Epstein Haunts the Elites, Mamdani to White House, with Matt Taibbi, PLUS Jasmine Crockett’s Big FAIL

Summary

Podcast Summary: After Party with Emily Jashinsky

Episode: Epstein Haunts the Elites, Mamdani to White House, with Matt Taibbi, PLUS Jasmine Crockett’s Big FAIL
Date: November 20, 2025
Guest: Matt Taibbi
Host: Emily Jashinsky

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Episode Overview

Emily Jashinsky hosts journalist Matt Taibbi for an expansive, incisive discussion touching on the political and cultural reverberations of the latest Epstein revelations, the awkward position of elites caught in the fallout, breaking developments with New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani meeting Donald Trump, and a viral congressional blunder by Rep. Jasmine Crockett. The episode wraps with a cultural deep-dive into recent trends in country music and what they say about American life today.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Epstein Files Transparency Act & Fallout (04:07–36:25)

New Document Release & Mainstream Reactions

• Taibbi outlines the current mania around the recently-passed Epstein Files Transparency Act and a massive new document dump revealing further connections between Epstein and prominent political figures (04:55).
• Congressional carve-outs for "national security" or "personal info" already signal likely significant redactions, with Speaker Mike Johnson and others invoking standard security justifications (06:52, 07:24).
• Taibbi is skeptical of these justifications:

  “The language, ‘to the maximum extent possible’ is already ridiculous… when there's a will, there's a way. When they feel like it's in their political interest to do so. I don't think that excuse is going to hold water. …You can almost hear the sigh of relief all across Washington.” (08:38)

Congressional Corruption and the Plaskett Case

• The Stacy Plaskett Situation: Recent revelations include Plaskett texting Epstein live during congressional hearings.
  • Emily: “It's just incredible that Lee [Fang] reported this in 2023 and it takes some of these really salacious emails for anyone to care about it, seemingly at least.” (14:13)
  • Taibbi: “She did work for the firm that represented Epstein… she's intimately involved with Jeffrey Epstein.” (12:27)
• Plaskett’s defense ("Epstein was my constituent") is widely panned for hypocrisy, highlighted by her previous denials and slow return of Epstein donations to charity (12:16-14:13).
• Broader Corruption: Numerous Virgin Islands officials implicated, exemplifying “ordinary, common-run corruption and the buying of access.” Epstein’s ability to manipulate local power via donations is emphasized (15:10).

The Larry Summers Angle

• Footage plays of Summers addressing his Harvard class in the wake of emails showing him confiding regularly in Epstein and allegedly courting the daughter of a Chinese Belt and Road official (20:24).
• Taibbi delivers a brutal assessment:

  “He's a rare like 10 out of 10 on the celebrity repugnance scale… He personifies the habit of this class of people to shower and lavish awards on intellectual mediocrity and give it exalted academic titles.” (21:33)

  • On the Summers-Epstein relationship: “It's embarrassing… These are people, one guy is worth $600 million and the other is the president of Harvard, and they have these terrible insecurities. It's really kind of sad to read.” (23:13)

Epstein: Conspiracies, Fact & Media Narratives

• “Is Epstein ‘like Russiagate’?” Taibbi draws a parallel to the media's speculative excess around Russiagate, cautioning against jumping to maximalist conclusions:

  “Everybody assumes that it's an intelligence conspiracy that involves sexual blackmail, but the evidence for that is lacking… the news is sort of ahead of its skis on this in the same way it was with Russiagate.” (27:44)

• While there’s “meat on the bone” regarding Epstein’s direct abuse, there’s a lack of direct documentation for the much-assumed intelligence/blackmail operation (30:46).

Reflection on Elite Corruption

• Emily probes the link between elites’ messy personal and political lives.
  • Taibbi: “There’s increasingly an assumption among voters… that people don’t tend to rise in politics unless they're compromised in some way… it speaks to their arrogance—they obviously assume they would get away with misbehavior without consequence.” (34:00-34:23)

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2. AI Bubble, OpenAI, and the Institutional Arrogance of Elites (36:25–40:50)

• Emily raises concerns over “circular funding” in AI (OpenAI, Nvidia), drawing parallels with the pre-2008 financial bubble.
• Taibbi: “That's certainly the lesson after 2008… they know that even if they just experience a downturn they're going to be propped up. There's an implied backstop to everything they do.” (37:23)
• On a coming AI crash?

  “Some of my old friends from like the finance days have been calling up and saying that the rug is going to come out from under this AI bubble sooner rather than later.” (38:16)

• Wall Street’s perspective is “incredibly off-putting,” and if the AI bubble bursts, ordinary people will pay the price as always, even if society gets some progress from it (39:39).

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3. Senator Slotkin’s Military Message: The New Insubordination? (43:29–49:07)

• The pair react to a viral video montage of Democratic lawmakers, led by Alyssa Slotkin, encouraging military/intelligence officers to not obey “illegal orders.”
• Taibbi compares the video to Starship Troopers-style propaganda:

  “This whole idea of ‘you can refuse to obey illegal orders,’ well, that's always been true… For former CIA members to suddenly be piping up about illegal activities—I’m sorry, that's just laughable.” (45:37, 48:06)

• They muse on hypocrisy: such messaging would be scandalous if it came from Republicans, and wonder if Slotkin has any real principles behind the gesture.

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4. Trump Meets NYC’s Neo-Socialist Mayor Zoran Mamdani: Left Populism and American Memory (49:07–58:35)

• Trump gloats online about an upcoming White House meeting with NYC mayor Zoran Mamdani, whom he dubs the “Communist mayor.”
• Emily prompts Taibbi to reflect on American left-populism:

  “Young people… holding hammers and sickles… They didn't know any of the history. They're no longer taught about the gulags… horrifying to me.” (52:02)

• Noting a shift from Bernie Sanders’ principled social democracy to Mamdani’s more radical, performatively cynical “DSA socialism,” Taibbi expresses concern at a new left with little knowledge of Soviet atrocities.
  • “The Bolsheviks were originally called the Democratic Socialists… there's an extraordinary cynicism in that [Mamdani’s rhetoric]… it makes it a little chilling for people who are students of history.” (56:33-57:58)
• On the Mamdani/Trump “WWE” dynamic:

  “He absolutely 100% [shares instincts with Trump]… He has a lot of the same instincts that Trump has in terms of PR.” (55:15)

• Taibbi is skeptical that real populist reform is possible from either current populist “wing” (Mamdani’s or Trump’s), as both are products of a broken status quo and are hindered by big money and extreme rhetoric (58:35).

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5. Jasmine Crockett’s Big FAIL: Congressional Oppo Research Gone Wrong (63:15)

• Rep. Jasmine Crockett went viral for accusing Republicans of taking money from “somebody named Jeffrey Epstein,” but failed to distinguish the now-notorious deceased financier from unrelated Epstein donors in FEC filings.
  • “Crockett getting this so badly wrong is, I guess, why politicians usually outsource their oppo research to the professionals… But you would also expect a member of Congress to know more about FEC filings.” (63:15)
• Emily skewers the blunder, noting the irony of Crockett defending Plaskett, who has real Epstein ties, while making a basic research error—“10 out of 10, no notes, Jasmine Crockett.” (63:15)

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6. Culture Shift: Country Music’s Yearning for Roots (70:12–End)

• Emily explores a trend in contemporary country music (e.g., Kelsea Ballerini’s “I Sit in Parks”) where artists now express nostalgia or longing for small-town, familial life and regret over chasing big city careers.
  • Sample lyrics:

    “I sit in parks, it breaks my heart because I see just how far I am from the things that I want...” (70:12)

• She observes this is a cultural reversal from the genre’s historic escapism toward city life—today, “there’s more focus on pining to go back to your hometown” and a recognition that “some of our highest ambitions can come from anywhere.” (~74:00)
• Emily suggests social media and post-pandemic remote work have fueled this shift, and interprets it as a healthy, stabilizing cultural move.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Taibbi on the Epstein Dump:

  “The number of people involved, that's another one of the details that's staggering… It's really a story so far just about kind of ordinary, common-run corruption and the buying of access.” (15:10)

• On Plaskett’s defense:

  “She didn't even need an intern to go through the constituent mail. That's how responsive she is.” (10:36, Emily)

• Taibbi on Summers:

  “He's a rare like 10 out of 10 on the celebrity repugnance scale. He's everything you can't stand about elites in our society.” (21:33)

• Summers to his Harvard class:

  “Some of you will have seen my statement of regret expressing my shame…” (20:24, Summers)

• On the elite’s arrogance:

  “I am shocked that any modern public figure would talk about anything that's damaging on email or even do anything that's damaging, frankly… it speaks to the arrogance of these people.” (34:00, Taibbi)

• On country music’s “roots” trend:

  “There's been a shift… away from pining to escape your hometown to a shift where there's more focus on pining to go back…” (~74:00, Emily)

• On left populism and memory:

  “Americans tend to be very well informed about the history of the Nazi party, but we don't know a whole lot about the Stalinist period or it's been forgotten. And that's what I worry about.” (52:02, Taibbi)

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Segment Timestamps

• Epstein Document Fallout: 04:07–36:25
• AI Bubble/Elite Arrogance: 36:25–40:50
• Slotkin/“Don’t Give Up the Ship”: 43:29–49:07
• Mamdani Visits Trump/Left Populism: 49:07–58:35
• Jasmine Crockett’s Blunder: 63:15–70:12
• Country Music & Cultural Trends: 70:12–End

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Summary Takeaway

This episode delivers a sharp, often humorous, but ultimately sobering look at how elite corruption, cultural change, and political cynicism intersect in today’s America—from the banality and brazenness of the Epstein orbit, to the performative politics of both the left and right, to a deeper grassroots yearning for something more grounded. Both Emily and Matt consistently return to a theme of institutional and personal arrogance at the top, and the often-unexpected ways this is now being challenged—often messily, and sometimes with genuine hope—at the bottom.

Transcript

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[Emily (Host)]

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[Emily (Host)]

Welcome to afterparty everyone. I just got back from a black tie dinner, so this is literally my after party tonight. Couldn't be happier to be joined by Matt Taibbi in just one moment. Please make sure to subscribe. By the way, I am the worst about being like, oh hey, this thing we're doing subscribe to it, but please do it. Helps us a lot. Thank you to everybody who has subscribed. I appreciate it. The whole team appreciates it. We are forever in debt. Now on tonight's show, we are going to be covering a lot of ground because as usual, there's a lot of ground to cover. New developments in the ongoing fallout over the Epstein investigation and actually reactions pouring in already after the bill passed Congress. The Epstein Files Transparency Act, I think is actually what it's technically called. Always love those bill names, but that passed Congress and we've gotten some early signals about how it might actually be executed on. So we'll have to see what's going to come. And I'm really eager to get Matt's reaction to people like Larry Summers getting caught up in all of this. We have new video of Larry Summers, by the way, who was teaching a class at Harvard today and someone had their smartphone and let's just say he addressed everything. So you're going to want to stay tuned for all of that breaking news this evening. Zoro Mamdani is going to be at the White House on Friday. He is going to be meeting with Donald Trump, at least as of right now. President Trump announced that on True Social. I actually have new media pool duty on Friday, so I'm going to be there. I'm excited for that. Excited to ask Matt about it as well. And before we wrap, I have some thoughts on the new Kelsey Ballerini song. Why not? I guess I always have thoughts on the new Kelsey Ballerini song, but this time I hope it'll be somewhat interesting as a reflection on the trajectory of country music. All right, on that note, let's bring in the one and only Matt Taibbi, who is, of course, editor in chief of Racket News. Matt, thanks so much for coming back.

[Matt Taibbi]

Thanks for having me, Emily. I appreciate it.

[Emily (Host)]

Oh, my gosh, of course. Let's start with Epstein because you wrote a great piece in Racket just today and the headline here was the Jeffrey Epstein story is beginning to smell like Russiagate. And this is such interesting framing that I feel like has gone by people. You had a post on the 17th where the head, the headline was the Epstein Circus will shatter our last delusions. So as somebody who's covered the intelligence community and elite corruption for a really long time and even some of the people who are popping up in these emails, unsurprisingly, what are your big takeaways as the estate document dump that we got last week continues to be kind of hashed out as everyone gets a chance to go through these 20,000 documents.

[Matt Taibbi]

Well, on the one hand it's fascinating, right, because we see things like the, the. The exchange with Stacy Plaskett where the, the. What's fascinating about that is, is the idea that a member of Congress would be in the middle of a hearing taking essentially dictation from a donor or you know, somebody behind the scenes and, and asking questions without having any knowledge of the facts of the situation. That, that speaks more to the sort of grave incompetence of the current crop of members because once upon a time it used to be your aide or the chief of staff of the committee who would be telling you something and handing you a sheet with some things on it. But for people to be texting in the middle of a hearing with somebody like Epstein and then just asking a question, not knowing, you know, who the, who the person is, it. It's incredible and it's, it is very revelatory. On the flip side though, I read a lot of the stuff and overwhelmingly it's banal and boring. Even, even the Larry Summers thing, which was. It's actually quite comic, the exchange. But there's nothing in there that speaks to a vast intelligence conspiracy or anything like that. So that's why I wrote the thing I did today because there are all these assumptions that are being built into to the coverage that, that are, I think are kind of troubling, but they're not proven out yet. And that's. Everybody's in kind of a mania about the whole thing. But we'll see. We'll see what comes of it. I mean it's going to be fascinating to see what documents are actually prod. You mentioned that you might. You have some insight into the process. I'd be curious to hear what that is.

[Emily (Host)]

Well, the. Mike Johnson was out today. I mean speaking of Russiagate, Mike Johnson, I don't know if you saw this map, but he was out actually I think it was yesterday already. Signaling that because the Epstein File Transparency act has carve outs, basically, and understandable carve outs, they always are for national security, personal information, etc. That it's already. We can actually just roll the clip. Let's. I will stop putting words in Speaker Johnson's mouth. This is S6.

[Matt Taibbi]

National Security Concerns. Okay. The discharge requires the Attorney General to release within 30 days, quote, classified information to the maximum, maximum extent possible. This ignores the principle that declassification should always rest and always has rested with the agency that originated the intelligence.

[Emily (Host)]

Why?

[Matt Taibbi]

So that they can protect their critical sources and methods. It is incredibly dangerous to demand that officials or employees of the DOJ declassify materials that originated in other agencies and intelligence agencies.

[Emily (Host)]

Okay, Matt, you're used to hearing the national security excuse for not declassifying documents. I mean, this is something that goes back at the very least to the Kennedy assassination, which Mike Pompeo was still telling us, what, like, year ago had serious national security implications if we were to release all of the files because people are still alive and sources, etc. So I actually think it's an important point from Mike Johnson just to see him signaling that already because the Trump administration is in charge of the Department of Justice right now. So, like, what are we expecting here?

[Matt Taibbi]

I mean, that's, it's ridiculous. The language, to the maximum extent possible is, is already ridiculous. And we already saw this this summer, you know, the, the Trump administration, in particular, Tulsi Gabbard's, you know, department Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the DOJ to, I guess, under Pam Bondi and Cash Patel, they went ahead and fought hard to declassify documents that originated in other agencies. So when there's a will, there's a way. When they, when they feel like it's in their political interest to do so. I don't think that excuse is going to hold water. I think it's a huge mistake for them to already be signaling that they're going to be excising some of the materials. But you can almost hear the sigh of relief all across Washington. You can probably hear it from where you are now because, you know, we've already seen this week, there have been two pelts already with, with Stacy plus Get and Larry Summers. We know there are going to be more people whose careers are going to be wrecked by this thing. It's only a question of how many. So I would imagine there's going to be pressure brought to bear to make sure that only the stuff that each party wants out is out. Right? And that's going to be what the fight is.

[Emily (Host)]

You know, it's crazy to me on this Plasket stuff because Lee Fong, who we both know has been doing reporting on her and her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein for years, as have others. And yes, these emails that were recently released gave us this wild insight into her literally being at a congressional hearing and texting with Jeffrey Epstein, who Jamie Raskin referred to as a constituent. We all know she has to be responsive to her constituent mail. So it was nice of her to respond to constituent mail during the Hearing.

[Matt Taibbi]

Itself live during the hearing. Yeah, I know.

[Emily (Host)]

She didn't even need an intern to go through the constituent mail. It's like that's how responsive she is. Let's take a listen to. To her. This is S2 responding to questions about all of this. And I got a text from Jeffrey Epstein, who at the time was my constituent, who was not public knowledge at that time that he was under federal investigation, and who was sharing information with me. We all know that Jeffrey Epstein's actions were absolutely reprehensible as a constituent, as an individual who gave donations to me. When I learned of the extent of his actions after his investigation, I gave that money to women's organizations in my community. You want to talk about texting, texting felons, texting. How often do you text President Donald J. Trump? That's the individual we should be concerned about. So Plaskett, for what it's worth, was. I believe Lee has reported this out, but she was working for a law firm that was entangled with Jeffrey Epstein, literally right up until she went into Congress. Now, the Virgin Islands, obviously US Virgin Islands, is in the state, so she doesn't have sort of like Eleanor Holmes Norton in Washington, D.C. doesn't have the full voting privileges of a member from a state. But, Matt, that's, that's a really incredible spin. I mean, it's not good, but maybe it's the best she can do on what happened in that hearing.

[Matt Taibbi]

So it's, it's amazing. And I'm the exact right person to ask this question about because Stacy, plus get actually threatened to throw me in jail for perjury.

[Emily (Host)]

Yes.

[Matt Taibbi]

Over essentially a typo. And in that clip, she says that she was unaware of the scandal. But, but in the deposition from 2023, and Lee pointed this out as well, when she talked about the question of trying to solicit money from Epstein for the dccc, she, she mentioned that the problem. There was a problem there because of his association with scandal. So she was already cognizant of the scandal at that time. So I don't know, it's at least hypocritical a little bit for her to talk about somebody else, you know, talking out of both sides of her mouth. Also, the thing about giving the money to charity, she didn't do that right away. She actually hesitated initially to do that, which nobody pointed out. So it's, it's ridiculous. It's embarrassing. You know, she, she did work for the firm that represented Epstein, went and helped him buy little St. James island, helped him attain a, a tax credit with the Virgin Islands Development Authority for whom she had been the general counsel almost right up until the moment that that deal was done, basically. So she's intimately involved with Jeffrey Epstein. And they, and when she was actually asked in the deposition, have you ever done work for Epstein or Epstein related entities? Her answer was, I don't recall. So not that great.

[Emily (Host)]

Yeah. I'm reading from Lee right here. He reposted his story from 2023 on X not long ago. This is again from 2023. His lead here is Democratic delegate Stacey Plasket has distanced herself from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, claiming she was completely unaware of his donations. However, recent court filings shed light on a much closer relationship between Pleskat and Epstein than previously known. His headline was House Democrat Work for Epstein's Tax and political Fixer. And the takeaway is that the, the reason Epstein was able to carve out so many special privileges on Little St. James was because he had these relationships with local officials in the Virgin Islands. He was showering them with donations and that's how he ended up being able to operate like he did on Little Satan. James. I mean, it's just incredible that Lee reported this in 2023 and it takes some of these like really salacious emails for anyone to care about it, seemingly at least.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah. And it's, it's not just Stacey Plusquette. I mean, the number of people involved, that's another one of the details that's staggering. Like there was a lawsuit originally and there were John Doe's 1 through 100 when it came to the, the defendants who were essentially like government officials in the Virgin Islands Authority. So, you know, everybody involved in public service in the Virgin Islands, there are connections that are laid out in another lawsuit. I think It's United States vs. JP Morgan Chase if I'm not mistaken. But there are payments that are laid out in the exhibits to that lawsuit. I would, I looked that up in PACER earlier today. So just the, it's really a story so far just about kind of ordinary common run corruption and the buying of access. Right. So here's a person who already has a, a conviction, is a registered sex offender, but is able to carve out these amazing benefits and buy an island, you know, with tax incentives because of these amazing donations that are going all over the place and gets, you know, access to a, a member of Congress in the middle of a hearing. Also, one has to wonder about some of the, the leadership positions that Stacy Plusquette has. You know, she was the Ranking member of the House Weaponization of Government Committee. She's, she's, you know, and you know, she's front, front and center of a lot of things for a non voting member of Congress. So that makes you wonder a little bit too. But, you know, we'll see what comes out of it.

[Emily (Host)]

Refresh my memory. But she was like the most aggressive, hostile, and I would argue like uninformed member of the committee questioning you. Am I remembering that correctly? That's she was just vicious to you?

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, absolutely. It was really funny because I was expecting, when we were testifying about the Twitter files, I was expecting the questioning to be hostile, but I, I thought there would be like a colloquy where they would challenge me sort of intellectually about censorship and, you know, the national defense. But she came out right away. She called Michael and I and me so called journalists and a direct threat to all who oppose them. And there was just this bizarre rhetoric. It was, was angry and fulminating right from the beginning. I mean, Michael and I were kind of glancing at each other sideways because we didn't expect that. And that turned out to be the tenor of the whole thing. It was scripted that way. Each one of the members had his or her own attack avenue, but she was certainly the angriest of all of them. It was, it was, was kind of off putting. It was, it was really weird in the moment.

[Emily (Host)]

Yeah, I remember it being really weird at the time thinking, you know, first of all, Matt and Michael are not conservatives. I think it was like somebody told her that you guys were like Tucker Carlson or.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. And, and you know, now we know that she, she can probably be handed something two seconds before and that might, you know, result in the question. So, you know, she, she doesn't know who we are. I mean that, that became pretty clear during, through, through the hearing, you know, calling me a so called journalist. And that's, that's a little weird. I've done a lot of long service in mainstream media and all that stuff and written, you know, written books and all these things. But you know, to her I was, I was some kind of like online influencer who had never done anything and same thing with Michael. So. But I think, I do think that this, you know, this thing is going to be very damaging, Epstein, to a lot of politicians probably as more documents come out.

[Emily (Host)]

Well, I want to force you to watch this clip of Larry Summers addressing his class at Harvard. So Summers, we should preface this by saying, actually in one of these email exchanges, Matthew stoler caught that he was trying to sleep with the daughter. Actually he seemed like he was. I mean we don't have to go into that. I don't particularly want to get into that, but he was courting the daughter of a belt and road official in the CCP and appeared to be doing favors for him in order to get in tight with his daughter. Oh my gosh, I'll send it to you. It's so wild. And Larry Summers is also obviously in these emails engaged in a very close like confidant level relationship, asking, bouncing everything under the sun off of Jeffrey Epstein all of the time. And he since stepped back from public life, stepped down from all of these very fancy positions apparently, though still teaching at Harvard. So let's go ahead and take a look at this clip taped yesterday by a student, one of his lectures.

[Matt Taibbi]

Some of you will have seen my statement of regret expressing my shame with respect to what I did in communication with Mr. Epstein and that I've said.

[Emily (Host)]

That I'm going to step back on.

[Matt Taibbi]

Public activities but for a time. But I think it's very important to fulfill my teaching obligations.

[Emily (Host)]

He has to fulfill the teaching obligation.

[Matt Taibbi]

We're going to go forward and talk about the material.

[Emily (Host)]

So Matt is brutal. You've reported on the likes of Larry Summers, who of course was Treasury Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton when much of the reporting you did during the recession, the seed of that was planted. And I imagine you have thoughts on the very notion of Larry Summers being a sort of idealized renowned figure who's teaching at Harvard in and of itself being kind of interesting as a statement on where we are and how we've reckoned with what happen in 2008 in the years leading up to it. So what do you make of Larry Summers now having to address his close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein?

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, I, in my article today, I called it Cancel Culture Sepu because he's, he's essentially killing himself as a public figure before they can do it for him. But, but no, I mean he's, I also said he's a rare like 10 out of 10 on the celebrity repugnance scale. He's everything that you can't stand about quote, unquote elites in our society. Right. He's, he's arrogant, you know, a fixture at Davos and he's, he personifies literally the, the, the, the habit of this class of people to shower and lavish awards on intellectual mediocrity and give it exalted academic titles. He's just a person who's not that Smart, who was put in charge of the leading academic institution in America and is really renowned for saying dumb things like that's the thing he's most famous for. And now he's sort of at the end of his career. He's going to be famous for, I guess, courting, you know, a daughter of somebody in the CCP and nicknaming her peril. I mean, by the way, there's. I'm a little bit curious about, about the genesis of that nickname. But. But no, the, the exchanges between him and, and, and, And Epstein are just. They're. It's. It's embarrassing. And, And Epstein is. Is really trying to cheer him up. He's like floor. Trying to tell him that the chance that his mistress will find another person or is in a Bainesian, in a Bayesian sense, because Summers has this thing about Bayesian statistics, which I don't even really understand. It's on the order of discovering life on another planet. The, the probability that she'll find something like that is zero. She won't find another Larry Summers. I mean, these, these are, these are people. The One guy's worth $600 million and the other ones is like the president of Harvard, and they have these terrible insecurities. It's really kind of sad to read.

[Emily (Host)]

Yeah. I put the Stoller post up on the screen here. This is from December 22, 2018, where, as Stoller puts it, he is trying to seduce someone that he was mentoring. Her father is a Chinese official running part of the Belt and Road initiative, and she explicitly thanked Summers for supporting her dad. Just. It's really heartwarming, actually, when you, when you think about it that way, unbelievable. But I feel like this argument that you fleshed out today in Racket is extremely provocative of the Epstein story being like, Russiagate, and at the time that Russiagate was, you know, starting to percolate, bubble to the surface back in 2016, 2017, and, you know, David Korn was running with the plants and all of that. It took a lot of courage for people to kind of hit the pause button and be like, not going all in on this. And so I'm. I'm sort of curious if you see us in a. Maybe a similar. Or see yourself maybe even in a similar moment right now.

[Matt Taibbi]

Well, Michael Tracy was really the trailblazer in this one. He's been taking.

[Emily (Host)]

Taking as so often. He is.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah. But no, I mean, I think obviously these are two completely different things. Right. Like the Russia Gate, as we subsequently found out, there obviously was a Real thing that happened, there was a, a leak of emails from the Democratic Party that came from somewhere and which the government attributed to, to Russia. And so people were trying to make a connection. Here though, there's much more meat on the bone. There's obviously a lot of real detail involving Larry Summers, his biography, you know, the, the admitted conduct with, with young women. He said some incredibly like revolting things about, you know, post pubescent girls and, and how they should all be available to men. And, and he's, he's convicted. He's a registered sex offender and there's a lot of stuff there about his own conduct. And if you talk to people who've covered the story for a long time, they'll tell you that there's a huge there, there when it comes to his own conduct. The problem is there isn't a lot in terms of at least officially sort of accusations of trafficking to other people. Even though his, his last charge was for trafficking and they regularly describe a trafficking ring in news stories. The accusation is that he trafficked women to himself, he and Jillian Maxwell. So that's one part of it. The other part of it is that yes, there are a lot of provocative details that have been reported by people like, you know, our mutual friend Ryan Grimm about, you know, his relationship to Barack to the hack materials from the. I think it's the. I forgot what the name of the group, the hacker group was, but.

[Emily (Host)]

Denial, distributed denial of sir. Whatever they call themselves.

[Matt Taibbi]

Right, exactly. Yeah. And it shows that him brokering a security deal with Mongolia for on behalf.

[Emily (Host)]

Of Israel, which you're very familiar with, Matt, if anyone should have been brokering this Mongolian deal, it should have been you.

[Matt Taibbi]

That's right. Yeah. I'm probably the only guest you've ever had who, who used to live in Ulanbaatar. Right. So.

[Emily (Host)]

No, no, no, not just used to live in.

[Matt Taibbi]

That's right. I played professional basketball.

[Emily (Host)]

Professional Mongolian. It's one of the best fun facts about Matt Tai. Should have been you.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah. So look, all that stuff has a, it definitely. There's no question that he had this mind blowing Rolodex of contacts that with Israeli officials, with arms dealers. I think there are four different Israeli prime ministers that he's been tied to. And you know, Barack would have been the head of the Mossad at the time he was corresponding with him. There's also the story about an Israeli agent staying at his house. The problem that I have is that these two wings of the, the Epstein story, there's, there's Never been any evidence linking the two of them. In other words, everybody assumes that it's an intelligence conspiracy that involves sexual blackmail, but the evidence for that is. Is lacking. Right. So that's what I'm just trying to say is that there's a. The news is sort of ahead of its skis on this in the same way it was with, with Russiagate. You know, you would see references to, you know, Trump's back, back channel relations with Putin or something like that. Right. As if it were already factually established. And that's the same thing that's going on here with, with Epstein. There are we. We assume that there is a. An operation going on, but it just. It isn't there yet. I mean, it might be. It could easily be true, but it's just not there yet.

[Emily (Host)]

It's interesting because we know there were, you know, there were young girls coming in for the massages. And in fact, there was that email that came out about Epstein. I think it was actually to Michael Wolf, talking about, like, the rub and tug girls coming in. And I think he says they're all mid-20s, something like that. We do know that the way he was originally caught was that very young girls from basically West Palm beach were being brought in to him and whack.

[Matt Taibbi]

Shacks, believe it or not.

[Emily (Host)]

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Just like nasty, disgusting stuff. But there are credit where it's due to Tracy here. He does throw cold water on some of the. Some of the particular media acceptance of. Of stories that have been. I mean, Jeffrey is a good example. Virginia Giffre is a good example that she herself took back. And, you know, a lot of these girls were targeted particularly because they were vulnerable and troubled. And so it's. It is genuinely very hard to know what is. What is real, what is not real. But I think that's a good point, that things become conventional wisdom. You know, things get repeated so much that become conventional wisdom. And that totally happened with Russiagate. And I have seen it happen here. And it's just you. You've seen this sausage get made so many times, Matt. It's. It's like something gets repeated so many times that stop questioning it.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah. And there's a universe of things that this, that the Epstein story could be. It could be, you know, he's not Masadi. It could be he's 100, a CIA person. It could be that the intelligence ties are informal. It could be that it's. It's a. It's a commercial prostitution thing. It could be that it's not that at all that it, that it's a vanity situation, that he just likes to have young girls around. There's evidence for all these different things. But the thing that hasn't been established, right. Like we don't have reports, you know, in writing where you see what, you know, Epstein talking to a Mossad agent about so and so's sexual proclivities and how they could be used, or we don't have anybody saying that they were blackmailed. That's what's missing from the story. Right. So I think people just need to keep that in mind as we wait to see what might come out of these documents, is that it could go in a number of different ways. And, you know, once upon a time in the news, a cigar was just a cigar until proven otherwise. Right. And now, now I think, you know, seriously, post Russiagate, we start with the maximalist interpretation of everything because we're so used to, we're accustomed to everything turning out to be a crazy conspiracy, but it's not always true, Right. Or sometimes it's a lesser version of what we think. And that might be the case here.

[Emily (Host)]

I think we get algorithmically nudged into those big takeaways too. Yeah, it's interesting. One thing I wanted to ask you about as well was how you think about the connection between the repulsive, personal, private lives of these men, whether it's Jeffrey Epstein, Larry Summers, Bill Gates. So many people to choose from as these emails come out. Farkas and the like, Michael Wolf. We could do a lot. We could do. We could talk forever about Michael Wolf in particular. But. Yeah, go ahead, Matt.

[Matt Taibbi]

Well, I was just gonna say his presence in the middle of any story makes me suspicious about anything. That's. But anyway, go ahead.

[Emily (Host)]

No, it makes me like circuiting like I start to twitch. Witch. In all seriousness, I'm curious how you think about the ways these personal, private lives reflect. Because, you know, there are a lot of times people will be like, well, listen, I don't know what was going on in their marriage, don't know what was going on in their personal lives. But there is obviously a pattern where you have elites abusing their power, especially men who know they can, because they're rich and powerful, get way more women than they otherwise would be able to. And we see that fully transparent in these emails where they think they're just talking to Jeffrey Epstein even though they're on a freaking in Gmail like Larry Summers. I mean, just amazing, amazing stuff from our, our moral superiors. But you've covered the, like, political Corruption very closely. And is there, do you think, a correlation or how do you think about the possible correlation between these very messy personal lives, seemingly corrupt personal lives, and the corrupt political lives?

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I've definitely noticed in the last eight years, in the kind of post Trump era, that there's increasingly an assumption among voters on both sides of the aisle that people don't tend to rise in politics unless they're compromised in some way. Right. And, you know, it's.

[Emily (Host)]

It's.

[Matt Taibbi]

There are these popular conspiracy memes that have become, I. I think, sort of embedded in the consciousness of American voters, in some cases for good reasons, in some cases for fanciful reasons. But. But, yeah, I don't know how to think about it. I am shocked that any modern public figure would talk about anything that's damaging on email or even do anything that's damaging, frankly. Like, in other words, if you, if you're a public figure on the scale of a Larry Summers or, you know, a member of Congress, I would have to assume that. That everything you do is going to come out and become public. And finding out that that's not the case, even that is extremely interesting because it speaks to the arrogance of these people. Right. They obviously assume that they would be able to get away with misbehavior or things that look like misbehavior without any consequence. So that's already interesting. It's just a question of finding out exactly what. What it is we're dealing with. Like, is. Is it. I mean, are these relationships coerced? Right? Is there. Is there a thing where there's a quid pro quo going on where that's known? Or is it just, you know, sleazy guys hanging out with sleazy guys? I don't know how that works. I honestly don't. You know, the political corruption, the financial angles, you know, the sort of circle of how people go from public to private and back to public again and, and get rewarded financially along the way. I think we're. We're all familiar with that.

[Emily (Host)]

But the.

[Matt Taibbi]

This other side, this, you know, the side with the. The high life, the partying, the girls, the private islands, like, that's not something that I don't think that many people know about, so that this will be interesting for everybody to find out about.

[Emily (Host)]

You know, I hadn't thought to ask you this question, but I just thought about it in the moment, and I'm genuinely curious what you make of some of this OpenAI conversation about the bubble. And this might seem Totally unrelated, but again, you covered this in 2008 and during the recession. But I'm just thinking about right now, I saw this, this is actually Neil Ferguson piece in the Free Press, but he's talking about the circular funding of OpenAI via Nvidia and this core weave company where you have the funding for OpenAI coming from companies that as Fergus Ferguson writes here, are both investors and suppliers to OpenAI. And the connection that I'm just making here in my mind and even thinking about some of your. Yeah, I mean, it's just like there's an arrogance. They kind of know that they're going to be okay so they can play chess with the pieces of the board that are the American economy and they know that they're going to get bailed out, they're too big to fail and everyone else is just left with the bag.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah. I mean, that's certainly the lesson after 2008. Right. You know, when that was the horror of things like the Goldman Sachs big short story was finding out how they thought, how these big powerful banks thought about these things behind the scenes that, you know, we have to get, you know, sort of back to normal. The government understands that and they will angrily insist on their right to be bailed out in every situation. And since that's been validated and has continually been validated, not just with the initial bailouts, but with, you know, the, the sort of Fed funding, the, the, you know, there was the, the COVID bailouts as well. Right. So that they know that even if they just experience a downturn that they're going to be propped up. There's an implied backstop to everything they do. How, however I am hearing, it's funny that you bring that up. Some of my old friends from like the finance days have been calling up and saying that the, the rug is going to come, come out from under this AI bubble sooner rather than later. So there's a lot, there's a lot of fear about that at the moment. And what you're talking about where, you know, eventually this, the check has to come due for some of these investments. Somebody actually has to have money in the end. And that's what. When people found out that with the mortgage thing that there was, there was no there there in the middle of that, you know, all those different bubbles that, that was when everything felt, everyone ran for the exits. And maybe we're nearing that moment now. I mean, is that what did, is that what you're hearing?

[Emily (Host)]

Yeah. I mean, and that just feels so familiar. And you Know, I saw a Tyler Cowan piece the other day saying, well, maybe it is a bubble, but bubbles still, you know, with railroads can create products that last. It doesn't mean that AI is, you know, a bust just because we might be in a bubble. And it's like that is cold comfort to the people who will once again be left with the bag when you have the circular funding schemes that just feel like they're going in a terrifying direction.

[Matt Taibbi]

And people said that about the original bubble and in the 90s, right, with the original tech bubble. You know, that was when middle America essentially lost its accumulated savings from the post war period, dumped it all into this booming stock market. And with, you know, stocks like pets.com and things that were basically just business plans scribbled on napkins. And they, you know, ordinary people lost everything. A whole bunch of bankers and lawyers made fortunes and cashed out on time. And then in the end, yeah, we did get Google and we got a whole bunch of other things. But you know, it came at the cost of hollowing out the whole middle class. So it's incredibly off putting to hear the way people on Wall street talk about those things. And if they, if they do it again with AI, which I imagine that probably will be how it turns out, right? Like, you know, these things have, they're not monetizing themselves yet. It's amazing technology that, that doesn't make money yet. And that is a familiar story.

[Emily (Host)]

Yeah, absolutely. Gonna take a quick ad break here. We'll be back with Matt Taibbi in just one moment. Now, over the years, I have been very clear about this. I am not just pro birth, I'm pro life. And being pro life means standing with mothers not only before their baby is born, but long after. And that's exactly why I partner very proudly with preborn. Preborn doesn't just save babies, they make motherhood abundantly possible. They provide free ultrasounds and share the truth of the gospel with women in crisis. And then they stay with real practical help, including financial support for up to two years after the baby is born. That is what true Christ centered compassion looks like. Not just for the baby, but for the mother too. And here's where you can make a difference. Just $28 provides a free life saving ultrasound. Truly life saving in many, many cases. One chance for the mother to see her baby. And when she does, she's twice as likely to choose life. Preborn is trying to save 70,000 babies this year. So don't just say you're pro life, live it. Help save babies and support mothers today. Go to preborn.com emily or call 855-601-2229 that's preborn.com emily America is built on.

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[Emily (Host)]

We're joined once again now by Matt Taibi, who is editor in Chief over at Racket News. Matt, thanks for being back. I have to get your take on this video. Alyssa Slotkin Senator Alyssa Slotkin Potential Presidential candidate Alyssa Slotkin, darling of the Democratic establishment, posted that has raised eyebrows from Lindsey Graham to Mike Lee. Let's go ahead and roll S7 here.

[Matt Taibbi]

We want to speak directly to members of the military and the intelligence community who take risks each day to keep Americans safe.

[Emily (Host)]

We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now. Americans trust their military, but that trust is at risk.

[Matt Taibbi]

This administration is pitting our uniform military.

[Emily (Host)]

And intelligence community professionals against American citizens like us.

[Matt Taibbi]

You all swore an oath to protect.

[Ingrezza Advertisement Voice]

And defend this Constitution.

[Matt Taibbi]

Right now, the threats to our Constitution.

[Emily (Host)]

Aren'T just coming from abroad, but from.

[Matt Taibbi]

Right here at home. Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders, you can Refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders.

[Emily (Host)]

No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. We know this is hard and that.

[Matt Taibbi]

It'S a difficult time to be a public servant.

[Emily (Host)]

But whether you're serving in the CIA, the army, or Navy, the Air Force.

[Matt Taibbi]

Your vigilance is critical.

[Emily (Host)]

And know that we have your back. Because now, more than ever, the American people need you. We need you to stand up for.

[Matt Taibbi]

Our laws, our Constitution, and who we are as Americans.

[Emily (Host)]

Don't give up.

[Matt Taibbi]

Don't give up. Don't give up.

[Emily (Host)]

Don't give up the ship. Matt, are you convinced? So that was Senator Slotkin, Senator Mark Kelly Kristaluzio, Representative, Representative Maggie Goodlander, Representative Chrissy Houlahan, and Rep. Jason Crow speaking directly to the military and the intelligence community, saying, quote, don't give up the ship. Here's Senator Mike Lee posting on X. Which orders are you encouraging our military to disobey? Be specific. So, Matt, what is your reaction to this montage from Slotkin?

[Matt Taibbi]

First of all, what's the deal with the finishing each other's sentences thing?

[Emily (Host)]

The Imagine video.

[Matt Taibbi]

Right. Yeah, it's. It's such a. It's such a weird trope on, like, the, the left, I don't know. But also it's straight out of Starship Troopers. It's the I'm doing my part video. It, you know, it's such blatant, bad, overwrought propaganda. And this whole idea of you can refuse to obey illegal orders, well, that's always been true. And we've had a gazillion illegalities in government that the Democrats didn't say a word about for decades, so why now? And also just this general notion of encouraging an uprising, essentially. I don't know. I mean, there are so many things about modern politics that just make you shake your head and say, we're just in this new territory. I don't even know how to think about it, honestly. Like, is that. Is that. That, you know, is that. That's beyond insubordinate or, or unhelpful. It reminds me again of the beginning of Russiagate. Right. There were. When there were all these leaks about encouraging people not to share intelligence with the United States. You know, yes, that made Trump look bad, but it also made the United States look weak and vulnerable and sent a signal that, you know, the country was in schism and, you know, maybe the government was not stable. Is that what they're trying to project? I mean, is that right? I don't think so.

[Emily (Host)]

Right. And you Know, I was thinking if the, if Republicans had done this, you know, Mike Waltz or whomever had done this during the Obama administration or the Biden administration, people like Alyssa Slotkin would have been horrified. And I guess that just speaks to, I mean, I don't know, there's this weird schism in the intelligence community itself because, Matt, you and, I mean, I don't understand what Alyssa Slotkin is even talking about here. I assume it's Venezuela related, but I think you and I could be that you and I are probably also like uncomfortable with any fudging of war powers that might be happening. And I think there's some pretty good evidence that there's fudging of war powers happening right now in the Caribbean. But would Alyssa slide? I mean, does not strike me as something that would bother Senator Alyssa Slack in one bit, to be quite honest.

[Matt Taibbi]

Well, no, and, and that's been going on. You know, it hasn't been going on in this context. I mean, I did stories where I interviewed families from Yemen who were, you know, who had relatives who were droned to death, you know, by mistake. You know, I talked to these people. I found out that there's a standard payment of $100,000 in, to people who are accidentally droned in sort of extralegal assassinations. I mean, these aren't declared wars. These aren't authorized military actions. All of this was done under the auspices of highly dubious connections to like the, you know, the initial authorization after 9, 11 and so for, you know, former CIA members to suddenly be piping up about illegal activities. I'm sorry, that's, that's just laughable.

[Emily (Host)]

It really is. All right, Matt. Breaking news tonight. Donald Trump posted on Truth Social F13 here. He said he announced this meeting in the funniest possible way. Quote, communist mayor of New York City Zoran, quote Kwame Hamdani. Like how he used to say, Barack Hussein Obama has asked for a meeting. We have agreed that this meeting will take place at the Oval Office on Friday, November 21. Further details to follow. But Matt, I wanted to talk to you about this because you wrote just an incredible essay over on Racket. This was right before Halloween, I think it was late October, called the great leftist ignorance scam. And reading your perspective again, as somebody who did the reporting during the Great Recession, but also lived in the post Soviet Union Russia and is watching now New York City have like a, you know, not just a sewer socialist in the 20th century, but Neo socialist mayor of the biggest city like in the country. One of the financial Power centers of the world. One of the culture power centers of the world. Trump and Mamdani meeting. Hilarious in many different ways. But I just wanted to, like, get your. See if you could flesh out some of the points that you made in that piece a little bit, because you often get pegged as, like. Like a man of the Democratic Socialist of America, not just even the left, but, like, kind of. You kind of get pegged of that kind of what branch of the left, I guess.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah. I mean, I was a big fan of Bernie's at the beginning. I knew him very well. I did a story with him that was amazing and educational. Like, I followed him around Congress for a month, and he basically taught me how Congress works. And I. I liked him. I. I thought he was honest. He seemed really to be interested in improving the lives of his constituents. He never went off the record with me, never insisted on anything being secret.

[Emily (Host)]

So that's incredible. You followed him around for a month and he never went off the record?

[Matt Taibbi]

No, he. He.

[Emily (Host)]

I've never heard of that.

[Matt Taibbi]

He. He is. There are only a couple of politicians that I can think of who, who were that unguarded. And so I admired him for a lot of things. I think he was. He was principled. I also like the fact that he was willing to work with people like Ron Paul in doing things like auditing the Fed. Right. And there was a collegiality that was absent from Congress at that time. So I admire. I admired him and I liked a lot of his ideas. But Bernie, you know, he. He has great affection for the Democratic Party for. He. I think he's patriotic in his own way, believe it or not.

[Emily (Host)]

And he.

[Matt Taibbi]

He knows that there's a line that you can't cross with American politics. Like, you can't start talking about, you know, seizing the means of production and expect to have to be a viable national candidate. But something, you know, happened, something changed with the American voter in the last, you know, 10 years or so. And I started to see this in the campaign trail, even in the 2016 cycle. Like, I would see anti Trump rallies where young people would be holding hammers and sickles, you know, flags with the Soviet emblem on them. And I would ask them, like, what do you know about the Soviet Union? And, you know, they would basically. They didn't know any of the history. They're no longer taught about the gulags. They're no longer taught about deep, cool location or the collectivization or any of the things. And I saw. I heard a lot of these Stories personally in my time over there. So it's kind of horrifying to me to think that there's a, there's been this change in how we view this stuff. Americans tend to be very well informed about the history of the Nazi party, but we don't know a whole lot about, you know, the Stalinist period or it's been forgotten. And that's what I worry about. Not that Zoran is, is, is Stalin, it's just that the, the language around him is on. It's sort of unembarrassed in its embrace of certain things.

[Emily (Host)]

Well, at the Zoran victory party, Hassan Piker talked about how unfortunately the US won the Cold War, the Soviet Union was toppled. Did you see that? No.

[Matt Taibbi]

I was, that's what prompted me to write the article because, you know, I, I studied in the Soviet Union. I was there. I watched it. You know, it's, it's full incompetence and inability to, to achieve anything. I mean, it's total, it was a total failure of a society even, and even at the end in the sort of post perestroika period, it was horrific. And, and the stories that people told about the things that they went through were just, they were mind boggling and, and for, for people to say that and sort of joke about it, it tells you that they don't know a whole lot.

[Emily (Host)]

That's.

[Matt Taibbi]

Which is really scary. Right. And that's what is worrying about this phenomenon. The meeting though, I mean, that's just so wwe. I hope they do it like a wrestling match. I mean, it's, I hope it's televised live at least.

[Emily (Host)]

I mean, yeah, he loves to televise those live. I was there when he was touring the Fed with Jay Powell and it was one of the most, as they were walking down the hallway in the construction, it was one of the most like uncomfortable 20 seconds. And he entirely did that on purpose, like 100%. He knew it. He was doing like, he knew that they were going to walk in silence to the press and is, I mean, just he coordinates this and choreographs it to a T. I think actually Mamdani and Trump maybe have more in common than they'd be willing to admit. What do you think?

[Matt Taibbi]

They absolutely 100% do. And you know, Mamdani is really, he's, he's the future, I think, of politics on that side of the aisle for that exact reason. I think he understands a lot of the, that you have to have simple, strong themes, the theatrics. He has a lot of the same instincts that, that Trump has in terms of pr. And so it'll be interesting to see the two of them together, because I would. I would bet that there's a moment or two where they get along which is going to freak both of their bases out, right?

[Emily (Host)]

Yes, it will freak both of their bases out, but maybe not them. I mean, I'm sure he's already doing the, like, Zoran Kwame Momdani thing, like he did Barack Hussein Obama, and he refers to him as the Communist mayor of New York City. But actually, that's kind of an interesting question, Matt. Like, what do you. There's, there's the democratic socialism that Bernie Sanders espouses, and obviously Zoran comes from Democratic Socialists of America, DSA circles. But there are a lot of people who are in DSA world who are actually not really democratic socialists who flirt with something much more like, like socialism or Communism. Full socialism or communism. Where do you put Zoran himself on that spectrum?

[Matt Taibbi]

I mean, I don't know. I mean, the Bolsheviks were originally called the democratic socialists, so it's.

[Emily (Host)]

Then there's National Socialists.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, yeah. Right. And, you know, part of the whole sort of Marxist, or it's probably better to say Leninist approach to politics is this embracing this idea, that sort of open insincerity to achieve power, which makes some of this the sort of insincere smile that Mandani flashes from time to time. It makes it a little chilling for people who are students of history. You know, when he talks about how the seizing the means of production quote came in the middle of a DSA meeting where he talked about how, yes, we should talk about the things that are popular now, the things that aren't, like seizing the means of production. Maybe we shouldn't. There's an extraordinary cynicism in that. Right. I mean, it's, it's. That's undisguised. So I don't know. I don't know how to classify him. We'll have to see who, how he governs. But the dsa, when you listen to their, you know, their actual meetings, yeah, it's, it's gotten, it's gotten pretty far to the left. It's, it's different from the Bernie version of the DSA that I, that I first covered.

[Emily (Host)]

So, last question then is like, how do you think about the genuine prospect of, like, a populist reform on Wall street when populism is manifesting in democratic socialism? That, that looks something like a person who's, who said seizing the means of Production is possibly on the menu. Or Trumpism, which is being showered with gifts, literally cash, by crypto billionaires at Wall street, the financial industry. What are our prospects for just having decent reform as you see them now?

[Matt Taibbi]

Not great. You know, I mean, I think the one thing that one would hope the populist movements would achieve is that it would, it would scare government and industry into doing a little better by people. Right. Because ultimately that's the only way that they can get the. Make people stand down and put their pitchforks down is to, you know, steal a little bit less, be a little bit less greedy, just like a fraction. Right. And, you know, maybe improve the, the lives of the general polity just enough so that people can get by and, and raise their, and raise kids or even think about having families, which is, you know, that's the problem right now. Right? What? Why does somebody like Mandani happen? It happens because, you know, people who are, are 20 years old or 22 years old. The idea of buying a house and starting a family, it's just not even in the realm of possibility for a lot of people who are, you know, coming out of college now. Right. So you turn to some pretty extreme politics because nothing else has worked. That's how, that's how Trump happened. Why. Why would you keep voting for the same clowns who don't deliver over and over and over again? You got to try something different eventually. And that's, that's how Mamdani happens. So I, we understand why it happens. The problem is, you know, who's going to bring about that more effective form of government and find that balance between these two dueling forms of populism that are becoming ascendant. I don't know. I mean, it's hard. It's hard to see where the answer is.

[Emily (Host)]

Matt Taibbi, editor in chief of Racket News, thank you so much for what you're doing at Racket, and thank you for stopping by the show tonight. Night.

[Matt Taibbi]

Thanks so much, Emily. Have a good night.

[Emily (Host)]

You too. Appreciate it. All right, we'll be back in with more in just one moment, but first, let me tell you about my favorite chips. The best chips that I've ever had in my life. If you've ever read the label on a typical chip bag, you've seen, like, the science experiment of seed oils, MSG, dyes, and vague natural flavors. Quote, natural flavors. But vanity crisps are part of the growing movement to bring back real food with just three ingredients. 100% pesticide free potatoes, sea salt and grass fed beef tallow. No junk, just real food. They taste so amazing and they leave you feeling light, energized and satisfied with no crash bloat or mindless binging. My favorite flavor is definitely the Smokehouse Barbecue. I like them all though. They're so good. And if you love Vandy, you'll love Masa chips, Vandy's sister brand. Their three ingredient tortilla chips are also the best that I've ever had and my go to flavor. I like them all again. Lime. I like the Carbonaro. I also like the Churro flavor. Super great for dessert. So if you're ready to give Vandy or Masa a try, use code afterparty for 25% off your first order at vanitycrisps.com or masachips.com or simply click the link in the video description or scan the QR code to claim this delicious offer. Don't feel like ordering online? No problem. Van de Amasa are now available nationwide at your local Sprouts supermarket, so stop by and and pick up a couple of bags before they're gone.

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[Matt Taibbi]

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[Emily (Host)]

Golden Scholarships at mcdblackscholars.com all right, let's get into the Jasmine Crockett of it all. Jasmine Crockett had a truly hilarious moment. I don't even know how else to put it. This was something really special. I used to some of, you know, teach journalism and she just committed the error that like a freshman commits or somebody who just started working in journalism. Now, mind you, Jasmine Crockett is not a journalist, but she is a lawyer and a member of Congress, which believe it or not, is even less of or she's actually even in more of a position to know what she's talking about here and yet doesn't. So let's roll this incredible moment of essay. Jasmine Crockett on the House floor trying to say that Republicans took donations from Jeffrey Epstein. She's right about that part, folks. Who also took money from somebody named Jeffrey Epstein. As I. Okay, somebody named again, very quickly, mitt Romney, the NRCC, Lee Zeldin, George Bush win read McCain, Palin, Rick Lazio. I just want to be clear if this is just. No, we gonna expose it all and just know that the FEC filings, they are available for everybody to review. This is absolutely ridiculous. Yes, Jasmine, they sure are. I'm sorry, Congresswoman Representative Crockett, they are. They sure are there for everybody to review. Let's go ahead and put this Chuck Ross tweet up on the screen. F6. He says Jasmine is Jasmine for us is disastrously wrong here. None of these donors are that are the Jeffrey Epstein. Several are from the same Dr. Jeffrey Epstein and the donations to Lee Zeldin are from after the Epstein Guild himself. So now technically, Jasmine Crockett did qualify it, whether it was intentional by saying somebody named Jeffrey Epstein. These Republicans took money from somebody named Jeffrey Epstein. But of course, if you just dug a little bit deeper on all of the FEC reports, you can always see the address. You can usually see the person's person's profession. You can match details as especially with in many cases, you can match details to the particular person that you're talking about. And with Lee Zeldin, I mean that would have been obvious because again, this money came in after Epstein died and this woman went to the floor of the House flanked by Stacy Plaskett who worked at the law firm that was like fixing the US Virgin Islands for Jeffrey Epstein legally. She's right there. And Jasmine Crockett's own on the Republicans is that somebody named Dr. Jeffrey Epstein gave money to these Republicans to The NRCC as well. I mean, and genuinely, we can put F7 on the screen. This is another great comment from Chuck Ross Crockett. Getting this so badly wrong is, I guess, why politicians usually outsource their oppo research to the professionals. But you would also expect a member of Congress to know more about FEC filings. And again, I just want to add, Crockett is a lawyer. She's a lawyer. If a lawyer is able to do anything, it would be to know exactly what you're talking about. When you pull somebody's FEC reports, Federal Action Commission reports. That is like the very basic, basic, basic thing that you would be capable of doing before going to the House floor and saying, we're gonna expose it all, mention it all, to quote the housewives. But nope, Jasmine Crockett did not even have that due diligence in her. So perfect, perfect, perfect all around. 10 out of 10, no notes. Jasmine Crockett. You would not be passing any of the journalism programs that I oversaw because that was egregious. And also just one of the reasons Democrats never wanted to really touch the Epstein story. Get in the muck with the Epstein story. Says you can see from these emails, let's put Donald Trump himself aside for just one moment and Alex Acosta aside. Those are two massive caveats. Not excusing them, just putting them to the side momentarily. Because people like Larry Summers were high profile Democrats for a very long time. Many of the circles that Epstein is running in, well, actually almost all the circles Epstein is running in were primarily left of center, Democratic Party establishment circles, which is why the left was very reluctant to wade into the Epstein saga until, of course, it could be made a story about Donald Trump. Now, I happen to think there are some very good questions to be asked about Donald Trump, about Alex Acosta, who was Trump's pick for labor secretary and backed out of it eventually. But Trump, you'll remember, was known as what, a Democrat? A Democrat well into the 2000s. And so these were the circles that Epstein and Trump were moving through. And again, like, we're talking about Larry Summers as Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary, we're talking about Bill Clinton himself, actually. And Epstein was really cozy with a lot of very powerful, high profile Democrats. Of course, those high powered, high profile, high powered circles tend to be bipartisan, corrupt, corrupt on a bipartisan basis. Because you look at all those guys, they give money to Republicans and Democrats alike. And so that's absolutely true. But it's also true that Epstein was particularly involved in some of Those spaces, which is why Democrats were reluctant to touch the story to begin with. So. So for Jasmine Crockett to be standing up in defense of Stacy Plusquette, who is implicated to, like, just up to her. What is. What's the phrase? Up to her ears in. Yeah, up to her ears. Her eyeballs in this. The implications about her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Was texting Epstein during a question during a questioning session in Congress of Trump officials or people. I think it was Michael Cohen, one of those guys. Unreal that they would have the audacity to stand up there and lecture everybody with the wrong interpretations of FEC accounts. Incredible stuff. All right, now for a story that I have been eager to do for a while, I want to talk about the new Kelsey Ballerini song that is really making waves. We've seen a decent bit of commentary already from people on the right about I Sit In Parks, this new Kelsey Ballerini song. You may have heard it if you didn't. That's fine. We can go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen. That's just sort of about the discourse on this song. It's again called I Sit in Parks. This is glamour that says the discourse around Kelsey Ballerini's I Sit in Parks is getting heated. Well, if you listen to the song, maybe it'll be a little bit of an inkblot test. Uh, but, man, I'll just read some of the first lyrics here. I sit in parks it breaks my heart because I see Just how far I am from the things that I want dad brought the picnic mom brought the sunscreen Two kids are laughing and crying on red swings we look about the same age but we don't have the same Saturdays Did I miss it by now? Is it a lucid dream? Is it my fault for chasing things a body clock doesn't wait for? I did the damn tour it's what I wanted, what I got I spun around and then I stopped and wonder if I missed, Missed the mark. Okay, now you can interpret those lyrics as many people on the right have interpreted them, which is to say, here you have a woman who has prioritized her career and found herself. Let me look up Kelsey Ballerini's exact age. But she's. She's 32, so she's the exact same age as me. Found herself in her early 30s wondering if she prioritized the wrong things. Looking longingly at families with kids, thinking to herself, did I miss out on that? Now, maybe Kelsey Ballerini didn't miss out on that, you know, she's. She's again, in her early 30s. But it's reminiscent of the new Taylor Swift album, of course, where Taylor is singing about wanting, what, like a basketball hoop in her front yard and lots of kids and actually kind of mocking the people who treat their pets as children and prioritize these decadent elite. These decadent elite experiences over. And priorities over family and sort of the simple American dream type hallmarks of that kind of experience. And obviously, this is funny to see show up in country music. You know, a song that was like a gut punch for me a couple of years ago. I try to keep up as best I can with the. The country charts. And a song that was just. This was. I guess it was this. This year. Outskirts by Sam Hunt. This one was a gut. A gut punch. Have you heard this song? I mean, it's. I. I immediately thought of it when I heard the Kelsey Ballerini song. So he says, we were gonna give up on the fast life, have a couple babies, raise them upright, take them to the river, get them baptized. Back in our day, if I'd have just stayed, I wouldn't be living in this condo. I mean, gosh, that is just a knife to the chest. Hanging out with Haley from Toronto. God almighty, baby. We were that close to ditching uptown, putting roots down out here on the outskirts. And he is invoking this Haley from Toronto as kind of like a. Is like the exotic people that you come across in, like, city life outside of your hometown, right? He's bringing in somebody singing about. He's singing about remembering the south and his nostalgia for the south and the kind of simpler life that he could have had where he's from, and then juxtaposing it with. With the people that he meets from interesting places that have nothing to do with where he grew up. Like Toronto, for example, in this song. And so that's why I thought of this song. At the same time, there's also that Morgan Wallen song, More Than My Hometown. There are actually a ton of examples of this. It's something that I've had my ear kind of tuned to try and pick up as soon as I heard Outskirts from Sam Hunt. But again, like, there are. Are a lot of examples of this. And you can tell me what you think about this. You tell me if I'm wrong, but when I was growing up, especially the female country singers, so much of it, not all of it, but so much of it was about kind of ditching your small town and going to the big city, right? And there's still some of that. Of course, I'm not saying that. That, you know, there isn't any of it now or there isn't one or, you know, I'm not saying. I'm not saying the extreme is true in either direction. I feel like there's more. There's been a shift now away from pining to escape your hometown to a shift where there's more focus on pining to go back to your hometown. Maybe the pandemic was the marker. Maybe that was the point when it shifted. But I think what you hear in Kelsey Ballerina, I mean, she's not specifically singing about her hometown, but she's kind of. And Taylor Swift, too, singing about something much simpler and having this longing for something much simpler than this remarkable career that she's been able to have, that Taylor Swift has been able to have. And I don't even need to necessarily get into the feminist questions of it all, because I think Sam Hunt is singing about something similar. The point I'm making is that there was an escapism. You know, I grew up in a fairly small town in Wisconsin, lovely little town in Wisconsin. But so many people who listen to country music have that similar background. They're not. It's changed now. But if you're listening to country music in the 80s and the 90s and going back even further, of course, a lot of people were in small towns, and the American dream for them wasn't just white picket fence. It was going to Hollywood and making it, or going to New York City and working at a magazine, something like that. Right. And people moved to big cities, and I'm talking to somebody who left a small town for a big city, and it's awful to live away from your family, but it was normalized and. And we became totally conditioned to see it as a perfectly normal thing, especially as technology developed in ways that made it much easier, because you can FaceTime your parents now, you can FaceTime your siblings now, you can FaceTime your grandparents now, and we feel closer. I mean, you probably remember when Facebook was first coming out, the idea was that distance wouldn't matter anymore, which is just not true. It's just not true. Because, I mean, I know some of my friends who have kids, it's like they wish that they lived by their parents. They wished that they lived by their spouse's parents so that they had this, especially if they settle outside a suburb, you know, in a big city where they didn't grow up, and they just kind of came there for work. They don't feel like they're tied into any type of, or knit into any type of social fabric in the way that they would if they lived where they grew up. And I'm not saying everybody has to live with where they grow up. There are economic questions about all of that. You know, hasn't been easy if you lived in Flint, Michigan, to take the Michael Moore example, you, you might not have been able to stay in Flint, Michigan after what happened to the auto industry. And so not saying what's right or wrong for anyone. Again, I'm somebody who left. But I do think the shift is fascinating because there was a time when the ideal was unquestioned. The conventional wisdom was sort of that the best and the brightest would go to the big cities and they would have big careers and those careers would kind of transcend the strictures of small town life. That was just how everybody thought of it. And what's very interesting to me now is people realizing and maybe this is post pandemic because there's so much like remote work availability and all of that, but people really coming to the conclusion or starting to work their way to the conclusion that some of our highest ambitions can come from anywhere. That the highest ambition of, you know, making it in the big city. And again, maybe it's because you can take shortcuts now. You don't have to live in Hollywood or New York necessarily to make it to get your music seen on TikTok, for example. I mean there's so many, so many instances of people who have. Justin Bieber wasn't living in New York when he was discovered. That's a very old example now. But there are many more current examples. Examples of people just going like bonkers on TikTok. Spotify disempowers, gatekeepers in all kinds of ways. Streaming just in general, YouTube. So you don't necessarily need to do that. Maybe that's part of why people are thinking back on it. But it's just a trend that I've, I've noticed in country music. When I was growing up, it was like these, all of these songs about just like getting out and everybody knows what I'm talking about. Everybody remembers these songs. But just leaving, like that was the, the, that was the glamorous thing. And you know, there are a lot of songs about bringing that small town with you to the big city. Was it Alan Jackson song I'm not thinking off top of my head? Little bitty, right? It's. There are a lot of that. There's a lot of that type of thing. There's more songs like that that I could maybe I'll just make a spot if I play a lot of songs. I'm talking about rambling about that, as I say, but I do really think it's, there's, there's something interesting happening in the culture and it's, it's healthy because the conventional wisdom that we coalesced around that again, this was just in general, wasn't every specific case, but just in general that you to be people with ambition left. They left rural America. They left beautiful, quaint small towns. People are rediscovering how wonderful it is to be knit into this small tribe. The social fabric immediately around you, the people who are yelling at you on Twitter do not know you for the most part. People in those YouTube comments that are saying what you think is dumb, they're never going to meet you. And they're saying those things the way that they're saying them, they're saying them at all because they're never going to meet you. Maybe you're one of those people you're, you're comfortable saying because you're never going to meet them. Maybe that gives you more courage, maybe that gives you more, you know, more motivation to speak out in some, some good ways. But also it obviously makes us talk to each other and treat each other in some really, really bad ways. And so I think people take comfort in going back to these, these physical, physical places, tangible places where you knit into a social fabric and are starting to see the real value in that and realizing that some of our highest ambitions don't have to be about climbing any corporate ladder or celebrity because celebrity has been utterly cheapened by, you know, Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame has become, you know, almost irrelevant at this point. Right? Because on TikTok everybody gets like 15 million clicks of fame at some point. It's like playing the lottery. You put out a tick tock, at some point you're going to go super viral or you're going to go middle level viral. And so fame has been just utterly cheapened. There's, there's less glamour involved in fame because everybody, you, you see them now through like an iPhone camera and everybody's just kind of been brought down to earth. So a lot of reasons for this potential shift, but I do think it has been a shift and I think it's a healthy one. So if you have thoughts on that, emily@devilmaycare media.com you can email me there, make sure to send me questions for happy hour. I'm also pre taping a happy hour for Thanksgiving week, so I'll take all the questions you have, send them in. Subscribe it helps us so much if you subscribe to our videos on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. We'll see you back here. More Monday with more Afterparty.

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