In this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Sami Winc discuss whether President Donald Trump just didn’t want the distraction of the Epstein files, was protecting Republican donors, or was luring Democrats into a trap.
Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to VDH’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.
Sami Winc: Well, Victor, let’s turn to what we talked about last week, and you judiciously veered off into talking about the economy, and that’s the Epstein files, and I thought that was a judicious move last week because we should be talking about the economy, but the Epstein files are everywhere in the news this week.
It’s everything from Democrat [Del.] Stacey Plaskett, who was texting [Jeffrey] Epstein in real time during congressional meetings, to [Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Greene, who says Epstein files have ripped MAGA apart, and even [former Harvard President] Larry Summers now has stepped down from public life. And so, we’ve got everything on all sides of the political spectrum.
What’s your thoughts?
Victor Davis Hanson: Well, Plaskett was not even a congresswoman. She was a representative from the Virgin Islands, and the reason that she was getting instructions how to—I think it was Michael Cohen, his former lawyer—how to bring him out and embarrassed [President Donald] Trump was that he had one of his sexual mansions in the Virgin Islands. So, he has a prior relationship with her. In the political, he is probably a donor or supporter of her. So, he was intimate with Plaskett. So, she gets up there. And basically, he’s texting her in real time because he hates Trump. So, what’s the point of all this? The point of all this: They had these Epstein files for four years and they didn’t release them.
Given what they did to Trump, and they coordinated with five lawsuits, 91 indictments, they would’ve leaked anything out. OK? So, they didn’t wanna release that. So, the question is, why, if they’re the Democrats? And we know the answer, that there’s going to be people like Larry Summers or [former President] Bill Clinton coming up, or this representative that we’re on very close terms with Jeffrey Epstein.
So, then it comes to Trump and everybody says, “Well, we’re going to let it out.” [Attorney General] Pam Bondi says, “I have the whole file.” And they didn’t. Now, why didn’t they? And everybody on the Left said, “Well, it’s because of Donald Trump.” That was the stupidest thing in the world because they would’ve released it because they hate Trump. That’s the one thing that guides [them]. That’s their North Star. They hate Trump, but they didn’t. And so, there was nothing really in there. Yes, there were things like Trump didn’t fall for it, or Ms. [Virginia] Giuffre was there for a little while, but there was no pedophilia. Now Trump has it, and he thinks it’s a distraction from his economic news.
OK? So, there’s pressure and they’re saying, “We’re getting killed by the Democrats. Release them.” Trump says, “No.” Then the question is, why did he say no? I have a feeling that he said no because there were some prominent Republican donors on that list. He didn’t want to embarrass them, and legally, it’s kind of strange. These are sealed court documents, and you’re leaking all these names and you don’t know to what degree. … Larry Summers’ career has been ruined. And apparently, it’s because he asked Jeffrey Epstein, how do I get vertical with this young woman? It didn’t really have incriminating evidence yet that he had gone to the island and had relations with underage girls, but he’s done for.
And that’s a good example of what’ll happen to anybody that comes up in that.
Then the question, finally, is to what degree is Trump playing four-dimensional, five-dimensional chess? Did he know all the time that he was not incriminated? Yes, he knew that they would make a mountain out of a molehill, but he probably did not go to the island. He did not do these things that other people did, or they would’ve leaked it.
So, now he has all this stuff and he’s saying: I don’t wanna leak it. I don’t wanna leak it.
Now, is that because primarily he’s, as I said, protecting a donor or is he luring them into a Trump ambush? So, then they said: No, no, he’s stonewalling. Marjorie Taylor Greene even agrees with us.
And then bam, he’s going to let it out. And the first couple of things we learned is a big Democratic former secretary of the treasury, former president of Harvard, boom, his whole life has exploded. And then this Plaskett woman, this representative from the Virgin Islands—I mean, that is pretty incriminating. Can you imagine a Republican congressman?
And he’s interrogating a witness, and he knows Jeffrey Epstein so well that Jeffrey Epstein is giving him real-time instructions? And she says, at one point: Slow down a minute, I’m coming up next for the question I need to get [more information]. What does this mean? What does this term mean? So, she was like a puppet. And she’s a Democrat. And there’s gonna be more of it.
So, I don’t know to what degree there will be Republican donor collateral damage, but I think the Democrats stepped in it. And that’s what happens when you are driven ideologically. Their ideology is Trump Derangement Syndrome. Anything he does, we’re going to [attack]. So, he knew that.
So, at some point he thought: OK. They’re distracting from my economic good news and my investment from overseas, and they think they’ve got something on me, and they think I won’t release them because there’s donors. But you know what? They started it, so I’ll just blow it all up. And if I have donors that get hurt, I’ll say they did it, they forced it, and they’re gonna have more exposure.
Basically, Jeffrey Epstein was a person on the left, and he wanted to be a player. He had two purposes in life. He was a high school teacher. He knew nothing about economics. He wasn’t a financial adviser. He was a blackmailer and he was slick. And with Giselle Maxwell, they had a team. She was the daughter of a former media magnate. She understood public relations.
He wanted to be an intellectual, he wanted to know all the celebrities, so he started out by getting these young girls and then making a web, and he was a spider. And then a celebrity or a big CEO would get entrapped, and he would say to him: Oh, I don’t know. It’s gonna get out. You had sex. I didn’t know it. That girl that happened to be visiting just for a few hours, did you know she was 15 that you had relations with?
And then he probably let it be known it was on tape. Then he said: I tell you what I’ll do. I will manage your financial portfolio. And he probably got just an average seven or eight, and they didn’t lose money, but he got money that way.
He got a fee for that. So, he was managing over a billion dollars. That’s how he ended up worth about half a billion dollars. And then he got to say, I know the Israelis, I know the U.N., I know the president of Harvard. And then that would be a resume, and then that would get another resume. And finally, he was meeting the presidents of the United States.
We don’t know to what extent these young girls were part of it, but I hope to God, excuse the expression, that they do not, they do not, pardon his partner, Maxwell. From what we can tell from some of the affidavits, she was knee-deep in the sexual exploitation.
Winc: She went out and recruited. That’s what I’ve read anyway, that she went out around, found girls that could be easily manipulated.
Hanson: According to this memoir [by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre], she was aging, she felt, to remain on a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, her task was to bring women for two purposes: for his sexual gratification and for this shakedown that they were being enriched by. And then they had a relationship, but she was sexually involved in lesbian relationships sometimes with these young girls.
Megyn Kelly got in big trouble because she said that the girls were teenagers and, therefore, were not completely victims. Her point was it was not pedophilia, which she would define as sexual relations with children that had not reached puberty.
That’s an ancient distinction. In the ancient world, a pedophilia was having sexual relations with somebody beneath the age or younger than puberty. After that, until adulthood, it was called pederasty. They used the word instead “philia,” which means love or can mean sex, “asty” pederastia is actual sexual congress.
I don’t know if she made that distinction, but the law does not make the distinction in modern times. Each state sets the age of consent. I think it’s 14 in one or two states, 15, 18. Usually it’s 18. Anything below that, we call it pedophilia. But actually, in classical terms, that’s pederasty.
Just because a girl is at the age of 16 or 17, sexually aware, she’s had sexual partners, she’s manipulative, she uses her youth, doesn’t nullify the idea she can be a victim. What does anybody know at 17? I didn’t know anything at 17 or 18. So they’re easily manipulated and it’s the responsibility of adults not to take advantage of them as Jeffrey Epstein did, much less humiliate them and make them basically be prostitutes.
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