Loading summary
Transcript28 lines
- [00:00]
Brett Msalis
Foreign.
- [00:05]
Unknown Host
We have a great guest today, one of the founding members of the Midas Touch podcast, Brett Msalis.
- [00:12]
Brett Msalis
It's great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
- [00:14]
Unknown Host
I'm so glad you did this. I mean, on a perfect day, the Epstein stuff just, it gets bigger every day. And so we have Senator Ron Wyden who just posted. In light of what we released last week for my staff's investigation, I'm handing Trump's DOJ a ready made with seven different lines of investigation for them to follow the money on. Jeffrey Epstein. What do you think?
- [00:39]
Brett Msalis
I mean, I think this is just another long line of the drip, drip, drip that we are seeing of this story. Donald Trump and Republicans want this Epstein story to go away. It's not going away. These are decades and decades and decades of crimes. These are decades of connections between Donald Trump and Epstein. And Wyden is saying that, that four big banks flagged $1.5 billion billion dollars in potentially suspicious money transfer. Epstein and he says that much of that appeared to be related to his massive sex trafficking network. And at the center of that were 4725 wire transfers. Wieden is highlighting also that Epstein used Russian banks to process millions in payments, suggesting that these transactions were part of the sex trafficking operation. And so when he has these, when he's talking about these seven lines of inquiry, I think he wants to see exactly what, where was this money going? What was he doing with all this money? And to be honest, what we're kind of, everybody's all kind of confused about is where did Epstein even get his money in the first place? He's this kind of Gatsby esque figure. Nobody really knows how he kind of got as successful as he got so quickly. When you look into Epstein's past, it's a very peculiar rise in the finance world. And then he's all of a sudden buddying around with the top people, you know, in finance and in politics. And a lot of people are just like, how did this person go from a person who graduated high school, dropped out of school, ended up being a schoolteacher to being plucked and then being put in the middle of this finance world, becoming such a major player and becoming involved in all this. And so I think Senator Ron Wyden is seeing a lot of this, you know, very suspicious activity in the finances. He's trying to flag it for Trump's Justice Department. And as we're seeing every step of the way, Trump's Justice Department, they like to call themselves the most transparent administration in history. I think they maybe got a little bit of a look into those Epstein files. They noticed that Donald Trump's name was all over them. Suddenly they're like, oh, we don't need to see the files anymore. Let's all. Let's all close our eyes, let's all cover our ears. Nothing to see here, folks.
- [02:44]
Unknown Host
You know, what's interesting to me is now the Justice Department is saying, oh, we're transparent. We're going to go talk to Ghislaine Maxwell. Nobody on planet Earth has more of an incentive to lie than Ghislaine Maxwell. I mean, full stop, Trump is the only person that can get her out of jail. And she also has enough information that she can hang and then tell all. You know, everybody that MAGA hates is on the list. I mean, there's no way to verify or test me. Like, I think that's why they'd rather talk to Ghislaine Maxwell than release the files. I mean, that's just my opinion for sure.
- [03:19]
Brett Msalis
Her incentive is entirely to do whatever she can to get released. She's serving something like a 20 year prison sentence. Where do you think her incentives lie? She wants to get the hell out of there, right? And you have to remember, she was, like, best friends with Donald Trump. They were all a part of this circle together going back years and years and years. It's why Donald Trump, when he was asked about Ghislaine Maxwell after the trial, after the conviction, he said, I wish her well. He could have said anything at that moment, but she's a dear friend of his. And I've seen a lot of people speculating, oh, Trump's gonna pardon her. You know, my perspective of all that is Trump is giving her everything that she needs to get out of prison early without pardoning her, without the fallout of the pardon. He's essentially called the entire case, the entire sex trafficking operation for which she is in prison for a democratic hoax. And you all already see Ghislaine Maxwell's attorneys starting to use that as they push for a retrial, as they push for early release.
- [04:16]
Unknown Host
And. And here's the thing. He is doing it to himself. He is the one that got the MAGA base frothing at the mouth over Jeffrey Epstein because he projects everything. I think you say on your show all the time, every statement is an admission, like, every projection tells you exactly what's going on with him. And he knew. He was all over the Epstein files. He knew and he just continued to do it. Okay, Someone that is dying to get away from the Epstein file. Mike Johnson, Moses Mike Johnson, the world's biggest Christian. He wants to protect children. He loves kids. Here he is concerned.
- [04:57]
Brett Msalis
I mean, obviously, we've seen the conservatives shut down the House floor routinely. You saw that. You had to pull the rule because of fear of the Epstein votes. No, we don't have any fear. No, no, hold on. No, Reese. No, there's no fear here. No, there's no fear. There's no fear. We're not going to allow the Democrats to use this as a political cadre. Remember?
- [05:15]
Unknown Host
Could you imagine being that big of a liar and acting like you're the world's biggest Christian, like you're so good. My faith tells me to protect children. He lies as much as anybody. He grosses me out so much.
- [05:30]
Brett Msalis
Yeah, he definitely. He gives you that factor. I think anytime you see Mike Johnson, you're like, I don't like this. Right. He's clearly lying. Lying. He is shutting down Congress so that the Republicans do not have to vote on the release of the Epstein files. And just think about how contradictory that is when you look at all of his statements made in the past. We need to be transparent. We need all of this to get out here. And, you know, sorry to quote Donald Trump here, but Mike Johnson just does not have the cards. Because if. If Mike Johnson had the cards in this situation, he would say, even if he's saying, oh, Democrats are trying to wield this for political purposes, he would say, I call your bluff. Let's vote on it. Let's release the files. Let's expose all those Democrats that we keep talking about. There's a reason he does not want those files out there. There's a reason that Donald Trump does not want those files out there. And quite frankly, the more that they try to deflect on this issue, the guiltier all of them look. I think a lot of people who maybe not have even been down the Epstein rabbit hole at all are now looking at Donald Trump's resistance to the release of the Epstein files. And they're probably going in the beginning, like, yeah, so they were friends. They had some pict. And now with the constant denials, with the constant, you know, pushing this off and the creation of these Obama conspiracy theories and all this other deflection, I think a lot of people are like, oh, not only were they friends, Donald Trump was deep in it and probably far more than anybody even knows at this point. And that's. Yeah. Because once you kind of realize that all of his actions around this issue Make a whole lot more sense. And when he speaks about this as a hoax, and then you think about all the. The long list of things that Donald Trump has called a hoax over past decade or so, you realize, oh, yeah, all those things were true. This is true as well, 100%.
- [07:18]
Unknown Host
And I think, how bad is it if they're shutting down Congress, if everybody is calling it a hoax, if they're doing all this stuff? It must be worse than the porn star, the Playboy bunny, like all the other things, and that, you know, election fraud, all an insurrection. I mean, it must be bad. At least my imagination goes crazy because of how he behaves general in such opposition to how he's behaving now. I mean, I just think it must be bad.
- [07:49]
Brett Msalis
It has. It has to be really, really bad. And, you know, you just look at Trump and Epstein's relationship. I mean, Epstein's own brother has said repeatedly that Trump and Epstein were best friends with one another. Tied at the hip, I think was the term that. That he used. Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. And we're seeing that, like in the footage that CNN released last night of Trump and Epstein at the Victoria's Secret event, of Epstein at Donald Trump's wedding with Marla Maples. Close these two were. And every time you see them together, they look like the best of friends. I know Michael Wolf, the biographer, author, has all those tapes. He. He had conversations with Epstein prior to his death. Epstein was talking about how he was best friends with Donald Trump for at least 15 years. And that goes way back. We have documented statements from Donald Trump, like in that New York magazine article, where he said Epstein was a terrific guy who liked. And these were his words. I don't want anybody to get, you know, mad at me who liked women on the younger side. And so it's very clear that Donald Trump, at minimum, knew what was going on in the Epstein world. But when you see Trump's ties and connections to not just Epstein, but all the kind of ancillary figures in that world as well, I think you kind of have to say, okay, so was Donald Trump the only person not engaged in all this behavior when all these people were doing these things? I mean, you just have to kind of look at Epstein's world at this time. He. And I think his connections are everything, which is why the Wieden report is so important, because he collected wealthy individuals basically like they were Pokemon, you know, and he viewed it as, oh, I got to become friends with Bill Clinton, I got to become friends with Donald Trump, I got to become friends with Prince Andrew, you name it. Epstein wanted to claim those people as friends and he rose. As I was saying earlier, he was a teacher at the prestigious Dalton School. He was let go from that job. They said it was due to poor performance, though there were lots of reports of inappropriate behavior with him and the students there. While he's there, he tutors the son of the Bear Stern CEO, Alan Greenberg. He's impressed by him. He gets a job at Bear Stern rises quickly in the finance world, becomes a limited partner by 1980, starts his own firm. 1981. His biggest kind of financial client is Les Wexner, who's the guy who founded Limited Brands and Bath and Body Works. He bought Victoria's Secret. Victoria's Secret. He turned it around by bringing in supermodels and by bringing in the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. That brings you to the CNN footage where we saw Donald Trump sitting just a few seats down from Jeffrey Epstein at the Victoria's Secret Fashion show. And once you start looking into those fashion shows and this whole kind of model network, you start seeing the seedy underbelly of all this stuff. Because you could look at somebody like a Jean Luc Brunel, who's the French model scout with ties to Epstein and John Casablancas who ran Elite Model Management and Trump, who had his model right. He had Next Management Corporation. He faced allegations of sexual assault and trafficking that went back decades. Virginia Giuffre said that Epstein sent thousands of girls to Brunel. Brunel was convicted after Jeffrey Epstein died in prison. And then Brunel ends up dying by suicide in prison overseas. You look at John Casablancas at Elite Model Management. We dug up that footage on Midas Touch on the Midas Touch podcast for the 1991 look of the Year event. That was a popular pageant that they had with girls as young as 14 years old. Donald Trump was one of the main judges of that competition. And this was a competition that the Guardian has done expose on and said that John Casablancas, the founder and others used the competition to engage in sexual relationships with these young models. It was an abusive, an abusive pageant. And by the, and by the way, Casablancas had a relationship with a 15 year old which led to the end of his marriage. He then married a 17 year old in 1993. He was accused of raping and impregnating a 15 year old in 1988. Donald Trump put Ivanka Trump in Elite Model Management. He put her in that world when she was age 14 or 15.
- [12:11]
Unknown Host
I did not Know that, Brett, you are. He is. Well, he said he would have sex with Ivanka if she wasn't his daughter.
- [12:20]
Brett Msalis
Yeah.
- [12:21]
Unknown Host
I mean, it's just so gross.
- [12:22]
Brett Msalis
Talk about feeding your own daughter to the wolves. And I think when you look at that, when you look at all these modeling agencies and these people who Donald Trump was good friends with, and there's that very kind of creepy photo that you probably seen. It's a black and white of Trump holding his kids. And you see Epstein, and then you see somebody's face all the way in the right corner of that photo. The person's face in the right corner of the photo is John Casablancas, who ran Elite Model Management. So you see the connections between all of these, and then, you know, it's not even a conspiratorial rabbit hole. This is just. This is documented proof that these people were friends and worked together. But I think when you look at that, I think you have to look at the whole Trump Models kind of empire that he was doing in a whole different light.
- [13:02]
Unknown Host
Well, and sexual abuse allegations that have stemmed back for years, the aging Carol lawsuit, I mean, all leads to the same path. One thing I did hear, Maria Farmer on CNN when she said, and she was the first victim to ever report Epstein, this whole thing would have gone away had the FBI followed her. She mentioned Donald Trump to the FBI twice. What I worry about when I see all these things is all the trauma these women have gone through, and now they're being re traumatized on a federal level every day in the media. And I think, who is going to protect these victims? Because it's not Mike Johnson, it's not Donald Trump. It's certainly not Pam Bondi or Todd Blanch. So I, I mean, I really, I have real concerns for how traumatized these victims are going to be. Again, nobody's protecting the victims in this same.
- [13:53]
Brett Msalis
This, this is a. It's a really serious issue. And, you know, it's obvious, obviously been weaponized politically in very nefarious ways. But at the core of this are really sad stories. Really sick people who've done really horrible things to innocent girls who are now still decades later dealing with their trauma, dealing with the ramifications of that. And every time this is dragged through the, you know, I have to imagine they are reliving these scenarios in very traumatic ways. And I have to assume also that a lot of these victims have been looking for justice. All they want is some accountability. And it's now been decades and decades and decades, and there has been none not only is there now not accountability, but the guy who is ostensibly the most powerful person in the world is now saying what they experienced was a hoax. And not only that, he is shutting down the federal investigation into the clients, into the network of people who victimized all of these people. And I feel like that's not getting enough attention. That was Donald Trump's decision that he made. So you could say, oh, you know, well, what are they going to do? They're going to hold more hearings. You know, how are these people going to be held accountable? They're not. Donald Trump, his Department of justice, they shut down the investigation into Epstein. They closed the case. They said, nothing to see here. They said, prince Andrew, you're free to travel around. We're not investigating you anymore. Anybody who has connections to Epstein, don't worry, you're off the hook. That's something Donald Trump already did recently, in the past few weeks.
- [15:28]
Unknown Host
Okay, one quick question. I. And I know you have to go. What do you think MAGA base will do if he pardons Ghislaine Maxwell? Do you think they'll have an uprising?
- [15:38]
Brett Msalis
Yeah, I think it would be incredibly damaging to him. You know, I feel like the MAGA base is a little bit split into kind of a couple, a few different factions. And I think you have the folks who are kind of the, the online influencer, grifter types who take their orders from the administration, who. Their job is pure propagandists. How are we going to spin this to help Donald Trump? And you see people like Charlie Kirk, who are legitimately, they are getting phone calls from Donald Trump or Trump says, hey, I need you to back off on this Epstein thing. And then the next thing you know, they start tweeting out, you know what? I don't even care about this Epstein thing anymore. Even though they were talking about this all the time. Time. Then I think there are the real die hards, the people who are actually deep in the cult, who. This is in many ways their origin story. If you remember how the entire kind of Trump, the rise of Trump happened in 2016, what was it around? It wasn't really around Build the Wall and all that other stuff, which he did push. But QAnon was a big part of that. And QAnon was about that there were these elite sex trafficking networks and that Donald Trump was the guy who was going to take it down and Donald Trump going to drain the swamp and execute his political opponents on live television. And everyone was going to watch that. That was the basis for the cult that was the basis that solidified this MAGA movement. And so now it's like everything that they have rested their beliefs on is being proven to be a complete and utter lie. And perhaps even worse, they were taken advantage of to actually protect the people who were engaged in that behavior by redirecting their attention to with that lie. That's how devious, that's how cynical those lies were that were spread. So I think if Trump were to pardon a Ghislaine Maxwell, I think it would be highly damaging with his, his base of those true believers. I think he'll continue to ramp up his distractions in other places, try to make them, you know, like in the movie, you know, up, you know, where.
- [17:44]
Unknown Host
Right.
- [17:45]
Brett Msalis
You know, squirrel, you know, they'll use or jangle the keys or whatever. That's, that's what he's constantly doing to try to redirect their attention and redirect their eyes or elsewhere. But the fact is, you know, I think that would make their, would make his base very pissed off. But I think that's why he's almost looking to see how could he sort of achieve that end goal without doing that directly. And I think we've already seen him take those steps where he's basically given Ghisain Maxwell a golden ticket to get out of prison early. And he's continuing to do that with these meetings and whatever we see develop from here.
- [18:18]
Unknown Host
Yeah, I completely agree with you. I think he is setting the stage for her to rat out Democrats, say he wasn't an involved, pardon her, wrap everything up, move on down the road to grifting, corruption, all the other things he's good at.
- [18:32]
Brett Msalis
Brett myself, he's very good at that.
- [18:35]
Unknown Host
I mean, he's the one thing I will give him. I don't understand the riz, but I will give him. He can grift better than any evangelical pastor ever thought about grifting. I mean, it is grift nation. Brett, my Salis from the Midas Touch network. Check out their podcast, check out their YouTube channel. They are the fastest growing media enterprise guys on planet Earth, which makes me so happy. Congratulations. Follow them and thank you so much.
- [19:03]
Brett Msalis
Thank you so much for having me and keep on crushing. I love seeing it.
- [19:06]
Unknown Host
It's great to see you.