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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Thursday, July 24th, I’m Jane Coaston and this is What a Day, another place where Vice President J.D. Vance can never go on vacation. The Vice President went to Nantucket for a break and instead found a whole bunch of angry protesters. Buddy, if you thought you could go to a whaling museum in peace right now, you were clearly incorrect. You were on a winning presidential ticket. You do not win the right to be liked. [music break] On today’s show, a federal judge rules that Kilmar Abrego Garcia can be released from a Tennessee jail. And the Environmental Protection Agency wants to argue that greenhouse gasses are completely fine. But let’s start with former president Barack Obama. Remember Obama? Two-term president, left office in 2017, ring a bell? Well, according to president Donald Trump, who is definitely not trying to distract from the ballooning Epstein debacle engulfing his administration. Obama is at the center of a massive conspiracy centered on Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election. If you’re thinking, that was nine years ago. I thought this whole thing was settled. Why are we talking about this again? Look I get it, but here’s the TLDR on the latest version of Trump’s Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. He’s alleging President Obama and members of his administration lied about Russian efforts to swing the 2016 election for Trump. And they made up intelligence to back up their claims. Now, Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election is well-established, as was its preferred outcome, that Trump beat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. It was all laid out in a 2020 bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee, which at the time, included now Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He signed off on the report. But now, according to Trump, Obama has committed, quote, “treason,” and obviously everyone involved has to go to jail. Here’s Trump speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] What they did to me, and whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people. 

Jane Coaston: Great. But what makes this all really scary is that Trump’s wild claims are being fueled by his own Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. She’s been releasing documents targeting the Obama administration, alleging they contradict the intelligence community’s well-established conclusion that Russia was trying to help Trump. She also says she’s referred the documents to the FBI for investigation. Gabbard spoke Wednesday during the White House press briefing.

[clip of Tulsi Gabbard] President Obama directed an intelligence community assessment to be created uh to further this contrived false narrative that ultimately led to a years-long coup to try to undermine President Trump’s presidency. 

Jane Coaston: Point of order. I remember Trump’s inauguration in 2017, which Obama attended. I do not think that’s how coups traditionally work. It’s fair to say that right now Trump could really use a distraction, because things are not going great for his administration. On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reported that the Justice Department alerted Trump back in May that his name appears in the Epstein files. We’ll talk more about that in the headlines. But for more on the return of Russia Russia Russia conspiracy theories and what Trump’s willingness to go after his opposition, including a former president, says about this presidency, I spoke to David Frum, he’s a staff writer at the Atlantic and host of the David Frum show. David, welcome to What a Day. 

David Frum: Thank you. 

Jane Coaston: I want to start with the latest conspiracy theory Trump is trying to peddle. It goes something like this. Former President Barack Obama and others in his administration committed quote, “treason,” by forcing the intelligence community to alter its conclusions that Russia tried to influence the 2016 election to help Trump in order to undermine his first term in office. Now to be clear, there is no evidence to support this claim. The claim doesn’t actually make any sense and it contradicts multiple previous assessments, including a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report that Marco Rubio signed off on. Rubio is now, obviously, Trump’s Secretary of State. But how seriously do we need to take this? 

David Frum: Well one of the remarkable things about Trump’s scandals is the way they take place in public. So you don’t have to look at assessments, you don’t have to know much about the intelligence community, you just have to have a memory, or even if you don’t have a memory, you just look it up. So here’s what happened in 2016. The Russians hacked Hillary Clinton’s communications, or they got lucky. People in the Hillary Clinton campaign or around the campaign, some people made mistakes, they got fished, anyway, the Russians got hands their hands on a trove of documents. They released these documents to Wikileaks. Wikileaks posted them in October. The documents really hurt [?] the Hillary Clinton campaign and knocked it off balance. And in a very close election where Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but not the electoral college, all of this made a difference. Now, there are a lot of question marks. Why did the Russians do this? Um. And there are a lotta question marks is exactly what was the connection between Trump and the Russians. Much again. It’s memory, you saw it happen in plain sight. You saw Donald Trump’s son take a meeting when he was offered dirt by the Russians. You saw Donald Trump himself in a press conference, say, Russia if you’re listening, and ask for the release of documents. So that’s what we know, that’s what we’ve always known. It’s not a complicated story. Russia helped the Trump campaign, Trump welcomed the help, and the help probably made some difference to the outcome. That’s the story. Those are the things we know. And Trump is using the one scandal that we know about from 2016 to sort of protect themselves from the other scandal that we’re just remembering in plain sight in 2025. 

Jane Coaston: But how seriously do you think we need to take Trump’s threats? Because clearly, yes, the timing of this is bananas suspect. Trump is definitely trying to distract from mounting pressure he and his administration are under over the Epstein files, which is again, their own fault. But in a way, does that make this moment more dangerous? Because Trump feels real pressure. He feels there are real stakes. He feels backed in a corner. And we’ve seen what happens what when he’s backed into a corner, you get January 6th, how worried should we actually be? 

David Frum: I think when Trump says things, um they’re indicators of direction, when he says, I’m going to invade Greenland and conquer Danish territory and annex it to the United States, he’s probably not actually going to do that. But it tells you what he’s thinking about and what he is planning and the direction in which his mind is going. So when he threatens to use the power of the state against political opponents, um you should take that seriously. One of the things about this that is especially bonkers is Trump went to court to get the Supreme Court to say, you know what, former president? Almost no aspect of criminal law applies to you. You have this vast domain of big, if fuzzy, immunity. Unless you’re Obama, then you have no immunity. Then the president can throw you in jail. 

Jane Coaston: Right. And I think that goes to Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, said she’d be making a criminal referral to the justice department. And we don’t have a ton of specifics about that. And she was even asked in a press conference about that Supreme Court ruling. And that was something she was like, oh, Pam Bondi will explain. 

David Frum: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: But what are the risks of having the top U.S. Intelligence official trying to rewrite history to serve the president’s narrative? To get him out of a jam, he got himself in. What does it signify about how far this administration is willing to go to protect Donald Trump and serve its own ends? 

David Frum: Look, the list of things that are wrong with Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence doesn’t end with what you just said. You have a list of people with very extreme views um who have often showed their enthusiasm for foreign dictators. Tulsi Gabbard is a huge enthusiast of the Assad regime in Syria, now mercifully gone. You have other people who have been very hostile to Ukraine, other people of other types of enthusiasm. And they have all these crucial points in the national bureaucracy. And so, whether they do this thing they say or not, the whole government of the United States is spinning in these crazy directions. At a time when um the United States has fewer friends than it used to do, at a time when we’re facing these global pressures, and at a time in the United State itself, police power is being used in all kinds of astonishing new ways. I mean, I personally don’t fear that I will have a masked man in a tactical outfit, playing dress up, seize me and put a rifle up my nose. But it’s happening to dozens, hundreds of people. And if this continues, one of the things I think about a lot is how do you conduct the 2026 elections in situations where ICE, which is going to be on its way by then to being bigger than the United States Marine Corps is doing these random raids, harassing people and intimidating people. There are a lot of people who are American citizens entitled to vote, who have spouses who may not be American citizens, entitled to the vote. Do they go into the line? Are they afraid for their relatives? And can you create enough chaos that Trump can selectively seize this part of America, that part of America, and say we’re having a state of emergency here during the 2026 elections? 

Jane Coaston: It’s interesting also because members of Trump’s MAGA base have been demanding for years to see former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Obama imprisoned. Like I remember lock her up. I was alive in 2016. Those people have long bought into Trump’s narrative that the investigations around Russian meddling were all a hoax and everyone they don’t like should go to jail. So the base is primed for this. What is actually stopping the administration from acting on these threats? 

David Frum: Yeah um. Well, in the past you would have said the integrity of the federal justice department, you would’ve said the character of the attorney general, you would have said the threat of resignations throughout the attorney generals office and the department of justice, but those things are less real. Um. The Trump base also has for a long time been fed a story that the Jeffrey Epstein scandals conceal a vast morass of elite wrongdoing and that only Trump can bring them truth. And the question, I think the question of all the things you’re asking is to what extent can he pivot his base, or at least the parts of the base that he most needs, into agreeing with him. Yeah, suddenly, we’ve spent all these years being promised a huge revelation about a global conspiracy behind Jeffrey Epstein, and now we’re told, forget about it. 

Jane Coaston: So you’ve started a podcast in the last few months where you’re talking to a wide range of guests in politics and business. And for your most recent episode, you talked with former FBI official Peter Strzok. He was fired from the bureau during Trump’s first term after a disparaging text he made about Trump were made public. And you talked about how Trump is destroying US counterintelligence apparatus. So how does what we’re seeing right now with Epstein, with these conspiracies about Obama fit into that conversation. 

David Frum: Well, two points. The first is, you know, if you follow the news, a lot of these names become very familiar, but they become familiar as names and causes. And I’ve had the privilege and the pleasure of getting to know Peter Strzok, not intimately, but well, and having a chance to see, this is someone who went into public service for exactly the reasons you would wish, um who turned down more lucrative opportunities. He loves the country. He wants to protect it. He’s not that political. But the thing that I had in mind when we talked about this, is the Trump administration struck Iran with a series of bomb attacks. By the way, that’s a decision I think was probably right. I supported that action. But it when you do something like that, you’re opening a door to a very complicated chain of events. And one of the obvious things the Iranians might do that they have done in the past is strike back in a terrorist way against targets inside the United States and U.S.-linked targets all over the world. They have a long history of doing this. You need every counter-terrorism resource in the FBI and other agencies to be deployed to protect Americans against the [?] Iranian retaliation that may be to come. And instead, they are turning off the counterintelligence systems. They’re turning off counterterrorism. They’re letting people go. They’re forcing people into early retirement. And they’re moving resources from all of those things that are probably, in most people’s opinion, the first line job of the United States government domestic security operation and putting them all into putting noses up the uh guns up the noses of gardeners and roofers. 

Jane Coaston: What kind of advice did Strzok have, if any, for current career government officials, especially in his former department, who are now being pressed to toe the line for the administration or be fired? 

David Frum: Well, um we didn’t talk about that advice. I’ve talked about that kind of advice with other people and many times over the years, 2016. And I think the advice that I would give is always, you have to be very clear in your own mind about where your red lines are and your own ability to execute your redlines. And I wrote something at the very beginning of the first Trump administration, where I said, you know, just imagine the Oval Office. It is an awe-inspiring place. It’s designed to be awe-inspiring. And there’s the president of the United States and he’s asking you to do something wrong. If you’re going to take the job, you need to know that you will be able to say no. And you need be sure that you actually, you may walk into that room intending to say, no. But when you’re there, your mouth may say something different. So you need know yourself. You need to keep one more thing in mind. If Trump thought you would say no, you wouldn’t be in the room in the first place. 

Jane Coaston: David, thank you so much for your time. 

David Frum: Thank you for having me. Bye bye. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with David Frum, staff writer at The Atlantic and host of The David Frum Show. We’ll link to his work in our show notes. 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] I just signed the largest trade deal in history, I think maybe the largest deal in history with Japan. [applause and cheers]

Jane Coaston: I don’t think it’s the largest trade deal in history, but President Trump announced that Japan and the U.S. reached a tariff deal. Trump elaborated on the terms of the deal in a Truth Social post late Tuesday evening, saying all imports from Japan would be subject to a 15% tariff, notably lower than the 25% he had threatened to enact on August 1st. In exchange, Japan will open its market to American cars and agricultural products like rice. Trump also claimed Japan agreed to invest $550 billion in the U S. Japan’s top tariff negotiator Ryosei Akazawa told reporters that the money would largely take the form of loans to Japanese businesses investing in the U.S. Akazama also confirmed that this deal does not include new terms for Japanese aluminum or steel, which is still subject to a 50 percent tariff, but that discussions there would continue. After facing massive backlash from his party for failing to release the so-called Epstein files, the Trump administration asked federal judges in Florida and New York City to release grand jury testimony related to Epstein. On Wednesday, the judge in Florida denied that request. The Wall Street Journal was first to report on Wednesday that President Trump’s name appeared multiple times in documents related to Epstein. And that Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump so in May, which is interesting. Since just last week, President Trump claimed that Bondi never told him that his name appeared in Epstein-related documentation reviewed by the Department of Justice. 

[clip of unknown journalist] Didn’t she tell you at all that your name appeared in the file? 

[clip of President Donald Trump] No, no, she’s given us just a very quick briefing and in terms of the credibility of the different things that they’ve seen. And I would say that, you know, these files were made up by Comey, they were made up by Obama, they were made up by the Biden informa– you know– 

Jane Coaston: Sure. According to the officials who spoke with the journal, Bondi also told Trump during the May briefing that the DOJ wouldn’t release any further documents related to Epstein because they contained child pornography and personal information about Epstein’s victims. The officials say that Trump agreed to defer to the DOJ’s decision despite claiming repeatedly over the course of his presidential campaign that he would declassify the Epstein files, like this time on Fox and Friends in 2024. 

[clip of unnamed Fox Host] Would you declassify the Epstein files? 

[clip of President Donald Trump] Yeah, yeah. I would. I guess I would I think that less so because you know you don’t know, you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there because there’s a lot of phony self with that whole world. Uh. But I think I would. 

Jane Coaston: Phony stuff with that whole world, eh? Yes, it’s so unfortunate when there are consequences for your actions. Really hate to see it. A federal judge has ruled that Kilmar Abrego Garcia should be freed from custody at the Tennessee jail where he’s currently being held, awaiting trial for smuggling charges. At the same time on Wednesday, another judge in Maryland officially blocked ICE from taking him into custody again if he’s released before said trial, meaning he could potentially be reunited with his family soon. Here’s a little refresher on the situation in case you’ve been distracted by the many, many other insanely horrific things happening in America over the last few months. In March, Garcia, who had protected legal status in the U.S., was arrested by ICE in Baltimore and sent to a notorious detention center in El Salvador. The Trump administration was like, oopsie, that was a mistake, but like, we can’t really do anything about it. Sorry, not sorry. And then after multiple court battles, Garcia was allowed to come back to the U S and was now facing charges for a years long conspiracy to smuggle immigrants across the border for MS-13, the Salvadoran gang, which he and his lawyers vehemently deny. The federal judge in Maryland had a few additional demands for the Trump administration. Give at least three days notice if ICE plans to detain him again and restore the federal supervision he was under before being wrongfully deported in the first place. Meanwhile, Trump’s team is really pushing hard for Garcia to lose that trial. Here’s Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sharing her extremely subtle and unbiased take on the issue. 

[clip of Kristi Noem] He’s standing trial now and I hope he faces consequences for his crimes uh and that that will be something that we will be able to deliver for the people that have been victimized by him and his actions over the years and then when that is done and that process is over he should never be allowed to be free in the United States of America. 

Jane Coaston: Remember, the trial has not even happened yet. And in the United States of America, you are innocent until proven guilty. U.S. Officials also say they could potentially skirt the roles by simply deporting Garcia to a totally different country like Mexico or South Sudan. Cool. The Environmental Protection Agency is working on a plan to reverse a 2009 legal decision that greenhouse gasses endanger public health by driving global warming. That legal decision, known as the endangerment finding, has served as the basis for the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars, power plants, factories, and more. In March, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the agency would re-evaluate the endangerment findings, saying that the EPA would, quote, “Follow the science, the law, and common sense wherever it leads.” It’s hard to imagine a common sense leading to the conclusion that actually, greenhouse gasses are truly no biggie and regulating them is for chumps who hate freedom. But Lee, I can’t wait to see what you have in store for the future of our planet. Two anonymous sources with knowledge of the plan told the New York Times the proposal argues that it’s not really the greenhouse gasses that hurt us. What we’re actually suffering from is the quote, “reduced consumer choice that climate regulations create.” On Wednesday afternoon, Zeldin confirmed in an interview with Newsmax that he’d sent the proposal to reverse the endangerment finding to the Office of Management and Budget. 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, contemplate how Donald Trump’s polling has pretty much cratered, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how Trump’s polling on pretty much every issue, including immigration, is very bad, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and I’m sure one more weird press conference yelling about how no one cares about Jeffrey Epstein will help. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Emily Fohr. Our producer is Michell Eloy. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Tyler Hill, and Laura Newcomb. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of news and politics is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. We had help with the headlines today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]

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