MAGA Fractures Over Epstein. Plus, What Michael Douglas Movies Tell Us About Masculinity.

Speaker 1 President Trump said his administration would release the Epstein files, but now he says those files are a hoax.

Speaker 3 Make some noise if you care about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

Speaker 4 Everybody hears.

Speaker 1 Trump adding, I don't want their support anymore.

Speaker 4 MAGA has found its fault line. From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.
I'm Brooke Gladstone.

Speaker 5 And I'm Michael Owinger. But where's the line between healthy skepticism and conspiracism?

Speaker 10 People who have engaged in conspiracy theories feel like their theories have been vindicated and thus they are very excited.

Speaker 4 Plus, how the films of Michael Douglas inadvertently trace the origins of today's masculinity crisis.

Speaker 2 He became an avatar for these changes that men were going through. And it seems like maybe it was a bit of a burden to act out an entire nation's sickness.

Speaker 5 It's all coming up after this.

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Speaker 5 From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. I'm Michael Loewinger.

Speaker 4 And I'm Brooke Gladstone. So at one point, we thought we really wouldn't have to go there, or at least all the way there.

Speaker 4 But at this point, it seems perversely contrarian not to, because in all our years of scrutinizing the MAGA movement, we've never seen such division in its ranks.

Speaker 19 Breaking news overnight about the Jeffrey Epstein files and the conspiracy theories officially being rejected.

Speaker 4 So first, the chronology, which began on July 6th in the evening with an Axios story, but took off on the 7th when everyone else jumped in.

Speaker 19 Overnight, the FBI and Justice Department releasing 11 hours of footage they say helps confirm notorious financier Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in his Manhattan jail cell in 2019, awaiting his sex trafficking trial.

Speaker 19 According to a memo detailing the findings, investigators found the video showed no one entering the area in the overnight hours before Epstein was found unresponsive.

Speaker 19 But perhaps the biggest bombshell, investigators say they found no incriminating client list of Epsteins, no credible evidence that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals, and no evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.

Speaker 4 A bonfire that had blazed steadily for years, fed by the hot breath of Donald J.

Speaker 4 Trump, his sacred vow to expose the Democrats' yawning depravity, was suddenly a conflagration and then an inferno because as president, he didn't come through.

Speaker 4 Exhibit A, Attorney General Pam Bondi on Fox back in February.

Speaker 20 One of the things that you alluded to, and this is something Donald Trump has talked about, that DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients.

Speaker 12 Will that really happen?

Speaker 22 It's sitting on my desk right now to review.

Speaker 22 That's been a directive by President Trump.

Speaker 4 But on July 7th, she shut it all down. On the 8th, at a cabinet meeting with Bondi and the president, this from a reporter who seems to know it won't go well.

Speaker 13 So could you say why there was a minute missing from the jailhouse teeth on the minute 7th? Yeah, sure.

Speaker 23 Could I just interrupt for a second?

Speaker 23 Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?

Speaker 4 The president was having none of it.

Speaker 23 I mean, I can't believe you're asking a question on Epstein at a time like this where we're having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas.

Speaker 23 It just seems like a desecration.

Speaker 4 For him, a desecration. For the opposition, an opportunity.

Speaker 4 The next day, Democrats and some Republicans vociferously demanded the promised release of the Epstein files and have been doing that pretty much every day ever since.

Speaker 4 On Tuesday, Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin, rankled by the conspiracy-fueled investigations into philanthropist George Soros, asked, Why don't we have a hearing about the continuing suppression and cover-up of the information in the Epstein files?

Speaker 24 Because President Trump, Attorney General Bondi, and their allies in the DOJ and FBI repeatedly claimed.

Speaker 24 in public that the Epstein files have the names of power elite actors involved in human trafficking and sexual abuse of minors with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and they promised to release all the information in the name of maximal transparency.

Speaker 24 Remember that? They said this would be the most transparent administration in the history of the United States, but now they're shouting nothing to see here.

Speaker 4 Oh, there are plenty of Democrats, but not just Democrats. Lots of prominent Republicans, too, among them.

Speaker 26 It's just a red line that it crosses for many people.

Speaker 4 The redoubtable Georgia rep Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Speaker 26 Jeffrey Epstein is literally the most well-known convicted pedophile in modern-day history. And

Speaker 2 I really think people deserve transparency on that.

Speaker 26 And it's not wrong to continue to push for it and ask for it.

Speaker 4 And Missouri Senator Josh Hawley in high dudgeon.

Speaker 27 This is the worst, one of the worst human trafficking rings in American history, run by this scumbag.

Speaker 16 And I think the more we know about it, the more we get out there, the better it is.

Speaker 4 And House Speaker Mike Johnson in mild discomfort.

Speaker 30 We should put everything out there and let the people decide it. I mean, the White House and the White House team are privy to facts that I don't know.
I mean, this isn't my lane.

Speaker 4 And plenty of those online influencers, like Infowars Alex Jones, the kind of people the president has always relied on.

Speaker 4 But when it came to calming the restive MAGA minions who lived online, they weren't much help.

Speaker 31 The reason that you are seeing this deep six is because the CIA with the Mossad and MI6 was running Epstein and it was an official U.S. government operation.

Speaker 4 Here's the nation's most popular podcaster, Joe Rogan.

Speaker 32 Like, look, where's the Epstein files?

Speaker 15 Boo. Can't find them.
Don't exist.

Speaker 32 Like, they can get away with shit, man.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And here's far-right flamethrower Jack Pasobiak.

Speaker 33 I will not rest until we go full Jan 6 committee on the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Speaker 4 And one-time Trump dinner guest, the anti-Semitic white supremacist Nick Fuentes

Speaker 34 you

Speaker 35 you you suck you are fat you are a joke you are stupid this entire thing has been a scam we are gonna look back on the MAGA movement as the biggest scam in American history and the liberals were right we will see Trump as a scam artist The president tried to shut it down.

Speaker 4 Of course he did. But he couldn't.

Speaker 3 Make some noise if you care about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

Speaker 4 Megan Kelly and one of Trump's favorite podcasters, Charlie Kirk, at a Turning Points USA event last Friday.

Speaker 37 Raise your hand if it matters a lot to you. Raise your hand.

Speaker 5 So every hand of 7,000 people.

Speaker 4 The next day, the president took to Truth Social.

Speaker 39 Writing in part, quote, they're all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a fantastic job. We're on one team, MAGA, and I don't like what's happening.

Speaker 39 We have a perfect administration, the talk of the world, and selfish people are trying to hurt it all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 20 According to one report, get this, Trump personally called Charlie Kirk. And then Kirk and others, I certainly softened their tone.

Speaker 4 Charlie Kirk on his show Monday.

Speaker 37 Honestly, I'm done talking about Epstein for the time being. I'm going to trust my friends in the administration.
I'm going to trust my friends in the government to do what needs to be done, solve it.

Speaker 37 Balls in their hands.

Speaker 4 Charlie Kirk on his show Tuesday.

Speaker 18 Let me be clear.

Speaker 37 I'm not trusting the government.

Speaker 36 I'm trusting individuals that you too also trust.

Speaker 37 You guys are all fans of Dan Bongino and Cash Patel.

Speaker 36 We are trusting that they heard you, they heard me, and they are working to fix this.

Speaker 4 The president's knickers are clearly in a twist because polls suggest that the recipients of so much of his beneficence, his respect and adoration, proved so unworthy when he pulled the rug out from under them.

Speaker 4 I'm talking about the MAGA base or part of it anyway. He wrote wrote this week in a Truth Social post that, quote, past supporters have bought into this bull stuff,

Speaker 4 hook, line, and sinker, adding, let those weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work.

Speaker 4 Don't even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success because I don't want their support anymore.

Speaker 12 So there, I added that.

Speaker 4 So as I write this Friday, there's a Wall Street Journal piece about a birthday letter to Epstein with Trump's signature and a doodle of a naked woman surrounding the text that reads in part, happy birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret.

Speaker 4 Trump's name is scrawled in marker where the pubic hair would be. False, malicious, and defamatory, he asserts.
I never wrote a picture in my life. It's not my words.
In fact, he's known to doodle.

Speaker 4 He personally begged Rupert Murdoch, who owns the journal's parent company, News Corp, not to print the story or risk his wrath. He intends to sue.

Speaker 4 Funny, the role played by Murdoch here. His own Fox News channel is barely covering the Epstein story and is silent on the journal scoop.

Speaker 4 Murdoch's fortune was hammered by one defamation case when Fox lied about voting machines, and yet for now, he's standing firm. Not so for some of our legacy media.

Speaker 4 This week, CBS, whose whose owner Paramount Global, needs Trump's okay for a long-sought merger, said it's canceling Stephen Colbert's top-rated late show for financial reasons. And it's true.

Speaker 4 The late shows are no longer big moneymakers.

Speaker 4 It's also true that lately Colbert has been joking about CVS paying Trump $16 million to settle what's widely seen as a baseless complaint against 60 Minutes. Colbert on Monday.

Speaker 41 My parent corporation, Paramount, paid Donald Trump a $16 million settlement over his 60 Minutes lawsuit.

Speaker 41 As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended, and I don't know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company.

Speaker 41 But just taking a stab at it, I'd say $16 million would help.

Speaker 4 Meanwhile, the president has asked Bondi to secure the release of grand jury transcripts from the Epstein case, which courts are loath to do, and that certainly will be redacted to protect the victims at least, and maybe not just them.

Speaker 4 So far, I've seen no commentary that predicts any revelations.

Speaker 4 It seems like a Hail Mary, an attempt to distract from all the irreconcilable narratives he's propagated. First, that the files would take down the rotten, rapacious deep state.

Speaker 4 Then, that the files don't actually exist. Then, that they were fakes written by Obama or Biden or whoever.
And finally, that the whole thing is so boring, why would anybody care? But they do care.

Speaker 4 The worldview that he crafted, where his followers have a community and a role, is roiling. It'll take a mighty suspension of disbelief, a Herculean rewrite, to make sense of this.

Speaker 4 If they even can.

Speaker 5 Coming up, what even are the Epstein files?

Speaker 4 This is On the Media.

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Speaker 4 this is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

Speaker 5 And I'm Michael Loewinger. When we talk about the Epstein files, what exactly do we mean?

Speaker 44 Well, first of all, there's tons of files that are out there in the FBI's fold.

Speaker 37 Julie K.

Speaker 5 Brown, investigative journalist speaking here on CNN.

Speaker 44 Hundreds and hundreds of pages of files that you can click on and you can look at.

Speaker 5 Her reporting in the Miami Herald, which identified some 80 survivors, helped spur a new investigation into Epstein in 2018.

Speaker 5 Over the past week or so, she's appeared on several podcasts and TV shows to discuss the Epstein files. What's secret and what's public, or partially public in the case of the FBI vault.

Speaker 5 That client list, the one that was supposedly on Pam Bondi's desk and then wasn't, Brown doesn't believe the client list exists, and that sometimes people confuse it with Epstein's contact list, his black book compiled by his accomplice, Jelaine Maxwell.

Speaker 44 Trump is in there. A lot of phone numbers, including important people, were on there, as well as other, you know, celebrities.
But Epstein was sort of a social climber.

Speaker 44 And part of that was him just meeting somebody and saying, I want to put you on my Rolodex kind of thing.

Speaker 44 So there's no evidence that the people that were on that phone directory were involved in his sex trafficking. Perhaps some of them were, but we don't know that.

Speaker 44 But there's tons of other material that we don't know about.

Speaker 5 There are the records from the prosecution of Jelaine Maxwell, which have largely remained sealed. Then there are the flight logs from his private jets.

Speaker 5 Some logs are public, but others are still held by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Speaker 5 There are the mostly redacted files from the U.S. Marshals, which inspected his planes when they made international trips.

Speaker 5 There's secret evidence reviewed by two grand juries, plus records uncovered by the U.S. Virgin Islands, which filed a civil racketeering case against Epstein.

Speaker 5 And of course, there are the records related to Epstein's Manhattan prison death, which was ruled a suicide by city and federal officials.

Speaker 44 We don't have his autopsy, for example. We know that his brother doesn't believe that he committed suicide.
We know that there were cameras that weren't working.

Speaker 44 I think that it's not a conspiracy to be skeptical when you find that the government really isn't releasing everything or they're keeping something secret.

Speaker 5 All of this might seem like perfect grist for the mill for congressional Democrats, but Dan Friedman in a piece for Mother Jones cautions the opposition not to indulge in the conspiracy at the heart of the Epstein story.

Speaker 45 Senator Ron Wyden tweeted last week after this news broke about Bondi.

Speaker 8 Given the evidence my investigators have seen, this reeks of a cover-up.

Speaker 9 Another example is Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee asked in a letter in which they also asked for former special counsel Jack Smith's investigation, the results of his investigation into Trump's retention of classified files at Mar-a-Lago, they also said we would like evidence mentioning or referencing Donald Trump in the Epstein files.

Speaker 25 Those are a couple examples.

Speaker 45 They aren't overt, but they do sort of raise the suggestion that Trump is implicated, and that's the reason that he is not releasing the files.

Speaker 5 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: You took note of what that letter from Jamie Raskin cited as evidence that there is Epstein material incriminating Trump.

Speaker 48 Right. What they cited was Elon Musk tweeting that Trump is in the Epstein files.

Speaker 11 That is the real reason they have not been made public. And the point that I would make is that Elon Musk has lied about all kinds of stuff.

Speaker 10 He said lots of crazy things.

Speaker 7 So there's no good reason to think Musk is telling the truth on this issue.

Speaker 25 And we should be pretty skeptical of things that Musk tweets, especially in this case when he deleted the tweet and apologized for it.

Speaker 5 But on Monday, House Democrats tried to push an amendment that would force the Justice Department to release the so-called Epstein files. It was subsequently blocked by House Republicans.

Speaker 5 Here's RoCanna, who brought the vote.

Speaker 51 It's not just about knowing who's being protected, the rich and the powerful, in terms of who had interaction with Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 51 It's the sense that people have that the government is too beholden to certain interests who have their thumb on the scale.

Speaker 5 Is there nothing to what Rocana is saying here?

Speaker 49 I think Democrats are going to point out that that Attorney General Bondi and President Trump are hypocrites on this issue, that they're not doing what they said they were going to do.

Speaker 8 I wouldn't want to be out there saying that they shouldn't be doing this sort of basic politics of trying to force a vote on this thing.

Speaker 53 The point I would make is it just seems like there's a low probability that these files are going to turn up evidence of criminality by Trump.

Speaker 5 Aaron Powell, I guess I'm curious to hear how you know that. Julie K.

Speaker 5 Brown, the reporter who helped reopen the case against Epstein in 2018, has identified the potential existence of many, many records that have not received scrutiny from the public or the press.

Speaker 5 So how are you so certain that you know what is or is not in those records?

Speaker 16 Well, let me be clear. I don't know.

Speaker 17 I don't know what are in those records.

Speaker 48 Julie Brown doesn't know what are in those records.

Speaker 10 So we're looking at what are the chances.

Speaker 11 And I think a big point is that these files were in possession of the Justice Department, not just for the last few months, but during the entire Biden administration under Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Speaker 52 So if there is evidence of Trump committing crimes in there, that means that Garland and the Biden administration also covered up that information.

Speaker 11 So that's conceivable. It's just improbable.

Speaker 5 It feels like this is not just the first scandal to really divide his most faithful supporters. It also feels like a topic that has inspired dissatisfaction and suspicion from both parties.

Speaker 5 Recent polling from CNN shows that a growing share of Americans really are not satisfied with the answers this administration is giving on the Epstein files.

Speaker 54 Look at this. You get 43% of lean GOP, that's Republicans and Independents, who are dissatisfied.
Just 4%

Speaker 54 satisfied? My goodness gracious.

Speaker 5 CNN's polling analyst, Harry Enton.

Speaker 54 When you only have 4% that is with Donald Trump on a particular issue, that is ridiculously low. I've never seen anything quite like it.
How about Lean Democrat? 60% dissatisfied. Compare that to 3%

Speaker 54 who are satisfied. Again, 4%, 3%, Republican, Democrat.
You rarely ever see this type of agreement.

Speaker 5 Doesn't that mean that there's a solid case for members of Congress to push for more disclosure, especially considering that it really is the secrecy and misinformation around the Jeffrey Epstein case that is likely inspiring so much of the conspiratorial thinking?

Speaker 49 I think that Republicans have formed a circular firing squad, there is no doubt, on this issue, and they do not need Democrats to get them there.

Speaker 46 They are fighting tooth and nail with each other, and Democrats don't have to egg them on to get them to do it.

Speaker 8 In fact, Trump, we've seen in the last few days, has made a ridiculous argument, which is that Democrats are the ones who concocted this.

Speaker 10 This is a hoax, he said.

Speaker 11 It's like the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, and Democrats are behind it. And Republicans should not fall prey to this because this is an issue that Democrats are pushing.

Speaker 56 It seems possible that if Democrats lean in too hard to making assertions that aren't going to be borne out about what these files may reveal, they will sort of play into the argument that Trump is making.

Speaker 11 And that will help, I think, kind of align Trump's megabase with him.

Speaker 45 We've seen that happen before on other issues, certainly with the Russia scandal.

Speaker 49 Ultimately, Trump's supporters became very convinced that it was Democrats who had concocted this issue and not that it was a real issue that needed to be looked at.

Speaker 5 Basically, what I hear you saying is that you agree that this story is newsworthy, but you're cautioning lawmakers and pundits to stick with the facts, the evidence that we do have.

Speaker 5 And there is evidence that I think continues to make this story only stickier.

Speaker 5 Wire just reported this week that, according to analysis of the metadata, there are three minutes missing from the video that Trump's Justice Department released, surveillance footage that purported to show that no one entered into his prison cell.

Speaker 5 Do you really think that he's not covering something up?

Speaker 8 I think there's no question that he sounds like he's hiding something. We just can't assume it's because he is personally implicated, as tempting as that is.

Speaker 25 The Wired report.

Speaker 11 These are facts reported by Wired.

Speaker 49 It's a great piece of reporting. But Hank Johnson, Johnson, the congressman from Georgia, who made a song about releasing the Epstein tapes.

Speaker 32 Epstein died by suicide.

Speaker 42 Believe that you must be blind. You've been telling us you'll release the file, but where are they?

Speaker 50 Johnson says in that song, everyone knows that it wasn't suicide.

Speaker 11 And everyone doesn't know that.

Speaker 46 That's not actually the case.

Speaker 16 It is, at best, very unclear and fairly persuasive that he did, in fact, end his own life.

Speaker 5 I had to look in the comments when that video came across my 4U page, and it was like an interesting mixture of cringe and celebration of that song,

Speaker 5 which I think shows a split among Democratic voters about how they feel about this story themselves.

Speaker 8 There is joy out there.

Speaker 49 People think it is so great to see Trump get his justice hurts for.

Speaker 11 pushing a conspiracy theory about Epstein and claiming he was going to reveal it when he became president and Pam Bondi and Cash Patel, the head of the FBI, too,

Speaker 8 and now being exposed as liars and hypocrites because they can't produce what they said they were going to produce.

Speaker 45 And I certainly wouldn't suggest that Democrats should not enjoy what they can about that or even point out that they're lying.

Speaker 45 If Hank Johnson falls into saying he knows for a fact that Epstein was murdered, that's where you get Democrats sort of diving into these conspiracy theories in a way that I think can come back to bite them when they turn out not to be borne out, at at least not to be proven.

Speaker 5 Yeah, in your piece, you say that this could potentially turn out like the Steele dossier.

Speaker 46 Yeah, I think that's a risk.

Speaker 10 I think there is a parallel. People had read in the Steele dossier that there was some tape of Trump with prostitutes in Moscow and somebody peed on the bed.

Speaker 45 And that turned out not to be real, it would seem.

Speaker 49 And I think there was a feeling that the credibility of anyone connected to it, and certainly people have made this attack on Mother Jones and other media publications as well as on politicians, was diminished because this tape isn't real.

Speaker 47 And Trump is trying to run the same play that he ran with the Russia scandal.

Speaker 48 The truth was that Trump was aware that the Russians were helping his campaign in 2016, it seems, and he didn't try to stop them.

Speaker 45 And then that scandal became defined by was there a P-tape, was the steel dossier accurate, which was not.

Speaker 46 And then Trump used that to say the whole thing was a bunch of BS.

Speaker 10 So clearly what he's trying to do here is to say the Democrats are pushing a false statement and to sweep away the entire scandal and to sweep away the fact that he himself said that the Epstein files needed to be released by claiming that Democrats are the ones ginning this up.

Speaker 45 You know, it's just good practice to stick to the facts.

Speaker 46 If you're a Democratic lawmaker, if you're a journalist, if you're anybody else.

Speaker 5 As I understand it, when you wrote this article calling for some caution from Democratic lawmakers, you got a negative response from some of your readers. What did you hear?

Speaker 10 Many of my readers said, you must be on the list too.

Speaker 9 There's no other explanation for you writing this.

Speaker 49 Or maybe you think Obama is on the list and you're covering for Obama or Bill Clinton.

Speaker 46 People called me a pedophile for writing the story.

Speaker 48 Another thing that I also heard back was the argument that there may not be anything there, but Democrats should make this argument because it drives a wedge between Trump and his supporters.

Speaker 49 And his supporters seem very mad at him, and nothing else has worked, so they might as well try this.

Speaker 9 I think there are a lot of other issues out there where there is a great deal of personal and professional failures by Trump that Democrats, to a certain extent, are putting aside when they're focusing on Epstein.

Speaker 8 Trump has let down his supporters who he promised he wouldn't cut Medicaid.

Speaker 11 The Big Beautiful bill cuts a trillion dollars out of Medicaid.

Speaker 56 The Trump administration has cut funding for FEMA.

Speaker 45 They cut funding for the National Weather Service.

Speaker 48 His corruption, the fact that his family and him are enriching themselves by doing deals in Qatar with the United Arab Emirates, with sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East.

Speaker 10 And these are companies that Trump still owns that are benefiting from these deals, which appear intended to gain favor with him.

Speaker 37 He got $16 million for his library from Paramount because Paramount seemed to believe that was the price they needed to pay.

Speaker 8 to get their merger with Skydance approved.

Speaker 11 And so they settled a ridiculous lawsuit that Trump never would have succeeded in, which he filed against CBS News.

Speaker 8 And Trump can benefit from his library.

Speaker 9 He can take a salary. He can use the plane that the Qataris gave to the library.

Speaker 11 Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts, this week released a report on the library. And one of the reasons it hasn't gotten much attention is because of the Epstein thing.

Speaker 11 So those are issues where there is really far more evidence of wrongdoing by Trump that is consequential and had a negative effect on his supporters and other Americans.

Speaker 5 Here's where I would usually thank Dan Friedman and we'd end the segment.

Speaker 5 But when the Wall Street Journal article about the alleged Trump-Epstein birthday message broke late Thursday night, we decided to call him back the next morning.

Speaker 5 Dan, thanks for coming back on the show. This is unusual for us.

Speaker 47 No problem. I'm happy to do it.

Speaker 5 When we spoke yesterday, Dan, you said it was highly unlikely that there would be any more information about Trump and Epstein to emerge from the so-called Epstein files.

Speaker 5 Does this Wall Street Journal story change anything for you?

Speaker 8 It is certainly an indication of something sketchy going on.

Speaker 55 What I would say is you could argue this is evidence of criminality, this Wall Street Journal report, but it's still a little short of what we were talking about, which is the speculation that there are pictures of Trump committing sex crimes, basically, or videos or something like that.

Speaker 10 What it does is it offers a pretty compelling explanation for why Trump has been acting so defensive and making up absurd stories stories like his assertion that former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton wrote the quote-unquote Epstein files in some effort to smear him.

Speaker 56 Why would he say that other than if there was evidence of him committing a crime in those files?

Speaker 25 Well, here's an example.

Speaker 46 Perhaps he was aware of something like what the Wall Street Journal has reported and was concerned about.

Speaker 8 a very bad-looking note that he sent to Jeffrey Epstein, which does imply something quite untoward.

Speaker 11 He wouldn't go to jail for this letter is what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 5 I think the thing I'm struggling with here is I agree that caution

Speaker 5 is the right mode in the middle of a developing story, especially for elected officials and journalists.

Speaker 5 I'm struggling to find the right way to talk about something that looks so bad, but does not meet a very high bar of criminality in court.

Speaker 11 I know exactly what you mean. I am struggling with how to characterize this.

Speaker 7 And I have to be honest, I made an argument about Democrats don't take the Epstein bait, and they did take the Epstein bait, and it seems to be working out for them.

Speaker 5 You do think it's working out for them.

Speaker 49 Well, I mean, I think the Epstein issue is working out for them so far.

Speaker 48 And obviously, I don't think a lot of Democrats are taking the advice, let's not speculate about what might be in there.

Speaker 53 I think people, including elected members of Congress, are speculating wildly.

Speaker 9 And I think it's kind of unavoidable, given what has happened in terms of the Wall Street Journal report, in terms of Trump's reaction to it, in terms of Trump's bizarre lies downplaying the so-called Epstein files.

Speaker 25 It's difficult to tell people to be cautious in how they go about talking about this issue.

Speaker 11 But I still would stand by the argument that elected members of Congress should stop short of opining on what they think is in there in terms of criminality by Trump.

Speaker 5 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: How should news consumers evaluate this news while sticking to the facts and not buying into the variety of conspiracy theories out there?

Speaker 9 Aaron Powell, I think that people who have engaged in speculation about Epstein that we could call conspiracy theories feel like their theories have been vindicated and thus they are very excited.

Speaker 7 But it is more important than ever when we're talking about an issue where really a lot of the key facts are still shrouded in secrecy.

Speaker 46 The grand jury transcripts that Trump said he's going to unseal haven't been unsealed yet.

Speaker 53 There's all kinds of files. We don't know what's in them.

Speaker 8 We don't know exactly what went on between Trump and Epstein.

Speaker 47 So I think it's more important than ever to stick to the facts and to be cautious and humble in what we think we know to be true about Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 5 Dan, thank you very much.

Speaker 16 Thank you.

Speaker 5 Dan Friedman is a senior reporter at Mother Jones.

Speaker 5 This is on the media.

Speaker 15 Star Trek Con.

Speaker 31 The untold story of Star Trek's most legendary villain.

Speaker 43 Cuck did us a favor. From this quintessence of dust, we will rise.

Speaker 31 Listen to Star Trek Con, wherever you get your podcasts. I

Speaker 31 am

Speaker 31 con!

Speaker 5 This is on the media. I'm Michael Lowinger.

Speaker 4 And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that men over 75 are at higher risk for suicide than any other group.

Speaker 4 Young boys are also more likely to experience mental, emotional, behavioral, or developmental problems than girls their age. They're less likely to graduate high school or pursue higher education.

Speaker 4 And men's participation in the workforce is declining too. Experts describe the phenomenon as a crisis of masculinity.
MAGA calls it something else.

Speaker 37 There's an outright war on men in this country and it happens.

Speaker 4 Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA.

Speaker 5 Men are aimless and they are treated as second-class citizens.

Speaker 58 Do you think the war on masculinity and the war on boys is a freaking accident?

Speaker 4 Dan Bongino, the FBI's embattled deputy director.

Speaker 58 There is nothing the socialist loves more than a population obsessed with weak, non-masculine men not willing to defend their country, their families, and their kids.

Speaker 4 The critic Jessa Crispin was mulling that rhetoric and the mounting data when she embarked on a binge of Michael Douglas movies in the 80s and 90s.

Speaker 4 And she realized that the actors' roles actually traced to the origins of today's masculinity crisis. Crispin's the author of What is Wrong with Men?

Speaker 4 Patriarchy, the Crisis of Masculinity, and how, of course, Michael Douglas films explain everything.

Speaker 2 I was reading a lot of press from the mid-80s to sort of late 90s, and I often saw him being referred to as a sort of symbol of a new masculinity.

Speaker 2 And I thought that was very funny because when I watched his movies, he was always wide-eyed and waving his arms around and yelling about something or other.

Speaker 2 And so I just thought, what if I take the idea that Michael Douglas is a representative of a new masculinity very seriously in order to look at what masculinity that was emerging in this time was really all about?

Speaker 4 So in the 80s, we're seeing the rise of, well, frankly, fiercely right-wing media that condemned feminism. People like the AM radio host host Rush Limbaugh.

Speaker 21 Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream society.

Speaker 4 But Michael Douglas's characters didn't hate feminism. He saw himself as a good guy, but we saw in his condescension and in his fragility that wasn't quite true.

Speaker 2 A lot of the vitriolic right-wing rhetoric around feminism really gave cover to a large segment of men who just didn't want to get involved, right?

Speaker 2 Who just didn't think that this had anything to do with them. The Michael Douglas figure conceptualizes himself as the center.
He doesn't have to adapt to a changing world.

Speaker 2 The world should adapt to him.

Speaker 4 So let's get to some specifics, starting with his two biggest hits of the era, Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct. And a warning, countless spoilers ahead, but come on, these movies are 40 years old.

Speaker 4 Fatal Attraction features Douglas as an attorney who has a steamy affair with an editor played by Glenn Close, but Close then simply will not go away.

Speaker 59 I just want to be a part of your life.

Speaker 58 Oh, this is the way you do it, huh? Show it up at my apartment.

Speaker 59 What am I supposed to do? You won't answer my calls. You change your number.

Speaker 2 I mean, I'm not going to be ignored, Dan.

Speaker 4 Her character stalks him, threatens his family, boils that rabbit.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's a very sort of vile little film if you really get into the sexual politics, because there's always been the disposable woman for the man who is successful.

Speaker 2 There's the mistress, the sex worker, there's the courtesan. The reason why women who were mistresses were disposable is because they didn't have the right to own property, right?

Speaker 2 They didn't have access to education or to their own income streams.

Speaker 4 Women couldn't have their own credit cards until the 70s.

Speaker 2 And so if somebody who has a lot of resources or the ability to threaten you, you have to do what they say, which is to shut your mouth.

Speaker 2 And if you don't, there's a threat of not just scandal, but also death.

Speaker 4 And in this case, the marauding mistress isn't taken out by the man. She's murdered by his wife.
Yes. That's a kind of tension we often see set up, the raging feminist versus the trad wife.

Speaker 4 These wives, and the wife certainly in this movie, isn't just protecting her home, she's also striking back at the feminists' seeming contempt.

Speaker 2 There was definitely a backlash to the development of the no-fault divorce.

Speaker 2 Women were afraid that this would make women like them, upper middle class, vulnerable because then their husbands could leave them without warning.

Speaker 2 This is a legitimate fear, but no fault divorce dropped women's suicide rates. It helped lower the rates of domestic violence that ended in homicide.

Speaker 4 One point which really surprised me is that the notion of midlife crisis, the man buying the motorcycle and looking for a younger woman to have an affair with, was rewritten.

Speaker 4 The midlife crisis was experienced by the woman who was much more likely to leave the marriage than the man.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so beginning in 1980, no-fault divorce was being rolled out state by state. Approximately two-thirds of these divorces were instigated by women.
They faced really serious consequences, right?

Speaker 2 Their income dropped. They had mostly the custody responsibilities at the time.
They would still rather suffer all of these things than to stay married to their husbands.

Speaker 2 I think the midlife crisis fantasy was a cover for men to protect their egos. Like, you can't fire me, I quit.

Speaker 2 Because so much of media was run by men, they reinforced it with these movies about the midlife crisis guy running off into the sunset with a 21-year-old secretary in a sports car.

Speaker 4 Who coined the term?

Speaker 2 A woman journalist, Gail Sheehee, actually.

Speaker 4 Ah, passages.

Speaker 2 Yes, in the book Passages, she was describing a change that women were going through once their children became less dependent on them.

Speaker 2 It would set off this kind of searching moment of, is this all that there is?

Speaker 4 Where does that leave Michael Douglas, though, in Fatal Attraction?

Speaker 2 He's trying to recreate a kind of masculinity that no longer exists, that says, I can cheat on my wife, and when I'm done with this woman, then she'll just disappear.

Speaker 15 Don't you ever pity me,

Speaker 15 you bastard.

Speaker 43 I'll pity you. I'll pity you.

Speaker 4 Let's move on to basic instinct. Here he plays a detective charged with bringing a crime novelist, played by Sharon Stone to justice since she appears to be offing her lovers one by one.

Speaker 4 Basic Instinct, you've said, basically comes down to a sweater in a way. Yes.

Speaker 2 Yes, the sweater that started this whole book, honestly. You know, it was a pandemic, and so I was watching Basic Instinct a lot.

Speaker 2 It's just such a good, it's such a good movie. And the sweater that Michael Douglas wears, maybe the most upsetting sweater in cinematic history.

Speaker 2 He's going to the club to meet Sharon Stone and all of her friends. He's investigating her, but they do like weird flirtation in the interrogation scene right before the club.

Speaker 7 You never tied him up?

Speaker 12 No.

Speaker 60 Johnny liked to use his hands too much.

Speaker 12 I like hands and fingers.

Speaker 6 You describe a white silk scarf in your book.

Speaker 60 I've always had a fondness for white silk scarves. They're good for all occasions.

Speaker 11 But you said you like men to use their hands, didn't you?

Speaker 60 No, I said I like Johnny to use his hands. I don't make any rules, Nick.

Speaker 12 I go with the flow.

Speaker 2 So he's going to seal the deal with Sharon Stone by wearing a sweater to the dance club. It's not just any sweater.
It is a V-neck, olive green.

Speaker 2 The V is just too deep, clearly made with synthetic fabric. And so you can just tell what it's going to smell like the next day.
Sweat, cigarette smoke, and spilled beer.

Speaker 2 And he's like, this one is going to go home with me despite the zero effort that he's put into his looks, the way that he talks to her, the way that he dances.

Speaker 2 He doesn't have to think about any of it.

Speaker 4 Sharon Stone, the character she plays, is very successful. She lives in a house that is sleek and beautiful.
She wears beautiful clothes.

Speaker 2 It's not just that she looks amazing. She's always on the shoreline with the waves crashing against the cliffs.

Speaker 2 And every time you see Michael Douglas at home, he's falling asleep in a recliner with the TV still on, right? He goes to work and it's fluorescent lighting.

Speaker 2 They're drinking coffee at a styrofoam cup.

Speaker 4 You sound a little bit like a snob. Why do you focus on this cheap garbage that he lives in?

Speaker 2 There's such a suspicion within Basic Instinct that the men have toward anything that is beautiful, soft, pleasurable.

Speaker 2 And I think that it's a kind of paranoia built into this moment where women had the power to create things on their own.

Speaker 2 It used to be we had dandies in masculine culture, artists and poets, But now, as women take space in the public realm, there's this paranoia about: am I going to be mistaken for being a sissy for being gay?

Speaker 4 So now's a good time to move to the category of Michael Douglas Films, the economic actor, starting with the movie Wall Street, where he plays the hugely successful, unabashedly amoral banker Gordon Gecko.

Speaker 57 Greed,

Speaker 28 for lack of a better word, is good.

Speaker 31 Greed is right.

Speaker 28 Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Speaker 4 The admirable qualities that once defined American manhood, you wrote, hard work, loyalty, ethics, they no longer had value. Only money matters.

Speaker 4 Like when Trump said during his first campaign, when challenged on paying hardly any taxes, that's because I'm smart.

Speaker 2 So Wall Street was released in 1987. In 1980, you have the first real financial reform in the banking industry in decades with the Monetary Control Act.

Speaker 2 What it does is incentivize speculation over long-term investment.

Speaker 4 Taking things apart.

Speaker 2 Yeah, by basically stripping businesses of assets and selling it off for parts. This is why we don't have local newspapers anymore.

Speaker 2 No one faces any consequences for the bad decisions at the time, and they continue the process of deregulation without creating any systems of oversight.

Speaker 2 This creates the foundation for the 2008 economic crash that affected the whole world.

Speaker 61 If you're not inside, you are outside, okay?

Speaker 61 And I'm not talking about some $400,000 a year working Wall Street stiff flying first class and being comfortable. I'm talking talking about rich enough to have your own ship.

Speaker 61 $50,000, $100 million, buddy.

Speaker 42 A player.

Speaker 4 Talk about how Wall Street commented on the impact of this change across generations.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you have a couple different father figures in Wall Street. And then you have this young man who's basically trying to figure out which father he's going to become like.

Speaker 2 You know, the young man's played by Charlie Sheen, the father who raised him, is working class, but he's built a stable existence for himself and his family. He's a union man.

Speaker 2 The rug is being pulled out from under his feet by men like Gordon Gecko. He's a representative of the sort of new financial system.

Speaker 2 And so he does insider trading and he does all of these unethical, illegal acts in order to attain wealth, but it works.

Speaker 4 So in 1996 comes the movie Disclosure, which I think can be distinguished as the one you find most reprehensible.

Speaker 4 Here we watch a man getting passed over for a promotion for a stereotypically undeserving woman. She is using her looks to get the job that he deserves.

Speaker 57 She said you sexually harassed her. She harassed me.

Speaker 2 If that came when you finished Richard Shredder, you're dead. Do you hear me? You are dead.

Speaker 57 We just have to hope he's smart enough to see he doesn't have any options.

Speaker 4 You wrote,

Speaker 4 it's a film not meant to entertain or to enlighten, but to rant loudly at you, up close, the spittle misting your face as you try to turn away.

Speaker 2 It is the 1990s, and out of every story that they could possibly tell, they are making a movie where Michael Douglas is victimized by his female boss, and ultimately he has to punish these women in order to put the world right.

Speaker 2 And the world is only right when Michael Douglas is in charge.

Speaker 4 Now, that's your least favorite film in the Michael Douglas catalog. But your favorite character that he plays is in the game.

Speaker 4 You say it's the only time that you felt real tenderness towards a Michael Douglas character. It was the only time that he plays vulnerability in a real way on screen.

Speaker 2 So in the game, Michael Douglas plays a finance guy again, but this time he is playing essentially the son of the last patriarch.

Speaker 2 His father dies by suicide, and he, as the eldest son, is tasked with replacing his father within the family.

Speaker 2 He takes over his father's business, takes over his father's home, takes on his father's social responsibilities. He doesn't have a sense of self outside of his father's identity.

Speaker 2 And so his brother buys him this game that is an all-immersive experience to force Nicholas to figure out who he is by stripping his father out of his identity.

Speaker 28 What do you get from the man who has everything?

Speaker 27 Consumer Recreation Services.

Speaker 27 Call that number.

Speaker 16 Why?

Speaker 28 They make your life fun.

Speaker 2 It leaves him in a state of having to admit that he doesn't know who he is, what he wants, what he has to contribute, and he's left in a really vulnerable place as a result.

Speaker 2 There are definitely times where Michael Douglas is put into a position of vulnerability in these films, where he's being stalked, chased by the police, persecuted in some way.

Speaker 2 But the game is the only movie that pushes him past hysteria or self-defensiveness.

Speaker 4 How does this speak to the current moment?

Speaker 2 Patriarchy used to tell men what the world wanted from them. It wants you to make money.
It wants you to have a family. It wants you to get an education.
It wants you to be respectable.

Speaker 2 This is how you're supposed to dress. This is how you're supposed to behave.
And this is where you're supposed to go to work and all of these other things. Now that's no longer really true.

Speaker 2 Just because you fulfill old expectations for what a man's life is supposed to look like, that doesn't mean you're automatically rewarded.

Speaker 2 So what you see are men struggling to figure out what other roles can they play?

Speaker 2 And there's a nostalgia for the patriarchy because at least then they were told what to do.

Speaker 4 It's kind of like the nostalgia for the Cold War, right? Things made sense. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Things made sense. This was the bad guy.
We were the good guys, right?

Speaker 2 And our flourishing was America's flourishing. Now you can be other things, but men see that as threatening.
The uncertainty creates anxiety rather than excitement.

Speaker 2 I mean, look at Jordan Peterson, for example, right? He's a man who has been telling men that their problems are essentially rooted in

Speaker 2 contemporary madness, feminism, or Marxism or trans rights, right? That they don't have to adapt their understanding of themselves. It's everybody else who is wrong.

Speaker 2 And so you don't have to think about

Speaker 2 what masculinity is supposed to be for.

Speaker 2 We just have to keep being who we are. And it's everybody else who has to change.

Speaker 4 Michael Douglas. We shouldn't confuse here the roles he played with the man himself.

Speaker 15 Right?

Speaker 2 I'm not really interested in who Michael Douglas is as a person.

Speaker 2 If he's a bad person, a good person, it doesn't matter because what matters is the work that he was doing. And I think that he became, you know, probably unintentionally,

Speaker 2 a kind of vessel

Speaker 2 for these very specific changes that

Speaker 2 Americans and men specifically were going through. And it seems like maybe it was a bit of a burden to kind of act out an entire nation's sickness.
But I appreciate his contribution.

Speaker 4 Jessa, thank you so much.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 4 Jessa Crispin is a cultural critic and author of the new book, What is Wrong with Men? Patriarchy, the Crisis of Masculinity, and how, of course, Michael Douglas' films explain everything.

Speaker 5 That's it for this week's show. On the Media is produced by Molly Rosen, Rebecca Clark Callender, and Candice Wong.

Speaker 4 Our technical director is Jennifer Munson with engineering help from Jared Paul. Eloise Blondio is our senior producer, and our executive producer is Katya Rogers.

Speaker 4 On the Media is a production of WNYC Studios. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

Speaker 5 And I'm Michael Lohringer.