Tina Brown on how Trump lost control of the Epstein narrative

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0:47It is the Jeffrey Epstein saga and Donald Trump's involvement, or not involvement, in it. and the strenuous denials of a White House looking more and more embattled. The ingredients are compelling. Politics, power, wealth, paedophilia and the presidency. Not all those circles overlap, but Donald Trump's efforts to distance himself are failing. In a moment, we're going to talk to a titan of journalism, Tina Brown, the former editor-in-chief of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The Daily Beast. And one of the first journalists to start investigating Jeffrey Epstein. She knew him. She knows Trump.

1:35Coming up next. Welcome to The News Agents.

1:42The News Agents. It's John. And our guest today is someone who you may have heard a couple of months ago on the podcast, Sina Brown because she has such an extraordinary journalistic career and still plays such an important role in keeping the flame of good journalism burning brightly that she spoke at length to Lewis about her career. Today I want to focus in on something much more specific. I want to focus in on New York in the 2000s, the noughties as they were called at the time and the sort of characters that were playing such a prominent role, Epstein, Trump, and where it leaves us today and the role of journalism holding those people in power to account for what they did.

2:38Tina Brown, absolutely fabulous to have you back on The News Agents. Thank you so much. Look, I want to talk about where the story is right now in just a moment. But maybe we could start with the fact that when you were editor-in-chief of the Daily Beast, you were one of the first news organisations to start investigating Epstein. Did you ever come across him yourself? Yes, I did. I mean, we were actually the first news organization to dig into and expose the sweetheart deal that Epstein had made with the Florida justice system, in which they bargained down multiple complaints from young girls about his assaulting them into a slap on the wrist charge of him soliciting two prostitution underage girls.

3:27And they gave him for that a kind of work release program sentence where he didn't even have to go behind bars. And it was like he served 13 months and then he was out back on the New York scene. And the journalist who brought that story to me was actually a sex trafficking activist. She wasn't really a journalist, but she had been interviewing a Mexican child sex trafficker in prison who made the comment, you know, most of the girls we bring in are we take them to rich sort of party people in Miami. And she was sort of stunned because she thought that his business was really with cartels. And she then sort of connected it to a small item in a Palm Beach paper, which said that Jeffrey Epstein, who was someone she had known from New York, had been arrested and had a small sentence, took her to the Palm Beach police stations, went through the files.

4:13And then her hair's on fire, because what she reads is that there are so many girls who had complained. It was outrageous. It's like, how did this case get down to a slap on the wrist? That's what sort of set us on our journey. That was the story that she brought to me. and which ended in a sort of six-part investigation into the depraved world of Jeffrey Epstein. And did Jeffrey Epstein push back? Did he threaten? What happened? Yes, well, what happened is, is that we published the first piece, and I got a call from Epstein's lawyer saying, you know, this is outrageous, these pieces are not, you know, right, you really can't do this.

4:46We went on, and then I got a call from Epstein, who I had met at one of the Clinton Global Initiative opening receptions, and saw him, you know, I didn't make a deep connection with him. He was a sort of cold-eyed operator who was working in the room, looking over my shoulder, you know, at anybody more important. But I had met him. I'd met him enough that twice I think I met him there. So he knew, you know, he could call me. He knew me. So he called me and he said, you know, look, this woman, Conchita Sanoff, who wrote this piece, is a well-known nutcase. This is outrageous. You know, I'm going to sue you, et cetera.

5:18So, again, we ignored him. I then subsequently went out for lunch one day. at the Daily Beast, during the course of these stories running, I came back from lunch. We had glass offices in that time. They were downtown in Barry Diller's glass building downtown. I came back to my glass-walled office, and there, sitting at my desk, you know, waiting for me, was guess who? Jeffrey Epstein. Now, I, to this day, have absolutely no idea how he got past the security desk. It's a tough security desk. I was there the other day, same guys. I mean, you know, you get to get your picture taken, and how Jeffrey Epstein got in, I don't know, but it kind of speaks to his commonship essentially that he would always get where he wanted to get he was sitting in there waiting for me and I literally stood by the door and I said Jeffrey what are you doing here he said I wanted to say to you to speak to you in person I said we've already had this conversation via the lawyers he said just stop and he looked at me with these kind of cold snaky eyes it was just ice and it was very intimidating and I said look you know, Jeffrey, if you have something to say, you should talk to our lawyers, you know, you shouldn't really be here.

6:26He said, just stop. And if you don't stop, there are going to be consequences. And he got up and he left the room. So I was extremely rattled because I mean, you know, I mean, having this guy sitting in my room, I mean, what the hell? And I waited for a kind of flurry of legal letters, etc. Strangely, there weren't. And I think that he'd made a computation which was accurate at the time, which is that if he didn't fan it, it would sort of go away. And that's because in these pre-MeToo days, because this was like 2013, I think it was, there wasn't the same interest in sort of young girls and men and powerful men abusing them and stuff.

7:10People didn't really pick up big on it because Jeffrey Epstein wasn't a figure, really. I mean, he was a sort of financial, cafe society, Manhattan guy, you know, who was sometimes in the columns but he wasn't like a household name or anything at all at that time so he didn't get major pickup he got a little bit not enough for it to disturb epstein and actually what he did do instead was to send out like a flurry of stuff about his philanthropy there were suddenly all kinds of pieces everywhere about his philanthropy with harvard and his philanthropy with this philanthropy with that so he basically went on a kind of you know philanthropy charm offensive and as far as he was concerned it went away left us feeling extremely rattled and pleased that we'd actually done this this story the irony was is that about six weeks later i get this phone call from a new york publicist called peggy siegel and said tina i want you to ask you to a great dinner we're having and i'm sure you're going to want to come and i said oh who's coming peggy she said well it's for prince andrew and she said i said really where is it she said it's at jeffrey epstein's house she said she said the other guests are woody allen and charlie rose and george stefanopoulos I mean Woody Allen and Charlie Rose and Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew so I yelled and somebody the other day reminded me because he was in the next desk I literally yelled into the phone what is this the fucking Predator's Ball you know are you out of your mind am I going to come to this dinner party and I was so outraged I think I was outraged on two counts not only that I was so offended like we'd done this six-part series and she obviously hadn't read it and secondly you know I was doing a lot of work at that time you know with Women in the World the summits that I created which is about giving voice to women who've been sort of abused and trafficked and she was asking me to this outrageous dinner party so anyway that dinner party became a sort of night of shame in Manhattan in subsequent accounts so I was very glad that I wasn't at it although I have to say in some ways I'm really sad I wasn't because I mean this was like epic This was like the cartoon of the story, essentially, was these guys at Jeffrey Epstein's house.

9:10But it also shows, you know, post his case where he'd been accused of being a pedophile. It was all still rolling around. It was all still going on. He was still having dinner parties for Prince Andrew and the other people. One of the other people there was Katie Couric, the excellent, you know, the morning host and George Stephanopoulos, who, you know, I think went out of journalistic interest. You know, so she could still she was rallying society for Jeffrey Epstein and it was still working, although it didn't work with me. I'm actually pleased to say. Well, that's such a fascinating insight on two levels, in the sense that New York society is on one hand very big, but it's also kind of very small that if you are, you know, in the circle and moving in the right circles, then this is what you get invited to.

9:55But also that sense that this was a different era when, you know, these powerful men with a certain land could, you know, be everywhere and with attractive young women. And Donald Trump was part of that world in that era. That's right. I mean, there was no cancel culture at that point. Now, Trump, you know, he was a very, very good friend of Epstein's. You know, Trump is such a kind of adolescent, you know, I mean, he really is. He's like pathetically sort of, you know, the whole thing where he's caught on tape saying, yeah, I grab him by the pussy. I mean, he's a braggart about sex. He's an ogler.

10:36You know, I mean, he loved to. There's a great little piece of videotape where you see him and Epstein at a party and they're clearly talking about women. And it's all like you can tell that he's saying, like, look, what about her? You know, she's pretty great. What do you want to do with her? You know, there's a kind of ogling adolescent attitude to models. It was all about models, models, models. They were like the Victoria's Secret shows together. And there was actually a big model culture in New York in the 90s. I mean, I remember very much that, you know, people I knew who had clubs and things.

11:05It was always about we just got to get like 20 models in and then we'll launch the club. So some models and having them in the clubs as kind of bait for the rich guys was very much a thing in the 90s, actually. And Trump was very much part of that. You know, he just loved models. Look, he married one. You know, that was his scene. So then we go to today, because that is such a vivid picture that you paint. And I'm trying to understand the whole sequencing of events where Donald Trump has always been the master of being able to deflect, to distract, to make people look somewhere else than where he wants them to look.

11:49And yet it's not working this time. Why doesn't Donald Trump just say, yeah, of course, my name's in the Epstein files. I was I was a mate of his in the but I didn't do anything wrong. I just don't understand how the White House is getting this so wrong at the moment. Well, I know he's he's in a panic for the first time, really, because, you know, I wrote a piece in my Fresh Hell substact called Orange Lotus, which is about, you know, how how Trump sort of has always structured the presidency thus far as a series of shows that he rolls out new episodes, new seasons. It's going to be bombing Iran and we're going to do tariffs.

12:24And then when we're all bored with tariffs, we're going to meet for that. So he's great as being a kind of literally the ultimate showrunner of his presidency. This is an episode he didn't write. This is an episode he didn't want. And he has always said, yeah, sure, I knew Epstein a bit, but he was a creep. You know, I threw him out of my club for going after a girl who was the daughter of one of my friends. So that has been his position thus far. I think he must be in a panic because honestly, I mean, you know, it's almost like it's not a mystery. He clearly is all over these files. And I'm not quite sure why he didn't think more clearly about that, about what was going to happen if these files were ever released, because they've all spent, he and his supporters and his podcast army have spent years building up this kind of notion of a rampant network of global liberal pedophiles, pedophiles, which seems to be kind of a core belief system, you know, essentially for this sort of from QAnon to the kind of MAGA extremes.

13:24They are obsessed with this issue of like a global elite and pedophiles. And so he's let that rampage on because it suited him so well. But now the crazy podcasters, unfortunately, he's appointed them to the Justice Department. And I mean, that's what happens when you get, you know, people who've never done anything serious in their life are suddenly like in the Justice Department, in the FBI. They haven't changed. They're still foaming about these conspiracy theories. And they've got their own credibility, their own audiences. I mean, Dan Bongiano, who is the deputy FBI director, I mean, he had a podcast, he had millions of followers, he was making a fortune.

14:00Now he's been recruited to be the deputy FBI director. He's earning like 133 ,000 bucks a year. He said, you know, in an interview on Fox in a kind of whining tone, you know, they're like, yeah, I have to work so hard. I get up these days at 7.30 in the morning and stare at these white walls. And you think, yeah, that's kind of called having a job. You remember all those people that doge fired? I mean, those, you know, public servants kind of was their life for a great deal of time, paid$133 ,000. But for him, it's like, this is just an awful life I'm leading. I much preferred what I was doing before, fulminating away and throwing out rubbish that had no facts attached.

14:35And then he actually said like, well, I'm now in an evidence-based world. I thought, yeah, that's right. You know, you're in the FBI and you're in an evidence-based world. So he can't do it anymore. And they're in such a bind, you know, these people, because this is what they've spent their lives doing, is spewing out absolutely unsubstantiated facts. And they have their own credibility to think about in their realm of podcasting followers. I mean, I think Dan Bongino is half out the door. I mean, he's the one who wants to return to that world where he could sit there bloviating, you know, in his basement and getting a fortune.

15:06But it's like a morality tale in some ways, isn't it? In the sense that, look, these people, Dan Bongino, Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, Donald Trump himself, have kind of made their careers on creating conspiracy theories which are virtually impossible to kill off. they have given oxygen to the idea that there is this thing called the epstein files full of powerful influential people as you say the q anon theory of this pedophile ring and suddenly donald trump's name is on it and they want to say there's nothing to see here move on and not surprisingly those people who've been fed on conspiracy theories are saying hang on i do want to see that's right and you know what to me one of the critical sort of tells essentially there was you You know, there was a kind of pastiche of different podcasters, you know, saying how angry they are about the Epstein files the other day on TV.

15:58One of them, Candace Owen, who is a kind of great, you know, MAGA conspiracy theorist. She's an anti-vaxxer, anti-Semite, anti-anti-anti-crazy woman. She actually says in a sort of injured tone, you know, on the podcast, it's almost as if Trump thinks we're stupid. To which I wanted to say, you think. you think that really you really think that trump all this time might not have taken his base seriously well i mean the whole scam of trumpland is like based on the fact that he thinks his base is stupid i mean he said so he said i could shoot somebody on fifth avenue and they would still follow me it's all been based on that they're just supposed to believe whatever garbage you know he siphons out of his rectum quite honestly and now they're going like well it's almost like he doesn't think we're important.

16:45He doesn't, you know, but now he's caught because in a sense at this moment, does he own MAGA or does MAGA own him? Well, it's such an interesting question. Do you think this represents a threat to him? I think it's the biggest threat because I definitely think it's at the very least, look, the polls show that there is a big drop of approval in him as regards the Epstein matter, but not as regards to is Trump doing a good job as president. They're still absolutely with their man, with Trump. It could greatly suppress enthusiasm at the polls in the midterms. It could suppress that enthusiasm, you know, instead of MAGA rushing to to help him out in the midterms which are coming, which are, you know, like your by elections, which are going to be very critical because, you know, the House and Senate majority so small that, you know, if they lose it, my God, I mean, that will be so great for the Democrats.

17:35So it's a slim, slim margin. And he knows that if this suppresses enthusiasm, that's a problem for him. And I think at the very least, you could say, I wouldn't go as far as to say, this is the sort of the thing that will turn his base off. But there's this chink in the armor now, this little bad suspicion that Trump has committed bad faith. Because the interesting thing about MAGA, and it is really interesting, is like they really believe that Trump speaks to them. You know, there was a very interesting documentary, actually, that Nancy Pelosi's daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, who's a really good filmmaker, made with the January the Sixers, you know, who were sort of at that point.

18:13They'd been put in prison and they were coming out. And this was before they were pardoned. And she interviewed a great many of them and she expected them to say, you know what, like he wasn't there for me. I went to prison. What, you know, where was he? Nowhere. I like I, you know, this has just been ruined my life. Not at all. They all said the same thing. I'd do it again. He speaks to us. We never have had a politician before who understood our whole way of thinking. He's our guy. So they have this sense. Trump has gave them the sense that they were special. They were finally understood, valued, and validated by a politician, whereas all the liberals had always discarded them, looked down on them and condescended to them.

18:55So that is a really tight bond. I mean, that is the tight, tight bond of MAGA with Trump. So I would say this is the first thing that's put a chink of suspicion in their minds. It's like, did he commit bad faith towards us? So it's not good for Trump. But, you know, for the last 10 years, I was just talking to someone last night, every few weeks we'll go, well, that's it. This is, you know, what he's just done. That's the end. I mean, this case this you know grabber by the pussy saying that john mccain was not a war hero i mean how many times like every time he says some of one of these things and people go well that's the end of trump he's never going to survive this never true always he found a way teflon you know to get through it so i would be loath to say this is the thing you know that's going to do him in because he always does seem to find a way to get through it doesn't he but i guess the power of what we're in at the moment is the thing that always struck me covering Trump was that his base never thought of him as a politician.

19:55They thought that he was like them. And yet the dissembling that we've seen, the cover up over what was in the Epstein files, Pam Bondi saying, right, we're closing the case now a month after they find out that Donald Trump's name is all over it. It just sounds like a politician. It totally does. And I mean, I think, you know, And we underestimate the unusualness of the fact that he's now dispatched his person in the Justice Department, Todd Blanche, who until this time had always been one of Trump's criminal lawyers. I mean, every single person of seniority now in the Justice Department and the FBI were former Trump criminal lawyers, everyone.

20:29So he's dispatching the deputy AG to the Tallahassee prison now to have this interview with Julian Epstein. This is absolutely unique. unique. I mean, there's no way that the deputy AG would be sent to a prison to interview, essentially, a lowly prisoner. They would just simply dispatch one of their investigators to go and interview her. So that sort of shows, essentially, they're so desperate to find something with Jelaine or offer this. But you see, where's that going to get them? Because if Jelaine has anything that she could try to sort of use to commute her own sentence, because, I mean, she, at this point, if she had anything that could get her out of prison and where she's supposed to be malingering for the next 20 years, she'll use it.

21:12But I mean, if they take that information and it has any real relevance of any kind, and I can't see that it will, and then they have to give her a deal to come out, how's that going to please MAGA? What? You've just let out the primary procurece of Jeffrey Epstein? You're not going to be able to do that. So it's just another distraction, frankly. And then his new thing of trying to launch this new idea that Obama, in a kind of almost treasonous act, launched this Russia investigation simply to sort of throw the election to Hillary, which is now the big reveal that he's done. I don't think people give a damn about the Russia thing anymore.

21:48That's really old potatoes. That is Trump off his game. He's wrong about that. Nobody cares about the Russia investigation. And they don't give a damn about what Obama did in 2000 and whatever the hell. The news cycle moves so quickly. And anyway, the Russia investigation how does that compete with pedophilia and billionaires I mean come on which show would you rather watch I'm finding it very unnerving because it's like you're reading my questions because I had my next question to you was going to be about Ghislaine Maxwell and what is going on there it's a very curious thing that the deputy AG is going to see her What do you think is going on there?

22:29Well, you know, look, I think it would be a dream, wouldn't it, if she said, you know, that letter that the Wall Street Journal published, he didn't actually write that. That would be a win if she would say that. I'd say if I was facing 20 years in prison. But unfortunately, you know, Ghislaine doesn't have much of a good track record. I mean, she was already convicted on two counts of perjury in the libel defamation case that Virginia Dufried launched with her. So she's already perjured herself in court before she even got this other sentence on the sex trafficking stuff. And I don't know what she could give.

23:03I mean, she could do perhaps two things. She could say that she could name six prominent Democrats, all of whom were pedophiles. But it still begs the question, what was Donald Trump doing in all of this? And it isn't going to get them prosecuted. I mean, you have to have more than her just blowing off steam and saying, you know, know it was actually all bill clinton and bill gates and bill you know whoever she says that she's got i actually question really whether she really has anything at this point i mean the trouble is that jelaine's primary mistake was epstein killing himself you know because she couldn't turn him over i mean it was crushing for her that that happened because she became like the surrogate for jeffrey epstein so she's maggot's surrogate for jeffrey epstein and i don't see how she gets out it's impossible isn't it to see how it ends up that there is nobody who is held to account for epstein's crimes if gillaine maxwell walks free i mean that would take some selling by donald trump and he is the marketeer extraordinaire but even that would be testing his abilities i don't see how he spins that i truly don't i mean i mean we don't know what she has if she has anything i mean i was quite surprised that they had never interviewed her before in the Justice Department, but I gather it was because, you know, she was claiming innocence and so she, you know, she didn't want a plea deal because her point was that I'm innocent and she wanted to have a trial.

24:23I mean, she's made many, many mistakes. I mean, I would have thought that giving up anything she could would have been a way to, but, you know, once he was dead, who have you got? You know, I mean, I don't know how much she has. And I don't think, I mean, Dershowitz has said, you know, there are no names, you know, in this file. There are no sort of videotapes. I don't know what to believe on his part. I think it's highly unlikely. I mean, I haven't met anyone who knew a lot about Epstein who thinks that there is this, quote, list of names. I mean, I don't think that Jeffrey Epstein, the way he moved and rolled, I don't think he had a kind of a list.

24:55He didn't work like that. I mean, it was all sort of subterfugural for such a word, like a mix of money laundering and money hiding and, and, you know, sexual, you know, transgressions and the mix of the two. And it was all such a mix with Jeffrey Epstein. And a lot of times, you know, people tend to assume anybody mixed up with him was sort of a pedophile. Well, it just wasn't true. I mean, you know, he had all these other games going on. I mean, he would basically use anything he had against people to get what he needed. And sometimes it was sex, sometimes it was hiding their money, you know, sometimes it was deals that he brought to them.

25:30So he had many ways of operating, all of them dubious, but it involved this giant network that sometimes overlaps. Sometimes it It was money and sex. You know, there's a couple I can think of that were clearly that. We'll be back with more from Tina in just a moment. I'm crime journalist Andy Hughes, one of the presenters from The Crime Agents. On this week's main episode, we'll tell you how the security services foil terror plots. Here's my co-host Neil Basu, the former head of counterterrorism policing, explaining how he and his team stopped a terrorist from committing mass murder in the heart of Westminster.

26:07He hasn't got his knives because his mother's hidden them, so he goes off and buys a rucksack and some new knives and equips himself effectively. He's got a burner phone on him, which he disposes of, and we see him crossing Westminster Bridge and throwing it in the Thames. That phone was never recovered. And I remember picking up the phone to my counter-terrorism commander, the same job Cressida Dick was doing in 21-7 when Jean-Charles de Menazes was killed. Basically running a surveillance operation with the responsibility of calling a critical shot if required. So if we thought Khalid Ali had a bomb, and he was an experienced bomb maker, and that was in the rucksack, this CT commander might have had to have given critical shot authorised, that's the language, critical shot authorised, which would have led to a firearms officer killing Khalid Ali.

26:58He never had to give that command. And the worst thing was, we had a surveillance loss on Khalid Ali. I know, I heard. as he was wandering around Westminster. I was going to bring that up. Yeah, well, this is... What a massive error that was. Well, that's a pretty challenging comment, Andy. Well, this was, wasn't it? I mean, you're losing sight of a guy who is potentially on the way to commit terror. What it is is the reality of doing surveillance in urban environments. To find out what's up next, check out The Crime Agents on Global Player or wherever you get your podcasts.

27:32You know what quality feels like. You can see it in the way a fabric moves, recognize it in a flawless fit, and appreciate it in the details that make our styles unique. It's the standard Coldwater Creek has honored for over 40 years, derived from a rich Mountain West heritage, and designed for today in styles that are distinctively Coldwater Creek. For a wardrobe you can count on season after season, visit coldwatercreek.com shop new arrivals and save 15 on purchases 75 or more with code iheart this is the news agents tina can we talk now about the journalism because i suppose some will find it striking i certainly do that rupert murdoch's wall street journal has sort of been leading the charge on this when it It was Rupert Murdoch's Fox News that got sued for seven hundred and eighty seven million dollars over the Dominion voting machine nonsense that they spewed out after the 2020 election.

28:37And yet here we see the Wall Street Journal standing tough against Donald Trump. Well, I mean, first of all, kudos to Emma Tucker, the editor of the journal, who I think is doing a fantastic job at the moment of breaking stories and hanging tough and being altogether a superb editor, actually. I think that what people don't realize about Mordok is that although with the Fox side of things, he absolutely is. That's a codependent relationship with Trump. He does feel somewhat differently about his newspapers in that, you know, he is a tabloid man to his core. I mean, empty his veins and out will come, you know, tabloid ink.

29:16So one of the things that Mordok loves most is a sex scandal. I mean, he's a huge gossip. I'm told that he calls like the editors, his various editors, two or three times a day with like, what do you think about this? And who's this and who's up and who's down and like, you know, who's sleeping with who? And like he loves tabloid gossip and he always has. Moloch doesn't have it in his DNA to reject or kill a story as good as this one, which is a porny doodle by the president of the United States in a birthday book about Epstein, which sort of incriminates him and makes him look ridiculous. Because, you know, Murdoch's long 70-year career essentially has been about embarrassing celebrities and powerful people and somehow using that power that he has to embarrass as part of his leverage of power.