This is a preview of The Weekender edition of the Muckrake Podcast. Please go to our Patreon to gain access to the regular Weekender episodes on Fridays.
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss Donald Trump's new claims that Epstein “stole” Virginia Giuffre from a Mar-a-Lago spa in 2000. We dig into what he said, when he said it, and why he called Epstein a “great guy” in 2002 — before their supposed falling out in 2004.
Also: Ford posts its first quarterly loss in years thanks to tariffs, and the U.S. labor market sheds 62,000 jobs — a 140% increase in layoffs from last July.
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That was a long extended delay to opening of the cam, the end of the week.
I'm Jared Dave Sexton.
This is the weekender edition of my Craig podcast.
I'm here with Nick Houseman.
We have a full show.
We're ready to go.
Just a reminder to everyone, head over to patreon.com slash mycraigpodcast, support the show, gain full access to the wickenders, whatever.
The weekender editions.
Man, I've been tongue-tied as hell lately.
Anyway, patreon.com slash moncrake podcast supports the show, gets you additional content and access to things.
My friend, Nick Houseman, how are you?
I'm good.
I'm good.
And I think that what we're seeing a little bit is that notion of relying on the automatic, just you're so used to saying things and your mind kind of goes somewhere else.
And next thing you know, you're like Elvis trying to do the talking part of are you lonesome tonight?
I mean, listen, most of the time, completely on.
The analysis is right there.
The thoughts, the insight, all right there.
Occasionally you get into the automatic mode and you skip.
It's for me, it's like playing guitar.
You get into a flow state with playing the guitar.
You can't do anything wrong.
You think about playing the guitar.
Oh, God, Nick, that's trouble right there.
Well, you know what's funny about that?
I get in that flow state I can remember.
And then someone might walk in the room kind of like I didn't quite see it over the shoulder and it startles me.
I get scared.
Like I'm so in that zone.
And then they break me out of that and I get, you know, it's an interesting flow states, am I right?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, it's funny even speaking about the Elvis, the famous one where he forgets the words, are you lonesome tonight?
And then part of that, he ends up saying, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, plus tax.
And guess what, Jared?
We got to talk about taxes a little bit today, the tariffs and all sorts of things.
But we also need to talk a little bit about Virginia Duffrey and her being, I guess, quote unquote, stolen from one business to another, which is awful.
And then guess what?
Ford is reporting some quarterly losses that they haven't seen in a while.
And the tariffs are about to kick in, I believe, tomorrow, if what Trump has said is to be believed.
So lots to talk about.
Unfortunately, always lots to talk about.
Always, always.
And this is not dying, Jared.
Again, if you asked me four weeks ago, three weeks ago, we'd still be talking about Ghelain Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein.
I would say, of course, we wouldn't, because there would be all sorts of other things like Obama being arrested for 2016 shenanigans.
And again, they've tried, but they can't get this horse dead somehow.
It can't go away because it's actually something.
Okay.
I agree.
Yeah.
Well, I think what's something is that when Trump keeps giving us different reasons and different explanations for stuff, then you got to, that indicates to you that they're lying about it.
Well, yeah.
I mean, that's the ultimate problem here is that Donald Trump is not just a liar, but he has no discipline whatsoever.
And also, like, he has a long and storied history of admitting the crimes that he commits.
And so here we are.
Does it indicate perhaps the sign of a conscience that he recognizes that this is wrong?
That's an interesting thing.
Nick, you bring that up.
That's a really, really interesting question because I think no matter how corroded and how like lost a person is, and Donald Trump is not going to suddenly have, you know, a conversion where all of a sudden he's like, I want to be a good person.
Like, I think that conscience or sense of self is always there.
And, you know, even if you're talking to people, and I'm sure you've had this experience, like even some of the least self-aware people that you'll talk to, sometimes in the middle of a conversation, they'll say something that sort of betrays an awareness that's underneath all of those things, whether it's a confession or whether or not it's a piece of insight.
Because I think you are constantly sort of fighting with those things, even if you're incredibly unhealthy, which I think is helping to fuel this thing.
Okay.
And it's just sort of fascinating to watch it unravel that way, because let's go through the timeline as we've now been able to examine it because on the plane, and we're going to, you know what, we have the audio, which I'll share in a second, but the timeline doesn't make a lot of sense to me because in 2000, we understand that Virginia Duffrey was working at Mar-a-Lago as a 16-year-old in the spa.
Jeffrey Epstein spied her, eyed her, and then hired her away to work for him.
2002, he's quoted as saying how great of a guy Jeffrey Epstein is and how he likes young girls.
And then 2004 is when they had this breakup, which again, there's all sorts of different versions of why they broke up, why Jeffrey Epstein and Trump broke up.
But here's what Trump did say on the plane.
I guess it's worth listening to for other people to decide whether or not he is feeling the weight of what's happening and why he's feeling so many details.
So, Mr. President, Epstein has a certain reputation, obviously.
I'm just curious, were some of the workers that were taken from you, were some of them young women?
Well, I don't want to say, but everyone knows people that were taken.
And it was the concept of taking people that work for me is bad.
But that sort of has been pretty well out there.
And the answer is yes.
It worked.
In the spa.
Yeah.
People that worked in the spa.
I have a great spa.
One of the best spas in the world at Mar-a-Lago.
And people were taken out of the spa, hired by him.
In other words, gone.
And other people would come and complain.
This guy is taking people from the spa.
I didn't know that.
And then when I heard about it, I told him, I said, listen, we don't want you taking our people, whether it was spa or not spa.
I don't want him taking people.
And he was fine.
And then not too long ago, he did it again.
And I said, out of here.
Mr. President.
All right.
There's a lot of interesting things happening in that confession.
Yeah, there is.
And Nick, I, man, first of all, President of the United States of America saying these things, it never ceases to just astound and disgust me.
You know something that has started to really, I don't know, it started to become something in the back of my head that's getting louder and louder.
And this comment, I think, spoke to it.
And Nick, it's this.
I don't think that Donald Trump was just a friend of Jeffrey Epstein.
I don't think that Trump was just running around with Jeffrey Epstein.
I don't think that Trump was just engaging in these awful crimes and abuses with Jeffrey Epstein.
It's starting to feel like over time they became competitors.
Yeah.
And that is a weird thing to think about in the scheme of this, which is we know who Trump is.
We know what he's capable of.
We know that he's an organized crime boss.
We know that he's not afraid to break laws wherever he can find them.
What's becoming more apparent is that this isn't just an association.
It is, I think, something deeper than that.
And I think as this gets revealed or doesn't get revealed, I think it's going to become more apparent that this wasn't just something that he engaged in.
It was something that he, for lack of a better word, participated in.
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, because the word stole is really concerning.
And, you know, at the end of that clip, he confirms that Virginia Dufrey was one of the people that he quote unquote stole.
And, you know, when you look at it that way, as if it's property, you know, that was stolen from you.
It does seem to indicate there's some notion of like he had a different relationship with her than just an employee.
Now, that said, there's usually the word is poaching, right?
You don't want people to come and poach.
You've trained, you spend a lot of time training people to work in your business, and then someone just comes and hires them away.
Now, the problem with that is that he's familiar with what Epstein, very familiar with Epstein as a person and what his businesses were.
So it's like, what is Epstein hiring someone that's a 16-year-old to do, right?
That's another question.
It doesn't make a lot of sense.
And no one seems to want to answer, ask Trump or anybody.
But he even referenced spa or not spa.
So there's some notion that there were other people that were poached from other parts of the Mar-a-Lago or other parts of his orbit.
And then other people were coming in to tell him that.
And so it's like, okay, well, who are these other people that are coming?
I didn't know that he was doing this until somebody came and told me like there are a lot of different little details that kind of seep into this that I, that, that indicate, yeah, just a lot of nefarious things going on.
And that's what I'm always listening for because I feel like, yeah, he's undisciplined.
Like you said, he can't control himself.
And he will give you stuff that he doesn't mean to every time he opens his mouth.
Yeah.
And, you know, like these weird confessions that also involve a young woman who was apparently, you know, allegedly assaulted by Prince Andrew, you know, through Jeffrey Epstein.
These details that he keeps offering.
And it just makes me think, Nick, like we know about a multitude of crimes that Donald Trump has committed.
He's been, you know, charged with them.
He's been found guilty of them.
Would you say it's fair to say that for every crime that Donald Trump has been charged with or that has come to light, that there are 10 to 20 other crimes that we do not know about?
Oh, I mean, I just hope that Merrick Garland doesn't sleep well at night anymore.
No, I mean, like, if there was any justice in the world, that guy would, you know, probably be behind bars as well.
And you think about it and you know how he treats people.
You know how he's abused people.
Now, you know, we have an inkling of some of the things that he was engaged in with someone like Jeffrey Epstein.
I don't think it's a hop or skip or a jump in order to start saying, you know, what else was going on in these Trump properties?
What else was and quite frankly, we know that he steals from people.
We know that, you know, he will take their grips if he wants to.
And now all of a sudden, you start really, I don't know, man.
It's, you kind of look at this stuff and you're on, you're like, you're really close to it.
You know what I mean?
Like you look at it and you see what he says and what he sort of acknowledges or even leaks, but then you go up to like 30,000 feet.
And all of a sudden you start looking at it and you're like, oh my God, like there's something deeper and darker here.
It's not just like losing employees who were then like groomed and taken advantage of.
It's the idea that these two guys very well could have had parallel.
I hate to say businesses, but you know what I mean?
Like parallel crimes.
And like to hear what he's saying now, like it just feels like it illuminates something like even uglier, which is one of the reasons why I don't think this thing is going away.
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