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The latest release of more than three million Epstein files has exposed the vast network of powerful and ultra-rich elites who were part of Jeffrey Epstein’s social and business circle. This week, Alex speaks to journalist Kurt Andersen about the way people at the highest echelons of politics, business, academia, and beyond co-mingle. Then, she’s joined by The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell to discuss whether or not this issue might finally bring about some political consequences for President Trump and his administration.

TRANSCRIPT

[AD BREAK]

Alex Wagner: Hello, everyone. It has been a big week for some very bad people. Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted co-conspirator to child sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, has been in federal prison for the past four years, which you probably know, only occasionally popping up to try and leverage her criminal knowledge to her own advantage. We’ll have more on that in a second. On Monday, Maxwell appeared before the House Oversight Committee, which is looking into the federal government’s own investigation of Epstein who, in 2019, “died in prison,” quote unquote. And yeah, I’m gonna say it like that until someone convinces me otherwise. Ms. Maxwell revealed exactly nothing to the committee. She pleaded the fifth to every single question that was asked. Instead, her lawyer said Maxwell, quote, “would answer questions if she were granted clemency by President Trump.” That is, in exchange for swearing to Trump’s innocence, Maxwell wants out of prison. This is not how the justice system works. Unless you’re talking about the Trump justice system. Remember that when the committee began seeking Maxwell’s deposition a few months ago, Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general and Trump’s former personal lawyer, interviewed Maxwell in her maximum security prison, where she told Blanche that Trump had been an absolute gentleman during the Epstein years. Trump really must have appreciated that because soon after, Ghislaine Maxwell was moved to a minimum security prison where inmates can play with puppies and do arts and crafts. And while Trump might have preferred that Maxwell’s jailhouse character reference be the end of the Epstein saga, it was not. It is not. Last Friday, the Department of Justice, responding to a congressional order, though a month late, released an avalanche of Epstein records, over three million emails and videos and photos from Epstein’s archives. Reporters are just beginning to sift through this mountain of information, but what’s clear is that the Epstein scandal did not just encompass a handful of rich men debasing and abusing young women and children. Jeffrey Epstein’s web of influence and connections was vast, touching nearly every corner of government, finance, politics, and academia. Not all of these people were involved in Epstein sex ring, but these new files reveal a corrupt sphere of influence with Jeffrey Epstein at the very center. President Donald Trump appears in the Epstein files an eye popping 38,000 times, but you will also see mentions of Steve Bannon and Elon Musk and Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick. That would be the same Howard Lutnick who swore he had nothing to do with Epstein after the year 2005, until these files, the new ones, confirmed that Lutnick had lunch with Epstein on his private island and started business ventures with him literally years after Epstein had been convicted of soliciting prostitution from a child. The web of connections between some of the most powerful people in our society and one of the more depraved is perhaps the most stunning revelation in this new batch of files. And there is way, way more to come. Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna and Republican Congressman Thomas Massie, who have led the charge on releasing these files, were granted access this week to unredacted copies of the material, and what they found was even more suspicious. Here’s Khanna on the House Floor on Tuesday.

[clip of  Ro Khanna]: There were six wealthy, powerful men that the DOJ hid for no apparent reason. Now, my question is, why did it take Thomas Massie and me going to the Justice Department to get these six men’s identities to become public? And if we found six men that they were hiding in two hours, imagine how many men they are covering up for in those three million files.

Alex Wagner: Now, other countries, other ones, as in not the United States, are demanding accountability from anyone who is in cahoots with Epstein or seen as empowering him. Over in the UK, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing calls to resign for appointing Peter Mandelson, his ambassador to the United States last year, despite Mandelson’s close ties to Epstein. A Norwegian ambassador resigned over her contacts with Epstein and an advisor to Slovakia’s prime minister has also resigned. But over here in the Wild West, where Epstein’s web ran particularly wide and extraordinarily deep, will enough Americans care? For the Epstein files to finally become a political noose? [music plays] I’m Alex Wagner and this week on Runaway Country, how did New York society allow a predator to operate essentially in broad daylight? How interconnected is the Epstein network and how far will the people in it go to make sure the truth never comes out? Can Democrats seize this moment to damage a wounded president and his party? They are certainly trying. This weekend, Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff called the Trump administration by a brand new name.

[clip of Jon Ossoff]: This is the Epstein class [applauded] ruling our country.

Alex Wagner: What does this all mean for the president’s political capital and his party’s chances in an election year? The Bulwark’s great Sarah Longwell will join me to give her thoughts on all that coming up.

Sarah Longwell: There’s basically two types of people in Trump’s administration, people who are in the Epstein files, and people who were actively covering up the Epstein files. And, like, that’s it.

Alex Wagner: But first, we wanted to get the skinny from an expert in New York City society, someone who watched Epstein-esque alliances form in the late 90s and early 2000s and has documented all of it with a gimlet eye. So I’m going to be talking to Kurt Andersen, journalist, author, WNYC radio host, and co-founder of the legendary Spy Magazine, about what the world of Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell and Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. Looked like when all this shit was going down. To better understand how these alliances form, what might break them, and whether we will ever get to the bottom of all of this. Here’s my conversation with Kurt. Kurt, thank you for doing this. When I was digesting this latest tranche of, and tranche is probably the wrong, this mountain of Epstein-related evidence, I just, the thing that struck me was, we have focused, I think rightly so, on the stories of sexual predation and abuse and the victims and they should always remain at the center of the conversation. But what has been exposed in this batch in particular is the vastness of Epstein’s network. And the degree to which it represents, I think probably the most reprehensible parts of society and is very much a picture of New York wealth and power. And I was like, who could help me understand how this all works but Kurt Andersen?

Kurt Andersen: Wealth nor power.

Alex Wagner: A trusted and brilliant chronicler of that swill pot Manhattan and the denizens thereof. Jon Ossoff has been using a term that a lot of people have been throwing around this week called, and it is the Epstein class. When you hear the Epstein class as a phrase, what comes to mind? Who and what do you think of?

Kurt Andersen: It’s a good question. It’s interesting because it’s not just fellow rich people, right?

Alex Wagner: Right.

Kurt Andersen: I mean, it’s, it’ not poor people or even very many middle-class people, but it’s just, you know, Steve Schwarzman or whatever, or maybe not even Steve Schwarzman at all. I don’t want to taint anyone. But it’s people who his pal, former, you now, show business publicist to the stars, Peggy Siegal, had on her, among her 30,000 names on her list. That were so, she was a, you know, was a big deal back.

Alex Wagner: She was.

Kurt Andersen: In the 90s and aughts and 10s up until 2019. And she ranked those people like, you know, with many, many different rankings. So it’s the upper echelons of that. It’s glamorous people of academic, public intellectual, you know show business, finance stripes, you know.

Alex Wagner: Well, I mean, for a lot of people who don’t understand how that can happen, right? Like how you can have a salon where Tommy Mottola and Deepak Chopra and Woody Allen and Soon-Yi and Harvey Weinstein, setting aside the fact that they had, you know, predation in common. But this mix of the elites would happen in these like Upper East Side salons. Can you give us a sense of what the scene was like in the late 90s and the early 2000s in New York? I mean, that sort of. Kinetic mix of those kinds of people and sort of where Trump fit into all of that too.

Kurt Andersen: Where Trump is is this question I’m still curious about because I mean he is like who does not belong [laughter] he would not have been invited to Epstein’s things and I don’t know if he was much I don’t think Epstein would want to mix him with the Woody’s and the Noam Chomsky’s of the world.

Alex Wagner: Because he wasn’t smart enough.

Kurt Andersen: Well, yeah, and all he was as has been one of his upsetting resentments all these years is he’s this bridge-and-tunnel guy, as, of course, Jeffrey Epstein was, too, who he grew up in Queens. And like, they don’t accept me in Manhattan. Well, I’ll make them. Well, never quite did until he became president and could try to destroy their businesses [laughs] if they didn’t tend to like him. One of the things it’s about or it’s a function of, and wouldn’t have happened, say, in the 70s. This thing that people started talking about back then, right, in 80s and 90s, which is, oh, downtown and uptown, they’re the same now. They’re all blurred. It’s all, you know, both are in both. Somewhat more show business, entertainment people, mixed with the financiers. It’s also a function of the fact that finance itself, after the 70’s and 80’s, became less old school waspy investment bank and more of these hustlers and players of various backgrounds, in essence, more kindred to Mr. Jeffrey Epstein, who, again, he got a job at, I forget which of these Upper East Side private schools, but one of them—

Alex Wagner: Think it was Dalton, might have been Spence.

Kurt Andersen: One of those, or Chapin, who knows? I mean, another prismatic milestone sign to look at about that time is Vanity Fair Magazine. Tina Brown, taking over and starting, effectively, Vanity fair, as this outsider, not from Queens, but from the Queen’s land, from England, she decided the Upper East Side and older people, because she was married to an older person, were the thing and gave it a centrality that one could argue was it was in the dying stages of being important, the WASPocracy of the previous years in New York City. But anyway, she decided that no, this is it and it’s the power and glamor, it’s Nancy Reagan and Ronald Reagan and all that. So that helped establish this paradigm of cool Upper East Side, it’s cool in a certain often grotesque way. And similarly, I don’t know exactly when the Met Gala began, but that is also part of it, right?

Alex Wagner: That Uptown would be a locus for connections and hobnobbing and social relevance in a way that it hadn’t been before. And then Epstein, with assistance, becomes a hub of that.

Kurt Andersen: Yeah, and really worked it like probably no one else. I mean, he was working at like famous socialites, like the women, because that was their job, right? They were like, you know, working the social scene as philanthropists and everything else. So, and he was that obviously, I mean like on a mega national scale, a philanthropist, which was also part of it. I mean the people like poor Leon Botstein, however you pronounce his name, the president of Bard College.

Alex Wagner: Yeah, who is, is in the Epstein files.

Kurt Andersen: Well, because college presidents, what are they doing? Always raising money. So this guy is gonna give me money? Yeah, I’ll be nice to him.

Alex Wagner: Philanthropy seems to be a big avenue by which he reaches them. But it’s also like they’re going to be connected to other famous people, right? They’re getting to sit down with Noam Chomsky or even Elon Musk and I guess to some degree, Mark Zuckerberg. Everyone’s there for slightly different reasons, but they love being in the presence of quote unquote “greatness.” I mean, what is also interesting to me, Kurt, and it’s very much feels like a before times thing is the degree to which Epstein is very fluent in both Republican and Democratic circles, right. And I wonder if you think that that was a hallmark of that period, that you could kind of move around. It was more about wealth than it was about partisan affiliation, because that just seems like the age of Trump has shattered all that.

Kurt Andersen: Correct. Partisan affiliation was unimportant and meaningless. I mean, yes, most of my friends were surely Democrats, but it just wasn’t a thing that came up, right? I mean in that kind of go-go, Clintonian, neoliberal time, we all agree on economics, Democrats decided, mistake. We’re not labor, we’re part of the ruling class too, just the smarter part or something. So those distinctions. Totally before times. It’s hard for younger folks to imagine that politics was not an important marker. I’m not saying it didn’t matter, but it mattered so much less than it did, and it still mattered relatively less in the Bush era, too. I mean, people would still say, oh, Henry Kissinger’s coming to the dinner, I won’t go, that kind of individual thing.

Alex Wagner: More a war criminal thing than a, you know, partisan.

Kurt Andersen: As we called him in Spy Magazine, the socialite war criminal Henry Kissinger many, many, many times.

Alex Wagner: Do you feel like when you hear about who is mentioned in this, right? Who is part of his network of allies and business partners and social partners, people who would have cocktails with him and who he’d invite over for lunch. Does any part of that surprise you? Are there any names? Are there are any characters that stick out as highly unusual and like you sort of wonder, huh, how did he ensnare that person?

Kurt Andersen: I don’t know about surprise, but like, huh. Noam Chomsky, for instance. I like that, what? Hmm, interesting. But, you know. Most of them not.

Alex Wagner: He was able to forge some deeper connections with these men Where they’re being very vulnerable with him like they’re very and it’s not just related to the women that Jeffrey Epstein was trafficking, but it’s like they go to him with marital problems So they talk about the deaths of their father or they talk about you know matters of the heart in a really first of all juvenile way. But the way in which someone who looks like he’s about you know, skin deep in terms of his real relationships with people was able to cultivate this intimacy with these captains of industry. Did that surprise you or do you have any insight into that?

Kurt Andersen: Well, I would say it’s a different version of the, you know, salesman con man that his friend in the 90s, Donald Trump, has. Very different, but like that, and different sales people and different con people have their own means of ingratiation. And his was, you know, obviously listening and practicing sincerity. I don’t think that’s part of Donald Trump’s. People whose jobs is selling something, and he was selling himself. And he was a hustler, you know, a version of Sammy Glick, as is Donald Trump.

Alex Wagner: You were chronicling Trump in the 80s and 90s especially, but like, had you heard in the late 90s, early 2000s about Jeffrey Epstein? I mean, he sort of really was making an effort to ingratiate himself to high society.

Kurt Andersen: Yeah.

Alex Wagner: After, like a little after that, but did you know him? Had you heard of him as a character in the New York story?

Kurt Andersen: I heard about him from Michael Wolff.

Alex Wagner: That makes sense.

Kurt Andersen: Yeah, exactly, whom I had been friendly with for 25 years. It was sometime in the early aughts. And he said, do you know of this guy, Jeffrey Epstein? I said, no, tell me. I mean, he suggested to me at the time that he was skeevy-ish, but nothing of the grotesque scale and magnitude. And I was also friendly with Harvey Weinstein. So don’t trust me about anything. But I knew he was a monster because the first time I ever met him, when I took over New York Magazine, he asked me to lunch through my publisher, and we sat down, and he just started threatening me. We hadn’t done anything, we hadn’t covered him, he just starting threatening me, we’ll find dirt on you and all this stuff. So that was a vision of that ugly transactional side of this world, for sure.

Alex Wagner: Right. But Jeffrey Epstein didn’t threaten people. He offered them private jets. He had an emissary with a British accent who seemed like she was from high society in England. And then he had Peggy Siegal doing his bidding to help curate fancy dinner parties where other famous people could meet other famous. So in retrospect, whatever that skeeviness was, people were able to look the other way. And that’s how you end up with this circle that is just so extraordinarily large and vast. And I don’t know, Kurt, it’s just—

Kurt Andersen: It’s just amazing and if you say I could put your own everybody you know contacts and like put it through the blender to see which of these are ever mentioned in the Epstein files I’m betting it’s a lot. I mean again, many people are mentioned and it’s just like he turned down my dinner invitation, or—

Alex Wagner: I looked at his tweet. I’m in the Epstein files. He looked he was sent two of my tweets, but um that’s the closest relationship we had but uh I mean, if you’re working it as he must have worked since the 90s for that long, you’re going to have a big network and you get rich and other rich people think you’re great and like, hey, this guy’s a genius.

Alex Wagner: Well, in the pantheon of New York characters, there are the bad guys, like Jeffrey Epstein, and then there are good guys, like you, Kurt Andersen. A warrior for the side of light and truth even if some of your tweets are mentioned in the Epstein files.

Kurt Andersen: There you go.

Alex Wagner: Kurt, thank you for giving me some perspective on this, the dark side of New York City, glitterati. You’re a wealth of information and resources. So thank you, Kurt.

Kurt Andersen: I happen to be of service. [music plays]

[AD BREAK]

Alex Wagner: Sarah Longwell, it is truly a pleasure to have you on this podcast.

Sarah Longwell: It’s a pleasure to be here. I’m so excited.

Alex Wagner: I literally like, it became a sort of a sad cycle of me saying every week, like could Sarah Longwell do the podcast? And they’re like, no, she’s busy this week. And I didn’t like them even like, like an unrequited lover. [laughs] Wow, that’s a really unnecessary metaphor. I did not give up though. My heart still beat for you being on this podcast, and now it’s finally all coming to fruition. I wish we were meeting under better circumstances.

Sarah Longwell: Yeah, yeah, I do too, because we don’t really know each other. But I will say I follow so much we do and we’re on TV together. Like we were just on TV, but here’s the thing. I was not not doing your podcast. I took like a six month break to do a project that I’ve had to do.

Alex Wagner: You know what? Even if they twisted your arm and made you do it and you didn’t want to do it I still—

Sarah Longwell: No I told my guys, I’m back. I’m done. Let’s go.

Alex Wagner: Now I’ve made it so awkward. Oh, my God. OK, it’s Epstein week again, Sarah.

Sarah Longwell: You know, I actually I’m glad I know that that sounds I’m glad it’s Epstein week because I think I was worried If you listen to me with my podcasting partners, Tim and JVL, I have been long I went from somebody who didn’t care about Epstein and didn’t pay attention to believing it was actually a really important story and that people should focus on it, which I think as Democrats were sort of reeling from 2024 and trying to be like well, we really we we whiffed on the economy. We whiffed on affordability. It needs to be kitchen table issues. And I’m like, don’t over-read. Like, it does matter to voters. And I just want to open up, I think, my feeling on Epstein by saying, there’s this sense that somehow Epstein’s not a kitchen table issue, but to me, Epstein is very much part of the story that Americans are grappling with now about like, does Trump protect elites? Does Trump? Not because right now the frustration from voters is around still around affordability. And so like to the extent that Trump is getting richer through corruption Trump is protecting his elite friends and the little guy and in this case the young girls who were trafficked are sort of done at the expense of all of these men is part of the overall story that I feel like democrats should be telling to voters

Alex Wagner: Yeah, and you know, I feel like we played a little bit of sound from Jon Ossoff in our introduction because he’s out there on the campaign trail and he’s come up with a catchphrase that I’m particularly obsessed with that I think hits all those points around corruption, affordability, elites, and he started calling them the Epstein class. The people in the White House, the administration, and to some degree the GOP are the Epstein class. Just as a creature of… You know, understanding what happens in voters minds and the way in which messages and language resonate or not. What do you think of that? What do think of the label Epstein class as trying to get at that central conceit that you’re talking about?

Sarah Longwell: Yeah, I mean, I would sort of like to call it, this is quibbling over terms, because I’ll just say directionally, I think Jon Ossoff, I felt like a ton of people sent that clip to me because they were like, he’s doing the thing you keep yelling about, which is to connect Epstein to this elite culture. And again, Trump protecting elites at the expense of average people. And so I think it’s great. I might call it the Epstein administration because there’s basically two types of people in Trump’s administration. People who are in the Epstein files, and people who were actively covering up the Epstein files. Like, that’s it. [laughter] There’s those two categories of people, and I feel like we should make that clear for voters.

Alex Wagner: Yeah. I mean, can we talk a little bit about this week’s Epstein or I guess it was technically last Friday, but there’s so many files that we’re still combing through them every day as a new revelation. But this week emphasis seems to be, and I say this as someone who has not been combing through all of them, but just in terms of news, I think the focus is not necessarily on the victims and the child sex trafficking as much as it is the secret cabal of elites who are working to further their own interests. You know, without any thought towards the fact that they were doing business, the center of this ring was a man who was a sex offender.

Sarah Longwell: Category three sex offender.

Alex Wagner: Category three.

Sarah Longwell: Which is the worst kind you can be.

Alex Wagner: So, given that, I mean, I wonder if you think that sort of injects new resonance in the minds of people who might otherwise have kind of be a bit dulled to Epstein revelations. Just how vast this network is, how all-encompassing it was, and the way in which… You know, they were all operating well into the 2010s and beyond with Epstein, even though they knew he was a really bad fucking guy.

Sarah Longwell: Yeah. So when I think about voters, one of the things I always think about is like, it’s less about what are you trying to get voters to think about that’s brand new versus what are you tagging into what they already know? And I think the reason that the Epstein story breaks through is that voters already think that there is an elite cabal that is sort of untethered to normal rules, laws, social norms, mores, and nothing has sort made an example of that more than watching the casual way that so many people, billionaires and professors, and from all walks of life, but people at the highest end. That average people would never have access to, how much they were all in league with each other, how much winking and nodding was going on, how much favor trading was happening, and the fact that they, yeah, they all know each other go to dinners together, the way, you can sort of see the way that Epstein, like it’s very clear how he reputation launders, how he’s like, well, Woody Allen’s gonna be here, so you should come and like brings people together. Like you can watch it happening in real time and I think that’s the. That’s when something becomes the kind of thing that breaks through, is not just that it’s new information, but that it maps onto something that people have long believed is going on.

Alex Wagner: It’s like the Hillary Clinton email thing, right?

Sarah Longwell: That’s right. They already think you’re corrupt.

Alex Wagner: They think you are a secret self-dealer. And here’s the best example of that. In terms of fallout adjacent to the actual files themselves, I’m going to list a couple of developments we saw this week. And I want to know which do you think is most meaningful or needle moving? The fact that Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie spent like 15 seconds looking at the unredacted files and they’re like, whoa, whoa. Whoa, there are six dudes in here. Who definitely whose names should not have been redacted and who are absolutely implicated in criminal activity. There was Ghislaine Maxwell basically, I guess, extorting the president of the United States for clemency. There’s Howard Lutnick being caught in a big ass lie. There’s the Miami Herald reporting that Trump admitted to knowing Epstein was getting up with teenage girls back in the year 2006. Um, which one of those things do you, are you paying particular attention to? Are you most intrigued about in terms of, you know, having a long tail?

Sarah Longwell: So the thing that is most interesting to me that I would like Democrats to press on the most is Lutnick. And that may seem weird because people are like, who’s this, like, he’s not an obscure official, but he’s one of these big, he not Pam Bondi or Kash Patel or somebody who’s as much in the public consciousness, but here’s why I think it matters. He tried to create a hero narrative for himself where he was like, and Trump has a hero narrative on Epstein from his supporters, right? The hero narrative on Epstein is, well, I kicked this dirt bag out of the club. I knew he was bad. And they’re trying to reanimate that right now based on this report that Trump actually called the police, the police chief and said, oh yeah, he’s a bad guy. You should get, I’m glad you’re gonna get him. And Ghislaine Maxwell, she’s evil. That’s sort of always been Trump’s hero’s narrative. This is a guy who shut Epstein down when everybody else was participating with him. Lutnick’s hero narrative has fallen apart. And much like the way we get gaslit about the shooting of Alex Pretti from Stephen Miller and from Kristi Noem, this idea that like all of these administration officials are lying to us. Like he was, it was shown that he was like, he knew in the statements that he gave what a creep this guy was. He made it clear when he was gave that interview where he said, I spent five minutes with the guy. And I knew what an absolute creep he was.

Alex Wagner: He had a massage table in his kitchen.

Sarah Longwell: And I never talked to him again. I was like, we are getting out of here. And then it’s like, oh, oh you took your family to the island after that. Oh, you started a business with him after that, you are lying. And the reason that it matters to me is because it is similar to Trump. Trump’s story on this has never added up. Trump is lying about it. And so I would like for us to press on this point that the narratives, and then it goes back to my framing of people are either in the Epstein files or they’re covering up the Epstein files, right? Is like, they’re all lying to us about these things. And Trump is very much, has continued to change his story about his relationship to Ghislaine Maxwell, his relationship to Epstein. And I think crumbling those hero narratives and instead, because to me, when I see that he called the police chief and said that you’re like, ooh! So you knew, did you know? Because you have said in multiple public things subsequently that you had no idea. When he’s like, why are we still talking about this? I barely knew him or I wasn’t around that or I told you I kicked him out and you’re like—

Alex Wagner: Who among us isn’t mentioned 38,000 times in those files. In those files.

Sarah Longwell: Exactly, and so that to me, to me if we can kind of get a handle. On how like Elon, Elon’s another one who had tried to say like, well, I never went to the island and made kind of a big deal about that. And then it comes out. But you were trying to and not in the way some other people were where they were going there for fundraising trips or these dinners, which I’m not saying is good either. But it’s different than than Elon being like, hey, man, when’s your next big party on the island? When is it? What’s your wildest one? Can I come? And like, that’s the part that you’ve really got to lean into that they are lying about it.

Alex Wagner: The subtext of that, and you brought this up on your podcast, is that they know there’s fucking documentation proving otherwise. But this is a class of people who is so used to not having to pay any price and operating with certain impunity that it’s as if they were like, I’m going to go out here, spin my hero narrative, but the truth is never going to come out because of course it won’t because the piper never comes for us. And that is the most disgust and that’s like not the most disgusting but it is such disgusting aspect of the ultra wealthy and ultra powerful is their sense of, I guess, lawlessness.

[AD BREAK]

Alex Wagner: You know, you talk about Trump officials who could be in trouble on this. I just think, you know, the fact that Trump may recognize some of himself in Lutnick maybe guarantees Lutnick a little bit of insurance, right? Cause like, Pete Hegseth is another blow dried fucking idiot, but his life expectancy in his office, I didn’t mean that, his term, is pretty much ironclad because he’s Trump’s poodle. And Lutnick, you know, if anyone is going to pay a price, I wonder if it’s not Pam Bondi. And I would draw everybody’s attention to an exchange, Pam Bondi is on the Hill today as we record, testifying about matters unrelated to Epstein, but of course is being asked about Epstein. And this is her back and forth with Pramila Jayapal, progressive congresswoman from Washington. Let’s take a listen.

[clip of Pramila Jayapal]: I asked you a specific question that I would like you to answer, which is will you turn to the survivors? This is not about anybody that came before you. It is about you taking responsibility for your Department of Justice and the harm that it has done to the Survivors who are standing right behind you and are waiting for you to turn to them and apologize for what your Department of justice system.

[clip of Chairman]: Members get to ask the questions, the witness get to answer in the way they want to answer.

[clip of Pramila Jayapal]: That’s not accurate. Mr. Chairman—

[clip of Pam Bondi]: Because she doesn’t like the answer. So, um.

[clip of Pramila Jayapal]: Mr. Chairman.

[clip of Pam Bondi]: Why didn’t she ask Merrick Garland this? Twice—

[clip of Pramila Jayapal]: I’m reclaiming my time and when I will reclaim my time—[overlapping chatter]

[clip of Pam Bondi]: I’m not going to get in the gutter for her theatrics.

Alex Wagner: The gutter. I think this is such a loaded moment, and not least because it’s two women arguing with each other. First of all, I think a lot of women have just looked at Pam Bondi and been like, how could you be doing this to these women? How could you have done everything in your power to cover up the abuse that they withstood for years, the trafficking, the destruction of their childhoods? But so it’s a woman at the DOJ who’s the mastermind behind the part of the, biggest part of cover up. There are women in the audience. There’s another woman pressing her. And then the assertion that the person in the gutter is Pramila Jayapal. Fascinating political like interplay and also social sociocultural commentary. What do you think of that? And how do you that reflects on Pam Bondi to audiences outside of Donald Trump? Well, so.

Sarah Longwell: So I watched a bunch of the hearing while it was going on, and Pam Bondi is being insane in this hearing. Like, I’ve sort of never seen anything like it. It really is jarring to see how combative she’s being with every single Democrat. And I mean, these hearings can get sort of combative, but there’s actually usually a veneer of respectability on them. But she, like many people in the Trump administration, are treating it as though it’s like a Twitter feud. And like when you do that, it’s her her go to is to do a what about what about is a move that right and it’s like well what about Merrick Garland? Why didn’t he do it? And it’s like this has nothing to do with your job and what you’re doing and and maybe uh you know they could even answer it like I don’t know there was an ongoing investigation into Ghislaine Maxwell at the time and that’s why we weren’t releasing it. I don’t know what the answer is. I do know she is trying to obfuscate and attack uh they know they are on their back foot but your original question was like… Does she pay the ultimate price?

Alex Wagner: Yeah.

Sarah Longwell: I’m not sure, because it does seem, to your point about Hegseth and the fact that Signalgate wasn’t aligned, like, it made them all look like buffoons, not the least of which was the fact that it also demonstrated that there are massive holes in our OpSpecs around national security. But like, so if that’s not aligned, Trump seems to have decided he’s backing every single one of these people to the hilt. The only reason that Pam is in slightly more trouble than other people is because it’s actual MAGA types coming for her, because they feel lied to about the whole performative here, give everybody a binder for your social media and then there was nothing in it, her saying it’s on my desk, I’m going to do something about it. Like for a lot of MAGA-types who just went deep on this and another one is Kash Patel, who by the way also lied, lied in his cover-up in a different hearing where he said that there, he looked at the files and that there were no other men that we’re trafficked to, which has now been completely obliterated as the truth, and, uh, our boy, um… Uh, the Republican who is running this, I don’t know the wrestling guy, uh, I don’t know why I’m—

Alex Wagner: Jim Jordan, Jim Jordan.

Sarah Longwell: Jim Jordan—[both speaking]

Alex Wagner: We would be good at that, whatever, some guessing game where it’s like, you just have one clue on my wrestling guy, Jim Jordan. [both speaking] Maryland, Jamie Raskin.

Sarah Longwell: But he said, he said you cannot lie to Congress. Like he kind of did this preamble about how it is a crime to lie to us. And I’m like, has anybody talked to Kash Patel lately? Because it has been completely proven that he was lying. But anyway, this what Bondi Bondi’s, I think, is like her whole deal is I’m going to protect Trump come what may. And that’s what he wants out of attorney general. She’s giving him everything he wants. They’re firing the people. Who are standing in the way of the political prosecutions that they want to do. She’s happy to jump on any political prosecution he wants to do, and so I don’t know that he gets rid of her because she’s like a heat shield for him

Alex Wagner: She is. And she has proven that she has no problem licking the bottom of the sewer, if that’s what you want her to do. I mean, it’s… But I will say the one meaningful difference, if I could, between Yabos like Lutnick and Hegseth, like the bombing of, you know, fishermen in the Caribbean waters and Signalgate, like that’s all bad. And it makes the administration look incompetent, if not evil. But it doesn’t implicate Trump. Trump’s not wrapped up in it personally, and Lutnick is slightly different. He’s adjacent to Trump in terms of the Epstein stuff. But Bondi is in the stew of the conspiracy around cover-up and MAGA and Trump. And I just don’t know whether his sense, Trump’s own desire for survival and being done with this and finding a scapegoat could make him less inclined to keep Bondi in there forever. Having said that, she does things that nobody else will do, and it’s going to be hard to find anyone with a law degree who is as despicable and characterless as Pam Bondi to fill the role of attorney general. But never say never, I guess.

Sarah Longwell: Yeah. I mean, he could go back to Matt Gaetz. Who was the original choice for this role, which by the way, can you just imagine if it was this is who was running the DOJ during the Epstein files. Like they are being forced into this. They were forced into it by Congress. This is where, look, you’re making what I think is a perfectly sensible political point, which is that at some point does Trump need a scapegoat or somebody to offer up to the altar of they messed this up. The problem is it’s not really what’s happening. Pam Bondi didn’t mishandle the thing. Like the thing happened. 12, 15, 20 years ago. And it’s just all coming to light and she can’t stop it because of what Congress did. And so she’s out there spinning for him. So like the Epstein files kind of don’t go away as long as Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna and people like Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace, like who are objectively kind of just crazy MAGA people themselves, but they have been good and principled on this point.

Alex Wagner: Absolutely.

Sarah Longwell: Because actually they think the victims matter. Like, and the end of the day, I was saying before how I didn’t really care about it, and the whole Epstein thing. And part of it was because I tend to not go down the conspiracy rabbit holes of did Epstein kill himself? Like I kind of thought this was just kind of in the QAnon vein. And I wasn’t invested in the whole conspiracy around Epstein killing himself, but I was invested in the reporting from Julie K. Brown about what actually happened with these young women. And I had read all of the things about Epstein have been like. This is the grossest stuff. This is like horrible and horrific. And so part of it too is I just didn’t want to engage. And like, I was like, I don’t need to read any more about that. That is awful. I’m not sad that he’s gone. It makes sense why he killed himself. And I kind of left it at that in my head. It was, but what changed is that it looked like accountability might be possible. It’s not just that Donald Trump was involved is that once the Trump came in and it made, it became clear they were, like, not- going to release them, you were like, well, wait a minute. You were desperate for this, not Trump himself though, because if you go back and start to parse it, you realize he was never as comfortable as people just assumed he wanted to do it because Kash and all those other people were out there. But like, oh, maybe we will get accountability for the victims, maybe, we will find out that there was a bunch of other people trafficking her, like I kind of never believed the elite cabal of like QAnon types and then Trump was the hero in all of that. But I do believe that there were a bunch of men who were traffic in these girls and who are trafficking who were allowing Epstein to invite them into his world and do this gross stuff and participate in it and then it’s clear And this is the part I didn’t anticipate that a much wider social circle of people knew about it and thought it was kind of either just like a funny quirk. Like Jeffrey Epstein—

Alex Wagner: Yeah, funny. He travels with a harem. Wow! Weird! And they all happen to be 16!

Sarah Longwell: This is one of those where it’s like, if you don’t, as a society, say this is not okay, we don’t accept this as a socially appropriate thing to do, that is a norm breaking, blunder is not a big enough word, but that is catastrophic for our moral fiber. And that’s the part that sort of got me the most engaged, is that you do want accountability for everybody, and the more that comes out, the more pernicious it all is.

Alex Wagner: Yeah, if you accept the fact that the most powerful, the best educated, and the wealthiest in our society have no moral code, then that denigrates, I mean, that means society on whole is broken. Like you can’t accept that they were looking at these human beings and not seeing them as human beings. They’re like, oh, they’re Jeffrey’s toys, and we’ll let him play with them however where he wants. And it’s not gonna stop us from making real estate deals with him because we could profit. It’s just their own, and the idea of self-interest above basic humanity is seems to be like, I don’t know, the organizing principle of what happens in the circle of Epstein friends.

[AD BREAK]

Alex Wagner: But you brought up, I want to stop on a point that you just made about the number of people in the House, some of the women, some of men who have held Trump or who have pushed Congress towards full transparency on this and in turn held Trump accountable on what is in the Epstein files. I wonder, and I’m saying this with a fistful of salt in my hand, but the… This is happening, like you have Bondi getting ripped to shreds, Bondi going on attack and also being hammered on the hill. You have three million files that continue to be poured through, none of which are good for Trump and his allies or, you know, many other rich people, even including Democrats. You had the House defeating an effort by Mike Johnson to protect Trump’s tariffs, like mutiny on the Republican side of the aisle. You have what feels like. I don’t want to say the beginnings of insurrection, but you know what’s happening here. You know how you, I think, have a keen sense of, like, if there is breakage, whether or not it’s a real, whether it’s hairline fracture or a full break. And I wonder if you think that the Epstein files might really have been the catalyst for what is feels like is coming, like a real reckoning between the president and his party.

Sarah Longwell: So there’s two components to this. There’s the part where some member of Congress show actual spine. And so that is Massie. That is actually Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace, like I said, in part because they say, like either they’ve experienced sexual assault themselves and they just won’t let this one go. Like that’s, there’s some spine, but the vast majority of Republicans aren’t doing anything, right? The vast majority of people are trying to cover it up and protecting him. They were able to get, I can’t remember, like four people. For Republicans to vote for it to make them have to release it and without that the vast majority of Republicans were happily happy to try to do this cover-up including Mike Johnson. And in fact Trump has been like punishing Lauren Boebert by taking money out of her district and they put you know Lauren Boebert moved districts she left her district that they put in some normie kind of more normie ish Republican less of a firebrand than her that guy’s not doing anything about the Epstein files being released like it took somebody like Lauren Boebert, so I don’t want to overstate Republicans getting a spine on some things, because I think it was such a small group of people, but it was just enough, because the majority is so narrow for Republicans. Then there’s the other reason, the thing that’s happening, the reason I think you’re starting to get the sense that people are gonna start pushing back, which is you’re seeing all the retirements.

Alex Wagner: Yeah.

Sarah Longwell: Because Republicans are like, we’re about to get absolutely murdered. But the second thing they’re seeing is Trump’s poll numbers start to crater. The reason that people stick with Trump. Is they think Trump is invincible with the public, certainly with the Republican base. And any start to Trump, like, independents are out on him, right? Hispanics have fallen out of him. Young people have dropped away from him. And so his disapproved numbers are getting really high. That’s the thing that I think starts to create a permission structure for some members of Congress to start to act, because they know there’s a life after Trump. They know that they’re what I mean.

Alex Wagner: It ain’t much of a life.

Sarah Longwell: Yeah. But I do think that’s part of what’s happening is that he is just, the poll numbers are dropping. There’s a buildup of things that he has done that they are now feeling, I think, accountable for, that they might be held accountable for. And that’s starting to get people a little weak-kneed.

Alex Wagner:  Can I just say, because I think this data point belongs at the end of this conversation, which is the Washington Post reported just a couple hours ago, that the National Guard is quietly being pulled from Portland and Chicago and Los Angeles. Like, it ain’t just the Republicans in Congress who are feeling the heat. Like, Trump, whatever he says, he’s putting out press releases that say, don’ t be panicking! The economy, what is it? You guys are going to make MAGA hats and say, the economy is moderating, or prices are moderating. Whatever the fuck the language is. They’re in trouble because they’ve done dog shit. Well, they’ve steered the economy into dog shit, and this attack on blue cities is not fucking working. The public is not with them on immigration. He’s flailing on an issue he used to be strong on. He’s in real trouble. I know that people want to hear that. People interested in democracy want to here that, but it also happens to be true.

Sarah Longwell: Yeah, I mean, this is where you want to be just slightly circumspect. So we did a whole show on this where we were talking about it. I wish I could remember the exact phrase that they put in their panicking statement, which I said on that show, you know that this is a real phenomenon because they had to name it. Like the idea of Republicans panicking, Trump has decided to name because it’s a real thing that’s happening. And I wish could remember the phrase that they used. It’s like… Yeah, prices are moderating slightly is like something that was was in the press release and it was like way down in it, too—

Alex Wagner: It’s the last point. It was the last point in the press release.

Sarah Longwell: Because here’s the thing Trump does know he’s in trouble And what I I’m not even sure they have quite figured out yet. But the thing to understand about voters is that this stuff doesn’t happen in a vacuum. People are independently mad about masked agents in the streets who our shooting Americans, but also pulling out people who are not criminals. And this is what I, but I do want Democrats to be slightly careful on one thing. Trump’s excesses on immigration enforcement are making people really upset. And I hear in focus groups all the time, like, this is not what I voted for. Like, I wanted him to get dangerous criminals out. That’s what he was supposed to do and secure the border. But I didn’t want him pulling this guy who’s lived here for 20 years and has never committed a crime out of his house in this horrible way. And shooting Americans in the streets. The thing though is, is that I don’t want Democrats to interpret people hating Trump’s excesses as wanting to go back to Democrats’ policy on immigration. It is a huge, it is the reason that he, Trump keeps getting, it’s the reason he launched his campaign. It wasn’t because people were like, this guy is gonna build a wall and I desperately want a wall. It’s because the wall was a stand-in for a vibe that he was gonna take immigration seriously. And Americans do want immigration taken seriously. I just I cannot tell you how many swing voters I listen to where like you, it’s an easy thing to triangulate. Like there just is a sweet spot. People want a secure border. They want us to know who’s in the country. They do want dangerous criminals deported. This feels like a pretty reasonable thing for an American to believe. But they also are like, if this person’s been here for 20 years and not committing any crimes, like don’t be a dick to them. And like, there’s gotta be a different way to work this out. And so, I think that Trump is way in his excess points, but I just don’t want Democrats to think like, see, people liked it better when immigration was done our way. Immigration was done our way.

Alex Wagner: Yeah, exactly. Well, it forces the Democrats’ hand on actually coming up with a proposal of what their immigration policy might be.

Sarah Longwell: That would be great.

Alex Wagner: I will tell you, the specific language in the panic and press release, Sarah, for your hats and hoodies and bags is, everyday costs continue moderating.

Sarah Longwell: Everyday costs continue moderating.

Alex Wagner: Put that on a red hat with white all caps and I will buy it.

Sarah Longwell: You know who doesn’t feel that way? Voters. Because I listen to it all day, every day. And this is, sorry, this is actually the main point I wanted to make, Which is everything doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Everything that Trump does that people don’t like is happening at the same time. Their costs aren’t going down, which is the one thing they hired him to do. They’re not an either or. It’s like, people are like, well, does it break through the East Wing, the ballroom stuff? And I’m like… It’s not, people notice it, and it’s not that they’re mad because they care about the ballroom, it’s that why is he focused on the ball room when my prices are still so high? Which, by the way, tags into the Epstein stuff, because it’s like, why are this out of touch elite stuff and my prices aren’t being lowered? This is where Marjorie Taylor Greene understands that America first isn’t just a slogan, it’s a statement of prioritization, and when they feel like they’re not being prioritized, that’s when Trump starts to lose his power.

Alex Wagner: It’s Trump first really is what it is.

Sarah Longwell: Of course it is.

Alex Wagner: Wait till the arc to Trump starts getting erected. That’s for another podcast. Sarah Longwell, you brilliant, wonderful person. Thank you for taking time out of your more important activities to do this podcast with me.

Sarah Longwell: Nothing was more important than this. This was the most important. Love talking to you.

Alex Wagner: You’re the best. I really I appreciate your time, Sarah. Thanks for coming on.

Sarah Longwell: You’re the best.

Alex Wagner: Before we go, a quick shout out to Fulton County, whose District 5 Commissioner Marvin Arrington was on this show last week. Now, you remember that FBI raid of a Georgia elections hub where Trump confiscated ballots from the 2020 election? Well, over the weekend, a federal judge in Atlanta ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to unseal and publicly release the search warrant materials and supporting documentation that federal officials relied on to carry out that raid. And guess what? The warrants show that the Justice Department used debunked claims about election irregularities in Georgia, ones that have already been independently reviewed, been through multiple audits, and ruled on in multiple cases. So the essential justification for seizing these records just isn’t there. Okay, Marvin. Anyway, that is our show for this week. As always, if you’ve been impacted directly by the Trump administration and its policies, send us an email or a one minute voice note at runawaycountry@crooked.com and we may be in touch to feature your story. A huge thank you to everyone who has written in already. You guys are awesome. Last but not least, do not forget to check out the show and our rapid response videos, which are en fuego. Check them out on our YouTube channel, A Runaway Country with Alex Wagner. Thanks for listening. Runaway Country is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Alyona Minkovski. Our producer is Emma Illick-Frank. Production support from Megan Larson and Lacy Roberts. The show is mixed and edited by Charlotte Landes. Ben Hethcoat is our video producer and Matt DeGroot is our head of production. Audio support comes from Kyle Seglin. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Adriene Hill is our Head of News and Politics. Katie Long is our Executive Producer of Development. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writer’s Guild of America East.