So I mentioned in today’s BackChannel that it kind of beggared belief we were only hearing about these Wolff/Epstein interview tapes and their contents now. But then I heard from TPM Reader MH who said he remembered hearing some of the tapes. What? Readers get so confused. But then MH comes up with a link and it turns out the Daily Beast actually had a lot of this from Wolff and actually snippets of the audio tapes themselves. That came out just a few days before the 2024 election. Then I heard from TPM Reader JW about a podcast Wolff was doing at the time that went into the same stuff. (Okay, so part of my theory or reason for caution is out, I guess.) From what I can tell, all of this was sort of lost in the mad rush of the final days before the election and sort of became moot after it. In the standard way, the campaign said it was fake news and “election interference” and that was kind of it.
All this said, the Epstein wildfire engulfing MAGA just continues apace.
Three thoughts on the delicious and deserved Jeff Epstein wildfire currently engulfing MAGA world.
First, a follow up on my post from last week. I stand by what I said about general skepticism about the whole Epstein meta story — the belief that some significant number of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful men slept with teenaged girls procured by Jeff Epstein and have used their power to keep the truth of their crimes secret. But some of you said I was either letting Epstein, his purported co-rapists or the MAGA movement off the hook. Not at all. I expressed something very specific which is that there are a lot of things that seem widely accepted about Epstein and his world for which there seems to be pretty thin actual evidence. But that’s totally consistent with wanting to turn over every stone to find out what’s real and what’s not. It is even more consistent with putting MAGA to its task. They created this. They ran on this. They used it to tarnish countless of their enemies based on little or no evidence. So there’s zero way anyone should let them just take a mulligan on the whole thing now. “Hey, so we took a look at all the secret information and it turns out it’s all fine. So we’re moving on.” No way.
The Department of Homeland Security posted an explicitly Christian nationalist and violent video on Facebook Reels captioned “Here I am, send me” about how Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol are delivering the Lord’s justice. Special thanks to TPM Reader DC for bringing this to our attention.
We went into this administration with a seemingly durable baseline assumption that, whatever his unpopularity in other areas, President Trump had durable if not overwhelming support for his hardline immigration policies. But something started to show up in polls in the late spring or early summer.
While his numbers on “immigration” were still reasonably robust, we saw a dramatically different picture when pollster’s asked about “deportation” or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. Not surprisingly, “immigration” is a very big word and covers a vast range of policy territory. Looked at from a different vantage point, Trump retained a bare majority of public support on “border security” but his “deportation” policy had the support of barely one-third of the population.
Earlier today, I read this piece by TPM fave Will Sommer which explained that Hugh Hewitt, one-time Josh antagonist, has been pitching his listeners on giving their money to what might be generously described as a fake bank which promised a totally credible 13% annual return when Hugh’s listeners purchased “First Liberty Notes” for a minimum purchase of $25,000. It was all a way to get out from under the “woke” banking system and build a “patriot economy” and do a lot of other cool stuff. It was all the work of a right-wing darling by the name of Brant Frost IV. Apparently the fake bank, First Liberty Building & Loan (no FDIC insurance), was a key part of the Georgia GOP ecosystem.
In any case, as Will explained, things had taken an unexpected turn — at least for the purchasers of “Liberty Notes” — when the company’s website suddenly disappeared and was replaced with a notice which announced that the owners were cooperating with federal authorities to close the business down. (Doesn’t sound promising!) Now, just a few moments ago, I got an alert about this article in The Atlanta Journal Constitution which reports that the SEC has charged First Liberty with running a $140 million Ponzi scheme.
As more than a hundred fatalities have been confirmed in Texas flash floods and some 170 remain missing, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has both denied that DOGE cuts to the National Weather Service played a role in the tragedy and also focused on the importance of timely and effective communications about extreme weather events, which she says wasn’t up to par. Coverage of the Texas flash flood calamity has made clear that it’s not just the work of forecasters that is critical. You can have a timely and accurate forecast but it does little good if it isn’t effectively communicated to local authorities in the effected areas. That “last mile” communication is critical and it seems like there were breakdowns on that front both with county officials and possibly on the National Weather Service side, where a senior position in charge of liaising with local officials was vacant at the time of the floods. But even as the rescue workers were searching for bodies in Texas on Tuesday, DHS canceled a $3 million grant aimed at ensuring precisely those kinds of “last mile” communications.
INSIDE: Jeffrey Epstein … Emil Bove … Abrego Garcia
Look Out: Bondi Is In Self-Preservation Mode … What’s most important about this whole sordid episode is likely to be the lengths Bondi will go to shore up her position in MAGA world.
For decades, Bill Moyers warned about our current crisis of democracy as it gradually drew nearer. And he saw the path through to the other side — should we choose to take it.
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