Viva & Barnes - Live with Michael Tracey: What Do the "Epstein Files" Disclosures Actually Reveal?
Aired: 2026-03-09
Duration: 01:20:48


=== National Pandemic Flu Strategy (03:09) ===

[00:00:01]  The president will be discussing his national strategy for a pandemic flu.
[00:00:07]  This strategy is based on three fundamental principles.
[00:00:11]  First, finding a flu outbreak as soon as it appears, then containing and treating it to the best extent possible.
[00:00:19]  Second, developing strong protections like vaccines and antivirals.
[00:00:24]  TAMA flu, for instance, is one that can be used to treat it.
[00:00:29]  And responding quickly to save lives.
[00:00:31]  This builds upon what we've already done as a country that is leading the way when it comes to addressing the threat from a pandemic flu outbreak.
[00:00:43]  We have already been acting to create a vaccine and stockpile protective medicines such as antivirals.
[00:00:51]  I should have prefaced this video, but I couldn't have my voice over.
[00:00:55]  This is from 2005.
[00:00:56]  This is the George Bush former press secretary Scott, I forget what his last name is now.
[00:01:02]  2005, 15 years before the pandemic, the COVID pandemic.
[00:01:06]  Listen to what he's saying.
[00:01:08]  Accelerating efforts to develop the next generation of vaccine technology.
[00:01:12]  That means using cell-based techniques versus the egg-based, because we believe that if we can move to the cell-based technique, we have the manufacturing capacity to be able to develop or mass produce that vaccine quickly.
[00:01:27]  And that's going to be important.
[00:01:29]  We don't know, well, we do know from history that there have been outbreaks from the bird flu.
[00:01:37]  We don't know what strain of virus it might eventually lead to a possible outbreak, but it's something we need to take seriously.
[00:01:44]  And that's why the president has been leading the way.
[00:01:47]  We've expanded our stockpile of antivirals to over 4 million courses by the end of 2005.
[00:01:53]  Listen to this part.
[00:01:54]  2005.
[00:01:56]  We're enhancing domestic preparedness.
[00:01:58]  Remember, we've provided over $5 billion to states and localities for public health and medical preparedness since 2001.
[00:02:04]  We've requested some $70 million in the 06 budget for mobile hospital surge capacity, emergency medical personnel.
[00:02:12]  And we've added influenza viruses with pandemic potential to the list of quarantinable diseases.
[00:02:19]  Quarantinable diseases.
[00:02:20]  I remember when COVID broke out and they're like, oh, we have a quarantine act in Canada from about the same time it was revamped that allows the government to lock you down in your homes.
[00:02:28]  Back on April 1st of this year, we've also been working to advance the international efforts to contain the outbreak.
[00:02:36]  We announced the International Partnership on Avion and Pandemic Influenza at the United Nations back on September 14th.
[00:02:42]  More than 80 nations have joined that effort.
[00:02:46]  We have ongoing engagement with the international community on these issues.
[00:02:50]  In fact, just today when the president met with Prime Minister Berlusconi over lunch, they discussed the importance of working together, European Union and the United States to address this threat and the importance of if there is a human-to-human transmission that we're able to quickly move and try to contain that possible outbreak.
[00:03:09]  It's amazing.

=== Venice AI and Michael Tracy (05:30) ===

[00:03:10]  I stumbled across this video because I was looking for discussion, press conference statements from 2003, 2005 about the war in Iraq.
[00:03:22]  I found an amazing six minute clip, which I also posted.
[00:03:25]  And then I stumbled across this.
[00:03:26]  I'm like, yep, history doesn't repeat, but it tends to rhyme.
[00:03:30]  Not going to get into the Iran stuff.
[00:03:33]  It's highly divisive.
[00:03:34]  I think at some point, you know, people are speaking past each other.
[00:03:38]  I think at this point today, we've noticed a new talking point that has hit the airwaves, which is short-term pain for long-term gain, or I don't mind paying a buck or more at the gas pump if it means freedom for the Iranian people.
[00:03:52]  And I wanted to find the clips from 2005 when the exact same thing was said about the war in Iraq.
[00:03:58]  But set that aside, this time it'll be different from our lips to God's ears.
[00:04:02]  Got Michael Tracy in, and we're going to distract from the Iranian war to go back to the Epstein stuff where I jokingly, when I was arranging this with Michael Tracy, saying I was going to make the joke, but I don't like making glib jokes about serious matters that the war in Iran certainly did divert the public discussion from the Epstein files.
[00:04:24]  I don't believe it's the reason why I'm not one of those people.
[00:04:27]  Stuff happens in politics all the time.
[00:04:29]  If it weren't this, it would have been something else to distract, to divert whatever.
[00:04:33]  But meanwhile, we were scheduling this.
[00:04:36]  We had this scheduled with Mario Nafal about a week ago, and it didn't go through because war with Iran broke out.
[00:04:42]  And you try talking about something that's not the most important issue in the world of the day.
[00:04:48]  And then you're going to notice it in the chat.
[00:04:49]  Now, it's been a, everyone said what they have to say about the war now, the intervention.
[00:04:54]  We just cross our fingers and hope it works out for the best, a net value to the world, and we'll quietly pray in our heart of hearts and our mind's eye.
[00:05:04]  We're going to talk about the Epstein stuff because I've been needling Michael Tracy for a little bit online.
[00:05:08]  And it's only fair at some points in time to have a viva vocab discussion.
[00:05:11]  But before we do that, someone actually said in response to that video that I posted, why is the video so weird, Viva?
[00:05:17]  And I was like, oh, that's because it was a digit, probably a digitized version of a VHS recording.
[00:05:23]  And the person's like, well, I don't trust anything now with the advent of AI.
[00:05:26]  And like, yeah, you're not wrong.
[00:05:29]  And that was a good segue into our sponsor where AI does have very good features.
[00:05:34]  And you can't trust videos on the internet anymore because you can have AI generated fake videos and it's impossible to know what's what.
[00:05:40]  You can do your own homework and you can use AI as a very powerful tool, but make sure that you're using the right AI.
[00:05:47]  And that is the sponsor of today's show, Venice.ai.
[00:05:49]  Sam Altman said ChatGPT will get to know you over your own life and more scarily, over your own wife.
[00:05:55]  He did say that, but I'm adding it to the quote because it's better.
[00:05:57]  Chat GPT has the former director of the NSA sitting on their board right now.
[00:06:00]  Edward Snowden called it a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on earth.
[00:06:05]  Alexa listens to us and recommends products based on our conversations.
[00:06:08]  Meta retargets us and determines what it wants to pitch to us based on our browsing history.
[00:06:14]  It took us far too long to understand what the social media companies were doing with all of our data.
[00:06:19]  And are we going to make the same mistake again with AI?
[00:06:22]  Don't.
[00:06:22]  OpenAI has hinted that they might start requiring their users to provide government-issued IDs.
[00:06:28]  Would you feel comfortable with that?
[00:06:29]  I know that I wouldn't enter Venice AI for their solution.
[00:06:32]  It uses leading open source AI models to deliver text, code, image generation to your web browser.
[00:06:38]  No downloads, no installation of anything.
[00:06:40]  Now, you might be wondering, why did I do this here?
[00:06:42]  Just to see what it has to say for the question of the day.
[00:06:45]  Did Epstein kill himself?
[00:06:49]  Yes or no?
[00:06:51]  Answer only.
[00:06:53]  And as I tell you where you can get this, they have a pro plan that unlocks the full platform and features, including PDF uploads, summaries, insights, the ability to turn off safe mode, unhindered image generation, the ability to change how Venice interacts with you by modifying the system prompt, limitless text, high image limits.
[00:07:10]  And by the way, it's, let me see what's the answer.
[00:07:12]  Oh, no.
[00:07:14]  Well, let's see another one here.
[00:07:15]  There was another one that I was going to ask.
[00:07:17]  Oh, hold on.
[00:07:18]  I had another funny question.
[00:07:20]  Oh, it'll come to me in a second.
[00:07:22]  Everybody, head over to the sponsor.
[00:07:23]  It's in the links, venice.ai forward slash viva.
[00:07:26]  You'll get 20% off the pro plan using my link, this link, our link in the description.
[00:07:32]  Venicewitha C.ai forward slash Viva.
[00:07:35]  What's another question that we want to tempt it with right now?
[00:07:38]  Oh, yeah, that's right.
[00:07:39]  Was COVID a government?
[00:07:44]  If I can type with my fat fingers here, government operation.
[00:07:48]  Yes or no?
[00:07:49]  Answer only.
[00:07:50]  Let's see what it says to this.
[00:07:54]  I'm going with no.
[00:07:55]  I'm going with yes.
[00:07:56]  I'm sorry.
[00:07:56]  I'm going with yes.
[00:07:58]  Oh.
[00:08:00]  Well, that's only because it's not as crazy a conspiracy theorist as I am.
[00:08:05]  And speaking of conspiracy theorists, we're going to have fun today.
[00:08:08]  Do you guys know who Michael Tracy is?
[00:08:10]  If you don't know who Tracy is, I have some, Michael, I'm going to bring you up.
[00:08:13]  I got some select tweets.
[00:08:15]  No, I don't have some select tweets.
[00:08:16]  You're comfortable familiar with your tweet history.
[00:08:19]  Michael Tracy.
[00:08:20]  Sorry, I'm just fixing my out-of-control disheveled hair.
[00:08:22]  Everybody criticizes me for not priming myself up enough for these streams.
[00:08:28]  Well, I made sure to take a nice photo of you off the internet because the Lord knows there are a lot of other ones.
[00:08:34]  No such photo exists, but the one I got was pretty decent, but it seems that whenever other outlets get a picture of you, it's arguably not.

=== Michael Tracy's Political Spectrum (02:02) ===

[00:08:41]  Always something grotesque, or I look exceptionally just blinkered and my eyes are bulging.
[00:08:47]  Michael, for those who don't know, I do do that.
[00:08:48]  I don't know why.
[00:08:49]  My eyes always just kind of seem to our faces are our faces are what they are.
[00:08:53]  We can only change them so much without ending up looking like Jim Carrey or Madonna.
[00:08:57]  Michael, tell the world who you are for those who don't know.
[00:09:01]  Who am I?
[00:09:01]  How did I get here?
[00:09:02]  James Stockdale.
[00:09:03]  Ever see that?
[00:09:04]  It was the vice presidential debate in 1992.
[00:09:06]  He was Ross Perot's running mate.
[00:09:09]  It was allegedly, it went down as one of the worst statements to have ever made.
[00:09:13]  It ended up sinking his campaign from what I understand.
[00:09:15]  I think it's kind of endearing, actually.
[00:09:17]  Well, because he was like a crotchet, he was sort of like, I don't know, a bit of a crotchety old guy.
[00:09:22]  Nobody who would have been perceived as somebody who might be a viable vice president before.
[00:09:27]  He was an admiral, Admiral James Stockdale.
[00:09:29]  I don't know.
[00:09:29]  Who am I?
[00:09:30]  Just journalists.
[00:09:30]  That's enough.
[00:09:32]  And who do you write for?
[00:09:33]  Where do you, what, what, what, might, what might people have known and where can they find you?
[00:09:38]  Yeah, primarily my substack mtracy.net, but I've written for a variety of many different places across political spectrum.
[00:09:45]  I had a column last week in the Wall Street Journal on an undercovered aspect of the Epstein files saga that I don't think has been covered anywhere before in any major American media outlet.
[00:10:00]  Having to do with the redaction criteria and like how people are a bit misguided in where they're directing their ire as to the excessive redactions that I agree are plastered on these files and have only perpetuated the suspicion that there's something sinister being covered up.
[00:10:21]  But what they don't understand is that the quote-unquote victims and their lawyers have been frantically arguing in federal court for months now that the DOJ ought to be obliged to impose the most sweeping possible redactions on these files, even though they're portrayed in the public arena as the most stalwart champions of, quote, releasing the Epstein files.

=== Epstein Files Redactions (04:33) ===

[00:10:44]  That was the slogan for a while, right?
[00:10:46]  And yet they were attempting to convince the federal judges in the Southern District of New York that at their behest, the files should not be released or at least should be radically curtailed in the amount of transparency that they were allowed to provide.
[00:11:01]  So that's just one example.
[00:11:02]  And I've written for many other places across the political spectrum, done Rumble stuff before with Greenwald on his show back when he was on Rumble.
[00:11:11]  I don't know.
[00:11:12]  Are we on Rumble now or where are we?
[00:11:13]  We are on Rumble.
[00:11:14]  We are on Twitter.
[00:11:15]  We are on vivabarneslaw.locals.com.
[00:11:17]  And I will publish this to CommiTube afterwards.
[00:11:19]  I just, I don't do it live.
[00:11:20]  I think I was on your show with Barnes maybe a couple of years ago.
[00:11:23]  Yeah, a couple, a while back.
[00:11:25]  And then we did a debate, I believe.
[00:11:28]  Oh, yeah, we did this.
[00:11:29]  Weren't you the moderator, technically?
[00:11:31]  I was the moderator.
[00:11:32]  I wasn't debating in that one.
[00:11:32]  I had to keep my mouth shut.
[00:11:34]  I think they floated me as a participant only when someone might not have come.
[00:11:38]  And then they found a replacement for the.
[00:11:40]  That was when I was saddled with the somewhat daunting task of having to figure out how I could possibly even attempt to debate Alex Jones, which is not a straightforward thing.
[00:11:51]  It was fun.
[00:11:52]  Okay, but actually, before we get into the redactions and the substance of this, also, Mike, if you don't want to talk about childhood and stuff coming to growing up, just if I, for a broad idea that I can understand who you are, how old are you?
[00:12:02]  Yeah, I think you did ask me this question last time I was on or you asked me to give background information, which I'm always a little bit like resistant to, maybe irrationally, but I'll do it.
[00:12:12]  Born and raised in America.
[00:12:14]  Do you ask how old I am?
[00:12:15]  Yeah.
[00:12:16]  How old am I?
[00:12:17]  I'm going to say 36, but everybody started looking younger the older I was.
[00:12:20]  37.
[00:12:21]  Okay, good.
[00:12:23]  And born in America, born and raised in New Jersey.
[00:12:27]  Now, let me ask you the outright question.
[00:12:28]  It was the funny clip, and you know, humor translates badly on USA for Springsteen, right?
[00:12:33]  So, yes, yes, yes, a New Jersey icon.
[00:12:36]  So, Michael, when you were on with Pierce Morgan and someone asked you who pays you, and you had your headphones go out at the bad time, and I didn't just ask me who pays me.
[00:12:47]  She asked, Are you being paid?
[00:12:48]  She did like a McCarthy, a classic McCarthy style phrasing of the question.
[00:12:54]  Like, are you now, or have you ever been paid by a Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirator?
[00:12:58]  So, she asked me, Are you being paid by any of Epstein's associates or something to that effect?
[00:13:05]  So, it's just like a general inquiry as to who I'm being paid by.
[00:13:08]  It was a deliberately accusatorily phrased question to provoke the most incendiary reaction.
[00:13:14]  Well, now, now that let me bring up one of the more, I say, one of the more uh shocking tweets.
[00:13:19]  It was, uh, oh, find it where you say this, you know, no broad.
[00:13:24]  Here we go.
[00:13:24]  I think this was this was one just to just to segue into this where you say zero credible evidence for pedophilia, blackmail, rape on uh, Rape Island, large-scale sex trafficking, child sex crimes by prominent individuals, intelligence involvement in Florida case.
[00:13:37]  They will marvel at the mass delusion.
[00:13:39]  I could have listed more, but I had limited.
[00:13:40]  I wanted to stay within the standard uh space restriction.
[00:13:44]  Well, my question to you: character restriction just because when she asks you, who are you representing, or whatever, you have no vested interest, let's say, other than promoting your journalism.
[00:13:54]  And I'm not even saying that in an accusatory way.
[00:13:56]  You write on this?
[00:13:56]  No, I'm not being paid.
[00:13:58]  I mean, I'm not, I'm not paid by any AI companies either, like you.
[00:14:02]  I'm not saying you're contemptible for being paid by an AI company to promote their product, but no, I have nothing even in that vein.
[00:14:08]  It's just people who pay me on Substack through a paid subscription.
[00:14:13]  And I do freelance content.
[00:14:14]  I don't know why I'm constantly under the microscope, having to disclose my income every day.
[00:14:18]  No, no, no, I'm not.
[00:14:20]  But the bottom line is: no, of course, I'm not being paid by any Epstein co-conspirators.
[00:14:24]  And yes, there was an audio, a technical problem with my audio feed at the time that she asked me.
[00:14:29]  But if you notice, if you look like in the minute or two leading up to that, I'm like fiddling with my earpiece because it's kind of like you know, dropping out and I can hear like every other word or it's becoming faint, right?
[00:14:43]  And then I eventually do hear what you hear the second part of what she's saying.
[00:14:47]  I'll play, I'll play it after.
[00:14:48]  And that was a mobile studio that the Piers Morgan show sent to my residence, right?
[00:14:52]  So it wasn't like even something that I could have orchestrated myself.
[00:14:57]  And I keep telling people, because like even Megan Kelly brought this up yesterday, like she just did a snide little remark about how it's like implying that I must have faked the audio problem.
[00:15:07]  I'm like, do you really want me to put you in contact with the studio technician who was in the mobile studio van and they can that guy can confirm for you on the record?
[00:15:16]  It was humorous.

=== Trump's Epstein Connection (15:30) ===

[00:15:17]  I mean, the timing was perfect and it was a perfect storm.
[00:15:20]  And my joke was glib.
[00:15:21]  The only question is people do ask, not who's being, who are you being paid, how much you make, et cetera.
[00:15:26]  Do you have anything that would, you know, if disclosed, result in something of a perception of conflict of interest in terms of why?
[00:15:32]  Okay.
[00:15:33]  And that's that's the mild.
[00:15:35]  Hold on one second.
[00:15:36]  Dog needs to leave the office.
[00:15:37]  Get out.
[00:15:38]  Get out.
[00:15:39]  Go.
[00:15:39]  Go.
[00:15:41]  Okay.
[00:15:42]  Dog decided he's not sticking around for today's show.
[00:15:46]  Okay.
[00:15:46]  So with that said, and now you're so you're writing on the Epstein stuff.
[00:15:49]  And so maybe when I say, you know, your Twitter timeline has turned into ostensible defense or minimizing of the Epstein disclosures.
[00:15:57]  And that's the past week or two, it's been commingled with, wait, what's this giant military cataclysm that just erupted in the Middle East?
[00:16:04]  So I'm trying to like synergize the two topics.
[00:16:06]  Well, no, that's it.
[00:16:07]  It's like you talk about what is.
[00:16:09]  And I heard your intro, meaning like we're going to do Epstein today and not Iran.
[00:16:13]  That's fine.
[00:16:13]  I just think that there are actually some overlapping issues there just in terms of public perception because the internet, I don't know about you, but as far as I can tell, every social media platform at the moment seems convinced, meaning it's a consensus view that it's about Epstein, or though Trump launched the war because of Epstein, or he's covering up his own child sex crimes, or he's covering up for other unnamed pedophiles, or the war is being waged by the Epstein class.
[00:16:42]  That's what even the Iranian government is saying.
[00:16:44]  And that's what domestic opponents in the U.S. and other places in the world are saying.
[00:16:48]  It's the Epstein war.
[00:16:49]  It's the Epstein regime.
[00:16:51]  So that just gives you some insight into the enormity or the magnitude now of this mass hysteria, I would argue, or moral panic, such that it's now infiltrating people's popular conception of something that on its face should be like wholly unrelated, which is Trump fulfilling his long-standing pledges to radically increase bellicosity with Iran.
[00:17:14]  And now it's being glommed onto Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:17:18]  I think that's bad, not just because it's false or, you know, or that there's like no justifiable basis to make that kind of assertion, but because it's stimulating so many people to develop faulty diagnoses of legitimate political problems or foreign policy issues right now.
[00:17:41]  So it's the Epstein issue has gotten so capacious in terms of how much it dominates like the public consciousness.
[00:17:47]  And it's actively distorting millions of people in how they're formulating their views as to this giant military conflict.
[00:17:58]  I was actually not tempted.
[00:17:59]  I was going to do it and then I aired on probably the side of caution not to do it because these things always get misinterpreted.
[00:18:05]  But I would have, I wanted to put a poll out on Twitter in our locals to say, do you believe or do you feel there's any connection whatsoever between the Epstein disclosures and the debacle and the war in Iran?
[00:18:16]  I think the vast majority of people will say yes.
[00:18:18]  And I don't want to anyone thinking I'm asking that question as an accusation.
[00:18:22]  And it's the same on TikTok.
[00:18:23]  It's the same on Instagram, same on Reddit, same on most of YouTube that I've seen.
[00:18:28]  Now, I haven't looked at literally everything, obviously, but if you were to attempt to glean the consensus take right now on those platforms, and you tell me if you've seen any differently, this would be the consensus take, meaning it's an Epstein war, it's a war for Epstein, or was fundamentally triggered by something to do with the Epstein files, et cetera.
[00:18:47]  Well, I'm looking at our locals community where F. Chasson says the war is about Israel.
[00:18:51]  It never needed Epstein.
[00:18:52]  And that, I mean, the things this actually.
[00:18:54]  Yeah, but people tie in Israel to Epstein.
[00:18:56]  So it's the same sort of agglomeration.
[00:19:00]  Well, but as they can't be blamed for doing it, when, as we're going to get into, you know, Ehud Barak has strong ties to Epstein.
[00:19:07]  Netanyahu has ties to Epstein.
[00:19:09]  And the thing is.
[00:19:10]  People had ties to Epstein.
[00:19:11]  I mean, Epstein had ties to the former Norwegian ambassador to Jordan in Iraq, who is now, who was sacked and is now under police investigation along with her husband, who also had a tie with Epstein.
[00:19:22]  I don't see anybody really spinning out some sort of theory about some sort of Norwegian connection that's supposed to be incredibly damning.
[00:19:29]  Yeah, maybe the Israel connection is more extensive than the Norway connection, but there is a Norway connection.
[00:19:34]  There's a French connection.
[00:19:35]  There's a British connection.
[00:19:36]  There's obviously an American connection.
[00:19:37]  Well, there's a Russian connection.
[00:19:39]  There's a Saudi connection.
[00:19:41]  But, you know, so I just have to sort of interject when people kind of foreground this Israel connection and point out that if you're so monomaniacally, myopically fixated on the Israel connection at the exclusion of everything else that you might postulate Epstein was connected to, I take that to be a bit bizarre and probably a function of you wanting a propaganda talking point against Israel.
[00:20:03]  Not that I'm pro-Israel, substantively, not that I haven't been a huge critic of U.S. foreign policy vis-a-vis Israel and so forth for as long as I've been in the public arena.
[00:20:13]  But you want that as like a propagandistic talking point to bolster your pre-existing Israel critical views rather than you trying to come up with a rational understanding of what it is that Jeffrey Epstein did or was or represented.
[00:20:30]  Yeah, well, let's get into that in a second.
[00:20:32]  But you know, there's two ways in which the I mean, it's literal now war propaganda.
[00:20:37]  I mean, the Iranian, it's like this is the official line of the Iranian government and of like what it takes to the critics of the war effort.
[00:20:43]  Well, first of all, it doesn't help the way and I'm a critic of the war effort.
[00:20:46]  So no, I'll say it doesn't help.
[00:20:48]  This is why I've been saying that Bondi should have been fired a long time ago.
[00:20:51]  The bungling doesn't help.
[00:20:52]  We're going to get to the redactions in a second, but you know, history teaches us things if we learn from it.
[00:20:57]  And there were some who argued that the bombing of the aspirin factory by Bill Clinton back when he was under electricity for the PHA was, yeah, was a distraction.
[00:21:05]  People can say this is an Epstein war, or others can say this is a distraction from the Epstein debacle.
[00:21:11]  Although, you know, that makes a little less sense just because Trump was never himself personally tied into this.
[00:21:16]  Maybe some people in his entourage were.
[00:21:18]  The problem is implicated in the Epstein in any allegation.
[00:21:24]  He was tied in with Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:21:25]  Well, you know, he was tied in with Jeffrey Epstein in a sense of they knew each other.
[00:21:28]  They, he, he, he helped the police and you know, kicked a value.
[00:21:33]  So here, here's a good idea.
[00:21:34]  This is going to be a problem, right?
[00:21:35]  Because one thing I find so bizarre about this whole story is that the people who have an well, kind of generally characterize as a more Epstein maximalist view than I do.
[00:21:46]  And I saw, and I got a full serving of this when I had to deal with Daryl Cooper a few months ago.
[00:21:51]  I don't know if you know who that guy is.
[00:21:52]  I know Darryl.
[00:21:54]  The history.
[00:21:54]  Yeah, I mean, he's the guy, you know, he's full-blown.
[00:21:56]  He's on, he's had, you know, Tucker summons him to do an emergency Epstein podcast last July when the issue got reignited.
[00:22:04]  And this guy is supposed to like one of the leading Epstein researchers in what he calls the Epstein space, which I don't know what the hell that is.
[00:22:10]  I would love to visit this space if it exists somewhere.
[00:22:13]  No, you don't want to, you don't want to sound bite of you saying I want to visit the Epstein space.
[00:22:17]  Okay, I take it back.
[00:22:18]  No, but he's supposed to be this preeminent authority on all things, Epstein, such that he'll be the one guy that Tucker would have, you know, rush over in this emergency situation to inform or educate the audience about Epstein.
[00:22:30]  And he has every maximalist view on like every little component of it, pedo blackmail ring, intelligence links, everything, blah, But then he just like arbitrarily, like he, so he connects every dot, right?
[00:22:42]  Every he has no problem spurrously connecting every conceivable dot to come up with this master maximalist theory.
[00:22:51]  But then he just does this giant carve out for Donald Trump and just declares that Donald Trump can't be incriminated or implicated in anything because I just know I just really feel that way or believe that.
[00:23:03]  And it just, you know, he happened to be a Trump voter, as were you, if I, if memory serves.
[00:23:07]  No, I'm Canadian.
[00:23:09]  Or you, you, you, you supported Trump in 2024.
[00:23:12]  I still support him through my constructive criticism.
[00:23:14]  Okay, so there you go.
[00:23:15]  So, I think your support for Trump is occluding your ability to depict Trump's role in this story.
[00:23:22]  Now, I don't assert that Trump has incriminated any child sex trafficking crimes or pedophilia or anything, but I'm also not asserting the maximalist view of the Epstein story.
[00:23:31]  Well, but you are asserting the Epstein maximalist story.
[00:23:33]  There's plenty of material that you can use that has to do with Trump.
[00:23:36]  Did you know that one of the four government witnesses that was called to testify against Ghelaine Maxwell, Nadia Bjorland, who was an actress on Days of Our Lives?
[00:23:45]  And you know, there is evidence that she had some degree of involvement with Epstein.
[00:23:50]  It's you know, fuzzy what that consisted of in terms of any kind of sexual offenses, but no, there was involvement.
[00:23:56]  She told the FBI, and she repeated this at the trial that like Jeffrey Epstein took her to meet Donald Trump.
[00:24:01]  You can find message pads of Trump calling up Jeffrey Epstein's house, where all these like all this pedophilia supposedly took place and like leaving messages.
[00:24:09]  You had a testimony.
[00:24:10]  I just saw this in the files of last week.
[00:24:13]  Like, Jeffrey Epstein's personal chef told the FBI that, you know, among the prominent people he could recall Epstein ever interacting with, he recalled Trump most prominently because Trump would come over and dine at the house and he would hold on what years?
[00:24:30]  Uh, what year would that have been?
[00:24:32]  You know, it probably would have been early to mid-2000s, early 2000s, probably, Michael.
[00:24:39]  You realize, okay, like this is where we can agree on certain things and we'll try to set aside what we disagree on.
[00:24:44]  Okay, and he goes around calling the whole thing a hoax.
[00:24:47]  Well, the hoax is the hoax.
[00:24:48]  My point is: if you're an Epstein maximalist, you can only exclude Donald Trump for some kind of condemnation here if you have a pre-existing political affinity for Donald Trump and you want to support his partisan interests.
[00:25:01]  Otherwise, it just makes zero sense.
[00:25:02]  No, but I can tell you you're wrong on that for a very good reason.
[00:25:07]  Other than what you can draw from the early 2000s before the falling out and before the excommunication and before Trump working with the falling out is another part of this myth.
[00:25:14]  I mean, there's no really good evidence.
[00:25:15]  Yeah, people claim that I want to claim he called the police and reported Epstein.
[00:25:19]  First of all, that was the police, a police detective, like years after the fact, claiming that Trump called them up.
[00:25:25]  I mean, there's no contemporaneous evidence of that.
[00:25:27]  Well, so that's that you're focusing on what is 20 plus years old before the business with Epstein.
[00:25:34]  I'm not focused on it to try to say, no, look, Trump's part of the whole web of pedo-conspirus, conspiracy trafficking.
[00:25:40]  But like everybody that I ever interact with who takes on a more Epstein Maximalist view of this stuff does that with any discrete data point they can ever happen upon with anybody else, Bill Dalton, Bill Gates, name number.
[00:25:52]  I'll tell you why you're wrong because, I mean, at least on this, the data point, like Trump's concincliary, was like best friends with Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:26:00]  Well, and Steve Bannon has, I would say, MAGA hasn't turned on him.
[00:26:04]  MAGA has MAGA.
[00:26:06]  I'm using that word.
[00:26:06]  I hate it.
[00:26:07]  People are rightly critical of that relationship.
[00:26:10]  Even those who appreciate his, you know, his political insights say that Bannon being like disavowed, really.
[00:26:17]  Oh, first of all, facing any penalty is one thing.
[00:26:19]  Being disavowed, you're not on the same internet I'm on.
[00:26:21]  I mean, he was being landed, excommunicated by, you know, the, the, you know, I say is he going to be at like CPAC and Turning Point USA this year?
[00:26:31]  We'll find out, but just say like a number of the things that you said don't line up is that, yeah, fine.
[00:26:34]  2000, early 2000s, Trump never denied it.
[00:26:37]  If there were anything, I want to pull up the picture of Bill Clinton getting a back massage here.
[00:26:41]  Where's this one here?
[00:26:42]  I got it.
[00:26:43]  Is this one it?
[00:26:44]  Is this one it?
[00:26:45]  Hold up.
[00:26:46]  Wait a minute.
[00:26:47]  No, that's not it.
[00:26:48]  I know exactly what photo you're talking about.
[00:26:49]  Yeah, I want to see it.
[00:26:50]  I want to show like if we're talking in 2002, yeah, that's Shantae Davies, who's an adult who was photographed giving Bill Clinton a back rub when they were on their trip with Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker and Ghylaine Maxwell.
[00:27:04]  I'm just going to say, if they're, and I'm not saying this as if you always said there was nothing ever ever inappropriate that happened between her and Bill Clinton.
[00:27:12]  But that's fine, but that's one step closer to a sex victim of Epstein while an adult giving sex crime there.
[00:27:20]  No, there's no, I don't say there's a sex crime here.
[00:27:22]  This is the, this is the issue.
[00:27:23]  I don't say there's a sex crime, but don't compare Bill I'm not saying either Clinton or Trump are guilty of pedophilic sex crimes.
[00:27:29]  I'm just saying I, if, if, if, if your presumption in terms of how you're analyzing all this info is that like any little data point or snippet of an email or like semi-redacted record that you see fluttering across social media is like all ipso facto evidence that there must be some kind of sex trafficking conspiracy.
[00:27:49]  And yet you do this giant carve up for anything that pertains to Donald Trump.
[00:27:52]  That just does not make sense, especially if the cover up people are claiming has been perpetrated is being perpetrated by the Trump administration.
[00:27:59]  You're calling it a carve out and it's not a carve out because they're not equivalents here.
[00:28:03]  This is an old tweet from Bongino.
[00:28:05]  Tell me why Bill Clinton is more obviously indicted in things having to do with sex criminality than Donald Trump.
[00:28:12]  Is your best evidence that an adult woman gave him a back rub and said that nothing?
[00:28:15]  Oh, no, no, my best evidence is not just flying on the plane domestically between that's what I'm saying.
[00:28:22]  Not just flying on the plane from New York to Miami domestically, but long international trips, multi-days, where there were people of unimpeachable reputational resource sources on the inside saying there was a bed in the back, young girls on the plane.
[00:28:35]  They didn't like what Clinton was doing right there.
[00:28:37]  I still can't.
[00:28:38]  So if Bill Clinton had only taken like, I don't know, I forget how many flights Trump took exactly, but there was like a prosecutor, the DOJ, during the first Trump administration, saying, gee whiz, guys, it looks like Donald Trump was on more flights than we had thought.
[00:28:49]  So we're just flagging you because it's like politically sensitive individual who, you know, they're not even saying he did anything wrong necessarily.
[00:28:55]  They're just saying that, you know, just they're just flagging it.
[00:28:58]  So if Bill Clinton only had taken a bunch of domestic flights with Jeffrey Epstein, absolutely cool.
[00:29:04]  It would be, it would be much less.
[00:29:06]  That wouldn't have aroused your suspicion?
[00:29:07]  No, it wouldn't have because incidentally it was the same.
[00:29:10]  It was the same.
[00:29:10]  No, with the come on's not an argument, it wouldn't.
[00:29:13]  And Trump's flights on his planes, you know, by and large, the late 90s, which is much different than Clinton, going to Africa on humanitarian sources.
[00:29:20]  And you talk about entangling, you know, the Finnish person.
[00:29:23]  Well, how about the Swedish person who's head of, you know, Virginia Roberts Gufray, having been a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago?
[00:29:30]  Who's like the chief, who's like the chief accuser in all the whole Epstein soccer?
[00:29:34]  Yeah, but and doesn't accuse Trump.
[00:29:36]  I mean, young people work at golf resorts.
[00:29:38]  But even Shanti Davies, but you just pulled up her giving Bill Clinton a back rub and said, like, this is like, you know, in the ballpark of a potential sex crime, which is no, I never said I never said anything of that nature.
[00:29:48]  But what I said is they are material.
[00:29:50]  We are in different leagues when it comes to these circumstantial or at least incriminating.
[00:29:54]  I agree.
[00:29:54]  I mean, Donald Trump clearly objectively had a much closer, long-term relationship with Jeffrey Epstein than Bill Clinton did.
[00:30:00]  I mean, that's just objectively true.
[00:30:02]  Bill Clinton, what would you go on with long-term extensive relationship?
[00:30:06]  What's that?
[00:30:07]  What are your metrics for this long-term relationship and when did it end?
[00:30:10]  Just the longevity of the relationship, the amount of interactions and communications they had, the fact that they were clearly good pals at one point.
[00:30:19]  Again, I'm not saying any of this to say that Donald Trump must therefore be guilty of X, Y, and Z. I'm just saying, as far as I've been able to ascertain, because as you know, I've been extremely immersed in this issue.
[00:30:28]  And I'm not somebody who is just going to arbitrarily say that Trump is guilty of something.
[00:30:32]  I wouldn't make a partisan point about this.
[00:30:34]  This is like, as best I can genuinely relate to you right now, this is my best impartial assessment in terms of the extensiveness of the Clinton versus Trump relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:30:45]  It was just extensive with Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:30:47]  I don't think it's impartial.

=== Concept Creep in Sex Trafficking Laws (15:14) ===

[00:30:49]  There's not a bunch of message pads with saying Bill Clinton that he called the house and then they meet up for dinner and stuff, or that they party together at like these modeling functions, or that they're going to the Jeffrey Epstein goes to Marla Maples wedding and whatever.
[00:31:04]  I don't think, but first of all, see this.
[00:31:07]  Did you know that Jeffrey Epstein attended Trump's wedding to Marla Maples?
[00:31:11]  Yeah, I mean, possibly, but possibly, but I want to just go back one second here.
[00:31:15]  You're not being biased or partisan.
[00:31:18]  You are being unfair because you're comparing things that are not comparable.
[00:31:22]  You're comparing a long-lasting relationship, one of which was cut off at the relevant time, and the other one, which involved international travel with a known sex human, child sex trafficker.
[00:31:31]  Do you at least, this is where I wanted to get back to you, concede that's not true.
[00:31:36]  I mean, you're saying a known child sex trafficker, there would have been no grounds for anybody to even claim that they knew that during the years that Bill Clinton took the flights with Jeffrey Epstein, which would have been 02 to 03.
[00:31:46]  I actually haven't even gotten a chance to listen to the whole Clinton deposition yet that just came out.
[00:31:51]  But my pre-existing knowledge is that those flights to Africa, and then there were, I think, maybe one or two others that were a bit like, you know, Clinton Foundation-oriented trips, or, you know, don't hold me through that.
[00:32:01]  But definitely the main one, the first one, was 02.
[00:32:04]  And Epstein wasn't even accused of anything like child sex trafficking at that point.
[00:32:07]  There wasn't even a police investigation into him until 2005.
[00:32:11]  So it's this idea that Clinton ought to have known that he was flying on the plane of a child sex trafficker.
[00:32:16]  That's just like a retroactive imputation to Clinton something that he should have allegedly known that no one could have even had the possible ability to know or even speculate at that point.
[00:32:27]  Well, I'd tell you, again, the material difference is what was alleged to have occurred on the plane from unimpeachable sources that were reported at the time.
[00:32:35]  But 2002?
[00:32:37]  Yeah, well, that was alleged to have occurred by an unimpeachable source in the 2002.
[00:32:43]  This one right here, I think this is the Fox News has told multiple U.S. Secret Service agents to former President Trump have been subpoenaed or expected to testify, yada, yada.
[00:32:50]  Now, is this the right tweet that I want to bring up?
[00:32:53]  Oh, yeah, who have had a lot of offers about some plane rides and some of his computer usage.
[00:32:57]  They should start looking at what happened to Blackpair.
[00:32:59]  Okay, that's not the right tweet.
[00:33:00]  This was back in the back in the day, Bongino episode, unimpeachable source said on the flights, there were young people.
[00:33:07]  Do you consider Dan Bongino an unimpeachable source?
[00:33:09]  No, he was referring to his unimpeachable source within the FBI.
[00:33:11]  Oh, so an unimpeachable, a highly impeachable source, Dan Bongino, is referring to some allegedly unimpeachable source that anonymously told him something.
[00:33:20]  Well, that's your source?
[00:33:22]  No, unfortunately, I can't say that Dan has done some favors to himself, but that's the best source.
[00:33:30]  No, but you see, it doesn't, because he might have how much BS did Dan Bongino spew on this thing for years.
[00:33:39]  That is now a legitimate question that people are going to ask.
[00:33:42]  And cashback.
[00:33:43]  And cash, but that is the legitimate question that people are going to ask, because there has never been a reckoning or an addressing of if what he said over a few weeks ago and they just, like you know, uh casually banter about totally unrelated uh.
[00:33:58]  First, they never, neither of them, utter the word Epstein.
[00:34:01]  Let me ask you, we can, let's try to agree on what we can agree on.
[00:34:04]  Epstein was a human sex trafficker.
[00:34:07]  I'm not even going to go with a the pedophile yet, but he was, he was, he was a sex trafficker, if only to himself.
[00:34:12]  We can agree on that.
[00:34:13]  No, I mean, I don't buy the whole basis of what people now claim to be quote sex trafficking.
[00:34:17]  It's the most nebulous amorphous, infinitely elastic concept that i've ever had the misfortune of having to study in any great detail.
[00:34:24]  Go look at this NEW YORK Times article from two weeks ago or so.
[00:34:28]  They described something that i've been saying for quite a while now, including in a very lengthy article that I did for Compact magazine back in October, which is that prosecutors are increasingly using charges related to sex trafficking, or they're charging defendants with sex trafficking offenses using the relevant federal statutes that are so far afield from what had been would have been contemplated as quote sex trafficking as little as 10,
[00:34:55]  15, definitely 20 years ago, nobody would have even cognized this stuff as constituting some form of sex trafficking.
[00:35:01]  So no, I don't know what that means anymore.
[00:35:03]  Well, there's a case, there's a, I'll just give you one quick example.
[00:35:06]  Yeah, for sure.
[00:35:07]  In Massachusetts, right?
[00:35:08]  There was a Superior Court case.
[00:35:11]  I think that was the court.
[00:35:12]  It was like where these guys appealed their convictions for sex trafficking up the chain in Massachusetts because they had been charged with sex trafficking by the local police, their local prosecutor, the state prosecutors in Massachusetts for having responded to a police decoys ad on some app or website advertising sexual services with an escort, essentially, and saying, if you want to have, you know, if you want X,
[00:35:40]  Y, or Z sexual activity, call or text this number.
[00:35:43]  The guys do it.
[00:35:45]  They're told to show up at a hotel room.
[00:35:47]  And then when they show up, the police bust them.
[00:35:49]  That got charged as sex trafficking.
[00:35:51]  Now, the court in Massachusetts threw that one out.
[00:35:54]  But just give you, I'll give you one other quick example.
[00:35:57]  Harvey Weinstein, okay?
[00:35:59]  A federal judge found that Harvey Weinstein could be sued for violating the federal sex trafficking statute because he was at the Cannes Film Festival one year and a woman came to his hotel room and alleged something untoward happened in the hotel room sexually.
[00:36:17]  And because Harvey Weinstein allegedly offered or suggested to this woman that he could help her get a movie role, that was a thing of value that he offered and therefore it qualified as sex trafficking per federal statute.
[00:36:28]  So, I mean, nothing about this whole concept even makes sense anymore.
[00:36:31]  It's so infinitely elastic.
[00:36:33]  When you ask me, do I agree that Epstein was a sex trafficker?
[00:36:36]  No, no, I don't because nobody can define that.
[00:36:39]  If you're now defining it as adult women 20, you know, 15 or 20 years after the fact claiming that they're sex trafficking victims, and oh, by the way, coinciding with that, there are multi-million dollar settlement monies suddenly available to them where they are going to get the highest possible settlement if they can embellish or dramatize their claims and say that they're a sex trafficking victim,
[00:37:01]  even if contemporaneously they might have regarded whatever they were doing as either consensual or unremarkable, but now suddenly they were enslaved in some giant sex trafficking operation.
[00:37:10]  I mean, this whole concept was introduced, trafficking, human trafficking, sex trafficking as a form of enslavement.
[00:37:17]  It's modern day slavery.
[00:37:19]  I mean, that's what like when presidents make a statement for human trafficking awareness month, as Trump actually did in January, funnily enough, they say this is, you know, human trafficking or sex trafficking.
[00:37:31]  Some modern slavery.
[00:37:32]  So no, you're not enslaved.
[00:37:34]  If you're an adult woman in your 20s and you go to some island or you go wherever for a luxury vacation and like, maybe you, maybe you like, you hook up or you do something and then 15 or 20 years later, Jp Morgan is dangling, you know, a couple million dollars over your head and to get it you can say that you're a sex trafficking victim.
[00:37:54]  Uh, that's not enslavement, and so I don't know what people even mean by trafficking anymore, because it is so unmoored to any kind of stable definition.
[00:38:03]  Well, here's the problem is that you make a decent point on one element of it.
[00:38:07]  And it's the same discussion argument we had when it came to Andrew Tate, where you're talking about the sex industry.
[00:38:13]  And then if it's synonymous with sex trafficking, then you can have these abuses of the law.
[00:38:19]  That being said, because it's been abused in a commercial sex industry.
[00:38:23]  Well, no, but as far as we know, what I mean to say is the sex trafficking that they were trying to go after Tate for set aside all of his other immoral behavior and whatever it was.
[00:38:32]  People are arguing this is a massive abuse of the sex trafficking laws, which might be opaque in the first place, which is constant now.
[00:38:41]  Well, it's constant now.
[00:38:42]  And because it's been abused now, doesn't mean it's a benefit.
[00:38:44]  I mean, look at Diddy.
[00:38:45]  Maureen Comey, who was the prosecutor who was in charge of prosecuting Epstein until he then dies, right?
[00:38:52]  And then she also, then she's one of the lead prosecutors of Ghelain Maxwell.
[00:38:57]  He prosecuted Diddy, as you might recall.
[00:39:00]  Oh, no, I remember.
[00:39:01]  She tried to claim that he was a sex trafficker in a sex trafficking conspiracy of one, I guess.
[00:39:08]  I haven't done a full in-depth study of that case.
[00:39:10]  Maybe I should.
[00:39:11]  But my understanding, based on what I have looked at, is that what was alleged was that Diddy was a sex trafficking conspirator in a sex trafficking conspiracy that consisted of one person himself.
[00:39:22]  Now, I'm sorry, we've gotten to a point where this concept can't be freely invoked anymore.
[00:39:26]  Like you can't just ask me cavalierly, do you agree that Epstein was a sex trafficker if like the contours of what supposedly constitutes sex trafficking now are so radically expansive that like you or I could be a sex trafficker if like we wink at a if I went like if you wink at a lady out your window and then like you facilitate her movement somehow by saying, hey, go down this road.
[00:39:46]  I mean, like it's, it's never ending.
[00:39:48]  Let me just say, there is no realm of the universe where I could even be accused of that.
[00:39:52]  You keep your schmeckling in your pants and your eyes to yourself.
[00:39:54]  But set that aside, Maureen Comey, another bad example, because my argument has always been that the prosecution of P. Diddy for sex trafficking of one person was the cover-up and not the prosecution.
[00:40:03]  Bring it back, however, to Epstein.
[00:40:06]  He pleaded guilty to solicitation of a prostitution from a minor.
[00:40:09]  Maxwell was found guilty of, and we can go through it.
[00:40:12]  I mean, whether or not you think the conviction is worth anything, politicized, whatever, from up to 94.
[00:40:17]  I think I maintain she was wrongfully convicted.
[00:40:19]  That trial was fatally flawed and actually farcical.
[00:40:22]  I've never examined a more farcical trial of any kind.
[00:40:26]  At least let's just get to the facts from 94.
[00:40:29]  From at least those are allegations.
[00:40:30]  Correct.
[00:40:31]  Well, no, now they're proven because she was convicted.
[00:40:33]  She was convicted, but you know, Jeffrey Epstein, they abused minor girls by, among other things, helping Epstein to recruit, groom, and ultimately abuse victims known to Maxwell and Epstein to be under the age of 18.
[00:40:43]  So at least one important premise of your caveat, they were under 18.
[00:40:47]  Now, I know you took shit, and I think rightly so, for suggesting it's not pedophilia if they're over 16, because pedophilia is an attraction to a prepubescent minor, and these are fully that's always been the definition.
[00:40:57]  If you look at any medical journal, the medical association, I mean, I know it's like I always say, look, this, I've, I've never, I didn't wake up one morning and say to myself, gee, you know what would be fun constantly having to debate the definition of pedophilia on the internet.
[00:41:11]  No, it just happens to be a relevant factor here, unfortunately, and it constantly gets brought up to me, or I'm constantly demanded to address it.
[00:41:18]  So I don't understand what is so radical about simply pointing to how pedophilia has always been defined as a medical pathology, which is yes, pre sexual, like deviant or pathological sexual attraction or sexual activity with prepubescent children.
[00:41:33]  That's just like what it always has been since the term was coined.
[00:41:36]  But now we have even more concept creep, just like trafficking, where I don't know, like soon enough, it seems like you could be a you're going to be called a pedophile if like a 25-year-old you know makes a claim about you 20 years after the fact.
[00:41:48]  Because like people insist that pedophilia is a proper way to describe some sort of, yes, maybe statutorily illegal, but nonetheless consensual sexual encounter or inadvisable or immoral encounter with somebody who's like 17 and a half.
[00:42:02]  Like, is that pedophilia?
[00:42:04]  If you say it is, then, and if that's just accepted, that's what foments the mass hysteria and moral panic.
[00:42:09]  And I'm trying to rein that back in because I argue it has really detrimental consequences in a variety of different areas.
[00:42:16]  And one of the main engines of it is this constant repetition that we're in like the midst of this giant international pedophilia crisis of such monumental proportions.
[00:42:25]  And that's just not accurate according to any reasonable understanding of the facts as I see it.
[00:42:31]  I would, I would, I mean, I would suggest it's a losing battle to try to, from a perversion and systemic abuse of young people perspective, it's a losing battle to try to distinguish between pedophilia, statutory rape, abuse of minors.
[00:42:43]  I mean, because I mean, and I have a losing battle to distinguish between things and using facts and evidence, like I consider myself a journalist.
[00:42:50]  Isn't that what journalists are supposed to do?
[00:42:51]  No, well, you're, I say conveniently, but from your own perspective, using the term pedophilia in a clinical term, and then people are using it in a colloquial term.
[00:42:58]  And so, in two different ways, I would say that the colloquial usage of the term now has gotten absurd.
[00:43:02]  Like, do you think that that's a like, just from your personal perspective, whether or not it's a losing battle?
[00:43:08]  Do you think it's reasonable to say that something sexually improper allegedly happening with a 17-year-old could be construed as pedophilia?
[00:43:17]  No, I wouldn't say it's unreasonable to say that.
[00:43:19]  So, then we agree.
[00:43:20]  No, no, no, no.
[00:43:22]  I would say unreasonable.
[00:43:23]  Not unreasonable for people to call it pedophilia because you're going to rely on a statutory statutory provision where then I can say, okay, well, I'll go to Nigeria or I think Philippines has a age of consent of 11.
[00:43:33]  Well, it's not pedophilia.
[00:43:33]  So you're saying it is reasonable for people to characterize some sort of sexual activity with a 17-year-old as pedophilia.
[00:43:42]  So it can be characterized just as you would characterize illicit sexual activity with a four-year-old.
[00:43:49]  Well, let's back it up.
[00:43:51]  So that would be pedophilia.
[00:43:53]  From a clinical psychiatric perspective, correct.
[00:43:56]  From a colloquial legal perspective, if you take a 17 and a half-year-old, take 17.
[00:44:01]  Pedophilia is not in the statute book.
[00:44:04]  But hold on, but take you want to take the edges and then try to draw something from that, like 18 less a day.
[00:44:11]  Is it are you comfortable calling the person a pedophile?
[00:44:13]  I don't know, but it was kind of perverted when people were doing the countdown for some of these 17-year-old TikTokers to turn 18.
[00:44:18]  14 years old, I would have, I would have said that Trump has made pedophilic remarks in his past because he would go on Howard Stern and joke that like some younger, some girl, you know, some some I can't give you the exact quotes, but they're quotes.
[00:44:31]  I wouldn't, I wouldn't call, first of all, someone makes sexual charge or sexual innuendo state, you know, just you know, quips having to do with like some girl being attractive and like maybe when she's older, et cetera.
[00:44:42]  Like, I don't, I wouldn't call that pedophilia.
[00:44:44]  Maybe you can say it's crass or something, but like pedophilia is like the worst thing you could call anybody.
[00:44:50]  Like the pedophile is the worst thing you could never call anyone.
[00:44:54]  Shouldn't we be a little bit scrupulous in how we use it?
[00:44:57]  You're also now confounding speech versus actions, which are two different things.
[00:45:00]  So making crass jokes under a Howard Stern type environment, I don't think anyone called that pedophilia.
[00:45:05]  So words versus actions and pedophilia requires actions.
[00:45:07]  Nobody's a an unit's like being a pedophilia does not require actions, actually.
[00:45:12]  Pedophilia is having the pathological sexual attraction.
[00:45:17]  So you can be a you could be a pet, somebody who has the pedophilic sexual attraction, but does not actually take any action with children to visualize.
[00:45:26]  But then you're not, then I don't know that you'd be called a pedophile.
[00:45:29]  I wonder if pedophile requires the act.
[00:45:31]  So if somebody came up to you and says, like, I have a confession for you, Viva, I'm sexually attracted to five-year-olds.
[00:45:36]  You would not then consider them a pedophile?
[00:45:40]  I would consider them to be a pedophile, yes.
[00:45:42]  But now, done anything sexually with a five-year-old.
[00:45:45]  No, well, then one would be a criminal pedo, the other one would be a pedophile, a criminal pedophile.
[00:45:50]  They're both pedophiles.
[00:45:51]  Yeah, and I think I think I've there you go.
[00:45:53]  So it's not contingent on the action, it's contingent on the attraction.
[00:45:56]  No, correct.
[00:45:57]  On that, on that particular point.
[00:45:59]  Now, calling someone a pedo versus as a result of their actions.

=== Does Pedophilia Require an Act? (11:36) ===

[00:46:03]  The question here is Epstein doing things with 16-year-old, which I think we can concede.
[00:46:08]  Can I just clarify?
[00:46:09]  I'm not saying, I just want the audience to know because unfortunately, this qualifier is necessary.
[00:46:14]  Nothing I'm saying here is some is the product of some hidden agenda that I have to try to normalize my own depraved sexual urges.
[00:46:23]  Are you reading that?
[00:46:24]  Honestly, I don't have any sexual.
[00:46:26]  I mean, look, I'm not if you think I was a secret pedophile, right?
[00:46:30]  Would this be the issue that I would want to spend day in and day out discussing?
[00:46:33]  Like, wouldn't that bring some unwanted attention to me?
[00:46:36]  Like, wouldn't I be found out?
[00:46:37]  Because, like, I get called a pedo like a million times a day.
[00:46:40]  I mean, you should see my DMs and so forth.
[00:46:43]  So, no, that's not an agenda.
[00:46:45]  I know everyone's like, everyone, the joke is, I want you to check this guy's hard drive referring to you.
[00:46:49]  That's what that's all I hear.
[00:46:50]  That's right.
[00:46:50]  That's right.
[00:46:51]  So, I tell people, you want to come check it?
[00:46:53]  I mean, there's not going to be anything that interesting, but like, if you want to make an appointment to come over to my apartment and check my hard drive, well, this is not go ahead.
[00:47:00]  You're going to see a lot of PDF, not PDF files, but like actual PDF documents with like court records and things and like Ukraine war videos and stuff like that.
[00:47:10]  It's not going to be ready for people to not clip.
[00:47:12]  If you want to come to my apartment, I post that on X.
[00:47:17]  Okay, but so back it up now.
[00:47:18]  So, I think your comparison between Clinton and Trump, I think, is wrong, but at least I understand it.
[00:47:22]  Your distinction of pedophilia is, I think, a distinction without a difference when it comes to this discussion because we're talking about sexual depravity.
[00:47:28]  And then the question is going to be: well, you say, you say if they're 16 to 18, well, that's a that is a legally distinct window than 18 and above, but you're saying 18 and above, you don't get to claim uh human sex trafficking as though people can't be, I don't know, um, coerced into some form of blackmail extorted type sexual activity.
[00:47:45]  16 to 18.
[00:47:47]  You got to give me evidence of the coercion and the extortion.
[00:47:49]  Well, I mean, there's no, there's no such evidence available that I've been able well, other than because you're disregarding the actual tension.
[00:47:57]  The pedophilia thing is not a distinction without a difference.
[00:47:59]  I'm sorry, the first when people hear the word Epstein, if we were to poll the American people right now, right, or even like the world, because this is like an international scandal now that's causing political tumult in Britain and Norway and Sweden and Slovakia and everywhere, France.
[00:48:18]  Um, we were to poll like every country in which there's a there's been an Epstein controversy of some sort, and we're doing like a word association thing.
[00:48:25]  What's the number one word that you make the association to when you hear the word Epstein?
[00:48:30]  Well, I listened a bunch of words, don't you think it would be pedophilia or pedophile?
[00:48:34]  Pedophile sex ring is what I would say.
[00:48:35]  So, then it's not a distinction without a difference if the basis for why people are making that word association is incredibly flawed to the point of, I would argue, nearly fictitious.
[00:48:45]  Well, okay, now I don't think it's incredibly flawed.
[00:48:48]  I think some of the victims who were 14 at the time, 14, 15, you're then you're gonna say, Well, that's still not pedophilia as if you're gonna get the kids to either.
[00:48:57]  So, when Pam Bondi gave her, you know, a car crash testimony before the House Judiciary Committee a few weeks ago, which was a shit show hearing based on her behavior, but then also the behavior of the Democrats and the behavior of Massey.
[00:49:12]  I've never seen somebody who I actually held in somewhat high regard, meaning Thomas Massey, because he was seemed intelligent, he seemed attuned to like legislative minutiae.
[00:49:19]  He could tell you what was going on in the rules committee when, like, the majority of actual members of Congress have no idea what goes on in the rules committee.
[00:49:25]  I've never seen somebody so thoroughly be clown themselves in the span of like less than a year than Thomas Massey.
[00:49:31]  It's incredible.
[00:49:32]  But anyway, so when she was Pam Bondi was protested, right, by those supposed Epstein survivors, they were all the, if not all of them, like all, maybe all but one of them were adults at the time that they claimed they were victimized by Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:49:51]  And yet, when people are seeing this imagery and the footage of them being protests, they're getting the immediate impression that's just fed to them constantly from all this hyper-credulous media coverage, whether it's on the online podcast media like we're on now or the mainstream CNN type media.
[00:50:06]  None of them think they all agree, everybody agrees with you that it's a distinction without a difference.
[00:50:10]  So nobody cares to make the distinction or to clarify to viewers that this is like you shouldn't make the word association to pedophile for these alleged Epstein survivors because they're not alleging anything that comes close to pedophilia.
[00:50:24]  They're claiming that they were adults in their 20s.
[00:50:27]  Something potentially happened and some of it might be recovered memory.
[00:50:30]  Some of it was like adult models going to an island and then you know 20 years later realizing there's a JP Morgan settlement available.
[00:50:37]  So yeah, it's not a distinction without a difference because this is exactly what is fueling the moral panic and NASA.
[00:50:43]  Unpunished pedophilia scandal.
[00:50:44]  I'll disagree with you on one thing.
[00:50:46]  I will agree with you on a part of something that if I were Massey and Rokan, and I've said this before, their righteous movement to have the Epstein files disclosed got hijacked by partisans like Gloria Allred's daughter, what's her name, Lisa Bloom, and the like.
[00:51:00]  And undoubtedly, you have people jumping on a bandwagon.
[00:51:03]  That doesn't undermine certain things.
[00:51:05]  When I say people are associated with pedophilia, let me just bring up a few things.
[00:51:08]  I'm curious to know what your explanation is.
[00:51:10]  You don't think they undermine themselves when they defamed a bunch of random nobodies, meaning a bunch of men who had no profile or public notoriety whatsoever as child sex criminals on the basis of literally nothing.
[00:51:24]  Like Rokana went on the floor of the House of Representatives and listed these names as though he was listing perpetrators of child sex crimes.
[00:51:30]  And then Thomas Massey said that they were incriminated in child sex crimes.
[00:51:35]  And it was just totally made up.
[00:51:37]  I mean, they just slandered these random men who are not totally innocent men.
[00:51:44]  They didn't undermine themselves in that case.
[00:51:46]  I'll say two things on that.
[00:51:47]  Set Rokana's guy.
[00:51:49]  Thomas Massey specifically said they might just be people who were in a random lineup.
[00:51:53]  He said that they were incriminated.
[00:51:55]  He said likely incriminated.
[00:51:56]  I'll give you the quote.
[00:51:57]  Well, but likely incriminated is not incriminated and it is.
[00:51:59]  Oh, so if I just say, hey, Viva, I mean, it's possible that Viva is likely incriminated in child sex crimes.
[00:52:05]  Like you would say, okay, no big deal.
[00:52:07]  Well, if it's if it's based on me having been in the lineup and then the context.
[00:52:10]  But it was based on a total, a totally false reading of that file.
[00:52:15]  It wasn't based on a false reading.
[00:52:17]  And I would argue that there are some redactions that were done and some that were not.
[00:52:20]  Interpretation of what that file signified.
[00:52:23]  Well, no, because he specifically added, he added in advance the qualifier.
[00:52:26]  They might have just been random people in the lineup.
[00:52:28]  And you're fine with politicians going around accusing random citizens of having been complicit in child sex criminality.
[00:52:33]  No, no, I'm not fine.
[00:52:34]  That's not what happened here, but set that aside.
[00:52:36]  It is.
[00:52:37]  I do think that some of these redactions were specifically done so that people would make those types of mistakes so they could then be subsequently discredited.
[00:52:43]  And what makes you think that?
[00:52:43]  Why would the Trump administration have those names have been redacted?
[00:52:50]  Well, I mean, Occam's Razor, to use a little bit of a cliche in terms of logical argumentation.
[00:52:56]  They were redacting victims and co-conspirators.
[00:52:58]  Well, why would they redacted those names?
[00:52:59]  Accommodate Razor tells me, because I've looked into this a great deal.
[00:53:03]  I've spoken to people.
[00:53:04]  I've done original reporting to some degree, in addition to the primary source materials.
[00:53:10]  Aquaman's Razor tells me this was like a mammoth undertaking that the DOJ had to get done on an expedited schedule.
[00:53:17]  We're talking about millions upon millions of files.
[00:53:21]  The redaction process is already incredibly laborious.
[00:53:24]  They had to take 500 lawyers from the DOJ, including some from like the National Security Division, and put them on this Epstein redaction beat for like six weeks or something or longer.
[00:53:37]  And there was not like a streamlined process for the redactions.
[00:53:40]  So some of it, your answer is incompetence, which I will agree.
[00:53:44]  I would say, or yeah, or just something a little bit more banal than the idea that there was some intentionality for specifically redacting that document to like trick people.
[00:53:54]  I don't think that's credible.
[00:53:56]  No, no, I said that.
[00:53:56]  That could be it's well, it's one thing.
[00:53:58]  It's either incompetence or it's malice.
[00:54:00]  And then when you go back to some of the rest of the what's your case for why there was would have been like why why would the Trump administration have done that with malice?
[00:54:07]  Well, since you supported Trump, I mean, what Trump administration, I have been long now critical of Pam Bondi because of this.
[00:54:14]  And I think you supported Donald Trump.
[00:54:15]  He's ultimately him, right?
[00:54:18]  To some extent, when you're operating the largest corporation on earth and you have to rely on moving parts, he's made mistakes.
[00:54:23]  It's not like saying you support Trump doesn't mean you support his decision to pick Bill Barr or rely on Anthony Fauci.
[00:54:28]  It means that you're the buck stocks stops at him.
[00:54:30]  That's the famous Harry Truman statement.
[00:54:32]  No, no, it's true, but that doesn't mean that he's necessarily like it stopped at Joe Biden.
[00:54:36]  I'm sure you didn't have, I'm sure you weren't overly hesitant to point out that the buck stopped at Joe Biden when something went wrong in the Biden administration.
[00:54:45]  I don't think Biden was in charge whatsoever.
[00:54:47]  So it stopped with him in so far he whether he was or he wasn't.
[00:54:49]  The buck stopped at him.
[00:54:50]  He didn't have the cognitive capacity to oversee the executive diversions for a second.
[00:54:53]  I'll tell you the buck stops with the president.
[00:54:56]  Yes.
[00:54:56]  Why would they do it nefariously to discredit Thomas?
[00:54:59]  Well, he signed the bill.
[00:55:00]  He signed the bill, but he didn't have a hand in the redactions.
[00:55:03]  Why would they do it to discredit Thomas Massey?
[00:55:05]  An easy argument as to why they would have done it out of malice, Pam Bondi in particular, because there's been a war waged against Thomas Massey.
[00:55:11]  But I assure you that Thomas Massey and Rokana are more than capable of discrediting themselves on this issue because they're possibly, but we're talking on one.
[00:55:17]  I spoke to them both, okay, about the Epstein files issue, and they were both amazingly lacking in knowledge about just basic tenets of the whole story as of like last summer and fall.
[00:55:31]  Um, and so yeah, they just out off about stuff and stick to one thing at a time.
[00:55:37]  The naming of the names, Massey specifically said they might have just been people in a random lineup.
[00:55:41]  If they were, there's no reason why because Todd Blanche was the one who's basically in charge of this, right?
[00:55:45]  The deputy.
[00:55:46]  No, and that was Trump's form.
[00:55:48]  Trump installed Todd Blanche because Blanche was Trump's former personal attorney.
[00:55:52]  He represented Trump as his defense counsel in the Stormy Daniels, you know, quote-unquote, hush money trial.
[00:55:57]  So Todd Blanche is the one who put in redactions to trick Thomas Massey and discredited him.
[00:56:03]  Todd Blanche is the one who issued that memo that utterly emasculated and humiliated Kash Patel and Dan Bongino.
[00:56:09]  And don't think that I don't think that Todd Blanche, because he was appointed, he was from last July.
[00:56:13]  Sorry?
[00:56:13]  Yeah, the unsigned.
[00:56:15]  Do we know that Todd Blanche is the one who composed that memo?
[00:56:18]  I'm not actually not even aware of that.
[00:56:20]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:56:21]  Whether or not he composed it, he's the one that tweeted it out, is my recollection because I remember writing.
[00:56:25]  It got leaked to Axios.
[00:56:27]  Yeah.
[00:56:27]  It got leaked to Axios.
[00:56:29]  Who the heck leaked it?
[00:56:30]  I don't know.
[00:56:31]  Maybe Todd Blanche leaked it, but I don't know that he did.
[00:56:34]  Oh, hold on.
[00:56:34]  I'll pull up my tweet from the time.
[00:56:35]  But bottom line, I have no more trust for Todd Blanche than I do for Pam Bondi.
[00:56:39]  I think the DOJ.
[00:56:39]  You have no trust for Trump's personal attorney, who he expressly installed because of his loyalty to Trump.
[00:56:45]  Yeah.
[00:56:46]  No.
[00:56:46]  I mean, I'm not going to, I'm not going to.
[00:56:48]  I have no trouble.
[00:56:48]  I have no.
[00:56:49]  I have to say that.
[00:56:49]  Trump's got a lot of problems then.
[00:56:51]  I mean, maybe Trump was the wrong thing.
[00:56:53]  He's had a history of making some bad picks and some good picks, and some people do get hijacked in the process.
[00:56:58]  But set all that aside, he himself is never a bad pick.
[00:57:00]  Like the guy who's constantly making all these bad picks, the problem is never, problem never lies with him, right?
[00:57:05]  It's always with him being bamboozled.
[00:57:08]  Certain problems lie with him, and that's why you try to get him to make the right decision in the long run and hope that he doesn't get his decision making right now in the international arena, like the middle of the day.
[00:57:19]  You have to, I've issued my constructive criticism in a way that I think is, you know, it'll either get listened to.
[00:57:27]  Okay, I'll issue my constructive criticism right now as well.
[00:57:31]  This is batshit crazy.
[00:57:33]  I mean, seriously.
[00:57:35]  But hold on, I want to get to Ram, but I want to talk about it.

=== Virgin Islands Lawsuit Claims (16:17) ===

[00:57:39]  No, we'll talk about that in a second, but I want to just bring up a few of these.
[00:57:42]  hold up because when you say the pedophile doesn't you know from my perspective i think todd blanch is actually pretty rational If it was him who was the public face of the DOJ day in and day out rather than Bondi, things would have gone a lot more smoothly because at least he's competent.
[00:57:54]  Pam Bondi is like just a bimbo.
[00:57:57]  I wouldn't use that term in particular.
[00:57:59]  Why not?
[00:57:59]  Because it's too active.
[00:58:00]  I've used Skank, but not for Pam Bondi, but Skank.
[00:58:03]  It's too true.
[00:58:03]  You can't handle the truth.
[00:58:06]  Okay, but hold on.
[00:58:06]  You say the penophile, I don't know.
[00:58:08]  She's an income poop.
[00:58:09]  She's an income poop.
[00:58:10]  I can go with that.
[00:58:11]  When you said that there's zero evidence in the files anywhere for pedophile sex trafficking, whatever, I've been dying to know what you understand by emails like this, where it says, who all is in the Austin office today going to want pizza?
[00:58:23]  Come on.
[00:58:24]  No, no, no.
[00:58:25]  I'm not on that.
[00:58:26]  Well, I got to stop you here because, look, we have millions of Epstein files now, even before this round of record releases.
[00:58:34]  So there was the first round in December, December 19th, second round, January 30th.
[00:58:39]  Even before December 19th, we had just a mind-boggling quantity of Epstein files that you could spend the rest of your life trying to pour through.
[00:58:47]  And believe me, I've tried, and you still wouldn't be able to finish.
[00:58:50]  You know, an avalanche of lawsuits and litigation, criminal cases with like accompanying exhibits, appeals, journalistic inquiries.
[00:59:01]  We got interviews, everything.
[00:59:02]  You could literally spend the rest of your life pouring through this stuff.
[00:59:05]  And then, so your best evidence for me, it's given this enormous quantity of material is that people decided on January 30th that the research method, right, was not going to actually go through and read as I have done.
[00:59:23]  Like I thought, okay, I want to see if there's a particular prosecution memo that where the prosecutors in the Zouthern District of New York talk about whether they're going to charge this person.
[00:59:30]  No, it's like, yeah, but guys who went in and typed in pizza and grape soda and beef jerky.
[00:59:35]  That's your research method.
[00:59:37]  And then when stuff pops up, that's now your best evidence of child sex trafficking.
[00:59:42]  Like you don't actually, you wouldn't expect to have a little bit firmer evidence at this point than some like weird sounding email from 2012 that references pizza.
[00:59:51]  Well, first of all, no, but now I can understand the, I don't want to accuse you of playing games, but I can now understand what you're doing.
[00:59:58]  The United States Virgin Island lawsuit, which I'm going to try to bring it up in the backdrop.
[01:00:03]  I don't know if I need it.
[01:00:04]  The United States Virgin Island lawsuit.
[01:00:05]  I know what you're going to say.
[01:00:06]  Yeah, that was never substantiated.
[01:00:08]  But so now you're saying, like, okay, well, you don't even have a memo or a lawsuit because that was never substantiated because it didn't go to court.
[01:00:13]  So you literally have framed it that there will never be that U.S. Virgin Islands memo has like a million incendiary.
[01:00:18]  It wasn't worse for random, like bogus news.
[01:00:21]  Swasi news articles.
[01:00:23]  That was the U.S. Virgin Islands trying to get the most possible money from the Epstein estate, right?
[01:00:27]  So of course they throw in everything that they possibly can.
[01:00:31]  That's the most inflammatory.
[01:00:32]  It wasn't a memo.
[01:00:33]  It was a civil suit.
[01:00:34]  It was the Leo is the complaint.
[01:00:35]  That ended up, that resulted in a massive settlement.
[01:00:38]  And so now, but I appreciate what you're saying then.
[01:00:40]  Yeah, after Epstein was dead, right?
[01:00:41]  So there's two of the dead guys.
[01:00:43]  They made allegations.
[01:00:44]  And the guy wasn't alive to defend any of the claims.
[01:00:47]  They made allegations of a sex trafficking operation of the Epstein Enterprise.
[01:00:51]  Lots of people make lots of claims.
[01:00:53]  Okay.
[01:00:53]  And so, you know, you say it was never proven in court, but even when it gets proven in court, financial incentives.
[01:00:58]  Stop, stop, stop, stop.
[01:00:58]  Let me just ask you in general.
[01:00:59]  Do you think it's worth taking into account when there's an enormous financial incentive for somebody to do it to do anything?
[01:01:04]  You take in different ways.
[01:01:04]  And how that might influence, Michael.
[01:01:07]  So now, even a conviction with Ghelaine Maxwell is not enough to convince you because you disregard that it was a political trial.
[01:01:12]  Yeah, I'll give you a whole civil lawsuit from the U.S. Virgin Islands doesn't prove anything too because it didn't get proven for us.
[01:01:20]  Because a complaint unto itself doesn't prove anything.
[01:01:22]  You know that.
[01:01:23]  But neither does a conviction to you.
[01:01:24]  So you're never going to get proven wrong.
[01:01:26]  Well, because I'm going through, I could go through every element of why I find that she, that trial to have been farcical and why it was inferior.
[01:01:34]  Motivated reasoning.
[01:01:35]  You disregard someone who is not.
[01:01:36]  I mean, you disregard lawsuits.
[01:01:37]  Okay, I mean, everybody has heard emails talking about slicing pizzas.
[01:01:40]  So nothing.
[01:01:41]  Hold on.
[01:01:42]  So if the U.S. Virgin Islands in that lawsuit, I can't recite it off the top of my head, but basically they say like a 12-year-old was seen on the island.
[01:01:49]  And the source of that claim was some random, I think it was like a tabloid news article, essentially, where they claim that somebody who was working on the airport lookout post looked in the distance and thought they might have seen, and this is like them saying so in hindsight, like years after the fact.
[01:02:06]  They think they might have seen a female who might have been, you know, that young in the distance going to the island.
[01:02:12]  You don't think there would be any additional evidence that might be able to corroborate that at this point?
[01:02:16]  Because there isn't.
[01:02:17]  No, well, of course, there isn't because it was that's why I say no credible evidence.
[01:02:20]  I don't regard that to be credible evidence at all.
[01:02:23]  But you don't like quadruple bogus wander through the you don't consider a condition to be credible evidence.
[01:02:30]  Let me ask that Maxwell was convicted.
[01:02:34]  Um, so this is another one that I want to, I'm just curious to see what you think of it.
[01:02:38]  I forget exactly who the Marcia Drakov.
[01:02:40]  So you have an email from to, I think this was to Jeffrey Epstein originally.
[01:02:44]  It says, Katya has a law firm, corporate law.
[01:02:46]  She also understands blockchain regulations ecosystems as well.
[01:02:48]  Al Jazeera Alesha is a film director.
[01:02:51]  She's working on human rights VR movie.
[01:02:53]  Alexandra is an actress and an art expert.
[01:02:56]  Her business ideas, all of them are smart, high energy, and great.
[01:02:59]  And then he says, your friend Alesa told me about the project she is doing researching a really bad guy that gets children for sex sent to his island.
[01:03:06]  She almost fainted when I told her that person is me.
[01:03:09]  That's from Jeffrey Epstein.
[01:03:10]  Like, yes, I just don't know about you, but like, if my every private text message and email and DM of mine from the past 20 years was dumped into the public domain, people would be able to find messages or emails that in context at the time would have been understood by the recipient of my message as As sarcastic or a joke or an inside joke.
[01:03:30]  Like sometimes you have inside jokes with people where you make little snide references to things, right?
[01:03:34]  I mean, this is not crazy.
[01:03:36]  I mean, you probably are familiar with this concept.
[01:03:37]  I would imagine that you have done the same at some point in your life.
[01:03:40]  And so, yeah, clearly that's that's Epstein.
[01:03:44]  I mean, Epstein was chronically sarcastic or sardonic.
[01:03:47]  And if you want to, if your argument to me right now is that email is Jeffrey Epstein confessing in an email to having orchestrated a child sex trafficking conspiracy that he knew he might be able to, he was possibly going to be prosecuted for, because that was around the time, that's December of 2018, right?
[01:04:05]  That was right around the same time where this Miami Herald series comes out and Bradley Edwards, his legal nemesis, is colluding with the Southern District of New York.
[01:04:13]  He knew that he was potentially in some legal liability at this point, but he's just going to make a confession.
[01:04:19]  Let me flip that entire premise on its head.
[01:04:20]  We're talking about a man now who has pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor who's the butt of an international, call it a badly hidden secret if you do believe it or a trope if you don't believe it.
[01:04:34]  And he's going to make that joke.
[01:04:36]  I mean, that argument comes.
[01:04:37]  But so like, let's say, let's say this is not a joke.
[01:04:39]  That was him being totally serious, even though we have like millions of emails.
[01:04:43]  It's like when he's clearly not where he's clearly being sarcastic or joking or tongue-in-cheek or what have you.
[01:04:48]  But let's just stipulate that's serious.
[01:04:49]  Okay.
[01:04:50]  Then like, where is the underlying actual hard, tangible evidence that would show that he did have children sent to his island for sex?
[01:04:58]  Because there's none available or none on offer.
[01:05:01]  And so, so what, now your contention would be that Donald Trump and Todd Blanche and Pam Bondi are still covering it all up?
[01:05:08]  Or that doesn't exist to be covered up in the first place, which is where we talk about where Epstein, a trove of evidence.
[01:05:16]  I think this is the article disappeared from Epstein's place when he was raided and in the week in advance of it.
[01:05:20]  And the fact that given that there's like nearly, I would say, like at least 700, something like well over $500 million.
[01:05:27]  I say it's approaching a billion in terms of like various forms of settlement monies that are available around the whole Epstein thing, depending on like how you count it out all up.
[01:05:35]  We wouldn't have had an instance of somebody filing a lawsuit where they allege that they were sex trafficked as a child to the island.
[01:05:46]  I know that Virgin Islands thing where they're just kind of like rehashing that like bizarre little half an anecdote from somebody who like saw something from a distance years before.
[01:05:55]  But in terms of somebody who could get financial remuneration for having been heinously sex trafficked as a child to what we're called, what we're told is pedophile island or rape island, like that wouldn't have manifested anywhere, really?
[01:06:05]  Because everybody never claims.
[01:06:07]  But first of all, I mean, I think on the one hand, to some extent, it has, and then we disregard it as being people who have fabricated stories for the purposes of jumping on a settlement or claim.
[01:06:15]  You're saying if they were adults and not necessarily.
[01:06:17]  You're saying that one throwaway line in the U.S. Virgin Islands lawsuit is sufficient.
[01:06:20]  Well, no, I think the entire lawsuit details it into the market.
[01:06:23]  There was like one, there was like one half a sentence on that.
[01:06:25]  No, no, I can bring it up.
[01:06:26]  We can, we can assessment of that.
[01:06:27]  We can go read it.
[01:06:28]  It's a lengthy lawsuit that goes into the sex trafficking.
[01:06:30]  No, I'm saying in terms of the 12, like the claim that there was like somebody who was like 13, maybe it was 12 or 13, or something like that, who was spotted allegedly at the airport going into the island.
[01:06:41]  No, I'll reread it, but no, it was more extensive than that.
[01:06:45]  And it was, but then, yeah, there was a larger sex trafficking, but it won't be alleged, but like involved.
[01:06:48]  It won't make a difference.
[01:06:49]  So, Michael, you've already said it.
[01:06:50]  It won't make a difference regardless.
[01:06:52]  If there is even a lawsuit, there'll be unproven allegations.
[01:06:54]  If it gets settled, it's because the estate settled it.
[01:06:56]  You can, and by the way, this all goes back to 2000.
[01:06:59]  Why am I crazy for requesting some measure of actual hard evidence for anything?
[01:07:04]  And then nothing never gets presented.
[01:07:06]  And then you have to resort to pulling up emails that reference pizza.
[01:07:10]  No, but first of all, it's wrong on several fronts.
[01:07:13]  There was hard evidence.
[01:07:14]  You just say that that trial with Maxwell was fake.
[01:07:16]  No, no, no.
[01:07:17]  I'm saying for the 12-year-old sex trafficking on the island for the child sex trafficking on the island, which is in that email you pulled up, is clearly making a joke.
[01:07:23]  But I said, even for the sake of argument, let's say it wasn't a joke.
[01:07:26]  Shouldn't we expect that to be accompanied at some point by some tangible evidence showing that children were sex trafficked to the island?
[01:07:33]  Well, there's two issues to that.
[01:07:34]  That wasn't a component of the Maxwell trial.
[01:07:36]  No, well, and I have other theories as to why they had a very limited scope of the sex trafficking, even in the Maxwell trial.
[01:07:42]  And you'll say it wasn't limited at all.
[01:07:43]  It was as expansive as they could possibly conjure it because they were desperate to get her convicted of something.
[01:07:48]  Two questions that says, why is there no better evidence?
[01:07:50]  And then one argument is going to be: A, whatever they, there was a lot of evidence that got moved before Epstein got arrested.
[01:07:56]  And then the flip side is in 2008, they gave no from his offices from his home in Manhattan, which might be where it was kept in any event.
[01:08:06]  But in 2008, I'm fairly certain, there's well-documented disappearance of computers.
[01:08:14]  One of his lawyers came in, they went to access a safe, they removed some materials, and they came back and then returned the materials.
[01:08:19]  And the FBI says that they went and they cataloged everything that was in the safe when they first rated it, right?
[01:08:26]  And it is funny when we decide what we want to believe and what we decide to believe.
[01:08:30]  I'm not saying I believe it or disbelieve it.
[01:08:32]  I'm saying here's what the FBI said.
[01:08:33]  Then you can make what you will.
[01:08:35]  What the FBI said the FBI agent who did the raid testified at the Maxwell trial, okay?
[01:08:40]  They cataloged everything that was in the safe, then stuff was removed, and stuff, then the stuff got returned.
[01:08:46]  If I'm saying this, if I'm recollecting correctly, I mean, I might be having a lot of things.
[01:08:49]  I know what I mean.
[01:08:50]  I think you are, I think, but I think you're wrong.
[01:08:52]  But they said that nothing was removed compared to when they first cataloged it.
[01:08:58]  So now we have your, now you would have to say that Donald Trump's FBI, because they're the ones who raided it, they were what covering for Jeffrey Epstein.
[01:09:07]  So maybe you shouldn't do that carve out for Trump because it seems to go pretty high up the chain of command or it seems to run pretty deep in terms of where Trump's in charge that all this malfeasance is taking place that you seem to want to impute.
[01:09:19]  Well, no, the Malfeasance occurred well before Trump's first term in any event.
[01:09:23]  And if you want to argue with that.
[01:09:24]  But that raid, that raid of the townhouse in New York was in July of 2019.
[01:09:28]  Correct.
[01:09:30]  Correct.
[01:09:31]  And the question is: what was taken beforehand?
[01:09:33]  So if you're saying the FBI tampered with it or the FBI was not there.
[01:09:35]  No, I didn't.
[01:09:36]  No, I never said that.
[01:09:37]  I said the FBI.
[01:09:38]  Well, you're saying that there was some kind of something that was suspicious that went on in terms of the FBI.
[01:09:43]  I believe it's well known that items were removed beforehand as whether or not he got tipped off for the raid.
[01:09:48]  No, no, no.
[01:09:48]  Items were removed from the Palm Beach house in 2000.
[01:09:52]  October of 2005 during the earlier phase through the state level initial phases of that process.
[01:09:59]  That was the one where I was getting to now, which is in terms of why you might not find any hard evidence is because in 2008 or 2006, they never actually did any investigation.
[01:10:06]  And then it's a question of whether or not it wasn't.
[01:10:08]  That's not true at all.
[01:10:09]  They never did any investigation.
[01:10:11]  Well, in terms of a broader sex trafficking operation where they gave the market.
[01:10:16]  Because they had no evidence that would suggest that.
[01:10:20]  Then why would they give non-prosecution agreements to co-conspirators known and non-profit?
[01:10:23]  Great question.
[01:10:23]  I'm happy to answer.
[01:10:25]  So if you look at who are the names, so that was the non-prosecution agreement that was finalized in terms of the wording of it in September of 2007.
[01:10:36]  Epstein signs it.
[01:10:37]  Sorry about the thumbs up thing.
[01:10:38]  I don't know how to disable that.
[01:10:42]  Because I flail around and like there's some Mac feature where it gives you like a thumbs up bubble.
[01:10:48]  But so in the September 2007, right, the text is finalized.
[01:10:53]  Epstein signs it, but it's not implemented yet because it becomes effective upon Epstein's entry of a guilty plea.
[01:11:00]  But they put into that non-prosecution agreement this immunity clause, right?
[01:11:04]  So they name four individuals who are hereby, upon the effectuation of this non-prosecution agreement, immunized from any further federal prosecution having to do with Epstein's claimed offenses.
[01:11:19]  And there are four low-level female, basically employees of Epstein who were alleged to have been potential co-conspirators because they used the phone and like call a girl or a girl called them.
[01:11:30]  And then they sort of like facilitated the movement of some of these girls back and forth to the Palm Beach house.
[01:11:34]  So Nadia Marsenkova, Sarah Kellen, Leslie Groff, Goff, Adriana Ross, no prominent people, not Bill Gates.
[01:11:42]  And then they then say, and then any other potential co-conspirators, but that's related to that discrete, localized case in terms of the Palm Beach situation where Jeff Berepston was essentially privately, okay, having some of these Palm Beach girls.
[01:11:55]  And yeah, this was definitely like reckless behavior on his part, but even leaving that aside, that was in terms of his personal massages, which he was pathologically obsessed with getting constantly.
[01:12:06]  It had nothing to do, like nobody involved at any level in the brokering of that non-prosecution committee, whether we're talking about his defense counsel, whether they're talking about the prosecutors, the police, the FBI.
[01:12:16]  Nobody, if you look at all the records, contemporaneous records, nobody had any conception that that would be later be interpreted to somehow immunize like a Bill Clinton or a Bill Gates or whomever.
[01:12:30]  If anything, it was about the fact that by technical letter of the law, some of the girls themselves could, in theory, be charged with, quote, trafficking or with some related offense because they would be recruiting one another or they'd be facilitating one another's movements.
[01:12:45]  Some of the girls actually said, we don't want to prosecute Jeffrey.
[01:12:48]  We want to prosecute this other girl who they had a feud with or they didn't like.
[01:12:51]  So that was an immunization.
[01:12:53]  That was intended as an immunization of any of the other girls who could have been charged theoretically as participants in Epstein's scheme, such as Haley Robson, who we're now told is a survivor, such as Tatum Miller, such as others.
[01:13:10]  Okay.
[01:13:10]  So that was the scope of it.
[01:13:12]  And you would easily discover that if you went through the voluminous material on that Florida non-prosecution agreement and the investigation underlying it.
[01:13:20]  I'll respectfully disagree to the extent that, unless you disregard what Acosta said, is that he was told not to delve deeper because Epstein was intelligence.
[01:13:28]  See, this is another myth.
[01:13:29]  I mean, I can't believe we're talking about this quote still.
[01:13:31]  Seriously?
[01:13:32]  I can't.
[01:13:32]  I'll get into it.
[01:13:34]  Well, you get into it because I'm not sure that I can believe you're denying it, or at least I'm denying the credibility of that quote 100%, which was foundational to the formation of this large term, especially on the internet.
[01:13:49]  Hold on, the credibility of the quote.
[01:13:51]  I'll explain it or the having uttered the quote.
[01:13:54]  I'll explain if you like.
[01:13:55]  Go for it.
[01:13:56]  Okay.

=== Denying the Epstein Quote (03:31) ===

[01:13:57]  You know what the origin of that quote is?
[01:13:58]  You know where it first was?
[01:14:00]  It was during a deposition of Acosta in 2019, where he mentioned that that's what he said in 2008.
[01:14:04]  Okay.
[01:14:04]  So that's 100% wrong.
[01:14:06]  See, this is why there's such myth that me being wrong doesn't address the statement.
[01:14:13]  So when you clearly never looked into the provenance of that quote, that quote is like the linchpin of your theories on things.
[01:14:19]  Like, why wouldn't you look into it at some point?
[01:14:20]  Well, that's three.
[01:14:21]  That's three ad hominems.
[01:14:23]  Are you denying that statement was made?
[01:14:24]  Are you denying the statement was made?
[01:14:28]  I'll tell you, I asked you if you knew the origin of the quote.
[01:14:31]  The quote was not in deposition.
[01:14:32]  It was in a single Daily Beast article by Vicki Ward, a former tabloid British journalist in July of 2019, where she buries the lead.
[01:14:43]  And you would think that if she had this explosive scoop, that Trump's labor secretary admitted that Jeffrey Epstein belonged to intelligence.
[01:14:50]  That's why he backed off.
[01:14:51]  That would be in the headline or something.
[01:14:52]  No, it's buried.
[01:14:53]  It's like the throwaway quote.
[01:14:54]  She attributes, she claims that this quote was something that was told to her two or three years before July of 2019 by a person whom she characterizes as a former senior Trump administration official, whom we now know with 99.9% certainty was Steve Bannon, Who Vicki Ward had been collaborating with on a book having to do with the Kushners, who and Gary Kushner was Bannon's chief rival during the first Trump administration.
[01:15:20]  And if there's any consummate bullshit artist on the planet, it's Steve Bannon.
[01:15:24]  And yeah, that's just being relayed by this former gossip, this former tabloid journalist, Vicki Ward, in this article.
[01:15:30]  She never does any real follow-up on it.
[01:15:32]  She never substantiates it at all.
[01:15:34]  It just gets thrown in there and then recycled across the internet constantly.
[01:15:38]  And nobody even knows what the genesis of it is.
[01:15:41]  It's quadruple hearsay.
[01:15:43]  And Al Costa, when he did do a deposition or when he did have to do an interview with the DOJ on this very, and he was asked about this very issue, did you ever say that you had some knowledge that there, he's asked in for in a 2020 report from the Office of Professional Responsibility for the DOJ.
[01:16:02]  So if you lie, you're on, if you lie to them, you're going to jail.
[01:16:07]  Did you have any knowledge that Jeffrey Epstein, quote, belonged to intelligence during this Florida non-prosecution agreement negotiating phase?
[01:16:14]  He says the answer is no.
[01:16:15]  He repeated it yet again when he did an interview with the House Oversight Committee in September of 2025.
[01:16:22]  So no, this was never in a deposition.
[01:16:24]  That's just another myth.
[01:16:25]  That was my mistake.
[01:16:26]  It was what I was confused about was the deposition that Mike Benz suggested we would resolve that particular question, which occurred in 2019.
[01:16:35]  And if I had Mike Benz is off the reservation too on this stuff.
[01:16:40]  Unfortunately, I mean, I would love to find somebody who's like a self-proclaimed Epstein researcher who evinces some sign of having done legitimate research.
[01:16:49]  And I can't find him.
[01:16:50]  Whitney Webb, Daryl Cooper, Mike Benz, I haven't looked into in great detail, although he was on, you know, appears working with me and just sat there like a potted plant.
[01:16:58]  You know, you name it, Dave Smith.
[01:17:01]  I guess he doesn't consider himself a researcher.
[01:17:03]  He's just like a bloviating failed comedian.
[01:17:08]  Nick Bryant.
[01:17:09]  Tara Palmeri is more of like a journalist.
[01:17:11]  I mean, like, no, none of these people do like actual.
[01:17:12]  Julie Kay Brown, supposedly our most intrepid investigative journalist of our time, because she broke the Epstein story for the Miami Herald when she just got fed selective stuff by these profit-seeking lawyer cabals.
[01:17:24]  But anyway, I digress.
[01:17:25]  So no, like, no, this is important, though, right?

=== Beyond Congressional Testimony (03:19) ===

[01:17:28]  Because this is like a central tenet of this online mythology.
[01:17:31]  Everybody just believes this quote and repeats it ad nauseum.
[01:17:34]  I thought we had maybe gotten beyond it.
[01:17:35]  I thought maybe people had figured out that it was BS, like, you know, sager breaking points.
[01:17:40]  You know, when this whole uproar began last summer, he just went around saying, yeah, I mean, Acosta must have said that.
[01:17:46]  He said it was congressional testimony.
[01:17:47]  He went on Tucker's podcast and said it was congressional testimony.
[01:17:49]  He didn't look into it either at that point.
[01:17:51]  I don't know.
[01:17:51]  Like, am I the only guy who like looks into stuff so I can see if stuff is actually before like just spouting off?
[01:17:58]  Everybody, everybody will, you know, nobody's going to be 100% on all facts.
[01:18:03]  And it's true that that's a false fact claim.
[01:18:06]  Well, it's first of all, it's it's disp, I say disputed or denied by the time it comes around to it.
[01:18:11]  And so the explanation then is that there was no, there was no broader reason to not prosecute or investigate further.
[01:18:17]  Jeffrey Epstein's time.
[01:18:19]  Yeah, don't worry.
[01:18:20]  Wait, hold on, Mike.
[01:18:21]  I'm going to go.
[01:18:21]  We're going to raid the next party over here.
[01:18:23]  Do you have 15 more minutes or 10 minutes?
[01:18:25]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:18:25]  Okay.
[01:18:26]  What we'll do is we'll come over to locals and we're going to get the Q ⁇ A from there, but I do want to read one crumble rant from King of Bill Tong, which says this isn't just Bill Tong.
[01:18:34]  It's premium meat, real craftsmanship, clean ingredients, all made in-house sold direct.
[01:18:38]  Welcome to Bill Tongusa.com.
[01:18:40]  Use code Viva for 10% off.
[01:18:42]  We're going to take the party over to vivabarnslaw.locals.com, get a Q ⁇ A. Mike, wait, so are we going to like a subscriber session or something?
[01:18:49]  Say subscriber session only.
[01:18:50]  Okay, I'm going to be a little bit of a pain in the neck right now because.
[01:18:54]  Oh, yeah, Dorian, Dorian.
[01:18:55]  I don't know.
[01:18:56]  If I go on podcaster streams and then all of a sudden they say, look, everybody, I'm paywalling this or we're going to.
[01:19:02]  I won't paywall.
[01:19:03]  I do an after-show anyhow.
[01:19:04]  So if you don't want to come, don't worry about it.
[01:19:05]  No, no, no, I would.
[01:19:08]  But okay, you know, I'll forget about that.
[01:19:10]  I'll do 10 minutes.
[01:19:11]  Tell everybody now before we go over on Rumble where they can find you and how they can support your work.
[01:19:17]  If you're not already so explosively aggravated with me that you're somehow wanting to further read my stuff or hear me, my stuff.
[01:19:25]  Yeah, mtracy.net.
[01:19:27]  M Tracy on YouTube.
[01:19:28]  I don't use that quite as much.
[01:19:29]  I try to like do something novel, I would say, in the modern media ecosystem, which is try to stay grounded as much as I can in like the written words.
[01:19:37]  So I like to write more than Bloviate, although I accept these streams and podcast invitations constantly.
[01:19:44]  Anton's meeting is now fair.
[01:19:45]  I'm not going to read that.
[01:19:47]  I want to give the link over on Rumble.
[01:19:51]  And then M Tracy on X. mtracy.net and I'll flip.
[01:19:55]  Let me show what you're mtracy.net or not.net, mtracy on X. Tracy with an E. Remember.
[01:20:00]  Yeah, yeah, Irish spelling.
[01:20:03]  X Irish.
[01:20:04]  So that would have resolved one question that I'm sure the chat was asking.
[01:20:07]  I am unfortunately not Jewish.
[01:20:09]  I would love it if I were.
[01:20:11]  I would say my IQ, my IQ would be a few points higher.
[01:20:13]  Everybody assumes I'm Jewish, I guess, because of my mannerisms or maybe my appearance.
[01:20:16]  And I always say, look, I get all the downsides of anti-Semitism.
[01:20:21]  I can't make jokes that might get me canceled.
[01:20:24]  M Tracy on X.
[01:20:25]  So everybody can go check you out there and I'll give everybody the link.
[01:20:29]  Okay, there we go.
[01:20:31]  And we will keep it short.
[01:20:33]  You don't stick around for two minutes.
[01:20:34]  We'll just get that.
[01:20:34]  And then I do an after-show every time on local.
[01:20:37]  So it's not a question of exploiting the guests.
[01:20:39]  It's just a question of.
[01:20:40]  Yeah, I'm not going to.
[01:20:41]  I just have a call come in that I have to get to.
[01:20:43]  So I'm just going to do an after-show.
[01:20:44]  You're going to do it in two minutes.
[01:20:46]  Okay.
[01:20:46]  I'm going to remove from X. Goodbye, everybody.