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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,

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Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of

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Speaker 1: today's best minds, and a California bill says ice agents

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Speaker 1: can't wear masks in California. We have such a great

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Speaker 1: show for you today. CNN's own David oxel Rod stops

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Speaker 1: by two parts the Aftermath of political violence. Then we'll

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Speaker 1: talk to The New York Times is David Enrich about

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Speaker 1: his blockbuster reporting on JP Morgan Chase's ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

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Speaker 1: But first the news, So.

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Speaker 2: Molly, in the aftermath of the killing of Charlie Kirk,

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Speaker 2: there has been lots of very very bad responses, particularly

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Speaker 2: some on the writer are really trying to use this

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Speaker 2: to throw i'd say, a gasoline truck on the flames

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Speaker 2: that are being brewed.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so there have been a lot of people on

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Speaker 1: the right saying things like this is war and that

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Speaker 1: is terrible, not helpful, very destructive and also not relevant

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Speaker 1: to the case. We don't know there's a suspect now,

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Speaker 1: but we don't really know much because this is a

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Speaker 1: developing story. But when they started saying these things this

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Speaker 1: is war, they didn't have a suspect so they didn't

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Speaker 1: have any sense of what the motivation for any of

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Speaker 1: this was. And I think it's really important again we

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Speaker 1: all know because of the Internet is so filled with information,

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Speaker 1: much of which cannot be necessarily accounted or backed up

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Speaker 1: or confirmed, that we all have to be really, really

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Speaker 1: careful before we say things and before we make the

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Speaker 1: leap between something like an allegation to a statement. And

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Speaker 1: this guy who is now in custody is accused of

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Speaker 1: being the murderer, but again, we still don't know really

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Speaker 1: what his motivations were, and we had people on the

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Speaker 1: right really pouring gasoline on that. What was actually, if

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Speaker 1: we're going to say, shockingly good, was that there is

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Speaker 1: a Republican called Tom Taylors who is conveniently not running

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Speaker 1: for reelection and comes from a purple state. We've seen

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Speaker 1: this kind of bravery from people like Jeff Flake, people

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Speaker 1: from purple states who aren't running for reelection, but I'll

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Speaker 1: take it where I can get it. Tom Taylors said

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Speaker 1: he was disgusted by conservatives declaring war after Kirk was killed.

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Speaker 1: That is the I think the appropriate way to feel,

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Speaker 1: because it's highly inflammatory to declare war on anyone, especially

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Speaker 1: a large percentage of the country for any reason, and

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Speaker 1: especially when you don't know any of the facts of the.

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Speaker 3: Case, especially when some of these people who are taking

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Speaker 3: the opportunity to do this were literally tried to kick

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Speaker 3: Charlie Kirk out of MAGA like days before this.

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Speaker 1: And that is another part of those stories. We don't know.

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Speaker 1: There was a lot of internal tension between Charlie Kirk

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Speaker 1: and a part of MEGA called the groy We don't

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Speaker 1: know really what happened, but we certainly know one thing,

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Speaker 1: which is the man in custody is not trans and

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Speaker 1: he is not LGBTQ. So I think that we know

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Speaker 1: for sure, and I think that is really important since

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Speaker 1: there were early reports that the bullet casing had pro

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Speaker 1: trans writing on it, which in fact was just normal

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Speaker 1: bullet marking. So great job team, Great great job team.

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Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal known for very good reporting, so that

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Speaker 1: was not great. But the suspected shooter not trans, not LGBTQ, Somalia.

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Speaker 3: You and I we like good news in this section,

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Speaker 3: but it's not always easy for me to find it

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Speaker 3: when I'm working on this. I know we try, though,

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Speaker 3: But I think what's really interesting is a lot of

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Speaker 3: people are saying that Chicago's pushback against Trump is why

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Speaker 3: he hasn't really invaded yet. What we saw yesterday was

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Speaker 3: kind of silly with RFK and Pam Bondi going in

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Speaker 3: and just invading a vape shop.

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Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't see that. Wait, Jesse, I miss this news.

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Speaker 1: Tell me what happened, because this this is the good

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Speaker 1: news I'm looking for.

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Speaker 3: Can we play a clip, Well, there's not really a clip,

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Speaker 3: but let me set a seed for you. There's illegal vapes.

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Speaker 3: They got Amali America. It's saved.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you something, and you're I don't

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Speaker 1: think you're going to be happy here. This is like

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Speaker 1: you and I are going to fight now because I'm

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Speaker 1: more baby brained than you are. Vaping is bad.

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Speaker 4: Oh, I hate vaping, and we have.

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Speaker 1: A lot of illegal vape shops and like closing down

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Speaker 1: vape shops. If RFK Junior would just do that, then Dianu,

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Speaker 1: I would not be so upset.

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Speaker 3: If I never smell a bubblegum flavored smoke again for

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Speaker 3: the rest of my life, I will be much much,

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Speaker 3: much happier.

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Speaker 1: I've never smelled bubble gum flavored a babe.

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Speaker 3: Anyway, go on I think one of the things that

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Speaker 3: this shows though, is that pushing back against Trump makes

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Speaker 3: them chicken out.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Taco baby, be tako. Yeah, this is really important

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Speaker 1: if you push back against Trump, and I mean push

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Speaker 1: back in the way like Pritzker did, which was he said,

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Speaker 1: this is illegal, we have lawyers, we will fight this

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Speaker 1: in the courts, we will not participate in this, we

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Speaker 1: will not allow this, we will not roll over. Then

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Speaker 1: that works, And I think these people who made deals

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Speaker 1: with Trump, these lawyers, these universities, you have no one

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Speaker 1: to protect you now because you are in the extra

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Speaker 1: legal right. You have no one who can say there's

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Speaker 1: no law that can protect you because you are making

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Speaker 1: these kind of deals that aren't technically legal. Whereas if

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Speaker 1: you are smart and you act in a smart way

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Speaker 1: and you push back in a legal way, you can win.

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Speaker 1: They will back down. And that should be the lesson here.

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Speaker 3: And also credit where it's due. Brandon Johnson is showing

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Speaker 3: the way that mayors can react to Trump too, unlike

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Speaker 3: our mayor Eric Adams.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I would like to take a minute to say

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Speaker 1: that having a captured mayor who is basically serving at

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Speaker 1: the behest of Donald Trump not great, bad, said, I

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Speaker 1: think you have to give it to Pritzker here too,

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Speaker 1: because Pritzker created the infrastructure for Brandon Johnson. I wonder

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Speaker 1: if our governor again, it's not on her yet, but

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Speaker 1: she could definitely take a lot of sort of this

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Speaker 1: is how we need our governors to behave.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, but Trump is sitting in the National Guard to

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Speaker 3: a city which is Memphis, and he says it's over

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Speaker 3: the crime rate.

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Speaker 1: I want to also talk about this piece about how

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Speaker 1: National guardsmen find being dispatched to do things that are

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Speaker 1: not their jobs, and how these National guardsmen are like

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Speaker 1: actually pretty traumatized by policing civilians because that was never

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Speaker 1: their job, or picking up trash, crushing it, candy crushing it.

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Speaker 1: That this crew they're not having fun, but more importantly,

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Speaker 1: they're like being actually traumatized. A lot of these people

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Speaker 1: are young guys. They signed up to, you know, save

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Speaker 1: drowning people in a flood or protect their country. They

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Speaker 1: did not sign up for the kind of deeply political

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Speaker 1: assignment they're being put on. And so there was a

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Speaker 1: reporting about this. There was a sort of they talked

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Speaker 1: to a lot of these National guardsmen. They compile the

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Speaker 1: report the National Guard and then they accidentally sent it

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Speaker 1: to a bunch of different journalists because this is the

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Speaker 1: well oiled government that we live in. But it did

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Speaker 1: show just the trauma that these guardsmen are having from

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Speaker 1: just being put in a political situation. Really good example

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Speaker 1: of how these sort of second order effects of trump Ism,

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Speaker 1: where Trump thinks he's doing one thing, but he's actually

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Speaker 1: traumatizing a whole other group of people that he has

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Speaker 1: no intention of traumatizing. And I think it's worth thinking

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Speaker 1: whenever you're reading these stories about Trump, is we're thinking

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Speaker 1: about the second order of facts one hundred percent.

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Speaker 3: Speaking of second order effects, one of the things that

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Speaker 3: chaos is not good for is the economy.

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Speaker 4: Trump's ice just wrecked a whole bunch of.

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Speaker 3: Our relations with South Korea after this high end a

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Speaker 3: plant incident, and South Area has paused work on at

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Speaker 3: least twenty two different projects.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, by the way, as a country, that's just sort

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Speaker 1: of waddling into stagflation, which is this thing. If you

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Speaker 1: listen to this podcast, you know all about stagflation because

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Speaker 1: I have very specific nightmares. But stagflation is an economy

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Speaker 1: and recession that is plagued by inflation. And I think

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Speaker 1: that once the FED cuts interest rates, we're going to

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Speaker 1: start to see that because, as we all know, cutting

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Speaker 1: interest rates will mean that it will be inflationary. Dollars

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Speaker 1: will not be that it will not be worth as

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Speaker 1: much as they were before, and we're going to have

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Speaker 1: some big problems. But what we really need is a country.

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Speaker 1: Is the money from South Korea, because South Korea there

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Speaker 1: is a really good economy, and they were building lots

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Speaker 1: of stuff in our country in order to increase manufacturing.

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Speaker 1: And those South Koreans who were arrested and sent home

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Speaker 1: but first kept on a jet for hours and hours,

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Speaker 1: those guys were actually building a huge, multi billion dollar

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Speaker 1: factory in Georgia that was touted by Brian Kemp. And

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Speaker 1: now they've gone home and they're taking all their money

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Speaker 1: with them. Talk about a second order effect. David Axelrod

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Speaker 1: is the chief political analyst for CNN and the author

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Speaker 1: of Believer, My Forty Years in Politics. Welcome David Axelrod

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Speaker 1: to FAT Politics.

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Speaker 4: Thanks.

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Speaker 1: I wonder if we could start by talking about Spencer

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Speaker 1: Cox's really I thought excellent Sea. So they caught the Charlie.

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Speaker 5: The suspect aspect.

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Speaker 1: Yes, they've arrested suspect and Governor Cox, the governor of Utah,

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Speaker 1: was making a speech.

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Speaker 5: Governor Cox, after delivering all the details of the arrest

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Speaker 5: about this young man who was arrested, gave just an

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Speaker 5: incredibly heartfelt, passionate hobbily at about what this moment in

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Speaker 5: history is. He said, I thought, very movingly that he

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Speaker 5: had prayed that this wasn't going to be a Utah

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Speaker 5: and who was involved in this, maybe because he didn't

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Speaker 5: think of Utah as a place where people acted in

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Speaker 5: anger like that, but it turned out it was. But

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Speaker 5: he was, you know, his plea basically was to the

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Speaker 5: better angels of our nature and to recognize that we

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Speaker 5: are doomed if we are trapped in an ever increasing

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Speaker 5: spiral of hate and division and violence. It was so

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Speaker 5: important that he said it because there were people, you know,

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Speaker 5: there were voices out there, Steve Bannon and others who

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Speaker 5: were saying, this is war, Alex Jones, the inference being

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Speaker 5: go pick up your guns and now we don't need

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Speaker 5: that on the left or the right right. So that

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Speaker 5: was why that was so important.

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Speaker 1: And I thought what was really also important about this

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Speaker 1: was that he talked about the nineteen sixties, which are

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Speaker 1: you know, we are the United States of Amnesia, and

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Speaker 1: so the nineteen sixties are not that long ago.

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Speaker 5: If I forget it, it's less about amnesia more about sinility.

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Speaker 5: But I lived here. I was a kid. I was

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Speaker 5: a kid in the sixties. I lived that Martin Luther King,

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Speaker 5: Robert Kennedy, John Kennedy when I was a little boy.

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Speaker 5: These were heroes of my youth. And I can tell

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Speaker 5: you that at that time. And remember we had National

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Speaker 5: guardsmen on Kent State Campus in Ohio in nineteen seventy

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Speaker 5: who killed four unarmed student protesters. It felt as if

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Speaker 5: things were coming apart. It felt like that. And remember

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Speaker 5: we were involved in a war then in which five

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Speaker 5: hundred thousand Americans were engaged, fifty thousand lost their lives.

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Speaker 5: So it really did feel that way.

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Speaker 4: We did.

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Speaker 5: We were able to write the ship then, but we

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Speaker 5: didn't have social media then, which I think the role

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Speaker 5: that social media has played in and the fraying of

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Speaker 5: our social fabric, I think can't be under estimate. You know,

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Speaker 5: it was presented to us as a tool to create community,

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Speaker 5: but what it really is is a tool to divide

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Speaker 5: the community into deeply divided camps. Because the thing and

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Speaker 5: you know this, you're student of all this, Molly. The

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Speaker 5: thing that keeps people online is their great inspiration is

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Speaker 5: hate and division and fear and anger and resentment and

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Speaker 5: conspiracy theories. And the more you evidence responsiveness to that,

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Speaker 5: the deeper you get shoved into a silo. And then

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Speaker 5: we are where we are now. Politics has come to

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Speaker 5: reflect that same that same culture, and we're gonna have

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Speaker 5: to push back with tremendous force to stop the momentum

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Speaker 5: of the divisiveness and the hate and the violence.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder if we could talk for a minute

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Speaker 1: about kind of where democrats are right now in the

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Speaker 1: wilderness and what that looks like. I have been. You know,

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Speaker 1: I was just interviewed by someone and he was like,

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Speaker 1: say something that you think is positive, and I was like,

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Speaker 1: I could think of like fifteen things like I think

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Speaker 1: like Pritzger has been incredible and has broken through Newsom

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Speaker 1: has cracked the Internet, even if you don't agree with

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Speaker 1: him or ideologically like him. My man has out Trump

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Speaker 1: Trump on Twitter. Like, you know, run for something is

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Speaker 1: being swamped with thousands upon thousands of people who want

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Speaker 1: to run for office. Robert Garcia got the birthday book

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Speaker 1: subpoena from the Epstein Estate, and we now, I mean,

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Speaker 1: I just have seen a lot of really impressive movement

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Speaker 1: from Democrats over the last couple of weeks. So I'm

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Speaker 1: wondering what you think about that.

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Speaker 5: I think that there has been a stouter resistance to Trump.

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Speaker 5: But I would just say to you, not one thing

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Speaker 5: that you said just now actually speaks to the day

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Speaker 5: to day lives of people. And one of the problems

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Speaker 5: that I think, I think that there are things that

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Speaker 5: Trump is doing that warrant that resistance. I think as

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Speaker 5: a tactical matter, you can get a lot of clicks

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Speaker 5: and raise a lot of money by trying to match

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Speaker 5: him control for troll. But ultimately there are two things

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Speaker 5: that are required for Democrats to succeed. One is to

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Speaker 5: be steadfast in standing up for principles. Yes, that's extraordinarily important.

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Speaker 5: The other is to ask the question how did we

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Speaker 5: get here? How did we get here? And why do

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Speaker 5: so many people? How did so many working people in

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Speaker 5: this country come to view the Democratic Party, the party

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Speaker 5: of the self styled party of working people, as a

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Speaker 5: party of elites, of failed institutions and a status quo

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Speaker 5: that is rigged against them. How did that happen? And

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Speaker 5: so you know, and I think it's pretty obvious that

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Speaker 5: the system hasn't really worked for large numbers of people,

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Speaker 5: and the Democratic Party ought to be in the forefront

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Speaker 5: of that fact. Donald Trump's not the answer. Donald Trump

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Speaker 5: is a symptom of alienation, but he's not the answer.

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Speaker 5: I mean, the only American family who he's making more

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Speaker 5: prosperous is his own and perhaps some of his friends,

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Speaker 5: not the people who elected him. But the Democrat Party

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Speaker 5: has to be an authentic alternative. And the answer can't

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Speaker 5: be We're going to restore everything Donald Trump has destroyed.

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Speaker 5: There's a lot that Donald Trump has destroyed that should

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Speaker 5: be resurrected. There are values that he's trampled that are

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Speaker 5: fundamental to who we are as a country. But it's

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Speaker 5: also true that I was in Washington for a couple

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Speaker 5: of years. I served in the White House. I got

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Speaker 5: a bird's eye view of it. There are a lot

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Speaker 5: of things that didn't make sense. There are a lot

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Speaker 5: of ways in which we run the government that reflects

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Speaker 5: the twentieth century and not the twenty first century, and

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Speaker 5: where it's not an agile, responsive place. There is way

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Speaker 5: too much influence of big money, and it's just gotten

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Speaker 5: worse with Trump. So the question is for Democrats to succeed,

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Speaker 5: they have to be stout in resistance to the trespasses

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Speaker 5: of Trump, but they also have to project a vision

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Speaker 5: of how you're actually going to build something that is

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Speaker 5: responsive to the day to day problems of people, that

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Speaker 5: is resistant to the influence of big money. And until

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Speaker 5: the party is speaking to that in a way that

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Speaker 5: is convincing and compelling and authentic, it's still going to

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Speaker 5: be a struggle.

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Speaker 1: You want my hottest take, I'm going to push back,

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Speaker 1: even though what you're saying is not necessarily controversial, I'm

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Speaker 1: going to say I don't think that any of that

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Speaker 1: matters if Democrats aren't willing to sell and like, for example,

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Speaker 1: if we look at Biden World, and there's certainly more

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Speaker 1: than a lot of room to criticize Biden World, but

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Speaker 1: legislatively they were able to transfer I mean things like

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Speaker 1: the child tax credit. They were able to transfer wealth

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Speaker 1: from the rich to the poor in a way that

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Speaker 1: you know, in my lifetime, there were a number of

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Speaker 1: legislative wins. But their staunch refusal to sell nothing ever

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Speaker 1: to anyone meant that. But you know by year three

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Speaker 1: when they were like, why is no one covering us?

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Speaker 1: It didn't matter. People didn't believe it. So I just wonder,

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Speaker 1: if I think you're absolutely right, big money number one,

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Speaker 1: biggest problem citizens United. I mean everyone look at TikTok.

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Speaker 1: You know they were going to get banned and then

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Speaker 1: they got lobbyists and now they're not. But I just

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Speaker 1: wonder how much of this is, like, how much of

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Speaker 1: this is a legislative problem, which is a real problem,

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Speaker 1: and how much of this is like in like, there's.

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Speaker 5: A communicacious problem. But I think it's more than what

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Speaker 5: you suggest. And look, I applaud a lot of what

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Speaker 5: they did. I disagreed with some of the things that

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Speaker 5: they did, and there's no doubt that they were piss

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Speaker 5: poor salesman and Biden was a piss poor salesman. But

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Speaker 5: you know what, you can't job oom people molly into

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Speaker 5: thinking that their lives are what their lives aren't. So

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Speaker 5: you know, the fact is that these things were helpful

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Speaker 5: and they should have been pitched in the context of

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Speaker 5: the larger struggle. The problem that as the Democratic Party

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Speaker 5: has become more of a metropolitan, college educated party, it's

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Speaker 5: still the party of working people. But it approaches working

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Speaker 5: people more like missionaries and anthropologists. And we show up

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Speaker 5: and we say we're here to help you become more

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Speaker 5: like us, and we know what you need and we're

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Speaker 5: fighting for what you need. We don't show up with respect.

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Speaker 5: We don't ask what is it that you need? What

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Speaker 5: is going on? How do you know? We don't do that.

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Speaker 5: And you know, in the pandemic, we go out on

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Speaker 5: our balcony and we bang our pots and hail the

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Speaker 5: essential workers, and as soon as the pandemic's over, they

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Speaker 5: become invisible again. So I think there needs to be

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Speaker 5: a genuine connection to the people who Democrats purport to represent.

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Speaker 5: And so it is a there's no doubt that there

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Speaker 5: was a failure to sell and and and you know,

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Speaker 5: in a way, Biden did a little bit of what

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Speaker 5: Trump has done in that there was so much talk

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Speaker 5: about you know, we haven't seen anything like this since Roosevelt,

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Speaker 5: and it was about his accomplishment, not about the task

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Speaker 5: at hand. And I think that was a communications problem.

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Speaker 5: Uh so uh And and look, one of the insidious

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Speaker 5: things about Donald Trump is that he whatever else he

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Speaker 5: is or isn't, And you can we can have robust

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Speaker 5: debates about about it, I guess. But one thing is

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Speaker 5: undebatable is he is the greatest salesman. Maybe maybe Roosevelt

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Speaker 5: was up there, but he was the He is the

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Speaker 5: greatest salesman. And you know, he is the P. T.

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Speaker 5: Barnum of American political and politics. And he you know,

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Speaker 5: I think he's going to run into a problem as well,

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Speaker 5: because now he's doing what Biden did, and he's telling people, Hey,

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Speaker 5: the economy has never been better, right, you know, forget

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Speaker 5: about what you see at the cash register. Forget about

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Speaker 5: what you see in your rent check, forget about your

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Speaker 5: health bill, which is about to shoot up, forget about

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Speaker 5: all that stuff. You're doing great. I think that's an

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Speaker 5: opportunity for Democrats, and I think but I think that's

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Speaker 5: where the focus should be. The question is who gets

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Speaker 5: your lives and who's going to fight for that. And

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Speaker 5: by the way, yes, I think that these side trips.

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Speaker 5: I mean, you know, I do think like it was

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Speaker 5: insane to spend three years before you did something serious

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Speaker 5: about the border. Insane, And you know it was wrong

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Speaker 5: not to be much more active and trying to reopen schools.

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Speaker 5: It was you know, there are things that are I

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Speaker 5: have great solicitude for vulnerable populations. But Democrats allowed themselves

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Speaker 5: to be portray trade as caring more about vulnerable populations

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Speaker 5: than understanding the vulnerabilities of large numbers of Americans. So

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Speaker 5: I think that the party itself has work to do,

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Speaker 5: and it's not just enough to be clever in response

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Speaker 5: to Trump or to get a lot of clicks or

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Speaker 5: raise a lot of small donations.

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Speaker 4: It's more.

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Speaker 5: It's deeper and more intense for the party to become

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Speaker 5: the party it needs to be.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe I agree that you can't run people who

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Speaker 1: feel elitist. I agree that, but I just wonder, like,

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Speaker 1: so my next question is really elitist, but or elitist.

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Speaker 1: But so let's talk about like a Grand Platiner from

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Speaker 1: Maine who's an oyster shucker and is the harbor master

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Speaker 1: of his small town. I mean, is that, like, there

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Speaker 1: is no one in Maine who thinks Graham Platiner is

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Speaker 1: an elitist? Right, he did like four tours of duty.

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Speaker 1: He you know, he's got like as egalitarian a story.

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Speaker 4: So you think that's appealing.

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Speaker 1: Well, I'm asking you, is that what you're talking about?

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Speaker 5: I mean, I think it may be. I think it

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Speaker 5: may be. I'm not sure. I know that the folks

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Speaker 5: in Washington have decided that it isn't and that they

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Speaker 5: want the governor to run who's a very popular politician there,

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Speaker 5: but who's seventy seven years old.

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Speaker 1: Fact check Jesse Cannon says he is an oyster farmer

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Speaker 1: and not a shucker. I assume that if he's farming

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Speaker 1: the oysters, eventually, if he's eating them, he's shocking them.

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Speaker 5: But yes, well maybe someone else is shocking them and

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Speaker 5: he's farming.

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Speaker 1: Them, and then he would be an elitist. But I mean,

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Speaker 1: is that the answer to that question.

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Speaker 5: I think the answer is to have I think that

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Speaker 5: I believe very much that the answers bubble up from

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Speaker 5: the bottom and not the top. You know, there are

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Speaker 5: people in Congress. Marie Glusen camp Perez is a good

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Speaker 5: example who's won in a Trump district twice. And Marie

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Speaker 5: is someone who authentically speaks for her community and doesn't

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Speaker 5: speak She's not Washington's representative to her community. She's her

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Speaker 5: community's representative to Washington. And I think more candidates like

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Speaker 5: her who are indigenous and home grown and really speak

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Speaker 5: for the community are going to help the Democratic party,

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Speaker 5: and there are plenty of examples of that around. It

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Speaker 5: may not be at the highest level, but you see

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Speaker 5: more and more of that now, whether he and you

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Speaker 5: know Plantner in Maine is one of those people that's

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Speaker 5: you know, that's to be proven, but I you know,

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Speaker 5: more and more I see these candidacies emerging, and that

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Speaker 5: to me is a hopeful sign. I'll tell you something.

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Speaker 5: Democrats lost ninety percent of the counties in this country

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Speaker 5: in twenty twenty four. Ninety percent, and I'll tell you

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Speaker 5: that is not a prescription for being a a sustained

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Speaker 5: majority party in this country. It makes governing almost impossible.

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Speaker 5: You can't be simply a metropolitan party. And so yes,

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Speaker 5: these homegrown candidates I think are very important.

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Speaker 1: And I'm thinking about Jared Golden as another example for sure,

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Speaker 1: right in Main he has a completely rural, very trumpy district. Now,

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Speaker 1: I agree, and I also want to push back. Just again,

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry.

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Speaker 4: I'm sure.

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Speaker 5: Well, I didn't come here to be I didn't think

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Speaker 5: to say I didn't think the name of the podcast

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Speaker 5: was the Amen Corners.

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Speaker 1: Well, I agree with everything you're saying, but it's this

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Speaker 1: is not really like a pushback as much as a

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Speaker 1: sort of and we're not supposed to talk about this

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Speaker 1: when we talk about Harris, but I do think you

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Speaker 1: cannot discount racism and misogyny because when you would talk

435
00:25:56,040 --> 00:25:59,400
Speaker 1: to non college educated women voters, that is the one

436
00:25:59,840 --> 00:26:04,840
Speaker 1: that I think is where it all falls apart. You know,

437
00:26:04,880 --> 00:26:08,520
Speaker 1: they would say, we like her, but we don't know her.

438
00:26:08,840 --> 00:26:11,639
Speaker 1: And I think what they meant was, you know, they

439
00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:14,120
Speaker 1: would say things like, we don't think she's up for it,

440
00:26:14,520 --> 00:26:18,199
Speaker 1: we don't think she has the strength for it, And

441
00:26:18,280 --> 00:26:23,000
Speaker 1: I think those were very polite ways to say that

442
00:26:23,080 --> 00:26:25,080
Speaker 1: they didn't feel comfortable voting for a woman.

443
00:26:25,400 --> 00:26:29,040
Speaker 5: Well, if you're asking me, is there racism and sexism

444
00:26:29,240 --> 00:26:33,280
Speaker 5: in this country? I think that's self evident. I was

445
00:26:33,640 --> 00:26:37,840
Speaker 5: involved in helping elect the first African American president, and

446
00:26:37,880 --> 00:26:41,199
Speaker 5: we faced some of those barriers, but he did not

447
00:26:41,359 --> 00:26:44,199
Speaker 5: run to be the first African American president. That was

448
00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:47,600
Speaker 5: never central to our messaging. He spoke to people's lives

449
00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:51,400
Speaker 5: in a way that people felt was authentic. He challenged

450
00:26:51,400 --> 00:26:55,040
Speaker 5: the incumbent politics of both parties in the White House,

451
00:26:55,080 --> 00:26:58,640
Speaker 5: he did in Washington. He did not represent those politics,

452
00:26:58,880 --> 00:27:02,960
Speaker 5: and part of the problem for the Vice president. I mean,

453
00:27:03,160 --> 00:27:06,960
Speaker 5: look those who were burdens for her, and maybe they

454
00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:10,119
Speaker 5: were decisive given the closeness of the race. I'm willing

455
00:27:10,160 --> 00:27:13,560
Speaker 5: to acknowledge that. But the biggest burden for her is

456
00:27:13,600 --> 00:27:16,800
Speaker 5: that she was the number two person in the operation

457
00:27:16,920 --> 00:27:21,040
Speaker 5: that folks wanted to replace, and that was an insuperable

458
00:27:21,119 --> 00:27:25,639
Speaker 5: barrier for her. I'm telling you that you want to

459
00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:30,359
Speaker 5: win an election, then you really need to understand fundamentally

460
00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:33,920
Speaker 5: what's going on, you know, in the lives of people.

461
00:27:34,680 --> 00:27:38,720
Speaker 5: And I'd like to think that, you know, in breaking

462
00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:43,040
Speaker 5: a barrier, Obama opened up possibilities for the future. I'd

463
00:27:43,080 --> 00:27:45,399
Speaker 5: like to believe that we can elect a woman. Maybe

464
00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:50,040
Speaker 5: we will into twenty twenty eight despite those barriers. But

465
00:27:50,080 --> 00:27:52,000
Speaker 5: the person who's going to do it is the person

466
00:27:52,040 --> 00:27:56,919
Speaker 5: who authentically is connected to the people they're trying to represent.

467
00:27:57,600 --> 00:28:01,560
Speaker 5: And I think that she never built that relationship, and

468
00:28:01,600 --> 00:28:05,800
Speaker 5: she had a very difficult burden to carry, and she

469
00:28:06,200 --> 00:28:10,520
Speaker 5: probably exacerbated it by failing in any way to differentiate

470
00:28:10,600 --> 00:28:13,600
Speaker 5: herself from Biden at a time when, as I said,

471
00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:17,600
Speaker 5: people their vote, this wasn't a great affirmation of love

472
00:28:17,640 --> 00:28:20,480
Speaker 5: for Donald Trump. It was a no vote on the

473
00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:23,960
Speaker 5: status quo. And you can't say, well, I wouldn't. I

474
00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:28,439
Speaker 5: would have done everything the same way and expect to

475
00:28:28,600 --> 00:28:30,920
Speaker 5: come out on top in that kind of a race.

476
00:28:31,200 --> 00:28:34,480
Speaker 1: How much do you think that Obama being a sort

477
00:28:34,480 --> 00:28:38,680
Speaker 1: of singular like I have never seen an orator like Obama.

478
00:28:38,960 --> 00:28:43,800
Speaker 5: Yeah, you have to be an incredible talent to get

479
00:28:43,840 --> 00:28:46,840
Speaker 5: elected president of the United States. I was blessed to

480
00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:49,640
Speaker 5: work with him. You know, people sometimes say are kind

481
00:28:49,640 --> 00:28:53,040
Speaker 5: of say, well, you you elected Barack Obama. I always

482
00:28:53,040 --> 00:28:57,480
Speaker 5: say the same thing. You always look at driving a maserati. Okay,

483
00:28:57,720 --> 00:29:02,440
Speaker 5: Barack Obama was a great generational talent, but that doesn't

484
00:29:02,480 --> 00:29:06,400
Speaker 5: mean that there aren't great generational talents out there. You know,

485
00:29:06,440 --> 00:29:09,480
Speaker 5: nobody knew who Barack Obama was. I remember sitting down

486
00:29:09,560 --> 00:29:12,560
Speaker 5: with Dan Baltz, who was a fantastic.

487
00:29:12,360 --> 00:29:13,520
Speaker 1: From the Washington Post.

488
00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:17,080
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, just retired as their lead political writer,

489
00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:20,000
Speaker 5: the best, you know, the gold standard. I remember sitting

490
00:29:20,040 --> 00:29:23,360
Speaker 5: down with him in Wisconsin during the primary in twenty

491
00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:25,320
Speaker 5: twenty four for president, and I told him I was

492
00:29:25,360 --> 00:29:28,160
Speaker 5: working on this primary campaign for a guy named for

493
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:30,280
Speaker 5: a guy and who he needs to watch because I

494
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:33,080
Speaker 5: think he'll be a big thing nationally. And he said,

495
00:29:33,640 --> 00:29:36,120
Speaker 5: who is it. And I said, his name is Barack Obama.

496
00:29:36,160 --> 00:29:38,120
Speaker 5: It's a Barack Obama. I never heard of him. That

497
00:29:38,320 --> 00:29:43,480
Speaker 5: was four years before he became the presidential nominee. What

498
00:29:43,600 --> 00:29:47,960
Speaker 5: you need this aspiring strategists out there, all you aspiring

499
00:29:47,960 --> 00:29:51,560
Speaker 5: strategists out there. The moral of this story is what

500
00:29:51,640 --> 00:29:54,480
Speaker 5: you really need to succeed is good taste. Keep your

501
00:29:54,520 --> 00:29:55,120
Speaker 5: eyes open.

502
00:29:55,480 --> 00:29:59,280
Speaker 1: But it's true because he was an Illinois state senator.

503
00:29:59,400 --> 00:30:02,920
Speaker 5: That yes, exactly, he was in the Illinois State Senate

504
00:30:02,960 --> 00:30:06,440
Speaker 5: at the time that I said that. But people need

505
00:30:06,480 --> 00:30:10,360
Speaker 5: to understand, Yes, his talent was enormous, it was, but

506
00:30:10,520 --> 00:30:16,480
Speaker 5: his message was very much of a anti establishment, anti

507
00:30:16,760 --> 00:30:20,680
Speaker 5: incumbent politics of Washington message, and that you know, and

508
00:30:20,720 --> 00:30:24,000
Speaker 5: obviously havn't been against the war was helpful. But that

509
00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:27,800
Speaker 5: was a big part of this. What you say, how

510
00:30:27,880 --> 00:30:29,600
Speaker 5: you say it is really important. And this is I

511
00:30:29,640 --> 00:30:32,800
Speaker 5: guess where we began. How you say it is not

512
00:30:33,480 --> 00:30:39,600
Speaker 5: at all inconsequential. What you say is paramount. And so

513
00:30:39,720 --> 00:30:42,760
Speaker 5: you could be a great messenger, but the message. If

514
00:30:42,800 --> 00:30:46,040
Speaker 5: the message is wrong or inauthentic, you're not going to win.

515
00:30:46,400 --> 00:30:49,720
Speaker 5: You can be you can, you can have the right message,

516
00:30:49,720 --> 00:30:52,520
Speaker 5: but if you don't deliver it, well, then you're not

517
00:30:52,560 --> 00:30:54,120
Speaker 5: going to win. You need to have both.

518
00:30:54,400 --> 00:30:57,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I agree, and I think that is one

519
00:30:57,440 --> 00:31:01,160
Speaker 1: hundred percent the most important issue. Thank you, thank you,

520
00:31:01,280 --> 00:31:03,120
Speaker 1: thank you, David for joining us.

521
00:31:03,320 --> 00:31:04,640
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you for inviting me.

522
00:31:07,760 --> 00:31:10,560
Speaker 1: David Enrich is a reporter for The New York Times

523
00:31:10,560 --> 00:31:14,080
Speaker 1: and the author of Murder the Truth and Servants of

524
00:31:14,160 --> 00:31:16,160
Speaker 1: the Damned. Welcome to Past.

525
00:31:15,920 --> 00:31:17,920
Speaker 6: Politics, David, Thanks for having me.

526
00:31:18,320 --> 00:31:21,840
Speaker 1: This is such an interesting story, and it's like the

527
00:31:21,960 --> 00:31:27,520
Speaker 1: kind of reporting that only a big institutional newspaper like

528
00:31:27,600 --> 00:31:30,160
Speaker 1: the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or

529
00:31:30,160 --> 00:31:32,320
Speaker 1: the Washington Post could do. I want you to talk

530
00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:34,880
Speaker 1: about how you got to this idea and then how

531
00:31:34,920 --> 00:31:37,240
Speaker 1: you started writing this piece, because like, this is the

532
00:31:37,320 --> 00:31:40,520
Speaker 1: kind of stuff that we desperately need to have in

533
00:31:40,640 --> 00:31:43,560
Speaker 1: our discourse and is expensive and important.

534
00:31:43,800 --> 00:31:45,800
Speaker 7: Yeah, it takes a long time to do this kind

535
00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:48,280
Speaker 7: of reporting. I mean we, I am, my colleagues Matt

536
00:31:48,280 --> 00:31:51,280
Speaker 7: Biltze and Tesca Silver Greenberg and I have been focusing

537
00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:55,560
Speaker 7: on Epstein and his money basically since twenty nineteen, and

538
00:31:55,680 --> 00:31:56,960
Speaker 7: there are all these unanswered questions.

539
00:31:56,960 --> 00:31:58,280
Speaker 6: But one of the things that kept coming.

540
00:31:58,160 --> 00:32:01,000
Speaker 7: Up over and over again was Jake Morgan, which had

541
00:32:01,040 --> 00:32:04,320
Speaker 7: been his bank for something like fifteen years, and we

542
00:32:04,400 --> 00:32:07,080
Speaker 7: just hadn't really found a very good weight into that story.

543
00:32:07,080 --> 00:32:09,720
Speaker 7: And partbees are so many unanswered questions and there's so

544
00:32:09,840 --> 00:32:13,040
Speaker 7: few people willing to speak candidly for obvious reasons. I

545
00:32:13,040 --> 00:32:16,840
Speaker 7: guess my colleague Matt ended up getting some just through

546
00:32:16,880 --> 00:32:19,520
Speaker 7: sources that he had cultivated over a period of years.

547
00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:22,800
Speaker 7: I got some deposition transcripts that had been sealed, were

548
00:32:22,800 --> 00:32:25,760
Speaker 7: never in court, we're never public, and we started looking

549
00:32:25,760 --> 00:32:27,680
Speaker 7: at that, and then we started going back through the

550
00:32:27,720 --> 00:32:30,160
Speaker 7: public court dock in both the US and the UK,

551
00:32:30,520 --> 00:32:33,120
Speaker 7: and we realized there's just tons and tons of stuff

552
00:32:33,120 --> 00:32:35,040
Speaker 7: that's in the public domain, but it has not been

553
00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:39,480
Speaker 7: mined very thoroughly and parties. It's extremely time consuming. It's

554
00:32:39,480 --> 00:32:41,520
Speaker 7: also expensive, like just I don't know if you ever

555
00:32:41,600 --> 00:32:44,080
Speaker 7: use pacer to get federal court records, but it's like

556
00:32:44,120 --> 00:32:46,160
Speaker 7: you download something that's one hundred pages long, and it

557
00:32:46,240 --> 00:32:48,720
Speaker 7: like sets you back ten dollars. And if you are downloading,

558
00:32:49,320 --> 00:32:52,360
Speaker 7: you know, tens of thousands of pages of stuff, it

559
00:32:52,560 --> 00:32:55,800
Speaker 7: becomes very expensive, very equivocally into like normal you know,

560
00:32:55,800 --> 00:32:58,280
Speaker 7: it's usually big corporate law firms that are footing that bill.

561
00:32:58,280 --> 00:33:00,680
Speaker 7: But when it's a news organization, it's really hard to

562
00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:02,120
Speaker 7: do that. He you're an independent journalist.

563
00:33:02,240 --> 00:33:04,640
Speaker 1: And then what you do is when you get all

564
00:33:04,720 --> 00:33:10,240
Speaker 1: of these pacer thousands and thousands of hours of depositions

565
00:33:10,400 --> 00:33:14,720
Speaker 1: and emails, you have to then read to them and

566
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:17,760
Speaker 1: figure out this sort of nuances. I'd love you to

567
00:33:17,800 --> 00:33:21,320
Speaker 1: talk about how so that one of the key parts

568
00:33:21,360 --> 00:33:23,440
Speaker 1: of this story is who knew what when?

569
00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:24,240
Speaker 6: Right?

570
00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:28,920
Speaker 1: Who knew that Jeffrey Epstein was pulling one hundred and

571
00:33:28,920 --> 00:33:32,840
Speaker 1: seventy thousand dollars out of you know, his checking account.

572
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:35,320
Speaker 1: That's a lot of cash. And so I'd love you

573
00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:37,600
Speaker 1: to talk us through sort of who knew what when

574
00:33:37,800 --> 00:33:40,080
Speaker 1: and how you started to sort of get clues.

575
00:33:40,640 --> 00:33:43,560
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, well let me answer that in reverse order.

576
00:33:43,560 --> 00:33:45,560
Speaker 7: I mean, we started getting clues because we built a

577
00:33:45,600 --> 00:33:48,600
Speaker 7: spreadsheet as we went and we just arranged the spreadsheeting

578
00:33:48,640 --> 00:33:52,000
Speaker 7: chronological order. And as we read these tens of thousands

579
00:33:52,040 --> 00:33:55,120
Speaker 7: of pages of court documents and financial records, you know,

580
00:33:55,160 --> 00:33:57,240
Speaker 7: you just are putting in chronological order, and you start

581
00:33:57,240 --> 00:34:00,440
Speaker 7: to notice patterns and they're not really short that's there.

582
00:34:00,440 --> 00:34:03,280
Speaker 7: This is not something it just takes a really, really

583
00:34:03,400 --> 00:34:06,160
Speaker 7: long time, and we had three of us working on

584
00:34:06,200 --> 00:34:08,319
Speaker 7: it full time for quite a while. But what we

585
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:11,080
Speaker 7: started to see was that there was a clear connection

586
00:34:11,520 --> 00:34:15,000
Speaker 7: between first of all, Epstein withdrawing huge sums of cash

587
00:34:15,040 --> 00:34:17,960
Speaker 7: from JP Morgan, sometimes from the branch in its headquarters

588
00:34:17,960 --> 00:34:19,759
Speaker 7: building ironically, and then and the.

589
00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:23,319
Speaker 1: Paying That means he like went to the bank and

590
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:25,400
Speaker 1: was like, I'm going to need one hundred and seventy

591
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:28,200
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in hundreds.

592
00:34:27,719 --> 00:34:30,760
Speaker 7: Right, Yeah, I mean, I think the more precise mechanical

593
00:34:30,800 --> 00:34:33,440
Speaker 7: way worked is that he would write checks from his

594
00:34:33,520 --> 00:34:36,400
Speaker 7: account to himself for cash, and if you would go

595
00:34:36,520 --> 00:34:39,120
Speaker 7: with deposit the checks and get cash out.

596
00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:40,640
Speaker 1: But it's very crazy.

597
00:34:41,000 --> 00:34:42,960
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's crazy. It's a huge amount of money.

598
00:34:43,280 --> 00:34:45,239
Speaker 1: Can you just explain to us, like, isn't there a

599
00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:48,120
Speaker 1: number that you can't take out more than before they

600
00:34:48,239 --> 00:34:49,440
Speaker 1: notify the police.

601
00:34:49,960 --> 00:34:52,680
Speaker 7: Yeah, the number is ten thousand dollars a day, and

602
00:34:53,480 --> 00:34:56,560
Speaker 7: they're clever people can figure out ways to work around that.

603
00:34:56,640 --> 00:34:58,839
Speaker 7: And the weird thing here is that I think JP

604
00:34:58,960 --> 00:35:02,879
Speaker 7: Morgan actually saw those cash withdrawals and recognize that under

605
00:35:02,920 --> 00:35:05,359
Speaker 7: the law, those needed to be reported, and I think

606
00:35:05,400 --> 00:35:07,600
Speaker 7: they reported some of those or maybe even all of those,

607
00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:11,000
Speaker 7: but they weren't taking it seriously internally, and so and

608
00:35:11,040 --> 00:35:13,640
Speaker 7: then there's a whole other set of things called suspicious

609
00:35:13,640 --> 00:35:16,560
Speaker 7: activity reports that they just weren't filing at all, which

610
00:35:16,600 --> 00:35:19,440
Speaker 7: related to the wire transfers that Epstein was sending all

611
00:35:19,480 --> 00:35:23,160
Speaker 7: over the world, including to countries and banks and individuals

612
00:35:23,160 --> 00:35:27,040
Speaker 7: that appeared to be part of his sex trafficking network.

613
00:35:27,520 --> 00:35:30,880
Speaker 1: Are there any people with those wires or countries that

614
00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:31,719
Speaker 1: stand out to you?

615
00:35:32,160 --> 00:35:35,200
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean not people individually, at least not that

616
00:35:35,280 --> 00:35:37,480
Speaker 7: we should name here, because a lot of these people are.

617
00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:40,000
Speaker 7: And one of the things with Epstein's network, as I'm

618
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:43,000
Speaker 7: sure you know, is that there are his victims to

619
00:35:43,120 --> 00:35:45,360
Speaker 7: then become kind of his enablers in some cases and

620
00:35:45,400 --> 00:35:49,440
Speaker 7: help recruit more women and girls and so the individuals

621
00:35:49,520 --> 00:35:51,839
Speaker 7: let's not focus on that. But he was making wire

622
00:35:51,880 --> 00:35:55,440
Speaker 7: transfers to banks in Russia, Belarus, places like that.

623
00:35:55,680 --> 00:35:57,400
Speaker 1: You would think that would ring some bells.

624
00:35:57,719 --> 00:36:00,400
Speaker 6: Yeah, and frankly it did ring bells within JP Morgan.

625
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:03,239
Speaker 7: The problem is that people were ringing the bells, and

626
00:36:03,640 --> 00:36:07,960
Speaker 7: the top executives at the bank were constantly disregarding those

627
00:36:08,000 --> 00:36:11,279
Speaker 7: bells or muting those bells to torture that metaphor. And

628
00:36:11,320 --> 00:36:13,680
Speaker 7: so this is a repeat pattern within the bank, over

629
00:36:13,719 --> 00:36:16,040
Speaker 7: and over and over again. Over a period of many years,

630
00:36:16,120 --> 00:36:20,520
Speaker 7: we saw that executives and compliance officers and anti money

631
00:36:20,560 --> 00:36:24,080
Speaker 7: laundering specialists were getting extremely worried about Epstein. They were

632
00:36:24,120 --> 00:36:26,319
Speaker 7: expressing those concerns and sending them up the food chain,

633
00:36:26,680 --> 00:36:30,080
Speaker 7: and they were getting overruled or disregarded at a very

634
00:36:30,160 --> 00:36:31,000
Speaker 7: high level.

635
00:36:30,960 --> 00:36:31,520
Speaker 6: Within the bank.

636
00:36:31,520 --> 00:36:35,880
Speaker 7: And then concluded when Epstein was originally indicted and arrested

637
00:36:36,239 --> 00:36:38,960
Speaker 7: in Florida in two thousand and six, when he pleaded

638
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:40,480
Speaker 7: guilty in two thousand and eight, when he was in

639
00:36:40,560 --> 00:36:43,879
Speaker 7: jail in two thousand and nine, So this is an

640
00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:48,120
Speaker 7: obvious concern within the bank. You know, it does not

641
00:36:48,160 --> 00:36:50,319
Speaker 7: take a rocket scientist to realize that when you have

642
00:36:50,640 --> 00:36:53,440
Speaker 7: a convicted sexual predator among your clients, that's something you

643
00:36:53,480 --> 00:36:55,839
Speaker 7: want to be thinking about. And the bank thought about

644
00:36:55,840 --> 00:36:58,279
Speaker 7: it and made the decision to keep doing business with them.

645
00:36:58,600 --> 00:37:01,680
Speaker 1: So at that point in two thousand and six, he

646
00:37:01,880 --> 00:37:06,080
Speaker 1: was on the sex offender registrary because I remember, because

647
00:37:06,120 --> 00:37:09,440
Speaker 1: I had the sex offender app on my phone as

648
00:37:09,480 --> 00:37:12,319
Speaker 1: a mother of small children, I was looking at it

649
00:37:12,560 --> 00:37:15,560
Speaker 1: and I saw that in Central Park there was the

650
00:37:15,640 --> 00:37:19,360
Speaker 1: sex offender registered and it was Jeffrey Epstein, and I thought,

651
00:37:19,920 --> 00:37:23,120
Speaker 1: oh my god, that guy is still not in jail.

652
00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:26,040
Speaker 1: How is that guy still not in jail. So at

653
00:37:26,040 --> 00:37:28,560
Speaker 1: that time JP Morgan was still treating him like a

654
00:37:28,600 --> 00:37:29,240
Speaker 1: normal client.

655
00:37:29,360 --> 00:37:32,080
Speaker 7: They kept treating him like a normal client until twenty thirteen,

656
00:37:32,360 --> 00:37:35,319
Speaker 7: and this is years after he goes to jail, gets

657
00:37:35,320 --> 00:37:38,240
Speaker 7: out of jail, registers as the highest level sex offender

658
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:43,120
Speaker 7: in New York and is engaged in a criminal a

659
00:37:43,120 --> 00:37:47,160
Speaker 7: pretty vast criminal enterprise, and he's bringing women and girls

660
00:37:47,239 --> 00:37:51,279
Speaker 7: into the United States to participate in coer sex. And

661
00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:53,440
Speaker 7: it's not just with him, right, he is farming some

662
00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:56,200
Speaker 7: of these women and girls out to his associates, and

663
00:37:56,520 --> 00:37:59,680
Speaker 7: he is engaged in it has all the hallmarks of

664
00:37:59,680 --> 00:38:03,400
Speaker 7: a big money laundering operation to at least in part,

665
00:38:03,520 --> 00:38:06,040
Speaker 7: to conduct that sex traffity network.

666
00:38:06,280 --> 00:38:10,120
Speaker 1: The money laundering, I think is a really important point

667
00:38:10,200 --> 00:38:13,200
Speaker 1: of this story. A lot of people wonder if there

668
00:38:13,239 --> 00:38:17,360
Speaker 1: are people, famous people who are wrapped up in this,

669
00:38:18,040 --> 00:38:22,160
Speaker 1: famous powerful people who are famous, powerful political people who

670
00:38:22,239 --> 00:38:25,960
Speaker 1: are wrapped up in this, and maybe more on the

671
00:38:26,040 --> 00:38:30,680
Speaker 1: money side than the sex side. Shockingly, what are you

672
00:38:30,880 --> 00:38:34,920
Speaker 1: seeing in the money side that you think might be

673
00:38:35,120 --> 00:38:36,439
Speaker 1: interesting in that vein?

674
00:38:36,960 --> 00:38:39,279
Speaker 7: Well, you know, look, there's at least two or three

675
00:38:39,320 --> 00:38:41,359
Speaker 7: people out there whose names are already out there, that

676
00:38:41,640 --> 00:38:45,800
Speaker 7: have had longstanding personal but also financial relationships with Epstein

677
00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:48,080
Speaker 7: that have never been fully explained. And I don't have

678
00:38:48,080 --> 00:38:51,400
Speaker 7: answer to this people are It's people like Glenn Dubin,

679
00:38:51,520 --> 00:38:54,279
Speaker 7: who is a big headshot manager, Leon Black, who's a

680
00:38:54,320 --> 00:38:57,799
Speaker 7: private equity billionaire, Les Wexner, who was the founder of

681
00:38:58,280 --> 00:39:01,720
Speaker 7: Victoria's Secret among other brands, And all of these people

682
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:05,200
Speaker 7: were close with Epstein for a period of years, and

683
00:39:05,800 --> 00:39:09,399
Speaker 7: you know, the facilitated or directly gave him tens, if

684
00:39:09,400 --> 00:39:11,200
Speaker 7: not hundreds of millions of dollars.

685
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:12,480
Speaker 6: And the public.

686
00:39:12,160 --> 00:39:14,320
Speaker 7: Explanations that all of those men have given for the

687
00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:17,520
Speaker 7: relationships with Epstein, I mean, it's hard to disprove things,

688
00:39:17,560 --> 00:39:20,160
Speaker 7: but I'm quite skeptical that we have the full story

689
00:39:20,320 --> 00:39:22,279
Speaker 7: in put it that way, And you know, I do

690
00:39:22,320 --> 00:39:24,040
Speaker 7: think one of the interesting things right now, at this

691
00:39:24,120 --> 00:39:27,520
Speaker 7: particular moment, is that all of a sudden, after years

692
00:39:27,520 --> 00:39:30,960
Speaker 7: and years of complete inaction and apparent apathy, we have

693
00:39:31,040 --> 00:39:34,480
Speaker 7: members of Congress from both parties who are actually starting

694
00:39:34,480 --> 00:39:36,080
Speaker 7: to pay some attention to this, and so we have

695
00:39:36,239 --> 00:39:40,239
Speaker 7: subpoenas that are being issued to Epstein's estate and to

696
00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:43,680
Speaker 7: various government agencies that have a lot of records. So

697
00:39:44,000 --> 00:39:47,160
Speaker 7: I'm kind of cautiously optimistic that we're going to learn

698
00:39:47,239 --> 00:39:49,760
Speaker 7: a lot more about this stuff in the months ahead.

699
00:39:49,920 --> 00:39:53,200
Speaker 7: But I'm always kind of optimistic, and often my optimism

700
00:39:53,520 --> 00:39:54,280
Speaker 7: leads me astray.

701
00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:55,520
Speaker 6: So we will see.

702
00:39:55,719 --> 00:39:58,120
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because like the thing when I

703
00:39:58,160 --> 00:40:02,280
Speaker 1: sort of did my own kind of soul sarcing about

704
00:40:02,640 --> 00:40:05,640
Speaker 1: my recent sort of where I messed up as a pundit,

705
00:40:06,040 --> 00:40:07,960
Speaker 1: the thing that I kept seeing was that I was

706
00:40:08,080 --> 00:40:11,040
Speaker 1: always overly optimistic. You know, I'd always feel like, but

707
00:40:11,120 --> 00:40:13,440
Speaker 1: this is the right thing, and so it will happen

708
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:18,360
Speaker 1: totally right, like an idiot. But I do think that

709
00:40:18,600 --> 00:40:22,200
Speaker 1: this point about the money and the transfers. So then

710
00:40:22,239 --> 00:40:25,000
Speaker 1: we get to the question of who knew what what,

711
00:40:25,480 --> 00:40:28,480
Speaker 1: and it is very important for Jamie Diamond to not

712
00:40:28,600 --> 00:40:31,840
Speaker 1: have known, so explain to us sort of that tension.

713
00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:36,360
Speaker 7: Yeah, So Diamond is obviously the longtime CEO of Jping Morgan.

714
00:40:36,640 --> 00:40:40,840
Speaker 7: He's probably the most respected and admired man on Wall Street.

715
00:40:41,200 --> 00:40:44,400
Speaker 7: He is almost certainly a billionaire as a result of

716
00:40:44,480 --> 00:40:47,080
Speaker 7: the many years he has spent at Jping Morgan, and

717
00:40:47,200 --> 00:40:51,040
Speaker 7: he is someone who is famously obsessed with details. He's

718
00:40:51,080 --> 00:40:54,040
Speaker 7: known for micromanaging his deputies. He gets really into the

719
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:55,840
Speaker 7: weeds and stuff, and that is kind of one of

720
00:40:55,840 --> 00:40:59,880
Speaker 7: his hallmarks as a CEO. And yet in this case

721
00:41:00,080 --> 00:41:03,920
Speaker 7: he claims complete ignorance about what was going on inside

722
00:41:03,920 --> 00:41:06,080
Speaker 7: his bank with one of the bank's most important clients.

723
00:41:06,080 --> 00:41:08,080
Speaker 7: He says that he has said under oath and to

724
00:41:08,200 --> 00:41:11,279
Speaker 7: us that he did not realize that Jeffrey Epstein was

725
00:41:11,280 --> 00:41:14,960
Speaker 7: a client of the banks until twenty nineteen, when Epstein

726
00:41:15,360 --> 00:41:19,080
Speaker 7: was arrested finally and then committed suicide. Diamond says that

727
00:41:19,120 --> 00:41:21,279
Speaker 7: he just did not realize it until then. I mean,

728
00:41:21,280 --> 00:41:23,080
Speaker 7: he said it under oath, so you've got to give

729
00:41:23,080 --> 00:41:27,120
Speaker 7: that some credibility. On the other hand, there are other

730
00:41:27,160 --> 00:41:29,280
Speaker 7: people who said under oath that they talked to Diamond

731
00:41:29,320 --> 00:41:31,800
Speaker 7: about this many years earlier, and there are some email

732
00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:36,800
Speaker 7: records that strongly suggest that Diamond was in the loop

733
00:41:36,960 --> 00:41:40,160
Speaker 7: on this. Now it's a little bit they're not dis positive,

734
00:41:40,800 --> 00:41:41,640
Speaker 7: and it's.

735
00:41:41,520 --> 00:41:43,960
Speaker 6: A little hard to figure out who's telling the truth here.

736
00:41:43,960 --> 00:41:46,040
Speaker 7: But I mean, it's kind of binary, and either Diamond

737
00:41:46,120 --> 00:41:50,240
Speaker 7: knew about it and has been lying, or he didn't

738
00:41:50,239 --> 00:41:52,200
Speaker 7: know about it, in which case this is a real

739
00:41:52,280 --> 00:41:53,840
Speaker 7: sign that he was kind of out to lunch on

740
00:41:53,920 --> 00:41:57,439
Speaker 7: something that even in the moment, was a really serious issue.

741
00:41:57,440 --> 00:42:00,400
Speaker 7: I mean, there are senior executives at the bank, including

742
00:42:00,400 --> 00:42:03,279
Speaker 7: the banks general counsel and head of Compliance, that were

743
00:42:03,320 --> 00:42:05,560
Speaker 7: fighting to get Epstein out because they are really concerned

744
00:42:05,600 --> 00:42:08,480
Speaker 7: about him, and some of the other executives were fighting

745
00:42:08,480 --> 00:42:11,719
Speaker 7: to keep him. And the fact that Diamond, this allegedly

746
00:42:11,840 --> 00:42:15,160
Speaker 7: detail obsessed CEO, would somehow not have been in the

747
00:42:15,200 --> 00:42:16,480
Speaker 7: loopernet is either.

748
00:42:16,840 --> 00:42:20,480
Speaker 6: Very hard to believe or very damning about his leadership.

749
00:42:20,480 --> 00:42:24,200
Speaker 1: I would say, imagine being the chief of compliance and

750
00:42:24,280 --> 00:42:27,440
Speaker 1: having that guy in your bed, like being like, can

751
00:42:27,480 --> 00:42:30,840
Speaker 1: you imagine like what I mean, just a nightmare. The

752
00:42:30,960 --> 00:42:33,480
Speaker 1: people who were trying to keep him in are they

753
00:42:33,520 --> 00:42:34,000
Speaker 1: still there?

754
00:42:34,280 --> 00:42:34,480
Speaker 6: Well?

755
00:42:34,520 --> 00:42:37,640
Speaker 7: One of them is Mary Aerdos, who was not the

756
00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:41,239
Speaker 7: kind of main cheerleader and defender of Epstein. That was

757
00:42:41,280 --> 00:42:44,080
Speaker 7: a guy named Jess Staley who left the bank in

758
00:42:44,120 --> 00:42:48,719
Speaker 7: twenty thirteen and has kind of since fallen into disrepute

759
00:42:48,840 --> 00:42:51,440
Speaker 7: in large part as a result of his connections to Epstein.

760
00:42:51,840 --> 00:42:55,400
Speaker 7: But an Aerdos was at various points relying or turning

761
00:42:55,440 --> 00:43:00,120
Speaker 7: to Epstein for advice, was very much aware of how

762
00:43:00,200 --> 00:43:01,880
Speaker 7: much money he was bringing in, and I think that

763
00:43:02,040 --> 00:43:06,560
Speaker 7: made her very eager to keep this lucrative client in

764
00:43:07,080 --> 00:43:09,920
Speaker 7: good standing. And one of the things that really became

765
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:12,080
Speaker 7: clear to us over and over as we reported this

766
00:43:12,120 --> 00:43:15,120
Speaker 7: story and read all these documents is that the biggest

767
00:43:15,120 --> 00:43:17,960
Speaker 7: problem here was simply read and the bank knew that

768
00:43:18,040 --> 00:43:20,759
Speaker 7: they were raking in millions and millions of dollars as

769
00:43:20,800 --> 00:43:23,680
Speaker 7: a direct and indirect result of their affiliation with Epstein.

770
00:43:24,040 --> 00:43:27,239
Speaker 7: And you know, that is hard. It's hard to turn

771
00:43:27,320 --> 00:43:30,440
Speaker 7: down that amount of money, even when you're a bank

772
00:43:30,520 --> 00:43:32,080
Speaker 7: with billions of dollars in assets.

773
00:43:32,320 --> 00:43:35,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, So talk to us about

774
00:43:35,640 --> 00:43:39,640
Speaker 1: There's like an email which sort of is a smoking

775
00:43:39,680 --> 00:43:42,000
Speaker 1: gun on who knew what when? Right?

776
00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:44,000
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, there are a couple of emails where

777
00:43:44,080 --> 00:43:47,239
Speaker 7: Diamond's name gets mentioned. In one case, people within the

778
00:43:47,280 --> 00:43:50,359
Speaker 7: bank are debating whether to keep his account open or not,

779
00:43:50,960 --> 00:43:54,360
Speaker 7: and they mentioned that the matter is pending diamond review.

780
00:43:54,600 --> 00:43:57,960
Speaker 7: There's another email around that same time where it mentions

781
00:43:58,000 --> 00:44:01,520
Speaker 7: that the general counsel of the bank is reviewing documents

782
00:44:01,520 --> 00:44:05,680
Speaker 7: about epstein'sccount for Jamie. And you know, Jess Staley, who

783
00:44:05,719 --> 00:44:08,920
Speaker 7: is the guy who was most closely associated with Epstein

784
00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:11,560
Speaker 7: and was his primary defender in the Bank, has said

785
00:44:11,680 --> 00:44:14,720
Speaker 7: under oath under penalty of perjury that he on multiple

786
00:44:14,719 --> 00:44:18,560
Speaker 7: occasions talked with Jamie Diamond about Epstein in the context

787
00:44:18,680 --> 00:44:22,560
Speaker 7: of Epstein being accused and then pleading guilty to sex crimes.

788
00:44:22,640 --> 00:44:25,920
Speaker 6: So again Diamond denies that also under oath. So I

789
00:44:25,920 --> 00:44:27,600
Speaker 6: don't know. I mean, there is certainly.

790
00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:29,799
Speaker 7: An awareness at a high level within the Bank of

791
00:44:29,840 --> 00:44:32,000
Speaker 7: what was happening, and there was certainly a number of

792
00:44:32,080 --> 00:44:34,960
Speaker 7: people that seemed to have been under the impression that

793
00:44:35,080 --> 00:44:37,480
Speaker 7: Jamie Diamond was in the loop, and that would certainly

794
00:44:37,560 --> 00:44:41,560
Speaker 7: fit with Diamond's self professed and self proclaimed mo as

795
00:44:41,600 --> 00:44:43,880
Speaker 7: a very detail oriented executive.

796
00:44:44,080 --> 00:44:46,480
Speaker 1: I would love you just like have another bite on

797
00:44:46,840 --> 00:44:50,600
Speaker 1: how you do this reporting and just because I think

798
00:44:50,680 --> 00:44:54,759
Speaker 1: it's so fundamental and a lot of us who are

799
00:44:54,920 --> 00:44:59,080
Speaker 1: media consumers maybe don't quite understand how this works.

800
00:44:59,360 --> 00:45:01,640
Speaker 7: Yeah, No, really appreciate that question, and you're interest in

801
00:45:01,640 --> 00:45:03,319
Speaker 7: this because I do think this is one of the

802
00:45:03,320 --> 00:45:06,200
Speaker 7: things that is sometimes this is the media's fault that

803
00:45:06,239 --> 00:45:08,640
Speaker 7: we are not as transparent as we could be about

804
00:45:08,640 --> 00:45:11,080
Speaker 7: how the sausage gets made here. But a story like

805
00:45:11,120 --> 00:45:15,040
Speaker 7: this is it's just extremely complicated, time consuming, labor and

806
00:45:15,080 --> 00:45:18,279
Speaker 7: resource intensive. And so you know, we were going through

807
00:45:18,320 --> 00:45:22,720
Speaker 7: these huge volumes of transcripts and emails and financial records

808
00:45:22,760 --> 00:45:25,720
Speaker 7: things like that from many different sources in many places,

809
00:45:25,800 --> 00:45:28,080
Speaker 7: which itself is like it's hard to figure out where

810
00:45:28,080 --> 00:45:29,719
Speaker 7: to get this stuff. We spend a lot of time

811
00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:32,319
Speaker 7: compiling the stuff and then even more time reading it.

812
00:45:32,400 --> 00:45:35,480
Speaker 7: We're entering things line by line into a spreadsheet that

813
00:45:35,520 --> 00:45:38,879
Speaker 7: explains to it for our own purposes, what happened, when

814
00:45:38,920 --> 00:45:41,239
Speaker 7: it happened, how we know it happened, things like that.

815
00:45:41,320 --> 00:45:43,759
Speaker 7: And this is a gigantic spreadsheet. I mean, I don't

816
00:45:43,800 --> 00:45:46,279
Speaker 7: know how many roads it has, but like thousands for sure.

817
00:45:46,480 --> 00:45:49,040
Speaker 7: And then we start identifying all the people involved with this,

818
00:45:49,120 --> 00:45:52,160
Speaker 7: and we try to call and we do not succeed

819
00:45:52,239 --> 00:45:53,960
Speaker 7: with all of them, but we do succeed with some

820
00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:57,520
Speaker 7: of them. That then compliments our understanding of everything in

821
00:45:57,560 --> 00:46:00,040
Speaker 7: the spreadsheet. And then we have to go through and

822
00:46:00,160 --> 00:46:04,520
Speaker 7: start looking for patterns and figuring out what is known when,

823
00:46:05,120 --> 00:46:08,760
Speaker 7: why it matters, and then trying to kind of assemble

824
00:46:08,800 --> 00:46:12,640
Speaker 7: this into a coherent narrative that actually explains how this

825
00:46:12,719 --> 00:46:16,680
Speaker 7: all worked and how these different pieces interacted, and you know,

826
00:46:16,760 --> 00:46:19,279
Speaker 7: and then you have to go to the people who

827
00:46:19,320 --> 00:46:21,920
Speaker 7: are implicated in the story, whether it's the bank or

828
00:46:22,000 --> 00:46:26,160
Speaker 7: Jamie Diamond or Jess Staley or Mary Airdus and seek

829
00:46:26,239 --> 00:46:28,319
Speaker 7: to understand things from their perspective and trying to get

830
00:46:28,320 --> 00:46:31,680
Speaker 7: their input and also understanding that a story like this

831
00:46:31,840 --> 00:46:33,560
Speaker 7: that's a you know, it's a big story that The

832
00:46:33,560 --> 00:46:35,400
Speaker 7: New York Times is going to promote.

833
00:46:35,200 --> 00:46:38,080
Speaker 6: Very heavily, is going to be held up to a microscope.

834
00:46:38,320 --> 00:46:40,919
Speaker 7: And these are a lot of these people that we write

835
00:46:40,920 --> 00:46:43,719
Speaker 7: about an a regular basis, not even in this story necessarily,

836
00:46:43,719 --> 00:46:45,759
Speaker 7: but just in general, are people who tend to be

837
00:46:45,840 --> 00:46:50,640
Speaker 7: lutigitious and have the resources and sometimes the appetite to

838
00:46:51,080 --> 00:46:53,560
Speaker 7: either threaten us or in fact sue us. And so

839
00:46:53,719 --> 00:46:57,360
Speaker 7: things have to get bulletproofed from like fifteen different angles.

840
00:46:57,520 --> 00:47:00,360
Speaker 7: And that also is very hard, and it's just not

841
00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:03,040
Speaker 7: the kind of thing that you can It would be

842
00:47:03,160 --> 00:47:05,719
Speaker 7: very hard for like a normal person on their own

843
00:47:06,160 --> 00:47:08,520
Speaker 7: to do this kind of reporting because it requires an

844
00:47:08,640 --> 00:47:10,880
Speaker 7: entire institution. It's like a privilege to be able to

845
00:47:10,920 --> 00:47:13,640
Speaker 7: work at the New York Times with awesome colleagues who

846
00:47:13,640 --> 00:47:15,960
Speaker 7: are so good at this and it it certainly it

847
00:47:16,040 --> 00:47:18,520
Speaker 7: like frustrates me sometimes, not in this context, but just

848
00:47:18,560 --> 00:47:20,719
Speaker 7: in general, where you know, there are people all over

849
00:47:20,760 --> 00:47:23,399
Speaker 7: the New York Times and other big news organizations as well,

850
00:47:23,600 --> 00:47:25,600
Speaker 7: who do this kind of reporting day in and day out,

851
00:47:25,680 --> 00:47:27,680
Speaker 7: and then you know, it's easy to kind of take

852
00:47:27,719 --> 00:47:28,280
Speaker 7: that for granted.

853
00:47:28,320 --> 00:47:29,319
Speaker 6: As a consumer of the news.

854
00:47:29,400 --> 00:47:32,680
Speaker 7: I think we in the media need to be like

855
00:47:32,760 --> 00:47:37,360
Speaker 7: a lot more proactive in explaining what goes into this stuff,

856
00:47:37,400 --> 00:47:39,359
Speaker 7: because otherwise it's just easy to be like, well, this

857
00:47:39,400 --> 00:47:41,520
Speaker 7: is the story and they told the story that they knew,

858
00:47:41,560 --> 00:47:44,640
Speaker 7: and it's like, well, we know it because we spent

859
00:47:45,280 --> 00:47:47,960
Speaker 7: just I mean so so wrong working on this.

860
00:47:48,120 --> 00:47:50,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would love to know, like when you were

861
00:47:50,200 --> 00:47:54,920
Speaker 1: talking to these people at JP Morgan about this data,

862
00:47:55,040 --> 00:47:58,040
Speaker 1: I mean, was there any sense like that this was

863
00:47:58,160 --> 00:48:00,880
Speaker 1: coming that someday people would be able to put it

864
00:48:00,880 --> 00:48:03,880
Speaker 1: together like these A lot of this stuff is public,

865
00:48:04,400 --> 00:48:07,360
Speaker 1: your big public bank. Like, I just am curious of

866
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:11,560
Speaker 1: this psychology of it. Now when you call them, I mean, like,

867
00:48:11,600 --> 00:48:13,680
Speaker 1: are people I'm just curious.

868
00:48:13,800 --> 00:48:14,560
Speaker 6: Yeah, they are.

869
00:48:14,920 --> 00:48:16,960
Speaker 7: I think inside the bank and among the kind of

870
00:48:17,000 --> 00:48:20,080
Speaker 7: alumni of the bank, there are two or three types

871
00:48:20,080 --> 00:48:23,440
Speaker 7: of reactions. One is people are indignant that we are

872
00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:26,000
Speaker 7: still writing about this. I think they have a lot

873
00:48:26,040 --> 00:48:28,600
Speaker 7: of these people convinced themselves that they were trying to

874
00:48:28,640 --> 00:48:30,439
Speaker 7: do the right thing. And yes, it's hard when you're

875
00:48:30,480 --> 00:48:32,800
Speaker 7: at a big institution to get them to pay attention,

876
00:48:32,880 --> 00:48:35,000
Speaker 7: and we make mistakes sometimes, but this was not a

877
00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:36,799
Speaker 7: big deal. And look, to be clear, I don't think

878
00:48:36,920 --> 00:48:39,840
Speaker 7: JP Morgan understood the full scope of what Epstein was

879
00:48:39,880 --> 00:48:40,719
Speaker 7: doing at.

880
00:48:40,640 --> 00:48:42,239
Speaker 6: The time that they were turning a blind eye.

881
00:48:42,280 --> 00:48:43,799
Speaker 7: They had every reason to know that he was doing

882
00:48:43,800 --> 00:48:47,359
Speaker 7: really suspicious stuff, and he had admitted doing really bad stuff.

883
00:48:47,400 --> 00:48:50,520
Speaker 6: But I don't think that picture right now. They're not psychic.

884
00:48:50,800 --> 00:48:52,839
Speaker 7: But I also think that even within the bank now

885
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:55,279
Speaker 7: where they are, you know, they gave it, ultimately, gave

886
00:48:55,320 --> 00:48:59,040
Speaker 7: us a statement that expressed regret for ever having had

887
00:48:59,080 --> 00:49:01,840
Speaker 7: him as a client and denying responsibility for the crimes

888
00:49:01,840 --> 00:49:04,719
Speaker 7: he committed. But even you know, we sent ultimately JB.

889
00:49:04,840 --> 00:49:06,759
Speaker 7: Morgan a list of I don't know, it must have

890
00:49:06,760 --> 00:49:09,200
Speaker 7: been like one hundred or one hundred and fifty questions.

891
00:49:09,280 --> 00:49:12,120
Speaker 7: I would guess about every specific point we're mentioning in

892
00:49:12,160 --> 00:49:14,480
Speaker 7: the story. And they sent back a very long, kind

893
00:49:14,480 --> 00:49:16,680
Speaker 7: of point by point rebuttal to most of this and

894
00:49:16,800 --> 00:49:19,120
Speaker 7: acknowledged some of it. But they fought in a very

895
00:49:19,200 --> 00:49:22,720
Speaker 7: kind of minute level of detail about things and denied

896
00:49:22,719 --> 00:49:25,000
Speaker 7: some things. And what struck me at least as kind

897
00:49:25,000 --> 00:49:30,040
Speaker 7: of a semantic dissembly way very corporate lawyer. Yeah, exactly,

898
00:49:30,120 --> 00:49:32,640
Speaker 7: And it does not suggest an institution that is really

899
00:49:33,239 --> 00:49:35,719
Speaker 7: ready or willing to own up to the fact that

900
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:39,000
Speaker 7: they made a terrible mistake here. They're trying to mitigate

901
00:49:39,040 --> 00:49:42,239
Speaker 7: and minimize every bit of the story at every turn.

902
00:49:42,280 --> 00:49:44,880
Speaker 7: And to be clear, that's not that didn't particularly surprise me.

903
00:49:45,000 --> 00:49:48,879
Speaker 7: That is the way big companies and big institutions generally work.

904
00:49:48,920 --> 00:49:52,839
Speaker 7: I always, as an eternal naive optimist, I'm always kind

905
00:49:52,840 --> 00:49:54,959
Speaker 7: of half expecting that maybe this will be the time

906
00:49:55,280 --> 00:49:57,080
Speaker 7: that the right thing to do is is, like, you

907
00:49:57,239 --> 00:50:01,359
Speaker 7: screwed up badly, just apologize, rather then try to keep

908
00:50:01,440 --> 00:50:03,320
Speaker 7: kind of thrunk stand in the gears.

909
00:50:03,360 --> 00:50:06,440
Speaker 1: But yeah, no, and I think that's a really good

910
00:50:07,080 --> 00:50:10,680
Speaker 1: salient point. Thank you, thank you, thank you, David. I

911
00:50:10,719 --> 00:50:13,080
Speaker 1: am looking forward to having you back for your next

912
00:50:13,200 --> 00:50:15,800
Speaker 1: great big piece of reporting in three years.

913
00:50:17,800 --> 00:50:19,200
Speaker 6: Thanks Molly, I appreciate it.

914
00:50:22,000 --> 00:50:24,160
Speaker 4: No more perfectly.

915
00:50:26,280 --> 00:50:31,240
Speaker 3: Jesse Kennon Somali in the Never Ending Flood the Zone

916
00:50:31,320 --> 00:50:34,640
Speaker 3: with shit Bannon approach to politics, the Senate has evoked

917
00:50:34,640 --> 00:50:37,359
Speaker 3: a nuclear option to speed through Trump's appointees.

918
00:50:37,440 --> 00:50:38,440
Speaker 4: What are you seeing here.

919
00:50:38,440 --> 00:50:43,520
Speaker 1: John Thune, head of the Senate, most hand man in America.

920
00:50:43,120 --> 00:50:45,040
Speaker 4: Seven eleven, hot dog of a look.

921
00:50:44,880 --> 00:50:51,320
Speaker 1: Beef jerky baby. He is, when not sunning himself, very

922
00:50:51,360 --> 00:50:54,960
Speaker 1: mad that basically Democrats are coming up the works with

923
00:50:55,040 --> 00:50:59,440
Speaker 1: GOP nominees, and so we're seeing they're going to do

924
00:50:59,560 --> 00:51:02,520
Speaker 1: these noes in block. Then they won't have to worry

925
00:51:02,560 --> 00:51:06,200
Speaker 1: about Democrats. Look, I mean, there's so many things that

926
00:51:06,239 --> 00:51:10,239
Speaker 1: they're doing that are problematic, but this will ultimately Democrats

927
00:51:10,280 --> 00:51:12,120
Speaker 1: will be able to do it when they get in power,

928
00:51:12,400 --> 00:51:15,600
Speaker 1: and they'll be able to do these nominees for ambassadorships.

929
00:51:15,640 --> 00:51:18,200
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's fine when it's ambassadorships. God

930
00:51:18,280 --> 00:51:21,120
Speaker 1: knows what they'll cook up next. But this is not

931
00:51:21,600 --> 00:51:23,759
Speaker 1: the thing that keeps me up at night, and there

932
00:51:23,840 --> 00:51:25,799
Speaker 1: are a lot of other things that do keep me

933
00:51:25,880 --> 00:51:30,080
Speaker 1: up at night. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.

934
00:51:30,560 --> 00:51:36,279
Speaker 1: Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear

935
00:51:36,560 --> 00:51:40,960
Speaker 1: the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos.

936
00:51:41,200 --> 00:51:44,080
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a

937
00:51:44,120 --> 00:51:48,120
Speaker 1: friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.