How Trump’s Epstein woes nearly derailed his spending cuts
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 July 2025
⏱️ 23 minutes
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Summary
Congress passed a rescissions package early Friday. The package formally withdraws funding for foreign aid, as well as for public television and radio stations. But debate stretched into the night on Thursday, as unrest over the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case continued to roil the GOP.
While the bill passed along largely partisan lines, the saga illustrates the heat some Republicans are facing after the recent Justice Department decision to withhold the “Epstein files” from the public. Host Colby Itkowitz speaks with Post congressional reporters Liz Goodwin and Marianna Sotomayor about the controversy over the rescissions package and why the Epstein scandal remains a sticking point for lawmakers.
Today’s show was produced by Arjun Singh. It was edited by Laura Benshoff and mixed by Sean Carter.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I've been thinking, you know, especially since Trump came on the scene, like a news cycle lasts, you know, a minute. |
| 0:08.6 | Like, stories don't stick around maybe for more than a couple of days. |
| 0:12.0 | But we've been talking about Jeffrey Epstein now for what, almost two weeks. |
| 0:18.1 | How is this the thing that's stuck? |
| 0:21.3 | It wasn't on my bingo card for recovering in the year. |
| 0:27.7 | I mean, I think it has all the elements of just like a story that people can't let go of in a way, right? |
| 0:34.6 | It's like, there's a jet, there's a private island, there's wrongdoing, |
| 0:38.6 | there's a mysterious suicide in a prison. And a couple of lawmakers described it to me as like a |
| 0:44.9 | political TMZ. Like people just love to know what happens next. |
| 0:54.9 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. |
| 0:58.6 | I'm Colby Echowitz, politics reporter, and host of Post Reports Weekly Politics Roundtables. |
| 1:04.0 | It's Friday, July 18th. |
| 1:06.2 | I'm so excited to be joined this week by a congressional correspondent here at The Post, |
| 1:10.0 | Liz Goodwin. |
| 1:10.7 | Hey, Liz. Hello, thanks for having me. And I'm also so excited to be joined this week by a congressional correspondent here at the post, Liz Goodwin. Hey, Liz. |
| 1:11.5 | Hello, thanks for having me. And I'm also so excited to be here with Mariana Sotomayor, who covers the House of Representatives for us. |
| 1:18.4 | Hey, Mariana. Hi, thanks for having me back. |
| 1:24.3 | So this week, the House and the Senate passed another major bill that cuts government spending. |
| 1:30.0 | But fighting among lawmakers over Jeffrey Epstein threatened to derail that vote in the House last night. |
| 1:35.8 | So we'll talk about what was in that spending cut package later. But let's start by talking about |
| 1:40.6 | the unrelated drama that overtook the House yesterday as Republicans were trying to get it passed. |
| 1:46.3 | Much of the debate in the House yesterday was about Jeffrey Epstein. |
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