Latest / The Nation Podcasts / What Jeffrey Epstein Taught Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon w/ Branko Marcetic | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

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What Jeffrey Epstein Taught Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon w/ Branko Marcetic | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: The old world is dying.
• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: The new world struggles to reborn.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now is the time of monsters.
• 0:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: With those words loosely based on Gramsine, I welcome to the time of monsters podcast.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast is sponsored by the nation magazine.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jeet here, a writer for the nation.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And obviously one of the guest monsters of the age, although he's dead, is Jeffrey F. Steak.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's still cast a large shadow.
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I, you know, there's much to be said about F. Steak, he's been, you know, a lot of terrific reporting on his crimes, of sexual predation on young women, but he's obviously a figure of interest.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: because of his political ramifications, his friendships with the elite.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so what has been doing really great work, reporting on all this is my guest for this week's episode, Ranko Marcettic, who is a staff writer, I believe for Jack Oven and also writes for responsible statecraft and many other publications.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he's on a series of articles on Epstein's friendships with people like Steve Bannon and Peter Tiel.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what I wanted to talk to him about.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much, Alex, I hope me.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, let's just get started here because you've done a bunch of recent pieces on Peter Teele, this sort of you know, obviously Silicon Valley billionaire who's become very active in politics and, you know, I would say it's fair to say that he has a bunch of powerful politicians, including JD Vans under his pockets.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: These are figures who will their rise to Peel's patronage.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: when it also went in Josh Hawley in the Senate.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what is the story of their kind of relationship?
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And how does it fit into sort of a larger F-steen story?
• 1:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, F-steen until a peer to become friends around 2013, 2014.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: At least that's as far as I can make out from looking at the emails.
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: For a long time, actually, you see this trail, this paper trail of Epsing, trying to become Teal's friend, trying to meet him, you know, desperately trying to arrange some kind of meeting through people that know the two mutual acquaintances and so on.
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then it seems like finally this happens around 2014, and then they're just emailing constantly, emailing, you know, they're also having fun conversations that are meeting up in various parts of the world, because they're both
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, ultra-rich gentleman, but also able to, you know, they're, they're constantly globetriding around the world.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And to me, what struck, what would stuck out is the fact that Epstein wasn't just interested in Teal, but seemed to also be interested in trying to develop his,
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: sort of political persona, his political thought process, trying to have him more engaged in politics, because till he used to be kind of a reclusive figure, we forget that now, because he's such an infamous guy, but until really the Gorka Lawsor made him infamous, he was someone who didn't want the limo.
• 3:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, that's actually why he
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: bankrolled that lawsuit because he, he didn't appreciate the Gorker, did something as, you know, like, outing him and outing his sexual orientation.
• 3:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know that that's where some underscoring a little bit in terms of like teal's own sort of trajectory because I mean, I think he's like, it's fair to say he's long being a kind of, you know, libertarian, right, libertarian and once he's going back to his early days at Stanford, his interest in kind of like a lead of stickers like the Australia's.
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: and Renée Girard, but it was also kind of tied to that right libertarians of at least early days.
• 3:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I kind of pessimism above politics and political activism.
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I kind of believe that in the age of mass democracy, as T.L.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thames sees that, you know, like, once women got to vote, but you know, like, it's sort of politics, like, a minimal state, isn't going to fly anymore.
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, to my mind, that type of thinking up and like, to kind of like a successionist idea.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, let's just separate out
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: from the political world.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think he was also involved with sort of these sea-studding movements, wasn't he?
• 4:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like where the idea is not to change American society, but to go into the ocean where there's no laws and
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: going gold, create your own libertarian utopia there.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, so that's the early deal.
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like he's like, you know, someone does like sort of a political preference as, but it's not, it doesn't actually think that they can play out in the political realm.
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, it's interesting that FC becomes involved with them and thinks that he can shift teal on this, right?
• 4:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, is that the story?
• 4:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think he did help shift him.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, Teele suddenly did shift on some pretty key things.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you mentioned, you know, I think his content for democracy is still very much there.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: As is, I think, you know, some of his, some of these ideas about wanting to kind of reshape the world and the military and image, but he also, you know, Teele as late as 2019 was saying that he was a non-interventionist, you know, which is a pretty
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: often core libertarian view is that wars are out for the state and the United States should be getting out of foreign conflict.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: But now I mean, Teele's entire business model seems to be very reliant on war and foreign intervention and specifically on the United States continuing to be involved in other parts of the world.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, Teele has this very very expensive contract.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: with Israel, and his company Palantir was responsible for providing some of the AI tools that were used by Israel and its genocide of Gaza.
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think that's a really important way that he's shifted.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: It seems that a cease to think things didn't quite work out.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Teele appears to now be more committed to or focused on trying to reshape the world as it is,
• 6:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: done several interviews about this and I keep forgetting to mention it, you know, he's also a fellow in New Zealander.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not because he was born or really, you know, has any, I think real commitment to the country in New Zealand, but effectively he bought citizenship in our right-wing prime minister in the 2010s, just basically gave him New Zealand citizenship.
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so now, you know, I guess he fancies New Zealand as a bit of a, um,
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, his kind of personal bomb shelter that he will be able to just escape to when everything.
• 6:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: When the world that he has created falls apart, so that's fantastic.
• 6:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, that is sort of tied to the sort of suggestion is that where you know, Dumer is the element of his kind of thinking.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he's far from alone.
• 7:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a kind of that kind of car gray of billionaires that have like, you know, on New Zealand citizenship with the idea that, yeah, that's where they will live out their days as the world collapses.
• 7:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's actually worth the underscoring as well as a sort of a point of contact.
• 7:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because T.L.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: had a very famous kind of like, or sponsored a lawsuit by Hulk Hogan, that effectively destroyed Docker, and this was because T.L.
• 7:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: had a personal vendetta, because Galker had owed it him.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think it's not too worth emphasizing a little that Jerry Epstein had reason to resent Gauker because that was I think where the first time I did a company Jeffrey Epstein's name was in the pages of Gaukers and they had been like very heavily involved we try to keep the story of his activities alive and they had like printed his that got a copy of his private phone book with the list of very prominent names of the the list of people who flew on the Lolita Express including
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: of Bill Clinton.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think for both T.L.
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: and F.T.
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: like this is a real thing they could bond on that they did not like the free press.
• 8:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: They don't like the sort of journals that could expose their activities.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's where thinking about in terms of what brought these two together.
• 8:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.
• 8:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, a quarter of Epstein's politics, I mean, as petty and kind of ridiculous as it sounds, Epstein was very animated by, or I guess, against, I should say, the me-too movement.
• 8:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: He constantly complained about me-too.
• 8:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because, you know, of course, he, he, himself, or at least preserve himself to people as being an unjust victim of a kind of witch hunt.
• 8:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: That, you know, even though, obviously,
• 8:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: uh... it seemed of course had to have to kind of keep up this this fiction that he was you know merely he had been accused by people and they were just out to get him and so on so forth and you know i think obviously till does not have any me to scandals but i think similarly uh... that they had a a similar interest in kind of uh... tamping down
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: some of these public controversies about their behaviour, personal behaviour, about trying to discourage people from looking into what they were doing in their private lives, whether it was something actually criminal, as everything was doing, or whether it was just something that, you know, entails case he wanted to keep private.
• 9:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And actually, it's interesting, there is an email that I cover in this piece that we're talking about, where, you know,
• 9:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: the way it kind of burst onto the scene and became, you know, the fountainhead of dozens scores of headlines was because of a lawsuit brought in 2015 and that was the lawsuit that named Prince Andrew as someone who had potentially taken part in these crimes.
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this was kind of what made it blow up, and at the time, you know, Epstein and Teals friendship was still, I guess, in its early stages, and Epstein kind of emailed him.
• 10:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think Teal has maybe not replied to him a few times, and he said, you know, it does my bad press give you pause.
• 10:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Teal's response was basically, no, not all, you know, I actually, I hope this blows over.
• 10:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hope you're doing okay despite these terrible headlines.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then he said, you know, once this is over, we should get together and kind of talk about strategies and kind of like, um,
• 10:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: exchange ideas for how to deal with this kind of negative press.
• 10:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Which is a pretty extraordinary thing to email someone who, you know, is, the first of all, has been convicted of, you know, using an underage prostitute, that's how the charges were framed, but also now, you know, is being accused of of running an underage sex rig.
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know,
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why exactly till he could look past this and sort of ignore it and even say, you know, I'm sorry, this is happening to you.
• 11:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, but he clearly was more interested in kind of how this experience could could be used to, you know, with a future public controversies that would brought out by newspaper reporting than anything else.
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, my sort of thought on that is that there is a kind of animus in Silicon Valley against independent reporting, which one sees that just in TL, but in a lot of the years, including Elon Musk.
• 11:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's actually one of the sort of causes of
• 11:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: the sort of political shift of Silicon Valley from a kind of, you know, centrist liberalism towards a harder politics on the right.
• 11:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: One often sees like sort of complaints when people like Moscow or the New York Times is unfair to Silicon Valley or hostile and that there's too much coverage of the sort of negative consequences.
• 12:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: of new technology or the dubious sales pitches.
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as always, I think about it in terms of, you know, Silicon Valley business model, a lot of it is about, you know, selling projected futures, some of which cannot, but actually most of which don't.
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And like any sort of independent investigation, like as a kind of like punctures the balloons that they're trying to blow up.
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it doesn't actually surprise me that, you know,
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: already a facility towards independent reporting, you know, is it's likely to take the side of Jeffrey upstairs and then take that, you know, like, and what's like, criticism in the media is a kind of witch hunt.
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's used like a fairly common point of view among this sort of billionaire class, but I don't know if you haven't thought so, man.
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think I wasn't a Google that hired a private investigator to basically kind of look into and stalk a reporter that was, you know, I'm not even looking into anything particularly scandalous.
• 13:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was other Google or Apple, but yeah, I mean, you're right.
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do who predicted to say something very simple.
• 13:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, yeah.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a long dispute this, yeah.
• 13:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, which I mean, you know, it's not as a, you know, that's the only industry with that's happening.
• 13:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's also sort of a speaks to a wider kind of
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know, corporate business side sort of hostility to the press and and to reporting and such, but yeah, I mean, I think it's particularly, it does seem particularly pronounced in that industry.
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, and as you said, you know, Epstein kind of like said, if I could, you know, I'd like to join you with Epstein in school care.
• 13:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, but yeah, I mean, I think the me two stuff was big.
• 13:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, in his conversation with Steve Bannon, another person that was
• 13:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Connected to Trump, very close to Trump, obviously, that Epstein purposefully kind of went out of his way to be friend and turned to an ally.
• 13:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, this was another frequent complaint.
• 13:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, and actually what the movie that Bannon was making about Epstein was, you know, partly, but the idea was partly to kind of rehabilitate him after this massive scandal kind of turned his name to
• 14:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, in terms of like, to give out these figures, as you mentioned, like, Tila already had been a sort of, you know, regular libertarian anti-democratic.
• 14:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think Epstein himself underwent some sort of like shift.
• 14:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, if one looks at his, like, period in the 90s and early 2000s before his conviction, where he concerted his figures like Bill Clinton,
• 14:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: and Donald Trump, actually it seemed like a, you know, like, almost a certain, like, but now and the history, uh, Neil's a pro, like, you know, someone who believes in globalization, science, uh, technocratic, uh, the elite governance, deregulation,
• 14:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: His, you know, it started with 2007 to 2008, which is dual crisis of Epstein's conviction and the financial realm, I think Epstein, himself becomes a more willing to sort of move out of that comfort zone of the sort of, you know, very summers of the world.
• 15:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: We could tune you to Hankau with and pursue a politics that's not about, you know,
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: but finding adventurous ways to further it.
• 15:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: So after that period, that's when he actively pursues both Peter T.O.
• 15:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: and Steve Bannon as potential allies.
• 15:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I don't know to what extent this is connected, but at the same time you start to see Epstein in these emails, you know, showing interest in cryptocurrency.
• 15:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: He talks about starting a alternate financial system, you know, he, as we've seen from reporting other reporting on this, he was very interested in, an idea as a deal is also interested around, you know,
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: attempting to go beyond a kind of physical human form and to kind of expand the limits of what is possible in human life.
• 16:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: In some kind of creepy ways, the idea of uploading your cautiousness to a computer and all these kinds of things.
• 16:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's also a pretty revealing
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: exchange between Teele and Epstein, which people found, you know, way before I had written the story, although it's included in there.
• 16:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, I think it does speak to this a little bit where Epstein emails Teele when Brexit happens, and he's kind of giddy about it.
• 16:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's gloating over it.
• 16:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he tells him, you know, this is the beginning of collapse and the rise of tribalism and, you know, this is a good thing because I think he saw it as, I mean, think about it, if you're someone like Epstein who has a mass of vast fortune, someone who has been able to operate really beyond the bounds of,
• 17:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: uh... the law as well as sort of norms of human decency it is a situation like that you know you you operate without any sort of reliance on a in a functioning state you know that we we all rely on it we need a state to to be able to you know maintain law and order to you know make sure that companies are regulated to make sure that you know basic the basic systems that we all rely on are kind of held up and and don't
• 17:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you're someone with that amount of money and wealth, you know, you can sort of do whatever you want, and to something you want to be able to do whatever you want, and so the collapse of governing structures is kind of, you know, you can see how it can be an opportunity for someone like that.
• 17:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think, you know, again, this is a little bit of me extrapolating, but I think that you can see some of that, you know, and what you're talking about in emails like that that have
• 18:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know.
• 18:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's why I think it actually ties it with the other thing that's in Europe, and it's also been in some of the excellent reporting that's appeared on Dropside, which is that part of this sort of new politics was in prison and lining with national security states.
• 18:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in sort of privatized selling of weapons systems, and I think there was like this exchange, that actually had with them.
• 18:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: former Israeli prime minister, a good baroque, where he, you know, basically lists off all the place in the world, where there's trouble, Ukraine, as I believe Somalia, the name of others, and says, you know, these are good opportunities, that you have like elites that are very scared and you know what to be bolstered, and it is in the context of, you know,
• 18:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: The business that FC was trying to do with the agon block of selling Israeli security systems to countries in Africa and Asia, so it doesn't seem like, I guess the radical framework would be something like sort of crisis capitalism or like the idea that these business models can thrive, the more systems collapse, and it's pretty like explicit as they
• 19:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it kind of makes sense when you think about Epstein's origins, you know, I mean it's been reported several times that he started out as an arms dealer, you know, in the 80s.
• 19:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe working for Israel, maybe working for other states, but either way, you know, that's the reporting that we have.
• 19:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it does seem like even, you know, as you say, the drop site reporting does suggest that even into the 2010s, maybe that wasn't, you know, his chief occupation anymore, you know, he was now
• 19:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: family of a financier, but he also clearly was able to leverage all these connections that he had to broker arms deals, in particular for the Israeli state.
• 20:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And clearly, if you're somehow making money off that, if you're getting a cut, of course, the rise in instability and conflict is
• 20:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, no, I think that's right, and I think that this is all the salute back in sort of like Peter Teele because I think, you know, it seems like one of the reasons he was pursuing Peter Teele.
• 20:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Jeffrey F.C.
• 20:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: was pursuing Peter Teele, so intently was the idea of connecting him with a good baroque and seeing that there might be potential ties between the tech companies that Teele was working on and Israel.
• 20:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, absolutely, if St. tried to connect teal to many people, but there are some people that he seemed really, really, really intent on introducing him to.
• 21:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then who Barack was one of those people?
• 21:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you know, I kind of am exactly what the number is now, but there were so many instances of him trying to get the two together and it not working out.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he finally did happen, and beyond just introducing them and making sure that they met and kind of got to know each other and discuss their mutual interests as Epstein put it, Epstein also we know from these emails.
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: basically got teal to invest money into one of Barack's cyber security ventures that he embarked on after leaving the defense ministry post and Israel and that one of those cyber security about all of those cyber security ventures that Barack was involved in were founded by and had connections to members of Israeli military intelligence.
• 21:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, obviously, a lot of time has passed in between then and now, but it's interesting because of course now, as I mentioned, it's a deal is no longer a non-interventionist.
• 22:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, he is a pro-Israel partisan, and he is
• 22:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: He signed a very lucrative partnership with the Israeli military.
• 22:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: His company was deeply involved in what the Israeli military has been doing in Gaza, but elsewhere in the Middle East as well.
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's not, I think, unreasonable to wonder, is this where was this the term of Epstein's involvement increasingly deep involvement?
• 22:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: in the Israeli military industrial complex, with Epstein putting him in touch with Ahud Barak, who then kind of opened the door to deal investing in these intelligence-linked companies.
• 22:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a very intriguing question to ask.
• 23:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, no, no, I absolutely.
• 23:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as I said, it's one way of mapping out a shift in T.O.s thinking and his sort of business activities.
• 23:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Also, it does seem like, you know, it was very important for F.C.
• 23:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: as well.
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: He might have been the same level of F.C.
• 23:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Lersey was in the 1980s, so if this was, he clearly had his finger in the pie.
• 23:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this sort of involvement of politics also,
• 23:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: It raises someone we've discussed before, but is worth going into, is it was a Steve Bannon.
• 23:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, I think it's worth, obviously I've seen, you know, preferended people from all across the political spectrum throughout his life.
• 23:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, he's a picture and, you know, like making connections.
• 23:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I do think that there does seem to be some sort of shift predominant sort of, you know, centrist neoliberal social milieu.
• 23:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: of the 1990s and 2010s to to someone like Steve Bannon and it presents a number of like ironies on bulls.
• 24:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Besides, because Bannon famously came into the poor as this sort of voice of the populist right, that is convincing the Republican Party to have to challenge the billionaire class.
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it was a forefront of that politics, which we're picking up by Donald Trump in 2016.
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what are the origins of this?
• 24:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: What seems on the surface of unlikely friendship?
• 24:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, you know, the irony of Badlands, right populist anti elite movement is that it's entirely dependent on and financed by elites, you know, and that shows you just how not not seriously to take these claims that the way they frames the movement.
• 24:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's interesting because
• 24:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Epstein obviously was best friends with Trump and yet by the time Trump becomes president they've had a fooling out they haven't had you know A connection for years and yet Epstein both we see that with with his Friendship with Bannon and we see that with his friendship with Teele
• 25:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: he appears to be kind of trying to, even though he was on the outs with Trump and on the outside, he is still maintaining contacts with people in Trump's world.
• 25:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: He is trying to be influential within Trump's presidency.
• 25:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a, you know, one-foot-scaramucci, if you were a most-scaramucci, press secretary briefly, for Trump, he gets in touch with, with Epstein, you know.
• 25:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so there's all these people who are in Trump world,
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: having context with Epstein, even though Trump himself, I think, genuinely did not want to have anything to do with this guy for obvious reasons, because it was very politically bad for him.
• 25:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: How Epstein and Bannon became friends?
• 25:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: The earliest reporting we have about this is that surely, after Trump gets inaugurated, that Bannon was looking for funders for this, you know,
• 26:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Trump like movement to Europe.
• 26:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wore this to be a global movement and so he was he spent the years after Trump's after Trump was inaugurated after Trump won and he and even now trying to build this movement somewhat successfully.
• 26:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: and also somewhat unsuccessful, but nevertheless trying to, and so we know that he visited Epstein, I think, in 2017, he went to his Manhattan pinhouse to try and get some kind of funding for this.
• 26:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in these emails, following that, you can see them constantly talking about
• 26:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Bannon's plans and Epstein telling him how he wants to help him out.
• 26:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Epstein offered to fly in places so he can do these things.
• 26:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Epstein offering him his Paris apartment to stay in and so on and so forth.
• 27:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, actually,
• 27:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was an indication that maybe they became friends actually through FC's connection to Teele because there was, well, rather, no, I shouldn't say that.
• 27:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: That they became friends a little earlier because of a sort of mutual crypto connection.
• 27:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was a cryptocurrency guy who was kind of Bannon's ally and he got in touch with FC's accountant
• 27:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Steve and you should really talk to Epstein.
• 27:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: He knows more about the subject than anyone.
• 27:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then Epstein says, let's get teal in the mix as well.
• 27:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's, I mean, I haven't found that anything else in the emails or his stuff has been released so far that that gives us more information about that.
• 27:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that's intriguing.
• 27:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: That that was happening.
• 27:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think in 2016.
• 27:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's possible that these guys that already kind of have gone to know each other.
• 27:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: The four Trump was even inaugurated.
• 27:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's maybe why bad and felt, you know, he was able to eventually, you know, come to his house, hadn't had been begging for money to launch this movement.
• 28:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I mean, to sum up, you know, once they really became friends,
• 28:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a very similar thing to Teal.
• 28:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Epstein was a very interesting band's project.
• 28:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: He lavished him with generosity, including, to put him in touch with doctors.
• 28:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: He said to, you know, you need to take care of your health, you need to stay alive, this movement can't exist without you, yada yada.
• 28:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he, you know, constantly tried to introduce him to different influential people in power players that he knew around the world, thinking that it would, you know, be helpful for his project.
• 28:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, I think we see, you know, really playing a pretty big role in this kind of, well, generously we might turn this right populist movement that has come up.
• 28:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think there's two strands of what you were saying that I want to pick up on.
• 29:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: One is a sort of cryptocurrency, which one could think of just as a sort of neutral silicon valley thing of, you know, like,
• 29:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's an alternative currency end.
• 29:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's only one might even like, from a certain left perspective, you can welcome as a possible path towards de-dollarization or, but, which I think, like if one looks at, you know,
• 29:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: the politics of T.O.
• 29:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: and Bannon, and F.D.
• 29:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: is also easy to be connected with this sort of like a billionaires were built, like this idea of like we don't want strong state, we want a deregulation, we want to be able to set up our own alternative systems, and I think that is one way in which cryptocurrency
• 29:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: with thought as part of not just, you know, potentially interesting investment opportunity or new technology, but as part of a political project of weakening the state and creating alternative power centers, right?
• 30:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I think crypto had several possible attractions to Epstein.
• 30:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, why don't we know that it's used for illicit activities?
• 30:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, as you can only imagine what someone like Epstein might have put that towards.
• 30:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, Epstein also was very big on tax avoidance.
• 30:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, one of the things that
• 30:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was part of his and Teele's friendship, where I was empty, we're given tax advice, you know.
• 30:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: It offered to kind of basically talk to his advisors so that he could minimise his tax burden.
• 30:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And of course, crypto and the way that it's, you know, unregulated.
• 30:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And obviously, it was very clear about this.
• 30:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: He said, you know, there's tax advantages here if we can make sure that it's not, you know, the boot of the government doesn't come down.
• 30:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, and I think the other thing is that it fits with Epstein's, Epstein and Silicon Valley's kind of broader view of kind of wanting to reshape society, you know, and kind of unilaterally.
• 31:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: go beyond kind of the the social structures that the rest of us abide by.
• 31:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Epstein very frequently talked about in these emails starting a alternative financial system.
• 31:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And to be clear, in the the way he envisioned it was a little bit silly and goofy sounding, which is he thought Facebook could be the basis of a
• 31:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: alternative financial system where you would trade favors instead of money, which sounds very stupid.
• 31:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: But either way, I mean, you know, regardless, he really believed in it.
• 31:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know.
• 31:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I don't let you see how things actually work as anything you could monetize.
• 31:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: On the other hand, I just think like when I read that part of your article, like it, it seems like a good metaphor for what actually
• 32:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: how someone like Epstein operates in the world, which is these clips in the world of favors, where it's unnecessarily financial transactions went like, I'll connect you with this one person and then later on, like if I happen to be in a favor from you, this is like, does he just like offered insight into the sort of
• 32:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: the social world, the life world of this billionaire class, where I think I think those sort of favors or like off the book assistants are actually quite important.
• 32:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I had not thought of that until now, but you're completely right.
• 32:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is exactly how it's seen off right.
• 32:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's exactly how
• 32:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: The world I have seen had created for himself worked is that he would connect people to other people and then he would give them advice, he would offer to find them in his jet, he would take them to his island, he would
• 32:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: off of them or kinds of things, sometimes as we know, some pretty warped and criminal things, yeah, exactly.
• 33:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then of course, they would be tied to him by way of obligation or, you know, who knows because of incrimination.
• 33:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, you can believe right, that is, it's not the world that the rest of us live in, and it's not to imagine how,
• 33:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: and economy would really tell me, working that way, but that is what Epstein was doing.
• 33:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's how things work for him.
• 33:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know if you look here like the emails.
• 33:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it is interesting how people would come from for you like very foot now like a system.
• 33:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I think it was like the the princesses of Norway or one of those countries was like, you know, like, I need to find a dentist.
• 33:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, check me if you, you know, let's set me up.
• 33:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, do that.
• 33:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it was abandoned as well.
• 33:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, like, I'll, you know, find a good doctor for you.
• 33:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, so, so, so, so, yeah, no, I mean the other aspect which is very important is this sort of like project of creating a right-wing network and as you kind of like just through that, like you know there's parties successful with not fully successful, you know like I think more recently we're seeing the sort of cracks on that project with both the kind of loss of urban but also the fact that like many people on the European
• 34:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: are not totally happy with the current war that the Trump administration is waiting in the Middle East.
• 34:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, like, but despite these limits or, you know, the cracks that we're seeing in the project, I think that that was a kind of a very serious project.
• 34:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's something that I think does, again, sort of connect it, Epstein, I would just with Bannon, but also with Teele, because I mean, that's also something that I think Teele's project, JD Vance, is very interested in.
• 34:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: is like, yeah, these sort of been the forefront in the corporate administration of like, creating, um, uh, close your ties with the European right.
• 34:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, like, how do we assess that?
• 34:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, the house series of our project is at, um, and as well as the limits of it.
• 34:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it seems pretty serious to me, Peter Teele gave a record amount of money to Vance so that he could win the Senate race in Ohio a couple years ago.
• 35:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then, reportedly, Peter Teele was instrumental in both, kind of, you know, using his relationship with Trump to smooth over Vance's
• 35:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, previous comments that he had made about Trump, many of them, very critical.
• 35:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it also was behind the scenes, pushing for events to be made running back in 2024.
• 35:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm sure that wasn't, you know, Teal was not the only factor in that decision, but clearly he played some role.
• 35:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, and now you're in a position where, okay, you know, Trump doesn't...
• 35:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: that ends up leaving office at the end of his term, or anything happens that puts him out of the White House.
• 35:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: J. Iván says, yeah, he's the vice-president, he stands to petition inherit the Trump's home movement.
• 36:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And from what we know and reporting in the Washington Post, Teal and Vans have kind of
• 36:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: going together to plan out what they envision as the society they want to create where basically they get rid of democracy and they have a kind of group of
• 36:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: right-wing business people, calling the shots.
• 36:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sort of a new era of stalker scene.
• 36:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, again, they seem pretty serious about it.
• 36:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, I don't think that that was necessarily Epstein's exact vision.
• 36:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's certainly really not what exactly Epstein's vision was aside from him just kind of, you know, having a foot in the door with whoever held influence in power.
• 36:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it does seem like, you know, it seems played a role.
• 36:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's my sense for me, reading these emails is that it seems did play a role in, you know, getting teal to be someone who is this active, politically, this deeply, deeply involved in domestic and foreign affairs, as well as, you know, trying to help, as you say, Steve Bannon, create a larger global right-wing network.
• 37:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, I think in both of those cases, when she's, you have the fact that despite FC's death that I've been happy and jail-celled, that his shadow is still very large.
• 37:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, actually, beyond the hurt for crimes that he committed, he did reshape the political world in a very significant way.
• 37:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: the consequences of which we're still, you know, witnessing today.
• 37:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, I'm sure those three people could do this as you do well, or sort of reporting on this.
• 37:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think that's probably a good place to end it on.
• 37:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we'll link to your reporting in Jacob and this been, I think quite a few of these articles.
• 37:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, I'd like to encourage listeners to read these.
• 37:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to thank Raccoe once again for the program.