The conspiracy theory Trump can't kill

0:00Saikat Chakrabarti:Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun. An army hung on her every word. My champions! I have sold my chariot on Carvana! Twas a lovely SUV, an inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it! Tonight, we feast! An offer you can feast on. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees, may apply. this is a global player original podcast make some noise if you care about the jeffrey epstein scandal raise your hand if it matters a lot to you raise your hand so every hand of 7 000 people everybody cares that's megan kelly and charlie kirk two of the luminous stars of magaland talking about Jeffrey Epstein, that everyone cares, everyone is troubled by the lack of explanation, but one person is begging to disagree.

1:07That person is Donald Trump. He thinks the question of Epstein and the so-called missing files is boring and he wishes everyone would stop asking him about it. What is this doing to Magaland? Welcome to the News Agents USA.

1:28It's John. It's Emily. And in a moment, you're going to hear an interview with one of the new progressive Democrats, a man who is trying to unseat Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker. His name is Shaukat Chakrabarty. He's worked with AOC. He's worked alongside Bernie Sanders. And he believes the old way of doing things is dead. And the Democratic Party has got to reinvent itself from scratch. But we start with Epstein because this is a problem that is not going away. It is getting worse for Donald Trump. And surely if anyone knows about conspiracy theories, it is the current president. He has been the propagator of so many of them.

2:13And the one thing you should know is you cannot kill a conspiracy theory. You can shrink it. You can get people to look the other way. But just to tell people there's nothing to see here is not going to wash. And yet that is still Donald Trump's demeanour when he's asked about it in public. This is him at the foot of Air Force One.

2:35Saikat Chakrabarti:Why do you think your supporters in particular have been so interested in the Epstein story? I don't understand. I don't understand why they would be so interested. He's dead for a long time. He was never a big factor in terms of life. I don't understand what the interest or what the fascination is. I really don't. And the credible information has been given. Don't forget, we went through years of the Mueller witch hunt and all of the different things. The Steele dossier, which was all fake. All that information was fake. But I don't understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody.

3:15Saikat Chakrabarti:It's pretty boring stuff. It's sorted, but it's boring. And I don't understand why it keeps going. I think really only pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going. But credible information, let them give it. Anything that's credible. Yeah. And maybe the first thing you'd say is how deeply offensive that will be to hundreds of Epstein's victims, maybe even thousands, and all their families. When you hear the president of the United States saying it's pretty boring stuff, he's essentially dismissing a lot of the pain and a lot of the trauma and a lot of the crime that Epstein got up to because he's decided it's no longer worth considering.

3:58And I think that is partly why you hear those voices in the hall of Turning Point that we played at the beginning say this is not good enough. You know, we actually do want to get to the bottom of whatever went on. You cannot just decide that this is over because you've decided that your conspiracy theory has gone. But I also think that it is creating real ruptures now within parts of the administration. You might have heard our episode last week and be aware that this came about because the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, shut down the case. Having said previously that there was an Epstein file case on her desk ready to go, she then turned around and said, there isn't, there actually isn't a file.

4:41There's nothing to see here. We don't know really what that file would be or whether there was anything or whether there is anything in existence that suggests a client list. as such, but the fact that she shut it down so comprehensively with so little real explanation. And then this week gave a press conference where she refused to let reporters even ask about Epstein suggests they are deeply uncomfortable with this issue. This today is about fentanyl. This is about a wall of people right outside this room who have died from... I appreciate your question, but this today is about fentanyl overdoses throughout our country and people who have lost loved ones to fentanyl.

5:27That's the message that we're here to send today. Nothing about Epstein. I'm not going to talk about Epstein. It's very hard to say you're holding a news conference, but we're not going to answer reporters questions on the subject that you want to talk about. I mean, fair enough. You know, fentanyl is a massive is a massive issue for America and a massive issue for many people in America right now. But it's not a great look as the Attorney General if you literally won't let people ask the question. Yes. I mean, journalists are not the secretarial pool where could you take this dictation as mateless?

5:59You know, they're not there to write down just what Pam Bondi wants you to write in your notebook. We are there to ask questions and sometimes the subjects will be agreeable to her and sometimes they won't. But again, it's all kind of adding to this sense of why can't you just be candid about this stuff? And why don't you just tell us what is out there? you're the ones after all who've whipped this all up into the possibility that there was a conspiracy that there was blackmail that there was you know a murder that there was all sorts of extortion going on and now they're saying no actually having said that for years we now recognize there's nothing yeah and the public aren't buying it and over the last six months there has been a pattern of i guess i'd broadly call it spinelessness in other words legislators congressmen and women, senators, basically adhering to anything that Donald Trump says, anything that he wants, any bill that he wants passed, they essentially come round to his way of thinking.

6:53On this issue, not so much. This is Tim Burchett. He is a congressman from Tennessee who is going out on a limb to say, no, I'm not having it. I'm big on clarity and transparency. And, you know, that's a good reason people don't trust government, either party.

7:10Saikat Chakrabarti:But you don't believe what the Justice Department is saying? I don't know. No, I don't. I don't. I think I don't. I don't. I don't trust. Yeah. I mean, the cat's out the bag. Once you tell people that the DOJ is full of crooks, once you tell people there's a deep state, once you tell people there's lawfare or whatever, then people take you at their word and they will run with a conspiracy theory even after you've put it down. And significantly in the past 24 hours, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, kind of dutiful, loyal lapdog of the president has come out and said, not good enough. We need to see the files such as they are.

7:49They're all out there and let the people decide. And, you know, it's kind of Donald Trump is being hoist by one of his own conspiracy theories that he now wants to say doesn't exist. Yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it? What happens when a conspiracy theory runs away from you? And I guess Mike Johnson, who has always been, as you say, the loyal Labrador, has now got to choose between the MAGA base that wants answers and the president who's saying nothing to see here. And it is laughable, quite frankly, to hear Trump sounding almost mainstream when he says there is no evidence to support the files and without evidence we can't go any further.

8:26Sorry? What? The man who had absolutely no evidence that the 2020 election was stolen suddenly needs to have factual evidence in order to take his next step? I mean, it's very interesting that what he is doing by telling people that there's nothing to see here is making people absolutely fascinated by it. Of course. And on the Democrat side, there is the I wonder why Donald Trump doesn't want anything to come out about Jeffrey Epstein, because it was known that Trump knew Epstein. And I remember during the, you know, when I was in Washington, a briefing that Trump gave where he was asked about Ghislaine Maxwell, who's the only person who's been convicted of any of the wrongdoing that went on.

9:09And he was very gracious about her. He was very, you know, a very nice woman, et cetera, et cetera. And so, you know, the danger is that it grows on the other side, that it's a Trump cover up, that Trump is covering up his own relationship. And of course, you know, Elon Musk said what he said. If I was to counsel Donald Trump, I don't think he's going to pick up the phone and say, John, what do you think I should do? He should ring up Barack Obama because Barack Obama had to deal with Trump's birtherism conspiracy all the time that he was president, where Trump was saying, oh, Barack Obama was not born in the US.

9:43He was born in Kenya. And that went on and it drove the Obama administration and the people around Obama crazy because they couldn't shake off this bloody conspiracy. Yeah, but it's too late for that, because as you'll hear, Trump has already lashed out as a way of preventing further questions about himself at James Comey, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Of course.

10:06Saikat Chakrabarti:On what? On the DOJ and what subject? Epstein, on Epstein, of the review of the files. A very, very quick briefing. The Pressure. What did she tell you about the review? And specifically, did she tell you at all that your name appeared in the file? The President Biden's office is a very quick briefing. And in terms of the credibility of the different things that they've seen, and I would say that, you know, these files were made up by Comey. They were made up by Obama. They were made up by the Biden information. you know, and we went through years of that with the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, with all of the different things that we had to go through.

10:48We've gone through years of it, but she's handled it very well. Handled it very well. So Pam Bondi has given him a very short briefing on what's in the files. You'd think the president would be a little more curious given the blowback that is coming over the fact that nothing has been released to the public and there's nothing to see here. I'm not sure how well Pam Bondi has handled it or Donald Trump because frankly if they'd handled it better it might not be the story it is now and is still growing and you just sense that with some things Donald Trump is brilliant look the other way look look over there there's a shiny object and we all look the other way and we go scampering after it no one is doing that they are still persisting with questions and the questions are intensifying.

11:32As you know, Trump is very good when there is an external enemy, whether it's Mexico, whether it's an alien invasion of illegal immigrants in his terms, whether it's the Democrats, whether it's Biden, whether it's a Russian hoax, that's fine. He's very good at creating a narrative of they're out to get us. You know, the grievance culture, they're out to get us. This time it's all happening within not just his party, but his administration. So the FBI director, Kash Patel, and his deputy, Dan Bongino, look as if there are odds with the attorney general, Pam Bondi. And at one stage last week, there were hints that Bongino might even walk.

12:15Yeah. Give up his job. Give up a job as the second most important person at the FBI to walk. Go back to doing a sort of right wing conspiracy podcast. Not that there's anything wrong with podcasts, obviously. But he didn't like what Pan Bondi said to the extent that he was thinking of walking. Now, that hasn't happened. We don't know if there will be resignations over this. I think it's probably unlikely. I'd also say, frankly, that Trump is the Houdini of politics who manages to get himself out of extraordinary scrapes with incredible alacrity most of the time. So I'm sure that he will find a way of pulling the party back together.

12:55And if something happens in the next few days where we're all being made to look over here, you'll know why that is. Right. There will be a look over here moment. But as things stand, as we record on Wednesday lunchtime, it feels very fractious what is going on within his actual administration between people he appointed, not always because they had the best track record of public office, but because they spouted his own conspiracy theories the loudest. Exactly. And Kash Patel and Dan Bongino were at the forefront of promoting conspiracy theories about what happened to Jeffrey Epstein in that jail in New York.

13:33And so you have a remarkable situation where we have tried to chronicle over the past six months the sort of turbulence and the extraordinary pace of events in the Trump administration. and we've looked at the crisis over tariffs and what happens on the bond markets and the uncertainty over that, the bombing of Iran, the failure to bring peace to Ukraine, the continuing war in Gaza and, you know, not making progress there. Yet the biggest crisis that Donald Trump faces is over a bloke who died six years ago and what did or didn't happen over it. And this is because Donald Trump has been bitten on the backside by his own speciality, conspiracy theories and inflaming them.

14:18And now he's trying to use a fire extinguisher and it ain't working. In a moment, we're going to hear from the man taking on the old style Democratic Party, Shoika Chakrabarti, who's putting himself up against Nancy Pelosi.

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16:05Saikat Chakrabarti:All figures per serving of Hero Bread. See Nutrition Facts on Hero.co. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. Well, joining us now on the News Agents USA is Shoikat Chakrabarti, somebody who, to be honest, we have been following and listening to and watching for a few months now and trying to get on with the various time-different logistics. And Shoikat, it's great to be able to speak to you finally. Let's give our listeners a sort of potted history of sort of where you come into the picture, because you are taking on Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House in California, in her House seat at the next elections.

16:49You were Bernie Sanders, can we call you technology guru on the campaign in 2016 and chief of staff to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, unseating Joe Crowley, who was the person who was expected to win. So, Shokat, I guess I'm going to say there is quite a lot of expectation on your shoulders now. Is that fair of being a representative voice of what the Democrat Party might look like or might need to look like and sound like in the next year? Does it radically need to change, do you think?

17:25Saikat Chakrabarti:I do think it radically needs to change. I mean, that's the whole motivation for my campaign, because after Trump won in 2024, I was actually sort of hoping that the Democrats would have sort of this come to Jesus moment, you know, where they do some soul searching, start to think about why they didn't just lose to Trump again, but, you know, why they're starting to lose or their working class base, because a lot of the traditional Democratic base started to move, you know, vote for Trump in this last election. And my view on it is ultimately the current political and economic system in America just hasn't been working for most people for decades.

18:01Saikat Chakrabarti:I think for decades now, most people have been working more and more hours to be able to afford less and less stuff. And that's the fundamental thing, driving people to vote for kind of sweeping change every chance they get. I think that was why Obama won in 2008, because he sort of campaigned on bold sweeping change. I think that's why Trump won in 2016. I even think Biden campaigned on, you know, a whole new economy would build back better. And that was a large reason why he won. And so I think Democrats have really got to understand people are, you know, they're open to the kind of change, but they're just sure that business as usual is not cutting it.

18:36Saikat Chakrabarti:And so Democrats have to win on that and we have to deliver on that. I was listening to Mark Cuban at the weekend, the businessman Democrat, who says the problem is that the Democratic Party tends to extrapolate and say this will happen if that happens. MAGA Republicans just say, this is why your life is shit now. Do you agree that part of the problem is the way that Democrats approach the problems is through language, is through the way they communicate? I think the language is downstream from a lack of a real plan or vision. I think on the MAGA side, they have kind of this cohesive story that they've really been saying for a while nationally of what their story is for why your life is getting harder.

19:18Saikat Chakrabarti:And they say your life is getting harder because immigrants are coming into a country and America spent a lot of time focused on them, focused on other countries and not enough time focused on you. And, you know, that's the whole premise of kind of America first movement. And I think the Democrats, A, don't really have a story of why things are getting worse. And part of that, I think, stems from the fact that many Democrats don't actually believe that things are getting worse. I think, you know, a lot of Democrats are living in D.C. They're living in, you know, top 1 % of the population. For them, life isn't getting worse.

19:51Saikat Chakrabarti:And, you know, there's this whole debate in this last election of whether we actually even trust that what people are telling us when they say the economy is getting worse, you know, inflation is too bad, we can't afford things, whether that's even real. You know, is that reality or is that just some feeling that voters are having? So I think first here is acknowledging that things are actually getting harder for a lot of people and then actually coming up with both the story for how do we get here, but how do you get out of it, right? And MAGA's kind of got their, I'd say, ham-fisted solution that's not going to solve the problem.

20:21Saikat Chakrabarti:And, you know, that's a benefit for the Democrats, because at the end of the day, life's not going to get better for a bunch of people after Trump's out of office, you know, in 2024. So we have to then figure out what's our answer to that going to be. And I'm really hoping the answer isn't just Trump was bad. And so, you know, vote for us. I think the answer's got to be here's our plan for how to actually make your lives better. The thing that strikes me watching the debate unfold is that the Democratic Party establishment seems more frightened of you than they do of Donald Trump in some ways.

20:53That kind of the insurgent element of Bernie Sanders and AOC and now Zora Mamdani and you is, oh, my God, they're going to rip down the walls of the establishment. Yeah.

21:05Saikat Chakrabarti:And unfortunately for them, I think unless the walls, the establishment get ripped down, the Democratic Party itself is not going to be able to win. I mean, you look at the polling right now. Donald Trump's got low approval ratings. The Democratic Party is worse. You know, people actually don't like the Democratic Party even more than they don't like Donald Trump. But, you know, I've been in the game of trying to push back against the Democratic Party establishment for quite some time. And every single time, you know, after AOC won, we wanted to try to work with the folks in the Democratic Party.

21:38Saikat Chakrabarti:We're trying to tell them, hey, let's come up with a real answer for how to solve these big economic problems. Let's try to modernize the Democratic Party. At that time, I remember, you know, the Democratic Party wasn't doing anything on social media, didn't know how to use any of these new messaging tools. You know, we want to work with them. But the party has such a culture of just, you know, keeping the status quo together. Right. It's the seniority culture. It's this cautious culture. It's sort of this defensive crouch that they've gone into. And in the face of MAGA, they're like deer caught in headlights.

22:12Saikat Chakrabarti:And instead of coming out and actually trying to go on the attack, do something proactive, they're just trying to figure out how to keep this thing that they've got going together. OK, I completely buy the argument about, you know, they are old and that's not to be ageist. But you look at, you know, the age of Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer. You know, there's certainly Joe Biden when he was president. There was a feeling that it was a gerontocracy. It was an old people's retirement home, the Democratic Party. That's true on age. But in terms of their positioning, weren't they in the right place?

22:42Because America as a country is right of centre, probably the most European countries. And what you're offering is a much more European socialist sort of program.