It Could Happen Here - Why Is Trump So Afraid of Epstein?

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

Robert, Gare, James and Mia discuss new revelations about Trump's relation to Jeffrey Epstein and how the Epstein Files have fractured Trump's base. Sources: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/23/donald-trump-accuser-stacey-williams-jeffrey-epstein https://apnews.com/article/trump-rape-carroll-trial-fe68259a4b98bb3947d42af9ec83d7db https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/17/donald-trump-accused-of-sexual-assault-by-former-model-amy-dorris https://archive.fo/J6z9J https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna218693 https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/21/18701098/trump-accusers-sexual-assault-rape-e-jean-carroll https://archive.fo/aeLYy https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/70843413/trump-v-murdoch/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast where we teach you how to pronounce the word pedophile or pedophile or pedophili. You're Greek, you know? That's not how the Greeks say it. I'm not doing any of this. Welcome to the show. We're talking about some breaking news

about friend of the pod, Carly Rae Jepstein, a joke I did on the Behind the Bastards episodes about Epstein that nobody liked least of all the lawyers I don't like that either. No me neither. It wasn't even really a joke just something I shouldn't have said yeah, so this is all barely breaking news because this is stuff that we've known about for like ever none of this Is a mystery we're not gonna be blowing any minds here that Jeffrey Epstein sexually trafficked and molested children or that Donald Trump probably did as well. Or well, he didn't do the trafficking,

but you know, he was a party to it. Yeah. Allegedly, you know, being alleged by a lot of people. Rupert Murdoch, one of them. By Rupert Murdoch, who is currently being sued for $10 million in his capacity as owner of the Wall Street Journal. So on July 17th, 2025, at 6.45 PM Eastern Standard Time,

the Wall Street Journal published an article with the title, Jeffrey Epstein's friends sent him body letters for a 50th birthday album. One was from Donald Trump. Body is one way to describe it. Body is one way to describe it. Yes, yes indeed.

It's really good to see a leftist outlet like Wall Street Journal take this thing head on. Finally, yes. You know, I've had my issues with them, you know, being hardline Marxists as they are, that doesn't fully gel with my own beliefs, but you have to respect them in this instance. You know, I'm not as much of a Stalinist as the Wall Street Journal, famed Stalinists. That's why they've cancelled us, because they're too woke. You know, I'm not as much of a Stalinist as the Wall Street Journal, famed Stalinists. That's why they've cancelled us, because they're too woke for cool time media. The Little Red Book published by the Wall Street Journal. Big mouth fans. The Wall Street Journal, pamphlets imprint.

They've got History Will Absolve Me, they've got the Little Red Book. Yeah, they've got a beautiful leather-bound edition of Ted Kaczynski's manifesto. Speaking of letter bound editions, Gillen Maxwell, I think this initially came out because it was a Spanish, like small scale publisher that published, that put out this like leather bound book for Gillen for, to give to Jeffrey. And God do I wanna see the whole copy

because I am curious as to who else submitted letters. But during the FBI investigation and everything around Epstein, this was found and it got leaked out to the Wall Street Journal. I think the New York Times has now seen it. So they're not the only people who have seen it. So you've got a piece of paper and there is a drawing that may or may not have been done by Trump But is alleged by some to have been done by Trump although he denies this having said that he has Never written a picture in his life But it's like a silhouette of a naked woman and then Donald Trump's signature where pubic hair would be Right classy man. Yeah Our current our current president. Yeah,, the guy with the nuclear codes.

Yeah, great stuff. And then the actual text on the letter is written in the form of like a dialogue, right? So it's like written as like a fake script of a conversation between Trump and Epstein. Voice over, there must be more to life than having everything. Donald, yes there is, but I won't tell you what it is.

Jeffrey, nor will I, since I also know what it is. Donald, we have certain things in common, Jeffrey. Jeffrey, yes we do, come to think of it. Donald, enigmas never age, have you noticed that? Jeffrey, as a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you. Trump, a pal is a wonderful thing Happy birthday and may every day be another wonderful secret The thing I need the listener to understand about this episode, right?

That is not the most incriminating thing Donald Trump is going to say in this episode It's not even close to it. Although it is it is very funny This could hardly be more direct if the letter was just, Jeffrey, I love being a pedophile with you. Love Donald Trump, right? Like, that's less direct. And yet he has gone further. Yeah. No.

But like, he's just saying it. So the Wall Street Journal publishes this and they publish this with like the least bit of editorializing that they can, right? They're being very careful with this. Trump loses his fucking mind. And this is obviously coming on the heels, or probably should have started with this,

but the important context is this is coming on the heels of Pam Bondi and the Justice Department announcing, actually everything's cool. And we're like not gonna be dropping any more info on Epstein. There's no client list or anything after Bondi hit earlier this year. Been like, I have the Epstein client list on my desk and they handed out

the Epstein papers, you know, release one. These like big binders that fucking the Libs of TikTok lady and Jack Psobik and a bunch of other right wing influencers well walked out of the White House with these big binders being like, aha, we've got it. We've got all the files that are going to put all the dims behind jail. And then a couple of months later, Bondi and the DOJ is like, actually, there's nothing else to tell anybody. We've got nothing. There's are gonna put all the dims behind jail." And then a couple months later, Bondi and the DOJ is like, actually, there's nothing else to tell anybody. We've got nothing.

There's nothing interesting at all about Epstein. So then this shit comes out, right? It gets leaked from someone, presumably someone within the FBI, right? I think that's what we're left to assume at this point. Yeah. Because this was revealed as a part of their investigation, right? This is some of the stuff that was confiscated, you know, when Gill and Maxwell got taken into custody.

Okay, so a couple of things have happened since then. For one thing, Trump is suing the Wall Street Journal for I believe at least $20 billion. This lawsuit was launched in a federal court in Miami. Trump said, on True Social, the lawsuit is filed not only on behalf of your favorite president, all caps me, but in order to continue standing up for all Americans who will no longer tolerate the abusive wrongdoings of the fake news media.

So this is what Trump is claiming. Obviously Trump denies any wrongdoing, denies anything but kind of lightly knowing Jeffrey Epstein. And for some context, Trump and Epstein have been seen together numerous times. There are pictures and videos of them both together. Trump talked about in interviews, including one with New York Magazine, where he said, like me, Jeffrey's known to really like women, and some of them

are on the younger side, right? But he's been saying shit like this for years. Quote, I've known Jeff for 15 years, terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It's even said he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it. Jeffrey enjoys his social life.

2002. We know they were friends. The information suggests that I think it's around 2005 or six, they had a falling out over a real estate deal. With a real estate deal and one alleged incident at Mar-a-Lago, where Jeffrey was acting quote unquote inappropriately to a daughter of a member of the club. And then Trump barred him from the club. And Trump has claimed this multiple times through the years that between this and the real estate deal, that's led to their falling out. There's other stories.

There's one I've heard that Epstein got really angry because Trump was physically like touching one of Epstein's girlfriends, like one of his actual like partner girlfriends, and that he got angry over that. We don't know. But we do know that they were seen socially together and talked about being friends for quite a while they were neighbors and they were like socialites both in New York and in Florida right yeah for a while from the 80s up through the early 2000s right now Trump has denied sending this letter he said that this doesn't

sound like me he wrote on truth social I don't draw pictures. Now that was a lie. This has sparked one of my favorite investigatory cycles. The New York Times published an article right after this post that says Trump says he doesn't draw pictures, but many of his sketches sold at auction. And it's like photos of a bunch of, and to be fair, none of these are sketches of naked women, but there's a crude black marker drawing

of the Empire State Building. A lot of city skylines. crude black marker drawing of the Empire State Building. A lot of city skylines. Allegedly the drawing of the woman was drawn in black marker, right? And they're noting that he did a lot of black marker drawings, right? He signs his bills in Sharpie, doesn't he? He signs his bills in Sharpie

and that he has a signature that does kind of look like pubic hair, right? If you were to like draw a crude set of genitalia, Donald Trump's signature could stand in for pubic hair right if you were to like draw a crude set of genitalia Donald Trump's signature could stand in for pubic hair right like the way that he signs his signature That's one way you could interpret it right It's also worth noting and I think this is actually really important when he signs this right He signs it like like on this picture of like the Empire State Building, right? It's a really shitty drawing the Empire State Building

His signature is like right next to the building. If you're drawing a picture of a naked woman and you shift it like five degrees. If the Empire State Building was sitting down in like an L shape and had pubic hair, that's where the signature would be. Everything is exactly the same. If the Empire State Building had pubic hair.

There's also a drawing that he did. It's called the money tree drawing. It looks like if the giving tree was filled with dollars, then again, the signature kind of looks like pubic hair. Trump's a little artist. He's just got like, but it sits underneath the money tree to meditate like it's his alternative. Trump did like yearly drawings and doodles for charity auctions,

and that's what most of these are from. And to be fair, a lot of US presidents have been doodlers. Ike, our former president, doodled himself with huge muscles during a meeting talking about the overthrow of Guatemala by the CIA. You mean like a Chad Mojang or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so funny, it's so funny.

I mean, so many people die to horrible deaths, but it's really pretty funny. The Chad Eisenhower versus the people of Guatemala. Just shredded? Entire indigenous civilizations wipe off the face of the earth forever like... Look at Chad Eisenhower! God! Yeah, God. If you have a Chad Eisenhower tattoo, please submit it to Sophie on Twitter.

She uses iWrite. OK. Look, I feel confident saying iHeartRadio will pay for anyone's tattoo if you want to get Chad Eisenhower, as long as it's a facial tattoo. You know? Yeah. You can get it in that UV ink they're doing tattoos in.

Only when you're in the club will people see you. In the club. See the Chad Eisenhower in our world day? Beautiful stuff. Triggering a stampede from the dance floor. Yeah, you're gonna cause another one of those fucking Jersey nightclub fires to kill 120 people.

It's not funny, a lot of people died. Anyway, there was also another, oh God, I should have it up here, but it's another investigation into like, does the writing that Trump did sound like his other writing? And they found that number one, Trump has a number of times in the past put out writing in the form of a hypothetical script between other people. That is a thing he's done in the past. And then multiple phrases that were used in this letter are phrases he has used

in the past, in some cases, multiple times. Except some of the mega investigators were able to use Grok to ask if Trump ever used the word enigma before. And Grok said no. So we closed that case, never mind the fact that he said it on the campaign trail in 2016. And he said multiple times in his best selling book. No evidence he wrote that book.

He loves the word. Well, I'm not gonna say he loves it, but he's used the word enigma before, right? He described Ben Carson as an enigma. He's described Dan Rather as an enigma. So maybe he and Epstein were both fucking Dan Rather. Is that possible? I'm gonna say yes. I think you should also be impeached for that.

I think so. I'm sorry. I have just think you should also be impeached for that. I think so. I'm sorry. I have just discovered talking of Grok, I'm reading the Trump versus Murdoch lawsuit, which describe eggs.com as quote, the internet's watering hole. What? No, I'm sorry, no.

No longer the everything website. The watering hole, what are you doing? What is wrong with you people? Fucking jump off a bridge, you stupid sons of bitches. It is interesting you still really mad at Elon because Elon is also one of the originators of this current wave of like Epstein focus. And it's interesting after the letter came out Elon was just like obviously a fake. Obviously. I think he's scared. I think some G-men showed up at his door and were like, yeah This is a nice life. You've got fucking Elon Musk It would be a shame of a hellfire missile hit your house hit your fucking compound with all of your wives

But the thing is and this is the fun part about this is like it doesn't matter what Elon says now like he already Opened the floodgates and that the gates are fucking open now No, no, no, do you know what else the gates are open from? Yeah, is our advertisers. Open AI is a financial abomination. A thing that should not be. An aberration, a symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley. And I'm going to tell you why on my show, Better Offline, the rudest show in the tech industry.

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Offspring Tim McGraw tickets are on sale now at AXS.com get your tickets today AXS.com And we're back so this is the gist of the situation now This letter is out and a lot of people, even I was, and I still am to some extent, kind of, there's been so many, ah, this has to be it for old Donnie Trump.

And then like- I love to see him wiggle his way out of this one. And then he wiggles his fuckin' way out, right? You know, that said, this does seem to be pissing off a lot of his more diehard people, right? Including fuckin' the Dilbert guy. We don't need to give any name besides the Dil right? Including fucking the Dilbert guy. We don't need to give any name besides the Dilbert guy, but the Dilbert guy is pissed about this.

A lot of people who have been like really religious Trump supporters are pissed as a result of this. Sean Ryan, the right wing podcast area is pissed about this. Even Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson has been more Trump critical the past week and has given interviews to another mega influencer turned soft Trump critic now, Benny Johnson, about how Trump handled this so poorly.

A lot of them are trying to make this down into like a messaging fail or like a rhetoric fumble, which obviously it's so much more substantial than that. But cracks are forming in a way that we haven't really seen for his base in a long time And the thing I think is really important about this is that Okay, so this is me a going history mode if you look at a thing that has been studied by an enormous amount by the left And I think studied mostly wrong which is how did the Bolsheviks actually take power in 1917? And the answer is that when they take power in 1917? And the answer is that when they came for Kerensky in the October Revolution,

everyone stayed home. Everyone looked at Kerensky and was like, I'm not dying for that dipshit, like fuck him. Like if there's like dueling machine gun companies in the street, I am not going to go die for Alexander Kerensky. And that's how they won because everyone stayed home. And that's the thing with Trump, right? The thing that's important about this is That the way that Trump can like be defeated is if enough of his base just stays the fuck home Whenever the sort of terminal crisis hits and every single thing we get like this for more and more of his base is like Well, I mean I could go face down a machine gun line for this guy

But he did piss me off by Epstein so like fuck that the more that happens the better It is for all of us whenever the confrontations start to emerge. Yeah, I think in general, just the more, so much of the modern right is built on the Epstein stuff. And a lot of it is a myth, right? There's a mythical idea that Epstein is trafficking small children and he's not,

he was trafficking teenage girls because that's what mostly rich adult men want to fuck, right? That's just the reality of the situation including famously Donald Trump Yeah He has like said this before and you can look at the many court cases that have often been solved out of court alleged by him and Like there's this clip of the Howard Stern show from the mid-2000s Which is kind of an endless source of men saying horrible things. I will include this clip of the Howard Stern show from the mid 2000s, which is kind of an endless source of men saying horrible things.

I will include this clip here. Thing about the four year olds. Oh, absolutely. I have no trouble. Would you do it? I have no problem. Yeah. Do you have an age limit or would you?

No, no, I have no age. I mean, I have an age limit. I don't want to be like the Congressman Foley with, you know, 12 year olds. Can I make a prediction for you? Good Lord. This is the incorrect response to this question. This question has a very clear cutoff point, which even still is a little bit iffy. But this is absolutely the wrong answer.

The answer is not 12 years old. That is morally, legally the wrong answer. Oh man. You know, one of the things I think is also really important about this is looking at this in the context of Trump's unbelievable number of sexual assault allegations. And we're going to get into that in a second. But first we need to ask the question, okay, has Donald Trump ever intentionally looked at the naked body of an underage girl?

And in order to figure out the answer to this, I am going to turn to the man himself, Donald Trump, talking about walking into the changing rooms of Teen Miss USA pageants and I quote, you know, no men are anywhere and I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant and therefore I'm inspecting it. Is everyone okay? You know, they're standing there with no clothes and you see these incredible looking women and I sort of get away with things like that. Now that is our president, Donald J. Trump, saying that he walks into changing rooms and

looks at the bodies of naked underage girls and says that they are and I quote, incredible looking women. I remember when this quote was going around like maybe 10 years ago. Yeah. And then just no one knows. No it's gone into the memory hole now. Yeah it just disappeared right like there's so much of this shit. Like the access Hollywood tape like. Yeah and I think it's actually worth like looking at this there's another quote from Vox where they say this is an incident of like Trump walking in on a changing room Like of again like naked underage girls quote the lot all told BuzzFeed She mentioned the incident to Trump's daughter Ivanka who shrugged it off saying quote. Yeah, he does that So like yeah, like this is multiple people

Cooperating that he just like walks into the changing rooms of naked underage girls and like looks at their bodies, right? Now I will call that pedophile shit, right? Like, I don't know if he wants to sue me for $1 billion, please don't, but like. Sounds like he's alleging pedophile shit. He is the one who said this. So like, you know. And it's worth noting also last year,

a jury did rule that Trump had sexually assaulted a vice columnist named Eam J. Carroll and he had to pay her like five million dollars. There's also again the like grab him by the pussy thing, which is him just talking about sexually assaulting women, which he does constantly. He kept on just like walking up to like people at his pageants and just kissing them without their consent, which is again sexual assault. And directly tied to the Epstein case, we have an allegation by former model Stacey Williams

which for some reason I don't know why everyone has suddenly forgotten about this who alleged that she was introduced to Trump by Epstein who like walked her to Trump Tower to meet Donald Trump where he then sexually assaulted her like in front of Epstein. Yeah in Trump Tower. This was also included in a list the New York Times put together a few days ago on like Trump and Epstein's friendship. Quote, one of the young women who later said Mr. Epstein groomed and abused her was recruited into his world while working as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago. Another accused her recalled being eyed by Trump during a brief encounter in Mr. Epstein's

office and claimed that Mr. Epstein told Trump at the time, quote, she's not for you. So like, he just like says this shit, right? And I think this is, you know, part of the problem that we've been sort of getting at here, right? Which is that like, the conservative mythos about Epstein is that it's like four-year-olds, right? And it's like, no, Epstein was doing the shit that Donald Trump talks about doing, right?

But because it's like attached to Epstein, right? Like Trump doesn't want to admit that he's been doing this, even though he's been admitting that he's been doing this for decades and decades and decades. It's harder for the conservatives to deal with this because like all of these people think that child marriage should be legal and that creeping on like 15 year olds isn't pedophilia. It's not hard for them to deal with this because they don't have a fucking problem with it. Like, Matt Walsh is talking about how like 17 year olds are the most fertile. So yeah, this is very common among certain aspects of like this, like evangelical. Again, it's a major thing on the right to fight for it to be legal to marry 14 year

old girls, you know, as long as their parents say yes. And you can look at this from a conspiracy perspective and be like, okay, like, is there a ruling cabal of Pedophiles that control the United States and it's like well, yeah It's the Baptists and like the systematic cover-ups of this shit by the Catholic Church, right? It's Epstein Yeah, but it's also like Trump admitting that he's like again Perving on like doing pedophiles shit like walking in on these changing rooms of these fucking girls He's just like admitting this on TV. Right.

And I think like the current thing that Trump's trying to do is make this Epstein thing another one of the many lines of attack against him throughout the years. And he's done a really good job at deflecting some things that have some actual like serious data on had some serious investigations. And like there was aspects of like Russian interference in the 2016 election. it may not have changed the outcome of the election in a substantial manner. But this is something that the FBI like legitimately investigated and had like, real findings of. And he was able to just completely like rewrite what that investigation was into this like completely like astroturfed and like orchestrated hoax.

And now it's like one of the main things that he talks about. And whenever there's new things that people bring up about why Trump is bad, he just compares it to the Russia hoax. Everything's just just like the Russia hoax. This is just another another Democrat hoax against me. And this has been such an effective way for him to diffuse so many lines of attack against him. It's by just repeating long enough and often enough that it's just a baseless hoax. And he can do this anytime and he'll replace like, oh, you know, this is a hoax. But you know, when Hunter Biden does stuff, that's the real thing that the Democrats then try to cover up.

Hunter's laptop. They talk about Hunter's laptop so many times, something that does not matter. But this is the train that he's been able to do. And eventually, journalists and media get tired of having to repeat the same thing over and over again, explaining that these things are not baseless hoaxes, but are legitimate investigations, legitimate concerns. And people just get tired of it. And he's able to like warp reality around things that he says.

And this is the thing he's currently trying to do with Epstein. This is why he's calling it the Epstein hoax, using the same rhetoric that he says. And this is the thing he's currently trying to do with Epstein. This is why he's calling it the Epstein hoax, using the same rhetoric that he used around all of the Russia stuff, around the 2020 election, around Hunter Biden's laptop. And it's gonna tire people out. And I can already kind of feel some of this, like iteration of it, losing some steam. And like, I thought the Wall Street Journal piece would like invigorate people's discussion of like, Trump's, you know, alleged pedophilia. And I think it's, I don't know,

at least in like, observing the online ecosystem, immediate ecosystem, the last few days, I don't know if Trump's strategy is working, but it is growing stagnant. And that's just kind of the pace of the internet sometimes. But if he's able to keep doing what he's currently doing, I'm not sure if this stuff's going to really matter in two months beyond, you know, whatever comes out in discovery for the Murdoch lawsuit. Open AI is a financial abomination, a thing that should not be, an aberration, a symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley. And I'm going to tell you why on my show Better Offline, the rudest show in the tech industry, where we're breaking down why open AI along with other AI companies are dead set on lying to your boss that they can take your job. I'm also going to be

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mental health struggles, and more, and found the strength to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on a street corner. He wasn't shot in, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant. But he wasn't shot on a street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house, unarmed.

Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. The summer of 1993 was one of the best of my life. I'm journalist Jeff Perlman, and this is Rick Jervis.

We were interns at the Nashville Tennessean, but the most unforgettable part? Our roommate, Reggie Payne, from Oakleth, sports editor and aspiring rapper. And his stage name? Sexy Sweat. In 2020, I had a simple idea. Let's find Reggie. We searched everywhere, but Reggie was gone. In February 2020, Reggie was having a diabetic episode. His mom called 911. Police cuffed him face down. He slipped into a coma and died.

I'm like thanking you, but then I see my son's not moving. No headlines, no outrage, just silence. So we started digging and uncovered city officials bent on protecting their own. Listen to Finding Sexy Sweat on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our iHeartRadio Music Festival,

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Tim McGraw. Tickets are on sale now at AXS.com. Get your tickets today. AXS.com. We should maybe explain who Murdoch is. He's so sweet. Murdoch! Rude Pop Murdoch is... He's a leftist revolutionary. Yeah, that's going to say member of the Communist Party. Murdoch is an Australian tabloid magnate who owns the tabloid press, more or less.

At some point in time, he has probably owned most of the tabloid press in the English language almost all around the world. He owns Sun in the UK, also the Times. In Australia, he owns The Daily Sun and Deadly Telegraph. In the US, he owns The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post. He also owns Sky News, which broadcasts in the UK. He owns Fox News. He used to own, people in the UK remember the News of the World. He owns a massive amount of the tabloid and I guess the broadsheet press now. But he has historically been very right wing, right? It's fair to say that Murdoch outlets have boosted Trump enormously in his ascent to office. However, now it appears they have fallen out. And that is significant, I think. It is significant that this guy who has played

a huge role in Trump's... We don't have the sort of liberal Walter Cronkite anymore, right? The person who can change their mind on something and take the nation with them in the way that Cronkite had a role in doing, at least in the Vietnam War. The boomer and Gen X conservative people still have that in Fox News, right? Like Fox News can, because it's like the constant background noise in people's lives in so much of this country, it can take people with it. And the fact that Trump has gone after Murdoch, I think that is potentially, like if their falling out continues, that is potentially the most damaging part of this for him. I want to read a quote.

I think I've talked about this on the show before, but Murdoch's role in doing this sort of reality shaping stuff for Trump until now, and Garrison, we were talking about how Trump is able to sort of create his own reality. I want to read this quote from the Bush administration that's very famous, which is like the reality based community quote, because the neocons were trying to do the same thing, right? There's a very famous quote from the Bush administration, which is attributed to a journalist named Ron Sutzkind. And he's doing an interview with like a Bush administration aid.

And I'm just going to quote from it. The aide said that guys like me were, quote, in what we call the reality-based community, which he defined as people who, quote, believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world really works anymore, he continued. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying reality judiciously as you will will act again creating other new realities which

you can study too and that's how things will sort out we're history's actors and you all of you will just be left to study what we do and that's you know a lot of what trumpism is too right which is it like yeah I know all of you people are trying to like describe reality I'm just simply going to change it by saying shit, right? And doing shit. And like, all he has to do is like diffuse the possible damage that this Epstein thing can do to his base. Like he does not care about the other half of the country at all. He knows that they hate him. That does not matter. All he has to do is create enough

of a doubt in the mind of the base that this thing isn't real. There's no proof that this Wall Street Journal story is real. This is all a hoax. The Epstein files were written by Obama, even though the second Epstein investigation kicked off when he was president in 2019. But all these files were written by my enemies. Oh, Garrison, I think it's bold of you to say that Trump was president in 2019.

That is very much up for debate. This is a controversial claim say that Trump was president in 2019. That is very much up for debate. This is a controversial claim now about who was president in 2019. Yeah, certainly like who was president in 2020 is something that the country now disagrees about. Yeah, the thing I want to say about this though, right, is the neocons believed they could do this, right? The neocons believed they had seized the range of empire and they could forever shape reality to their will. And they couldn't. This to their will and they couldn't this quote from 2004 Right the neocons tried to do this and they invaded a rock and they thought they could just fucking will like Empire like We create reality. I thought they could just turn a rock into their own personal playground and it destroyed them Like where are the neocons now?

Right like some of them are obviously the Trump administration But like this is not a neocon some of them are now in the anti-trumper side of yeah Yeah, many of them are now in the anti-trumper side of yeah Many of them are in the Lincoln project is right the neo cons are like they don't they do not rule the Empire anymore Right, that's Trump these people they ran into a piece of reality That they tried to devour and consume and replace and it destroyed them and I don't know if this is that for Trump But yeah, I don't know. I'm not that optimistic But like the last time that someone tried to do this using the American state, they eventually hit a thing they couldn't swallow, and it completely annihilated them.

And that's the goal with us, right? Like, we have to, like, find the thing where enough of the coalition has peeled off, and where it just completely blows up in their fucking face. And hopefully it's not, like like the Iraq war three or something, but there's ability to warp reality purely by like thought and speech and action of empire like has its limits and we've seen them be destroyed before. Yeah, it took a lot of people dying. It did.

The first time and that's what it was horrible. It's not it's not easy to stop these people, but you know, like where the fuck is George Bush right now? Yeah, he's doing a painting, yeah. Yep, on his farm painting, but he's not running the fucking country. He's not on his farm, he's like 10 miles away from where I used to live in Dallas. Oh god. He's at Robert's house.

Yeah. I don't know, what else do we got to say about our old friend Jepstein I Guess the one last thing that I have to say is I actually do think that like Look if the thing that you've decided to do is you want to wage information warfare? Like just continuing to spread this shit and like seeding it and random right-wing things is probably a fun thing to do with your time It could work. Who knows it can't hurt Yeah, I mean it could but probably won. What really could hurt right now, given

where we are? This is like the biggest chink in the MAGA armor that we've seen. He's lost more people over this than tearing families apart with masked unidentified men with guns. People are fine with that, James. Unfortunately, lots of them think it's cool. But some of them don't, and that's going to be our interview tomorrow! Or maybe yesterday! The whole country is governed by QAnon logic now.

This is the only thing that truly gets Americans upset anymore. As like an entire political block. Yeah. This is it. Like QAnon as a cohesive conspiracy doesn't really exist anymore, but its logic has perforated every aspect of America, Democrats and Republicans included now. And that's the real people that's like survived, survived the past 10 years of politics is like the logic of QAnon. It's the only thing that matters.

It cannot be killed anymore. All right. Well, this has been It Could Happen Here. Until next time, you know, may every day be another beautiful secret. Oh, God. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonedmedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions.

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