July 8, 2025: MAGA turns on its own

The Playbook Podcast

POLITICO

News, Daily News, Politics, Government

3.9 • 699 Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2025

⏱️ 16 minutes

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Summary

After a few weeks during which things seemed to go more or less as the Trump administration had hoped, MAGA world is suddenly in revolt. Yesterday, the Justice Department announced that it would not release any further documents pertaining to its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious sex offender and wealthy financier whose 2019 death fueled conspiracy theories across the political spectrum. Many members of the MAGA base aren’t satisfied with the DOJ’s decision — and its conclusion that he died by suicide and did not maintain a long-rumored “client list” — and are aiming their ire at Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino. Playbook author Jack Blanchard and chief Playbook correspondent Dasha Burns discuss the potential political fallout.

Transcript

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0:00.0	presented by BP.
0:08.6	Hello, I'm Jack Blanchard.
0:10.5	And I'm Dasha Burns.
0:11.7	It is Tuesday, July 8th.
0:13.6	And this is the Playbook podcast.
0:15.7	Good morning, Dasha.
0:16.6	How are you?
0:17.4	How are you?
0:17.9	I am good.
0:19.0	I'm good.
0:19.4	How are you, my friend?
0:20.4	I'm good. We were saying yesterday morning, everything's going so well for Donald Trump this last few weeks. He's not really going to just mess it all by blowing up the economy again, is he? And yesterday, he kind of went and did it a little bit. But like with a little more time. Right. There's always a little more time. The stock market is not overly thrilled,
0:38.2	though, I have to say, obviously the big story that everyone was talking about yesterday,
0:41.7	and certainly we'll be talking about today as well, Dasha, the announcement of tariffs of
0:45.5	at least 25% on 14 different countries, but their deadline's been moved from tomorrow all
0:51.5	the way back to the 1st of August. And is that really a deadline?
0:54.7	Do we really know? I'm not sure it is. Well, and he was asked, you know, is there room for negotiation? And he said, no, we sent these letters. There were letters. He posted them on truth social. He said, no, this is it. But then he said, well, but yeah, maybe there's some negotiations. So I mean, look, we have been on this roller coaster time and again.
0:52.9	And so I am curious to see how this. he said, well, but yeah, maybe there's some negotiations. I mean, look, we have been on this roller coaster time and again,
1:12.7	and so I am curious to see how this plays in the stock market
1:16.7	because at this point, this is the pattern,
1:19.9	and that's kind of starting to get priced in a little bit.
1:22.4	So this is just the classic Trump move here, right? Like what else were we expecting? It's the classic Trump move, but is it really affected? I just think if you want to get people to invest and build factories in America, then constantly moving the goalposts all the time, like what business is going to be like, right? Yep, that's it. We definitely need to build our factory in America. Like, no, because next week is going to be a whole different story again and the week after, who knows?
	...

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