♪ >> BARBARA FOUGHT: Congress stands up to the President, and the President sits down with a former pariah - now a great pal.

We'll talk about it next on "Ivory Tower."

This program is brought to you by the members of WCNY.

Thank you.

♪ ♪ >> BARBARA FOUGHT: Welcome to "Ivory Tower."

I'm Barbara Fought from Syracuse University.

The professors on the panel tonight are Nina Moore from Colgate University, Rick Fenner from Utica University, Anirban Acharya from Lemoyne University, and Ben Baughman from Gannon University.

Well, this week, two Republican Congress members in our viewing area, Elise Stefanik, and Claudia Tenney, surprised us.

Both are fierce supporters of President Donald Trump, but they and nearly all of the House and Senate Republicans defied the President.

And they voted for release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

any that, of all of the issue, why is this the one they broke with him on?

>> Sure.

I'm not so sure it is this issue as much as it is the fact that it's of a piece with a basic dynamic that the MAGA base fuels Trump's power and without MAGA supporting Trump, then he has no power.

He has no cards to play.

And specifically, in this instance, an NPR/PBS poll showed that 67% of registered Republican voters supported release of the files with only the redaction of the victim's name.

So bottom line is, he might be able to stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and get away with it, but he Cannot retract a promise that he's made to the MAGA base that's very animated around this issue.

>> Yeah, I believe that many of these folks were conspiracy theorists first before, you know, Trump even came into the picture, and he just fed this.

And so now that he was backing away from it, you know, there are certain things that they're not willing to allow him to backtrack on.

The other thing about Stefanik and Tenney, I don't really- I wasn't surprised because they weren't part of the original discharge petition.

They really waited till the writing was on the wall, and everybody was going to fall in Line and vote in favor of releasing the files.

>> I mean the MAGA base, this has been continuing together to extend your point here, that, you know, Bongino and all these people, they were hyperventilating about these files getting released.

They were agog with excitement to use that word, that, oh my God, you know, finally this would be released.

Pam Bondi, they said it was lying on her desk.

She was looking at it, apparently, and then about turned, that doesn't go well with the MAGA base.

So I think this was a natural conclusion, but also there's very interesting stuff there, Right?

Mary Farmer, one of the accusers of Epstein, had said that he had secret cameras, Ira Rosen, who's a CBS producer Told him pointblank -- was told point blank, that Epstein had videotapes of both Clinton and Trump, and a stack full of binders of CDs with names we don't know about.

Drop Site News recently is reporting that the Israeli intelligence Ehud Barak had very close links with Epstein.

And there is also excellent reporting by this conservative news called Weekly Standard, which talks about how Prime Minister Netanyahu at that time, Bibi, he wanted to obliquely threaten Clinton about the Lewinsky affairs.

So there is a lot of things going on here that is definitely going to come out and at the minimum, right, what the reporting says, that Epstein had some level of connection with Israeli intelligence and had some kind of compromising evidence by which he could control very powerful people.

So we'll see what happens.

FOUGHT: So, Ben, this is there, this is there, we don't know, will we ever see all of it all frankly?

>> No, no, no.

>> Why not?

>> Even what they voted on, there's -it has to be unclassified, and it can't be part of a current investigation.

And the why not, in addition to that, is you have real survivors that are protected by federal law, that you don't give their names, you don't supply information.

You have underage people that are in there, you have video footage of the sexual violence taking place.

That can't be released to the general public.

The other issue with this is you've got Trump, and you've got this idea of transparency that he ran on.

And they have done a really good job, and a lot of aspects, being transparent until it came to this, and it kept getting pushed back and pushed back and pushed back, and you do have the base that bought into the transparency.

They voted for transparency, and For some reason, this didn't feel transparent.

So it was inevitable that it was going to get to this point, and Trump got on board, took control of the narrative the best he could at that point, because it was inevitable, and he is maintaining party unity at the moment by showing this unity part, there's nothing to hide.

It does come down to the transparency component, though.

>> Yeah, I would agree with you on the transparency component, but this is clearly an instance in which he was pushed.

He did not jump.

In this case, it wasn't his choice to do what he did.

And even for Republicans, 427 of whom voted for releasing the Documents and all of whom, presumably, in the Senate, did so - that his 427 on the House side, and all on the Senate side, they were waiting in the wings first to see what would happen, because you only had 218 people who supported the discharge petition, and it wasn't until this groundswell of pressure to release came about.

And I think that Trump is reeling from these wounds and that he's surprised, that he could not control the MAGA base.

I think that other positive here, or the first positive, I don't know if we've talked about others, is that it is an indication that the MAGA base is not as susceptible to control as lots of folks talk about it Being - that these are folks who don't think, who don't digest information.

This clearly shows that the MAGA base has a mind of its own and the foremost spokesperson is Marjorie Taylor Greene, who started out as the most vehement supporter of Trump and now in in his crosshairs.

>> Well, I just want to say, there are other cracks that are surfacing here when Trump said that he was going to bail out Argentina.

The MAGA base was really upset about this because it didn't follow with the America First view.

Just a couple of days ago, when he admitted, made an innocuous statement that we do need some immigrants that have high skills, again, just look what Happened on the podcast, the conservatives have been tearing him apart on this.

So I think while the Epstein case is the most visible, there are a number of signs that he's losing some of the support of these MAGA people.

>> Plus, there might be a thing that, you know, even in these files, Democrats might also be implicated.

>> Absolutely.

>> Larry Summers is going down hard.

Bill Clinton's own spokesperson revealed that Epstein had tried to blackmail him about his affairs.

So, you know, it's not just the Republicans, a lot of Democrat operatives who'll also be, you know, caught up in this, and the MAGA base and the Democrats want that, right?

We want pedophiles to be exposed.

And that's where we have come together to save the children, if you will.

>> So, Ben, Rick says, maybe is Trump's support unraveling?

Is this the first cracks we're Seeing in his hold?

>> I think that you do have members of the Republican party that are more risk-willing to that are not as risk-averse to testing the waters.

I do think we're seeing that, I don't think it's unraveled.

I don't think it's anything exceptional, like a huge shift that we've seen.

I do think it's going to be incremental, that he is not going to be on the midterm election ballot.

He's not going to be three years from now on the ballot.

So you do have Republicans testing the waters to see if they're going to be the next face of the party.

>> Rick, do you think it's unraveling?

>> Well, first of all, I think traditional Republicans are solidly in line with Trump.

But again, the MAGA folks didn't start off as Republicans.

Many of them were outside of the political - (inaudible) He's the biggest RINO there is.

So I think that on the far right, he is losing some of his support.

And there also seems to be at the middle, as we saw in the last elections in Virginia and New Jersey.

I think he's losing some support there.

>> I disagree.

I think that his support is solid around issues like the deportation of immigrants, and perhaps around some of the economic concerns as they pertain to China.

It's only in other areas where you don't have the sort of promise at the outset that he's going to follow through, where you see some unraveling.

FOUGHT: All right, well, for our second story, I want to follow up to our conversation last month about the U.S.

military blowing up alleged drug smuggling boats off the coast of Venezuela.

Since then, we've seen more boat attacks, the greatest military buildup in that region in years, and the green light to the CIA for covert actions against the Nicolás Maduro regime.

So Anirban, why Venezuela?

Why now?

>> Yeah, so this is a complicated issue here.

So let me start with the first thing, which is a National Intelligence Council assessment from April, which says, and I quote, "It was highly unlikely that the gang coordinates large volumes of human trafficking or migrant smuggling, and further motive says, there is no evidence that the Venezuelan government was directing Tren de Aragua, or that the gang or the government was attempting to destabilize the United States by flooding it with a criminal migrants."

So this is the administration's own intelligence assessment.

Now, given that, it's, of course, the drugs and all that stuff is the ruse.

We all know those who have studied these things for years on, that Ecuador is more of a hub right now, in terms of drug trafficking and shipping, rather than Venezuela.

But Venezuela is also near to China, China has a lot of influence there.

And, you know, recently, this Machado, María Corina Machado is a long-time advocate of U.S.

military intervention, and these kinds of extrajudicial murders, a very far-right politician, she got the Nobel Prize.

So, you know, there is this space where Trump finds itself, where they want to do a regime change, but would that be successful, even?

Does he even want to do a regime change?

Is this kind of a distraction from present ongoing headwinds that Trump is facing?

We don't know.

But yes, one of the reasons is geopolitical.

It is basically change regime in Venezuela in order to have some level of control and leverage over, you know, over oil, over other kinds of resources, that China, frankly now is one of the highest buyers and has a lot of influence in there.

So we'll see what happens.

>> Ben, but Maduro's not a good guy, right?

Why not get rid of him?

>> Well, and there's no guarantee of who's going to replace him either.

It's not that straightforwarrd.

There is that element in play.

There's no way around that.

But the public justification is legitimate.

It is also true.

Both can be true, by the way.

It is also true that the significant amount of cocaine quantities that are being produced and sent from there -- much more sent from there that are produced -- but you already have about 2,000 cars worth of cocaine coming in.

I mean, it's over 30,000 tons, I believe, cubic tons.

It's a ridiculous amount of cocaine yearly -- FOUGHT: Coming to the U.S.?

>> Leaving, and the majority comes to the U.S.

from Venezuela.

So you have that component, in addition to that is a transit point that criminal organizations are legitimately using as a transport point.

So it's not just the drugs that they're producing there.

It's not just the drugs they're shipping there.

Most of them are coming here.

So there are legitimate concerns there on top of the other ones that have been expressed here.

>> But on the one hand, I would agree with you in that I've harped for a long time, including in my own research, about the importance of foreign interdiction, meaning that you prosecute the drug war before the drugs get here, right?

Instead of imprisoning Low-level dealers so that you can keep certain people employed in the prison system.

So there is that sort of positive element to it, that it's shifting the focus of how we deal with drugs.

The problem is, the way in which it's being executed is counterproductive.

It's a shift from past interdiction efforts that involve seizing the drugs, taking the people who were manning them into custody, and then getting intelligence information out of them.

And as to the current iteration of the drug problem, it's mainly fentanyl.

Fentanyl is the deadliest drug in the U.S.s history And China provides the products for fentanyl that are then manufactured elsewhere.

And here's what we know.

Trump is not going to mess with China.

He's not going to be shooting Chinese boats anywhere in international waters, so perhaps the overall ideal is on point, the overall goal and gist of it, but the execution is problematic.

And then there is also the issue of institutional safeguards, the fact that Congress is not being consulted when 75 people have been killed in the name of the U.S.

and this has been conducted since September 2nd.

This is the equivalent of Hostilities yet under the War Powers Act, the Trump administration is saying, well, it's not hostilities because they didn't shoot back at us.

>> What about that, Rick?

Should Congress have a say, and would Congress have a say?

>> I think they should, but I wanted to go back to one point, you know, I agree that Venezuela is a huge problem here, but, as Nina said, the way that we're dealing with it is counterproductive.

Colombia now has said that they will stop sharing intelligence with us, and they were a clearinghouse of information that allowed us to know where drugs were going.

So what we're doing is we're Taking out a few boats here and there, but we're giving up a source of major intelligence which would help us stem the flow of drugs into this country.

So it is a big show of strength but we're undermining what the long-term goals should be.

>> A couple of corrections here.

Venezuela is in no way a bigger, big vector of drug trafficking to the United States Ecuador is sometimes, and Colombia is.

So that whole concentration on Venezuela is completely misplaced.

Second, I mean, to my parallel, I will say this, what we forget is a massive level of scholarly work, especially the recent one by Seth Harp, or the Fort Bragg Cartel, which looks at the CIA's long entanglement, along with special forces, with the drug trafficking networks of Latin America.

So if you look at the story, if you look at the actual data, if you read, you would see the United States is as much involved in many, many cases quite deeply in drug trafficking, moving of drugs, collecting money, destabilizing countries.

I mean, I will just ask my viewers to just read this book, "The Fort Bragg Cartel."

It will open up your eyes to see how we are constantly involved in this.

So there is a certain kind of hypocrisy to say, "Oh, you know, he's a bad guy, we are the good guys, and they are the medium guys."

This is not political analysis, right?

One, if you have to do political analysis, you have to show, right, what is going on, and what is going on here is geopolitics and nothing else.

Drug is just like the smoke screen that one can have.

>> We have to move to our last topic, another foreign policy.

The U.S.

and Saudis.

The president gave an over-the-top lavish welcome to the Crown Prince in Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, often called MBS.

The President lauded him with compliments and then defended him when asked about the CIA finding that MSB approved the brutal killing of reporter Jamal Khashoggi.

That was seven years ago.

So Ben, what does this big welcome for MSB mean as far as Saudi-U.S.

relationships?

>> We're continuing to rebuild it.

It did take a huge hit, and even Biden won partly on saying that they were evil, that Saudi Arabia, as a country, were the bad guys.

That continued for at least a year, almost two years before the Russia and Ukraine War broke out.

Oil prices went up.

We got in a position where we were going to continue to see oil prices go up.

Biden flew over there and did a fist bump with him.

So all of that to start rebuilding the relationship, we are a global world.

We are a global country, and we have to be aware of that.

There are strategic relationships that we have to continue, and he continued the process that a president's role has to do, which is continue to build those strategic relationships.

>> Since February 14th, 1945, FDR met with Abdulaziz ibn Abdul Al Saud, gave him a wheelchair.

The alliance has been strong, it's security for oil, and that's the end of it, right?

We will provide you with security, if you have uprisings in your country, you can crush it with our help.

We will completely turn a blind eye on your human rights records.

We will not mention that women Couldn't drive in your country for a few years ago.

You didn't have any movie halls.

We will not mention all those stuff.

As long as you give us the oil, we will pat you on your back and we will carry on.

But even after that, Saudi Arabia goes and joins the Shanghai Corporation, joins the BRICS, is very much close to China.

I think the United States' attempt to kind of, as you said, kind of cozy up with, you know, say, "Oh, no, you know, we are all allies.

Don't go to China too much."

But Saudi Arabia is a very intelligent player in that sense.

It is playing both sides.

It is not going to leave the Shanghai Corporation.

It's not going to leave the BRICS conglomeration there, but it's going to stay with the United States and talk to Trump and give him gold gifts.

Bearing gifts for the supreme leader kind of stuff.

>> First obviously we need to ensure that relations improve.

But again, Trump's rhetoric is just deplorable.

When the question about the death of the journalist and says "Well, you know, some people didn't like that gentleman anyway," as if that was some justification for dismemberment and killing a journalist.

>> And "things happen."

>> And "things happen" were another one.

It's just words come out of his mouth are just horrible.

The other question I have is, how do we separate Trump's foreign policy moves from, are they to enrich his family more or the first interest is what the United States?

Because there was this big talk about real estate deals early in the week with his relatives.

So this is a huge mess that the Trump administration has brought on.

I understand the goal.

We'd like normalization of relationships between Saudi Arabia and Israel, but at the same time now, we're sending F-35s and there's questions about the technology getting to China.

So as most things, it is so hard to unravel what's going on behind the Trump administration's policies.

>> Well, I take something of a cue, kick, from the fact that Israel is not objecting to Saudi Arabia getting the F-35 fighter jets.

Israel has said that what it would like is the normalization of relations.

Embassies, cooperation and trade and so forth, but it is not objecting as it did in the case of Turkey.

I think the other issue to me pertains to U.S.

Israeli relations in that, if the F-35 jets are actually given, and it appears to be the case, then, Israel is no longer the only country in the region with those.

And what we know is, Israel's qualified military edge, the idea they are sort of the biggest and baddest on the block, is somewhat undermined and this is a shift from what has been America's foreign policy in so far as in 2008, the idea that we would support Israel having an edge was codified into American law.

So this sort of uproots all of that but again, I'm following Benjamin net I can't you had who doesn't seem to have a huge problem with in.

>> And the Iran team that the China broker, the peace deal, remember that that's what is also very interesting to see how China came in and kind of brokered the deal.

The U.S.

was not even on the table.

>> That's correct.

And that's part of this is the counter measure of having Saudi Arabia in a position that they are not relying on China.

That we are a player in that region.

And the f-5s we're not going to sent over the ones that's currently have.

They have to be built which provides job and it will take a while to get over there.

It is estimated seven years.

>> And potentially provides China with the knowledge and technology.

>> In seven years of the F-35s that we currently have now, the technology we currently have versus what we'll have.

FOUGHT: Okay, It is time to wrap this one, because we've got to get to the F&As.

>> According to a recent poll by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, more than half of Americans believe the country is on the path to another civil war.

They're worried about the erosion of free speech, about threats to democracy, and worsening race relations.

Although the economy and inflation are still top of mind for voters, these other concerns reveal that our bank account is not the only thing in peril - so is our faith in all that America has achieved down through the years.

>> My F goes to the Coast Guard, which said that displays of swastikas and nooses will no longer be considered hate incidents, and rather, they're going to be thought of as politically divisive.

So while at the same time, eliminating protections for transgender troops.

So more tolerance for swastikas or noose, less for transgender.

This is not moving in the right direction.

>> I did hear something this morning.

They may make a reversal on that, >> My F goes to the Anti-Defamation League's special project called the Mamdani Monitor, which wants to monitor Mamdani for putative anti-Semitism.

The Art Jewish Action, which criticized the Anti-Defamation League's monitoring move, pointed out, and I quote, "Instead of condemning Elon Musk's signal or anti-Semitic lies, and proud pardoning the New York City's first Muslim mayor Mamdani, and threatening to defend members of his new administration."

>> My F is going to AI teddy bears.

Easy for me to say.

So they have AI built in them, and after giving advice on BDSM, sex, and where to find knives and pills, they have suspended the sales of that AI teddy bear for kids.

FOUGHT: Okay, we got to fly through the A's.

>> Okay, I'm giving an A to local businesses that stepped up to provide free food and other items to SNAP recipients whose benefits were stalled during the government shutdown.

This includes a bakery that I frequent, the Honeycomb Bakery.

It's unfortunate that in a country as rich as America, some still go hungry, but it's wonderful that the American spirit remains a spirit of giving.

>> My A goes to Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, after Trump called her a traitor, said that it was wrong and putting her life in danger.

But then she said it was fair criticism to ask why she didn't speak up when Trump used this type of rhetoric against others," and she said she's going to try to do better.

>> My A goes to the Syracuse Regional Market and the State Department of Agriculture for providing $20 coupons for people needing food at the Syracuse Regional Market.

>> My A is going to Paul McCartney.

His performance in Buffalo 83-year-old showed that both he and his music are timeless.

FOUGHT: Well, as we close, know that we love to hear from you about these topics or your ideas for others.

You can contact us at the addresses that will be on the screen.

And remember, the show airs Friday nights at 8:00, Saturday afternoons at 5:30, and it streams anytime on WCNY.org.

From all of us at Ivory Tower,