Aware of his leverage on the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) demanded that Todd Blanche meet with Epstein survivors on Thursday if he wanted his vote on the attorney general confirmation.
During a Substack Live conversation, Michael Popok and I took a cynical view of the outgoing Republican senator’s gambit.
On Wednesday, Tillis waxed indignant on what he called the “situational ethics” of the so-called weaponization of government, but he criticized the prosecutions of Donald Trump while staying silent on the numerous failed prosecutions of Trump’s enemies. Demanding a meeting without any further action smacked of a choreographed way for Tillis to justify a “yes” vote on Blanche, who already tried to signal some empathy for Epstein survivors without any promise of action, Popok and I agreed.
Meanwhile, Tillis’s willingness to try to discredit Trump’s criminal prosecution for 2020 election subversion particularly matters today. At 9 p.m. Eastern Time, Trump plans to deliver a speech that’s widely expected to float new conspiracies about the election results that year in Georgia.
During our conversation, Popok and I unpacked why Trump’s upcoming address is almost certain to be filled with disinformation. We profiled the key figures behind that campaign and shared highlights from both days of Blanche’s confirmation hearing.
