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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Tuesday, September 9th, I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show congratulating Lachlan Murdoch on winning control of the Murdoch Empire, which includes Fox News, the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal. I’m sure he will enjoy being loathed by one of this country’s two main political factions for the rest of his life. And honestly, it could be either faction at any time. [music break] On today’s show, President Donald Trump goes to the Museum of the Bible to say we need religion to have a great nation. And Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth goes to Puerto Rico to hype up our troops. But let’s start with… hmm… weirdos. Say what you will about Trump’s first administration, and believe me, I have. But at least some of the people given top jobs had a morsel of actual experience doing those actual jobs. Former national security advisor H.R. McMaster, for example, was a lieutenant general in the United States Army. And former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, previously served as the chief of staff of the Army. But that was then. Now, the Trump administration is chock full of the weirdest people the MAGA world has to offer, united by their personal allegiance to one man, Donald J. Trump. From Secretary of Defense, or is it Secretary of War now? Pete Hegseth, whose qualifications are, co-hosted the weekend edition of Fox& Friends, to Paul Ingrassia, the former podcaster nominated to run the Office of Special Counsel, who loves Andrew Tate and thinks the descendants of slaves should pay the descendants-of-slave owners reparations. It’s a cavalcade of the worst people to ever be given a high-speed internet connection, especially when they now have real power. And then there’s Laura Loomer, a MAGA influencer who has an almost manic obsession with Trump. She’s a Jewish white nationalist 9/11 truther who made headlines in 2018 when she chained herself to the doors of Twitter’s New York City office to protest getting banned from the platform for Islamophobia. And somehow, that’s all just the tip of the Laura Loomer iceberg. And you know what’s actually terrifying? Loomer has Trump’s ear on hiring, firing, and even who gets to enter the United States in the first place. Fantastic. No one knows the world of MAGA better than Will Sommer, a senior reporter with the Bulwark. So I absolutely had to talk to Will about the world of MAGA and how the most bananas pants people in America rose to the very top of the federal government. Will Sommer, welcome back to What a Day. 

Will Sommer: Hey, thanks for having me. 

Jane Coaston: I’m so happy that you’re here because if anyone can explain what is going on in the world of right wing influencers who have way too much influence over this administration, it’s you. So I thought we could start with just an overview of some of the main players in this sphere. If you had to draw like a family tree of MAGA personalities that have real influence on the White House right now, who would be in it? 

Will Sommer: I mean, I think at the top, I’d put Laura Loomer. Um you know she’s someone who has managed to really take heads, knocking specific people out of organizations. I mean she got the general counsel at the NSA out. I mean she purged the National Security Council. Um. She got the head of you know vaccine treatments approval ousted at the FDA. I mean the list goes on. So I think she would definitely be at the top of the list among others. 

Jane Coaston: So we have Laura Loomer at the top of the food chain. Who else is in this, do you think? Like the important people, you know kind of your Jack Posobiec, for example. 

Will Sommer: Yeah, sure. I mean, like, let’s just jump off with Jack Posobiec there. I mean this is a guy who he was originally like a Game of Thrones fan fiction writer. Um. That didn’t really work out. I mean. This is the deep, the deep lore. He was one of the first Pizzagate guys. He went to Comet Ping Pong and was live streaming and sort of like, maybe I’ll get eaten. I don’t know. Um. And so then from there, he he became a right wing pundit. And now we see him. He pals around with Pete Hegseth. He goes on these foreign trips. Uh. He’s one of these people who is invited to these sort of cozy bizarro press briefings you might call them where they’re stocked with all of these real pro-Trump reporters. Um, or you know, you could also look at someone like Charlie Kirk, the head of Turning Point USA who’s a podcaster. Um. But also has so much influence on the right that we know when the Jeffrey Epstein saga was really at its height that Donald Trump reportedly called him personally and said hey lay off stop talking about Epstein. 

Jane Coaston: I want to drill down into the completely baffling assent of Laura Loomer because she’s climbed the ladder above everyone else and has a direct line to the president and yet has changed absolutely nothing about how she talks about her beliefs or just how she behaves in general. Like I think that a lot of people were really thrown off last year when she was flying with then candidate Trump to the 9/11 memorial while she is also a 9/11 truther. And I think that a lot of people, it seems, are terrified of her because she has gotten a lot of people fired, as you’ve mentioned. And I just want to know, how did we go from someone who I knew because I’m terminally online, as the person who chained herself to the door of Twitter’s headquarters, to being the top Trump whisperer? How did this happen? 

Will Sommer: I mean it just sort of shows you, I think, how much Donald Trump values this kind of like almost, you know, incredibly intense loyalty towards him. I mean, this is someone, as you said–

Jane Coaston: Sycophancy. 

Will Sommer: –who–

Jane Coaston: That, she’s a sycophant.

Will Sommer: Sycophancy I think would be would be the way to put it. Yeah. I mean, she said basically I’ve given up having a family, having kids, I’ve devoted my life to Donald Trump. Um. I so she’s for her Trump is everything uh and as you said she was doing stuff, you know seven eight years ago that even these other right-wing influencers were like, you know I don’t want to be seen with her. You know, she she got banned from Twitter. She called me up and said, you, know, my life has been ruined. You know, she seemed to be, it got to the point, I was like, do I even want to write about her? I mean, she basically has no influence. And yet through this kind of really like die hard, kamikaze devotion to Donald Trump, and she’s willing to attack people like for really crazy reasons. I mean she went after this, I believe, a Medal of Honor recipient who was, who had badly hurt his leg by tackling a suicide bomber, you know, a hero by any measure. And she said, well, this guy spoke at the Democratic Convention and the Pentagon shouldn’t be honoring this guy. I mean, for her, really, it just seems like Donald Trump is the only thing that matters. I mean most recently, or maybe most strikingly, she managed to get the US to block medical visas for injured Gazans, children who had limbs blown off who were visiting the country for medical treatment. She started saying, you know, who knows what these Gazans are going to get up to in America. This was an issue that didn’t even exist for conservatives before she posted about it. And then within 48 hours, she manages to get all these children and adults blocked from receiving medical treatment. I mean, that is how much influence she has. And I think, obviously, she’s often using it for really you know sinister ends. 

Jane Coaston: And what is her end goal? Like she’s talked about how, as you’ve mentioned, like she doesn’t care about having a family or really having a life outside of Donald Trump. But she has run for office before, didn’t go well. She was allegedly up for potentially the White House press secretary job, did not get that. But what’s in it for her besides her deep and abiding love for Donald Trump? 

Will Sommer: Yeah, so this is interesting there there on one hand, I do think she really is just very obsessed with Donald Trump. And, you know, I’ve talked to her a good amount. Um. And you know that’s her life. You know, you watch these videos where journalists visit her in her apartment and it’s very Trump themed. We got kind of a glimpse into this in the summer of 2024, when people were saying, you know, what’s up with Trump and Loomer? Why are they hanging out? Bill Maher sort of insinuated on his show that they were sleeping together and so she’s suing him over that and this deposition revealed all these embarrassing things about her. One of the things they said was, well, you know, what did Bill Maher really do that hurt you so much? Um. And she said, well you know I could have, you know I’d like to be White House press secretary, I’d like to be in the administration um and then from there, you who knows, I could have my own foundation, people work at the White House and get cable news gigs. I could’ve had this you know paraphrasing here, I could have had this sort of very lucrative career after the Trump administration. 

Jane Coaston: So I want to ask, what is Laura Loomer’s process? Like, how is she finding all of this information about people who are like, you know, some undersecretary at the National Security Administration or something like that, like, how was she doing this? 

Will Sommer: Well, you know, I think what she would say is just that, you know, she works really hard and she Googles people a lot and goes through campaign finance filings. I believe that to some extent. Um. But I also think it’s it’s pretty fair to assume that there are people within the administration who are leaking things to her. I mean, she knew details about Hunter Biden’s security detail when he was abroad. I mean, things that you obviously couldn’t just look up online. Um. And also, I think she’s sort of being used and I’m sure she doesn’t mind it by various factions. Uh. If they want to take someone out if they want to take some policy role for their own group. That they’ll leak against someone some unflattering information or you know a tweet that this person sent against Trump. Or you know factions within the administration are also outside of that I mean she really went on a campaign against uh some of RFK Jr’s people at HHS and the FDA in a way that prompted allegations that she was in league with big pharma. Um. Again, we don’t really have concrete proof proof of that, but she does really seem to champion these causes in suspicious ways. 

Jane Coaston: Now here’s another question for you. You and I both know that among MAGA people, and especially among Republicans, who are MAGA adjacent and are kind of putting up with a lot of this, none of them like Laura Loomer, they all very much dislike her. Why do you think that those people have had so little success in separating Trump from Loomer? 

Will Sommer: Yeah, I mean, certainly, you know, the Marjorie Taylor Greene, who’s like an arch enemy of Laura Loomer’s, people like that have have leaked unflattering things about Loomer in an attempt to sort of keep Trump from hiring her. At the same time, you know she gets back in somehow. And I think it is Trump seems to really like her. And she’s really effective. I mean he she can sort of take out uh his enemies or people she deems disloyal. And so I think as long as she keeps the hits coming, I mean she’ll she’ll be with the administration um and and often how these big right wing media personalities bump up against each other and turn on each other. The sad reality is that often does affect um our policies and sort of the future of this country. 

Jane Coaston: I mean, I think that that goes to my big wrap up question for you, which is what does all of this say about the Trump administration? 

Will Sommer: I mean, I don’t think it says anything good. I mean I think truly these people who we recognized as um in the past in the first administration as sort of very unsavory or unhinged characters uh that now are regularly visiting the White House and you know calling the shots to some extent. I mean obviously it’s alarming. Among many alarming things with this administration. 

Jane Coaston: Will, thank you so much as always for joining me. 

Will Sommer: Thanks for having me. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Will Sommer, a senior reporter with The Bulwark, where he covers right-wing media. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] To have a great nation, you have to have religion. I believe that so strongly. There has to be something after we go through all of this, and that something is God. 

Jane Coaston: Inspiring. That’s Trump speaking to his religious liberty commission at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. He announced new guidance from the Department of Education on prayer in public schools, but didn’t say what the guidance would actually entail. He spoke for nearly an hour on religion and a host of unrelated topics. First, he alleged that school children are being, quote, “indoctrinated with anti-religious propaganda.” Then he called former President Joe Biden a, quote, “mean guy.” And then he brought up crime in the District of Columbia. Suggesting that domestic violence shouldn’t count as a crime because it undermines the perceived success of his crackdown on the city. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] These things that take place in the home they call crime you know they’ll do anything they can to find something. If a man has a little fight with the wife they say this was a crime see so now I can’t claim a hundred percent. 

Jane Coaston: Domestic violence is a crime. Trump also announced that he would donate his own family Bible, because that apparently exists and has been opened, to the Bible Museum. Unclear if it’s the same Bible he brought to his infamous photo op in Lafayette Square in 2020. Or perhaps it’s one of his branded God Bless the USA Bibles, which can be yours for just $100. A new list of convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s associates that is currently being compiled by survivors of his abuse has around 30 to 50 names on it. That’s according to one of Epstein’s survivors, Lisa Phillips, who spoke exclusively to Crooked Media’s Matt Berg. Last week, survivors of Epstein made headlines by announcing a plan to draft their own list of people associated with him. Phillips tells Berg that not all of the people listed are accused of wrongdoing. Her comments come as the Epstein-Trump controversy continues to balloon. Lawyers for Epstein’s estate gave Congress a copy of the now infamous birthday book. Remember that book? The one the Wall Street Journal reported in July that contains letters from Epstein’s Social Circle, including one signed by none other than Donald Trump? Well now, you can see the letter for yourself. That’s because Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released it on Monday. Here’s ranking member California Representative Robert Garcia. 

[clip of Representative Robert Garcia] This note, Donald Trump has said, does not exist. Well, once again, he is lying to the American public and is leading a White House cover-up. Now, I’m gonna show you the note that we’ve now acquired. It’s a little crude, so I do apologize if you don’t wanna see it, but this is the actual note. You see the president’s signature there. You can read some of the words that he is sharing with his friend, Jeffrey Epstein. 

Jane Coaston: Head to our YouTube to see the letter in full. Trump has denied writing the letter and sued the Journal for its reporting. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also continued to deny the legitimacy of the letter Monday, saying that litigation will continue. 

[clip of unnamed person] What is happening here in the city of Los Angeles is wrong and is uh violates people’s constitutional rights. And I think they will get the unmistakable picture that we will present to them. And we will get, we will get the victory. 

Jane Coaston: Immigrants, rights attorneys, and advocates rallied Monday, hitting back at the Supreme Court. It comes after the justices handed Trump a win in his crackdown on immigration, allowing immigration and customs enforcement to continue its so-called roving raids around Los Angeles. When armed ICE officers, wearing masks, singled people out at car washes and home depot parking lots based on loose criteria such as speaking Spanish, the court didn’t explain its decision. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first Hispanic justice, responded in a fiery dissent, which was joined by the other liberal justices. Quote, “we should not have to live in a country where the government concedes anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low-wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.” 

[clip of Pete Hegseth] How are we doing, warriors? [loud grunt from crowd] I think this might be the single most beautiful picture I have ever seen in my entire life. 

Jane Coaston: Now that’s a man who likes to hear himself speak. 

[clip of Pete Hegseth] Make no mistake about it, what you’re doing right now, is not training. This is the real world exercise on behalf of the vital national interests of the United States of America to end the poisoning of the American people. 

Jane Coaston: Secretary of Defense, excuse me, War, Pete Hegseth gave an absolutely rousing and not at all concerning speech to troops aboard the USS Iwo Jima on Monday. Hegseth traveled to Puerto Rico alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Air Force General Dan Cain as the U.S. steps up its military operations against drug cartels in the Caribbean. Just over a week ago, hundreds of U. S. Marines deployed to Puerto Rico for a training exercise, a move that some on the island have criticized. Hegseth also rallied troops on the ground, hyping up Trump’s executive order to rename the Department of Defense. 

[clip of Pete Hegseth] The reason I like the name War Department so much is not because I love war. I don’t, and neither do you. It’s because I seek and love peace. 

Jane Coaston: No, I think Pete Hegseth loves war a whole lot. This all comes on the heels of a U.S. Strike carried out in the southern Caribbean against a vessel that had left Venezuela and was suspected of carrying drugs. 11 people were killed in the rare U. S. Military operation there. Trump and his subservient administration said the vessel was operated by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, but provided no evidence. Venezuela’s government on Monday insisted that the U.S. is falsely accusing it of playing a crucial role in the global drug trade. And that’s the news. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, celebrate great minds like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent threatening to punch a top Trump housing official, quote, “in the fucking face” at a private party last Wednesday and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just about how this is possibly the third time Bessent has threatened to punch another official in the face just in the last six months, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and Scott Bessent, stop threatening to punch people in the face unless you’re willing to punch someone in the face. Also, stop doing everything else you’re doing. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Emily Fohr. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Megan Larsen, Gina Pollack, and Jonah Eatman. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of news and politics is Adriene Hill. We had help today from the Associated Press. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]

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