July 17, 2025: Trump’s Epstein woes go mainstream

The Playbook Podcast

POLITICO

News, Daily News, Politics, Government

3.9 • 699 Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

The Jeffrey Epstein news cycle is here to stay. And that’s increasingly frustrating President Donald Trump, who has grown accustomed to being able to exert control over the news cycle for much of the past decade. There’s a policy side to this, of course, as a number of prominent Republicans and MAGA figures are calling for a special counsel to investigate the files and the DOJ’s handling of them. But there’s also a pop cultural aspect to this, as the story has spilled over into the zeitgeist. Contributing author Adam Wren and chief Playbook correspondent Dasha Burns discuss how we got here and what comes next.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Presented by BP.
0:08.1	Hello, I'm Adam Red.
0:09.8	And I'm Dasha Burns.
0:11.0	It is Thursday, July 17th.
0:13.4	And this is the Playbook podcast.
0:16.2	So without further ado, here's the big story driving the day.
0:20.0	The growing number of Trump allies and
0:22.1	insiders calling for a special counsel to investigate the Epstein files. We started the week off
0:28.4	with this story reporting that Laura Lumer was calling for a special prosecutor in this case,
0:34.7	and we're at the end of the week talking about the same news.
0:38.4	And you're talking to Laura Lumer again, Adam.
0:40.8	That's right. A lot of Laura Limer time this week for me.
0:44.3	What's fascinating to me, though, is we heard yesterday John Solomon, just the news journalists,
0:50.3	have a conversation with Donald Trump where he expressed being open to the idea.
0:55.2	And then we finished the afternoon with Donald Trump at the White House telling CNN's DJ Judd that he has nothing to do with this,
1:03.8	essentially exempting himself and tacitly acknowledging that there's no conflict that would require a special counsel to intervene in the
1:13.3	Epstein files case. We also know that Roe Kana, the congressman from California, told Jake Tapper
1:19.2	that they had the votes to push a House vote on this to release the files. That's 212 Democrats
1:25.1	and seven Republicans. Lauren Boert has also called for a special
1:29.2	counsel. We're really seeing this bubble over, but there are a lot of cross currents that would point
1:35.2	to this being a bad idea for the Trump administration. Absolutely. I talked to a number of White House
1:39.7	allies today who, first of all, said they don't think the White House would actually do this.
	...

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