The following is a lightly edited transcript of the July 24 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 Donald Trump is reportedly “furious” about his inability to make the Jeffrey Epstein scandal go away. Politico reports that Trump is angry and frustrated that his staff can’t get the story out of the news, and his own allies are privately admitting he’s vulnerable on it. This comes as The Wall Street Journal reports that Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy privately informed Trump earlier this year that his name appears numerous times in the Epstein files. That strongly suggests this story is only going to get worse. One big question all this raises is this: Is Trump losing his supposedly superhuman ability to manipulate the media narrative? And how should Democrats exploit that now? We’re talking about all this with media strategist Tara McGowan, the publisher of Courier Newsroom, an anti-MAGA news site. Tara, thanks for coming on.
Tara McGowan: Thanks for having me, Greg.
Sargent: Let’s start with this Wall Street Journal report. To catch people up, for years, MAGA said the Epstein files—i.e., the trove of investigative information compiled by law enforcement on Epstein’s sex trafficking—would show evidence of elite Democratic pedophilia. But the Trump administration looked at the files and decided, No, we’re not releasing them after all. And now the Journal reports that Trump has been told by Bondi that his name is in there. While that doesn’t necessarily incriminate him, it means the media and members of Congress are going to start looking even harder at the story. Tara, what’s your reaction to all that?
McGowan: Unsurprised, Greg, but delighted nonetheless. I don’t think it should or does surprise too many people that Trump’s name appears. I’m glad that it’s being reported as such, but I’ve never seen anyone who has more selfies with Jeffrey Epstein than Trump. That have been on the internet for years and years and years. And of course, the story that came out earlier this week, or late last week, in The Wall Street Journal about the birthday card that Trump wrote to Epstein.… The evidence is mounting. And especially [for] folks that follow conspiracy theories or conspiracy theorists themselves, where there’s smoke, they think there’s fire or there likely is. And so the compounding evidence, including coming from Bondi, is going to keep the story going.
And I will tell you—from our own audiences and the coverage that we’ve been doing of Epstein at Courier across our network—we’ve seen over 50 million views on our Epstein videos just over the past week and change, which is wild. The audience is following every twist and turn in the story. They are not moving on from it. And of course, that has made legacy media outlets like Wall Street Journal and others pay closer attention when I think they were likely not to touch it if they thought it was just a conversation in the really extreme political spaces on the internet. It is very mainstream right now. And you can tell by how Trump is reacting that he is crouched in a corner like a feral animal.
Sargent: And the Politico story really underscores your point about him being in a defensive crouch and understanding his own vulnerability on this. One person close to the White House tells Politico, “POTUS is clearly furious.” Trump obviously wants the media to be focused on his greatness and so forth. One White House ally says this is “a vulnerability” for Trump and that this is the fault of Trump and MAGA for originally hyping the Epstein files. That’s a White House ally speaking to Politico. One senior official says he’s frustrated with his staff for failing to tamp this down. Now Tara, we’ve been told for years that Trump wields magical powers over “the narrative.” That was always overstated, but now we’re really seeing that mythology get dispelled, aren’t we?
McGowan: Yeah, it’s actually one of the most interesting things to me as someone who has studied this person so closely for so many years; I started doing work essentially against him in 2015 when he first ran in the Republican primaries. He is incredibly brilliant at understanding narrative and marketing and [at] being able to control not only right-wing media narrative and benefit from that but also legacy media, mainstream media; [he’s] able to define the coverage in certain ways and [shape] the attention economy. And it’s really surprising to me as someone that has observed him so closely for so long that he did not anticipate this blowback from his base when he and all of the right-wing commentators and pundits who helped to get him elected were beating this drum on this story and his promise to immediately release the Epstein files consistently throughout his campaign. It was one of his top campaign promises. So to think that he could just make it go away by saying that there was nothing there, I’m even surprised that he is so surprised.
Sargent: I’ll tell you what, I just think that there are a bunch of boneheads who actually believed that stuff about Democratic pedophilia rings, and they thought they were going to go in there and blow the lid off this thing. That was the whole point of putting in Dan Bongino as deputy director of FBI and Kash Patel as director of the FBI. They were going to go in and be the scourge of the deep state and blow the whole thing wide open. They were just dumb enough to believe that shit. That’s what I think happened.
McGowan: Yeah, but the thing is, I don’t think Trump believed that stuff—because he knows so much and knew Epstein so well. So I think maybe putting Bongino and Patel in those positions was the concession. And he thought if the message came out from them, which it did, that there was nothing there that it would go away. And it has had the absolute opposite effect. It has really, really shaken the core of the MAGA base who believed deeply that he was going to rout out the deep state and shed light on all of this and confirm all of their darkest theories and conspiracy theories. And now it’s not that they feel like it’s debunked or those things are not true. Now they’re starting to realize that Trump might be complicit in it instead of the guy who’s going to actually rout out that deep-state corruption.
Sargent: So Trump’s frustration and the frustration of Trump’s team really came through at the White House press briefing. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked if Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is releasing all this horseshit stuff about prosecuting Obama in order to boost her shaky standing with Trump. Remember, Trump dressed down Gabbard for admitting that Iran wasn’t on the verge of a nuke. Listen to Leavitt here.
Karoline Leavitt (audio voiceover): The only people who are suggesting that the director of national intelligence would release evidence to try to boost her standing with the president are the people in this room who constantly try to sow distrust and chaos amongst the president’s cabinet. And it is not working. I will just answer your question directly. I am with the president of the United States every day. He has the utmost confidence in Director Gabbard. He always has, he continues to, and that is true of his entire cabinet who is all working as one team to deliver on the promises this president made.
Sargent: So that sounds like a case of protesting too much. It sure sounds like we really are seeing internal strife among Trump’s team right now. Remember that Bongino is deeply angry over the Epstein fiasco. I’ve got to think there’s a lot of anger at Bondi in particular for mishandling her announcement that the matter was closed. That really stoked a lot of MAGA fury. I think it’s going to get worse for her now that this leak came out in The Wall Street Journal about her supposedly telling Trump that he’s in there. That’s going to seem like a leak from maybe DOJ. What’s your sense of what’s going on over there?
McGowan: Yeah, it’s absolute chaos, right? So Trump has not only lost the narrative and the ability to control it, but he [also] does not have control of his own staff or advisers or cabinet at this stage. And when people are sensing what is very much on the surface right now about fractures within their base of support that they have been incredibly.… There’s been so much hubris essentially about their mandate after the election to lead, etc., and now their base is turning on them. Their biggest talkers, pundits, podcasters are turning on them. You are seeing actual individuals within the administration turn on them with these leaks. And so they are in the most vulnerable position we’ve seen this administration in.
At the same time—I read this in Axios this morning in this sort of bloviating way, I thought—at a time where Trump really has been delivering a lot of “wins” in terms of his other campaign promises to his base, that’s why he’s also furious: He’s not getting any credit for it. So now he’s really experiencing what it is like to not actually be able to control the story or control your team. And this is where it’s going to get really interesting because the story, as we said, is not going away. So who is going to really defect? Who is going to get thrown out, because we know how he reacts when he’s angry, right? He starts firing. He starts demonizing. And he’s been doing his distraction strategy, and it isn’t working. So we’re going to start to see him, I think, act even more and more irrational, if that’s possible. I hate to say that there is fun and joy in this—but for those of us who have known what an empty suit he has been on so many of the promises he made to his base, there is a level of enjoyment, I think, we are all allowed at watching this go down. But I do think it’s incredibly important that all of us in media and advocacy also help keep this story and this momentum going.
Sargent: I want to get to that in a sec, but your point about his distraction strategy failing just reminded me of something that I think is essential. One of the sub-narratives of this idea of Trump as master media manipulator has always been that he’s got this magical distraction powers. And this is something pundits were incredibly credulous about for a long time. He would go out there and he would just try to change the subject and everyone would say, Wow, he’s distracting us. He’s weaving his spell again. And it was always garbage; that stuff doesn’t actually necessarily work for voters. But here, we’re seeing it fail in a particularly glaring and obvious way, right?
McGowan: Yeah, it’s definitely feeling desperate because he has not satisfied the base. And thus the media’s amplifying because his answer [shows] that he has continued to not evolve. In fact, he just got more angry at his base and continued to say, There’s nothing there, move on. Why do you care? That’s undressing his base, right? That’s like shaming and blaming them and turning on them, which, of course, is not going to calm them down. If it had been pure distraction to something that was equally important to them, which is difficult to do, maybe it would have worked—but he actually turned on them first. We started to see a little bit of a bump and a splintering of the attention away from Epstein with the Gabbard announcements of the files, but it didn’t last very long. Epstein was back taking the cake in terms of engagement pretty quickly, and they’re not able to get it off of that at this stage.
Sargent: Well, so where does that leave us with Democrats, Tara? This is something you have a lot of strong feelings about, the Democratic strategies and so forth. Democrats are obviously now calling for full release of the Epstein files and they’re doing a pretty good job of keeping it in the news, but then you’ve got people like Nancy Pelosi calling it a distraction. I feel like, on some level, the party is still internally conflicted about how and whether to go hard at something like this. What are your thoughts on that?
McGowan: Yeah. I deeply, deeply respect Nancy Pelosi in many, many ways. And I fundamentally disagree with her. This is not a distraction. This is important. We’re seeing it across all audiences. It is honestly the most unified and bipartisan issue. And I think that Democrats need to lean into this very heavily. I think there’s also just a “take party out of it” [element to this]. If you’re not talking about the Epstein story, that’s a little bit more concerning in certain ways to me than the people that are, right? Because we should all be aligned that whoever was involved with Epstein was not on the good side of society or history or the law—let’s say. I think that this is not only a really important story that is actually unifying people of all political and other backgrounds, but it is such a critical one for Democrats to lean in on—because this is the most potent example we have of the corruption of Trump in this administration. The through line for everything that also unites the left and the right is getting corruption out of politics, right? He ran as someone who was going to do that. Him being corrupt himself and finally looking very defensive and scared, frankly—people can sense that.
This is where the whole house of cards could fall down if everybody stays vigilant about it. I think that we are in that place right now, [and] that’s why any Democrat that’s calling this a distraction is deeply out of touch with where the American public is. And I think that is an indication and also just a reinforcing indication of the establishment Democrats. The folks in leadership in the Democratic Party have been very out of touch of where people are. They’ve been out of touch of how to communicate with them, what they care about, where to communicate with them for a while now. And that’s where we’re seeing really different camps in the really broad left: folks who are just ready to fight, actually have fight in them, know how to communicate authentically, and have a vision for the future and the ones who are still clinging to this old way that hasn’t existed for a long time, this decorum, this “we need to talk about kitchen-table issues.”
Actually, no. Right now, this is what we should be talking about. And that doesn’t mean that fast forward a year from now, when we’re just months out from the midterms, we shouldn’t be talking about the other really important issues like affordability, etc. We should be doing that too. But I absolutely disagree with Nancy Pelosi and think that every Democrat should be leaning in and continuing to amplify all of the new incoming information that comes out of this story. We rarely, rarely have the ability to be on offense and to have Trump and the right on defense—and that is the moment we’re in right now. We need to hold that leverage for as long as we can.
Sargent: Yeah. In fact, I would go as far as to say that Democrats should take the word “distraction” and ban it from their vocabularies forever—because I think it actually embodies two deeper, broader, very bad tendencies in the Democratic Party. One is this belief, as you said, that everything always has to be reducible to kitchen-table issues. And that sends the message that I just don’t think these other things are important. I don’t have convictions around these other things. And so when big things like this happen, they’re hamstrung and caught off guard. The other message that calling stuff like this a “distraction” sends is that Democrats think that they can’t win arguments with Trump about anything, right? They can only fight on the issues where they’re strong like health care. And we’re seeing the fallout from that now. Immigration right now is in many ways the biggest moral crisis of the moment. Trump’s crackdown on immigration is a massive moral crisis for this country. And Democrats tried their little thing about, You know, we can’t talk about that. It’s a distraction from the kitchen table. Well, voters care very much about that, right? Voters care about people getting kidnapped off the streets. And Democrats have to be able to speak to people’s feelings and values on that stuff.
McGowan: Yes, and sex trafficking young children and women. This is a really important issue. And again, it gets back to what I was mentioning before, which is: If you want to move on from this story, it really begs the question of why. And we all know that very likely there are Democrats in the Epstein files as well. This is why for so long all the conspiracy theories spread so crazy where we don’t know what’s true and what’s not—because both sides were in cahoots at protecting it. And that’s also why I think it’s so important that now, [with] time passing, we’re facing a very new generation of leadership in the Democratic Party that is really fighting to be able to get into positions of leadership and power against these folks that, frankly, have been the ones who have lost the trust and the support of the American people.
Lest we forget, Democrats have the lowest approval rating in the history of polling on Democratic approval ratings right now. So even though Trump’s support is flailing and his support is falling, especially around a lot of things his administration is doing related to ICE and other things, Democrats are not in any better shape. And I really fundamentally believe that is because of the folks that are out of touch—that are are still projecting that they might have some things that they don’t want to talk about or things from years ago they want to protect [for] establishment or former leaders in the party. And I think that’s actually how we unify the American people: the folks that are willing to come out and say, Corruption has no place in either side. That’s how we rebuild trust as a party and a movement.
Sargent: Yeah, and the story is about the fundamental problem of elite impunity. That’s a huge thing. It’s a real problem. So to close this out, what should Democrats be doing specifically? You take someone like Senator Ron Wyden. He just put out this great information. We reported on it at TNR.com. You can check that out. He put out this information about a whole lot of suspect Epstein financial transactions that are on the file at the Treasury Department. Wyden’s pushing hard on those specifics, trying to get Treasury to release the financial transactions, which would show all sorts of stuff. I feel like Democrats could be using their power more like that—to try to shed light on what specifically is being covered up. What are your thoughts? What do you think Dems should be doing specifically?
McGowan: Yes to all of that. I think any calls for investigations hearings—similar to what Democrats were doing [of staging] their own hearings that weren’t official committee hearings because they’re not the party in power to choose those.… They should also just very simply be talking about this every day, everywhere. Like, you want an excuse to go on a go-everywhere media tour like Pete Buttigieg does or others do? Book yourself everywhere online and in broadcast and radio and be talking about this. Be asking, If he has nothing to hide, why won’t he release the information? Are we taking him out his word on this? It doesn’t seem like that. Literally, there’s so many ways to talk about this with new information coming out every day that we just need to keep the conversation going. And I really think that there is not a good argument that I have heard or could imagine hearing as to why they shouldn’t be when most of us dream of having an opportunity like this: to be able to stay on offense, to keep the attention of the American people on something that is very much a clear, evident vulnerability for this administration.
Sargent: Yes. And I think Democrats have to figure out a way of talking about this as if they really mean it. It can’t be like, Look at me, I’m at the podium now and I know Trump’s in trouble. I’m going to be clever and I’m going to do 11-dimensional chess and put Trump on the defensive on an issue involving elites. Democrats have to summon from inside actual feelings and thoughts and values about this scandal and talk about it to the American people. That’s what I think has to happen.
McGowan: Yes. And connect it to all of the other corruption that has been unprecedented in this administration and the other abuses of power, right? There is a way to very succinctly connect all of the dots and threads of everything horrible coming out of this administration to show that this is why he is abusing his power. It’s like we all stopped talking about the fact that the major reason Donald Trump was always running for president again was to keep himself out of jail. He has gotten himself into a position of the greatest power in the world when he was likely to spend time in jail had he not won that election and been able to get immunity by his rigged Supreme Court. So this is the fact: We have folks in his base moving away from him, becoming more skeptical, more doubtful and angry about how they’re not feeling heard or respected anymore by this president. That is the opportunity we’ve all been waiting for—to help them, to bring them, in an inclusive way, into this movement against corruption, frankly, on both sides to be able to find a way forward.
Sargent: Well, Tara McGowan, I really hope Democrats are listening to you. Thanks so much for coming on. Great discussion.
McGowan: Thanks, Greg.