Primary Sources

[3:15] [Jon Favreau:] Dan, how does this explosive revelation – that we all saw coming – change the nature of this almost 3-week old scandal?

[Dan Pfeiffer:] I would hope that this changes how everyone, ourselves included, talks and thinks about this scandal.

Because we've had a lot of fun about with this. We're going to have fun about it on this podcast, I hope. It is... There's something amusing about it.

But I feel like everyone has been treating this kind of from a perspective of...bemusement? Like, "Ah, look at these conspiracy pushing grifters who've been hoisted on their own petard!" right? Where the real crime here is hypocrisy and deception. Right? That they they say they released the Epstein files but they didn't do it. Trump's breaking a campaign promise, ha! Take that! The dog that caught the car, and all of that.

But I think we do really have to to take a step back, and I know this is going to sound like hyperbole, and I know it will, but I truly believe it: that this scandal, now with this revelation, this scandal, now, should be treated like Iran-Contra, Watergate, other major political scandals.

Because what we have here is the president of the United States, the attorney general, the intelligence community, the FBI director, and the Republican Congress, all part of a conspiracy to cover up information about the President of the United States' relationship with America's most notorious child sex trafficker.

[Jon Favreau, profoundly missing Pfeiffer's point:] And lying about it, right?

[Dan Pfeiffer:] And he lied– he lied to the American people.  Whether– either by direct order or by implicit request, the intelligence community! We have intelligence professionals, like, the most– what's theoretically supposed to be the most, one of the most apolitical parts of the government, concocting a bullshit report we're going to talk about to try to distract people from the political fallout of this. You have the Republican Congress shutting down and going home, for a month because they are so afraid to vote on a measure that could shed light – once again – on the President of the United States' relationship with America's most notorious child sex trafficker.

Like this really is a giant deal. Like, we need to know what is that hearsay Trump's worried about, in the files? What is in there? What do we not know about Trump's relationship? Like, what, what other steps have been taken to try to cover this up? Have there been efforts to alter or destroy the records? Right? What what other government officials have hid it? Who else has been lied to? Like, this is a big deal and it should be treated as a big deal, in my view.

[...]

[...] this is one of the clues that [5:44] you and I took as evidence that Trump knew his name, or at least suspected his name, was in the Epstein files, was he kept saying, "How are we going to know they're real? Maybe Comey and Biden and whoever else doctored them?" To put his name in there, right?

[...]

I mean the, the chain of events here is they were planning to release the files; they were on Pam Bondi's desk; they released that first tranche that had his name in it, that did not– that at that point they did not say We're not going to release more, because after that went out Pam Bondie said These are on my desk for review; she reviewed them, found something that she thought would be quite embarrassing to the president, and they changed their plan. And they've continued to believe that the massive amount of political fallout they've been getting now for almost 3 weeks is preferable to whatever they believe is in the files.

[Jon Favreau:] How do you think Dems should [17:09] handle this issue over the next few months?

[Dan Pfeiffer:] I think our goal should be to keep the issue in the news as much as possible without putting too much spin on the ball. Right? I've seen other testing which shows that the most effective online posts are not Democrats talking about it. It is clips of Republicans or people who previously supported Trump – you know, podcasters, influencers – criticizing Trump for this. That's the most effective medium.

When we think about how we, like, if we are messaging– if you're an elected official and you're thinking about how to use your platforms, that's one way to do it. If we're thinking about it in the context of how all of us are messengers, and people in our lives, and you're sharing things in your group chat, the better thing to share is the clip of Andrew Schultz talking about this on Flagrant, than it is, you know, some Democrat ranting about this on MSNBC.  Or Pod Save America, or anywhere else, right? It's like the... Think about someone who is– who's motivations are not automatically questioned even in an issue on this one where they're, they're quite sincere.