What do you see? Do you feel like people are seeing it for what it is?

I do.

And, you know, it's funny, a lot of people are always like, so what do you think about the Democratic messaging right now? What do you think about the what's the right slogan that people should use? And I'm like, I think we're beyond messaging right now.

You know, I'm not even a messaging guy, but it's like walk outside, look at the TV, look at any clip of Donald Trump.

What we're seeing is so brazen.

The clips that you just played are so utterly depraved.

I have never seen such a thing.

What do we do instead?

In other words, he's corrupt.

And I would say that's an indisputable fact if you just look at the evidence, the billions of dollars added to Donald Trump's net worth throughout this presidency.

And it really just goes to show you that in politics, things change very quickly.

That's why I was in such dismay after the November 2024 election when we saw so many people bending the knee, when we saw these tech executives, a lot of people in the media, a lot of these law firms doing everything they can to make their journey down to Mar-a-Lago and to kiss the ring, to change their policies.

It just felt like a misread of the moment.

And they acted like Donald Trump had this massive mandate when he really only won by a very slim percentage.

And they went all in on him, abandoned all of their values that they claimed to have before then.

And I'm curious what you think of that development tonight, as well as the winds shifting where some of these companies may think Trump's not that important anymore.

Dude, it's 9-11.

He's a sick man.

He's a sick, deranged man.

And it doesn't really matter what the norms are.

It doesn't matter if it's September 11th.

None of that matters.

It only matters is does he think it's OK? And if Donald Trump thinks it's OK and he could profit from it and he can make money from it.

What do you think makes McCarthy so nervous about what's in there? And why would he even make these requests in the first place as an elected official?

We've had that name forever.

I mean, I think at a base level, everybody understands, you know, any honest broker understands how kind of stupid all of this is.

It's stupid and it's dangerous.

And at the end of the day, you know, I could ask you, like, would you want would you accept a free seat at a party in the Titanic? I would.

I'm going to guess your answer is no.

And that's kind of the choice that a lot of these podcasters made early on when they maybe didn't realize it.

But now they're seeing the reality that's coming before them.

If they're so great, drop one at Mar-a-Lago.

And obviously it's one of the reasons why we reached out, you know, to have you here today.

Yeah, well, I mean, generally, I was just always interested in politics as a spectator.

I mean, our family would talk politics growing up, but I never took it seriously as like a career option.

I honestly always thought that Ben would get into politics.

Ben had went to GW undergrad.

He went to Georgetown Law School.

I always thought that was a path that Ben was going to pursue.

What's your thought on that one?

And he's just saying the craziest shit.

yeah in a way i think uh it's very clear that there are a lot of underlying issues there and that he's going through something but as far as the content that he's creating is concerned he's creating that content with a specific audience in mind like it's really hard for everybody to get out of their bubbles because with technology you're forced into a specific algorithm like you just are so you start clicking on one thing you get brought down this rabbit hole of more content that's like it gradually You're brung through a more extreme and extreme and extreme rabbit hole where you're consuming all these videos.

And the people who are being fed those Don Jr. videos are not the people who are mocking him.

We mock those little clips we see on Twitter and stuff.

And we say this guy's a nut.

But to a lot of people, I'm sure he's an absolute hero and he's the guy who's telling the truth.

And I feel like part of the thing that he's doing is similar to what Navarro is doing is similar to what Trump Jr.'s father is doing, which is let's muddy the water.

What's in it? What's in it for them that I'm missing? Because I'm definitely missing something here.

Dude, it's 9-11.

He's a sick man.

He's a sick, deranged man.

And it doesn't really matter what the norms are.

It doesn't matter if it's September 11th.

None of that matters.

It only matters is does he think it's OK? And if Donald Trump thinks it's OK and he could profit from it and he can make money from it.

What do you think makes McCarthy so nervous about what's in there? And why would he even make these requests in the first place as an elected official?

I mean, on a perfect day, the Epstein stuff just, it gets bigger every day, and so we have Senator Ron Wyden who just posted, "In light of what we released last week from my staff's investigation, I'm handing Trump's DOJ a ready-made case with seven different lines of investigation for them to follow the money on Jeffrey Epstein." What do you think?

I mean, I think this is just another long line of the drip, drip, drip that we are seeing of this story.

Donald Trump and Republicans want this Epstein story to go away.

It's not going away.

These are decades and decades and decades of crimes.

These are decades of connections between Donald Trump and Epstein.

And Wyden is saying that he, that four big banks flagged $1.5 billion, billion dollars, in potentially suspicious money transfers involving Epstein, and he says that much of that appeared to be related to his massive sex trafficking network.

Right.

That's right.

... you know? And th- and that's sort of how they won this almost hippie wing, I guess I could sort of call it, of, of the, uh, uh, uh of our political, you know, electorate which, which is always, you know, weird to me.

You know, I, I live in Los Angeles and that kind of, you know, uh, organic food, natural this, uh, kind of like the, you know, the, uh, uh, vaccine hesitancy like, a lot of those things were actually not too long ago kind of, uh, little s- a, a subsect of, of liberal voters and, um, Republicans just kind of co-opted this with, um, you know, with the, with the pandemic and stuff and, and took advantage of it a- and, and has this R- RFK faction which are a lot of folks I think that used to, you know, vote Democratic, but for whatever reason and, and I think the pandemic played, you know, a lot to it, were able to be pulled over, um, you know, like that.

And that's just one of the ways that, you know, I've seen them, you know, pull at these strings a- and divide folks, but I would, I would just, you know, urge people not to throw the baby out with the bath water when, when it comes to certain things.

And that's too, especially in these moments when, you know-Uh, our, our politics right now is being redefined in a big way.

That election, I think, uh, set off a firestorm and, and it's causing the Democratic Party as well to think inward and think, "Who are we as a party?" And it's also making voters say, "Who are you as a party?" We gotta know.

Like, like, pick, pick, pick a lane.

These are the sorts of insurance policies that prior to this administration, even in the first Trump term, I never even thought of this stuff.

Oh, yeah.

We got doggies and babies and the whole bit over here.

And our focus was always like there's this passionate community of folks out here who are getting their information from these digital sources.

So you could either abandon them and say that we only need to be here and anybody focused on this other thing is an idiot, or you could accept the fact that this is where Americans are getting their information from.

Even the stuff that people are talking about when you go to Thanksgiving dinner or any gathering, a lot of the things that they're talking about are things that percolated from a tweet or by somebody's blue sky post or by a podcast.

And so I think the 20... 24 election was a big wake-up call to folks like, holy crap, we should be paying attention to podcasts.

We should be paying attention to these alternative forms of media.

And that's where I think we could all benefit from what you guys do.

Here it is.

Look pretty because we are live on Substack Live.

It has been such a pleasure to use the Substack platform, which ha- has just been a, a revelation for us here at MeidasTouch to have this, uh, platform that elevates independent journalism and reporting.

And today, we have a legend joining us, a person who needs no introduction, and a newcomer to Substack.

I think this is actually an exclusive for people.

This is his first interview ever here, his first ever Substack Live here.

Welcome Don Lemon to the Meidas+ Substack.

Mm-hmm.