On MSNBC's The Weeknight, Angelo Carusone discusses the Epstein files story and why it's still simmering in MAGA media even as Fox News moves on
Carusone: “Underneath it, they each have their own individualized frustrations or feeling of betrayal on foreign policy and elsewhere. And this is now the vehicle, the vessel by which they are channeling that populist outrage.”
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Citation
From the July 15, 2025, edition of MSNBC's The Weeknight
ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): The clip you played at the beginning of, you know, Speaker Johnson talking about transparency, right after he finished that, then he goes down to the House floor and whips votes to make sure that there is no transparency. And there's a big tell there because all the Republicans got in line. They are not acting like Donald Trump is a lame duck president. They are not — I mean, they have not gotten the memo. You know, they've not done anything that's in their self-interest here.
ALICIA MENENDEZ (CO-HOST): Or they have gotten the memo.
CARUSONE: Well, they have, right. Yeah, that's exactly it. They just — they have not. They have not changed their perspective, right? I mean, they are fully in line as if this guy is going to be in power for a really long time. That's the calculus that they've clearly displayed on the floor. And I do think it's tied in again to a larger issue, which is what's going on in MAGA media because what was the other part of that Speaker Johnson interview was he was there with Benny Johnson, one of the first people out of the gate, hammering away at Pam Bondi and pushing for more transparency on Epstein.
And yet boop, all of a sudden, he's now sitting in the speaker's office broadcasting his show live after he changed tune and said, yeah, Comey probably put this together, sort of toeing the line of the administration. Because one of the things Trump did over the weekend was get a few lighthouses within MAGA media to shift course, to say, no, we're going to direct our attention over here. Either we're going to be mad at Biden or somebody else. We're going to deflect. So, in MAGA media, there is a part of it that is sort of containing it and getting it under control, the ones that are really tied into the core of the political media ecosystem.
But if you go one ring out from there, you start to see a few interesting things, more than just cracks and schadenfreude. What you start to see is the Tim Dillons of the world, sort of the bro-casts, they're not buying it, right? They may be weaving other conspiracies. One of the theories they have right now is somebody must have threatened Donald Trump.
If you were the bro-cast that you were listening to in October, what you hear right now is Donald Trump is scared. That's what they're saying. That's what Tim Dillon is saying. That's what people like him, like Joe Rogan, are saying that he's scared. Somebody threatened him. They said they were going to kill him if he released these files. That's the argument they're making because surely that's the only explanation they could come up with.
And then you have others, like, you know, the Laura Loomers or Rachel Campos-Duffy who's Secretary Duffy's wife, who's out there saying, I'm not going to change my tune. I want transparency. So, there's a core part there. And then you have the Steve Bannons that are trying to say, well, I should take the mantle here. You should give me control of the narrative because I can steer us through this rocky waters. Oh, and by the way, I have 15 hours of interviews that I did with Jeffrey Epstein that I haven't released yet. Maybe those will suddenly appear or maybe they won't. Maybe I'll keep them on the shelf and not let this simmering conspiracy go back up to a royal boil. So, that's sort of what's happening in the — the last thing I'll just say is that Trump isn't connected to the zeitgeist for the first time in a long time. He's too busy watching Fox. They've got the memo. They stopped talking about it. But the rest of MAGA media and the online ecosystem, they have not. It's still simmering pretty wildly.
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CARUSONE: I also think it's worth, you know, to your point, some of those examples, you pointed out, the seeds of that disappointment and frustration were sown a few weeks ago. Joe Rogan coming out and complaining about immigration. Shawn Ryan, recently, another prominent podcaster, saying, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, this has gone — this is not what I signed up for. Some of these other — now, I don't buy it. These are smart business people. They knew what they were doing, but now they're saying, well, that's too much. This is too far. Some of the discussions around Medicare.
Steve Bannon was a vocal advocate out there saying you better start listening to me on this Medicare stuff or you're going to lose a large part of your base. What did he say this week? He repeated the same thing, but instead of saying, you're going to lose your base because of your Medicare cuts, he said, you're going to lose 10% of your base because of the Epstein things. You better start listening to me.
So to your — one thing is that this is very fertile. This is an easy type of cancer. It will metastasize because they've put so much energy into this. If you ignore the conspiracy part of it and the subject matter, what it boils down to is a simple story. The establishment's bad. Donald Trump is going to break the establishment, and what he is doing here is protecting the establishment. He's literally doing a turn heel. He is flipping his story and he doesn't even realize it. So, it's easy for them to organize around it.
But underneath it, they each have their own individualized frustrations or feeling of betrayal on foreign policy and elsewhere. And this is now the vehicle, the vessel by which they are channeling that populist outrage. And I'll just note, I always say sometimes if you really want to know what's going on, it's rare, but you listen to the callers because right now, if you listen to the callers on talk radio, they're mad. They're listening. They weren't using the word betrayal around Medicare. Democrats were using it. Media was using it. But they weren't saying they felt betrayed because they haven't gotten the cuts yet.
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MENENDEZ: What if he doesn't care? What if he says to himself, wait a second, I am a lame duck president. I'm not really interested in the process of legislating. So, why do I need to continue to play this game with these folks? You're the only person nodding at me.
CARUSONE: That's authoritarianism. Once you start to consolidate power, you turn on your people because you don't need them anymore. You build an organized power on the fringes. You don't live there. First, you get there.