The following is a lightly edited transcript of the July 22 episode of the
Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
President Trump’s propagandists are getting more frantic in their efforts to spin away the scandal around the Jeffrey Epstein files. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, unsurprisingly, offered the most creative spin of all, basically throwing the FBI under the bus. But House Speaker Mike Johnson followed a close second, casting Trump’s position on the files as the height of transparency. All this comes as Trump’s approval ratings have just hit a new low, and those things are related. The Epstein scandal, though it might appear disconnected from people’s everyday lives, is perfectly suited to damaging Trump in all kinds of hidden ways. We’re talking about all this today with data analyst G. Elliott Morris, author of the Strength in Numbers Substack, who has a good new piece probing how the Epstein fiasco is weakening Trump. Elliott, good to see you.
G. Elliott Morris: Hey, thanks for having me back.
Sargent: The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Trump drew a lewd doodle in Jeffrey Epstein’s fiftieth birthday album along with some cryptic prose. Trump denies it. As a reminder, MAGA spent years promoting the idea that Epstein’s client list would expose a massive pedophile ring among Democrats. Now Trump’s DOJ suddenly said, Oh, there’s nothing here. Yet, in fact, there are actual questions about whether Trump is in there or not. Elliott, you wrote the other day that the scandal by itself is taking a toll on Trump’s approval. Can you walk us through that argument?
Morris: Sure. So at Strength in Numbers, my Substack, what we like to do is look at an average of all polls over a certain amount of time. While there’s some noise in the data, when there’s a clear shift in how people feel about the president in a short amount of time, we can be reasonably confident that we can attribute that to certain events. So since July 13, there’s been about a two percentage point increase in Trump’s disapproval rating, from 52.5 percent of the public saying they disapprove of the job he’s doing as president to 54.5 percent. And there’s been a corresponding decrease in his approval rating, from about 44 percent to about 42.5 percent. Look, you can come up with other explanations for me, maybe, but it seems like the easiest explanation here is the Occam’s razor one: The thing that’s sucking up all of the news attention that’s particularly damaging to Trump because of the last two years of Republican positioning on this is the one that’s affecting his approval rating. That’s my analysis.
Sargent: Well, I want to talk about that at some length a bit later, but first let’s talk about what White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said when she was asked Monday why Trump won’t just order a full release of the Epstein files. Here’s her answer.
Karoline Leavitt (audio voiceover): The president has said if the Department of Justice and the FBI want to move forward with releasing any further credible evidence, they should do so. As to why they have or have not or will, you should ask the FBI about that.
Sargent: So Elliott, unless I’m missing something, Trump actually called for the release of the grand jury testimony, which is really unlikely to be revelatory. But it is noteworthy that the White House badly wants Trump to appear pro-transparency. She’s now fobbing it off on the FBI as if Trump couldn’t order the FBI to release the files. Your thoughts on that?
Morris: Yeah, it seems unlikely to me, given everything else Trump is able to do with a snap of his finger, that if he wanted full transparency, he wouldn’t get it from his own FBI, especially with the people who are running the FBI today, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino. So it just seems obvious that there’s some roadblock that we’re not seeing. And in terms of public opinion, the public agrees with that. Reuters/Ipsos polled people between July 15–16 and asked them if they agreed with the statement, “The government is hiding Epstein’s alleged client list,” and 70 percent of people said that they agreed with that. They also agreed with the statement, “The government is hiding information on Epstein’s death,” which I know we don’t necessarily want to touch and I’m not sure how much we believe that. But just that is a point in the case that the public sees that something is going on behind the scenes here. And I think that’s the explanation for Karoline Leavitt’s comments as well.
Sargent: Well, you mentioned Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, so I want to point out for people that Kash Patel, the FBI director, and Dan Bongino, the FBI deputy director, were among the leading promoters of the idea that the Epstein files contained this explosive set of revelations back when they were big MAGA influencers. They were put into the deep state partly to blow the lid off the deep state and show everybody that that scandal that had been festering for many years was actually there. So it’s this weird poetic justice for them to be getting thrown under the bus here. But again, the desperation to appear pro-transparency is palpable. That’s the thing.
Morris: Yeah. And people do want the transparency. If you ask them, “Should the government release all the documents it has about Jeffrey Epstein?” that’s an 80–20 issue. They’re clearly reading public opinion here in that the people want the information. And then the next question is like, “Why are they not getting it?” and that’s, I guess, where we have to be a bit more speculative.
Sargent: Well, Leavitt said something else of real note that I want people to listen to. She was asked about the news that FBI agents going through the Epstein files were told to flag any mentions of Trump. Listen to her answer.
Leavitt (audio voiceover): I don’t believe that’s something the White House was aware of. You’d have to ask the FBI.
Sargent: Now that’s just preposterous. The second that that came out—it came out last Friday—Karoline Leavitt and the White House would have been on the phone with Pam Bondi, the attorney general, in about three seconds, finding out exactly what the deal was with whether there was a directive to FBI agents to flag mentions of Trump. And they would have gotten an answer. So I think it’s pretty damn telling that they’re not saying, No, it’s not true. They’re saying, Go to the FBI, again.
Morris: Yeah, that’s just classic obfuscation by the press secretary, right? If they could say no, then they would say no. They say no all the time when they don’t have information on their side. This press secretary … How does The New York Times call it? Stretches the truth, perhaps? So they could be stretching the truth further here if they want, but instead you get the redirection to the FBI. So I agree. I think that’s pretty telling of what’s going on behind the scenes here.
Sargent: Yeah, there’s just no chance that they wouldn’t have gotten to the bottom of this. I want to be clear [on] how this emerged so people know, because it’s a really important turn in this whole story and maybe people missed it. Senator Dick Durbin sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday saying that his office had received information that FBI agents going through the Epstein files were tasked with flagging mentions of Trump. And in that letter, Senator Durbin also demanded that Pam Bondi produce essentially a list of flags of Trump’s name. Now, I think there’s very little chance that there will be an answer from Attorney General Bondi on that point, but what Dick Durbin there did was something really quite extraordinary. I don’t know what the basis for his information was, but this was a very serious congressional letter. It was not just some tossed-off thing on a podcast or something like this one. It was an official letter to the attorney general from the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee saying, We have gotten confidential information to this effect. It’s pretty explosive stuff.
The reason I bring this up, Elliott, is that this is the sort of event—this letter—that can continue the media maelstrom, which in turn gets the public more and more focused on this. What are you seeing in the polling there? Are you seeing like a marked uptick in actual interest by the public? Because I’m expecting if Democrats can stoke this more this way and more questions get aired out in the media, the public gets more and more focused on it.
Morris: Yes. So we asked about this in our July Strength in Numbers and Verasight poll, which has just come out this morning. We asked people to recall what they’ve seen in the news over the last month. And although our poll missed, I think, the height of the Epstein controversy, it still shows up in the answers. About 10 percent of people say they’ve heard something about government scandals, let’s call it. Most of that is about Epstein, but also people will mention the FBI without saying Epstein’s name. That’s the only story about the FBI in the news really, so I think we can reasonably assume that that’s in there. For comparison, about 15 percent of people say immigration and deportations, and far fewer people, like 5 percent, say the big, beautiful bill. So Epstein is ranking somewhere closest to the most covered story in the administration right now and twice as much as the biggest legislative story. So I think it’s pretty impactful, and people are definitely picking up on this. It makes sense that the White House would be trying to get ahead of the backlash that we’ve been seeing in the polls as well.
Sargent: Well, as a scholar of public opinion, can you talk a little bit about why we should anticipate that things like this Durbin letter and other interventions by Democrats that focus the media on this issue are likely to gin up more public interest about it? This is something you public opinion–types obsess over pretty regularly.
Morris: Yeah. So this is the worst issue for Trump, and that’s something to underscore. In an average of polls that I calculated last Friday—so a couple of days old now—17 percent of people said they approve of the way Trump’s handling “the Jeffrey Epstein files,” and 59 percent of people disapprove. That’s a minus-42 net rating. Again, for comparison, [with] inflation, which is bad for any president, particularly bad over the last two years, that’s minus 20. So people feel about twice as bad as they feel about inflation—something that sank the last presidency—toward Trump’s handling of the Epstein files. To answer your point, it’s still early in the news cycle for this, and the White House shows no sign of slowing it down. So if they don’t make concrete steps toward giving the public what they want—which is, as they say, full transparency, but [which they] aren’t giving—then we can imagine that that minus-42 rating is just going to keep wearing on the White House as the new cycle wears on.
Sargent: And I think a coordinated message has gone out among top Republicans. We had House Speaker Mike Johnson also comment on whether there will be a House vote compelling release of the Epstein files. Listen to this.
Mike Johnson (audio voiceover): So here’s what I would say about the Epstein files: There is no daylight between the House Republicans, the House, and the president on maximum transparency. He has said that he wants all the credible files related to Epstein to be released. He’s asked the attorney general to request the grand jury files of the court. All of that is in process right now. My belief is we need the administration to have the space to do what it is doing. And if further congressional action is necessary or appropriate, then we’ll look at that. But I don’t think we’re at that point right now because we agree with the president.
Reporter (audio voiceover): So no vote after the resolution?
Johnson (audio voiceover): No. No.
Sargent: So here Johnson again conflates releasing the grand jury testimony with releasing the files. Note, again, the effort to portray Trump as supremely transparent. Like I said, the message does appear coordinated. They’ve got to be looking at similar data to what you’re talking about here. And let me ask this, Elliott, if I could: There’s going to come a point when House Republicans get even more nervous about this, aren’t they?
Morris: Yeah, and I think that point’s got to come pretty soon. So we know that Trump’s really unpopular with all voters, but he’s also unpopular with Republicans, the types of people that vote in the primary elections. Those are still about nine months away, but hey, you’re always campaigning when you’re in Congress, right? So in a Reuters/Ipsos poll last week, 35 percent of Republicans say they approve of the way Trump’s handling this. Trump’s approval rating with Republicans is usually 90 percent, so the fact that he’s at 35 is pretty telling. If these people are looking to signals from their constituency about what to do next, they’re going to be getting a lot of really negative feedback about the president’s strategy here. And I imagine either they change course and they respond to the public or they respond to their party leader. And what determines how they respond to this is: Who’s the loudest in the meantime? Are they paying more attention to Twitter and people yelling at them, or are they getting a bunch of phone calls from Trump and the White House?
Sargent: Well, you wrote this piece trying to dig into why this is so problematic for Trump. I want to read a bit from it, “[B]y siding with Epstein and against transparency, Trump significantly injures his reputation as an outsider fighting the ‘deep state’ for God and country. Much of the conspiratorial wing of the Republican Party has been arguing that Epstein was in bed with major Democratic donors and other political elites — by refusing to side against them, Trump implicitly sides with them.” He’s the traitor to his class, in a way, to appropriate the FDR idea. He’s the guy who’s going to go in and avenge the people by showing them how elites rigged the system in their favor, how corrupt their globalist schemes are and so forth. So I think you’re really getting at something essential there. This cuts against his political mystique at a very deep level.
Morris: And it’s not just his mystique, as you call it. It’s his entire “value-add” in the Republican Party. In the 2016 primary, this is why Trump beats Cruz and Rubio. In 2024, this is why Trump outperforms with young men who would otherwise be liberals. It’s because they feel like the system is corrupt; especially at a time of inflation, they feel like it’s not giving them what they need. When there’s lots of these narratives about the elites being in bed with some pedophilic ring and covering it up and Trump says, I can fix it. I alone can uncover the story for you—when he doesn’t do that, when he looks to be actually continuing to cover stuff up, then he loses a lot of credibility. And this isn’t … There’s lots of stories like that over Trump’s term, but it does seem like this one is unique; there’s a lot of staying power. In most of Trump’s term, there’s lots of news events and you move on every two or three days. This has been the lead story for two weeks at this point. And because he really got behind it in the 2024 campaign and so much of the party was behind the transparency, for him to turn around completely the opposite direction, I think, is hurting him in a unique way that we haven’t seen before.
Sargent: Right. He’s basically in on the elite cover-up. That’s not an exaggeration. That’s essentially what’s exactly happening.
Morris: Yeah, he has chosen his side very publicly in a way that he will most likely be attacked for by his party in the future, I imagine.
Sargent: And it’s interesting how hard Johnson and Leavitt are working to obscure that that’s his actual position. That’s really what’s at issue here with the throwing of the FBI under the bus. That’s basically, Hey, we’d love to have the files out there. Go talk to Kash.
Morris: Yeah, this does raise the question of, Who’s going to out-Trump Trump on the Epstein files? And we worry about what that figure looks like over the next four years. But yeah, he has chosen the side that he was previously not associated with very publicly. Marjorie Taylor Greene is saying he needs to be more transparent. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene is not on Trump’s side here, so we can imagine that that’s going to have some costs. As we get more data, we’ll probably see those costs kick in.
Sargent: I just want to pick up on what you said about young men. Of course, young men are the success story for Trump of the 2024 cycle—the incels and those types, all the Joe Rogan–vote types, and so forth. They’re the more conspiratorial, “anti-system” voters that Trump was able to win over. You do think this costs him with that demographic? And does that matter in the midterms though? How do you see all that playing out? These are probably the types of voters that would sit out a midterm, but I would imagine that Trump would like them to turn out on his side—on the side of the Republican Party—precisely because the midterm electorate is going to be made up of highly educated, highly motivated voters who lean Democratic.
Morris: Yeah. In 2024, analysts made a lot about the podcast voters. These are the people who were activated by Joe Rogan and Theo Von and such. Both of those podcasters have come out against Trump in the past two weeks, asking, Where are the hundreds of thousands of hours of tape? They claim, I think, it is a quite credible question from Rogan, for example. So if we’re asking where the people that they brought to the Trump camp are going to go, they’re probably going to follow the person who brought them there. They’re not Trump podcast watchers. They’re Joe Rogan watchers. That’s the person they trust. That’s the person they have a parasocial relationship with, to use the podcast marketing [term]. And as you say, they’re quite conspiratorial, and yes, they are disengaged. But every vote matters. If turnout in this group is only 30 percent instead of 40 percent, there’s still a lot of people that the Republicans were counting on and had counted on in 2024 to win that they’re losing now because of this very high-profile flip-flop.
Sargent: I’ve got to say, it’s awfully inconvenient for Trump and House Republicans that the people now sounding the loudest calls for transparency on this matter are House Democrats, right?
Morris: Yeah. And the most popular part of the identification among this group are independents, so I think they’re very likely to acknowledge that messaging in a way that your Republican young men aren’t likely to. There’s a lot of people … there’s a lot of votes here that could be moved.
Sargent: Fascinating stuff. Elliott Morris, thanks so much for talking to us, man. It’s going to get really, really crazy.
Morris: Yeah, this is probably one of the more interesting stories I’ve covered in my last 10 years. Thanks for having me on, Greg.