--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's a lot going on in the world right now, but much of the nation remains obsessed with a list that may or may not exist by a guy who's definitely dead. It's so big it shut down Congress. It's so big Ghislaine Maxwell is meeting with the Department of Justice. It's so big the president ran away to Scotland, but he's still posting about it or posting to distract us from it.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm looking at a large amount of money owed by the Democrats after the presidential election and the fact that they admit to paying, probably illegally, $11 million to Singer Beyoncé for an endorsement, $3 million for expenses to Oprah, $600,000 to a low-rated TV anchor, Al Sharpton, and others to be named for doing absolutely nothing. These ridiculous fees were incorrectly stated in the books and records. You are not allowed to pay for an endorsement. It is totally illegal to do so.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Can you imagine what would happen if politicians started paying for people to endorse them? All hell would break out. Kamala and all those who received endorsement money broke the law. They should all be persecuted. Thank you for your attention to this matter. The mother of all conspiracy theories on Today Explained.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Together, autonomously, anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters most. I've never met an AI agent. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people at servicenow.com.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Mama! Today, Explained from Vox here with Andrew Prokop, senior politics correspondent at Vox.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: In your latest piece for Vox, you call the Epstein scandal the mother of all conspiracies. How did Epstein get to become that, Andrew?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Epstein scandal has so many different elements to it that touch on the interests and obsessions with so many different American politics and conspiracy theory subcultures. subcultures, it sort of unites them all. It's the one conspiracy theory to rule them all.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: The bare facts of the scandal are wild to the extent we know them. A guy comes out of nowhere, gets fabulously wealthy through unclear means, befriends all the top people in New York society. They said he was a financier, but his firm had no clients, no website, and no record of trades. Hanging out in the same place as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, was buddy-buddy with Bill Gates getting him to give money to MIT.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Then he gets accused of sexually abusing dozens of women, including underage women, trafficking girls. On the white sandy beaches of St. Thomas, it's a 70-acre island called Little St. James. For Jeffrey Epstein, it was a zen-like retreat. For others, it was a horror show.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Sleazy Wall Street tycoon Jeffrey Epstein used the Lolita Express to ferry a bevy of beautiful young women. Among the passengers, former President Bill Clinton and Britain's Prince Andrew. And then he dies mysteriously in jail while awaiting trial in 2019.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I've said this from day one. I do not believe it was suicide. I can't talk about what happened to him. How about the fact that they deleted the first tapes? Oh. So he had an original attempt on his life, and then they had a second one. And they can't find the tapes for the second one, and then they accidentally deleted the tapes from the first one.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I mean, there's a lot of interest just based on those core facts. But then this also sort of connects to what other people, various different groups in American politics, are reading into the Epstein scandal or how they interpret the Epstein scandal. because in a sense, it could be called a Me Too scandal. It's about a powerful and influential man exploiting and abusing women.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For years, it's also been treated as kind of like one of those Pizzagate slash QAnon right-wing scandals, which is these scandals that were popular online in which the right fantasized about how their political enemies were secretly child sex abusers who were about to be exposed in some law enforcement operation.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: What is QAnon? QAnon is basically a shadow civil war between rogue intelligence agencies and good guys, for lack of a better term. There's this belief that elitists or politicians ordering pizza symbolizes them ordering underage boys and girls. There's this transcript of a call from Obama to order pizza and hot dogs to the White House.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: and then there's the sort of hashtag resistance hope for a trump scandal and that's what's kind of supercharged the latest round of this interest because donald trump does have long-time personal ties to epstein that have been kind of overlooked for a while they've been known but they haven't really been the focus of much attention and now they are definitely getting a lot of attention
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Trump famously loves a conspiracy, and I imagine producer Rebecca will throw in a little montage of some of his greatest hits here.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats. You know, the FBI has never gotten that server. That's a big part of this whole thing. Why did they give it to a Ukrainian company? Are you sure they did that? Are you sure they gave it to Ukraine?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Well, that's what the word is. The person that he reposted said that former President Biden had been executed and that he was actually replaced with clones and robots that were doing the job for him. How did this one go sideways on him? It's not even new.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the interesting thing is that Trump loves to stoke conspiracy theories about his political enemies but he he doesn always control them on the right When we think about Pizzagate when we think about QAnon these were not conspiracy theories that were invented by Donald Trump They kind of bubbled up on the right wing fever swamps on online message boards, in chain emails and so on.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But it was more that he kind of recognized the energy and power that these conspiracy theories held over a portion of his base and wanted to use them. And Epstein was kind of similar. There is a logical tie between it to Pizzagate and QAnon. Jeffrey Epstein did abuse a lot of underage girls. He did have a lot of powerful and influential friends, many of whom, not all, were Democrats or liberals.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The interesting thing is that when Trump was asked about it, he was always a bit more cautious and reticent. When he was asked about this in the 2024 campaign, he was asked whether he would release the Epstein files. And I think he said, Yeah, yeah, I would. All right. I guess I would. I think that less so because, you know, you don't know it. You don't want to affect people's lives if it's phony stuff in there because it's a lot of phony stuff with that whole world.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But I think I would or at least. Do you think that would restore trust? Help restore trust? I don't know about Epstein so much as I do the others. And now in hindsight, you can sort of read into perhaps some of the Trump anticipating what might be in those files and that perhaps he might be in those files.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do we know if he's actually losing support? Do we have any evidence to that yet? What the polling shows is that this is very clearly a bad issue for him. They disapprove of him on CNN polling analyst Harry Enten looked at Trump's net approval rating on various issues. how many more people disapproved of his handling of the issue than approved. Immigration, he was negative five points. The economy, negative 14. Foreign policy, negative 14. Epstein case, negative 37. 37 points below water. My goodness gracious.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So it was by far the worst issue for him. And that's because a bunch of people on the right who usually support what Trump does on this stuff are unhappy with this issue specifically. Is it actually hurting his broader support and approval? Is it driving hardcore Trump supporters away from him? That remains to be seen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'd be a little skeptical of that. Ben Smith, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of semaphore has recently called the Epstein scandal QAnon for people with college degrees. Do you get the sense that some of the people that are hopping on the Epstein train are maybe just taking advantage, doing it just for the fun, you know, happy to see Trump in some hot water, but don't actually believe there's a there there?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I can't read their minds, but that would probably be my guess that there's a mix. But I mean, it is also the case that like Trump's behavior on this has been kind of genuinely strange. And I'm actually surprised that he's sort of gotten the benefit of the doubt on it for a while, because back in February, when Bondi didn't really come up with anything new to release, and then more recently, when they said, hey, we investigated all this, And we think he did kill himself and there's no evidence of a larger conspiracy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think the default assumption from a lot of people was that that this was just kind of the conservative base embarrassing themselves. They talk themselves into believing these silly theories. And now, you know, they couldn't Bondi and Kash Patel couldn't deliver. And so that it's just kind of something to point and laugh at them about. But the idea that like, oh, they're covering this up because it's embarrassing at the very least for Donald Trump. That was a kind of fringe view among Democrats until we got some more evidence and indications pointing that way relatively recently.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: The Wall Street Journal reports Bondi and Blanche informed the president in May his name appears multiple times in the Epstein files. He was told he was in the files two months ago and then last week said, no, no, he wasn't. He was. So Democrats were really kind of slow to rally to this. So it's I think that it's really been kind of the opposite of what Ben Smith says, that the that it has been the exact same crowd as QAnon that has been keeping this scandal alive for so long.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's QAnon, but also QAnon for people with college degrees. That's why it's the mother of all conspiracy theories. There's something for everyone in the Epstein scandal. But Donald Trump has a new strategy, which is to make it about the love of his life, Barack Obama. I thought you were going to go with Vladimir Putin. Oh, sorry. Both of them. Even better. You know what? That'll work. That'll work. That's the throw. We're going to talk about that when we're back on Today Explained.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Support for Today Explained comes from Built Rewards. These days, it seems like everybody has a rewards program. You swipe your card and you get one cent on the hundred dollars. But with your rent, frequently, you just pay month after month. You never get anything from it other than that roof over your head. Not anymore, says Built Rewards.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Built Rewards says it lets you earn points on your rent. By paying rent through Built, they say you can earn flexible points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines, perhaps a future rent payment, your next Lyft ride, and so much more.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When you're ready to travel, they say Built Points can be converted to miles or hotel points all around the world. You can earn points on rent and around your neighborhood wherever you call home by joining built.com slash explained.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Every day, millions of customers engage with AI agents like me. We resolve queries fast. We work 24-7 and we're helpful, knowledgeable, and empathetic. We're built to be the voice of the brands we serve. Sierra is the platform for building better more human customer experiences with AI No hold music no generic answers no frustration Visit sierra to learn more.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Support for the show today comes from LifeKit, the podcast from NPR. What's in your life kit? I'm asking, they didn't ask that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Every day you have to make choices that might shape the direction of your life, but you can't flip to the back of the book to find an answer key. Instead, you can listen to the Life Kit podcast from NPR.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Life Kit offers real stories about common issues like relationships, finances, parenting, and your career. If you're looking to move with more intention or just need thoughtful guidance on living better, Life Kit delivers strategies to help you make meaningful, sustainable change.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: From fitness routines to mental resilience, navigating personal goals to tackling burnout, Each episode is full of relevant insights and clear takeaways about things we all could use a little help with.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: LifeKit wants to help you approach your own life with confidence and clarity and walk away with a game plan you can implement right away. Enough from me. Go listen to the show LifeKit. It's a podcast from NPR.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is Today Explained. Andrew, longtime listeners of this program will remember that you were on it a good many times in the first Trump administration, talking about Russia. This sounds like a job for Prokop. Cop? I thought you were a PI. No, no, I'm Andrew Prokop, politics reporter over at Vox.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So it was a big day for the investigation. Mueller makes it very clear that there was a Russian effort to interfere with the election. And if Trump does win a second term, then everything we've talked about here will just be the prologue to what he's going to be up to then.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Can you remind our listeners why we spend so much time talking about Russia? I ask myself that question often. What was it all for? But no, I mean, the reason that we were so interested in the Russia scandal is that it was a very serious, strange and scandalous thing that happened during the 2016 campaign.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: We are learning more about the hack into the Democratic National Committee, including indications for the first time that the breach went beyond the official accounts of DNC staffers and included personal email accounts. As well as a separate effort to leverage Internet trolls and fake news to drive interactions with Americans that way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Russian intelligence officers carried out this hacking. This led to a larger investigation and scandal about how exactly this hacking happened, but also whether anyone in Donald Trump's campaign was aware of or involved in this hack and leak operation in any way, but also whether Donald Trump's notable public warmth and friendliness towards Russia and Vladimir Putin were hiding anything suspicious or compromising.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: You know, a lot of people would say he's put himself at the forefront of the world as a leader. If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him. I think our relationship with Russia will be very good. Like, that's kind of the larger Trump-Russia investigation that emerged.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the investigation ultimately found they couldn't prove anything. And now Trump wants to relitigate this whole thing. Yes. Well, Trump has always, of course, believed that the Russia investigation became this gigantic scandal blotting out the sun of his first administration, you know, generating so many Today Explained episodes that were about that and not about his many accomplishments.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He has always resented this. He and his narrative has been that the scandal was fake, that like everything about it is fake. And the Democrats and Obama administration and intelligence and Justice Department officials who did this investigation knew it was fake all along and we're just doing it to hurt him politically.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's been trying to prove this for many years and he can't prove it because it's not true. But the latest round is that he got National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard to try to review some old files, old notes, old documents, to look for anything that they could take out of context and spin to fit their narrative that, oh, they knew this was fake all along. They worked with their partners in the media to promote this lie, ultimately to undermine the legitimacy of President Trump and launching what would be a years long coup against him and his administration.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And on one hand, it's just a transparent attempt to change the subject from Jeffrey Epstein. And Trump has actually said Jeffrey Epstein's scandal is just like Russia. All it is is the Republicans, certain Republicans got duped by the Democrats and they're following a Democrat playbook. And no different than Russia, Russia, Russia and all the other hoaxes. And what they did in 2016 and in 2020 is very criminal. It's criminal at the highest level. So that's really the things you should be talking about.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But on the other hand, it also plays into Trump's effort to have his political opponents prosecuted and sent to prison. Whether it's right or wrong, it's time to go after people. Which is that something he very much wants to do. He's been very clear on this for a long time. And the question has always been, can he and the people he appoints actually get it together to make this happen? Is there any chance this actually goes anywhere that he actually has any grounds to try and prosecute Barack Obama or James Comey or anyone else?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Well, conveniently for Barack Obama, the Supreme Court famously held last year that it's very difficult to prosecute a president for things that they do while in office. The immunity we recognize today does not just protect any particular president. It protects the institution of the presidency. God save the United States and this honorable court.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I would not say Obama should be losing any sleep about what's going on. But what they are doing is they really looking at the former intelligence chiefs specifically John Brennan who was Obama CIA director and James Comey the FBI director who Trump fired in 2017 in a firing that really supercharged the Russia investigation because it made him look very suspicious Lordy, I hope there are tapes.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He is looking for anything they've said or done, you know, in testimony that might be grounds for a perjury charge, any bits that could be hung together into some sort of conspiracy charge. Who knows? Like, they're going to try to do something, but whether they can actually get it together remains to be seen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Barack Obama usually remains above the fray when it comes to, you know, Trump conspiracies and what have you. But I did see that he bothered to actually address this one. How are he and other Democrats responding? So Obama's spokesperson released a statement that said these bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election, but did not successfully manipulate any votes.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So, you know, he's basically saying that, yes, this is an attempt by Trump to change the subject. And it's he didn't find anything new and that there was no wrongdoing here from his administration or from Democrats.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What do you think we should be taken away from Trump's effort to divert attention from the Epstein scandal to Russia? Trump has a time-tested playbook for pushing back against mainstream media-driven scandals, which he basically perfected during the Russia scandal by creating this alternative narrative and scandal where, in fact, it was the Democrats and investigators who were the criminals. And he was the innocent victim of their malfeasance.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And he managed to cede and advance this alternative narrative in conservative media through conservative members of Congress. And it was very successful. It prevented anything like a Watergate-like outcome where President Nixon had to resign because his support just collapsed. That is much harder to do with Jeffrey Epstein. And so he is trying to do something a little different, which is to just change the subject back to where he felt comfortable to try to rebrand the Epstein scandal as a just another phony fake news Trump Russia scandal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But, you know, it's a really hard sell because the conservative base, this clearly did bubble up from the MAGA base. They've been obsessed with Epstein for years and people around Trump promised to disclose the truth about Epstein. And now they have to squirm and explain, okay, well, were you pandering then? Are you lying or covering something up now?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: They're finding that when you play with this conspiracy theory fire, you get burned because like no disclosure is actually enough for the conspiracy theorists. They will always believe there's more to the story. And, um, and so they're not willing to accept the idea that, Hey, there's nothing to see here. Take a representative Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia, like, widely known as one of the most sort of conspiracy theory-friendly members of the Republican conference.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We like the truth. We like supporting our Constitution, our freedoms, and America first. What about Jewish space lasers? Tell us about Jewish space lasers. No, why don't you go talk about Jewish space lasers?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: She tweeted last week that, If you tell the base of people who support you of deep state treasonous crimes, election interference, blackmail, and rich, powerful, elite, evil cabals, then you must take down every enemy of the people. If not, the base will turn and there's no going back.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Dangling bits of red meat no longer satisfies. They want the whole steak dinner and will accept nothing else. But in there, I think you can see a path forward to Trump, which is that Marjorie Taylor Greene is saying, what the base wants is to see Democrats arrested and prosecuted. They don't necessarily care so much about finding the truth about Jeffrey Epstein, no matter where it leads, that this is more about taking down the supposed elite criminals that are at the top of society or who the right wing base imagines are those criminals.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So So Trump's attempts to change the subject aren't really working so far in a broad sense. And this continues to be a very bad issue for him. But one potential path forward is that he kind of doubles down on these efforts to actually arrest Democrats in hopes that his base will be satisfied with that and stop caring so much about the Jeffrey Epstein stuff.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Andrew Prokop, Vox, Vox, Vox. Rebecca Ibarra produced our show today. Amina Alsadi edited. Hadi Mawagdeh and Denise Guerra were on Facts. Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd were on The Mix. I'm Sean Rameswaram for him, and this is Today Explained. Thank you.
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