Washington Week with The Atlantic

FRANKLIN FOER: Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, a scandal that even President Trump can't manage or contain.

Just six months into the president's second term, lingering questions about his relationship with the deceased sex trafficker are consuming his White House and paralyzing Congress with no end in sight, next.

Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

I'm Franklin Foer in tonight for Jeffrey Goldberg.

It wasn't that long ago when Elon Musk, who was on his way out of DOGE, posted what he called a really big bomb, that President Trump's name was in the files of the government's Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

Musk deleted that post, but a report from The Wall Street Journal this week confirmed his extraordinary claim and revealed that the president was briefed about it by Attorney General Pam Bondi in May.

Joining me tonight to discuss this, Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, Eugene Daniels is the senior Washington correspondent and co-host of The Weekend on MSNBC, Susan Glasser is a staff writer at the New Yorker, Jonathan Karl is the chief Washington correspondent at ABC News.

Before we tumble down this sordid rabbit hole, Trump landed in Scotland today and took questions from the press.

I want to listen to this exchange.

REPORTER: Were you briefed on your name appearing in the Epstein files ever?

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. President: No, I was never brief, no.

FRANKLIN FOER: Eugene, The Wall Street Journal reported that he was in these files, and he was briefed about it.

The New York Times confirmed it.

Why in the world is he denying this?

EUGENE DANIELS, Senior Washington Correspondent: Donald Trump deny something that everyone else says is true?

I'm shocked by that.

Because he knows, he feels like it's a bad, it's a terrible thing, even though everyone who you will talk to who's an expert will tell you that just because someone's name is in these files doesn't mean they did anything bad, right?

We know that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were friends.

We know that Donald Trump and him hung out a lot, right?

We know these things.

We know he was on the plane at some point.

And so what Donald Trump has clearly made the calculation that he can't be connected to Jeffrey Epstein in any way, shape or form, and because, for years, he and a lot of the people that are in the administration stoked the files so much and talked about how bad they were and how all these pedophiles were in these files, je knows he cannot cop to knowing that he was in these files.

JONATHAN KARL, Chief Washington Correspondent, ABC News: But, you know, here's the thing.

When Pam Bondi put out what she called phase one of the Epstein files in those binders to those right wing influencers, those documents, which were mostly stuff that had already been out, 300 or some pages, Donald Trump's name was in those documents.

Those documents included Epstein's address book, which had Donald Trump, it had his brother, Robert, it had Ivanka, it has his ex-wife, Ivana, had, you know, whole several Trumps and also had the flight logs from some of Epstein's flights between West Palm Beach and Teterboro in New York, and one to D.C.

I think his name appeared four or five times already in what were in the so-called Epstein files that were released by DOJ.

FRANKLIN FOER: Well, can you just talk about the bizarre paradox here, I guess is what you might call it, is that at the same time that they really are desperate to escape this scandal, they keep burrowing deeper into it.

I mean, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche just spent two days in Florida with Maxwell.

What's the calculus?

JONATHAN KARL: I mean, if you thought this was an insignificant story and didn't want to pay any attention to it, they're making it impossible to ignore it.

Having the deputy attorney general go down to Tallahassee for two full days to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell, who obviously is in prison for sex trafficking, is an extraordinary development.

And when - - what other case do you see like that?

And it's not just that, Frank, when you think about it, there were -- the Times had a great story about all the resources that have gone into this, reviewing these files, saying hundreds.

I am told it's actually about 1,000 personnel from the FBI and the DOJ -- FRANKLIN FOER: 1,000 personnel?

JONATHAN KARL: 1,000 people at the FBI and DOJ have been working to review these files for a matter of months.

Now, what were those people doing before they were tasked to this assignment, working on national security cases, terrorism cases?

They are now -- you know, I mean, a significant part of the manpower of our national security division has been spent looking at these files.

FRANKLIN FOER: Peter, you guys have written a biography of Trump.

Can you help me understand why -- I mean, there's no evidence that there's anything revelatory in these files about Trump.

Why, if he's innocent, does he act so guilty all the time?

PETER BAKER, Chief White House Correspondent, The New York Times: Well, we've seen that on other occasions too, right?

The Robert Mueller investigation found no provable in court conspiracy with Russia, and yet he seemed to act like there was one, right?

He seemed to act very close to Russia, very admiring of Putin.

Why do you do that if, in fact, you don't have something wrong?

And by firing people like Jim Comey back in his first term, you act like you've done something wrong, you're trying to cover it up.

And so, yes, he is his own worst enemy in this way.

He brings this on himself by looking like he's trying to hide something by denying the obvious right there.

As Jon says already out there, this is not a mystery that his name was in these files, nor should it be, because, again, we already knew he was a friend of Epstein's, and yet he is acting that way.

But I think it's part of, you know, his habit is to deny, deny, deny, even provable truths.

It's just never in his DNA to admit, much less acknowledge or apologize.

FRANKLIN FOER: Where does that impulse come from?

PETER BAKER: Well, I think it's from his father, I think his upbringing, to some extent.

He was taught you never, ever give in, never give an inch, ever.

You're a killer, his dad would say to him.

Well, a killer doesn't give in it, doesn't apologize, doesn't acknowledge, doesn't say they did anything wrong, doesn't acknowledge that there's some -- you know, that he made a mistake in being friends with Jeffrey Epstein.

FRANKLIN FOER: Susan, you wrote an excellent column in the New Yorker about this scandal, and I want a quote from it.

This scandal then is not the revelation that Trump was friends with a sexual monster who exploited underage women, since it is not a revelation, nor is it that the president lied to the American people, something he does with remarkable frequency.

No.

The novelty here is that millions of Americans who knew that Trump was friends with such a horrid man and voted for him anyway now appear to have decided that in a choice between Trump and a favorite conspiracy theory, they may just stick with the conspiracy theory.

Of all the many Trump scandals, why is this one that seems to be the one that has gained traction and gripped the media and apparently tormented his base in the way that this has?

SUSAN GLASSER, Staff Writer, The New Yorker: Yes, I think that's a really important question for us to be asking, Frank.

You know, if you think about it, in an administration where every day there's some new outrage or controversy where you could argue that the scandals get to the core of who we are as a country, right?

I mean, we're talking about the monetization of the presidency.

Nobody apparently cares about that.

We're talking about flouting court orders, attacking individual judges.

I mean, the list can go on and on.

So, what is the political truth that we're seeing in this becoming a scandal when so many other things haven't?

I mean, I just, to be totally frank, I would rather be talking about anything else than this, okay?

We are talking about a convicted sexual offender who has been dead for six years, who was prosecuted, arrested, prosecuted, sent to jail.

We're talking about the deputy attorney general spending two days of his valuable time going to interview the also convicted accomplice of that long dead sexual offender, right?

So, on some level, it's a perversion of our politics that we are talking about this.

And it reflects, of course, very poorly on the man in the White House who was friends with such a person.

But I just think it tells us something about the nature of Trump's alliance with the MAGA movement, that he's both a leader but also a follower of them.

He's unleashed so many lies, conspiracy theories, diversions, untruths, and that this particular one resonated so deeply with a portion of his base that they are willing, at least for now, to even do what they're not willing to do on any of the other many lies and conspiracy theories that he has foisted upon them.

I think it's quite interesting to wonder whether this is a breach that could widen over time or it's a one-off.

And I think we don't know the answer to that yet, but it's notable that some members of Congress who stick with Donald Trump through the most outrageous untruths are demanding answers from him that he doesn't want to give right now.

EUGENE DANIELS: And part of it is this scandal, the Epstein/Trump of it all, goes at the heart of kind of what the MAGA base is about, which is powerful people doing things behind closed doors and the rest of us being screwed out of it, right?

And, usually, Donald Trump is on the side of the people that are getting screwed, right?

Usually, Donald Trump is talking about how, you know, the lowly man and woman are losing out to these interests in Washington, D.C., and people are defending and protecting them, and we have to stop those people.

But now they are seeing Donald Trump seemingly being one of the people doing the defending and the protecting of the powerful people, and him being one of the powerful people themselves.

That's why I think he can't shake it because, at the end of the day, this is -- they love a conspiracy theory, right?

Over and over again, this is one that, when you talk to people, the pedophile rings, alleged pedophile rings -- JONATHAN KARL: Based on QAnon.

EUGENE DANIELS: Yes, based on QAnon, and also remember the pizzeria.

SUSAN GLASSER: But let's be clear here that, you know, we act as though these poor people were misled and now they're shocked to find out like that Donald Trump was friends with Jeffrey Epstein, they've known that for years, okay?

How many times have, you know, we inflicted upon our viewers or our readers images of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein?

The video of him, them partying, that's from decades ago.

PETER BAKER: The MAGA base, though, is upset not because they think Trump was friends with Epstein.

They're upset because they thought that the Epstein files would tell them something about other people, about other rings.

They didn't want to actually target Trump, per se, that sort of collateral damage in a way they thought.

It would be telling about Bill Clinton, it would be telling them about other famous and, you know, elites.

JONATHAN KARL: And Bondi raised the expectations.

But, look, there's a fundamental question that I'm amazed has not really been directly addressed in so much of how the story has unfolded.

Why is Todd Blanche in Tallahassee?

What is what purpose?

Just a basic question, because the White House hasn't answered.

So, I think that -- I mean, my understanding is there's really only one explanation, and then that is he's trying to go and produce what all those FBI agents couldn't produce when they were looking through the files, trying to get some dirt on the president's enemies.

FRANKLIN FOER: So, it's a desperate hash tag, save the conspiracy.

JONATHAN KARL: Yes.

He claims there, what do you have?

Do you have -- give me the evidence on Bill Clinton in the island.

Give me the - - you know, I mean, what else could it be?

SUSAN GLASSER: Well, I think it's important to note just quickly on this, that Donald Trump has already dangled publicly the prospect of a pardon.

And I think that's very significant.

I mean, I can't think of, you know, someone who has more incentive to lie or to tell Todd Blanche what he wants to hear than someone who's in jail for a very long sentence.

Trump has said, he was asked directly about it.

He said, I can't - - you know, I'm not doing anything right now, but I have the power to do it.

And I think he repeated that.

FRANKLIN FOER: Peter, let me ask you a question that goes to what Susan was saying earlier about this whole constellation of things that could potentially be a scandalous.

PETER BAKER: Yes.

FRANKLIN FOER: Is there any part of Donald Trump that actually enjoys this being the scandal as opposed to any of the other number of things that could be even more devastating perhaps and directed his way?

PETER BAKER: I don't know if he enjoys it.

I think that -- but it is true that this has obscured to some extent other stories that might be, in other times, pretty big controversies.

Let's just talk about this week.

Just yesterday, the FCC appointed by Donald Trump approved an $8 billion merger with Paramount that just 23 days after Paramount agreed to give Trump $16 million for his presidential library.

That's extraordinary.

Just think about that.

The president filed a private lawsuit against Paramount, which owns CBS because he was upset the interview that 60 Minutes did with Kamala Harris.

That by itself, by the way, the idea that he gets to decide how an interview gets edited is pretty extraordinary for anybody who cares about the First Amendment.

But put that aside for a second.

Paramount settled this lawsuit with him, gave him $16 million, which he gets to use as he wants for this library, and then strangely enough, 23 days later, his appointees approved their $8 billion merger.

And reporting has shown that the Paramount people were concerned that the government wouldn't, that is the Trump administration, wouldn't approve their merger unless they gave him the money.

JONATHAN KARL: And the FCC chairman approves it, basically suggesting they got assurances on what the editorial policies would be by CBS going forward.

PETER BAKER: Exactly.

The president using, in effect, what appears to be the power of government, right, to tell a media company how it should be reporting, A, and, B, pocketing a little bit of money at the same time for his library.

FRANKLIN FOER: And among the other various scandalous things that have come out this week is his response to the scandal itself.

Susan, one of the time tested methods that he uses is distraction.

And the form of distraction that he's deployed this week is not just forcing Coke to reintroduce sugar into its drinks, is that he had Tulsi Gabbard come out and essentially declare a coup that took place in 2016.

I want to listen to Gabbard from earlier this week.

TULSI GABBARD, Director of National Intelligence: When you look at the intent behind creating a fake manufactured intelligence document that directly contradicts multiple assessments that were created by the intelligence community, the expressed intent and what followed afterward can only be described as a years-long coup and a treasonous conspiracy against the American people, our republic, and an attempt to undermine President Trump's administration.

FRANKLIN FOER: I'm old enough to remember when Russia, Russia, Russia was a hoax, but now it's apparently what they want to talk about all the time.

Could you just parse and explain the sleight of hand that she was engaged in?

SUSAN GLASSER: Well, let's stipulate on the front end that none of this is true, okay?

So, I think that's important to state for people.

Not only that, but we have the really shocking in any other context image of the director of National Intelligence not only going and spreading lies, she's directly called the former president of the United States, Barack Obama, essentially guilty of treason, referred him to the Justice Department for a criminal prosecution, again, on the basis of a fantasy, a fiction, a lie.

And in that clip that you played, for example, she says, it is the basis of a years-long coup, okay?

That is an allegation that's ongoing, that not only at base, she says that what Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, the former leaders of the intelligence community, all of them implicated, in her view, in basically putting out an intelligence finding that she says wasn't true, that Russia intervened in the 2016 election on Donald Trump's behalf.

Now, that ignores the investigation by Robert Mueller, the conclusions of the U.S. Intelligence community.

It even ignores the years-long bipartisan investigation of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time led by Republicans who was a senior member of that committee, Marco Rubio, the current Trump secretary -- JONATHAN KARL: Archivist for the -- SUSAN GLASSER: Acting, acting national archivist, as well as national security adviser and secretary of state.

So, not only is there no basis to this but imagine the recklessness of saying that the former president is guilty of treason.

The years-long coup is a new aspect to this conspiracy theory that I think is really quite remarkable.

It speaks again to the hunger of this political movement in our society for grand unification, conspiracy theories, because the allegation here is that the original sin, quote/unquote, coup in 2016 of saying that Russia was trying to elect Trump when it wasn't, actually was the precursor event, according to Tulsi Gabbard, for efforts to rig the 2020 and 2024 elections as well.

And that is the ongoing coup.

She even, in an appearance with Charlie Cook -- sorry, Charlie Kirk, a well-known MAGA figure, claimed that it was actually this false statement about the 2016 campaign was the reason for the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago to recover the illegally taken classified documents that Donald Trump brought with him from the White House.

I mean, again it's lies upon absurdities, upon lies.

FRANKLIN FOER: What's being unleashed here, Jon?

JONATHAN KARL: I mean, you use the right phrase, sleight of hand.

Because if you actually look at what she said, she did present some documents, and it was that the intelligence community's secret assessment was that Russia did not manipulate voting machines in America and changed the vote and rigged the election.

Well guess what?

That was never alleged.

EUGENE DANIELS: No one said that.

JONATHAN KARL: Barack Obama actually said at a press conference, it might have been his last press conference in December of 2016 that there is no evidence, whatsoever, a vote-rigging.

And that was actually part of the very assessment, the CIA assessment that Gabbard was saying was a scandal.

It said, no, there were -- no votes were changed.

Russia tried to manipulate a public opinion in America by hacking into Hillary Clinton's emails and through a series of other steps.

But it was never the allegation.

So, it was a very strange thing, because you have the director of National Intelligence acting like she was presenting this smoking gun and what she was actually presenting was nothing of the kind.

FRANKLIN FOER: Eugene, is such a patently obvious ploy to distract?

Does the distraction actually work with this base?

EUGENE DANIELS: No, because they still want the files, right?

When you talk to the folks who are part of the base, they still want the files.

They don't see these things as connected.

They also already believe that Barack Obama was some evil mastermind, right?

So, you're not presenting them with anything new to distract.

That's the problem with this.

And I think, you know, it is really important to -- like it's very serious to accuse anyone of treason.

It is very serious to accuse the former president and his team of treason and trying to steal the election from Donald Trump, because it's not -- it is the government saying that that's happening, but also the people who are crazy and will may act on those kinds of conspiracy theories, right?

PETER BAKER: And to see that it's not -- it's worth remembering the video that the president posted, an artificially intelligence fake video of Barack Obama being handcuffed in the Oval Office and taken into prison.

This is something we've now just kind of brushed off because we're so used to this kind of wild and crazy kind of politics.

But no president ever would've done that in the past.

And it would have been another time been a shocking breach of etiquette and I think, you know, a corruption of the judicial system to have a president of the United States say that his predecessor should be locked up and put a video out there to celebrate the idea of it.

FRANKLIN FOER: And a manipulated video.

PETER BKAER: A manipulated fake video.

FRANKLIN FOER: Yes, right which goes to what you were talking about at the beginning that we're in -- we're trapped in this prison of conspiracy and manipulation, and those two things are deeply connected.

SUSAN GLASSER: Can I just admit that I actually was shocked and horrified even to be living in this news cycle that we were.

I actually -- I found that video that Donald Trump circulated on social media of Barack Obama being debased and humiliated in the Oval office to really make me feel nauseous.

And, again, you know, this is something that all Americans should be condemning.

And I think it also speaks to our debasement as a political culture.

I went back and I looked.

In the first Trump administration, you would get at least the bleeps of concern from Republican members of his party, from people around the country.

Not a word, not one word.

You know, these are people who've lost their souls.

And, you know, ultimately it's for a political power that may or may not last more than, you know, two or four years.

And you got to ask, you know, was it really worth it for them?

FRANKLIN FOER: And, Peter, I want to just pause further on the accusation of treason, because it is so extreme, and I think also it's something that is -- you know, in terms of its magnitude outweighs anything having to do with the Epstein case, and it wasn't something that was necessarily leading the news or on the front page of newspapers.

And it is not an isolated incident.

It's reflective of a trend in his rhetoric.

And you wrote about this the other week, and I want a quote from it.

You wrote, evil is a word getting a lot of airtime in the second Trump term.

Anyone viewed as critical of the president or insufficiently deferential is wicked.

The Trump administration's efforts to achieve its policy goals are not just an exercise in governance but a holy mission against forces of darkness.

PETER BAKER: Yes.

And it's so much easier if your opponent, your rival, your competitor, isn't just somebody you disagree with, isn't just somebody who has bad policy ideas, maybe, but it's somebody who is wicked or evil because then you justify all kinds of things that come up, right?

And the reason one of these, I wrote that article, was because the president was asked at one point about Ale Mayorkas, who's the secretary of Homeland Security under Biden, and somebody says, should he be locked up because the border was so bad?

And he says, yes, that's something we should look at.

Kristi Noem, he says to his own, secretary of Homeland Security, you should look at that.

Should we put Mayorkas in prison because of the border?

That's not accusing him of a criminal act.

He's simply saying that I don't like his policy, therefore I would go ahead and imprison him.

Guess what?

Nobody paid attention to that because, in fact, we hear him say things like this so much.

And I know a lot of Republicans, a lot of Trump people will say, well, you know, the Biden people weaponized government by going after Donald Trump.

Okay, I understand that concern by a lot of people.

He was pursued by prosecutors.

You never heard President Biden say, hey, this guy's guilty of treason.

He never put a video on there showing Trump being locked up.

He recognized it was his job as president to stand back and let the justice system handle this as justice system should.

It wasn't his job to try to demonize or vilify his enemies.

Now, he said a lot of bad things about Donald Trump.

Fair enough.

I've heard that from Trump people since I wrote an article, but it just doesn't come close to what Donald Trump does.

FRANKLIN FOER: And it's a departure, right?

This is not -- I mean, not just from past precedent, but this is actually a different version of Donald Trump.

JONATHAN KARL: I think that Susan hit on one of the biggest different here is that he now has total command of the Republican Party.

So, there's nobody -- and he also has an administration and a staff that is based entirely on loyalty.

So, you don't hear any dissent either within the administration or within the Republican rank and file or leadership in Congress.

You heard some of that.

Whether it mattered in the first term, maybe it didn't at the end, but that's gone.

I will say one thing in terms of the question to Eugene about will this ultimately really hurt his base, him with his base.

I think that the way Democrats have jumped onto the Epstein story, I think you now have a little bit of a rallying around Trump on this.

FRANKLIN FOER: We're going to have to leave it there for now.

Thanks to our guests for joining me, and thank you to you at home for watching us.

I'm Franklin Foer.

Goodnight from Washington.