Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast.

I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Delight to welcome to the show, author and journalist.

He's Chief Washington correspondent for ABC News.

His latest book, Retribution, Donald Trump and the Campaign that Changed America. He also is a co-anchor of this week with George Stephanopoulos. George, is that what we're calling him? Stephanopoulos? It's Jonathan Carl. Hey, how's it going, man? Do you have a nickname for George? No, no, just George. Just George. Just George for you? Yeah. Yeah. Just George. Did you give him a finger wag over that, you know, for that faux paw that cost you guys $17 million or whatever it was? I think it was a little less than that, but no. Okay. I stayed very far away from all that. Yeah, that's probably smart.

There's a bunch of book stuff.

I kind of want to do like a little bit of a potpoury of some of the random nuggets in there.

But we got to do a little news first, particularly with regards to the Epstein files.

We have this vote coming this week.

I noticed you were on GMA yesterday, I think it was, and offering a

little bit of skepticism about, you know, like the, that this might be the big moment where the

damn breaks and Donald Trump just says, okay, let's see it all. You know, warts and all. We'll show you

everything. You noted the phrase in his bleat that they'll release everything that they're legally

entitled to have. Ken Klippenstein noted that there's word unclassified in the discharge

petition that cut his eye. Where do you think we're at? What do you think the state of play is on this?

I mean, there are multiple reasons to be totally skeptical of this. First of all, let's just remember

the base fact that if Trump actually wanted to release the Epstein files, he could do it right now. He could have done it a month ago. He could have done it six months ago. He could have let Pam Bondi do what she promised all those MAG influencers. Yeah, the binder. I mean, technically he already kind of started the release himself without a discharge

petition with those binders.

You remember that binder?

Oh, yeah.

Those binders were amazing. DC Drano and all the big journalists. You weren't invited, I noticed. But a lot of the other key journalists got invited for that. I wasn't. I wasn't. That's one reason. But the other reason is, I mean, he's coming out and saying, oh, yeah, vote for it after he has done everything in his power to prevent this vote from happening. I mean, obviously the Bobert display in the in the, in the situation room, obviously the phone calls. I mean, he actually made phone calls to Nancy Mays. Apparently she didn't take the call and to Bobert, her attacks on Marjorie Taylor Green.

I mean, the house was out of session for seven weeks? I mean, why was it out of session?

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