The Rest Is Politics: US

154. Epstein Files: Is Trump Really Cleared?

45 min
Feb 3, 20263 months ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

The episode analyzes the newly released Epstein files, examining what they reveal about powerful figures and whether Trump is truly cleared, while also discussing a surprising Democratic victory in a Texas state Senate race and concerns about election integrity threats ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Insights
  • The Epstein files reveal systemic institutional failure protecting elites rather than isolated criminal activity, with significant political blowback expected from younger voters and politicians
  • Despite 48,000 Trump mentions across 3 million documents, the redaction process has insulated him from criminal exposure, demonstrating a two-tiered justice system for wealthy versus vulnerable populations
  • Special elections show a consistent 13-point underperformance by Republican candidates versus Trump's 2024 margins, driven by voter backlash against ICE deportations and cost-of-living concerns
  • The Tulsi Gabbard-led Fulton County election raid appears designed to create electoral doubt rather than uncover new evidence, mirroring Russian disinformation tactics to destabilize democratic institutions
  • Trump's Kennedy Center rebrand demonstrates how executive overreach damages institutions and cultural sectors, creating cascading economic harm beyond the president's immediate circle
Trends
Organized consumer boycotts emerging as political resistance tool, with Scott Galloway's MAG-7 boycott paralleling Kennedy Center performance cancellationsHispanic and young male voters—Trump's 2024 coalition pillars—showing dramatic approval collapse, signaling demographic realignment risk for Republicans in 2026 midtermsWeaponization of election security narratives by sitting president to create systemic doubt, mirroring foreign adversary disinformation strategiesInstitutional resistance from career government officials leaking to press to counter executive overreach, suggesting internal checks on presidential powerTwo-tiered accountability system where elites face reputational damage while victims remain unprotected despite government promises, eroding public trust in justice institutionsSpecial election performance as leading indicator of midterm vulnerability, with 30-point swings in Trump districts signaling broader electoral instabilityCrypto and tech sector entanglement with executive branch creating conflicts of interest and regulatory capture concerns
Topics
Epstein Files and Elite AccountabilityTrump Clearance Claims and Document RedactionElection Integrity and 2020 Recount NarrativesICE Deportation Policy BacklashTexas State Senate Special Election ResultsHispanic and Youth Voter RealignmentKennedy Center Rebrand and Cultural BoycottsTulsi Gabbard DNI Role and Fulton County RaidRussian Election Interference and DisinformationCost of Living and Affordability CrisisConsumer Boycott Movements (MAG-7)Whistleblower Complaints Against Administration OfficialsGreenland Acquisition RhetoricNATO Alliance TensionsMinneapolis ICE Enforcement Operations
Companies
Amazon
Referenced as example of MAG-7 company consumers could boycott by switching platforms or reducing purchases
Apple
Mentioned as MAG-7 tech company that consumers could abandon in favor of competitors like Samsung as protest
Kennedy Center
Rebranded as Trump Kennedy Center; experiencing boycott by performers and audience decline due to political controversy
People
Donald Trump
Claims Epstein files clear him; renamed Kennedy Center; threatening Canada; pushing 2020 election narratives; 61% neg...
Jeffrey Epstein
Deceased subject of released files; revealed as running systematic abuse operation with elite protection network
Prince Andrew
Implicated in Epstein files with photos and emails; lost royal titles and positions due to revelations
Bill Gates
Epstein files suggest affair and possible STD transmission; included in elite orbit facing reputational damage
Elon Musk
Emails show inquiry about Epstein's wildest parties; implicated in Epstein files released over weekend
Lord Mandelson
Named in Epstein files; resigned from Labour Party following revelations about connections to Epstein
Tulsi Gabbard
Director of National Intelligence; led Fulton County election raid; called Trump from election office; whistleblower ...
Taylor Remitz
Democrat who won Texas state Senate special election by 14 points in Trump +17 district; represents 30-point swing
Trevor Noah
Comedian threatened with lawsuit by Trump for claiming Trump visited Epstein's island
Keir Starmer
UK Prime Minister; used as satirical comparison for Trump's Kennedy Center rebrand overreach
Vladimir Putin
Mentioned 1,000+ times in Epstein files; Epstein claimed meetings and positioned as back channel to Kremlin
Sergey Lavrov
Russian Foreign Minister; Epstein attempted to position himself as intermediary through Lavrov
Scott Galloway
Launching MAG-7 boycott campaign (Unsubscribe.com) starting February 1st as economic resistance to Trump
Bernie Sanders
Referenced for 'Fight the Oligarchy' tour framing elite accountability issues
AOC
Co-hosted 'Fight the Oligarchy' tour with Bernie Sanders addressing elite protection systems
Rosa Parks
Historical reference for bus boycott as model for potential tech company consumer resistance movements
Todd Blanche
Deputy Attorney General; promised victim protection in Epstein file release; promise broken with exposed identities
Catherine Belton
Author of 'Putin's People'; identified Russian strategy to sow electoral distrust in Western democracies
Quotes
"There is one world for the rich and powerful, and there is another world and another set of rules for the people that have no wealth and no power."
Katty KayMid-episode
"No president puts their name on the Lincoln, Jefferson, or Kennedy memorial. No president threatens to attack Canada or another allied country. No president fawns over the Russian leader."
Anthony ScaramucciKennedy Center discussion
"The American people are giving this man a 61% negative approval rating because of the facts, not just my opinions."
Anthony ScaramucciPre-break segment
"This is not actually about the 2020 election. This is a narrative that is taking place about the 2026 election."
Katty KayElection integrity discussion
"There are still very very good people in America and there's still a system in place where there are unwilling participants in this faux fascist charade."
Anthony ScaramucciClosing analysis
Full Transcript
Welcome to The Rest is Politics US with me, Katty Kaye, down oddly in Texas, which is the center of America's political world this Monday, and we'll explain that in the second half. Hello, Anthony. Is that a blue state now, Katty Kaye? Well, who knows? We'll get into that. No, I don't think it is. They go chasing unicorns down here, but they have had a little bit of a victory. And we can talk about the meaning of that. Okay, so what are we talking about today, Kat? So we're going to talk about the Epstein files, dum-dum-dum, and millions of documents have been released and photographs and images and videos. And we will talk about what we actually learned after this massive weight that we've had for these files, who looks like they're implicated, who looks like they're not. Donald Trump says this all clears him. We'll get into that. And then in the second half, we are going to talk about this state Senate race in Texas where a Democrat won unexpectedly in a very Trumpy area, and it's got Republicans all over Twitter, and they're worried about what it might mean for the midterm elections. But let's start with Epstein. And quickly, just to remind everybody. The DOJ released millions of these documents that they've been holding over the weekend. 180,000 images were released. Some 2,000 videos were released. Emails, lists, diagrams all out there. There are emails between Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Jeffrey Epstein inviting him to various parties. There are emails between Elon Musk asking where Epstein's wildest parties, where Epstein's wildest parties would be. There are emails which suggest Bill Gates had an affair and may, according to some of these documents, have caught a sexually transmitted disease from a Russian girl. There are photos of Andrew crouching over a woman, young woman, I would say, judging by the image, lying on the floor. Donald Trump, in reaction to these documents has said that it all absolves him from blame and he has attacked and threatened to sue the comedian Trevor Noah after Noah claimed that Donald Trump had been on Epstein's island. I mean, it's very hard, Anthony, I think, to make sense of everything from the Epstein files because there are so many of them. So, we have investigative reporters who are trawling through them and literally as we're speaking, recording this on Monday lunchtime, people are still giving us drops that are coming out of them on Twitter and from the major news organizations. I think for me, the biggest issue is the DOJ is saying this is probably going to be the last major tranche of documents that come out. Will the people who were calling for the release of Epstein files be satisfied with this big chunk of emails and documents and videos? Will they think, okay, I'm clear. Jeffrey Epstein was a very bad guy. There isn't any more need for any criminal prosecutions. Donald Trump is in the clear as he says he is. And I have learned everything I need to know to make me convinced that there was not a conspiracy of people in powerful positions protecting Jeffrey Epstein because either they were getting something from him of a sexual nature or he had some kind of dirt on them. Do you think this dump does that? Is this it done and dusted with the whole Epstein file saga? I would say not done and dusted, but I maintain that Donald Trump will be effectively insulated from this. And I maintain that despite whatever he did, and it was probably a lot, but who knows? Again, that's my opinion. That was probably a lot. But I maintain that he will be absolved from this. They're spending months and months and months cleansing him and redacting him from the documents. And even though, and again, this is a fact, so I can state it, he's shown up 48,000 times in 3 million documents. There is no smoking gun, as you and I predicted on this show several months ago. But what I'm surprised about is that you're not talking about the Starmer Victoria Albert Museum, which is closing for two years due to its renovation due to low attendance. See, I'm surprised that you're not talking about that, see? Because Prime Minister Starmer, you may not have saw this in the news, he put his name on the Victoria Albert Museum. It's now called the Starmer Victoria Albert Museum and it's closing for two years. Yeah, well, that's because then you see he was so overwhelmed with people wanting to come to the museum that he just like, they have to triple the size of it because everybody wanted to show up. Should we fill people in on what you're actually talking about? Because our UK listeners, if Starmer, Prime Minister Starmer, put his name on that museum or a symphony hall or you pick something, I guess Westminster Abbey, we could call it the Starmer Westminster Abbey. But Donald Trump put his name on the Kennedy Center. And so it's now the Trump Kennedy Center. A very big, famous art center that I've been to many times just down the road from me in Washington. But, Caddy, it is an art center, but it is actually a memorial to the slain president, like the Lincoln Memorial and like the Jefferson Memorial. Jackie Kennedy, his widow, wanted his memorial to be like a performing arts center because they were into the performing arts. And if you look at it and step back from it, it's a 1960s version of what the Lincoln Memorial is rendered after. But Donald Trump, in order to defile it because everything Trump touches or almost everything dies, he's now put his name on the Kennedy Center, the memorial of the slain president, and a result of which no one's going. Yeah. And performances are being dropped and there's a boycott of people. And so he's closing the center for two years of renovation, which I'm sure he's going to put gilded Liberace-like marble and gold in the place to make it even more of a disaster. But I'm bringing this up because we're not in a normal country right now. We're not – United States, not normal. Of course, Prime Minister Starmer – I was kidding, fellas. Prime Minister Starmer did not name the Victoria Albert Museum after himself. But I'm saying it to point out how absolutely outrageous what Donald Trump is doing and how little pushback he's getting from the first article of the U.S. Constitution known as the U.S. Congress. Yeah, I mean, first of all, changing the name of the Kennedy Center, there are a lot of questions about whether he was actually allowed to do that. So he changes the name, he brings in a new board, he puts himself as chair of the board and says that he's going to de-wokify the Kennedy Center and it's going to become much more kind of MAGA-friendly performances. They have, my understanding is they have, I was told by somebody who's in the arts world in Washington, they have a whole load of shows booked until the fall end of this year. That's fine. They've got lots of shows. But then the problem was they had no programming. And they had no programming because guess what? All of the shows were thinking either they don't want to go and perform there because it's now the Trump Kennedy Center and so they're doing it as a political statement. Or apparently there's no money for marketing. It's in disarray. They're worried the audiences won't show up. They keep trying to move the shows into smaller and smaller theaters and people, they can't make money out of it. So this whole big thing that he announced, which was really a vanity project on par for the president, a kind of glorification of Donald Trump's presidency, has actually turned out to be hugely detrimental to the art scene in Washington, D.C. because the Kennedy Center is the big dog in town. And so it's something that doesn't work. And I think in a way, the comparison here is, and we'll get back to Epstein in a minute, I promise everybody, but there are things that Donald Trump does which are overreach, which then don't work. And in the process, you cause damage to other people, all the people working at the Kennedy Center, all of the artists who are going to perform at the Kennedy Center, the citizens of D.C. who enjoy going to the Kennedy Center. Not that he really cares about that, but I think it's one example of, and we've had several of them over the last few weeks, whether it's been Greenland, Minneapolis, much more serious, where overreach on the part of the president has resulted in grow back by the president, but quite a lot of bad political force. out and damaging fallout to other people. So, Katie, it is connected to the Epstein thing, if you don't mind me saying so, because it's another distraction. And the goal is I am waiting for my Department of Justice to cleanse these files of anything related to me. And I am going to continue to distract the American public with my nonsense. And I'm also doing the best I can to inflame the liberals. I want their heads and their hair on fire as they run around talking about I'm remarking about my idiocy. And so all of that is working. But I want to list three people who are impacted by the files. Yes. And then I want you to respond to them. Okay, so the first one is Jeff Epstein himself. And so it's posthumous, but he is decisively a rogue figure who wasn't just a sexual predator. but i think it's definitive at this point that he was running a system and this was not a solo crime and his legacy in my opinion is now inseparable from institutional failure for a world that i will describe as the elites okay the number two victim and i think this is the most consequential caddy, is the elite orbit. These are the real losers. These are the billionaires, the powerful lawyers, the media executives, intelligence adjacent figures, royal former Prince Andrew and political insiders like Lord Mandelson, who may or may not be a lord by the time this broadcast is over. He's resigned, as we both know, from the Labor Party. But I think this is potentially big because I think this is what younger politicians like Mondani and a new crop of politicians are going to run on And believe it or not there a lot of seething anger by a very large group of people in this country over the fact that these billionaires and quasi trillionaires and political figures, no harm will be done to them in the United States. They're losing their jobs in places in Europe and they're getting defrocked like Andrew did in UK. But the Department of Justice, Dana Bash was told over the weekend, nobody's getting prosecuted. Nobody's getting prosecuted. Here's a list of all the bad guys. But I think there's going to be political blowback from this. Yeah, I think you're right. One other thing, I think you're so smart to bring this up and to frame it in that context, because it is difficult from this massive pile of documents to pull somebody out and say, this person is definitively guilty of having colluded with Jeffrey Epstein to traffic young girls, having sex with underage girls, and having a kind of system of nefariousness, because there are so many documents that we're still sorting through them. But there are plenty of very important people, the kinds of people who speak at Davos, where you and I were, the kinds of people who speak at democratic conventions, the kind of people who speak at republic conventions, who have been lionized over the course of the last 20 years, who even in the cursory first look at some of these documents don't come out of this well. Now, did they commit crimes? We can't say that yet. We don't know that yet. We haven't got all of the information from these documents yet. But the degree to which they were in cahoots with Jeffrey Epstein, the tone of the emails that they sent backwards and forwards with Jeffrey Epstein. I mean, maybe Andrew is at the most egregious end of it, but knowing what we do about Epstein and the way that he was raping young girls for years and years and years, hundreds of them, and the cozy tone with which these men talk to him about sexual issues doesn't make any of these men look good. And the fact that there is no retribution against them. It's interesting that when Bernie Sanders and AOC went on that tour. They called it the fight the oligarchy tour, which sounds like it's sort of us against the business leaders. But I think in a way, you're right. It's us against the elite. It's the elite that have been protecting themselves, whether it's because their assets have gone up, because they have had more of the share of the pie of GDP, because income disparity has grown, or because they've protected themselves with a sexual monster like Epstein. I think you're right. I think it's such a smart way of framing, Anthony. So I just want to go one step further, because again, I think they're all tied together. So Epstein is bothering a lot of people. And guess who those people happen to be in Trump's base? Okay. They are the Marjorie Taylor Greens, who were quote unquote, pure MAGA. And it's tied to the Kennedy Center, because I'm going to tell you why i'm waiting for this i'm waiting for the time okay so ready the kennedy center was effectively boycotted and the boycott had such a big impact that they're now closing the center now one of our podcast contemporaries is a personal friend of ours scott galloway is calling for a boycott of the mag 7 okay you can go to his website unsubscribe and he is asking people to resist and unsubscribe. That's the name of the website. And it's launching on February 1st, which is a day or two ago. It's basically an economic boycott of America that he's calling it. Well, no, you see what he's calling for is a boycott of the MAG-7. He doesn't want to hurt small businesses and he doesn't want to strike, which always disproportionately hurts small businesses. So how is it all tied together? It's tied together because Trump has sufficiently pissed everybody off by saying that there was a file that he was going to release. Then he becomes president. She lies about it. Then she says there's no file. Then Massey and Marjorie Taylor Greene said there is a file. Now they're going to 6 million document dump a file that has redacted Trump and anybody close to Trump from the file. But guess what, Caddy? Everybody and their mother knows exactly what they did. And so there's a point of potential resistance right now where if Galloway and this group starts a boycott process, similar to what they did in the Kennedy, the Trump Kennedy Center, this is going to be an unmitigated disaster for those tech companies. In the United States in the 1950s, if you were black, you could not sit in the front of the buses in the South. Rosa Parks, said, F you guys, I'm too tired. I'm not moving to the back. They threw off the bus. And then there was a bus boycott throughout the South by the African-American citizens that lived in the South. And it caused massive consequential damage. So this is all connected, Caddy, because this is going to trigger something now that even people in Trump's base are talking about wanting to do. Although I think it is one thing for theater companies to boycott performing at the Kennedy Center and for audience goers not to buy tickets at the Kennedy Center, and another for people who have made a lot of money from the Mag-7 or have them in their pension funds to suddenly say, okay, I'm going to liquidate all of my Mag-7 stocks, even if that means I might have to retire a little bit later or I take a financial hit to myself. This could be consumers that don't own any stocks, but they have an Instagram account. They have a Amazon Prime account. And they pull back from that. They are ordering stuff from these different companies. They switch from Apple to Samsung and they say, geez, I'm really sorry. I now have to protest your fawning over the wannabe dictator. So I have to fawn. And we should watch that because it'd be very interesting to see how far that goes and how big it gets. I want to say one other thing on the Epstein files before we move on to some of the politics, which are super interesting. And what on earth was Tulsi Gabbard doing down in Georgia? We'll get to that in a second. But we've taken time on this show to talk about the victims of Epstein files. The Justice Department said that one of the reasons they had taken their time to release these files was because they wanted to protect the identity of the victims. They were going to go through all of these files and make sure that names and faces of people who had been sexually abused as girls by Jeffrey Epstein, that they didn't have their names put out there in public without even their permission being given and potentially could have dangerous threats against them, get re-traumatized. It is not something that they wanted to do, but guess what? In this big dump of documents over the course of the weekend, the victims were not protected. I mean, your point about there is a system for the elites and there is a system for the victims. Once again, the victims have been the last people on the food chain and they've been forgotten because there are names and faces of survivors who are out there. There's a driving license of one victim. Her name is Anushka DiGiorgio. She has said that she can use her name now because her name and her face are there on her driving license. Somebody took the time to redact her address, but they left her name and her face out there. And so she's now out there in public. Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General, had said specifically this wouldn't happen. So, I mean, I think it gets to your point, Anthony. There is one world for the rich and powerful, and there is another world and another set of rules for the people that have no wealth and no power. And in this case, those are the surviving victims of Jeffrey Epstein, and they have been forgotten once again in this process. So, Katty, when you say that the wishes of the victims goes unrequited by the actions of our government, I just have to tell you how much that pains me and how much sympathy I would like to express to them and on their behalf. It's just a very upsetting thing. And my heart does go out to these people. You know, if you want to add that to ICE and you want to add that to the literally the worst poll numbers, president has a 61 percent, as you and I are speaking, is a 61 percent negative approval rating right now. And when people ask why, they say ICE. And now you have this underlying context. The House subcommittee voted over the weekend to try to hold back even more information or continue to slow roll the Epstein file. uh and so these people are sitting around scratching their heads saying okay you really made us move a mountain here you told us you were not for sexual predators you told us there were no more forever wars you told us you were going after the criminals you were going after the worker bees you're going to go after the criminals in the immigration saga and they're pushing and listen you know i know we're going to get to the texas you're in texas we're going to talk a little bit about what happened in texas and frankly that could have been a one-off but i really think that the heat is on the republicans right now and again just to state for people the idiocy of this keir stormer has announced that he's going to take greenland for his majesty's government okay and look at the look at the look on your yeah i know you have to but this is the crazy world we live in where you have to put it in that context. A Brit could be listening right now- Right, exactly. And say, what are you talking about? Well, no, no. Or even Barack Obama says that Canada is going to be the 51st state. So it's beyond the pale. And so when I pick up the phone, because these people do talk to me, I don't even know why they're talking to me. But when I pick up the phone and I talk to a Republican congressional leader, which I did this morning, and I say, this doesn't bother you? Oh, the Greenland thing is over. It's been resolved favorably. And what about the traffic coming over the border from Canada, where you want to talk about where a boycott has already started on American goods and American tourism? That would be the Canadian citizens I scratching my nose for all of you guys listening I scratching my nose and YouTube That what Canada is doing to us catty cat And that is hurting a lot of small businesses That would be the bordering states with Canada, New York and Michigan, Minnesota, et cetera. But it's also hurting in Florida. Okay. So again, Mr. Congressman, what's up? The equivocation and the ground shifting of the norms is bizarre. Not to mention, by the way, everyone should read the Wall Street Journal article about the UAE sheikh who invested a huge amount of money in the Trump family crypto business on the eve of the inauguration. So, Cady, we're going to get to that too, but I just want you to hear the ground shifting equivocation, right? oh he doesn't really mean that with Canada and you know I talked to him about Putin and and he says well I've got to be nice to Putin so I can get him to the table but then why not be nice to Prime Minister Corny don't you want to get them to the table and do business with them too okay now this is where I'm going to get in trouble and Goldhanger will probably edit me out but I don't care Caddy because it is my opinion okay and I'm going to share it with you it's pretty clear from the documents that Epstein had a relationship with the Russians. It's pretty clear. I'm not going to go so far to say that he was an agent of Russia and he was running a pedophile ring to create compromise on all of the world's Western elites. I'm not going to go that far to say that. But you are just going to say. But I'm right on the edge, okay? Okay, so what is it in the file so far that suggests to you a strong link between Jeffrey Epstein and Moscow? So, Cady, Vladimir Putin is mentioned no less than a thousand times. And there's insinuations in the file that Epstein had scheduled meetings with Putin and he had a relationship with Lavrov, the foreign minister. Now, I'm going to state candidly and for the record, there's no proof that Epstein ever met Putin. but the files do show something very troubling. Epstein claimed he had an appointment with Putin. It's right there in the emails. And then he later tried to position himself as a back channel to the Kremlin. Again, right there in the emails. And he was trying to offer insight on US leadership through Lavrov. Okay. I mean, these are right in the email. So it tells you that he wanted proximity to Russian power so that he could sell access, and it raises serious counterintelligence questions. So again, these are my opinions. This is my surmise having delved into these documents over the weekend. This is an editorial opinion by me that I'm sharing. But again, you've heard me say this on this podcast, when the windows open and you hear clippity-clop, it is a horse, it is not a zebra so so these are my opinions and i can show you directly in the files where there's a tie but again i love vladimir putin vladimir putin is my guy i have a picture of vladimir putin and me in my house in my residence above the picture of my family members and again if you haven't caught on i'm channeling donald trump because this is how he talks about the guy. And no president, Caddy, puts their name on the Lincoln, Jefferson, or Kennedy memorial. No president threatens to attack Canada or another allied country. No president fawns over the Russian leader who they know has been a dishonest, unsavory adversary of ours for a generation. No president does that, but this president does that, Caddy. Okay. So these are my opinions that I'm sharing with you guys. And we can go to a break now, but listen to me. This has got to hurt somewhere in the system. Maybe it's going to hurt in the house races. Maybe it's going to hurt in a boycott. But the American people are giving this man a 61% negative approval rating because of the facts, Caddy. Not just my opinions, the facts. Okay, we'll take a break and we'll be right back. Welcome back. We said we want to pop down to Texas. Actually, I'm in San Antonio, Texas. Lovely San Antonio, Texas, to speak to Trinity University down here, which is a great group of people. But it's timely because Democrats have scored an unlikely victory. There was a special election for a Texas state Senate seat. Remember, every state has its own Senate and its own House of Representatives. And there was a special election for one of the Senate seats down here. And a Democrat, Taylor Remit, won the seat by a large margin. The district had voted 17 points for Donald Trump in the 2024 election, but Remit just won it by 14 points this weekend. That represents a 30-point shift for those of you doing the maths on this. And I think you've got a lot of Democrats, Anthony, looking at what happened, not, I hope, telling themselves that Texas is about to go blue, which is the big white whale of all Democrats. But they're looking at this saying this is part of a pattern that we had. We reported on it a lot last year. We had those two big gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, which swung to the Democrats in much bigger numbers than people had predicted. I had done some research that showed that you've had this huge swing. There have been, I think, in 2025, I think I mentioned this before, there were roughly five dozen special elections for seats in Congress and in state houses, and Republicans' candidates underperformed Donald Trump by an average of about 13 points. So across the country, you're seeing people, voters, go to the polls as they did in Texas this weekend to protest against two things. One is the cost of living, this affordability issue, which the president still hasn't done much about, and maybe presidents can't do that much about it. We'll see if the new Fed chair-designate can do much about it. But the other thing that they're protesting against is the immigration policies and everything that we've seen with ICE. It turns out that you were right, that Americans don't like these mass deportations when they start going for a grandmother or a five-year-old child, or they start killing American citizens, as they have done up in Minneapolis over the last few weeks, then Americans don't like it. And I think that is a big part of what we're seeing. And the two groups that Republicans are losing in these local elections are the two groups that powered Donald Trump to power. They were young voters and Hispanic voters. Donald Trump built up this quite unusual coalition in 2024 that pushed him into the White House again. And it was young voters, young men in particular, and it was Hispanic voters. And his numbers have just fallen off the cliff with both of those two groups of voters. And I think that's what Democrats are looking at. I don't think Democrats are telling themselves they're going to win Texas. But if you want to set this up as a stage ahead of the midterm elections, which are now, whatever they are, 10 months away, nine months away. This is part of the reason that Democrats are feeling good. Donald Trump's reaction to this, I wasn't on the ballot, it's not about me, never heard of this, even though he had endorsed Taylor Remitz, Republican opponent in the race. Do you think that Democrats are right to look at this and say, this is good news for us? This is a good sign? you know on the on the margin i do but i have a i have a bigger question okay you know and again demographically the latino voters and some of these suburban electorate that voted for trump in 24 they look like hey man we had enough of this guy but a bigger question for you and that's about the electoral process and the integrity of the process democrats tell me don't worry about that Trump is not going to meddle in the midterm elections. It's too decentralized for him to meddle. Do you believe that, Cady? I mean, I think those are great questions. And we've already seen some meddling because we've seen Texas and California make moves to redistrict their districts in ways that would politically advantage themselves, either Republicans in Texas or Democrats in California. That is a form of election engineering, if you like. That is a way you set the playing field. And the Republicans are trying to set the playing field so that they have more seats going into the midterm elections. I think the issue that has been raised in the last week or two by Donald Trump, and I don't know whether it is just because Donald, this is something he cannot let go, or whether it's something he brings up like a cultural weapon when he's doing badly because of all the scenes from Minneapolis, or there's a great deal of pushback and he's had to row back on Greenland, or he says that NATO allied NATO forces didn't fight very well in the wars in Afghanistan and he has to row back from that. And so, guess what he brings up again? He starts bringing up the 2020 election. And if you had to kind of map the number of times he's mentioned the 2020 election during the course of the past year, I reckon AI could probably do it for us. You'd see a massive uptick in the last two or three weeks. He's gone back to his old playbook. The election was rigged. Now, there's no new evidence, and we can get into what was happening down in Fulton County, Georgia, where they've demanded the election rolls. There's no new evidence, as far as I can see, that's come out that suggests that there was something quantifiably different about the 2020 election that has not already been litigated. So why is he bringing it up now? Why is he going back to that playbook? I think you're right. Maybe he's going back to the playbook to create a false narrative around election security more broadly that is designed to destabilize the upcoming midterm elections. So this is not actually about the 2020 election. This is a narrative that is taking place about the 2026 election. Is that what you thinking Yes And in Catherine Belton book Putin people which was written about five years ago uh the legendary journalist katherine belton said that what would the russians ideally want in the west particularly in the longest standing democracy uh the united states what would they want. They would want someone of credibility to sow the seeds of distrust in the electoral process. Are the statements by the 45th and 47th president of the United States doing that, Kat? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you've got the double whammy of we know the fact that in 2016, the Russians were meddling in the US election process, but now it's not the Russians that are raising issues about electoral security. It's Donald Trump that keeps raising issues about election security. So what happened, just to fill people in, this week the FBI executed a search warrant at the Fulton County Election Office in Georgia. Fulton County was at the heart of all of the disputes about the 2020 election. Georgia, you'll remember, all of you, was a state that Donald Trump lost, but pretty narrowly, it was by about 10,000 votes. He went to the Secretary of State and said, find me more votes. The Secretary of State said, no, that's not how it works. Fulton County was the county that a lot of the dispute was focused on. So, last week, the FBI goes down to Fulton County and they have a search warrant and they want to search the Fulton County offices and they want to take away things like the electoral rolls, more information about the 2020 election. This has been hauled over so many times. They've gone through it. They've litigated it so many times. And one of the things that was really weird about the raid was that Tulsi Gabbard, who is the director of national intelligence, was present at the raid. The reporting from the Wall Street Journal is that she called Donald Trump from the office, from the faulty count and election offices, and kind of put him on speakerphone. But Tulsi Gabbard's role, a bit like the CIA, is to deal with foreign international threats. So, a lot of questions. What's she doing there? Is it constitutional that she's there? Has she got new information of some international player meddling in the 2020 election? What's the new information that would justify a new search warrant when this has been gone over so many times already and nothing nefarious has been found? Or is Tulsi Gabbard just trying to save her own job? And so she's trying to get in with Donald Trump and she knows that the way you get in with Donald Trump is you say, Mr. President, the 2020 election was stolen. I'm going to go down there. I've got new information. But the fallout is that people will not trust the election system as much as they did. So, Cady, Tulsi Gabbard, the Wall Street Journal, let's give them kudos because they have a mole inside the White House. There's no question. And they have a mole that's an adjutant to the president. In journalism, we call it a source, by the way. We don't call it a This is not a John McCary novel. Okay, so let me rephrase this. This is not the rest is classified. We have a source. I know that you secretly want to be the host of the rest is classified. We have a source. So we can call it a mole just to make you happy. Only for the Kennedy assassination, okay? McCloskey, if you're listening. Okay, but we have a source inside the administration that does not like the administration. Right. And they're dropping dimes to the Wall Street Journal, and the Wall Street Journal is doing some exceptional reporting. Yes. I agree. They reported on the $500 million, you know, you tell me what it is, we'll call it a business transaction, but you're having a business transaction with the president and then you're getting AI chips that were classified. I don't know. We'll just leave that there. We'll leave it there. We'll leave that hanging. Yes. We're going to leave that hanging chat out there. Now, we have at 5 a.m. this morning, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that a whistleblower complaint was filed against tulsi galbert yeah and that is so secretive they've got it locked in a cupboard yes so something is going on things up and tulsi needs to save her job and if you need to save your job in the trump administration you either go after people on the streets of minneapolis or you say the election was stolen so the inspector trying to put pressure on the inspector general now to say that this confidential whistleblowing complaint isn't justifiable see what's going on but you see caddy this is the good news for america and this is the good news for people listening who say wow america has really lost its way yes that is true but there are still very very good people in america and there's still a system in place in america where there are unwilling participants in this faux fascist charade notice i said faux in front of fascists he can't be overly mad at me and they're rising up and they're just a bit mad like just a little bit mad yeah i'm not like overly mad okay so so so go ahead provide us your erudite analysis of miss gabbard and her role in all this i think miss gabbard is down there to save her job i honestly think that's what she's doing. I think she was squeezed out of all of the Venezuela raid stuff. She is not respected in the Trump administration. She's been put on the outs and she's thought to herself, what can I do? I'll go down to Georgia and I'll find some way to make a show of being down there. And I'll call the president when I'm down there and tell him that I'm in the Fulton County, Georgia election offices and that we've got new information and we're digging everything up and we're going to prove, Mr. President, that you should have been the 46th president. You should have been reelected in 2020 and that the election was stolen. I honestly can't see otherwise why the head of DNI would be down there unless, you know, my God, there is some unbelievable kind of foreign intervention evidence that we haven't come across. But the way that that I have never known an election that has been litigated and relitigated and relitigated, whatever it was, 60 different lawsuits brought by the Trump team and all of them dismissed. I mean, this was looked at by so many judges that if there was some massive fraud or some massive foreign intervention, I can't believe we wouldn't have fined it. So I think she was down there to save her job. And I think the president is going back to the 2020 election stuff because he's, as we've been saying on the show, he's feeling the heat. He's feeling that heat across a whole range of things. In the last, he's pulled back from Greenland. He's pulled back from what he said about allies, NATO troops. He's pulled back, had to pull back on Minneapolis. Let's see what happens there. But he's had to pull back his people from Minneapolis. It's been climbed down central from the White House. And I think when he's under pressure, he goes back to 2020. Okay, we have to be fine. I know we have to go, Katty, but we have to do a little bit of role playing with me if you do not mind, okay? Okay, go on. And I'm a reporter now, okay? Okay. And you're the FBI agent and you have now she took out her cell phone, not a classified phone, but her cell phone and she called the president and the president got on the phone with Tulsi Gabbard to praise the FBI agents. And now you're the FBI agent and I'm interviewing you and I say to you, well, what did you think about that? And you say what? Well, we have gone over this. I would like to see the new evidence. I mean, if you're a good FBI agent, you know that this has been litigated up the wazoo. If you're a Trump friendly FBI agent, you might be very flattered that she goes down there and he speaks to you while you're on the phone. And then you go out there and say, well, maybe there is new things. Maybe President Trump is still interested. We should still keep digging because maybe it was an unfair election. And that's the trouble where that's why it becomes insidious is that even though there is no evidence that the 2020 election was anything other than free and fair, all of this just creates doubt, which is guess what exact? Who is it who is the number one person that wants Americans to have doubt about the electoral system? Your friend, Vladimir Putin. i'm gonna leave it there right because i'm gonna get myself in trouble because i'm gonna say some stuff and you guys just say you can't say that so i'm not gonna say it but i'm gonna talk directly i'm breaking the fourth wall yeah and i'm gonna talk directly to the viewers and listeners the obvious is the obvious katika and i'll leave it there Cryptic words from Mr. Scaramucci. Okay, that's it for today. This, of course, is, however, a super busy time, you'll have noticed in American politics. And we don't have time to cover everything on this episode. We have not really talked about Minneapolis, which we would love to because there is more going on up there that we should be talking about. We've only alluded to some of the graph that is taking place. But luckily for our members, we will be back on Wednesday to discuss more of the big stories this week. We're going to have an update on ICE, look at the Democrats' chances for the midterms beyond that Texas race we were just talking about, and how are other countries buying their way onto Donald Trump's Board of Peace. So do join us for that. Become a founding member at therestispoliticsus.com. We would love to have you in the club and we'd love to hear your questions if you join up too. So go on, become a Thanks, guys. Thanks for listening. OK, we'll see you later in the week. Thank you, guys. whether the Russians helped Donald Trump take the White House. This is the unbelievable story of how Russian spies first hacked and then leaked emails belonging to Hillary Clinton's campaign, how Julian Assange got involved with Putin's spies, and how 2016 marked the point that the world changed forever. Get the full insider scoop by listening to The Rest is Classified, wherever you get your podcasts.