Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / Epstein Engineered Musk's Dating Life

Transcript

Epstein Engineered Musk's Dating Life · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:00
  When we talk about Musk drama, it's usually, you know, rockets,
• 0:04
  social media rebrands, maybe a cage match.
• 0:06
  That never quite happens. It's always big, it's always
• 0:08
  public, and it's almost always Elon.
• 0:10
  But today, we're doing something different.
• 0:12
  We're looking at the other Musk Kimball, the one in the cowboy
• 0:16
  hat. The farm to table guy.
• 0:18
  The restaurateur who sits on the board of Tesla and SpaceX.
• 0:22
  He's often branded as like the good Musk.
• 0:25
  Exactly. But the documents we're digging
• 0:27
  into today, this huge release from the Department of Justice
• 0:31
  analyzed in detail by the Guardian, they just, they
• 0:34
  completely dismantle that entire persona.
• 0:37
  It's a huge shift, and we're also looking at this really
• 0:40
  sharp opinion piece from Cholera's Sun that kind of
• 0:43
  grapples with the fallout. The core of it all is Kimball
• 0:46
  Musk's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
• 0:48
  And it's not just that they knew each other.
• 0:49
  That's not the headline. It's the sheer scale of the
• 0:52
  connection that's so jarring. Yeah.
• 0:54
  We're not talking about a quick handshake at some gala.
• 0:56
  Kimball Musk appears in the Epstein files over 300 times.
• 1:01
  300 I mean, that number alone just changes the whole
• 1:03
  conversation. It really does.
• 1:05
  It takes you from, oh they might have known each other to
• 1:08
  something something much more systematic.
• 1:10
  And that's where the real conflict is, because Kimball has
• 1:13
  been trying to get out ahead of this.
• 1:14
  He went on Ex, you know, formerly Twitter, on February
• 1:17
  9th. He did.
• 1:18
  He put out this statement that was basically a total disavowal.
• 1:22
  He. Claimed he met Epstein just once
• 1:24
  in some New York office and knew right away that the guy was, and
• 1:29
  this is a direct quote, demon. A demon.
• 1:32
  I mean, that's a really powerful choice of words.
• 1:35
  It suggests this immediate moral horror, right?
• 1:38
  I saw evil and I walked away. He also tried to explain away
• 1:41
  all those emails by saying, oh, Epstein was just on my mass
• 1:44
  newsletter mailing list. Like thousands of other people
• 1:47
  getting updates on what organic kale and school gardens.
• 1:50
  Which, you know, on the surface, that sounds kind of plausible
• 1:53
  for a public figure. You have a big mailing list.
• 1:55
  But the Guardian and the Boulder for a reporting lab, they
• 1:58
  actually read the emails. And that newsletter defense, it
• 2:02
  just falls apart immediately. Instantly, these weren't mass
• 2:05
  blasts. They were personal.
• 2:06
  They were direct, specific, ongoing conversations.
• 2:10
  They were logistical, they're intimate, and they totally
• 2:12
  contradict that whole I met him once story.
• 2:15
  I think the most damning piece of evidence for that is probably
• 2:19
  the island invitation. Oh.
• 2:20
  Absolutely. That was from January 2013.
• 2:23
  Right. So think about it, if you meet
• 2:25
  someone once and decide they're a demon and then they invite you
• 2:28
  to their private island. You block them.
• 2:30
  You, I don't know, call your security team.
• 2:33
  You definitely don't reply politely.
• 2:34
  Exactly. But Kimball didn't do that.
• 2:38
  He didn't recoil in horror. His actual reply was that would
• 2:42
  be nice. That would be nice.
• 2:44
  He said he couldn't go, but not because of who Epstein was.
• 2:47
  It was because he was dealing with, in his own words, the
• 2:50
  nuclear explosion that is my life, which was his divorce.
• 2:55
  He even kept the door open, he said.
• 2:56
  Maybe in the spring. Maybe in the spring, that's a
• 2:58
  not how you talk to a demon. That's that's how you reschedule
• 3:01
  with a friend when you're busy. It just completely undermines
• 3:04
  his entire public statement. It does.
• 3:07
  But honestly, if you look past the hypocrisy of it all, the
• 3:11
  actual content of these emails shows something way more
• 3:14
  disturbing than just a couple of rich guys hanging out.
• 3:16
  Yeah, it reveals this, this sophisticated operation.
• 3:20
  This is what the sources call engineered intimacy.
• 3:23
  Yes, Epstein wasn't just a pal. He and his circle, They were
• 3:28
  actively managing parts of Kimball's personal life.
• 3:32
  And this brings in a third person, a guy named Boris
• 3:35
  Nikolik. Right.
• 3:35
  Nikolik was a science advisor for the Gates Foundation and a
• 3:38
  really close associate of Epstein.
• 3:40
  And the emails show Nikolik and Epstein working together, almost
• 3:43
  like handlers, to set Kimball up on a date.
• 3:45
  The timeline on this is September 2012.
• 3:48
  It's right around Kimball's 40th birthday and there's this e-mail
• 3:51
  chain. It's incredible.
• 3:52
  They're planning a party for him in New York.
• 3:54
  But they're not just talking about catering or a DJ, they're
• 3:56
  talking about people as if they're inventory.
• 3:58
  That's the only way to put it. Nicola writes to Epstein about
• 4:01
  bringing a specific woman to this party.
• 4:03
  Her name's redacted, but the message is crystal clear.
• 4:06
  He tells Epstein please prepare the woman and he adds a little
• 4:10
  winky face emoji. Prepare the woman.
• 4:12
  And what does that even mean? It sounds like they're prepping
• 4:14
  an asset for a mission or something.
• 4:16
  Then he adds, she might like Elon as well.
• 4:19
  So transactional. But the detail that just takes
• 4:23
  it to another level of like, inhumanity is how they plan to
• 4:27
  deal with Kimball's X. The ambient e-mail I.
• 4:30
  Had to read it twice, I thought I was misreading it.
• 4:32
  It's so stark. So Nikolik is basically
• 4:34
  strategizing how to get Kimball alone with this new woman.
• 4:38
  He writes that they need to distract the X, and then in
• 4:41
  parentheses he just asks any spare Ambien.
• 4:44
  It's so chilling because it's so casual.
• 4:46
  They're not talking about a person.
• 4:47
  She's just an obstacle and the proposed solution is sedation.
• 4:51
  Let's just drug her so we can move our asset into position.
• 4:54
  It shows this completely utilitarian view of the world
• 4:57
  where people just chest pieces and if a piece is in your way,
• 5:00
  you just you remove it. If you need a piece to do
• 5:03
  something, you prepare it. So the big question becomes, how
• 5:06
  much did Kimball actually know about all this engineering?
• 5:09
  Well, he definitely knew about the end result because despite
• 5:12
  his claim about one meeting in an office, he had lunch at
• 5:15
  Epstein's penthouse on October 7th, 2012.
• 5:19
  And the e-mail he sent after that lunch, it just it removes
• 5:23
  any doubt that he knew he was being set.
• 5:24
  Up. It really does.
• 5:26
  He writes to both of them, to Epstein and Nicola, and says,
• 5:29
  Jeffrey and Boris, Many thanks for connecting me with the
• 5:32
  woman. I believe you both played a
• 5:34
  role. Another :) he's thanking them
• 5:37
  for providing a service. He might not have known about
• 5:39
  the ambient detail, but he knew he was being handled.
• 5:42
  He knew they were curating his love life.
• 5:45
  And that gratitude, it seems, opened the door for Epstein to
• 5:48
  become this this invisible third person in the relationship.
• 5:52
  This is wasn't just a setup, it was ongoing surveillance.
• 5:56
  Right. The Guardian found that the
• 5:57
  woman was forwarding Kimball's private emails, his love
• 6:00
  letters, directly to Epstein. It feels like something out of a
• 6:03
  spy movie. Kimball is there, you know,
• 6:05
  pouring his heart out, sending these romantic notes, making
• 6:07
  travel plans, thinking he's building a real connection.
• 6:10
  And on the other end, she's just hitting forward and sending it
• 6:13
  all straight to Jeffrey Epstein. Who was basically tracking them?
• 6:17
  He knew their itinerary. He was giving travel advice, I
• 6:21
  think he suggested they go to Morocco at one point.
• 6:23
  He was choreographing the whole thing from the shadows.
• 6:26
  And Kimmel, he wasn't just some passive pawn in all this.
• 6:29
  There's a level of comfort there, of banter that suggests
• 6:32
  he felt like part of the group. We have to talk about the
• 6:35
  Halloween costume idea. Oh, the Halloween e-mail, Yes.
• 6:37
  Kimball emails them with a joke about a group costume for the
• 6:41
  three of them, him, Epstein and Nicolik.
• 6:43
  And it wasn't a subtle joke, no. He suggested they go as the Holy
• 6:47
  Spirit, the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus.
• 6:50
  You just don't make that kind of joke with a demon you met.
• 6:52
  Once you make that joke with people you feel very, very
• 6:55
  comfortable with, it signals he felt like he was in the inner
• 6:58
  circle. Exactly.
• 6:59
  It signals a feeling of safety, but that safety was a total
• 7:03
  illusion, especially for the women involved, because
• 7:06
  eventually this relationship between Kimball and the woman it
• 7:10
  it started to crumble. Right in April 2013, Kimball
• 7:14
  tries to pull back. He sends the downgrade e-mail.
• 7:17
  He tells her he's stressed and exhausted and wants to go back
• 7:19
  to just dating. You know, on the surface it
• 7:23
  sounds like pretty standard relationship stuff.
• 7:25
  But her reaction confirms everything about the power
• 7:29
  dynamic. She doesn't call a friend.
• 7:31
  She forwards Kimball's e-mail to Epstein.
• 7:33
  She's panicked, worried that she's failing her mission or
• 7:36
  something. And Epstein's reply?
• 7:37
  I think this might be the single most revealing line in the whole
• 7:40
  investigation. The good news?
• 7:41
  E-mail, Yeah. You read back to her.
• 7:44
  OK, good news. Now I have you back again full
• 7:46
  time. Just makes your skin crawl.
• 7:49
  Good news. Her heartbreak is good news to
• 7:51
  him. It implies her time with Kimball
• 7:54
  was just a deployment, an assignment, and now she's being
• 7:57
  recalled. She was an asset, and when the
• 8:00
  job was over, she went back on the shelf.
• 8:02
  And it wasn't just Epstein saying this.
• 8:04
  Another associate, a guy named Steve Hanson, emails her and
• 8:07
  just lays it out. He tells her, and he even has a
• 8:10
  typo. It's a game you're losing.
• 8:12
  Then he orders her to leave immediately.
• 8:14
  It's a game. I mean, that really is the
• 8:17
  mission statement for this whole circle of men, isn't it?
• 8:19
  The women, the relationships, the power plays, it's all just a
• 8:23
  game. And they're the only players,
• 8:25
  Everyone else is just part of the scenery.
• 8:27
  So you have to ask why? Why go to all this trouble?
• 8:31
  Why is Jeffrey Epstein, A billionaire financier, playing
• 8:35
  matchmaker for Kimball Musk? Access.
• 8:38
  It's always comes back to access.
• 8:40
  Epstein collected powerful people and by 2012 the Musk
• 8:44
  brothers were rocketing up. Getting close to Kimmel was a
• 8:47
  clear pathway to Elon. And Elon does pop up in these
• 8:50
  files, too. It's not all about Kimball.
• 8:52
  No, there are mentions of Elon doing Kung Fu practice and
• 8:54
  things, but there's one e-mail from November 2012 that really
• 8:58
  complicates Elon's own attempts to distance himself.
• 9:00
  The helicopter one. Yeah, he asked Obscene about
• 9:03
  getting a helicopter ride. But then he asks what day night
• 9:06
  will be the wildest party on your island.
• 9:08
  Wildest party? That's a very specific phrase.
• 9:11
  Now we should be clear, the reporting shows that trip never
• 9:13
  actually happened. Logistics got in the way.
• 9:15
  Correct, the trip didn't happen, but the intent is what's so
• 9:19
  telling here. He wasn't asking for stock tips.
• 9:22
  He wasn't asking about science philanthropy.
• 9:24
  He was asking for the wildest party on an island that was
• 9:27
  already notorious. It suggests that for both
• 9:30
  brothers, Epstein was seen as a kind of facilitator for a
• 9:33
  certain lifestyle. Exactly.
• 9:35
  And you know, to give Kimball some context here, he has
• 9:39
  admitted he was in a really bad place at the time.
• 9:41
  He called it an unhealthy version of himself.
• 9:43
  He was just divorced. He was drinking, partying a lot.
• 9:46
  He was vulnerable. And predators like Epstein, they
• 9:49
  have a sixth sense for vulnerability.
• 9:50
  They absolutely do. They find a void and they offer
• 9:53
  to fill it. You're lonely?
• 9:54
  Here's a curated girlfriend. You're bored?
• 9:56
  Here's the wildest party. But, and this is the huge caveat
• 10:00
  that you just can't get around, the timeline is absolutely
• 10:03
  damning. This was 20/12/2013.
• 10:06
  Jeffrey Epstein was not some mystery man.
• 10:08
  Not. At all.
• 10:09
  He was a convicted sex offender. He'd been convicted back in
• 10:11
  2008. He'd served time, such as it
• 10:14
  was. He was on the registry.
• 10:15
  It was public record. It wasn't some dark secret.
• 10:18
  So when Kimball or Elon or anyone else from that orbit
• 10:22
  claims they had no idea, it just it doesn't hold any water.
• 10:26
  They knew who they were dealing with.
• 10:27
  They made a choice, yeah. They decided that the access,
• 10:30
  the parties, the connections, whatever he was offering was
• 10:35
  worth overlooking the fact that he was a known predator.
• 10:37
  That's the Merrill calculation. And that brings us to this idea
• 10:40
  of the muck. Yeah.
• 10:42
  That's from the Colorado Sun piece.
• 10:43
  The author, Diane Carmen, she brings up that old saying about
• 10:46
  how it's just as easy to love a rich man as a poor man.
• 10:49
  Right. But she points out the warning
• 10:50
  that always came with it. Associating with that kind of
• 10:53
  extreme wealth, it often involves wading through a lot of
• 10:56
  muck. It's the same word Melinda
• 10:58
  French Gates used when talking about her divorce from Bill
• 11:01
  Gates. Yeah, his relationship with
• 11:02
  Epstein, she said. She couldn't stand the muck.
• 11:05
  And these emails? This is the muck.
• 11:07
  It's The Dirty, sticky reality of how these networks of power
• 11:10
  and influence actually work. And for guys like Kimball Musk,
• 11:13
  the consequences for wading into it all seems surprisingly light.
• 11:17
  That's what the article points out so well.
• 11:19
  The fallout is so asymmetrical. Kimball had to step down from
• 11:23
  the Burning Man board because a petition went around, which is,
• 11:26
  you know, it's an embarrassment. Yeah, but it's not jail time.
• 11:29
  No, for the women, the ones who were being prepared and told it
• 11:33
  was all a game, the trauma can be lifelong.
• 11:36
  For the men, it's APR problem. They go to their private
• 11:40
  islands, they wait for the news to blow over.
• 11:42
  They have the money to insulate themselves from the damage they
• 11:45
  caused. It forces you to really think
• 11:47
  about what complicity means. I think that's the real take
• 11:51
  away here. We tend to think of complicity
• 11:53
  as, you know, actively helping someone commit a crime.
• 11:56
  Sure, like driving the getaway car.
• 11:57
  Right, but what these files show is a different kind of
• 12:01
  complicity. It's the complicity of
• 12:02
  normalization. Normalization.
• 12:04
  Explain that. Well, if you're joking about
• 12:07
  Halloween costumes with a known sex offender, if you're taking
• 12:10
  his dating advice, if you're having lunch at his penthouse,
• 12:14
  you are sending a very clear message to him and to everyone
• 12:17
  else that his crimes don't actually matter.
• 12:19
  You're saying your value to me is more important than the harm
• 12:23
  you've done to others. Exactly.
• 12:25
  You are normalizing his presence in polite society, and that
• 12:29
  normalization is what gives predators a shield.
• 12:32
  It's what allows them to keep operating.
• 12:34
  Epstein thrived because powerful people treated him like a
• 12:37
  friend, not like a pariah. And that's why looking at these
• 12:41
  specific emails, these smiley faces and jokes, is so
• 12:44
  important. It's not just celebrity gossip,
• 12:46
  it's a blueprint for how that shield of respectability gets
• 12:49
  built. One casual e-mail, one lunch
• 12:52
  meeting, 1 ambient request at a time.
• 12:54
  Which is why it's so critical to look past the public statements
• 12:57
  and dig into the primary sources.
• 12:59
  Don't just read the tweet where he calls him a demon.
• 13:02
  Read the e-mail where he's sending a :) and asking for a
• 13:05
  rain check. The truth is always in the
• 13:07
  contradictions. And that's where we'll leave it
• 13:08
  for today. It's a dark story, but it's a
• 13:10
  necessary one if you want to understand how power really
• 13:13
  works behind the curtain. Thanks for joining us for this
• 13:16
  deep dive. Take care.