Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business show about making better decisions.
Speaker 1: I'm Maria Kannakova.
Speaker 2: And I'm Nate Silver, So Nate.
Speaker 1: Today on the show, we're talking about some important things
Speaker 1: that are going on in UH in the government right now.
Speaker 1: The name Jeffrey Epstein probably rings a bell to some
Speaker 1: of our listeners. By the way, please.
Speaker 2: Experience I've never heard of the guy with Maria. I'll
Speaker 2: I think I think I changed emails with him once.
Speaker 1: Add on that note, yes, I am actually taping this
Speaker 1: from an office location, so you might hear some more
Speaker 1: background noise than usual. But yet you and I are
Speaker 1: both back from Vegas.
Speaker 2: Nate, well, First of Maria, I want to congratulate you
Speaker 2: for winning a poker championship trophy. You won the five
Speaker 2: thousand dollars no limit hold Them event at the North
Speaker 2: is it North American Poker Tour anyway, we were both
Speaker 2: out in Vegas. This is the last event of this
Speaker 2: NAPT series. But it's a tough event, five thousand dollars
Speaker 2: price point. I want to be super honest, I thought
Speaker 2: it was a fairly tough tournament. A lot of rags,
Speaker 2: a lot of Vegas local pros. There not the softest
Speaker 2: field I've ever played. I flew home scared. Maria played
Speaker 2: this five thousand dollars event, actually won the fucking event.
Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about that, Maria.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Nate. Yeah, it was the fifty
Speaker 1: three hundred high roller, the final high roller of the series,
Speaker 1: and I had busted out of the ten k high roller,
Speaker 1: as had you. We were playing that together and then
Speaker 1: decided that, you know what, let's let's do one last hurrah.
Speaker 1: I tried to convince you to play, and you said.
Speaker 2: I would have had to. I would have had to
Speaker 2: downgrade from a business class seat on Delta to coach on.
Speaker 2: I would have had to take a red eye on
Speaker 2: Spirit Airlines. Maria, there are some things that are negative
Speaker 2: expected value. But if I had known I would win
Speaker 2: the tournament, then I would have Then I would have
Speaker 2: happily flown Spirit Airlines. But Maria, this is amazing.
Speaker 1: It's it's I was. I was just about to make
Speaker 1: the joke. Note that I'm glad that you decided not
Speaker 1: to downgrade because I would have had to come in second.
Speaker 1: So oh, I'm glad I got to win. So thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you for flying home in business class it was.
Speaker 1: You know, it's always an amazing experience to win a tournament,
Speaker 1: but there's something extra special about winning a high roller
Speaker 1: where the fields are tough. You know, it feels really
Speaker 1: good when you are able to hold your own and
Speaker 1: kind of prevail against opponents who you know, most of
Speaker 1: them are a lot better players than I am. I'm
Speaker 1: not afraid to say that. And you know it feel
Speaker 1: it feels good when you can actually make it happen.
Speaker 1: I did you know I started It was a multi
Speaker 1: day event, and I started the final day, day day two,
Speaker 1: as the chip leader, which is always a great position
Speaker 1: to be in, but that usually does not translate right.
Speaker 2: Now, it's am, It's almost you have to like remind
Speaker 2: yourself that, like, oh, I'm chip leader at the end
Speaker 2: of day one, fifth and chips out of a thousand people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: your odds of winning are not that much higher than
Speaker 2: they were at the start. Your odds of cashing oftener
Speaker 2: even depends, right, even your adds of cashing can be
Speaker 2: love fifty fifty, right, So you have to you have
Speaker 2: to not rest on your laurels.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, not resting on your laurels
Speaker 1: and like being able to get to keep everything going
Speaker 1: is a really, uh really tough thing to do. And I,
Speaker 1: you know, it was one of those days where everything
Speaker 1: went right. You know, all of my bluffs got through.
Speaker 1: You know, when I went all in with Jack High,
Speaker 1: I got the sold I didn't get the call, and
Speaker 1: I got the calls in the big spots where I
Speaker 1: actually had really good hands. That's what needs to happen,
Speaker 1: right Like, you need to make some hands and get calls,
Speaker 1: and you need to be able to you know, play
Speaker 1: when you don't have the best hands. And I also
Speaker 1: made some really good call downs. There were a few
Speaker 1: pots that gave me a lot of chips where really
Speaker 1: good players bluffed into me and I was able to
Speaker 1: call down with with with the hands that made me
Speaker 1: close my eyes and call instead of you know, slam
Speaker 1: dunk calling. I was based on Are there.
Speaker 2: Any particular players you want to mention? Is this based
Speaker 2: on gto? Is it based on live reads? Is it
Speaker 2: based on your expectation of how people play against you?
Speaker 2: Do they do you think they think you're overfolding?
Speaker 1: So I think that it's a combination of all of
Speaker 1: these things. There was a one player who I haven't
Speaker 1: played with before, and he'd been he'd been running well
Speaker 1: the whole series, he'd had some good results, and I
Speaker 1: felt like he was, you know, trying to take advantage
Speaker 1: of that a little bit. And so this was actually
Speaker 1: one of the hands that made me into the chip leader.
Speaker 1: On day two, he triple barrel bluffed into me where
Speaker 1: I ended up having a straight. But I had a
Speaker 1: straight on a double parrot board. So for people who
Speaker 1: don't play poker, not a very strong hand in that
Speaker 1: particular case, because if you, you know, if you're holding
Speaker 1: any one of the other cards, you have a full house.
Speaker 1: And he was the button and the two cards that
Speaker 1: were paired were a Queen and a ten, So those
Speaker 1: were both very likely cards for the button to have
Speaker 1: and for the button to represent, And in that particular case,
Speaker 1: there was just some spidey sense that just made me
Speaker 1: hit the call button. And I actually have no idea
Speaker 1: what he had because he mucked his hand, which is
Speaker 1: something that I actually never never advocate players do. So
Speaker 1: if you mock your hand, that means I don't have
Speaker 1: to show my hand, right, So that means that he
Speaker 1: doesn't get the information with what I was calling him with,
Speaker 1: And had he known that I called him with the
Speaker 1: hand I had, you know, that would have been I think,
Speaker 1: very valuable information. So in that particular case, it was
Speaker 1: you know, it was a combination of just the way
Speaker 1: that the hand played out, and like I said, the
Speaker 1: fact that he had been very aggressive all day, and
Speaker 1: then there was a there were a few hands against
Speaker 1: Joey Weisman. I love Joey, We're friends. He's an amazing player.
Speaker 1: We've played a lot together, and he did he tried
Speaker 1: to bluff me in a in a spot where he
Speaker 1: had the blocker to the nut flush, and I ended
Speaker 1: up calling without a flush, but with uh, you know,
Speaker 1: with a with a good hand, and it was one
Speaker 1: of those things where he understands gto play so well,
Speaker 1: and the way that I played my hand, it was
Speaker 1: pretty clear that I did not have a flush, and
Speaker 1: so I thought that any good player would probably try
Speaker 1: to exploit that, and he did. You know. I I
Speaker 1: had bet the flop and then I checked her and
Speaker 1: he bet big, and then he over bet the river,
Speaker 1: and I ended up using a time bank because in
Speaker 1: these events you do have a limited amount of time
Speaker 1: to make your decision. So I ended up using a
Speaker 1: time bank, and then I did make the call and
Speaker 1: saw that he had just stays high, but he had
Speaker 1: the right ace, right he had he had the ace
Speaker 1: that you wanted to represent the flush, So it was
Speaker 1: a good bluff. I almost folded, but I'm very glad
Speaker 1: that I ended up making the hero call. And that
Speaker 1: was one of the big hands of that final day
Speaker 1: that made me really keep my chip lead. And it
Speaker 1: made Joey short, which is good because Joe is a
Speaker 1: very good player and he was to my left, and
Speaker 1: it was very good to have him bust out of
Speaker 1: the tournament. It's always nice when players who are better
Speaker 1: than you bust out.
Speaker 2: I have a final table to a final table. The
Speaker 2: five hundred and fifty dollars oh, he said eight mixed event.
Speaker 2: I CONGRATU literally won one thousand dollars gross.
Speaker 1: That's four dollars. Hey, you should be proud. You should
Speaker 1: be proud.
Speaker 2: To Delta tell you that much.
Speaker 1: Nice. Nice. On that note, Nate, let's shift gears a
Speaker 1: little and talk about some political news. So we're recording
Speaker 1: this as always on Monday, November seventeenth. By the time
Speaker 1: you're hearing this, there will be more updates in this.
Speaker 1: But there have been things going on in the Trump
Speaker 1: White House, including major shifts on the Dunk Dunk Dun
Speaker 1: Epstein Files. I feel like we need the X Files
Speaker 1: theme or something playing in the back.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a Harvey Weinstein running for city council
Speaker 2: in my district. That seems like an unfortunate.
Speaker 1: That's amazing, that's amazing. What an unfortunate name. Can you
Speaker 1: imagine running for office with the name Harvey Weinstein? Right now?
Speaker 2: I'm pretty bad. Yeah, eight off, I'm not Let's not
Speaker 2: go there. Let's not go there anyway. I don't mean
Speaker 2: to compare anyway. Friend of the pod now the now
Speaker 2: deceased Jeffrey Epstein. I'm just kidding. I where do you
Speaker 2: want to start.
Speaker 1: Someone's going to go Someone's gonna clip that out of
Speaker 1: context night, Someone's gonna clip that out of context. Okay,
Speaker 1: So just you know, for people who've been hiding under
Speaker 1: a rock, the Epstein files have been a point of
Speaker 1: contention for quite some time. It was part of the
Speaker 1: things that the Republicans and Donald Trump ran on. You
Speaker 1: don't release the Epstein files. Tell us what was going
Speaker 1: on with Jeffrey Epstein. You know, we want to protect
Speaker 1: our children. Once Trump got into office, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there was don't release the Epstein files. There's nothing to
Speaker 1: see here. Pam Bondi said, you know nothing to see here.
Speaker 1: Let's move on. But the popular clamor for the files
Speaker 1: never died down. It kept growing, kept gaining momentum. Cue
Speaker 1: the an attempt of the Democrats to actually get the
Speaker 1: files released by circumventing the normal way for a measure
Speaker 1: to come in front of Congress.
Speaker 2: So usually the party that controls Congress has control of
Speaker 2: what is litigated or debated in Congress. In the House,
Speaker 2: there is a mechanism known as a discharge petition, whereas
Speaker 2: if an outright majority of all members of the House,
Speaker 2: which in this case or not in this case with
Speaker 2: four members, the match numbers.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: So there had been two hundred and thirteen Democrats in
Speaker 2: the House, there were four Republicans Thomas Massey, who's kind
Speaker 2: of this libertarian from Kentucky, Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Green
Speaker 2: who is now feuding with Trump, and who's the other,
Speaker 2: Lauren Bobert, and uh so that plus all Democrats was
Speaker 2: two hundred and seventeen. However, Democrats won a special election
Speaker 2: in Arizona. The Republican Mike Johnson, Secret of the House,
Speaker 2: dragged his feet to avoid seating her for as long
Speaker 2: as possible until the show down was over. She finally
Speaker 2: got seated and sworn in. They were now two hundred
Speaker 2: and eighteen to force to vote. By the way, there
Speaker 2: are many other Republicans who are going to who are
Speaker 2: planning to vote for this bill, right, And so what
Speaker 2: Trump finally did was he said on Sunday night that Okay,
Speaker 2: go ahead, House Republicans and vote for this Epstein file.
Speaker 2: It's a big hoax and a big distraction, but like,
Speaker 2: you know, go ahead and vote for it. House Republicans.
Speaker 2: Now hopefully our American listeners though maybe some of you
Speaker 2: Europeans don't know, but we actually have multiple chambers of
Speaker 2: Congress in the US, so the bill has to pass
Speaker 2: the Senate. It also has to be signed by the
Speaker 2: president or you need a veto proof majority two thirds
Speaker 2: to overwrite it. So I thought it was interesting that
Speaker 2: Trump and his language said House Republicans and not Republicans overall.
Speaker 2: So it may be a way for him to save face.
Speaker 2: Is going to lose his vote. Now you kind of
Speaker 2: can't tell, you're like, okay, yeah, throw your you know,
Speaker 2: throw your tomatoes at me. I'll take it. Doesn't necessarily
Speaker 2: means he wants to files release, but that's what's kind
Speaker 2: of foreseen, is like finally, finally the Democrat was seated.
Speaker 2: This petition has been in place since September. In the meantime,
Speaker 2: I believe it's the House Oversight Committee has released some
Speaker 2: files related to Epstein. Trump is mentioned quite a bit
Speaker 2: in there, a lot of speculation. I mean, by the way, Maria,
Speaker 2: do you know that I fucking hate email? I hate
Speaker 2: typing out long emails.
Speaker 1: I know you hate email, Nate, as evidenced by the
Speaker 1: impossibility of getting you to reply to.
Speaker 2: First of all, you freaking scandal. But like if I did,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't fucking email this fucking crazyh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's it's actually it's quite crazy to
Speaker 1: me how much is in email form and how many
Speaker 1: ridiculously smart people put things into email that you're like,
Speaker 1: are you fucking kidding me? Like we've obviously you know,
Speaker 1: Trump has mentioned many times Larry Summers, former president of
Speaker 1: Harvard University, current university professor. He has quite the correspondence
Speaker 1: with Epstein. You just see, you know, you see all
Speaker 1: of these people and you're like, guys, you know this
Speaker 1: is email. This ain't even you know, you're emailing Gmail
Speaker 1: account to Gmail account, Like I don't need to be
Speaker 1: a great hacker to be able to hack this. And
Speaker 1: and Nate, how many huge leaks and data breaches have
Speaker 1: we had over the last decade, you know, the Sony emails,
Speaker 1: all of these things. Haven't you seen enough to realize
Speaker 1: that everything you put in an email is going to
Speaker 1: be easy to see? Anyway? This isn't aside, but the
Speaker 1: stuff in these emails, it really is truly mind boggling.
Speaker 1: And obviously there are tons of thousands of them. We've
Speaker 1: only seen the tip of the iceberg. But I I
Speaker 1: want to go back just a second to what you
Speaker 1: were saying about Trump's specific language about you know, House,
Speaker 1: go ahead, you know, I want you to release this,
Speaker 1: which is a huge about face. You know, this U
Speaker 1: turn that he pulled to try, I think, as you say,
Speaker 1: to save face, because it was very clear that this
Speaker 1: was going to happen no matter what. Now it looks
Speaker 1: like he's saying, oh, well, I have nothing to hide
Speaker 1: right going on the offense, but we still need the
Speaker 1: Senate unclear if it's going to pass the Senate, and
Speaker 1: on Friday he also issued a command to his favorite
Speaker 1: Pam Bondi to start investigating some of the Democrats that
Speaker 1: are in the emails, such as Clinton and Summers. What
Speaker 1: that means is that he actually has another lever through
Speaker 1: which he can suppress some of these files even if
Speaker 1: the measure passes both the House and the Senate, because
Speaker 1: if they're part of an active investigation, you can say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, for the integrity of the investigation, we can't
Speaker 1: actually release them. So he has a few different points
Speaker 1: that he could play going forward where we might not.
Speaker 1: You know, people might think, oh, slam dunk, like he's done,
Speaker 1: he's in a quarter. Not so right. There are lots
Speaker 1: of strategic exits that are still left and lots of
Speaker 1: plays still remaining.
Speaker 2: The lopside being, you have subpoena power, you have Freedom
Speaker 2: of Information Act, you have leaks to the media, you know,
Speaker 2: and you have a lot of members of congressman various
Speaker 2: committees who have access to some of these things, and
Speaker 2: so you know, you can do also reporting by organizations
Speaker 2: and organizations. It's not what the federal government is doing.
Speaker 2: If that information is out there, there's a good chance
Speaker 2: it will be discovered eventually. You can make it to
Speaker 2: silver bulletin.
Speaker 1: If you want.
Speaker 2: I have to check our viability insurance situation. Probably would
Speaker 2: get sued. It might be good for subscriptions at first, right,
Speaker 2: I am I even sued by the president subscribed to
Speaker 2: silver Bulletin. No, I would say that it would be
Speaker 2: much more eloquent. Why want to making that baby voice?
Speaker 2: That would be a good fucking That would be a
Speaker 2: good reason to subscribe.
Speaker 1: You need a different voice for that night.
Speaker 2: I've been sued. I am an impartial journalist. I've been
Speaker 2: sued by.
Speaker 1: Yes, the BBC voice.
Speaker 2: That's perfect, okay, but there are ways for the information
Speaker 2: to get out, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, yep, absolutely.
Speaker 2: The initial news in July that Trump had been named
Speaker 2: in the Epstein piles didn't actually seem to move the
Speaker 2: needle all that much. Right, There was a little bit
Speaker 2: of a tickdown and the popularity the tickdown seemed to
Speaker 2: be more about the obstruction than anything. Right. When Pam
Speaker 2: Bondi said, oh, well, wea it and it turns out
Speaker 2: nothing funny going on there, you know, let's not let's
Speaker 2: not let's not keep litigating this. Let's move on to
Speaker 2: the things it really matter to the American peace and nobody, nobody, nobody, but.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry your pambody voices stylistic yes, but absolutely.
Speaker 2: But like nobody somebody bought Nobody bought that right, nobody.
Speaker 1: No. And by the way, Pam Bondi is now obviously
Speaker 1: doing it about face because before she said absolutely nothing
Speaker 1: to investigate, and then on Friday she opened investigations, so
Speaker 1: clearly one of the two Pam Bondis was lying.
Speaker 2: So to me, the question is, are we passed not
Speaker 2: necessarily some type of inflection point, but like, is Trump
Speaker 2: in some sort of a lame duck downward spiral? Which
Speaker 2: you're not quite the same thing right. By lame duck,
Speaker 2: I mean so Trump technically is a lame duck unless
Speaker 2: he figures out a way to run for a third term.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I know we should dignify that or not,
Speaker 2: but like putting that aside for now, he has a
Speaker 2: lame duck in the sense that he can't run for
Speaker 2: president again. But by lame duck, I really mean like,
Speaker 2: does he lack the political capital to have the agenda
Speaker 2: setting power, the juice to get things done. In addition
Speaker 2: to this Epstein stuff, there are now more Republicans ignoring
Speaker 2: him on redistricting. Indiana, where there are two Democrats, seems
Speaker 2: not to want to redistrict. I think some of these
Speaker 2: Republicans have been spooked by Democratic success in New Jersey,
Speaker 2: Virginia and so forth. You know, you can have districts
Speaker 2: that are R plus ten, meaning up by ten points.
Speaker 2: Those aren't necessarily safe in a blue wave year, and
Speaker 2: so they might be worried about that. They might thinking, okay, well,
Speaker 2: actually Democrats have shown in California that we can have
Speaker 2: this kind of mutually assured destruction where nobody wins, right,
Speaker 2: and so the game theory is interesting and will be
Speaker 2: right back after this break. If you look at the
Speaker 2: ratings for approval ratings for presence and their second term,
Speaker 2: they're much less resilient. And there are cases like Bush
Speaker 2: in particular, where it was just a downward trend. You know,
Speaker 2: Nixon also because of Watergate, where it deteriorated very fast.
Speaker 2: You know, Truman surprised people by defeating Dewey despite headlines
Speaker 2: of the nineteen forty eight election, was very unpopular in
Speaker 2: his second term, kind of a straight downward arrow, and
Speaker 2: so like once you kind of you know, you don't
Speaker 2: necessarily have your party coming to your defense if you
Speaker 2: don't have to run for election again. In fact, you
Speaker 2: have Republicans maybe positioning themselves for what does life look
Speaker 2: like posts Trump? Right, We've written or talked a lot
Speaker 2: in the show about how Democrats are still a mess.
Speaker 2: It's certainly a very valuable nomination to have in twenty eight, right,
Speaker 2: assuming there's not a constitutional crisis, then they have to
Speaker 2: nominate somebody else, and the jockeying for that starts now.
Speaker 2: It's definitely occurring among Democrats already.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the base case is always that you know,
Speaker 2: Trump is a high floor, low ceiling, high floor, but
Speaker 2: you never know, there's enough history of second term presidents
Speaker 2: actually going to this downward spiral where first term presidents
Speaker 2: tend to have this U shape or swoosh Nike shape recovery.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll be very curious to see how this plays out.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of it is going to
Speaker 1: depend not on the Epstein files, but on economic indicators,
Speaker 1: right on what is happening with the economy, what's happening
Speaker 1: with inflation. Basically, how is the American public feeling and
Speaker 1: are they what's going to happen with snap benefits, you know,
Speaker 1: Trump asking everyone to reapply for snap benefits with all
Speaker 1: of these different elements. You know, this is a puzzle
Speaker 1: right now. That is you know, Trump has a lot
Speaker 1: of different things that he has to manage correctly in
Speaker 1: order for there not to be a downward spiral. And
Speaker 1: we've talked before many many times on the show, how
Speaker 1: you know, nothing seems to matter right like he happens.
Speaker 1: It seems like he can rebound from anything negative. This
Speaker 1: is the first time night that we're actually seeing in
Speaker 1: since he became president in term number two. This is
Speaker 1: the first time I think that we've seen cracks in
Speaker 1: you know, this monolithic Republican support for Trump in the
Speaker 1: House right before, like basically whatever he wanted, they were
Speaker 1: rubber stamping, they were getting. They were basically even not
Speaker 1: doing what they were supposed to be doing, right. They
Speaker 1: were abdicating their powers of the purse. They were letting
Speaker 1: kind if Trump pass legislation. I realized that Trump isn't
Speaker 1: passing legislation, that's what Congress does, but they were really
Speaker 1: letting that Trump pass this legislation, tariffs, all of these
Speaker 1: different things, and they are finally starting to kind of
Speaker 1: crack a little bit, at least that's what it looks
Speaker 1: like right now. It's certainly I mean, it happened with
Speaker 1: the two hundred and eighteen signatures, right, you actually did
Speaker 1: have the breaking of ranks, So I would really you know,
Speaker 1: I'm very curious to see how this ends up playing
Speaker 1: out and what happens in the Senate. Right Is the
Speaker 1: Senate going to fracture as well after in the wake
Speaker 1: of what happened in the House. Is Trump going to
Speaker 1: is the fact that he said, oh fine, go ahead,
Speaker 1: you know, vote for this thing. We have nothing to hide.
Speaker 1: Is that actually going to propel this through the Senate
Speaker 1: as well? Is he going to backtrack yet again? How
Speaker 1: is this going to play out? And what does that
Speaker 1: mean for his ability to pass everything he wants to
Speaker 1: pass in the next two years to actually have that
Speaker 1: monolithic support. Is he still going to have it moving
Speaker 1: forward or not? Obviously you know, a betting person would
Speaker 1: say he probably will because he's always managed to regain it.
Speaker 1: But I think that it's a question mark for me
Speaker 1: for the first time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, I don't know that Trump has that much
Speaker 2: more of a legislative agenda, really apart from like appropriations bills, which,
Speaker 2: as always for Republicans will try to to lower taxes
Speaker 2: for rich people in corporations and star of the welfare
Speaker 2: state a little bit. But I mean, yeah, look so
Speaker 2: you have you know, it would be subject to a
Speaker 2: filibuster in Congress. It seems like a kind of a
Speaker 2: bad look to if the House votes overwhelmingly for I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess you're kind of hoping that, like if you
Speaker 2: go to Polymarket, which I consult for, then there's only
Speaker 2: like a forty percent chance implied that the Senate passes
Speaker 2: the bill by the end of the year. Now, we
Speaker 2: don't have that many left, and things in the Senate
Speaker 2: are slow, right, so they might kind of slow walk
Speaker 2: it and hope that people forget about it, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, the fact is that there are entire you know,
Speaker 2: like MSNBC has not been rebranded to MS now, which
Speaker 2: sounds like a multiple sclerosis charity.
Speaker 1: It's not it really does it.
Speaker 2: It's a cable news ess awful, what is it?
Speaker 1: Sorry this is neither here nor there, But what is
Speaker 1: it with all these horrific media rebrands?
Speaker 2: It was like MS like the partnership with M Microsoft
Speaker 2: Network lasted ended what like fifteen years ago or something, right,
Speaker 2: it is that you know the news screaming MSNBC is
Speaker 2: teaming with NBC News. It's like doesn't really or MS
Speaker 2: it doesn't really make sense, right, but like it made
Speaker 2: sense in the early aughts, I guess, and the name
Speaker 2: has stuck. But like you know, basically they're just gonna
Speaker 2: be talking epsteptepstn on MSMB MS. Now it's a new
Speaker 2: kind of Russia gay. So if you're hoping people forget
Speaker 2: about it, then then they won't, right. But like, look,
Speaker 2: maybe Trump figures that. Like what's the scene from a
Speaker 2: Christmas story where the kid gets a bb gun, like
Speaker 2: don't don't shoot your eye out? Am I am? I
Speaker 2: getting that right? I don't know if I've seen the
Speaker 2: whole New Gay know that's scene. I'm sure I've seen
Speaker 2: the movie.
Speaker 1: He Got I don't remember it. I don't remember, but the.
Speaker 2: Kid gets a bb gun and of course he like
Speaker 2: shoots his I don't know what the fuck's going on,
Speaker 2: but it's a little bit like, you know, you have
Speaker 2: Democrats with this bb gun on Epstein and like they're
Speaker 2: so giddy about the story, which, by the way, I
Speaker 2: say open up fucking everything. Right. I don't like these
Speaker 2: political elites. I think they're fucking weird. Social circles and
Speaker 2: parties are fucking weird, right, Like, I hope as many
Speaker 2: people as possible are tainted for this and we get
Speaker 2: a better fucking set of elites to be perfectly honest, right,
Speaker 2: you know, by the way, I you know, I think
Speaker 2: that it's not irrational for someone to ask whether Jeffrey
Speaker 2: Epstein really killed himselves, right, I don't care. I don't
Speaker 2: think I think that should be That's a normal thing
Speaker 2: to ask if you go and like look at like
Speaker 2: what the fuck is going on with this? Right? How
Speaker 2: is he doing all this stuff? And you know, I
Speaker 2: think there are lots and lots of open questions. I
Speaker 2: would love to see every single file on this released
Speaker 2: to the public and debated. Right. At the same time,
Speaker 2: when you have kind of the ms now partisan democrats, right,
Speaker 2: there's a risk that instead of having this kind of
Speaker 2: moment of cross partisan crossover, that it goes back to
Speaker 2: kind of a he said, She said, people I think
Speaker 2: already have kind of low expectations for Trump and so
Speaker 2: and so. I don't know, right, you know, but it
Speaker 2: would be an absolute like epsteina palooza for three months
Speaker 2: if the file, if the files came out, which again,
Speaker 2: if I were Democrats, I'd say, Okay, this is a
Speaker 2: pretty good story for us, But there is an opportunity cost, right,
Speaker 2: and the opportunity costs might be to drive home a
Speaker 2: message about the economy.
Speaker 1: That's actually what I was just about to say, like
Speaker 1: in the grand scheme of things, like right now, you've
Speaker 1: got the economy, right, You've got inflation, you've got snap
Speaker 1: benefits being cut off, you've got the healthcare stuff, You've
Speaker 1: got all this stuff going on. It seems like a
Speaker 1: good moment to release. However, tens of thousands of emails
Speaker 1: and whatever else, all of this just insane amount of
Speaker 1: information and try to kind of bury bury it all, right,
Speaker 1: And Trump is really really good at the politics of distraction, right,
Speaker 1: He is very good at getting people to pay attention
Speaker 1: to things that make them not deal with the issues
Speaker 1: that are actually important at the moment. Like he is
Speaker 1: so good at attention hijacking. And he's I mean to
Speaker 1: be clear, with the Epstein files, he's been trying to
Speaker 1: avoid this, right, because there is we already know that
Speaker 1: he's in the files. We already know that there's damaging information.
Speaker 1: The question is how damaging is it. But I think
Speaker 1: he might be making a gamble now that like, if
Speaker 1: they're going to come out, might as well like just
Speaker 1: have this barrage and try to bury everything else, and
Speaker 1: then you know, people will stop caring or stop paying
Speaker 1: attention to the things that they really should be paying
Speaker 1: attention to in terms of the welfare of the American people.
Speaker 2: No, and look, there are sure to be other Democrats implicated. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: and there are sure to be and you can, you can.
Speaker 2: It's a little bit morbid. You can bet on like
Speaker 2: who's going to be named the obscene files? And like
Speaker 2: I'm not going to go for.
Speaker 1: Sure, Yeah, for sure, and we get and you know,
Speaker 1: I can. I'm willing to bet that we are going
Speaker 1: to be seeing a lot of news headlines and we're
Speaker 1: going to have a hijacking of the conversation about everything.
Speaker 1: Every single Democrat right who's mentioned, however peripherally in the files.
Speaker 1: So so I think that that will be another great
Speaker 1: opportunity for attention redeployment.
Speaker 2: Shall we say, to some extent in the notion that
Speaker 2: you have like cabal, a bipartisan cabal of like rich
Speaker 2: elites who are behaving very very badly and think that
Speaker 2: money can buy you anything you want, including access to
Speaker 2: underaged women, right children if they're underage, ate their children,
Speaker 2: Like you know, in some sense, that kind of is
Speaker 2: part of what like sparks populist narratives right now, if
Speaker 2: Trump is caught up in this, then he is hardly
Speaker 2: a populist savior obviously. At the same at the same time, like,
Speaker 2: you know, look, there's been people recently who so Trump
Speaker 2: has pardoned a bunch of like January sixth writers, protesters,
Speaker 2: whatever you want to call them, right, people, people that
Speaker 2: were convicted of crimes, and that's some article. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: people who criticized Joe Biden or pardoning Hunter Biden. You know,
Speaker 2: this is so much a bigger deal. And I'm like, no,
Speaker 2: fuck you, right, because like Democrats are running on the
Speaker 2: we are the party of the rule of law and
Speaker 2: democracy and the moral high ground, right and Trump is
Speaker 2: running on everyone's a fucking hypocrite. So do you want Yeah, maybe,
Speaker 2: I like maybe I like younger women. I don't drank,
Speaker 2: I don't smoke, right, I like to hang out. We
Speaker 2: talk about women, you know, I mean, like that's kind
Speaker 2: of you know, Trump is reveling in his hypocrisy in
Speaker 2: a way, kind of his like degenerously almost. I guess
Speaker 2: it isn't like smoke or drink or things like that, right,
Speaker 2: but he's kind of like a proud degen in a way.
Speaker 2: And that's different. They're not trying to like claim it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: everyone's a hypocrite, So we got to look out for
Speaker 2: our own, right, And so when things happen that discredit
Speaker 2: quote unquote both sides of the establishment, that plays into
Speaker 2: cynicism of political institutions, and that plays into the hands
Speaker 2: of populace, including what outlimited to Trump.
Speaker 1: We'll be back right after this. I'm just curious kind
Speaker 1: of what is the line, right, like what because it
Speaker 1: seems to me that you know that Trump is able
Speaker 1: to withstand most accusations better than most people, right, So
Speaker 1: if we have the Epstein files released and there's bad
Speaker 1: stuff on Trump but also bad stuff on you know,
Speaker 1: a bunch of Democrats, he might be able to kind
Speaker 1: of waltz through it if there's you know, nothing like
Speaker 1: nothing ridiculous, But they won't, right, So, so it's one
Speaker 1: of these things where it may be asymmetric risks.
Speaker 2: No, I think it yeah, you know, I don't know,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, listeners, you'll be hearing whichever version
Speaker 2: of this that Christian lawyers have lit again because their
Speaker 2: president is right. But like, you know, look, I agree
Speaker 2: that like it. It's a little binary in terms of like, look,
Speaker 2: he's not been afraid. I mean, he talks about walking
Speaker 2: into in the locker room and miss America patchets, right,
Speaker 2: It's always kind of been like a a running stick
Speaker 2: or joke that yeah, he likes it, likes women, right,
Speaker 2: maybe he likes women that are a little bit younger,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of like priced in, right, So I
Speaker 2: think it would have to be like pretty definitive, pretty
Speaker 2: salacious evidence, which is possible. But I think it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: to me, it's a little bifurcated between like either really
Speaker 2: bad or gets swept up rushed aside into the previous narrative, right,
Speaker 2: And there probably are some probably just some leetl ground yeah,
Speaker 2: but yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it'll be it'll be very interesting to see
Speaker 1: how this process moves forward, what happens in the Senate,
Speaker 1: and whether we do end up seeing a sustained fracturing
Speaker 1: of the base where Congress becomes a little bit less
Speaker 1: of a rubber state, rubber stamp mechanism for the state.
Speaker 1: So or whether this is a one off and it
Speaker 1: will just go back to kind of to see to
Speaker 1: doing exactly what Trump says. And I think that the
Speaker 1: repercussions of that are actually potentially much wider because, as
Speaker 1: you've pointed out, Nan, and as we've talked about, a
Speaker 1: lot of Trump's agenda has been accomplished through executive order,
Speaker 1: right through kind of just saying Okay, this is what
Speaker 1: I'm going to be doing, and a lot of those
Speaker 1: are now making their way to the Supreme Court right
Speaker 1: in front of the Supreme Court, will be in front
Speaker 1: of the Supreme Court soon. And the Supreme Court has
Speaker 1: also shown itself to be very pro Trump. But if
Speaker 1: there's a sustained fracturing of kind of the Republican support
Speaker 1: base in Congress, I'm wondering whether we might actually see
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court also be come a little bit less
Speaker 1: rubber stampy and a little bit more willing to strike
Speaker 1: down things.
Speaker 2: Sure, I don't know if you're don't, but like for sure,
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court is sensitive to public yeah, right, And
Speaker 2: sometimes we'll kind of be honest about that, sometimes less so.
Speaker 2: But like they they are a a political.
Speaker 1: Assay're not supposed to be, but they are.
Speaker 2: Do you have closing thoughts here?
Speaker 1: My closing thoughts are I am you know whatever is
Speaker 1: behind the pivot. I do hope that all of the
Speaker 1: Epstein files are released, and I do hope that they
Speaker 1: are released in a way that actually has a lasting
Speaker 1: effect and helps clean up the elites on both sides
Speaker 1: of the aisle. You know, let's let's be very clear,
Speaker 1: no one should be what what was happening on Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Epstein's island and his mansion. All of these things are
Speaker 1: completely unacceptable and people should be held to account. So
Speaker 1: I hope that we're actually able to see this and
Speaker 1: very curious to see what's going to happen in the
Speaker 1: Senate and whether the American public and Congress is able
Speaker 1: to maintain their focus and their attention on more than
Speaker 1: one thing at a time and keep the kind of
Speaker 1: eye on the prize when it comes to the health
Speaker 1: of the economy, the health of snap benefits, healthcare, all
Speaker 1: of these things, like let's let's multitask people, we can
Speaker 1: do this two things.
Speaker 2: That was what was the island called.
Speaker 1: Little Saint James to day?
Speaker 2: Are you thinking of like the island in Jurassic Park,
Speaker 2: like East Lend, New Blar or whatever it is? Right?
Speaker 2: But why not Jurassic Park eight Epstein Island Island. Why
Speaker 2: not let the dinosaurs be the good guys for ones? Right?
Speaker 2: They eat all these child pedophile rapists? Like that would
Speaker 2: be good, right? Wouldn't it a legend a legend child molesters?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, but I'll watch that Jurassic Park. Let us
Speaker 1: know what you think of the show. Reach out to
Speaker 1: us at Risky Business at Pushkin dot FM. Risky Business
Speaker 1: is hosted by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2: And by me Nate Silver. The show was a cool
Speaker 2: production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
Speaker 2: by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya gerwit Lydia,
Speaker 2: Jean Kott and Daphne Chen are our editors, and our
Speaker 2: executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
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