This is a preview of the Weekender. Get full access to the entire episode on our Patreon: http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
Co-hosts Nick Hauselman and Jared Yates Sexton unpack a wild week: The Epstein survivors speak and the right tries to launder Trump’s proximity. RFK Jr. does the “don’t trust experts” routine, while Florida moves to end school vaccine mandates. The U.S. blows up a Venezuelan boat with 11 people on board, insisting they were drug smugglers with no evidence.
They talk about how manufactured uncertainty keeps power unaccountable, why shredding public health is the point, and what it means when even Rand Paul sounds like due process. Plus: Oasis in Chicago, beer showers, and why Jaws in IMAX still rips.
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I am your host, Nick Houselman and my co-host Jerry DH Sexton is with us from the road today.
And we have a lot to talk about.
So Jared, uh great to have you on here wherever you're calling in from and uh how's everything going?
I well, first of all, it's good to see you.
We took Labor Day off.
We don't take many days off.
I hope it was good for you.
I spent Labor Day with a few 10,000 other people watching Oasis, put on the best concert I have ever seen in my entire life.
I will talk about it at the end of the weekender and a reminder that in order to listen to this entire episode, you're already listening to the previews.
Head over to Patreon.com slash Mike Craig Podcast.
We'll get into that.
So many other things.
But Nick, my friend, it is so good to talk with you and hang out with you again.
Absolutely.
And I was also out of town uh over the Labor Day weekend.
I was dodging murder and bullets, I suppose, in Chicago, left and right.
Uh in in absolute, this is a beautiful city, my home my hometown, uh, that's howdling town.
Um we just each other.
We missed each other in Chicago by a few hours.
Oh, I know, I know.
We're so close.
Ships passing in the night.
But uh again, if you were to walk around and we were all over the city all weekend long, uh, and and you would not get any sense of what Trump is trying to portray uh as far as that city goes.
Um, but we have a lot to talk about.
So we have to talk about the Epstein victims who speak out, spoke out for the first time uh in public, and uh how Trump is reacting to that.
Uh that goes us that takes us to Florida, where they are um eliminating mandates for all vaccines in schools, um, good times.
Uh we also have RFK Jr. testifying in front of the Senate, which is a chalk full of uh uh soundbikes we can share with you guys.
And then um, you know, our government uh murdered some folks uh out on a boat uh near Venezuela.
So we need to talk about it.
Yeah, they they sure did.
And then for hours at a time, no one was for sure whether or not the president of the United States of America was alive or dead.
So not only that, but I would say a good uh half the uh country was kind of hoping he was dead.
Well, I I gotta tell you, and getting into the story, and there's analysis to be had here, but one of the things, Nick, that I keep thinking about are these weird little surreal moments that we have.
I was on an Amtrak train outside of New York City, watching people try and figure out whether or not Donald Trump had either died or been taken to some sort of intensive medical care.
This is the stuff of a weird totalitarian, authoritarian state.
And I've I've got reactions to this and thoughts on an analysis, but how how did you feel during those few hours?
It felt like Covefe, but a little bit uh, you know, more mortal.
I I would argue that it wasn't even, you know, uh hours, it seemed like a few days.
Uh a couple of days, we weren't sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so it's like, you know, the dude doesn't break the law for a couple days, uh, or at least publicly, and and the assumption is he must be dead.
It's really what we're thinking.
So uh I I'm I'm way beyond ever believing in any of that crap anymore.
And uh I I don't think that's gonna happen this way anyway.
I think uh i i if it were to happen like that for whatever reason, health and stuff, it'll be so sudden there won't be any kind of wringing hands or like a little bit of leaks here.
I right you know what I mean.
I just feel like uh there that that won't happen the way that we thought it happened this weekend.
Well, and and I want to get into that because it it is one of those things.
We've been covering this shit for years, and you know, how many rumors have there been he's going to be arrested, he's gonna be, you know, not going to be able to run for office.
This report's gonna come out, it's gonna do this.
I think this is both one a symptom of a like uh a non-transparent authoritarian regime.
It's much like wondering whether or not the king is alive or dead at all given times, you know, wondering about signs and signals and all of that type of shit.
But on top of it, Nick, I think this is another round of what we've seen for years, which is this ongoing hope that if this, if one silver bullet or another would take care of the problem, if Trump would die, maybe the MAGA coalition would fall apart.
Maybe we could get out of this thing.
If we could just win this election, if this report would do what it would necessarily do.
But it really betrays a larger thing, which is we have a deeper systemic issue here.
And even if Donald Trump were to die tomorrow, and again, we're looking for signals and whether or not something is happening or you know, or it's not.
Like, even if that were to happen, we wouldn't be out of the deep water.
But a lot of people want to believe that this one guy is the sole reason why we're in this situation.
And so a lot of that speculation, it just gets caught up in this sort of churning and rumination that people get caught up in.
I agree.
And it's been that way since the Mueller report and it probably even before that.
So what's interesting is that they put a lot of hope in the Epstein files as well.
They thought this might be the thing that's going to bring him down.
And uh as the Epstein uh survivors and or the victims uh or both of the uh characterizations of them uh spoke on the other day in front of uh the cameras.
The one thing that kind of struck me was that you know, no one is saying that Donald Trump was amidst any of these uh abuses that were going on under Jeffrey Epstein's notes.
Um let's listen to one of the survivors though, and and and hear how she uh characterizes how Epstein leveraged his um his associations with Donald Trump.
With Elaine Maxwell and they Jeffrey and Elen were always very boastful about their friends, their famous or powerful friends.
And his biggest brag forever was that he was very good friends with Donald Trump.
He had an eight by Tim framed picture of him on his desk with the two of them.
Like they were very close.
So if you uh it was hard, had the heart uh couldn't hear that as well as I could.
Uh, she was just saying that yes, you know, Donald Trump is this guy that like legitimizes them, right?
And that's how they were able to do this, what they were doing and this abuse.
And um, you know, that's a that's not a smoking gun, but certainly we can see that uh, you know, Donald Trump was was uh in integral in in this whole thing.
Well, so now we've reached the point, and and you know, this goes back to what we were talking about with what like wondering whether or not he was alive or dead.
We've now reached the point with the Epstein situation where we've seen the actual fallout.
Like none of this is going to bring down Donald Trump's presidency in totality.
If if if his presidency is to fail, it will happen for a variety of reasons instead of one single thing.
What we actually know at this point is the only actual effect of this, and again, he is a rich white man in the United States of America, so things like this are often going to miss him.
As that happens, the one effect that we've seen, Nick, is it's actually had the consequence of changing the MAGA coalition and and moving the partnerships and the alliances around.
And quite frankly, that's not enough for the people who survived this.
It's not enough for the people who endured this, which is what pisses me off as much as anything else, is the lack of justice in this country.
And like this is one of those obvious things.
This should be the end of his presidency.
All of this, like playing footsee with Jeffrey Epstein, you know, in the midst of all of this, it should be the end of his presidency, and and he should be held accountable.
But now we know like that's not going to happen, particularly because of how corrupt this system is.
I mean, what does it tell you that Alex Acosta had stepped down uh from his role as a secretary uh in the midst of all this?
Um, because we we keep thinking, oh, that guy would never do that now in the Trump era, but that was still, you know, I mean, it was early, I guess, enough.
Uh, would he have done that had this been happening years and years and years later into the Trump uh experience?
I you know, I have no idea because it it is something that has happened that I I think you got this very, very early on, which is basically the honor system of this country and its politics and its political, you know, ruling class, it all worked on the system of shame.
Like that's just gone.
So what are you gonna do with it now?
So I have no idea.
I I can't even like take like four or five years ago and transplant it to now.
Like the these barriers have broken so wide open that everybody knows that they can pretty much get away from with everything as long as they're rich, white, and powerful.
I I agree.
And we also I wanted to share another clip because what's here's what's interesting is you'll you're hearing some Republicans kind of get dipped their toe in this uh outrage about what's going on with Epstein.
Um, and my concern uh is that they're simply doing it because they're already figuring out that they can get they can cut Trump out of all this and he won't be implicated, so they can still sort of appear that they're outraged and they want justice, but it really it's just kind of cover for um for for Trump, you know, being pulled out of this.
And this is what uh comer, uh friend of the pod comer to uh said about this, and it kind of is, I think, indicative of what their strategy is on this.
The many of these women said they were uh teenagers, uh under 18, uh, when they were groomed by Jeffrey Epstein and Glain Maxwell, and and then uh ended up in in bad situations with uh, according to them, many wealthy, prominent people around the world.
Now, one thing that that continues to be a recurring theme is Donald Trump's name was never mentioned in any of this.
And I think the Democrats have already demonstrated that their sole concern in in uh this whole Epstein saga is to try to somehow uh find some dirt on Donald Trump when it doesn't appear that there's any dirt there.
And what Donald Trump's done is he's disclosed the Epstein files.
He's already turned over 34,000 files to the Oversight Committee.
We published them online last night.
We expect to get more documents in over the next few weeks.
So there you go.
Uh also, by the way, there's been other breaking news in the past like day or so, Nick, where uh an official of the DOJ has come out and said that he fully expects them to release the Epstein files to redact every single powerful Republican in the file and leave the Democrats.
And Nick, I I I don't know about you.
I believe that's a real possibility.
I I mean, like that, I could see that going uh being the road that this goes down because what do we keep seeing?
And we'll talk about RFK here in a second.
They break reality so much that you can't even begin to believe it, which is the best strategy that they've got, the best weapon that they've got.
And so I wouldn't be shocked to see that happen.
I mean, it has already been turned on its head.
We know that Trump was involved with this guy.
We know he you know acted like he had been caught, you know, basically in the middle of of committing this crime.
And as this whole thing is played out, like I have lost any faith that we're going to find out the truth about this, because at least it's going to serve his bottom line.
And so looking at all of it, it comes down to I I still can't have faith that any of the official avenues are going to take this guy down.
I I agree.
I I think at this point, whatever was in there that implicated Trump.
We've already heard about all the different FBI agents they had working on this case day and night, 24-7 to try and go quote unquote go through the Epstein files, but in reality, it's like go through it, comma, and then delete whatever we've seen that Trump when Trump is mentioned.
Because we we've already heard we know that Trump's been mentioned in this thing, and I think that's why the bank records end up being the biggest issue, which I don't know if they're going to be able to doctor that stuff.
And that's what's interesting the most to me, and that's we've heard some of these um senators have gone through this and then been talking about the volume of the transactions occurring between F Epstein and people, you know, and I have a feeling that we're gonna see a lot of money passing hands between a lot of different people.
And um, ostensibly, you know, uh Jeffrey Epstein was not running any kind of uh goods and services or sorry, goods business.
He was clearly what he needed money for, why you'd be sending him money would be to cover the cost of human trafficking.
Exactly.
And I mean, again, it it is a really frustrating thing.
Like our job is to talk about this and analyze it and give, you know, our perspective on it.
And Nick, it it's you know, one of the things that we've had to do over the course of this show is say, yes, is it obvious that a crime was committed here?
Is it obvious that this person broke the law?
Is it obvious that this person broke the constitution?
And then it's supposed to go to the next step, which is what are the consequences?
And now it's gotten to the point where like it's hard to even talk about these obvious crimes and collusions and conspiracies and like end up doing anything but saying, Yeah, this is what happened and what's gonna happen from it now.
Like, I I I hate living in this sort of like weird foggy state.
Like this is again, this is an authoritarian totalitarian fog.
And like to live in it, it it's it can drive you insane.
It really can.
It can drive you insane to look at all of this and be like, this is fundamentally wrong, this is fundamentally corrupt, and yet we live in a world where that has become sort of the rule of the day.
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