Why don't Americans trust Trump on Epstein?

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0:44That is Donald Trump on the roof of the White House. He looks bizarre. I mean, at a passing glance, it looks absolutely mad, but it is part of a carefully constructed walkabout with security detail to see the site beneath him, which will soon be housing the White House ballroom. Yeah, the intention is to spend$200 million from donors, not US taxpayers, to create a kind of ballroom like he's got at Mar-a-Lago on the White House estate. I mean, tempting to say fiddler on the roof, but maybe given his problems with Jeffrey Epstein, this is an attempt at diversion. More cat on a hot tin roof. Welcome to the Newsagents USA.

1:39It's John. It's Emily. Where are you? I've run away. I've actually run away from you for one whole month but I'm here in spirit and indeed well in voice. Well it's very nice to see you. Look, we've got to start with the Council of War. I don't know how else to describe it. That is taking place later today at J.D. Vance's residence in Washington, D.C. with the president, with the president's chief of staff, Susie Weil, apparently Pam Bondi, the attorney general, apparently Kash Patel, the FBI director and even the deputy attorney general, who, of course, went and saw Ghislaine Maxwell with one subject.

2:21What the hell are we going to do about this mess? Because this mess is now engulfing the Trump presidency and every attempt to deflect and to get people looking the other way. People keep returning to this central issue of Trump's handling of the Epstein affair and the question marks being raised about does he have a role in it? Yeah. And even since we last spoke to you about this, so much has changed. Ghislaine Maxwell, who, as you know, was convicted for 20 years, sent to prison on charges of sex trafficking, human trafficking, has now been removed from a high security prison where she was carrying out her days to a much more relaxed, more open prison, what we call, I guess, a white collar prison.

3:12And there are a lot of people inside who are very, very unhappy that she's joined them. And there are a lot of people on the outside, namely her victims, who are really wondering what on earth is going on and what Trump is up to. Now, I think we should just talk you through Trump's response when he was asked about why she'd moved and what had happened in those meetings with Todd Blanche, because they're now talking about releasing the transcripts of those eight hours or so of interviews that she did with him. And here's what Donald Trump said when he was asked about it directly. Were you aware of and did you personally approve the prison transfer for Ghislaine Maxwell that your Justice Department?

3:53I didn't know about it at all. No, I read about it just like you did. And do you believe that she is not a very uncommon thing? Do you believe that she's credible to be listening to your deputy attorney general sat down with her recently? Well, he's, let me tell you, he's a very talented man. His name is Todd Blanch. He's a very legitimate person, very high, just a very highly thought of person, respected by everybody. Okay, quick fact check here. There is no chance, there is absolutely zero chance that Trump read about that or saw it on the television like the rest of us. Trump would have been in on exactly what was happening as a consequence of that meeting and what has been decided.

4:32It is also, fact check, an incredibly uncommon thing. You do not simply move criminals, convicted criminals, from one very, very high security prison, where they are deemed to be a risk to the public, to somewhere that is considered an open white collar prison for no apparent reason. No reason has been given. No explanation has been given. The victims are frankly furious. Look, there's just one, I mean, I'll just insert one other little factoid in all of this. Prison transfers are normally conducted by the US Marshals Service. That is the established mechanism by which you, you know, move a prisoner across county lines or from one sort of penal establishment to another.

5:17This was not done by the Marshals Department. It was done by Department of Justice staff very quietly, very swiftly. This did not go through normal mechanisms. The idea, as you say, Maylis, that Trump knew nothing about it is risible. It is just inconceivable, given how much political airtime, oxygen this is taking up and that he can't seem to get shot of the subject. There is just no way, no way at all that he didn't know about it and sanction it himself. But the gamble in all of this, and you do have to talk about the gamble, you know, he is gambling that if he can get Ghislaine Maxwell to say something very obliging, saying Donald Trump did nothing wrong, Donald Trump was never on the island, Donald Trump never had anything untoward in his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and Ghislaine Maxwell gets free, that the American people will think, OK, that's fine.

6:15Because so far, the great salesman has not been able to sell. There's nothing to see here. And Maxwell's lawyers are saying that they haven't been given a chance to review the transcripts. They say it has a harm to, as I say, harm her public image. I don't understand how that could be right. But I guess this calls into question what the whole release of the transcripts is about, because it feels to me like this is the wrong thing that they should be releasing. Everyone knows the thing that they should be releasing, the thing that Trump keeps on saying doesn't exist. There is nothing to see here.

6:50Bloomberg recently did a report saying in whatever the Epstein file is, his name appears nearly a thousand times. So there is a clamor to have something released. And in its place, Trump or those around Trump, those who will, let's say, rid him of a turbulent child molester, child abuser, are now trying to find something to move the conversation on. So this is why the whole conversation is now turning to, should we be looking at the transcripts of the conversations? Now, I don't know what Ghislaine would have said to Todd Blanche. And I don't even know that what was in the interview would be as relevant as maybe a conversation that they might have had around the edges before or after.

7:33But it does seem that once again, he's trying to sort of get everyone to look over here, so you don't look over there. I mean, just to go back to your war room. It does feel like Cobra, where J.D. Vance is sitting there and Pam Bobby is sitting there and Trump is sitting there. And you presumably have like the finest MAGA minds unable to make this story that they have unleashed go away. And there are just fascinating little details. I don't know whether you've seen the New York Times today, but they've kind of published photos from inside Epstein's New York townhouse. And among the kind of curios that you get there, there is a framed photo of Melania and Donald Trump, which sort of suggests that they were still friends or someone's planted it there.

8:22Or I'm sure Donald Trump will say it's total fake news and doesn't exist and it's all been made up by the New York Times. But, you know, let's take that at face value. The other thing you've got is the House issuing a subpoena for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Again, another attempt to look the other way. And if you don't think this is history repeating itself, Remember the second presidential debate in 2016 between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in St. Louis, Missouri, where Donald Trump brings to the debate a number of the accusers of Bill Clinton for sexual misconduct. It was absolutely an attempt for Donald Trump to change the subject after the Pussygate tape so that he could say, yeah, I may be bad, but that Bill Clinton is even worse.

9:09and Hillary Clinton allowed it all to happen. I mean, you know, that's what he's done before and that's what he's doing now. Yeah, I mean, it sort of seemed quietly, horribly brilliant at the time. I don't think it's looking that clever now, is it? Because when you've got this sort of, this list of Bill and Hillary subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee to testify as part of those investigations and you look down the list and yes, he's brought in, you know, James Comey, doesn't like James Comey either. Robert Mueller, who did the Russian investigation, doesn't like Robert Mueller either. Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder doesn't like them either.

9:45You suddenly sort of go, oh, wait a sec. So there's lots of sort of Democrat or Democrat adjacent people on this list, or indeed some of your own sworn enemies. There are a few notable gaps. We don't see your former Homeland Security Advisor, Alex Acosta, the very man who cut the plea deal for Epstein back in 2008 that made it ridiculously lenient on him and allowed him essentially to walk free from jail. And we don't see, what's the other missing name? Oh God, don't tell me. Oh God, who's the other one? Who's the other one that should be subpoenaed who does appear? Oh, oh yeah, we don't see Donald Trump.

10:20So there is this whole sort of parade of, if you like, enemies that are now trying to be pushed to do a perp walk. They probably won't ever testify. They have presidential privilege, at least, you know, Bill Clinton has presidential privilege. I very much doubt that we'll see him testify. But once again, Trump is not really helping the story to go away by just providing a whole list of people that should be testifying. And I guess there will be many in the American public who think we'd quite like to hear what they have to say. Yeah, go for it. But there's some notable gaps in that list. Yeah, absolutely.

10:55Although two of his attorney generals have been summoned from the first term, Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions, the former Alabama senator. I mean, they have been summoned, but they also fell foul of Donald Trump. So Donald Trump won't have any hesitation in kind of. I mean, Jeff Sessions memorably recused himself. So he basically ducked that one, didn't want to support Trump. Bill Barr, I think, is a more complicated one because Bill Barr was the attorney general when the Mueller report came out. And essentially, he manipulated what that report said to get it over the line and make Trump happy. I mean, I think the Mueller report ended up saying that there wasn't enough proof to connect Trump with Russia.

11:36And Bill Barr was the one who gave Trump that line and said there has been no collusion. wasn't strictly true. But anyway, Bill Barr then, I think, fell foul of Trump because he publicly tried to tell the world what he was like. In other words, we have a list of Trump's enemies here. We have a list of Trump's enemies here. We don't have many of the people close to Epstein at the time, which would include the President Trump. So let's go back to where we started and this Council of War. I was really struck by some polling evidence I saw that's been conducted by UMass, the University of Massachusetts, where my son studied for a year, incidentally, which shows that Americans appear to be dismayed at Trump's handling of the Epstein case.

12:1970 % of Americans believe he has handled this issue not too well or not well at all. And nearly two thirds believe his administration is hiding information about Epstein. Now, in a country where we say it's split down the middle and you get 70 % saying, hang on, this is all going wrong and you're lying and you're not telling us the truth, then you've got a real problem. And I think that the public attitude towards this is really mixed and the MAGA community is utterly split, as we've discussed on previous occasions, between those who say, oh, we've got to get behind Trump and those who've been at the vanguard of this saying there is something rotten here.

13:00How can Donald Trump say there's nothing to see. Yeah, well, one person who's tried to get ahead of this is the Democrat Stephen Klubeck, who is the candidate for California governor. And he's launched an attack ad on Trump. And you might remember, if I cast you back to November, there was one very famous ad that really punched through and it was the they them ad. It tried to tie Kamala to trans rights issues and say that Trump would have none of it. And it said, you know, she is for they them and Donald Trump is for you. Well, this ad has now been turned around and used very much against Trump, tying him to the they them that is Epstein and Maxwell.

13:39It's laughable that it wasn't a good friendship, if not his best friend. It's been reported that Trump invited Epstein to his wedding. Weddings are super close friends and family. It's hard to believe, but it's true. Even the conservative media is shocked. We also found this photo of Donald Trump with two of his children talking to Jeffrey Epstein? Were some of the workers that were taken from you, young women? The answer is yes. Trump is for they, them. Stephen Klubeck is for you. Smart ad, isn't it? I mean, really smart. I mean, you know, I think the question that we have been asking for the last six months is when are the Democrats going to start fighting back?

14:16You know, what is their message? Where are they? What are they talking about? How are they making waves? And I think something like that will probably, whether or not you think it is the most important issue in America right now, it has a certain sass to it. And I think it will punch through in a way that much of the rhetoric that has come from the Dems in recent months has been slightly apologetic, you know, slightly awkward, not quite fiery enough to take some of the stuff that's happening before our eyes on. And one of the things that I just want to talk about in parenthesis before we move on to what's happening in Texas is the firing of the head of the Bureau for Labour statistics on Friday.

14:57You might remember first thing Friday morning, the jobs numbers came out. And normally, I mean, it's one of those things that you sort of see as a drop or it might be in the FT and people move on. And Trump this time couldn't move on because the numbers for last month for July in terms of the number of people in work was slightly flat, but the numbers that had been revised from May and June were really revised downwards. In other words, signalling a three-month trend that things were not going well. And what was awkward was that first thing Friday morning, Trump was sending out his sort of henchmen and women onto the airwaves, you know, to say all is well, nothing to see here, the economy's fine.

15:36And by Friday afternoon, he had fired the commissioner, a woman who was appointed originally by Biden, but had been just as faithful to the data when Biden was in power. Indeed, her last jobs report in October was pretty brutal reading. And yet Trump tried to say that she had rigged the data, that she had been a political appointee and that she wasn't talented enough at her job. I don't think we can overstate the kind of shockwaves that this has sent around certainly the sort of US markets, but also the world watching. Because once you try to shoot the truth, you're into a really dangerous game.

16:17And what Trump was doing there was essentially just trying to break things like fire her, break that, tear up the data so it goes away. It won't go away. If the economic data is not good, people will start to see it and feel it. And anecdotally, they will start to talk about it. And yet what Trump is doing once again is just trying to massage a number into non-existence, shooting the truth. It doesn't work. Well, I think it also puts America in a very dangerous position. it's not only the rest of the world that will look at these numbers and say can we believe what we're being told about the US economy its growth forecasts its labor numbers if you're going to start appointing statisticians who are going to give you the numbers you want to hear rather than the numbers and I think that you know even someone like Janet Yellen who let's face it is more academic than she is politician is saying that this makes America look like a banana republic it's what they did in Argentina when inflation was spiralling out of control it's what they've done in other countries that are going to hell and their economies are going down the toilet and it just leads as well to a lack of confidence in the US and going back to this UMass poll I was talking about a moment ago this is also feeding into it that people are getting angry they're worried about the job situation they're worried about inflation still all these things that Donald Trump said he had solved Americans are seeing with their own eyes that it's not solved, that there is still a problem there.

17:48And this is also hurting Trump as well. And I think that the move, just going back to the move about the woman, you know, Erica McEnfell, I think this will come back to bite him. Yeah, I mean, in a way, it is not a big surprise. We've seen what Trump does when he doesn't like numbers. We've seen what happened when he was on that phone call with Brad Raffensperger after the 2020 election, the Georgia Secretary of State. and he said, fine me 11 ,780 votes. Once again, if the number's wrong, Trump tries to change it rather than sort of accepting the reality of an actual election. But I think what tends to happen as a result of this is that you get people, I mean, already we've seen, I think, one of the deputies at the Federal Reserve leave, no reason given, oh, I just think it's better if I go off and do my stuff.

18:36You won't get good people into the jobs. And then people lose confidence in the organizations themselves. And I think the thing that is keeping America going right now, frankly, is its institutions. You know, it's all those institutions at one remove from whatever is going on in the crazy government. And once you start undermining trust in those institutions, and I know it's a kind of boring subject, it's not, you know, it's not a sexy subject to talk about, you know, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but actually, it's so fundamental. I mean, I heard this great quote from Thomas Friedman today, you know, the sort of columnist who said, trust is the one legal performance enhancing drug.

19:20You know, once you get rid of trust, once nobody trusts what your own bureaus are doing or the numbers that are coming out or the data that you are seeing, then people think, oh God, well, we don't really know what's going on. I think, well, you know, we'll leave that alone. We won't invest. We won't trade. I'm not really sure what we're seeing there. And I think that has a massive knock-on effect. But, you know, if you're Donald Trump, you look at the markets, which he always looks at, and the S &P 500 and the Dow, they're all looking pretty damn rosy at the moment. You know, the markets have bounced back.

19:53So Americans looking at their 401k pension pots are thinking, oh, things are pretty good right now. Explain that, because I don't understand how that tallies. A lot of people don't understand. You're asking the question. A lot of people don't understand how that tallies. But the fact of the matter is that the US stock prices are really high right now. Now, whether it's a kind of a false blip and the markets will come crashing down again soon, as some people are predicting, I don't know. But equally, you've had the chaos of the tariffs. You've had the economic uncertainty and what's going to happen as a result of the one big, beautiful bill.

20:30You know, people protesting at kind of town hall meetings with their Republican congressman about what's happening to Medicaid at the same time as the economy seems to be doing really, really well in terms of the stock market. I guess there is always this lag effect. And that was, you know, one of the things he didn't like with the Labour statistics was that they seemed fine when they came out in June and fine when they came out in May. But these things get revised downwards. So sometimes you're looking at a sort of cross section that will then be completely different in two months time. And the stock market doesn't necessarily reflect, you know, the revised numbers as we see them today.

21:07And we'll be back in a moment to talk about what's happening in the Lone Star state of Texas, where the Democratic Party in the Statehouse have fled to stop the Republicans gerrymandering the number of seats that will be up for grabs in the midterms. That's to come.

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22:25Learn more at amahealthvshype.org. That's amahealthvshype.org. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. So we're going to turn to what's happening in Texas, where, as you were hearing, there are congressmen and women who have essentially fled the state to avoid being part of a vote, which they say would have deeply undemocratic consequences. And full disclosure, I was going to leave you to this, Soaps, because you have a guest all lined up for this bit. Yeah, we had a guest lined up, Jolanda Jones, and she is one of the state representatives who has gone to Illinois to stop this gerrymandering, which would in effect mean that you redraw all the boundaries for House of Representatives seats within Texas and you will end up with five more Republican seats than you would have done beforehand by this whole process of redistricting and which bits of the population are included and which bits go into another area.

23:31And so the Democrats decided, well, the way we can stop this is by leaving the state altogether because there will not be a quorum in the state house in Austin, Texas to get this vote passed. Greg Abbott, the governor of the state, has issued arrest warrants for these people, for the Democrats who've left the state. As we're talking right now, Texas Department of Public Safety officers are on the streets looking for those Democrat House members to arrest them and to take them to the Texas Capitol and hold them there until a quorum is reached. And the woman we were going to speak to, Jolanda Jones, is in Illinois.

24:08And we've just had an email from her chief of staff because we were due to be speaking any second now. And it's to our editor, Louis, who says, hey, Louis, I don't think Jolanda is going to make it on. They've had to evacuate her hotel for a bomb threat. She texted me. She is in a briefing right now and cannot log on. I'm so sorry. I'll get back to you and hopefully do a make up interview. I'm hearing everyone is okay and hoping it was an empty threat. I'm sure it will be in the news. Thanks for understanding. Look, it is entirely possible that it's completely unrelated to anything and it is an empty bomb threat and we all hope and pray that everyone's safe.

24:47It is also weirdly coincidental that a hotel that has so many of these people, in essence, kind of seeking a sort of safe zone to escape what is happening in their state of Texas right now should at least feel threatened to this extent. It is disruptive, if nothing else. Yeah, and I think that's probably the aim of the disruption. And that the person who made the threat, if we're right in our assumption that this is weirdly coincidental, you know, it means that Jolanda Jones is not going to appear on the News Agents USA and a whole pile of other state congresspeople are not going to appear on the radio and TV appearances that maybe they had lined up because they're all under Secret Service protection now, are waiting to see the all clear about whether they can go back to their hotel or not.

25:34I mean, I just think it shows the fury that has been generated on both sides by the Republicans in wanting to introduce this, issuing the arrest warrants and the Democrats who feel that they have got to protest it. Yeah. And John Cornyn, who is the senior senator for Texas, has actually asked the FBI to help locate and arrest all these dozens of Democratic lawmakers that are heading over the country. And so right now, I don't know if you're the FBI, are you chasing down the escapees or are you trying to protect them from a bomb threat? It's getting very confusing. And I don't think a British audience, I mean, I don't think we can even begin to understand properly redistricting because it just seems so odd that you would do something so publicly and so obviously that would, in essence, make for a more partisan area of your state.

26:28But the Democrats are looking at what the Texas governor is trying to do and saying, well, I know you're trying to firm up this state and firm up more of the areas for Trump. And clearly, it's going a long way towards pleasing Donald Trump, this whole action. But you are actually cutting out people. You are changing the nature of who can vote in many of these places. And some of the Democrats are saying, look, this is an actual racial bias here. You are shutting out people of color. You are shutting out people who are more marginalized by sort of forming the areas in which, you know, seats can be won or lost.

27:04And one response, which I have to say I wasn't really expecting, was from the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, who's now said, you know what, if Texas does that, we're going to do the same in California. In other words, we're going to play the same game. And he's now trying to pass a law which is only triggered if Texas goes ahead with their redistricting. And he's saying, well, yeah, fine. If you do that in Texas, I'm going to redistrict in California and then we'll get our extra seats here. It's cause and effect. It's triggered on the basis of what occurs or doesn't occur in Texas. I hope they do the right thing.

27:42And if they do the right thing, then there'll be no cause for us to have to move forward. But again, we're working with the legislature on a trigger that if they do move forward, California will not sit by idly and watch this democracy waste away. We'll fight fire with fire, we'll assert ourselves and we'll punch above our weight. And it will have profound impacts on the national outcome, not just here in the state of California. And so it doesn't seem to me to be a sort of a place of particular moral high ground that it does seem to suggest that the whole system is kind of screwed if governors can just play around with exactly how their boundaries are drawn, right?

28:20Look, we are 60 years on from the passing of the, you know, the Act, giving voting rights, making sure that elections were free and fair, that there wasn't discrimination against minorities, that you had to make sure the will of the people was heard. And here we are with what is happening in Texas, with Greg Abbott's approval and arrest warrants being issued. And now Gavin Newsom saying, well, if you're going to do it, I'm going to do it and we can all play that game. And you just realise the sort of how powerless this is and terrible it is for US democracy. Whatever happens, I suspect that the result of midterms next November is that someone will say, cry foul and say, these weren't free and fair elections.