Today in Politics, Bulletin 190. 8/19/25

… DOJ was supposed to turn over the Epstein Files to the House Oversight Committee today, but instead announced that they would be providing selected documents incrementally over time. Ranking member Robert Garcia (D-CA): “Releasing the Epstein files in batches just continues this WH cover up. The American people will not accept anything short of the full, unredacted Epstein files. In a bipartisan vote, the Committee demanded complete compliance with our subpoena. Handpicked, partial productions are wholly insufficient and potentially misleading.”

… Right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk on Trump’s former AG Bill Barr’s deposition yesterday: “Former AG Bill Barr told House investigators that he never saw anything that could tie President Trump to Jeffrey Epstein's crimes. According to Oversight Chair James Comer: ‘He said that he had never seen anything that would implicate Trump in any of this.’”

… Garcia said Comer is lying about Barr’s testimony: “Yesterday, during his deposition with our Committee, AG Barr could NOT clear President Trump of wrongdoing. Chairman Comer should release the entire unedited transcript of his interview to the public.”

… Meanwhile, psycho MO AG Dan Bailey was named as the co-Deputy FBI Director with Dan Bongino. Rachel Maddow: “Fox is reporting tonight is that Dan Bongino is effectively out. He's had somebody else given his job same job title, after he reportedly clashed with the White House and AG Pam Bondi over the administration's efforts to suppress the material about Epstein that it holds in its own files."

… Last year, Bailey was on a media tour calling for any local Republican prosecutor to indict Joe Biden for bribery for allegedly trying buy votes by granting student loan forgiveness. He’s still probably more stable than Bongino.

… Texas State Rep. Nicole Collier spent the night in the TX House chamber after being locked inside for refusing to submit to monitoring by the police. Collier was one of 51 TX Reps who fled the state in order to prevent a radical redistricting plan that would eliminate 5 Democratic congressional seats. When they returned to the capitol, Democrats were forced to agree to a mandate by Speaker Dustin Burrows that they be monitored 24/7 by state troopers leading up to the vote on redistricting on Wed to prevent them from leaving again.

… Collier to Meidas: "I refuse to sign away my dignity as a duly elected representative just so Republicans can control my movements and monitor me with police escorts. My constituents sent me to Austin to protect their voices and rights. When I press that button to vote, I know these maps will harm my constituents—I won’t just go along quietly with their intimidation or their discrimination. I refused to sign and so I was told that I was gonna have to stay here on the floor. They have locked the doors. The sergeants have been instructed not to allow me to leave until I have a permission slip.”

… Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX): "As a former TX State Rep, let me be clear: LOCKING Rep. Nicole Collier inside the chamber is beyond outrageous. Forcing elected officials to sign 'permission slips' and take police escorts to leave? That's not procedure. That's some old Jim Crow playbook. Texas Republicans have lost their damn minds.”

… Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was on Fox complaining about CA’s response to his gerrymandering scheme: “What the Democrats have done is disgraceful and potentially illegal. If California is trying to squeeze out more Republicans, there will be lawsuits that overturn that.”

… Trump woke up and his first post of the day on Truth Social was to rant about windmills in NJ: “STUPID AND UGLY WINDMILLS ARE KILLING NEW JERSEY. Energy prices up 28% this year, and not enough electricity to take care of the state. STOP THE WINDMILLS!”

… He then went on Fox and Friends, where he talked about greeting Putin on the red carpet in Alaska: “We maintained a very good relationship - you saw that when he got off his plane and I got off my plane. There’s a warmth there - there’s a decent feeling.”

… Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-MS) responded with a post tagging Trump that linked to a story about Putin bombing civilians during his phone call with Trump: “President Trump, Vladimir Putin is a genocidal maniac. Putin lies and kills. Your leadership will be key to keep Ukraine, US, and Europe together against Putin's delays and deceptions.”

… Trump was asked how European leaders reacted when he left their meeting to call Putin while they waited for 45 minutes: “I didn't do it in front of them. I thought that would be disrespectful to President Putin.”

… Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about Trump’s comment: Q - “If the point is to get everybody on the same page, why wouldn't Trump just take the call from Putin when the other leaders were in the room? Leavitt: Only a reporter from the New York Times would ask a question like that.”

… Every time she gets confronted with a question she can’t answer, that is her exact response with only the name of the media company being changed.

… JD Vance then posted: “Karoline Leavitt lighting the American media up for lying about our negotiations with Russia and Ukraine.”

… Trump then said Ukraine started the war: "It's not a war that should've been started. You don't do that. You don't take on a nation that's 10 times your size."

… Ukrainian journalist Kateryna Zubkova reacted to Trump’s comment: “We are basically getting blamed for existing next to Russia. This is getting ridiculous.”

… Trump said he expects even more than a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on Ukraine: "I want to try and get to heaven if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I hear I'm really at the bottom of the totem pole. But if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.”

… Leavitt was later asked about Trump’s bizarre comment. Q - “He said he was doing this in order to get to heaven. Was he joking or is there spiritual motivation behind his peace deals? Leavitt: I think the president was serious. The president wants to get to heaven as I hope we all do in this room.”

… Trump concluded his Fox interview with a preposterous lie (unchallenged of course) followed by (shockingly) making the war all about him: "I've solved 7 wars. We ended 7 wars. I thought this would be one of the easier ones, and this has turned out to be the toughest one. I hope President Putin is gonna be good. President Zelensky has to show some flexibility also."

… Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed on CNBC that Trump intimidated Putin during their meeting last week: "Alaska was a show of force by President Trump. It was kind of like inviting your uncontrollable neighbor to your house and showing them your gun case."

… Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL): “Thank goodness we got President Trump that’s speaking for us. Putin respects Trump and that’s the key card to play in this game.”

… Sky News Intl Affairs Editor Dominic Waghorn: “It's always wise to let the dust settle before reaching conclusions with this presidency. But on the face of it we are further away from peace now than we were 2 weeks ago. The consensus that was held back then was that Putin would only relent under maximum pressure. He does not want slivers of territory. He wants the whole of Ukraine extinguished and absorbed into his greater Russia. To stop him, allies agreed an immediate ceasefire was necessary, along with much more painful pressure, namely sanctions hitting his oil industry. Europeans and Republicans in Congress agree on that.”

… “Then Alaska and Donald Trump's U-turn. No ceasefire and no more severe sanctions. So less pressure. Yesterday's reality TV diplomatic circus in Washington has not shifted him on that stance, so he stays it seems now aligned with Putin on those crucial points. Making matters worse for Ukraine, allies seem to be accepting it will have to give up land taken by force. They sweeten the pill by saying of course only Ukraine can decide whether or not to cede territory, but there is now enormous pressure on Zelensky to do so.”

… “In return there is nebulous and vague talk of security guarantees. European leaders are seizing on the fact Trump did not rule out American troops being involved and hinted at US support for post-war security arrangements. But that is little consolation for Ukrainians. They point out this president changes his mind as often as his socks and goes back on commitments, even those enshrined in international treaties.”

… “The best that can be said for the WH meeting is it sets up more such meetings. Much of yesterday's events were focused on stroking Trump's ego. Many here in Kyiv would prefer he was reminded of a few hard facts about this war: Putin cannot be trusted. Putin wants the end of Ukraine. Putin will only relent under maximum pressure. Protracted international diplomacy may suit Trump's craving for attention, but they fear it will only take us further away from peace.”

… Irish Senator Michael McDowell’s editorial in the Irish Times: “Trump won’t even countenance further sanctions against Russia. He astonished his so-called allies by calling for Russia’s readmission to the G7 summits. He regularly suggests that Ukraine somehow started the war with Russia. He called President Zelenskiy a dictator and insulted him grossly at an ambush in the Oval Office – the political pigsty where idiotic parodies of international diplomacy are staged. He has hardly more than murmured against the Russian missile onslaught on Ukrainian cities.”

… “What is his real strategy? Is it to collapse the Ukrainian state by weakening its resistance to Russia or to re-establish Ukraine as a Russian satellite? Is it to divide the mineral and oil assets of Ukraine with Russia, in line with the ‘deal’ he imposed on Zelensky in a Corleone-style offer he couldn’t refuse? Is the ‘dictator’ Zelensky now to be the object of US-backed regime change as part of a capitulation to Russia? Or is there some different hidden policy agenda?”

… “I used to be skeptical about claims that Putin had access to kompromat on Trump that explained his groveling relationship with the Kremlin. But if such kompromat is not the explanation, it is hard to see why the WH is behaving as it does towards Ukraine.”

… Fox Chief Political Analyst Brit Hume posted this today: “From Bret Stephens writing in NYT: "Some in this admin, particularly the Pentagon’s Elbridge Colby, seem to think that settling the war in Ukraine will allow the US to concentrate its efforts on containing China. In fact, nothing will do more to encourage Chinese adventurism against Taiwan or in the South China Sea than to see Putin rewarded in Ukraine."

… Rep. Marge Greene (R-GA) had some spelling issues while posting a defense of her boyfriend’s questions about Zelensky’s suit: “The White House press core under Joe Biden, never asked tough questions. During tyrannical Covid lockdowns and the highest inflation since the 1970s, the best they could muster up was what flavor ice cream he liked. Brian Glenn is asking the questions America cares about.”

… It’s “press corps.” And Trump was president during lockdowns.

… After getting busted by multiple media outlets for living rent free in the home designated for the Commandant of the Coast Guard, Kristi Noem was on Fox blaming the media for her scam: “I had an apartment I was paying rent on but I had to leave there because the media put my address and the threats were so much that I had to temporarily stay somewhere else. That’s really the carelessness, the heartlessness, and the thoughtlessness that the media operates in right now.”

… Noem’s “special friend” and de facto Chief of Staff Corey Lewandowski also happens to live right near her new very comfortable free residence.

… SecDef Pete Hegseth has redecorated the Pentagon with photos everywhere of himself and his 3rd wife (a Fox producer he impregnated while married to his 2nd wife). Daily Beast notes that in a recent video showing Hegseth and RFK Jr walking through the Pentagon, “a photograph that shows Hegseth and third wife Jennifer Rauchet is on the wall as the pair shake hands. The photo of Hegseth and his wife originally included JD Vance in the foreground but he was unceremoniously cropped out of the picture.”

… “The video cuts to the two men walking down a corridor lined with more pictures of Hegseth, one inspecting what appears to be Marines and the other saluting in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. Other pictures of the couple were plastered on another Pentagon wall in a meeting room.”

… Fox host Dana Perino isn’t happy about Gavin Newsom’s social media trolling of Trump and his cult worshippers: “You have to stop at with the Twitter thing. If I were his wife, I would say you are making a fool of yourself, stop it. He's got a big job as governor of California but if he wants an even bigger job, he has to be a little more serious.”

… Apparently, Perino doesn’t understand that Newsom’s posts all mimic and mock posts that Trump has already made.

… Newsom then posted: “DANA "DING DONG" PERINO (NEVER HEARD OF HER UNTIL TODAY!) IS MELTING DOWN BECAUSE OF ME, GAVIN C. NEWSOM! FOX HATES THAT I AM AMERICA’S MOST FAVORITE GOVERNOR ("RATINGS KING") SAVING AMERICA — WHILE TRUMP CAN’T EVEN CONQUER THE “BIG” STAIRS ON AIR FORCE ONE ANYMORE!!! TRUMP HAS “LOST HIS STEP” AND FOX IS LOSING IT BECAUSE WHEN I TYPE, AMERICA NOW WINS!!! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER. — GCN”

… Trump’s Kennedy Center director and MAGA snowflake Ric Grenell was also triggered: “It’s so obvious that Gavin Newsom isn’t the person actually tweeting from his account. It’s some new team he’s hired who has convinced him to step aside and let them try something new. He’s so phony. He’s not even able to tweet on his own!”

… Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) responded to Grenell’s post with Newsom-style mockery: “Some people say it’s him, Many in fact. Billions and sometimes even trillions say it’s him. Vladimir Putin (SMART GUY!) agrees. Even the late great honest Abe who was treated so unfairly only second to President Trump who recently aced the test something rarely seen. TAKE THE TEST!”

… Kid Rock took the bait and didn’t get the joke on one of Newsom’s latest troll posts:

Thank you so much for all your kind words in the replies to yesterday’s Bulletin after my return from a week off - I read all of them. It was great to hear that so many of you look forward to receiving this every day and really missed it while I was gone. My goal in creating this was to make it very unique and special - where I would would tap into the wide array of people in so many areas that I read and follow daily. I try to take that mountain of info (and sometimes tedium and drivel) and boil everything down to it’s most useful essence in an easily readable format that informs and entertains (probably angers too).

I think this keeps getting better as we enter our 11th month doing this, and I thank each of you very much for subscribing which helps to make this happen. A reminder that there is no Bulletin on Wednesdays because I do my show Uncovered and also my Ask the Editor show with Ben. Please submit anything you would like me to comment on for that show in a reply to this post.

If you missed yesterday’s Bulletin (over 360,000 have read it so far), you can find it here.

… After Trump fired the Director of Bureau of Labor Statistics because of the last dismal jobs report, it turns out that Trump’s nominee to replace her is a J6er. WIRED: “In the months leading up to the J6 Capitol riot, a now deleted Twitter account bearing the full name of E. J. Antoni, Trump’s pick to run the BLS, betrayed a seeming obsession with promoting election denial conspiracy theories while talking about violent threats to those who stood in Trump’s way.”

… “The account was linked by the conservative Heartland Institute think tank when referring to Antoni in a 2020 post on Twitter promoting one of its own YouTube videos in which he appeared. A WIRED review of an archive of the account’s posts shows that in the months leading up to the attack on the Capitol, it spread baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and shared content from The Donald, a virulently pro-Trump message board that was used to organize the events of J6.”

… “One of the final posts on the now deleted account used violent religious rhetoric in the hours before the assault on the Capitol began. Last week, an NBC investigation uncovered video footage showing Antoni near the Capitol on J6. The WH confirmed to NBC that it was Antoni, while claiming that he was merely a ‘bystander’ who was in DC for meetings and had wandered over after seeing coverage of the incident on the news.”

… “Antoni’s main qualification for the job appears to be that he is the chief economist for the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, a