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Epstein and the #MeToo of It All
00:26:20
“You need this renewal. You need new figures who are untouched, who were never part of these awful power games,” the columnist Lydia Polgreen argues.
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A
Hi, this is Eric Kim with New York Times Cooking. As a recipe developer, I spend a lot of my time trying to come up with dishes that are quick, easy, but also very special. For me, that means dishes like gochugaru salmon. It's a crispy salmon filet with a salty, sweet glaze that bubbles up in candies. I love cooking this because it only takes 20 minutes. You can get this recipe and so many more ideas on New York times cooking. Visit nytcooking.com to get inspired.
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This is the Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.
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C
I'm Lydia Polgreen, a columnist at New York Times Opinion, and I'm here with contributing opinion writer Molly Zhang, Fast, host of the Fast Politics podcast. Hi, Molly.
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D
Hi, Lydia.
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C
Well, we are here to talk Epstein files. Molly, you just came back from D.C. where you were at a press conference of Epstein survivors on Tuesday, and we're taping this on Wednesday morning. So I wanted to talk to you about where the Epstein saga sits in the broader arc of MeToo and the movement that has stumbled along the way and what it says that three of the four Republicans who broke ranks with Trump were all women. Anyway, before we get into the broader context, let's talk about the the press event that you went to. It sounds like it was quite a.
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D
Scene, so I think it's worth pulling back and looking at Tuesday. Tuesday was a day that for Donald Trump was like right out of Macbeth. We saw a president who had successfully gotten away with a lot of stuff. All of a sudden, Jeffrey Epstein, like Banquo's ghost, comes back. These files weed their way through. You know, Trump is hanging out with Mohammed bin Salman, doing a press conference in his golden Oval Office. And at the same time, these women are doing a press conference right outside of the Cannon Building. And you have this ghost of a story that has come back once again, and now the discharge petition goes right through the House that same day, and it goes to the Senate, and it passes as the Senate. And it is just a very sort of Shakespearean moment of a problem that Donald Trump had. And we don't know how big a problem. We don't really know what's in those files. So he certainly behaves like someone who does not want those files to be released. And it comes back to him. It's just a very cinematic and also morally important and atrocious moment.
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C
I mean, one of the things that's really striking about this whole saga. I mean, this has been going on now for two decades. Right. You know, Jeffrey Epstein first, you know, kind of gets into legal Trouble just about 20 years ago. He does a little bit of time, very soft time. And this was all before the MeToo movement started. Right? Or the MeToo movement, I should say, became a big public phenomenon with the exposure and ultimately the downfall of Harvey Weinstein, thanks to reporting by some of our colleagues. And, you know, the scope and scale of the Epstein crisis coming at a moment when it seems as though there is this kind of like MeToo has gone too far, that, you know, it was being applied, you know, that men weren't being allowed to be men. So it's been really interesting to sort of see the way that this whole case has unfolded and the politics around it have unfolded. Like, how have you kind of seen the me too, of it all as you've watched this happening?
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D
Well, so that, I mean, that was why I thought we should talk was because I think of you as a very. As someone who is also following this, like these rapid cycling of progress and, you know, of progress and reversal. And progress reversal. And progress and reversal. So what I thought, you know, like the sort of moment I would take away from that press conference was one of the survivors, and I think it's Annie Farmer, talked about how she and her sister had called the FBI. Under Bush. No, under Clinton. Under Clinton, and said, you know, we have this thing, we wanna report that they had hung up on her. And it was just for me, the sheer magnitude of different administrations, different parties, all, you know, having been in some way responsible for an FBI that did not take these women serious.
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E
In 1996, when my sister Maria bravely blew the whistle on this group by reporting to the FBI what Epstein and Maxwell did to both of us, they hung up on the phone on her and there was no follow up of any kind. Bill Clinton was president in 2006. The FBI came to us, finally interviewed us, and asked us both to be witnesses against Epstein. We were very anxious, but we agreed to. And then we didn't hear back from them due to their infamous sweetheart deal. George W. Bush was president in 2015 when the DOJ was sent a FOIA request for Maria's FBI files and they were denied, as they have been many times. Barack Obama was president in 2019 when Epstein died in prison due to either negligence or foul play. Donald Trump was president.
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D
And she said this thing which is like, think of all the people, all the girls who got hurt during the period when we were trying to raise the alarm.
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C
Yeah. I mean, that's one of the things that has really struck me about the Epstein case and about MeToo more generally. A lot of people think about MeToo as starting with Harvey Weinstein, and, you know, that kind of opened the floodgates. But in fact, MeToo was first popularized by Tarana Burke, who is a black American activist. And it was inspired by many conversations that she had with teenage girls about the terrible experiences they had with sexual abuse, harassment. And what that really highlights for me is that so much of this conversation about Epstein and about this kind of vast conspiracy of pedophilia, you think about controversies like Pizzagate and all of the kind of QAnon belief that there were powerful Democratic leaders who were trafficking children out of a pizzeria in Washington. But all of that obscures the fact that sexual exploitation of girls and teenagers in this country is endemic. Surely it happens among power brokers, but I think for most people, their connection to a situation like this is actually something that they've witnessed in their own life. And the conspiracy feels more like a conspiracy of silence of powerful men wherever they happen to find themselves. Right. Like the powerful man might be the head of a family, or it might be, you know, the head of a company or, you know, the head of a small business, your boss at the Taco Bell.
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D
There's a power dynamic there.
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C
Exactly. And so I think that one of the reasons that. I mean, it's just really striking to me that me, too, took off once it became clear that this kind of broader societal problem that was just kind of bubbling below the surface starts to be written about at the very kind of top of society. Right. Talking about the big power brokers. And I think there's something similar happening with Epstein by the fact that these three, the three of the four Republicans who signed on were all women. And two of the three have spoken publicly about their own experiences, in the case of Nancy Mace, of sexual assault and domestic violence. For Lauren Boebert, definitely domestic violence. And for Marjorie Taylor Greene, I think a sense that in this kind of chauvinistic Washington, she's being pushed around, she's getting belittled. She's told what she can and can't do, and. And, you know, I don't want to read too much into it, but you sort of have to think like these are women of a certain age who have.
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D
Our age.
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C
Yes, our age. Exactly. Who know what the score is. Right. And have surely seen in their own lives, their own friends, their own communities. Case after case of teenage girls who've been exploited or have, you know, been pressured into, you know, having a relationship with a, with a man who's too old for them. All those kinds of things that we know all the way up to, you know, like horrific sexual, you know, childhood sexual abuse. So I think that there's something about this saga and the role of these three women that is just totally fascinating. It just delves into this thing that connects it to people's life experience.
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D
And it is, you know, it's funny cause it's like as someone who covers politicians, I have become so cynical of everyone's motives. And you know, especially over the last decade of Trumpism, you know, you just, it's hard to think that these people want what's best for anyone, really. Honestly.
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C
Well, but they don't have some cynical ulterior motive that it's about, you know, preserving their own power or whatever.
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D
Exactly. Especially Marjorie Taylor Greene, who really did say a lot of crazy stuff over the last eight years and has some very odious beliefs. Very.
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C
Yeah.
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D
But what I do think is interesting is like when I saw, when I was there, you could see that these victims felt very connected with Marjorie Taylor Greene. So. Huh.
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C
That's fascinating.
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D
Yeah, I mean, you really could see cuz they're not faking it. They don't, you know, and in fact some, you know, one of them was like, I voted for Trump and you've betrayed me. Not quite that, but basically that. So they were not faking it. And the other thing that I want to just mention about the victims is these women. And remember, there are probably hundreds of women. There may be as many, I think. I mean this was years and years and years of abuse, but these women had not ever been together. So what? That first press conference when the discharge petition got started, they had a real camaraderie and they started talking about reading a list and they talked about it again yesterday. I didn't haven't seen any reporting about this, but they did in fact talk about, one of the victims said, you know, Marjorie said she'll read a list of our names and Representative Jai Paul said she would too. So there really is appetite for information. So even if the Trump doj, which really does serve at the pleasure of Donald Trump at this moment, as you can tell from Pam Bondi's just general acquiescence on every point, this list, these names, there really is a feeling these names are getting read.
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C
Yeah. So there's like a kind of desire to kind of put this out into the world and make it into something that's like part of the Congressional record. That's part of the kind of the overall sweep of these events. Again, just coming back to these three Republican women in Congress, they really were under a tremendous amount of pressure. Given the level of pressure that they were under, it's remarkable that they held up. But it's also interesting to me to think about kind of like the arc of MeToo and the arc of how we went from this moment where there was just this tremendous pressure for accountability. And then quite quickly, a feeling that it had gone too far. You know.
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D
Quite quickly, yes.
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C
And admittedly, like, the gamut of people who got caught up in MeToo, there were truly onerous ogres, like Harvey Weinstein. Like Harvey Weinstein, you know, or you look at somebody like Kevin Spacey, you know, who was very clearly had a long track record of, you know, if not criminal behavior, then, you know, very serious harassment against young male actors over many years. But then as time progresses, you know, and it starts to catch up with figures like Al Franken, the Democratic senator from Minnesota, and former comedian, I guess he's still a comedian. Aziz Ansari. That was one of the most kind of edge cases that I think turned a lot of people off of me, too. And it's funny because I do think you mentioned this earlier, there is this kind of cyclical nature to these things, where there's accountability, there's a sense that this cannot go on, and then there's a backlash. So where do you think we are in this cycle?
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D
Yeah, it's such a good point. I had for a long time believed that this was the nature of modern life and technology and that it was the failing of. I don't know why I had this whole theory in my head that it was a failing of technology. But I actually now think. If you think about the book Backlash, Susan Faludi's just seminal bible of the sort of war against feminism.
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C
Yep.
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D
And you think about, like, the periods. I mean, I actually was rereading it again. Phyllis Schlafly, the Equal Rights Amendment. Cause I feel like that is such a. I feel like that's a very similar story in a way. The Equal Rights Amendment, the piece of legislation that would have guaranteed women equal rights. And the pushback to that. And those years where they had passed it through the Congress but couldn't get it ratified by the states. And there was this concerted effort by conservative women to show that they didn't need it. And I feel like there's this sort of it feels like a similar kind of pushback to movement, to pushback. I don't wanna be wrong. And I feel like whenever you want to try to predict the future. Whenever I predict the future, I'm always wrong. I'm always told that predicting the future is bad podcasting, but that said, now I'll predict the future. It does feel like an important moment.
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C
Yeah. And I think that what's crucial is in these moments, they need to be able to connect to the experiences that ordinary people have in their own lives. You know, it's not just about the shadowy group of financiers and, you know, media moguls and, you know, elite university professors who have this kind of old boys network who are helping each other out at the highest level of society. This is something that's happening in every social context. And all of that is just happening kind of silently. And the women who are experiencing it are like, oh, wait, it's happening there too. And that I think is like, again, too. Me too. That was the whole kind of like, origin and momentum of the movement.
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D
I wanna ask you a question.
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C
Yeah.
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D
So I think there's an element to this, which is privilege.
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C
Yeah.
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D
And I think that the victims are. That a lot of this is about this. The. So I'm gonna tell a very quick story. During MeToo, a friend of mine said, well, no one ever MeTooed me. And I said, you come from a fancy family. Nobody's gonna. Me too. You. Cause they know your mom. And I wondered if that. When you look at these victims, right. Like, one was picked up at Mar a Lago for massage, like these, you know, or she was a spa attendant. Right.
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C
Virginia.
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D
Virginia was a spa. 16 year old spa attendant in Mar a Lago. Like, these women were disenfranchised enough so they didn't have a powerful mom they could call.
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C
Yeah, yeah.
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B
No.
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C
And I think that, you know, that's a huge part of the story. Right. Is that. And again, this connects back to the sort of like, ubiquity and just how common this kind of sexual exploitation is of young women. Again, not by fancy rituals, although that certainly happens, but by people that are close to them. I mean, I think there have been a number of stories that have come out about how these teenage girls who ended up in the, you know, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein's clutches had had previous experiences of being exploited, again, not by somebody with a private island and a Manhattan townhouse, but by somebody close to them. And that is sort of the painful reality of how These things work. I wanna talk a little bit about this question of. Because I think there's been this sense that Trump never ultimately pays a price for what he does. He always manages, he's Teflon Don, he always manages to get away with it. Do you think this time will be different?
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D
So it's funny because if you think about Epstein 2007, it looks like the walls are closing in. And then he signs this non prosecution agreement with Alex Acosta 2008, he does a year of couture jail where he's like basically sort of walks in, walks out. He's doing this, he's doing that. It's in Palm Beach. I think that the way it works with a lot of powerful men, I would say people, but it's really men. Because even powerful women, they tend to get held accountable. I'm thinking about Martha Stewart and James Comey. I'm thinking about Martha Stewart. A lot of people would not have gone to jail for what Martha Stewart went to jail for a lot of powerful men. It's like sometimes the problem process is imperfect, but eventually it happens. And when Trump was out of office, he did end up judicated by E. Jean Carroll. He did end up owing millions of dollars. So I do think that this accountability thing, it happens sometimes. It takes a couple pushes. So I'm not convinced. I also am not a person who believes. Like I don't think the arc, you know, I don't think history, it just stops. Like I think it keeps going.
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C
Ye. It's kind of gross, right? Because the answer to the question of like should there be accountability? Should just be yes, rather than who's it gonna hurt? Which side is gonna get more hurt by it. But there's been a lot of talk about, well, Epstein, the circles that he ran in. This is actually gonna affect more Democrats than it is Republicans. I mean, I don't know about that, but I have a slightly different view, which is that I think it'll actually be a really good thing if this whole network and constellation of powerful men who of this in varying degrees, some of them not criminal, some of them just creepy, some of them just really bad judgment. I think if all of those figures, regardless of what their politics are, are swept away and pushed into retirement and sent off to live out the last of their days in some kind of shame, that would not necessarily be a bad thing. And I would say it's not necessarily a bad thing, especially for the Democratic Party. You need this renewal. You need new figures who are untouch, who were never part of these awful power games and networks that they used to play. And I almost think of it as being a little bit like the dividing line between Democrats who opposed the Iraq war and those who voted for it. Right. Again, it's an imperfect analogy, obviously. Different situation. But I think that there was something really healthy about that becoming in effect a kind of litmus test to have a clear moral point of view about whether the Iraq war was a huge mistake or not. So I don't know. I mean, thinking about accountability less in like who goes to jail and more in terms of how does our culture and politics shift at the end of this?
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D
I don't know.
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C
That feels like a real possibility coming out of this.
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D
You know, it's funny cuz we're friends, besides being colleagues.
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C
Yes.
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D
And I always think of you as a person who has in their head moral, like, moral questions. Who doesn't. Who try, you know, I mean, nobody is perfect. But who in their head is constantly sort of thinking of the moral implications of things, which I hope that's not. I hope I'm not like, you know, this is not my own fantasy of you, but like, and I too am often, I think, not because I'm so great, but because I got sober when I was 19. And so I'm always thinking about like, the moral implications of like, will this make you feel so bad that ultimately you'll start drinking it? You know, that kind of thing. And so I do see, you have to Wonder, like after 2007, these people all. Nick, right? Like, he was on the registered sex offender website. Cause I remember I once, I found the app and I was looking at it and I pushed Central park and he came up. So he was on. He was like a registered sex offender on the registry who lived not that far from you? Not that far, no.
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C
And your kids.
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D
Yes, and my kids. So, you know, and so though of course they never would have gone for any of the kids who were like private school kids because they knew that they couldn't. And that I think is like such an important. You and I are both. I think we want to talk about the layers of privilege and wealth and how they Cause the one thing that Donald Trump I think ever said that was a benefit to society was he said the system is rigged. And about that one thing, I mean, of course he wanted to rig it more for himself, but about that one thing, he was correct. But I do think the moral question of if you are going to the home of someone who's a registered sex offender, you know, like the Woody Allen dinner parties like you are, you know.
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C
Yeah. There's no denying it that, you know, it's clear that some of the people involved here chose to stay in contact and in warm and affectionate contact with Epstein long after they knew. And that I think is where ultimately like the accountability is just gonna be kind of undeniable. And you know, I say sweep them all.
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D
Yeah, I do too. I also agree with that point. Bill Clinton's in there. Bill Clinton was president in the 90s and it was a very different time for how we think about powerful men.
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C
Yeah, yeah, no, obviously. And our mutual friend Monica Lewinsky has lots to say about that. Yes, she really does. You obviously have had a lot of conversations and talked to a lot of people and there is this sense that, that this Epstein saga has split Donald Trump's coalition in a way that nothing else has. Why do you think that is? What is it about this particular story that has led to such a profound cleavage?
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D
So I think it's two parts. So one is they were radicalized on Pizzagate in 2016 when Donald Trump was running for office. WikiLeaks kept releasing these emails. I actually went back and looked this up. Emails from like John Podesta to his brother Tony about like pizza. And do you know he was talking about like a walnut sauce. Like tell me cuz they're both big cooks. Okay. So these and these emails were interpreted to be child sex trafficking. So this was the very beginning of Trumpism right before Trump got elected the first time. So I think you had a base that had an origin story that was Donald Trump is going to end a sex trafficking ring. Then fast forward. QAnon 2020. He's making overtures towards QAnon when he's running for reelection. He's saying the storm is coming. QAnon again, a follow up of Pizzagate. There is a cabal of sex trafficking powerful men and that Trump is gonna bring them down. Here we are, fast forward. We are in 2025. There is actually, it's not really. I mean, yeah, it's a cabal. There's a cabal of powerful men. There's a ringleader, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine. But there clearly are many people who are many, I think mostly men who are doing this. And so you have a base that's radicalized on an origin story that turns out to be true.
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C
Yeah, well, I mean that's that classic line, right? Just cause you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Sometimes conspiracies turn out to be true. Just that instead of using obscure coded language of walnut sauce and pies, it's like, very directly, I'm trying to hook up with this hot lady. Jeffrey, what's your advice? And there is something sort of sad and banal and, frankly, kind of tragic about that.
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D
And speaking of sad and banal, the other thing I would say just is an underlying thing. Like, I personally would be more gratified if it were, like, a return of MeToo that dissected the MAGA movement, if it were women's rights that came in and did it. But you have to realize also that what's bubbling below the surface is a movement that has been promised for about 10 years that they were gonna Trump was gonna make things cheaper, and he hasn't. And in fact, things have gotten more expensive. And that he was gonna do things like bring back coal jobs and bring back manufacturing. And so some of this, I think, is like, as much as I, in my own belief system would like it to be, that finally the women are winning, there's also, I think, an underlying dissatisfaction that is. That is stoking the flames.
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C
Well, Molly, I think we should leave it there. Thank you so much for talking with me. It was great to see you.
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D
It was so great. Thank you for having me.
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B
If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur Vishaka Darba, Kristina Samulewski and Gillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Alison Bruzek. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabaro and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Aman Sahota. The Fact Check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samulewski. The director of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.
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C
Sam.