BONUS CONTENT: Mike Baker & Jillian Michaels
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Hey, Mike Baker here with some bonus content for you, because after all, it is the gift-giving holiday season. Well, have I got a gift for you. Look, recently I had the chance to sit down with the great Jillian Michaels on her excellent podcast called Keeping It Real. Now, happily, Jillian didn't put me through one of her famously tough fitness workouts, but it was a mental workout, as she asked a whole series of smart, thoughtful questions on some very serious topics. In this portion of our conversation, we focus on Jeffrey Epstein, yeah, him, how he built his influence, the shadowy network around him, and the unanswered questions about just how far his reach really went into politics and power.
So, here's my conversation with Jillian Michaels.
Mike, how are you?
Doing good. Doing very well. Thank you very much and appreciate the opportunity to catch up.
Oh, my gosh. You're so kind for joining me. I got a lot on the docket for you today from Venezuela, narco terrorism to what Trump is doing in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Gaza and the ceasefire. What do we do about Iran? I cannot help but begin with Epstein. So I'm sure you expected this. You know, I just recently heard of him, too. I want to start out by reading you what the average person is hearing about this guy and why the average person, of course, I'm referencing myself here, can't help but think there's a lot of nefarious stuff going on. So I want to read you this list and then I just just weigh in. Tell me what I'm getting right, what I'm getting wrong and what we can make of the things that are actually true.
So first thing you've got is Ghislaine Maxwell's father is Robert Maxwell, who had confirmed intelligence ties to Mossad. True or false? False.
Yeah, you know, it depends on what you mean by confirmed intelligence ties. Like there's everything from recruited asset to cooperative contact, right? To, you know, unwitting, you know, provider of information or insight.
How did Jeffrey Epstein build his influence?
There's a range here. And so typically when somebody says, oh, he's, you know, confirmed ties, you got to start defining what does that mean? I don't know what Robert Maxwell's specific definition connections meant in terms of his ties to Mossad, but there's no doubt that, you know, that there were linkages. I just don't know. It would be speculation to say to what degree, right? Was he, did Mossad itself, right, as an intel service, because that's what you do, you categorize these people, right? So if it's a CIA, for example, you would say, okay, this individual is a recruited asset. That means you can task them. You can say, here's what we want to know. You go out and get that information from your contacts because I've recruited the deputy foreign minister of a country.
Now he's a recruited asset. He's on the hook. So I don't have to beat around the bush. I can tell him, I need the following information. There's the cooperative contact where, OK, he's not disinclined to chat with me, but I can't direct him. I can't task him. I can talk to him. And if I phrase my conversations correctly, right he may either wittingly or unwittingly provide me with the insight that i'm looking for you know and then there's then there's just the occasional contact there that you know you don't you kind of refer to them as a source but they're not taskable they're not controllable they're not recruited and so maybe you know you're hoping that one day you can strengthen that relationship and turn it in the direction of something that's more taskable so that's a long-winded way of saying people have to be careful when they start talking about these things because there's more you know
complexity to it than just, and there's a lot of folks out there that just, everything for them is black and white, right? So I'm just trying to be a little bit more nuanced, I suppose.
That's exactly what I'm wanting to know from you. That's exactly why you're the expert here. You talk about these different levels of recruiting someone and being able to utilize them. Why would they cooperate?
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