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- [00:00]
Tony Hawk
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- [00:35]
Joy Reid
Okay. I always love it when the music kicks in. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Joy Reid Show. We have got a big night on tap for you tonight. We have got Angelo Carasone from Media Matters for America. We're going to talk about all of this backlash that we're seeing that's happening for Donald Trump apparently breaking one of his biggest, biggest promises, releasing the Epstein files. Also, Congressman Maxwell Frost and Florida State Senator Chevron Jones. They will join us to share more of what they saw and experienced when they paid an unannounced Visit to Ron DeSantis Florida Concentration Camp for Brown, ghoulishly nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz. We're not going to call that MAGA fans do. By the way, the mega fans also selling and buying merch, concentration camp merch. That's because we live in a hell timeline, which is the only reason you do something like that. Independent, also independent journalist Jason Garcia will also join us. He has more details on the horrific atrocities at the Desantis concentration camp and the legislative lies that went into creating it. And finally, Omer Bartov, who is a professor of genocide studies at Brown University, will join us. And I will ask him if the comparison of the Desantis concentration camps to the concentration camps of eras past is in fact appropriate. But first, a little Monday reset for all of you. And thank you for joining us. Whether you're joining us on YouTube or on Substack. Welcome, welcome, welcome. But let's go back for just a moment. There is a popular idiom that shows up frequently in literature and it is called the dog that caught the car. And it goes a little something like this. Dogs really love chasing cars. Our late dog, this, my late dog, Turbo, who was a cute, tiny little mini pincher, was one of those dogs. He used to literally chase anything with wheels. The bigger the better. And in theory, dogs like Turbo would love to get their little canine teeth around the wheels of the cars that they are chasing and eat those cars. Right on up. But what would actually happen if a dog actually caught a car? If they actually did get their teeth around the wheels of a Toyota Camry or, you know, God forbid, a big old suv, what would actually happen? What would they actually do with that car? The answer is they would probably have no idea what to do with the car because they're a dog and it's a car. Cars are giant and dogs are small. Even a big dog would have no idea what to actually do. If, if they bit into the wheels of a car, they would be completely discombobulated and confused and probably injured. MAGA is the dog that caught the car. They have spent years reveling in conspiracy theories, all involving Democrats and Hollywood liberal elites, all of whom are supposedly secret pedophiles who've been kidnapping children for decades and trafficking them to the basins of pizza restaurants that don't have basements. And all that they needed, all that they needed to have happen was for the good people, the true conservatives, to get power and their guy get into the White House. And they would be able to rip the COVID off all of these conspiracies. They would be able to stop all the steals, imprison the pedos, and restore righteous Christian government to America. All they needed to do just restore Donald Trump to power. And they would get all of the answers to everything, all the conspiracy theories they believed in, from who really did the Kennedy assassination to the MLK assassination to the truth behind QAnon's online clues. I mean, they would also probably reveal who QAnon was. Just get Donald Trump in. This is what these people have been worrying about, rather than, I don't know, having Medicaid or food or food stamps or public assistance for the poor, flood warming, flood warning systems and clean air and water and like a working power grid. They don't care about any of that. They don't care if immigrants are getting kidnapped off the streets and traffic to foreign countries or children are going hungry in schools because they've had school lunch fed off, cut off from federally funded sources. They don't care about that. Rather than giving a damn about kids dying of measles or old people dying of COVID or MAGA people, you know, dying because they won't get vaccinated. They don't care about that. What MAGA people have been doing with their time is worrying about conspiracy theories of all kinds from January 6th being an FBI false flag to the black helicopter supposedly coming for their guns, though they weirdly don't see the warning signs of Those street kidnappings, they don't seem to think that's weird. But chief among their absolute favorite conspiracy theories, the one that really brings them all all together, brings them to the table, has involved Jeffrey Epstein. The late, vile, gross pedo sex trafficker. Jeffrey Epstein has long been portrayed in right wing media circles and on their online favorite podcast, et cetera, as the key to unlocking all of the other conspiracies of the far left. But then a funny little thing happened on the way to the X Files. Trump actually won. And rather than stocking his administration with normal experienced people, he hired a bunch of these same MAGA influencers, people from podcast and Fox, who have been peddling these exact same conspiracies for years and making a lot of money doing it. But now that they're in charge of unfurling the conspiracies, now that they are in a position to actually stop the steal and uncover the truth behind all the things that they themselves have said were happening under the noses of we the people perpetuated by Joe Biden and Barack Obama and the Democrats. Now that they have the power to uncover it all, they actually can't do it. Because either the conspiracy theories that they have been peddling for money were never true and they were lying to their base and grifting them all along, or the conspiracies are true. But the people implicated in the conspiracies are the very people who now pay their salaries, including maybe Donald Trump. Dog car. Joining us now is Angelo Carasoni, president of Media Matters for America. He is one of the people who's been paying the most attention to all of the things when it comes to the radio right wings conspiracies. Do we have Angelo in the house? Angelo's not here yet. Angelo's not here yet. Okay, while we wait for Angelo, let's, let's. I just want to play for you just a couple of things just to sort of tease this out just a little bit. Let me play for you. Well, actually, I'm not going to play for you. I'm going to show you what happened over the weekend when Donald Trump decided to plead with his own supporters to stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein. Just stop. Okay, so let's put up this tweet. Trump got ratioed on his own site on Truth Social, his very own site that he owns that's now launching a streaming service. Soon. He went on and pleaded with his people, please stop. And he got ratioed. You know what that means, right? It means that the ratio of people attacking you to the people praising you is like bad for you. That's not supposed to happen on a site you own. And where is your biggest fans? Let's go to Trump. This is Trump ratio 2. His post that he posted on was basically a plea to people and I'm going to read a little bit of it. Okay, I don't like reading too much Trump, but I'm going to read a little bit of Trump. It says what's going on with my boys and in some cases gals, they're all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi who is doing a fantastic job in all caps. We're on one team MAGA and I don't like what's happening. We have a perfect all caps administration, the talk of the world and quote unquote selfish people. He put selfish people in quotes are trying to hurt it all over a guy who never dies. Jeffrey Epstein. For years it's Epstein over and over again. Wait a minute, it's starting to sound like Russia, Russia, Russia. Why are we giving publicity to files written by Obama, crooked Hillary, Comey Brennan and the losers and criminals of the Biden administration who conned the world with the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, 51 intelligence agents, the laptop from hell and more. That's my dog barking. They created the Epstein files just like they created the fake Hillary Clinton Christopher Steele dossier that they used on me. And now my so called friends are playing right into their hands. Why didn't the radical left lunatics release the Epstein files? He goes on and on and on like basically like that. I'm not gonna read the whole thing. And he continues, there's like part two, we're gonna like post for just a second part two of it. It like went on for this is a lengthy, lengthy, lengthy post in which he's his supporters for continually talking about the Epstein files. But instead of people getting on truth social and this is per mediate and supporting him, I don't, I don't have a truth social account. I refuse. Instead of supporting him, his own base, we're like, nah man, you promised us the Epstein files and now we want them. The backlash was immediate rights media. The post was swarmed with angry and skeptical comments. Vastly outnumbered, numbering the likes and reposts. This kind of ratio isn't just a matter of bad optics. It's a warning flare from Trump's base. The digital loyalty he once commanded without question is now at least on this issue showing serious cracks. And we have Angela here. The statement breaks my heart, Mr. President, replied somebody named Rosie 26. I have four daughters and live in Texas where families lost little children. I can't even begin to comprehend the flip narrative that it was long ago. Why are we still talking about this and nobody should care? I just want to note that Rosie, 26, notes that she has four daughters and lives in Texas where there are literal floods and children who are drowned at summer camp. But her main issue, I just want to refocus you her main concern is not that it's not the fact that Donald Trump has promised to get rid of fema. It's not the fact that Kristi Noem, the dog killing lady with the Trump face, that she's redone through plastic surgery, that that lady has completely failed at her job, failed to protect the people of Texas who voted for Trump. That's not her concern. She has four little daughters and she wants the Epstein files. That's what she wants. Another wrote, this is going to cost you so many supporters, wrote a user named Dwayne Sykes. I being one of them. I have been on, I've been to multiple rallies and even was there on J6O. FBI. Oh right, there's my FBI. This is one of the main things that needs to be fixed. Our two tier justice system needs to end. We the people are tired of. Turns out the one thing that Trump fans care about the most more than they care about actually dying in a natural disaster flood without help from the federal government is getting those Jeffrey Epstein files. A couple more things. Let me play you Cash Patel. We played it on the show before. I want to play it for you again. Cash Patel is one of the people who for years has been promising to get to the bottom of the Epstein files to, to release them to the public and listen to him telling Glenn Beck, another right wing content creator, who would have access to those files, Cash Patel.
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Cash Patel
I'm not saying it's not there. Who are you going to get to get them?
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Unnamed Journalist
For instance, who is currently holding this is way off the topic. But who has Jeffrey Epstein's black book?
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Cash Patel
Black book FBI.
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Unnamed Journalist
But who that is, I mean there's.
- [11:51]
Cash Patel
That'S under direct control of the director of the FBI. Just like the manifesto from the Nashville school shooting of the Catholic school. We still haven't seen that. Right? It's not the Nashville police or PD saying we don't want this out. The FBI air mailed into that operation and said this is not getting out. Because they do that because they, this is another government gangster operation. All these local law enforcement get funding from the DOJ and FBI for Local programs.
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Joy Reid
Sorry.
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Cash Patel
If you don't cooperate, you're not getting your million dollars for this, and you're not getting your. And that's a lot of money to these local districts. That's how they play the game.
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Unnamed Commentator
You know, it's the same thing with Epstein's list. It's like, what the hell are these Republicans doing?
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Oh, I saw you give out. I saw you make news this morning about that. I gotta get to that. You say that the FBI has Epstein's list. They're sitting on it. That doesn't seem like something you should do. You're protecting the world's foremost predator. That seems like an evil thing to do, regardless of who may be embarrassed in the release of that list. Why is the FBI protecting the greatest pederast, the largest scale pederast in human history?
- [12:56]
Simple. Because of who's on that list. You don't think that Bill Gates is lobbying Congress night and day to prevent the disclosure of that list? And why is it that the Senate, you know, and good for Senator Blackburn to try to get it out, but then Dick Turbin comes over the top and says, no, we're not going to release the names. I don't care about the list itself. But if released the names, right, what the hell are the House Republicans doing? They have the majority. You can't get the list. You're going to accept Dick Durbin's word, or whoever that guy is, as to who is on that list and who isn't and that it can and can't be released? Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are. We have an election coming up and we need to adjudicate.
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Joy Reid
There we go. Okay, we can stop there. We can stop there. Let's bring in our guest, Angelo Carsoni.
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Unnamed Commentator
How are you going to reward the FBI with a new headquarters building after their illegal surveillance on Donald Trump continues with a reauthorization of fisa, and we can't even get basic documents out. This is why America hates Congress. And this is why I'm tired of the Republican majority saying they're going to get the job done. And.
- [14:00]
Joy Reid
Okay, I think we've played it all. Let's bring in Angelo. Angelo Carasoni of Media Matters for America. Angelo, thanks for being here. Do we have Angelo? Angelo is on screen. Oh, he's on screen. I don't know if we can hear you. Angelo, are you muted?
- [14:19]
Angelo Carasone
Hi, Joy.
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Joy Reid
Hi. Now we've got you. Angelo, great to see you. Great to see you. No, that's quite all right, let's talk about this because it does seem to me that people thought that, you know, cutting MAGA rural people's Medicaid and maybe making their hospitals close would be the thing that tipped them over. That ain't it. It's the Epstein files. What do you make of this sudden backlash that's pulled in? Everyone from Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, they're all mad at Trump and Cash Patel and Pam Bondi for not releasing these files. What do you make of that? And what have you seen out there in Magellan?
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Angelo Carasone
Yeah, I mean, look, there's a lot, there's a lot happening here. And I think one of the reasons why it's such a potent issue and obviously Medicaid, it's too abstract. People don't feel they're not connected to it yet. They will be in a couple years, but right now it feels really far removed. But this is front and center for them because one of the things to consider is that, remember, Trump built an organized power on what used to be considered the fringes. He activated all of these people and brought them into the center of the Republican Party, into politics. And one of the vehicles to get the fringes to come in was to spin up and reinforce a lot of these conspiracy theories. QAnon was the fastest growing part of MAGA media for years. It was one of the fastest growing communities on Facebook ever with 25% growth rates that nothing has anything close to that. And QAnon is a conspiracy theory that the elites are out there doing all sorts of nefarious things, including child sex trafficking, pedophilia for either actual vampirism or psychic vampirism or just because if they want to appeal to their sexual delights. But either way, the elites are doing horrible things to kids and everybody else is covering up for it. That has been a central pillar of the story that Trump has built and reinforced for years for his base and that the right wing media, the very people that are turning on Trump right now, have captivated audiences and told stories with. So it is central to them as well as to the audience. And that's why the story is going to perpetuate. And one of the ways that he added and expanded the appeal last cycle with all these broadcasts was this was one of the things that he wanted to talk about. They all asked him about whether or not he was going to release the Epstein files if he was elected president. So yeah, this is one of the connectors. This is a central theme. It's not that surprising when you look at just how big of an issue it's been for so many years.
- [16:46]
Joy Reid
I don't know if we have this clip of Donald Trump being asked directly if he would release the Epstein files. And we have that clip. If we could tee that up. But, you know, he said he would absolutely release JFK files. He said he would absolutely release MLK files. Then he got a little funny when it came to releasing the Epstein files. He was like, do we have that?
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Angelo Carasone
Yeah, maybe not. I don't know about that.
- [17:07]
Joy Reid
He was like, maybe bad things were happening with Epstein and maybe. I don't know. But the issue, too. Oh, here it is. Let's listen.
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Unnamed Interviewer
Lingering mysteries. One of the biggest ones is whether he ever worked for an American or foreign intelligence agency. The former labor secretary who was Miami U.S. attorney Alex Acosta, he allegedly said that he did work for an intelligence agency. So could you resolve whether or not he did? And also could you say why there was a minute missing from the jailhouse tape?
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Tony Hawk
Yeah, sure.
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Angelo Carasone
If I have.
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Joy Reid
Did I.
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Unnamed Interviewer
Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years. You're asking. We have Texas, we have this. We have all of the things. And are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable. Do you want to waste the time and do you feel like answering?
- [18:01]
Angelo Carasone
I don't mind answering.
- [18:02]
Unnamed Interviewer
I mean, I can't believe you're asking a question on that. Epstein, at a time like this, where we're having some.
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- [18:40]
Joy Reid
So that was not exactly the one I was looking for, but that's okay because that is Pam Bondi also joining in the. I don't know. I'm not sure I want to do it. The reason people care about this, we have a photo of Donald Trump with Ghislaine Maxwell, with Melania Trump and Jeffrey Epstein together. These. This is someone that he knew for a very long time. We interviewed Angela, we interviewed Michael Wolf, and he said not only were they the best of friends for a decade, but that toward the end of his life. And you guys just let me know. Jason when you have that clip. Toward the end of his life, he low key threatened Donald Trump that he had something that could make people have to end or have to cancel the election. And then there's also Angelo. I mean, look, MAGA people to my mind are a religious cult. They are a cult of personality. But on the Jeffrey Epstein thing, they're not entirely wrong. It does. There is some sort of COVID up. There is a discomfort that Donald Trump has with talking about Jeffrey Epstein all of a sudden post election, he doesn't want anything to do with it. Pam Bondi, the former Attorney General of Florida who's now the Attorney General of the United States, wants nothing to do with it, is like super quiet after being very loud about it. And it appears that this is actually disrupting the DOJ and causing folks to want to leave. Former podcasters who are like, I don't want to be with it.
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Cash Patel
Yeah.
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Angelo Carasone
And I think there's one really significant thing about this, to your point about Trump being uncomfortable talking about it that I find very revealing and that's that you know that that sort of weird tweet that he sent over the weekend was like, come on, what's going on with my guys and girls? Like, everybody stop. There's nothing to see here. We're done, we're done with this issue. It's the first time that one of his posts on Truth Social ever got ratioed. And by that I mean that instead of having more likes, it had more comments. That never happens. It's literally the first and only time one of his posts has been in that situation. And when you look at the comments, they're not like, yes, we agree with you, they're actually his people are saying the opposite. They're saying, no, no, no, you have this wrong. And it's a reflection of the fact that not only is he uneasy talking about it, but but it's a really rare moment where he's actually not tapped into the zeitgeist of his own base. And that is a real problem for him going forward now he's made some real gains in clamping down right Fox, you know, up out as of 4pm today, they talked about Biden 86 times. Zero times they mentioned Epstein. Charlie Kirk said he was done talking about it. You know, he may be able to diffuse or close a couple of these doors, but the reality is it's going to be self fulfilling because the zeitgeist is really there and his unease talking about it to the very audience that love these conspiracies are actually going to latch onto that narrative and continue to fuel and demand and ask for more, even for their own selfish reasons because it's great for their own engagement. Yeah. So one time that something else is going to have better ratings than him.
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Joy Reid
And the other piece of it is that now it is not just the QAnon people who are interested in these questions. Wired magazine had a really fascinating piece up about how the video that they released that the DOJ released to try to assuage, you know, sort of slake the thirst of the magazine mega crowd for info on Jeffrey Epstein. It turns out the video they released was not raw video. It was edited. It was edited with like regular old editing software that you can just edit with that any consumer can buy. And there was a minute missing and they're not explaining that. And then I want to read to you just a little bit. Joe Conison for alternate wrote a piece that is titled There's Far More to Trump and Epstein's Relationship, per his biographer. And I just want to read you all a little bit if we don't have this full article on screen, but I just want to read a little bit to you. And it's about who we interviewed on this show who talked about same kind of episode. And I want to read this to you a little bit about Michael Wolf. And it says most Americans interested in Epstein and Trump has seen the old video of them together at a party whispering and leering at young women. And we have that video available as well. Most have seen quotes from Trump in magazine profiles praising his pal Epstein, who likes beautiful women as much as I do. And many of them are on the younger side. But if you listen to Michael Wolfe, the best selling Trump biographer and National Magazine Award winning writer, there's far more to their relationship than a few words and images. Wolf knows Trump well and knew Epstein very well. And what he has to say about them points to very troubling direction. Last month, he discussed both subjects and their connections on the Court of History Midas Touches podcast hosted by journalist Sydney Blumenthal and historian Sean Willis. And here's what's important. While Trump has repeatedly tried to minimize his ties to Epstein, who he now calls a creep, Wolf said Epstein and Trump had been the best of friends for almost 15 years. They were instrumental in each other's rise. The pair hunted women together, according to but fell out as very rich men do over real estate. Trump went behind Epstein's back to outbid him on a Palm beach property that both coveted. Epstein believed that Trump was actually laundering money for a Russian oligarch and threatened to expose him. And then this is the key part. According to Wolf's recollection of what Epstein told him, Trump dropped a dime on his friend's trafficking of young girls to the Palm Beach Police Department, which, as Wolf notes, indicates that Trump had long known of the crimes perpetrated at Epstein's house. By the time Trump's ascents to the presidency, Epstein was ready to drop a dime of his own. Wolf told Blumenthal and Wilentz how, after Trump's election in 2016, quote, quote, I was sitting talking to Epstein, and he said, wait a minute, I've got to show you something. According to Wolf, Epstein went into his safe and came out with photographs. They were Polaroids, I think, of the kind. And he kind of spread them out like playing cards. Do we have the video, Jason? We have it. We do. We're gonna play. And it says, it showed Trump with girls of an uncertain age at Epstein beach house. And he places these on the pictures around 19. Let's just play this. Let's play this video. He sold the same story on this show. Let's just play that. I mean, Donald Trump, you know, look, his history is what he did to Eugene Carroll and not just defaming her, but what he did to her in the first place. About 22 dozen women who've accused him of similar sort of lascivious predilections. I'll just put it that way. He's talked about maybe musing about maybe pardoning Diddy, which is weird. You know, he seems to think that he was somehow, maybe wrongly accused. He seems to have a proclivity for people like that. So do you believe, as a journalist, having done a lot of biographical work on him, that he's done things with Jeffrey Epstein that, if it came out, would even horrify MAGA people?
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Unnamed Journalist
Well, I'm not sure what would horrify MAGA people. And the only. I mean, what I specifically know is that Epstein had a series of photographs of Trump. They were in his safe. He would go to the safe, he would bring them out and treating them almost like playing cards. This was an amusing thing. Here were these dozen photographs with Trump with some of the Epstein women, girls under, you know, of indeterminate age. And I specifically remember three of them there. Two in which girls. These. Some of these girls are sitting on Trump's lap and they are topless. And then another one in which Trump has a stain on the front of his pants and the girls are pointing maybe three or four girls are pointing at this and laughing. And I assume those or it would be a reasonable assumption that those photographs were in Epstein's safe when the FBI raided Epstein's house after his arrest in 2019. Where are they now? I don't know.
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Joy Reid
Mama. Papa. Mi cuerpo. Alarm.