The Tara Palmeri Show

Tara Palmeri sits down with producer Chris Fenton — dubbed "Hollywood's MAGA whisperer" — to unpack how an entire industry is learning to speak Donald Trump's language. With LA hemorrhaging jobs (50,000 lost in recent years) and production fleeing to the UK, Canada, and 80-plus countries offering national tax incentives, Hollywood is pushing for a federal film incentive to bring shoots back to America. The catch: getting it passed runs through a president who rewards allies and punishes critics. Fenton lays out the economics — state-by-state rebates, why Marvel left Georgia for Britain, and why the real beneficiaries are middle-class "below the line" crews in red states, not the Hollywood elite the public loves to hate. But Tara presses on the harder question lurking underneath the talking points: where does lobbying end and self-censorship begin? She and Fenton spar over whether studios are quietly shelving politically risky projects to avoid angering Trump, the payouts ABC and CBS have made, the firing of late-night hosts, and the broadcast networks afraid of losing their licenses. Fenton concedes the biggest tell of all: a film about Jeffrey Epstein that actually examined Donald Trump's role would "never get a full release" from a major studio. Tara argues it's the biggest corruption story of our time and 80% of the country would watch it — yet Hollywood won't touch it. Along the way: the China problem (why James Bond never has a Chinese villain), Steve Bannon's surprising openness to the idea, Fenton's own story of being shut out of left-leaning platforms, and his new faith-tinged comedy "Bad Counselors."
0:00 – Has Hollywood flipped? The new Trump-era dynamic
3:18 – What does a "MAGA translator" actually do?
5:31 – How the federal film incentive works: tax rebates, explained
7:20 – Do the studios just want to wait Trump out?
9:40 – Who wrote the talking points? "Everybody's on board"
11:11 – A charm campaign for Trump's attention — and promoting his own movie
13:14 – Importing foreign actors and trading talent like H-1B visas
16:43 – Tara's take: the quiet suppression campaign across news and entertainment
19:31 – Has Hollywood actually shifted scripts and hiring under Trump 2.0?
21:23 – Escapism vs. censorship: studios afraid to offend Trump
22:53 – Is this a push to make Americans more conservative?
28:04 – Networks afraid of losing their broadcast licenses
31:31 – The everyday Americans hurting beneath the political storm
36:06 – Will the subsidies pass? Midterms and Republican support
37:39 – The faith element in his film and its cross-political appeal
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Tara Palmeri is joined by attorney Michael Popok of Legal AF to break down the explosive new reporting from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan — an excerpt from their book "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump" that pulls back the curtain on the White House's "summer of Epstein." While the administration publicly dismissed the Epstein story as a hoax and a "Democratic witch hunt," Haberman and Swan reveal that Trump's top officials were repeatedly huddling in the Situation Room — the SCIF normally reserved for national security crises — trying to contain the fallout. Tara and Michael walk through who was in the room (Todd Blanche, Susie Wiles, Kash Patel, JD Vance) and who wasn't (Trump himself, left outside the door; Bondi and Patel phoning in), and unpack the verbatim quotes that suggest someone was taking meticulous notes or recording — and the mole hunt that will follow. They get into Blanche's stunning plan to interview a convicted child sex trafficker, Ghislaine Maxwell, and dangle a pardon; Pam Bondi's chaotic binder rollout; the sworn FBI 302 alleging abuse by Trump; the redacted emails connecting Trump and Epstein through their lawyers; and why JD Vance, eyeing 2028, was the lone voice for transparency. Michael lays out the realistic odds of impeachment for Todd Blanche and others, while Tara connects the dots to the polling collapse, the "wag the dog" timing of the Iran escalation, and Michael Wolff's tapes and the missing contents of Epstein's safe. As Haberman and Swan write: Trump could break institutions and bend the world's richest men to his will — "but he could not, it turned out, make Jeffrey Epstein disappear."

Thanks to Ground News for sponsoring the show! Only by using my link, you can get 40% off the unlimited access Vantage plan! Go to groundnews.com/tara!
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Tara Palmeri joins Ari Melber on MSNBC to break down the House Oversight Committee's interview with Lesley Groff — Jeffrey Epstein's longtime assistant of 18 years, who booked girls, arranged their hotels, paid them over $1,000 for so-called "massages," and told them the "protocol" of being around Epstein. Now Groff claims she had no idea what was going on. Tara isn't buying it. Named as one of four unindicted co-conspirators in Epstein's 2008 non-prosecution agreement, Groff kept working for him even after his conviction for soliciting a minor, and was named again as a potential co-conspirator in 2019. Yet she was allowed to testify before Congress behind closed doors and not under oath — free to deny everything without repercussion. Alongside civil rights attorney Nancy Erika Smith, Tara argues that the wrong people are being dragged to the Hill: it's the women who facilitated the abuse being called, while the powerful men accused of it — Leon Black, Jes Staley, Prince Andrew, Harvey Weinstein, all named in U.S. Attorney Jeff Berman's barely-covered 86-page 2019 prosecution memo — walk free. The conversation digs into why none of Epstein's enablers were ever held accountable, the role pardon politics may be playing, and why the biggest scandal of our time is still unfolding behind closed doors.

0:00 – Tara on Ari Melber: who is Lesley Groff, Epstein's assistant of 18 years

1:41 – The 86-page 2019 indictment memo from U.S. Attorney Jeff Berman that's gone uncovered

3:02 – A non-prosecution agreement built on the claim she "didn't know anything"

5:09 – Tara on Jeff Berman's 2019 prosecution memo and the named co-conspirators

7:04 – Prosecutors focused on the women, not the men the victims accused

9:45 – Pizzagate, the believers, and the victims of the lie
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Tara Palmeri is one of the most feared and fearless reporters covering power and politics. She has 15 years of experience covering national politics and foreign affairs. She was formerly a White House Correspondent for ABC News where she covered the first Trump administration. She was the chief National Correspondent for POLITICO during the Biden administration. She has been a political analyst for CNBC, CBS and CNN. She started her career as a columnist for the Washington Examiner and then went on to report for the New York Post. She was a foreign correspondent for POLITICO Europe, where she covered international affairs, including Brexit. She hosted the Ringer's political podcast "Somebody's Gotta Win" and wrote a column for Puck. Tara also hosted two acclaimed podcasts on Jeffrey Epstein, "Broken: Jeffrey Epstein" and "Power: The Maxwells." Tara currently hosts the Tara Palmeri Show.
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Democrats say corruption will be a central issue in the midterms.Congressman Jason Crow joins me to discuss his new End Corruption Caucus and the party’s plan to target Trump’s ethics controversies.The bigger question: Why should voters believe Democrats this time? Will the party confront corruption only on the other side—or look in the mirror as well?
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