Trump Ramps up Attacks on Elections

17:23Gretchen Carlson:I mean, I read about or heard of now. I mean, Putin, you know, in terms of nationalizing industries and whatever, you know, financing is going to him and his family. You know, you know, he may he may beat Trump. I'm sure if Trump believes that he'll try to do even more because he wants to be number one. Yeah.

17:42Ty Cobb:And again, this is just one of many things that get occluded these days. And the old playbook of if you imagine any other president, if you imagine, oh, what would they do with Obama if he was pocketing this kind of money? Right. You'd have a whole committee, special counsel, impeachment, everything. Ty, you've agreed to stay with us here. And on Fridays, I like it. We get a little more time. I wanted to ask you both about the very serious rebukes of Donald Trump for blatant racism, a big story here, and his mental state. And so I'm going to get into those issues with Ty when we're back in 90 seconds.

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19:32Ari Melber:I needed it for my own ego. I would have had a bad ego for the rest of my life. Scriptures always tell us that blessed are the pure in heart. I don't know if that applies to me necessarily. I'm not so sure.

19:48Ty Cobb:Donald Trump rambling, perhaps disinhibited, discussing that he doesn't have a good heart by his own admission there. I'm back with White House vet Ty Cobb. That raises, again, a recurring issue that you and others have spoken out about, that foreign allies have discussed, whether he is operating in a way that gives confidence and credibility to the United States or not. And that comes amidst a series of late night posts and other things that he's done, many in bad taste. The White House official account has posted these racist images they call memes about Keem Jeffries and others. But he took it up a whole nother notch in a post that was blatantly racist that we're not showing on air, but blatantly racist about the Obama's.

20:30Ty Cobb:It's since been deleted headlines, which include Republicans saying that what Trump posted, which we're not showing, was, quote, the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House, which means Tim Scott, a Republican apparently is aware of or tracks multiple racist things and says this is the worst. Boston Globe, Trump's racist post about Obama's deleted after backlash. The White House had, they note, earlier defended it. Axios, Republicans condemned appalling Obama video posted by Trump. Ty, I raise both these issues for your response.

21:08Gretchen Carlson:Well, thank you, Ari. I do think if we could start with the national prayer breakfast, that the excerpts that you showed, you know, a national prayer breakfast historically was a place where humility and love of country and love of fellow man and safety net and caring for each other was the theme. This time with Trump, it's all spectacle. It's self-aggrandizement. It's, you know, talking about his own greatness, making up lies about his own greatness, ending, you know, however many wars and, you know, bringing peace to places that are far from peaceful. So, you know, it's and then and then you add on to that the meme, you know, the racist meme today.

21:48Gretchen Carlson:It's not the first racist meme, as you may recall, that he's used with Obama. He had a meme of Obama being arrested on his knees in the Oval Office in July. So it's just it's it's stunning the way he has drained 250 years of dignity out of the office with acts like this.

22:10Ty Cobb:uh and do you view this as all related as sort of how he acts at night whether he's able to lead

22:18Gretchen Carlson:oh yes i mean you know the the late night memes um the the late night screeds the uh um you know the lies that uh you know get out unmonitored because at that hour there's nobody uh you know even if even if there was somebody he listened to there's really nobody there to say you might want to rethink this. Yeah, no, that's all related. And it's all part of his cognitive decline. I mean, so many physicians and psychiatrists around the country and certainly around the world now have, you know, commented on the frontal lobe issues that he has, you know, the way that his dementia has aggravated his narcissistic personality disorder, which, you know, I mean, a sixth grader could diagnose if they had the DSM-5 in front of him.

23:01Gretchen Carlson:So, yeah, no, it is related. The White House tries to, you know, prevent him from being perceived as other than whimsical on these things, but he's not. I mean, he's gone. And, you know, while these uncontrolled messages sometimes get in the way of the execution of the Stephen Miller, Stephen Vaught, you know, dismantling of democracy that's going on and they have to deal with them, you know, they achieve one of the goals in helping them do that, which is, you know, the terror that people live with every day that, you know, this man with serious cognitive decline has the nuclear codes. Right.

23:46Ty Cobb:Yeah. I mean, that's the situation within all this. And you've worked with him. You know him personally. You're speaking as someone who's observed him in private and public settings, just as former President Biden was sort of assessed and reviewed in public by people who knew him or explained what they saw over time. And it's it's clearly a live issue. Ty Cobb, as always, thank you on more than one topic tonight. We appreciate it. I'll tell folks coming up, there is pushback to ICE coming from around the country and culture. We have that by the end of the hour. The tech CEO is not only bowing to Trump, but sometimes trying to reshape the media you see, even as citizens and employees take a stand.

24:24Ty Cobb:I have an important piece on that coming up. And the Monopoly man protesting in Washington. You know, we love getting a point across with a little bit of fun. Also, who hasn't grown up on Monopoly? We'll explain that. But first, the very serious topic and the new revelations that are rocking the Trump White House. They couldn't stop this. They couldn't get Republicans to stop. They couldn't even stop the files coming out. We're still going through the many millions of new ones. And now the new deposition from an Epstein convict. Next.

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26:17Ty Cobb:We're tracking new footage tonight of this image here. We are seeing something you don't usually see, the convicted Epstein associate, Jelaine Maxwell, in another way that we have seen the law working late, delayed, slowly, as I've told you in our special reports, and yet ultimately working. Now, what we're seeing is Epstein being discussed from a 2016 deposition.

26:45Ari Melber:As far as I'm aware, a professional masseuse showed up for a massage. There is nothing inappropriate or incorrect about that. And your mischaracterization of it, I think, is unfortunate. How many teenagers did he have that were professional masseuses that worked in his home? Chex the Foreman Foundation. Herman, first of all, I'm not aware of teenagers who worked in him.

27:13Ty Cobb:at that time she was defending him the doj had this material and we have reported on how the new files show not only how epstein built his web but how often he was able to corrupt elite power centers sometimes in both parties to evade the long arm of the law drawing on the new files and new evidence we've only just gotten in the last few days let's look deeper at the timeline in 2007 prosecutors internally said they had the goods that they had enough material evidence testimony on epstein for an actual sex trafficking case of not one or two but actually a dozen teenage girls and they wrote and this is new that we've learned this a 56 page draft indictment So back then, some inside government were ready to charge Epstein for that whole terrible alleged conspiracy.

28:11Ty Cobb:But here's what I want to show you tonight. And this is newly revealed. That was the draft indictment. But it was discarded. The Bush DOJ never allowed it to be filed. And that was the big case. Instead, the top prosecutor, later a notorious name, Trump official Alex Acosta, at the time he let Epstein off the hook with that controversial secret deal. And that meant just one year in prison for the lesser count of soliciting prostitution. Acosta and others have argued that this was basically the case they had, that these things are complicated. Well, it's taken all this time, but I can report for you tonight that now the new Epstein files released from Friday shows that's false, that there was a whole written draft indictment of the bigger case, and they just discarded it.

29:03So what happened?

29:06Ty Cobb:Some prosecutors had that case written up, ready to go. We've now seen it, but their bosses, this later Trump ally Acosta, or perhaps bosses in Washington, discarded it. The DOJ since then, I should mention, has only indicted one person related to what's been documented as this sprawling conspiracy. And so I'm going to get into this because we are learning new things. For the first time, the New Friday files show the DOJ was eyeing other suspects. It's a mob-style chart, and the feds made this of Epstein's inner circle. So let's take a look at this right now as part of our special report. I just can tell you, this is a rare view inside a normally secret federal probe.

29:51Ty Cobb:You almost never see this type of thing before, during, or after a case, and the federal laws protect that. What's different here, of course, is Congress changed the laws for this particular mess of Epstein and the secrecy. So we have questions stoked here about why the feds, under first Trump and then the Biden DOJ did not apparently pursue and indict most of these men or the others who knew or partook in what the government also calls a broad sex trafficking ring. Which is it? A giant sex trafficking ring with someone at the center and other men involved in crimes knowing and otherwise? Or not?

30:30Ty Cobb:And if it's not, then what were the feds doing with their chart and their leads? What are the feds doing? Who has gotten off the hook? And how is this pressure building in ways that have completely come out of control of elite institutions? We've seen people ousted, sidelined, even fired just in the last week. We turn to a very special guest who knows this world as well as reporting on the survivors' demands. Gretchen Carlson joins us next.

31:04Ty Cobb:with heat rising from these epstein files releases that we're still going through we're joined by gretchen carlson a veteran journalist advocate and expert on these issues co-founder of lift our voices welcome back hey great to see you ari great to have you i showed some of the reporting we've done and to let audiences in on how it works. If you get 30 documents, you go through them. You get 100 documents, you might lean more on a print outlet's coverage and you go through them. When you get 3 million documents, everything then becomes this deluge. And I'll put our timeline back up. This was new reporting we've done, but also leaning on the documents and other materials where I showed before the break that DraftSec's trafficking indictment is newly detailed, although there were reports about how much they backed off then.

31:56Ty Cobb:These new emails from Trump officials like Lutnik and Musk are revealed as of Friday, and we go on through that timeline. I wonder what you think about this overdue reckoning as people learn what's really in the files.

32:14Ari Melber:Yeah, I think two things. I think that this was pre-Me Too. And so I think that it was easy to pass this off, you know, much more so than it would be post-Me Too to be able to get away with that. So that's my first thought. My second thought is that this is affecting both sides of the aisle. And so there was a reason to try to quash it no matter who was the president at that particular time.

32:46Ty Cobb:It's such an important point you raise that while we don't need to only sift it politically, we are in a two-party system where the DOJ and these powerful forces are usually under one of the parties. And to your point, Epstein cultivated both parties. He had a top Obama-Biden era lawyer, Kathy Rumler, which we reported on. He had outreach to others. Alan Dershowitz is a complex figure, but he did spend many decades sort of on the center left of law, of course, later representing Trump. And so, again, to your point, when you look back at what he was doing 20 years ago, was cultivating those figures as well as Ken Starr, Alex Acosta and these others.

33:31Ty Cobb:As someone who's been at the intersection of law and journalism, does it bum you out? Is it depressing that he was that it worked for so long? And what does that teach us about fixing it now?

33:42Ari Melber:It teaches us that power rules and sex rules. I mean, unfortunately, when I read through these documents now as well, it's just it's completely disheartening to know that sex has always ruled. Right. I mean, it doesn't matter what political party you're in when somebody wants to treat you poorly. They don't ask you, are you a Republican, an independent or a Democrat? I mean, we're finding that out when we look at this. And I think that, honestly, the Me Too movement has changed all of this because this would never have happened post-2016. He would not have gotten that Steve Hart deal back in 2008.

34:26Ari Melber:And no administration—well, I shouldn't say that. Maybe some administrations. But for the most part, most administrations would not allow this to be covered up. I think one of the most important things, though, that we should be talking about tonight is that members of this House committee are going to get a chance to go in and see these unredacted files next week. And so much of the criticism since they started releasing this on a Friday a week ago was that they redacted a lot of names of these powerful potential men. Well, now you're going to have members of Congress who are going to be able to go in there and they're going to be able to see this.

35:05Ari Melber:and they're going to be able to come out and say what they saw. And they're also going to be having potentially public hearings. So I don't think this story is over, Ari. You know, I think that they tried to come out a week ago and say that, OK, we've released everything and that's it. And nobody asked any more questions. You know what?

35:25Ty Cobb:Do you think as part of the oversight, Congress and the Democrats could do it themselves, should hold more hearings? I mean, they could do the January 6th model. You can hold primetime hearings. You go through this. People sometimes forget that effective hearings, effective congressional oversight usually is built on a bunch of research. This was a research bonanza. It took years. It was overdue. But now there's more material than you normally have for any hearing.

35:51Ari Melber:Yeah. Well, the people that you show in your timeline, Congress has said that they're going to subpoena them for these hearings. Mm hmm. So, I mean, one of those one of the men committed suicide in a prison in France. But the other people who are there, they are going to subpoena them. Bill Clinton tonight, former president, has said, let's do this public hearing. Let's do it on camera. And so, you know, I think that this as much as we try to say that a week ago or at least the Trump administration has tried to say that a week ago, this was a document dump on a Friday afternoon. And, you know, let's be done with this and that he attacks female reporters who continue to ask him about this legitimate questions about this.

36:33Ari Melber:I think the story is far from over, Ari, because if they have these public hearings, these members of Congress will have seen these unredacted files. and they're going to tell, I think they're going to tell the American public the truth.

36:48Ty Cobb:Really striking. Gretchen, we've come to you on these stories before. Look forward to having you back. Made some important points tonight, I feel. Gretchen Carlson, thank you very much. We're going to finish a break when we come back. The way that the internet, the tech titans, are now trying to control the journalism you see and what you can do about it.

37:13Ty Cobb:the most valuable companies in the world are tech companies. Largest share of the stock market there, those top 10 companies, most of them are tech, which has profound implications for our economy. But that's not where it stops. Some of the biggest tech companies aren't content to just be the biggest. They now want to buy up other things, which are comparatively smaller. And that means they want to affect what you see even when you are off your proverbial phone. Take Jeff Bezos, who of course has massive power with Amazon and his space company. He also bought the newspaper, The Washington Post, and this week completely gutted it.

37:49Ty Cobb:Amazon spending$75 million for that Melania film while he's fired a third of the staff. A top executive editor there who worked with Bezos, slamming the layoffs as part of the Trump cave. Critics also say the new MAGA owner of CBS, unless the Ellisons, backed by David Ellison and his father, are trying to appease Trump with their coverage and also get more power and get involved in more deals by giving Trump the coverage he wants. Now, there's been a lot of talk about who's going to get a hold of Warner Brothers, an empire that can include CNN or not, depending on how they do the deal. Larry Ellison and his son, David Ellison, the Trump allies, are also pursuing that.

38:35Ty Cobb:They're competing against the lead bidder, which is basically Netflix, that has put up$83 billion. You think about what these tech companies have? $83 billion to get the whole empire. That deal, if approved, would then spin out CNN separately and create a kind of entertainment goliath, combining Netflix with Warner, their library, HBO, and so on. Now, all of this gets regulatory review in more than one country. The Netflix CEO was testifying in Washington just this week about the merger. There was this demonstrator we mentioned, the Monopoly man there, trying to use that favorite video board game, excuse me, that great favorite board game to protest this kind of monopoly power.

39:16Ty Cobb:Lawmakers, indeed, from both parties, pressed Netflix about any dealings with Trump. The CEO saying he believed politics wouldn't influence whether the Trump administration blessed the purchase. All of this is a big deal in Hollywood as well as in journalism for the reasons I mentioned. And we have just heard from Hollywood power player Ari Emanuel about a whole bunch of things. We talked to him about his podcast, but he also said something you're going to see on TV for the first time tonight, making a little news when we asked about this potential merger, which could reshape everything from movies, entertainments to podcasts to journalism.

39:56journalism.

39:57Ty Cobb:Ari, there is so much interest and controversy around the media consolidation, media mergers. You're also, of course, a player in the space in many ways. Do you think there is a concern about monopoly or concentration when you look at a Netflix Warner or whoever gets it? How do you view this from the standpoint of the artists and the creators and people you work with, as well as what might be good, if we can say that, good for the creative community? Well, from my perspective, you know, I'm in business with all of them.

40:31Ari Melber:I would like to have a kind of robust marketplace as a representative. So I think there's going to be issues surrounding in Europe and in the United States with market share on the Netflix bid. And so I think those are the issues.

40:55Ty Cobb:Price and market share are the issues, one, for the government and two, for the shareholders.

41:01Gretchen Carlson:and you're going to see if Netflix changes its bid and moves off the stock price of Netflix, which is now below the collar,

41:13Ari Melber:which then will move up the process probably till February, March, that those are the two considerations, and we'll see what happens. I have a great relationship with people at Netflix. I have a great relationship with David Zasloff and with David Allison, But I think people are underestimating Europe and market share and regs for approval processes. So we'll see. I want a more robust—I want more bidders in the market.

41:51Ty Cobb:There is a lot going on. There are many issues with the Trump administration. But we have begun this year with a clear national clash over ICE. Donald Trump's immigration seeing its highest opposition ever in his two terms in office because ICE has mass agents patrolling the streets. Federal agents have now killed two Americans, menaced and hurt others. And the movement built around this is bipartisan and broad and growing. There's an American paradox here, though, because while one side, MAGA, which did win an election on some of these issues and has gone even farther, not only with this ice patrolling, but a kind of anti-immigrant, anti-Latin agenda.

42:36Ty Cobb:They're pretty open about it. We discussed racism earlier in the broadcast. It's up against what is also now clearly the year of Bad Bunny, an American pop star who sings in Spanish, who won the top Grammy you can get album of the year, first time a Spanish-language album has ever won that award. It was also tapped for something so big, I don't have to explain why. the largest stage in the country, the Super Bowl halftime show. And the Puerto Rican star tops the charts. All of this has angered Donald Trump and his allies. Their desire to control everything, including culture, is running up against the fact that they are being rejected, not just by, you know, the cool, young, hip kids who like Bad Bunny, but by all the people who run the NFL and major companies and Super Bowl halftime show.

43:25Ty Cobb:and what's more American than the NFL? Commissioner Goodell continues to tout the performance expected this Sunday and the Grammy wins by the artist, which again shows another type of embrace. A Grammys that had a lot of different, diverse people saying, hey, whatever your politics are, fine, but let's not have ICE agents killing people. That's well beyond political differences. Goodell says this is now a time for unity, not division.

43:54Ari Melber:Bad Bunny was, and I think that was demonstrated last night, one of the great artists in the world. And that's one of the reasons to be chosen. This platform is used to unite people and to be able to bring people together. I think Bad Bunny understands that, and I think he'll have a great performance.

44:15Ty Cobb:There you have it. And he's not some liberal crusader, to state the obvious. I want to mention what Bad Bunny said from the stage accepting that award because he dedicated it to a very American idea, being a nation of immigrants. And he shouted out, and I'm quoting, all the people that had to leave their homeland to follow their dreams. And a tribute for all the people, he said, who have lost a loved one and even so have had to continue with great strength. This award, he told them, is for you. So, again, that's not about politics. It's about humanity. It's about coming together. And we will all be watching to see how he uses this next great stage on Sunday.

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