Transcript
Tim Miller (0:00)
Hey, everybody. Tim Miller from the Bulwark here with managing editor Sam Stein. Sam was watching the Sunday shows this morning while I was doing some crunches and it's an interesting thing. You look good. Thank you. You know, I'm working on it, man. I'm working on it. You got to put in a lot more work at this age, you know, to have any results. And you wanted to highlight for me. I've just seen the, I've just seen the tweet, but an interesting take from the Speak of the House, obviously, ton of conversation on Sunday shows about Epstein, about the COVID up that this administration is participating in, about the kind of floated pardon for the ringleader of the child sex trafficking ring, Ghislaine Maxwell. So the Mike Johnson response was pretty noteworthy. Let's watch that and we'll get Sam's take on the other side.
Sam Stein (0:43)
If you're asking my opinion, I think 20 years was a pittance. I think she should have a life sentence at least. I mean, think of all these unspeakable crimes and as you noted earlier, probably a thousand victims. I mean, you know, it's hard to put into words how evil this was and that she orchestrated it and was a big part of it, at least under the criminal sanction, I think is an unforgivable thing.
Nate (1:06)
Okay, so first on the big picture thing, because you and I talked about this on a separate video about whether, you know, Trump's attempts to kind of engineer a different storyline to overtake the Epstein or at least distract from it. Like if you watch the Sunday shows this morning, it was like 75, 80% Epstein. I mean, it was a lot. So it's not working. Right. Like on the Johnson thing, I think this is probably the newsiest bit from the Sunday shows because what he's doing here is he's basically, you can say he's painting himself into a corner. He's certainly taking a stand. That is not, it's unequivocal. Right. Like if Trump were to go and pardon Maxwell, he would be now completely at odds with the speaker of the House. He said, I mean, he's very clear there. He thinks 20 years is a pittance is his wording. And I mean, I don't know how you feel about it, but the signs at least to me suggest the pardon's a real possibility here. I don't know if it's going to happen because I continue to think, I struggle to find the logic through which that would work out well for Trump. But I don't deny that they have Definitely made overtures in that direction. And certainly he's not ruling it out. And so when Johnson comes out and says, no, 20 years is not enough, that would really, I think there would be a real potential for combustibility if Trump were not to go to pardon her.
Tim Miller (2:31)
Yeah. Let me just let us float a contrary view. That's the natural thing to think is what I first saw when I saw in the speaker of the House saying, you know, throwing cold water on this and saying she should be in jail longer, which, by the way, rare agreement with Mike Johnson and my fellow Louisianan on that one, Ghislaine Maxwell should never get out of prison. What she did was just depraved and evil. But, okay, let's look at, like, Johnson's behavior in two other areas. So initially, remember, he did this just a little bit ago on Epstein when Trump was saying, move on, move on, and Johnson was saying, no, I think we should look at the documents. And then he has kind of come back around to being in line with Trump at least much more on the documents. So he did that. And then if you look, this isn't Mike Johnson in particular, but a lot of prominent Republicans on Hill the regards to the January 6th pardons. And forget prominent Republicans on the Hill, Vice President J.D. vance, up till the minute that Trump did the January 6th pardons, they're saying, well, we're not going to pardon the violent criminals. I mean, like, literally, his own vice president was mocking people that suggested that they might pardon, that he might burn the violent criminals like, two minutes before he did it. Right. So, yeah, you know, I do think, Nate, like, does that have any influence on Trump? Like, I don't think so, actually, no. And it's notable that Mike Johnson did it, but I don't know that it will have any actual impact on what, how this plays out.