MTracey podcast

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I watched the Charlie Kirk memorial extravaganza today. I also went to a Charlie Kirk church service last night in suburban New York. So here’s me thinking aloud about all of it.

People are predictably enraged that I had the audacity to write this article yesterday, questioning whether we’re all obliged to sit passively by while Charlie Kirk gets inducted into the pantheon of slain American political saints. But I’m just following Glenn Greenwald’s dictum:

We are all taught that it is impolite to speak ill of the dead, particularly in the immediate aftermath of someone’s death. For a private person, in a private setting, that makes perfect sense. Most human beings are complex and shaped by conflicting drives, defined by both good and bad acts. That’s more or less what it means to be human. And — when it comes to private individuals — it’s entirely appropriate to emphasize the positives of someone’s life and avoid criticisms upon their death: it comforts their grieving loved ones and honors their memory. In that context, there’s just no reason, no benefit, to highlight their flaws.

But that is completely inapplicable to the death of a public person, especially one who is political. When someone dies who is a public figure by virtue of their political acts — like Ronald Reagan — discussions of them upon death will be inherently politicized. How they are remembered is not strictly a matter of the sensitivities of their loved ones, but has substantial impact on the culture which discusses their lives. To allow significant political figures to be heralded with purely one-sided requiems — enforced by misguided (even if well-intentioned) notions of private etiquette that bar discussions of their bad acts — is not a matter of politeness; it’s deceitful and propagandistic. To exploit the sentiments of sympathy produced by death to enshrine a political figure as Great and Noble is to sanction, or at best minimize, their sins. Misapplying private death etiquette to public figures creates false history and glorifies the ignoble.

The above 100% applies to Charlie Kirk, whom none of the people reading this right now would be talking about if not for his public political activities. So yes — I’m going to keep challenging the rapidly-congealing, and groundless, mythology.

For instance, today Utah Governor Spencer Cox, who clearly wants to run for president, cited what he made out to be a touching and wise quote from Charlie Kirk, about how we all needed to get off the internet, read the Bible, and re-connect with our friends and family. Cox forgot to mention the context, which was that Charlie was urging his followers to disengage and uncritically “trust” the government during the US-Israeli war on Iran in June 2025. That was the context in which Charlie Kirk was advising that everybody log off and stop complaining about what Trump was doing — that is, mobilizing for war in the Middle East.

So yes — I’m going to keep countering this nonsense.

By the way, I haven’t forgotten about the plagiarism of Jessica Reed Kraus. She posted a very strange and incoherent “apology” on Wednesday, which I will soon make a point to address. The whole Charlie Kirk thing has thrown me off a bit from what I’d been planning to cover. As the news broke, I was on my way to the Comedy Cellar for this podcast recording. Maybe not the most opportune moment for some laughs, but we made the best of it. I also recorded this Reason podcast last week, and it finally just came out. I think it’s probably the best podcast I’ve done so far on Epstein. I’m headed out to do yet another podcast this afternoon. Will no one rid us of these godforsaken podcasts!!!!!

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One of the people responsible for catalyzing me to look into Darryl Cooper in the first place was Thaddeus Russell, who insisted on a previous stream that I must “respectfully” engage with his friend Darryl’s work, given how prominent a player he’s been for so many years in the “Epstein Space.” So I took up the challenge… and the results weren’t pretty.

This is a long stream, recorded today, August 28. It was supposed to be primarily about Cooper, or so I thought, but at Thad’s request I also wound up giving a comprehensive chronology of the Epstein saga, interweaving commentary on Cooper throughout, since that’s at top of mind for me right now. I also took some questions solo at the end.

I’ll have a followup article on Cooper soon, but it will be paywalled, so consider upgrading your subscription to “paid,” if you’d like to read it.

You can also subscribe to me on YouTube, because unfortunately Substack makes it annoying to live-stream to Substack over desktop.

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This past Saturday I did what every conscientious citizen should’ve been doing with their placid summer weekend: asking random people on the Jersey Shore about Jeffrey Epstein.

The journey began improbably, when it turned out the very first guy we encountered had literally been on a boat tour of Epstein’s island. And it ended with a big barrel of laughs, as another guy, Bob, proved to be one of the most naturally funny people I have ever come across. He had me seriously cracking up. Along the way, other interviewees also provided some interesting commentaries. Just another day at the boardwalk in Seaside Heights, NJ.

Why do I do this sort of thing? Not merely in search of cheap viral moments with a news peg, although I do personally think Bob deserves to go viral and then perhaps take over “The Late Show” on CBS. I would also argue there is genuine journalistic value in making a point to semi-regularly ask “normal people” what they think about major news events. Not only to gauge their opinion, but to sense how they’re processing information, and from what sources. One young woman told us she’d only heard about the Epstein controversy from a single video on TikTok, and therefore didn’t have a whole lot to add. Others admitted with admirable candor that they hadn’t formed any strong views one way or another, because while they might be vaguely aware of the controversy, they had not consumed enough information to comment intelligently.

And then there were others who volunteered their preexisting knowledge of “Pizzagate.”

I know there’s a whole genre of “content creation” where man-on-the-street interviews are used for lame stunts or ridiculous gossip. However, on principle, I think it can be a worthwhile endeavor. Here’s another such video I did recently, asking Staten Island residents on the Fourth of July about Trump bombing Iran. The answers were diametrically opposite to what we’d been told were the prevailing views within the “MAGA Base” — by which pundits generally mean a handful of outlier social media personalities and podcasters who are not meaningfully representative of anything in particular, except the curious incentives of contemporary media.

I’m still thinking through to what extent the popular storyline of Epstein-infuriated MAGAs being in rebellion against Trump actually has any long-term political ramifications, or if that narrative is just another invention of lazy media pontificators (both traditional and “alternative”) who love nothing more than to report on alleged “rifts” bedeviling MAGA. The jury’s still out, but I lean toward the supposed MAGA dissension being greatly exaggerated — a function of chronic over-reliance on algorithmically-curated social media feeds to extrapolate larger political trends. Are some Trump supporters angry and disenchanted — particularly those with outsized visibility online? Sure. Are they meaningfully representative of the wider GOP electorate? I have my doubts.

Although, I will acknowledge that Epstein resonates differently than other issues, like Iran or even immigration, because it impinges on what’s come to be a core tenet of online Right-Wing dogma: that society is perpetually governed by the omnipresence of Satanic child sex-trafficking rings, and their sadistic coverup. Trump was supposed to vanquish the Deep State and expose the pedophiles, but now he appears to be colluding with them, and may even be implicated himself. And it’s not as if he just politely informed the public that sorry, there is no master Epstein “file” after all — he’s repeatedly called the whole thing a “hoax,” and launched bizarre screeds against his own supporters. So, I could see this having some deeper long-term political impact that’s a bit difficult to quantify right now, although I still lean toward it having not nearly as much impact as many have over-eagerly suggested in the past several weeks.

Either way, it’s still interesting and amusing to ask normal people IRL about Epstein.

Here’s the new video on YouTube, if you prefer.

Videography and editing credit to Meagan O’Rourke.

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By popular demand, I spent the weekend immersed in yet another Epstein deep-dive. I report my preliminary findings.

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We’re giving the people what they want. And the people want Epstein.

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Whether we like it or not, it’s the Summer of Epstein. Trump keeps denouncing his own supporters for fixating on the issue — today even going so far as to disown what he now calls the “stupid” MAGA Influencers who refuse to shut up about it. I keep getting requests to write and talk about Epstein mania, throwing a monkey wrench into my plans to cover ot…

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It was time for yet another dive into the Epstein humiliation tonight, this time with Richard Hanania. Agree with him or not, Richard tends to be a fairly well-informed person, so it was interesting to discover how little he fundamentally knew about the Epstein saga, and how easy it was to dispel various myths he’d just kind of ambiently absorbed.

We al…

Here’s my discussion with Lily Lynch, whom I met at the NATO Summit last week and considers herself a fellow journalistic “weirdo,” making it opportune to swap some observations.

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