CREEPY Trump - Epstein Letter REVEALED: MAGA Cries Fake News

24:02And if this comes out, it could actually violate Ghislaine Maxwell's right to due process. And the judge actually agreed with her, at least partially in that case. And so there's going to be all kinds of legal wrangling around this because it actually could put the Maxwell trial or the subsequent legal appellate stuff that's happening right now in danger. It will take weeks, if not months for something like this to happen. You can go to a judge. Listen, I mean, does anybody know how the federal court system works? Like people don't just magically wave a release button. The thing that Trump does have the ability to do is to declassify all of this other information that allegedly they've been working on now for six months.

24:42Remember, Kash Patel said that they had dozens of agents working on the case, compiling information. That's something that is under your purview that could be released. And yeah, I mean, I just think that this is another misdirect where, you know, MAGA forces are trying to be like, see, like we're getting transparency. And I'm like, guys, this is just I mean, to be honest, I'm not saying it's a nothing burger. All information is good information, but it's not the Epstein files in any way that were promised. Because remember that the government's case against Epstein in 2019 still only really focused on Epstein.

25:15Like it's a very narrowly terror tailored charges that don't implicate a broader circle. And they definitely don't get into the source of his money and his finances. Yeah, that's right. Griffin, I don't know if you had something to say, but I just wanted to add this entire book. book is well worth the Wall Street Journal printing at this point, because one of the things that's most convincing about this document is that it's part of a larger book in which the other notes appear to be well within character. And Trump should be furious at Pam Bondi, because the only reason we are now mired in a week plus long news cycle about Jeffrey Epstein is that Pam Bondi, maybe Trump told her to do this.

26:00We don't know that yet. But Pam Bondi moved in the most ham fisted possible way to close the case and say, quote, no further disclosures would be warranted. And if Pam Bondi had handled this with a modicum more, just pure logic and competence from a public perspective, and that's a very cynical way to look at it, but it's from the politics. It's completely true. The only reason this is now dogging Trump over the last week or so is because Bondi said literally that case closed, wrapping it up, nothing more to see here, which set all of this off. So it's understanding the truth of what happened is and always has been muddled by the politics because people at the Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch, have important, powerful relationships with people like Donald Trump and others who are potentially implicated in the Epstein world.

27:03And that's just going to be inextricably intertwined with our ability to know what the hell actually happened is that we are seeing this through the glass of politics. And the glass is cracked and smudged because people want it that way. And this is another example of that. So it's hard to separate the two at this point. But the letter in itself, I think that's an important observation, Sagar, is not, it's extremely weird. It's extremely weird. It's not directly discriminating. Yeah, it's not a smoking gun. It's weird as hell. It looks really, really bad. And it seems to be real at this point.

27:43Trump probably could have managed this without basically inviting people to leak and prove him wrong. Yeah, all he had to do was release it. And then yeah, maybe some of this would have come out. But you know, I mean, I'm assuming that there's probably something in there that's a lot worse for a lot of people, especially with the financial transactions. I mean, one of the things that I again, I know a broken record, but it's very important to actually understand like what Epstein files should mean. Here, let me try my I'm a boomer, but I'm going to try my best to share my screen because there was a big report yesterday by Ron Wyden.

28:21And look, I get it. MAGA. Yes, he's a Democrat, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, Ron Wyden has been actually working on the Epstein case for quite some time, and he is the Senate Finance Chairman. He says that the government is sitting on secret bank filings showing$1.5 billion in suspicious wire transfers by Epstein involving some of the most powerful people in the world. Now, as I said here, how about we release those? So the thing is, and the story is extraordinary. And by the way, because I know a lot of people in Washington do listen to the show. If you are one of the people who was able to review these documents, please contact me.

29:01I've been aggressively trying to get into contact with you. So the way that this all went down apparently is last year, the Treasury Department allowed Ron Wyden and members of the Senate Financial Services Committee to sit and review suspicious activities reports filed by four of the biggest banks in the world. Those suspicious activity reports detail$1.5 billion in suspicious transactions by Epstein in and out of his accounts, very often to Russian banks, to Eastern European women. It fits exactly with the pattern laid out by the New York Financial Services Department in their fine against Deutsche Bank, except the totality of the money is insane because we're talking about$1.5 billion in wire transfers.

29:44The Treasury Department right now is sitting on that information. Whenever they allowed the Senate to look at it, they refused to let them make copies and only let them make handwritten notes in a classified setting, which have yet to be released. All we know is the number of$1.5 billion. So again, if you're one of the people who saw those, please contact me. I would like to talk to you. If you're at Treasury. Yeah, if you're in the Treasury Department and you have at one point, I will protect your identity. But the point is that the government is sitting on that right now. That is not subject to any private – like they could release that today if they wanted to.

30:19Same with the IRS, which has all of this documentation around all of these trust accounts and other things that were linked to them. Release even just one or even review one of the guy's tax returns. How did, where did the money come from? It's all in there. This is America. You are, you, I forget it's from the wire, but it's something that's like in this country, somebody's name is on somebody's piece of paper somewhere. It just is. Okay. You can follow the paper trail if you want to, if you're actually motivated. And in the words of Lester Freeman, if you start to follow the money, you don't know where the fuck it's going to take you.

30:52And I remember that this is one of those where what we're watching is a bastardization of like what the alleged Epstein files and all that were. And then, like you said, politically, it's just pretty obvious that this is entirely a fault of their own making. Like they said the case was closed, which reignited public interest, which exposed a cover up, which then had people digging even more. I mean, is there any reality where this book report or whatever would have come out if Trump had actually released much of the information? No, it would have been it would have been like a WikiLeaks dump. You know, everybody would have gone deep into it.

31:31So, yeah, I think the whole thing is really crazy. But it is also proof to me of how at the end of the day, MAGA will fall in line. And I think that's important as well for people to understand with the Iran thing. Like this is going to be a job of like people who are actually independent minded. And yes, unfortunately now, because it's polarized Democrats and the mainstream media, like I don't really see a way out of this. Yeah, exactly. Here we have JD Vance's tweet. He says, forgive my language, but this story is complete and utter bullshit. The Wall Street Journal should be ashamed for publishing it.

32:07Where is this letter? Would you be shocked to learn they never showed it to us before publishing? Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump? Follow up, Griffin. He had a reply there as well. I forget exactly what it was. Can you just scroll down? OK, go ahead. If we scroll down and look at it. Yeah, doesn't it violate some rule of journalistic ethics to publish a letter like this without showing it to the victim of this hit piece? Will the people who have bought into every hoax against President Trump show an ounce of skepticism before buying into this bizarre story? And so, again, I mean, I don't think that the I really don't think that the journal that the journal did anything, quote, wrong except for not publishing it.

32:48And it's not even about showing it to Trump. It's for all of us, because in a sense, they have just invited this reaction. Yeah. Here example, Representative Anna Paulina Luna. Please don't show this to the Wall Street Journal. It's a hand sketch. They may think I'm a sex trafficker. I've seen even many people who are extraordinarily critical of Trump's handling of the Epstein files immediately just being like, hey, this is complete bullshit. There's no way this is real. It's obviously a hoax. I mean, again, look, I'm open to it. It would be a pretty extraordinary journalistic scandal if it was.

33:18But at the end of the day, the fact that they ran with it and it went through standards and Murdoch and the entire Murdoch empire is putting their entire financial future on the line, I guess it's possible they did it with Dominion, but, you know, Trump's going to have to prove it. I just see I see a bungling here of just epic, epic proportions.

33:37Saagar Enjeti:Wouldn't it be like career suicide to like post this? I mean, you're dead. You're coming at the king with birthday letters and you best not miss. I mean, I guess my question for you guys is like, why haven't they not released it? Like, shouldn't they just turn it into like a coffee book or something and start selling it? And like, you know, on top of that, like it might even at this point help Trump for it to all be released because it's not just Trump in there. There's like 50 other names in there and there's like a lot of other smoke and a lot of other ways to kind of take it with with other letters from other people.

34:12Saagar Enjeti:So like I don't see like it seems like it would help almost both sides for it to just all be released at this point. Trump can release it if the Justice Department has it. I mean, that's the Wall Street Journal says it's part of the Justice Department document. So here is my theory. And this is a quote from the story. Pages from the Leather Mountain album assembled from Epstein were first arrested in 06 are among the documents examined by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein and Maxwell years ago, according to people who have reviewed the pages. It is unclear if any of them are part of the Trump administration's review.

34:44The Justice Department documents, the so-called Epstein files and who are in them are at the center of the storm consuming that. But here's my theory. The journal doesn't have the book. The Justice Department has the book. Somebody in the DOJ leaked a photo or a filing of the book and the paper to the journal. This is just my theory. This is pure speculation. That is the source and why they had to print it by hand. So like, for example, remember that whole reality winner scandal? whenever the NSA sent those documents, she sent those documents from the NSA or whoever she was working for to the intercept.

35:20And the way that she got caught was by distributing the screenshots of the printout. So very often guys, just to explain this for classified settings or legal documentation, they'll have distinguishing marks actually on the pages themselves. And that way, if that were to ever come out, it would be easy to identify whoever leaked that, like a unique identifier or something. Think about like a, what's it called? like a page mark or something like that, you know, whenever it's like not for public consumption, that type of thing. That's my theory as to why they have not released it. A watermark. Yeah, exactly.

35:53Um, that's my personal theory for why it has not yet been released. I think that's a very strong theory. I think that's probably right. Which means the justice department could, could show us the whole book right now. Right. And that's the thing about Trump is now, well, it sets up a very interesting incentive because now Trump's gonna be like, I'm under attack by the deep state and all of this. And it's like, bro, you can just release it. You know, it's like, you could have just released it. And again, it would have just been one of many different stories that are that are in there. And yeah, it's the whole thing is very interesting.

36:26Saagar Enjeti:Yeah. Be like, I also numbers kind of right. Like, oh, there's just so many other people to look at here. And I but it just seems like Trump is having an incredibly emotional reaction to what seems like a very intimate, almost loving relationship with Epstein to like a level that I don't think we've really fully seen before. I mean, we've heard about them being best friends. We've heard about them playing like weird games in an elevator, I think from a woman in the past. But this seemed to be just the most kind of like they are partners in crime. I mean, it kind of felt like a, if I did it, OJ Simpson type of moment, like where everyone's really, you know, suspicious, man.

37:06And I'm telling you, I genuinely didn't believe most of the Trump. I thought, all right, Trump is a sleazy guy, not a surprise to anybody. Right. Uh, Trump, you know, had the, on the record quote, Trump is a philanderer and for years bragged about his sexual prowess with young women to the tabloids. So I was like, okay, I mean, you know, I thought that was baked in. And then to the extent that the whole Epstein thing is like, yeah, you know, Epstein and all these like pretty Victoria's Secret model girls and all that. Trump was involved with the beauty pageant, but nothing beyond what kind of was already out in the open.

37:40I was like, you know, but the thing is now is his reaction is just so sketchy and weird that it really kind of does make me think that there might be something else there because you have Elon saying it right. and then that's another theory of mine is that the reason that the jurn that the fbi and the attorney general went so hard in the paint about shutting things down was maybe like a political response to elon musk i think that's very probable yeah i'm not 100 sure right and that trump may have nudged bondi to do it that way right yeah and then like that's maybe why they did it but um yeah i mean i mean do we want to play griffin if you want to go on youtube you can find this it's like a 2002 no sorry 1992 package of trump the mpc the video of let me see if i can find it actually this is matt rogers from las culture east that's with matt rogers and bowen yang this is bowen yang from las culture east with matt rogers and bowen yang you know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like okay hold on i got a new favorite food that's the reaction a lot of people are having when they first try cutie mayo yeah it's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle.

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40:19Saagar Enjeti:yeah while you're while you're looking for that and we talked a little bit about um some of the maga defense we put up anna paulina kind of doing a jokey drawing but we have some new polling here about the trump's handling uh of this 63 percent of voters disapprove of the trump administration's handling of the jeffrey epstein files quinnipiac university national poll finds, nearly half of voters would consider joining a third party, just not one created by Elon Musk. Sorry, buddy. Well, this also contrasts with numbers that Harry Enten was analyzing on CNN yesterday. There was a new CNN poll, and it's similar in the Quinnipiac poll that shows Republican support for Donald Trump increasing two to three percentage points, which is very close to the margin of error in both of those polls, over the course of the Epstein, the latest chapter in the Epstein saga.

41:12So like the last week or so. And yeah, go ahead and roll this, Griffin. I think this one surprised me a bit because of all these complaints online going after Trump and the Epstein files, you might think his approval ratings were going down. Republicans, if anything, they're going up. Republicans who approve of Trump. Look at our CNN poll, the prior one, 86 percent. The one out this week, 88 percent were Republicans. How about Quinnipiac, The prior poll, 87 percent approval for Republicans this week out, 90 percent with Republicans. If anything, Donald Trump's approval rating has gone up since this whole Epstein saga started.

41:45OK, so the margin of error there was plus or minus six. So if you're thinking about that, it means there could be no movement or there could have been a slight drop potentially in the numbers. But this is very easy to reconcile. Like, say this is accurately gauging Republican support for Donald Trump. It's very easy to reconcile with the numbers in the exact same poll that shows 65 percent of Americans don't support his handling of the Epstein files, which is that to most Americans. And this is always worth saying when you're talking about Jeffrey Epstein. Do most people care about the Epstein story?

42:15Yes. Are most people disgusted by the Epstein story because they believe that it reflects a sick and corrupt ruling class? Yes. Is it most people's top priority? No. It's many people's. It's high up on the list of many people's priorities. It's a very powerful proxy issue. It's a powerful symbol. And there are substantive questions of justice that still needs to be served in and of itself. But I think it is always worth saying that this is a story. People in media who know some folks that might be implicated, who can think about this as a metamedia story at the same time, are always going to be more interested in it than most members of the public.

42:56That does not make the story unimportant, though.

42:59Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, totally. To your point, like, Emily, like even in that Harry Enten poll, there was only one person who responded saying that it was like a top priority issue. Not one percent, but just one person only said that it was a top priority issue. Yeah, I would just caution this type of analysis, though, because it's like it's about a vibe. You can't quantify it. It's just it all compounds on itself. It's like Epstein, Iran, the Israel situation. You can feel it happening. And yet you could say that that's stupid. But by the way, guys, did Trump not get elected on a vibe? I think he did. I mean, I think that was a huge part of it.

43:39If you guys watch my interview with Andrew Schultz, that's for our premium subscribers early. We talk about this. I go, hey, did you guys feel like you maybe voted on vibes and you didn't vote on policy? And, you know, I mean, it's not a call out. I think most people vote that way. I'm just saying, like, I think that was pretty important. for this whole idea of like the outsider versus the insiders and a new way of doing business. And like this all just screams just, you know, very classic way. I also, you know, I mean, this footage is genuinely crazy. Like when you watch this, this is archive footage from NBC at Mar-a-Lago in 2002.

44:17I mean, just like what you're watching is Trump. Sorry. Yeah. No, 1992. Yeah. 1992. But you can see this is at Mar-a-Lago. But one thing I also hate about Epstein is he's always dressed down. I know it's a small, small complaint, but he always wore a track suit. That's his greatest sin. His greatest sin. It's one of his great sins. And it, by the way, just shows you that not dressing properly is often a indication. A sign of moral ill. Moral ills. Yes. So everybody else there is dressed well. You can see Ghislaine there in the background and Jeffrey and Trump having animated conversation. But yeah, I mean, look there, I knew that this all existed.

45:01I always was like, yeah, you know, they definitely knew each other. I don't think it went beyond anything like too crazy. But it's really the behavior of Trump since then that just has me being like, I mean, it's mystifying. It really is mystifying. But what's also important for everybody to understand, as you pointed out in that CNN poll for all of that. Magga's got his back. All right. This is now a media story. It's a hoax. They will never believe it. It genuinely helped him. Internally, in the internecine squabble, it absolutely helped him because now it looks like he is under attack, but they didn't print the picture.

45:41If they had printed the picture, it would have been different. I'm not saying the Wall Street Journal by any means should allow the politics of Magga to dictate its reporting. Of course, that's not true. But hypothetically, if the journal had printed the story, it would have looked obviously a lot less like a major media hit piece on Donald Trump that drove everyone back into Trump's arms because he's embattled, which is exactly what he has been trying to do all week. Brilliant on Trump's part. I mean, genuinely, when he started saying that this was coming from Comey and Biden and whomever else.

46:18Obama. Obama. Like, yes, all of us look at that and we're like, OK, but he knew what was coming, which was a Justice Department file that had been sat on for a while that he can now say, huh, isn't that interesting? it's coming out in the Wall Street Journal just me there's all these other people in the book and so he was cleverly obviously trying to point in that direction probably the best defense that he can muster and it's obviously still not good enough but what it does do is stigmatize people in MAGA who continue to raise questions and make them look like they're doing the bidding of Comey in the Wall Street Journal yeah right And that I mean, she's so stupid, but do you guys think anything that we're going to do?

47:06But yeah, go ahead.

47:07Saagar Enjeti:Do you guys think that there would be an outlet that they could have gotten this to that MAGA would have accepted more as opposed to like the mainstream media? Like, could they have gotten this to Rogan or to some independent outlet that may have land, make it land a little bit better? They could have just dropped it themselves. I'm serious. Like if Trump had said the Wall Street Journal is about to release the story on me writing a letter to Jeffrey Epstein. Here's the whole book. As a joke. Yeah. Here's the book. Here's the letter that the Wall Street Journal is trying to make into some bombshell.

47:42And then it would have looked way less. I think it would have looked. Here's his locker room talk. Locker room talk 2.0. Here's all the sketchy Democrats. Here's all the other sketchy Democrat demon crats who are in the book. OK, it's done.

47:55Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, exactly. And then like Sager mentioned that it's about vibes and this hurts Trump's vibe. But, you know, we're not in like an election time unless we're thinking about a Trump third term. So like, what does this really affect in terms? Does this affect Trump's governance over this current term? Like, does this affect his political power going forward with like other endorsements? Like, because if Sager, you're saying this hurts the vibe, then what is what does Trump need the vibe for at this point? Great point. It's about mind space. So can we all submit the Lewinsky story was important?

48:29Like in terms of politics, right? Can we can we agree with that? Well, I'll submit to that. All right. Yeah. But but it was fucking stupid at the end of the day, like the entire investigation and the country's obsession and all of that over Lewinsky and the all the details and the Ken Starr report and Congress. Well, what did that do? I mean, I've read multiple accounts of Clinton's presidency. It consumed every moment of every day from the legal stuff to the subpoenas, to the spin, to the press conference, to the extent that Clinton is distracted in major meetings involving NATO intervention in Serbia.

49:08And there's a lot of conspiracies that he actually bombed Serbia to distract from the Lewinsky scandal. So the point is, is like, what do you need a vibe for when you're president? So you can govern. There's only so many hours in the day. And by the way, this is a capricious guy who's obsessed with cable television in the news, which means he's going to be monitoring this and thinking about nothing else. So every single every moment of a president's time is a zero sum game. Every single moment that a president spends is time that he could be spending doing something else. And it's the job of his staff and of himself to keep himself well ordered.

49:43This is true of any extremely highly powerful individual and especially true in the case of the president. Yeah, that's true. And to the point that Sagar was making, I just want to – this is what I – how I put it earlier this week. I wrote about it. Will Epstein files become Trump's Kabul moment? And I think that's – The way I was thinking about it on the vibe level is if you look back at the Biden presidency, he never recovered after Kabul. Like that's the moment that his favorability like never, ever recovered from. And I think part of it is because he campaigned on being this president for decency and bringing back like restoring the nation.

50:20And Trump like ran on draining the swamp. And it just this makes him look so weak that while it's nobody's top priority in the same way that nobody went to the polls in 2022 or 2024 and said, I want to vote against the party that botched the Afghanistan withdrawal. Almost nobody did that. I don't think people are going to be going to the polls for the most part in the midterms saying I'm going to vote against the party that seems to be hiding something on Jeffrey Epstein. But what it does do is make Trump look weak. It makes him politically damaged. Yeah, he's on defense. Yeah, absolutely. And all of that, by the way, total unforced error because Bondi handled it and maybe she was handling it this way because of Trump.

51:05But the way that it was handled, put them on defense because they said case closed, which was never, ever, ever going to suffice or to be satisfactory, period. And just lastly, to Sagar, those of those people out there who may be right of center like we are, just imagine and honestly, if Joe Biden had a pattern like this, how it would imagine that this was a letter from Bill Clinton. Imagine it seriously. Yeah, it's just be real. Be honest. All right. And just listen to it. The case that I think I presented is one that it's about the denial is I've never doodled. It's like, okay, well, here's all these doodles.

51:49I've never said the word enigma. It's like, well, here's the word. Well, did he say that he said it wasn't his language? And then MAGA people said it was saying it was other people. It's the word enigma. Yeah. And it's like, dude, yeah, he said it. He said it. All right. And then you have to also, I mean, I know everybody, you know, listen, nobody hates the media and all those people more than me. Okay. but uh i you know because we're in this business you don't just publish it like especially when you're the wall street journal or others you know i would you have to have them dead and stone cold on something like this before you go to print i've been involved with my much more minor stuff where oh my god the level of review and i mean griffin you were here for signal gate remember you remember how much fucking sweat we had to put into that yeah it was so much homework it wasn't fun at all yeah it's not it's honestly not fun because you have to sit there and be like okay is it responsible you know you see comment from the justice department or from the pentagon you know in response to this stuff and then that's just you know little breaking points okay this is the this is one of the premier world newspapers so it's you know they knew lawyers they have a team of the best lawyers in the world oh my god like lawyers upon lawyers upon lawyers like at the end of the day, when you hit publish on something like this, there's an entire apparatus that is going to back you up.

53:10It's like, okay, you want to sue them? Like, fine. And don't forget, this is probably a good segue to the Colbert thing. It's not like Trump had CBS dead to rights on 60 minutes. Absolutely. If 60 minutes had fought this in court, Trump was the one who was going to lose. They ended up caving because they want their merger with Skydance to be approved. Let's be very clear. Same with ABC News and Disney. ABC settled with Trump basically just be like, let's make this go away. There is no scenario, zero, where any of these people do not prevail in court. Their own lawyers would tell you that. They're going to win 100%.

53:49And Trump would have to pay their legal fees. I think the ABC one would have been, that one actually would have been more of a fight. But CBS was a joke. I don't know. I mean, come on, Emily. I mean, the bar for defamation in life is so fucking high. It's true. Although Stephanopoulos wasn't. Yeah, look, he got over his skis. Look, the guy got over his skis. Fine. That's not defamation. Like, you have to be able to prove that he knew what he was saying was false. Same with life. You've proved damages. Like, you can't do that. Right, right. But there's a magnitude difference between the bullshit CBS one.

54:27Yeah, 100%. I agree with you. But what I'm more saying is like in every single one of these cases, in every single one, in my opinion, there's no way that they don't win. A hundred. Right. Yeah. This is Matt Rogers from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like, wait. That's the reaction a lot of people are having when they first try Kewpie mayo. It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it in the grocery store before.

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56:40Saagar Enjeti:so you mentioned monica lewinski earlier which kind of leads me to like my final question on the subject um which is sort of like the culture and sort of how different parts of trump's cultural coalition are reacting to this um i've got a clip here uh from shane uh gillis uh recently where he um let's see from the espies yeah so let's play this clip here all right so good donald trump Trump wants to stage a UFC fight on the White House lawn. The last time he staged a fight in D.C., Mike Pence almost died.

57:17All right.

57:19Saagar Enjeti:I don't know how to do that. It was fine. I didn't write it. It was supposed to be an Epstein joke here, but as it got deleted. Must have probably deleted itself, right? probably never existed actually let's move on as a country and ignore that let's uh move on as a country so yeah i mean i guess my question for uh both of my maga hosts here is you know i do see a big difference yeah don't put that label on me but go ahead sorry you can call us fascist just don't okay yeah yeah uh to my two groiper hosts here um I would rather be a grouper. I do see sort of like a delineation or a schism between the sort of MAGA influencers like your Charlie Kirks versus the bro sphere, the Rogan sphere podcasters that have been a lot more confrontational about this subject.

58:24Saagar Enjeti:I see Shane Gill's a joke. I've seen Rogan talk about it. I've seen Theo Vaughn kind of demand for there to be more. so like what does that mean in terms of trump's like cultural coalition in terms of what do you guys think yeah that's kind of what i was talking about with the vibe and that's also why that poll was really dumb because it said it was about republicans it's like who cares about republicans there's not that many republicans that you think everybody who voted republican is a republican no uh you think everybody who voted democrat is a democrat no um and it's very rare there's a huge independent swing uh to donald trump in the 2024 election and to the extent that uh culture is being driven here and to affect Donald Trump, those podcast reactions, in my opinion, are way more impactful than the Charlie Kirk.

59:09I mean, actually, I'll give Kirk credit. He has a young MAGA people who listen to him. He's probably the only one of that who actually has like a real young audience. But the rest of it goes to colleges.

59:19Saagar Enjeti:It's insane. Like every college event he does is packed out. But the rest of you're just preaching to a bunch of boomers who love Trump anyway. I don't those people are never going to stop voting for Trump. They're never going to stop voting for Republicans. So that's why it's important to distinguish exactly like who all these subgroups are. Yeah. The last thing that I just want to say is I don't think it's implausible. So I mentioned the Megyn Kelly reporting this week suggesting that people, her sources inside the administration said that the files had been left in such a way that points to Donald Trump.

59:52I don't want to discredit the possibility that there was some funny business going on. What that doesn't do is negate the veracity of the potential file itself. So two things can be true at once, right? That the holdovers at the Justice Department and at the Biden era Justice Department, which, you know, it did have a Marine Comey as part of it. And there are all kinds of people who have despised Trump that were in career positions at Justice and FBI. We all know that it is not impossible that there was actually some maneuvering behind the scenes to make it more difficult for the Trump administration to release files and to do their transparency without implicating Donald Trump.

1:00:37That's possible. I have no idea what that would look like. Maybe it looks like, you know, leaving the Trump page in that book right at the top and moving the other pages somewhere else. I genuinely don't know. But I just want to say again to people who are listening to that and are deeply suspicious of the intelligence community, two things can be true, that the intelligence community was engaging in significant funny business and that the Trump letter is real and massively suspicious and that there are potentially other pieces of information that the administration is sitting on that do implicate Donald Trump.

1:01:15And lastly, the easiest way to get around that is just release it all. And then nobody cares what's on top or whatever. You know, you can reorder it if you want to. And lastly, I know this is a probably a decent teaser for the second half of the show, which is premium. But the reason that we are talking about all of this and on the show, we try to cover topics that are not the sort of mainstream media outrage bait. The reason that this is important is because there's substantive justice justice questions. And also it could be affecting our foreign policy. Yeah, literally right now. Exactly. Every single day.

1:01:48Saagar Enjeti:Totally. Yeah. Well, may every new piece of information be a new wonderful secret. You know, we were talking a lot about all these lawsuits against news media organizations. And, you know, that kind of leads us, I think, naturally to this Stephen Colbert thing, which just announced last night that the late show with Stephen Colbert has been canceled. Why don't we take a listen to what he has to say right here? Oh, hey, everybody. We got a great show for you tonight. Senator Adam Schiff was my guest. We are on seven bridges road. What a voice. I cried. But before we start the show, I want to let you know something that I found out just last night.

1:02:31Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending The Late Show in May. And...

1:02:45Yeah, 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 This is all just going away And I do want to say I do want to say That the folks at CBS have been great partners I'm so grateful to the Tiffany Network For giving me this chair And this beautiful theater to call home And of course I'm grateful to you The audience

1:03:11Saagar Enjeti:Who have joined us Awesome And that audience has been growing smaller and smaller by the day. You know, a lot of people I mean, I saw Elizabeth Warren. I saw Adam Schiff after his interview say or question if there was political pressure from the Trump administration behind this cancellation. What do you folks make of this? I really don't know because apparently the justification from CBS is that it's no longer financially sustainable. So I'll read here. The genre has experienced a sharp decline in advertising revenue in recent years. In 2018, network late night shows took in$439 million in ad revenue.

1:03:57by last year, the figure had dropped to 220 million, a 50 % drop in just seven years. The cancellation of the late show raised immediate questions about the ties to the government's review of Paramount's merger with Skydance or the recent settlement with Mr. Trump. So I think both things could be true. It's convenient to get rid of him. But also, I mean, what was Stephen Colbert's salary at the late show? Probably 30 million. That's my guess. it's got to be something like that uh let's see i i can't find yeah his annual salary is about 15 million dollars so if we submit that the total amount of advertising revenue is 220 million how many late night shows are there there's the late night there's the late show there is um kimmel i don't know basically kimmel fallon so that's three shows but there's also daily show Seth Meyers.

1:04:54Seth Meyers. All those people are all lumped in. So$220 million divided by all those shows. Obviously, it's not equal, but it's somewhat dispersed. $15 million just for Colbert. Anybody even know what the operating costs for a studio and a staff size of 25 people pulling full corporate bennies? I can kind of see it, right? Like I could see a case where the show doesn't pencil and where at the end of the day, like kind of just not really worth it financially anymore. I also could see, you know, this whole thing. A lot of people are saying that it is about Donald Trump, but you know, shout out to like Klippenstein and others who are like, guys, I'm sorry.

1:05:33Like he's not funny. Like it's just a bad show. And I think it's just bad. He is funny, but he's not funny anymore.

1:05:41Saagar Enjeti:He was, no, it's heartbreaking. You know what I mean? Like, the Colbert report was, you know, cutting edge at the time. And I even before that, thank you, Emily, straight to the candy. That was cutting edge. I went to the rally to restore sanity in 2000. Oh my God. Front row seat. Yeah. I think I'm actually in a package from Craig Ferguson. That's awesome. Because he was going around with it. If anybody wants to pull that clip, I was there. So what else? I don't know when I started doing this, but whatever it is, my like student stump speech when i'm trying to explain what happened to the media is literally juxtaposing the colbert report with johnny carson because i think it's the story of media really neatly it's like your perfect arc um when johnny carson was the king of late night you're pulling in north of 10 million people every night and in order to do that you're competing with two yeah yeah well it depends i mean his his tenure was very long um and the genre went through a lot and And so you're competing with basically two other networks.

1:06:43And the way to maximize your ad revenue is to appeal to as many Americans as you possibly can. So Carson was not at all apolitical. He talked about politics all the time, but what he was was not partisan. So that's because Republicans buy sneakers, too, as the saying goes from Michael Jordan. And so at the time, that's the way to beat your competitors is to just get the biggest slightest of the pie. Colbert was the number one host in late night during the Trump era, Trump 1.0. And actually right now, if you compare him, this is very interesting. Gutfeld is beating him on cable, which would have been unthinkable in the latter Carson era, because, first of all, that was a new thing relatively.

1:07:25And secondly, not everybody had cable. So Gutfeld is actually pretty handily destroying everyone else on a cable network. Colbert was number one in Trump 1.0, despite being the least funny and the most political host. You heard him in that monologue about the show being canceled, that Adam Schiff was his guest. A comedy show with Adam Schiff as the guest. Does that sound appealing to you? No. But the way to win the competition now is the niche. So if you can get resistance wine moms coming back night after night, you have the best shot at selling really specific ads that are easy for the business people to understand and maximizes the audience loyalty, all of that.

1:08:09So what's getting buried in all of this is Colbert said that they're actually retiring or CBS said they're actually retiring the late night brand. They're retiring the show after he leaves. So that can only mean one thing. Deborah Vance is coming in. No, I'm kidding. But that's what it's like. That's actually, I think, even more significant than Colbert being pushed out is that they're retiring the franchise of the show. And that show is a staple of Hollywood culture. Griffin's literally in Hollywood, so he can speak more to this. But I think it's possible that Colbert was overpaid and was needling the network over the settlement.

1:08:50And that's the straw that broke the camel's back. But this is not about politics. This is nothing to do. I totally agree. It's like, guys, it's an insane system. It airs at 11 35 PM Eastern to watch interviews live and Colbert's monologue and various sketches. Who the fuck is watching that in 2025? I'm being serious. Like anybody who is remotely interested in comedy or to the extent that it has any cultural cachet left at all, people are watching it on YouTube or on Twitter the day after. They don't. No one is watching this live like they're just not. Maybe some people in California at 830 whenever it also happens to air live like I and there's a great book.

1:09:35I think it's called The Late Shift. I read it a few years ago. It's the history of late night television and specifically the war between Jay Leno and David Letterman. And people need to understand that it was a very specific moment in time, pre-internet, in which was the only way to get access to comedy as a genre that everybody could experience. It was the platform through which Leno and Letterman could have all of these like guys on and to debut. it goes back to the history of the tonight show in the 1970s as like the convening ground it also was a really good way to get publicity out about a movie but effectively like basically the moment youtube and the internet and all that stuff starts to come around these shows just become obsolete overnight i mean in my opinion the greatest to ever do it conan he couldn't even make it work what is conan doing now he's a podcast host and a very successful podcast host and it's very I love I love Team Coco.

1:10:35It's a good show. He gets good guests. But my point is just like that genre of like 25, 30 people on your staff staying up every night to do jokes. Yeah. I mean, even Jon Stewart, he's only on the air, guys, once a week. Right. Once a week. Like this, that is just it was such a specific moment in time that even I don't understand it. I can only read about it for what it was like. For mass media. Culturally, yeah, that post-1990s mass media culture right before the internet and YouTube and all that came out. And the only reason it even stayed around was because of all this legacy advertising. But look, the world has moved on.

1:11:16So yeah, if you ask me, that's the main reason, is you have to just keep signing these mega deals. You have this massive burn rate on the show. But I mean, I'm not going to be stupid and deny that it's an easy thing to hand to the Trump administration to also get the skydance to or to also get the paramount skydance merger so I think it's both 100 but I think that a lot of liberals are really ignoring like but guys the show was bad like it was a bad show the ratings

1:11:43Saagar Enjeti:were bad and like I was thinking a lot you know you know Emily mentioned that he was a star in Trump 1.0 and like we already knew like before Trump won 2024 that the talk show format was dying culturally. But even I thought that Colbert would get like a shot in the arm from Trump being back that it would like gin the resistance people back up. But you know, really, in my view, like the age range now for the Colbert audience is like 60s and 70s. Yes. And like, and but and you'd think that those people well would still just be watching like cable and the old things they're used to. But like, you know, I see like my dad who's in his 60s.

1:12:23Saagar Enjeti:I mean, he's he's looking at TikToks. He's looking at Instagram reels. When I go over to my dad's house, we're not watching cable. He's playing me a YouTube video now. And I really think that like even that age range of like 60s and 70s just have so many more entertaining distractions and watching a five minute interview like these really short bite interviews with really boring people or like some, you know, modern family actor is just not really hitting anymore. And it really goes to show that these the but the talk show format, I do believe people still like if you may if you revolutionize it, if you make it again, like, oh, I'm looking at shows online like Kill Tony is essentially a talk show that gets like hundreds of thousands of life and currents on YouTube.

1:13:12Saagar Enjeti:It's massive. I'm looking at people like the Adam Friedland show, which is much styled in like a 70s talk show. I do think people still like something about the format, but you have to keep it modern. You have to update it. And, you know, I look at an organization, Sagar mentioned the 25 employees, probably on the writing staff, the massive crew, and they saw the ratings go down for years and they refused to innovate. I mean, I've worked at a lot of media companies where the writing's on the wall. It's The downward trajectory is obvious and they just don't update. They don't modernize with the times.

1:13:47Saagar Enjeti:There was a way for them to save this show. They could have brought in new writers. They could have cleared house. They could have made it interesting and changed things. But when you're in that level of Hollywood cemented tradition, it's almost impossible unless someone gives you the mandate to go in and fire everyone, hire new staff, and like challenge the format i think it was savable but i just think i agree with that they're totally in their own ways yeah right i mean this is the problem they don't know how to streamline they don't know how to you know innovate or any of that for the future and uh by the way this is coming from all the legacy franchises i mean this is a sign that they are coming to it lately i think it's too baked in the burn rate's too high for example my prediction saturday night live it'll be dead in 10 years that's my no i don't disagree with that i don't just maybe if lauren dies like that's when it'll die i just think at this point nbc is just keeping it around for whatever say i don't know they're 10 years emeritus you know like some sort of emeritus thing and then when lauren is gone they're like look let's just end the show i mean there's no more like you know it's not good anymore it becomes a clip show i mean it already has become a clip show yeah yeah basically but yeah no i think they're realizing this a decade too late and that's why uh i think one of like my hottest takes ever is that cnn plus was actually a good idea.

1:15:05I mean, they executed it horribly. It's a hot take. It's a sizzling hot take. I understand what you're trying to say. The concept shouldn't have been abandoned because Fox News invested early in Fox Nation. Whatever you think about it, it's now a huge part of the Fox News business. And that's because they were able to bring people in with these documentaries and subscriptions and blah, blah, blah. That makes up for the fact that even, okay, so Gutfeld's trouncing Colbert. Okay, but that's 3 million people on average watching Gutfeld a night. It doesn't compare to the 10 million or the 5 million that you would have had on a late night show a long time ago.

1:15:44So anyway, all that is just to say that a lot of these networks are 10 years too late and are trying to adapt. They're just doing it in a very poor way and they're doing it late.

1:15:56Saagar Enjeti:And to the SNL point, just because SNL was mentioned and I am a sicko and I still watch every episode of SNL. I watch every single sketch. There's at least one good sketch an episode, but you got to suffer through a lot. I say, get rid of Lorne, bring in Tina Fey and let Tina Fey

1:16:16Saagar Enjeti:revolutionize the show. Let her update it for the next era. And I do think there's a ton of life there. Anyways, if you're listening to NBC 30 Rock. Yeah. Tina, if you're listening, we love you. Tina is on the record as having burner accounts. So in my fantasy, she does listen. Incredible. I love Tina Faye. Perhaps the most lib thing about me. Nothing better than 30 Rock. Oh, my God. So to this day, the greatest network show of all time. And Baldwin is just incredible the entire time on that. But yeah, why don't we kick it over to the second half now for premiums. Folks, we're going to be talking.

1:16:50Saagar Enjeti:We're going to be answering AMA questions. we're going to be talking about a little bit of the Vatican and Israel. And we're also going to be releasing exclusively a first for premium subscribers, a one-on-one interview between Sager and Schultz that was recorded outside of the Schultz episode where Sager asks, does he regret voting for Trump? The vibe check on JD Vance and more. You can check all that out by signing up at breakingpoints.com today and you'll get it in your email inbox. We'll see you on the other side.

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