Loading summary
Transcript38 lines
- [00:06]
A
The Epstein files are rather pesky and they are blowing up in Todd Blanch's face on Capitol Hill this week. Let's play the clip in the room. I have been there. This is what we, I had to do to transcribe, to show what is true. What is true is that the President has lied about being on Epstein's, Epstein's plane and the unredacted files prove that. There's a lot in here. I am, I am shocked at this. There's also this set of files in the, in the file. This is investigation into the potential co conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein. I almost used up all the blank ink in the hallway because it's all covered up. The fix is totally in on this thing with Todd Blanch carrying the water for Trump. And joining me to discuss this is national analyst, political commentator and world class MAGA basher, my friend David Rothkoff. David, what do you make of the Epstein files? Do you think they're just pesky and never going away?
- [01:09]
B
No, I think they're much bigger than we actually think they are. I get this entirely from Trump's behavior and Blanche's behavior and everybody else's behavior because there are a lot of ways they could have made this go away, right? They could have redacted less, they could have revealed more, they could have done what they said they were going to do in terms of revealing them and they don't. And so why not? What is underlying all of this? And there are two things that I think seem most likely. One is Trump did some really awful stuff, right? Trump did some criminal stuff with young girls and he's been accused of that. But I think he's afraid that it's going to lead into a place that could have the darkest kind of ramifications for him. I also think, and here I'm, you know, you know me, I'm not very conspiracy theory drawn, but somehow the relationship between Melania and Epstein I think is, is a real like exposed nerve. And there are a couple of these releases recently that come from this model that she used to be friends with. And when I read them, I think, wait just one minute here is Melania putting a lot of pressure on him? Does she not want us to get into the truth about her past and who she was and what her relationship was with all of this? Anyway, I think this is sort of part of the origin story of Trump as a comic book villain, right? This is like the worst of the worst of Trump and that's why he's got an entire Government apparatus devoted to hiding it to obstructing justice. That's why his personal lawyer is now the acting Attorney general, because he is scared shitless of what is going to come out here.
- [03:07]
A
I completely agree, and I would. I'm with you. I'm not a huge conspiracy theorist. And if I would have heard that some former friend of Melania said, oh, Melania used to be a hooker, I'd
- [03:16]
B
be like, huh, whatever.
- [03:16]
A
You know, big deal.
- [03:19]
B
What a shock that would be, right?
- [03:21]
A
But when Melania did the surprise press conference, talking about humility and all of these things, I was just like, okay, she used to be a hooker. I mean, 100%. Epstein passed her down to Trump. That's what makes me believe it when they go out. Like, when Trump says, I ace my cognitive exam, I'm like, clearly, he failed it, because why on earth would you be saying that?
- [03:44]
B
Well, and why on earth would you be taking one every three months? I mean, you know, clearly his doctors are worried about something, and it's that he's losing his marbles. Yeah, but. But, you know, the Epstein thing won't die because it can't be killed. You know, that there is something alive deep within it that just can't be suppressed. And Trump keeps burying it. And it's like the end of the movie Carrie where you're walking by the gravesite and a hand comes up, you know, out of the ground. I think that's. I think that's kind of where we are. And I think, you know, I mean, speaking of, you know, grave sites, you know, whatever happen to Ivana Trump, you know, I mean, here is this weird story that the wife of the president, quote, fell down the stairs, that old Russian thing, you know, fell off a balcony, fell down the stairs, and they buried her in a golf course, you know, and it's like, what?
- [04:47]
A
Exactly. There's so much shit. And they just do. They commit so many crimes and do so. So many outrageous things, it's hard to. We can just go back. Like, I totally forget about that. You know, the documentary the Staircase about the guy and the wife and the trial. So that's kind of in everybody's. But I mean, obviously that's fishy as hell as well. And she accused him of rape, which, you know, he is an adjudicated rapist. His first wife is the one who said that he read Mein Kampf, which is. I'm not surprised that he read Nazi and Hitler literature. I'm just surprised that he reads.
- [05:24]
B
Yeah, well, look, he's never read a book Right. He thinks putting Mein Kampf beside the bed is kind of an aphrodisiac. Which. That's what's fucked up about Donald Trump.
- [05:34]
A
Yeah.
- [05:34]
B
He think it makes him look like some big, strong, dangerous man. And, you know, I think part of the problem he's got right now is he's losing that completely. Right. I mean, he's shitting in his pants and he smells bad and he can't stay awake. You know, he's at the hands and everything else, and he's like, I'm over. Nobody's gonna look at me again. I can't be that manly man that I once was. Which brings me to something else. Since I've got you here, I've been thinking about this a lot because you are the first person to zero in on this. If I may. I've just been watching a lot. What is it with the Republican Party and their obsession with manhood? I mean, this whole thing when they go after Talarico and it's like, well, he's a vegan and he's. And Stephen Miller, speaking of manly men, Stephen Miller is like, oh, yeah, he's the first trans candidate. And it's like, it's like a collective of guys who, like, measured themselves in the gym one day and all came up short and are desperate. They're obsessed with it.
- [06:45]
A
Here's my observation, okay? These men are happiest in homo social relationships. They're always around other men. They fired the women that worked in the cabinet, you know, those are the first four to go. The women that carried the water for the patriarchy are the first to drown. They are obsessed with trans issues. They are obsessed with genitalia. They are specifically obsessed with gay stuff. The President of the United States himself on the campaign trail, gave a. The microphone a blowjob with striking familiarity to doing such an act. And you can imagine any other candidate simulating a blowjob on a microphone. That would be the end of their political career. He talks about the size of Arnold Palmer's cock. He goes on and on about to the UFC wrestler, you're hot. This. This guy from Saudi Arabia's hot. I like young men. This quarterback from the New York Giants is hot. What a good looking guy. I'm just like, I mean, you guys, it's okay to come out of the closet. We the. The sad thing about this, David, the people who would be the most accepting if these people came out of the closet and atone would be the gay community. And it's just, it's wild, like Benny Johnson, Moses, Mike Johnson, Lindsey Graham, Josh, Holly. Have you seen that image of him trying to kiss his wife? I mean, it's like. It's like he's kissing vomit or something. I've never seen somebody so repelled. It's just. They're just so homosocial slash obsessed with gay stuff. This right here, David, that.
- [08:21]
B
That's pretty hot. That's like. But I mean, it's. It's so weird. And, you know, it gets. It gets back sort of to this Epstein thing. There is something so dysfunctional about the United States in the sexual part of its brain. You know, it is like we have a real deep cultural problem going on here, and it's manifesting itself in a lot of weird ways. You know, you're right. Donald Trump was introduced by Jackson Dart, who is the quarterback for the New York Giants and who will never sell another jersey in New York again because he embraced Trump. And Trump's like, look at his thighs. Look at his thighs. I mean, are you kidding me?
- [09:14]
A
That's the takeaway. There was this. There was this Christian pastor on Newsmax the other day, and he plays a video of James Talarika. And his response after seeing the video is, James Talarico wearing frilly panties. And I thought you saw this video of this guy speaking about the. And you immediately visualize him in frilly panties. That says far more about you thinking about men in panties than it does about James Talarico, who was hilarious. I remember the scandal a few months ago that James Talarico followed only fans, models. So he's either too straight, too trans to this. But here's the thing that Democrats miss out on. The people who talk about culture wars all the time are the freaky MAGA people who are so insecure in their religion, in their individuality, in their politics, in their moral compass, most importantly, in their sexuality and in the bedroom. And the Democrats need to start talking about why are they always talking about gay stuff? Why is Donald Trump always telling men how hot they are? Why is he always talking about thighs? Why is he giving microphones blowjobs and then go to talk about affordability, play offense on it? It would be so refreshing.
- [10:23]
B
It would be refreshing. And it would also have the added advantage of being the truth. You know, these guys are weird. They behave in a weird way. They are obviously screwed up about their own sexuality. And they're afraid. You know, I think they're afraid of the fact that the Democratic Party would embrace them. They're like, oh, I don't wanna be A part of a party that would embrace the gays because, well, what are they gonna say about me? It's a little bit like all these red states that are getting all this welfare money from the, all this stuff. And they're like, oh, yeah, you know, we hate that stuff, you know, because it reveals how much they need it. You know, it reveals their own weaknesses. And the, you know, MAGA and the GOP is really about hiding the character flaws and weaknesses and doubts within the people who are its principal spokespeople. I mean, Lindsey Graham, I mean, I don't, we don't have to say anymore, right? But, but, but it's true with, with all of these. Ken Paxton. I mean, how, how do you even pick a guy like that, you know, to be a candidate? His wife divorced him on biblical ground. I don't even know what that is. But, but, but, you know, he's, he's, he's obviously, he's, he, his criminal case was about ripping off his friends. His wife kicked him out because he obviously was, Whatever he was doing, it's not in the Bible, whatever he was doing. And yet Trump's like, yeah, that's the man for me. And they're gonna lose. Texas is going to go blue. Talarico is going to be a senator. And part of this is going to bring Donald Trump that much closer to the one thing that he really fears from a Congress, and that's an impeachment that results in a conviction because there's no pardoning that, there's no Supreme Court immunity around that. And he knows that he's committed crimes.
- [12:32]
A
I completely agree. Speaking of incompetent senators and gender affirming care and freaky Republicans, the senator from my state, who I'm, whom I refer to as Senator Booster Box now has Kristi Noem's job. The wife of Big Titty Bryant in. I call him Senator Bushwark. I'm talking about Mark Wayne Mullen. And Mark Wayne Mullen has been in front of congressional hearings, Senator Senate hearings, and they ask him if he will commit to following court orders. And here's what he says.
- [13:04]
B
Yeah, will you not implement court orders? If we didn't think that, if we didn't think courts were politicized, then I would probably be able to answer that. But we see courts over and over again that use their bench for their political opinion, not just the rule of law. And we can see that because we see how many times orders you obey based upon whether, you know what I said to be, no, no political. Don't put words in my mouth,
- [13:34]
A
David,
- [13:36]
B
look, first of all, I'm going to get in trouble if I were in the room with these people. I want to smack these people. Every single one of these Trump Cabinet secretaries who get in front of these hearings and talk down to the people who are funding them now, by the way, I don't think it says a whole lot about the Democrats. If I were a Democrat and somebody talked to me that way, I'd be like, okay, that's it. You're not gonna get funded. We write the checks. They would do something. It's like Scott Besant today, Same kind of thing. There's a hearing, and. And Elizabeth Warren starts saying, well, the President said, invest in Nvidia, and he then invested in Nvidia, and he made a lot of money. Do you think that's a problem? And Bassett is, get your own house in order. And he's like, talking back to her. But secondly, Mullen, this is one of those questions. They asked another one today to Marco Rubio in a hearing. They said, did Trump win the 2020 election? There ought to be a trap door under these seats. If you can't answer, you know, if you're presented with a simple, basic fact and you can't answer it, hit the button, go through the floor into the pit of sharks or whatever it is from the James Bond movie, you know. And the same is true with Mullen. If a court tells you you can't do something, you say, we don't do it. Because that's how the rule of law works in the United States of America. You don't get to choose which judges you think are activists and which judges you think are fair. But this is the whole MAGA approach to these things. And unfortunately, who justifies it the most? The Supreme Court, which yesterday came down the pike with one of the ugliest rulings allowing Alabama to gerrymander, you know, essentially to take away black voters, right, to express themselves at the ballot box. And they did it in an unsigned shadow docket ruling that goes against all their past rulings. And all I would say to anybody is, you got a minute? Go read Sonia Sotomayor's dissent to this thing. Because she took them apart because it is against the rule of law and it is against order in the United States. And she made the case in the clearest, simplest language, short sentences. Because what that court is doing is every bit as corrupt and dangerous as what Trump is doing.
- [16:15]
A
I completely agree. And the reason why he's governing as though he will never face Accountability is because that they ruled in his favor with the immunity. But I like to diagnose these problems and then talk about how the Democrats, not the do nothing Democrats, but the progressive Democrats can message this. And I just feel like there is a huge messaging opportunity here that the Republicans are pathological liars. They tell you they are the party of law and order, yet they pardon all of these January Sixers that then go out and molest and rape little kids. I mean, it just seems like every time I open up my phone, there's some J. Sixer that and they just
- [16:55]
B
gave one of them a high national security job. And when asked about this January 6th slush fund he was going to set up, somebody at the Department of Justice said today, well, we'll find other ways to give them their money. Money. They're not just pardoning them, they're paying them. They are paying people for having launched a coup against the United States. And you're absolutely right. We're not speaking in long, difficult words here. These are simple sentences. They are corrupt. They are paying people who launched a coup against the United States. You talk about the Supreme Court. What did we learn last week? Oh, Sam Alito's son got a job at the Treasury Department, and Sam Alito kept ruling on cases in front of the Treasury Department while his son has this kind of do nothing job because they just wanted to give something else to the Alito family. The best thing that progressive Democrats can do is tell the truth in short sentences that people will understand and just rely on the facts, because these guys are corrupt. They're the most corrupt ever. These guys are twisted, and they are twisted in ways that are hurting millions of Americans. They are responsible for millions of deaths overseas, for suffering of tens of millions of people in the United States. They are screwing us 15 ways to Sunday, and you've got to talk about it. Instead of the do nothing Democrats whose first response is to say, well, you know, in order to win in November, we've got to meet them halfway. Meet them fucking halfway. These are fascists. What do you want to do, be a 50% fascist country? You don't compromise with people who are evil. You don't compromise with people who are doing the wrong thing, because that is a victory for evil. And that's the. That's the most important thing we can do here. We just gotta call out what we see. And you have always been such a great champion of this. Ken Paxton is gonna get beaten if we tell the world who Ken Paxton is. If we tell the world that The Republican Party in Texas, moments after he got elected as the candidate, had to take down their own ad saying that crime had risen dramatically in Texas under him. Right, you know, right. You know, I mean, it's all there. We just shouldn't tiptoe around it. I saw today there's a Washington Post story about a couple of centrist Dem congressmen who want every Democrat to sign a pledge. I'm a capitalist, not a socialist.
- [19:44]
A
Oh, for fuck's sake. Are you serious?
- [19:47]
B
Serious. Front page of the Washington Post today. And it's like, are you fucking kidding me? They wanna wage a war on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. When you have the most corrupt president in history, destroying the rule of law in the United States, undermining our institutions, destroying our alliances around the world, waging illegal wars, inviting pandemics to pop up again and spread and kill millions of people. Cuz they don't believe in science and they wanna AOC or Mamdani because he thinks that people ought to have health care or they ought to have free education. Holy shit.
- [20:32]
A
Well, we need to let the world know these people are MAGA with a D by their name and they are fascist collaborators, if not full blown fascists themselves. But you spoke about Texas, and I worry about the elections in these red states. I worry about the Secretaries of State, Attorney General, Governor in a Texas. Because these people are so obsequious to Donald Trump, they will do anything to service him. And this appointment, this recent appointment of DNI to replace Tulsi Gabbard is really concerning to me as it relates to election integrity. Pop this up. Democracy Docket says Trump tapped loyalist Bill Pulte, a top housing official, to serve as the Acting Director of National Intelligence. He has no experience. He's basically a Trump ass kisser. I mean, worse than all of the people that are already seated at the table. And Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the appointment sharpened his worry that Trump and his allies will try to steal or subvert the midterm elections. David?
- [21:46]
B
Absolutely right. First of all, the job of Director of National Intelligence is one of few jobs where it explicitly calls for a certain kind of experience for somebody to have the job. It explicitly says in the description of the job, to get confirmed for this job, you've got to have intelligence experience. This guy has none. But Trump's done this workaround where he goes and becomes an acting Director of National Intelligence. And so then you have to say, well, why would you give the job to somebody who has no intelligence experience? And there are only a couple of reasons. One would be to make the United States at greater risk and to help our enemies, including Trump's sponsor, Vladimir Putin. But let's set that aside for a second. He is definitely putting the US at risk by neutering the intelligence community in the way that it does by putting somebody brain dead and inexperienced on top of it. But you have to ask, why would Trump do that? And the answer is, well, if your mission is to advance intelligence gathering and do intelligence analysis, well, then, of course, you hire somebody with experience in that area. But if your mission is to stay in office and protect yourself against enemies who want to prosecute you for crimes that you actually committed, then you hire somebody who's willing to use the intelligence community to commit dirty tricks or to undermine the credibility of elections. And we recall among the last things we saw Tulsi Gabbard do was go to Atlanta, Georgia, and participate in this bizarre effort to try to gather up voter rolls there. And the answer, the question is, why was she there? And the answer is, because there was this theory that other intelligence groups had somehow grabbed our voter rolls and were manipulating election results. It's completely unfounded. But by going there, she could say, well, we were looking into that. And it calls into question the results of the elections. And what you know is this. Bill Pulte knows nothing about intelligence. But if Trump says destroy files that are bad about me, he'll do it. And if Trump says give me files that could that cast doubt about some of my enemies, he will do it. And if Trump says, I want a credible argument that foreign powers are trying to put their thumb on the scale so I don't win, show me how the Iranians are beating Republicans in the November election. Bill Pulte is gonna come up with some kind of bullshit because he doesn't care about the law, because he knows Donald Trump will pardon him. He knows that's part of the deal in these guys. Trump's like, do what I say, you'll get rich later on. And in the meantime, I will ensure that you never run afoul of the law, even if all you do is break it. And that's. That's where we are with. With. With Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte.
- [24:56]
A
God, it's so painful because you're so spot on. All right, shifting gears slightly. Trump and Netanyahu and Iran and Lebanon and all this shit. Let me play this video for you of Trump. Play the clip. Him, you said, are you effing crazy? What are you Effing doing. I helped you stay out of jail. Is that true? Did you speak to him in those terms?
- [25:19]
B
I did. I wouldn't say angry. I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon. You know, at some point I said, maybe we got to stop this. We got to stop it. But I have a very good relationship. We've done well, then.
- [25:40]
A
All right, and then one more video, and then I want to get your take on this. Netanyahu responds in a CNBC interview. Play this one, Kylie.
- [25:47]
B
I was going to say, has your
- [25:48]
A
relationship at all shifted with him?
- [25:50]
B
No, no, this has been. This has been a great relationship because he's been the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House. And he. He respects me, I respect him. We always find a way to work out our differences.
- [26:03]
A
Did he? All right, David, break all this down for us?
- [26:09]
B
Yeah, I mean, look, first of all, I think it's interesting that Trump is sitting there saying, yeah, I told him he was out of his fucking mind. You know, he acknowledged that at the beginning of that interview. And obviously Trump was upset. The reason Trump was upset is that he wants this Iran war, which is a fiasco, to go away. The only way to get it to go away is to have even the flimsiest kind of a ceasefire. And the flimsiest kind of ceasefire requires one thing that Trump doesn't control, and that is that Israel stops its war against Lebanon. But Israel doesn't want to stop its war against Lebanon. Bibi Netanyahu is launching. You know, that's his only way of communicating to the people of Israel that they need to keep him in office. And he's got an election coming in a few months, so Trump doesn't control him. And so Trump can't get the flimsy ceasefire that he wants in place, the one that says, yeah, we're going to solve all these problems in the future, and just punts it off into the distance, like the Gaza ceasefire agreement, where none of the tough problems have been solved, where the Board of Peace has no money, where nothing is actually advancing. Here, the problem is that Trump and Netanyahu are two bad leaders who are strategically impaired, who are desperate for political survival, and who have created a situation in which they need each other and in which they both are relying on somebody who's one of the world's worst people. I mean, if you were making a new axis of evil right in, it would be Trump, Netanyahu, and maybe you'd throw in Putin. In other words, we are now the rogue state allied with another rogue state, Israel. Both of our leaders are liars and crooks, and unfortunately, neither one of them can survive without working with the other one. And so to me, this is like two mob bosses getting into a dust up. But at the end of the day, who are they going to rely on? They're going to find a way to work this out. I just think Iran is going to be a festering wound for months and months and months to come. There will be no solution for it. And by the way, in the past couple of days, we've seen studies that suggest that even if the war were solved tomorrow, and it can't be solved because Trump won't accept terms that are worse than the terms Barack Obama got, and he can't get terms that are better than the terms Barack Obama got, he's going to put us in a position that's worse than where we were in 2015 and worse than where we were on February 27th. So we're not going to have a solution for all of this stuff. And, and that means that food prices will stay high, gas prices will stay high, fertilizer prices will stay high, the global economy will slow down. And you and I were back here in a few weeks talking about, why did the Fed loosen in the middle of all of this? Because now Trump's got his guy at the Fed and the only way that he's going to be able to try to save the economy prior to the election is if the Fed does some very unfed like things and that results in weakening the dollar. And I know this is not, it wasn't sort of your front of mind thing, but recently I'm like, what do we expect in the next few months? I expect Trump to cheat on the election and I expect him to use every tool at his disposal to attack his enemy. But I also expect him to try to use every tool at his disposal to spin the story of the economy. And he's now got a puppet at the Fed who's going to help him do that. He was just appointed the guy from Project 2025 who did Project 2025's what do we do about the Fed stuff to be his deputy. And so we've got a lot of stuff percolating here that makes me think that even though in November I, I'm hopeful that Democrats will win, the period between now and November is going to be profoundly dangerous for just that reason.
- [30:54]
A
I completely agree. Do you think, final question. In wrapping it, we ended with BB Israel. Do you think we started with Epstein. Do you think Israel, Mossad, bb you think they have some good, some compromise to take the Russian term on Trump? And that's why he has been gone further than any other American president ever has for Bibi.
- [31:19]
B
I don't know. Trump depends on the evangelicals. The evangelicals love Bibi. Trump depends on certain donors. The big donors love Bibi. Trump and Bibi and AIPAC and the ADL and all those. They all sort of made a shift from being nonpartisan, we'll work with any president in the US to we are now on the side of the Republicans. And so he sees that as part of his base. Now there's another story here which I think you and I have talked about in the past. But what Epstein was doing with rich, powerful people that involved compromising them sexually is exactly the kind of thing that foreign intelligence services are drawn to. And if the Mossad or if the FSB and Russian intelligence were not deeply monitoring it, deeply involved in it, trying to exploit it, I would be absolutely shocked. It's like Mar a lago. The president lives in this kind of tacky hotel in Florida that people can walk in and out of. So do you think the Chinese and the Russians and the Iranians are all got people wandering around there, particularly since they know that the bathroom shower may contain boxes of classified documents? Of course they are. Of course they are. And so now does Vladimir Putin or maybe drop a hint every now and then? Oh, yeah, we know what you were doing there. Maybe I don't know. But I do know this. There's a reason you don't elect presidents who are rapists and fraudsters and felons. And it's because their character is bad for the presidency. But it's also because of how many people have leverage over them who can force them to do things. Because the downside, the risk is that what they've done in the past that is even worse than we imagine will be revealed.
- [33:36]
A
David, thank you so much. I could talk to you for hours. What a treat. Thanks again. Bye.
- [33:50]
B
Foreign. Of overpaying with DirecTV, Dish offers a reliable low price every month without surprises. Get the TV you love and start watching live sports news and the latest movies, plus your favorite streaming apps all in one place. Switch to DISH today and lock in the lowest price in satellite TV starting at $89.99, 9amonth with our two year price guarantee. Call 888-add-D dish or visit dish. Com today.