We had supper last night and you came in and as we were eating, the president was raging against you on Air Force One. Me and the president. His line now about the Epstein files appears to be, he's exonerated and you, sleazebag journalists, you, sleazebag journalists, Michael Wolff and Jeffrey Epstein, were conspiring to bring him down. That's what he takes from the Epstein files. Michael. Joanna. We are back in the studio. Thank goodness. And I have my little walker tucked in the corner. Thank you, everybody who's told me about your hip replacements. Let's not display the walker. It's not displayed. It's tucked away. And by this time next week, I will be done with the walker. Although we will soon all be with walkers, so we should maybe practice. Well, the only reason I've got a walker is because soon I'll be able to run like a gazelle. Okay, we're going to run together. We're never going to run together. I still don't believe that you run. Anyway, thank you very much for your lovely comments about getting well. And also all the people out there that have had hip replacements and your various ideas for therapies and when you're on a cane and all that. I really appreciate it. It's actually very nice to hear from people. All right. And what color is this prey? Is this a latte? Yes. And this is chocolate. OK. So chocolate latte this morning. OK. February. We're longing for spring. It's a bit gloomy today, but never mind. We're here in person. Life is good, although not for Tom Pritzker, another person. Every single day, someone has fallen because of their relationship with your old friend, Jeffrey Epstein. No, it's extraordinary. It is a fast-spreading disease. Yeah, the scion of that, and I think he was chairman of the Hyatt Hotel Group, and he's had to resign because it's all too much and his emails have come out. Michael, did you ever meet Tom Pritzker with Jeffrey Epstein? I did. Pray tell. Jeffrey Epstein, and this is other people who have fallen, Jeffrey Epstein had a special viewing of the play Oslo. Oh, yeah. Because he was involved with the people that were actually there. He knew that the central protagonists in Oslo are Norwegian diplomats, a man by the name of Tyrjee Larsson and his wife, whose name I should know because I know her. But, you know, two enormously capable people and two people who have made a profound contribution to world peace. Can we just say they were the Witkoff and Jared of their day? Well, they were not. I think the important point is the Witkoff and Jared of their day. They were legitimate diplomats who made a profound contribution to the world. Right, to the Middle East peace process, to be specific. Yes. And to other things, I mean, these were lifelong career diplomats. And actually, the play Oslo, which is kind of terrific, makes this very clear, the kinds of things that they did and the kinds of things that they were involved in and this profound contribution that they made. And it was on at the Lincoln Center. It opened at the Lincoln Center. Yes, and Epstein was a friend of theirs, so he had this special, not screening, staging, viewing, whatever. At his home? Do you mean at the Lincoln Center? No, at Lincoln Center, yeah. I mean, he sort of bought out one evening at Lincoln Center and then invited a lot of people, including Tom Pritzker, which is where I met Tom Pritzker. And I think one other time I met him at Jeffrey's house. Did you ever meet Deepak there? I did meet Deepak Chopra. Yes, I think we've talked. Haven't we talked about this? I think we talked about him. Let me see. Let's do it again, because that was Deepak Chopra described when Jared and Ivanka came to one of his whatever he does. Workshops. I think spiritual workshops for which you're guaranteed spiritual awakening. Yes, and they sat in the front row. He was very fixed on that, and they were very attentive. to him. Yeah, you did tell me that. But okay, so you met Tom Pritzker. Well, he's the next one. There's an element of Salem witch trials about this now that anybody that's ever been involved with Jeffrey Epstein has to step back. Yeah, no, no, no. And I pulled, there's this line which has haunted me for some time. And this is something that the New York Times wrote in just after, in the months after Epstein died, the New York Times, an editorial in the New York Times, they said, anyone who has shaken hands with Mr. Epstein in recent decades should be scrutinized. And I thought, well, certainly since, well, actually, I haven't shaken hands with Epstein because Epstein did not shake hands. So this is... What did he do? Did he do the elbow thing? Yes, he was a germaphobe. I've always found that elbow thing, unlike RFK, who isn't scared of germs, because as he said, he used to snort coke off a toilet seat. I know I said that on Saturday, but it's such an extraordinary detail about him. Here's an uncomfortable truth. Your home address, phone number and personal details are almost certainly online right now, being bought and sold by data brokers you've probably never heard of. Stop companies from fleecing your data now with Incogni. Incogni automatically hunts down your personal info and removes it from hundreds of data brokers. They can't profit off you if they can't find you. What I love is how dogged Incogni is, continuously scrubbing your info from people's search sites, online directories and giant databases housing your precious details. And if your personal info pops up somewhere new, you can flag it and a real privacy expert takes care of it in a flash. Let's stop the endless spam calls, scrub your data now and give yourself some peace of mind. Act now to get an exclusive 60% off with an annual Incogni plan. Just go to incogni.com forward slash beast or click the link in the episode description box. Epstein was very much a germaphobe and often said that a pandemic was coming before the pandemic. Odd that he was a germaphobe given how many people, strange girls he had sex with that he didn't know. And that there seemed to be endless doctors on hand to help the girls who'd picked up STIs. I don't know what to say to this. I find – Because I – you know, one of the things, if you told me that Epstein did not actually have penetrative sex, I would not be surprised. You know, I mean, his fetish, which demands significantly more explanation, which I wish someone would do, was about these massages. I mean, that's what the whole thing was. It was a constant thing, and I don't understand this. I don't understand why anyone would have this. Well, I think they were massages with, in theory, happy endings, right? I mean, wasn't his thing that he had to have three climaxes a day, according to Glenn? Yes, again, again, there's the penetrating, the penetrative issue. We're not clear on that. Anyway, let's get back to the handshake. Okay, so the point is he didn't, the point is he was a germaphobe, like Trump is a germaphobe. The point is that this was... All these gross men are germaphobes. It's so ironic. The point is that this is set up, the New York Times foreshadows this, that almost anyone, that this is guilt by association. Right. And this is a classic thing. I mean this could not be more classic. What was Tom Pritzker's association? Is there any suggestion that Tom Pritzker was involved with Jeffrey Epstein's dark sexual, that compartment of his life? No, there is certainly no suggestion of that. Just the only suggestion is that he had a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. All right. So we had supper last night with a group of friends. You were in town. You left the Hamptons behind and you came in. And as we were eating, if I may say so, a rather good lasagna, the president was raging against you on Air Force One. Me and the president. Yeah, I mean, you know, he's his line now about the Epstein files appears to be he's exonerated and you. are the cause of all of his problems. You, Sleazebag Journalists, Michael Wolff, and Jeffrey Epstein were conspiring to bring him down. That's what he takes from the Epstein files. Right. And this is not altogether untrue, by the way. I mean, it is certainly untrue that he's been exonerated. He's always exonerated. Nobody's been exonerated more. The great exoneration, terrific exoneration. But it certainly was a piece of my relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was trying to get him to use what he knew to actually sound at the very least a warning against Donald Trump. So yes, so he is right. He's picked up on that. He's kind of focused in on that. And when he focuses in on things, that is actually he has an antenna for what is true. In other words, so when he singles that out, he is saying, yeah, that could have been harmful to me. Right. Well, I still think he thinks the Epstein files might be harmful to him. And let's go into, because I want to do the Steve Bannon thing, because Steve Bannon has been an Epstein person of the day. But before we do, I would just like to remark that I thought it was strange that the reporters on Air Force One, given the news last week with your own legal case, that Melania doesn't in fact live at the White House, she lives at Trump Tower. I thought it was odd that instead of asking them, where does Melania live? They asked instead, you know, did you give Melania flowers for Valentine's Day? And weirdly, he didn't even say yes to that. He said, oh, it's complicated. What's complicated about it? He couldn't just say, no, because we don't live together. And why did no one say, is it true that Melania lives in Trump Tower? Instead, he looked sort of sheepish and weird and backed away. Yeah, no. And well and that the other thing why my name comes up I am under his skin with this Melania lawsuit Well we inside his head and you under his skin I mean this lawsuit is a problem for them I mean, they screwed up to get themselves in a position where I could pursue them. They're not pursuing me. I'm pursuing them. And that this could ultimately end up with depositions taken from certainly from their friends and quite possibly, inevitably, actually, if it goes that far with them. So that's a screw-up. The lawsuit, getting themselves in this position, is a screw-up with my name on it. But if I were a journalist on Air Force One and I had the opportunity to talk to Trump, I would be talking to him about this. Journalists, if you're out there and you're looking for things to ask about, the suit against Melania is interesting. Yeah, you know the problem. If you ask those kinds of questions, you won't be on the plane anymore. I'm sure that he will open the door mid-flight and kick them off. Anyway, but I want to get back to this Bannon thing and I want to connect it to this idea that he thinks that I was plotting with Epstein against him. because one of the people who Epstein, the other person Epstein was plotting against Trump was with Bannon. But also let me recollect that that moment when Jeffrey Epstein met Steve Bannon, Steve Bannon's first words to Jeffrey Epstein were. I know what they were. Yeah. You were the only person I was afraid of during the 2016 campaign. Bingo. Yeah. See, I have been listening. And you introduced Steve Bannon to Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah, so the New York Times yesterday did their Bannon-Epstein takedown. There's one a day now. So all they're able to do is just write stories with snippets from these emails. And they managed their coverage of the Bannon-Epstein relationship was, I mean, it seemed like zero reporting, actually. Well, I thought the coverage was exactly the same as the chapter you had written in your book, Too Famous, five years ago. Yes. OK, so five years ago, written everything you could want to know about the Epstein-Bannon relationship. Five years ago, why? So why now? I mean, and the other thing is that they missed a kind of a salient fact, which is that I was the person who introduced Epstein and Bannon, which is interesting because the New York Times takes any excuse to give me a poke. And they missed that one because nobody is doing any reporting. well it was a very interesting chapter in your book when it came out which was an anthology of of um pieces about sort of famous men basically and um but but what was interesting about it was you have steve you have the recordings of steve bannon trying to help jeffrey epstein prepare for a possible interview on 60 minutes and bannon is putting him through his paces and actually we've seen some of this now. Some of this has come out. Yeah, I watched some of it on on Instagram and TikTok. So it's out there. But it is a really interesting insight into the two of them. Yeah, no, I mean, and I think it was it was a kind of fascinating relationship. And it was a relationship that I kind of watched unfold. And, and it goes, I mean, they it was me first thing it was I mean, Bannon is now like everybody, you know, no, no, no, I didn't really know him. No, no, I wasn't really friends. Just place Bannon for us at this point. So this was 2017, right? 2000 is the fall of 2017. So Bannon had been cast out by Donald Trump at this point? Yes, he had been cast out in August. He was, you know, I mean, he was considering his future, obviously looking to meet people who might help finance that future. But also kind of having a good time. I mean, I knew Bannon well at this point and had seen him, if not every day, very often through the first term, through that from January through to August. And the working in the White House for him had become an intolerable burden. I mean, working with Trump, who he hated, working with Jared and everything was. So by the time he was pushed out of the White House, exiled from the White House, you could just see the weight come off his shoulder. So he was in a great – he was in a very good place, not I've been banished, but like I've been saved. And so I introduced them to Epstein. And they immediately bonded over their hatred for Donald Trump. I mean they both had had this deep experience with him. And to this day, I think both Epstein and Trump, certainly in my rather substantial experience, are the two people who are most insightful about Donald Trump. I mean, Bannon and Epstein are the people who are most insightful. And they would get together constantly and the overwhelming part of their conversation was about Donald Trump, about trying to explain this, about trying to understand how this guy could have come to power, how this happened. And then anecdote after anecdote after anecdote about what a moron he is. Do you think they were jealous of Trump? Yeah, of course. I mean, I think they each felt that they were smarter than Trump because they both were smarter than Trump. And they each felt that he had played them in some way. And whatever Trump was, whatever Trump had become, it was partly because of them. So all of those kinds of things were operative. But I think the overriding thing was they felt like much of the country felt. How could this possibly have happened? And they went on because they knew him so well to see this quite in comic terms or comic tragic terms. So this became a kind of entertainment for them to go over this again and again and again and again. But the point is they really bonded. They really became incredibly good friends on the phone all the time or in person all of the time. And did Donald Trump know this? Did he know that the two people that he had at one point been close with were now bonded together? Because I would imagine that might make him paranoid. Yes, and I imagine that he did know this. And it probably did make him paranoid, yeah. In the book? I mean, there is a kind of thing, and it's an unanswered question. How aware was Donald Trump of this Epstein relationship closing in on him? You know, there is the view of a number of people that when Epstein started to talk to me about Trump and I started to publish this. And I went back and forth with Epstein. And he said, yeah. I mean, I remember this very specifically, yes. And he thought about it. Tell that story about the breakup of the relationship and Epstein's belief that it was Trump that... Shopped him to the Palm Beach police. Yes, exactly. And then when that book came out, And then it was really three weeks later that he was, that Epstein was arrested. And I don't know this, none of us know this, but there is certainly conjecture among a circle of people that that was, that there was a direct cause and effect there. And that the Southern District of New York arrested Epstein because they wanted information on Trump. Well, that's the other side of this. So there are two operative theories that he was arrested at Trump's behest because he had information on – because Trump wanted to shut him up. Or he was arrested on the – independently on the behest of the Southern District looking to squeeze him for information about Trump. It's almost impossible now. And this came out of the dinner we were talking about last night. But I'm sure a lot of people have had these conversations where the more you read about the Epstein files and the more you read them, the more you think it is possible he didn't die by suicide. I mean, I'm always a cock up theory, not a conspiracy theorist. But on this one, it reaches so deep. It's such a bizarre story that you think, gosh, maybe he was actually killed in jail. I mean, it's just. Well, and I don't – I mean you know my feeling about this, that I can't see the circumstances in which he died the way they say he would have had to have died. And yet I can't see the circumstances in which all the people who would have had some knowledge of this, the assistant U.S. attorneys, the FBI agents, all of the people surrounding that moment of the most significant prisoner in the United States at that moment would know nothing or would keep quiet about what they knew. So I remain agnostic on this question. Well, it's – I mean it's just a remarkable – it's a remarkable story. All right. But it is and I think in more and more as we come back to this – I mean every day this goes on. It becomes a story the likes of which we've never seen since – I don't know, the Kennedy assassination. I mean, it becomes that kind of thing and that kind of Rosetta Stone. If only we could interpret this, we would know everything. Instead of as we interpret it, we seem to know less and less. Right. And also, it's impossible to know where to start. First of all, the search function is not reliable. So you can put someone's name in and it comes up with 200 references. You can put them in the next day and it comes with 700 references. So it's not well organized. But it's very difficult to know where to begin even going through it. And every day I wake up and I'm more confused by it. Anyway. No, well, at some point, and I don't think this can be done now, but someone will put this all together. Remember and the other thing that happened there I mean we have this now you know this collection of information which is unvetted which we don know where it comes from I mean, it's random. And that will be a separate question about the effect of releasing this information in this way. And we ought to remember that information has never been released in this way. I mean, the idea of law enforcement agencies and the government, investigative arms of the government, taking all of the information that they have about something and just throwing it out has never happened before. So we don't know the effect of that. And, you know, in the future, we may look back at this and say this is as – doing this is as illiberal as anything the Trump administration has done. And this was, of course, forced upon the Trump administration. But the other thing is that we don't have the people who have – who are directly involved with this. People, Tom Pritzker, Kathy Rumler, Joel Klein, I just saw was pulled into this the other day. Naomi Campbell. Right, Naomi Campbell. All of these people. Nobody who actually was a part of this has spoken. They don't speak. Well, everybody's advising them not to. There was a wonderful. Except me, by the way. I am speaking. Okay, well, you are speaking, yes. There was a wonderful line in the piece about Joel Klein, who was the former head of education for New York City and is spending some time with Epstein. It sounds like for a company that he's doing post his leading the education job. But Epstein says to him, I want to have some friends tonight. Can you think of some people to invite who aren't too ponderous? And Joel says, I fear most people are too ponderous. I thought, what a good line. What a great line. Yeah, it's impossible to know where to begin. But but also, isn't it? I mean, your your point about illiberal, well, maybe illiberal is the word, but anti-democratic about the fact that all these statements and things have just been thrown out there. When you give information to the FBI, you don't expect it to be made public. You know, no, I totally I mean, I think illiberal. Well, we can whatever, whatever the word. Yeah. Yeah, no. And this goes back to that New York Times thing. Anyone who has shaken his hand deserves scrutiny. Right. Oh, and I can add, what these people at the New York Times don't know is that Epstein credited one of the contributors to his rise was the publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Salzberger. Arthur Oaks Salzberger, so now the grandfather of the current publisher because Epstein, when he was a teacher at the Dalton School, one of his students was the daughter of the then publisher of the New York Times. And the then publisher of the New York Times met Epstein and then tried to encourage him to... To break out of teaching. To leave teaching, was offered a job at the New York Times. Epstein was offered a job at the New York Times. I mean, that's what... According to Epstein, yes. But again, the New York Times reporters don't know this because they're terrible reporters. But they're not reporting. I just want to make this point again, that they are not reporting, that the idea of going through these emails and just extracting snippets from these emails is not reporting. They don't know the context. They don't know the meaning. They don't know the – they know nothing. But I guess my point – and maybe this is what you mean by the illiberal point – is just the collateral damage on people is remarkable. I mean, you know, Kathy Rumler's private life absolutely everywhere, all over the front page of the Wall Street Journal, none of which really pertains to the Epstein case. None of it. Yes. No. And even even when I mean, in just due process, I mean, this is a kind of violation of due process. Due process says you have information related to a specific investigation or crime. Well, yes, OK, the public has the right to know about that, but it does not have a right to know about the information that has no relevance. OK, yeah, I agree. I agree. And that's where it gets very Salem witch trials, the whole thing. Whereas we are trying to get to the bottom of an industrial sized sex trafficking ring. Should we talk about climate change? Please. It's too much Epstein, although it is a remarkable story and it's continuing to grow. And obviously, we'll continue to map who's the next person who loses their job. It's continuing to grow, but no one is continuing. No one is really telling it. Yeah, there's less understanding of what it is. And by the time we come back on Thursday, someone else will have lost their job. I think we can guarantee. All right. So climate change, it's not happening anymore. We're all going back to coal-fired plants. No, I mean, this is and let's get inside Trump's head on on this, because I mean, what he has done is he has he has given up power. So the federal government over the course of a generation has amassed a variety of of of of tools, accrued power with which it can regulate climate issues. which it can oversee and begin to, you know, and that relates to automobiles, it relates to... Water, air. Yes, everything. I mean, they have a kind of a broad or they have amassed an amount of authority here. So whether you use it or not, you get to use it as you see fit to use it, as you are advised to use it. You can decide to use less of it. It's just an authority that the federal government has come to have because obviously there is reason to believe, even if you might want to disagree, there is reason to believe that this is a threat that the government should be aware of and might well need to be in a position to act on. Okay, all of this is very, very reasonable. What the Trump administration has done is basically say, we don't want that power. And we're giving it back. So they have dismantled the entire system for regulating, for having any involvement in the regulation of climate change. So why would they have done that? This is not as simple as saying, well, we disagree with the science here. I mean, this is like we're going away. Whatever power we have here, we are giving it back. We want to hear nothing. We are washing our hands of this matter. Why would you do that? And I think that the answer is not a policy point of view. It's not about climate change. It is about Donald Trump. I am against anything that the people I am against are for. So this is the kind of thing, and this is dividing this – I mean it goes further. It's dividing this line in the sand. Those are what liberals, democrats, blue state people are for. We are against anything that they are for. But a simple act of them being for it, we are against it. That is, so it is not only that we're in a time of polarized politics, but this is taking it a step further. This is us against them. But again, you feel that this is going to impact his voters in the red state just as much as anybody in the blue states. Totally. Yeah, no, on a lifestyle, scientific, on every basis. except so what is the benefit the benefit is we and then he you know he draws this broad we as as the you know in red states and we mega people and we republicans are what is our what is our the largest issue facing us not a climate apocalypse but democrats right okay i i want to go back to the Epstein, because I have one question. Is it possible that the release of Epstein files turns out to be good for Trump? Yeah, I think already it has. I mean, it has certainly taken the focus off of him and put the focus on so many other people and fractured the focus? Who do we focus on? You know, we don't know the head of the Nobel Prize Committee, Naomi Campbell, Woody Allen, the Clintons, and whereas Donald Trump just becomes a kind of a kind of bit player. And he's done this once before, when in 2016, the fall of 2016, when the grab them by the pussy tape came out. The way he got by that, the way he survived that, when no one, nobody thought he would survive this. When the head of the RNC came to New York, Reince Priebus at the time, and said, basically, you have to withdraw from this race. We're not going to spend our money on you. And how did he survive that? He survived that by blaming it on Clinton. which he's doing it again. And Steve Bannon had this spectacularly evil idea of the debate. Yeah, bringing the women. That debate, and that was not the first debate. It was actually one of the penultimate debates, filling the front rows with all of the women who had. The Clinton accusers. Yes. Yeah. So again, we're just doing it. Trump always does what he has done before. Except for Donald Trump. Yes. Yeah. All right. And again, all of these people, who was the person who had the closest and the longest relationship with Jeffrey Epstein? Right. And most of these people, most of these people who are now being tagged, it's an interesting thing because there's a kind of line, did you know him? did you know him after he was convicted and after? And that seems to be a bad sign Right the watershed yeah that the line the red line Yes But in fact all of the bad stuff happened before this You know, in relatively, I mean, my own feeling is that after this happened, after he was sent to jail, after he was investigated, he he the idea of under underage girls he became scrupulous about that. I thought he carried on while he was in jail because he got after six months he was allowed work with women not with underage women. I mean I I think and and I mean this is again just my impression but and certainly in 2019 when he was when he was charged by the federal government that was for acts that had occurred before he went to jail. Okay. All right. So Marco Rubio seems to be rising again, though. He had a successful speech at the Munich conference. Remember last year, J.D. Vance went in and slapped the Europeans around. And now Marco Rubio is sort of saying, come on, guys, you've got to save your own Western civilization. We love you. We came from you. You need to step up and preserve what's great about Western culture. And then see, if Marco Rubio rises, that means J.D. Vance is falling. Yes. So this, I mean, this is clearly a Marco Rubio moment. And against all of these, against the gang that couldn't shoot straight that comprises this administration, he invariably looks good because he is actually the one person in this administration who has some professional experience in the job at hand. Right. And he speaks more fluently. I mean, Pete Hegseth doesn't seem to be allowed off the teleprompter. His speech is terrible, but he doesn't seem to go off the teleprompter. Whereas Marco Rubio seems capable and intelligent enough to speak fluently and off He's been doing this. He's run for statewide office two times, I think now. He was in his second term, third term as a senator, as the Florida senator. And he ran for president, too. Ran for president, has a significant, has had a significant position on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Yeah, he's a pro, the one pro in the administration right now. So the interesting thing, and you can almost see him, it's a kind of fascinating process in which he is trying to adapt to – his background is entirely as a classic Republican, a pro-international involvement, somewhat neocon kind of – kind of guy. And now he has had to adapt that position, which is contrary to the Trump administration's position, to the Trump administration. And he does this, you know, I mean, it's not unimpressive. It's completely amoral to a horrifying degree, but he is clearly trying to survive this to at some point, I would suspect, turn. What he stays up at night thinking is, I'm going to get through this. And when is the moment? When's the moment? Yeah, I'm going to pull it back to the middle. I'm going to finish off these guys who I hate. Right. And also you feel that he's trying to signal with his face. He's always looking anguished in photographs. He's looking off in the middle distance and everybody's like Marco. You know, the caption is always Marco Rubio looking for his soul or whatever. But you do sense that there is something more there than there is. Now, the question is, when does Trump get onto this? Right. And when does J.D. well, J.D. must be onto it and trying to. So he lies awake at night thinking, how do I get rid of Rubio? Right. Yeah. No. And this is also a classic Trump thing. And let me have two guys who will kill each other. Yeah. And leaving who's standing? Me. Donald Trump. Me. All right. So what about AOC? Because AOC was also in Munich, which I don't think technically she needed to be. I think she was elected to represent the people of the Bronx and Queens. And yet there she was in Munich. Yeah. I think it's fascinating. She's obviously running for president. Clearly running for president. She's obviously a person outside of all of the conventions of running for president. And what we know now is that the person outside all of the conventions for running for whatever office you're running for has a kind of remarkable advantage. Well, not always. I mean, let's not forget Abigail Spanberger in Virginia. Let's not forget Mikey Sherrill in New Jersey. I mean, she's a more interesting politician because she says things. Well, that's I mean, that's that's going to that. And that is clearly going to be the Democrats dilemma. You know, are we are we a middle of the road party? Are we a disruptive party? Yeah. Well, nobody knows because nobody knows. what works in that. Clearly both work. But you can only choose one. So who would her vice be? If she were going to run part of her vice, is she going to have an older white guy as her vice? Is she going to have Bernie? Let's not go there. That's too far. But it is interesting thinking about it. She seems a viable candidate. She's only 36 years old. So she's going to she I mean, I'm sure she is playing this. This is as much. I mean, you know, she doesn't know what to do yet. Right. And everybody's going to run for for the Democratic Party. Right. Mark Kelly is making more noise. He won his case against Pete Hegseth. Kevin Newsom obviously making noise. I like Seth Moulton from Massachusetts. I also like James Tallarico, but I also like Jasmine Crockett. So, well, I mean, so what happens, this is we're just foreshadowing what will what will come into begin to clarify as soon as the midterms are are done. Right. Day after the midterms, we're off to the races. We better put our boots on. Yeah. Yeah. But we'd be able to be paying attention to the people who are going to win the midterms to the Tallarico Jasmine Crockett. Our primary off in Texas is interesting. I think it's March the 3rd. So that's two weeks, I think. Yeah, so we need to keep an eye on that because that's going to be – both of them have got a lot of support. Obama was talking up James Tallarico. It's very interesting. All right, so. Who? James Tallarico. Oh, do you mean Obama? Obama. Yeah, who? Jesus. Well, he's been out and about a bit more. Yeah, well, he's, you know, but – Since you poked at him and said he wasn't doing anything. All right, we have lots of questions for Melania. JV Saints wants to know, is Melania receiving funds from the U.S. government? What state does she claim? That might be interesting for you to look into. Two different questions. Is she receiving funds from the U.S. government? And of course, she's supported in all kinds of ways by the executive branch. But what state? I don't understand that part of the question. Well, I think what state is she? Does she have to be in a state to qualify for funds? OK, here's another question. I like this question. This is from Boatnut57. Question to ask Melania in the deposition. Can your black rimmed hat be used as a weapon like the bowler hat in Goldfinger, the odd job uses to decapitate a statue? I thought that was a good question. I think it's a facetious question. I don't think you have to ask it, but it's funny. All right. Here's a question from Eternal Diplomat. When is your husband scheduled to meet with the Epstein survivors? Wait a minute. When is your husband? I have to figure whose husband? Melania's husband. I would just say that I was on the street yesterday and someone came up to me and began talking about Melania issues and then referred to something my wife had said, meaning I suddenly realized you. So Joanna and I are not married. We are not married and we're never going to be married, but we're YouTube spouses, right? We're podcast spouses. All right. Another question for Melania. Is she the reason Trump and Epstein fell out? And that's from Judy Herring 156. Good question, Judy. Well, I mean, at the at the at the center of this lawsuit and of this whole of of of her threats against me of the suit we filed against her is what is the nature of the relationship between Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump and Melania Trump? Yes. Do you want to read Garfreed's limerick? And then I've got another limerick from a new person. This is the first time I'm seeing this, so I'm reading it fresh. There once was a crowd in first class whose secrets were buried in brass. As files disappeared and the truth engineered, they governed by gaslight and sass. Not bad. Not bad, Garfreed. I've got another one for us. And this is from someone called Andrea Brunay or Brunace. There's nothing Miss Coles abhors more than a podcast whose light motifs bore. Thus, she seeks new suggestions for Melania questions as Donald finds Wolf at the door. Pretty good. Pretty, pretty good, as some what's-his-face would say. Cobra enthusiasm. I did watch a whole series of those episodes the other day, and I realize that you are the equivalent of him. You are the podcast Larry David. I was going to say Mary David then. Don't know why I said that. You are the podcast Larry David. I disagree. Okay. You would do. In character, you would do. All right. If you have been, thank you for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe to The Daily Beast. Please leave us a comment on our YouTube channel. And what else? Anything else I need to remind people of? I don't know. It seems open-ended. Well, I think just... Many things we should remind people of. If you're also confused about what the hell is going on, read The Daily Beast. We are really trying to lay it out for people. Be a stand-up guy. You know, at any rate. So the good news is we have so many B-Beast tier members now. There are too many names to read out. And we really appreciate your support. Thanks to our production team, Devin Rogerino, Ryan Murray, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro, Neil Rosenhaus.