Incorruptible Mass

Epstein and Inequality

• Anna Callahan • Season 6 • Episode 13

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We examine another big story in the news, this time focusing on the continuing fallout from the Trump administration's refusal to release files related to Jeffrey Epstein. We discuss Trump's own possible connections to Epstein, how our nation's moral and legal systems are fundamentally different for the rich, and what the fact that Epstein was allowed to get away with this for so long reveals about our country.

You’re listening to Incorruptible Mass. Our goal is to help people transform state politics: we investigate why it’s so broken, imagine what we could have here in MA if we fixed it, and report on how you can get involved.

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ANNA

Hello and welcome to Incorruptible Mass. Our mission here is to help us all transform state politics because we know that we could have a state that truly represents the needs of the vast majority of the seven million people who live here.


And today we will be talking about Jeffrey Epstein and what this entire case says about inequality in America. We don't even know what we're gonna say. Normally I'm like, this and that and this and that, but like we wanted to save it all to be fresh and vibrant for you all to hear the things that we're going to say. And I hear, I understand that Jordan also has some shocking revelations.


JORDAN

I wouldn't say shocking. We'll dive into Massachusetts tie-in.


ANNA

A Massachusetts tie-in. I like it. It's a good teaser. Before we do any of this, I will have my fantabulous co-hosts introduce themselves today. I will start with Jonathan.


JONATHAN

Jonathan Cohn, he/him/his, joining from the South End. I've been active in progressive issue and electoral campaigns for a little over a decade.


ANNA

And Jordan?


JORDAN

Jordan Berg Powers, he/him, and I have worked in politics for a long time and I live in Western Massachusetts and I've lost the plot. I've already lost the plot. I'm so excited about talking about this.


ANNA

My name is Anna Callahan, she/her, coming at you from Medford, where I am a city councilor, and I love doing work at the local level across the country. Also super excited to do state level stuff. And man, sometimes once in a while talking about some national issues is very fun.


So today we are going to talk about Jeffrey Epstein. And you know, this is a guy who managed for decades to get away with horrible, repulsive, illegal, morally, I mean, I don't know, what are the worst words I can come up with? How much worse can you be than the actions of this person? And be known by some of the world's most powerful people, and yet nobody turned him in for anything, and he got away with this forever and ever and ever.


And we are gonna talk today about how unfair that is, how, if you're not wealthy and powerful, you cannot get away with anything at all. I'm just gonna, we're gonna, this is very, very loosey goosey today. We did not plan and I see that Jonathan is ready to jump in.


JONATHAN

Yes, no, because I was thinking of when we first mentioned talking about this, I thought there was an excellent article just earlier this week by David Dayen from the American Prospect with the headline of Jeffrey Epstein Is a Policy Issue, connecting the whole case to the issue of elite impunity that has been really like a defining issue in American politics for several decades now.


And that speaks to what you noted, where you have something that was both during the crime being committed of doing a sex trafficking ring of children, young girls, was widely known where you had a number of international elites and politics, business, et cetera, friends with this guy. And none of the people who are clearly involved in this have faced any repercussions on their careers or even with the law, other than his own kind of entanglement with the law. And then, was Ghislane Maxwell formally his girlfriend? What was that?


ANNA

People are saying girlfriend.


JONATHAN

Yeah, this is the one who's actually, beyond him, the only one facing any repercussions. When you run a global trafficking ring with only two people for decades, you don't have the number of hours in the day.


ANNA

Let alone, and it's not even the people running it, it's the people who are using the service too.


JONATHAN

Yeah, exactly. So all of the financing, all of the people who themselves committed a crime, by basically kind of effective, like being with trafficked 15-year-olds. Yeah.


ANNA

That, and younger.


JONATHAN

Exactly, like all of that, like you clearly should be facing legal repercussions for what is— exactly, what is for all practical purposes rape in a case like that. And one thing I thought was good in the piece from David Dayen, was about how it's a failure of both parties to hold anyone responsible who has a certain degree of power and authority. Something about this that makes it such a striking kind of reflection of a larger problem in politics.


And that kind of element of it about how it ultimately does speak to issues of inequality comes down because just the other day on TV, Nancy Pelosi was commenting that this is a distraction and we should just be talking about the economy itself, when issues of elite impunity aren't a distraction. They're why economic problems exist. And especially when Trump is down, you start kicking. You don't try to— he hates the topic. You don't suddenly like save him. And that's just terrible political instincts on its own part. But I know, Jordan, you wanted to say some things.


JORDAN

Well, I guess I'll just start with just, yeah, I mean, I say this all the time, I've said this on this podcast, that there are two— there is the just-us system and there's another one for other people. And like, this is, you know, the fact that Trump has been able to get away with so much for so long, I would say that's why he feels like he's being persecuted, because he is being targeted for political reasons, because he's a developer who has broken laws.


You know who's breaking laws right now? Developers of Manhattan. They are breaking laws right now without facing consequences. And we have a system where the police do not arrest you if you steal from your employees. They do not go to Wall Street and arrest you. The SEC is captured by people who work on Wall Street, so it's barely doing its job. The FBI is not looking into corruption of banks for stealing mortgages. Like you can commit crime in America if it's done to us. you know, if you steal from your boss, right? Like, or if you walk out of a store with a good, you could be arrested. If you're an owner of a store and you steal from your employees, nothing will happen to you. And this just highlights that problem.


And that's, that's why MAGA got upset about it, because this was, he was supposed to upend that. He's supposed to— which is, of course, hilarious. This is what gets attention is, of course that was never going to happen, but just like how much they want to live in a delusion of morality is funny, but it does highlight this other problem, which is that there is not a real justice system.


It is why I get frustrated with when MSNBC has prosecutors on talking about how good prosecutions are. And I'm just like, these are all terrible people you have on TV pretending to be good people upholding the law. The law is not upheld. It's not equally upheld. It's not blind. If I walk in, there's— if I walk into the justice system, that's going to be common. None of them would ever walk into the justice system. There's not a justice system for them. There's not laws for them. They live above those systems unless they do something totally egregious, like BMAPS.


JONATHAN

So, like, even then, right? Because none of the people, none, like, none of the people who are involved in this, like, child trafficking and rape, like, rape ring have even faced legal, like, right, right.


ANNA

It's only the, it's, who is the Ponzi scheme guy who got into, into huge trouble because he was ripping off rich people, right? Who was that guy?


JORDAN

What was that guy's name?


ANNA

Anyway, Madoff, Bernie Madoff: that's how you get in trouble, right? If you steal from rich people and you have a Ponzi scheme against rich people, that's gonna get you in trouble.


JORDAN

But like, 12 year old girls internationally for decades, you know, 15 year old girls, every single, every single MLM is a Ponzi scheme, and none of them are going to jail because they're stealing from poor people.


ANNA

I also, I have to say, it's just in some ways delicious to me that so many people are utterly shocked by the idea that Trump doesn't want the list coming out. I mean, what world were you living in? Those people who were like QAnon and somehow, I really think that they're, this is negative partisanship, right? Is this belief that it isn't just the elites of the other party that are bad. It's like the voters of the other party are like fundamentally evil people. And this whole QAnon idea that like Democratic people are like Satanists and they're evil, they're child, you know, pornography, sex trafficker people. And like it's only the Democrats that are gonna be affected by this.


If you listen to like Bernie Sanders, I'm not saying Bernie is saying anything about sex trafficking, but Bernie is very clear. He understands that power corrupts and the problem is people who are billionaires and who have too much freaking power that control everything. And, you know, that psychologically is also true. There are all these studies that say when you have a certain amount of too much money, not if you're, like, a little bit wealthier than your neighbor. I'm not talking about, like, you earn $150,000. Right. But, like, people who have, like, real amounts of wealth that put them in a totally different category, you lose the ability to have empathy for human beings. Like, it's a real thing that happens and the idea that corrupt, that all that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.


Why are we surprised to finally come to the conclusion that it is not just like Democratic Party elites who clearly have, you know, there were some Democratic Party elites involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, but also there are probably many Republican Party elites who had involvement with Jeffrey Epstein.


JORDAN

I don't think anybody should be surprised. So I just think, I just want to say really quickly, the reason that that happens is because Republicans fundamentally believe immoral things and they know fundamentally that what they believe is racist and greedy and about themselves. And they have to, they have to, they have to, because we all think we're good people, they have to, they have to circle that thing.


And I don't think enough, this is actually some of the things I tell Democrats all the time is we need to be in the moral much. We need to be waging moral- and value-based conversations and just saying what's happening is immoral. And because they do that all the time, but of course they do because they have to make sense of a world in which they are stealing from poor people. They are allowing people to go hungry. What do they say about hungry people? They don't really deserve it.


ANNA

Yeah, right.


JORDAN

They try to create morality around the fact that they're doing something that their own religion says is evil. So that's the reason that this blew up is that it allowed, it gave them, it gives Republicans and MAGA supporters a moral out for their immorality. It says that actually what you don't see with your eyes and ears is not actually happening. What's actually happening is a secret conspiracy, right? That's why the conspiracy is so important. Because don't believe what you hear, don't believe what you see, don't believe what's actually happening. There's actually this other world that you don't understand that's a conspiracy that shows that we're moral people.


And so the fact that the person who they said was gonna be a person who breaks this up is a thing is because it's shattering their moral understanding of themselves. And that means that maybe actually they aren't on the moral side of all this. And of course we all know that the person, like Donald Trump couldn't be friends with Elon Musk for more than six months. Who is friends with Donald Trump for more than six months? For 10 years, 10 years, people can't be friends with Trump for 10 weeks.


ANNA

10 weeks. 10 weeks.


JONATHAN

And he's even like the quote of his of saying how the oh, that Jeffrey Epstein's probably the only person who appreciates beautiful women as much as he does, but he likes them on the younger side.


JORDAN

And that like, I mean, there's so much there, right? Like Donald Trump.


JONATHAN

How do you think that that guy is your hero? Although the one thing that I think is definitely at play with the kind of MAGA, like, kind of right-wing, disgusting kind of internet sphere take on this. Some of it reminds me of the line about how antisemitism is the socialism of fools. In the sense that there's clear, the people who are on the right wing definitely latch onto this for clear, they want the conspiracy of global elites to just be like, it's basically an antisemitic conspiracy theory.


JORDAN

Does that make sense?


ANNA

Oh, yeah. Bam.


JONATHAN

Because they're not willing to grapple with the fact that it is actually capitalist financial.


ANNA

Hello.


JONATHAN

At this, that, and because that they refuse to grapple, but that's a fundamental.


ANNA

Systemic capitalist patriarchal, you know? Exactly. This is like a sex trafficking ring of girls as if they're literal property and you can abuse them as much as you want to. So, yes, I rarely step in as like, I, I, somebody was commenting to me the other day that like, I never step in as like, “the woman,” you know, as you said.


JONATHAN

So, yeah. I was gonna mention, like, no, and when you view that as part of those systems, where is that like, as that problem is what that actually is a story of that they kind of latch on to because in some ways that the only way that you can view Trump as your hero in that is if you've somehow shrouded the story in a bunch of existing prejudices and are fully divorced from any actual reality. It's also hilarious because Trump is acting in every step of the way as though, like, if you were, you couldn't act guiltier.


ANNA

I know, right?


JORDAN

It's amazing. Any one of us would be better at this.


JONATHAN

He's so terrible. Like, I love, I love the whole, like, Pam Bondi, the list is on my desk. And, like, ask later, there's no list.


ANNA

It doesn't exist. And then later, it was all made up by Obama.


JORDAN

But there is a list. But there is a list, but it's made up.


JONATHAN

It's like my, it's like Trump's, “there is no Epstein list and I'm not on it” T-shirt. Racist opinions that are answered by the shirt.


ANNA

No, but I love that there is no Epstein list and I'm not on it. And if I am on it, I'm put on it by Obama.


JONATHAN

And then it's like, you get like, it makes you wonder like, what is like, but he's totally convinced that he's on this, like watching him and like when Pam Bondi got asked about that in one, like, cat and then he immediately intervenes.


JORDAN

So let's just say, like, I just think it's important. So I guess I want to say I have watched a lot of documentaries on Netflix about this, so I know way more about this than I should. And, you know, there's arguments about Ghislaine, Ghislane Maxwell's relationship. I don't know, I don't think any of us would know for sure.


And also, it's complicated because she both trafficked people and also may or may not have been a victim, depending again on which documentary on Netflix you watch about this. I don't want to make light of it. There are real people who are really harmed and they have, and if you are interested in it, let me, they, there are, some of them have spoken and you should hear their words about what happened to them. Because it's horrible. And there's been some really good documentaries that did some really good investigation into this. And so you should look, you should look to sources that are true and fact.


So we know for sure is that between 2002 and 2005, Donald Trump called Jeffrey Epstein a few times. There is like documentation of that. We know that Donald Trump was on Jeffrey Epstein's plane seven times from Palm Beach to New York City, never to the island that we can secure, although again, who knows, because we don't have that data. But we do know that that is out there already. And of course there's video of them partying together. And also there is him saying that we are best besties. And there's also these other things, right?


Like, of course, the thing that's also ridiculous to those paying attention is like Donald Trump said on Howard Stern, one of the benefits to owning them, not owning, to Miss USA is “I can just walk in on people in while they're changing.” You know, he, there are, during the first time he ran, Miss Teen USA, underage, 18-year-old teenagers said that he also did that when he owned Miss Teen USA. His own daughter has said, yes, he does that sometimes, walks just in without notice. Like there is, he's like really creepy.


JONATHAN

Comments about his own daughter too.


JORDAN

Besides the ridiculously creepy comments, there is a, you could easily look at the Daily Show where there's a montage of the creepy things he said about his own daughter, which made all of us cringe. Like there is, of course all of this is funny to us because like there's, there's not warning signs. There is like a gazillion things out in the public right now telling you that he's on the flight list and he has a problem, including being in a court of his peers being found to have done, to have sexually assaulted somebody, at least not in a criminal case, but in a civil case, right?


So we're like, like, there's, besides being also a criminal. So like, over to covering up an affair with somebody before an election, which is of course the thing he got. He got, he got, yeah. Right, so like there's just like an endless amount of these things where like you, if you were just paying a little bit of attention, you'd be like, “boy, it seems like Donald Trump has some issues around.”


ANNA

Well, it also seems like this is the last guy in the whole world you would think is gonna expose the Epstein by like, who on earth worse than, can you think of anyone less likely than Donald Trump to.


JONATHAN

Like, Nixon going to China is like Donald Trump.


JORDAN

So and that, and just like, you know, so I just think the other thing too is like, there's, there's some other pieces I think people should set, should know, which is that it's not just Donald Trump, but Pam Bondi was the attorney general of Florida, there is some debate to the ability of go into a little bit more about her involvement specifically in Florida.


Yeah. So she was the attorney general when there was a deep. So, so two, two girls were, were picked up for trafficking and, and we're like, I'm being, we’re picked up for, for unraised prostitution and we're like, I'm being trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein. And those women testified before a grand jury. And this then-state attorney who worked for Pam Bondi, Barry Krischer, basically eviscerated those girls and gave a sweetheart deal to Jeffrey Epstein.


And that could have stopped Jeffrey Epstein at that moment. There was credible allegations. There's clear everyone knew what was going on, at least from the, again, watch some documentaries or read some things about it, but people knew that powerful people were being trafficked. By Jeffrey, being trafficked, girls were being trafficked.


ANNA

If only the powerful people had been trafficked, maybe this would have been stopped.


JORDAN

A little different. And it could have been stopped then, but instead he used his power and connections and Pam Bondi could have stopped it at that moment as the attorney general. She maybe didn't know about it. It was a small case, right? There's lots of cases, but it then rose up again. People were, I literally being like, you need to look into Jeffrey Epstein. And she could have then again been like, hey, somebody should review these cases and did not do so. So that is so, like, she's also implicated in all these things.


And I just want to say really quickly that I, I generally think like it's messier than, than Republicans want it to be. Like there's just a list and then those people are bad people. Like actually it's complicated. Jeffrey Epstein ran a really shady hedge fund and then had some money and maybe didn't have money. And there's a lot of entanglement because rich people are all sorts of illegal and do all sorts of terrible things. And it's not always sex crimes the way that Republicans just think everybody who they don't like is a pedophile. And so like the reality is that we do need some— it would be nice to do some investigation and distangling of all of these things that happened. But of course that will never happen because to the earlier point, it's all rich people.


Like not every person who's involved themselves with Jeffrey Epstein did terrible things to girls and underage people. But every person probably did something illegal because he was involved in more than one terrible type of illegality and shadiness and all sorts of other things. And to me, that's also part of the problem with a lot of the way it's getting talked about or putting together is that there is this sort of criminality where rich people can just go about pretending laws don't exist and they're not party to them means that all the people like this are entangled with lots of terrible things all at once. Yeah, they're not using their, their lack of morality to just one sphere.


ANNA

Yeah, I want to bring up the whole question of like, conspiracy theory because I have, like occasionally I hear, you know, people say like, oh, well, this Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theory, you know, blah, blah, blah. Like, I think it's difficult to not like, if you're running a sex trafficking ring and, you know, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Bill Gates are all involved, like they are flying on your plane and they're like on your island or whatever, you know. We do not know that any of them are on this island.


JORDAN

Let's just be clear before I make any more comments. Great, sure.


ANNA

Okay, on the plane. Let's say you're just on the plane. Let's say you say things like, “boy, he likes girls on the younger side. He sure likes women.” Like, I mean, to think that you have, I mean, we know that they knew something was happening. And so the idea that like, oh, this is some crazy conspiracy theory is of thinking that there is some conspiracy, like powerful people knew that this was happening. So I don't think that's a conspiracy theory.


And then the other thing that people are like, “oh, how could they think such a conspiracy?” Is like that there was some sort of bribery going on? And look, I don't need particularly like evidence that there was like, that he's emailing them with a bribe, like not bribery, but like he, like blackmail. That's a question. Like he doesn't need to be saying like, “if you don't do X, then I will, you know, reveal that he slept with blah, blah, who was 13 years old.”


Like, I think it's fair to say that when powerful people, whether they're billionaires or, you know, Jeffrey Epstein or whoever they are, they use the power that they have to get government officials to do the things they want, right? And so the idea that someone like Jeffrey Epstein would not be pressuring government officials wherever to get the things that he wants, whether it's lower taxes or like, who knows what he's asking for, but like, the idea that he's not doing that and that he wouldn't, for example, use, “well, it happened at that, you know, I know I have a video viewer, you know, some evidence that you were doing this thing that people wouldn't like about you.”


Like the idea that he would never stoop to such a low, you know, this guy is going to stoop, right? He's going to stoop to that low if he's doing all these other things. So in my opinion, you don't, it doesn't take a genius or it doesn't take like a ton of evidence to say, was he pressuring government officials? Because obviously there's government officials all over the world who are like flying on a plane. Was he using some pressure on them to get things that he wanted? I think clearly, yes, all the billionaires do the same thing, right? So.


JORDAN

Yeah. And again, it's just like, it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's the system itself that's the problem, which is that we have a system where people can be above the law. And so therefore they're no longer bound to any sort of the limitations that you or I would go through to get any of these things happening.


I want to plug a book I'm currently almost finished, but it's fantastic. It's Careless People, which is about Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, poor Mark Zuckerberg being flattered to this thing. He's definitely not implicated in any of this, but I think it does get at, if anything, the opposite from this book. But it does get at this broader thing, which is that when you are so rich that you no longer tether to reality, that you do that, like, it is about the fact that, like, he's so rich, he doesn't, no one around him tells him anything that's true.


He doesn't see, they, you know, the book is about how they're, Sheryl Sandberg and him have no respect for the law. They're just like, the law doesn't really, if it doesn't work for them, they just ignore it. Like, this is the problem. And, like, and that, and then government officials bend over backwards to say, “how can we get you to apply, how can we get you to be inside the law?” And it's like, no, no, the way to get them to be inside the law is they go to jail.


JORDAN

Yeah. Daryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg don't want to pay taxes and they go to jail. That's what should happen. That's not what happens. And so that type of two tiered system is the heart of the problem for all of these people is that they have so much money that they're no longer bound. Then they're only bound by whatever they think is moral or immoral. And that is a terrible system because they're fundamentally immoral.


ANNA

And I'm just gonna throw in a little plug for one of our former episodes, our previous episodes, which is about how even at the local government level, government tends to work great for, like, wealthy people and tends to just screw over people who don't have much money just to the, to little things.


Like, if you're a homeowner and you want to put a deck on your home, like, how many hoops do you have to jump through? But if you're a developer and, you know, the developer is, the city is going to be like, “Oh, what can we do for you? Oh, how can we get you to come in here and like build and whatever? Like, what laws can we just wave away so that you don't have to worry about them?”


And just at all levels of government, our government sadly, is for many reasons is set up to just, you know, bend over backwards for wealthy and powerful people and to make everything incredibly difficult for the little guy.


JORDAN

I want to say also just to that, just to, so we flagged this at the beginning, so I'm gonna say it now. This is just a reminder that also this type of criminality, our state legislature has had, state legislators have had lots of allegations thrown around. There are lots, you do not need to go far before you hear about inappropriate relationships in the State House.


Now, the State House has all consenting adults, so it is not on the level that we're talking about here. But it is a reminder that powerful people use their power to get away with sexual assault. And one of the many, one example of that became public when the Senate president's husband finally got outed for the predatory, for the way he was being a predator.


But there was a lot of those allegations. There is not an active police investigation. There's not an FBI investigation. The Boston Globe with its spotlight and I got a, I literally got an email from the Boston Globe talking about support independent investigative journalism. And I was like, great, I don't know why I'm getting it from you Boston Globe, because that's a, you don't know, you're right, you're owned by a billionaire and you don't do any of that. So I don't know what I'm getting this email from you from.


Like they've never, you know, they left it to, you know, the story of the Senate president's husband sexually assaulting people was left to a columnist to tell that story, not a reporter. And thank God that that columnist did that. Thank God. Because it put to stop real harm that was happening.


But like that, what's your investigative reporting for? Like where is the pressure on our systems to say, “Hey, all of those allegations that swirl around, are they true? Can somebody verify them? Does there need to be follow up? Are there people who are currently being threatened or having pressure put on them because they're not in powerful positions to not tell their story?” We could hear the rumors, but we don't know for sure.


And this is again a reminder of the way that all of these things come down, that there is two systems. If you're a poor person, and you, you were going to get, like, the full, the full fight of the law. If you're a middle class person, the full weight of the law will come down upon you. If you, if you step a minute out of line, right? If you don't, if you get, if you go 60, if you go 70 in a 65, and the police come in, you're gonna get arrested. And if you don't pay your taxes, you're going to jail. But if you're a rich person, like, you're just not even, none of those things are going to matter to you. None of those things are going to happen to you.


And it's just a reminder that there's just, like, a totally different system, and that's happening. That is, that is at least alleged to be happening in the State House. Again, I do not, I have not seen something, but I think we've all been around enough to have heard rumors about inappropriate things happening. And there is not a way, there's not a mechanism.


I know this is something that the, while I'm not the biggest fan of the Secretary of State, this is something that she and I agree wholeheartedly on. Auditor. The auditor, excuse me, that the auditor, yes, sorry, not Bill Gavin, that the auditor and I agree on is that there is, There is a lot there that we don't know about and there needs to be more transparency about it. And the people who are being protected through systems of power and money, that should not be protection. There should be actual some sort of system to get at, is this happening and do we need to protect people?


JONATHAN

The dimension of media in this just reminded me of like a tweet I just saw the other day, which would be like, “wow, sure is great that the media is talking about all of this six months into Trump's second term in office.” And it's like, it's the type of one of those things that when you can get with a lot of like elite corruption of it being an open secret and it being the type of thing that like all many other people know, most people in media know to be true. But it doesn't reach the public in full unless media decides to actively spend resources covering it.


It also gets to the way in which so many small decisions in media are ideological. Like, for instance, if you wanted to write stories, you could say “Donald Trump, comma, best friend of Jeffrey Epstein, comma,” and could have done that from a while ago. But, and not doing that is a choice.


JORDAN

Yep.


JONATHAN

I'll have one final comment, but, Anna, go.


ANNA

I was just gonna say, you know, we were wrapping it up probably. I just want to have any like final comments from my co-host here about this whole Jeffrey Epstein thing. I will say I actually do think it's an important topic and I'm glad that both parties, not the parties, but both of the voter bases are now quite upset about this. I think it is important. I think that this kind of absolute disrespect for the law and thinking that you're completely above the law and can do anything in amorality, immorality, I think is deeply in the corruption conversation and the inequality conversation and everything that's wrong with our politics today. So even though it's sorted and it's not about a policy issue, I do think it's a really important conversation.


And, and, you know, I, I will bring up one other thing, and I would love you guys to comment on this. Have you guys heard some of these right-wing commenter people who are saying things like, you know what? Like, we can't trust any of these guys. Maybe, maybe the socialists are right. Maybe, maybe Bernie and Zohran, I swear to God, I've heard these now. Maybe Bernie and Zohran are the only people we have left to believe in. And I'm like, “yes.”


So I want to see if you guys have heard about that at all, because it is like a tiny glimmer of hope of the, you know, the right-wing people who are like, wow, the whole QAnon thing was not that the Democrats are evil and the Republicans are righteous. Really? They're all terrible? Well, maybe we need something different. And they're maybe going to go for, you know, some other kind of policy questions.


JORDAN

I, I have no hope because I think ultimately this is a racism, but I do think that we'll get some people. I mean, it doesn't take much. You know, I think the thing we're always looking for is like, what's the thing that's going to get massive people to like wake up? And I don't think that's what's going to happen. But I do think we'll bleed some people who are who are who are frustrated with the powers that be and those that 5%, 6%, 10% if we're lucky, who are curious about like actually fighting power, like we need like welcome and we need to like, I agree.


ANNA

Yeah.


JORDAN

So I do think I don't think it's like a mass, but I do think it'd be great to have some folks come over. I want to just do a really quick plug. I'll say these are really complicated issues. You know, we make them really simple, good versus bad, evil versus not. Not to say that it's not, you should not have, you should not have trafficking young girls.


ANNA

I think we can say bad.


JORDAN

I meant more like, I think like, I think like the, the, the, there's a lot of like, I think that there's a lot of overarching, like, issues that lead to this, to the really terrible thing happening. That's what I'm trying to say. I'll say better.


ANNA

Yes.


JORDAN

But at the heart of it is that there's real people who are victims. And so if you can to donate to a good cause, I have worked at a shelter and it's so do consider giving and hearing the words of people who were affected.


Again, there are people who are real victims of Jeffrey Epstein who have bravely spoken out in their own words. I think if you are interested in this at all, go seek out their voices so that you can hear them talk about their stories and so that they can feel supported also, like seeing them, getting their views up, re-sharing their words so that they, because they bravely spoke up, you know, not everybody who's been affected wants to speak, but those who did, and do, we should do things to support them in this moment because I am sure that it is not an easy perch to be on in this moment. And so I'm thankful for them for bravely talking about this. It's not easy. So that's all safe.


JONATHAN

Yeah, I know the mention of how the kind of the like, to remember the fact that like real people are harmed here reminds me of that woman. I don't know the proper pronunciation for her last name, if it's Giuffre, Virginia, is it Giuffre? Her last name, who committed suicide. Actually, that's a-- When was that? Kind of a-- Was that actually-- Is that that soon ago? But from that, who had been-- who had sued Prince Andrew because of her having been trafficked when a teenager, and how much of actual harm was done to people, again, harm that so few people have actually ever faced justice for.


The line that I always think about this, that like some people ribbed, but I still think that the sentiment of it is correct was Christine Pelosi's comment, Nancy Pelosi's daughter back in 2019 of “this Epstein case is horrific and young women deserve justice. It is quite likely that some of our faves are implicated, but we must follow the facts and let the chips fall where they may, whether on Republicans or Democrats.”


She got, I think, dragged a lot for the like some of our faves might be implicated part, but at the end of the day, it is likely that there are people of both parties who would be in some ways or people kind of in the general associated with left or right implicated in both of those and like they should all face justice.


ANNA

Yeah, I think Trump is looking for moveon.org and I for his own like moveon.org movement. And I just, I don't think it's happening today, not in 2025.


JORDAN

Yeah. Yeah.


ANNA

All right, gang, thanks everybody. A fun conversation about a horrible topic. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to donate to the show. And we look forward to chatting with you all next week.