The Trump Epstein Doodle Bombshell

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Welcome to Raging Moderates.

I'm Scott Galloway.

And I'm Jessica Charlove.

We're one years old.

I know.

We're one years old.

We're so fresh, baby face.

Oh, my gosh.

But one feels serious.

Happy anniversary.

Is that weird?

Likewise, we are.

What is one?

One is paper.

Paper.

Paper.

Huh.

Yeah.

Well, daddy's been bringing you Benjamins, if I might say so myself.

I was going to say, is there like a money joke, but it's supposed to be sentimental?

Like, you know,

what you give your partner on a one-year anniversary, like a special card or, you know, a photograph framed from your best trip ever.

One year should just be a note saying, okay, if this hadn't happened, it'd be really fucking embarrassing.

I was thinking about a buddy of mine.

I was just in Brazil, and I have this wonderful friend that I met 20 years ago in Brazil.

And whenever I go to Brazil on a speaking gig, I don't know if you know this, I'm big in Brazil.

But anyways.

I've heard that, and I've seen it on your social media.

Yeah.

I'm big in the matcha countries.

I'm big in Brazil, South Africa, and Australia.

Anyways, I have this great friend, Augusto, and I met him at a bachelor party where the bachelor didn't show up.

A good friend of mine, he's not eccentric, but he gets really into shit.

And he decided he was really into Brazil.

And we went down to Salvador de Bahia for a carnival, which was amazing.

And he met...

like one of the biggest movie stars in Brazil and was of course immediately starstruck, you know, talented, famous, beautiful, and Brazilian.

Yeah.

Anyways, their their marriage lasted like not very long, but my friendship with Augusto has endured 20 plus years.

And we knew it wouldn't work very long when the night before the bachelor party in Floripa, she would not let him go.

This was like 23 years ago.

He sent out this big email saying, guys, I'm really sorry, but, you know, I forget her name is upset and won't let me go.

So I just don't feel like I can go.

And I'm like, we're like, we don't.

You're like, don't do it.

Well, no, we were more concerned with us.

We're like, dude, this isn't about you.

We're all going.

None of us are casting our trip.

This had nothing to do with you.

This is about Brazil, surfing, Flaripa.

Anyways, that did not last a year.

I don't know how I got here, Jess.

Jess, what are your reflections on the year?

I think we're supposed to talk about this at the end of the show, but we can start early.

But we're going to have a lot of like Epstein stuff to talk about.

So we can go early.

My reflections are that this has been one of the most wonderful, consequential experiences of my professional life.

And I'm so thrilled to be doing this with you.

And, you know, a lot of people obviously want to get into podcasting and it's kind of a joke, right?

But I got so lucky that I was partnered up with someone that already has a podcasting empire.

So everything was just easy and your team has been so fantastic and welcomed me into the prof G fold.

And

I feel like we've carved out a nice space for this raging raging moderates conversation.

And I've had a blast.

And the idea also that I could speak for more than, you know, 90 seconds without being interrupted is thrilling.

And I always look forward to it.

So I had a great year.

I'm so glad.

That's very nice.

By the way, I would like to draw this to a life lesson for you young professionals out there.

That's how you get a raise.

Oh, really?

Is that how we're going back to paper?

The paper is coming.

I wasn't even trying to do it that way.

It was just genuinely what my reflection is.

I mean, even the stuff that's hard and it's, I get it, we're not coal miners and we're not curing cancer and all the things,

but there are real.

Caring for children, because being a mother is the hardest job, Task.

That's true.

School drop-off started this week.

Yes, it is.

It's really the hardest job.

Well, do you want to carry someone in your stomach, then get them out of your body and be responsible for them?

basically for the rest of their lives because i know people say oh they go to college i still call my mommy on my way to work every single day so yeah it never ends yeah no I had Indian food last night.

So I think that's somewhat similar, kind of walking around.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

It's like a wild stomachache and a bad poop.

That's all it is.

I feel like I'm on the verge of throwing up every 30 minutes.

And also, I'm a little pregnant all the time because I have to pee all the time.

Oh, yeah.

Aging with the male bladder is not great.

No, it's not great.

But I like that you call, you speak to your mother every day.

Oh, yeah.

Definitely.

I mean, I always did, but even more so since my dad passed away.

I love, she's the best.

Even when she's wrong, she's the best.

Yeah.

I speak to my mom every day.

That's nice.

That's really nice.

That's good.

And not a lot of sons do that.

I think more than you think.

I think that actually

a lot of men I know

are, well, a lot of the, most of the men in my life are really, really close with their mother.

I'm, maybe that's, I'm sorry, I'm drawn to kind of feminine men, but, and maybe that's just part of it.

Or I don't know if you need to be masculine or feminine.

I don't think you'd, it's not a femininity thing.

It's not a femininity thing.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's probably true.

But anyways, I'm glad you you talked to your mom.

I'm glad you're happy.

A year in.

Are you happy?

Yeah, I'm really happy.

I need some affirmation back now.

Has this been the most consequential year of your professional life?

I'm not sure I'd go that far, but you're like still selling L2 was pretty cool, but you're fine.

No, 160 million felt pretty good, felt pretty consequential.

We did not earn that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

To be honest, the sentiment or the emotion I register on this podcast is imposter syndrome.

And that is, I have a a view on politics, but I don't bring the same expertise and rigor that you bring with your polling background and you're thinking about it all day because you're on Fox and you just have more street credit.

You're looking at data.

I'm just throwing out an opinion.

And also,

I'm usually the salsa in podcasts, and someone else is the straight man.

And it's flipped here, so it's been a learning experience for me.

It's really me asking you questions.

But I very much enjoy it.

And as is the nature of politics, I really enjoy meeting our elected representatives.

It makes me feel better about our elected representatives.

What is unfortunate is the comments and the things you get back, people are so polarized and

sort of a hair trigger away from being angry around your views.

If I'm talking about stocks or I'm talking about why young men are struggling, people come back with thoughtful comments.

Here, it's just like, okay, you fucking libtart.

I mean, it's just cry harder.

Yeah, there's not a lot of room.

For nuance.

Yeah, there's not a lot of, I don't know, like that's the right word, nuance and context.

Anyways,

I think we killed banter there.

I think we can move on.

Nailed it.

Nailed it.

Again, happy, happy winning anniversary.

Your gift is in the mail.

I'm just kidding.

There's no gift.

And our gift to our listeners is that

is Jeffrey Epstein.

There we go.

The Epstein files.

But before we start the episode, we started Raging Moderate's very own YouTube channel.

We have left the nest.

So we're going to give you more of what you want, up-to-the-minute videos and conversations.

We're going to try and be more newsy and respond more quickly.

We just had a strategy meeting.

It was productive.

Jess did a quick hit with, who's that kid?

What's his name?

The brilliant kid?

Aaron Parnes.

Aaron Parnes is having a moment, a glow-up, and it got 100,000 views.

So we're like, okay, we need to do more of that.

So we're going to try and be a little bit more responsive and newsy, if you will.

We're going to do these up-to-minute videos and conversations.

in addition to the Wednesday and Friday pod.

So if you're hearing this, we'll have the YouTube link in the show notes.

Anyways, thank you for enduring that.

Sorry for the ad.

In today's Raging Moderates.

Doesn't it feel uncomfortable doing that?

I think it's terrible.

Well, it helps if you're a total fucking whore, which I am.

Oh, I'm glad also that I partnered with a whore.

There's very little I'm not willing to do for money, Jess.

There's very little I'm not willing to do for money.

Except the good news is I'm an expensive whore.

High class.

So I find some solace in that.

In today's Raging Moderates, we're discussing a roundup of the latest Trump news.

Plus, we'll dig into a new poll revealing a sharp Gen Z gender divide.

I was fascinated by some of that stuff.

I'm curious to get your thoughts.

And

as we mentioned, our one-year anniversary.

All right, let's get into it.

House Oversight just received its first batch of documents from the Epstein estate, including the so-called birthday book, letters gifted to Epstein for his 50th.

One image released by Democrats has the White House playing defense.

Trump has denied writing it, sued the Wall Street Journal for defamation, and AIDS insists the signature isn't his.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, the administration launched Operation Midway Blitz.

God, that sounds like a bad movie to target undocumented immigrants with criminal records.

Advocates say arrests are so far minimal.

At the same time, the Supreme Court let Trump keep roving ICE patrols in Southern California.

Despite concerns, they single out Latinos, even U.S.

citizens.

Trump also vowed to bring back prayer in public schools, promising new education department guidance to protect religious expression.

And behind closed doors, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant reportedly threatened to punch housing chief Bill Pulte at a Georgetown dinner, accusing him of badmouthing him to Trump.

Hmm.

Jess, a lot happening in Trump world.

Where do you want to start?

I know.

How about, let me, let me think, Epstein.

Yeah.

It's

there

is

rarely,

very few things in this world in which we're constantly being inundated with news and horrifying images, you know, starvation, murder, et cetera.

You know, we become desensitized to some degree.

And

I looked at the birthday book and

had a physical reaction to it.

It felt like I was going to throw up at least in my mouth a little bit, and that it was a confirmation of all of the possible worst case scenarios.

that you could imagine about what's going on.

Because there are a lot of folks who vote in different ways, right?

A lot of Democrats and Republicans that kind of want to bypass these things, right?

And just we want to think the best of it, right?

We certainly can't be accusing everybody that fraternized with him of being guilty of, you know, doing it with 13, 14-year-old girls.

But you look at some of these images,

including obviously the card that the president drew for him, you know, highlighting that we have certain things in common and it is in the frame of a woman's body.

And some people on the internet pointed this out and I hadn't noticed it until I saw folks pointing this out, but the breasts are very small.

It's not like how you would typically draw boobs.

I don't draw a lot of boobs, but it's not grown-up boobs that Donald Trump has drawn there.

It's just, you know, little and maybe, you know, he's not into big boobs or whatever, but it has a young girl vibe to it.

And when you see actually the signature as pubic hair in real life versus someone describing it to you as it was in the Wall Street Journal article originally, your stomach just drops.

And so I thought, well, this is going to be the worst of it, right?

Cause this was the lead aspect of the story.

But for me, it got so much worse.

And I don't know if you've looked at the other drawings that were in the birthday book, but one in particular is a sketch and it's in color, kind of like crayon looking, of Epstein giving balloons to little girls in 1983.

And then it's labeled 1983.

And then there's another image of him being massaged and potentially orally serviced, it looks like, by a woman in a thong.

And that's labeled 2003.

And the line says under it, what a great country.

So

It's just all there spelled out for you that this person was obviously a groomer, that this person was a pedophile, a sex trafficker, all the worst things that you could ever imagine.

And by looking at the letters that are enclosed in this birthday book, you know that some of the most powerful people in American society were totally fine with it, found some redeeming quality in him.

I don't, you know, this.

It's going to become harder and harder to believe that there wasn't something nefarious going on in all of these connections.

And this goes so far beyond what I had to adjust to as locker room talk in 2016, right?

With the Access Hollywood tape.

Like, you know, I have accepted that American society is cool with that.

But to look at what's in this book and think that people are going to be okay with this breaks my heart.

What did you feel?

It's funny because when I first saw that one image, the card or the balloons?

The card.

Yeah.

I might be just tone deaf and thick, but I just kind of didn't get it.

And then when I read someone pointed out that this looked like someone who had not gone through puberty yet and the pubic care thing, like, you're right.

You just, you hear that and it's just like, whoa, I mean, that's just creepy.

And then the

creepiest thing or, you know, creepy squared was I thought, okay, I don't think he's a very creative person.

I don't think he's the kind of person to go into his basement with scissors and paper and kind of workshop some creative cards.

He clearly got help.

And my sense is, I'm just trying to imagine him saying to someone, hey, I want to give this guy, send this guy a birthday card.

Can you brainstorm some ideas?

I mean, him describing what he wanted and then seeing it and going, that's perfect.

You know, people send stupid emails or like make offhanded comments that are totally inappropriate.

I get out over my skis all the time and say shit that's just not appropriate.

And then I look back and they go, I wish I could take that back.

But this felt like a work.

This felt like a piece of work and a project

where he hired or had resources and he instructed them: this is the vibe I want to get across.

It's got to be funny.

It's got to be creative.

It's a book.

And then people came back to him probably with several ideas.

And he said, that's the one.

And unfortunately, I think right now the most consequential figure in the world is probably not Putin.

I think it's she.

I think she is in the background playing us like a fiddle.

And then probably

number two in terms of damage, I would argue, is Bobby Kennedy.

He'll be consequential in five or ten years when we have measles and rubella outbreaks and then people realize that, okay, this is why we have these outbreaks by creating massive friction around getting vaccines.

Arguably the most powerful person in domestic politics right now is Epstein posthumously because he basically shut down the government.

And in order for Speaker Johnson to try and get this out of the news cycle, he dismissed Congress early.

And it's not as if they don't have a lot to do.

So he shut down the government.

And my favorite was Speaker Johnson claiming that, no, no, Trump is actually a hero in all of this, that he's an FBI informant.

And even, it sounds like even MAGA hasn't picked up on that.

Even MAGA's gone, okay, that's a bridge too far.

But this is, I would argue, that those

narco-terrorists or innocent civilians, whatever your viewpoint is on those people who were killed in the boat off the Venezuelan coast,

I think Epstein did that.

I believe, and this is my thesis, that there are five or six people in a room queering AI, different LLMs with different prompts around how do we keep Epstein out of the news cycle.

And they're coming up with just a ton of ideas, whether it's threaten to fire Chairman Powell.

Now say that's bullshit tomorrow.

You know, a military strike against a nation that doesn't have the the power to move back under the auspices of narco-terrorism, change the name of a cabinet for no real reason.

And that's not to say that they don't want to do these things or they don't think these things are right, but I think there is a concerted, methodical, and quite frankly, quite effective strategy right now of every day pushing Epstein out of the media cycle.

I think Jeffrey Epstein right now is the most powerful person.

posthumously, or the most consequential and influential figure in American politics.

What are your thoughts?

Do I sound very conspiracy theory here?

No, not at all.

This has been the theme since, I don't know, a couple months now, I should say, since this came back into the news in a very prominent manner.

And you see it all over social media, whatever the headline is, is like, where are the Epstein files?

Right?

Caroline Levitt, there was that conspiracy theory that one day when she had to talk about Epstein, she didn't wear her cross to the press briefing room.

But those are the hardest questions that she gets because she knows also that this is something that activates the MAGA base.

This isn't the usual liberals are over here screaming the sky is falling and, you know, we're going to oppose everything that's going on.

There is a core faction of Donald Trump supporters that are incensed about this.

And it's not just the fact that young women were abused, raped, trafficked.

It's that Donald Trump sold them on this idea that he wasn't part of the cabal of powerful men that are preying upon the rest of society.

And it turns out that not only is he part of it, that he's a main feature of the birthday book, right?

He is a flagship participant in this world.

And there are some big-time Republican or MA influencers that are going along with Trump on this, like Charlie Kirk.

He's buttoned up now, right?

And he's on message and whatever they're saying now.

Carolyn Carolyn Levitt tweeted that this somehow exonerated him.

I mean, they're trying to get into the signature comparisons.

And to the journal's credit, and a lot of credit goes to the journal for this, they included signature comparisons from Trump around the same period and notes to George Conway, who he's obviously no fan of anymore, and to Hillary Clinton.

This is indisputable.

The New York Times is out with their analysis of it.

It is obviously his signature.

So this idea that Donald Trump was somehow the hero in it and Mike Johnson had to back off of the ludicrous idea that he was the FBI informant that's actually exposing all this terrible stuff that's going on is not going to fly.

J.D.

Vance has been humiliated 50 ways from Sunday on this because he had posted, excuse my language, but in a word, this is bullshit.

It's not bullshit.

And I understand that you have the fight or flight response to these things and they think like, well, what can we do?

Deny, deny, deny, deny.

Let's slap a huge lawsuit out there, $10 billion.

And Rupert Murdoch and the journal basically said, you know, if you come for the king, you best not miss.

And they missed.

They missed bigly on this one.

And the idea that they thought that there was a chance that the journal would have gone to print with something this massive that they hadn't fact checked to oblivion

is beyond reckoning.

Yeah, 100%.

Beyond comprehension.

That is the correct way to say it.

So, you know, hats off to the journal for this and being so buttoned up about it as well.

But this is the Apstein files and how this is all being handled is one of those 80-20 issues that we hear about all the time that the Democrats always take the wrong side of, right?

Like, you know, trans people in competitive sports.

Basically, no one is satisfied with how the Trump administration is managing this.

And Rocana and Thomas Massey, who are spearheading that bipartisan discharge petition, they need a couple more signatures.

They have four Republicans that have signed on thus far, and they're talking about

reading names on the floor of Congress.

They obviously want to protect survivors who don't want to have their names mixed up in this.

But when you look at the way that the ball is rolling from the press conference with 10 survivors speaking out to unlikely heroes like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who

o'clock is right twice a day.

You got to give her credit, though.

Totally.

She's shown a lot of leadership here.

She comes across as unafraid and trying to do the right thing.

I think she comes out of this, regardless of what happens, a big winner.

Totally.

It's interesting how there are some things

that supersede politics, right?

They're so visceral.

Yeah.

And that you can see these materials, that you could listen to those survivors talk about what their lives were like, how they were manipulated.

Like the young woman who had a dying mother and Jeffrey Epstein kept saying, I'll get her into the right doctor.

You know, is there a sicker way to get someone to give you a dirty massage than to say, I'll help you save your mother?

And Marjorie Taylor Greene's just saying this, this is not red or blue.

This is just about humanity.

A couple of things or observations.

I think that the Democrats may have their message for 26,

and that is we've been saying for a while they were flat-footed.

They needed to kind of respond.

It feels as if they found their footing and they're responding.

You know, Governor Newsom, Senators Bennett, Warren, Warner, Cassidy, to his credit, Sanders, I thought were excellent, pushing back on RFK and thereby ergo pushing back on the president.

It feels like they're not playing offense, but they're off their heels.

And so the next thing has to be big ideas and messaging around 26.

And I think the big ideas have to be all around affordability, you know, 8 million houses, raise minimum wage,

lower access to Medicare by two years every year, you know, whatever it might be.

But I think that they have may have been handed the foot to lead with.

And it's very simple and very understandable and appeals to people across the political spectrum.

And that is, if we take control of the House, if you vote for me and we take control of the House, we will release the Epstein files.

Because they'll have that power.

It's pretty simple, folks.

If we take back the majority in the House, the next day we vote and pass

legislation to immediately release the Epstein Foss.

I think that will be a very powerful thing to run on.

Your thoughts.

So I think it definitely can be part of it.

I worry that we could have the same - I don't want to even call it a missed opportunity because Kamala Harris did talk about affordability and prices all the time in 2024.

And it just, you know, it was a change election.

It didn't resonate.

But I really want to lead with cost of living and losing health care.

Agreed.

Yeah.

I agree.

I think this is certainly part of it because it's part of the betrayal.

That's the main message, I think, which is Donald Trump has been lying to you from the get-go.

And it's everything about lowering your cost of living, making the grocery store more affordable, getting us out of wars to I'm going to release the Epstein files and I had nothing to do with it.

And I think that you can thread that needle, but the price of

your chicken wings.

I don't know if you saw that Mallory McMorrow ad that went very viral running for Senate in Michigan.

We had her on the podcast a few weeks ago.

You know, she's talking about all of the ads in NFL Red Zone, which was supposed to be seven hours of ad-free.

People were really pissed about it, but she's talking about, you know, it's 19 bucks for chicken wings, $5

for chips.

Even your price of beer is going up.

And to me,

that has to be the front foot.

And then the back foot is all of this.

But I think the mismanagement of the Epstein files and frankly, the corruption that's going on surrounding it is certainly part and parcel of this package that Donald Trump sold you a really bad bill of goods.

And you can't point to an area in your life where you are better off than you were when he assumed the presidency.

And I think that that will be very salient.

And just before we bust a break, I just want to get your views and provide some comments on the recent ICE raid of a plant, a Hyundai plant.

I think a lot of people are down with cracking down on illegal immigration.

And

also,

look, this is largely performative in the sense that we were deporting more people during certain periods during Obama and Biden by cooperating with local governments and not doing it in such a cruel, visible, like faux little dick macho way.

But approximately 450 to 475 workers were detained at a Savannah, Georgia Hyundai plant.

Most of them were South Korean nationals, and many of them were here on a B-1 business visa or the visa waiver ESTA program, neither of which authorized manual labor.

So our immigration process and visa process is best described as a total shit show.

And

kind of demonstrates how irrational and self-damaging our immigration policy as it relates to our economic policy.

And that is, South Korea is one of our strongest allies.

And it has already prompted travel freezes and reviewed operations by affected firms, including Hyundai, LG, and Samsung, who are all reconsidering future U.S.

plans.

And Trump has made a signature of his presidency to bring back manufacturing and to get domestic and foreign firms to commit to making investments.

South Korea has good relations traditionally with the U.S., one of our strongest allies.

We fought a war together side by side.

We backed their government.

And we have convinced them to build really big factories and employ a lot of people.

And now they are reconsidering that because we went in to play G.I.

Joe, you know, minus the dignity, minus the humanity, minus the patriotism, and have effectively sent to chill down all South Korean firms around investing in the U.S.

It's just as if, again, going back to ChatGPT,

it's as if they keep typing in, what are the best ways, how do we accomplish the biggest own goals in geopolitical and economic history?

It's almost, I like admire the elegance.

It's like one ICE raid is likely going to reduce tens, potentially hundreds of billions of capex from South Korean firms into the United States.

Nobody wants to leave their home, be an engineer, go work at a plant, and then get rounded up.

You know, when those people get out of jail, which they're probably already out of jail, they go back to fucking Seoul and they think, you know what?

We're going to open a plant in the suburb of Rio, or we're going to open a plant in Vietnam, or we're going to open a plant, you know, who knows?

Maybe we'll even do something jointly with China because all of a sudden, maybe we should start talking to them again.

This is just, it's not only performative, we've seen that, and cruel.

But let me appeal to the Republican side.

This will absolutely reduce jobs of domestic workers.

That Hyundai plant hires and creates a lot of jobs for high-paying jobs for domestic workers.

We're saying fuck you to a great ally.

South Korea is an amazing success story.

They've built incredible products.

You know, the only rival to the iPhone is a product made in South Korea.

South Korean firms are wonderful to work with.

They take their relationship with America very seriously.

They are very measured.

They make big investments.

They're very methodical.

They have great companies.

And we've basically said, no, we want to humiliate your workers and send a chill.

How many Korean companies right now?

are canceling plans for joint ventures and capital expenditure around plants in the U.S.

just in the last 48 hours.

Not even just that.

They're talking about kicking American English teachers out of South Korea.

There you go.

And why wouldn't you?

We're not a friend.

And on top of it, that

we came with our camera crews because we're the most deeply unserious nation on the planet.

It's like picks or it didn't happen.

So that we could line up 350,400 South Korean engineers and people with college degrees who a lot of them, it sounds like, had a legal right to be here, at least based on what their immigration attorneys have been saying as they've been doing interviews about it, to shackle them.

These guys wearing polo shirts.

I'm sorry, that is not what anyone imagined when Trump said, I'm going to get the bad ombres out of the country.

And I don't think it's just South Korea.

If you were any civilized and developed nation that was thinking about acquiescing to Trump's demands for more American investment, we should note that this predates Trump coming back into office.

I mean, this was the crown jewel of Brian Kemp's economic strategy for how he was rejuvenating Georgia.

And he must be sitting there thinking like, what the fuck?

Holy shit, I didn't even have someone good that I was going to have to run for Senate.

And now I have to explain to people why billions of dollars of investment is just going away so that Stephen Miller can get off again.

I thought it was one of those stories that couldn't be real.

Let's talk about just how bad those ombres are.

As of late June, there are over 59,000 immigrants held in ICE custody, which is, by the way, is 140% of detention capacity.

So they're not being held in good conditions.

Nope.

Over 70% of them have no criminal record.

No criminal record.

So do you really need to incarcerate people with no criminal record guilty of, and they would say, well, they're guilty of a crime.

To be clear, folks, let's remind you: immigration is the secret sauce of America.

A lot of people agree with.

What a lot of people don't acknowledge is the most profitable part of immigration is illegal immigration because it's a flexible workforce that we have no one comes in to pick our crops, take care of our grandparents, provide us services.

And then, when the work goes away, they melt back to their home countries, they pay Social Security taxes, consumption taxes, but they actually tax themselves and call on our resources.

I would argue it is the most profitable, flexible workforce in history.

Has it gone too far?

Does it mean we should let it continue?

No.

But to all of a sudden show up and act like these people are criminals, we knew this was going on.

And if you really wanted to be serious about it, if you really wanted to solve the problem, you'd start finding those nice business owners that employ these people.

And before you know it, they would do

certain biometric checks and boom, the demand would dry up and they would melt back to their home countries.

They have detained 20,000 immigrants a month.

That's a 3x increase from 2024.

93% never convicted of a violent crime.

It reminds me a little bit of when we brought all these interpreters back from Afghanistan who had helped us hunt down bad guys.

And then lately there's been talk of sending them back to Afghanistan, which is essentially a death sentence.

These people go back, they're dead.

And this feels like the same sort of disingenuous wink wink, come here, do our work, do our dirty work that domestic workers don't, and then let's demonize you.

Anyways, Jess, let's take a quick break.

Stay with us.

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Welcome back.

Gen Z's gender divide is sharper than ever, and it's not just about politics.

A new NBC poll shows young men and women split on Trump, on work, even on what it means to live a successful life.

Nearly half of Gen Z men approve of Trump, compared to just a quarter of women.

Men are also far less likely to say they feel anxious about the future.

And when asked what success looks like, I thought this was fascinating.

Trump Trump-backing men put marriage and kids at the top, while Harris-backing women ranked children near the very bottom, instead prioritizing emotional stability and meaningful work.

This blew my

mind.

Judge, what do you think it means when Gen Z men and women are chasing completely different visions of family and success?

Well, I think it means that we're not going to be marrying people who vote differently than us,

which is the fun thing.

As if we needed another reason for young people not to hook up.

Exactly.

There is.

Did you talk politics when you were dating in your 20s?

I can't remember, even, I have no idea what the politics were of anyone I dated when I was young.

I lived abroad, I was in London.

So we talked about it a little bit, but it was mostly like, hey, your guy made us go into Iraq and Afghanistan.

And, you know, everyone was kind of center left.

I mean, I was doing a politics PhD, so I have a bit of like a stamp on me that I'm interested in it, but it certainly wasn't definitional in this way.

And I had a very serious boyfriend who was a like a Romney Republican, a John McCain Republican, who voted for Hillary in 2016 because Trump was just too much, but fundamentally had different ideas about the size of government and taxes.

And we got on just fine for three plus years, right?

It didn't used to be

this much of a way to define who you are.

And that is led in a lot of ways by liberals.

You know, we have less of a tolerance for people who disagree with us than conservatives do.

And I certainly see that in my environment at work.

And I know that's particularly true with young people.

But I was, and maybe I'm putting too much of my, you know, pollster or researcher hat on.

I didn't love the way the question was phrased because they said, what do you consider important to a successful life?

And that's kind of unclear as to what do you personally consider to be important or what do you think is most important generally?

And I understand as a young woman setting out in life, so a woman in her 20s that's planning, I can see why you wouldn't be like, you know, I'm just trying to get my MRS and bang out a few babies, right?

Because you know that you're going to be set back in your career or there are going to be a lot more challenges, at least.

I personally feel that I've thrived in this era of having children, but it's harder.

Right.

And I have a very specific kind of career.

And so this idea of young women basically saying, I've got a lot that I want to accomplish before I'm even thinking about kids made sense to me.

And that men, especially Trump voting young men that are leaning into the kind of Charlie Kirk mold of it all, are going to be like, kids, that's what's most important to me.

And it is important.

And we, you know, we have a population problem and liberals are the one that are having less babies.

But I saw in the census data, which I found fascinating, that it's not college-educated women that are having less kids.

It's liberal women without a college degree.

Hmm.

So.

Well, there's, it feels as if women,

the bottom line is a lot of women who have opportunities and economic independence, which is a wonderful thing.

The bottom line is divorce rates have gone up since the 70s as women have gained more economic independence.

In sum, women's assent economically has not been matched by men's assent in terms of their ability to manage more of the domestic responsibilities.

And And so a lot of women are doing the math and saying, the math ain't math, ain't, I'm out.

And it's sort of creeped down to the younger generations where now I think a lot of women are saying, I have reshaped my life around my relationships, different types of relationships, my work, and I don't necessarily need to have a romantic relationship to feel like that I'm a success.

And that I'm happy.

And that I'm happy.

And one of the biggest myths that the data should dispel dispel is the following.

There's this cartoon of a woman in her 30s who hasn't found love and doesn't have a husband, and she has failed at life.

And all of the data, including this one, in my opinion, in terms of the aspirations of young men and young women, show the following.

And this is true.

Men need relationships and get more from them, romantic relationships, than women.

On average, men live four to seven years longer when they're married.

Women, two to four years longer.

Widows are happier after their husband dies than when they were married.

Widowers are less happy.

Men are much less likely

to have better health outcomes, much more likely the household to build wealth.

And essentially, only one in three men is in a relationship under the age of 30, whereas two in three women are.

And you think, well, that's mathematically impossible.

It's not because women are dating older because they want more economically and emotionally viable men.

And one of the things that just should be dispelled is that men get more from romantic relationships because they need guardrails more, they need support more than women.

80% of men say that their best friend is their wife, where it's only one in three women say their best friend is their husband.

But what we have is a generation of young men who are being told they have no value.

are having a difficult time finding venues to demonstrate excellence.

Guys fall in lust.

Women fall slowly, quote unquote, in sort of love.

Because the bottom line is, I don't want to say our standards are lower, but men find a variety of different things.

When men are asked if you could have a woman with 80% of everything you want, three-quarters say, yeah, I'm in.

When you present a woman with the concept of a man of 80% of everything she wants, three-quarters say that's not enough.

Because the basis of evolution is women have a much finer filter.

And when there's fewer venues, whether it's work, whether it's school, whether it's church, for people specifically meant to demonstrate excellence to women, you end up with a lot of lonely young men who blame women.

And also a lot of women, not as nearly as many, only half as many, who don't have relationships, but they pour that energy into more productive means.

They don't start blaming men.

They don't start blaming immigrants.

They work on themselves.

They pour that energy back into relationships and the friend network and

back into their professional lives.

But nearly half of men ages 18 to 29 feel they face discrimination.

And I think some of that is the manosphere telling them that they should be aggrieved.

I think some of it is bullshit.

I still think young men have a tremendous amount of opportunity in our society or as much as any society.

But what is really sad is a lot of them, when I coach young men, it ultimately ends up in a conversation of, I'd really like to have a girlfriend.

And I hear their stories.

And I hear, granted, I know women have a lot of like horrific dating stories.

They just sound like shocking.

The stories you hear from these young men are just really sad.

They're just trying so hard.

They're trying to better themselves.

And they really have a difficult time finding anyone who will even give them a shot.

And I think that just as the, I apologize, I'm ranting on here, but the digitization of any category creates a consolidation and a winner-take-most.

50% of all e-commerce goes to one player.

Two-thirds of all social media globally goes to one player meta.

93% of search goes to one player.

When you digitize something, it all aggregates and becomes a winner-take-all.

And the same thing has happened in dating, and that is the top 10% of men are just cleaning up, and the bottom 90% are just kind of shut out of the mating market.

And I think it's creating a lot of unnecessary anger and real fissure.

And I still, I like the idea going back to messaging of Democrats talking about certain key themes and messages.

And one of the key messages I'm trying to convince people to run on is the restoration of rejuvenation or the power of alliances, alliances between moderates, alliances between great nations, democracies, alliances between us and Ukraine, us and Israel, the power of alliances.

But I think the greatest alliance in history is the alliance between men and women.

And I have seven and a half billion points of proof for that.

But there's just less mixing now, less interacting, less coupling, less mating, less connecting.

And especially when men don't have the guardrails.

I think about if I hadn't been forced to go into work at Morgan Stanley, put on a tie, and commute from my mom's house to downtown 515 Figueroa and have a tie on, I think I would have smoked a lot more pot if I hadn't had a boss who pulled me into a conference room like every other day and said, don't say that.

If I hadn't had a girlfriend who said, stop drinking so much, or I'm going to break up with you, or be kinder.

And these men, so many men don't have the benefit of these guardrails now because everything is a reason not to date that guy or not give him a second coffee.

And I found this just really discouraging that these men do still value family and children.

And women have basically said, you know what?

I don't need it.

I don't need it.

Your thoughts?

Well, there was a lot in there

about the dating scene.

I totally understand that.

You know, this like nice guys finish last and having your checklist.

of what you're looking for, especially once you're in your 30s as a woman and you have accumulated some wealth.

You've moved up the ladder, right?

You're middle management or above now.

It's not that crazy frenetic energy of everyone's 25 and has, you know, three or four roommates and one bathroom.

And you have an apartment that you're renting on your own.

Or maybe if you live somewhere where it's more affordable, you even own your own apartment.

And you're sitting there thinking, well, I got to have these 10 things.

And the truth is, is that life just doesn't work that way.

You know, you have one or two core things that you need in someone, but the overwhelming message that I hear from my friends who are in happy marriages as people in their upper 30s or low 40s is marry someone kind.

It's kind of all that it is.

I mean, we are on such a

deeply traumatic in a lot of ways journey through life that you need someone who is kind to you.

And then by extension, to the things that matter to you in life, to your family, to your colleagues and whatever's going on in your professional life, especially to your children.

And you can see that also in how fatherhood has changed.

I mean, can you imagine all of these boomer dads?

Like if my dad were alive and he saw how many diapers Brian changes.

And he was an amazing dad.

I mean, I have him on a pedestal so high, I cannot reach it.

And he didn't get up in the middle of the night with us.

He went away.

I mean, work made it so, but would go away months at a clip.

And Brian doesn't stay an extra night if he's on a work trip because he wants to make sure that he's back to do bedtime.

There's a complete revolution in what is going on in male parenting right now and fatherhood.

For some men.

Unfortunately, I think some men aren't keeping up.

I think women have ascended faster on more levels than men.

And again, going back to the notion the gap is widening and a lot of women are just exiting.

They are definitely.

That was what I wanted to get to.

So

for the ones who are signing up for fatherhood, the millennials and Gen Zs, they are much more hands-on than I think older generations.

For the women exiting, I'm afraid for a lot of them and what that's going to look like long term, especially for the ones who are then going on and having children on their own, which I think is fantastic.

I was not strong enough.

You know, I always wanted to have kids, but I thought if I don't find somebody, I'm not, I can't do this on my own, even with a huge support system.

I think that that's something that's incredibly hard.

But there is so much value in doing it with somebody.

Oh, 100%.

Right.

If you can.

And you brought up this idea of the way, you know, women talk about men.

And I've been stunned by the spate of op-eds in our top publications, right, in the New York Times and the Washington Post, that are just essentially shitting on men, and that it feels like open season that you can do that.

And that doesn't mean we can't talk about issues within relationships or behaviors that men display that we don't particularly like.

We all feel that way.

And likewise, men have things about women that are annoying to them or that make their lives more difficult.

But the New York Times, I don't think, would publish an op-ed

written by a guy about how fucking annoying and frustrating his wife is.

Right.

Like, it just wouldn't be allowed.

Jess,

you have, we don't even realize how much of the public discourse is biased.

First off, there's still a lot of misogyny out there.

It gets really ugly online.

Yeah.

And sort of the conversation ender is like, well, no one's taken away your bodily autonomy.

That's sort of the mic drop.

I get it.

At the same time, there is such a bias.

I was at a conference and we were talking about, and it was a really robust, respectful conversation.

And I said, look, at some point we have to acknowledge that people born as male and people born as female have certain biological predispositions that give them certain behavioral characteristics more prone to people born as a male or as a female.

And I said, look, what you probably have with leveling of the academic field and a prefrontal cortex that matures earlier, that's the executive gas on, gas-off function.

You're going to have more women, it's already true, in law school and in medical school.

And also, you could argue that because of what I feel are more feminine characteristics around nurturing, I said women will likely disproportionately populate our medical professions.

They will likely make better doctors.

They will likely make better lawyers.

They will likely make better PhDs because they have an easier time adapting to the more rigorous standards of academia.

Everyone in the audience is nodding their head, like clap, nodding their head.

Oh, I get, yeah, you're right.

Women will be better doctors.

And I've also said, I believe in general, and in no way should this reduce the equality of opportunity.

I think in general, I have found women are better managers.

They can just read the room better and read people better.

I then said, I think men on average are better entrepreneurs.

I think that they are more risk aggressive.

They are more willing to ignore the data around them and do something crazy and take a, not a reckless, but a bold risk with their own economic well-being and their own time and branch out and be ridiculously aggressive around calling new clients.

Comments, I do not feel safe around this guy.

I cannot believe you would invite him.

So you can be wildly sexist as long as it's a bias towards women, especially at these conferences that are massively populated by media and people who are more progressive.

That's fine.

We buy into the notion that men or women are different as long as all those differences add up to women being the superior sex.

And anything resembling like an honest conversation around the fact that, okay,

there is a role for men.

When Russian soldiers pour over the border in Ukraine, you want some of that big dick energy.

That masculine energy is important in a home raising kids.

The moment you say that, people's antenna goes up and it gets very hard to have a serious, thoughtful conversation.

And I think young men are really paying the price.

And this all comes back to one central theme, and that is young men are paying the price for the disproportionate, unearned, massive advantage that was crammed into white men of my generation.

The amount of economic prosperity from 1945 to call it 2015 was greater than the rest of the world combined in the U.S.

I acknowledge when I was in the 90s raising tens of millions of dollars to my startups,

No women were raising money.

Is that because women didn't want to be entrepreneurs?

No non-whites were raising money.

Is Is that because black people didn't want to start companies?

No, it was because the entire VC community was not only white guys from Stanford and Harvard, but 80, 90% of the total capital allocated was from white dudes from Harvard and Stanford who felt more comfortable with people similar to themselves.

So much so that people from other groups didn't even have the confidence to try sometimes.

And I got so much disproportionate under an advantage.

People finally have had a reckoning.

So now, similar to the way I think a lot of students on campus go hunting for fake racists, people are holding young men accountable for my advantage.

And where I'll finish this with some virtue signaling is men of my age have a responsibility to recognize some of that disproportionate advantage we had and not only try and pave a path for people who weren't as fortunate as us, but also especially to reach back into the young men who are paying the price for our advantage because nobody has empathy for them except for mothers.

Mothers see what's going on.

So it heartens me when I see men of my age, men are just not stepping up in my generation.

They're just not stepping up.

And they're hoarding the wealth.

And we were talking about that with the Republican bill.

100%.

You know, just shutting the door behind you or opening it a crack to let your kids and your grandkids through.

And I'm not saying everyone has to take the giving pledge or something like that, but it's kind of harrowing to think that people are in massive positions of success and attainment, and they definitely were given a chance by somebody, right?

Like someone made a call for them, someone opened a door, someone gave them 15 minutes for a coffee.

All these men, when I was right out of Berkeley, Howard Lester, Hamid Mogadan, Tully Friedman, Warren Hellman, Paul Stevens, all of these older men took an interest in me and gave me, Sandy Robertson gave me unbelievable meetings, access, wanted to help me out because they saw a little bit of themselves in me as a younger man and knew kind of my background.

And I can personally attest to the fact that raising a kid on your own as a single mother, I experienced that, is not easy.

I think it would be even harder now because of inflation and we've fallen out of love with the unremarkable.

I think it's harder now for single mothers than it was when my mom was raising me.

But, you know, men of my generation need to really stand up and help

younger men who are paying a disproportionate price.

And also, I would say that women and the media need to stop looking at younger men and saying, you don't have any problems.

You are the problem.

That is not helpful.

No, and you don't even, if you want to just make it, you know, in purely like winning and losing terms, you're pissed off, you lost the election.

Well, here is a route to trying to rectify some of the problems that we had that turned off an entire generation of men from from the Democratic Party.

It's pretty simple.

It's why Trump won.

The good news, and I want to end on a good note, is that everyone from President Obama to Governors Newsome and more have highlighted this issue and said, okay, something is wrong in Mudville, and

it requires real attention.

And even better news, have you heard this?

The dating sites are literally collapsing.

Yeah.

People have decided, young people have said, you know what?

And you know what's taking off?

Things like running clubs, dining clubs, book clubs.

In-person is back in vogue again.

And I could not wish more ill will on publicly traded companies than these dating sites.

I love hearing that Bumble is laying off its staff.

I apologize, Bumble.

I hope you all go on to do bigger and better things.

And that match is down 70 or 80%.

I think online dating has been a disaster for both men and women, especially men.

And everybody just ends up discouraged about the other sex.

All dating advice from a guy who lost his virginity at 19.

Okay, we're going to move on here.

Let's take a quick break.

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Hello, Daisy speaking.

Hello, Daisy.

This is Phoebe Judge from the IRS.

Oh, bless, that does sound serious.

I wouldn't want to end up in any sort of trouble.

This September on Criminal, we've been thinking a lot about scams.

Over the next couple of weeks, we're releasing episodes about a surprising way to stop scammers.

The people you didn't know were on the other end of the line.

And we have a special bonus episode on Criminal Plus with tips to protect yourself.

Listen to Criminal wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for Criminal Plus at thisiscriminal.com/slash plus.

Welcome back.

Before we go, we again want to celebrate our one-year anniversary.

We'd like to take a moment such that we could play a few of our favorite moments.

I have not heard this.

Jess, have you heard this?

Yeah.

Oh, I have not heard this.

David, roll tape.

So we're trying something new here at Raging Moderates.

This is going to be the formal last question, and you are the inaugural flight on this.

So what's one issue that makes you rage, and what's one issue that you think we should all calm down about?

I do think we need to be raging about veterans, to be honest.

The tax code, it's so frustrating to me.

One thing that really makes me rage, that we are the only industrialized nation in the entire world without access to paid leave and affordable, accessible child care.

Infuriating.

I mean, the Liberation Day tariffs, probably the greatest act of national self-sabotage that I've ever seen.

The thing that makes me rage is this completely false narrative that the economy is stronger when a Republican president is in the White House.

I'm still pissed about what's happening to USAID.

Well, first of all, what makes me rage is traffic.

You know, I just don't think we should be out there campaigning in swing states with Mark Cuban as our spokesperson.

I think that hurts us too.

So a little bit of rage there.

What makes me rage is the whole anti-empathy thing.

It is deeply disheartening that we are living in a time of such overt misogyny and pushback on the rights that women have gained over the last, you know, hundred plus years.

We are better than this.

I think that is, above all else, what enrages me in terms of the moment that we find ourselves in.

The mainstream media's job in the Trump era too often has not been to get the story, but to get the president.

And I think it helped him win this time, frankly.

I was having an Egg McMuffin and I got so much grief.

Warner, you should be eating healthier.

You're being a role model.

I think people should chill out about early morning eating habits after an all-nighter.

I am just going to be an old man and complain about people on escalators.

It's very simple, everybody.

Move over.

The issue that makes me absolutely rage would probably be train delays.

That would be top of mind.

Do you feel like the subway is much better since congestion pricing?

Yeah, I think everything has been a little bit better since congestion pricing.

I hate to admit it, but I know, me too.

Yeah.

But we did publicly just now.

Yeah, Yeah, we did.

We'll cut that part out, right?

Yeah, totally.

I mean, this is pre-Hitler shift.

And yet I don't see a single Democrat with anything resembling a following of social media out there saying, fuck all.

So right now, as far as I can tell, we have one party and another party that thinks they're at Cotillion training their kids to be polite.

Wow, well done, David.

And Eric.

Yeah, and Eric.

Oh, God.

Sorry.

Eric.

Oh, that's right.

No, it's more than one person.

Eric, you're a valued part of the team.

It was cute, right?

A little bit.

I like the music.

I was trying to get everyone's voice, though, and I probably only got 50%.

I got Senator Warner.

I got

Secretary Clinton.

Mallory McMorrow, I got.

I know her voice.

Wesley Morris from The Times, distinctive voices.

It's actually kind of...

I mean, you can't change it, but it is a lesson in that you should have a voice that's distinctive.

Hakeem Jeffries, I definitely got that one.

You got to be memorable, even if people hate your voice, or I'm just making myself feel better since so many people hate my voice, but at least you know it's me.

So, just as we wrap up here, I want to pat ourselves on the back.

We are getting about, I think, an average of about 140,000 downloads, about 50,000 on YouTube.

So, call it 190,000 impressions.

And the average CNN show gets 350.

So, while we're still well behind total viewers from CNN,

CNN only averages 76,000 people in the core demo.

That is, people aged 18 to 54 are still buying shit.

And we get 70%, so we get approximately 140,000.

So we're losing on total viewership, but in terms of people that actually swing elections and buy expensive coffee and Range Rovers and Viori athleisure, we're kicking ass, Jess.

I love it.

Love working with you.

Appreciate David and Eric's good work.

Drew Burroughs and Catherine Dillon continue to run the operation and steer this aircraft carrier seamlessly.

Our engineer is William Flynn.

And as I referenced, our executive producer is Catherine Dillon.

Going forward, you'll find Raging Moderates every Wednesday and Friday.

Subscribe to Raging Moderates on its own feed to hear exclusive interviews with sharp political minds.

This week, Jess will be talking to the wine moms themselves, the I've Had It podcast ladies, Jennifer and Angie.

You won't want to miss it.

I went on their podcast.

I found them really interesting.

Yeah, they told me.

They loved it.

Yeah, I like them a lot.

I like how they're just, God, they're just unafraid.

They're kicking ass and taking aims.

They've got the vibe right now that everybody wants.

They're having a moment.

Make sure to follow us wherever you get your podcast.

You don't miss an episode.

Congrats on a year, everybody.

And thanks, everybody, for listening and making this show a nice place to work and success and rewarding and all that good stuff.

All the positives.

Thanks, everybody.