November 19, 2025 • 37 mins
After months of resistance, President Trump made a striking reversal on the Epstein files this week, signaling he would sign legislation to release them. Nate and Maria discuss whether this is the start of a “lame duck” spiral for Trump, and whether (or to what extent) it will impact his tenure if the files do finally come to light.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business show about making better decisions.
I'm Maria Kannakova.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
And I'm Nate Silver, So Nate.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Today on the show, we're talking about some important things
that are going on in UH in the government right now.
The name Jeffrey Epstein probably rings a bell to some
of our listeners. By the way, please.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Experience I've never heard of the guy with Maria. I'll
I think I think I changed emails with him once.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Add on that note, yes, I am actually taping this
from an office location, so you might hear some more
background noise than usual. But yet you and I are
both back from Vegas.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Nate, well, First of Maria, I want to congratulate you
for winning a poker championship trophy. You won the five
thousand dollars no limit hold Them event at the North
is it North American Poker Tour anyway, we were both
out in Vegas. This is the last event of this
(01:37):
NAPT series. But it's a tough event, five thousand dollars
price point. I want to be super honest, I thought
it was a fairly tough tournament. A lot of rags,
a lot of Vegas local pros. There not the softest
field I've ever played. I flew home scared. Maria played
this five thousand dollars event, actually won the fucking event.
(01:59):
Tell us a little bit about that, Maria.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Thank you so much. Nate. Yeah, it was the fifty
three hundred high roller, the final high roller of the series,
and I had busted out of the ten k high roller,
as had you. We were playing that together and then
decided that, you know what, let's let's do one last hurrah.
(02:24):
I tried to convince you to play, and you said.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I would have had to. I would have had to
downgrade from a business class seat on Delta to coach on.
I would have had to take a red eye on
Spirit Airlines. Maria, there are some things that are negative
expected value. But if I had known I would win
the tournament, then I would have Then I would have
(02:48):
happily flown Spirit Airlines. But Maria, this is amazing.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
It's it's I was. I was just about to make
the joke. Note that I'm glad that you decided not
to downgrade because I would have had to come in second.
So oh, I'm glad I got to win. So thank you.
Thank you for flying home in business class it was.
You know, it's always an amazing experience to win a tournament,
(03:12):
but there's something extra special about winning a high roller
where the fields are tough. You know, it feels really
good when you are able to hold your own and
kind of prevail against opponents who you know, most of
them are a lot better players than I am. I'm
not afraid to say that. And you know it feel
(03:34):
it feels good when you can actually make it happen.
I did you know I started It was a multi
day event, and I started the final day, day day two,
as the chip leader, which is always a great position
to be in, but that usually does not translate right.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Now, it's am, It's almost you have to like remind
yourself that, like, oh, I'm chip leader at the end
of day one, fifth and chips out of a thousand people. Yeah,
your odds of winning are not that much higher than
they were at the start. Your odds of cashing oftener
even depends, right, even your adds of cashing can be
love fifty fifty, right, So you have to you have
(04:11):
to not rest on your laurels.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, not resting on your laurels
and like being able to get to keep everything going
is a really, uh really tough thing to do. And I,
you know, it was one of those days where everything
(04:35):
went right. You know, all of my bluffs got through.
You know, when I went all in with Jack High,
I got the sold I didn't get the call, and
I got the calls in the big spots where I
actually had really good hands. That's what needs to happen,
right Like, you need to make some hands and get calls,
and you need to be able to you know, play
when you don't have the best hands. And I also
(04:56):
made some really good call downs. There were a few
pots that gave me a lot of chips where really
good players bluffed into me and I was able to
call down with with with the hands that made me
close my eyes and call instead of you know, slam
dunk calling. I was based on Are there.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Any particular players you want to mention? Is this based
on gto? Is it based on live reads? Is it
based on your expectation of how people play against you?
Do they do you think they think you're overfolding?
Speaker 1 (05:29):
So I think that it's a combination of all of
these things. There was a one player who I haven't
played with before, and he'd been he'd been running well
the whole series, he'd had some good results, and I
felt like he was, you know, trying to take advantage
(05:49):
of that a little bit. And so this was actually
one of the hands that made me into the chip leader.
On day two, he triple barrel bluffed into me where
I ended up having a straight. But I had a
straight on a double parrot board. So for people who
don't play poker, not a very strong hand in that
(06:11):
particular case, because if you, you know, if you're holding
any one of the other cards, you have a full house.
And he was the button and the two cards that
were paired were a Queen and a ten, So those
were both very likely cards for the button to have
and for the button to represent, And in that particular case,
(06:31):
there was just some spidey sense that just made me
hit the call button. And I actually have no idea
what he had because he mucked his hand, which is
something that I actually never never advocate players do. So
if you mock your hand, that means I don't have
to show my hand, right, So that means that he
doesn't get the information with what I was calling him with,
(06:55):
And had he known that I called him with the
hand I had, you know, that would have been I think,
very valuable information. So in that particular case, it was
you know, it was a combination of just the way
that the hand played out, and like I said, the
fact that he had been very aggressive all day, and
then there was a there were a few hands against
Joey Weisman. I love Joey, We're friends. He's an amazing player.
(07:18):
We've played a lot together, and he did he tried
to bluff me in a in a spot where he
had the blocker to the nut flush, and I ended
up calling without a flush, but with uh, you know,
with a with a good hand, and it was one
(07:39):
of those things where he understands gto play so well,
and the way that I played my hand, it was
pretty clear that I did not have a flush, and
so I thought that any good player would probably try
to exploit that, and he did. You know. I I
had bet the flop and then I checked her and
he bet big, and then he over bet the river,
(07:59):
and I ended up using a time bank because in
these events you do have a limited amount of time
to make your decision. So I ended up using a
time bank, and then I did make the call and
saw that he had just stays high, but he had
the right ace, right he had he had the ace
that you wanted to represent the flush, So it was
(08:20):
a good bluff. I almost folded, but I'm very glad
that I ended up making the hero call. And that
was one of the big hands of that final day
that made me really keep my chip lead. And it
made Joey short, which is good because Joe is a
very good player and he was to my left, and
it was very good to have him bust out of
the tournament. It's always nice when players who are better
(08:42):
than you bust out.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
I have a final table to a final table. The
five hundred and fifty dollars oh, he said eight mixed event.
I CONGRATU literally won one thousand dollars gross.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
That's four dollars. Hey, you should be proud. You should
be proud.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
To Delta tell you that much.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Nice. Nice. On that note, Nate, let's shift gears a
little and talk about some political news. So we're recording
this as always on Monday, November seventeenth. By the time
you're hearing this, there will be more updates in this.
But there have been things going on in the Trump
(09:28):
White House, including major shifts on the Dunk Dunk Dun
Epstein Files. I feel like we need the X Files
theme or something playing in the back.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
You know, it's a Harvey Weinstein running for city council
in my district. That seems like an unfortunate.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
That's amazing, that's amazing. What an unfortunate name. Can you
imagine running for office with the name Harvey Weinstein? Right now?
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I'm pretty bad. Yeah, eight off, I'm not Let's not
go there. Let's not go there anyway. I don't mean
to compare anyway. Friend of the pod now the now
deceased Jeffrey Epstein. I'm just kidding. I where do you
want to start.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Someone's going to go Someone's gonna clip that out of
context night, Someone's gonna clip that out of context. Okay,
So just you know, for people who've been hiding under
a rock, the Epstein files have been a point of
contention for quite some time. It was part of the
things that the Republicans and Donald Trump ran on. You
don't release the Epstein files. Tell us what was going
(10:30):
on with Jeffrey Epstein. You know, we want to protect
our children. Once Trump got into office, all of a sudden,
there was don't release the Epstein files. There's nothing to
see here. Pam Bondi said, you know nothing to see here.
Let's move on. But the popular clamor for the files
never died down. It kept growing, kept gaining momentum. Cue
(10:55):
the an attempt of the Democrats to actually get the
files released by circumventing the normal way for a measure
to come in front of Congress.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
So usually the party that controls Congress has control of
what is litigated or debated in Congress. In the House,
there is a mechanism known as a discharge petition, whereas
if an outright majority of all members of the House,
which in this case or not in this case with
(11:29):
four members, the match numbers.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
So there had been two hundred and thirteen Democrats in
the House, there were four Republicans Thomas Massey, who's kind
of this libertarian from Kentucky, Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Green
who is now feuding with Trump, and who's the other,
Lauren Bobert, and uh so that plus all Democrats was
(11:57):
two hundred and seventeen. However, Democrats won a special election
in Arizona. The Republican Mike Johnson, Secret of the House,
dragged his feet to avoid seating her for as long
as possible until the show down was over. She finally
got seated and sworn in. They were now two hundred
and eighteen to force to vote. By the way, there
are many other Republicans who are going to who are
(12:18):
planning to vote for this bill, right, And so what
Trump finally did was he said on Sunday night that Okay,
go ahead, House Republicans and vote for this Epstein file.
It's a big hoax and a big distraction, but like,
you know, go ahead and vote for it. House Republicans.
(12:41):
Now hopefully our American listeners though maybe some of you
Europeans don't know, but we actually have multiple chambers of
Congress in the US, so the bill has to pass
the Senate. It also has to be signed by the
president or you need a veto proof majority two thirds
to overwrite it. So I thought it was interesting that
Trump and his language said House Republicans and not Republicans overall.
(13:05):
So it may be a way for him to save face.
Is going to lose his vote. Now you kind of
can't tell, you're like, okay, yeah, throw your you know,
throw your tomatoes at me. I'll take it. Doesn't necessarily
means he wants to files release, but that's what's kind
of foreseen, is like finally, finally the Democrat was seated.
This petition has been in place since September. In the meantime,
(13:26):
I believe it's the House Oversight Committee has released some
files related to Epstein. Trump is mentioned quite a bit
in there, a lot of speculation. I mean, by the way, Maria,
do you know that I fucking hate email? I hate
typing out long emails.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
I know you hate email, Nate, as evidenced by the
impossibility of getting you to reply to.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
First of all, you freaking scandal. But like if I did,
I wouldn't fucking email this fucking crazyh.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Yeah, I mean it's it's actually it's quite crazy to
me how much is in email form and how many
ridiculously smart people put things into email that you're like,
are you fucking kidding me? Like we've obviously you know,
Trump has mentioned many times Larry Summers, former president of
(14:23):
Harvard University, current university professor. He has quite the correspondence
with Epstein. You just see, you know, you see all
of these people and you're like, guys, you know this
is email. This ain't even you know, you're emailing Gmail
account to Gmail account, Like I don't need to be
a great hacker to be able to hack this. And
(14:45):
and Nate, how many huge leaks and data breaches have
we had over the last decade, you know, the Sony emails,
all of these things. Haven't you seen enough to realize
that everything you put in an email is going to
be easy to see? Anyway? This isn't aside, but the
stuff in these emails, it really is truly mind boggling.
And obviously there are tons of thousands of them. We've
(15:06):
only seen the tip of the iceberg. But I I
want to go back just a second to what you
were saying about Trump's specific language about you know, House,
go ahead, you know, I want you to release this,
which is a huge about face. You know, this U
turn that he pulled to try, I think, as you say,
to save face, because it was very clear that this
(15:28):
was going to happen no matter what. Now it looks
like he's saying, oh, well, I have nothing to hide
right going on the offense, but we still need the
Senate unclear if it's going to pass the Senate, and
on Friday he also issued a command to his favorite
Pam Bondi to start investigating some of the Democrats that
(15:49):
are in the emails, such as Clinton and Summers. What
that means is that he actually has another lever through
which he can suppress some of these files even if
the measure passes both the House and the Senate, because
if they're part of an active investigation, you can say, oh,
(16:11):
you know, for the integrity of the investigation, we can't
actually release them. So he has a few different points
that he could play going forward where we might not.
You know, people might think, oh, slam dunk, like he's done,
he's in a quarter. Not so right. There are lots
of strategic exits that are still left and lots of
plays still remaining.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
The lopside being, you have subpoena power, you have Freedom
of Information Act, you have leaks to the media, you know,
and you have a lot of members of congressman various
committees who have access to some of these things, and
so you know, you can do also reporting by organizations
and organizations. It's not what the federal government is doing.
(16:57):
If that information is out there, there's a good chance
it will be discovered eventually. You can make it to
silver bulletin.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
If you want.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
I have to check our viability insurance situation. Probably would
get sued. It might be good for subscriptions at first, right,
I am I even sued by the president subscribed to
silver Bulletin. No, I would say that it would be
much more eloquent. Why want to making that baby voice?
That would be a good fucking That would be a
good reason to subscribe.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
You need a different voice for that night.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
I've been sued. I am an impartial journalist. I've been
sued by.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yes, the BBC voice.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
That's perfect, okay, but there are ways for the information
to get out, right.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
I mean, look, yep, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
The initial news in July that Trump had been named
in the Epstein piles didn't actually seem to move the
needle all that much. Right, There was a little bit
of a tickdown and the popularity the tickdown seemed to
be more about the obstruction than anything. Right. When Pam
Bondi said, oh, well, wea it and it turns out
(18:02):
nothing funny going on there, you know, let's not let's
not let's not keep litigating this. Let's move on to
the things it really matter to the American peace and nobody, nobody, nobody, but.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
I'm sorry your pambody voices stylistic yes, but absolutely.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
But like nobody somebody bought Nobody bought that right, nobody.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
No. And by the way, Pam Bondi is now obviously
doing it about face because before she said absolutely nothing
to investigate, and then on Friday she opened investigations, so
clearly one of the two Pam Bondis was lying.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
So to me, the question is, are we passed not
necessarily some type of inflection point, but like, is Trump
in some sort of a lame duck downward spiral? Which
you're not quite the same thing right. By lame duck,
I mean so Trump technically is a lame duck unless
(19:00):
he figures out a way to run for a third term.
I don't know, I know we should dignify that or not,
but like putting that aside for now, he has a
lame duck in the sense that he can't run for
president again. But by lame duck, I really mean like,
does he lack the political capital to have the agenda
setting power, the juice to get things done. In addition
(19:25):
to this Epstein stuff, there are now more Republicans ignoring
him on redistricting. Indiana, where there are two Democrats, seems
not to want to redistrict. I think some of these
Republicans have been spooked by Democratic success in New Jersey,
Virginia and so forth. You know, you can have districts
that are R plus ten, meaning up by ten points.
(19:48):
Those aren't necessarily safe in a blue wave year, and
so they might be worried about that. They might thinking, okay, well,
actually Democrats have shown in California that we can have
this kind of mutually assured destruction where nobody wins, right,
and so the game theory is interesting and will be
right back after this break. If you look at the
(20:21):
ratings for approval ratings for presence and their second term,
they're much less resilient. And there are cases like Bush
in particular, where it was just a downward trend. You know,
Nixon also because of Watergate, where it deteriorated very fast.
(20:42):
You know, Truman surprised people by defeating Dewey despite headlines
of the nineteen forty eight election, was very unpopular in
his second term, kind of a straight downward arrow, and
so like once you kind of you know, you don't
necessarily have your party coming to your defense if you
don't have to run for election again. In fact, you
have Republicans maybe positioning themselves for what does life look
(21:05):
like posts Trump? Right, We've written or talked a lot
in the show about how Democrats are still a mess.
It's certainly a very valuable nomination to have in twenty eight, right,
assuming there's not a constitutional crisis, then they have to
nominate somebody else, and the jockeying for that starts now.
(21:27):
It's definitely occurring among Democrats already.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
And so.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Yeah, I think the base case is always that you know,
Trump is a high floor, low ceiling, high floor, but
you never know, there's enough history of second term presidents
actually going to this downward spiral where first term presidents
tend to have this U shape or swoosh Nike shape recovery.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Yeah, I'll be very curious to see how this plays out.
And I think a lot of it is going to
depend not on the Epstein files, but on economic indicators,
right on what is happening with the economy, what's happening
with inflation. Basically, how is the American public feeling and
are they what's going to happen with snap benefits, you know,
(22:09):
Trump asking everyone to reapply for snap benefits with all
of these different elements. You know, this is a puzzle
right now. That is you know, Trump has a lot
of different things that he has to manage correctly in
order for there not to be a downward spiral. And
we've talked before many many times on the show, how
(22:29):
you know, nothing seems to matter right like he happens.
It seems like he can rebound from anything negative. This
is the first time night that we're actually seeing in
since he became president in term number two. This is
the first time I think that we've seen cracks in
you know, this monolithic Republican support for Trump in the
(22:52):
House right before, like basically whatever he wanted, they were
rubber stamping, they were getting. They were basically even not
doing what they were supposed to be doing, right. They
were abdicating their powers of the purse. They were letting
kind if Trump pass legislation. I realized that Trump isn't
passing legislation, that's what Congress does, but they were really
(23:14):
letting that Trump pass this legislation, tariffs, all of these
different things, and they are finally starting to kind of
crack a little bit, at least that's what it looks
like right now. It's certainly I mean, it happened with
the two hundred and eighteen signatures, right, you actually did
have the breaking of ranks, So I would really you know,
(23:35):
I'm very curious to see how this ends up playing
out and what happens in the Senate. Right Is the
Senate going to fracture as well after in the wake
of what happened in the House. Is Trump going to
is the fact that he said, oh fine, go ahead,
you know, vote for this thing. We have nothing to hide.
Is that actually going to propel this through the Senate
(23:57):
as well? Is he going to backtrack yet again? How
is this going to play out? And what does that
mean for his ability to pass everything he wants to
pass in the next two years to actually have that
monolithic support. Is he still going to have it moving
forward or not? Obviously you know, a betting person would
say he probably will because he's always managed to regain it.
(24:20):
But I think that it's a question mark for me
for the first time.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, Look, I don't know that Trump has that much
more of a legislative agenda, really apart from like appropriations bills, which,
as always for Republicans will try to to lower taxes
for rich people in corporations and star of the welfare
state a little bit. But I mean, yeah, look so
(24:45):
you have you know, it would be subject to a
filibuster in Congress. It seems like a kind of a
bad look to if the House votes overwhelmingly for I mean,
I guess you're kind of hoping that, like if you
go to Polymarket, which I consult for, then there's only
like a forty percent chance implied that the Senate passes
the bill by the end of the year. Now, we
(25:08):
don't have that many left, and things in the Senate
are slow, right, so they might kind of slow walk
it and hope that people forget about it, you know.
I mean, the fact is that there are entire you know,
like MSNBC has not been rebranded to MS now, which
sounds like a multiple sclerosis charity.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
It's not it really does it.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
It's a cable news ess awful, what is it?
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Sorry this is neither here nor there, But what is
it with all these horrific media rebrands?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
It was like MS like the partnership with M Microsoft
Network lasted ended what like fifteen years ago or something, right,
it is that you know the news screaming MSNBC is
teaming with NBC News. It's like doesn't really or MS
it doesn't really make sense, right, but like it made
sense in the early aughts, I guess, and the name
has stuck. But like you know, basically they're just gonna
(26:04):
be talking epsteptepstn on MSMB MS. Now it's a new
kind of Russia gay. So if you're hoping people forget
about it, then then they won't, right. But like, look,
maybe Trump figures that. Like what's the scene from a
Christmas story where the kid gets a bb gun, like
don't don't shoot your eye out? Am I am? I
getting that right? I don't know if I've seen the
whole New Gay know that's scene. I'm sure I've seen
(26:25):
the movie.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
He Got I don't remember it. I don't remember, but the.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Kid gets a bb gun and of course he like
shoots his I don't know what the fuck's going on,
but it's a little bit like, you know, you have
Democrats with this bb gun on Epstein and like they're
so giddy about the story, which, by the way, I
say open up fucking everything. Right. I don't like these
political elites. I think they're fucking weird. Social circles and
(26:50):
parties are fucking weird, right, Like, I hope as many
people as possible are tainted for this and we get
a better fucking set of elites to be perfectly honest, right,
you know, by the way, I you know, I think
that it's not irrational for someone to ask whether Jeffrey
Epstein really killed himselves, right, I don't care. I don't
think I think that should be That's a normal thing
to ask if you go and like look at like
(27:10):
what the fuck is going on with this? Right? How
is he doing all this stuff? And you know, I
think there are lots and lots of open questions. I
would love to see every single file on this released
to the public and debated. Right. At the same time,
when you have kind of the ms now partisan democrats, right,
there's a risk that instead of having this kind of
moment of cross partisan crossover, that it goes back to
(27:33):
kind of a he said, She said, people I think
already have kind of low expectations for Trump and so
and so. I don't know, right, you know, but it
would be an absolute like epsteina palooza for three months
if the file, if the files came out, which again,
if I were Democrats, I'd say, Okay, this is a
pretty good story for us, But there is an opportunity cost, right,
(27:54):
and the opportunity costs might be to drive home a
message about the economy.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
That's actually what I was just about to say, like
in the grand scheme of things, like right now, you've
got the economy, right, You've got inflation, you've got snap
benefits being cut off, you've got the healthcare stuff, You've
got all this stuff going on. It seems like a
good moment to release. However, tens of thousands of emails
(28:18):
and whatever else, all of this just insane amount of
information and try to kind of bury bury it all, right,
And Trump is really really good at the politics of distraction, right,
He is very good at getting people to pay attention
(28:40):
to things that make them not deal with the issues
that are actually important at the moment. Like he is
so good at attention hijacking. And he's I mean to
be clear, with the Epstein files, he's been trying to
avoid this, right, because there is we already know that
he's in the files. We already know that there's damaging information.
(29:01):
The question is how damaging is it. But I think
he might be making a gamble now that like, if
they're going to come out, might as well like just
have this barrage and try to bury everything else, and
then you know, people will stop caring or stop paying
attention to the things that they really should be paying
attention to in terms of the welfare of the American people.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
No, and look, there are sure to be other Democrats implicated. Yeah, absolutely,
and there are sure to be and you can, you can.
It's a little bit morbid. You can bet on like
who's going to be named the obscene files? And like
I'm not going to go for.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Sure, Yeah, for sure, and we get and you know,
I can. I'm willing to bet that we are going
to be seeing a lot of news headlines and we're
going to have a hijacking of the conversation about everything.
Every single Democrat right who's mentioned, however peripherally in the files.
So so I think that that will be another great
(29:58):
opportunity for attention redeployment.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Shall we say, to some extent in the notion that
you have like cabal, a bipartisan cabal of like rich
elites who are behaving very very badly and think that
money can buy you anything you want, including access to
underaged women, right children if they're underage, ate their children,
(30:29):
Like you know, in some sense, that kind of is
part of what like sparks populist narratives right now, if
Trump is caught up in this, then he is hardly
a populist savior obviously. At the same at the same time, like,
you know, look, there's been people recently who so Trump
(30:52):
has pardoned a bunch of like January sixth writers, protesters,
whatever you want to call them, right, people, people that
were convicted of crimes, and that's some article. It's like, well,
people who criticized Joe Biden or pardoning Hunter Biden. You know,
this is so much a bigger deal. And I'm like, no,
(31:12):
fuck you, right, because like Democrats are running on the
we are the party of the rule of law and
democracy and the moral high ground, right and Trump is
running on everyone's a fucking hypocrite. So do you want Yeah, maybe,
I like maybe I like younger women. I don't drank,
I don't smoke, right, I like to hang out. We
talk about women, you know, I mean, like that's kind
(31:33):
of you know, Trump is reveling in his hypocrisy in
a way, kind of his like degenerously almost. I guess
it isn't like smoke or drink or things like that, right,
but he's kind of like a proud degen in a way.
And that's different. They're not trying to like claim it's like, yeah,
everyone's a hypocrite, So we got to look out for
our own, right, And so when things happen that discredit
(31:56):
quote unquote both sides of the establishment, that plays into
cynicism of political institutions, and that plays into the hands
of populace, including what outlimited to Trump.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
We'll be back right after this. I'm just curious kind
of what is the line, right, like what because it
seems to me that you know that Trump is able
(32:31):
to withstand most accusations better than most people, right, So
if we have the Epstein files released and there's bad
stuff on Trump but also bad stuff on you know,
a bunch of Democrats, he might be able to kind
of waltz through it if there's you know, nothing like
nothing ridiculous, But they won't, right, So, so it's one
(32:54):
of these things where it may be asymmetric risks.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
No, I think it yeah, you know, I don't know,
you know, you know, listeners, you'll be hearing whichever version
of this that Christian lawyers have lit again because their
president is right. But like, you know, look, I agree
that like it. It's a little binary in terms of like, look,
he's not been afraid. I mean, he talks about walking
into in the locker room and miss America patchets, right,
(33:22):
It's always kind of been like a a running stick
or joke that yeah, he likes it, likes women, right,
maybe he likes women that are a little bit younger,
and it's kind of like priced in, right, So I
think it would have to be like pretty definitive, pretty
salacious evidence, which is possible. But I think it's like, yeah,
(33:46):
to me, it's a little bifurcated between like either really
bad or gets swept up rushed aside into the previous narrative, right,
And there probably are some probably just some leetl ground yeah,
but yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah, well it'll be it'll be very interesting to see
how this process moves forward, what happens in the Senate,
and whether we do end up seeing a sustained fracturing
of the base where Congress becomes a little bit less
of a rubber state, rubber stamp mechanism for the state.
(34:22):
So or whether this is a one off and it
will just go back to kind of to see to
doing exactly what Trump says. And I think that the
repercussions of that are actually potentially much wider because, as
you've pointed out, Nan, and as we've talked about, a
lot of Trump's agenda has been accomplished through executive order,
(34:42):
right through kind of just saying Okay, this is what
I'm going to be doing, and a lot of those
are now making their way to the Supreme Court right
in front of the Supreme Court, will be in front
of the Supreme Court soon. And the Supreme Court has
also shown itself to be very pro Trump. But if
there's a sustained fracturing of kind of the Republican support
(35:04):
base in Congress, I'm wondering whether we might actually see
the Supreme Court also be come a little bit less
rubber stampy and a little bit more willing to strike
down things.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Sure, I don't know if you're don't, but like for sure,
the Supreme Court is sensitive to public yeah, right, And
sometimes we'll kind of be honest about that, sometimes less so.
But like they they are a a political.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Assay're not supposed to be, but they are.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Do you have closing thoughts here?
Speaker 1 (35:35):
My closing thoughts are I am you know whatever is
behind the pivot. I do hope that all of the
Epstein files are released, and I do hope that they
are released in a way that actually has a lasting
effect and helps clean up the elites on both sides
of the aisle. You know, let's let's be very clear,
(35:56):
no one should be what what was happening on Jeffrey
Epstein's island and his mansion. All of these things are
completely unacceptable and people should be held to account. So
I hope that we're actually able to see this and
very curious to see what's going to happen in the
Senate and whether the American public and Congress is able
(36:16):
to maintain their focus and their attention on more than
one thing at a time and keep the kind of
eye on the prize when it comes to the health
of the economy, the health of snap benefits, healthcare, all
of these things, like let's let's multitask people, we can
do this two things.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
That was what was the island called.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Little Saint James to day?
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Are you thinking of like the island in Jurassic Park,
like East Lend, New Blar or whatever it is? Right?
But why not Jurassic Park eight Epstein Island Island. Why
not let the dinosaurs be the good guys for ones? Right?
They eat all these child pedophile rapists? Like that would
be good, right? Wouldn't it a legend a legend child molesters?
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Yes, yes, but I'll watch that Jurassic Park. Let us
know what you think of the show. Reach out to
us at Risky Business at Pushkin dot FM. Risky Business
is hosted by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
And by me Nate Silver. The show was a cool
production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya gerwit Lydia,
Jean Kott and Daphne Chen are our editors, and our
executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
If you like the show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too, But once again,
only if you like us. We don't want those bad
reviews out there. Thanks for tuning in
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business show about making better decisions.
I'm Maria Kannakova.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
And I'm Nate Silver, So Nate.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Today on the show, we're talking about some important things
that are going on in UH in the government right now.
The name Jeffrey Epstein probably rings a bell to some
of our listeners. By the way, please.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Experience I've never heard of the guy with Maria. I'll
I think I think I changed emails with him once.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Add on that note, yes, I am actually taping this
from an office location, so you might hear some more
background noise than usual. But yet you and I are
both back from Vegas.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Nate, well, First of Maria, I want to congratulate you
for winning a poker championship trophy. You won the five
thousand dollars no limit hold Them event at the North
is it North American Poker Tour anyway, we were both
out in Vegas. This is the last event of this
(01:37):
NAPT series. But it's a tough event, five thousand dollars
price point. I want to be super honest, I thought
it was a fairly tough tournament. A lot of rags,
a lot of Vegas local pros. There not the softest
field I've ever played. I flew home scared. Maria played
this five thousand dollars event, actually won the fucking event.
(01:59):
Tell us a little bit about that, Maria.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Thank you so much. Nate. Yeah, it was the fifty
three hundred high roller, the final high roller of the series,
and I had busted out of the ten k high roller,
as had you. We were playing that together and then
decided that, you know what, let's let's do one last hurrah.
(02:24):
I tried to convince you to play, and you said.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I would have had to. I would have had to
downgrade from a business class seat on Delta to coach on.
I would have had to take a red eye on
Spirit Airlines. Maria, there are some things that are negative
expected value. But if I had known I would win
the tournament, then I would have Then I would have
(02:48):
happily flown Spirit Airlines. But Maria, this is amazing.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
It's it's I was. I was just about to make
the joke. Note that I'm glad that you decided not
to downgrade because I would have had to come in second.
So oh, I'm glad I got to win. So thank you.
Thank you for flying home in business class it was.
You know, it's always an amazing experience to win a tournament,
(03:12):
but there's something extra special about winning a high roller
where the fields are tough. You know, it feels really
good when you are able to hold your own and
kind of prevail against opponents who you know, most of
them are a lot better players than I am. I'm
not afraid to say that. And you know it feel
(03:34):
it feels good when you can actually make it happen.
I did you know I started It was a multi
day event, and I started the final day, day day two,
as the chip leader, which is always a great position
to be in, but that usually does not translate right.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Now, it's am, It's almost you have to like remind
yourself that, like, oh, I'm chip leader at the end
of day one, fifth and chips out of a thousand people. Yeah,
your odds of winning are not that much higher than
they were at the start. Your odds of cashing oftener
even depends, right, even your adds of cashing can be
love fifty fifty, right, So you have to you have
(04:11):
to not rest on your laurels.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, not resting on your laurels
and like being able to get to keep everything going
is a really, uh really tough thing to do. And I,
you know, it was one of those days where everything
(04:35):
went right. You know, all of my bluffs got through.
You know, when I went all in with Jack High,
I got the sold I didn't get the call, and
I got the calls in the big spots where I
actually had really good hands. That's what needs to happen,
right Like, you need to make some hands and get calls,
and you need to be able to you know, play
when you don't have the best hands. And I also
(04:56):
made some really good call downs. There were a few
pots that gave me a lot of chips where really
good players bluffed into me and I was able to
call down with with with the hands that made me
close my eyes and call instead of you know, slam
dunk calling. I was based on Are there.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Any particular players you want to mention? Is this based
on gto? Is it based on live reads? Is it
based on your expectation of how people play against you?
Do they do you think they think you're overfolding?
Speaker 1 (05:29):
So I think that it's a combination of all of
these things. There was a one player who I haven't
played with before, and he'd been he'd been running well
the whole series, he'd had some good results, and I
felt like he was, you know, trying to take advantage
(05:49):
of that a little bit. And so this was actually
one of the hands that made me into the chip leader.
On day two, he triple barrel bluffed into me where
I ended up having a straight. But I had a
straight on a double parrot board. So for people who
don't play poker, not a very strong hand in that
(06:11):
particular case, because if you, you know, if you're holding
any one of the other cards, you have a full house.
And he was the button and the two cards that
were paired were a Queen and a ten, So those
were both very likely cards for the button to have
and for the button to represent, And in that particular case,
(06:31):
there was just some spidey sense that just made me
hit the call button. And I actually have no idea
what he had because he mucked his hand, which is
something that I actually never never advocate players do. So
if you mock your hand, that means I don't have
to show my hand, right, So that means that he
doesn't get the information with what I was calling him with,
(06:55):
And had he known that I called him with the
hand I had, you know, that would have been I think,
very valuable information. So in that particular case, it was
you know, it was a combination of just the way
that the hand played out, and like I said, the
fact that he had been very aggressive all day, and
then there was a there were a few hands against
Joey Weisman. I love Joey, We're friends. He's an amazing player.
(07:18):
We've played a lot together, and he did he tried
to bluff me in a in a spot where he
had the blocker to the nut flush, and I ended
up calling without a flush, but with uh, you know,
with a with a good hand, and it was one
(07:39):
of those things where he understands gto play so well,
and the way that I played my hand, it was
pretty clear that I did not have a flush, and
so I thought that any good player would probably try
to exploit that, and he did. You know. I I
had bet the flop and then I checked her and
he bet big, and then he over bet the river,
(07:59):
and I ended up using a time bank because in
these events you do have a limited amount of time
to make your decision. So I ended up using a
time bank, and then I did make the call and
saw that he had just stays high, but he had
the right ace, right he had he had the ace
that you wanted to represent the flush, So it was
(08:20):
a good bluff. I almost folded, but I'm very glad
that I ended up making the hero call. And that
was one of the big hands of that final day
that made me really keep my chip lead. And it
made Joey short, which is good because Joe is a
very good player and he was to my left, and
it was very good to have him bust out of
the tournament. It's always nice when players who are better
(08:42):
than you bust out.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
I have a final table to a final table. The
five hundred and fifty dollars oh, he said eight mixed event.
I CONGRATU literally won one thousand dollars gross.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
That's four dollars. Hey, you should be proud. You should
be proud.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
To Delta tell you that much.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Nice. Nice. On that note, Nate, let's shift gears a
little and talk about some political news. So we're recording
this as always on Monday, November seventeenth. By the time
you're hearing this, there will be more updates in this.
But there have been things going on in the Trump
(09:28):
White House, including major shifts on the Dunk Dunk Dun
Epstein Files. I feel like we need the X Files
theme or something playing in the back.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
You know, it's a Harvey Weinstein running for city council
in my district. That seems like an unfortunate.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
That's amazing, that's amazing. What an unfortunate name. Can you
imagine running for office with the name Harvey Weinstein? Right now?
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I'm pretty bad. Yeah, eight off, I'm not Let's not
go there. Let's not go there anyway. I don't mean
to compare anyway. Friend of the pod now the now
deceased Jeffrey Epstein. I'm just kidding. I where do you
want to start.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Someone's going to go Someone's gonna clip that out of
context night, Someone's gonna clip that out of context. Okay,
So just you know, for people who've been hiding under
a rock, the Epstein files have been a point of
contention for quite some time. It was part of the
things that the Republicans and Donald Trump ran on. You
don't release the Epstein files. Tell us what was going
(10:30):
on with Jeffrey Epstein. You know, we want to protect
our children. Once Trump got into office, all of a sudden,
there was don't release the Epstein files. There's nothing to
see here. Pam Bondi said, you know nothing to see here.
Let's move on. But the popular clamor for the files
never died down. It kept growing, kept gaining momentum. Cue
(10:55):
the an attempt of the Democrats to actually get the
files released by circumventing the normal way for a measure
to come in front of Congress.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
So usually the party that controls Congress has control of
what is litigated or debated in Congress. In the House,
there is a mechanism known as a discharge petition, whereas
if an outright majority of all members of the House,
which in this case or not in this case with
(11:29):
four members, the match numbers.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
So there had been two hundred and thirteen Democrats in
the House, there were four Republicans Thomas Massey, who's kind
of this libertarian from Kentucky, Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Green
who is now feuding with Trump, and who's the other,
Lauren Bobert, and uh so that plus all Democrats was
(11:57):
two hundred and seventeen. However, Democrats won a special election
in Arizona. The Republican Mike Johnson, Secret of the House,
dragged his feet to avoid seating her for as long
as possible until the show down was over. She finally
got seated and sworn in. They were now two hundred
and eighteen to force to vote. By the way, there
are many other Republicans who are going to who are
(12:18):
planning to vote for this bill, right, And so what
Trump finally did was he said on Sunday night that Okay,
go ahead, House Republicans and vote for this Epstein file.
It's a big hoax and a big distraction, but like,
you know, go ahead and vote for it. House Republicans.
(12:41):
Now hopefully our American listeners though maybe some of you
Europeans don't know, but we actually have multiple chambers of
Congress in the US, so the bill has to pass
the Senate. It also has to be signed by the
president or you need a veto proof majority two thirds
to overwrite it. So I thought it was interesting that
Trump and his language said House Republicans and not Republicans overall.
(13:05):
So it may be a way for him to save face.
Is going to lose his vote. Now you kind of
can't tell, you're like, okay, yeah, throw your you know,
throw your tomatoes at me. I'll take it. Doesn't necessarily
means he wants to files release, but that's what's kind
of foreseen, is like finally, finally the Democrat was seated.
This petition has been in place since September. In the meantime,
(13:26):
I believe it's the House Oversight Committee has released some
files related to Epstein. Trump is mentioned quite a bit
in there, a lot of speculation. I mean, by the way, Maria,
do you know that I fucking hate email? I hate
typing out long emails.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
I know you hate email, Nate, as evidenced by the
impossibility of getting you to reply to.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
First of all, you freaking scandal. But like if I did,
I wouldn't fucking email this fucking crazyh.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Yeah, I mean it's it's actually it's quite crazy to
me how much is in email form and how many
ridiculously smart people put things into email that you're like,
are you fucking kidding me? Like we've obviously you know,
Trump has mentioned many times Larry Summers, former president of
(14:23):
Harvard University, current university professor. He has quite the correspondence
with Epstein. You just see, you know, you see all
of these people and you're like, guys, you know this
is email. This ain't even you know, you're emailing Gmail
account to Gmail account, Like I don't need to be
a great hacker to be able to hack this. And
(14:45):
and Nate, how many huge leaks and data breaches have
we had over the last decade, you know, the Sony emails,
all of these things. Haven't you seen enough to realize
that everything you put in an email is going to
be easy to see? Anyway? This isn't aside, but the
stuff in these emails, it really is truly mind boggling.
And obviously there are tons of thousands of them. We've
(15:06):
only seen the tip of the iceberg. But I I
want to go back just a second to what you
were saying about Trump's specific language about you know, House,
go ahead, you know, I want you to release this,
which is a huge about face. You know, this U
turn that he pulled to try, I think, as you say,
to save face, because it was very clear that this
(15:28):
was going to happen no matter what. Now it looks
like he's saying, oh, well, I have nothing to hide
right going on the offense, but we still need the
Senate unclear if it's going to pass the Senate, and
on Friday he also issued a command to his favorite
Pam Bondi to start investigating some of the Democrats that
(15:49):
are in the emails, such as Clinton and Summers. What
that means is that he actually has another lever through
which he can suppress some of these files even if
the measure passes both the House and the Senate, because
if they're part of an active investigation, you can say, oh,
(16:11):
you know, for the integrity of the investigation, we can't
actually release them. So he has a few different points
that he could play going forward where we might not.
You know, people might think, oh, slam dunk, like he's done,
he's in a quarter. Not so right. There are lots
of strategic exits that are still left and lots of
plays still remaining.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
The lopside being, you have subpoena power, you have Freedom
of Information Act, you have leaks to the media, you know,
and you have a lot of members of congressman various
committees who have access to some of these things, and
so you know, you can do also reporting by organizations
and organizations. It's not what the federal government is doing.
(16:57):
If that information is out there, there's a good chance
it will be discovered eventually. You can make it to
silver bulletin.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
If you want.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
I have to check our viability insurance situation. Probably would
get sued. It might be good for subscriptions at first, right,
I am I even sued by the president subscribed to
silver Bulletin. No, I would say that it would be
much more eloquent. Why want to making that baby voice?
That would be a good fucking That would be a
good reason to subscribe.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
You need a different voice for that night.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
I've been sued. I am an impartial journalist. I've been
sued by.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yes, the BBC voice.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
That's perfect, okay, but there are ways for the information
to get out, right.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
I mean, look, yep, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
The initial news in July that Trump had been named
in the Epstein piles didn't actually seem to move the
needle all that much. Right, There was a little bit
of a tickdown and the popularity the tickdown seemed to
be more about the obstruction than anything. Right. When Pam
Bondi said, oh, well, wea it and it turns out
(18:02):
nothing funny going on there, you know, let's not let's
not let's not keep litigating this. Let's move on to
the things it really matter to the American peace and nobody, nobody, nobody, but.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
I'm sorry your pambody voices stylistic yes, but absolutely.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
But like nobody somebody bought Nobody bought that right, nobody.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
No. And by the way, Pam Bondi is now obviously
doing it about face because before she said absolutely nothing
to investigate, and then on Friday she opened investigations, so
clearly one of the two Pam Bondis was lying.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
So to me, the question is, are we passed not
necessarily some type of inflection point, but like, is Trump
in some sort of a lame duck downward spiral? Which
you're not quite the same thing right. By lame duck,
I mean so Trump technically is a lame duck unless
(19:00):
he figures out a way to run for a third term.
I don't know, I know we should dignify that or not,
but like putting that aside for now, he has a
lame duck in the sense that he can't run for
president again. But by lame duck, I really mean like,
does he lack the political capital to have the agenda
setting power, the juice to get things done. In addition
(19:25):
to this Epstein stuff, there are now more Republicans ignoring
him on redistricting. Indiana, where there are two Democrats, seems
not to want to redistrict. I think some of these
Republicans have been spooked by Democratic success in New Jersey,
Virginia and so forth. You know, you can have districts
that are R plus ten, meaning up by ten points.
(19:48):
Those aren't necessarily safe in a blue wave year, and
so they might be worried about that. They might thinking, okay, well,
actually Democrats have shown in California that we can have
this kind of mutually assured destruction where nobody wins, right,
and so the game theory is interesting and will be
right back after this break. If you look at the
(20:21):
ratings for approval ratings for presence and their second term,
they're much less resilient. And there are cases like Bush
in particular, where it was just a downward trend. You know,
Nixon also because of Watergate, where it deteriorated very fast.
(20:42):
You know, Truman surprised people by defeating Dewey despite headlines
of the nineteen forty eight election, was very unpopular in
his second term, kind of a straight downward arrow, and
so like once you kind of you know, you don't
necessarily have your party coming to your defense if you
don't have to run for election again. In fact, you
have Republicans maybe positioning themselves for what does life look
(21:05):
like posts Trump? Right, We've written or talked a lot
in the show about how Democrats are still a mess.
It's certainly a very valuable nomination to have in twenty eight, right,
assuming there's not a constitutional crisis, then they have to
nominate somebody else, and the jockeying for that starts now.
(21:27):
It's definitely occurring among Democrats already.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
And so.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Yeah, I think the base case is always that you know,
Trump is a high floor, low ceiling, high floor, but
you never know, there's enough history of second term presidents
actually going to this downward spiral where first term presidents
tend to have this U shape or swoosh Nike shape recovery.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Yeah, I'll be very curious to see how this plays out.
And I think a lot of it is going to
depend not on the Epstein files, but on economic indicators,
right on what is happening with the economy, what's happening
with inflation. Basically, how is the American public feeling and
are they what's going to happen with snap benefits, you know,
(22:09):
Trump asking everyone to reapply for snap benefits with all
of these different elements. You know, this is a puzzle
right now. That is you know, Trump has a lot
of different things that he has to manage correctly in
order for there not to be a downward spiral. And
we've talked before many many times on the show, how
(22:29):
you know, nothing seems to matter right like he happens.
It seems like he can rebound from anything negative. This
is the first time night that we're actually seeing in
since he became president in term number two. This is
the first time I think that we've seen cracks in
you know, this monolithic Republican support for Trump in the
(22:52):
House right before, like basically whatever he wanted, they were
rubber stamping, they were getting. They were basically even not
doing what they were supposed to be doing, right. They
were abdicating their powers of the purse. They were letting
kind if Trump pass legislation. I realized that Trump isn't
passing legislation, that's what Congress does, but they were really
(23:14):
letting that Trump pass this legislation, tariffs, all of these
different things, and they are finally starting to kind of
crack a little bit, at least that's what it looks
like right now. It's certainly I mean, it happened with
the two hundred and eighteen signatures, right, you actually did
have the breaking of ranks, So I would really you know,
(23:35):
I'm very curious to see how this ends up playing
out and what happens in the Senate. Right Is the
Senate going to fracture as well after in the wake
of what happened in the House. Is Trump going to
is the fact that he said, oh fine, go ahead,
you know, vote for this thing. We have nothing to hide.
Is that actually going to propel this through the Senate
(23:57):
as well? Is he going to backtrack yet again? How
is this going to play out? And what does that
mean for his ability to pass everything he wants to
pass in the next two years to actually have that
monolithic support. Is he still going to have it moving
forward or not? Obviously you know, a betting person would
say he probably will because he's always managed to regain it.
(24:20):
But I think that it's a question mark for me
for the first time.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, Look, I don't know that Trump has that much
more of a legislative agenda, really apart from like appropriations bills, which,
as always for Republicans will try to to lower taxes
for rich people in corporations and star of the welfare
state a little bit. But I mean, yeah, look so
(24:45):
you have you know, it would be subject to a
filibuster in Congress. It seems like a kind of a
bad look to if the House votes overwhelmingly for I mean,
I guess you're kind of hoping that, like if you
go to Polymarket, which I consult for, then there's only
like a forty percent chance implied that the Senate passes
the bill by the end of the year. Now, we
(25:08):
don't have that many left, and things in the Senate
are slow, right, so they might kind of slow walk
it and hope that people forget about it, you know.
I mean, the fact is that there are entire you know,
like MSNBC has not been rebranded to MS now, which
sounds like a multiple sclerosis charity.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
It's not it really does it.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
It's a cable news ess awful, what is it?
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Sorry this is neither here nor there, But what is
it with all these horrific media rebrands?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
It was like MS like the partnership with M Microsoft
Network lasted ended what like fifteen years ago or something, right,
it is that you know the news screaming MSNBC is
teaming with NBC News. It's like doesn't really or MS
it doesn't really make sense, right, but like it made
sense in the early aughts, I guess, and the name
has stuck. But like you know, basically they're just gonna
(26:04):
be talking epsteptepstn on MSMB MS. Now it's a new
kind of Russia gay. So if you're hoping people forget
about it, then then they won't, right. But like, look,
maybe Trump figures that. Like what's the scene from a
Christmas story where the kid gets a bb gun, like
don't don't shoot your eye out? Am I am? I
getting that right? I don't know if I've seen the
whole New Gay know that's scene. I'm sure I've seen
(26:25):
the movie.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
He Got I don't remember it. I don't remember, but the.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Kid gets a bb gun and of course he like
shoots his I don't know what the fuck's going on,
but it's a little bit like, you know, you have
Democrats with this bb gun on Epstein and like they're
so giddy about the story, which, by the way, I
say open up fucking everything. Right. I don't like these
political elites. I think they're fucking weird. Social circles and
(26:50):
parties are fucking weird, right, Like, I hope as many
people as possible are tainted for this and we get
a better fucking set of elites to be perfectly honest, right,
you know, by the way, I you know, I think
that it's not irrational for someone to ask whether Jeffrey
Epstein really killed himselves, right, I don't care. I don't
think I think that should be That's a normal thing
to ask if you go and like look at like
(27:10):
what the fuck is going on with this? Right? How
is he doing all this stuff? And you know, I
think there are lots and lots of open questions. I
would love to see every single file on this released
to the public and debated. Right. At the same time,
when you have kind of the ms now partisan democrats, right,
there's a risk that instead of having this kind of
moment of cross partisan crossover, that it goes back to
(27:33):
kind of a he said, She said, people I think
already have kind of low expectations for Trump and so
and so. I don't know, right, you know, but it
would be an absolute like epsteina palooza for three months
if the file, if the files came out, which again,
if I were Democrats, I'd say, Okay, this is a
pretty good story for us, But there is an opportunity cost, right,
(27:54):
and the opportunity costs might be to drive home a
message about the economy.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
That's actually what I was just about to say, like
in the grand scheme of things, like right now, you've
got the economy, right, You've got inflation, you've got snap
benefits being cut off, you've got the healthcare stuff, You've
got all this stuff going on. It seems like a
good moment to release. However, tens of thousands of emails
(28:18):
and whatever else, all of this just insane amount of
information and try to kind of bury bury it all, right,
And Trump is really really good at the politics of distraction, right,
He is very good at getting people to pay attention
(28:40):
to things that make them not deal with the issues
that are actually important at the moment. Like he is
so good at attention hijacking. And he's I mean to
be clear, with the Epstein files, he's been trying to
avoid this, right, because there is we already know that
he's in the files. We already know that there's damaging information.
(29:01):
The question is how damaging is it. But I think
he might be making a gamble now that like, if
they're going to come out, might as well like just
have this barrage and try to bury everything else, and
then you know, people will stop caring or stop paying
attention to the things that they really should be paying
attention to in terms of the welfare of the American people.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
No, and look, there are sure to be other Democrats implicated. Yeah, absolutely,
and there are sure to be and you can, you can.
It's a little bit morbid. You can bet on like
who's going to be named the obscene files? And like
I'm not going to go for.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Sure, Yeah, for sure, and we get and you know,
I can. I'm willing to bet that we are going
to be seeing a lot of news headlines and we're
going to have a hijacking of the conversation about everything.
Every single Democrat right who's mentioned, however peripherally in the files.
So so I think that that will be another great
(29:58):
opportunity for attention redeployment.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Shall we say, to some extent in the notion that
you have like cabal, a bipartisan cabal of like rich
elites who are behaving very very badly and think that
money can buy you anything you want, including access to
underaged women, right children if they're underage, ate their children,
(30:29):
Like you know, in some sense, that kind of is
part of what like sparks populist narratives right now, if
Trump is caught up in this, then he is hardly
a populist savior obviously. At the same at the same time, like,
you know, look, there's been people recently who so Trump
(30:52):
has pardoned a bunch of like January sixth writers, protesters,
whatever you want to call them, right, people, people that
were convicted of crimes, and that's some article. It's like, well,
people who criticized Joe Biden or pardoning Hunter Biden. You know,
this is so much a bigger deal. And I'm like, no,
(31:12):
fuck you, right, because like Democrats are running on the
we are the party of the rule of law and
democracy and the moral high ground, right and Trump is
running on everyone's a fucking hypocrite. So do you want Yeah, maybe,
I like maybe I like younger women. I don't drank,
I don't smoke, right, I like to hang out. We
talk about women, you know, I mean, like that's kind
(31:33):
of you know, Trump is reveling in his hypocrisy in
a way, kind of his like degenerously almost. I guess
it isn't like smoke or drink or things like that, right,
but he's kind of like a proud degen in a way.
And that's different. They're not trying to like claim it's like, yeah,
everyone's a hypocrite, So we got to look out for
our own, right, And so when things happen that discredit
(31:56):
quote unquote both sides of the establishment, that plays into
cynicism of political institutions, and that plays into the hands
of populace, including what outlimited to Trump.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
We'll be back right after this. I'm just curious kind
of what is the line, right, like what because it
seems to me that you know that Trump is able
(32:31):
to withstand most accusations better than most people, right, So
if we have the Epstein files released and there's bad
stuff on Trump but also bad stuff on you know,
a bunch of Democrats, he might be able to kind
of waltz through it if there's you know, nothing like
nothing ridiculous, But they won't, right, So, so it's one
(32:54):
of these things where it may be asymmetric risks.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
No, I think it yeah, you know, I don't know,
you know, you know, listeners, you'll be hearing whichever version
of this that Christian lawyers have lit again because their
president is right. But like, you know, look, I agree
that like it. It's a little binary in terms of like, look,
he's not been afraid. I mean, he talks about walking
into in the locker room and miss America patchets, right,
(33:22):
It's always kind of been like a a running stick
or joke that yeah, he likes it, likes women, right,
maybe he likes women that are a little bit younger,
and it's kind of like priced in, right, So I
think it would have to be like pretty definitive, pretty
salacious evidence, which is possible. But I think it's like, yeah,
(33:46):
to me, it's a little bifurcated between like either really
bad or gets swept up rushed aside into the previous narrative, right,
And there probably are some probably just some leetl ground yeah,
but yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah, well it'll be it'll be very interesting to see
how this process moves forward, what happens in the Senate,
and whether we do end up seeing a sustained fracturing
of the base where Congress becomes a little bit less
of a rubber state, rubber stamp mechanism for the state.
(34:22):
So or whether this is a one off and it
will just go back to kind of to see to
doing exactly what Trump says. And I think that the
repercussions of that are actually potentially much wider because, as
you've pointed out, Nan, and as we've talked about, a
lot of Trump's agenda has been accomplished through executive order,
(34:42):
right through kind of just saying Okay, this is what
I'm going to be doing, and a lot of those
are now making their way to the Supreme Court right
in front of the Supreme Court, will be in front
of the Supreme Court soon. And the Supreme Court has
also shown itself to be very pro Trump. But if
there's a sustained fracturing of kind of the Republican support
(35:04):
base in Congress, I'm wondering whether we might actually see
the Supreme Court also be come a little bit less
rubber stampy and a little bit more willing to strike
down things.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Sure, I don't know if you're don't, but like for sure,
the Supreme Court is sensitive to public yeah, right, And
sometimes we'll kind of be honest about that, sometimes less so.
But like they they are a a political.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Assay're not supposed to be, but they are.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Do you have closing thoughts here?
Speaker 1 (35:35):
My closing thoughts are I am you know whatever is
behind the pivot. I do hope that all of the
Epstein files are released, and I do hope that they
are released in a way that actually has a lasting
effect and helps clean up the elites on both sides
of the aisle. You know, let's let's be very clear,
(35:56):
no one should be what what was happening on Jeffrey
Epstein's island and his mansion. All of these things are
completely unacceptable and people should be held to account. So
I hope that we're actually able to see this and
very curious to see what's going to happen in the
Senate and whether the American public and Congress is able
(36:16):
to maintain their focus and their attention on more than
one thing at a time and keep the kind of
eye on the prize when it comes to the health
of the economy, the health of snap benefits, healthcare, all
of these things, like let's let's multitask people, we can
do this two things.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
That was what was the island called.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Little Saint James to day?
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Are you thinking of like the island in Jurassic Park,
like East Lend, New Blar or whatever it is? Right?
But why not Jurassic Park eight Epstein Island Island. Why
not let the dinosaurs be the good guys for ones? Right?
They eat all these child pedophile rapists? Like that would
be good, right? Wouldn't it a legend a legend child molesters?
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Yes, yes, but I'll watch that Jurassic Park. Let us
know what you think of the show. Reach out to
us at Risky Business at Pushkin dot FM. Risky Business
is hosted by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
And by me Nate Silver. The show was a cool
production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya gerwit Lydia,
Jean Kott and Daphne Chen are our editors, and our
executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
If you like the show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too, But once again,
only if you like us. We don't want those bad
reviews out there. Thanks for tuning in
Hosts And Creators
Maria Konnikova
Nate Silver
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