Shutdown and Release: Dems Cave, Consequences of Epstein Files

This week, Diana was on the road promoting her new book, A Beautiful Year, but Robby, Kristin, and Jemar took advantage of all being in Washington, DC, together and recorded this special episode from PRRI’s new office. We talked about our disappointment at the capitulation of a handful of Democratic officials, who voted with Republicans to end the record-breaking government shutdown—without securing much in exchange. At best the deal only temporarily restores SNAP funding and reopens the government for six weeks, and it secured no concrete assurances on government funding to protect Americans who depend on Obamacare against skyrocketing health insurance premiums. And worse, Democrats seemed to offer no strong moral case for their actions. We also talked about the bombshell partial release of a trove of emails from the Epstein files, which seemed to show that Trump knew about the pedophilia sex ring that Jeffrey Epstein was running for powerful men. We noted that the Epstein files are creating rare fissures within the MAGA movement, especially since Trump encouraged the conspiracy theories of the QAnon movement during his campaign. But it is still to early to know whether either condoning or failing to protect children from pedophiles would be a grave enough sin for the MAGA faithful to break with Trump, or whether they will continue to find ways to rationalize his immoral behavior.