The Epstein Files & Religious Hypocrisy: Putting Politics Over People

[0:04] This is Glass City Humanist, a show about humanism, humanist values, by a humanist. Here is your host, Douglas Berger. In this episode, I talk about our group wanting to host the last class film in Toledo and how you can help make it happen. We then move into the unsurprising world of Christian nationalist hypocrisy involving children and the Epstein files. Putting party over morality is a feature, not a bug. Glass City Humanist is an outreach project of the secular humanists of Western Lake Erie, building community through compassion and reason for a better tomorrow.

[0:46] Music.

[0:59] If you follow liberal or progressive political content on the Internet, one of the commentators that I’ve been listening to and watching for quite some time is Robert Reich. He is a former secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton back in the 90s. He’s a lawyer. Some people say an economist But that’s not his training He’s a lawyer and a political commentator And he’s written several books Including And focusing on capitalism, And income inequality He has a lot of good things to say At least things that I agree with And I think a lot of people that are Concerned about progressive movements And.

[1:53] Making sure that We help as many people as we can and hurt the least number of people, would appreciate a lot of his commentary. He recently had announced that he was going to retire. He’s teaching at the University of California at Berkeley, and he’s been teaching there for several years. And he recently announced that he’s retiring. So they made a documentary about him preparing for his Last Class. The title of the documentary is called The Last Class. And his content creation company.

[2:34] Is allowing local groups to host a showing of this documentary for like, for people with like-minded views that share those views. And, and you can use it as a sort of a fundraiser if you get enough people to show up. And so the secular humanists of Western Lake Erie here in Toledo signed up. And so we are hosting a showing of the documentary, The Last Class, tentatively, because the way it works, we didn’t have to really, we weren’t required to pay any money up front. It’s going to be shown at the Franklin Park Mall movie theater. And so normally, if you want to do that is you have to rent the theater, you have to pay money to book the film, etc. et cetera, and set up the ticketing and things like that. Well, we weren’t required to pay any money up front. What it does is because we’re a small group and we don’t have a lot of money, we can’t just cut a check for this film. And so we have to depend on people buying tickets.

[3:57] And the theater limit the number of people we can fit in the theater is about 90 people so like i said it it’s it’s a good film a good uh documentary it i think it played at sundance and places like that and i’ve seen the trailer it looks really nice and i really like the guy robert reich he’s i really like his his uh take on the economy and and wealth inequality and income inequality, and I agree with a lot of the things that he talks about. And I think humanists would agree with a lot of things that he talks about.

[4:35] So here’s the blurb, all right? So join us for a screening of the last class at Cinemark Franklin Park 16. The last class is a nuanced and deeply personal portrait of master educator Robert Reich, teaching his final course and reflecting on a period of immense transformation personally and globally it is a love letter to education the former secretary of labor might be famous for his public service best-selling books and viral social media posts but he always considered teaching his true calling now after over 40 years and extraordinary 40,000 students reich is preparing for his last class, Over the course of the film, Reich confronts the impending finality in his own aging, he’s 79 years old, with increasing candor, introspection, and ultimately emotion. He displays a rawness of feeling he has never shared publicly before. Drawing on his lifetime in politics, he uses his class Wealth and Poverty to offer us all a deeper look at why inequalities of income and wealth have widened significantly since the late 1970s, and why this poses dangerous risks to our society. And currently we are seeing that. We are seeing those risks.

[5:57] And in this blurb here, we added, humanists support education based on the truth, facts, and data. We also support social justice issues that Robert Reich talks about, and we are also concerned about income inequalities. So if you would like to attend this showing and help us promote the topics that Robert Reich talks about. And we have a website or it’s part of the organization that we worked with to book it. It’s their website and their ticketing system. And you can reach it at bit.ly slash lastclass hyphen Toledo 2025. That’s bit.ly slash last class hyphen Toledo 2025. And it should be a good time and you really will enjoy it.

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[7:11] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show.

[7:20] Music.

[7:31] Before we get to the main story where I talk about Christian nationalists and their hypocrisy when it comes to the Epstein files. I wanted to mention that as a private citizen, not as a member of a group or anything like that, I had sent a letter to the editor of the Toledo Blade, basically saying the same thing, but in a short letter to the editor. And it was published in the print edition of the Toledo Blade on August the 3rd. And I’ll have a copy of it, copy of the letter, and then a link to if you are able to get past their paywall, and you can read it online.

[8:15] But basically, what it was is I sent this in about why conservative politicians have been so hesitant to speak out about the Epstein files when it involves child sex trafficking, something that they have claimed that they are against. I mean, they just had a conference or task force or something here in the state of Ohio about child sex trafficking. So obviously, they’re wanting to get rid of it and punish the people that do it. But for some reason, you know, it seems like a lot of these elected political conservatives have put their party above morality, which we see quite a bit.

[9:11] And so I wanted to call him out on it. So here’s the text of the letter that I wrote. This is what I submitted. Why is it when accountability is called for, there seems to be deafening silence from our elected officials? I believe there is a strong consensus, not just a liberal or conservative view, that crimes against children are a heinous crime, needing strong justice and lengthy prison terms. As well as, I didn’t put this in the letter, but as well as treatment, psychological treatment. Many conservative politicians, including the ones who represent parts of Northwest Ohio, tend to have a mantra of protecting the children. One of our local state representatives even tried to pass a bill to ban drag shows, and his reasoning was to protect the children from exposure to drag queens. And another local state representative who happens to live in the Fremont area led the effort to prohibit parents from getting their children gender-affirming care and his reasoning was to protect the children.

[10:24] One would think these conservatives who claim to want to protect the children would be front and center in demanding that the Epstein files be released in Washington. Instead, we get silence. And in the case of the transphobic representative, he was indifferent when confronted about the issue by a citizen. I find that very disappointing.

[10:53] And I am not playing political games with this issue, okay? I just don’t like hypocrites. I hate hypocrites, especially when they wear their religion on their sleeve and they claim that they’re protecting the children. And that is not the case. And so that’s basically my take on this whole Epstein file issue. And this is what we’re going to talk about in the next segment.

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[11:38] Okay, so everybody who is listening to this episode should know who Jeffrey Epstein is. Been playing a large part in the news recently, again. Jeffrey Epstein was a money guy, a Wall Street money guy, and a convicted child sex offender. He was also charged with sex trafficking. And that is what he was under indictment for in August of 2019, when he was found dead in his jail cell in New York City. And ever since then, he has loomed large, a large cloud over President Trump. Why? Because they were best buddies for many years. And we all know Trump’s kind of a creepy guy when it comes to younger women. I mean, they even had him in an interview talking about how if his daughter wasn’t his daughter, he’d want to date her, that sort of thing, that creepy stuff. So it’s not impossible to imagine that Trump and Epstein were buddies because they shared so much in common, not so much the money part, but the fact that they both love young women.

[13:07] The problem was Jeffrey Epstein was trafficking, trafficking people, moving them between countries and procuring women who were definitely under age. And he had already been convicted of it in a state court. And the feds got involved in 2019. But President Trump, during the campaign, pretty much said that the Epstein files, the investigative files, should be released. And the reason why it was that whole part of that going after Hunter Biden type salaciousness that the Republican Party likes to do is basically they assumed, especially Trump assumed, that the Epstein files contained a number of names, mostly Democratic names, that they could use to smear people. If those records were ever released. So he went through the whole entire campaign talking about it.

[14:16] And so then we cut forward to February of this year when Pam Bondi brought some conservative and MAGA influencers and social media people into the White House and gave them binders. And it said, Epstein Files, Phase 1, or something like that. But that’s what they claimed, that it was the start of the release of the Epstein files.

[14:44] Then we cut forward to, I believe it was June, and the Department of Justice released a statement saying that the Epstein files were not going to be released because there was no list, and they just decided that there was nothing there.

[15:00] And, of course, the MAGA people had a meltdown because Trump had been playing this up for a couple of years, and it looked like that they were going to release it. And so they’d be able to have their dream of knowing that all these Democrats were pedophiles, just like that they believe from QAnon and the Pizzagate stuff. And this was their holy grail, and they were going to be saved. Thank you, Donald Trump. And then they didn’t release them. So they had a meltdown.

[15:32] And Trump has been fighting it now for weeks. And the reason why he’s fighting it is because he doesn’t like being wrong. He refuses to admit that he’s wrong. and so he’s been throwing crap at the wall to see what sticks uh first he he was saying that there was no list uh that he didn’t know Epstein and which is false uh that and then they were talking about how the Epstein files were created by Obama and Comey when they were actually created when Epstein was arrested in 2019 during Trump’s term. The guy in Palm Beach that gave Jeffrey Epstein a sweetheart plea bargain, Acosta, became Trump’s labor secretary in his first term, and he ended up having to resign when this issue blew up in 2019.

[16:35] And so, you know, this has been going on now for four or five years where this Jeffrey Epstein stuff is. And the thing is, the reason why it’s such a big deal, at least in the media, is because this affects the elite class, the elites, the Harvard and Yale people, the people that run the government, the corporation people. I mean, having an association with Jeffrey Epstein was like poison for some people. Billionaire Leslie Wexner employed Jeffrey Epstein to be his financial advisor and even gave him power of attorney for several years. Jeffrey Epstein even had a house on the Wexner compound in New Albany outside of Columbus. The backlash from knowing and employing Jeffrey Epstein was so severe for Wexner that he ended up having to retire from his company. They kind of forced him out.

[17:43] And uh who else who else lost big on that uh no one epstein oh uh alan dershowitz the criminal defense attorney he is so intertwined with with epstein he’s the one that worked out the sweetheart plea bargain and so his name is mud currently bill gates possibly got got a divorce lost his marriage because he associated with Jeffrey Epstein, even after Epstein had been convicted and served time for prostitution, soliciting prostitution.

[18:22] You know, he still, he met Epstein in 2011 after he had already served his time. So that’s part of the news. That’s not proven, but more than likely that’s what happened, that he got involved with the shenanigans with Jeffrey Epstein and it eventually cost him his marriage. But anyway, so the splash zone has now included Trump because we have many pictures and videos and interviews, how they were best buds and they hung out together for many, many years.

[18:59] And then of course Trump is saying that he didn’t know that this guy was a pedophile I highly suspect I highly doubt that he did not know I highly doubt that many of his these powerful people did not know the FBI concluded in 2019 that Epstein had surveillance cameras over all his properties and collected blackmail information on people, And so that’s why they think that he was able to ingratiate himself into social society because he didn’t have any he didn’t have any roots in that that world. He started out as a school teacher for a private school, but he didn’t go to college, but he’s very smart. And then he moved into the stock market area and that’s where he made a lot of money. He worked for Bear Stearns and things like that. And so that’s how he met these powerful people.

[20:02] And so much of the money that he made was in managing fortunes for these people that he knew.

[20:09] And like I said, you know, Trump is so scared that he is mentioned in these files, which he probably is, more than likely. He’s mentioned in these files, and obviously something was found that he didn’t want out that they decided that now these files can’t be released.

[20:30] So it’s kind of funny to watch him it kind of reminded me of that scene in the Kill Bill movie I can’t remember, it might have been volume 2 when the bride meets up with the Daryl Hannah character who has the eye patch who had lost the eye and they meet in that trailer in the desert, and the bride fights her and takes her other eye, her good eye and Daryl Hannah’s character starts thrashing around on the floor. That’s Donald Trump and the Epstein files. The Epstein files took his other eye and he’s thrashing around on the floor because he can’t see. And I really think that that is probably part of the problem. And it could be that it is true that he didn’t do any of the child abuse that Epstein was convicted of. I doubt that that’s the case. I bet you that Epstein gave him some women, and he did what he creepily does with women, as we found out from Stormy Daniels, and he probably didn’t even ask what their ages were, and they were probably under 18.

[21:42] Because that’s how Epstein rolled.

[21:46] Oh, another person that was mentioned that was piled around with Epstein quite a bit was Bill Clinton. But, of course, we know about Bill Clinton and his sexual exploits, as it were. We don’t know if he was also involved with that. But anyway, so basically, Epstein, he was involved with all these rich people, rich, powerful people, probably had blackmail information on them, probably for many of the men that he dealt with, and most of them were men. And he probably procured underage women for them and filmed them probably in various states. And basically, he was covering his behind and making sure that he stayed in his little station. That explains the Sweetheart prosecution deal in 2007, where he just got 13 months for child abuse and or for solicitation of prostitution. And he had work release. They allowed him to have work release. They never allow sex offenders to have work release. He was able to get out of jail for 12 hours a day. And then it was 2019 when the FBI went after him. And again, this was Trump’s FBI at the time. His first term prosecuted him. The Department of Justice in 2019 was prosecuting Epstein.

[23:15] The New York office was prosecuting Epstein when he ended up supposedly committing suicide in his jail cell.

[23:25] But the reason why I’m bringing all this up and talking about it, and I know people are probably sick of hearing about it, is because of the hypocrisy, the utter hypocrisy. I just want to play this clip from MSNBC just to give an example. The first voice that you hear is going to be Ted Lieu.

[23:46] He’s a Democrat from California talking about the Epstein files. And then the reporter says something and then Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, talks about it. And I want to play that. They are actually ending this week early because they’re afraid to cast votes on the Jeffrey Epstein issue. We should release the Epstein files. Johnson slamming it as political games. The Democrats are trying to play gotcha politics right now. Has anyone forgotten? They had all these files the entire time. They sat on everything Epstein-related for four long years while President Biden was in office.

[24:23] Okay. So what Mike Johnson is saying, Speaker Johnson is saying, is that the Democrats had these files during the Biden administration. Why didn’t they release them then? Well, that is one of the things that Trump talked about. That’s why during the campaign he was demanding that these files be released. Because, again, Johnson is on this talking point that the files must be about Democrats, that there can’t be any Republicans in that file. And so that’s why the Democrats didn’t release it. It was to protect the pedophiles from the Democratic Party. So you could take that argument that he just made and then inferred and turn it around on Trump. Why doesn’t Trump release it? Well, obviously, he must be protecting pedophiles in the Republican Party and himself.

[25:17] And that’s what they do. That’s what, you know, Mike Johnson has no room to talk about morality. He’s the one that has him and his son monitor each other’s porn consumption or whatever jazz that was. He’s the one that worked for Alliance Defending Freedom, which is a Christian nationalist group that does church and state issues. You know, he’s the one that allowed the prayer, the Bible study where the Dollinger, Pastor Dollinger said that Jesus didn’t say that you should help poor people or the Bible doesn’t say you should help poor people. This is Mike Johnson. This is Speaker Johnson, Mr. Christian. He wears his Christianity on his sleeve. So he has no room to talk about morality when he’s protecting pedophiles. And that is, short of murder, I think murder is probably the worst crime somebody can commit. The second worst crime, or it might even be the same, is child sex abuse. That’s why it bothers me that there’s so many Catholic priests that haven’t been prosecuted.

[26:39] The Houston Chronicle had a piece about there was over 300 members of the ministry in the Southern Baptist Conference that had been charged or convicted of child abuse or child sex crimes.

[26:57] How many priests have there been worldwide that have not been prosecuted at some point or been accused of child sex abuse? And not to mention that there was a recent report that Trump’s Department of Justice is weighing in on a lawsuit in Washington state where the Catholic Church is suing the state over a law that requires priests to be reporters of abuse. Teachers and doctors and law enforcement and people like that are required to report suspected child abuse, and they passed this law to apply to priests. And the Catholic Church is fighting it for religious freedom reasons. And the Trump Department of Justice is on their side of protecting pedophiles. I could almost tell you point blank that there are no trans kids.

[28:02] There are no drag queens, and there are no atheists. Well, I can’t say that, but there’s no trans kids and there’s no drag queens in the Epstein files, pretty much. I could probably much to tell you. Now, the reason why I hedged on the atheist part is because I forgot that one of the people that worked with Epstein, who’s been photographed with Epstein, that considered him a friend.

[28:29] Is Steven Pinker, who is one of the people in the free thought community that I personally don’t like anymore because not just because of that, but because he’s anti-trans and stuff like that. But he paled around with Hepstein. So I can’t say atheists might not be in there. But anyway, So here are these holy rollers, these people that think that they know more than you do about morality, and they’re the ones that are always getting in trouble. They’re the ones that are the adulterers. They’re the ones that are the child sex traffickers. They are the sex abusers.

[29:12] They try to ban abortion because they want to control women. And that’s the thing. Every time there’s somebody that is a holy roller that comes in, It’s like Marjorie Taylor Greene talks about cloud seeding. Well, she cheated on her husband, you know, Boebert, the lady in Congresswoman in Colorado. She was caught masturbating her boyfriend during a theater performance. You know, all these people, when people publicly wear their religion on their sleeve, you can know that there’s something in their closet that they don’t want you to know about. I can almost guarantee you that that is the case. And I can almost guarantee you that Donald Trump benefited from his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein by getting women to have sex with. Now, the question becomes if he knew that they were underage or not. I’m going to say he probably did, because he has said that he liked younger women. You know, all his past wives have been younger than the previous one. And like I said, there was that creepy thing that he said about his daughter years ago.

[30:33] So I think it’s probable that Trump benefited from the procurement of those underage girls, that he knew they were underage, that he had sex with them, and that he just assumed that his didn’t stink. And that’s why he demanded that the Epstein files be released, because he thought it only probably contained Democrats, because he thought, since it was his Department of Justice during his first term, that that’s what they put in it. And then I think he found out that that’s not the case. So that’s why he’s throwing crap on the wall. That’s why he’s claiming that it was written by Obama, that Obama should be, in jail for treason, and it just goes on and on and on. And I did not have on my big bingo card that a convicted child sex offender would be the Achilles heel of Donald J. Trump.

[31:41] You know, that his his precalition or his proclivity for pedophilia would be the be be the thing that might take him down. I did not have that on my bids on my bingo card.

[31:58] So it’s going to be interesting. But like I said, the thing that I hate the most are hypocrites and the Christian right, the Christian nationalists like Speaker Johnson are at the top of that list. Thank you for listening.

[32:11] Music.

[32:17] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show.

[32:26] Music. Glass City Humanist is hosted, written, and produced by Douglas Berger, and he’s solely responsible for the content.

[32:32] SHoWLE can be reached at humanistswle.org. Music,

[32:50] Music.