from WNYC studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Monday, November 17th.

So if you follow the news closely enough, even like Sunday night and early Monday morning,

maybe you've heard by now about President Trump's latest flip-flop on releasing the Epstein files. He was for it as a candidate

when he couldn't release them, then against it when he became president, and he could. You

probably know that much. Now it looked like he would get embarrassed by lots of House Republicans voting

against him and for the release. He suddenly recommended last night in a social media post

that the House should vote for it. Now, if they do, I guess he can declare victory instead of defeat,

right? We'll talk more about the politics and the new revelations from last week about

Trump's involvement with and knowledge of the Epstein crimes. But in light of that content, I thought

it might be good to start with a very brief reminder of what we're talking about when we talk

about Jeffrey Epstein. This is a short clip of the journalist Julie K. Brown

from the Miami Herald who spoke about Epstein on NPR's weekend edition yesterday. She reported

more on Epstein than anyone. She was asked about Epstein having so many friends in high places

while being a serial abuser of minors?

I think that it shows that he's a great manipulator, and that also could you imagine,

if he's able to manipulate some of the top people in the world, could you imagine what he must have done with these young girls who were 13 and 14 years old and how he must have been able to manipulate

them into believing somehow that he was going to help them with their lives.

I mean, that is the sad part about it.

He was the mastermind behind this sex trafficking network that led to the abuse of hundreds

of women and girls and girls that came from troubled

backgrounds. Julie Kay Brown, hundreds of victims as young as 13 and 14, she reports, just so we know

what we're talking about for some basic context, because it doesn't always get stated so explicitly like Julie K. Brown did

...