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Truth and Consequences: Trump Is In The Epstein Files | The Joy Reid Show Jul 23, 2025 Episode
01:11:22
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- [00:01]
Joy Reid
This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two factor authentication, strong passwords and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected. But many other places also have it and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year.
- [00:26]
Uncle Luke
Verify.
- [00:26]
Joy Reid
Visit lifelock.com podcast for 40% off terms apply.
- [00:33]
Angelo Carusone
Yes, they're switching Luke. Okay. Well, hello, hello, hello, everybody. Happy Wednesday and welcome to the Joy Reid Show. It has been a big breaking news day on some news that will make Donald Trump very unhappy. And what you have to understand, and I think it's really critical that you understand this, is that Donald Trump is afraid. He's scared. And the Republican Party, collectively, they're afraid. And why are they afraid? They are afraid because in this moment, one of the greatest political grifts in American history may be skidding toward an end. And that is not to say that Donald Trump is going to lose or he'll be run out of office or he'll be impeached. He's not. Impeachment is not a thing. It's not going to happen. It's never happened in American history. But the majority of Americans are waking up to, or have already woken up to the fact that, that they're being played by this president and by this party. And this is what I mean. If you work in Washington, you know, or if you've studied or talked to Republicans on background at all, you understand that the vast majority of Republicans despise Donald Trump. They don't just dislike him. They don't mildly dislike him. They despise him. They despise him. So why do they bend the knee to him? Why do they go along with everything he wants? Well, for one thing, he has a culture. And they're afraid of his voters because some of them are violent. And they saw what happened on January 6th when those same Maga people tried to literally kill them and Mike Pence. So on one hand, they go along with him because he has a cult and they're scared. That's one part of it. But the other part of it is that Donald Trump is very, very useful. This is why Mitch McConnell and John Thune and those sort of ordinary old fashioned Republicans go along with him. He's super useful because Donald Trump, because he's a performer, because he was a popular celebrity on the Apprentice with a hit TV show that Americans like he, he has this unique ability as a performer to get tens of millions of Americans, 80 million in the last election, to be so distracted and focused on what he wants them to focus on, mainly conspiracy theories that they won't notice when Republicans hand over everything that keeps them alive and thriving to the super rich and billionaires. They won't even pay attention when Republicans vote to end their Medicare, end their Medicaid, privatize their Social Security and steal that money and hand it over to Wall Street. They won't even care when they lose their farm subsidies, when their kids drown because they've ended the national weather service warning systems and local Republicans vote to kiss off $10 million to save their life. They won't care because Donald Trump has this unique ability to get 80 million some odd Americans, mainly white Americans, to focus on conspiracy theories. The conspiracy theory that George Soros and the left are conspiring to bring tens of millions of non white immigrants through the border, border, border, border. To bring them in, to overwhelm the numbers of white Americans, turn them into a minority in their own country, steal the English language away and make Spanish, banish the language of the United States, fly the Mexican flag over the United States Capitol, and steal elections by sneaking into the voting booth and voting so that they can't get their way. That's one of the conspiracy theories they believe. And they call that stop the steal. Whatever they call it, they believed it during Obama, they believe it today. That's one conspiracy theory that they deeply believe in. On the other side, they also believe in this conspiracy theory. This one really worked during the 2024 election, that the left is conspiring to turn all of the boys into girls and all of the men into women. And all of these trans women are going to take over women's sports so that natural born women can never win a track meet ever again or a volleyball match. They're going to take over and they're also going to reduce the birth rate and reduce the numbers of white Americans because all of the men who would be making babies with the women are going to be all women. I got to stop this transgender ideology that's trying to trick a lot of boys into becoming girls. They believe that conspiracy. But the biggest conspiracy theory that's been the most effective, effective for Donald Trump to bamboozle millions of Americans into voting, to allow Republicans to give all their stuff to billionaires, to give away all of their hard earned benefits to billionaires, to make it hard for them to go to college, hard for them to have A business, destroy them with tariffs, do all of the things that only billionaires benefit from. The biggest conspiracy that's been the most effective has been QAnon and this belief, and this goes back before Donald Trump was president. There is a band of pedophiles who have been operating in secret behind the scenes, throughout the walls of power, and that this gang of pedophiles is secretly controlling the world and that Donald Trump is the one man, the one man per QAnon, who can stop this pedophile ring from destroying the world. I have to read you this because this is a core belief and I'm not, Don't take it from me. Donald Trump's own supporters believe this. I'm going to read you something from the New Republic. I don't have it on screen, but I'm just going to read it to you. You can look it up. I will put the link on Joann Reid.com and I'll even put it below if you want to read it from the New Republic. They're talking about the Oath Keepers who calls himself Stuart Rhodes. His real name is Elmer. Elmer Stuart Rhodes, who got pardoned by Donald Trump after plotting, joining and plotting the January 6th insurrection. This is what he said. He's upset that the Epstein files are not being released in full. He's upset about it. But he doesn't blame Trump because of course, he's in the cult. The cultists never blame Trump. This is what he says. He attributes Donald Trump's survival of the July 2024 assassination attempt to divine intervention. Rhodes remarked God saved him for a purpose, and that purpose is to defeat the deep state. It's not to make great trade deals.
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Uncle Luke
It's.
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Angelo Carusone
It's not to have a great economy. It's not any of that stuff. The real heart and soul of it is to defeat the deep state, because if he doesn't do that, it's going to be exponentially worse for all of us. That is a core MAGA belief, that the only real purpose of Donald Trump's presidency is not to even make their economic lives better. It's not to make housing cheaper, it's not to make food cheaper, it's not to make gas cheaper. They just say that during elections. It is to defeat this secret deep state that they believe is a band of pedophiles who are running the world, if not just our country, and that if they're not defeated, the whole world will end somehow, even though they're dispensationalists and they kind of want the world to end, too. But here's the problem. Donald Trump won on that. And then he hired a bunch of the podcasters who've been the ones pushing this the hardest. People like Cash Patel, who he literally put in charge of the FBI, which Cash Patel, before he was heading the FBI, said was the agency whose director has the Epstein files. They've pushed this QAnon narrative and Donald Trump, as the savior of America, the savior of the world, from the pedophile ring so hard that when he got in and hired a bunch of the people who go on Fox on a regular basis to say, release the Epstein files, it's the Democrats that are afraid of the Epstein files. They are the ones who are scared of the Epstein files because they're in the Epstein files. It's all Bill Clinton. That's in the Epstein files. It's all of Hollywood, all the celebrities. Holly Weird is what's in the Epstein files. We're going to unmask the deep state by unmasking Jeffrey Epstein. And, oh, he was killed in prison and it wasn't Donald Trump's fault, even though he was president. And Bill Barr, whose dad hired Jeffrey Epstein, was in charge of the Justice Department and therefore in charge of that New York prison federal status side. They still believe that somehow Donald Trump will save us from the pedophile deep state. But now Donald Trump won't release the Epstein files. And Donald Trump is panicking. You see him crashing out every day. He sued the Wall Street Journal for some really great reporting in which they found out that Donald Trump wrote a body little nasty Christmas card where he drew a naked woman and then used his signature to be the pubic hair, which for his buddy Jeffrey Epstein, who was his best friend for at least 15 years, this has testified by Michael Wolf, the author who's been on this show, and many others to say it. Other people who have known the two of them for years, they were besties. Donald Trump is crashing out because the Wall Street Journal reported that he's crashing out because his base, the podcasters who are not cult maga, the podcasters are really just benefiting. They were benefiting from the growth of the Donald Trump industry. And so they jumped on board the release the Epstein thing. And they're committed to it. They're committed to the bit. They don't want to change their mind. They're not in the cult necessarily. They're communicators who benefit from riding with Donald Trump. But now they realize, oh, maybe we benefit from not riding with him on this, because their viewers Want the Epstein files. Even Tucker Carlson's viewers want the Epstein files. Even people who are are hardcore maggot in some other ways want the Epstein files because they're very committed to this idea that the secrets to unmasking the decline of the United States are in the Epstein files. So Donald Trump not wanting to release it makes people suspicious. And it should make people suspicious because Elon Musk said, and he's the guy whose little hackers took over our federal government. So he knows what's in every aspect of the federal government. He probably knows all our phone numbers and Social Security numbers at this point because they got in with, with Doge. He said Trump's in the Epstein files. And the MAGA base said, no, he's not in the Epstein files. How dare you say he's in the Epstein files? And then all this information keeps coming out with former Epstein accusers saying, no, I was in Epstein and Trump's presence at the same time when Donald Trump was the creeper. It's a problem. More reporting is coming out talking about how close they were and how they were best friends. Let me actually read from this new blockbuster report from the Wall Street Journal because they just keep cooking. They don't care about this lawsuit. They obviously feel very confident in their reporting position. They got new news today. Justice Department told Trump in May that his name is among many in the Epstein files. Now, we do know that the Department of Justice recently we found out that they had the FBI order FBI agents to go through the Epstein files and flag any mentions of Donald Trump. That reporting came out yesterday or the day before yesterday. Now we find out that Donald Trump actually is in the Epstein files. And why would he be in the Epstein files and why would they know that since May? And maybe that is what's making Donald Trump crash out. Because if he was in the Epstein files, apparently multiple times, maybe we're going to find out more about the stuff, the dirt that he was doing back in the day when they were besties. But there are other witnesses. There are other people who have partied with Donald Trump and who know the kinds of things that he was into. That might mean that might explain why he and Jeffrey Epstein were such good friends. One of those people is the great uncle Luke, Luther Campbell, one of the iconic members of the hip hop culture. Hip hop artist, writer, columnist, sometimes politico. We think he's going to run for more offices in the state of Florida. And Uncle Luke is with us now. Uncle Luke, thank you so much for being here.
- [12:15]
Uncle Luke
Hey, how you doing?
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Angelo Carusone
It's great always to talk to you, my friend. So I want to talk to you about this because it's interesting. You were actually the first person that I interviewed in 2015 when Donald Trump decided he wanted to run for president. Because I happen to be a big time OG disliker of Donald Trump because of a lot of reasons in Central Park 5 and others. But I also knew that he resonated in hip hop, more than 60 mentions in hip hop songs. And I was like, I want to ask Uncle Luke about him. And I remember you talking about the fact that parties at Mar a Lago used to include a lot of hip hop artists, a lot of black folks and Jewish folks who otherwise couldn't party in Palm Beach. But they. You said sometimes the parties got a little wild. You recently on your podcast, talked a little more detail about that. How wild were the parties Donald Trump would throw at Mar a Lago?
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Uncle Luke
Well, I mean, like I said, I attended one party. It was a party, I think it was with the girls from the pageant that were having this. They were having this. This. This pageant. And me, Eddie Murphy, Mike Tyson went up to the actual party and. And he showed us around, we walked around, you know, laid it out. You know, people were enjoying themselves. You know, people were in different rooms doing whatever they were doing in those rooms. I didn't unfortunately go in those rooms. And I don't know what was going on, but I know the party got to a point where I was like, okay, it's time for me to go.
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Angelo Carusone
And I mean, if people are, if you guys are not familiar with Uncle Luke, you had some, like, racy lyrics back in the day. I mean, I think people would say, if the party's too wild for Uncle Luke, the party's gotta be pretty wild. Can you tell me around when this was? This is the 2000s. Was it the 90s?
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Uncle Luke
It was, man. That's a good question. It had to be around. It was. It was early 2000s. It was. It had to be 2000s, late, late 90s or something like that. Was it before he. Excuse me.
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Angelo Carusone
It was before he was on the Apprentice.
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Uncle Luke
Yes, it was before he was on the Apprentice. And it was before, I guess it was around the time when he was a. A Democrat at that time. So he wasn't, he wasn't the person he is right now. You know, everybody felt. Everybody hung out with him. I mean, Jesse Jackson hung out with him, for Christ's sakes. You know, like you say, every hip hop artist in New York basically co signed him, it was like, you know, Trump is cool and Trump is that. You know, I had not, you know, to, to my, I had not studied the Central Park Five. I didn't know about that because if I knew about that, I definitely would not have went to a Donald Trump party or have him been involved in that in no capacity. And so, you know, like everybody else, I just went down to the party and, you know, they always said, hey, man, dude, have some real cool parties, real wild parties. And it's almost like he's the New York virgin of Hugh Hefner, right?
- [15:17]
Angelo Carusone
Or like, I mean, I remember when I first moved to Florida, people would describe him as like a Robin Hood figure because he moved into Palm Beach. And I've, I've, I've interviewed one of his neighbors, talked to one of his neighbors who said when he moved to Palm beach, the rich Tony white folks there hated him. They didn't want him there. He's new money. They saw him as low brow. And so the way he paid them back was he said, you know what? You all don't allow blacks and Jews to come to your golf clubs. They can come to my club, they can join Mar a Lago, they can party here. And he would basically open his doors to your point, to a lot of hip hop artists, et cetera. So people kind of dug him. I don't blame you. You're from Miami. People who are the New York rappers should have known better because they were, they were alive during Central Park 5, so they knew that. So not. I don't blame you, but when you say he was Hugh Hefner, you're talking about a party that was full of women or were some of them girls?
- [16:08]
Uncle Luke
I mean, the people I saw were women. You know, I didn't. The people I saw were women, women participating in the pageant. I really didn't necessarily see any little girls or anything like that because I'm, I mean, if you know me, you know, I've, I'm the one who's, who take every one of my shows because I'm real cautious about. Because I am the guy. I'm the, I'm the, the Uncle Luke and the guy who sings about the type of things that I sing about. So I have to protect myself at all times because I would be an easy target to most. And you know, if I saw little girls running around there under no circum, I'd have been out of there so fast. Make your head spin. But I, I just saw a party going on and it wasn't My type of party, you know, And I told Mike and I told Eddie. I was like, look, we all came down here together. You guys can stay. I think Eddie left when I left. We were in separate cars, and Mike said he would stay, you know, and Mike had a. Mike had more of a relationship with Trump because Trump was, you know, dabbing into the. The sports world. You know, he was more so trying to be a. A boxing promoter, trying to be a football own. He just. He just was hanging out with everybody. I looked at him as a dude that just wanted to be down with everybody, you know, but then I knew that there was some kind of end game. He wasn't just being down with everybody just to be down with everybody, basically trying to find his way in.
- [17:41]
Angelo Carusone
Right. And most of the black people that were partying there weren't members. They were partying there, but they weren't necessarily members of the club. When you talked about what kind of. What would make you leave, can you be specific? What was going on that would make you feel uncomfortable there?
- [17:55]
Uncle Luke
Well, I mean, you know, it's just like any. Any other party. You know, it's for me like a Puff Daddy party. I want to Puff Daddy New Year's Eve party and a couple of his parties. I got to the point where, you know, when the party gets. For me, when the party gets too good and it's. And people get a little lathered up and, you know, it takes on another life of his own, because I know parties will take another life of his own, and I just don't choose to be a part of. Of those parties that do take another life of his own. But again, I didn't. I didn't see nothing at Puff Daddy party. I wasn't there to be able to see nothing at the Trump party. But then I know. I knew, you know, the party was going to be going on for a very long time, put it that way.
- [18:39]
Angelo Carusone
Did you ever see Donald Trump indulging in? You know, because at that time, I'm not sure which of his wives he was married to. Maybe this was when he was still married to Ivana. Did he ever seem to indulge in, you know, hanging around with the girls or seeming to be too friendly with girls?
- [18:54]
Uncle Luke
No, no, he was more like the host. You know, here's my golf course. Here's my house. Welcome to the house. You know, here's the beautiful pool. You know, he was more carrying himself like the host of the actual party, you know, not necessarily. Okay. I didn't get to that part of the party, if that did happen.
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Angelo Carusone
Where.
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Uncle Luke
Okay, all right. Now the host takes off his host hat, and then now it goes into a whole nother level. You know, I've seen parties like that, but in that particular party, that, that didn't happen.
- [19:30]
Angelo Carusone
Did you ever see Jeffrey Epstein at these parties?
- [19:33]
Uncle Luke
I didn't know who he was until I started seeing his pictures. He probably could have been there. I'm pretty sure it was a lot of people there. It was some who's who there. It was some drop dead gorgeous women there. But again, you know, when, when you're, when it's a pageant, when it's those type of pageants, you really don't know the age, to be honest with you. You know, they make up the girls, and the girls look nice and made up. You don't know whether those girls are 18 years old or 21 years old. So, you know, for a person like me who know better, you know, you know, I, I, I just choose not to indulge. When I do go to a pageant, any type of pageant or Miss America or whatever it may be, they can look like they're 21, but not ne to be 21.
- [20:21]
Angelo Carusone
Two quick more questions. I know that you, I know that you have a birthday you were celebrating today with your, with your family. So I don't want to keep you too long.
- [20:27]
Uncle Luke
My son.
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Angelo Carusone
Yeah, absolutely.
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Uncle Luke
I didn't even know. I, I thought it was supposed to be a sweet 16, but that's only for girls, huh?
- [20:35]
Angelo Carusone
That's right. That's exactly right. That's exactly. Whatever it's the modern world. It could be whatever he wants it to be. I'm just hope he has a wonderful happy birthday. So I'm not gonna keep his dad too long, but let me ask you, would, would it surprise you? Does it surprise you? I should say that Donald Trump appears, his name appears like having known him to the extent that you did back then, does it surprise you that his name appears in the Epstein files multiple times?
- [21:00]
Uncle Luke
It doesn't surprise me. It doesn't surprise me. I don't know what the Epstein files entails. I mean, we all hear what, what it was, but it doesn't surprise me for Donald Trump to be going to a hot party with a lot of hot women. I mean, look, just look at his White house. All the girls are like models. I mean, his White house before. I mean, the type of women that he's married, you know, I'm saying everybody, all the women around him are beautiful women, you know, and he's quick to call somebody's wife ugly, you know, when, you know, he's. He's quick to do that. So, you know, it would not be surprising me. So I would not be surprised if he's at a hot party with a bunch of hot women. You know, that would be a type of party that Donald Trump would be attending. I mean, look. I mean, look at the places where his business was at. I mean, you talk about Vegas, hot women, New York, hot women, you know, little Russia here in Miami, hot women. You know what I'm saying? So it wouldn't surprise me to be at a party full of hot women and a lot of rich people, because that other part of it, you know, that other part of it, you know, he's always gonna be around a bunch of rich people, you know, rich athletes, people who are well off.
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Angelo Carusone
And last question to you. Does it surprise you how far he's gone to the far right?
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Uncle Luke
Yes, that's. That totally surprised me. That, that, that, that totally surprising. But, you know, when you really think about it, you know, he's. He's a landlord, you know, in some cases a slum lord. And when you're a landlord and you're a house salesman, it's almost like being a used car salesman. You know, he found a niche. You know, he found a group of people. He took the Tea Party and. And turn it into the mega party I call Tea Party on steroids. You know, he fed into that base of anger and those people who. Who were sick of the regular politician, regular, you know, Republican Party, and they just wanted to be. They just wanted to be obnoxious and they wanted to be negative, and they wanted to hate black people and anybody that wasn't white in this country. And he fed into it, and he consistently feeds his base. You know, you see him, like, parting rappers, and then you kind of think, what. What is going on here? You know, I think a large part of him, he's struggling with who he really. Who he was to what he is right now. He know he had to sell his soul, you know, to be the president. And he's done that. And he continuously sells his soul. And I think it's some little manipulator behind him saying, you got to do this, you got to do that. You got to say these negative things toward black people and immigran immigrants to feed your base, because you'll lose them. I don't know what the end goal is, because at the end of the day for him, when this presidency is over with, he has to go and be a, a regular citizen. You know, I think he's very bitter based on, you know, all the charges that was pressed against him, you know, and he's taking that out on the American people, you know, but, you know, it surprised me as far as, you know, his first term, how far to the right he went.
- [24:36]
Angelo Carusone
Yeah, indeed. Uncle Luke, Luther Campbell, thank you, my friend. I appreciate you taking the time out. Please tell your son apologies for taking his dad away to come and talk on the Dirt Reed show, but we appreciate him. We'll figure out a birthday present to send him so that basically he won't be mad at me. Thank you, Uncle Luke.
- [24:51]
Uncle Luke
He'll understand. As always, Auntie Joy, thank you.
- [24:55]
Angelo Carusone
I appreciate it. Thank you so much, my friend. Have a good one. All right. Well, y', all, that was Uncle Luke. Give him a round of applause in the chat, please. We appreciate him coming on because he knows Trump from before. And one of the things he said that I think is really important about Donald Trump, selling his soul in order to have the presidency of the United States. When you sell your soul, eventually the Devil's bill comes due. And for Donald Trump, the devil's bill appears to be coming due in the form of his friendship for 15 years around with Jeffrey Epstein coming back to bite him. And he's clearly shook by it. Do we have this CNN clip? There's two CNN clips that I want to play for you guys. Cnn, Andrew Kaczynski from the Kaczynski Files. I think he calls his, his, his, his, you know, his little thing over there at cnn. He has come up with a couple of really good bombshells today that I think are really important. The first one we're gonna play, it's gonna be in two parts. I'll play it in two parts. The first part of the is Andrew Kaczynski appearing with Aaron Burnett last night to drop this bombshell about what video, old video CNN has found of Donald Trump. Here it is, exclusive.
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Andrew Kaczynski
Tonight out front, K File has unearthed photos of Jeffrey Epstein that we've never seen and they shed new light on his relationship with President Trump. The revelations come as Trump is under fire from his own base for his Justice Department's handling of the so called Epstein files. Trump has tried, of course, to distance himself from Epstein every which way. But one of the photos that K File found confirms that Epstein actually attended Donald Trump's wedding to Marla Maples. And this is the proof. Again, this has never been published before. So this is a new image you haven't seen it out there on X or anything like that. This is the proof that Epstein attended Trump's wedding at the Plaza Hotel in New York. And in the photo, what you see is Epstein entering the Plaza Hotel. The wedding date of this is December 20, 1993. In the center of their friendship, which of course, continued. And for comparison, we'll show you on the right, a photo.
- [27:14]
Angelo Carusone
All right. Well, I think that's part of it. Okay, so that is part one of this clip from Andrew Kaczynski. The K Files is what he calls his SineCure. Over at CNN. They have found old pictures that show that Jeffrey Epstein attended Donald Trump's second marriage. This man's been married three times. The second marriage, that's Tiffany's mother, Marla Maples, who's a model that he married after he, I guess, cheated on Ivana Trump, who is Ivanka and Junior and the other one's mom. That wedding attended by Jeffrey Epstein. All right, let's play part two.
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Andrew Kaczynski
But, you know, so let's start with the one at Trump's wedding. I mean, this is a significant development.
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Aaron Burnett
Well, yeah, it is. Trump's wedding to Marla Maples in 1993 was dubbed the wedding of the century by the media at the time. And although we know that Trump and Epstein were friends during this period, this is really the first time that it's actually been reported that Trump invited Epstein to his wedding. This is, we should note, more than a decade before those first allegations of sex trafficking against Epstein. But as you know, Trump's relationship with Epstein has been under the microscope recently. Now, besides that one photo of Epstein entering the reception at the Plaza Hotel, we can also see him in the background of another picture. That's Howard Stern on the far right along with Robin Leach from Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. And Epstein is behind them at the wedding, almost seeming to be photobombing them. We also found this photo from just a few months earlier. Donald Trump with two of his children talking to Jeffrey Epstein. That's at the opening of the Harley Davidson Cafe in New York in October 1993. You can see Ivana there. She would have been just about to turn 12 years old in that photo.
- [28:59]
Andrew Kaczynski
Yeah, you can see Ivanka right there between. It looks like, between Trump and Epstein. All right, these are never before seen photos, Andrew. I know you also found some video of Trump and Epstein that was from later that of them talking that has also never surfaced before. What's that?
- [29:18]
Aaron Burnett
Well, that's right. This is from Six Years later in 1999. This video has never been seen before in this context. It shows Trump talking to Jeffrey Epstein just before models hit the Runway at the Victoria's Secret fashion show in New York in 1999. You know, the only other video we've seen of the two men was seven years before this Trump.
- [29:41]
Angelo Carusone
So I want you all to understand that he would be. Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein had a lot of things in common. They both love to party with pageant girls and models. Donald Trump actually owned a modeling management company. It was called Trump Model Management. He owned it. He started in 1999. So this is that same period when he was having wild parties that were, in some cases, too wild for Uncle Luke, too wild for Uncle Luke's Uncle Luke said, yo, this is too much for me, and left the parties all similarly to how he left the Diddlers parties. So that means the two of them were throwing similarly wild parties. And you also have Donald Trump owning a modeling management agency that actually went defunct in 2017 when he became president because there was a lot of complaints about the bad management of the firm and the mistreatment of girls who were forced to pay exorbitant prices for model apartments. And they didn't feel they were treated very well. That went away. His buddy, John Casablancas, who owned Elite Model Management, which is where Ivanka Trump started modeling at age 14 years of age, was notorious in the modeling world for the sexual predation that he allegedly committed against models that were with Elite Model Management. Angelo Carasoni is joining us now. He's back with us from Media Matters. Angelo, let's walk through some of this, because the CNN discovery of this video, it's not shocking in the sense that we knew that they were friends. But Donald Trump keeps trying to dismiss his relationship with Epstein as somehow ephemeral. They didn't really know him that well. They were obviously hanging pretty tight.
- [31:23]
Unnamed Analyst
Yeah, I think think of it like this. It's sort of what happened in the early days of Project 2025. Right. Very rarely does something penetrate and saturate the minds of so many Americans so quickly. And if you think back to that moment right now, it's very much still a household name. People know it. They may not know all the details, but they, they vaguely have an idea that it's a thing that, that, that's, that's hard to get these days in landscape. And if you think back to those early couple weeks, one of the things that happened is that every time something was reported about a connection between Project 2025 and the Trump campaign, Trump would go out there and say, I don't know anything about this and I don't know what they're talking about. And then there'd be another piece of evidence that came out that talked about an overlap and that went on for a few weeks. And each time there was a new piece of evidence that undermined or contradicted that, it just gave the story more juice. And in this case, it's even more intense because one, his own base is the ones that are saying, hey, something is being hidden from us here. And two, it's visual. There's a lot of visual. It's not just generic reporting where people have to use their imaginations. Even the original Wall Street Journal report about the letter, it didn't include a picture of the letter. It just sort of reported a description of it. People have to use their imaginations. We live in a visual environment. 70% of communication is non verbal. So, you know, the reality is when you start to see these videos and you get to look at the body language and just the juxtaposition of the connection, it just becomes a lot harder for him to keep pushing this idea that he has no relationship, no overlap, no connection. There's nothing to see here. It's not dispositive in any way, but it's fuel for a story that is consistently simmering and growing. And I think if you think about it like a curve, we're certainly not even at the peak of this yet, which is hard to believe. We're probably right at just the beginning part of where it starts to bend up and grow it an exponential way.
- [33:15]
Angelo Carusone
Well, I mean, because the challenge with disproving a conspiracy theory is that when someone believes in a conspiracy theory, every new piece of evidence, no matter what it is, just seems to deepen your belief. Right. But in this case, the things that have come out and the things that continue to come out would make anyone believe even further that Donald Trump and he were involved in some affairs. I mean, there's Donald Trump. There's video of Donald Trump talking in really gross and disgusting ways on Howard Stern show about his daughter, about Ivanka. There is him saying that the thing they have the most in common is sex. No one says that about their daughter. That's not normal. There is a video in which I believe Joy Behar of the View says, are you a sexual predator? And he just laughs. And this is like, you know, there's there, there is, there's so much. And then you've got 27 accusers. Maybe if there was one accused this is like the Bill Cosby thing, Angelo.
- [34:09]
Unnamed Analyst
Yeah.
- [34:09]
Angelo Carusone
And there was one Bill Cosby, Cosby accuser. People brushed it off. When you got to, like, accuser 16, you're like, you know what? When you got to accuser, like, 40, you're like, wait a minute. Like, there's. The problem is that his past behavior, the model management firm that went under, the fact that he's also friends with John Casablancas and this other man, Jean Luc, I can't remember his name is from Karen Models. All three of them known to prey on the model. The two of them known to prey on models, Casablancas and Jean Lucas. The fact that, you know, it's just like, it's weird that you happen to be friends with so many people who prey on little girls.
- [34:42]
Unnamed Analyst
Right? I mean.
- [34:42]
Angelo Carusone
Yeah.
- [34:43]
Unnamed Analyst
And, you know, you can continue to pull that thread. And that's. That's your point about once you sort of have this conspiratorial mindset, and you know that is. That has been a power tool that he's had for a while, which is that everything is the deep state. Right. So anytime there's new evidence against him of the deep state. The deep state. Right. That it can point to, it's kind of the same thing here. It's a similar playbook, but in the opposite direction. Right. Because then you can start to say, wait, that's interesting. Some of his cabinet officials used to be Jeffrey Epstein's neighbor. Right.
- [35:08]
Angelo Carusone
I mean, you could.
- [35:09]
Unnamed Analyst
You could continue to pull the thread endlessly. And that is what gives these conspiratorial storytellers so much kinetic energy, is that there is no end to the thread. They can just keep pulling it, which means the story continues to move. And then on top of that, you have new reporting that consistently comes out which explains or at least reaffirms conspiracies or concerns that people had. So, for example, the Wall Street Journal says that Pam Bondi was the one that told him that his name was all over the Epstein files. And then if you think back to what happened from when that was reported, well, all of a sudden you had Cash Patel and Dan Bongino out there saying, Jeffrey Epstein didn't killed himself. We're closing this case. There's nothing to see here. And Trump beginning to push back and start to push, close this thing down in hopes, it seems like, of getting in front of it before it started to metastasize. Right. So that's the real challenge he's going to be in. And then the third is just the selfishness and greed of their own audiences. I mean, their own influencers. I mean, Dan Bongino is the deputy director of the FBI, and yet the thing that he seems to be the most concerned with right now is his credibility as a podcaster.
- [36:17]
Angelo Carusone
Right? I mean, he should be. Right, because that is his actual career. Right. He's not an FBI agent. You know what I mean? The thing that's so wild is that Donald Trump. The thing I think that's hurting Donald Trump in this the most is the perception he himself has created of his absolute power. They put out this. The White House put out this. This thing where, you know, I'm the hunted now. I'm the hunter with all these eagles. It looks very Nazi like, to be honest, but they've made the. They've made their base belief he's all powerful, and yet somehow he's not powerful enough to release the Epstein files. Like he's supposed to be all powerful. So it challenges. It's like it's a disconnect mentally for his supporters. He also put Cash Patel, who's the other podcast who's been pushing this, in charge of the FBI. And Cash Patel's the one who said to Glenn Beck that it's the FBI director that can release the Epstein files. So Cash, do it then. And so everything that they've done to empower themselves and make themselves seem all powerful just makes it look like they're lying to their base.
- [37:14]
Unnamed Analyst
It's so true. I'm so glad you said that, too, because I think that's one of the threads in all of this that hasn't really been fully explored in a lot of the. A lot of the media conversation about this, which is that he's sort of in this bind because on the one hand, either his audience is mad at him because they feel like he is in cahoots with the deep state, that he's in some way trying to protect them, and that's why he's not releasing it. But the other part that is almost as significant is that people think he's capitulating to it, that in some way he's scared. So a lot of these new MAGA bros, like the Tim Dillons of the world, right, if you listen to their explanation for why Trump is doing this, they're basically the explanation or the flagrants or some of these other broadcasts, they say somebody threatened him.
- [37:55]
Angelo Carusone
Right.
- [37:56]
Unnamed Analyst
That cuts against Trump as well. It basically makes him look weak and that either way, that only creates more of an appetite and an incentive for them to keep pushing on this, because we have to get to the bottom of this. Not even the all powerful Donald Trump can resist this.
- [38:12]
Angelo Carusone
It turns him into the whiz, right? And he's got a hot air balloon, but no real power. I mean, J.D. vance goes running off to a secret meeting in Montana with the Murdochs and the heads of Fox. And he does that like shortly before the Wall Street Journal piece comes out. And the impact of him going to meet with them, whatever that meeting was about, we don't know the details, is the story still comes out. Donald Trump threatens to sue the hell out of the Wall Street Journal if they put that story out about a Christmas card. Like, okay, I think Bill Clinton sent a park card too. No one else is crashing out about this Christmas card except him. He threatens Rupert Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch puts it out anyway. It's, it's starting to look like Donald Trump maybe just is the Wiz. Maybe he doesn't have the power. And I gotta read you this quote. I read it earlier in the show, but I gotta read it to you, Angelo, because I think you will find it entertaining. Stuart Rhodes, who called himself Stuart, his name is really Elmer, the guy who shot himself and got, gave himself an eye patch and to tries to make himself seem like a badass, but he just, just shot his own eye. He said about Donald Trump, the guy who was pardoned because he participated in planning the January 6th insurrection. And he attributes Trump's survival. So Donald Trump, according to Stuart Rhodes, survived a July 2024 assassination attempt about which we know absolutely nothing about his health post or about the shooter. But I'll put that aside for a moment. We've got no information about it. But anyway, he says he survived that 2024 assassination attempts by divine intervention. Quote, God saved him for a purpose. And that purpose is to defeat the deep state. It's not to make great trade deals. It's not to have a great economy. It's not any of that stuff. The real heart and soul of it is to defeat the deep state, because if he doesn't do that, it's going to be exponentially worse for all of us. What he's saying, Angelo, is that God himself protected Trump from a murderer, but can't get him to release the Epstein files. He's too scared to release the Epstein files because the deep state has it. Like, which is it? Is he God's, you know, God's hammer or is he like scared of the deep state?
- [40:12]
Unnamed Analyst
That's the, that. And that's why his audience is so upset, right? Because they are really having a hard time reconciling this. And I think that gets to the so what of all this, because, you know, aside from the victims, which is the core of the so what, that there was. There's. There was a lot of bad stuff that happened and a lot of powerful people that are connected to it. That doesn't seem to be any accountability. And I know we live in a society where impunity has become the norm. And I could think all the way back to the bank, to the global financial meltdown back in 2008. So, I mean, I understand that that's. It's become so much socialized that there's a lack of accountability. But that is one core part of this. The other core part is that every time Trump tries to get out of it, he somehow makes it worse for himself. He reinforces the very tension that people feel. And so what is a lot of the power that he has that he then leverages for political power is this belief in him, in his story. And if that starts to crumble, it's a lot harder for him to maintain. All the other claims, like the reason why your beef prices are going up is because of the Democrats. The economy is great even though inflation is going up.
- [41:14]
Angelo Carusone
Right.
- [41:14]
Unnamed Analyst
So it's hard for him to maintain all these other things as well, all these other lies, all these other myths. If the central myth has unraveled and.
- [41:22]
Angelo Carusone
Then he does this thing which is a tick for Donald Trump, because I think of his, his racial animus, I will just say an envy. He immediately goes and blames Obama for stuff like when he gets, you know, Donald Trump is really desperate and really afraid when he starts saying, arrest Obama. There's no reason to arrest Obama. But he sends Tulsi Gabbard, another conspiracy theorist connoisseur, sends her out and she's been in trouble with them on Russia, Ukraine. So now to fix her situation and get herself back on side, she rushes out to say, we're going to arrest Obama for. I'm sorry, for an actual legitimate investigation of Russia trying to help Donald Trump out in 2016. Because clearly he needed the help. And here's the thing, it's wild. The reason he needed the help, Angelo, is because of the Access Hollywood tape. People need to go back and remember the timeline. The day that the Access Hollywood tape came out was the same day that President Obama asked Mitch McConnell and, and Harry Reid and all of the party to come. The parties to come together to try to combat Russia's attempted interference in the election. He said they're going to interfere on both sides. We need to come together. Mitch McConnell said, Go to hell. Absolutely not. And the Access Hollywood tape drops around the same time. And it became the biggest crisis in Donald Trump's campaign to that point, because his base, he had gathered this base. It started out as hip hop fans and people who liked Home Alone and people who like the Apprentice, but it suddenly became evangelical Christians, even though he's no evangelical Christian. I don't even know if he's a Christian at all. Right. Suddenly he has this crisis because of the Access Hollywood tape. And now the very thing that he covered up by paying off Stormy Daniels, by doing everything he could to suppress his history of, of predatory behavior, it's all coming back to wash over him.
- [43:10]
Unnamed Analyst
Yeah.
- [43:11]
And you know, and as in that deflection to a degree, it's weird because I think he thought that everyone was going to follow that. Instead they're willing to go after Obama. I mean, they're all upset and talk about Obama, but they're also still talking about Epstein. So it hasn't actually solved the problem at all. Fox News stopped talking about it mostly because Obama for them is like catnip. They just can't not go crazy about Obama. And They've mentioned him 400 talked around 445 times in the last few days. By comparison, about a fifth of that has been about Epstein references and most of it has been to defend Trump. Charlie Kirk is going to co host Fox and Friends this weekend, which is a stepping stone to the cabinet. So coming next. But that's not playing. But Andrew Torba, who runs gab, which is an important part of the right wing media ecosystem, said, don't buy this. What is he doing here? This is a transparent attempt to distract us. Everybody needs to stay focused on Epstein. So a large part of the audience just isn't going to buy it if they are going to talk about it because like I said, there have to be man at all Obama. They're still going to continue to push on Epstein because that's not going to be sufficient for them.
- [44:14]
Angelo Carusone
It's so bad. And you Media Matters, you guys calculate these things. It's so bad. Are they even talking about this, like hilariously wild Hunter Biden, I mean, Hunter Biden went like, you want to talk about crashing out? He went like three hours. He went hard for three hours. Are they even talking about him?
- [44:29]
Unnamed Analyst
I mean, not really, no. I mean, it's occasional references. You know, Jesse Waters kind of can avoid it. You know, and to your point too it's like you have Sean Hannity out there who usually is in his own studio or Fox News, going on into the other parts of the MAGA media, the newer parts, like Patrick Bed Daily and otherwise, trying to defend Trump here to say, yeah, I want the Epstein files released too, but enough, everybody needs to calm down. There's disloyalty. Or Ben Shapiro who's been a critic of Trump, but also he's a part of that political establishment that needs. Trump is out there chastising people. So. But Hannity, I think going out and doing a little circuit is an illustration of just how desperate they are because they're trying to use him to try to bring in some of the attention and the animosity that exists or that's percolating in the space.
- [45:14]
Angelo Carusone
Well, I hate to tell them, but that base does not listen to Sean Hannity. Sean Hannity has a great cable audience, but I'm not so sure that he can rein in QAnon. I mean, it's almost as if, if you build a faith based cult that is based on the idea that you personally are going to take down a massive global pedophile ring, you can't then say, don't forget about the pedophile. Like, you can't do that if that is the basis of your cult. And if your former attorney general's daddy hired that pedophile, if the guy who was that guy's lawyer, it just gets worse. Angelo just recently died. The guy who rees Mr. Black, who just represented, who got him the sweetheart deal. Roy Black, who got the sweetheart deal for Jeffrey Epstein to essentially serve a couple of years and be registered as a sex offender, but really nothing else. I mean, Ken Starr represented this guy. What in the world is happening? Ken Starr, who went after Bill Clinton for having an affair with Monica Lewinsky, represented Jeffrey Epstein. It's almost like if the more you talk about it, the more it does look like a conspiracy because, you know, sometimes there is a conspiracy.
- [46:25]
Unnamed Analyst
Yeah, it's like throwing chum in the waters. It brings, it brings in all the predators. And that's what's happening here. All these little things, all these little breadcrumbs that, you know, people can compartmentalize for the audience that he has. He built an organized power on what used to be considered the fringes, all of these extremes. We've always had this as a part of our country. We always have like, that's a part of the, of the landscape. What's different is that QAnon, this conspiracy connected otherwise disconnected audiences and he used that for political power. They're now in the political movement. He shouldn't be surprised when Marjorie Taylor Greene is out there yelling and screaming about him not doing enough and pushing back against the efforts to try to shut this down, because she's a part of that, of that landscape. So that's why it's not going to go away. And these little breadcrumbs, they are going to simmer in YouTube channels in the very same ecosystem that was complaining about Hillary Clinton and connecting all these dots that thought Biden was wearing all these earpieces and things. That's the same ecosystem that's going to find all these breadcrumbs and lay them out and make videos and stories that connect the dots that gets served to millions and millions of people. And it's not just going to be right wingers that consume it. This has escaped containment. It's not just sitting in and percolating in the right wing media landscape. To get back to what we talked about at the beginning, this is now a much larger story that has penetrated a large part of the American population. And they're not going to follow all those breadcrumbs as closely as the diehards are, but they're now exposed to it and the big rocks are going to reach them. And at the end of the day, something just seems off and people are largely going to gather that that's the ultimate narrative here for the larger universe.
- [47:57]
Angelo Carusone
Angela Carsoni, always a pleasure. Thank you very much, my friend. I appreciate you. Thank you very much for being on Darby Show. Come back often. Thank you. And this is the point, friends. This is the reason Donald Trump cannot weasel out of this. He has trained tens of millions of voters to believe that he is omnipotent, that he can do with tariffs what no other previous president can do with tariffs, somehow grow the economy rather than crash it. That somehow he can bring peace to the world by bombing Iran and letting Bibi Netanyahu commit a genocide. Somehow he's going to flip that into peace because he's omnipotent. He has convinced his supporters that there's nothing he can't do. There's nothing he can't do except release these files that he seems to be in. He there's nothing he can't do except distance himself from essentially the diddler of the modeling, you know, hanging around, pageant set. And the pieces of this story that are so weird, they're the pieces that are the most conspiracy theory fueling. Bill Barr's father hired Jeffrey Epstein to be a Math teacher at a sushi Manhattan school. Then he suddenly leaves from being a math teacher, goes right to Wall street and becomes like the biggest investment handler in the game and gets the guy who owns Victoria's Secret to give him his whole portfolio based on nothing. He suddenly becomes super rich. He becomes buddies with Trump, I mean, and a lot of other. Bill Clinton flew on his plane, all kinds of people flew on his plane. All of a sudden he's hobnobbing at Harvard, hobnobbing with all the rich and famous. And then he gets busted for a sex offense in 2006 in Florida and gets the sweetest sweetheart deal you could possibly get for somebody who is alleged to have been abusing 14 year old girls. One of the 14 year old girls, Virginia Giuffre, was working at Mar a Lago when she was spotted, allegedly by Jeffrey Epstein's camp and pulled into his orbit. She was working at Mar a Lago. Sometimes there are just too many coincidences for you to dismiss a story. And this is one of those stories that the more threads you pull, the more it's going to look like orange hair. We're gonna move on from this. And the reason that I do think this is important to talk about is number one, I think it speaks to a weakness of Donald Trump that I think the other side that is becoming paralyzed with fear as he is unleashing ice into our streets, as he is stealing Medicaid from millions of people, and that's not going to kick in until next year. A lot of people are going to wake up that are Trumpers. They're going to find that I need Medicaid. A lot of people who were singing I will vote ding, ding, ding, ding for Donald Trump are going to find out they or their family members are going to get deported or detained in concentration camps. And while all of these horrible things are happening, people are starting to become so afraid. They're becoming paralyzed with fear and believe Donald Trump to be all powerful. But this proves he's not. Because if he was all powerful, the simplest thing that he could possibly do that would stop all of this, that would assuage his base, that would assuage his critics in the podcast world. That would silence everyone and give Fox News the victory they crave is just release the files, Donald. You can fix this. You can fix it right now. Just release the files. If your name is in them. That doesn't prove you did anything wrong. It just proves that you were real close friends with a pedophile or two or three. And that's weird because most people are not friends with pedophiles. Most people have never met a pedophile. Most people don't know any unless, unfortunately, they're victimized by them. And you were buddies with this guy for 15 years. And you might want to explain that to your base because they're upset about it. All right, we have another really important topic to talk about tonight on the Joy Reid show. And this one is really, really important health wise, because in this country, we have an epidemic that seems to not want to go away. And this is an epidemic that reared its head in the 1980s around the same time that Donald Trump was becoming famous for being a real estate, you know, entrepreneur, taking his father's real estate firm and taking it basically, but becoming TV famous and becoming a fixture in our world around in that same time, in the 1980s, during the Reagan era, HIV AIDS is. It first appeared and really scared the hell out of the world. And we've made huge progress in this country toward making it. So people who are suffering from HIV AIDS can survive, can live in, you know, long, healthy lives. And one of the reasons that that has happened is because of research, one of the things that the Trump administration is eliminating in Washington and under RFK Jr. And friends. But research is really important because it is the thing that is saving people's lives. Let me introduce three people who have been active in the cause of making sure that people who are living with HIV AIDS are healthy, are able to live good and decent lives. So you will recognize the first one. Raheem Devon. Raheem Devon is a Grammy Award winning artist and activist, known for his R B and neo soul music. He's a longtime advocate for HIV prevention and education, partnering with a company called Gilead Sciences to destigmatize HIV and promote health equity, particularly within the black community. Using his platform to educate through entertainment, he's joined by Dr. Roger, Roger Mitchell Jr. Who is the president of Howard University Hospital and the National Medical association, and Toyin Nufor, Dr. Toyin N for WHO's executive director of US medical affairs at Gilead Sciences. Thank you all for waiting and thank you all for being here.
- [53:59]
Dr. Roger Mitchell Jr.
I'm not sure if they're having a conference at the moment. I'm gonna put them back on stage.
- [54:03]
Angelo Carusone
Okay. We're gonna bring them back on stage. We're gonna hold on and we're gonna allow them. And they've been actually sitting backstage waiting to come on, so we're gonna let them get a chance to come back in. But While I'm waiting for them to come back in, let me big up some of the people in the chat and I want to thank you all. You guys are always so fun in the chat and you guys are always handling the trolls so, so beautifully. And the reality is we have to learn how to fight Donald Trump in a much more robust way without fear. And I think seeing him flail around, flail around on this Epstein case really should show you that he is actually a much weaker figure than anybody on the media side especially wants to admit, because he doesn't have the power to do the simple thing that would actually save him from this challenge. So we're waiting for our guests to come back in the studio. And while I do that, let me big up Cecilia Charles. Welcome to Team tjrs. She has joined the inside family. I want to thank Wanda M. Who has joined. She's been a member for one month and she says TJRS is the place to be. Thank you very much, Wanda. I appreciate you. Let's pick up Ligia. I think it's Liglia or Lygia Ovando. Welcome to Team tjrs. She has joined the family as well. And thank you all for doing that. And the Team TJRS thing, what that is, is it's our extra special little club and we've been like, really working hard. And we want to make sure that this first chat that we're going to do, we're going to do a special Team TJRS only chat. So only people who are in Team tjrs. It's not really expensive. It's just a little thing. We're going to allow them to have a an ask me anything. We're going to get in and we're going to have a great conversation. We're going to talk just amongst ourselves. Just going to be a friends only chat. So we're going to do that very, very soon.
- [55:47]
Dr. Roger Mitchell Jr.
Have a guest already.
- [55:48]
Angelo Carusone
So our guests are ready. All right, let's bring them on. Thank you all for being here. Raheem, Devon, welcome. Dr. Roger. Roger Mitchell Jr.
- [55:56]
Dr. Roger Mitchell Jr.
Welcome back.
- [55:57]
Angelo Carusone
And. Oh, did they disappear? Oh, oh, okay. Well, I guess they're having technical difficulties. I guess we're gonna wait for them to come back on. Yes. No.
- [56:04]
Dr. Roger Mitchell Jr.
Yeah. They call back in. There we go.
- [56:06]
Angelo Carusone
Okay. Okay. They're here. All right. They've called back in. Y' all let me know when they are live in studio. There they are.
- [56:12]
Unnamed Analyst
Okay.
- [56:13]
Angelo Carusone
Welcome, guests. How are you? How are you?
- [56:14]
Unnamed Analyst
We're doing well.
- [56:15]
Uncle Luke
Good to see you.
- [56:16]
Raheem Devon
Good evening. Good to See you.
- [56:17]
Angelo Carusone
Thank you for being here. Ryan, I do have to start with you because the chat is loving you. I want to, I want to give you big ups from the Joy Reid show. Chat are all big fans of yours. So talk to me about how you got involved in this Gilead Sciences initiative and what is it.
- [56:32]
Raheem Devon
I've been working with Gilead since last year. You know, had the opportunity to do a collaboration where I take my artistry and use it to educate, you know, doing what I do on stage and touring. And we had the opportunity to build with over 40,000 women, not to mention all the men that were there for date night, you know, and to get the information out about the latest statistics and HIV and the latest, you know, medication that's available. PrEP, which has been around for 10 years. And it's been great to do what I call, I think of it as Joy as like a party with a purpose. You know, edutainment is like what I like to call it.
- [57:15]
Angelo Carusone
Yeah, absolutely. Because listen, date night is very important. So we want to make sure the date night is a safe night as well. Dr. Roger Mitchell, Jr. Talk to me about where we stand in terms of hiv. The rates of hiv, they seem to be going up in some places. Talk to me about where we stand.
- [57:34]
Unnamed Analyst
Well, first I want to thanks for being on the National Medical Association. I'm the 126th president. We're actually in Chicago, Joy, at our 120, 123rd convention. We're here with Gilead Science, with Raheem Devon, and dedicated to really making sure that our membership, black physicians from all over the country, have access to this great information surrounding PREP and making sure that it's part of their primary care regimen that they're providing to, to our community, quite frankly, making sure that they have. Now, I'm going to refer your question to Dr. Noir, for she is the expert in epidemiology of this disease process. But I will say that our over 3,000 members that represent over 50,000 black physicians are working closely with Gilead and closely with Raheem Devon to get out the message that we need to make sure that our patients are getting tested, that they know their status, that our patients know that this is a disease that can be undetectable and that we need to have access to medication, particularly in the era of the act that is happening now that's trying to roll back our access to Medicare.
- [58:59]
Dr. Toyin Nwafor
Yeah, absolutely.
- [58:59]
Angelo Carusone
Dr. Zolofo, please, please answer that question. Is, is HIV infection rate going down? Are we seeing the prevalence Go down. And how has PREP changed things, the landscape?
- [59:10]
Dr. Toyin Nwafor
Thank you so much for that. And you know, like I said, I work with Gilead Sciences as an executive director, really with a company that's been committed for over three decades to really innovative treatments in and looking at breakthroughs for hiv, for hepatitis and for cancer. And while we have made great progress over the last couple of decades with hiv, what we are still seeing in the United States is that in 2023, there were still 39,000 new HIV diagnoses that year. And so what that means is that while we've made good progress over the last couple of decades, we are still seeing almost 40,000 new diagnoses every year. And there are differences by region, by race, by ethnicity, where certain populations remain consistently, disproportionately impacted by HIV. The impact of PrEP, which has been around HIV pre exposure prophylaxis initially since 2012, so 13 years this summer, and then more recently, Another medication for PrEP, approved last month, is that in places where there has been a big uptick of PrEP, there has been a decline in HIV incidence in those areas. So we know that PREP works to prevent HIV acquisition. We know that treatment works as prevention. If we can test people, link them to care, and get them virally suppressed, where they live healthy, productive, long lives, quality lives, and they also have an undetectable viral load, which means they can no longer transmit HIV sexually to their partner. Something we call U equals U. Undetectable is cause, untransmittable. So we have the tools to end the epidemic through treatment as prevention and with prevention as treatment. So we have the tools to end the epidemic. We have made great progress. I've been in this field now for almost three decades. However, the progress is not uniform. It's not equal. And we still have a lot of work to do with communities of color, with women, and just to make sure we can truly end the epidemic in the U.S. absolutely.
- [61:14]
Angelo Carusone
And Dr. Mitchell, let me ask you this, because it does feel like there is a bit of a war on science going on in our country right now. Is it becoming more difficult, especially if Medicaid is threatened, for people to be able to get treatment and get access to PREP and get affordable care if in fact they do find that they are HIV positive?
- [61:33]
Unnamed Analyst
Yeah, it's a big risk, Joy. I mean, there is a war on medicine and science. We know that we have individuals that are making decisions. And it's not based on the literature, it's not based on science and medicine. It's based on something else. And that something else can be structural and institutional racism, that something else can be dollars and cents, but it's not being based on true medicine and science, and it puts us all at risk. Those that are carrying a chronic disease like hiv, HIV is one of these disease processes that if you have access, you have access to testing, you have access to a clinician, you have access to the medication. It's a disease process that you can live your whole life with and live a good life with, but it's also one of those diseases is if you don't have access, it could kill you. And it is indeed. Still, those that don't have access still claim the lives of those that don't have access to those areas.
- [62:35]
Angelo Carusone
And, Raheem, you know, you're lending your fame to this, which is, you know, so good of you to do, because for so long, there was such a stigma around hiv, AIDS that people wouldn't admit, you know, that they had it. I recall Freddie Mercury dying, and people at first didn't even know why he died, you know, because it was very clear that there was such a stigma that, you know, a celebrity passing away, you know, you. You didn't know why, because people. People were so afraid to come forward. How has that changed to the point where you, as a, as a celebrity yourself can join this project? And how is that making it easier? Is it making it easier to get people to come forward and to seek treatment?
- [63:12]
Raheem Devon
You know, ironically, I'm the new voice of the radio personality of the original quiet storm on 96.3 WHUR in DC and we just celebrated the late, great Melville Lindsay's birthday. You know, who transition from complications of HIV and aids and, you know, absolutely. I think that it's no time like the present for us as artists to aspire to inspire, to use our gift. You know, I think this is one of the reasons that the gift is bestowed upon us. You know, to bless the world, but also to navigate and be able to use that to talk about community issues. You know, I'm no stranger to the community, doing community work with my Love Life foundation since 2012, ranging from HIV to domestic violence to mental health as well. So, you know, anything that I can do to lend a hand, you know, lend my voice. You know, it's not always just about entertaining. It's about going out to the communities and, you know, and touching the people. A lot of times entertainers come to our city and get the bag and keep it moving, you know, so to hang behind, you know, come in a day early, you know, Meet with the mayors, you know, meet. Meet with city officials, you know, faith leaders, you know, and to. And to create this collaboration in the fight against HIV has been a major priority of mine since 2012.
- [64:35]
Angelo Carusone
Yeah. And it's interesting because, you know, I do remember even, you know, when Eazy, you know, died from hiv. I mean, there's been many. So, so much stigma. When Magic Johnson, who's still living quite healthy, and, you know, when he first announced that he had HIV aids, you could go on. Let me ask you. Doctor.
- [64:54]
Dr. Roger Mitchell Jr.
Somebody's controlling their camera and it's moving all around the room randomly. So I'm not sure. I mean, we can hear them and see them, but we. Yeah, the camera is just moving by itself. Yeah. There you go, guys. Thank you.
- [65:06]
Angelo Carusone
Okay, continue. All right, we're going to keep the camera. Keep it. Hopefully keep the camera still so we can go on to. Doctor, what has changed since then, since the Arthur Ashe days, since the Eazy days? How is it that we no longer directly associate HIV AIDS with dying?
- [65:27]
Dr. Toyin Nwafor
Absolutely. Thank you for that question. What has changed is the commitment and the resilience of the communities impacted, and also the innovation, right. To create new medications to help people live and suppress their virus and the dedication to not just viral suppression, but to the quality of life of people living with hiv. Also the innovation in prevention so that people have options when it comes to how they protect themselves from HIV in terms of oral medications or injectable medications, and that continuing development and drug discovery. So that has changed. What has not changed is the fact that there's still a lot of stigma, as you mentioned, around having conversations around hiv. And that stigma impacts people's ability to want to get tested, ability to stay engaged in care, to retain in care, to get their partners tested because of that stigma. So as we look at initiatives and innovations to develop and discover new treatments and prevention modalities, it's important to also think about things that allow us to have conversations like this to address the stigma. Because until we end stigma, we really cannot truly end hiv. They're really intricately tied together. So incredible innovation, the resilience, the people who have participated in clinical trials to get us to where we are, the partnerships with the community, with healthcare providers, with public private partnerships, all of those things are key, very important. But innovation, without really, really looking at it from a lens of equity and making sure that innovation does not worsen existing disparities. So, you know, with convenings like this, where we have partnerships and we have healthcare providers and community icons and leaders really talking about the same thing about how do we end the epidemic and how do we do this together. So a lot has changed. A lot of work to be done still.
- [67:22]
Angelo Carusone
Indeed. I'm gonna give you the last word, Raheem. Where do our viewers find more information so that they can be informed on.
- [67:30]
Raheem Devon
The healthysexualswithas.com once again, that's healthysexuals with a s dot com. You know, get the information, learn about prep and preventative medications. And, you know, again, we just. I'm so honored to do the work. Thank you, Joy, for having us on the show and thank you for all that you're doing and the community and globally as well.
- [67:52]
Angelo Carusone
Thank you so much. I want to thank Dr. Toyin Nwafor, Dr. Roger Mitchell Jr. And of course, the great Raheem Devon. Thank you very much. We're looking forward to new music from you too, my brother. Thank you all very much. We appreciate you. Okay, y', all, thank you so much for being on the show. All right, you guys, we're trying to give you some information, make sure that you are fully empowered and informed and as well as ready to fight, because all of this is a fight, particularly with the current administration, who I call the regime in office. They're not exactly promoting and supporting science innovation, and they're not exactly promoting and supporting health. You know, we've got a measles epidemic that's running rampant in the country. They're not doing a whole heck of a lot about that. Thank you all for tuning in. I want to big up just a few, few more people. Vita, Vita or Vida Lawson. Welcome to team tjrs. Vanilla Bean and me. I don't know who Vanilla Bean and me are, but thank you and welcome to Team tjrs. Twigs. I love that name. Twigs. Welcome to team TJRS as well. We've got a lot of new members tonight and I appreciate you guys doing that. I want to also guys remind you guys that in addition. Oh, wait a minute, let me thank Vita Lawson also threw a two dollar tip in the till. A two dollar tip in the till. Sanaa Brags also threw a couple of couple coins. A couple bucks in the till. Thank you very much. That means you guys are loving the content. And if you guys continue want to continue to get this great content, please make sure that you hit like and please make sure that you hit subscribe like so we know you like the content that you want more of it. Subscribe so that you can join the Team TJRS nation so that we can know that you are here to get this content from us every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, including our lives, etc. But there's one other thing that I really think you should do. You should hit that little bell thing. It's like a little bell looking thing. Hit that because then you can get notified every time we go live and every time that we're on and every time we have a special. I hope you guys got a chance to watch our Losing all to Dina special. It is on the channel right now. If you have not gotten a chance to watch it, I highly recommend it. We spoke to some really, you know, impacting families, families who've been impacted by the fires in Southern California, the wildfires that happened in January. And people are still struggling. It's, you know, seven months later and people are still struggling to rebuild and get their lives back together. So please watch Losing Altadena. We worked really hard on it and I hope you guys enjoyed that. And I will see you guys on the next the Joy Reacho. Thank you all for tuning in. Much love. Thanks to everybody who joined the team and everybody who tuned in. See you on the next Joy Reach Out. Bye.