Quote. We have nothing to hide, says Donald Trump, the president now saying he wants House Republicans to vote in favor of a bill to compel his own Justice Department to release the Jeffrey Epstein case files. And just moments ago, he indicated he’ll sign the bill if it lands on his desk. I’m for any I don’t. They can do whatever they want.
We’ll give them everything. Sure. I would let them let the Senate look at it. Let anybody look at it. But don’t talk about it too much.
Whatever. Okay. All of this is a stark reversal on an issue that, more than any other has seen, Trump’s own base refused to go along with him. This all come down to the Epstein files, and that is shocking. And you know, I stand with these women.
My people want to know who else if anyone did. Epstein traffic young women to dogs don’t bark at parked cars. And we are winning. In a social media post on Sunday, the president said the House Oversight Committee could have any documents that they’re legally entitled to and then declared in all caps. Quote, I don’t care.
End quote. Just three days prior, he had said that Republicans focused on Epstein were, quote, soft and foolish. The House vote is expected to come as soon as tomorrow. Even before the president’s flip flop on this House, Republican leaders were bracing for many of their members to support the bill. Last night, President Trump seemed to acknowledge just how big a distraction the Epstein story has been throughout his second term.
They’re using Jeffrey Epstein as a deflection from the tremendous success that we’re having as a party.
All right, let’s get out the sidelines, head into the arena. My panel is here. We’re also joined by CNN senior white House correspondent Kristen Holmes and CNN chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju. Kristen, let me start with you.
We just heard at some length from the president, what more is he saying ahead of this expected vote? Yeah, a lot of this was blaming Democrats, saying Democrats are the ones with the Epstein problem. At one point, he said he didn’t want this to take away from people recognizing how much he had done. But the question persisted multiple times. Would you sign this bill if it landed on your desk?
It’s one thing to put out a truth social saying, sure, go ahead. Do whatever you want. Republicans should vote for quite another to affirm that you would sign this on your desk.
And here’s what he said. President.
So I’m for any I don’t care. They can do whatever they want. You will give them everything. Sure. I would let let the Senate look at it.
Let anybody look at it. But don’t talk about it too much because honestly, I don’t want to take it away from us. It’s really a Democrat problem. The Democrats were Epstein’s friends. All of them.
And it’s a hoax.
The whole thing is a hoax. And I don’t want to take it away from, really, the greatness of what the Republican Party has accomplished over the last period of time. Yeah. So you hear them, they’re saying it’s a hoax again.
But of course, I will remind you that last week, at the end of the week, President Trump insisted that the Department of Justice, as well as Attorney General Pam Bondi, look into Democrats ties to Epstein. So clearly not a hoax in that case.
And I do want to just quickly know you can hear him there, a really raspy, gravelly voice who said that over the weekend he was yelling at another country about a trade deal. They wanted to renegotiate terms of the trade deal. He wouldn’t say which country that was.
Fair enough. Kristen, thank you for that reporting. Manu, from your end to Pennsylvania Avenue, you caught up with the House speaker earlier. What are we hearing from Mike Johnson? Yeah, we do expect this vote to happen tomorrow, and we expect it to be a significant number of Republicans and Democrats, maybe more than 400 members.
We’ll see if it’s even unanimous. That’s going to be one of the big questions.
The question do the speaker himself. He has, of course, tried to deny this bill from coming for a vote for months. There is an effort there to circumvent his opposition that succeeded to force the vote forced the speaker’s hand.
And when I asked him if these guys are going to support the bill now that Trump has reversed course, he said, my support will be conditioned upon an agreement in the Senate that if they did, if they indeed process and they fix the terrible provisions in it.
And I also asked him about Trump’s very harsh rhetoric against Marjorie Taylor Greene, his longtime ally and supporter of this Epstein bill, whom Trump called a traitor repeatedly over the weekend. Greene herself said that this is causing threats to her family, her security and safety. I asked him if he would advise Trump not to level that kind of rhetoric. By the president to stop calling her a traitor.
I don’t. It’s not surprising the president was frustrated because some of the criticisms that I get that Marjorie could have been out stating that the comedian, of course, she criticized me all the time for that. But I work on the unity in the party, and my encouragement of everybody is to get together.
We have to do that in order to qualify for the people. So declining to criticize the president’s comments there.
Now, when it comes to this bill, which will come to the floor tomorrow, the question is going to be how the Senate will deal with that, given that the president is now signaling that he would be okay if the Senate were to act. It remains to be seen how the Senate majority leader pursues this. We are hearing that the Senate Majority leader, John Thune, is looking at his options, is going to see how the House vote turns out before making a decision himself. And Thune had thrown cold water on moving ahead on this just a few weeks ago. But because of Trump’s shift, expect Republicans in the Senate to be under enormous pressure to move ahead on this bill as well, especially if this bill is approved, as we expect tomorrow by an overwhelming vote in the House.
Okay, so warming indeed. All right, Manu Raju, Kristen Holmes, thank you both very much for getting us started. Our panel is here in the arena.
Political reporter and author Molly Ball. Get this.
The former host of MSNBC’s Hardball is here, Chris Matthews. We’re also joined by CNN political commentator, former communications director for Vice President Kamala Harris, Jamal Simmons, and the former Republican congressman from Michigan, Peter Meijer. Welcome to all of you. Thanks for being here. So I want to replay kind of the piece of sound that we showed from the president at the top of the show because, it gives you kind of a little bit of a flavor of the degree of flip flop here.
Right? Let’s watch. I’m for any I don’t. They can do whatever they want. You so give them everything.
Sure. I would let let the Senate look at it. Let anybody look at it. But don’t talk about it too much. You know, he took his good take.
The goons took Boebert into the situation room. That worked her over. Okay. They threatened the other woman by calling her a traitor over and over again, and he doesn’t care.
Minutes ago, he said something else.
I think he’s got a tactical name here. He’s going to act like I’ll go along with the discharge petition. But then the Senate gets to look at it. Oh, isn’t that great? Did that prissy a little look at it?
And he’ll do a look at it. Is he going to sign it? Is he going to let that information out? Everybody seems to say that. Yes.
In there. He doesn’t want out. Nobody knows what it is, but he knows what it is. Congressman, what do you think? What do you think changed here?
I mean, because he had this a strategy that I mean, they were dragging Lauren Boebert into the Situation Room trying to convince her not to vote.
They were telling people their aides were putting out all kinds of anonymous quotes saying a vote for this is a vote against the president. And then all of a sudden the story has totally changed. I mean, I think, number one, he’s frustrated that he hasn’t been able to control the narrative, right? Donald Trump is excellent at controlling the narrative.
He grabs that laser pointer, points it at the wall, and everyone goes in like a little cat, you know, to try to follow it. This is something that has escaped containment, not just in the media more broadly, but also more importantly among the MAGA base that haven’t been said.
If there was anything politically toxic to him in all of this, it is. There is no way on God’s green earth that it would have survived not getting into the public realm from 2021 to 2024 ahead of the November elections. Right.
I do think there are things that are inconvenient. There’s probably some things that are embarrassing, just like we’ve seen amongst, you know, former Treasury secretary who was mentioned in there. The delegate. Non-voting delegate, who? Member of Congress from the Virgin Islands, who was texting with Jeffrey Epstein during the Michael Cohen deposition or hearing in Congress.
Like, there’s probably additional things that are out there, some of which may rise up to bump on some national security things that, again, are not criminal in nature. But would be embarrassing. Why should he defend Democrats? Why is Trump hiding these papers? Joe Biden stays Democrats a no, no no no.
This has gone from like QAnon to blue anon a Democrat. No, he’s not in that business. I don’t know. But he is. He is the commander in chief.
And there may be some elements that are national security adjacent. Right. Again, why did Biden sit on all these landslide questions saying it’s logical when you’re saying it’s not? Yeah. I mean, the reality is these he controls he is not afraid to tell his Department of Justice to investigate his enemies, but he seems to be afraid to order them to release these files.
Yeah. I don’t believe that Donald Trump would do anything, just to protect Democrats or anyone else. There is something in this refrigerator that is stinky, and the president is does not want to open it up. He doesn’t want anybody to look at it. I think the rest of us at some point are going to find out what’s inside of there, because we’re going to see the House vote for it.
It’s going to be very hard for senators to stand up in front of their constituents and say, no, I’m not going to vote to expose people who may be pedophiles. It’s very hard for that to happen. And then we’re going to see if the president is going to have the into nudity or the the need to, to, to veto is that you’re kind of using words. I can, I can say on television. But whenever he can have the imperative to do this and then veto it in front of people, and then we’ll see whether or not the House will override that video veto.
This is very tough terrain for him. Molly, what do you think changed for the president? Well I think look it’s politics 101 that if the train is leaving the station anyway, you might as well get in the conductor’s car and seem to be in control of the situation. Right? I think after his unsuccessful attempts to get to stop this from taking hold in the house when it became clear that was not going to work, the votes were there.
They could not be budged. You decided he might as well make it look like this was his idea. And this is always the cycle with any kind of Trump scandal, right? Is that the first half of the scandal? Is this didn’t happen, and I had nothing to do with it.
And then the second half of the scandal is, well, it did happen, but I’m proud of it.
And it was a good thing, actually. So whether you’re talking about, you know, both impeachments, January says this is always the way his sort of cycle goes. So if he can appear to be in control of the situation and take ownership of it and have it look like his idea, but at the end of the day, what matters is what, if anything, is in those is in those documents..
Read More: BRANDY B.NPC COMPETITOR BACK ROUTINE
