President Donald Trump's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files saga may have permanently damaged his reputation with his base, according to one columnist.
Ahmed Baba described the impact of Trump's decision not to release the Epstein files, as he promised to do on the 2024 presidential campaign trail, during an appearance on CNN's "NewsNight with Abby Phillip." The comments come at a time when Trump is searching for ways to distract his base from the Epstein files altogether.
"The fundamental deal that Trump made with his base is that he was going to root out this mysterious cabal of elites that are running things and keeping you down, and enriching themselves, and keeping you from knowing what's really going on," Baba said. "A key part of this became these Epstein files."
The Epstein files were a central element of Trump's support during the 2024 election cycle. Trump and his surrogates used the story to create a narrative that Trump could rescue the nation from a group of corrupt individuals. However, that illusion appears to be broken after Trump refused to release the entire Epstein case file.
"Essentially, what he's proving is that he is one of these corrupt elites," Baba continued. "Not only with this Epstein refusal, to not release these files. He's not actually releasing the files. He's doing the grand jury testimony, which is only a fraction of the files out there."
"While he's doing this, he is simultaneously raising prices on Americans via tariffs," Baba added.
President Donald Trump's luck in the courtroom may be starting to run out, according to a former federal prosecutor.
Glenn Kirschner, MSNBC legal analyst and the host of the "Justice Matters" podcast, created a short podcast episode about Trump's attempts to find a friendly judge for his lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal. He sued the outlet last week for $20 billion for defamation over the recent report about a "bawdy" letter that Trump sent to Epstein for his 50th birthday.
Trump filed the lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal in southern Florida, where one of his favorite judges happens to sit on the bench. Trump previously won a lawsuit over his handling of classified documents in southern Florida, a case that was argued before Judge Aileen Cannon.
Instead of having Cannon assigned to the case, Trump's lawsuit was handed to Judge Darrin Gayles.
Gayles was appointed to the bench in southern Florida in 2013 by former President Barack Obama. He previously presided over a lawsuit Trump filed against his former lawyer, Michael Cohen. Trump sought to collect $500 million from Cohen over claims that Cohen violated his attorney-client privilege. After six months, Trump abandoned the lawsuit.
"Who that judge is tends to suggest that karma is alive and well," Kirschner said.
This isn't the first time that Trump has sought to influence legal proceedings against him. For instance, he signed executive orders targeting multiple big-name law firms, some of whom hired lawyers who worked on Robert Mueller's investigation into the 2016 election.
"Judge Gayles has seen the Trump show before, in court, up close and personal," Kirschner added. "Bring a frivolous lawsuit, and then right before you are going to be deposed, right when you are going to have to answer questions under oath, when you are going to have to put up or shut up, you give up."
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) warned on Monday's edition of MSNBC's "The Weeknight" that Fox News put itself in a position where it could be sued on exactly the same grounds as President Donald Trump's legal complaint against CBS — a case experts widely considered frivolous, but which CBS' parent company nonetheless settled, allegedly to avoid regulatory action against their merger.
"That Fox News interview where he was asked about this," said anchor Alicia Menendez. "You are concerned that they edited the files. He was asked if he would declassify the files. He says, yeah, yeah, I would, or at least that's how it appears in their edit. In the raw footage, Trump clearly refuses to unequivocally endorse full declassification. Why is that important to you?"
"I mean, the hypocrisy," said Garcia. "I mean, well, first, clearly him and his campaign focused on the edited version. They put it out, they put it on social media. You know, he basically said, 'Oh, yeah, I clearly want to release the files.' The full version, which they didn't release during that interview, was much longer, a nuance. Why this is important is Donald Trump just got $16 million from CBS for his freakout about the Kamala Harris '60 Minutes' interview that he said, of course, 'Oh, they edited the interview,' which we know, of course, is done oftentimes for clarity or for different shows. So he can get $60 million for taking on his version of editing that he didn't like. Yet he's now going to — the same thing is happening clearly by Fox News?"
"So we want to know, did the Trump campaign and Fox News coordinate that?" Garcia continued. "What did Donald Trump tell Fox News to do? And was there actual communication and coordination around that incident, which is exactly the same thing that Donald Trump is now getting $60 million for by CBS and Paramount?"
"Are you — is anybody going to find a way to have standing to sue someone anywhere around this?" asked anchor Symone Sanders Townsend.
"Well, we're making the case that Donald Trump settlement that he got and that he forced CBS, essentially, the exact same thing happened in this Fox interview," replied Garcia. "So we're laying that out."
Members of the GOP are starting to call for the Attorney General to testify about her knowledge of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
On Monday, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) told CNN's Manu Raju that he would like to see Attorney General Pam Bondi testify before a House committee about the files. His comments come after the Department of Justice issued an unsigned memo contradicting many of President Donald Trump's comments about the files. At the same time, reports indicate that the FBI has engaged more than 1,000 agents to comb through the files and flag any mentions of Trump's name.
"I don't see why we would do anything other than bring Pam Bondi in to a committee of jurisdiction and say 'Please explain.'" Davidson told Raju.
Davidson's comments underscore the tension that the Epstein files have created within the Republican caucus. GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) have called on Trump to release the entirety of the Epstein files, as he promised to do during the 2024 presidential campaign.
However, members like Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) appear to be trying to slow the efforts. On Monday, Johnson told reporters that a vote on releasing the Epstein files won't happen until September at the earliest.
"I would really like the committee of jurisdiction to bring her in and say, 'Hey, you have binders of this stuff. Please explain,'" Davidson continued. "We were led to believe there would be prosecutions. If we prosecute, we assume there are going to be convictions."
Retired police chief and Brown University professor Brandon del Pozo tore into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers for wearing masks and concealing their identities during President Donald Trump's immigration raids — and claimed their reasoning for doing so is nonsense.
"Let's get right to the heart of this," said anchor Melissa Murray. "ICE says that the masks are absolutely necessary to protect the safety of their agents and to prevent doxing. But you argue that anonymous policing poses even greater threats to society. Can you elaborate?"
"Well, first of all, American police have been facing much greater dangers, equal or greater as ICE, for decades, since the beginning, in fact," said del Pozo. "Arresting rapists, arresting robbers, killers of all sorts. They've never thought to mask themselves, to protect themselves from retribution. I used to get calls from the state police when certain felons got out of prison saying ... just so you know, that man that threatened your life is now out of prison. I never for a second thought of hiding my face from the public, hiding my face from the people I policed. Nor did any cop that I knew and worked with. And we were proud that we had the courage to do our jobs that way."
The real risk, he added, is that "if people get confused by what's happening when masked men are coming out of nowhere and grabbing people off the street, that's a worse safety risk to ICE than doxing, which should be illegal and should be prosecuted, but is not the most important thing here in our democracy."
"Well, to that point in your piece for The Atlantic, you wrote that anonymous policing could, quote, 'expose federal agents, local police and the public to physical dangers that make the risks of doxing seem minor in comparison,'" Murray said. "And you note that masks are often a marker of criminals looking to intimidate their prey while avoiding identification. Are we actually seeing some of these dangers playing out right now? And are they putting law enforcement and ICE enforcement in danger?"
"Yeah," said del Pozo. "So there's been many tragic cases of misidentification between police officers in different agencies, even within the same agency on duty and off duty. There are already people wearing masks and impersonating ICE officers to commit felonies. When you have local police, other jurisdictions responding to masked men with guns, masked women with guns, masked folks, it sets up a recipe for disaster, right?"
Indeed, he added, "there are cops that have been killed by friendly fire from other cops in cases of misidentification, criminal impersonation ... that's happened throughout policing already, even without the masks."
CNN's Erin Burnett, host of the show "OutFront," made Trump's distraction efforts a key part of her opening monologue on Monday. Her comments come as the Trump administration continues throwing red meat to its base by announcing potential investigations into former President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Burnett reported that at least 10 Democrats are supporting a GOP-led effort to force a vote to release the Epstein files. However, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) appears to be stonewalling the effort. Johnson said Monday that a vote to release the files wouldn't happen until September at the earliest.
"That's a real kick the can down the road," Burnett said. "September is a long way away. I mean, it is only July."
Several MAGA lawmakers like Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have called on the president to release the files, as he promised to do during his 2024 campaign.
However, Trump appears happy throwing new distractions at his base. Over the past week, he has threatened to pull support for an NFL football team stadium unless they changed their name; ordered the Department of Justice to release files related to the MLK Jr. assassination despite the objection of the King family, and made numerous posts on Truth Social about seemingly innocuous topics like the University of Idaho killings.
"It's like throwing spaghetti at a wall," Burnett commented.
A prominent White House reporter revealed what he called the "most striking" detail to come out of Hunter Biden's meltdown Monday at the media and Democrats.
CNN anchor Jake Tapper brought Axios' Alex Thompson, who co-wrote a damning book about President Joe Biden and an alleged cover-up over his mental fitness, onto his show, "The Lead," on Monday to discuss Hunter Biden's lash out.
"Hunter made headlines of his own in a more than three-hour-long interview on a podcast, touching on a number of issues, including the 2024 campaign. He vehemently defended his father while revealing a new detail about the debate," said Tapper.
In the clip, Hunter Biden said he knows "exactly what happened" in the disastrous debate between Joe Biden and then-candidate Donald Trump, in which a frail Joe Biden fumbled through answers and sent panicked Democrats into a frenzy.
"He flew around the world basically and the mileage, he could have flown around the world three times. He's 81 years old. He's tired as s---. They give him Ambien to be able to sleep. He gets up on the stage, and he looks like he's a deer in the headlights," said Hunter Biden.
Tapper asked co-author Thompson what he made of the new detail about the Ambien being a part of the performance.
"Well, the fact that we didn’t know it beforehand, even though the doctor had been public about trying to say what Joe Biden was on, what he was taking, the fact that we did not know that the President of the United States was on Ambien, I would also imagine it is very difficult to do the proverbial '3 a.m. phone call' crisis when you are on Ambien in the middle of the night. I think it’s really striking," said Thompson.
Thompson acknowledged that while the public hasn't heard from a doctor that Joe Biden was on the sleeping medication, the fact that his son said Joe Biden was taking the drug in the weeks before the debate "is a telling new detail about the president’s abilities at the time."
Tapper later played a clip of Hunter Biden melting down at Democratic strategists James Varville and David Axelrod, in which Hunter Biden unleashed a profanity-laden rant aimed at the two.
"James Carville, who hasn’t run a race in 40 f---ing years. And David Axelrod, who had one success in his political life and that was Barack Obama. And that was because of Barack Obama, not because of f---ing David Axelrod. And David Plouffe, and all of these guys — and the Pod Save America guys — who were junior f---ing speechwriters on Barack Obama’s Senate staff, who have been dining out on the relationship with him for years, making millions of dollars."
He then tore into what he called the "Anita Dunns of the world, who’s made $40, $50 million off the Democratic Party. They’re all going to insert their judgment over a man who has figured out, unlike anybody else, how to get elected to the United States Senate over seven times?"
Thompson flagged the eyebrow-raising statement.
"The most striking thing is that he attacked Anita Dunn, who, by the way, helped steer his father to the Democratic nomination in 2020. She was also in the White House for the majority of those four years, until, basically, she was driven out because of this rift with Hunter Biden. She is also set to be interviewed by the House Oversight Committee in the coming weeks."
Democratic strategist Karen Finney noted Dunn didn't want Joe Biden to drop out, either.
"100%. And — I write it in our book. It is striking: Hunter is clearly establishing himself as the carrier of the family’s grievances. And he is also, you know, completely obliterating the fiction from last summer that Joe Biden was doing sort of the honorable thing. Joe Biden was driven out of this race by the elites of the Democratic Party. And Joe Biden — his entire family — deeply resent it.
President Donald Trump's administration announced a new investigation on Monday, which one analyst said should be seen as a "blinking red light" for the MAGA movement.
Last week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced that it had uncovered evidence that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama conspired to prevent Trump from winning the 2016 election. On Monday, Attorney General Pam Bondiannounced that the Department of Justice would also be releasing information about former FBI Director James Comey's investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails.
Progressive YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen responded to the news on his show, "No Lies," calling it "perplexing."
"Trump is reverting to his old strategy of throwing out the most obvious distractions he can find, including and up to Hillary's emails," Cohen said. "He'll threaten football teams, President Obama, and anybody else he can think of so that he can fool the rubes."
"Therein lies the real embarrassment for Trump's voters," Cohen continued. "The people he is trying to fool are not the Democrats. The Democrats understand that the guy is very clearly trying to hide something, and where there's smoke, there's fire. It is the Republicans whom Trump is targeting. Those are the people he believes are dumb enough to fall for this stuff. His own voters!"
Cohen's comments come at a time when Trump is attempting to distance himself from the Epstein saga. However, those efforts appear to be alienating a large swath of his base.
"Those are the people he despises enough to spend all of his time and energy fooling," Cohen said. "The people who should be angriest here are Trump's voters who are being deceived in real time."
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) described a scene in the House in which a Republican saluted him for his ongoing persistence in obtaining the investigation files around Jeffrey Epstein.
Swalwell, who spoke to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on "Deadline: White House" Monday, responded to Republican complaints that Democrats could have released the files while President Joe Biden was in office. It inadvertently admits that it's President Donald Trump who is currently refusing their release, and has the power to release the million-plus pages of documents.
Swalwell recalled his demands dating back to 2019 with the late Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), who sought the files after Epstein died in prison. He noted that he, along with several others, called for the resignation of Trump's former Secretary of Labor, Alexander Acosta, who gave Epstein a sweetheart plea deal in a 2008 Florida case.
"Last week, when I was walking to a vote, I kind of came right into a Republican as we were coming from different hallways, kind of almost clashing to each other, and he put out his fist and gave me a fist bump and said, Thank you," Swalwell said. "Now, I had, just over the last couple days, been pretty loudly calling for the release of the files. And so Democrats are doing what Republicans are not willing to do."
He noted that the Democrats are open to speaking with whistleblowers who are willing to come forward. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said that he was made aware that the “FBI was pressured to put approximately 1,000 personnel in its Information Management Division … on 24-hour shifts to review approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in order to produce more documents that could then be released on an arbitrarily short deadline."
Any of those FBI agents would be given whistleblower protections if they came forward, as an example.
Democrats can't force any votes to mandate the release of the files in the House, because they don't currently hold the majority. Still, Swalwell said that he and other Democrats will force votes in key committee hearings on the matter and that they'll use the Congressional subpoena power.
"But I wouldn't count on these guys [Republicans] one bit to do the right thing and release the files," said Swalwell. "And they have the subpoena power. They have that power! It doesn't take a vote in Congress. The Speaker of the House could subpoena it today, but he won't because he's going to do everything possible to protect Donald Trump."
A report published Monday by the Union of Concerned Scientists details how U.S. President Donald Trump "has led a systemic and coordinated attack on science" during the first six months of his second administration as "part of a larger strategy to strip public protections, consolidate power, and remove scientific evidence from policymaking."
The UCS analysis states that the second Trump administration has carried out 402 attacks on science, defined as "an action, statement, or decision that originates from an elected official or political appointee in a federal agency that results in the censoring, manipulation, forging, or misinforming of scientific data, results, or conclusions conducted within the government or with federal funds."
The 402 attacks are nearly double the 207 UCS said that Trump oversaw during his first full term, and over four times the number committed during eight years of George W. Bush's presidency. UCS said the Obama administration carried out 19 attacks on science, while former President Joe Biden oversaw just two attacks.
UCS accused the Trump administration of gutting scientific expertise, halting science and innovation, ignoring public input, eliminating independent expertise, and censoring and suppressing scientific information.
"The first six months of President Trump's second term have been characterized by destruction of democratic processes, divisive and vindictive actions, and chaos in federal government agencies," UCS said in a summary of the report. "The Trump administration's actions are not normal. This is an illegal power grab—a wholesale attack on the democratic systems upon which this nation was built."
In the past six months, the Trump administration has systematically and recklessly undermined federal science. Read our new report here: act.ucsusa.org/Trump6Months
"People are already paying the price of these attacks on science: children unnecessarily exposed to lead, families denied clean air, and lives needlessly lost in preventable disease outbreaks," UCS noted. "Dismantling science harms every member of the U.S. public—but especially Black, Brown, Indigenous, rural, and low- and-moderate-income communities."
The report offers recommendations "to protect science and the public good," including:
Passing the Scientific Integrity Act—introduced in February by Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.)—which would require federal agencies to uphold evidence-based policymaking free from political interference;
Opposing the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, a bid by Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to give Congress veto power over regulations based on expert consensus;
Passing the EXPERTS Act (formerly the Stop Corporate Capture Act), legislation proposed by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) to limit industry influence on science-based rulemaking;
Strengthening whistleblower protections for federal scientists;
Restoring diverse, independent, and empowered federal advisory committees; and
Reinstating and strengthening public participation in rulemaking and other government decision-making processes while restoring public access to censored scientific data.
Darya Minovi, the report's lead author, said that "the pace and severity of the administration's attacks on science is extremely alarming."
"These attacks are about power," she continued. "By silencing science that does not align with its agenda to line the pockets of polluters and billionaires, the Trump administration is stripping the public of its right to information, participation, and protection."
"Science is a cornerstone of democracy," Minovi added. "When science is sidelined, people get hurt. Lawmakers and agency leaders must act with urgency to defend the institutions and people who safeguard our health, environment, and future."
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is refusing to allow a vote on the legislation that would mandate the release of files in the investigation of wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein. His position is something that MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace said should be an "easy" decision for the GOP leadership.
"My belief is we need the administration to have the space to do what it is doing, and if further congressional action is necessary or appropriate, then we'll look at that," Johnson told reporters on Monday. "But I don't think we're at that point right now because we agree with the president."
"So, no vote, no vote on this resolution," CNN reporter Manu Raju can be heard saying in the recording.
Wallace said it was " the White House director of legislative affairs," before adding, "I'm just kidding. That was the Speaker."
She noted to fellow ex-Republican Tim Miller, "This is an issue that should be easy for them. Like, even easier than tariffs, which their voters don't want. Even easier than, I mean, it should all be pretty easy because the voters, their voters, do not want cuts to Medicaid, but their voters are ravenous for the Epstein files, and they can't even vote to release them. What is this?"
Miller called it a "pickle" for Johnson and the House GOP.
"I know you think it's an easy one, but here's the problem: Yeah, sure, it's an easy one with the base voters," said Miller. "It's easy to know what they want and the grand scheme of things. But he can't get on the wrong side of Donald Trump. I mean, there's a graveyard of past Republican speakers who got on the wrong side of Donald Trump on various issues."
Miller said the top priority of Johnson's office is not ending up under the Trump bus like those former speakers.
"But there's good reason that he would not be read-in on whatever it was that was behind the decision for Donald Trump or Pam Bondi to not release these additional files," Miller noted. "And, so, if you're Mike Johnson, it's like, I guess I let's try to kick the can down the road."
A new CBS News poll found that most Americans want the files related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation released in their entirety. Instead, on Monday, President Donald Trump's administration announced files around the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Speaking about the matter on CNN to Kasie Hunt, New York Times reporter and podcast host Lulu Garcia-Navarro noted that the public is infatuated with the story. The Netflix documentary and books on Epstein have gained significant attention over the month of July, CNN reported Sunday.
"So I think exactly this, the narrative arc has broken containment," said Garcia-Navarro. "I'm going to bring you two together and use those things. The other thing I will say is just this one thing, as we were speaking, The Associated Press just sent a news alert saying that the FBI miraculously is just handing out all these files on the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., and so suspicious timing, I mean, it's all I'm going to say. I'm sure it's very welcome, but strange that the FBI would be releasing those files at this particular moment, isn't it?"
Indeed, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claimed to be releasing the MLK files in April.
Hunt recalled reporting over the weekend that the FBI was told to "scrub" the Epstein files.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel were to blame for refusing to release additional files on Jeffrey Epstein.
While speaking to reporters Monday, Leavitt was asked why President Donald Trump had not "just ordered the FBI to release the full Epstein files."
"The president has said if the Department of Justice and the FBI want to move forward with releasing any further credible evidence, they should do so. As to why they have or have not or will, you should ask the FBI about that," the press secretary replied.
"Do you call on Kash Patel to do more?" one reporter wondered.
"Again, as I just answered, the president has told the attorney general and the FBI director to release any credible evidence that they find," Leavitt repeated, "and he also signaled to them over the weekend to move forward with unsealing the grand jury documents that were under sealed by various judges across the country and I believe the attorney general has taken the proper legal action to do that."
