July 14, 2025: Why Trump’s Epstein headache won’t go away

The Playbook Podcast

POLITICO

News, Daily News, Government, Politics

3.9 • 699 Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2025

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For years, prominent voices from Trump world have agitated for the release of all files in the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy and well-connected financier and convicted sex offender who died by suicide in prison. Which is a big part of the reason why the blowback is so ferocious to last week’s announcement from AG Pam Bondi that no further documents will be released in the case. If they thought that would end the story, they were wrong: Trump’s hyper-loyal base isn’t satisfied with the departments’ findings, and they’re taking it out on Attorney General Pam Bondi and other senior administration officials. What sets this issue apart for the base, and will Democrats be able to capitalize on this fracture? Playbook contributing author Adam Wren and chief Playbook correspondent Dasha Burns walk through it all.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Presented by BP.
0:08.1	Hello, I'm Adam Wren.
0:09.8	And I'm Dasha Burns.
0:10.8	It is Monday, July 14th.
0:12.9	And this is the Playbook podcast.
0:15.0	Good morning, my friend.
0:16.3	Morning.
0:16.9	Good to see you.
0:17.8	I am filling in for Jack while he's out.
0:20.5	And so I'm looking forward to jumping right back in. So without further ado, here are the topics driving the day. First up, the saga of the Jeffrey Epstein files and the DOJ's decision not to release them continues to drive the conversation in Washington, much to the president's frustration. I've got some reporting
0:38.9	on that that we'll talk about in just a minute. But first, the second big thing that Washington
0:43.5	will be talking about today is Russia. President Trump has said he'll make a major statement
0:48.7	today on that topic, and while the particulars are a bit hazy at the moment, it comes as Russia
0:53.2	has escalated its
0:54.5	deadly attacks on Ukraine, frustrating Trump, who seems to have soured on Vladimir Putin,
1:00.0	and is now considering new U.S. assistance to Ukraine's self-defense.
1:04.3	Dasch, what are you hearing from your sources in Trump world about what we should expect from
1:08.1	all of this?
1:08.7	Well, it's a completely different tone, certainly, from the president.
1:13.3	And everyone in Maga World has noticed some are supportive of it, some not so much.
1:18.2	A lot of the base does not want the U.S. to be any more involved.
1:23.1	In fact, wants us to be much less involved than we are in Ukraine.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from POLITICO, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of POLITICO and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.