Media Storm - News Watch: Making sense of the Epstein Files, and will Reform rollback women’s rights?

Episode Date: February 19, 2026

Care about independent and ethical news? Support Media Storm on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Next week on Media Storm, we will be speaking to survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse, following weeks of coverage that has often focused on this as a political and financial scandal. Survivors have been too lost in the media storm. But there has been a hell of a lot to process - so for Part One of this week’s news watch, we break down the key geopolitical, financial and political you need to understand. divorce rates, birth rates, tax rates, abortion rates, working from home rates, and the root of all evil according to Reform: child-free women. But what links all these sensationalist splashes? There's something much darker, deeper and scarier going on here, and it's an attack on women's bodily autonomy. We draw the parallels between Reform's potential policies and the policies of the Nazi's. Think we're being too dramatic? Just listen. The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mathildamall⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) and Helena Wadia (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@helenawadia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠)  The music is by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @soundofsamfire⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok ⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Matilda, this will mean probably nothing to you because you don't partake in pop culture in the same way that I do. But last night at Dolster Junction Station, I met Stephen from the traitors. Um, come on. Oh, my God. That's so cool. Not Stephen. Stephen is the most treacherous of all the traitors. Great acting from Matilda.

Anyway, I know that at least some of our listeners who are normal members of society and partake in traitors watching will be super excited by this. So that's great. But the reason I wanted to tell you is because I spoke to him for like probably a minute and a half and in that time, like managed mention media storm.

Helena, I am so proud of you. Do you think Stephen of the Traitors is listening to this now? I don't know. I also sent him a DM afterwards. Not to sound like weird and stalkery, but I was like, might just follow up with a little link to Media Storm. So he's either listening to Media Storm or getting a restraining order out against us. Exactly.

But I feel like it was a very fortuitous meeting and a wonderful way to bring in the new year, the year of the horse, the year of the fire horse, no less. Happy Lunar New Year, everybody. Helena, you somehow were not the only one of my absolutely insane friends who left me messages yesterday night. Like, Matilda, please don't wash your hair. Yes. Don't clean your apartment. Don't take the bins out.

If you want to cry, if you want to cry tomorrow, just hold it in. Okay, because I love you, I'm asking you, just do not cry. I, for some reason, probably because I had a pretty rough January. with like leaks in my flat and norovirus, I just like pinned my entire belief system on the year of the horse. How's day one going? Honestly, great. I met Stephen.

Also, what is a fire horse? Why isn't it just a horse? You know, in true media storm style, I feel like we should ask somebody actually from the community to tell us that. Yeah, that good safe. Listen, some people need the year of the fire horse to hold on to. which is probably a good segue into the madness that is going to be this media storm. Yes, this is a wild one.

We're going to be broaching the Epstein files, and because that means my entire Newswatch has been sucked into the black hole of the Epstein files, I thought I'd just mix it up by bringing in a mini media storm to launch the show. Is that allowed? It's the year of the firehorse, You can do what you want. It's just one that I felt our listeners at Media Storm would be interested in and should be aware of. It's a scary one for free press in America.

At the start of the month, Jeff Bezos, the billionaire Amazon owner who bought The Washington Post, he cut at least 300 jobs from the paper. That's more than a third of its newsroom. Now, the paper's executive editor said that it was just because the Post is losing too much money. But as some people point out, Bezos could cover five years of the post's estimated losses with just one week of his earnings. And the most outrageous part comes when you remember what Amazon just did for Donald Trump. Melania, the Melania documentary that no one went to see. The Melania documentary, which made extraordinary losses, was released just five days before those massive job slashes.

Now, that documentary reportedly cost Amazon 75. million dollars, 28 million dollars of which was a straight fee to Melania Trump, which is why some critics have said, this is clearly a bribe. And it feels pretty credible to say Bezos is among those US tech moguls using the media platforms that they have, our media platforms that should belong to us, to appease Trump politically and financially. We talked about this pretty much exactly a year ago when Bezos sent a memo around the Washington Post staff saying that the paper would only be publishing opinion pieces that defend personal liberties and free markets.

Exactly. And important context here, right, is that during Trump's first presidential term, Amazon lost a $10 billion government contract and its lawyers called this a clear retaliation by Trump for the post's critical coverage of him during the presidential campaign. So since Trump 2.0, Bezos has meddled much more directly in the Washington Post's coverage.

He also blocked the paper from publishing its Kamala Harris endorsement as well as the op-ed thing. And all this at a time when Trump is using eye-watering lawsuits to bring the media under his thumb or dangling mergers over their heads or gutting federal funding of public media. Which is why it's so important that all of us who value independent media fund independent media that breaks through gatekeeping structures that doesn't depend on billionaire owners, that doesn't depend on corporate advertisement, that doesn't depend on government funding.

Oh, I see where you're going with this. Very smooth. It's not a setup, I swear. But it is kind of impossible not to say right now that if you value what we do at Media Storm and you can afford to help us cover some of the costs of our time, please do consider subscribing to our Patreon. You can do so for the price of,

a cup of coffee a month and the link is in the show notes. And if that's not feasible for you, don't worry, you are just as valued a member of our Little Media Storm community. We love you all. We love you. Now let's get on with the show. Today, an Eiffel Tower of Epstein Files and a DOJ drop designed to disorientate. And piecing together reforms true motive behind all their sensationalist headlines.

Every year, over 200,000. Abortions happened in the UK. Breaking tonight, the Justice Department releasing more than 3 million pages of documents. Chairman Jordan, I'm not going to get in the gutter with these people. As we sit here today, there are over 1,000 sex trafficking victims, and you have not held a single man accountable. Shame on you. Welcome to Media Storms News Watch, helping you get your head around the headlines. I'm Matilda Mallinson.

And I'm Helena Wadia. This week's Media Storms, Making Sense of the Epstein Files and Reforms Rollback. of women's rights. Brace yourselves because today we're talking about the Epstein files. Now this segment was supposed to be the introduction to next week's deep dive, where we will be speaking to survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse, and they will be talking to us about the media coverage of the files. But this segment was so damn long, we just had to make it its own news watch.

A few weeks ago, the US Justice Department, or DOJ, released three million files from the FBI's investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. It was and remains chaos as journalists trulled through a pile of disorganized files with millions of often erroneous redactions that would apparently amount to the size of two Eiffel towers. Jeffrey Epstein was an American financier who died in a New York prison cell in 2019, awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. He died accused as a serial rapist, child molester and human trafficker, and he was friends with some of the most powerful people in the world. Mick Jagger, Woody Allen, Kevin Spacey, Elon Musk, Bill Clinton.

Yet some of the most powerful people included in the files are people you've probably never heard of. Arms dealers, CEOs, spies and state leaders for whom Epstein appears to have worked as a private and unofficial diplomat. The released files were full of redactions and at least 3 million more files remain held by the DOJ. Redactions were haphazard and failed to hide many victims' names and even naked bodies, while concealing the names of at least several powerful men. A few lawmakers who got access to the unredacted files said the exclusions are not in line with the recent Epstein Transparency Act, a law forced on Trump by a cross-party vote that makes it a legal obligation to release the files in full.

The DOJ missed that deadline by six weeks. But the Epstein affair is a constant story of missed opportunities and turning away. In 1996, the first police report was filed by a survivor of Epstein's abuse. The FBI failed to investigate and his abuse continued for decades. Dozens of civil lawsuits by hundreds of victims later, Epstein received his first criminal conviction in 2008 and was registered as a sex offender. But he was handed a sweetheart plea deal

charged with solicitation of prostitution instead of child sexual abuse or trafficking. This resulted in a 13-month stint in a minimum security open facility that he left 12 hours per day to work at his foundation. In Florida, child sex abuse cases can recommend up to life imprisonment, sex trafficking cases up to 30 years.

Many famous and powerful people stuck with Epstein even after that conviction. And in some cases, even after he landed in jail again in 2019 on sex trafficking charges. He was arrested in July that year and faced up to 45 years in prison if convicted. But he never went to trial. He was found dead in his jail cell in August. The FBI concluded he died by suicide. Over 1,000 women and girls are believed to have been abused by Epstein and his associate. Just one co-conspirator is in jail, Galane Maxwell, who received a 20-year sentence for sex

trafficking girls. Next week, on Media Storm, as Helena said before, we will be doing a survivor-centred deep dive on the Epstein files following weeks of coverage that is often focused on this as a political or financial scandal. Survivors have been too lost in this media storm, but there has been a hell of a lot to process, and I have been attempting to do so over weeks of reports. So ahead of next week's deep dive, I'll use today's Newswatch to pick out the other major implications of the Epstein files that you need to understand. Besides, that is, the rampant and unrepentant sexual violence.

That small thing. That small thing. It's true. This has been a hell of a media storm. I have really struggled to wrap my head around it. But listeners, if you feel the same, we don't blame you. In fact, we bet you are confused. because the release of the files was designed to confuse. At least, that's the argument of Daphne Delvo,

an American lawyer, specifically a trial attorney. You might have seen Daphne's thoughts on threads, which went viral earlier this month. I interviewed her to find out why the whole Epstein affair just seems so confusing. Here's what she had to say. Can you explain what reptile theory is and how it relates to trials? So it is a theory that is traditionally deployed in trial practice when lawyers like to kind of hijack a juror's brain by flooding them with information that will make them feel scared.

Truly the goal is to put them into fight or flight or freeze, which is collapse. And so the goal is to overwhelm a juror to the point that they just cannot reasonably deliberate in the jury room. And what that looks like is that a juror is just so overwhelmed and scared and horrified by the information received that they just want to come to a very quick conclusion so that they can leave. Attorneys intentionally try to manipulate the jury by overwhelming them with a bunch of traumatic information without proper sequencing and containment. Is that legal? Well, it's a pet. I mean, the judge is going to limit it because we don't really want. people in that state making decisions. In California where I practice, this is generally not allowed

in more conservative states that have kind of less regulation around these things. The judge can sometimes let things come in because you also need to let the information be seen. And this is the balance we try to strike in trial practice too because like sometimes something is really important for the jurors to see. And so we're always in this conversation of how do we actually present this information because if something needs to be seen, it has to be seen if it's important to the case. But the deliberate manipulation is generally not allowed. Let's relate this to the Epstein files. What's happening then to our brains when we read this kind of dump of information, this overload of information, including the random redactions? What's happening in our brains? Right. So this is

actually the opposite of how you want to receive this information. When you get it in random fragments when you get it without proper sequencing, without someone explaining it to you, someone mature, someone who can help you contain the information, can help you make sense of it, your mind, your brain is going to spiral. It's going to try to put the information into the narrative arc by itself. And it's going to feel like it's your job to make sense of the story. They are just dropping this information without narrative arc, causing your brain to just do that work yourself so that labor is put on the reader to make sense of like what actually happened what we're seeing online is kind of the mass sharing of some of these screenshots of these

fragments of things that happened and we're horrified but our brain can't actually process the information in this format what are the two predictable outcomes that are happening as we read the dump of information so the one is um you just escape it you know and we see this a lot right like it's overwhelming. I'm just going to live my life. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but just please know that this is what they want. The reasoning, the strategy behind delivering the information in this method is so that you're like, it's too much, I'm tuning out. And then the other thing that can happen is that you just completely lose yourself in the story, in the sense making, in the processing, in the putting all of the fragments together, and then you just find something

else and it just feels like you are going somewhere, but actually you're not. Actually, you're just circling and looping and because we're not actually going to have the full story for at least a couple of years. And what the redactions do to the brain is that it feels like it's your job to get the unredacted version. It's going to drive you actually mad. And again, this is done intentionally and also know this because lawyers do this to each other. The strategy is to overwhelm your opponent with this mass confusing disarray of information so that you just sit at your desk for days and weeks and months, scrolling, making sense of the story and losing your goddamn mind so that you give up on the case. And when the lawyer gives up, then the case is over.

So in both ways, you collapse and you leave the fight in the way that we really need to be able to sustain this and have the stamina to push back and fight back in a very productive way. So how do we do that? how do we counter this deliberate strategy? How do we consume the Epstein files healthfully or absorb what is most important, or at least understand the narrative and the strategy? What I don't want you to do is exactly what I explained, which is to leave the conversation because we need all of us to really understand the issues.

We do need to know what's going on, but we do it in a way that our brain can actually receive the information. So understanding that when you're scrolling on your phone and you see random fragments and then you see all the activation around that, that only helps them because it keeps you in a loop of activation where you're just scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. And actually we need you off your phone. We actually need you volunteering.

We actually need you making money so you can donate. But that doesn't mean you don't consume the information. It just means that you unfollow or you mute everyone who delivers fragments of trauma and then is in an activated state. And just also like tracking those who are sequencing and synthesizing. So there's some really excellent folks who are doing the labor of consuming the information to give you the synthesis, to give you kind of the overview.

And I think that is also a good way to consume the information. But the way that we're consuming media right now with receiving all of these uncontained, unprocessed fragments of trauma is really unhealthy for us. And it's unhealthy to the cause. Like our nervous systems are not built for it. You can absolutely be an activated. activists without consuming unprocessed violence every day. This is a long game.

We only have seen a part of it. It's going to take years and years and years for the full story to develop on all of these different levels. The only lawyers who win cases are those who have endurance because in the end of the day, when your opponent tries to overwhelm you, you have to be able to stay centered amidst all of that. There is so much to this story and as Daphne just explained, it's important to compartmentalise in order to understand. So, Matilda, you're taking on that fun task for us today.

Yep, buckle in. Helena, I am going to ask you to give like a one-line summary at the end of each segment, partly to break up my voice and also just to check that you're listening. Yes, Mrs. Mallison. I have been reporting on the Epstein files over the past few weeks and it has been. left me with a sour taste about the world we live in. They have painted the world order in a nasty tint, an order in which any nation's democracy is partial at best, in which decisions that negatively affect millions of people are made by unelected men via undue processes motivated

by egoistic financial and sexual impulses rather than international law. The first story from the Epstein Files that I want to tell you today is about a global, military-industrial complex in which human life has a lower currency than money. Epstein counted major arm traders among his early mentors, Douglas Lees, an aristocratic British arms dealer, Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi Goliath in the trade. An investigative journalist at Dropsite News showed me how the files actually connect Epstein to the Iran-Contra affair. Now, this was a huge scandal in the 1980s when U.S. President Ronald Reagan and the CIA illegally sold arms to Iran, during its war with Iraq, and they did so using Israel as an intermediary.

Now, Epstein reportedly helped the American billionaire, Les Wexner, repurpose airplanes that have been used to move these illegal weapons in order to transport clothing for his fashion empire, which included Victoria's Secret. Oh, my God. I knew we should fuck Victoria's Secret. Peter Thiel is another relevant name in this story. That is one I know. Yeah.

He's mentioned in the Epstein files over 2,200 times. He was a South African student sympathizer of apartheid, now inside Trump's inner circle, and one of the president's biggest financial donors. He founded Palantir. Now, you've probably heard of Palantir in the context of ICE. The immigration and customs enforcement body essentially converted into Trump's personal paramilitary, currently raiding American neighborhoods. Palantir provides ICE with surveillance technology that harvest immigrants addresses, from healthcare data. Now, in Peter Thiel and Geoffrey Epstein's extensive correspondent,

the pair refer casually to crises, war and foreign currency devaluation as exciting business opportunities. Teal was a visitor of Epstein's island as well, where hundreds of women and girls were abused by Epstein and associates. Of course, we're obliged to say that what's revealed in the files is not evidence of wrongdoing by Peter Thiel, and he has not been accused of a crime. Now a man that comes up even more is Ehud Barak, former Prime Minister of Israel.

He's mentioned over 4,000 times, including in the Iran-Contra deal. But listen to this. It's a sign of how Epstein worked, bringing his powerful friends together. In one audio recording in the files, Epstein advises Ehud Barak on working with Peter Thiel's Palantir. Epstein appears to have later been offered a 50% discount on Palantir shares by a hedge fund manager but who knows if that's connected. Today, though, Israel is one of Palantir's most lucrative clients. It uses Palantir technology in its surveillance of Palestinians and genocide in Gaza. Palantir software was also reportedly used in Israel's 2024 pager attack against Hezbollah inside Lebanon,

which killed 42 people and left thousands of mostly civilians with life-altering injuries to the eyes, face and hands. The UN's human rights chief said that that attack violated international law. Helena Samarise. So Epstein's early career climb was mentored by some of the world's biggest arms traders and he spent his professional life linking traders with politicians to help fuel the international surveillance and wartime economies. Very good. But Matilda, was he or wasn't he a spy?

The question on everybody's lips. Yeah, most Western media are busy debating whether he was a Russian spy. Most non-Western global majority media find far more proof he was an Israeli spy. In a nutshell, we can't say for sure that Epstein was a spy, but he was definitely an intelligence asset. Now onto the second mass theme in the Epstein files, which is widespread political and financial corruption. In the UK, we've already seen former US Ambassador Peter Mandelson not just lose his ambassadorship and his lordship, but become subject of a police investigation. This is over suggestions that as UK business secretary, he may have shared government information with Epstein, a financier, amid the fallout of the global financial crisis.

There are also calls for former Prince Andrew to face police investigation due to potential exploitation of his position as a trade envoy. Note that the only criminal investigations into individuals in those files are over white-collar crimes, not sexual violence. Now, due to the criminal investigation, there are some reporting. restrictions. One story I can tell you about Mandelson involves another of Epstein's close associates, UAE billionaire Sultan Ahmed bin Soleim. Suleim was up until last week, CEO of DP World. He was replaced following his exposure in the files. Now, DP World is one of the biggest logistics companies in the world. It's also highly connected to the UAE state. And UK listeners, you may remember them as the company that bought P&O ferries a few years ago and then laid off 800 workers without consultation.

Oh my God, he's the P&O guy. He's the P&O guy. Yeah. Okay. So, Jeffrey Epstein emailed Peter Mandelson back when he was UK business secretary to lobby on behalf of Sultan bin Soleim for a $1.8 billion government-funded port project on the River Thames. DP World did in fact get the contract and they continue to manage the site today. So we don't have details of the full process, but essentially, yeah, government contracts are being

given to friends of friends. Epstein is also very interested in Europe's far right and at least in part for financial reasons. Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's former chief strategist, emailed Epstein about his plot to help Eurosceptic populists win seats in the European Parliamentary elections so that they can, quote, shut down any crypto legislation or anything else we want. Epstein, we now know, invested a lot in cryptocurrency. And the banks come into it too. A New York Times investigation a few months ago revealed how at J.P. Morgan Chase, where Epstein banked, red flags were raised internally about the nature of his cash withdrawals

and transfers. Basically, they showed signs of sex trafficking. But Epstein proved himself so valuable to J.P. Morgan. connecting the bank to the likes of Sultan Ahmed bin Salahim, helping it find its way into the hedge fund business that the institution overrode its own doubts and kept him as a client for years after that. So, Helena, how well were you listening?

Well, I feel a bit sick, so probably very well. Too well. But to summarise a bunch of financier friends may or may not have done a bit of insider trading and were very happy to get rich off lobbying, political interference and dirty banking. Very good. Now, the third takeaway here is the most important.

It's that, despite probably over a thousand women and girls, believed to have been victimized by Epstein, the files, in the form that they've been released by the DOJ, do not criminally indict a single sexual predator. The story is about a world in which women and survivors of sexual violence, particularly, matter very little. Of course, not everyone mentioned in the files committed rape, but some of them definitely did, and many more of them turned a blind eye to it.

And for those who stand to gain from Epstein's network of wealthy, powerful, and conveniently amoral friends, his 2008 conviction for soliciting sex from a minor, aka child prostitution, aka surely rape, that was no deterrence. On the contrary, many of them rallied around him to provide reputational whitewashing advice for the child sex offender. Sir Richard Branson, the British businessman and co-founder of Virgin, gave Epstein PR advice on his 2008 conviction, recommending he get Bill Gates, another associate of Epstein's, to vouch for him and going with the line, as a single man, you seem to have a penchant for women, but there's nothing wrong with that. Oh, God. Now, as his 2019 sex trafficking charges

came to light, Epstein also sought PR advice from the renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky. This broke my heart. Chomsky lamented the horrible way Epstein was being treated and the, quote, hysteria that has developed around abuse of women. Now look, if you want to read these individuals and their families' PR defences for them, you can just Google them. I'm not going to go into all the right of replies because survivors have not been given right of reply. But look, if you were mystified how Epstein managed to keep so many high-profile people so close to him, even after his conviction made him a reputational liability. If you read the Epstein files, it makes it very clear that his main currency to people lay in his exceptional talent to broker introductions and money. Would

Peter Thiel like to have dinner with Noam Chomsky? Would Steve Bannon like to meet the Chancellor of Austria, Sebastian Kurtz? The thing is, he also brokered women and girls, and his clients overlapped? Would Anil Ambani like to meet a tall Swedish blonde? Would Steve Tisch like to meet a woman whose name will leave out, but whom Epstein describes as a Tahitian speaks mostly French, exotic? You don't need a complex summary here. It's a tired old tale we know all too well, not monsters and maniacs, just men and misogyny. I agree the main story is misogyny, but I feel like it's largely been co-opted by politics, and the core issue, the mass abuse of women and girls, has been an afterthought and has been dismissed. Like last week, when British politicians and papers

got their knickers all twisted about Kirstama appointing Peter Mandelson and every opposition MP made it their life's purpose to have him step down as Labour leader, but not a single one of them steered the conversation towards introducing policies that would actually tackle sexual violence and trafficking and misogyny. You're so right. I felt the same way. And do you know what? Some praises needed here for the financial times because the FT was the only paper to criticise Mandelson's appointment at the time on the grounds of his friendship with a convicted child sex offender. Now they pushed hard, they pushed Stama. No one joined them in their efforts. Every other paper or politician who

expressed opposition at the time did so on the grounds of Mandelson's business links to China, if at all. So there's a whole lot of hypocrisy in the moral outrage that dominated last week's front pages and prime minister's questions. The fact that none of them raised these issues at the time when Epstein's conviction was widely known. Sadly, it suggests their priority is not the women and girls violated so much as how those women and girls can be used as their political pawns. Whatever my feelings about Kirsteuma, I will not be getting behind such a farcical display. Okay, so to sum up your overall takeaways, we have one, a global military-industrial complex, two, a shadowy, undemocratic political elite willing to sell their souls to the devil for money, and three, the abject discardment of victims of sexual violence. What a wonderful world. I'm sorry. And look, the final very active political scandal at the heart of this story points to,

the country of origin, the USA. It's a question of potential corruption in the US judiciary and the government of Donald Trump. I was wondering why Trump's name hadn't come up yet. Oh, it comes up. If you search Trump in the Epstein Library, you get 5,176 results. That's more than 38,000 mentions of his name. Yet none of them prove criminal wrongdoing by the president, who once called the child. molester a terrific guy, but claims he ended his friendship with Epstein before he was ever convicted.

Epstein, on the other hand, claims that he ended their friendship when he realized Trump was a crook. It's worth noting that Trump is the president who promised to rid America of exactly the sort of self-serving global elite that Epstein represented. In his 2016 speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination, Trump said, nobody knows the system better. than me, which is why I alone can fix it. And this is why the release of the Epstein files divided Trump's MAGA fan base like never before. It split them between the Trump loyalists and the sort of Trumpian conspiracy theorists who don't believe Epstein killed himself in prison and who've been campaigning for the files to be released for years. Trump's increasingly autocratic

administration is now in an ongoing war with the political majority in America about giving the people what they want, giving them the Epstein Files. After Trump did everything he can to bury them, in July, a Democratic representative and a Republican representative introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act with the help of MAGA ex-loyalists like Marjorie Taylor Green and Nancy Mace. They defied Trump and used a discharge petition to force the bill to the House floor where it passed overwhelmingly. Analysts look at what's published now and they say it barely scrapes the surface of what the DOJ actually has. And the main reason is that what we're seeing now has been reviewed and heavily redacted by lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice led by Attorney General Pam Bondi.

To give you a sense of Pam Bondi's judicial independence, here's a clip from her congressional hearing last week. Donald Trump attended various parties with Jeffrey Epstein. I want to know whether any underage girls at that party or at any party that Trump attended with Jeffrey. Epstein. This is so ridiculous and that they are trying to deflect from all the great things Donald Trump has done. There is no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime. Everyone knows that. This has been the most transparent presidency. He's the one that I'm going to claim my time. I got your answer. You said there's no evidence.

Mr. Chairman, please stop the clock. I'm going to put up another document from a witness who called the FBI's National Threat Operation Center because I believe you just lied under oath. There is ample evidence in the Epstein file. Don't you ever accuse me of a crime? I believe you just lie under oath, and this is all on videotape. Now, the deputy attorney general is Todd Blanche, and he was previously one of Trump's personal lawyers.

So you can add to your list this question of judicial corruption in Trump's America. Wow. Okay. If you had to pick just one thing for us to take away from the Epstein files, what would it be? Helena, there is no greater scandal in the Epstein affair than the abuse of over a thousand women and girls for which not a single man is in prison. Agree. Which is why for next week's deep dive, we'll have Epstein survivors in the Media Storm studio with us

to take apart the media coverage. For now, let's take a break. Welcome back to Media Storm's News Watch. So, there were lots of salacious and sensational headlines about the Reform Party and its MPs recently. You might have heard about recent reform convert, Nadine Zahawi, crossing the road because he saw a tired man. Yesterday, I walked from my home in one of the most upmarket, you can call it, areas of London, and an individual walk past me. Was this individual, did he appear to be drunk? Did he appear to be aggressive? He just looked at, you know, like, you know, he hadn't.

slept for, you know, a week. Or you might have heard about Nigel Farage patronising a female Financial Times reporter. Just write some silly story tomorrow and have fun with it. Or you might have read headlines about divorce rates, birth rates, tax rates, and the root of all evil, according to reform, child-free women.

That's you and me. Nigel Farage is given a big speech this morning. He's expected to promise his party would overhaul the tax system to incentivise people to get married and tackle the falling birth rate. I want to link these headlines together because there is something much darker, deeper and scarier going on here. What are we missing behind the sensational headlines about reform? First up, in one of the many press conferences and rallies that reform are calling to generate

thousands of headlines, Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform Party, called for an end to working from home. He dismissed dozens of studies that show hybrid working is actually more productive for businesses and instead claimed it's nonsense that people are more productive when working from home. He said, an attitudinal change to hard work rather than work-life balance is what was needed. Now, much of the response to this was, A, outrage at his comments, which is fair, and B, pointing out the hypocrisy of his stance. For example, that he's the MP for Clackson and he literally is never in Clacton. Not sure if that's because he's not working at all or working from home. But anyway, that's also a fair criticism. But what's deeper than this? Who will not

working from home harm the most? Working parents and perhaps even more specifically, working mothers. This takes us onto Farage's past comments about maternity leave. In 2010, Farage criticized the European Parliament for voting to increase maternity pay, calling it foolish. In 24, 14, Farage stated that women in certain professions, such as the city, are worth far less to her employer when she comes back after taking maternity leave. In 2015, he argued, it's a fact of life that women who take time off for children will find themselves behind in their career. Just get over it. Just get over it. Yet in 2025, Reform UK has been campaigning for what they are dubbing pro-family policies to boost. the birth rate.

Make it make sense. Stay with me. This brings me on to what really made headlines and caused outrage last week, the reformed candidate for Gorton and Denton in Greater Manchester, Matt Goodwin, saying that young girls and women need to be given a biological reality check. That sounds incredibly creepy. You're not wrong. In a clip posted to his personal YouTube channel in November 24,

Matt Goodwin stated that many women in Britain are having children much too late in life and they would prefer to have children much earlier on. Oh, thanks for telling us what we would prefer. Matt? I know. How would I ever know what I wanted if it wasn't for Matt Goodwin? He also suggested, in an unearthed blog post, that people who don't have children should be taxed, extra as punishment. While he did say people and not women, were this to happen, it would of course disproportionately affect

women, putting pressure on them to become pregnant to protect both themselves and their partners from the tax. Reform candidate Matt Goodwin also went on to say in this blog post that the British family is imploding and essentially blamed childless women for the current state of society. What in The Handmaid's Tale is going on? You think it can't get worse, but then you see that reform candidate Matt Goodwin also appeared on right-wing commentator Jordan Peterson's podcast and agreed with Peterson's claim that universities have become hotbeds of politically correct authoritarianism because they are full of childless women. Peterson said that there were three predictors of politically correct authoritarianism,

of which the first was being female, at which point Goodwin interjected and added, I was going to say that. So I love how universities are like just full of childless women. Presumably, where there are childless women, there are childless women. there are childless men. If there's childless women under 30, there's childless men under 30. But I suppose that is not the problem. No, that's not the problem for the state of society, Matilda. Oh, just side note, because I just want to make you more angry. Matt Goodwin is also a G.B. News presenter. I'm more shocked that he's a politician because I know him

from GB News because of previous Media Storm News watches where he has said absolutely insane things. But of course, now he's running to join our parliamentary system as well, which is just wonderful news. Yep. Now listen, this tax on childless people is not an official reform policy, but it is a sign that we need to stay vigilant. Because when questioned on his blog post and YouTube video, Goodwin simply appeared to double down by cloaking his Gilead-like views in the language of family. He said it was time for a grown-up, mature debate about,

how we can encourage people to have more children and support British families. So this is an attack on women from two sides of the same coin, that we should be prioritising being mothers and that if we are childless, whether that be by choice or not, that we are worthless. And that education is somehow pushing us away from family values and we should therefore be taught that our bodies need to be impregnated, preferably when we're nice and ripe and young. Oh God, please don't know so nice and ripe again. Sorry, I'm just trying to demonstrate how gross this all is. This is all reminding me about a previous episode of Media Storm we did.

It was actually about capitalism and who owns the news. Louisa Munch, who is a critical theory professor, spoke on that episode about why education is so important and who gate keeps education. I'm so glad you mentioned that because I have this clip all lined up. As Louisa said, education is freedom and here's why. I work in Warwick and I teach, you know, I'm an academic, I guess. And I go home to Rochdale and nobody in my family has a university degree.

My nana, she votes for, well, she voted for reform last time. And I can't move between these two worlds without having a language in which to communicate. I drive three hours to and from work. That distance feels like a different universe, two different worlds. And I think that's one of the biggest problems that we have in the UK. It's not just a wealth divide. It's an educational divide. And education is freedom.

Education is power always. You know, being able to understand is your ability to liberate yourself from an oppressive system. If you can't name the oppression, you're never going to overcome it. And funnily enough, like, I come from a town that has the lowest social mobility in the country. outside, like, there's a million flags, you know, there's St George's flags up everywhere on roundabouts. That is manufactured ignorance. It's completely manufactured by the state. The university degrees are so expensive now.

It's seen as a personal investment when it absolutely is not. It's a public good. It's a civic good. And it should be treated as such. And when you ensure that it's exclusive and it's got exclusionary, that's an oppressive system. That was the amazing Louisa Munch, her at Louisa Munch theory. I also find it so frustrating how we're all screaming like,

please can we educate boys? Please can we have funding for groups to go into schools and talk about misogyny and relationships and consent and kindness and the powers that be are like, no, that's too woke. Let's instead teach girls about their ripe and fertile wombs. Stop saying ripe.

Please. Okay, so we know that reform is pushing a narrative of British families, family values, women having children early, no good maternity leave and no flexible working, yet somehow still saying that they're making it easier for people to have children. Farage has also said that under reform there would be less divorce, that there should be a transferable tax allowance for married couples and that they're making marriage more important

because children from stable married backgrounds have a better chance in life. I mean, Nigel Farage has been divorced twice, but who's counting, eh? Oh my God, no, that hypocrisy is so relevant. That hypocrisy is so relevant. That's just autocratic. The rules do not apply to those who make them. Yes, but we need to go further than just pointing out this rank hypocrisy. Because honestly, Farage and the far right know they're being hypocritical.

They just don't really care. They don't deal in details. They don't get support by details. They get support by broad sweeping statements and sensationalism. headlines. What we are missing is that reform is essentially calling for state intervention to influence your life choices into having family values. It's a technique that's been used before by none other than drum roll please do do do do do do do the Nazis. If someone started playing this episode from that point that would sound really bad. Okay yeah if someone just heard drumroll

the Nazis oh god. Hopefully our listeners know about the important. of context having lessened to Media Storm for many years. Don't decontextualise us. But wrapping up authoritarian and controlling policies about female bodily autonomy into a cozy, cute little package about family values is something that has long been done by the far right. The Nazis had a policy called, and Matilda, maybe we need your German husband to pronounce this for us.

No, I want to hear you pronounce it, and then I'm going to pronounce it the way that I've been trained to pronounce Okay, that sounds good. They had a policy called Kinder Kutja Kircher or the 3Ks, go figure. It was not terrible. Kinder, Kutche, Kirche. Ooh, I'm Matilda. I speak German now.

Yeah, you know there are bigger flexes. German's not the sexiest language, especially when you're reading out Nazi slogans. Yeah, that's true. Let's get back to the media storm. So the 3Ks. It translates to Children Kitchen Church. and it was used under the Nazi Empire to describe a women's role in society. It confined women to their supposed biological roles.

The Nazis urged returning to the family values of the past when women were encouraged to stay at home and concern themselves with taking care of the household, not with education or careers. Sound familiar? This is not about family values. This is about control. Control of women, control of women's bodies,

control of women in relationships, so it's harder to get out of your marriage if you need to, control of the future generations, control of your money. Also, don't think for a second that family values aren't concerned with racism, with anti-LGBQ bigotry. There's a reason that reform talks about British family values. And in the US right now, which is arguably further along on its fascism journey, the Supreme Court is actively trying to roll back same-sex. marriage. Totally. There are layers upon layers here. But you might be asking, why control women?

Why do fascists need women to stay at home and stay uneducated? Why do Nazis need to disenfranchise women? I saw this incredible explanation by Jess Brittvich. She's a former social worker turned content creator and she often discusses the intersection of internet culture and politics. Here she speaks about how the Nazis used lifestyle content, for example slogans like children kitchen church and a magazine called Fraunvater to recruit women and keep them in their place. The most influential political content doesn't look political at all, especially when it's targeting women. And you can look to history for examples of this, like this Nazi woman's magazine that basically function as the for you page of its time. It was called

faux invalter. The magazine came out biweekly and it was filled with things like sewing patterns, homemaking tips, bare-faced makeup, clean girl aesthetic anyone. But alongside, Besides all of that, it also ran defenses of anti-intellectualism, accounts of how the Nazi regime supposedly benefited women, and even pieces on things like bridal schools. Because even though women had no formal power in the Nazi regime, they were still essential in upholding ideology through their rules as housewives and mothers. On the surface, so went about it. Didn't look political at all. And that's exactly the point, and that's why I talk about it constantly.

These alt-rate pipelines get women to co-sign their own disenfranchisement by paring oppressing ideology with aesthetic lifestyle content because authoritarian regimes have always believed that if you can control the home you can control the nation and they depend on women to implement that ideology on the family level and you can see the strategy taking place through our very own algorithms tradwife content divine femininity dating advice evie magazine turning point USA's young women's leadership summit these things all function as the so invited of our time and this is why media literacy in women's spaces is so important because when oppressive ideologies is smuggled in through beauty trends and domestic aspiration, it becomes harder to see and easier to internalize. That was Jespritvich. That was so good. Follow her at Jesperitvich online. I just have. I want to end my news watch with some cold, hard evidence that this is actually happening now. Reform will and already are rolling back your rights. Farage had never really said anything about abortion in the passed. When Farage was head of the Brexit Party, it had no stance on abortion. Then last year, he seemingly suddenly started talking about how he thinks Britain's abortion limit of 24 weeks

was ludicrous and should be pushed back. In talking about this subject, he peddled some of the worst myths about abortion and brought them right to our front pages. But beyond that misinformation he spewed, is something more sinister. On the surface, I suppose it didn't seem that fishy, Gammon Man starts talking about rolling back women's rights, what's new. But around the time he seemed to take an interest in abortion laws. It was reported by the New York Times that Farage was cozying up to the ADF. The ADF stands for the Alliance Defending Freedom, if that freedom is like the 1950s.

The ADF is an American conservative Christian lobby group that, surprise, surprise, played a central role in the US anti-abortion movement and helped overturn Roe v. Wade. Roe v. Wade was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to abortion. In fact, this group, the ADF, is basically credited for overturning Roe v. Its allies include J.D. Vance and other hardline right-wing American politicians. It has close ties with the Trump administration.

And the group has openly said that its goal is to see abortion rights curtailed in Britain. And they've decided. that Nigel Farage is the man for the job. Exactly. Do you remember last year when Nigel Farage testified to the US Congress during a hearing about censorship? He missed Prime Minister's questions to basically go and be Trump's little lapdog in the US. Well, the ADF helped arrange that visit.

They even quote Farage in many of their statements, and it's been reported they helped set up meetings between Farage and the US State Department. The ADF also operate as a registered charity in the U.S. charity in the UK and have already spent millions here funding anti-abortion campaigns in court, lobbying MPs, giving legal support to people who've been prosecuted for protesting outside abortion clinics, breaching the UK's buffer zones and publishing communications aimed at shaping public discourse on abortion. So this could be an explanation as to why we've

seen an influx of negative news stories about abortion in the media. Yes, stories like this from G.B. News, five-year-olds taught that abortion is a superpower in new children's book, classic clickbait title, or an influx of stories last summer about abortion rates reaching record highs, but not necessarily delving into why that might be. Cost of living, access to contraception, expensive childcare, the list goes on. And I guess I want to say that this all isn't a coincidence. And I want to remind people that when they see abortion stories playing out in our media, to really put those media storm glasses on and ask yourself,

does this sound like someone is pushing a narrative? And could that be for Raj's new best mate, the ADF? Yes, and this is where we have to be especially wary if it's all wrapped up in the cozy language of family values. Exactly. I wish someone in the mainstream media would connect the dots that removing the bodily autonomy of women is not only a political statement, but also a political strategy.

Before I just go mad, can you tell us if there's anything that we can do right now? Yeah, there's always solutions. I'll take you back one more time to GB News presenter and creepy obsessive of women's wombs, Matt Goodwin. Yay, Matt. He's running to be the MP of Gorton and Denton in Greater Manchester, where there is a by-election on February 26th, less than 10 days to go. Reform is pitching this by-election as a referendum on Kirstama, telling those who are unhappy with the Prime Minister that this is their chance to make that point and potentially force him out.

It's currently a Labour constituency. I suppose this is the time to not fall for that messaging. So what can we do? Obviously talk to people, talk to your friends and families, make sure they're registered to vote. And if you know anyone in the Greater Manchester area, ask them, are they aware of this by-election? We definitely need to do a big media storm special before the May local elections. On it. Thank you for listening.

We'll be back next week when we speak to the most important voices when it comes to the Epstein files, the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse. If you want to support MediaStorm, you can do so on Patreon for less than a cup of coffee a month. The link is in the show notes and a special shout-out to everyone in our Patreon community already. We appreciate you so much. And if you enjoyed this episode, please send it to someone. of mouth is still the best way to grow a podcast, so please do tell your friends and obviously leave us a five-star rating and a review. You can follow us on social media at Matilda Mal at

Helena Wadia and follow the show via at MediaStorm Pod. MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helena Wadia and Matilda Mallinson. The music is by Samfire.