MTracey podcast - "Today's News," April 6, 2026: Has Trump finally gone crazy?

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

An unpleasant, but unpleasantly necessary, discussion. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mtracey.net/subscribe

did. All right, we are on. We are live. Welcome to today's news, not the pedophile report, not private petal party. I'm Matt Saevy. That's right. It's a public peto party. And I'm Michael Tracy. And we were laughing a little bit off air. We were going to get to a difficult topic today. I think this is a hard question. There was a lot of incredible video over this weekend from our our president. Our favorite president. Our favorite president. I mean, well, we'll get into that too. So there are really two questions. There's a serious question which we'll get to later. We'll start with this premise.

Has Trump crossed the line into no longer being funny in any way? And I think we should start with SOT one. And this, folks, I don't watch a lot of political media over the weekends. I have a family. I try to stay in a positive mind frame when I don't absolutely have to work. How dare you? But I saw this. This was today.

Okay, right. I guess it was today. Well, I saw this right after. So I watched Hop last night. Do you ever see that movie? Hop. Yeah. It's like a kid's movie where Russell Brand is the son of the Easter. Why would I have seen that movie? What are you trying to say? It's good. It's actually a good.

What do you make me out to be? So, but there, the bunny in that movie is very much like this bunny. And, and, uh, so my mind was, was not. Imagine me just solo as a, as like a male in my 30s sitting down to watch hop. It's a, all right. I mean, I mean, maybe it's good. It's got Hugh Lurie in it. He plays the Easter Bunny. There's a lot of good voice acting.

All right. Let's just roll tape. We'll get to all the discussion later. And what about the rescue that took place yesterday? What about that? That's something that you rarely see. You know, they were giving me a briefing about that. Many people are saying that it's Rubio in the bunny suit.

I don't think it gets much more hostile that. They're capable fighters. They're very tough people. And there are others like that. And that's where Ruby would be standing, right? He would be. Not so strong like they were about a month ago. I can tell you, in fact, right now they're not too strong.

They're going to find out, aren't we? Our warriors are the greatest fighters. Can we pause for a second? They very much appreciate. What is the person in the suit thinking? I want to know who it is. Can we? Yeah.

I want I want we we got to find out who this is that known who is in it could be Marco it could be it could he's always by his side uh yes he is and and the height's about right right um but uh yeah I don't know I don't know this one it's a tough one um because you know have you ever met anybody who's done like the kabuki job I don't think so you know should. I should seek them out for life. I met a guy at a minor league baseball game who was the Batavia Muckdog, I think was the name of that mascot. It's a tough job. It's hot in there. I mean, the Philadelphia Philly always gets his ass kicked. Yeah, yeah, he does.

And you ever heard of the green blob guy? You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, the fanatic. Oh, yeah, fanatic. That's right. I've got it. I always think his name is the Philly. because the team's name is the Phillie, but no, I mean the fanatic. Yeah. He always gets, you know, beat up pretty much. So, Mr. Met, I think, has been beat up. Yeah, there was a, there was a mascot who was created to be abused named Crazy Crab. And people used to put firecrackers in its mouth and stuff like that.

For what team? The San Francisco Giants. It's a long and very funny story. But anyway, what can the person possibly be thinking in this moment? Like, let's just keep watching. Maybe he's got like loud, like, metallic music playing in the masks. He's drowning it out. Yeah.

You and love you and that's why they do it. So this is all about today. I must tell you. I mean, so of the stuff that Trump has blurted out over the past couple days, this would not be a foremost example of him exhibiting sign. of potentially being crazy or descending into psychosis, but it's just that the the tableau of that footage is just so transfixing. The bunny is just, you can't take your eyes off that fucking bunny the whole time.

And it's just such a, it's such a mystery what's going through that. And pull up the truth social post from yesterday, because that sort of sets the whole. Yeah, can you read this out loud for us? We go. Today will be power plant day and bridge day, all wrapped up in one. Sorry, Tuesday, I misspoke. Maybe I'm going crazy. Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day, all wrapped up in one in Iran.

There will be nothing like it. Open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Just watch. Praise be to Allah, President Donald Jane Trump. That's actually the second time, by coincidence, that I read that aloud today. Did you really? I did. My dad hadn't heard it yet.

Oh, okay. All right. Because it's just so, I'm struggling even to come up with the right adjective for it because the open the fucking straight combined with praise be to Allah, it defies anything that we can really conceive of as a presidential statement, such that I'm just sort of like babbling to even come up with a good way of capturing my feelings about it. And bear in mind, okay, so that was 8 a.m. yesterday on the holiest day in the Christian calendar, right?

Where if Trump really was such a, quote, fan of God as he often claims to be, remember he once said that the Bible was his favorite book apart from the art of the deal. And then he was asked, okay, so what is your favorite book of the Bible? What is your favorite book of the Bible? And he says, Two Corinthians? Remember that? That was from, that was from, like, 2015.

Is he referring to the whole, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels? He's misstating. Well, no, he, right, but he thinks two Corinthians is a book. I don't think he knows any. I think he just came up, whatever, just burble to the top of his brain in terms of an example of a Bible book.

But, um, yeah, but see, But anyway, so it's like where everybody's like everybody's rising to get, they're probably getting prepared for church at 8 a.m. They're having a light breakfast and washing up. And what do they get?

Blasted into their devices. Not just, not just a declaration of comically outlandishly aggressive warfare with an ultimatum attached to it for two days later, but also praise be to Allah. Praise be to all. Now, it can be a little trite to say, what if Barack Obama had done this? But seriously, what if President Barack Hussein Obama had said, praise be to Allah, in any context, on Easter morning? Well, but this is different, though. Of course, it's different.

I'm just saying, just like, contemplate that just as almost just a laugh. I'm not, you know, I'm not making like a moral judgment necessarily by invoking that comparison. It's just sort of funny to contemplate. Had Obama done that just in any context and like, people would have just gone insane. What frame of mind do you have to be in to think, all right, this is what the world wants to hear right at this moment? Just to get up in the morning and full on, first of all, has any president ever done anything remotely as belligerent as open the fucking straight? or you'll be living in hell. Like, is any president never F-bombed a foreigner?

No, I mean, maybe the closest comes, the closest is that famous episode where, as a joke, Reagan said, he was on the phone with somebody and he said, the missiles are incoming to the Soviet Union or something. I can't read the exact quote. Right, right, yes, yes. But he didn't even know, he thought that was private, right?

And it was just a, it was an obvious joke. this is like you don't even know it's hard to even tell what connotation anybody should take from this stuff anymore like it's not as though it can be just interpreted as a pure joke because it actually does correlate with the military activity going on and it's all in concert with

these purported negotiations that are supposedly underway that could just be totally fictitious where we're supposed to believe that negotiations are always quote going well as though any state actor in the world would respond well to a negotiating entreaty that included you crazy bastards, you'll be living in hell and so forth?

Like imagine if Americans were told by some seemingly crazed foreign head of state, hey, you better negotiate with us and surrender, because that's basically the terms that they're demanding. You crazy bastards are we're going to blow you to the hell or bomb you to the Stone Age, etc. You think the average American would take kindly to that? Probably not. Yeah, I can't think of another.

I mean, I guess when we were fighting the Germans at Bastogne, and they sent us a message, and who was the general who replied nuts in response to Bestone? Is that World War I? Two. This is the Battle of the Bulge. A battle of the bulge, okay.

Would it be Carth? no it wasn't it wasn't somebody famous it was uh anthony mcculliff um i would have flunk that jeopardy question yeah and it's i'm not i'm not even sure that that might even be a little bit apocryphal but uh but certainly no president that wouldn't be the president right i mean that's not fDR spoken like almost literary type pompous language yeah exactly the reagan thing is close though it comes But we're basically living that now 24-7, like that Reagan moment when he was saying the missiles were on the way, whatever the fuck, whatever it was.

That was crazy. You mean, nothing like that ever would have come out of George W. Bush's mouth. And again, I'm not saying George W. Bush was great or I wish I could go back to 2003. I'm just noting as a contrast. Like, he didn't have that same sort of just like doesn't have any, has no F-Lifted left to give whatever, say anything, do anything. Like on the eve of the Iraq war, he pretty much said Saddam Hussein had, and his sons, like his ultimatum was Saddam Hussein and his sons have 48 hours to leave

the country or military operations will commence. That was his morning. That was his equivalent of a truth social post. It wasn't like, it wasn't just like this, you know, brash, you know, hardcore language. No. no um all right let let let's yeah i mean what is the like i don't you tell me i mean what did you think when you first saw that like what did you what did you speculate about the mental state of the commander in chief that would author that oh okay this is what i wanted to get into because i was

once assigned the question of whether or not donald trump should be was crazy and or needed to be removed under the 25th Amendment. Remember there was a whole movement. There was a group of mental health professionals who were diagnosing him from afar. And I got assigned by Rolling Stone to write that story. And by my, you know, judging from the interviews that I did, the standard for fitness under the 25th Amendment is extremely high. Like the person has to be basically incapacitated basically. Yeah, like not able to do the job. And there was constant pushback.

And if you tried to say, well, he's not like, would you vote to say that he's not responsible criminally for a crime at that time? Nobody would have said that, right? No. There's a political talking point to try to underscore how unstable Trump was allegedly, which Trump then cleverly appropriated later on and declared himself a very stable genius. Right. And you can you could say Trump is disordered, right?

And with the 25th Amendment thing, actually almost came to a head during the first term, if you recall, when there was a preliminary movement, I think that Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who then took over basically for Jeff Sessions to preside over the Mueller investigation. Right. When, you know, I forget what exactly precipitated it now, but I remember I wrote a column on it at the time

for the New York Daily News. But Andrew McCabe, when he got fired and he wrote a book, he laid out in detail these behind-the-scenes machinations to potentially, amongst cabinet officials and the FBI to potentially invoke the 25th Amendment in the first term. And I remember being very skeptical because this was something that was basically whipped up by a security state cabal. And it was probably all tied in with their preexisting aversion to Trump on like an ideological level or resenting what he represented culturally and politically and not so much. much about their pretensions that they were actually alarmed about his mental incapacity. Yeah.

So that was my attitude then. I think we have to revise that somewhat. I'm not going to run out and start demanding. Yeah, no. I'm not going to be stuck in the same. I'm up. There's more data coming in. I think we have to update our priors and not just be sort of stuck in a,

a first term sort of reflex. Yeah, so I feel much the same way that I felt in 2019 when I first went out to see Biden on the trail, because I had covered him a little bit in 08. And the difference was so striking in terms of, I mean, he wasn't just having trouble speaking, which he always did. you could always see that he was fighting a little bit or trying to discipline himself to get the words out, right? Sometimes he hurries to the end of a sentence or something like that. But in 2019, he was sometimes not sure where he was.

His emotions were all over the place. He would blow up at people for completely inappropriate reasons. And immediately the question raises, like, what happened in this intervening time period? has he changed like what's gone on and i i think trump is uh in the last year has changed a lot yeah i i interviewed biden actually in september of 2019 so during the primaries i went to new hampshire and i had a you know a quick interview with him basically at one of his events and i don't know if you remember this but there was a mini controversy that actually should have been a bigger controversy,

but the media wasn't that interested in it. It had to do with whether he was accurately representing his position on the Iraq war because he started claiming in the 2020 primaries that he opposed the Iraq war before it started. He claimed that he opposed the Iraq war right after a starter. He was doing like this Ludicris revision of his Iraq position when you could go as I did and find him basically endorsing George David Bush's approach as of 2003, mid to late 2003. Obviously, he voted for the war.

He voted to authorize the use of force in October of 2002, but he was trying to concoct this sort of like alternate timeline where he was almost like secretly opposed to it, even though he had voted for it. It's kind of like the John Kerry thing. I voted for the 87 billion, but then I voted against it. Then I voted against it. I forget the exact line now, but it was some just convoluted appeal to like legislative minutia. But when I asked him about this and then he on the fly invented a whole additional layer of his revision to the Iraq history,

where his like the procedural history having to do with his support and voting pattern and started to claim that he came out against the war before it started. So I think prior to that, he had been saying he support, he, uh, opposed the war immediately after it started after first having supported it. Then to me, he said he opposed it before it started. And so to me at the time, there was always a little bit of a conundrum. Because on the one hand, it wouldn't be implausible for even the most lucid politician to try to obfuscate. This is always the problem with Biden. But go ahead.

Yeah, yeah, to try to obfuscate or try to do, you know, work some magic with hindsight to put a better gloss on his policy posture toward the Iraq war, which is obviously extremely unpopular. But at the same time, it would be so garbled and there would be so many indications that he was struggling to even articulate his obfuscation that you had to wonder. Okay. And so, yeah, I wrote about that at the time, too. And another problem was, like, sometimes there will be something. that there was some goofy moment of his right where he seems to be oblivious or he seems to be

spaced out or he seems to have be having a very senile moment that was like kind of misrepresented when it gets filtered through like the partisan framing of like the republican national committee you know social media accounts right but there was enough there there obviously that you had to take it seriously so yeah i do think that the even even if we're having this conversation yeah there we go exactly see there we go yes i did oppose the war before but it began that's what he said to me and then if and if you scroll down i kind of like uh i kind of mentioned this conundrum i think um let's see so while he's looking for that um i just want to say the line is very similar

like with biden there was a moment where instead of worrying whether he was plagiarizing you think that he actually believes it. Right? Like, I think he crossed over into thinking he actually wrote certain things. You know what I mean? That's like a cosmic synchronicity moment because here's what I said. Here's my concluding paragraph.

Scroll down, scroll down. It's unclear whether the Delaware senator, that's an editor who inserted an error. I actually remember that now because like obviously Biden wasn't a sitting Delaware senator in 2019. It's so annoying. Have you ever had editors who like, Mostly what they seem to do is insert errors.

Like, that's their function editorial. I always thought it was our job to take it for the team. So I'm going to stay moment on that question. Anyway, it's unclear whether Biden genuinely believes the tale he is currently telling or if it's the product of his apparent cognitive decline, which has resulted in all manner of statements where he fails to formulate coherent thoughts or recall basic facts. Likely, it's some combination of these factors.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. So, yeah, we're having to be. We're having a similar now discussion about Trump. I think with Trump, he's verbally more coherent than Biden, meaning he doesn't just trail off or he doesn't get painfully tongue tied or he doesn't kind of like lose his train of thought within the span of the same sentence in the same way that Biden did.

Start poking people in the sternum and we're right next to him. But I think with Trump, the cognitive decline, process might be manifesting a bit differently, perhaps in the form of more and more pronounced mega-lomania. Yeah, yeah, grandiosity, delusions of grandeur, self-assuredness, belief in his own like infallibility and world historic prowess. Remember this is, and this is bolstered by the idea that he was spared from the assassin's bullet for some divine reason. Oh, yeah. Like, when he bombed Iran the first time in June of 2020, he posted a letter, a text message that he received from Ralph Reed, who's one of these old Christian conservative

guys. He's still around, right? Meaning moral majority, basically, Jerry Falwell days. He was from that era. And he sent Trump a text message that Trump posted on true social. And it was Ralph Reed thanking Trump for bombing Iran and telling him that he's sure God saved him from that assassin in order so that he could bomb Iran and fulfill his divine. Naturally. All right. Well. So, I mean, again, Trump doesn't seem like the most pious guy in the world, obviously,

but it's not inconceivable that he could be absorbing those notions with all the sycophancy and flattery that he's constantly surrounded by day after. day on year 11 of him being the most dominant political figure in the United States. Yeah, it does sound like that. So let's listen to Satu, and this is the one where you're watching him and you're, you're really wondering if he's losing his shit full, like in a real way. Here we go. They just don't want to say uncle.

They don't want to cry as the expression goes, uncle, but they will. And if they don't, and they'll have no free... We pause for a second. This little... This little... Yeah, press availability is the best because of the music.

There's this goofy... Like, there's a tuba playing at one point. There was a tuba warming up when he's speaking to these little kids and telling them about how Joe Biden used the auto pen. Which is, I mean, it is funny. See, you laugh at just the absurdity of that,

just that sheer situation. between the bunny and the music it's just all anyway go ahead yeah go ahead I won't go further

because there are other things that are worse than those two and we might have well wait wait so when Donald when Trump now exercises

you got to turn the volume up on the clip by the way or or show the one that I sent in from this because we can hardly hear it. The commenters are also saying they can't hear it. All right, maybe we can. The problem is the stream yard does the volume automatically. So from the same little availability, I sent in the clip of, let me see if I can find it, of Trump talking about how he, how the Iranian people really want him to bomb Iran. They love being bombed. yeah and well that's in this one as well oh no that's in this that's in this little that's in this clip uh i'll send it right now yeah but let's just keep listening there's nothing i don't think we can

do about this one for now let's just keep going take the oil because it's there for the take it there's not a thing they can do about it unfortunately the american people would like to see us come home if we're up to me i take the oil i keep the oil i would make plenty of money and it also take care of the people of Iran, much better than they've been taking care of. It's been horrible. The Iranian people, when they don't hear bombs go off, they're upset. They want to hear bombs because they want to be free. When the Iranian people don't hear bombs, they're upset because they want to be free.

I mean, so in another context, he says roughly the same thing. I think you called it the ultimate boomer meme, where he, Yeah, that was from the press conference later. Yeah, play that one. Yeah, so he's basically saying that, why don't we have gays for Iran? They throw those people out buildings there. They throw gays off buildings in Iran, which is this like meme that gets where every Muslim faction gets conflated with ISIS. I know, I know.

Iran fought ISIS. It's an ISIS story from 2015. This gets conflated. with every other conceivable country and situation. It's been a talking point on late night talk shows. And it's not something that's in the past anymore. It's something that is still ongoing, apparently, for a lot of people. Let's listen to Trump's take on this.

How is it taking care of the Iranian people? If you're bombing. Who you with? Who you with? Well, that's a radical left group of lunatics if you're with. Let me just tell you, let me just tell you. Very fair question. The Iranian people, when they don't hear bombs go off, they're upset.

They want to hear bombs because they want to be free. And the only reason they're not now protesting, you know that, is because they were informed that if they protest, like the wrestler and his friends, if they protest, they will be shot immediately. And that's an edict, that's in writing. If they protest, if they go out in the streets, they will be shot immediately. streets, they will be immediately shot. They don't have guns. You know, we sent some guns, but the group that was supposed to give, which I said what happened to my people, I said it,

I called it exactly, we sent guns, a lot of guns. They were supposed to go to the people so they could fight back against these thugs. You know what happened? The people that they sent them to kept them because they said, what a beautiful gun. I think I'll keep it. So I'm very upset with a certain group of people and they're going to pay a big price for that. But The Iranian people will fight back as soon as they know they're not going to be shot, and as soon as they can get weapons. If they had weapons, not many of them, if they had weapons that would go on the other way, and you know what happened?

Iran would give up in two seconds because they wouldn't be able to take it. But in Iran, they have absolutely no weaponry, and they've been told point blank, if you come out, if you come out to the streets, you will be killed. As of this morning, and we have this on pretty good information, 45,000 protesters have been killed. Pretty bad. Okay, first of all, that's I Wish by Stevie Wonder in the background, right?

Was it? I thought it was, it sounded like maybe. It sounded like... It's the same tune for that song. Remember that? It wasn't like a Will Smith song We're going straight to the Wild Wild West? Remember that? Oh, yes. Straight to the Wild Wild West. It was for some movie and like,

maybe the late 90s, I forget now, which one. I think it might have been sampling. Well, I think that might be. It probably was a sample, yeah. But just like the dainty little music in the background makes it so perfect. Yes. I mean, Adam Curtis is going to have a gold mine to put in whatever he comes up with. Wild West, which is, which actually is, I think, I think it's, it's among Will Smith's better songs.

I can't believe I said that that's the most embarrassing thing I've ever said but it does come from my wish it is sampled the horns are sampled from my wish yeah that seems right so okay and then and then

one more is play the victor goes the spoils one oh yeah can we see that that's number 11 saw it 11 we're number 11 but that whole stream of consciousness thing

he's always done that again i'm sort of um of mixed minds about it because it's not as though he pulled a biden really at any point in that little soliloquy and couldn't complete a thought right it's something else right oh yeah go here no no not this one not this one number number oh yeah no yeah this yeah right this is the one go ahead the old days to the victim okay you know that To the winner belong to spoils. Go the spoils. And I've said, why don't we use it? To the victor, go the spoils.

And we don't have that. We haven't had that in this country, probably in 100 years, because even the Second World War, you look at the Second World War. We didn't have it with the Second World War. We helped rebuild all those countries. We rebuild Germany. How about Germany telling us, Germany telling us that, well, it's not their war. We had nothing to do with it.

They wanted me to. to go and tell them everything I was doing. We didn't know anything about it. Well, if I would have told them, they would have leaked it, and we wouldn't have been nearly as successful, possibly, right? But to the victor belonged to spoils. So we haven't heard that in, I think, maybe hundreds of years.

To the victor belongs to spoils. Why don't you get the fuck out of here before I shove your quotations book? Up your fat fucking ass. That was the first thing I thought of. Nice. It's very good. The Victor. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, no, I mean.

So he did screw up a word there in a more Biden-esque fashion, actually, because he couldn't call to mind. Well, he said, the first word of the saying. He first said, to the victim, goes to spoils. Right. Right. Which is probably a Freudian something or other in there. I mean, we all really do, or I know I do. Of course. I do. Yeah. But I always know. I don't want to over extrapolate from it necessarily.

But I don't know. What's your diet? diagnosis doctor. So like, so your, your thought process has now evolved where you'd be more willing to say that we could make some kind of psychological diagnosis. So I don't, whereas you would have been more resistant to that.

10 years ago. I was totally resistant to the whole. So was I. Eight years ago. I thought it was a ploy. Yeah. There were signs that it was coming from. basically NGOs that were loyal to the to the Democrats.

So that I didn't like that. I also didn't like the fact that when I called back some of those same medical professionals or psych professionals to ask about Biden a couple of years later, they said it was unethical for them to comment. So it was also kind of like a phony appeals authority. I'm sorry. I mean, it just seems like scientific gobble-be gook for a. somebody to claim that they can watch TV and have any actually like medically authoritative insights into somebody's psychological state unless there's something just so obviously apparent that like anyone with common sense would perceive it well I think we got there with Biden

right eventually yeah we did eventually get there with Biden and we're I think we're approaching that moment with with Trump this comment from Joe West 69. I'm done with this. Our country is run by lunatics. It's ran by lunatics. All you can do is laugh and just give up caring. I guess that's been my strategy until this moment.

Now I'm worried that I have to start caring. Yeah. Well, I mean, I mean, the clock is ticking. He says tomorrow at 8 p.m. is ultimatum time where he's going to start bombing the whole

country. He's basically saying, this is the bombing to smithereens moment that's on its way in 26 hours so you know in the past he has kept moving the deadline right but this this seems like the real one and yes i mean so the difference here right it's not just some annoying democratic partisans invoking false appeals to authority for some you know, schmuck, psychologists or like writing this contrived open letter, right?

Where they're forecasting something out that's probably based more on their just kind of standard antipathy toward Trump as this right-wing menace or fascist or whatever. We actually have that active military conflagration that's like rep in rapidly escalating

where they can hardly articulate any kind of strategic purpose for it. It was launched in the middle of the night, he, when describing it, again, constantly is contradicting himself within the span of the same sentence or definitely the same paragraph. He seems to relish in kind of just sadistic pleasure at the, just the displays of military force, meaning he and he and Hegseth. They seem to enjoy, like Trump actually said at one point that part of why he ordered a torpedo missile to be fired at an Iranian ship that was engaged in a military exercise off the Sri Lanka was because they found it to be fun or like the military guys seemed like they were having fun doing it. So there's definitely some sadism going on here. And, you know, he's turning 80 in June.

That's kind of like when things can kind of fall off a cliff cognitively for people. That would be like right around the age where if you'd expect there to be a precipitous decline, as with Biden, it probably would start to manifest. So, yeah, I mean, but again, the difficulty is he actually still does make me laugh. There are still these moments of just pure absurdism. that I can't help if I'm morosely funny, but the subject matter this time is cataclysmic.

So how do we navigate that? It's so, so dark that your sense of humor has to be like deeply, deeply, uh, I don't know. You have to have a very,

very apocalyptic graphic sense of humor to, to see this, uh, as funny. But it's still, I mean, it is. Uh,

Trump is still basically the same guy. All right, let's quickly, I want to hear him talking about the leaker. So let's go to Sop 3 because this is something that, look, this issue is a long developing problem. But to hear him talk like this is just so amazing, let's see if we can get this one up. God was watching this day. Well, it was the Easter. we were in the Easter territory, I guess, but God was watching us.

Amazing. But these two extraordinary rescues, because it was two, and as you probably know, we didn't talk about the first one for an hour, then somebody leaked something, which will hopefully find that leaker. We're looking very hard to find that leaker

and talked about there's somebody missing. They basically said that we have one, and there's somebody missing. Well, they didn't know there was somebody missing until this leaker gave the information. So whoever it was, we think we'll be able to find it out because we're going to go to the media company that released it, and we're going to say, national security, give it up or go to jail. And we know who, and you know who we're talking about. Because some things you can't do, because when they did that, all of a sudden, the entire country of Iran knew that there was a,

a pilot that was somewhere on their land that was fighting for his life and it also made it much more difficult for the pilots and for the people going in to search for him. All of a sudden they know that there's somebody out there they see all these planes coming in. It became a much more difficult operation because a leaker leaked

that we have one, we've rescued one, but there's another one out there that we're trying to get. We have to find that leaker because that's a sick person. Probably didn't realize the extent of how bad it was. I can't imagine that the person did. But we're going to find out it's national security. And the person that did the story will go to jail if he doesn't say. And that doesn't last long.

And I think everybody would understand that they put this mission at great risk. They put that man at great risk. All right. All right. They put the hundred. Okay. You want to go? You want to start?

Well, let's just say, I don't know if you recall this, but in the 2016 campaign, he would occasionally. That's funny. He would occasionally make, sort of taunting comments about he wants to revise the libel laws, or he wants to tighten the libel laws so that journalists could be more. easily punished if they report negatively on him, right? And I remember at that time, you had these kind of history on liberal saying, look, this means press freedom is going to be destroyed if this fascist maniac gets in. And I rolled my eyes at it because I thought, what are you realistically suggesting that he could do as president to unilaterally change any libel laws? It's just not

something that's even really conceivable that he would have the ability to do, right? So, again, it seemed more like a political ploy than any sort of dispassionate assessment of what we could expect for a first drop administration. And that was true. Like, he didn't do anything really to that effect. No. But now, you know, the, what's his name from CNN, you know, denying press credentials. That's, you know. Yeah, that was about the worst of it.

And he denied press credentials to the most annoying possible person who was. Right. It was impossible for me to gin up any sympathy for. But now, like, we have, this is Trump 2.0, right? The administration is structured much differently than the first administration, where he would come up against these bureaucratic roadblocks constantly and be thwarted and undermined and connived against and have, you know, quote, whistleblowers leaking things. And like, remember there was just like a deluge of leaks virtually every day where he would have some mostly innocuous phone call with like some, like the prime minister of Australia. earlier or something. Right.

Then they had the Miles Taylor anonymous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or the, what's the name of the guy now that he was, the CIA guy that was the quote unquote whistleblower that was valorized

Oh, Eric. E. Emeryceadellah or something like that. So there's all kinds of stuff like that happening constantly. But now in Trump 2.0, this is an administration that was expressly organized with a lot of advanced thought. with the sole intention of making the executive branch fulsomely and, you know, unswervingly

responsive to Trump. And making it so that he actually could carry out his deepest desires, right? And he thinks he has a much bigger mandate, which he does, you know, in electoral sense, post-2024. Then he did post-2016, where, you know, he didn't win the popular vote. etc. And so, I mean, he has done a bunch of stuff that you would almost see as like Trump Unleashed or Trump after dark or like Trump quat Trump, right? You know, he does this whole thing where he says, I'm just going to impose these random arbitrary tariffs on the entire world all a sudden, right? He actually does. He actually does just like send a huge naval armada to Venezuela to

just our bombing random boatman. And then he uses that as a pretext, like a fake drug interdiction pretext to then abduct the president of Venezuela. Right. And, and on and on. And he's also, you know, I've started pointing this out pretty frequently, you know, within the past 16 months, but he's more and more monomaniically fixated on foreign policy, as presidents often do when they're kind of thinking about their quote unquote legacy.

Like Biden definitely was fixated on a foreign policy. That's day to day what he was overwhelmingly. concentrating on to the extent that he actually could summon the mental powers to concentrate. And so too with Trump, which is a little bit counterintuitive maybe for people because, I mean, it's not like Trump spent a career, you know, pouring over issues, you know, great questions of foreign policy. But that's what he's expending his energies on. And, you know, because remember, he says we're taking Cuba after whenever we're done with this thing.

Right. So, which is all to say, maybe he's just, you know, blowing off steam when he says, that whichever reporter it was who got this leak, you're going to jail if you don't give it up. But I do think the stuff that we might have been more inclined, or I know that I would have been more inclined to write off or just sort of chuckle at and move on in the past, in like an earlier phase of the Trump experience,

now I feel it's kind of imperative to take him more. Seriously, even his words carry a lot more weight this time around because, again, there's no plan for this Iran war except whatever he happens upon within his own adult brain on any given day. Yeah, I mean, it could have been a whim. And so the whole thing, you have to take all of it more seriously now. This whole issue of picking up reporters and jailing them until they give up the source, Barack Obama a little bit started, opened the door for this with a series of

espionage act uh prosecutions but they they targeted the leakers not the the journalists um in one case a journalist was sort of like an unindicted co-conspirator right um you had that case with uh with i think it was james rosen at fox yeah with uh north korea um where they went after uh a leaker in that case and everybody there was there was a small handful of like press freedom types who paid attention to those cases. He said, you know, this is kind of a bad idea. And everybody was terrified that when Trump came into office, he was going to ramp up the same kinds of things.

He didn't in the first term. Well, with the one notable exception of going after Julian Assange. Right, yeah, Assange. Right. Yes. I mean, he did ultimately say yes. And Obama had said no. right like the the justice department didn't want to do it they had prepared that same indictment

and then the Biden DOJ would subsequently approve the the rollback the rollback or the plea not plea oh the whatever arrangement was brokered where he got out of the Belmarsh prison right but they Biden also and then didn't the Biden they they rescinded like they rescinded like something. The Biden DOJ, Merrick Garland's DOJ, issued some kind of directive to clarify that they made a proactive clarification that publishers or journalists would not be subject to criminal prosecution for receiving leaks. Yeah, and also that their stuff couldn't be seized. Right. And then the Trump administration revoked that. revoked it, reinstated it.

And yeah, I guess we should have all paid more attention to that moment. There are a couple of kinds of cases where journalists can get in legitimate trouble. There aren't many. In most cases, you actually are allowed to publish anything that's stolen. But in a few, I think there are a couple of little exceptions. involving maybe signals intelligence and, you know, like an ongoing, like an active military situation. So we'll have to see what goes on with this. But it's just a deeply troubling sign that he just kind of came out with that and that they're already making plans to put it,

to throw the leaker and the reporter in jail. That it's messed up. And he also, he also just seemed. to really enjoy this is the spectacle of warfare at this point. Like he likes bombing stuff, clearly. He likes sort of envisioning the more and more audacious military operations that maybe he could order. Like he toys with the idea of, oh, I could just, I personally, Donald J. Trump could personally control the Strait of Hormuz. He bizarrely ended this press conference today with a total non sequitur saying,

You know what it all came down to? Because he's like complaining about Europe again also. But he actually also added complaints in terms of allies not being loyal and not joining this random, totally crazy, aggressive war. He also complained that Australia, Japan, and South Korea didn't join. So they're in trouble too now, I guess. But then he ended, like the last sentence he uttered at this press conference was, you know what it all came down to?

Greenland, because we need Greenland. so he repeated this whole Greenland gambit so I mean I don't know it just like I mean I again there's lots of ironies bundled up for me because I would often be cautioning as I know you would be in the past like in an earlier phase of the Trump journey to not get overly historical about stuff not because it was like a quote grift it was like liberals in a constant state of panic 24-7 often about stuff that was trivial but this doesn't seem trivial to me this seems like actually as consequential as it can get and if it's overlaid with this person who's seemingly getting more and more like sometimes it's just outright psychotic the truth social

posts yeah where he he's sorry let's just put it up on screen quickly the the the freedom of the press foundation quote keep going but yeah i mean that be some of the truth social post which, of course, you know, you have to bear in mind, sure, it shouldn't be taken hyper-literally in every sense, but if the only information coming out of the US government around the conduct of an active war scenario is what the president himself says, because there's no policymaking process otherwise.

Like, 99.9% of the administration itself is in the dark about what's going on at any given day. So it's not like you can consult the State Department, you know, the, subcommittee for something and like get some sort of update on what is going on with iran everybody just has to wait with dated breath for the next truth social post or the next off-the-cuff wisecrack from trump um so you know the the stakes are very high in terms of his utterances but at the same time by sort of uh paying such close attention to his every utterance

and assigning such significance to it, I'm now doing exactly what I would have cautioned against eight years ago. I know. And I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say. It's just like, I guess you have to just update, you have to just take in new data as time goes on, right?

I guess. I mean, now it's going to seem like all those people who were freaking out about every little thing. And I didn't even think they were sincere most of the time. a lot of those sort of TDS panics of the first Trump administration. Yeah, they're going to claim they're vindicated and like, you know, people of our disposition were resoundingly proven wrong or something. Right.

So here's the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Journalists don't work for the government. Their right to publish government leaks is protected by the First Amendment, which despite Trump's efforts remains the law of the land and does not disappear whenever the words national security are uttered. To the extent that the government is allowed to withhold information is up to the government to keep its secrets, not journalists. That is true.

However, the de facto reality of this is that they've shown an ability to effectively override the legal protections of the First Amendment, most notably in the Assange case where they can argue or, you know, they can argue or, charge people with things like the espionage act where you're you're basically guilty under the espionage act right if you know they can charge you for a conspiracy to try to obtain

national defense information which can mean just about anything right so it doesn't even like not people people often conflate national defense information with the formal classification regimen which it's actually doesn't even correlate with right

technically or legally it's just anything that the government by its own discretion deems is in the quote interest of national security to remain concealed like it doesn't even have to appear under some particular classification you know schedule national defense information is just whatever they say it is yeah to just plain me one who says no special carve out carve outs for journalists that is true but the issue here isn't that they're journalists, it's that they didn't leak the stuff. The crime that they can actually legally charge without running afoul of the Constitution is when somebody does something like, I'm trying to think of a good example.

Manning isn't a good example because the government technically doesn't have the right to withhold evidence of war crimes, for instance, right? uh it's not it's not allowed to insist on secrecy for illegalities so um but you know somebody like elzberg for instance uh could have been prosecuted uh right and and there was a case obviously although they you know he might have argued i'm not sure if you did argue this but you can imagine it being argued that the pentacom papers contained evidence of crimes yeah yeah none though but a lot of it was just very bad policy too, right? And, and.

Well, same with Manning. I mean, not everything that was in the tranche of stuff that she turned over to WikiLeaks was a crime per se. I just, it was, it was often like, you know, the government obscuring casualty counts, right?

Yeah, I'm trying to think of a good example of a leaker who just purely broke the law and it's nothing's coming to mind. Yeah, I mean, it's a kind of like, it's complicated case law. Right.

But, you know, it's not, It's not a special carve out for journalists, right? The First Amendment applies to everybody. Right. Right. So, I mean, I don't think that if classified information were passed to just a ordinary person,

a non-journalist, a non-credential journalist, like, they couldn't be subject to prosecution either. I don't think. Obviously, journalists could invoke things in their defense and make appeals to the freedom of the press, but the First Amendment writ large still would protect anyone in society from the government encroaching upon one's ability to possess

information. Like, for example, when that guy, when that I think it was, what branch was he in? When he leaked a bunch of Ukraine war stuff to the Discord channel. Right, yeah, I'm trying to remember the coast of Run Island. I think it was a guardsman, right? Was it a

no, I wasn't a guardman. I forget now. I was a 21-year-old kid pretty much who was like trying to make it sound like he was an oracle to his little buddies on his discord where he was Jack Tashara. Yeah, Jack Tashira. Got 15 years. So, yeah, right. So what he did was straightforwardly illegal, I guess you could say.

Well, that's actually a good example because he did sort of declassified information, but it wasn't even for even a pretension of some higher journalistic purpose. It was just basically some raggedosio. It was like maybe a little bit of a political critique that he didn't like. Yeah, it was like a flex. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like sort of very specific to the insular little subcultures of these discord or online worlds that are most populated by these guys who are, you know, atomized. I can speak her experience about that, actually.

And but under the First Amendment, right, his friends who might have been recipients or had viewed the classified material that he posted are not supposed to themselves be subject to prosecution, right? because they didn't illegally leak the material. They just saw it once it was provided by the leaker. But you will find lawyers who will argue that the mere act of taking possession of that stuff is illegal. Sure. I'm just saying that there are First Amendment defenses that could be marshaled to argue that the other guys in the Discord chat are not culpable for any leaking crime. anyway, just a bummer. It's just like another thing.

I don't know. Like, every time I see Trump on television now, I'm just, yeah, it's basically what you said. Like, there was always an element where part of me thought, this is kind of funny. Like, this is the funniest. There were times when he was actually hilarious. He still is funny. That's the thing. Again, that's the conundrum.

He still is funny on occasion. It's just the subject matter here is actually deadly serious. Right. So we're all just like left in this limbo as to what to do about it. Yeah, he's got a little bit of that whole, um, Kirk Douglas or who was the guy who was in hot shots who played the commander with a plate in his head. Uh, I think, I think it was. Anyway, um, all right. So we should talk about the Dave Smith thing, too, because it's like on the flip side, right?

It's just like everybody's losing their mind right now. Yeah, I was a little bit late logging on because I had just seen your new piece. The latest instantiation of the great derangements. I got through about half of it. Yeah, I mean, I know. Thanks for the shout out for having predicted the real. emergence of the satanic panic stuff for the the satanic child uh sacrifice thing no satanic child's abuse stuff which you know you could see coming from a mile away but now thanks to tucker

yep yeah tucker into podcast listeners are probably now going to suddenly believe themselves to have been subjected to satanic child sex abuse or their children are being subject to it and they're going to like read the tea leaves for things or try to detect patterns that lead to that conclusion. So thanks a lot. Yeah. So this piece, which I just put out on Rackett, a long time ago, I actually first wrote about this subject in a book that I published 20 years ago, or almost 20 years ago, called The Great Drangement. Then for a book called Hate Inc., there's a long chapter in there about moral panics. And I tried to make a list of all the things

that you like the catchphrases that you'll find in news stories that might give you a hint that you're reading a conspiracy theory right so when when Satan makes an appearance that's usually a pretty good um like when people non-ironically refer to the Satan uh that's usually not a good sign whenever they they start talking about something must be true because it it's scientifically impossible, like what we saw on TV. So the magic bullet theory, the back into the left, you know, thermite melts steel. The latest one is obviously Charlie Kirk with the 30-odd-6.

Jet fuel can't melt steel beams, right? That's become a meme almost. That transcends even like a literal claim about 9-11. It's just something that people would like to say. Yep, yep, exactly. when people say believe that the redactions are the proof that that's a thing that

tends to be a without defending excessive government redactions or at least without me defending it you make it sort of a tentatively I think you're a little bit more willing to accept redactions than maybe I am

I can see the argument but well I mean I just don't think like even if I don't like the redactions, the first instinct shouldn't be to impute something under the redaction that would vindicate my wildest conspiratorial fantasies. Exactly, yeah. Like, I'm not particularly for or against redactions,

but the idea behind them is there's a reason when we don't release grand jury files, because if there's no indictment, then all that stuff is supposed to mean that, well, we didn't, yes, we spent three months wondering, whether or not to charge your neighbor with, you know, dog fucking or whatever it was. But we're not going to release that publicly

because we ultimately decided that there wasn't enough evidence. That to me is a good example of when you don't need to release things into the public. Right. Well, we do release grand jury materials now thanks to the wonders of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. So get used to it. Actually, there have been very narrow circumstances where even in the past, an argument was made that on the grounds of historical significance, something that went on 50 years ago with like Whitaker Chambers or whatever, they should release the grand jury materials so we can just fill in the historical record. And that had been approved in certain narrow circumstances where there is something that does rise to the level of enough historical interest that the judge says, okay, this is an exception to the ordinary grand jury restrictions.

but I think now that quote norm is one that's being, quote, eroded because we have court rulings in two federal districts, New York and Florida, approving the just mass release of grand jury materials because they say that that is authorized or compelled by the Epstein File Transparency Act, which is now part of like the fabric of the American jurisprudence. Yeah. And I don't think anybody, I haven't even heard anybody bringing up. the reason why we didn't do that previously. You know,

even the FBI wasn't allowed into grand jury material before the Patriot Act. Is that right? Yeah, it was that closed off. So at Fish Hookism says the best way to get rid of conspiracy is to investigate and prove it isn't true. What happened to your investigative reporting. So this is another feature of conspiracy theory.

I love that logic. It's non-falsifiable. these stories are basically undisprovable. They can't be killed, right? Or based on what that guy said, the burden is never on the expositor of the theory to prove anything.

The onus is always on those who are reticent to embrace the theory to prove a negative, right? And basically, you can't prove a negative, like just how you can't prove that God doesn't exist. Let's not get into that discussion, but like it's the same fundamental logic. which is that I can't prove there was no blackmail

with Jeffrey Epstein on the island, right, in this definitive way, just like I can't prove a negative about anything, I can examine what evidence is available and then make inferences from it. Yeah. But you can show people. The burden isn't on us

to disprove whatever blinker thought you want to go around peddling on the internet. Right? Or it shouldn't be if we're like trying to maintain some logical consistency, which I know is like out the window these days. Yeah. No, I mean, this is, it's a continuation of Russia Gate, right? Like Russia Gate was another one where you, where you, it was basically impossible to prove that there was no connection. You could, you could say, you could show that an absence of evidence for that. But until you actually got documents showing how the investigation got started and what the predication was for that, I mean, that's the only way you can do that. It takes forever.

It's not an easy thing to do. And even then, people don't believe it. One of my problems was even using, quote, connections or ties as our standard for evaluating whether a given piece of information has some probative value for some larger supposition about what was going on collusively, allegedly, between Trump and Russia, right? So what is a connection? What is a tie?

I mean, do I have a tie to you? I guess so, but what does that prove? Right. And because people, so Trump or people in the Trump orbit did have some, quote, ties to people connected in some way or another to Russia, right? In that, like, there was the Carter, you know, Carter Page did work for a economic think tank or whatever.

in Moscow for a time. So you could find ties or connections, but the tie or connection unto itself didn't prove anything. So you just citing a tie does not by itself vindicate any larger theory, unless you can establish how that tie

actually shows or demonstrates that there's something that was collusively illicitly going on having to do with the election being subverted. And you see the same stuff going on with Epstein, right? Yeah. So a conspiracy has to have a crime, and the conspirators have to commit an overt act that furthers the crime, right?

Because people always tell me, wait, you're not trying to deny, are you? Are you seriously telling me that Jeffrey Epstein did not have ties to intelligence? Like, okay, let's pursue that thought. What are you talking about? Could you give me an example of a tie to intelligence that he had? And there are some, like just like there were some ties that people associated with Trump might have had people associated with Russia. So, yeah, and who Barack the former Israeli prime minister, just by virtue of having been a former prime minister of Israel, he would have overseen the Mossad and security state agencies, etc. Okay, I guess that's a tie to an Israeli state official who would have himself had some tie to Mossad or whatever.

You know, Epstein did have a meeting, which is bizarre. I'll acknowledge that. He had plenty of, the thing that makes Epstein, actually why I always credit people's intrigue on some level with it. It's like it is just incredible the Rolodex, right? So he did meet with Bill Burns

after he left the Obama administration, I think. I forget what year this would have been, probably like 2014-ish. So this was before, this was between him, serving in the State Department, I believe, under Obama, and then later on he would become the CIA director under Biden. Right.

But he apparently met with Epstein to talk about financial management strategies for somebody at his stage of his career, right? And maybe they talked about other stuff, who knows? So that is a tie, I guess you could say, right, to somebody who's to intelligence, but like, okay, what's the rub? Like, you can't just keep citing a tie and then have that be the sum and substance of the argument and then somehow I'm obliged to like disprove an argument

which you haven't even articulated. I mean, it's maddening. Yeah, no. Because like what they want is that for this, they want to throw out a bunch of ties, which may or may not exist, some of them do. And then the inevitable subtext is that there was a blackmail, child sex trafficking operation that ensnared all manner of prominent people and that basically

shows that Epstein was this all-powerful person who could dictate world affairs like that's what they want to that's what they want the tie to somehow be evidence for which it's not but they think they can just insinuate it right yeah that's the move if you had to actually connect dots previously and show that the the end result is a picture that describes an actual conspiracy. Now we just kind of throw dots out there and we make the inferences do all the work. When you, if you say, well, there's no evidence that he actually ever did anything for an intelligence agency or did it at the behest of an intelligence agency. agency. And I wouldn't just believe that if it were evidence of it, but we just don't have it,

right? But doing something at the behest of an intelligence agency is different from orchestrating a globe-spanning child sex trafficking and blackmail operation at the behest of some intelligence agency, which is what people want the ultimate climactic revelation here to be. Right. And that's why even if he had like he could have passed along a piece of information to Ehud Barak at one of his suarez. I mean, there was a hilarious one where there was a soiree at his New York townhouse that included himself, his lawyer, Steve Bannon, and Ed Hood Barak. I mean, imagine being on the wall at that. So let's say at that meeting, Steve Bannon, who, you know, like maybe a year or so, a year and a half before was working in the first Trump administration.

Maybe he passes something, maybe he says something that's relevant about his tenure. Ehu Barak picks it up, passes it along, you know, about Trump or some administration official passes it along when he gets back to Israel to one of his former colleagues in some security state agency in Israel. Is that Jeffrey Epstein doing something for some intelligence service? I guess in a sense, very indirectly. Right. No. But so what? I mean, it's like, what are we supposed to infer from that? Well, nothing if we're thinking logically, but nobody is. everybody's making the maximum possible inference way beyond the scope of what's actually there. If you actually read what these stories say, they say,

so-and-so knew Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of sex crimes with girls as young as 13. and that is a million miles from, you know, a child sex trafficking ring, right? And I think it would have to be as young as 14, not to nitpick, but... But there are some that say as young as 13. Well, I mean, there are some, but, okay, I guess I should clarify, if we want to stay in the realm of, like, non-holucinatory, fabricated accusations, there is, like, crazed stuff

where like that are little literal hoaxes where a 13 year old has alleged. There was a the notorious Katie Johnson lawsuit of 2016. You familiar with this? No, which one is this? Where do I begin? So this was in 2016. In 2016 there was a lawsuit filed

against both Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump. So this was before Jeffrey Epstein becomes a big sensation, right? That would be two years later. 2016, he's sort of on the back. You have to be like sort of in the know in the know to even have him be on the backburner. Like, I had been aware of him because like the gawker thing with the little black book had come out in 2015, right? So there's like,

there was some preliminary, just sort of like chatter about him. But a lawsuit was filed in 2016 by a quote unquote Katie Johnson, which is a pseudonym for somebody, alleging that she had been brutally raped at age 13 in New York. Oh, right. By Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, have been gang violently and brutally gang rape, which they described, which, which was describing the lawsuit of the most revolting detail, where, uh, yeah, Trump would say, like, Trump like punched her in the face when she was like performing fallacious on him or something like this. I mean, it was just garbage.

And it turned out to be a, I mean, like a literal hoax. I mean, it was, it was engineered by a literal former, former producer on the Jerry Springer show who was a professional like hoaxe, celebrity hoaxes. Like, he tried to sell to tabloids. Like, he claimed that he sold. drugs to OJ Simpson on the day of the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman and he made other crazy claims like that that's a pretty impressively crazy I like that one I wish I had done that but that's the only one that I could call to mind right now about somebody being 13 other than

like the more recent one of this like South Carolina thing which I had been meaning to write about like right when the Aram war was launched I was like supposed to be writing about that and then I got all thrown off of course but I'm I'm sticking this stuff that like not just in civil litigation but I guess that maybe has like some more slightly more credible evidentiary basis so I would say 14 but it's

neither here nor there. Yeah 14 because the original complainant the original complainant yeah exactly but even even that okay look we all know what we're talking about here the point is it's lacking right that might be a good a good time to play this might be a good

point down to play that Dave Smith clip. Yeah, let's play. Let's play start 8. So this was last week, Thomas Massey, who's running, who has a contested primary in Kentucky for re-election because Donald Trump has come out artedly against Thomas Massey and vowed to primary

him in Kentucky. And there is a ton of money flowing into the district from a handful of wealthy donors who are very pro-Israel, like, you know, John Paulson, Paul Singer, and other people like

whom we might have thought of as quote neocons. I think that's an antiquated term now. But, you know, they're in that neighbor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty much. And so Thomas Massey now has to raise a lot of money for a contested primary, which was not something that he really had to do in the past because Trump has thrown his full weight behind trying to get rid of him, probably mostly because of the Epstein files.

Right. So they had a money bomb thing, which is something that was done. on only back in 2008 for Ron Paul. I mean it was 2007, actually. That Ron Paul had nothing to do it. It was his online supporters at the time put together independently a money bomb for Ron Paul where they had this, I forget how they did it exactly. I think it was just like a blog or something where they just raised a bunch of money for Ron Paul

within a 24 hour period. So this is Massey doing his own money bomb. And it was coupled with him having a bunch of guests on to basically kiss his ass. And here's Dave Smith talking about, well, you'll see. But like, if we had 500 Thomas Massies in Congress, there's no reason why we couldn't just actually hold people accountable for the crimes that they committed. Really get to the bottom of it. Have a Justice Department that's not redacting all these files and withholding all the other ones. Let's figure out what code.

Let's crack that code. What were they? All those emails, everyone's speaking in code. What does that mean? And yeah, let's pull some people off and see them go to jail if they committed anus crimes. And that would actually do a lot to bring the country together. And again, to your point, we could have drastic companies spending and regulation and not quite stupid wars. We could do all of that.

We're capable of it. Listen, I don't want 500 of me in Congress because they could turn out to be my evil twins and just have different ideology, but just as effective and cunning as I am. So I like having a lot of people who are followers in Congress. Let me give you the math I try to explain. This might sound like a black pill, but it's actually a red pill. There are 30 members of Congress. I would count myself among them and Marjorie Taylor Green and people like

Lauren Bobert and Nancy Mace. Those are my partners in the crime of uncovering the pedophiles, okay. Okay. Can, you know, question. Uncovering the pedophile. So, Michael, you famously got in trouble for a class with Maxine Waters right after she's, this was right around the time, I believe, that she had said that whole thing about how we just have to find the evidence. For Rushagate? For Russia Gate, yeah.

That's what I was asking her about. I was asking that that's one of the arteries. nobody actually ever watched that full interview, which was about her being on the vanguard of saying all these most insane things having to do with Trump and Russia. And like she had one of those like almost classic Charlie Day. It's always sunny in Philadelphia charts that her congressional office put up of like Trump, Manafort, Don Jr. Assange, et cetera, like sprawling infinitely out. And so that was her big thing. But when she shoved my hand aside holding a microphone that was outstretched, I didn't quite word it properly on the initial tweets.

And I was accused of having lied about her having assaulted me, which, of course, I never said. I actually said the opposite. And they said, oh, then it was caught on video and I was exposed, even though, like, my camera guy was literally recording it. Like, we're the one who put out the video. Anyway, I'll never live that one down. Well, but what's so crazy about that whole moment, though, was that she should have been getting all this questioning about making an assumption that there is an underlying crime and we just have to dig out the evidence for it.

Like, if you don't have, you don't have evidence now, why would you think you're going to have it later? No, but Massey there has said, he said, uncover the pedophiles, which ones? They've already uncovered the pedophiles. So the natural follow-up would be, okay, can you share it with us some? examples of the pedophiles whose identities you've uncovered. Right? He's saying it's already been done. Like he accomplished it.

He had this great legislative achievement, which is why you should vote for him in his primary in Kentucky. Right. But it's apparently still lacking. So now we know who the names are, I guess, but we don't have any of the evidence to support the conclusion that they're pedophiles. Like, I don't really understand it.

Like, the, it, anybody who even brings up the topic of whether or not it's appropriate to use the term pedophilia in the context of Epstein gets hammered like you were and have been repeatedly I hadn't noticed but even but you know Megan Kelly too just for that barely legal thing

she kind of did it in a more annoying way of of course yes not like but but but there are no known pedophiles in the situation except maybe Jeffrey Epstein which okay right no I mean not technically

and I get in trouble for this but so be it just like okay I'm going with the clinical definition of pedophilia I know that's radically controversial to say look the deaf pedophilia is defined in every medical journal that you want to look at from every medical association right as a pathology

marked by sexual attraction to or sexual activity with pre-pubased children. I don't know why I get in trouble for saying that, like, because people want to be able to do perpetual concept creep with it. So I'm just going to, don't, I'm not saying what my personal definition of pedophilia is, don't take my word for anything, please. Google it yourself and look at what the medical associations in the U.S., Britain, everywhere define pedophilia as. That's how it's always been defined since the term was.

coined. So that's where I go with. And no, there's no evidence that I've ever seen that Jeffrey have seen exhibited tendencies or traits or engaged in behaviors that would make him a pedophile under that clinical definition. Sorry, I mean, I know that's a bummer to people. I know people are really invested in like wanting to believe that there's such rampant pedophilia. And there's a pedophile behind every bush and armies of pedophiles are marching down the streets to meet up with their, you know, sex trafficking, you know, battalions. But I don't know what to tell you. Right. Yeah. So, no matter what though at minimum

there's there's no story like like the only thing I can think of is is what don't say there's no story Matt because then you'll say people will accuse you of saying you're just saying what you're saying there's nothing to see here or no there's lots to see but but it's it's

the story people want there to be is not there yeah the one that the people that people want to exist which is this international pedophilic trafficking ring, it's just not there. Like, none of the elements are there. And like Jeffrey Epstein is the most well-documented person maybe now have ever existed. Right.

Do we have more emails and photos and all kinds, like millions upon millions of primary source records chronicling the life and communications and the finances, et cetera. Like, do we have a greater volume of material on any person who's ever walked the earth than Jeffrey Epstein? give me an example of someone we have more stuff on. No, I mean, he's got to be one of the most documented people of all time. And so at this point, given this, you know, mind-boggling mountain of evidence, you can't find anything, really.

That credibly substantiates what you want to, what you want to be substantiated. Although it's logically true that you can't technically prove a negative, like, you also can't technically prove that the moon is not made out of cheese. right right because like maybe there's there's always something that you can't prove but that's what i mean michael we're in this place where where there's like six things we got to get past to get back to the area of of being in reality we have to make it so that the onus is not on uh you know journalist to prove something isn't true you got to prove something is true uh you know like that's the way it should be right

or yeah I should the moon the moon man of cheese example is probably not the best one it's uh

like you can't you can't prove that an invisible uh pumpkin is not orbiting the earth in outer space right you can't prove that definitively

that that's not happening here we go Whitney Webb has done a lot of Epstein deep dives you're just willingly blind or stupid uh Whitney Webb who's that who's that chick Oh, my God.

Actually, we should play the Massey on the BBC clip because this is a perfect example of one of the categories that you've laid out as emblematic of conspiratorial thinking, right? Because he gives a beautiful rendition of the proof is in the next redaction. Right, yeah, let's see this here. The head of the Metropolitan Police Force in London,

the biggest force in the UK, Sir Mark Rowley, was here. in Washington, D.C. last week, trying to persuade the Department of Justice to share unredacted evidence relating to people like ex-Prince Andrew. Should the DOJ share that information with the net police in? They absolutely should. So he really is the artist formerly known as Prince Andrew at this point, right? Like they're going to do that every time now. Ex-Prince Andrew. Is that what they're going to say? Well, I mean, his title was formally rescinded. It would be a It's a bit strange to say Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.

I've always said I'm still referring him to Prince Andrew. Yeah, I'm going to keep calling him that. I don't know. Sue me under British libel laws. Right. Yeah, exactly. Keep going. From what I've read, it sounds like they are sharing that.

They absolutely should share that. And there are things that aren't released. So we can talk about the redacted files. And obviously he would want to see the unredacted files. And the original copies, he said, of the evidence. Right. And then there are other documents that haven't been released. that our law requires them to release.

I'm not talking about over-redactions. I'm talking about documents they're just not releasing. For instance, our law specifically says that they have to release internal memos and emails about decisions on whether to prosecute and investigate or not prosecute. They haven't given us any of those documents. We want to know in 2008 why he got such a light sentence

and was allowed to recommit these crimes. This was the sweetheart deal that Epstein negotiated. Right. Where essentially he, He pleaded guilty to less estate charges and was given a 13-month jail sentence. So what was the decision behind that? There are documents. Obviously, they had memos and they had emails.

They haven't released those. I took the liberty of making them. I mean, there's an unbelievable quantity of exactly the emails and memos that he's saying are missing. I know. So, I mean, this is how you know, as though it was ever in doubt, that he's never bothered to do a quote-unquote good faith examination of the actual Epstein files, right? He's always been on a political mission to vindicate his presuppositions that he started putting out there last summer when he sensed, along with Rokana, a political opening to seize on this matter, in part so he could raise, like, lots of so we could get lots of online donations for his primary, which he knew he was going to be,

you know, budding heads with Trump on. Right. So he would have to have a unique donor base, which is, to itself is not necessarily objectionable, but. No, look, it's fun. It's fine that he wants to pursue this,

I guess, but, but it's tragic in his case because I actually, yeah, I liked him sort of. I mean, I did too. I mean, I didn't say, I knew him well or anything, but I would have, I had corresponded with them. Like, for the most part, I felt that, like, he was actually, he was one of those members of Congress who could actually explain the minutia of what was going on in the Rules Committee and how it related to some other legislative action that may or may not be happening.

Whereas the vast majority of Congress have no clue. not only does the general public not know what the congressional rules committee is. Members of Congress themselves often really don't know what the rules committee is, but it's vital to how the bodies govern. So he was like very incisive and informed about just like legislative procedure stuff. And he also was independent-minded.

He still is, I guess. But the tragedy that he is he got sucked into this vortex where, you know, again, the algorithm rules over us all. We will all bow down to it. And he's playing this whole thing where, like, we've talked about this. It's, they're never going to be able to release all of the stuff. So as long as there's still some outstanding stuff, this thing can continue forever. just to

I mean just to channel what the devil's advocate would say not Satan I'm not making a satanic reference the non-literal like why couldn't they just release everything I mean my criticism of Massey and Rocana was just like okay if we're going to get if the files are going to be coming out

why lard up your bill with all these ridiculous exceptions and provisions that are going to lead to this never ending tedious process of redacting and then unredacting and then why is something there and not blah blah blah blah How about a one-line bill, which they are more than able to do, theoretically, release the absentee files? Like, that was the slogan, right?

Right, right. But that's not what we got. We got this whole patchwork of... It feels like everybody has an interest in not completing this process. I don't know. But just quickly, at the analytical failure who says, you can't prove a negative, but you could engage with the best evidence and the strongest versions of, of a theory rather than the worst and weakest.

That's true generally. I agree. So we like we do. I do. I know Michael does. What are the best versions of the of the argument that I've refused to engage with? Like what are we talking about here? Okay.

So there is there is I don't know. I guess they're talking about the indication, you know, of, of brokering some kind of a meeting for, Prince Andrew, I guess. I don't know. There's a little bit... Who broke for a meeting? Epstein, right?

A meeting with who? Was it... I mean, there was a... There's an allegation floating around now that came out via one of these emails where Galane Maxwell is having sort of like a, you know, a winking banter with him in 2002. Right.

And a long time ago. about he's going on some trip I forget where exactly it was South America and like you know they're alluding to like you know young women being there essentially right right okay

but like so nobody even virtually no one in 2002 would have read that email and have the first thought that occurred to them be sex trafficking conspiracy or blackmail you know nothing remotely like that even though they would have gotten some

implicative meaning from it in terms of what was being alluded to but now in 20206 just to rethink, like, well, being like this spell of mania over how sinister it is and how it vindicates some larger theory. By the way, Russell's teapot is the thought experiment I was going for about, you know, this is Bertrand Russell. Came up with this thought experiment about the burden of proof and how the burden of proof would have to, wouldn't be on the person who says there's no evidence that an invisible teapot is. orbiting the earth. Oh, right. He can't disprove that definitively.

So there's sort of like a, the burden of proof is often placed on the wrong party in terms of the coin much bit. So I screwed up the thought of term. What's it called again? Russell's teapotts. Bertrand Russell. Right.

Do you read that why I am not a Christian? I have read that. I have read that. It's a very good essay. It's a whole book. or at least I think there's a book form of it with the collection of essays on religion and Christianity and stuff. Anyway, this moment that we're in right now,

like it's just people are repeating the term pedophilia so many times that it's just going to, it exists in a realm beyond proof at this point, right? It's never going to be relitigated. It's, it's never going to be relitigated. just a thing that people accept. You know what I want to kind of like

tie both parts of this conversation together? Trump is on the phone to so many reporters every day now. He does say these weird mini interviews with reporters who just call his personal phone. Where sometimes he'll do like seven of them in a day and they're like, you know,

maybe four minutes long or something. But he takes the call apparently. And, you know, he does a lot of press availability. Today he did a long press conference. conference from the White House briefing room and then he did that thing at the outskirts of the Easter Bunny, whatever event that was. How come no reporter has asked him, hey, why do you think that polls appear to show that a majority of Americans feel that you launched this war with Iran because of Jeffrey Epstein? Like, wouldn't you at least want to hear his answer to that?

I would love to hear his answer to that. That would be amazing. When they ask him some of these repetitive questions over and over, they ask the most. with reporters, their questions are so peg to like the next 24 hours. Well, yeah, that's true too. I mean, in that, they'll say, what about this negotiation potential plan that was sent?

I'm not saying it's not important, but like, it just bugs me that never is there a more sort of far thoughted, foresighted question or a more of like an all-encompassing question or a thematic question. Um, that's because most people, the way it works for most people is they get a sign of the story. They've, they've got a topic where the, their editor kind of is going to want to quote on that topic. So they, they phrase a question in a way that they, they know will allow somebody like Trump to answer it. Right.

And, well, I guess the rules really go out the window with Trump because with other politicians, you do all those calculations right i don't know i get the i get the i get the feeling that like sometimes the assignment is hey just call up trump and see if he answers his phone right yeah well i don't know if it's the standard like almost like formalized editor to report a dynamic so much anymore yeah you're right you're right the reporter's kind of more autonomous yeah i guess so yeah but you're right why don't they ask more interesting questions i don't know um like that would be that that be one of the questions to throw and throw out there, right? I mean, again, it's like, I'm not saying that the questions are always unimportant if they're peg to some kind of

transient news cycley thing. It's just that, I don't know, there should be a little bit more a broad mindfulness in terms of the spectrum of things that could be asked, even in those tight little scenarios where you're on the phone for a few minutes or he's passing by. And what's especially weird about this, Michael, is that like, at least half the country is, is obsessed with that question and believes that, uh, that, that we're at war with Iran because of the Epstein files.

We've got, or you could peg it to, hey, the Iranian, Iranian officials, they're constantly talking about Epstein Island. They're constantly like putting out these, uh,

oh, can we, can we see that thing? Yeah, let's show that. Let's show the new, the new Iranian Lego video, uh,

which is Sot 10. And this, we can close on this. Okay. And the fact that, we're watching the this shit over and over again is another like a sort of surprise addition to modern American life uh let's start back at the beginning here yo be hexif this one specially for you have you seen this rape is bitch straight from erron you tattoo covered clown with that

cafe ink on your arm think you will crusader nah just a drunk infidel in the fake uniform Can to kill all Muslims wasted in the hotel lobby. Sexual assaults, settlement in Monterey, block the door, took a phone, paid her off quiet, because Me Too was on. Now you secretary? What a joke, bro. Cheated on wives, multiple affairs. Kids in the mix, family, man, hell no. Hands even women at Fox, drunk on the job, your own team say, yo.

It's pretty good. Toxic. Couldn't even guard Biden's inauguration, your own military set next. Book called American Crusade. Dreaming a whole, I've read that I've read that Trump picture because you kissed the ring but wait funny part in coming

the dude you're sucking up for that secretary gig Trump himself was Bill Clinton's time giving blue jars back in the day real talk you out here blowing for access Bahia original BJ Queen you thought our missiles max 2,000 kilometers Q rookie mistake we're hitting the bow

worshiping Epstein Island Look at the kids. Revenge for every American soul you and Trump's dirty crew of wrestling did. Look at the dump. There's a pizza thing. Every victim screaming in the dark. Iran got you on the play. You threw everything at us.

All your cards, all your might. We still operating on 10% power. Laughing while you fight. We see everything, know, every secret, every dirty Epps least expected in the shadows we ride in you done roasted raw here on sending this heat feel the mass drop the mic infidel clown okay so how come they're not releasing the secrets if they know all everyone in the iranians yeah that's just a bit press inquiry i mean uh i mean the the the the extent to which epsi has been incorporated in

to the messaging of the Iranian state over the course of this war is itself just another mind-boggling thing which I mean I was trying to warn people about the ramifications of what this could morph into months ago but even I didn't conceive of this yeah this is as weird as it gets man

I mean we're actually at war and we've got Legos meets the Easter Bunny meets yeah so the New York interview who ever created that video and they're remaining anonymous but they spoke to the New Yorker apparently and they described themselves as an into a grassroots content creator and they won't say if they have any quote ties or affiliations with

the Iranian state but those that that series of videos gets put out by both the Russian and Iranian state media organs so that's April 26 for you but there's a million examples of those kinds of invocations being made of Epstein I mean it's kind of crazy

no I know but it's just the whole situation so they could ask Trump about that like hey the Iranian state media keeps saying that like you're you're waging this war on behalf of the Epstein regime like any response wouldn't you want to hear his response to that question Of course. Yeah. Yeah, I know. But I don't know, man. It's, uh, would you have enabled, like in your wildest dream, let's pick a time. I mean, even that at the absolute peak of the George W. Bush lunacy, like, I don't know, maybe the mission accomplished moment, wherever the whole world was talking about, uh, his bulge and everything and, uh, his bold and.

This bulge. Oh yeah, there was a whole controversy. On his back, right? During the debate. No, no, no, no. That was a different bulge. Okay. That was the...

What bulge are you talking about? His crotch was prominently displayed in that when he got off the plane. Oh, I remember there being, like, in early pre-social media internet on, like, message boards that I would be on. Where it was mostly, like, just, you know, adolescence and, you know, teenage boys, like, you know, on these video game forums that just became like general purpose forums and whoever was interested in politics to talk about it.

It became like an early meme where in one of the John Kerry debates in 2004 Yeah. There was a bulge in his like the crease of his suit on his back. And the idea was that he had some device implanted so I don't know who like Carl Rove could send him

you know instructions like during the debate. Do you remember that? Yeah, the New York Times did a front page story on it. It was like a real thing. Yeah. They did a reporting the controversy story on it where they,

I think it was Slate did the actual story. And then the Times did a story about how this was all over the internet. Pretty sure it was Elizabeth B. Miller, who did it. That's an impressive recall. Yeah, I mean, I remember it because it was kind of like a landmark moment in journalism. Because you had this thing that nobody had ever proven happened, right? it was just lots of speculation on the internet and suddenly that became a story, right?

But now that's like every day, that's like a minor thing compared to like our whole, but we're really at war, right? Like in other words, we're living in insanity. Unless we're living in a simulation, which I guess is possible. Totally possible at this point. Now I feel like Rogan and Theo Vaughn.

No, we're not in this movie. I mean, what you have to accept is that, like, when you're trying to ask me, do you think we ever got anywhere close to this during even the craziest heyday of the Bush years? There was no social media, really. No. So maybe that means it's inherently, could not have been as crazy. Like, maybe there was some shift in collective consciousness that is just more inherently crazy making with the Adventist. to social media such that nothing by definition that ever happened pre-social media could be as crazy as they could get now.

Maybe that mixed with the uniqueness of Donald Trump as a, as a perfect like recipe. As a politician because nobody else, I mean, his thoughts are flowing out of them like a river, you know, all the, and it's just the sort of. serreality of some of these scenes is just nobody else is ever going to be able to equal it, I don't think. He really does seem to be to talk all day one way or another. Like, I don't know that he has much quiet time. You know, for like, for quiet

contemplation or anything. No, no. It seems like, yeah, again, it's just this it is, yeah, that's perfect metaphor. I think we all need some. It's a raging Colorado river of thoughts just constantly. Yeah. the raft is, you know, splashing around increasingly violently.

It's just pouring right out of them. And then there's a waterfall that goes straight down into Tehran. Yeah, exactly. Well, we'll see what happens. And onto a statue of ball. The statue of ball. I can't believe that's already a meme also.

Like our ball, that came up in this Tucker thing. Did you watch that whole episode, by the way? Not all of it. Exorcist. I watched a bunch of it. I couldn't the whole thing, but like... I couldn't get past the whole animals

when they were talking about the difference between demons and being in an animal, they infest animals, but they possess humans. Did you know that technically speaking, Satan presides over an executive council of demons that report to him? And Ball is one of the five subordinate demons. He's like, you know,

Satan is like the commander-in-chief and he has like five commanding generals and each of the five demonically possess or oppress subjects for different conduct so Ball is the one who will demonically possess you for like fornication or whatnot.

That was explained on the Tucker thing but you know what stood out to me and this is disturbing is that eventually they came to the point of satanic ritual abuse of children. Right. Yeah. No,

it's in there. Yeah. So we got like the number one of the number one podcasters in the country validating this idea that there's more demonic, there's a bigger demonic invasion of the United States than ever. Like he's saying that he, Tucker and this exorcism priest agree. The United States. Yeah, yeah.

That agree that. The United States is currently under bigger demonic assault than ever before. And also, and one of the features of that is a resurgence, they say, of satanic ritual abuse of children that had a big explosion in the 80s. Right. And now is back. Yeah. So, I mean, that's like, that has real world effects, okay? Because like, now you're priming legions of podcast list.

listeners to be on the lookout for that stuff. And you could, you could actually find documented, empirical evidence of when the, the exorcist movie came out. Lots of people were actually, were traumatized by watching that movie and then reported, or like there was like a surge in reports of demonic possession. Yeah.

So we're going to get something similar now, but like it's being germinated by this podcast crew, the podcast creatures. Yeah, no, it's, so the other one was catapulted in large part because of the book, the Michelle remembers book. Yeah. But it went on for a really long time. They eventually had to do that whole thing where they, because you kept seeing these

stories talking about thousands or even tens of thousands of murder victims. That was the speculation that was going on at the time. But then we never settle on a number. you mentioned this in your piece right there's always this like slip a slippage with the number um they they made fun of that in the movie the mensuring candidate i don't know if you remember that there's a scene where they're picking on joe mccarthy there's a character supposed to be a stand-in for mccarthy and he can't remember how many communists he's right and so uh his wife played by angel lansbury um picks 57 because it's on his hind sauce

right so so he says there are 57 communists but the this concept of constantly changing the number it's one of these things that pops up in all these stories where you know one day it's a thousand the next day it's you know 1500 whatever it is but it the continual expansion of you know of the figures involved you've talked about that number and that was a really good catch, by the way, getting that footnote. Yeah. In the... Have you heard that reported at any place else?

No. I think it's brain genius in the world, but like, I think that's relevant information. If people actually want to do understand the purported scope of the criminality here, but of course, I can't... How do you not go back and put an editor's note on that? Oops. We've been saying for months, like, Republicans and Democrats, journalists, everybody. We're saying for months

Over a thousand victims because that's something that you can just Credulously repeat from the FBI I guess That appeared in that FBI memo from July of last year But now we know that includes family members of purported victims That's in the public domain now Hallelujah, the Epstein files came out There was a little footnote that revealed that It's had zero impact on just the popular consciousness

whatsoever All right Right. Yeah. So that was pretty big. But that number is going to grow further. You know why? Because we have now two active, newly established settlement programs that purport to cover

an even larger universe of potential victims that had already been established. So now, even in that 1,000 number of the victims, not their lawyer, not their family members, but whatever subset of that number is purported victims. a huge majority of that subset of purported victims would have been incentivized to come out by the financial reward. Okay? So now we have two more pots of money

that are just now becoming available from Bank of America, the $72 million, but there's another one, which I don't remember if I mentioned to you that was finalized, that was agreed to in February, where there was a new class, action lawsuit brought against the Epstein estate. Ah, by who?

Which is incredible because there's already been. They bent over absolutely backwards to have the initial settlement, class action settlement for 2020, be this holistic resolution to claims against the estate. But this Edwards boys cabal, I mean, they're incredible at what they do because they're able to they're able to convince the judge to just override it and allow this whole new class of purported victims to be able to have a class action law settlement. So I think that one's like 60 something million. So keep the tally going for like what this, how lucrative this industry

is. Yeah, we should do that. And I think it's time now to keep an eye out to see if the same thing that happened in the 80s happened where you start you let me give you right you have these regional parents groups that get together and trade stories about the the ritual abuse that's the next step in this thing let me just give you the language quickly for this new edel epstein estate class action settlement quote the settlement will resolve the claims of all females who were sexually assaulted abused or traffic by geoffrey ebtson during the time of 1995 january 1st 95 to August 10th, 2019. So I guess they're positing that it's possible that while Epstein was in the federal jail facility

in Manhattan, he could have continued to abuse or traffic. Or that he never really died, maybe? I don't know. No, because August 10th, 2019 is the date of the death. Oh, I see. Okay. Right. Whether they were minors or adults at the time of their assault, abuse, or trafficking,

who have not previously executed a settlement agreement that included a release of claims against the absent estate of defendants and also includes the name plaintiffs who in this litigation did not voluntarily dismiss the grant claims of litigation. So now what's going to be happening is both the the executors of the Bank of America settlement and this new Epstein and State settlement,

they're going to be spending the next couple months for feverishly searching for enough of enough claimants to satisfy the requirements for the class. They can get a class, yeah. Anything they can conjure, right? So they're, and so they're going to be going, so they're going to be trawling through Eastern Europe.

They have to put, bizarrely, they have required to put ads like in the physical newspaper of both USA Today and some Polish newspaper and then do social media stuff. So it's going to be lunacy. And that is, and to close on this note, it's yet another example where nobody cares. There is a bit of a civil liberties issue.

with double jeopardy, there's a reason we have it, right? Like, there's a reason we don't allow, we don't generally like to let people be accused of the same thing more than, more than once. This is civil, though, so that would be. Right, it's civil. But even, but even in that case, though, there's a reason why, you know, you structure settlements to get your liability covered, right? Yeah.

And it is blue right past it. It's incredible. And then the executors of the estate got sued individually. Right. unbelievable well i mean uh i think the next step in this is is that we're going to see a lot of regional parishes and things like that come out come up with uh stories um sort of non epstein directly related right it's going to be sort of uh fantasy not fantasies there are going to be people telling stories about things that that um maybe involved their kids which is what happened in the

80s for a significant period of time. What is the, what is the, what is the, what is one of the lessons of Epstein that we're all supposed to now be hypercognizant of? This stuff happens everywhere. It's ubiquitous, right? There's millions of other Epstein's. Right. So they're going, they're going to impute onto other phenomena, the Epstein framework.

Right. All right. Well, I'm, I'm going to go. Epstein could be living next door to you right now. I'm going to do my little P-Tex-F as a Lego character vomiting routine and go throw up blue goo. I'm going to worship my own personal statue of ball that I keep in my closet. Oh, we got to get statues of ball. Yeah, yeah.

We got to get that. We need statues of ball. I'm going to go look for that right now. Let's get a giant, it's in a ball made out of. cheese and then stick pepperonies on it or something made it on a mozzarella a mozzarella ball mozzarella ball right there you go oh that's perfect i love it i love it all right well uh thanks everybody for coming to hang out thank you michael for for spending some time today

um i'm going to be uh on a plane tomorrow but we'll we'll wrap up the tournament later this week and I don't know any other any closing thoughts before we sign off for the evening oh is the game God bless America God bless the troops that God bless you yeah that's right God bless the troops did you have one extra final addendum thought no I don't I don't have any thoughts left I got just I'm just thinking like literally we're at 7.57 p.m. Eastern time we're told that at almost literally almost literally 24 hours from now some the world will change forever so i guess we'll have to see i can't wait i wait with bated breath uh thanks everybody for hanging out and uh we will uh see you again soon