← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
A
Hi, I'm Andrew Egger with the Bulwark. Got some weird new stuff to discuss in the ongoing, never ending, apparently story of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Here to discuss it is my Bulwark colleague and right wing media whisperer, Will Sommer.
- [00:15]
B
It's a classic Howard Lutnick foot in the mouth moment. I'm happy to be here.
- [00:20]
A
Yeah, we get these so often, right? It's a good day. So let's start with the kind of preexisting line here, right? The White House has been a saying for a while that, that as far as they know, according to all the evidence the Justice Department has, Jeffrey Epstein was not actually like, involving other high profile, powerful people in his abuse of underage girls that was going on for years and for which he ultimately was. Went to prison and. And ultimately apparently killed himself. This is what FBI Director Kash Patel had to say about that last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee. There is no credible information.
- [00:59]
C
None. If there were, I would bring the case yesterday.
- [01:02]
A
Now, I think we have all been interested to see that. That's the line the White House is rolling with, right? It's been interesting to see them all say, nothing to see here, Nothing to see here. Nothing to see here. Obviously, a lot of Epstein's victims have accused other prominent people of participating in their abuse. Along with Jeffrey Epstein, there are a lot of outstanding questions about how he got his money and, you know, why, why he had, why he was rubbing shoulders with all these rich and powerful people. Among those people, among the people who apparently are not particularly satisfied with the White House's version of events here is the Commerce Secretary of the United States, Howard. Howard Lutnick, who showed up on a podcast yesterday. New York Post podcast, by the way. New York Post. Please stop horning in on our territory with these video podcasts. We do not go to New York and print off, you know, broadsheet tabloids and put them around town. You do your thing, we'll do our thing. The Commerce Secretary was on this podcast and, and he was asked about his own prior connection to Jeffrey Epstein. I actually will. I did not know that these guys had such an interesting personal history. Why don't we start there? Why? What is it? What's the Howard Lutnick experience when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein?
- [02:15]
B
Like so many in the Trump administration, Howard Lutnick had a relationship, albeit perhaps a distant one, with Jeffrey Epstein. They were neighbors. At one point, Lutnick says he went over to Epstein's house and got kind of creeped out by the massage table. And he said, you know what?
- [02:30]
C
Let's.
- [02:30]
B
Let's not hang out with this guy anymore. I mean, that's how he relates it. But he certainly appears to have been, you know, in his own telling, sort of at least somewhat you know, socially familiar with him.
- [02:40]
A
Yeah, I did not realize that. The thing that was so crazy to me is he talks about how they were literally next door neighbors, right? He says, he says we shared a wall while they were both living. Living in New York. And it appears, I mean, when, when, when. When he narrates this story to the, to the Post, it's very clear in, in his telling that, like, they were not close, right? That, that they, when they became neighbors. Epstein had him over to his place one time and, and then. And he was so creeped out by the way the whole thing went. He said, he said, you know, they had this massage table just like in the living room, right? Like where, where ordinary people would just be like, hanging out, right? And, and, and he, he narrates that that Epstein came up to or came very close to him and is like, yeah, I get a massage every day and I get the right kind of massage. And, and Howard Lutnick and his wife are just standing there like, cool, man.
- [03:30]
B
This is, this is a hand sanitizer, perhaps. Yeah.
- [03:35]
A
The whole story of Jeffrey Epstein is full of these things, right? And you mentioned it a second ago, like, he really was like, just very much a. A. A mainstay of this whole kind of like, New York social scene for a long time. Right? Yeah.
- [03:47]
B
I mean, Look, I mean, New York magazine wrote about him in 2002, way before even the first pedophile accusations, you know, made it to law enforcement. And they said, like, who's this guy who's so rich and how did he get so rich and how does he know everyone? So, I mean, I guess it's not surprising that Howard Lutnick as another rich New York guy would have a connection to him. But I do think it's interesting here how, you know, as someone plugged into that milieu, he then goes on to obliterate the administration's line on, on Epstein.
- [04:15]
A
Right, right, right. Yeah, we're burying the lead here a little bit. Like, let's, let's just play this clip because this is crazy that he comes out and says this as another cabinet official in this White House.
- [04:24]
C
That's what his M.O. was. You know, get a massage. Get a massage. And what happened in that massage room, I assume was on video. This guy was the greatest blackmailer ever blackmailed People. That's how he had money. So, so what happened to those videos? Why is there now such a dearth of information when, you know, Donald Trump's people are running the FBI and the doj, I assume way back when, they traded those videos in exchange for him getting that 18 months allowed him to have visits and be out of jail. I mean, he's a serial sex offender. How could he get 18 months and be able to go to his office during the day and have visitors and stuff? Must have been a trade just to.
- [05:12]
A
Put these things side by side, right? Cash Patel. The basic argument here, and this is, this is the, the kind of great unanswered question about Jeffrey Epstein, is like, we know he had all these relationships with, you know, the jet set crew, and we also know that he had this horrible life, abusing underage girls, trafficking them, you know, all this, all this stuff, all the stuff that everybody knows by now. And the big outstanding question that has never been resolved to anybody's satisfaction is how much did those lives cross over, right? How much did they coincide? Was, was he just like this crazy finance guy who had this, like, horrible secret side of his life, or was. Was the horrible, secret side of his life part of his attraction to sort of like the elite set that he ran with? And the White House line has always been very much, or at least, you know, since Trump's reelection, since this was a story they wanted to put to bed very much. The totally separate nothing to see here. It's over and done with. Letnick again, he's speaking in his personal capacity here. He's just kind of sharing his own thoughts. But he makes it sound like from the minute he met Jeffrey Epstein, it was obvious and apparent that that Epstein was, you know, a total sex pest and a total creep and was like, kind of like leading with that while meeting other prominent members of the. Of, you know, of the. Of the New York elite, the New York financial elite.
- [06:30]
C
And then he, like, gets, like, weirdly close to me. Oh. And he says, and the right kind of massage. Ooh. Now, my wife is standing here. So she looks at me and I look at her and we say, I'm sorry, we have to go. And we left. And in the six or eight steps it takes to get from his house to my house, my wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.
- [07:07]
B
Lutnick here is making clear that, you know, I don't think I. I personally wouldn't consider Howard Lutnick like a Sherlock Holmes level Sleuth or, you know, like this guy who can really deduce things others can't see. And yet he's like, oh yeah, you know, he's like, here's my creepy old massage table. Welcome to my house. It's right in the living room. So, you know, I mean, in the same way this hearkens back to, you know, Trump's birthday letter, you know, saying like, you know, we love secrets. You know, I, or Trump's remark, Jeffrey likes his women very young. You know, this kind of thing. And so in this case, the idea that Lutnick says, yeah, like Jeffrey was blackmailing women or I would assume, and I think he had all these videos of people. I mean, this goes right against what the White House and the DOJ line has been this whole time.
- [07:48]
A
Yeah, yeah. And again, just to dwell on that because like, any one of these, like, clips that we have, have known that have been kind of a matter of the public record now forever, you know, Trump talking about liking the women on the young side or, or, you know, who the heck knows? Like, there are, there are 500 of these, like, weird little things. Or like, you go back to the, all of the weird smoke around Jeffrey Epstein's original plea deal when he got off incredibly light in 2008 when it was, it was thought that they were going to be bringing federal charges against him for, for, you know, these accusations of, of sex crimes with underage girls got a slap on the wrist sentence from a guy who went on to be a cabinet secretary in Trump's first turn, first term, Alex Acosta. I mean, it's just this stuff just piles up, right? And now you have, you know, here, this guy, a cabinet secretary for Donald Trump now a former next door neighbor of Jeffrey Epstein, who's saying, yeah, you know, from, from the second we met, obvious sex pest he was, he was blending these two sides of his life completely. And, and it's my opinion that, that this is how he made his money is by blackmailing famous wealthy people after, after talking them into getting, you know, creepy, creepy, you know, untoward massages in my, in his living room. I mean, it's just, it's all right out there, right? The funniest thing about this clip to me came right at the end of it when, when the, the, the Post reporter who like, is plainly sort of like, wow, these are some wild things that, that the Commerce Secretary is throwing around, she kind of asks him, have you, have you shared your, your perspective, your theory, your experiences with, with the President about this? And he Kind of, he kind of goes into, like, immediate, like, wait a minute, I'm kind of talking out of turn mode. And he's sort of like, ah, yeah, well, you know, the President knows that I wasn't, I wasn't a big fan of the guy, but, you know, he has so much stuff going on. He has so much stuff on his plate, and these are all sort of distractions. And it's funny to see him kind of, like, snap back out of, like, fun story time with Howard mode, back into. Wait, there's like, a White House narrative that I need, I need to keep standing up here.
- [09:51]
B
Well, I mean, it's really crazy what he's saying. I mean, he says that Epstein was filming, you know, people he was providing underage girls to. Right. And something the Justice Department has said is not true. And he says, well, I think Epstein got this sweetheart plea deal and which, by the way, was arranged by Alex Acosta, who went on to be in the Trump administration in exchange for the pedophile tapes. Now, the government, that means the government is covering up, you know, the, these videos of other people who are, who are, you know, having sex with underage girls. And also is like, okay, like that. In order to cover that up, let's give you the deal. I mean, that is really, that's a crazy allegation. And as we said, I mean, it goes completely against what the Justice Department is saying, if anything. I mean, that's like, you should be on Infowars, Right? I mean, that level like, that, that's something that's like, way beyond what a lot of people are saying. And so that idea is just really wild. And then, you know, he's just going to say, oh, well, you know, never mind. You know, maybe I've said too much.
- [10:51]
A
Yeah. And look, we should know, like, we've been talking a lot about these, these allegations that Lednik is making. He is not really in a position to, like, have insider knowledge about this stuff, you know, like, to the same degree that, like, Cash Patel is or, you know, the FBI or various people in the doj. I mean, that's obviously not Lutnick's role as Commerce Secretary. So he is sort of coming at this story from outside again as, like, a former neighbor of Epstein's and as a pundit. Right. So it's, I, I, I, it is in one sense, you know, the White House, like, contradicting its own story horribly. In another sense, it's not like, I mean, I don't expect the, the Judiciary Committee to, like, drag Cash Patel back and wave this interview in his face and be like, what you see, you see, you know, caught in the act, the smoking gun. But it's crazy. It's crazy that he's saying these things. And it does really just underscore how implausible the, the White House's case has been because, because here's a guy, you know, again, just talking from his own lived experience of having shared a wall once upon a time with Jeffrey Epstein and, and having supposedly been sort of enthusiastically talked to about unsavory massage activity that was taking place on the other side of that wall. So much so that he and his wife like immediately made a U turn and he says, you know, we would, we would like never be seen with him again. You know, for, we wouldn't do professional events with him. We wouldn't do, you know, we wouldn't go to philanthropic stuff that he was at. I mean, this is what Lutnick says. It's interesting. I mean, Donald Trump did not have the, the same, the same sort of knee jerk reaction to Jeffrey Epstein that, that Howard Lutnick, his Commerce Secretary, seems to have had. Anything else we should say about this stuff, Will? Before we, before we.
- [12:30]
B
I think that's it. I mean, it's a classic, you know, Lutnick blunder. You know, famously, he said, you know, you might not get your Social Security check, you know, this week, but, but who would miss that? And so, you know, I, he just loves sticking his foot in his mouth in ways that I think are disadvantageous for the administration.
- [12:48]
A
Yeah, the Zepstine story is going to keep rolling. We're going to get a discharge petition out of the House of Representatives in theory, in the near future here. So we will, we'll keep an eye on it. It just keeps burning, just keeps going, keeps being new stuff to say about it. So thanks, Will, for coming on to talk about the whole thing. Thanks to all of you guys out there in TV land for watching, listening, however you consume this, whether it's on YouTube, whether it's on our website, thanks for doing that. If you are on YouTube, you should consider heading over to the bullwork.com checking out our stuff. Get Will's newsletter. Get my newsletter. Get 50 other newsletters and podcasts and stuff we put up on the website. It's all good as well as we hope you will subscribe to the channel if you aren't yet. Thanks for watching. We will see you all next time.