I'm John Betts with my good colleagues. That is, Macotta of American Greatness, my co-host and colleague,

and Judy Dempsey in Berlin for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She's a veteran journalist.

I apologize immediately because of this is distasteful. It's about Epstein.

But the matter comes to four because of a man named Mendelsohn, who was appointed by the present overwhelming majority in Parliament

to be the UK ambassador to the United States

before revelations of his unacceptable conduct with regard Epstein

and the young people who were exploited by Epstein over many years.

This is a vast demonstration of human vice, and I do not characterize it any more than that.

But I do say that this is crowding into governmental decision-making, not just private banks like Goldman Sachs,

not just private world-scale organizations like meta, for heaven's sakes,

and Microsoft dancing with these characters.

I have no simple way to put it other than the fact that Epstein

resembled, and I was telling Thaddeus

and Judy, before we started, it reminds me of a 1941 movie called The Devil and Daniel

Webster, a story by Stephen Vincent Bonae, in which the devil buys the soul of a simple farmer

who's having bad luck, gives him lots of money and opportunity, and then one day and future comes to collect the soul of a simple farmer who's having bad luck, gives him lots of money and opportunity.

And then one day and future comes to collect the soul, something you don't bother with.

You don't care about it.

It doesn't weigh anything.

And the man doesn't want to go with him because by giving up his soul, he's headed to Hades.

Daniel Webster enters the great interlocutor of the moment and argues

before a jury of pirates and cutthroats and mass murderers to get our farmer off. It's a fascinating

...