Trump's Epstein failure haunts his second term

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0:41Try it at eightsleep.com. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melba reporting on the continuing fallout from Donald Trump's waking nightmare. Congress forcing him to release the Epstein files that his administration has been hiding. This is an overwhelming rebuke. it strips Donald Trump of the presidential veto power because both parties overruled him. Where other presidents have vetoed bills they strongly oppose, we've covered that from Bush to Obama, keep in mind under the rules Trump cannot veto this because he lost so badly, he lost that option as well. He is not really presidenting when it comes to the Epstein bill.

1:19And that is why what we're also witnessing risks for Donald Trump a wider contagion for his perceived and actual declining power in Washington. Republicans just saw they can defy him. Democrats found a way to run the Congress instead of the Republican speaker, who you see there like Trump was on the run yesterday, making claims that actually were evaporating in real time, including his claims that the Senate was going to make changes, which they didn't do. Because like Trump, when it comes to the Epstein files, you don't have the votes. That's how Hamilton was memorably scolded by the founding fathers in the play.

1:54You don't have the votes. You don't have the votes. You're going to need congressional approval, and you don't have the votes. Well, this is Donald Trump's Hamilton test. And like cabinet battle won, he failed it. Let me show you, departing from the art back to real new history, the living history this week, what it looked like when Trump didn't have the The vote's not even one single Republican standing by him in the Senate. Just seconds ago, a landslide vote in the House of Representatives. The release of the Epstein files has passed the House. A reckoning over the Epstein files on Capitol Hill.

2:36The Trump presidency, as we have known it, is over. This was a nearly unanimous vote. No amount of arm twisting by Donald Trump managed to stop or slow. the passage of legislation to release the Epstein files. This has been one of the most destructive things to MAGA. Today is a day because of the survivors that we can say is the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency. We did see Leader Schumer do what we expected him to do, which was ask for unanimous consent. Senator Thune says he thinks this is going to move fairly quickly through the Senate. Oh, it moved quickly. Senator Thune avoided the Senate floor.

3:15I just showed you our colleague Lawrence O'Donnell's reporting on this, how he views it as the end of the Trump presidency, at least as we knew it for these first 300 or so days. He also pointed out how John Thune, who again runs the set, it wasn't even on the floor when the Democrats showed their power. Chuck Schumer was the one saying they had a unanimous resolution. Devastating loss. Trump spent most of the year trying to block the file's release from the DOJ's now discredited two page memo about clients and blackmail from Pam Bondi to Trump's failed effort to trick his own MAGA backers that, remember this?

3:48These little binders that maybe they had already released the material, that was back in February. The binders were not full of anything. If you remember the old Romney reference, they were not full of new documents. And it didn't work trying to trick the MAGA faithful then. Even Trump loyalists could see the old binders were not the new Epstein files. Today, influential podcaster Joe Rogan, who had hosted a pretty warm, lengthy Trump interview in the campaign homestretch, is now concisely summarizing Trump's bizarre, self-contradicting claims amidst his loss and Epstein crash-out. I heard there's no files.

4:30I heard it's a hoax. And then all of a sudden, he's going to release the files. Well, I thought there was no files. He wants an investigation now. listen like what is going on what is going on why doesn't it make any sense why do donald trump's sentences start with hoax and end with new investigation start with don't release the files it's a hoax put it away mike johnson said it'd be reckless to do it and the sentence ends with them claiming they're going to do it which again they're not doing because as i've told you you don't need a whole bill if you were actually for transparency you could release them tonight or at least start the process, they're not doing that.

5:07And so tonight we have a lot of coverage for you on this. Last night we went through this methodically. Tonight I have a very special guest I'm about to go to, but one more programming note. We have some of the Epstein files. We have the emails that, according to legal experts in our reporting, the DOJ would also have. They haven't released it yet, so can't say for sure. And I have new revelations that are bad, which is the only way to really fairly put it, for both Donald Trump and Steve Bannon. And that is our special report. And it's coming up tonight. And I'm telling you, it's part of the Epstein file.

5:39So we're going to go through those parts and emails about their secret alliance, which is now exposed. That's coming up. But first, our lead off guest on this story is someone who's been writing about it, recording independently on it for a long time without fear or favor. Michelle Goldberg, the New York Times columnist, MS Now analyst. Welcome. Thank you. We, you and I, our team and the nation, some of whom watch this program, we've all talked about this for a while. I'm curious what you think about how the dam broke, how quickly it broke, and how many Republicans who had to reverse themselves did so, that something was more fearful to them than Donald Trump's wrath.

6:18Well, I mean, it broke in part because I think Ro Khanna so successfully identified this as the perfect wedge issue for the Republican coalition. It broke because you had these four Republicans who were willing to stand up to Trump's pressure. And then I think the reason that they were able to successfully stand up to Trump's pressure, because usually when Trump turns on a Republican, we've seen this with Jeff Flake. You saw this with Bob Good, who was the former head of the House Freedom Caucus that Donald Trump supported a primary challenge against. You saw this with his own vice president, Mike Pence, who he drove out of politics.

6:51Usually when he turns on a Republican, the party follows him. And in this case, he wasn't able to do it, right? He tried to excommunicate Marjorie Taylor Greene. He tried to excommunicate Massey. He wrote really vicious things about Massey's late wife and his new wife. And yet it didn't work. And I think there's a couple of reasons. I mean, part of it is just because the Epstein files are uniquely important to Trump's base. But it's also because Trump's power is declining. I don't think that this happens if Trump's approval rating is in the 50s instead of in the 30s. And so and you've seen a bunch of moments up till now where the base has gotten rustic around things like HB1, H1B visas and other things, you know, the split in the party over Israel.

7:39So there's already these kind of fissures in MAGA that this vote was able to really widen. Donald Trump had to pretend that he agrees with the Democrats. We've covered him a long time. He doesn't do that very often. Right. And I want to show because now he's lying about it. I say that with all due diligence and respect, but these are lies. Him and Johnson were publicly doing this. And so we saw Joe Rogan and others don't like it being lied to this way. Let's just look at the history up until this reversal this week. So this is a Democrat hoax that never ends. They're forcing a political show vote on the Epstein files.

8:18This is a political exercise. It's all been a big hoax. It's perpetrated by the Democrats. And some stupid Republicans and foolish Republicans fall into the net. He had nothing to do with it. President Trump has clean hands. He's not worried about it. Well, I don't want to talk about it because fake news. The discharge petition is not only reckless, it is also a totally moot point. They can do whatever they want. So we'll give them everything. Sure, I would. Let the Senate look at it. Let anybody look at it. But don't talk about it too much. Go ahead. I mean, well, what's interesting is that Donald Trump actually usually has this kind of frankness.

8:57You know, he's not an honest person, but he does say what's on his mind typically. He blurts. He's a blurter. He blurts. And you could think about that one moment in Nevada when he said something like, you know, I don't care about you. I just want your votes. Right. But he hasn't mostly mostly has not been like that on the Epstein files. He's been cagey. He's been, you know, kind of duplicitous. That's why you see someone like Rogan, who usually likes Donald Trump's, you know, kind of, quote unquote, straight talk, seeing him suddenly as just a normal politician. And I think he had, look, he had no choice but to say that he approved of this vote because otherwise it was going to be this humiliating rebuke.

9:34And so he was able to avoid the rebuke, but he can't avoid, I think, both his diminished power and also that this fight is obviously not over. I mean, I would suspect and I don't think we know this yet. I would assume that because Donald Trump recently announced an investigation into or he recently ordered the Justice Department to investigate Democrats ties to Jeffrey Epstein, that they might try to use that as a pretext for holding some of these files back. You know, we can't release them. Right. And that could end up in court where the congressional lawyers would say, well, Pam Bondi wrote more more formally than Trump did.

10:11she wrote that there's nothing left to investigate. That was her infamous memo. Correct. Right. But I, you know, what they, Pam Bondi was asked at a press conference whether this means that she will release the files and she was a little bit cagey about it. So I don't know if this is, you know, if we actually get the revelations that so many people are desperate for, at least if we get them, you know, anytime soon. But again, the demonstration that Trump, who sort of had this astonishing comeback and seemed to have these political superpowers really is a political mortal, I think, changes the whole trajectory of his second term.

10:50Yeah, a mortal or an unusual politician whose apparent kryptonite are the files around one of the most heinous sex traffickers opposed by liberals and the MAGA base. If that's your kryptonite, that's a problem, right? And so that's sort of what's going on here. Michelle on a big news night. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Coming up, we turn to my special report. We have some of the Epstein files. I've got the emails. They tie Epstein closer to Bannon and Trump than we knew. This is new stuff. My new breakdown for you in 90 seconds.

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12:42Visit a Beautyrest retailer today. Congress voted to force Trump to release the Epstein files. That includes Epstein's documents, communications, and those of other individuals referenced in connection with his crimes. That applies to all Epstein emails that the government has. those files, as we've reported, are likely to overlap with newly released Epstein emails that Congress released last week. Any competent investigation would, of course, pursue all of Epstein's emails. That's one of the first things prosecutors do long before they charge and arrest someone. So, in other words, let me put it very clearly, some Epstein files are already out right now.

13:30The 20 ,000 emails that Congress released last week drove headlines about Trump and many others. But there are also so many thousands it will take longer for a full independent accounting. Congress, as you saw, focused on some review and put out some Trump stuff. Then they put out more. There wasn't a big congressional report. This wasn't like the Jan 6 probe. We all witnessed it in real time. It all just sort of fluttered out and then everybody's been making sense of it. So right now, our new special report focuses on the newly revealed emails specifically between Epstein, the deceased sex trafficker, and one of the most important people in Donald Trump's orbit, which matters now.

14:11Top Trump campaign and White House vet Steve Bannon, the firebrand who, remember, chaired Trump's 2016 campaign in the closing stretch when he won. You can see him there back in the day, served in the White House, ultimately went to prison as punishment for refusing to cooperate with evidence requests for material about Trump, which is really striking. Bannon went to prison over secrecy, withholding Trump-related information from Congress, only to now watch Congress get all this evidence on him. Now, there were public links between these two men. It is not that the emails are the first ever public connective tissue, But the new emails do reveal more cooperation, more plotting, and secret strategy sessions.

14:57And so what we can do right now is something that journalists usually cannot do. Sometimes you get a one-sided leak, or you get a handful of emails, or in campaigns, you get what they call oppo, and you have to be really careful to go through it and figure out what was the other side of that email, and who can you get to talk. Here, we now have hundreds of newly revealed messages these two people exchanged in 2018 and 2019. Now, Bannon has not been accused of any kind of criminal wrongdoing related to Epstein, although he was, as I mentioned, convicted of a different crime and has been basically arrested prior on a whole other issue I'm not going to get into.

15:34But no one is saying, to be clear, that he's been accused of an Epstein sex crime. But during a period when Epstein was facing more heat than ever, Bannon got even closer with him. And they hid this potentially embarrassing alliance. That's their view. Epstein lived in a grand townhouse near Central Park. The two men knew Epstein was so politically toxic and embarrassing then that they actually furtively hid Bannon's arrival. Epstein emailing, I'm in New York tonight through Saturday if you want to visit under the cover of darkness. Now, that may sound like dramatic rhetoric, but it wasn't drama.

16:11Bannon got the drift and asked about, quote, access that's not the front door. he even cited what he believed was 24-7 surveillance on Epstein. Then Epstein offered a hidden rear entrance where someone would let Bannon in. Those messages matching Bannon's phone number, according to Guardian reporting, when his name is not technically listed in those. Now, Bannon emailed about secretly trying to help Epstein redeem his reputation. Think about how some people are in trouble just for bantering with him or getting benefits from him at some broad level, totally unrelated to, say, his island. Here, Bannon is aware of how much trouble Epstein is in and how much criticism there is of his past conduct, and he wants to help him.

16:53When Epstein recounts how he writes in one of these new emails, Christians he met with feel the media portraying him as beyond redemption was to Epstein, deeply troubling and offensive. Bannon responds, we must counter the rapist who traffics in female children to be raped by the world's most powerful, richest men as kind of a storyline, if you read the email the way he's putting it, a man who, quote, can't be redeemed. He adds, you're a lot of things, which we will show, but you are not that. Why is one of Trump's top aides, and they had a falling out that I'll get to, telling Epstein in no uncertain all caps terms, you're not that guy?

17:36accusers and a lot of evidence certainly suggests otherwise and i want you to note here how bannon speaks of them on a team that they are going to do this together and show epstein's quote better side if you will quote unquote or just better and figuratively this went beyond emailing ideas bannon made 15 hours of video of epstein for what he called a documentary and this was in a key period, months leading up to what we now know was his arrest and then death. No movie has come out. There is a 2021 trailer for something called The Monsters. That's the linkage I mentioned that we knew some of this, but now we see behind the scenes how Bannon was not, you know, just making a movie or an interview, but wanted to help him redeem himself from what all these accusers and survivors and evidence has shown him to be.

18:25The Monsters knows some kind of catchy title. It shows them I'm talking about accountability movements that targeted Epstein like Time's Up. The future is for the way women think. The way women think. That's correct. Is that not a sop because of all the depravity you've done against young women? Your new sop is that women's thinking is the future? No, I've always believed that women would, in fact, be able to take over. I'm a firm believer and supporter of Time's Up. He's a supporter of Time's Up, he claims there. Many parties may now be extra interested in that video series or evidence. Bannon says he will release a film early next year.

19:10Epstein would also advise Bannon on his own message and media during a period when Bannon had left the White House on bad terms with Trump. He was trying to burnish his voice as some kind of global populist. Number one, with populism, I think you're going to have people with much more control of their sovereignty and their citizenship, okay? And I think in nationalism, what you're going to have is a collection of robust nations. The emails do not reveal whether Bannon could see the irony, some might say hypocrisy, of tapping one of the nation's most notorious, coddled, rich elites to advise him on the media around his so-called populism for the everyman.

19:49Now, much of Epstein's fortune remains a suspicious mystery. Indeed, we've talked to lawmakers who want to dig even deeper into his accounts and transfers and how he got his money and why J.P. Morgan didn't issue the required suspicious activity reports until after his death. But we do know he frequently pitched himself as a business and tax expert. And we saw that in these new emails, newly revealed, telling Bannon to respond to the tax cut criticism of Trump's plans by rebutting critics who say 83 % goes to the rich. That's misleading, he wrote, telling Bannon you got to talk up cash back, pension funds up, and that while giving corporate breaks is perceived as giving to someone else, wage inflation can't be the first focus.

20:30Now, while those emails almost seem to unload some dry economic talking points, some other emails I'm about to read to you implicate Trump and have a gossipy, almost sort of cartoonishly sinister tone, except that we know how much serious bad stuff was going down. And Epstein seemed to use that type of banter with many. And there was plenty of media advice. In August 2018, Epstein says he changed his travel plan so he could watch Bannon on TV, suggesting he already knew that this TV interview was coming up. We now see in the newly revealed emails that Jeffrey Epstein tells Bannon, I took off early so I could land in time to watch.

21:13With a jet, you control your schedule. And then he asks, all good. The records show Epstein was watching Bannon's interview with me on MSNBC at the time. We taped at his D.C. office. The newly revealed emails show these two commiserated on how it went. So here this was seven years ago, Bannon saying that his team, the Bannon team, quote, loved it. I was too focused. He asked, how did it come across? Because he wanted the view of this sex trafficker. Epstein replies, based on the comments, couldn't be better, adding last 10 minutes more the real you. Apparently, Epstein felt credible telling Bannon that he really knew the real him.

21:53As for that final portion they were discussing in these newly revealed emails, here's a little bit of it. I think you're going to see a complete civil war in the Democratic Party. It's going to clear the path to Donald Trump in 2020. The illegal immigration is nothing more than to try to suppress the wages of working class blacks and Hispanics. These guys are cranks. Nobody takes them seriously except the main. It's MSNBC's camera and CNN's camera. There's a platform. If you didn't pay attention to them, they would. I'm ready to move on. But when you say that about the press, are you suggesting we shouldn't cover this killing and this second degree murder trial?

22:29I didn't see that.

23:00March. The two continued in that kind of banter. Bannon referred to the channel here. Again, we just are reporting the news, so I'm not weighing in, but he says it's the Soy Boy Network and that he wanted to be clean, not sloppy. Epstein replied, closer to Toy Boy, Winky Face. Now, Bannon may have been referring to how Donald Trump publicly knocked him as, quote, Sloppy Steve during their falling out earlier this year. Excuse me, earlier that year, I should say. Bannon's appearance and dress has come up in public more than most operatives, the way he wears his clothes and his demeanor. We're not making a point of that.

23:35I'm just telling you what they emailed about. Epstein was in on all kinds of references. He talked about Trump figures that Bannon might see, referring to billionaire Trump supporter Peter Thiel being in town. Bannon should take no heat. Re me. Not worth it for the moment, he advised. And in the email to journalist Michael Wolfe, Epstein talks about seeing Bannon in London, saying he seemed paranoid about any reporters seen me with him, my guess is he's working hard on his relationship with Trump, who he sees as newly ascendant and being seen with me may, and it's hard to get the exact implication here, but seen would affect that.

24:09And then he writes Bannon's media tour seemed with an eye toward an audience of one. He talks about Bannon's right-wing meetings in France and says, these guys seemed like idiots. He goes on to say, Bannon's surrounded by his own thuggish looking security people and wacky blogger advisors thrives precisely because the world of populism is so unprofessional, if not farcical. That is Jeffrey Epstein's dead hand in email trashing the guy who's his supposed ally and gives you another window into how these people all think they're conning each other, whether Mr. Bannon has noticed or found out that that's his view.

24:49We don't know, But as I mentioned, the idea of having Jeffrey Epstein be your populist advisor was odd to begin with. The emails show Epstein emailed a lot with author Michael Wolff. That's gotten a lot of attention in certain quarters, which is part of the media strategy he was plotting with Bannon. But let me show you something else as part of our report. There's an email that has not actually gotten much attention. And understandably, like I said, there's 20 ,000 of these. But look at what happens. you're kind of going inside in real time when Epstein learns that all of his fancy talk media outreach to Wolf was on a key issue for him, a failure and maybe hurt Bannon too.

25:31He writes to Bannon, quote, I've now seen some of Wolf's book mentions me and underage prostitutes. Let me repeat that. That's the thing they were working to quiet down, minimize or lie about. quote, mentions me, Epstein writes, and underage prostitutes. You is the man behind and in front of the curtain. Lots of Steve quotes, lots. Bannon appears to see the problem, replying, ugh, anything awful? Wish he hadn't done that. Why are you mentioned at all? You rarely get this kind of view. There's no public bluster or spin here. We just see two self-styled strategists admitting their whole media outreach strategy failed.