← The David Pakman Show
The David Pakman Show
7/28/25: Trump European humiliation as Epstein scandal blows wide open
01:20:27
-- On the Show: -- David hosts a Substack Live with Heather Cox Richardson -- Donald Trump faces mounting fallout from the Epstein files as comparisons to Watergate raise questions about his legacy -- Donald Trump delivers a rambling and...
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- [00:08]
David Pakman
Welcome, everybody. We start today thinking back to Watergate. Let me explain. As Donald Trump's second term now is really getting swallowed up by the growing scandal around the Epstein files, it is really time to ask a serious question. Is this the thing that finally breaks Trump now, not his presidency? I'm not pretending Trump's going to be kicked out depending on what's in the Epstein files. But does this break Trump's legacy and does this break the future of maga? I'm always honest when frank with my audience. This scandal is not going to end Donald Trump's term. There is not a realistic path to removing Trump really, no matter what is in those files. But it is sort of seeming like the Epstein files could end up really defining how history remembers Donald Trump. And if we look at past scandals, the parallels really feel familiar. We have new polling out Trump's approval ratings down to 37, and the drop is significantly driven by independents and even by some Republicans who increasingly believe Donald Trump is indeed covering something up with regard to Epstein. And so Trump was already an unpopular president, but he's getting more and more toxic as a result of this. And what's fueling it, as often is the case, is Trump's response, the White House's response, the leaked reports of DOJ meetings with G. Lane Maxwell and the frantic deflections, and the perception that not only is Trump covering something up, he's willing potentially to hand out a pardon to G. Lane Maxwell to try to keep covering it up. So if we zoom out a little bit and look at the historical playbook, we of course look to Watergate, the sort of gold standard of scandals. And Nixon didn't fall because of the crime. It really, in a way, it started with a break in at the dnc, but it was the COVID up that was the issue. Two years of investigations that uncovered abuse of presidential power, obstruction, paranoia and secrecy inside the White House. And ultimately Republicans turning on Nixon, being forced to resign to avoid impeachment, which seemed clear was going to happen. And we have other examples. You look at Andrew Johnson in 1868, impeached for defying Congress during Reconstruction, survived by one vote, but was a total lame duck with no political power after that. That could happen to Trump. You look at Reagan and the Iran Contra affair where money was funneled to Nicaraguan rebel rebels illegally. Reagan claimed ignorance, accepted responsibility. He was allowed to hang on, but it really hurt his legacy. Clinton's impeachment was different. He had this affair with Monica Lewinsky. Survived impeachment for lying after lying about it because the public really saw it as personal, not presidential misconduct. And Clinton's approval ratings actually went up during the whole thing. By the way. Side note, Clinton, who left office decades ago, is still younger than Donald Trump. Right now, Clinton's a few months younger than Trump. We then look at Joe Biden's exit in 24, which really wasn't a scandal in the traditional sense. It was a moment, right. The June 27 debate where Biden unraveled. Took less than a month for him to go to. I am from, I am the best shot to beat Trump to I'm getting out. And Biden's presidency was very successful. But that final 28 days has really become a lot of Biden's legacy, at least at the moment. And we'll see where it shakes out historically. So then it brings us to Trump. Here's why the Epstein scandal is different from other Trump scandals. Number one, it won't remove him, but it could destroy what's left of his legacy if it indeed involves child sex trafficking in any way as connected to Trump. These are allegations that really have a sort of moral weight being beyond partizanship. And importantly, even Republicans seem rattled and upset with Trump based on what's going on. So the scandal right now is really tracking this classic arc of presidential scandals. You've got the revelation, the story breaks. It's often through reporting that part has happened. You then have the COVID up. The administration starts to scramble. There are denials and distractions or maybe worse. That's where we are right now. We don't yet know what's at the end of this, this. And then you get to accountability. And that's what we're waiting on. Either the President is able to weather the storm or he isn't. So if we go back to the original question, is this Trump's Watergate? What history tells us to watch is, number one, where are Republicans on this? Nixon was fine until Republicans abandoned him and it became clear he would be impeached. If Republicans continue going the direction they've been going, it could be bad for Trump. Second, public opinion, sustained low approval will give Republicans permission to say we can't stay behind him. Three, are there new revelations? Right. Sometimes it's not a bombshell, but it's the drip, drip, drip of information that will tip the balance. And we don't still know. We still don't know what's in the Epstein files. And then finally, what's the institutional response? Does Congress, do the courts, do career officials look the other way, or do they hold the line. So the next few months are going to be crucial. Trump is trying to get everybody to move on. Will Trump end up in the history books next to Nixon, primarily remembered for the Epstein scandal? Will it be more of a Reagan or Clinton scenario? It's almost never the crime that ends the presidency or destroys the legacy. It's the COVID up and the lies and that's where we are right now. This was supposed to be a moment of global diplomatic diplomacy for Donald Trump. And instead, Trump used his time on the world stage to deliver a completely unhinged tirade against windmills. We are going to have extensive coverage of the current European trip of Donald Trump. But these few minutes of video Trump alongside European leaders speaking in this video alongside the EU's Von der Leyen, Trump drifted into a barely coherent monologue, mixing completely fabricated numbers about immigration, unprovoked rants about bird deaths, bizarre claims about whales losing their minds. And it made even seasoned diplomats look around and say, what is happening to this guy's brain? Take a look at this.
- [07:27]
Donald Trump
I will say this. You know, they did ask me when I got off the plane, immigration. Europe has a tremendous problem. We do too. But we've sealed our borders. We have nobody coming in and we have hundreds of thousands of people being taken out and the bad ones first. And I think we're doing a very good job of that. But we had, I mean, it literally registered zero people last month. You probably saw that. Nobody. And Europe has a very similar problem. I think they're going to end up in the same place. You might as well go there quicker. And the other thing I say to, to Europe, we will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States. They're killing us. They're killing the beauty of our scenery, our valleys, our beautiful planes. And I'm not talking about airplanes. I'm talking about beautiful planes, beautiful areas in the United States. And you look up and you see windmills all over the place. It's a horrible thing. It's the most expensive form of energy. It's no good. They're made in China, almost all of them. When they start to rust and rot in eight years, you can't really turn them off. You can't bury them. They won't let you bury the propellers, you know, the props, because there is certain type of fiber that doesn't go well with the land. That's what they say. The environmentalists say you can't bury them because the fiber doesn't go well with the land. In other words, if you Bury it. It will harm our soil. The whole thing is a con job. It's very expensive. And in all fairness, Germany tried it, and wind doesn't work. It's. You need subsidy for wind, and energy should not need subsidy. With energy, you make money, you don't lose money. But more important than that is it ruins the landscape. It kills the birds. They're noisy. You know, you have a certain place in the Massachusetts area that over the last 20 years had one or two whales wash ashore. And over the last short period of time, they had 18. Okay? Because it's driving them loco.
- [09:33]
David Pakman
It's driving them loco, driving them crazy.
- [09:37]
Donald Trump
Now, windmills will not come. It's not going to happen in the United States. And it's a very expensive. And I would love to see. I mean, today I'm playing the best course, I think, in the world, Turnberry. Even though I own it, it's probably the best course in the world, right? And I look over the horizon and I see nine windmills like, great. At the.
- [09:58]
David Pakman
Anybody ready to surrender End of the year.
- [10:00]
Donald Trump
I said, isn't that a shame? What a shame. You have the same thing all over, all over Europe in particular. You have windmills all over the place, some of the countries prohibited. But now people ought to know that these, these windmills are very destructive. They're environmentally unsound, just the exact opposite. Because the environment is. They're not really.
- [10:22]
David Pakman
There's like, you know, 20 more seconds, but we're going to, we're going to stop. We have to stop. And if you're eating, I apologize. As Donald Trump with another failed, failed attack, a brutal attack on the English language, a failed attempt to communicate. So that was not about policy or energy. That's a man unraveling in real time, drifting between personal grievance, fantasy golf courses, conspiracy theories about whales, their loco and deeply confused commentary, I guess, on soil composition, that was a decompensation. Trump's obsession with windmills has always been weird, but this is an entirely different thing. Rambling, tangential, factual errors, emotional outbursts. If Biden ever said one tenth of this nonsense, it would be a week of headlines and hours of panels on CNN about whether he's fit for office. But it's crickets when it's Trump 5 minutes on camera saying windmills are making whales, they're going loco. And the windmills rust and rot. In eight years, you can't turn them off. The soil fibers are not the right ones. This is sort of the privilege of being pathologically erratic, which is Any one unhinged outburst doesn't get that much attention. People stop reacting. But this isn't just embarrassing, this is dangerous. And we know that cornered people will lash out and often their faculties suffer the more cornered they are. And that is exactly what is happening with Donald Trump. Tulsi Gabbard is angry again. Not about Russia, not about disinformation. Tulsi's mad because the media isn't giving her latest nothing Burger conspiracy theory the attention she believes that it deserves. Now let me catch you up, catch you up as to what's going on here. As Director of National Intelligence in Trump's administration, Tulsi Gabbard just last week, miraculously, at a time very convenient for Donald Trump, concocted a conspiracy theory, a sort of right wing fantasy that Russiagate was a deep state hoax carried out by Barack Obama, Obama and Hillary and it was all meant to do a coup against Trump. No one is covering it really because it's completely unbelievable and Tulsi's mad. Why won't anybody cover my conspiracy theory?
- [13:05]
Heather Cox Richardson
Why?
- [13:06]
Tulsi Gabbard
Thanks, Rachel. Thanks for continuing to bring this story to the forefront because of the magnitude of the implications of it. It's been interesting to see how the mainstream media has either refused to cover this story at all the headlines or the lack thereof of newspapers, Washington Post, New York Times and others in the days following this release have, have actually been quite deafening in their lack of coverage.
- [13:33]
David Pakman
And it's interesting, no one's fallen for my conspiracy theory.
- [13:38]
Tulsi Gabbard
Seem to see how when they do cover this, they don't actually cover the revelations that these intelligence reports and the evidence that, that we released actually conveys to the American people. They simply talk about their criticisms of it or convey Democrat politicians criticisms of it, but none of them actually dealing with the truth that has been revealed.
- [14:02]
David Pakman
And to me, we're going to get to that truth in a moment.
- [14:04]
Tulsi Gabbard
There's two reasons for that. Number one is they don't want the American people to know the truth. But also they recognize the mainstream media's complicity in, in this, that they were fed early lines from this manufactured false intelligence assessment that President Obama ordered, that John Brennan and James Clapper created without any vetting, without any actual journalistic integrity of looking at what they were being fed. They received it and they printed it almost immediately. And then they went on to double down and trickle down on this over the next several years. I look back at, you know, the Iraq WMD manufactured false intelligence to support an action to go to war in another country. And I went back and looked at the mainstream media's complicity and that. And how many did they ever admit that they were wrong, that they failed as journalists? Really? They didn't. They gave a couple of them gave some, some lame excuses. But there's a lot of parallels here for us to take a step back and look at, again, the magnitude of what has been revealed.
- [15:13]
David Pakman
You know what's really funny here and sort of sad is that Tulsi saying there's an analogy here. There's an analogy here between the media ignoring her revelations that Obama concocted the Steele dossier and all of this stuff and the case made for war in Iraq on faulty claims of weapons of mass destruction. She almost got it. This is classic Tulsi, by the way. She's rebranding herself again, right? It's a new Tulsi. Once again, the real analogy is their attempt to distract from the Epstein files with this concocted conspiracy is analogous to, to the false case about WMDs in Iraq that was made. The truth is that the Russia investigation resulted in dozens of indictments, prison sentences, and clear evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 election. That's fact. Now, Tulsi is conflating two different things, which is Russia's ability, interest and and wherewithal to carry out hacks on our election systems, which we assess they did not have the ability to do in 2016 compared with did they prefer Trump over Hillary and do things on their own to try to make it more likely that Trump would win. And now what she's trying to do is retroactively justify every lie that Trump told along the way at a moment in time that would be convenient to take attention away from the Epstein fiasco.
- [16:51]
Heather Cox Richardson
And.
- [16:51]
David Pakman
And because the media is not playing along with her, because it's an obvious nothing burger, she lashes out at them. She wants to pretend that she's whistleblowing, but she's just laundering propaganda through a government office and it's not working. The media isn't really biting. Even Fox News didn't quite know what to do with this rant. No one's trending the clips. No one's suddenly declaring her the new Edward Snowden or whatever. She expected and hoped for a firestorm that would take attention away from the Epstein scandal. But no one's looking away because we're not falling for it. Tulsi. Tulsi wants a scandal and headlines. And what she has is a folder full of vague documents, a desperate need to stay relevant and re ingratiate herself with Donald Trump as Trump is running out of distractions. Nobody's falling for it and that's what's really pissing her off. We're going to have more about this on our YouTube channel, YouTube.com/the David Pakman Show. Make sure you're subscribed. Most people trying to lose weight focus on diet and exercise, which makes perfect sense. Sometimes habits and behaviors can also play an outsized role. And our sponsor Hypnosio is a self hypnotherapy app designed to help with things like emotional eating, cravings, portion control. If you're working on healthier habits, something like this can help to reinforce the changes you're trying to make. Hypnosio guides you through short hypnotherapy sessions, just a few minutes a day. The idea here is let's bring stress down, let's increase mindfulness around food and just build some longer, longer term consistency. Many users say Hypnosio helps them to pause or reset in a moment where they might reach out for food out of emotion or out of habit. And it just creates a little bit of space, a little bit of breathing room to make a more intentional choice instead of just following old patterns. So many people have found Hypnosio useful as a way to stay on track, especially when dealing with like yo yo dieting or stress eating. If that sounds familiar to you and you're curious, you can go to David pakman.com/hypnosio and use the code PACMAN15 for 15% off your first plan. The link is in the description was this Donald Trump's worst press conference ever and it happened on foreign soil. Donald Trump is in Europe. He is claiming to be negotiating, he is claiming to be making deals. But it is one global humiliation after another. A reporter asked a very astute question. Are you rushing to get these deals done so that you can knock the Jeffrey Epstein story out of the news? Trump gets irate, which to me means that is exactly what he is doing.
- [19:48]
Donald Trump
You know, on August 1st and beyond. Okay, Mr. President was part of the rush to get this deal done.
- [19:55]
Heather Cox Richardson
Jeffrey Epstein story.
- [19:57]
Donald Trump
Oh, you got to be kidding with it. No, had nothing to do with it. Only you would think that. Yeah, that had nothing to do with it.
- [20:05]
David Pakman
Nothing to do with it except it basically probably did. Now another interesting moment came when Donald Trump was asked a very clear question in English. He couldn't hear it the first time. The second time it seemed he didn't understand it and it seems that he simply doesn't understand it. The question Is should Israel be doing more to allow food into Gaza? Trump disoriented and confused.
- [20:35]
Tulsi Gabbard
Should Israel be doing more to allow food into Gaza?
- [20:38]
David Pakman
Now, notice that that wasn't that. That's not even a British accent. Oh, maybe Trump struggles with British accent. That is American unaccented English.
- [20:47]
Heather Cox Richardson
Food into Gaza said, should Israel be.
- [20:49]
Tulsi Gabbard
Doing more to allow food into Gaza?
- [20:53]
Donald Trump
What did you say? Should Israel be doing more to allow food into Gaza? Well, you know, we gave $60 million two weeks ago and nobody even acknowledged it for food. And it's terrible. You know, you really at least want to have somebody say thank you. No other country gave anything. We gave $60 million two weeks ago for food for Gaza.
- [21:19]
David Pakman
As Ruth Ben Guia told us, these authoritarian strongmen, they need to be thanked. They want to be thanked. They will demand that they be thanked. Now, there are really like three stories here. Story number one is authoritarian Trump demands thank yous. Classic story of authoritarianism. Go back to 20th century authoritarians. You will see it. Why haven't I been thanked? Why aren't people being grateful to me? Story number two, again, Trump doesn't seem to know what he's being asked. Is it a hearing issue or is it a comprehension issue or is it both? Regularly needing multiple clarifications of questions? And then number three, he doesn't actually seem to have understood the question because the question is, should Israel be doing more to allow food into Gaza? The answer is, of course, you've got Benjamin Netanyahu there also behaving the way we have become accustomed to these right wingers behaving. And the answer is, of course, all else aside, all other opinions aside about what's going on there and Hamas and all these other things, of course Israel should be doing more to allow food. And Trump goes, well, but we sent 60 million. They're not even thanking me. The topic of incompetent Democrats came up because Trump brought it up. And again, incoherent, angry, lashing out, blaming.
- [22:46]
Donald Trump
Others, pouring into our country. And I think it's the hottest. And by the way, one year ago, our country was dead. We had a dead country because of an incompetent president. And incompetent Democrats, all they know how to do is talk, talk and think about conspiracy theories and nonsense. If they'd waste their time talking about America being great again, it would be so much nicer, so much easier be.
- [23:13]
David Pakman
Very successful if these Democrats could just get out of the way. And then finally, and we looked at just this little bit earlier, ultimately, it's all About Trump. Trump hates windmills, so he attacks the fact that there are windmills visible from his golf course. And of course, everything is superlatives, everything is hyperbolic. The best golf course in the world happens to be Trump's.
- [23:37]
Donald Trump
I would love to see. I mean, today I'm playing the best course, I think, in the world. Turnberry. Even though I own it, it's probably the best course in the world, right? And I look over the horizon and I see nine windmills, like right at the end of the 18th. I said, isn't that a shame? What a shame. You have the same thing all over, all over Europe in particular. You have windmills all over the place, some of the countries prohibited.
- [24:01]
David Pakman
But.
- [24:04]
Donald Trump
People ought to know these, these windmills are very destructive. They're environmentally unsound, just the exact opposite.
- [24:11]
David Pakman
Because, you know, when I look out there, and by the way, he's talking about wind turbines, not windmills. Windmill is a different thing. You can find a lot of pictures of windmills from the 1800s, but Trump's talking about wind farms, wind turbines, wind. When I look out and I see those, and they're relatively common in the northeast of the United States, I say, that's really cool. We're not burning and pumping carcinogenic fossil fuel particulate into the atmosphere. We're just harnessing the wind for electricity. That's phenomenal. But Trump gets angry and he's always angry at other people and everything is always everybody else's fault. But if you think this press conference was bad, and it was, you should see what happened this morning with bagpipes. Let me explain. Donald Trump, authoritarian maniac, this morning reiterated, as bagpipes play in the background, that he needs to be thanked for sending food aid to Gaza. Listen to this. It is beyond parody. This is, dare I say, Kafka esque. The bagpipes play as Trump attempts to demand thank yous as authoritarians are want to do.
- [25:28]
Donald Trump
Because you have a lot of starving people. You have people that you know. The United States recently, just a couple of weeks ago, we gave $60 million. It's a lot of money. No other nation gave money. I know the Prime Minister would if he knew about it, and he really knows about it now because we're going to be discussing it. But we gave 60 million. Nobody said even thank you, you know, thanks. Somebody should say thank you. But other nations are going to have to step up. When I spoke to Ursula yesterday, she said that the European nations are going to step up very substantially too.
- [26:02]
David Pakman
Why aren't people thanking Me a trip of potentially globally diplomatic, significant global diplomacy. Trump were capable of it. And he's whining that he hasn't been thanked enough. As bagpipes play in the background. How, how much embarrassment can a country take? Asked a question about a possible ceasefire in Gaza, Trump somehow ends up ranting about nuclear dust. I kid you not.
- [26:37]
Mark Wayne Mullen
Do you think a cease fire is.
- [26:39]
Jake Tapper
Even possible, Mr. President?
- [26:40]
Donald Trump
Yeah, ceasefire is possible, but you have to, have to get it, you have to end it. You're talking about with Israel, you're talking about there. Because we have many ceasefires going on. The whole world is. If I weren't around, you'd have right now six major wars going on. India would be fighting with Pakistan. You see what we just did yesterday with two nations that we're trading with. And during the trade, I said, I'm not going to do any trade deal unless you guys settle your differences. And we got to settled in 24 hours. I mean, they just announced it was settled, which is a tremendous thing. But Serbia, Kosovo is another one. We have many hotspots that were at.
- [27:21]
David Pakman
Remember, the question was about a ceasefire.
- [27:23]
Jake Tapper
In Gaza, or I think a very.
- [27:24]
Donald Trump
Big one was India and Pakistan, because that's. You're talking about two nuclear nations. That was a very big one. But. And we get help from the uk, the Prime Minister's help. Do we have cases where we specifically need the help? Because somebody comes from here that you're aware of and you know, when you come from a country, you can do things. And I call up the Prime Minister and all of a sudden he's able to do things. True. Also with other presidents and prime ministers, but we've done it. Nobody's ever done what we've done. We have six different major. Look, if you take a look at.
- [28:00]
David Pakman
Rwanda, just a reminder, the question was ceasefire.
- [28:04]
Donald Trump
Gaza and the Congo, Republic of the Congo, they've been fighting for 31 years. Eight million people dead. It was going on. Nobody could go to that part of Africa. They were being killed. If even walk there, you're being killed with machetes. And it was a violent situation. And I was able to. They liked Trump, they wanted to make a trade deal with Trump. They wanted us to take their rare earth. They want to give us their rare earth. And I got to know the leader of the Congo, I got to know both of them indirectly. And I called him, I said, let's end the war. I don't want anything until you end the war. And we ended the war. As you know, the foreign ministers came up two weeks ago and the leaders are going to be coming very shortly to Washington for what?
- [28:51]
David Pakman
Rwanda and reminder, the question was cease fire.
- [28:57]
Donald Trump
Gaza and Congo, I mean, that's another one that we did. So we've done a lot. It's an honor to do it. It's not hard for me to do it. And I use not in all cases, but I use a combination of knowing them a little bit or in some cases, knowing them a lot. I knew, you know, the leaders of Pakistan and India, I know very well. And the, you know, they're in the midst of a trade deal and yet they're talking about nuclear weapons. I say this is crazy. So I said, I'm not doing a trade deal with you guys. And they want the trade deal. They need it. I'm not doing a trade deal with you. If you're going to have war, and that's a war that spreads to other countries, you'll get nuclear dust. We'll all get nuclear dust when they start using nuclear weapons.
- [29:38]
David Pakman
That is the weave, folks, also known as completely falling apart and losing connection with time and space. Cease fire in Gaza, you're going to end up with nuclear dust everywhere. Finally, exhaustingly, Trump says free speech is important. And Keir Starmer goes, we've had free speech here. What is Trump talking about free speech today?
- [30:08]
Donald Trump
Well, free speech is very important. I don't know if you're referring to any place in particular. Perhaps they are, but we've had free speech for a very, very long time here. So we're very proud about that.
- [30:18]
David Pakman
The guy suing media outlets over what they say is now going around the world saying we've got free speech, but not everybody does. Hard to think of a more embarrassing diplomatic global trip. We're going to dig into the implications of this on our substack, which you can get at substack dot. David Pakman Dotcom Heather Cox Richardson joins me next. Donald Trump has already packed his second term cabinet with loyalists. He's threatened deportation as political punishment. He's expanded executive authority in ways we have not seen in modern history. These are real changes that are happening right now. And what's even more alarming is that a lot of the media is either glossing over the worst of it or they're refraining framing it. So it all sounds a little more palatable. And that is why I use ground news. This is a news comparison tool, doesn't just feed you headlines, it shows you, here's how different outlets, left, right, center, are covering the same story. And this is One of the few tools I know of that can really help you detect the political spin, the bias catch stories that your usual sources might date, downplay or not cover it all on everything from immigration policy to economic shifts. If you want to get a bigger picture, a broader picture of what's being reported, Ground News is an invaluable source to keep you informed. And Ground News is offering my audience 40% off their top tier vantage plan. You'll only pay five bucks a month. Go to Ground News, slash Pacman or enter the code Pacman in the app to get started. The link is in the description. After dozens and dozens of requests from you, we finally did it. Heather Cox Richardson and I had a phenomenal conversation about this moment in American politics, about independent media, about so many things. This aired live on my substack. Make sure you're subscribed there. Substack.david pakman.com Here is that full conversation.
- [32:26]
Jake Tapper
Welcome everybody. I am live once again today with Heather Cox Richardson. This is really, I, we've been trying to line this up for a while and I'm so interested to talk to you, Heather. Not only because I love the substance of what you write and so many people write to me and they say, David, you've got to have Heather Cox Richardson on, but also because I'm so interested in talking to you really as a sort of pioneer in the substack space, which I see as a very interesting space and different from the space I've occupied for a while now. So this is great and I really appreciate you doing it.
- [33:05]
Heather Cox Richardson
Well, I'm looking forward to it and it'll be fun to kind of chase down what's happening in the media. Cause your own media story is a really interesting one. And in a funny way, I think you and I both got into this kind of sideways rather than head on. Is that accurate, you think?
- [33:19]
Jake Tapper
Yeah, I mean, I got into this through boredom in college and you know, saying I want to do something on a microphone is really like the start of the journey. And then I, I'm curious to hear from you about, you know, one of the things people often ask me is to what do I attribute the growth of my show? And a lot of it is just timing and, and odds in the sense that if I were to start now, a lot of the platforms I'm on are to a degree a lot more saturated than they were. And so when I started on YouTube there weren't as many people doing left leaning politics. And so I think I had the benefit of timing in A sense. And that's not something you can really manufacture, you know, it's just what are you, what's going on in your life when the opportunity presents itself and it might be a good time, it might not be a good time.
- [34:18]
Heather Cox Richardson
Yeah, I would say the same thing, that timing is everything. But that being said, one of the things that always jumps out to me is that, you know, I think, I guess I'm gonna speak for both of us. We're both pretty good at what we do, but at least for me, I look out the world and see there's thousands of people who could do what I do just as well as I do. And that one of the roles that I have going forward is trying to highlight their voices. And that because one of the things that I found coming up through the years, especially as a woman in the political sphere in wr, the gatekeepers really didn't want to give me a lot of room. And being in a position now to open doors for other people is pretty cool. And it's its own kind of jol as well, I think, and important to carry forward in this moment where everything is changing so quickly. And I don't just mean media, I mean ideas and the way we look at the world. We need as many new voices as we can possibly have rather than the same people who've been writing for, you know, 642 years in the same newspaper.
- [35:22]
Jake Tapper
Well, that's really interesting you mentioned because one of the things that I think about is, okay, so I have a public facing content creation apparatus and of course part of it is you do it for an audience. I do it as a creator of content for people who are looking to consume the content. That's number one. Layer two is because of the space that I'm in and I'm just giving my, you know, genuine, authentic and passionate view about the world and how I think the world might be better. I'm also trying to create, I don't know if I would call them activists, but certainly involved citizens who say, ah, okay, I understand the connection between what David's talking about and why I can or can't afford healthcare or housing or how education is. So I'm certainly going to vote and figure out what other ways I can get involved. But then layer three, and I think this might be what you're driving, driving at a little bit, is I also want to encourage more people to become content creators. And so even though there's often this 80, 20, you know, 20% of the creators get 80% of the views, although. And it might even be more skewed than that. I think we are better off if there are a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand people doing what I do. And yes, some people will have larger audiences and some smaller, but I think the ecosystem and society is better off. The more people that I can convince not just to get involved in your community, but even to think about creating content as well. I don't know how you see that.
- [36:49]
Heather Cox Richardson
Yes, except I agree with you, except my project is something very different. And the first thing I would say is that it is my observation that the most powerful thing anybody can do is actually to produce content. You know, so much of what is out there is filler. And it makes me crazy to, you know, to try and listen to somebody and they do what I call throat clearing. It's like, once you're alive, tell me something that I don't know. Cause my time is really very short. And I think what really rises to the top are people who are giving you good new information. And that is really, to me, really always really exciting. But the other piece for me is that I write the letters every night. And they are really a record of what's happening in the United States of America in this fraught moment. And so they're kind of different from journalism or anything else. They are really a record. And I do write them with the idea that these are things that in 150 years A graduate student is gonna look back and be able to use quite literally. Because when you write history, there are key diaries that we go to to see what happened in a certain moment. And nothing makes you more frustrated than when you're like, oh, I can't wait to see what George Strong had to say about this battle or that battle. And you get there and he's like, eh, took the day off. You're like, no, no, you can't take the day off. Which is one of the reasons I always try and cover everything in a, you know, either in a day or if I take a day off. But that's different than what you and I are doing here. And what I do on my webcasts is one is certainly sharing information, because I believe you have to have good access to good information in order to make good decisions about your life. But also in those circumstances, then I am indeed trying to get people involved in changing the country, both by providing good information, but also by telling people how to change things, how to get involved and so on. And those, weirdly for me, are two entirely different projects. They often overlap in the content. But people get very frustrated every day. I get people saying, please write about this in your newsletter, whether it's a rally or something they want people to organize around. And I will say I can't because that's not what that project is. But I'll be happy to talk about it on social media. And it's a very different project across all my platforms.
- [39:10]
Jake Tapper
Actually, I. There's like two or three things there that I think are maybe 10 or 15 minutes from now in our conversation. But before, before we get to those, what's your approach in terms of. There are people who create content, who write, etc. Who, when you ask them, what's your strategy, what are your tactics? They have 10, 15, 20 different things. They've thought about the time of day that they publish. They've thought about the style that they write in. They have a very crafted perspective on, you know, when I write this number of words, it does way better than when I write that number of words. My instinct is, and I'm curious to see you either say yes or no. My instinct is you don't think about.
- [39:54]
David Pakman
Any of those things.
- [39:55]
Heather Cox Richardson
I am, I am sitting here amused beyond belief. It never occurred to me that anybody did that. Although I can certainly tell you, you know, I. The sweet spot, spot for writing on social media is 800 words. And when I write, you know, I used to have a history magazine, I always aimed for 800 words. I don't think about any of those things except that I know that on rare occasions, only very rare occasions, will I go beyond. I think of it in terms of Google Doc pages. My sweet spot is two and a quarter Google Doc pages. I wrote on immigration recently and that went to four Google Doc pages. But that was a very comprehensive look at the history of the US Mexico border in the 20th and 21st centuries. And you just couldn't do it in fewer words. But no, I don't give any thought to any of that at all. I know that I get a lot more readers if I publish before midnight Eastern time in the U.S. the number of times I've actually managed to make that deadline, probably you could count on two hands. I don't give that any thought at all because I'm actually not in this as a creator who is trying to create a job around it. I'm in it as somebody who is trying desperately to keep the record accurately. And if that takes me all night, so be it. And if that means I can publish early, so be it. And I never think about the Words. Except that I have a really, really, really short attention span. So if I'm bored, I quit. Because I figure if I'm bored, everybody else can be bored too, so. But do you do that?
- [41:29]
Jake Tapper
Which part of it?
- [41:30]
Heather Cox Richardson
The part of, like planning all that stuff out?
- [41:34]
Jake Tapper
No, it's not. So the way it works in my space is since I do this every day, like you do for many years, you develop an intuition that is less about sitting down. But I know that my audience is mostly active after 3:00pm Eastern time. We just published almost everything after 3:00pm Eastern time. I know that my audience prefers content that is salient to domestic politics more so than foreign policy. You, you kind of just build up a picture through a combination of doing it, getting the feedback very quickly, and then also comments. And this was something that I wanted to talk to you about. This may come as a surprise to you or not, but half of the people I hear from despise me, despise what I say. Anti Semitic comments, go back to Argentina, you know, just horrible, horrible stuff to which you just kind of have to develop a thick skin. There's no other way around it. I have friends who do very different types of podcasts, for example, and they.
- [42:40]
David Pakman
Go, everybody loves what I do. I only.
- [42:43]
Jake Tapper
Everybody I hear from says, what I'm doing is absolutely fantastic because what you do is tangential, but really quite different from what I do. I'm curious, in terms of the feedback, do you hear from what we might call haters?
- [42:56]
Heather Cox Richardson
Oh, every day. Every day. A lot of them. But you know what's really interesting is I don't think of what I do in a way as media. I think of it as a classroom. And to that end. Ooh, I lost you. Yeah, that was good.
- [43:09]
Jake Tapper
I lost you for a second.
- [43:10]
Heather Cox Richardson
Okay, to that end, anybody is welcome. And that does not mean you have to have any kind of a political slant or anything. Anybody is welcome so long as they come with facts. Because that's the whole point of my enterprise, is to encourage the idea of the free exchange of ideas with the concept that really sparked the Enlightenment or pushed the Enlightenment, that this is how you achieve sort of an understanding, a better understanding of the world. You want to be pushed back, you know, And I love to argue. I was trained in an educational system that urged us to learn to argue based on ideas. And that is still my favorite thing in the world to do. But here's the trick to that. I operate by what I call my. Sorry about this, but the pee on the rug principle. Anybody is welcome in my classroom, just like anybody is welcome in my house. But if you're gonna pee on the rug, I'm gonna ask you to leave. And then you've given up your right to be included in a polite conversation about whatever's at stake. And it's really interesting to me because I get people who come into comments or especially comments, but who, who are furious when they can't just start making ad ominous attacks and so on. They're like, you know, you have no right to silence me. I'm like, pee on the rug, Principal, you are welcome to be here. Engaging, but you may not come in and pee on the rug. So I get those. But then I also get a lot of ad hominem attacks on my email. And those are really interesting to me because like I say, you know, I have friends across the political spectrum and you are more than welcome. And I've learned a ton, especially about military strategy from friends who at least in the past would have been far right now they're centrist compared to where the MAGA Republicans are, and I quite enjoy that. But in the comments when people are angry at me, what I get is simply, you're an idiot, you're dumb, you're a left wing, whatever. And my favorite of all time was after I'd written something, I got an email that said, and I will quote it in its entirety, you are dumb. And I was like, oh my God, my life is over. I'm like, you know, that just doesn't move any ball forward at all. You, you, you just gotta ignore that and figure that's just a, a knee jerk. I don't like what you're saying. So I'm gonna stick my fingers in, in my ears and go, la la la la la, so I don't have to listen to it.
- [45:31]
Jake Tapper
What do you think right now? Because as you said, you write about different, you know, pretty significant breadths of top right now believe that the key sort of overarching, important narrative is about authoritarianism right now. There are others who would say it's about misunderstandings and bad ideas about how economies should be organized. For example, you know, I'm sort of like riffing here, but there is not widespread agreement, even among those who believe that this is sort of a critical point in American history, an inflection point potentially. There's not necessarily agreement about on what basis is this such a critical point? Do you have a strong feeling in these kind of broader buckets or overarching categories, looking at what's going on today in the context of other historical periods that you've studied, what would you expect to be the big story, as you say, in 150 years, when people look back at the country right now?
- [46:32]
Heather Cox Richardson
All right, so I will answer that if you will answer it after I do. Okay, fair enough. Okay. So, yes, remember, I'm a historian and I am what we call an idealist, which means that I believe ideas change society. And the way you change society is you change the way people talk about ideas, which you cover so well in the echo machine. And that means that what I am constantly looking for is the way people are thinking and talking about what's going on around us. So there are a lot of really important stories out there right now. But the larger tides, if you will, the larger waves, look to me like we are reaching a crisis point, not a surprise that is showing us the rise of authoritarianism in the United States, in part because we had a political party get taken over by an oligarchic elite that began to use the political system in order to serve them rather than serving the good of the American people. Now, what's happening in this moment, though, that is so interesting, of course, and this could go either way. They could win and we could end up with full on authoritarianism, or they could lose. And what's interesting to me in the larger, let's say this moment, as in the last several weeks or months and going forward, looking at the same period of time, is it looks to me very much like the late 19th century, when in the 1880s and the 1890s, you got the rise of the robber barons, you got their takeover of the White House, the Senate and the Supreme Court, and real inroads on the House of Representatives. They get new states, all sorts of things that add up to them controlling the United States of America. And yet within that, there were people who clung very tightly to the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the idea of human self determination, in that case, within the Republican Party. So they ended up getting elected as Republicans and yet turning the country on a dime to give us the Progressive era. And that was people like Theodore Roosevelt. Now I'm looking. So that's sort of what I've been watching for. And I think you are starting to see it in a number of places with the new voices coming up in all these different areas, not just in the media, but in art and in music and all the different ways in which people are engaging with the world in new, exciting ways. But in the moment that you and I are talking, which is July 17th or 16th. 16th.
- [49:01]
Jake Tapper
I guess 16th.
- [49:02]
Heather Cox Richardson
Yeah. I am absolutely fascinated, fascinated by the extraordinary power of the Epstein Files to have derailed Donald Trump. Because I've been watching this guy like a hawk now for almost exactly six years. And before that I was engaged as well. But I mean, I have lived in the news for six years. And his hallmark has always been no matter what went wrong, he managed to marshal his forces and. And literally the next day, it was almost like a seesaw. Things are bad, things are good, things are bad, things are good. Now it's been over a week and he cannot get his feet underneath him, and he is essentially now turning against his followers. So if you go from the very broad thing, the broad tides to the waves, now we're down to a splash. And this moment, this moment that we are in feels again, and that's not scientific. It feels different to me because the push against Trump is coming from within MAGA rather than from without it. So that's the big to the small. How about you?
- [50:13]
Jake Tapper
Okay, so it's interesting you don't think Donald Trump not getting a Nobel Peace Prize is the story of our time. That's very. I'm surprised to hear that. No, I'm kidding. No, listen, as a non historian, it seems to me that this time is unique because so many of the things that for several hundred years now have been sort of bedrock American principles are a little bit of a question mark. When we talk about should the winner of an election get to hold the office to which they were elected, that's something which in 2020, with, with Trump's claims about the election, it started to be sort of a question mark. Is the judiciary to be respected and court orders followed? Like, do we have law order and due process or don't we? Are Americans American or on a whim, can we denaturalize people? Whether it's Rosie o' Donnell or, you know, the. A free press. Do we have a free press or do we have an administration that says convenient reporting, gets to do whatever? If we are getting antagonized or critical reporting or whatever, all of a sudden we want to clamp down? So all, to me, all of this is under the umbrella of authoritarianism and just the basic principles on which the country was built. My, my cautious optimism is that this is going to be an inflection point where we're kind of getting close to moving away from those things, but then we actually recognize their importance and go back to them. And it's funny you bring up Epstein, because I have not been Like a Epstein truther who follows the Epstein story. I find it interesting only because that split that we're now seeing, Steve Bannon saying if the files don't come out, Republicans will lose 40 seats in November of 2026. Trump saying that the story is BS and even some of the Republicans got duped. It's such a relatively minor story, but it, because of the timing, I guess I would say it seems to have the potential to actually take this inflection point and point it a little bit back in what is hopefully a better direction is my, my cautious optimism. I don't know how you see it.
- [52:34]
Heather Cox Richardson
So just, just to be clear, I think you misspoke there. It, it's a, it's a minor story in terms of politics, but a very major story for the people who lived through it. And I know that what you meant, but just because I'm going to save you some hate mail tomorrow.
- [52:46]
Jake Tapper
Oh, I must might have misspoken there.
- [52:48]
Heather Cox Richardson
Yes, I think you misspoke. So a couple of things that I think reflect back on where you started, and that's that we are certainly in a period in which people are not honoring the principles that were articulated at the beginning of American the establishment of the American nation. But even then, of course, they were honored solely in the breach. And so when we look at this moment, which is terrifying, of course, for all of us, we can point to a lot of places that looked a lot like it. And what's jumping to mind here is the 1920s, when in fact we had the rise of the Ku Klux Klan for a second time in the United States. And it was really taking over governments in a number of states. It started in Indiana, but it spreads all across the country. And a lot of people jump into the KKK at that point because it is not just anti black in the American south at the time, it's also anti immigrant across the entire rest of the country. And that the reason I bring that up is it looks in some ways like this moment with Epstein. That is, a lot of people grabbed hold of the rise of the KKK in that period because they believed that the KKK was going to be protecting white womanhood from immigrants, especially because as I say, it really takes off in Indiana and it's big in Maine. I mean, it's, it's important in a lot of places. But what happens is people start to turn against it because it's corrupt, but they're not really obviously turning against it. And then the leader actually ends up raping and murdering a Young white woman. And the KKK just explodes. Because what it had been about at heart was this idea that people who had felt that the modern world was leaving them behind could reassert what they thought of as their community values on the country through this organization, only to find out that they had been used. And if you look at the degree to which QAnon was important in the reelection, first the support for Trump, but then the reelection of Donald Trump in 2024, and the number of people who really believed that he was going to tear apart this cabal of Hollywood actors and Democratic politicians and so on, who were raping and cannibalizing young girls, young white girls. To have him now say, oh, forget about it, that's not important, you're watching them turn on him. But to go back to where you started, that is all very important. But what really managed in the 20s, but also in the 1890s and the 1850s and so on, to turn the ship of state around back to democracy, was the articulation again of those American principles and the people who fought and died for them. And you talk about that in the echo machine, but the idea of honoring our history, not just the wars or not just the movements, or not just the many times in which we got things wrong, but also the defense of the bedrock principles of human self determination and the American democracy that enables people to live that self determination, that's what people jumped on board. Those are the values. We might not agree with each other about how to repave the roads, but by God, we can agree that we don't want to turn our government over to an oligarchy or to an authoritarian. And that's the other piece, I think, of what you and I do.
- [56:26]
Jake Tapper
I want to get your. Really your advice about a question. I get often in this moment that we've just described from people in my audience that I sort of struggle to feel really good about how I answer it. But I'll tell you how I do and then maybe you can give me some feedback, which is people will call me. This is an example call. And they'll say, hey, I have a trans daughter and I live in Mississippi. I'm thinking of, do I leave the state? Do I leave the country if I'm able to do it? And my reaction to these sorts of questions is sort of twofold. It's at the 40,000 foot level. I know that if the good influences leave either the states that are doing it wrong or even leave the country, we're sort of ceding control to the People with the worst instincts and those who can't afford to leave or are not in a life position where they can leave, they're getting screwed, right? In a way, if the right instincts all go for greener pastures, it's a problem at the 40,000 foot level. And simultaneously, how can I tell someone who says, I have a practical problem, David, here's the laws as they are changing in my state, and I'm in this particular situation, how could I possibly tell someone, you're wrong for doing what you've calculated is the best thing for you and your family. So I can't criticize you if you do it, but someone needs to stay also, because otherwise we're kind of giving up in a sense. How would you advise people in this general situation in the United States right now?
- [58:10]
Heather Cox Richardson
Okay, so I'm not in the business of giving people advice in general, but I will tell you what I would say were I in that position. One is that you got to protect your kids. You know, that's Dear children. I do, yeah. I mean, if your parents aren't gonna stick up for you, who is? So that's number one, you gotta stick up for your kids. So you make the decisions that are best for your children, whatever that looks like. Now, that being said, I have kids as well, by the way. So, that being said, so I'm gonna change the equation a little bit and say that in this moment, when we have the population distribution the way we do, this is the moment where people like me, especially older white women, who are the least likely to be attacked by ice, for example, should be standing up for those people and are standing up for those people. And this is the advice I often give to young black men or young men of color when they say they feel like they should be out in the streets. And my answer to that is, only if you let people like me go in front of you, because this is our time to reinforce those things that we believe in. And absolutely, we need it all, hands on deck. But the thing that I try and do is get people like me out to show solidarity and to be out in front, because we are the ones who have the least to lose in some ways. And I don't mean to limit that just to older white women. We need older white men out there, too, but we need a lot of them. Because again, one of the tricks that authoritarians use, especially in countries like the United States that has a long history of racial conflict, is they look at people of color, especially young people of color or black Americans, and call them communists or suggest that they are gang members or that they are somehow anti American. It's a lot harder to look at somebody like MC or somebody who's in a wheelchair or somebody who's 90 and say, that's it, you're about to knock over a bank. So, yes, we do need people to stand up in those areas, but we also need people like me to stand up. And I think you're seeing it. I think that's one of the things that was so important about the no Kings rally is that a lot of those rallies were in Republican dominated states and small towns and they were older white people. And so, you know, it's a funny movement in this moment because so often we think of movements, we think of the civil rights movement in its phases where it was really driven primarily by young black women and young black men. This might be a movement that needs to be driven by older white people. And, you know, it's our time.
- [60:54]
Jake Tapper
Last thing I want to ask you about, and it does relate pretty directly to this, which is I right now have a sense and also have five or six different data points to suggest that I don't think the Trump administration is going to come after me per se. But only during this presidency has an official rapid response Twitter account attacked pieces of my content. For example, only under Trump have, I mean, you know, Don Jr. Once weaponized his base against me, et cetera. So I guess my question is, for someone in your position right now, one of the largest substack followings, and this is not trivial stuff that you're writing about, it's hugely consequential from a policy and sociocultural standpoint. Do you have a personal sense that you could be targeted by this administration?
- [61:51]
Heather Cox Richardson
Oh, sure. I mean, we all do. But, but, you know, when the, the way I even got involved in this, I'm not sure you, you know, this story, the way I got involved in doing what I do was after Trump was elected in 2016. I had been many years ago, I was put on what was called a terminate list. Theoretically, somebody wanted to terminate my job because, although obviously the name was unfortunate because of something that I had written in a children's magazine about Lincoln trying to work within the Constitution when he was president, which is just established as a historical thing. You can agree with it or you can not agree with it, but we have the documents on that. I've never given it any thought, but it certainly appears that when he created his professor watch list, Charlie Kirk, who later became the person directing Turning Point usa, Reached back to that list, and he put me on that professor watch list. And, I mean, there'd never been any complaints about how I teach. I'd been asked by the conservative organization, students organization, to advise them, as well as by the young communists, because I just, you know, that's. As you know, in a university, your political leanings, if you're teaching right, shouldn't really matter. And I don't think they did. So I remember coming downstairs, and all of a sudden, my phone and my Facebook and everything was exploding over having been included on this list. And I was concerned for my children, who were young at the time. And I said to my kids, I said, I can shut up if you want. And I feel like I should because I'm worried about you. And my son said to me, if we can't trust you to speak up, mom, who can we trust? And for me, that was a really big deal. I was like, well, you know, expletive it. I'm going for it. You're not gonna shut me up. And so I wrote back, you know, I wrote a post on Facebook saying that America was. That I was not gonna shut up, that America was worth fighting for. And it went viral, and one thing led to another, and they kind of created me. And the end of the day, we need to people like me, who at this point have very little to lose compared to, as you say, somebody with a trans child in Mississippi. People like me have to live the country that we expect to see. And if something happens to again, to me, an older woman whose children are grown and all that, I'm not suggesting other people should put themselves out there like this. That's itself part of history as well. And that being said, also, people like me are not stupid. That is, I do expect that I certainly could be a target. But if I am, I have not put myself in this position lightly or without pretty serious coverage.
- [65:02]
Jake Tapper
That's amazing. You know, my daughter is too young to even understand what I do right now, but I hope that when she does understand it, that she would have that same reaction. That's a really poignant, poignant thing to hear. Heather Cox Richardson, I can't thank you enough for doing this. For my viewers and followers. Absolutely. Subscribe to her substack. One of the best. If I'm the one who's new to you and you're one of Heather's followers, I would be flattered if you subscribe to my substack as well. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time, and I Hope that we're able to do this again.
- [65:36]
Heather Cox Richardson
I'd love to. That'd be fun. Thanks, David.
- [65:39]
Jake Tapper
All right. Thank you so much. Take care.
- [65:42]
David Pakman
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- [68:22]
Alex Acosta
And that's why Attorney General Bondi, if it was saying for sure, well, then tell me why for months she was saying that she's going to release the information tomorrow.
- [68:31]
Mark Wayne Mullen
We made the assumption that the judges would release the order and allow the evidence that they had, that it could be heard if it's. But it's all been sealed. And so if it's been a sealed case, we can't release it until the judges allow us to release it. And we.
- [68:46]
Heather Cox Richardson
You.
- [68:46]
Mark Wayne Mullen
You would think common sense would play. That's why they asked for transparency. We want transparency. We want the judges to have transparency in this, too. But remember, there was a plea deal that was struck in 2009, way before I was in office, way before Trump was even considering to be in office, way before Pam Bonney was office, way before Cash Patel was director. 2009, there was a sweetheart plea deal that was made underneath the Obama administration with Epstein. And that sweetheart Hart has not been exposed.
- [69:13]
Alex Acosta
It was 2000. Well, when he heard it was 2008, it was. The U.S. attorney at the time was a guy named Alex Acosta. He was a Bush appointee. He went on to become President Trump's Secretary of Labor.
- [69:27]
David Pakman
It all took place, that is all absolutely correct.
- [69:30]
Alex Acosta
In 2000. Who was in office at the time? 2008? George W. Bush.
- [69:34]
Mark Wayne Mullen
Who was in office at the time?
- [69:35]
Alex Acosta
George W. Bush.
- [69:36]
Mark Wayne Mullen
No, 2009 is when the case came out, and it was. And Obama was in office at the time.
- [69:41]
Alex Acosta
It's not true.
- [69:42]
David Pakman
And you would think that Mark Wayne Mullen might go, oh, you know what? Maybe I do have the facts wrong on this. Maybe I have the timing wrong. Because indeed, Epstein's plea deal was in June 2008. Bush was president. It was overseen by U.S. attorney Acosta, who later went to work for Trump. Obama didn't start till January 2009. But Mark Wayne Mullen just doubles down, down. He doesn't want to accept the truth.
- [70:07]
Mark Wayne Mullen
Even weigh in on that.
- [70:08]
David Pakman
But, and by the way, notice how here Mullen shifts to when the documents were sealed, which I'm going to come back to. But this is what's called moving the goalposts.
- [70:18]
Mark Wayne Mullen
I'll go back to what you're saying. But it wasn't true. The case was sealed in 2009. That's absolutely true. It was heard in 2008. It was sealed in 2009.
- [70:27]
Alex Acosta
The point is that the sweetheart deal, which was completed in 2008, was under the Bush administration. U.S. attorney Alex Acosta. That's why Alex Acosta resigned in the first Bush administration because the Miami Herald had written this story in 2018 about how Epstein got away with so much. And then in 2019, the US Attorney under President Trump, Jeff Berman in the Southern District of New York, then brought charges against him. So, I mean, there is stuff to say that you could, you could point to that, say like President Trump did this or President Trump did that.
- [71:03]
Mark Wayne Mullen
And remember in 2019, President Trump and his administration called for it to be unsealed. At that time too, it went silent. And not a word was said during the Biden administration. Not a word. Nothing was said during the Biden administration.
- [71:14]
Alex Acosta
People can look it up. The sweetheart deal was 2008 during the George W. Bush administration. But I always appreciate.
- [71:21]
David Pakman
So notice how Mark Wayne Mullen shifts in this second clip. He thinks, ok, maybe Jake Tapper is right about the timing of that. Let me just focus on when the documents were sealed. And of course, when the documents were sealed has nothing to do with, number one, who made the deal, number two, who was president when the deal was made. And number three, which president did Alex Acosta ultimately go and work for? And it was Donald Trump. If you are conspiratorial, if you want to find meaning in all of these different shiftings of loyalties, the natural conspiracy would be Trump rewarded Acosta for doing that deal because by doing the non prosecution of Epstein, it prevented Trump's name from coming out as having been associated with him. That's if you want to create some kind of meaning in all of this. And Mark Wayne Mullen just doesn't even accept the facts. This is the problem that I write about in my book, by the way, when we aren't even arguing as to the meaning of the fact facts because we've not even gotten them to acknowledge what the facts are. I want to talk to you today about the most suspicious thing that I've ever seen on YouTube. And it has everything to do with a YouTuber named Benny Johnson. Now, I published a piece on Substack about this where I go into even more detail. But let me explain what this is about. I've been publishing political content to YouTube for a very long time. If you dig way back, you'll find videos from 2009. They make me cringe. Yes, but after 15 years on this platform, you learn a few of the things that are just reality. Number one, video performance is unpredictable. You think a video will do well, it doesn't. You think a video will do okay, it blows up. You just sometimes don't know. Number Two, if you talk about politics, half your audience will hate you. At least the ones that comment. And this is the key part for us. New subscribers track closely with video views. Unless something weird is going on, to get more new subscribers, you have to have more video views. If your video views go down, you're going to have fewer new subscribers. Except if something very weird is happening. And this week, writer and researcher Kyle Tharp published a piece called this right wing YouTuber is having a moment. The YouTuber in question is Benny Johnson. The headline stat that is that in Q2 of this year, Benny Johnson's YouTube channel gained 2.2 million subscribers, making it by far the fastest growing politics related channel of the second quarter by far. Now, why is this unusual? It's unusual because the growth in subscribers for Benny Johnson does not match growth in views. In fact, his views appear to be down slightly. Now, before we go deeper, remember who we're dealing with here. Benny Johnson was caught up in this 2024 scandal where it was revealed that he was indirectly receiving Russian money through a company called Tenet. Johnson and others said, we had no idea the money came from Russia. The payment rates were wildly above market rate. In some cases $400,000 a month. Some even had six figure signing bonus bonuses. So this is not someone with a spotless track record record. Now let's get back to the data. Normally, more views means more subscribers. It's not exact, but that's the pattern. Here's a look at my own channel. About 3.3 million subscribers right now. This is actual data from my YouTube analytics and you can see clearly, more views, more subscribers. It's predictable. That's how it works. Now look at Benny Johnson's data from Q2. The arrows show huge subscriber growth. Growth, but views that are either flat or declining. This is weird. Now compare this to Midas Touch. Midas Touch is one of the fastest growing progressive YouTube channels right now. Similar subscriber numbers, but their views match their subscriber growth. Midas has had high views, high subscribers. That's what you would expect. So what's going on here? There are really only a few scenarios where you see subscriber numbers and view numbers separate. Decouple number one, if you say something truly awful like so disgusting that it encourages your existing subscribers to unsubscribe, you could see that as the views go up of this disgusting thing, you said your net subscribers go down because people go, I got to unsubscribe. This is absolutely disgusting. But that's the opposite of what we're seeing, we're not seeing high views and subscribers going down, down. We're seeing low views and subscribers going up. And that's what gets us to the most likely scenario, which is some kind of artificial subscriber growth. And this is where things get complicated. Artificial subscriber growth might be completely legal. Paid ad campaigns, you run YouTube ads or Google Ads, they're targeting subscriptions to your YouTube channel. You could do that. It's really inefficient for political channels. I don't know anybody who actually does it because the targeting isn't great. It's just really expensive. You've got to pay a crazy amount of money for a relatively small number of subscribers. However, however, if someone else is paying for that, if you had a super pac, a foreign government, some propaganda agency, a wealthy ally, the logic changes. They're not worried about profit, they're after influence. So they might just pour money into inflating your channel subscribers through paid campaigns just to boost your reach. Now, there's other scenarios, like maybe you're using some kind of technical trick, some auto subscribe pop up somewhere or embedded subscriber links or stuff like that. YouTube's terms of service don't allow that. And that stuff tends to get shut down. And finally, you could do what's called subscriber farming. This is probably the most concerning. There's a sort of black market for YouTube subscribers. You can buy them through click farms, hacked accounts, and in other ways it's classic manipulation. These are like the tactics that Russia's Internet Research Agency does. You fake the numbers to make it seem as though you have a lot more influence. The fake subscribers are low quality. Over time they tend to get purged out. But in the short term, they can really boost your clout by showing a really high subscriber number. So what is Benny Johnson actually doing? I have no idea. I want to be clear. I don't have evidence that any of the things I mentioned are happening on his channel. After 15 years of, of being on YouTube, I have never seen subscriber growth like this without a spike in views. I've talked to other creators, none of them have ever seen it. Whatever is going on, the implications are big and it's bigger than YouTube. If this is a coordinated third party campaign, it raises really serious questions about influence operations, manipulating platform metrics. If this is an algorithmic exploit, it would mean YouTube's defenses are weaker than we thought. That impacts everybody. And if this is paid acquisition for political gain, even legally, it could trigger A new arms race for artificial growth. And that will warp the field for independent voices, small creators, and those who don't have the pockets to generate artificial growth. Now, if this is straight up fraud bots purchase subscribers. That would mean it's still pretty easy to game the system. And the fallout isn't just views or clout, it's media coverage. It's, look at the growth of this channel. He must be saying important things. Well, is he? Or is there some kind of artificial subscriber acquisition here? So this is by far the most suspicious thing I've seen on YouTube. And it hurts all of the progressive channels because many of us don't have the third party or whatever it is that is just dumping money into artificial growth. So what can we do? Number one, if you see something that doesn't make sense, report it to the platform that you're seeing it on. And number two, this is free. Just make sure you're subscribed to the YouTube channels of the creators you actually support. We estimate that even though we have three and a quarter million subscribers on YouTube every month, there's another four million people watching the videos who don't subscribe. If you are in that 4 million. If you watch the videos but don't subscribe, consider hitting the subscribe button. It doesn't hurt you in any way, but it really helps us and it's the best tool we have against this sort of algorithmic distortion. We've got a great bonus show for you today. We'll talk about Trump getting roasted after he got caught cheating playing golf in Scotland. We'll talk about Pete Hegseth saying no more polygraphs. We'll talk about Lauren Boebert defending her son Tyler after child abuse allegations. The Apple doesn't fall far from. Ok, hold on, let's wait on that. All of those stories and more on the bonus show. Sign up at. Join Pacman Dotcom. And remember, you can get this entire episode free on Apple podcasts on Spotify, anywhere podcasts are available. I'll see you on the bonus show.