The Opinions - In the Epstein Saga, Trump Is His Own Worst Enemy

Episode Date: November 15, 2025

The release of thousands of pages of emails from Jeffrey Epstein has cast a spotlight back on President Trump and his relationship with Epstein. This week, the Opinion national politics writer Michelle Cottle and the columnists Jamelle Bouie and David French argue that MAGA’s engagement with figures like Epstein and the prominent white nationalist Nick Fuentes is causing cracks on the political right and gradual losses for Trump’s base. But will these incremental steps away from Trump eventually look more like a stampede?Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail]. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm Michelle Cottle. I cover national politics for Times Opinion. And I'm back this week with my usual partners in crime, the fabulous columnists, Jamel Bowie, and David French. Guys, how you doing? Doing well, Michelle. Doing okay. That's not very convincing, Jamel. Why only okay? Do I want to know?

Or we're going to come back to that. I'm just tired of being in hotel rooms, as viewers may have noticed. You know, you're the hardest working man in opinion. This week, I feel that we need to dig in once again to the Epstein files. 23,000 of them. I assume that both of you have read them all, every single word. I've read as much as I can stomach. Let me put it that way, Michelle.

I mean, I have to say. I found the whole thing completely vomitous. And I just, I'm so over this whole thing. But, I mean, bottom line, it sure seems like President Trump knew a little bit more about Mr. Epstein's predation than he had previously acknowledged. Just saying, not, you know. That honestly seems like a bit of an understatement. I mean, by his own account and by Epstein's on account, like they were close friends for over a decade. And it seems like every single bit of circumstantial evidence we get access to.

Like, I'll put it this way. Nothing has ever emerged to suggest that Trump didn't know at the very least what was going on, right? Nothing. Everything that's ever emerged relating to this suggests quite strongly that Trump was, like, very aware of what was going on and may have even participated, right? Oh, okay. That's where the evidence falls. Not so much... That's a visual.

I just, I can't handle Chamele. Not so much anything exonerative. And these emails are just another example of that. We're taping on Thursday morning, so as always, things may change by the time you hear this. But give me your basic reaction, David. Yeah, I mean, I would say this just advances an already terrible story incrementally in the more terrible direction. So let's put this in a larger context. So you've had a situation where we've had...

about the Donald Trump, what was a birthday greeting, where he allegedly drew the outline of a naked woman around a poem or some sort of very, what was very obvious, like the content of the text there, it was very obvious that if that was from Trump, that Trump was signaling that he knew exactly all that was going on. And then you have the transfer of Gisland Maxwell to a far more favorable accommodations reporting

that she is now experiencing even favorable accommodations within the context of the more favorable accommodations, getting special favors even at this new prison. Then we get emails that indicate that Trump may have spent many hours alone with a victim. Now, Republicans pushed back on that and said that this victim, who's a known person in sort of the Epstein story who passed away not long ago, that she had said that Trump had never done anything inappropriate. But once again, we had more evidence of connection to Epstein and Trump, more evidence that Trump seems to have known, at the, at Jemel is saying at the very least, seems to have known a lot about what was going on. And so it turns out that Donald Trump is not, big surprise,

some sort of avenging angel against sexual misconduct. No, it turns out that all of the available evidence indicates that Donald Trump, when it comes to sex, is really a really depraved man. He's a really depraved man. And he is not, MGA, your warrior against sexual misconduct and abuse. All of this stuff is very incremental. None of it is damn bursting kind of stuff. But it's all incrementally terrible for Donald Trump. And very critically, it's also incrementally terrible for the MAGA movement going forward.

Jamal, did you have deep thoughts on this? I'm not sure I have any thoughts deeper than what David put forth. I guess I would just observe. that in addition to the way the emails further implicate Trump or further suggest the degree of Trump's implication, to be precise about it, I was just struck going through some of them how, you know, you hear what I've read and heard about Jeffrey Epstein is that he was like this remarkably charming and intelligent guy. And then you read these emails and frankly, he sounds like an idiot. He writes in like this half-lip. He writes in like this half-lifference.

style. Nothing he says is particularly perceptive. And one thing I was struck by is, you know, the extent to which with these very wealthy, very powerful people, you always hear that they're so charming. I think it's that people want to be charmed by someone with wealth and with power and with access to things that they might want. I think that's true for Epstein. I think it's true for Trump. And one of the useful things about a glimpse to sort of maybe more intimate communications is It allows you to see how much these people aren't particularly remarkable. But the only thing that really distinguishes them is that they have money and power. So, David, as you noted, this is not the first piece of evidence we've seen of Trump's sexual degeneracy.

I mean, we've had the access Hollywood tapes going way back, the birthday card for Epstein, multiple allegations by women of his bad behavior. But nothing seems to stick, or at least stick in any. way that actually has repercussions for him. So do we think, or what would it take for this time to be different? Is it just deacretion or would there have to be something, you know, earth-shattering? I don't see that there is anything but incremental losses for Trump. I think if you look back at everything that you walked through from the Access Hollywood tapes to the E. Jean Carroll situation, to the Epstein revelation so far, to the Gisland-Mexwell transfer, pile that on top of January 6th,

pile that on top of all of the other Trump stuff. And you really realize that, look, everyone who's sitting there saying, what is the thing, there is no single thing. It's a number of things. But one thing that seems very clear to me right now is what we have is a one-way ratchet that is moving against Trump in the arena of public support. That everything right now is,

causing Trump to shed support. And then what's more dramatic, though, Michelle, is what's happening the layer below Trump. That's where you're actually seeing dramatic activity. You're seeing dramatic conflict within the Republican world that one layer below Trump. Trump is still largely untouchable. But any layer below Trump and people are willing to rip each other to shreds. And that is the dynamic that is taking place. Maga below Trump is cracking apart. And so that, to me, is what's the actual story of what's happening right now. So this week, a new Democratic Congresswoman, Adelaide Grijalva, was finally sworn in after weeks of delay. And there'd been all this grumbling about how she's long vowed to provide the final

necessary signature on a petition to force a House vote on whether, to compel the Trump administration to release its Epstein files, which, of course, it was promising to get to the bottom of this for its people long ago from day one. But, you know, that's changed. So as Grohlva is finally being sworn in, there's this news that Trump is now, like, putting the screws to Lauren Bobert, one of the few House Republicans who has been willing to do the right thing in this regard and sign on with a, you know, transparency group. But the minute, it looks like that they might have kind of the momentum to get this moving again and force some revelations, Trump jumps in and is like squeezing people, which I don't know how you can look more guilty.

I mean, it's just like it's like they're handling this as poorly as possible. Is there a logic to this other than they just don't want people to know what's in there? I mean, what the hell? I think the logic to this says that it is. is, and this goes back to what David said earlier, is that they, Trump specifically, but the people around him do not know how to engage in politics in any other way other than sort of being super aggressive, going on the attack and escalating, right? They don't know how to do anything else. No other thing seems to occur to them. This is their only mode of operation. We were going to

try to use as much force as we can. They kind of like beat you into submission. And when that doesn't work, they're kind of left adrift. And one thing I want to really strongly emphasize is that looking ahead to the next year, the only way things get better for the administration is if they can somehow recover, right? Switch gears, change course, whatever you want to use as your metaphor here. And there's no evidence that they're capable of doing that. Not even, I'm sure they might want to on some level, right? Like someone who, you know, might be addicted to eating ice cream might want to stop. But like they don't talk about me like that.

but they don't have the capability to do anything different. And so one thing that I'm, one assumption I'm operating for is that this right now might be like the high watermark at this point of like Trump's stature with the public. I don't see it going up in any meaningful sense. I think it's going to continue to go down because there's mismanagement of the federal government, like there's the material stuff. And then there's the fact.

as you point out, Michelle, that whenever any kind of scandal comes up, they seem to make themselves look red-handed. Like, taking Lauren Bobert into the situation room and trying to put the screws on her, doesn't just make it look guilty. It makes it look like you publish a book titled If I Did It, Right? It puts you into, you know, late period OJ territory. So I don't really understand how things are ever going to get better for them. I think that that's right. I mean, I will say, obviously, there are events that can occur. Here's a wild card. One of the things that could actually end up helping Trump quite a bit is that the Supreme Court strikes down his tariffs, because right now a Trump policy is a huge drag on the economy. So I think if the Supreme Court reverses the tariffs, you might actually see kind of a burst of economic activity and optimism that would be in spite of Trump, not because of of Trump, but that he, because presidents always benefit from, you know, a positive economic

development. So I could see that there are events in the future that I could imagine helping Trump, events. What I cannot see helping Trump is Trump. Who I cannot see helping Trump is MAGA. That's what I want to get at next, which is that if, as it looks like, there is a House vote on the Epstein files. This is going to force Republican lawmakers to make a very uncomfortable choice between supporting their constituents who want transparency

and not going against Donald Trump who does not want these files released. What do they do, David? How do you expect them to navigate this line and then Jamel, you after? You'll see a few peel off, a few more in addition, I think, from Lauren Bobert and Massey and some of the others who have pushed forward on Marjorie Taylor Green.

I got to throw that in every time. We've got to get it in there. And you're going to see a few more peel off because there's this kind of calculus going on right now. And that calculus is we know that there is going to be a point in which Donald Trump is a lame duck. And we're going to have a point where Donald Trump is an anchor on me in my career. Me, me. What about me? People are going to be starting to make these kinds of determinations at an increasing rate, you know, with every month that passes and we get closer and closer to the end of Trump's term, and also maybe even closer and closer to the midterms. Because for all of the bluster you saw

online about, oh, big deal, Democrats won in blue states, there actually is alarm about what happened on election day. And so I think you're going to see, again, I hate to keep using this word. It's a broken record, incremental. It's just going to be incremental. I think that's about right. Like, there's not going to be a flood of Republicans fleeing Trump, but there will be are small calculations here and their willingness to say, I don't think I'm going to support this. I think with this bill to force the White House to release the Epstein files,

passes the House, I would expect there to be a good deal of pressure on Senate Republicans. And I would expect some of the Senate Republicans to look around, you know, look around the environment and say, better to just support this than not. The sense that Trump is a lame duck, I think, is growing. I think the shutdown contributed to it quite a bit, not simply because it went so long, but because he clearly wasn't showing any particular leadership during it. Like, there was no indication that he would even capable for solving it. The fact that there's no legislation.

And that he just didn't care. Yeah. It's just, that was, that surprised even me. The fact that there's not really any legislation on the horizon. Like, is there a Trump? bill for anything that anyone sees happening over like the next year. No, there's no particular legislative program and then he's becoming more unpopular. So I would suspect that, and I will say not just more unpopular with the public at large, but among Republicans, he's not in the 80s anymore. I'm a 90%

level. He's like kind of hovering between high 70s, low 80s, which like for him is not great. So I think as Republicans in Congress begin to pick up on what is actually happening, in the public, they're going to, like David says, take incremental steps away from him. But a lot of incremental steps all of a sudden looks like a stampede, right? Yeah, yeah. And so it's not, which is to say, it's not going to look like a stampede over a course of a month or two months,

but we may look back and see quite clearly the movement. Okay, so I want to run by both of you, something that our colleague, Brett Stevens, wrote this week, about the Epstein mess. He was saying that the only way any of this sticks politically, is a smoking gun red letter evidence that Trump had a sexual relationship with one of Epstein's victims. Otherwise, it doesn't do much but provide fodder for a few manic hours on MSNBC. Democrats need to focus a lot less on Epstein and start worrying a lot more about winning over normal voters with better ideas about governance.

Agree? Disagree? I have thoughts. Go ahead. I mean, I disagree with that for two reasons. First is sort of like a low-level one. The first one is when he just asked, voters about this. Do you care about this? What do you think about this? The answers are, yes, I care about this. I think it's very troubling, right? And when you have like two-thirds of American voters consistently saying in surveys that this is something that troubles me, I want to know more about it, it seems to me to be political malpractice to sort of like leave it alone. The other thing related to that is the way modern American scandals work, in fact, it's not one big revelation that hurts the most.

it's small revelations over time that hurt the most. And so just thinking politically, being amateur political strategist, which I think we should strongly encourage people in our business from doing that. But if we're going to do it, being an amateur political strategist here, the best thing to do is just to keep it going.

Like, have it be a thing that he's asked about constantly. That's the smart play. But the other thing is I think Brett's analysis misses the symbolic aspect of this stuff. The broad public, and we see this with all these of political insurgencies happening in both parties are extremely distrustful of the establishment, right? They're extremely distrustful of normal politics, of institutional politics. And here we have in the Epstein scandal, kind of this example of corruption amongst the highest reaches of the

American political and cultural and economic establishment, major figure, paling around with this guy, politicians, palling around with this guy. And so if voters are telling you in their actions that what they want is some kind of visible representation of you breaking with the way things are normally done, then here is this scandal, which gives you an opportunity to performatively break with the things that are normally done. And it's breaking with how things are normally done that's going to open the pathway, I think, for voters listening to you on your other ideas, right? You show that you're not just another politician, and then they listen to what you have to say. And so I think, with all respect to Brett, I think his analysis here kind of just like misses a couple steps and doesn't take seriously what the voters themselves are saying and signaling in their actions and behavior.

So I think of it as short term, long term. So I think in the short term, it is, I think Jamel's exactly correct that it would be in many ways, I think political malpractice for Democrats not to focus on this because voters do actually care about it. I mean, it's a target-rich environment. Let's just put it that way. The record is full of full of Cash Patel, Pam Bondi, J.D. Vance, others. Like, we're going to get to the bottom of Epstein. And then also there's this other thing that this is about the only scandal in the Trump era, whereas he's engaging in sort of that classic political dissembling that makes voters' antenna go up.

Like, is there something real here? Because the other way that he's dealt with scandal in the past in his administration is just to do it right out in the public. Raising it out. I wrote about this. I mean, you know, he pardons a guy whose company helps pump up the value of Trump crypto, and he just does it. Or he just releases the memo about trying to extort a political investigation out of Zelensky.

He just puts it all out there, and it really confuses voters because they're not used to politicians just dumping their scandal out on the public and just saying, here it is. But this is classic political scandal. conduct, hiding the ball, working very hard to keep things concealed, and all of that broadcast to the public, there's something bad here. And so I think it'd be malpractice for the Democrats not to lean into that in the short term. But if all you do is win because the other side is bad, then what we're doing is we're trapping ourselves more and more into the cycle we've been through for the past 20 years, which is Republicans win. They govern in a way that the public doesn't

like, so they turn to the opposing party because that's the only alternative. Then Democrats win, and then very quickly the voters turn to the opposing party. And then we're just, we've just been doing this every two to four to six years for 20 years now. So it is absolutely true that if a party wants to break this log jam for anything more than one election cycle or two election cycles, you do need long-term popular stable governance, which involves a popular governing agenda that actually works in people's lives. So you have to walk and chew gum at the same time. Yeah, I mean, I think that the idea that you can just run against Trump indefinitely is obviously, you know, look at where we are. I mean, that's what the party tried in 2024 and we wound

back up in this pickle. Although I do agree with the point, and I think it's hard to overstate how much voters respond to kind of that ugg level scandal. I mean, you can talk about Democratic norms and the approaching autocracy and good governance all you want to. And they'll be like, yes, yes, we believe in that. That's not what really, you know, kind of sets them on fire, though. Something like this is like the sexual predator version of taking a wrecking ball to the East Wing, which we've all enjoyed. We've all enjoyed the public response to that. But... No, because, Michelle, that actually gets through a thought I just had, which is that I think one reason, one reason that people in our business should not be amateur political strategists,

is that we think in terms of words and messages. But voters think in terms of images. That's what lands with people, images, right? And so the East Wing is more, you ask a wordsmith, do you think people are going to care about the East Wing thing? They'll say, I don't know, so much. But people actually do care about it because it's a striking and dramatic image. And it represents something on a very visceral level about how they feel about what's

happening in the world. In the same way, Epstein is primarily about images, right? Images of this guy with powerful people, images of this guy with teenage girls, right? These images are quite powerful. And so I think the task for Democrats politically is to be able to conjure up compelling images, compelling images that tar their opponent in like talking about democracy doesn't do that, but this might. And then images that demonstrate a commitment to building a better. better world, right? For me, dismissing something as vivid as the Epstein scandal, as a political tool. There's a good word for it. It feels, it does feel like malpractice, right? Like, that's,

well, the press conference the House did with victims of Epstein, I think, caught a lot of people's attention for exactly that reason. You had actual faces to put to some of this. But shifting to another set of images, since we're talking about the potential coming crackup of the Trump Coalition, which I know, I know, David, is one of your, is your favorite topics. You've also been following the Tucker Carlson Nick Fuentes saga, which shifts us from, you know, sexual predators to groopers. What is this story for those who are out of the loop? And how does it fit in with, you know, the broader topic? Yeah. So let's, let's see. talk about both individuals. A lot of listeners will be familiar with Tucker Carlson. They may not be

familiar with the turns Tucker Carlson has taken since he's left Fox News. And when he was at Fox, he was a conspiracy theorist. He has to just double down on it. He's quintupled down on that since he's left Fox News. He has trafficked in all kinds of anti-Semitic tropes over the last several years. He's dived into the 9-11 conspiracy theories. He has given softball interviews to Vladimir Putin. And through all of that, he is, by some measures, a very popular podcaster on the right. He then invited a guy named Nick Fuentes on. And a lot of listeners may not be familiar with this guy because he's not somebody who you're going to see on television. But he's a very popular Nazi sympathizing fan of Adolf Hitler.

And when I say all of that – Like, when I say all of that, you're thinking, wait, what? an actual fan of Adolf Hitler and is popular? Yes. I mean, this is a guy who will say things like Team Hitler. I mean, he's a guy who has denied the Holocaust. I mean, we're not talking about dog whistle anti-Semitism from this guy. It's bullhorn anti-Semitism. And he's built a big following. He's got about half a million followers on this video platform called Rumble. And so Tucker Carlson has him on his podcast for what can only be described is in just a just an incredibly softball interview.

And for whatever reason, this blew up on the right. And it created some real anger, especially online, which then herit the Heritage Foundation, arguably the most prominent sort of think tank in the MAGA universe, came forward, and the president of the Heritage Foundation condemned dot, dot, dot, dot, the, quote,

Vinnibus Coalition critiquing Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes. unbelievable stuff. This led to a staff revolt in heritage. It has led to a giant fight on the right over the Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, where you're really clearly seeing the different factions emerge. The pro-Nazis versus anti-Nazis? Or let's just say Nazi curious versus not? And Rod Dreher wrote this, that about 30 to 40 percent of Republican male staffers on the hill are what you would call groipers.

And what is a groiper? There are people who follow Nick Fuentes. You're not going to encounter much in the offline world. You're not going to encounter much in the real world. You know where you're going to encounter it a lot in the ranks of young MAGA Republicans. And so all of this is spilling out now into the open, and it's causing an enormous fight within the right. And if you're going to sort of say it, it's a Tucker Carlson as the avatar for one side of it, and then Ben Shapiro on the very, very, very definite anti-Nazi side of it.

it. And so you're literally seeing people attacking, viciously attacking Ben Shapiro. Why? Because Ben Shapiro is mounted his horse and is righteously taking on Nazi sympathizers in the Republican Party. He's taking that hard anti-Nazi stance. This is a problem. And he's getting massive blowback about it, which is shocking. It is shocking when you think about it. So I don't find it that shocking because this has been, I mean, the gropeization of the Republican stapper class, you might say, the young men who are entering in Republican politics, this has been like an ongoing thing for a couple years. Back in 2017, after the Charlottesville Unite the Right incident, a writer Alex Perrine wrote a piece saying, that is the future of the Republican Party. That what we saw there, those young men are the future of the Republican Party, and he was right, right? this thing has been happening for almost a decade now.

And with all respect to Ben Shapiro, now I'd say it's almost a little too late to pushback. So of course he's getting into kind of a ferocious pushback because it's almost like a fait accompli at this point. It's happened. You scroll the feeds of the Department of Homeland Security and what you see are like explicit allusions to Nazi propaganda. The Vice President of the United States, J.D. Vance,

pals around with people like Curtis Yarbin, who, although does not identify as a neo-Nazi, has sort of, like, you might say, like Nazi-jacent ideology about the domination of subhuman peoples, right? Like, this is just part of the firmament of a good deal of, you know, professional Republican politics right now.

And I don't know what to do about it. But the rise of Fuentes, as a player, could be seen coming a mile away. And it's just, it's so clearly been percolated. Jimel's so right here. I mean, I was jumping up and down about this more than 10 years ago. Because more than 10 years ago, the alt-right emerged from the shadows, took direct attack, directly attack to my family in the most vicious and brutal ways you can possibly imagine. One of the reasons why I'm no longer a Republican, and one of the reasons why I was very quickly became no longer welcome in a lot of conservative circles, is because I was calling. this stuff out. They were saying, shut up, the real enemy is Hillary Clinton. The real enemy is the

Democrats. And so they were allowing into the tent anyone who would train their fire on the Democrats and they were shoving away outside of the tent, anyone who was saying, we've got a problem on the right. All of these things together started to pull some of the worst figures in American politics, including neo-Nazis, right into this broader right-wing tint. This all feels to me a little bit like what we've watched with the Trump movement from the very beginning, whereas these people make these accommodations, in part because they think they can manipulate or control or make use of the extreme versions of their or the extreme elements in their party, but not get swallowed up by them. But then you turn around and next thing,

you know, you're in Congress and trying to decide if you're going to vote in a way that makes you look like you're covering up child sexual predation. It's like once you go down this road and start kind of accepting stuff that you could never have imagined embracing before, on the assumption that you can control it, like, you're just asking for a whole lot of trouble. Sorry. I would go even further and say that being put in a situation where you may have to vote to cover up child sexual abuse is not just a hazard, but I'd see like the inevitable result of this, right? Like the kinds of politics are describing are politics that are built on exploitation and domination and hierarchy and the destruction of other people. And historically speaking, that stuff has always been tied up in the worst kinds of abuse of other human beings. not just in an organized state fashion center way,

but also in a directing quite personal way, right? So, like, my knowledge base is, like, American history and, like, history of the 19th century. And there were, we have loads of evidence attesting to pervasive child sexual abuse in the slaveholding South. It was like, it was arguably, that's what it was, right? That was the whole thing, you know?

and those people produce ideologies that on the surface were all about, like, you know, order and like organic community and such. But when it came down to brass tax, we're just elaborate justifications for dominating other people in the most disgusting and exploitative ways. And I see the same exact patterns with these modern-day neo-Nazis and neo-Nazi sympathizers and all of these people. It's the same thing. There's a direct line from disparaging, right, the Declaration of Independence, which our vice president has done, and engaging an apology for really awful behavior and really awful conduct and really awful ways of relating to people. Let me put it this way. People were more angry at me for calling attention to the fact that neo-Nazis had Photoshop pictures of my then seven-year-old daughter into gas chambers with Donald Trump in an SS uniform pressing the button

to kill her. They were more upset that I was calling attention to that fact than they were that that happened. Why? Because they didn't want me to undermine the sense of solidarity against Hillary Clinton. And if that is the dynamic, if that is the moral calculus here, then everything that has happened since was almost inevitable at this point, because once you have said, I'm going to accommodate neo-Nazi expression for the, quote-unquote, greater good of taking down a mainstream Democrat, then you've lost your way. You have absolutely lost your way. And here we are. And here we are. I'm comfortable taking a hard anti-Nazi pro-David French stance. I'm just going to come right out there Thank you, Michelle. I appreciate that.

I'm with you, David. Okay, so let's turn this after that kind of, you know, dark discussion. Let's turn this to some recommendations. What do you got for me, guys? And I don't want to hear anything about Nazis. It's a very, very smooth transition. I love that transition. That was pro.

Work with me, people. That was pro. How about you go first, David? Okay. This is easy. This is the easiest recommendation. week ever. One word, pluribus. It's by the creator, Vince Gilligan of Better Callsall and Breaking Bad, starring Ria Seahorn, who was Kim Wexler and Better Call Saul. And it's one of these shows that really

kind of was wrapped up in a lot of secrecy, you know, that the top line description didn't make it sound appealing, that, you know, Seahorn is playing the last unhappy person in the world. It's like, What does that mean? So all I'm going to say is in the opening three minutes, you discovered that there is a beam being emitted from about 600 light years away, and it has a message to it, obviously coming from an alien intelligence. And then just watch it. It's so phenomenal. It's just great. So I'm so excited.

I'm just vaguely mad that it's coming out once per week, and you can't binge it. I need to bench. I really resent the non-bingerable things. Okay. What do you got for me, Jamo? I have a movie. So listeners may know that I buy lots of physical media. I have a big Blu-ray collection.

And recently, a couple months ago, I bought a new release of the 1992 film Sneakers, directed by Phil Alden Robinson and starring. This is kind of the most stack cast you can imagine. Starring Siddi Poitier, Robert Redford. Dan Aykroyd, Mary MacDonald, River Phoenix, and David Straitern. It's about to former kind of like hackers who all go separate ways and they get embroiled into a grand conspiracy. It's kind of an obscure movie, you know, rarely makes it onto a list of things to see from the 90s. But I think it's like if you could imagine the movie version of a big warm bowl of chicken soup, this is what this movie is. It's so fun and comforting, and I highly recommend checking it out.

It also looks incredible. It's like a very good-looking movie. Well, it's got Robert Redford. Yeah, I just have Robert Redford. By definition, it's a good-looking movie. That sounds perfect for my holiday viewing. I'm going into that comfort mode. It's a good Thanksgiving day movie, actually.

It's a perfect Thanksgiving day movie. We're like, where you're, like, I'm usually the one doing the cooking. So, like, if I'm in the kitchen and there's something on the TV, you can put sneakers in the TV, and it's like people will enjoy it. Ah, perfect. Okay, well, I'm going with a kind of nebulous recommendation, which is that I'm recommending people get out there and organize a group outing that gets their friends

out of their comfort zone. What brought this up is that on Friday, I am rallying a group of about a half dozen women to go take a line dancing and two-stepping class. I like to dance. Oh. It is hard to find line dancing, in Washington, D.C., but I have rallied the troops.

But I like to do this all the time. Over the years, I've, you know, rallied people to go skeet shooting, karaoke, of course, all kinds of things along, you know, salsa dancing, that sort of thing. And it's always something that your friends are like, really? But then they have a great time. So anytime I hear the word dancing, Michelle, or that anyone's going dancing, my inner eighth grade self comes out, which means I, in real life, would stand on the edge of the room, affirmatively not dancing, and in virtual life of a conversation, means I shuffle to the

edge of that conversation. I would go dancing. I think it's fun. Would you? Yeah. Well, if you drive back up, Friday, Chameau, you're welcome to join us. I'm very much looking forward to it. And if it goes well, this could just be what I do on Fridays.

I'm just saying. All right, guys, I think that's it. If you do anything over the weekend, out of your comfort zone, I expect you to report back to me. Okay? All right. We'll do. Guys, thanks so much. Let's do it again next week.

Thanks, Michelle. Oh, looking forward to it. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Veshaka, Dara, Christina Samuoski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Alice. and Bruzic. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabro, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samuoski. The director of Times Opinion

Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.