Inside Trump's psyche as Epstein rips MAGA apart

0:01This is a Global Player Original Podcast.

0:30That is one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims outside Congress just before it voted to pass the legislation requiring the release of the Epstein papers. And Donald Trump is in a stew. The vote to release the Epstein files passed overwhelmingly in both houses of Congress last night. Donald Trump was out of sync with his own base. Is he starting to look like a lame duck president? Welcome. to the News Agents USA. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. It's John. It's Emily. And I was bizarrely in the middle of a talk to survivors, actually last night, to rape victim survivors when that vote passed at 7.45 in the evening, our time.

1:23And the numbers were absolutely astonishing. It was 427 votes yes to release the Epstein files in the House. One person, Clay Higgins, a big sort of loyalist fan of Trump's, voted against. And after that kind of bombshell number, it then sailed into the Senate, the upper house, for the next vote. And it passed with such speed. I think it left people reeling, actually, because no one was expecting it to go so quickly or to be unanimous. So it's gone through the House. It's gone through the Senate. In other words, Congress has now overwhelmingly approved the call on the DOJ, the Department of Justice, to release the Epstein files.

2:13And Trump's whole position in this is looking, frankly, euphemistically awkward. Yeah. Look, this time last week, it was a coin toss vote. I mean, just think of that. People were saying it's on a knife edge. And if Donald Trump can only win over a couple of Congress women, Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert, then he might be in with a chance of stopping this being released. I mean, that's amazing, isn't it? Just a pause on that moment because he called in Nancy Mace. He called in Lauren Boebert. He was at that point sort of trying to find individuals who could help save it. Well, it looks like what happened with Nancy Mace, which is even more interesting and telling in and of itself, is that he rang her up and it went to voicemail.

2:59Now, when the president of the United States cannot reach you on the phone because Nancy Mace has looked at her phone and thought, president of the United States. No, I'm not going to take that. And that is extraordinary. And that's the extent to which Donald Trump has taken an absolute pounding on this issue because he wanted it to be stopped. He's now, of course, saying, oh, no, no, no, I'm totally relaxed about it. But it's a democratic con job and then puts on truth social. And again, Emily, this is where what you said in the introduction is interesting about, you know, is he a lame duck? Is he out of kilter?

3:32He says, look, focus on the big things. This is irrelevant. The whole Epstein thing. What we need to be focusing on is the economy and look at the victories we've had there and look at what we've done with the border. And that's all going great. So don't lose sight of the bigger prize. Well, the fact of the matter is that Republicans were furious about this and the base was furious about this. And Donald Trump has had to capitulate, which is not something he's used to doing. Look, I think you get an indication of the Trump's state of mind through some of his snappier responses to female journalists over the last 24 hours.

4:08And you might say, actually, he's always pretty rude to journalists and he's always especially rude to women. but there are two instances that we're going to play you now. One was on board Air Force One where he was asked by a reporter about the Epstein files and about his feelings towards them and when she tries to come back on a question he slaps her down with the words Quiet, Piggy. Just have a listen. Sir, is there something incriminating in the box? Quiet, quiet, Piggy. Quiet, quiet, Piggy. Yeah. I mean, it's just playground. It's vile. Yeah. I mean, let's let's remove from our thoughts the idea of the differential in size and power between Donald Trump and the young woman asking the question and just go to the heart of what he's trying to do there.

5:01he's silencing in no uncertain terms he's silencing the journalist by making her feel humiliated and unable to come back and he's trying to silence the question because he doesn't like this repeated attempt by journalists to actually get to the bottom of why he's so disinclined to see those Epstein files I think it's always I think there is something interesting in watching the way Trump responds to certain things and when he's under pressure he reaches for the insult first instead of an argument because the fact of the matter is there's no argument he can't make a cogent argument about why these things shouldn't be released apart from it being it's a democratic hoax and we heard that woman at the stop of the pot at the top of the podcast say it's not about politics we just want this bloody documents released so we can find out who the powerful people were that did this to us.

5:57Politics has got, you know, it's not a Democrat or Republican issue. It's about an issue of criminality and wanting to find out who's responsible for it. Well, of course, and that's probably what he's most concerned about. But I think your point is, yes, he doesn't formulate an argument. He's always found it quite hard to articulate or to actually fight well with words in an argument. So what he does is he shames, you know, and he finds the easiest response is just to shame women into silence or hope that he's shaming women into silence. There was a moment where he was actually hosting the Saudi prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in the Oval Office.

6:34And once again, he is asked a question by a female journalist from ABC. Just listen this time around. Mr. President, why wait for Congress to release the Epstein files? Why not just do it now? You know, it's not the question that I mind. It's your attitude. I think you are a terrible reporter. It's the way you ask these questions. You start off with a man who's highly respected, asking him a horrible insubordinate and just a terrible question. And you could even ask that same exact question nicely. You're all psyched. Somebody psyched you over at ABC. You're going to psych it. You're a terrible person and a terrible reporter.

7:17As far as the Epstein files is, I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. I threw him out of my club many years ago because I thought he was a sick pervert. OK, so A, don't tell journalists how to ask questions. But B, how defensive was that answer? How angry was that answer? How lacking in any kind of sort of political sophistication was that answer? Just to say, you're terrible. I don't like your tone. And why aren't you nicer to old bone-sore chain face himself, Mohammed bin Salman? It shows a man who was so badly on the back foot, he hasn't actually got the language now to cope with it. And it is the most legitimate question.

7:58Why don't you just release? You could release it. You don't need to wait. You can let these documents come into the public domain. You didn't need a law in Congress. You had the power to do that with a stroke of a pen and you've chosen not to. I mean, you know, kind of it's an obvious question for a journalist to ask the president of the United States. It's not a gotcha question. It's not a rude question. It's a straightforward question. We've had to wait for this law to get passed. We still don't know whether he's going to sign it or block it or delay it or whatever. I mean, it may be by the time this episode goes out, it will be signed and the Justice Department will have released the papers.

8:34But equally, we don't know. So Donald Trump could have released this at any time. He chose not to. And it's an utterly, utterly legitimate question. And it's an entirely illegitimate response to round on a reporter like that for asking a question. So let's not be distracted by him and his insufficiencies with female journalists. Let's get back to the substance of the Epstein files, because I think this is really what we need to get to the bottom of. We know now it's gone through both houses. The Justice Department is now compelled to release these files within 30 days. Now, that has to be signed off by Trump.

9:15It could come as early as Wednesday, we think, if he signs it. The Attorney General, Pan Bondi, may decline to release some of the information on the basis it would pose a risk to underage victims or interfere with an investigation. And let's not forget, just three days ago, Trump called for, called for an investigation into Bill Clinton's role with Epstein. Will they try and obfuscate and say, oh, there's still an ongoing investigation, so we can't do that now? I guess we don't know. But just to try and break down what it is we're talking about, because the Epstein files is this sort of, you know, amorphous buzzword now.

9:51It is not a client list. It is not something that is going to necessarily point to criminal wrongdoing between underage girls and Donald Trump. We absolutely do not know that. And there is nothing to suggest that that's what we're going to get. But what it is, is a testimony from the young women themselves from 2006, 7, 8. In other words, the first time that they were trying to bring Epstein to trial, the trial that went away into that sweetheart plea deal. And so it is hours of police transcripts. It's hours of witness testimony. It's hours of, we think, videotape or letters or things that have been collected from Epstein's property.

10:31and to just try and explain why this is relevant. Yes, we had 23 ,000 emails from Epstein released by his estate last week, but they were all in Epstein's hand. In other words, his version of events. This is not Epstein's version of events. These are his accusers. And there is another aspect to this, of course, which is that Epstein is arrested. There is an investigation into him, but before any charges are brought to court, he's taken his own life, the official version of events, or he was bumped off, the unofficial. And so there's been, you know, there have been FBI investigations that led to that arrest.

11:08And it's, you know, so that's also... Nothing's been answered. And nothing's been answered. So that is also a key part of it. I think we need to address the other question that you posed at the top, which is, is Trump now a lame duck? And look, there's no doubt in my mind that this is a really significant reverse when MAGA says, no, you're not having your way. And it was MAGA that has thwarted him. I mean, if you think of back to the first term when, you know, getting rid of Obamacare, it was nearly going to go through. And it was John McCain, who was an opponent to Donald Trump, who put his thumb down when he went to vote in a rather performative way, infuriating Donald Trump.

11:47This is the MAGA movement that has gone against Trump. So that's significant. I don't know whether it goes wider yet. I think it's too soon to say. You know, the number of times I thought, oh, wow, this is it. They've got Trump now. And it never does quite. I mean, you know, I've just seen too many occasions where you've thought, he's got a spot of bother here. He has got bother here. And I think that I do think it shows that people are starting to look to beyond the midterms. Who's running in 2028? How do we position ourselves for all of that? And I think that is the bit where Donald Trump could very quickly become a lame duck.

12:23Yeah. I mean, for years, we've talked about the absence of backbone, haven't we, in the wider Republican Party? and this goes back to I think four backbones at the start who were really prepared to say I don't care if I lose his support. I don't care if I lose the vote. I don't care if I lose my seat. One was Thomas Massey. We've spoken about him before. He was the congressman from Kentucky who quite frankly says, look, I could go back to being a peach farmer. I'd have a much nicer life. My blood pressure would be lower. I'll be fine. I want to do the right thing by the people who voted me into power.

13:01I want to do the right thing by my conscience. And I think he is one of very few voices at the beginning that were prepared to go out there. But maybe he will embolden others. In other words, you know that phrase that people use, slowly and then all at once. I think that's what happened here, that there were only three or four voices who were willing to put their heads above the parapet and say, actually, we're going to take on Trump because we feel this is important. But now, now you've got this overwhelming vote of people who suddenly decided that this is the right thing to do for America, for their constituents, even, as you say, for the MAGA brand.

13:40And they're kind of going, well, maybe the future of MAGA no longer lies with Trump. Well, I think the other person that is interesting to consider in all of this is Marjorie Taylor Greene, because I do think that her role has been fascinating. And she seems to be on a bit of a journey at the moment. She would say, I'm staying absolutely consistent to MAGA principles, MAGA values. It's Donald Trump who is not. And she gave a fascinating rejoinder to Donald Trump, who'd accused her of being a traitor. This is how she responded to Trump. I wasn't a Johnny come lately to the MAGA train. I was day one, 2015.

14:19And there's a big difference in those Americans and those that decided to support President Trump later on. And I'll tell you right now, this has been one of the most destructive things to MAGA, is watching the man that we supported early on, three elections, for people that stood hours, slept in their cars to go to rallies, have fought for truth and transparency and to hold what we consider a corrupt government accountable, watching this actually turn into a fight has ripped MAGA apart. And the only thing that will speak to the powerful, courageous women behind me is when action is actually taken to release these files.

15:17and the American people won't tolerate any other bullshit. That's where we are today. Thank you. Look, I'll put my hand up and say, I like this new look, Marjorie Taylor Greene. I think she's onto something and I think she's making sense. I'd warn against assuming there was a kind of massive damascene conversion going on. You know, Marjorie Taylor Greene backs Trump on his election denialism of 2000. She has got a thing, as we know, about the old Jewish space lasers. I think she has got her own theories about what happened on 9-11, conspiracy led there. So there are plenty of questions, I would say, still circulating that as a journalist, you might want to check in with Marjorie Taylor Greene before sort of, you know, leaping over the railings and saying, oh, great, she's come back to us.

16:03She gets it. But I do think hers is a very strong voice. The other voice is one we haven't heard, like at all. And that's J.D. Vance, the vice president. I mean, where has he been in all this? Right? Absolutely miles away from any questions about Epstein, about Trump, about the vote. See, if you look back to the first term and Mike Pence, Mike Pence was never near a microphone. Mike Pence stayed away from more or less everything. He was working behind the scenes on stuff. J.D. Vance has simultaneously been absolutely at the forefront of the MAGA movement. He was the one who came over to Europe and lectured us all on free speech.

16:44He's done a lot that is very, you know, leaning with the chin and right out there. And suddenly at times, where is J.D. Vance? Where's he gone? Is he hiding? You know, has something happened to him? And I do think what's interesting is, I guess this comes... Well, I think the answer to that, go on. It's just I think that you can look at that where J.D. Vance is being quiet and Marjorie Taylor Greene being noisy as two sides of the same coin. They are both positioning for the future. They are both putting themselves in a position where they have got a distinct position that they can stake out if they are going to be players in 2028 or in whatever shape.

17:23Yeah. The other thing I'd say is that it's only 2025. Yeah. This is normally where you'd be after the midterms. And the Democrats had that rather successful off-year load of elections. We talked about it before, the Mamdani election in New York, Virginia, Abigail Spanberger and Mikey Sherrill in New Jersey, to name but three. But they are buoyed. The Democrats are buoyed with how they did in these, you know, very selective, specific elections that they saw at the beginning of November. And I think the cumulative effect of the Dems feeling slightly buoyed and the Republicans all amassing around a MAGA base movement, not around Trump, is making this feel like we're a year ahead of ourselves.

18:09Like this is 2026 and we've just had the midterms. That's when you normally start talking about a lame duck presidency. But I think now it feels like, hang on a sec, are we 12 months out of kilter? Now, look, as you say, we might be sort of digging a grave way too soon. And I'm sure Trump is about to invade Venezuela or, you know, crash the education system or plans for Gaza, plans for Ukraine. Who knows to divert from what's happened at home. But domestically, he's not had a strong week. No, he hasn't had a strong week. And there was an interesting little, just as a sort of footnote, a little judge's ruling, a federal judge ruled that the Texas plans for redistricting are not lawful.

18:50And so they've been struck down and that Texas will have to fight the midterm elections on the old maps. And, you know, Republicans were hoping they might get four or five extra seats out of Texas because of this redistricting. And the other bit of that is that the judge who struck it down had been appointed by Donald Trump. In a moment, we'll be talking to the college professor, Mark Bray, who is an Antifa specialist, i.e. author, and has had to flee America after Donald Trump threatened to make Antifa recognised as a domestic terror network. We'll be speaking to him about why he's left his home country.

19:42the newsagents usa we're joined now by professor mark brate he's a historian an anti-fascism scholar at rutgers university except he's not there anymore he's in spain and mark you better tell us why you had to go to spain right so um the short story is that a book I wrote eight years ago called Antifa, the Anti-Fascist Handbook, became the target of a lot of attacks from the far right after President Trump issued an executive order declaring Antifa to be a terrorist organization, despite the fact that it is neither terrorist nor an organization. And so I was attacked by far right influencers for being allegedly a domestic terrorist professor, even though I am not a part of an Antifa group.

20:29I am just a researcher and a historian. So I received a lot of death threats. My home address was posted publicly on X. And after all this harassment, my wife and I and our two small children had to leave the country. So you literally had to leave the country because you feared for your life? Well, we did fear for our lives. We definitely had to leave our home. We did discuss the possibility of going to another location in the U.S., but we were concerned about the overall political trajectory of the country, which is, in our opinion, heading in a very authoritarian direction. Certainly, the problems we had leaving the country with our personal flight reservations being canceled at the last moment, the first time we tried to leave, the second time we left being interrogated and searched by federal agents for an hour prior to boarding, made me feel more negative about the political climate in the U.S.

21:18Just stop there. Just tell us what actually happened. You got to the airport and your tickets didn't work. Right. So, you know, I've taken a lot of flights. I'm sure you have as well. When you're at the gate with your boarding pass in hand, you think that it's a done deal. You're about to get on the airplane. When we tried to get on, there was some kind of an error. We were taken aside to speak with the United attendant. She made a number of phone calls, had conversations in hushed voices and told us essentially after about a half an hour of trying to figure out that someone had canceled my family's reservation at the last moment, presumably between when we checked through security, when we were going to get on the plane.

21:59And this was the same day that the far right influencers who were harassing me online were meeting with President Trump in the White House. So to me, it was clearly in some form or another politically motivated. Do you think it could? I mean, there's obviously a very dark explanation that it was, you know, the powers that be in the land are stopping you. Or it could be some prankster who just, I don't know, knew you were flying and thought, I'll cancel his tickets. I don't know. I don't know which it was. Right. But I think it was just not a coincidence that it happened to me and my family. That's all.

22:28Wait, what do you feel then when you're standing at the gate and you can't board the plane that you think is going to take you to safety? Right. Well, my children were sobbing. I was getting very aggravated and frustrated. I felt at that moment like the White House was looking at me, which again, as we just discussed, may not have been true in a literal sense, but felt like that in a metaphorical sense. It was really depressing and upsetting. Ultimately, we were put on the same flight for the following day. And despite a lot of challenges the next day as well, we did manage to take off. And did you, I mean, when it was cancelled, did you think I have to tell this?

23:01Did you get out there? Did you tell people what had happened? I mean, could it have just been an administrative or clerical error? Is it possible that it was, you know, you were heightened sensitivity, but something just went wrong on the ticketing sale that moment and it was fine the next day? You know, life is certainly full of coincidences. But I've taken flights all around the world for more than 20 years. And for it to happen at that particular moment and to my family and no one else, I don't believe it was a coincidence. So you were, until then, I don't know, were you a radical activist or were you a sort of boring professor kind of going about your daily work?

23:41In a sense, both. I am a radical activist. I was involved with Occupy Wall Street in New York City. I've been involved with anti-war organizing, union organizing. But the one movement that I have not actually been involved with as an activist is anti-fascism. I wrote my book as a historian and also as an activist with a lot of interview contacts with activists in a number of different countries. And so I tapped into that to write the book. I support anti-fascism insofar as I hate fascism, but I am not the person they're claiming I am. It's just that when they decided to go after Antifa as the boogeyman term du jour, I'm the most famous person in the U.S.

24:17explicitly associated with that term. And so it was just kind of an easy target for them. I suppose the thing I would observe from when I lived in America was there are various different groups that turn up on demonstrations. They're not very well organised. There's not a kind of central command and control. There's no I didn't think and maybe I'm wrong. Antifa head Q HQ where everyone meets and plans the demonstrations and plans the insurrection. Actually, it just seems to me there are a whole bunch of people, very disparate, very disorganized, who kind of have, you know, certain views that are in opposition to Donald Trump's.

24:55Well, I think that's mostly true. I mean, certainly there are some small groups that internally have, you know, a solid core of organization, largely along kind of horizontal, directly democratic means. And so they, you know, maybe a dozen people here, a dozen people there. But obviously the bigger demonstrations are individuals and small groups showing up opposing Donald Trump. But really, the administration is not interested in the reality of bottom-up organizing. As I mentioned before, I was part of Occupy Wall Street more than a decade ago, and they made the same accusations against Occupy Wall Street, that there was one big leader that George Soros was funding.

25:28They can't really imagine and conceptualize just a lot of activists and leftists and protesters coming together without someone paying them and directing them. When you were working on your book, Mark, did you come across Antifa in a way that you would describe as domestic terrorists? I mean, I guess a lot of this goes back to the Black Lives Matter movement, what happened in sort of communities after those protests and after there was sort of rioting in some towns and cities across America as well. I mean, when you were investigating, and I know your book was written sort of previous to that, would you have ever framed Antifa in that way as being part of a domestic terror network?

26:13Is there any conceivable way that that strikes a chord with you? Well, I know a formative moment of my youth was 9-11, right? When Al-Qaeda flew airplanes into the Twin Towers, killed thousands of people. We've seen what's happened, like, for example, with ISIS in the Middle East, where they've killed thousands and conquered entire territories. For me, that's what I think of when I think of terrorism is slaughtering people indiscriminately. Antifa groups in the U.S. have had confrontations with the far right, most famously in Charlottesville. You know, punches have been thrown. Pepper spray has been sprayed.

26:45If that level of conflict and violence is what we're calling terrorism, then we kind of, you know, then that spreads it so far as to, I think, render the term meaningless. I don't really think that. And the other thing to also throw into it is when you see what the Trump administration is calling on to, they're trying to bring in Tyler Robinson, the man who killed Charlie Kirk, Luigi Mangione, who killed the health care CEO. So they're trying to really conflate a lot of different things, blur the distinctions. And that's really, I think, a way to call resistance to Trump and protest and general terrorism.