How CBS Torched Its Own Reputation (Eliza Orlins Full Interview)

This is the one we promised. Our full, unedited conversation with our first guest of Season 3; with public defender, creator, and iconic Survivor player Eliza Orlins. A slice of it ran in Thursday's episode. Here's the whole thing.

Eliza anchored "Cover to Cover-Up," 24 straight hours 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. She takes us inside how it actually came together, the overnight scramble to fill the midnight to 7:30 AM hours, and what it felt like to read victim testimony out loud for a full day.

She 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. Then 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 birthday.

There is more here than made the Thursday cut. Eliza gets into the Democratic "autopsy," Rob Flaherty's much more honest version of it, and why she thinks the left is decades late on building real creator infrastructure because no one is watching cable news anymore. It is the clearest case we have heard for why shows like this one exist.

Then things get a bit more personal as 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.

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

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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. I'm Brian. I'm Glennis. And welcome back to Vibes Only. The podcast. Anyway, we have someone on our show today. Eliza Orlins, our friend, our collaborator. She has been a public defender in the city of newyork 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. We appreciate you. learned that you love the MTA. I do. I'm a huge, huge fan of the subway. I take it all the time. I wish it functioned even better. Yeah, ride or die. I was just complaining about my commute this morning, into the office and the lack of Wi Fi on the MTA, which is like my one charge for Mamdani I need him to like take that on. I want Wi Fi on the trains more than I want free buses, personally. Yeah take the bus. I'm a bus rider. I I occasionally take the bus. I'm a I'm a pro bus human. I actually don't take the bus anymore, but when I lived on fourteenth Street, when the M14 when they closed down fourteenth Street, that changed my life. OG bus lover, but it happens to be that now I I rarely take it. Shout out M14 D and A. Okay, 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." And 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. to that end, wait, we're gonna pivot a little bit, Eliza. Um, and we're gonna talk about Democrats for a second. Uh did you have a chance to read the I'm using air quotes autopsy report. Yikes. I looked at it. I was like, wow, this is this is terrible. This is not good. it's not the Epstein Files, but it also can make you a little sick to your stomach because what the fuck? Like, how is this where we're at that we're getting like this half baked eighth grade book report ass version of what was a pretty catastrophic year for Dems. obviously the release, the non release and then forced release was just like Probably couldn't have been handled worse than it it was. I can't really imagine a scenario. I'm curious in the reactions to the autopsy, that you've seen from people because the internet was set ablaze pretty quickly. Are there lessons that you feel people have learned from 2024 That feel that they are moving Democrats forward at this point in time, either as a reaction to the autopsy or just a reaction to the year overall. did you read Rob Flaherty's autopsy? Okay. He he wrote like a very long autopsy of his own kind of, and I who don't know, just just flagging, he was a deputy campaign manager for Kamala Harris. Right. And and I think it was v pretty honest about their shortcomings in a lot of ways. Obviously the stuff I find the most interesting at the moment is the way that creators are utilized and kind of the like lack of coordination. I mean, we've seen on the right for years, if not decades, the way they invest in people to be political messengers for their party. And the way that Democrats are like, oh, in the last month before an election, we can just like chuck a bunch of money at people and it's gonna work. And that's just not working. And it doesn't work. And it it will never work. And they there has to be like a real investment in left-leaning creators who are trusted messengers who are not just Johnny come lately, you know, really last second things. And so I think Rob's honesty about that, that's something that I'm kind of taking away, that like the Democrats are finally coming to the realization that there has to be real infrastructure for online messaging from the left because no one is watching cable news anymore. Truly. No one watches cable news. Like if you think MS Now or CNN is gonna be your messenger, like you're deeply delusional. It's just not happening. it's kind of why I'm doing what I'm doing. I'm like, we all have to fight fascism with everything we have. And so, you know, we really need to be investing year round for a long i time, you know, extended period of time. Like it can't just be at the last second. Like it has to be starting now for 2028. And it's already we're late. We're already late. We're decades late. But it it better now than never, you know? Every moment is the best moment to do it. At till this point, you know, and so so I really hope that that's people's takeaway and that people recognize like the real importance of political creators. Well, I do, that's for sure. Uh Eliza, we we can't let you go without asking you about 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, 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, you know, capitulated to this administration both by paying uh this massive settlement uh you know, 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. Thank you all for listening. 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.