Max Blumenthal: The Epstein Files & Rise of Anti-Israeli Sentiments in the US (Transcript)

Then Pam Bondi comes in, someone who is as much of a swamp creature as anyone had lobbied for every slimeball corporation and foreign governments. And she promises that she declares in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News that she has the Epstein files on her desk, that there are witness, there are accuser testimonies. I think she might have said hundreds of accuser testimonies.

So this created massive, for years there was just this massive anticipation among Trump’s base. And then all of a sudden, Trump just slams the door in their face. Pam Bondi declares she doesn’t even want to talk about Epstein in press conferences. And Trump, as you said, seems like he has something to hide.

And this occurs at a time when Donald Trump had been betraying his base on many other promises and at a time when the right, the political right in the US, the America First movement is beginning to wake up on the issue of Israel. And so Jeffrey Epstein and the Epstein files become kind of a catch-all for every Trump betrayal.

The Deep State Realization

And it fuels the, correctly fuels the sense that Donald Trump is actually part of the deep state, part of the swamp, that he actually had very close relationships with this so-called pedophile elite, which I see sort of, I would call them like a decadent hovercraft elite.

And now Donald Trump is getting his ass kicked left and right by the Democrats over this and by his own, many of his own influencers. I mean, I mentioned the QAnon Shaman. Now CNN is playing Nick Fuentes, who previously supported – like he was seen as supportive of Trump, but he’s more like the he sort of presents himself as the purest America First influencer. And CNN is playing these clips of Nick Fuentes going off on Trump, just tearing Trump to shreds.

So for the first time, we’re actually seeing Trump’s mystique being broken and he will never be able to recover that mystique. So this is the most, whatever you think of the substance of the Epstein Scandal. This is the most significant scandal of the Trump era because it’s the first one to actually scathe him.

Trump’s Failed Media Management

PROF. GLENN DIESEN: It does, just from his persona, the way he speaks now, it does seem as if he’s under immense stress or pressure. But one of his skills, though, as you suggested, has been to manage the media. He can – well, if there’s been whatever was in the news today, he can put something else in the news tomorrow. But it doesn’t seem to be working this time.

I mean, he tried to dismiss the Epstein files as he used the word “boring.” And, “he’s been dead for a long time. Why are you even talking about this?” And even going after his own base, telling, “I don’t need you,” trashing them. This is quite remarkable. I think maybe he bought into the whole notion that he was untouchable.

But one thing that I thought was strange is the way he keeps linking it to the Russiagate hoax. I mean, this again, was a real hoax. It was pushed by the Democrats. But now he’s saying that the Epstein files are a Democrat hoax. How? Why is he pushing these two issues together? Or is it just trying to benefit or shift the narrative? Or what is – how do you read this?

The Intelligence of Trump’s Base and Epstein Deflections

MAX BLUMENTHAL: He’s insulting the intelligence of his base and his followers. He thinks that they’re so dumb that they’ll actually believe that Hillary Clinton and Obama wrote the Epstein files in order to embarrass Trump and that they won’t look any further. And these sorts of deflections have worked in the past, partly because the Clintonites and Obama camp have weaponized misinformation and disinformation against Donald Trump so much in the past.

But I think this is a different era and younger people who supported Donald Trump or voted for him can clearly see through this. There’s so much more to it. As I said, this is a catch all for various other betrayals. And the biggest betrayal among many younger right wingers is just the whole concept. They feel like the whole concept of America first has been betrayed by Donald Trump because they see him not only rearming Zelensky and turning his back on his vow to end the Ukraine proxy war, but also being controlled by Netanyahu, being controlled by this foreign state that operates through the same kind of circles that Jeffrey Epstein operated within, that influences Trump through those circles of Zionist billionaires.

The Wexner-Epstein Connection

Jeffrey Epstein was the money manager for Les Wexner, who is one of the most powerful Zionist billionaires in the US. He controls basically half of downtown Columbus, Ohio. He is the head of the Board of trustees for Ohio State University, even after he had to resign from his position as CEO of Victoria’s Secret, which was his main company, over his very close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Ohio State couldn’t dislodge Wexner because he had contributed so much money to the school that he was basically indispensable.

And Epstein, what he was doing was like offshoring money for Wexner in the Virgin Islands. So he would pay no taxes, and then Epstein would get all these gifts from Wexner, like a townhouse in the middle of New York City, a luxury townhouse for nothing. His neighbor, Jeffrey Epstein’s neighbor in that townhouse, who bought his townhouse through a shell company controlled by Wexner and Epstein, was Howard Lutnick, who was at the time the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald. And Howard Lutnick is now Trump’s Commerce Secretary.

So it’s pretty bad optics when Donald Trump goes out there and insults his base on the tarmac when he’s about to get into Air Force One, and Howard Lutnick is standing right there next to him. Howard Lutnick is also very influential in the Chabad Lubavitch cult, which has very close links to the Israeli settler movement and backs many of the messianic, fascistic figures in Netanyahu’s coalition.

Tucker Carlson’s Bombshell at TPUSA

So it all feeds into this sense that Trump is hiding something about his ties to Israeli intelligence. Tucker Carlson came out at TPUSA, which is the big gathering of conservative youth hosted by someone named Charlie Kirk, whose career – he was basically a conservative child influencer. Ever since he was a teenager, he’s been on the track to basically lead the conservative movement. His career was completely fueled by pro-Israel money, by Zionist money.

And Charlie Kirk suddenly finds himself presiding over a conference where Tucker Carlson, the keynote speaker, the most influential speaker, gets up and says, “Jeffrey Epstein was Israeli intelligence, and that’s why Trump is covering this up.”

And something that I’ve never seen happen before took place as a result of that. The Israelis themselves got frightened by Epstein. A domestic US scandal actually frightened the Israelis. And Naftali Bennett, the former Israeli prime minister, was summoned to declare that he, as prime minister, dealt every day with the Mossad, and Jeffrey Epstein did not work for the Mossad, was not a Mossad agent. And then he threatens Tucker Carlson and said, “We won’t stand for this.”

Another Israeli intelligence connected figure, Amichai Chikli, who is the Minister of Diaspora affairs, also denounced Tucker Carlson and issued a veiled warning to Charlie Kirk because Israel has so much leverage over Charlie Kirk, having funded his career. And it’s like this whole relationship between Israel and the conservative movement is cracking up over Jeffrey Epstein. It’s amazing to see it. And it suggests that there actually is something there. There definitely is something there.

The Compromising Evidence

Now, I cannot say that Jeffrey Epstein is a Mossad agent, but he traveled in circles, in Zionist circles. And if he were alive today and not had and had not been jailed and was a free man, he would have been involved with all of these Zionist billionaires in threatening to defund Ivy League universities that allow Palestine solidarity protests. He would have been part of that world.

So this is, I think, why Epstein – one of the reasons why Epstein threatens the movement or threatens the elites around Donald Trump and why they’re seeking to bury the files, as well as the fact that Donald Trump has had a very close personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And there may be photos of Donald Trump in a compromising position, as the journalist Michael Wolff, who knew Jeffrey Epstein, who spent time with Jeffrey Epstein, who interviewed Jeffrey Epstein for many hours, has said.

Michael Wolff has said, and I mean, he’s been shown to be unreliable in the past, but he has said that the FBI seized photos, including one showing Donald Trump with topless girls by Epstein’s pool, sitting on his lap, seized those from Jeffrey Epstein’s safe. And that’s what the Epstein files are.

There are also 16 hours of footage recorded by Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief of staff. And he’s basically refused to release those 16 hours of footage of him and Jeffrey Epstein having friendly conversations and interviews. And Bannon was very close to Epstein for many years, and I think they both were united on their hatred for Donald Trump. That’s what I think Michael Wolff has said.

So I think there are two things going on here. There’s the geopolitical danger of Jeffrey Epstein to the special relationship with Israel, and there’s the personal relationship that Donald Trump enjoyed in which Trump appears to have been compromised by.

PROF. GLENN DIESEN: Well, I thought that almost was established that he was a Mossad agent. But the main operation was to get politicians, businessmen in compromising position in order to extort favors for influence. But if he’s not Mossad or an agent of Israel, at least, how else is his background being explained? Or do we know anything else about his associations?

Israeli Intelligence Operations in America

MAX BLUMENTHAL: I mean, what we know is that he had very close relationships with figures who functioned as kind of like Israeli intelligence assets or Israeli cutouts in the United States. I mean, the way that Israel operates in the US is different than the way, I don’t know Russian intelligence would operate or any other foreign intelligence service. They work through the American Jewish establishment and the American Jewish power elite in a very open way.

And the way the Mossad operates is – I know this through a mutual friend who worked on Wall Street, who knew a major American Israeli investment banker, someone who ran their own firm, who was a Mossad cutout. And he would boast that the Mossad would deposit, would ask him because he had so much liquid assets. They would ask – they’d say, “We’re going to do a black operation in a third country, and we need you to deposit this much money in this shell account now, and we will pay you back later. And we can’t tell you what it’s for, but you’re an Israeli patriot, so do this.” And he would just do it.

I don’t want to say who they are because I don’t want them – I don’t want to get sued or anything. But what I’m saying is the relationship between Israeli intelligence or the Israeli state is very fluid and unregulated in the US.

This other character I mentioned to you who threatened Tucker Carlson, Amichai Chikli, he is the Minister of Diaspora Affairs. And there’s a great investigative series by the journalists Jack Paulson and Lee Fong on how he has been circumventing America’s Foreign Agent Registration Act, which requires foreign governments to register their lobbyists and their lobbyists to report on their activities and meetings to the Department of Justice.

And what Chikli has been doing is instead of, while the Israeli government is like, paying influencers in the US, they’ve set up a series of NGOs, nonprofits in the US and are working through those and saying, “Well, this is just American,” but the money is foreign, so it is a – and it’s totally unregulated.

Epstein’s High-Level Connections

So how can we evaluate whether Jeffrey Epstein was actually a Mossad agent who is meeting around a glass table with the Mossad chief, getting instructions when the relationships are so fluid? What is clear is Jeffrey Epstein would have meetings with very influential foreign officials and salons at his townhouse. One of them was Ehud Barak, who visited about 36 times, worked with Jeffrey Epstein, I think, to set up a surveillance company or surveillance startup. Ehud Olmert, former Israeli Prime Minister, also had several meetings with Epstein. Shimon Peres had some meetings with Epstein. Epstein even reportedly set up a meeting for JP Morgan executives with Benjamin Netanyahu.

Jeffrey Epstein helped Peter Thiel from Palantir who has major investments with Israeli intelligence, make enormous amounts of money through firm, through an – like, through an investment. He helped guide his investments. So he had connections with all of these intelligence connected individuals. He applied for multiple passports to travel to the Middle East and Africa. This was reported by CBS News.

Jeffrey Epstein went to Israel in 2008 when he was facing his first prosecution for sex trafficking in Florida. And then there’s the Daily Beast report which claimed that Alex Acosta, the Florida prosecutor, was told to back off Epstein because he, quote unquote, “belonged to intelligence.” I don’t know if that’s dependable, a dependable report or not. Alex Acosta, by the way, now is in the Trump administration.

The Barr Connection and Epstein’s Death

But what we can say is Epstein was intelligence adjacent and he may have also been adjacent to other intelligence agencies. A Saudi passport was reportedly found in his town home when after he died or killed, was killed. The last person to meet Jeffrey Epstein, I believe, was William Barr, who is Trump’s Attorney General. William Barr launched his career in US Government as a CIA officer and he helped write the pardons for the Iran Contra felons under Reagan and Bush. William Barr’s father, Donald Barr, was the headmaster of the Dalton School that first hired Jeffrey Epstein.

And Jeffrey Epstein had said to various journalists, including Michael Wolff, that he was afraid of Trump during Trump’s first term, understandably because he had compromised Trump. And then Epstein was placed in a compromising position in the end in a prison cell. Steve Bannon, who knew him very well, said he believed Jeffrey Epstein was murdered. All of this happens under Trump with all these figures who have these strange associations with Epstein.

So it’s no wonder that this scandal only grows and Trump cannot dismiss it as some giant nothing burger from a long time ago.

PROF. GLENN DIESEN: Well, when I first saw Trump behaving in this manner, I thought, either he has to be on this list or he wants to use the lists somehow. But for pressure. But it does appear from all of this that, well, his name are on some of these flight logs. So it does look suspicious.

My last question, though was just about what this means for the future relationship with Israel, because for a long time in the United States, it looks as if patriotism has been linked to –

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Very.

PROF. GLENN DIESEN: – close to being pro-Israel, in which it’s especially among the conservatives where this is impossible to say anything critical of Israel. So this is something completely new. It seems to me that you have people not – well, so far in the media, at least alternative media, the Candace Owens, the Tucker Carlson being very vocal about why are we subordinating our interest to Israel. Again, this is the whole America first. If the US would get out of the Middle East and worse, he has to put America above Israel. But do you see this? Because I’ve only seen in the media sphere so far. Do you see this having some influence on actual politics?

Trump’s Declining Youth Support and the Gaza Factor

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, let’s see. There’s an interactive poll, a polymarket interactive poll that just came out on July 21 that’s showing that Trump’s approval among Americans age 18 to 29 has gone down from 55 points in early February, which is very high for a US President, especially a Republican. The Democrats typically had commanded the youth in the past 55% in early February to 28% in July. So a 54 point negative swing for Donald Trump in just those few months.

And I think a lot of it has to do with Gaza, with Palestine, with seeing images of shredded babies day after day and associating Trump with that. I mean, this really destroyed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as well their association with the Gaza genocide. Young people are paying attention like never before.

Yesterday I arrived in New York, got out of a train and saw a giant Palestine march proceeding up 7th Ave. And I joined it and it was stretched several blocks. And you would see in the march very kind of like, almost like professional managerial class looking people, like people who had just gotten out of work, normie looking, white, progressive people who just look like the kind of urban cadre that works in New York City.

And as the march proceeded up 7th Avenue, people would come out onto the sidewalks to cheer for it. And cars passing by were honking in support, vendors were cheering in support. Something is going on and it’s like bigger, it is about Palestine, but it’s bigger than Palestine. A backlash is taking place.

The Rise of Anti-Israel Politics in New York

A backlash is taking place in New York City in the form of Zoran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign. Kind of a 34 year old assembly member slash influencer looks set to become the next mayor. And this is someone who favors boycotting Israel and has said that he would arrest Netanyahu if he arrives in New York City, which is causing this giant meltdown on the right.

You can see there is a total lack of enthusiasm among the America first influencers for Israel. And Epstein, for them is the symbol of everything that’s wrong with Israel. This kind of corrupt elite that’s controlling government in the United States through blackmail. It may be a little too sophisticated for them to make AIPAC that symbol. So Epstein is a convenient symbol and it’s going to play out for a generation.

Israel’s Collapsing Support Across Demographics

Israel is losing everyone. They’re losing Catholics this week sending out their own Zionist influencers to attack the Pope for condemning an Israeli attack on a Catholic or Orthodox church in Gaza. Attacking the Pope, the new Pope, Leo, as a kind of Nazi for his condemnation of that. One of the biggest Catholic youth influencers, Michael Knowles, has spoken out for the first time against Israel.

And Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to curry influence with popular podcasters when he arrived for his last visit to the U.S. it was his fourth visit this year. He’s constantly tending to this relationship that’s collapsing, that’s fraying at the edges.

So the Trump White House set up an interview for Benjamin Netanyahu with the Nelk boys, who are popular like frat bro type influencer podcasters. As vacuous as they sound. They market like an alcoholic seltzer and nicotine packs. There’s almost no substance there. Like their whole podcast is based around, you know, watching them get drunk and play pranks and so on.

And the questions for Netanyahu were fed to them by Netanyahu’s team and they asked him, “Do you like McDonald’s or Burger King? Which do you like better? And do you like the Whopper?” And they’re asking him these questions. While Israel is deliberately starving the children, the people of Gaza and the images are pouring out of Gaza of skeletal children and skeletal people collapsing in the streets.

This becomes a huge scandal for the Nelk boys. They wind up having to host some of the biggest anti Israel and even anti Jewish influencers like Nick Fuentes to mollify their followers. And in a follow up live stream they declare that someone had told them that they just interviewed the modern day Hitler. And that actually seems to be the case.

So I mean, it’s just, it’s all collapsing at the grassroots level and all Israel has is its established bribery networks like AIPAC to hold on to the elite. And how long can that last?

PROF. GLENN DIESEN: Well, it is interesting though that after all of this, not just making Ukraine war, his calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, every man, woman and child attack on Iran that Epstein files is what might sink Trump’s presidency. But again, I think you’re right. I think it’s probably the genocide that has turned most people against Israel. And this, I guess just piles on and it’s important for those who see this as the final nail in the coffin of, you know, their dreams of Trump being this America firster to drain the swamp.

Finding Language to Critique the System

MAX BLUMENTHAL: So, yeah, just to kind of summarize what I’m trying to say, because American politics from the outside can be hard to understand. The United States, our unofficial religion is anti communism, like any critique of the capitalist economic system is officially discouraged and you are painted as anti American.

So young Americans, they’ve grown up without having a means or a language for critiquing the system that has failed them. And anti war activity, Palestine solidarity is painted as almost like a form of bigotry, as Jew hatred, as, you know, disloyalty to our military. It has been since the war on terror.

So there’s, it’s so hard for many people to find, particularly if they don’t have like a higher education, didn’t go through the academic world. It’s hard for them to find a language to critique this system that has betrayed them, that’s lying to them. And so Epstein has kind of helped them find their language. But it’s a catch all for all these other betrayals and for the general hatred of the 0.1% elite that was the target of so many other anti establishment protests going back to Occupy Wall Street.

PROF. GLENN DIESEN: Yeah, that’s an excellent way of framing it. Max, thank you so much for your time. This is truly amazing stuff. So amazing.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Thanks a lot.

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