The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Epstein Is Trump’s Defining Crime: Rothkopf

Episode Date: March 2, 2026

David Rothkopf joins Joanna Coles to argue that the Epstein scandal is Donald Trump’s defining crisis, connecting global power, income inequality, corruption, and impunity. Rothkopf, The Daily Beast’s unmissable columnist and Founder of the DSR Network, explains how Epstein ensnared a network of elites like Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Peter Mandelson, and Wall Street titans, while raising deeper questions about obstruction, missing evidence, and intelligence entanglements. They also discuss how key players actively covered up wrongdoing to protect themselves and their allies, showing a world where privilege shields crime and the full truth may never see the light of day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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coms bar records. The reason I have hope is that in 2026, the majority of voters will have been born since 1990, that they will demand change. And unwittingly, Donald Trump's government will have pushed that change by releasing the Epstein files. And by being Donald Trump. I mean, you know, because he's the most vile human being that the United States has ever produced, and he's surrounded by vile people.

I think the cover-up that Trump and Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche are involved in right now is a huge crime. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. And if like me, you are having problems sorting through the Epstein files, like who's guilty, who knew, who didn't know, who was guilty of bad judgment, who was guilty of actual crimes that involved the more than one thing. thousand women who have come forward to say that they were trafficked or abused by Jeffrey Epstein. Then we have the conversation for you today with our favorite contributor, David Rothkopf. This is the perfect Sunday conversation, I think, to help process the corruption at the heart of the Epstein files and its ripple effect through all sorts of different businesses and through government. So grab yourself a cappuccino or whatever your drink of choices could be a

bloody merit, could actually be a double whiskey for this one and settle in because David Rothkopf, who worked for the Clinton administration, who was an entrepreneur and a businessman and, of course, was also the editor of Foreign Policy Magazine and is now the founder of Deep State Radio, which tells you something about his sources. Well, he's whipped. up ahead of steam here and he's got theories and conspiracies of his own that you're going to want to hear. Let's get to it. David Rothkopf is in the house. David Rothkopf, it's so good to have you here. And though you may not like sitting right in front of a microphone being grilled by me, I bet it's a better experience than the one Bill Clinton is having as we speak being interrogated

by the oversight committee on his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Thoughts, please. given that you works for his commerce department. Look, I'm glad that they're testifying. I think that Hillary Clinton put them through the ringer yesterday because they had no business calling her. She had nothing to do with any of this. It is a certain kind of insidious sexism, right? It's like, oh, no, we're getting, Bill and Hillary,

they're like a thing, right? We're going to talk to both of them. And of course, Hillary's the one that left scars on Trump because she beat him in that election. Right? She got more votes than he did. And that's something that torments him to this day, I'm sure. Of course. She got more in the popular vote than he did. That he did. And that was sort of under his skin.

Now, having said that, you know, asking some questions, a bill makes more sense, given Bill's past and his history and everything else. And I don't know how all that's going to turn out, although Clinton so far today has already said, you know, that he didn't know that he was doing this stuff and that wasn't what he was involved in and so forth. And that may be true. I don't know. Asking questions of Bill Clinton seems like a reasonable thing for this group to do. And also Donald Trump has always used Bill Clinton as a political human shield in a way to say, well, look, I'm not the only person that did this. You know, I'm not the only person that grabbed them by the pussy. Well, I think he's used that.

But it's a little weird, right? Because, you know when Bill Clinton was president? 25 years ago. Right. You know, it's a little like, this is all true with Trump, because Trump lives in the 80s. Trump lives in the 90s. You know, he was a TV star in the 90s. And, you know, that's the last century.

And, you know, saying, oh, we're going to go after the Clintons, it's really kind of showing how out of touch he is. Well, it's showing him as aging boomer, right? Right, right. I mean, actually, probably all his younger voters have no idea who the Clintons are. I mean, except that they're part of MAGA conspiracies. Or they might have a little bit of an idea of Hillary because Hillary ran in 2016, but even Hillary running in 2016. Ten years ago. It's ten years ago.

It's a long time ago. And Trump, you know, it's just like one of these aging people who can't get the songs of their youth out of their head. Right. You know, he can't move on to whatever the new issues are. are here. But he also doesn't have that many people to hide behind right now. You know, he'd say, well, Bill Clinton, you know, he did these things and he had affairs and blah, blah, blah, and that may get him so far. But Bill Clinton's little scandals in Arkansas, wherever he was having his scandals, is nothing to compare to the Epstein scandal. But I just want to say,

Epstein scandal is kind of like the scandal that connects everything right now. It is the story of our time because it connects the president. It connects the Epstein class. It's about inequality in our society. You've got the Russian secret police. You've got the Israeli Mossad. You've got, no, there's everything in there. There's famous people and there's crypto.

and there's murders, and the more we learn about the Epstein scandal, the bigger it gets. Yeah, I mean, I'm just going to read you a list of the people who've lost their jobs or lost their roles, being forced to resign because of their proximity and bad judgment for hanging out with Epstein. And it's 13, I counted, since the release of the far. So we've got Peter Mandelson, the British, you know, former ambassador to Washington, British. We've got Morgan McSweeney. So that's in the UK. We've got Borgon Brenda, who is the CEO of the World Economic Forum, Davos, the heart of the liberal aspirational establishment. We've got Brad Karp, the chairman of Paul Weiss. We've got Tom Pritzker, executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels. We've got Sultan Ahmed bin

Suleim, who was the chairman of and CEO of D.P. World. We've got Casey Wasserman, who's now being forced to sell his Wasserman agency. We've got Larry Summers finally stepping down from Harvard. Well, we had Joey Eto stepping down from MIT. Richard Axel this week. Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist resigning from Colombia. We've got, well, we knew about Les Wexner, Peter Ateer, the longevity expert and, you know, bestselling author of Outlive. Finally, he stepped down from a protein bar company faster than he did from CBA. Yes. It is remarkable how wide and deep... You know what's really remarkable to me?

What? That you didn't mention Prince Andrew. Oh, Prince Andrew? Oh, my God. Well, he's no longer Prince. He's no longer Prince. No, he's not. I meant... And what did he step down from?

Andrew Mountbatten, Windsor, whatever he is. Yeah, of course. He totally said 14. 14. Yep, you're absolutely right. And then... And the number of people who are stewing in their own juices waiting for the other shoe to fall. Right.

And of course, Kathy Rumler. who was forced out as the general counsel from Goldman Sachs. It is remarkable how this thing has just spread its tentacles. And it started as a conspiracy. Right. But we are still in the bad judgment phase of this. Go on. The bad judgment phase is,

well, you were associated with this leasy guy. Typically you were associated with him after you knew he was a sex criminal. That's what's really doing these people in. We are not at the phase where, you know, like Donald Trump is accused of raping somebody. We're not in the phase of people get murdered. Who's murdering them? We're not at the phase of the incredible obstruction of justice that's going on right now.

Who's murdering them? Did you just say that? Who's being murdered here? But think about Galane. Right. Her father was murdered. By who? Was he murdered?

I think he jumped. Oh, did he? Well, okay. Do we know? No. He left a perfectly good boat. No. And he went into the water.

Oh. What we know is he plundered the Mirror Group pension fund to the tune of half a billion pounds. And this 30 years ago. And he was, it was closing in on him. He knew he was beginning to move money everywhere to try and keep himself afloat. And it may be, and it turns out he didn't float. But it may be. be too soon it may be not too soon it's just so bad days but it may be so I'm so sorry to offend you

but it may be that that's why he died and it may be that there were people who are tied to his financial dealings who didn't want his financial dealings to come out but my point is here's galane whose father dies under mysterious circumstances her best buddy um Jeffrey Epstein dies under mysterious circumstances, this French modeling dude. Jean-Luc Brunel. John Luke Brunel commits suicide in the midst of this whole thing. She knows, right? She knows that she lives in a world of silence or death.

Because, you know, I mean, it's also an interesting part of this thing, right? Even I, like two, three years ago, if you said to me, Jeffrey Epstein was murdered, I go, really? Yeah, yeah. I think we're all thinking now that you look at this stuff and you're like, there's something here. There's something here. There's something weird. It's not just the missing videotapes or Bill Barr going to see him in advance and so forth.

And, you know, the more you learn that people like the Russians, like he was moving money for the Russians and was providing financial advice for Putin and he was dealing with the Mossad. And there are all these people who would really be in hot water if Jeffrey Epstein started to crack. We also know that his brother was like, oh, he's got a plea deal of working. You know, things are going to be fine. So it didn't seem like he was going to crack. So, but anyway, the point is, pick a story, inequality in America, political corruption in America, political corruption in our ruling classes, broken justice. system, you know, all these things that are sort of signatures of our time.

And here is Epstein. And then in the middle of that mentioned thousands upon thousands of time, you have this sort of, you know, well, did you see the interview that was done today on Fox News with the FCC chairman, Carr? Brendan Carr, I did not tell us. Maria Bartaromo, who's a total tool of Trump. Trump, yeah. was talking about Trump and Brendan Carr was saying that Donald Trump is the political

colossus of our times. Well, he's certainly a colossus. He's certainly a colossus, right? And that, right, you're not even mentioning Stephen Chung. But his spokesperson who, he keeps saying, you need to be on the fat drug. Right, who's also known as the human thumb and a few other things, right? The human thumb? Yeah, because he looks like a thumb.

Oh, because he looks like a thumb. Okay, I didn't. heard the human thumb. Stephen, interesting nickname for you. Hi, Stephen, nice to see you again. Stephen is always calling me a lying sack of shit just for the record. So people know, you know, know your biases before you begin. And Stephen's people, who you reached out to said that I was a no-name nothing. That's right. A no-name nothing. Yes, that's right. So, yeah, so there we are. We're at the forefront of their consciousness, right? But in any event, you know, I think then in the middle of this story, you have the most important political figure of the past

15 years in the United States, maybe of this century in the United States in Donald Trump in a scandal that is an absolute manifestation of everything who he is, right? I mean, this is like this, you know, some leaders have a signature accomplishment. Donald Trump has many, many scandals, but this is his signature scandal. Right, the Epstein scandal. The Epstein scandal. That's a great way of thinking of it. Right.

Because it's his sense of impunity. It's his weird, you know, his weird sexual history with fagents and pageant girls and models. Well, a modeling agency. Right. And setting up companies that he could then examine women naked, which we know from his Miss Universe. Which he did. He walked into the competitions and so forth.

In fact, we have something really interesting coming up that I'm sure your listeners here do not want to miss because you know, you'll release this on a Sunday, I guess. So it's starting off the week. You know what's happening on Monday? What? You know who's presiding over the UN Security Council on Monday? Who? Melania.

Melania is presiding over the UN Security Council? Apparently, there's some issues that she is interested in him because she's the Queen of America. Because I can think of Noah. There is it. She's a movie star. She's a movie star. She's a movie star. of America.

She... I'm Queen of America. America. Yes, I'm queen of America. It's so alarming to me. Really, I would just like your voice on my answering, you know, my phone answering service. Hello, David Rothok.

I am Queen of America. But, you know, why else was she? Why else is this woman? Very smart boy, Baron. Very smart boy. You speak to Baron? Yeah. Very cute boy, cute boy.

I'm just quoting from her movie, which is a woman. I know you haven't seen, but I have seen. Yeah, you did. You were there alone in the theater. I wasn't alone because at the end, I went with a couple of people and at the end. I keep telling people this, and I think it's odd. Two women came up to us who were definitely a Russian and said, you'll like a movie, how you'll like a movie. I was like I love the movie.

I love the movie because I was terrified. They were going to take me out of there. I got to tell you, there is some cell of the KGB or the FSB, whatever they're called at the moment. that has a weekly Friday afternoon party because this operation is the most successful intelligence operation in the history of intelligence operations where her father who was involved, you know... He was in communist party.

In Slovenia. Exactly. And by the way, Victor Nalves, who accompanies her everywhere, by the way, and looks like a smaller, slightly more rectangle. version of her husband. He's a Slovenian, Trumpian-looking figure.

Patriotska dolls. Oh, you mean you just... Right. This is like Patriotka dolls. You take open Donald and inside is the... Inside is picked the enough. But inside, who's in the middle? Vladimir Putin, who has...

This is wildly conspiratorial. But come on. Yeah, yeah. Well, we know that our first lady speaks to Putin. to release children from Ukraine, that they have kidnapped from Ukraine. Well, they all speak to Putin. Whitkoff said a week ago,

you know, Vladimir Putin has always been straight with me. Come on. Deep breath. Because he's been straight with no one else, Steve. Right. I mean, but come on. But, you know, that one of the...

Bring me, Steve Whitkoff. I like Steve Whitkoff. Bring me the head of Stephen Whitkoff. But one of the things about, the whole Epstein story is that if you dig deep enough at the candy-coated center of the story is Russia, Russia, Russia. Well, do you think Russia and Israel? Well, we know that there's some overlap between those two things, not for the first time,

by the way. But don't you think that everybody was paying him and everybody was giving him information and he was giving information to everybody? I mean, the thing I find truly shocking is that Peter Mandelson, who twice been, been fired as a cabinet minister coming back and giving Epstein information in pretty much real time. I mean, inside information, he was a government minister. I know a lot of people in the intelligence community. I do not know a single person who did not think or does not think from conversations that

I've had that Epstein would not be a target. I mean, think of what Epstein did. What do you mean a target? A target for what? For an intelligence service to get close to. Right. Because just like Mara Lago is a target, right? There's a big open door.

People can go in, become a member, wander around, see the president. He's got secret documents in the bathroom. Right. Can you imagine it's a great bonus of your membership that you get to look at classified documents when you go to the loo? Well, exactly. Right. I mean, that's a membership benefit.

If ever there was one. We'll never know that because, of course, Now the courts have said, we can't hear the truth on that. Boo, boo. Right. Well, you know, that's, you know, this is part of the Department of Obstruction of Justice sitting there working, covering all this stuff up. But, you know, I mean, we're joking and it sounds very conspiratorial and so forth. But do you don't think Russian intelligence?

You just gave the list of names. You don't think they who were financially working with Epstein? who were, you know, feathering his nest? Well, and we have a... You don't think they were gaining access? Right, and you know whose name people I can hear them are screaming at us right now. What about Bill Gates, who this week came out and said, yes, he had had two affairs... With two Russian girls, right?

One, a nuclear physicist, or Mr. Gates, tell me about deep security for Microsoft World. Microsoft World. How do I use it? And also, the Russian bridge player. She goes... She did play bridge, because he is a... the real bridge player? I don't know, but I'm sure they were both trying to get to the mystery of Y Gates.

Please tell me. I think they were just trying to have an affair with him to figure out how on earth do you use Microsoft Word effectively. It is so difficult. Yeah, or why they had that paperclip as the talking paperclip of the symbol. It was a long time ago was a talking paper clip. And they'd be like Windows. Talk to me about Windows 95.

I need to talk about Windows 95. This is kind of cutting edge right now. in Novos Sybiers, right? But in any event, the point is, intelligence services look for access to influential people in a country, ideally in situations where there's compromising factors, where they can provide a little bit of pressure to get the kind of information that they want.

And Epstein's world was, you know, the world's largest honey trap in that regard. And there's no reason to assess. that this wasn't going on there. In fact, I thought it was kind of interesting yesterday when James Comer, who's completely corrupt running the House Oversight Committee, the Republican right, who's going in for the Hillary hearing, said one of the things we want to find out is the involvement of Epstein with foreign intelligence services, Russians or the Israelis, he said, or our own. I was like, really? What does that even mean?

Well, you know, that, you know, maybe. What, they were giving him information to give to the Russians. They were running ops or whatever, you know. But the point is, these little clusters, these have always existed since the beginning of time. Before there was Epstein, there was some guy who was hosting parties in, you know, and famous people would go to the parties, and they would be a little bit compromised, and they would get drunk, and they would say the wrong things. And, you know, women would be involved or men would be involved in getting.

the information out of people. That's, that's, you know, these things are magnets for that kind of thing. And this is how people collect compromise. Well, that's right. And how they, you know, find people in situations where they're willing to give a little bit more. I mean, you know, why did Prince Andrew, when they made him a trade minister against the objections apparently of his brother, right?

Right. His older brother. The king. The king who is saying, don't do this. He is a near-do-well playboy. You know, they made him a trade envoy. Right. And so all of a sudden he had all this trade information. Right.

Which he's sent to Jeffrey Epstein. Which he sent to Jeffrey Epstein in these, you know, emails, which, you know, may, you know, be the foundation for some of the trouble that he ultimately gets into if he ever gets into any trouble. Right. Public misconduct, which is which if he gets charged is probably the thing he'll be charged with, as with Peter Mandelson, giving information. And both of them got things from Jeffrey Epstein, not least staying in his house in Manhattan. And I can't, I'm fascinated by the fact that in a world of Hotels.com and Hotels Tonight, are you? People still felt they had to stay. What do you think it was?

You think he had very plush towels? Well, he may have had very plush towels. But I'm, I mean, Andrew's thing was, well, I needed a place to stay. And you're like, really? Because as Hotels.com, do you know how to use the web? You could have stayed with other people. I'm sure he could have stayed with the British consul. I'm sure the British consul wouldn't have wanted him to stay.

day. I'm sure there's always a room available. Jeffrey Epstein was saying we have lots of kinds of room service. Now, as it happens, as it happens, I don't want to make light of it because he was trafficking women. He was trafficking underage women. He was, you know, abusing them. We can, we can, we can joke around about some aspects of this thing because it is so sorted. And these people were such assholes for getting involved in this kind of thing. And they reveal the how, how fucked up their characters were. But beneath that, there's a crime. In fact, there's a crime against a thousand women, 1,200 women, you know, to the extent to which UN agencies look at it and say, you know, this is, you know, potentially crimes against humanity. This is a, this is one of the

industrial scale network of girls that were coming in. I mean, we did a fascinating interview based on a piece in New York Magazine with a writer called E.J. Dixon, who, basically looked at the network of doctors. And what Epstein would do is bring these girls in from Eastern Europe and he sent them all off to have what he called the sort of pussy check, which was to make sure that their sexual health was top-notch. So he would minimize getting diseases. It didn't stop him getting at least gonorrhea twice. Too bad. So sad, Jeffrey. Hope it didn't impact your health in any way. But the premeditation and the scale of the doctor network he built was really eye-opening.

Yeah, and you have Jolaine who's like sitting there, finding people, talent scout, bringing them in. You have this modeling agency guy, finding them, you know, all those modeling agencies were a little bit dubious. No, unquestionably. You know, what was going on in these places. And, you know, Epstein is one of these stories. You know, if anybody thinks, well, the Epstein story, you know, it's like, now this is over.

you know, the whistle has been blown and rich guys are not going around doing this kind of thing and, you know, getting away with it here and around the world. That's just crazy. This just happens to be the one that we're, you know, getting a little bit of exposure into right now. Do you think there are other things going on of this scale, though? I have no idea. I mean, all I know is, you know, one, you know, hear stories and, you know, Well, who's, what stories? You know, these other guys, and they've got planes, and they're flying around, and they're going places.

And there's a piece in Andrew Loney's book entitled about Andrew, formerly known as Prince, where he talks about him going through 40 prostitutes in one weekend when he was in Thailand and staying at the British government's expense there in a theory on business, on official business. Yeah, and I mean, I just think, I mean, you know, look, you know, Pat Pong in the middle of Bangkok is, you know, a famous red light district where all sorts of craziness is going on. And, you know, there's one in Tokyo. And there's, you know, if you used to go to

the Metropole Hotel in Moscow and you would go down into, you know, the downstairs, there was a disco and so forth. And you'd go, gee, this is an amazing number of, you know, six foot tall blonde women dancing on the floor here and, you know, and then somebody would knock on your door later at night or, you know, these... Hello, Mr. Rothkopf, if I come to talk to you about Russian affairs. I'll tell you a story. Because I'm the most British person in the world and have no experience to this. I was 23, 4 years old.

I was producing a TV show called the Omni TV show. I flew to Hollywood. I'll keep it as brief as I can. I flew to Hollywood. We were producing the opening titles of the show. I stayed at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. I've never, I mean, I was like, oh, my God, I'm from New Jersey. Gorgeous hotel.

This is the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. There's movie stars everywhere. Oh, Mr. Rothkoff. Oh, we'd like to welcome you to the hotel. And here is your room and we've upgraded you. And I was like, well, you know, I'm producing the Omni television series, obviously. Is this the one fronted by Peter Houston? History of right?

And it was about science and science fiction. Yeah, very short-lived show. But anyway, so I'm there and there's a sweet. and I'm like, oh my God, I'm in a, there's a suite here at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Now, back in the olden days, in the olden days, kids, there on a phone that you would have a phone attached to the wall with a wire, and there was a little red bulb on the top of it. And if you had a message, the bulb would flash, right? And so I go in.

You mean a handset? A handset, yes, right? And so I got in the room and the little red light was flashing. And so I picked up the phone and they said, oh, Mr. Roe. I said, okay, what's the message? I said, it's Candy called. Here's her number. And I was like, you're putting it.

Right. And Candy was a lady of the night. Well, I didn't know that. Right. But, you know, I put it down and then somebody else later told me and said, oh, you know, that's what that was. You know, that that was just like a service. No, I did not.

You didn't think to call her back and say, oh, my God, did I leave something in the tax? Did it? I had no idea what was going on. But the point was this was apparently common enough in, you know, that, you know, people would come into the hotel and stuff. So, you know, this world exists, this demi-monde exists. And people take advantage of it to make deals and to make company and build companies and so forth.

There is one element of this, though. I wonder what happened, Candy. You have a big heart. I love that, no, no, you're a very compassionate person. I don't know. But I'm pretty sure it wasn't pretty women, you know, which was also in that hotel. Right. Well, and also, I think writ large for 10 years that movie, I mean, I actually think it was a sort of serious fantasy for both men and women that movie.

You did a lot of weird damage. I agree with you. I agree with you. And you can't look at it. I saw it the other day. No, you just look at it and you just win. and just think this is horrifying, that the kind of fantasizing of the life of a prostitute

who meets someone like Richard Ehr and gets. Well, it's like love actually. They're just some of these movies. You look at them in retrospect, you go, I laughed at that. I thought that was okay. But there is something more serious under here. I mean, you know, we do have the crime under it,

and I do think the intelligence aspect of it is a thing. And I think that cover-up that Trump and Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche are in. in right now is a huge crime. Well, let's just look at the missing picture of Howard Lutnik. So he's one of the men that's also got side swiped by this, because of course Howard Lutnik lived next door to Jeffrey Epstein, claims he went to his house.

Jeffrey Epstein showed him the massage bed. This was a trigger, a red flag to Mr. good old family man Lutnik who flees with his wife and says, I will never talk to that man again. A man known for his high principles throughout the financial community. Indeed. And then, lo and behold, when the Epstein files drop, there are emails showing that Howard Lutnik was in fact delighted to go to Epstein's house on the island for lunch as he was taking his boat with another family. And he takes his family, his kids, his four kids, and his friends' family with their four kids and their nannies to the island.

Seven years after Epstein is convicted of crime. Right. Seven years after. So it's not like, oh, we had no idea. We just thought he was our nice next-door neighbor. Right. And then what happens is a photo surfaces in the first drop of Epstein files with Howard Lutnik and his kids and Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein in an all-white linen outfit. Howard Lutnik in an unflattering pair of cargo shorts with a shirt that's much too long. It's just a fashion aside. And then, Miraculously, the picture gets taken back or removed deleted from the files on the grounds of nudity. The only nudity in it are Howard Lutnik's legs. Well, and disgusting.

Below the knees, because the cargo shorts. Nobody is known for particularly ugly calves. But, you know, I mean, worse than that is, you know, legitimate. allegations made under oath about Trump that are taken off, you know, worse than that are apparently, you know, well, there's three million other pages, right? Well, they've only released half of the documents, right? Right. Right. And, you know, they've redacted a lot. You know, there was a story that one of the things they apparently redacted, and again, I've just read this online someplace, but that one of the things that appears to have been redacted in a number of documents was the word

don't and and then people are like well why was the word don't relax redacted but of course don't is don't t and so somebody put in a search term oh so interesting and so they i hadn't heard that yeah well you know i read it some place but but but but but but that was you know redacted in these files we know that they're hiding stuff you know it i nobody would be surprised if somebody said oh there was a burn bag accidentally a bunch of things got put in that, we will never see them again because this is the, how do you have Todd Blanche as the deputy attorney general of the United States when his only real qualification was being the defense attorney for Donald Trump? Yep. But I do want to say one other little thing. Just as a little

footnote, I haven't said it anywhere, but I just think it's worth noting, right? A bunch of those people you mentioned, there is no allegation that those people did sleazy things. The assertion is They were associated with a sleazy man who did sleazy things. Now, we can debate this a lot. Like, for example, Bill Barr, the Attorney General, turns out was in the house when maybe some bad things were being done to young women. And, you know, if that's the case, there are more questions to be asked. Because if that's going on in a house you're in, you kind of know it, right?

So that's a kind of, I mean. Well, do you know it? I think one of Epstein's great skills was pulling a huge slight of hand while other people gave him the veneer of respect. Yeah, although, you know, he go into his house and there's like mannequins and sexy pictures and weird shit hanging around and massage tables and all this other stuff.

So he was giving out the vibe. But that's not the point that I want to make. But let me ask you something. If you went to someone's house and Bill Gates was there, or you saw a picture of the person and you saw a picture of Bill Gates. And this 10 years ago, not knowing now, Bill Gates would act as a kind of social alibi for them. And that's what Epstein was good at doing, right? Pulling people in Nome Chomsky.

Who would have thought Nome Chomsky would be a friend of Jeffrey Epstein? But he pulled these people in as hiding for the stuff that he was doing in plain sight, I think. I agree. He was trying to legitimize himself. You know, this is a, he's the typical. Yeah, he didn't go to college. He's the typical Araviste, right? He gets to town.

He wants to meet some people. He becomes a high school teacher at this school run, as it turns out, private school run by Bill Barr's. Dalton. Father. Well, I don't know what the, father. It may have been. But the point is, and then he starts meeting people and networking, and one thing leads to another, and the financial deals happen and these other things.

What is he doing? Is he trading favors? of one sort for another sort, who knows. He's buying, you know, a lot of this world of the Epstein class is transactional. I'm going to invite you to my parties. You invite me to you are parties. I can introduce you to this person. Can you introduce me to that person?

Oh, I have this kind of problem. Can you help me solve that problem? Which is what an effective network does, right? But it does. And at the highest level, these networks, you know, they, that, That's how they're working all the time. And their connections are better than your connections, my connections. And so they get their bigger payoffs from all this stuff.

But I think one of the sort of elements of this that's worth noting is all those academic people, the summers and the Nome Chomsky's and all these others, why were they there? Because we don't fund academia in our society. And they're all looking all the time for rich people to raise. money for. Like politicians. Just like politicians. Because that's the way the American system works. We're not a corrupt third world country. We just have a set of rules that say a few people have a lot of money. And if you want to do anything, you want to run for office, you want to teach a program at Harvard, you want to have a ballet company. You've got to go to this group, this very small group of people.

find your way into this group and start asking them for money. And actually what we haven't seen is the conversations among people going, oh my God, Jeffrey Epstein's asked me for dinner again. The man is a nightmare. He's such an hour of east. He's always surrounded by girls. But we need access to his money. Let's try and get in and out within an hour,

which is often the conversations that people actually have about people like Jeffrey Epstein, right? Right. And, you know, or we need access to this other person and this person's going to be there and I'm going to show up at these things. Right. And people just sort of drop their guard and they say, okay, hold my nose, get what I need to do. And what you see, what we've seen is the emails to them saying, Jeffrey, what a marvelous

evening at your house. I had a fantastic time. You're so erudite. You never see this stuff. They're actually saying privately about him. Who knows if Larry Summers and Nome Tromsky had a conversation. and said, oh, do you have to suffer through another Epsteinian dinner? I hope they had these conversations.

I'm not confident. I hope so. Now, I'm not saying this by any way to sort of get these people off the hook. Because the reality is, by swarming Epstein, by coming into these places, they provide him with cover, they provide him with advice, they provide him with, you know, links to this person or that person who can get them out of trouble. They help, you know. And so they enable.

And that's why, if you know, if you know, you know, if you know, you know, they're not. is it possible that in the year 2000 you might have known Jeffrey Epstein and not know that he was sex trafficking or that he was doing this? Yeah, maybe because there was no big legal case. But if you knew Jeffrey Epstein after the case and you kept showing up, that's why you're being fired for bad judgment because it's actually worse than bad judgment. It's enabling. You were legitimizing Jeffrey Epstein for years and years after where he would commit crimes throughout all that period of time, you were the ones that were embracing him and saying he was okay and telling him he was okay and helping him get off the hook in exchange for what? A donation, an introduction for some other

kind of a thing, maybe sexual favors in case some of them, I don't know. But it's, you know, It is how huge swathes of our society work. It's how the top in our society works in some ways. And that's why, again, I think that the Epstein crisis is not just the signature crisis of Trump. It's the signature crisis of our time. It is the story that connects to all stories because of the people involved, but also because of what it reveals about how broken our society is, and how corrupt our society is.

And, you know, associated with American capitalism, associated with our culture, associated. All of these things are, I think, at fault. And that's why I think that it's ultimately a healthy thing that this comes out into the open. Even though it's very complicated to wade our way through, can I just tell you an anecdote of one of the, I remember being invited to a transactional dinner. I get a call. I've shortly, I've just arrived in New York, and a friend calls and says, listen, would you like to come for dinner? We're having Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft to dinner. Of course I want to go to dinner. Of course I want to meet the co-founder of Microsoft, even though I still haven't figured out how to use Windows 98. Maybe that's what you thought you'd learn. Yeah, I thought, I'm going to ask him. Maybe he'll be my IT guy. Anyway, get to the house. Everybody

else has obviously been asked as a sort of freesant of excitement as we wait for Paul Allen to arrive. And of course, Paul Allen never arrives. And the dinner duly starts late. And then it's just very clear he's never going to come. But no one ever says Paul Allen isn't coming. There's just this disappointing sort of aura to the evening as we realize we're not important enough for poor. Paul Allen to come to. And I always remember thinking that, and I hold it in my head when people call and say, oh, you must come to dinner. We're having so and so because I always remember, well, are they going to turn up? And then this sort of fascinating bait, and God knows I've done it, too, where you're sort of baiting and switching people coming for dinner. And it really doesn't happen in the UK. It was the first time I'd come across it. I mean, it probably happens there much more now.

It's just an interesting, transactional gambit. Well, it's also, everything is kind of a pyramid scheme, right? A long time ago. Except the Daily Beast podcast, David. No, except the Daily Beast podcast. But a long time ago, I wanted to start a company. And I thought, well, one way to do it and for it to be big and successful is we'll get CEOs together. So I said, well, let's call it the CEO Institute.

And we'll have meetings of CEOs. And I said, oh, that's good. Great idea. How are we going to do that? And then it's like, well, okay, we'll go and get somebody that CEOs want to see. So who did I call? this guy that I later worked for, and people are constantly beating the shit out of me online for having worked for him for two years, Henry Kissinger, right?

Right. And so I call up Henry Kissinger, his office. And I said, we would like him to come and speak as a keynote speaker at this conference. And they said, okay, great, that's $60,000. It was a long time ago. That's $60,000. And he needs to be flown first class for him and somebody else. And then from Los Angeles Airport to Laguna, Nagle, which is where this thing was, he needs a helicopter to two pilots,

It's not one pilot. He has to have two pilots. Two pilots. That's a good demand. He's very insecure about flying. Right, especially in a helicopter. I later learned that that was true because he would be like, what is that noise? We've been playing.

Is that the noise you're supposed to be here? Anyway, also a war criminal. Should I have done this? No. Was I doing it with Henry Kissinger? For all the reasons we're talking about here, yes. I get it. I apologize.

And did you get him the two pilots? Did it all come to pass? No, no. So I get Henry Kissinger. He says, yes. So then I think, well, I'm going to have a panel, and it'll be a bunch of big guys. So then I thought, well, I'll call Alexander Hague, who was also secretary of state. All these flashed people that you called.

So I called up Alexander Hague, who I sort of knew a little bit? And I said, we're doing this thing. And he said, who else is coming? I said, well, Henry will be on the panel. And he is a big rival with Henry. He said, okay, great, $30,000. And I was like, okay, fantastic. So now I've got him for $30,000.

I think, well, we probably need three people for a panel. I needed a Democrat. So then I called up the office of Edmund Muskie, who briefly was the U.S. Secretary of State, a former senator. And I said, we're doing this panel, Kissinger and Hague, we'd like you to be on it. They said, great, just came. No fee. He just showed up because it was a pyramid scheme. Because he was a Democrat. I got Kissinger. I got that Hague. Right. And so, you know, we, you know, then other people started to come. And, you know, big, big name CEOs started to come to this thing. And lo and behold, you know, that's how that worked. Well, what happened to the company? My company? Oh, I made a billion dollars and then I retired to the Caribbean. Right.

It was a little company. It grew. It got sold to some other little company. You know, somebody made some money. I didn't. But, you know, it was fine. It was found it. It's leveraging people. It was leveraging. But we had a magazine called CEO magazine. And we, so I hung out with a lot of CEOs. I was seeing this all the time, where you're sort of building these transactional meetings, and from that, you know, comes our economy. And by the way, I heard crazy shit. Like at that dinner, there was a guy there who ran an airplane company. I don't even want to tell you the name of the airplane company,

but everybody knows the name of the airplane company. And at some point, the guy turns to Kissinger and says, look, maybe you could help me. I've been approached by MoMA Gaddafi the president of Libya the head of Libya was a horrible person and he said

and Gaddafi wants to buy one of our planes he says now we need a license to sell them the plane but I'm perfectly happy to put explosive bolts in the wings and so if we could get the license we'll sell him the plane and then we'll blow up the plane wow what did Henry say I'll talk to you later

I'll talk to you later Relet, but, but, but, but, I mean, I wasn't working with the time, but, but the, but the, but the, but the, but the point is, presumably the plane never sold. Well, who knew. It's not what happened to Gaddafi. Right. He ended up getting dragged and beaten to death for other reasons. He was shot in the back of a truck. Yeah, it was on the, yeah, exactly what happened.

But the, the, the, the point is that, you know, that's an outrageous story. But every one of those meals, there's a hundred of those stories. That's why Davos works. There's a hundred of those stories happening. around the table. Another person at that event came and said to me, I was coming into the ballroom and this woman who was well known and her husband was well known had rearranged all the seats at the table. So her husband could sit next to Kissinger so he could get a job in the next government and he was trying to do. And so, you know, there were levels of intrigue upon intrigue here

in our meritocratic let the market solve all our problems system. And you look at it and you look at it in retrospect and you see what has been sold and what the transactions have led to. And it's kind of stomach turning. And frankly, for me, in the Clinton administration, I was in this administration and I saw all these people go off and get jobs at Goldman Sachs or J.P. Morgan or these other places.

And then they'd come back into the government and oddly enough, they were pursuing the policies that were in the interests of Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan. And then I'd be in meetings going, well, we must stop, we have the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and we have to stop American companies from being corrupted by foreign companies. But our government's just as corrupt as those governments? The payoffs are just fancier. It's all done in a more white-collar way. And, you know, this is where we are, because we have also seen as a result of sort of 40 years of giving into that, the highest inequality in American history. We've now seen with Citizens United change in our laws that give more power to billionaires.

In the past 10 years, billionaires have given 14,000 percent more money to political campaigns than they did 10 years ago, right? And there's more of them in government, right? Trump has 13, 14 in his cabinet, right? And which, by the way, also proves that you don't have to be smart to be a billionaire. You have to be lucky. You have to be in some. Because some of these people are real morons, right?

But our system is at its core. And I don't feel like I'm being hyperbolic here in Washington, in New York, in the way that we do capitalism, in the way that we put individual aspirational needs ahead of society, in the way that we set the rules for our society. Our system is corrupt to the core. Corrupt to the core. And yet, David, it's a beautiful day.

The sun is shining. We're about to skip out and have lunch. And I don't want to leave people thinking that the corruption is unsolvable. What's not unsolvable, And frankly, one of the things that happens when you have 40 years of growing inequality is that the people who then grow up in that environment, and in this particular case, I mean millennials and zoomers, they say this doesn't work. My parents could buy a house. I can't buy a house.

My parents could afford college. I can't afford college for my kids. My parents had these opportunities. I don't have these opportunities. And I've got AI breathing down my neck. And, you know, I've got a government, by the way. this week, you know, it's a whole other story. But, you know, they're like putting pressure on AI companies to remove their guidelines.

They can do crazy shit and have autonomous weapons. He tags up doing that with Anthropic this week. Right, right. But, you know, that generation is coming up or those generations are coming up. And they're saying, our system's broken. Help me, you know, help. We want somebody who represents a change from that system. Right.

And I think Trump, 10 years ago, tapped into the fact that anger was growing. But of course, he was a symptom of the problem, not a solution for the problem. And the reason I have hope is that in 2026 or in 28, where, as I've told you before, the majority of voters will have been born since 1990, that they will demand change. And we're starting to see politicians who understand that and hopefully will say, yeah, the solution can't be dictated by the Epstein class. And unwittingly, Donald Trump's government will have pushed that change by releasing the Epstein files. And by being Donald Trump.

I mean, you know, because he's the most vile human being that the United States has ever produced. And he's surrounded by vile people. And every single one of their policies is driven by greed, corruption, excess, and ignorance. and, you know, disloyalty to the people of the United States. And so you reach kind of a point of a fever where this is unsustainable. This is too disgusting to go on. And I think, you know, the hope that I get is that it won't, you know, as Richard Nixon had a council of economic advisors chairman who once said,

that which is unsustainable won't be sustained. And I think the situation that we're in is unsustainable. Oh, David Rothkoff, a lot to think about there for a Sunday. But what an interesting perspective on the Epstein Files and the change that it's likely to create with its ripple effect, which is it's a rippling every day, every day more ripples. And eventually there will be waves. Well, and also, I think, you know, I think if you think the Epstein Files story is done, We're just at the beginning.

This story was undercovered because the people who own the publications. You know, the people who wanted to go to the parties, this was the world. Why rock the boat? We need to get out into the park on a Sunday. People put down your phone. Stop listening to podcasts. Get out and communicate with real people. Put down the razor.

Put down the razor. David Rothcob's excellent having you in the studio. Let us go and get some lunch. So tell us your conspiracies about Epstein. Come on, hop on the YouTube comment channel and I'll get back to as many of you as I possibly can. Don't forget to subscribe to The Daily Beast because we can keep you up to speed moment by moment

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