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Deadline: White House
"The human cost of war in Iran”
00:40:54
War in Iran had been on the table for most presidential administrations in recent memory – so far, only Trump has believed that the human cost would be worth it.
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Hi again everyone. It's five o' clock in New York. From the sheer honesty that President Barack Obama's reflections represent and trust and respect for the American people, he said those things at the funeral today for Reverend Jesse Jackson to the head scratching disdain for the American people that Sarah Longwell was talking about in the last hour. The public posture that Donald Trump has taken on the topic of the sacrifices we may be making as a country in this war with Iran, we will chalk it up to an important lesson in contrast today. Because when Trump this week suggested American lives, quote, may be lost and we may have casualties that often happens in war, end quote, he invited those comparisons he's refused over and over and over again since one in the morning on Saturday to take to a stage or a podium and speak directly to the American people, to engage the country people that voted for him and people that may not have in a conversation about what we are doing in Iran, how we will achieve his goals in Iran and how long it will take for us to achieve success and how will he judge success in the ever widening war in the Middle East. It is something that all of his predecessors especially and including President Obama, spent a great deal of time thinking about and doing, offering clarity, trying to provide reassurance and context and gratitude to the American people out of respect, making clear that when President Obama was the leader of the free world, that he valued the health and safety and sacrifices of the American people above all else. In a few moments, remind you of Trump's latest at bat, I guess we'll call it. But first, for comparison's sake, here's how it has sounded in the past.
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Our nation has been put on notice. We're not immune from attack. We will take defensive measures against terrorism to protect Americans. Americans are asking what is expected of us. I ask you to live your lives and hug your children. I know many citizens have fears tonight,
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and I ask you to be calm
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and resolute even in the face of a continuing threat. There is no doubt that Al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must and we will remain vigilant at home and abroad. We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies. The cause of securing our country is not complete, but tonight, we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history. The fundamental obligation of a president, in
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my opinion, is to defend and protect America.
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To those who wish America harm, to those who engage in terrorism against us
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or our allies, know this. The United States will never rest.
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We will not forgive.
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We will not forget.
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We'll hunt you down to the ends of the earth. And we will. You will pay the ultimate price.
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Now, at the end of the day, all three of those past presents will be judged by any and all of you and history. But all of them made an effort. All of them appreciated the importance of doing what they were doing. They took a genuine interest in trying to comfort and inform the American people and to make certain that the country understood that the commander in chief valued each and every one of them and the sacrifices they would make. Let me show you that. Because it is so different what's happening right now. It's almost disorienting, and maybe it's designed to be disorienting. This is from the pages of Time magazine today, quote, asked whether Americans should be worried about retaliatory attacks at home, Donald Trump acknowledges the possibility. Quote, I guess he says, quote, but I think they're worried about that all the time. We think about it all the time. We plan for it, but, yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die when you go to war. Some people will die, end quote. Those jarring words, both that we're at war and he hasn't addressed the country, and that, quote, some people will die are where we start the hour with some of our favorite reporters and friends. New York Times reporter Glenn Thresh is here on also joining us, former acting vice chief of the National Guard Bureau, Major General Randy Manor is here. Recently back stateside, former Assistant Special agent in charge of the FBI and National Security Intelligence analyst Michael Feinberg is here. I want to start with you, General Manor. I want to ask you to first tell us what you have been through this week.
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From the first few minutes when I landed in Abu Dhabi in the Middle east and we were under missile attack, literally, it was like, you got to be kidding me. There were thousands of phones going off, just like tornado warnings do in the United States with. But something very different. Incoming missiles seek shelter. So you can imagine that there was panic and shock in the airport with thousands of people move away from glass. Last time we checked, airports are predominantly made of glass. It was very, very unnerving for the people that were there. We could hear the missile impacts about 20 miles away. And I say that only because being a military person in that situation, but in this particular case, 99% of the people in that airport had no idea and were very fearful. So it's something where again, we have a president who does not care about our allies, does not care about the American citizens in harm's way, and is very callous and very. It's a very difficult situation to think that our country has abandoned us among the tens of thousands of Americans in the Middle east, when our compatriots in the various hotels, whether they be German or French or Czech or whatever, already were notified by their embassies and their departments of foreign affairs of where to go and when to expect to be able to get out of the country. When I contacted our embassies who were fighting for their lives, quite frankly, as well as the website, we cannot help you. I mean, that was just a resounding defeatist attitude and a shock to me as someone who has served 36 years of my life to our country. So this is extremely wrong. It is not what America is made of and abandoning our American citizens and for doing things that are not explained. This does not give us hope. It does not give us inspiration. It does not give us confidence in a leader. This is not the kind of. Of the president of the United States should not be leading this way.
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How did you. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey home?
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So this is something where I almost feel like I was in an Indiana Jones movie. 41 Hours it took from the time I arrived at the airport until I actually arrived down in Dulles, went from. And by the way, when I on Monday morning, early Monday morning, My flight was only one of 12 that got out of literally hundreds of flights that were canceled out of Dubai. And it's something where we boarded the aircraft three separate times. We had missile warnings come in. There was. While we were on the aircraft, there were panicked passengers who wanted to get off the plane because obviously the woman came up to the front where I was sitting and said, well, were sitting literally on a bomb, meaning a jetliner full of jet fuel. This is a dangerous place to be. And I stepped up, calmed them down to say, look, these things are very unlikely. The missiles are unlikely to be striking this airport. And sure enough, within 30 minutes, we found out, unfortunately, they did strike the consulate in Dubai, the American consulate, which was only five miles away. On the fourth attempt, we actually. We were taken back off the plane three times. And on the fourth time, they literally took us out there. We loaded the plane in, no kidding, eight minutes, and the pilot says, we are leaving now. And then another eight minutes, we were going down the Runway. I've never seen an aircraft move so fast on aprons and a Runway. And we had two UAE F16s escort us out of this airspace. And I have to be extremely complimentary of the government of the UAE that took care of all of us, all nationalities, to ensure that we were safe and to ensure that we were able to get out of the country, in contrast to the American government that abandoned every single one of us. And you have to hear this because I was there on the ground, and I know what right looks like, and this is not the way it's supposed to be.
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How many people are left stranded?
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I do not know the exact number, but my guesstimate would be somewhere between 10 to 30,000Americans in the Middle East. It's important to understand it wasn't just people like myself that was doing a connecting flight through the Middle East. You had people who were on vacation, you had business, people who were working there, and people who actually live there that would like to have gotten out with their families out of harm's way, which was not possible. And again, I have to applaud the. The UAE. They are now operating almost 1,000 flights a day. And yet the idea of anything from the United States, it's crickets.
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You know, Glenn, I think about your body of reporting about all that has been, I wanted to say, surgically removed, but it hasn't been surgical at all. All that has been demoed from the national security capabilities of the Department of Justice and the FBI. And it is the kind of ally that we in normal Times would have surged resources and national security support and coordination, collaboration to. What are you hearing from your sources about how capable we are of helping in this moment overseas with our allies?
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I think it's an extremely confused situation. And I think at our end of the pipe, much like the Pentagon reporters, we're getting much less information than we have in previous episodes that we've had to deal with. We understand their national security concerns, but we're having basic trouble getting fundamental questions answered. And that's really consistent with the way the administration has operated in terms of crisis. Nicole, I just want to address something that you were saying in your really effective open, which is this notion of him, the president of the United States, not addressing the country and not making his case. What it really reminds me of, he's going reporter to reporter. He's essentially calling everyone up individually. And this is a technique Trump hasn't. I haven't really seen Trump employ in the second term, but it was extremely common in the first term, and it was even more common when he was a developer back in New York City and he was trying to accomplish some. Some development goal. I remember, and I'm trying to remember this correctly, in the early 2000s, Trump was trying to get a ramp installed from his development on the west side to connect it to the west side Highway. And if I'm remembering correctly, I was sitting in the famous press room in New York City hall at that period of time. And you could hear the cell phones ringing one by one as Trump was working each member of the press to try to get them to write about his side of the story. I think he was trying to pressure the Bloomberg administration, but he does this not just as a means of convincing people, but as a way of workshopping arguments and ideas and messaging. This is actually something Trump hadn't been doing. He was sort of behind this wall in the second term. So I think it goes to show you forget about the larger issues of addressing the public. And I think those three presidents, you know, at the time, Nicole, we saw them address the country. And I remember Obama's people feeling pretty badly about that presentation. They didn't like the way that he looked. But compared to the absence of what Trump has done, it seems of enormous import. But what Trump is attempting to do, I think, and you've seen it in this shifting messaging over the last week, is he's doing that old Trumpian trick of crowdsourcing. So the other thing that it really accomplishes is, is it mutes criticism of him because each of these individual Reporters, even at outlets that generally would be extraordinarily skeptical of him. He is giving each one of them a little prize. And I know this, and I'm not casting aspersions on anyone. The President of the United States calls, you answer, you talk to him. But it is an extraordinary event when the President calls you and gives you a piece of information about an important international story.
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So why, why is it an extraordinary event? I mean, to me, it seems like a vanity project that they're participating in. Let me be the one to cast aspersion.
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It's very hard. Look, we are locked in. This has been the frustration of covering Trump from jump right. We are locked in a very conventional mindset about the way that we do coverage. We are bound by certain fundamental rules of fairness and taking somebody who sits behind the great seal of the United States with the seriousness that a president demands. So. So Trump has always played around with that duality of operating outside the frame of what, what a president, how, of how a president would act while still having the vestments and the structure of the presidency to protect him. We have to behave in a very conventional way. He does not. So when Trump calls a reporter to, to give them information, as he did with this Time reporter, it is your responsibility to ask the questions. These people are asking good questions. They're not presenting the information in a disingenuous way, but it is accomplishing goals for Trump. And those two goals are for him to get out of his own bubble and hear what people might be saying outside, because that is a thing.
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Now.
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He is surrounded himself with people who say yes, and reporters don't typically say yes. And then the other thing that it does is, I do think from a public relations perspective that he has known for five decades, reaching out and developing individual relationships with reporters. It's a very effective way of making your message rather than giving an address that could be criticized. He knows that it's not his strong suit. So what we're seeing here is Trump, I think, quite recognizing the import of the moment and the crisis that he fakes and behaving the in a very Trumpian way, but in a Trumpian way that we haven't necessarily seen in the second term.
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Fascinating insight. I appreciate you so much pulling back the curtain on that. It's interesting too, Glenn. This is a week where he's proven himself hyper reactive to the press. The New York Times reported on an auto pen investigation that had been canceled after the story came out. It was possibly maybe still happening. He seems to be reacting and changing policies based on things that are written about him, something he hasn't done a lot of in the second term. I'm desperate to bring Michael Feinberg in. I need to do that. On the other side of a very short break, we're going to talk about the other thing. Donald Trump has made clear this week that we are vulnerable here at home. And quote, people may die. I guess this is, quote, to quote him accurately. Also ahead, there are newly published Epstein files that were initially missing from the Justice Department's website. Included among them, FBI documents containing unverified sexual assault, sexual and physical assault allegations against Donald Trump from a woman who was a minor child at the time. We'll get to that story later in this hour. Deadly in White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere,
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CTNC's 21/plus sponsored by Jumbo Casino. With the war in Iran, probably the
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biggest threat to the homeland right now that I worry about Iran is cyber or cyber attacks.
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They're very sophisticated.
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They are fully capable of doing a lot of harm. And yet prior to this, Kristi Noem, Donald Trump, they've laid off or pushed out one third of the entire workforce of our Cybersecurity folks, over 800 individuals. We're now trying to get more information about other individuals who are no longer
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doing cybersecurity work, they're doing immigration work,
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they're doing deportation work. When they should be protecting our country from cyber attacks. They that has to change.
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And those are the kinds of questions
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we're certainly going to ask the nominee to be secretary. Are you going to bring cyber professionals back on the job, particularly when the
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United States is war?
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Because this is an unacceptable risk that
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we're facing right now. We're back with General Maner Glenn and Michael. Michael Feinberg. We talk, I feel like, not just weekly, but almost daily at an increasingly rapid clip about all of the expertise and experience that has been hollowed out from the FBI, including the folks that would protect us from this threat. What are your concerns today?
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My concerns have not really changed since you and I began speaking about this roughly eight months ago. There has been a deleterious brain drain from the organs of national security in the United States, whether we're talking about counterterrorism, cyber defense or counterintelligence. But what really strikes me and what makes this all so infuriating is that all of the problems we are facing are ones that the administration has chosen in terms of the lack of personnel doing counterterrorism or cyber defense. This administration, led by its deputy chief of staff, has made a conscious election to reassign those individuals to immigration operations. In terms of our affairs overseas, this administration has purposely done things to alienate long term allies in NATO who could be offering us intelligence and assistance to disrupt plots. And it has now engaged us in a war which is not based upon an attack in the United States. It is not based upon upon halting an expansionist regime overseas. It is not clear what it is based on. We've heard it's an effort for regime change. We've heard it's to stop a nuclear program. Now. We've heard that unconditional surrender is demanded, but the statements change every 15 minutes. And we keep digging the hole we're in from a national security perspective. Deeper and again, these are all scenarios that the administration has chosen to place
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itself in the middle of general manor. What are your thoughts about the way to Glenn's point and to points that others made in the last hour. Trump has internalized the professionalism and the excellence of the United States military, but he now seeks to market it in his one on one calls to reporters, as Glenn just explained, as a personal triumph. Where does that lead us?
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You're talking about the President of the United States who is putting our sons and our daughters, our husbands and wives, in harm's way for Reasons that are not clear. And literally tens of thousands of Americans and their families back in the United States who are worried about them, whether they are civilian or military in the area, they are abandoned. In my opinion, this president is nothing more than someone who is using the military as a strongman. And it's very sad when we leave our coalition partners surprised and unaware in the way, not in the way that it was done previously where we went in United. It's important to have friends in the world and not just those of Putin or the Israeli prime minister. It's important that we look at this as the whole. Otherwise what we are going to see immediately is prices will go up in the United States and our security, not only overseas for Americans like myself and and tens of thousands of others, but our security at home is greatly diminished. So no matter what the propaganda is, the evidence is clear. We are actually more vulnerable than we have been in the past 12 months compared to the past 20 years since 9 11. All Americans should be concerned about this and should absolutely be demanding accountability from their congressmen, no matter what party it is. Because remember, the president works for the people of the United States, not the other way around. It truly is we the people. If we do not take back the responsibility for the ownership of our great nation, then we will suffer the consequences at the hands of this administration. So I encourage everyone to contact their, their senators, their representatives, no matter what the party, and say, what is going on? What is the end game? How are you getting Americans out of the Middle east that don't need to be there? Civilians? And when are we going to know when it's okay for our loved ones in the military to come back home safe and sound. That is what we should be demanding. That is what the President of the United States should be offering to every American is hope, confidence and inspiration, all of which are absent right now. This is not the kind of leader that we would follow into combat, and it's regretful and it's also quite frankly impressive that our military will continue to be professional, to follow the legal orders of the commander in chief, you know,
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as the general speaking. Glenn Thresh, I'm thinking about your comments. I'm mulling them and processing them. And I'm wondering, one of the outlets he's done several interviews with is the Atlantic. And the Atlantic championed the initial reporting that Donald Trump believed that men and women who died serving their countries were suckers and losers. The New York Times and others would go on to report that Donald Trump once asked General John Kelly whose own son died serving his country in Afghanistan, quote, what was in it for them? He also said about John McCain, quote, I like people who weren't captured. He denigrated the service of former President George H. President Bush. 41. Have any of the reporters who've been on the receiving ends of phone calls from Donald Trump who feel sort of hemmed in, as you articulate, by the conventions of covering him because he's president, asked him if he believes the six men and women who lost their lives in this mission are, quote, suckers or losers?
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That's a great question. I don't know if it's been asked. If he calls me Nicole, I will definitely ask him that question. Look, I don't think it's likely, but the point that you're making about Trump's relationship with the military is an extraordinarily interesting one. I think I remember when I was.
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I mean, isn't it central, isn't it central that everyone who died serving their country in a mission he didn't order, he believes are, quote, suckers and losers? Our amnesia feels like our greatest danger right now.
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But the question is it a broad amnesia or is it an amnesia, or is it an opinion held by what polling shows to be 37 to 40% of the American public? I mean, we saw initially. Now, I don't know if this was a quirk in the polling, but the first polling, the first credible polling that came out after the bombing of Iran began, showed that Trump was in the. In the high 20s, moving into the low 30s, and that there was significant questioning going on in the MAGA movement that seems to have tightened up. And now we're seeing splits in terms of the approval and disapproval of this action that almost exactly mirrors his approval rating. That, to me is one of. Is the extraordinary characteristic of the Trump era is that on any single issue, it might start off initially, the valence might be totally different. People might have a particular opinion that differs with Trump. I'm talking about the base of Trump supporters. And then it snaps into place as the messaging gets coordinated, as the Trump adjacent media outlets start. Start coalescing. That is what is going on. You see a consolidation of opinion on the Trump side that has become a factor regardless of what Trump himself has said or done in the past.
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Do you view the messaging as coordinated?
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It's absolutely coordinated. And you can see it, by the
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way, six different reasons for why we're at war. I take your.
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I'm not saying the message is coherent, but I'm saying that whatever message is
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that minute they've fallen into line. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's interesting because it's some of the largest figures in maga. It's Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly that have said we don't like it. Major General Randy Manor, we are so glad that you are home safe. Thank you so much for joining us to talk about your experience. Glenn and Michael, stick around. When we come back, the big development in the Epstein scandal. DOJ publishing documents that were initially missing that contain unverified section sexual and physical assault allegations against Donald Trump. We'll have that reporting next.
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documents that contain allegations made by a woman that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her when she was a minor between 13 and 15 years old. Documents that the Justice Department had withheld are now public. DOJ released them Thursday night, just one day after the House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena Pam Bondi in its Epstein probe, claiming that they were mistakenly held back from the trove of Epstein files. They have released. They previously only released the memo of the woman's first interview in 2019 with the FBI where she alleged she was raped by Jeffrey Epstein. In the newly released memos of three additional interviews, the woman, who again was a girl at the time, says she met Donald Trump when she was around 13 to 15 years old in the 1980s and accuses him of sexually and physically assaulting her. In her final interview in October 2019, she was again asked about her allegations concerning Donald Trump. FBI agents noting that he was the current president at the time of the interview. Now, according to the interview summary, the woman asked, quote, what the point would be of providing the information at this point in her life when there was a strong possibility nothing could be done about it. There's no indication in the reports whether the FBI was able to verify her claims. The White House on Thursday calls the woman's allegations baseless. And the White House continues to claim that the release of the Epstein files has totally exonerated Donald Trump. Joining our conversation in progress, political analyst Molly Zhang. Fast is at the table. She's the host of Fast Politics and a New York Times contributing opinion writer. Glenn and Michael are still here. Michael, I want to start with you and just ask you to tell me what you see in the newly released files.
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It's difficult to say because this has been coming in such drips and drabs that I don't know whether we can actually be certain. We've seen all the documents. We've now seen the four documents we were previously aware of. But this Justice Department has really attempted to obfuscate the full depth and scale of these files. They were supposed to be produced in total ages ago, and instead they've been releasing them piecemeal and only when prodded by Congress. If Congress really wants to get to the bottom of what happened with the Epstein investigation, I don't see how it can stop with the release of the files. At a certain point, I think somebody's going to need to use the subpoena power to speak to the individuals who are actually involved in the investigation and probe what happens that what happened that we do not see in the 302s in case briefings.
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B
And just so I understand what you're saying, so to. To subpoena the FBI agent who questions the woman who's making the unverified allegations.
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Normally what they would do is subpoena the senior executive who is overseeing the investigation, who should have been the one at the highest level making decisions. I think we have seen enough Leisure Domain and hiding the ball from Congress, from this FBI and this doj, that it may be time to start contemplating that.
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B
Molly yeah, and you know, when you talk to the victims, they, and I've interviewed a bunch now, they talk about this idea that no one is talking to the people who worked for Epstein. There were tons and tons of staff at many, many loc. And it's just a question of why are these people not being interviewed. I also have questions about the redactions. Remember, members of Congress were allowed to go into the and to read the redacted memos, and some of the forms were already redacted. And so they weren't able to see the totally unredacted files. But I think it's absolutely clear that we have not seen everything and we don't even really know how much we've seen. I've heard all different numbers. And then also the other question a lot of survivors have talked about this is all of the cameras, like, where are all these videos? Where are all these photos? You know, when you read Virginia Giuffre's book, she talks about how she saw all of these cameras and all of these men working in these, you know, in these places where they were doing surveillance. So I just wonder why we're not seeing more interviews with witnesses and more of this surveillance camera. I mean, Glenn, none other than Kash Patel was my first source in one of his appearances on Joe Rogan for all the video evidence. And it's interesting how much the MAGA figures who were out of government supply a lot of the lines of inquiry now that they're in government, that they then in government either have different answers to or no answers to. What do you make of where they are in terms of the drag that they're causing Donald Trump? I mean, Donald Trump has some of his lowest approval ratings on the question of the economy. It's a square 11 points beneath the approval rating number you were talking about. It's 30% that think the economy is good or, yeah, 70% that think the economy is fair or bad. The Epstein numbers are even lower. What do you make of how they're botching this in an ongoing rolling manner?
- [36:15]
A
Things are about to get super interesting for Pam Bondi. Let's just put it this way. It is a perfect storm of problems for Pam Bundy. Look, she's generally viewed in the White House, it's no secret, as kind of a weak link. She does not really have control of the department. To the extent that anybody over in that building is running things, it Is Todd Blanche, her deputy. Remember all this. I'm not saying that this crisis for them would not have happened anyway. But Bondi's initial attempt to dismiss it with that fiasco in the Roosevelt Room really created a huge problem for them. But here's what is happening. There was this vote on Wednesday in the Oversight Committee, James Comer's oversight Committee, in which five Republicans spit the bit and voted to subpoena to testify behind closed doors. Nobody wanted that in terms of the Republican leadership. And Bondi's folks were caught completely flat footed. There is a terror in that building that once, once the ball starts rolling potentially on impeachment of Bondi, that that could get out of control. Because right now it is every Republican for themselves, every signal splashing red. This war doesn't help. And Bondi's performance in this has been really questionable. And I'll throw in another thing. Kristi Noem. The fact that Republicans in the Senate felt completely empowered and free to go after Kristi NOEM and then 24 hours later, she was gone, does not bode well for Pam Bondi, who as you may recall, in her last appearance before a congressional committee behaved in an incredibly defiant and in some ways disrespectful way to some of the Epstein victims. So Pam Bondi could be heading for a world of hurt.
- [38:12]
B
My memory too, of the first Trump term is that he's against firing people until he starts firing people. And then if he sees a little bounce or a positive tweet or one person in MAGA world is like, ah, that was a great idea. The next come a lot more easily for him via social media posts. Typically, no one's going anywhere. We have to sneak in a short break. We'll be right back on the other side with much more. We're all back. Michael, where do you view this going in terms of the oversight committees? They are the most focused and the most bipartisan. The survivors are so dogged and fearless. But one of the things that comes out in this new release is that. Let me just read it. Miami Herald is reporting this. During her third interview with agents, she detailed how she and her mother had received numerous death threats and had twice been run off the road. She said she felt she was being threatened by Epstein and Trump. She said the callers told her, quote, we know where you're at. You need to keep your mouth shut. You know, it feels like the longer this is out there, the more time people that are endangered by transparency and by these allegations coming to light will be facing possible harassment and threats.
- [39:33]
A
Yeah. So I would note too specific points in regard to that. The first is this president has a history of forcing courts at the state and federal level to issue gag orders to prevent him from berating potential witnesses and, or doing things that might dissuade them from testifying. We saw that in Jack Smith's investigation at the district court level. We saw it in the New York case. So I don't want to speculate on what happened to that particular survivor, but this is a story we've seen before. And the second thing I would really note about this is that it's gotten this far and people who may have been involved with Epstein have been able to build up their defenses so much because for essentially a decade now, Congressional Republicans have outsourced, have outsourced their independence as a co equal branch of government in favor of just providing cover to the President on any topic whatsoever. There have been dozens upon dozens of events and scandals that would destroy any other presidency were there a Congress that took its oversight responsibilities seriously. But from day one, from day one, whether it's his first national security advisor talking to foreign diplomats and not reporting it prior to the inauguration, to essentially blackmailing the Ukrainians in exchange for aid, to treating every, every alliance we have as a stage for personal transactions, like if Congress was doing its job, this would have been nipped in the bud in 2016,
- [41:47]
B
I think. I would add though that I'm not sure this is partisan here. Like, these women have been failed by four, five different administrations. And honestly, in some ways this is a failure of both the FBI and state area law enforcement. And a good example is New Mexico Zarro Ranch. I talked to the AG from New Mexico. He said, well, he wasn't there at the time, but the FBI had told them to stop, right? That they were gonna investigate it. And then there hadn't been a follow through. So it's like a communication between law enforcement offices. I think it's a larger failure and the point of like checks and balances within the FBI. Like there were hundreds of survivors coming forward. And the question is, you know, why wasn't there greater transparency and why wasn't there more accountability? And why were all these fancy elite people emailing with Jeffrey Epstein when all this was out there? Molly, thank you so much for being at the table and helping us get on the record with these developments. Glenn Thrush, thank you for pulling the curtain back. I really, really, really appreciate that insight. Michael Fernberg, thank you for spending the hour with me. One more break. We'll be right back. I will pull back the curtain on my own week a little bit. My guest on the new episode of the Best People might have saved my sanity over the last eight days. She's the one and only Tig Notaro. She just produced and directed the documentary Come See Me in the Good Light about her dear friends, celebrated poet Andrea Gibson. Andrea passed away from cancer last year year. Tig's own battle with cancer has been a feature of her standup career. And take a listen to what she told me about all of this.
- [43:30]
A
If you tell somebody you're going to
- [43:32]
B
make a joke about cancer, their brain is going to construct the worst possible.
- [43:40]
A
Like a child pointing at somebody and
- [43:43]
B
saying, haha, you have cancer. And so in their mind they're like,
- [43:48]
A
you cannot do that. But when you find a way into a subject that is in a roundabout
- [43:57]
B
way that wasn't maybe considered before, that's what's so amazing about comedy, is you
- [44:06]
A
go, oh my God, I was laughing
- [44:08]
B
at this woman who's on stage with invasive cancer.
- [44:12]
A
Like, I can't explain and I don't
- [44:14]
B
mean to like pat myself on the back. That's not what I. But it's a release. Comedy is everything. The Entire Conversation is available tonight for premium subscribers and you can become an Ms. Now premium subscriber by scanning the QR code on your screen. Tig is worth it. The Entire Conversation will be available on Monday for everybody. As always, please let me know what you think on bluesky and Instagram. One more break. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for letting us into your homes for another week of shows. We are so grateful and thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Best. People.
- [44:51]
A
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