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Michael is back for yet another Epstein podcast. In this one, we spend a lot of time going over Ross Douthat’s recent interview with Julie K. Brown, who has been the most important journalist covering the Epstein story. Michael shows how she glosses over the credibility problems of the alleged victims who were supposedly trafficked to men other than Epstein, even implying that one of them was killed.

We talk about Michael’s article on what Bannon is hiding. I encourage him to send it to Democratic members of Congress, and he follows my advice by DMing Ro Khanna as we’re speaking. If Democrats start discussing the need to subpoena Bannon in the coming days and weeks, you’ll know why.

We also take some questions from the audience.

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Alright, I really thought we were done, but with the revelation that Trump wrote a love letter to Epstein about their shared secret interest, I guess not. As I tell him, I was in the gym and had to go outside and record in my car. For something this funny, one finds a way to post.

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I thought we might be done with Epstein, but Trump decided to start calling his supporters morons for ever believing in the conspiracy, which means the scandal is not going away. Michael is therefore back to discuss. See our first conversation here, where we go over the background and basics of everything Epstein. Michael and I are both of the opinion that there is probably something here that Trump doesn’t want the world to see. The Bannon angle in particular seems underexplored. I encourage Michael to write something on the topic, and he says he’s going to take my advice.

Later in the discussion we talk about the specifics of the Ghislaine Maxwell conviction, and whether it might get overturned by the Supreme Court. See Michael’s thread on the topic here. This strikes me as a terrible miscarriage of justice, given that there was practically no evidence against her other than the decades-old recollections of supposed victims who had a financial incentive to lie.

Something we forgot to mention is that there’s now a discharge petition that might force a vote on the Epstein files on the House floor. I’m excited to see where this goes politically. The substantive truth of what Epstein was doing doesn’t seem that interesting, but this has become a fascinating political football, having more of a divisive effect on MAGA than perhaps any other issue since the movement began, or at least since it has entered its more cultish phase.

I am not big into the art scene. But when a Dutch girl reached out to me to be part of one of her projects, I saw who she was with, noticed that they were within a twelve-minute drive, and decided that this could be fun.

As it turned out, Christiane is part of Keeping It Real Art Critics (KIRAC), which is perhaps best known for its project getting Michel Houellebecq to agree to have sex with two of its members on camera. This led to him writing a short book denouncing his former collaborators and filing a lawsuit to try to stop the film from being released. You can read about the feud in the New York Times here, and watch the trailer here.

While engaging in their latest project, I got to talking with members of KIRAC, and they described another movie that director Stefan Ruitenbeek had made called Honeypot (2021). The premise is that Jini Jane, one of the girls who was set up with Houellebecq, publishes on a conservative Dutch website a call for right-wing men to have sex with her. She ends up settling on a far-right voter from the working class and a philosopher named Sid Lukkassen, and the film centers on her meeting up with them as part of her quest to solve political polarization.

Upon watching the movie, I decided to return to the house where I first met members of KIRAC and interview Stefan and Jini about Honeypot. To mark the occasion of the release of this interview, Stefan has today posted the entire movie on X. You can watch it here, and I would recommend doing so before listening to this conversation. As promised in the interview, here is the safe-for-work version, though it only has the first twenty-one minutes.

What I ended up being fascinated by was the contrast between the two kinds of rightists and how they interact with the same woman under vulnerable conditions. The film ended up telling us something important about the differences between those who land on the conservative side for organic reasons, working-class men who this kind of politics naturally suits, and the thinker who is as distant from members of his own coalition as he is from his fellow intellectuals. The foreplay, the sex scenes, and the aftermath of the second encounter brought home the depth of the pain and sense of cognitive dissonance felt by some right-wing intellectuals.

While we often see incels and trads as hateful misogynists, their views are in many cases an outgrowth of extreme sensitivity. They seem to be less equipped than other men to deal with being rejected by a woman. I simply could not relate to the emotional neediness Lukkassen displayed, and him accepting his role as the supplicant in the meet-up. The working-class guy did not have this problem! The insecurity that such rightists feel ironically makes them behave in ways that repel women, turning their fears into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I don’t believe that Jini went in expecting this or manipulating the situation so she would accept the first man and reject the second. I felt that these were organic interactions that showed how a romantic situation can go one way or another depending on what the man reveals about his soul. You see Jini getting progressively angrier, and, like most women, unable or unwilling to put into words exactly what is turning her off, she latches on to these various excuses, which Lukkassen is not sophisticated enough to see for the pretexts that they are. Stefan explains to me what about the man he finds offensive. It’s not that he’s clueless, but rather the lack of curiosity. I speculate that this is what right-wing politics often is – retreating from complexity into a rigid inner life that creates a vision one uses to try to mold the rest of the world.

In the interview, I question the two guests on different scenes in the movie, including the parts that blur reality and fiction. I express some confusion about why a trad or incel-adjacent right-wing philosopher would agree to have sex on camera in the first place, as this would be unthinkable in the American context. Another cultural difference: in the Netherlands, feminists took the side of the right-wing philosopher. I enjoyed having the opportunity to question Jini regarding what exactly about Lukkassen’s behavior turned her off, and how he was unable to redeem himself in her eyes, even screwing up his attempt to give her a spanking. Don’t be this guy!

Lukkassen ends up humiliated here, so much so that it made me feel some unease about watching and promoting the movie. That said, he was an adult who consented to being in that situation. My mind was fully put at ease upon hearing from Stefan that Lukkassen was once again friendly with him and had come to accept what had happened, despite the film turning into a major scandal in the Netherlands.

Viewer discretion is advised regarding this interview, and especially the film, which has sex scenes that we discuss in detail.

You can follow Stefan, Jini, and Christiane on X, subscribe to KIRAC’s YouTube channel, or support them on Patreon and get their other films here. I’ve never been much of a connoisseur of performance art, but what KIRAC has done with Honeypot is give us the best version of it, provoking in this viewer at least thoughts about what women really want, the state of contemporary politics, and the various sorts of men who end up on the right in opposition to a left-wing elite monoculture.

One may watch for the implicit commentary on modern conservatism, but there are more generalizable lessons here on relations between the sexes, and also how the personal and political are not so easily separable.

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I never paid much attention to the Jeffrey Epstein thing. The idea that he was some kind of spy obtaining blackmail material on powerful figures by trafficking young girls to them has for years been pushed by figures like Tucker Carlson, Jack Posobiec, and Eric Weinstein, which convinced me that there wasn’t much to look into, since I can’t recall a situation where this crowd has ever been correct about anything.

But until I read Michael Tracey’s recent article on the topic in Compact, I didn’t realize how flimsy the conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein actually are. He joins me to discuss.

If anything, it appears that the establishment took sensationalist claims surrounding Epstein’s behavior way too seriously, which led to large payouts for alleged victims while stoking conspiracy theories. As it turned out, our society does not go out of its way to cover for sexual abusers. Especially since the MeToo era began, we’re too credulous about these things. So we have globs of money going to Epstein accusers and their lawyers, while nothing has ever been proved by the standards of the criminal justice system.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s handling of the issue has caused a major headache for the MAGA movement. As someone who has constantly harped on the misinformed and conspiratorial nature of modern conservatism, I’m enjoying the poetic justice of seeing the chickens coming home to roost. Figures like Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, and Trump himself have gained power by playing to the paranoia of their gullible supporters, and now that they’re running the government they have nothing to offer them. I’ve often gone back and forth on whether the problems I point out with the Republican Party will get better or worse after Trump is gone, and this entire episode has convinced me that the next iteration of the right is probably going to be even stupider than the one we have now. The Trump Cult is the relatively non-conspiratorial wing of conservatism!

The left seems to see an opening. In an era where more voters appear inclined to prioritize a conspiratorial worldview, it is probably naive to expect Democrats to completely refrain from swimming in these waters. One wonders if we’ll see them continue to harp on Epstein’s connections to Trump, which are more well-sourced than almost everything MAGAs believe about him. Just as liberals have had to inch away from woke in order to be better positioned to win future elections, becoming slightly more conspiratorial might be another way to meet voters where they’re at.

After going through the nonsense behind the Epstein story, Michael and I discuss the wider culture of hysteria over pedophilia and sexual abuse. I bring up the online “pedo hunters,” QAnon, Epstein’s role in the cosmology of Rogansphere types, and how all of these things fit together. We also debate how much this will actually hurt the MAGA coalition. On the mood at the Turning Point USA conference, see this story. Also, I speculate a bit on whether there was anything in the Epstein materials that was embarrassing to Trump, based in part on this claim by Michael Wolff that he saw pictures of him with topless girls that were in Epstein’s safe.

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Today, I’m excited to welcome on the podcast State Senator Scott Wiener. He serves as Assistant Majority Whip and chairs the Senate Budget Committee and the Senate Housing Committee.

Senator Wiener joins me to discuss AB 130 and SB 131, the newly passed reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

We explore what these laws do, including how they affect single-family and multifamily housing, what density and affordability standards apply, and what else remains to be done. The conversation gets deep into the weeds, as Senator Wiener explains why these reforms passed as part of the budget process and discusses the crucial role played by Governor Newsom, as well as the broader political and activist ecosystem — including YIMBYs, environmental groups, and the influence of public narratives like the debate set off by Abundance. I ask how much of the housing affordability issue could be blamed on CEQA, and he gives me a ballpark estimate.

I never cease being amazed at how dysfunctional housing policy has become. Senator Wiener provided me with a surprising new tidbit, explaining that if your porch is rotting in San Francisco, you need to jump through hoops to make sure you do not cause too much damage to the environment when fixing it.

Beyond housing, we talk about other abundance issues. He brings up energy and childcare, and I, more excited about the libertarian aspects of the philosophy, ask where occupational licensing and immigration fit into his thinking.

This conversation also gave me an opportunity to ask about the nature of power. How exactly do environmental groups influence legislators? Is it persuasion, intimidation, or some combination of the two? And why have environmental organizations been so bad on housing, as seen in the “NASCAR letter”? Given that the abundance movement has prominent spokesmen like Senator Wiener, and the arguments on its behalf are being made in the most prestigious, well-read outlets in the country, where are attempts at persuasion coming up short?

Finally, I ask Senator Wiener whether the time he got his cell phone snatched in San Francisco, before he bought it back from the thief, influenced his views on criminal justice issues.

As someone who lives in California and is raising three children here, I’m glad to see legislators taking the issues facing the state seriously. I hope you find the conversation as useful and informative as I did.

Links

My interview with Derek Thompson

Institute for Justice on occupational licensing

Story on the cell phone robbery

The “NASCAR letter” from environmental groups

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Murtaza Hussain (X, Substack) is a journalist who reports on the Middle East and foreign conflicts more generally. He joins me to discuss Israel, Gaza, his travel to Syria, the future of the Muslim world, and immigration to the West. I disagree with Murtaza on most things related to American and Israeli policy, but have always found that his work provides an interesting perspective. We discuss a few of his articles here, including “Did Al Qaeda Win the War on Terror?” and “The Iran War and What Comes Next.” See also his reflections on his time recently spent in Syria. Note that Trump’s ceasefire announcement broke as we were recording this episode.

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Trump just bombed Iran. Here are my initial thoughts. I begin by talking about how “Bombing Iran” has been a meme in the culture over the last two decades. After serving as a nightmare scenario for noninterventionists all these years, it has finally happened.

The results are unlikely to be as dire as they’ve always claimed. I discuss why there won’t be American ground troops, why we won’t see World War III, and what the real potential risks are. I also talk about the history of regime change, and what lessons the collapse of the Soviet Union have for today.

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Michael Tracey is back for a discussion of whether we will soon be at war with Iran. Some of you have complained about Michael, but he’s very knowledgeable and the perfect interlocutor for when I haven’t had enough time to follow geopolitical events as closely as I would like. Here, he helps clarify Steve Witkoff’s role in Trump administration policy. When you understand Witkoff as a pro-Israel partisan, the approach to negotiating with Iran begins to make a lot more sense. Michael informed me about his “red line” comment on enrichment, which made all the pieces click. We go into Witkoff’s different postures on Russia and Iran, and how they reflect Trump’s own instincts.

We’ve been hearing about Iranian nuclear proliferation and the threat of war for over two decades. Right now, an American strike seems much closer than ever. By the time you listen to this podcast, it may have happened already. Polymarket as I type these words gives a 63% chance of an American attack by July.

Near the end, we discuss what American policy should be towards Iran. I lay out my case for regime change, and Michael is unsurprisingly skeptical. My position is based in part on the belief that there is a very small chance that the US would send in ground troops. People keep going back to Iraq and Afghanistan, but I think the way these interventions were conducted should be seen as a historical aberration. Since Vietnam, we’ve never tried to do large-scale nation building in a foreign country under dangerous conditions, except for Iraq and Afghanistan, which were both launched within a year and a half of 9/11. There is simply no appetite for doing anything similar again, anywhere on the right or left.

A policy of regime change towards Iran therefore wouldn’t mean American soldiers walking the streets of Tehran, but the attempted toppling of a government from a distance and hoping something better emerges afterwards. Michael and I discuss other times states have fallen, and what the outcomes have been for the nations involved. He surprises me by expressing a bit of skepticism over whether the collapse of the Soviet Union was in the end a good thing, though it seems like I may have been able to convince him that it was.

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New livestream on the LA Riots, if you can even call them that. I discuss how this is another instance of MAGA desperately trying to create a narrative in which Americans are threatened by foreigners, while reality refuses to cooperate.

I go on to talk about how attitudes toward immigration have changed over the last two decades. Immigrants themselves have become much more MAGA since 2016, and I explain why. A lot of new arrivals are simple people not too interested in left-wing status games. The first generation runs a store or works in engineering, the second goes to college, and tries to be a journalist or TikTok influencer. The vibes that the two parties give off matter much more than actual positions on immigration, which are malleable based on which side people feel more attachment towards. There’s an irony here in that all of this tears down yet another nativist argument.

Finally, I go into the latest on the Trump-Elon feud, what it tells us about the myth of oligarchy, and take a few questions.