NYT: Dan Bongino SCREAMED at Pam Bondi Over Epstein Files

Summary

The Bulwark Podcast: NYT – Dan Bongino SCREAMED at Pam Bondi Over Epstein Files
Date: June 10, 2026
Host: Sam Stein
Guests: Tim Miller, Sonny Bunch

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the revelations from a major New York Times story (by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, adapted from their book "Regime Change") exposing the chaotic and clownish internal efforts within the Trump administration to contain the fallout from the release of the Epstein files. The hosts focus on the absurdity and dysfunction at the highest levels of government, with a particular eye on JD Vance’s role and motivations, the infighting among top officials, and how the administration prioritized PR and self-preservation over transparency.

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Major Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Situation Room – Keystone Cops at the Highest Level

• Absurdity of the Cover-up: The administration’s attempt to strategize around the Epstein files is described as blundering and lacking seriousness. The hosts compare it to a farce.
  • “It's honestly hard to believe it's real life... you cannot even imagine a scene like this sitting in the Situation Room.” – Tim Miller [00:43]
• PR Over Substance: At the heart of the meeting is not justice or truth but avoiding “bad optics” for Trump, with outlandish ideas like pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell floated.
  • “Pardoning Maxwell, a trafficker of young girls would create a huge PR problem.” – Stephen Chung, quoted by Sam Stein [02:02]
  • “A broken sumo wrestler is right once a day, you know.” – Tim Miller’s sarcastic quip about Chung [02:06]
• Situation Room Parody: The traditional gravitas of the Situation Room is mocked:
  • “What's the image of the Situation Room?... It's Obama, the Osama bin Laden raid… And you just imagine this group of fucking clowns sitting there like, ‘Well, what about the nipple emails?’” – Sonny Bunch [10:32]

2. JD Vance: The Strategic (and Self-Serving?) Leaker

• Vance’s Panic Over ‘the Base’: The narrative centers on JD Vance’s fear of losing the support of the online right-wing base.
  • “The running thread throughout this story is J.D. vance's sweaty panic...” – Sonny Bunch [02:59]
  • “He has no core beliefs. This is his defining trait.” – Sonny Bunch [03:11]
• Theory: JD Vance as the Leaker: Sam Stein theorizes that Vance is leaking stories to position himself as the reasonable and noble figure for future ambitions (e.g., 2028 presidential primary).
  • “This is the second time that we've got an excerpt from this book...and each of these excerpts is JD Vance, who comes across as a sort of noble protagonist who's dissenting from the rest of the crew...” – Sam Stein [04:12]
• Post-Trump Pivot?: Hosts are skeptical of whether Vance’s attempt to “out-Trump Trump” will succeed.
  • “I do think he is trying to make the post Trump pivot here maybe, which I don't think will work because I don't think he has that sort of rapport with the base.” – Sonny Bunch [06:50]
• Susie Wiles Also Suspected as Leaker: Tim Miller reinforces that Susie Wiles is part of the inside source network feeding reports to the Times.
  • “JD Vance is obviously the leaker, and so is Susie Wiles...at times differing and at times overlapping interests.” – Tim Miller [05:31, 08:32]
  • Example: The story about Wiles telling Vance to stop tweeting.

3. Pam Bondi’s Blunder and the Administration in Disarray

• Pam Bondi’s Catastrophic Mistake: Bondi appears incompetent by distributing unvetted “Epstein files” binders to influencers, inadvertently exposing Trump’s name in the documents.
  • “Everything basically just blew up when she handed the binders to the influencers that said Epstein files on them.” – Sam Stein [11:10]
  • Quote from Times article recited: “One official opening the binder began flipping through pages to see if Trump's name was mentioned anywhere. A few pages in, right in the middle of the page, there it was.” [11:10]
• Dan Bongino’s Emotional Outburst: Foreshadowed as the next anecdote, highlighting further dysfunction and volatility among Trump’s circle.

4. Trump Avoiding the Mess

• Shielding Trump: Trump himself is absent from the crisis meetings; aides like Susie Wiles are charged with managing the fallout and keeping him insulated from bad news.
  • “Donald's not in any of these meetings. He's just not in these meetings. And it's up to Susie to go and convey what's going on...” – Sam Stein [08:42]
• Everyone but Trump in the Room: The hosts are amused by the image of nearly the entire administration scheming to cover for Trump without his direct involvement.
  • “It's fucking everybody. It's like the whole administration is in the Situation Room, like batting around… How do we cover up Trump's involvement with Epstein?” – Tim Miller [10:05]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Absurdity:

  • “There will be no Veep ever again... you cannot even imagine a scene like this sitting in the Situation Room.” — Tim Miller [00:43]

• On PR strategies:

  • “Pardoning Maxwell, a trafficker of young girls would create a huge PR problem.” — Stephen Chung, quoted by Sam Stein [02:02]
  • “A broken sumo wrestler is right once a day, you know.” — Tim Miller [02:06]

• On JD Vance:

  • “There’s nobody in this administration or really any other administration...that I have more contempt for than JD Vance.” — Sonny Bunch [02:59]
  • “He has no core beliefs. This is his defining trait.” — Sonny Bunch [03:11]

• On the Situation Room Meeting:

  • “Maybe we should pardon Ghislaine. It's like, oh, no, maybe we should interview Ghislaine. Maybe Tucker should interview Ghislaine. Maybe we should have a grand jury gambit. It is pretty astonishing...” — Tim Miller [10:05]
  • “What about the nipple emails? I don't know. Maybe we should put those out here.” — Sonny Bunch [10:32]

• On Pam Bondi's Mishap:

  • “Everything basically just blew up when she handed the binders to the influencers that said Epstein files on them.” — Sam Stein [11:10]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00-02:10 – Introduction, summary of the NYT exposé, and depiction of the Situation Room chaos
• 02:10-04:12 – Analysis of JD Vance’s actions and motivations; introduction of the theory about him being a leaker
• 04:12-08:42 – Deep dive into Vance’s possible strategic leaking, Susie Wiles’s involvement, and intra-administration maneuvering
• 08:42-10:59 – Trump’s absence from meetings, further details on the farcical Situation Room discussions
• 11:00-11:30 – Pam Bondi’s disastrous binder distribution and beginning of the Dan Bongino angle

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Tone and Style

The conversation is irreverent, sharp, and laced with biting humor and cynicism, reflecting both exasperation and dark amusement at the ongoing dysfunction and self-serving machinations inside Trump-world.

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Summary:
The episode pulls back the curtain on the comic, dangerous incompetence at the heart of the late Trump administration, as exposed by the New York Times. The hosts spotlight the shallow calculations of JD Vance and the farcical lengths the White House went to shield Trump from the truth about his Epstein connections, skewering their subject matter with wit and outrage, and raising deep concerns about competence, accountability, and the future of American political culture.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, managing at the Bulwark. I'm joined by Tim Miller and Sonny Bunch to discuss a story that popped this morning from the New York Times. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Adapted from their book Regime Change, that looks at the frantic, sophomoric, ridiculous efforts that the Trump administration at the highest possible levels went to to try to cover up. I think that's a fair description. The Epstein files. There's many revelations in this long article, but I think the primary one is that it's a bunch of keystone cops who don't really care about anything other than protecting the reputation of the President and who are using the Situation Room, of all places, to sort of go about scheming on how they're going to do it.

[B]

It's honestly hard to believe it's real life. And it's like you can't ever do, like there will be no Veep ever again. You could not do another spoof about our political system anymore. I mean, it's just you cannot even imagine a scene like this sitting in the Situation Room. 400 pound Stephen Chung, the tweeter in chief, telling the Vice President that his plans to cover up the Epstein files, not telling the Vice President, telling the Attorney General that his plans to cover up the Epstein files are going to be a PR problem. And it's just like what that is a direct. Hear all the details of this Situation Room meeting. It's like how it is dumber than anything you could possibly write in Sonny's movie world. Which is why we have Sonny here.

[A]

Exactly. So the quote is from Stephen Chung. This just gives you a taste of it. And then we'll go to the broad picture. They're in the. They're in the situation. They're talking about different ways to kind of distract from the Epstein files. And they get to the idea of maybe they should just pardon Ghislaine Maxwell, which I don't really understand how that would work, and neither did anyone else in the room. But the idea is pardon Ghislaine Maxwell. And Stephen Chung, who is, who's the head of comms at the White House, responds, according to the article, with this Pardoning Maxwell, a trafficker of young girls would create a huge PR problem.

[B]

You think so?

[A]

Which is true. But that's not the only problem.

[B]

A broken sumo wrestler is right once a day, you know.

[A]

Yeah. So, okay, let's talk big picture here, Sonny. J.D. vance is the lead of this story, I think, for a reason. And I'll get to my suspicions in A little bit, but mostly because in the depiction of this situation room scene and there's multiple scenes in here, he is the one who's, like, deeply nervous about losing the base. In this case, his base is the Internet. And he also comes across as the one who is like, we need to just get everything out. We should just get everything out very quickly and take our lumps and hopefully just move on, because it's going to come out one way or another. Now, I think he was right about that, and they probably should have done that in retrospect. But the first part about it, his sort of occupation with how the Internet is going to perceive the Trump administration over this specific issue. That. That's the one that you picked up on?

[C]

Yeah, yeah. No, I. The. The running thread throughout this story is J.D. vance's sweaty panic, right? Which is like, I. There's. There's nobody. There's nobody in this administration or really any other administration, previous, hopefully future administration that I have more contempt for than J.D. vance. He's a man who. Who has no beliefs. He has no core beliefs. Right. He started as a never. Trumper realized that was not gonna get him elected anywhere. It was like, oh, actually, Trump is great and you're not to blame for your own problems. People, hillbilly elegy. Don't ignore that book in the corner. I didn't write that. This is not your fault. So he has no core beliefs. Right. This is his defining trait. And so what happens now is he has latched onto this idea of the Internet masses, the manosphere types, the Rogan types, as the base of power of maga. And what do these people believe in? He has to try to, like, kind of reverse engineer a set of ideas of what he believes in. And. And what he has settled on was Epstein files. We got to get these Epstein files out there. We got it. We got to clear the air here. We got it. And I am. Sam, I. Could you. Could you tell everybody your. Your. Your theory here? Because I think it's interesting. I want to. I want to bounce off that in a second, but I want you to explain it first.

[A]

So my theory of the case, and this is all sort of parlor game, but whatever we can engage in, it is that advance is the leaker for a lot of this stuff. Now, there are definitely parts of the article where he doesn't look particularly bright. Like, for instance, this idea that he would arrange Tucker Carlson to interview Ghislaine Maxwell. Don't really know how that would probably go. There's a point in the article where Susie Wiles, the Chief of Staff, tells others that the Vice President has proved himself to be a major conspiracy theorist. I'm not sure Vance wants that out there, but my, my theory is predicated on this, which is this is the second time that we've got a excerpt from this book. The first time was around the decision to attack Iran. And in each of these excerpts is JD Vance, who comes across as a sort of noble protagonist who's dissenting from the rest of the crew on these very crucial issues. In the Iran one, it was. He was the one who's like, very against going in and was the one who's like, we should, we should be skeptical of the success of this mission. In this one, he's like, we just need to get everything out. We just got to get everything on. We should be transparent as humanly possible. And to me, Tim, you can, you can slap me down if you think I'm wrong, but to me that's like he, he's trying to position himself in a way where the bad stuff doesn't get blamed on him. And that suggests a strategic leak.

[B]

JD Vance is obviously the leaker, and so is Susie Wiles. I mean, both Susie Wiles and J.D. vance are very obviously talking to Maggie and Jonathan Swan on this. And you know, look, I think the JD is looking ahead already to a 2028 primary, right? And like, these are both issues, in addition to being both fuck ups with the administration, they're the two fuck ups that most created problems on the America first, right? Iran and Epstein.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

And so J.D. whether or not these self leaks are true or not, obviously cares about how that faction of the party, you know, thinks about him. And it would be a great delicious irony for J.D. vance to go down because he can't successfully distance himself from Donald Trump. Like, that would be an appropriate, you know, an appropriate final frame to the story. I know we can't have nice things and you know, you know, maybe this, you know, grand epic of our modern Odysseus will not end, you know, in the way that we wish, but it would be appropriate for it to end with J.D. vance dying by his own sword of just not being able to separate himself from Donald Trump.

[C]

This is what really jumps out at me, right, is that this whole, a lot of this piece, not, not the whole thing. As you mentioned, there are places where he does sound fairly deranged, but they're, they're. The whole piece reads like him doing his next pivot, which is Trump. He's trying to Out. Trump. Trump. Trump is, Trump is the problem here. Trump is the one covering up the files. Trump is the one going to war with Iran. I'm, I'm the one talking to Rogan and Tucker Carlson. Who are the guys you like? I'm the one who is, you know, trying to get all the Epstein information out there. I want the pedophiles gone. That's me. J.D. vance, anti, Mr. Anti Pedophile. Like, I, I, I do think he is trying to make the post Trump pivot here maybe, which I don't think will work because I don't think he has that sort of rapport with the base. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know.

[B]

I don't know if it'll work either. Can I just say one more thing on the leaks, just because this is another important piece of evidence that it is JD and, or Susie, I think Susie in particular, who is also leaking is. We had the other story from the Times about a week ago where Susie told JD to stop tweeting because it wasn't presidential. And Steven Chung, big, big boy posted on social media that this was false, this was fake news. And the New York Times did something very like not that typical, which is like their communications account replied to Steven Chung and then they updated the story like basically saying we stand by our sources on this. And it's like the only way that they would be that adamant that their source is correct if their source was Susie. It's just like, it's like who else could it be? It's either it's a two person conversation between Susie and J.D.

[A]

right.

[B]

So I do think it's pretty clear if you look at the story that like both of them are trying to shape things with different, with at times differing and at times overlapping interests.

[A]

Yeah, there's, there's some chestnuts like that in this piece too. Like Vance having just gotten off the phone with Joe Rogan. Like, you know, there's probably two people who know that Joe Rogan and J.D. vance. So that kind of giveaway I want to go through. There are so many really interesting anecdotes in here. I'm going to go through a few of them. One person who does not come across particularly great in this piece is Pam Bondi. Well, Donald Trump. Okay, let's, let's go with Donald Trump first. Donald Trump, first of all, obviously way completely connected to these files and everyone's just basically running around trying to figure out ways to shield him. Not just from the release of the files, but hearing bad news. You Notice that Donald Trump's not in any of these meetings. He's just not in these meetings. And it's up to Susie to go and convey what's going on and the situation.

[B]

We made a joke about it before we read the article. The people in the lead example of this. There is a Situation Room meeting about the Epstein cover up. What can we do to distract from the fact that Donald Trump is in the files? And JD Is basically saying we should just let it all out, which I think is so funny. It's like, I'd love for him to say that to Trump's face. Like, Mr. Trump, what we do, what we need to do is just put everything you did in these files out. It's like, that's. And everybody's looking around, like, great idea, J.D. okay, but like, in the meeting, it's like, J.D. the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General Cash is on the phone.

[A]

It's everybody.

[B]

It's fucking everybody. It's like the whole administration is in the Situation Room, like, batting around Brooke Rollins. How do we cover up Trump's involvement with Epstein? And it's like, they're like, oh, hey, maybe we should pardon Ghislaine. It's like, oh, no, maybe we should interview Ghislaine. Maybe Tucker should interview Ghislaine. Maybe we should have a grand jury gambit. Like, it's like, it is pretty astonishing, like, how many people are involved in the conversation.

[A]

You think they had one of those whiteboards where they're just writing down ideas, like a brainstorm?

[C]

No, bad idea. No, bad idea. No, I just. I was saying before, like, the opening anecdote of this thing, they're in the Situation Room. And what's the. What's the image of the Situation Room that we all think of? Right? It's Obama, the Osama bin Laden race, and everybody's sitting there very seriously like, oh, what's. What's about to happen? And you just imagine this. This group of fucking clowns sitting there like, well, what about the nipple emails? I don't know. Maybe we should put those out here.

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

We're gonna get to the nipple emails in a little bit.

[C]

I'll tell you.

[B]

I haven't read the whole story. I should just say I was just. I just finished interviewing Senator Warnock. I only got halfway through, so I'm excited to hear what I've missed.

[A]

So. Okay, I want to get to a few angels before we get to the nipples. Pam Bondi really comes across particularly ineffectual and pathetic here. It really, like, everything basically just blew up when she handed the binders to the influencers that said Epstein files on them. So this was like, this is a big moment in all this because there. There's a lot of stuff they're trying to contain. But when she does this really hits the fan. I'm just going to read it from the piece because they're in the Oval, they're meeting the present, and Bondi's handing them these binders. And the piece goes like this. But as Bondi staff started distributing the binders, the blood pressure of other officials in the room skyrocketed. They had no idea what was in the handouts. The Attorney General was distributing something she was calling, quote, the Epstein files that had not been vetted by anyone in the White House. One official opening the binder began flipping through pages to see if Trump's name was mentioned anywhere. A few pages in, right in the middle of the page, there it was. So that was not a good move by Pam Bondi, and it did appear to set things in motion in a way that completely screwed her over. The other person who is like a real protagonist in this is Dan Bongino, who doesn't seem to have a good grip on his emotions, and they sometimes boil over.