Four Former Presidents On Service And America At 250

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:46

I think my message. Don't give up on my mom before I think. I think I'm going to think of my longer. So everybody should be thinking about that this year. Do I wanna make it longer? Because if I do, then I have to favor cooperation over conflict conflict. And I have to be willing to lose as well as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:21

The most unique country in the world. We really do think democracy is dictated by the rules of the Constitution. And we do believe, and we act and we do we do well. That all are degree equal. Everyone's kind of shocked. That everybody has to shout. And I think we as we do that, people it grows instead of focusing on divisions.

SPEAKER_08 1:55

If we hold true to that idea that we the people uh have been gifted this chance of self-government, if if we pay attention to uh our responsibilities and our duties, and if we extend respect and thoughtfulness to our fellow citizens, um, even if we disagree with them. If if we understand that part of this democratic project is to sort through our differences in peaceful, legal ways, um then uh I'm confident that we're gonna have another 250-year run that's gonna be just as good.

SPEAKER_15 2:38

My message is consider yourself fortunate to be a part of uh a great nation. Study our history so you have a better sense for what the future would be like, and be a citizen, not a spectator. And by that I mean participate in the process, but also love a neighbor like you'd like to be loved yourself.

SPEAKER_05 2:58

So the History Talks event traditionally features former presidents, and it's taking on even more meaning as we celebrate 250 years. We had a a lot longer of a conversation.

SPEAKER_15 3:08

Oh, thank God.

SPEAKER_05 3:09

Yeah, that felt short. But it was really interesting to hear each of them talk about why service matters, why treating our neighbors the way we would want to be treated matters, and we have a bigger conversation.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Did you know what your dad's answer was gonna be?

SPEAKER_05 3:23

No.

SPEAKER_14 3:24

But by the way, it was also great to hear their optimism. Yeah, all four of them sounded quite optimistic about the future of our republic.

SPEAKER_05 3:31

And also just to say how grateful we are to live here.

SPEAKER_14 3:35

Was it cool spending that time with dad?

SPEAKER_05 3:37

Oh, yeah. He liked to bring out all the old stories.

SPEAKER_14 3:41

We didn't see it.

SPEAKER_05 3:42

You didn't see it. We're gonna hold that forever.

SPEAKER_04 3:46

Jenna, thank you so much. Want to mention you can catch Jenna's full interview with the former presidents tomorrow morning.

SPEAKER_14 3:53

We are back at 808 now with a today exclusive part of NBC News' Common Ground initiative aimed at bringing people together in search of solutions to the challenges we face across the country. Well, Jenna is here.

SPEAKER_04 4:06

She had the chance to sit down with each of the four former U.S. presidents for their reflections ahead of America's 250th anniversary in July.

SPEAKER_05 4:14

Yeah, I did. You guys, the former presidents were all gathered in Philadelphia at a private event hosted by the History Channel. It's called History Talks. It's in partnership with our parent company, Comcast. I caught up with each of the former presidents on the sideline of the event. We talked about what inspired their service to our country, their legacies, and I asked them to share their messages to the American people on our country's historic anniversary.

SPEAKER_03 4:42

I'm William Jefferson Clinton.

SPEAKER_05 4:44

It's a time-honored tradition, 250 years strong.

SPEAKER_15 4:49

George Walker Bush do solemnly swear.

SPEAKER_05 4:51

The American people electing their leaders.

SPEAKER_08 4:54

Hi, Barack Hussein Obama.

SPEAKER_05 4:55

Presidents, an indelible mark on our nation's history. Serving their country, the highest office in the land. Hi, Dad. What's it like to be part of the ex-president club?

SPEAKER_15 5:13

Well, it can be boring when we're all together. Uh no, it's uh it's an honor. There's a great camaraderie because we all shared something special.

SPEAKER_05 5:23

Our nation's leaders, each carrying the weight of those promises and the ideals of our founding fathers. There's a weight of the presidency that few can understand.

SPEAKER_03 5:34

You understand.

SPEAKER_05 5:35

I understand it.

SPEAKER_03 5:37

I found that people were ready to help. I mean, it looked I mean, it was a senator for a long time, been that building a lot of times. Yes. 36 years I was a senator, and then eight years as vice president. And uh it was uh it was an opportunity to be able to focus on the things that I thought needed to happen.

SPEAKER_05 5:57

What was your favorite part about being the president?

SPEAKER_08 6:00

You get to meet the widest possible cross-section of the American people. You know, every corner of this country is just full of really amazing, hardworking, decent people. And getting that broad overview of who we are as Americans, it were uh it made me much less cynical. It it made me less prone to think there's an us and a they.

Why They Chose Public Service

SPEAKER_05 6:30

For some, that inspiration came from the very place they would one day call home, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. At 16 years old, you walked into the White House and met then President JFK. What did that moment do to inspire a 16-year-old kid from Hope, Arkansas to want a life in service?

SPEAKER_02 6:57

That a president, even on a bad day, can do something good for somebody. That's what I took out of it. I just couldn't believe he was done all that time. Everybody says when you become president that they remember it, blah, blah, blah. And that I knew when I was standing in the Rose Garden that I was going to be there someday. That's just not true.

SPEAKER_05 7:22

You couldn't have even imagined it in 16.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

I thought I wanted to be a United States Senator from Arkansas. I didn't dream of doing that. I never dreamed I'd be president.

SPEAKER_05 7:32

What were you most grateful for, in experience of being president of the United States?

SPEAKER_03 7:38

Well, I just was the greenest honor in my life, or any America's life. The idea that a kid from Scranton, Pennsylvania, and we were a poor, poor middle class guy, could, you know, used to have a stutter, uh, could end up being president of the United States is uh is just uh kind of a story of what America's all about.

SPEAKER_05 8:00

These foremers, as they are called, remembered for leading our country through some of our greatest challenges. What do you think was the most historically significant moment of your presidency? 9-11.

Defining Moments And Presidential Legacies

SPEAKER_15 8:14

I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you. I think historians will analyze that day, America's response after that day. It was a reminder that the human condition elsewhere matters to the security of this country. It mattered then, and it now matters now, by the way. And uh but I I think people want to know how the country responded, and it was overwhelming volunteerism, starting with the military. It was an outpouring of patriotism. We can recapture that. I hope it doesn't require crisis, but it's still latent in the American soul.

SPEAKER_05 8:51

Your presidency was a historic one. You were the first black president of our country. What do you think the history books are gonna look back and say?

SPEAKER_08 9:01

It's very hard for us to judge our place in history. That's uh up to other people. Um I can speak about what an extraordinary honor it was to serve the American people. I can speak to how inspired I was uh to hear the stories of folks out there who were doing wonderful things in their communities, uh helping each other out, being good neighbors. Um maybe one thing I am proud of is the fact that uh I think we upheld the integrity and the and and the honor of the office uh and and and how we conducted ourselves and how we ran our administration.

SPEAKER_05 9:40

What are you most grateful for for your all your years of service and your time as president?

SPEAKER_02 9:48

I am grateful that I had a chance to do what President Kennedy said everyone should want to do to make maximum use of the talents God gave me and to do it in a way that benefited other people. You know, you can get up every day, no matter how bad it is, you can make something good happen for somebody. And that is a gift beyond imagining.

SPEAKER_05 10:17

How do you hope the history books see your service?

SPEAKER_03 10:21

Well, I hope it's not only can see your grandfather's service as generated by making sure everybody got a shot. My dad just said, look, Joey, everyone's entitled to a shot. I'll guarantee everyone's entitled to a shot, guarantee.

SPEAKER_05 10:44

250 years later, a nation tested in a democracy that endures. You ran on a simple yet effective principle, which was hope. Do you still feel that hope in our country? I do.

SPEAKER_08 11:04

I I you know, um the first time I was on the national stage and I talked about hope.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Hope in the face of difficulty.

SPEAKER_08 11:15

I reminded people hope is not blind optimism.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

The audacity of hope.

SPEAKER_08 11:21

Hope it arises in the face of difficulty, in the in f in the face of uncertainty. And obviously, we're going through some uncertain times, but when you look at the sweep of American history, we've gone through rough patches, and we tend to come out on the other side of them stronger.

SPEAKER_05 11:40

Family members can't sit across from one another and debate. They can. We can. And we have for a long time. Yes, we have. But what what can help us bring us back to each other?

SPEAKER_15 11:54

Well, I think when we one of the things about the 250th is its chance to focus on uh the common good and the wonders of this country, the the history of this country, the fact that you can worship freely without government tell you how to worship, the fact that you can speak in the public square without being jailed, the fact that we have a press that's willing to hold a powerful to account. I mean, these are all things that should and generally do unite us. I am not concerned about the long-term health of our country because I've studied enough history to know that we've been through the periods of the uh of intense uh anger and intense uh rivalry of ideas. Uh but the beauty about democracy, Jed, is that it's self-correcting. And one of the key things I'm going to try to do during the 250th is encourage citizens to participate in the process. And if you don't like what's going on, vote. And that's how America heals itself.

SPEAKER_03 12:50

I'm not sure we're as divided as we portray it. I'm sure there's anywhere from 15 to 30 percent of the people who are on the one end here. But I think the vast majority of people are coming around to conclude that, you know, those things that they don't even think about it directly, but the safeguards of the Constitution. I I think people begin to realize they're sort of being trampled on right now. So I'm hopeful that people are going to begin to say, well, wait, wait, wait, we've got to slow this thing up. We're coming to the 250th anniversary of the country, and uh for me it I think it reminds people that democracies depend on certain basic rules.

SPEAKER_05 13:36

In 1993, when became president, my grandfather left you a letter.

SPEAKER_02 15:39

Uh what did that letter mean? It meant the world because it basically said we had a tough campaign. It's over, you won. And I wish you well because you're all our president now. And your success is America's and every American's. I really wish you well. I kept that letter close at hand for years after the I read it. I was just so touched by it. And then when your dad was elected, I wrote him a letter that said basically the same thing.

SPEAKER_05 16:19

What do you think we can learn from that in this moment in history?

SPEAKER_02 16:26

That America is bigger than anybody's personal hopes and dreams.

SPEAKER_05 16:34

For the American people, sometimes it's the smallest gestures that have the biggest impact.

SPEAKER_15 16:40

I get a little antsy, as I'm sure you know. And I was sitting next to Michelle. That's what happened. That's who I sit next to at funerals, and uh, I was kind of teasing her and stuff, and I slipped her an altoid. Not as a joke, but uh uh I thought she might want one. And uh I got in the car afterwards and he said, You're trending. I didn't know what trending meant. And uh and it turns out the country is starved to see a you know white center right Republican and uh uh African American center-left Democrat having fun and being able to uh converse, not as political figures, but as citizens. And uh I I I I intend to continue to try to do that.

SPEAKER_05 17:24

Our next chapter filled with the same passion and determination on all sides to hold close to the principles that built America and made her strong. As we're celebrating 250 years of our democracy, what message do you have to Americans?

SPEAKER_08 17:42

Remember what's best in us. Um the the basic principle upon which this country was founded, which is uh we don't have rulers, we don't have kings or monarchs or aristocracies, we have citizens. And if we hold true to that idea that we the people uh have been gifted this chance of self-government, if if we pay attention to uh our responsibilities and our duties, and if we extend respect and thoughtfulness to our fellow citizens, um, even if we disagree with them. If if we understand that part of this democratic project is to sort through our differences in peaceful legal ways, um then uh I'm confident that we're gonna have another 250-year run that's gonna be just as good.

Epstein Files Released Then Redacted

SPEAKER_02 18:44

The country will survive as much by the process, by the freedom to speak, by the freedom to vote, by the freedom to be active in politics as by any particular issue. And that's the reason because it's like it is, compromise is essential.

SPEAKER_03 19:05

We're the most unique country in the world. I think democracy is dictated by the rules of the Constitution. And we do believe, and what we act, and when we do, we do well, that all men agree equal.

SPEAKER_15 19:22

My message is consider yourself fortunate to be a part of uh a great nation. Study our history so you have a better sense for what the future will be like, and be a citizen, not a spectator. And by that I mean participate in the process, but also love a neighbor like you'd like to be loved yourself. See, one of the beauties of this country is that there are thousands and thousands of citizens who volunteer on a daily basis to help somebody in need. They're often not heralded, but they make a huge difference one person at a time. And uh I would hope people will take a look at our history and realize we're an imperfect nation trying to be more perfect. But be optimistic about the future of the country.

SPEAKER_04 20:09

Yes, yeah. What a great conversation.

SPEAKER_05 20:13

I mean, what an honor. We I realized when I was flying home. I mean, I've interviewed each of them. I know you all have too, but to get to be with them all on one day, they have different beliefs, different thoughts, they've served differently. But, you know, they to hear them all say, I have hope in our country. Yes, I'm optimistic. I my dad did say we we didn't have time in that um documentary to put this in, but um, he did say he was gonna bring they're all gonna be together for President Obama's library opening early later this summer. And he said he was gonna bring Mrs. Obama a crate of Altoy.

SPEAKER_14 20:49

I love her.

Cash Patel Profile And FBI Turmoil

SPEAKER_07 20:51

I mean, that said a lot of good things, but one might have reasonably expected that when Congress passed, with near unanimity, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, legislation signed into law by the very president who spent months attempting to scuttle it, the American public would receive something approximating transparency. Instead, what the Department of Justice delivered on December 19th was a masterclass in the art of bureaucratic obfuscation, thousands of pages in which the text had been replaced by the absence of text, hundreds of documents so thoroughly blacked out that they resembled nothing so much as a confession written in the language of cowardice. Consider the mathematics of this contemptuous exercise. Over 550 pages rendered completely illegible, 119 pages of grand jury testimony from New York, a document presumably containing the most substantive material about how a known pedophile managed to evade serious federal prosecution for decades, transformed into a solid rectangle of black. 255 consecutive pages of evidence, testimony, or God knows what, converted into what can only be described as the visual manifestation of a cover-up in progress. The Department of Justice, in its infinite wisdom, apparently believes the American public is too fragile to handle the truth about how Jeffrey Epstein cultivated his garden of powerful friends, friends who, for reasons that remain suspiciously obscure, still require protection from the embarrassment of association. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, a man whose previous occupation was serving as Donald Trump's personal defense attorney, a fact that should give pause to anyone with functioning critical faculties, has offered the predictable defense that every redaction serves the noble purpose of protecting victims. This explanation would be more convincing if it didn't fall apart upon the slightest examination. When photographs containing images of Trump mysteriously vanished from the department's website mere hours after their publication, only to be restored following public outcry, Blanche offered the risible explanation that the Southern District of New York had flagged the image for potential further action to protect victims. The victims in this formulation apparently required protection from a photograph showing Trump's image alongside Epstein's effects. One wonders what species of victim advocacy demands the temporary disappearance of evidence implicating the current president of the United States. The law that compelled this release, the same law Trump ultimately signed after being dragged kicking and screaming by members of his own party, explicitly forbids the government from withholding records due to the risk of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity. The statute might as well have been printed on toilet paper for all the respect the administration has shown it. Representative Thomas Massey, a Republican from Kentucky who co-sponsored the legislation, has accused the administration of failing to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law. Representative Roe Kana, his Democratic counterpart in this bipartisan effort, has raised the specter of impeachment or prosecution referrals. When legislators from both parties are united in denouncing an administration's handling of a legal mandate, one begins to suspect that something other than victim protection motivates the army of redactors. The survivors themselves, the actual victims whose interests the department claims to champion, have not been fooled. Marina Laserda, who testified that Epstein abused her when she was 14 years old, characterized the release as another slap in the face. All of us are infuriated by this, she told reporters. Another survivor, Marika Chartuni, posed the rather obvious question: if everything is redacted, where is the transparency? The women who Who suffered at Epstein's hands have spent years waiting for accountability, only to receive a document dump composed largely of black rectangles and irrelevant photographs. The government's message to them could not be clearer. Your trauma is less important than protecting the reputations of the powerful men who moved through Epstein's orbit. And what are those powerful men? The files that have emerged beneath their patina of black ink show images of Bill Clinton swimming with Gislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker who served as Epstein's principal accomplice. They show Prince Andrew draped across the laps of women whose faces have been obscured. They contain phone logs, flight manifests, and the detritus of a vast criminal enterprise that operated for decades with something approaching impunity. What they do not contain, or rather, what remains hidden beneath the redactions, is precisely the information that would explain how this was possible. The memo that accompanied a 2007 draft indictment of Epstein, a document that Massey and Kana explicitly designed their legislation to capture, was not included in the release. The internal communications documenting how prosecutors made their decisions remain concealed under claims of privilege. A leaked Republican memo that circulated through Congress this month provides a helpful window into the party's strategy for managing this debacle. The document instructs members to dismiss any damaging revelations about Trump as a politically motivated hoax and to redirect attention toward Democrats, specifically Representatives Stacey Plaskett and Suha Subramanium and Rua Roman, none of whom enjoyed anything resembling Trump's decades-long personal and business relationship with the deceased sex trafficker. The memo deploys the classic strategy of Darvo, deny, attack, reverse victim and offender, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. What it notably fails to do is dispute the accuracy of any information contained in the files themselves. Let us be clear about what we know regarding Trump's relationship with Epstein, since the president's defenders seemed determined to pretend otherwise. The two men were photographed together repeatedly over many years. Trump once told New York magazine that Epstein was a terrific guy who likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. Epstein had numerous contact numbers for Trump in his personal directory, along with listings for Ivana and Ivanka Trump. A photograph in the newly released files shows Epstein holding a novelty check bearing Trump's signature, framed with the caption, Once in a Blue Moon. An email from Epstein to Maxwell in 2011 noted that that dog that hasn't barked is Trump and claimed that Virginia Jufre, one of Epstein's most prominent accusers, who died by suicide this year at 41, had spent hours at my house with him. For the former president, it seems the barking has finally commenced. The political dynamics here would be amusing if they weren't so infuriating. Trump spent months attempting to prevent this release, going so far as to direct House Republicans not to sign the discharge petition that would force a vote on the matter. When Marjorie Taylor Green, of all people, broke ranks to support transparency, Trump was, in her words, furious. He said it was going to hurt people, Green recounted. The president branded her Marjorie Traitor Green and withdrew his endorsement. She has since announced her resignation from Congress, citing death threats that she attributes to Trump's public attacks. The president's response to her safety concerns was characteristically empathetic. I don't think her life is in danger. Frankly, I don't think anybody cares about her. The hypocrisy on display requires a moment of sustained contemplation. For years, Trump and his allies cultivated the QAnon movement, a sprawling conspiracy theory, whose central premise is that a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles controls the government and that Trump was divinely appointed to expose them. The movement operated under slogans like Save the Children and portrayed Trump as a crusader against elite child traffickers. His allies, Pam Bondi, Cash Patel, Dan Bongino, promised repeatedly that the Epstein Files would be released and the truth revealed. Attorney General Bondi distributed binders labeled the Epstein Files Phase I to social media influencers earlier this year. The implication was always that the files would expose Democrats while exonerating Trump. Instead, what has emerged is evidence of Trump's intimate decades-long association with the most notorious paedophile of the modern era, accompanied by a frantic effort to bury that evidence under black ink. The man who was supposed to storm the gates and expose the pedophile elite turns out to have been at the parties. The savior was a regular at the predators' dinner table. One might expect this revelation to prompt some soul searching among Trump's supporters, particularly those who were drawn to him through appeals to child protection. One would be wrong. The same mental architecture that allowed believers to dismiss every previous failure of QAnon's predictions, the storm that never arrived, the mass arrests that never occurred, the great awakening that never dawned, permits them now to rationalize this contradiction. Some blame the deep state for thwarting Trump's noble intentions. Others insist the delay is strategic, another dimension of the plan. The capacity for self-deception, it seems, is bottomless. For those of us who have not surrendered our critical faculties, the picture is somewhat clearer. The President of the United States is using the power of the Justice Department to conceal information about his relationship with a convicted sex trafficker. The law mandating transparency is being flouted. The victims are being ignored, and the party that styles itself as the defender of children has closed ranks to protect a man whose friendship with Jeffrey Epstein spanned decades and whose efforts to prevent the release of these files bordered on the frantic. The shamelessness of it is almost admirable in its brazenness. Trump calls the Epstein matter a Democrat hoax, despite the fact that Epstein was his friend, not Bill Clinton's, or rather, in addition to Bill Clinton's. He dismisses calls for transparency as the work of troublemakers and radical left lunatics, while his own Department of Justice transforms legally mandated disclosures into a monument to redaction. He expresses confidence that his base will forget about the whole matter while his appointees labor to ensure there is nothing left to remember. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was characteristically understated when he observed that simply releasing a mountain of blacked-out pages violates the spirit of transparency and the letter of the law. Representative Jamie Raskin was more direct, accusing the administration of covering up things that, for whatever reason, Donald Trump doesn't want to go public, either about himself, other members of his family, friends, Jeffrey Epstein, or just the social, business, cultural network that he was involved in for at least a decade, if not longer. There will be more releases in the coming weeks, we are told. More documents will emerge from the department's vaults, presumably bearing additional black rectangles where the truth once resided. The administration will continue to claim that every redaction serves the interests of victims, while the actual victims continue to express their fury at being silenced once again. And Trump's supporters will continue to believe that their champion is secretly fighting the pedophile elite. Evidence to the contrary, notwithstanding. The whole sorry spectacle illuminates a truth about American politics that we would prefer not to acknowledge. Accountability is for the powerless. Jeffrey Epstein avoided serious federal prosecution for years because he was rich and connected. His victims were ignored because they were young and vulnerable. And now, even in death, his network of powerful friends continues to enjoy the protection of the very institutions that should be exposing them. The Black Inc tells its own story. Each redacted page is a decision, a choice made by someone with the authority to reveal or conceal. When hundreds of pages emerge as solid rectangles of black, that is not an accident of process, it is a statement of priorities. The Department of Justice has examined the evidence and concluded that whatever lies beneath those redactions is more dangerous to the powerful than it is useful to the public. We are left with the question that Marjorie Taylor Greene posed before her excommunication from the MAGA Faithful: why fight this so hard? She claims not to know what is in the files, neither really do we. But the intensity of the effort to keep that information hidden suggests that those who do know are very, very afraid of what would happen if the rest of us found out. The children who were trafficked through Epstein's operation deserved better than this. The survivors who testified, who went public with their trauma, who fought for years for some measure of justice, they deserved better than 550 pages of black rectangles. The American public, which was promised transparency by legislators of both parties and by a president who signed the very law now being flouted, deserves better than the insulting theater of concealment masquerading as compliance. Instead, we have received a masterwork of cowardice, thousands of pages in which the truth has been replaced by its absence, testimony transformed into silence, evidence converted into the visual representation of a cover-up in progress. When the history of this sordid episode is written, the black ink will tell the story that the Department of Justice refused to tell. And the question of what and whom that ink was meant to protect will hang in the air, unanswered and unanswerable, a monument to the corruption of power and the protection of the protected. Those who continue to support this administration while claiming to oppose human trafficking and protect children have surrendered any pretense of intellectual coherence. You cannot simultaneously venerate a man as the scourge of elite pedophiles while defending his frantic efforts to conceal his decades-long friendship with the most infamous pedophile of our time. You cannot claim to champion victims while excusing an administration that ignores their pleas for transparency. You cannot pretend to care about children while providing political cover for the burial of evidence that might explain how their abuser operated with impunity for so long. But consistency was never the point. The point was power, the acquisition of it, the maintenance of it, and the deployment of it to protect those who possess it from the consequences of their associations. In this, at least, the redacted files have achieved their purpose admirably. The truth remains hidden, the powerful remain protected, and the victims remain, as they have always been, an afterthought. Their suffering less important than the reputations of men who preferred not to be embarrassed. One had hoped, perhaps naively, that the machinery of democracy might force a different outcome. Congress passed a law, the president signed it. The Department of Justice was mandated to release the files, and yet here we are, sifting through black rectangles and disappeared photographs, watching as the law is transformed into a suggestion and transparency into a performance. The files we were promised would tell us the truth. Instead, they have told us something else entirely: that in America there are some truths too dangerous to speak, and some men too powerful to expose. The Black Inc has spoken.

SPEAKER_13 35:58

Shall we turn to what's going on with the head of the FBI here and some internal drama here in the US? In lighter news. Yeah, it is a bit lighter.

SPEAKER_10 36:07

Yeah, a bit lighter. Yeah. Well, Cash Patel, FBI director Cash Patel was the subject of a truly wild Atlantic profile that posted, it really was more of a profile than a report, posted on Friday. And now I'm gonna give the bylines on this. So this is Sarah Fitzpatrick, and I include some prior reporting from Ashley Parker and Jonathan Lemere. Those are two, I would say, people who are sourced up in anti-Trump world. So keep that in mind. Keep in mind that the FBI is undergoing uh some purging processes where you would have people who really, really, really dislike cash patel for political reasons and the like. But this is really having like talk to like 12 people. Yeah, it's I mean, it's it wouldn't surprise me that they were able to find 12 people who absolutely hate Cash Patel, but this reporting is pretty. Like even if you hate Cash Patel, it doesn't mean that you're spewing lies necessarily.

SPEAKER_13 36:59

Right. Also, I mean those 12 people would all have to like spin the same story in the same way.

SPEAKER_10 37:05

Yeah, right. It's really specific stuff. Like read like if we just read the lead here. On Friday, April 10th, as FBI director Cash Patel was preparing to leave work for the weekend, he struggled to log on to an internal computer system. Uh he quickly became convinced that he had been locked out and he panicked, frantically calling AIDS and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House, according to nine people familiar with his outreach. So, like we were just saying, a really specific story here, corroborated by nine sources to the Atlantic. Uh two of them described his behavior as, quote, a freakout about a very specific instance very recently. So that was about seven days. It was like a week before this story published, exactly a week before this story published, about the computer system. He can't get into the computer. He's so freaked out. Now, the Atlantic had reported not long before that Cash Patel after Pam Bondi was on basically a list, maybe not a formal list, but a list of people who could be axed within DOJ at any moment. So maybe that had something to do with his paranoia. But it goes on to cite all kinds of current officials, former officials who remain, quote, close to him, according to The Atlantic, uh, saying that he is, quote, deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy, including what's some reasons, quote, having to do with what witnesses describe to me as bouts of excessive drinking.

SPEAKER_12 38:21

Now, obviously, that goes back to Cash Fattel. Are we talking about the same cash fatel here? I know. I just, I can't believe it, Emily. I mean, he looked like a novice when he was deer chugging in the locker room.

SPEAKER_13 38:35

Let's put C4 up on the screen. C4. This guy, this is the guy you're talking about here. This one has a drinking.

SPEAKER_12 38:43

I just can't believe it. This is business.

SPEAKER_13 38:46

These people's business.

SPEAKER_10 38:48

This is going to be my business.

SPEAKER_13 38:50

Reportedly, Trump was uh supposedly pissed off about this, by the way. Yeah. Because Trump had a brother who was an alcoholic and you know, found this all to be sort of horrifying. That is part of why I think cash, one of the reasons that cash is is actually justifiable. That behavior is rational, justifiably afraid that he is imminently going to be fired.

SPEAKER_10 39:11

Well, and people forget that there was a uh a man who was detained, arrested, trying to kill Trump. Literally, the day that Cash Patel allegedly trying to kill Trump, the day that Cash Patel is filmed chugging beers while almost at the same time. Cash Patel was chugging beers uh in the locker room of the Olympic hockey team, which by the way, hockey team, awesome. Cash Patel still nobody knows what was happening at all. They said this is according to, quote, several officials who told the reporter, quote, Patel's drinking has been a recurring source of concern across the government. They said that he is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication. In many cases, at the private club NEDs in Washington, D.C. It's just around a corner from the White House. He's also known to drink to excess at the poodle room in Las Vegas, where he frequently spends part of his weekends. That is something that's go about in DC, that he's not actually even in DC, that often that he spends a lot of time in Las Vegas. I don't know how true that is, but obviously uh some of it gets into this story here. Now, Patel says, all lies, print it, I'll see you in court, and then responds on, he goes on uh Sunday morning features with Maria Bartaromo just yesterday, known to be one of Trump's favorite shows. Obviously, Trump watches Maria Bartaromo, seemingly uh with a religious photographer. So here's Cash Patel's response just yesterday to Bar to Barta Romo, C1.

SPEAKER_11 40:31

The Atlantic magazine uh director uh is alleging that you have a drinking problem, that it is getting in the way of your work running the FBI. What is your response this morning to this article?

SPEAKER_01 40:45

Look, Maria, you and I have been at this together for a long time, whether I was leading the investigation on Russia Gate back in the house, um, or my time in the Trump admin one and now, and the results, I say, speak for themselves. If the fake news mafia isn't hitting you personally with baseless information in Washington, D.C., then you're not doing your job. And it's louder than ever because this FBI, under President Trump's brilliant leadership and backing the blue and backing law enforcement, this FBI has the most prolific year in crime reduction in the United States history. So if I'm not doing my job, if I'm not working, then how is it that the FBI delivered the safest America under President Trump's leadership in the history of our country? They can beat their drums and stand next to toxic waste all they want, but that doesn't make it toxic waste. And Maria, I'm happy to announce on your show that we are not gonna take this laying down. You want to attack my character? Come at me. Bring it on. I'll see you in court.

SPEAKER_11 41:38

So you're gonna shoe them.

SPEAKER_01 41:41

Absolutely. It's coming tomorrow.

SPEAKER_11 41:43

Tomorrow you will be dropping a lawsuit against the Atlantic magazine.

SPEAKER_01 41:48

Yes, yes, I will for defamation.

SPEAKER_10 41:51

All right, well, we'll see what actually happens in that case today, Crystal. But uh, let's actually go ahead and skip here to C5. Probably no surprise. This is uh Mark Elias uh posting from the Democracy Docket. FBI director Cash Patel said that his agency will soon make arrest maybe this week in connection to the 2020 presidential election, which he claims was rigid. Now, uh you could hear in the Barterromo clip the uh sort of high school theater level of acting from President Trump's leadership and his decision to back the blue.

SPEAKER_13 42:22

And you notice Fox had pre-prepared a graphic with all the stats. Did you see that they put when he started talking about that that had the like this many arrests, this many child predators, the blah blah blah. In Fox News, ready to go with this uh, you know, when he launched his high school acting uh moment here, they they were ready to support him with that. Interesting.

SPEAKER_10 42:43

Uh well that's probably what's uh buoying him, to be honest, is that the FBI has had some successes cracking down on crime, but how much of that is actually the FBI and how much is the national atmosphere? We could do a whole segment on that. Uh, but I do just want to read the part about the hockey team from the Atlantic story. They say, quote, while an official travel to Italy, he's trying to eat beer, quote, the incident prompted the president who does not drink and whose brother died following a long struggle with alcoholism, to call the FBI director to convey his unhappiness according to two officials familiar with the call. So just keep that in mind. So you have somebody who would be familiar with the call as we try to figure out the sourcing here. I also just wanted to uh bring up this this other part of the story that gets to the sourcing, uh, which said that they are internally within the Trump administration um already discussing who they might replace Cash Mattel with. So that is, I mean, that's that's a pretty clear sign that he's genuinely in jeopardy and that this isn't just like it is the most obvious thing in the world that if you go and you start purging uh career officials from the FBI, a lot of them are probably going to leak. The FBI leaks a lot to journalists already. And so in this really polarized climate where people don't like Trump, is the most obvious thing in the world that you're probably going to get some hit pieces written about you. That what I just uh referenced was quote sourced to senior members of the Trump administration, according to an administration official and two people close to the White House who are familiar with the conversation. So that tells us at the very least that Patel has enemies within Trump circles. Uh, and that that tells us in and of itself that this is already fairly serious, Crystal.

SPEAKER_13 44:28

Well, and here's the thing too. I mean, it's all it's demonstrably had an impact on his ability to do the job effectively during the Charlie Kirk early days of the early hours of the Charlie Kirk investigation. He was tweeting out, oh, we've got someone in custody in custody, giving very much the impression that, like, oh, we got the guy when they very much had not gotten the guy. Um The Brown case too. It's same very similar situation unfolded with the Brown case. What they say in this article is that suspicion is that that was because he was like half drunk when he was getting this information in and then just, you know, no inhibitions, tweeting it out. Why not? Uh, the other thing, in terms of just like the seriousness that we're talking about. So they had to reschedule all his meetings to later in the day because he's like too hungover in the morning to be able to get up there. Or he's in Las Vegas. Or he's anything. And then and they also talk about how they're like, well, it's kind of nice when he's not here, actually. But then it's also kind of a problem that we don't actually really have an FBI director. And there have been times too, there was a time when they had to summon breaching equipment, like the type a SWAT team would use to like bust into a house to try to get into his home because he was, you know, so sort of like passed out drunk or or after effects, et cetera, that he was not responding at all and he was behind locked doors. So that's the length that they've had to go to to um to deal with this guy. I mean, so that's uh that's the I guess that's what the is one of the problems of Cash Patel's leadership at the FBI. And do you think that do you think that he actually is likely to go? Or sometimes these stories from the from the lame stream media sometimes they push Trump in the other direction, it seems, where it kind of like then he doesn't want to be seen as giving in to the Atlantic in this case. So he at least keeps them around for a little bit longer.

Staffing Fights And Optics Over Substance

SPEAKER_10 46:15

You know, I was totally surprised by the Pam Bondi uh departure, and that genuinely surprised me. There there really hadn't been a lot of rumors at all that she was in jeopardy, um, which is is almost always the case. You start hearing the gossip and people are upset with her. And it was true that some people were a little bit irked by obviously the Epstein stuff, um, but the administration had just been doubling and tripling, quadrupling down instead. Support of Pam Bondi on all of that. So I'm not sure. You know, Cash Patel strikes me as someone who would be hard to replace from Trump's perspective. Like somebody who is as what's the right word for it? Like as I don't know, charismatic's not the right word for it, but like as performatively MAGA and anti-deep state. Um hard to find somebody. And he also, I mean, lest we forget, Cash Patel did have like prior DOJ experience, which was one of the interesting like distinctions, I think, between him and other possible candidates that he had actually worked like as a bureaucrat at the DOJ. Um, prior in his career, he was on, he's like the senior aide on House Intel. And to find somebody who who kind of checks both of those boxes, who is like so performatively MAGA and has some experience that you can kind of squeeze into the FBI director box, that actually could be tough for Trump.

SPEAKER_13 47:36

Well, and it seems like the thing that Trump isn't most pissed off about is that he hasn't done enough to like go after Trump's enemies. That's the thing that Trump's disappointed in his performance over. And uh, so that's why, you know, the information about okay, now Cash is gonna go out and try to arrest somebody or make some have some sort of action with regard to the election being stolen in 2020. It it tracks with, okay, this is how I'm gonna save my job, right? And it also tracks with it reminds very much of Tulsa Gabbard getting involved in the Fulton County raid and inserting herself there to try to reclaim her status within the administration after she had fallen off there. So I guess that's the way back into Trump's good graces.

How To Support The Show

SPEAKER_10 48:15

Yeah, it also reminds me a little bit of Christy Gnome, uh, where you know we saw Christy Gnome doing some of this performative stuff too. And even people whose jobs aren't in jeopardy, like we see it at those cabinet meetings are performatively pro-Trump. But there's an exasperation in some like hardcore MAGA circles in DC, with, for example, the Charlie Kirk investigation uh and other top priorities epstein, for example, for like MAGA grass roots. Uh in you know, DC circles where there are people like Cash Patel who were saying, we're gonna get to the bottom of Epstein. Like this Epstein thing is a disaster for the left and for the Democrats. And so there are people who are just utterly exasperated with the showmanship of the Christy Gnomes on deportations, for example, and then looking around and saying, we want you to go much harder. Same exact thing with Cash Patel. Um, that's something that you hear, it's just this exasperation with putting uh the showmanship over the substance. And that's where you have Mark Wayne Mullen coming out just in the new DHS director, just in the last week, saying, we're gonna be doing stuff that you're not seeing in the headlines. Our goal is not to be in the headlines. Uh, he said that on, I think he said that on Fox. Um, and so that's where it could, I could see changes being made in that people are absolutely sick of uh seeing so much performativity with legal substance.

SPEAKER_13 49:29

It kind of attracts it. I don't know if you saw this story. They're looking for a new, or I guess they nominated someone to be the new CDC head. And in the search for that, the the criteria was we need someone who's not crazy. That was the idea is like, okay, we this has been too much of a mess. It's been all over the place. Trump is not comfortable, I think, with all the anti-vax stuff, because obviously he sees one of his primary accomplishments from his first term was the quick spin-up of the COVID vaccine, and uh, which I think he deserves some credit for the, you know, Operation Warp Speed, I think was highly successful in, you know, developing and then pretty rapidly the Biden administration was able to deploy the vaccine pretty rapidly. But you brought in this Maha coalition, which is deeply vaccine skeptical. And RFK Jr. obviously like his whole thing is like hating vaccines, basically. I'll object to that, but that's just the reality. And so, you know, I don't think I don't think Trump, like Trump has not really expressed that he's ever been fully on board with this stuff. And so now it feels like he is okay. This is this is a mess. This is causing problems for me and my you know political desires. So we're we gotta get in someone here who is, in his view, not crazy. So interesting.

SPEAKER_10 50:38

We'll see. We'll see. We will see, yeah. Kind of assembling a crew of crazy people was the 2.0 uh like strategy. So yeah. Depends on how's that going? Right, yeah. It wasn't that she had a bunch of DHS experience, it was that she was a good uh Trump Sawyer is a good spokesperson. So uh I think probably similar with Cash Patel, and it tracks. I mean, this is the fruit line of the show today, is that Trump is so obsessed with optics that sometimes it undermines his substantive goals. Yeah.

SPEAKER_13 51:07

True. Um, all right. Well, Emily, thank you for doing the first half of the show. We're gonna swap out, swap you out now for Ryan. It's my pleasure.

SPEAKER_10 51:15

Ryan's gonna tap in. I'm passing the baton. And then Sagar is playing to be back tomorrow. Excellent. All right, we'll see you soon. So yeah.

SPEAKER_09 51:23

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SPEAKER_13 51:28

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SPEAKER_09 51:35

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