I’m happy to share this week’s Reason Roundtable podcast here, above as video and audio and below via links to YouTube, Spotify, Apple, and Soundcloud.
My colleagues
, , , and I spend a lot of time talking about last week’s (and maybe still this week’s) big story, the failure of the Trump administration to release “the Epstein files.” I put it in quotes because it’s not exactly clear what different people mean by that phrase. Some believe it denotes a client list, blackmail receipts, actionable intelligence that might have been shared with the CIA, Mossad, or other spy agencies. Regardless of what it means, there’s no question that high-level members of the Trump admin (think, say, FBI director Ka$h Patel and his deputy Dan Bongino) promised that a Trump victory would mean a full and total release of all information on Jeffrey Epstein. And that a huge part of MAGA is pissed that The Donald put the kibosh on releasing same. Regardless of the specifics, it’s always a bit fun to watch people get hoisted their own petard.But of course that wasn’t the only big story, either. Just a week ago, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released a bombshell report charging that ‘President Obama and his national security cabinet members manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.’ It remains to be seen what the receipts on this exactly look like, but what became known as ‘Russiagate’ dominated much of the media discourse of Trump’s first term, despite no good evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Putin’s people—or any evidence that Russian interference independent of Trump had a meaningful impact on the 2016 election. Two years ago, I interviewed Matt Taibbi, who made the case that ‘the left lost its mind’ over Hillary Clinton’s loss and was desperate for some explanation other than the former senator just running an incredibly shitty campaign. I think that’s largely true, but it also doesn’t mean that the Obama admin is guilty of what Tulsi Gabbard is calling ‘treasonous’ behavior.
We’ll see, I assume, though if the past 10 years is prologue, partisans will not accept anything they don’t want to believe, regardless of the strength or weakness of evidence and facts.
None of this stuff is going away anytime soon, so I hope you enjoy our conversation about it all. If you’ve watched or listened to The Reason Roundtable before, you know that each week we offer up some object of political or cultural consumption for our audience. I pointed to
’s deeply moving remarks he gave recently at FreedomFest, a conference held in Palm Springs in June. He founded and operated the Silk Road online drug market that was powered by Bitcoin and, until Donald Trump’s pardon at the start of his second term, he was facing an effective life sentence in a federal super-max prison (undeservedly so). Ross’ talk was about the reality of life in prison and how it is brutally dehumanizing while offering no gestures toward rehabilitation or justice. His mother Lyn, who fought for his release since he was first sentenced, has started a group called Mothers Against Cruel Sentencing (MACS), which is well worth checking out. Here’s a link to Ross’ comments:Here’s the chapter headings for the Roundtable episode, followed by links to other formats of the show:
00:26—Epstein conspiracies come full circle
06:13—The Epstein files and government transparency
16:52—Trump's made-for-TV administration showing cracks
21:42—Gabbard and the treasonous conspiracy accusations
38:03—Listener question on panelist relationships
45:27—DOGE rescissions and public broadcasting cuts
56:08—The declining influence of institutional media
1:00:28—Weekly cultural recommendations
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