The Duran Podcast - Epstein files and foreign policy. Trump reverses course

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Epstein files and foreign policy. Trump reverses course

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is going on with the Epstein files. And we have a statement from U.S. President Trump, where he is now saying to Republicans in the House to vote for the release of the Epstein files. It's an act that I believe was put forth by Thomas Massey, or at least he was one of the people leading the way for, for this act to be voted on in Congress. I believe it's called the Epstein Transparency Act or something along those lines. Anyway, Trump, for the past few months, has been very resistant to releasing the Epstein files,

or at least all of the Epstein files. And all of a sudden, he is now saying, okay, vote to release everything. What are your thoughts? Well, it's a capitulation. He's agreed to it because it was going to happen. Thomas Massey, as you rightly say, proposed it. There's a significant number of Republicans who support it too, and the Democrats, for their own reasons. And by the way, I would not be surprised if there's eventually backfires on them. But they were also going through the

motions of pretending to support it as well. So it would have passed. And what Trump cannot afford politically at the moment. And we've already discussed in programs which we've done with each other and with Robert Barnes last week, that he's currently politically very damaged. Anyway, he cannot afford to go down to a massive defeat over an issue like this. I mean, what would he have done? Let's say Congress had passed a bill like this. Would he have vetoed it? I mean, think what the effect of that would have been. So he had no. choice and very grudgingly and very angrily and after making absolutely uncalled-for and ridiculous criticisms of both Massey and Marjorie Taylor Green, which is, to my mind,

only compounding the damage which has already been done. He's now reversed and he has agreed for this bill to pass. And what astonished me about this, what baffles me about this, is that I am going to make a prediction. I might be completely wrong, but I suspect that when we do finally get all of the paperwork and documents about, and the whole files, or at least the majority of the files about Epstein published, what we will discover is that Donald Trump's own role with Epstein was in no, well, was not anywhere as close to being damaging as some people think. If there had been actual bad news about Trump in the Epstein, Epstein files, the FBI, the Biden administration, all of these terrible people would have used it

against Trump long ago. So that makes me think that there is nothing specifically about Trump there. So why he did this enormous damage to himself by taking that decision which he did back in May to try to keep this whole thing under wraps, breaking a campaign promise that the American electorate took extremely seriously. Well, we can discuss. this program, but only he can fully explain. Well, he pushed it while he was campaigning. Yeah. Right?

I mean, he's the one that pushed the whole releasing of the Epstein-Faul's narrative. No doubt about it. People took him seriously. It was one of the reasons people voted for him. Sure. It was a key reason why people voted for him. It made him different from the rest of the political class. it strengthened the sense that when this man said that he wanted to drain the swan,

he was being serious about it. And then suddenly he comes along in May and he says he's not going to do it after all. And as a the damage that has done has been enormous and it's been getting worse. Yeah, well, Epstein is representative of the swamp, no doubt about it. So, yeah, him coming out on the campaign trail and saying he's going to release everything. thing. It's basically telling the American people, I'm serious about draining the swamp. Yes. And I'm going to start with this, with Epstein, right? Yes.

The act is the, it is the Epstein files transparency act. And the aim of the bill is to make the Justice Department release all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials linked to Jeffrey Epstein. I was watching Barnes and Viva Fry's live stream the other day. And Barnes brought up a good point that there's a lot of documents and Intel about Epstein all over the place, right? I mean, it's not only with Congress or not only in these files with the DOJ. It's in various court cases, which we have been getting released. They've been trickling out some of the communications from various court cases about Epstein and Galane Maxwell. You have these files. You have

you have what the DOJ has, you have what Congress has. You also have what the intel agencies have. They probably have a ton of surveillance and information on Amstein. Yes. I mean, would we ever see anything from them? You've actually put your finger on the whole problem because this act, when it's passed, is only going to result in the point.

publication of declassified material. I'm going to make a guess that about 80% of what exists about Epstein, you know, recordings, papers, surveillance reports, emails even. I said, getting to make a guess that about 80% of it is classified. And what I suspect we're going to get is something not unlike what we've seen. with the JFK papers. We're going to get some document release, which will simply lead to more questions. And possibly, just possibly, that will then in turn lead to demands that papers that have been classified or which are classified should be declassified.

So this act is not going to be the end of this story. I predict it's going to be the beginning of this story. And it's going to continue. We're going to see various parts of the bureaucracy, increasingly resistant, and more people are going to be speculating and are going to be debating and asking questions. And this thing is going to run and run. And we're going to see the whole deep state, the bureaucracy, see much of the political class constantly fighting a rearguard action against full publication,

or at least greater publication of what is there. And Trump himself has already put himself politically on the wrong side of this, and I suspect that that rearguard action will continue to be fought by him, though I suspect that with every iteration of this battle, we're going to see more and more things gradually being declassified as he's pressured to agree to further declassification. I want to make one very general observation, just based on some of the emails and some of the information about Epstein that's been coming out over the last few weeks, which to me actually begs more and more questions.

It deepens what you might call the underlying mystery about Epstein. Because it's absolutely clear that right up until the moment of his arrest in 2019, he was in active correspondence with lots of important people. I mean, there's emails from, I think it's 2018, might be a bit earlier with Larry Summers, for example. He's in contact with Ehud Barak. We know that Peter Mandelson, the former British politician, I say former politician, somebody who was absolutely pivotal within the British establishment,

continue to maintain contact with Epstein after Epstein's first conviction. We know the same was true. This is the ambassador that you're talking about, the UK ambassador. The UK ambassador. We also know that the king's brother, Andrew, we're not supposed to call him Prince anymore. He was also in contact. And one is getting hints that we're going to find that lots and lots of other people continued to be in contact with Epstein as well.

And he was trying to develop contacts with the Russian government, which should. so far from what we can see up to now don't seem to have gone especially far, but he was even apparently trying to arrange discussions, private back-channel discussions between Russia and Israel over some kind of stabilization in Syria. Who was this person who was able to do all of these things. Again, this is the question which I suspect the more documents are released, the more questions are going to be asked about. Well, he tried to actually get in touch with Lavrov before the Helsinki summit during Trump's first term in 2018 before they were going to meet. Yeah, it was in Helsinki. It was. It was Trump Putin in Helsinki. Yeah, yeah, he was

trying to get in touch with Lavrov to give him advice. Yes. About Trump, interesting. Yeah, about Trump. Why would Epstein want to give advice to Lavrov to the Russians about Trump before they're going to have a very big summit in Helsinki?

I mean, you said rear guard, action, right? Yeah. I mean, you said Trump is going to take a position to protect the rear guard. I mean, basically you're saying that Trump is taking a position to protect a political or deep state figure. Yes.

Well, I think what we're seeing is the extent to which Epstein was a deep state figure. I mean, he was never an official of the US government, but he was conducting what I can only describe as diplomacy. I mean, reaching out to Lavrov to not just a. give Lavrov advice, but to give Lavrov advice about Trump. Is that a hint that he has information about Trump? Well, he contacted a former Norwegian Prime Minister, I believe, in order to get to Lavrov. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, he's got those kind of contacts. It doesn't seem, by the way, is that the Russians on that occasion took him up on that offer.

He did speak to Russia's ambassador to the UN, not the current one. the previous one, the one who died, Vitali Churkin. But he also seems to have been trying to arrange a back channel between the Russians and the Israelis during Russia's intervention in Syria previously. I mean, again, this is diplomacy at a very high level involving very important people. And they don't come back and say, well, who is this person? Why would we want to communicate with him? What kind of actual role in the United States is he actually playing to be able to conduct

diplomacy like this? Nobody. None of the people that Epstein seems to be an email correspondence express surprise or doubt or question his role. And what exactly was his role? role and was he working for someone? I know a lot of people are going to speculate about whom he was working for. But why was he playing this pivotal role in the conduct of diplomacy, not just in the United States and for the United States, but altogether, as I said, trying to broker

contacts between Russia and Israel, apparently other countries too. As I said, lots of questions And with Epstein, the questions just go on mounting. Yeah, I mean, when you look at the emails that have been released so far, it does appear as if Epstein took a very active role in foreign policy. Yes, yes, yes. I mean, he was all over the place when it comes to foreign policy and diplomacy. Why would Trump, who's been resisting the release of these files, why would he turn around and say in a truth social post, release the files, I don't care. They're going to do more damage to the Democrats anyway. I mean, you would think that in much the same way, we are speculating, everyone is speculating,

that the Democrats did not release, if the Democrats had information on Trump, damaging information on Trump through these Epstein files, they would have released it when Biden was president. Nothing was really released. So we make the assumption that most likely there was nothing. that incriminating, that damaging to Trump, right? Yes. That's the assumption that is made. But you can say the reverse. If Trump is now on record saying that these files are going to do damage to the Democrats,

why would he resist releasing these files? More and more questions and not enough really good answers. And this is going to snowball. I mean, as I said, this is going to fester. Because with every document released, as I said my prediction, more questions are going to be asked because the documents are going to open up the way for further questions. And that's absolutely correct. I mean, Trump hasn't explained this.

Hasn't explained why the Democrats are pushing to release papers, which he says are going to incriminate that. I think they will, by the way. I think we're going to find all sorts of people who are either in the Democratic party or who are connected to the Democratic Party will have, let's say, more questions to answer. And I do believe, for the record, that Epstein's connections were more with the Democrats than with the Republicans, which doesn't mean, by the way, that there weren't lots of Republicans also involved. But what we've seen publicly, what we've, the information we've had publicly, if we've looked at, if we look at who was, you know, passengers on his private jet, it does seem to

point more to Democrats, prominent Democrats, the Clintons, people like that, than to Republicans. But I suspect that this is just the tip of the iceberg, that Trump perhaps has been told that the iceberg is enormous and that it also implicates all kinds of other people. perhaps not him personally, but people who are close to him and people who perhaps he has relied upon because they're donors or political allies or who knows what. Again, I know lots of people who are watching this program are coming up with their own answers and some of those answers may be true. But for the moment, we're just speculating, we're just guessing because we don't know.

know, and this is going to get worse and worse with every further iteration of this scandal. Unless and until there is a proper release of everything. How? How do you get there? I'll tell you how it can be done. You set up a proper board of inquiry. You have it set up by Act of Congress. you give it statutory powers, you get proper people drawn from the wider community, including, by the way, some of the victims, the trafficking victims, you have them involved,

you accept that this is going to be a five-year, ten-year investigation or something like that, because I suspect it is on that kind of scale. And you also contain in the Act proper provisions for regular reports by this committee, maybe every six months giving us updates on what is happening and what has been found. And, you know, with proper reports to Congress and with public hearings in Congress, and indeed public hearings by this committee also. And you could do it. It's not impossible.

Once upon a time, the United States was able to do things like this. During the Watergate, in the aftermath of the Watergate scandals, a scandal, there were all sorts of scandals that came up about some of the activities that happened with the CIA and the US intelligence communities in the 50s and 60s. and the Church Commission was set up in the United States, and it didn't go anywhere near far enough, but it went very far, and all sorts of uncomfortable and disturbing facts came out into the open. So it can be done. The United States used to know how to do this,

and in the interests of cleansing the political system, and sorting out the U.S.'s foreign relationships, because this is all about foreign policy, by the way. This is my growing sense about this is that this is the scandal is mostly connected to foreign policy, more than anything else, more than domestic policy. There's no sign that Epstein up to now, from what we've seen, was particularly interested in U.S. domestic policies at all, taxation, or any of the other things. In the interest of getting to the answer of U.S. public relations, foreign policy relations, we need to go through this exercise to find out the truth. Yeah, I agree. The United States needs to go through this exercise.

Absolutely. Can Trump save his reputation from all of this if you say he had a reputation? Let's say his MAGA, his MAGA movement. that he started. He says, I started MAGA. He told Laura Ingram, I started MAGA, I know what MAGA wants,

I know what MAGA needs. So let's assume, let's say, yes, he started MAGA. MAGA is his movement. Can Trump remain part of MAGA or by siding the way that he has, by taking the position that he has taken?

He has removed himself from MAGA, at least in my opinion, He's taken the exact opposite position of what America first, Make America Great Again, was and is. He took the exact opposite position with regards to the way he lined up with the release of the Epstein files. Can he return from where he is? I think an enormous amount of damage has been done, and I don't myself believe that the damage can ever be fully repaired. I mean, he's been forced to take the step that he has just done, this reversal that he has just done. But I don't believe there's any real conviction in it.

If there was, he wouldn't be criticizing Massey and Marjorie Taylor Green in the way that he is. So I don't think there's any real change of feeling on the part of Trump. It's just that he knows that if this bill went to Congress, he would lose. Too many Republicans would support it. And the Democrats for their own interests, political interests, misguided, though that may turn out to be to them, by the way. I'll go to support it anyway because they think it will hurt Donald Trump. So I don't think there is a way back for Trump from this. I think he has completely misunderstood the underlying dynamic in U.S. policy, in politics.

I think he believes that Maga is entirely his own creation. He does believe that. He does believe that. He said it. That's why I said. He told Laurie Ingram. Exactly. To the extent that that is true, it has now outgrown him.

It exists as a movement beyond him. And anyway, I don't think that was ever really true. Obviously, he came up with the expression. But I think that current of wanting to prioritize the interests of the United States, America first, if you like, restoring the Republic, as many people say, I think that was already there before he came along and that it was growing stronger. And I think what brought Trump to the White House in 2017, and what brought Trump back to the White House again this year,

was that in a sense he surfed that growing wave, which, of course, through his personality and his political skills, which absolutely do exist, he contributed to. But I don't, I think that he's absolutely wrong if he thinks that he imagined it all himself. Before him, there was the tea movement, for example, in the United States, which was partly, the Tea Party, sorry. Which was partly about all of this. Of course, it's grown and it's evolved and it's developed new ideas and new thinking.

and then there was the effect of the radicalizing effect of the Iraq War and the Forever Wars. Even Occupy Wall Street, which was a left-wing movement, has probably to some extent had an influence over all of this. No single individual can generate the kind of political movement that Maga has become. And I think Trump is delusional if he thinks it's all down to him. I agree with you. I actually think that Mag is pretty much over, and I think we have evolved to a more left-right. It doesn't matter if you're left or right anymore. I think there are parts of both sides, which are definitely saying America first. Put America's interests and Americans' interests first, whether it's coming from the left. There are a lot of voices in the left that are saying that. There's a lot of voices in the right that are saying that. Exactly, exactly. And what he could have done is that of course he could have looked, and perhaps temporarily he did unite all of those different streams. It looked as if he might.

He might have done. But of course he did. That's the... He went the opposite. He went the opposite. He went more neocon than anything. Exactly. He went more deep state.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Okay. We'll see where all of this ends up. We're just at the beginning, I think. We are absolutely just at the beginning. And just to repeat again, as I said, I know what a lot of people believe.

I spot Robert Barnes believes. And it may very well turn out to be true. I actually think it's worse than that. I think it's what we're going to find, if we ever do get to the end of this rabbit hole, is something that's very dark and very sinister, very ugly indeed. And it goes beyond just one government, just to say. Yeah. All right.

We will end it there. The durand.locals.com. We are on X and on Rumble and on Telegram and also on substack as well. You'll find the substack link down below. Take care.