What Should Libertarians Make of the Epstein Files?
The Reason Roundtable
The Reason Roundtable
4.5 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 21 July 2025
⏱️ 70 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Reason Roundtable. |
| 0:08.6 | This is the podcast of Free Minds, Free Markets, and Free Takes. |
| 0:12.4 | I'm your host, Peter Souterman, and today I am joined by my illustrious colleagues, Catherine |
| 0:17.8 | Mangy Ward, Matt Welch, and Nick Gillespie. |
| 0:21.6 | Everybody say hello. |
| 0:22.6 | Howdy. |
| 0:23.6 | Hello. |
| 0:24.6 | Hi. |
| 0:25.6 | Happy Monday, and may every day be a wonderful secret this week. |
| 0:30.6 | Well, I guess we're going to have to talk about Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. |
| 0:36.6 | We've not talked about Epstein very much on this podcast. |
| 0:39.1 | The last time was a few months ago when Attorney General Pam Bondi handed out a binder |
| 0:43.9 | of Epstein documents to a select group of MAGA influencers. |
| 0:48.1 | But this story will not go away. |
| 0:50.6 | In the last week, it has become bigger than ever and threatened to consume the Trump presidency because MAGA influencers weren't satisfied with the binder. |
| 0:58.7 | And they have pushed the Trump administration to release more files. |
| 1:02.6 | Just last week, the Wall Street Journal reported it on a cryptic birthday note that the paper says was written by Trump to Epstein. |
| 1:10.3 | It references a secret and says that enigmas never age. |
| 1:15.6 | In response, Donald Trump has sued the paper for $10 billion, which is a lot of money. |
| 1:22.7 | That's actually more than Doge is going to save us in the rescission bill. |
| 1:26.1 | So I have two basic takes here. First, live by the fringe, dive by the fringe, right? Live by the fringe die by the fringe, not dive, right? Trump is feeling the heat from a fire that he poured gasoline on. And second, this is a government transparency story. So Nick, I want to start with you last time we talked about Epstein. You kind of dismissed it. |
| 1:44.5 | You said people who are obsessed with the Epstein files are searching for something else. You said |
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