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This is On Point. I'm Magna Chakra Bardi.

Marie Antoinette never actually said, let them eat cake.

That quote was misattributed to the French queen decades after her execution in 1793.

But the story has sticking power because it so perfectly captures the cruel indifference of the global elite.

In Antoinette's case, the utter contempt the aristocracy had

for a starving French populace on the brink of revolution crying for justice.

And it's why I can't stop thinking about that quotation.

When I think about Jeffrey Epstein and the large network of the global ultra-elite who remained his friends, his benefactors, his contacts, who partied with him, appointed him to their boards, enjoyed his largesse, and even participated in his criminal sexual

abuse and human trafficking crimes. It's a class of people indifferent to immorality,

indifferent to the ruined lives of young women and girls. But the horror of the Epstein case isn't just that. It's that this class of

people did more than simply orbit Epstein. They facilitated him. Investigative journalist

Vicki Ward has been reporting on Jeffrey Epstein for decades, and in, she wrote one of the first exposés about Epstein.

Her Vanity Fair article was titled The Talented Mr. Epstein.

And she interviewed some of his victims as well.

She went inside his New York townhouse.

And I just want to read a moment from her 2003 article because here's how she describes that townhouse.

Quote, guests are invited to lunch or dinner at the townhouse.

Epstein usually refers to the former as tea since he likes to eat bite-sized morsels and drink

copious quantities of Earl Gray.

...