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- [00:00]
A
Hey, next level, fam. It's jvl. I had to do a little bit of a weird secret show this week because Sarah was out of town. And so I brought in my new friend. Not best friend, not yet, but my new friend, Katherine Rampel, who has just joined the Bulwark. And we had a pretty great talk, I think. I think you're gonna like it a lot. So here is making her secret show debut, Kathryn Rampel. Enjoy the show. Hello, everyone. This is jvl. My best friend, Sarah Longwell is not here. She is off doing important stuff. But I have a new friend, Kathryn Rampel, the latest bulwarker, who is here with her Florida woman T shirt. A butterfly ballot. Amazing. Look at that.
- [00:48]
B
Yeah. This is my most prized piece of political paraphernalia. It is from the 2000 election. I grew up in South Florida and there were lots of protests over this butterfly ballot when, like, all of the South Florida Jews voted for Pat Buchanan by accident. And if you can see, it's like enormous on me. I wear this as a sleep shirt, but it says revote. Revote.
- [01:13]
A
Fantastic.
- [01:14]
B
And as I was saying before we started recording, my claim to fame as a teenager is that I think I got the one and only, only interview with Teresa Lepore, who was the head of Palm beach county elections, who was responsible for the butterfly ballot and was like in hiding at the time because understandably, people were kind of mad at her.
- [01:39]
A
Yeah.
- [01:39]
B
But I was a high school journalist and she agreed to give me an interview, so.
- [01:44]
A
Wow. I. One of my special, one of my theories is that actually the Florida election recount is an underappreciated driver of where we are today. I believe people have largely forgot about it because it's pre 911 and everything before 911 just sort of gets compacted into post World War II. Right. It all gets. Just gets flattened into cold war. And I don't know, I. I feel like. I feel like both the Bush campaign and the Gore campaign bear some responsibility for not having sat and thought about what putting us all through a big. A big fight like that over the results of a presidential election would do long term to the country.
- [02:35]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think Al Gore did give a pretty gracious concession speech.
- [02:41]
A
Yeah, 100%.
- [02:43]
B
Somehow we are still litigating the 2020 election. Maybe we'll talk about this a little bit today. But looks like Trumpers, Trump's DOJ is again investigating Georgia in 2020 and why they couldn't just find him. Those missing votes, they were all right there. They Were all right there. Did they look between the couch cushions? Honestly? So anyway, so like we're, we're still living that dream as such as it is. And you know, as shocking as the recount stuff was in 2000 in my home state, it was very civil by comparison.
- [03:28]
A
By comparison, yeah. But the, the acrimony long term, I think. And then having rolling right from the 2000 recount into 9, 11 and having like that accidental presidency turning into a war presidency, like again, history is contingent.
- [03:47]
B
Yeah, yeah, that's all.
- [03:49]
A
Okay. So there's a fair amount of stuff for us to cover. You're new here, you have not done this before. So we'll have the training wheels on the big story this week. Jeffrey Epstein stuff. I don't think you and I have ever. I mean, you and I have talked very little period. I don't think we've ever talked. Jeffrey Epstein, also quasi Florida man.
- [04:11]
B
Yes, Florida man, slash private island man. I feel a little bit left out because I feel like everyone else got an email from Jeffrey Epstein except for me. And I mean, maybe that's good, maybe that's good, I guess, but it does feel like there are, there's a big trove of people in those emails and you know, some with, with prurient interest. I, I've been reading some of them. But obviously there is some political interest in all of this stuff as well.
- [04:48]
A
How about the Larry Summers stuff?
- [04:51]
B
Yeah.
- [04:52]
A
Can you imagine being a former Secretary of the treasury and still being so thirsty that you've got to be like trading emails with your pal Jeffrey Epstein?
- [05:02]
B
Epstein was. I mean, look, I know Larry and I've known him for a long time. I really respect him as an economist and I like him, actually. I know that he rubs some people the wrong way.
- [05:16]
A
One of the few.
- [05:17]
B
Yeah.
- [05:18]
A
Not a lot of people go around saying, yeah, that Larry Summers a good guy. Well, people respect him as an economist.
- [05:25]
B
Yes, I respect him. I respect his intellect. Certainly it's, yeah. Not a good look. To put things in a little bit of context. Epstein had given a lot of money to Harvard and Larry Summers had been the president of Harvard. So, you know, that was no longer.
- [05:43]
A
The president of the.
- [05:43]
B
Harvard was no longer like, yeah, he.
- [05:45]
A
Had a professional obligation to be nice to the donor.
- [05:47]
B
No, I agree, I agree it's, it's not a good look. And yeah, I think again, the, the fact that there are a lot of people with proximity to this guy who turns out to have been a child sex trafficker is disturbing and not a.
- [06:07]
A
Secret child sex trafficker.
- [06:09]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [06:10]
A
Is the other thing, like, it was pretty.
- [06:12]
B
I mean, he had been arrested for.
- [06:14]
A
Some stuff and he'd already done time.
- [06:15]
B
He'd already done time.
- [06:17]
A
And the Lolita Express was a thing that everybody joked about, like, even in print. Like, I mean, I don't know, maybe this is just, like, shows how. How bourgeois my own life is, but I.
- [06:32]
B
Because you're not on the Lolita Express and not getting emails from. I can. Of a. An indicted sex trafficker.
- [06:40]
A
I don't have contact with people like that. And if. If I did and they got into, like, I would stop emailing with them.
- [06:47]
B
Yeah, I know.
- [06:48]
A
Like, I don't know. Like, my bourgeois morality would be like, no, you're a bad person.
- [06:54]
B
Yeah, yeah. I don't know. There is certainly a lot of hints in those emails, including to Larry, among others, that there was some big dirt that Epstein had on Donald Trump. I also saw that somebody pointed out that, I think in one of the emails to Larry, Epstein said, like, Trump is the worst person he's ever met or one of the worst people he knows. Like, do you know how bad you have to be to be one of the worst people that Jeffrey Epstein knew? That's impressive. That's a high bar. I feel like.
- [07:32]
A
Great.
- [07:32]
B
It's not great. And, you know, I guess we'll see what else comes out of all of this, particularly since it looks like the house maybe is going to get more of these files.
- [07:46]
A
Yeah, I think they're going to. Well, they're going to vote on it. At least.
- [07:49]
B
They're going to vote on it. Yeah.
- [07:50]
A
And here's. Here's my question to you. Can you construct a reasonable defense of Trump in which Trump didn't know what was going on?
- [08:03]
B
No. I mean, I know he's not the brightest bulb, but, like, he was. He was on the plane. He, like, apparently was spending Thanksgiving. Did I see this? That he was spending Thanksgiving with. With Epstein at one point.
- [08:18]
A
Like, so this is. This is 2017. Actually, I went digging into this.
- [08:22]
B
Okay, tell me more, because maybe I'm talking out of my rear end.
- [08:26]
A
So we don't know. And this is a thing which should be findoutable. What we have is an email from Epstein to one of his friends, a lady friend. She says, what are you doing for Thanksgiving? This is like the email is the week of Thanksgiving. So it's like two days before. And he says, oh, I'm going to go hang out with this woman, Eva. Eva refers to a former paramour of his who is now married to a hedge Fund billionaire and his friend, the, his lady friend on the other email says oh well then her husband will be there. Who else? And he lists a couple of people and says Trump. So is this true? Right? I mean a, it's, he's not saying I spent it with, he's saying I'm going to spend it at this place and Trump will be there. So maybe, maybe he was not lying. Maybe he expected Trump to be there and Trump wasn't there. But I don't know. Eva is subpoena a bold Trump was the sitting president United States. His calendar is pretty well kept. There are security guest lists of everybody who's going to appear in a place that he's going to be at. Right. Everybody there has to be vetted.
- [09:38]
B
Yeah.
- [09:38]
A
Checked out and vetted so the like we can find out the answer to this. And I so as I read through the emails and I did not read all of them, but I did see three distinct versions of Epstein and I want to try this out on you and see what you think. The first is the version of Epstein who is talking with Gillet or however the hell you're supposed to pronounce her name.
- [10:06]
B
I think there's more sneezing sounds in her more.
- [10:09]
A
But it's French, right? You're supposed to like really Frenchify it.
- [10:12]
B
Yes, exactly.
- [10:14]
A
So and the, the version of him which is talking with her is very sort of conspiratorial. Then there's the version of him which is talking with his sort of hangers on in the pre incarceration period so before he goes to jail, which is a lot of those Larry types. And then there's the version of him once Trump is president where he, it seems much more performative. And I might, my working theory is that I mean he's not a trustworthy witness obviously because he's not here, but B, because he's a criminal. But that different parts of him are going to be more trustworthy than others. And so like the versions that we see of him making pronouncements as he's trying to construct, like talking with Michael Wolff, I think are going to be less trustworthy than the private communications much, much earlier. Like in 2011, 2012 with Maxwell.
- [11:24]
B
Yeah. Well, when he's talking with Michael Wolf who is a well known writer, clearly Epstein had some sense that that material would if not be leaked, be quoted, like deliberately quoted. Right. So he is clearly, you say performative, I would say more guarded or more deliberate about what he says and, and what image he wants to craft that doesn't mean it's wrong, doesn't mean it's, it's less accurate. We just don't know. But the prior messages, which were not meant for public consumption, presumably were a little bit more unguarded. And again, it would be nice to go back and cross examine him about all of this, but we unfortunately can't. And I think that's because he died.
- [12:24]
A
Under completely innocent circumstances.
- [12:27]
B
Yeah.
- [12:28]
A
Can I, can I just. On the. I am in general against conspiracy theories, but there, there are basically two, Two recent instances in American life where I, the, the circumstances seem so utterly bizarre and the explanations which have been provided seem so patently incomplete that I'd be willing to believe just one of them is the suicide of Jeffrey Epstein. The second of which is like the Las Vegas shooter, the guy who shot up the music festival. Again, everything about the explanation of that, which is barely an explanation, like there's almost no investigation of it, it just seems crazy to me. And if you told me he was an alien, then I would believe that. And if you told me he was a lone wolf who just acting on himself, I, I'm open to believing that too. I'm open to anything. But in the Epstein suicide, like, I'm basically open to just about anything on this because it's so wildly convenient. There just isn't a good explanation. Like, oh, and here's the videotape. Oh, but it's missing three minutes. Come on.
- [13:51]
B
Yeah, I too would like to know more. I try to avoid publicly speculating on what might have happened, but like you, I am open to lots of alternative realities, to what we know, or like, it's not even alternative realities. It's just like there's so many gaps in our knowledge. Right. About what happened or gaps in literal footage that I think there's a. Yeah, I think there's a difference between saying, like, I know for sure this person was an alien or this person was murdered and like, what don't we know? And trying to figure out how we push harder on that and then being curious about why some people don't want to know, don't want to fill in those gaps in our knowledge and in our visibility into these incidents. And, you know, to some extent that's just as significant. Like, it's been interesting seeing how incurious a lot of Trump allies are about all of this. I don't mean specifically Jeffrey Epstein's bizarre death circumstances, but like, just Jeffrey Epstein in general. There's some effort to like, maybe issue half hearted apologias for Epstein Like Megyn Kelly is basically saying, well, he was into the barely legal 15 year old. And it's like, first of all, 15 year olds, not barely legal. Not legal. And besides, I think saying he was only into 15 year olds is not the exculpatory explanation she thinks it is. And why, like what? I don't know. It's, I guess it's, you know, preemptively trying to defend the President.
- [15:58]
A
That's the weirdest thing.
- [15:59]
B
It's so weird. Yeah, it's, that's weird. Lots of stuff around this is weird. And then like just the, the lack of coverage on Fox News, you know, there's coverage of trans athletes and all of the other greatest hits. And for some reason, again, very little curiosity about this bombshell trove of emails that we've already seen, let alone pushing for more information that primarily House Democrats and some House Republicans are asking for now.
- [16:37]
A
Lauren Boebert, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
- [16:41]
B
I hero of the resistance.
- [16:43]
A
Lauren, I have another, another theory that I will try out on you. Not a conspiracy theory, just a theory of politics, which is that if there is a Republican break with Trump, it will actually be powered by the, the handful of genuine true believers in this stuff. And it'll be people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert who, whatever else you want to say with them, I don't think are especially cynical. I think that's why I, I maintain that Marjorie Taylor Greene and I can be friends or at least friendly because like she gen. She's not Margot Rubio. It's not a put on. Like she, she just believes these things and like, I'm happy to accept people at face value who believe the things they genuinely believe in. Um, I feel like you can work with that, right? You can have relationships, authenticity. Well, because it's like there are operating good faith, right? I mean, somebody who believes crazy things is still operating in, in a form of good faith.
- [17:50]
B
Okay.
- [17:51]
A
And paradoxically, I think that the, the good Republicans, the ones who are supposed to be the grownups, will be the last ones to break with Trump because they're only there for the power anyway. And so, so long as Trump has power, they're not going to give up anything. And they're gonna, they will wind up being the dead enders or the bitter enders, right? And they won't jump until the ship has capsized. If it capsizes, maybe it won't, but I don't know. Does that sound crazy to you?
- [18:28]
B
I think that's a good theory of the case. But to be fair, like, my instincts about this have been wrong for many years. I thought back in 2016 that Republicans were going to cut him loose a few different times, not just after the Access Hollywood tape, but like I remember, I think I even wrote something I'd have to go back and check, suggesting in early 2017, like, oh, once they get their tax cuts through, they're gonna, they're gonna turn on him. Like, they're, that it's, it's all. I thought at the time that this was all just about, like, holding their noses, Republicans in, in Congress in particular, holding their noses until they got the thing that they really needed him for that they cared about. And then obviously no version of that materialized. They did get their tax cuts, but then they hung around him and then the people who had turned on him were pushed out. Right, the. Yeah, the never Trump Republican types. And so I don't know. I don't, I really don't trust my instincts on this. I think it'll be interesting to see what happens with the people that Trump is leaning on now that fall into that category where you think they are genuine and acting in good faith. I'm not sure I agree that, that Lauren Boebert is not performative as well. Maybe not, but they've been leaning on her. They've been leaning on a number of these people who were, like, generally considered hardcore maga. And so what happens with them, I don't know. Marjorie Taylor Greene clearly has broken with Trump in a number of ways already, and there are different theories about why. One is that I think it's because.
- [20:12]
A
She'S got a heart of gold.
- [20:13]
B
Yeah, that's my theory. Could be. That's plausible. So, you know, it could be that, like, she genuinely disagrees with him on not just Epstein, but the health insurance subsidies and other things. There's also been some reporting suggesting that maybe he put the kibosh on her Senate campaign and, or potential, you know, what, what, what? Her Senate ambitions, I should say. And so maybe that's why she's broken with him. I don't know. I don't know what's in her heart of gold. But, you know, I think ultimately, I think incentives do matter. And as long as the voter base is still with Trump, I think it will be con. It will still be hard for lawmakers to break with him in ways big and small. And until that changes, and obviously these things are related, Right? Like where the voter base is is partly about where the voter leadership is and where media is and all of that. But until that changes, I think it's really hard to see a lot of Republicans cutting him loose.
- [21:31]
A
So. So, like you, I had, from the beginning assumed that the Republican Party was going to abandon Trump. And my. My thinking changed after the 2018 elections, because in any normal environment, the 2018 elections would have been the kind of loss at which point the party would have started triangulating against him.
- [21:54]
B
Yeah.
- [21:54]
A
And they didn't. And what that did was that had. I think I wrote about this at the time, it shifted my frame where I had thought that we were approaching a tipping point after which the Republican Party would tip against Trump. But in reality, the tipping point had actually come much, much earlier, and that tipping point had gone in the other direction. Right. The party had tipped over into Trumpism and become pot. Committed to it. And we just quite didn't. On the outside. We didn't understand that. Listen, the rest of the show is over behind the paywall. Just me and Catherine talking about some more stuff. This is a great time to join Bulwark plus, if you want. We're finally, like, winning for the first time in forever. We actually even wind up some days having news that is mostly good instead of all terrible. Like, what better time is there? Come on, get inside the community. Be with us. Join Bulwark Plus.