[0:00]It's ripping MAGA apart in a way that nothing else has done. The left must exploit this. For now, letting Trump feverishly attempt to cover it up publicly seems to be doing enough
[0:11]self-inflicted damage. >> If Trump feels that throwing out the chaff, if you like, around Obama and and other scandals isn't working, he may have to do something more substantial.
[0:22]You know, he might have to do something quite outrageous >> to really make people start talking about something else. That's the fear. An uninhibited Trump with true loyalists, they can do a lot of horrible
[0:33]things and they are doing a lot of them. [Music] Hello and welcome to the forecast. Donald Trump is under pressure again. This time over his alleged ties to the
[0:44]pedophile financia Jeffrey Epstein. As the scandal grows, the speaker of the house has shut down Congress seemingly to avoid any further questions being raised on the floor. And now even
[0:56]Trump's usual allies in the alt-right world of podcasts and influences are turning on him. So what happens when the support base that shielded Trump for years starts to crumble? David Pacman,
[1:08]host of the David Pacman Show and author of the Echo Machine joins us to break it all down. David, thanks for joining us. >> My pleasure. Now, when you think about who Trump is
[1:19]worried about, I mean, obviously, everyone who hates Trump is lapping up all the controversy, but he he's not going to care about them. Who is he really worried about? Well, I think
[1:30]Trump is increasingly worried about legacy as he is now in his final term as president. He's almost 80 years old. But we don't really know who else he might
[1:40]be worried about. You know, if there's been one theme of the last decade of Trumpian politics, it's that Trump primarily worries about himself. To a lesser degree, he worries about his kids
[1:52]and then it's sort of like everybody else. So where where I think the most interesting aspect of this is is that simply having hung out a little bit with
[2:02]Jeffrey Epstein 30 years ago doesn't necessarily mean that he is guilty of whatever it is that he's being accused of or there are fears he may have been
[2:13]involved in. But it's the behavior, the deliberate distracting tactics, the carefully worded requests for pertinent grand jury testimony to be released
[2:25]rather than just release all the files. The behavior is such that it doesn't project innocence. And it's interesting because it's not, as you say, just people on the political left. Half of
[2:37]Republicans in the United States believe he's covering something up. >> Yes. But the question is what what's he really worried about? Because you know there have been so many awful stories
[2:48]about Trump in his history. He's been accused of uh sexual harassment, of sexual assault. He's been caught on tape
[2:56]admitting uh how he behaves. Um and and none of it's bothered the electorate that much. They still reelected him. Um
[3:05]so so what is it about this Epstein story that is potentially so much more damaging? There are two critical differences. As bad as all of the
[3:16]previous allegations have been against Donald Trump, this at least potentially has to do with underage women, girls we're talking about here. And that is
[3:27]different than the bulk of what he has been dealing with over the last decade or so of his political career. So that's that's number one. Number two, this is
[3:37]now a concern because it's ripping MAGA apart in a way that nothing else has done. Even, you know, he ran as the anti-war president. And then we had what
[3:47]happened in Iran and there was equivocating, but for the most part, his constituents, his base didn't really care about the 180. This really seems to be ripping them apart where even
[3:59]prominent content creators and influencers who have been on his side are saying, "I don't believe this. We were told the transparency would come
[4:08]from him." The current FBI director, Cash Patel, for years said, "If Trump wins, you're going to get the full truth about Epstein." The current deputy FBI
[4:20]director, Dan Bonino, for years on his podcast said, "If you want to get to the truth about Epstein, the full truth, you've got to elect Donald Trump." And then now they, as part of Trump's
[4:30]administration, are saying it's all the way you were told about the death of Epstein. There's no client list. There's no further prosecutions. There's nothing here. And so this is different because
[4:42]it's already ripping his base apart. and it has the potential for even people in his administration to potentially abandon him. I think that those two reasons are why this is different.
[4:53]>> Yeah. And and now that they've they've uh wrapped up Congress for the summer um early, it seems they don't want any votes on this. Um what is it they're
[5:04]trying to avoid? >> I think they just want to postpone this and push this into the fall. They there's a division among Republicans in
[5:13]terms of are we sticking by what we said when Joe Biden was president, which is we need a vote about whether to release this and let's get on the record as to whether we really do or don't support
[5:24]the release of the files. This is going so poorly politically. I think the idea is it's sort of like a defendant who says if I can push my trial off, I'm always better off pushing the trial off.
[5:36]uh witnesses forget, some witnesses die, paperwork is misplaced, etc. Uh I think it's the same idea if they can at least postpone having to determine whether to
[5:45]vote on the release of these files uh until late August, early September. Who knows what might be going on then? There will be other stories, tariffs, etc. Um
[5:55]I think it's just a calculated play that maybe people will forget, maybe people will move on, maybe there will be some different shiny object. >> Yeah. I mean, and obviously that the key
[6:05]witness, Gileain Maxwell, is potentially back in play as there are talks about calling her before Congress, uh, and also for the Department of Justice to
[6:16]try and speak to her as well. Now, Trump has said that he he's not involved in any of that. He didn't know about that. And it and it's a strange one because she hasn't spoken in public before. So
[6:28]there's very little reason to think that she would want to now unless there's a deal to get her out of that 20-year sentence she's serving.
[6:38]>> Yeah. I think there's a question of she certainly I assume sees two possible paths here to improving her situation.
[6:49]She has gone on the record and said, "Prosecutors have not come to me and said, "Tell us all you know. We now want to see who you might be able to get us." So, she has said she's open to doing
[7:00]that if there is the possibility of a deal. But because it's Trump, there's the other side of the coin, so to speak, which is it's conceivable that she may
[7:11]put herself in a position to maybe earn a pardon in order to keep her silence. So this she is in a very interesting position because there are multiple parties who might be interested in
[7:22]making deals. Now I think you're referring to a video where Trump was asked something along the lines of Galain Maxwell may testify or whatever and Trump said the the what? He did his
[7:34]thing where he didn't quite hear what I'm not who are you talking about? I have nothing to do with that. But we know from contemporaneous reporting that there is significant activity in the
[7:44]federal government right now uh to try to prevent that testimony or at least to limit the scope or the potential damage that it might have. Yeah. I mean h how close is this White
[7:56]House to the Department of Justice? How broken down are the traditional uh separation um of these powers and and
[8:07]how how important is that in how this whole story? >> Completely broken down completely broken down. I mean, listen, we it we were uh
[8:17]in the last 48 to 72 hours told that at an extraordinarily convenient moment, the director of national intelligence,
[8:28]Tulsi Gabbard, has stumbled across proof that former President Obama committed
[8:35]treason. Treason. And we were told by uh the attorney general that it is now time to release files related to the
[8:46]assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. that his family did not want released. You know that it it's extraordinarily clear that there is a hand glove
[8:56]relationship here. Uh and it's going even further where Donald Trump is now making posts about late night host Steven Cobear has been fired and his
[9:06]show cancelled. Trump gleefully saying, "I believe I had a hand in that." And actually sort of warning fellow hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon that that they are next and Trump's pushing for
[9:17]it. All of this is Yes, it's authoritarianism, but it's also attempts to distract. >> Yes. But but I mean can does that work
[9:27]with his MAGA base, you know, who have been absolutely obsessed by this whole idea that he and his supporters stoked of the deep state of these conspiracies
[9:37]that protect powerful people that he was going to come in and drain the swamp that he didn't drain the first time round and change everything. I mean, you know, can they be distracted with these
[9:47]extraordinary wild allegations about Obama and god knows who else? Well, it depends on what you mean by by they being distracted. It it has distracted
[9:57]part of the base and it has not distracted another part of it. I mean, I think we have to look at really at the polling and as of last week, that's before, you know, the Obama treason allegations and some of these other
[10:08]things came out. Adam Schiff's mortgage fraud, I don't know if that's another one that you've been following, but it it has succeeded in getting some in the base. There's an influencer, for
[10:17]example, named Charlie Kirk who is completely standing by the president, unquestioning in every way. On the other hand, there are other prominent influencers like former Fox News host
[10:29]Tucker Carlson, former Fox News host Megan Kelly, and others who are saying, "We are not being distracted by this. We remember what we were promised. We have every right to continue demanding the
[10:40]transparency that that we were we were promised." So I think to your question, will it uh trip Trump up in terms of will the MAGA base start demanding his
[10:50]resignation, for example? I I I struggle to believe that it's going to get to that point. >> Yes. I mean, and and he's now also trying to say this is all a hoax and sort of marry it with the Russia Russia
[11:01]Russia hoax as he calls it. Um now again it's sort of it's it's how susceptible are are that bunch of people
[11:11]who are holding out at the moment to giving up you know and saying okay let's let's fall into line because they must see what's uh
[11:22]>> I wish as I said indelicately on my program you really would have to have an IQ in the single digits to fall for this stuff but but and I know that that you
[11:33]know I'm being a little coarse in my language. Uh there are tens of millions of Americans who voted for this man three times in 2016, in 2020, and in
[11:43]2024. So when you say to me, could anyone really fall for this? I I think the evidence is that yes, people could. >> Well, so I suppose it's not so much falling for it that I'm suggesting. I
[11:55]mean, I'm I'm not I'm not implying you have to have an IQ of seven. Um, I'm I'm I'm suggesting that there are people who support Trump ultimately no matter what, and that if they see that this is
[12:06]starting to damage him, that he is desperate, that he needs them to fall into line. Does the the cult of Trump and of Make America Great Again Trump
[12:17]everything for one of a better phrase? >> Depends who you're talking about. If you're a big corporate CEO who just
[12:26]cashed in uh with a beautiful jackpot because of the recent tax bill, for example, do you care whether Trump's being honest or not about Jeffrey
[12:36]Epstein? Do you care about whether he went into the locker room at whatever pageant it was that he owned? Of course you don't. Of course you don't. I think the people that care or who are
[12:48]potentially swayable in terms of the public presence are the people who are on the record promising that this is the
[12:58]guy who will get us these documents. They are now in a position where they risk losing credibility with their audience and that's starting to happen to a degree. Um, and then I do think that there is some broader, if we zoom out a little and think about the midterm
[13:09]elections of 2026 or who might be the Republican candidate in 2028, there is definitely a contingent that might look around in October of next year, a month
[13:19]before voting, and say, "Here's what Republicans promised me. Here's what I got," which is no transparency on Epstein, tax reform that really doesn't help me. It helps the rich and
[13:30]corporations. I'm not really buying it. I'm going to look for something different and how big that contingent is is really a question mark, but I do think it will it will be there. >> Now, how do you think the Democrats are
[13:42]playing it? Because obviously they they're the ones, you know, who had said there's nothing in this. He committed suicide, there's no great conspiracy. Um
[13:52]and and are now sort of enjoying this deep discomfort that Trump is going through. Well, listen, uh, Democratic elected officials, uh, it's a mixed bag in terms
[14:04]of how they are handling it. My, myself, as a non-member of the Democratic party, but certainly a a progressive content creator, I believe that the left must
[14:15]exploit this. And the reason that this has to be exploited is that for nearly a decade, hypocrisy hasn't really mattered to the electorate of Donald Trump. He
[14:26]said he would build a wall with Mexico that Mexico would pay for and it didn't happen, but they excused it. And he said he was against regulating businesses and the government being too involved. But
[14:36]then all of a sudden he wanted to force Facebook and Twitter to publish COVID disinformation. Just to pick some examples and pointing out this double standard, pointing out this hypocrisy didn't really do anything. It didn't
[14:47]really sway voters. We finally seem to have found something that really is swaying a part of his base to say, "I was promised a and I'm getting the
[14:58]opposite of a. I'm getting the opposite of what I was promised." So, I think that the left should exploit it. As far as elected Democrats, it's sort of a mixed bag, but some of the ones I've
[15:10]spoken to do recognize that it is worthy of exploitation. Now, I think there's one other issue worth uh addressing that you mentioned, which is Democrats all along were saying there's nothing here.
[15:22]We need a little more nuance on that. Um what I understand the left broadly to have been arguing is that there clearly
[15:30]is a client list for Epstein and we don't know the full scope of who's on that list. That is a question of revealing something that is true and we
[15:40]just need the information. on the death of Jeffrey Epstein being suicide or some kind of murder. That specific area is
[15:50]where the left I believe was saying we don't have evidence that it was anything other than a suicide at this point in time. Uh and so I think it's important to distinguish in in what sense it was being said that there's nothing here.
[16:01]The client list, which was not public, is something that all along I've heard Democrats say that should be released, >> right? Even though it's quite likely that I mean the client list, as it's
[16:13]called, which may just be a list of people who went to Epstein's parties and and Ireland will almost certainly include high-profile Democrats.
[16:25]>> It is uh extraordinarily likely that this is a nonpartisan list. And one of the things about these sort of financier influence peddler types is that they
[16:36]very often are willing to help whoever will help advance their interests and are willing to be helped by whoever uh will be able to advance their interests.
[16:46]So I have no doubt that it would be extraordinarily unsurprising for this to be a bipartisan uh client list. Doesn't it possibly fall into the big
[16:57]trap though, which is that this goes after Trump personally for his personal behavior? Um, and you know, the lesson
[17:05]of the last 10 years or so is that Trump supporters on the whole um, you know, don't really care about the criticism of Trump's character. Um, in fact, they
[17:17]rather like it. And the thing that really has purchase on the American voting population is the economy and how they feel and how the country's doing.
[17:27]And if Democrats get caught up in another round of go after Trump personally on something which may na which may or may not ever be conclusively proven, they will just fall
[17:39]into the same old trap. >> Yeah. I mean, this is why I I think what Democrats benefit from right now is that Democrats per se don't really have to do
[17:48]much of anything right now. It's Republicans who are fighting with each other about whether to hold a vote to release the documents. It's Trump and
[17:58]the DOJ and the FBI sort of working together to try to calculate and limit and prepare for the impact of this. So, I I I think your analysis is a good one.
[18:09]the circumstances of this situation are a little bit different in that it is less about what Democrats should should be doing or or have done in the past successfully or unsuccessfully. And the other difference is what we talked about
[18:20]a few minutes ago, which is we are seeing a different amount of purchase or traction among the MAGA base. We have never seen that before. It didn't happen with the uh when you're rich, they let
[18:32]you do whatever infamous Access Hollywood tape before Trump was first elected. It didn't happen with the I'm the anti-war president, but here I am bombing Iran. We just didn't see this level of division within the Republican
[18:43]party in MAGA on any previous issue. And this is why even historians like Heather Cox Richardson, who I interviewed last week, are saying we should not understate the potential longerterm
[18:53]impact of this Epstein thing. And for now, letting Trump feverishly attempt to cover it up publicly seems to be doing enough self-inflicted damage. I I
[19:03]suppose the other potential uh outcome of this though is that if if Trump feels that throwing out the chaff, if you like around Obama and and other scandals
[19:14]isn't working, he may have to do something more substantial to take people's minds off things. And and that uh again takes us into potentially new
[19:24]territory for, you know, this you know government that is pushing all the boundaries of democracy. you know, he might have to do something quite outrageous
[19:34]>> to really make people start talking about something else. >> Yeah, that's the fear. And this has been a Trump strategy for a long time. If you study 20th century authoritarians, one
[19:46]of the things you learn is that the more pressure there is on them, the more they are willing to sort of push the boundaries. And Trump's floated a lot of different things. He's floated shutting
[19:57]down media outlets adversarial to him or getting specific journalists or late night hosts fired. He's floated suspending habius corpus. He's floated
[20:06]ignoring legal court orders. Uh and so I think it is a completely realistic fear because of Trump's personality and and his uh sort of desperate wish to be like
[20:17]the strong men that he so admires. And that is an extraordinarily realistic possibility >> just on the media. I mean, what do you make of the the two very different
[20:27]responses from these two different media giants? You have Paramount on one side who seem to have sort of caved in to a large degree and uh have ended up settling with the president over his
[20:39]allegations of of how they um edited a pre-election interview. Um and yet you have Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal who are standing fast uh and are saying, "Okay, we'll see you in court."
[20:51]Um, >> yeah. >> What does that tell us about the the media establishment and its appetite for ultimately taking Trump on?
[21:00]>> Well, I I do think in order to know what ultimately will be news corporations handling of the Wall Street Journal lawsuit, we do need to wait a little bit. It's very common that in in the
[21:11]first days of these things, you hear we'll see you in court and that once more lawyers get involved and sort of lay out the possible outcomes, sometimes the more sort of uh presumably
[21:23]riskaverse path of a settlement becomes a little bit more appealing. But let's kind of think about it as we've heard it so far. You know, the Paramount story is an interesting one because 60 Minutes
[21:33]did not agree with settling and CBS did not agree with settling. It was really a decision made at the absolute top and it was a decision that was influenced significantly by the very
[21:43]authoritarianism of Donald Trump. Paramount is currently in talks for a merger with Sky Dance and it was made very clear implicitly and explicitly by
[21:53]this administration that if this becomes an ugly fight down to the very end, the administration may prevent that merger from taking place. And so I don't say that to say, "Oh, it made a lot of sense
[22:05]for Paramount to settle." But it sort of gives you a picture of how the authoritarianism and the uh man who said, "I don't want government involved in business is
[22:16]willing to get very much involved when he has a personal stake in it or a personal outcome that affects his ego." On the other hand, with the Wall Street Journal, my instinct is, and I am not a
[22:27]supporter of Fox News nor of Rupert Murdoch or of News Corporation, my instinct is that the story at the core of this, which is that Trump sent a Christmas card to Jeffrey Epstein, uh,
[22:38]they really must be extraordinarily confident that they have strong sources and that they have vetted it um to the full ability and that it's true. And my
[22:50]guess would be that if it comes to the point at which they aren't going to settle, at some point Trump would need to sit for a deposition, I cannot
[22:59]imagine any circumstance in which Donald Trump does that. And I would expect at that point that the lawsuit will be dropped. >> I mean, ultimately, do do you think this is an administration that's going to
[23:10]plan or is it starting to come come apart a bit? >> Whose plan I guess is the question. I mean, listen, I'll kind of give you a couple. There's a few interesting things
[23:19]to say about that. I'm often asked, "Is this as bad as I expected it to be?" And it sort of more or less is. I mean, we
[23:28]we knew that an uninhibited Trump who in his first term at least made a sort of shadow boxing game of installing some mildly competent people. You know, I
[23:40]wasn't a fan of of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, right? If you say to me, "Do you want an oil man as Secretary of State?" I would say no. But Tillerson at least had some instincts that still
[23:50]were responsive to the sort of norms of what that office is supposed to represent. You know, in this second term, you've got people like Cash Patel, Dan Bonino, Pam Bondi, and others. Uh,
[24:01]and that is exactly what I expected, an uninhibited Trump with true loyalists. They can do a lot of horrible things, and they are doing a lot of them. So, so to my view, it's going to plan and that
[24:12]it's just as bad as as I expected. In terms of is it going to plan for the people who supported Trump? I don't believe that it is. I mean, you know, we the tariff story was he's going to dump
[24:23]these tariffs, everyone will be afraid and come crawling to him and say, "Please, sir, make us a deal." That's not happening. Um, he was going to be the anti-war president. He's already been embroiled in in this bombing of
[24:35]Iran. Um, and in in just about every way, it's not really going to the plan that he laid out. Deportation would be the other one. By selling the lie that
[24:46]there are significantly more undocumented immigrants in the United States than than there are, they set this target, as inhumane as it is, a target of deporting 3,000 people a day.
[24:57]It turns out there really aren't that many people to deport. And now they're sweeping up workers. They're sweeping up um employees of different kinds. And so that's also not going to plan. So by by
[25:08]Trump's promises, I would say it is not going to plan. Right. Okay. So, so what does that mean for the Democrats in terms of their pre-election planning for the midterms?
[25:19]>> Sadly, I I don't know that it means that much. And so, I I'll kind of just be candid in this. Over the last two months, I've interviewed probably 15 Democratic elected officials. That
[25:30]includes governors, uh, senators, members of the House of Representatives. And I don't I can't tell you with confidence right now that there's a
[25:41]coherent and cohesive way to argue in next year's midterms that okay, Trump's doing all of these terrible things. But here's why you should really vote for
[25:52]Democrats. I'm just not really seeing that right now. And I've been upfront with the senators, members of the House, and and governors that I've spoken to about that. And so there's a sort of to
[26:01]be determined aspect to that. Can Democrats learn from the mistakes of 2024 and find some credible and coherent argument for why voters should vote for
[26:12]them? And remember, the US is a country where, especially in midterms, often half of the electorate does not vote. And so motivating people to say for forget about who I'm going to vote for.
[26:23]I'm going to vote rather than staying home. Even that is something that there's an uphill battle on right now. >> David Pman, we'll leave it there. Thank you very much indeed. That's it for this episode of the forecast. Until next
[26:34]time, bye-bye.