[0:01]Donald Trump is known for courting controversy. His relationship to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is the big exception. Trump has always been against the Justice Department,
[0:11]making the Epstein files public, but not anymore. US President Trump is calling on Republicans to vote to release files related to the convicted sex offender
[0:21]Jeffrey Epstein. Now, this is a true Trump 180. Trump has spent months resisting bipartisan efforts to force the Justice Department to release the
[0:31]records, but the push to publish kept growing. Dozens of Republicans have threatened to break ranks, signaling that they are ready to vote with Democrats to release the documents. Well, apparently the pressure made the
[0:43]president and House Speaker Mike Johnson blink. In a social media post, Trump wrote, "House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files because we
[0:53]have nothing to hide and it's time to move on from this Democrat hoax perpetuated by radical left lunatics in order to deflect from the great success
[1:03]of the Republican party." Now, this follows the release of more documents last week. On Wednesday, a Republican le panel released more than 20,000 pages of documents from the
[1:14]estate of Jeffrey Epstein. Hours earlier, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee published emails from Epstein to his associate, Gileain Maxwell. Now, some of those exchanges
[1:26]make references to Donald Trump, and they raise new questions about the president's relationship with Epstein and what he may have known about Epstein's crimes against underage girls.
[1:37]But there is no implication of any wrongdoing by the president. House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News on Sunday, "It's an attempt to smear the president."
[1:48]President Trump has clean hands. He's not worried about I talk to him all the time. He has nothing to do with this. He's frustrated that they're turning it into a political issue. And it's not surprising because the Democrats have nothing else to talk about. What have
[1:58]they accomplished in 10 months? Epstein is their entire game plan. >> All right. Joining me now is Matthew Sheffield. He's a journalist and a former conservative media insider himself. He's been tracking the
[2:10]evolution of the MAGA movement as well as the Jeffrey Epstein story. He joins me tonight from Los Angeles. Man, it's good to have you back on the program. Why is President Trump urging
[2:21]Republicans to vote to release the Epstein files? I mean, is his hand being forced or has he had an epiphany?
[2:31]Um well I think what this represents is a jiu-jitsu move by Trump. So essentially he was experiencing so many people who wanted to u vote to release
[2:43]release the files in Congress u that he decided that he was going to say that he was in favor of doing it. But it's interesting though that this was paired
[2:53]with a separate announcement from Trump in which he said that he was directing the attorney general to launch an investigation into Epstein's contacts
[3:02]with Democrats. Um and so not only there's two things that that he accomplishes by doing that. one is that he can now pretend to be in favor of
[3:12]more disclosures and more transparency on this stuff, but also he can uh use the Justice Department to weaponize that investigation uh against this political
[3:22]opposition. And then number three, that ongoing new investigation can be used as the pretext to redact or refrain from
[3:32]disclosing any material that might be negative about Trump. And you know, we know based on the 20,000 documents that you uh mentioned earlier, 20,000 pages,
[3:42]the Trump himself was mentioned,500 times in those documents. So there's there's clearly a lot of uh deep connections and commentary uh with Epstein and Trump.
[3:52]>> You you mentioned redacting. So, I mean, I'm we're assuming that the vote um on Tuesday is a foregone conclusion that they're going to vote to release these documents, but with the possibility of
[4:03]redacting uh you know, elements in these documents, then do you expect us to get a treasure trove of new information
[4:12]tomorrow? >> Uh well, we won't be getting it immediately. Uh but uh yeah, it does look like that uh yeah the the vote is going to pass in the house and in the
[4:24]senate and it was going to pass before Trump had uh you know done his public 180 on the issue. Um so but it has to pass the senate um after it passes the
[4:34]house and then Trump has to sign the law as well. So and then there will be u a delay after that. So um you know we'll we'll see how quickly uh documents will
[4:45]be produced but yes there definitely will be a lot more but you know as is the case um if if they are launching a grand jury um which so far we don't know
[4:56]that they have been but basically you under US law people do uh law enforcement agencies are not allowed to um um to disclose documents to the
[5:08]public that are part of an ongoing investigation. So yes, there will be a lot more documents. Um, but as to what's in them, you know, who can really say, but we, as we've seen so far, there
[5:20]definitely are a lot of comments that Epstein had about Trump. Uh, including saying that he was probably Trump's best friend for a number of years. >> And of course, you can, you know, you
[5:29]can be Trump's best friend, um, but that doesn't mean that you're guilty of a crime. And and I'm just wondering, are
[5:38]we on the on the verge of finding out something that is incriminating uh for the president or is this just, you know,
[5:47]a lot of titillating information that is going to blow over as I'm sure President Trump is hoping it will do
[5:56]>> well. I mean, it's hard to say what we would what would be in these documents because we we haven't seen them. So I can't really say in that regard but you know at the at the one of the things that we have seen in the recent
[6:08]disclosures is that a lot of people who were uh you know very well well-known public figures including Trump um were very close to him and and and knew in
[6:20]particular that he was um constantly engaging in you know trying to uh that he was that he surrounded himself with extremely young women and that he was
[6:30]constantly pursuing them. So uh and even Trump himself as we saw in the uh the uh letter that he wrote to Epstein for his birthday you know we saw that Trump
[6:40]himself also knew that and Trump himself publicly has said that. Uh so so that's really the thing that I think Trump doesn't want to come out is that just this extensive documentation of his very
[6:51]close friendship with uh a a the world's most notorious pedophile. And you know, this is kind of a nightmare scenario for him because his right-wing Christian
[7:03]supremacist base, you know, they've built up for decades, beginning in the 1980s and the so-called satanic panic. Um, they built up this elaborate worldview in which, you know, everything
[7:14]bad that exists is the part is uh is the result of some secret satanic pedophile group. And it looks like Donald Trump, you know, at the very least was uh very close friends with somebody who was
[7:26]involved uh as an infamous pedophile and was running a ring to traffic children. >> You know, we we're seeing dozens of Republicans now who are threatening to break ranks and to vote with Democrats
[7:37]tomorrow. Is this the the MAGA meltdown that you and I have spoken about before and that we're hearing now more and more people say is almost inevitable for a
[7:49]president as um as the twilight of his political power um emerges. What do you say?
[7:58]Well, I think the the recent elections that we had here, um, they basically have made Trump a lame duck in a lot of ways because, you know, his his administration made all these big
[8:10]promises that they were going to lower prices, not just lower inflation. They're going to drop prices. Um, and all he's done is increase prices. Inflation is higher now than it was when Biden was president during the same time
[8:21]of year. Um, so yeah, like a lot of people in who voted for Trump are very upset with him. He has um the lowest approval rating right now that he's ever had um across his two terms. So, you
[8:33]know, right now uh a lot of people are very upset and and this may is is the first big um crack in the in the dam of his support. And the, you know, things
[8:43]like this uh are common uh in across presidents that have served two terms um that during their second term they they start to receive a lot of uh complaints and a lot of dissent uh that had been
[8:54]bottled up uh because that before they had kept quiet. So this is >> Trump returning to the the norm for US politics uh despite the fact that he
[9:06]kind of upended the Republican party quite a bit. And you know, a lot of Republicans uh they don't like Donald Trump and they have always hated him, but they were afraid to uh to cross him
[9:18]uh because he would turn his his social media post and campaign staff against them. But you know, Marjorie Taylor Green uh who recently did that has has really shown that it he can't really
[9:29]hurt you. >> Well, I want I want to ask you about that. You're reading my mind here. I want to bring in Marjorie Taylor Green. She was once a close ally of the president, but she's recently broken
[9:40]with Trump over Epstein and other matters and she's done that publicly. She said that attacks on her by the president have resulted in multiple threats on her life. Now, we got a
[9:52]response from Donald Trump to that. He posted on his social media platform, "Wacky Marjorie Trader Brown is working overtime to try and portray herself as a
[10:02]victim when in actuality, she is the cause of all of her own problems." The fact is, nobody cares about this traitor to our country.
[10:13]That's another 180 we're seeing by President Trump at the moment, isn't it? Because she's been considered one of his most loyal followers in Congress. He
[10:23]adored her and now he's calling her a traitor to the country. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's a big flip. And in her case, she has been completely consistent
[10:34]when she ran for Congress the first time. And you know, ever since she has been saying that uh you know, she she wants to stop child trafficking and to
[10:44]be against uh you know, various and to support various investigations into it. And so she stayed with the same position. But once that position came
[10:54]into conflict with Trump and his very close um associations with Epstein and some of his um friends like Gileain Maxwell, I mean, you know, you see Trump
[11:03]giving the the sweetheart deals to um the associate Gileain Maxwell of of of Epstein, uh putting her in a minimum
[11:13]security prison and uh you know, sending his former personal lawyer to come and deal with her. I mean, you know, he's he's very clearly trying to to give Maxwell uh to stop Maxwell from saying
[11:24]anything bad about him. And so, you know, so so Marjgerie Taylor Green has been very consistent here and and that has enraged Trump uh because he doesn't want people to have principles. He wants
[11:36]people to just do whatever he says and and and she's not doing that clearly. I mean, he, you know, made the the the infamous remark when he ran for president the first time that he could
[11:47]walk down Madison Avenue or Fifth Avenue in New York and shoot someone in the head and he would be able to get away with it. I mean, he that speaks to the the Teflon like quality of President
[11:58]Trump, you know, now in his second term. Um, do you see that Teflon now finally cracking? And does it even does it even
[12:09]matter though, Matt? I mean, he he's in office. He he has power. His agenda is is being um pushed through as he desires. So, at the end of the day, does
[12:19]the Epstein affair does it matter for the power that Donald Trump is projecting? Well, I mean, right now the Republicans
[12:29]control both houses of Congress and they have uh done as much as they can to avoid doing any kind of oversight to many of the illegal and unconstitutional actions that Trump has taken. So, yeah,
[12:41]I mean your your your point there is true, but as a symbolic act, uh this is a very open um rebellion against Trump uh the likes of which that we haven't
[12:52]seen on something that was very important to him. um and was not something. So the the one exception to this has been that some Republicans have been willing to um to criticize Trump on
[13:03]his tariffs and that has that was actually probably the beginning of the of the rebellion that a lot of Republicans um have they agree with you
[13:13]know there's basically no qualified um you know highly qualified experienced economists who agree with Trump that tariffs are good for economies and and a number of Republicans have started
[13:24]saying that. So, you know, this this this is another issue where he's losing control over the Republican Congress. So, I I expect we'll see more of these as as time goes on.
[13:36]>> Journalist and former conservative media insider Matthew Sheffield joining us tonight from LA. Matthew, it's always good to talk with you. We appreciate your insights tonight. Thank you. >> Thank you.
[13:47]>> Let's pull in Alana Shore now, senior Washington editor at the news website. Alana, it looks like Trump is trying to frame this now as his idea and also as a
[13:58]win. Is it really? >> Absolutely not. He lobbied pretty hard to kill this measure in the House. He personally called members of Congress into the situation room, which is not a
[14:10]venue typically used to discuss a convicted sex offender like Jeffrey Epstein. So, this is undoubtedly a loss. It's very significant also that he's now saying he'll sign it because until he said that there was an open question
[14:21]about whether the Senate would kill this after it passed the House. Now that looks less likely. >> Well, Trump could have supported releasing the Epstein files any time in the last month instead. As you say, he
[14:32]campaigned against it. Is it now just a case of him bowing to pressure from his base or are there other reasons for him changing course?
[14:43]Well, Trump isn't known to like losing, right? And now he at least can claim that he's getting a win. Of course, as we discussed, that's not actually the case. There is a lot of talk in Washington also that he's setting the
[14:53]stage for ultimately declining to release the full complement of files because, and this wasn't really discussed very closely in the last few days, he's also said that he's directing
[15:04]the DOJ to take new investigative steps on Epstein. So, the theory goes, this passes the House, the Senate, he signs it. He then says, "I'm not releasing certain files due to this ongoing
[15:15]investigation." Now, that hasn't been confirmed yet, but it is the assumption of, you know, some folks who have been supporting this bill for a while that he will ultimately find a way to not release the full compliment.
[15:26]>> You're talking about Trump directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Epstein's ties to Bill Clinton and and to other Democrats.
[15:37]>> Exactly. So that was uh you know ostensibly a new investigation that could theoretically allow Bondi to limit a further release. Of course we won't know whether she'll take that opportunity until after the bill as
[15:48]expected ultimately passes. >> How fast uh assuming this goes forward. The House is is set to vote uh on Tuesday and then if it goes through the
[15:58]Senate and Trump signs off on this, how fast could the Epstein files be released in whatever form uh the the current
[16:08]ongoing investigations would allow >> I mean pretty darn fast based on what we know about what the DOJ has done. you know, earlier in in the year, they invited a bunch of conservative
[16:19]influencers over and famously gave them a file of, you know, the Epstein dossier, right, which turned out to be documents they'd already released, but those were compiled pretty pretty quickly. And also, you know, the DOJ has
[16:30]reportedly amassed teams already to to scrub these files. Some of them, according to a whistleblower who contacted a Democratic senator, we're looking for mentions of the president's name. Obviously, we don't have that 100%
[16:41]confirmed, but we know that it's it's easy to get these together. So it looking like we will get more of the Epstein file files albeit maybe not all the files with Trump in them. Um from
[16:53]zooming out in terms of MAGA and Republican party politics, Trump has had the Republican party in such a chokeold for almost the last decade. How significant is it that he seems to have
[17:05]bowed to pressure from below? >> It's pretty darn significant. This is not a president who's known to bow to a ground swell of rank and file rebellion,
[17:16]which is really what happened here, right? And you know, in just the last 12 hours, another the technical term is a discharge petition, but what it really means is another rank and file effort to
[17:27]force party leaders to consider a bill has also picked up steam. So we may be seeing Epstein kind of break a dam in a sense that Republicans will now feel more comfortable trying to push the
[17:38]White House than they did even a week ago. >> Alana Shore, senior Washington editor at Semaphore, thanks for talking to DW. >> Thanks for having me.