Latest / The Vault: The Epstein Files / The Epstein Effect: How Trump's Handling of the Files Became a Midterm Election Liability (11/3/26)

Transcript

The Epstein Effect: How Trump's Handling of the Files Became a Midterm Election Liability (11/3/26) · The Vault: The Epstein Files

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  Speaker 1: What's up, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the
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  Speaker 1: Epstein Chronicles. Today, November 3rd, 2026, the American people finally
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  Speaker 1: get to do something that no White House press secretary,
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  Speaker 1: Justice Department lawyer, or Republican campaign consultant can talk them
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  Speaker 1: out of. They get to vote. For more than a year,
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  Speaker 1: they've watched the Trump administration turn the Jeffrey Epstein scandal
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  Speaker 1: into a masterclass, and political arrogance, institutional stonewalling, and spectacularly
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  Speaker 1: bad judgment. They've asked for the records, demanded straight answers,
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  Speaker 1: and watched the people entrusted with providing those answers behave
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  Speaker 1: as though public scrutiny were some outrageous personal insult. And
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  Speaker 1: guess what? Some of those people voted for Donald Trump,
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  Speaker 1: defended his ass at Thanksgiving dinners, and spent years believing
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  Speaker 1: he was the one man in Washington who who'd finally
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  Speaker 1: dragged the Epstein story into the sunlight. Their reward was
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  Speaker 1: to be talked down to, mocked and treated like ungrateful
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  Speaker 1: children for asking the administration to honor its own promises.
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  Speaker 1: And now, after all the lectures about loyalty and all
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  Speaker 1: the attempts to change the subject, the ballot box has
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  Speaker 1: arrived to interrupt the sermon. That's the beauty of Election Day.
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  Speaker 1: Because nobody in power gets to mark a voter's ballot
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  Speaker 1: for them. No amount of bluster can force an angry
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  Speaker 1: Republican to stay home. an independent to stick with the GOP,
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  Speaker 1: or a former Trump supporter to pretend that the last
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  Speaker 1: year never happened. There are plenty of reasons Americans are
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  Speaker 1: furious with Washington, from the cost of living to the
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  Speaker 1: conduct of this administration. But Epstein has become a particularly
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  Speaker 1: ugly symbol of a government that expects trust while refusing
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  Speaker 1: to earn it. If even a fraction of the voters
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  Speaker 1: sickened by this spectacle decide to make their displeasure felt today,
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  Speaker 1: Trump and his party may discover that contempt is not
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  Speaker 1: exactly a sound turnout strategy. And what makes the whole
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  Speaker 1: entire thing so wild is that Trump didn't inherit this
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  Speaker 1: from some political enemy who forced it upon him. His
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  Speaker 1: political world helped feed the expectation that a great reckoning
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  Speaker 1: was coming. And his own allies spent years talking about
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  Speaker 1: secret files, protected elites, and a corrupt establishment that had
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  Speaker 1: supposedly buried the truth. The ugliest corners of that movement
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  Speaker 1: turned this into a QAnon mythology promising a righteous savior
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  Speaker 1: who'd swoop down and destroy a hidden network of monsters.
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  Speaker 1: And breaking news, I never bought that fairy tale, and
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  Speaker 1: neither should anyone who understands how actual investigations work. But
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  Speaker 1: millions of people were told to expect revelations, and it
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  Speaker 1: was entirely reasonable for them to expect the government to
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  Speaker 1: be transparent about the crimes of a convicted sex offender
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  Speaker 1: whose connections... reached into the highest levels of American society.
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  Speaker 1: Trump had a rare political opportunity to separate legitimate questions
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  Speaker 1: from conspiratorial nonsense, publish what the law allowed, and demand
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  Speaker 1: serious independent scrutiny of the failures that let Epstein operate
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  Speaker 1: for so long. He could have looked his own supporters
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  Speaker 1: in the eye and told them that no billionaire, politician, donor,
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  Speaker 1: or former friend would receive special treatment. He could have
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  Speaker 1: made openness the standard even when it was inconvenient for
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  Speaker 1: him personally. Instead, he chose to pick a fight with
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  Speaker 1: the very people who wanted him to keep his promise.
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  Speaker 1: For a man who never misses a chance to tell
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  Speaker 1: the world how brilliant he is at politics, that was
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  Speaker 1: a breathtakingly stupid decision. Now, the turning point was not
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  Speaker 1: some complicated legal filing buried on page 400 of a
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  Speaker 1: court docket. It was the president's own mouth. When his
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  Speaker 1: supporters demanded answers in 2025, Trump dismissed the Epstein controversy
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  Speaker 1: as a hoax, and call Republican critics weaklings, while declaring
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  Speaker 1: that his former supporters had swallowed what he described as bullshit. Yo,
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  Speaker 1: think about the sheer arrogance of that response. These aren't
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  Speaker 1: lifelong Democrats trying to embarrass him, but people who had
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  Speaker 1: knocked on doors, donated money, and voted for him, because
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  Speaker 1: they believed his promises about fighting corruption. Instead of answering them,
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  Speaker 1: he essentially informed them that their usefulness had expired the
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  Speaker 1: moment they started asking questions that he disliked. In the
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  Speaker 1: Trump political universe, apparently, loyalty is a one-way street with
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  Speaker 1: a toll booth at the White House. You're expected to
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  Speaker 1: cheer when he speaks, defend him when he contradicts himself,
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  Speaker 1: and shut your damn mouth when the subject becomes uncomfortable.
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  Speaker 1: And if you refuse, well, you can expect to be
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  Speaker 1: lumped in with the enemies he spent years telling you
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  Speaker 1: to despise. In my opinion, that's not leadership, and it's
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  Speaker 1: not accountability. It's the behavior of a politician so accustomed
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  Speaker 1: to unconditional obedience, that he forgot even his most devoted
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  Speaker 1: supporters have the right to say no. And say no
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  Speaker 1: they did, because next came the Epstein-Files Transparency Act, a
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  Speaker 1: piece of legislation that should have never required the political
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  Speaker 1: equivalent of dragging the administration kicking and screaming towards daylight.
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  Speaker 1: The House passed it overwhelmingly, the Senate approved it, and
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  Speaker 1: Trump signed it in November of 2025. after earlier resistance
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  Speaker 1: to the push for disclosure. The law set a December
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  Speaker 1: 19th deadline, which the Justice Department did not meet in full. Instead,
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  Speaker 1: Americans watched a rolling production of records, accompanied by official assurances,
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  Speaker 1: that the Department had done what it was supposed to do.
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  Speaker 1: By January 30th, the Department said it had released nearly 3.5
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  Speaker 1: million pages, which is a substantial amount of material by
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  Speaker 1: any reasonable measure. But a large release... not the same
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  Speaker 1: thing as a complete accounting. And the existence of millions
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  Speaker 1: of pages does not answer why particular records were withheld,
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  Speaker 1: how redactions were justified, or whether the law was fully obeyed.
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  Speaker 1: The administration wants credit for opening the vault while treating
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  Speaker 1: every question about what remains behind the door like a
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  Speaker 1: personal affront. That is an absurd posture for a government
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  Speaker 1: that spent years promising the public it would be the
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  Speaker 1: champion of transparency. The issue was never simply the number
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  Speaker 1: of pages dumped onto a website, because nobody elects a
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  Speaker 1: president to run a document counting contest. The issue was
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  Speaker 1: whether the federal government could finally give the public a
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  Speaker 1: credible explanation of what happened, who enabled it, and why
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  Speaker 1: so many people escaped meaningful scrutiny. And while the administration
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  Speaker 1: was busy congratulating itself over the release, some of the
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  Speaker 1: people who had suffered at Epstein's hands... were raising alarms
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  Speaker 1: about their own identifying information appearing in public records. Survivors
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  Speaker 1: have alleged that the release exposed sensitive information about victims,
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  Speaker 1: even as other records remained hidden behind government redactions. To
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  Speaker 1: make matters worse, the Justice Department has faced legal challenges
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  Speaker 1: over its withholding decisions, including litigation in which a federal
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  Speaker 1: judge demanded that it justify certain redactions. The government's response
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  Speaker 1: has too often sounded less like a public servant explaining
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  Speaker 1: itself more like a corporate lawyer determined to win a
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  Speaker 1: dispute over fine print. Nobody's asking the Justice Department to
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  Speaker 1: publish victims' identities or compromise legitimate criminal investigations. People are
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  Speaker 1: asking it to apply the law consistently and explain, with specifics,
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  Speaker 1: why it has chosen to conceal what it has concealed.
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  Speaker 1: Yet the administration has managed to turn even that reasonable
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  Speaker 1: demand into another fight It seems more interested in winning, politically,
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  Speaker 1: than resolving transparently. And every round of evasion has given
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  Speaker 1: skeptical voters one more reason to wonder whether this Justice
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  Speaker 1: Department understands whom it's supposed to serve. Now, add the
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  Speaker 1: latest insult to the pile, because the House Judiciary Democrats
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  Speaker 1: have called for an independent special counsel to investigate Epstein,
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  Speaker 1: potential co-conspirators, and allegations about how the Justice Department handled
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  Speaker 1: the case. Their October 26 report leveled serious accusations, including
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  Speaker 1: claims involving Trump, and those claims deserve an independent examination
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  Speaker 1: rather than an automatic assumption of guilt or another reflexive
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  Speaker 1: White House dismissal. Trump denies wrongdoing, but his denial is
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  Speaker 1: not a substitute for an investigation. Any more than an
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  Speaker 1: accusation is a conviction. The Justice Department rejected the committee's
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  Speaker 1: report as politically motivated effort and defended its record of
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  Speaker 1: document production. Well, so here's the question I keep coming
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  Speaker 1: back to. What exactly would this administration lose by allowing
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  Speaker 1: a genuinely independent prosecutor to follow credible evidence wherever it leads?
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  Speaker 1: Not another political errand boy, not another insider whose first
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  Speaker 1: instinct is to calculate what might embarrass the boss, and
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  Speaker 1: certainly not somebody whose personal loyalty to Donald Trump creates
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  Speaker 1: an obvious conflict of interest. I'm talking about somebody with
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  Speaker 1: the authority, resources, and institutional independence to review the evidence
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  Speaker 1: and tell the public what can actually be proved. If
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  Speaker 1: the evidence does not support charges, say so, and show
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  Speaker 1: the legal reasoning. If it points towards prosecutable crimes, then
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  Speaker 1: investigate those crimes without checking party registration, bank balances, or
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  Speaker 1: presidential friendships first. An administration that claims to have nothing
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  Speaker 1: to hide should welcome that standard and instead of acting
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  Speaker 1: as though the very suggestion were an act of political warfare.
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  Speaker 1: I think what makes the GOP's predicament, at least in
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  Speaker 1: my eyes, even more deliciously ironic, is that the Epstein
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  Speaker 1: scandal has moved beyond social media arguments and into actual
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  Speaker 1: congressional campaigns. Campaign advertising about Epstein has appeared across competitive states,
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  Speaker 1: including Kansas, Maine, Alaska, and Pennsylvania, putting the issue before
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  Speaker 1: voters who might otherwise have tuned the entire Washington circus out. FactCheck.org reported,
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  Speaker 1: More than 350 television ads mentioning Epstein since Labor Day.
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  Speaker 1: Evidence at the controversy has become an organized electoral weapon
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  Speaker 1: rather than a passing internet obsession. Some of those ads
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  Speaker 1: have stretched the truth. And I have no interest in
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  Speaker 1: pretending a misleading attack becomes legitimate merely because it targets
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  Speaker 1: a Republican. For example, Susan Collins, Roger Marshall, and Dan
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  Speaker 1: Sullivan ultimately supported the 2025 transparency law. even though opponents
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  Speaker 1: have tried to reduce their earlier votes on a separate
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  Speaker 1: amendment to a simple accusation of covering up for Epstein.
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  Speaker 1: But the larger political problem for the GOP survives those
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  Speaker 1: corrections because Republican candidates are still being forced to answer
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  Speaker 1: for an administration that turned transparency into a running public
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  Speaker 1: relations disaster. They now have to explain a president's insults
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  Speaker 1: and administration's conflicting messages and a Justice Department whose handling
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  Speaker 1: of the files remains bitterly contested. Some of those candidates
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  Speaker 1: never had anything personally to do with Epstein, which makes
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  Speaker 1: the collateral damage even more absurd. Trump took an issue
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  Speaker 1: that could have united voters across party lines and made
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  Speaker 1: it a liability for people whose names are nowhere near
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  Speaker 1: the original scandal. That's not the work of a political mastermind,
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  Speaker 1: but a man who has set his own party's house
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  Speaker 1: on fire and then started screaming at everyone who complained
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  Speaker 1: about the smoke. And now, with voters actually casting ballots,
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  Speaker 1: the Republican damage control operation has the unmistakable smell of
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  Speaker 1: a party trying to prepare the public for an outcome
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  Speaker 1: it would rather not discuss. Trump himself has urged voters
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  Speaker 1: to pretend he's on the ballot, a gamble that makes
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  Speaker 1: it awfully difficult for him to disown the result if
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  Speaker 1: his party loses seats. He wanted the entire election to
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  Speaker 1: be a referendum on his political strength, so... He should
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  Speaker 1: not be surprised when voters decide to judge the whole
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  Speaker 1: record rather than just the parts his campaign likes. The economy, healthcare,
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  Speaker 1: and the war with Iran all matter enormously, and the
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  Speaker 1: polling makes clear that Epstein is not the only thing
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  Speaker 1: or even the leading thing on most voters' minds. But
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  Speaker 1: elections are decided at the margins. And a voter who
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  Speaker 1: already dislikes the cost of groceries does not become more
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  Speaker 1: enthusiastic about the GOP after watching its leaders insult people
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  Speaker 1: who demand accountability. A Republican who stays home and discuss matters.
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  Speaker 1: An Independent who crosses over matters. And a Conservative who
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  Speaker 1: votes for a different candidate matters. You don't need every
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  Speaker 1: voter to be thinking about Epstein for a scandal like
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  Speaker 1: this to do serious damage in a close race. You
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  Speaker 1: only need enough of them to decide that they've been
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  Speaker 1: lied to, talked down to, or taken for granted. And
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  Speaker 1: the extraordinary part is that this trust problem was avoidable
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  Speaker 1: if the administration had decided from the beginning to put
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  Speaker 1: credible disclosure ahead of Trump's personal grievances. Instead, the party
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  Speaker 1: is spending Election Day wondering how much of the president's
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  Speaker 1: self-inflicted political mess its candidates will be forced to carry.
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  Speaker 1: And yo, there's another reason today's election matters beyond who
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  Speaker 1: gets the better television graphics tonight, and that is the
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  Speaker 1: balance of power in Congress. If Democrats win the House, committees...
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  Speaker 1: that have spent months running into Republican roadblocks, could gain
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  Speaker 1: authority to issue subpoenas, demand records, and compel testimony without
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  Speaker 1: needing permission from the same people they're trying to scrutinize. Now,
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  Speaker 1: that doesn't guarantee a serious investigation, and I won't hand
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  Speaker 1: out participation trophies to politicians just because they discover Epstein
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  Speaker 1: is a useful campaign subject. Plenty of elected officials from
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  Speaker 1: both parties ignored this case, exploited it, or treated survivors
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  Speaker 1: like props, long before today's ballots were printed. The Democrats
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  Speaker 1: campaigning on transparency need to understand that a majority would
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  Speaker 1: come with obligations, not just a fresh collection of television appearances.
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  Speaker 1: If they win control and then settle for another parade
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  Speaker 1: of toothless hearings, scripted outrage, and witnesses who cannot remember anything,
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  Speaker 1: they will deserve every ounce of criticism that follows, and boy,
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  Speaker 1: will I provide it. The subpoenas need to be real.
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  Speaker 1: The document demands need to be specific, and the questions
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  Speaker 1: need to go well beyond the names that make convenient
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  Speaker 1: opposition research. That means examining the original non-prosecution agreement, the
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  Speaker 1: institutional failures, the financial facilitators, and the decisions made by
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  Speaker 1: investigators and prosecutors across multiple administrations. The purpose of congressional
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  Speaker 1: power should be to expose what the government has done
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  Speaker 1: and failed to do. not to exchange one partisan protective
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  Speaker 1: racket for another. Voters who care about Epstein should demand
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  Speaker 1: that standard from whoever holds the gavel in January, whether
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  Speaker 1: today's winner wears a red tie or a blue one.
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  Speaker 1: For all of his talk about enemies, traitors, witch hunts,
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  Speaker 1: and hoaxes, Donald Trump has spent his entire episode demonstrating
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  Speaker 1: how badly a president can misread his own supporters. He
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  Speaker 1: convinced people he would challenge an establishment that protected the powerful.
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  Speaker 1: then acted offended when those same people asked him to
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  Speaker 1: prove it. He could have treated transparency as a duty,
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  Speaker 1: congressional oversight as a legitimate check, and the demand for
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  Speaker 1: answers as a sign that Americans still care whether the
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  Speaker 1: government tells them the truth. Instead, he made it about himself,
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  Speaker 1: as he always seems determined to do, and forced his
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  Speaker 1: own party to defend conduct that never needed to become
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  Speaker 1: a political liability. Look, I can't tell you how every
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  Speaker 1: close race will end tonight, And anybody pretending Epstein alone
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  Speaker 1: will decide the entire midterm election is selling another political fantasy.
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  Speaker 1: What I can tell you is that this administration squandered
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  Speaker 1: an extraordinary opportunity to build public trust and then insulted
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  Speaker 1: the people who noticed. Now those people have something more
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  Speaker 1: powerful than an angry social media post, a cable news interview,
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  Speaker 1: or a petition that disappears into a congressional inbox. They
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  Speaker 1: have a ballot. And no president gets to overrule the
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  Speaker 1: message they decide to send with it. If Republicans suffer
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  Speaker 1: losses that they fear, they can blame the media, Democrats,
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  Speaker 1: disloyal voters, or whatever other convenient villain the White House
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  Speaker 1: comes up with before breakfast. But somewhere beneath that mountain
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  Speaker 1: of excuses will be the truth they've spent so long
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  Speaker 1: trying to avoid. Donald Trump picked this fight. Donald Trump
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  Speaker 1: made it worse. And Donald Trump will now have to
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  Speaker 1: answer for it. at the ballot box. All the information
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  Speaker 1: that goes with this episode can be found in the
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  Speaker 1: description box.