00:00Well, let's bring in Ian Pfeifferitz, excuse me, a distinguished professor of history at the State University of New York.
00:08He joins us now. Thanks so much for being with us, Ian.
00:11So Hillary Clinton is sort of known to do well in these kinds of situations.
00:16She came out largely unscathed after being questioned for 11 hours before Congress in 2015 over her handling of the
00:24attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in 2012.
00:27How, in your view, do you think she would have fared this time around? What were the biggest takeaways for
00:33you?
00:35Well, you have to understand that this truly is political theater.
00:39When Representative Comer said that the hearings yesterday were productive, he was right.
00:45If you look at it from his perspective, his perspective is that he has an audience of one, and that
00:50one is Donald Trump.
00:52Donald Trump wants to distract the American public.
00:56More specifically, he wants to distract the MAGA base from his own involvement, as the reporter just said.
01:04Tens of thousands of mentions of Donald Trump in the Epstein files.
01:07Donald Trump was very clearly a good friend of Jeffrey Epstein before the time that he was entered into that
01:18plea.
01:18But certainly, he was a friend, and then they broke publicly.
01:21But Donald Trump is much more vulnerable in the Epstein files, certainly, than Hillary Clinton and even Bill Clinton.
01:28So the point here is to serve as a distraction.
01:32Because the one thing that Donald Trump can't allow is for the MAGA base to fracture over the Epstein files.
01:38And there are people who are very important to the MAGA base, Joe Rogan, Theo Vaughn.
01:44They're talking about the Epstein files.
01:46Donald Trump wants them to be talking about the Epstein files and the Clintons, rather than the Epstein files and
01:51Donald Trump.
01:52And specifically, why Trump's Department of Justice hasn't released the files that were mentioned.
01:57Also, there's something like 50 pages of files on this most recent accusation from a woman who was a minor.
02:05And she accuses President Trump of having committed some kind of sexual assault.
02:10Again, that's not corroborated.
02:11That's the last thing Donald Trump wants the MAGA base to be focused on.
02:15Look over here.
02:16Look over here at Hillary Clinton, who he still thinks, I guess, he thinks people are still, you know, obsessed
02:21with Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton, who have not held public office for quite some time.
02:25Well, it will be Bill Clinton's turn to go before the committee today.
02:30What are the pressure points likely to be during that hearing?
02:35They're going to ask about his relationship to Jeffrey Epstein.
02:39You know, you were on the plane.
02:41There are photos of you with Epstein.
02:44It basically looks like Bill Clinton is having fun with a guy who turned out to be one of the
02:49worst human traffickers, certainly of our time.
02:52And somebody who has rightly been, you know, is rightly seen as a sexual predator.
02:59Why were you with him at all?
03:01And Bill Clinton will say, I shouldn't have been with him.
03:04I didn't know he was doing bad things at the time.
03:06He was trying to help with the global initiative and trying, you know, he was, Bill Clinton was trying to
03:11do good.
03:11And Jeffrey Epstein was supposedly, you know, or Clinton thought he was going to do good or help Bill Clinton
03:16do good.
03:17So it's a bad day for Bill Clinton.
03:19And it's, you know, again, part of Donald Trump's larger political plan.
03:24But Bill Clinton really isn't very important in 2026.
03:28I think that's one of the interesting things, you know, that the Trump administration, or I should say Trump and
03:33his political strategists, are still obsessed with the Clintons after all these years.
03:38The people that they need to get to vote for them, the swing voters, the people that they moved from
03:44the Biden camp in 2020 to their camp in 2024, I don't think many of them are still worried about
03:50a president from 30 years ago.
03:51It just doesn't seem logical that that's what their vote is going to be based on.
03:56They might be worried about the Epstein files and how Trump's Department of Justice is dealing with it.
04:01And again, that's why you call Bill Clinton.
04:03You can win today's news cycle, at least among the MAGA base, if you can talk about Bill Clinton today.
04:11Well, given some of those things that you mentioned there, you know, that trip that Clinton took to Africa in
04:172002 abroad, Epstein's plane, the flights that have been documented, the photos that we've seen of him on that plane.
04:27We should say that he hasn't been accused of any wrongdoing, but is it truly plausible that he knew nothing
04:32about what was going on behind closed doors?
04:36I guess it's no more or less plausible than that Donald Trump knew anything about what's going on behind closed
04:42doors.
04:42And Bill Clinton is a private citizen. Donald Trump is president of the United States.
04:46If Bill Clinton knew something and didn't disclose it, then he should certainly be punished for whatever that was.
04:56In the long run, I think what matters is that Donald Trump knew much more about Jeffrey Epstein than Bill
05:03Clinton.
05:04So today, Bill Clinton is the story. But in the long run, it's going to be, well, what did President
05:09Trump know?
05:10And you have the precedent now set that a sitting president, excuse me, a foreign president has been compelled to
05:16testify.
05:17Well, if and when Democrats take a majority in the House in November, they will then say we're going to
05:24compel President Trump to testify.
05:26He'll say no and there'll be all kinds of arguments about it.
05:29But a precedent clearly is being set. And someday you would think Donald Trump would be a former president.
05:35He's not going to like that precedent very much.
05:38Well, we are very much seeming to enter this era where no one who's held the Oval Office is beyond
05:44being dragged back into the spotlight over their past ties.
05:48The Clintons have criticized this whole process as being serving partisan interests.
05:54You know, how much is this really about the Republicans targeting one of their longest standing political adversaries, the Clintons?
06:03I would say it's 100 percent about that.
06:05You know, if you wanted to get to the bottom of the matter and you wanted to have transparency, you
06:12would allow the Clintons to testify publicly.
06:14But of course, it's much better if you're looking at it from a political perspective to not have them testify
06:21publicly, because then people will be able to see for themselves that there's in all likelihood with Bill Clinton not
06:26much going on there.
06:27We already know that not much happened with Hillary Clinton.
06:29And it's a lot better if you're the Republicans to be able to control the message, as they did yesterday,
06:34leak a photograph.
06:36Representative Lauren Boebert leaked the photograph, even though that was totally against the agreement that the committee had worked out
06:41with the Clintons.
06:42Much better to be able to put out the information you want rather than have people be able to watch
06:48it live and be bored when not much of interest comes up.
06:52And so, yes, it's 100 percent political.
06:54Well, we've had for decades now the Clintons have weathered scandal after scandal.
06:59They've remained standing, you know, sometimes even coming out on top politically.
07:03Is this just another storm that they will outlast or does the fact that Epstein is involved in all this,
07:09does that change the equation a little bit more?
07:13I think if the evidence comes out, and you mentioned this before, that Bill Clinton knew something bad about Epstein,
07:21then that would be very bad for Bill Clinton.
07:24But what would it mean that something is bad for Bill Clinton?
07:27He's not running for office again.
07:29So he's if something is bad for his public persona.
07:34I don't think that really matters very much for American politics, for the American people.
07:40Maybe Donald maybe Donald Trump thinks it will help him.
07:43I think this is frankly misguided.
07:45I don't you know, but when you're you know, when you're in Trump's position, he believes what he believes and
07:53he cares about what he cares about.
07:54And if Donald Trump says I care about Bill Clinton, then the people who listen to Donald Trump and answer
08:00to Donald Trump have to act on it.
08:01I just don't see that this is going to affect the political arena, political races, elections.
08:09None of this matters.
08:11Bill Clinton is out of office.
08:13Hillary Clinton is out of office.
08:15But this is what Trump is interested in.
08:17So that's what the Republican Party is going to be interested in.
08:19We'll see how Bill Clinton fers today.
08:22Ian, thank you so much for joining us on the program.
08:24Really great to get your insight today.
Comments