Epstein and the #MeToo of It All

0:01This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.

0:17I'm Lydia Polgreen, a columnist at New York Times Opinion, and I'm here with contributing opinion writer Molly Jong-Fast, host of the Fast Politics podcast. Hi, Molly. Hi, Lydia. Well, we are here to talk Epstein files. Molly, you just came back from D.C. where you were at a press conference of Epstein survivors on Tuesday. And we're taping this on Wednesday morning. So I wanted to talk to you about where the Epstein saga sits in the broader arc of Me Too and the movement that has stumbled along the way. And what it says that three of the four Republicans who broke ranks with Trump were all women.

0:55Anyway, before we get into the broader context, let's talk about the press event that you went to. It sounds like it was quite a scene. So I think it's worth pulling back and looking at Tuesday. Tuesday was a day that for Donald Trump was like right out of Macbeth. We saw a president who had successfully gotten away with a lot of stuff. All of a sudden, Jeffrey Epstein, like Banquo's ghost, comes back. These files weed their way through, you know, Trump is hanging out with Mohammed bin Salman. doing a press conference in his Golden Oval Office. And at the same time, these women are doing a press conference right outside of the Cannon building.

1:44And you have this ghost of a story that has come back once again. And now the discharge petition goes right through the House that same day, and it goes to the Senate and it passes the Senate. And it is just a very sort of Shakespearean moment of a problem that Donald Trump had, and we don't know how big a problem, right? We don't really know what's in those files. So he certainly behaves like someone who does not want those files to be released. And it comes back to him. You know, it's just a very cinematic and also morally important and atrocious moment. I mean, one of the things that's really striking about this whole saga, I mean, And this has been going on now for two decades, right?

2:29You know, Jeffrey Epstein first, you know, kind of gets into legal trouble just about 20 years ago. He does a little bit of time, very soft time. And this was all before the Me Too movement started, right? Or the Me Too movement, I should say, became a big public phenomenon with the exposure and ultimately the downfall of Harvey Weinstein, thanks to reporting by some of our colleagues. And, you know, the scope and scale of the Epstein crisis coming at a moment when it seems as though there is this kind of like Me Too has gone too far, that, you know, it was being applied, you know, that men weren't being allowed to be men.

3:10So it's been really interesting to sort of see the way that this whole case has unfolded and the politics around it have unfolded. Like, how have you kind of seen the Me Too of it all as you've watched this happening? Well, so that, I mean, that was why I thought we should talk was because I think of you as a very, as someone who is also following this, like these rapid cycling of progress and, you know, progress and reversal and progress and reversal and progress and reversal. So what I thought, you know, like the sort of moment I would take away from that press conference was one of the survivors, and I think it's Annie Farmer, talked about how she and her sister had called the FBI under Bush.

3:58No, under Clinton, under Clinton, and said, you know, we have this thing we want to report, that they had hung up on her. And it was just, for me, the sheer magnitude of different administrations, different parties, all, you know, having been in some way responsible for an FBI that did not take these women seriously. In 1996, when my sister Maria bravely blew the whistle on this group by reporting to the FBI what Epstein and Maxwell did to both of us, they hung up on the phone on her and there was no follow up of any kind. Bill Clinton was president. In 2006, the FBI came to us, finally interviewed us, and asked us both to be witnesses against Epstein.

4:44We were very anxious, but we agreed. And then we didn't hear back from them due to their infamous sweetheart deal. George W. Bush was president. In 2015, when the DOJ was sent a FOIA request for Maria's FBI files and they were denied, as they have been many times, Barack Obama was president. In 2019, when Epstein died in prison due to either negligence or foul play, Donald Trump was president. And she said this thing, which is like, think of all the people, all the girls who got hurt during the period when we were trying to raise the alarm. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that has really struck me about the Epstein case and about Me Too more generally.

5:26A lot of people think about Me Too as starting with Harvey Weinstein and, you know, that kind of opened the floodgates. But in fact, Me Too was first popularized by Tarana Burke, who is a Black American activist. And it was inspired by many conversations that she had with teenage girls about the terrible experiences they had with sexual abuse, harassment. And what that really highlights for me is that so much of this conversation about Epstein and about this, you know, kind of vast conspiracy of pedophilia. You know, you think about controversies like Pizzagate and all of, you know, the kind of QAnon belief that there were Democratic, you know, powerful Democratic leaders who were trafficking children out of a pizzeria in Washington.

6:13But all of that obscures the fact that sexual exploitation of girls and teenagers in this country is endemic. Surely it happens among power brokers, but I think for most people, their connection to a situation like this is actually something that they've witnessed in their own life. And the conspiracy feels more like a conspiracy of silence of powerful men wherever they happen to find themselves, right? Like the powerful man might be the head of a family or it might be, you know, the head of a company or, you know, or the head of a small business. Right, your boss at the Taco Bell. There's a power dynamic there.

6:51Exactly. And so I think that one of the reasons that, I mean, it's just really striking to me that Me Too took off once it became clear that this, you know, kind of broader societal problem that was just kind of bubbling below the surface starts to be written about at the very kind of top of society, right? talking about the big power brokers. And I think there's something similar happening with Epstein, right? I'm really struck by the fact that these three, the three of the four Republicans who signed on were all women. And two of the three have spoken publicly about their own experiences, you know, in the case of Nancy Mace, of sexual assault and domestic violence.

7:31For Lauren Boebert, definitely domestic violence. And for Marjorie Taylor Greene, I think a sense that that in this kind of chauvinistic Washington, she's being pushed around, she's getting belittled, she's told what she can and can't do. And, you know, I don't want to read too much into it, but you sort of have to think, like, these are women of a certain age who have— Who are our age. Yes, our age, exactly. Who know what the score is, right? And have surely seen in their own lives, their own friends, their own communities, case after case of teenage girls who've been exploited or have, you know, been pressured into, you know, having a relationship with a man who's too old for them.

8:13All those kinds of things that we know, all the way up to, you know, like horrific sexual, you know, childhood sexual abuse. So I think that there's something about this saga and the role of these three women that is just totally fascinating. It just delves into this thing that connects it to people's life experience. And it is, you know, it's funny because it's like, as someone who covers politicians, I have become so cynical of everyone's motives. And, you know, especially over the last decade of Trumpism, you know, you just it's hard to think that these people want what's best for anyone. Really, honestly, they don't have some cynical ulterior motive that it's about, you know, preserving their own power or whatever.

8:55Exactly. Especially Marjorie Taylor Greene, who really did say a lot of crazy stuff over the last eight years. And it has some very odious beliefs. Very. Yeah. But what I do think is interesting is like when I saw – when I was there, you could see that these victims felt very connected with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Huh, that's fascinating. Yeah. I mean you really could see – because they're not faking it. They don't – you know, and in fact, some – you know, one of them was like I voted for Trump and you've betrayed me. Not quite that, but basically that. So they were not faking it. And the other thing that I want to just mention about the victims is these women, and remember, there are probably hundreds of women.

9:39There may be as many, I think. I mean, this was years and years and years of abuse. But these women had not ever been together. So that first press conference when the discharge petition got started, they had a real camaraderie and they started talking about reading a list. And they talked about it again yesterday. I haven't seen any reporting about this, but they did in fact talk about one of the victims said, you know, Marjorie said she'll read a list of our names. And Representative Jaipal said she would too. So there really is appetite for information. So even if the Trump DOJ, which really does serve at the pleasure of Donald Trump at this moment, as you can tell from Pam Bondi's just general acquiescence on every point, this list, these names, there really is a feeling these names are getting read.

10:34Yeah. So there's like a kind of desire to kind of put this out into the world and make it into something that's like part of the congressional record, that's part of the kind of the overall sweep of these events. Again, just coming back to these three Republican women in Congress, like they really were under a tremendous amount of pressure. Given the level of pressure that they were under, it's remarkable that they held up. But it's also interesting to me to think about kind of like the arc of Me Too and the arc of how, you know, we went from this moment where there was just this tremendous pressure for accountability and then quite quickly a feeling that it had gone too far, you know.

11:16Quite quickly, yes. And admittedly, like the gamut of people who got caught up in Me Too, there were truly onerous ogres like Harvey Weinstein, you know, or you look at somebody like Kevin Spacey, you know, who was very clearly had a long track record of, you know, if not criminal behavior, then, you know, very serious harassment against young male actors over many years. But then as time progresses, you know, and it starts to catch up with figures like Al Franken, the Democratic senator from Minnesota and former comedian. I guess he's still a comedian. You know, Aziz Ansari, that was one of the most kind of edge cases that I think turned a lot of people off of Me Too.

11:57And it's funny because, like, I do think you mentioned this earlier. There is this kind of cyclical nature to these things where there's accountability. There's a sense that this cannot go on. And then there's a backlash. So where do you think we are in this cycle? Yeah, it's such a good point. You know, I had for a long time believed that this was the nature of modern life and technology and that it was the failing of technology. I don't know why. I had this whole theory in my head that it was a failing of technology. But I actually now think if you think about the book Backlash, Susan Faludi's just seminal Bible of the sort of war against feminism.

12:32Yep. And you think about like the periods. I mean, I actually was rereading it again. Phyllis Schafly, the Equal Rights Amendment, because I feel like that is such a—I feel like that's a very similar story in a way. The Equal Rights Amendment, a piece of legislation that would have guaranteed women equal rights. And the pushback to that and those years where they had passed it through the Congress but couldn't get it ratified by the states. And there was this concerted effort by conservative women to show that they didn't need it. And I feel like there's this sort of, it feels like a similar kind of pushback to movement to pushback.

13:11I don't want to be wrong. And I feel like whenever you want to try to predict the future, whenever I predict the future, I'm always wrong. You know, I'm always told that like predicting the future is bad podcasting. But that said, now I'll predict the future. It does feel like an important moment. Yeah. And I think that what's crucial is in these moments, they need to be able to connect to the experiences that ordinary people have in their own lives. You know, it's not just about the shadowy group of financiers and, you know, media moguls and, you know, elite university professors who have this kind of old boys network who are helping each other out at the highest levels of society.

13:54This is something that's happening in every social context. And all of that is just happening kind of silently. And the women who are experiencing it are like, oh, wait, it's happening there too. And that I think is like, again, too, me too. That was the whole kind of like origin and momentum of the movement. I want to ask you a question. Yeah. So I think there's an element to this which is privilege. Yeah. And I think that the victims are—a lot of this is about this—so I'm going to tell a very quick story. During Me Too, a friend of mine said, well, no one ever Me Too'd me. And I said, you come from a fancy family.

14:38Nobody's going to Me Too you because they know your mom. And I wondered if that, when you look at these victims, right, like one was picked up at Mar-a-Lago for massage, like these, you know, or she was a spa attendant, right? Virginia was a 16-year-old spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago. Like these women were disenfranchised enough so they didn't have a powerful mom they could call. Yeah. Yeah. No, and I think that, you know, that's a huge part of the story, right? is that, and again, this connects back to the sort of like ubiquity and just how common this kind of sexual exploitation is of young women.

15:17Again, not by fancy rich people, although that certainly happens, but by people that are close to them. I mean, I think there have been a number of stories that have come out about how these teenage girls who ended up in the, you know, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein's clutches had had previous experiences of being exploited. again, not by somebody with a private island and a Manhattan townhouse, but by somebody close to them. And that is sort of the painful reality of how these things work. I want to talk a little bit about this question of accountability, because I think there's been this sense that, you know, Trump never ultimately pays a price for what he does.

15:57He always manages, he's Teflon Don, he always manages to get away with it. Do you think this time will be different? So it's funny because, like, if you think about Epstein, 2007, it looks like the walls are closing in. And then he signs this non-prosecution agreement with Alex Acosta. 2008, he does a year of, like, couture jail where he's, like, basically sort of walks in, walks out. He's doing this. He's doing that. It's in Palm Beach. I think that the way it works with a lot of powerful men, I would say people, but it's really men. because even like powerful women, they tend to get held accountable.

16:37Like I'm thinking about Martha Stewart and James Comey. Like I'm thinking about, you know, like Martha Stewart, a lot of people would not have gone to jail for what Martha Stewart went to jail for. A lot of powerful men, it's like sometimes the process is imperfect, but eventually it happens. And when Trump was out of office, he did end up, you know, judicated by E. Jean Carroll. He did end up owing millions of dollars. So I do think that this accountability thing, it happens. Sometimes it takes, you know, a couple pushes. So I'm not convinced. I also am not a person who believes, like, I don't think the arc, you know, I don't think history, it just stops.

17:18Like, I think it keeps going. Yeah. And it's kind of gross, right? Because the answer to the question of, like, you know, should there be accountability should just be yes rather than, you know, who's it going to hurt? Which side is going to get more hurt by it? But there's been a lot of talk about, well, you know, Epstein, the circles that he ran in, this is actually going to affect more Democrats than it is Republicans. I mean, I don't know about that. But I have a slightly different view, which is that I think it'll actually be a really good thing if this whole network and constellation of powerful men who are part of, you know, this in varying degrees.

17:55Some of them not criminal. Some of them just creepy. Some of them just really bad judgment. I think if all of those figures, regardless of what their politics are, are swept away and pushed into retirement and sent off to live out the last of their days in some kind of shame, that would not necessarily be a bad thing. And I would say it's not necessarily a bad thing, like especially for the Democratic Party. You know, you need this renewal. You need new figures who are untouched, who were never part of these awful power games and networks that they used to play. And I almost think of it as being a little bit like the dividing line between Democrats who opposed the Iraq War and those who voted for it, right?

18:37Again, it's an imperfect analogy, obviously. Different situation. But I think that there was something really healthy about that becoming, in effect, a kind of litmus test, you know, to have a clear moral point of view about whether, you know, the Iraq War was a huge mistake or not. So, I don't know. I mean, thinking about accountability less in like who goes to jail and more in terms of how does our culture and politics shift at the end of this? I don't know. That feels like a real possibility coming out of this. You know, it's funny because we're friends besides being colleagues. Yes. And I always think of you as a person who has in their head moral, like moral questions, who doesn't, who try, you know, I mean, nobody is perfect, but who in their head is constantly sort of thinking of the moral implications of things, which I hope that's not over.

19:31I hope I'm not like, you know, this is not my own fantasy of you. But like, and I too am often, I think, not because I'm so great, but because I got sober when I was 19. And so I'm always thinking about like the moral implications of like, will this make you feel so bad that ultimately you start drinking? You know, that kind of thing. And so I do see, you have to wonder, like after 2007, these people all knew, right? Like he was on the registered sex offender website because I remember I once I found the app and I was looking at it and I pushed Central Park and he came up. So he was on he was like a registered sex offender on the registry.

20:12Who lived not that far from you. Not that far. No. And your kids. Yes. And my kids. So, you know, and so though, of course, they never would have gone for any of the kids who were like private school kids because they knew that they couldn't. And that, I think, is like such an important—you and I are both, I think, you know, we want to talk about like the layers of privilege and wealth and how they—because, you know, the one thing that Donald Trump, I think, ever said that was a benefit to society was he said the system is rigged. Yeah. And he was—and about that one thing, I mean, of course, he wanted to rig it more for himself, but about that one thing he was correct.

20:52So I do, but I do think like the moral question of like, if you are going to the home of someone who's a registered sex offender, you know, like the Woody Allen dinner parties, like you are, you know. Yeah, there's no denying it that you know. It's clear that some of the people involved here chose to stay in contact and in warm and affectionate contact with Epstein long after they knew. And that, I think, is where ultimately, like, the accountability is just going to be kind of undeniable. And, you know, I say sweep them all away. Yeah, I do, too. I also agree with that point. You know, Bill Clinton's in there.

21:34Bill Clinton was president in the 90s, and it was a very different time for how we think about powerful men. Yeah, yeah. No, obviously, and, you know, our mutual friend Monica Lewinsky has lots to say about that. She really does. You obviously have had a lot of conversations and talked to a lot of people. And there is this sense that this Epstein saga has split Donald Trump's coalition in a way that nothing else has. Why do you think that is? What is it about this particular story that has led to such a profound cleavage? So I think it's two parts. So one is they were radicalized on Pizzagate.

22:16in 2016 when Donald Trump was running for office, WikiLeaks kept releasing these emails. I actually went back and looked this up. Emails from like John Podesta to his brother Tony about like pizza and do you know he was talking about like a walnut sauce like tell me because they're both big cooks okay. So these and these emails were interpreted to be child sex trafficking. So this was the very beginning of Trumpism, right before Trump got elected the first time. So I think you had a base that had an origin story that was Donald Trump is going to end a sex trafficking ring. Then fast forward, QAnon 2020, he's making overtures towards QAnon when he's running for reelection.

23:03He's saying the storm is coming. QAnon, again, a follow-up of Pizzagate, there is a cabal of sex trafficking powerful men and that Trump is going to bring them down. Here we are, Fast forward. We are in 2025. There is actually, it's not really, I mean, yeah, it's a cabal. There's a cabal of powerful men. There's a ringleader, right, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine. But there clearly are many people who are many, I think, mostly men who are doing this. And so, like, you have a base that's radicalized on an origin story that turns out to be true. Well, I mean, that's that classic line, right? Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

23:42Yeah. Sometimes conspiracies turn out to be true. It's just that instead of using obscure coded language of, you know, walnut sauce and pies, it's, you know, like very directly, I'm trying to hook up with this hot lady. Jeffrey, what's your advice? And there is something sort of sad and banal and frankly kind of tragic about that. And speaking of sad and banal, the other thing I would say just is an underlying thing. Like, I personally would be more gratified if it were like a return of Me Too that dissected the MAGA movement, if it were women's rights that came in and did it. But you have to realize also that what's bubbling below the surface is a movement that has been promised for about 10 years that they were going to – Trump was going to make things cheaper.

24:34And he hasn't. And in fact, things have gotten more expensive. And that he was going to do things like bring back coal jobs and bring back manufacturing. And so some of this, I think, is like as much as I, in my own belief system, would like it to be that finally the women are winning. There's also, I think, an underlying dissatisfaction that is stoking the flames. Well, Molly, I think we should leave it there. Thank you so much for talking with me. It was great to see you. It was so great. Thank you for having me.

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26:11Thank you.