MTracey podcast - "Today's News" Live Stream -- 3/30/2026

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

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All right, welcome to today's news, which is definitely still not the pedophile report or private petal party. I'm Matt Taeebee. The rumors will not die. Sad, sad, exclamation mark. I'm Michael Tracy. Good evening, everybody. By the way, this is the real Michael Tracy, not the pranked Michael Tracy or the AI-generated Michael Tracy. No, that was really me.

That was me on the prank call. No, that was the real Michael Tracy. Tracy as well. Will the real Michael Tracy please stand up? So you are now, you've become sort of... Me and Slim Shady.

Of a sort of counter, counter, counter narrative or something like that. And hold on a second. Mr. D. You are on screen. Welcome.

Yeah. You can stay if you want. Yeah. So we got to get to this just because we talked about it before. First of all, how is your weekend? How is my weekend? I'm not even sure how to answer that. I guess it was,

I wasn't even cognizant to that there was a weekend. I guess maybe that gives you an answer. Okay. All right, excellent. How about you? Well, I'm not at home. I'm in Texas for undisclosed reasons, but. Whereabouts in Texas?

Are you permitted to tell us? I am in Austin. Somewhere in Austin, okay. Yes, if you need to call. South by Southwest must be this week, right? That's right. That's right. So we got to just roll this tape because we've been outed.

Can I just set some context first? Okay, so it often does tend to be the case that I end up being like a foil for a counter, counter, counter narrative. Like it's like enough layers of a counter narrative that you lose track of where the narrative. even began. But that that has happened before like where you remember anti-ante-Trump or anti-ante-anty-anty- Trump or um you know like multiple in incarnations of what people didn't like about Russia gay. Remember like you and I would get accused of being the people who were really obsessed with Russia Gates or it was our fault that it was a major issue. Oh well yeah that that's certainly true. We were the ones who were spinning it up in the news apparently.

but people particularly like to pile on like with me it was it was more like a professional shaming campaign I felt like but people they like to make you into this villainous character I'm kind of unshameable so they might they might have to use slightly different tactics against me than they would against you or most other normal people maybe but you've certainly become for Epsteinologists, which is everybody now, it's unbelievable. Like, it seems like there is not a single media outlet or a person who is not obsessed with this exact topic, like, constantly. So as a result, you're at the focus of this, I don't know, this sort of storm of condemnation.

everybody whenever they bring up your name like i was just in in with a bunch of people and i mentioned that i had to do a live stream with michael tracy and they were like oh the person on the other side of the up team upstein stuff okay what who are these schmucks no no no it was okay but but um yeah i don't know that's that's you raise my hackles a little bit yeah so here we go Here's Jimmy Dorr who was. Okay, so the thumbnail is just funny. I have to applaud the thumbnail on something. It's hilarious.

Yeah, because I've been putting a lot of Photoshop or AI-generated montages lately or kind of kaleidoscopic images that include Jeffrey Epstein, which I really enjoy, actually. Like, there was one that Reason magazine made that wasn't even supposed to be derisive. This was like maybe six months ago now. but I want that as like a banner that's displayed over my gravestone or something. It's like Jeffrey Epstein emerging from the dust in like this smoky visage. And then, but it's got my phone, my big fat face like emblazoned on it. So I want that as like, that's the banner people can wave at my funeral or something.

It's going to be on your gravestone. Like you have to worry about these things. For a long time, I worried that a squid was going to be on my gravestone. I no longer think that that's going to happen. That'll be like that'll be for the old school. Right. To resurrect as a as part of your obituary. You know, today there was,

it was just announced in some of the Hollywood press, so Hollywood Reporter, Variety, et cetera, that there is a new mini-series being optioned or I don't know in what production stage it's in exactly, but there's a new Jeffrey Epstein mini-series that's in the works in some fashion. and it's going to be based on the heroic journey of Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald. So she's going to be played by Laura Dern.

No. And the production company, predictably enough, is Adam McKay, who brought to us the David Sarota classic Don't Look Up, which I actually kind of like to, except for the overheated messaging. He's actually cool. He's kind of, he's funny. Like, that's depressing. I like Don't Look Up, except for the overheated Cerroda political messaging. Like, I just, that's like a sort of a farce of a movie.

It was kind of cool. But Adam McKay, he's been, he's had his, you know, fingers in the Epstein thing for a number of years now. Because he produced, or his production company was responsible for this podcast series starting in 2020. That Julie K. Brown was like the executive producer of. And then my good pal, Tara Palmeri, she took over the reins for the second season. So he's been looking to try to commercially monetize Epstein for quite some time. And so I guess now it's all coming finally to fruition where he can make an epic out of the, the travails of Julie K. Brown to cause like, you know, Woodward's a Woodward and Bernstein little thing about her, like, you know, shouting out in the wilderness to try to get the rest of us to care about. Yeah, I mean, look, it's always got to be somebody's life rights.

It's sold. What's this? Michael, would you ever be reporting on the case against Mike Jeffries, which in my opinion is trumped up charges and opportunism? I don't know who that is. Who is Mike Jeffries? I'm not sure. I guess maybe it's featured on the O'Reilly Factor, which is this guy's icon. Mike Jeffries, that's not the Scientology guy, is it?

I'm not sure. I don't know immediately know who you're talking about. Yeah. So look, with these film treatments and Netflix series and everything becomes a Netflix series within 10 seconds now, and they have to buy the rights from someone. The problem is someone is very often a journalist who is intertwined with one particular aspect of the story. Sometimes that's a good thing. I would say all the president's men was a, you know, a successful venture.

But, you know, well, it was just funny because, like, when this was announced today, people were going through and naming their ideal cast. And I was in the cast that people were naming. It's like, I'm going to, like, have, like, a cameo role in the miniseries. And, like, some actor would play me. Like, I saw somebody say Max Cassella. I'm not even, I don't, I don't, is that, was that the guy, was that Benny and the Sopranos? I don't know.

That would make sense, though. Okay. I suggested Zach Gallifanacus. Oh, I like that idea. Somebody who's like the shovel, but kind of, you know, audacious, let's say. Right, right. Yeah, that's a good, that's a good casting idea. But I'm willing, I mean, Adam McKay, I will play, I will play either myself or some other role.

I'll take acting lessons. I'll go to the acting school. Oh, Tracy S himself is a good idea. we should ask anybody who's listening if they have casting suggestions. It's like when Michael Jordan played himself in Space Jam. Right. It's exactly like that. It would be exactly the same thing.

Paul Giamati, that's an interesting suggestion. I don't know about that great actor. But anyway, so... As Paul Giamati has pig vomit in private parts, that's the parallel. That's right. That was a great. Was that him? He played pig vomit? Yeah, he absolutely did. Howard Stern's private parts.

Wow. That was a million iterations of the media ago, back when Howard Stewart was funny. Because I brought up Howard Stern in that phony phone call because, I don't know, I, I instinctively say phony phone call instead of prank phone call because that's what they would call it on the Howard Stern show when his guys like stuttering genre or whoever would call up. The Baba Booie thing? Yeah, Phil Donahue or whoever they called up. up and prank call them and they would be called a phony phone call so i kind of chastised this guy who prank called me it's not even being clever enough to be funny really so i said okay i mean i i understand the i respect the hustle but you got to up your game of it um well we'll get to the the the prank phone call in minute we got to watch this exchange between whitney webb and jimmy door okay

yes let's do it's it's it's so frustrating it's mind-blowing on a on a couple of levels. Well, mind-blowing is a strong way to put it because admitting that either of these people are, you know, capable of blowing my mind is embarrassing. Can I point out an irony first? Sure. I constantly have this suspicion heaped upon me about by funding sources.

Oh, I know. Whatever. In a while, Whitney Webb lives in some hideout in Chile for reasons that I've never heard her explain. And if you want to live in Chile, fine. I mean, I don't have a problem with that on principle. But I've never heard her, I've never seen her, like, publish her tax returns or, you know, give any insight into how she is funded. It seems like the onus is always little old me.

And I mean, like, maximally transparent about every feature of my life. But, like, everybody just accepts as, like, totally unremarkable that she lives in some kind of, like, you know, hideout in South America. Okay. I mean, I'm not that interested, really, in her personal life. but it is sort of ironic. The funding thing is incredible. So let's listen to this. It's three minutes, folks.

But it's need to listen to it all the way through. What do you make of this new kind of? Is it, I'm afraid that I'm being the establishment in a sense, right? When I push back against these people who are trying to dismiss the Jeffrey Epstein thing as nothing, nothing to see here. And, you know, like for instance.

Pause, pause, pause, pause, pause. This is already fucked because we're not, nobody's dismissing anything. Yeah. I have never said nothing to see here. That's constantly ascribed to me. I always say, on the contrary, there is lots to see here, including, yeah, some meta issues around how the mass hysteria, moral panic has kind of got constructed. But also just on the substance, I mean, there's a lot of interesting stuff in the Epstein files that I actually try to bring attention to while everybody else is focused on pizza. And the structural corruption stuff.

All that stuff is interesting. We've never, neither of us have ever said the sex crimes didn't happen. Well, I say that the severity of whatever sexual proprieties may have not, may or may not have taken place have been grossly exaggerated. Right. Where I land on this, I think is pretty much in the same place, but also that we just haven't seen conclusive evidence of trafficking or blackmail in the way that people are talking about it. I push things a little harder than maybe if you're comfortable with,

because I've just like examined too much of the underlying material at this point, which is that I also say in addition to that, you know, it's, it's may, might make people angry, fine, but like my honest assessment is that the actual scale and severity of what we, know of Epstein's actual conduct has been systematically exaggerated for narrative fueling reasons. Well, certainly when we start talking about thousands of victims. But anyway, let's listen a little further. Pete, they're trying to do kind of the same thing they did to Pizza Gate. And now when we saw the words pizza and grape soda showing up in the Podesta files emails and now we're seeing them in the Jeffrey Epstein. Right, stop, stop, stop. I mean, he's all over the place.

Okay, so like, you know, we have to just accept this like a scatter-brained version of whatever is he's trying to, yeah, podcast brain's depiction of whatever it is he's trying to depict. But, you know, for what, like they, they, so the amorphous they is back and they are trying to do, do them dirty, just like we did to Pizza Gate. I don't think I hardly ever even talked about Pizza Gate. I think I discussed this with you because I felt that it was too like prima facie retarded that it really wasn't worth me expending much effort on at the time. Right. You know, when Q&On came up and like it withdrew on Pizza Gate, yeah, I did familiarize myself more and then it culminated with me last week going down to Miami and actually having a one-on-one

with like the guy who popularized Pizza Gate pretty much. So now I am pretty well versed on it. enough to know that there was no mention of grape soda in the Podesta emails. Like he's just conflating a bunch of stuff because he's got podcast brain where he can't like keep a thought straight. This is what's happening to everybody. They've just facts or bits of things that are like facts or sound like facts have they've just sort of stopped in the way station on the way to wherever the thinking part of the brain is. And they just kind of circle around. Like if you shake a bowl of Cheerios that's got little in it.

And, you know, that's really the extent of the thinking. It's just pieces of cereal crashing against each other. And then you end up having soggy Cheerios like plastered on your face and your shirt and stuff. So you end up getting sullied by the shaking of the Cheerios. Everybody's serving up the same soggy Cheerios. All right. Let's keep going. are what do you so what do you make of all of that what do you make of those people doing that what do you

it seems it's to me it seems crazy is it crazy am i the born am i the person pushing rushagate in this situation yes yes or you see follow my okay so there's a subreddit called it's like are am i the asshole meaning people take scenarios from their personal life where they're not sure if Maybe they thought like some other guy was in the wrong, but now that, you know, they're reflecting on it and they, they wonder if maybe they were in the wrong. Jimmy should post his, his whole story on that subreddit. Yeah, yeah. And yes, Jimmy, this is like Rush and eight. And yes, you are playing that role now.

But anyway, keep going. Katrina thought? Yeah, I think a little bit, but you brought up a lot of what I thought were different points. So I guess I'll start in one place. Pause, pause, pause. So, yes, we're having a decent amount. Wait, so, okay, so I made this clip, right? And I clipped, I didn't even include the whole intro from Jimmy because it was, it was, it was almost too all over the place to even like be worth following for comedic purposes.

Yeah. But even Whitney, who's the master of the rapid fire, just succession of alleged fact claims that are supposed to congeal together into something. And everybody kind of nods in solemn affirmation of her assumed authority. even she can't quite follow what he's trying what he's trying to get at yeah Whitney's the she's the digital Madame Defarge or Madame Defarge she can knit

anything together basically at the speed of life but Jimmy's thing basically it was almost like it started off the earth is a primordial soup and then somehow made its way all the way to Epstein and you and Russia Gate and lots of other things

but she decided not to try to stitch it all together and cut off a piece, but let's keep listening. The amount of people that I would argue through bad faith have been claiming to be objective journalists and acting more like defense attorneys as it relates to the Epstein scandal and only when it became very inconvenient. Pause, pause, pause, pause, pause, pause, pause, pause, okay, so I've gotten this claim or this accusation on a bunch of occasions. I'm acting more like a defense attorney than a journalist.

Well, I don't know. If nobody has ever even attempted to provide a objective or at least an aspirational, objective like characterization of what Jeffrey Epstein himself did, and he's this world historic figure now who we're told like is the reason why Trump bombed Iran. And, you know, there's a million other insane things that he's now kind of given some agency for. I think it is actually a sort of a worthwhile journalist to corrective to do a, not a defense lawyer sort of representation per se, but like try to take a

develop an understanding of the actual facts that are grounded in a perspective that draws on like what his or his, yes, his defense attorneys would have understood to him him to have actually done. Not that I'm going to like on blind faith accept everything. But like at least incorporate that into a formulation of what he is understood to have been culpable for. Right.

And I also would know. that I found the old tweet, like when I had to go through a Whitney Webb into a Whitney Webb rabbit hole, unfortunately, like a couple months ago, I found an old tweet of hers where she's enraged during the trial of Gilein Maxwell back in December of 2021, where she's like denouncing on principle the defense attorneys that are represented Gailene Maxwell as these evil, wicked, pedo-protecting, you know, depraved animals, which very much suggests that she's not in favor of the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution. institution, meaning she has no, she just doesn't believe that people are entitled to representation at all in terms of a defense counsel. And we should add that journalists are kind of supposed to think like defense attorneys, like one of our primary responsibilities, or at least the thing, one of the things that we have to be most cautious of is being sued. And one of the things that is the easiest way to be successfully sued is to accuse somebody

of a crime that they're not guilty of. So particularly when you're writing about somebody and implying that they've done something terrible or that they, for instance, for knowledge of an assassination or, you know, work for as assassins for an intelligence agency or have been trafficking minors or are members of a pedophilic sex ring. These are things you can't do in journalism without lots and lots of proof, right? So it is imperative that you do think like a defense attorney. And if you look at the Epstein case as the defense attorney would,

you would say, I can't substantiate all of these things, right? Even if I, even if you thought certain things, you couldn't, you still couldn't say them in real journalism. Yeah, right? And here's another irony, right? Who is the defense attorney coming up in opposition against? The government, right? You're defending your client against the government.

And yet, if you're behaving like a defense attorney, you're doing something super suspicious. And actually, you're part of the conniving establishment. Or you're doing something where you're trying to exonerate powerful elites, rather than just towing the government line, right, which is what she would want somebody to do with respect to, for example, the prosecutorial efforts against Epstein and Maxwell

and potentially others, although she would say, I think, that the government was in on the plot because they didn't actually investigate everything and they knowingly covered up certain things so they couldn't actually present the full case and that only perpetuated the attempt to, sort of misdirect from what Jeffrey Epstein and Galane Maxwell at all actually did.

So she would have a way to spin it. But ultimately, what the defense attorney is doing in this situation, quote unquote, meaning quote unquote defense attorney is they're poking holes in the arguments of the government. But now, but that is now seen as somehow you being a stooge for the establishment. Right, right. And you see the comment there, Michael believes all pretos are innocent until proven guilty. they are you know just like any any citizen frankly i mean accused of any crime i thought that was a pretty foundational tenant of the whole constitutional order but maybe i misread the constitution

maybe there's a carve-out for credos i don't know no they would like there to be in functionally there is well right yeah which is why you can have these kind of like extra constitutional post-sentencing punishments that are imposed on people you know convicted of sex crimes in general not just pedophilia where like you can serve your sentence and you can be required to in some cases live in state-controlled housing indefinitely after you've served your carceral sentence because it can be determined as a civil matter so as a civil regulatory matter in the Supreme Court vindicated to this or ruled that this is constitutional in 2003 you can be indefinitely consigned to government-controlled housing in a manner that's just so like laughably antithetical to the Constitution,

but nobody cares because nobody wants to defend pedos or defend sex criminals. They're okay to defend convicted murderers. They're okay to defend people who commit all kinds, you know, racketeering and whatever else, but not this one, not this one area of crime, which is like just exist in this, you know, different planetary realm or something where like if you quote defend any of it, then you're somehow implicated in the moral monstrosity. Yeah. Yep.

And look, there are other manias where this happens, but this is the worst one. Okay, so this guy says Mike Jeffries is the former Abercrombie CEO. Okay, so that's actually said that, you know, he's on to something because Bradley Edwards, who's the lawyer, who was part of this whole cabal that got the ball rolling on Epstein and it has made a fortune on his representation of all the upstained survivors. He's been part of, he helped initiate the civil litigation against the Abercrombie and Fitch CEO who was accused of gay trafficking of minors. And then some of the factual predicate for the ultimate criminal charges that were brought

against the Abercrombie CEO drew from the civil litigation. I can't speak chapter and verse on it, but it's a. solid lead from whoever that commenter is. Interesting. All right. Let's keep going. Millionaires who are known to finance significant portions of alternative media. So as an example, I will point the finger at Compact Magazine. A lot of this early rhetoric and the instilling of these ideas that Epstein was not engaged in, you know, engaged in. elicit relationships with minors and that all the victims are liars and this and that

started there. Michael, have you ever said all the victims are liars? No. Actually, I've said, you know, in the case of Virginia Roberts Gouffray in particular, I've actually gone out of my way to clarify that I can't say with any certainty that she ever lied about anything. In fact, I think it's probably most. plausible that she did not consciously lie and it was just a fabulous meaning she constructed

this alternate universe for herself that she came to sincerely believe on some level that when Whitney Webb is talking about the early rhetoric she and compact magazine she's talking about my article um from July of 20 in I mean I spliced that in oh you spliced it in okay here we go a lot of the efforts to dismiss Epstein having any intelligence ties have been published there or promoted through there. There we go. And, you know, it's interesting, too, sort of the argument being made is that, you know, Epstein

was taken down by the federal government because of, you know, if you believe these people, all these women who lie who pretend to be victims. But there's no interest from those people in trying to find out. Okay. So she thinks it's just a totally zany theory. The Epstein was, quote, taken down by the federal government. He was arrested, prosecuted twice by the federal government. He was federally re-prosecuted in 2019 and then thrown into federal jail and ends up dead in federal custody.

After a giant political clamor erupts following that Miami Herald series from 2018, that is now going to be dramatized into an Netflix miniseries. And somehow it's crazy that the government, like, went after Jeffrey Epstein. And then once he dies, they are desperate to find somebody else that they could prosecute in lieu of him. And they set along Ghislane Maxwell. And they'd spend a lot of time. If you read through these Epstein files, I don't know how many she's actually read, where they're likewise desperate to find any other potential co-conspirators of Epstein that they could conjure.

and it falls flat. So how is that crazy? I'm sorry, if you die in federal custody after being prosecuted by the feds for a second time. And remember, they abrogated the federal non-prosecution agreement that they set up with him from 11 years prior, which is also a civil liberties issue. Because if you come to an agreement with the fed. There's a double jeopardy issue here. Yeah. Yeah. And this is another thing that drives me crazy about.

the Epsteinologist, which is everybody, and by the way, that people complaining about this topic, yes, we have to talk about this because it's every story. Like, it's in, it's in the background of almost everything that we see on the news. But, wait, you mean, you mean like the habit of mind or the Epstein story in particular is like a subtext or everything now? I think it's both. Both. Yeah. Both. I would say. But, but, you know, specifically the Epstein story, we got to talk about, There's a kernel of insanity built around this. I'm going to be talking about it on my deathbed, so get used to it, commenters. But also the people who wonder why it would be difficult, why the feds didn't make a case earlier,

have they ever sat and thought about the difficulty of building a federal solicitation case or federal traffic. Were you aware of this? This is amazing. So Whitney Webb is speaking as though she's this presumed authority on how the federal prosecution or non-prosecution of Jeffrey Upsen came about both in 2008 and then 2019. She's the Internet's leading expert. In August of 2025, which was, I think at least five years after she had, you know, four years,

after she had published her, you know, renowned tome, multi-volume, One Nation Under Blackmail, I read through, you know, as much of it as I could stomach. And I noticed that there was no reference to this definitive report by the DOJ, Office of Professional Responsibility, that was published in October of 2020 or November of 2020. And if you're going to have a book out that purports to be the go-to source for all things Epstein, for people to get an introductory primer on the Jeffrey Upsin case. And there's no indication whatsoever that you even were aware of this report, then that's a little strange.

So I went to Whitney Webb, but I said, hey, Whitney, I didn't see any mention of this report in your book. It's 325 pages. Had you ever been aware, had you ever read the report or even known of his existence? She learned of it for the first time in October, in August of 2025, after I emailed her about it. Not only had she not read it, she didn't even know it existed. So that's the kind of research.

No, that's not possible. It's 100% true. And like if you want to be minimally conversant, if you're going to hold yourself out as some kind of expert on the Jeffrey Epstein story and you don't even know that that report exists, that really says all you need to know. All right. One of our listeners has already forgotten, they say, what Doran and Whitney are talking about. Let's roll tape again. The pedocast report. I like that name.

Yeah, I like that. Why the federal government would want to take Epstein down if it wasn't because of those women. Right. And no interest at all. What do you know? No interest. And I don't know if you saw. She makes a defense attorney point.

She makes a kind of phase where it looks like she's having an exorcism or something. Like scroll back a couple of seconds. Let's see. Right. A little bit forward. like right there like what is that like what there's like she's like possessed by her smugness yeah uh it's a little bit like that um south park episode with the smelling of the own farts but um let let let let's finish this up because people are going to are going to lose track

of like whatever it is we're even talking about and no interest at all what do you know no interest But, and I don't know if you saw. But to the defense attorney point, the point I meant to make about Compact Magazine, which I mentioned earlier, has been where this really started and has been blowing this up since then, is it's funding sources. Who funds Compact Magazine? It's funded by the Soros family. And it's funded by Peter Thiel.

So Peter Thiel went around very publicly and claimed that he didn't really know Epstein very well. and it was Reed Hoffman's fault they ever met. And then the Epstein releases came out, and it showed that they were business partners, they were chummy, they liked to meet up together on many occasions, and they wanted to start a secret society together. I guess they didn't know each other at all

and didn't really like each other very much, right? So anyway, Peter Thiel is a liar, and he's lied on camera about it and hasn't been really held accountable, and said he's going around the world, lecturing on the Antichrist and how the Antichrist might want to stop AI and AI data centers. Okay, Peter. All right, all right, right.

Let's get her off screen. So, no, leave her befuddled looking face on there. This is so infuriating. Obviously, I was the subject along with Glenn of a book called Owned, right, that essentially asserted that I had been bought by people like Peter Thiel and Elon. Teal, Teal, Teal, Teal. Yeah. And people throw around this accusation in so many different ways.

I'm assuming, Michael, that you didn't get paid a mint to write that article for compact. Would that be a correct assumption? Paid a mint, meaning what? Like a massive fee. Oh, no, I mean, it's, you, I mean, you'd laugh if. I told you how much I got for it. And I certainly didn't get a check from Peter Thiel. I mean, I was asked by these guys who run the magazine that, you know,

I'm technically a contributing editor on, although I still don't know quite exactly what that's supposed to entail. They asked me if I wanted to do it when they launched it maybe in 2022. I said, okay, I'm not even 100%. I mean, Peter Thiel may fund it. I'm not even sure, frankly, it's possible. But I certainly, I mean, I agree that Peter Thiel is a freak. And one of the ironies here is that Peter Thiel is podcast.

brain himself, meaning when he when he has commented on Epstein, including to Joe Rogan, he'll go and, you know, he'll spin out these convoluted, insinuating theories about what Jeffrey Epstein was up to and like maybe he was embroiled in it by like one of his rivals, like I don't know, Reed Hoffman or something. And same with Elon. Like he, Elon is still demanding the arrests of just unknown perpetrators who are on Epstein's like client list or something according to him. And so neither Peter Thiel nor Elon, or especially Peter Thiel in this case,

I don't even know what role they're claiming. She's claiming Soros hasn't doing anything. I thought like Peter Thiel and Soros would not be collaborators on some ideological projects. But in any event, like it's just like she has no, her standards for dot connecting are so spurious that she just takes so many things for granted. But because it sounds like she has some kind of

coherent rendering of things. The brain-melted podcast audience sits there and listens to her and nods and thinks that she's imparting some brilliant insight. And this is so frustrating to me because I make, I'm very careful. Like, I don't accept ads. I have no sponsors. It's not like people don't come forward with. business opportunities if you have any kind of audience at all in independent media. But it's important to be able to say nobody has a hand in influencing this content.

Can I make an admission of one of those things that I did actually accept? The one and only time I accepted one. I accept there was a Dutch eyeglasses boutique where their main model was Tom Brady. for Tom Brady wore their sunglasses and like, you know, I wasn't rolling in the dough like Tom Brady. So I could actually use a complimentary pair of free regular glasses and also prescription sunglasses. And all I had to do was send one tweet saying, hey, these are cool sunglasses. So I said, okay, I'll do it. And this was like maybe seven years ago.

It was right when Tom Brady won one of, I think, the 2019 Super Bowl. So I pegged it to that, right? And that was the one time I just couldn't resist accepting it. But other than that, no, I haven't accepted any of these shady deals or, you know, they wanted me to become some kind of sponsor or collaborator on one of these

prediction market websites, CalShe or something. No, no, it was the other one, Kalshi or something like that. I'm like, no, I mean, I actually think that your industry is like totally parasitic. So I declined. But yeah, but aside from the one eyeglasses thing,

which I admit I accepted, I have not accepted any of those offers. And I'm sure you get plenty more, many more than I do. Yeah, I mean, look, we've all been offered. But the frustrating thing is like, you know, I'm like the, neither of us have any weird corporate money flowing into our pockets. I wish. I mean, I could have a, I want an upgrade from my Jersey City apartment, Matt. So where can I accept this billionaire largesse?

Exactly. Like, you know, I remember being in a position like, God, I wish I could sell out. You know what I mean? But that's not what's going on here. And frankly, if you pay any attention to how the algorithm works, you know, you get paid the other way right now in terms of what talking about Epstein content. Here's a comment from the Jonah 13. Laura Dern is starring and executive producing an Epstein TV series based on Julie K. Brown's Miami Herald reporting into Epstein's sweetheart plea deal. this show will be insufferable.

I hope there's an episode of that mini-series where Trump declares war on Iran, right? And Julia Kay Brown is like, wait, this must be to cover up the Epson file. So she's sent on a clandestine mission to Tehran to uncover like a secret box of Epteen files that they got stashed away there. And that will tell us the real story

or the secret on what caused the war. Like they should just make it. I would actually watch it and support it if it just got progressively absurd. but I'm sure it'll be very stern and very serious and very, you know, almost like, you know, self, you know, self serious, let's say. There will be no humor at all. Well, I mean, we're in a no humor era.

So that would be appropriate. All right. Shifting gears because we don't have a ton of time, unfortunately. Michael, you recently were mentioned in a report by Kit Clarenberg. Is that right? Oh, yes, I did come up. I don't know. I'm all over the place these days.

But yes, I did come up in a report by Kitt Karemberg. I said, click Kieranberg. Sorry. Kit Klarrenberg. That's a tongue twister. It's a spoonerism. But I know we're going to notice that I pronounce his name that way, so I might as well just fess up to it.

Kit Klarinberg, yes. I mean, his name is Kitt. And then the last name begins with K.L. It's hard. That can't be the first time he's heard that. I mean, I mean, anyway, my apologies. But it came up, yeah, it was about the, it was a blast from the past because back in October of 20203 after, you know, I gathered myself together emotionally following the October 7th attacks, which very deeply affected me. I happened to be in England.

And I decided I would mosey on over to the Labor Party. conference that was being held in Liverpool. And little did I know, this would put me on the radar of the British security state. Right. Even weirder, you basically fell a foul of a former BBC

presenter. I'm sorry, I'm blanking on the name right now. Paul Mason. Paul is the one and only. Yeah, the one and only. So this is, it would sort of be like if Jake Tapper had like some weird episode in the United States and started mass reporting, uh, sort of left-leaning reporters to the, the, the NSA.

Uh, and that's sort of funny that he perceived me as a left-leaning reporter because mostly in the United States at the time, perhaps all, perhaps to this day, but like, definitely more around that time, I would have mostly perceived as like, right coded. Right. Like, it never, you know, it always kind of toggles back and forth, but it's funny, like, he saw me in the same milieu is like, his left-wing enemies within like a UK context that he felt were being puppeteered by Russia or compromised by foreign forces or something.

Because I had met Paul Mason or I had encountered him about a year and a half prior in May of April of 2022 or May of 2022 in London. Because I went to a left-wing pro-war march where they were saying that we have to We have to have NATO send arms to Ukraine because we're supporting the Ukrainian's working class struggle or something like that. So you had like trade unions that were like in these weird left wing factions that were supporting that in respect to Ukraine. So they were like on the same team with Boris Johnson and the conservative government. And the funniest part of that rally that Paul Mason was leading or March. was that at one point

we all paused in front of the Ministry of Defense and in White Hall so like the government corridor in London and Paul Mason is shouting out to the Ministry of Defense

saying come out and join our march and he wanted the workers of the Ministry of Defense to come out and join the march Oh God so so he's that Anyway he got in my face he was telling me to fuck off

he was saying I must be some kind of infiltrator and then I found out later, a little bit later, that he had reported me for the first time to some British security state agency. And then it did turn out that when I finally went back to the United States following that trip,

I got pulled aside for secondary questioning at Newark Airport. We had to sit like for 90 minutes in one of those side rooms and be questioned in one of those, you know, like movie, little movie style rooms with like the one dangling light overhead. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the one plane table when two chicks. There's. Yeah, and remember, Clint Karenberg also was detained around that same time. And why are we bringing this up? Because it's not entirely impossible, Michael, that this habit that Mason got into of reporting people to, I think it's the GSC or GCSC. It's like the general cybersecurity something. It's a wing of GCHQ.

Reporting journalists to this thing became kind of a tactic that was used. And then somewhat later than that, there was a contract that was drawn up by a group called Labor Together, which is obviously a labor affiliate, think tank and it was the contract was between labor together and this private intelligence firm or like a PR firm called APCO and for the people complaining that like I don't do any real reporting anymore like this just happened this is one of the things that I was reporting on I was one of the people who was the subject of this of this APCO contract along

with Paul Holden who wrote at Rackett. We were all reported to the same agency, the same one that you were reported to, the same one was the same one that I was reported to. I was described as a, like basically a Russia-affiliated person who had, you know, like a dubious sexual history and all kinds of crazy stuff.

And as a result of that, a British cabinet minister named Josh Simons got fired as a result of all this reporting. Right, yeah. Right? So just to be clear, so I end to what came out recently by way of Kit Clarenberg was that Paul Mason apparently reported me to this entity for his second time

when we encountered one another yet again by happenstance at the Labor Party conference in October of 2003. And I kind of want, I kind of Josh them a little bit because I had known. by then that he had reported me to this agency. I'm like, hey, Paul, you know what? You still think I'm a big national security threat or something, tough guy or whatever? The funniest thing he ever said to me was like,

where from Lee? I can't do the, he does like a northern English accent. Oh, like a Yorkie accent. Something like that where he's saying like, you don't know how we get down on the mean streets of Lee, which is this obscure little town somewhere in the north of England where like if I had been familiar with it, I would know not to mess with him

because like they settled their differences on the streets. Oh, my God. notes that I handle himself. Yeah, exactly. But so, but, so, but he, he, he sends emails to this contact of his. First of all, fabricating outright that I had something supposedly to do with an email leak, which I don't know what Kate Clarenberg may or may not be involved in, but I'm, I certainly have nothing to do with any email leaks.

I just happen to be named in some of the emails from Paul Mason that came out. But he conflates that and accuses me of being somehow a facilitated. or a perpetrator of some email leak operation, which is just totally false. And then also he brags that he got the Labor Party conference to throw me out of the conference, which they never did. I never got thrown out.

I was freely able to talk to Ed Miliband and all kinds of, you know, top Labor Party people. The only thing that I was blocked from doing was attending the labor friends of Ukraine like Happy Hour. So that Paul Mason did end, did successfully block me from entering. But in terms of the overall labor conference, no, I was able to attend. I had a press pass and everything.

And look, why bring this up? Because this stupid little story of a weird, insecure former media figure deciding that he can handle himself just fine because he's from the streets of Leeds. But he just has to report Michael Tracy and some other folks. Lee, not even Leeds. I would have heard of Leeds. L-E-I-D-H. It's just some, it's like a tiny little town that you know what he would ever hear of. Oh, okay.

That's even worse than whatever. So, but he's so tough that he has to do this. That weird little instinct turned into like official government policy, not that long after. And this is something that goes on all over the world now where reporters are being investigated by these sort of private intelligence firms. Sometimes on contracts with governments, I mean, I found out, because, I'm on one of them. Like, there's a significant report that got passed to, passed around the,

the, the, , uh, the, uh, the, uh,

the, uh, the, and this is what you were hoping Trump would come in and put a stop to in the U.S., right? I, I guess so. Like,

it's embarrassing to think about this now, right? Because the same exact shit would probably happen here. But the problem is that, this is the mechanics of how it works. So, uh, Simon's given an, uh,

an interview to the BBC over the weekend. And it's worth just listening to a little snippet of it. Let's listen to SOT4, if we can. What about the Washington Reporter rate? Any concern? We are. Which Washington Post reporter rate? Oh, the one who cover the Doge stuff?

Yeah, I guess. Of course I'm concerned about that. Like, just because I happen to have a personal relationship to the story. And so does Michael. So, yes, we're going to bring it up. That doesn't mean that we're saying Donald Trump is good. My God, the people are just absolutely nuts. It's funny that like people now think that this podcast is dedicated to just 24-7 Trump Apology or at least some people do. Even as Matt brought me on knowing that I have taken like a pretty antagonistic line, especially during Trump 2.0. Of course. Yeah. And like Matt, I guess.

that i mean matt's kind of a crazy guy so who knows what his thought process was there but this is like what he's now beset with and yet people still think that like your secret agenda 24-7 is to somehow you know kiss up to trump and also trump's record on speech just it is what it is like come on you can't deny it right like but the the the reason this story is important this bbc thing and this was big news in england not so much here um is because this this is the this is the roadmap for what our future is it. Trump might be doing it already, right? And with a war going on, that doesn't tend to be the most positive environment for untrammeled free speech.

Right. And this is exactly what the, what will happen is you'll, you will get private intelligence companies doing research on reporters to put out derogatory information about them. Does that sound familiar? Right. and then Sir Christopher. Right, exactly. So this is the basically the

The thing with Paul Mason is like, okay, so look, if people find something derogatory on me, I guess go ahead. There's really not that much that's interesting. Unfortunately, I wish I had to live, let us enough of a salacious life that maybe there would be some material for them to uncover. But Paul Mason just fabricated stuff. no of course yes and there wasn't the curl of truth to it like it wasn't just like an embellishment or something it was just like outright 100% fabricated and that's bad enough but it's even it's even

worse when somebody in the government hires somebody to fabricate something like that's that's even more anyway well let's listen to this quickly and just uh laura coonsberg my girl but did you explicitly ask for paul holden to be investigated or Andrew Feinstein or Matt Tabibi because they were who wrote the book that you said raised concerns. You talked about your concerns because of his

political stance, but there's two different things here. Do you keep like a record of like the most amusing mispronunciations of your name? Because that's a good one. Tabibi? That is a good one. It's like Habibi. It's like Habib a really good one. Like Habibi in Arabic. Yeah. Yeah.

Didn't you, uh, didn't you, uh, did you say that you're that there's a, There's a town in like the West Bank. It's in Lebanon. Oh, it's in Lebanon? Okay. Yeah. And they make a,

apparently they make a pretty good beer there. But no, there was one in the West Bank called like Tai Be, where it's spelled like, A, B, A, B, A, B,

something. I think I went, I either went there or went right by there. Oh, interesting. Well, it would make sense that my adopted ancestors were from that part of the world. So, okay. Anyway, I had to comment on,

all right. Let's hear what Simon says to say. been concerns about how he had been part of Jeremy Corbyn's sort of version of the Labor Party where they'd been concerned about anti-Semitism, then there's concern about whether or not your organisation might have been a victim of a hack. So for the record, explicitly did you ask for those people to be investigated? No, it was never even about those two individuals themselves. It was about how they'd obtain this material. And just to go back to the context at the time, Five months before this, the government of the day had announced that there was a hack of the Electoral Commission.

During this work, a statement was made to Parliament saying that there'd been hacks of multiple organizations and individuals around British politics. And so when we were confronted with these private documents that only our lawyers and the Electoral Commission had a record of, it seemed like it was an important enough thing to go away and find out and you know, Appco the firm assured us that they had a cyber security expert who could go and troll the dark web and find out about this. And you know, if I'm being really honest, I had absolutely no experience of this. I was told that this firm was credible, serious international firm. They could go away and find out whether that material was out there on

the dark web and why it was being used and they would provide a report and advice on what to do about that. Because the thing is that you're scampering across the timeline a bit, aren't you? Because the story was about undeclared money. That's the story, which they tried to investigate. And then Paul Holden has told us that the contract signed with APCO sought to proactively undermine factually accurate public interest stories that dealt with serious, unlawful conduct by the most senior people in the incoming Labour administration, many of whom were Simon's personal friends and political allies.

This was intended to undermine not just my work, but the work of all the journalists, including Gable Pogrand and Harry York of the Sunday Times and Matt Tybee. Do you understand the charge that Paul Holden is making about what you did, which you say is unintended, but do you understand that statement? He's making a claim about what I intended to do that just isn't true, Paddy. Okay, that's completely wrong. He, the contract explicitly lays out that part of their remit, it was to come up with a public relations strategy for basically undermining this reporting. But even more than that, more generally, this is emblematic of this thing that's kind of happened

in not just in journalism, but in the culture writ large, which is this idea that whether or not something is true is less important than what its political meaning is or what, especially the provenance of something is. So in the United States, we have a Supreme Court case, Bart Nicky v. V. Vopper, which is very explicit that journalists are allowed to publish stolen material, right? As long as it's in the public interest and it's true, it's fair game for us, right? And obviously, this is England, but there was a big movement here as well to change. change what some academics at Stanford called the Pentagon Papers principle, which is publish it if it's true. Instead, there's a movement basically to try to get people to look at how somebody got the information.

So was it hacked materials? That would rule out, for instance, the WikiLeaks stuff from 2016. or the total obsession with the process story behind the Twitter files at the total exclusion of the actual substance. I mean, I was berated about that with that guy, Destiny, whose stream I decided to go on a larko on when I was in Miami. But he was, he was peppering me with questions about how can I possibly defend the Twitter files. And it was like nothing about the substance of what was reported, obviously. It was just about the intrigue having to do with, you know, Musk and the process of it and whatnot. And if they succeed when they, I don't want to use that.

The amorphous they have to catch yourself. If influential people, if it were to be a successful public relations campaign that would result in people actually believing that we shouldn't publish hacked materials, that we should. publish things that are obtained in a way that might be like less than legal, right? But they're authentic. If they're authenticated. Yeah. As long as it's true, it's supposed to be not just fair game, but we have an obligation to publish it, right?

Like this came up in a big way at the beginning, you know, in the 2016 campaign. the Podesta emails came out. Remember, there was a big Bruyahy MSNBC about this. But it did, I mean, the Podesta emails did spawn plenty of insanity, such as PizzaGate, which could then get easily conflated with the stuff that was more legitimate that was found in those files, such as, like, for example, in the Democratic primaries with Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton said, yeah, sure, just wait, I will definitely release those transcripts of the speeches that I gave to multinational banks. And then she never did, but then it turned out that they were included as attachments in John Podesta's Gmail account. So we actually got those transcripts, but then that all got

bunched together with crazy people deciding they could decode references to pizza and have them mean child sex slaves being held captive in a pizza restaurant. So yeah, I mean, there's like you got to hopefully use a little bit of discernment, but, but no, I mean, It's a serious point. That's why there's a little slice of pizza in our logo. It looks great. I love that. Cheese.

Right? Steenhan cheese pizza to sink my teeth into. But in serious, I know we got to wrap up soon, but part of the reason we have this problem with just sort of rampant mistakes, lack of interest, and whether or not things are true, that Cheerios, soggy jumble of pseudo fact that's just everywhere, is because people, there has been this conscious effort to shift what's important in sort of public information, right? Right.

You see the New York, every major press institution is now much more worried about whether or not something is going to impact politics in a certain way than they do about the details. Don't you think there's been a little bit of a diminishment in the mania around trying to sort of prioritize moral clarity as like the paramount

moralistic principle? Since like the heyday of like 2020, maybe thereabouts. I think we've reverted a little bit back to the mean, although maybe not quite as much as you were. No, it's done the other way, though. It's, uh, now it's gone into this direction of moral clarity is, is conspiracism. Um, right. Right.

Uh, yes. Uh, yes, the organizing principle of moral clarity is not actually, you know, Democrat, Republican or Trump bad, Trump good. It's this conspiracyism epistemology that we've been trying to suss out for the. Right. And what's so weird about that is, as you point out, one of the original things that people got freaked out about with the Podesti emails was, oh, well, look at the pizza stuff. And they wanted to censor social media. Yeah.

We have to censor social media because look at all this out of control stuff that's out there. And then we fast forward to this. They realize it's such a lucrative business model, especially for these people from corporate media who are now independent. Right. right right like this is the untapped market opportunity for them and then they just die headfirst into it yeah let's just crank out lots and lots of bullshit constantly and just let's have a constant soap opera and maybe people are going to accuse us of being hypocritical because like we're we spend a bunch of time talking about the stupidity of like various media personalities but like i like to think

it's not a soap opera constant you know sort of spiel coming from us in quite the same way but so it's like it's like a conspiracist soap opera that's what they're doing yeah no we're we're doing the thing that everybody at this moment hates which is reminding which is why it's so funny Whitney webb thinks I'm compromised because it's been such a payday right right exactly me to take the perspective that I do on the Epstein thing whereas you know I could have done the breaking points thing and just done pizza grape soda Israel blah blah blah you know all the buzzwords that are the top of the algorithm, that would have been actually lucrative.

And, you know, what's Whitney, I mean, Whitney Websteens have done pretty well, taking her perspective on the Epstein thing. I mean, I like to know, like, how, what are her accommodations like in Chile? I'll compare, I'll compare them, I'll be happy to compare them to my dwelling in Jersey City. I actually hope she has a gigantic,

uh, glass pyramid. mid mansion or something. Yeah, like on the side of like Machu Picchu or something. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I do wish that. Is Machu Picchu in Chile or have I screwed that up? That sounds right.

This is not America. That's close enough. But folks, this is financial suicide. And it's just funny that people are trying to make it out to be. For some reason, I'm on Pierce Morgan being demanded to declare my income. Seriously. Does anybody else have to declare their income? And again, it's not like I'm riding around in a Rolls-Royce.

Right. I'm a 2008 Hyundai accent. Yeah, folks, the way to get rich is not to go on the internet and say like Jeffrey Epstein didn't commit every crime in the universe. Like, I can personally. Machu Picchu is in Peru. I stand corrected. We're all about the facts here. I'm reporting the news. So I'm reporting the news that Machu Picchu is in Peru.

So, all right. I have another event that I got to go to, but I did want to get you on because you were accused of being at the center. You're meeting with some money bags, right, who want to suborn you into some sort of quasi-journalistic scheme, right? Absolutely. That's exactly what's happening. You're going to be clinking your martini glasses with them. I'm getting my canvas bag ready to open. for my gold doubloons. So I'm going to go head off to that meeting again. But thanks everybody for tuning in.

And we will be back later this week for the completion of the much awaited, we're not the completion, the progression of the much awaited March Madness. We're at the final four, right? Or is it the elite eight? I can't remember. No, we're at the final four already. It's the final four.

So. Well, what's the final four right now in the real NCAA tournament, right? Hang on a second. Matt doesn't do journalism. Oh, here we go. You just watched a cabinet minister that I helped get fired with original reporting. All right, never mind.

Michael should visit Whitney in Chile. You want to take a field trip, Matt? Right. We probably end up in a Chile in jail and going to get drone bombed or something. I mean, what drives me nuts about this, this is another thing. Reporting takes time, right? Like, if you actually do a breaking news story, It takes a minute, right?

It's going to take two weeks to do any halfway decent breaking news story, right? This thing that people have gotten used to where people just get up in front of a microphone and say shit is, yeah, it's entertaining. But it's not how it can possibly. I'll do some of that. Look, I'm not immune to the temptations of the modern media landscape. but I like to at least try to integrate that with actual reporting of some kind, right? So it's not just solely me talking out of my ass. No, you actually go to the places and talk to the people, right?

So that's... And people, you can watch the video from the Cuba rally if people... Oh, that's right. That went up yesterday. Yep, yep, absolutely. All right, Michael, thanks for hanging out with me tonight. Thanks to everybody who took the time out to come watch us. and we will see you again soon.

All right. Adios.