says they're really mad, you don't know if they really are or they're pretending. So whenever I hear these stories about who said I'll quit or if you don't do this I'll do that, I don't fully believe them to be literally true. I treat them more like well this is what people are saying. You know you don't know what's really happening behind the scenes there. But we would know if Bongino quit. We would know that. So apparently he did not quit. And there's some reporting that maybe they're relooking at their approach to what they revealed about Epstein. So maybe possibly there might be more to come and it might be that that more to come is the only thing that keeps Bongino staying there. Because he needs to get a win because Bongino got kind of shit upon by this whole situation. He gave up this lucrative, incredible podcasting gig he had to have the worst job in the world, which is working for the government, and tried to make a difference. And then he gets totally shit upon by this whole Epstein situation, which he had a reason to believe would go differently.

So to me Bongino is the canary in the coal mine meaning if he doesn't quit and nothing else happens that's going to give me one view of the whole situation versus if he did quit and says I can't talk about it but I can't work here anymore and if you're guessing it's because of the Epstein stuff you'd be right but I can't tell you more than that. Now that would tell me that the cover up was something that didn't really need to be covered up, but maybe, you know, there's some billionaire who's being protected or something like that. And that would not be cool with the public or with him as well. But if he doesn't quit, then I would have to assume that he's been convinced that not releasing the information is better than releasing it. Which would tell us that there's something really big that's been hidden like really big more than just one person's career or life or freedom. Maybe something at a national level, you know, something that would derail the country entirely if it got out. So I'll be watching him.

Benny Johnson on his podcast says there's a massive disclosure coming on the Epstein files. So he's got good sources. And so Benny says that Bongino's back at work and there's a major push for more transparency etc. Separately. While we're waiting for that, there's a story in Rolling Stone. They've got an exclusive apparently that way back Jeffrey Epstein hired private investigators to follow and intimidate the FBI agents who were surveilling him because he knew he was being investigated by the FBI. So he hired people to harass them. You know, I don't know about you, but the more I hear about this Epstein guy, the more I'm thinking he's not a nice guy. Yeah, that's a Norm Macdonald joke. I stole it. He was talking about Hitler, but it works for Epstein.

All right. You know how I always tell you that you don't know what's happening in the story until Dershowitz tells you. If there's anything that has anything to do with legality, you just have to wait for Dershowitz. And I've been saying this for years now. Here it is again. So Dershowitz was on Chris Cuomo. Most of you know that Dershowitz was a lawyer for Epstein. So he's not guessing. So you know, a lot of stuff is speculation and guessing, but Dershowitz is not guessing. He knows. And one of the things he knows is that there's not a client list per se, you know, where Epstein put a list together of all of his bad actions. That doesn't exist as far as Dershowitz knows. And I assume it does not exist as well. But he says there is a redacted FBI affidavit from the accusers. So this would go way back. And there are several of them. So several instances in which the accusers have named names and those documents exist but they've been redacted. So Dershowitz says he knows the names because he was the lawyer, he was involved. So he says now of course because as a lawyer and I did all the investigations I know who all these people are. So Dershowitz knows the truth. He knows who the bad guys are who have been accused. But because he's a lawyer and ethical he can't tell you. But he can tell you that if you could penetrate those redactions, you would know who was being blamed.

Now to complicate things at one point Dershowitz himself was being accused and his accuser who has recently died, that Virginia Giuffre, well before she died she withdrew her accusation and said she was mistaken and that she does not, at the moment she does not, well she's dead now but she went to the grave having said that she did not mean it and that Dershowitz did not do anything illegal that she knows of.

So here's my question now that we know exactly what document would tell us what we need to know. But it might not be accurate because remember if it's true that Virginia Giuffre simply made up a story and it's also true that apparently there was some kind of fund established that would pay off victims who wanted to settle. So allegedly, one of the reasons that we're not hearing from the alleged victims of Epstein's Island is that they probably signed NDAs, non-disclosure agreements, and they probably took large amounts potentially of money from a fund that was set up, I think, with Epstein's money to pay off people who had a civil complaint. So though that's something that could be the NDAs could be penetrated in the context of a criminal case. So the people who signed the NDAs would probably sacrifice something if they talked, but not if a court made them. So we've got the possibility that some court somewhere will say, "I know you signed NDAs and I know you got paid for being quiet, but there's a legal case here and you just have to tell us" and then they would know all.

So now we have all the characters are at work today as far as we know. Bongino, Bondi, and Patel still at work. And now Dershowitz has said this document or this set of documents these are the ones these are the exact documents which we know exist there's no question that they exist and all you have to do is penetrate the redactions. So my question would be, is that what the conversation is now? Did Bongino say, "Here's the deal. I'm just going to kick the shit out of the administration if they leave me hanging out to dry," which I would love it if he did that. We don't know anything about what happened, but I would love it if Bongino said, "You guys hung me out to dry. I'm going to take down the whole operation unless you unredact these names and put them out." What would they do? Well, they're not going to murder him. And he has the power now. He has the power to take down the whole process. He could take down Trump easily. All you'd have to do is say, "Look, I've seen everything, and if you vote for Democrats or if you vote for Republicans in the midterm, you're crazy because the whole Republican thing is covering up stuff." So, weirdly and ironically, Bongino is a blackmailer. Now, I say that jokingly, so he's not breaking any laws as far as I know. But don't you think that Bongino knows enough about what's happening on the other side of the curtain that if he had a conversation with Trump, he could say, "Here's the deal. You can't make me a liar. You cannot make me a liar. If you don't release more, I'm going to tell people what I know, but I won't do it within the administration, and you're going to have to deal with the blowback for that. So, how would you like to do a better job of transparency?" That's my guess. My guess is that Bongino had so much power because he has knowledge that he can force them to disclose more than they wanted to. So we'll see.

Now of course you know that the risk here as with Dershowitz is that people were making false accusations to get paid out. So if you see a list of people who are accused of being abusers on Epstein Island, my advice would be to assume that half of them are not true, but you'll never know which half. That's the best I can do. I mean, it would destroy the reputations and lives and marriages probably of anybody who gets named, but there's a good 50 percent chance that anybody named didn't actually do what they're accused of. So we have to deal with that.

Well, of course, the Democrats are having fun with the Epstein file stuff because as long as we don't know what the story is, the Democrats can kind of suggest that it's much worse than you think. So Representative Hakeem Jeffries, he says, quote, "If you're trying to hide something, as many of Donald Trump's MAGA supporters apparently believe, then Congress should actually work hard to uncover the truth for the American people." So he's pushing on that division in MAGA of the people who want to see what's going on. Then Jamie Raskin, who I call one of the several designated liars on the Democrat side, he said, "At this point, the president owes it to the country to put it to rest one way or the other." And I agree. I agree with that. The president owes the country. Maybe not all the redacted information, but definitely a better excuse for why we're not seeing it.

I don't know about you, but if Trump came out and said, "Here's the deal. The country would be at a great disadvantage if this information came out and I can't tell you why. But trust me, it's not about the individuals we're protecting. I'm protecting the country. And I'm making the tough decision. I know you all wanted to see it, but you're going to have to trust me on this. The country would be much worse off if I release everything." Now I'm not saying that's the case. We don't know what the case is. But at least if Trump said that, I would say to myself, all right, you know, under the sort of republic that we live in, we hired him to make those decisions. He's telling us that he is hiding something and there's a reason for it. Some people, not everybody, would say, you know what, at least that's better than what we had. I can move on now.

You prefer truth. Well, what I learned is that many people are really bad at understanding themselves and at understanding how to do a risk analysis. So if I say to you, releasing the full Epstein files would cause a nuclear holocaust, apparently an alarming number of you would say, that's okay. I'd rather have the truth. And you would put up with a nuclear holocaust. Okay. If you say that you're either a liar, you're an idiot. Is there any other or you haven't really thought it through? Because I think people want to present themselves as the strongest voice against these particular kinds of heinous crimes against children. So a lot of it feels like just positioning. And if you were the president and you really thought genuinely that releasing it would cause a nuclear holocaust, you telling me you'd really release it? Really? Really? If you had to make the decision, you would allow the entire world to burn just to know the names of those accusers? Really, even knowing that maybe they're falsely accused. I don't believe that. I don't believe there's one person who would do that. Not even one. But I'll bet you a quarter of the people asked would say they would because they said it's the I don't care if the entire world burns up in a nuclear fire. It's the principle of the thing. As if your government has been honest to you about the other stuff. If this were the one thing that the government lied about, I'd say, you know, there is a principle involved here. We don't want our government to lie to us about even one thing. But is that the situation? The situation I see is that the government lies to us about everything all the time and this is just more of that. But okay.

Trump says he's had enough of Putin and Putin talking nice but bombing Ukraine five minutes later. And so he has issued a 50-day ultimatum to end the war in Ukraine. And the ultimatum is that he will do secondary tariffs of up to 100 percent on Russian goods that are going to other trading partners. So the tariff would be on anybody who deals with Russia, not just on Russia directly. Now I don't know how much impact that would have because I don't know how much exports Russia does. I mean if they're selling stuff to China, will we put 100 percent tariffs on that? Yeah. Will we shut down our own trade with China which would destroy the United States so that we could stop Russia from trading with China? I don't know. So I'm a little questioning whether this would be effective, but it's better than nothing.

Then Trump confirmed that the US is going to send Patriot missiles and systems to Ukraine and it will be funded by the European countries and Canada. Now he doesn't say NATO, but I'm wondering if he means NATO. Does he mean NATO? Because Ukraine is not part of NATO. So presumably the budget that goes to NATO would not be used by a non-NATO country. So it could be that this is on top of that 5 percent that Trump's trying to get all the countries to. But it would be the NATO countries. It was not all of them because I gu