The New Trump Lie That Everyone’s Repeating

Summary

Summary of "The New Trump Lie That Everyone’s Repeating"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Bulwark Takes
• Host/Author: The Bulwark
• Episode: The New Trump Lie That Everyone’s Repeating
• Release Date: July 28, 2025

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In the episode titled "The New Trump Lie That Everyone’s Repeating," hosted by Andrew Egger, The Bulwark delves deep into the evolving narrative surrounding former President Donald Trump and the persistent allegations of a "Russia hoax" that originally gained prominence during the 2016 and 2017 election cycles. The discussion primarily centers on how Trump and his allies are strategically redirecting attention from recent scandals, such as the Epstein investigation, by reviving and distorting past intelligence assessments and official statements to undermine the legitimacy of the investigations into Russian interference.

Introduction: Redirecting the Narrative

[00:00] Andrew Egger opens the episode by highlighting Trump's efforts to shift the public conversation away from the Epstein investigation. Instead, Trump is revisiting the "Russia, Russia, Russia" narrative, accusing former President Barack Obama and his administration of engineering a coup to undermine him as he assumed office. Egger introduces Will Salitan, a senior writer for The Bulwark, who specializes in historical analysis to shed light on current political maneuvers.

Re-examining Past Intelligence Assessments

[00:46] Will Salitan emphasizes the necessity of revisiting past events to counteract ongoing misinformation. He critiques Republicans who are resurrecting the Trump narrative by misrepresenting intelligence documents released by Tulsi Gabbard. According to Salitan, these documents do not substantiate claims that Obama stated there was no evidence of Russian interference, directly contradicting statements made by figures like Senator Lindsey Graham.

Notable Quote:

“Tulsi Gabbard herself mischaracterizes the documents that she put out... counting on people not to look at the actual documents.”
— Will Salitan [06:08]

Misrepresentation by Republican Figures

[01:36] Kristen Welker, during her interview with Graham, presents clips where he asserts that Russia interfered to benefit Trump and harm Clinton. Salitan points out that Graham and others are distorting the content of Gabbard's documents, which actually support the original intelligence findings of Russian interference, thereby perpetuating a false narrative.

Notable Quote:

“They are trying to scour the entire database of the entire White House to find Democrats acting suspicious.”
— Andrew Egger [08:14]

The Role of Key Republican Figures

The episode discusses the involvement of John Ratcliffe, the CIA Director, and Devin Nunes, former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, in propagating the revised narrative. Ratcliffe accuses Hillary Clinton of orchestrating the Russia hoax to discredit Trump, while Nunes further complicates the narrative by suggesting that Hillary Clinton was actually soft on Russia, which supposedly motivated Putin to prefer her over Trump.

Notable Quote:

“This is connected. Is there any basis for this at all?... I mean, who believes this? Or does it even, does the truth even matter anymore?”
— Will Salitan [19:51]

Linking Unrelated Events to the Russia Narrative

Egger and Salitan explore how recent events, such as the Mar-a-Lago raid, are being intertwined with the Russia hoax narrative without substantial evidence. Nunes claims that the raid was an attempt to retrieve intelligence documents related to the Russia investigation, further muddying the waters between unrelated scandals and the established facts of the 2016 election interference.

Notable Quote:

“This is the work of months by folks like Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe, which is now going out to these other Republicans.”
— Andrew Egger [22:02]

The Strategy Behind the Narrative Shift

Salitan describes the strategy as fostering "epistemological anxiety" among the public, where conflicting and unfounded narratives create widespread doubt about the truth. This tactic undermines trust in factual information and consolidates partisan cynicism, making it easier for Trump's allies to discredit genuine investigations and reports.

Notable Quote:

“Stuff that was like, I mean, everything you just laid out about, like, here's this meeting with Don Jr. Like, this isn't. There's not a lot of debate about this. There's document, there's all the emails.”
— Will Salitan [20:16]

The Decline of Truth in Public Discourse

The conversation culminates in expressing concern over the erosion of truth and the rise of denialism within Republican circles. Egger and Salitan worry that such strategies could lead to a political environment where factual accuracy is sidelined in favor of maintaining a consistent anti-Democrat narrative, reminiscent of authoritarian regimes where dissenting facts are dismissed.

Notable Quote:

“This is kind of the work of months by folks like Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe, which is now going out to these other Republicans.”
— Andrew Egger [22:02]

Conclusion: The Future of Political Narratives

As the episode wraps up, Egger and Salitan emphasize the ongoing efforts to reshape public perception by leveraging past narratives and distorting established facts. They highlight the importance of vigilance in the face of such misinformation campaigns and commit to continuing their analysis and reporting to counteract these falsehoods.

Final Quote:

“I'm just flummoxed. I mean, who believes this? Or does it even, does the truth even matter anymore?”
— Will Salitan [20:16]

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Overall, this episode of Bulwark Takes provides a critical examination of how Donald Trump and his allies are manipulating historical narratives to undermine investigations that originally painted him in a negative light. By dissecting interviews and statements from key Republican figures, the hosts illustrate a concerted effort to distort facts, foster public skepticism, and maintain a persistent narrative that serves their political interests.

Transcript

[Andrew Egger]

Hi, this is Andrew Egger with the Bulwark. Donald Trump wants you all to know, stop talking about the Epstein investigation. Stop thinking about it. Here's what you should be talking and thinking about instead. The birth of the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax all the way back in 2016 and 2017. He is accusing Barack Obama of committing treason. A lot of top former officials in the Obama White House of colluding to keel haul him, to sandbag him just as he was coming into office. Here to talk about a little bit of that today is Will Salitan, senior writer for the Bulwark, sort of our Svengali of these sorts of things. Well, I think of you as kind of like a reverse Nostradamus. You don't make predictions about the future. You return us to the past and show it how it illuminates our present. So thanks, Will, for coming on to talk about all this stuff.

[Will Salitan]

You know, it shouldn't be necessary to go back to the past, but basically we have an administration that's lying so much about the past that a lot of our job is just like, go back and remind people what actually happened, including what some of them said. So let me take you through a little bit about what's going on with these Republicans who are parroting this Trump story. So, like, again, not going to talk about Epstein. We're going to talk about Barack Obama and his people engineering a coup against Donald Trump with the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax in late 2016, early 2017. So, so Lindsey Graham was one of these people who was a Russia hawk and said that Russia was involved in trying to interfere in the 2016 election, which it was. So Lindsey was on Meet the Press this weekend, and Kristen Welker led him through some of the quotes that he had said previously about the, about Russia's intervention. Here are some of the quotes that she played from him.

[Kristen Welker]

The Russians did it. It was the Russians who tried to interfere in our election. Every member of the committee agrees it was the Russians. They didn't change the outcome, but they did release information embarrassing to the Democratic Party. It did affect Hillary Clinton. There's only one person in Washington that I know of that has any doubt about what Russia did in our election and is President Trump.

[Will Salitan]

Okay, so that's what Lindsey Graham said at the time. So Kristen Welker plays these clips and she asks Graham about these new documents that have been released by Tulsi Gabbard. So Tulsi Gabbard, the director of National Intelligence, has put out a bunch of documents which she claims show this Obama conspiracy to frame the whole Russia thing around Trump. And, and of course, this is released, timed exactly to distract people from Epstein. And so Graham in this interview proceeds to characterize falsely what he says Tulsi Gabbard has found. Here's what Graham says in the interview.

[Kristen Welker]

What she found, Ms. Gabbard, is that in 2016, the intelligence community told President Obama there's no evidence that Russia was involved in trying to change the outcome of the, the election. And he supposedly told her, a group.

[Will Salitan]

Of people keep looking.

[Kristen Welker]

And the analysis changed.

[Will Salitan]

First of all, the documents that Tulsi Gabbard produced here, these are intelligence community documents. None of them says that. None of them says anyone told Obama there's no evidence Russia was involved. They all say exactly the opposite. Like there's zero of that in what she actually produced. But correct me if I'm wrong, Andrew, wasn't it pretty well established by multiple reports, including by some Republicans, that Russia did, did intervene in the election, did try to change the outcome of the election?

[Andrew Egger]

Yes. This has been sort of a long standing thing where after this initial intelligence assessment in early 2017, late 2016, a lot of Republicans in Congress went back and kind of kicked the tires on that work, double checked that work and repeatedly found, yes, you're correct, that the initial assessment was more or less correct. One thing that I want to drill down on, because this is the funniest thing to me, there's been this long standing kind of phenomenon here, right, where, where in this White House, the explication of the documents is almost always like dramatically more, more dramatic, more explosive than what the actual evidence suggests that they're releasing. Like they, they will, you know, slap down a three ring binder on the document on the table with an indictment in it or with, with some declassified reports in it, and they'll say, well, we've uncovered this explosive stuff that says XYZ here, read it for yourself. And they'll slide it across the table to you. And when you read it, it doesn't say anything like that. But they're not counting on you to read it. Right. They're just saying, wow, there's a, that's a really heavy binder. The, the thing that's so funny to me about this particular moment here is that the, the before Tulsi Gabbard, the DNI released this, this tranche of documents, there was kind of a preliminary report on this same intelligence finding that the CIA released a few weeks prior. CIA Director John Ratcliffe is obviously another strong Trump ally, and he was saying a lot of the same stuff. But if you read his report. What, what, his report, which was written by career CIA guys, again, kind of trying to reassess that 2016, 2017 intelligence assessment was that they said all of these guys, Obama and all of his guys, they really, they really jumped to conclusions by saying that Russia wanted to help Trump. There's, there's, there's not a good reason to believe that Russia wanted to help Trump because all we really knew for sure is that Russia wanted to hurt Hillary Clinton. And even this report, it kind of acknowledges the smallness of that logical leap. Right? Like, like, and now, yeah, these intel, these analysts reasoned that in this zero sum, two party system that that information that came out that was damaging to Hillary Clinton would ultimately play to the benefit of Donald Trump. But they said that is, they should have said that was an inference and not, you know, not, not treated it like it was, you know, rock, rock solid intelligence finding of its own. So, so that, that, that's kind of what we're dealing with. That's kind of the sleight of hand that we're dealing with. And then, and then you, you start there and then you go way beyond that with a lot of these claims where we're already there. You know, you have, you have Gabbard and you have Graham basically saying that Russia wasn't trying to help or hurt any candidate. Right. Which is again, completely contradicted by the documents that this White House itself was putting out just a few weeks ago.

[Will Salitan]

Right, right. Yeah. It's like Tulsi Gabbard herself mischaracterizes the documents that she put out. Again, as you said, not counting, not just not counting, counting on people not to look at the actual documents. Right.

[Andrew Egger]

One thing she says over and over again is, look, I just, I just invite people to go read the intelligence. Go see for yourselves. Like, I mean, it's really kind of cynical when you, when you think about it that way, because she is misconstruing what's in there. But, but she knows that people aren't going to actually go and do that. And so she thinks she bolsters her own credibility by, well, I mean, she's telling me to go read it. She couldn't be lying. Right.

[Will Salitan]

As much as Tulsi Gabbard herself has embellished what the documents say, these other people are going beyond what Gabbard was actually relatively conscientious compared to Lindsey and some of these other folks. So here's another quote from Lindsey in the same interview, because Kristen Welker's a little surprised by the about face that Graham's doing here because he's just complying with the new Trump line.

[Andrew Egger]

Right.

[Will Salitan]

So she asks Graham Welker asks Graham, senator, are you now saying that you don't believe that Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 election? And this is his answer.

[Kristen Welker]

What I'm saying is that this is new evidence. This is something I didn't know. You didn't know that in 2016, Obama suggested, I don't like the outcome that there's no evidence Russia was involved. Well, now we all say Russia was involved, but in 2016, they said Russia wasn't involved. What the hell happened?

[Will Salitan]

Again, I'm kind of perplexed by this because, you know, what the hell happened is that Lindsey Graham seems to have changed his tune. I mean, again, the documents that Tulsi Gabbard released do not show that Obama said anything like, I don't like the, an intelligence finding that there's no evidence Russia was involved. All they do, Andrew, is, all she has is there was a President's daily brief that was prepared and then they decided not to use it. And then the next day there's a meeting, and we don't actually know what happened at the meeting except that somebody says out of that meeting came a directive from Obama to report on how Russia intervened. And apparently this directive on, to report on how Russia intervene is taken as some kind of a shoehorning of forcing them to reach a conclusion which as far as I know, all the evidence did support that Russia did intervene.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah. And it's all such sophistry. Right. Because, I mean, at the end of the day, who cares, like, what President Obama might have said or how President Obama might have characterized his own thoughts about, like, even if it were exactly as, as Graham characterized him saying it there. I mean, again, to go back to the CIA report, like the, the, the, the findings of the CIA report there were, you know, essentially they, they thought maybe there was some undue political pressure from, from guys like then CIA Director Brennan or from the Obama administration, you know, in essentially lighting too much of a fire under their career analysts there to get this thing out too quickly. And I guess you could quibble about that. But, but, but the conclusion still again, of this White House's CIA report is despite that potential, you know, bad management, the underlying intelligence assessments were sound and were correct and were corroborated years later by Republican committees who were looking into the same stuff in, in, in Congress, in the, in the Senate, and So again, it's, it's basically they're just trying to scour the entire database of the entire White House to find Democrats acting suspicious, Right? And anytime they find one of those, anytime they find like an email from Brennan or a potential comment from Obama or something like that, they're pointing at it like, look, look, see, see, this was politicized. This was partisan. Even as their own analysts today are saying that the actual intelligence work that was done with wasn't any of those things. So it's again, it's like the sophistry is kind of hard to overstate here, right?

[Will Salitan]

So let, let me go follow up on one of the guys you mentioned, John Ratcliffe, the CIA director. There was another interview this weekend, back to back interviews. So John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, and then Devin Nunes, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. So Maria Bartiromo interviews John Ratcliffe, all about this. And Ratcliffe's main point in this long interview is that Hillary Clinton is. We've gone back from Joe Biden to Barack Obama. Now we're back to Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is behind this whole Russia hoax thing and that Hillary was driving this narrative of the Russia hoax even before the 2016 election. And so here's what Radcliffe says in the interview.

[Andrew Egger]

In the summer of 2016, US intelligence intercepted Russian intelligence talking about a Hillary Clinton plan, a Hillary Clinton plan to falsely accuse Donald Trump of Russia collusion, to vilify him and smear him.

[Will Salitan]

That's the Ratcliffe interview, which, and the whole theme of that, again, Hillary Clinton super hawk is like portraying Trump as in, in Vladimir Putin's pocket, right? That is immediately followed by Devin Nunes, the former House intelligence chairman, who tells Maria Bartiromo this.

[Andrew Egger]

We went through every single piece of intelligence that existed. And if anything, it was clear that if Putin was going to do anything, he probably wanted Hillary Clinton to win. If you remember people, this is lost on people, but Obama and his people and Hillary Clinton loved Putin.

[Will Salitan]

Radcliffe's message is Hillary Clinton's super hawk portraying Donald Trump is in Vladimir Putin's pocket, followed immediately by, by Devin Nunes saying that actually Hillary Clinton was soft on Russia and that's why Putin actually wanted her to win. Andrew, how do these people put these two things together? How do they think this?

[Andrew Egger]

Well, I mean, a big part of it is that they don't, right? I mean, a big part of it is that when, when you are operating in this world, you have kind of an enormous amount of freedom to free associate different elements as long as like, they're all, in theory, bad for Democrats and, and, you know, just kind of trust that different ones will lodge in different people's brains. Right. Which is, which is if you were trying to kind of like, actually build up a reasonable, coherent narrative around this stuff, that would be sort of a problem. But. Right, right. That doesn't add up to anything. But if you, if all you're trying to do is kind of instill this, this sort of broad base cynicism and epistemological, like, anxiety where, where, where people, you know, just don't really know where they can, where they can turn for true facts about any of this stuff. And, and, you know, do the Steve Bannon flood the zone with shit thing, it's a lot, it's a lot easier. You have a lot more leeway to just kind of, you know, throw these mutually contradictory narratives all, all around again, provided that they all sort of reflect poorly on Democrats.

[Will Salitan]

Epistemological anxiety. I love that. That is kind of what they're after, isn't it? Yeah. So there's one more from Devin Nunes, because this just killed me. Apparently they've connected this all to the Mar A Lago raid. I know you thought this was a separate thing, but. So Maria Bartiromo again interviewing Devin Nunes, and he decides that the, the Mar A Lago raid was all about retrieving the FBI, trying to retrieve the House intelligence report that Tulsi Gabbard just released from, what was it, 2020, that had nothing to do with Donald Trump in classified documents and, you know, all the stuff he did at Mar A Lago. And apparently this is all about. More about the Russia hoax. So here's the exchange between Bartiromo and Nunes.

[Andrew Egger]

So you believe that they raided Mar A Lago because they were looking for this. They were looking for the intelligence community assessment, your report on Russia's influence campaign targeting the 2016 presidential election. That's why they rated Marago, I believe it had to be one of the things that they were looking for.

[Will Salitan]

Andrew, this is connected. Is there any basis for this at all?

[Andrew Egger]

So, no. Like, I mean, I don't know. You keep giving me these questions and I'm just like, no, Will, there's really not. This is what I think is happening here. And I'm curious your opinion about this too, but let me just throw this out. It kind of seems to me that what Donald Trump is chasing here is the same kind of high that he got escaping the Russia gate, like beating the rap on Russia, collusion in his first term where this was kind of the original witch hunt, right? He kind of coined that whole playbook in responding to the Mueller probe, in responding to the outcome of this intelligence report and that story that dominated the first couple of years of his first term. And it is a story where a lot of liberal pundits and journalists got pretty far out over their skis in terms of sort of imagining the sorts of revelations that might be forthcoming about all of that. And it ended up playing very much to Trump's political benefit in the end when, you know, even though he had acted unbelievably, dishonorably, and probably illegally in how he responded to that probe. Robert Mueller essentially said that there was enough evidence to indict him for obstruction of justice with regard to that probe. He, he also kind of let the air out of the tires of the original collusion accusations that Trump had been playing along and helping along Putin's attempts to interfere in the 2016 election. And because that played so well for Trump, it's like ever since he has been trying to do this witch hunt thing, right? And now when he is under fire from all these different, completely unrelated things, he is trying to kind of reimagine this, and his allies are trying to kind of reimagine this as like the ur text of the, of the Trump story that like every bad thing that ever happened to Trump, Tulsi Gabbard said the same thing at the White House last week, that, that not only was the Mar A Lago raid ultimately the fault of this, this dastardly behavior by Obama, but that's also, that's the reason why he was impeached twice, right? Like, stuff like that, which is like, I mean, if anyone remembers, totally different stuff, I mean, we could rehearse the whole. The perfect phone call to Vladimir Zelensky and the quid pro quo and January 6th and all of the things to Congress deciding that it needed to impeach Donald Trump twice. But again, they're laying out this very tidy story where the witch hunt that went pretty well for them the first time around is actually the first step of basically everything that's ever gone wrong for Donald Trump.

[Will Salitan]

Incredible. And since you have read the Mueller report, all the stuff that's in there, I gotta throw one more at you because I just love this one. This was actually from last week. Tulsi Gabbard went to the White House podium, did her spiel about her documents and all the dastardly stuff Obama did. And then in the course of this, Caroline Levitt the White House press secretary delivers this little speech rebuking the Democrats for all these hoaxes that you just enumerated. And here's what she said.

[Andrew Egger]

The intelligence community was concocting this narrative that the President colluded with the Russians, that the President's son was holding secret meetings with the Russians. All of these lies that were never true.

[Will Salitan]

So Andrew, this part about this lie that the President's son was holding secret meetings with the Russians. Can you refresh our memory about what was in the Mueller report and other reports about the President's son and his meetings with the Russians?

[Andrew Egger]

So this is where it really just kind of goes off the rails into pure crazy town. Because first of all, the exact answer to your question is I cannot. I actually don't remember whether the Mueller investigation or the Mueller report got into this specific thing. But it was a big thing. If you will remember a few years back, one of the early kind of shoes to drop. I think the summer of 2017, possibly of 2018, but I think it was the summer of 2017 was this big explosive New York Times report that Don, Don Jr. Had indeed taken a meeting with a Russian lawyer who is connected to, to the Kremlin for the express purpose of being handed during the campaign. For the express purpose of being handed dirt on Hillary Clinton that Don Donald Trump would find political. That was the pitch in the email that was sent to Don Jr. And Don Jr. Responded. This is like these words are just baked into my mind. I did not have to look them up when we were writing about this story the other day because it's such a good response. If it's what you say, I love it. If it's what you say, I love it. Especially later in the summer is how John Jr responded. They did take that meeting. Nothing seems to have really come of it. But that was, it was an offered quid pro quo for dirt on Hillary Clinton. So you can understand in the midst of this Russia story why that was so explosive at the time. And, and just for Carolyn Levitt to then come out, not only to, to say that this is somehow, you know, all this stuff's connected back to, to this Obama era intelligence assessment, but then to just completely drift off into, into these fantasias of basically saying, and also all of these, the story beats never happened either. I mean, it's just, it's really, really, really something to see. I feel like. So you've been kicking a lot of this stuff to me and, and I have been sharing a lot of my opinions and I feel Like, I want to know what you think is going on here. Like, like, what's, is the, is there like a superstructure to this strategy of them, of them leaning on the Obama stuff? Like, what, what do you make of it all, Will, you know, Andrew, I.

[Will Salitan]

Don'T have a good answer for you. I'm like, watching it in dismay. Like, I live in the reality based community. Like, I say something, it turns out to be false. Someone brings me evidence, I'm like, ooh, like, I'm embarrassed or I like, got to figure out how I'm going to, like, deal with that. And the strategy from the Trump people seems to be. No, no, we're just going to say it never happened. I mean, stuff that was like, I mean, everything you just laid out about, like, here's this meeting with Don Jr. Like, this is, this isn't. There's not a lot of debate about this. There's document, there's all the emails. There's like, literally this is, the Russians are like, this is an offer from the Russian government to help you in the election. That's literally like, what's in the email. And like, and as you said, Don Jr. Is like, you know, as you, if it's what you say, I love it. I mean, the defense from the, from the Trump people about this meeting that happened is that the Russian, the Russians that they met with didn't actually have the dirt on Hillary. That's it. Like, we showed we wanted to cut a deal with the Russians and they didn't have what we wanted to help us win the election. So, Andrew, for them to come back later and say, like, this whole collusion narrative is a hoax when it's all written down there, and when everybody, Mueller and the Senate Republicans and Marco Rubio investigated all this stuff, it's mind numbing to me that, like, they're getting away with this. I mean, who believes this? Or does it even, does the truth even matter anymore? I'm just flummoxed.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah. And again, like, I could be wrong, but my suspicion is that it isn't so much a matter of believing it as it's a matter of a certain kind of like, intellectual conditioning, right? Where it's just, it's not as though people are like transcribing all of these different, mutually incompatible, totally fabricated and fanciful different claims that are being made and like, using them to construct like a new model for Russia in their minds. All of this stuff basically just amounts to different ways to give people permission to see any story that, that, you know, potentially reflects poorly on Donald Trump and, and have an immediate kind of Pavlovian response of, oh, this is just like that Russia, Russia, Russia witch hunt hoax nonsense that, that they tried to get him with before. You know what I mean? Like, it's.

[Will Salitan]

Yeah.

[Andrew Egger]

So I don't know exactly, to put it.

[Will Salitan]

This is what creeps me out about Lindsey Graham becoming part of this, because Lindsey Graham was like, real clear. And those clips that Kristen Welker played showed where he was. He knew what the truth was, he knew what the evidence was. And for him to capitulate now and, like, start parroting this narrative that, like, maybe Russia didn't interfere, interfere in the election at all just suggests to me that this attack on the truth, this just defiance, this denialism, is working, if not with the public, with enough of the Republicans in Congress that, like, we're just going to see this whole phalanx of Trump sycophants who are going to repeat his false narrative, his revisionism. And I just wonder how far America's going to go towards believing it or accepting it. Like in an authoritarian country where people don't actually believe the lie, but they just say, oh, that's the way it is. The government tells us this stuff and we're just going to, we're going to live with it that way.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah, yeah, that is a grim, grim note to go out on, but it probably is the note that we ought to go out on because we're going to see. Right? I mean, they're, they are, it's been about a week of this now. They don't seem like they have any intent to let this one slip aside. Basically, as long as, as long as the Epstein conversation is going on, at least we're definitely going to see Trump continue to pivot to this story, and probably even longer than that. I mean, these, the, the sort of seeds of this, of this narrative coming out of. Again, the Trump CIA and the Trump intelligence community were planted a long time before this Epstein, Epstein saga even reared its head. Right. This is kind of the work of months by folks like Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe, which is now going out to these other Republicans. So we'll keep an eye on it. We will keep you all posted on it. Will, thanks for coming on to talk about it and to bring all of those receipts. Thanks to you all for watching, and we'll see you next time.