The following is a lightly edited transcript of the February 20 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.
Donald Trump thinks he’s put the Jeffrey Epstein scandal behind him—or he’s pretending to think that, anyway. Asked to comment on the news that British police arrested Prince Andrew—or former Prince Andrew—in connection with the Epstein files, Trump declared himself “totally exonerated.” But he had little to nothing to say about whether his Justice Department will seek accountability for elites implicated here more broadly. No matter how hard Trump tries to put this to bed, it just won’t go away. Lawmakers are still asking hard questions about what still hasn’t been released, and some MAGA figures are boiling with anger, unwilling to let this go. To understand MAGA at times like this, we always turn to historian Nicole Hemmer, who’s been following the Epstein mess closely and is the author of good books about the history of the American right and about right-wing media. Nicole, always good to have you on.
Nicole Hemmer: Great to be back, Greg.
Sargent: So the former Prince Andrew has been arrested by British police. We don’t know much about that, but it’s obviously Epstein-related. The DOJ just released a huge amount of new materials and Trump’s name appears throughout, but there’s still lots redacted—and Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican, is calling for the release of other materials, like internal DOJ memos describing decisions whether or not to charge Epstein.
There’s tons still out there, apparently. Nicole, can you bring us up to date on what we’ve learned in the latest round of revelations?
Hemmer: So the latest round of revelations—you’ve rightly described it as a lot of Trump’s name all over these files and still a lot of redactions. You know, the release of these files was mandated by law—by law that Congress passed—and representatives like Tom Massie are saying, “Wait a second. We required you not to redact the names of the people who were implicated in the crimes and the deeds that were done alongside Jeffrey Epstein. And you seem to have redacted them.”
So we feel like you’re still not being fully honest with us, which is why it’s so interesting that he’s asking for these DOJ memos, because now you start to get the sense that he’s shifting from the crimes to the cover-up. And that’s what he, I think, is hoping that the DOJ memos will show—to what extent has the DOJ been covering for Donald Trump?
Greg Sargent: And for elites more broadly, right? Like the big question here is, you know: What names have been redacted? Why didn’t the DOJ charge people? That’s the essence of what we still need to know, right?
Hemmer: Right. Because the thing that became clear—I mean, we’ve known for a long time that there were so many elites across the world who were in relationship and had connections with Jeffrey Epstein and with his crimes. But there was something about this latest tranche of files that just blew that open for most Americans. It’s as though most Americans suddenly realized: It’s everyone. It’s leaders in finance. It’s leaders in politics. It’s world leaders. Like, everyone is implicated in this.
And I think part of what we want to understand is: Across the world, you are seeing leaders and elites, like the former Prince Andrew, who are going to jail or losing their positions, and that’s not happening in the United States. People want to understand, “Well, why isn’t it happening here?”
Sargent: Well, Trump was asked basically exactly that question by Steve Doocy of Fox News. He asked whether people will go to jail over the Epstein revelations. Listen to this.
Steve Doocy (voiceover): Do you think people in this country—at some point, associates of Jeffrey Epstein—will wind up in handcuffs, too?
Donald Trump (voiceover): Well, you know, I’m the expert in a way because I’ve been totally exonerated. That’s very nice. I can actually speak about it very nicely. I think it’s a shame. I think it’s very sad. I think it’s so bad for the royal family. It’s a very, very sad thing to me. It’s a very sad thing. When I see that, it’s a very sad thing.
Sargent: Nicole, was Trump totally exonerated, as he says there?
Hemmer: He was not. I mean, he’s trying to control the storyline here by repeating that over and over again. But first of all, we don’t have all of the files. There’s no way to have him “exonerated.”
And also, Trump’s relationship with Epstein—the closeness of it—predated a lot of the files that were covered in this particular release. So there are lots of open questions still about Trump’s relationship with Epstein, but he wants people to believe he was cleared. I think the other thing about that clip and his answer is he’s not concerned about the victims of Epstein. He is concerned about the powerful people who are being punished. And that is a bit of a tell.
Sargent: Yeah, I’ll say. And note that Trump has nothing to say about whether others will face accountability over what we’re learning. And that was Steve Doocy’s question, right?
Hemmer: Right. And he should have some vested interest in whether the people who are named in the files will face some repercussions, because some of them are very close allies of his, like Steve Bannon, who is all over those files. Steve Bannon was Trump’s campaign manager starting in August of 2016.
So he should have some concern about whether people are going to be prosecuted. But then again, he runs the DOJ in a way that has compromised its independence. So maybe he’s not concerned about it because he knows there won’t be prosecutions.
Sargent: Yeah, that’s very interesting. He seems very willing to tell the DOJ to prosecute when it’s—say, I don’t know—Adam Schiff or Letitia James or James Comey. But here he’s just like, “Yeah, I don’t know. They’ll do whatever they think is right.”
Hemmer: Right. And in those cases, the DOJ has complied, even when there is simply no evidence to pursue those cases. We’ve seen attorneys for the federal government be sanctioned because they are putting forward inadequate or false information to judges in order to get these indictments. So the fact that he is willing to go so “hard into the paint” for the people that he doesn’t like, and unwilling to do that in the case of Epstein’s co-conspirators, is another tell.
Sargent: It’s like a double whammy for them, right? Because on the one hand, you have some names that seem to be now coming out—like Steve Bannon’s, as you pointed out, like Prince Andrew’s and a few others. But then you also have a lot of names that are being redacted.
So you get both here, right? You’ve got elites who are getting, you know, incriminated in some sense with these releases, but you also have the sense of a cover-up from the redactions. You know what I mean?
Hemmer: I do. And then the question is: Who are the people? If it’s not his former campaign manager and recently pardoned friend, who are the people that he is willing to cover up for, and why is he willing to cover up?
I think that we can say who he is willing to cover up for because, again, he is directing the DOJ in a way that I think it’s fair to say no former president—no previous president—has. And so, yeah, I think if we find out those redacted names, we learn a little bit more about Trump’s own network of elites.
Sargent: Yeah, it might be worth pointing out that he’s not exonerated in this other sense, right? Like, we don’t know who he’s covering up for. And obviously, some people are essentially being protected here. So he’s not exonerated from the charge of a cover-up, either.
Hemmer: Right. And that’s what we need to know. We want to know both: What was his involvement in the underlying crime, and what is his ongoing involvement in the other crime—which is not following this law and covering up for other people?
Sargent: Yeah. It’s like it’s metastasizing in a funny way. So a lot of Trump-adjacent right-wing podcasters are really pissed off right now. Let’s listen to this from Sean Ryan. He’s talking about Attorney General Pam Bondi here. He mentions that Bondi recently hailed the Dow, and then he says this:
Sean Ryan (voiceover): You’re going to protect pedophiles. You’re going to protect pedophiles rather than go after them, and hope that everybody’s happy that the Dow hit 50,000? Are you fucking out of your mind? I guess the whole “drain the swamp” campaign promise was another fucking bullshit lie, huh? Man, the lies are stacking up fast.
Sargent: This, too, is like a double shot at Trump elites. He’s saying, “You guys are telling us that everything’s just fine because wealthy investors are making lots of money, but you know what? Everything is not fine. You are covering up for global elites.” Nicole, that just seems absolutely deadly in terms of driving a schism into MAGA. Your thoughts on what you heard there?
Hemmer: This very much is about a schism that is happening in MAGA. And some of the schism predates Epstein, and we’re just seeing it play out. Like, the people who are willing to attack Trump over Epstein already had problems with Trump.
You even see this in the case—you know, Sean Ryan is attacking Pam Bondi, and he’s also attacking Trump for putting her there and for his own implication in the cover-up. Somebody like Glenn Beck has spent a lot of time on his podcast attacking Pam Bondi and saying, “No, she’s the problem. Trump is perfectly fine. Trump is great. We all love Trump, but Pam Bondi is the problem.”
And so you’re seeing the schisms in MAGA over Trump and over, like, the nationalists versus the MAGA people. You’re seeing that play out through the Epstein files: who they talk about, who they’re willing to implicate, who they’re willing to acknowledge are implicated, and, in particular, what they’re willing to say about Trump himself.
Sargent: If I understand you correctly, you’re essentially saying that Pam Bondi is almost functioning a little bit like a lightning rod, right? Like, so, you and I know perfectly well—and everybody knows—that Donald Trump tells Pam Bondi what to do. He had literally commanded her to bring prosecutions against people in what he thought was a private DM.
Pam Bondi does what Trump says. But at the same time, she’s almost being set up as the person who’s the one making the decision here. It’s like a pantomime where Trump and MAGA kind of know that the way this can work is MAGA figures, who want to maintain credibility with their own followings, can go hard at Pam Bondi, but maybe not so hard at Trump. Does that make sense?
Hemmer: It does. And that’s why the “lightning rod” analogy is so apt, because it’s drawing all of the heat and all of the energy toward Pam Bondi and away from Donald Trump. And I think that that is the purpose. For people who want to deflect from Donald Trump, Bondi is a great scapegoat—not quite scapegoat. She’s involved, right?
And she set her own self up with her early comments about, “There’s a list sitting on my desk, and I’m going to have all these influencers come over.” So she has been a bit of the goat for this group for a long time for her own actions. But now she is very conveniently placed to draw the heat away from Donald Trump for those who want to draw the heat away from him.
Sargent: I mean, what the hell does she get out of this? A Fox News gig at the end of the day? Is a Fox News gig really that great that it’s worth this?
Hemmer: What a great question, because actually a Fox News gig isn’t worth what it used to be. But I think it is important to remember that there are people who desire power and proximity to power. She is the Attorney General of the United States. That is a powerful position.
Even if she’s not able to exercise power fully independently, she is the head law enforcement figure in the country in a prestigious and powerful position. Even if she’s not going to be making money hand over fist after she leaves—although I think she will be—she is now in a position of power. She’s in a particular position to try to do everything she can to please Donald Trump, in part because she is kind of on the outs.
Sargent: Just crazy stuff. So it gets really, really interesting with Steve Bannon. You mentioned earlier that he’s kind of under fire as well. A bunch of MAGA voices are pissed off at Bannon, who appears in the files. It turns out he was advising Epstein on how to handle the pedophile allegations. Bannon was basically contacting him daily and saying things like, You know, do it like this, do it like that, do it like the other way. Media Matters had a very good roundup of some of these MAGA podcasters. Let’s listen to this. Here’s Ben Shapiro.
Ben Shapiro (voiceover): Well, folks, Steve Bannon has now been totally exposed in the Epstein files. We’re going to get into what is actually in the Epstein files, and why is it that the people who are, like, actual conspirators with Jeffrey Epstein—like people who are working closely with Jeffrey Epstein—are being overlooked in favor of a broad, broad conspiracy theory?
Greg Sargent: Here’s Benny Johnson.
Benny Johnson (voiceover): And listen, it’s just not a good look. I’m telling you, it’s not a good look. Not sure if there’s anything criminal there, but it ain’t a good look. It’s not a good look for a lot of people, but it’s not a good look for Steve.
Sargent: And here’s Dinesh D’Souza.
Dinesh D’Souza (voiceover): Steve Bannon is all over the Epstein files. It’s not just that Bannon knew Epstein; Bannon was a close advisor and confidant to Epstein. Bannon was planning to make a documentary film defending Epstein.
Sargent: Nicole, Steve Bannon was the keeper of the MAGA flame. And now—my God—this. What do you make of it?
Hemmer: So again, I think this is where you’re seeing the pre-existing fissures in the right really revealing themselves. Ben Shapiro getting to go after Steve Bannon is Ben Shapiro’s dream. He hates Steve Bannon. So Bannon’s presence all over these files is something that he is really going to, like, spend the next several months just rolling around in.
And for good cause, right? Bannon’s name isn’t just all over these files. He wasn’t just helping Epstein to, like, figure out his legal defense; he was making a documentary about Epstein and hasn’t released the tapes from that. And so there is this kind of sense that Bannon, too, is covering up—that he was much more deeply involved.
And even people like Benny Johnson—I would add in here, maybe Megyn Kelly. Benny Johnson, at the end of his comments on Bannon, was like, Well, look, we’re friends with him. We don’t want to go after him. Megyn Kelly has said the same thing, where she’s like, I don’t know if I want to go after Steve Bannon. I love Steve Bannon.
So there is this tension between how much can we really say about him. For people who are already anti-Bannon, they’re having the time of their lives. For the rest, they’re trying to figure out how little they can get away with saying about what Bannon’s done. So that’s the divide that you’re seeing right now.
Sargent: Yeah, I mean, we discussed this “pantomime” a little earlier and how it works. So Pam Bondi is kind of drawing all the heat and light away from Trump. And in a way, Bannon is now functioning as that figure as well.
If you look at the way these MAGA podcasters are talking about this, they don’t seem quite as exercised about Donald Trump as they do about Steve Bannon. But here’s where it really breaks down for me: It is up to Donald Trump whether anybody pays any kind of price or is held accountable for what’s in the Epstein files. It’s up to Donald Trump because he controls Pam Bondi. We know that.
So how long can these MAGA figures play this game where they’re saying, “You know, this is an absolute outrage. What we’re learning—are elites ever going to, you know, be held accountable?”—while not blaming Donald Trump for the failure to hold people accountable? How long can they do that?
Hemmer: I mean, they’re going to try to do it for the rest of Trump’s time in office. This really is something where they’re just—they’re going to try to hold it together as long as they can, because there’s a real cost to going straight for Donald Trump. And there’s a real cost with their audience.
There are going to be members of their audience who demand they go after Trump, and there are going to be members that demand that they don’t. And this is a fissure that all of these podcasters and media figures are, like, trying to hold together. And it gets at a tension underlying the entire Trump regime, which is: He is the elite. He is the elite that they’re so angry about.
And he has positioned himself as like, Because I’m the elite, I’m the one who can attack them. But in this case, he’s just not going to do it. He’s not going to have Steve Bannon arrested. He’s already pardoned Steve Bannon for crimes against MAGA, right? Steve Bannon scammed MAGA. He was trying to raise money to “build the wall” and that money went to buying a yacht for Steve Bannon. So he is somebody who actually gets prosecuted for that scam and was going to go to jail—then Trump pardons him.
And so Bannon is deeply embedded in Trumpism, but Trump is not going to go after him. So the podcasters can talk all they want, but Trump is going to continue to be an elite who protects elites. And they are just going to have to “hand-wave” that away, because that is just a core truth about who Donald Trump is.
Sargent: This is what’s amazing to me about the whole thing. The MAGA mythology all along—the very reason MAGA got exercised about the Epstein files in the first place—was because it allegedly contained lots and lots of information about “global elite pedophiles” who were, you know, acting with impunity and doing all sorts of horrible things and were kind of helping each other cover it all up.
And at the end of the day, it turns out that MAGA was kind of right about that, right? It actually is an elite cover-up. This is about elite impunity. But the problem for MAGA is that the elites who are, you know, getting off on doing the cover-up are Donald Trump and his minions.
So it’s like—if they were just willing to be honest and kind of consistent about this and willing to criticize Donald Trump, they could say, We were right about this. You know, it was an elite cover-up. But they can’t quite get there, because that would require indicting Trump.
Hemmer: That’s exactly right. And that’s actually the reason why the people who are, kind of, having the most success in talking about Epstein and Trump are those who haven’t tied their entire political futures to Donald Trump.
And so it’s people like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes who can talk about this elite corruption because they have a bigger project. Their bigger project is a white nationalist ethnostate, and Donald Trump is useful for that—but when he’s gone, their project lives on. It’s the people who are tied to Donald Trump’s power who are having such a difficult time talking about this, and are going to continue to have a really difficult time talking about this.
I mean, I will say, I don’t think you have to “hand it to” QAnon or to Pizzagate. Those were wrong conspiracy theories, but there is a story of elite corruption and elite exploitation—the elite cover-up that is at the heart of the Epstein story—and that should be fodder for both left- and right-wing politics in the United States. And it’s interesting to watch the right kind of fumble the bag on it.
Sargent: Yeah, the bottom line is that they are not able to hold Trump accountable for anything. And so they themselves become participants in the failure of accountability toward elites.
Hemmer: And that’s part of one of the things that you’re hearing a little bit on the right. You hear it—I will say, Megyn Kelly and a couple of other people are talking about—”Well, we were told that these were children who were being abused, and actually it’s just, like, underage girls, and that that’s different.”
And that is putting them in, I think, a tricky position. And so I do think you are going to see more of that, though. I think there is going to be some “Epstein denialism” that begins to emerge, because there’s no other way, really, to defend the right-wing elites who are caught up in the scandal.
Sargent: So what happens now? Where does this go? There are two major dynamics that I can see. One is that Donald Trump won’t be on the scene forever—believe it or not—and MAGA will no longer have this kind of one central figure around which they organize everything: their emotional lives and their worldviews and all that. That’s one dynamic.
And the other is that the pressure for more revelations and accountability for the Epstein crimes—and the elites who are implicated in them—isn’t going to let up. Those two dynamics are, kind of, what are coming. What happens now?
Hemmer: It’s a great question. And I don’t have a crystal ball for this, but I do think that you have picked out the right dynamics. I mean, I think there is a tension growing in the system around impunity, and Donald Trump sits at the heart of that. He’s not outside of it.
We are seeing world leaders put on trial—both for their relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, but also for trying to overthrow their governments. There are people being held accountable outside of the United States in the way that they’re not being held accountable within the United States.
And there is a real tension around the fact that elites are not being held accountable. And that could lead to a movement that crosses political lines and that calls for more accountability. I’m not bullish on that in the immediate future, but I do think it’s worth noting that there is a growing populist resentment that can be channeled in different ways.
It can be channeled toward authoritarianism and toward a further right-wing radicalization, but it can also be channeled toward reform movements. And I do think that as people are thinking about, “What do we make of all of this?” our energies could be fruitfully spent thinking about how do you reform this system so that impunity isn’t the “order of the day” in the United States?
Sargent: And clearly Donald Trump has to disappear from the scene before that can even start to happen, right?
Hemmer: Not just disappear from the scene, but he has to be held accountable. And that, I think, is going to be the heaviest lift in American politics and in the American judicial system. Because that’s the problem in the system right now. And if you can fix that, then you can start to make headway on other things.
Sargent: I guess the other alternative would be that people have to wait until he passes away, and then maybe something like what you’re talking about can begin to happen.
Hemmer: The door will open sometime, so we just need to be ready to walk through it when it does.
Sargent: Nicole Hemmer, this is fascinating—if unnerving—stuff. Thanks so much for coming on. Always great to talk to you.
Hemmer: Thanks so much for having me.