7/17/25: Saagar Debates Michael Tracey On Epstein Israel Connections

22:31Michael Tracey:Fine. Yeah. It's all this fragile masculinity exuding. I could smell it walking down the hallway, to be honest with you. I was like, is that weed? Nope. It's fragile masculinity. Ben Stiller, no. Because a lot of times, out of context, people don't get it or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? They're so stupid. Everyone's so dumb except for you. And fake. Right, fake and also not interested or just like, oh, I've got my life. I don't care about your life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy.

23:11Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let me ask you a question about this, Michael. How do you explain the deal he was able to cut down in Florida with Alex Acosta, who goes on to be Trump's labor secretary, who was U.S. attorney at the time, which led to him serving, I believe, 13 minutes in a county jail where the jail cell was open, where he was able to go to his office for 12 hours a day. Afterwards, he's released. There's significant reporting that indicates even after he was supposed to be on home confinement, he's flying around, he's doing what he wants to do.

23:47That deal was so sort of outlandish that actually a judge came in and said, you violated the rights of victims. This deal was actually technically illegal. And not only did it provide for a very cushy deal and very low-level charge, ultimately, for Jeffrey Epstein, it also indicated that none of his potential co-conspirators could be charged whatsoever. So how do you explain this person getting such an incredibly cushy deal at that point and a deal, again, that allows any even theoretical co-conspirators off the hook, which is, it's so extraordinary that even Galene Maxwell now is appealing to the Supreme Court saying, hey, I should have been part of that deal.

24:29What am I in prison for since you, the government, said no co-conspirators could ever be, you know, indicted or found guilty of anything?

24:38Michael Tracey:I'm just not sure why people think it's such a profound mystery that a wealthy individual, whatever the source of his wealth, and I agree that if possible, a more forensic audit should be done of how he acquired his wealth. But obviously he had the means to hire a dream team of lawyers to come and negotiate with the government on his behalf. He brought in Alan Dershowitz, who had just participated in securing an acquittal for O.J. Simpson. He brought in Ken Starr to make a federalism argument to federal prosecutors arguing that the offenses for which Epstein was accused were fundamentally state-level crimes and did not enter the purview of federal prosecutors on that ground because the federal prosecutors couldn't establish that there was trafficking across state lines or some other element that would place the crime in their purview.

25:32Michael Tracey:Were these technical arguments? Sure. But, you know, if you want to make this a scandal about wealthy people having access to powerful lawyers who can maybe get them a more lenient non-prosecution agreement than the average person would have access to. I'd be all on board with that, but it seems that people just immediately launch into the explanation that he must have been some kind of intelligence asset or agent. And just to touch on that for a moment, you know, Sagar, I'm not trying, I wouldn't, I'm not trying to personally attack you on this. I happened to see, I happened to, I saw a clip going around last week of you on Tucker's show in which you asserted that.

26:11Michael Tracey:Which I corrected, by the way. I corrected that quote. OK, maybe you corrected it, but I'm just. But a lot of people have repeated this quote. OK. That derives from a 2019 Vicki Ward article in which she's quoting or she's attributing this quote from Alex Acosta from several years before 2019 when he's in a meeting with Trump transition officials. And according to Vicki Ward, a former Trump senior Trump administration official, which sounds a lot like steve bannon's blowing smoke we don't know that with 100 certainty by the way why is steve bannon sitting on 16 hours of raw we're all with you there we're all okay yeah okay and why was he strategizing with with epstein about how he could uh present himself for a media interview with 60 minutes but anyway that we'll leave that aside for the moment But that quote was a sense, it's like the definition of hearsay, and yet it got characterized as an on-record declaratory statement from Acosta of him just asserting that he had been warned that Epstein belonged to intelligence pursuant to the 2007 non-prosecution agreement, and therefore he should back off.

27:21Michael Tracey:That's not what that quote signified. And actually, several years later, post-2018, when the Miami Herald series briefed new life into the story, harnessing the power of Me Too, which, by the way, I thought the right was mostly skeptical of. Instead, on this issue and in select circumstances, we hear the right saying, believe women, we have to honor all survivors, we can't use any critical scrutiny of their claims. But after the Me Too energy bolstered this story, the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility conducted a review of the 2007-2008 non-prosecution agreement. And Alex Acosta did directly address this claim that he had once potentially asserted that Epstein belonged to intelligence.

28:06Michael Tracey:And that's why a supposedly more lenient deal was given. And Alex Acosta did deny it on the record. Now, in terms of the leniency of that deal, listen to what Dershowitz has to say. I'm not saying I agree with Alan Dershowitz on everything. In fact, I strongly disagree with him on the issue of Israel. It's odd to me that every critic of Israel now has to feel that they have to be wedded to this particular issue because their criticism of Israel is bolstered by the idea that the reason that Israel is so widely supported among power structures is because there's a pervasive sexual blackmail network.

28:39Michael Tracey:I think that kind of makes critics of Israel look rather stupid. But Dershowitz says that Epstein fired him and refused to pay his legal fees because Epstein felt that he did not get a lenient deal. He felt that the prostitution charges, state-level prostitution charges in Florida that he was required to plead guilty to were actually overly onerous. And he should not have had to be subject to any kind of state control at all. So there was a dispute over whether they were actually – let me respond. Michael, the idea that this was because of Me Too is complete bullshit. The reason why - It wasn't bolstered by it?

29:14The cultural energy of Me Too didn't empower this? The U.S. District Court judge ruled that the non-prosecution agreement violated the rights of the victims who were not informed of the non-prosecution agreement, which you're portraying as standard operating procedure for some sort of rich person. That is just absolutely not the case. When did the Miami Herald series come out that caused such - Yes, I agree it came out in 2018, but it was a 12-year period in which the victims themselves were not informed of the situation, sued under their rights under the, I believe it's like the crime, the crime victims.

29:43I don't exactly remember.

29:45Michael Tracey:I mean, Julie Brown and Tina, Tina Brown, who have covered this issue very closely, attribute the renewed interest to me too. What I'm saying is that the district court judge is the person who overturned the NPA, which is the reason why, now perhaps some of the motivations of perhaps coming back for your rights, It is indisputable that the rights of the victims were violated under that non-prosecution agreement. Number one, as you just pointed out in that OPR review, they said that Acosta himself exercised, what, poor judgment whenever he came to that. Sure. Now, let's address the— But he denied the intelligence asset claim, right?

30:17Yeah, but let's address that intelligence. First of all, the transcript of that has never been made public. And the way that it was phrased specifically around OPR and when they asked him about intelligence was he said, absolutely not. I did not have information that he was an intelligence asset. The way that that question, as you and I know, asked is pretty damn specific. Now let's talk about Israel as well. No, no, no. And no, no, no, no, no.

30:36Michael Tracey:It was much more, it was much more, it was much more, did you look at the footnote? Yes, I did. I looked at both the footnote where he said I was allowed to address it in a classified setting. He said, absolutely not when asked specifically whether he belonged to intelligence. He says, he was asked whether he had knowledge of Epstein being a quote, intelligence asset. Yes. Acosta stated to OPR that quote, the answer is no. I'm not sure how much more direct he could have been. The answer is, look, I mean, I'm trying to be very specific here. I believe that the way that that question is asked in the transcript and the circumstance are pretty important.

31:06I got it right in front of me. No, but that's my point, though, is that even if you're, quote, he belonged to intelligence and I was told to leave it alone, is not direct knowledge. These are classic non-denial denials. And in his 2019 press conference, he did not actually address it whenever he was asked on the record publicly. It's only in his OPR review that he later on comes back to it. I don't think you're going to deny in 2019 that he did not leave the door open to the fact that that report could have had some accuracy. He said something along the lines of, I wouldn't believe everything you read, but it was a non-denial denial.

31:34But at the time of that non-prosecution agreement that you're talking about, Jeffrey Epstein, by verified report, is in Israel, basically brought all of his assets over there, returns from Israel to Palm Beach in April of 2008. So that's the first, in my opinion, sketchy connection for why he's exactly granted this special status in Israel whenever he's fighting a pedophile prosecution in the United States of America. But let's just continue down that fact. And this is the part that I just don't understand. for somebody who generally looks for links. Why do you have the former Israeli Prime Minister Ayyud Barak flying on his plane multiple times, staying at his house for months on end, pictured when there were women there, holding a scarf in front of his face to hide his identity from the tabloids?

32:18Why is it that, what is it, J.P. Morgan in 2011 has to rely on Epstein to broker a meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu? Why is it that Ayyud Omer and Shimon Peres are both linked to Jeffrey Epstein. Ehud Barak was asked, how did you meet Jeffrey Epstein? I did it via Shimon Peres. Ehud Omer is named specifically by the U.S. Virgin Islands as an Epstein associate. I mean, if we take that and then combine it here with Leslie Wexner, the fact that Jeffrey Epstein is on board the Wexner Foundation and then pays Ehud Barak$2.3 million to complete two reports, one of which he never finished, I can continue back further.

32:57Here we have Jeffrey Epstein involved in multiple sketchy arms transactions from the 1980s. I mean, this is where I genuinely wonder, like, if you're just trying to be a contrarian, do you accept it as a fact that Steven Hoffenberg, Douglas Lees, and Adnan Khashoggi, Robert Maxwell, who, by the way, is a known Mossad agent, did not have connections with Jeffrey Epstein, in which it looks like with a source of his wealth, was used as cutouts for use by the U.S. intelligence or the U.S. and Israeli intelligence community. The four individuals who I just named are known and linked to multiple sketchy arms deals from the 1980s.

33:31Khashoggi, Robert Maxwell, Douglas Lease, Stephen Hoffenberg. They've given on the record statements about their relationship with Epstein. At one point, Epstein is flying on a private jet with Douglas Lease in the 1980s when he's just 28 years old. I mean, I don't know how you can't look at that, specifically here about the money, even ignore the sex trafficking, and not saying that he did not have connections here. to intelligence, or at the very least, for cutouts and use as an intelligence asset in the past. I genuinely do not know how you cannot look at that, and specifically where the source of his wealth is complete bullshit.

34:03He starts a firm in 1988, J. Epstein and Associates, where he says, I only take on people with a billion dollars. There are only 140, 150 people in the country, or in the world at that time, who have a billion dollars under management. He's never been a registered money manager. He has no proven tax record. He called himself a high level bounty hunter when he forms an international assets group. In what way does this not look suspicious for everything that I have just laid out there in the highest level? I totally get the suspicions around this issue, but if you're saying that it's contrarian.

34:37Yeah, but you want people to come out and say, yeah, he was Mossad. That's not how it works, Michael. The CIA doesn't come out and say, yeah, we killed Kennedy. We connect all of the dots. I mean, do you believe then the official Warren, what you're saying is that because the Warren Commission said that the magic bullet theory is true, that we should all just swallow it and get accepted. It's ridiculous.

34:54Michael Tracey:So now we're going to go with you a detour into the Warren Commission? No, but what I'm saying is you're saying, well, that's been. Discussing this issue. But that's a factual predicate. Nobody can stay wedded to like one coherent train of thought. That's a factual predicate. The Warren Commission said it's been stolen. It's good that you conceded that the primary Epstein accuser is a serial fabulous. Oh my goodness. That's a positive. By the way, by the way, there are two other individuals who have named. No, who have named Prince Andrew. Johanna Sjoberg and I need to find her name. One second.

35:19Caroline Peake, who's been named here in an affidavit. Let me go ahead and get Michael in. But that's the case. In particular, you know, Sagar laid out the connections with what? Four different Israeli prime ministers. You know, how do you how do you assimilate that information? What's your response to that?

35:33Michael Tracey:Sure. First of all, I have to just address the idea that I'm just being arbitrarily contrarian. I can't tell you how many issues I've received that accusation on over the years, whether it was the Trump-Russia story, which contained conspiratorial elements where I was accused of being a contrarian, whether it was the 2020 George Floyd riots, which I went around and critically covered the poor media coverage of. I was widely denounced for being a contrarian. I'll give you all the evidence, whether it was the war in Ukraine. This just happens to be an issue where people, I guess, more on the right now think I'm being a contrarian.

36:03Michael Tracey:And so they're particularly enraged. I shouldn't have impugned. I should not have impugned your motives, but go Okay. Well, so I just don't believe it's not contrarianism to critically cover how media narratives congeal in the absence of what I think to be a reliable, factual basis. So why is Epstein linked up with all these Israeli prime ministers? Dave Smith, who I think you guys have had on to discuss this or you had on as a regular guest, who was at the Talking Points conference and accused Donald Trump of covering up a child sex trafficking or child raping. I mean, Sagar, do you think that that was a credible statement?

36:37Michael Tracey:I simply don't. I mean, again, I would not. So let me let me address the Israeli Israeli officials. OK, so, yes, it's not disputed that Ehud Barak, for instance, was a longtime associate of Epstein. They engaged in some business deals together. They even Ehud Barak, amazingly enough, was actually present when Epstein was on a media strategizing session with Steve Bannon, where they were planning how he could rehabilitate his image in the wake of the 2018 Miami Herald series. And Bannon was having to educate Epstein about how Me Too had changed cultural attitudes around this stuff. So you couldn't just be as obstinate as maybe you were able to be before in the past in rejecting some of these charges.

37:24Michael Tracey:So Steve Bannon was actually like - You couldn't just out and out smear the women, basically. Yeah, yeah, you had to be more sensitive. So Steve Bannon conducted the 16 hours of preparatory interviews with Epstein to kind of tell him how he would be questioned in the context of the 60 Minutes interview or something. On the Israel connection, yes, Ehud Barak was a longtime associate of Epstein. Epstein had longtime associations with an astonishing array of people. I'm not doubting that. He was a consummate bullshitter. He had alliances with, as we know, everybody from Bill Gates to Donald Trump to Bill Clinton over the years.

38:00Michael Tracey:So does it surprise me that some of those people included the Israeli government? No. Or the Saudi arms deal stuff that he was involved in in the 1980s? No. I'm not surprised about any of that. And I'm also allowing for the possibility, as I wrote in that compact article, that over the course of his bizarre international jet setting, perhaps he did come into contact with somebody who was associated with the Israeli security services. Ehud Barak himself would have been the head of Mossad when he was prime minister. So is it inconceivable? He was also the head of military intelligence. Sure. So is it inconceivable that over the course of their meetings, Ehud Barak obtained some piece of information that maybe he passed along to somebody?

38:45Michael Tracey:No, that's not inconceivable at all. I just don't see it as dispositive or as like all encompassingly explanatory of Epstein supposedly getting away with this child sex trafficking ring whose existence I don't regard as having been anywhere near established. You know, in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, interestingly, Maureen Comey was the prosecutor who was just fired yesterday. And she then tried to prosecute, you know, P. Diddy Combs, et cetera, under like similar auspices of like, you know, asserting a sex trafficking ring, but like weirdly narrowing the claimed contours of the sex trafficking to two people or one person.

39:29Michael Tracey:So people hear trafficking and they think it must be the sprawling, multi-layered ring when in reality, the grounds on which Maxwell was convicted was a sex trafficking, quote unquote, conspiracy that literally consisted of two people, according to the government and according to what the four purported victims in that trial even claimed. Oh, and by the way, those victims in that trial just received multi-million dollar payouts from the Epstein estate and from J.P. Morgan. And there was a similar Deutsche Bank settlement that came out whereby they could confidentially and non-adversarily have their claims adjudicated by a mediator.

40:11Michael Tracey:So if you had any tangential connection to Epstein or if I had any tangential connection to Epstein, of course, I would work with my lawyers who are going to get cut to come up with a story. You're claiming these people are doing it to get rid of. Just like Virginia Goufray did to become a multimillionaire where she could purchase luxurious. You're so focused on Virginia Goufray. I literally just told you there is another. I had to I have her name here in my notes. I've got it right. Were her claims ever adjudicated in a criminal setting? Because that's where the highest evidence - Evidential standards are in place.

40:42Prince Andrew of inappropriate sexual contact while posing for a photo at the Epstein mansion suggesting that she was trafficked there. That's in a sworn affidavit in the very defamation case that you're talking about. Caroline B., another anonymous individual. But listen, I mean, this is my thing. Did you read the Deutsche Bank settlement with the New York Times? I did, yes. Yes, and what does it say in there? Epstein had multiple financial transactions, which broke bank rules in which he's transferring money to Eastern European women for apparent sex trafficking purposes. It's in the fucking report there, Michael, from the New York Financial Services, in which they fine the bank for breaking its own policies, for sending and wiring money all over the world for apparent purposes after he's a convicted sex offender.

41:25I mean, you think he's wiring all of these money for hookers just for himself? Because that's not even what they say in the New York Financial Services document regarding the Deutsche Bank settlement.

41:34Michael Tracey:If he's trafficking, if he's participating in a trafficking conspiracy to supply minors to others, how is it that over the course of over a decade of incredibly intensive and lucrative litigation, not a single credible allegation of a third party individual having minors trafficking them to has been established? How come after every media outlet, at least post-2018, became hugely invested in this story, so you have Netflix documentaries, HBO documentaries, newspaper and magazine articles, podcasts out the wazoo, how come none of them have ever established any third-party individual to whom a minor was trafficked?

42:25Michael Tracey:Is it because everybody is just so afraid of offending Bill Clinton? Really? Well, no, no, but that's not accurate. How come they couldn't extract a lucrative settlement from Bill Clinton if he actually could have been critically accused of having a minor traffic to do? The U.S. Virgin Islands, who has the most evidence around this because so many of the heinous accusations, I won't say crime, were committed on their soil, had an attorney general who actually was going forward with a lot of this prosecution. What happened to that attorney general, Michael? They were fired, and the current attorney general, who is in charge of the case, what?

42:56He was to work for the Epstein estate. So that seems like a little bit of a cover-up and a problem there, no? Especially whenever that's something that happened to have been intersected in the past week, exactly, the lucrative dispersion of much of the Epstein estate. They have attorney generals - Can I ask you this?

43:10Michael Tracey:Let me ask you this, Sagar. Yeah, go ahead. Would you concede that there is a perverse incentive or an incentive for purported self-identified victims? Because by the terms of these settlements, all the purported victims have to do is self-identify as a victim. They can do so confidentially, meaning they don't have to be cross-examined, they don't have to have their claims adversarily scrutinized, and then there's no downside reputational risk for them in the effect that they're not adjudicated to be modified victims. Would you agree that there's a perverse incentive in terms of dramatizing claims to maximize one's chances to receive the biggest possible payout?

43:49Michael Tracey:And were you aware that the four people that Maureen Comey and her fellow prosecutors had to settle on to bring forward in the Maxwell trial in 2021, receiving multimillion dollar payouts because they were counseled by their attorneys that in order to obtain the biggest possible settlement, they should cooperate with prosecutors. Michael, it sounds like you think Ghislaine Maxwell should walk. Does that create a perverse incentive structure here or not? Or am I crazy? I agree that. Or am I contrarian? I agree that it, quote, could create a perverse incentive structure. At the same time, many of these are legally justifiable because of their proven claim in a court where she was convicted by a jury of her peers.

44:28Michael Tracey:Did you know that full-fledged adults, so not minors, adults were eligible for these payouts? And actually one adult testified at the Maxwell trial, meaning she was above legal age whenever any of these offenses occurred. Nobody's been able to sue somebody or have legal justification whenever they are a victim of sex. Like in the case of the Maxwell. Well, if we're talking about a child sex trafficking ring, then the fact that people who were adults could receive payouts because many years after the fact they could claim that they were coerced to receive the quote in the policy. No adult could ever be able to sue anybody else and be able to get any money for it for damages?

45:00I mean, it's like, what are you saying? That our entire legal civil court system is false and by that standard, the ability to claim damages in itself is a perverse institution. Now, I agree it can be weaponized, but I mean, in the Maxwell case, you're basically - Great, we agree. Yeah, okay, but then I don't know what to say, Michael. Maximize for - Weaponize for financial gain, right? Yeah, then you should support Republicans who want tort reform or whatever the fuck, you know, all that is. Okay, maybe I would support tort reform around this particular issue because it's been so

45:27Michael Tracey:insanely abused. Let me ask, we'll try to close this up. Soghar, a question for you is one of the things that I've seen from people who say, look, there's, you know, we believe Trump and there's no there there is they say, well, look, if the Democrats had access to this material and Trump was potentially implicated, don't you think they would have released that? What is your response to that claim? Me or Michael? Yeah, you, Sagar. Okay. Yeah. For me, I mean, look, I originally thought that it was actually a decent argument, but considering Trump's behavior now so far, and this is actually where I wonder if Michael would just agree with me, Michael, why don't we just release all of the evidence within the FBI and within whatever the case that has from the Department of Justice, the secret indictment from 2007, which has never yet been made public, that was prior to that non-prosecution agreement, release everything that's in the case file, and just show it to the American public, and we can all make up our minds.

46:24I mean, that's where, maybe you'll be vindicated, Michael. Maybe it won't show any of the child sex trafficking. I agree. Release everything. I don't know why it can't all come out. Dershowitz.

46:31Michael Tracey:Dershowitz said for the past 10 years, look, release everything. I waive any right to privacy. I've been falsely accused. I'm going to be vindicated. So I want maximum disclosure. I'm in favor of that. But there are two judges in New York who are keeping materials under seal. You know why? To protect the purported victims mainly, maybe to protect others who could be defamed by those victims. so if people want to go lobby i mean breaking points should go lobby in the southern district of new york for disclosure of the files that remain under seal but i think the fact that dan bonguino i mean talker would you agree with me that dan bonguino and cash patel and all these people obviously dangled these tantalizing little tidbits in front of the right-wing social media audience on the idea that trump was going to storm into office with his most loyal tenacious soldiers and expose the deep state demonic sex trafficking Democrats.

47:26Michael Tracey:And that whole narrative was obviously politically expedient bullshit that they very cleverly used to gin up excitement to vote Republican in 2024. And it wouldn't necessarily translate to any concrete revelations once Republicans got the power. The idea that there was a consolidated Epstein list that the DOJ has in some vault somewhere that they could just release was always kind of a confabulation to get people all exercised. I'm on the record here, Michael. I completely agree with you for the political expedience purposes, but I don't agree that it's bullshit. When I've also said it's a canard to say that there's some Epstein client list where it's like, hey, fucked a kid, now supports Israel.

48:06That's not the way that documents work. Look, I'm not here to defend Kash Patel. I agree with you completely that the way that they frame, look, there's two options. They either ginned it up and exploited perhaps what they claim is the rape of thousands of children or hundreds of victims or whatever for politically expedient purposes, or they did that, which is disgusting, or they're covering up said thing, which is equally disgusting, perhaps more so, actually, on the latter part. I would love for them, I totally agree,

48:30Michael Tracey:I would love for the maximum amount of material to come out, because you know what? I want FBI 302s, the original secret indictment. Who you happily conceded was a serial fabulous. No, I didn't say that. I said that she's a troubled woman who, yes, has been proven to have lied to. So now you don't agree that she's a serial fabulous. I didn't know. I'm not going to use your level of framing, which I actually do frankly think is disgusting because it points her as the central character, which you've self-appointed. It ignores the other individuals who I just think. She's the one who introduced the whole sex trafficking theory.

48:59Michael Tracey:Yes, with the photo of Prince Andrew. It's like the photo exists. The photo exists. Go ahead, finish your point. Okay, so I agree that a maximum disclosure should be made and that these concealments that are still in place to protect the supposed accusers, many of whom are serial fabulists, but yet received enormous payouts from these settlement funds that don't even scrutinize claims. Because when that screening was applied to Virginia Gufrae, as more and more information had to be revealed, she had to concede that she just made an enormous amount of stuff up. We got the Virginia Gufra thing.

49:37Michael Tracey:And so I think that would probably pertain to others associated with this. Yeah, she lived in such a life of expedient luxury. You know, it's just whatever. All right, continue. She did not live a life of luxury. She didn't have an oceanfront mansion in Australia and a ranch. And she didn't make$15 million. He committed suicide, bro. Like, yeah, this is what I'm saying. It was so great for her that she decided to under, I mean, I don't know. Well, yeah, because she had a domestic, because she got, according to her estranged husband, she became increasingly violent and attacked him. The local Australian authorities agreed with the husband, and then she lost custody of her children and became distraught.

50:13Michael Tracey:Could that maybe reflect on her credibility? Could that maybe be an insight to why she was not called as a witness in the Maxwell trial? That reflects to me somebody, a pattern of behavior of somebody who was obviously, in my opinion, abused whenever she was young and as a child. And that's exactly. Did she lack credibility? So, Michael, let me wrap up with this. She obviously did, Sagar. I know it's difficult to admit because. I said she's on the record. She's lying. I'm not going to sit here and besmirch somebody who killed herself and who obviously was a troubled individual. She's a prominent individual for almost a decade.

50:47Your feelings are clear. So are mine. All right, go ahead. Michael, a final question here for you. How do you explain the fact that you had the Trump administration go from the big influencer phase one Epstein files coming out? We're reviewing Pam Bondi's, I'm reviewing thousands of hours of footage to two page memo, nothing to see here. We're moving on case closed to Trump now saying, well, there are files that were created by Obama and Hillary and Comey and Brennan, and it's all a hoax, and that everyone needs to move on, and there's nothing to see here. So how do you explain his specifically changing narrative of what's going on here, and the fact that, obviously, it seems bizarre, the way he's handling this in the worst possible way just for him politically, let alone anything else?

51:43Michael Tracey:well i mean i think people in the right-wing media universe are charlatans and they exploit their charlatanism to politically expediently cater to this long-standing belief that's trump specifically no i know i i got it but it leads into trump meaning there's like a pervasive ever-present belief within right-wing media circles whom trump harnesses for political power that there's a pedophilic sex trafficking ring that's perpetually waiting to be uncovered. That's why they were so into QAnon, Heats a Gate, and that kind of transferred over in part to Epstein. Well, it explains it in that, like, why did Pam Bondi in that now notorious February 2025 interview with Fox News say she had the Epstein files waiting on her desk?

52:31Michael Tracey:desk because there was an incentive within this milieu to dangle the most appetizing little snippets in front of the audience, like the beating heart of right-wing social media and comment sections always believes that the triumphant anti-deep state warriors in the Trump administration are finally going to unveil the true heart of evil at the core of elite networks and expose the pedophiles. Cash would tell us to put on your big boy pants and tell us who the pedophiles are. And so Bondi was kind of playing into that assumption. And she used like imprecise language. Are these people charlatans?

53:13Michael Tracey:You're not getting an argument from me. I was trying to make this argument like last year when they were pumping out this stuff for their own electoral advantage. Now, I will say, is there a possibility that there are some additional materials somewhere that could be embarrassing to Trump? Of course, we know that he was a friend of Jeffrey Epstein's for like 15 years. Jeffrey Epstein is on tape that was released by Michael Wolf saying, I'm Donald Trump's closest friend, or I was his closest friend. Now, could that be puffery by Epstein, who loved to exaggerate his influence? Trump also said he knew him for 15 near so yeah exactly so i mean so there could there could be something that is embarrassing on trump somewhere in the archives here that wouldn't be surprising at all michael wolf claims that epstein displayed to him like uh pictures or uh polaroid photos of trump like sitting around with like topless young women or something and that there was no claim that those women in the photos were minors but like trump was also in these modeling circles that's how he met Melania, right?

54:22Michael Tracey:And Epstein also, you know, Michael, I just got to point out, man, this is the same hearsay that you're indicting the intelligence quote. You're like, Oh, Michael Wolf. But by the way, Michael Wolf is a fucking serial fabulous. Are we going to sit here and not say that he literally made shit up in his book in fury? Uh, like why is it that the secondhand account here from Michael Wolf? No, but it is. Oh, he's got a homeless woman. That's not, it's not hearsay for Michael Wolff to say, I was shown this photo. Like he could testify in court to that. He couldn't testify in court that he was told by somebody that somebody else told him that they spoke to Alex Acosta two years prior to that.

55:03Michael Tracey:So it's a different level of hearsay. I'm not saying it's dispositive. It's reporting. Yeah, fine. But Michael Wolff has shown that he has recordings of Epstein. He has hours of tape. Vicky Ward has multiple quotes on the record from Epstein. Why is she a worse reporter? By the way, Vicki Ward is 10 times the predator. I'm not claiming that Trump is a sexual predator. I'm arguing against that assumption now that has overtaken these popular assumptions. So I'm not trying to argue that Trump is a sexual predator. Yeah, I agree with that, but I'm saying you're willing to take hearsay and reporting from other people when it's convenient for your point.

55:38Michael Tracey:Here's the Occam's razor that I tend to use with Trump. obviously he'll just launder whatever bullshit he can to get through a current controversy. And the way that he's handled this issue is really amazing. I mean, now he's like voluntarily bringing it up when he calls into these right wing, like Real America's Voice shows and saying Epstein hoax. He's disowning his supporters over it. So obviously, I don't know, like, does he have the presence of mind to know how to negotiate this story in a way that is befitting him? Maybe not. I mean, he's 78 years old now. So that could be an explanation.

56:14Michael Tracey:It is interesting to me that never once do you hear Trump express sympathy for the quote unquote victims. Like a traditional politician would say, we sympathize with the victims. They've been through trauma. We're not going to re-traumatize them. This horrible person, Epstein, was a pedophile and a disgrace and whatever. Like Trump doesn't even make any perfunctory gestures along those lines. He just like goes nuclear now on his own supporters. So is he handling this artfully? No, but like, I think there are some, you know, more simple explanations than, oh, that means he's covering up the child rape ring that people accused Democrats of covering up.

56:54Michael Tracey:And now Trump is following suit. I just don't find that to be that plausible. All right, Michael, thank you. Appreciate your time. One more thing. Like, okay, I know this got a little heated. That's fine. Genuinely nothing personal against Sagar. I mean, I'm waiting for the avalanche of comments denouncing me, and that's fine. To quote whoever it was, Dan Bongino, I think we all have our big boy pants on here, so no worries. It's all good, brother. All right, Michael, good to see you. Thank you. Thanks so much for watching, guys. We appreciate it. We will see you all tomorrow for The Friday Show.

58:00We'll be right back. Download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Honey, is it on? Is it on? Is this thing recording? This is your girl T.S. Madison coming to you loud, live, and always and forever in color from the Outlaws podcast with me, T.S. Madison. This week, Laverne Cox is back. We're talking about her new book, her controversial ex, and going off on the red carpet. 20 minutes later, he was like, let's squash this. Let's talk about it. I was like, no, you do not talk to me like that. that is unacceptable. I watch dance like we used to break up.

58:33And can you ever really change a man? Listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Dancing with the Stars is looking for a new pro. And since last season, I came in eighth place. I'm basically an expert. I'm Danielle Fischel. And I'm Val Schmerkowski. And we have a new podcast called Stepping on Toes with Danielle and Val. Every week, we're breaking down Dancing with the Stars, the next pro. to find out who I'll be sharing the board with next season. Listen to Stepping on Toes on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Stepping on Toes and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

59:12This is an iHeart podcast.

59:15Michael Tracey:Guaranteed human.