Trump Swamped by Epstein and New Jobs Slump

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0:54Paul Krugman:This is The Beat, and we begin here with a piece of the story we were just discussing and a lot more of the Epstein political meltdown, including what victims say is Donald Trump's betrayal and favoritism for pedophiles. That's their words. I'm going to get to that. It's what might be the greatest peril of Trump's second term. The economy, we've been discussing the Epstein uproar hitting a whole new pitch today because it's gone beyond promises and talk and content and into coddling Epstein conspirators. So today we have an extraordinary move. Donald Trump, as Stephanie Ruhl and I were just discussing, firing the data official who does these jobs numbers.

1:36Paul Krugman:Critics say it's an abuse of power. People involved in this type of work, labor, finance say they've never seen anything quite like this. And it all was quite blunt. If you can say one thing about the second term that might be different than the first is Donald Trump just does whatever he wants immediately. We don't see guardrails. We don't see a lot of spin and we don't see the Washington game of them saying, well, wait till midnight, wait till Sunday. Nope. Came right along with what was bad news for the Trump administration hours after this tough jobs data, which shows hiring basically sharply slowing, which means that's a bad thing because it's not the kind of job gains they wanted.

2:12Paul Krugman:And second, a lot of concern and indicators that this could relate to Trump's policy. So it's not just bad news. It's bad news partly caused by Trump. According to experts, we'll get into the details. They fell short of the expectations. And this is widely understood here. It's summer. Some people are busy. Some people turn off the news. But in finance, where this monthly jobs number is a big deal, it hit hard. This was a very weak report. The revisions, certainly to May and June, are very concerning. I'm still very bullish on the U.S. economy, but this is a disappointing number. Disappointing number, weak report.

2:50Paul Krugman:That's just how it played on, say, Fox Business. Hours after this came out, Trump fired the Commissioner on Labor Statistics, someone you never really talk about by name. They are a nonpartisan sort of civil servant that does the numerical work. and then he went after her, smearing her as some sort of political person. Later in the show, we have Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman on this firing, what it means, the tariffs and more. Then you turn to Epstein, the lawyer for the only person in prison for Epstein crimes, Jelaine Maxwell. She was convicted of the luring of minors, the sex trafficking, revealing she has now been moved to a minimum security prison in Texas.

3:32Paul Krugman:This is unusual. It is suspicious. It comes after her suspicious DOJ interviews and where Trump wouldn't rule out pardoning her. This looks like help for her. Looks like leniency. Looks like a reward. And the reason it looks like that is because, A, there was no automatic sort of legal process that would just lead to this. B, it is in direct contradiction with the rules. You know how we have written rules. They're not laws. It's not a crime to move people around as an exception. But the BOP, the Bureau of Prisons, has rules that convicted sex offenders cannot get this type of better minimum security prison.

4:11Paul Krugman:So I just want to pause here and tell you what's happening. Say you think the Epstein story is sometimes overblown. Say you think it's become political and the right wing's doing this and Democrats then jumped in, but Democrats weren't talking about it last year. And it all kind of seems like a lot of noise. Well, this is a day today where the noise and the politics have turned into action. And that action is to help the surviving Epstein conspirator. So if you're someone who was on the right or in MAGA or saying, boy, the Epstein guy is worst of the worst and other people might have gotten away with it and you can catch the new guys.

4:47Paul Krugman:The sum total result under the Trump administration is now to help Epstein style pedophiles, Epstein style predators, including the one serving time for him. I say that by way of introduction to the victims. I've told you when we cover this story, we will cover all sides of it. The politics are part of it. But let's hear what these Epstein victims and family members are saying today, because they are outraged, saying it is with horror and outrage that we object to this, what they call preferential treatment for convicted sex traffickers, just saying Maxwell, that she's received. Quote, Maxwell is a sexual predator who physically assaulted minor children on multiple occasions.

5:28Paul Krugman:She should never be shown any leniency. And then, and these are people who've lived this, these family members, and they didn't say this a year ago. They didn't say it at random. They are saying it in response to this unusual sweetheart prison deal for the Epstein conspirator. quote, Trump has sent a clear message today, quote, pedophiles deserve preferential treatment according to Trump. That is how the Epstein victim's family views it. Bloomberg reports FBI teams saw Trump's name in the Epstein files and redacted them, that he was mentioned multiple times, and the DOJ did this review, found all that material.

6:08Paul Krugman:Bloomberg saying hundreds of agents who actually worked on this at one point, and it was a controversial matter to put so many resources into reviewing the documents, which then all led to nothing. The two-page memo, which just said, we're not giving out more information. Republicans are facing heat from voters, meanwhile, because they are tied, of course, to MAGA. They're tied to President Trump on an agenda that is really closing in on all sides, that is saddled. You have the unpopular healthcare cuts in that budget. You have the extremism, many people have found, of the immigration agenda. And you have the Epstein uproar showing that an administration that ran on and claimed it would bring more transparency and justice to the Epstein case has brought only secrecy and now today leniency for an Epstein conspirator.

6:53Paul Krugman:That is the climate for a Republican town hall like this in Wisconsin. One of the biggest improvements that we have seen is the success in securing the U.S.-Mexico border. We can just keep it down a little bit so people can hear that's going to be helpful. in making sure that we're supporting, making sure that we're supporting what occurred during the Biden administration was a massive influx of illegal immigrants into the United States. That is just some of what Republicans are facing in the few areas where they are willing to go out in public and face their constituents rather than run and hide.

7:34Paul Krugman:We're joined by Bill Kristol, a longtime Republican White House veteran, editor-at-large for The Bulwark, critic of Donald Trump, founding director of Defending Democracy Together, and a longtime Washington journalist, friend of the beat, and now editor-at-large for Semaphore, Margaret Carlson. Bill, I want to start with the actual fact that the only big change to anyone in the Epstein case is what the victims see as leniency, what the BOP rules doesn't normally allow for the only incarcerated living Epstein conspirator. I want to give you the floor to speak to that obvious problem, that unethical problem, and the politics of a movement that claimed, at least at times, that it cared about getting the bad guys and now helping one of them.

8:20I think your point that you made a couple of minutes ago is really important. This is an actual thing they have done. This isn't a conversation that we don't know why they were doing it. We can speculate, and I think there are grounds to speculate some bad motives there, but we don't know yet. But here's something they've done out of the blue, right? There's no, as you say, the Bureau of Prison Rules, I look quickly at the online and what it seems to suggest this shouldn't happen for this kind of offender, especially this early in her term. I assume she would request, maybe she requested, maybe a lot of them requested.

8:52But suddenly, one week after meeting with the Deputy Attorney General in private, in a meeting that we've had no readout of. No, there are no notes that we've been made available. For this to happen, I mean, what would we think in any context, right? You don't have to be a Trump, a never-Trumper, you don't have to be a, you know, I don't know, an Epstein conspiracy theorist, if that's the right word anymore, or at least, let's say, someone who's very interested in the Epstein case. You just look at this happening, this one-two punch, and you think it's an inducement to her to say nice things about Trump, or is it a reward to her for something they know she's going to do?

9:26Is it a bit of a threat also because they could retract this, right? I mean, the whole combination of the back and forth. Did she say she might reveal certain things if they didn't do this? We don't know, again, who's inducing who, right, in this case, maybe some of both. But it really smells to high heaven.

9:48Paul Krugman:Margaret? it? You know, the story wasn't gaining steam as quickly as it might have because, you know, Pam Bondi did what she did and then that kind of died and there wasn't anything new and Trump's name being redacted is not new enough. And so it now turns into a story where the cover-up is worse than what was happening before. I won't call it a crime because we don't know what the crime exactly is on Trump's part. We know what it is on Maxwell's part and certainly on Epstein's part. But to give her a break right now when she could rat on him, she knows what happened with whom. I mean, it's such a blunder.

10:37I can't imagine who told Trump that it was okay to do or did he not ask anybody. He had to ask some people because it takes more than Trump whispering into the phone. So we go along and the story grows and comes into a whole other level, which is I assume that Maxwell wouldn't take the chance of saying anything against Trump because he could pardon her. Now we know he can give her leniency. So she wasn't that much of a threat to Trump anyway. So to go out in front of this and give this to the only living person who really knows what happened, it's one of the biggest blunders I've ever seen. But don't you, I don't quite necessarily agree, because we don't know if it's a blunder, because we don't know what she has on Trump.

11:30It's not a blunder if it keeps her quiet when she is threatening, and she may have given up on hopes of a pardon or whatever. But we don't know if she's threatening. If she's threatening to reveal things that could really implicate Trump in knowledge, not in direct knowledge of what Epstein and she were doing or in participation in that, it's worth it. She takes a hit. They think it's worth it. Right. So I don't know. I think what you're. And also. So I do think one has to take me. It all comes back to the thing we've all been saying, I think should have been saying for the last month. There must be something in those files.

12:02He desperately. Right. Why?

12:05Paul Krugman:Where I where I'm hearing you both agree is that this is a huge deal and risk. And Margaret is saying, if you're taking that risk for no good reason, what a blunder. And you're saying maybe in the midst of all this, when he's already on defense, you take that bigger risk because there's something worse in there. And the other point I want to remind folks is the thorough investigation and deduction of everything that could be provably gotten out of this. at one time defendant and now convict already happened. And it happened, whatever skepticism people have in the government, which is fine, we're journalists, we're all skeptical.

12:39Paul Krugman:It happened under less suspicious terms already. In other words, she was prosecuted. There are plea negotiations and other things offered. They ran a whole case. They have all these files. They had Ms. Comey, among others, at DOJ doing it. So to go back in that jailhouse is not necessarily a conversation that's on the level. they certainly haven't conducted themselves in a way where they're I think the Trump administration gets that benefit of the doubt. It may have been questions asked to try to encourage outcomes. Please do or don't say this or that the way a shady lawyer, not an honest prosecutor operates.

13:15Paul Krugman:And so I want to hit some other points of that. Bill and Margaret have agreed to stay. So we're on that. I also want to remind folks we have something by the end of the hour that will be interesting and talk about Obama's cultural legacy that some Democrats want to use and Paul Krugman coming up on the econ story. But I'll be back as well with Bill and Margaret in 90 seconds. Hi, I'm Daniel, founder of Pretty Litter. Cats and cat owners deserve better than any old-fashioned litter. That's why I teamed up with scientists and veterinarians to create Pretty Litter. Its innovative crystal formula has superior odor control and weighs up to 80 % less than clay litter.

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14:49We were shocked by it. Um... especially to use the term stolen,

15:00because she's not an object. She's a person.

15:08She's a mom. She's a sister. And it just kind of makes us wonder, I mean, how much he knew.

15:19Paul Krugman:Epstein victims' family members speaking out there, responding directly to some of Donald Trump's statements this week. We're having this back and forth. And Bill, go ahead, pick up where we were. I mean, it's terrible. I mean, everything Trump says, A, makes me think it's much more likely he knew in real time what was happening. He may not have participated. We don't know. But he had an idea of what was going on. I think we know that already from other things he said. But it's been confirmed by what we've learned in the last couple of weeks. For me, what's so striking, Donald Trump speaks about, as the gentleman said, about these young girls being stolen or taken from him as if he owns them.

15:58And if the problem was just that they were working for him and then Epstein took them, though he also says whatever Epstein was doing with them or something like that, he said something like that. But the degree to which Trump doesn't even think to offer words of sympathy or empathy for the girls. I mean, think about any normal person. Let's not assume even you kind of didn't know stuff was going on. You should have done more. You didn't do more. Maybe you trusted your friend too much. Let's assume, you know, some story like that, right? If this stuff thing comes out about the incredible abuse, the horrible behavior, what Epstein was doing to these girls, you say, when you address it later on, you say, first of all, I just want to say I feel terrible about what happened, that they have my sympathy.

16:39I'm sorry that this happened anywhere close to where I was. I wish I could have done more to stop it. But I didn't. And I do want people to know that I didn't know what was going on. I mean, something, right? That would be what a normal politician would say. Hopefully, a normal person would believe that. But even a politician who didn't quite believe that would be told by his aides, you've got to show empathy, right? This is not, you know? And the fact that he doesn't even think of it, doesn't even occur to Trump to say it. He's addressed this, what, 10 times in the last two weeks? Not a word, literally not a word of sympathy.

17:11I mean, it shows to me what a, I don't know, a moral monster he really is, I've got to say. Margaret? A moral monster is a good way to put it. And Maxwell, her participation in this coming out, everybody around Epstein had to know, including people who visited the island. And even if it was only rumors. It's so disturbing. You would be repelled and stay away. He didn't stay away. He says the birthday letter with the naked drawing that the Wall Street Journal reported isn't true. He denies in different ways. He's had different stories about when he stopped seeing Jeffrey Epstein, what he knew, how much he knew about how much time he spent with Maxwell, all kinds of things that he's denied without ever, as Bill says, getting down to what it is he's denying, which is just the most egregious, horrible, dark behavior that's possible.

18:19And that poor family, and we forget that that girl committed suicide. She's gone because of this. She's gone because of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell and all those people, the important people that huddled around him. Right.

18:40Paul Krugman:And what connects Bill used his turn of phrase, a moral monster, what connects the concern about that lack of ethics with governance today is a government that has given leniency, a lighter treatment to an Epstein conspirator. That's what comes home. And the reason we have a justice system and we punish crimes that I've mentioned in our coverage, we punish capital crimes, murder, the highest violence and sex trafficking and crimes against children, the highest of anything. and there's other bad crimes, but they're the highest. And there are reasons for that in our society that we all know that I don't need to repeat.

19:19Paul Krugman:So undercutting that system so that someone isn't punished as hard, either because you put them to an easier prison, which is easier for a reason, their minimum security usually for nonviolent crimes, this is a violent crime, or as Trump has still held the door open to it, potentially giving them clemency as if that is on the table, is a tell. Bill and Margaret, I thank you both for your thoughts and your contributions. Thank you. Have a good weekend. Good night. Up ahead, Paul Krugman, the Nobel winner, is here. And by the end of the hour, cultural lessons from Obama. It's the Oval Office. Oh, my gosh, I can't believe I'm there.

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21:33Search for Why Is This Happening wherever you're listening right now and follow.

21:41Paul Krugman:Donald Trump's economy is the worst since the pandemic when it comes to job growth. The trade war may be part of the problem. And he didn't like getting the bad news on the job slowing, so he fired the person who collects that data. Today, we'll show you the July jobs report. Shows a slowing to just about 70 ,000 jobs, far below what they wanted. On top of that, hiring in May and June has been downgraded. That's how the data works. So the whole picture is getting worse. Reaction pouring in. Warning signs. Stocks plummet after a weaker than expected new jobs report. Now, the revisions, here's a biggie.