Trump declares war on the podcast bros over Epstein
He wants people to shut up about the dead financier. Will his base buy it?
The official rationale for closing the FBI investigation into Jeffrey Epstein stinks and President Trump must know it - even if he can manage to feign incredulity that anyone should still want to talk about the disgraced financier.
‘‘Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years,’ he responded testily on Tuesday to a reporter’s question at a cabinet meeting about whether Epstein had ever been an intelligence agency asset.
‘Are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable. Do you want to waste the time? I mean I can’t believe you’re asking a question on Epstein.’
Crucially, Trump didn’t deny Epstein was a spook, and neither did Attorney General Pam Bondi to whom he passed the question. “I have no knowledge about that. We can get back to you about that,” she obfuscated.
What an insane place the Epstein saga has now arrived at, a place in which - according to the official statement released late on Monday - we are now required by the FBI and the Department of Justice to believe Epstein did not traffic ‘over one thousand’ young women to powerful men as part of an industrial-scale honey trap blackmail operation, but rather that he molested them himself, in private.
As for all the entertaining he did on his Little Saint James island, or at his various multimillion dollar properties – where guests included Bill Gates, Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew – hell, he must have just really loved parties.
Stating that there seems obviously to be a high level, deep state cover-up taking place on all things Epstein-related can no longer be dismissed simply as a nut-job conspiracy theory, no matter how much those involved might like to. Why not? Well, because so many of the people now asking us to believe the unbelievable not so long ago themselves called bullshit.
In 2023, current head of the FBI Kash Patel was asked by podcast host Glenn Beck who he believed had possession of Epstein’s black book of clients.
He said: “FBI. That’s under direct control of the director of the FBI… This is another government gangster operation. All these local law enforcement communities get funding from the DOJ and FBI for local programs. If you don’t cooperate, you’re not getting your million dollars for this, and that’s a lot of money to these local districts. That’s how they play the game. That’s why you don’t have the black book.”
In 2021, Vice President JD Vance responded to allegations Epstein’s close associate Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyers had made a deal with the DOJ to ensure her black book of contacts would never see the light of day, by stating: “What possible interest would the US government have in keeping Epstein’s clients secret?... If you’re a journalist and you’re not asking questions about this case you should be ashamed of yourself. What purpose do you even serve?”
Exactly.
There is so much about the Epstein case that is deeply suspect. To pick a few questions at random: what exactly was contained in Ghislaine Maxwell’s testimony at her 2021 trial for crimes including human trafficking that was considered sufficiently ‘sensational and impure’ by judge Alison J Nathan that to this day it is withheld from public consumption?
What did former US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Alex Acosta mean when he said ‘I was told Epstein “belonged to intelligence” and to leave it alone’ when explaining the 2008 plea deal over which he presided that saw Epstein receive a thirteen-month work release deal rather than a maximum 45-year jail sentence for the crime of raping girls as young as 14?
Also, was the $158 million dollars paid to Epstein between 2012 and 2017 by Apollo Global Management Services CEO Leon Black really only for ‘estate planning, tax and philanthropic advice,’ as claimed? It seems a tremendous amount. Interestingly, Black was twice on the receiving end of lawsuits alleging he raped young women at properties owned by Epstein. He has denied all accusations.
Then, of course, there is all the other strange stuff: the cameras filming the door to the cell in which Epstein supposedly committed suicide being on the blink. The guards responsible for supervising him being asleep. Epstein’s friend the modelling agent Jean-Luc Brunel - who like him supposedly committed suicide in a Paris jail while awaiting trial for human trafficking - being pictured on Little Saint James island wearing a cap bearing the words ‘Israel Army’.
Could it be that Trump, who before winning re-election said he would have ‘no problem’ with releasing the Epstein files, has been forced to make some very difficult decisions to protect the involvement of the American state, or of America’s allies, in whatever Epstein was up to? There are also people who claim he is trying to protect himself. It is no secret he used to party with Epstein. The Democrats on Tuesday demanded all DOJ Epstein documents mentioning Trump be released.
What seems certain is that Trump at a stroke has placed himself at odds with the podcast bros – and their massive audiences – that he and Vance went to such lengths to embrace ahead of the election. Hundreds of hours have been spent over the years by the likes of Joe Rogan, Tim Dillon, Lex Fridman and Theo Vonn discussing Epstein.
This, for example, is Rogan’s recent take on Epstein: ‘It was an intelligence operation. Whoever was running it - whether it was the Mossad or the CIA, or whether it was a combination of both - it was an intelligence operation. They were bringing in people and compromising them, and then when they compromised them, they would use whatever they had on them to influence their opinions and the way they expressed their opinions.’
It seems extraordinary that Trump’s usually so reliably excellent political instincts, particularly when it comes to his base, would be so off. What is really going on? Unless answers are swiftly forthcoming, there is no danger discussion of Epstein will cease any time soon. It will be tremendously damaging for Trump.