August 4, 2025 • 58 mins
Anna Merlan is a senior reporter at Mother Jones who covers disinformation, technology, and extremism. She joined us to discuss the Trump Administration's efforts to address the "Epstein Files" controversy and why calming supporters' anger over this issue has proven particularly challenging. We also explored how right-wing media has sought to downplay Ghislaine Maxwell's role in Jeffrey Epstein's crimes.
Links for Anna:
* Read her story in Mother Jones: How Does the Epstein Scandal End?
* Check out her book: “Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power”
* Follow her on Bluesky: @annamerlan.bsky.social
Transition Music: “Stars” by Hum
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Oh, boy, there he is again. Jeffrey Epstein.
Annoying story, isn't it? In so many ways.
And kind of infuriating. All right, He he beat the system
kinda in death. Total monster.
I believe it. Yeah, monster.
He pled guilty to that horrible,sick stuff.
But that doesn't mean that GalenMaxwell is guilty.
(00:24):
And there was a hell of a lot ofevidence out there that she's
innocent and a hell of a lot of evidence that they railroaded
her part of a deep state media hysterical plot.
And I don't like it. Welcome back to posting through
(01:12):
it. I'm Jared.
And I'm Mike. We are back this week talking
about Epstein again. If you need context for what has
been happening with this Epsteinscandal and the Trump
administration, be sure you go to the episode that we did with
Will Summer a few weeks ago. That's episode 25.
(01:33):
That'll catch you up on kind of how we got here.
But despite their best efforts, you know, the best efforts of
the Trump administration, this story is just not going away.
It it continues to persist. And it it's just like kind of
crazy to me that it's been around this long.
(01:55):
It's the first time that the movement itself has really been
on its heels since COVID and Black Lives Matter.
Trump himself has been in jeopardy before with all his
legal issues and everything thathappened in between there.
But those were sort of like, that was like the system kind of
coming down on this one guy. And MAGA was like tight.
They were they're rallying around each other.
(02:16):
But this is really the the firsttime I've seen this in years.
Nearly five years in fact. Yeah.
I mean, I think that's a good observation because, yeah,
during the first Trump administration, the system was
coming down on him. And fuck, the system is a very
potent cultural political message.
But defend the system or please look away from the system.
(02:36):
I just don't think has the same ring to it.
They're in charge. I mean, they're absolutely in
charge. They're building a fucking
prison called Alligator Alcatraz, which, you know, one
of the more disgusting things like my tax dollars have almost
have basically ever gone to, andthey've gone to a lot of
horrible shit. Yeah, yeah.
And I think they're losing like public opinion too.
(02:56):
I don't think people are as dumbas this administration treats
them, you know? And I think people are kind of
starting to see through this. Even just looking at the bro
podcaster sphere, the like Theo Von's and Joe Rogan's and
whatever, they are not really down to just like toe the
(03:16):
partisan line here or like move on from this.
They seem to be pretty upset. And I think kind of an
underappreciated angle of this Epstein stuff and part of why
it's stuck around so long and why this administration has kind
of struggled to get the online influencer class to move on is
because this like, directly insulted their egos, right?
(03:40):
Like, these people built these careers or like, expanded their
existing profiles by kind of catering and becoming crowd
favorites of the MAGA movement. Part of that was going along
with this idea that there was going to be this transparency
and hope. They're cutting the government
funding. And who knows?
Trump's saying maybe people get,you know, a check in the mail
(04:02):
come tax season next year from all the money they saved.
You know, they kind of, like, went along with this a little
bit. And now they just look like
fucking idiots. Plus, pedophiles were the
ultimate villain, right? So.
Like if you go to the libs of TikTok, like her profile now, if
you look in the replies of her post, like every single goal
post, somebody is in the replies.
(04:23):
Like I, I don't know if it's quite like getting ratioed
level, but like in the replies, it's just photos of her like
holding the Epstein binder in front of the White House and
being like, damn, I bet you feelstupid.
And it's just that on everythinglike it.
Just happened to a nicer. Person back in her face and it's
it's kind of just pissed these people off, right?
(04:43):
They feel, I'm sure they feel betrayed or embarrassed by this.
They've been trying to distract themselves with these, you know,
with these like the Sydney Sweeney ad and other, other ads
that seem vaguely fishistic. They, they, they're really
excited about that. Like, they're really back.
Like, so one of them is this kind of like douchey guy sipping
a lemonade and he's like, I've got great jeans.
(05:05):
And it's for, for Dunkin' Donuts, which, you know, come
on, you have. Yeah, I know you've been out of
the loop, but that is what they're talking about these
days. Yeah, yeah, I've been a little
under the weather so that that'swhy I sound, you know, my voice
is a little smoky roasty today. But yeah, yeah, I mean, I just
(05:26):
on those ads generally, like I've seen some stuff about that
online. I just automatically and I
probably shouldn't, but I I justlike look down on people that
think they're like they're like the TV is talking to me.
The TV is look, look American equal genes or look Dunkin'
Donuts. They, they are talking to me and
(05:49):
it's like you, you fool, They'retrying to sell you shit.
This is an advertisement. What are you talking about?
My threshold for, for Dunkin' Donuts offending me is very
high. They have to get like really
high. They have to be like racist
about me specifically, I think because I I that's, that is my
go to for coffee. And it's like, we're like, you
know, one guy in a pool talking about his jeans is not going to
(06:10):
do it for me. Yeah.
We're bringing in Anna Merlin ina minute to to talk about some
of this Epstein stuff. But where we get there, I just
got to say, you know, I was looking at the sort of back end
and podcast metrics are weird and hard.
But by far, you know, even with those caveats, I think The Who
the Hell is Dave Portnoy episodewas like the most downloaded
(06:34):
episode of this show since we rebooted.
That's awesome. It was about that's great, you
know, Davey page views, but. More like Bobby downloads.
Right, because Bob. Silverman was part of it.
I did take Bob out to a Mets game.
Everybody with you know our tip Sharp.
Promises made, promises capped, you know, Yeah.
(06:54):
Exactly. And it was, it was, it was, it
was Friday night's game, which is fireworks night.
And I was like, Bob, I got tickets, you know, I got, you
know, pretty nice seats. And I was like, you know, it's
fireworks night and he's just, you know, OK.
And like, I'll meet you in the park and all this stuff.
So we get there and I noticed Bob is like, he eats like
(07:16):
Dave's, David's sunflower seeds,like of different flavors, like
during the game. And I was like, where are you?
Where are you spitting the seeds?
Because I couldn't, couldn't see.
I thought he had a cup or something.
He's like, oh, I just eat the whole thing.
It's lots of fiber. That's my first Bob Silverman
story. And then and then the second one
is that like, you know, Mets were down.
He's like, you know, it's over, you know, and I was like, no,
(07:38):
they're going to come back. I just like they're going to
come back. So the Mets actually did come
back. They're down 3 nothing.
They tie the game. This is like the most Metsy
thing of all time. And you know, we're there.
We like all of a sudden we fall behind by one run to the Giants
in extra innings and the Mets load the bases in at the end of
the game and it ends. And Silverman turns around.
(08:01):
He just like, he's like, I don'twant to watch the fireworks.
I'm just like. So sounds like you had a banner
Mets game experience from what Iknow about the Mets, which is
not a lot to be fair. Well we should plug the tip jar
for this week which is in the episode description.
(08:22):
Every dollar folks chip in. Helps keep this show going.
Helps us produce those big Who the Hell is episodes which take
a ton of work. And I would like to note for
some of the people who complained about us doing ads,
there are no ads on this. This is all tip jar.
Yeah, we, we did, you know 3 adswith magic mind and we have
(08:44):
completed the three ads. The quest is fulfilled, so we're
going to. All tip jar here.
Yeah, we're going to take a break from that for a little
bit. Ad free.
But that's down in the description.
I think that is about all the housekeeping we've got.
I'm like very excited for Anna. She's really huge admirer of her
(09:04):
work. Yeah, I've been reading Anna's
work for a long time. I think she's one of the
smartest people on the beat. So enjoy this conversation we
had with Anna Merlin. She's Outback counting stars.
(09:26):
She thinks she missed the train to Mars.
She's Outback counting stars. Joining the podcast now, we have
Anna Merlin. She's a senior reporter at
Mother Jones, where she covers disinformation, technology and
(09:47):
extremism. You might have read Anna's work
in other outlets too. She's done stents at Vice,
Gizmodo, she's had pieces in Rolling Stone and many, many
other places. She's also the author of the
2019 book Republic of Lies. American Conspiracy Theorists
and Their Surprising Rise to Power.
I'll put a link to that in the description.
Long time listeners will remember that Anna was on this
(10:09):
show in 2019 after that book launched when it was still
called Shit Post and I'm excitedto have her back.
Hey, Anna. Hi, this time I'm not sitting
outdoors at a Starbucks in the middle of the desert, so my
sound will be better. Sorry about that.
That's OK, I I had almost forgotabout that but.
I remember it vividly because it's the only time I've ever
(10:31):
done that on a podcast and I feel very bad.
So this is karmic. Karmic balancing is coming back.
This is a professional operationnow.
So we don't, we don't tolerate that.
I have a giant microphone I never returned.
Advice and everything. What's happening with Gilane
Maxwell? So what is happening with Gilane
Maxwell, as we're talking, is that she couple of weeks ago had
(10:51):
meetings with the Justice Department, including Todd
Blanche, who is like the number 2 official in the Justice
Department and is Donald Trump'sformer criminal counsel.
And after those meetings, the contents of which have not been
disclosed, she was recently moved from the prison facility
that she's been at in Tallahassee to a lower security
(11:12):
facility in Texas. She's now at a minimum security
facility that is kind of widely seen as one of the nicer places
to be locked up if you are a woman in the prison system.
So that's what's going on there.And also, we know that she and
her attorney are saying that they would like a pardon or for
her sentence to be overturned inreturn for her cooperating with
(11:34):
the Justice Department, speakingto officials about what she
knows about Jeffrey Epstein's crimes, which she is, of course,
known to have participated in some of those crimes with him.
So that's what's going on right now.
We don't know yet where any of those meetings are going to lead
or why she was moved in the Bureau of Prison system.
We have no idea. Incredibly insane.
(11:56):
That's. Crazy.
Yeah, didn't like for the for the new minimum security prison,
didn't they have to like bend, they had to bend the rules in
order to get her in right, Isn'tsomething like that.
I don't know. I mean, it's entirely possible
that there's been reporting about that.
Definitely, it's unusual. Yeah, I think these I read
something where that you're not allowed to have somebody who has
like a sex offender past and whatever was they've been the
(12:18):
rule. So that's obviously they're,
they're quite literally doing everything to help this person
who was, as far as I remember, at the center of their
conspiracy theories and whateverelse, just like a few months
ago. I'm just kind of amazed that
like this has got to be like the4th or 5th episode in a row
where we've referenced the Epstein scandal and we have to
(12:41):
because it remains like this kind of focal point in politics
right now, which is, is kind of almost amazing to see.
I feel like any news story just doesn't last anymore, right?
I mean, the Internet moves so fast and audiences move so fast.
I'm curious as somebody who's covered conspiracy land for as
(13:04):
long as you have, just sort of general thoughts on how things
are going. I, I mean, it's just, it's very
bizarre. It's almost like for me, it's
almost surreal to watch play out.
Yeah. I mean, even just, you know, I
think we've all worked in news for a long time, and it's just
so rare that any story ever lasts for more than two weeks.
(13:24):
And obviously, in some ways, that's a failure of how
journalism works that, you know,we tend to not be able to keep
things in the headlines after two weeks, no matter how
important they are. But yeah, this story
specifically is so unusual because the MAGA base is still
angry about the administration'shandling of the Epstein stuff,
(13:45):
and the mainstream news is also still talking about it.
Like it's still just dominating the headlines, despite the fact
that at this point, I think the Trump administration has
announced like 567 something like that.
Investigations that are meant todraw attention, you know, are
meant to move the news cycle on.And it, it hasn't, it's still
(14:07):
like every time one of these investigations is written about,
it's often explicitly referred to as, you know, the president
trying to move people's attention away from the Epstein
stuff. It's it's crazy.
I did not think that as the American public, we had this
attention span for anything anymore.
So maybe that's maybe that meanswe all haven't been totally like
zapped by our phones into not being able to focus on anything.
(14:28):
Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about some of the stuff that
the Trump administration has thrown out over the last couple
weeks because, like, Trump's response to this whole saga,
basically, I feel like started with like, shut up, shut up.
How are you still talking about this?
Aren't you bored? And then there was that Truth
Social post that like, you know,my guys and sometimes my gals or
(14:52):
whatever. It was basically just trying to
tell people to move on. And that has kind of been the
message that a lot of, you know,administration officials have
tried to put out of like, we looked into it, it's time to
move on. And now, you know, it's just
like every few days this, it's like they're dispensing catnip
into the base, whether it's likeinvestigating Obama or like the
(15:16):
what's the Beyoncé one. I'm less familiar with that, but
I know Beyoncé's involved in here somewhere.
I believe that there was a post by President Trump on Truth
Social that suggested that Kamala Harris was going to be
investigated for campaign finance fraud for having Beyoncé
perform and suggesting that she had been improperly paid for her
(15:36):
performance in a way that constituted campaign finance
fraud. And again, I would have to dig
down through his thousands of posts and reposts in the last
few days to find that. But that was that was my sense
of what was being suggested. You also have to look past the
he has such an interesting usageof quotation Marks, and if
you've noticed this, his capitalization has always been
(15:57):
weird, but now the quotation marks are also getting weird.
Yeah, he'll, he'll drop it completely out of the blue.
It's like a Gucci Mane ad Lib orsomething, you know?
So they just be like, it's always time for another
quotation mark in the middle of it.
Another quotation mark anyway, Yeah, I think that's what that
was as a suggestion that perhapsBeyoncé and Kamala Harris were
also, I think it was Kamala Harris was under investigation.
(16:18):
I don't think it was suggested that he was going to, you know,
go to Beyoncé's house. But you know, I guess we'll see.
I remember a more than once and I like, I think Beyoncé was at
the center of this more than once.
But celebrities when they have celebrities who kind of
associate themselves with the Democratic campaign, they
(16:38):
there's a big push either by, you know, deliberately or just
organically by their followers to say that this is paid for and
stuff like that. So it's he's, he's, I think
feeding an appetite that alreadyexists in his base.
So he's they're probably like, yeah, well, what about that, You
know, that huge scandal where Beyoncé was paid to like,
promote Kamala Harris? It seems like something that
(17:01):
like, I remember stuff like thatgoing back to even 2016.
Yeah. The issue, though, is that
Kamala Harris lost and nobody but the president, I think, was
thinking about Beyoncé. He's, you know, appearance at
one of her rallies anymore. And it's just like if you were,
you know, a cynic would suggest if you were looking for the
biggest possible story with the biggest possible name to draw
(17:22):
attention away from Jeffrey Epstein and you, you know, fired
the Beyoncé gun and the Beyoncé gun did nothing.
And it just dinged right off the, you know, Epstein ship or
whatever contorted metaphor we're using here.
Then, you know, what else could you possibly do?
And then, of course, after that,soon after that, this was it was
announced that they're also investigating President Obama
(17:43):
and perhaps going to charge him with treason.
So, you know, the the targets ofthese purported investigations
just keep getting bigger. Yeah, it and they don't seem to
be getting pick up like you noted in a lot of the big, you
know, kind of legacy publications.
This is getting framed as like, you know, they're trying to
distract from Epstein. But one place it's not getting
framed that way is right wing media.
(18:05):
And saw Media Matters had a study out a few days ago showing
that Fox News has pretty much pivoted.
Like there was, I forget what the exact stat was, but that
Sydney Sweeney, American Eagle denim advertisement or whatever,
they talked about it like X amount of times more than they
talked about Epstein developments.
(18:27):
You've got the Mike you were saying before we started
recording, like the Tim Pools ofthe world and stuff are like
they're moving on. And I, I'm curious, like, from
your observations, clearly the order is out.
And people like Alex Jones, you know, take it with a grain of
salt, have claimed that, you know, the Trump administration's
telling him to back off it and move on.
(18:49):
And like, from other statements of people, you get the
impression that they're like, you know, suggesting to some of
these people that they're going to lose some of their access if
they don't like, let this go. So right wing media is kind of
moving on, but it it doesn't seem like the base is.
I, I mean, I'm curious your takeon like, if this is actually
(19:09):
working, you know, if they can get like the Fox News prime time
to focus on, you know, whatever Tulsi Gabbard puts out or
potentially arresting Obama or whatever.
It, I mean, does that work? To me, it's just like, conveys
contempt for the audience, you know?
But I don't know. Well, so I think there's also a
larger issue here, which is thatto convey why President Obama is
(19:33):
supposedly going to be charged with treasonous conspiracy or
whatever term they're using now,any day now there, it requires
so much explanation, right? It requires so much back story.
It requires people to care aboutthe Russia gate scandal of 2016.
And the Epstein stuff is of broad interest to a lot of the
American public, not just the mega base.
(19:55):
You know, I'm sure all of us have left-leaning friends who
also care about it a great deal for different reasons.
And it is much easier to explainin a nutshell, so I don't
particularly think it is. Working to move public attention
away from the Epstein stuff. There is also, as I've written
about in a couple pieces, the fact that this administration
(20:17):
worked really hard to position themselves as like the
administration of disclosure, you know, strongly implied that
all of these bombshells were going to be revealed, including
stuff about Epstein. And they they haven't, they
haven't done it here. I mean, they haven't done it in
a bunch of cases. But, you know, a lot of them
are, you know, like supposed newinvestigations into stuff like
who dropped a bag of cocaine in the White House in 2023, which
(20:39):
people don't care about as much.But no, people care a lot about
the Epstein stuff. They were promised sort of
concrete answers. And those things have not
materialized. And that is harder for people to
let go of. I don't know if you saw, but Joe
Rogan a few days ago said that he felt like Donald Trump is
gaslighting his supporters. That was Joe Rogan's term
gaslighting. Someone's taught him that term
recently, I guess, which is fascinating again to see, you
(21:03):
know, Joe Rogan living away fromhis pretty full throated support
that he was expressing for a while there.
Well, I mean, isn't some of it related to the fact that there
may have been stuff in the past with other presidents that was
not, you know, disclosed at the time, like, you know, sex
scandals, whatever. But this is the first time where
(21:26):
this such a high profile association with a pedophile.
I mean, I, I can't recall a story like this ever.
So I mean, it's not surprising at all to me that people are
kind of, you know, they can't let it go, even people who
support him. Yeah.
I mean, what is weird is that ittook so long for this to be a
(21:48):
thing, right? Obviously, Jeffrey Epstein's
first conviction was in 2008. He, you know, was a known
associate of Donald Trump's for a long time before then.
So the fact that this has not really come up as a, like,
sticking issue until now is kindof extraordinary.
But, yeah, now, you know, obviously all the photos of them
(22:10):
are recirculating all of Donald Trump's comments about Jeffrey
Epstein, like the one in 2002 calling him, you know, what was
it a great guy who likes, who enjoys the company of younger
women, Just something where you're like, oh, my God.
So, yeah, I don't know. It's a it's a bit of a mystery
of the American imagination thatit took this long for people to
really want to talk about this. I've seen a lot of people not on
(22:32):
this podcast, but you know, there's like a strain of liberal
commentary that likes to comparethe Trump base to Colts.
And you've written about Colts, you've covered Colts.
I'm curious what you think aboutthose comparisons.
I think like anybody who covers extremism for a long time, you
(22:52):
get really allergic to using a word like cult automatically
because it's kind of a, what do they call it, a thought
terminating cliche of sorts. Like if you want to describe
Trump ISM as a cult, I would askwhat you like, what someone
means by that, rather than agreeing or disagreeing with
that statement. I don't personally think that
that's true. I think it tends to be an
(23:13):
oversimplification. But if you want to say, for
instance, you know that Donald Trump has a tremendously loyal
base who don't seem to be dissuaded by hardly anything,
Like you can say that, you know,if you want to say that he's a
charismatic leader, you can say that.
But I don't know. I think I don't know.
I guess I'm sort of unreasonablyirritated by describing it as a
(23:33):
cult because I think it doesn't lend itself to any kind of
further conversation about what we what we mean when we say
that. Also because we have so many
better examples of actual cult leaders in this country who have
done some really crazy stuff to it, like discrete number of
people. But yeah, I mean, I think when
people use that comparison, right, when they say that
(23:54):
Trumpism is a cult, what they mean is what is it going to take
for the base to get mad at this guy or not believe in him or see
when he's breaking his? Process which is where I'm
going, which is where I'm going with this right?
Because this it kind of sticks out to us, not only just for the
the staying power, but also because it seems to be driving a
genuine wedge in a way that likethe failed promises of Q Anon
(24:19):
never seem to do or the, you know, countless scandals before
never seem to do. And I, you know, where I was
going with this is I'm curious, you know, your thoughts on why
that might be, you know, if you have any theories.
So I think one of the big thingsabout Q Anon specifically was it
(24:42):
wasn't Donald Trump making thoseclaims, right?
He might have like stoked or winked at or kind of nudged and
elbowed people a little bit to kind of lead on the Q Anon base.
But he was not the one saying, you know, I am fighting a heroic
battle against a underground cabal of sex traffickers and
soon their crimes will be revealed, right?
So I mean, when he left office without any of the Q Anon
(25:03):
predictions coming true, HillaryClinton was not taken to jail.
You know, the the secret basement underneath Comet Pizza
was not revealed or whatever. There was a pretty significant
kind of peel off of people who believed in Q Anon as a specific
discreet conspiracy theory. Broader kind of ideas about Q
Anon, like trickled into, you know, broader conspiracism, like
these ideas that there is a underground group of elites
(25:25):
richly abusing children. But, you know, in this specific
case, both Trump and people around him, his family, his
proxies in the media specifically said when he comes
back into office, he is going todisclose everything about
Jeffrey Epstein who killed JFK. You know, all of these other
things that every other administration has kept from you
(25:47):
will be revealed. You know, these are these were
explicit promises that were being made.
You know, and they love to talk about themselves as the the the
administration of maximum transparency.
So it is really striking here especially to see a different
approach being taken with the Epstein stuff.
In the years of the previous administration and after that,
(26:07):
it was not, you know, it was common for us to find online
photographs of Trump and Epstein.
Those those photographs that arenow familiar, but also a lot
more pictures of Trump and Ghilane.
And those are always around. They were always around.
You know, you could always find people sharing them with Trump
supporters before and nobody seemed to latch onto it.
(26:31):
And that's why I, I guess, you know, it's it, it doesn't, it
doesn't shock me much. I do know that if, if Joe Biden
or I guess Kamala was not reallythe type of person you would you
could possibly imagine with, with Jeffrey Epstein there.
But but if anybody, I mean, if she had posed for one picture
with Colleen or something, right, that would have been
everywhere and it would have, they would have used it to
(26:51):
probably destroy her campaign. Why is it that now all of a
sudden, I think, you know, people are starting to to think
about it. And then then the I guess the
second question about that wouldbe, you know, is, is it true
that that Trump's base is actually starting to bend a
little bit? Because I also see in the
polling, it's independence that have gone down the most.
(27:12):
Democrats continue to fall and Republicans still kind of hover
around the same line. So I'm just kind of wondering,
is it the independence do you think?
I mean I'm just curious why? Why the sudden change in like
where the change is coming from?Right, people who have sort of
like softer support for Trump inthe 1st place, who maybe voted
for him just because they thought he was going to make the
economy better rather than believing deeply and the rest of
(27:36):
his promises might be the first to peel off.
I mean, the stuff about the factthat there's so many pictures of
Trump with both Epstein and Gilad Maxwell and that it didn't
really catch on as an issue before, it's an interesting one.
In some ways it's because Trump's supporters and Trump
himself have always said, you know, this is a very wealthy
(27:57):
man, this is very power, this isa very powerful man.
And he's been photographed with all kinds of people.
That was always kind of the thatwas always kind of the
explanation there. And also there has been, as you
guys probably know, among a certain strain of Q Anon
believers, this idea that DonaldTrump is uniquely positioned to
take these people down because he's so wealthy and powerful
that he knows them and he knows all their secrets and he's he's
(28:20):
about to like air their dirty laundry.
So I think there's a little bit of a, you know, hubbub building
as it becomes clear that maybe that's not what's going to
happen. I think the real kind of test of
specifically MAGA support for Trump is going to come if he
does pardon Gillian Maxwell, as has been, you know, widely
speculated is going to happen. I think seeing what's going to
(28:41):
happen there is going to be really, really interesting.
You know, I could see them saying, well, he's pardoning her
because she's about to reveal everything she knows.
Or I could see there being a bigoutcry from the base and I guess
we'll just kind of have to see. I'm very, very curious if he's
going to decide that that's in his interest to do.
I predict that they will that they will roll with whatever.
(29:02):
And that's because just my experience, you know, my cynical
experience from seeing this for a decade now.
And it's kind of, you know, I hate, you know, I hate to be
cynical about it. I'd like to hope that they'd
actually care, but I think they're willing to to swallow
almost anything with Trump. And I think it would, I, I
really think it, you know, it would take a profound economic
(29:22):
collapse to even make a dent with them.
That's just, that's my gut. But I, you know, I hope, I hope
I'm wrong. Anna, you wrote a story in
Mother Jones. It's called How does the Epstein
Scandal End? Which is a good question because
they've really been trying to end it.
They would love for it to end, I'm sure.
And it seems like they're, you know, throwing out all kinds of
(29:46):
like, true spaghetti at the wall, you know, to abuse a
cliche there. But like, I want to kind of walk
through your piece first. I want to know, like, you know,
what inspired you to write this piece or like, start thinking
about this question of like, howdoes this end?
Where does this end? Well, some of it is just as you
guys noted, the crazy sticking power this is like had in the
(30:09):
headlines and just thinking to myself, OK, what is it going to
take for right wing media to move on, which they are
currently doing as we speak. What is it going to take for the
base to move on? And was it going to take for
kind of mainstream media to moveon?
Because as we were remarking, most news stories just do not
last this long anymore. So I mean, I think that was the
that was the primary question and that this piece of sort of
(30:33):
my groping attempt to figure outwhich of these things is going
to come first. And in a way, the last scenario
I promised is the one that's happening now, which is right
wing media and the Trump administration just do a brute
force moving on, not talking about this anymore, ignoring the
people in their replies on Twitter asking them to talk
about it, which I'm seeing a lotof people doing.
(30:53):
Just deciding as a unit that it is time to stop discussing it
and stop giving it error and seeing if that works.
And that is kind of what we're seeing.
Yeah, I want to walk through some of the the other things you
laid out here. The first one going back to
Ghilane Maxwell, the situation with her, bringing her in.
I, I guess the idea would be that she would come out and name
(31:17):
names or at least like if you watch right wing media, that
seems to be the idea they have right?
That like Trump and Max as well are going to like team up
somehow and that's how they're going to get, you know, that's
how it's going to happen becausethe names will be named, but
they don't have to, you know, release the source material,
which they say contains, you know, child pornography and
(31:41):
immaterial that would cause additional harms to victims,
which I'm sure it has plenty of that in there to be fair, you
know. But like, tell me more about
like sort of where that's going,where right wing media seems to
think that's going or like, you know, what, what would be kind
of the idea here in terms of like, how do you get Ghilane in
(32:03):
the process? And then how does that go from
there to everyone's moved on from the Epstein scandal?
Right. So there is a lot of stuff that
has not been released ever. You know, obviously grand jury
files, which judge just denied the release of those because
they are secret and they're going to remain secret.
You know, discovery in these cases against Epstein and
(32:24):
Maxwell, discovery and other files in this case that was
filed against the Epstein estatein the US Virgin Islands.
Like there is all this stuff that could come out.
But the idea is that I think theidea in right wing media is that
Gillian Maxwell sits down and she specifically accuses
powerful Democrats of engaging in sex crimes against women and
girls with Epstein. Like, I think that's the idea of
(32:45):
what's going to happen. And that does point at a
secondary and like, very real, frankly, scandal, which is there
are a bunch of powerful people on both sides of the aisle who
associated with Epstein, took rides on his plane.
You know, we're generally content to be seen hanging
around with him after he had already been convicted of a
sexual offence against a child in 2008.
(33:06):
You know, between 2008 and 2019,plenty of people were happy to
attend parties, scientific summits, you know, ask for money
from him for their academic institutions.
Seemingly unbothered by the factthat by all accounts, this was
somebody who had engaged in a pretty systematic practice of
having teenagers come to his house for massages and sexually
(33:28):
abusing them. You know, like the.
The details were widely known. But yeah, so the idea is I
suppose that Maxwell comes out, she names these names, these
public figures that she's namingare forced to defend themselves
in some way, you know, legally in the public eye.
And somehow that satisfies the mega bases, cries for disclosure
(33:49):
and further transparency. And then people move on.
It's sort of hard to see, right?Like how?
How could that be it? Sounds like they're gonna
they're gonna go around like they're gonna just work around
the elephant in the room, which which is that this all started
because everybody started to speculate about Trump, right.
So they you know, we're we're we're all of a sudden we're
gonna do all this stuff. We're gonna do everything but
(34:11):
Trump right. I mean that to me.
I think, I think some of the more conspiratorial anti-Semitic
MAGA people who are very sort ofa loud undercurrent in the base,
I would say like that is kind of, you know, just not the main
part of it, but they're there. Those type of people will, you
(34:31):
know, call bullshit on it, I think.
But I could imagine like the more mainstream pundits trying
to trying to help Trump over thefinish line with that.
Right. I think what you're gesturing at
is that a bunch of people have sort of claimed about evidence
that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent or had some other
ties to Israel, and that's why the full depth of his crime is
not being revealed. And there is, of course, no
actual hard evidence of that that we have other than the fact
(34:53):
that he was Jewish. So that's, yeah, not great.
But, yeah, I mean, also, if she comes out and names, names and
then those people are not criminally charged, I doubt that
will satisfy anyone either. You know, I mean, a lot of what
I talked about in this piece is the way that they have created
sort of an unsolvable problem for themselves.
Yeah, because it would seem thatlike if she came out and named
(35:14):
names that would just extend this situation for like years,
right. I read a theory and I also
something that's interesting on that I've seen.
You know, we opened the show today with a clip of from
Newsmax where one of their hostsis, you know, being, you know,
basically trying to argue that Ghilane like maybe didn't do
(35:38):
that much wrong. But that's also not true.
You know it's. Oh no, it's 100% not true
according to the government. According to the pre sentencing
memoranda that the government put out in 2022, she is directly
accused of engaging in sexual abuse herself.
And accusers have said that she was there and physically
involved in in in some of these incidents.
(36:00):
That she groped them in order tonormalize these, you know, hyper
sexualized environment. That Epstein and her had created
in their homes, that she was an instrumental part of trying to
convince these girls that what was happening was OK or
acceptable or normal or something that adults and
children did together. I mean, it's really disturbing.
(36:20):
Like, I don't know if I would recommend reading it
necessarily, but certainly it is.
It is there and it is laid out in black and white what the
government alleges she did and what she was convicted for and
sentenced to prison for. Yeah, I think that's going to be
another obstacle to them because, you know, whatever they
have to give Ghilane Maxwell in exchange to participate in this,
(36:41):
whether it is a pardon or reduced sentence or what.
I'm not an expert on how that stuff works, Right.
Part of that will have to involve, like, trying to launder
her reputation. Yeah, You know, it will.
I think that would turn a lot ofpeople off.
I don't think the American public is like nearly as stupid
as as people like to think sometimes.
(37:01):
It's interesting because I've only ever heard one person prior
to this ever making that claim. That's this woman, Jessica Reed
Krauss House in habit. It's like a yeah, she made sort
of a bit of a cottage industry for a while, covering Elaine
Maxwell and claiming that she had been made a scapegoat for
other other people's crimes. But that was like a very unusual
claim to make, and now it's popping up on Newsmax.
(37:23):
Yeah, yeah, that person, just for listener contacts, is one of
the people that had the Epstein binders in their hands at the
White House, so. Indeed, she did fun.
I'll say she'll fall right into the story then, you know, if
she's, if she was already doing that before and then she was
doing the Epstein binder, she'llbe perfect for them.
(37:43):
She's written quite a bit about this, yeah.
So another thing you identify inthe story is that they could
just declare it's over and call it a hoax, which we've seen some
of that already, right? Yeah, I mean, the Slate had a
great piece about a round of stories declaring that Trump had
moved his base on from this issue.
And every single one of those stories, it was like Politico,
(38:06):
New York Times, I forget which other outlets, but they all
quoted the same person, which was Steve Bannon.
Notoriously reliable source. I don't know if I worked at a
big publication. I I mean, part of this is like
how the sausage is made in journalism, right?
It's like if the person who picks up the phone gets quoted,
you would think a big newsroom would have a little bit more
(38:26):
like discernment. You would like to think maybe,
but I just Bannon as a source, like all his like bullshit and
antics aside, I also just every time I hear his name, I vividly
remember that he was charged andI think pleaded guilty to like
some, you know, had some kind ofplea deal to scamming the MAGA
(38:48):
base like like having some. Having some kind of.
Fraud. So it's like, OK, you're going
to quote this guy as like an authority on a base that he
like, actively scammed. All right, guys.
Yeah, he he pleaded guilty to defrauding donors in this
fundraiser fundraiser to build aborder wall and avoided jail
time. Trump also has, I've I saw, I
(39:11):
think it's like a true social post where he tried to compare
this Epstein stuff to, you know,what they like to call Russia
gate or whatever. Has that stuck at all as far as
you can tell. So it is sticking in the sense
that like right wing and conspiratorial media is covering
the Russia gate stuff and all the pundits who are very angry
(39:33):
about Epstein 2 weeks ago are talking about it now.
Like, you know, the front page of Infowars is a bunch of Russia
gate stuff. People who were involved in the
Epstein binder stunt in Februaryare talking about it.
But like is it catching on with the base?
Like I would love to see pullingon it because it can be really
hard to tell. To me.
It doesn't seem like it is. To me.
It seems like people are not super captivated by this unless
(39:54):
you're in the very deep end of the pool.
But I guess, I guess we'll see if it works to kind of displace
this in the minds of their of the base.
I'm curious what what you think about this as a as a thing.
It seems to me in in just looking at the way the base kind
of response to things that thereare these narratives, these
stories with like heroes and villains that kind of, you know,
(40:16):
come and go throughout. And, and, and one of the thing
about the Russia disinfo thing is it feels like when somebody
hasn't released a single for a while and then they release one
of their old singles as a remix or something.
It, you know, it's kind of like they may like the song and
they're happy that it's there, but it's really not.
It may not, it can't deeply satisfy them because there
(40:36):
hasn't been like new villains that kind of on the on the rise.
And it seems like all the villains that they're pulling
out like everyone from like JackSmith to Obama and all these
things. These are kind of they're not
new stories. Like if you like, I was thinking
about something that had a lot of power, for instance, when
Anthony Fauci kind of emerged aslike a like a super villain in
the in the mega universe. And it's just like how much
(40:59):
power like that had just the, you know, when people would say
Fauci, you could just feel theirtheir anger underneath.
And it seems like they're just pulling out like remixes of like
these old stories without havingsomething that they can really
thump on. And and that's just, I don't
know bottom text. That's mine.
It's a band who had a hit album and then like 1010 years went by
(41:21):
and they finally got ownership of their masters.
So you get the like. I mean, if you, if you, if you
look at it like, I mean, it's just like these characters come
up, everyone from Podesta, Fauci, these things.
And, and I feel like Trump doesn't have one right now.
It's, it's, it's one of the curses of having so much control
over over all the houses of government and like all that,
(41:42):
you know, they had, they're in charge very much.
And so and like, what do you who, who's it going to be?
Cory Booker? It's going to it's, it's really
difficult for them to find the villain that they need to change
the subject from this. Anyway, just my thought.
Yeah, I mean, I've said this elsewhere, but, you know, the
Trump administration has engagedin a really accelerated campaign
(42:04):
in so many other areas of government, right?
You know, when it comes to immigration, when it comes to
dismantling broad sectors of thefederal government, when it
comes to, you know, really reshaping our public health
system, as is happening right now under Robert F Kennedy
Junior. And so when the Trump
administration comes out and says, like, oh, we really can't
do any more on the Epstein stuff, I don't think people
believe them. Like, I think this this
(42:26):
administration has been a reallygood demonstration so far of how
much power the president and theRepublican Party have when they,
as you say, control every singlebranch of government.
So yeah, people, this is a bit of the curse, right, of having
that much power is that people really do not believe you when
you declare a limit on that power.
And that kind of gets to the thethird sort of realm of
(42:47):
possibility you explore in the story, which is finding someone
in the administration to blame it on, right.
You know, if there's right, if they control the government,
I've I think the deep state thing becomes less compelling.
I don't know if that sticks as as much as it might have during
the first Trump administration. They're.
Still claiming, yeah, yeah, no, they're still claiming that
there's a lot of deep state in there that they still have to
(43:08):
root out. That is absolutely going to be a
very durable claim for years to come until there's no federal
government left. So the idea on like this track
would be that basically like somebody becomes the fall guy.
Yes, the scapegoat. And in the piece, I suggested
that would probably be Attorney General Pam Bondi because she's
kind of first, first of all, like, the least in Trump's
(43:28):
circle, frankly, you know, and secondly, she is the one that
most of the anger has focused atso far.
You know, she was behind this kind of stunt in February,
handing out these binders full of previously released Epstein
information that was touted as new.
She was the person who claimed that she had the Epstein list
of, you know, clients on her desk waiting for review.
(43:49):
And then she never did because of such a list probably doesn't
exist. So yeah, it does seem like one
of the possibilities here is that she is scapegoated and made
into the person who bungled the investigation.
She's pushed out. A new person is installed in her
place, and they claim to be, youknow, starting over.
And that at least buys some time, right, If people go with
(44:10):
it? Another lane that you identified
as they could dump more documents, you know, then they
could just say OK, OK, OK, here's Part 2 of the Epstein
files. Right.
What would that look like? Even you wrote that this feels
maybe like a less plausible route that they're they would be
willing to take. Now it's I don't, I don't know.
(44:32):
If that did happen, what do you think that might look like?
Well, first of all, we know now in May, because of some
reporting by the New York Times and other outlets, that and
Bondy told Donald Trump in May that his name is mentioned in
the Epstein files. He has been accused of sexual
misconduct by other women many times, but we don't know what
form he appears in the Epstein files.
(44:53):
So releasing those files could mean that Donald Trump's name is
used in ways that he would not find favorable.
Also, as I note, when they released a big batch of JFK
files, they didn't redact them adequately and they contain the
Social Security numbers of living people, which was really
bad for those people. They face threats and identity
theft concerns. When they released a bunch of
(45:16):
files relating to Doctor Martin Luther King Junior, his family
objected and said that they thought that it was meant to be
a distraction from the Epstein files.
Sometimes these document dumps don't work to drive attention as
much as they would hope. And then of course, the the
bigger actual concern, if these files contain C Sam, if they
contain the names of victims whohave not previously stepped
(45:36):
forward, they could like re victimize these women and girls.
And they could put people into the public eye who didn't choose
to be there whose only involvement with the story is
that they are the victims of a serious crime.
So that would that would be really bad.
That would be a terrible thing. And I think we could all agree
that that would be kind of the worst case outcome.
And then we talked about the the5th lane you identified, which
(45:57):
is it? And we've been talking about
this earlier, but basically trying to find a new scandal
dispensing, you know, treats little, little morsels of, you
know, to fantasize with about Obama getting cuffed and, you
know, perp walked across the East lawn or the South Lawn.
(46:17):
But just kind of zooming out, like as we're getting closer to
the end here, is any of this going to work?
I mean, I'm just, it's so puzzling.
I, I feel like this scandal is, is like so unique and it seems
to be like getting down to the core of this administration in a
way that a lot of stuff just doesn't.
But also like, does anything matter?
(46:38):
I don't know, I don't know. I mean what's what is your take?
I mean, my take is no, but I want to hear her.
Three things matter OK, so it will work in the sense that
eventually people will move on. No, no news story lasts forever.
It just can't especially not in this environment.
So yes, some one of these thingswill stick in a certain sense
and people will move on and it will not dominate the headlines
(46:58):
anymore right. Like, I think we can all safely
agree on that. However, I wrote a piece a few
weeks ago about how the Trump administration's missteps here
have also guaranteed that Epstein's stuff is going to be a
permanent part of kind of the fabric of conspiracism in the
same way that skepticism about the JFK assassination is or the
suicide of Clinton aide Vince Foster.
Like, there are things that juststick to the big ball of
(47:21):
conspiracy theories that we havein this country and just don't
go away. And this is going to be one of
them. There will always be some number
of people who believe that the Trump administration covered up
what they know about the Epsteinfiles and that they did that to
benefit the president or people close to him.
Like that's they can't make thatgo away.
There's nothing that is going todislodge that in some people's
(47:42):
minds. But yeah, will it will it
matter? Like no, of course not in the
sense that does anything, does anything matter in the long
term? Probably not.
No. Like will it will it cause
Donald Trump to leave office? Will it cause some like
overwhelming sort of turn away from MAGA ideas?
(48:03):
No, probably not, because the things that brought people to
MAGA in the 1st place are way more complicated than that.
So as with everything, it both matters a lot and doesn't matter
at all. Well, I wanted to to just ask
before we fade out. So we're in agreement that
probably probably not. They won't leave whatever.
But I guess like I said, we see independence, you know,
(48:27):
depressed on mag other, whereas they were much more excited in
the run up to the election and now they're starting to kind of
pull away. So Trump is his approval numbers
are not fantastic, you know, compared to where they were when
he first took office. I think people are kind of
getting a little bit sour with him broadly.
Maybe not his, not his base, butin general, I'm just curious
(48:50):
what you think about how they have managed image at least now
that we're kind of past the honeymoon days of his
administration and sort of the that that transition out of the
doge days into wherever we are now to the dog days.
You know, I mean, you got like it seems like every single
person of prominence in his administration has dealt with a
(49:14):
tremendous amount of criticism, probably not even enough
criticism considering how insanesome of these people are.
But I mean, I was thinking aboutRFK Junior and and and so forth.
What do you, what do you think the impression, not the base,
but the obvious and, and not obviously not, you know, people
who are, who are watching MSNBC and whatever.
(49:36):
I'm talking about the, the kind of person who is a little bit
more passive about politics. What do you, what do you think
about how they have managed image?
Because I think it's a train wreck.
And that's just my stomach, you know, but maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe people like this stuff. I I just can't tell.
I think that in the US, as in a bunch of places in this last
(49:56):
election, incumbents were swept out of office and people who
were seen as the upstart candidates were brought in.
And we saw that all over the world and we're still seeing it
where there is a rising in a bunch of places, sort of
populist, often far right set ofmovements that claim to be
making people's material conditions better, improving the
(50:17):
economy, getting them paid more often, while also advancing
xenophobic kind of anti immigrant agendas.
That has happened in so many places in France, in Japan, in
Germany, you know, there are allthese places that are dealing
with this. And so the question for the
Trump administration, when it comes to like, I don't know, the
ordinary person who's not payingthat much attention to politics
(50:38):
is like 6 months into the administration, are they going
to feel like their lives are better because of Trump and
Trumpism and mega? And to me, again, you know,
admittedly as somebody who's notin that category, it doesn't
look like it. The economy is not doing well.
You know, terrorizing and deporting my neighbors here in
Los Angeles and kidnapping them from bus stops is not really
(50:59):
doing anything for the ordinary person.
It's not creating jobs. It's not really doing anything
but creating a, a spectacle of cruelty and violence.
So, you know, I, I think that atsome point people do notice that
their lives are not being made better because of these
policies. So I guess we'll see if people
feel that way when I guess the next elections roll around
(51:21):
because ultimately it doesn't really matter until then again,
the Trump administration is pursuing policies even when they
are broadly unpopular, like so-called Alligator Alcatraz,
the concentration camp that was built in Florida.
Most people don't like it. You know, most polling on that
is like people think it's cruel and gross and weird and then
they're they're doing it anyway.So in one sense, even if these
policies are broadly unpopular, it almost doesn't matter, which
(51:43):
is depressing place to leave. But I think that is where we're
at. We will see what voting is like
in the coming years. That's what I would say like,
you know, because I, I, I personally think that they're
what, what makes me worried. We're dealing with a lot of
really corrupt people. And, you know, they're going to
make it as difficult for people to vote as possible if they're
very unpopular and things are very unhappy in this country.
(52:05):
And they can do that in a lot ofways that, you know, just subtle
ways in order to make it harder for people to vote and things
like that. Yeah, I mean, there were all
these concerns ahead of the lastelection about people like at
the state and local levels. You know, the nomenclature was
election deniers, right? You know, people going in and
(52:26):
being like, you know, trying to change the voting process in
ways that make it more difficultfor, you know, historically
disadvantaged people or people with disabilities and that sort
of thing. All of that is still rocking and
rolling at the state level. And it is not like a focal point
of, of a lot of news media coverage anymore.
(52:47):
But, you know, one thing I'm kind of holding my breath on,
it's just over the next like 2 to 4 years, you know, how much
damage are those people going todo?
You know, I mean, I, I, I think a lot of people have kind of
tuned it out, but I would, you know, maybe flag that for people
as, as something that is still boiling in the undercurrent.
I think Trump's opponents or theopponents of MAGA, whether it's
(53:09):
left liberal, whatever, have an opportunity, I think to to run a
campaign based on, you know, in some way on morals to some
degree. And just, you know, to point out
things like the alligator Alcatraz, if people if it is
truly unpopular, I mean, it is obviously a a living nightmare
that we are our tax dollars or paying for something like that.
(53:29):
Anna, before you go, I do have one more question for you.
You've covered conspiracy theories.
You wrote a book about it. What's your favorite conspiracy
theory? Well, OK, there's my favorite
and there's the one that I believe, and those are separate
things. Obviously I'm from New Mexico.
I believe in aliens. I think the government probably
knows more. That's so funny because I was
(53:50):
literally going to say why don'tthey release the Area 51 stuff?
That would be the best way to get.
OK, it's just funny. It was on my mind, the whole
thing and I was like, I didn't want to.
Interject I saw it. Open area 7 gates area 51 and
let everyone go. Check out the like prototype
skunks, skunk works, planes, youknow, like.
Yeah, or the, you know, chimerasthat they have in there anyway.
(54:11):
Actually, that might literally be true.
Let's talk about that another time.
So my favorite conspiracy theory, though, obviously, is
the notion that deceased comedian Bill Hicks is actually
Alex Jones, That Bill Hicks, like, fakes, faked his own death
and came back as Alex Jones. Partly I love it because they do
look exactly like. It's hilarious.
(54:32):
The second thing is that it makes Alex Jones so unhappy when
you bring it up. It genuinely displeases him and
makes him angry in a way that I think is noteworthy and sort of
funny. So yeah, that's, you know, that
that'll always be my answer. There's a lot of depressing
ones, but that one's just, it's just good fun.
Do you like The X-Files? Of course I like the X.
Files I I just felt that vibe from you.
(54:53):
OK. I even have my background
blurred so you can't see all theweird stuff I have in here but.
Yeah, but I just got this like, you know, this is our first time
meeting on on Zoom or whatever, but I just, I just was like, oh,
she watched The X-Files for sure.
I love The X-Files. Such a fucking good aliens.
From outer space. It's incredible.
It's also got so much stuff around, like narrative.
But anyway. Yeah, beautiful and also like
(55:15):
the romantic tension between thetwo leads is just it can carry
even the bad bad episodes right.It's just so when they OK,
actually I can't tell by for OK.So I used to go to this theater
called Worldwide which where they used to sell tickets for
like $2.00. And like you know when the in
the in The X-Files movie, I wentto go see The X-Files movie like
3 times and like I went to go see it.
(55:37):
When I one of the time I went tosee it, it was like some guy
just stands and goes, Yeah, Mulder.
Do it. When it looked like he's about
to get her just stood up and yelled at.
It was such a loud. Theater and people.
Were cheering when the guy yelled at it was so funny.
Anyway, I'm done. Truly it, you know, it is so
uplifting and honestly, I think that would be a great time to
rewatch The X-Files. Maybe that's everybody's
(55:58):
homework is go rewatch The X-Files, because God, it has so
much to say about where we're at.
Anna, thanks for coming out on the show today and talking about
Epstein stuff. Where can people check out your
work, give you a follow and? That sort of thing.
Yeah. OK.
Yeah, I'm a senior reporter at Mother Jones.
Probably should have said that earlier, but I forgot.
(56:20):
I'm also a contributor to Flaming Hydro, which is an
independent publication that's 60 writers and artists and
journalists where you all contribute once a month.
And I'm using Blue Sky now pretty much exclusively because
everyone on Twitter just constantly reminds me of what
religion I am, and I already know that, and so I don't really
need to hear it anymore. So if you're looking to see what
(56:42):
else I'm posting about, it wouldbe Blue Sky.
Also Twitter, well, now we know.Surprise.
What I was going to say is that we we recently learned that
Twitter is about 676% bots anyway, So it's not Twitter.
Anymore. But this is the wasteland, yeah?
It's it's a bummer, yeah. All right, everybody, that was
(57:05):
awesome. Really good time.
We're going to see you next week.
Tip chart is in the show description.
Take care. She's not at work, she's not at.
(57:40):
School she's not dead, I. Think I'm finally broke her and
nothing next to. Me thoughts, me there holding
(58:00):
daisies, and she always waits for me.
Oh, boy, there he is again. Jeffrey Epstein.
Annoying story, isn't it? In so many ways.
And kind of infuriating. All right, He he beat the system
kinda in death. Total monster.
I believe it. Yeah, monster.
He pled guilty to that horrible,sick stuff.
But that doesn't mean that GalenMaxwell is guilty.
(00:24):
And there was a hell of a lot ofevidence out there that she's
innocent and a hell of a lot of evidence that they railroaded
her part of a deep state media hysterical plot.
And I don't like it. Welcome back to posting through
(01:12):
it. I'm Jared.
And I'm Mike. We are back this week talking
about Epstein again. If you need context for what has
been happening with this Epsteinscandal and the Trump
administration, be sure you go to the episode that we did with
Will Summer a few weeks ago. That's episode 25.
(01:33):
That'll catch you up on kind of how we got here.
But despite their best efforts, you know, the best efforts of
the Trump administration, this story is just not going away.
It it continues to persist. And it it's just like kind of
crazy to me that it's been around this long.
(01:55):
It's the first time that the movement itself has really been
on its heels since COVID and Black Lives Matter.
Trump himself has been in jeopardy before with all his
legal issues and everything thathappened in between there.
But those were sort of like, that was like the system kind of
coming down on this one guy. And MAGA was like tight.
They were they're rallying around each other.
(02:16):
But this is really the the firsttime I've seen this in years.
Nearly five years in fact. Yeah.
I mean, I think that's a good observation because, yeah,
during the first Trump administration, the system was
coming down on him. And fuck, the system is a very
potent cultural political message.
But defend the system or please look away from the system.
(02:36):
I just don't think has the same ring to it.
They're in charge. I mean, they're absolutely in
charge. They're building a fucking
prison called Alligator Alcatraz, which, you know, one
of the more disgusting things like my tax dollars have almost
have basically ever gone to, andthey've gone to a lot of
horrible shit. Yeah, yeah.
And I think they're losing like public opinion too.
(02:56):
I don't think people are as dumbas this administration treats
them, you know? And I think people are kind of
starting to see through this. Even just looking at the bro
podcaster sphere, the like Theo Von's and Joe Rogan's and
whatever, they are not really down to just like toe the
(03:16):
partisan line here or like move on from this.
They seem to be pretty upset. And I think kind of an
underappreciated angle of this Epstein stuff and part of why
it's stuck around so long and why this administration has kind
of struggled to get the online influencer class to move on is
because this like, directly insulted their egos, right?
(03:40):
Like, these people built these careers or like, expanded their
existing profiles by kind of catering and becoming crowd
favorites of the MAGA movement. Part of that was going along
with this idea that there was going to be this transparency
and hope. They're cutting the government
funding. And who knows?
Trump's saying maybe people get,you know, a check in the mail
(04:02):
come tax season next year from all the money they saved.
You know, they kind of, like, went along with this a little
bit. And now they just look like
fucking idiots. Plus, pedophiles were the
ultimate villain, right? So.
Like if you go to the libs of TikTok, like her profile now, if
you look in the replies of her post, like every single goal
post, somebody is in the replies.
(04:23):
Like I, I don't know if it's quite like getting ratioed
level, but like in the replies, it's just photos of her like
holding the Epstein binder in front of the White House and
being like, damn, I bet you feelstupid.
And it's just that on everythinglike it.
Just happened to a nicer. Person back in her face and it's
it's kind of just pissed these people off, right?
(04:43):
They feel, I'm sure they feel betrayed or embarrassed by this.
They've been trying to distract themselves with these, you know,
with these like the Sydney Sweeney ad and other, other ads
that seem vaguely fishistic. They, they, they're really
excited about that. Like, they're really back.
Like, so one of them is this kind of like douchey guy sipping
a lemonade and he's like, I've got great jeans.
(05:05):
And it's for, for Dunkin' Donuts, which, you know, come
on, you have. Yeah, I know you've been out of
the loop, but that is what they're talking about these
days. Yeah, yeah, I've been a little
under the weather so that that'swhy I sound, you know, my voice
is a little smoky roasty today. But yeah, yeah, I mean, I just
(05:26):
on those ads generally, like I've seen some stuff about that
online. I just automatically and I
probably shouldn't, but I I justlike look down on people that
think they're like they're like the TV is talking to me.
The TV is look, look American equal genes or look Dunkin'
Donuts. They, they are talking to me and
(05:49):
it's like you, you fool, They'retrying to sell you shit.
This is an advertisement. What are you talking about?
My threshold for, for Dunkin' Donuts offending me is very
high. They have to get like really
high. They have to be like racist
about me specifically, I think because I I that's, that is my
go to for coffee. And it's like, we're like, you
know, one guy in a pool talking about his jeans is not going to
(06:10):
do it for me. Yeah.
We're bringing in Anna Merlin ina minute to to talk about some
of this Epstein stuff. But where we get there, I just
got to say, you know, I was looking at the sort of back end
and podcast metrics are weird and hard.
But by far, you know, even with those caveats, I think The Who
the Hell is Dave Portnoy episodewas like the most downloaded
(06:34):
episode of this show since we rebooted.
That's awesome. It was about that's great, you
know, Davey page views, but. More like Bobby downloads.
Right, because Bob. Silverman was part of it.
I did take Bob out to a Mets game.
Everybody with you know our tip Sharp.
Promises made, promises capped, you know, Yeah.
(06:54):
Exactly. And it was, it was, it was, it
was Friday night's game, which is fireworks night.
And I was like, Bob, I got tickets, you know, I got, you
know, pretty nice seats. And I was like, you know, it's
fireworks night and he's just, you know, OK.
And like, I'll meet you in the park and all this stuff.
So we get there and I noticed Bob is like, he eats like
(07:16):
Dave's, David's sunflower seeds,like of different flavors, like
during the game. And I was like, where are you?
Where are you spitting the seeds?
Because I couldn't, couldn't see.
I thought he had a cup or something.
He's like, oh, I just eat the whole thing.
It's lots of fiber. That's my first Bob Silverman
story. And then and then the second one
is that like, you know, Mets were down.
He's like, you know, it's over, you know, and I was like, no,
(07:38):
they're going to come back. I just like they're going to
come back. So the Mets actually did come
back. They're down 3 nothing.
They tie the game. This is like the most Metsy
thing of all time. And you know, we're there.
We like all of a sudden we fall behind by one run to the Giants
in extra innings and the Mets load the bases in at the end of
the game and it ends. And Silverman turns around.
(08:01):
He just like, he's like, I don'twant to watch the fireworks.
I'm just like. So sounds like you had a banner
Mets game experience from what Iknow about the Mets, which is
not a lot to be fair. Well we should plug the tip jar
for this week which is in the episode description.
(08:22):
Every dollar folks chip in. Helps keep this show going.
Helps us produce those big Who the Hell is episodes which take
a ton of work. And I would like to note for
some of the people who complained about us doing ads,
there are no ads on this. This is all tip jar.
Yeah, we, we did, you know 3 adswith magic mind and we have
(08:44):
completed the three ads. The quest is fulfilled, so we're
going to. All tip jar here.
Yeah, we're going to take a break from that for a little
bit. Ad free.
But that's down in the description.
I think that is about all the housekeeping we've got.
I'm like very excited for Anna. She's really huge admirer of her
(09:04):
work. Yeah, I've been reading Anna's
work for a long time. I think she's one of the
smartest people on the beat. So enjoy this conversation we
had with Anna Merlin. She's Outback counting stars.
(09:26):
She thinks she missed the train to Mars.
She's Outback counting stars. Joining the podcast now, we have
Anna Merlin. She's a senior reporter at
Mother Jones, where she covers disinformation, technology and
(09:47):
extremism. You might have read Anna's work
in other outlets too. She's done stents at Vice,
Gizmodo, she's had pieces in Rolling Stone and many, many
other places. She's also the author of the
2019 book Republic of Lies. American Conspiracy Theorists
and Their Surprising Rise to Power.
I'll put a link to that in the description.
Long time listeners will remember that Anna was on this
(10:09):
show in 2019 after that book launched when it was still
called Shit Post and I'm excitedto have her back.
Hey, Anna. Hi, this time I'm not sitting
outdoors at a Starbucks in the middle of the desert, so my
sound will be better. Sorry about that.
That's OK, I I had almost forgotabout that but.
I remember it vividly because it's the only time I've ever
(10:31):
done that on a podcast and I feel very bad.
So this is karmic. Karmic balancing is coming back.
This is a professional operationnow.
So we don't, we don't tolerate that.
I have a giant microphone I never returned.
Advice and everything. What's happening with Gilane
Maxwell? So what is happening with Gilane
Maxwell, as we're talking, is that she couple of weeks ago had
(10:51):
meetings with the Justice Department, including Todd
Blanche, who is like the number 2 official in the Justice
Department and is Donald Trump'sformer criminal counsel.
And after those meetings, the contents of which have not been
disclosed, she was recently moved from the prison facility
that she's been at in Tallahassee to a lower security
(11:12):
facility in Texas. She's now at a minimum security
facility that is kind of widely seen as one of the nicer places
to be locked up if you are a woman in the prison system.
So that's what's going on there.And also, we know that she and
her attorney are saying that they would like a pardon or for
her sentence to be overturned inreturn for her cooperating with
(11:34):
the Justice Department, speakingto officials about what she
knows about Jeffrey Epstein's crimes, which she is, of course,
known to have participated in some of those crimes with him.
So that's what's going on right now.
We don't know yet where any of those meetings are going to lead
or why she was moved in the Bureau of Prison system.
We have no idea. Incredibly insane.
(11:56):
That's. Crazy.
Yeah, didn't like for the for the new minimum security prison,
didn't they have to like bend, they had to bend the rules in
order to get her in right, Isn'tsomething like that.
I don't know. I mean, it's entirely possible
that there's been reporting about that.
Definitely, it's unusual. Yeah, I think these I read
something where that you're not allowed to have somebody who has
like a sex offender past and whatever was they've been the
(12:18):
rule. So that's obviously they're,
they're quite literally doing everything to help this person
who was, as far as I remember, at the center of their
conspiracy theories and whateverelse, just like a few months
ago. I'm just kind of amazed that
like this has got to be like the4th or 5th episode in a row
where we've referenced the Epstein scandal and we have to
(12:41):
because it remains like this kind of focal point in politics
right now, which is, is kind of almost amazing to see.
I feel like any news story just doesn't last anymore, right?
I mean, the Internet moves so fast and audiences move so fast.
I'm curious as somebody who's covered conspiracy land for as
(13:04):
long as you have, just sort of general thoughts on how things
are going. I, I mean, it's just, it's very
bizarre. It's almost like for me, it's
almost surreal to watch play out.
Yeah. I mean, even just, you know, I
think we've all worked in news for a long time, and it's just
so rare that any story ever lasts for more than two weeks.
(13:24):
And obviously, in some ways, that's a failure of how
journalism works that, you know,we tend to not be able to keep
things in the headlines after two weeks, no matter how
important they are. But yeah, this story
specifically is so unusual because the MAGA base is still
angry about the administration'shandling of the Epstein stuff,
(13:45):
and the mainstream news is also still talking about it.
Like it's still just dominating the headlines, despite the fact
that at this point, I think the Trump administration has
announced like 567 something like that.
Investigations that are meant todraw attention, you know, are
meant to move the news cycle on.And it, it hasn't, it's still
(14:07):
like every time one of these investigations is written about,
it's often explicitly referred to as, you know, the president
trying to move people's attention away from the Epstein
stuff. It's it's crazy.
I did not think that as the American public, we had this
attention span for anything anymore.
So maybe that's maybe that meanswe all haven't been totally like
zapped by our phones into not being able to focus on anything.
(14:28):
Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about some of the stuff that
the Trump administration has thrown out over the last couple
weeks because, like, Trump's response to this whole saga,
basically, I feel like started with like, shut up, shut up.
How are you still talking about this?
Aren't you bored? And then there was that Truth
Social post that like, you know,my guys and sometimes my gals or
(14:52):
whatever. It was basically just trying to
tell people to move on. And that has kind of been the
message that a lot of, you know,administration officials have
tried to put out of like, we looked into it, it's time to
move on. And now, you know, it's just
like every few days this, it's like they're dispensing catnip
into the base, whether it's likeinvestigating Obama or like the
(15:16):
what's the Beyoncé one. I'm less familiar with that, but
I know Beyoncé's involved in here somewhere.
I believe that there was a post by President Trump on Truth
Social that suggested that Kamala Harris was going to be
investigated for campaign finance fraud for having Beyoncé
perform and suggesting that she had been improperly paid for her
(15:36):
performance in a way that constituted campaign finance
fraud. And again, I would have to dig
down through his thousands of posts and reposts in the last
few days to find that. But that was that was my sense
of what was being suggested. You also have to look past the
he has such an interesting usageof quotation Marks, and if
you've noticed this, his capitalization has always been
(15:57):
weird, but now the quotation marks are also getting weird.
Yeah, he'll, he'll drop it completely out of the blue.
It's like a Gucci Mane ad Lib orsomething, you know?
So they just be like, it's always time for another
quotation mark in the middle of it.
Another quotation mark anyway, Yeah, I think that's what that
was as a suggestion that perhapsBeyoncé and Kamala Harris were
also, I think it was Kamala Harris was under investigation.
(16:18):
I don't think it was suggested that he was going to, you know,
go to Beyoncé's house. But you know, I guess we'll see.
I remember a more than once and I like, I think Beyoncé was at
the center of this more than once.
But celebrities when they have celebrities who kind of
associate themselves with the Democratic campaign, they
(16:38):
there's a big push either by, you know, deliberately or just
organically by their followers to say that this is paid for and
stuff like that. So it's he's, he's, I think
feeding an appetite that alreadyexists in his base.
So he's they're probably like, yeah, well, what about that, You
know, that huge scandal where Beyoncé was paid to like,
promote Kamala Harris? It seems like something that
(17:01):
like, I remember stuff like thatgoing back to even 2016.
Yeah. The issue, though, is that
Kamala Harris lost and nobody but the president, I think, was
thinking about Beyoncé. He's, you know, appearance at
one of her rallies anymore. And it's just like if you were,
you know, a cynic would suggest if you were looking for the
biggest possible story with the biggest possible name to draw
(17:22):
attention away from Jeffrey Epstein and you, you know, fired
the Beyoncé gun and the Beyoncé gun did nothing.
And it just dinged right off the, you know, Epstein ship or
whatever contorted metaphor we're using here.
Then, you know, what else could you possibly do?
And then, of course, after that,soon after that, this was it was
announced that they're also investigating President Obama
(17:43):
and perhaps going to charge him with treason.
So, you know, the the targets ofthese purported investigations
just keep getting bigger. Yeah, it and they don't seem to
be getting pick up like you noted in a lot of the big, you
know, kind of legacy publications.
This is getting framed as like, you know, they're trying to
distract from Epstein. But one place it's not getting
framed that way is right wing media.
(18:05):
And saw Media Matters had a study out a few days ago showing
that Fox News has pretty much pivoted.
Like there was, I forget what the exact stat was, but that
Sydney Sweeney, American Eagle denim advertisement or whatever,
they talked about it like X amount of times more than they
talked about Epstein developments.
(18:27):
You've got the Mike you were saying before we started
recording, like the Tim Pools ofthe world and stuff are like
they're moving on. And I, I'm curious, like, from
your observations, clearly the order is out.
And people like Alex Jones, you know, take it with a grain of
salt, have claimed that, you know, the Trump administration's
telling him to back off it and move on.
(18:49):
And like, from other statements of people, you get the
impression that they're like, you know, suggesting to some of
these people that they're going to lose some of their access if
they don't like, let this go. So right wing media is kind of
moving on, but it it doesn't seem like the base is.
I, I mean, I'm curious your takeon like, if this is actually
(19:09):
working, you know, if they can get like the Fox News prime time
to focus on, you know, whatever Tulsi Gabbard puts out or
potentially arresting Obama or whatever.
It, I mean, does that work? To me, it's just like, conveys
contempt for the audience, you know?
But I don't know. Well, so I think there's also a
larger issue here, which is thatto convey why President Obama is
(19:33):
supposedly going to be charged with treasonous conspiracy or
whatever term they're using now,any day now there, it requires
so much explanation, right? It requires so much back story.
It requires people to care aboutthe Russia gate scandal of 2016.
And the Epstein stuff is of broad interest to a lot of the
American public, not just the mega base.
(19:55):
You know, I'm sure all of us have left-leaning friends who
also care about it a great deal for different reasons.
And it is much easier to explainin a nutshell, so I don't
particularly think it is. Working to move public attention
away from the Epstein stuff. There is also, as I've written
about in a couple pieces, the fact that this administration
(20:17):
worked really hard to position themselves as like the
administration of disclosure, you know, strongly implied that
all of these bombshells were going to be revealed, including
stuff about Epstein. And they they haven't, they
haven't done it here. I mean, they haven't done it in
a bunch of cases. But, you know, a lot of them
are, you know, like supposed newinvestigations into stuff like
who dropped a bag of cocaine in the White House in 2023, which
(20:39):
people don't care about as much.But no, people care a lot about
the Epstein stuff. They were promised sort of
concrete answers. And those things have not
materialized. And that is harder for people to
let go of. I don't know if you saw, but Joe
Rogan a few days ago said that he felt like Donald Trump is
gaslighting his supporters. That was Joe Rogan's term
gaslighting. Someone's taught him that term
recently, I guess, which is fascinating again to see, you
(21:03):
know, Joe Rogan living away fromhis pretty full throated support
that he was expressing for a while there.
Well, I mean, isn't some of it related to the fact that there
may have been stuff in the past with other presidents that was
not, you know, disclosed at the time, like, you know, sex
scandals, whatever. But this is the first time where
(21:26):
this such a high profile association with a pedophile.
I mean, I, I can't recall a story like this ever.
So I mean, it's not surprising at all to me that people are
kind of, you know, they can't let it go, even people who
support him. Yeah.
I mean, what is weird is that ittook so long for this to be a
(21:48):
thing, right? Obviously, Jeffrey Epstein's
first conviction was in 2008. He, you know, was a known
associate of Donald Trump's for a long time before then.
So the fact that this has not really come up as a, like,
sticking issue until now is kindof extraordinary.
But, yeah, now, you know, obviously all the photos of them
(22:10):
are recirculating all of Donald Trump's comments about Jeffrey
Epstein, like the one in 2002 calling him, you know, what was
it a great guy who likes, who enjoys the company of younger
women, Just something where you're like, oh, my God.
So, yeah, I don't know. It's a it's a bit of a mystery
of the American imagination thatit took this long for people to
really want to talk about this. I've seen a lot of people not on
(22:32):
this podcast, but you know, there's like a strain of liberal
commentary that likes to comparethe Trump base to Colts.
And you've written about Colts, you've covered Colts.
I'm curious what you think aboutthose comparisons.
I think like anybody who covers extremism for a long time, you
(22:52):
get really allergic to using a word like cult automatically
because it's kind of a, what do they call it, a thought
terminating cliche of sorts. Like if you want to describe
Trump ISM as a cult, I would askwhat you like, what someone
means by that, rather than agreeing or disagreeing with
that statement. I don't personally think that
that's true. I think it tends to be an
(23:13):
oversimplification. But if you want to say, for
instance, you know that Donald Trump has a tremendously loyal
base who don't seem to be dissuaded by hardly anything,
Like you can say that, you know,if you want to say that he's a
charismatic leader, you can say that.
But I don't know. I think I don't know.
I guess I'm sort of unreasonablyirritated by describing it as a
(23:33):
cult because I think it doesn't lend itself to any kind of
further conversation about what we what we mean when we say
that. Also because we have so many
better examples of actual cult leaders in this country who have
done some really crazy stuff to it, like discrete number of
people. But yeah, I mean, I think when
people use that comparison, right, when they say that
(23:54):
Trumpism is a cult, what they mean is what is it going to take
for the base to get mad at this guy or not believe in him or see
when he's breaking his? Process which is where I'm
going, which is where I'm going with this right?
Because this it kind of sticks out to us, not only just for the
the staying power, but also because it seems to be driving a
genuine wedge in a way that likethe failed promises of Q Anon
(24:19):
never seem to do or the, you know, countless scandals before
never seem to do. And I, you know, where I was
going with this is I'm curious, you know, your thoughts on why
that might be, you know, if you have any theories.
So I think one of the big thingsabout Q Anon specifically was it
(24:42):
wasn't Donald Trump making thoseclaims, right?
He might have like stoked or winked at or kind of nudged and
elbowed people a little bit to kind of lead on the Q Anon base.
But he was not the one saying, you know, I am fighting a heroic
battle against a underground cabal of sex traffickers and
soon their crimes will be revealed, right?
So I mean, when he left office without any of the Q Anon
(25:03):
predictions coming true, HillaryClinton was not taken to jail.
You know, the the secret basement underneath Comet Pizza
was not revealed or whatever. There was a pretty significant
kind of peel off of people who believed in Q Anon as a specific
discreet conspiracy theory. Broader kind of ideas about Q
Anon, like trickled into, you know, broader conspiracism, like
these ideas that there is a underground group of elites
(25:25):
richly abusing children. But, you know, in this specific
case, both Trump and people around him, his family, his
proxies in the media specifically said when he comes
back into office, he is going todisclose everything about
Jeffrey Epstein who killed JFK. You know, all of these other
things that every other administration has kept from you
(25:47):
will be revealed. You know, these are these were
explicit promises that were being made.
You know, and they love to talk about themselves as the the the
administration of maximum transparency.
So it is really striking here especially to see a different
approach being taken with the Epstein stuff.
In the years of the previous administration and after that,
(26:07):
it was not, you know, it was common for us to find online
photographs of Trump and Epstein.
Those those photographs that arenow familiar, but also a lot
more pictures of Trump and Ghilane.
And those are always around. They were always around.
You know, you could always find people sharing them with Trump
supporters before and nobody seemed to latch onto it.
(26:31):
And that's why I, I guess, you know, it's it, it doesn't, it
doesn't shock me much. I do know that if, if Joe Biden
or I guess Kamala was not reallythe type of person you would you
could possibly imagine with, with Jeffrey Epstein there.
But but if anybody, I mean, if she had posed for one picture
with Colleen or something, right, that would have been
everywhere and it would have, they would have used it to
(26:51):
probably destroy her campaign. Why is it that now all of a
sudden, I think, you know, people are starting to to think
about it. And then then the I guess the
second question about that wouldbe, you know, is, is it true
that that Trump's base is actually starting to bend a
little bit? Because I also see in the
polling, it's independence that have gone down the most.
(27:12):
Democrats continue to fall and Republicans still kind of hover
around the same line. So I'm just kind of wondering,
is it the independence do you think?
I mean I'm just curious why? Why the sudden change in like
where the change is coming from?Right, people who have sort of
like softer support for Trump inthe 1st place, who maybe voted
for him just because they thought he was going to make the
economy better rather than believing deeply and the rest of
(27:36):
his promises might be the first to peel off.
I mean, the stuff about the factthat there's so many pictures of
Trump with both Epstein and Gilad Maxwell and that it didn't
really catch on as an issue before, it's an interesting one.
In some ways it's because Trump's supporters and Trump
himself have always said, you know, this is a very wealthy
(27:57):
man, this is very power, this isa very powerful man.
And he's been photographed with all kinds of people.
That was always kind of the thatwas always kind of the
explanation there. And also there has been, as you
guys probably know, among a certain strain of Q Anon
believers, this idea that DonaldTrump is uniquely positioned to
take these people down because he's so wealthy and powerful
that he knows them and he knows all their secrets and he's he's
(28:20):
about to like air their dirty laundry.
So I think there's a little bit of a, you know, hubbub building
as it becomes clear that maybe that's not what's going to
happen. I think the real kind of test of
specifically MAGA support for Trump is going to come if he
does pardon Gillian Maxwell, as has been, you know, widely
speculated is going to happen. I think seeing what's going to
(28:41):
happen there is going to be really, really interesting.
You know, I could see them saying, well, he's pardoning her
because she's about to reveal everything she knows.
Or I could see there being a bigoutcry from the base and I guess
we'll just kind of have to see. I'm very, very curious if he's
going to decide that that's in his interest to do.
I predict that they will that they will roll with whatever.
(29:02):
And that's because just my experience, you know, my cynical
experience from seeing this for a decade now.
And it's kind of, you know, I hate, you know, I hate to be
cynical about it. I'd like to hope that they'd
actually care, but I think they're willing to to swallow
almost anything with Trump. And I think it would, I, I
really think it, you know, it would take a profound economic
(29:22):
collapse to even make a dent with them.
That's just, that's my gut. But I, you know, I hope, I hope
I'm wrong. Anna, you wrote a story in
Mother Jones. It's called How does the Epstein
Scandal End? Which is a good question because
they've really been trying to end it.
They would love for it to end, I'm sure.
And it seems like they're, you know, throwing out all kinds of
(29:46):
like, true spaghetti at the wall, you know, to abuse a
cliche there. But like, I want to kind of walk
through your piece first. I want to know, like, you know,
what inspired you to write this piece or like, start thinking
about this question of like, howdoes this end?
Where does this end? Well, some of it is just as you
guys noted, the crazy sticking power this is like had in the
(30:09):
headlines and just thinking to myself, OK, what is it going to
take for right wing media to move on, which they are
currently doing as we speak. What is it going to take for the
base to move on? And was it going to take for
kind of mainstream media to moveon?
Because as we were remarking, most news stories just do not
last this long anymore. So I mean, I think that was the
that was the primary question and that this piece of sort of
(30:33):
my groping attempt to figure outwhich of these things is going
to come first. And in a way, the last scenario
I promised is the one that's happening now, which is right
wing media and the Trump administration just do a brute
force moving on, not talking about this anymore, ignoring the
people in their replies on Twitter asking them to talk
about it, which I'm seeing a lotof people doing.
(30:53):
Just deciding as a unit that it is time to stop discussing it
and stop giving it error and seeing if that works.
And that is kind of what we're seeing.
Yeah, I want to walk through some of the the other things you
laid out here. The first one going back to
Ghilane Maxwell, the situation with her, bringing her in.
I, I guess the idea would be that she would come out and name
(31:17):
names or at least like if you watch right wing media, that
seems to be the idea they have right?
That like Trump and Max as well are going to like team up
somehow and that's how they're going to get, you know, that's
how it's going to happen becausethe names will be named, but
they don't have to, you know, release the source material,
which they say contains, you know, child pornography and
(31:41):
immaterial that would cause additional harms to victims,
which I'm sure it has plenty of that in there to be fair, you
know. But like, tell me more about
like sort of where that's going,where right wing media seems to
think that's going or like, you know, what, what would be kind
of the idea here in terms of like, how do you get Ghilane in
(32:03):
the process? And then how does that go from
there to everyone's moved on from the Epstein scandal?
Right. So there is a lot of stuff that
has not been released ever. You know, obviously grand jury
files, which judge just denied the release of those because
they are secret and they're going to remain secret.
You know, discovery in these cases against Epstein and
(32:24):
Maxwell, discovery and other files in this case that was
filed against the Epstein estatein the US Virgin Islands.
Like there is all this stuff that could come out.
But the idea is that I think theidea in right wing media is that
Gillian Maxwell sits down and she specifically accuses
powerful Democrats of engaging in sex crimes against women and
girls with Epstein. Like, I think that's the idea of
(32:45):
what's going to happen. And that does point at a
secondary and like, very real, frankly, scandal, which is there
are a bunch of powerful people on both sides of the aisle who
associated with Epstein, took rides on his plane.
You know, we're generally content to be seen hanging
around with him after he had already been convicted of a
sexual offence against a child in 2008.
(33:06):
You know, between 2008 and 2019,plenty of people were happy to
attend parties, scientific summits, you know, ask for money
from him for their academic institutions.
Seemingly unbothered by the factthat by all accounts, this was
somebody who had engaged in a pretty systematic practice of
having teenagers come to his house for massages and sexually
(33:28):
abusing them. You know, like the.
The details were widely known. But yeah, so the idea is I
suppose that Maxwell comes out, she names these names, these
public figures that she's namingare forced to defend themselves
in some way, you know, legally in the public eye.
And somehow that satisfies the mega bases, cries for disclosure
(33:49):
and further transparency. And then people move on.
It's sort of hard to see, right?Like how?
How could that be it? Sounds like they're gonna
they're gonna go around like they're gonna just work around
the elephant in the room, which which is that this all started
because everybody started to speculate about Trump, right.
So they you know, we're we're we're all of a sudden we're
gonna do all this stuff. We're gonna do everything but
(34:11):
Trump right. I mean that to me.
I think, I think some of the more conspiratorial anti-Semitic
MAGA people who are very sort ofa loud undercurrent in the base,
I would say like that is kind of, you know, just not the main
part of it, but they're there. Those type of people will, you
(34:31):
know, call bullshit on it, I think.
But I could imagine like the more mainstream pundits trying
to trying to help Trump over thefinish line with that.
Right. I think what you're gesturing at
is that a bunch of people have sort of claimed about evidence
that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent or had some other
ties to Israel, and that's why the full depth of his crime is
not being revealed. And there is, of course, no
actual hard evidence of that that we have other than the fact
(34:53):
that he was Jewish. So that's, yeah, not great.
But, yeah, I mean, also, if she comes out and names, names and
then those people are not criminally charged, I doubt that
will satisfy anyone either. You know, I mean, a lot of what
I talked about in this piece is the way that they have created
sort of an unsolvable problem for themselves.
Yeah, because it would seem thatlike if she came out and named
(35:14):
names that would just extend this situation for like years,
right. I read a theory and I also
something that's interesting on that I've seen.
You know, we opened the show today with a clip of from
Newsmax where one of their hostsis, you know, being, you know,
basically trying to argue that Ghilane like maybe didn't do
(35:38):
that much wrong. But that's also not true.
You know it's. Oh no, it's 100% not true
according to the government. According to the pre sentencing
memoranda that the government put out in 2022, she is directly
accused of engaging in sexual abuse herself.
And accusers have said that she was there and physically
involved in in in some of these incidents.
(36:00):
That she groped them in order tonormalize these, you know, hyper
sexualized environment. That Epstein and her had created
in their homes, that she was an instrumental part of trying to
convince these girls that what was happening was OK or
acceptable or normal or something that adults and
children did together. I mean, it's really disturbing.
(36:20):
Like, I don't know if I would recommend reading it
necessarily, but certainly it is.
It is there and it is laid out in black and white what the
government alleges she did and what she was convicted for and
sentenced to prison for. Yeah, I think that's going to be
another obstacle to them because, you know, whatever they
have to give Ghilane Maxwell in exchange to participate in this,
(36:41):
whether it is a pardon or reduced sentence or what.
I'm not an expert on how that stuff works, Right.
Part of that will have to involve, like, trying to launder
her reputation. Yeah, You know, it will.
I think that would turn a lot ofpeople off.
I don't think the American public is like nearly as stupid
as as people like to think sometimes.
(37:01):
It's interesting because I've only ever heard one person prior
to this ever making that claim. That's this woman, Jessica Reed
Krauss House in habit. It's like a yeah, she made sort
of a bit of a cottage industry for a while, covering Elaine
Maxwell and claiming that she had been made a scapegoat for
other other people's crimes. But that was like a very unusual
claim to make, and now it's popping up on Newsmax.
(37:23):
Yeah, yeah, that person, just for listener contacts, is one of
the people that had the Epstein binders in their hands at the
White House, so. Indeed, she did fun.
I'll say she'll fall right into the story then, you know, if
she's, if she was already doing that before and then she was
doing the Epstein binder, she'llbe perfect for them.
(37:43):
She's written quite a bit about this, yeah.
So another thing you identify inthe story is that they could
just declare it's over and call it a hoax, which we've seen some
of that already, right? Yeah, I mean, the Slate had a
great piece about a round of stories declaring that Trump had
moved his base on from this issue.
And every single one of those stories, it was like Politico,
(38:06):
New York Times, I forget which other outlets, but they all
quoted the same person, which was Steve Bannon.
Notoriously reliable source. I don't know if I worked at a
big publication. I I mean, part of this is like
how the sausage is made in journalism, right?
It's like if the person who picks up the phone gets quoted,
you would think a big newsroom would have a little bit more
(38:26):
like discernment. You would like to think maybe,
but I just Bannon as a source, like all his like bullshit and
antics aside, I also just every time I hear his name, I vividly
remember that he was charged andI think pleaded guilty to like
some, you know, had some kind ofplea deal to scamming the MAGA
(38:48):
base like like having some. Having some kind of.
Fraud. So it's like, OK, you're going
to quote this guy as like an authority on a base that he
like, actively scammed. All right, guys.
Yeah, he he pleaded guilty to defrauding donors in this
fundraiser fundraiser to build aborder wall and avoided jail
time. Trump also has, I've I saw, I
(39:11):
think it's like a true social post where he tried to compare
this Epstein stuff to, you know,what they like to call Russia
gate or whatever. Has that stuck at all as far as
you can tell. So it is sticking in the sense
that like right wing and conspiratorial media is covering
the Russia gate stuff and all the pundits who are very angry
(39:33):
about Epstein 2 weeks ago are talking about it now.
Like, you know, the front page of Infowars is a bunch of Russia
gate stuff. People who were involved in the
Epstein binder stunt in Februaryare talking about it.
But like is it catching on with the base?
Like I would love to see pullingon it because it can be really
hard to tell. To me.
It doesn't seem like it is. To me.
It seems like people are not super captivated by this unless
(39:54):
you're in the very deep end of the pool.
But I guess, I guess we'll see if it works to kind of displace
this in the minds of their of the base.
I'm curious what what you think about this as a as a thing.
It seems to me in in just looking at the way the base kind
of response to things that thereare these narratives, these
stories with like heroes and villains that kind of, you know,
(40:16):
come and go throughout. And, and, and one of the thing
about the Russia disinfo thing is it feels like when somebody
hasn't released a single for a while and then they release one
of their old singles as a remix or something.
It, you know, it's kind of like they may like the song and
they're happy that it's there, but it's really not.
It may not, it can't deeply satisfy them because there
(40:36):
hasn't been like new villains that kind of on the on the rise.
And it seems like all the villains that they're pulling
out like everyone from like JackSmith to Obama and all these
things. These are kind of they're not
new stories. Like if you like, I was thinking
about something that had a lot of power, for instance, when
Anthony Fauci kind of emerged aslike a like a super villain in
the in the mega universe. And it's just like how much
(40:59):
power like that had just the, you know, when people would say
Fauci, you could just feel theirtheir anger underneath.
And it seems like they're just pulling out like remixes of like
these old stories without havingsomething that they can really
thump on. And and that's just, I don't
know bottom text. That's mine.
It's a band who had a hit album and then like 1010 years went by
(41:21):
and they finally got ownership of their masters.
So you get the like. I mean, if you, if you, if you
look at it like, I mean, it's just like these characters come
up, everyone from Podesta, Fauci, these things.
And, and I feel like Trump doesn't have one right now.
It's, it's, it's one of the curses of having so much control
over over all the houses of government and like all that,
(41:42):
you know, they had, they're in charge very much.
And so and like, what do you who, who's it going to be?
Cory Booker? It's going to it's, it's really
difficult for them to find the villain that they need to change
the subject from this. Anyway, just my thought.
Yeah, I mean, I've said this elsewhere, but, you know, the
Trump administration has engagedin a really accelerated campaign
(42:04):
in so many other areas of government, right?
You know, when it comes to immigration, when it comes to
dismantling broad sectors of thefederal government, when it
comes to, you know, really reshaping our public health
system, as is happening right now under Robert F Kennedy
Junior. And so when the Trump
administration comes out and says, like, oh, we really can't
do any more on the Epstein stuff, I don't think people
believe them. Like, I think this this
(42:26):
administration has been a reallygood demonstration so far of how
much power the president and theRepublican Party have when they,
as you say, control every singlebranch of government.
So yeah, people, this is a bit of the curse, right, of having
that much power is that people really do not believe you when
you declare a limit on that power.
And that kind of gets to the thethird sort of realm of
(42:47):
possibility you explore in the story, which is finding someone
in the administration to blame it on, right.
You know, if there's right, if they control the government,
I've I think the deep state thing becomes less compelling.
I don't know if that sticks as as much as it might have during
the first Trump administration. They're.
Still claiming, yeah, yeah, no, they're still claiming that
there's a lot of deep state in there that they still have to
(43:08):
root out. That is absolutely going to be a
very durable claim for years to come until there's no federal
government left. So the idea on like this track
would be that basically like somebody becomes the fall guy.
Yes, the scapegoat. And in the piece, I suggested
that would probably be Attorney General Pam Bondi because she's
kind of first, first of all, like, the least in Trump's
(43:28):
circle, frankly, you know, and secondly, she is the one that
most of the anger has focused atso far.
You know, she was behind this kind of stunt in February,
handing out these binders full of previously released Epstein
information that was touted as new.
She was the person who claimed that she had the Epstein list
of, you know, clients on her desk waiting for review.
(43:49):
And then she never did because of such a list probably doesn't
exist. So yeah, it does seem like one
of the possibilities here is that she is scapegoated and made
into the person who bungled the investigation.
She's pushed out. A new person is installed in her
place, and they claim to be, youknow, starting over.
And that at least buys some time, right, If people go with
(44:10):
it? Another lane that you identified
as they could dump more documents, you know, then they
could just say OK, OK, OK, here's Part 2 of the Epstein
files. Right.
What would that look like? Even you wrote that this feels
maybe like a less plausible route that they're they would be
willing to take. Now it's I don't, I don't know.
(44:32):
If that did happen, what do you think that might look like?
Well, first of all, we know now in May, because of some
reporting by the New York Times and other outlets, that and
Bondy told Donald Trump in May that his name is mentioned in
the Epstein files. He has been accused of sexual
misconduct by other women many times, but we don't know what
form he appears in the Epstein files.
(44:53):
So releasing those files could mean that Donald Trump's name is
used in ways that he would not find favorable.
Also, as I note, when they released a big batch of JFK
files, they didn't redact them adequately and they contain the
Social Security numbers of living people, which was really
bad for those people. They face threats and identity
theft concerns. When they released a bunch of
(45:16):
files relating to Doctor Martin Luther King Junior, his family
objected and said that they thought that it was meant to be
a distraction from the Epstein files.
Sometimes these document dumps don't work to drive attention as
much as they would hope. And then of course, the the
bigger actual concern, if these files contain C Sam, if they
contain the names of victims whohave not previously stepped
(45:36):
forward, they could like re victimize these women and girls.
And they could put people into the public eye who didn't choose
to be there whose only involvement with the story is
that they are the victims of a serious crime.
So that would that would be really bad.
That would be a terrible thing. And I think we could all agree
that that would be kind of the worst case outcome.
And then we talked about the the5th lane you identified, which
(45:57):
is it? And we've been talking about
this earlier, but basically trying to find a new scandal
dispensing, you know, treats little, little morsels of, you
know, to fantasize with about Obama getting cuffed and, you
know, perp walked across the East lawn or the South Lawn.
(46:17):
But just kind of zooming out, like as we're getting closer to
the end here, is any of this going to work?
I mean, I'm just, it's so puzzling.
I, I feel like this scandal is, is like so unique and it seems
to be like getting down to the core of this administration in a
way that a lot of stuff just doesn't.
But also like, does anything matter?
(46:38):
I don't know, I don't know. I mean what's what is your take?
I mean, my take is no, but I want to hear her.
Three things matter OK, so it will work in the sense that
eventually people will move on. No, no news story lasts forever.
It just can't especially not in this environment.
So yes, some one of these thingswill stick in a certain sense
and people will move on and it will not dominate the headlines
(46:58):
anymore right. Like, I think we can all safely
agree on that. However, I wrote a piece a few
weeks ago about how the Trump administration's missteps here
have also guaranteed that Epstein's stuff is going to be a
permanent part of kind of the fabric of conspiracism in the
same way that skepticism about the JFK assassination is or the
suicide of Clinton aide Vince Foster.
Like, there are things that juststick to the big ball of
(47:21):
conspiracy theories that we havein this country and just don't
go away. And this is going to be one of
them. There will always be some number
of people who believe that the Trump administration covered up
what they know about the Epsteinfiles and that they did that to
benefit the president or people close to him.
Like that's they can't make thatgo away.
There's nothing that is going todislodge that in some people's
(47:42):
minds. But yeah, will it will it
matter? Like no, of course not in the
sense that does anything, does anything matter in the long
term? Probably not.
No. Like will it will it cause
Donald Trump to leave office? Will it cause some like
overwhelming sort of turn away from MAGA ideas?
(48:03):
No, probably not, because the things that brought people to
MAGA in the 1st place are way more complicated than that.
So as with everything, it both matters a lot and doesn't matter
at all. Well, I wanted to to just ask
before we fade out. So we're in agreement that
probably probably not. They won't leave whatever.
But I guess like I said, we see independence, you know,
(48:27):
depressed on mag other, whereas they were much more excited in
the run up to the election and now they're starting to kind of
pull away. So Trump is his approval numbers
are not fantastic, you know, compared to where they were when
he first took office. I think people are kind of
getting a little bit sour with him broadly.
Maybe not his, not his base, butin general, I'm just curious
(48:50):
what you think about how they have managed image at least now
that we're kind of past the honeymoon days of his
administration and sort of the that that transition out of the
doge days into wherever we are now to the dog days.
You know, I mean, you got like it seems like every single
person of prominence in his administration has dealt with a
(49:14):
tremendous amount of criticism, probably not even enough
criticism considering how insanesome of these people are.
But I mean, I was thinking aboutRFK Junior and and and so forth.
What do you, what do you think the impression, not the base,
but the obvious and, and not obviously not, you know, people
who are, who are watching MSNBC and whatever.
(49:36):
I'm talking about the, the kind of person who is a little bit
more passive about politics. What do you, what do you think
about how they have managed image?
Because I think it's a train wreck.
And that's just my stomach, you know, but maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe people like this stuff. I I just can't tell.
I think that in the US, as in a bunch of places in this last
(49:56):
election, incumbents were swept out of office and people who
were seen as the upstart candidates were brought in.
And we saw that all over the world and we're still seeing it
where there is a rising in a bunch of places, sort of
populist, often far right set ofmovements that claim to be
making people's material conditions better, improving the
(50:17):
economy, getting them paid more often, while also advancing
xenophobic kind of anti immigrant agendas.
That has happened in so many places in France, in Japan, in
Germany, you know, there are allthese places that are dealing
with this. And so the question for the
Trump administration, when it comes to like, I don't know, the
ordinary person who's not payingthat much attention to politics
(50:38):
is like 6 months into the administration, are they going
to feel like their lives are better because of Trump and
Trumpism and mega? And to me, again, you know,
admittedly as somebody who's notin that category, it doesn't
look like it. The economy is not doing well.
You know, terrorizing and deporting my neighbors here in
Los Angeles and kidnapping them from bus stops is not really
(50:59):
doing anything for the ordinary person.
It's not creating jobs. It's not really doing anything
but creating a, a spectacle of cruelty and violence.
So, you know, I, I think that atsome point people do notice that
their lives are not being made better because of these
policies. So I guess we'll see if people
feel that way when I guess the next elections roll around
(51:21):
because ultimately it doesn't really matter until then again,
the Trump administration is pursuing policies even when they
are broadly unpopular, like so-called Alligator Alcatraz,
the concentration camp that was built in Florida.
Most people don't like it. You know, most polling on that
is like people think it's cruel and gross and weird and then
they're they're doing it anyway.So in one sense, even if these
policies are broadly unpopular, it almost doesn't matter, which
(51:43):
is depressing place to leave. But I think that is where we're
at. We will see what voting is like
in the coming years. That's what I would say like,
you know, because I, I, I personally think that they're
what, what makes me worried. We're dealing with a lot of
really corrupt people. And, you know, they're going to
make it as difficult for people to vote as possible if they're
very unpopular and things are very unhappy in this country.
(52:05):
And they can do that in a lot ofways that, you know, just subtle
ways in order to make it harder for people to vote and things
like that. Yeah, I mean, there were all
these concerns ahead of the lastelection about people like at
the state and local levels. You know, the nomenclature was
election deniers, right? You know, people going in and
(52:26):
being like, you know, trying to change the voting process in
ways that make it more difficultfor, you know, historically
disadvantaged people or people with disabilities and that sort
of thing. All of that is still rocking and
rolling at the state level. And it is not like a focal point
of, of a lot of news media coverage anymore.
(52:47):
But, you know, one thing I'm kind of holding my breath on,
it's just over the next like 2 to 4 years, you know, how much
damage are those people going todo?
You know, I mean, I, I, I think a lot of people have kind of
tuned it out, but I would, you know, maybe flag that for people
as, as something that is still boiling in the undercurrent.
I think Trump's opponents or theopponents of MAGA, whether it's
(53:09):
left liberal, whatever, have an opportunity, I think to to run a
campaign based on, you know, in some way on morals to some
degree. And just, you know, to point out
things like the alligator Alcatraz, if people if it is
truly unpopular, I mean, it is obviously a a living nightmare
that we are our tax dollars or paying for something like that.
(53:29):
Anna, before you go, I do have one more question for you.
You've covered conspiracy theories.
You wrote a book about it. What's your favorite conspiracy
theory? Well, OK, there's my favorite
and there's the one that I believe, and those are separate
things. Obviously I'm from New Mexico.
I believe in aliens. I think the government probably
knows more. That's so funny because I was
(53:50):
literally going to say why don'tthey release the Area 51 stuff?
That would be the best way to get.
OK, it's just funny. It was on my mind, the whole
thing and I was like, I didn't want to.
Interject I saw it. Open area 7 gates area 51 and
let everyone go. Check out the like prototype
skunks, skunk works, planes, youknow, like.
Yeah, or the, you know, chimerasthat they have in there anyway.
(54:11):
Actually, that might literally be true.
Let's talk about that another time.
So my favorite conspiracy theory, though, obviously, is
the notion that deceased comedian Bill Hicks is actually
Alex Jones, That Bill Hicks, like, fakes, faked his own death
and came back as Alex Jones. Partly I love it because they do
look exactly like. It's hilarious.
(54:32):
The second thing is that it makes Alex Jones so unhappy when
you bring it up. It genuinely displeases him and
makes him angry in a way that I think is noteworthy and sort of
funny. So yeah, that's, you know, that
that'll always be my answer. There's a lot of depressing
ones, but that one's just, it's just good fun.
Do you like The X-Files? Of course I like the X.
Files I I just felt that vibe from you.
(54:53):
OK. I even have my background
blurred so you can't see all theweird stuff I have in here but.
Yeah, but I just got this like, you know, this is our first time
meeting on on Zoom or whatever, but I just, I just was like, oh,
she watched The X-Files for sure.
I love The X-Files. Such a fucking good aliens.
From outer space. It's incredible.
It's also got so much stuff around, like narrative.
But anyway. Yeah, beautiful and also like
(55:15):
the romantic tension between thetwo leads is just it can carry
even the bad bad episodes right.It's just so when they OK,
actually I can't tell by for OK.So I used to go to this theater
called Worldwide which where they used to sell tickets for
like $2.00. And like you know when the in
the in The X-Files movie, I wentto go see The X-Files movie like
3 times and like I went to go see it.
(55:37):
When I one of the time I went tosee it, it was like some guy
just stands and goes, Yeah, Mulder.
Do it. When it looked like he's about
to get her just stood up and yelled at.
It was such a loud. Theater and people.
Were cheering when the guy yelled at it was so funny.
Anyway, I'm done. Truly it, you know, it is so
uplifting and honestly, I think that would be a great time to
rewatch The X-Files. Maybe that's everybody's
(55:58):
homework is go rewatch The X-Files, because God, it has so
much to say about where we're at.
Anna, thanks for coming out on the show today and talking about
Epstein stuff. Where can people check out your
work, give you a follow and? That sort of thing.
Yeah. OK.
Yeah, I'm a senior reporter at Mother Jones.
Probably should have said that earlier, but I forgot.
(56:20):
I'm also a contributor to Flaming Hydro, which is an
independent publication that's 60 writers and artists and
journalists where you all contribute once a month.
And I'm using Blue Sky now pretty much exclusively because
everyone on Twitter just constantly reminds me of what
religion I am, and I already know that, and so I don't really
need to hear it anymore. So if you're looking to see what
(56:42):
else I'm posting about, it wouldbe Blue Sky.
Also Twitter, well, now we know.Surprise.
What I was going to say is that we we recently learned that
Twitter is about 676% bots anyway, So it's not Twitter.
Anymore. But this is the wasteland, yeah?
It's it's a bummer, yeah. All right, everybody, that was
(57:05):
awesome. Really good time.
We're going to see you next week.
Tip chart is in the show description.
Take care. She's not at work, she's not at.
(57:40):
School she's not dead, I. Think I'm finally broke her and
nothing next to. Me thoughts, me there holding
(58:00):
daisies, and she always waits for me.
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