
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
10/28/26: Israeli Election Results, Bolsonaro Flees Brazil To U.S., Dems Drop Trump Epstein Report
Mittwoch, 28. Oktober 2026 · 1 h 13
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Shownotes
Saagar and Emily discuss the Israeli election results, Trump extracts Bolsonaro from Brazil, Dems drop major Trump Epstein report.
Juan David Rojas: juandarojasro.substack.com
Noga Tarnopolsky: x.com/NTarnopolsky
Matthew Cole’s Book: simonandschuster.com/books/Princes-and-Thieves…
Kushner’s Response: jaredkushner.com/posts/response-to-matthew-col…
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Good morning, everybody.
Happy Wednesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. My heart goes out to everybody here. Emily and I are going to do the very first hour here on Breaking Points.
Apologies in advance.
We had a little bit of technical meltdown today, so that's why you're going to see things the way that they are.
Bear with us.
Unfortunately, the show does come out later if you see any few things. Please know that we're working our very, very best to get it all sorted. Of course, we are going to start here with the Israeli elections. It does appear now that Prime Minister Netanyahu's party, Likud, did achieve the plurality in the Israeli election. However, the open question now is, will he be able to form a coalition government? That is very much in question as of right now. We've got our grass Noga from Israel, who will be joining us to break all of that down.
There is, of course, also this situation going on in Brazil. Absolute madness where Flavio Bolsonaro had been ordered to have his passport seized. Then Brazilian authorities are trying to track him down. Various reports yesterday he was fleeing to Argentina and then to the United States. It now appears he's either on the ground or on his way here to the United States will be granted asylum, I guess, of some sorts. by the Trump administration. So that, of course, is crazy. Our friend Juan David Rojas is going to break that down. We've got Emily in particular, who did a massive deep dive on this new Democratic report that came out about Donald Trump and his connections to Jeffrey Epstein.
In particular, the major headline is they are saying if they win the House of Representatives, that they will be looking for a special prosecutor to examine that little preview of what's to come if the Democrats do take the House in particular, if they also get the Senate. Ryan has a major scoop. He's going to join the show a little bit later to talk about the UAE. New Dropsite report says that the UAE is actually helping the Houthis in their campaign against Saudi Arabia. And then finally, Emily and Ryan are going to interview Matthew Cole. He is the journalist with those new explosive allegations against Jared Kushner.
in his new book that's forthcoming. Many of you probably saw it in the Vanity Fair article. And so Ryan and Matthew go way back. Emily, I know you guys have some questions here for Matthew. It's going to be very, very interesting. Obviously, those allegations have taken the world by storm. So thank you to everybody who's been subscribing to the show, BreakingPoints.com.
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If you're watching this on YouTube, hit subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you're listening to this podcast, please share an episode with a friend. But Em, let's get to Noga.
Let's see her.
Let's do it.
Joining us now is Noga Tarnopolsky. She is an Israeli political analyst and, of course, a great friend of our show. Noga, thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate your time.
My pleasure, as always.
Of course.
All right.
So let's go ahead and start with some of the results that we know right now. We can put these up here on the screen. As of the latest, with approximately 77 percent of the votes counted, the Likud party has got some 27 seats in. in the current projections. However, for our purposes, as I understand it, what matters the most is.
About the bloc itself.
The current bloc does not put Netanyahu in a 61-seat coalition majority. However, the opposition led by Eisenhower also has not achieved that. And there have been a significant showing by the Arab parties as well. Noga, can you break down for our American audience what this means going forward? Will Netanyahu be able to form a coalition government? Will Eisenkant potentially? And will any of this actually potentially break apart with some people saying that they wouldn't previously align themselves with the Arab parties?
Will they continue to do so? I know it's a bit complicated.
That's about 17 questions in one.
Yes, yes. Okay.
I'm going to frame it this way.
I think the headline here should be how Netanyahu won by losing. OK, so that's the first bottom line of this election is that Netanyahu lost.
He crashed and burned.
He walked into Election Day with a 68, depending on how you count it, 64, 68 coalition. And if he's lucky, he's going to walk out of this Election Day with a 54. So it's a big loss for him. And it leaves him in a position in which he cannot form a new government.
He doesn't have leeway.
Let's say he holds steady now at this block of 54. That 54 is a hard 54. He has no one else from the opposition block, from the non-aligned block, from whatever you want to call it, no one else who is going to reach out a hand and give him those extra mandates. Now, to form a government, you need a majority. It can either be a majority of 61 out of the Knesset, or it can be a simple majority.
The opposition can have 50 and you get 52. You can form what's called a minority government. Netanyahu does not have that possibility. And I think that this was reflected in his speech last night, which was, I'm going to dare say, maybe the most overtly racist speech statement I have heard him make as prime minister. He touted, I'm quoting this now, he touted having, and I quote, a Jewish majority, which is really a step further than even what we've seen. And he basically delivered an election speech.
So Netanyahu, I think, believes that that he has succeeded not in winning, which he never could do, he just never had the numbers, but in preventing anybody else from being able to win. Now, why do I say that, given that the opponents to Netanyahu, the opposition, has, you know, 65, 66, 67 out of 120 seats, a clear majority. And that's because Netanyahu's success during this campaign. He may have realized before any of us did that he really had no way of winning, or maybe as the rest of us did, but we saw it more linearly. Netanyahu realized the only way he could win is by being able to hang on as acting prime minister and pushing for second elections in the hope that in a second round of elections,
the left would the Arab voters, the liberal voters, the pro-democracy voters would be disheartened, and he would have a better chance at winning. And he may have succeeded at that, not just because of racism, although that's a big part of where we are right now, but because Eisenkot appears not to even be at an equal position with his bloc as the Netanyahu bloc, I still think that there's a chance of changing the Israeli government. There's 100% certainty of changing the Israeli parliament. The parliament has been voted in.
It's a vast majority against Netanyahu. And that parliament, once it crosses some hurdles, Netanyahu will try and stop the parliament from forming. The Supreme Court will have to get involved. But once that parliament and a new parliament speaker, Knesset speaker, takes over, they can pass laws. For example, the opposition has promised to pass a law prohibiting any indicted criminal from running for office. That would eliminate Netanyahu from his plan, which is to run again. He's indicted. He's on trial.
So we really are very much at a standstill. I think, to end this long explanation, I think that Eisenkot may still give it a shot.
He may.
Join up certainly with the most, I would say, kind of mainstream of these two parties. That's called Ra'am, actually a party, a very moderate party affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood here in Israel. But it's the other party, the Joint List, that has had also just an astonishing, just impressive, inspiring success. And its leader, Yusuf Jabarin, he's the one who has spoken up already today. and said that he's in negotiations with the opposition and that they are, he said, ready and.
Prepared to.
Asphalt the way, to pave the way to get Netanyahu out. So the possibility exists, but right now I say odds on Netanyahu sticking around as an acting prime minister and pushing for a new round of elections.
Well, I want to pick up on this anti-Arab messaging question. We have a few elements to run through here. There's a Haaretz headline, quote, emergency Netanyahu rails nonstop against alleged high Arab election turnout. Amit Siegel posted voters are complaining of messages that briefly took over their phone screens, reading, quote, last chance to prevent a left wing Arab government go out and vote. So, Noga, tell us more about how Likud and Netanyahu relied on this particular messaging as the election was happening yesterday.
It's really a mind blowing thing. I don't think I'm exaggerating if I tell you that Netanyahu and his party posted more than 20 videos, posts, memes, whatever you want to call them, overtly racist. Now, Amit Sehgal, just for you to know, he's.
Like a little Hannity.
He's one of the whiny mouthpieces of the prime minister in the Israeli media space. He doesn't pretend. His official title He's a political analyst for one of the main channels here. But that shows you a little bit about how broken the public space and the political space is in this country. So take everything he posts with a grain of salt, but I can tell you and I can even show you if you'd like.
Yesterday was astonishing.
Those of us old enough to remember 11 years ago, this is what you have now on the screen is particularly astonishing to This photo is AI manipulated, having nothing to do with elections. This was proven by a good government group called Fake Reporter early in the morning, maybe midday. I remember quoting it in a report that I did maybe at midday-ish, two in the afternoon. It was known that this was fake. And Netanyahu continued reverberating this message.
throughout the day, again and again, apparently somebody on his team thought this show, apparently showing, right, this fake image ostensibly showing veiled Muslim women coming in droves to vote.
Now, anyone who.
Knows Israel or knows Israeli Arab communities would know this is a cheap fake because people here tend to vote in families, Arabs and Jews, mother, father, kids, Grandpa, grandma, kids, no one, there's no sex segregation in voting. That clearly, if it even existed, was a religious event. Nonetheless, even after being shown, having it been proved that this was AI, the Likud and Netanyahu personally kept posting this and reposting it.
They thought it was effective. It may have been, I don't really know. I don't yet have all of these like behind the scenes stacks on who voted and when. And also very important to state, The full numbers are not yet counted. I don't think we're going to have complete numbers, at least for a full other day. Even that 77% of votes counted that you showed lacks a whole other chunk of voters. There's about 10% this year of voters who are voting from temporary voting places. Those votes are going to be counted later. So things could change.
I don't expect a sea change. There could be enough of a change that it would give Eisenkot the kind of boost he needs to feel that he would have public legitimacy to, in fact, join forces with one or two of these Arab majority parties and form a coalition. But I think if he stays uncontrovertibly behind Netanyahu's bloc and the bloc that he leads, it's a bloc right now filled with kind of a circular shooting squad, a lot of recriminations inside it. I don't think he will feel that he has the legitimacy to take a brave step, which ironically is the step that a majority of his voters are asking for.
A clear majority of.
Aysen Kot bloc voters want them to join forces with these Arab majority parties.
Noga, one of the interesting things, I guess, you know, from our perspective, of course, we're based in the United States, is we've seen Netanyahu as the ultimate survivor. And so what you're laying out here is a scenario where he remains the interim prime minister while all these parliamentary and legal machinations happen. Meanwhile, while he has the authority as prime minister. He can continue to push what we know here in the United States, which is a new round of war with Iran. Could you talk a little bit about how he may try to use this interim period to reignite hostilities with Iran? And then what effect that would have on your potential to even hold new elections and potentially even try to swing the vote, which I
know he tried desperately to do ahead of this round of elections?
Right.
That's what I was about to say.
It's no secret that he's trying to ignite a new round of fighting with Iran. As far as I could tell, he tried to do it both unilaterally, just Israel, and has been basically blocked by his military chiefs. That in and of itself is a remarkable moment, which we really would be focusing on if everything else weren't happening all around.
He clearly is trying to push Trump, who I'm not sure needs much pushing. into another round with Iran. We heard both of them speak last night. Netanyahu's kind of strange 3 a.m. rah-rah post-electoral speech spoke as much about the horrible media, the traitor media and the Arabs, as it did about Iran and his partnership with Trump. I don't know where Trump will be on this. Trump has proven himself to be fickle on this issue. The United States did issue a warning yesterday to Gulf states that initially, at least, I took quite seriously. And I thought, wow, they would not be warning all of their allies in the Gulf, Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi, to watch out and to expect what the Wall Street Journal reported as a
short but intense round of fighting if they didn't have something in mind. But then a colleague reminded me they've been doing this for a few weeks now. So I don't know. But from the Netanyahu point of view, on the one hand, one of the things you said I would want to modify, Netanyahu as acting prime minister does not have the same powers vested in him as he does as fully-blown prime minister. And I think that explains a remarkable moment in Gadi Eisenkot's speech last night, which was at about 1 a.m., when he still thought his block was larger than Netanyahu's, part of his speech was a direct warning to the military chiefs. He said, I know the kind of pressures you're under. You have to remember that you serve the people of Israel and not
the outgoing prime minister, and you will have my full backing to make all the legal decisions you must.
That was quite a moment.
In what was otherwise a sort of thank you and now on to the White House kind of a speech. So there's very much something going on in the background, and I'm not sure how in the background it is again. We have seen it in the front pages. Netanyahu wants another war. I would say, unrelated to whatever Trump may do, Netanyahu would also like to expand Israeli activities in Gaza, whether that means giving free hand to some of his ministers who literally want to settle Gaza, whether that means continuing to block Trump's board of peace plan to try and reconstruct Gaza. With this current situation as I'm reading it and Netanyahu remaining as acting prime minister for at least a few more months, I think that it presages
a very, very bad panorama for the West Bank.
Because if he is.
Limited in his legislative and military powers as acting prime minister, He's not limited in that he can just give a free reign to his own brand of crazies who are perpetrating a kind of violent anarchy in the West Bank. So I don't see that changing right now anytime soon.
And you're there, Noga.
So just to go back to what you alluded to, Barak Ravid posted on X in a speech to his supporters, Netanyahu claimed victory. He didn't mention the opposition of forming a unity government with Eisencutt, but rather called for forming, quote, a strong Jewish right wing national government. Can you talk to us a bit about how this is playing out on the ground? Like, what is the mood in Israel right now? Obviously, a very divided country. But how are people reacting just in the last 24 hours to everything that's transpired?
Well, tragically.
the people who voted for the opposition are very depressed, very disheartened, and really feel a sense of a lost opportunity. And that's the side that has won somewhere between 65 and 70 seats out of this Knesset. But again, it's because we're going back to this, I think, realpolitik point, which is that if Eisenkot, if his bloc really does have substantially less even two, three seats less in the Knesset than the Likud bloc, it's hard to imagine them taking what is now a bold step in Israel, and it's simply joining with another party that has enough votes to make a coalition, but it's an Arab-majority party. This is Netanyahu's great success in his four-year term. He has made racism a completely common currency. In 2018, ran what
was at that point a shockingly base election, and it was against the then-Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog, who today is president of the state. And he seemed to burst through all of the taboos and laws. On election day itself, he posted a video on Facebook in which he exhorted his voters, go out and vote. The Arabs are being bussed in to vote in droves. At that time, the fact that he broke the law to post an electioneering video on election day, which is illegal, was then and is now illegal, became a scandal. And the fact that he used overt racist tropes, the Arabs are coming to vote in droves, the leftists are driving them in buses, whatever it was, he said, this became a scandal lasting years.
Okay.
And his party was fined. And, you know, the fines here are ridiculously low.
I think his party was fined something, a few thousand dollars or something for breaking the law. Yesterday on an election day, 11 years later, they were posting more than a video an hour. This breaks the same laws as it did 11 years ago. These were so racist and also so lunatic that they made what he said 11 years ago kind of look like a kindergarten teacher. That's how bad things have gotten. And it's gotten that bad basically during this term. You know, we hear astonishing things.
Netanyahu's diaspora affairs minister, Shikli, who is a friend of European neo-Nazis, talks about how we're not going to let the terrorists anywhere near the government. This is a guy who sits around a cabinet table with Itamar Benvir, who was convicted 13 times of hate crimes and terror. The first actual convicted terrorist to ever sit in an Israeli government.
So we really are very much in loony land. I think, you know, I'm speaking very bluntly right now with you. I think we do have to wait a few days to see how things pan out. And it could still go in different directions. But right now, it really does appear that Netanyahu has lived to fight another day, probably a few more months. I don't think he has any way to form a government. And I don't think he does from what he said last night. But he can just wake up tomorrow and still be prime minister.
For a little while longer.
Or maybe a lot longer if this election leaves the majority of Israelis feeling so crushed that they don't have it in them to themselves fight another election like this. Both, I'm speaking among the Jewish majority and among the Arab, both Muslim and Christian minorities, it may be hard to pull people out of a funk.
Yeah, I mean, that really was my takeaway. I was really shocked, you know, watching from afar.
I've spent time in your country, you know, probably 10, 12 years ago. And for me to watch the centrists be like, oh, well, we'll never align with the Arabs.
I'm like, wow.
I mean, that's not really something I would have heard long ago. And we're talking about the opposition here. To Netanyahu. But you're saying that the voters themselves wouldn't or at least for the opposition bloc would actually be OK with that. Could you break just.
OK, go ahead.
I didn't speak well or something. OK, the clear majority in every single poll, including a poll published yesterday. Last night by the Accord Center, I recommend you look it up, which is the Hebrew University kind of stats guys. They posted a poll after speaking. They did their own exit polling of people who had just voted after 9 p.m.
So in every single poll, a clear and solid majority of opposition voters want the opposition bloc parties to include among them the Arab parties. They want to govern with their fellow Arab citizens. By the way, even among Netanyahu voters, interestingly, the last time I checked this, it was somewhere like 45% of the Netanyahu voters thought it was fine for Arabs to be in government or an Arab party to be in government. This is the taboo, this kind of racist delegitimization of Arab-identified parties. and the Arab voting public, this very much comes from this complete break in Israeli society between the leadership and the people. So the ministers, the leaders of parties of this right-wing nationalist extreme who are
in Netanyahu's government, they have made it a commonplace way to speak to say that Arabs are delegitimized. The Smotriches, the Benviers, the Minister Levins, the Minister Regevs, there's a whole bunch of them. It's not reflected in the people, but the people may be too exhausted to fight this one again.
I'm not sure.
Got it.
Well, Noga, we appreciate your analysis very much. And of course, we'll keep up with it as the days progress. Thank you for your time.
We appreciate you.
You caught me on almost no sleeve. So very raw this time.
No, you were fantastic. You were really good. Thanks.
And great to meet you.
Nice to see you again, Emily.
Take care.
Joining us now is our great friend Juan David Rojas, columnist over at Unheard. He was recently in Brazil. He's going to break down this craziness for us. Good to see you, man. Juan, what the hell's going on? Let's put B1 up here. On the screen, Simon Levy says, I can confirm Flavio Bolsonaro is no longer in Brazil.
and is on his way to the United States, a U.S. protective operation is underway to ensure his safety. So, Juan, why is Flavio Bolsonaro on his way here? Why does his safety need to be insured after he lost this election in Brazil?
And why is Simon Levy tweeting about this? He's Mexican, like American anyway.
Yeah, so.
It seems like the CIA extracted Flavio Bolsonaro from Brazil after Sunday's result within hours of his defeat to Lula on Sunday. Justice Alexandre de Moraes is an extremely controversial, horrific figure, in my opinion, in Brazil, like already was asking him to turn in his passport. And Flavio reported that. consequently, it seems, and Rubio stated something to this effect, yeah, that they helped extract him. It looks like he crossed the land border with Argentina and then flew over to Ecuador and now is in Miami, or at least got to Miami yesterday. The Trump administration, yeah, Rubio already said that him and his family are going to be given asylum and have been given visas, so This is to give you an idea. There's so much to go in
here with this like judicial persecution. Flavio himself does. He is a very shady figure. Like there is some legitimacy to some of the investigations against them.
Yeah, we can talk about it.
Well, let's let's stay on this Trump point, because Sagar rightfully flagged this clip of Donald Trump being asked about what happened just yesterday.
Take a listen.
Just one more thing on Brazil.
Do you want to do something about the election?
Well, I'm not running Brazil.
I'm running the USA. I just thought that the election was.
I like Lula.
I get along with him very well.
I just think it had a very bad look, the election, the way it was tabulated.
You have a response? The extension given was very strange.
Okay, Juan, so on that point, what do you make of this? You've covered the Trump administration, obviously, and their approach to Brazil. He sounds like he's not the one running the show, obviously. I don't think it would surprise anybody to imagine it's purely coming through Marco Rubio at this point.
Three notable things. First, the Trump administration, I said this on Monday, did not formally endorse Flavio Bolsonaro. Very, very curious. Maybe they thought, you know, obviously, like he had tacit backing and like Flavio went to the White House, et cetera. But maybe they thought that if they endorsed him, it would have actually have helped Lula in the runoff. Who knows? Second, well, sort of to that effect, you know, just personal relations, Trump does actually sort of seem to like Lula. Trump likes winners. So, you know, regardless, even if he thought there were irregularities. And third, yeah, regarding the irregularities, yes, you know, they extended the voting by two hours. It was the first time it was done in history. It
was an extremely questionable decision. That said, did it affect the results? Almost certainly not. The amount of people, Sagar said this yesterday, that voted after 5 p.m. when polls closed and then were reopened was only around like 30,000 people and Lula won by like 4 million.
OK, so let's talk about the Brazil aspect itself. Let's put what is it before up here on the screen. So this is Flavio may have put his name on a decoy flight from Brazil to the U.S. in reality, slipping into Argentina. from where he may now be en route to the United States. Put B5 up next, guys. This was something that you referenced, where Flavio was ordered to hand over his passport in a money laundering inquiry. Now, as I understand it, and you have flagged this multiple times, Juan, is that the issue of the Supreme Court itself has been a problem in Brazilian society now for years. So break down this controversial figure the role of the Supreme Court, kind of their quasi-status in Brazilian society, their overt politicization
that eventually led to this?
Where to begin?
So a friend of mine made a good point in referring to the Supreme Court in Brazil. He called it like the moderating power in the country, which if you know anything about Brazilian history, that's how the emperor was referred to in the 19th century. Brazil used to have an emperor. And so the emperor was actually pretty powerful.
But it was still a parliamentary system. It wasn't an absolute monarchy. And the emperor tried to restrain himself in dealing with the parliament and whatever. But whenever they couldn't make a decision or he just thought something was too objectionable, he would get involved. Basically, the Supreme Court is something like that. I would say far worse. In Brazil, a single justice, it's not even just at the Supreme Court, like the federal justices, they can they are judge, jury, and executioner. They can investigate crimes, rule on them, send police to enforce the decisions. And you have these insane monochromatic decisions where a single justice can do what Cristiano Zanin did on Sunday to just extend voting by himself.
You don't need a majority on the court. I guess there's some equivalence here, right, in the U.S., but this has really gotten out of control. I mean, to give an idea, try to be as fair to both sides ideologically, Lula himself was put in prison for allegedly accepting an apartment he neither lived in, had a deed for, and ultimately went unoccupied by a single judge who, again, same thing, was judge, jury, and executioner in his case. Later, the Supreme Court, well, first the Supreme Court affirmed the decision to not let him run in 2018, giving the presidency to Bolsonaro and And then when they got scared that Bolsonaro would turn into a dictator, they got him out of prison to run against them. And so really, in
recent years, they've really turned on Bolsonaroismo. And look, me personally, you can talk to Bolsonaroistas about that. It's very similar with Trump in January 6th. I personally think that Bolsonaro Sr. did try to lead some kind of coup attempt. There were apparently lots of different plots. But the main thing was that the heads of the armed forces testified. that he asked them to do a military coup. And one of them, one of the three, apparently, was willing to go along with it. So, to me, that's very serious.
At the same time, like, the court, in order to defend democracy, has, like, jailed people without trial. Basically, like, there was one case where, like, someone, like, threatened them, like, on social media. And they literally, like, sent officers to, like, their house to arrest them.
So.
Again, Bolsonaroismo, I think, is unhinged, but that doesn't give the court a right to trample over democracy in order to try to save democracy.
Well, yeah, Juan, I wanted to ask you about this post from Glenn Greenwald, obviously based in Brazil. For those who decided to invent some bizarre new authoritarian law and order rule today to justify Morais' ban on Bolsonaro leaving the country, Glenn writes that if you're under investigation without even being charged, it's normal to have your passport seized.
Please note, Lula's son is engulfed in several major financial scandals. And then he goes on to say countless rich and powerful people in Brazil, including Lula's allies, are are under investigation yet freely leave the country when they want, jetting off to Dubai, France, wherever. Truly bizarre how some on the left start fabricating extremist police powers when it suits them. Now, Juan, if you could also tell us a bit about how you think that take, that argument from Glenn and others is playing on the Brazilian left and among the sort of Bolsonaro contingent. Because I bet there are people on the right in Brazil who don't like that he fled.
So can you help us understand like the politics of this and how it might be playing out on the left and the right?
Yeah.
So, Glenn, Glenn has pissed off a lot of people left of center recently on the election in Brazil. I think he's kind of gone too far because like Bolsonaro, like, for example, the the top electoral court is was during the election was run by this Bolsonaro ally who was clearly favoring Flavio. He was like favorite. boosting his stuff on social media and, like, taking down Lula's stuff. So, you know, I think that whoever would have won eventually, like, well, you know, it's exactly like we've seen in the U.S. Like, look at free speech MAGA. Whoever would have won, they eventually would have adopted this stuff. But so, you know, we do need to, like, look at this stuff on principle and say, no, look, like, censorship is wrong regardless, like,
of who's doing it. As far as Flavio is concerned, yeah, the politics, he did say that he wouldn't do this.
And then he did it.
So that's not a good look. On the other hand, you know, on the right, they're just saying that this is persecution. And look, I said this before, like he does have a lot of serious investigations against him. He has a lot of a long background of disturbing ties to what are called the milicias in Rio, which are kind of these right wing paramilitary groups. Actually, years ago, the Supreme Court dropped one of those investigations against him, I think, in order to try to ingratiate themselves with his father when he was in office.
Got it. Last question. Yeah.
My last thing, Juan, is more about the U.S. factor here, where, you know, in some cases, this is kind of a humiliating defeat for the United States, which has attempted many times successfully, I will add, to swing elections in Latin America. The whole Don Roe doctrine, right, is we colonize Venezuela.
What did Rubio say the other day?
He's like Cuba, you're on notice.
You're on notice.
And remember all the memes before the runoff, in between the runoff about how USAID had been crippled and this was allowing for freedom and liberalism to flourish.
In Latin America.
Right. So in that context, like how do you see this in terms of the Donro doctrine? I guess, if you will, we're one of the most largest democracies in Latin America, unambiguously, probably what? Maybe the greatest power outside of I can't even think of really another one. Praline flagrantly flouts the United States and forces their friendly leader to flee the country like a rat. you know, the moment the guy even gets indicted. I mean, look, say what you will about Lula. He stood in prison. He literally fled the country like a dog. I mean, Lula, you know, indicted on some bullshit charge. He at least went to prison, fought for his people. You know, I mean, this is not a good look, I think, for Flavio
and for the United States and its power in the region, Juan.
Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean, if you look at polls across the region, especially since Trump has come back into office, both his personal approval And attitudes towards the United States have really gone under since 2025. And in Brasilia, I think it's something like almost 60% have a negative view of Trump right now. And this is the case in other countries, including, you know, it's a bit better in like Colombia, for example. But a lot of these right-wingers that are really close to Trump, they went in spite of their ties to Trump, in many cases, not because of them. In Brazil, I still think, and yeah, a lot of people left of center have gotten mad at me for saying this. I think they should have,
I think I shouldn't be doing this, especially immediately after winning the election. They should have had at least some restraint with the opposition. I mean, they still won tons of votes. They dominated in the Congress. I said this on Sunday. Both candidates ran on a platform. of reforming the Supreme Court. And there was this huge scandal before.
The other thing, Moraes was, he received like $ 50 million from this corrupt evangelical banker who also was like, had these like ties to multiple other people on the court related to both sides, Bolsonaro, Rizmo, and Lula. And so this turned into like a Game of Thrones where they were like, each side was like trying to protect each other.
Lula-friendly justices were protecting Moraes. And yeah, it completely destroyed the narrative, though. Look at Moraes defending democracy. The court, if it's not reformed, this is going to turn into a powder keg. It already is. Lula's fourth term is going to be really rough. If he doesn't deliver on this problem, I foresee serious problems in the future.
I have one more question, Juan, which is, you were in Brazil as the election was playing out, were you surprised to see the runoff go in a direction people didn't expect it to?
What was the mood? What were you hearing from voters?
Yeah, I said this on Monday. I thought that Flavio would win, but I thought that he would win based on the polls. In fairness, and I was struck by this while being over there, I thought to myself, Wow, dude, Lula really has a lot of support on the streets. There were these insane, absurd demonstrations. He was campaigning all over the country at 80 years old, much to his credit.
But I thought, oh, you know, this must be like a silent majority in favor of Flavio. And again, like, look, his party, the PL, got... the best result of any single party in the Congress since the 80s, basically since redemocratization. So Lula's victory is very ferocious. But yeah, on the other hand, what he did in the runoff was really impressive, was really driving out turnout among people who abstained in the first round, who also got scared that, oh, dude, Bolsonaro is going to win. You know, last thing I'll say about this, there's been so much back-slapping, rightfully so, from progressives. It's like, oh, look, Lula can win, and progressivism is great. Lula, during the campaign also, he ran
away from a lot of the bad parts of progressivism on crime, on energy, And, you know, there's one debate where he was saying, I'm the one like paving this road in the Amazon. Well, that's something that a lot of people in his coalition and like foreign NGOs have like screamed about. Oh, my God, that will lead to deforestation.
So anyway, he's also pumping large amounts of oil. These are all things that are going to get memory hold. It's really important to learn the right lessons from a lot of this stuff. His victory is incredible, but it is fear in many ways.
Yeah.
Great points, Juan.
As always, we appreciate not only your analysis, but your willingness to actually go to these places and tell us a little about what's going on. We will see you next time we have a Latin American story to cover.
See you, man. Thank you.
Thank you, sir.
Well, Democrats are now calling for a special counsel to be appointed to look into Donald Trump's ties to Jeffrey Epstein. This comes on the heels of Democrats in the House releasing a large report this week detailing allegations about Donald Trump, women, and Epstein. And I think that's an important way to look at this document that was just released. rehashing some allegations that happen in the public. It does add new allegations to pre-existing allegations, but it's really what it's doing is repackaging some of these allegations specifically through the lens of proximity to Epstein, if that makes sense.
And what we wanted to do here.
is go deep into the report as best we could. It is a long report, but we want to bring you as many details as possible because, as we just mentioned, Democrats are now calling for a special counsel to, as the New York Times put it, quote, scrutinize Trump ties to Epstein. And first of all, Ryan, let's just start by saying we don't necessarily need a report or special counsel for us to understand that Donald Trump has has a deep relationship going back years, that is to say, in terms of longevity, had a deep relationship with Jeffrey Epstein going back to at least the late 1980s and early 1990s. And so some of this may not seem new to people. But again, we've covered this here many times.
Their connections go back many years. And Ryan, you at Dropsite have covered that for a long time as well.
You might not need a special counsel, but it'd be smart to have one. And here's my free advice to any Democrat or Republican running for president in 2028. Promise to appoint a special counsel and promise to make it Thomas Massey. I don't even think he's a lawyer, but have him run the office. Because then, Democrat or Republican, you know you have somebody there who is going to follow the leads where they go, particularly if you're a Democrat at that would show an enormous amount of confidence to say, look, don't care about party. Don't care where this goes. Whatever Thomas Massey and his team, well-funded team finds, we're prosecuting. So anyway, there you go. Free advice.
No, I think they'll have a very good.
Case for assembling a special counsel if they get the ability to do it. And so let's dig into the report first. It says, quote, a growing body of evidence demonstrates that Donald Trump was an active participant Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of young women during the mid to late 1990s. Now, that is really the crux of the theory that Democrats are trying to build out with this report, that Trump was an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of young women. So they have to do a lot, I think, to tie Trump specifically to the Epstein ring. But what you're going to see in this report is obviously a lot of similar characters in similar locations, if that makes sense.
I mean, for example, we already had Virginia Jafray many years ago saying that she was recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago. So that allegation has been public for a while. But you're going to see things where basically Epstein and Trump are orbiting each other during those years. The report goes on to say the Department of Justice and the FBI are doing everything they can to keep the American people in the dark about it. So that's another chunk of the allegations in this report is going into what they say. are shady dismissals or, let's say, attempts to ignore certain evidence by the Trump DOJ. That's another chunk of what is in this report, in addition to some allegations.
They write, the actual evidence we have seen, as shared in the accounts and stories of 11 women each described below, indicates that Trump abused, assaulted, and even raped numerous women alongside and in coordination with the most infamous sex trafficker in history. So, These 11 stories vary wildly in the severity of the allegations. For example, one of them is that Trump made a comment about a 14-year-old. We'll get into this in just a moment. Basically, Epstein said to Trump, that's a good one, huh? And Trump said, yes, this is a 14-year-old, allegedly. There are some allegations of rape.
There are some allegations that he was basically serving as a sugar daddy to a 21-year-old.
So let's go ahead and get into the allegations. We'll start with.
Beatrice Kuhl, who added to her prior allegation against Donald Trump and is now accusing him not just of groping her, but actually of rape. That is what's new in the report. It's probably the biggest thing that's new in the report. So this is a young Swiss model and her allegation is from 1993 at the Donald J. Trump American Dream pageant.
That was for 16 to 22 year olds, according to the report in Atlantic City in New York. The Dem report says during their at least 15-minute introductory conversation, Trump promised Kuehl that he would arrange a visa for her, stating that Paolo, a reference to Paolo Zampolli, would, quote, take care of that. Trump further stated that he personally would ensure her acceptance into New York University, and he repeatedly offered to take care of her and arrange her travel, insisting, quote, either I will take care of you or when she said she could handle her own visa, quote, No, no.
My friend Paolo will take care of that. Paolo was just fired. Ryan, I think you followed this from the State Department because of the spat with Kimberly Guilfoyle.
Yeah.
Dispute there.
Yes.
The fact that Paolo has been an envoy to the Trump administration, given all of his connections to ancillary connections and tangential connections and perhaps more than that to all of these different sex traffickers who are involved in the fashion industry is just kind of just shocking in general.
Yes.
That in this era, I'd be like, you know, that's fine. Well, this this guy's fine. But does the report get into why she expanded her allegation?
It doesn't yet, and I'm sure we'll hear more from her in the days to come. But yes, I mean, part of. The problem that she's going to face is that this was originally an allegation that was made really shortly before the 2024 election. So if there's a special counsel assembled, you're definitely going to hear about that. She also says after Trump stepped away from that conversation, Epstein immediately approached her saying, quote, I'm Jeffrey, Don's best friend.
I scoured yesterday.
Gmail and all of that to try to find a record of Epstein's referring to Trump as Don. He does usually call him Trump or Donald. But anyway, nonetheless, she goes on to say Epstein also made similar promises as Trump and asked Kuehl to attend a party at Mar-a-Lago in the coming months, saying, quote, you know I can take care of you. We organize many parties with Don.
Don again. Epstein, like Trump, Dempsey, stated that all her needs would be met. Flights, accommodations, you don't have to worry about anything. Then, apparently, Kuehl gets invited upstairs at the Plaza Hotel.
Goes to the room.
Trump, quote, ushered her into the suite, where upon entering, Trump reportedly grabbed Kuehl from behind and forcibly raped her, in the process tearing her dress and causing bleeding and bruising on multiple parts of her body.
Kuehl described the rape as, quote, brutal.
Following the assault, according to Kuehl's report, Trump sat her on the edge of the bed, repeated his promises to arrange for a visa and NYU admission, and made her promise she would keep quiet, saying, quote, the show must go on. Now, this is, according to Dems, substantiated by another woman who's among the, uh, people listed in the report named Jill Hearth, who also had a complaint. We'll get into this as well from 1987. that detailed how Trump called, quote, several models for four years after the calendar competition to offer them positions and or career advancement in return for sexual favors, much the way he repeated his offer of a visa and NYU admission to Kuhl months after the competition.
That is really important. The NYU bit of it is really important.
And House Democrats say that Kuhl would have had little way of knowing that Epstein had this NYU pattern. But when she reported Trump's similarly manipulative promise back in twenty twenty four, Dems say that was months before any public report of the connection between NYU and Epstein survivors had surfaced. Now, as I mentioned, I was going through a lot of this stuff yesterday trying to confirm, verify.
That is false.
James Patterson's book, Filthy Rich, does advance the NYU-Epstein connection. It's actually pretty early in the book that was written in 2017, Filthy Rich. And that is one of the most, I would say, widely read books on Jeffrey Epstein or pieces of investigation on Jeffrey Epstein.
So people can take that for what they will.
I think that's just a big error that Dem staffers made to make that claim.
2017, they were in middle school then.
Yeah, that would have been out there already. But now, again, remember with Paolo Zampolli, this is the New York Times recently, who said Ongaro was a 17-year-old, this is a woman who made accusations against him, who flew to New York on Epstein's plane from Paris with her French agent the year she met Zampolli, then 32 at a Manhattan nightclub.
In 2004, Zampolli and Epstein teamed up in an unsuccessful bid to buy elite modeling management. Despite this, Zampolli has long maintained he was not close with Epstein. He was known as the man who helped introduce Donald J. Trump to Melania Maas. So, Zampoli has said that Epstein was hanging around his modeling firm that was totally normal back in the 90s or early aughts.
I think it must have been the 90s.
But Zampoli being in the Trump administration, to your point, Ryan, is obviously going to supply Democrats with fodder to hear these sorts of allegations. We should mention also in that 1990 biography of Donald Trump that was written, Ivana Trump did say that Donald Trump got violent with her and she used the.
Word rape at the time.
Yeah.
She described the rape.
Yeah.
Yes.
And then she walked it back so much so that they had to put a note at the front of the book. But she said basically that she meant it was mental rape, not legal or criminal. So, again, people can take that for.
What it is. What she originally described was physical and legal and very similar to what the Swiss or Swedish.
Swiss.
Yeah.
So, yes, Trump is describing. And this was in a sworn statement.
Trump apparently took a handful of her hair, according to Ivana, and then forced himself on her sexually, according to the biographer at the time. And Ivana, again, walked that back. But that is one allegation of violence regarding Trump. There's another woman in the report named Stacey Williams. She was a 25-year-old who does accuse Trump of groping her during a visit to Trump Tower in 1993, according to the Dems report. In her words, quote, his hands were all over me. They were on my breasts. They were on my butt. They were on, you know, my hips and up and down. CNN interviewed three women who confirmed that Williams informed them about the incident with Trump and Epstein in 2006, in 2015 and 2018, respectively. Let's also note
the White House has denied all of these allegations are true. They literally their statement was, quote, none of these allegations are true.
Let's move on now.
To Jill Harth, who was 31 years old at the time of these allegations. Jill Hearth is another interesting case. She was offering to help the Trump campaign in 2016. She went to a rally. She accused him, rather famously now, of attempted rape in a 1997 lawsuit. The to the Guardian in 2016, she described, quote, He pushed me up against the wall and had his hands all over me and tried to get up my dress again. And I had to physically say, what are you doing?
Stop it.
It was a shocking thing to have him do this because he knew I was with George. That's her husband. And they were in the next room. And how could he not be doing this when I'm there for business? At the same time as this lawsuit, Trump was in a suit with her husband over business dealings. And again, this was surfacing in 2016. she was offering to help the campaign at that same time. So something to keep in mind, all of these caveats don't mean that an allegation is true or false. I just was going through this yesterday and thought it would be helpful to do a breakdown so everybody could have as much information as possible.
In that lawsuit, she claimed in 1993, Trump had hosted a party where he allegedly, quote, forcefully removed Hearth from the, quote, public areas of Mar-a-Lago and forced her into a bedroom belonging to Ivanka, wherein Trump forcibly kissed, fondled, and restrained Hearth from leaving against Hearth's will.
And despite her protests.
Now, she did say to Law News, this was like the law and crime website, that she wouldn't discuss the settlement because she had settled that original lawsuit. And she said she was under duress and pressured to file the case. So this is when she's coming out and seemingly in support of Trump. And when she was questioned about that pressure, she wouldn't say. So were the sexual harassment allegations true?
Hearth says the allegations were twisted and embellished. Everything could be looked at in a different way. Hearth, who now runs a beauty business, says she's put the lawsuit behind her. And get this, she said she'd even vote for Donald Trump in the upcoming election, what she calls supporting a friend.
So again, putting all the information out there.
This was in 20, I think this was 2016.
Got it. When the allegations surfaced. Okay, so now.
Getting into an underage allegation, this is from Jane Doe One, 14 years old. This is from DOJ documents from the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Apparently, Jeffrey Epstein introduced a victim to Trump saying, quote, this is a good one, huh?
In Mar-a-Lago in 1994.
And Trump responded, yes, the victim was 14 years old.
At the time.
This victim was used in the Maxwell trial, according to the House Democrats, who they say was seen as a credible witness by a DOJ investigator.
She was one of the four women to testify against Maxwell.
And described in detail, quote, abuse and sex acts that occurred at Epstein's properties in Florida, New Mexico and New York, sometimes involving Maxwell and groups of people. So this is one of those allegations that they're using to build a case that Trump was specifically involved in trafficking operations. There is another Jane Doe, too. It goes by Katie Johnson, 13 years old, and alleges that she was asked to perform a penis massage on Donald Trump. She came forward with a lawsuit in April of 2016. That lawsuit has since been withdrawn, accusing Trump of raping and sexually abusing her on multiple occasions in 1994. When she was 13 at an Epstein party in New York, she reported that as a minor, quote, she was asked to strip down
to her underwear and give a massage to Epstein and massage the penis of Epstein's guest, Trump, with her hands. She also reported that Epstein and Trump argued over who would take her virginity and Epstein became angry and violently raped her. when he learned that Donald Trump had done so.
Yeah, I wrote about her case in 2016. She kept promising to come forward with new information and then kept backing off and canceling press conferences. And even the attorneys that were working with her started to become skeptical about her claims, as I recall, this particular allegation.
That was when I dipped back into the case yesterday. I think that's a good characterization of it. We can move on to Jane Doe 3, a.k.a. Kate, 20 years old. While her official FBI form is heavily redacted by DOJ, the Dems say it shows that Kate was introduced by Maxwell to Donald Trump with a clear understanding that she was available for sex. The FBI notes state Maxwell took Kate to a party in New York. Maxwell, quote, seemed very excited. There would be a lot of great men for her to meet, including Donald Trump. Maxwell allegedly presented Kate to Trump They had a conversation for approximately 20 minutes before she was invited to Mar-a-Lago, where she was given a tour by Trump with Epstein and Maxwell present.
Although Kate does not explicitly claim any misconduct by Trump, Maxwell repeatedly made clear that Kate was available to Donald Trump, saying things like, oh, I think he likes you.
Aren't you lucky? This is great.
So just to mention, she is 20 years old. But what Democrats are trying to do here is to reinforce the point that that we've been making, they are just trying to specifically build a case that Trump and Epstein were, that Trump was involved knowingly in Epstein's trafficking.
Yeah, that they're boys.
Yeah.
And that there was a legal trafficking question that Trump was aware of and participating in.
Right.
I thought, wasn't this the time they were allegedly not buddies anymore?
That's part of what Democrats are trying to cast doubt on.
They're trying to cast doubt on this question of whether Or Trump's claim that he kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago. That's one thing they specifically mentioned in the report as being called into question. So, yeah, that's one of the things that a special counsel, I think, would certainly focus in on is if there's all these testimony of them still hanging out together at the time. But again, that one says no misconduct.
He seemed to have his own independent relationship with Ghislaine, too.
Right.
Yeah, that's a good point. Next, Jane Doe, 13 years old. This is Jane Doe four. DOJ documents indicate that in 2019, FBI interviewed a Jane Doe who came forward shortly after Epstein's arrest to allege abuse in South Carolina in 1983. So part of the problem with this allegation is that Trump said in 2002 that he'd been friends with Epstein for 15 years, which would date that to roughly like the late 1980s at the earliest. Doesn't mean it's completely false.
He could have been speaking cavalierly, but that is one of the holes that would be poked in this one. Initially, Dems write a third party contacted FBI to share that Jane Doe, when 13 or 14 years old, allegedly, quote, bit President Trump while performing oral sex. And then he, quote, hit her in the face after she laughed about biting President Trump. I found a New Republic article that focused in on some of this reporting here. They write, she detailed that one incident took place while Trump was developing a casino in Atlantic City. She was led to Trump in a, quote, very tall building with huge rooms. People have already cast doubt on her story because it's not particularly specific. So the very tall building with huge rooms
in Atlantic City is one of the problems that people have raised with it. Trump allegedly told others to leave the room, New Republic reports, and told her, let me teach you how little girls are supposed to be.
This is so gross.
Before unzipping his pants and forcing her to perform a sex act. She told the FBI that she, quote, bit the expletive out of it, which angered Trump, who slapped her and cursed. The Post and Courier, so a local paper in South Carolina, said in her account about Trump, she claimed that he forced her to commit a sex act on him sometime around 1984, but provided foggy details to FBI agents, including that the alleged encounter with Trump happened when she traveled north to New York or New Jersey with Epstein, who was a fixture in elite society.
Then this report, go ahead, Ryan.
No love for Trump over here. I think one of the biggest creeps ever to live, but you're going to need more than just that. Also, I'd be surprised if Jeffrey Epstein ever set foot in South Carolina.
Well, so apparently he had that Hilton head.
This is actually an interesting Epstein subplot. Yeah, that he was, but it's never been fully investigated.
I forgot about it.
Certainly possible.
Yeah.
But by the way, again, like if they're building a case for a special counsel, they're definitely, you know, for Democrats, they'll have plenty to build that case with. Now, this Jane Doe five is an interesting story because people may remember the picture of Epstein holding a giant check that was from the birthday book. she is the woman that is identified as the one that is quote unquote sold to Trump because it's her name that.
Is under the redactions. So them's right.
One page of the birthday book depicts Epstein holding a check with the caption, Jeffrey showing early talents with money plus women sells quote fully depreciated woman's redacted name to Donald Trump for $ 22, 500.
Okay.
Well, she first dated Epstein while she was at NYU and, And then Trump dated her right afterwards.
So she does not ever. She has not. There's no evidence.
Dems note she hasn't alleged misconduct, but she is a person, a real woman whose name is on that check. After Epstein dated Trump and they're joking about the sale. Not a helpful joke in the context of a serious sex trafficking ring that we see Epstein. She was 20 years old at the time that we see Epstein now in retrospect, very clearly building.
Right.
These guys were passing young women and girls around like that's what they were doing. Like I think when people. look for too much of a hierarchical, like mafia-like sex trafficking operation, they're probably going to be disappointed because they're not going to find the precise structure of that. But what were they doing? Using their wealth and power and impunity to exploit young girls and young women. And so this is an example of that. And some women are going to come out of that and be like, hey, like, It's a disgusting world. I knew what I was getting into.
Right, right.
And I got the meetings I wanted. And these are just two of the dozens of disgusting men, you know, that I had to navigate my way around.
Right.
And a few of them are going to actually like the guys.
I think that's well said, because the question of consent is obviously an important one. But that's where the NYU allegations, which are mostly just coming from Kuehl here, If they can find more allegations that Trump was like pulling the strings at NYU and pulling the strings to get people visas, that's going to be in the trafficking realm much more clearly.
These underage allegations, I'm sure, will be investigated more. But yeah, a lot of these women that we're talking about here.
So let's go into Maria Farmer.
Also, by the way, Trump bought the teen USA or whatever it's called. And said he did it so that he could creep on girls in the locker room. It's like, what are we even talking about here? The guy is a disgusting, like, if pedo is not the right word, whatever it is for like guys who are like into 13 and 14 year old girls. Like he's a disgusting creature who acted his entire life as a disgusting creature.
So we're just kind of painting in some of the lines here.
This gets us to Maria Farmer, 25 years old, who obviously is one of the more famous Epstein accusers. She claims that she was at Epstein's office in New York. She was waiting for Epstein. Trump comes in the room. Trump, quote, stood over her, Democrats say in a very imposing way, smirking at her like he was in on some secret.
Epstein then emerged from his office laughing and saying, no, no, she's not here for you. Epstein escorted Trump to another room, leading Farmer to suspect there was another girl in that office who was potentially there for a sexual purpose, causing Donald Trump to confuse her for that girl. As the two men left the room where Trump had ogled her, Farmer overheard Trump comment, quote, oh, I thought she was 16, although she was in her 20s at the time. Said Farmer, quote, it felt it, quote, felt very predatory. And Farmer's sister was 15 at the time.
Last one.
To go through from this new report is Jane Doe Six, who was 21 years old at the time, and basically alleges that Trump was still married to Marla Maples while he was allowing her, well, not allowing, but he was inviting her to be a sugar baby to him, basically. And this was in proximity to Epstein. So she's a Russian model who moved to Florida in 1995 at age 21.
And shortly after meeting Donald Trump, the report writes, moved into an apartment in Trump's Fifth Avenue building. Notwithstanding the fact that Trump was still married to Marla Maples, the New York Post, which wrote a contemporaneous article, stated that her lavish accommodations were taken care of, quote, courtesy of an unidentified sugar daddy. Around this time, Jane Doe Sixx spent time with Epstein and other co-conspirators. Flight records show that not long after, Jane Doe Sixx flew on Epstein's jet with Chloe Maxwell and Prince Andrew. So those are some of the, I think, bigger.
chunks of this report, which.
Is, again, it's not necessarily trying to just say that Donald Trump has new allegations of sexual misconduct, although I think some of the media covered it that way. What it's really trying to do is build connective tissue between Trump's sexual exploits, many of which were covered by tabloids at the time, and then.
The Epstein, the broader Epstein operation. So we'll obviously continue to follow.
That, Ryan.
Yeah.
Yeah. And meanwhile, Democrats have found that the Epstein issue, I don't know why it took them so long to realize this, has been resonating with voters around the country. Republicans, independents and Democrats hitting them differently. Democrats, it's inspiring them to turn out. And a lot of independents is inspiring them to turn out and vote against Republicans. For Republicans, a lot of them, some of them are switching. Others, it's inspiring them to just stay home. So, you know what? Like, I don't like these Democrats, but I'm not going to go out and put my name behind these disgusting kind of sex trafficking, you know, cover up artists. And what I think happened here, and I don't think this is controversial,
is that dozens of senators and Republican House members did not realize that they were going to have close races. And so their biggest fear over the last couple of years has been getting on the wrong side of Trump. And so when Massey and Khanna put up, you know, with the help of Marjorie Taylor Greene and others, put up the legislation to release the Epstein files, the politically safer thing for them to do was to side with Trump.
That is now being used heavily against them. Democrats on the Senate side have spent, and Politico reported this, I can confirm it, have spent at least $ 20 million on ads that mention Epstein files. On the House side, there's at least several million. I'm still working on getting a full figure there. But let's roll Politico discussing a little bit about the way that Democrats are successfully kind of leveraging this as a wedge issue.
There's a world where if Democrats are able to climb uphill and flip the Senate in their favor– that one of the reasons why they were able to do it will have been because of the Epstein saga and its fallout. In a number of states, including Alaska, Ohio, Iowa, and others, Dasha, the Democratic firm Blue Rose Research is working with the Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC to flood the airwaves with $ 20 million in ads down the homestretch. focusing on the Epstein scandal. Dasha, this is interesting. It's really privately giving Republicans and Republican pollsters a lot of consternation because essentially what they say is happening is they've consolidated 85% of their base. They're confident in 85% of Republicans who they
think will turn out for their candidates, where Democrats are at 95%. The difference, they think, is partly due to these Epstein ads. They think these Epstein ads from Democrats are suppressing the Republican vote and encouraging them to not turn out to vote because they feel let down by how the Epstein files played out.
So I actually want to take a look at some of the ads in particular. Now, imagine that you're a voter in Kansas, Nebraska, Florida, and you're seeing these ads and think about how it would make you feel about the incumbent. Let's roll through some of these.
It was one of the worst child abuse scandals in history. Dozens of young girls sexually trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein, drugged, molested, and raped.
And Roger Marshall helped cover it up.
Marshall voted to keep the Epstein file sealed, ignoring pleas from victims, and saying releasing the information was, quote, not of much interest to me. Roger Marshall used his office to protect pedophiles. He doesn't belong in the Senate.
Let's play a game. How many degrees is Pete Ricketts from Jeffrey Epstein? Rule one, follow the money. Let's start with an easy one. Former Call of Duty boss, Bobby Kotick. Years after Epstein's sex crime conviction, Kotick invited him over. Drinks tomorrow, my house, 5.30? Kotick's cash went to Ricketts.
If you guessed two, you're right on the money.
Six million documents, 1,200 victims, and his vote stood in the way of the truth. Dan Sullivan took thousands in cash from Epstein Associates and voted to keep the files hidden from the public, even after he knew 14-year-old girls were raped. Dan Sullivan had the power to release the Epstein files and protect the victims. Instead, he protected his donors and his friends.
In their world, power protects power. Ashley Hinson made sure of it. Her top donors appear in the Epstein files over 700 times. In Congress, Hinson voted against releasing the files. When given another chance, she skipped the votes. Instead, she was raising money from a billionaire who was in the Epstein files over 20 times. Ashley Hinson put her donors before her duty.
I was 13 years old when I met Jeffrey Epstein. I was told about an old guy that just liked to get massages from young girls. When Jeffrey gave me that $ 300, I was very vulnerable.
He used me in every way.
Senator Ashley Moody cast a deciding vote to protect the man who abused me. Why protect a pedophile? Ashley Moody, whose side are you on? Ashley Moody, how can you put your political career above abused children?
And Emily, it turns out somebody in the Epstein files is helping fund some of these. Is that right? Reid Hoffman?
It's Reid Hoffman.
Reid Hoffman basically put a ton of the money into the pack that's running a lot of these ads.
And Ryan, you've reported on Reid Epstein's, Reid Epstein, Reid Hoffman's Epstein ties.
He's a reporter right now.
Yes, unfortunately for him. Reid Hoffman's Epstein ties, which are not nothing. They're not like insignificant. Somebody who's just like incidentally in the files.
They were correspondents.
Reid Hoffman was on the island, according to the reporting that I'm familiar with.
So this is a twinge of irony.
He is denied participating in any, you know, you know, sordid activity, uh, People who have met Epstein say that you got creep five from him immediately. So at a minimum, it reflects either poor judgment or the kind of judgment that we'd rather not know about. Yeah, put up C5. So, yeah, Reid Hoffman, you know, spending a significant amount of money hammering them. What are you hearing on the Republican side?
My understanding is that this is that Democrats are going to lean heavily into this in the final kind of stretch.
This is exactly what Republicans deserve for milking the Epstein issue rightfully before the Trump administration came back into office and then allowing Trump to get away. I mean, to be fair, a lot of Republicans. I mean, you'll remember this. I remember this before they went to the break. Last year, when the Epstein-Faust Transparency Act was being pushed for, I was at like a Republican event. And the kind of conventional wisdom in Washington was that this was just a podcast issue.
Nobody really cared about it.
And I went and talked to all of these Republican members and said, like, do you think when you go back home to your district in August, it was right before the recess, they're going to want to talk to you about Epstein? And like every single one of them just casually, fairly casually was like, yes, they were all prepared to have to talk about it because they knew.
That people at home would want to talk about it.
Like it was clear to them that people cared enough to ask them questions about it. And so that's why I think you end up with the Epstein-Files Transparency Act finally passing because they knew the pressure was so significant. And Republicans knew that going back years because they were the ones who were trying to milk the issue politically during the Biden administration. And so honestly, I have no sympathy for them whatsoever. And I do think, I mean, the Ashley Moody ad, I do think these ads are absolutely powerful.
Yeah. Yeah.
This is this is brutal stuff. And yes, absolutely agree. And it's ironic that they did so much to elevate the resonance of it. And now it's coming back and hammering them. So maybe hopefully we don't see that cycle again. And with Democrats taking control and then themselves refusing to investigate, it's like we want you know, we want to see everything and we want to we want actual accountability. And I think until the public gets it, the politicians are going to continue to be punished for it.