- 7/17/2025
#BBCNews
#Afghanistan
#epsteinfiles
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the House of Commons the previous government had ‘serious questions’ to answer about a major data breach from the Ministry of Defence.
On Tuesday, a major data breach which led to thousands of Afghans being secretly relocated to the UK became public knowledge for the first time.
Chris Mason joins Adam Fleming to discuss the former government’s account of events, as well as what could happen next.
Adam also speaks to Larisa Brown, Defence Editor at The Times, about how she broke the story.
Subscribe here: http://bit.ly/1rbfUog
For more news, analysis and features visit: www.bbc.com/news
#BBCNews #Afghanistan #epsteinfiles
#Afghanistan
#epsteinfiles
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the House of Commons the previous government had ‘serious questions’ to answer about a major data breach from the Ministry of Defence.
On Tuesday, a major data breach which led to thousands of Afghans being secretly relocated to the UK became public knowledge for the first time.
Chris Mason joins Adam Fleming to discuss the former government’s account of events, as well as what could happen next.
Adam also speaks to Larisa Brown, Defence Editor at The Times, about how she broke the story.
Subscribe here: http://bit.ly/1rbfUog
For more news, analysis and features visit: www.bbc.com/news
#BBCNews #Afghanistan #epsteinfiles
Category
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NewsTranscript
00:00A major data breach, a super injunction, a secret route that has already cost hundreds of millions of pounds.
00:08The Prime Minister sums up one of the biggest political stories for ages.
00:12We will speak to the journalist who broke it and who the state tried to silence
00:16on this episode of the BBC's daily news podcast, Newscast.
00:22Hello, it's Adam in the Newscast studio.
00:24And it is Chris at Westminster.
00:25And we're going to have another quick catch up with Washington DC in the second half of this episode.
00:30But the first half is dominated by an absolutely huge story that broke in Westminster on Tuesday morning.
00:36Even though the story itself had been going for years,
00:40this is the story of the data breach at the Ministry of Defence
00:43that meant that lots of sensitive data about people who'd worked with the British military in Afghanistan
00:48was sent out to people who it shouldn't have been sent out to.
00:52And then as a result, the government got a super injunction,
00:56which meant that no journalists could report the story.
00:59And we'll speak to one of the journalists who was on the story from the very beginning in a minute.
01:03But Chris, yeah, first of all, just give me your take on the sort of the massive nature of this
01:08and the very secretive nature of the story.
01:10I think it's really significant, this.
01:12You know, there's lots of stuff that happens at Westminster that we kind of attach superlatives to
01:15and, you know, people get excited about or whatever.
01:17But this is a this is a real kind of core blimey story because you've got it kind of has everything, really,
01:25in that you've got an initial moment of extraordinary human fallibility,
01:30this sending of an email inadvertently with thousands and thousands of crucial
01:37and very sensitive bits of data and information in it about people who were fearful of the Taliban.
01:44Afghanistan and it's sent to Afghanistan and the it becomes apparent that it's it's you know,
01:50it's out of control, it's in hands that it shouldn't be it shouldn't be in.
01:53Then you have and of course, we've only found out all of this in the last 24, 36 hours.
01:58Then you have the government at the time, the conservatives a few years ago thinking,
02:01what on earth do we do here?
02:03Lives are at risk.
02:04And so they apply for a injunction.
02:06That then becomes what's known as a super injunction, where even reporting its existence, you can't, you can't do.
02:15And now we have the newish government, albeit a year into their time in office,
02:21saying that they can lift this injunction and they can wrap up the scheme that was giving people a chance to get out
02:27because of the fear that this leak would imperil their safety.
02:33So you've got questions asked about the conservatives.
02:36I've spoken to a good number of senior conservatives who were in the thick of it at the time.
02:39And they say, you know, weren't wildly comfortable with the idea of a injunction.
02:44But they say this was simply necessary because of the alternative was the risk that lots of people could be killed to be to be blunt.
02:52And their view is any minister presented with that scenario would have acted broadly in the way that they did.
03:00Then there are questions about why it went on for so long.
03:03Labour are making the argument, look, it's them who unraveled this, not the conservatives.
03:09But others are saying, yeah, but did it need to take this long?
03:11So John Healy, when he was the shadow defence secretary, was briefed about this in opposition.
03:16The prime minister was only briefed at the point that he became prime minister.
03:20They set up a review that began in January looking into all of this.
03:24Now, their argument is, look, this is quite complicated and you've got to give it proper attention before you start unravelling it.
03:30There are one or two who say, well, did it really need to take a year?
03:33Perhaps most of or indeed all of the risk was resolved, you know, in relatively short, in relatively short order.
03:42And so you've got this argument that then rages about, you know, is this is this an example of state failure?
03:47What is a legitimate use of these super injunctions?
03:53And you have Labour and the conservatives now, frankly, in classic political terms, sort of, you know, making arguments against one another.
04:02And you've got reform saying that this is a kind of a case study in state failure and a case study in the failure of the two big parties at Westminster.
04:09And there's lots of discussion, particularly online, about the financial cost of this.
04:15Yeah.
04:15And it's worth unpicking a few of these numbers because some of the numbers running into the billions are clearly huge.
04:23But the argument that is made is that those really, really big numbers were about the overall projected costs of the schemes to help Afghans leave Afghanistan and come to the UK,
04:35including the schemes that we've known about all along, as opposed to the additional costs associated with this cock up, basically.
04:46And then what had to be done to try and mitigate the potential impact of that of that data leak.
04:53So the emergency resettlement scheme for those affected by the breach, it was called the Afghanistan response route, has seen four and a half thousand Afghans arrive in the UK.
05:03It's cost 400 million pounds with a projected final cost of 850 million pounds.
05:10And they reckon the Ministry of Defence that just shy of 7000 people are expected to come in the end.
05:18But the scheme is now is now closed.
05:20And, you know, that's another factor.
05:22There's two other factors, though, aren't there, that come out of those numbers.
05:26One is we're forever talking on newscasts about the challenges that the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, faces.
05:31There goes there comes an additional challenge because that's money that, you know, wouldn't have been needed to be spent without this without this mistake.
05:40And then the other is that the implications in terms of the housing, the settlement, the processing of people who might not otherwise have needed or even wanted to leave their home country without this without this mistake.
05:55And then the actions taken in response to it is that the implications of this, the consequences of this continue just as the scrutiny of it just really gets going.
06:05Because, you know, there'll be there'll be a parliamentary inquiry into this, you know, there'll be lots of questions and there's loads of folk, no doubt, that will have to account for themselves publicly about the decisions that they that they took.
06:15Yeah. And hearing about the the data breach and the idea of emails with spreadsheets attached being forwarded to the wrong person just reminds me of the evacuation from Kabul originally.
06:28And you would speak to MPs at the time who were being emailed by constituents with desperate stories about their family members.
06:34And then those MPs would be forwarding those on to the Ministry of Defence and the defence ministers to their parliamentary email address.
06:41And then MPs would be getting emailed by multiple the same person, multiple different times.
06:46And it was all very there was just information flowing in at such great speed.
06:52And it did take the government a little while to design a system to just capture all of that, let alone deal with the actual people on the ground in Afghanistan who were affected by it.
07:02Yeah, all of that. And again, speaking to people today who were in the thick of all of that, they, you know, would use and I know it's a cliche,
07:10but it's, you know, the kind of the sense of the fog of war at the time that that that this was incredibly fraught.
07:18Lots of people attempt, you know, believing that they're acting in in good faith, whether it's backbench MPs or however it might be.
07:25But where you had data sets that the government was compiling that were in many senses partial, but then would also include colossal overlaps.
07:32So the same names popping up repeatedly because they'd been they'd been put in by, you know, various actors in the wider in the wider conversation.
07:40So, yeah, I mean, and then that then opens up, doesn't it?
07:44All sorts of questions about what procedures the MOD was using, how on earth you end up with a situation where this leak was possible.
07:54But then also, because it's very easy to forget this and it's important, I think, as you were saying there, to just wind our memory back a bit,
08:02that that was a extraordinarily tumultuous moment where very little was predictable or certain, where data sets were very messy, where there was huge anger and frustration.
08:16And, you know, and that's the context. It's not it's not a solely excuse, of course, but that's the context in which this in which this happened.
08:24Right. Let's speak to one of the journalists who was first on the case and who was one of the people who was super injuncted.
08:29Although I suppose we actually were all super injuncted because no one would be allowed to talk about it.
08:33It's Larissa Brown, who is defence editor at The Times.
08:37Hello, Larissa.
08:39Hello.
08:39And congratulations on your mega scoop.
08:42Thank you very much.
08:43So I'm sure you've been asked this a lot in the last 24 hours, but just take me back to the moment you realised you were on to something.
08:51Well, this was two years ago, which seems an extraordinary length of time.
08:55I was on maternity leave, actually.
08:57It was August 2023.
08:59And I was about to publish a book about the Afghans called The Garden of Lashkar Ghar.
09:05And I was having I had lots of Afghans often coming to my home.
09:09And I found out that there had been this data breach that affected the lives of thousands of Afghans who were had been put at risk.
09:17And then a few days later, it emerged that there was a super injunction preventing us from actually revealing that information and also preventing us revealing the fact that a court order even existed.
09:30And then when I returned from maternity leave, I called the Ministry of Defence and told them I knew exactly what had happened.
09:37And I knew it was a super injunction.
09:39And they hauled me into the Ministry of Defence.
09:43I was told that I needed to bring a lawyer.
09:45Obviously, I mean, that had never happened before.
09:47And we went inside a room at the MOD in Whitehall where we were faced with a team of MOD lawyers.
09:54And at that point in that meeting, we were served with the injunction.
09:59And that meant that when we left that room, we weren't able to talk about that super injunction or the case to anyone.
10:07And if we did, we could face prison.
10:11So it was pretty daunting stuff.
10:14And it was extremely, you know, after that, we weren't able to tell, you know, even senior members at the Times, if we wanted to tell anybody, then we had to provide that name to the court for them to put in a document.
10:29And also, you actually were in court a couple of times making your side of the argument.
10:34Yes. Well, so in January 2024, we became defendants and the Times then spearheaded the legal fight to get the super injunction lifted.
10:46And just before we became defendants, I did stand up in court.
10:49The judge did allow myself and others to to to address him, which was which was unusual in itself.
10:55And we were we were pointing out that there was a general election coming up, that this was an election issue because of the severity of the incident.
11:03And there were major policy decisions being made without parliament scrutiny and without the public knowing.
11:11And also, we we later went on to to argue that the Afghans also weren't aware that their data had been breached, which meant that they weren't able to take any safety measures.
11:23As a result, they weren't able to decide whether they needed to change their emails or their phone numbers because the Taliban could suddenly end up with their personal information.
11:32And you said, you know, lots of people, Afghans in the UK, Afghans in Afghanistan.
11:38Have you been in touch with anyone who's been affected in the last 24 hours or so?
11:42How are they feeling about it?
11:43I have. And I'm just trying to put together a piece now.
11:46And I mean, one of them is a really sad, sad case for me because he has been trying to come to the UK for a long time.
11:55He's the brother of a dead interpreter who had died whilst on an operation with British forces.
12:02And he and this individual that I know, he actually was trying to escape the country in 2021 when we saw those awful scenes of people trying to flee as the British troops left Afghanistan.
12:14And he's applied to come to Britain and he is on the list and he is terrified because he doesn't know what to do.
12:23He can't afford to move house. He doesn't know what information he needs to change.
12:28He's telling us that he sent the MOD his photograph.
12:31So he's wondering, does the Taliban now, could the Taliban end up with his photo?
12:35And he's he's he's really alarmed and worried by the situation.
12:41And Larissa, what about the government's argument that the risk to the people in Afghanistan who are named on the list has decreased?
12:47That actually, that's why it's a sort of safer environment for the super injunction to be lifted?
12:53It's a confusing picture from the government because at the same time, they're also arguing that there is still a risk to those Afghans.
13:00And so they're not saying that there isn't a risk that the Taliban, you know, tries to tries to kill them.
13:07So, you know, these people are still worried for their safety.
13:11And I think there's also more confusion because they don't know exactly what was on the list.
13:16The government hasn't told them. They've just obviously sent generic emails to everybody saying to be careful.
13:21Now, that's not very much information. I don't know if the Taliban's got their home address.
13:26They don't know if the Taliban's got their passports. They don't know, you know, they don't know this crucial detail.
13:32And yesterday there was talk of kind of future legal action from people who are on the list in various forms.
13:39What have you learned about that?
13:42There's a there's a one law firm, Behring's Law, that has around a thousand Afghans already signed up to sue the MOD.
13:52I think that number is probably going to rise substantially over the coming days.
13:57There's also likely to be reviews of the judicial reviews on going into Afghan cases.
14:02They're likely to be affected by all of this.
14:05So I think this is really going to rumble on for quite some time.
14:09Now, the former Conservative Defence Secretary Ben Wallace was on the Today programme this morning.
14:13Let's play a little bit of what he said.
14:15I took a decision that the most important priority was to protect those people who could have been or were exposed by this data leak in Afghanistan,
14:28living amongst the Taliban, who had no regard for their safety or indeed potentially could torture them or murder them.
14:36That was my priority.
14:37Now, I felt and people can criticise me all they like on that and they have a right to that opinion.
14:43But if we weren't given time and space to deal with this leak, find out whether the Taliban had it.
14:51And to date, there's no actual evidence they have now got it.
14:55And John Healy quite rightly has done a review subsequently.
14:58And to then start the process of getting out of that country, those people who would have been put at risk by that data.
15:06And that was my priority.
15:08I'm glad I'm not on this radio programme today saying, I'm terribly sorry all these people were killed or captured by the Taliban.
15:16So, Larissa, how convinced are you by what he said on the Today programme?
15:20Ben Wallace, at the beginning, he wanted an injunction for four months and this and the judge upgraded it to a super injunction.
15:27You know, I don't doubt that he had the best, you know, the interests of the Afghans in his mind.
15:33I don't doubt that. But the super injunction lasted for a very long time.
15:40And the fact that this government review in the last few months has found, as you said, the threat had diminished.
15:46I mean, there's just a lot of questions about whether the super injunction should have remained in place for that amount of time and whether this could have been handled a lot better.
15:55And just going back to where we started and the data breach initially, what more can you tell us about what the data breach actually was?
16:04Because we know it was a soldier sort of working as an administrator and it involved a spreadsheet being sent to the wrong person.
16:13Do we know anything more than that?
16:15We know that the individual was a soldier. He was also an official.
16:20He was working at Special Forces headquarters in Regent's Park.
16:25He was working under the command of General Seguin Jenkins, who's now the head of the Navy.
16:32He was trying to verify applications to come to the UK.
16:34He sent an email to Afghans in the UK with about what he thought was about 150 names.
16:42What he didn't realise is that actually he was sending a database of 33,000 applications.
16:48The Afghans who he sent it to then sent it on to people in Afghanistan.
16:53And then what happened 18 months later, so in August 2023, one Afghan who ended up with that list then threatened to publish it in a Facebook post.
17:07And that is when the government found out about this extraordinary mistake by this soldier.
17:13Which is another kind of head-scratching aspect of this whole head-scratching story, the gap between the data breach and the government realising they'd breached the data.
17:24I know. It seems amazing that it could take that long for them actually to realise.
17:28And when they first saw this post on Facebook, obviously they didn't know why this person had ended up with this list.
17:35And that sparked, you know, a huge operation inside the MOD and wider government involving the security agencies to work out whether, you know, had a foreign state hacked into the government system.
17:49They didn't actually know what had happened.
17:52And Larissa, we're recording this bit of newscast at quarter to five, which I know is kind of danger time for print journalists because the deadline is approaching.
17:59So I'm going to let you get back to your writing. But thank you very much for talking to us today and for your amazing piece of journalism.
18:06Thank you very much.
18:08So that's Larissa's take on today. Actually, let's hear Keir Starmer's take on it when he was speaking at the final Prime Minister's Questions before the summer holiday.
18:16We warned in opposition about conservative management of this policy.
18:21And yesterday, the Defence Secretary set out the full extent of the failings that we inherited.
18:27A major data breach, a super injunction, a secret route that has already cost hundreds of millions of pounds.
18:37Ministers who served under the party opposite have serious questions to answer about how this was ever allowed to happen.
18:45The Chair of the Defence Committee has indicated that he intends to hold further inquiries.
18:50I welcome that and hope that those who were in office at the time will welcome that scrutiny.
18:55So, Christy, I imagine there's going to be a long tail to this, isn't there, with other legal action, parliamentary inquiries, MPs getting upset about not being told.
19:05There's lots of angles to be pursued on this.
19:09Yeah, there really is.
19:09And, you know, if we just take a couple of steps back, you know, we're a quarter of a century on from the beginnings of the Afghan conflict that the UK was a part of in the time after 9-11 in 2001.
19:26There were all of those British casualties during the war itself.
19:30And what we're seeing here is an ongoing implication of that conflict so, so many years on, where there are still those live questions about the risk that some people might face as a result of this.
19:47And the government's of the view that they think that risk is now minimal, mitigated and dissolved, if you like.
19:55And then, yeah, all of those questions that will be asked about procedures in the Ministry of Defence, about political accountability, about the legitimacy or otherwise of these injunctions.
20:05And then, of course, this is where it comes back to this sort of allegation of state failure, if you like, in an era of deep cynicism about politics, which is that whenever there is a story about a super injunction, we've not had one for a while, but whenever there is one,
20:19the obvious question to which the answer is, we don't know, is what other ones are there?
20:25And that is instantly a question that can sort of seed cynicism in those in power and authority.
20:37On a completely different note, just explain why, as we record this episode of Newscast at 6.42 on Wednesday evening,
20:44there were four fewer Labour MPs than there were at, say, 2.42 this afternoon.
20:49Yeah, so the Prime Minister has suspended four Labour MPs from the Labour Parliamentary Party,
20:55taken the whip from them, to use the Westminster jargon.
20:59So Neil Duncan-Jordan, Brian Leishman, Chris Hinschliff and Rachel Maskell,
21:04they were characters in the whole business of the benefits rows of a couple of weeks ago.
21:11Three other Labour MPs have been stripped of trade envoy roles,
21:15so sort of roles where they're working on behalf of the government,
21:18Rosanna, Alan Khan, Bel Ribeiro, Adi and Mohamed Yassin.
21:23And so what we're seeing is almost a kind of history repeating itself moment,
21:28because last summer, the Prime Minister took the whip off a handful of Labour MPs
21:34who had rebelled on the whole business of the two-child benefit cap.
21:37And a handful of months later, the whip, for a fair few of them, was restored.
21:43Yeah, here you have these four losing the whip.
21:46Let's see if any others might do too.
21:49It's a curious strategy, because they're not the only ones who rebelled,
21:52but they're relatively prominent, a few of them,
21:54in terms of the noises that they were making.
21:58And the question then is, you know, does it work?
22:00Because the Prime Minister did it last year in order to send a message
22:03to the rest of the parliamentary party, which is this is what happens if you get noisy.
22:08You know, in the year that's gone on since,
22:10a far more number than a quartet have been noisy.
22:14So where is it reasonable to draw the line?
22:16What is regarded as justified or, in the eyes of some, petty?
22:21But yes, notionally, the Prime Minister's majority shrinks a little more,
22:27and then they'll have to work out, you know, what might count as the good behaviour
22:32necessary for them to have the whip restored,
22:35assuming in time that that's what they would like to see happen.
22:38And Keir Starmer is either strong or weak, depending on your point of view.
22:42Basically, yes.
22:43And that is, I mean, to an extent with his political actions,
22:46there's always a, that's always a prism through which these things are looked at.
22:50But yeah, when you've done as they have here and picked four,
22:54where there's, of course, an element of discretion in who gets picked and who doesn't,
23:00then that question is unquestionably sort of live in all of this.
23:05An unquestionably live question.
23:07Yeah, something like that, yeah.
23:08Like Donald Trump's positive non-thinking.
23:11Right, Chris, good to see you.
23:12It's all right.
23:14Donald Trump's first U-turn this week was deciding to supply arms to Ukraine
23:20via European allies who will actually be buying them from America.
23:24And now we're witnessing his second one.
23:27And it's to do with the so-called Epstein files.
23:30And the subject of those files and what's in them and the so-called Epstein list
23:35was a big thing for Donald Trump's fan base, the Make America Great Again crowd.
23:41It was a big thing at one point for Donald Trump too.
23:44But now that he's actually in office and lots of his supporters have big jobs in the government,
23:49they're not really publishing anything that to his supporters looks like the Epstein list.
23:55So what's going on?
23:56And is this a bit of a rupture between Donald Trump and his superfans?
24:00The person who can answer those questions, as always,
24:03is BBC News chief reporter in Washington, D.C.
24:06and great friend of newscast, Katrina Perry, who's here.
24:09Hello, Katrina.
24:10Hi, Adam.
24:11Good to be with you.
24:13Welcome back.
24:13So when supporters of Donald Trump say about or talk about something they call the Epstein list
24:20or the Epstein files or Epstein's clients, what do they think they're talking about?
24:26Kind of two parts to that.
24:28So the Epstein files are broadly the name given to all the documents relating to the case of Jeffrey Epstein,
24:36who pleaded guilty in 2008 to sexual misconduct charges.
24:41And he died by suicide in August 2019 while in prison awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
24:50So we're talking about the Epstein files.
24:52It's relating to that.
24:53And it's relating to a conspiracy theory around how he died, whether he did in fact die by suicide
25:00or whether he was murdered in his cell and who his friends were and who may have been involved in this alleged sex trafficking that he was accused of.
25:12Now, the client list is, let's say, part of the Epstein files, and that is something that really has been given massive significance
25:22by some of the most high profile MAGA supporters and indeed the president himself on the campaign trail last year.
25:30Now, Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, when she came into office earlier this year, she referred to this client list and said it was on her desk and she was about to go through it.
25:41Fast forward to the last couple of days and she said, oh, there isn't actually a client list.
25:46There's just a whole bundle of documents, court documents, documents relating to the case.
25:51And what reaction has that provoked from the MAGA supporters?
25:55There has been an explosion or implosion, whatever way you want to look at it, of really distrust and shock and disappointment and all of those words,
26:07because this was one of the sort of signature platforms of Donald Trump on the campaign trail and the MAGA movement,
26:13that they viewed this massive conspiracy theory that the people on this so-called client list were really high profile elites,
26:22mostly in the Democratic world, that there was a massive cover up, that the government under President Joe Biden,
26:30the Democratic Party were protecting really powerful individuals in this country.
26:34And the president and all of his supporters swore as soon as they got into office, they would publish all of this.
26:40They would be transparent. They would shine a light on it.
26:42They would reveal all of these people.
26:44And some of the most high profile people speaking out about this, the president himself and Pam Bondi,
26:51but also two people who are now in charge of the FBI, the FBI director, Kash Patel, and his deputy, Dan Bongino.
26:59Dan Bongino in particular had a big following on a podcast.
27:02And this was something he really railed about and pledged to uncover when they got into the administration.
27:08Now that they're in the administration, they are saying there's nothing to see here.
27:12This is a nothing burger.
27:13I mean, is this the first rift between Donald Trump and his fans?
27:18It's the first major one.
27:20And it's over something that's really questioning the trust that many of these supporters had for President Trump.
27:28They're now questioning, you know, have one of three things happened, really?
27:33Has President Trump and his supporters who are in the administration, like I mentioned, the attorney general and the team in the FBI,
27:39have they found out that actually this big conspiracy theory, this big cover up that they were alleging that actually there was no cover up after all,
27:48but that they believe there was one, but they've now found out there wasn't one.
27:52That's option one.
27:53Option two is, are they in fact involved somehow in this?
27:58And are they now trying to cover up for themselves?
28:02This is how some in the MAGA world would see it.
28:04And have they now become part of the problem themselves?
28:08Or the third option is, they never thought there was a cover up there at all.
28:12And it was just something kind of convenient to rile the base up about, to rile that anti-Democrat, anti-Joe Biden feeling.
28:21So there's kind of three options.
28:23None of them are good at all for the president and his supporters.
28:28And I mean, when you're listening to the podcasts in the MAGA world,
28:32some of Donald Trump's closest supporters on Capitol Hill really questioning,
28:36what is he doing here?
28:38Why won't he make all of these files public if indeed they do exist?
28:43And of course, he and the Attorney General are saying they don't exist.
28:47And Katrina, I'll ask you how Donald Trump is handling this
28:50and the different versions of how he's handled it over the last few weeks.
28:54But let's listen to how he handled it when he was in the Oval Office
28:57and asked about this earlier on on Wednesday,
29:00when he had the Crown Prince of Bahrain sat next to him.
29:02Will you ask Attorney General Pambani to release more documents to finally put this controversy to bed?
29:07Whatever's credible, she can release it.
29:10If a document is credible, if a document's there that is credible, she can release.
29:15I think it's good.
29:17But it's just really, it's just a subject.
29:20He's dead, he's gone.
29:22And all it is is the Republicans, certain Republicans got duped by the Democrats
29:28and they're following a Democrat playbook.
29:31And no different than Russia, Russia, Russia and all the other hoaxes.
29:35They're started by the Democrats.
29:38And some Republicans, in this case, I was surprised, but they got duped.
29:44Yeah, so that's how Donald Trump was telling the Crown Prince of Bahrain about what's going on.
29:48Yeah, Katrina, what's your take on how Donald Trump himself has handled this?
29:53I mean, it's kind of dangerous when you hear the language that he used there in the Oval Office,
29:58calling his own supporters stupid people, saying they've been duped, saying they've been duped by Democrats,
30:05when just a few months ago he was basically in the trenches with them on this issue.
30:10That's a dangerous road to go down in many ways.
30:12However, Donald Trump himself won't be on the ballot again for president unless something seriously,
30:19dramatically has changed with the law in this country.
30:21So in a way, he doesn't really have to care about that.
30:24And he does want to move on.
30:25I mean, we heard that many times in the Oval Office today.
30:28Let's just move on.
30:29And earlier in the week as well.
30:31Why are we talking about this guy who's been dead?
30:33You know, he's calling him a creep.
30:35This is a guy he did actually used to hang out with.
30:38There are photographs and videos of him partying with Jeffrey Epstein back in the day.
30:43But he's now calling him a creep and saying, let's just move on.
30:46I want to talk about the great work I'm doing on the economy because it's really inconvenient for him,
30:51to put it mildly, to have so many of his core base supporters really agitating,
30:56not just against him, but against some in his team as well.
31:01I think the word that jumped out for me in his post on Truth Social about this,
31:05which was quite a long post, was he talks about his former supporters believing this,
31:11what he describes as a hoax.
31:12So he's almost like he's leaving behind some people.
31:16Exactly.
31:16And he called them weaklings as well.
31:18And as we know, for President Trump, the absolute worst thing you can be is weak.
31:22He loves things, people that are strong, sentiments that are strong.
31:26And it's dangerous to say to these people who built him up, built his movement up,
31:31got him elected.
31:32I don't need you anymore.
31:34You're stupid.
31:35You're weak.
31:35You're, you know, you're trusting the wrong people.
31:37This is a hoax that's been made up by the Democrats.
31:41Which, again, every time he says that, you'll see the chatter on the online forums
31:46moving into the category of, well, is the president involved here?
31:51And is he now trying to cover up for himself?
31:54And they're saying, if you have nothing to hide, put it all out there.
31:58But, you know, we heard from Pam Bondi earlier in the week that all these videos
32:02that they've always talked about existing, thousands of hours of videos,
32:07she's saying, well, actually, those aren't videos of Jeffrey Epstein and his,
32:11you know, so-called famous friends and whatever, that they're actually videos
32:14of child sex abuse.
32:16And we're not going to be making those public.
32:18And she said she has put everything into the public domain that is relevant.
32:22The president says he trusts her on that.
32:24And anyone who doesn't now trust him has been duped and is stupid.
32:28And he doesn't need them anymore.
32:30I'm also just thinking of another position that Donald Trump has moved away from,
32:35which is on Ukraine.
32:36Like, he now seems quite enthusiastic, or enthusiastic for him,
32:40about supplying Ukraine with weapons via NATO allies in Europe.
32:45And he also sounds much less enthusiastic about Vladimir Putin.
32:49I just wonder how that's playing with the MAGA base as well.
32:53Honestly, this issue of the Epstein files for those MAGA supporters
32:57is generating far greater chatter than his switcheroo, if you like,
33:03from Russia to Ukraine.
33:04And the key part about his change in support now for Ukraine
33:08is that he is not giving any more American money to Ukraine.
33:12And that was really the key pledge.
33:15He wasn't really saying, you know, we'll no longer help people who need help.
33:18He says we're no longer using American money around the world
33:21to fight other countries' wars.
33:23And here he's been very clear every time he talks about it to say,
33:26well, I've got the Europeans to pay for all of this.
33:29This isn't American money.
33:30And in actual fact, they're going to be buying our weapons.
33:33So we'll even get money for our support of Ukraine.
33:37So isn't this fabulous?
33:38And kind of how clever am I to have come up with this
33:40and got the Europeans to agree?
33:42So interesting.
33:43Katrina, great to catch up as always.
33:45Never a dull moment, is there?
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