Chapo Trap House - 1009 - Sideshow Bob Ritchie feat. Alex Nichols (2/9/26)

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

Alex Nichols is back to recap Turning Point USA’s alternative halftime show featuring Kid Rock, Lee Brice, Brantley Gilbert, and Gabby Barnett. We also read a Tablet article complaining that Robert Kraft’s #StopJewishHate Super Bowl ad was too woke and before checking in on some old friends (including Megan McArdle) trying to downplay the significance of the Epstein scandal. Tickets for our ten year show are going fast, so buy now: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0900643BE404F182 Follow Chapo on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chapotraphousereal/ And Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/chapotraphousereal.bsky.social

Hello, to all of allos. It's Lunez Noveno de Ferbrero, and this is Su Chapo. Today, we're going to be Alex Nichols. Sorry. Alejandro. I'm just chasing the trend here, okay? You know, I'm just trying to expand our reach into, from America to Americas. Per Greg Grandin and the Bad Bunny halftime show.

But yes, no, it's the 9th. February. This is Chapo. And joining us is Alejandro Nichols. Back again. You join Felix and I. Alex, great to have you back. And I suppose I'd like to begin there to talk today this Monday about the Super Bowl and to talk about a little sort of half-time culture war that we also play out yesterday with Bad Bunny, spiking the ball in the end zone of white America,

facing off against the Charlie Kirk Patriots headlined by Kid Rock at the TPUSA All-American halftime event. Now, Felix, I know you covered the TPUSA halftime with Hassan and Pablo Tori, but I only saw clips from the show so I was hoping we could begin there with you

because you just give us a rundown. How was the TPP USA halftime show? Well, let me just put it. it to you this way. Immediately after it was done, I started hitting my frontal lobe with a hammer to forget any Spanish I may have ever known. So yeah, me, me, Hassan, Pablo Torre, and Noah Colwyn, we were all, we're all there. And we, this, you know, we, we, um, we were waiting hours for this thing to happen.

And I didn't really, I hadn't really been paying attention to the lineup. I knew that Kid Rock was going to be there. That's all you really need to know. It's him and then four other people who you would only know if you were a big countryhead. Brandli Bryant. Brian, Brian Gilbert, Bradley Bryant, Brian Bryant. Yeah, Brendan Brenley. It was Kid Rock and another, and like three people who are just, you only know them if you have CMT and watch it.

And they're like, the other three people on there were like country musicians in the GTA universe. Yeah, where it's just like, it's just like, yeah, their names, they're like their songs are just, it's like the lowest level of satire. Their songs are called like, you know, let's kill Muslims because I'm gay. Brought you brought to you by anal sex records distributed by AIDS entertainment. Their songs are just called like Friday night. Yeah. Like having fun with the boys. He's going to be performing at the blowjob arena.

I really got to see this one. Try that in Liberty City. Yeah. So the first guy, I think, his name was Lee Bryce. And Lee Bryce, we always talk about the dangers of first draft syndrome on the show. And Lee Bryce, I think this was his first time ever, like, lip syncing or lip syncing in a venue where it was recorded because he would do things like he would bring the microphone really far away from his mouth. And obviously, like, he would sound exactly the same. All these things that, like, you know, ruin Millie Vanilli's career.

He's just doing it and completely fucking up. But he mostly passed. And then there was Brantley Gilbert, who I actually recognize, like, Brantley Gilbert has, does that song that everyone thinks is by Jason Aldeen, but it's actually by Brantley Gilbert. And it's the one where he kind of wraps. Yeah, that's, okay, that's when I saw a clip up. Yeah.

Right. And it's a really shitty song. It's a song about like not fighting. someone but just telling people, oh, if you're, if you're like rude, I'm going to maybe kick your ass. It's like the verbal equivalent of being held back. I think they should rename China's final warning, which I've always thought that as funny, but we should actually call it Brantley Gilbert's final warning. Then there was, so have you guys ever heard of this Gabby Barrett lady? No. I feel like maybe once or twice before this, but not really.

She reminded me of the AI musician you and Charles made. Yeah. That's what country is. Well, her, like she made, she made Brantley Gilbert and Lee Bryce. They were like fucking Prince and like Lou Reed compared to her. She was the most replacement level performer I've ever seen. I've weirdly, I don't know if this is a thing anymore. but I remember in like 2006, 2007,

like the first times I would, I was like drinking socially with my friends. Every time I was in kind of like a shit kicker type area, like around Elgin, one of the forgotten meth hollows of Illinois. And every time there was like a attractive girl wearing an express polo. It was always like,

the way that guys would talk to her would be like, oh, you're a singer. Could you sing something for me? And every time that I've overheard that in my, life, I realized it sounded exactly like what Gabby Barrett sounded like. I don't know why she was there. I don't know what she did.

I presume that like her entire career is a result of like some transgression by either Matt Schlapp or some guy like him. Because there's just no other, she's not like bringing anything else. And then Kid Rock, it was Kid Rock. And Kid Rock, he

I got to say, this is probably the end of the road. He attempted to. Like this is If you can't, like, kill it at the Chud event, it's what lane is left for you? Yeah. What else can you do? I think he's doing fine. I think it's more of an indictment of the event.

It's just such a shitty event. And it's always such a letdown. And it's coming right off the Kennedy Center shit where Trump, Trump just decided to shut down the whole Kennedy Center and say nobody gets to have the Kennedy Center because the orchestra quit. People kept quitting. So he just said, no, we're not doing events. Like every time the right wing tries to do their parallel culture war.

thing. It's just such a letdown. Like this thing, it was, like, there were all these fake articles about how it was going to be like Gene Simmons and like Kid Rock was the only interesting person there. It was supposed to be like Rob Schneider and all the canceled comedians and maybe get like Woody Allen to do some jazz or something. And it's just like, it's basically Kid Rock and then three local openers who were sort of okay. Like they had like a, a, a number. number 32 hit in 2012. That's it. Yeah.

Like, if I was putting this together, I would have, yeah, like, I would have gone with your idea, which is just like the superstars of cancellation and not try. Obviously, because it was a TPOSA thing, all these people had to be just like, you know, whatever constitutes as a, like, a Republican midterm voter. That's what all their songs are about. Like, Lee Bryce had a song, or it may have been Brantley, Gilbert. Like, who give us a fuck? Same guy.

But it was like the lyrics are just, I want to just drink my beer and go fishing. I just want to catch my fish, drive my truck, drink my beer. And then I actually thought I was going to like the song because I thought the lyric was, and not wake up. Felix, I had the answer. It was like, I had not wake up to, like, head. lines. It's like a song about how you don't like the news, which I get like, that's like the one

remaining position you can have if you're a Trump guy. It's just, oh, like, none of these things are actually that bad. It's just that the news is, the news makes everyone think it's bad for the president to be beholden to Israel because he made out with a toddler on camera. But I, I would have done your idea and I would have, it would have been emceived by either Woody Allen or Garrison keeler. Kevin Spacey, he's still alive. Oh, he could do his sort of like ring a ding ding ding lounge lizard act like that, you know, running up the stage in Tel Aviv, bring it over here to the TPSA.

I have to be like do a little Mac the Knife, you know, do some sort of stage pattern. I would have like a like a super group where it's Jesse Lacey from brand new. I was going to say, yeah. Jesse Lacey for Brit, that would be like perfect. And then also the pedophile from blood on the dance floor, he would be in there somewhere. I don't, this is a lot of vocalists, unfortunately. Yeah, you can get Gary Glitter. Yeah. If the UK would extradite him over here to not be in prison, you could do that.

Yeah, yeah. There are a lot of people you could use. Rolf Harris is dead, so you can't have him as an emce. But anyone, any of the guy, the lesser known guy is from Operation. U-Tree. Any of the UK entertainers who turned out to be like horrific individuals, they can have, they can do like a quick five.

Alex, who do you think would compliment this band? You know more about music than me. The only other guy I was going to add was the rapper X-rated, who I think is still in prison, but they could commute that. They could get him out of prison. Yeah, I don't know. I would say Morrissey, like a Morrissey

Jesse Lacey duet. That would be really nice. But he would never do it. None of them would ever do it. That's the thing that's kind of it drives me crazy because you always hear these news stories about how Nikki Minaj is a Republican and Kanye is a Republican and they all love Trump and Lil Pump in 50 Cent and all these different people endorse him and take pictures with him and then they have their concert and none of those people show up they don't actually want to do it I think they know it's embarrassing I had the same thought about Nikki Minaj because like I don't know like 50 cent probably is

I don't know like I think he's a little savier but like Nikki Minaj seems very thirsty both for American citizenship and like, you know, I don't know, some sort of legal pass for her husband and brother. I always shocked that they couldn't get Nicky Minage out there. Because like, well, I think she would be an artist like comparable to kid rock as someone who's like, you know,

people know their music. And they could have some cachet there. They want to have something palatable. That's sort of the problem is that they, their whole complaint is that it's music that's not that much different than Nikki Minaj. Right. The stuff bad bunny is doing.

Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like influenced by that in a way. And they don't want to offend people because then it's kind of pointless. If people are tuning in, if these old white people turn off the Super Bowl and then turn on Nicky Minaj and she's rapping really fast about her pussy. Like, I don't know if that would be better than what they ended up with. Right. It just really pushes the contradictions out in front, makes you really think about it. Like, wait a minute.

Like, I don't... Why is this Christian? How is it Christian that this woman from Trinidad is twerking and singing about her ass and pussy? Like, what are we doing? Okay, well, I mean, like, speaking to that contradiction, like, you can fill me in on this. But, like, the thing that interested me about Kid Rock's performance

is that he opened with a ball with the ball. You know, like, that's his big single. And, you know, like, leaving aside whatever stake you have in the sort of politics of all this, I got to say, I kind of like ball with the ball. I think it's a fun song. Everyone likes it. Yeah, yeah, it's a fun song.

And like, you know, it's like, you know, it's kind of, it's, it's dirty. It's like, you know, it's like a dumb karaoke song. Yeah, yeah, it's cool. But then, like, I, as I've read accounts of the halftime show, Kid Rocky did one song essentially as Kid Rock. And that was the one that was like horribly link synced and like the back, like you can sync up with the backboat, like the backtrack he was trying to like sort of talk over.

He was, like the clip I saw it looked like he was just. kind of tossing the mic to himself and it like bounced it off his head and he was just like not really even trying to speak into it. But they could have been the venue too and the sound guy. Because a lot of the time at these conservative events, they're set up for just people doing debates or lectures or something. And they don't have someone who's actually, who knows how to set up the track and like get the in-ear monitors going so they can hear themselves and shit. Well, maybe I know Will, you're aware of this, but both, um, Kansas.

And soones and now Erica Kirk, we should call her Mrs. Me Too. Yes, yes, yes. They've been talking about how Charlie Kirk, when he would run by streetlights, he would turn them off. I always picture him Naruto running. But it was probably like all those, all the audio equipment, they probably have to use special audio equipment that's like in sort of a Faraday cage because Charlie's spirit is still running around. Felix, I had the exact same thought.

Like I was like, yeah, exactly. What are these technical difficulties? and apparently they were going to stream it on Twitter, but then they couldn't because of copyright issues. I think like this is a cover for the, for the, yeah, like, I think Charlie was there in spirit, but like because of his X-Men powers were like, you know, fucking with the, you know, the wiring, the electricity.

He was fucking with the levels. And like the lights are flickering on and off. The audio was going in and out. So Kid Rock had to kind of improvise. And he's a pro. But Alex, do you point about this kind of contrast between sort of vulgar, secular music that has a kind of, I don't know,

a tinge of patriotism because it's like a drunk white guy doing it. Felix, didn't Kid Rock then like sort of take a break after Bar with the Ball and then come out sort of like as his government name? As Bob Richie, yeah. I'm Bob Richie. And then like he did sort of a cover of a country song

where he added another verse and like he did some stage pattern about like, listen to everybody. Like there's a book in your house right now. You probably haven't looked at it in many years but it's a book that everyone should read and it's got the answers and it's about a guy who I think everyone should, you know, like,

look up to his name is Jesus. It's called Revolutionary Road. And it's about like the sorrow in the mid-century and how even the best-sewing marriages can fall apart and how it's sort of impossible to find meaning in America. It's really weird.

I don't know why. Yeah. Yeah, he was lecturing people about not finishing Proust. Like everyone says, they're going to get to the end. They may only read the first book. and I was sitting there like, yeah, I did only read the first book. You're right.

Listen, there's a book in your house. It's called Swan's Way. It's only the first one. It's about a great guy who does great stuff. It's called Lolita. But it's just so, like, what does Kid Rock offer if he's just a generic country singer? That's kind of the problem. Like, he has to tone down the new metal stuff because the people who want to hear that

are like zoomers who wear deaf tone shirts, if anything. the current audience he has now, they just want to hear generic country, but what's the point? Because there are people who are better generic country singers than kid rock in their better performance. Like he's good at what he does, or what he did, like Woodstock 99,

that kind of shit. Rap rock, stupid songs about getting fucked up, but if he's trying to get serious, it's like, who cares? Why do I want this mediocre version of this? It's not even fun. Well, that's like the musicians, I mean, really just like the enter.

retainers curse that they never they become incredibly successful like doing a certain thing and then they're like actually you know the thing that I've I made my name doing and I've made tens of millions of dollars and it's responsible for my entire life actually hate it and it's like slavery for me to do it and I don't want to be known for it it's the same reason that like Garth Brooks did Chris Gaines but it is I mean with Chris Gaines at least he's like there's like a I get a daring element to it but yeah it is Why do you want to hear this guy do like a shittier version of Zach Bryan when Zach Bryan exists? Unless you are like the kind of psycho who's like, oh, I can't listen to Zach Brian because he's like woke now. Which, so I guess that's like a lot of people.

But he, it was, it was really cute, by the way. When he like did the incredible costume change, changed out of his shorts and short sleeve shirt and put on long jeans. Hassan was like, who's this fucking Bob Ritchie guy? Kid Rock only did one song. It was so cute. It was like, oh, Hassan grew up listening to Turkey's greatest, Turkey's version of Kid Rock, a guy named like Ozilik Korof Duden. The song's about abducting Serbian boys at all.

Did they shout out Charlie at all at the show, at the halftime show? Did they, like, dedicated to him? Was there any imagery about Charlie Kirk? There was a real one or the fake one? No, the fake one. Yeah, Bad Bunny, Burkified himself. That would have been funny. That would have been funny if he said fuck ice and then shouted out Charlie Kirk.

Just to get everyone pissed. Or if he had Charlie Kirk up on the screen but did the exact same set. It's completely apolitical. My hermano, Charlie. Yeah. It just said like Charlie Kirk agreed with all of my opinions. Regatone, regatone version of We Are Charlie Kirk. They should have done that.

That would have been sick. That was something that we talked about on stream was how if they really wanted to like make an attempt to get people talking about this outside of their circle, they really wanted this to be big. They would have done we are Charlie Kirk. They would have leaned into it and been like, okay, well, like this is silly, but it's like popular and we can use it to our advantage. but it's just like that entire thing that entire like movement is so self-serious now it's so you know

it only took a year because um this entire the entire time this trump thing has been uh for its entire existence and especially since uh he got inaugurated it's been like we're the funny guys we do mean magic everyone we have two types of frogs they're both hilarious uh then the more that uh things get brandonized, the more they become just like those bitter Biden people, and they're just angry all the time. And they cannot,

if you, like, suggested doing We are Charlie Kirk there, they would have been like, oh, well, why don't you just, why don't you just,

you know, play a close-up video of him dying in front of his kids? He had a family. And it's like, well, okay,

do you want anyone to talk about this? I guess not. You know, yeah, that's a good point because, obviously, we are Charlie Kirk,

you know, there's some potential there. Like, you know, it's, it's unique. There's a certain meme ability to it, but like, I think that they would never consider doing that because I think it, it rankles them so deeply that the Charlie Kirk assassination was like, was not the Reichstag fire they were hoping for,

and instead has just become a meme and kind of a contemptible and sort of pitiable one at that. It's just, everyone's having kind of a laugh at how corny this is instead of, you know, ushering in the Fourth Reich, which I think is kind of like, the problem for like for Trump too is that like they got a taste of winning the popular vote by like what, 1% or something like that. And they assumed that that meant it was time for a total cultural reset of America in which being racist would there be like no social tax anyone would have to pay for that anymore. Or that like most average Americans were just like we're just ready chomping at the bit to like let it out and just like and just be fully racist openly all the time. Yeah. It was after a weird. That tiny election mandate, part of that was that they, the Republicans did better with men of color. Right. And then they turn around and say, well, that's a mandate to get racist against those people. We need to lose those votes. We need that approval straight down. Fuck you guys.

28, no Latinos. It was like, I mean, it was, it was there for the taking. But like, I don't know. I think they have like a, it's not just they have like a fundamentally antagonistic. an antagonistic view of culture because I think they've spent so long feeling on the outs of it and feeling like the culture is hostile to them. But like they're hostile to the culture that they try to create too. And like that's like that's like what I think. I think is like the weird contradiction of this kind of siloed off like American halftime show where it was just like, first of all, Americans are never going to not watch the Super Bowl. You know, like that's baked.

Right. That's the thing too. Like I thought they were boycotting the NFL. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's assuming that they're watching the Super Bowl and then only this halftime show and then turning back to the NFL. But you're not supposed to watch any of it. Yeah.

Or just do another NFL. Just have a fake football game. Who cares? You're doing a fake halftime show? Just do the whole thing. You got this venue rented out? They should have a fake football game that's white American corn feds versus like Mexican guys who. usually play football, and then they just put pads on them

and send it out there as sort of like a Harlem Globetrotters versus Washington General's style exhibition match. There should be a white puppy bowl where it's only golden retrievers. They should just do that for the rest of it. They should, yeah, if we're just inventing it sort of the sports, American soccer, and it's like you play against countries where kids grow up playing soccer and people walk places, so they're more accustomed to staying on their feet

and they don't need seven minutes of breaks for every one second of action like an American football the other teams just play regular soccer but America just like in the movie the last Boy Scout we have guns oh yes oh yeah gun ball

gun ball and it shoots the ball yeah like a t-shirt can yeah you can deflate the ball like that's allowed That's actually what J.K. Rowling. That's what she said she wanted Quidditch to be.

But the publisher said it was too out there. Deflating the ball? That would have been cool. Slytherin would do that. They would deflate those balls. Oh, fuck. It's pissing me off. I hate Slythern so much.

I hate them so evil. They are fuckers. If the sorting hat put me in Slytherin, I would kill it and myself. That hat must be so gross. How do they not have lights? What do you think happens if you, like, if you comment to that? hat. Because there has to be like a...

It would probably feel good for the hat. Oh, do you think it would be like, I've been rude to all these kids because I've never, no one's ever used me as like a receptacle. That's how hats have sex. Imagine all of the Weasley children put on the sorting hat and then you're next and it's like, I think I'm going to go to public school or something.

Because I'm not, like, they have fleas on them. I can see fleas jumping on them. I'm not putting that on. It is, dude, it's exactly like when I would have to go to, like, people's bar mitzvahs and they would give me, like, the community Yamika. You have our own. J.K. Rowling would love that you said that. I did that.

Yeah, she would be, like, how did you know it was inspired by a Yamika? Yeah, the sorting out was Jewish, actually. That's what Yamakas do. They tell you, like, what type of Jewish guy you're going to be. Yeah. You're going to be a lawyer. Are you Ashkenazi or Sephardic? Like you don't know based on your parents. I mean like, you know, oh, are you going to be a contract lawyer? Are you going to be like the America's second most prestigious expert on Proust? But there's a number one guy and you hate him. Yeah. Are you going to be a podcaster? Are you going to be an entertainer? Yeah. I think that's how it works for observant Jews. And it just never did that for me. And that's why I ended up in this. You should make that. You just have to put a sound. chip in it.

You know, as a lot of Yonica that like, it's linked with your 23 and me and it detects criminality in your bloodline.

So it can tell if you're going to be a real estate agent. That would be embarrassing. As those are talking about Jewish kids and the school experience, I would like to talk about one of the most talked about

Super Bowl ads this year was the sort of what was it, the blue Square initiative. This is funded by Robert Kraft, owner of the Patriots. And this was a sort of a high profile

ad by during the Super Bowl to sort of to counter or sort of combat growing anti-Semitism, particularly in American schools, you know, based on the idea that two out of every three, you know, a statistic shared in the ad is two out

of every three Jewish kids in America have experienced anti-Semitism of some kind. And the interesting thing about this ad is that there is nobody more angry about it than Tablet Magazine and like the diehard Zionist in America who were very offended by it.

Yeah. It's fucking woke. The ad is woke. The ad is woke and the thing that they're most annoyed about is that it's sort of like a nebishi, it's like a kid walking through the halls of like a high school and it's like lockers and kids are milling around and then like somebody has

you know done one of the like the sort of kick me thing on the back of his backpack and people were like oh should be telling him or whatever like he goes to his locker and takes off his backpack and someone has put like a post-it note. It says dirty Jew. Yeah, it says dirty Jew. And then like a sort of like like his friend who is like a black kid

comes over and puts like a blue post-it note over the dirty Jew one. And he's like, I got you man. Like I know what it's like. And then they're like, thank you. And then like and then the black kid takes the blue post-it note off of the dirty Jew and puts it on his chest and just sort of stand. in the hallway. And I'm

going here to a... No, he puts he just puts a blue thing over it. That's what's so stupid about him. So, have you ever tried to apply a Post-it note to like any type of cloth? It doesn't stick on. It doesn't stick on. That kid probably walks so slow. That's why he's getting bullied. He's making people late to class.

And so they put the... It's so easy to take a Post-it note off. But this fucking, his stupid friends, like, I have a blue thing. It's perfect for situations like this. But it is. But it is, it shows how old Robert Kraft is, because this is like, you know, Zionism from 15 years ago. It's before people knew that like Jews didn't build the pyramids and you could go, we were slaves too. And yeah, it's before October 7th and when people got really resentful and we're like, well, we help them with the civil rights movement.

Not that they remember. Yeah, yeah. They care. But it's so far past that. You know, for anyone who's still rabidly Zionists, they are now just like, you know, there is a genocide of Jews in America being bullied by people who play their beatspills on trains. Why didn't this ad reflect that? Well, it doesn't speak to an existing constituency anymore, you know?

Well, I'm going to, I'm going to quote here. This is from our good friend, Leo Leibovitz from Tablet Magazine's New Scholar. Yeah, yeah. You remember, we still haven't done his article, what Scooby-Duce. says about America. But he was really pissed about this ad. And one of the elements that he was most annoyed about is that the sort of Nebish Jewish kid

is bailed out by a cooler black kid. We don't know that the kid's cool? He's fucking lame. No kids are really cool. They're kind of pretending. They're just pretending to be someone they saw on TV. They don't have the confidence of someone who's really cool yet. I mean, it's just,

I think he's assuming that like, audience will assume that the black kid is cool by virtue of his sort of like, I don't know, racial, like getting a racial buff on your coolest stats by being black. But I would suggest as a counter to that argument, this kid's so cool, but yet he walks around with post-it notes that he's ready to like put on his friend's backpacks or defaced belongings to help them out. That seems like a pretty dorky thing to do. Can you imagine how lame like you would have to be to be like 14 and you're like like, yeah, I'm of, I'm sort of like a freelance vigilante for Robert Kraft's anti-anty

anti-Semitism initiative. No, I'm not Jewish at all. And I'm not, no one in my family's marriage. I just, I just like them. Yeah, let me read Leal's, a summary of the ad. He says, even if his New England Patriots win, he says, no matter what happens in the Super Bowl this Sunday, we already have a loser, Robert Kraft. Even if his New England Patriots win, the team's owner will go down in history as

having created the single most embarrassing, idiotic, abominable, counterproductive, no good, very bad ad in the big game's history. Have you seen it? Yeah, yeah, come on. There have been worse ads. And by the way, like the Goodwill Duncan ad that I had to sit through. Leo, this is why you're not in the big leagues. This is why you're in the free press and commentary.

Here's what I would have written in what critics are calling the worst happy ending Robert Kraft has ever been involved with. He says here, okay, so he says, Have you seen it? If not, let us save you 60 seconds and hours of vague nausea to catch you up to speed. A young team named. Vague nausea? He's such a shit writer.

What a bad writer? What is vaguenotia means? I like to draw a commercial. Also, I don't want to, I don't want to recap of a commercial. I sorry, you missed the commercial. Let me explain what happened. No. You don't, you also don't need like a recap.

You don't need like a prelude to the recap. Okay, I'm about to do this. you can just say here's what happens in it in two sentences so okay well this is leal's paragraph long i mean he is very he's very pressed about this this ad here so he says a young teen named david is walking down a high school hallway two dude bros body check him and stick something onto his backpack we hear snickering and whispering and when dave arrives at his locker we understand why the post-it note tacked onto his backpack reads dirty jews david is sad david is thin who could save david Enter Bilal. He's black, cool, and apparently 19 feet nine inches taller than little Davidil,

and he covers up the note with a sticky blue square. They amble down the hallway. Bilal dispenses sage words of advice, his arms squarely around Dave. As with Rick Blaine and Captain Raynault at the end of Casablanca, we marvel at the beginning of a beautiful friendship. The ad was created by the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, an organization craft launched last year. Its main call to action is as simple as it is pointless. Post a blue square on social media to show that you like Toach don't jam with Jew hate and stuff. He's just

like he's just such a bad writer. He's like, what is the problem? Yeah. It is corny and it sucks but this is what you want. Well, no, no. Is this not your whole platform? No, Alex. That's kind of his point. That's kind of his point that if you want to combat Jew hate, you should like post

a video of a family that's been killed by a J-Dem and be like this is what we do to anti-Semites. Like that's his whole, that's really why this ad is outmoded. Because all the people who are like in the Israeli corner are like, they don't care about the civil rights movement. They don't care about like appealing to a late aughts form of liberalism.

It's just like pure, just like malice and hatred of human life. And if Robert Kraft wasn't 98 years old, he would have understood that. The ad would have been like, it would have been like one of those King Vaughn videos where he's making fun of an op who's dead. Well, yeah. And the idea of getting the cosign from a black. kid being like validating.

Yeah, I know he's, right, away from that. Like when they used to pay people to be like, Beyonce's lemonade is low key giving Israeli vives.

Yeah. Like they kind of gave one. Now people are saying that, but as an insult to Beyonce. Yeah. Another would be really insulting. And like, and the way that,

the way that, uh, the way that Leal is like super, like he, like he, he, he, he,

he, he, he, he, he, is supposedly 19 feet, nine inches taller than little, of a deal?

Yeah, of course, like, why would it be the, is the biggest kid in school who could beat anyone's ass going to be the one getting bullied? Like, why would that kid be big? Well, like, to Felix's point, like, he spends a few paragraphs talking about, like, you know, how out of sync with it with the Times is. He says, in other words, the executive was saying that their organization, too, was willing to tell the story of David and Bilal, the quivering Jew, begging the righteous Gentile to come in and save the day. Respectfully, but that's what, like, you're doing that with the federal. government though. You can't make this argument if you're like, oh, Donald Trump, save Hillel. You're doing a little country and then 19 feet tall America coming in to save the day over and over again. Yeah, exactly. Listen to Leo putting his Don Draper hat on of, okay, this is like, if he was like, if someone gave me money to make this commercial, here's what it would look like.

Here's Leo Leibovitz's ad for the Super Bowl 60. Interior, a kitchen in Beirut, day. Middle Eastern music is playing in the background, interrupted by the trill of a beeper bouncing around a kitchen table. A man approaches the table. We see his midrift. He's dressed in black and carrying an AK-47. He picks up the beeper, looks at it, and places it on his belt next to his groin. We hear a loud explosion. The screen goes to bright white.

Loud music comes on. It's Tamid Ovev OT, cut to interior fighter jet cockpit. We see an Israeli Air Force captain flying his plane. IAF captain. Talley, target 12 o'clock. Welcome to Tehran, boys. Next scene. Interior, living room somewhere, night. A television screen is running a series of news reports about the killings of Hassan Nasrallah,

Ismail Hayana, Mohamed Daef, Yawa Sinwar, and other murderous terrorists. Exterior, IDF base, day. A group of hot IDF soldiers standing around cleaning weapons, getting ready for action. Cut to black screen, caption. Don't like Jews, fuck around and find out. So, his idea... It would be kind of funny if there was, like, a minute dedicated... to fallen Hezbollah fighters during the Super Bowl.

Someone paid for a Super Bowl ad with Hassan Nasra La. That would be cool. But this is like, why would, what's the point of this? Like, obviously this guy knows they wouldn't show that on TV, but why even have this thought? It's like, it's like saying after 9-11, they should have had Super Bowl ads that were like flash animations of Osama bin Laden getting blown up. Like, they wouldn't put that on TV, even if he's bad.

Have you ever heard, like, one of my favorite types of bad podcasts to listen to is people who, in the late, like, 2010s were like, you know, Comptown is just like three guys who are friends joking around. I have three friends. And I love listening to Bad Podcasts. I spend a lot of time doing that. And those are the best to listen to because just the sheer ineptitude of it of people misunderstanding like what people like about that show or why those guys are fun. and the jokes they make are just like, it'll be like, oh, what if instead of the Lion King, it was child pornography.

And that's basically what Leo Libowitz is proposing here. Yeah, it's like a snuff film. Yeah, you know, like, his entire, his entire sensibility is so weird to me, because talk about things being outmoded. Was there, did there need to be like a right wing wonkette in-house style? It's so, it's just so, like, antiquated and not by like five, six, seven years, like how now everyone is just doing

4chan memes from the first Trump administration or before that. It's outmoded in that it's like from before 9-11. I mean, I, like, he's upset and I think like, I think it makes sense given where his brain is at. Like, he's upset that combating anti-Semitism is still presented to the American people as sort of of a piece with combating other forms of racial bigotry or intolerance. And that like the clear message of the ad is that like the black kid in school understands like what racism feels like. So he's sympathizing with his Jewish friend who is experiencing like a, you know, a similarly evil prejudice that has bedeviled American life. And like, you know, if you're Robert Kraft and like 98 years old, you're probably thinking like, oh yeah, black people, there are

a defensive line against anti-Semitism. But for Leo, like, he's like, no, like, the racism is the point. Like, we want to be on the side of the racist. Because if you're not, that means you're weak and erotic and sniveling and, you know, quivering and you're not looking for some big schvarta to come and bail you out. Like, no. But not in the sense of becoming white. You want that kid to bring a fucking gun to school and kill like 30 kids tomorrow and go,

fuck around and find out as he stands over like, you know, a gymnasium full of dead. high school kids that he just snuffed out. And like that's what the message here is with like, you know, the Hasbalah Pagers or like Israeli Air Force guys being like, Tehran, 12 o'clock boys, let's light. So let's start pouring whiskey. Is there like the message he wants to send to the world during a Super Bowl ad watched by like 200 million people is, hey everybody, don't like Jews. We'll fucking kill you in your family.

Yeah. We're not victims anymore, but we are. We still are. but also you need to imagine us killing you well we're victims that's what I was going to say is like he's been he was posting about this before he put out this article about how hey look all this whining

complaining shit no one likes it America likes winners no more crying about anti-semitism but like I'm sorry a zebra cannot change its stripes here you are still bitching about how the commercial made you look weak and you're entitled like You're still going to write articles about how anyone who, like, not even, they don't even want to pull aid from Israel.

They're just like, oh, we should condition it. So if they, like, they have to shut down. They can't explicitly have a prison that's just for ritualized child abuse. They can have that in secret, but it's bad for people to know about it. Calling that guy and anti-Semite, it's still, like, you can't, you can change, like, the posture. You can make it so that instead of going, look, it's war is awful. No one wants this. you're bragging about all the families you annihilated,

but it still is a fucking mulling, complaining, whiny, fucking bullshit identity politics thing at the end of the day, and it always will be. Just like how all reaction in this country, is identity politics for one group or another? It's for white people or heritage Americans or fucking whatever. Yeah. I keep thinking about the Sopranos

Columbus Day. episode. That just comes into my head so often. Just these old conservative guys who are ostensibly culturally conservative and they represent old-fashioned masculinity and stuff. And they're just whining and crying about nothing. Oh, see, it's these Indians and the Kami fucks. They want to paint Columbus as a slave trader instead of an explorer. You got to admit they did get massacred the Indians. They're just bitching about a statue or bitching about TV or bitching about bad. Bad Bunny. Bad fucking funny. They're always talking about influencers and podcasters and celebrity gossip and all this shit.

And it just makes you wonder like where, what's the party for the old fashioned guys who are like our grandpas? He said, I don't, I don't have feelings. I don't care. Whatever. Alex. I saw a great, a great reply. We talked about it last week.

The sort of like Elijah Schaefer, Sarah Stock like, like, you know, infidelity and public and. public divorces blowing up in public they shouldn't be doing that what's the point of being conservative Alex I saw like have some fucking shame Alex I saw a great reply to someone like commenting about about about about this ongoing scandal

and someone goes can we just have one right wing e girl who's not a total whore there's your problem I think we've identified the problem it's just like how about how about you do the fact that you need to have a right wing e girl

validate you through the computer is maybe a sign of why all of this is fake and you keep being disappointed that like the girl who dresses like you know Ava Braun and is like, hey everybody, Heil Hitler. Like, isn't that cool and cheeky? Ha ha. And then like you find out she's not living up to the ideals you would have hoped she espouse. Like what you're saying, why can't they invent a stripper who actually loves her? Yeah, yeah.

You can marry a stripper, but she can't really be a stripper. anymore. Like you can't, you can't be her client. It's like, yeah. If she was actually a trad wife, she would be offline probably taking care of her family. Like, it's just self-falsified. A new form of girl that worked. Yeah. It's just so stupid. It's so weird. These sort of like antisocial, uh, women who are living in extremely cloistered existence and the only way they can get out of the eternal recurring loop of homeschooling is by just

openly and nakedly seeking as much attention as possible. It's really weird how they're not like normal good people. It's got to be something with just women in general. That's the problem. Yeah. They just extrapolate that to all women.

Like the top the 99th percentile of women who post selfies on the internet that represents all of them. Basically, they all think that way. There's nothing wrong with the bisexual men that repeatedly fuck these women. Like, they don't even try to resist it. Like, Joe Pesci and Casino showed more fortitude when he stood like a soldier.

Sharon Stone tried to seduce him. It took a few months before he gave in and started fucking her. These guys, like, these homeschooled women, they're like, hey, you're the third man I've ever met, who I'm not related to. and they're like, I'll ruin my entire life for you. Can you get a guy who like at least jerks off before he thinks a little bit before blowing up his entire life? Or is that just like, that is out of the question. No man can resist that. They don't like women, but like they understand that like how you're viewed among other men,

like your value as a man is still largely mediated by your success impressing or attracting the attention of women. So like, if all of your beliefs and your personality are like repellent to like to women or just most people in general, there's like a very handy lane open there for a woman who will just like give that just will be racist in public. And then like to be like, oh, this is one of the good ones. Like this is a girl who gets me. And I feel accepted by her. But like, of course, like they don't believe it any more than they do anything else. It's just it's all. No, they don't want a guy who's going around just getting in fights with minorities all day.

Like they might be like they're just. a moral. They would date a Republican, but they wouldn't want it to be a Republican who's like a psychotic in-cell guy, like a school shooter. It would be like the guy Lana Del Rey's dating. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It would be like a normalish guy. Yeah. HVAC and like he probably has some racist beliefs, but he's not like a groper. He's not watching streams all day. That is the problem they run into with everything eventually. That's just like, and they will never ask themselves a question because a lot of them do they do realize the answer but it's just like this is so unlucky that everyone in her movement every public facing figure they are either like completely

compromised they will just anyone who pays them they'll they'll do their bidding they'll work for fucking el salvador or they are weirdly obstinate people who just um they're they just default to sort of attention-seeking behavior and self-destruction. It's really unlucky that our movement attracts those people, but it's probably just a coincidence. That it seems to, it just, we keep drawing from this pot of antisocial people who love ruining their lives just to, like, spite their kids. I don't know why that is.

Felix, I was thinking about that in light of the fact that the sham wow guy is running for Congress as a Republican. I love it. Dude, he should be. the ambassador to Israel. He is Israeli. If you notice the Shamwow guy disappeared from public life

for a few years, it was because he, in Miami, where else, with some of his shamwa spoils, hired a, hired a prostitute and got into an argument

over what he was going to pay her and then bit her tongue off. Like during a fight. It's like a proto-kick streamer before there was kick. Like he would have been hanging out with Yair Net and Yahoo. Who also did that to his dad,

by the way? Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. Because they kissed their dad over there. He bit his dad's tongue off when they were kissing. No, there was coverage in the Israeli press today about how Yair was sent to Miami because he attacked his father. And his father's security team, like his, you know, the Israeli Secret Service had to intervene. Because apparently Yaira takes karate lessons.

Karate, don't they have their own one? What about Krav Maga? Yeah, yeah. He did like a judo shop to his dad. It's like they don't use their own martial arts. They're not over there. They're over here in Miami doing karate. Why do you look it over there so much?

Why do we have to have your other country? And Crave Magas, look, we've talked endlessly about how stupid it is. But if it's useful for anything, if I had to eat up an 82 year old, I would be studying Grave Maga. Like, that's probably the most efficient system for paralyzing your 83-year-old father. I would just trip him. I would just stick my leg with. There are trips in Cravemaga.

There's techniques like you set up a clothes line that's invisible. It's all just tricks. You said it, not me. I'd slap a post-it note on him. When you earn your black belt in Crave-Magah, they teach you how to just do NDA, just issue NDAs at anyone you see on the street. Yeah, my fists are a deadly weapon,

so you have to sign this first. Yeah. You do that thing that seems. to Zagaldo's where he's like moving someone's wrist around really fast, but you're making them sign an NDA. That'll be a great move. If someone attacks you with a pen, you like, you use the force of the pen and redirect it to a document that is now completed with your signature. Well, I guess moving on and talking about, you know, silencing people. I do want to return a little bit to the, just I don't know, like what I've been noticing is, kind of like a new tactic and how the sort of

mainstream press attempts to I don't know absorb and re-communicate the recent Epstein Revelations or the recent and like what's fascinating to this about is like I don't know if you've been following how this

has been shaking out in Europe but like a number of like diplomats have like and people in government have like already resigned because of their involvement with this and it's like very likely that this could top Kier-Starmor's government. Like, you know, all of his aides have just resigned.

Kira is addressing the nation, probably as we're recording this. But like, at least as far as Europe goes, there does seem to be like real ramifications in terms of, like, what having your name in these files does to, like, you know, serving governments and people, you know, like a Norwegian ambassador. But particularly for the UK. That's not the case. They're just waiting to resign from anything.

They're just waiting for the first experience. Every prime minister they get, they're like, oh, three months, something's got to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Anthony Eden is like there, Abraham Lincoln because he was like, he invented that move of resigning after like, you know, two trimesters of a pregnancy. West Streeting already, he already like had one in the chamber. He's already put out an article that's just, I actually was never friends with fucking

Peter Mandelson, which is an insane move to pull. fucking insane. Wasn't he posting pictures of Peter Mandelson and his mom being like, my mom's a big leftian, she loves Peter. She loves Mandy.

Yeah. He posted fucking... You're not friends with your stepdad all the time. The guy can fuck your mom and you don't have to be friends with him. You can hate him. He posted screenshots

of his group chat with fucking Mandelson. Like check out the riffs we're getting it. I just, I bring this up because like, obviously like this is not happening in America. and what is happening is kind of like I'm going to use a couple examples here

this is this is from the Atlantic magazine oh wait now I'm actually I want to start with Megan McCartle an old friend of the show this is um there's a podcast this is a transcript of a podcast Central Air that featured Megan McCartle

Josh Barrow Ben Dreyfus and Ross Duthout and the headline here is young money cash money we're all in the upscene files and like I think like the, I don't know, like, there's been sort of a concerted media effort into, and like to sort of communicate what's going on here to just be like, look, I know it all looks really bad, but like, look, there's a lot of people who are just being like tarnished

unfairly or that this is all kind of a witch hunt. And like, yes, like he was trafficking girls like for himself. And, you know, like there's an appearance of blackmail with some very powerful rich people, but like there's really no evidence of that yet. So like really who can say. And I'm going to begin here with Megan McCartle's take on the Epstein files and how there's nothing to see here. She says here, you mean like, this is a transcript of the podcast.

She says, you mean the first round of charges back in 2008? The first round of charges that he did like, he did one year in jail. Yeah, it's actually less surprising than you think that those cases settled because those cases are actually quite hard to make when you get the people in court. The victims break down. They contradict themselves.

And that really shifted with me too. But also the way it was settled. I think most people probably did not understand the details of his crimes. But the other part of this is that until me too, people just didn't think it was that bad. Or a lot of people did not think it was a shunning from society. I never want to see you again. Like you'll retire to a mountaintop and become a postal service driver because you're done in elite society if you had sex with a 16 year old girl, even when you didn't know she was 16.

Well, we're not talking about rock stars. We're not talking about like lead Zeppelin or whatever, like stuff that's never been prosecuted. and people just talk about it and they say, well, oh, it was back in the day, that's what people did, and it's unfortunate and it's gross, but we can't, we can't judge people by the moral standards. Like, he was a sex offender. He was on the sex offender registry.

That's a very common opinion that they should be off on a fucking mountain top. Well, I love that from Megan McArdle, like being ostracized from elite society as you become a postal worker, like if you rape the teenager, like that's the worst things you can imagine happening to you is, becoming a UPS driver or something. They get paid pretty well. She does indeed bring up the example of David Bowie.

And she says here, think how many rock stars did that in the 60s and 70s, right? I mean, the way men behaved was not viewed entirely in the same kind of like, it's a social death penalty offense if you commit it. And so, yeah, I think it's not improbable that someone else thought,

well, this really isn't that bad. She's 16. How like she's four. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but like this argument, it's always fucking insane. same to me because it's like okay well imagine

David Bowie and instead of this happening in the 70s and him being this beloved musician and he was like 23 replace his music career let's replace his music career with just doing that

yes what if he just did that there was no art to separate yeah exactly like so yeah David Bowie even even someone like Woody Allen or Roman Polanski like Woody Allen's all over these files too and it's just like it doesn't excuse any of things they've done but like the reason people maybe like hold it to a different standard is like

they've done something in their life that people enjoy or remember fondly and maybe it hurts more because they've created art you like but like they've done something they've produced something with their life whereas Jeffrey Epstein and most of the people around him they only did this that's all they did was fucking Are people who like are just like normal people who have no need for a guy who supposedly if we're going to take them into their word, specialized in estate planning for ultra wealthy people are just like regular people supposed to be like, well, you know, his lifetime of pedophilia and

sex trafficking and the people he surely killed and the money laundering and blackmail. that's all bad but he really knew how to save money for Leon Black and you can't take like that's the same thing as David Bowie

making fucking Ziggy Star Dust well she says McCardo says she's 16 it's not like she's four and we have now really shifted on how we think about that

I think in a good way I think in a good way person that they had she goes right right I do not think that a 50 year old man should be having sex with 16 year old girls

Thanks, thanks, Megan, thanks for sharing that. But he goes, but I think you're not going to find the evidence of a pedophile ring where he is actively trafficking these girls because until Me Too, it's not like a pedophile, right? There are 16-year-old girls around who are vulnerable and can be exploited, but not in this like, there's this mastermind who's going on the dark web and selling these young girls to you. They're just around, and they're close enough to the age of consent

that a lot of people felt like it was okay to hit on them. Like she's saying like, oh, okay. Yeah, she's saying, it's not like there's some mastermind. mine that's just like, you know, coordinating with a network of like sexual predators to traffic. He's not transporting that. They're just around. They just around. They just happen to be around

in a certain place. And all the 70 year old men who I think it's okay to flirt with them and have sex with them, they're just like, whatever, they aren't asking too many questions. So whatever. It's not like they're four. That temple looking complex on the island, that was actually his G-mod server and they just kept

spawning in there. No one could do anything about it. I, it just also like, I've seen this argument a bunch of times where it's like McCardo of course, the most extreme example of, it's not like they were four, but I just, I love this idea

of like, I hate this culture where like no one gets to be a winner or a loser. It's these participation trophies. And it, it overshadows real achievements like making it through adulthood without fucking raping a four year old. Yeah. Yeah.

Even just, even the fact that all these guys were married, like, shouldn't we be condemning that? Shouldn't everybody be finding something wrong with this stuff? Like, it's just, it's bad. It doesn't matter. Like, oh, 16 was the age of consent in some state. Like, it's, he's a married guy who's old as fuck. I thought we were, shouldn't we all be against this stuff? Like, why are the details even important?

These are, people shouldn't do this stuff. They should get fired and be driven out of public life for having scandals like this. And the other tactic, and I'm going to use the Atlantic magazine as an example here. This was, this was in the Atlantic. The subhead is, in the case of Jeffrey Epstein, association seems to apply guilt. And so the release of the self- Why not? Who cares? Well, I mean, yeah, well, A, they're not guilty.

Fuck all those people. I don't need them. Yeah, exactly. Like, they're old. They're going to die anyway. Like, who gives a fuck about Nome Chomsky? Like his last three days. Oh, no, we need to have him his last three days.

Like, fuck, who cares? And no chance is a perfect example, right? They're treating like Leon Black stepping down from his private equity company like fucking the breakup of brand new. Oh my God, none of those deals are going to get done. Who fucking cares? Yeah, it's all people who are past their sell by date anyway. It's like the last generation of evil people. And it's just like, let's say there are people in here who's just like, we're emailing with Jeffrey Upsine and like didn't have anything to do with his, you know, pimping of teenagers or sexual blackmail.

or any like the murders of fraud or like, you know, conspiracies that are going on here, which to be assured by the Atlantic is not a conspiracy. It's just very powerful men talking to each other when what they, you know, assumed was some level of privacy, coordinating with one another over their sort of, I don't know, social networks or efforts to skirt the various laws and, you know, taxes of whatever country that they lived in. But not a conspiracy. The thing is, though, like, even if you did nothing, like in terms of, like, in terms of, like, like any of the sexual blackmail or like, you never went to the island or any of that shit.

Post 2008 and then certainly post-2017, you're still being friends with a guy who you know went to jail for soliciting a minor for the purposes of prostitution. And then if you're like, okay, hanging out with him or being friendly with him over the email, I don't think that's just, there's not necessarily evidence of your criminality,

but it's evidence of your severe defect in character and morality. That you would like... Yeah, if you fuck that up, what else are you fucking up? What else you're letting slip by? Because, oh, who cares? No one's going to get mad. If you were socially hanging out, like, if you were just like, there's this guy who, even if you are one of the cranks who's like, oh, he was doing it for fucking Russia or the MAGA opinion,

which at least among some circles, he was blackmailing on behalf of America against Israel, which is fucking insane. But, um. Why was it mostly Americans then? If you were just hanging out with this guy who did sexual blackmail and organized these fucking orgies and rapes and trafficking of girls who were, you know, they're practically middle age because they're 16. They're not four year olds. That you should, we cannot trust you to like make judgments. If you keep fucking doing, you're friends with this guy for 10 years.

after he registers as a sex offender. And you're like, well, I just, he's just so fun to talk to. By the way, we know he's not. We know he definitely wasn't. We know he wasn't. We have video of him talking in a documentary that's supposed to be about how smart he is. And the stuff he says is like humans of New York level shit. Yeah, he's remembering like 20 different sentences that an MIT guy told him about the brain

and just combining them. And it makes no sense. People are like, whoever he's talking to is about to get a check. So they're like, oh man, that's crazy.

That's crazy. The brain has like molecules in it or something. Like, exactly. Even if you take, the most innocent possible reading of any of the people who get like,

you know, thrown in there because their names are in these email releases. It's like you're still a, a credulous dope who was taken in by this obvious charlatan

and moron because you were impressed by his like wealth or the beautiful girls that seem to be with him everywhere he went. Yeah. You're getting everyone yelled at. You're getting your company in trouble. You're getting your friends and your boss in trouble. Isn't that bad? Isn't that a bad?

Like, who cares if it's not fair? It's the same reason people would get fucking fired for when they would post like, isn't everyone sick of blacks? It's not because like J.P. Morgan is woke. It's because, oh, that looks really shitty for a publicly traded. company. Yeah, it's just basic media training. Just basic common sense to be a professional and have a career. Yeah, if you're Larry Summers, you're like the dean of Harvard. You're in your 60s. And even if you never were like, uh, fucking any of these like underage prostitutes that he was pimping out to all

everyone else around him, you're just like a 60 year old man who's like, my girlfriend ghosted me again, Jeffrey. What should I do? Dude, the phone. Yeah, like that's like you, you've disgraced yourself and Harvard. That's enough. Just because it's not criminal doesn't mean it's not worthy of judgment of the broader society. And the example, I'm going to just read here from the Atlantic here. This is the other piece. He says here, the health influencer, Peter Ataya, had to resign from a protein bar company after emails showed him participating in crude banter with Epstein. Who gives this shit? He had to resign from his protein bar company. Oh, he'll just have to go back to being another

another rich moron who has a career and then like oh maybe or maybe he'll be like a slightly less rich asshole who doesn't have her career like who cares that's so sad they can't find another guy who technically has a medical degree who can't sell like fucking inedible

quest nutrition protein cardboard you know I bet the company will go out of business because it's not like there are 10 billion guys like that it's just drop shipping I says Brad Carp who in one email to Epstein gushed, you're amazing, is stepping down as sheriff of the law firm Paul Weiss. Queens University Belfast has announced that it is removing former U.S. Senator George Mitchell's

name from its Peace Institute and his bust from campus. Mitchell, who is now 92 years old, presided over the negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 and served as the school's chancellor for a decade. And like, Alex, you're pointing to guy, the guy's 93 years old or whatever. Why was he working that? Why was there anything to fire him from? He should be in a nursing home. Alex, I did like your take on Nome Chomsky, which is that his behavior of replying to everyone who emails him

looks a little bit more sinister in light of... Yeah, it's not so sort of charming and endearing as it is now. And, like, Chomsky's a perfect example. Like, even if you want to say, like, you know, I'm not going to say, oh, like, this tarnishes, like, this tarnishes, like, his entire body of work. Like, you know, I mean, I think it tarnishes his character, but, like, it tarnishes him because he was,

giving Epstein advice about how he could, like, repair his image after this guy had already been arrested for, like, being a sex offender. Yeah, it's completely enforced. If you don't think that, like, Dings Chomsky's character as a person, like, I, like, that he was friendly with this, like, CIA-connected Mossad operative in the first place. Like, come on. Like, what are we doing here? Like, it's not like, MIT was going to fire him if he didn't respond to those emails.

Yeah. He has tenure. Going on in the Atlantic, it says here, Los Angeles officials are calling for the city's Olympic Committee chair to resign because he exchanged flirtatious emails with Jelaine Maxwell. So it goes on here. And he says here, nothing comparable happened. He says, nothing comparable happened in the cases of other high-profile sex criminals.

The many famous friends of Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby generally did not issue public apologies. Epstein is different because under a certain set of circumstances, under a certain set of assumptions, an individual's presence in the files is presumptively damning. Epstein is known to have paid or coerced dozens, perhaps hundreds of teenage girls,

some as young as 14, to perform sexual acts. Beyond what has been proved, the conventional wisdom holds that Epstein built his network by trafficking teen girls to other powerful men, whom he then blackmailed to generate his mysterious wealth, that his private plane and island were essentially brothels, and that even friends who didn't participate in his crimes, were surely aware of them

and chose to consort with him anyway. Those assumptions are all widely held, but poorly substantiated. It's like, you just laid out what is a convincing explanation for everything we've seen that beg, like any other explanation literally doesn't make sense for like his entire existence and the fact that he was, to believe anything else, you would have to believe that he was uniquely intelligent and charming. Yeah. And also every single rich guy is too stupid to realize this stuff.

Like they don't notice. They don't notice that he's always talking about these young girls. girls that he's like they don't they don't hear anything about him because they don't hear the Trump is saying like he likes very young women even younger than me like people just people bring him up and say shit like that in all these guys like Bill Gates just he didn't know he's too stupid he just has too low of an IQ to notice things the conventional explanation is that he meets Les Wexner and they less Wexner is just like Jeff you're so charming that joke you tell where we're talking about how.

Actually, humans only use 90% of their brain. Only 10% of their brain. It's so smart and you're the first guy to ever say it. I'm going to give you this $60 million townhouse and you get to have power of attorney over me. That happens and apparently he was just like a spengal. He tricked Waxner who never tried to get his money back or anything and never told anyone.

He was embarrassed. He was like one of those people on SVU who Olivia has to tell them that they're more than a victim. Then he goes on to do that to pretty much every billionaire in the world, everyone with any type of influence on the executive level, cabinet secretary, senators, presidents, just no one could catch on, which again, it's kind of like the idea that like Hillary Clinton was on track to win and uh putler putler stopped her in her tracks well okay you failed the first test there yeah yeah you didn't want it enough because you know could greggabit have stopped you

it's the same same same goddamn thing and also i mean the supposedly exonerating explanation that he was just he was the greatest fucking um tax expert in the entire world none of these guys who like Glenn Dubin or Leon Black, these guys who spend their entire careers at the highest levels of finance, the richest guys in the world, behind some of the biggest fucking deals of all time. They didn't know anyone else who could do this.

And so even after he was on the sex offender registry, they were like, well, this is worth the extra 2% in income tax I'm saving. How is that alone not a gigantic fucking moral indictment that should exile these people from public life forever? And now that he's dead, They're paying so many taxes. They pay so much like the, it's like back to 1950s marginal tax rate.

There's just that story about how Amazon had like a 97% reduction in their taxes, which is why they did that Melania thing. Yeah, yeah. The Curry favor. But like there are clearly other ways of getting your taxes reduced, just knowing rich guys. It didn't have to be him. Ever since Epstein died for people think like the dollar is collapsing because of terms of policies, and that's why the yield is so high.

It's actually, it's the opposite. We're experiencing something exactly like the Spanish Siglo de Oro, where we have so many dollars in the treasury since Epstein's death that it's lost value. They're worthless now. There's just too many of them. Felix, your point about how, like, this guy was a

registered sex offender, so, like, you think that would, you know, give people some pause, even if you thought, like, oh, he was, you know, he got done in unfairly. And this is addressed here. It says here, the Epstein files reveal plenty of powerful people

to have tolerated or participated in disgusting and shameful behavior. Far from shedding light on a grand conspiracy, however, the files bolster the case that although terrible crimes are committed,

there never was a larger conspiracy to begin with. No, there's no large conspiracy. It's just many rich and powerful men doing terrible and shameful crimes in secret. Also the fact that he was a racist sex offender. It's a simple trick.

Well, no, Alex, yeah, I want to get through this. Even just, even if you are a pedophile, like, how do you trust him? Like, he's obviously not good at it. He got caught. He definitely got caught. So, like, I wouldn't trust him with the tax stuff either. Alex, because he's not good at hiding stuff from the government.

Yeah, it's like, it's like being like, you know what? I know Phil Spector is bad. I know people don't like him. But, A, he's just so cool. He's so charismatic. Everyone knows that about him. And he's so good at getting away with killing his wife. It wasn't even his wife.

It was a random woman. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah. I'm not even sure. I still don't even know what happened. Like, why did it take until then for him to shoot somebody? He was holding Leonard Cohen at gunpoint like 40 years before that. Like, I don't know why it was that specific woman.

Well, that's why so many people still hang out with him. He had great restraint. Yeah. Yeah, he didn't actually shoot anybody. That's what people love Phil Spector. he was a crack shot, never missed. It was so fun to work with. To this point about being a sex offender,

being on the sex offender registry, it says, nor is, this guy writes, nor is it obvious that Epstein's friends necessarily knew about his crimes. Some surely did. Brad Karp, the Paul Weiss chair, kept emailing with Epstein through 2019 after his offenses had become national news.

But Plenty might not have. His 2008 plea deal is scandalous precisely because he was allowed, to admit to the lesser offense of soliciting underage prostitution rather than rape or child sexual abuse. So it's just like, oh, so like in that case, it's like, oh, if he had pled guilty to raping a child, that'd be one thing. But if he merely pled guilty to soliciting a child for the purposes of prostitution, well, you know, it's sort of like shoplifting, you know, tax fraud. You know, it's like, he did his time and then he can come out and he can still like, I can

host a dinner for him or be seen sleeping over his apartment. What are you talking to him? about that it doesn't involve his crimes. He says here he spent only a year in jail and continued to move in polite society once he got out. Acquaintances might have taken all that as evidence that whatever he had done wasn't so bad. Or they may have not have known about it at all. Surely he did not go around telling them the truth. Like this is like, like, it's very hard to go to jail for a year and like have nobody know

why that happened. Yeah. Like the fact that a guy that rich went to jail for that. long. You have to be guilty. There was some random guy. Maybe you could get railroaded like that. They could frame you or plant evidence or something, but someone that rich

was that much, that many connections with people. Like for him to serve any time, he had to really be doing some shit. Yeah. But not for nothing. We knew about it. We, like us.

Yeah. Who were doing our podcast on Google Hangouts with laptop, embedded microphones at the time. Yeah, by 2019, like, I think, like if you listen to podcasts, you were aware of Jeffrey Epstein. If the most well-connected guys of the world did it, like this guy just cold, according to them, just cold emailed them.

And they're like, sure, I'll be photographed with you. JEE vacation. His name is so cool. And also, there's something kind of sad to me about the fact that he was always working on his vacations. He never had a non-working vacation. So, like, did he really love vacation? Did he ever get to have a vacation?

He's gold. Because his office was on that island. It was like going to work. He says, because the Epstein conspiracy theory is treated as reality by so many, however, merely appearing in the file seems to be grounds for suspicion. And it's like, yes, it is grounds for suspicion. It really is. It really is.

If for no reason other than the fact of how wealthy you are. Like, if you were that wealthy, people should be suspicious of you. And if you're not that wealthy and you're sucking up to guys like this, that's also cause for suspicion, in my opinion. If that isn't cause for suspicion, then, like, literally, nothing short of, like, committing a crime on camera and then looking directly into the camera and saying the date, your name and going, submitting a blood test that shows you were not under any type of, you know, you weren't, no one gave you that serious.

that makes you do bad stuff. Casamigos. Yeah, Casamigos. You know, the Mikey Miles defense, or that no one hypnotized you. Then that is the only grounds for suspicion, and even then you should be able to plead out because your work as the head of the fucking

counsel on foreign relations, it's so important. You are irreplaceable. There's not another guy in the world who can do what Glenn Dubin does. It's just too socially beneficial. It's just so incoherent because they want the standards for elites to be so low. But then they also want it to be so polarized and so unequal. They want wealth inequality to just get worse and worse and the elites to have more and more power. But also, you can't even notice when they fuck up.

Like in the Roman days, like if the emperor lost 50 battles in a row, people would get pretty upset. His own guards would kill him. Yeah, they would just kill them. It would strangle him in his fucking bed or his, like, cousin would slit his throat. I mean, like, I'm here now. We don't have to say, oh, we'll give you a mulligan. Oh, it's no big deal. You know, everybody makes me, like, they don't, people don't have to say that over and over again and just keep giving you a fucking pass.

Like, why? Someone else can take your place tomorrow. And no one feels bad about it at all, because you fucked up. Especially galling in light of the fact that, like, these same people are getting college students, like, expelled and indeed put in prison for like, fucking like writing an op-ed that's critical of Israel. And now these people like are kissing ass to this fucking pimp. And then they're just like, hey, come on.

Like, you know, like, do we really need to like, let's not start a witch hunt here or anything. It's not like he, it's not like these people were emailing him free Palestine or something like that. And now listen to this. It says here, and because Epstein cultivated as many high profile contacts as possible, that leaves a whole lot of people potentially exposed

unfounded insinuations. A Daily Beast headline over the weekend. Yeah, that's the worst thing about this. A Daily Beast headline over the weekend, for example, declared of the journalist Nelly Bowles, maga curious CBS boss's wife busted ingratiating herself with Epstein. In fact, the files show Bowles, who is now married to CBS Newshead, Barry Weiss,

emailing with Epstein to interview him for a New York Times story. Gee, what are the chances that New York Times story was about his many, many crimes? Man. I guarantee that New York Times story would just be about like whatever effort, whatever philanthropic effort he's pursuing at MIT. I kind of feel bad for Barry Weiss

because she probably had to delete DoorDash off her phone. She's trying so hard not to eat. It's so stressful at CBS. It's the most stressful period of her life. I genuinely feel empathy for her. She's so hungry all the time. Hey. The closing paragraph here is...

We've all been there. Epstein committed horrific acts against a staggering number of women and girls. But judging from the available evidence, he was not at the center of a global pedophilia ring that included dozens of criminal co-conspirators. The apparent truth is somehow even more depressing. Smarmy jerks can get experienced.

Okay, he just said he committed horrifying acts against a staggering number of women and girls. And he's like, the truth is even more depressing. He was a smarmy jerk. She's doing the Norm MacDonald bit, but unironically. Yeah. That was a real jerk.

This guy was a bad egg. That William Bonin guy who killed probably like 30 people called the mother of the victim to describe the screams of her kid as he killed them. He was a no good Nick. I think...

He was cringe. Yeah. He was chugy. He was so chuggy. Serial killers are so chuggy. He said, men who sexually abuse women and children can be charming.

The most accomplished people in our society can be terrible judges of character. They can, in pursuit of proximity to wealth and power, ignore or downplay what's right in front of them. The Epstein files show us that the world is an ugly and unfair place. But we already knew that.

That should be like on the masked head of the Atlantic magazine. The world is ugly and unfair, but you already knew that. So who cares? By the way, proximity to wealth and power, it's not like when Homer Simpson worked for Hank Scorpio like these were wealthy

and powerful people that's kind of the fucking point yeah no he was the one that wanted he wasn't just like going to he wasn't just like going to footlocker and being like anyone want to come to my island only wage employees no this was an influence peddling operas it wasn't that they like that fucking

Leon Black or Glenn Dubin or Bill Gates these guys with the resources of nation states were like oh my God, he has two cars. This is by Gilad Edelman writing in the Atlantic month. I wonder what country

this person's from. And like, just like the smugness of that closing thing. We're like, they just sort of hand a wave away. They're like, because like at this point now with like at this stage of disclosure, they're like, yes. Like he did many staggering and horrific crimes possibly

possibly for, with or on behalf of a lot of like the bold-faced names associated with him. But like that doesn't imply like it's a conspiracy or some sort of global pedophilia network. It's just the same old, same old. The world's messed up. What are you going to do about it? But like I love that like a journalistic outlet.

It's like their conclusion here is like, the world's ugly and unfair. We already knew that. So that's why any effort can make it less ugly and unfair is like ultimately kind of, kind of suss. and a bit overstated. It's not like there's a conspiracy going on here or anything.

And it's not like any effort should be made. Forget putting these people behind bars or like putting them under oath so they have to testify about what they knew in front of Congress or any kind of public accounting of this.

It's just even though the idea that they are treated roughly by public opinion is like is a bridge too far for these people. And they're like, let's stop here before it gets out of hand. The world's ugly,

but man, who cares? If the world is ugly and unfair, but we already knew that that's a satisfactory explanation, then like, why even write this article? Oh, the, okay, oh, all these guys are getting unfairly tarnished as pedophiles when really none of the girls that they, um, they, um, they, they were with. None of them had just been born. A lot of them had even gone through puberty recently. Um, if the world's so ugly unfair, then, okay, why is it even notable that these guys are, getting supposedly tarnished and having their good names ruined. I mean, the answer is obvious.

So that is the entire function of the Atlantic and McArdle's entire career. But it just, if you can write off like this vast fucking almost unimaginable quantity and scope of abuse as just like, hey, the world's a tough place, then like, why is like, why, why is people being mean to Stephen Pinker? Like, that needs a bottle, though. Yeah, why does anything like, why can't people break into Megan McArdle's house and steal all her stuff? The world's an ugly place. She's an ugly woman.

Yeah. No, it's like the point of this article, you're exactly right. Sorry, you're exactly right, Felix. The point of this article is that like the world is an ugly and unfair place. Not because Jeffrey Epstein and all these billionaires at the height of like finance, government, entertainment or whatever got away with like selling and raping children for decades. it's that like maybe George Mitchell gets a bust of him

removed from Belfast University because he sent the wrong email. Who at Belfast University is looking at the busts that they have? No one pays attention to that. Like the building you took biology in, the guy they named that after, I really care who that was. Oh, God, the chair of the LA Olympics Committee

may have to resign. Yeah, who? Larry Summers? Like, who's heard of Larry Summers? You have to be in this little bubble to even think that these are celebrities that anybody gives a shit. Like, Stephen Pinker. Go ask someone on the street who's Stephen Pinker is. They'd be like, yeah, the guy who invented the shocker.

Yeah, two in the pinker, two in the stinker, one in the stinker. The other thing, though, is like, okay, if your official editorial line is nothing matters, it's all a big nothing, then this should be the last issue ever. of the Atlantic. It should just be, like, the cover should be black. It should just be the words, we're all going to die anyway. And this is it. This is the last article you ever published. Yeah, there shouldn't be an article after this that's like, is Gen Z turning on Peloton?

Yeah. That wouldn't be the next thing because we're only covering stuff that's really important. Yeah. Every article in the Atlantic that isn't just like, you know, actually Palestinians like being killed is something like the tyranny of. of the iPad tipping screen. It's all just the most worthless complaints of fucking,

that the upper middle tier of office drones and shitheads like this. And you know, like as long as you're talking about the Atlantic, I mean, it was just last year that they published that piece by Graham Wood. The purpose of which was to say not every child killed in war is necessarily, is a war crime.

And they were saying like, you know, like sometimes it is permissible to kill children in a war, you know, as it relates to the tens of thousands of Palestinian kids who have been killed by Israel. So I would submit that if the Atlantic is willing to publish that and celebrate that point of view, is it really too far to assume that they would be okay with

other violations of children that don't involve killing them? Just food for thought, in my opinion. Probably, like, not since Nambla had a publication, has there been an outlet more just, comprehensively hostile to children. Maybe, maybe cracked magazine. I think, I think of cracked as like pro kid. Because they're always, they're pretty anti-teacher.

I never had it. It was a magazine. I remember the website. Oh, I used, I used to get cracked and bad magazine, like both by subscription. Oh, yeah, yeah, kids like you with one Christian parent and one Jewish one. You get to celebrate both. Yeah, the two types of comedy. All right, let's wrap it up there for today.

Do we have any business to conduct at the end of the episode? Plug the show, ticket links in bio. And yeah, subscribe to the Patreon. 10th anniversary show, April 3rd, Los Angeles. Tickets still available, but only for a limited time. There's only a few left. So make a move on that right now. Tickets will be available in the episode description.

and, uh, well, that's all right. So it's for us today. Until the next day. Adios. Thank you.