WEBVTT - Fast Politics Episode_518 0:00:00.640 --> 0:00:04.160 Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:07.120 where we discussed the top political headlines with some of 0:00:07.160 --> 0:00:12.119 today's best minds, and a California bill says ice agents 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:15.600 can't wear masks in California. We have such a great 0:00:15.640 --> 0:00:19.599 show for you today. CNN's own David oxel Rod stops 0:00:19.640 --> 0:00:26.200 by two parts the Aftermath of political violence. Then we'll 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:29.800 talk to The New York Times is David Enrich about 0:00:29.840 --> 0:00:37.080 his blockbuster reporting on JP Morgan Chase's ties to Jeffrey Epstein. 0:00:37.479 --> 0:00:38.879 But first the news, So. 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:42.800 Molly, in the aftermath of the killing of Charlie Kirk, 0:00:43.080 --> 0:00:48.320 there has been lots of very very bad responses, particularly 0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:50.519 some on the writer are really trying to use this 0:00:50.600 --> 0:00:54.360 to throw i'd say, a gasoline truck on the flames 0:00:54.400 --> 0:00:55.280 that are being brewed. 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:57.560 Yeah, so there have been a lot of people on 0:00:57.560 --> 0:01:01.080 the right saying things like this is war and that 0:01:01.280 --> 0:01:07.240 is terrible, not helpful, very destructive and also not relevant 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:10.679 to the case. We don't know there's a suspect now, 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:13.480 but we don't really know much because this is a 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:16.959 developing story. But when they started saying these things this 0:01:17.000 --> 0:01:19.319 is war, they didn't have a suspect so they didn't 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:21.880 have any sense of what the motivation for any of 0:01:21.920 --> 0:01:25.319 this was. And I think it's really important again we 0:01:25.440 --> 0:01:29.919 all know because of the Internet is so filled with information, 0:01:30.160 --> 0:01:34.720 much of which cannot be necessarily accounted or backed up 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:37.720 or confirmed, that we all have to be really, really 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:41.959 careful before we say things and before we make the 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:47.840 leap between something like an allegation to a statement. And 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:53.400 this guy who is now in custody is accused of 0:01:53.440 --> 0:01:58.160 being the murderer, but again, we still don't know really 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:01.920 what his motivations were, and we had people on the 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:06.040 right really pouring gasoline on that. What was actually, if 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:09.160 we're going to say, shockingly good, was that there is 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:12.840 a Republican called Tom Taylors who is conveniently not running 0:02:12.840 --> 0:02:15.919 for reelection and comes from a purple state. We've seen 0:02:15.960 --> 0:02:19.760 this kind of bravery from people like Jeff Flake, people 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:22.800 from purple states who aren't running for reelection, but I'll 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:24.919 take it where I can get it. Tom Taylors said 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:28.440 he was disgusted by conservatives declaring war after Kirk was killed. 0:02:28.520 --> 0:02:31.280 That is the I think the appropriate way to feel, 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:37.320 because it's highly inflammatory to declare war on anyone, especially 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:41.200 a large percentage of the country for any reason, and 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:43.680 especially when you don't know any of the facts of the. 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:46.240 Case, especially when some of these people who are taking 0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:48.720 the opportunity to do this were literally tried to kick 0:02:48.800 --> 0:02:51.440 Charlie Kirk out of MAGA like days before this. 0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:54.400 And that is another part of those stories. We don't know. 0:02:54.720 --> 0:02:58.000 There was a lot of internal tension between Charlie Kirk 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:01.240 and a part of MEGA called the groy We don't 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:04.679 know really what happened, but we certainly know one thing, 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:08.320 which is the man in custody is not trans and 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:11.880 he is not LGBTQ. So I think that we know 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:16.600 for sure, and I think that is really important since 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:20.679 there were early reports that the bullet casing had pro 0:03:20.919 --> 0:03:24.680 trans writing on it, which in fact was just normal 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:29.919 bullet marking. So great job team, Great great job team. 0:03:30.240 --> 0:03:34.840 Wall Street Journal known for very good reporting, so that 0:03:35.040 --> 0:03:41.280 was not great. But the suspected shooter not trans, not LGBTQ, Somalia. 0:03:41.560 --> 0:03:44.160 You and I we like good news in this section, 0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:46.640 but it's not always easy for me to find it 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:49.120 when I'm working on this. I know we try, though, 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:51.280 But I think what's really interesting is a lot of 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:55.520 people are saying that Chicago's pushback against Trump is why 0:03:55.600 --> 0:03:58.840 he hasn't really invaded yet. What we saw yesterday was 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:01.840 kind of silly with RFK and Pam Bondi going in 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:04.160 and just invading a vape shop. 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:08.640 Oh, I didn't see that. Wait, Jesse, I miss this news. 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:11.280 Tell me what happened, because this this is the good 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:12.480 news I'm looking for. 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:14.880 Can we play a clip, Well, there's not really a clip, 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:17.440 but let me set a seed for you. There's illegal vapes. 0:04:17.640 --> 0:04:20.000 They got Amali America. It's saved. 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:22.160 I'm going to tell you something, and you're I don't 0:04:22.160 --> 0:04:24.039 think you're going to be happy here. This is like 0:04:24.080 --> 0:04:26.360 you and I are going to fight now because I'm 0:04:26.400 --> 0:04:29.599 more baby brained than you are. Vaping is bad. 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:31.640 Oh, I hate vaping, and we have. 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:34.280 A lot of illegal vape shops and like closing down 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:38.600 vape shops. If RFK Junior would just do that, then Dianu, 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:40.839 I would not be so upset. 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:45.080 If I never smell a bubblegum flavored smoke again for 0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:47.160 the rest of my life, I will be much much, 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:48.000 much happier. 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:51.000 I've never smelled bubble gum flavored a babe. 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:53.760 Anyway, go on I think one of the things that 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:57.279 this shows though, is that pushing back against Trump makes 0:04:57.320 --> 0:04:58.120 them chicken out. 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:04.680 Yeah, Taco baby, be tako. Yeah, this is really important 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:07.960 if you push back against Trump, and I mean push 0:05:08.040 --> 0:05:11.359 back in the way like Pritzker did, which was he said, 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:15.280 this is illegal, we have lawyers, we will fight this 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:18.919 in the courts, we will not participate in this, we 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:22.600 will not allow this, we will not roll over. Then 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:25.760 that works, And I think these people who made deals 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:30.599 with Trump, these lawyers, these universities, you have no one 0:05:30.640 --> 0:05:33.440 to protect you now because you are in the extra 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:38.400 legal right. You have no one who can say there's 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:41.040 no law that can protect you because you are making 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:44.719 these kind of deals that aren't technically legal. Whereas if 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:48.279 you are smart and you act in a smart way 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:52.359 and you push back in a legal way, you can win. 0:05:52.680 --> 0:05:56.200 They will back down. And that should be the lesson here. 0:05:56.600 --> 0:05:59.440 And also credit where it's due. Brandon Johnson is showing 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:02.919 the way that mayors can react to Trump too, unlike 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:04.400 our mayor Eric Adams. 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:06.479 Yeah, I would like to take a minute to say 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:11.120 that having a captured mayor who is basically serving at 0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:14.920 the behest of Donald Trump not great, bad, said, I 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:17.719 think you have to give it to Pritzker here too, 0:06:18.200 --> 0:06:23.719 because Pritzker created the infrastructure for Brandon Johnson. I wonder 0:06:23.760 --> 0:06:26.680 if our governor again, it's not on her yet, but 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:29.360 she could definitely take a lot of sort of this 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:32.440 is how we need our governors to behave. 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:35.520 Yeah, but Trump is sitting in the National Guard to 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:38.320 a city which is Memphis, and he says it's over 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:38.960 the crime rate. 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:41.520 I want to also talk about this piece about how 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:48.160 National guardsmen find being dispatched to do things that are 0:06:48.279 --> 0:06:52.160 not their jobs, and how these National guardsmen are like 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:57.120 actually pretty traumatized by policing civilians because that was never 0:06:57.160 --> 0:07:02.039 their job, or picking up trash, crushing it, candy crushing it. 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:05.320 That this crew they're not having fun, but more importantly, 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:07.920 they're like being actually traumatized. A lot of these people 0:07:07.960 --> 0:07:11.840 are young guys. They signed up to, you know, save 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:17.520 drowning people in a flood or protect their country. They 0:07:17.560 --> 0:07:22.680 did not sign up for the kind of deeply political 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:26.240 assignment they're being put on. And so there was a 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:30.080 reporting about this. There was a sort of they talked 0:07:30.080 --> 0:07:33.560 to a lot of these National guardsmen. They compile the 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:36.440 report the National Guard and then they accidentally sent it 0:07:36.480 --> 0:07:39.160 to a bunch of different journalists because this is the 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:42.960 well oiled government that we live in. But it did 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:46.600 show just the trauma that these guardsmen are having from 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:50.720 just being put in a political situation. Really good example 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:53.960 of how these sort of second order effects of trump Ism, 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:56.760 where Trump thinks he's doing one thing, but he's actually 0:07:56.800 --> 0:07:59.040 traumatizing a whole other group of people that he has 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:02.720 no intention of traumatizing. And I think it's worth thinking 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:05.920 whenever you're reading these stories about Trump, is we're thinking 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:08.840 about the second order of facts one hundred percent. 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:11.680 Speaking of second order effects, one of the things that 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:14.600 chaos is not good for is the economy. 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:17.560 Trump's ice just wrecked a whole bunch of. 0:08:17.600 --> 0:08:20.280 Our relations with South Korea after this high end a 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:24.480 plant incident, and South Area has paused work on at 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:26.360 least twenty two different projects. 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:29.160 Yeah, by the way, as a country, that's just sort 0:08:29.200 --> 0:08:33.400 of waddling into stagflation, which is this thing. If you 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:36.160 listen to this podcast, you know all about stagflation because 0:08:36.720 --> 0:08:41.360 I have very specific nightmares. But stagflation is an economy 0:08:41.360 --> 0:08:44.920 and recession that is plagued by inflation. And I think 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:47.360 that once the FED cuts interest rates, we're going to 0:08:47.360 --> 0:08:50.280 start to see that because, as we all know, cutting 0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:53.520 interest rates will mean that it will be inflationary. Dollars 0:08:53.520 --> 0:08:55.720 will not be that it will not be worth as 0:08:55.800 --> 0:08:57.680 much as they were before, and we're going to have 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:00.000 some big problems. But what we really need is a country. 0:09:00.280 --> 0:09:02.600 Is the money from South Korea, because South Korea there 0:09:02.840 --> 0:09:05.360 is a really good economy, and they were building lots 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:08.720 of stuff in our country in order to increase manufacturing. 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:13.600 And those South Koreans who were arrested and sent home 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:16.559 but first kept on a jet for hours and hours, 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:20.080 those guys were actually building a huge, multi billion dollar 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:23.920 factory in Georgia that was touted by Brian Kemp. And 0:09:23.920 --> 0:09:26.560 now they've gone home and they're taking all their money 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:33.840 with them. Talk about a second order effect. David Axelrod 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:36.800 is the chief political analyst for CNN and the author 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:42.080 of Believer, My Forty Years in Politics. Welcome David Axelrod 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:43.319 to FAT Politics. 0:09:43.760 --> 0:09:44.080 Thanks. 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:47.000 I wonder if we could start by talking about Spencer 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:54.960 Cox's really I thought excellent Sea. So they caught the Charlie. 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:57.000 The suspect aspect. 0:09:57.040 --> 0:10:00.960 Yes, they've arrested suspect and Governor Cox, the governor of Utah, 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:02.400 was making a speech. 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:06.440 Governor Cox, after delivering all the details of the arrest 0:10:06.720 --> 0:10:09.960 about this young man who was arrested, gave just an 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:15.840 incredibly heartfelt, passionate hobbily at about what this moment in 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:21.280 history is. He said, I thought, very movingly that he 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:24.280 had prayed that this wasn't going to be a Utah 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:27.840 and who was involved in this, maybe because he didn't 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:31.839 think of Utah as a place where people acted in 0:10:31.880 --> 0:10:34.760 anger like that, but it turned out it was. But 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:37.760 he was, you know, his plea basically was to the 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:42.880 better angels of our nature and to recognize that we 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:47.320 are doomed if we are trapped in an ever increasing 0:10:47.440 --> 0:10:51.600 spiral of hate and division and violence. It was so 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:54.120 important that he said it because there were people, you know, 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:57.280 there were voices out there, Steve Bannon and others who 0:10:57.320 --> 0:11:01.520 were saying, this is war, Alex Jones, the inference being 0:11:01.679 --> 0:11:06.240 go pick up your guns and now we don't need 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:08.720 that on the left or the right right. So that 0:11:08.840 --> 0:11:10.120 was why that was so important. 0:11:10.440 --> 0:11:13.200 And I thought what was really also important about this 0:11:13.480 --> 0:11:17.880 was that he talked about the nineteen sixties, which are 0:11:17.920 --> 0:11:20.720 you know, we are the United States of Amnesia, and 0:11:20.840 --> 0:11:23.400 so the nineteen sixties are not that long ago. 0:11:25.000 --> 0:11:29.840 If I forget it, it's less about amnesia more about sinility. 0:11:30.040 --> 0:11:34.480 But I lived here. I was a kid. I was 0:11:34.520 --> 0:11:38.160 a kid in the sixties. I lived that Martin Luther King, 0:11:38.520 --> 0:11:41.839 Robert Kennedy, John Kennedy when I was a little boy. 0:11:42.320 --> 0:11:46.400 These were heroes of my youth. And I can tell 0:11:46.440 --> 0:11:49.080 you that at that time. And remember we had National 0:11:49.120 --> 0:11:53.559 guardsmen on Kent State Campus in Ohio in nineteen seventy 0:11:53.600 --> 0:11:59.160 who killed four unarmed student protesters. It felt as if 0:11:59.240 --> 0:12:03.640 things were coming apart. It felt like that. And remember 0:12:03.640 --> 0:12:05.520 we were involved in a war then in which five 0:12:05.600 --> 0:12:09.720 hundred thousand Americans were engaged, fifty thousand lost their lives. 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:12.560 So it really did feel that way. 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:12.960 We did. 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:17.920 We were able to write the ship then, but we 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:22.040 didn't have social media then, which I think the role 0:12:22.200 --> 0:12:27.280 that social media has played in and the fraying of 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:31.640 our social fabric, I think can't be under estimate. You know, 0:12:31.720 --> 0:12:36.439 it was presented to us as a tool to create community, 0:12:36.920 --> 0:12:39.479 but what it really is is a tool to divide 0:12:39.960 --> 0:12:44.520 the community into deeply divided camps. Because the thing and 0:12:44.559 --> 0:12:47.240 you know this, you're student of all this, Molly. The 0:12:47.320 --> 0:12:50.920 thing that keeps people online is their great inspiration is 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:54.760 hate and division and fear and anger and resentment and 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:59.240 conspiracy theories. And the more you evidence responsiveness to that, 0:12:59.280 --> 0:13:03.640 the deeper you get shoved into a silo. And then 0:13:03.720 --> 0:13:06.640 we are where we are now. Politics has come to 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:12.280 reflect that same that same culture, and we're gonna have 0:13:12.320 --> 0:13:16.360 to push back with tremendous force to stop the momentum 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:20.040 of the divisiveness and the hate and the violence. 0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:24.680 Yeah, I wonder if we could talk for a minute 0:13:24.840 --> 0:13:29.160 about kind of where democrats are right now in the 0:13:29.200 --> 0:13:34.040 wilderness and what that looks like. I have been. You know, 0:13:34.160 --> 0:13:36.800 I was just interviewed by someone and he was like, 0:13:36.880 --> 0:13:40.680 say something that you think is positive, and I was like, 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:44.240 I could think of like fifteen things like I think 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:49.720 like Pritzger has been incredible and has broken through Newsom 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:53.120 has cracked the Internet, even if you don't agree with 0:13:53.200 --> 0:13:57.600 him or ideologically like him. My man has out Trump 0:13:57.679 --> 0:14:01.520 Trump on Twitter. Like, you know, run for something is 0:14:01.559 --> 0:14:06.160 being swamped with thousands upon thousands of people who want 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:09.520 to run for office. Robert Garcia got the birthday book 0:14:09.800 --> 0:14:13.600 subpoena from the Epstein Estate, and we now, I mean, 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:17.760 I just have seen a lot of really impressive movement 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:21.000 from Democrats over the last couple of weeks. So I'm 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:22.440 wondering what you think about that. 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:27.680 I think that there has been a stouter resistance to Trump. 0:14:28.160 --> 0:14:30.760 But I would just say to you, not one thing 0:14:31.360 --> 0:14:35.720 that you said just now actually speaks to the day 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:39.600 to day lives of people. And one of the problems 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:43.400 that I think, I think that there are things that 0:14:43.440 --> 0:14:47.240 Trump is doing that warrant that resistance. I think as 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:50.360 a tactical matter, you can get a lot of clicks 0:14:50.360 --> 0:14:53.080 and raise a lot of money by trying to match 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:57.760 him control for troll. But ultimately there are two things 0:14:57.760 --> 0:15:00.440 that are required for Democrats to succeed. One is to 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:06.920 be steadfast in standing up for principles. Yes, that's extraordinarily important. 0:15:06.960 --> 0:15:09.840 The other is to ask the question how did we 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:13.160 get here? How did we get here? And why do 0:15:13.320 --> 0:15:16.160 so many people? How did so many working people in 0:15:16.200 --> 0:15:21.360 this country come to view the Democratic Party, the party 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:24.200 of the self styled party of working people, as a 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:29.160 party of elites, of failed institutions and a status quo 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:32.680 that is rigged against them. How did that happen? And 0:15:32.760 --> 0:15:35.920 so you know, and I think it's pretty obvious that 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:39.520 the system hasn't really worked for large numbers of people, 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:43.760 and the Democratic Party ought to be in the forefront 0:15:43.920 --> 0:15:47.040 of that fact. Donald Trump's not the answer. Donald Trump 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:51.560 is a symptom of alienation, but he's not the answer. 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:54.560 I mean, the only American family who he's making more 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:57.360 prosperous is his own and perhaps some of his friends, 0:15:57.560 --> 0:16:01.120 not the people who elected him. But the Democrat Party 0:16:01.160 --> 0:16:05.040 has to be an authentic alternative. And the answer can't 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:08.840 be We're going to restore everything Donald Trump has destroyed. 0:16:09.240 --> 0:16:12.520 There's a lot that Donald Trump has destroyed that should 0:16:12.520 --> 0:16:16.520 be resurrected. There are values that he's trampled that are 0:16:16.640 --> 0:16:20.040 fundamental to who we are as a country. But it's 0:16:20.040 --> 0:16:22.760 also true that I was in Washington for a couple 0:16:22.800 --> 0:16:24.440 of years. I served in the White House. I got 0:16:24.480 --> 0:16:26.360 a bird's eye view of it. There are a lot 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:29.080 of things that didn't make sense. There are a lot 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:33.000 of ways in which we run the government that reflects 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:36.960 the twentieth century and not the twenty first century, and 0:16:37.280 --> 0:16:42.040 where it's not an agile, responsive place. There is way 0:16:42.080 --> 0:16:45.600 too much influence of big money, and it's just gotten 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:49.560 worse with Trump. So the question is for Democrats to succeed, 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:54.840 they have to be stout in resistance to the trespasses 0:16:54.840 --> 0:16:57.120 of Trump, but they also have to project a vision 0:16:57.400 --> 0:17:00.280 of how you're actually going to build something that is 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:03.440 responsive to the day to day problems of people, that 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:09.159 is resistant to the influence of big money. And until 0:17:09.280 --> 0:17:12.280 the party is speaking to that in a way that 0:17:12.400 --> 0:17:15.960 is convincing and compelling and authentic, it's still going to 0:17:15.960 --> 0:17:16.640 be a struggle. 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:19.200 You want my hottest take, I'm going to push back, 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:24.600 even though what you're saying is not necessarily controversial, I'm 0:17:24.640 --> 0:17:28.080 going to say I don't think that any of that 0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:32.000 matters if Democrats aren't willing to sell and like, for example, 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:35.160 if we look at Biden World, and there's certainly more 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:38.480 than a lot of room to criticize Biden World, but 0:17:38.640 --> 0:17:42.480 legislatively they were able to transfer I mean things like 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:45.560 the child tax credit. They were able to transfer wealth 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:48.640 from the rich to the poor in a way that 0:17:49.080 --> 0:17:52.399 you know, in my lifetime, there were a number of 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:58.320 legislative wins. But their staunch refusal to sell nothing ever 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:03.119 to anyone meant that. But you know by year three 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:05.720 when they were like, why is no one covering us? 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:10.600 It didn't matter. People didn't believe it. So I just wonder, 0:18:10.880 --> 0:18:13.960 if I think you're absolutely right, big money number one, 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:20.120 biggest problem citizens United. I mean everyone look at TikTok. 0:18:20.359 --> 0:18:22.679 You know they were going to get banned and then 0:18:22.680 --> 0:18:24.760 they got lobbyists and now they're not. But I just 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:27.600 wonder how much of this is, like, how much of 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:31.119 this is a legislative problem, which is a real problem, 0:18:31.160 --> 0:18:33.760 and how much of this is like in like, there's. 0:18:33.600 --> 0:18:36.080 A communicacious problem. But I think it's more than what 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:41.640 you suggest. And look, I applaud a lot of what 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:45.000 they did. I disagreed with some of the things that 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:47.560 they did, and there's no doubt that they were piss 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:50.800 poor salesman and Biden was a piss poor salesman. But 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:54.399 you know what, you can't job oom people molly into 0:18:54.560 --> 0:19:00.560 thinking that their lives are what their lives aren't. So 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:05.400 you know, the fact is that these things were helpful 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:08.359 and they should have been pitched in the context of 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:12.320 the larger struggle. The problem that as the Democratic Party 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:19.720 has become more of a metropolitan, college educated party, it's 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:22.639 still the party of working people. But it approaches working 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:26.600 people more like missionaries and anthropologists. And we show up 0:19:26.600 --> 0:19:29.080 and we say we're here to help you become more 0:19:29.240 --> 0:19:31.960 like us, and we know what you need and we're 0:19:32.000 --> 0:19:35.040 fighting for what you need. We don't show up with respect. 0:19:35.080 --> 0:19:37.479 We don't ask what is it that you need? What 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:41.359 is going on? How do you know? We don't do that. 0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:44.199 And you know, in the pandemic, we go out on 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:47.080 our balcony and we bang our pots and hail the 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:50.040 essential workers, and as soon as the pandemic's over, they 0:19:50.119 --> 0:19:53.520 become invisible again. So I think there needs to be 0:19:53.600 --> 0:20:00.760 a genuine connection to the people who Democrats purport to represent. 0:20:00.840 --> 0:20:04.200 And so it is a there's no doubt that there 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:07.840 was a failure to sell and and and you know, 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:10.680 in a way, Biden did a little bit of what 0:20:10.720 --> 0:20:14.280 Trump has done in that there was so much talk 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:18.440 about you know, we haven't seen anything like this since Roosevelt, 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:22.879 and it was about his accomplishment, not about the task 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:27.879 at hand. And I think that was a communications problem. 0:20:28.080 --> 0:20:31.199 Uh so uh And and look, one of the insidious 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:35.800 things about Donald Trump is that he whatever else he 0:20:36.040 --> 0:20:39.240 is or isn't, And you can we can have robust 0:20:39.240 --> 0:20:42.960 debates about about it, I guess. But one thing is 0:20:43.240 --> 0:20:49.080 undebatable is he is the greatest salesman. Maybe maybe Roosevelt 0:20:49.119 --> 0:20:50.600 was up there, but he was the He is the 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:54.720 greatest salesman. And you know, he is the P. T. 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:59.520 Barnum of American political and politics. And he you know, 0:20:59.760 --> 0:21:01.960 I think he's going to run into a problem as well, 0:21:01.960 --> 0:21:04.720 because now he's doing what Biden did, and he's telling people, Hey, 0:21:04.760 --> 0:21:08.000 the economy has never been better, right, you know, forget 0:21:08.000 --> 0:21:10.280 about what you see at the cash register. Forget about 0:21:10.320 --> 0:21:13.320 what you see in your rent check, forget about your 0:21:13.359 --> 0:21:17.800 health bill, which is about to shoot up, forget about 0:21:17.800 --> 0:21:20.439 all that stuff. You're doing great. I think that's an 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:23.520 opportunity for Democrats, and I think but I think that's 0:21:23.600 --> 0:21:27.520 where the focus should be. The question is who gets 0:21:27.600 --> 0:21:29.960 your lives and who's going to fight for that. And 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:33.000 by the way, yes, I think that these side trips. 0:21:33.960 --> 0:21:38.159 I mean, you know, I do think like it was 0:21:38.680 --> 0:21:42.440 insane to spend three years before you did something serious 0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:46.800 about the border. Insane, And you know it was wrong 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:51.399 not to be much more active and trying to reopen schools. 0:21:51.480 --> 0:21:53.600 It was you know, there are things that are I 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:59.320 have great solicitude for vulnerable populations. But Democrats allowed themselves 0:21:59.359 --> 0:22:03.840 to be portray trade as caring more about vulnerable populations 0:22:03.880 --> 0:22:08.320 than understanding the vulnerabilities of large numbers of Americans. So 0:22:08.800 --> 0:22:11.479 I think that the party itself has work to do, 0:22:11.520 --> 0:22:15.879 and it's not just enough to be clever in response 0:22:16.000 --> 0:22:18.800 to Trump or to get a lot of clicks or 0:22:18.880 --> 0:22:20.560 raise a lot of small donations. 0:22:21.600 --> 0:22:22.080 It's more. 0:22:22.200 --> 0:22:25.359 It's deeper and more intense for the party to become 0:22:25.359 --> 0:22:26.520 the party it needs to be. 0:22:27.040 --> 0:22:32.440 Yeah, maybe I agree that you can't run people who 0:22:32.440 --> 0:22:36.240 feel elitist. I agree that, but I just wonder, like, 0:22:36.880 --> 0:22:40.520 so my next question is really elitist, but or elitist. 0:22:40.520 --> 0:22:43.880 But so let's talk about like a Grand Platiner from 0:22:44.000 --> 0:22:47.800 Maine who's an oyster shucker and is the harbor master 0:22:47.920 --> 0:22:51.320 of his small town. I mean, is that, like, there 0:22:51.960 --> 0:22:54.600 is no one in Maine who thinks Graham Platiner is 0:22:54.640 --> 0:22:58.120 an elitist? Right, he did like four tours of duty. 0:22:58.720 --> 0:23:01.880 He you know, he's got like as egalitarian a story. 0:23:02.240 --> 0:23:03.600 So you think that's appealing. 0:23:04.240 --> 0:23:06.639 Well, I'm asking you, is that what you're talking about? 0:23:06.600 --> 0:23:09.199 I mean, I think it may be. I think it 0:23:09.280 --> 0:23:11.639 may be. I'm not sure. I know that the folks 0:23:11.640 --> 0:23:14.240 in Washington have decided that it isn't and that they 0:23:14.280 --> 0:23:19.120 want the governor to run who's a very popular politician there, 0:23:19.240 --> 0:23:21.000 but who's seventy seven years old. 0:23:21.520 --> 0:23:25.320 Fact check Jesse Cannon says he is an oyster farmer 0:23:25.520 --> 0:23:28.560 and not a shucker. I assume that if he's farming 0:23:28.560 --> 0:23:31.320 the oysters, eventually, if he's eating them, he's shocking them. 0:23:31.320 --> 0:23:33.600 But yes, well maybe someone else is shocking them and 0:23:33.640 --> 0:23:34.800 he's farming. 0:23:34.359 --> 0:23:36.520 Them, and then he would be an elitist. But I mean, 0:23:36.600 --> 0:23:38.760 is that the answer to that question. 0:23:39.240 --> 0:23:42.560 I think the answer is to have I think that 0:23:43.280 --> 0:23:46.360 I believe very much that the answers bubble up from 0:23:46.400 --> 0:23:48.960 the bottom and not the top. You know, there are 0:23:49.000 --> 0:23:53.600 people in Congress. Marie Glusen camp Perez is a good 0:23:53.600 --> 0:23:59.320 example who's won in a Trump district twice. And Marie 0:23:59.480 --> 0:24:03.960 is someone who authentically speaks for her community and doesn't 0:24:04.000 --> 0:24:08.000 speak She's not Washington's representative to her community. She's her 0:24:08.880 --> 0:24:14.199 community's representative to Washington. And I think more candidates like 0:24:14.320 --> 0:24:18.960 her who are indigenous and home grown and really speak 0:24:19.000 --> 0:24:22.200 for the community are going to help the Democratic party, 0:24:22.240 --> 0:24:24.639 and there are plenty of examples of that around. It 0:24:24.720 --> 0:24:27.560 may not be at the highest level, but you see 0:24:27.600 --> 0:24:30.879 more and more of that now, whether he and you 0:24:30.920 --> 0:24:35.320 know Plantner in Maine is one of those people that's 0:24:35.720 --> 0:24:39.280 you know, that's to be proven, but I you know, 0:24:39.440 --> 0:24:42.800 more and more I see these candidacies emerging, and that 0:24:42.960 --> 0:24:46.520 to me is a hopeful sign. I'll tell you something. 0:24:46.840 --> 0:24:50.760 Democrats lost ninety percent of the counties in this country 0:24:51.080 --> 0:24:56.400 in twenty twenty four. Ninety percent, and I'll tell you 0:24:56.520 --> 0:25:01.760 that is not a prescription for being a a sustained 0:25:03.119 --> 0:25:08.960 majority party in this country. It makes governing almost impossible. 0:25:09.840 --> 0:25:15.480 You can't be simply a metropolitan party. And so yes, 0:25:15.560 --> 0:25:17.920 these homegrown candidates I think are very important. 0:25:18.080 --> 0:25:21.080 And I'm thinking about Jared Golden as another example for sure, 0:25:21.440 --> 0:25:25.720 right in Main he has a completely rural, very trumpy district. Now, 0:25:26.680 --> 0:25:30.879 I agree, and I also want to push back. Just again, 0:25:31.040 --> 0:25:32.159 I'm sorry. 0:25:32.000 --> 0:25:32.480 I'm sure. 0:25:32.840 --> 0:25:36.080 Well, I didn't come here to be I didn't think 0:25:36.119 --> 0:25:38.119 to say I didn't think the name of the podcast 0:25:38.160 --> 0:25:39.359 was the Amen Corners. 0:25:39.960 --> 0:25:43.040 Well, I agree with everything you're saying, but it's this 0:25:43.200 --> 0:25:45.399 is not really like a pushback as much as a 0:25:45.480 --> 0:25:47.639 sort of and we're not supposed to talk about this 0:25:47.680 --> 0:25:51.320 when we talk about Harris, but I do think you 0:25:51.520 --> 0:25:55.720 cannot discount racism and misogyny because when you would talk 0:25:56.040 --> 0:25:59.400 to non college educated women voters, that is the one 0:25:59.840 --> 0:26:04.840 that I think is where it all falls apart. You know, 0:26:04.880 --> 0:26:08.520 they would say, we like her, but we don't know her. 0:26:08.840 --> 0:26:11.639 And I think what they meant was, you know, they 0:26:11.640 --> 0:26:14.120 would say things like, we don't think she's up for it, 0:26:14.520 --> 0:26:18.199 we don't think she has the strength for it, And 0:26:18.280 --> 0:26:23.000 I think those were very polite ways to say that 0:26:23.080 --> 0:26:25.080 they didn't feel comfortable voting for a woman. 0:26:25.400 --> 0:26:29.040 Well, if you're asking me, is there racism and sexism 0:26:29.240 --> 0:26:33.280 in this country? I think that's self evident. I was 0:26:33.640 --> 0:26:37.840 involved in helping elect the first African American president, and 0:26:37.880 --> 0:26:41.199 we faced some of those barriers, but he did not 0:26:41.359 --> 0:26:44.199 run to be the first African American president. That was 0:26:44.240 --> 0:26:47.600 never central to our messaging. He spoke to people's lives 0:26:47.880 --> 0:26:51.400 in a way that people felt was authentic. He challenged 0:26:51.400 --> 0:26:55.040 the incumbent politics of both parties in the White House, 0:26:55.080 --> 0:26:58.640 he did in Washington. He did not represent those politics, 0:26:58.880 --> 0:27:02.960 and part of the problem for the Vice president. I mean, 0:27:03.160 --> 0:27:06.960 look those who were burdens for her, and maybe they 0:27:07.000 --> 0:27:10.119 were decisive given the closeness of the race. I'm willing 0:27:10.160 --> 0:27:13.560 to acknowledge that. But the biggest burden for her is 0:27:13.600 --> 0:27:16.800 that she was the number two person in the operation 0:27:16.920 --> 0:27:21.040 that folks wanted to replace, and that was an insuperable 0:27:21.119 --> 0:27:25.639 barrier for her. I'm telling you that you want to 0:27:25.680 --> 0:27:30.359 win an election, then you really need to understand fundamentally 0:27:30.720 --> 0:27:33.920 what's going on, you know, in the lives of people. 0:27:34.680 --> 0:27:38.720 And I'd like to think that, you know, in breaking 0:27:38.760 --> 0:27:43.040 a barrier, Obama opened up possibilities for the future. I'd 0:27:43.080 --> 0:27:45.399 like to believe that we can elect a woman. Maybe 0:27:45.440 --> 0:27:50.040 we will into twenty twenty eight despite those barriers. But 0:27:50.080 --> 0:27:52.000 the person who's going to do it is the person 0:27:52.040 --> 0:27:56.919 who authentically is connected to the people they're trying to represent. 0:27:57.600 --> 0:28:01.560 And I think that she never built that relationship, and 0:28:01.600 --> 0:28:05.800 she had a very difficult burden to carry, and she 0:28:06.200 --> 0:28:10.520 probably exacerbated it by failing in any way to differentiate 0:28:10.600 --> 0:28:13.600 herself from Biden at a time when, as I said, 0:28:13.680 --> 0:28:17.600 people their vote, this wasn't a great affirmation of love 0:28:17.640 --> 0:28:20.480 for Donald Trump. It was a no vote on the 0:28:20.560 --> 0:28:23.960 status quo. And you can't say, well, I wouldn't. I 0:28:24.000 --> 0:28:28.439 would have done everything the same way and expect to 0:28:28.600 --> 0:28:30.920 come out on top in that kind of a race. 0:28:31.200 --> 0:28:34.480 How much do you think that Obama being a sort 0:28:34.480 --> 0:28:38.680 of singular like I have never seen an orator like Obama. 0:28:38.960 --> 0:28:43.800 Yeah, you have to be an incredible talent to get 0:28:43.840 --> 0:28:46.840 elected president of the United States. I was blessed to 0:28:46.960 --> 0:28:49.640 work with him. You know, people sometimes say are kind 0:28:49.640 --> 0:28:53.040 of say, well, you you elected Barack Obama. I always 0:28:53.040 --> 0:28:57.480 say the same thing. You always look at driving a maserati. Okay, 0:28:57.720 --> 0:29:02.440 Barack Obama was a great generational talent, but that doesn't 0:29:02.480 --> 0:29:06.400 mean that there aren't great generational talents out there. You know, 0:29:06.440 --> 0:29:09.480 nobody knew who Barack Obama was. I remember sitting down 0:29:09.560 --> 0:29:12.560 with Dan Baltz, who was a fantastic. 0:29:12.360 --> 0:29:13.520 From the Washington Post. 0:29:14.000 --> 0:29:17.080 Yeah, you know, just retired as their lead political writer, 0:29:17.480 --> 0:29:20.000 the best, you know, the gold standard. I remember sitting 0:29:20.040 --> 0:29:23.360 down with him in Wisconsin during the primary in twenty 0:29:23.400 --> 0:29:25.320 twenty four for president, and I told him I was 0:29:25.360 --> 0:29:28.160 working on this primary campaign for a guy named for 0:29:28.240 --> 0:29:30.280 a guy and who he needs to watch because I 0:29:30.320 --> 0:29:33.080 think he'll be a big thing nationally. And he said, 0:29:33.640 --> 0:29:36.120 who is it. And I said, his name is Barack Obama. 0:29:36.160 --> 0:29:38.120 It's a Barack Obama. I never heard of him. That 0:29:38.320 --> 0:29:43.480 was four years before he became the presidential nominee. What 0:29:43.600 --> 0:29:47.960 you need this aspiring strategists out there, all you aspiring 0:29:47.960 --> 0:29:51.560 strategists out there. The moral of this story is what 0:29:51.640 --> 0:29:54.480 you really need to succeed is good taste. Keep your 0:29:54.520 --> 0:29:55.120 eyes open. 0:29:55.480 --> 0:29:59.280 But it's true because he was an Illinois state senator. 0:29:59.400 --> 0:30:02.920 That yes, exactly, he was in the Illinois State Senate 0:30:02.960 --> 0:30:06.440 at the time that I said that. But people need 0:30:06.480 --> 0:30:10.360 to understand, Yes, his talent was enormous, it was, but 0:30:10.520 --> 0:30:16.480 his message was very much of a anti establishment, anti 0:30:16.760 --> 0:30:20.680 incumbent politics of Washington message, and that you know, and 0:30:20.720 --> 0:30:24.000 obviously havn't been against the war was helpful. But that 0:30:24.160 --> 0:30:27.800 was a big part of this. What you say, how 0:30:27.880 --> 0:30:29.600 you say it is really important. And this is I 0:30:29.640 --> 0:30:32.800 guess where we began. How you say it is not 0:30:33.480 --> 0:30:39.600 at all inconsequential. What you say is paramount. And so 0:30:39.720 --> 0:30:42.760 you could be a great messenger, but the message. If 0:30:42.800 --> 0:30:46.040 the message is wrong or inauthentic, you're not going to win. 0:30:46.400 --> 0:30:49.720 You can be you can, you can have the right message, 0:30:49.720 --> 0:30:52.520 but if you don't deliver it, well, then you're not 0:30:52.560 --> 0:30:54.120 going to win. You need to have both. 0:30:54.400 --> 0:30:57.360 Yeah, no, I agree, and I think that is one 0:30:57.440 --> 0:31:01.160 hundred percent the most important issue. Thank you, thank you, 0:31:01.280 --> 0:31:03.120 thank you, David for joining us. 0:31:03.320 --> 0:31:04.640 Yeah, thank you for inviting me. 0:31:07.760 --> 0:31:10.560 David Enrich is a reporter for The New York Times 0:31:10.560 --> 0:31:14.080 and the author of Murder the Truth and Servants of 0:31:14.160 --> 0:31:16.160 the Damned. Welcome to Past. 0:31:15.920 --> 0:31:17.920 Politics, David, Thanks for having me. 0:31:18.320 --> 0:31:21.840 This is such an interesting story, and it's like the 0:31:21.960 --> 0:31:27.520 kind of reporting that only a big institutional newspaper like 0:31:27.600 --> 0:31:30.160 the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or 0:31:30.160 --> 0:31:32.320 the Washington Post could do. I want you to talk 0:31:32.320 --> 0:31:34.880 about how you got to this idea and then how 0:31:34.920 --> 0:31:37.240 you started writing this piece, because like, this is the 0:31:37.320 --> 0:31:40.520 kind of stuff that we desperately need to have in 0:31:40.640 --> 0:31:43.560 our discourse and is expensive and important. 0:31:43.800 --> 0:31:45.800 Yeah, it takes a long time to do this kind 0:31:45.800 --> 0:31:48.280 of reporting. I mean we, I am, my colleagues Matt 0:31:48.280 --> 0:31:51.280 Biltze and Tesca Silver Greenberg and I have been focusing 0:31:51.360 --> 0:31:55.560 on Epstein and his money basically since twenty nineteen, and 0:31:55.680 --> 0:31:56.960 there are all these unanswered questions. 0:31:56.960 --> 0:31:58.280 But one of the things that kept coming. 0:31:58.160 --> 0:32:01.000 Up over and over again was Jake Morgan, which had 0:32:01.040 --> 0:32:04.320 been his bank for something like fifteen years, and we 0:32:04.400 --> 0:32:07.080 just hadn't really found a very good weight into that story. 0:32:07.080 --> 0:32:09.720 And partbees are so many unanswered questions and there's so 0:32:09.840 --> 0:32:13.040 few people willing to speak candidly for obvious reasons. I 0:32:13.040 --> 0:32:16.840 guess my colleague Matt ended up getting some just through 0:32:16.880 --> 0:32:19.520 sources that he had cultivated over a period of years. 0:32:19.920 --> 0:32:22.800 I got some deposition transcripts that had been sealed, were 0:32:22.800 --> 0:32:25.760 never in court, we're never public, and we started looking 0:32:25.760 --> 0:32:27.680 at that, and then we started going back through the 0:32:27.720 --> 0:32:30.160 public court dock in both the US and the UK, 0:32:30.520 --> 0:32:33.120 and we realized there's just tons and tons of stuff 0:32:33.120 --> 0:32:35.040 that's in the public domain, but it has not been 0:32:35.160 --> 0:32:39.480 mined very thoroughly and parties. It's extremely time consuming. It's 0:32:39.480 --> 0:32:41.520 also expensive, like just I don't know if you ever 0:32:41.600 --> 0:32:44.080 use pacer to get federal court records, but it's like 0:32:44.120 --> 0:32:46.160 you download something that's one hundred pages long, and it 0:32:46.240 --> 0:32:48.720 like sets you back ten dollars. And if you are downloading, 0:32:49.320 --> 0:32:52.360 you know, tens of thousands of pages of stuff, it 0:32:52.560 --> 0:32:55.800 becomes very expensive, very equivocally into like normal you know, 0:32:55.800 --> 0:32:58.280 it's usually big corporate law firms that are footing that bill. 0:32:58.280 --> 0:33:00.680 But when it's a news organization, it's really hard to 0:33:00.720 --> 0:33:02.120 do that. He you're an independent journalist. 0:33:02.240 --> 0:33:04.640 And then what you do is when you get all 0:33:04.720 --> 0:33:10.240 of these pacer thousands and thousands of hours of depositions 0:33:10.400 --> 0:33:14.720 and emails, you have to then read to them and 0:33:15.120 --> 0:33:17.760 figure out this sort of nuances. I'd love you to 0:33:17.800 --> 0:33:21.320 talk about how so that one of the key parts 0:33:21.360 --> 0:33:23.440 of this story is who knew what when? 0:33:23.960 --> 0:33:24.240 Right? 0:33:24.440 --> 0:33:28.920 Who knew that Jeffrey Epstein was pulling one hundred and 0:33:28.920 --> 0:33:32.840 seventy thousand dollars out of you know, his checking account. 0:33:32.880 --> 0:33:35.320 That's a lot of cash. And so I'd love you 0:33:35.360 --> 0:33:37.600 to talk us through sort of who knew what when 0:33:37.800 --> 0:33:40.080 and how you started to sort of get clues. 0:33:40.640 --> 0:33:43.560 Yeah, I mean, well let me answer that in reverse order. 0:33:43.560 --> 0:33:45.560 I mean, we started getting clues because we built a 0:33:45.600 --> 0:33:48.600 spreadsheet as we went and we just arranged the spreadsheeting 0:33:48.640 --> 0:33:52.000 chronological order. And as we read these tens of thousands 0:33:52.040 --> 0:33:55.120 of pages of court documents and financial records, you know, 0:33:55.160 --> 0:33:57.240 you just are putting in chronological order, and you start 0:33:57.240 --> 0:34:00.440 to notice patterns and they're not really short that's there. 0:34:00.440 --> 0:34:03.280 This is not something it just takes a really, really 0:34:03.400 --> 0:34:06.160 long time, and we had three of us working on 0:34:06.200 --> 0:34:08.319 it full time for quite a while. But what we 0:34:08.360 --> 0:34:11.080 started to see was that there was a clear connection 0:34:11.520 --> 0:34:15.000 between first of all, Epstein withdrawing huge sums of cash 0:34:15.040 --> 0:34:17.960 from JP Morgan, sometimes from the branch in its headquarters 0:34:17.960 --> 0:34:19.759 building ironically, and then and the. 0:34:20.000 --> 0:34:23.319 Paying That means he like went to the bank and 0:34:23.480 --> 0:34:25.400 was like, I'm going to need one hundred and seventy 0:34:25.480 --> 0:34:28.200 thousand dollars in hundreds. 0:34:27.719 --> 0:34:30.760 Right, Yeah, I mean, I think the more precise mechanical 0:34:30.800 --> 0:34:33.440 way worked is that he would write checks from his 0:34:33.520 --> 0:34:36.400 account to himself for cash, and if you would go 0:34:36.520 --> 0:34:39.120 with deposit the checks and get cash out. 0:34:39.400 --> 0:34:40.640 But it's very crazy. 0:34:41.000 --> 0:34:42.960 Yeah, it's crazy. It's a huge amount of money. 0:34:43.280 --> 0:34:45.239 Can you just explain to us, like, isn't there a 0:34:45.320 --> 0:34:48.120 number that you can't take out more than before they 0:34:48.239 --> 0:34:49.440 notify the police. 0:34:49.960 --> 0:34:52.680 Yeah, the number is ten thousand dollars a day, and 0:34:53.480 --> 0:34:56.560 they're clever people can figure out ways to work around that. 0:34:56.640 --> 0:34:58.839 And the weird thing here is that I think JP 0:34:58.960 --> 0:35:02.879 Morgan actually saw those cash withdrawals and recognize that under 0:35:02.920 --> 0:35:05.359 the law, those needed to be reported, and I think 0:35:05.400 --> 0:35:07.600 they reported some of those or maybe even all of those, 0:35:07.800 --> 0:35:11.000 but they weren't taking it seriously internally, and so and 0:35:11.040 --> 0:35:13.640 then there's a whole other set of things called suspicious 0:35:13.640 --> 0:35:16.560 activity reports that they just weren't filing at all, which 0:35:16.600 --> 0:35:19.440 related to the wire transfers that Epstein was sending all 0:35:19.480 --> 0:35:23.160 over the world, including to countries and banks and individuals 0:35:23.160 --> 0:35:27.040 that appeared to be part of his sex trafficking network. 0:35:27.520 --> 0:35:30.880 Are there any people with those wires or countries that 0:35:30.960 --> 0:35:31.719 stand out to you? 0:35:32.160 --> 0:35:35.200 Yeah, I mean not people individually, at least not that 0:35:35.280 --> 0:35:37.480 we should name here, because a lot of these people are. 0:35:37.880 --> 0:35:40.000 And one of the things with Epstein's network, as I'm 0:35:40.000 --> 0:35:43.000 sure you know, is that there are his victims to 0:35:43.120 --> 0:35:45.360 then become kind of his enablers in some cases and 0:35:45.400 --> 0:35:49.440 help recruit more women and girls and so the individuals 0:35:49.520 --> 0:35:51.839 let's not focus on that. But he was making wire 0:35:51.880 --> 0:35:55.440 transfers to banks in Russia, Belarus, places like that. 0:35:55.680 --> 0:35:57.400 You would think that would ring some bells. 0:35:57.719 --> 0:36:00.400 Yeah, and frankly it did ring bells within JP Morgan. 0:36:00.440 --> 0:36:03.239 The problem is that people were ringing the bells, and 0:36:03.640 --> 0:36:07.960 the top executives at the bank were constantly disregarding those 0:36:08.000 --> 0:36:11.279 bells or muting those bells to torture that metaphor. And 0:36:11.320 --> 0:36:13.680 so this is a repeat pattern within the bank, over 0:36:13.719 --> 0:36:16.040 and over and over again. Over a period of many years, 0:36:16.120 --> 0:36:20.520 we saw that executives and compliance officers and anti money 0:36:20.560 --> 0:36:24.080 laundering specialists were getting extremely worried about Epstein. They were 0:36:24.120 --> 0:36:26.319 expressing those concerns and sending them up the food chain, 0:36:26.680 --> 0:36:30.080 and they were getting overruled or disregarded at a very 0:36:30.160 --> 0:36:31.000 high level. 0:36:30.960 --> 0:36:31.520 Within the bank. 0:36:31.520 --> 0:36:35.880 And then concluded when Epstein was originally indicted and arrested 0:36:36.239 --> 0:36:38.960 in Florida in two thousand and six, when he pleaded 0:36:38.960 --> 0:36:40.480 guilty in two thousand and eight, when he was in 0:36:40.560 --> 0:36:43.879 jail in two thousand and nine, So this is an 0:36:43.920 --> 0:36:48.120 obvious concern within the bank. You know, it does not 0:36:48.160 --> 0:36:50.319 take a rocket scientist to realize that when you have 0:36:50.640 --> 0:36:53.440 a convicted sexual predator among your clients, that's something you 0:36:53.480 --> 0:36:55.839 want to be thinking about. And the bank thought about 0:36:55.840 --> 0:36:58.279 it and made the decision to keep doing business with them. 0:36:58.600 --> 0:37:01.680 So at that point in two thousand and six, he 0:37:01.880 --> 0:37:06.080 was on the sex offender registrary because I remember, because 0:37:06.120 --> 0:37:09.440 I had the sex offender app on my phone as 0:37:09.480 --> 0:37:12.319 a mother of small children, I was looking at it 0:37:12.560 --> 0:37:15.560 and I saw that in Central Park there was the 0:37:15.640 --> 0:37:19.360 sex offender registered and it was Jeffrey Epstein, and I thought, 0:37:19.920 --> 0:37:23.120 oh my god, that guy is still not in jail. 0:37:23.480 --> 0:37:26.040 How is that guy still not in jail. So at 0:37:26.040 --> 0:37:28.560 that time JP Morgan was still treating him like a 0:37:28.600 --> 0:37:29.240 normal client. 0:37:29.360 --> 0:37:32.080 They kept treating him like a normal client until twenty thirteen, 0:37:32.360 --> 0:37:35.319 and this is years after he goes to jail, gets 0:37:35.320 --> 0:37:38.240 out of jail, registers as the highest level sex offender 0:37:38.320 --> 0:37:43.120 in New York and is engaged in a criminal a 0:37:43.120 --> 0:37:47.160 pretty vast criminal enterprise, and he's bringing women and girls 0:37:47.239 --> 0:37:51.279 into the United States to participate in coer sex. And 0:37:51.320 --> 0:37:53.440 it's not just with him, right, he is farming some 0:37:53.480 --> 0:37:56.200 of these women and girls out to his associates, and 0:37:56.520 --> 0:37:59.680 he is engaged in it has all the hallmarks of 0:37:59.680 --> 0:38:03.400 a big money laundering operation to at least in part, 0:38:03.520 --> 0:38:06.040 to conduct that sex traffity network. 0:38:06.280 --> 0:38:10.120 The money laundering, I think is a really important point 0:38:10.200 --> 0:38:13.200 of this story. A lot of people wonder if there 0:38:13.239 --> 0:38:17.360 are people, famous people who are wrapped up in this, 0:38:18.040 --> 0:38:22.160 famous powerful people who are famous, powerful political people who 0:38:22.239 --> 0:38:25.960 are wrapped up in this, and maybe more on the 0:38:26.040 --> 0:38:30.680 money side than the sex side. Shockingly, what are you 0:38:30.880 --> 0:38:34.920 seeing in the money side that you think might be 0:38:35.120 --> 0:38:36.439 interesting in that vein? 0:38:36.960 --> 0:38:39.279 Well, you know, look, there's at least two or three 0:38:39.320 --> 0:38:41.359 people out there whose names are already out there, that 0:38:41.640 --> 0:38:45.800 have had longstanding personal but also financial relationships with Epstein 0:38:45.880 --> 0:38:48.080 that have never been fully explained. And I don't have 0:38:48.080 --> 0:38:51.400 answer to this people are It's people like Glenn Dubin, 0:38:51.520 --> 0:38:54.279 who is a big headshot manager, Leon Black, who's a 0:38:54.320 --> 0:38:57.799 private equity billionaire, Les Wexner, who was the founder of 0:38:58.280 --> 0:39:01.720 Victoria's Secret among other brands, And all of these people 0:39:02.080 --> 0:39:05.200 were close with Epstein for a period of years, and 0:39:05.800 --> 0:39:09.399 you know, the facilitated or directly gave him tens, if 0:39:09.400 --> 0:39:11.200 not hundreds of millions of dollars. 0:39:11.280 --> 0:39:12.480 And the public. 0:39:12.160 --> 0:39:14.320 Explanations that all of those men have given for the 0:39:14.400 --> 0:39:17.520 relationships with Epstein, I mean, it's hard to disprove things, 0:39:17.560 --> 0:39:20.160 but I'm quite skeptical that we have the full story 0:39:20.320 --> 0:39:22.279 in put it that way, And you know, I do 0:39:22.320 --> 0:39:24.040 think one of the interesting things right now, at this 0:39:24.120 --> 0:39:27.520 particular moment, is that all of a sudden, after years 0:39:27.520 --> 0:39:30.960 and years of complete inaction and apparent apathy, we have 0:39:31.040 --> 0:39:34.480 members of Congress from both parties who are actually starting 0:39:34.480 --> 0:39:36.080 to pay some attention to this, and so we have 0:39:36.239 --> 0:39:40.239 subpoenas that are being issued to Epstein's estate and to 0:39:41.360 --> 0:39:43.680 various government agencies that have a lot of records. So 0:39:44.000 --> 0:39:47.160 I'm kind of cautiously optimistic that we're going to learn 0:39:47.239 --> 0:39:49.760 a lot more about this stuff in the months ahead. 0:39:49.920 --> 0:39:53.200 But I'm always kind of optimistic, and often my optimism 0:39:53.520 --> 0:39:54.280 leads me astray. 0:39:54.360 --> 0:39:55.520 So we will see. 0:39:55.719 --> 0:39:58.120 You know, it's funny because like the thing when I 0:39:58.160 --> 0:40:02.280 sort of did my own kind of soul sarcing about 0:40:02.640 --> 0:40:05.640 my recent sort of where I messed up as a pundit, 0:40:06.040 --> 0:40:07.960 the thing that I kept seeing was that I was 0:40:08.080 --> 0:40:11.040 always overly optimistic. You know, I'd always feel like, but 0:40:11.120 --> 0:40:13.440 this is the right thing, and so it will happen 0:40:14.960 --> 0:40:18.360 totally right, like an idiot. But I do think that 0:40:18.600 --> 0:40:22.200 this point about the money and the transfers. So then 0:40:22.239 --> 0:40:25.000 we get to the question of who knew what what, 0:40:25.480 --> 0:40:28.480 and it is very important for Jamie Diamond to not 0:40:28.600 --> 0:40:31.840 have known, so explain to us sort of that tension. 0:40:32.160 --> 0:40:36.360 Yeah, So Diamond is obviously the longtime CEO of Jping Morgan. 0:40:36.640 --> 0:40:40.840 He's probably the most respected and admired man on Wall Street. 0:40:41.200 --> 0:40:44.400 He is almost certainly a billionaire as a result of 0:40:44.480 --> 0:40:47.080 the many years he has spent at Jping Morgan, and 0:40:47.200 --> 0:40:51.040 he is someone who is famously obsessed with details. He's 0:40:51.080 --> 0:40:54.040 known for micromanaging his deputies. He gets really into the 0:40:54.080 --> 0:40:55.840 weeds and stuff, and that is kind of one of 0:40:55.840 --> 0:40:59.880 his hallmarks as a CEO. And yet in this case 0:41:00.080 --> 0:41:03.920 he claims complete ignorance about what was going on inside 0:41:03.920 --> 0:41:06.080 his bank with one of the bank's most important clients. 0:41:06.080 --> 0:41:08.080 He says that he has said under oath and to 0:41:08.200 --> 0:41:11.279 us that he did not realize that Jeffrey Epstein was 0:41:11.280 --> 0:41:14.960 a client of the banks until twenty nineteen, when Epstein 0:41:15.360 --> 0:41:19.080 was arrested finally and then committed suicide. Diamond says that 0:41:19.120 --> 0:41:21.279 he just did not realize it until then. I mean, 0:41:21.280 --> 0:41:23.080 he said it under oath, so you've got to give 0:41:23.080 --> 0:41:27.120 that some credibility. On the other hand, there are other 0:41:27.160 --> 0:41:29.280 people who said under oath that they talked to Diamond 0:41:29.320 --> 0:41:31.800 about this many years earlier, and there are some email 0:41:32.000 --> 0:41:36.800 records that strongly suggest that Diamond was in the loop 0:41:36.960 --> 0:41:40.160 on this. Now it's a little bit they're not dis positive, 0:41:40.800 --> 0:41:41.640 and it's. 0:41:41.520 --> 0:41:43.960 A little hard to figure out who's telling the truth here. 0:41:43.960 --> 0:41:46.040 But I mean, it's kind of binary, and either Diamond 0:41:46.120 --> 0:41:50.240 knew about it and has been lying, or he didn't 0:41:50.239 --> 0:41:52.200 know about it, in which case this is a real 0:41:52.280 --> 0:41:53.840 sign that he was kind of out to lunch on 0:41:53.920 --> 0:41:57.439 something that even in the moment, was a really serious issue. 0:41:57.440 --> 0:42:00.400 I mean, there are senior executives at the bank, including 0:42:00.400 --> 0:42:03.279 the banks general counsel and head of Compliance, that were 0:42:03.320 --> 0:42:05.560 fighting to get Epstein out because they are really concerned 0:42:05.600 --> 0:42:08.480 about him, and some of the other executives were fighting 0:42:08.480 --> 0:42:11.719 to keep him. And the fact that Diamond, this allegedly 0:42:11.840 --> 0:42:15.160 detail obsessed CEO, would somehow not have been in the 0:42:15.200 --> 0:42:16.480 loopernet is either. 0:42:16.840 --> 0:42:20.480 Very hard to believe or very damning about his leadership. 0:42:20.480 --> 0:42:24.200 I would say, imagine being the chief of compliance and 0:42:24.280 --> 0:42:27.440 having that guy in your bed, like being like, can 0:42:27.480 --> 0:42:30.840 you imagine like what I mean, just a nightmare. The 0:42:30.960 --> 0:42:33.480 people who were trying to keep him in are they 0:42:33.520 --> 0:42:34.000 still there? 0:42:34.280 --> 0:42:34.480 Well? 0:42:34.520 --> 0:42:37.640 One of them is Mary Aerdos, who was not the 0:42:37.880 --> 0:42:41.239 kind of main cheerleader and defender of Epstein. That was 0:42:41.280 --> 0:42:44.080 a guy named Jess Staley who left the bank in 0:42:44.120 --> 0:42:48.719 twenty thirteen and has kind of since fallen into disrepute 0:42:48.840 --> 0:42:51.440 in large part as a result of his connections to Epstein. 0:42:51.840 --> 0:42:55.400 But an Aerdos was at various points relying or turning 0:42:55.440 --> 0:43:00.120 to Epstein for advice, was very much aware of how 0:43:00.200 --> 0:43:01.880 much money he was bringing in, and I think that 0:43:02.040 --> 0:43:06.560 made her very eager to keep this lucrative client in 0:43:07.080 --> 0:43:09.920 good standing. And one of the things that really became 0:43:09.960 --> 0:43:12.080 clear to us over and over as we reported this 0:43:12.120 --> 0:43:15.120 story and read all these documents is that the biggest 0:43:15.120 --> 0:43:17.960 problem here was simply read and the bank knew that 0:43:18.040 --> 0:43:20.759 they were raking in millions and millions of dollars as 0:43:20.800 --> 0:43:23.680 a direct and indirect result of their affiliation with Epstein. 0:43:24.040 --> 0:43:27.239 And you know, that is hard. It's hard to turn 0:43:27.320 --> 0:43:30.440 down that amount of money, even when you're a bank 0:43:30.520 --> 0:43:32.080 with billions of dollars in assets. 0:43:32.320 --> 0:43:35.400 Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, So talk to us about 0:43:35.640 --> 0:43:39.640 There's like an email which sort of is a smoking 0:43:39.680 --> 0:43:42.000 gun on who knew what when? Right? 0:43:42.400 --> 0:43:44.000 Yeah, I mean, there are a couple of emails where 0:43:44.080 --> 0:43:47.239 Diamond's name gets mentioned. In one case, people within the 0:43:47.280 --> 0:43:50.359 bank are debating whether to keep his account open or not, 0:43:50.960 --> 0:43:54.360 and they mentioned that the matter is pending diamond review. 0:43:54.600 --> 0:43:57.960 There's another email around that same time where it mentions 0:43:58.000 --> 0:44:01.520 that the general counsel of the bank is reviewing documents 0:44:01.520 --> 0:44:05.680 about epstein'sccount for Jamie. And you know, Jess Staley, who 0:44:05.719 --> 0:44:08.920 is the guy who was most closely associated with Epstein 0:44:09.000 --> 0:44:11.560 and was his primary defender in the Bank, has said 0:44:11.680 --> 0:44:14.720 under oath under penalty of perjury that he on multiple 0:44:14.719 --> 0:44:18.560 occasions talked with Jamie Diamond about Epstein in the context 0:44:18.680 --> 0:44:22.560 of Epstein being accused and then pleading guilty to sex crimes. 0:44:22.640 --> 0:44:25.920 So again Diamond denies that also under oath. So I 0:44:25.920 --> 0:44:27.600 don't know. I mean, there is certainly. 0:44:27.360 --> 0:44:29.799 An awareness at a high level within the Bank of 0:44:29.840 --> 0:44:32.000 what was happening, and there was certainly a number of 0:44:32.080 --> 0:44:34.960 people that seemed to have been under the impression that 0:44:35.080 --> 0:44:37.480 Jamie Diamond was in the loop, and that would certainly 0:44:37.560 --> 0:44:41.560 fit with Diamond's self professed and self proclaimed mo as 0:44:41.600 --> 0:44:43.880 a very detail oriented executive. 0:44:44.080 --> 0:44:46.480 I would love you just like have another bite on 0:44:46.840 --> 0:44:50.600 how you do this reporting and just because I think 0:44:50.680 --> 0:44:54.759 it's so fundamental and a lot of us who are 0:44:54.920 --> 0:44:59.080 media consumers maybe don't quite understand how this works. 0:44:59.360 --> 0:45:01.640 Yeah, No, really appreciate that question, and you're interest in 0:45:01.640 --> 0:45:03.319 this because I do think this is one of the 0:45:03.320 --> 0:45:06.200 things that is sometimes this is the media's fault that 0:45:06.239 --> 0:45:08.640 we are not as transparent as we could be about 0:45:08.640 --> 0:45:11.080 how the sausage gets made here. But a story like 0:45:11.120 --> 0:45:15.040 this is it's just extremely complicated, time consuming, labor and 0:45:15.080 --> 0:45:18.279 resource intensive. And so you know, we were going through 0:45:18.320 --> 0:45:22.720 these huge volumes of transcripts and emails and financial records 0:45:22.760 --> 0:45:25.720 things like that from many different sources in many places, 0:45:25.800 --> 0:45:28.080 which itself is like it's hard to figure out where 0:45:28.080 --> 0:45:29.719 to get this stuff. We spend a lot of time 0:45:30.000 --> 0:45:32.319 compiling the stuff and then even more time reading it. 0:45:32.400 --> 0:45:35.480 We're entering things line by line into a spreadsheet that 0:45:35.520 --> 0:45:38.879 explains to it for our own purposes, what happened, when 0:45:38.920 --> 0:45:41.239 it happened, how we know it happened, things like that. 0:45:41.320 --> 0:45:43.759 And this is a gigantic spreadsheet. I mean, I don't 0:45:43.800 --> 0:45:46.279 know how many roads it has, but like thousands for sure. 0:45:46.480 --> 0:45:49.040 And then we start identifying all the people involved with this, 0:45:49.120 --> 0:45:52.160 and we try to call and we do not succeed 0:45:52.239 --> 0:45:53.960 with all of them, but we do succeed with some 0:45:54.000 --> 0:45:57.520 of them. That then compliments our understanding of everything in 0:45:57.560 --> 0:46:00.040 the spreadsheet. And then we have to go through and 0:46:00.160 --> 0:46:04.520 start looking for patterns and figuring out what is known when, 0:46:05.120 --> 0:46:08.760 why it matters, and then trying to kind of assemble 0:46:08.800 --> 0:46:12.640 this into a coherent narrative that actually explains how this 0:46:12.719 --> 0:46:16.680 all worked and how these different pieces interacted, and you know, 0:46:16.760 --> 0:46:19.279 and then you have to go to the people who 0:46:19.320 --> 0:46:21.920 are implicated in the story, whether it's the bank or 0:46:22.000 --> 0:46:26.160 Jamie Diamond or Jess Staley or Mary Airdus and seek 0:46:26.239 --> 0:46:28.319 to understand things from their perspective and trying to get 0:46:28.320 --> 0:46:31.680 their input and also understanding that a story like this 0:46:31.840 --> 0:46:33.560 that's a you know, it's a big story that The 0:46:33.560 --> 0:46:35.400 New York Times is going to promote. 0:46:35.200 --> 0:46:38.080 Very heavily, is going to be held up to a microscope. 0:46:38.320 --> 0:46:40.919 And these are a lot of these people that we write 0:46:40.920 --> 0:46:43.719 about an a regular basis, not even in this story necessarily, 0:46:43.719 --> 0:46:45.759 but just in general, are people who tend to be 0:46:45.840 --> 0:46:50.640 lutigitious and have the resources and sometimes the appetite to 0:46:51.080 --> 0:46:53.560 either threaten us or in fact sue us. And so 0:46:53.719 --> 0:46:57.360 things have to get bulletproofed from like fifteen different angles. 0:46:57.520 --> 0:47:00.360 And that also is very hard, and it's just not 0:47:00.440 --> 0:47:03.040 the kind of thing that you can It would be 0:47:03.160 --> 0:47:05.719 very hard for like a normal person on their own 0:47:06.160 --> 0:47:08.520 to do this kind of reporting because it requires an 0:47:08.640 --> 0:47:10.880 entire institution. It's like a privilege to be able to 0:47:10.920 --> 0:47:13.640 work at the New York Times with awesome colleagues who 0:47:13.640 --> 0:47:15.960 are so good at this and it it certainly it 0:47:16.040 --> 0:47:18.520 like frustrates me sometimes, not in this context, but just 0:47:18.560 --> 0:47:20.719 in general, where you know, there are people all over 0:47:20.760 --> 0:47:23.399 the New York Times and other big news organizations as well, 0:47:23.600 --> 0:47:25.600 who do this kind of reporting day in and day out, 0:47:25.680 --> 0:47:27.680 and then you know, it's easy to kind of take 0:47:27.719 --> 0:47:28.280 that for granted. 0:47:28.320 --> 0:47:29.319 As a consumer of the news. 0:47:29.400 --> 0:47:32.680 I think we in the media need to be like 0:47:32.760 --> 0:47:37.360 a lot more proactive in explaining what goes into this stuff, 0:47:37.400 --> 0:47:39.359 because otherwise it's just easy to be like, well, this 0:47:39.400 --> 0:47:41.520 is the story and they told the story that they knew, 0:47:41.560 --> 0:47:44.640 and it's like, well, we know it because we spent 0:47:45.280 --> 0:47:47.960 just I mean so so wrong working on this. 0:47:48.120 --> 0:47:50.160 Yeah, I would love to know, like when you were 0:47:50.200 --> 0:47:54.920 talking to these people at JP Morgan about this data, 0:47:55.040 --> 0:47:58.040 I mean, was there any sense like that this was 0:47:58.160 --> 0:48:00.880 coming that someday people would be able to put it 0:48:00.880 --> 0:48:03.880 together like these A lot of this stuff is public, 0:48:04.400 --> 0:48:07.360 your big public bank. Like, I just am curious of 0:48:07.440 --> 0:48:11.560 this psychology of it. Now when you call them, I mean, like, 0:48:11.600 --> 0:48:13.680 are people I'm just curious. 0:48:13.800 --> 0:48:14.560 Yeah, they are. 0:48:14.920 --> 0:48:16.960 I think inside the bank and among the kind of 0:48:17.000 --> 0:48:20.080 alumni of the bank, there are two or three types 0:48:20.080 --> 0:48:23.440 of reactions. One is people are indignant that we are 0:48:23.480 --> 0:48:26.000 still writing about this. I think they have a lot 0:48:26.040 --> 0:48:28.600 of these people convinced themselves that they were trying to 0:48:28.640 --> 0:48:30.439 do the right thing. And yes, it's hard when you're 0:48:30.480 --> 0:48:32.800 at a big institution to get them to pay attention, 0:48:32.880 --> 0:48:35.000 and we make mistakes sometimes, but this was not a 0:48:35.040 --> 0:48:36.799 big deal. And look, to be clear, I don't think 0:48:36.920 --> 0:48:39.840 JP Morgan understood the full scope of what Epstein was 0:48:39.880 --> 0:48:40.719 doing at. 0:48:40.640 --> 0:48:42.239 The time that they were turning a blind eye. 0:48:42.280 --> 0:48:43.799 They had every reason to know that he was doing 0:48:43.800 --> 0:48:47.359 really suspicious stuff, and he had admitted doing really bad stuff. 0:48:47.400 --> 0:48:50.520 But I don't think that picture right now. They're not psychic. 0:48:50.800 --> 0:48:52.839 But I also think that even within the bank now 0:48:52.960 --> 0:48:55.279 where they are, you know, they gave it, ultimately, gave 0:48:55.320 --> 0:48:59.040 us a statement that expressed regret for ever having had 0:48:59.080 --> 0:49:01.840 him as a client and denying responsibility for the crimes 0:49:01.840 --> 0:49:04.719 he committed. But even you know, we sent ultimately JB. 0:49:04.840 --> 0:49:06.759 Morgan a list of I don't know, it must have 0:49:06.760 --> 0:49:09.200 been like one hundred or one hundred and fifty questions. 0:49:09.280 --> 0:49:12.120 I would guess about every specific point we're mentioning in 0:49:12.160 --> 0:49:14.480 the story. And they sent back a very long, kind 0:49:14.480 --> 0:49:16.680 of point by point rebuttal to most of this and 0:49:16.800 --> 0:49:19.120 acknowledged some of it. But they fought in a very 0:49:19.200 --> 0:49:22.720 kind of minute level of detail about things and denied 0:49:22.719 --> 0:49:25.000 some things. And what struck me at least as kind 0:49:25.000 --> 0:49:30.040 of a semantic dissembly way very corporate lawyer. Yeah, exactly, 0:49:30.120 --> 0:49:32.640 And it does not suggest an institution that is really 0:49:33.239 --> 0:49:35.719 ready or willing to own up to the fact that 0:49:35.719 --> 0:49:39.000 they made a terrible mistake here. They're trying to mitigate 0:49:39.040 --> 0:49:42.239 and minimize every bit of the story at every turn. 0:49:42.280 --> 0:49:44.880 And to be clear, that's not that didn't particularly surprise me. 0:49:45.000 --> 0:49:48.879 That is the way big companies and big institutions generally work. 0:49:48.920 --> 0:49:52.839 I always, as an eternal naive optimist, I'm always kind 0:49:52.840 --> 0:49:54.959 of half expecting that maybe this will be the time 0:49:55.280 --> 0:49:57.080 that the right thing to do is is, like, you 0:49:57.239 --> 0:50:01.359 screwed up badly, just apologize, rather then try to keep 0:50:01.440 --> 0:50:03.320 kind of thrunk stand in the gears. 0:50:03.360 --> 0:50:06.440 But yeah, no, and I think that's a really good 0:50:07.080 --> 0:50:10.680 salient point. Thank you, thank you, thank you, David. I 0:50:10.719 --> 0:50:13.080 am looking forward to having you back for your next 0:50:13.200 --> 0:50:15.800 great big piece of reporting in three years. 0:50:17.800 --> 0:50:19.200 Thanks Molly, I appreciate it. 0:50:22.000 --> 0:50:24.160 No more perfectly. 0:50:26.280 --> 0:50:31.240 Jesse Kennon Somali in the Never Ending Flood the Zone 0:50:31.320 --> 0:50:34.640 with shit Bannon approach to politics, the Senate has evoked 0:50:34.640 --> 0:50:37.359 a nuclear option to speed through Trump's appointees. 0:50:37.440 --> 0:50:38.440 What are you seeing here. 0:50:38.440 --> 0:50:43.520 John Thune, head of the Senate, most hand man in America. 0:50:43.120 --> 0:50:45.040 Seven eleven, hot dog of a look. 0:50:44.880 --> 0:50:51.320 Beef jerky baby. He is, when not sunning himself, very 0:50:51.360 --> 0:50:54.960 mad that basically Democrats are coming up the works with 0:50:55.040 --> 0:50:59.440 GOP nominees, and so we're seeing they're going to do 0:50:59.560 --> 0:51:02.520 these noes in block. Then they won't have to worry 0:51:02.560 --> 0:51:06.200 about Democrats. Look, I mean, there's so many things that 0:51:06.239 --> 0:51:10.239 they're doing that are problematic, but this will ultimately Democrats 0:51:10.280 --> 0:51:12.120 will be able to do it when they get in power, 0:51:12.400 --> 0:51:15.600 and they'll be able to do these nominees for ambassadorships. 0:51:15.640 --> 0:51:18.200 I mean, I think it's fine when it's ambassadorships. God 0:51:18.280 --> 0:51:21.120 knows what they'll cook up next. But this is not 0:51:21.600 --> 0:51:23.759 the thing that keeps me up at night, and there 0:51:23.840 --> 0:51:25.799 are a lot of other things that do keep me 0:51:25.880 --> 0:51:30.080 up at night. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. 0:51:30.560 --> 0:51:36.279 Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear 0:51:36.560 --> 0:51:40.960 the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. 0:51:41.200 --> 0:51:44.080 If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a 0:51:44.120 --> 0:51:48.120 friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.