Steve Bannon, Who Called Epstein “God,” Finally Responds to Files

Former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon once called Jeffrey Epstein “God” during a text message exchange, newly released government files reveal.

In May 2018, the two men were having a discussion about currency trading, in which Bannon praised Epstein’s financial acumen.

“Bannon hammers; God shorts,” Bannon wrote.

“I don’t think of myself that way,” Epstein replied.

“I do,” said Bannon.

A text message like this seems to go far beyond an exchange by a documentarian and his subject. Bannon built a close relationship with Epstein while ostensibly filming the billionaire financier and convicted sex offender for a documentary he was making. The files show that the pair would correspond often, with Epstein offering plane trips to Bannon and the two regularly meeting. Bannon offered Epstein advice on how to deal with increased negative publicity from 2017, when the two first met, through July 2019, when Epstein was charged with sex trafficking of minors.

Bannon claims that all of this was part of his efforts to secure interviews from Bannon for the film.

“I am a filmmaker and TV host with decades of experience interviewing controversial figures,” Bannon told The New York Times in a statement. “That’s the only lens through which these private communications should be viewed—a documentary filmmaker working, over a period of time, to secure 50 hours of interviews from a reclusive subject.”

Bannon said in the statement that the documentary, which a spokesperson claims will be released later this year, would “destroy the very myths [Epstein] created.” But Bannon is hardly innocent of helping to build those “myths.” Was it necessary for Bannon to call Epstein “God”?

The rest of the released texts and emails between Epstein and Bannon show the pair working together and maintaining a close friendship. Epstein offered to cover Bannon’s medical expenses, and the pair shared multiple meals together at Epstein’s mansion in Manhattan.

At one point in 2018, Epstein told another associate, regarding Bannon, “We have become friends.” That same year, Epstein told Bannon, “Whatever you need, I’m in,” of Bannon’s efforts to advise far-right political parties around the world. Today, Bannon can claim all he likes about wanting to destroy Epstein’s myths, but he not only bought into them but also sought to assist and protect the sex criminal.

Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries still refuses to engage with growing calls to abolish ICE, even as the agency is in the nadir of its popularity.

The Left Hook podcast host Wajahat Ali read Jeffries a list of facts when they appeared together Friday on The Joy Reid Show.

“Sixty-five percent of people taken by ICE had no convictions, that’s from the Cato Institute, a right-wing institute. ICE has killed eight people this year alone that we know of.… Over 60 percent of Americans now disapprove of ICE. That means in three weeks, it’s gone from 30 percent to 60 percent,” Ali said. “If you lead on something, people will follow. It seems the wind is behind your back for the first time ever.… You said you wanna rein in ICE.… Why not lead, and say ‘abolish ICE’?”

“What you’re telling us is that you want our taxpayer dollars to pay for a lawless, masked, armed agency to continue terrorizing our cities,” Ali continued. “I’m trying to figure out how you as a leader can be telling Americans that their taxpayer dollars should be going to ICE.”

“I don’t understand anything that you just said,” Jeffries replied curtly.

“I spoke English,” Ali replied.

“I don’t understand anything that you’ve just said to me when I’ve made clear that taxpayer dollars should be used to make life more affordable for the American people, not brutalize or kill them. That’s the whole reason we’re in this fight right now,” Jeffries continued. “That’s the whole reason that DHS is getting ready to shut down.”

While Jeffries is right regarding why DHS is currently (partially) shut down, it will surely reopen. And some are skeptical that the demands of Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are strong enough to stop ICE from committing more harm, or if agents will even abide by them when the moment comes.

Ali again asked Jeffries to take a stance on abolishing ICE.

“I’m gonna use the language that I wanna use; you can use the language that you wanna use. And the language that I’m using right now relates to these type of bold, meaningful, dramatic changes that are designed to save lives right now.”

Can asking ICE agents to wear body cameras and not detain U.S. citizens (which is already illegal) really be described as “bold, meaningful, dramatic” change?

“I think Wajahat Ali was clear. He acknowledges the current fight, but asks Representative Jeffries to lead on the long term goal of abolishing ICE,” one liberal user shared on X. “I don’t understand the leader’s reticence on that very simple, and frankly moderate, position.”

Donald Trump’s White House is posting about President’s Day in the creepiest way possible.

In honor of the holiday, the White House Monday posted a menacing picture of Trump accompanied by the quote: “I was the hunted, and now I’m the hunter.”

That particular cliche comes from an unwieldy interview with NewsNation’s Katie Pavlich last month, where Trump offered a strange description of the difference between his first and second terms in office. “In a way, I was the hunted, and now I’m more of the hunter,” Trump said.

The president went on to claim he’d been “hunted by these horrible people,” and openly bragged about getting revenge on his perceived political enemies.

Revenge is a major part of the grievance-fueled Trump presidency. The president reportedly holds daily meetings with Department of Justice staffers to discuss his ongoing plots against individuals like former Special Counsel Jack Smith, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and New York Attorney General Letitia James. However, publicly announcing one’s intention to seek revenge is actually very bad for winning court cases.

The White House’s declaration that Trump has transformed into a “hunter” comes as his administration has resoundingly failed to go after any of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged co-conspirators. It’s not so much that they’re missing shots but that they’re refusing to take any.

But if you ask some women, Trump was always a predator—and the White House knows it too.

Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is blasting the MAGA right for alienating women from the Republican Party.

The MAGA loyalist turned Trump critic called out influencers on the right on Sunday for “mocking the seriousness of women who were trafficked and raped as teenagers and young women,” saying they “look like cult fools.”

“Good luck trying to get women to vote for Republicans in the midterms you insensitive clowns. The Republican Party already has a woman voting problem,” Greene wrote on X. “Keep mocking those of us who take rape and pedophilia seriously and demand accountability for corruption.”

As the government has released more files related to Jeffrey Epstein, many on the MAGA right have sought to defend the Trump administration by attacking Epstein’s victims or minimizing his crimes. It’s ironic that Trump’s base once embraced the QAnon conspiracy theory of a cabal of deep-state pedophiles running the government, with Trump as a crusader against them.

The revelations that Donald Trump was closer to Epstein than he let on, and that his advisers, from Steve Bannon to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, were too, has divided MAGA. White nationalist influencer Nick Fuentes, for example, has called out the Trump administration for lying and engaging “in a cover-up which failed.” Other MAGA influencers are now openly calling for Attorney General Pam Bondi’s resignation.

But Republican leaders such as House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune have continued to back the president. Bondi’s flippant dismissal of Epstein survivors during her Senate testimony last week has already become a damning indictment of the Trump administration’s complete disregard for Epstein’s victims, and by extension, women who have suffered from sexual assault.

Attorney General Pam Bondi claims that the Trump administration has released all of the government’s files on Jeffrey Epstein—but a new analysis suggests that they’ve published only 2 percent.

In emails reviewed by Channel 4 News, federal investigators discussed the massive amount of data that had been seized from Epstein’s properties, including his home in Palm Beach, Florida, his townhouse in New York City, and of course, “pedophile island”—also known as Howard Lutnick’s favorite family vacation spot.

“We expect the data to be somewhere around 20-40 [terabytes],” one investigator wrote in an email dated June 2020, noting that the total capacity of the devices seized from Epstein’s properties was around 40 to 50 terabytes.

In another email dated March 2025, an investigator suggested that there was “a total of approximately 14.6 Terabytes of archived data to unpack.” That would be equivalent to roughly 15,000 gigabytes

So, how many gigabytes of data did the Department of Justice eventually release? Only 300 gigabytes—or just 2 percent of the data investigators had previously discussed.

In a letter to lawmakers Saturday, Bondi claimed that the government had “released all ‘records, documents, communications and investigative materials’” related to Epstein. She also claimed that no records were withheld “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity,” and included a ludicrous list of 130 “politically exposed persons,” which included multiple dead celebrities.

With midterms on the horizon, Republicans fear their party is heading toward disaster—in the Senate as well as the House of Representatives.

Some Senate Republicans are sounding the alarm that the caucus is not addressing critical issues ahead of the 2026 election season, namely affordability, which is predicted to be the top issue come November.

The party has failed to pass major policy wins beyond Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last July, suffering from a razor-thin legislative majority in Congress that has fractured at nearly every juncture, including basic government funding packages. And the possibility of pushing another GOP bill to curry favor with voters seems slim—just last week, Trump told his caucus that Republicans had “gotten everything passed that we need.”

“We’re not going to win the midterm by going to the American people and saying, ‘Look, we passed 11 out of 12 appropriations bills and we confirmed all of President Trump’s nominees,’” Louisiana Senator John Kennedy told The Hill. “The American people don’t care. That’s not what, when moms and dads lie down to sleep at night and can’t—that’s not what they’re worried about. They’re worried about the cost of living.

“In their minds, they’re tired of selling blood plasma to go grocery shopping,” Kennedy said.

The 2026 agenda isn’t conducive to another legislative overhaul, either. This year earmarks significantly more time for lawmakers to spend in their home states than in Washington, a major departure from the 2025 calendar. That’s forced Republicans to focus on bills that absolutely must pass, such as government funding efforts, the farm bill, and the National Defense Authorization Act.

The shift in priorities has left conservative lawmakers to fend for themselves, more fixated on the advertising efforts of their individual campaigns than working as a party to pass more legislation that would sway their districts.

“Are we doing enough? We’re not doing anything,” Senator Tommy Tuberville, who is campaigning in Alabama’s gubernatorial race, remarked to The Hill. “Everybody’s working on getting elected.”

Top Republicans are hitching their wagon to the aging success of the OBBA, hoping that the mid-2025 legislation can still win at the ballot box a year and a half after the fact.

Meanwhile, Republicans are losing on a host of critical issues: The White House has so far failed to meaningfully address the fact that Trump was named in the Epstein files tens of thousands of times; the cost of living is boiling over; a conservative stonewall fueled the longest government shutdown in U.S. history; and immigration—the party’s terra firma—has buckled since ICE agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.

Republican Congressman Randy Fine is still an idiotic, Islamaphobic bigot. 

On Sunday night, the lawmaker, known for his disturbing history of anti-Palestinian comments, wrote on X, “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”

Fine said he made the comment in response to what is clearly a joke from Nerdeen Kiswani, the founder of New York City–based Palestinian organizing network Within Our Lifetime. 

“Finally, NYC is coming to Islam. Dogs definitely have a place in society, just not as indoor pets,” she quipped last Thursday. “Like we’ve said all along, they are unclean.”

“Lmao at the Zionists frothing at the mouth at this, thinking they’re  doing something. It’s obviously a joke,” Kiswani wrote later without mentioning Fine. “I don’t care if you have a dog, I do care if your dog is shitting everywhere and you’re not cleaning it.” Another post from Kiswani made clear it was a reference to people upset by the amount of dog shit left sitting on top of piles of frozen snow throughout the city.

Only someone whose bigotry transcends logic would think that New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani would somehow decree that dogs could no longer be indoor pets (although there are certainly some valid questions around the conduct of urban dog owners). 

At this point, it’s obvious that Fine is that someone. This is the same congressman who has constantly celebrated the death and suffering that Israel has perpetrated in Gaza, stating, “The Palestinian cause is an evil one.… We nuked the Japanese twice [in World War II] in order to get unconditional surrender.” 

Fine’s comments have been widely condemned, especially as they come right before the beginning of Ramadan. 

“Resign now, you racist slob,” California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote. 

“Imagine if an American politician said this about Jews,” Parkland school shooting survivor and gun control activist Cameron Kasky said. 

Attorney General Pam Bondi tried to pacify critics of the Justice Department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files by sending Congress a letter Saturday with a list of 130 names—which for some reason, included dead celebrities.

The list contains some absurd names, including people whom Epstein had merely mentioned but never met, such as Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and Janis Joplin. Monroe passed away when Epstein was only 9. While the list does include the names of known Epstein associates, such as President Trump, Les Wexner, and Steve Bannon, it also includes Representatives Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna, who have pushed for the files’ release.

Also named on the list are Trump enemies like George Clooney and former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is also mentioned with her name spelled incorrectly.

Arguably the most egregious part of the letter, however, is the assertion from Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that the DOJ had fulfilled its legal requirements and considers the legal matters of Epstein and his associates and accomplices settled. Khanna called out Bondi’s antics on X.

The DOJ has yet to release all six million files relating to Epstein, and this list of names looks like an attempt to placate critics. But the end result is the opposite, with Bondi exposed for avoiding the information that would be damaging to Trump and his friends. It’s obvious that the Trump administration is trying in vain to pacify the public about Epstein but is failing blatantly.

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat turned Donald Trump sympathizer, falsely claimed that the president has never violated a court order.

Speaking to Dasha Burns on Politico’s The Conversation, Fetterman launched into a fantastical defense of Trump when pressed on how he felt about the president calling him “the most sensible Democrat.”

“I know and I love a lot of people that voted for Trump, and that’s part of why I refuse to call these people Nazis or they’re brown shirts or they’re trying to destroy our democracy,” Fetterman said. “Now I’m not defending the president, but I will say he hasn’t defied a single court order yet. He hasn’t.”

To defend Trump’s rule as—of all things—lawful is preposterous. Let’s lay out just a few violations, shall we?

In April, the Trump administration illegally deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, even though he had received a judge’s protective order—and when the government eventually brought him back, it just tried to deport him again. That same month, Trump also defied a court order requiring his administration to allow the journalists from the Associated Press to report presidential events.

In May, a federal judge found that the Trump administration had “unquestionably” violated a court order requiring the government to provide written notice and an opportunity for detainees to apply for protection before deporting them to a third country.

In October, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration had flouted a judge’s order by requiring states to cooperate with immigration enforcement in order to receive emergency management funding.

In November, the Trump administration continued to sign criminal indictments with Trump’s improperly appointed U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan’s name, even after a judge ruled that “all actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment … constitute unlawful exercises of executive power and must be set aside.”

U.S. courts have ruled that Immigration and Customs Enforcemnt has illegally detained people 4,400 times since October, and yet Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown continues undeterred. But this isn’t the kind of thing that bothers Fetterman—the only member of his party who voted to keep funding the Department of Homeland Security.

In total, the Trump administration has been sued more than 650 times—a sure sign of a lawful reign worthy of Fetterman’s staunch defense.

One of President Trump’s oldest donors is closing a manufacturing plant in Ohio and moving it to China, a slap in the face to the American workers he claimed to be fighting for.

Hedge fund billionaire John Paulson plans to offshore the East Lake, Ohio, plant of Conn Selmer, the largest U.S. manufacturer of brass and orchestra instruments.

“We can’t have American producers closing American factories and offshoring. We need to protect American jobs and protect American manufacturing,” Paulson said just last year.

“We came in with a full proposal, fully prepared to bargain, and they started off with a presentation of telling us how bad we were doing,” said UAW Local 2359 president and plant worker Robert Hines. “To go publicly on CNBC to support the Trump administration’s positive views on tariffs and all that stuff, and then you turn around and [say you] want to go send the work right over to China … it’s a slap in our face.”

Paulson raised $50.5 million for Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign. And like Trump, he’s pushed pro–domestic worker rhetoric while leaving those same workers out to dry.

“It’s going to take a lot of money out of East Lake,” Hines said. “We’ve had people come out [and] show love to try to keep the place open, and the company just isn’t open to it. They’re not answering or returning anyone’s calls.”