Why Epstein Is Trump’s Defining Crime: Rothkopf

Summary

The Daily Beast Podcast

Episode: Why Epstein Is Trump’s Defining Crime: Rothkopf
Host: Joanna Coles
Guest: David Rothkopf
Date: March 2, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode delves deep into the political, social, and intelligence implications of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, exploring its vast network of connections across elite business, academia, and government. Joanna Coles and guest David Rothkopf—former Clinton administration official and founder of Deep State Radio—discuss why the Epstein scandal is so emblematic of Donald Trump’s character and American political corruption at large. The conversation uncovers the continuing fallout from the released Epstein files, the enablers within powerful institutions, and the broader message about systemic inequality and corruption in American society.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Generational Change and the Epsteins Scandal’s Legacy

• Majority of Voters Are Younger
  • Rothkopf sees hope in demographic shifts:

    "In 2026, the majority of voters will have been born since 1990, that they will demand change." (00:29, 51:53)

  • Coles suggests Trump’s own actions and government have inadvertently accelerated this change by forcing the Epstein files into the open. (00:39, 52:30)

The Clinton Testimony and the Double Standard

• Rothkopf is glad to see Bill Clinton testify even as the Oversight Committee investigates his relationship with Epstein, but criticizes the inclusion of Hillary Clinton as insidious sexism (03:03–03:37):

  "Hillary Clinton... had nothing to do with her." (03:03, Rothkopf) "Of course, she got more in the popular vote than he did." (03:34, Coles)

• The focus on past figures like Clinton demonstrates Trump’s fixation on the past and inability to address new issues (04:19–05:17).

The Ripple Effect: Who's Fallen Amid the Files

• Coles lists prominent figures who've resigned or lost positions due to Epstein proximity—across the UK, US, and global business. Notable names: Peter Mandelson, Larry Summers, Tom Pritzker, Les Wexner, Casey Wasserman, and even Prince Andrew. (06:23–08:00)

  "It is remarkable how this thing has just spru[n] its tentacles." (08:17, Coles)

• Many are “steaming in their own juices waiting for the other shoe to fall,” highlighting widespread anxiety and unfinished business. (08:06, Rothkopf)

Bad Judgment vs. Criminal Enabling

• Rothkopf frames the current phase as the "bad judgment" era, where association rather than direct participation is leading to downfalls—but hints worse revelations are to come (08:24):

  "We are still in the bad judgment phase of this... Typically, you were associated with him after you knew he was a sex criminal." (08:24, Rothkopf)

• The conversation touches on suspicious deaths (Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, Jean Luc Brunel, and Epstein himself) and the world of “silence or death” around these elite circles (09:03–10:49).

Intelligence Services and the Ultimate Honey Trap

• Rothkopf calls Epstein’s global network “the world’s largest honey trap,” with ties to US, Russian, and Israeli intelligence. (14:49, 18:18–21:21)

  "The Epstein scandal is kind of like the scandal that connects everything right now." (05:45, Rothkopf) "At the candy coated center of the story is Russia, Russia, Russia." (17:22, Rothkopf) "There's no reason to assume that this wasn't going on there." (20:21, Rothkopf)

• Coles is shocked at how high government ministers, like Peter Mandelson, gave near real-time information to Epstein (17:40).

• Foreign intelligence services are implied to have exploited Epstein’s access to compromise powerful individuals for information (18:27–21:59).

The Trump Connection—“Defining Crime”

• Rothkopf sees the Epstein scandal as the signature crisis defining Trump’s presidency and person, not just another scandal:

  "Some leaders have a signature accomplishment. Donald Trump... this is his signature scandal." (13:55, Rothkopf) "It's his sense of impunity, his weird sexual history with pageants and pageant girls..." (13:58, Rothkopf)

• Coles and Rothkopf joke about Melania’s performative public roles and their belief foreign influence has penetrated deep into the Trump inner circle, “matryoshka dolls” style, with Russia at the center. (14:37–17:14)

The Social Web of Enablers

• Epstein created a web where academia, politics, and business all sought his patronage, providing him with cover and legitimacy:

  "He pulled these people in as hiding for the stuff that he was doing in plain sight." (35:34, Coles) "All those academic people... why were they there? Because we don't fund academia in our society." (36:57, Rothkopf)

• Coles notes the emails are full of people thanking Epstein for “marvelous evenings,” while their private conversations remain unknown (38:08).

• Rothkopf is blunt about the culture of enabling:

  "By swarming Epstein... they enable. That's why... it's actually worse than bad judgment, it's enabling." (39:09, Rothkopf)

The Transactional Elite: Pyramid Schemes & Dinner Parties

• Both note the transactional nature of American elite culture—dinner parties, networking, and access games that amplify inequality and corruption (43:18–44:45).

• Anecdotes of seeking out power via CEOs, or being used as bait for social climbing, illustrate this point. (43:18–47:22)

Corruption in American Capitalism

• The core thesis emerges: the Epstein files provide a lens for seeing how deep corruption, transactionalism, and impunity run through American elites—deeper even than the more colorful criminal details:

  "Our system is corrupt. Corrupt to the core." (50:20, Rothkopf)

• Rothkopf links unchecked capitalism, growing inequality, political donations (billionaires have increased campaign funding by 14,000% in a decade), and the erosion of opportunities for the younger generation to this rot. (48:48–51:37)

The Prospect for Change

• Despite the bleak outlook, Rothkopf and Coles see hope in generational turnover and changing norms—amplified because Trump’s excesses and the release of the Epstein files may force a reckoning.

  "The solution can't be dictated by the Epstein class." (52:14, Rothkopf) "That which is unsustainable won't be sustained." (53:15, Rothkopf quoting Nixon’s economic advisor)

• Coles concludes the episode by encouraging listeners to process the information, communicate, and engage in activism.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The Epstein scandal is kind of like the scandal that connects everything right now.” (05:45, Rothkopf)
• “Some leaders have a signature accomplishment. Donald Trump... this is his signature scandal.” (13:55, Rothkopf)
• “At the candy coated center of the story is Russia, Russia, Russia.” (17:22, Rothkopf)
• “Epstein's world was the world's largest honey trap in that regard.” (20:21, Rothkopf)
• "He pulled these people in as hiding for the stuff that he was doing in plain sight." (35:34, Coles)
• "By swarming Epstein... it's actually worse than bad judgment, it's enabling. You were legitimizing Jeffrey Epstein for years." (39:09, Rothkopf)
• "Our system is corrupt. Corrupt to the core." (50:20, Rothkopf)
• “The solution can't be dictated by the Epstein class.” (52:15, Rothkopf)
• “That which is unsustainable won't be sustained.” (53:15, Rothkopf quoting Nixon’s advisor)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 00:29 | The generational shift and hope for change
• 03:03 | Clinton testimony and the Clinton-Trump dynamic
• 06:23 | List of fallen elites post-Epstein files release
• 08:24 | Bad judgment vs. crime; deaths in Epstein orbit
• 13:55 | Epstein as Trump's signature crisis
• 17:22 | Russia and intelligence services’ core role
• 20:21 | Epstein as a “honey trap” for foreign intelligence
• 36:57 | Enabling culture and the role of academia
• 39:09 | The enabling social alibi, complicity of elites
• 44:19 | The transactional nature of elite dinners and access
• 48:48 | Deep-seated corruption, campaign finance, and inequality
• 51:53 | Youth, hope, and the possibility for systemic change
• 53:15 | Unsustainable corruption—historical perspective

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Tone & Style

• The conversation is energetic and occasionally irreverent, with dark humor employed to cope with the episode’s disturbing subject matter.
• Both speakers deliver candid, often scathing, critiques of elites across the political spectrum.
• The tone remains urgent, skeptical, and slightly conspiratorial, but ultimately hopeful that exposure will drive change.

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Summary Takeaways

• The Epstein files expose not just individual crimes but a vast enabling network implicating leaders in politics, academia, and business—the true signature scandal of the Trump era.
• The real story is about systemic corruption, social climbing, transactional relationships, and how elite impunity erodes trust and opportunity.
• Yet change is possible—demographically and politically, new Americans may finally break the cycle, especially as the old guard loses legitimacy.
• The uncovering of the Epstein files is just the beginning: expect more scandals, more resignations, and, hopefully, greater calls for reform at the heart of American and global power.

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“If you think the Epstein files story is done, we’re just at the beginning.”
— David Rothkopf (53:48)

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For more conversation and community, Joanna encourages listeners to share their own theories in the podcast’s YouTube comments or subscribe for more investigative journalism via The Daily Beast.

Transcript

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[David Rothkopf]

The reason I have hope is that in 2026, the majority of voters will have been born since 1990, that they will demand change.

[Joanna Coles]

And unwittingly, Donald Trump's government will have pushed that change by releasing the Epstein

[David Rothkopf]

files and by being Donald Trump. Because he's the most vile human being that the United States has ever produced and he's surrounded by vile people. I think think the COVID up that Trump and Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche are involved in right now is a huge crime.

[Joanna Coles]

I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. And if, like me, you are having problems sorting through the Epstein files, like who's guilty, who knew, who didn't know, who was guilty of bad judgment, who was guilty of actual crimes. The that involved the more than 1,000 women who have come forward to say that they were trafficked or abused by Jeffrey Epstein. Then we have the conversation for you today with our favorite contributor, David Rothkopf. This is the perfect Sunday conversation, I think, to help process the corruption at the heart of the Epstein files and its ripple effect through all sorts of different businesses and through government. So grab yourself a cappuccino or whatever your drink of choice is. Could be a Bloody Mary, it could actually be a double whiskey for this one. And settle in, because David Rothkopf, who worked for the Clinton administration, who was an entrepreneur and a businessman, and of course was also the editor of Foreign Policy magazine and is now the founder of Deep State Radio, which tells you something about his sources. Well, he's whipped up a head of steam here and he's got theories and conspiracies of his own that you're gonna want to hear. Let's get to it. David Rothkopf is in the house. David Rothkopf, it's so good to have you here. And though you may not like sitting right in front of a microphone being grilled by me, I bet it's a better experience than the one Bill Clinton is having as we speak being interrog by the Oversight Committee on his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Thoughts, please? Given that you worked for his Commerce Department.

[David Rothkopf]

Look, I'm glad that they're testifying. I think that Hillary Clinton put them through the wringer yesterday because they had no business calling her. She had nothing to do with her.

[Joanna Coles]

I know. Insane, insane.

[David Rothkopf]

It is a certain kind of insidious sexism. Right. It's like, oh, no, we're getting it. But Bill and Hillary, they're like a thing. Right. We're going to talk to both of them. And of course, Hillary's the one that left scars on Trump because she beat him in that election. Right. She got more votes than he did. And that's something that torments him to this day, I'm sure.

[Joanna Coles]

Of course, she got more in the popular vote than he did.

[David Rothkopf]

Than he did. And that was sort of under his skin. Now, having said that, asking some questions of Bill makes more sense, given Bill's past and his history and everything else. And I don't know how all that's gonna turn out. But although Clinton so far today has already said that he didn't know that he was doing this stuff and that wasn't what he was involved in and so forth, and that may be true. I don't know. Asking questions of Bill Clinton seems like a reasonable thing for this group to do.

[Joanna Coles]

And also, Donald Trump has always used Bill Clinton as a political human shield in a way to say, well, look, I'm not the only person that did this. I'm not the only person that grabbed them by the pussy.

[David Rothkopf]

Well, I think he's used that. But it's a little weird, right? Because, you know, when Bill Clinton was president 25 years ago.

[Joanna Coles]

Right.

[David Rothkopf]

It's a little like this is all true with Trump because Trump lives in the 80s. Trump lives in the 90s. He was a TV star in the 90s, and that's last century. And saying, oh, we're going to go after the Clintons, it's really kind of showing how out of touch he is.

[Joanna Coles]

Well, it's showing him as aging Boomer.

[David Rothkopf]

Right, right, right.

[Joanna Coles]

I mean, actually, probably all his younger voters have no idea who the Clintons are. I mean, except that they're part of MAGA conspiracy.

[David Rothkopf]

Yeah. Or they might have a little bit of an idea of Hillary because Hillary ran in 2016. But even Hillary running in 2016, 10 years ago. It's 10 years ago. It's a long time ago. And Trump, it's just like one of these aging people who can't get the songs of their youth out of.

[Joanna Coles]

Right.

[David Rothkopf]

You know, he can't, you know, he can't move on to whatever the new issues are here. But he also doesn't have that many people to hide behind right now. You know, you say, well, Bill Clinton, you know, he was, you know, he did these things and he had affairs and blah, blah, blah. And that may get him so far, but Bill Clinton's little scandals in Arkansas or wherever he was having his scandals is nothing to compare to the Epstein scandal.

[Joanna Coles]

Well, let's.

[David Rothkopf]

But I just want to say the Epstein scandal is kind of like the scandal that connects everything right now. It is the story of our time because it connects the president, it connects the Epstein class. It's about inequality in our society. You've got the Russian secret police. You've got the Israeli Mossad. You've got. No, there's everything in there. There's famous people and there's crypto and there's murders. And the more we learn the Epstein scandal, the bigger it gets.

[Joanna Coles]

Yeah, I mean, I'm just gonna read you a list of the people who've lost their jobs or lost their roles or been forced to resign because of their proximity and bad judgment for hanging out with EPSTEIN. And it's 13, I counted, since the release of the files. So we've got Peter Mandelson, the British, you know, former ambassador to Washington, British. We've got Morgan McSweeney, so that's in the UK. We've got Borgn. Brenda, who is the CEO of the World Economic Forum, Davos, the heart of the liberal aspirational establishment. We've got Brad Karp, the chairman of Paul Weiss. We've got Tom Pritzker, executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels. We've got Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayam, who was the chairman and CEO of DP World. We've got Casey Wasserman, who's now being forced to sell his Wasserman agency. We've got Larry Summers finally stepping down from Harvard. Well, we had Joey Ito stepping down from mit. Richard Axel this week, Nobel prize winning neuroscientist resigning from Columbia. We've got, well, we knew about Les Wexner. Peter Attia, the longevity expert and bestselling author of Outlive. Finally, he stepped down from a protein bar company faster than he did from cbs. It is remarkable how wide.

[David Rothkopf]

And you know, it's really remarkable to me that you didn't mention Prince Andrew.

[Joanna Coles]

Oh, Prince Andrew. Oh, my God. Well, he's no longer Prince.

[David Rothkopf]

He's no longer Prince. No he's not. I meant.

[Joanna Coles]

And what did he step down from?

[David Rothkopf]

Andrew Mountbatten Windsor or whatever he is.

[Joanna Coles]

Yeah, of course. He totally. So 14. 14, yep. You're absolutely right. And then.

[David Rothkopf]

And the number of people who are stewing in their own juices, waiting for the other shoe to fall.

[Joanna Coles]

Right. And of course, Kathy Rummler, who was forced out as the general counsel from Goldman Sachs.

[David Rothkopf]

Right.

[Joanna Coles]

It is remarkable how this thing has just spru. Its tentacles. And it started as a conspiracy.

[David Rothkopf]

Right. But it's. But we are still in the bad judgment phase of this. Go on. The bad judgment phase is, well, you were associated with this sleazy guy. Typically, you were associated with him after you knew he was a sex criminal. That's what's really doing these people in. We are not at the phase where, you know, like, Donald Trump is accused of raping somebody. We're not in the phase of people get murdered. Who's murdering them? We're not at the phase of the incredible obstruction of justice that's going on right now.

[Joanna Coles]

Who's murdering them? Did you just say that? Who's been murdered?

[David Rothkopf]

Well, think about Ghislaine, right? Her father was murdered. By who?

[Joanna Coles]

Was he murdered? I think he jumped.

[David Rothkopf]

Oh, did he? Well, okay. Do we know?

[Joanna Coles]

No.

[David Rothkopf]

He left.

[Joanna Coles]

What we know.

[David Rothkopf]

Is that a perfectly good boat.

[Joanna Coles]

No.

[David Rothkopf]

And he went into the water.

[Joanna Coles]

What we know is he plundered the Mirror Group pension fund to the tune of half a billion pounds. And this is 30 years ago. And it was closing in on him. He knew he was beginning to move money everywhere to try and keep himself afloat.

[David Rothkopf]

And it may be. It turns out he didn't float. But it may be. It's too soon. It may be not too soon.

[Joanna Coles]

It's just so bad. Change.

[David Rothkopf]

But it may be. I'm so sorry to offend you. But it may be that that's why he died. And it may be that there were people who were tied to his financial dealings who didn't want his financial dealings to come out. But my point is, here's Ghislaine, whose father dies under mysterious circumstances. Her best buddy, Jeffrey Epstein, dies under mysterious circumstances. This French modeling dude, Jean Luc Brunel. Jean Luc Brunel commits suicide in the midst of this whole thing. She knows, right? She knows that she lives in a world of silence or death. Because, you know, I mean, it's also an interesting part of this thing, right? Even I, like, two, three years ago, if you said to me, jeffrey Epstein was murdered, I go, really?

[Joanna Coles]

Really? Yeah. Yeah. I think we're all thinking, now that you look at this stuff and you're like, there's something here, there's something here, something weird.

[David Rothkopf]

It's not just the missing videotapes or Bill Barr going to see him in advance and so forth. And you know, the more you learn that people like the Russians, like he was moving money for the Russians and was providing financial advice for Putin and he was dealing with the Mossad and there are all these people who would really be in hot water if Jeffrey Epstein started to crack. Right. We also know that his like brother was like, oh, he's got a plea deal working, you know, things are going to be fine. So it didn't seem like he was going to crack. So. But anyway, the point is, ever feel like your brain just won't click?

[Joanna Coles]

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[David Rothkopf]

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[Joanna Coles]

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[David Rothkopf]

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[Joanna Coles]

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[David Rothkopf]

unlock your next level. That's O n I t dot com. Pick a story. Inequality in America, political corruption in America, political corruption in our ruling classes, broken justice system. You know, all these things that are sort of signatures of our time. And here is Epstein and then in the middle of that, mentioned thousands upon thousands of time you have this sort of, you know. Well, did you see the interview that was done today on Fox News with the FCC chairman Carr, Brendan Carr, I

[Joanna Coles]

did not tell us.

[David Rothkopf]

Maria Bartiromo, who's a total tool of, of Trump.

[Joanna Coles]

Trump, yeah.

[David Rothkopf]

Was talking about Trump and Brendan Carr was saying that Donald Trump is the political colossus of our times.

[Joanna Coles]

Well, he's certainly a colossus.

[David Rothkopf]

He's certainly a colossus. Right and that. And right, you're not even mentioning Stephen Cheung, but his spokesperson who.

[Joanna Coles]

He's a colossus. You need to be on the fat drug.

[David Rothkopf]

Right. Who's also known as the human thumb and a few other things.

[Joanna Coles]

Right, the human thumb, yeah.

[David Rothkopf]

Because he looks like a thumb.

[Joanna Coles]

Oh, because he looks like a thumb. Okay. I hadn't heard. The human thumb. Stephen, interesting nickname for you.

[David Rothkopf]

Yeah. Hi, Stephen, nice to see you again.

[Joanna Coles]

But Stephen is always calling me a lying sack of shit. Just for the record. So people know, you know, know your

[David Rothkopf]

biases and Steven's people who you reached out to said that I was a no name nothing.

[Joanna Coles]

That's right. A no name nothing. Yes, that's right. So, yeah, yeah.

[David Rothkopf]

So we're at the forefront of their consciousness. Right. But in any event, you know, I think in the, you know, then in the middle of this story, you have the most important political figure of the past 15 years in the United States, maybe of this century in the United States in Donald Trump in a scandal that is an absolute manifestation of everything, who he is. Right. I mean, this is like this, you know, some. Some leaders have a signature accomplishment. Donald Trump has many, many scandals, but this is his signature scandal.

[Joanna Coles]

Right. The Epstein scandal. The Epstein scandal way of thinking.

[David Rothkopf]

Right. Because it's his sense of impunity. It's his weird, you know, his weird sexual history with pageants and pageant girls

[Joanna Coles]

and models, well, modeling agencies and setting up companies that he could then examine women naked, which we know from his Miss Universe, which he did.

[David Rothkopf]

He walked into the competitions and so forth. In fact, we have something really interesting coming up that I'm sure your listeners here do not want to miss. Because you'll release this on a Sunday, I guess. So it's starting off the week. You know what's happening on Monday?

[Joanna Coles]

What?

[David Rothkopf]

You know who's presiding over the UN Security Council on Monday?

[Joanna Coles]

Who?

[David Rothkopf]

Melania.

[Joanna Coles]

Melania is presiding over the UN Security Council.

[David Rothkopf]

Apparently there's some issues that she is interested in and. Because she's the Queen of America. Because I can think of no other. Is it.

[Joanna Coles]

She's a movie star.

[David Rothkopf]

She's a movie star. She's the Queen of America. She.

[Joanna Coles]

I'm Queen of America. America. Yes. I'm Queen of America. This is so alarming to me.

[David Rothkopf]

Really. I would just like your voice on my answering, you know, my phone answering services. Hello.

[Joanna Coles]

David Rath.

[David Rothkopf]

I'm Queen of America.

[Joanna Coles]

Queen of America.

[David Rothkopf]

But, you know, why else was she. Why else?

[Joanna Coles]

Very smart boy, Baron. Very smart boy. You speak to Baron?

[David Rothkopf]

Yeah.

[Joanna Coles]

Very cute boy. Cute boy. Cutest boy. I'm just quoting from her movie, which I know you haven't seen, but I have seen.

[David Rothkopf]

Yeah, you did. You were there alone in the theater.

[Joanna Coles]

I wasn't alone because at the end I went with a couple of people. And at the end, I keep telling people this, and I think it's odd. Two women came up to us who were definitely Russian and said, you'll like a movie how you'll like a movie. I was like, I loved the movie. I loved the movie because I was terrified they were going to take me out of there.

[David Rothkopf]

I got to tell you, you. There is some cell of the kgb, or the fsb, whatever they're called at the moment, that has a weekly Friday afternoon party. Because this operation is the most successful intelligence operation in the history of intelligence operations where, you know, her father, who was involved, you know, he was in

[Joanna Coles]

Communist party in the party, Slovenia.

[David Rothkopf]

Exactly. And by the way, Victor, who accompanies

[Joanna Coles]

her everywhere, by the way, and looks like a smaller, slightly more rectangular version of her husband. He's shorter, he's a Slovenian Trumpian looking figure.

[David Rothkopf]

Patryoshka dolls. Oh, you mean you just Patry as this is like patryashka dolls. You take open Donald and inside is the inside father. Inside. Who's in the middle? Vladimir Putin, who has.

[Joanna Coles]

From wildly conspiratorial.

[David Rothkopf]

But come on.

[Joanna Coles]

Yeah, yeah. Well, we know that our first lady speaks to Putin to release children from Ukraine that they have kidnapped from Ukraine.

[David Rothkopf]

Well, they all speak to Putin. Witkoff said a week ago, you know, Vladimir Putin has always been straight with me.

[Joanna Coles]

Come on, deep breath, deep breath. Because he's been straight with no one else, Steve.

[David Rothkopf]

Right. I mean, but, but come on. But you know, bring me Steve Witkoff.

[Joanna Coles]

I like Steve Witkoff.

[David Rothkopf]

Bring me the head of Stephen Witkoff. But, but one of the things about the whole Epstein story is that if you dig deep enough at the candy coated center of the story is Russia, Russia, Russia.

[Joanna Coles]

What do you think? Russia and Israel?

[David Rothkopf]

Well, we, we know that there's some overlap between those two things. Not for the first time, by the

[Joanna Coles]

way, but don't you think that everybody, him and everybody was giving him information and he was giving information to everybody. I mean, the thing I find truly shocking is that Peter Mandelson, who'd twice been fired as a cabinet minister, coming back and giving Epstein information in pretty much real time. I mean, insider information. He was a government minister.

[David Rothkopf]

I don't know. I know a lot of people in the intelligence community. I do not know a single person who did not think or does not think from conversations that I've had that Epstein would not be a target. I mean, think of what Epstein did.

[Joanna Coles]

What do you mean, a target?

[David Rothkopf]

A target for what? For an intelligence service to get close to.

[Joanna Coles]

Right?

[David Rothkopf]

Because just like Mar A Lago is at target, right? There's a big open door. People can go in, become a member, wander around, see the President. He's got secret documents in the bathroom.

[Joanna Coles]

Right. Can you imagine? It's a great bonus of your membership that you get to look at classified documents when you go to the loo.

[David Rothkopf]

Well, well, exactly.

[Joanna Coles]

I mean, that's a membership benefit.

[David Rothkopf]

We'll never know that because of course, now the courts have said we, we can't hear the truth on that.

[Joanna Coles]

Boo. Boo.

[David Rothkopf]

Right. Well, you know that, that's, you know, this is part of the Department of Obstruction of justice sitting there working, covering all this stuff up. But, you know, I mean, we're joking and it sounds very conspiratorial and so forth, but do. You don't think Russian intelligence, you just gave the list of names. You don't think they. Who were financially working with Epstein, who were, you know, feathering his nest?

[Joanna Coles]

Well, and we have.

[David Rothkopf]

You don't think they were gaining access.

[Joanna Coles]

Right. And you know whose name people I can hear them are screaming at us right now. What about Bill Gates, who this week came out and said, yes, he had had all these science with two Russian girls. Right. One a Nuclear physicist or Mr. Gates, tell me about deep security for Microsoft World. Microsoft Word, how do I use it? And also the Russian bridge player. I think she did play bridge because he is a real bridge player.

[David Rothkopf]

I don't know. But I'm sure they were both trying to get to the mystery of Gates.

[Joanna Coles]

Please. I think they were just trying to have an affair with him to figure out how on earth do you use Microsoft Word effectively. It is so difficult.

[David Rothkopf]

Yeah. Or why they had that paperclip as the talking paperclip of the symbol. It was a long time ago, was a talking paperclip.

[Joanna Coles]

And they'd be like, Windows, talk to me about Windows 95. I need to talk about Windows 95.

[David Rothkopf]

We're kind of cutting edge right now in no Sibirsk. Right. But in any event, the point is, intelligence services look for access to influential people in a country, ideally in situations where there's compromising factors where they can provide a little of pressure to get the kind of information that they want. And Epstein's world was the world's largest honey trap in that regard. And there's no reason to assume that this wasn't going on there. In fact, I thought it was kind of interesting yesterday when James Comer, who's completely corrupt, running the House Oversight Committee, the Republican right, who's going in for the Hillary hearing, said one of the things we want to find out is the involvement of Epstein with foreign intelligence services. Russians or the Israelis, he said, or our own. And I was like, really?

[Joanna Coles]

What does that even mean?

[David Rothkopf]

Well, you know, that, you know, maybe

[Joanna Coles]

what they were giving him information, he was.

[David Rothkopf]

They were running ops or whatever, you know, But. But the point is these little clusters, these have always existed since the beginning of time. Before there was Epstein, there was some guy who was hosting parties in, you know, and famous people would go to the parties and they would be a little bit compromised and they would get drunk and they would say the wrong things and women would be involved or men would be involved in getting the information out of people. That's, you know, these things are magnets for that kind of thing.

[Joanna Coles]

And this is how people collect. Compromise.

[David Rothkopf]

Well, that's right. And how they, you know, find people in situations where they're willing to give a little bit more. I mean, you know, why did Prince Andrew, when they made him a trade minister against the objections apparently of his brother. Right.

[Joanna Coles]

His older brother, the King.

[David Rothkopf]

The King who is saying don't do this. He is a ne' er do well playboy. You know, they made him a trade on boy.

[Joanna Coles]

Right.

[David Rothkopf]

And so all of a sudden he had all this trade information which he

[Joanna Coles]

sent to Jeffrey Epstein, which he sent

[David Rothkopf]

to Jeffrey Epstein in these emails, which may be the foundation for some of the trouble that he ultimately gets into, if he ever gets into any trouble.

[Joanna Coles]

Right. Public misconduct, which if he gets charged is probably the thing he'll be charged with, as with Peter Mandelson giving information. And both of them got things from Jeffrey Epstein, not least staying in his house in Manhattan. And I cannot. I'm fascinated by the fact that in a world of Hotels.com and Hotels Tonight are you felt they had to stay.

[David Rothkopf]

What do you think it was? Do you think he had very plush towel?

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[Joanna Coles]

Well, he may have had very plush towels, but I'm not.

[David Rothkopf]

I mean, that's not it.

[Joanna Coles]

Andrew's thing was, well, I needed a place to stay. And you're like, really? Because it's Hotels.com. do you know how to use the web? You could have stayed with other people. I'm sure he could have stayed with the British consul. I'm sure the British consul wouldn't have wanted him to stay. I'm sure there's always a room available.

[David Rothkopf]

Jeffrey Epstein was saying, we have lots of kinds of room service now, as it happens. As it happens, what? You know, I don't want to make light of it because he was trafficking women.

[Joanna Coles]

True.

[David Rothkopf]

He was trafficking underage women. He was, you know, abusing them. You know, we can joke around about some aspects of this thing because it is so sordid and these people were such assholes for getting involved in this kind of thing. And they reveal how fucked up their characters were. But beneath that, there's a crime. In fact, there's a crime against 1000 women, 1200 women. You know, to the, to the extent to which UN agencies look at it and say, you know, this is, you know, potentially crimes against humanity, this is a.

[Joanna Coles]

This is one of the industrial scale network of girls that were coming in. I mean, we did a fascinating interview based on a piece in New York magazine with a writer called E.J. dixon, who basically looked at the network of doctors. And what Epstein would do is bring these girls in from Eastern Europe and he sent them all off to have what he called a sort of pussy check, which was to make sure that their sexual health was top notch. So he would minimize getting diseases. It didn't stop him getting at least gonorrhea twice. Too bad. So sad, Jeffrey. Hope it didn't impact your health in any way. But the premeditation and the scale of the Dr. Network he built was really eye opening.

[David Rothkopf]

Yeah. And you have Ghislaine who's like sitting there finding people, talent scout, bringing them in. You have this modeling agency guy finding them. All those modeling agencies were a little bit dubious, unquestionably what was going on in these places. And Epstein is one of these stories, you know, if anybody thinks. Well, the Epstein story, you know, is like, now this is over, you know, the whistle has been blown and rich guys are not going around doing this kind of thing and, you know, getting away with it here and around the world, that's just crazy. This just happens to be the one that we're, you know, getting a little bit of exposure into right now.

[Joanna Coles]

Do you think there are other things going on of this scale, though?

[David Rothkopf]

I have no idea. I mean, all I know is, you know, one, you know, hears stories and

[Joanna Coles]

you know, well, who's what stories?

[David Rothkopf]

You know, these other guys and they've got planes and they're flying around and they're going places.

[Joanna Coles]

And there's a piece in Andrew Lowney's book entitled about Andrew, formerly known as Prince, where he talks about him going through 40 prostitutes in one weekend when he was in Thailand and staying at the British government's expense. They're in theory on business, on official business.

[David Rothkopf]

Yeah. And I mean, I just think, I mean, you know, look, you know, Pat Pong in the middle of Bangkok is, you know, a famous red light district where all sorts of craziness is going on. And you know, there's one in Tokyo and there's, you know, if you used to go to the Metropole Hotel and in Moscow and you would go down into, you know, downstairs there was a disco and so forth and you go, gee, this is amazing. Number of, you know, six foot tall blonde women dancing on the floor here. And you know, and then somebody would knock on your door later at night or you know, these.

[Joanna Coles]

Hello, Mr. Rothkopf, I come to talk to you about Russian affairs.

[David Rothkopf]

I'll tell you a story because I'm the most brutish person in the world and have no experience to this. I was 23, 4 years old. I was producing a TV show called the Omni TV Show. Flew to Hollywood. I'll keep it as brief as I can. I flew to Hollywood. We were producing the opening titles of the show. I stayed at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. I've never, I mean I was like, oh my God, I'm from New Jersey.

[Joanna Coles]

Gorgeous hotel.

[David Rothkopf]

This is the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. There's movie stars everywhere. Oh, Mr. Rothkoff. Oh, we'd like to welcome you to the hotel. And you know, here is your room and we've upgraded you. And I was like, well, you know, I'm producing the Omni television series.

[Joanna Coles]

Obviously that's the one fronted by Peter Houston and it was about science and science fiction.

[David Rothkopf]

Yeah, very short lived show. But anyway, so I'm there and they. And there's a suite and I'm like, oh my God, I'm in a. There's a suite here at the apparently Wilshire Hotel. Now back in the olden days, in the olden days, kids there on a phone that you would have a phone attached to the wall with a wire and There was a little red bulb on the top of it. And if you had a message, the bulb would flash. Right. And so I go in.

[Joanna Coles]

You mean a handset?

[David Rothkopf]

Yeah, handset, yes. Right. And so I got in the room and the little red light was flashing. And so I picked up the phone and they said, oh, Mr. Rothkoff, you have a message. I said, okay, what is the message? He said, it's Candy called. Here's her number. And I was like,

[Joanna Coles]

right. And Candy was a lady of the night.

[David Rothkopf]

And well, I didn't know that, but, you know, I put it down and then somebody else later told me and said, oh, you know, that's what that was. You know, that. That was just service. No, I did not.

[Joanna Coles]

You didn't think to call her back and say, oh, my God, did I leave something in the taxi?

[David Rothkopf]

I had no idea what was going on. But the point was, this was apparently common enough in, you know, that, you know, people would come into the hotel and stuff. So, you know, this world exists, this demimond exists, and people take advantage of it to make deals and to make company and build companies and so forth. There is one element of this, though.

[Joanna Coles]

I wonder what happened to Candy.

[David Rothkopf]

You are. You have a big heart. No, no, You're a very compassionate person. I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't Pretty Women Woman, you know, which was also in that hotel.

[Joanna Coles]

Right. Well, and also I think writ large for 10 years, that movie. I mean, I actually think it was a sort of serious fantasy for both men and women. That movie, they did a lot of weird damage.

[David Rothkopf]

I agree with you. I agree with you. And you can't look at it. I saw it the other day and.

[Joanna Coles]

No, you just look at it and you just wince and just think, this is horrifying, the kind of fantasizing of the life of a prostitute who meets someone like Richard.

[David Rothkopf]

Right. Well, it's like love, actually. There's just some of these movies, you look at them in retrospect and you go, I laughed at that. I thought that was okay. But there is something more serious under here. I mean, you know, we do have the crime under it. And I do. I do think the intelligence aspect of it is the thing. And I think the COVID up that Trump and Pam Bondi and Todd Blanch are involved in right now is a huge crime.

[Joanna Coles]

Well, let's just look at the missing picture of Howard Lutnick. So he's one of the men that's also got sideswiped by this. Because, of course, Howard Lutnick lived next door to Jeffrey Epstein, claims he went to his house. Jeffrey Epstein showed him the massage bed. This was a trigger, a red flag to Mr. Good Old Family man. Lutn flees with his wife and says, I will never talk to these high

[David Rothkopf]

principles throughout the financial community.

[Joanna Coles]

Indeed. And then, lo and behold, when the Epstein files drop, there are emails showing that Howard Lutnick was in fact delighted to go to Epstein's house on the island for lunch as he was taking his boat with another family. And he takes his family, his kids, his four kids and his friend's family with their four kids and their nannies

[David Rothkopf]

to the island seven years after Epstein is convicted of crimes. Right.

[Joanna Coles]

Seven years.

[David Rothkopf]

Seven years. So it's not like, oh, we had no idea. We just thought he was our nice next door neighbor.

[Joanna Coles]

And then what happens is a photo surfaces in the first drop of Epstein files with Howard Lutnick and his kids and Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein in an all white linen outfit. Howard Lutnick in an unflattering pair of cargo shorts with a shirt that's much too long. That's just a fashion aside. And then miraculously, the picture gets taken back or removed. Deleted from the files on the grounds of nudity. The only nudity in it are Howard Lutnick's legs.

[David Rothkopf]

Well, and disgusting.

[Joanna Coles]

Below the knees. Below the knees. Because the cargo shorts.

[David Rothkopf]

No. But it is known for particularly ugly calves. But I mean, worse than that is legitimate allegations made under oath about Trump that are taken off. Worse than that are apparently. Well, there's 3 million other pages. They've only released half of the documents. Right, right. And they. They've redacted a lot. You know, there was a story that one of the things they apparently redacted, and again, I've just read this online someplace, but that one of the things that appears to have been redacted in a number of documents was the word don't. And then people are like, well, why was the word don't redact it? But of course, don't is don T. And so somebody put in a search term.

[Joanna Coles]

Oh, don T. That's so interesting.

[David Rothkopf]

And so they.

[Joanna Coles]

I hadn't heard that.

[David Rothkopf]

Yeah, well, well, you know, I read it someplace, but that was redacted in these files. We know that they're hiding stuff. You know, nobody would be surprised if somebody said, oh, there was a burn bag. Accidentally, a bunch of things got put in that we will never see them again. Because this is the. How do you have Todd Blanche as the Deputy Attorney General of the United States when his only real qualification was being the defense attorney for Donald Trump.

[Joanna Coles]

Yep.

[David Rothkopf]

But I did. But I do want to say one other little thing, just as a little footnote. I haven't said it anywhere, but I just think it's worth noting. Right. A bunch of those people you mentioned, there is no allegation that those people did sleazy things. The assertion is the drive. They were associated with a sleazy man who did sleazy things. Now, we can debate this a lot. Like, for example, Bill Barr, the attorney general, turns out, was in the house when maybe some bad things were being done to young women. And, you know, if that's the case, there are more questions to be asked. Because if that's going on in a house you're in, you kind of know it. Right. So that's a kind of. I mean.

[Joanna Coles]

Well, do you know it? I think one of Epstein's great skills was pulling a huge sleight of hand while other people gave him the veneer of respect.

[David Rothkopf]

Yeah. Although, you know, you go into his house and there's like mannequins and sexy pictures and weird shit hanging around and massage tables and all this other stuff. So he was giving out the vibe. But that's not the point that I want to make.

[Joanna Coles]

Let me ask you something. If you went to someone's house and Bill Gates was there, or you saw a picture of the person and you saw a picture of Bill GATES and this 10 years ago, not knowing now, Bill Gates would act as a kind of social alibi for them. And that's what Epstein was good at doing. Right. Pulling people in. Noam Chomsky. Who would have thought Noam Chomsky would be a friend of Jeffrey Epstein? But he pulled these people in as hiding for the stuff that he was doing in plain sight.

[David Rothkopf]

I think I agree. He was trying to legitimize himself. You know, this is a. He's the typical.

[Joanna Coles]

Yeah, he didn't go to college.

[David Rothkopf]

He's the typical Araviste. Right. He gets to town, he wants to meet some people. He becomes a high school teacher at this school run, as it turns out, private school run by Bill Barr's Dalton. Well, I don't know what the may have been, but, but, but, but the point is. And then he starts meeting people and networking and one thing leads to another and financial deals happen and these other things. What that does he doing is he trading favors of one sort for another sort. Who knows he's buying. A lot of this world of the Epstein class is transactional. I'm going to invite you to my parties. You invite me to your parties? I can introduce you to this person. Can you introduce me to that person? Oh, I have this kind of problem. Can you help me solve that problem?

[Joanna Coles]

Which is what an effective network does, right?

[David Rothkopf]

It does. And at the highest level, these networks, that's how they're working all the time. And their connections are better than your connections, my connections. And so they get. They're bigger payoffs from all this stuff. But I think one of the sort of elements of this that's worth noting is all those academic people, the Summers and the Noam Chomsky's and all these others, why were they there? Because we don't fund academia in our society. And they're all looking all the time for rich people to raise money for.

[Joanna Coles]

Like politicians.

[David Rothkopf]

Just like politicians. Because that's the way the American system works. We're not a corrupt third world country. We just have a set of rules that say a few people have a lot of money. And if you want to do anything, you want to run for office, you want to teach a program at Harvard, you want to have a ballet company, you want to. But you've got to go to this group, this very small group of people, find your way into this group and start asking them for money.

[Joanna Coles]

And actually, what we haven't seen is the conversations among people going, oh, my God, Jeffrey Epstein's asked me for dinner again. The man is a nightmare. He's such an Araviste. He's always surrounded by girls. But we need access to his money, or we need access to, let's try and get in and out within an hour. Which is often the conversation that people actually have about people like Jeffrey Epstein.

[David Rothkopf]

Right? Or we need access to this other person, and this person's gonna be there and I'm gonna show up at these things. And people just sort of drop their guard and they say, okay, hold my nose. Get what I need to do.

[Joanna Coles]

And what you see, what we've seen is the emails to them saying, geoffrey, what a marvelous evening at your house. I had a fantastic time. You're so erudite. You never see the stuff they're actually saying privately about him. Who knows if Larry Summers and Noam Chomsky had a conversation and said, oh, do you have to suffer through another Epsteinian dinner? I hope they had these conversations. I'm not confident.

[David Rothkopf]

I hope so. Now, I'm not saying this by any way to sort of get these people off the hook, because the reality is by swarming Epstein, by coming into these places. They provide him with COVID they provide him with advice, they provide him with, you know, links to this person or that person who can get them out of trouble. They help, you know, and so they enable. And that's why. Is it possible that in the year 2000 you might have known Jeffrey Epstein and not know that he was sex trafficking or that he was doing this? Yeah, maybe because there was no big legal case. But if you knew Jeffrey Epstein after the case and you kept showing up, that's why you're being fired for bad judge judgment. Because it's actually worse than bad judgment, it's enabling. You were legitimizing Jeffrey Epstein for years and years after where he would commit crimes throughout all that period of time. You were the ones that were embracing him and saying he was okay and telling him he was okay and helping him get off the hook. In Exchange for what?

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[David Rothkopf]

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[David Rothkopf]

A donation, an introduction for some other kind of a thing. Maybe sexual favors in the case of some of them, I don't know. But it is how huge swaths of our society work. It's how the top in our society works in some ways. And that's why again, I think. The Epstein crisis is not just the signature crisis of Troy Trump, it's the signature crisis of our time. It is the story that connects to all stories because of the people involved, but also because of what it reveals about how broken our society is and how corrupt our society is and associate it with American capitalism associated with our culture, associated. All of these things are, I think, at fault. And that's why I think that it's ultimately a healthy thing that this comes out into the open, even though it's

[Joanna Coles]

very complicated to wade our way through. Can I just tell you an anecdote of one of the. I remember being invited to a transactional dinner. I get a call, I've shortly I've just arrived in New York and a friend calls and says listen, would you like to come for Dinner. We're having Paul Allen, co founder of Microsoft, to dinner. Of course I want to go to dinner. Of course I want to meet the co. The co founder of Microsoft. Even though I still haven't figured out how to use Windows 98.

[David Rothkopf]

Maybe that's what I thought you'd learn.

[Joanna Coles]

Yeah, I thought, I'm going to ask him. Maybe he'll be my IT guy. Anyway, get to the house. Everybody else has obviously been asked. There's a sort of frisson of excitement as we wait for Paul Allen to arrive. And of course, Paul Allen never arrives. And the dinner duly starts late. And then it's just very clear he's never going to come. But no one ever says Paul Allen isn't coming. There's just this disappointing sort of aura to the evening as we realize we're not important enough for Paul Allen to come to. And I always remember thinking that. And I hold it in my head when people call and say, oh, you must come to dinner. We're having so and so. Because I always remember, well, are they going to turn up? And then this sort of fascinating bait, and God knows I've done it too, where you're sort of baiting and switching people coming for dinner. And it's really doesn't happen in the uk. Actually, it's the first time I'd come across it. I mean, probably happens there much more now. It's just an interesting transactional gambit.

[David Rothkopf]

But it's also. Everything is kind of a pyramid scheme, right?

[Joanna Coles]

A long time ago, except the Daily Beast podcast, David.

[David Rothkopf]

Except the Daily Beast podcast. But a long time ago, I wanted to start a company and I thought, well, one way to do it and for it to be big and successful is we'll get CEOs together. So I said, well, let's call it the CEO Institute, and we'll have meetings of CEOs. And I said, oh, that's good, great idea. How are we going to do that? And then I was like, well, okay, we'll go and get somebody that CEOs want to see. So who did I call? This guy that I later worked for. And people are constantly beating the shit out of me online for having worked for him for two years. Henry Kissinger. Right, right. And so I call up Henry Kissinger, his office, and I said, we would like him to come and speak as a keynote speaker at this conference. And they said, okay, Great. Right. That's $60,000. It was a long time ago. That's $60,000. And he needs to be flown first class for him and somebody else. And then from Los Angeles Airport to Laguna Niguel, which is where this thing was, he needs a helicopter. Two pilots, not one pilot. He has to have two pilots.

[Joanna Coles]

Two pilots. That's a good demand.

[David Rothkopf]

He's very insecure about flying, which, by

[Joanna Coles]

the way, especially in a helicopter.

[David Rothkopf]

I later learned that that was true because he would be like, what is that noise? We would be. Is that the noise you're supposed to be hearing? Anyway, also a war criminal. Should I have done this? No. Was I doing it with Henry Kissinger? For all the reasons we're talking about here? Yes, I get it. I apologize.

[Joanna Coles]

And did you get him? The two pilots did it all.

[David Rothkopf]

Yeah. No, no. So we. So I get Henry Kissinger. He says yes. So then I think, well, I'm going to have a panel and it'll be a bunch of big guys. So then I thought, well, I'll call Alexander Hay Haig, who was also these

[Joanna Coles]

flash people that you called.

[David Rothkopf]

So I called up Alexander Haig, who I sort of knew a little bit, and I said, we're doing this thing. And he said, who else is coming? I said, well, Henry will be on the panel. And he is a big rivalry with Henry. He said, okay, great, $30,000. And I was like, okay, fantastic. So now I've got him for $30,000. I think, well, we probably need three people for a panel and I need a Democrat. So then I call up the office of Edmund Muskie, who briefly was the US Secretary of State, a former senator. Right. And I said, said, we're doing this panel. Kissinger and Haig, we'd like you to be on it. They said, great. Just came, no fee. He just showed up because it was

[Joanna Coles]

a pyramid scheme because he was a Democrat.

[David Rothkopf]

Kissinger, I got that. Hague.

[Joanna Coles]

Right.

[David Rothkopf]

And so, you know, then other people started to come and, you know, big, big name CEOs started to come to this thing. And lo and behold, you know, that's how that worked.

[Joanna Coles]

What happened to the company?

[David Rothkopf]

My company? Yeah. Oh, I made a billion dollars. And then I retired to the Caribbean. No, it was a little company. It grew. It got sold to some other little company. Somebody made some money. I didn't, but it was fine.

[Joanna Coles]

It's leveraging, people.

[David Rothkopf]

It was leveraging. But we had a magazine called CEO Magazine. So I hung out with a lot of CEOs, and I was seeing this all the time where you're sort of building these transactional meetings and from that comes our economy. And by the way, I heard crazy shit like at that Dinner. There was a guy there who ran an airplane company. I don't even want to tell you the name of the airplane company, but everybody knows the name of the airplane company. And at some point, the guy turns to Kissinger and says, look, maybe you could help me. I've been approached by Muammar Gaddafi, the President of Libya. The head of Libya was a horrible person. And I said, and Gaddafi wants to buy one of our planes. He says, now we need a license to sell him the plane, but I'm perfectly happy to put explosive bolts in the wings. And so if we can get the license, we'll sell him the plane and then we'll blow up the plane.

[Joanna Coles]

Wow. What did Henry say?

[David Rothkopf]

He said, well, I'll talk to you later, but please.

[Joanna Coles]

Wow.

[David Rothkopf]

But I went on, I wasn't worried about it at the time, but the

[Joanna Coles]

point is, presumably the plane never sold. Well, who knew?

[David Rothkopf]

It's not what happened to Gaddafi. He ended up getting dragged and beaten to death for other reasons.

[Joanna Coles]

Yeah, he was shot in the back of a truck.

[David Rothkopf]

Yeah, he was on the. Exactly what happened. But the point is that that's an outrageous story. But every one of those meals, there's a hundred of those stories. That's why Davos works. There's a hundred of those stories happening around the table. Another person at that event came and said to me, I was coming into the ballroom and this woman who was well known and her husband was well known, had rearranged all the seats at the table so her husband could sit next to Kissinger, so he could get a job in the next government. And he was trying to do. And so there were levels of intrigue upon intrigue here in our meritocratic, let the market solve all our problems system. And you look at it, and you look at it in retrospect and you see what has been sold and what the transactions have led to. And it's kind of stomach turning. And frankly, for me, in the Clinton administration, I was in this administration and I saw all these people go off and get jobs at Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan or these other places, and then they'd come back into the government, and oddly enough, they were pursuing the policies that were in the interests of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. And then I'd be in meetings going, well, we must stop. We have the Foreign Corrupt Practices act, and we have to stop American companies from being corrupted by foreign companies. But our government's just as corrupt as those governments. The payoffs are just fancier. It's all done in a more white Collar way. And this is where we are, because we have also seen, as a result of sort of 40 years of giving into that, the highest inequality in American history. We've now seen with Citizens United, change in our laws that give more power to billionaires. In the past 10 years, billionaires have given 14,000% more money to political campaigns than they did 10 years ago. Right.

[Joanna Coles]

And there's more of them in government.

[David Rothkopf]

Trump has 13, 14 in his cabinet. Right. Which, by the way, also proves that you don't have to be smart to be a billionaire. You have to be lucky. You have to be in some, because some of these people are real morons. Right. But our system is at its core. And I don't feel

[Joanna Coles]

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[David Rothkopf]

Like I'm being hyperbolic here in Washington, in New York, in the way that we do capitalism, in the way that we put individual aspirational needs ahead of society, in the way that we set the rules for our society, our system is corrupt. Corrupt to the core.

[Joanna Coles]

Corrupt to the core. And yet, David, it's a beautiful day. The sun is shining. We're about to skip out and have lunch. And I don't want to leave people thinking that the corruption is unsolvable.

[David Rothkopf]

Well, it's not unsolvable. And frankly, one of the things that happens when you have 40 years of growing inequality is that the people who then grow up in that environment, and in this particular case, I mean, millennials and zoomers, they say, this doesn't work. My parents could buy a house. I can't buy a house. My parents could afford college. I can't afford college for my kids. My parents had these opportunities. I don't have these opportunities. And I've got AI breathing down my neck. And I've got a government, by the way, this week, it's a whole other story. But they're putting pressure on AI companies to remove their guidelines. They can do crazy shit and have autonomous weapons.

[Joanna Coles]

Doing that with Anthropic this week.

[David Rothkopf]

Right. But, you know, that generation is coming up, or those generations are coming up, and they're saying, our system's broken. Help me. You know, Help. We want somebody who represents a change from that system.

[Joanna Coles]

Right.

[David Rothkopf]

And I think Trump 10 years ago tapped into the fact that anger was growing, but of course, he was a symptom of the problem, not a solution for the problem. And the reason I have hoped, hope is that in 2026 or in 2028, where, as I've told you before, the majority of voters will have been born since 1990, that they will demand change. And we're starting to see politicians who understand that and hopefully will say, yeah, the solution can't be dictated by the Epstein class.

[Joanna Coles]

And unwittingly, Donald Trump's government will have pushed that change by releasing the Epstein

[David Rothkopf]

files and by being Donald Trump, because he's the most vile human being that the United States has ever produced, and he's surrounded by vile people, and every single one of their policies is driven by greed, corruption, excess, and ignorance and disloyalty to the people of the United States. And so you reach kind of a point of a fever where this is unsustainable, this is too disgusting to go on. And I think the hope that I get is that it won't. As Richard Nixon had a Council of Economic Advisors chairman who once said, that which is unsustainable won't be sustained. And I think the situation that we're in is unsustainable.

[Joanna Coles]

David Rothkoff, A lot to think about there for a Sunday, but what an interesting perspective on the Epstein files and the change that it's likely to create with its ripple effect, which is it's a rippling. Every day, every day more ripples, and eventually there will be waves.

[David Rothkopf]

Well, also, I think, you know, I think if you think the Epstein files story is done, we're just at the beginning. This story was undercovered because the people who own the publications, you know, the people who wanted to go to the parties, this was the world. Why rock the boat?

[Joanna Coles]

We need to get out into the park on a Sunday. People, put down your phones, stop listening to podcasts. Get out and communicate with real people.

[David Rothkopf]

Put down the razor.

[Joanna Coles]

Put down the razor. David Rothkoff's Excellent. Have you in the studio. Let us go and get some lunch. So tell us your conspiracies about Epstein. Come on, hop on the YouTube comment channel, and I'll get back to as many of you as I possibly can. Don't forget to subscribe to the Daily Beast, because we can keep you up to speed, be moment by moment with the crazy that's going on out there. And don't forget, this week, I am launching my substack. So please join me for Primal Scream. Just go to Beast Pub Scream. That's Beast Pub Scream sign up. You don't want to miss it. So the good news is we, we have so many Beast Tier members now there are too many names to read out. And we really appreciate your support. Thanks to our production team. Devon Rogerino. Ryan Murray. Rachel Passer. Heather Passaro. Neil Rosenhaus.