Jeffrey Epstein and the American Empire
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Van Jackson on how the late pedophile gained power and influence.
A bronze-painted statue titled “Best Friends Forever”, depicting Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding hands on October 2, 2025, in Washington, DC.
(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)The scandal around Jeffrey Epstein, who trafficked and abused children and died in a prison cell in 2019, has never gone away. It continues to explode now that House Democrats have released thousands of e-mails from Epstein and his cronies. But while the political class and mainstream media are understandably focused on the sex scandal, another dimension of the scandal goes uncovered except by independent media outlets such as Drop Site: Epstein’s deep ties to the national security state. I talked to international relations scholar Van Jackson about this crucial part of the story.
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What Jeffrey Epstein Taught Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon w/ Branko Marcetic | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
The late Jeffrey Epstein was friends with all sorts of elite figures in the US and many other countries. This extensive network is now sometimes described as “the Epstein class.” The question is, was this class held together merely by the opportunistic trading of favors or did it have a coherent worldview and agenda?
Branko Marcetic has written a series of articles in Jacobin that clarify this issue by looking at relationships Epstein had with the billionaire Peter Thiel and the political operative Steve Bannon.
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