← To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
Jim Acosta: Trump, Epstein, and the Politics of Distraction
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- [01:55]
Charlie Sykes
I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome to the to the Contrary podcast, where there's a lot to talk about today. And to talk about it all, our good friend Jim Acosta joins me. Jim, welcome back to the podcast.
- [02:06]
Ryan Sickler
Hey, Charlie, great to see you.
- [02:08]
Charlie Sykes
All right, let's just dive right in here. You are a longtime Trump observer. We had that scene in the Oval Office where the President of the United States accuses one of his predecessors of treason. I mean, you know, again, we've gone through this so often, like, boy, that was crazy. That was nuts. What the hell happened there? But, but, I mean, it does seem like we need to take a deep breath and go, okay, this is really remarkable, even by the standards of Trump, this deranged rant about something that happened 10 years ago. And following up, I mean, it came after that weekend of crazy social media posts, the TikTok videos of Barack Obama being arrested, pushed to his knees, handcuffed. Jim Acosta, what were you thinking when you were watching that?
- [03:02]
Ryan Sickler
Yeah, you know, I think, you know, I think Donald Trump is in a bad spot right now, to say the least. He's totally freaked out over the Jeffrey Epstein case. He has tried every trick in the Trump playbook in terms of distracting his base and the American people from the Epstein files, and he just hasn't been able to do it. And, you know, he's talked about Rosie o', Donnell, my Washington commanders. He's talking Obama being guilty of treason, and he's rehashing things that he's rehashed before. Starting to feel like season five, six and seven of the Apprentice, you know, after a while, hearing you're fired is just kind of. It's kind of meh.
- [03:42]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [03:42]
Ryan Sickler
What else is on tv, Hun, let's, let's change the channel. You know, and I think, I think Trump is in a bind. I don't think he is able to do what he's been able to do in the past. And, you know, just to take this one step further, Charlie, because I don't want to just write it off as just his usual reality TV antics. It is highly dangerous, and we just need to say it plainly. It is highly dangerous for Donald Trump to accuse Barack Obama of treason. He knows full well when he puts that kind of content out in the atmosphere, especially with his fringe base, that he might potentially be putting the life of the former president in danger when he engages in that kind of rhetoric. And, you know, I was thinking about some of this, you know, pretty long and hard over the last 24 hours since he, he did this, since he said what he said. And it seems to me that, you know, we're in a position right now where Donald Trump is really at war with the truth. And he is these lies that he's weaponized, these lies about the election, he's weaponized these lies about Barack Obama. These are his weapons of mass destruction. And to me, what he is doing is he is bombarding and doing violence to the truth in this country. I mean, I'm happy to unpack that further, but my sense of it is, is that he's playing a dangerous game right now because he's up against it in this Epstein case.
- [05:04]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, this, this is a really important point because, I mean, there is that, that, that tendency to sort of roll your eyes and go, okay, this is Trump, you know, Trump, you know, you know, lying once again. But this is a. This is a dangerous moment because we are dealing with a desperate man. He is the President of the United States. He has access to nuclear weapons, but also to the vast array of powers the president has to ruin people's lives. And when you throw out things like criminal conspiracies about somebody, it is. It may have consequences. You know, in the short term, you're having people like Marjorie Taylor Greene saying it's not enough to throw out the red meat. If you're gonna, you know, if you have evidence that he committed treason, then why aren't you going to arrest him?
- [05:47]
Ryan Sickler
Right.
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Charlie Sykes
This is a president who. It feels like he's going up the ladder of things to distract from Epstein, that, that everything, again, as you point out, you know, everything he's tried in the past, he's pressed all the buttons. You know, he's done the silly things. He' done the distractions. He's gone with the culture war, even tariffs, you know, I don't know who's going to bomb next, but none of it is working. And he's used to being able to warp reality into his own image. And so each one is an escalation. And it feels like going back and accusing Barack Obama of treason is nearing that break point. Like, where the hell is he going after this? What is he capable of doing? Because, you know that he's sitting around and thinking, what tools do I have? What weapons do I have now to. To. To change the subject, right? So we're. We're at a dangerous point, but it could become even more dangerous.
- [06:46]
Ryan Sickler
I agree wholeheartedly. And the other thing you have to look out, Charlie, is. Is what he's talking about. He's talking about the 2016 election, right? So, you know, when he's trying to say that, you know, Obama is guilty of treason, what he's essentially saying is that Obama somehow interfered with the 2016 election and that this, you know, the Russia hoax, as he calls it, was being used against him to try to keep him from winning the White House, which he did win in 2016, let's not forget he became the President of the United States. And, you know, I covered the 2016 campaign. I was actually in the room with him, Charlie, and I asked the question that prompted the response from him when he said, Russia, if you're listening, I hope you find he'll Hillary Clinton's emails. And if you did, the press will reward you mightily. And remember after he said that the Russians did try to hack into the, into the Democrat emails and they were put out by, you know, WikiLeaks and so on. And the Russians later admitted, Prigozhin admitted that he interfered in the campaign. In addition to that, Donald Trump Jr. Jared Kushner and Manafort, Paul Manafort had that meeting at Trump Tower in June of 2016 with a Russian attorney who said she was representing the Kremlin. And Donald Trump Jr. Welcomed their interference in the campaign. He said, I would love it if that happened close to the election. And a lot of this was the basis for the Mueller investigation. A lot of this was the basis for the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on all of this. And the Senate Intelligence community, chaired by Marco Rubio, chair by exactly found that the Russians did try to interfere in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump. So he says this Russia hoax stuff and I've gone round and round with him about it because he's trying to rewrite history. I mean, you can go back and find the video. Trump said during the 2016 campaign, oh, anybody would have taken that meeting and talking about his son taking that meeting. So to me, it would have been investigative malpractice to not investigate that during the campaign. I mean, this is why he called me fake news at that press conference in June, January 2017. I tried to ask him, did anybody on your campaign have contact with the Russians during that campaign? And he would not answer my question. That's when he said, you are fake news. So I just not to go down that rabbit hole. But that's the basis for why he continues to cry about this.
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Charlie Sykes
Well, speaking of rabbit holes, let's underline the fact that we did have the Senate Intelligence Committee report signed off on by Marco Rubio, making it clear that yes, Russia did interfere in the election to benefit Donald Trump. Donald Trump actually in 2018 at least went through the motions of accepting the Intelligence Community's conclusion that they had in fact tried to influence the election. But I'm reluctant to take the bait on all of this to relitigate that because the reason he's talk talking about it is not because he wants to re litigate it, not because there's any new evidence that sheds a different light on. He is talking about it as part of this desperate flop sweat effort to distract attention from Epstein, which is an indication of another metric of like, how consuming is this Jeffrey Epstein story? And again, this was not something that I predicted, was not on my bingo card, but I was talking to somebody from doing a podcast in London earlier this morning, and I said, if you want a metric about how big a deal this is, the fact that the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein has just chased the US Congress out of Washington D.C. that they shut down some of us because they, it is amazing. And Donald Trump just can't figure out a way to make people forget about it or shut up about it. Now, again, he is a master of this. He, I mean, let's give him credit. He. We live in a news cycle and you've lived it for years, where giant stories that would have dominated the news at one time for six weeks, you know, are forgotten about in two or three hours. We are now in the second, third week of this story. And he cannot figure out how to, how to get away, you know, how to, how to make it go away. You know, he, I think that, you know, maybe he thought, well, we'll release the grand jury transcripts and everybody. Yeah, that, that is not, that's, that's a head fake. That's not going to do it. So now I want to get your take on this, the Ghislaine Maxwell thing where he's sending Todd Blanche, his former personal attorney, down. Look, I try not to be cynical, as you know, Jim.
- [11:23]
Ryan Sickler
Yeah.
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Charlie Sykes
But it does seem as if the, that he, that he thinks that, what do you think he's playing here? I mean, I'm, I'm willing to, I'm willing to speculate that they're basically saying, jelaine, would you like commutation or a pardon? And you know what you need to say in order to get that?
- [11:41]
Ryan Sickler
Let's make a deal. Ghislaine Maxwell.
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Charlie Sykes
Okay.
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Ryan Sickler
Yeah. Do you take what's behind door number one, another 20 years in prison, or might you want to say Donald Trump wants you to say?
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Charlie Sykes
Right, okay.
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Ryan Sickler
And a reduced sentence behind door number two. You know, I, you know.
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Charlie Sykes
Well, what do you think?
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Ryan Sickler
No, I mean, I think that's exactly what's going on here. And I mean, Charlie, you and I are old enough to know this. How unethical, how inappropriate is it for Donald Trump to be sending his former defense attorney, who is now a high level Justice Department official, down to talk to Ghislaine Maxwell behind bars? What is this? Why now a former Soviet republic? This is supposed to be the United States of America. It is unbelievable that his former defense attorney would be going down to talk To Ghislaine Maxwell, of course, they're going to be talking turkey and trying to figure out what they can do to extricate Donald Trump from this situation. That is, that is all they are doing right now. And when Mike Johnson, who apparently was on this right wing podcast last week saying we should release the Epstein files is now this week, as you were just saying a few moments ago, shutting down the Congress, I mean, the American people need to absorb this information. The speaker of the House is shutting down the Congress and sending the House of Representatives home for their August recess early. Like these guys don't work hard enough as it is so they don't have a vote on Jeffrey Epstein. That is the totality of why he's doing it.
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Charlie Sykes
To give you a sense of how unreal it is. When I first saw that bet on social media, my first reaction was, no, not really. What's really going on here? No, is this real life? Because the, the notion that that vote in the Rules Committee would freak out Republicans in the administration to the extent that they basically say we're done for the year, we're going home until September, is like so over the top. And yet, and yet it has. And you know, part of this problem, why this won't go away is that, and this, this is, this is also unusual. I won't say unprecedented, but. Well, it's close to unprecedented that you have a number of Republicans who are willing to beat the drums on all of this, willing to break with the administration. You have, you know, Congressman Massie, who with the, with, by the way, the backing of Elon Musk.
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Ryan Sickler
Yeah.
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Charlie Sykes
Who's got, who's got a bunch of Republicans. And so there's no way, there's no way, you know, on door number one, there's no way that you can let that pass because, you know, obviously Trump, you know, is adamantly not going to want to release those documents. And then number two, you don't want to have Republican congressman go on record as part of the COVID up. So, you know, it's like, run away. By the way, could we just give a shout out to Elon Musk because, you know, all of this is happening because, you know, you'd run the tape back early in the year. And I think you and I both thought one of the great dramas of 2025 or 2025 and 2026 will be the, the Shakespearean relationship between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, you know, the world's most powerful man, the world richest man, that, you know, the bromance Was not going to last. Right. That something was going to happen.
- [15:02]
Ryan Sickler
Yeah.
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Charlie Sykes
My script writers didn't have it this lurid that Elon Musk is the one who. Yeah, I mean, it really goes back to that Elon Musk tweet.
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Ryan Sickler
Doesn't really does. And, you know, you have to wonder, why does Elon Musk have so much confidence in all of this? Oh, yeah, that's right. Didn't. Weren't his kids in the Doge office running through these federal departments and agencies hoovering up all this personal data? Did they go. Did they. Did they get the Epstein files? Was that downloaded onto a thumb drive? Is that something we can ask Elon Musk about? Maybe he could release the Epstein files, put it on Grok or whatever. Maybe I should go on Grok and say, crock, do you have the Epstein files and can you release them? You know, I just, I wonder. But you're right. Thomas Massie might as well have an A next to his name for America party. Elon Musk's political party. And, you know, Trump. I mean, this is one of the other elements in all of this where he can't herd the cats. There are people like Tim Burchett in the Republican Party, Marjorie Taylor Greene. I mean, they just voted to have Ghislaine Maxwell testify or give a deposition to the House, I think, the House Oversight Committee, whenever that might possibly happen. Who knows, maybe Mike Johnson will try to shut the House down forever. I don't know if he could do that, at least until, you know, 2027. But, you know, my sense of it is, Charlie, is that, you know, yes, Elon Musk has certainly turned on Donald Trump. There's no question about it in a major way. And these are, you know, two rattlesnakes in the same potato sack. And they're just going to go at each other tooth and nail until, you know, what's that line from the Untouchable? Until one man is left standing. And my sense of it is, is that Elon Musk is not going to let up until Donald Trump gives him some kind of concession. You know, if they go back and put the EV tax credits in some kind of legislation, maybe Elon Musk will come back and NASA.
- [17:06]
Charlie Sykes
Let'S play a little game, at least the one that I've been playing in my head. And again, having watched Donald Trump and all the ways that he has escaped things in the past. So let's go back to that tweet. So the issue is out there. You know, Donald Trump is in the Epstein Files. How could Donald Trump handled this to avoid getting to this point now? You know, the easy answer is. I mean, some of the answers are like, well, he could have just released the files. Right. Because if he has nothing to hide, he could have released the files. Okay? That was number one. Number two, I thought that they would do what Bill Barr did with the. With the Russia investigation. You have a press conference, you say, you know, the pr, we're releasing the Epstein files in two weeks. And I will tell you, they completely exonerate Donald Trump, and you redact them. You. You, you know, you put out. You put out some bullshit version, you spin the story, and then it goes away, right?
- [18:01]
Ryan Sickler
Yep.
- [18:02]
Charlie Sykes
It's hard for me to imagine how he could have handled it worse than what they did, though, you know, it's so true. Yeah. So what? Run that scenario back where you wouldn't. This wouldn't have happened, you know, and.
- [18:16]
Ryan Sickler
That'S what makes this so damn peculiar because, I mean, I will tell you, Charlie, I really thought. I didn't really think much of the Epstein files until, you know, a couple of weeks ago. I thought, okay, you know, Donald Trump had sort of this sleazy friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, and, you know, maybe, you know, they were doing the white man's overbite on the dance floor together, but Donald Trump was making lewd remarks in his ear and making him laugh and so on. But when he freaked out, what was it two weeks ago, Tuesday, at that reporter's question about the Epstein matter, that. That was the first time I said to myself, I said, what is this all about? You know, and, you know, listen, I've given Donald Trump hell on just about everything you possibly can, but for the first time, I thought, wow, is there something going on with him and Jeffrey Epstein that might be criminal that he's trying to cover up? Like, what is it that he's trying that's so bizarre? And then everything that they've. Since then has only added to the suspicion, and it makes you wonder, when did he know it?
- [19:14]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
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Ryan Sickler
Yeah.
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Charlie Sykes
I don't need your support anymore. Well, exactly.
- [19:19]
Ryan Sickler
But I mean, I mean, it's just. It's just to me, it's just. It's. It's. It's kind of flying in the face of what we all thought about Donald Trump at the beginning of this administration. We all thought at the beginning of this administration he had learned the lessons over the last four years of what not to do the second time around.
- [19:36]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
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Ryan Sickler
And yet on this one matter, you're absolutely right. He's doing the exact worst thing he could possibly do to prolong this controversy.
- [19:47]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and this is where the hubris comes in that the things that were going so well for him, he thought that perhaps he, you know, he just thought, well, I get away with everything else, so I can handle this. Because the decisive moment even came before that when he had of all people, Cash Patel and Dan Bongino put out a statement or whoever was involved, involved and that saying, yeah, we're not, we're not releasing anything. There is no client list there. Nobody was ever blackmailed. And Jeffrey Epstein definitely killed it, you know, killed himself. You know, that was, I think he thought that that would put it to rest, which is one of the very few times when I think he completely misread his base, that he completely misread MAGA to shut it down because there was palpable shock and disillusion from that and everything that's flowed, including you, his, his attacks on, on the media and his attacks on, on, on his own supporters who bought this, you know, you know, you know, hook, line and sinker. And then of course, you know, but again, he runs through and he tries to. It was written by Hillary, written by Biden, it was written by Obama gets us to this particular point where he thinks that. Does he? Okay, I'm going to go where we started from this weird, bizarre rant where he's accusing Barack Obama of treason. Does he think that Barack Obama is still the ultimate distraction? Bright shiny object? I mean, this is where he. The origin story of Donald Trump is Barack Obama birtherism, the original conspiracy theory. My base will hate the black president more than anybody else. Is that part of it? Yeah.
- [21:31]
Ryan Sickler
He starts to peddle Barack Hussein Obama. He starts to use the middle name. He thinks that he can keep push buttons of his base and get the desired results. And unfortunately, the base has been, you know, spoon fed this drip of conspiracy theories over the last 10 years, starting with the birther lie that Donald Trump peddled for, for many years, knowing full well that it was a lie, he continued to peddle all of that nonsense. And you know, Ted Cruz's father was part of the JFK assassination. I mean, this has been Trump's stock and freight trade. The, the election was rigged. And so he's gotten his base, he's gotten his supporters, his most loyal supporters hooked on these conspiracy theories, hooked on these lies. Again, I, you know, I like to think of him as of his weapons of mass destruction. And they've gotten so hooked on them that they're just not going to. I mean, they're just not going to believe it. I mean, earlier this year, key members of his base, the influencers like Libs of TikTok and DC Drano and some of these shit posters on Twitter, you know, they were marching out of White House with these giant binders, and they were just binders full of. And, and they did not have the information that was promised to the base. And they were promised, the base was promised the Epstein files. And anything that stopped short of that, they're just going to see right through it. You and I see through it. It's just obvious. But now they're starting to sell.
- [23:01]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, so self inflicted because, I mean, he played them for suckers. I mean, he humiliated his own base. And this whole, you know, my base is so stupid and so gullible. But one of the interesting things that's happening now and one of the reasons why this is so surprising, I think, to a lot of folks, is that the Epstein story was dead in many ways. Right? It was outside, outside, outside of the fever swamp we're seeing now. You know, and I was, I was asked about, you know, the various stories. So you have the Wall Street Journal story about the, the lewd birthday note. You had New York Times doing a lot of T and finding former victims talking about Donald Trump. You have CNN coming out with, with new video of them hanging out at Victoria's Secret and everything. You feel that it's like people are lifting up the rock in a way that they hadn't done it. And let me ask you this, because I was speculating about this earlier this morning that I think there was kind of this despairing shrug on the part of many of the watchdogs in the media that nothing matter, nothing ever moved the needle after Access Hollywood where the guy bragged about having sex with his friends wives, grabbing women by the pussies. You know, the guy was found liable for sexual abuse by a federal grand jury. I mean, it's not like it's a secret that Trump is a horn dog. Was there kind of an assumption that, yeah, Epstein's story is old. We all kind of know that he's kind of a lecher, that he makes no secret of it. So it was like, you know, the base has accepted all this, so why bother? And now suddenly it's like, all right, let's, let's, let's start peeling off the scab again and who the, who the hell knows what's going to come out?
- [24:42]
Ryan Sickler
Well, and I think you, Charlie, you and I, you hit the nail on the head. And you and I both know we're long in the tooth enough to know. And we've watched this game long enough to know. First of all, D.C. loves the summer scandal. And we're in the middle of summer. You know, the news kind of wanes a little bit. And then, you know, Donald Trump should know this stuff all too well. We know Rupert Murdoch knows this all too well. He knows how to sell tabloid trash better than anybody. This, this is the perfect summer beach read for millions of Americans. And, you know, watching Donald Trump twist in the wind is, is not an unwelcome site for a lot of people in D.C. on both sides of the aisle. But the larger issue here, Charlie, is here's the question. And this is the question I would ask if I were in a White house press conference. Mr. President, what do you have to hide? What are you hiding in these Epstein files? What is it in these Epstein files that has you so nervous? And I have to ask you, Mr. President, are you concerned at all that allegations about your sexual past might come to light in a way that might be damaging to your presidency? And I just wonder if somebody is going to ask that question in whatever variety or form that person sees fit. Because it seems to me there is something in those files that is making him as nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof. And he's, you know, he's, his paws are bouncing up and down on that hot tin roof. He just does not know what to do to make it all go away. And that sun is beating down on that hot tin roof and his feet are cooking right now. He's, he's jumping up and down.
- [26:31]
Charlie Sykes
He's cooking this analogy.
- [26:33]
Ryan Sickler
Because I, I just, I think he's, I think he is, he sounds like somebody who is hiding something.
- [26:39]
Charlie Sykes
Of course, everybody knows it and the public is. And you see, look at some of these poll numbers. And I think people understand, this was like, okay, if you have nothing to hide, release them. Why are you so adamantly opposed to releasing them? And he's trying to, again, the bogus things. Okay, so talk to me a little bit about this lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal. $10 billion. And again, Playbook seems to be that you file these massive laws against corporate media. You get ABC to, to cave in, you get CBS to cave in. What, what does it mean that he's going after Rupert Murdoch and in the Wall Street Journal, does he think that he's going to bring RER to his knees? And how do you think that Plays out.
- [27:26]
Ryan Sickler
I mean, Rert Murdoch has been at this game, I think longer than Donald Trump, which is saying something. And I, I have to think that, you know, a couple of things. One is I used to scoff at these lawsuits and think that they were joke, but now we know that they're not a joke anymore and they can do major damage to these media companies and ABC and CBS because they bent the knee and they paid these basically bribes to the President.
- [27:52]
Charlie Sykes
Extortion.
- [27:52]
Ryan Sickler
Yeah, their extortion payments. There's no question about it, that this is a real live ball. Now the question though in the Rupert Murdoch Wall Street Journal case though, is it pertains to the Epstein files and Donald Trump will do anything, he will move heaven and earth, he will move mountains to not disclose what is going on in those Epstein files and he is not going to sit down for a deposition in that case. I, I mean, I, you know, if he does, it will be, I take the fifth, I take the fifth, I take the fifth. Yeah, that'll, I'm sorry, my lawyer. And that'll look good. And it'll be a videotape deposition and it may not play on Fox because if you look at, at what Fox has been doing these days, they're not covering everything but Epstein right now. I know and you know, but, but Rupert Murdoch knows this game all too well. He knows what sells newspapers and he will make a fortune off of this. And so, you know, if I were Donald Trump and I were his attorneys, I would say, you know, maybe we should back off Rupert Murdoch. But you know, he, Trump is, it feels like to me, he's in self destruct mode. There's something, there's something. This just feels different. This doesn't feel like Access Hollywood. It doesn't feel, it doesn' feel like Russia. It doesn't feel like, you know, the 2020 election and so on. This feels like, like layer of desperation upon layer of desperation to the point where I just don't know how this is going to end up. And when he's racing his own defense lawyer down to Tallahassee to go talk to Galain Maxwell to try to fix this, it says to me his goose is not cooked, but the pot is boiling and he's got to act.
- [29:35]
Charlie Sykes
I really am reluctant to say this time is different because for the last 10 years we've been doing that thing over again. You know, there are these montages of people on television saying, well, the walls are closing in. The walls are closing in.
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Ryan Sickler
No, I watch that expression from my show, you're not allowed to say the walls are closing.
- [29:55]
Charlie Sykes
I mean, I watch those montages with great interest to make sure that I'm not in them.
- [29:59]
Ryan Sickler
That's, that's the only thing I'm sure I've been in the.
- [30:02]
Charlie Sykes
But I agree it does feel different because you would think that at the moment that he says he's going to sue the Wall Street Journal, you know, on, on the whole Epstein thing, you know, that at some point there's some lawyer you'd expect would say, Mr. President, let me explain to you how discovery works and understand that what this does is it opens up. I mean, the lawyers could say, okay, we're going to subpoena all of this, this material. But let's go back to what you're putting out. The, you know, going down to the, the Ghislaine Maxwell card, which feels like, it feels like kind of the ultimate card, at least in his mind, so far, as opposed to bombing another country or. And by the way, what's really interesting is watching is, and you put this in great context, talking about the summer drama that Donald Trump has raised the ante for attention so high that, you know, a few weeks ago, you know, a tariff deal would have been like, distracting or something about tariffs. And now it's like, no, no, no, could we get back to this? I don't know what it would take firing the Fed chair.
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Ryan Sickler
He raises tariffs.
- [31:00]
Charlie Sykes
He, the, yeah, people have kind of like, okay, get back to me when we finally have a resolution on this. But he's been worried about her for years. He's been asking about her. She's been a wild card. That weird interview with Jonathan Swan when he was at Axios when he specifically, you know, Jonathan asks Trump, what do you think about Julian Max? He says, I wish you're well. He says, well, she's a child sex trafficker. I wish you're well. He's gone out of his way not to say anything bad about her. You know, according to Maggie Haberman, he asked aids. Well, has she mentioned me as she talked about me, as my name come up and anything.
- [31:40]
Ryan Sickler
Yeah.
- [31:40]
Charlie Sykes
So he's, and his, his big cudgel, of course, is the pardon. But, you know, you know, part of me thinks that the, the Trump playbook, which is you get her to say, you know, Trump was totally innocent, then you tout that. You get everybody on board saying it's an exoneration. That sort of thing has worked for him in the past. It worked on Russia for him. You know, give me your sense.
- [32:06]
Ryan Sickler
Does it work for him.
- [32:07]
Charlie Sykes
Does that work for him or does it blow the fuck up in his face? Because I can see that.
- [32:16]
Ryan Sickler
I could foresee a situation where Trump gets on the phone with Hannity and says, hannity, I need you to go down to Tallahassee and interview Ghislaine Maxwell. And Hannity sits down with Ghislaine Maxwell. And Ghislaine Maxwell says, Donald Trump has never done anything wrong. I have no idea what, what's going on here with Donald Trump. My goodness, he's a boy scout. He could never do anything. He would never grab a woman by the pussy and so on. And, and that would play on Fox and that would work with some part of his base. And then maybe the next day or the week after Ghislaine Maxwell gets a full pardon, I suppose something like that could play out. There's, that's, that is very possible. I agree with you. He has unleashed the hounds on this conspiracy theory to the point where that you just cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube. And I really think he is in a jam. And that's why I wonder if he is in self destruct mode right now. Because there's something, there's something in those files. I just think that there has to be something in those files.
- [33:17]
Charlie Sykes
Can she get him off the hook?
- [33:19]
Ryan Sickler
This is my notion.
- [33:20]
Charlie Sykes
Because, because, because.
- [33:23]
Ryan Sickler
Does that amount to releasing the files? I mean, I just, you know, does. Yeah, that's, that's the question.
- [33:28]
Charlie Sykes
I agree with you on the Hannity interview and I think it might, and it might bring back the base and maybe that's enough for Donald Trump because Donald Trump also has great confidence in the ability of people to forget. So, yes. So she gives that interview, they a lot of speculation. Did she do this in exchange for the pardon? Everybody adamantly denies it. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Six months down the road, a year down the road, you know, she's got a 20 year sentence. So anything is gonna, is gonna get her off and then people will, there'll be people like you and Iowa going, we were lied to. This was bullshit. We saw this coming all along. But, but the move, but the circus will have moved on by now. That's that I think is, would be the Trumpian way of looking at it. But the problem is, is that, you know, Ghislaine Maxwell, there's a long paper trail there. There's a federal case, there are documents, there are victims. There are statements from the Trump 1.0 Justice Department saying what a complete liar she is, how she is trying to evade accountability. And you do wonder about, you know what about all of the women who had come forward and testified because once again the rock has been lifted up and with her there is a lot of documentation. So suddenly that spotlight is going to be really intense. So that doesn't go away. In Trump world, this playbook that you and I have lived through over and over again, it's the distraction, it ends it, we move on. I do wonder whether if you're right, I'm right, we're both right, that this feels different, that that card doesn't play out the same way because I mean, that woman has so many bugs jumping off her and so many and so many documentation and flight logs and all that becomes fair game again.
- [35:21]
Ryan Sickler
Yeah. And the allegations, I mean, some of the sordid allegations about Maxwell and Epstein are absolutely horrific. I mean, what they're accused and have been and she's been convicted of doing, it's just absolutely horrific. And so to think that she's going to swoop in and be the hero in all of this, I think is a bit far fetched. She might be to Fox and to Trump and that whole gang, but, and they have a vested interest in Donald Trump staying in power and staying in office. Same with a lot of the mag influencers. The mag influencers, when they circle the wagons and rally around Donald Trump, it's because they've got to save their bacon. And you know, I just wonder how all of this plays out. I think you're absolutely right that, you know, with some folks, with a lot of folks, a Ghislaine Maxwell interview where she says, oh, Donald Trump, he's as pure as the driven snow, you know, that, that obviously is not going to work with a lot of people. It may work with enough people to put it to rest. And I think the other portion in all of this, Charlie, and this is what this goes back to what you and I were talking about earlier on in the program. If Congress comes back in September and Mike Johnson is still playing games, he's only going to be able, he's not a very strong speaker. He does not have a firm handle on that House Republican conference. And you just wonder how unglued they become in the fall. And if you're Trump and company, you almost would rather deal with this in the summer when people are sort of not, not really paying attention to the news. They checked out, they're off on vacation or whatever. People come back to work in the fall, they're paying attention and kicking this can to September. I'm not so sure that works to their benefit. I'm not so sure.
- [37:05]
Charlie Sykes
That's a really good point. Yeah, it's like you're talking about it now and when you come back, we're also going to be talking about it.
- [37:14]
Ryan Sickler
Exactly. And it prolongs the whole thing. I just don't, you know, he, you know, he is, as we were saying at the beginning of this, he's in a jam unlike anything I've ever really seen before. And you know, that along with political problems that he has with the legislation that just got passed, the precisions and the big boulder of bullshit, I mean, you're talking about a party right now that is going to be defending steep Medicaid cuts, out of control debt, tax cuts for the super rich and covering up the Epstein files. How's that message for 2026? I mean.
- [37:55]
Charlie Sykes
It is a problem. And the other kind of surprise of the year is watching his numbers slip on immigration. I mean, I think that he, you know, he and Stephen Miller really thought that immigration was their silver bullet. And now that you're, as people are beginning to see the actual human consequen of it, those numbers are actually rather surprising. I thought, and by the way, I didn't, I, I was, I was wrong on this. I thought that, that, that maybe the numbers would side with Trump when he sent the troops into la, you know, law and order and everything that has backfired. And now in this big, beautiful bill, you know, you are suddenly having this massive funding for Tom Homan's brute squad at the very moment when Americans are going, yeah, this brute squad, this is not what we, what we really support. This is not who we are. And there' of moderation on what ICE is going to be doing. I mean, just think of the nightmare of this massive organization, you know, who they're going to recruit and how they're going to be trained and what they're going to be told and what the internal culture is going to be. So that's turned out to be a problem for, for Donald Trump that I don't think he anticipated.
- [39:03]
Ryan Sickler
Yeah, I mean, to me, and there are reports that have been coming out in recent days, Charlie, that, you know, some of these detention facilities in Florida, and there was a story in the Guardian the other day that I guess was picking up on a report from Human Rights Watch that talked about conditions where detainees were eating food like animals, where they had to eat food like a dog off a styrofoam plate with their hands behind their back and that sort of thing. This is like Abu Ghraib level stuff. And, you know, insurance for Abu Ghraib.
- [39:34]
Charlie Sykes
Right. We didn't celebrate Abu Ghraib.
- [39:37]
Ryan Sickler
Exactly. And the Stephen Millers. No, exactly. And the Stephen Millers and the Tom Homans of the world, they may have a stomach for this kind of, of fascist insanity that has been unleashed on the country, but most Americans do not. And the vast majority of Americans, they want a secure border. They think it's okay for criminals and gang members to be scooped up and brought back to their country of origin to face justice in those places. But Charlie, you and I both know presidents of both parties have had those kinds of policies. George W. Bush built fencing and walls down on the border. Barack Obama, I remember I was covering Barack Obama when he was called the deporter in chief because he had lots of deportations during his second term in office. And so what Donald Trump has done is just un American. It's just outside the mainstream of what Americans are willing to accept. They're not willing to accept little kids with cancer being removed from the country and grandma's getting swept up. Apparently there was a Chilean grandfather, 82 year old the other day, who was scooped up, sent to Guatema. The family was told he was dead. It turns out he was not dead. He was in a hospital in Guatemala. Where are we right now as a country, Charlie, when we're sending people to countries not of their origin? I mean, that to me is also not in keeping with the American mainstream when it comes to immigration policy. And so I think people are unpacking this on their own and they're saying, I'm not on board with this and he's suffering politically as a Congress consequence.
- [41:12]
Charlie Sykes
I agree completely. It's also why the Epstein story is not a distraction. It's also a way of defining it. And I think that American politics, I think we over complexify American politics sometime. And Democrats do, you know, they think politics is about the intricacies of their legislation when it's often simply about, are you for me or not for me? Do you represent people like me or are you a defender of the elites and the others? And Trump has capitalized on that. I'm for you, they are for they and them and all that stuff. I think this is turning it around. I just, I just get that sense. Okay. In the time that we have left, I have to get your take on all of this. I want to get your take on the Stephen Colbert story.
- [41:56]
Ryan Sickler
Yeah.
- [41:57]
Charlie Sykes
Which I don't need to go into. Except that there, there's Two, there are, to the two narratives. There is the narrative which is his show was losing lots of money. Okay. For CBS, I've seen the number of $40 million. On the other hand, I think you have to be living under a rock to think that he, that his firing doesn't have something to do with the appeasement of Donald Trump, the timing of his criticism. What is your take on all of this? Because it is one of those stomach turning moments.
- [42:28]
Ryan Sickler
It's one of those stomach turning moments. And, you know, I mean, for Paramount and CBS to do this, what, three days after Colbert had described that settlement as a big fat bribe. Yeah, you know, to me, I mean, I think they were trying to send them a message and say, listen, you know, you work for us, don't shit where you eat, you're out of here. And I think that, I think CBS has made a major mistake and to pay that settlement to Donald Trump. And apparently Trump has been on social media saying, oh, we're not only getting the 16 million or 15 million, we're getting 20 million on top of that in the form of free PSAs and, and so on. What is he talking about? What's that all about? Is Paramount going to tell us whether or not that's true? Are we talking, are they going to run those Kristi Noem immigration ads for free on cbs? Is that what we're talking about here? I mean, this is some sick stuff. And Charlie, what I get concerned about is that what you've seen since he's come back into office is that prominent critics of the President have been terminated. They have been knocked out of their jobs in a lot of different places and it all leads back to Trump. Well, yeah, and, and I mean, to me, the question has to be asked, what is going on in these executive boardrooms? Are they getting calls from the White House? Are they getting calls from Trump's political allies and saying, you know, if you get rid of so and so, we'll do you a deal over here. And if you get rid of that person, yeah, we'll get you your merger or your, whatever you're going to try to do from a, from a corporate standpoint. And I just, that to me, that's, that's complicity. And these companies, I think, need to take a long, these executives need to take a long look in the mirror and ask themselves, how do you want to be remembered 10, 15, 20 years from now? Do you want to be remembered as somebody who, you know, got down on your knees for somebody who was, you know, possibly implicated in the Epstein case. And just think long and hard about that, that how's that going to look 5, 10, 15 years from now? What, what's your legacy going to look like? If you bent the knee to this man and things turn out in a way that are pretty damn ugly, that's not going to look good for you. I would think hard about that if I were a corporate executive at one of these media companies right now, and.
- [44:47]
Charlie Sykes
I hope that they do, because I think this has been one of the most troubling things that's been happening. You know, it's one thing to have Republican congressmen and senators cave in. It's something very, very different when you have these private institutions, including the news media, which had been dining out for decades, that we speak truth to power and we are independent. And to sell that out for what a mess of pottage. So that, yeah, you're gonna get a good quarterly report next quarter, but then a quarter century now we're gonna look back on you as sort of the ultimate quizzling of the news media. Jim Acosta, thank you so much for this conversation. I really, really enjoyed it. It's always great talking with you. Thank you. Thank you, Jim.
- [45:29]
Ryan Sickler
Always great to do it. Thanks, Charlie.
- [45:31]
Charlie Sykes
And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sachs. You know why we do this, why we do this several times a week? Because now, more than ever, and I mean more than ever, it's important to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones. Thank you.
- [45:59]
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