The following is a lightly edited transcript of the November 13 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.
Suddenly the Jeffrey Epstein files are back in a big way. House Democrats released some new emails raising fresh questions about the relationship between the sex trafficker and President Trump. Meanwhile, the White House has been privately pressuring Republicans to stop trying to get the Epstein files released. And all this forced White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt into some really tortured damage control efforts. The core dynamic here has always been that at some point, whatever is in the Epstein files involving Trump is going to come out. And at some point, MAGA will have to have some sort of reckoning with that. Are we there yet? Maybe. Today we’re unraveling all this with one of the best commentators on the right wing out there, historian Nicole Hemmer, author of several books on the topic. Nicole, always good to have you on.
Nicole Hemmer: Great to be back, Greg.
Sargent: So lets start with what these Democrats released. In a 2011 email Epstein wrote to his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, that one of his victims, “spent hours at my house with Trump.” In 2019, Epstein wrote this about Trump to a journalist, “of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.” Nicole, none of this proves what Trump did or didn’t do, but it does seem to show that Trump had more of a relationship with Epstein than he’s admitted and that Trump knew about Epstein’s conduct. Doesn’t that seem to show that?
Hemmer: It definitely seems to show—and we have other evidence of this as well—but it does seem to show that Trump understood who Jeffrey Epstein was, how he and Ghislaine Maxwell were acting, and the kinds of—frankly—crimes they were committing. And he was adjacent to, if not involved in, those crimes.
Sargent: Yes. Just to go back to refresh everybody’s memory, MAGA spent years and years screaming for the Epstein files, seeing it as a cover-up and a conspiracy, an elite conspiracy. And then Trump got his people in the Justice Department, right? The Attorney General and the FBI head, they looked at the Epstein files and they said, oh shit, those aren’t coming out. I mean, that’s what happened, right?
Hemmer: That’s what happened. And in fact, people might have forgotten one of those very early moments in the second Trump term when Pam Bondi, the attorney general, called together all of these conservative influencers and gave them binders that suggested that they were about to walk out with all of those Epstein files and boy did that dry up basically immediately. And so there has been this sense, both among Democrats and among a big sizable contingent on the right, that there must be something in those files that is damning. And I think these emails continue to point us in that direction.
Sargent: Well, we may see more of the files soon enough. Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva is about to be sworn into the House, and she’ll be the 218th signature on a discharge petition pushing for full release of the Epstein files—which is the trove of materials unearthed in investigating Epstein’s sex trafficking.
Now, though, it’s being reported that the White House is personally pressuring Representative Lauren Boebert—who has signed on to that discharge petition—to drop her quest to get the files.
Nicole, Boebert is full MAGA, of course. And as we said, MAGA used to want these files—now many don’t. But what does Boebert do here? And what does it say about what’s happened to the MAGA movement? It just seems really topsy-turvy.
Hemmer: It’s fascinating that as soon as there were enough votes to release the files, this pressure got put on one of the few Republicans who was willing to release them. Boebert is in the same position as somebody like Marjorie Taylor Greene—where they are fully dedicated to the MAGA project, but they see themselves as having a political career that extends beyond Donald Trump.
And so they seem to be looking at how the right is splitting on this Epstein issue—and splitting more broadly—and positioning themselves with what they see as the more populist and almost truth-telling version of MAGA. And that aligns them with some pretty out-there characters, right? It aligns them with Nick Fuentes and other very far-right figures.
But they also have a special power position right now, because unlike folks who are MAGA do-or-die—who are dedicated to Trump and whatever his party line is—they’re willing to say, well, we can see that, in this instance, the emperor has no clothes. We’re willing to say it, and we’re betting that you can see he has no clothes too.
So when push comes to shove, you’ll side with us—because we have this evidence that we are the only ones who are willing to tell you the truth.
Sargent: I want to come back to Nick Fuentes and what all this says about MAGA in a second. But first, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about this White House pressure on Boebert. Listen to this exchange.
Reporter (voiceover): Why are White House officials then meeting with Representative Boebert in an effort to try and get her to not sign this petition calling for the release of the file?
Karoline Leavitt (voiceover): Doesn’t it show transparency that members of the Trump administration are willing to brief members of Congress whenever they please? Doesn’t that show our level of transparency? Doesn’t that show the level of transparency when we are willing to sit down with members of Congress and address their concerns? That is… that’s a defining factor of transparency.
Sargent: The audacity here is really something else. Private pressure on a member of Congress to refrain from seeking the Epstein files is actually being transformed into evidence of transparency.
Nicole, MAGA spent years demanding these files—just to reiterate. How does MAGA turn around and now adopt this line that the cover-up actually equals transparency? It’s Orwellian.
You talked about this MAGA split. So how does the chunk of MAGA that’s lined up behind Trump justify this?
Hemmer: I mean, they’re going to pick up the Leavitt line. In many ways, that was her role in answering this question this afternoon—to basically say, here’s what we’re going with, guys. This is the line. And just repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. And there will definitely be a faction of MAGA that does exactly that.
And you can even see it being riffed on in various ways. Megyn Kelly was talking about this case earlier today, and she was just like, yeah, this is a Democratic plot to try to stop the MAGA momentum. And there will definitely be people who sign up to that.
But it is not going to work with the folks who are very clear that there is a cover-up—or something happening around the Epstein files—and this is not going to satisfy them. And that is the split that you’re seeing in MAGA: those who are willing to march on the party line, and those who are saying, no, no, the Epstein conspiracy actually is more important to us than just repeating what Donald Trump says and protecting Donald Trump.
Sargent: Well, you mentioned Nick Fuentes a little earlier. So, for listeners, he’s basically a white supremacist, a white nationalist—a neo-Nazi—he’s in that world. Can you talk a little bit about that, and kind of give us a taxonomy of MAGA? In other words, what makes the MAGA contingent that still wants the files—like Boebert, I guess for now anyway—what makes them who they are, and what makes the other MAGA faction who they are?
Hemmer: So there is a sort of civil war in MAGA right now between the people whose careers are entirely beholden to, or in the shadow of, Donald Trump—who believe that their political futures are tied to lashing themselves to Trump and never deviating from the party line. So that’s one faction of MAGA.
Then there’s this other faction of MAGA—and these are the people who have kind of bigger goals. In the case of Nick Fuentes, it is the transformation of America into a white ethno–nation-state. For others, it is this kind of post-liberal project, who see Donald Trump as a convenient vehicle for their politics—but their politics do not live or die with Donald Trump.
And that, again, empowers them in certain ways, because always their bigger goal is going to override loyalty to Trump. And so, in these moments when Trump demands loyalty in really laughable ways, they can take a step back and say, I’m not going there. I can see that he’s lying to you. I will tell you that he is lying to you.
And so the next time you are uncertain, and you’re trying to figure out what the truth is, you’re going to come to me—and you’re not only going to hear about the ways Trump is lying to you, but you’re also going to hear this neo-Nazi propaganda that I’m promoting.
Sargent: So in a sense, someone like Nick Fuentes and the MAGA figures who are going to keep pushing for release of the Epstein files can kind of leverage their followings here and expand them this way, right? Because there’s always room to be even more conspiratorial and even further to the right, apparently, like that pool is endless. So are these guys kind of saying, I’m not going to let Trump bullshit me on this, so you follow me, followers. Is that the basic guide there?
Hemmer: That’s exactly the argument that they’re making. And this comes at a particularly dangerous time, both for MAGA, but also, I think, for U.S. politics more broadly, because Nick Fuentes had been successfully sidelined in U.S. politics. He’d been deplatformed. It was very clear that he had politics that were beyond the pale. And he has managed to worm his way back, not just onto those platforms and into the conversation, but it really is a central figure in the splits on the right, right now.
And if his contingent or this more conspiratorial contingent that includes people like Tucker Carlson and other pretty visible figures, if they are able to successfully win this civil war, then now you’re talking about a right that has radicalized even further to the right against democracy, against diversity, against all of these things. And if you think it’s bad with Trump leading the movement and the MAGA movement as it is now, it can get worse.
Sargent: Well, and Trump is, like, the only figure who could even possibly unite the faction. So when Trump sent out the word earlier this year that it was time to stop talking about the Epstein files—the scandal is closed down, it’s a Democrat hoax—a lot of MAGA figures kind of fell into line there.
But even Trump couldn’t unify the factions, as we’ve been talking about. There’s this contingent that’s gonna say, I don’t let any elite buy me, right? Not even Donald Trump.
And so we’re all now, at this point, kind of looking toward a post-Trump MAGA. I’ve got to think this whole thing maybe disintegrates more once Trump passes from the scene, right?
Hemmer: That’s entirely possible. Yes. I mean, he is holding together, not particularly well at the moment, but holding together this MAGA contingent. And what we’re seeing play out in this so-called civil war is already we’re seeing people try to vie for leadership of the MAGA movement and of the right in a post-Trump era. And so they’re like, what will that look like? That fight is happening now. And the Epstein issue is such a potent one, because while Donald Trump is willing to play both sides and lie and sort of like wishwash whatever he feels he’s getting out of line with a particular part of the MAGA base. He’s willing to do that on a lot of issues, but on Epstein, he’s never been willing to do this. This has been the one place where his self-interest has gotten in the way of that kind of political instinct towards fluidity. And that’s why this is the breaking point for so many people.
Sargent: Yeah, and we’re sort of in this weird moment where MAGA—and this whole universe on the right—has what appear to be unifying moments, like the horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk, for instance. I think someone like Stephen Miller and some of the other MAGA leaders looked at that and said, boom, here’s our moment—the whole movement is going to come together now behind persecution of the left.
And so they rolled out their whole plan to start arresting leftists—or whatever the hell they thought they were going to do—which hasn’t happened, by the way. I don’t know if you noticed that, but it hasn’t. And so that didn’t hold, though. That unity was extremely short-lived, and we are right back to a position where they can’t hold it together.
What does that say about the movement overall?
Hemmer: So it suggests that the movement—or at least the coalition—is very fragile. That it is something that has been held together by this kind of cult of personality. And that there are opportunists who are looking for every moment, because actually Nick Fuentes made a lot of that unity moment—since he had been fighting with Charlie Kirk for years. He had been his main opponent, and when Kirk was just shot, he positioned himself immediately to say, we do all need to come together in the aftermath of this.
But these moments of division are also something that are being leveraged. The right also notices—at least the dissatisfied-with-Trump part of the MAGA right—they notice that he hasn’t been rounding up Antifa, that there hasn’t really been any follow-through on this war with the left. And they want somebody who’s actually going to do that.
So this could break a couple of ways, right? We could see the MAGA movement kind of dissolve when Trump shuffles off the scene. We could also see more pressure for Trump to illegally retain power, because he is the only one who is seen as capable of holding this movement together.
We just don’t know. But it is a problem in our politics right now that those are the options on the table.
Sargent: Yeah, for sure. I just want to ask you about the contingent of MAGA that is falling into line behind Trump for a sec. A lot of people, as we’ve pointed out here—and as others have also pointed out—note that MAGA did this complete 180. But I think there’s a way to look at it that makes it look even worse.
For MAGA, the Epstein scandal captured something big, right? Something essential about the wickedness of global elites. But in their schema, they kind of had a very clear idea of who these elites were—Democrats and liberals, George Soros, the Clintons, and so forth. Now it turns out that the elite cover-up is coming from inside the house. It’s coming from deep inside MAGA—it’s Trump and his allies in the government.
Now, again, we don’t know exactly what Trump did and what’s in the Epstein files. But for MAGA—once it was no longer liberal and Democratic elites, at least for this contingent of MAGA—the files no longer had any place in their worldview. They just vanished.
Can you talk about that, and what it means?
Hemmer: This puts MAGA supporters in a really interesting position for exactly the reason that you’re saying, that this was supposed to be this anti-elite movement. Donald Trump was the person who was able to, as a member of the elite, point out the hypocrisy of all the elites. And that sort of was a protective shield around him.
Sargent: Yes, he was a traitor to his class, in a sense. He was an elitist against his class. He was going to reveal the deep dark secrets of how it all works.
Hemmer: And the Epstein thing complicates that, right? Because it’s like, well, we actually have had a politics of anti-elite pedophilia schemes that has been a through line of this politics. And it doesn’t work out well for us if you’re this closely connected to one of those elite pedophilia schemes.
And so what I think is going to happen is going to be twofold. One, you’re going to have people that just deny it—and I think this is the Karoline Leavitt line, right?—that this is a Democratic conspiracy. People may even be picking up some of those QAnon threads that say, well, this looks bad for Donald Trump, but actually he’s playing chess when everyone else is playing checkers. And he’s actually, you know, at the end of the day, Joe Biden is going to end up in handcuffs somehow for all of this, and Trump will walk away a hero.
And then I think there is going to be a contingent that radicalizes over this, right? Because there’s no one they can trust. There’s no elite they can put their faith in. Their faith has been broken again and again and again. And so for the folks who kind of hold on to it—who hold on to, like, this is not a Democratic hoax, like, Donald Trump is connected to the Epstein pedophilia scandal—you can imagine them radicalizing because they’ve lost their faith once again in another figure.
And that pushes them in a more nihilistic direction. But I actually think that for most MAGA members, they will find a story they can tell themselves that allows them to say, Donald Trump didn’t really do anything—and that’s how they’re going to self-soothe.
Sargent: So just to wrap this up, looking beyond Epstein, putting Epstein aside, for a sec, you’ve written these great books about the American right going back half a century, you’ve seen it morph and transform itself and so forth and so on. What do you think is going to happen to the American right in coming years? Again, putting Epstein aside for now, what’s it going to become? Is it going to morph into some other sort of politics? Is JD Vance going to be able to, I don’t know, become a leader who develops his own version of it? What are you looking at? Like, what are you watching for going forward?
Hemmer: I am watching people like JD Vance and the factions around him because, again, this sort of civil war that has broken out on the right involves this idea of something called post-liberalism—which is an idea of a post-democracy society, a more authoritarian, strongman society that isn’t in any way reliant on Donald Trump.
It could have JD Vance as its figurehead; it could have some of these techno-totalitarian elites as part of its head. There is a real philosophy on the right that is, in many ways, post-democratic. And that’s the faction that I’m watching, because it actually seems like the faction that has the most sort of momentum behind it at the moment.
And I don’t know if JD Vance is going to be the figurehead for that movement—he certainly is well positioned to be that person—but there are a lot of other people vying for it as well.
And so I’m keeping my eye on the further right of the right, because it seems to be the side with the momentum, and it seems to be the side that is being empowered. And so that would mean that the story going forward is the further radicalization of the right. It’s hard to believe that it can go even further, but that is my concern, and that’s where I’ll be watching.
Sargent: Donald Trump, speaking of this whole post-liberal movement, he was supposed to be their Caesar, right? He was going to be the one who was going to finally break the system and rescue it. And if he can’t do it, who can?
Hemmer: That’s going to be the question. And I think that it’s very possible that, because people want him to be the strongman—the authoritarian—in order to try to overcome this particular scandal in his administration, he is going to attempt to appease his base by seizing even more power and hurting even more people, which is entirely possible, in order to feed what it is they want.
So I do still think that, even though it could end up being a moment of real weakness—and a moment we look back on and say, well, that was the end of Donald Trump’s power—it could just as easily be the impetus for another power grab. And so I think we need to take it seriously.
Sargent: Just to go really dark here, it occurs to me listening to you that when they say this is all a Democrat hoax, meaning the Epstein scandal is a Democrat hoax, it has this other meaning which is what you just said. It’s basically, we’re not going to let Democrats stop the strong man from breaking the system, ending liberal democracy and instilling authoritarian rule, are we? Go for it now, Mr. President. That’s what they mean, right?
Hemmer: That is what they mean. And I think it’s worth noting that, you know, there are what, maybe four Republicans in the House who are voting to discharge the Epstein papers. Like we are not talking about a major contingent of Republicans with power. And so the circling of the wagons will likely happen precisely because of that. And that can, you know, authorize a great deal more authoritarianism from Trump. And I think that’s what we need to watch for.
Sargent: Nicole Hemmer, I have no idea how you stare into this kind of cauldron day in and day out without going completely bonkers. Thanks so much for coming on.
Hemmer: Happy to be back. Good to talk to you.