Tangle - The Sunday Podcast: Isaac, Ari, and Kmele let it all out on Jeffrey Epstein, some Jerome Powell stuff and a very good grievance section.

Episode Date: July 20, 2025

Isaac, Ari, and Kmele really get into it about all the Jeffrey Epstein stuff for nearly an hour. Then they talk about their opinions on the Jerome Powell and President Trump situation. And, as always, the Airing of Grievances and a very good one at that. Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was hosted by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75 and Jon Lall. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Hunter Casperson, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Coming up, we talk about the Jeffrey Epstein stuff for honestly, literally nearly an hour, if I'm being totally honest with you. So buckle up for that. It's good. And then we get into some Jerome Powell stuff and then a very good grievance section. It's a good one. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast. I'm pleased to get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul.

I am here with Tangle managing editor Ari Weitzman and our editor-at-large, Camille Foster. Gentlemen, I want to start with this. We are in, this is like US politics bizarro world. I'm going to read this little excerpt from Politico, which I love. I think this is from a day ago. Perhaps it's the summer doldrums.

Perhaps it's Superman leading the box office, but within the last 24 hours, the political universe feels a lot like bizarro world. Democrats are sounding positively MAGA-fied when it comes to the Jeffrey Epstein files, while leading MAGA figures are calling for supporters to trust the government. Donald Trump is talking tough about Vladimir Putin's Russia. Top progressives find themselves on the opposite side of a big House primary in Arizona.

And we have new polling from Tony Fabrizio suggesting that the key to Republicans holding onto the House majority may be supporting a facet of Obamacare. U.S. politics are insane, man. This is... I don't know how we keep up with the moving goalposts. I want to have that meme of the astronaut, like, who's pointing the gun at you as you turn you back. That always has been. Yes, this is the latest insanity and sometimes we have these moments where it's palpable. But we've been in crazy world, in crazy town for a very long time and it continues to play out and surprise us in interesting ways. It kind of reminds you of that fact that every 10,000 years or so, the literal poles on the

earth will just reverse. North is south and south is north. And it feels like we're kind of in the middle of it. And like we've been asking that question like, well, looking at the demographic data here, it looks like all these blue counties are higher income. And what does it mean to be the party of the working class? And we're all sort of stroking our chins about it.

And maybe we're just going through the toll mode right now. And that's exactly what's happening. We're just, we're flipping and we don't know what to do. You know it reminds me a little bit of that moment where Donald Trump won the primary back in 2015, I guess. And right up until that moment, I was confident he couldn't possibly win the nomination. You were the only one. Confident.

And it was at that moment that he won it. I said to myself, you know what? I'm not going to do that kind of prognostication anymore because I don't know. I just don't know. And I think embracing that perspective, like you don't know. You don't actually know how this is going to break. Having a perspective on a story is one thing.

Insisting you know exactly how this is going to work out is another thing entirely. So yeah, this is, it's interesting times. And while some of the issues are hella severe and very consequential and others are not, though they may seem to be, it is nothing if not interesting. Man, I know you've got a whole run of show here, Isaac.

And I've got so many follow-up questions that I want to say to Camille, but I don't want to derail us after three minutes. I think let's go through with the plan. No, we can derail. Yeah, I'm going to derail. Yeah, I was going to give you the bait, say like, yeah, shoot me down on that one.

I dare you. What's the point of a good intro without some derailment? That's how I feel about it. Yeah, so I really want to hear as a follow-up question what you said, Camille. Like, is there a thing though that you feel like you could say, no, that's not going to happen or that's not going to work? Like, what are you confident on right now?

And follow-up, is it terrorists? You know what? I don't think this is an American apocalypse. I think America will survive. And interestingly, that might actually be a controversial perspective depending on who you're talking to. I think half the country at this moment is looking around, imagining what the future looks like and thinking that this administration is going to lead us into the doldrums and

this is it. This is the perpetual decline of the country. I think I've long embraced Adam Smith's dictum that there is much ruin in a nation. And I certainly believe that about the United States. We are consequential, great. We still have a very dynamic economy. The citizenry is still filled with amazing people who do hard things and who work very hard. The best things about the country aren't our politics, however weird they may get. So I'm still optimistic and bullish on America,

which I don't know if that's a hot take, but some days it feels like something that once said aloud, you know you're gonna get a couple of strange looks. But that's the thing that I'm pretty sure I can depend upon. But everything else is probably up for grabs. I just want to throw this out there. This whole intro, it reminded me of Hiram and Verilyne Lewis, who we interviewed on the Tangle podcast.

And we did a write-up. I think we released a transcript of their interview from a couple of years ago. They co-published a book, they're actually not related, but they co-published a book about the myth of the left and the right and how the left and the right are not fixed poles and how different they are, which I think has always been a really compelling point.

And Hiram, I can't actually remember, I get them mixed up. One of them has written in a few times recently, just like urging me to abandon our format of what the left is saying, what the right is saying, because he's just like, there are two political tribes that you can identify as the left and the right, the reds and the blues for sure. But there is no like central poll that their ideology revolves around.

And like in a week like this, it is a really funny thing watching the polls shift. Like I already said, you know, it's like all of a sudden, you can't get Democrats to shut up about the Epstein files. And it's like the Republicans don't want to talk about it. The client list, in fact, not just the files, the client list. Yeah, yeah. Dude, I saw there was an unbelievable...

I saw a tweet from a Democratic member of Congress who was playing the guitar. Oh yeah, it was representative Hank Johnson. That's right. Who wrote his own song about releasing the Epstein files and was just strumming the guitars. And I was like, what? What is happening?

What's going on? Like this is like that. And that particular genre of like Twitter posts is, it's just like, it's such a classic kind of Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert move. Like I'm imagining them posting something like holding one of their automatic weapons or something to say something cringe about gun control. Celebrate Santa. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

It's just like this Democrats are just adopting wholesale this sort of magified brand and approach this issue because they recognize that it's advantageous right now in this moment, which and approached this issue because they recognize that it's advantageous right now in this moment, which is wild to me. But I do want to actually talk about this before I just, yeah, I don't want to get too distracted, but the other big thing that's been happening today in the news, have you guys been following this,

the CEO who got caught on the Jumbotron? Yes. Dude. Oh yeah. An incredible story. I heard it news. I, he's like, I guess this guy's like, I didn't know who he was before this.

One of the largest tech companies in the world, Astronomer. And he is at a Coldplay concert, I guess with a woman he works with. Like the head of HR. Yeah, the head of HR. He is at a Coldplay concert, I guess, with a woman he works with. The head of HR. Yeah, the head of HR. And they get put up on the Kiss Cam Jumbotron at Coldplay and both immediately try and hide their face.

Do the most guilty looking thing you could possibly do where nobody would have ever noticed if they didn't just completely dodge the camera. Yeah. He just, the CEO, Andy Byron, just released a statement saying, Let me start by apologizing to my family, my wife and our wonderful employees. My behavior is inexcusable and the shame I'm receiving is well deserved. I tried to hide my actions, but the truth has finally been revealed. I am a Coldplay fan and not just of the first two albums. I also like the recent stuff.

I'm going to take some time to contemplate my future. Please respect our family's privacy. What is that? What is that? That is a real, I believe it is. It's the Astronomero whatever Twitter account or... Doesn't that make you wonder? Because the way that they...

Wait, is that signed by him or is this a joke? Do you think he's paid off by big Coldplay here? Like this is a little bit too perfect of a PR storm. Maybe we're drumming up a little bit of interest for Coldplay, a little bit of interest for my tech company and... Oh no, there's so many fake statements going around. That can't be real. That can't be real.

Oh, did you just get suckered by fake news too? Well no, I did, but there's, I guess it's becoming a meme. There's a lot of really good stuff and fake accounts popping up. Yeah, unverified tweet. Definitely doesn't seem real. You have to look for the verified badge, which someone has to pay for. That'll tell you whether you have to. Yeah, exactly. But you never know if Chris Martin paid for that badge though, which someone has to pay for. That'll tell you whether or not it's on the ticket.

Yeah, exactly. But you never know if Chris Martin paid for that badge, though. That's where we're at. Anyway, I will say this. Either of you is thinking of cheating on your spouse. You should know, just maybe don't go to a 60,000 seat arena to do it. That is your first order problem. The fact that you end up on the Jumbotron,

you know, that's unfortunate for you. It's bad luck. But you went to a 60,000 seat arena to ho-up, to hug up ho-up. That's not appropriate. Whoa. To hug up. Out of HR there.

Your side piece. I'm going to get reported. That's a bad idea. Just don't do that if you're going to be a monstrous cheat and destroy your family and break your children's hearts. That's a bad look. Or get a record. This guy has a personal...

His net worth is $1.3 billion. And he's publicly... It's unbelievable. I mean, you just have to be... Divide that by half. Now. Yeah, exactly. Divide that by half. Now, all right. Yeah, exactly. I'm assuming. Yeah. Divide it by half. I've seen a couple,

there's been some really good jokes about it. One of them was, there was a New York Times op-ed from a couple of days ago that from a Biden advisor, the headline of the op-ed is, I was one of Biden's border advisors. Here's how to fix our immigration system. Someone tweeted out a screenshot of that headline and said, I'm the CEO of Astronomer.

Here's how to stay faithful to your wife. Which is pretty good. Yeah, it's on point. Oh man. All right. We should get into the Epstein stuff. So I have a couple of things I actually want to cover despite our divergences here.

The first one, before we get in some of the kind of hard news stuff, I actually want to cover despite our divergences here. The first one, before we get in some of the kind of hard news stuff, which there's a lot of really interesting angles to this, is that we got a little bit of critical feedback, not a little bit, a lot of critical feedback about some of our coverage last week. One particular piece of feedback got published in the Sunday, thank you Ari. It is a funny thing.

Ari gets to now just like pick out really critical feedback that he wants to amplify to our entire audience. And he put this in the Sunday newsletter, which was me getting flamed by one of our readers on my take about the F-scene thing. We'll be right back after this quick break. Say hello savings and goodbye worries with Freedom Mobile. Get 60 gigs to use in Canada, the US and Mexico for just 39 bucks a month. Plus get a one-time use of 5 gigs of Roam Beyond data. Conditions apply. Details at freedommobile.ca.

This episode is sponsored by the OCS Summer Pre-Roll Sale. Sometimes when you roll your own joint, things can turn out a little differently than what you expected. Maybe it's a little too loose. Maybe it's a little too flimsy. Or maybe it's a little too covered in dirt because your best friend distracted you and you dropped it on the ground. There's a million ways to roll a joint wrong, but there's one roll that's always perfect, the pre-roll. Shop the summer

pre-roll and infuse pre-roll sale today at ocs.ca and participating retailers. So I'm going to read what this reader said and then I want to address it. And then I'd be kind of curious. I'm going to state my clarified position on the Epstein stuff. And then I'd be curious to hear from you guys because this is now a story. Ezra Klein just did a whole podcast about Ezra Klein, just did an entire hour long podcast for the New York Times about Jeffrey Epstein and like this story. I mean, it's really remarkable stuff where we are in this moment. This is the piece of criticism that I got from a reader whose name I did not catch,

but maybe Ari has. They said, you're overly focused on debunking the quote unquote client list as if that disproves the broader concern. That is not the heart of it. The real issues are, no one has been held accountable. We know Epstein trafficked girls to powerful men. Even without a list, victims exist and some could still testify, yet no prosecutions.

Why? No charges isn't the same as proving no crimes were committed. Even if there is no list, we know for a fact there are numerous sealed or redacted files. Trying to prove there is no bolded list when it might be the same core information and multiple PDFs seems to be missing the point. The origin of Epstein's wealth and connections remains unexplained. He was a math teacher who ended up managing hundreds of millions of dollars and network with very powerful world leaders. That's not a conspiracy theory. It's an unanswered question.

Lack of information doesn't disprove suspicion. Calling all skepticism nonsense ignores real gaps that deserve investigation. The 2020 election conspiracy should have been put to bed because there is plenty of public evidence to explain what actually happened. Here, we have plenty of sealed evidence or information that is simply not public. We simply don't know a lot about what happened. So saying there are many open questions is not the same. It's just the missing any theories about them.

Okay. There's a few things, first of all, just to clarify. Some people have been held accountable. Some of the stuff in this criticism is just not true. I just want to say that plainly. Like there have been people who have been held accountable. Ghislaine Maxwell is one of them. Jeffrey Epstein is one of them.

Like he didn't get the prison sentence or the charges that a lot of people wanted, but he was charged and he got a sweetheart deal initially and ended up back in prison. But like there was court cases, the files exist because there's all this testimony and because there have been trials and witness statements and investigations.

I mean, that is the whole, that's the thing. This stuff is there because there has been some level of accountability. We don't know the degree to which Epstein trafficked girls to powerful men, actually. We don't know that it happened at all, actually. We don't know that happened at all. Yeah, that is like a sort of misnomer. We know that Jeffrey Epstein had a network of really powerful men that he was close with and women.

And we know that Epstein worked in all these circles. We also know that Epstein was trapping girls at his island and having sex with these minors and all this stuff. But the degree to which those two worlds cross is actually very unclear. It has not been made clear by the investigations in him or even some of the really good reporting that we have on this issue.

So that's not totally true. I'm not saying it didn't happen. I think it very well could have, but to your point, that is one of the unanswered questions, not like a fundamental premise that you've thrown out. My criticism of like the list existing is just, again, there is this misnomer that Epstein had some lists. And it's not like I didn't invent this idea.

It's something that's being pushed by Donald Trump, or was being pushed by Donald Trump, was being pushed by JD Vance, was being pushed by the attorney general who said she had the list on her desk. Like there is an idea that is false, which is that Epstein carried some sort of client list around with him of people whom he was trafficking

these girls to that the government had possession of that they were not sharing with the public. That is the thing that I'm saying is BS. That is like, you know, a myth. I'm not saying it's a myth that Epstein trafficked women, girls, minors. I'm not saying it's a myth that Epstein had really powerful friends who may have participated in that trafficking. I'm not saying it's a myth that Epstein made a bunch of money in really shady ways that we don't totally understand. That's also true. I'm just saying there are some parts of

this story that I think are very misunderstood by the public. So just to state my position plainly, I've like gunned ahead what's the truth. I have to like bet my life on some version of reality. I think it's probably true that much of what we'll ever know about Jeffrey Epstein and the trafficking network he had or the girls that he was abusing

has already been made public or is in the possession of federal authorities and is not being released, not to protect the abusers, but to protect the victims, which is a part of the story that's sort of gotten lost is that there are various kinds of privacy acts and rules and regulations and wishes of victims that are keeping some of these stories private. It is true that Epstein had all these powerful connections.

It's also true that like every media organization on earth spent some kind of resources investigating this story. It's true that there is so much money to be made for these huge, powerful, connected law firms and lawyers. Like if there was a world where some random rich celebrity was one of the abusers and tied to Epstein or some random rich politician, and there was a case to build against that person,

that is like a goldmine for very wealthy law firms to pursue. They would pursue it if they had the goods and that those cases would be happening if they had the goods. And I don't know that Epstein has to be alive for that to happen if like the files are as incriminating as everybody claims. So the fact that it hasn't happened to me

is actually a signal that maybe a lot of the information that we have or will ever have has been kind of poured over, scoured over, and explained or is, you know, not been made public because it isn't quite as damning as people think. I think there's a very good chance that Donald Trump's name has popped up in some of these cases. I mean, there are legitimate allegations of him being an abuser that have existed outside the Epstein stuff. So it wouldn't surprise me if like his connection to Epstein or a visit he had to Epstein's house or something got caught in this huge drag net of investigations that has pulled all this stuff in. And maybe that's why he doesn't want this stuff to go public and he's being so defensive about it. I don't have a fully flesh out theory there, but I'm not like, I don't think it's absurd to believe that his name would be in there. I don't think it's crazy to think that many other well-known politicians or celebrities names would be in there, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they'd be guilty.

And that's another good reason to protect this list or the files is because you could release information that says, you know, ex-politician, I'm not going to use anybody's real name because I don't want to do the thing, but like ex-politician or wise celebrity once visited Jeffrey Epstein at his island or was on his plane or in the flight logs. And that trip was some totally legitimate business interests where they went there to like seek his investment for some company they were starting. And now they're suddenly being viewed as a sexual predator when they actually never committed a crime or went to Epstein's house or whatever else. Like that's a real problem with releasing all this information.

People don't really seem to talk about it. So that's kind of my position on the story. Ari, Keneal, I'd be happy to see the floor a little bit to hear from you guys, because I'm just kind of curious where you land. But I just want to make that clear, because I think maybe my take wasn't really well stated, at least based on the feedback like this I got,

maybe I wasn't totally clear in my writing about what my position is, but that is my position. I think I have a bias that kind of goes in that direction as it is. One of the things that I hold, that I don't discuss a ton is this belief that the general claims and trends that we hear about with sex trafficking, especially sex

trafficking of children, are based on completely made up numbers that's not real. And this goes back to years and years. It's so easy, and we said this last week, it's so easy to dunk on child molesters and terrorists. Those are the two people you're allowed to just make shit up about and know what to push us back on. But this is one of the consequences of that when you don't push back on claims and then they run out

and have side effects with like the AGs losing their job or whatever ends up happening. But to get really specific here, there's like a couple of years ago, pulling up an article about this now, there's a claim online that said 800,000 children go missing every year, and that was widely shared, and it's just pretty much made up. It's based off of a claim that 22,000 kids go missing per day, which is incorrect and

also sort of based on missing person reports of children who like are late for school or with a relative or something and then they're reported as lost and it gets rolled up into this stat that's now telephoned out to 800,000 how a million kids are stolen and trafficked every year and the word trafficked so vague that that can mean different things to different people who are hearing it. So my inclination generally, when I hear a story about sex trafficking, is to think, I'm assuming that's exaggerated, which is not a popular position to take, I think, normally, because you would want to say, obviously, it's a monstrous thing and you want to be on the side of the victims, and you always should be in these cases.

It's almost hard, like tough to even understand the mind of a person who does that. But at the same time, I do think that it's really easy for us when we hear about it to let our minds run wild and think that there's more to the story than there is. I think most of the time when it comes to stories like this, there generally isn't and I don't think that's sexy, but I think that's the time when it comes to stories like this, there generally isn't. And I don't think that's sexy, but I think that's probably right. Yeah. I think that first, Isaac, I don't think what was written in this particular complaint

is necessarily an indictment of the way that we've discussed the story, so much as a very clear illustration complaint is necessarily an indictment of the way that we've discussed the story, so much as a very clear illustration of the climate surrounding the story. The fact that there are very important, and I imagine to the extent this person did not believe explicitly believe, we know Epstein trafficked girls to powerful men. If he or she was not confident of that, then I don't even know that they would write this email.

It seems to me that what is actually going on here is there's just a miasma of insane and half-supported and perhaps even potentially true, moderately credible claims that are all circulating at exactly the same speed, at exactly the same cadence, and believed with exactly the same intensity across the political spectrum across America. That's kind of where we are with this story. And I think a lot of people have perhaps lost the ability

to actually gauge with the appropriate level of rigor, like what's true and what isn't here. And it's unfortunate, it's also not surprising, hardly the first time we've seen it. And interestingly, I think dovetailing on what you were just unpacking, Ari, trafficked is a very interesting word. And it has this almost kind of magical, hypnotic quality to it.

It has a taken vibe. Yes. I think people hear it, or they read it, or they say it aloud. And suddenly, you know, an Uber ride turns into a mission and possible operation. And that, I think, is a great deal of what has happened with the Epstein story. Like, if we actually look at what the underlying legislation has to say, or the legal code has to say about what trafficking is, it doesn't describe adjacent porn operation. You're soliciting sex.

You're paying for someone's ride to one place or another. And this technical term, this term of art perhaps even, has again just kind of taken on these properties of its own and animates imaginations and suddenly everything turns into a Comet pizza. One can traffic only for themselves by picking up a prostitute on the street and driving them back to their home. That's trafficking. And one could do that dozens or hundreds of times simply for themselves.

You know, there are a great many other issues here in this story. Very powerful man, highly connected as Isaac was laying out, exceptionally wealthy in a strange kind of nebulous industry, who's got this interesting island, and who has a determination to spend time with powerful, glamorous, important, smart people. And that is inherently interesting. And I think that is just a, that particular constellation of issues is going to create a circumstance like this in a number of occasions. And the Trump administration, unfortunately, finds themselves on the wrong end of this particular situation because they just didn't manage it properly.

But we've spoken about that at length. Can I fan the conspiratorial flames a little bit? Please do it. That was about to, but it's your real house. All right. Well, first of all, like to just play, I guess, play the other side here. Sure. Ron Wyden, Senator Ron Wyden, by the way, this happened just today.

Think maybe even the last couple hours as we record this on Thursday afternoon, the US Senate voted to block the release of the Epstein files with a motion by Senator Diego. Unsurprising, you know, again, it's not even totally clear to me what files they are talking about. But Senator Ron Wyden, who has worked the Epstein case for several years, said that the government is sitting on secret bank filings showing some $1.5 billion in suspicious wire transfers by Epstein involving some of the most powerful people in the world. And it looks like a New York Times article Sagar and Jeni is screenshotting on Twitter, noting that in particular filings by four big banks flag more than $1.5 billion in transactions,

including thousands of wire transfers for the purchase and sale of artwork for rich friends, fees paid to Mr. Epstein by wealthy individuals and payments to numerous women the senator's office found. The filings came after Mr. Epstein was arrested in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges. And Ron Wyden gave a speech on the Senate floor today about these over 4,000 wire transfers. This is the kind of thing where it's like,

again, it's all the same problems. The other stuff I just described where some of this is probably innocuous, rich guy stuff, buying artwork or whatever. But I don't blame people for wanting something like this to be released. You know, I don't like the curiosity is very understandable. And they, I personally, Isaac Saul, like if you could, if I could vote up down, like somebody gives me those files or they don't, I obviously would take them. I'd be very curious to scour those and see whose names popped up and how much money was being moved around and for what.

Um, but it's, it is interesting again, like, you know, I didn't even know, I follow this stuff quite closely. I didn't even know Ron Wyden was somebody who was working on this case or doing some kind of oversight into the federal investigation or whatever. And now he's, he's just like giving a speech about it on the Senate floor. I mean, Democrats are leaning in. This is, they, there's sort of blood in the water on the MAGA base here,

and they are really not being shy about it. So I don't know, like something like that, does that tickle your interest at all? Or are you just like, I couldn't give a shit less? I mean, maybe. I mean, I'll say. Like I've kind of always believed. Like there's some, we were just saying earlier before, Camille,

that there isn't really any proof of trafficking. I guess the farthest I go is... Again, trafficking, trafficking. Right. Wide-trade, and I'm just overusing it again. But I guess what I mean there is like hooking up other... Coordination with other people. Yeah, essentially being a pimp. It's not clear that happened. I'm hooking up other... Coordination with other people. Right. Yeah.

Essentially being a pimp. It's not clear that happened. Sure. I... Yes. But also that's where I think I do believe that it did. And I don't... I'm looking at the same evidence you are, so I'm not saying that I know something different.

I'm just saying I can believe it. I can believe it pretty easily. And I think the... Is believe the right word or you can imagine it? Which is it? I'm curious. I mean, I think I would say that I believe it. I'm not saying I know it. I think there's always a leap of faith that's required to use the term belief because you don't have all the evidence. So you have to make that leap to draw a conclusion and then operate on it. And I'm not saying that this is something that I'm going to be hard and fast in.

I'm like, I'm very open to changing my opinion on it. And clearly it's not something I'm really trenching on anyway. But if you were to tell me, do you believe that, you know, Epstein pimped out people? I'd say, yeah, more likely than not, I believe that. And I think the thing that people are probably upset about is to Isaac's point, like the totemic nature of it, of rich guy who's well connected, the point is that it's untraceable.

The point is that you're buying art and you can be giving it to friends or making payments through financier channels that seem innocuous maybe maybe and you have connections so they'll never be brought out. Like it just feels unjust because if it weren't somebody who was well connected, it would be coming out. So I think whether or not there's fire there, I think the fact that like that amount of

smoke would suffocate the rest of us is what is frustrating. I got another one for you. This one's, this one's maybe more interesting and more tangible. Steve Bannon, have you guys read about Steve Bannon's Epstein connection? Yeah. He shot this doc with him. Well, he says it wasn't a documentary.

Yeah. Filmed 15 hours with him. There's this whole, just like this Business Insider article from 2024, headline, Steve Bannon filmed Jeffrey Epstein for 15 hours. His quote unquote documentary has never surfaced. He published this, Bannon did publish a trailer basically for it, but it was never released. It's been three, I guess four years now. And you know, Bannon had this close relationship with him

that's been totally memory hold. The footage is completely under wraps. Nobody's ever seen it. A lot of people who sort of witnessed some of the filming of this footage said that the two seemed pretty cozy. Like they were friends around each other. And now Bannon's on his like War Room or Real America Voice podcast or whatever it is,

talking about how turbulence is coming, we're nowhere near through it. People should keep pressing to demand action. They want the documents to surface. Special councils need to be appointed. He's like doing this. I'm turning on Trump for this thing and he's got 15 hours of Epstein footage that has never seen the light of day for Reasons we don't know or understand at all. That seems kind of weird to me now. I don't know what's up with that

Could he release the footage? I'd like to see that What's up with that? Could he release the footage? I'd like to see that. Doesn't it kind of remind you of that Tim Robinson sketch with the hot dog? We're all trying to find the guy who did this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, again, I don't want to like fall

into this conspiratorial trap all of a sudden because this stuff is, you know, there's all these little things popping up on the board and we can tie the strings around them and put them all together. But like, there's just some genuinely weird behavior happening, like, and I mean that on the, like, you know, Hank Johnson doing the guitar riff

for the Epstein files to be released all the way to Steve Bannon pretending like we need government transparency and a special counsel while he sits on 15 hours of Epstein footage. It's really weird. It's all very strange. And I mean weird in like the pejorative sense that Camille always uses that word.

Like you guys are behaving weirdly. Please stop. Just like- And I can see like he's almost bleeding. Camille has been biting his tongue for so long. He's got so much to say right now. I can feel it. Yeah, that Epstein trailer is very weird.

The Bannon Epstein trailer. He does kind of crack a joke. And it seems like a joke because Epstein smiles when he says it, or at least the camera cuts to the shot anyways. It cuts to a shot while Bannon is asking this question and suggesting rather provocatively something along the lines of, is that why you kind of did all these horrible things with all of these young women?

Because you believe females are the future or something like that and Epstein is smiling in response to this. He doesn't seem offended or taken aback. Like they do seem like friends and there seems like there's a bit of friendly ball busting going on. So I don't know that we'll ever see this footage. I'm not sure that it'll ever see the light of day. I don't know what what Bannon has. Bannon is nothing if not savvy about trying to meet the moment and stoke kind of panic and concern, even in ways that are anathema to

Donald Trump. I think we all remember when Bannon was prominently going after Elon Musk when he was very close to Donald Trump and was kind of campaigning for him and leading cabinet meetings for all intents and purposes. So it's a strange situation to be sure. But look, someone had asked me, because I shared something on Twitter or X, I suppose as it's called now about the case. And someone responded saying, Camille, do you think it's appropriate

or is it all kind of conspiracy theorizing to ask questions about things that we don't yet have evidence for? And, you know, in your everyday life, and perhaps even as a person in the media, to ask questions about things, to propose things that are, you know, potentially kind of bleak, sure, you can do that. You can ask those questions. I just think what's important is that you're not getting too far away from what the actual evidence can sustain. And that you're always in a position to be able to say, I haven't seen any evidence to support it yet. I don't know that this is true. And kind of qualifying things appropriately. And unfortunately, what most people are doing is kind of backfilling their uncertainty with anything,

any piece of seeming as evidence from the, as I referred to earlier, this kind of miasma of uncertainty and craziness. And again, sometimes potentially viable theories about what may be going on here. And I think the important thing is you should never disregard Occam's razor or Hanlon's razor. We know that generally speaking, people are animated more

or at least more likely to be operating in ignorance than they are kind of maliciously. And similarly, the simplest explanation, given the actual available evidence, is probably the likeliest explanation. And unfortunately, with a universe of possibilities, and that's what you get when you get outside of the realm of what we actually have evidence to support, people are selecting what seems to me the most improbable possible explanation, That there is a vast global multinational conspiracy

that is bipartisan in nature and implicates all of the most powerful people in America and involves thousands of young women. Again, when I put it in that way, like this beggars belief. It's not one conspiracy that you're signing up for. It's a plethora of different conspiracies that there was a mission impossible operation

to get into a particular prison and murder him, that he had this compromising information on pretty much everyone, that he was working for some of the most important intelligence agencies in the world while also being prosecuted for, I think very clearly, self-evidently true things like picking up prostitutes and hooking up with them.

And also that his money was a result of just kind of stealing and shaking people down. And yet he didn't try to shake people down while he was in prison, or in the moments before he knew he was going to go to prison. It appears that that never really happened. And the only shakedown operation that we have

sort of publicly available information about is him asking Bill Gates for something and Bill Gates ignoring him. And those emails were publicly disclosed. So, you know, it's not the most inspiring thing in the world to think he's just a bad guy who did bad things with perhaps lots and lots of girls. But that might be the truest thing about the circumstance.

I'm nodding along. I hear that too. You said my name, so that's my cue, yeah? Or you want something else? No, no, I said, all right. I was about to say, are you ready? Are you ready for a quick palate cleanser? Yeah, sure, why not?

People say all right all the time. It sounds like my name. I'm going to read a quote, warning, it's got expletives in it. So my name. I'm going to read a quote, warning, it's got expletives in it. So if you have children listening or you don't like curse words, you might want to skip ahead 30 seconds. I'm going to read a quote.

You tell me who you think it's from. This is to Trump. Fuck you. You suck. You're fat. You're a joke. You're stupid. You're not funny.

This entire thing has been a scam. We're going to look back at the MAGA movement as the biggest scam in history. The libs were right. We will see Trump as a scam artist." End quote. Alex Jones. No, but very close.

I can't guess. Tell me. Nick Fuentes. Oh, well that makes sense. Tried and true. Nick Fuentes. Oh, well that makes sense. Tried and true Nick Fuentes. Yeah, Outer Ring of the Bullseye. Completely turning on Trump in the MAGA movement, calling him fat, telling him F you. And it's all, yeah.

I cannot believe this is the thing, but you know, I don't't wanna say I'm enjoying it, but I do think there are elements of this that are like, it's cathartic to watch the kind of the most conspiratorial minded people on the internet eat each other alive, because they're all just deploying the tactics they've deployed against people like me, against each other. And it's just like this

circling firing squad of like anybody who is not aligning with Trump is now being accused of being fake MAGA and they were a poser and they were in it for the grift the whole time. Anyone backing Trump up is like, Oh, you're actually probably on the Epstein list. Just like these bold, ridiculous public proclamations. Um, yeah, it's really, it's great. I remember, uh, in the wake of the 2020 election, when I was debunking a bunch of claims about election fraud There were just these massive accounts like senior editors at Breitbart tweeting about how I was receiving money from Democratic You know donors or something to produce the content. I was produced. I mean like I was so

infuriating and Like a genuinely horrible experience. And now they're just all doing it to each other. And yeah, it's a little hard not to laugh a little bit, but this is the reap what you sow dog caught the car moment, I think, and the kind of like American super conspiratorial right-wing politics. I just want to say very briefly that while I agree and I think that the easiest thing

to explain here that doesn't create a universe where if you are following Donald Trump you're anti-mega and whatever else you have to sort of circle around to make it all make sense is just that child molestation is a political football or a hot potato and you have to sort of circle around to make it all make sense. It's just that child molestation's a political football or a hot potato and you want to be the team that's not holding the hot potato. And if you're not, then you want to point it out. And that's just like the easiest thing to use to explain it. Like that makes all the sense in the world to me.

And I, on that page with you guys, I'm still holding this doubt in my mind to a smaller conspiracy that I do think that like it's not going to involve everybody. But isn't it so easy to imagine, and now I'm co-opting your language here, Camille. It's easy to imagine that a person who's been shady, well-connected and had dangerous proclivities for years and liked to socialize with people would probably involve one or two in a way that he profited from.

Like it's almost difficult to imagine that didn't happen a couple of times. That's kind of all that I'm saying. And I think that in order to uncover that stone, it's gonna have so much bycatch involved both on the side of victims as well as people who just happen to be in the same area that it's really, really easy to imagine people saying like, we should probably keep that door shut.

Like I think that's that's pretty defensible to to think. But if you have a despicable fetish of a criminal nature, and you also are the sort of person who cares greatly about public perception of you, to the point where you want to be seen and photographed with the most high profile people in the most high profile places, do you, A, keep it to yourself?

Maybe share it with your most trusted partner who can help you recruit people and maintain this interest? Or do you photograph it, create video evidence of it, and in a paper trail, and threaten people over email and in various other ways, and try to involve some of the most prominent and powerful people in the world in your scheme? Do you do that?

Even the effort to try and entrap someone. Hey, you know little girls? The moment you ask that question, you could become one of the most notorious people in the world. I actually find it harder to believe, personally, that someone who was as sophisticated as Epstein was, and you had to be somewhat sophisticated

to move in all these circles and to con people out of their money, as it seems he did, would you open up yourself to potentially getting caught by telling other people about this? And I don't know. I mean, you'd have to be a bit crazy. And maybe he was crazy in exactly that way,

but also it seems to me that it's very possible that he wasn't. So again, it's quite hard. I think the thing that most sticks in my craw here, and it's kind of crystallized for me in the past couple of hours actually, is that a weirdo libertarian inclined person that I am, I care a great deal about transparency.

And I want the government to be maximally transparent about all of the things. But I also care about abuses of power. And one way a government can abuse its power is by publishing or promoting the possibility, the appearance of wrongdoing on someone's part without ever having to convict them. In this particular case, if they were to publish documents, the appearance of wrongdoing on someone's part without ever having to convict them.

In this particular case, if they were to publish documents that even without explicitly implying, that generally kind of leave open the possibility that you might be a party to utterly disgusting things, the most heinous kind of depravity, that maybe this is something that we should be careful about with respect to the disclosures. And that seems eminently reasonable to me. What happened here, however, is that the Trump administration is just not particularly good

at things. And as a result, they've screwed the pooch or they're trying to conceal, again, global conspiracy, which I mentioned a little bit earlier. Again, I leave open the possibility that I am wrong and everyone else is right, and this is the most disgusting, deplorable thing that's ever happened in the history of American crime. But I have to, I think extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. And that's the one thing we don't have here, that extraordinary evidence.

You're invoking all the right razors. I like them too. I got them in my bag. The Occam's razor, the Hanlon's razor, the Kitchens razor. It's all true. I'm with you. A mountain of cliches. Yes, here I am.

That's upon which we build our empire here. But the thing where I just get stuck is like, it does feel like it shouldn't have to be a one or the other thing. It shouldn't have to be the Trump administration's been caught doing government bad, or there's a giant global conspiracy. It could be more closer to the Trump administration

was caught like trying to play both sides of political storm and the chickens have come home to roost and at the same time like there I I that there could be one or two or three actual conspirators here that we aren't ever going to get to because we'd have to uncover too much like I think I think there's still so much room for that to be the case and like you said earlier what makes more sense? Does it make more sense for you to be open with that or trust one very trusted person? And I just think when you compare this to, this is going to be really, really crude. So apologies for this being inartful. But when you compare

this to one other case that's kind of similar that I can think of from the last 15 years, like the Jerry Sandusky of it all, where this is a person who is on his own, who sort of ingratiated himself in plain sight. Like the philanthropy was very public facing, was visible, was trusted in ways that a person of those particularities can only dream of. That model that I have in my mind is of a single person. And when I think any time that there's a person who opens the door to somebody to work with them, I have a hard time myself feeling like it stops it too, you know? Sure. That's fair.

Fair. I don't think you're too far out over your skis there. I mean, again, like to open, to leave yourself open to that possibility seems reasonable. And I have to think that the criminal investigators who worked on this case were open to that possibility as well. But as Isaac said, very early on here, like there've been so many people

who've been involved in this, not just the criminal prosecutors, but various lawyers who've prosecuted civil cases, who've won massive, massive judgments against huge financial institutions. This has just been of all of the places where one might get caught. Like this is a place where you maybe get caught. And this maybe this is the Monica Lewinsky razor. Stop coming up with more razors. We got plenty.

The president is doing something really bad in his office. Are you going to find out about it very quickly? I don't know exactly how to make that fit in this We got more razors. We got plenty. It's like the president is doing something really bad in his office. You're going to find out about it very quickly. I don't know exactly how to make that fit in this particular context, but I think you kind of find out. You know, the Watergate, Lewinsky. Don't do crimes in glass houses. You find out.

Speaking of people involved in this case and the lawyers and prosecutors, whatever, Maureen Comey was fired. Yes. Which, you know, again, so it just so interesting to see the way this moment is sort of shifting stuff. The New York Times covers this story. Maureen Comey is the daughter of former FBI director James Comey, Manhattan prosecutor, Southern District of New York,

she gets fired, which there's, I mean, something pretty alarming happening there, absent the story we're talking about. But the New York Times headlines the story of Manhattan prosecutor who handled Epstein cases is fired. Like the New York Times is framing this, not as the FBI's daughter, all the other huge cases

she's worked on, but like, oh, she's the Jeffrey Epstein person and that's the lead abruptly fired by the Trump administration. This is really bizarre for a few reasons. One, it's very unusual. They like cited Article 2 of the Constitution. There's some sort of like weird flex happening here. Maureen Comey responded to her firing with a statement where she said, you know, this is unexpected me

in my last day in the office. And she basically said that, you know, it's hard to do your job without fear in this climate if a career prosecutor can be fired without reason and fear is going to seep into the decision of those who remain. Kind of throwing up a red flag. I mean, this is the work of Pam Bondi basically, but it is, there's something here, there's a, this is throwing, first of all, if you're the Trump administration, just insane move given the position you're in to fire the person who worked on the Epstein stuff

when there's all this suspicion about you floating around already. You're just like, oh, here's a gallon of gasoline. Let me dump that on the fire. And two, they did it without sort of, like they didn't come out and say, we're firing her because she mishandled the Epstein case or something. Like they didn't, they didn't try to frame it as some sort of act that they just like

did it, didn't really explain it. Very bizarre. And then there's just all this other, you know, it's just another latest, like weird executive overreach abuse of power from Trump, where they're just firing like big name prosecutors without really explaining why or without cause, which I don't love, not a great development. So, yeah, all of a sudden it's just, it seems as if they are both trying to bury the story

and keep it in the headlines all at the same time. It's a very, very odd thing. Yeah, look, the thing that most surprised me about this is actually that she managed to survive this long. Maybe you don't fire her during the first administration because you still had all those gatekeepers around who were trying to enforce the norms. But early January, you get sworn into office, I guess mid to late January when you get sworn into office in 2025. I'm surprised the firing didn't happen then. It is amazing that she survived until July, given the way that this particular administration

has operated. You're right. It is weird, very, very weird to fire her during, in the midst of this particular scandal for the administration. It hardly seems to make sense for them from a narrative standpoint. However, if you had something to hide,

do you fire this person and turn them into an enemy who is definitely going to go to the press and start talking? Again, if there were some horrible thing about Donald Trump in those files, is it possible that we would know about it already? Does it even seem likely that we would know about it already? And I think the answer to that question is undeniably yes. That actually seems pretty probable despite prohibitions against leaking. So yeah, it is disturbing when high profile people are being fired for what here actually

seems like nakedly political reasons. And again, here I'm speculating, I don't know, but it feels like this is probably political. I mean, her dad now I believe is also being targeted for investigation by the Justice Department, by again, Donald Trump's Justice Department, precisely for doing things disfavorable to Donald Trump. And maybe some of those things were wrong, and maybe it's appropriate for him to be investigated. But it is impossible to escape the sense that these things are

politically motivated. And I think that's the bit of it that's actually most disconcerting for me. I think you kind of nailed it. Just you have to imagine that Trump is going, like that he does have something small to hide with this Epstein connection. If this weren't a political firing in some way

and it didn't benefit him in some way, that's hard to make the pieces fit. And it feels like, and I'm speculating as well, but just like reading Trump and the way that he usually works the press, one gets the impression that he's walking around with a hand, like a two and seven off suit, and he's saying, you should probably fold.

I've got kids, you should probably fold. And we know you're weak on this, man. Like we know that you're afraid of your name and implications going to be released if the Epstein files come out more. And it feels like if you just work from that premise, everything kind of makes sense. But if you don't, then we are flailing a little bit more. So that's probably what's happening.

Yeah, I think so. We'll be right back after this quick break. savings and goodbye worries with Freedom Mobile. Get 60 gigs to use in Canada, the US, and Mexico for just 39 bucks a month. Plus get a one-time use of five gigs of Roam Beyond data. Condition supply details at freedommobile.ca. This episode is sponsored by the OCS Summer Pre-Roll Sale. Sometimes when you roll your own joint, things can turn out a little differently than what you expected. Maybe it's a little too loose. Maybe it's a little too flimsy. Or maybe it's a little too covered in dirt because your best friend distracted you and you dropped it on the ground. There's a million ways to roll a joint wrong, but there's one roll that's always perfect.

The pre-roll. Shop the summer pre-roll and infuse pre-roll sale today at OCS.ca and participating retailers. All right. We've done almost a full hour on Jeffrey Epstein. It is July 17th, 2025. What a world we're living in. I, I just quick little breaking news. Gut check. Is this a story or not a story?

Donald Trump diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency following leg swelling. President Trump examined for swelling in his legs has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency. The White House announced Thursday Trump underwent a comprehensive examination, including diagnostic vascular studies at the White House Medical Unit.

The Hill reporting that he had swelling in his lower legs and bruising on his hands. And this is like a condition that's quite common. About 150,000 people diagnosed with it every year where valves don't really pump the blood back to your heart. So it allows it to pool, can cause, you can cause certain things like blood clots and stuff. Probably not a story, my inclination though, a reminder, Donald Trump, now the oldest president or will be the oldest president we've ever had

by the time his term ends, cause I believe he'll be 83 at the end of his term surpassing President Biden. Just like a weird thing that we have to think about that, I guess. He's had that leg thing for a while, right? I mean, we haven't had a diagnosis, but he's like, if you watch him walk, it's in change directions in turn, like it does seem like he favors one leg. Like it feels like that's been true for a bit. So this doesn't seem too surprising. I'm seeing a lot of pictures, screenshots of pictures

of his swollen legs on the internet right now. So, yeah. Great, I'm happy for you. Did you say Isaac, that this is also Dr. Isaac, did you say that this shows up as bruising as well? Is that- The Hill was reporting that he had bruising in his hands. Yeah.

From- It was back in February with the Macron meeting. The Hill was reporting that he had bruising in his hand. Yeah. From... It was back in February with the Macron meeting. Familiar as well. There were these pictures of it that started circulating. Like, what on earth is going on with Donald Trump's hand? And you could tell in the photos, these big... I mean, they blew it up. What kind of camera are you using?

But that it was kind of covered with makeup. Like, it looked like they tried to conceal it. So maybe that's what's going on there as well. Yeah, I don't know if it's a huge news story, but certainly the president's age is an issue. And it would be weird if this administration, of all administrations were to suggest otherwise, considering what has happened in the previous administration

and their critique of it. But at the same time, hypocrisy is not beyond the scope of things that this administration will engage in. You're saying an Agstin 2.0 then with this age issue then? I don't think it will be quite so controversial, but yeah. All right. Before we really close up shop here, we should probably hit at least one other topic.

I think maybe the next biggest story in the news right now is the potential firing for lack of a better term. We're not totally sure how they'll do it. The of Jerome Powell, the current Fed chair. We had a really classic like one-two punch of stories this week, where Trump had a closed door session with House Republicans,

asked them if he should fire Jerome Powell, received positive feedback and, you know, pushes that he should, then circulated and shared a draft of him announcing or informing Powell that he was fired, told the House Republicans that he was going to do it. The story immediately leaked to Fox News, which broke the story and reported on it.

And then three hours later, Trump comes out and says, I'm not firing him, it's very unlikely, we wouldn't do that. we wouldn't do that. It's all just like total noise and it's hard to kind of suss out what's real and what's not. We talked about this a little bit this week, but to me, there's no real argument for firing him both because it would be a massive

breach of precedent. And in order to do that, it feels like some sort of, I guess, line needs to be crossed that I don't think Powell has come remotely close to crossing. I mean, by all accounts, he's, you know, at worst, a like average Fed chair and by many accounts, a phenomenal one who has sort of managed to navigate and ushers into like this soft landing from inflation that was supposed to be impossible to pull off, though it really does seem like we're there now. Yeah, I'm curious what you guys think. I guess I'd put the question like, is there a fireable offense for someone like him? And do you think Trump is gonna try and do this

and maybe invent one, I guess, if he doesn't have the real thing? I mean, they've taken a run at trying to invent a pretense. The president and many of his supporters were openly talking about this renovation project and testimony from Powell that they insist is a horrible lie. And I think the president was quoted

as saying something along the lines of, he was very concerned about the profligate spending at the Federal Reserve on this renovation project, that they were building a palace for themselves, that didn't go any place. And it was clear that they hoped it would. I believe SCOTUS has already weighed in on this

in a decision back in like 20, in May, or actually, well, I know Powell's term ends in May of 2026, but I believe in perhaps even in May of this year, SCOTUS weighed in and said in one of their decisions that the Fed chair was not someone that the president could just dismiss easily. So they needed to find this pretense. And I just, I mean, one would have to come up

at this point, could they do it? I suppose they could try. They've tried all manner of things recently, but this actually seems like something that they probably wouldn't do, given that they only have to wait a year. And if, in fact, inflation does start to spike, it would be helpful for the president

to have someone he can blame, as opposed to install someone Who is completely compliant to him? In the way that he would prefer and is doing the things at his direction So there's a sense in which even though they don't like him and they'd prefer him out and the president seems to have forgotten that he actually appointed him That that he gets he gets to stay until he's ready to go. So, listening to that, I think you made a couple points that I hadn't really deeply considered which is maybe embarrassing because they're good points and I feel like I should

have thought of them first, but good job. Yeah, maybe they would benefit from having him in the seat so that they can blame him. It seems like it would be a risk to put somebody in who was just going to lower interest rates because you're going to disagree with the guy that you appointed to do the thing you want. I mean, that makes a ton of sense. And the second thing is that, yeah, like it is just a year. They can wait.

And if Trump replaces the Fed share now with the express goal of cut interest rates, because I want to, because it's good press, it's good for the, um, like it'll make the economy run hot and all other good stuff that you would want to oversee as commander in chief or commander in chief of the economy, as it were, um, it probably is better politics to not. Um, the only concern though, Camille is that self restraint for the thing that Trump wants now hasn't always been his strong suit. Sure. It seems like he's generally followed the strategy of push for all the

things I want all the time, and then maybe I don't get some of them, but I'll keep pushing. And then I'll get a lot of things that I want. And maybe this is just one of the things that that kind of strategy allows you to do is to push, but do it falsely and then have somebody to blame. Maybe that's just like a good political play from Trump. Like for sure, this is a Fed chair who has just objectively by the metrics done at least a competent job in this position, just judging by our recovery from the pandemic. It's hard to say that there's anything way out of bounds that Jerome Powell's done.

If you want to disagree with his timing by a month or two, you can do that. But I think it's really tough for anybody to make a sober-minded argument to say he's been incompetent and deserves to be fired. Maybe it's just better for the president to just leave him in there and yell at him. But my question then to you would be, does it make sense in a year to replace him then? If you have him there to yell at, would it be better if he cuts rates to say, no, he's coming to the census? It seems like he's doing the right thing now. We'll keep him there rather than replace somebody that will then be an albatross around your neck if something goes wrong. Yeah, I don't know. And it's interesting. I mean, as we've said throughout,

the administration and Trump in particular tend to be pretty impulsive. The kind of multi-dimensional thinking that I'm describing to them potentially with respect to, yeah, we'll wait because it's good to blame him. Really not actually the way that they generally do things. I mean, I suppose there was that immigration bill that they helped to kill while out of office because they wanted this as an issue to run on. But that's an easier thing to imagine. That's immediate. Yeah,, we'll wait and see. So, yeah, you might be right.

You might be right. But again, at the moment, it seems like they're a bit stymied. They definitely want him gone. They've definitely pulled back on the stick a bit. Their first ham-fisted attempt to try to hang something around him hasn't really worked. But that doesn't mean they won't try again.

Maybe they'll try to get him the way they have several other people on some sort of mortgage fraud allegations. So we'll see. I think the really wild thing, or the thing that I'm most concerned about would be the firing and then hiring of Howard Lutnick one-two punch where it becomes very clear immediately that Donald Trump is about to control the Federal Reserve. Yeah, total control of the economy. Yeah.

And we had a really good article that we shared in Tangle, though I wasn't crazy about a couple lines and maybe the headline, like I think it was, if you want 35%... I can't remember exactly what it was. It was something like totally insane, like if you want the economy to collapse, fire the Fed chair or something. But the writer made a really good argument about what we've seen in some other countries with regards to the sort of central bank being corrupted by political appointees. And it's not great, unsurprisingly, things typically don't go very well after that happens.

And there are some real world examples of this, like in Turkey, where there's this thing that has happened pretty consistently where people effectively watch as some executive leader, a president, prime minister, whatever it is, tries to just pull the levers of the economy independent of any kind of rational economic analysis from somebody overseeing a central bank, and things spin out of control pretty quickly. And it is wild to think or imagine

what Trump would do with that kind of power where he could tariff, he could print money, he could raise and lower interest rates. I mean, we would be living in like an unbelievable ordeal of uncertainty and total craziness. And so I'm less defensive of Jerome Powell as like this guy did his job well and he deserves to be, we changed the Fed chair every 10 years,

no matter what, anyway, he won't be there forever. They're gonna replace him. I'm totally fine with all of that. It's more like if Trump fires him, he would only go through that political malstorm to get his guy in who will do his true bidding. And that's the part that I find really deeply frightening and feels like it would have really big

implications for the economy. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Did you say Ron Paul is right? It should have ended the Fed. Is there a good case for that? Do you have the libertarian case for that? I actually thought about including some kind of perspective like that in my...

Is the central bank and the Fed just all... Are we just trying to make a bad system work well, maybe? I mean, look, I'm not gonna make an argument for the gold standard right now. I mean, if you force me to, I might, but I won't. But at a minimum, it seems reasonable to suggest that the government, even with the trappings of independence that currently exist around the Federal Reserve, that are obviously imperiled

Because not everyone is going to respect norms as we are observing right now That allowing the federal government to control Fiscal policy and the money supply it gives you a single point of failure in a really important sense and politicizes the money supply In ways that are probably not helpful to the economy. Does it give you more control? Sure, but that control may or may not be a good thing. Federal reserves have made profound errors that have caused problems in the past and if you, the kind of libertarian and this is kind of an Austrian economics but not narrowly, insight, if their perspective is correct,

prices are a signal, and the money supply is all about the kind of value of the dollar, and that signal is really, really important, not just to the US economy, but to the global economy. It changes everything. Interest rates are a signal. They give us some indication of what is the kind of cost

of saving relative to investing. And if those signals are being distorted, that could wreak havoc on the economy. And it does give you less ability to do some of the things that governments do when they are concerned about depressions or recessions or generally just kind of inflation. But taking away some of that control might actually limit the number of times some of those bad

outcomes come about and might allow for the kind of economy to rebalance itself more naturally. And it's possible that there are fewer hazards associated with that. So people are going to have differences of perspective here. But one thing that I think we shouldn't have a difference of perspective on is it's probably a bad idea for one person to be in control of all of those things.

And at a minimum, perhaps between now and next year, maybe the Trump administration will be in a sufficiently dire position that even some of the the die-hard supporters are willing to say, you know what, Mr. President, that's not really the outcome that we want here. We actually want to ensure the independence of the Federal Reserve because that's important and vital for there to be a division of power. But I'm not quite sure that I have any confidence that that'll come about.

And I also don't suspect we're actually going to abolish the Fed. That would require a great deal of change, even though we are in bizarro politics world. And maybe Democrats will come around and Ron Paul will be the patron saint of the party by this time next year. Stranger things. I agree. The abolishing of the Fed is a pipe dream, classic libertarian pipe dream. You guys are all just high as kites thinking stuff's going to happen and it's not going

to happen. But the fact... I'm not sure I've ever... I'm very true for that outcome. Fair enough. I'm not sure I... I think I'd put the firing pal odds at like 10 to 1 right now. I think it's fairly unlikely, but I wouldn't rule it out.

I think Trump knows that there are enough people around him who know that doing it would cause such a great deal of economic turbulence that it's like, the juice isn't worth the squeeze. And I think it's another year until he gets to appoint somebody. It's like, Powell's near the end of his term. It's definitely happening during Trump's term.

So you know, I don't think that's like a, yeah, his term ends in May of 2026. So you know, I don't think that's like something that Donald Trump needs to blow everything up for eight less fewer months of having your own pal as the Fed chair. Wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to me. All right, fellas, we've been at it for about an hour and a half now. So I think it's time to get into some of our closing stuff here, which of course, most importantly includes complaining about all the injustices that have happened to us this week,

even though we aren't the Fed chair or, there was a really bad joke there, but I'm not gonna make it. So, you. You. Use your bad attitude, right? This one's fine. All right, John, play the grievance music

and then we'll get into it. The airing of grievances. Between you and me, I think your country is placing a lot of importance on shoe removal. I'll go first, I think. You cool with that or you want to pull the no, I got a Camille? What do you want to do? No, you go. Pull the, no, I got a Camille. What do you want to do? No, you go. I want to open up and say, you never really

know the internal struggles that a person's going through in their own mind. For the past four weeks, up until last week, I'd been trying to remember a song that I could barely recall. And it is a very, very frustrating feeling. It's the mental equivalent of having a pebble on your shoe. It's like always there. Can't quite get it. I just had one line in my head that I couldn't remember the words to. I could kind of

get the sense of the lyrics, but the lyrics were wrong. So I'd search for it and I couldn't get anything. And it was like about a month of that, like three weeks, close to a month of just having one line kind of popping up in my head, feeling like I was getting a little bit, going a little bit crazier. And I was trying to, this is something my mom has called planned happenstance. I was trying to listen to music in the genre that I thought this song would be in on Spotify, hoping that its recommended songs would sort of return it to me like a message in a bottle. And after what I guess in retrospect is not a lot of time

of that approach, it did come back to me. So I was finally able to scratch that itch. The song did appear in Spotify and I'd like sort of over scratch the itch and the scab came off. So I'd listened to the song for like a day and then another day. When I'm writing something too, I tend to just listen to one song on repeat

just cause you kind of go insane when you're writing something like when I, yes you may or may not know Camille. That sounds pretty insane, yeah. When I was in college, I had a playlist that I called, that I think was titled like, Essay Writing. And it was the song Grounds for Divorce by Wolf Parade three times.

Just, and I just listened to the whole thing on repeat. And that's a song that you feel really insane when you listen to. This song that I finally was able to learn and now is stuck in my head, and now I can't get it out, but I at least have the whole thing, is called Living Room New York.

And it is by the artist, Laura Stevenson. It's a very good folk song. And I wish her the best, but I really want a little bit of, I need some space. I need some space from this song a little bit, which is ironic because I think it's about missing somebody in a long distance relationship. But I need some space from Living Room New York.

It's a great song, but it's been killing me. Killing me inside mentally for the past month. And now you all get to know that. I'll be sure not to look that song up. I asked John to put it in the episode. Give us an outro maybe. There's so many good things there. Yeah.

Planned happenstance, great phrase. Love that. I hadn't encountered it before. I appreciate the writing advice. Listen to the same song over and over again until you're done. And you opened with something that made me think of this Milton quote that comes to mind every once in a while. The mind is its own place and can make, and in itself can make,

a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven, which I don't know how it fits, but I like it. Yeah, it fits for sure. I do have my own like weird playlist, and it a playlist just titled beef and it is a bunch of different Like rap like rap beef songs and when I'm angry about something I will just listen to this playlist and it is just it mean it's the seek in it's the sequencing of the songs It's important to like it's the biggie Tupac The meat mills trade I would like access to that play. Yes, send me that I'd like to give that a listen No problem, Drake. I would like access to that playlist. Send me that. I'd like to give that a listen. No problem, sir.

I suppose there is one that doesn't fit. What's Beef by The Notorious B.I.G., which is a very... You need a combo breaker? Hanus song. But it's just a good beef song. It's a good beef song. That's kind of blood meridian vibes. I suppose I should get into my complaint for this week.

Your grievance. Don't call it a complaint. Don't minimize it. my complaint for this week. Your grievance. Don't call it a complaint. Don't minimize it. Yeah, my grievance. My grievance. I am aggrieved this week by social media. I don't like being the subject of abuse online. And I was reading a story about Brigitte McCrone, a woman who I've never met and suspect I never

will meet. But there was a story recently about how she is like heartbroken and miffed by all of the conspiracy theories about her actually being a man. It may be hard for people to appreciate who've never been part of a kind of viral public shaming or whatever you want to call it. Or at least the media panic of some sort. public shaming or whatever you want to call it, or at least the media panic of some sort. But when you find yourself to be the figure of contempt for whom thousands of strangers you've never met before

are like uniquely animated, they're coming after you, they're sending nasty messages, sometimes they're in your DMs, a couple of them find ways to send you emails and addresses that are completely undisconnected from anything else you do. They're leaving weird comments under photos of your kids on Instagram. Like, it's awful.

And it really, really sucks. And I suppose this week, I'm just a little annoyed by that dynamic, having endured a little bit of it this week. But the Brigitte Macron story when I saw it just made me think, God, you know, fine, you're a public person, you're prominent, and your husband at least is quite powerful. But damn it, I wish there was just a little bit

more kindness, a little bit less of an inclination to promulgate horrible stories. Even if you believe they're true, at least Candace Owens, like for a moment imagine that you might be wrong. And maybe this is injurious to someone else who has done you no harm. So I don't know. Just practice kindness, people. And maybe you won't—I haven't used my beef playlist in a while. Let me just put it that way.

I try to be in more positive spaces until I'm encouraged to do this exercise. Candace Owens is like primary. What's the mob commentary for? For the Radrique Mucrone thing, she is probably the leading global proponent of this. Cause I remember she, Owens claimed that Donald Trump

called her like two weeks ago and told her to cut it out because it was like taking a toll on Brigitte Macron. I know too much about this. It wasn't Donald Trump, but someone in the administration she claims. She alleges. She didn't say who it was, but someone high ranking. When Macron was in town, that he was going to sign a deal to end the Ukraine conflict,

but wouldn't do it until they got Candace Owens to promise to stop spreading these vicious, ugly rumors. And they are vicious and ugly. Like it's, it's horrific. But she won't stop. And it's like, it's... And also that's probably what would be really remarkable is if Macron was able to take

it to court and win some kind of liable case. Like I know she's suing, she's doing, she's taking some legal action in European courts where she could sort of, if she were to prove her gender, sex origin, whatever, and then like simultaneously kill the conspiracy theories and get paid for all the damages and strife that she had to live through. I would support that because you like Camille or like you Camille, I have been on the receiving end of much smaller mobs

than the one that Macron is certainly facing with some of the high profile like conspiracy theorists, for lack of a better term, the influencers we could say who are like drumming up this nonsense about her. Yeah, I mean, I at some point, it would like break me and I would just like get nude on a Instagram live or something be like this is my body and full take it or leave it people that would be like I also feels kind of like the Yeah, that is what I think the French thing to do. I feel like maybe she should just lean into the free Are you alleging that she's not?

Are you alleging that she's not really the bitch now? You're just telling me. There's nothing. It's just a really pro-Jex culture. There's nothing that could resolve these issues. There's nothing that could resolve these issues in the mind of the conspiracy theorists. They would see some people and say, see, there they are.

Those are the stitch marks right there. So, it's hopeless. Yeah, it's like the joke about the conspiracy theorists going to the pearly gates or whatever and asking God who really killed Jeff Gaines. He says, Lee Harvey Oswald. He says, wow, this thing really goes all the way up to the top, huh?

Yeah. Yeah. It's impossible to satiate them. All right. Well, my grievance for this week is not social media, but it is the algorithm. It is. And so it's interesting, Camille, I guess it's like almost a sister issue to the one that you raised. But it made me think of this

because we were doing a pitch meeting at Tangle. We're talking about some stories we're going to cover. And one of the things that came up was like what the government knows about you. And another one that came up was about the sort of online health space, subscription health space, sort of supplanting some of the more traditional ways that people get care.

And I sat in the pitch meeting this thing about how like a couple of years ago, when I started losing my hairline, I like Googled one time something about like hair loss medication or like shampoo that could stop your receding hairline. And for years since now, I have just been getting absolutely hammered with ads on every platform I go on about hair loss, with hair loss stuff on websites, on social media, whatever. And so this just happened to me again this last week because I'm trying to cut. I put on a lot of weight, like lifting,

and then I sort of had the baby. And I don't know if you guys know this, when you have a kid, you start to eat like shit and you lose a bunch of sleep and you don't go to the gym as much. So like all this awesome bulk that I turned on just quickly turned into like raw body weight. And so now, yeah, now I'm back in the routine.

I'm like going to the gym again. I'm starting to work out again. I'm trying to lose weight. And so I made the like absolute rookie mistake of just looking up like top rated weight loss apps. Because I was curious if there was a tracking app, something to put in my food, track my calories, whatever. And now I'm just getting bombarded on every platform I go on,

on every website I go on with just weight loss stuff. This prompted a few things in me. One, fury, anger, disappointment in myself for being so dumb to not do this in Google Incognito or in Brave browser or something. So I feel like a fool and idiot because I've trapped myself again. I also came up with an incredible business idea, which I shared with the Tangle team and nobody talked about how brilliant it was, even though it was so smart, which is create an app, a workout app, where you, when you sign up for the app, you put in a certain amount of money, maybe like $100, $500, something significant to people. And then in order to earn

your money back, you have to work out and like log your workout by tracking it on like one of the health devices like an aura ring or an Apple watch or something. And if you don't get the money back, then the business the app gets to keep the money you've deposited is like your subscription fee. This is brilliant gamifying workouts and so many people are going to fail, you're going to make a ton of money. And a lot of people are going to be really motivated because they want their money back and they'll work out and lose weight.

It's the seedling of an idea, but if there's an investor out there who wants to put some money into it, hit me up. Anyway, I'm just like, I can't believe that I'm back now in the slaps and I can't, I go on a website that has programmatic ads and it's like weight loss stuff and hair loss stuff. And I'm just reminded that I'm fat and going bald if I spend any time on the internet. So that's my grievance for the week and I can't wait to be out of it.

I should Google some other really big industries to maybe drown. Maybe I'll try and fake out the algorithm and look up some other stuff. I'm open to ideas. I kind of feel you. I know what it's like to post something brilliant on the team Slack and people not respond to it.

It's tough. That's what I heard. That's what I heard was the main grievance here. I think reading between the lines. I think, you know, I was pretty pleased with the way that I was able to play that keyboard keyboard thing that Will shared in our Slack. Got no traction on it.

So I'm with you. Sometimes you just have to take the signal that people don't give a fuck. Yeah, yeah, sometimes. Wait, wait a minute. I'm picking up something from you guys. We have a Slack. Yeah, we have a Slack.

We've been trying to get Camille to log into it for the last three months. We've been messaging him a lot. All right, fellas. It's time to get out of here. Appreciate the time. This was a good one. I'm glad we got all the Epstein stuff off our chest. Maybe we won't have to talk about it again.

Probably not, though. Shocking. Yeah, probably not. Take it easy. Have a great weekend. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wall.

Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kavak and associate editors Hunter Kaspersen, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsay Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Senior Editor Will Kavak and Associate Editors Hunter Tasperson, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsay Knuth and Kendall White.

Music for the podcast was produced by Dyat75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com. This episode is sponsored by the OCS Summer Pre-Roll Sale. Sometimes, when you roll your own joint, things can turn out a little differently than what you expected. Maybe it's a little too loose, maybe it's a little too flimsy, or maybe it's a little too covered in dirt because your best friend distracted you and you dropped it on the ground. There's a million ways to roll a joint wrong, but there's one roll that's always perfect.

The pre-roll. Shop the summer pre-roll and infuse pre-roll sale today at ocs.ca and participating retailers. Say hello savings and goodbye worries with Freedom Mobile. Get 60 gigs to use in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico for just $39 a month. Plus get a one-time use of 5 gigs of Roam Beyond data. Conditions apply. Details at freedommobile.ca. .

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