Ari Melber (22:05)
They would, I'm ready to move on. But when you say that about the press, are you suggesting we shouldn't cover this killing and this second degree murder trial? Emails show the men also focused on Bannon's appearance in that interview, Epstein writing, you looked so clean cut next to him. I thought I turned on the figure skating channel by accident. Bannon replies, it was his come hither look. And Jeffrey Epstein then replies in this newly exposed email, better than the usual come Hitler look. Bannon appeared to take that as a negative replying. Ouch. The two continued in that kind of banter. Bannon referred to the channel here. And again, we just are reporting the news, so I'm not weighing in. But he says it's the soy boy network and that he wanted to be clean, not sloppy. Epstein replied, closer to toy boy winky face. Now, Bannon may have been referring to how Donald Trump publicly knocked him as, quote, sloppy Steve during their falling out earlier this year. Excuse me, earlier that year, I should say Bannon's appearance and dress has come up in public more than most operatives. The way he wears his clothes and his demeanor. We're not making a point of that. I'm just telling you what they emailed about. Epstein was in on all kinds of references. He talked about Trump figures that Bannon might see, referring to billionaire Trump supporter Peter Thiel being in town. Bannon should take no heat re me not worth it for the moment, he advised. And in the email to journalist Michael Wolfe, Epstein talks about seeing Bannon in London, saying he seemed paranoid about any reporters see me with him. My guess is he's working hard on his relationship with Trump, who he sees as newly ascendant. And being seen with me may and it's hard to get the exact implication here, but seem would affect that. And then he writes Bannon's media tour scene with an eye toward an audience of one. He talks about Bannon's right wing meetings in France and says these guys seemed like idiots. He goes on to say Bannon, surrounded by his own thuggish looking security people and wacky blogger advisors, thrives precisely because the world of populism is so unprofessional, if not farcical. That is Jeffrey Epstein's dead hand in email, trashing the guy who's his supposed ally, and gives you another window into how these people all think they're conning each other. Whether Mr. Bannon has noticed or found out that that's his view, we don't know. But as I mentioned, the idea of having Jeffrey Epstein be your populist advisor was odd to begin with. The emails show Epstein emailed a lot with author Michael Wolf. That's gotten a lot of attention in certain quarters, which is part of the media strategy he was plotting with Bannon. But let me show you something else as part of our report. There's an email that has not actually gotten much attention and understandably, like I said, There's 20,000 of these. But look at what happens. You're kind of going inside in real time when Epstein learns that all of his fancy talk media outreach to Wolf was on a key issue for him, a failure. And Maybe hurt Bannon too. He writes to Bannon, quote, I've now seen some of Wolf's book mentions me and underage prostitutes. Let me repeat that. That's the thing they were working to quiet down, minimize or lie about. Mentions me. Epstein writes, and underage prostitutes. You as the man behind and in front of the curtain. Lots of Steve quotes. Lots. Bannon appears to see the problem, replying, ugh, anything awful. Wish he hadn't done that. Why are you mentioned at all? You rarely get this kind of view. There's no public bluster or spin here. We just see two self styled strategists admitting their whole media outreach strategy failed. This was Epstein's main vulnerability. Underage sex crimes boosted to new visibility in a book that spent about two months atop the best seller list. In a period of Trump mania in America, there were many people in politics and beyond who were reading about Epstein for the first time in that context because of the book. Epstein then replied to Bannon's question, noting, Wolf wrote about the Palm beach house purchase and how Epstein and Trump may have had a fight about that, saying, don't reach out to Michael. Well, if he meant Michael Wolff, it's a little late for that. The book is f. Epstein also detailed money laundering allegations against Trump to Wolf, who that's the author now says Epstein has also worried that his whole original Florida probe, where he ultimately got a sweetheart deal but was the first legal problem that set in motion these events. Wolf says Epstein seemed to have the fear, paranoia or belief that it came from Donald Trump reporting him to the cops as payback. Dropping a dime. To be clear, that's a theory that could explain Epstein's anger at Trump. If that's his belief, there's no public corroboration of it, so it may not be at all true. But Wolf says that's what Epstein believed, which fueled an anger that you can see across these emails. And if you care about the truth, you do have to look at whether someone is so angry that it might change how accurate they are. But it was on display in Epstein's claims that more than the feds or Mueller was a big deal that year, he, Epstein was the one able to take Trump down. Epstein had faced a lot of legal heat. But by 2019, Epstein and his lawyers, who were some of the highest priced top lawyers you could get, and I've told you he had them from both parties, they all could see things were at a new level. In fact, just one week before Epstein's 2019 arrest, as he pondered his own supposed leverage over President Trump, who oversaw the DOJ that he knew was probably closing in, he was thinking about it. And even though he trashed Bannon, as I showed you, and his unprofessional populism and his wacky bloggers and his weird security, again, I'm paraphrasing what Epstein said, of all people. Then a week out, who did this sex trafficker reach out to Donald Trump's guy, Steve Bannon, to talk about Trump. And he wrote, quote, now you can understand why Trump wakes up in the middle of the night sweating when he hears you and I are friends. It's quite a claim. And if it had come out only back then, it might have sounded like some possibly overblown assertion by a paranoid conman sex trafficker to his political buddy, who was something of more of an outcast at the time. Something many might just dismiss if you care about assessing the facts. But here we are, a long seven years later. Donald Trump's many, many efforts, now failed efforts to hide the Epstein evidence, puts that secret claim in at least a different light. Epstein claimed in private, in a message he didn't know would ever be on tv, that Donald Trump was more nervous about this than anything else. And now, for all these years later, that is pretty much how Donald Trump has been acting in public. Perhaps it is fitting that we only know about that claim because some of these Epstein files are already starting to come out. As we report on new emails showing the Steve Bannon, Jeffrey Epstein alliance and Trump's wider cratering, I'm joined by Michael Hirshhorn. He is a filmmaker, a producer, a media extraordinaire, and has done a lot of writing about strategies for effective ways to fight Donald Trump. Welcome.
