Episode Summary 

Donald Trump in an unfamiliar situation. After years of being able to tell his followers what to think about almost everything, many of the MAGA faithful are upset at his administration for refusing to release the government’s files on the infamous sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.

When he was running for office last year, Trump and many of the people who work in the highest levels of his administration repeatedly promised that they would release the documents on Epstein, including FBI, director Kash Patel, Deputy FBI director Dan Bongino, and Attorney General Pam Bondi. Now, both Bondi and Trump are saying that they will not be releasing the Epstein files.

This refusal has been extremely upsetting to many Trump voters because believing that imaginary Democratic pedophiles secretly rule the world has become almost the cornerstone of being a Republican in the Trump era.  Faced such massive inter-party descent, the administration has taken to a strategy that they reportedly refer to as “zombie food,” throwing out stories that they know know to be nonsense in order to distract MAGA partisans from Trump’s Epstein betrayal.

In the past several weeks, Trump has offered a veritable zombie food buffet of narratives to supporters. But the biggest dish by far seems to be a new effort re-frame the 2016 Russian hack and influence campaign as actually a secret plot by Trump’s former opponent, Hillary Clinton, and former President Barack Obama.

None of this is real, needless say, but I think particular episode is worth digging into further in real-time since we can see right now how zombie food is made served up to the MAGA masses. Joining the show to discuss is Renée DiResta, a long-time friend of the show who has direct knowledge of this particular history because she was one of numerous experts who worked with the Senate Intelligence Committee to analyze the Russian hacking and disinformation campaign.

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Audio Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

08:26 — Marco Rubio and Senate Republicans said Russia tried to help Trump in 2016

12:21 — Trump’s “zombie food” distraction strategy

15:13 — The Sydney Sweeney hoax controversy

18:29 — File dumps as fake disclosure

22:25 — Tulsi Gabbard’s desperation to reconcile with Trump after Iran debacle

28:22 — Russian trolls only praised Clinton to damn her

30:06 — Russian troll tactics

34:15 — Right-wing figures falsely conflating media headlines with government actions

37:30 — John Durham turned up nothing compared to Robert Mueller

41:56 — Kash Patel’s burn bag story

44:20 — What the Durham Report annex actually says

48:48 — Right-wing media’s lower reading comprehension?

55:48 — Russian idiom snafus

01:00:05 — Conclusion

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