Trump Panics as Epstein Class is Finally Exposed!!!

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2:15Ben Meiselas:Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are panicking as the Epstein class has been exposed. exposed in the Epstein files and exposed through Donald Trump's grift and quid pro quos and all the things he's doing with those right wing oligarchs who are doing the golden ballrooms and the triumphal arches and all of the shadiness and people are done with it. The crimes, the shadiness, the grotesque behavior, people are sick and tired of it. And it's not a partisan thing anymore. And I think that's been the big revelation from this week that we're not talking about, oh, is this a Democrat issue? It's a Republican issue.

2:59Ben Meiselas:When it comes to covering up child sex trafficking, it is an issue that impacts people and people covering it up need to be brought to justice and held accountable. I mean, right wing podcasters like Andrew Schultz are posting photos of Howard Lutnick, who, by the way, lied about not meeting Jeffrey Epstein after 2005. Then it It turns out he brought his kids to the island, did business deals. But there was also reference that Howard Lutnick's family that controls Cantor Fitzgerald, they were doing deals betting that the United States Supreme Court would strike down Donald Trump's tariffs against the world and that they could potentially benefit.

3:38Ben Meiselas:Now, Lutnick's family said, well, we were doing that at first, but now we're not doing it anymore. But we know the Lutnicks lie about everything. And they're doing a lot of self-dealing, in my opinion, with the government as well. But here's what Schultz writes. He goes, the Epstein class playbook 101, fun, both sides of the war policy disgraceful. They have no love or loyalty to America. We are simply a vessel for them to exploit for their own enrichment. If we want Americans to have faith in our institutions, the Epstein class must receive the highest punishment of the law imaginable. And he's responding to a post by Meet Kevin who writes, Howard Lutnick's family bought up the rights to tariff refunds for 20 to 30 cents on the dollar after Liberation Day last year.

4:22Ben Meiselas:Right-wing podcaster Sean Ryan responds to Donald Trump's latest distraction saying that the files he's going after are the alien files right now. The alien files, that's the big priority. Sean Ryan goes, nice April Fool's joke, plot twist. What if the files don't reveal aliens, but they reveal us? And I think the epiphany that we've all seen in these Epstein files is that it revealed this Epstein class. The child sex trafficking was the currency used by these individuals who were talking about how they were going to manipulate and destroy the lives, not just of the children they were sex trafficking, but of the world in general and trying to then reap profit off of the pain and suffering of people.

5:09Ben Meiselas:Senator Sheldon Whitehouse says the billionaire class, a.k.a. Epstein class, fetish with not paying taxes. It's now just self-serve. It's not just self-serving greed, but an actual drag on our economy. And don't get me started on the political corruption. The Wall Street Journal reported tax avoidance by the super wealthy is an economic issue as well as a political one. And our friends dropkick Murphys in the concerts that they've been doing throughout this country. We're seeing this in general permeate the culture right now. They've been showing the Epstein footage, rocking out and showing Donald Trump and Epstein together.

5:47Ben Meiselas:And this is the people get it now. The people understand what's going on. Let me just show you a short clip. This is from the summer. But they've been going and playing this over and over again on their shows. Here, play this clip.

6:09Ben Meiselas:I want to bring in Graham Plattner. Graham, great to see you running for that Senate seat in Maine. We've been following this campaign. We spoke to you before. You've been calling out the Epstein class since the very beginning of the campaign and before that as well. Seems that one of the big changes, a zeitgeist shift, the shocks that we're really feeling is identifying this thing. And this is, to me, one of the reasons your campaign has been surging, this Epstein class that's out there, huh?

6:43Graham Platner:Yeah, and I think, you know, it's important to note that, like, this is just, I think a lot of us have understood for a long time that there is a class of people that exist above accountability, that exists kind of above even, like, the concept of the nation state, that there are people out there who have so much wealth and so much power that they live in a totally different world than we do. And what the Epstein files are showing us is just how true that actually is. And also just how depraved that level of power and wealth can make people. And it's amazing that it is really kind of bringing in a lot of folks who in other issues don't agree with each other politically.

7:29Graham Platner:But we are all beginning to realize, right, left, Republican, Democrat, down here in the real world, we actually are just there to be exploited by a small group of people who, in some ways, are just kind of running the world for their own benefit. And the Epstein files show that in glaring fashion. And I think it's just the realization that we're all starting to wake up to this fact. And it is a... The only way that we're gonna move forward is by, frankly, building the political power to hold all these people accountable and make sure that that kind of wealth just doesn't get to be accrued anymore.

8:09Ben Meiselas:There's the expression, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist. One of the things that Donald Trump did effectively is fraud, and that's what he's been doing his whole life. He convinced the people of Maine and throughout the rest of the country, that while this class may have existed out there, that he was the one who was going to get them and fight them and be the one who destroyed the deep state and took it all down. When in fact, he's the leader of the cabal, in my opinion, he is the personification of the Epstein class. And everybody who surrounds him at the highest level are the top people are the lieutenants in the Epstein class.

8:55Ben Meiselas:And that has been just, I think, a revelation again across parties. But we're seeing that now it's them. It's them who try to trick and convince and defraud people and say, no, it's this other cabal out there. They're the center of the cabal.

9:10Graham Platner:They absolutely are. I mean, we when you look at the names, when you when you look at the people who are now currently trying to run interference on this stuff, they're it's the Trump administration. It's the people in the Trump administration who currently are still, frankly, stealing from all of us. I mean, they just had that crypto summit down at Mar-a-Lago. I mean, the corruption is so brazen. But at the end of the day, I mean, I think it's so brazen because they truly feel like there will be no accountability. And that's why it's really important for us down here in the real world to build the political power necessary to make sure that there is accountability.

9:51Graham Platner:We can't, when this is said and done, when normal people have power again, we can't all just move on from this. We need to make sure that those who have engaged in this kind of behavior, whether it's the corruption or the, I can't believe I'm going to say these worlds, the international pedophile ring, those people need to be held to account and to the utmost ability that the law can do. And I think that we are reaching a moment where that realization is beginning to dawn on all of us down here that it really is us versus them. And they've been winning for a long time, and it's time for us to build some power and start winning ourselves.

10:31Right.

10:32Ben Meiselas:You had two summits kind of taking place around the same time. You had the Trump family crypto summit taking place in Florida. Then you had an AI summit taking place in India at the same time, zooming in on both. But we'll just zoom in on the Trump crypto summit. The Trump kids said we had to do this. They were asked by CNBC about the levels of corruption there. And the host was like, you realize that people are doing deals with you because they want proximity to the White House and they want benefits. Well, we've been canceled and this is what we have to do. And and daddy told us that we need to, you know, they did that.

11:10Ben Meiselas:But what's fascinating, too, is when you go through the Epstein files, you see Epstein talking to these same types of people about getting Putin involved in crypto and launching it. And, you know, all of this behind the scenes was being kind of puppeteered. And now, you know, I guess if there's one benefit that all of this, it's in plain view, like we see it. The kids are saying we're doing it. Here's what we're doing. So what? Yeah.

11:40Graham Platner:I mean, that's the irony with the crypto stuff, too, is that that was sold to all that was sold to us as this like decentralized, democratized way that we were going to be able to use to have like new currency. And in reality, when you, I mean, both in the Epstein files, but also elsewhere, in reality, it was all just a moneymaking scheme for those who already had plenty of money. I mean, it's just a way of essentially bilking people out of their actual wealth and investing it into these mediums that are not at all what they were sold as, that are just ways of extracting wealth out of working people, which, you know, shouldn't be that surprising because that's sort of what this class has been doing for a very long time.

12:29Graham Platner:But the brazenness of it now, the fact they don't even hide it, I mean, it really is pretty wild. Right.

12:37Ben Meiselas:You know, on Friday, we got some really bad economic data as well. The GDP was less than half in the fourth quarter of what Trump regime people were saying it was going to be. And you had Lutnik saying, judge me by my fourth quarter GDP. It's going to be 5%. What was Trump saying? 15%. OK, well, it was like one point four percent. Not that the GDP is necessarily can even be necessarily extrapolated on how people are doing. But then you look at PCE, how inflation is impacting consumers that ticked up and came in hotter than expected. But to me, you look at the big one that we've been seeing, which is jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.

13:17Ben Meiselas:We are in a jobs recession right now. Manufacturing has been crippled. and Donald Trump's out there saying$2 ,000, I'm going to give you rebate checks. You know, how are we going to deal with health insurance? $2 ,000. For Donald Trump, it is to tell people who are suffering, we're going to give you$2 ,000. And then he never actually even gives the money. But as though you should be thankful when I just give you a$2 ,000 check and shut up, right? That's what they're saying.

13:47Graham Platner:I mean, this is really kind of the issue with, not just the Trump administration, but also often sort of Republican policies, which is that they claim that they're going to fix the kind of deeper economic problems that we have. But they can't because those policies are being created to protect those who are benefiting off of the current system. I mean, like the idea that we're going to fix the health insurance issue, not by going after health insurance companies, not by creating the universal healthcare system and just divesting ourselves entirely from a profit-based healthcare system. That's not how we're gonna do it.

14:30Graham Platner:No, we're just gonna write people checks that then they'll have to go turn around and give to the same entities that have been exploding them the whole time. It's always this kind of bait and switch where they tell you that they're gonna fix it, but when you, and this, I guess, for me, is sort of the point of why this moment is so important, that we have a clear message about what the answers actually are, that we have kind of a, we re-engage with political imagination around how to fix the systemic problems that we have, something like a universal health care system, like changing the tax code to claw back all this wealth that has been stolen from working people in this country for decades.

15:14Graham Platner:We need to re-engage with that because it's the only way to actually fix the problem. And we know that we're gonna have to do it because Republican policies will never actually fix it, even when they claim that it will. We know that it's going to always benefit those who are benefiting now, which is not working people in this country. And it is just such a... It's so clear at this point. But I also think that's why we, and when I say we, I mean Democrats or progressives or even just at this point, I would say like economic realists, we need to have obvious policy prescriptions for these problems because we cannot just allow this kind of limp along.

16:03Graham Platner:And as the Republican Party continues to fail because their policies are not actually meant to fix these systemic issues, we need to be there ready to provide people the actual answer. And the actual answer is going after the Epstein class, going after the billionaires, going after the oligarchy and breaking their power.

16:22Ben Meiselas:And that's what excites me about this moment, because from the depths of depravity, there is a real opportunity, not just for Democrats to pick up seats or take control of the house. what's the purpose of control if you don't do with control things that actually help the people? Sure, Megan Mike Johnson's the Speaker of the House, but he's got no power. He's just a Donald Trump sycophant. Why would you even want to be the Speaker if that's what you do, if you're just being, you know, in that world? So to me, we've talked about Republicans, but let's end this by talking about Democrats, because to me, it's not just power for power's sake, right?

17:02Ben Meiselas:It is, What fundamentally is the Democratic Party? And to your point, setting aside the party, what what are fundamentally we doing in governance generally? What does it mean to be a senator? What does it mean to be look? Fetterman ran a campaign where he made all these promises. I'm this distance. I I had him on. He did the Fetterman stick when he was back in the day, Mr. Progressive. He went in there and now I can see the guy on, you know, every night, Fox News, every second, you know, he made his well. So that's not helpful to have, you know, someone, you know, doing in my view, you know. So to me, talk to talk to that more generally about the opportunity that we have as a party to move in a certain direction rather than just saying we need to see power.

17:51Graham Platner:Yeah. And it's and it's not again, I don't actually think it is the party. I mean, it's a, I don't care who comes along with us. I don't care what the letter next to their name is. If we can put together a coalition of people who actually want to fight for systemic change, who want to fight for things like universal healthcare, who want to fight for things like amending the tax code so we can pull back all that wealth, who want to fight for large programs like we used to do, like what we did in the Great Depression, large public works programs, rebuilding our infrastructure, rebuilding our transportation, rebuilding our energy grid in a way that's going to get us off fossil fuels and provide energy for Americans, not prioritizing corporate profits, but prioritizing getting people the energy they need to live good lives.

18:41Graham Platner:That's what we need to be engaged in. And it's not just about if you get power for power's sake, you actually don't have any power, which I think is right now what we are seeing in elements of the Democratic Party leadership. They have spent years just trying to get to a place of power, but with no plan of what they were going to do with it when they got there. And when you don't have a further goal, when you don't have the intent of using this power to do something, you find yourself to be utterly powerless, which is why I think we see the inability of some in Democratic leadership to resist the Trump administration because they don't have a theory of power.

19:26Graham Platner:And they don't really have a theory of change. They don't really seem to know what they're building towards. We need to re-engage both politically, but also, I think, culturally with the concept of using our imaginations to envision a better future for all Americans. And I think the way that we do this in many ways is we get to look back. We get to look at the New Deal. We get to look at FDR. We get to look at things like the CCC or the Works Progress Administration. We get to look at the Tennessee Valley Authority or the Rural Electrification Program. Mass, mass programs driven by political will and government intervention that laid the groundwork and the foundation of the society that we have today.

20:14Graham Platner:The way of thinking that brought us social security and unemployment insurance laid the groundwork for things like Medicare and Medicaid. We have to reengage with that kind of imaginative thinking and understanding that the purpose of power, when we get it, is to wield it and bring about positive change for Americans. If we don't have that vision and we win, I'll be very upfront, one of my fears, is if establishment Democrats coast back to power this November on an anti-Trump wave, but we elect people that have no interest in actually trying to make systemic change, I fear we might not get this chance again.

20:58Graham Platner:If we let the American people down one more time, if they give us power back and we do nothing, I'm worried about the next iteration of this. Donald Trump is terrible, but at least he's incompetent. I do fear what the next thing is. And I think the way that we guarantee that day never comes is we don't just try to go backwards to the society we had. We try to build a society that does not allow for this kind of immiseration of working people that creates the resentment and the fear and the aggrievement. We give people the material benefits that they deserve in a society that is so productive and so wealthy that we can actually provide those things.

21:38Ben Meiselas:Graham Plattner. Rarely am I left speechless with no further questions at the end. I won't concede whether or not I am right there. I'll just wrap it up by saying where can people learn more about the campaign?

21:48Graham Platner:So, gramforsenate.com. We can absolutely use your help with small-dollar donations, recurring monthly donations. We don't take corporate PAC money. We don't take APAC money. The vast majority of our donations are$200 or less. Our average donation is somewhere around like$27. We're very proud of that. We need your help. But also, it's the volunteering side. We really are trying to build something here in Maine that is a different kind of politics. It's a politics built on organizing and built on people. And even if you're not in the state of Maine, you can't just come knock doors with us. You can help out with phone banking, text banking.