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I turned off news altogether.
Krystal Ball
I hate to say it, but I.
Saagar Enjeti
Don'T trust much of anything. It's the rage bait.
Krystal Ball
It feels like it's trying to divide people.
Saagar Enjeti
We got clear facts. Maybe we can calm down a little.
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Let's meet at the Facts.
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Saagar Enjeti
Hey guys, Sager and Krystal here.
Krystal Ball
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.
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Saagar Enjeti
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breakingpoints.com Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. We have Crystal Epstein.
Krystal Ball
Epstein. Epstein. So whole lot of stuff, stuff went down yesterday. Emily and I covered the initial emails that were released from the House Oversight Committee. There is a whole lot more that has dropped since then. In fact, people are still going through all of the material that's been released. So we're going to go through as much as we can. We're also going to break down for you the White House's panicked response and how Republicans responded. That discharge petition now has the requisite number of signatures. So a whole lot for us to talk about there. There is other news as well, though. We want to dig into the landscape of the jobs market after a very Poor job report came out. Also, a fascinating and disturbing look at an Israeli company that has been, you know, bought up a ton of properties here in the US and is just an absolutely terrible landlord and what that looks like, what the impact it is having on our country. We're also taking a look at the way the billionaires are reacting to Zoran's victory in New York City. And also got some interesting comments from Lina Khan about her role on the transition team there, which is kind of fascinating as well. And, and today Starbucks workers are going on strike. We are going to have one of the leaders of that strike here in wait, not here in studio, but live, you know, in spirit. In essence, in spirit. She'll be in studio talking to us about what they're going on strike for and what they're hoping to accomplish. So very interesting one today.
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, that's right. Thank you to everybody who has been subscribing BreakingPoints.com if you can help support the show. We deeply appreciate it. If you are able to. If not, no worries. Please just go ahead and hit subscribe to our YouTube channel. And if you're listening to this as a podcast, please send an episode to a friend or rate us 5 stars. It really helps the show grow here, the Epstein stuff here today. I know a lot of people are interested in that who may not even be necessarily interested in politics. It's a perfect episode to go ahead and send to a friend.
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Saagar Enjeti
So, all right, let's go ahead and start then with the Trump White House panicked reaction to the Epstein files. Acting guilty as hell, if I might say, with their initial reaction, working incredibly hard to try and stop a discharge petition from hitting the House floor, which would require a release of the Epstein files. So this was their initial reaction to those releases of the emails. Here is what they had to say.
Krystal Ball
Can you address their substance? Did the president ever spend hours at Jeffrey Epstein's house with a victim?
White House Press Secretary
These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.
Saagar Enjeti
Why not just go ahead, release the full files on Epstein, get this all over with?
White House Press Secretary
We have this administration has done more with respect to transparency when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein than any administration ever. And it was CBS's own reporting Weija that recently wrote that, that Ms. Guthrey maintained, and God rest her soul, that she maintained that there was nothing inappropriate she ever witnessed, that President Trump was always extremely professional and friendly to her.
Saagar Enjeti
If the president is considering a pardon.
White House Press Secretary
For Ghislaine Maxwell, again, he's answered this repeatedly. It's not something he's talking about or even thinking about at this moment in time, I can assure you of that.
Saagar Enjeti
All right, so that's their reaction there in terms of their oh, we've done absolutely nothing wrong. You know, these emails prove nothing other than the fact that he did absolutely nothing wrong. I don't know about that. All right. I mean, these are. Look, I was willing to believe, here's the theory, and I think this is a reasonable one. Trump's been on the scene since, what, 2015, right? You're like, well, if anything had come out, it would have come out right. He's one of the most heavily scrutinized people. You've got all these MeToo lawsuits et cetera, it's not exactly like he was a choir boy in his tabloid lifestyle. So it seemed like whatever was out in the open was out in the open. But man, I mean, you read some of this stuff and we're gonna spend a decent amount of time here. It's not looking good there for Mr. Trump. At the very does prove, at the very least their behavior only validates what could be the theory behind it, Right?
Krystal Ball
Yes.
Saagar Enjeti
About running scared, in my opinion. And I think any reasonable person could see that. We had the letter that initially came out from Trump which said. Or the letter, the drawing or whatever from the birthday book. They said it was fake. It was obviously real. It's been vindicated as real ever since then. Not that maga's ever acknowledged that. But the release a lot of these emails just suggests like a very close, intimate relationship. Could Epstein have been bullsh? Like, yeah, maybe, but you know, at this point, like, you basically have no choice but to fully release everything if you actually want to be, quote, vindicated and we're whipping this hard against it. Like, I don't know how a reasonable person couldn't say. It does look like you're trying to cover up something. I don't really have another explanation for it. Do you?
Krystal Ball
No. I mean, you put together what we're gonna go through that has been revealed in these emails, which is highly suggestive and suggestive of a longer term relationship. Remember, Trump said that he had cut off all relations, all friendship, any sort of communication with Epstein long ago. These emails would certainly seem to indicate otherwise. That's number one. So you put together some of the content of the emails with the incredibly guilty, panicked way that they're reacting to this vote that could potentially in the future lead to a further Epstein files release. And you put that together with the cushy treatment of Ghislaine Maxwell, who's sitting in Club Fed playing with puppies and getting special meals and filing her application for a commutation of her sentence. Why? Because he's afraid of what she has on him, what she could say it appears she was leaking to the press. I mean, I think that's a pretty reasonable assumption at this point. Not proven, but reasonable. Those leaks stopped once she got her special treatment. And so they're trying to keep her quiet. They're trying to keep the Republicans in line and failing, by the way, and acting guilty as hell while more and more comes out as people are going through these emails about what Trump knew, what Epstein thought he had on Trump. I mean, he outright says I could destroy him. Like I have dirt on him that could end his political career. He says I'm the only one effectively who could do that. So yeah, it's. And all those, you know, libs of TikTok and all these people are very interested in this stuff. Suddenly they got nothing to say. Nothing to say.
Saagar Enjeti
A friend of mine asked me about it yesterday and I said, here was the stupidity of these people is they believe that when we said the richest and most powerful, they were like, oh, well, that's just Democrats. And the whole point was it was never just Democrats.
Krystal Ball
Right?
Saagar Enjeti
And I mean, no one's whitewashing Democrat. Larry Summers, Bill Clinton and all that stuff. Over here, Larry Summers. We'll show all of. Listen, in the next segment about emails, I'm gonna go through all of these, like titans of industry, donors, Larry Summers, Clinton, all these other folks that were ensnared in the Epstein story. Nobody. I have no problem talking about that. I don't even think a lot of the liberals who are now interested or have any issues talking about that either. The issue here is the centrality of Trump himself. And I think his best case could probably be, well, I knew he liked young girls. It was a different time. Yes, I fooled around with many women and Epstein was aware of that. But he chose instead to be like, oh, I threw him out of Mar A Lago. Cause I thought he was a creep.
Krystal Ball
Barely knew him. Threw him out of Margo.
Saagar Enjeti
I barely knew him. It's like, this is just obviously not true. Okay? And so, and that's really what the email. I mean, look, the emails only validate. I mean, there's photos, right? There's the NBC News report. There's the quote of like, Jeffrey likes him young. He has a very active social life that he gave in 2002. Like these are all on the record. Was already well established.
Krystal Ball
Creepy ass birthday book contribution.
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, the birthday book thing, when was that? 2006. Right. I mean, so you can see like this wasn't that long ago. It was like 20 some years ago. Not to mention not only the letter from the Trump birthday book, you remember the whole like the gifting of the girlfriend thing with the check signed by Trump, which was also.
Krystal Ball
This is not referenced in these emails.
Saagar Enjeti
It was referenced in the emails. Let's just get to what Trump said here about the Epstein thing. Let's put that up here on the screen. This was an initial truth. The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein hoax again because they'll do anything at all to deflect how badly they. They've done on the shutdown, so many other subjects. Only a very bad or stupid Republican would fall into that trap. The Democrats cost our country some $1.5 trillion with their recent antics of viciously closing our country. They should pay a fair price. There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else. Any Republican involved should be focused only on opening up our country and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats. So this was in response to a few of those Republicans who ended up signing that discharge petition. And that discharge petition, by the way, does now have the requisite two. Thomas Massie says that even if a representative were to die, that their signature will live in the petition. So that's discharge petition.
Krystal Ball
They can't kill anyone to fix their problem.
Saagar Enjeti
It's actually pretty interesting about discharge. Discharge petitions are quite rare. They're famously, you know, it was used in the Civil Rights Act. It's one of those things where 218 votes, you need a majority of people to vote in order to circumvent leadership. It's actually very hard to do to get 218 signatures on a discharge petition. So it just shows you how extraordinary this thing is. Massie also indicating that some 40 or 50 Republicans will probably end up voting for the Epstein resolution, despite the fact the White House is whipping so hard against this. Let me put the next one up here on the screen, just again, to show you the extraordinary measures that the Trump White House is using. So, quote, Trump ramps up the pressure on the GOP to thwart an Epstein vote. So two of the individuals, Representative Nancy Mace and Representative Lauren Boebert, signed the vote on releasing the Epstein position because of course, they were people who not only ran, talked about it like a lot over the last few years, and they wanted to be consistent. They were summoned. Boebert was summoned to the White House situation room. All right, the White House situation room. That is not normal. Like, let me just explain here. Like, situation room briefings are for something that can only take place in a skiff. Is. What is it? Secure compartmentalized information facility. You can't bring your phone in if you just watch House of Dynamite. Right? There you go. So that's what the White House situation room, it has a variety of. It's like a whole complex down in there in the White House. A lot of briefing rooms, meeting rooms. But in that same day, she was summoned to a meeting with the Attorney General and the FBI director. So these are the top law enforcement officials of the whole United States government are sitting in the White House situation room, quote, providing a briefing. I'm like, okay, so what does that all tell you? You've got very sensitive information that being briefed here to a member of Congress, presumably, you know, in a, in a secure with a security clearance. Honestly, you know, when I see something like that, I'm like, that's just flashing intel, right? Anything that's unclassified, normal political meeting. There's a shitload of meetings in the rooms in the White House. Okay. There's an entire complicated eeob. There's so there's a lot of meeting space over there. There's so I've been down there. There's so many meetings that can happen in a non classified setting. So the fact this happened in the situation room really was like a whoa moment for me because I'm like, wow. So this goes to classified setting. They don't want her to bring a briefing, they don't want to bring her phone in. Presumably she probably didn't have any staff that were allowed in there. This is like clearance to the max of thing. And I actually don't think the press is doing a good enough job about explaining how crazy it is to bring someone to the White House situation for briefing.
Krystal Ball
How absolutely extraordinary. And the reason is the clock was ticking to 4 o' clock because remember, first of all, Mike Johnson shut down the house entirely for 50 something days, ridiculous amount of time just to forestall this potential discharge petition. Then Adelita Grijalva was elected almost two months ago and he's just like, yeah, not going to swear her in, just not gonna swear her in because she would be that 218th vote. So finally, with actually the end of the shutdown, he could no longer justify putting that off. And so she was gonna be sworn in at 4 o' clock and sign onto the discharge petition immediately. And so the clock was ticking down 4 o' clock and Trump and his administration cronies, full court press. I can only imagine the level of pressure that was exerted on Nancy Mace and on Lauren Boebert and whoever else they thought they might be able to get to withdraw their name and to cave. And at the end of the day, they didn't. None of the Republicans took their name off, which is an incredible sign, I think, of the weakness of this White House at this point. You know, I think maybe even just weeks ago, before the election results, you might have been able to bully some of your Republican suicide onto this petition to walk away from it. But now Trump's popularity is going down and down and down, you've got Americans who are very unhappy with the economy. You know, you've got so much, so many of these people talk so much about the Epstein files and have so much of their reputation on the line with regard to how they handle all of this. And so all of them held firm. Boebert put out a pretty entertaining, honestly tweet after this full court press came from the White House. She says, I want to thank White House officials for meeting with me today. Together, we remain committed to ensuring transparency for the American people. With the little American flag emoji translation being sorry, not going to bend, keeping my name on here. And yeah, thanks for your time. Thanks for wasting your time.
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Saagar Enjeti
I mean, look, it's interesting. Boebert had been out of the news kind of lately over the last two years. She was like one of our Beetlejuice. Yeah, there's no more Beetlejuice, man. Yeah, she inspired my Beetlejuice costume two years ago. Shout out to Lauren Boebert for that one. But it is interesting to me that she is sticking with this. But also, I mean, if you're a Republican, if you're mtg, Lauren Boebert, remember, Lauren Boebert barely won reelection. You remember how close that race was?
Krystal Ball
It was like it was raising nothing right.
Saagar Enjeti
And her antics really, I think, cost her part of the reason why she's been a little bit more silent. But if you're mtg, Boebert, any of these people, you gotta run for reelection again. Like, you know, mtg, for example. I'm not saying she'll lose her district, but Georgia, look at what just happened with those power elections. You got two Democratic senators repping the state. You got, you know, Democrats who are on the rise. You've got your own political future here to worry about. And so the White House is not nearly as powerful. Trump is acting like a real lame duck lately in a way that I don't think a lot of people are fully appreciating. And the fact that he lost, this actually does demonstrate, in my opinion, some of a lack of hold. He's gonna lose or the hold that he's gonna lose increasingly a lame duck.
Krystal Ball
I mean, really, he's starting to be a lame duck.
Saagar Enjeti
Well, he is quite literally a lame duck running for office. And then, you know, the more look at W. W's hold on the party after 06, people were like, yeah, thanks. Thanks for calling, Mr. President. I don't care what you really have to say.
Krystal Ball
Yeah. So the four Republicans who signed on were Massie, who Of course, partner with Ro Khanna has really been, you know, leading the charge here. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and then the two that we just mentioned, Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace. So I think the White House knew there was no chance they were going to get mtg, certainly not Thomas Massie. That ship has sailed. So those were the two. And apparently what it looked like is that Nancy Mace just basically didn't answer their calls. It was just like, yeah, I'm just not going to pick up the phone right now. And so they were the two that made 218. There is another Democrat who's likely to be sworn in, I think, in January. So even if they got Bobert off of the discharge petition, which obviously they failed to do, then in another month or two, you're gonna have another Democrat who comes into the House who would have still made 218. But it's also interesting that they are so threatened by this because, number one, I mean, it's their government who has control over these documents. Does anyone here think that they would be above messing with it and scrubbing them of any sort of unflattering information that could come out? I certainly don't think that they're above that. The amount of material you're talking about here, though, makes that job very difficult to be able to effectively do. So, obviously, they're worried about what may be contained in whatever government information exists about Jeffrey Epstein, which, given Ryan and Maz's reporting over at drop site about all the intel connections and just absolutely confirming he was an Israeli intel asset. Also, by the way, he was talking to the Russians, I mean, he was any sort of power broker in the world that he could ingratiate himself with. He was certainly doing that. So, no doubt the CIA has files. We know the FBI has files. Like, they have financial records. Like, there is a lot of information that our government has about this man. But in any case. So, number one, you think, okay, well, they've got some time to scrub out whatever it is, they don't want to come forward, and nobody thinks that they're above that. Number two, it still has to pass the Senate, and then Trump have to sign it. And then even if it gets through the Senate, Trump still has to sign it, and he's not going to. So then you have to. How many votes do you have to get in the Senate to overcome a veto? 60 or 66.
Saagar Enjeti
Well, to overcome a veto.
Krystal Ball
To overcome a veto, that would be 66, right? Yeah. So, I mean, very unlikely that you would be actually able to get 66 members of the Senate to go against Trump and override his veto. But in the meantime, you have this story that is just festering and more and more stories like what we're talking about today of just incredibly guilty behavior. You have every Republican, both in the House and in the Senate, having to go on the record of trying to, like, protect a pedophile, protect a ring of global ring of pedophile elites. Not exactly votes that they want to take. So I think that explains why, even though it is very unlikely that we actually get to a point where, you know, this succeeds in the House, succeeds in the Senate, Trump signs it, or they overcome a veto, it's very unlikely for all of those things to happen. But in the meantime, it's just political hell for every Republican involved, every holiday.
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Saagar Enjeti
Oh, I mean, obviously that's why they didn't want to do it. Who would want to be the person who has to vote against this? Like, good luck to you. By the way, anybody want to remind me about some senators who are up for reelection, let's say in a year, in 2026? Like, why would you gift that to your opponent? If you're running against Sherrod Brown, good luck. You know, if you're running, if you're running in some of these closer races, if you're John Ossoff or any of these folks, this is great fodder for you to be like, I voted for the release. And this is what, again, these MAGA folks, for weeks, remember, they were like, MAGA forgives Trump on Epstein files. And I was like, here's what you guys didn't understand. There is a whole cohort of people who definitely voted MAGA or were Maga adjacent in 2024 because Maga was seen as a revolutionary kind of insurrectionist movement against the establishment. Epstein was actually a big part of that because it was like, he's different. He's going to release the Epstein files because he's saying, I'm above the fray of this, like global ring of elites, right? And so when they started doing the COVID up, that was actually a major dissolution made, I think for a lot of younger people, I would say, especially young men. I mean, if you already feel like the system is rigged against you and that people in high places do stuff that you could never imagine and you saw Eyes Wide Shut and your life is being disenfranchised, it's like, not only is it easy to believe it's actually quite literally true in this case. Well, when you start acting like those people, and in particular, you know, covering up any of the Israel connections and any of that stuff, you're like, same new boss, same as the old boss. That's. I mean, if anything, you asked me where Trump's real fault comes from in terms of a lot of his political popularity. It's the new boss, same as the old boss mentality. Israel war continues, Ukraine war unsolved. A lot of the foreign policy looks cookie cutter neocon, just like out of the last administration or anything. I keep saying he's like Biden. That's the whole problem is if people hated Biden, they don't want anything like that. Oh, actually, your life is fine. Let me show you some bullshit chart about why the s and P500 is up. And that means that your life is getting better. No, that's quite liter. And I could go on. In every facet of this, I'm just talking about Epstein. Bret Weinstein, a major Maha guy. He was recently on Rogan. He's like, yeah, Maha has been failure basically, whenever it comes to RFK Jr. Right? And for them, MRNA was a big thing. RFK being like, I'm gonna withdraw the MRNA vaccine. It has not happened, literally, period, End of story. They can make all kinds of excuses and talk about food dyes and steak n shake all you want. The singular thing that you said was gonna happen quite literally didn't happen happen. Tulsi's the DNI director. She was supposed to come in and be a bomb thrower, right?
Krystal Ball
Yeah.
Saagar Enjeti
Oh, okay.
Krystal Ball
She barely exists.
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, exactly. Where is she? All my reporting suggests is she's out on the outs, all right? CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who's like much more of an establishment guy. He sees control. She, you know, Trump is mad at her about the Hiroshima video. She's like a side character fighting for relevance right now. So that's just stacking on top of each other, like the more revolutionary parts, so called, of Mag and all that. It's been a year. Like the rubber hit the road and now you kind of know who's running the show. So that's just. That's why I think the Epstein story continues to matter.
Krystal Ball
And I mean, it's such a blow to his brand. Yeah, exactly. And nobody gets how important a brand is more than Donald Trump. And it is. I mean, it's a devastating blow to his brand as this renegade outsider going to expose the corrupt elite. Like, think about the fantasies of QAnon, you know, and the storm is coming, and all this idea that all the corrupt elites were gonna be swept up and arrested and it was gonna be a new day and the sort of moral cleansing and purification was gonna occur. And then it's like, no, actually, this guy's not only gonna cover up the Epstein files, but he is in, like, all over the Epstein files. He was this man's bestie for years and years and years. And you don't think there was gonna be anything there on him, Obviously. Not to mention he always acted weird and shady when he would get asked directly about it. He could never give a straightforward, like, unequivocal answer when he would get asked about, are you gonna release the JFK files? Yes, absolutely. Are you gonna release the absent files? Well, maybe less. So there may be other, you know, I Don't want innocent people to be harmed, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, it was always there if you wanted to open your eyes and see it, but a lot of people did not. And so to your point about the damage to his presidency, again, sort of like with the authoritarianism, you know what people will put up with a lot of him being shady and buddies with Jeffrey Epstein and all over these emails and whatever. If they were like, but I can buy a house, but my kids lives look great now. Their jobs are not actually gonna be stolen by a band of robots that are going to destroy society. My electric bill is going down. Actually, like, life is measurably better in ways that I can, that I am experiencing personally. If people felt like things were going great and yeah, I guess the President was like, at the very least knew about this ring, pedophile ring, and that the worst was directly implicated in it. Eh, what are you gonna do, right? It's the guy we got. At least my life is getting better. But when the President's a creep, the economy is cratering and you've got all this authoritarian bullshit, mass thugs in the streets and all of that nonsense as well, and the foreign policy landscape is an utter and complete disaster. Like, when you put all of that, what are you giving people to hang onto? Some, like, owning the libs, quote unquote based social media videos and an announcement about Steak n Shake, like that's what we're supposed to hang our hat on. Here is the golden age. Oh, congratulations. And I think for the podcast world in particular, Epstein obviously was a major focal point and it just was impossible for them to really defend. So, you know, in terms of the, you know, some of the podcast bros that were directly supportive of Trump going into this election, you know, that really was the start of them having to start to say some critical things and having to turn in a somewhat different direction, which is influential. I mean, I'm not saying they're like the only reason he got elected, but they do have power in society. And especially with this group of young men who were very important in the Trump coalition.
Saagar Enjeti
That's what people just, you know, really just don't get. And so, you know, bringing back to the point, I actually think one of Trump's powers, superpowers always was like a directional honesty, is that he would lie, but kind of tell the truth. And so do you remember, like in the 2015 campaign, that famous line when he was like, you think we're so innocent? You know, it was like, wow, like, nobody's like that Nobody, no American president has been like, yeah, we're shady too, right? And everyone's like, yeah, exactly. He's right. On a lot of his divorces and his own conduct for years, one of the superpowers was he had no shame. He would just call the New York Post. I mean, don't you remember some of those headlines like best sex I ever had or whatever with Marla Maples?
Krystal Ball
He would pretend to be his pr.
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, he would pretend to be his PR guy.
Krystal Ball
Right.
Saagar Enjeti
He was absolutely shameless. And that's why people were like, oh, he's lewd and cheats on his wife. He's like, yeah. So, you know, he's like, yeah, he never hit it. Yeah, right. He never hid any. So even here, if he was like, yeah, I was friends with him. I had a ram. You know, some line about. I had a rambunctious youth. Even though he's like, 55 at the.
Krystal Ball
Time, that's like, what RFK Jr did. It kind of works.
Saagar Enjeti
You know, it happened with me. I interviewed rfk and I was like, hey, like, this nanny says that, you know, you groped her or whatever. And he's like, I had a crazy youth. I was like, wow, what an answer.
Krystal Ball
He was like, 40 or whatever.
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah. I was like, whoa. But I mean, it worked, right? And so for Trump, like, that's a twice divorced man who owned Miss Universe pageants and has a long history from, you know, from the tape of 2016 and prior. Like, that's part of the reason I don't think the tape was the hit that most people thought. He's like, he never pretended to be anything that he wasn't. But in this case, he actually did kind of pretend. Right. He was friends with Epstein. It's obvious it's not a good look. You could just say something like, yeah, you know, we party, we chase girls together. But I never see a new or saw anything crazy at this point, though. Doubling, tripling down. And especially, I think, by the way, it's not just about Trump, because Trump, as you say, is always kind of ambiguous. I think it's like Cash Patel, Pam Bondi and Jade, you know, all these other people who used Epstein to political advantage, to rally people to their cause, and then they're silent. Right? And that, See, that I actually think.
Krystal Ball
Really rubs people or directly in cover up, like Cash.
Saagar Enjeti
Right? And so that's what really bugs. I mean, I can't. Can I say, like, for me in particular, watching, like, Cash and all that literally go on podcasts, you know, tours, talking about we know exactly where the Epstein files are. And then bro, you come into office and you say, believe me, I would tell you with your bug eyes, you know, it's like, no, I don't believe you, actually.
Krystal Ball
Pam Bondi. Pam Bondi sitting on my desk.
Saagar Enjeti
I have them on my desk, right?
Krystal Ball
And then weeks later, oh, actually there are no Epstein files and there's nothing to see here when we're moving on.
Saagar Enjeti
So it's like, well, when time, when were you lying? Cause you did lie. There's just no, there's no world where you didn't lie. Then you put some of the facts and all that stuff together. So yeah, for years from. Not years, it's only been a year. It feels like years, but for weeks there was this whole discourse about how MAGA doesn't care about Epstein. And maybe that's true, but this is what I always say. MAGA did not win Trump the election. All right, Maga's only like 33% of the country. 80 something million people did vote for Donald Trump. He won a popular vote victory in the election. Not all of them are maga. Go ask them. They'll tell you, I'm not MAGA or I'm an independent or I was voting for this. That and that reason the coalition that they were the most proud of and they should be proud when young people vote for you. I think that's inspiring. Cuz it's just like, oh, the next generation believes in the stuff that I have to say. I think this is important to them. I think it's important to them. I think our show, our long focused on Epstein. And of course, I mean, I won't lie, I've been rewarded for it a lot through ratings and through all this other stuff. I think it's because the reason why it became a podcast thing is cuz by the way, even to this day you can't go on CNN and just say he was an Israeli asset. Like even then people would go, why? Without evidence, sir, you're speaking. Right? Like that's why it goes big on the podcast, because we can just speak the way that every normal person can look at the facts. Yeah, it's obvious. The New York Times, I mean, one of the things that comes out of these emails is that you have a New York Times reporter who worked there for like 15 years who's basically working with Epstein to try and quash different stories and talking about blackmail. It's like, bro, what the fuck?
Krystal Ball
Well, and that gets to the point of, you were saying your assumption was Basically like, listen, they've been out to get Trump. You know, they've been wanting to take down Trump for a long time. Something, if there was there, there something would have come out. But that discounts how much these media outlets were implicated in terms of the COVID up. It of course erases the number of Democrats who are involved here as well. And so I think it's the case that there was just a bipartisan disinterest like directly going in their own self interest, like, we're just gonna not talk about this. One of the emails is where Epstein and Michael Wolf are going back and forth about like, I think CNN in 2015 is going to ask Trump a question about you. And so they're like brainstorming, well, what would be the perfect answer. And by the way, Wolf, I think it is suggests that hopefully Trump will say some things that are untrue because then you'll have leverage on him. I mean directly plotting, like here's how we're going to this president is compromised and it'd be good for us. Or this potential president at that point is compromised. It'd be good for us if we have some dirt on him. We can use it to our own advantage here. But in any case, CNN didn't ask that question, so yeah, I noticed that too. They didn't end up asking that question. So somewhere along the way, if they were planning to, that particular question got spiked and didn't make it in. So that's why we can be all these years later and you feel like you must know everything there is to know about Donald Trump and we are learning more and more and more.
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, I'm not cynical enough. Cause you know, intellectually, you know, you read the Manson book, right? The Tom. I'm totally blanking on the name, but it's an incredible book. You read the Tom o', Neill, that's his name, the guy who wrote the book. You read that Manson book and you're like, wow, so even 40 years later people will cover this shit up. And intellectually, I know JFK, for example, it's been 60 something years since the assassination and even though we like basically know, you know, the COVID up and the plots and all of that, but we don't know for sure, right? Like we know enough to reasonably guess and say it obviously points in one direction, but in real time it's like, even when you're a very cynical person like me, you're like, oh, I assume something would have come out, you know, by now. And now I'm like, I Don't know, man. Look at the CNN stuff, the New York Times, and you're like, yeah, it's like, to borrow my own words, when we said the richest and most powerful people, we meant it. And it really is a conspiracy of. Of silence, of intelligence, of just like the sketchiest. The sketchiest stuff. And you know what comes through to the emails to me, and again, I knew this at an intellectual level, but the depraved nature through which these guys act in private is so disgusting. I don't care what time it is. Like, what time period. And even if it was 20 years ago, like, when you read that birthday book, remember that one about the guys with masks on talking about raping, rape fantasies. Like, I'm sorry. Like, that's not normal. Like, that's. That's really, really not normal. And psychotic.
Krystal Ball
90% violent. Like the birthday book entries.
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah.
Krystal Ball
All about his, like, sex life and I mean. Yeah. And what it was for his 50th birthday. Is that right?
Saagar Enjeti
Right.
Krystal Ball
It's like, I mean, disgusting. That was like, when that came out, I was like, oh, QAnon was actually.
Saagar Enjeti
Low key on something. I know. That's what I'm saying.
Krystal Ball
You talk about directional crack. Yes, yes. They were just wrong to put Trump as their hero at the center of that story. And I think some of them are realizing that, I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene was a QAnon person, and now here she is signing onto the discharge petition, very much at odds with Trump and kind of in the crosshairs from the administration. But when you think about Trump's life and the characters he ran with, not just Epstein, John Casablancas, who was pioneer in making the modeling industry basically like a global human trafficking industry and exploiting these young girls. Known pedophile himself. And Trump was close with him. And Trump had his own modeling agency and reportedly modeled some of his practices after Casablancas. Puts his own daughter, by the way, in this industry when she's 13, 14 years old. Which, given what you had to know about it, is so beyond disturbing. He bragged about in his beauty pageants how he could go in and since he owned them, he could go into the dressing room and check on all these girls. Now, there's this reporting about the party that he threw that was supposed to be with all these models, young models, and a bunch of VIPs, and then the only person he invites is Jeffrey Epstein. All these girls who thought that this was gonna be their break and there'd be a bunch of rich, famous, influential people that they could get hired for. Gigs, et cetera. And then it's just frigging Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. We know without a doubt that they were super close friends for years and years. All of this is out there. Trump himself confirmed that Virginia Giuffre worked at Mar A Lago and Ghislaine Maxwell comes in and takes her and that's how she ends up being in the Epstein world and herself being trafficked and abused. So once you start to open your eyes to all of these things and then it just really bad. And then we'll get into the emails here, it really bears underscoring why this matters. Obviously, from a moral character perspective, it matters a lot. Okay. That's one thing. We're talking about a President of the United States who was compromised by an Israeli intelligence asset. That's what we're talking about here. I mean, whatever Trump is afraid of coming out right now, he knew that Jeffrey, whatever deep dark secrets he has that he doesn't want to come out, which I think is undeniable at this point given what we know and his behavior. He knew that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, by the way, had that information on him. And you have to assume whether it's true or not, that that information was shared with the Israelis. You have to assume that we know, and Ryan brought this up, that the Israelis used the Monica Lewinsky tapes against Clinton to coerce his behavior. Oh, you think they're above? Of course not. Like that's their whole movie. So we have in the White House it looks like someone who is compromised by Israel. And there was all the Russiagate stuff in the first administration theorize. And by the way, there's also emails here between Epstein talking about his diplomacy with Russian leaders as well. So I think it actually is fair to assume that Trump thinks that they probably do have something on him as well. But in a lot of ways, everybody was looking in the wrong direction. So that's why the Trump focus here is so important. Cuz this is such an incredible. I mean, this is the President of the United States, maybe the most powerful person in the world. And you have to assume that he thinks Israel has some sort of devastating dirt on him.
Saagar Enjeti
And there's only one way to prove that you don't, which is by releasing it all. That's the only way at this point point to prove that you don't. And I think that's why I get extraordinary lengths. I know that this stuff sounds outlandish, but it's like, dude, you know, if you're, if you look like you're in full blown cover up here, you know, either for yourself or your friends or whatever. It's like, yeah, this is politics. People are going to assume the absolute worst. Like you set up the every holiday.
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Saagar Enjeti
Conditions through which people are going to assume that type of stuff. So I don't know. I mean, it's, it's dark. It's very, very dark. Turning now to the emails themselves, which we've been teasing here for a little while, let's actually get into some of them. Crystal and Emily went into the three big ones that happened yesterday, which you'll recall, but it's actually worth knowing. The House oversight Committee ended up releasing some 22,000 new pages. Now, I want to say at the top part of the difficulty for people like us is that they have put them out as individual images, not as searchable PDFs. So we have to individually go through all 22,000 files. It would take weeks if not months to actually go and read. I've done my best. And we have collated a lot of stuff here that various researchers and all of them have flagged. But we want to give you a fulsome taste here of some of the Trump's stuff that remains in the email. So let's put the first one up here on the screen. This is B2 actually guys, let's just jump ahead to there. Jeffrey Epstein. This was a June of 2019 email where they Epstein says specifically, quote, recall Prince Andrew's accuser came out of Mar a Lago. So this is Virginia Giuffre and this is in a text chain that was with Steve Bannon. So this was from July of 2000, June of 2019. And saying, quote, can't believe nobody is making you the connective tissue. And he says specifically Prince Andrew and Trump today too funny. So presumably there was some meeting.
Krystal Ball
There was a meeting that was happening between Prince Andrew and Trump that day.
Saagar Enjeti
Right. So that's what Epstein and Bannon are like joking about. I mean this is only months before he's dead in federal prison and indicted. Just flagging that one. Let's go to the next one. This is, this is nuts. Okay, so this was a email chain with Landon Thomas Jr. Who is a New York Times reporter who worked there for years, who it turns out had this deep and long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And he's sending him some stuff specifically about the Trump campaign, kind of asking him for some questions here about previous BuzzFeed News articles about Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. And what he says is my 20 year old girlfriend in 93 that after two years I gave to Donald. So what that shows is you'll recall Michael Wolf and others had talked specifically about this girlfriend that they appear to have shared or whatever who was 20 years old in the year 1993. There were several jokes about that and being depreciated in the birthday book, which you will also recall. Just again, you know, to show some other relationship. Let's go to the next one. This one is in emails with Michael Wolf, the quote unquote journalist. Yeah, I mean the emails from Wolf here are like a secondary conversation about how disgusting that is. But anyway, he says, well I guess if there's anybody who can wave this away, it's Donald. Let me know if there's anything I can do. This is from Michael Wolfe about the lawsuit.
Krystal Ball
This is in relationship to the lawsuit from an accuser, I believe, named Katie Johnson, who alleged that both Trump and Epstein had raped her when she was 12, 13 years old.
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, that's right. So this was in a lawsuit he's talking about.
Krystal Ball
Well, if anyone could waive this lawsuit away, it's Donald. I guess he was right.
Saagar Enjeti
Okay, first time. Anyway, next time, let's put this up here on the screen. This is for Epstein to on Donald Trump quote, he feels alone and is nuts. I told everyone from day one, evil beyond belief, mad. So it sounds like he had TDS Most thought I was speaking metaphorically. It's obvious he could crack Stormy Daniels. Question mark. Lies after lies.
Krystal Ball
Yeah. Jeffrey Epstein is lecturing you on morality. Like what? You have gone seriously wrong somewhere in your life.
Saagar Enjeti
Next one. This is from 2015. Again, Landon Thomas Jr. Over, I think.
Krystal Ball
Was fired because of his relationship with Epstein.
Saagar Enjeti
Right. And so he emails him about the infamous quote, I've known Jeffrey Epstein for 15 years. And Epstein replies, Read the Uzzfeed.
Krystal Ball
Must be Buzzfeed.
Saagar Enjeti
Buzzfeed. Ari. Airplane logs. Hawaiian contest. Have the ask my house man about Donna. Donald presumably almost walking through the door, leaving his nose print on the glass as young women were swimming in the pool. He was so focused, walked straight into the door.
Krystal Ball
Pause on that one for a second because he's talking about. So they're talking about Trump. Landon Thomas Jr. Says now everyone coming to me thinking, I have juicy info on you and Trump. Because of this, the story will never die. And then Epstein replies, read the buzzfeed. Read my airplane. Law dogs and Hawaiian tropic contests. So some sort of a beauty contest. And then have them ask my houseman about Donald almost walking through and leave as young girls, blah, blah, blah. So anyway, he's gesturing towards, like some of the dirt that he would have. Right.
Saagar Enjeti
That was in a Trump exchange about that. Okay. So yeah, that's. That's what. Let's go to the next one. This was about Ghislaine and more or sorry, this one was a very weird email from a victim them where they say, I'm at the door. I will wait for my time. I don't want to come early to find Trump in your house. Laughing emoji. Laughing emoji. This is from 2017 in December. There is no evidence because Trump was president at this time about a visit. I mean, you know, you can't really go anywhere without the White House press corps, but I guess they were still joking about it or alluding to something while this, at this time period with one of the victims, again, it's, it's this. I've seen these being passed around, but I'm telling you, I mean, I was covering the White House at this time. It's literally impossible. Like, it can't go anywhere without the White House press corps that was tagging along. So I don't think it's likely at all. I mean, he was definitely at Mar A Lago a ton. But Jeffrey Epstein, if he had been at Mar A Lago at that time, that actually would have been a story. It was under Secret Service control. I mean, theoretically, I guess possible, but very unlikely. This just seems to me there's a lot of winking, nodding, joking. And Epstein in the emails, to me, he loves how important he is of his relationship with everybody else. And he's constantly alluding to the dirt that he has on everybody around him, including Trump. Trump was one of the figures that.
Krystal Ball
He constantly alludes to in the email confirmation of. You know, one of the things that has been posited about Jeffrey Epstein is basically like he was using blackmail to make money, ingratiate himself with the rich and powerful, keep himself out of trouble. And you can see him using those tactics in this email saying, basically, I've got, I could take down this person. I've got information on that person. And then you also see him having these high level meetings with heads of state and leaders from countries around the world. So you really get Trump included in this. But even separate and apart from Trump, you do see how he really operates and the way that he presents himself in these emails. You know, back to the, the question about his connectivity with Trump. What's the year that Trump claims he cut off all contact with Epson? It was like 2004 or something like that. Early. Yeah, early 2000s is when they supposedly, I think they did actually have some kind of falling out over like this mansion that they both wanted or some sort of.
Saagar Enjeti
Well, it was that and also Virginia Giuffre being stolen.
Krystal Ball
Stolen from Mar A Lago.
Saagar Enjeti
Don't believe me. Trump said that.
Krystal Ball
Trump said it in episode. Epstein confirms it in these emails, effectively in any case. But you have some indications in these emails, this one being one of them, but others as well, that Epstein still wasn't in direct contact with Trump. He was certainly in contact with Steve Bannon, who was obviously Trump world insider. A lot of questions for Bannon. We knew that Bannon had all of these hours of Epstein footage that has never been released least. And then you see him regularly texting back and forth with Epstein. Again, this is a longtime Trump World insider that is clearly continuing to communicate with Jeffrey Epstein right up until he is dead. So that exchange with regard to Prince Andrew, that is, I think, like a month before he ends up dead in a prison cell.
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah.
Krystal Ball
So all the way up to the end, he was certainly connected directly to Trump World. There's another email where someone is asking him to pass some sort of a video along to Donald Trump, suggesting that they at least thought that he still had that kind of access. So I think that's a really important piece of this, too, as we put these pieces together. And you may like, what's going on with the Steve Bannon thing. I mean, I think the most logical conclusion is that he wanted to keep Epstein close because reportedly he had said that he knew that Epstein was the one guy who could take Trump down and that he was worried about, about going back to 2016. So I think the probably logical conclusion is that he wanted to keep this guy close and keep tabs on him to make sure that nothing that was going to be damaging to Trump was going to be coming out.
Saagar Enjeti
Let's get to B.A. this might be the craziest one. Let's put it up here on the screen. Okay. Trump said, he asked me to resign. Never remember ever. Of course he knew about the girls. As he asked Ghislaine to stop. That was one of those. That was really.
Krystal Ball
Of course he knew about the girls.
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, of course he knew about the girls.
Krystal Ball
And that seems to confirm the Virginia Giuffre at mar. A lot like that dovetails with that story about Virginia Giuffre being, quote, unquote.
Saagar Enjeti
To be fair, I will say what the MAGA people are all showing is what Virginia Giuffre did testify under oath that she never saw Trump do anything wrong, which I don't think is all that exculpatory I get, because for Trump per se, because that's not really the alleged accusation. The accusation here was about knowing about this and some of the relationship that preceded. But did want to throw.
Krystal Ball
But read, read this part from Michael Wolf, too, though, because. So the first part of the exchange is this is when I believe they're talking about this potential CNN debate. Oh, no, this is later. This is 20. Oh, yeah, no, it's 2015.
Saagar Enjeti
This is 2015.
Krystal Ball
Okay, so 2015, they're talking about this potential CNN debate exchange and brainstorming how they would want Trump to respond, which again, indicates that there's some way to get this information to him and to press them to respond one way or another. And Michael Wolf says, I think you should let him hang himself. Interesting choice of words. If he says he hasn't been on the plane or to the House, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you. Or if it really looks like he could win, you could save him generating a debt. Of course it is possible that when asked, they'll say Jeffrey's a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime. So here you have Michael Wolf saying, we should hope that Trump lies because then you have leverage over him, you have valuable PR and political currency, and if he wins, you could save him generating a debt. So again, strategizing about how basically to wield this information against Trump and have power over him. And so that email was in 2015 and then the one above, it is from a separate exchange about, of course, course he knew. Of course Trump knew about the girls. He asked Elaine to stop. So extremely revealing there in terms of how, how they were talking internally and how Epstein operates.
Saagar Enjeti
Let's go to the next one, shall we? This was another pretty extraordinary one. This was, this is a joke where he talks about, well, it may not be a joke. He's saying, quote, hillary doing naughties with Vince. So this is about Vince Foster. This is some 1990s stuff. If you've never gone down the road of the Vince Foster suicide. But he is alluding there the Clinton body count. Well, I mean go and read it for yourself. It is objectively a crazy death. There's no getting around that. Let's get to B11, shall we? This was from Jeffrey Epstein to Peter Thiel, quote, subject. That was fun. See you in three weeks. Just put a pin in that. I will return because it actually just tells you about how crazy his inner circle was. Go to B12, shall we? This was another one. Quote, would you like photos of Donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen? This was from December of 2015. Let's go ahead and skip to B14 just cuz I wanna show everybody how deep he was still in DC. This is an October 2017 email from Larry Summers, who remember, is like former president of Harvard, World bank, treasury secretary under Clinton, like as respected as it gets in liberal establishment circles, still is somehow. Epstein says, when we meet, I will endeavor to mesmerize you with stories of DC so wild. Exclamation, exclamation, exclamation. Interesting. B15, please. These were all some of the ones that I was noting that I dug out. So here is Epstein keeping tabs on Alex AK Acosta before Alex Acosta's hearing. He says who will represent Acosta at hearing and his lawyer, Roy Black, who by the way helped Epstein with the sweetheart deal with Acosta, says he will be by himself, perhaps Trump aide to assist and to accompany him. The reason why that's noteworthy to me is number one, he's keeping tabs on Acosta at the hearing. Number two, the alleged he belonged to intelligence quote about Acosta happened while he was being vetted. Allegedly according to whoever leaked, leaked that story that he belonged to intelligence quote, happened while he was being vetted for his potential confirmation hearing in the belief that he may have been asked about it at some point during that confirmation. So that's why it was important to me that he is keeping tabs on Epstein. Be 16, please. This is the perfect one for me, cuz this just shows you like. Yeah, look, obviously Trump is headlined because he's a president, but this is how deep this stuff all goes. So this is just 2014, just 2014. September, September 2014 during the UNGA when the global elite is all in New York City. These were all of his meetings that he lists out. And please keep this on screen so I can read from them. Peter Thiel, Larry Summers, Bill Burns, CIA director Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of Britain, Jaquelin, who was a Nobel committee person from Norway, the Mongolian president, the UAE leader, Qatari leaders, Leon Black, that Apollo hedge fund guy who, you know, they had a long relationship with. That correspondence that he has back and forth is with Obama's recently departed White House counsel. And he's listing like the Clinton people, the Security Council. He talks about the climate summit that's happening there for the Clinton Global Initiative. Woody Allen, right? Fair weather friends, I guess there between the two. But my point is just like you can see how deeply interconnected that he was into this global elite. Like it's not just Trump, it's like everybody, Indian prime, Indian energy ministers. And just to flag here, the Mongolian president part is, remember one of the first stories that Ryan reported is that Epstein helped broker an Israeli security agreement between Israel and Mongolia. So here you have him meeting with this head of state around the same time that he's working on behalf of Israel to broker the security. So this just conference information of the drop site story number one. But number two, look at the level of access that this guy just had. I mean, it's just so crazy. From prime ministers, CIA directors, billionaires, Nobel committee, sultans of Dubai, people at Harvard, Woody Allen. I mean, it's everywhere. It's entertainment, it's the presidency, it's finance. It's like at the highest levels of government, including many of these people, they never even answered. Like Bill Burns when those stories came out, he was literally our CIA director under Biden. And everyone was like, oh, yeah, you know, and he was asking for career advice from Epstein in a lot of his emails. So it goes deep, man. It's an actual, like, this is a full blown conspiracy. And I want to be clear, I'm not alleging that they all have Kompromat or any of that stuff on them. I really actually don't think that's the case. I think a lot of it was money, influence and power. That's enough. You and I have lived here long enough. We know, know, and people will just look past it. But what you, what I think I would hope most moral people are above is you usually Google the people that you're associated with. This is a registered sex offender at the end of the day, and none of them cared. As long as you know you can get access to money into power.
Krystal Ball
And to use the fact that other wealthy famous people continue to associate with him to be like, well, I mean, Bill Gates still hangs out with me. It can't be that bad. Like, you know, these, like Larry Summers or whoever, they still think that I'm cool. So it can't be that bad. One more that I just saw here this morning, because by the way, and this is important to remember, as Sagar was saying, 22,000 emails and messages got dropped yesterday and none of them are in a searchable format.
Saagar Enjeti
So they're in a Google Drive in image folders which are unsearchable. Just so everybody knows.
Krystal Ball
So what we just went through is a sampling of what has come out so far. There is going to be more. Okay. And so here's another one that I just am seeing for the first time where it's Michael Wolf again going back and forth with Epstein talking about Trump. This is in early 2018. And so Epstein replies to him. The rich and powerful always send lawyers letters. A book about any one of them takes more time to publish, as I must be. And I ain't meticulous about documentation and backup. Now, again, maybe that's not true. There are some indications from the FBI search of his townhouse and victims saying that There were video recording, that there was cameras everywhere, etc. There is some indication that that is actually the case, but that was the perception he wanted people to have, was that he was meticulous about documentation, that he was recording everything, that he was keeping track of everything. And so the reality of what he actually had or didn't have doesn't really matter. What matters is what powerful individuals like Trump think that he may have and assume that he must have and assume that he must be sharing with various entities that he's also associated with. So I think that one is significant as well in terms of the way that he's portraying himself as this sort of like all knowing, all powerful with all the receipts to back it up kind of a guy. And so there's the proximity to power, the genuine influence. I mean, the amount of now we've seen, it honestly goes beyond what I expected. The amount of globetrotting power that he had to shape world events is mind boggling to contemplate. So you have, have wealth, you have power, you have proximity to all of these elites, and then you throw in that you have dirt on any number of people that can make your life very difficult. Then you see how this conspiracy of silence develops and is sustained over so many years. And the last point I wanted to make here, and like I said before, there's gonna be stuff that continues to come out, whatever's new, we'll also put in the show tomorrow. Tomorrow, the Friday show tomorrow as well. But Jill Filipovich made a good point about these emails with this New York Times reporter. These were from his work account. So New York Times fired him because he had an inappropriate relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. So they knew that he was having this personal relationship. And these emails about Epstein and Trump have been sitting on New York Times servers, presumably for all these years. And they just, I guess, never bothered to think of that, never bothered to search the emails, never bothered to see if there was anything relevant there that they might want to look into and report out. And that is wild. And gets to what you were saying Sagar, about like, how is it possible that none of this has come out before? You literally had the email sitting on New York Times servers and they did nothing with it.
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, weird. Interesting.
Krystal Ball
And look at Ryan right now, reporting out all this stuff that any reporter could get access to and report out, but they are the only ones who are doing it tells you a lot.
Saagar Enjeti
I mean, this goes to the heart of the Epstein story from day one. Remember Amy Robach? Good Morning America had the story couldn't cover it. Actually, in some of those files, he is giving advice about how to help quash stories for the royal palace when the Duke Andrew Drew is in his emails being like, please, I have nothing to do with this. Please quash this story for me. And Epstein is like, if we help this, then we're gonna be at, you know, parties in, in Buckingham palace for the next, for the rest of our lives. He literally says that in the emails. Stark crazy stuff. Crazy stuff.
Krystal Ball
Wild.
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Episode: Trump Freaks On Epstein Vote, Full Epstein Email Breakdown
Date: November 13, 2025
Podcast Host: iHeartPodcasts
Hosts: Krystal Ball & Saagar Enjeti
This explosive episode centers on the recent release of thousands of emails related to Jeffrey Epstein, their deep political and social ramifications, and in particular, the Trump White House’s intense and suspicious reaction to a House vote that could lead to the full release of Epstein's files. Krystal and Saagar walk listeners through the latest email dumps, dissect Trump’s reactions, explore the broader context of bipartisan elite complicity, and highlight how these revelations strike at the heart of anti-establishment political brands and narratives.
[05:36]–[10:08]
"You put together some of the content of the emails with the incredibly guilty, panicked way that they're reacting … I think that's a pretty reasonable assumption at this point." – Krystal Ball [08:24]
[10:08]–[20:41]
"The fact this happened in the Situation Room really was like a ‘whoa’ moment for me … that’s just flashing intel." – Saagar Enjeti [14:08]
[20:41]–[26:41]
"When you start acting like those people … new boss, same as the old boss." – Saagar Enjeti [23:24]
[26:41]–[33:44]
"It's a devastating blow to his brand as this renegade outsider going to expose the corrupt elite … and then he's all over the Epstein files." – Krystal Ball [26:41]
[33:44]–[40:49]
"...it really is a conspiracy of silence, of intelligence, of just the sketchiest stuff." – Saagar Enjeti [35:19]
[42:51]–[59:12]
A selection of notable emails and what they reveal:
“One of the things that has been posited about Jeffrey Epstein is basically like he was using blackmail to make money, ingratiate himself with the rich and powerful, keep himself out of trouble. And you can see him using those tactics in this email.” – Krystal Ball [49:05]
[36:49]–[40:49]
“…it looks like someone who is compromised by Israel … and you have to assume that he thinks Israel has some sort of devastating dirt on him.” – Krystal Ball [39:23]
Krystal, on the White House’s obvious panic:
“You put together some of the content of the emails with the incredibly guilty, panicked way that they're reacting…” [08:24]
Saagar, on the Situation Room meeting:
“The fact this happened in the Situation Room really was like a ‘whoa’ moment for me because … that's just flashing intel.” [14:08]
Krystal, on damage to Trump’s brand:
“It's a devastating blow to his brand as this renegade outsider going to expose the corrupt elite … and then he's all over the Epstein files.” [26:41]
Saagar, on the bipartisan nature of the scandal:
“When we said the richest and most powerful, we meant it. And it really is a conspiracy of silence, of intelligence, of just the sketchiest stuff.” [35:19]
On the role of podcast/alternative media:
“You can't go on CNN and just say he was an Israeli asset.” – Saagar [32:05]
On Epstein's proximity to power:
"You have, have wealth, you have power, you have proximity to all of these elites, and then you throw in that you have dirt on any number of people that can make your life very difficult. Then you see how this conspiracy of silence develops and is sustained over so many years." – Krystal [59:43]
| Topic | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------------------|-----------| | White House’s panicked reaction to Epstein files | 05:36–10:08 | | Discharge petition explained; Republicans hold firm | 10:08–20:41 | | Political ramifications for Trump/GOP | 20:41–26:41 | | Impact on Trump’s brand and MAGA coalition | 26:41–33:44 | | Media complicity, suppression, and coverup | 33:44–40:49 | | Elite/cross-party Epstein connections | 36:49–40:49 | | Specific Epstein–Trump emails discussed | 42:51–59:12 | | Reporter complicity; why it didn’t break earlier | 59:38–62:53 |
"And look at Ryan right now, reporting out all this stuff that any reporter could get access to and report out, but they are the only ones who are doing it tells you a lot." – Krystal Ball [62:53]
If you care about transparency, media independence, and holding power to account, this episode is a must-listen—delivering clear-eyed, gutsy analysis and a roadmap for following the bombshells still to come.