Tim Miller (2:57)

How many of you are satisfied?

Simone Sanders (3:00)

You can, you can clap.

Tim Miller (3:02)

Satisfied with the results of the Epstein investigation. Clap. Okay, I told you to clap. Raise your hand. If it matters a lot to you, raise your hand. So every hand of 7,000 people, everybody cares.

Simone Sanders (3:19)

This is the first big scandal, I'd say, of the Trump administration. It's one of the right's own making and it's not going well. Joining us now, MSNBC political analyst Tim Miller. He hosts the Bulwark Podcast. Tim, it's very good to see you. Look, I think it's important that we ground the conversation in the fact that this, this conspiracy theory, and let's just be very clear, Epstein's crimes were real, but it is the surrounding narrative around them that is the conspiracy I'm talking about. This conspiracy, the is actually very central to the MAGA base. It's about a lot of things. You know, Jeffrey Epstein is the perfect symbol of this war on elites, if you will, that the MAGA Republicans often talk about. He helped give just a little bit of truth to a lot of the fringe pieces of the Internet that used to be QAnon and now are what I would call mainstream MAGA. This was about Democrats. This caught fire with Republicans, MAGA Republicans, right wing conservatives about Democrats. They said that Jeffrey Epstein was linked to Democrats. Now it's like a boomerang coming back around because the files and the lack thereof of the release or even now saying that they exist by the Trump administration and Pam Bondi are now coming home to roost and reflecting very badly on Donald Trump.

Tim Miller (4:40)

Yeah, for sure, Simone. Look, I think this is important for two reasons, like within the kind of Republican mind, if you can get your head there. The first is that for a decade now, and maybe more, they've been pushing the actual conspiracy theory, right, that there was this Democratic pedophile ring, you might remember Pizzagate and the people that went to try to find the kids in the basement of a pizza parlor in D.C. that doesn't have a basement. This goes all the way back to 2016. And in this kind of narrative that you get from the maga right. There's this deep state, it's a shadowy group of elites, they protect each other, there's no accountability. And we need an outsider like Donald Trump to come shake it up, right? And to hold them to account. And in their mind, these elites are mostly Democrats, but they also could be whatever bankers are, Hollywood elites. And so then you have this case of Jeffrey Epstein where that is kind of true of him, right? Like he was an elite that was convicted of trafficking young women and he did have a lot of elite friends. So it kind of verified this narrative that they all had believed. And so when Trump doesn't follow through on getting accountability, responsibility for that, people are rightly upset. Right? Again, it's like they've been watching this show for 10 years where people tell them that Donald Trump's gonna get the bad guys. And then he says, oh, nope, nevermind, you can understand why there's blowback to that. And then if you add on top of that all the other, like more real conspiracies that they have about Russia or the 2020 election or the plandemic, it's like they were promised that Donald Trump and his DOJ was gonna go get all the bad guys that did all these things. And if they can't even get Jeffrey Epstein's cons conspirators, then, you know, maybe they're in on it.

Alicia Menendez (6:30)

There are two ways I want to go with this, and I'm trying to figure out which way Alicia is going to go so I can swing around the other corner so we can just kind of meet at this, at this central point. Because I think I'm going to go with Hakeem Jeffries because he's closer to where I see some of this. Listen to Hakeem Jeffries on the two options here. Option one, they lied for years. Option two, they're engaging in a cover up. At this point, it seems reasonable. That can only be one of the two things. If you're not hiding anything, prove that to the American people. And if you are trying to hide something, as many of Donald Trump's MAGA supporters apparently believe, then the Congress should actually work hard to try to uncover the truth. And that's kind of where I am. Because here's the core thing to keep in mind. This whole thrust in the MAGA world about the Epstein files is that there's a list, there's a paper with names on it, and the presumption is that all the names on the list are Democrats. Okay, let's go with that. But keep in mind that list of Democrats included one Democrat, Donald Trump, right. Who was hanging out with Epstein when he was a Democrat, when he was swinging and writing checks to Hillary Clinton, when he was going out and partying with New York's elites. So all of this is around this idea that somehow we're going to produce a list that's going to have all these Democrats and the first Democrat on the list is sitting in the White House. That's where I think this, this is where. This is the pullback. This is the sweet pullback. They get there and look at it and they go, oh, hell no, we can't go, no, no, no. Oh, no, no, no. And then what? It kind of makes sense then when Elon Musk puts out this sort of tweet, this sort of threatening tweet, okay, ominous. You know you're on the list, Trump. And then backs away from it. So what do you. Am I, what am I doing here? Tell me what I'm doing, cuz I think I'm right.

Tim Miller (8:47)

Yeah. No, look, we're all just like, I don't know, maybe this is true, maybe there's something to it. I guess the point is it's not incumbent upon us to have a theory about whether it's true or not that there's a cover up. And Donald Trump's on the list. We know his shadow president, his closest advisor for the first four months says he was on the list. We know the deputy director of the FBI, which was once a serious role. It's a podcaster that's doing it now. But like the Deputy Director of the FBI was threatening to quit over this. So, okay, maybe all these people are clowns and maybe this is all a big WWE show, I don't know. But those are serious roles if you're gonna be the top adviser of the President of the United States or the Deputy Director of the FBI. And if those two people are saying there's there there, then I do think it's incumbent upon Hakeem Jeffries to look into it in Congress. And they should. And the only other thing I'd add to what Jeffries said was the thing that's different about this case politically, when he gave those two options, either it's a cover up or he's been lying for years. In this case, on the Lyin for years side, it would be that he's been lying for years to his own people. And I do think that's meaningfully different. Cuz I don't think MAGA voters, we know actually at this point, Maga Voters don't really care if Donald Trump lied to the public about stuff to get elected. Right. Or lied to the media. They don't care about that. But if he was lying to them this whole time, I do think that's a meaningfully different, you know, data point and why we're seeing kind of a different reaction than we have in the.

Alicia Menendez (10:12)

Past from that world within the Republican Party. This has taken off a life of its own. How do you see, or what's your best guesstimate of this narrative playing out? Does it. Is it something that, you know, Dan Bongino decides to show up back at work and just put his head down and move into that thing with no further noise? Or does he step down or does the grassroots call for a more independent source away from the White House and the Department of Justice and the FBI to sort of get involved here?

Tim Miller (10:50)

Yeah. Far be it for me to get inside Dan Bongino's head, Chairman. Maybe he just pulls a Costanza and shows back up to work. I don't. I don't know what he's going to do. But here's something I think is an opportunity is how this plays out. I admire the congressman's optimism that maybe his Republican colleagues will actually do something on this one. I don't really share it, but I think that he should pressure them, and we all should continue to pressure them to do something, and I know their voters will. Here's where I think it's vulnerable. Where it plays out is I think Fox will stop talking about this. We've already heard that today. They'll get in line. The Trump sycophants will get in line on this and move on. But there are two groups of people that aren't. There's that group, like the manosphere of the Joe Rogans and Biovons and flagrant pies. Those guys, they weren't on board with Trump the first time they got on late. And they truly cared about this Epstein story and covered it and talked about it to all their followers for years. They're not just gonna stop talking about it now. And they've been mocking Trump, if you listen to those shows over the last few days, for trying to play them like fools. So that group's gonna keep talking about it. And then I think kind of the outsider MAGA world, the Alex Jones, the Tuckers, the Candace Owens, they're gonna keep talking about it because this is their bread and butter, the conspiracy material. So I think that there are gonna be some outside forces that pressure Trump, that he doesn't have as much control over as kind of like the Institutional Maga or institutional Republican Party, if that makes sense.

Simone Sanders (12:17)

Tim, you're gonna get the last word on this. Look, I think the congressman. What do you think about what the congressman is saying about corruption? Because maybe, but maybe not.

Tim Miller (12:26)

I don't know. Look, I don't. We always try to paint with a broad bush on this stuff. Right. I think that there are definitely some voters that care about corruption. And I think that maybe the way I would frame it is there are a lot of voters that went along with Donald Trump because they thought he was anti establishment. They might have gotten fooled by this, but he'd been president before, so we could roll our eyes at it if we want, but they thought that he was taking on the status quo. And I think those people are being disappointed by him. And whether it's about corruption, whether it's about the fact that he's hasn't stopped the wars that he promised, that he hasn't brought down prices, I do think that those are all places of opportunity. And I think that the Epstein thing plays into that a little. It.