The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
Raging Moderates: Trump’s Sparking Culture War Fights to Bury the Epstein Scandal
11 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway.
And I'm Jessica Tarliff.
Today, we're going to talk about how Trump stirs culture wars to distract from Epstein, Trump's economic pitch ahead of November elections, and if private school is worth it. If you aren't already, if you like what you hear, please subscribe to our YouTube page to get up-to-date coverage on everything happening, where you'll find hot takes you can only find on our YouTube page.
So please, if you think of it, subscribe. All right, let's get into it. Over the weekend, two very different versions of America were on display.
Chapter 2: How does Trump stir cultural conflicts to distract from the Epstein scandal?
One on stage, Bad Bunny turned a major pop moment into a celebration of joy and unity, naming every country across the Americas and reminding audiences that America is bigger than any one flag or administration. At the same time, Donald Trump was doing what he's done for years, picking cultural fights.
He went after an Olympic skier for expressing mixed feelings about representing the US, amplified a racist video depicting the Obamas, and once again leaned into grievance and division. And the timing matters, because as Trump fuels these outrage cycles, Congress is quietly reviewing unredacted Epstein files. We should put unredacted around in quotes.
Jelaine Maxwell is publicly floating clemency for silence, and senior figures tied to Trump, including his Commerce Secretary, are facing bipartisan calls to resign over their Epstein ties. Jess, before we get into Epstein, what stood out to you about the wave of culture war fights Trump picked over the weekend?
What really stood out to me is how ineffective I feel like he's become. Like, he's really lost his fastball. You know, I think they call it the weave that he does, right? Where he, like, finds a way to get a question that he doesn't like, and then he goes some other path.
And, you know, somehow his base plus the extra 10% that voted for him or whatever, like, understands what he really meant and all is forgiven. Yeah. No, not at all.
But it was really interesting to see prominent conservatives coming out and defending Bad Bunny's halftime show, including Alexis Wilkins, who's Kash Patel's girlfriend, the one that he's flying all over the country to see on our dime. But she said Republicans need to unite and get on better messaging because this branding is fantastic and allows all Dems to get behind it. Also super aesthetic.
Chris Ruffo, super white wing, defended it. Nick Fuentes, who does go through many phases, but he said, it's literally fake outrage, self-ghettoizing, being overly political, pretending to like the things. We have become the far left. That's about the obsession with, you know, the Kid Rock show. And he said, that looked like me, Familia. That's like all my cousins.
I think I recognized a few people there. And on the horrible racist video of the Obamas depicting them as apes that came out, Laura Ingraham, who hosts the 7 o'clock show on Fox, had Caroline Leavitt on and asked her about it, said, can you really throw a staffer under the bus? And Leavitt tried this, oh, well, this is a leftist media narrative.
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Chapter 3: What cultural differences were highlighted by Bad Bunny's performance?
And she's staring at Laura Ingraham. Right? Saying that this is a leftist media narrative. So it feels like the bullshit is being called a bit more. I'm not predicting some downfall of the Trump administration, but it does feel like he is not... hitting his marks in the same way. And he's not able to dangle like one trans swimmer in front of people to get them to come over to his side.
And the people are actually observing what's going on on the ground and formulating a not so positive view of Trump and co as a result. What did you think about the outrage over all the culture war stuff that's going on?
Well, first off, I have absolutely no interest in Bad Bunny. I couldn't name a song that he sings. But at the same time, I look at the economics of it. It was a brilliant move by the NFL. The NFL is investing in the future. Now, people under the age of 18, the majority are non-white. And this is the most popular artist in the world. So, of course, they should have him as their halftime show.
And I thought the halftime show was optimistic and well-produced. I watched it the next day. So I think this was a big win for the NFL. No one on the Republican side has asked me, but for them and their carnival barkers to come out and say he wasn't speaking English, how's that going to help them with the Latino vote?
Yeah.
These cultural icons have such a huge followership. And then I think what was even worse, and again, I'm biased here, but Kid Rock's thing looks so sad. Yeah. It just looked like, okay, you know, this is sort of what, like if meth had a concert, it just felt really desperate. It felt really, you know, not very well produced and kind of weird.
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Chapter 4: How are Trump's allies being scrutinized in relation to Epstein?
Yeah. I think he picked the wrong culture war. They picked the wrong culture war here. Other observations, the things I found most fascinating about the Super Bowl had nothing to do with Bad Bunny. But by the way, I think the Threads account of Elmo had it perfectly that Elmo just hopes both teams have a really fun time. And he said, Bad Bunny isn't a bad bunny. He's a good bunny.
Both of those made me laugh. But the thing I noticed was that a quarter of the ads were AI. Yeah.
Chapter 5: What are the implications of Trump’s economic messaging ahead of the midterms?
So it was sort of the AI bowl. And the last time tech dominated was in 2022. It was called the crypto bowl because a quarter of the ads were crypto, things like FTX and Binance. We know what happened there. And then the time before that where you breached 25% of the Super Bowl ads being from tech companies was in 2000. And we know what happened there.
So if economic history repeats itself, we're about to see a major drawdown in AI. And the other thing that the Super Bowl kind of connoted for me was I think there's been an enormous transfer in power and value from the betting sites. Remember the big ad a few years ago with Salma Hayek as Cleopatra, and I forget the guy's name, from Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Larry David.
Not Larry David, his sidekick, the guy who lives with him, talented, funny guy. He played Caesar or whatever.
Oh, yeah, J.B. 's move.
There you go. It was bet MGM and companies like Flutter have been on a roll. Flutter shit the bed and missed its earnings. I think everyone's basically moving from wagering to these speculation markets. And I think you saw that in the Super Bowl. But I think they're on, and again, I'm biased here. I think they're on the wrong end.
I think it would have been genius for them to say, love the Super Bowl was great. Bad Bunny was great. I just think that being associated with Kid Rock, you just look lame.
Yeah, but they like there is an inability to ever be graceful about absolutely anything. I mean, they couldn't even I'm talking about the administration, not the examples that I read out, but they couldn't even deal with reality that like a straight couple got married at the Super Bowl show. Right? Like, there's nothing more pro-family. And a lot of people are pointing that out.
Like, this is your quote-unquote conservative values. And, you know, I've seen the translations of the lyrics. Like, yeah, Bad Bunny says some dirty things. Like, Kid Rock sang one of his original hits, which is completely profane. I know it was supposed to be his redemptive arc for when he found Jesus or whatever. But, like... It's just fucking entertainment.
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Chapter 6: What are the long-term effects of the Epstein scandal on political discourse?
I just, I love that. And it's true, right? And seeing all those flags, our strength is essentially we're the operating system for every other country that aspires to be democratic and prosperous. The U.S. used to be the operating system legally, morally, economically for the entire West and people who aspire to be like the West.
And when I saw those flags, I just thought of it as their different cultures mostly operating or aspiring to our operating system. Let's move on. Trump's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is under bipartisan pressure over alleged lies about his relationship with Epstein. I don't know if you've seen here in the UK, CalSheet thinks there's a 70% chance that Keir Starmer is going down.
Not because he's in the Epstein files, but because He recommended a cabinet post for someone who's in the Epstein files. I mean, that's the bar here versus our president, who, by the way, this is just some fun facts. Trump is mentioned in the Epstein files more than Jesus is mentioned in the Bible or the term meth is mentioned in all eight seasons of Breaking Bad. That's my fun fact for the day.
Has the main character energy.
Any thoughts on what's going to happen with Secretary Lutnick here?
Well, we're recording this mid-testimony, so I don't know what else will come out. But people are going to be looking into whether he perjured himself, whether he said in any sort of official forum that he didn't associate with Jeffrey Epstein past 2005. I think it was in his confirmation hearing. But he went to the island to have lunch, brought all his kids there in 2012.
And I really think that... You know, it needs to be a far bigger part of the discourse on this that so much of this is happening after Jeffrey Epstein is a convicted sex offender. He is a registered sex offender in 2009, and business continued as usual in many respects. So, you know, I think Lutnick would be an easy person to push out.
He seems dug in about Kristi Noem, but Lutnick doesn't really bring— a lot of positivity or glow to the administration. And remember early on, we were talking about how he was giving the worst interviews of anybody, and they actually had to take him off of TV because he was doing such a crap job. So I could see that happening, but it's all part of just this overwhelming...
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Chapter 7: What economic benefits are Americans actually seeing from AI-driven growth?
narrative um that's taking shape and you know three million documents is going to take months and months to be able to sift through and then also to be able to connect dots between things because sometimes you you know you see an email and you don't know what it's a response to right or where it fits into the whole story but i was watching uh rokhana has done a couple long-form podcast interviews with sean ryan have you ever watched the sean ryan show
I haven't.
He's really interesting. He's a former Navy SEAL, was a Blackwater contractor with the CIA. He has a podcast and they have like 5.5 million subscribers on YouTube. Very conservative guy. And he is...
part of this new cadre of traditional Trump supporters that are losing their minds over the Epstein files and not looking at this at all through a partisan lens, but just saying, how is it possible that people in positions of power are not interested in getting
To the roots of all of this, to understanding what went on here, especially when it has to do with the abuse of children in many cases, Jamie Raskin came out of the viewing room and said that the youngest victim that they saw was nine years old, right? We're talking a nine-year-old. Right.
And I was thinking back, remember, Megyn Kelly a few months ago made that crazy comment, like, well, we're not talking about five-year-olds. We're talking about 14-year-olds. And she said, I'm not justifying it. But, well, now you're talking about a nine-year-old. So a nine-year-old is more like a five-year-old, right, than is like a 14-year-old. They haven't gone through puberty, right?
You're talking about a kid.
Right.
And Ro Khanna was talking about how he and Thomas Massey want, like, a truth and reconciliation committee to be enacted to get to the bottom of this Epstein web, which I think would be interesting. It doesn't get people any solutions right off the bat, but it feels like it's very necessary because the questions—you're getting more questions than answers from all of this, like—
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Chapter 8: How is the private school tuition crisis affecting families in NYC?
But this has just eroded these institutions where it's like, okay, who can we trust to parse through this? and figure out who is criminally liable here and get a subpoena or indictment from a grand jury and who is on the wrong invite list.
I think this whole thing has just been handled so poorly and will be looked back on as something that absolutely molested and dented and just perverted the reputation of our institutions because we don't even know how to conduct an investigation and then parse it out and what the outcome should be. And it's something that I've been thinking a lot about.
Derek Thompson, who I had on Prof G Conversations said, we've only been skirting along the surface of the atmosphere at seven tenths the speed of sound for about 30 or 40 years. 95% of the public was not taking subsonic travel. Jet lag, and I know jet lag really well, our species just doesn't know how to react to the sun coming up five hours before it's supposed to.
So our bodies get whacked with jet lag. Eventually over, I don't know, 100, 200, 500 years, we'll adapt. Is our species ready for all of us to be broadcasters and for files like this to be released to all these people who think of themselves as people who can parse through this stuff and then broadcast it in a thoughtful way? They can't.
And so this just seems like a melee where who gets caught in the scrum is our institutions.
And I think the FBI under a competent president with distinct branches of government charged with fidelity to their oath and what they're supposed to do would have come out with a sub-report saying, okay, today we are announcing 24 criminal indictments against the following people and this is the evidence against them.
I think so much of this is just gossip and people, not gossip, but people who just love. One of the things I don't like about our brothers and sisters on the left is we seem, I think we need a massive redistribution of income and they're much more interested in a massive redistribution of virtue. And yeah, this person's a creep. Yeah, it makes your skin crawl.
But the FBI isn't in the business of disclosing things that make your skin crawl and make people look like creeps. That's not what they're there for. They're there for criminal indictments. And all of this, what I'll call redistribution of virtue, is diluting from the premise, from the whole shooting match here. And that is, we need to put in place a series of incentives
where no matter how rich and powerful you are, if you in any way provide the infrastructure, traffic, or enable or conduct child rape, we're coming for you. And everything else, it strikes me that this is the best thing that happened. The way this has been parsed out sclerotically was a gift to the people who have actually committed crimes here because it's diluted the whole thing.
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