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 Galen Maxwell is guilty.

And there was a hell of a lot of evidence 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 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 Epstein scandal 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.

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.

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 that happened 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.

But this is really the the first time 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.

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, and they've gone to a lot of horrible shit.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think they're losing like public opinion too.

I don't think people are as dumb as 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 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?

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 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.

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 feel stupid.

And it's just that on everything like it.

Just happened to a nicer.

Person back in her face and it's it's kind of just pissed these people off, right?

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.

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's why I sound, you know, my voice is a little smoky roasty today.

But yeah, yeah, I mean, I just on those ads generally, like I've seen some stuff about that online.

I just automatically and I probably shouldn't, but I I just like 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 it's like you, you fool, They're trying 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 do it for me.

Yeah.

We're bringing in Anna Merlin in a 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 episode was like the most downloaded 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.

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 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, 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.

He just like, he's like, I don't want to watch the fireworks.

I'm just like.

So sounds like you had a banner Mets game experience from what I know 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.

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 ads with magic mind and we have 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 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.

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 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 show in 2019 after that book launched when it was still called Shit Post and I'm excited to 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 forgot about that but.

I remember it vividly because it's the only time I've ever done that on a podcast and I feel very bad.

So this is karmic.

Karmic balancing is coming back.

This is a professional operation now.

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 meetings with the Justice Department, including Todd Blanche, who is like the number 2 official in the Justice Department and is Donald Trump's former 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 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 in return for her cooperating with the Justice Department, speaking to 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.

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't something 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 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 whatever else, just like a few months ago.

I'm just kind of amazed that like this has got to be like the 4th or 5th episode in a row where we've referenced the Epstein scandal and we have to 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 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.

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's handling of the Epstein stuff, 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 to draw attention, you know, are meant to move the news cycle on.

And it, it hasn't, it's still 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 means we all haven't been totally like zapped by our phones into not being able to focus on anything.

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 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 like investigating Obama or like the 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 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 usage of quotation Marks, and if you've noticed this, his capitalization has always been 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 or something, 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 perhaps Beyoncé and Kamala Harris were also, I think it was Kamala Harris was under investigation.

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 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 already exists 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 like, I remember stuff like that going 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 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 and perhaps going to charge him with treason.

So, you know, the the targets of these 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.

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.

You've got the Mike you were saying before we started recording, like the Tim Pools of the 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.

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 take on like, if this is actually 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 that to convey why President Obama is 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 about the 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.

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 explain in 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 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 new investigations into stuff like who dropped a bag of cocaine in the White House in 2023, which 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 know, Joe Rogan living away from his 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 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 it took so long for this to be a 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 kind of extraordinary.

But, yeah, now, you know, obviously all the photos of them 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 that it took this long for people to really want to talk about this.

I've seen a lot of people not on this podcast, but you know, there's like a strain of liberal commentary that likes to compare the Trump base to Colts.

And you've written about Colts, you've covered Colts.

I'm curious what you think about those comparisons.

I think like anybody who covers extremism for a long time, you 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 ask what 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 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 unreasonably irritated by describing it as a 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 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 like the failed promises of Q Anon 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 things about Q Anon specifically was it wasn't Donald Trump making those claims, 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 predictions coming true, Hillary Clinton 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 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 to disclose everything about Jeffrey Epstein who killed JFK.

You know, all of these other things that every other administration has kept from you 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, it was not, you know, it was common for us to find online photographs of Trump and Epstein.

Those those photographs that are now 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.

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 really the 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 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 would be, 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.

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 in the 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 his promises might be the first to peel off.

I mean, the stuff about the fact that 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 man, this is very power, this is a very powerful man.

And he's been photographed with all kinds of people.

That was always kind of the that was 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 Donald Trump 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 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 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 big outcry 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.

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 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 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, how does 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 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 move on?

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 my groping attempt to figure out which 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 lot of people doing.

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 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 because the 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 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 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 Maxwell, discovery and other files in this case that was filed against the Epstein estate in the US Virgin Islands.

Like there is all this stuff that could come out.

But the idea is that I think the idea 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 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.

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 fact that 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 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 naming are forced to defend themselves in some way, you know, legally in the public eye.

And somehow that satisfies the mega bases, cries for disclosure 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 Trump right.

I mean that to me.

I think, I think some of the more conspiratorial anti-Semitic MAGA people who are very sort of a 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 know, call bullshit on it, I think.

But I could imagine like the more mainstream pundits trying to trying to help Trump over the finish 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 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 that like if she came out and named 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 hosts is, you know, being, you know, basically trying to argue that Ghilane like maybe didn't do 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.

That she groped them in order to normalize 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.

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, 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 of people off.

I don't think the American public is like nearly as stupid as as people like to think sometimes.

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.

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'll be perfect for them.

She's written quite a bit about this, yeah.

So another thing you identify in the 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, 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 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 and I think pleaded guilty to like some, you know, had some kind of plea deal to scamming the MAGA 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 a border wall and avoided jail time.

Trump also has, I've I saw, I 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 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 February are talking about it.

But like is it catching on with the base?

Like I would love to see pulling on 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 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 there are these narratives, these stories with like heroes and villains that kind of, you know, 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 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 Jack Smith 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 as like a like a super villain in the in the mega universe.

And it's just like how much power like that had just the, you know, when people would say Fauci, you could just feel their their anger underneath.

And it seems like they're just pulling out like remixes of like these old stories without having something 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 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, 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 engaged in a really accelerated campaign in so many other areas of government, right?

You know, when it comes to immigration, when it comes to dismantling broad sectors of the federal 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 administration has been a really good demonstration so far of how much power the president and the Republican Party have when they, as you say, control every single branch 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 the third sort of realm of 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 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 circle, frankly, you know, and secondly, she is the one that most of the anger has focused at so 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.

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, you know, starting over.

And that at least buys some time, right, If people go with 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.

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.

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 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 who have not previously stepped 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 the 5th lane you identified, which 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.

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?

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 things will stick in a certain sense and people will move on and it will not dominate the headlines 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 just stick to the big ball of conspiracy theories that we have in 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 Epstein files and that they did that to benefit the president or people close to him.

Like that's they can't make that go away.

There's nothing that is going to dislodge that in some people's 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?

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, 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, but in general, I'm just curious 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 tremendous amount of criticism, probably not even enough criticism considering how insane some of these people are.

But I mean, I was thinking about RFK 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.

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 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 of movements that claim to be making people's material conditions better, improving the 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 all these 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 paying that much attention to politics 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 not in 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 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 at some 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 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 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.

And they can do that in a lot of ways 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 last election about people like at the state and local levels.

You know, the nomenclature was election deniers, right?

You know, people going in and being like, you know, trying to change the voting process in ways that make it more difficult for, 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.

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 to do?

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 the opponents of MAGA, whether it's 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.

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 literally going to say why don't they 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, you know, like.

Yeah, or the, you know, chimeras that they have in there anyway.

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.

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.

OK.

I even have my background blurred so you can't see all the weird 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 the romantic tension between the two 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 went to go see The X-Files movie like 3 times and like I went to go see it.

When I one of the time I went to see 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 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.

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 else I'm posting about, it would be 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 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.

School she's not dead, I.

Think I'm finally broke her and nothing next to.

Me thoughts, me there holding daisies, and she always waits for me.