The State of the Epstein Regime | The Joy Reid Show LIVE!

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Joy Reid Show — "The State of the Epstein Regime" (Feb 24, 2026)

Main Theme Overview

This episode of The Joy Reid Show dives deep into the "Epstein Regime"—a term Joy uses to describe the interconnected network of tech billionaires, Trump-era officials, and political power players running the country. Reid and her guests dissect the ongoing dominance of what she calls the "Epstein class," discuss recent scandals, voter fraud allegations linked to Elon Musk’s PAC, failures of government institutions under Trump, and the upcoming State of the Union. The episode is packed with sharp political analysis, investigative journalism, and a look at tech, surveillance, and political corruption’s impact on democracy and everyday life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Airline/Infrastructure Failures, "Broken America" ([02:32-07:32])

• Joy recounts her own nightmare experience with northeastern air travel during a minor snowstorm.
• Blames deregulation/reversal of consumer protections and Trump-era leadership for rundown infrastructure and unreliable transportation.
• “Apparently our airline industry in the Trump era is a dumpster fire. It is a third world dumpster fire. … We are the third world, y'all.” — Joy Reid [03:55]
• Touches on Biden’s previous infrastructure efforts and the irony of Trump taking credit.
• Compares US infrastructure woes unfavorably to Japan, Europe, even African countries: "Traveling in Africa is easier than traveling in the United States." — Joy Reid [07:34]

2. Missing Persons & Law Enforcement Incompetence ([07:35-11:04])

• Focus on the mysterious disappearance of NBC anchor Savannah Guthrie’s mom, Nancy.
• Criticizes the FBI under Director Kash Patel for disengagement, politicization, and purging competent investigators.
• “There is no FBI right now. ... If you’re counting on Kash Patel’s operation... you’re already toast.” — Joy Reid [09:02]
• Questions misplaced priorities—patting themselves on the back with sports teams while ignoring pressing criminal investigations.

3. The "Epstein Regime": Grift, Tech Bros, Global Surveillance ([11:05-14:00], [35:48-41:00])

• Defines the “Epstein Regime” as an ultra-wealthy class of US tech CEOs, government contractors, and political actors, many recurring in Epstein’s circle/files.
• Describes how these actors are living luxuriously while slashing social spending and perpetrating grift at the highest levels of government.
• Issue of defense contracts, lack of oversight, and government-backed profiteering.
• “We're going to start calling them the Epstein regime, because this Epstein class, this ultra wealthy Epstein class... they are living their best lives now...” — Joy Reid [12:46]
• Explores the tech-billionaire drive toward global surveillance (Palantir, Check Point, mentions direct CIA investment). Epstein’s deep ties to MIT’s AI community and Silicon Valley are continually referenced.

4. 2024 Georgia Voter Fraud Scandal — Elon Musk's PAC ([20:35-25:19])

• Exposes how Musk’s America PAC sent pre-filled absentee ballot requests—a clear violation.
• The only “punishment” is a letter of reprimand.
• Joy and Rep. Lauren Underwood discuss the Republican push for restrictive voting legislation (SAVE Act, Save America Act) as a smokescreen for real election fraud, which in this case stemmed from a foreign-born tech billionaire.
• “Elon Musk... should not legally, lawfully be able to obtain and send in pre-filled voter absentee ballots—like, legislate against him.” — Joy Reid [28:12]
• Underwood: The real threat is mass voter suppression; Republicans “are moving forward with nationwide voter suppression through the Save America Act.” [26:46]

5. Democratic Responses, Alternative State of the Union, and Organizing ([13:34-17:01], [30:00-31:54])

• Large Democratic boycott of Trump’s State of the Union; numerous alternative events organized by figures like Jacob Fry, Brandon Johnson, Robert De Niro, Don Lemon.
• Joy and her cohost Katie Fang set to host “People’s State of the Union” with directly impacted individuals and Democratic lawmakers.
• Underwood: Diverse Democratic tactics—some attend the official event, others organize counter-programming to communicate the “truth of this moment.”

6. Big Tech, Surveillance State, and Anti-Democratic Rhetoric ([35:48-41:00])

• Joy plays a chilling clip from Shlomo Kramer (Check Point) advocating for government censorship of social media and restrictions on First Amendment rights: “It's time to limit the first amendment in order to protect it…”
• Palantir CEO Alex Karp: "Safe means that the other person is scared. That's how you make someone safe." [38:46]
• Joy points out the merging of big tech, surveillance, and foreign connections perpetuated by the Epstein circle.

7. Epstein Files Deep Dive with Ellie Leonard (Writer/Researcher) ([44:40-64:39])

• Leonard provides context on key players: Les Wexner’s deep entanglement with Epstein, real estate gifts, Mossad/foreign intelligence links.
• Allegations of potential crimes at Zorro Ranch, law enforcement reluctance to investigate, and the political connections guarding that secrecy.
• Epstein’s influence over academia, AI, tech, and right-wing conspiracies (e.g., QAnon), with hints toward possible false flag operations to cover up real elite wrongdoing.
• Detailed speculation over Epstein's cause of death and whether or not he was murdered, highlighting suspicious government actions and missing evidence.
• “He was so connected to what we know as the dark web now that it's a little frightening.” — Ellie Leonard [49:02]

8. Trump’s Use of Fake Names & Ongoing Grift ([67:13-79:28])

• Joy breaks down Trump’s history as “John Barron,” “John Miller,” “David Dennison,” and even “Carolyn Gallego”—aliases used to manipulate the media and business.
• Tariffs case: Supreme Court decision blocks Trump from imposing arbitrary tariffs; Trump lashes out with baseless conspiracy theories.

9. State of the Union & Economic Reality Check with David K. Johnson ([78:15–108:05])

• Johnson explains Trump’s economic and legal illiteracy, the destructiveness of failed tariffs, and the myth of the ‘booming’ economy (AI bubble, collapse of job growth).
• Outlines the transformation of American oligarchy: from productive industrialists to “wealth extractors” who create systems, not goods, and substitute automation for labor.
• “They have made a lot of things more efficient... but the reason they're so profitable is we do the work... They've gotten us to do the work.” — David K. Johnson [87:27]
• Alarming increase in inequality and decline of journalistic accountability, leading to unaccountable “kleptocrats.”

10. ICE and Industrial Detention Complex ([99:14–100:33])

• Joy and Johnson discuss how immigration policy has shifted from deportation to mass detention for profit—governed by secretive, unaccountable “shock troops.”
• “ICE is... the shock troops of a mass surveillance society who are lawless. They are the secret police...” — Joy Reid [100:14]

11. War Fears: Iran and Foreign Policy Manipulation ([103:53–108:05])

• Discussion of Trump/Netanyahu agenda for regime change in Iran; dangers of military escalation and probable manipulation by Israeli interests.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Donald Trump uses fake names... John Barron... John Miller... David Dennison... Carolyn Gallego... He’s every woman. It’s all in him.” — Joy Reid [77:07]
• “If you're counting on Kash Patel's operation to help you in a situation of crime, you're already toast.” — Joy Reid [09:02]
• “This Epstein class... they are living their best lives now, while cutting Medicaid, while cutting food stamps...” — Joy Reid [12:46]
• “It's time to limit the first amendment in order to protect it.” — Shlomo Kramer [36:16]
• “Safe means that the other person is scared. That's how you make someone safe.” — Alex Karp [38:46]
• “They are the Peter Thiels, Elon Musks, Alex Karps... getting defense contracts, not paying taxes and building a global surveillance state, which by the way, Jeffrey Epstein wanted and invested in.” — Joy Reid [41:00]
• “And so we have to be clear-eyed about that and how it will harm all of us, including black people all across the country.” — Rep. Lauren Underwood on voter suppression [26:46]
• “Automation created jobs [for a while]... now the amount of time you and I... spend [doing] what a bank clerk used to do... they've gotten us to do the work.” — David K. Johnson [87:27]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Airline/Infrastructure Meltdown: [02:32–07:32]
• Epstein Regime & Tech Surveillance: [11:05–14:00], [35:48–41:00]
• Musk’s PAC Voter Fraud Scandal: [20:35–25:19]
• Democratic Response Strategies: [13:34–17:01], [30:00–31:54]
• Ellie Leonard/Deeper Epstein Files: [44:40–64:39]
• Trump’s Aliases, Tariff Debacle: [67:13–79:28]
• David K. Johnson: Oligarchy Analysis & ICE: [78:15–108:05]
• War with Iran, Foreign Policy Risks: [103:53–108:05]

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Closing/Miscellaneous

• The episode ends on a lighter note: Joy gives parenting advice to guest Garrison Hayes (have a second child; [111:54–113:13]), and highlights the need for Democrats to present a clear, bold agenda to counter the Epstein/Trump regime.
• “You have to protect us from voter fraud. Because if they steal elections... it's very hard to come back from it once that election is a fait accompli.” — Joy Reid [113:23]
• Joy also plays two “moment of joy” clips: a snow day announcement by NY’s Zorhan Mamdani [117:46], and an adult snowball fight in Washington Square Park [119:02].

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Overall Tone & Style

Joy-Ann Reid blends incisive investigative commentary and biting satire. The episode is fast-paced, densely packed with political analysis, and distinguished by open frustration with elite corruption, journalistic failures, and the rise of surveillance capitalism. Expert guests provide rigorous insight, while the recurring “Epstein class” motif ties together concerns about democracy, social justice, and oligarchic power.

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For listeners new to this episode, expect an unvarnished, skeptical look at the intersection of Trumpism, tech billionaires, and global surveillance—plus strategies for resisting systemic corruption. Joy’s advice? Keep asking the uncomfortable questions, scrutinize the money and power, and—above all—don’t surrender hope for accountability and real change.

Transcript

[Joy Reid]

It's tax season, and at Lifelock, we know you're tired of numbers, but here's a big one you need to hear. Billions. That's the amount of money and refunds the IRS has flagged for possible identity fraud. Now here's another big number. 100 million. That's how many data points LifeLock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, we'll fix it, guaranteed. One last big number. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast for the threats you can't control. Terms apply. Okay. Well, well, well, well. Happy Monday, everybody. Welcome to the Joy Reid Show. Big ups to everybody that is listening on YouTube. Looking at the YouTube chats right there. Happy Monday. Happy Monday to my sorors, who are also chiming in in the substack. The Soros always jump in early, but all the D9, even if you're not D9. Happy Happy Monday to all of you. Big ups to everybody that is on the sub stack thread as well. We don't want to skip that. You guys are also always in here on the chats and always got great things to say. Also, those who are listening on Facebook. Hello to our Facebookies. We love you guys as well. And of course, our fabulous, stalwart Twitchies. Small but mighty, the small but mighty tjrs Twitch Crew. Thank you all for tuning in. We appreciate you no matter where you're listening. We just appreciate you all being a part of our adorable, cute little family. I hope you guys had a really, really great weekend. Thanks to everybody who tuned in to our Black History Month special. It like, it really went gangbusters. People were really enjoying it. The chat was really lively. We appreciate everybody that tuned in for that and also that sent in questions. I hope you got good answers to your questions as well. And those of you who are on substack, I do realize that that was not a live chat, so we apologize, but we had to post it because we were actually out of town. Jason. I were out of town. And so we know that at the end of that show, there was, like a little sound that dropped out. The. The. The gremlins decided to take away a little piece of sound. Well, we've got that sound as bonus sound for you tonight. You're going have to wait till the end of the show, but we will have some bonus sound for y' all tonight at the end of the show. So that's what you call a tease.

[Jason Reed]

I wouldn't say bonus sound. I would say we'll just have what was muted by Mistake out. So you could hear what Joy's advice was to Garrison about having a second child.

[Joy Reid]

I still feel like that's bonus, though. And. Oh, there you are. I was gonna say where you have. Now that you have your camera ready, people want to see you when they hear you, Mr. Jason Reed. So, yes, I'll call it bonus, But Jason is saying it's just the sound that you miss. Missed because of the gremlins. We'll have that for you tonight. We appreciate that. We're also in day two of the latest blizzard that shut down airlines across the Northeast. Apparently, as Jason and I learned on this weekend, just the. The news of snow coming will shut down basically all of the airlines. They shut it all down. We were at a wedding, a really wonderful wedding. Our good friend Tina got married in the. In the good old South. And so we. And trying to get north of the Mason Dixon Line was practically impossible. And this is way before the snow even began. Airlines have shut down, like, all over the country. They just shut themselves down. All the airports going into the Washington, D.C. area. Even though when we got back here, there was no snow. It was like barely a dusting of snow. It was a little bit of snow. It's already melted, practically. But apparently our airline industry in the Trump era is a dumpster fire. It is a third world dumpster fire. We are the third world. They used to call the third world the developing world. They would call that the quote. No, we are the third world, y'. All. Japan has super trains, India super trains, Europe, Eurail. But in the United States, just the news of potential snow is enough to completely shut down our entire transportation system, planes, trains, and automobiles, including in New York City, literally. I don't know what's going on in our country, but as a setup to the State of the Union, I will say part of our state of the union is that the airlines that serve this country are hot trash. It's not the employees fault. It's not their fault. They're just doing what they're talking. But the airlines themselves, because there's no penalty. Remember that? One of the hairs. The Lemonheads, I see them. The Lemonheads have popped into the building. Hello, Lemonheads. One of the things that Joe Biden did. I had a lot of criticisms of Joe Biden, but one of the things he did is push through this airline bill of rights, where you actually had some rights when airlines canceled your flight. You could go, you could get refund. There are all these. That's gone. Donald Trump has wiped that away. And so we are now once again at the mercy of our transportation system, which is in the hands of the guy from the real world, Boston, and he's not doing a great job. When the airlines aren't crashing into each other or crashing into military planes, they're just not taking off the train system. We're supposed to be getting fast trains. We're still waiting. The infrastructure that Joe Biden started to put in place, I don't know if Donald Trump is following through on those things. Congress passed them, but they don't even enforce the laws they pass, so who knows? So we are living in the age of broken America. By the way, one of the things that's not broken is independent media. If you're loving this independent media, as the chimers in the chat have already said, please hit like and subscribe. It really does help people think that we just say this. This is part of, like, the standard script that we say in independent media, but we really do mean it. If you hit like and subscribe, the more likes and subscribes you get, the YouTube algorithm, they kind of eat it up. All the algorithms love it. So, like and subscribe is the way that you can, for free, support independent media. So please do that. So that was one story. Another story, Rob and Michelle Reiner's son, Nick Reiner, pleaded not guilty to murdering his parents. That was a crazy story. And we love the Reiners. And so we're going to keep following that story as it goes. As one. What is this? Guacadier said America should be like Wakanda. We should. We should. Well, so should the Congo, which is really Wakanda, because they have all the minerals. But the United States is this country that purports to be the wealth, the richest country on earth, but we might have the worst infrastructure of any Western nation. And remember when Donald Trump ran the first time. Thanks for the 49. 99. Megan Underwood. When he first ran in 2016, Donald Trump promised to do $1 trillion in infrastructure. That was Steve Bannon's big plan. And I actually thought they might do it and kind of worried that Democrats would be under the gun if they did it. They never did it. Then Joe Biden came and did the trillion dollars in infrastructure. Donald Trump and Republicans are out there taking credit for it. Some of the airports have gotten much better. LaGuardia, much better. Kennedy, much better. I was in the university. I'm sorry, in Chicago. O', Hare, much better than it used to be. Detroit's airport, not bad at all. Denver's airport, pretty good. But And. And DCA still, to me, the best airport.

[Jason Reed]

But in the region.

[Joy Reid]

You mean in the region.

[Jason Reed]

In this particular region.

[Joy Reid]

In this region. But in general, flying from Paris to anywhere and flying from anywhere in the US to anywhere, night and day. Europe has US Beat, hands down. Japan has US Beat. China has US Beat. Every other western nation has us the

[Jason Reed]

continent has US Beat.

[Joy Reid]

Traveling in Africa is easier than traveling in the United States. It's more reliable than it is traveling here. Our transportation system is basura. As. As Benito would say, as. As bad bunny would say. It's basura. It's terrible. So that happened. So we experienced it. Jason and I experienced the hell of trying to get north of the Mason Dixon line when it threatens to snow, because, to be clear, it didn't snow that much in D.C. but they shut down all three airports. All three. And all the airlines participated in. It's horrible. So that's what's happened there. Meanwhile, Savannah Guthrie's mom, Nancy, we haven't gotten a chance to do this story because we keep getting too much breaking news. Her mom has now been missing for Almost a month, 22 days as of today, and there is still very little evidence of where she is. Volunteers recovered a backpack near the search area, which was then handed over to sheriff's deputies. There's been no suspect named. Authorities have no new updates. This is wild, right? The. The. The. The mom of a very famous news anchor disappears, and there's nothing. There's no evidence. There's nothing. Law enforcement has just asked anyone with information to call them at 1-800- call FBI or tips.FBI.gov or the Pima county sheriff's department. But if you were to call 1-800-FBI, who would answer?

[Jason Reed]

A bunch of scrubs, B listers and everybody who would.

[David K. Johnson]

How come.

[Jason Reed]

How is it that Mr. Patel can never find anybody when he's looking for it?

[David K. Johnson]

What.

[Jason Reed]

What is that about?

[Joy Reid]

And the only reason they found the identity of the pipe bomber is somebody turned it in. The Charlie Kirk said situation. A family member turned in the guy who allegedly shot Charlie Kirk. It's all got to be that the person turns themsel in on their own, right? When the FBI's got to do what the FBI is supposed to do, they don't do it. If you were to call the FBI right now, to me, there is no FBI right now. There is no FBI. Because if you're counting on Cash Patel's operation to try to help you in a. In a situation of crime, you're. You're already toast. But you will be comforted to know that while the FBI is also basurah, they're not. They fired the really talented people because the talented people participated in investigating Donald Trump's theft of classified documents and helped to investigate him. His campaign potentially playing footsie with the Russians. So they had to be thrown out and punished. They're gone. They no longer want to investigate the Epstein files. They have no interest in investigating any of the thousands of tips about Epstein's co conspirators and fellow perss. They don't want to investigate that because that would hurt Donald Trump because he's in the Epstein files more times than Jesus is mentioned in the Bible. And so they're not doing much. But Cash Patel, you will be comforted to know, is having a really good time. Nothing is stopping him. You know, poor Nancy Guthrie. God knows where that poor lady is. That's not stopping him from having a good old time. He took the time out of his busy schedule and out of your tax bill on your dime to hang out with the men's gold winning hockey team as they celebrated their victory over Team Canada. Here's a little bit of that. Is that Valhalla, Cash? I know you want to go to Valhalla.

[Jason Reed]

That is our FBI director.

[Joy Reid]

That's your FBI director, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah. That spectacle is estimated to have cost you, the taxpayer, between 75,000 and $100,000 minimum. And those estimates of 75 to $100,000 are based on that man, Cash Patel taking a government chartered Gulf Stream Dream G550 jet. It's based on government estimates of $5,000 per flight hour, 5,000 per hour for the FBI aircraft with a flight to Milan, which is where he was typically lasting around nine hours. That would put the travel expenses alone at $75,000 of your money. That's more than the average American earns in a year. Some unverified social media claims have suggested the trip might have cost you as much as four hundred hundred thousand dollars. But major news outlets, because they try to stay conservative on things, Trump labeled it at around $75,000 based on the standard flight rates. But we don't know what else he did while he was partying on your dime. Maybe Cash, bring your ass back here. Stop pretending you're a member of the hockey dude bro team and get your ass back here and find Nancy Guthrie. Maybe arrest a pedophile or two from the Epstein files. Maybe you could find some time for that Cash while you're out here taking custom flights and riding in Fancy brand new SUV's and wearing your cool fancy FBI sports jacket that you pitch a bitch for if they don't find it for you so you can always appear to look cooler than you are and flying your country's western singer girlfriend around to her gigs on the America the entire Trump regime is a grift. Everything about it is a grip. They're making money and we're going to start calling them the Epstein regime because this Epstein class, this ultra wealthy Epstein class of Americans, this small group of tech bros and CEOs who have government contracts who are on the public teat and who are basically constantly showing up in the Epstein files, they are living their best lives now, as are all the members of this regime, while cutting Medicaid, while cutting food stamps, while taking away USAID and causing children to die all over the all over the world. While Russ Vogt, the guy who wrote most of the Epstein files, uses the USAID money to pad his own personal security.

[Jason Reed]

You mean Project 2020.

[Joy Reid]

Sorry, Project 2025. Sorry, Project 2025. So he, because he wanted to have his own private security, his own beefed up security, wants big men to walk around with him even though nobody knows what he looks like. So meanwhile, with all of that happening, this clown show of grift and theft and stealing, while they've done nothing for the American people, nothing. Your prices are up, your food prices are up, your rent prices are up, your housing prices are up. Nothing has gotten better for you. Nothing has gotten better for you. We're all preparing for the State of the Union address in which Donald Trump is expected to pretend that all this garbage, the crap economy. He's going to pretend it's not even happening, that he didn't lose the tariffs case in the Supreme Court and we are not going to have to start issuing refunds to the American people for the tariffs. His insane foreign policy ideas like annexing Canada and Greenland and kicking NATO in the face and ending USAID again. So Russ Bo can have stepped up security, mass detaining brown and black immigrants in private prisons and concentration camps for profit. Because they're not deporting them, they're detaining them for profit. For a small number of rich CEOs whose companies have special contracts with the government can make money on the bodies, taking children and putting them in tender age camps. Children being detained for profit. They're not deporting people, they're detaining them for profit. They're gonna pretend on tomorrow that this is all working out great. Here's what's gonna happen on the Democrat side. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a friend of this show, will join several other Democratic elected officials and well known actors, including in giving unofficial responses to Trump's State of the Union address. According to a news release about the event, organizers are calling it the State of the Swamp. It's a boycott of Trump's address. Brian Johnson are expected to join us. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, Delaware Governor Matt Meyer, Robert De Niro. I love Robert De Niro. He should be there as well. Mark Ruffalo, Don Lemon, our friend Don Lemon. Lemonheads and Jim Acosta will also be there at that event. It's scheduled to take place at the National Press club in Washington D.C. during Donald Trump's State of the Union. Remember, last year's was not a real State of the Union. This one is an official State of the Union address. On the official Democratic side, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger will deliver the official Democratic response to Trump's speech. California Senator Alex Padilla will deliver the Democratic response in Spanish. As of now, nearly 50 Democratic House members and senators will not be attending the State of the Union and they're going to also be at other events. I myself, along with my pal from the Artist formerly known as msnbc, Katie Fang of the Katie Fang show, we will be hosting some of those non attending members and senators at the People's State of the Union event which takes place at the nation's capital starting at 8pm The People's State of the Union is brought to you by midas touch and moveon.org it's not loading but we will, we'll put it in. We'll put it in the, in sort of the aftermarket of the show so you can see it later. It's decided it didn't want to load but trust me, we will be there. It's brought to you by midas touch and moveon.org it will stream on the Midas platform and also right here on this channel, the TJR's channel, starting again at 8pm tomorrow night. So please do tune in and it's going to start on time. So make sure you tune in. Maybe tune in a few minutes before. We'll have it teed up at about 7:30.

[Jason Reed]

SP is stopping.

[Joy Reid]

It's being stubborn.

[Jason Reed]

Yeah, it's being stubborn.

[Joy Reid]

It's being stubborn. The tech is trying to play games with us. It's probably Starlink. It's Elon. So that's also happening. Also doing alternative State of the Union events. The State of the People Power Tour is also doing an alternate State of the People Power Tour alternative to the State of the Union. So is Roland Martin on his Black Star Network. He has a State of the Union alternative as well. It's going to feature Latasha Brown, Cliff Albright and some other folks. So bottom line, there are many, many, many alternatives to you having to sit there and listen to Orange Dummy tomorrow night. You don't have to listen to him now. We're all going to be clipping and watching what he says so that we will make sure that, you know, if he says anything cray cray. But we are going to at the People State of the Union that Katie and I are hosting, we are going to have these senators and members of Congress who with people who've been directly impacted by the Epstein Trump regime. And the Epstein Trump regime has hurt a lot of people. I call the Epstein Trump regime because everybody all in it, all in the Epstein files. And we're going to talk to people who've been impacted by the policies of this regime. Now, apparently some Epstein survivors may be in the audience sitting with the Democratic members who do turn up. It would not surprise me if some Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who she, she, she's still going to be there until January 5th. I wouldn't be surprised if she and Thomas Massie bring some survivors with them as well. This is all happening as Donald Trump's numbers are at record lows. Even his handling of immigration is polling right now in the latest APNORC poll at just 38%. 38%, according to that recent poll. His standing on the economy also at record lows. The vast majority, two thirds of Americans, rate the nation's economy under Trump as poor, which is effectively what Joe Biden was facing going into having to be booted out of the seat to move make room for Kamala Harris. Even though Donald Trump is insisting he's won on affordability. I'm not sure how grocery prices are up, housing prices are up. Utility prices are up. And the latest data shows that 2025 was the slowest year for job growth and economic growth since the pandemic in 2020. So not good. Meanwhile, Speaker Mike Johnson, who denied Reverend Jesse Jackson's family's request to have Reverend Jackson lie in state at the nation's capital. Back door. Through the, through the back door. He tried to get the Jackson family to attend the State of the Union as his guests. They, of course, declined, but they will attend. Some members of the Jackson family will be there, but they're going to be guests of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries instead. Reportedly. Now one of the other many reasons that people feel the state of the nation is so poor is that instead of low prices and what the far right and even some not on the far right wanted, which is mass deportation, instead of that we've gotten killer ice, high prices and mass detention for profit. With the super wealthy Epstein class continue to roll over our constitutional rights. Last week we found the voter fraud by the way in the state of Georgia as a super PAC connected to another ultra wealthy Epstein class member Elon Musk got fined for submitting, get this pre filled ballots. Pre filled absentee ballot requests. Not ballots, but pre filled absentee ballot requests in Georgia. Take a listen to this.

[Caller/Guest/Panelist (various)]

Case in the agenda is SEB2024 151 multi county pre filled AB applications November 2024 the Secretary of State's office initiated investigation on October 7, 2024 after receiving complaints from several counties alleging that the organization America pac, a political campaign, sent partially pre filled absentee ballot and applications to register voters in Chattooga, Cherokee, Coweta, Floyd Whitfield counties after the passage of a law that had made such activity unlawful.

[David K. Johnson]

Mr. Chair, I think that there is evidence

[Joy Reid]

to suggest that America PAC is in violation of 21 2,381 when they sent to an elector pre filled absentee ballot applications in November of 2024 and evidence

[David K. Johnson]

to suggest that America PAC is in

[Joy Reid]

violation of 212381 when they failed to

[David K. Johnson]

display in a conspicuous location the statutory language.

[Joy Reid]

This is not an official government publication and was not provided to you by any government entity. And this is not a ballot.

[David K. Johnson]

Mr.

[Joy Reid]

Chair, I would move that we issue

[David K. Johnson]

I'd make a motion that we issue a letter of reprimand to America.

[Caller/Guest/Panelist (various)]

Pack we have motion to issue a letter of reprimand to America pac. Is there a second?

[Ellie Leonard]

Seconds.

[Caller/Guest/Panelist (various)]

We have a motion a second. Any further discussion? Hearing no further discussion. All those in favor of issuing a letter reprimand to America PAC signify by saying aye. Any opposition hearing no opposition so moved letter reprimand will be sent to America. Pact on case SCB2024 151 a letter of reprimand.

[Joy Reid]

What? Wait, wait wait. You committed voter fraud? Elon Musk's pac, who a lot of people suspect that he stole the election for Trump. Now we find out after did they get that when they went and raided Fulton county and took away those ballots, Were they trying to hide the pre filled ballot requests? Is that why that raid took place. Because it seems to me that those who believe that the 2024 election was stolen are starting to look more right than wrong. Why were there pre filled ballots from Elon Musk's PAC in Fulton County? And why is the only penalty a strongly worded letter of reprimand? Not even sure if it's strongly worded. Joining me now. We're going to come back, Jason, to some of the other things I had set up in a. But let's, let's bring in Representative Lauren Underwood, the great state of Illinois, because I guess I need to ask an elected official. So the Republicans are trying right now to pass the SAVE Act. First of all, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. Representative Underwood, is there anything in the SAVE act barring people from submitting pre filled absentee ballot requests?

[Representative Lauren Underwood]

I've not heard about that, so I can't comment on that.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. But we do know that what is in the SAVE act is a requirement that people show proof of citizenship because the Republicans have this conspiracy theory that non citizens are voting. Well, apparently there is a foreigner who really did commit voter fraud. Elon Musk, should we maybe not have something if they want to pass a law to make our election safe from foreign interference? Something to protect us from the guy who owns starlink?

[Representative Lauren Underwood]

So, you know, the bill that we recently considered in the House is called the Save America Act. They've made it even worse. So they passed the SAVE act last year. They added a provision to require states to turn over voter rolls to Kristi Noem. Yes. And so that's what they recently passed out of the House called the Save America Act. What is clear to me is this. This is a very clear voter suppression effort that would disenfranchise millions of American women if their name didn't match their birth certificate or their passport. And these comments about undocumented people voting in our elections just don't really line up with the facts. And I would say we have to take this threat really seriously. I understand what you're saying about Mr. Musk. I just want people to be really clear about how this impacts them. Right. If we are going to be serious about stopping this voter suppression initiative and making sure that we can have free and fair elections this fall. We have to be really clear about the nature of the threat and how it's coming to our front door, our zip code, our blocks. No matter where you live in this country, we all are impacted.

[Joy Reid]

But here's the thing, and the reason I bring this up. You know, I lived in the great state of Florida for quite a long time where there was, where the Republican Party's expertise was absentee balloting. And there had been instances of absentee ballot fraud in the past, not committed by Democrats, but by Republicans in the city of Miami. And one of the things that you could easily do if you were going to commit absentee ballot fraud would be to pre fill out absentee voter requests and then fill them out when they get to whatever address you're using. So here we have an instance where somebody did something that actually could produce massive fraud and swing an election in the state of Georgia. They didn't do it to help Kamala Harris. This is the guy helping Donald Trump. And so when I say this, the idea that people who are undocumented would out themselves by registering to vote and then out themselves again by trying to vote is insanely stupid. But this thing that actually did happen, that resulted in an actual vote to fine the and give a strongly worded letter to this pac, this is a real thing that now we know. And if it happened there, it could have happened anywhere. So is Congress prepared to now push the other way, Democrats, to say, wait a minute, we are concerned about the kind of voter fraud Republicans specialized in, which is using the absentee ballot process to game the system for Trump?

[Representative Lauren Underwood]

What is very clear to me is that voter fraud is unacceptable in any scenario and anyone who commits that crime should be prosecuted, Period. However, this is not that bill. This bill is designed to prevent the American people who are US Citizens, who are lawfully registered and eager to exercise their democratic and participate in our democracy. This is designed to prevent them from voting, Period. And I just think that we, if we want to go down these voter fraud rabbit holes with them, that's fine. But we have to devote equal or higher amounts of energy to making sure that we are registering voters and making sure people are informed about how they can participate in this election and making sure that we are advocating by calling our senators and blocking the Save America act, that is like the red light is blinking, this alarm is ringing. We are in a crisis moment that they are so desperate. Joy, Donald Trump knows he's losing and his redistricting schemes didn't work and giving them the advantage that they wanted. So they are moving forward with nationwide voter suppression through the Save America Act. And I just think that we have to be clear eyed about that and how it will harm all of us, including black people all across the country. So.

[Joy Reid]

But I want to go down the rabbit hole. I mean, honestly, I'm down The rabbit hole I am down.

[Representative Lauren Underwood]

I know you are.

[Joy Reid]

Because the reality is, I think what gives Republicans fear, what, what makes them concerned about the elections not being sound is the thing they've been told for something like 30 years that undocumented people are pouring into the voter rolls and they're the ones who are swinging elections. They believe it to their core, which is why they're so insane about voter id and they have gotten a majority of Americans to agree that you should have voter id. That's a battle Democrats have not really won on in terms of people's public opinion. But the actual when Republicans do real voter fraud, my concern is that Democrats don't pursue it. We stay out of the rabbit hole. This man, Elon Musk, who is a foreign born, foreign born man who has Defense Department contract, who stripped our government illegally through Doge, leaving something like 300,000 people unemployed, I will note here in the DMV there are people who were promised buyouts who haven't gotten them and have not gotten a paycheck since September and are now risky losing their homes. He stole money away from Medicaid, stole money away and potentially exposed our whole Social Security data. And, and yet his PAC committed voter fraud. So to me, are Democrats prepared to lean in as hard as they're leaning in on voter ID to say that PACs like Elon Musk should not legally lawfully be able to obtain and send in pre filled voter absentee ballots like legislate against him?

[Representative Lauren Underwood]

Well, I think in the majority, Democrats are very much prepared to hold people like Elon Musk accountable for the crimes that they've committed. I mean that is.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, he should be prosecuted. Let me, let me go on to. Are you attending the State of the Union? Yes. So tell me what the Democratic strategy is here because there are some who are attending, some who are not attending. It appears not to be super organized. What decision? What was your decision base? Because some people are going and some people are not. What was the conversation behind the scenes?

[Representative Lauren Underwood]

The conversation was you should go if you want to go and if you don't want to go, do something really constructive to talk to your community and make sure everyone understands the truth of this moment. So what I see are that we have a big diverse caucus and as House Democrats we are going to be showing up on many platforms creating counter content and then we are going to hold down the fort in our House chamber to make sure that Donald Trump understands that when he comes to our House and he tries to stand up there and deflect and spread his lies that we are not going to just stand by and let it happen. I mean, I think that we have to be the light and the darkness joy and cannot surrender that moment.

[Joy Reid]

So what will you do if he says a lie? What is the plan for you personally? What are you thinking you will do?

[Representative Lauren Underwood]

Well, I will be there and when he goes too far, I will get up and leave.

[Joy Reid]

Got it. That is what Representative Al Green did last time. And I hope that when you do it, if you do it unlike when Representative Green did it, people will get up and follow you out. It was one of the things that was so deeply disappointing is that the rest of the Democrats watched that man shake his cane and walk out and then walk out with him. So hopefully if one leaves, maybe let the caucus know if one leaves, everyone should leave. I personally, that's my only personal opinion I know that you wanted to talk about while we have you, you all have an effort to try to enhance the chances of Democrats taking back the House by flipping some red seats. Talk about that.

[Representative Lauren Underwood]

Well, we rolled out, we the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the DCCC earlier today made our first red to blue announcements, which is the program where we are putting our bright spotlight on candidates. 12 candidates who have stepped forward to challenging incumbent Republicans and they are our best chances to flip the House. So we have great geographic diversity from coast to coast, 12 exceptional candidates running in districts that Kamala Harris won, running in districts that Donald Trump won, running in districts that are highly competitive for these Republican incumbents due to their extremism, due to their corruption, due to their negligence and their extreme loyalty to Trump have put these districts in play. Now, earlier in the conversation I referenced redistricting. We do have some, some districts on this list where their redistricting scheme has failed. And so we have great candidates in North Carolina and great candidates in Virginia who are going to be those redistricting exemplars that will help power our majority come November.

[Joy Reid]

And let me ask you this. The candidates who you are backing, can we get a pledge to not take APAC money and not take money from super PACs that may be funded by the big tech industry?

[Representative Lauren Underwood]

You know, you would have to talk to those candidates about that. And so we don't have that kind of litmus test at the dccc. What the dtrip is looking for are candidates who are running serious campaigns who are a good fit for their district. Candidates like Jonathan Nez, who is the former Navajo Nation president, running against Eli Crane, a mag extremist in Arizona. President Nez is someone who has robust fundraising capacity and reflects the community he's seeking to serve in the Congress. And I'm not here to be a spokesperson or even to validate that this type of big money playing in our elections is a good thing. But what I am saying is that these candidates are running smart campaigns and I think that they would be happy to talk with you about their candidacy's joy.

[Joy Reid]

Please send them our way. The folks in the chats have lots and lots and lots of ideas. They like to see a platform writ large from the Democratic Party saying get rid of ice, end ice. They'd like no APAC funding. And here's an idea for you guys that are going to attend. Someone in the chat said, bring pictures of some of these Epstein victims and put them in the chair. And if you leave, leave that, that face in the chair. That was a really good idea. Some of the chat folks have really great marketing ideas. So that's one that was free to you. We charge nothing for this advice. Thank you very much, Congressman Lauren Underwood.

[Representative Lauren Underwood]

Thank you.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you. Please come back. All right, everybody, Congressman Lauren Underwood, one of the young 30something members of the House of Representatives. Representatives. And yes, arrest all the pedophiles. I think those are good ideas. Let's get back really quick before we bring our next set of guests in, because one of the challenges I think people have, and the reason I always do ask about the AIPAC thing, is that we have this weird thing where it feels like the government of Israel has inordinate influence over our government and people from that country, for whatever reason, they seem to really want us to invade Iran and it looks like Trump might do it. And they also seem to want to really control what we're doing on social media to make sure that people are not saying mean things about Israel doing genocide. I want you guys to listen. Jason, if you, if you can pull it up. This is a guy named, his name is Shlomo Kramer. He is one of the many tech billionaires who's profiting off of cheating us. He is the co founder of a cybersecurity company called Check Point. And he has another company called Imperva, as well as a third company called Cato Networks, which is a company, cloud based network security provider that is providing assistance to this sort of global mass surveillance infrastructure. He was on CNBC this past December over the Christmas holiday. And what he said I think is pretty chilling. Here he is, Slow Mo Kramer, also one of the founders of Checkpoint, another big cyber company. Shlomo, it's Great to have you here. Welcome.

[Shlomo Kramer]

Thank you for having me.

[Joy Reid]

How is AI cyber warfare shaping geo politics right now?

[Shlomo Kramer]

Is going to revolutionize. Cyber warfare is revolutionized by from critical infrastructure to the fabric of society and politics and undermining it. Giving unfair advantage to the Canadian governments against democratic countries. First Amendment type of.

[Joy Reid]

That's already happening.

[Shlomo Kramer]

That's already happening. You're seeing the polarization in countries that allow for the first amendment and protect it which is great and I know it's difficult to hear but it's time to limit the first amendment in order to protect it and quickly before it's too late.

[Joy Reid]

What do you mean?

[Shlomo Kramer]

I mean that we need to control the platforms, all the social platforms we need to stack rank the authenticity of every person that expresses themselves online and take control over what they are saying based on that ranking.

[Joy Reid]

The government.

[Shlomo Kramer]

The government should do that and we need to educate people against dies and government need to develop cyber defense programs that are as sophisticated as they seem Today it's a 1 to 100 ratio and really government are not doing this today at any rate and enterprises are left fending from themselves.

[Joy Reid]

You can, you can stop in there. The political system typically can to respond. He then goes on to say when the. When the two CNBC hosts say but wait a minute, you know China, they control their Internet and we don't want to be that. He said oh no. Yes you do. China has an advantage over us because they control the narratives that are on social media that could disrupt their society. And here in the west you all are letting people develop their own narratives. That's dangerous. The government needs to control the narratives on social media like China does because if you don't China will have an advantage over you not to be left out. Now let's play Alex Karp. He is the super weird happens to be black. He's half black. CEO of Palantir. It's almost like the Terminator the real way the Terminator ended wake up scared

[Caller/Guest/Panelist (various)]

and go to bed scared. And if you give that to the American people the American people will go back and say and honestly probably shouldn't say this is why I thought the Democrats going to lose the election why they did because people want to live in peace. They want to go home. They do not want to hear your woke pagan ideology. They want to know they're safe. And safe means that the other person is scared. That's how you make someone safe.

[Joy Reid]

Wait, what he said we want to make American people feel safe so that you have to make people scared. Alex Karp, the guy from the company Palantir, which you need to understand was founded after 911 and funded initially by the CIA. The CIA has an investment firm that funded them. They currently are a 1.5 billion dollar income company that is the foundation of global surveillance in the United States. They're powering ICE surveillance. They are founding a surveillance state. He's very glib about it, happy about it. He's anti Palestinians as the only real problem with that is happening in Gaza is that Hamas terrorists have found useful idiots in social media who believe there's a genocide when they see one. He's a super uber duper Zionist, as is the first guy I played. He's funding, he's behind our global surveillance. They're not paying taxes, they're essentially getting free money. They got a big chunk of that huge tax cut. And he's saying the goal is to make people scared with your tax money and not paying taxes. This is the Epstein class. This is the Epstein class. They are ultra wealthy, non tax paying billionaire CEOs, tech bros and other CEOs with major defense contracts that are connected to the CIA sometimes through direct investment in them. They are the Peter Thiels, Elon Musk's, Alex Karps. These men, Sam Altman, they're getting defense contracts, not paying taxes and building a global surveillance state, which by the way, Jeffrey Epstein wanted and invested in. One of his goals was to build a global surveillance state. He had his own prurient reasons for doing it. He was obviously trafficking girls and women all around the world. But he also very much believed in global surveillance and the advancement of AI tech to control societies. And he was kikiing around with these same tech bro oligarchs. We're going to move on to our next step before we get to them. Really quick, I have one more clip that I want to play before I get to them. This is Doug Wilson. Before we play it, Jason. Pete Hegseth invited this next man. You're going to hear Doug Wilson, whose church is the granddaddy church to the church that Don Lemon and Georgia Ford covered the protest in. He is the mentor of the man who founded that church. And, and that man of course is the man who wrote the Sin of Empathy. His name is Doug Wilson. He's the poobah of white Christian nationalism in America. He's the guy who called slavery a benevolent institution that represented the most harmonious time in U.S. history when there was slavery. Here he is talking about because it fits. Pedophiles

[David K. Johnson]

are themselves on the verge of becoming friends of pedophiles. And this is the thing they're they're going to be five years from now. Friends of pedophiles. As pedophiles, I'm a friend of pedophiles. As a preacher of the gospel, that will bring them out of that grotesque sin, right? So I'm, I'm a friend to pedophiles because Christ was a friend to sinners, right? But the thing I'd return to the

[Joy Reid]

you apostate, fake Christian bastard, Christ was not a friend of pedophiles. You may be. And all the people who follow you may be. And Maga may be. And they may not mind that the President of the United States has been sued multiple times alongside Jeffrey Epstein, his best friend for 10 years. You may not mind that you may be willing to be a friend of pedophiles. You may be willing to hang out with Pete Hegseth and be his pastor. The rest of us, it's a no for us, dog. We don't believe in that kind of fake Christianity. Let's take a quick ad break before we bring our guest in our sponsor, MSI Reproductive Choices shared with me that the number one reason that their supporters donate to them is because they want women to have the choice that comes with access to contraception. Now, if you agree that women everywhere in 2026 should be able to access modern, safe contraception to prevent pregnancies that they don't want, can't afford, aren't healthy enough to withstand, et cetera, this is a nonprofit that could use your help if you think adolescent girls should know how their bodies work and have access to contraception so they can stay in school, for instance. And maybe not one become one of the four girls in sub Saharan Africa whose educations come to an abrupt halt due to pregnancies they didn't plan, this is a great place to give. You will have huge impact for every dollar that you give. For just $39, you can give six women contraception for a full year. You heard that right. 39 bucks helps six young women finish their education, start a job, stay in their job, put a little money away so that when they're ready, they can start a family. If you want to help, go to MSI United States.org to make a donation. That's M for modern as per se, I for informed msiunitedstates.org or simply text read our surname Reid to 511-511-text read to 511-511 or go to MSI United States.org Text fees may apply. Thank y' all very much. Okay, so did you guys happen to hear this hot mic moment from yet another billionaire? Epstein friend, client, and maybe co conspirator Les Wexner, billionaire founder of LVs, including Victoria's Secret, during his interview with Democratic members of Congress last week? Here's what he said.

[Caller/Guest/Panelist (various)]

It's regularly done.

[Joy Reid]

Answer the question. Okay. He, he was being asked about the Rothchild family and how Jeffrey Epstein managed to get involved with their money as well as his. Joining me now is Ellie Leonard, our friend and host of the Panicked Writer substack. Oh, Ellie. The Friends of Pedophiles. Where to begin?

[Ellie Leonard]

Yes, well, I'm happy to be here because I'm shoveling snow all day, so I'm really excited to sit down and relax and talk to you, but this, this stuff is wild. Where to begin? I, I, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised that they didn't wheel him in, you know, they didn't pull a Weinstein and wheel him in a wheelchair, tipped half over and like, say that he couldn't talk and he, like, I was pleasantly surprised that he was cognitively sharp. But that being said, everything he said was a lie. I think very often when you, you think of someone like him, you think of someone like Elaine Maxwell, you think of someone like Prince Andrew. They're, they're sort of wrapped in this, this bubble wrap of sort of like a, a lovely Persona. You know, he's a cute, sweet little old man. He's, he was dressed like the Village People. Like, he's, you know, he's very gentle and giggly. You have, you know, Prince Andrew who says horrible things in his emails. But he sounds like Mary Poppins, you know, like, like we have to remember the things that these people knew, the things that they funded, the things they participated in, and the things that they continue to push forward despite. Well, I mean, along with having no consequences.

[Joy Reid]

And can we talk about. So what have you been able to discern from what's in the files about what Lex Wexner did when it came to Jeffrey Epstein? Was he a co conspirator from what you've been able to find?

[Ellie Leonard]

Yes. I mean, I've, I've, I've had a little bit of some insight with talking with people who are also involved in the case way back when. But I do know that he, he Epstein's only public client, he would fund him. You know, I don't know about your accountant, but I don't think most accountants charge people $150 billion a year or whatever. He was being paid, like, or maybe a million. Sorry, but he was. He was being paid astronomical amounts of money. He was being given real estate. So when you think of, like, his New York mansion, there's no record of him paying for that other than paying for the title he was given, like, jets. He was given the apartment complex that his brother still owns on 66th street that housed all the. The global dignitaries, but also the young girls who came over from Eastern Europe. I mean, this man gave him everything. And it started out on this compound in Ohio where Epstein would go out and stay on this compound, and that is where Maria Farmer was abused. And that's where she escaped. You know, locked herself in a room and escaped. And Leslie Wexner was privy to all that. He wasn't unaware of what was going on. You know, we were. We were all taught that Epstein had a house and she was abused in his house on the property. I have learned that that is not the case. She was abused in. In part of the property that Wexner would have known about and could have seen and his wife could have seen. And so they were aware of everything, and they. They were funding everything. And there was heavy connections with Wexner that go back to other countries and intelligence and. And potential Mossad connections. And, you know, we were digging through a lot of this today, me and Wajahat Ali, and there are just some very, very weird coincidences that I don't totally believe in, that talk about some of the timing and again, the Rothschilds and how all this stuff lines up, that there has to be more in the files that we're not seeing yet that connects all of these people to some very big things.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And it also seems that they're connected to the tech world. They seem to have had very warm relations, not just with some Hollywood people, but also. And some Harvard people. You know, it's. Woody Allen seems to be really good buddy with them. Noam Chomsky, which was a super weird one. But also these tech roles are sort of running throughout these files. Right. Peter thiel, Elon Musk, etc.

[Ellie Leonard]

Yeah, I mean, so one of Epstein's closest confidants was Marvin Minsky, who is considered to be the father of AI. He was from mit. He developed. Developed the AI laboratory many, many decades ago. And. And this was in the works for a long time. And Epstein was working alongside him and also taking him to the island. And also Marvin Minsky is described in Virginia's book, but he was huge proponent of a lot of this AI and just veins of science that are very niche. You think about the departments that he funded at Harvard that got him an office and a key card until the day he died, you know, but. But he would. He would bring all these tech bros in, and as far as I can tell, a lot of them would meet up at Zorro Ranch. That seemed to be the hotspot for a lot of these guys because then they would go out to the west coast for some of these tech conferences at Silicon Valley. But he was so heavily invested in it. He loved what Peter T. Was doing. He was introducing people, he was calling people and connecting people. We had connections to. We found that he was. He was meeting with the people who were the original creators of like, QAnon and some of these 4chan and 8chan folks. And he was meeting with them like days before they launched their platforms and saying, we need to further this, we need to encourage this, we need to fund this. I mean, he was so connected to a lot of what we know is like the dark web now that it's a little frightening.

[Joy Reid]

It's a little frightening because it does seem that he had some intelligence connections. If you believe what the former prosecutor who gave him the sweetheart deal said when he was told the hands off of him. He belongs to intelligence. And if he was working with the Mossad, which again, you know, Epstein's co conspirator who's now in a soft. With a. But I think she has like a dog, you know, and a yoga mat, right. Her dad was a big Mossad agent. Like, this isn't like. It's not like you have to be a super conspiracy theory to believe that this guy was trading in secrets to foreign governments. And he had. He had the whip hand over the royal family because he knew what the brother of the prince was doing. The Israeli government, a former prime minister who was another of his clients and potentially the American. Multiple American presidents, including maybe Donald Trump, like, that is the thing we should be worried about.

[Ellie Leonard]

He was meeting. He was meeting with the treasury and he literally, if you look back in his history In I think 93, he was arrested for stealing like Department treasury documents out of people's mills boxes. And yet later on he's like, advising them. There are very weird things. Some of the things we were looking through today. Dershowitz, Alan Dershowitz had actually gone over to Epstein's house and gone inside and. And found, ahud, Barack and Epstein, you know, with one of their big blackboards as they always did. Making plans on how to split up the west bank. And. And then there was connections to, like, Bibi Netanyahu went to Harvard for three years while Dershowitz was there. He left town to go back to Israel the same time that Epstein was fired from the Dalton School. And then. And then Netanyahu went and met up with Robert Maxwell, and then Epstein read up with Robert Maxwell. Like, there's just these weird connections that we have not totally found the through line with, like, documentation, but it's just. They're all just in the same place at the same time with the same people. And you just. Like, that cannot be a coincidence.

[Joy Reid]

It can't be. And I'm going to come back to Steve Bannon in a minute because he's another one. But you mentioned Zorro Ranch, for those who are not familiar with that, because that is the western property, right in New Mexico, where people are now alleging there might be bodies buried. There's a new owner who doesn't seem too enthusiastic about the idea of allowing excavation. But can you talk a little bit more about Zorro Ranch?

[Ellie Leonard]

Yeah. So we recently found out who the owner was, because, like, a lot of these billionaires that had been purchased with an LLC instead of a human name, but they renamed the roads around the property, which changed the tax system, which then made the owner apparent, and he's a politician. His son works in the White House. Again, a connection that we didn't know. But this ranch is Epstein's biggest property. It's 8,000 acres. It is surrounded by electric fences. There are snakes, there are wild animals. You cannot see it from the road like it is. It is remote, to say the least. And it is in the documents, when you see that Epstein's arrested and they started raiding all of his homes, you start to find emails from, like, the FBI and some of these legal teams that say, you know, let's put that one last. Let's just not worry about Zorro right now. Let's focus on the other properties. And it's. It's like, well, no, no, we should focus on that one. But what you have to remember is one of the people who was visiting Zorro and who was friends with Epstein and who was described in Virginia Giuffre's book as a perpetrator was Bill Richardson, who was the governor of New Mexico. And so that then puts a hurdle in. In between them becoming. Being able to do an investigation, because he was in charge of all the law enforcement at the time. But this idea of girls going missing and Potentially dying on the property is not that fantastical. Because what you have to remember is, you know, we have descriptions of Ehud Barak, who is the Prime Minister of Israel. Virginia didn't name him. She called him the well known Prime Minister. But when you open up like a lot of these unsealed court documents, you see that that is indeed the Prime Minister who was visiting the island and, you know, sexually abusing these girls. And one of his mos was choking girls until they passed out. And so it's not that far fetched to think of somebody not coming to and not knowing what to do, not knowing how to revive, not knowing how to do cpr. And a lot of these girls that were coming to Zorro were girls from other countries who didn't have all the ID and documentation that somebody would be looking for them, that somebody would know if they were missing. And their parents may have sent them over thinking, you know, they're giving them the American dream. And then the idea of them just not turning up, they may not know how to contact. So that is not that far fetched. It would be a simple investigation with cadaver dogs on the property, they could do that. And the idea that they're spending 2 million is just so pithy in the grand scheme of things. Because you think about all these billionaires who want to go clear their name, then fine, go fund it. Go fund an investigation to clear your name. Drop a couple milk.

[Joy Reid]

That's right. I mean, look. Or testify in public. I mean, the Clintons have said they'll testify in public. What we're seeing is this thing where the QAnon people. And again, it may be that QAnon was a false flag created by people who were associates of Epstein to get people running off down a rabbit hole. That was in some sense true. Pizza. The Pizzagate conspiracy. Same thing. It's created by the same sort of core group that are maga who now dismiss any problem. There being any problem with pedophilia. These people apparently were using the word pizza as a signal for like there are even these stories, allegations that there were like satanic rituals being done that involved consuming people like and children like this. And so they now have a movement that is layered over with this false apostatic version of Christianity that isn't Christianity that justifies slavery and that now says that one can be a friend of pedophiles. It's like end scene. That's just my editorial comment. But can you talk about Steve Bannon and what his connection to all this is?

[Ellie Leonard]

Yeah, so Steve Bannon kind of came into the picture. He was limping a little as he got out of the White House. He'd been kicked out, and, you know, his feelings were hurt. And he knew that Epstein was heavily connected. And the rumor at the time, which may very well have been true, was that Epstein was connected with intelligence. And Steve Bannon has always wanted to work for the CIA, and he thought that that was his way of getting back into the White House, which is the only thing that he wanted. And so they struck up a friendship that got very quickly, very deep. Like, they became best friends over the course of two years. And in so doing, Epstein and Bannon started to create a documentary that was meant to refresh Epstein's Persona in the. In the media and fix his image and bring him back to society. Because now Bannon was start to grow and Epstein was starting to become more isolated, more of a hermit. Didn't really leave his house, and he was living vicariously through Bannon and his travels and his conversations with global leaders. And so, literally, these guys are talking all day, every day. I transcribed their emails from, like, the last batch. There's got to be more in this batch. But, like, from the last batch, and it was incessant. It was just all day, every day, all day to the point that Epstein was literally emailing or texting Bannon the second he got arrested. They were making plans, and then he goes, hold on, everything's off. And then that was it. That's where the emails were cut off. So they were very close. And there are. There are some, you know, longer pieces of the documentary footage, which I was happy to see in the files. I think that was good that he let those be in there. But I do know that there's about 15 hours, so there's a lot that we still need to see. But I'm glad that we could actually see those pieces, because I think we need to hear this man speak, but not. Not that what he was saying and how he was acting was him. I really. I really think that was a different personality he was putting on for the camera. But I do think we need to hear and see all of these interviews from him and from Michael Wolf, who has about 100 hours as well.

[Joy Reid]

I think the thing that is the most shocking, as I go through these files and then text you repeatedly that you interpret them for me. Just so y' all know that that is my relation before Ellen is objected to my content Johnson text. But is. Is how comfortable so many people, Democrats and Republicans alike, whatever their brand Name in terms of politics, were so comfortable kikiing with this pedo, they found him to be delightful. They wanted to text him about what was happening with him. We're talking about Naomi Campbell being. Hey, we want to invite you. Hey, Naomi's in town. Do you want to get lunch? People who were famous and rich saying, this guy seems fine to me, and he was doing things that were literally demonic. Before I let you go, we got to talk about this. Aaron Parnas unearthed this one, and he reposted it. And this is about an ausa, an assistant US Attorney, for those of you who don't know the lingo. And this is in 2020, one year after Jeffrey Epstein's alleged death by self, you know, removing himself from the world. An Assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York discusses a confidentiality agreement in connection with the investigation of what he calls the murder of Jeffrey Epstein. Jason, if you can hit that next one, it just makes it bigger so that we can see it in full. There it is. I'm in AUSA in the Eastern District of New York, and I'm working on an investigation into the death of an inmate in the Brooklyn mdc, which is where he was housed. The ocme. This is an official told me that it is signed, that it had. It signed a confidentiality agreement in connection with the investigation into the murder of Jeffrey Epstein. We are hoping to extend a similar agreement, and I wanted to see if you could share the agreement or a boilerplate version of it. This is a red giant, red flag, Giant red, you know, loud bail going off for me, because I've never believed that he did it to himself. What do you make of this?

[Ellie Leonard]

You know, I'm very, like, I. I usually run from conspiracies because I was raised by someone who's, like, super conspiracy theorist. So I'm just like, oh, I have to get the details. I have to get the facts, because if I get it wrong, then I. I lose my whole reputation. But, like, for this, you know, I was determined that he killed himself because he had talked about how. How hard it is to be in confinement and how you don't last very long. So I was like, okay, I wrote it off. And there have just been so many strange things that have popped up that are just like, you know, like the fact that only 2 out of 11 cameras on the floor were turned on the night that he died. That is wild. Why would that be The. The fact that he got to go to the wreck yard? You don't go to the wreck Yard when you're a high profile person, because it's for your own protection. You don't have roommates when you're a high profile person. And he was being roomed, they had a paper that said he was going to be roomed with the guy who was sending incendiary devices to like the Clintons and all the. That was going to be his roommate.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Ellie Leonard]

And like, who, like, was a cop who killed three people. They're like, let's let him be his roommate. Like, it was very, very weird. And you know, I've spoken a little bit to Mark Epstein, who I, I keep at arm's length because I don't really trust him either. But that is the one thing that he will talk about. And he says he's like on the record. That is the only thing I will say is that I know he was killed. I know he didn't kill himself. And there's something that's supposed to come out this month that's supposed to prove that. I haven't seen that yet. But, like, there is a lot of very, very weird things that wouldn't have happened to somebody. Now I will say you have to be very careful, though, about the things you see where people say, oh, but I see a video of him walking around in Jerusalem. This, that, you know, you have to be very careful with that because AI is so finite now. It is so careful now. So you have to look for those AI markers. You have to Google it and figure out that, oh, the signs in the background don't actually say anything. You know, those are the things because they look. So you have to be really careful with that kind of thing. But there are things in these files that are court documents and that are FBI files that raise the question that I did not ask before of him being killed. And this is a big one.

[Joy Reid]

It's a big one. And if you are in bed with foreign intelligence of Russia potentially and of Israel potentially, know that these are two governments that have no problems sending people into their graves. They have no problem doing it. They do it openly to journalists. And so you have to be careful. If you're in bed with bad guys and you're in bed doing things that might be illegal, it is a risky business. I'll just say it's a risky business to be in a lot about a lot of people. He knew a lot of dirt about a lot of people. And I think that's what Mark Epstein is saying, is that he was, he was playing at a very high level for a math teacher. To wind up playing at.

[Ellie Leonard]

Right and uncredited math teacher.

[Joy Reid]

An uncredited math teacher ends up playing at the highest possible levels in the global influence game, the global tech game, the global surveillance game. We're talking about looking at the continent of Africa and ways that they could use them to experiment. Like the things that he was involved in. For just some guy that dropped out of college and became a math teacher, it's not very hard to understand how he got there, got so rich, became a billionaire and then ended his life ended in one of the most secure facilities in the country.

[Ellie Leonard]

That he only had two indictments, which is the same amount he had the first time. So he thought he was going to get out.

[Joy Reid]

It's so. It's all weird. And what we're saying, we do not think we have the answers. We're not giving you conclusions. We're just saying that from a journalistic point of view. These are things that we have to keep asking these questions, guys, because these are the people, the people who are associated with him that are running our country. Ellie Leonard, you're great. Thank you so much. Always appreciate you. The panicked writer is the substack. We're going to always put the link in. But everyone should be following you already. Thank you. I appreciate you and have a great rest of your night. Thank you.

[Ellie Leonard]

Bye.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you. Thank you very much. Let's talk about our other sponsor. Because we could not do this show and independent media could not live without our wonderful, wonderful sponsors. And this one is a good one. It's one that we've discovered this year and it's been good for me, I'm personally going to say, been great for me. Of the Joy B Show is brought to you by 120 Life. The health problem that affects almost everyone, everyone, everyone right now out there is high blood pressure. It is the number one risk factor for mortality. And the truth is half of all adults have it and most people don't feel it until it becomes a serious, serious problem. February happens to not just be Black History Month, which, yes, is still legal in the United States. It's also American Heart Month. And if you have fallen off of a few New Year's resolution, that's fine. That's fine. There is a simple, measurable way to get yourself back on track and do something really great for your heart. 120 Life is a once a day functional drink made with ingredients that help support healthy blood pressure. It's not a pill, it's not a stimulant. It's not some tricky trendy Wellness gimmick. It's made from a blend of super fruit juices. It's refreshing, it's delicious. It's not chalky or weird testing. It doesn't have that medicinal taste, which I personally can't stand in like a vitamin Y thing doesn't have that at all. It's easy to make part of your daily routine. It's really good cold, which matters because if you do it right after working out, you want something really cold. And consistency is everything. Hundreds of Doctors actively recommend 120 life to their patients. More than a thousand health professionals have supported or endorsed its use. It's increasingly part of a natural food sort of, you know, clinical setting study like health regime. It's not guesswork. So grab yourself a blood pressure monitor, drink 120 life daily, and then check your numbers. Many people see improvement in as little as two weeks, which is exactly why this product has become so popular. So watch your numbers move and then your motivation will grow. If you would like to try it, you can, with a great discount for this show's viewers. Go to 120life.com, that's 120-life.com and you can use my code joy or the code read for 20% off. So try it risk free for two weeks. If your blood pressure does not come down, they will give you a full refund. So go to 120life.com, use the code joy or read and save that 20%. Nothing to lose except your high blood pressure numbers. And by the way, we should note that this product is not intended to diagnose, treat or cure or prevent any disease. And this. These statements have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Thank y' all very much. Okay, so last week, this was a good one. A caller called into C span and had a very weirdly, suspiciously familiar voice. Let's listen.

[Caller/Guest/Panelist (various)]

Well, this is John Baron. And you have. Look, you have. This is the worst decision you ever have in your life, practically. Jack. And Jack's gonna agree with me, right? But this is a terrible decision. And you have Hakeem Jeffries, who. He's a dope. And you have Chuck, Chuck Schumer, who can't cook a cheeseburger. Of course these people are happy. Of course these people are happy. But true Americans will not be happy. And you have the woman earlier. I assume she's a woman. She's a Democrat. But she said she's. She's disgraced. She's devastated.

[Joy Reid]

All right, we'll go to Chester, who's in Baton Rouge, Louisiana Democratic Caller, she was like, all right, John. All right, John. So the caller calls in, says it's John Baron from Virginia, and they're calling in to attack the United States Supreme Court. Right. For their decision knocking down Donald Trump's tariffs. Donald Trump's very mad about it. He says he's now going to put 15% tariffs on the whole planet. The whole planet is getting to be 15% tariffs now. It very much. As our, as our, our wonderful commenter there says, yes, it could be an impersonator. Absolutely. It could totally be an SNL level impersonator. Right. And it could just be a coincidence. Right. Also that it's just somebody who has a similar voice to Trump and, you know, whatever. But it's a weird coincidence. That's a thing that is actually true and that I actually found out when I was writing my Trump book that Donald Trump uses fake names. He really does. And he has done it for decades, since the 90s. Let me read you this piece from the Standard UK, the original and best known. There they are, John Barron, John Miller and David Dennison. This Eileen, AKA Eileen. That was a very, very funny tweet. So we put it up there. Those are three of his very much used names. John Baron, John Miller and David Dennison. Let's give you a little history from the Standard UK. The original and best known of Mr. Trump's characters is John Barron, whose surname could sometimes used just one R, an apparent spokesman for his affairs. He was his supposed spokesman. Right. His name is John Barron. Mr. Barron was quoted in the press all the way through the 1980s, initially referenced, according to Fortune, as a voice to defend his controversial business deals. The Washington Post reports Mr. Barron appears to have been Trump's go to alias when he was under scrutiny, in need of a tough front man, or otherwise wanting to convey a message to, without attaching his own name to it. Mr. Trump kept the Barron act going all the way through the decade, providing quotes in defense of his actions and spinning stories. According to the Post, in 1980, Mr. Barron told the New York Times that Mr. Trump was unable to respond to reports that he was intending to destroy art sculptures in the Bonwit Teller Building. So he buys the Bonwit Teller Building on Fifth Avenue, which he wants to turn into Trump Tower, which he does, but it had these beautiful frescoes that the, the, the sort of art community in New York was begging him to please, please, please preserve these beautiful frescoes so they could put them in a museum. He was like, nah, if that. And he smashed them. He destroyed them. He Destroys them, but he wants to deny that he was going to do them. And so he used this guy, John Barron, to issue those denials on his behalf. Mr. Trump then, three days after being so approached, told a reporter that he'd been away, and John Barron is his spokesman. Now, the name John Barron had run its course by 1990, when he was forced to testify in court over claims that he owed some of his workers a million dollars in fees because he never paid people. You all know the story, right? So when he builds Trump Tower, he used a bunch of undocumented Polish workers to do much of the work, and then he didn't pay them. And when they came to him saying, you got to pay us, he threatened to have them deported. And he would also not pay his contractors. I happen to know a gentleman whose family did the contracts for the chandeliers in Trump Tower and never got paid, to this day, does not have the money, tried to sue, and Trump sued him back. So he wouldn't pay his workers, and then he would just refuse to pay, and then he would have John Barron go out and be the spokesman to defend it. So then he has to actually testify. So then he gives the statement that says, I believe on occasion, I may have used that name. He had to say it in court, which brought down the curtain on his secret. But apparently Donald Trump was so attached to the name that he named his youngest child, Barron with two Rs. Melania's son is named Baron because he loved the name Baron with two Rs, the name it, by the way. So that's how that name ends. Now, in 1991, he moves on to a new name he was going through the process of divorcing Ivana Trump, the mother of Eric, Don Jr. And Ivanka. And then a spokesman during the divorce named John Miller comes out and speaks in glowing terms about his apparent boss and soon to be second wife, Marla Maple. So he comes out, this John Miller comes out and says he's a great guy and he's not going to hurt anybody. He treated his first wife. He treated his first wife. He treated her very well. And this is what Mr. Miller told people magazine in a telephone interview. However, the likeness of the voice of Mr. Miller and that of Trump was noticeable to many. And a forensic audio specialist was brought in by CNN and said the voices were identical. And this is what the forensic audio specialist told cnn. I can conclude with a fair degree of scientific certainty that it is Donald Trump's voice. He said that in an interview in 2016, he also used, and it's not on this picture because Eileen missed it. A woman named Carolyn Gallego. And I mean Gallego like Espanol G A L L E G O Carolyn Gallego. Now, Mr. Trump has never tried to speak on the phone as a woman, but a more dubious claim is that he invented this character named Carolyn Gallego. In 1992, when sending a letter to New York magazine, the apparent Ms. Gallego said that after facing scrutiny for his actions, Mr. Trump knew how to treat women with respect and that she had been his secretary. And this is what Mrs. Gallego said. I do not believe any man in America gets more calls from women wanting to see him, meet him or go out with him. The most beautiful women, the most successful women, all women love. Donald Trump said this letter. Now, it doesn't take a massive leap to suggest that the style is very similar to the way Donald Trump speaks. And when he rambles, it sounds like this, right? And some of his quotes do go on and on and on in the same exact style as Carolyn Gallego. A 2017 investigation by the Washingtonian found no record of there ever having been a Carolyn Gallego working for Donald Trump, although this person said they worked for Donald Trump. And last, but certainly not least, there is David Dennison. The Stormy Daniels affair has been a thorn in the side of Donald Trump, who has denied that he ever had a relationship with the former adult film star Stormy Daniels. But Donald Trump was eventually found to have falsified business records to conceal payments related to their alleged affair. That is why he is now a felon, because falsifying those business records was a felony. That's why he is now a felon. Right? But it all started with a non disclosure agreement. According to Ms. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. She said that Donald Trump had used the name David Dennison in their correspondence around the agreement back in 2016. In court, Trump admitted to having used the name, having borrowed it from someone in his high school on his high school hockey. According to Newsweek. The tale was all the more bizarre, says this magazine, for the real David Denison, who told People magazine that he wished Mr. Trump had called himself the equivalent of Joe Bloggs if he wanted to use a fake name and that he hadn't used his name because he really didn't appreciate it. That is from the Standard uk. You really can't make this shit up. You really, really can't. Donald Trump uses fake names, including the same person who called in to C span. Now, just so that you guys can compare, we let you Listen to the person who said their name was John Barron. Now I want to let you and Jason, this is C3. Let's listen to actual Donald Trump just for comparison.

[Caller/Guest/Panelist (various)]

Can't charge a dollar. I would have used one penny but we don't make the pennies anymore. We save money. Can't charge $1 to any country under IPA. Not $1, I assume to protect other countries. This must have been done to protect those other countries, certainly not the United States of America which they should be interested in protecting. That's what they're saying supposed to be protecting. But I am allowed to cut off any and all trade or business with that same country. In other words, I can destroy the destroy the country. I'm even allowed to impose country destroying embargo. I can embargo, I can do anything I want, but I can't charge $1 because that's not what it says and that's not the way it even reads. I could do anything I want to do to them, but I can't charge any money. So I'm allowed to destroy the country, but I can't charge them a little fee. I could give them a little 22 cent fee, but I cannot charge under any circumstances. I cannot charge them anything.

[Joy Reid]

I'm going to start is a mad ban Jason. I'm going to start calling him Carolyn Gallego. I'm sorry, but I just have to call him Carolyn Gallego for because he does this soft little voice. I can only charge a dollar. John Barron, John Miller, David Denison, Carolyn Gallego, all of those people are also Donald Trump. He has been all of those people. He's every woman. It's all in him. He's everyone. It's all. It's all in me. Let's bring in our guest, David Cache because maybe he can help us to make sense of the absolute madness. A Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter, author of three bestselling books on Donald J. Trump and a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology. So David, let's talk about John Barron and Ms. Gallego. And Jason, can you put them back up again? Because I just love it so much, these three people that Donald Trump is John Barron, John Miller, David Dennison and apparently Carolyn Gallego. Why? Why?

[David K. Johnson]

Well, because Donald needs someone to verify to journalists that they have two sources. And until his voice was well known, he got away with this very easily. Once his voice got well known, then things changed. But it's just Donald is believes, you know, that he has these magical powers. He's special. Everybody else is an idiot and Nobody in the world knows more about taxes in the whole history of the world than I do. Donald doesn't know jack about taxes. I have a worldwide reputation as you know, for my knowledge of taxes.

[Joy Reid]

And tariffs are taxes. And he goes to the Supreme Court with this notion that he can just issue any tariff he wants on any country he wants unilaterally does not have to go to Congress. Even John Roberts, who is a monarchist and who believes in having a king and wants Trump to be that king, even he was like, yeah, no, that's not a thing you can do. And Donald Trump is crashing out, saying that the Supreme Court did it at the behest of foreign interests. Talk about pot and kettle.

[David K. Johnson]

Yeah, well, this is how Donald projects. When Donald tells you someone else is an idiot, he's telling you about himself. And when he tells you foreign interests are behind the scene, he's telling you about himself and Roberts and Gorsuch and Coney Barrett. For all the other things we could criticize about them, they did stand up here for a fundamental principle in the Constitution. In fact, the reason we live under our Constitution, not under the original Articles of Confederation, government was the original American government had no power to tax and therefore was no government. It's government by bake sale. And the first power we grant our Congress is to tax us. That was the whole point of overthrowing the former regime in the late 1800s. And tariffs or taxes? Tariffs are very important if you're a developing country. The United States up until the end of the Civil War, in fact, up to about the year 1900, heavily depended on tariffs because they do two important things. One is the one everybody's talking about, and that is hitting another country's products, which raises the price of those products. And American consumers, if they buy those products, pay it. So they're discouraged from doing so. But that's the small effect. The big effect, Joy, is it allows domestic manufacturers to charge higher than market prices, build up financial muscle to invest back in the company and strengthen the economy overall. So if we were a brand new economy, if we were a poor country in Africa trying to become part of the advanced world, hey, you need tariffs for us. Tariffs are destructive and they reflect something that's crucial to Donald. Donald doesn't believe in market economics, which was invented, let's remember, or discovered by Adam Smith 250 years ago. He believes in mercantilism. You have a piece of gold, Joy. That means I don't have it. Well, I better take it from you. And that's why we had all of these pirates commissioned by governments, including our own, the Spanish going after the British, and the British going after the French to steal. And guess what? Donald spent his entire life stealing. So, surprise, surprise, he believes in a tariff system, which is a way to steal. And by the way, in the court proceedings, including the Supreme Court, the Trump administration said, well, if we lose, of course, we'll give the plaintiffs back their tariffs that were improperly collected. What are Trump and Scott Besant, his idiot, and I do mean idiot treasury secretary, saying, well, you'll have to litigate for that.

[Joy Reid]

So now they don't want to give the money back. I mean, and the thing about it is, they're.

[David K. Johnson]

They're thieves, plain and simple.

[Joy Reid]

They're thieves, but they're also, and I say this, you know, I was just with some folks over the weekend. We were in a wedding in South Carolina, and one of the lovely older women came up to me and was saying, you know, that, that, you know, she's from Germany, and they see the kind of remnants of when Hitler, you know, sort of came in when she was a child. And how in, how in the world could we be in this situation? Can we beat it? And I said, look, the thing you have to understand about the United States and the situation we're in is that, number one, Donald Trump is far stupider than Adolf Hitler, and the people around him are demonstrably stupider than the Nazis in the 1930s. So we have a shot just based on that. They're not smart people because everyone could have told them, I took one semester of economics, okay? And I could have told them that if you try to return to a tariff economy, you're going to have a recession.

[David K. Johnson]

And they told me and Joy overseas, I'm on TV every day, sometimes two or three times a day, in India, the Middle East, Britain, elsewhere. And the overwhelming tone of questions in recent days has been how Trump is disrupting everybody else's economy. How can a manufacturer in India or Bangladesh or Britain who sells stuff to the US Plan? How many people are you going to keep on the payroll? How many supplies you're going to order? And Donald goes around making these grandiose claims. The Japanese are going to invest $36 billion in the U.S. first of all, that's not a lot of money. And second, they were going to do it anyway.

[Joy Reid]

So the state of union is to borrow, David, and the economy is not great. Donald Trump claims that he won affordability, and it's over. Affordability is over. He won. Your thoughts?

[David K. Johnson]

Well, the reason you're, the biggest reason you're seeing his poll numbers go down is not the Epstein files, the war in Ukraine or the threat. Contrary to his MAGA promises, he's going to take us to war with Iran. It's the economy, stupid. Now the stock market is at 50,000 plus, apparently Pamban.

[Joy Reid]

They'll never let us live. Let it down, right? Yeah, they'll never let us forget that.

[David K. Johnson]

That's dollars. It's an index. But, but look, the. We, we no longer sell soybeans to China. So Donald has been great for soybean farmers in Canada, Brazil, Argentina and Australia. They should be sending him donations. Except. Except that would be illegal. The price of soybeans is down about 30%. The price of rice about 40%. Wheat over 50%. We're going to see lots of farm bankruptcies because of these policies that are damaging to the economy. The number of job growth has stopped. When Barack Obama was president, once the economy turned around, remember, he inherited a disaster just as George W. Bush just before him. Although Obama's was much worse. Obama was creating the last six years of his presidency about 200,000 jobs a month. Last year, Donald created about 15,000amonth. Now, technically, presidents, let me be clear, presidents don't create jobs, but they always want to claim credit when there's lots of jobs. All politicians want jobs. But to go from 200,000amonth to 15,000 and then try to tell us, oh, things are great. Yeah, the only thing going up is the stock market. That's because of AI and speculation and it's a handful of stocks that are driving the market. So sooner or later there will be a reversal there.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, it's a bubble. I mean, it's an AI bubble because everyone is counting on Elon Musk building robots that he hasn't built to do something that we don't know. And, you know, it strikes me, because you are an econ guy, that we can have this conversation. I'm working on a substack now that sort of has this premise. You know, we've gone through sort of three oligarchies. You know, there was the planter class oligarchy where what they were creating were personal kingdoms. They were creating personal lordships where they were the lord of the estate. And they had enslaved men, women and children, and their wives were effectively their slaves as well. And they created these Little Lordships and it was all for their own personal aggrandizement. But it did build the United States into the Cotton Kingdom, the Rice Kingdom in South Carolina. They created sort of America tobacco. Exactly. Indigo. We became like the country exporting those things because of the cheap labor of perfect capitalism.

[Ellie Leonard]

Right.

[Joy Reid]

Then you go into sort of the second tier. This is the Gilded Age. Oligarchs, they were just as rapaciously greedy, but they built things. Railroads that, some of which we still use today. Steel mills, factories. Like, they expanded the country. They allowed us to traverse the broad nation. We'd stolen from the indigenous. They created industry that lasted, that made America. There was a Zenith tv. There were Ford motor cars. The United States made typewriters and all sort of refrigerators. Like, they made things. And now we're in this third oligarchy. And these oligarchs don't create anything. The things they create are entertainments for themselves. They want to live forever. They want to transport their consciousness into AI but what they make is not productive at all. It creates nothing.

[David K. Johnson]

No value. I. I want to push back a little bit on that. Okay. They've made a lot of things more efficient. You can order airplane tickets on your cell phone. I can do banking all day long on my iPhone. There's a number of things that are unusual, but here's what they have done, without any question, is going back to the slavery era. The reason they're so profitable is we do the work. You no longer go to a bank, and there's a bank clerk you deal with. We do the work. And the amount of time you and I and everybody else spends, oh, how do you get this software? And I got to upload this and.

[Joy Reid]

Right.

[David K. Johnson]

It shut down suddenly when I was about to say, yeah, spend $1,000. They've gotten us to do the work.

[Joy Reid]

Well, this is what I'm saying, though, David, is that that, to me is not creating anything. Right. If you build a thing, you build a widget, and that widget can be reproduced. That a person can make the widget, that's a job for the. The person who makes the widget. It's creating things. What they're doing is they're creating systems. They're creating systems, but those systems often remove the worker, make the worker irrelevant. We don't have telephone operators anymore. They're gone. We don't have toll booth collectors. They're gone. We're soon not going to have postal workers. We just. When I was in the rest. When I was in the airport, there's now a store you can go in inside of DCA Airport, where you swipe your card, you walk in, it senses what you bought, and you walk out. No humans involved. They're even that poor little clerk job, you know what I mean? Like they're creating systems but not goods.

[David K. Johnson]

In the 60s, when I was in high school and did speech and debate, the national debate topic one year was automation create or destroy jobs. And there were all these predictions that by the year 2000 we would be so wealthy we'd have a 28 hour work week and the biggest social problem would be all this free time. And would people get into trouble? Well, in the year 2000, we were mostly working like dogs. Lots of people had jobs. But look what's now happening. Automation created jobs. For a long time, computers led to more paper being printed and used. Now all of that is going away. And the faster it goes away, the richer. The people who own the means of production are getting there. And the rules we have, we're not being protected from predatory bankers. Trump is killing that. The US Government's official position now on the Clean Air and Water Acts, which were signed by a Republican president who was a crook, Richard Nixon, they're now saying the value of human life is zero when you're considering pollution. We are in a whole new ball game. And unfortunately, the major news organizations where I spent almost 60 years of my life, they don't get it. Donald Trump is just a different kind of politician.

[Joy Reid]

No, that's right.

[David K. Johnson]

He's the third generation head of a four generation white collar crime family. We have a bunch of white collar crime families. Some of them own banks, lending companies, all sorts of institutions that they use to exploit the populace without any great fear of being prosecuted. Once in a while they grab somebody, but that's not affecting anything. And we're entering an era here where about 85% of jobs in America, especially many of the good paying jobs, those are transferable, they can be moved to electronic means. We're seeing some news organizations now are taking press releases and having computers rewrite the stories. That's where you ended up with the famous fuddy headline where the news release said that we're now in the black and our days of losses are gone. And it came out saying we're now in the African American.

[Joy Reid]

It's so true. I mean, they're one click away from just putting AI anchors in and having them all read the same news release. We now know just because of doing this show and using programs that help us find news clips, that there are local news networks all over the country that they just read the same script into the prompter and people are not really getting local news because it's not Unique. They're just all reading the same script.

[David K. Johnson]

And that's absolutely the policy of the biggest TV network in the country, where famously, you have to read, you know, what you're told to do. We have two of their channels here, where I live in Rochester, New York. And it's yes, Sinclair, you know, there were about 360,000 journalism jobs, broadly defined, at the turn of the century. There's now about 80,000. And there are city councils in America that haven't seen a reporter in years. So listen, if you want to be a kleptocrat, you want to go into politics and get rich by being a crook, this is a golden era that's coming forward. On the other hand, there are some contraindications. The New York Times, when I left 18 years ago, had 1300, 1400 journalists. They now have 3000. If you watch the three network news shows and I watch one and then race through the other two to see if there's anything I want to watch. Despite Barry Weiss being there, Tony Dukoppel's coverage in CBS News is better than ABC and NBC. Now, that may change. I don't know what's going to happen. But for now, he's had a harder edge in his coverage of Trump and everything else than the others. But the general trend is very clear. No accountability, piling up the money at the top. And can I give you one number? Just please, in my book, Free, My book, Perfectly Legal, which is about taxes and how lots of people actually turn the burden of taxes into a profit center, which was shocking to many people because they don't understand the tax system. I had a graphic, and it was this. This one inch is the increase in income from 1970 to 2000. Of the bottom 90% per person, everybody got one inch. On average. The top 1% of the 1%, the graphic said, continues off page for 62ft. Well, I just recalculated the numbers up to 20. 21. One inch has now become minus one inch. It's gone down. And here, that 62 and a half feet, 2,560ft, more than a half a mile. They're piling up all this money at the top way beyond what anybody can live on or use. I used to do with my business graduate business students at Syracuse, a little game called wretched excess. How much money can you spend on consumption? So if you want to buy a house that's buying another asset, you got to spend it. Buy flowers, things like that. None of them could ever spend more than a few hundred thousand all sorts of business executives I played it with, they could spend 8 or 900,000 on consumption. That was about it. And yet we have people who literally have multibillion dollar annual incomes now and they pay little or no tax because they borrow against their assets. This is the American people are really getting taken for a ride because they don't understand what's happening. And sadly, our national news media is doing a just God awful job of explaining this, partly because most journalists give you an accurate version of what they were told.

[Joy Reid]

Right.

[David K. Johnson]

They don't have any deep knowledge. So they're honest and accurate. They just lack the depth knowledge. Secondly, there aren't many reporters like me who are willing to say, I know this on my own authority and I can go get experts who will back me up. And thirdly, there is clearly at any place that has a license, so not newspapers, but TV stations, radio, fear that Trump will use the government's powers against the organization. That's why you're seeing Jeff Bezos, who needs the post office for his retail giant Amazon, bowing down to Donald and just destroying the Washington Post.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, I mean, and they have a reason to fear. Brendan Carr has opened an investigation into the View, trying to claim that they. Right, that they violated equal time rules. And are they really in the news division? Yeah, they're in the news division at abc. That's where they placed them. But attempting to challenge that. You know, they've talked about investigating Stephen Colbert for having James Talarico on. And just the fear that they might do it prompted them to put that interview online. And so you do have. There's a combination of the grifting and the misuse of the law and twisting it. What Pamela Joe Bondi is doing at Department of Justice just outright turning the government into Donald Trump's personal revenge factory. But I want you just to focus for a moment on the grip shift scale for us, just like you did with that, what you did a moment ago with the. Well, the amount of wealth Donald Trump is taking in versus what he was able to earn doing his real profession, which is as a real estate developer.

[David K. Johnson]

Well, back almost 40 years ago, I broke the story that Donald wasn't a billionaire. And then later, after he said I was a liar, the records came out and I showed he had a negative net worth of about 300 million. And in the Philadelphia Inquirer, where I worked at the time, the headline we ran on the very top, the front page above the masthead, was, you are probably worth more than Donald Trump. He is today an actual Billionaire? Yes, because of the meme coin. Because he's clearly selling pardons and clemency. By the way, he's not protected by the Supreme Court order that says you cannot prosecute a president for an official act. Giving a pardon is an official act. Can't trust him, touch him for that. But arranging to have money given to your sons, businesses, organizations, that's a corrupt act. You can be prosecuted for that when he leaves office, and he damn well better be assuming. Assuming we get our democracy back because we're living in a dictatorship right now. Assuming we get it back. Trump is making, you know, they got the airplane and they couldn't sell that plane for a dozen years. Nobody wanted it. Trump pressured them to give it to us. Now we're going to spend probably a billion dollars, certainly north of 500 million, remaking this old 747 so Donald can have it when he leaves the White House. Everywhere he can, he and his family are profiteering. If Barack Obama had done any of these things, if Joe, in fact, they kept accusing Joe Biden, you sold out for $50 million. No, he didn't get a damn penny. It was all a lie. George Bush put his fortune of about $15 million into a trust. Jimmy Carter sold his nothing little peanut business in order to make sure no one thought he was doing something improper. Bill Clinton left the White House without two nickels to rub together. He got very rich quick by selling books and giving speeches and all that. But he left the White House broke. So did Al Gore. And we've never had a president do anything like this.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, I mean, Barack Obama was still paying off his student loans when he was in the United States, Senator, like these people were not. He got rich. Obviously he's rich now, but that was off of what he did. The thing about it is, what do you make of the news media's a complete lack of coverage of that because to me, you know, the wonderful Lawrence o' Donnell just read from a New York Daily News editorial that talked about, as you said, being essentially running a crime family, which he is. But the media in general ignores the theft, including, by the way, what ICE is doing. And I say this on the show all the time, but I can't say it enough. They're not mass deporting people, they are mass detaining people for profit and core civic. And these companies are getting incredibly rich off of contracts with the government to hold these people in sometimes filthy conditions, including children. And then they keep them for 90 days and send them back out. So that they can put them back out, or they now could use them and convict, lease them out as cheap labor. Like they could do that.

[David K. Johnson]

So, first of all, federal judges should put a stop to that. You have a right to be seen by a magistrate. The privilege of habeas corpus to be presented to a court. It is a privilege. That's what it says in the Constitution. But only Congress can suspend it. And they have to have a reason. Like the Civil War where Lincoln did it and then later Congress backed him up. The, the essential ingredient here with ICE is that this is an operation where a whistleblower, a lawyer who worked in ice, is about to tell Congress they're teaching them how to violate the Fourth Amendment, how to shoot people, how to violate the law in every possible way. These are goons. They are not law enforcement. And that's why you've seen all these police chiefs in uniform with other police chiefs appear in front of the cameras saying, this is not what we do. And for all the things wrong with policing that you and I can write about, talk about, they. They at least try to be upfront, by and large. And ice, no, ICE is.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. You know who they are, David. If a police officer, no matter what they wind up doing, you have their name and their badge number and their face is visible so you can identify who hurt you. In their case, this is a secret police. They're the shock troops of a mass surveillance society who are lawless. They are the secret police, and they're

[David K. Johnson]

the warehouses they're buying to put people in them in places that don't have the water, the sewage, the anything for it. In some cases, members of Congress say they're paying four, five, six times the value of that property. Now, those are criminal acts. We have federal laws about paying, overpaying for things. So there's a whole grift going on there that we haven't seen and explored. Assuming the Democrats get control of at least the House next January, and you know, the Democrats are really great at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And there are a lot of people don't like Trump who are going to say to themselves, I'm not going to go vote. I'm fed up with politics. No, you got to go vote unless you want to live in a dictatorship. Assuming they get back in control, lots of stuff is going to start to come out about what's going on here. And, and you know, Pam Bondi, the sneering contempt for members of the House and Senate who are Democrats. We have never seen any Cabinet officer in the history of this country do that. Nobody. And we've had some terrible people who've been in cabinet positions, you know, crooks and all sorts of scoundrels, but nobody's ever behaved like this. And it's because Donald Trump, as I've been telling people since 2011, and I've spent hundreds of hours with Donald Trump over my lifetime, Donald really believes he's special, that everybody else is an idiot, that he can do anything he wants. And he says, I have an article, too that says I can do anything I want. It doesn't say anything within a million miles of that. But does the news media report that? No. We see news reports pointing out when Trump wanders off and throws his right leg across his left, which is a sign of frontal lobe dementia, and does other things like that. No. And he gives a crazy speech like he just gave in Washington. Does it, it's the President gave a rambling address, no right vote. The guy, quote him.

[Joy Reid]

Do you think that it was him that called into C span in your opinion?

[David K. Johnson]

I, you know, I, I looked at that. I don't know. I mean, there's a good chance that I don't know, but it's, it's, I think it's small potatoes compared to all these other things where Donald is clearly having cognitive issues.

[Joy Reid]

Clearly.

[David K. Johnson]

And I was on somebody's show and the person who followed me was an expert in this area and I had said what I thought was going on with his dementia. And the guy turns out to be an expert in the field who says, yeah, I got that just right, that you don't need to have him in an examining room to identify these problems. You know, we've all encountered people we know are living in a different world. They're talking to voices, they're crazy. And you don't have to have a medical degree often to determine that. Donald Trump has been crazy his whole life, but most importantly, he now has his finger on the button. He can send American soldiers into harm's way. He is messing up the entire world economy. And everybody else knows this. The coverage is so much better whether you're reading left or right wing papers in Israel or Germany or India or Norway than it is here. And it's very, very troubling to me to see this, the failure to just report what he does. You don't have to take any kind of position, just report what he does.

[Joy Reid]

A question to you, because this is something that has been concerning me really, since George W. Bush seems, seemed like he was going to do it. This question of war with Iran. Let me play you what Donald Trump reposted in his own, on his own Truth Social. And this is Mark Levin, who is a far right wing, very, very, very, very hyper Zionist. Right.

[David K. Johnson]

Angry meal.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. That regime needs to be eliminated to

[David K. Johnson]

save our children and grandchildren from having

[Joy Reid]

to deal with it. He would like very much for us to go to war with Iran. Now, we know that Bibi Netanyahu wants

[David K. Johnson]

to eliminate the Ayatollah of the government. What was Levin talking about?

[Joy Reid]

He was talking about Iran. He was saying that that regime, there needs to be regime change in Iran. We know that Bibi Netanyahu has been saying literally for 30 years that Iran was at any minute going to get a nuclear weapon. And he's saying it again. In your mind, who is talking Donald Trump into this idea of going to war with Iran because he used to say he was the guy who was going to end wars.

[David K. Johnson]

Well, Netanyahu and some other people around Trump are all pushing this agenda. And remember, when we went into Iraq, it was, well, we have to go into Iraq. There are weapons of mass destruction. I mean, they even tricked Colin Powell on this issue. The Iranians, Trump does not have the military assets in the ocean off of Iran right now for a ground assault that would require Marines, cavalry, artillery and amphibious landing vehicles. We don't have any of that. You're going to see jet fighters and bombers, drop bombs, missiles and drones. And the problem in this, in a political sense is, first of all, the Iranians are the most sophisticated culture in the Middle east and they should be the leader of it, not the Saudis or anybody else. Secondly, because we overthrew the elected government of Mosaddegh in the early 50s and put the Shah in place, we have managed since then under both, both parties, to drive Tehran into the arms of the Kremlin. The enmity between Persians and Russians goes back more than a thousand years. And yet we put them together and it's not going to get us anything we wanted. And if you're a maga, hey, Donald promised no more of these wars. And look what he's doing. And threatening many others. Panama, Cuba, Greenland. So I don't know who exactly has his ear, because the last person who talks to Donald always has excessive influence about him. But Netanyahu is right at the top of that. And of course, Netanyahu is in a suspended trial for corruption. He needs desperately to avoid having to be accountable. Here in Iran, the average age is only 32 years old. That means about 65% of the Iranian population did not know about life under the Shah. Who is the Trump administration hinting? Is there person to lead the government?

[Joy Reid]

The son of the Shah.

[David K. Johnson]

The son of the Shah. And overthrowing that regime, I don't think would necessarily be a bad thing at all. You don't know what's going to happen next. But if young people want to rise up and they have tens of thousands of them, the government says they've killed rising up, Trump can stop that and ruin that by attacking because people will want to defend their territory from occupation by the US I'd rather live under these monsters than live under this American monster. And they don't get it. Just as they thought, oh, we're going to go into Iraq and people are going to say joyfully, we want democracy.

[Joy Reid]

Read us as liberators. Yeah.

[David K. Johnson]

Yes.

[Joy Reid]

Never works out. David K. Johnson, it is always such a pleasure. You're so knowledgeable. I appreciate you, my friend. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. I appreciate you, Joy.

[David K. Johnson]

Thank you.

[Joy Reid]

Come back anytime. And there you have it. David K. Johnson. Can I get a round of applause, Jason, for David K. Johnson. These people are fools. And I'm sorry to cast aspersions on the maga, but these people voted for him in many cases because they wanted to end the wars. And now he's literally threatening to start a war with Iran. And just to be clear, war with Iran is not war with Iraq. War with Iraq was the easy one. Iran is a much bigger, more coherent culture.

[Jason Reed]

Iraq is hypersonic missiles. They was flying over Israel when they.

[Joy Reid]

I mean, the reality is Iran used to be an empire. This was the Persian Empire. They are a coherent, cohesive country. By the way, they are the origin of Abraham. The original Abraham came from that region between Iran and Iraq. They are the origin and they know it. And they are not. There was a. You know, the stories of the war between Iraq and Iran are bone chilling. The children in the white shrouds ready to blow themselves up to kill the Iraqi. They are not. Iraq and Iran, two very different things. You don't want war with Iran. You sure don't. And if Americans go, it's gonna be a lot of young MAGA that are gonna be the ones going in and fighting that war, and they're the ones who voted for Trump. So this has been a good show. I've enjoyed it very much. And I think, hopefully we've learned something here. What we've learned here today is that the State of the Union is bad, the economy is crap. We've lost our friends in NATO and isolated ourselves economically, isolated ourselves culturally from the rest of the west. While Donald Trump or John Barron or John Miller or David Denison or Ms. Gallego, I think I just want to call him Ms. Gallego. I feel like that's the name that I want to call him the most. That's the name that I'm most, that I'm the most married to because I think that's the name that actually makes the most sense because he does the soft voice. Carolyn Gallego. He's every woman. Things ain't good for the maga. But I want to move on before we end the show tonight because we did a really great Black History Month episode last on Friday and we so appreciate Ashley the Baroness and Michael Harriet and Garrison Hayes, all brilliant, incredible people. And we got a chance to really talk to them about their backgrounds, how they got to do the things they're doing. And at the end, I was going to give some parenting advice to Garrison because Garrison is a new father and the glitches in the, in the system, in the Matrix decided that they didn't want y' all to hit the that. And so that part dropped out audio wise. And so people didn't get a chance to really hear my advice to Garrison. So Jason very kindly clipped it and now you guys are going to get to hear it before we get to our moment of joy. So here is the advice that I gave to Garrison Hayes, new parent. My two breaking news on tonight is that Ashley is not 19, which is what I'm pushing 40. I do not believe you. That is fake news and that Garrison is a pastor. So we're going to Reverend Dr. Pastor Garrison Hayes and the, the Ashley, the two E's Baroness. You all are so brilliant. You have made my day and my week and my Black history Month. Thank you both for being here. You guys are gonna wanna follow everything that both of these brilliant, brilliant, brilliant millennials do. They are a credit to the millennial generation. And you can follow Ashley. Ashley TheBaroness with two E's nstagram. Are you also on other social media,

[Representative Lauren Underwood]

Ashley, YouTube and TikTok.

[Joy Reid]

YouTube and TikTok. With the same handle. With the same handle. She keeps it simple for you. You just to follow Ashley V. Baroness at all the different places. And also Garrison, you can follow Garrison Hayes, of course, at Garrison Hayes on Instagram and also on his YouTube channel which he says he's going to fill with more content. He promises to give you more content. He's got a baby at home and Babies take time. They want things. Can I just give you a piece of parenting advice, Garrison?

[Jason Reed]

I love this.

[Joy Reid]

Please give me parenting advice. Please have a second child. And this is gonna sound crazy to me. Okay. This is gonna sound like. And I'm not J.D. vance trying to tell you, make more baby. He don't want black people to make babies, so he don't want to do that. Yeah. The second child is like a distraction to the first one. So when you have the other one, the first one gets fascinated with the baby, and you can get work done or even get a nap. It seems crazy.

[Ellie Leonard]

You know what?

[Joy Reid]

But to say, I'm telling you, it's a secret.

[Representative Lauren Underwood]

She's not wrong. Speaking as the last one, I distracted

[Joy Reid]

my brother, so you were the distraction. The second one is like a distraction to the first one. And so you can actually. Because if you just have the one, you're the distraction for them. You're their playmate, you're their every. And they just gonna. You and your wife, you're never gonna catch a break. No date night, no nothing. You just going to have to be focusing on that baby. You know what? I'm. You know what? I'mma take this message, and I'mma go

[David K. Johnson]

and talk to my wife.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, she has to do more of the work, so you got to give her permission. She's got to do a lot of work. Okay.

[David K. Johnson]

She needs to weigh in here.

[Joy Reid]

But. But I'm.

[Caller/Guest/Panelist (various)]

I'm hearing you. I'm hearing you.

[Joy Reid]

She may block my phone and my email.

[David K. Johnson]

She may.

[Joy Reid]

She may say, never speak to that mad woman again. Another one? No.

[David K. Johnson]

That's funny.

[Joy Reid]

One day, if y' all have that second one, both of you will thank me. And Ashley Baroness, thank you, Black. Happy Black History Month, and we appreciate y' all come back soon. Thank you.

[Ellie Leonard]

Happy Black History Month.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you so much. Thank you. I told you. I'm telling you. And look, I'm getting some love in the chats. I'm telling you, the one you are. You have to do everything. And they just are like. They're looking at you like, hey, are we playing? Are we eating? Are we taking a walk? What are we doing? What are we doing? What are we doing? And when you have the second one, they're like, I forget you. I'm playing with this baby. Yeah, they. They fall in love with the baby and they forget about you, and then you just. You can just do your thing. But, yes, three kids, and we have three. That third one is like the. That's like the extra. And then all of a sudden now you got whole dynamics and factions. They form teams against each other and you. And then it's like a whole. So we did an odd number. You got to do even numbers. They can team up and be in team. You can distract it distractions. My other piece of advice I'm gonna give the Democrats right now, and I appreciate Lauren Underwood for coming on, you guys have got to come up with a game plan that is unified and that is singular and that people understand because, and I tried to ask Hakeem Jeffries this as well, People need to know what your project 2027 is. If we give you power in 2027, January 1st comes on and they formulate the new Congress and Hakeem Jeffries is the Speaker. We need to know specifically what you're going to do with that power. And some of the things you might want to do is go hard against the things that the right is doing. And one of the things they are doing, apparently, is voter fraud. They're doing voter fraud. You've got to get excited, interested about, because you have to protect us from voter fraud. Because if they steal elections, it doesn't matter what you do. Once they've stolen elections, look where we are now. If they stole, and I'm not saying they stole the 2024 for election, but if they did, look where we are now, it's very hard to come back from it once that election is a fade accompli. Now I want to know. I am in the wormhole. What did Elon Musk do in Georgia in 2024? Did any of those pre filled ballots get used? And by who? Who turned them in? And why is Donald Trump so obsessed with absentee ballots? Why does he so. Why is he so convinced they're fraudulent? Because remember, everything Donald Trump says is an admission. Why is he so concerned about the post office? Why is he so worried about absentee ballots? Why is he so focused on that? And it's weird that it's his friend that paid $250 million to make him president and you're saying all he did was pay the 250? He didn't do anything else.

[Jason Reed]

You know what this is about? This is about the 2020. This is the midterms.

[Joy Reid]

It's about the 20.

[Jason Reed]

This is the midterms he needs to keep hold on of power. Because money, the money number one.

[Joy Reid]

But boy, they're running a giant.

[Jason Reed]

His presidency will be over and he knows it.

[Joy Reid]

The money, the money boss is going to get turned off.

[Jason Reed]

Not even that. If they Take both the House innocent and they have a good majority, which I, you know, that's on a pipe dream, but everything is like, over.

[Joy Reid]

The investigations happen. We start getting the information. We get all the Epstein files. Even Democrats get dinged. But if they. If they do. But if they use their power, I need to be convinced still that I need to know that they're going to use their power. Look at that. $10. Thank you very much, Alison. We appreciate you. Thank you to everybody who's throwing a little money in the tail. I need to know how y' all are going to use your power. I'm not going to ride or die for the Democratic Party just based on. I rather have you than Mike Johnson. Okay, that's not enough for me. I need to know, what are you going to do? I need to know that you will go and subpoena Elon Musk and do a referral. If he committed a crime in the state of Georgia, he need to be arrested. He needs to. And I know there's no doj. I get it, Pamela. Joe's never going to prosecute one of theirs. She won't even prosecute the pedos in the Epstein file, so she don't care about that. But eventually we will get our Jack Smith. We will have our person in the doj. And the other side needs to know that when our day comes. Your day is coming. We're putting a bunch of y' all in jail. Steve Bannon said a bunch of us are going to jail. I need Democrats to say a bunch of y' all sons of bitches are going to jail. If we get in, we're going to put a bunch of you in J A I L prison. Let's do our moment. I need to hear it. And I need to hear that you actually care that maybe Elon Musk committed voter fraud. I just. I'm just saying. And let's. Let's play our moment of joy. Our moment of joy is. Comes from our favorite mayor, Zorhan Mamdani. And he announced a snow day.

[Ellie Leonard]

Hello.

[Joy Reid]

Oh, my God.

[David K. Johnson]

Mayor. Hi, Victoria.

[Joy Reid]

Hi.

[David K. Johnson]

So I thought, as the mayor, I

[Caller/Guest/Panelist (various)]

wanted to call you and give you some news.

[Joy Reid]

We've got a full snow day tomorrow.

[David K. Johnson]

No online school, no remote learning, full classic snow day. So my only ask to you is

[Joy Reid]

that just stay safe, stay indoors during

[David K. Johnson]

the height of the storm.

[Joy Reid]

Once that has passed, feel free to

[Jason Reed]

go out and sled.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you so much, Victoria.

[David K. Johnson]

Bye.

[Joy Reid]

First of all, the mayor calling you is like, is dope. And second of all, the reason he Called this, this child in New York is that people were mad that the previous snow day, he wanted it to be online learning so that they wouldn't just be sitting home doing nothing. This time he was like, okay, y' all get a real snow day. And so he was, he was calling to let people know. That is called responding to the people. He got criticized by his base for not going hard enough on snow days. And so he flipped the script and did a full snow day and then called his constituents, called the baby and said it. That is responsive politics. And that is why people love that man. Now let's do a second moment of joy. We're going to have two. We needed two, I felt. And this second one is the snow day that the grown ups had in Washington Square park in New York City.

[David K. Johnson]

Why do you have.

[Joy Reid]

That is so fun? They did a snowball fight, making the best of a bad situation. Maybe the airports are shut down, but the fun is never ending. I love it. I love a snow day. A snow day is so much fun. In Denver, Colorado, when we had snow days, which we barely ever had because they're like, it's Colorado. You just need to trudge through that snow up to your knees and get to school. So we almost never got snow days. But I can tell you when we finally would sometimes get a snow day. I was sitting home watching Sesame street, sitting home watching Electric Company. I was like, I'm in front of this TV watching Star Trek. I am not leaving this house. I'm gonna have fun. And then when we were finally, you know, had enough cereal, we do our cereal and then we will go outside, jump into the snow and we would make forts, we would do snowball fights, we would make snow angel. We would get in that snow and just like have a best time. Because you know that snow would be like up to here as a kid. And so you really want to lean in. You want to lean in. And kudos to Zorhan Mamdani for being a responsive politician. I need my Democrats. And so last thing I'm going to say before I go tomorrow is the State of the Union. Please, if you get a chance, tune in to this channel or to the Midas Channel. It'll be on there too. This is going to be our alternative to the State of the Union address. It's the people's State of the Union. We are going to be talking with members of Congress, House and Senate who are not attending the official State of the Union but will be with us with impacted people who are being harmed by the Epstein Trump regime. That's what we're calling them now because they're all Epstein Trumpers. So in between shoveling snow, as we got a chatter saying they're shoveling snow, please take some time. We're going to start at 8pm so not our normal 6pm it's going to be at 8pm you can tune in a little bit early. We'll probably fire up the channel maybe 7:30 or so. We'll just have it grown and so you can see what's going on. And I hope you guys enjoy it. We appreciate y'.

[David K. Johnson]

All.

[Joy Reid]

We love you. Happy state of the union eve. And tomorrow's also my fire bursary. Tomorrow is one year since I was fired on my day off by him, the other artist formerly known as msn.

[Jason Reed]

What are we going to do to celebrate that?

[Joy Reid]

We got to celebrate our fire. June.

[Jason Reed]

We started this. But what are we going to do to celebrate your firing from Ms. Now.

[Joy Reid]

From Ms. Now. Ms. Now broke up with me one year ago yesterday. I said, oh, Ms. Now you don't like me no more? Ms. Now said, get out. I said, oh, are you breaking up with me?

[Jason Reed]

They said, I'm.

[Joy Reid]

No, no, no, no.

[Jason Reed]

We're showing you the door. Remember that scene in what was that? God, it was Eddie Murphy when he got thrown through a plate of glass window. He landed on his ass.

[Joy Reid]

No. Are you talking about Will Smith? No.

[Jason Reed]

Back in early. No, it was like. I think it was. It was Eddie Murphy got thrown through a plate of glass. I think it was a traded space.

[Joy Reid]

Are you breaking up with me? I said, they said, yeah, we breaking up. So they broke up with me so I would maybe have a security, but I have to work tomorrow so I can't be too drunken and drunk. I have to be. I will take my zebiotic before I do though. Security. I will have my security and I will also celebrate. So y' all go on, be good. Have a good night. And never, never forget Carolyn Gallego. Never, never forget her. Never leave her out of your heart. Carolyn Gallego, Everybody good?

[Caller/Guest/Panelist (various)]

Getting back to the basics. Grassroots level. Let me dig a little deeper with the shovel. Plenty. Can't tell the forest from the trees that I'm hard to detect Like a black hole in a jaw Injustice anywhere, it's a threat to justice everywhere. Let me make this clear I got a bone to pick and I'll never fear the threat of poverty they don't want to talk about it. They rap the party so I'm a real talk about it for sure.