And now, the main event...

Nicolle Wallace is one of the few remaining shining stars in the ever-dimming cable news solar system: a former advisor to George W. Bush whose understanding of the practice of politics in the trenches and at the highest levels in Washington, combined with her skills behind the anchor desk and deep grasp of her audience’s appetites, have turned her two-hour stint each afternoon as host of MSNBC’s Deadline: White House into a bigger draw than many of the network’s primetime shows.

No surprise, then, that Wallace is extending her brand into the podcast realm with a new interview show entitled The Best People—a cheeky play on one of Donald Trump’s famously counterfactual claims that “I only hire the best people”—with an initial batch of guests, including Jason Bateman and Kara Swisher, who have actually been terrific. Equally unsurprising, Nicolle has been among the most popular guests to appear on my own Impolitic podcast, which is one reason I keep inviting her back again and again.

In our most recent conversation, late last week, we delved into the backlash among the MAGA faithful over the Trump administration’s handling of the D.O.J.’s case files related to the late accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and in particular the supposed list of his high-powered clientele (which may or may not exist). Nicolle decoded why the Epstein scandal, uniquely among Trump controversies and betrayals of his base, has revealed real fissures within the coalition that’s empowered him. We also discussed what she called the potentially seismic consequences of Trump’s D.O.J. announcing criminal investigations into former F.B.I. director James Comey and former C.I.A. chief John Brennan. As always, this excerpt from the pod has been edited and condensed for clarity; you can hear the whole thing here.

John Heilemann: The idea of going deep on Jeffrey Epstein makes my skin crawl, and yet we gotta talk about it because MAGA is on fire over this story. Why is that?

Nicolle Wallace: You have to try to get into what moves MAGA. What moves MAGA isn’t a 60 percent tariff on toys that Mattel makes. They’re in for the Epstein list; they’re in for prosecuting enemies. The Epstein list is the retribution against the elites who Trump’s seniormost media figures believe are hidden in that list. It’s not a political hunger; they believe there are elite Republicans and elite Democrats. Some stuff is swampishly, hysterically partisan. Some of it is, sure, the obsession with the Biden family, and the Obama family, and the Clinton family. But this was about the elites who hung out with Jeffrey Epstein—and that included Donald Trump.

That’s the complicating factor. I’ve been following the Epstein story for basically 10 years now, but I never really understood until recently how important it was to MAGA. Did you?

No. I think it’s a failure of the vast majority of people in the media—to exclusively wrap ourselves around the axis of norms. When you put Dan Bongino and Kash Patel in charge of the F.B.I., you have to steep yourselves in the conspiracy theories they peddle, because they now run the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency, and their workforce has to become fluent. This workforce has to adapt, not just to people who are incompetent, but people who throw gasoline on the fire of the craziest conspiracy theories that animate MAGAworld.

A.G. Pam Bondi came out in February and said, The Epstein list is on my desk, and she’s referred to it several times since then. They also called all these MAGA influencers into the White House, where Bondi produced this white binder, which is now talismanic, which said on the front of it that the Trump administration would be the most transparent in history. Then all of a sudden, last Sunday, she posted on the D.O.J. website saying, basically, Never mind, there’s nothing there. Do you think Bondi is full of shit, or is there a real cover-up going on here?

I really have no idea. The Trump story is making us all dumber. But I do think that following the heat, as opposed to following the norm-busting, is a good way to cover this. And this is where all the heat is right now. This is where they feel betrayed by three of their own—Bondi, Patel, and Bongino.

Cable news gets worked up about fractures in the Trump base. But the loyalty of MAGA to Trump has proven really deep and unshakeable time and time again. So what are the real political consequences of all this?

The coalition is not at any risk of breaking up along the lines that we used to cover it, old Republicans and new. MAGA replaced the Republican Party—and the Republican Party feebly and pathetically handed it over. It wasn’t hostile. Mitch McConnell and John Thune took out their spines and their balls and voluntarily handed them over.

I think the first clash that I saw as potentially consequential was Elon Musk and Steve Bannon. And what happened when Musk seemed to win the personality or beauty contest, or whatever it is that Trump judges by? DOGE happened, and it was so unpopular that the Trump-backed person lost a Wisconsin state Supreme Court race. That was the first time voters were evaluating Trump 2.0, and Trump got smoked. So there are real consequences out in the battleground states. We’re not looking at the disintegration of the coalition, but when you cover the clashes, it’s interesting to pull the thread on who’s been weakened in Trump’s orbit and what that means. Because Trump’s arbitrary—there aren’t competent people running his government; they’re just personalities.

Is there anything else that happened last week that rises to the level of the Epstein brouhaha?

I think what happened with Brennan and Comey is potentially seismic, and I don’t even think I know how to cover it, to justify how important I think it is. The weaponization of the D.O.J. started with the firing of Comey in 2017, and it sort of culminates in [C.I.A. Director John] Ratcliffe doing what [Special Counsel] John Durham, a big MAGA hero, and Marco Rubio, who’s now got like 11 jobs in the Trump cabinet, wouldn’t do as head of the Senate Intel Committee—and that’s manufacture fodder for a criminal referral to D.O.J. for Brennan’s role atop the C.I.A.

Durham spent $6.7 million investigating the Russia investigation, and John Brennan spent eight hours being interviewed by Durham, himself. They had the top of the Justice Department behind Durham. They had every resource, every asset, and complete political cover for whatever they would have been able to find. And in the very lengthy narrative that came out in the Durham report, they allege no wrongdoing that indicted Brennan’s leadership at the C.I.A. People made their way through the Mueller report, and fewer people made their way through the Senate Intel Committee report, which was a bipartisan report on Trump’s campaign ties to Russia. It’s devastating, and they looked very close—because of their clearances, they got all up and into the C.I.A. files and classified materials and found no discrepancy between the assessment that was made and what career professionals found.

Tens of millions of dollars have been spent investigating Brennan and Comey and no one has found any wrongdoing, when they had all the political cover and all the political appetite to do so. Now, you’ve got Ratcliffe, who had a position in the intel community in the first term, manufacturing something and sending it over to the D.O.J., run by the folks we’ve been talking about—Bondi, Patel, and Bongino, who are on their asses because Epstein blew up in their face. I think it’s a very scary moment.

All three of those investigations affirmed Russian interference in the 2016 election, either explicitly in the cases of Mueller and the Senate Intel Committee, or implicitly in Durham failing to come up with any wrongdoing in his investigation of the investigators. Yet Trump ran for reelection in 2024 saying over and over that “Russia Russia Russia” was a hoax, a witch hunt, and millions of his voters believed him.

I think it’s about something bigger, which is a good note to us: The success with which they shamed coverage of Russia is what we’re all living with. What’s interesting is that in the same clip where Trump is telling everyone to move on from Epstein, he’s the one going back to a nine-year conspiracy, [implying] that the effort to investigate Russia’s role in the 2016 election is a hoax. He’s the person who is so much a hostage to the time capsule of his gravest grievances: losing in 2020, and Putin’s interest in him prevailing in 2016. Volume One of the Mueller report alleges they had the same strategic goal, and so Putin did things to help him win. That’s in the Mueller report; it’s not contradicted in the Durham report; and that’s the finding of the Senate Intelligence Committee led by Marco Rubio.

Need help? Review our FAQ page or contact us for assistance. For brand partnerships, email ads@puck.news.

You received this email because you signed up to receive emails from Puck, or as part of your Puck account associated with {{customer.email}}. To stop receiving this newsletter and/or manage all your email preferences, click here.

Puck is published by Heat Media LLC. 107 Greenwich St, New York, NY 10006