Semafor Editor Ben Smith on Epstein Saga; How do MAGA Supporters Really Feel About Trump's Foreign Policy? Eddington Movie Review: Reflections on 2020
Semafor's Ben Smith discusses the latest Epstein saga developments. Plus: Michael Tracey reviews Ari Aster's latest film 'Eddington' and what it reveals about Covid, BLM, and social media in 2020. Finally: System Update producer Meagan O'Rourke also joins to discuss interviews with MAGA supporters from a Fourth of July parade on Staten Island. ------------------------ Watch full episodes on Rumble, streamed LIVE 7pm ET. Become part of our Locals community Follow System Update: Twitter Instagram TikTok Facebook
Welcome to yet another new episode of System Update, which as you all undoubtedly know is our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 8 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
I'm Michael Tracy, and Glenn is somewhere.
So this is where I triumphantly storm in and anger parts of the audience who would prefer not to have to see my face, which I have to say on some level, I sympathize with.
Tonight, interesting show.
We'll be joined by Ben Smith, who is the editor-in-chief of Semaphore and a longtime political observer, journalist, editor.
And we will probably, I think, provide you with a slightly counterintuitive or different perspective anyway on the meaning of the whole Epstein saga that continues to engulf American politics and media, seemingly.
We'll also bring in somebody who works on this very show and who you often don't see on camera.
She stays behind the cameras, but today we're going to pry her out because Megan O'Rourke, who I often do interviews with, and she's a producer on the show.
I'm sure should be a fan favorite anyway.
We're going to do actually a review of a new movie.
This is a little out of left field based on typical system update content, but there's a new movie that I happened to see last night, partly at the adamant urging of Megan called Eddington.
And I think it's an incredible movie and an incredible window into a lot that's going on politically and culturally.
So we're going to do a movie review tonight.
And we are also going to show some footage that she and I collected actually back on the 4th of July, earlier this month, that has been available on locals for you subscribers for several weeks.
But what we wanted to do was go to like an area that is sort of ground zero for salt of the earth, Joe Six Pack style supporters of Trump, Trump voters, and ask him about, ask them about his foreign policy record thus far, particularly the bombing of Iran, which may seem like eons ago at this point, but it was only last month and the full ramifications have not really been settled.
So just wanted to remind you system update is available on podcast forum on all major platforms.
So you can go find the show there and leave a review.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update.
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Okay, so we're going to go a little bit off the beaten path tonight because I know my mind has been largely occupied by this movie that I saw last night.
And if it was just a well-crafted drama, or if there were just some sterling acting performances that were put in, I'm not sure that I would necessarily have been compelled to discuss it on system update.
But there's like an interesting synergy going on in the universe where we have this Epstein story that keeps embroiling the American political and media worlds with some new developments on that score, even just this afternoon.
And we have the debut of this movie or the opening of this movie, which really gets to the beating heart in a very unparalleled way for like a cinematic experience of what drives the American, the contemporary kind of like internet adult American political psyche.
And it's called Eddington.
I guess we'll try to steer away from spoilers, but I know Megan has seen it, so maybe we can bring her in now and we'll play the trailer for you for those who are not familiar.
Is Megan there?
Is she joining?
I got a call into the office about a disturbance.
Last night, the family was murdered.
Shooters on travel ground.
This is a Pueblo case.
This is our crime scene.
Get out of here.
I'm running from there.
Device can't keep your own office going, but you're going to run mine.
They're your streets to keep safe.
Take care, see who the man is.
Simple people.
Can you shut this bitch up?
You want things simple and neat.
There were some allegations made.
Allegations like what?
You were in his house.
Well, here's a quote from you.
Arm yourselves.
I don't mean literally arm.
I have motive, but we need evidence.
People are gonna be looking here now.
He's aggressive.
He's dangerous.
He needs to be locked up.
I don't trust him.
Maybe he's been spying this whole time.
We are in a fight against evil.
We are in a fight against evil.
Okay, so there you go.
I actually didn't even realize that this movie was considered a Western.
Sitting there and watching it, I don't know that I would have necessarily even thought of that as a genre category.
I guess it's set in New Mexico, so there's some Western scenery and so forth, but I don't know.
That wouldn't have necessarily come to top of mind for me as a description.
But anyway, is Megan there who saw this movie?
And urge me to see it.
There she is.
Hello, Megan.
How's it going?
Welcome.
Thank you.
Greet the system update viewers with whom you interact and who you're always trying to service in various respects.
So directly.
No.
Also, I can see the comments because I have the Rumble login, so be nice.
But no, I don't prefer not to send me comments.
Yeah.
No, I really want to.
So you strongly urged me to see this movie.
And I think I had very vaguely heard that it existed, but I didn't look much into it at all.
And so I really went into this almost completely blind.
I knew like a very, very, very minimal synopsis, which gave me almost no insight into what the movie would be about.
So it genuinely was one of the most sort of like mind-blowing, crazy movie-going experiences I think I've ever had.
And I'm not just saying that, like we're not getting paid by A24 or whomever the director is.
What's his name again?
I'm just giving my genuine sort of reaction.
And like the thing that I was immediately thinking of with like in the first 30 or 45 minutes, maybe is like, oh my God, they figured out how to film a movie from inside my internet adult brain.
Like it was too close to home almost.
It was like miniature men set up inside my brain and like we're capturing what it's like to be in a state of delirium based on our oversaturated media consumption.
They do this through the prism of events in the spring or summer of 2020 when like the George Floyd riots broke out and you had Black Lives Matter protests and counter protests and COVID and conspiracy thinking definitely flourishing.
And so it all just kind of melds together into this like manic internet addled sort of fugue state that the movie seems to exist in that unfortunately and kind of scarily enough for me was very relatable in terms of how my life oftentimes operates, which maybe I should fix.
Maybe log on.
It was relatable in a scary way.
So I don't, is that how you thought, is that sort of aligned with how you experienced it?
Yeah, I was going into the movie, I was pretty skeptical of like a COVID era movie because I was like, all right, first of all, no one really wants to think about that time.
And there really aren't many like TV shows or movies that are being made about that time.
And I was really pleasantly surprised about the way it was able to capture what you described, that sensation of like being on Twitter at that time and just being inundated with all this information.
And, you know, everyone around you seems to also be taking in just like so much information at once.
And there are very few movies, I think, that can seamlessly integrate the experience of being online into a movie because it's a very like unromantic thing to visualize in a movie, right?
Like a lot of movies are set in the past, but the reality is that we're on our phones, like we're on Twitter all the time, and especially during COVID.
So I thought it was really impressive that Ariaster was able to capture what that feels like and also kind of explore how does how do these little spheres of the internet then become real life when people really internalize them and start to believe them wholeheartedly.
And I mean, the way it would movie too, Michael, because I know you were traveling around the country during 2020.
And so I was curious, like, how true was this movie to not only your internet experience, but like your IRL life?
It was extremely true to it.
That's what made it almost scary.
Like it seemed like as close to an approximation of what I can recollect from my own brain as could have been available from a cinematic experience.
Like there's a scene, and we won't try to give away spoilers in terms of like major plot points or anything, but we would give like just some examples of some interesting little tidbits or what have you.
There is a scene where there's a Black Lives Matter protest that's happening in this small New Mexico town.
And actually people who, for anyone who might think that that's not realistic, that there would be a protest, you know, a decently sized protest in a small town in New Mexico, think again, because one of the things that was so kind of sociologically unique and almost unprecedented about that George Floyd 2020 protest movement was that, sure, there were major protests and often some writing in major cities, New York, LA, Chicago, et cetera.
But there were also extensive protests in places that you would never have expected, like small towns, rural areas, suburban areas.
These were Often organized by high school students in conjunction with their parents and their teachers.
So there was like a weird sort of institutional backing to a protest movement in a way that wouldn't have been the case before.
Like in the 1960s, could kids going to high school or maybe even college age have partnered with their parents and school administrators to hold a protest?
No, they would probably be protesting in opposition in some sense to those sort of sources of authority.
But here, the sources of authority were collaborators.
And so I went to protest actions that were held in small town places like Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana, Wisconsin, Washington, other places.
And so there's this one scene in the movie where there's this girl.
I think she's said to be like 18 or so.
She is very radicalized by the internet-fueled social justice uproar or furor that was engendered by the George Floyd death.
And she's got her mask on.
And they're in the street in the small New Mexico town.
And there's one, there's like one black cop who works at the sheriff's department.
Like the main character, Joaquin Phoenix is the sheriff of town.
He then is inspired to run for mayor because he doesn't want to abide by COVID mask mandates.
And his underling or his junior sort of officer is a black guy.
And there's the scene where this 18-year-old white girl is screaming with this emotional fanaticism in her voice.
Like she's almost sounds on the verge of tears, right?
Demanding that this black cop, I guess, abandon his post and come join the protest movement.
I personally witnessed scenes almost identical to that.
I think I told you or I showed you there was a tweet that I put out from May or June of 2020 where I actually like in real time took a photo of this white girl like screaming in the face of a black cop telling him abandon your post, help free your co-racialists by joining us white girls who are leading this protest movement.
And it's true.
It happened and I never thought I'd live to see the day where that were accurately was actually portrayed on film, but it was.
And yeah, I mean, so should the degree that you were sort of aware of this protest activity in 2020, does it jive with your memories?
I mean, I was in college at the time, so I had a pretty different experience of, you know, being sent back home to like my mom's house and, you know, not being at school anymore.
But I think it really did capture just especially the early COVID times, because in the, this isn't spoiling anything, but it's May of 2020 and COVID has not even reached the town yet.
And I think what the movie does really well is showing how these national movements are so localized because of things online.
And it's interesting that screen or scene you described of the girl yelling at the black police officer, she knows him in the movie.
And it's a very small town where everyone seems to know each other.
But then these very national movements create divisions that weren't necessarily there before in many ways, whether it be because, you know, someone's deciding to mask now versus not.
And even the details, this is a small thing of the masks I thought were great.
Like there's like the N95 wearing more liberal Mare who is played by Pedro Pascal.
And then you also have like the bandana wearers too, or like the people who like wear it under their under their nose.
And even at the very beginning, he has an argument with other cops who want, meaning the main character, Sheriff Joe, he has an argument with other cops who are trying to tell him to put his mask on.
And he points out that like one of the two cops in the car wearing the mask has it drooping below his nose.
And like that's an arg, that's an argument that you know must have taken place 10 billion times in the United States during that period.
So it was like a true representation of what everybody can remember, but almost like wanted to put out of their minds and not have depicted back to them on the big screen.
But I'm glad that it did because there's a hyper realism to it.
You know, one thing that another thing that this movie also amazingly nails is that it realistically captures how much time people spend mindlessly scrolling on their phones.
So there's a lot of instances in which a character is just scrolling on a phone.
And that's done really well too, because like stuff, like there's, there's this teenage boy who's interested in the 18-year-old girl who's become a protest leader.
And he's jockeying with like others to try to like, you know, get her attention.
And you just see him lying in bed scrolling Twitter at one point, like just habitually liking every tweet of hers.
And then like she's also on Instagram and they're like, her name on Instagram is something or other underscore Bernie your bust.
And there's just a lot of paper specific.
And he's told who Angela Davis is to like impress her.
Yeah.
And then the main character, Joe, he ends up campaigning for mayor by, and he turns his truck into like what is like a MA mobile that is very much frequently seen out in the wild, which is that he has all these, like, he has like an image, like a poster of Bill Gates on his truck.
He has all these like slogans against tyranny and whatnot.
And in a way, I guess he's, he's portrayed, at least initially, as more somewhat sympathetic, which is why people think that this movie has a right-wing slant or a right-wing sympathetic tilt to it.
I'm not sure I totally buy that.
My sort of impression is that it was just about accurately depicting every different flavor of like politicized internet mania from that period without much of a value judgment one way or another.
I don't know what you made of that.
Yeah, I think at least in the first half of the movie, it's pretty like sympathetic to a lot of people.
And you can ask Ben Smith about this later because he actually interviewed Ari Astor on his podcast, Mixed Signals.
But apparently, Ari Aster did a lot of research for this, and he's originally from New Mexico.
And he did all these interviews with, and Ari Aster identifies as someone on the left, but he said that the most interesting people were those who were on the right.
And he wanted to really kind of capture their stories.
And, you know, I think the movie is still getting pretty bad reviews from like the traditional critics because maybe they see it as being like too sympathetic, but that's just, in my view, what storytelling is.
And, you know, people are free to make whatever conclusions from a movie.
And I think it really just does a better job of depicting this overall trend and, you know, that everyone was going crazy during this time.
And looking back, it seems kind of unreal.
Yeah.
You know, artistic depiction is not necessarily any normative endorsement of what it is that's being depicted.
Like that should be very easily understandable, you would think, to professional reviewers, movie reviewers, you know, quote unquote professional reviewers who write for some dopey website and then get included in the Rotten Tomatoes.
Total.
But yeah, it's being very negatively reviewed, which is the diametric opposite of the impression that I got or my the value judgment that I attached to the movie once I was walking out.
I was like in a daze almost in terms of how crazy that was in a in a good way.
And it does remind me of the Joker movie in 2019 getting barraged with negative reviews because the idea, it was more like what reviewers were reviewing at the time was this cultural idea that Joker was going to be a portrayal of like right-wing violent incels.
And therefore, there was some obligation on the reviewers to criticize the movie like almost totally divorced from its actual artistic merits.
So I wouldn't be surprised if there's something similar going on here with Eddington.
Yeah, definitely.
I think, you know, not everyone is over that.
Like, you know, you have to, you know, can you separate the art from the artist discussion or whatever?
And, but I think, you know, you're really cheating yourself of the value of the movie if you're looking at it that way.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think it was like a perfect.
I wouldn't say it was like the best movie of, I don't know, the past.
I think you said it was like the best movie of the 21st century.
I said it's one to me.
I don't, I don't see that many movies, but for me, it's one of the best movies I can recall seeing in like the past decade.
So I don't know, top 10, 15, 20, something like that.
Yeah.
And maybe it's because the movie industry is in such a terrible place right now, but I do think it was definitely worth seeing.
So I'm glad you saw it.
Yep.
So we're going to spare you from having to comment on Epstein Mania, but there is an interesting connection in this movie.
But Ben Smith is coming on to perform that function.
So we're going to spare you.
But there is an interesting connection in that one of the plot points, essentially, is that a character becomes convinced that they were sexually abused.
And then it just kind of snowballs into an allegation of sexual predation.
And then like there's a sex trafficking ring that is claimed to exist, but is doubted to exist.
And there are, it is some weird crossover now, just in terms of what's politically relevant and what is depicted in this movie that maybe should encourage people to see it.
Okay, so Megan Ben Smith is here.
Megan is going to come back for a brief segment after Ben is done with me and we'll go over some MAGA interviews that we did.
But I do now want to go to Ben Smith, if possible, from Semaphore.
I can hear you.
Ben.
Great.
Well, thanks for having me on.
What a world.
Great to see you.
Indeed.
You actually have been on system update before.
Do you recall when?
With Glenn at some point?
It was with me.
It was with me as his surrogate.
I did a brief interview with you at the Republican convention last year where you just commented generally on System Up.
Well, that doesn't really count.
I had no idea who you were and you ambushed me and I would never have done it if I'd known who you were.
I'm just joking.
For loyal system update audio.
You're a damn liar.
I have long known who Michael Tracy is.
I've known who Michael Tracy is a lot longer than you have.
Dear system update fewer.
Wow.
That's a little disturbing.
Let's not really get that deep into that claim because we have probably more pressing things to discuss.
So Epstein Mania, summer of Epstein.
I've declared 2025 the summer of Epstein.
Remember, like 2024 was Brat's summer.
Likewise, 2025, counterintuitively enough, is Epstein's summer, even though Epstein met his demise six years ago.
So maybe there was some lag time there.
But you had a good article in Semaphore that people could see on the screen, I think, in which you propose to tell people how to, quote, resist the Epstein temptation.
And this struck me as pretty jarring.
You say the Epstein story brings out two of the worst traits in journalists, and to really point fingers here, in our audiences.
First, the human tendency to fill gaps with wild theories that flatter our prejudices.
And second, the bias toward what's new over what's known.
Now, Ben, I just want to say every, almost everybody on the internet absolutely despises my position on Epstein.
Every comment thread, every email, every communication that I've received over the past two weeks reacting to anything that I've said about Epstein is like violently negative, which I'm fine.
My brain is wired in a weird way where that doesn't really have an emotional effect on me anymore.
But I'm just going to invite you to like take the most adversarial possible position against me if you want.
But in terms of this story, why does it bring out, as you put it, that trait, those bad traits in the audience and in among journalists?
Because I agree with you, but I'm just curious for what your ultimate explanation is for why this story has that effect.
Well, I think there are a few things.
I mean, you know, first, it is a horrific, lurid story, accurately, about a really disgusting, abusive, rich guy who treated these, you know, young women from the wrong side of the tracks in Miami just horribly and did it in a systematic way and then used his wealth and power and connections to get away with it.
And so, and that story and the story of how a sort of political prosecutor gave him a slap on the wrist really genuinely is a great story.
And it is a story about money and power and sexual abuse.
And there's, and I think it sort of collided with these kind of deep human temptations, which by the way, you see everywhere to A, accuse your political opponents of the worst possible crime, which is abusing children.
You see it around the world.
You see it across parties.
It's also a conspiracy theory that people in the way of certain conspiracy theories have decided leads back to the Jews, which I think gives it a little extra sort of power in the collective subconscious.
But also the theory, and I mean the theory specifically that he had a list of clients and had video of these clients committing sex crimes and was using those to blackmail them probably on behalf of the Mossad.
I think that's like the theory.
You know, there's just no evidence for it.
And it's incredibly beguiling.
It's the sort of thing people write fiction about because it's a beguiling story.
But it's also something that law enforcement, both in the Trump and the Biden administration, who have subpoena power, who are able to go into people's phones and computers and arrest them and threaten them with imprisonment, did not find anything, did not find any evidence of.
And every, as you know, and you have, and I have, every journalist for the last, since Julie K. Brown sort of resurfaced this story, has chased it very, very aggressively and hasn't found anything.
And I do think this is one of these cases where absence of evidence is evidence of absence, even if nobody likes to hear that.
And heads are exploit with your rendition here of the nature of the upscene story.
Heads are exploding all across the audience.
And I want to urge people to try to like do some breathing exercises, try to maintain your composure.
We can engage in some rational discussion on this issue without going crazy.
One element here that I wanted to ask you if you think is a contributing factor in why this brings out some of the worst tendencies in the media.
So forget the audience for a second.
It's pretty easy to understand.
The audience, I mean, every algorithmic incentive.
There's a customer is always right incentive in the media.
And I think that's a lot of the worst that comes from that.
But to more squarely indict the media, don't you think there's been a tendency on the part of journalists, particularly since the Me Too era, to kind of serve effectively as victim advocates and do that under journalistic auspices?
So they think that their proper role is to ally themselves with purported victims, self-identified victims, and then advocate for their interests and thereby not necessarily do the kind of due diligence to scrutinize the claims of certain victims that then sort of transmocrify into this larger mythos
that we see having taken such hold around the Epstein story.
That's a tentative theory that I'm going with.
You mentioned Julie K. Brown.
She wrote, look, I'm not trying to disparage anybody personally.
She did write that groundbreaking 2018 Miami Herald series.
And she was on Ross Dalfett's podcast for the New York Times over the weekend.
And if we could just play that clip for you and get your reaction that I identified to our wonderful producers.
Thinking response, as I understand it, is that out of the young women who made accusations, only one, who you mentioned earlier, Virginia Juffray, made serial allegations that she was pressured into having sex with famous figures.
And out of the allegations, there was only one settlement.
There was no trial or anything, but there was, of course, the settlement with Prince Andrew, where there was a photograph of him together with Maxwell and Juffray.
In the other cases, the men mentioned successfully fought back.
Juffray is dead now.
She was very troubled, clearly.
And there are reasons to think that she might have been sort of out to get money or get revenge and these kind of things and reasons to be skeptical of some of her allegations.
That is how I understand the case that it was just Epstein.
Do you think it was just Epstein?
No, it wasn't because over the years, a lot of women have come forward.
And I speak with the attorneys that represent these women quite often.
And I was speaking with one yesterday who said that he had a client.
She was of age.
She was on the younger side.
And she was trafficked to a very powerful man by Epstein in Palm Beach.
And I believe there were others like that that were trafficked to very powerful men.
These women are scared to death.
They're not going to come forward at this point because look what happened to Virginia.
It's just, they're just not going to.
They're afraid.
And so I do believe.
What did happen to Virginia?
Well, Virginia, you know, she went public and she named names.
And as a result of that, Alan Dershowitz was really the most vocal.
And he attacked her just brutally at every juncture.
Said every time he was in front of a microphone, he said horrible things about her.
It was very, very, very nasty.
And they ended up.
In fairness, I mean, in fairness to Alan Dershowitz, she had accused him of sex crimes.
Right.
Well, you didn't let me finish.
I was because I certainly agree that that's enough to drive anybody crazy, especially if you're wrongly accused.
And he certainly felt that she had misidentified him.
At the same time, Virginia wasn't the only one that accused Dershowitz of this.
There was one other victim that also accused him.
Okay, so, Ben, a couple of things there.
She's saying that she knows because of her discussions with lawyers, she doesn't name, that there are victims that she doesn't name who could have a credible claim of having been trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein to a prominent individual, but they're so afraid that they're not going to come out and publicly say it.
They might have gotten compensated through a settlement disbursement, but they could have done that confidentially.
But Julie K. Brown is saying these people are just too afraid to come out and say so publicly.
We're supposed to believe that they wouldn't be hailed as political and cultural heroes for standing up to Epstein.
And also, on the Dershowitz point, and sorry if I'm overloading you with information, Julie K. Brown says, no, it wasn't just this one person who accused Dershowitz of committing child sex trafficking offenses.
There was a second person who Julie K. Brown cites as also having done this to kind of give some corroboration to that initial accuser, Virginia Gouffray.
And the second person, whom Julie K. Brown doesn't name, but if you're familiar with the case, you know, was Sarah Ransom, who admitted, we have material here, that she made up the claim that she possessed sex tapes implicating Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, Richard Branson.
She made it up.
She admitted it.
She admitted that she made this up.
She accused falsely Dershowitz of sex trafficking and then essentially had to retract that.
She gave a deposition saying that she engaged in sexual relations with like gentlemen over the course of her modeling endeavors, quote unquote, on my own accord.
And on and on and on with this.
I mean, she made like ridiculous, bizarre claims that she provably retracted.
And there's Julie Kay Brown citing her as a corroborating source.
So I ask all that as a lengthy lead up to say, like, isn't there some issue here with journalists acting as credulous victim advocates more so than journalists who should be more multi-directionally skeptical?
Let's say.
I mean, I'm not sure I agree with all or most of what you said.
And I also don't want to, I'm not as familiar with all the details of the case.
But I think that journalists actually should look out, should look for opportunities to tell stories that powerful people don't want told and are often in various ways compelling people with less power to cover up.
Like that's a huge kind of story.
And, you know, and obviously, but they obviously also, and I think, you know, if you read Jodi Cantor's book, she said, you know, there's an enormous burden on the journalists to make sure the stories are not just, you know, not just that you personally believe them, but that they are just stood up so well that you can't, that it's kind of inarguable.
And because among other things, what you don't want is to hang this accuser out there without enough evidence to corroborate their claim.
And I think I don't really doubt that there are, and that, you know, I think it has also been widely reported that there were adult sex workers in Epstein's orbit, that that was sort of part of, I don't know, the word trafficked, again, I'm not sure what the legal definition is, but that they were hanging around his world.
There was a money transfer to a woman.
But I think, again, like these are, in that case, of age professional sex workers.
Honestly, I think that most normal people do not.
I don't think it's unusual or a cover-up that most normal people, even if they were going to get paid and get some attention, would not want to be anywhere near this insane media storm.
So I'm sure there are lots of people who, I mean, there are obviously lots of people who had contact with Jeffrey Epstein through the years who don't want to talk about it in public.
Like, why wouldn't there be?
So I'm not sure there's a real conspiracy on the other side here either.
I agree with you that there's a credulity sometimes in journalism, but I think it's conspiracy.
I think that there's, I think that like most people here are acting in.
And I think that most of what's getting interpreted as really potentially wild conspiracies is kind of disgusting, lorid personal behavior by Epstein and by his, you know, companion, Ghillen Maxwell, that there's just no evidence that it was part of something much bigger.
But I think the question again why he was given your German embrace.
By the way, there is a real interesting mystery, which is how did this guy with this really pretty egregious sex conviction from the aughts become this central figure in New York society?
How did he ingratiate himself into these rich guys and make all this money?
Like those are really interesting, bizarre features of the world that actually Michael Wolf in particular has written a lot about and kind of explained.
Like it's yeah, and I want to get to that.
I want to get to that.
But Ben, I try to just sort of crystallize for this kind of crystal that I wanted to put to you.
But Ben, you, given your journalistic experience, would you would not use as a corroborating source a so-called witness or self-identified victim who is on record as having admitted that she fabricated salacious accusations of having sex tapes of prominent individuals.
Okay.
You wouldn't view somebody who has deposition transcripts out saying that she was like hacked by the CIA.
And then that's what Julie K. Brown did.
So it goes beyond, it's not a conspiracy, but there's like such credulity and such a reluctance to do any kind of critical assessment of people who contribute to the kind of instantiation of these theories.
And I'll also, by the way, draw millions of dollars From settlements, that I think to kind of frame this as it's just like the powerless versus the powerful is not quite right.
Like, David Boyce is not a powerless person, he's one of the most powerful lawyers in the world, and he's the one who's been aggressively representing many of these so-called victims who, some of whom have had to admit that they fabricated claims.
So, like, I don't understand why that's so bizarre for it to like incorporate into one's understanding of this issue.
Yeah, but I guess I just don't want to engage on the specifics because I don't know them well.
And the, I mean, but I guess, I mean, I think that you have a situation, you know, people say where there's smoke, there's fire.
And that is like really, really, very, very often true.
And a lot of the allegations against Epstein are uncontested and criminal.
And so you then see him in this New York, you know, in this new context with all these powerful people.
Like that's a lot of smoke.
And so, and you then had enormous investigative researches put to find the fire.
And it didn't turn out that there was one.
And I think that's a hard thing to get people's head around.
I mean, it's a very hard thing to do.
And also that there were serial stories.
And also, not just wasn't the fire found in terms of prominent third-party individuals to whom Epstein's quote-unquote victims were trafficked, which is what people believe.
I mean, the core belief that people seem to have about this issue is that there was a pedophilic sex trafficking ring and blackmail network that's being covered up.
First, it was the Biden administration that just was covering it up to protect their Democratic allies, and now Trump is covering it up.
But it's not, but it's not just evidence.
And that's something that happens.
There's evidence that there's been serial fabrications.
Yeah, very prominent people, including the president and vice president of the United States and a number of prominent Democrats and media commentators of all sorts, have either just explicitly said or insinuated the theory that you just stated, right?
So like, there's lots of reasons for regular people to think it makes sense, like people who I respect are saying it.
So it's, and then I do think it just kind of appeals to a sort of lizard brain kind of archetypal, powerful people sex trafficking.
I mean, there was a big, there are intermittent primal rage that deactivates your rational thought.
Yeah.
And I think you see all through history, people believe that, particularly about Jews, but also about other people.
Yeah.
Well, we don't have to get sidetracked into the Jewish discussion, but I know you have to go soon then.
So I want to bring one final thing here, which is that the ban, so it's the Steve Bannon.
In 2021, you got confirmation from Steve Bannon that he had over 15 hours of interview footage with Jeffrey Epstein that he personally conducted.
We found later through Michael Wolfe's book and some of his subsequent reportage that Jeffrey Epstein had essentially enlisted Bannon to provide him, Epstein, with sort of like media consultants, consulting services.
And Bannon took part in strategizing sessions with Epstein, Epstein's lawyers, and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, bizarrely enough, about how they could potentially train him or prep him to approach a forthcoming network TV interview with 60 Minutes or Gail King or someone else.
And in the course of doing that, Bannon recorded this one-on-one explosive interview footage, which would have been the only TV-style interview that Jeffrey Epstein was ever known to have done in his entire life.
And this was recorded just months before his final arrest and death.
And Bannon's been sitting on this footage for over six years now, with the exception of one little snippet that he put in a trailer for a documentary that he claimed was going to be released at some point and never was.
And at the same time now, given this latest brouhaha around Epstein files, we have Bannon styling himself as on the vanguard of calling for disclosure and transparency around Epstein files.
Meanwhile, he's sitting on and actively concealing for six years, probably the most explosive Epstein file that's in existence, right?
I mean, you know, we've read the transcript of it.
So it would obviously be fun to see it.
And I'm not sure.
I mean, I think there's a question of whether Bannon, and, you know, you're in the media business, whether he owns those videos or whether the Epstein estate owns those videos, right?
Like on whose behalf were they made.
And so I don't actually know if Bannon has the right to turn them into a doc.
I mean, I would love to see it.
And it is, I mean, you know, if you don't buy that there is some giant conspiracy involving lizard people here, it's still like the whole thing has become sort of darkly hilarious.
But I don't think there's something, I guess, like we all love there's no better story than like the video or the audio that, you know, that won't be released.
And obviously it's like a great genre of story.
Release the tape.
We don't.
I think there are versions of a translation.
Michael Wolf's book.
Yeah, Michael Wolf is written with the 15 minutes.
But if you assume that Michael Wolf isn't that is very complicated because he's also revealing parts.
You know, basically enough, although, I mean, obviously, we'd love to see it, but there is this pull toward like, there's got to be a silver bullet.
Like there's a secret tape.
There's something more, you know, just out of view.
We're just reaching just out of view.
And I think, I mean, I don't know, like at Semaphore, our goal is definitely to sort of try to serve as a bit of an antidote to that and to write for the reality-based community, which, by the way, like also insane, horrible things sometimes happen and there are real conspiracies.
And it's more about just trying really hard to stick to the evidence than denying that horrible things happen.
And that's really what's happening here is just, I think if you spend a good, you know, if you spend five minutes looking at this, you're just like, oh my God, this is the world's hugest, most insane conspiracy.
If you spend a couple hours, you think, oh, wow, a lot of really motivated investigators in journalism, in justice departments run by Donald Trump and by Joe Biden, you know, looked for the smoking gun that would have made their careers.
I mean, what a story and didn't find it.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not suggesting that the interview footage that Bannon has concealed since 2019, for whatever reason, whatever the ultimate ownership of that footage.
I'm not saying that it would be a silver bullet or prove any of the overarching theories.
I'm just saying it would obviously be very interesting for in the public interest to have that put out because we haven't ever seen a TV style interview with that scene.
Yes.
Yeah.
And yeah.
And what a strange, dark character, right?
That would be.
Yes, for sure.
I would love to see the documentary.
I look forward to it.
I mean, I'm not holding my breath for the release of that quote unquote documentary anytime soon because I'm not sure that there was ever much of a plan really to put it into existence because like what's got to take place in that 15 or 16 hours that Bannon's prepping Epstein for in anticipation of like a 60 minute style interview.
They're going to ask him all kinds of questions about his relationship with Trump.
Like 60 minutes, Steve Croft, let's say, would ask Jeffrey Epstein to explain his relationship with Donald Trump, who was the then president and then future president.
Does Bannon want to put out a bunch of footage in which Jeffrey Epstein is opining at length on Donald Trump?
It seems like explaining his relationship with Dan Bannon.
It seems like a good question for your interview with Steve Bannon, but I am not sure.
Unfortunately, that's my next question.
I did send questions to him.
He did not answer.
So, Ben, we're all having me.
Give us a one thought on Eddington because we all just saw it.
Oh, there's like a nerdy movie.
I thought it was brilliant.
And I was surprised.
I've been a little surprised to see that it's being in, it's actually sort of being received as a right-wing movie.
It's always, I saw it and did not, and didn't really see it as having a political valence in that way, but actually thought to the degree that it did, maybe the, I don't know.
I think people on the right are quicker to take offense mostly on sort of Hollywood products.
But in this case, it seems like, I don't know, I thought it was great.
I thought it was a real, I don't know, it's a real sort of dramatization of lots of things that are wrong with societies.
And the director, Ariaster, said the thing on our podcast, Mixed Signals, about it being a Western in which people had phones instead of guns.
It really stuck with me.
Yeah, as I told Megan, who works on the show and was demanding that I go see this immediately, even though I was only very vaguely of its existence, vaguely aware of its existence, I told her it felt like they figured out how to film a movie from inside my internet adult brain.
Oh, God.
It was like disturbingly realistic.
The funny thing is whenever you talked about this movie, like we had the director on, and at the end of the interview, he sort of was like, oh my God, we've made this sound like the worst movie ever, but actually like it's super fun.
There's an action scene at the end.
Pedro Pascal is in it.
Like you should see it, which is how I feel like I need to say now.
It does not actually look like The Inside of Michael's Brain.
Or maybe it does.
But The Inside of Michael's Brain has like Emma Stone and Joaquin Phoenix in it.
So it's fine.
Yeah, it's a really excellent movie.
But I feel like whenever you talk about it, whenever I talk about it, the person I'm talking to is like, well, I'm definitely not going to watch that.
That sounds insane.
Actually, it's very interesting.
There's not a great way to sell it.
I mean, like you're an original blogger fan.
You're somebody who is admittedly internet addled.
We kind of like intuitively understand what we're trying to convey here.
But for the normal person who maybe is a little bit more sane in how their brain is constituted, I could see why our pitch might not immediately get them to rush out to the theater.
But what amazing captures is like how much time people spend scrolling on their phones.
And you would think that would be boring, but some of the biggest laughs are like people are like some of the characters scrolling on their phone and seeing some ridiculous meme about, I don't know, Bill Gates or Hillary being like morphing into demons or Trump with the Bible in June 2020.
And there's Marjorie Taylor Greene makes a cameo somehow.
I mean, it's endless and it's incredible.
Actually, it's one of the most mind-blowing movie-going experiences I think I've had in a decade or so.
So people should go check out your innovative director in Semaphore.
Yes, it's go watch the movie, despite what we say.
Ignore us.
Ben, thanks so much for having me on.
Glad we were here.
Yes, Ben, I hope this was not.
I mean, you couldn't have been that enthused about doing this, but I hope it didn't.
What do you mean?
I did that.
I was thrilled to hear from you and I'm happy to be here.
You know, it's optional showing up.
You know, this is all very optional.
That's true.
That's true.
So thank you for having me on.
I'll suspend disbelief and assume that you're being earnest.
I mean, why else would I be here?
It's nice to see you.
All right.
Thanks a lot, Ben.
Appreciate it.
All right.
That's Ben Smith of Semaphore.
Probably not your most commonplace interview here on System Update.
He made certain assertions around the Epstein narrative that I don't know that I would totally endorse, but and like in terms of why he's saying that the Epstein story resonates with the public or at least the internet in the way that it does, that I'm not sure I would fully co-sign.
But I think he has a worthwhile perspective, usually in general, and it's informed by like a reporterial eye.
And I wanted to bring on somebody to touch on the Epstein issue whereby I wouldn't just be pontificating at length because it would probably drive the entire audience insane.
And they would pledge never to watch system update again.
And they would burn their like Rumble premium subscriptions.
Anyway, just as like a final quick segment here, can we bring Megan back just to touch on these interviews that we did a few weeks ago, or should we skip over that?
Is there any thoughts coming from the control room?
Megan's back.
Okay, so Megan, first of all, do you have any reaction to the Ben Smith interview?
Were we screaming over each other?
It was a little bit Pierce Morgan, but you know, that's always fun to watch.
That was Pierce Morgan?
No, no, no.
It wasn't that level of screaming over each other, but it was a scary thing.
I think I meant Pierce Morgan in that I was trying to like nail him or sandbag him or something.
No, no, I just mean the general like chaotic energy of Pierce Morgan.
But we needed like maybe five more outrageous people to make it a true Pierce segment.
Okay, I like to summon my chaotic energy for journalistic purposes.
So I think he's a great guest.
I'm a fan.
But yeah, anyway, in terms of these interviews, some of you guys may have seen them posted on our locals page on the 4th of July.
Michael and I, truly dedicated to system update, went to Staten Island and interviewed people.
We weren't really dedicated to system update, let's be honest.
We were just like, let's go to Staten Island and record some video and then maybe something could be done with it.
No, no, no, no.
We do it all for the audience.
So yeah, we talked to mostly Trump voters on Staten Island about what they thought about Trump bombing Iran, which feels like ages ago since transpired.
Yeah, not even a full month.
Yeah, it was last month.
It's like almost exactly a month ago.
Yeah.
So that's the best.
And I mean, the responses were pretty uniform, I feel.
Yeah, and here's why I wanted to do this, because I think there's way too much emphasis in so much media coverage on the MAGA base or trends within the MAGA base or opinions that are evident within Trump's quote-unquote base, which is a very overused term, based on just looking at what's going on on social media or like what's ever algorithmically served up to you.
You take that as indicative of broader opinion trends or dynamics or sentiments within the Republican voting coalition, which obviously is virtually synonymous with MAGA.
Maybe there's like a little lack of overlap there, arguably, in terms of how you conceptualize it.
But I do think a useful corrective is to go actually in person to events where there's going to be a lot of Trump supporters and ground zero is nowhere if not Staten Island on 4th of July.
So I figured, yeah, I'm just kind of like non-judgmentally ask people just to give a new, a neutral, neutrally ask people to give their opinion on Trump bombing Iran.
I think you'll verify, Megan, I didn't cherry pick.
I didn't really ask leading questions, I don't think.
It was really about trying to just identify what their views were, right?
Yeah.
I mean, you were just bringing that 4th of July, Michael Tracy Joy to the parade, asking people about their thoughts on Trump bombing Iran.
It was a great parade, I will say.
Eric Adams was there.
Curtis Lewa was there.
It was true, like, Americana.
It was really fun.
Vito Facella, Staten Island Borough President?
Yes.
Yeah.
Lots of, you know, miss that or other, one thing or another, like winners where like they'd ride around in a truck and wave.
Old, like, classic cars that people would drive, classic NYPD vehicles.
So like retro colors and styles and so forth.
Yeah, great slice of Americana.
Definitely.
It's claimed to be the oldest continuous 4th of July parade in the country.
I haven't fact-checked that.
Maybe you can ask AI if that's true.
But what you'll see here is that, I mean, these people are very supportive of Trump bombing Iran and have no connection at all to these proclamations that were very widespread within the past month that whether to bomb Iran or not was creating some dramatic rift within the MAGA base based on like a handful of media person,
like online media personalities or podcasters who are obviously not representative of Republican voters at large or Trump voters.
Yeah, I'd be curious if you went back to Staten Island and asked people about the Trump administration's handling of the Epstein case, like if you would get that same kind of uniform support for Trump.
I don't know.
I don't think so.
Because on the bombing Iran issue, people were very adamant, like I trust whatever Trump says.
But it does seem that maybe the Epstein case is one issue where you might see a little more division on that.
I don't know.
Possibly.
Could be a new assignment.
Let's play some of this old footage.
Let's play some of this footage.
And I gave a timestamp for where to start it.
And people can get a taste of what we're talking about here.
Curious, since it's the 4th of July when we were reflecting on America and so forth, what was your view of Trump bombing Iran a few weeks ago?
Were you supportive of that, opposed to it, somewhere in between?
I'm supportive of that because it makes in strength we can gain more peace.
And I think we showed the people of the United States how powerful we can be when we take action against terrorism.
And if they try again, I think that Trump will be even stronger.
But I think we can maintain peace with that type of system where negotiations have failed over months and months and months.
So that's my opinion.
And I praise my country on the 250 anniversary because I'm also an Associate Marine, Brooklyn 1 Detachment 27, and I'm also a member of the Catholic War Veterans as an associate.
Well, thank you for your service.
Which conflict did you serve in?
Oh, no, I didn't serve.
I'm an associate.
I serve now to do anything the Marines want to war veterans.
So did you vote for Trump?
Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
And Trump has been strongly supporting Israel.
Do you consider that consistent with America First, which is Trump's big slogan, meaning put America first?
And yet some people maybe raise questions about whether that comports with also Being so profligate in support of Israel with military support, financial support, economic support, and so on.
Yes, because Israel is our closest friend.
We have someone in the Middle East we can depend on with their type of intelligence they have, and such a small country all the rest of their lives have to fight for their freedom.
So I'm proud that the United States has a great friend with the greatest technology and systems that we can work with and that we can count on them at all times.
We're curious, since we're all reflecting on America today, what did you think of Trump bombing Iran recently?
This is 4th of July.
I'm not commenting on that, but I like what he did on ex-military.
Okay.
So you do like what he did?
Stopped the war, right?
He stopped it by bombing Iran?
Are they messing with Israel anymore?
Is any of our troops getting killed anymore?
No, they're not.
Well, Israel started it, right, by launching a preemptive strike on Iran.
No.
No.
No, they didn't.
Iran has been bombing us for how many years?
Bombing Israel?
No, bomb bombing us.
And Israel.
They've been messing all their proxies for how many years?
Because of Biden, right?
When Biden released all their money for them, they went nuts.
The Iranian military's been bombing the United States?
Not them per se, but Hezbollah.
Remember, they were shooting our ships a couple months ago?
Oh, the Houthis in Yemen?
In Yemen and all of that potential.
Where they get all their money from?
Right.
Oh, okay.
So right there.
So you basically support what Trump did?
Yeah, that's my man.
You're a voter of Trump?
That's right.
Trump's all the way.
Okay.
So just as a group, since today's a day to sort of reflect on America, just curious what you all thought of Trump bombing Iran recently.
Was it good, bad?
I don't know.
I love Trump, so.
Trump supporters.
We're Trump supporters.
You are?
So what did you think about him bombing Iran recently?
I believe he had good reasons.
You do.
What was the reason?
I just believe in him.
And whatever he does, I'm all for it.
So if in the abstract, maybe you might be a little wary of something.
If he says it's necessary, you deferred his judgment because you're a longtime supporter of his.
Yes.
That's it.
Got it.
Okay.
Let's just hope he does his job and he does it well.
That's all we can hope.
We're counting on him.
What did you think of the whole Iran episode?
Did we get paid for this interview?
No, listen.
Like I said, whatever he thinks, if it's going to work, let's do it.
And hopefully it will bring us some peace.
Oop.
I muted myself.
I'm back.
So that's a sample of the interviews.
There's one more that's pretty interesting, but I think people sort of get the idea.
And what I enjoy or appreciate about that is I think you would agree that it's reasonable to postulate that those folks are more representative of the,
quote, MAGA base, if we're going to use that terminology, than some anomalous podcaster who decided that they were going to like maybe advocate for Trump in 2024 to defeat the deep state or something like that.
These people are much more representative of how the kind of prototypical Trump voter consumes information about Trump and then formulates opinions as to the rightness or wrongness of Trump's actions.
Yeah, I would say so.
I mean, I think it's always helpful to remember and not to bring it back to Eddington, but I guess this is one of the things that brings home is that online is not always real life.
And sometimes those two things converge.
But a lot of these people, I would imagine, watch TV probably more than like watching YouTube videos or, you know, scrolling on Twitter where they're in this kind of very specific sphere that I think, you know, our show is sort of adjacent to this sphere as well.
So I sometimes have to check myself and be like, okay, this media ecosystem that I'm in is not always 100% representative of like the rest of the country.
I would say it's probably like Fox News, which is the number one watch cable network.
I believe it still is.
And that's probably where these people are getting their information.
And it's not like they're uninformed.
Like they had a lot to say to you.
There's an interview later in the locals compilation where you spoke to this woman for like almost a half hour, it felt like.
She wanted to go on forever and ever.
I mean, she was, she was interesting.
It was long.
I was happy to chat.
But yeah, it's not, this is not to say that these people are uninformed.
Yeah, they don't use the internet.
You know, I think it might be a little bit anachronistic to assume that because like there's a guy in the 60s or something who is pro-Trump, that he must just sit and vegetate in front of Fox News or something all day.
Maybe he partly does that, but these people, people also use the internet, you know?
Yeah.
It's just that like the representations that the media chooses to fixate on of like online MAGA sentiment might not even be representative of online MAGA supporters, right?
Or only representative of a narrow subsection.
You know, in the 2016 election, this was before your time, you must have been kidding.
You were hardly sentient then.
But there was a very palpable phenomenon that I personally was trying to chronicle where because Trump had so little support within traditional media, elite media, with the exception of Fox, like he had gotten zero essentially newspaper endorsements.
Even some traditional conservative media was either hostile to Trump or like barely even tolerant.
It created a lot of blind Spots in the coverage of the nature of Trump's appeal and also his prospects for potentially winning the 2016 election, which took a lot of people as this giant surprise that never could have been anticipated.
And all along, I was trying to provide a corrective to that outlook because it was reflective of a certain kind of insularity or immersion in a certain bubble with a limited scope of information coming and broadening your views of what's possible in a very diverse country of 330 million.
And I mean, diverse in like every respect, not just racial or the more typical ways people conceive of that, geographically diverse, et cetera, sociologically diverse, and diverse in terms of how people are increasingly consuming media.
But now I see like a similar dynamic happening now and then on the alternative media, which has gotten a lot more ascendant since 2016.
Just like the proliferation of streaming technology like we're using now or podcasts where like podcasts existed in 2016, but it wasn't like everybody and their mother had a podcast at that point.
Now like any dope could just like make one and they're suddenly a podcaster or in the media.
And alternative media is like superseding in terms of its influence, the traditional media, particularly among let's let's say people 40 and younger.
And so there's a temptation to get overly immersed in or overly biased by that information environment that you inhabit and then draw unsupportable inferences about from what you're observing within that information ecosystem that you want to extrapolate reflects something about the entire polity,
but doesn't.
And so you do have to kind of diversify how you're picking up information.
And I think one way to do that that I've always found to be useful is just do like man on the street, you know, old school reporting now and then where you're going and talking to people like we did in Staten Island.
I feel feel that to be a very useful corrective.
No, definitely.
I think that you see some of that like man on the street reporting, especially like leading up to elections.
Like I forget who it was from like MSM, Alice Wagner or whatever did that town hall where she talked to union workers in some like Midwestern state or something.
And it was just like so uncomfortable to watch because she was just clearly sent through on like this one assignment because she's like, oh, the election's coming up.
We better figure out what these union voters think.
And, you know, very few people actually.
The cliche is a diner in the Midwest.
A diner in the Midwest and parachute in and then leave.
Yeah.
But you have to get out there as much as you can.
And I've also, I went to Staten Island, I think like a week maybe before we went.
I've spent a lot of time on Staten Island, weirdly enough, over the past, I don't know, a month.
But just to talk to people about like the New York City elections and, you know, really just doing that on the street reporting, I think is the best way to get your finger on the pulse.
And I'm always conflicted about like how to do those because you don't necessarily want to like debate people or anything or like really push back on them.
It's just interesting to see like, why do people think the way that they do and what kind of information do they have and where are they getting it?
Exactly.
Like I'm not necessarily looking to press or probe or quote unquote debate random citizens like I would if I were interviewing a politician.
However, there was one clip.
I mean, hilariously enough, there was the guy, I think, what was his name, Michael or whatever his name was, where he's like, no, I don't want to talk about that.
When I ask him the question, then he immediately starts talking about it.
Yeah.
Like I asked him, like, what do you think of Trump bombing Iran?
He's like, I don't want to talk about that, but it was a good idea.
And then he just talks about it for another two or three minutes, right?
You know, but he's saying stuff like Iran's been bombing the United States and or Israel for X period of time.
And he's making other like factual assertions that I'm not necessarily looking to debate him over, but I think in order to further interrogate how he acquires those beliefs or belief in certain statements of fact, then you can do a little bit of a light pushback to kind of just draw him out on how he developed that belief.
There was another guy, I don't think we showed it, but there's another guy.
Can we pull that one up actually?
Because this one was actually, you know, we don't have to go on for too much longer.
But there was another one where a guy makes a genuinely astounding claim that was a little bit disturbing if we want to kind of assume that it's widely believed.
Let me see if I can.
I think it was right after that last one that we played.
There was another gentleman.
Joseph.
Can we go to Joseph at 1405?
Joseph Mutoli.
And do you live around here?
Right here.
I'm sorry.
Yeah.
So since it's the 4th of July, we're reflecting on America and so forth.
I'm curious what you thought of Trump bombing Iran recently.
Did you support that?
I supported it.
You know why?
You don't know what that country's going to do.
And now they didn't know retaliation.
They knew it.
You know, this man, he don't fool around.
You know, he's crazier than the rest of them.
No, seriously, and they fear him, which we need in this country.
Do you think that it could result in a broader war, potentially?
No.
They already said that there's no retaliation with that.
But once you start bombing, you never know what could happen in a month, six months.
What if they started bombing?
They got the nuclear attacks, too.
The first person that's going to get hit is New York.
You think Iran would attack New York with a nuclear bomb?
Oh, definitely.
They hate the United States.
Definitely.
But there was some controversy or dispute over whether they had actually acquired a nuclear weapon, because that's been claimed by Israel and others for a very long time, and it hadn't come to fruition, but now, supposedly, it was different.
It's your same say, we get in an argument or a thing, you did this.
I say, well, he did this in an accident.
We really don't know the truth, but it is good to have a supporter behind us that'll stand up for the country.
Whether he's right or wrong, it's still, you know, God forbid we do get bombed 9-11.
We got hammered.
That wasn't Iran, though.
No, but it was their neighbors.
Well, that was, oh, yeah, we get it.
The people there, I feel sorry for.
A lot of people got killed.
Just like you and I. It's the government that they weigh on the people.
People don't want this.
They want to be our friends.
We want to be their friends.
I think war is terrible.
I was in six years.
I know war is terrible.
Where did you serve?
United States Army Reserves.
I was in the United States for six years, yeah.
War is a terrible thing.
What do you think about the idea of regime change?
Trump suggested it while the Israeli bombing campaign is underway, but as of yet, there hasn't been a full Iraq-style invasion or anything.
But what about regime change in principle?
Do you think that the U.S. should be involved in facilitating regime change in Iran?
Between Iran and Israel.
I mean, you want to be a media.
Israel is very closely tied to the U.S., though.
Thank you.
But that should be between the two countries.
We should be like in the back as a mediator.
Russia should be also as a mediator.
You know, this way you got balance.
One last question, just curious, in terms of Russia, since you mentioned it, Trump said yesterday that he was very disappointed with Putin.
He's not happy about how his negotiations have been going because Putin doesn't seem interested in ending the war.
What do you think the status of that conflict is and Trump's role as a mediator?
The two of them are like Abbott and Costello.
No, seriously.
Except less funny.
And I support Trump.
But the two of them, they know each other.
They play games.
Trump and Putin are like Abbott and Costello?
Yes.
When they play games with nuclear weapons.
And thank you.
And they notice.
Okay, so I guess that the interview is paused.
You guys get the idea.
I enjoy actually talking to people about their political views.
It's not every day that just some ordinary person is going to be asked what they think about things.
And much of the time, people want to chat or they're happy to chat.
Not always.
Sometimes the people are a little bit more reserved or they think they might get in trouble or there could be some adverse consequence to talking.
But in the main, I think it's not that difficult to get people to expand or articulate their political views.
But there were a few interestings with that gentleman.
He was suggesting that essentially preemptive military action against Iran was needed because they were on the precipice of potentially bombing New York with a nuclear weapon, attacking New York with a nuclear bomb.
And he said, you know, look at 9-11 as though like 9-11 was a lesson in what we could expect from Iran if they were to acquire a nuclear weapon.
Of course, like people who are a little bit more well-versed in the issue know that Iran had nothing of substance really to do with 9-11, although that claim has kind of been made at the fringes over the years.
But, you know, Iranians are Persians.
They're not Arabs.
It's Shiite Islam.
It's not Sunni jihadism that would have informed the ideology of al-Qaeda.
Many differences that could be explained to that gentleman.
But, you know, he just kind of conflates a lot of things.
And again, I'm not saying this to denigrate him, but I just think it's a useful window in terms of how people are processing information.
Like if he was supporting Trump on the grounds that we needed to take preemptive military action to prevent New York from being destroyed in a nuclear strike, then you got to think about like, what is it about the nature of the media environment that he's inhabiting where that came to be a belief he thought was reasonable and then caused him to support that latest round of military interventionism.
A little bit disturbing in terms of the efficacy of like propaganda and how easily and oftentimes eagerly people will parrot it and then sort of present it as like a result of their own independent thought.
Yeah, definitely.
And the rest of those interviews are up on locals in case people want to watch them.
I'm getting messages from Victor and Cole to.
We should wrap up.
Okay, we will wrap up.
Megan, last word for me is even though you wanted to avoid the Epstein issue like the plague, there actually has been a through Epstein through line, summer of Epstein through line throughout this entire broadcast.
Started out with the Eddington review, went to Ben Smith, and then we thought, okay, we're going to like somehow do a U-turn for this final segment where we're going to talk about our 4th of July interviews from a few weeks ago when the Epstein memo hadn't even come out yet.
But it gave us this idea that maybe we should go back to Staten Island or someplace and talk to people about their impressions of what's going on with the Epstein saga.
So maybe we'll do that.
Maybe we won't.
But there's a unifying theme here clearly, which is that it's the summer of Epstein.
And I'm apologizing in this.
I'm not co-signing summer.
I'm not co-signing summer of Epstein, but I think that I can't believe I would ever say this, but I miss Brat Summer at this point.
It's funny that that was all happening like almost exactly a year ago, right?
I know.
I was saying earlier, we need Charlie XCX or Sabrina Carpenter or it would probably have to be one of those two, maybe Gracie Adams, Abrams, although not as into her necessarily as like a cultural sugarnaut.
I'm saying Sabrina Carpenter and Charlie XCX need to co-write an Epstein anthem, Summer of Epstein anthem.
And then at least we'll get some club classics Out of the summer of Epstein.
We got them from the Brat Summer.
I actually love that album and I reviewed it on this very show in summer of 2024.
But I'm now demanding that the powers that be in the music industry, whomever pulls the strings for Sabrina Carpenter and/or Charlie XCX, needs to convince them to do an Epstein anthem.
Actually, you know what?
I think I might have a connection there.
Dasha, the Red Scare Girls, they know Charlie XCX.
They were referenced in one of her songs.
So maybe I'm going to, I'll pass a message along for her.
All right.
Well, keep me updated.
That's my contribution to humanity.
All right.
Thank you, Megan.
Thank you, viewers.
Thank you, Ben.
Yeah.
Thank you, Ben Smith.
Thanks, System Update Producers.
And thanks, Glenn, I guess, wherever he may be.
And we will see you next time here on System Update.
