How Trump’s Epstein woes nearly derailed his spending cuts

0:02I've been thinking, you know, especially since Trump came on the scene, like a news cycle lasts, you know, a minute. Like stories don't stick around maybe for more than a couple of days. But we've been talking about Jeffrey Epstein now for, what, almost two weeks. How is this the thing that's stuck? It wasn't on my bingo card for the covering in the movie or the year. I mean, I think it has all the elements of just like a story that people can't let go of in a way, right? It's like there's a jet, there's a private island, there's wrongdoing, there's a mysterious suicide in a prison. And a couple of lawmakers described it to me as like a political TMZ.

0:46Like people just love to know what happens next.

0:55From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Colby Ickowitz, politics reporter and host of Post Reports Weekly Politics Roundtables. It's Friday, July 18th. I'm so excited to be joined this week by congressional correspondent here at The Post, Liz Goodwin. Hey, Liz. Hello. Thanks for having me. And I'm also so excited to be here with Mariana Sotomayor, who covers the House of Representatives for us. Hey, Mariana. Hi. Thanks for having me back.

1:24So this week, the House and the Senate passed another major bill that cuts government spending. But fighting among lawmakers over Jeffrey Epstein threatened to derail that vote in the House last night. So we'll talk about what was in that spending cut package later. But let's start by talking about the unrelated drama that overtook the House yesterday as Republicans were trying to get it passed. Much of the debate in the House yesterday was about Jeffrey Epstein. And earlier in the week, we covered why MAGA is so upset about how the Trump White House is handling the case. But basically, just to sum up, Jeffrey Epstein was this really well-connected financier.

2:01He died in 2019 in jail after being charged with child sex trafficking. A lot of Trump's MAGA base believes there's been this government cover-up with his death. Trump initially hinted that he might release some of the investigation files, but then the administration said, no, we're not going to do that. So that was a quick summary. Mariana, how did the Epstein files become such a sticking point in Congress this week? Well, there's a lot of Republican members who are part of the MAGA base who they themselves have been talking about these Epstein files for years. And it's actually been kind of impressive how much this story has stuck and stuck around.

2:45You know, when you start off the day thinking, OK, there's a big vote in the House, you know, there could be disagreements on policy, on principle, but usually not a conspiracy theory. And all of this kind of started earlier in the week on Tuesday where we actually saw Democrats latch on to this issue and kind of troll Republicans with it, particularly in the House Rules Committee. they started to introduce amendments, kind of forcing a number of Republicans to have to vote on the issue of releasing these Epstein files. So that happened on Tuesday. And then Democrats tried to force Republicans to vote on the issue on the House floor.

3:26So you're putting many more Republicans on notice. And there were actually several members of the Freedom Caucus who were ready to vote with Democrats to allow a vote that would have forced the Justice Department to release all of the Epstein files. and leadership was on the floor, like super tense moments. There were other congressmen who were really angry yelling at floor staff. It took about like 45 minutes for this to get resolved. That was on Tuesday. Okay, so Epstein is coming up at the beginning of the week, but then they have this big deadline for these spending cuts at the end of the week, and Epstein becomes a major issue again.

4:04What happened then? Yeah, so after the drama in the House Rules Committee on Tuesday, Republicans on that panel were pretty nervous. The Rules Committee, which again is this committee where all legislation that's about to hit the floor must go through. So if they can't approve bills to go to the floor, there is no vote. And they were supposed to meet on Wednesday, and then it just got delayed for 24 hours. And that's when we started to wonder, okay, what is happening? There's no real problem with the spending package. Republicans want to make these cuts. So there's got to be something else that's going on.

4:45And it was Republicans on the panel, Chip Roy, a notable member of the House Freedom Caucus, Republican from Texas, Ralph Norman, another member of the Freedom Caucus, and then a couple of other Republicans who have been facing pushback back home for the votes that they took in this committee to vote against releasing the Epstein files. They just didn't want Democrats to bring up this issue again. And of course, Democrats in the minority, having very little power, were going to introduce these amendments. So those conversations, again, took over 24 hours. It really started to delay the ability to pass this spending cuts package, which had to be done by Friday under law and under this mechanism that they were using.

5:36So long story short, a number of those Freedom Caucus members on the panel were advocating that they needed something. They needed more transparency. They needed to show their constituents at least that they are willing to vote to release the files in one way or the other. And that's why this quote-unquote non-binding resolution came to be. And essentially what it does is at some point, the House could bring up this resolution. And all it would do if the House were to vote on it is say, we as the body of the House of Representatives believe that the Trump administration should release these files and be more transparent about this.

6:20It doesn't actually enforce the Trump administration from releasing the files. Okay, so what you're saying is that this doesn't actually force the Trump administration to do anything on Epstein at this point, but that this was enough of a compromise for Republicans to get them enough votes overnight to actually pass this bill. I mean, Liz, what do you think about how Republicans are responding to all of this? Yeah, I think they're just in a tough spot because they've really fired people up over Epstein And, you know, among Republicans lately, like the past few election cycles, there's been like a little bit of a conspiratorial vibe sometimes to what they tell their base.

7:02So like, you know, the government is hiding files about January 6th, actually, like the FBI did it or whatever. There's a lot of calls for transparency and releasing all the files because a lot of Republican politicians say that the government is lying about a lot of things during the Biden years and the Obama years. So they've already kind of set this precedent for their voters that like the government lies all the time. So you have to release everything so that you can know for yourself what happened. So I think to now say the opposite is just hard. But what's so interesting, Liz, is like obviously the Democrats and like anti-Trump people have are really pushing this idea that Trump is covering for himself.

7:42Right. That there must be something incriminating about Trump in these so-called files. So it does put Republicans in this tough spot. Right. Because their base wants them to press for releasing these files. But what if there is something that would harm Trump in them? They've been protecting Trump for 10 years. How do they square that? Yeah, I think at the end of the day, that's why there's not going to be some investigation where their Hill Republicans are demanding more information. Because, you know, at the end of the day, they're supporting President Trump and they usually do whatever he wants, even if there's a lot of complaining in the meantime.

8:18Like, that's what we've seen on the Hill these past few months since he came back into office. They feel like he is the leader of the party. He is way more popular than them. There's no Republican Party without Trump or apart from Trump. It's very different from the first term where he was the newcomer and they would push back on a bunch of stuff. They really fall in line. They do what he tells them to do. And so I think that's what you're going to see here, too. Yeah, Liz, but like for now, at least the people in his base who are upset about this don't seem to be falling in line. Maybe the Republicans in Congress are.

8:52But Trump is like he made some moves on this on Thursday night to try to appease his base, I think, and to try to turn down the temperature on this story. You know, he came out and said, OK, Justice Department, you can release some grand jury transcripts from the Epstein files. So, Liz, do you think that alone is going to be satisfying to the Republicans who want who've been asking and clamoring for more Epstein information? I think in the House, there's people who are more worked up on about this and aren't going to be satisfied. I think on the Senate side, a lot of lawmakers want to just grab onto something and say, see, they released something.

9:30It's fine. And that might be enough for them. I think it also depends on how the actual voters and the base react, because a lot of the lawmakers are just hearing this kind of from the ground up and like MAGA influencers on X being upset about it and kind of not letting it go. And as we were saying before, I think Trump is used to news cycles just dying after a certain point, and this one just has not. So I think the fact that he's even willing to make a small concession after saying there's nothing here, everybody needs to move on, it's a hoax, shows that they're also grappling with that reality of the fact that they need to do more.

10:10Right, because I think that they understand or realize that this wasn't just going to go away on its own. I mean, Trump's base is really upset because they think that he's not being transparent on Epstein. And then at the same time, you've got Democrats that are really pushing on this because Trump and Epstein, they had a relationship, right? Like they were friends. There's lots of records of that. You know, there's photos, there's video. And I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention that there was a big story in the Wall Street Journal published Thursday night that kind of sheds new light on that friendship.

10:43Mariano, what was that reporting? So essentially what the Wall Street Journal reported was that when Jeffrey Epstein turned 50 years old, he was gifted this album full of letters from a number of his friends. And one of those entries was from Donald Trump. And besides, you know, congratulations for turning 50, happy birthday that Trump allegedly wrote, he also drew a picture of a naked woman and signed it. And, you know, since then, of course, Trump has posted on Truth Social that, you know, he never submitted this letter, that he never draws. And he also threatened to sue the Wall Street Journal, having called one of the top executives before the article published.

11:37And to your report, Mariana, he said in his defense of this and why it couldn't be him is because he doesn't draw. And then pictures of him doodling and selling doodles for charity events started appearing on social media. it. Well, this is wild and does not seem to be going away anytime soon, but we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll get into what's actually in this spending bill that almost got held up in the obscene drama. So we'll be right back.

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12:53Okay, so putting the Epstein files aside, this bill that passed in Congress that's on its way to President Trump's desk, it cuts another$9 billion in federal funding from a bunch of different programs. Liz, what does it cut? The rescissions bill that just made it through, it cuts a billion dollars from NPR, PBS, this like public broadcasting money that will likely have a pretty big impact, especially on like rural areas that just have, you know, one little public radio station. It also cut billions from USAID programs, and those include, you know, democracy promotion programs abroad. There was a last minute change where cuts to an HIV prevention program, PEPFAR, were taken out because a few Republicans did not want to defund George Bush's signature policy program.

13:48But it still basically makes permanent and makes legal a big chunk of the destruction of USAID because the Trump administration has been kind of unilaterally not spending money that Congress appropriates. And then in the case of USAID, they actually just destroyed a federal agency that's authorized by Congress. And then they folded it and put it under the State Department. And I think there were a lot of questions about, well, what's going to happen to that long term? There were lawsuits. Is this legal? But now Congress has essentially blessed a huge piece of that USAID cut. So we keep talking about this like rescission bill, rescission package.

14:27What does that mean? It's almost like a weird loophole that a lot of people don't know about because Congress never passes them. This is the first time this has been done in decades because, you know, Congress has the power of the purse. So every year they would fund the government through, you know, 12 appropriations bills that that are like different pieces of the government. and they say, this is how much everybody gets to spend. Here's the money you have. And then a rescissions package basically claws some of that money back and says, never mind, don't spend that, the thing we told you you could spend.

15:01And a weird loophole about a rescissions package is that in the Senate, most things need 60 votes to pass, sort of a super majority. And that's part of why things often get bogged down in the Senate, because most major legislation needs to be bipartisan in order to pass the Senate because they almost never have 60 votes from one party or the other. So appropriations actually has to be bipartisan, like Republicans need Democrats to sign off on government funding bills in the Senate. But rescissions, it only needs 51 votes. So you can essentially fund the government in a bipartisan way. And then if you have 51 votes to claw back the stuff that the Republicans didn't want to spend, you could, in theory, do that, right?

15:50So that's why Democrats have been very mad this week, as they're saying, you know, why would we agree to fund the government with y 'all? And then you can just take it back without our votes. It's sort of like a veto of the appropriations process, the bipartisan process. There's also a much bigger fight to come on Capitol Hill, which is, as Liz was saying, the government funding process. Congress must do this every single year before October. And something else to note about rescissions is that the Trump administration has said that there are more to come. I am starting to hear privately from Republicans who care about their yearly role of funding the government, who are really starting to worry about what those next asks will be.

16:36And there is starting to be more murmurs. You hear it from Democrats all the time. And Republicans haven't come out yet, and it's unclear if they ever will. But there are more murmurs from the Republican side of the aisle that they really fear that if the Trump administration continues to send rescission packages and kind of force it down Congress's throat, we're starting to really enter into a constitutional crisis. That question really came up during like the early Elon Musk, Department of Government Efficiency, Doge time when they were, you know, cutting billions of dollars in programs and people were like, wait, Congress appropriated or authorized that.

17:20Like you can't just come in and get rid of it. that's expanding the powers of the executive and minimizing the powers of the legislative branch. Are these cuts in the rescission package, are they related to what Elon Musk and Doge was doing? Yeah. So remember when Elon Musk said, I'm putting USAID through the wood chipper? Yes. So this is defunding a portion of USAID that has already been defunded. So I think what's kind of confusing is Doge unilaterally did a lot of things that are still being like litigated in the courts when it comes to just not spending congressionally appropriated money or trying to reorganize or eliminate a federal agency without consulting Congress.

18:06I mean, what they're doing is just very unprecedented. It's pushing the boundaries of what is legal. And the rescissions process, even though it's controversial, it's legal. So now if something passes through a rescission, there's no way to like challenge that or say that's unconstitutional. This is an actual like, you know, legal process they're going through. So if you're a little bit more of a constitutionalist, you would think that pretty much everything Doge did needs to stop September 30th if they're not passing it through Congress. And that's why the White House is trying to send more packages over because once it's ratified in this way, it is legal, it's airtight, it's locked up, this money is gone.

18:50They can, you know, use it in other ways. So this is the way to make Doge legal, essentially, a rescissions package. So one of the big cuts in this rescissions package, Liz, you brought it up earlier, were the cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which of course funds public television and radio stations. I mean, I don't know about you guys, But like I grew up on Sesame Street and my daughter's first favorite show was Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, which airs on PBS. I mean, what does this funding cut mean for those type of programming? Mariana, what are you hearing? It's really going to hurt the smaller affiliate stations.

19:27So it's obviously going to hit the national PBS and national NPR. But of course, they work with local stations, right? They're the ones who kind of make sure that the programming that comes from the national stations are heard in local communities. But they also have their own programming. They also actually are a major source of weather information, for example. And that actually came up both in the Senate and over in the House with a number of Republicans saying, hey, like my constituents who live in really rural areas and can barely get radio stations. do get, you know, the local NPR station.

20:10As we saw, though, they still voted for this rescissions package, which is likely going to hurt a number of these affiliate stations. The reason why I have heard is, as Liz just very succinctly explained, a lot of Republicans know that voting against what Trump wanted in this way would have been politically bad for them. So that's why they voted yes. Why does PBS and NPR seem to always find itself in the crosshairs of Republicans? I think Republicans see NPR and PBS as liberal, especially NPR. There's a lot of criticism of their coverage. But I did hear in the past few weeks defense defense of public radio from some Republicans who especially ones who live in in states that have Native American reservations on them or just large rural areas in general, because a lot of times you can't get cell phone service out there, but you can get public radio.

21:08And that'll be that community's sort of main source of news about something like a weather emergency, other types of emergencies. And so there was some discussion about how this did provide value to those areas. But I think in general, the sort of overall take on the right is that these are liberal entities and the federal government shouldn't be funding them.

21:36great well we will we will leave it there guys thank you so much uh for coming on i really appreciate it i know you both have long hard hard weeks up on the hill so i hope you enjoy your weekend thanks you too mariana sotomayor reports on the house of representatives from post Liz Goodwin is the Post's congressional correspondent. That's it for Post Reports. Thanks for listening. If you love the show, help other people discover it by leaving a rating on Spotify or a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Today's show was produced by Arjun Singh. It was edited by Laura Benshoff. It was mixed by Sean Carter.

22:17Thanks also to Rachel Van Dongen. Our team also includes Maggie Penman, Rina Flores, Ted Muldoon, Alana Gordon, Ariel Plotnick, Renny Siernovsky, Sappy Robinson, Emma Talcoff, Peter Bresnan, Sam Baer, Thomas Liu, Arjun Singh, Tadeo Ruiz-Sandoval, Martine Powers, Alahi Azadi, and Renita Jablonski. I'm Kolby Ekowitz. Have a great weekend.

22:50Thank you.

23:26We'll see you next time.