Dealing with Online Harassment and Stalking

with other people, but sure. Looks like we're alive now. Thanks everybody for tuning in . All right. Do you want to introduce yourself just real quick? And we'll kind of go more into the, you know, your Epstein work later. Yeah, okay. So my name is Ellie and I have the panics writer substack and I'm kind of humdring around other social media, but I mostly hang out on some stack and I write political pieces, personal pieces, and sort of the cross section of those too. How much do you balance the personal pieces with the kind of political results of your, I guess, suspected dooms scrolling? I'm a doom scroll . Right. I think I think , you know, I was raised politically and to be like civically minded , but I'm also raising kids. And so I mean even before the whole substack situation, I was writing political pieces and sort of in the mindset of what's the world I want to raise my kids in . And so a lot of that centered around the twenty twenty four election and we were going to like the women's marches and doing different things like that . And now it's, you know, now we're in the system that we're in once again . And so I do write personal pieces of things that of how this has affected our family or our community, probably more our community because we have like a very immigrant heavy community and we have issues that are at stake with the Trump administration happening where we live . We live a little bit close to like Delaney Hall and some of that stuff , but also with a lot of like the Epstein Survivor stories, that's that's just that piece of it is, I mean, I think that was kind of like a the universe sort of pulled me into that one. That wasn't really the plan, but I think for me that a big piece of that is just raising kids in a world where you don't ever want something like that to happen again . And so how do we fix that? But then how do we prevent it in the future? Yeah, well, a testament to your work is this steady stream of hearts that you are getting This is getting constant hearts like the last three minutes straight . But first up, I wanted to touch base just with some of the more recent today's like Supreme Court decisions, do you have any strong feelings on that? Egene Carroll's case, Trump's appeal got denied, so I guess officially he's a rapist, right? Right, right. And I mean , I had the pleasure of meeting A gene last September. She there's a little kind of like secret book club that happens in New York City and someone brought me to it, which then meant I was on the invite list for the other ones, but like they bring in really cool authors and you sit in somebody's living room and they don't tell you the address until like twenty four hours before, but one of them was for her book . And so we got to go in and she read some experts, excerpts and they talked to us. And it was interesting at the time because she said like, yeah, I've not received a dime. Like I haven't seen any of that money . And supposedly the case she won won she already won it, but he lost the appeal for that you know, that's for like five point five million. It's a smaller piece, but that's for the actual sexual assault battery . Supposedly that money is already in escrow and she should have access to it, but then you know , should she you accusing Donald Trump of using litigation to avoid accountability for his actions? I mean , I don't want to put words . Yeah. So and so he's got that. He's got the eight like the eighty four eighty four million, something like that. They also owes her for the defamation case. So she may or may not have received that money, but the point is he's guilty. He's guilty of these things and now he's running a country with these, you know, on his resume. Yeah, right. So that, but I mean, I think that was just one more big piece of that 's like, you know , and when that case happened, the biggest thing for me when that case happened was the judge's statement after the fact. He wrote a letter after the fact and he was like, I do find that he raped DJ Terrell. That is, you know, that's not this was a defamation case. This was not a criminal case, but he's like, I do find that that actually happened the way she described it, which I found . Yeah, it's unfortunate that it is a civil case so we can't be like officially registered as a sex offender, which I can tell a lot of people who would be pro . And then you have the you had the letter from what the twenty what was it twenty other twenty something other women. I can't remember it was twenty one or twenty eight, but there are actually on the record there are forty one women who have accused him on some level of sexual assault or harassment over the years. And by harassment, I don't just mean like, hey baby, it's like, you know, he has he has MOS for pushing women up against the wall and kissing them without being asked and like doing all sorts of all the things he described in the Axis Hollywood and brighten about it in many situations on live television. Yes. Yeah, everybody . So he's I mean , I mean, there's a very long risk. I've written about it. Other people have written about it , but it was good to see the letter come out with all the women's names on it yesterday saying we stand behind Eugene. I think that was really great . So yeah, that was I mean, that's I mean, it was something we already know, but it's just reinforcing, reinforcing, reinforcing that, yes, this is the thing that he did. It's very hard to walk away from it. Do you have any idea what it's taking so long for someone to just start reading all the names of the perpetrators on the house floor using the kind of free speech loophole that they have. Like they keep talking about doing it and threatening to do it. Like what is the whole thing? What does it mean? We just do it today. So like specifically to the Epstein files, you mean ? Yeah . I know a lot of people have asked like the victims to do that and I don't think they need to do that because I don't think I think we keep asking them to like litigate their own case, which, you know, it's thirty years later, they shouldn't be doing that anymore . But when you think of people in Congress , there are people who are threatening to come back once like Thomas Massy, like once he's no longer in office coming back. So you do wonder like what is the hold up in office ? What is a lot of it has to do with the power of their legal teams, you know ? For the women, for the survivors, the reason that they shouldn't have to come forward and say these names is there is no pro bono lawyer that they're going to have that can go up against Leon Black's lawyer and win, right? They're just, I mean financially , powerfully , that's just not going to happen and they can try their best. They will do their best. The lawyers are amazing people and they're doing a good job , but when you go up against a billion dollar lawyer, you know, it's a very tough legal team to . So that you know, a lot of these people could be crushed financially and reputationally and everything else by coming forward and naming the names, but I think that will happen. It will begin to happen. I think we will have better access. There's a lot of information in the files now. Yeah . And so I think a lot of people when they find it, they're just announcing . Well, do you think like this is something that like with my Satire, I'm always thinking about things that I feel people should be doing, whether even if it's just as simple as trolling, but like is there not enough money amongst rich like Hollywood people, billionaires that are liberal to just flood money for the legal fees . Is it just everybody's afraid of the political abuse and the retribution and Trump obviously abusing all of his executive powers? I think it's not even that it's it's just so not liberal versus conservative at this point. It's money versus not money . And there are so many people in the files. An example that I have given a lot lately is there's a guest list for a yam board or a yam cubor dinner in twenty ten that was at Geoffrey Essen's house and it's a very long list of people that are on all sides of the spectrum politically and Hollywood and everything . People are not speaking up who has big platforms because these degrees of separation are very, very slim and depending on who you are . If you, if you're anybody who made above a certain amount of money, you're very close, most of Congress, you know, it's a very it was a circle of people. You know, if you're in New York City, if you're in DC, it's I mean, it's a lot of people, but it's a relatively small circle and everybody's very close to it. And so I think most people are not speaking up because if they're not in the files in some way, shape or form, not saying they're abusing Kilburn, but a lot of people were connected with him or had financial They took his money. Yeah, right? Yeah. And so they don't want to speak up because they don't want that to be made public. But even if they aren't, someone they know is. And so it's just like this a bunch of nepotism . And it's why I say like, you know, if we look at Congress, if we could just like clear everybody out, get a brand new Congress , you know , of people because this is a very generational investigation too. Like it's above a certain age. If you're younger than a certain age, you're not in the files. Like that's just how it works. And so it's like if we had a younger Congress, we would have nobody connected to this court case. Right . And then we could probably investigate it properly. Yeah. Do you think well, like how nefarious would you say because you've been doing a lot of stuff with EB theSC Bowser actually reading Virginia Dufrez , like , I guess the transcripts of the things that she's been involved in. Yeah. How's that going for you? Are you getting a good reaction? Are you learning anything new kind of like literally doing like the theatrical element of it . I try not to be too theatrical, but I also wanted to be I want it to be read in a way that people kind of like hear her voice and not just me like reading words on a piece like, you know , because she, you know, we were roughly the same age and grew up at roughly the same time . I you know, the reason I do that is I was at the Trump Evcine Reading Room, and I participated in their filibuster where for twenty four hours people read from the files out loud. And then they had people there watching, but then they had people kind of across the country on displatforms watching. And it just struck me and I was talking to the to the man who heads that up. And I just, you know, he said, if we did this , we did this properly, we would be doing this for a couple years. We would just be reading straight . And I you know, I can't do that all by myself, but I just thought why not continue to read the files out loud? And then whoever wants to listen can listen because people, you know, I'll post things that are in the files. I'll post little clips or whatever, you know, on my notes and substack and people are like, Oh my gosh, is that from the files? Like, that's shocking. And it's like, yeah, this is in the files. Like all this stuff is in the files. And so if you just if you just make something public like Virginia Jiffre's deposition from Glen Maxwell's court case, you know, or not court case excuse me, her civil suit with Virginia Jeffrey for defamation . If you just read those depositions out loud, you hear you hear a person's voice and you realize like the timidity of Virginia Deferre's voice. Like she was not there you know about to go write a book or like to get on a I don't know a Netflix special like she was very timid , right? She was not excited about giving her testimony . And then you have other people , you know, there's there's a lot of testimony in the files. Like there was there was a deposition with Jean Luke Brunel's bookkeeper. Jean Luke Brunel was Epstein's business partner. He's from France. He was incredibly involved with child trafficking, and he also ended up in a ran a modeling agency, right? It was obviously moving people around invested in. Right, right . And in that deposition with his bookkeeper, you know, she's got no skin in the game. She has no problem saying what she knows. She's not going to get in trouble for it. So she names people, places, you know, all the people, perpetrators, everything. And she's like, I don't know this person. I just know they were there. They were in the room. They saw this. They participated in that. And there's a lot of that in the files where it's just lists of perpetrators . And again, you know, when this idea was like Katie Fang's lawsuit that just came out and where there are violations. It is almost every page of the files. There's some kind of a violation where they either named a survivor and didn't react her or gave details around her name to indicate who she is , or they redact somebody who's a perpetrator for reputational reasons, which is currently called out in the Transparency Act , or just the idea of if you find an email thread from anybody in the files that it starts exactly in two thousand nine and nothing nothing was discussed prior to two thousand nine. And it's like, well, we wouldn't just have a giant gap in conversations. Even if let's say somebody like Epstein or Donald Trump weren't big emailers, right? Like let's say that Epstein started emailing in two thousand nine . Other people were emailing. Other people were scheduled and there were flight lines. There were things but there's just like a ten year missing gap in the files. So just things like that where you can say, you know, I have my head in this sort of vacuum all day of information, but I can't assume that everybody else does . How can I get on twice a week for an hour and just make some of this stuff public in a way that it's accessible. You know, I don't know how many people are watching because I can never see myself stat at the same time reporting . So I don't know, I don't know how popular they are , but I just I',m just going to continue to do it. So if it's like ten people, hundred people, whatever , just so that people have access to the information and also that not everybody can sit down and read deposition documents, right? Like that's not that's not something that everybody can do. And so if I can read them in a way that's maybe a little bit easier to understand then that code. Yeah . Well, you are doing some great work for that because yeah, most people don't have the time to read all of this stuff. And speaking of Kitty Fang's lawsuit, like that, I guess just got over one of the hurdles, right? That the judges basically say, like, it's obvious. I think Todd Blanche admitted that he wasn't following essentially all the rul es . Like why are Democrats or other like lawyers? Like why is it up to Katie Fang to do this? Why are no Democrats in Congress doing this? Like is this something do you think that Democrats in the Senate should be like filibustering stuff until they yeah, okay. Any questions I'd appreciate the quirk a little bit . I think there's a lot here that they should be doing and I think that people think way too much about their future political careers . Yeah. They talk a big game, but when it comes down to actually doing something about it. Right. You see people stand out, you know, you see people who will go get pepper sprayed at the Wingy Hall like you'll see some people doing things for their constituents, but this is a big one that a lot of people are doing a little bit, but not very many people are doing a lot. And you know, sometimes I get frustrated because we'll hand things off the Congress that we find or I'll mention something in a document and they'll be like, Oh who's that guy? I've never heard of him before and I just how am I dog? aware of this, but you're in Congress and I've never heard of this . And I get that they have a very heavy workload, but I think there is sort of a middle ground where people could be much more active if people thought less about like what their elect ion's going to look like and more about they'd probably be a lot more electable if they were really vocal and making it. That's the thing that strikes me is like I feel like it's kind of an easy win to be a hero if like you like somebody that went to the parties and didn't do any of the icky stuff, but it's like, hey, here's everybody I saw. Here's the offhand comments I heard. Like it seems like low hanging fruit to make yourself a hero . And like, you know, especially from my understanding, it seems like a lot of the acquaintances of Epstein like obviously were not all of them were involved. A lot of them didn't know. There's like dinners. And like some of the articles I've read with the people working around Epstein, like they kind of like tripped people to get to get like other famous people to go to his dinners or events or tricks people into not being totally clear about who he was to get him invited to events . And like some of the articles actually make him kind of look like a little bit of a loser as in. He's like trying to rehabilitate himself and he think there was a lot of that and you do wonder like what was the sauce there that he was getting these people to kind of do all his fixing because because you're right that there are a lot of people who are coming out as very nefarious. And I mean, I've written about Michael Wolf, but there's like Michael Cohen. There's other people who were aware of information at the time where you just think, man, if they came out and did this the right way, they could be superheroes, right? Yeah. Michael Wolf, especially like he's got those hours of transcripts that he says, no one's interested in. Yeah, and I think everyone's interested. Like if you want to be the hero and have book deals for the rest of your life get it right and help and you know, stop making money off it and start helping And there's so many people in the files and like and there's just like, you know, I was reading through Bill Gates's transcript and this and and then also Howard Lutnick and this blatant like disregard A or just I didn't know that he was a sexual offender. You know what I mean? And it's just like if you can tell with Bill Gates , especially you can tell that Melinda figured out right away his criminal convictions were why he went to prison, why he, you know, what is that she figured out Bill Gates was like, I don't know. And it's like in, what world would you have a billion dollar foundation? Go work with a guy that you heard had a criminal background. Yeah, impossible sexual , you know, something and then be like, But it's just not our policy to look that up. Like this is a billion dollar foundation that like clean water for children. You'd look it up in every scenario. You'd go look into this guy's background. So just like there's this constant , you know, even people who are like reporters or whatever at the time who were hanging out with him and there's just like this constant drum of like we didn't know his background. We didn't know his criminal history . And when I was writing about Howard Lut nick, I thought, you know, he states that he's disgusted by this guy. We went to his house and he was talking about sexual things and we were like, We will never be around that guy again. You know , he's like your neighbor. Right. Fagras Lauder's bringing his kids to his island . It's like, in what world would that ever happen? And so I thought, you know what? They're all in New York. I'm just gonna look, I'm gonna do a Google search. This is the thing. We have Google. We're going do to Goog ale search of how many headlines from just New York City newspapers talked about Jeffrey Epstein's criminal and sexual history in this period of time. And it was over a hundred. He would it would be so hard to not know if you were in his circle what his crimes were and know that he based on his reputation likely did those crimes. Like it's just impossible to know. And so you see a lot of people just saying, oh , I went to his house for dinner. I didn't know I didn't know it. And it's like that was news. That was in, you know, New York magazine, that was in New York Times, that was everywhere. People knew about him. He had a reputation . And it's more men than women, I think, in that scenario that kind of turned a blind eye, but it wasn't. I mean, there were women in there in those rooms with him who just didn't seem to have a problem And some weird ones were there. One of them Yeah, but there's some emails where they're even talking about like, oh, I'm bringing my daughter and her friends. Like that's pretty creepy. Yeah . Absolutely. Because even like let's say hypothetically you didn't know he had that criminal background, which is ridiculous He's very big in New York City, disappeared for thirteen months. You'd know reputationally because he always had that's the thing. Like he was kind of weird. Like he didn't like to be alone, whether it was in his own house, which he was a hermit, he didn't like to leave. Everybody had to come to him , or even just like in his email threads, when people didn't answer his emails right away, he'd be like, What's going on? Are you gonna answer? And he gets very neurotic being alone , right? And so he wasn't alone in his own home. He was always surrounded by people. And you have people like Michael Wolf who have documented statements where they say I noticed he had girls around him all the time. He had teenage girls around him. I did an interview with a guy who went to Harvard during the time that Epstein was like building departments and making friends. And he was a student there and he said, I noticed that he had girls around him all the time who seemed very young. And he's like, I was just a student there, you know ? He didn't hide that fact. And so for people to be like, well, I just brought my kids around him when he has these girls around him that feel very, I mean, even if you think of like playboy bunnies, like some of these ridiculous people who had to have playboy bunnies around them all the time, like you wouldn't bring your kids around. Like that. Yeah se Vxerualy in nature environment . So even if you thought that they were over eighteen, which I'm sure nobody was checking , it was still a very sexual environment. Every home had photographs of naked women and his assistants who were like, you know, helping at the table. And there's a big eight put naked picture of her right there . It would be very, very hard to miss. In terms of the investigation , like how would you rate Raid James Comer. He's the one kind of in charge of the committee over this. Is he like good faith acting at all? Are they just running out the clock, pretending to be incompetent and taking their time? Like, is there anything redeeming in the stuff that Commer is personally doing . I think he's just a better actor than Tod Blanche . I think he is he's giving space for people to ask questions, but I don't think he's enforcing any rules that would put the iron to the fire . And so you have all these depositions that are not under oath. You know, they're not on camera. We cannot see their body language , like all the things that you would normally require we can't have with these guys. They're just they're they're just voluntary interviews, right? Yeah, right . And thankfully, you know, the house oversight is pretty good . They tend to be more leaning towards justice with this case. And so they subpoenaed Leon Black mid conversation because he was so resistant to their questions . But James Commer is , I think he would be just as happy to see this investigation sort of subside than be solved . Whereas I feel like Todd Blanche is actively trying to get rid of the investigation and , you know, make information public at the Be Hes . No, Donald Trump, who's his boss . So I think that's the only difference. I think their intent is the same. It's just, again, Comer's better at looking like he's doing the job, but he's right . He would be happy to have this go away. Now, what did you make of Pam Bondi's recent claims where she was saying that basically Todd Blanche actually was in charge of everything? Well, she was attorney general . And it seemed to me like kind of pushing blame and kicking the can away from herself. But like, do you think there's any hope that the New York state will like disbar him or debar him, take away his law license . I think there's a bunch of like big letters signed by a hundred lawyers. Is that going anywhere in this I mean , any kind of justice that we will ever look for will have to happen once Trump's out of office, whether that's impeachment or at the end of his term. I do think that Todd Blanche has been in charge of this the entire time. Yeah I'm a personal lawyer by the way. Yeah, his defense attorney from the Storm and Daniels case, there's no conflict of interest there. So I do feel like he put her in charge to sort of soften the blow from the American people to have like a woman attorney general . She either acted like she knew nothing or she didn't know anything that was going on because it was so great possibility, I feel like, you know, I think she was maybe just intentionally hands off and yeah when I don't know, I can't perjure myself about her or something like that. Right. And that's and that was the whole thing with her deposition was, you know, they would ask her a question and she'd give an answer for something that like the stock market or whatever like gas prices had nothing to do with the question that was asked and that was because she didn't want to lie and she didn't want to tell the truth. So she had just given nonsense answer . Todd Blanche has been in charge of this, you know, obviously at least since last summer when he was in that situation room and proffering Gallaine Maxwell and you know, I'm I'm positive. He's known what's been going on the entire time because the only reason we have files that we do, which is not everything and I will say this side note, you know , I was I was just the other day going like we keep hearing that we have three point five million, three point five million files. How do we know we have three point nine five million files? Like is there a count? Is there a way to count them? And so I was searching through and it said, There's no way to know that we owe three point five million files. We were just told by the DOJ that that's what we have. And I was like, that is so sketchy. We could have a million . We could have half a million. You know, as long as we have a number that's so big that it's basically unsearchable for one human being, we will not know how many files we have. But everything that we've gotten so far has been because of like citizen reaction , public reaction, screaming for something that we have a right to see that should have been given, you know, ninety days passed the Transparency Act last December . This is this is how the Justice system is supposed to work, and everything has been very resistant until people figure out about it and start yelling. Basically when NPR figured out last, I want to say February , they figured out that there was sixty or fifty three, I think fifty three missing pages of FBI interviews with a young Jane Doe out of South Carolina . The American public went nuts and they said, give us those pages. And they eventually gave us sixteen of them. We're still missing thirty seven pages . But we got part of what we needed. We needed to know certain things exist. And so that's just been it's been a little bit of pulling teeth , but I think that 's what it's going to take. Now I don't again, I don't know how many files we have, how many more files we'll get , but we don't have nothing. Like every day we yeah. Do you think that things are actively getting destroyed when Democrats take over and maybe hopefully, you know, subpoena everything right away? Like do you think there's just they're just destroying a bunch of stuff? Probably that would be very hard to do just since everything 's digitized . I question if Elon Musk didn't take a copy on the lab . Yeah, yeah, right. He hadn't doge had access to every piece of information about that angle. That it's just like so many people are involved that like from a national security standpoint, like how many people like Trump filled out the administration with people involved. So it's a little bit of a circular firing squad potential thing where it's, you know, everyone has to lie and go with the lies because they're all implicated. So it's kind of mutually assured destruction. But I don't know. Like with the Democrats taking over and subpoenaing everything, and I'm sure they'll do everything they can to slow everything down and refuse. They'll probably do all kinds of insane client attorney privilege claims and executive privilege claims I guess going forward, it's obviously going to be a mess to try to get this from their claws, right? But like should Democrats make this a bigger issue in the election ? Do you perceive it becoming like kind of a giant controversy again when the election and all the ads are coming out and candidates are really giving a reason why Republicans do not deserve any power in Congress . I think if they were smart, they would do that. I mean, this has clearly been the number one issue in this government is those files and it's and it's bipartisan and and as far as like will we have access to them, they've been really , you know, it's a little bit of a clown show. Nobody's qualified for anything that they're any of their positions that they're in . And we know that other governments have access to the files . We know that when you have all these FBI agents in there who have access to the files, the idea that there couldn't potentially be a leak of something is pretty slim. Like the files exist somewhere. But also what I remind people of is we got a really not a really big. We got like a thirty thousand file drop or something like that in November of last year. That was really significant. It was photos, it was emails, there was a lot of stuff we didn't have. That all came from the Epstein Estate, which is not run by the DOJ . The Epstein Estate has probably more damning information because it is completely private. It is not it is not, you know, the FBI agent reactive emails, that type of thing. It is all private information that comes from Jeffrey Evstein's home and his estate , his lawyer and his accountant , Richard India and Khan , they are in charge of that estate . And also so you have those two who could pull the trigger and just say here it is . I also believe and this is just me. I don't, you know, this is not a guarantee, but I also believe that Glaine Maxwell is probably in charge of the estate and has control over the estate. She certainly has control over Epstein's money , which is all still available, but probably offshore in something called the Southern Trust because after he died, payments were still being made to this offshore. Yeah, right . So likely that money still exists and she still has kind of a yes, no power with the estate. And that holds a lot of information. Like that's where we got the writing book. That's where we got the ban and emails. Like that is all from the state. So , you know, there are things that we have access to that are not under the thumb of the DOJ, all those computers that were hidden and pulled out of his house and . Those exist. They probably were not destroyed. They are probably in a warehouse somewhere just for like a kill switch situation. I don't know, but there's a lot more for us to see. And even if we go, even if we go based on what we're being told from the DOJ , Kimbani says we still have two and a half million more files to go. And they can't say that they're duplicates and say that they're under seal because why would a duplicate be under seal if it is not under seal? Yeah, right . That doesn't make any sense. So they're not duplicates . They're the missing chunks of files that we know don't exist right now , and often we will see pieces of those that we're not supposed to have in the files that are forgotten and they're sort of like the little Easter eggs right and they almost always have to do with Donald Trump, like almost every single time. Yeah. Well, you know, that's that's kind of an issue that I've been thinking about, but you know, Donald Trump doesn't send emails. He allegedly wasn't on the Lolita Express plane, but like I'm sure his plane was going all right the into place to exit the proper ties constantly . And so like I have this idea that like, you know, I don't know how nefarious to believe, how conspiratorial to be. Like was he really this like hyper like cutting edge blackmail operation from Israel . I have this idea that Donald Trump was definitely more involved and Donald Trump always had political aspirations. Donald Trump's always had international relations. He's been accused constantly and actually been prosecuted for like , you know, Trump tower being filled with like Chinese nationals, Russian oligarchs and mafia people. So he's obviously been money like, you know, he's he's an overpriced luxury real estate mogul, which means almost certainly a lot of that is just straight up money laundering, right? Over priced luxury goods, you know, from New York. . Like it's his first term , what was it? Like Turkish officials were buying all kinds of stays at his hotels and things like that. So like Donald Trump with the political aspirations, the international relations , like I've always thought that like Donald Trump is probably more of a ringleader, right? Like who got all the blackmail? Like maybe the guy that wanted to run for president and take over the Republican Party and kind of hijack it from what's been ? I mean , I mean, yes, to the flights, like how many billionaires do you know that are carpooling? Like he would have flown his own plane. Right. Nobody's looking into Donald Trump's flight. Sorry to the climate that they're all flying solo to the . You wouldn't be like, Hey, can I have a ride? Like maybe once in a while? No, he was flying his own. Donald Trump was he was worried about the climate carbon emissions . Sure. I'm sure he was . Yeah, so you have all that. And then you have like , you know, and this is kind of an excuse that a lot of these like billionaire guys use, Howard Luther use is like, oh, I never saw that email. I never saw it because it's the existence of people talking to assistance . Right, exactly. But the information is there, their schedule is there. Everything they were doing is there, but also Evestein had no problem talking about Donald Trump and the things that he did . He had no problem talking about like when they had that real estate deal in Palm Beach that kind of went south and their French screwed him over, right? And Trump will behind his back and the last minute fought it with money. He didn't have to split to an oligarch. That is a holig er. But like in that, when Evstein was pissed off about that, he was talking about how Trump was working with like the electrical union down there that was like Rob Run. And he had no problem talking about any of that. And that is that's also why I've been really adamant about Michael Wolff's like interviews with him because Epstein would run his mouth about the things that Donald Trump did. He had no problem talking about him. He hated him . And so a lot of that information, even if Donald Trump is not emailing it himself, 'cause yeah, he didn't email often. He always calls. Part of that is because he's paranoid. Part of that is because he's technology like stupid. Yeah. And he just doesn't work work its out. He's kind of got that mob boss replilian lizard brain ability to keep himself out of prison. And that's like the one thing he's actually talented in our life . Yeah . So but we would have a lot of information about him and his whereabouts and what he was attending photographs and who knew who and who was where that would , you know, you'd start to have credibility to the stories of somebody saying, No, he's been around for this long versus he disappeared in two thousand four and they never spoke together again. That's probably not very likely. They were they were in the same circle in the same city . And there were some emails in twenty seventeen about spending Thanksgiving at the White House, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, I try to take things very much with a grain of salt because and I think it's just because I've read these things so like way too long. Like I've read the email too many hours to where I start to sort of get in the mindset of what's humor, what's sarcasm, what their what's the psychology behind it Can you say something about the Trump Boys are in Pete Palm Beach this weekend for Thanksgiving? I think more of that has to do with the fact that whenever Trump was flying back and forth , Epstein's pilot would have to tell him, you know, Trump's flying in at this time, and that was because they couldn't fly out. I mean, that may mean the air spray is closed. And I so think it was more that they just knew when the Trumps were coming and going to Palm Beach. I don't think he was having Thanksgiving dinner with Donald Trump in twenty seventeen, but they certainly were in the same circles and the money flowed to the same people . They were affecting the same politicians and making gains for themselves. So I'd say more by that time, they were probably , you know, enemies and competitors and so they were aware of each other certainly, right? They were they were aware of each other. They were sort of they had steed band between them hopping information back and forth . So if I get you right, you're saying that Eric Trump wasn't just a good hang that everyone wanted to hang out with Eric Trump. I mean, what do you think? You mentioned Steve Bannon, which cracks me up that like Steve Bannon has paid absolutely no consequences for like being the TR guy for Epsen. Like even his fans just like, oh yeah, that's Steve Bannon, that's Steve. Like that's funny to me that he like Steve Bannon is like so odious that like other people involved you start getting like the media attention , like handpeking them, but like just no one was surprised or even cared that Steve Bannon is trying to be BFF Squid . I just think that partially it's almost like whittles down to like the way he dresses and looks in public that people were like, don't take, you know, we're not even gonna take no one should take him serious. Yeah. He kind of smells bad. He didn't shave. He's wearing yesterday's clothes. Yeah. Looks like shit . Yes, but it's like a weirdly weird relationship because Michael Wolf ed introduc Steve Bannon to Epstein's. He was like oh my god to be a fly on the wall of that Yeah so and they were trying there's a lot of relationships that Michael Wolf is trying to get, you know, Epstein wanted , he have M wouldichael Wolf go to work for him and get. And one of those was Bill Gates. One of them was Steve Bannon . Michael Wolf would write these write ups. He would write the letters that he would have Epstein said to these people to sound like he was a smart guy. Yeah . And Bannon was one of those. They finally met in october twenty seventeen . And then they had this sort of fast friendship except for Bannon was much more paranoid than Steve Wolf or Michael Wolf, but they had a very parallel relationship with Michael Wolf and Steve Bann on, I think there was a little bit of a fight rivalry layout for Epstein's affection and like yeah , you know, that kind of thing. But it's interesting because in the beginning , Steve Bannon really looks up to Epstein because , you know, there's the rumors of him being involved in intelligence and Steve Bannon still sort of licking his wounds leaving the White House. He's always wanted to work for the CIA. That's been his dream forever . And so he was thinking like, you know, this may be the guy who can get me there. I heard he's in intelligence, you know, whatever . And so he's really like hyper involved in the relationship and kind of trying to get his attention. And then you see just over the next two years because they talked every day to the point when Epstein was arrested. Like they were talking while Evsteen was getting arrested . You see a shift in their dynamic where Bannon starts to build like this global empire where he's flying all over the world and meet ing with leaders and Epstein starts to become more isolated. He knows he's under surveillance, he's filling the walls closing in. And so he starts to live vicariously through the things that Steve Bannon is doing. And so he starts to vie for Bannon's affection and he lets his guard down. And you know, this guy who's usually very kind of curt in his emails and very stiff depending on who he's talking about, he totally lets his guard down and it's like I always say it's like bro talk. Like he will say things , you know, he doesn't swear a lot, but when he talks to Bannon and he'll just start swearing and being like really loose . And so he wanted to do everything and he was telling Bannon how to talk to certain leaders because he couldn't talk to them anymore because he had a reputation . And he was trying to get Bannon to make this documentary, which they were. They were filming it. And we've seen a couple of hours of those in the files, but the intent was toward the end, they were supposed to go to the island and film on the island. They obviously never got to do that . But Bannon started to want to do this big film thing with Epstein. But what he didn't know is Michael Wolf was also trying to make that film Epstein over here . So it was funny to see the two men kind of have this like triangular relationship with Epstein and not know what the other person was doing and they were doing the exact same thing and Epstein didn't tell either of them of course . He was just like, great, I'll get a movie somewhere. Yeah . That's what I enjoy about the Eagle Maniacs and the total morons that like I've been watching lately like a lot of crime docs where just you get these like morons that just film everything about themselves thinking they're genius and then you end up yeah and you get like you end up to the point where there's a documentary using your documentary that is you think is making you a genius. It's going to show everyone that you're so intelligent and then instead that footage that you filmed of yourself is like just incriminating and or creating a documentary that just makes you look like a giant idiot where you go viral on Netflix for being like so outlandish, you know. Yeah, so I've watched two lately and one is the false prophet, which if everybody you must watch it, but then there's nothing as good as that. I apologize . But it's about this guy who's who's in a polygamist sect and he's sort of a loser but he',s somehow becomes a kingpin and has , you know, it's just kind of the age old story . But he is so excited about being on camera. And he just such a metaphor for all these men in the EFSEN files. He's just like, he's like, did you see how I jumped on the rocks? They're let me go back and I'm going to go jump across the rocks again. Can you get mom are you watching Mom? Mom, are you watching? Yeah, look at me. Right. So there's that one and then there's another one I think it's called in the deep and it's about this guy who goes down on a submarine and he commits a murder on a submarine. But then you go back and the whole time they'd been filming him for like to talk about his submarine it had nothing to do with this crime that was going to happen and you start to see all the foreshadowing leading up to this murder at some point in the end and you realize the whole time he's filming to go do a murder and like all the things he says and he knows he's going to be famous for committing this murder and it's just like the level of so ciopathy first off, but then the narcissism is I mean it's now, I think having read all these files , it's so easy to spot now and it 's so it gives me such clarity for like how I will vote in the future . Yeah, who I will look up to and authors and actors and activists because I can just like I can just see it now and I'm just like no oh hold on that sentence you just said I see that I see that you're Yeah, right. You know, I've just it's just made me pinpoint , you know, who are you out for are you out for yourself or you out for good? Yeah . And it's and this entire story is a bunch of people who have like a t shirt that said I'm out for good and then they were just like this creep over, right? So it's like and it's so wild because because we have all these emails from them, you know, that nobody ever thought was going to be read. I don't ever think anybody gonna read my emails. I hope I'm nice in them. But like you have all these emails from people where they let their guard down because they don't think anybody's ever gonna read them and you see their true nature and you're just like yeah, man, all these people are assholes, like, right? Who knew? Who knew Bill Gates was such a jerk, right? Like and everybody treated his wife badly and she was really smart and she protected her children and he, you know, didn't. And so it's just like and that's hard to turn off sometimes and that's Yeah, right. I'm like, don't look at that person. You got the eye . Yeah, you got the eye for the Dark Triad of Dr. Yes. Yeah. You brought up Michael Wolfe and you had this amazing quote, I want to read it. You were describing him that he segued from Manhattan Media Wise Guy to Hampton Hampton's lifestyle influencer complete with sockless flats and pioneer womanes backdrops in the just so farmhouse he shares with his wife. I just thought that was like a really good way to kind of like introduce him . But it's Michael Yeah. Is he a villain ? Is he an idiot? Like he's playing all sides because he came out with that fury book about Donald Trump seemingly like burning a big bridge with Donald Trump. He's doing this stuff with Epsee and then like , you know, he was being a PR guy for Epstein. Is he just like what's his deal? Is he a villain or a moron or both? I don't think he's a moron. No, I think he knows exactly what he's doing. He very much fits this circle of people, but he was not he was not considered qualified to be at the top. So he's like in there, but you know, you think of like, I don't know . So he's never let in and he's always kind of looking in and wanting to be there. Yeah, and there's a really great picture of Epstein in there somewhere and there's I think it was there some concert or something. There's somebody playing a cello but there's Epstein standing smiling for the camera and in the back Michael Wolff is just like staring at him like how I'm gonna be up there with you . I just think that like, and I don't think he burned his bridge with the White House. I think he still has it because even bad press, Donald Trump loves all presses good press . Yes . And so and I also think that's part of why he won't give up those interviews with Epstein is because that bridge would definitely be burned if he gave up those because they're all about Donald Trump. Because you have to remember, Michael Wolf had in, order to write that book, he had two hundred hours of interview or two hundred interviews with people in the White House. So he has more interviews with that. He has a lot of interviews . Right. I just think of him , you know, he's just very typical. He's he so I researched him for about six months based on some emails where I just went hold on. This is not who I thought this man was because I read his books. I was really excited to see him come forward and start talking about Evstein . And then I started to read some of these emails and I was like, these are making me uncomfortable . And I started to research him and I came to the realization that most of the places that he's worked won't work with him anymore, you know, whether that's because he was connected with people that were very uncomfortable to them to be connected to or just like a personality, like a narcissism thing. Like he's burned a lot of bridges himself , not the Daily Beast because he's very close with Joanna Coles. They've been friends for years and years. So that's a pretty stalwart platform for him , but he , you know, he's just kind of the ultimate drifter and I don't like to throw that word around , but when you know you drip information about the Epstein case and you call yourself like a warrior for survivors, which I'm you know, he hasn't used those exact words, but like, you know, we called Epstein the Devil and it's just like, man, we have eighteen hundred pages of emails. You did not think he was devil, right? Like he was paying you. He wanted you to write a book and a documentary He was his ultimate fixer. He was hiring PR for him. He was telling him how to like cleanse the Wikipedia and the internet of all of his sexual crimes so that they looked like a voice he was the Michael Cohen of Jeffrey Epstein, right? It was the ultimate fixer . And in this course, he's just like watched to see how does the public receive this story and I'm going to navigate how I tell it based on what they want . He didn't believe survivors . He thought the British press was gullible for believing Virginia Joffrey's story about Fridz Andrew. He was helping Epstein how to navigate away from these people who were blackmailing him, right? These survivors , he didn't leave any of them. He thought it was just totally bonk . And so now he's writing these stories and trips and drabs behind a paywall to look like he's like the Savior of the Epstein files and he wasn't. And he , you know, I think the thing that really kicked it off for me was when he, you know, when Melania Trump said, I'm gonna sue you for saying, you know, I had sex on. Yeah, right, right., whatever And he like',s, Oh, yeah I'll sue you first . And there was no lawsuit. She's never filed a lawsuit. It doesn't exist, but he filed something called an anti slap suit . And then he started to go fund me to like pay his legal bills. And it raiseded and you mention that how he has money. He made like thirteen million dollars from his books. He's got the money. What does he need eight hundred thirty thousand dollars from like people , middle class people paying for their substance, right? Like what does he need with that m oney? He lives in the Hamptons . He had, you know, a bestseller that made out of for him in his pocket thirteen million dollars along with other books and deals that he has. Like, he didn't need any of that . Why would you ask for it? Like that it takes a time person to ask that question. Like suer if you want to sue her. I mean, it got thrown out because the judge was like, That's not what you do. That's an abuse of the system. You can't just do that So then where is that money, right? Like where does it go? And that was that's just been the kicker for me because I've even tried to like play into it and be like, look, if you're a Gregor , fine, you know , release those interviews, put them behind a paywall, right? But just make them publicly available so that we have access to them if that's what it takes for you, you have to make money off of them fine, but like don't hold on to these. These could help somebody down the line. And so yeah, he's just he's a little I mean everything's so cliche, I don't want to be like he's a snake, he's a cricket, but like he's just somebody who has n't been out for good and he hasn't been out for others. It has to benefit him first if he's going to do something . And also he's just it's just this like reputational currency. He just, it's the same thing that Donald Trump had, the same thing that Epstein had, you know, your reputation matters above all else. And if it means not helping somebody, if it means hurting somebody , then fine. But you know, I always say that with the caveat. He didn't abuse children as far as I know. Like Michael Wolf is not, it's anywhere involved in these files abuse with children. It's just that he was aware of stuff going on. He helped clear the path so that it could continue on another ten years. I mean, this could have ended in two thousand eight . And he stepped in and just totally paved the way for Epstein to have another ten years of business now. Yeah. Well, one thing I really appreciate your reporting is just how fair you are and how sens likeible you are. And like, obviously just from this chat, you know, you always point out the things that are maybe not fair to say or things that are maybe taken like out of context. Like I know you mentioned like the sulfuric acid jug,s or whatever that Epsene had and how that actually had like a cleaning purpose, I guess that it wasn't necessarily for dissolving body . Yeah, yeah, I just you know, my mother, I love her dearly, but she's a little bit of a conspiracy theorist. So I was just very like solidly into I was the kid somebody who said this online the other day like how many of us grew up reading the encyclopedia from the nineties and was like I totally read the encyclopedia in the nineties. So I just I was just somebody who really needed to make sure something existed before I said it There was information and now with the internet, even more so. And so in this case, you know, it's really easy to get lost on tangents of things that sound very exciting , like horribly exciting, but exciting to say that some of these really, really wild things happened when there's not a lot of evidence, there may be somebody mentioned it once in an email or something like that. But like I try to remind people that we have enough evidence in the actual , you know, photographs, FBI files, interviews, everything. We have enough evidence to put a lot of people in jail. We don't we don't need any more wild stories to convince people that what they did was a crime . And so like, you know, when you see memes, you see photographs, there's one that always goes around where it's like Epstein and Trump standing in a room full of children and people share it all the time . And I remind them, I'm like, look at their faces. That is Donald Trump from like twenty five is Effre Epstein from nineteen eighty five. Like they wouldn't look like that at the same time. Yeah, right. This is not a real picture. And I realize we want them to have a picture like this to prove how terrible they are, but we already have this stuff. Like we already have the information. We don't need to go into really conspiratorial territory . And I get really I get very black and white about a lot of it where people, you know , things will be said in the emails and people will be like really, really shocked about it. And I'm just like, I've read so many of their emails. I know that there's this is just their stupid humor. This isn't like even Martin Novak when he talks about he's like, oh, did you torture the girl? Like he's trying to be cool to Epstein. He's trying to sound cool because he's a nerdy professor and which was a lot of the people he dealt with, they want they looked up to Evstein like a jockey and they wanted to cool to him. So they would say things like that and they probably didn't mean them, but they sound horrible, right? They sound terrible and it's awful that that's the thing that was funny to them in Epstein's wheelhouse. But likely there was no girl being tortured in that moment. It was supposed to be off the cuff . But again, I don't know, I don't know. You know, this is just kind of me reading a thousand emails and learning about people's personalities. Yeah. I love my favorite one of those examples is Elon Musk kind of kind of trying to get himself invited into the party and apparently being so lame that Epstein ghosted him and yeah I just can't imagine that relationship would have worked out Yeah, right but it's funny that you know, it',s like all of these people that are so rich and famous and big and so much alleged power, but they're like lonely losers that want to be included. They look up . Idiots just because they're like, I guess completely overwhelmed or like jealous of the fame and the glitz and the access to parties and things like that. You know, like Elon Blas might be the most so lonely person in the world despite being the richest person in the world. Yeah, I mean he basically pays people to be mothers to his children. You know what I mean? Yeah, right. He's not out there with like a rampant sex wife . Yeah, I think, you know, you if you look at like statistics of personalities , sociopaths tend to go to Hollywood , politics and finance. So this is the world that they lived in. Where a lot of people that could not relate to anybody else, couldn't empathize with anybody else. But then you also have, especially with Hollywood , a lot of people are intro verts, right? A lot of actors are introverts in real life . And so you would have these people who have this like fame on paper and it looks really good. And I'd love to see that guy standing next to me in a picture, but all of them were so aw kward . All the professors at Harvard were so awkward and yet he was getting underage girls for it's just the weirdest thing like you look at these pictures of these professors and their clone lovers and their pop bellies, and it's just like, what are you doing? Like how and I mean, how did you end up in this world? But again, they're grownups, you know, they can all make the same decisions that you and I make . There's no excuses for their actions, but it's just like in what world did you end up in that situation? And it's just that idea of just appeasing someone to be cool and how you think that goes away when you graduate high school , but apparently it doesn't. Yeah. It's the same high school politics and socio like rivalries and things like that . Like in terms of the people that like being bought into it , like the nerdy professors and things like that . Like, I guess it's a testament to just how much like money papers over so many things in this world that like people with terrible backgrounds can kind of gloss over that if they're investing into building new buildings at a university or something like that or giving the right donation to the right place. And you know, it's sad that how much money just kind of rules everything. And even now with like so many people not coming out with it, you know, whether it's their worried about losing their jobs because of their connections and the emails and things like that or just the grifters that all along were just trying to make money and get in with people to, you know, get some kind of opportun istic endeavor out of it. I guess it's sad that you know, it's like the Obama quote that any boardroom you go into or even meeting with like foreign officials and things like that, like everybody belongs in every room because everyone is kind of a moron, you know, like no one's really out of your league in terms of intelligence. Yeah , especially like the rich people because they get rich in one thing. Like you have a company that sells bags and you got super rich and now you think because you're a billionaire selling bags or whatever, you must be a genius at everything. And like, no, you're actually an idiot in everything, but you have this like dark triad set of traits that makes you like this insane businessman that gets rich . Which is interesting with Epstein because he knew a little bit about everything, but he didn't know a lot about anything. Right. So and that's how he sort of net he I always think of that movie catch me if you can where the kid goes around. Yeah. Right. No, that was that was a lot of what Epstein was , you know, when he lost his job at the Dalton School , he was picked up by Bear Stearns, but he was also offered a job at the New York Times by Punch Salzberger. And it's like for what reason, this guy is qualified for nothing , but that's how he lived his life. You hear him. It's again, it's funny in the emails, you'll hear him talk to like Nom Chomsky and hear him talk to Steve Vannon. Right. And it's like two different personalities. Like over here, he's just this like dumb surfer bro. And then we when talk to Nov Chomsky, he speaks like a language like he's this wise philosopher , you know, solving the physics equations and like , you know, famous neurophys icists are coming to him for his opinion about things that I'm like, man, he has he read a lot, but like he has people so fooled . But back to like the money thing, like when I was talking to this guy who was from Harvard, he said the thing with the professors there like they loved the thing that they taught. Like that was their passion before he came along . They were just so focused on this really evol utionary mathematics, this very area which is his department that he was in. And you had this guy come along who offered to donate to their department, which never happens. They always had to go out and request money and write to people and do grants. And they said, this was the first time somebody just came to them and offered them money. And it was like they just gave him everything because they were just like, wow . And so he built departments, he built like student housing. And this guy had like actually stayed in the apartments that Epstein had built on campus because he was a foreign exchange student. He couldn't go home at Christmas . And so like he saw everything. He was just a kid, but like he saw everything. He goes, our depart ment had the nicest coffee maker on campus coffee maker . But it was just like he came in and he told these super nerds that they were special and that they, you know, which is on the one hand , it's very nice. You know, people deserve to hear that, but like he told them that they were powerful and they could have whatever they wanted. And he started hanging out because they made him feel special because he wanted to be part of a college department because he never finished college and they were just like, sure, you know, you're a billionaire and you're exciting and you're famous and that makes us feel good, but it made Epstein feel good to be able to hang out with him and he had an office there until almost the day he died. He had a key card and an office. Yeah, right . And he was a fellow on campus and they never took that away from him, even when he was, even when he was arrested, like they did that didn't matter to them . And so in that process, you know, because again, you see these guys hanging around with him and you're just like, how is this possible? This guy's like, you know, eighty pounds overweight, his balding. You got a sweater vest and cook bedottle glasses. And how did this guy end up on Epstein's island with a fifteen year old girl? Like how is that even possible ? And it was just because Epstein was getting something, it was transactionally he was getting something from being able to hang around at Harvard. Right . And then he's like, why don't I show you guys what I have? And it just became this just weird nerdy relationships that don't make sense. Yeah. Alan Dorsowitz is another one that just is like especially gross and odious, you know, this old gross guy clean, you know, allegedly he only got massages and he kept his pants on, which seems like underwear detailed throw out. him He's like I,' youm know in, 'cause my pants never came off and it seems like a little loophole language there. He's disgusting. He just like , he's one of the people and you know, there's a select few people in this case where they're like, I'm not gonna get in trouble. I didn't do that, but also I have no problem with it. And he's welcome. Like he's written several articles about that we should lower the age of confession. Yeah. Fifteen year olds are so much more mature than they used to be . He's really gross . He thinks , you know, there's this idea of being like worldly . And if you travel a lot, then the age of consent at like the youngest country in the entire world should be the age of consent everywhere because it works out for them and I travel a lot. He's kind of like that. Like he just thinks that nobody should be able to complain if they are fourteen, fifteen years old . You know, you're fully aware of what you're getting yourself into. And if you're upset about it, then that's your own problem. And again, he's written like in the files, they have like this book that he wrote. They have two articles that he wrote. And it's all about changing the age of consent and that child pet is that child porn art and photography is like it's freedom of expression and we shouldn't stand in the way of it like child pornography and photographs . And he's just disgusting and he goes after people . I'm like, he's very su ppy. He will sue everyone and he's just he's just such a cantankerous old shit and doesn't he doesn't feel bad about anything. There's no remorse. He just thinks yeah no remorse is the important part yeah he's not invited to the Hamptons parties anymore. I think you know how to talk about regarding that, right? Like the only time you can get interviewed is prompt Chris Cuomo now because Chris Cuomo's been kicked off everything. Like he's just not very he's unlikeable . Nobody wants to work with him. Epstein hated him after a while because he was a liberal and then he quit working for Epstein and went to work for Trump and that pissed Epstein off and then he decided now I'm a Republic an because it benefits me more. Like he's just yeah he's just somebody who's always like every one of these other guys, he's just like how does this benefit me first? Okay, I'm going to go do that but he's just the most unlikeable, forward personable , but he is getting interviewed in a few days. So back . Yeah . You know, there's a lot of weird stuff like that too because Bill Barr recently published an op ed about Todd Blanche is the guy to write the shit at the DOJ and he's doing everything right. And then like the connection with his dad that got epstein which Bill Marsh all talking right now. And so it's like obviously like personal protection, but also it's like it's surprising to me that they've even published that. Like does that soy anybody that Bill Barr is defending Todd Blanche in an upd somewhere? Like what's the point of that? If I was Todd Blanche Todd Blanche is a terrible person. But if I was Todd Blanche or anybody in that in that administration, I'd be like Bill, Barr, don't talk about me. Like, don't don't go on camera and talk about me. Bill Barr is so enmeshed in the Epstein story . His father was the one who hired Epstein to work at the Dalmon school and then he resigned in protest from the school and then he went off to write a book about sexually abusing children. Hypothetically. It was on a different planet, right? On a different planet, it was fiction . It was just fiction . That school is super locked down. I've talked with a student there and they're just so protective of the school that they just won't talk. But I know I know more stuff happened . It's just gonna take time or it won't be like there's a lot of creepy stuff surrounding that whole thing, but then, you know, Bill Barr is there the entire time. He was a very, very, very young man at the time . He was aware of Epstein at the time, and he sort of worked his way up into the Trump administration. And there's, you know, he was the AG when Epstein died and like there's that whole controversy. Like he's just sort of always there and always had power to do something. You know what I mean? What he did, we don't know. And then when he gets on camera, he talks , he just is very like offish and like unreachable and you never know whose side he's on because he's like against Trump sometimes and sometimes he's not against Trump . But he's just too he's too far in the middle of the story to ever get a clear answer out of him about you know what he knew. Did he go to the jail? Did he visit? Did he, you know? Well, yeah, then there's like inconsistencies with the, like, the moving the body , right and checking them in, and then like the camera being off when he committed suicide. Nine cameras. Nine cameras were off . They only had eleven, nine of them were turned off because they were updating their software like and I mean even if even if let's say it's all on the up and up and he killed himself and it is what it is, which, you know, is an option . The amount of negligence on a floor of a jail where you had a high profile person who is friends with the president who is part of a case for abusing over a thousand girls like would never have a cellmate . Like there's a there were just so many things that would never happen if it was somebody else and that that is something to pay attention to whether or not he killed himself, all that stuff allowed it to happen , whether that was intentional or not intentional. Like he shouldn't have been able to kill himself. He should have had enough surveillance. He should have had again all eleven cameras turned on. Like we have this video of the jail cells, right? That people have paid attention to and said, you know, there's time missing, here, here, here . And people think that it's pointing to his jail cell, but his jail cell is like down the stairs across the floor, up the stairs, down a hall behind a closed door. We're not even looking anywhere near his jail cell . And so there's just very, you know, there's just very weird stuff. I know that the two guards on duty were indicted and then their case was dropped for not, you know, for false buying records, they were paying attention, but it's just it's just odd . I was talking to somebody else who has been in that jail before criminal purposes and they said nobody who is as high profile as Eve seen would have been in that unit, would have had a roommate would have been going out for recre ation, would have been , you know, with his lawyers so much. I have a lot of concerns about that last phone call he made to his girlfriend that were told over and over again doesn't exist. There's no transcript, blah , blah blah because you know we have this whole file and we know the guard he spoke with and he says I don't have my, you know, prison ID pin so I can't log into the phone and the guard says we'll all log you in. And then he tells the other guy, you know, give him fifteen minutes or whatever. So the guard logged him into the phone. It was a jail phone , which means there has to be a record of that call. Like if you're logged into the jail phone, they're not going to be like, oh, there was no recording, you know? They would record anything coming in and out on those jail phones. There was not a cell phone . And so we don't know what he talked about in that last phone call that was like five hours before he died. We don't know his state of mind, we don't know if he was, you know it would be helpful to hear if he was like giving everything away to his girlfriend and being like go look for this here's where I burned this, you know, or here's my money you know this is what you're going to get. That would make more sense and we could say, okay, well he's, you know, tying up Luisense. He probably killed himself, but nobody knows where that call is . Yeah. You know, it's a testament to Trump's like staffing choices where he puts like giant clown s into roles that like maybe don't matter to him personally. But the thing that personally affects him, he puts in like a total shark like Bill Bar or Cout Blanche in this case as the deputy and now I guess acting attorney general. But you know, it's a big difference when it's it's like that lizard brain self protection instinct of Donald Trump where you know the Department of Defense we can put on a Fox news weekend host, you know, not a big deal for the Department of Defense, but we need a real serious guy at this attorney general role or deputy spot to protect me and keep me outta jail. Yeah, or just somebody who knows my background and knows what can be right publicly. That's probably a big part of it too . Yeah, and his Dad is maybe involved in a lot of that too, but where did you make of Ivanka and Jared's Albanian island? Because to me, that seems like the most tone deaf thing ever. It's like you're already being accused interacting with this private island for sex trafficking and now they're stealing this, you know, private land protected land, I guess. Like we discovered an island. I just wanted to be like we have Google Earth. There's no more discoveries we've got all right and just like yeah, completely toned deaf, completely toned up going on and being like, we discovered this. There's military barracks on it, but we found it first. Like probably bumpers. Yeah, to my untrained eye , that seems like a big red flag for sex traffic because there's a large underground network of tunnels from the Cold War. Right. Like all these people probably shouldn't be buying islands right now. Like just, you know , wait wait a couple of years until we can hash this out and then talk about islands, but also , you know, in the middle in the middle of the Trump administration, let's say that this investigation doesn't exist , everything that has gone wrong with the policies in this administration and how they've taken, you know, the big beautiful bill taking away all the environmental yeah coverage , all the Medicaid , you know, veterans benefits. Like it's everybody has become poor. Like this was the goal of the Trump administration. Everything's gold at their house, everybody else is poor. It's very like, you know, lame mis, it's very tale of two cities. Like he's having a great time. He's just like, I'm gonna take from you guys and I'm gonna be just John over here . Speaking of Les Miz, do you think it's about time to set up barricades in DC or something to start chanting about the Red Bull No, so he but just to just for anybody at this point in the game, like these in the Met Gala, I like to get on TV and have a big giant public display of wealth when everybody's starving, you know, like I was okay. Somebody this is random, but somebody posted a menu from the World Trade Center from the top restaurant in New York was in the World Trade Center and they just shared the menu from two thousand . And it was just like, man, those are McDonald's prices now. Like those are not Yeah, right . Like that's twenty five years ago , that is what we pay for fast food now . It's and that was the finest dining, right? Like it's just . Like we live in a time and I wrote a paper about this, but like the price of college, if you consider inflation over time , from when I graduated to now has gone up four hundred ninety five percent , right? Right. That is, that is the price of if I went back to the University of Washington where I graduated, I would pay almost five hundred percent more with inflation , meaning like dollar for dollar from then to now. Right. five hundred percent more the house of the price of houses has gone up four hundred percent with inflation . Like everything is so far out of reach for the average person that to get on TV and talk about your new island that you bought and how many hectares it is. And I was just like, I got to google that. I don't even know what that means like I know when she talked about it, like exploring it barefoot as if it's this like heavenly state of nature, pure p arents everybody's just like dying to have like a little L shaped yard, right? Like that's that's like the height of like it you know, the best part is it was on the yacht of the Rothchild guy who appeared to do. Island with a Rock Child. There's nothing weird about that. Yeah, it's just, it is so toned. Like everything coming from them is so toned deaf. It was that what was the day when they were having the big party at Marlago they had the Greg Gasfe Party at Marlago and it's just like you guys are just like the bikini ladies in the giant champagne glasses card first off so tacky but, just like so tom death while you know, like Los Angeles is burning and like people are starving. People can't get to the polls, you know, you know, the mail and ballot boxes are being ripped out of the ground. Like it's just like they're they're just their job is to be wealthy, right? That's their job. Their full time job is to make money . It's just I mean, beyond being like colonialism , Amundo , you know, pulling land amounts . Yeah, right buying it when it wasn't for sale . It's just incredibly toned up to the entire world that is like just trying to like buy groceries like a week's worth of groceries. Yeah . Well, you know, as Trump's MO two of making money of abusing power, like his first term, he was all about selling out all of his properties to any foreign lobbyists or special interest group. But you know, it's funny too because it's you always wonder does Trump turn the people around him gaudy, tacky and evil? Or does he just attract already gaudy tacky, evil people? But you know, like the Marlago face that's kind of developed is like such a weird thing where they're like literally changing their faces and body colors, especially when like, you know, people are trying to look like a vanca to get a special Donald Trump. I mean, it's so far away from anything I know and any level like you can't get into their head. I was like, I grew up in a mill town. Like people worked at the mill. . I don't know if they think if they look in the mirror and they say this is attractive . I guess anything can be clubby if everybody around you is doing it even if it looks super weird to the outside world. It's kind of like religions where people get into like a religious cult. If everybody they know is also in the religious culture that doesn't seem that bad , I often wonder like in that world, why hasn't Donald Trump done a little work, you know? Like you know, why hasn't he taken care of himself when he's surrounded by that all day? But not that that looks good either, but that just kind of I don't know. It is very it is very weird and you wonder yeah, I don't know. I have no answer for that. It's just so far away from my conscious dream of knowledge that I don't know . Right. Well, you know, and I talk about this a lot that no one benefits from political correctness more than Republicans , especially Donald Trump because people don't just point at his face and say, why are you so orange today? Like why did you not blind? Everyone is so polite and nice and like his fake hair, his fake white teeth, you know, like everything is so fake about him, but that is the person that they're writing the coattails of for ty. Money and access to power. Like why, though? You know what I mean? When you look at Marco Rubio in the shoes, right? Yeah. Like why? Is there like a blackmail reason? Like there just doesn't seem to be anything to benefit at this point, right? You know, at this point in the game, you wonder what the benefit is because he , I mean, even if he screws over the election and tries to like not leave or whatever, like biologically, he's on a clock, right? There's only a certain period of time to where you would start to think that people need to kind of like move out of mom and dad's house and start to take care of their own political food. Yeah, right . But the things that people are willing to do and say for him when you just, when he does something so stupid, like the reflecting pool and the fiasco and the paint ripping up. Right. And then he goes, you know, he creates that somebody's tearing it up and it's just so obvious what's going on, right? Like it's very obvious it's the spread of our eyes, we've seen the process of it peeling away and the hydrogen all all of a sudden. And and then he'll go no, you know, Antifa is cutting it with a knife. And all the people around him who I assume some of them are very smart go, Oh yeah, that's what's happening. That's what's happening. It's just like and it's such I mean, it's cliche, but like the emper or has no clothes. Like it's like right the people around him are such sycophants and you wonder is that is it like a cult mentality where you just can't think for yourself ? Is there a benefit? Is there a blackmail Like what would make you as a person who threw up in politics and went to Harvard or whatever you did to get to this point , what would make you throw all that away for somebody who's just like a hot mess dumpster fighting. Yeah, right. You know, me burning rolling down a mountain. Like why I don't think it benefits anybody. I just think they don't they don't know what they're doing anymore. Like it's just like everybody's just kind of wandering around a little bit lost and trying to look to the person next to them and they're a little bit lost. And so they're just sort of like, you know, wandering around the room . Yeah. And you know, the loss aspect is kind of interesting too, because that is kind of Donald Trump 's like benefit is that he is so lost himself . You got a thought we're gonna screamy kids. Yeah. But like the , you know, Donald Trump , he has no real ideological leanings. He's not religious. That's all obviously a lie . I wonder too, like how many people need to learn firsthand that Donald Trump screws over everybody . His word means nothing. And it's like the Rick Wilson, everything Trump touches dies. Like Israel right now is kind of like pissed off at Trump because he just totally sold out all of their military goals and his dumb Iran deal. And so it's like not only are they so they're like such hangers on, but the fact that like they have to just totally change on a whim all of their alleged beliefs. Like free trade, you know, for fifty years dominated Republican policy and everything, just out the window because Donald Trump doesn't understand mercantilism is a failed economic process that has never worked. And there's a reason every modern country no longer is just trying to set up polonies and screw over everybody. Like I'm so amazed that people like literally tens of thousands of people have like gone bankrupt or lost money or been screwed out of deals by farmers like any relationship with Donald Trump. Okay, and going back to the Supreme Court today, farmers A have lost everything under the Trump administration. Like I come from a family of farmers . Half of them are liberal, half of them are conservative . The price of wheat, you know, like a bushel of wheat is sort of how you measure how you're doing . The price of the land if you wanted to sell it, the price that it costs to harvest, the price of utilities and water is so much high er than what they earn from from the thing that they sell . But then today in the Supreme Court, they sided with Monsanto . And yeah, right. Our family and most families have gotten cancer because they used roundup on their farms . And you know, that and at the time that my dad got it, thankfully he survived it, but fifty percent of people had a five year survival rate from that specific cancer that was caused by that specific product . There have been many lawsuits based on glycophate and roundup based because it gives you a specific cancer , which is not hydrogen a . That all targets the farming industry that targets the food. We're supposed to be talking like with RFK about making America healthy again. They don't care about pesticides and your food. They don't care about people dying of cancer, trying to make the bread that you eat on your table with your kids. Like that is a specific thing where they are taking their own voting base in these rural farm states that vote red, and they are killing their own constituents. Like they're hurting their own constituents . Then those people are all on Medicaid because they can't afford private health care. They are working for themselves. Their Medicaid has been taken away. In the case of my parents , and I could be getting this wrong, but I think this is what my dad said is , you know, they're now on Medicare or Medic aid and they do like the pay ahead system, but they have a certain period of time before that runs out and then they don't have the next option, right? Because that has been taken away. You think of veterans and you talk about like how brave they are and they're fighting wars for us and we're creating wars for them and then we come home and veterans are just abandoned. They're abandoned for their mental health, they're abandoned for their physical health and their insurance is a joke . And so are the constituents for the Trump administration. It's people who live in a very lower middle class, maybe less educated, live in farm states , military . These are the people who are being hurt the most. Like people who, you know, if you think of like a wealthy Democrat who, you know, lives in Connecticut, they're not even being hurt that badly by the Trump administration. They're just voting for social reasons, right? Like social economic reasons and thinking about other people before themselves, but the people who are voting for him are the people who are being crushed. They are the people who were told not to wear masks during COVID. So they had a higher rate of death. Yeah, right. Right. Like he's killing his own voters, which you think would be absolutely stupid just on a numbers game . But like these are the people and it's just it's this issue of almost like a stockholm syndrome like or you think of like an abused spouse how they continue to say, no, you don't understand he loves me. Like you just don't understand him. He actually loves us. You just can't see it. Trump is the abusive spouse for his right. His base. I mean, he hits them and they turn around and they say, do it again . And I don't understand. It's going to be I feel like this is going to be curriculum for future psych programs. Like how easily people can be manipulated into doing something that harms themselves, harms their families , takes everything away financially and that cult mentality because it is a cult mentality. Like, I'm going to give all my money to you. I'm going to tell you that you can take it from me and that's fine. And I'm going to do what you say even though, , you know, ten years ago I could look at this and objectively see that this is harmful, this is racist, this is great . We're not letting any, you know, the whole the no fly ban for the Muslims like, like, here's here's an example . When Trump got into office the first time, one of the first executive orders was the no fly rule for Muslims Muslim countries, right? What does he do this week? He has this group of people into come the oval Office to talk about religious freedom in America and how they're the religious freedom coalition . And in his head, of course, he's not thinking of Muslims when he's thinking of he's thinking of Christian nationalism. But But the people who vote for him and go, huh , when he did the Muslim ban, that felt pretty terrible, but I can look at what he's doing now and see that he's for, you know, freedom in America and religion. Like they can't see that those two things cannot coincide , right? That this is a president who doesn't want religious freedom. He wants religious freedom from that one specific religion . And so it's just like , but you can't explain that to people . I mean, I have people here who I've talked to, you know, we live again in a very immigrant heavy community and when, you know, people are getting ripped out of their businesses and their cars by Ice agents , things will go around on local Facebook pages and it's like just FYI make sure your kids carry their passports because everybody is from somewhere else and parents are freaked out because their kids walk to school and like everybody's just really scared . And so I was working at my son's school at that time and so we made an announcement in our classroom just of where this had gone out. And one of the women I worked with said, What are you talking about? Ricked out of their cars? That doesn't happen. And I said, Yeah, I mean, you know what I mean? Like I said officer they're pulling they literally slammed the guy to the ground at the restaurant and she goes, What are you talking about? They only go after criminals like rapists. Like that's the only people they're looking for. And I just remember thinking like , she really believes that wherever she's getting her information has filtered it to look like that's what's happening and they're really good guys, right? They're really and it's just really amazing and maybe that's been the takeaway from this, you know, as we because this, you know, a good thing that's happened in the Trump administration is we have shifted heavily away from legacy media, which kind of feeds you what you're supposed to believe what you're supposed to think and everything , you know , in publishing newspapers, TV, everything has gone very independent and our swath of news is much more variety. You probably still get it from like a lean or a slant. Yeah, right. But But you know, people really get their information through a filter and that filter can completely define the way the world works and how you vote. And it's just a very interesting to me because, you know, I have family members who are vote MAGA . Some are Stalwart soldiers and know everything that's going on and still vote . And then some are just kind of like the very typical older Americ an who just doesn't really know what's going on, but like the way her friends votes, right ? And just how easily we can just be manipulated as a society. Like older people are so easily manipulated . You know, but I will say in the protests that I've gone to, it's a lot of older women though. So I don't want to let people off. But yeah, just like just that idea of how easily people can be moved to do something or other without actually being . And that's like one of the things that Trump's actually successful at. Like a lot of the project twenty twenty five stuff seems like it's just hitting the wall of like apathy and how many like checkpoints and veto points there are in our government system. But like changing like the FCC and obviously having conservative allies that are sucking up to protect their bottom lines they're like buying up these media proper ties and then destroying them like CBS is obviously the perfect example and I believe that Berry Weiss is going to take her war path of destroying valuable iconic media companies to CNN next, but I'm sure I'm sure that's a lot . Yeah . What's what's your media diet? Like what do you where do you do scroll out? What is do you have any like companies or peoples who flag or highlight? I sometimes have to be very intentional about it because you know, being on Substack now I get a lot of, you know, I listen to a lot of live streams and people that I talk to and trust . But sometimes the things that you see are just an opinion about something, but I need to find somebody to tell me like what the story actually is . I hear the opinion on it . And so you know, I will I will go a few places. There isn't real unbiased news. It's hard to find . I do like Rachel Madow , but I think she's probably very much under the thumb of MSNBC and you know, what she can say and do . I'll go read like the Wall Street Journal and things like that, but it's just like all these people, you know, yeah, you really like to triangulate everything. You have to get like both sides' angles on the opinion side and then try to find you have to read between the lines because like , you know, I've had a small business trans fer compring foran a longies time so. And I subcontracted for the New York Times for like ten years . And so I know for a fact that the people who write for the New York Times do their homework write from a point of accuracy and fact , but it goes to the filter of the admin at the top who are at the behest of the Trump administration. And that's where things get moved around and changed and cut out . And it's it sucks because you have really, really good writers and journalists who aren't paid enough and work really hard to do the right thing and they you know, they write with integrity and honesty and they, you know, their whole life is back checking because they don't want to get it wrong . But then you have these people who just say no at the top because you know, even I was speaking to somebody the other day who is a book agent and they said, you know, it's just a tough time because they' s just only so many things you can write about right now because if it bumps up against the Trump administration they won't publish it. No publisher will touch it because they will get shut down . And which is just, I mean, it's just so histor ical. Like it just feels like we're living in another time . But so I bounce around to get just the basics of what a story is like so if that's the reflecting pool or whatever, like I will see what is the story. And then I'll start to hear people's opinions that I trust. And you know, I would say that it's a little bit helpful that some of the like really hyper disgusting conservative like media has left MAGA because like they're they're still not somebody I would hang out with at dinner , but like they're a little bit more objective even though they're like hyper conservative where I can listen to five minutes of them and disagree with them, but I can also see what that opinion is on that . They're not totally bad faith. Yeah, I mean, Margaret Taylor Green is still way out there for me. I don't think I'm ever gonna I appreciate that she's helping survivors , but she has done horrible things and I can't can't do it . But I just think that it's important to get a variety in your news because it's so easy to get in a vacuum about what you believe and what you think and even that idea of that stilter and not knowing that things are going on in the world, that can happen on the left as well. Like we it's so important to hear what everybody's saying and you can disagree with them. I think that's important to listen to people you disagree with, but at least you know what's being said. So when you're talking to someone, it's not like a super shock if they come up to you and they go, I believe this and you go, I've never heard of that, right? Yeah, right. It's important to know, you know, people who think that the two hundred fifty , you know, fairgrounds or whatever will happen this week, there are people who think that that was filled with people, right? And to like look at that and be like, oh, they think that okay. But I can see all of Donald Trump his post about that, you know, he throws in like little phrases like the totally packed fair. Okay, everyone saw the videos in photos . Like a different that was a moment. Like if you were gonna fake the news, that would be the moment to like not have that in the background in your news. Yeah, right. There's just like a thousand people behind us and you're like, you can see it . Yeah. I don't see anybody . You know, and that's something that I'm thankful for that like the biggest push to fascism in at least like modern American history has been at a time when we were not so monolithic as a media or a kind of cultural complex and now like cable news is dying I. don So't even know why conservatives want CBS necessarily. It's like losing viewers probably as they're dying off and like no one like my age or younger is watching any terrestrial or even satellite cable news, anything is good. Why would you pay for it? I mean, that's the thing. Like brought in streaming, they're like, although who kind of screwed people? They're like, it's only twenty dollars a month for all these channels and then they went up like thirty dollars a year. Yeah, right. But I mean it,'s like you can watch streaming and watch all these news and get all your news or get all your stuff in one place or you can pay like two hundred dollars a month to have a dish on your house. Like people don't do that anymore because it costs too much , but also like it's like my kids going to a hotel room and going like, Why are I have to watch this ? I can't pick my show. Yeah . And like, no, this is not total cable television. And they're like, this is , you know, that's I have serious satellite radio in my car and it's like I laugh every time because I'm like, oh, I'll check in with the news and I make a bet with myself. I'm like, I bet both of them like MSNBC and CNN are on commercial right now. Go to commercial on CNN, commercial. It's like, you know, it's like and I watched so many interview s on CNN where it's like they get the person, it's like they get three questions before the next commercial break. And like the person like starts saying he disagrees with Trump on something. And it's like right there. Follow that lead. Up. It's time for a commercial break. We'll be right back. Thanks for joining us person who just made news and have an inch of separation between the party line. And especially when there's like something on the ground. Like talk about Delaney Hall, when you talk about the set that there was happening in Minnesota . Like I'm not going to turn on CNN and be like, What's happening in Minnesota? I'm going to go on YouTube and look for somebody who has a live stream on the ground that's just filming it, right? So you can just see what's happening sometimes you'll have somebody who's just sort of like walking around narrating what they see. You get more information from that than you will from someone who's being very careful about what they're filming, who they do, what they're saying, what they're I would rather I would rather see on the ground reporting, which we used to have more of. You know, we used to have more people who were in the middle of different actions and talking to people who were upset in the moment and not , right Making? sure they're what about to say is okay before they say it, you know. I prefer that . And then, you know , and this can happen all the time, but like if there's something close to where I live and if it's not incredibly unsafe, like going and seeing it for myself, right? Just go there. And I live in a place where that's probably more accessible than a lot of people. But like pop in the car and just go see for yourself and make sure that what you're seeing on the news isn't, you know , more performative for me or whatever I want us to believe . And you've got kind of like a media career going . In terms of like Marshall McLewan, how much do you think substack like the message is or the medium is the message where like how much do you think substack allowing you to like you got kind of big pretty fast, right? Like substack has been like a like I guess I don't know you're ten thousand hours behind you leading up to this. I think that it's, I mean, I am very, I get a little bit sess about it because like I have my own substance, but then I'm a contributing editor for Blue App and they have like a huge audience. And everybody sees something different when they log into my profile. So some people say, wow, you have five hundred thousand followers. And then some people see my actual follower count. And so I'm always just like, Those aren't my and they're just linked statements to subst atus . But then yeah, there's a little bit of unfairness with that too because when it links it all, it then puts you in an algorithm thinking you have five hundred thousand followers. So then it builds you exponentially based on kind of this false numbers. So I try I try really hard to like platform other people because I'm like, well if my things are getting seen a lot and I can share this person's article that they wrote the, mail gets seen a lot and I try to kind of pay it forward because I feel like people help to bring me where I am. And so if I could do that for somebody else, that's what I'd like to do. But I try to stay positive about subst ack because Substack, again, like we've said with all these people , has the opportunity to do something really, really great. Like they grew really fast and they became the platform of independent journalism . I went to one of their I was invited to like a meet and greet in New York for their it was just like they just brought in a bunch of substackers. I don't know why I was invited, but it was just like little pretentious food you got to invite them. You belong in that room. So we got to ask questions and you know, it felt a little performative from some of the people who were there. They're just like, have you seen myself I was like, nobody knows who I am. So anyway, but we got to ask questions . And one of the biggest questions and I don't remember if I asked her if somebody else asked it was just like , you know, if somebody comes along to someone like a Hamish Mackenzie who's like the CEO and offers them five billion dollars for substack . How are you going to say no to that and maintain the integrity of a platform of free expression, which it's changed even now, it's changed over time. Like you see what's his name Tate, the rapist, what 's his first name? I forgot, I'm glad. Anyway, there's people on Substack who are terrible people who also have substacks for like three speeches. I just like Bronze Age Pertber, I think it's a pretty successful track now . And it's been a nice filter because it's still the majority of people here are still very well read and like to read long form articles . Yeah . And that kind of weeds out I, guess, of some of the trolls that could be hanging out. Yeah, right. But it's like if somebody came along like an Elon Musk and wanted to buy substack , how do you say no to that? Like tell us that this platform will maintain the integrity that it has and fight the natural electrification where they can make a little more money making the user experience exhibition and then change how it works. And you know, because even right now, they're bringing these things called creator , I don't know, we had to fill something out. But it's the idea that sponsors can look at your page and offer to sponsor your page. It would be like, you know, Dove Soap wants to sponsor my page. And I feel weird, I mean, I filled it out, but I feel weird about it because I don't want to be like an ad platform in order say the things that I'm trying to say. Like I'd like to just be able to do it without , you know, say ing zip recruiter? Yeah. You know, I always think of these like famous people who always end up with a like perfume ad and just how ridiculous they are just like I don't want that. I don't mind if every once in a while there's just a little like button in the corner. I don't know. I guess it would have to depend on it. But I also they said are there brands you absolutely wouldn't work with? And I thought there must be like, but I just can't think of them right now . And so I would be very picky if somebody came along and was like, I would like to advertise all of your substack because I think that's just a little bit of a slippery sl ope, I would say. Yeah, right. Really capitalizing substack instead of it being this really independent journalistic place. And so I don't know. I don't know, I don't know if I can trust that substack wouldn't flip if necessary because it's I think it's very hard for people to say no to money . But I hope at least it lasts a very long time. I hope by that time there are other options and we've sort of spread out and diversified . Well, you know, there will always be that market incentive for somebody else to just redo what Subsac was doing well, you know, I feel like already right now when Trump or sorry Elon Musk destroyed Twitter and ran into the ground immediately I showed up. Yeah, blue sky, thread, Substack. I mean, that helped me a lot just because now I have like five places to copy and paste all my jokes. So I just go viral in different places. So in a way, it kind of works or I guess I was like it was relative ly good timing for me personally to just expand the number of platforms that I'm on, but you get to the point where also the platforms are going to start having like a total ideological swing. You know, already like Twitter I'm, sure Elon Musk is daily like going through and manipulating the algorithm for himself, obviously, but algorithm is like white house posts and I'm like, I'm not contributing to this. How is this the only followers that I really want to see like the things that they're doing and I can't see them. Yeah. Now you also have like a stocker situation going on. Do you get a lot of heat, a lot of hate? Do you get emails? Do you respond to them? Do you ignore them? What's going on? I've had it pretty low key thus farming at Trolls and you just kind of just like, whatever . I've had lately, I think it's just I don't know what the intent behind it is or like what the goal is for it. It's just somebody who's really made it their full time job to just write about me, go after me, kind of terrorize me. Obviously they're blocked everywhere, but whether it is that they've just logged out and can still see my substack page or whatever , they still can see everything that I do. There's really just no way around that . They have other people send things to me. So there will be somebody who pops up because I'm usually like if somebody's like in my DMs going, Oh I wrote this thing, or I did this thing. Can I send it to you? And he's like, Yeah, go ahead. Now I have to be more careful because people are he's sending things to me through other people. And so like, right. He's got me like this manifesto that was twenty nine pages long. And you know, did you look into that at all? Did you read it? You looked at it a little bit, but I was just like, I think I'm good . I was like, this is not, this is not really where I want to spend my evening . But it just it just became this like really obsessive, slightly dangerous focus, this hyper focus on me and my life and anything I wrote about, you know, and then I had to start thinking about like, did I say anything about my kids? Because then he'll write about my kids. And like and and thankfully, his audience is very small . And that's not like a dig on him. That's just very helpful that it kind of is a little bit of a vacuum . But I just, you know, I think I take it just the biggest thing that has helped me because I've done all the reporting for like the police officers and the FBI and the cyber crimes and all I've done all the things I'm supposed to do . But I think the biggest thing that's been really helpful is just people have validated that how I feel about it or my worries about it is totally normal and that I'm not overreacting or I'm not , you know, because I know I know a lot of people on here that have been through so much worse and have been doing this for years and they probably wouldn't mad an eye at this, but I haven't and this just felt very close to home. He was starting to talk about my location and I just it just was not comfortable . And so the idea of ignoring somebody and hoping they go away did not work for everybody was like just, ignore him, and he was like, we're going on trying four weeks of ignoring and this is just night and day posting about me . And so I mean I don't know, I don't know how it will roll out long term. I hope it will stop. But I guess the validation of how I felt about it was helpful. I've filed all the reports that I can file so there's a paper trail if I need, you know, need that. And just that , um, you know, again, and this sounds, I don't know if this sounds stupid or just like I don't know . I said that like then we're in living in this time that's a little bit of like, you know, we think of like the Epstein Files and women being believed and coming forward and saying, I feel this way and like somebody actually hearing how they felt. Like I was worried, you know, this man is posting all these things about me that have never happened. Like things that just don't exist. I just remember thinking like what have do I have enough credibility with the people that I talk to that they would know this is not true if I say it's not true. Like will I be believed if somebody asks me and you know which I felt like was just such a metaphor, I guess for the times that we're living in , but they did. Like the people came for they're like, they read it and they go, Oh, of course I don't obviously that's not true. When I said, okay, right, right. You know , but it was it's been a big learning experience. I've spoken with other people who are also being threatened, who have been doing this years and years. And just the idea that independent journalism is definitely not protected against that, you know , we've we've been safe from it because Trump really hates legacy media, but that won't be forever. You know, he's going to figure out you know, he first and foremost, he will figure out that Jim Acosta is out here talking talking about him because he needed to be Dimacor when he was in the press pool. After so he's going to figure out we're doing this, but you know, how do we protect ourselves when we don't have all these things set in place that you might have if you worked with the New York Times and the Yeah, right and mean how do we do that here ? What should we do? Somebody mentioned the idea of like an independent journalist union or something put,ting protections into place , legal protections or whatever. So it's something to think about . I'm at a point where I'm not afraid anymore. You know, like there was a lot of worry and anxiety about what this guy was going to do or you know and I sometimes that comes back a little bit like he'll post something and it comes back a little bit but now more I'm just like just I guess exasperated and . I was saying the other night like a little revenge, but you know, I'm not going to respond to him. Yeah, I'd like to, I'd really like to humiliate him, but I'm not going to and I've never publicly stated his name because they just don't want more attention on him . But it's just it's a thing. I mean he's done it before to other people and it's just a thing that's not unusual especially for women. I mean women get targeted with stuff all the time so it's just like how do you protect yourself? What do you do? How do you how do you not only physically protect yourself, but how do you, when you turn everything off at night, how do you feel good about yourself despite somebody working very hard to make you feel otherwise . Yeah. Well, anybody ever doing anything productive and important, you know, always got haters at some point. That's how you know you're doing something right , especially in this instance with Trump had . Yeah. Well, I wish we would let you go because we've been tying for quite a while . It was great to talk to you and a mechanic of everything that you do. Yeah. Anybody watching for my followers, follow Ellie here. Very valuable speech.. Yeah Yeah , good. Well, good to talk to you. All right, it's good to talk to you, see you guys later. Have a good rest of your week. See everybody. Thanks for listening to Brain Milk. See you