Ezra Klein

How is this one guy at the center of so many other kinds of people?

Why would Steve Bannon have access to the Augusta National Golf Club that Brad Karp, you know, I don't know if at this point the chairman of the Paul Weiss firm, but an absolute scion of the establishment.

I mean, as a question of just where power is.

Right.

In a lot of these emails, it doesn't lie where you'd expect.

You used the word solidarity a moment ago for this network.

But when you look at these communications,

There are moments of solidarity, and you wrote, and some of it's actually movingly, about, I mean, Epstein has a talent for friendship.

He has a talent for being of use to people.

He becomes an advisor to them.

You can't be a great con man without understanding human beings at a very deep level.

But there's also just endless transactionalism.

an endless trading of information, money, connections, favor, powers, ultimately women and girls.

And that what feels oftentimes like it is attracting them to each other is not always what I would think of as solidarity, like a fellowship.

But what can you do for me?

And if you can be the one who finds it for them, that's real power, right?

So I want to go into some of the pieces of this.

And another word for what you're talking about is

is he's a broker.

And I think it's important to always remember, Epstein, where he comes from is finance.