforcement officials who were going door to door essentially, rounding up undocumented migrants and sending them off to detention centers. There was mass protests in Minneapolis from people on the left who were against this operation. And as you'll recall, two protesters were shot and killed by immigration enforcement officials, Alex Preti and Renee Good. And that generated a firestorm of criticism that the enforcement, the crackdown, the way this was taking place was too militarized, was too violent.

15:29Kristi Noem had come out in both cases and suggested that these activists who were killed were domestic terrorists. And she was pressed in this hearing to, one, explain why all of this kind of immigration enforcement was necessary, but then also to explain her response to those killings and why she handled it the way she did.

15:56Anthony:Let's listen to a bit of this exchange that she had with the Senate committee. So this is an exchange with Senator Amy Klobuchar, very senior Democrat, well-known Democrat, who represents Minnesota. And she's talking now to Kristi Nguyen. After the killings of Renee Good and Alex Preddy, when I spoke to Alex's parents, they told me that you calling him a domestic terrorist, this was directly from them the day after he was killed. A nurse in our VA, Alex, one of the most hurtful things they could ever imagine was said by you about their son. Do you have anything you want to say to Alex Preddy's parents?

16:38We were relying in the hours after that incident that was so horrific on information we were getting from the ground from our agents. I just asked if you had anything you wanted to say to the parents or to the family of Renee Good after you called them domestic terrorists. I can't even imagine what they have gone through in the loss of their son and the loss of their family members. But how about specifically calling them domestic terrorists without any evidence of that? Ma 'am, I did not call him a domestic terrorist. I said it appeared to be an incident of.

17:11Anthony:I think the parents saw it for what it was. And actually, Anthony, she did, didn't she, call him a domestic terrorist? And just listening to that, when you think of sometimes senior people, administration people, appearing before congressmen and women and senators, they sometimes wipe the floor with them. I mean, they sometimes make the senators look silly and are very punchy. I'm thinking about people like Marco Rubio. But actually, this wasn't that, was it? She really did look as if she was in trouble. Is that because she's not quite sure that Donald Trump is still backing her? I think there's a lot of speculation that he's not happy with how she has handled all of this and the way she's conducted herself as head of Homeland Security.

18:04I think maybe her being on thin ice, as opposed to someone like Pam Bondi, the attorney general, who was extremely combative, came out to a similar type of congressional hearing and pushed back vehemently and then was praised by Donald Trump almost immediately afterwards. Like you said, this didn't feel like that with Noam. And there hasn't been the kind of support that Bondi had from Trump. The sword is hanging over her head.

18:32Anthony:And that wasn't the only uncomfortable moment for her, was it, Anthony? There was this absolute broadside from Tom Tillis, Republican senator. I mean, albeit he's retiring and he doesn't think much of Donald Trump, but he's a Republican senator from North Carolina who really laid into her on the subject of whether all of this actually is counterproductive. We're beginning to get the American people to think that deporting people is wrong. It's the exact opposite. The way you're going about deporting them is wrong. The fact that you can't admit to a mistake, which looks like under investigation, it's going to prove that Ms.

19:06Good and Mr. Pretty probably should not have been shot in the face and in the back. Law enforcement needs to learn from that. You don't protect them by not looking after the facts. Not only should the FBI be investigating it, but every single law enforcement agency in that jurisdiction should be invited to it. So our law enforcement officers do not have this paw cast upon them. One of the reasons why ICE officers are having threats and damn the people that threaten ICE officers, because so many of them are doing a good job, is because you've cast a paw on them by acting like we should investigate things differently.

19:43Obviously officer involved shootings have a formula that we should go through every time. And we're not going through that formula. As a matter of fact, in this goods case, I think that they were even saying that maybe there wasn't even a need to do it in the DOJ. I hope that that's changed. Tell us how you really feel, Senator. I mean, that is just a flavor. He went after her on her handling of hurricane relief in North Carolina as well. And he wasn't the only Republican who sharply questioned Noem. John Kennedy, a senator from Louisiana, he criticized Noem for spending$220 million on national TV ads where her face was prominently featured.

20:22You're testifying that President Trump approved this ahead of time.

20:27Anthony:Is that my understanding? We had conversations about making sure that we were telling people. No, ma 'am. I'm asking you, sorry to interrupt. But the president approved ahead of time you spending$220 million running TV ads across the country in which you are featured prominently. Yes, sir. We went through the legal processes. Did it correct? Did the president know you were going to do this? Yes. He did? Mm-hmm. Yes. Okay. I mean, to me, it puts the president in a terribly awkward spot. And I'm not saying you're not telling the truth. It's just hard for me to believe, you know, the president, as I do, that you said, Mr.

21:11Anthony:President, here's some ads I've cut and I'm going to spend two hundred and twenty million dollars running them that he would have agreed to that. That, again, this is another reason why this hearing was different from, say, Pam Bondi or, like you mentioned, Marco Rubio, is because there were Republicans in that room who were openly hostile to her as well. And that's just not a good sign for her long term position in the administration. Just a final thought about what went on and the killing of those two. We had a big discussion, didn't we, immediately afterwards about what legal ramifications there were potentially for the officers involved.

21:50Anthony:And at the time, we didn't really come to any firm conclusions because I don't think there were firm conclusions to come to. But I think people would be interested in knowing what, if anything, has happened since. And I must admit, for me, I don't know. Do you know what is going on? I haven't heard much of anything coming out of this. We were told that the FBI was investigating that there were internal federal investigations, but there have been no results posted, no announcements on it. In theory, maybe the families of the victims could bring some sort of a civil action, but that's a lot harder to do against federal law enforcement than it is, say, against a local police officer.