Trump dances ‘YMCA,’ pals around with Jake Paul on Day 12 of war

When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter.

You are the expert because you know what fits your life.

And getting it right starts with good information.

That's why America's beverage companies are sharing more information about our ingredients

at GoodToNoFacts.org.

No spin, no judgments, just the facts straight from the experts for more than 140 beverage

ingredients.

Visit GoodToNoFacts.org.

Now finding a doctor is a little less challenging.

United Health Group is investing in tools that make it easier for patients to navigate

healthcare and pay less.

These transparency tools help patients find providers and this is the big thing, compare

costs up front.

The big picture, more transparent pricing, benefits everyone.

And these tools from United Health Group can help patients save hundreds of dollars annually.

Learn more at UnitedHealthgroup.com slash commitment.

Tonight on All End, Operation Epic Fury!

The president dances on stage in Kentucky as his war on Iran goes sideways.

He just said it is a little excursion and you said it is a war, so which one is it?

Well it's both.

It's both.

It's an excursion that will keep us out of a war.

Tonight why Trump's war has no end in sight and what it means for his latest political

snap though.

We are now in the grip of the escalation trap or the smart bomb trap to be more precise.

Plus new reporting on the Trump accuser from the Epstein files and the details of her story

that are checking out.

And new polling that shows the democratic momentum in the polls is real.

But All End starts right now.

Good evening from New York.

I'm Chris Hayes.

We're 12 days into Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu's war with Iran and it looks exactly

as poorly planned and disastrous as many of us feared it would be nearly two weeks ago.

Do you remember when this war first started and Donald Trump echoed the old W. Bush

administration argument about U.S. forces being greeted as liberators?

Do the great proud people of Iran?

I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand.

America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force.

Now is the time to seize control of your destiny and to unleash the prosperous and glorious

future that is close within your reach.

That was Trump's pre-recorded statement from his golf palace announcing the war to the

American people in that white trucker hat you can buy off his campaign website.

Then a few hours later an American Tomahawk cruise missile struck a girl's elementary

school killing 175 children and staff.

An act in my view that gruesomely rebutted the argument that our vision was being done

about half of the Iranian people.

And instead of taking accountability for what happened, Trump on multiple occasions in

the day since blamed Iran for blowing up its own school.

You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary

school on the first day of the war, but you're the only person in your government saying

this.

Even your defense secretary wouldn't say that when he was asked standing over your shoulder

on your plane on Saturday.

Why are you the only person saying this?

Because I just don't know enough about it.

I think it's something that I was told is under investigation, but Tomahawks are used

by others as you know.

Numerous other nations have Tomahawks they buy them from us, but I will certainly whatever

the report shows, I'm willing to live with that report.

Well, he's willing to live with it.

So there you go.

We're one of three countries on earth with Tomahawk missiles.

It is the U.S., the U.K., and Australia.

Not only does Iran not have Tomahawk missiles, it does not have the technology nor the infrastructure

to fire them.

And if all that was not convincing enough, bomb fragments recovered from the scene say

maiden USA on them, because of course we're the only country that makes them and we determine

who gets to have them.

The Iranian government is not one of those places.

Well, today the New York Times reports and MSNOW has matched that an early investigation

from Trump's own government from the Department of Defense of Pete's Hegseth concludes that

yes, we were responsible for that horrific attack.

They're saying it was a mistake with the targeting system, a mistake that killed nearly

200 people most of whom were children in their school.

Trump doesn't know about it.

A new report says that the military investigation has found that the United States dropped

the school in Iran.

As Commander-in-Chief, you take responsibility for that.

That is what?

As Commander-in-Chief, do you?

Or what?

For the strike on the school in Iran, a new report says that the military investigation

has found it was the United States that dropped the school.

I don't know.

Oh, all of a sudden he doesn't know about it.

Guys got opinions on everything.

He knows about everything, can solve anything from college sports to energy to anything.

Well, what do you know?

A sleep at the wheel now.

All while his administration is scrambling, after speaking with dozen US officials, a

Times reports quote, inside the administration, some officials are growing pessimistic about

the lack of a clear strategy to finish the war, but they have been careful not to express

that directly to President who has repeatedly declared that the military operation is a complete

success.

It is not clear that Trump knows there is no exit plan.

It's not even clear he understands this war is unpopular.

Apparently, his people were not even prepared for the possibility that Iran could retaliate

against the US by shutting down crucial trade routes through the Strait of Long Mews,

again, quoting from the Times.

Even during the Israeli-Nus strikes against Iran last June, energy secretary Chris Wright

said there had been little disruption in the markets.

Trump's other advisor shared similar views in private, dismissing warnings the second

time around, Iran might wage economic warfare by closing shipping lanes carrying roughly

20% of the world's oil supply.

They just didn't think it would happen, they didn't have a plan for it.

Now Trump has been forced to release oil from the strategic reserves, 172 million barrels

are coming this week, it's out of just north of 400 million total.

Meanwhile, Iran is sending millions of barrels of oil to China.

They've actually increased their exports of oil during this period of time.

They are also now firing on oil tankers in the Strait, like trade up, reporting indicates

they are mining the sea as well.

They clearly see this as their essentially lone point of leverage against a joint war

by Israel and the US that have more firepower than they do.

They are dead serious about grinding it all to a halt.

As least as it pertains to us.

This strategy is widely known, one might even say it, obvious and widely anticipated.

The problem here is the US doesn't seem to have a strategy of its own.

Listen to this interview with the Editor-in-Chief of Arab News.

It is clear that their strategy is to make this war as expensive as possible for the United

States and for the rest of the world to put pressure on the United States for it to

stop.

On the other hand, nobody really knows what the declared mission of this war, and I'm

not even sure I've heard the United States call it a war.

It's been called Operation Epic Fury, Military Strikes.

I'm not sure if they've called it a war yet, but the continuous sort of flip-flopping on

what is the target makes everybody a bit anxious.

I mean, you imagine you'd be anxious if you were one of the Gulf countries, which hosts

American service members is being used to watch this war and is now receiving incoming

from the Iranians who seem very intent on widening the pain as much as possible.

By the way, Trump himself isn't even sure if he should call it a war, despite the fact

that he has been calling it a war from the very beginning.

We did a little excursion.

We had to take this little couple of weeks, a few weeks of excursion, but it's been incredible.

Our military is unbelievable.

The job they're doing.

Yes.

You just said it is a little excursion, and you said it is a war, so which one is it?

Well, it's both.

It's both.

It's an excursion that will keep us out of a war, and the war is going to be, I mean,

for them it's a war.

It's going to be easier than we thought.

Yes.

It's an excursion and also a war.

It's a military engagement, but not a war.

It's about to be done because it's basically ended, but it's also just the beginning.

It's the war as a Zen cone, everything in its opposite at all times.

That was an event in Cincinnati, Ohio earlier today, part of a tour across the heartland

to convince voters that everything's fine.

Meanwhile, the average price of gas in Ohio is $344 a gallon.

Last month, it was $289.

Guess what?

It's not going to stay at $344 very long if this continues, and I'm not sure any amount

of glad handing it a factory can distract voters from what's happening.

People are paying attention.

When you launch a war in the Middle East, they tend to.

Eight Americans have already died.

We now know, according to CBS News Report, that dozens more U.S. service members were

seriously injured in that drone attack on the tactical operation center and quaint

that the Trump administration was completely unprepared for.

And as we say, every night here, because it can be easy to lose sight, though the war

has been turned into this bizarre form of content, this is as real as it gets.

It's extremely real human cost to all this.

There are 1,300 dead Iranians.

We have no way of knowing what percentage of those are civilians or combatants, 1,300

Iranians.

Over 600 dead in Lebanon, from Israeli assault, they say is targeting the Hezbollah there,

but has leveled parts of the southern part of that country, 13 dead in Israel alone.

So amid all the chaos and death, how did our wartime president spend the afternoon?

By piling around with internet personality and aspiring boxer, Jake Paul and Kentucky.

And of course, dancing to the YMCA.

There you go.

At least he's having fun, right?

He's having a good time.

He seems to be enjoying himself.

That's how the commander-in-chief is behaving.

During the war of choice, he started the region literally on fire.

Is there really any wonder why it's so unpopular?

Look at this great chart from New York Times comparing the popularity of this war to the

start of passwords.

In the Iraq war, the infamous boondoggle was pulling at 76 percent approval.

I think that's after the war started right before it was a little lower.

And that's because the White House lied to the American people, but boy, do they spend

a lot of time in effort lying.

By contrast, this war is pulling at 41 percent.

That's even before there are any U.S. boots on the ground, which by the way, Trump has

very noticeably not ruled out.

There's reporting indicating it's being strongly considered, and the difference here is that

even the people waging this war do not seem to know why they are doing it.

Senator Kristen Hollins, a Democrat in Maryland.

He serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, and he joins me now.

First, let me start on that question to you.

We have gotten a bunch of differing and internally contradicted explanations for what the objective

of the war is.

There's some reporting to indicate that I think Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth have sort

of cooked up a new set of objectives, you know, depleting the ballistic missiles of the

Iranian government and handicapping, it's Navy, and that'll be enough.

It's not about the nuclear program, and it's not about regime change.

It's something in the middle.

It's something achievable.

Does that scan to you?

Chris Nell.

It just shows that they've been making everything up as they go constantly shifting rationales.

When everybody points out that one is false and has no faces, they switch to another one.

No end game whatsoever.

They've taken the lid off Pandora's box.

They've made the world in the region less safe and less safe for America, and they have

no friggin' plan for how they're actually going to conclude this war.

Meanwhile, as you said, we've already lost seven Americans, others injured, civilian casualties

across the region, including all of those school kids blown up in a bomb, US bomb in Iran.

So no, the president has no clue what he's doing.

All tactics is zero strategy.

You wrote a letter along with others asking first, since you mentioned that school strike,

demanding answers on the school bombings and civilian casualties, it seems like there

should be a foreign report.

Hague says she's coming for Congress.

Do you think it is fitting of the dignity of this nation for the president of the United

States to be throwing out landish lies about what happened when we in fact were responsible

for this horrible incident?

Well, Chris, it's always bad to have a president who lies all the time and we know Trump does

that.

It's especially dangerous when the president just lies throughout a war.

I mean, both the reasons he's going to war and now, you know, trying to blame the Iranians

for the killings of the school kids when it was the United States.

And so we need a complete investigation.

We need accountability.

And it's important that everybody understand that when Pete Hexath came into the Defense

Department, he began to systematically take apart, destroy the provisions we have in place,

the safeguards we have in place to try to prevent civilian killings in wartime.

We want to make sure we can tell our military targets, but you also want to make sure you

avoid civilian harm.

And what did Pete Hexath say about that?

He said he wasn't going to deal with any stupid, he called them sort of rules of war.

And the results has been the kind of thing that we're just witnessing.

Yeah, I mean, I think he gave us speech where he seems to think that not bombing little

children at school is woke and handcuffs our war fighters.

There's a new estimate of the cost of this war.

Pentagon is going to tell Congress the first week cost more than $11.3 billion.

That's more than a million, a billion dollars a day.

It's somewhere between one and two billion dollars a day.

Are you a yes or no on a supplemental appropriations bill to continue to fund this war?

No, I'm a hell no on any more money for the war.

I mean, this is an illegal reckless war making us less safe.

And the best way to protect our interests and protect our troops is to stop funding a

stupid war.

So no, I won't vote for any more money for this war.

You're going to hear more, Chris, about how they're going to add to this supplemental disaster

relief for certain states, maybe some farm assistance, they're going to try and sprinkle things

in to try to tempt some people who might not otherwise support it to support it.

We should not allow them to buy people's votes for this war.

We need to vote no on the supplemental, which could be up to $50 billion.

That farm assistance is interesting because we've heard reports about what this is doing

the price of fertilizer.

I've seen some spot pricing that shows it up 50, 70, 75%.

It's obviously the start of planting season right now.

It's literally the time when fertilizer is grown.

Fertilizer utilizes those fossil fuel inputs that are restricted.

Do you think there's going to be motion for like a big farmer bailout from this?

Oh, I think they may try and do that, but as you're pointing out, the best way to stop

those prices from rising, whether it's oil prices, gas prices, fertilizer prices, or

anything else, is to stop the war.

Not to put more money into the war, which as you say, is costing us a billion dollars

a day and could rise.

There's a reason, Chris, that Donald Trump on the campaign trail said he wouldn't drag

America into more wars because he knew the American people wouldn't support something

exactly like he launched right here.

This is why so many people who are part of his mega movement, a number of them are feeling

totally betrayed.

Obviously, there's a group that says whatever Donald Trump does, man, the guy's God, so it's

got to be right.

For people who took what he said seriously, they feel betrayed and they should.

Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Coming up as the president tries to calm the markets, why Donald Trump and our country

may have already fallen into the escalation trap.

That's next.

Here's a shift worth noting, better health care is care that meets patients where they

are.

United health group is bringing it directly to living rooms.

This is a win for patients managing chronic conditions, and here's the interesting thing.

By closing those care gaps, administering in-home exams and identifying risks earlier, more

diseases can be prevented, and patient outcomes can improve.

In 2025 alone, United Health Group patients received over 19 million home visits.

Learn more at unitedhealthgroup.com slash commitment.

Bringing your business dreams to life takes heart, and about a thousand decisions a day.

That's why Atlantic Union Bank's knowledgeable bankers are here for you.

With the right guidance and customized solutions to help you reach your business goals, so

whether you're planning your next move, upgrading your space, or scaling to meet demand,

we make sure your business is ready for what's ahead, because we are big enough to support

you, yet small enough to know you.

Atlantic Union Bank, anyway, you bank.

Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start, Thumbtack

knows homes, so you don't have to.

Don't know the difference between Matt Paint finish and satin, or what that clunking

sound from your dryer is.

With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro.

You just have to hire one.

You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app.

Download today.

Donald Trump has been reaching out to reporters nonstop to try and manage and message this

war this morning.

For example, I mean, I can't keep track.

He's doing them all the time.

He called Axios to tell them that, quote, the war with Iran will end soon, because there's

practically nothing left to target.

I guess, hey, in the many years that I've covered the U.S. Iran problem, right?

One thing that has always been true is that there's only so much you can do with air

power.

You can maybe stall things.

You can degrade the capabilities of Iran, but beyond that, experts have long warned

that airstrikes alone stand little chance of toppling our regime or producing a lasting

military victory.

The person who's been the chief expert on this, uh, pioneered this research is Robert

Pave.

He's a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, an author of the

sub-stack called Escalation Trap, and he joins me now.

Professor, it's great to have you in the program.

I have, um, read your writing on this literally for decades, and just start with what your

study of the use of air power, which seems to be the prime means the U.S. and Israel are

deploying here, what the limitations are, and what the kind of trap problem of it is.

So President Trump is up against the weight of history, not just Iran.

For over 100 years, states have been trying to topple governments with air power alone.

I've studied every single one of these cases, big book, bombing to win, I've taught for

the U.S. Air Force, published multiple articles on every air campaign in the last 30 years,

and here's the bottom line, Chris.

The bottom line is air power alone has never, and I'm choosing my words carefully, never

toppled a regime.

Now what happens when you use air power alone is you get one of two outcomes.

You get a slightly reconfigured government because our smart bombs will, in fact, hit the

targets, will kill the leaders, or more likely, more common is you get a lash back.

You really inject the regime with much more radical people.

You kill a layer, and that next layer that comes in is a much more radical layer.

And then the folks in society, who are your pro-democracy movement, they start to get cold

feet because as much as they may not like their regime, they don't want to be the henchmen

of, say, the United States or Israel, that is even worse.

So what you end up with is the escalation trap.

You end up with smart bombs, they do, in fact, destroy the targets.

They kill the leaders, but those leaders are then replaced by more radical.

And what are you left with?

You try to double down, which ends up further escalating the war.

And this is what Quagmire looks like.

We are in the opening stages of Quagmire.

I don't think this is going to be easy to get out of.

We are in the midst of the escalation trap.

You wrote this.

You say the Iran War is already falling a pattern seen in many modern conflicts, early

military success and escalation, then a widening war, no one originally planned.

Across history, the same strategic mechanic keep appearing.

We've seen reporting, talking about, a very serious consideration of some special forces,

US troops being sent to Iran.

My understanding, at least as far as the discussions go now, is that their job would be to try to

secure the highly enriched uranium that would be the fuel for any future nuclear program,

particularly the nuclear weapons program.

What do you think of that?

Well, this air campaign that Donald Trump has unleashed may well go down in history as

the most disastrous air campaign America has ever waged.

And here's why.

The whole issue for 20 years, I've been modeling the bombing of Iran in its consequences

for 20 years.

And what is the whole issue been about for all this time, the enriched uranium?

What did Donald Trump do last June?

He bombed for a dose and he told us he had dismantled, destroyed, well, think of it as

he used air power to contain that enriched uranium.

What has, in fact, happened is air powered that he used in 4.0 didn't contain it.

It triggered Iran to disperse it.

In fact, we have satellite, and if you go to my sub-stack, you would see this, we actually

have satellite photography out in the open of Iran at 4.0, the day before the bombs falling,

pulling material out that looked like scuba tanks.

Well, that's exactly what this enriched uranium looks like.

We have other satellite imagery showing at Estefan, that's another one of the nuclear sites

we bombed, that in February, over weeks Iran was digging material out.

Well, what do you think they're digging out, coffee, I mean, this is really the dispersal

of that enriched uranium.

So in other words, what Donald Trump did is it's not just a failure and it's not just

he's unleashed the problem of the global economy, but just imagine it looks as if he

has triggered the dispersal of uranium, this enriched uranium inside Iran, and it doesn't

have to say dispersed just inside of Iran, it can weak out of Iran.

Think of all those tentacles we talk about that Iran has with all those terrorist groups,

the Houthis, Hezbollah, etc., etc.

Well we haven't been able to shut that down.

Do we really think we can stop scuba tanks from getting to the Houthis?

This is really quite a dangerous situation, and this is not just the escalation trap as

history unfolds, it is that.

It could be the worst set of disasters triggered by the smart bomb trap by an American air campaign

because it is likely triggering the dispersal of that material.

And that's why you see Senator Blumenthal and others walking out of that briefing yesterday

ashen face, what do you think that they're learning?

They're learning there is probably bigger problems coming.

That's the real problem of the escalation trap.

Let me play that, here's Richard Blumenthal walking out of that briefing yesterday, looking

ashen face, take a look.

We seem to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran to accomplish

any of the potential objectives, I'm telling you that the objectives that have been outlined

to this war will require boots on the ground at some point.

So now that it's started and the trap is there, I remember back in Iraq and I heard with

Afghanistan a million times was, well you got to stay for a little longer, the next six

months is crucial.

Always longer, longer, longer, longer, the sunk cost fallacy.

It seems to me, just to lay my cards on the table for what I am rooting for personally,

is that he just declares victory and says it's done.

Given a range of bad options, does that seem the best one to you?

I don't think it would be enough, Chris.

He is on the horns of a dilemma.

He had a possible deal with the Iranian negotiators the Friday before the Saturday when he kicked

this off.

Remember, there was an actual deal on the table that he turned down.

Then he went and he killed, supported killing all these leaders, you see what I mean.

So now the idea that we're just going to walk away and let this radicalized regime disperse

all this material.

Think about, we just went through Savannah Gunsbury's mother and we saw by day by day the radius

of expansion where she could be was growing.

This has been growing for eight months inside of Iran.

You got 1,000 pounds of 60% enriched uranium, 10,000 pounds of 2 to 5% enriched uranium.

We have satellite photographs out in the open of them moving materials at these sites.

So what you are facing here, and this is why I think Senator Blumenthal is probably what

he's facing.

He probably isn't getting information like Donald Trump's going to do a go order with

those troops.

What he's probably seeing is that how else would you even try to get this enriched uranium?

And then he's probably doing the natural calculation.

If we can't find Savannah Gunsbury's mother, how are we going to find that 10,000 pounds,

that 1,000 pounds, I just outlined, when they could be in scuba tanks and this is a territory

two and a half times size of the Texas, and this is just a disaster in the making.

I think we're probably only at the beginning of the real disaster as it unfolds.

That's sobering, Robert Pape.

Thank you so much for sharing your expertise tonight.

I appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Chris.

Still ahead, new reporting on the Trump accuser from the Epstein file, some great journalism.

Shoe Leather, good old-fashioned reporter running down the details of a store, we're going

to bring that to you next.

Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start, Thumbtack

knows homes, so you don't have to.

Don't know the difference between Matt Paint Finish and Satin, or what that clunking

sound from your dryer is.

With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro.

You just have to hire one.

You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates and read reviews, all on the app.

Download today.

At DSW, we ask the important questions.

Like, what shoes are you going to wear?

Whether you're prepping for wedding season, festival season, or just planning the ultimate

vacay, the right shoes can make or break an RSVP.

So own the moment.

You've got big plans and we've got just the shoes, at the perfect price, of course.

Get ready to get ready with designer shoe warehouse.

That's your DSW store, or DSW.com today, and let us surprise you.

Imagine relying on a dozen different software programs to run your business, none of which

are connected.

Each one more expensive and more complicated than the last.

It can be pretty stressful.

Now imagine, Odo.

Odo has all the programs you'll ever need, and are all connected on one platform.

Does an Odo sound amazing?

Let Odo harmonize your business with simple, efficient software that can handle everything

for a fraction of the price.

Sign up today at Odo.com, that's Odo.com.

Late last week, the Department of Justice released three previously missing FBI memos.

Memos that we knew the Department just had, but did not put up on their website when

they released the files, that summarized the Bureau's 2019 interviews with a woman

who said that Jeffrey Epstein groomed traffic and sexually abused her when she was a minor.

In those interviews, the woman also said that when she was between 13 and 15 years old,

the president of the United States, Donald Trump, sexually abused and beat her.

The FBI seemed to take these accusations seriously enough that they interviewed the

same woman four times, producing these FBI memos, which contain a bunch of details that

are, let's say, they're verifiable, but we're not verified.

Meaning, it's possible to use available public records to just start to cross reference

some of the factual assertions she makes when describing her abuse in the situation.

And that is exactly the kind of investigation that South Carolina newspaper, the posting

career undertook with this enterprise reporting.

They were able to verify a number of the woman's claims about her background or family using

things like court records, police reports, old print reporting and property records.

Now, Donald Trump has consistently denied it wrongdoing, any wrongdoing when it comes

to Jeffrey Epstein.

And the posting career, I should be clear, does not substantiate the woman's allegations

about Trump.

In fact, the paper reports quote, of the details the posting career found supported by

public records, none elated directly to the alleged victims' claims about Trump.

But, this new reporting shows that this woman's story is, let's just say, not a completely

fictitious or fabricated account, right?

It's not disproven, it's not dispositively ruled out based on facts here.

The paper reached out to the woman and her lawyer, they did not respond.

Joining me now is Marilyn Thompson, veteran investigator, reporter of the posting career who

dug into public records to publish that story with her colleague, Mitchell Black.

Marilyn, I just want to start by praising the work that your colleague, Mitchell Black,

who I know was running around doing sort of shoe leather reporting on this and you have

done on this because my first thought when I read through these documents, I read them

a number of times is, okay, there's some basic assertions here that should be in the public

record that we can start to sift through.

So tell me what you started to look for and what you found.

Yeah, Chris.

If you remember the progression of the release of documents, the first document came out

a little earlier and it had a pretty substantial story of her abuse while she was living on

Hilton Head Island, a lot of details that basically Mitchell and I put our heads together

and said, you know, these are the true or not true.

And we came at this from the assumption that good reporting is looking back at the record

to try to verify facts as they exist.

In this case, we were able to verify any number of claims that she made in her initial report.

But she did, in the second FBI interview, the first one had ended rather abruptly and

she started mentioning Trump and then she shut down.

The FBI came back and got a more detailed account.

We, Mitch, who's a fearless young reporter, got on a plane and went to the West Coast.

We had made an editorial decision that we would not name this victim.

But he went to the West Coast and was able to look in the public records in kind of a

breakneck pace and find verification of a number of the claims.

Can you walk us through those interesting to watch it?

Can you just walk us through?

Let's start with that first interview and just like the basic claims, Hilton Head Island,

she says she was there at the time.

She answered this advertisement, I think, for babysitting is how she describes it.

What were you able to sort of pin down?

Yeah.

I mean, there was a story behind it that her mother was a realtor on the island, that her

mother had loaned her out for babysitting services to clients of her rental real estate company,

and that she had gone to a house thinking she was babysitting and this attack began.

She did have a number of other encounters with the person that she later identified as

Jeffrey Epstein.

So we were able to take that story, the mother, we didn't know who she was, but we found

her.

We found the mother, we found the mother's cases, we found property records.

We did old-fashioned shoe leather type stuff that I haven't seen done in many a year.

What that just means is that again, you can imagine someone calls an FBI tip line and says

something and it's just totally fabricated.

I was in a plane with so and so and we flew to Dubai and they did something and then it's

like, you were never on that plane.

In this case, just the ground fact of like she was in Hilton Head Island, again, we don't

want to give any details that revealed her energy, but she's around the age that this

would be the case, that her mother was a realtor there, that she did live there, that these

are all things that you can kind of nail down as true.

Correct.

Yeah, and we were able to identify her high school, we were able to find her picture in

the high school yearbook, her friend's picture, there was a friend who made a similar tip

to the FBI and unfortunately the friend in the FBI's kind of bungled handling of an internal

memo, they put some identifying details about this friend that were quite interesting and

verifiable.

We were able through this mosaic to kind of create a picture of what this woman's

life had been like and then tell the story and I thought it was a very compelling story.

We have a lot of respect for victims and don't believe that you can just dismiss their

claims out of hand.

Yeah, I suspect there's more reporting obviously to do here, but just establishing these

sort of basic things to check through I think is really helpful in moving the story forward.

So Marshall Blackright is your, your colleague, sorry, Mitchell Black, Mitchell Black, yeah,

Mitchell Black of the Posting Courier and Marilyn Thompson, thank you so much, I appreciate

your time tonight.

Oh, thank you very much.

All right, still to come.

Brand new polling showing the Democratic surge is very, very real day by day, we see

it real trouble for Republicans next.

If there's any hope within the Trump administration for some kind of rally around the flag effect for

a regime change war in Iran launched out of nowhere with zero fixed rationale, someone

should tell them it's definitely not been the case.

As we know, to look at this, New York Times chart based on years of public opinion polls

in just the first two weeks of the war, it has lower public support than the first days

of nine other US military inventions, starting with World War II, which after Pearl Harbor

was, you might be shocked here, quite popular.

And every day that we get more polling on national politics, it really does seem like

things get worse and worse for the Republican Party as a whole, which is crucial because

Donald Trump is on the ballot, right, in the fall.

So for example, the latest Marist pull out today on the generic ballot, just ask people

are you going to vote for Democratic or Republican, your congressional race, show Democrats

the nine percentage point lead over Republicans among registered voters asked how they would

vote if the midterm elections were held today.

Starting of marquee Senate races in states like Ohio and Maine show Republicans in dead

heats with potential Democratic opponents.

Philip Bump is an MS now contributor, creator of the How to Read This Chart newsletter,

Nikki McCann Ramirez is a politics reporter at Rolling Stone, and they both join me now.

Let's just start on the Marist pull, Philip, that these are the approval, disapproval

numbers, which is Trump at 38%, disapproval 57%, again, I do think there's like a little

bit of response by us when things are going bad for him, where like you get a little

more lives in the mix, like picking up the phone.

But generally stated, like that's about the floor for Donald Trump.

And the thing that was striking to me is there's been a little gap between him being at his

floor and the generic ballot that we've seen.

And it was striking to me that the Marist pull, starting to show the kind of generic ballot

numbers that are also kind of like the real heading towards worst case scenario.

Yeah, I mean, people should recognize that typically in the first midterm after a new

president, you're going to see backlash against the president.

So we're seeing this heightened here.

And I think there are two factors here.

The first is that the Democratic Party itself is unpopular.

And so when you are asking people three months ago who they prefer the Democrat or the

Republican, there's going to be an antipathy towards the Democratic Party that isn't normally

the case, but now we're getting candidates.

Now we have actual people who are out there and can running in the primary.

And so now people are saying, okay, now I know who those people are more than they

used to. I think that's playing a role here too.

That's really interesting.

Yeah, I hadn't thought about it.

A generic poll gets started fill in with non-generic stuff.

This was also striking to me, Nick.

I mean, so when you're talking about, I think, look, Democrats are odds on favorites to

take back the House.

They only have to win what five seats or something like that, right?

Even in a normal political cycle, you would expect that level of flip back.

The Senate is a much higher climb.

And if they're going to win the Senate, they would have to win seats in places like Ohio,

right, which Trump carried by eight points.

This Ohio polling has shared Brown, who of course lost in the last election, running

against John Hustead, who's the incumbent there, and up to points within the Marginare

are basically tied.

But that's got to be heartening if you're running the Democratic Senate, or you'll come.

Oh, absolutely.

And I think if you want to be even more in live and look at Texas, where the decision

Trump is facing right now regarding the Republican runoff is, does he pick a candidate who has

been critical of him before, but is sort of a more historic example of a Republican sort

of those like old, when Texas still had blue statewide officials, or does he endorse

Paxton, a very MAGA Republican figure made in his own image, who does not pull well

against the Democratic candidate.

And Trump carried Texas by what, 14 points, 2024, the fact that the party is having to make

this decision, that Trump is sitting there considering, do I betray my own base for

better odds here?

That is just a signifier of how fragile the Republican position is right now.

And in terms of the map, I mean, do you should just say that, you know, the two best, best

opportunities Democrats think for pickups are main, where, you know, it's going to be Susan

Collins, and there's going to be primary there.

And North Carolina, which is an open seat, because Tom Tillis is retiring, it's going to

be Michael Watley, former chair of the RNC, verse, the very, very, very popular Roy Cooper,

who's never lost a statewide election in North Carolina.

Like those are the first two.

When you move past that, you immediately get into much more difficult territory, because

you get into Ohio, which Trump carried by 8 or 10, Texas, we carried by 14, Alaska,

was she carried by 8, I want to say, Iowa.

So like, you, the Democrats need good candidates, but they also need like, something like a really

unpopular war that drags on for, I mean, really, like if you're talking about like exogenous

events, it's like, to get to the level that you would need to start looking at those places

being competitive, or gas prices starting to surge.

Right.

Gas prices at $5 a gallon, like if you were like, you know, you were before the Oracle,

right?

Please.

Yeah.

But I do think there's two things about Ohio and Texas that are worth noting.

The first is in Ohio, and he's shared Brown.

This is someone who's been on the ballot.

He's running this relatively unknown incumbent there.

So it's, it's not exactly just, you know, throwing things into the mix, the way you'd expect.

He also, we should just say, rather than running as the person who's in Washington, is

running against a person who's in Washington, which just that flip alone gives you some.

And then in Texas, of course, Texas actually swung to the right, as did most states in 2024,

but that was powered a lot by Hispanic voters along the border.

Those Hispanic voters turn out very heavily for Tallarico, the Democratic candidate, in

the primary, which may actually change the dynamic more than we expect.

You know, there's two groups that we are seeing that swung to Trump in 2024 and seem to

be in the early returns in polling we have swung way away.

Latino voters, Hispanic voters, right?

And Gen Z men.

I mean, Gen Z, there's like a million stories written about Gen Z men.

And it really did jump out to you in the exit polling like they did move to the right.

There's interesting Peter Hamby thing.

He didn't puck just like interviews with Gen Z men and just how sort of toxic the Iran

war specifically is to the kind of Gen Z men that were like, not like a diehard mag up,

a kind of flow to him in the last election.

He said, back in 2024, a topic rarely discussed in Washington kept popping up in my conversations.

Young men were telling me over and over again, they were worried about being drafted into

war.

And people have been showing those posts from Stephen Miller back in 2024, Kamala Harris

is going to send you and your sons into World War III, like it does seem to be based on

what you see in the manosphere and the podcast that like starting a war of choice in Iran

uniquely alienating to precisely that demographic.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think in all the think pieces about why men were swinging so hard to the right,

one of the central issues there was, of course, economic disillusionment.

This idea that this generation grew up watching their parents, their peers struggle financially

while at the same time watching the US government wage these 20, 30 year quagmires.

And so yeah, you see periods of instability, you see the United States on the brink of

action, time and time again.

And I think, for example, there was that AP report that came on out just before we went

on the air about how the first week of the war cost $11 billion approximately, earlier

this year, the Trump administration announced that it would be cutting federal funds for

childcare assistance in five different states, including California, Minnesota, and New York.

So people aren't stupid, they're seeing their government dump money into this while abandoning

them.

I mean, this is the most obvious argument to make from the Democratic side is like there's

money for bombs in Iran and there's not money for fill in the blank of domestic priority.

And I think it's why in some ways that supplemental bill, to me, you know, I'm not a sitting

member of Congress and I've never been elected.

So take this for what it's worth.

It seems like a obvious vote for the Democrats in Congress.

Philip Bump, thank you, McCann Ramirez, thank you both.

Stay tuned, because in just a few minutes, Jen Psaki is going to tell us how the Department

of Defense is booting photographers because they're taking unflattering pictures of heat

eggs at.

That's coming up.

We'll be right back.

That does it for all in.

You can catch us every weeknight at eight o'clock on MS now.

Don't forget to like us on Facebook.

That's Facebook.com slash on with Chris snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigued,

wake up to Zepp Bound, tears appetite.

The first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive

sleep apnea, OSA, and adults with obesity.

Zepp Bound is an injectable prescription medicine that may help adults with moderate to severe

obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA.

Zepp Bound should be used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity.

Zepp Bound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection.

Zepp Bound contains tersepotide and should not be used with other tersepotide-containing products

or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines.

It is not known if Zepp Bound is safe and effective for use in children.

Do not share needles or pens or reuse needles.

Don't take Zepp Bound if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had

medullary thyroid cancer, or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2.

Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck.

Stop Zepp Bound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic

reaction.

Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gall bladder problems.

Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes, depression, or suicidal thoughts before

schedule procedures with anesthesia.

If you're nursing, pregnant, planned to be or taking birth control pills.

Taking Zepp Bound with a sulfonoluria or insulin may cause a little blood sugar.

Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen

kidney problems.

Talk to your doctor.

Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zeppbound.lily.com.

Zepp Bound and its delivery device base in QuickPin are registered trademarks owned or licensed

by Eli Lilly and company.

It's subsidiaries or affiliates.