What’s Actually Hidden in the Epstein Files? (feat. Eliza Orlins)

Brian and Glennis are back with their first guest of Season 3, and it is a big one. Public defender, creator, and iconic Survivor player Eliza Orlins joins to talk about the 24 hours she spent live streaming a reading of the Epstein files, Cory Booker filibuster style, after Steve Schmidt and the Save America movement connected her with the redacted reading room in Tribeca.

Eliza has been on the Epstein beat since 2018, when she watched the Manhattan DA's office quietly request a downward departure on his sex offender registration level, something she says she had never once seen in 15 years of public defending. She walks through what is actually in the files, the two million plus pages still hidden, the improper redactions in the pages we do have, and the Treasury documents that implicate Jamie Dimon and the banks. She makes the point that lands hardest: in every horrific case she ever read as a public defender, there was at least the promise of accountability. With Epstein, the richest and most powerful men in the world (Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Leon Black) have faced none. The reading room is now going on the road and opening two blocks from the White House, just in time for Trump's 80th birthday.

Then it gets personal. Eliza explains why she believes she will never be invited back to Survivor after she publicly torched CBS over its hard right turn, the $16 million settlement, Bari Weiss taking over CBS News, and a returning contestant's on air antisemitic rant. There are Survivor 50 hot takes, a MAGA alliance theory, and a Roy Moore connection you will not see coming.

After Eliza, Brian and Glennis turn to the Texas runoff that just wiped out John Cornyn. Ken Paxton, who is indicted, impeached, settled a whistleblower suit for $3.3 million in taxpayer money, and is comically corrupt by any measure, won by nearly 28 points on the strength of a single Trump endorsement. It capped the most expensive primary in US history at over $100 million, with roughly $80 million of that spent against Paxton, and it did not matter. Brian and Glennis dig into the chicken and egg of a Trump endorsement, why an unelectable nominee may be the best case scenario for Democrats and James Talarico, and the growing list of Republicans Trump is turning into lame duck enemies inside his own caucus.

Then, in What Fresh Hell Is This number 642: the UFC cage Trump is building on the White House lawn for his birthday, the billionaires set to watch from the front row, Paramount's $7.7 billion UFC deal, and the illegal online casino sponsoring the whole thing that Trump keeps posting about. Brian and Glennis make the case that the whole spectacle is rage bait engineered to make liberals look out of touch, and lay out how to talk about it without taking the bait.

They close on a genuinely good vibe out of South Carolina, where the state Senate killed a new map that would have eliminated its only majority Black district.

And one more thing: a bonus episode with Eliza Orlins drops this Friday.


A programming note: this episode includes discussion of child sexual abuse and trafficking. Listener discretion advised.

EPISODE LINKS
Eliza's 24 Hour Livestream of the Epstein Files
Eliza's YouTube

New episodes of Vibes Only drop every week. If you like the show, the single biggest thing you can do is leave a rating and a review… it's free, it takes ten seconds, and it's how we get in front of more people who need a politics podcast that isn't going to make them want to move to the woods.

Vibes Only is a weekly political podcast hosted by Brian Derrick (Political Strategist and Founder of Oath) and Glennis Meagher (Political and New Media Strategist and Co-founder of Generator Collective), two political operatives turned creators breaking down the news of the week for you in terms of politics, elections, and culture. Consider us your weekly pause from doomscrolling and consultant-speak, just some solid vibes (and receipts) every Thursday morning.

Transcript

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A note from the producers. This episode includes discussion of child sexual abuse and trafficking, listener discretion advised. Hi, Brian. Hi Glennis. How are you? I'm good. you know, running late this morning per usu for me, but we're here. We're queer. Get into it. I'm an ally. I'm a straight ally. Um I don't wanna I don't wanna queer bait. Okay I TikTok. Is that a thing? Of course it's a thing. Are you on lesbian Tok? I'm deep in lesbian Tok. I wanna see your algo. Mine is mine is crazy. My algorithm right now is like not right. Something's going on with my TikTok. I'm Brian. I'm Glennis. And welcome back to Vibes Only. we have someone who has a tremendous TikTok on our show today. We're we're super thrilled. Our first guest of season three and a very important one at that, Eliza Orlins, our friend, our collaborator. She has been a public defender survivor player. Iconic Survivor Player. It's a fucking stick. you know her, you love her. Eliza Orlins. Eliza, we are literally thrilled to have you. Thank you for joining us early. Our community knows we record early in the morning, so we appreciate it. It's outrageous. I actually never get up this early and I despise you both for this. That means it's it's actually i indicative of how much I love you because otherwise I would not be here. yes, I take that as a compliment. So thank you so much. so Eliza, we are here today to talk to you about this tremendous thing that you did last week, which was you live streamed for twenty-four hours. The Epstein files. And there's so much that we can unpack here because one, I think it's like extremely important that we as people on the left continue the drumbeat of talking about the Epstein files, of talking about the Epstein class. You know, we saw what happened to Massey last week in the primary, one of the only Republicans to actually demand some accountability around the Epstein files. What was your why for doing that? How did that idea come to be? How did it happen? And what was your experience? do you guys know Steve Schmidt? co-founder of the Lincoln Project, and he is a steering committee member of Save America movement. We've known each other for a long time. he supported my run for office five years ago, and he reached out and asked me to come on his live stream to talk about the rape academy story and the legality and all that. And so we had a great hour-long conversation and he was like, "I was looking at your social media, you've been on this Epstein beat." so he connected me with Save America movement and I got on a call with his producer. And she said, "Listen, Eliza, we would like to find a way to really bring attention to the Epstein files and not allow people to forget this story, do you have any ideas? You know, there's this redacted reading room in Tribeca, it's a temporary exhibit. We'd love to bring attention to it." And I was like, I don't know, why don't I like a Corey Booker style filibuster and just read it for 24 hours and live stream it? And she was like, my God, you are insane and I love it. Yes, let's make this happen. And the Save America movement really dove into doing all the production stuff. I mean, they brought in an incredible team. that did all of the tech stuff that booked a lot of the daytime guests. And had like this whole run of show for 24 hours of who was gonna step in and read for me. And I'm looking at it and I realized that we have no one from like midnight to 7 30 AM and I was like, I'm going to die. Like I can't actually physically do that. And so then I started reaching out to more people and we like ended up booking a ton of folks, some of our West Coast friends and activists and influencers. The survivors joined for both the open and the close, which was like very powerful. we had politicians and just incredible people joining throughout to give me little breaks in between. it was so exhausting, but I think so impactful and so important. And now You know, that stream lives on, and a lot of the survivors said this is something that now we can point to. We can say, hey, like this stuff was read out loud, you know, and people can't ignore this. it really brought a lot of attention to the reading room as well, which thankfully just announced that they are going on the road. They've raised enough money that they're gonna go on the road. They are opening two blocks from the White House, and so Trump is gonna be doing his big birthday 250 celebration and The Epstein files are gonna be there in their printed glory, these bound books that weigh 17,000 pounds. it's really extraordinary. Okay, most importantly, did you wear a diaper? No, it wasn't a real filibuster. I was allowed to go to the bathroom and eat and take, you know, little breaks. It wasn't a true filibuster, thankfully. No, that is absolutely incredible. kudos to you and the whole team for pulling it off. That's not an easy thing to do. And it's such an important topic for you to be shining a light on, which Glennis and I have both seen you do on your own social What would you say was a surprising reaction from people who were watching, listening, engaging? how was it received? what's fascinating to me I mean, I've actually been talking about Epstein online since 2018 because the Manhattan District Attorney did something extremely unusual that I had never seen for one of my clients in my 15 years of public defending, which is they asked for what's called a downward departure in his sex offender registration level. basically, if you get convicted of a sex crime, you get a SORA Sex Offender Registration Act level. And in every case, they're always trying to make it the most severe. So they're always trying to do an upward departure. And I had never ever ever seen, like, you know, that you basically have this chart and their points assigned. And on Jeffrey Epstein, they asked for a downward departure on his SORA level, which is completely unheard of. Like I can't emphasize enough how absolutely unheard of this is. To the point where Judge Pickholz, a judge who I was very familiar with, ended up issuing a written decision slamming the Manhattan District Attorney's Office saying, this is outrageous. And I will not do a downward departure, and how dare you, basically. it was something that caught my eye because I felt that Cy Vance, who was the Manhattan District Attorney at the time, was doing a lot of things like this, you know, not prosecuting Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, these rich, powerful white men. And meanwhile, my clients, who were poor people of color, were getting the book thrown at them. this was when I was thinking about running against him. And so this is I've been talking about Jeffrey Epstein for a really long time. and then, reading tens of thousands of pages of the Epstein files, I've read the Ghislaine Maxwell trial transcripts. I mean, these things are truly horrific. and what I realized in doing this 24-hour live stream, both from the feedback I got from people watching, but also from some of the people who jumped in to do some of the reading for me, is most people. In spite of having heard so much about this Epstein stuff, have not actually read much of it. And I think they found it much more disturbing than they even knew. Because when you are reading these things about 14 year old girls being preyed upon, being literally picked up at their camp, at Interlochen in camp, told they're going to be given scholarships because they're so talented and and they want to support them. And it's Poorer kids who are having family issues, you know, Ghislaine Maxwell picking them up and then bringing them and really literally trafficking them to Jeffrey Epstein to get sexually assaulted. People are horrified. And and I that's it it just reiterated to me how important it is that we don't stop beating this drum because people don't actually know what's in the Epstein files. And, you know, if I could do one 24-hour live stream a week, I would do it. I just physically am not capable. It's it's a lot, you know, I I'm like it. I'm finally recovered a week later, but it was you know, it it's it's really important. Yeah, it's like I have like a pit in my stomach even hearing you talk about this because it is just so it's such a good reminder that this Epstein class, what Jeffrey Epstein and his cohort of predators did to these young women and girls is so predatory and was so coordinated at all levels of society. And we cannot stop talking about it. Like there are still two million files that haven't been released. They've released three million more. Okay, so more than two million files that have not yet been released and don't Donald Trump saying, no, we've done our job, we've we've released all the files. And it's absolute bullshit. And I think the power of you, as like this creator who has a huge following and your career as a public defender, like you are able to, with authority, speak about this and with the legal authority as well. And you make it very tangible for people to understand. what people don't realize about the the lack of release of the files is like it's not just DOJ files that are missing. You know, it's it's improper redactions in the files that we do have. And also, Senator Wyden has been like an absolute champion on this, but there's a whole host of files that aren't under the Department of Justice that are actually Treasury files that implicate Epstein, that implicate Banks that implicate Jamie Dimon you know, there are all these financial files that we should be entitled to. And we should be saying release the the Treasury files. Not just like when we say release the files, people were were really talking about the DOJ files, but these treasury files implicate all these people who were complicit, who knew exactly who Jeffrey Epstein was and what he was doing. they should be released also. I do want to move us on from Epstein in a second, but we just saw Thomas Massey lose his reelection in Kentucky. What is next for the movement to release the files for the campaign, the pressure on Trump and the administration to release it? what does that look like? part of it is just the amplification of this story, which is why I was so grateful that you two asked me to come on to talk about this, because I really think the more people refuse to let this go... I do think this is still a bipartisan issue. obviously Massey lost, obviously, Trump and his people are like, no, we already did our job, we don't have talk about this anymore. But there's still a lot of Republicans who are extremely upset about this. I don't think we Can rule out the fact that the general public has been talking about this and has been obsessed with this for a long time, and people think this is not okay. so we need to just keep amplifying this. I think the reading room traveling around to different cities is going to be huge because I think there's something extremely powerful about seeing these bound copies of the Epstein files and saying, there are folks who read this for twenty four hours, they didn't even get through a full volume. It would take, even if we read for twenty four hours a day, if we read it like a good clip, it would take us four and a half years to read all the files in this little space, in this room. their plans to bring it to places where maybe these are swing states, you know, leading up to the midterms. Maybe these are places where i when we throw that stuff in people's faces, they're gonna say, Hey, can I really support someone who's not going to hold these people accountable? Who trafficked 14-year-old girls? Like, you know, the survivors who were there, there's this big, I think you've both been there, but there's this big timeline. And when the survivors were there, they asked if they could add themselves to the timeline. And so they wrote handwritten and they put themselves by date, you know, 14 at 14 years old, this person was trafficked to Prince Andrew. At 14 years old, Donald Trump, da-da-da-da, you know, and and they placed themselves on the timeline and it's it's just like very powerful to see and so I think not ignoring this story and and making sure that we keep beating this drum for accountability really matters. Wow. Thank you. yeah, I mean, obviously we're no friends of of Thomas Massey, but we want to make sure that like Congress continues to to push the issue. I'm glad that Ro Khana has been a leader on this in the way that he has and I feel like we need more Democrats and Republicans too, but like we need more people to step up. Yeah, I completely agree. we should not let this go. obviously I've spent my career as a public defender. So I have read about horrific crimes for Fifteen years, I've represented over five thousand people and I I was reading the Epstein files and I found myself like extremely upset. And I kind of was like, but I've I've read horrific allegations. Like, why is this so different? Like kind of examining why I felt so upset by it. And I realized that every time I've ever read a horrific case before where there are allegations of something horrible happening, it was because there was going to be accountability. You know, most of my clients end up taking pleas, end up spending decades in prison if they've done something like that. and I realized in reading all this stuff, I'm Reading about Elon Musk, about Donald Trump, about Leon Black, about all of these people who are Leading the free world, whether they're the richest men in the world, whether they're the most powerful men in the world, you know, and none of them have faced any accountability. No one has been prosecuted or held accountable for the things that they've done or the things they were complicit in. And it just like, it really makes you sick to your stomach. It really is one of those things that just is such a gut punch to be like, wow, like they just, they just have evaded all measure of accountability. And the system is designed that way. And I I w just wanna double down on that point. It it is so disheartening and disgusting and it's so important. Anyone listening, like if you see a story on Epstein, please share it. If you are in conversation and someone doesn't want to talk about it, like of course don't force them, but we have to continue to talk about the structure and the system that is in place and being protected by Republicans. Tea. we can't let you go without asking you about something that Brian and I did you know that Brian and I are super fans of Survivor? I mean Brian and I definitely have messaged about Survivor a bunch of times over the years. So we have to like speaking of accountability, we have to talk. You have said publicly, that you will you believe you will never be asked back to survivor. Why is that? you know, I I pretty aggressively like went very hard at CBS. I think CBS has taken, obviously, as we all know, a hard right turn. They have, capitulated to this administration both by paying uh this massive settlement sixteen million dollars and then, you know, Bari Weiss taking over CBS News, they've just like really become a MAGA network. They cancelled Colbert and the survivor of it all is they cast this woman who was known for using slurs on her original season and ended up, you know, going on a drunken anti-Semitic rant against me. And it just kind of all falls in line with the way that CBS has turned these days. And instead of saying, Yeah, listen, maybe we shouldn't have cast her, we're gonna call her out for this absolute horrific behavior and we're not going to feature her or we're not gonna put her on red carpets or we're not gonna highlight her. They uh sent CBS legal after me and tried to intimidate me from saying anything. Oh. I was like, you guys, nah that I th you're messing with the wrong bitch. Like, no, nope, nope, nope, I have not done anything wrong. Like you you got the wrong girl. And so I very publicly called them out the week of the premiere you know, I didn't just burn that bridge. I like threw a Molotov cocktail at it and like really blew it up. And so yeah, I don't think I'll be being asked back. did you see the popularity favorability rankings after after the season? I did that I mean Glennis, did you see it? Se Stephanie was in literal last place, had the f had the most unfavorable views from all viewership. about that that last tribal when she's like looking in the camera and she's like, Jonathan? Like what? A she she is a horrible person. my god, did you not watch it? The last tribal? Yeah, when she was doing trying to sell Jonathan. around player. The same way that she was like going zoo like super zoomed into camera when she was going on the tirade against you, Eliza. It was absolutely nuts. completely agree with you that she should not be platformed as a human being. And we love you. Oh, well thank you. Yeah, no, she got the she's the lowest rated and I don't think that people would have otherwise known about this. Without that video that I put out, like at Premier Week, because they didn't do anything to make her even look that bad on the show. Jonathan was uh Roy Moore's bodyguard. Did you know that? He worked for Roy Moore. Yeah. He's a huge MAGA person too. Of course they had their MAGA alliance. didn't even I didn't know that, but I knew. You know what I mean? Like I the energy was wrong. The energy was incorrect. I hated watching him all season, to be honest. I really didn't. I was not feeling it. Nobody was, according to that data that we saw, wait, Eliza. all being the lowest rated, I was like, that is so beautiful. As like Chrissy c cut from the same crot cloth, Chrissy, Jonathan, Coach, and Steph being the bottom four was just like chef's kiss. ya. who went out too soon? Like what one person went out too soon in fifty? Well, I mean Kyle Fraser. Yeah. He's a he's a good guy. fellow lawyer, you know, outspoken, like just like a solid, nice, lovely human. And especially going out with an injury like that, that really sucks. Wrap them ankles, guys. Come on. Yeah. Do some like Achilles training. I don't know. That was yeah. Yeah, that was rough. Eliza, thank you so much for being with us. We really appreciate your work and your advocacy for the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, for your continued efforts to make the Democratic Party better and smarter, for making all of us smarter online. We're thrilled to have you and thank you for your time. Love you both and I'll see you soon. Yes. Very soon. Okay, Diva, we have two big stories that we need to cover for the week. The first, election results Have you looked at what happened in Texas? Yes. Did you see the New York Times margin map? No, tell me. well one, let's state what happened. Ken Paxton, the infamously corrupt Ken Paxton, was endorsed by Donald Trump in the Texas Republican Senate primary, which is now again the most expensive primary in the history of the United States of America, topping out over a hundred million dollars spent. And I saw this stat I think eighty million of that was spent against Ken Paxton for ads, but Donald Trump's endorsement got him over the finish line. so the New York Times does this like image that shows arrows of how like districts go towards the entire state of Texas towards Paxton. It was it was a crazy, yeah, it was crazy. I mean Cornyn only picked up three counties. so that doesn't surprise me. this was a runoff election. There had been a primary like a month and a half ago. That was when Talarico fought or was up against Jasmine Crockett. There was was not a cage match, but we will be talking about a cage match soon. and so this was a runoff because neither of them got to 50% because there was this dude, Wesley Hunt, in it. So Cornyn is the one billion year old incumbent. And people wanted people being like defense hawks and the establishment wanted him to stay because he's a reliable vote. Trump does not like Cornyn because he voted to convict him after Trump helped facilitate the attack on January 6th. we were in the scenario where Ken Paxton who's thought of as being extremely unelectable in a general election because He's committed crimes and he had a fraud settlement. he's in a really or went through a really messy divorce. He was like cheating on his wife. He's a lunatic. His politics are extremely far right. He's the one who tries to sue doctors in other states for performing uh like reproductive care and abortion on abortions on people. Like like all kinds of crazy shit. He's tried to open a detransition clinic, to untrans people. he's a lunatic. there was a concern that him being up in a general election against Talarico, who's like a bona fide center left sort of Christian pastor dude with wide appeal could actually present some real problems for Republicans and make them go spend another hundred million dollars in the state to make sure that their Republican wins. And that's exactly the scenario that we got. It was kind of from a Democratic standpoint, kind of Best case politically for us in many ways. now that Cornyn has been defeated resoundingly. It was not even close. We thought it was going to be like a five, seven point race, something like that. It was too almost thirty 30 points. He was wiped out. They wiped the floor with him, Now Cornyn's probably gonna be on a war path against Trump for the rest of his term. And so Trump is like continually pissing these people off who he needs to vote for his shit in the Senate and in the House. so I'm just like, I I have my popcorn, I'm thrilled with the outcome last night. I'm like more, more, more, more, more. but we got to keep Ken Paxton out of the Senate. Right, is Donald Trump creating a lame duck before November with all of these Republicans that he's pissing off. I just wanna like go through this hit list of Ken Paxton being corrupt and criminal. 2015 he was indicted on two f first degree felony charges for defrauding investors while serving in the Texas legislature. 2020 senior senior aides, people who worked for him, reported him to the FBI alleging bribery and abuse of office. those continued. He settled a whistleblower lawsuit for $3.3 million in taxpayer dollars, Texas taxpayer dollars. the Texas House impeached him in 2023. then the Senate acquitted him of the 16 articles of impeachment. And then, of course, as you said, the wife drama. He th this guy is is comically corrupt and unelectable. Brian. Is the Trump endorsement that important? Well, Paxton was already leading in most polling before the Trump endorsement. So there's a little bit of chicken and egg here of yes, it is clear that Trump wanted Paxton over Cornyn. That's been true. But did Trump endorse and then that surged his polling? Or did Trump endorse because he saw The polling that showed that Paxton was going to win. And so he just kind of said, like, fuck it. it was it was probably kind of both. but yes, we can say definitively that in the Republican cult, a Trump endorsement is everything. Like it's literally everything. We just saw the same thing in the Cassidy race in Louisiana, we saw the same thing in Indiana with the state legislators, we saw the same thing with Massey, Republicans cannot get enough. Trump and they have replaced their moral compass, their entire policy platform, and vision for the country with a orange. Monster. Like yeah, right. what he says goes 'cause otherwise, like, what do you make a decision based off of? Because you don't have any values anymore, you know? Texans clearly hate themselves. Like if you're voting for a person like Ken Paxton, you you hate yourself. I just cannot imagine being like circling that dot for Ken Paxton after all all all of the corruption. It is it is so mind boggling. I mean, it kind of amplifies that we're living in this time where being a t a target, being a target of the majority to a certain class of people makes people believe that you're standing up for something. Like the the very fact that people are against you validates the idea that you're taking on the system. And so it creates a scenario where like whenever there's a majority of people that agree that something is bad, there's a minority of people that are like obsessed with making that thing happen and more and like more popular. And you do you know what I mean? It's But like then then the onus is on us. You know, Eliza spoke to this and I completely agree with it. It's what I do all day, which is like investing in in a left narrative infrastructure. Because how is it that because people are anti Ken Paxton? He kinda he he wins, right? This is what you're you're saying, right? If someone's like so against you, you become like the the chosen one because you're counterculture. But really what you're doing is protecting the Epstein class, protecting yourself against The laws that you are breaking and the predators that you're protecting. I totally hear what you're saying, but it it makes me go cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs because it does not make moral or logical sense that this is what's happening in the United States of America. Well, we could say that on every episode because that's that is the timeline that we live in. and dot da dot, do we have something else to talk about today? We do. In What Fresh Hell Is This, edition number six hundred and forty two. Currently under construction is the cage in front of the White House where some immigrants are gonna fight some Americans in about two weeks for Trump's eightieth birthday. In front of the billionaire oligarchs who are literally puppeteering our government at present. It's have you seen have you like seen images of it? It's disgusting. It's like Nimay Ndolo she posted this really funny thing on her story that was like, even our founding fathers who parentheses literally owned people. would not be okay with this. Like, it is so grotesque. And did you see the the Dana White interview when a reporter, I think it was the Fox News reporter, asked, and will any women be fighting?'Cause there are female cage fighters. and he's it just didn't work out that way. It didn't work out that way. He said it didn't work out that way. That was his answer. my God. Yeah. I mean, I just want to be clear from the beginning. This is liberal rage bait. And I genuinely think that they're doing it just as much to hurt us as they are to enjoy whatever this event is because it's so uniquely designed to trigger liberals. liberals do not watch UFC. Like for for for the most part, liberals have such an academic sort of response to it, or at least like the liberal party establishment class. I'm sure that there like obviously there are d democratic voting people who watch UFC and WWE and all these things. But culturally it's so antithetical to current mainstream liberal coastal elitist bullshit culture. that it is literally a nuclear bomb since nuclear bomb to the on the front lawn of the White House. It is horrific. And like Bezos, Zuckerberg, Cook, Musk, and whoever watch these men who are like commoners beat each other into submission is like it's so I want I want the celebrity deathmatch, but not Claymation. I want Bezos and Musk to to go go at it. isn't Zuck like trained in something, BJJ or something? Get in there. I wanna see you I I don't wanna see them fight each other. I wanna see one of the UFC fighters, V Zuck, go. Let's see what happens. don't there punches like aren't they like, you know, five hundred pounds of weight when they punch? So to Eliza's point on CBS and the CBS of it all. Did you know that there's also a deal with Paramount Plus, seven point seven billion dollars that closed with UFC? I mean, the accoutrement of this event are just like corruption galore. Trump has been promoting a online casino that is sponsoring the event that is literally illegal. It's illegally operating. And Trump has posted about it four times with the logo. Like, what are we talking about? we talking what would be the live version of the UFC cage fight on the front lawn? Um I feel like Like Drag Race, live drag race runway, hosted by Chelsea Handler. I don't know. No, RuPaul's work the world live with Bianca Del Rio. And no, I mean, yeah, it's like, to your point. We we need to just like, I know we're talking about this. We have to overstate your point. This is rage bait. It is like the creme de la creme of corruption. And don't fall for it. Don't fall for it. You can comment on it. You can look at it, but we look Look away. Yeah, look away. And if you're gonna talk about it in every breath, which I have not done in this in this episode, in every breath, it should be look at Trump putting on shows while you pay seven dollars a gallon for gas. Look at Trump putting on shows while we drop a hundred billion dollars worth of bombs on Iran. Look at Trump putting on shows and hanging out with billionaires. while your food prices double. It has to be both because just hating UFC for the sake of hating UFC, thinking that it's barbaric, that's the trap. That's where they make all of us look out of touch because UFC is like relatively mainstream. So like it I I don't think that I have the most popular opinion about UFC. In the world. And so if I make if we make this about whether UFC is cool or not, we will lose. But if it's about why is Trump spending all this money? Why is he spending all this money putting on an event to entertain billionaires while none of us can afford a house? It's different. Yeah. Or why is Trump protecting the Epstein class? I mean dancing for them, right? this is putting on a festival inside the walls of the castle while the potato famine r ravages the commoners. Like Don't bring up the potato famine to me. Um, I will say also, like, I have this vision you know, I s like the the fifteen shots outside the White House last week, it's just like that the epicenter of violence that this is, it's just like, uh Okay, G we will not be watching that, but why don't we go ahead and send them off with a good vibe? This week, the South Carolina Senate in a surprise move rejected the state's new maps, which would have eliminated the only majority black district in the state in one of the states with the most black voters in the country, eliminating all representation of of Democrats. And The Senate said no, because voting was already underway. Twelve Republicans changed their mind at the last minute, which is like a decent sizable block, and a bunch of them have been on the record saying they will not change their mind back. So I'm uh I'm cautiously optimistic that we actually are gonna hold the South Carolina seat. That's a great vibe. So we'll take it. We gotta take where we can get it. I know, I know. Okay. right. Thanks y'all. We will be back here same time, same place next week. Do not forget that we have a bonus episode with Eliza Orlins coming out on Friday. And Thanks all. Thank you all for listening. And thank you to Eliza Orlins for joining us. She is so fucking smart and I really appreciate her sharing her time. If you are watching, make sure you hit that subscribe button, like, and drop us a comment. And if you are audio only, please leave us a review so that more listeners can find the pod. We will be back here, same time, same place next week. Thanks, guys.