Fire and Fury – The PodcastFollowing last week’s headline-making revelations about the complex relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, Michael and James return for a special bonus episode with a powerful follow-up. In this discussion, Michael dives deeper into his decision to release these recordings now, revealing additional behind-the-scenes conversations with Epstein that offer a candid look at Trump’s tactics, ambitions, and the dark dynamics of their friendship.
Well, good morning, Michael. We just dragged each other out of bed in this rather special extra podcast we're doing because the last one we did, Lift the Blue touch Paper in ways that I think neither of us had quite imagined, became one of the most listened to podcasts in the country, was denounced by the Trump team, which will come to and it was discussed in Congress on Friday as the possible investigation of the FBI's practice in resting and confiscating Jeffrey Epstein's materials.
So wow, which goes to what I've always found and always thought that the name Epstein makes people go crazy.
Well it sure seems to have done. I mean, we've been posting some of these clips on The Daily Beast, so they've been somewhat available.
And let me just also point out that The Daily Beasts has been incredibly helpful because a lot of these tapes are of poor quality, which would be largely my fault because I seemed to barely have to work a tape recorder even the voice memo function on the iPhone. The Daily Beast has subtitles on this material, and we can't have subtitles here, but I will do my best to interpret the problematic places. More on my interviews with Jeffrey Epstein about Donald Trump coming up.
Welcome to Fire and Fury the podcast.
I'm Michael Booth and I'm James Truman. Michael, can you just set the scene for a moment for us here where you were, what the vibe was between the two of you, how the conversation arrived at this point.
Yeah, let me do two things. Let's just briefly set up the thing. What we have here in this clip is Epstein talking about Trump's methods of seducing the wives of his friends horrible.
He would do it, in Jeffreys, he does nasty with best friends, best friend's wives, anyone who first tries to gain trust and uses it to bad past.
That's how would finished.
In the specific way, he would seduce the wives of his friends, and he would have someone into his office. He'd make an appointment to see them, and at the same time, he'd get the wife on the speaker phone and the husband would not know that the wife was listening into this conversation, and then Trump would prompt him to essentially begin to talk about sex and begin to talk about issues he might have with his wife. And then offer girls to this person, and that would essentially be the way that Trump would seduce the wife secretly listening in on the phone.
You've asked the question about where.
So there were two places that Epstein and I usually talked as a scene setter. He lives in or lived in. One of the largest private residences in Manhattan was on East seventy first Street on the Park Block, a gargantawan house.
I used to take.
You know, there are those big town houses on the park blocks of the Upper east Side, but then there was Epstein's house. So I would often take people buy the house and point it out and say that's where Jeffrey Epstein lives, and it invariably got a guffaw, that's how big this house is. So the conversations took place either in his dining room, which is in the back of the house. It's a very large dining room around a table that I guess would see comfortably thirty and that's where from morning till night he had people in constantly. It was kind of a meeting in constant progress, with new faces, new personalities joining throughout the day, and you could have any food that you want.
It was like, what would you like.
Literally anything was on offer, it would be made and then it would come out. And actually this was always kind of awkward because he would say, what.
Would you like?
Would you like an omelet? Would you like a monte Cristo. He would reel this off and you would be kind of caught off guard and he would say, oh, yeah, you know, I'll have this, and then you would find yourself as the only person at the table eating.
So you had to learn, he said, always to say no, yeah, yeah, at any rate.
That was one of the scenes of these interviews. I would sit there and there were often other people there, and then I had to wait until the room cleared and then we could have a moment of private conversation. Or The other place was up a very grand staircase, and at the top of the staircase there was his study, and to call it baronial would be to underplay it. And it ran the entire length of the house, so basically a quarter of a Manhattan block. And I think that's one of the reasons that some of this is difficult to hear, is the size of this room, with its double height ceiling, all of the sound is absorbed.
So I have a question Michael. One of the things I found fascinating about this clip was as he was describing Trump's behavior, he applied it to you and your wife, who he named, and also the object of Trump's would be seduction.
This is just amazing, Rocks, and he's what's there?
Uh?
You like sex? Right? How old are you?
See?
It's great?
How seriously? How we don't want? We can unite and go upstairs or tomorrow? Come over? Is this girls coming into Los Angeles? Part of the oh why on? Traffic cuts? Right? So come over with your coffee. You can have a great coun I promise you, Michael. You know it's just me and you're gonna have a great time and be up here through the cock and grow steps the whole time. Your return has been on the list.
Because he wants to Sorry, did that seems strange to you at the time, Well, well at the time it didn't.
Listening to the clip, it now seems extremely strange.
And I have to go and ask my wife is this okay?
And she said, I'll take one for the country. But I think that was a sort of Epstein kind of thing. I mean, he was actually a very good storyteller, so he just suddenly personalized this. It would be you in that position and he would be talking about your wife.
Yeah.
But I mean as he did that, he kind of challenged or took away your boundaries, which I guess is convincing storytelling.
Yeah.
I think one of the things it's interesting for people to hear Epstein suddenly as the real life guy in these tapes, because he's less when we've come to think of him clearly as the monster of our time.
Yeah.
And in these tapes, even as he details Trump's behavior in his own less than acceptable behavior, he still comes off as someone quite thoughtful and quite incisive about his friend Donald Trump.
Yes, and just to Kathie's in time. This was twenty seventeen. Trump had just come into office. Epstein had had his first run in with the law in Palm Beach, but gotten free.
That's right.
Epstein went to jail in two thousand and eight. He was out of jail, living his life, occupying this incredible house, going on as though nothing had happened to him. His house was still filled with the good in the great, the high end, the mighty.
Such a Yeah.
I mean, I think we know a lot of these names from Bill Gates to Larry Summers, to a who had Barock, the former Prime Minister of Israel, to Gnom Chompsky. It was kind of an incredible cast of characters. I think the reasons that they were there were complicated reasons, or perhaps not complicated reasons. They were there because it was an incredibly interesting place to be. And if there were people involved with Epstein's other side, of which I never saw any indication of, I didn't know that. But even having said that, I suppose.
I did see.
I mean, there were always a background of girls at Epstein's house. I never thought any of these girls were necessarily underage. Actually none of them did seem to be underage. But they were a kind of cast of characters. Of these women who he employed as assistants, And you know, I have no idea what they did other than provide this backdrop to this I suppose hedonistic lifestyle, although again other than their presence, there was no indication of that. Most of the time Epstein spent talking economic affairs and international affairs and politics as though he were a man at the center of the world's affairs.
You'd set on Friday that he had become frightened of Donald Trump. I assumed that this was the moment when he had he was frightened of Donald Trump because Trump would come into office.
Yes, I mean, he never said I am afraid for my life here. But there were many times at which I tried to urge him to go public with his views about Trump. And what he indicated was that I was somehow and innocent, that I didn't know how the world worked or how Donald Trump worked.
What was his motivation in talking to you and telling these actually incredibly reckless stories about Trump.
I mean, many people have told me the air incredible and reckless stories about Donald Trump. I don't think this is unique to Jeffrey Epstein. People who have known Donald Trump cannot believe how history has unfolded. The fact that Donald Trump became the President of the United States will be the president again is beyond explanation to many people who have had any kind of an experience with Donald Trump. Yes, so I came along, and I had known Epstein at various points, and the fact that I was writing this book, which curiously Epstein well before I knew it, saw that this book would be quite incendiary and would in some sense defying the early Trump era and I think that was an opportunity for him to begin to understand what had happened here and to fill in pieces that he possessed.
Okay, we know that many people who have been kind of cast aside by Trump kind of want to worm their way back in. Was Epstein one of those?
Oh, I wonder, I think that's a good question. I don't think so. Since he was telling me all of this, I don't think that he saw that as a possibility. I think he understood what you would have to do to get back into Trump's good graces if he wanted to, and he was not going to do that. At the same time, he knew a lot of people around Donald Trump. A lot of Donald Trump's friends were Jeffrey Epstein's friends. So there was a weird thing going on here. Maybe there was some degree that he felt like he was the shunned friend and therefore left to tell tales out of school.
That may have been part of it.
Yes, among all the drama that has unfolded in the last three days, I mean, I've read a lot of questions from people why you waited until the week of the election before the election to start releasing this material?
Why did you.
Why did we do that?
Well, I mean, the reason we did it is because of the model Stacey Williams, who came out last week and described her interaction with Trump while she was Jeffrey Epstein's girlfriend. That was the immediate reason we did this, and frankly, that was what gave us the idea. I hadn't particularly thought about this before. And one of the reasons I hadn't thought about this is that I've had this material for quite a long time now. I have discussed this material with virtually every major media outlet. I've said, this is a great story, this is explosive stuff. We ought to be done with it. And there has been an interesting pattern of immediate and great interest and then a kind of sense as it's discussed among media executives of people saying, this is epstein life is too short, This stuff is too difficult, It is too problematic to present Epstein as someone other than the worst kind of criminal, and here we are now positioning him as a somewhat knowledgeable insider. And there have been a lot of occasions.
There was a.
Big discussion with Netflix that was led by one of the most prominent people in the business, making these kind of docudramas, and Netflix said, no way.
Do we want to do this.
Sky and the UK actually commissioned a script on this, and then suddenly there were and I was around this table a lot of executives with the script and saying, hmm, I thought this was a good idea, Jeffrey Epstein, and then virtually every network and cable channel that has had a documentary or non non fiction narrative outlet saw this material two summers ago, I guess, and everybody took an incredibly interested meeting. They were shown extensive parts of this, and then they all passed. So from my own point of view, it's like, Okay, you know, you just got to get on with your life here, and so I sort of put it on the back burner, thinking that this is important stuff. At some point there would be a way to tell this story.
We'll be back right after the break.
I think this particular clip is really you have to concentrate and listen to. So getting the version with the subtitles, which the Daily Beast has done a terrific job on, is worthwhile. But the interesting thing here is I ask Epstein how he knows all this stuff, and he kind of responds with some incredulity and says, well, I was Trump's closest friend for ten years, and I think that's the point here.
So how do you notice? So I need the I need THEE.
And then he does this, He tells this, you know this funny story about Trump's scalp reduction surgery, because Trump is as bold as any guy with mail pattern baldness.
He had a scout.
One other point is that I wrote quite extensively about this in a book that I published two years ago, a book called Too Famous. It sort of tells the story of people gathering in Epstein's house to talk about his legal difficulties. It also includes a long section with Steve Bannon, who Epstein has befriended, and Bannon has befriended Epstein. They've befriended each other over there shared incredulity about Donald Trump, and Bannon comes in to give Epstein media training, because there's a thought that Epstein could go on a national show sixty minutes, for instance, and address all of his legal problems and somehow get himself out of the fix, the mortal fix. As it turns out, that he seemed clearly to be headed toward Yeah.
I remember that was the last section of the book. It was riveting, and you felt that Epstein at that point was in the same sort of state that Hobby Weinstein was in when he was first accused, and he said, oh, I'll make a film about this, and that you know, didn't understand the seriousness of it.
I mean, Epstein certainly did not understand the seriousness of it, as everyone around him kept telling him how serious it was. I remember his lawyer was in one of these conversations and his lawyer said, and this is kind of gives me a shiver. His lawyers said, Jeffrey.
Listen to me. This is bad. This is heart attack, Badow.
So do we know if Donald Trump personally is aware of what you've done and releasing it?
You know, I think it's interesting. Let's look at the statement that they that the Trump campaign.
Oh, it's too good. I got to read it. Yeah.
Michael Wolfe is a disgraced writer who routinely fabricates lies in order to sell fiction books. Because he did no morals or ethics, he waited until days before the election to make out landish false mears all in an effort to engage in blatant election interference on behalf of Kamala Harris. He's a failed journalist that is resorting to lying for attention. Well well done, Michael's that's pretty great.
Yes, that's from Stephen Chung right now. No, Stephen, who's actually an incredibly nice guy, but his fame in the Trump camp is that he issues these kind of flamethrower statements. Ah, I mean, they go, we need a flamethrower statement, get Stephen to write it.
Yeah, you know.
And at the same time, just to do the Trump split screen thing. There's another person in the campaign who I called and I said, these tapes are going to come out and this is what's going to be on them, and this person could stop laughing. So but also the nature of this thing, you know, this is a kind of a boiler plate statement. I mean, there are many other names that could be replaced with mine here. But the interesting thing is this conceit about saying things that would be negative to Trump before the election is election interference when it seems to me that is the very nature of an election campaign. I mean, what is the alternative you know something and you don't say it because that would change people's minds.
Do you think it's is going to try and shield them from it, because oh.
Well, yeah, that's the other thing that would go on here. The imperative would be to keep this clamped down and not for it not to get to the point of which they have to speak to Trump about it. Yeah, because if they have to speak to Trump about it, then Trump would blow up and then he would say something and make it a much more bigger deal than.
It already is.
Yes.
And the other thing to note about this statement is that they don't say that anything is untrue.
Yeah. And of course the other immediate impact on Friday was the Congressman Steve Cohene brought up in Congress about the evidence that the FBI retrieved from Epstein's safe and asked that an inquiry be open to find out what happened to the photographs. Can you just remind us what the photographs were all?
You know, the photographs of Epstein on several occasions would take out these these photographs of Donald Trump and the set of girls that were at Epstein's house in Palm Beach, and in the pictures, and there were possibly a half a dozen of them, and Epstein used to kind of flick them around like playing cards. There were girls around.
The swimming pool. They were all topless.
One specifically, I remember a girl sitting on Trump's lap, and in another Trump has a stain on the front of his pants, which the girls three or four are pointing at and laughing.
Epstein used to go to his safe, take.
These pictures out, and then return them to the safe.
It is quite possible.
That they were in the safe when the FBI raided the house, although of course I don't know that, okay.
And you believe that the FBI either house them, will destroyed them.
I don't know.
I just know that that's where they were.
He kept them in his safe, and the FBI ultimately raided that safe and took the contents of the safe.
Yeah, that was the safe in New York.
In New York, in the house on seventy first Street.
Yes. Yeah, wow.
So having listened to these tapes, I mean, the immediate conclusion anyone has to make is that both awful people. What's the larger lesson to be gleaned from this?
I think I said in our conversation last week that it's just this glaring, kind of extraordinary circumstance that these two guys who are really very similar in their levels of corruption, and one ends up in the darkest prison in the country and the other in the White House. So explaining that is, you know, talking about a shiver up your back. That really is something that history has to resolve, you know. I think partly the reminder of these tapes is that Trump comes from this world. Epstein's world, which we now see as one of the darkest places in modern culture, is also the place that Trump comes from, you know. And you can call it the sort of the eighties and the nineties and possibly in some way rationalize it that way. But again, one guy went to the darkest prison and the other guy to the White House.
Do you think the only thing that separated them was sort of Epstein's sordid predilection for underage girls. Otherwise they're essentially the same character.
I think that Epstein was never very interested in being anything but Jeffrey Epstein. He didn't have a double character or a triple character, or much of an interest in hiding who he was. And Donald Trump, who he was, was constantly being created and recreated. Yes, so you know, suddenly, you know, he had a television show in which he was the consummate businessman, then he became a politician and then the president. Yes, so I think Donald Trump ends up in the White House because of a sleight of hand, really the slight of hand, well, his own sleight of hand.
I'm a magician.
His relationship with Epstein is really hiding in plain sight, has hidden in plain sight. But pay no attention to that. I can distracting from that with whatever is happening over here, this other distraction.
Yes, and it is an astonishing image when you think of Epstein and you know, whatever one thinks of him, a last desperate act in jail, trying to kill himselk with a bed sheet, while Trump that in the White House and astonishing.
Yeah.
No, and I get speaking again of another shiver, the idea that Epstein was speaking to me so that I would be the channel from which he could speak from the grave.
It's kind of wow. Yeah, yeah.
Did he want redemption?
I don't know if he wanted redemption. I mean I actually said on many occasions, you just have to tell this story publicly, and your contribution to humanity will redeem you much.
For that played out, I'm not.
Sure he necessarily believe that or I'm not sure he necessarily wanted that. All Epstein wanted I think was his peculiar, eccentric and sordid life. Right, Yes, but maybe he wanted revenge too. Maybe maybe that's my purpose.
Fire and Fury.
The podcast is hosted and executive produced by Michael Wolfe and James Truman. The producers are Adam Waller and Emily Maronoff, executive producers for Kaleidoscope.
Mangesh had to get a Los Volocian executive producers for iHeart On, Nikki Ito and Katrina Novelle
