- The recklessness that this moment invites is making visible what has been invisible or under-acknowledged for a long time.

- They are hell-bent, literally hell-bent, on returning themselves to absolute power and crushing these advances.

- Across history, when women and feminist-led fronts are out in front of a pro-democracy coalition, we win.

- Coming up on "Laura Flanders & Friends," the place where the people who say it can't be done take a backseat to the people who are doing it.

Welcome.

(upbeat music) Donald Trump has an extensive, decades-long record of demeaning, objectifying, and allegedly abusing women, from his days of his beauty pageants where contestants complained that they were treated like his personal harem to his "Grab them by the *****" Access Hollywood tape, his sexual abuse and defamation of E. Jean Carroll, and his contemptuous campaigns against two women: Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris.

In the White House, his administration has moved to exclude women, especially Black women, from positions of power and backed policies that attack women's equality and autonomy in all sorts of ways.

Here's how he treats women journalists in public.

- Because they let him in.

Are you stupid?

Are you a stupid person?

- [Reporter] Mr.

President, why wait for Congress to release the Epstein files?

Why not just do it now?

- You know, it's not the question that I mind.

It's your attitude.

I think you are a terrible reporter.

It's the way you ask these questions.

You start off with a man who's highly respected asking him a horrible, insubordinate and just a terrible question.

- [Reporter] Sir, if there's nothing incriminating in the files, Sir, why not- - Quiet.

Quiet, piggy.

You know, she's a young woman.

I don't think I've ever seen you smile.

I've known you for 10 years.

I don't think I've ever seen a smile on your face.

- [Reporter] I'm asking you about survivors.

- You know why?

You know, why you're not smiling?

'Cause you know you're not telling the truth.

- It all reeks of misogyny.

So why is it that the sexism at the heart of Trumpism seems to be taken so relatively lightly, especially as it plays out against what is arguably the biggest, sickest sex abuse scandal possibly ever: the Jeffrey Epstein horror with all of its links back to the president and his circle, and which his team seems so desperate to cover up?

What is really going on here?

And alongside racism, how does sexism function in the fascist resurgence we are living through?

To talk about all of this, we have three experts.

Nina Burleigh is a journalist, bestselling author, documentary producer, and the publisher of a Substack on politics called "American Freakshow."

Reverend Naomi Washington-Leapheart is a minister, professor, and the first ever strategic partnerships director at Political Research Associates, or PRA, a social justice research and strategy center that was founded back in 1981 by the feminist political scientist Jean Hardisty.

In 2025, PRA dedicated an entire issue of their excellent journal to the relationship between gender and authoritarianism.

Our third guest, Annie Wilkinson, wrote the lead essay.

Alright, so we have a lot on our plates to discuss.

And I want to start with you, Nina.

That deluge of Epstein file information seems to have been with us for years and never to stop.

It's endlessly sprawling.

And there are ties, not just to President Trump and his circle, but rich and powerful figures across the world.

What's your thumbnail takeaway from what we are witnessing and learning about, Nina?

- My thumbnail take, what I always tell people, is it's not just about a sex case.

It's not just about the mistreatment of women, I'm sorry to say, because that's a big part of it, and it's the underpinning of how Epstein maybe was operating.

It's really about influence, foreign affairs, and the way that like the last 20 years of American foreign policy has played out.

And you can see that in this guy's interactions with Saudi, especially with the Middle East, Saudi sheiks, with European council people.

Everybody was enmeshed in, you know, this operation.

- And what about you, Naomi?

What are you taking away from all this?

- I'm thinking a lot these days about the sanctification of misogyny, of patriarchy.

It's not new sanctification.

I think the Christian tradition, especially, has been a leading institution that has conferred to patriarchy and misogyny a kind of spiritual significance.

That is to say that now, we've got people thinking that it is a matter of faithfulness to be discriminatory and violent toward women and femmes.

And so because I hang out in Christian communities, in communities of faith, I'm particularly concerned with how we can de-sanctify, if I can say it that way, remove the moral cover from misogyny, even as we are trying to fight it on political grounds as well.

- One of the things that's frustrated me is that the whole Epstein story seems to be being covered in a separate column of the paper by separate reporters from those who are covering the ICE raids, and the rise of authoritarianism, and all the rest.

But the characters, of course, are super connected from, you know, Trump and Musk to the guy who made the misbegotten Melania movie.

Am I alone here in thinking there are threads that need to be kind of connected, Annie?

- What this example does for us is it gives us an opportunity to tease apart the varying actors that come together in coalition around gender politics or perverse gender politics, and perhaps also anti-gender politics, which is, you know, what my opening essay that you referred to is about and what I've been studying for a long time.

You know, what anti-gender politics is able to do is to help bridge these different factions that we've been discussing, right?

So transactional authoritarians who instrumentalize gender for their own power.

So these are the characters that we've been discussing.

Trump, Epstein, right?

MAGA politicians who, you know, have a deep seated sense of misogyny and sexism, but they're transactional about it together with the Christian nationalists that Naomi was also referencing, right, who are differently ideologically committed to patriarchy, who believe that it is divinely ordained right, and core to their worldview.

And other elements of this coalition that we see coming together around a sort of similar politics of gender also include ethno-nationalists.

In the United States, that's White nationalists, right, who need, who are invested in a strict gender hierarchy and gender essentialism or this idea about who women are and who is a woman in order to maintain their racial and demographic control that they're interested in.

And another aspect of this coalition that joins in, right, is the tech oligarchs like Elon Musk, like Peter Thiel, who benefit, by the way, from a gender inequality that enables them to maximize capitalist extraction.

- Is this sort of the same old culture war that we've seen before, or would you say we're in new territory, Nina?

- Well, I mean, stepping back, I think what I see happening is the backlash that Susan Faludi noticed in the early, what, '90s, you know, it's now juiced on testosterone, and steroids, and another, you know, five, 10, 15 years of progress by people of color, and women, and gay people.

And they're just beside themselves.

They are hell-bent, literally hell-bent on returning themselves to absolute power and crushing these advances.

And so it's a giant backlash.

In some ways, it's like an extinction burst, you know.

It's like a biological concept.

When something's like not going to survive, it may flower and flourish at the last minute.

This like last burst of action.

Or if you guys remember the movie "Carrie," where at the very end the corpse hand comes up.

I've always thought that, you know, that image when Trump got elected in '16, that's what I thought was going on.

The last gasp of these horrible, white monster men.

- The people that have borne the worst brunt of the federal government layoffs were Black women.

You've got immigrant women being targeted and intimidated.

You've got a particular desire, it seems to me, to kind of humiliate women in the military.

And most recently this bizarre posting by the White House of an altered picture of the very dignified and elegant Nekima Levy Armstrong, protestor in Minnesota, to suggest that she was, instead of standing strong and proud with a constituency behind her, actually crying and with darker skin.

I mean, backlash seems too weak a word for it in a way.

What do you think is really the agenda here, Naomi?

- The most sort of unprotected woman in the United States throughout history has been Black women, right?

And so Black women have had the testimony.

And now, it's sort of okay for a MAGA influencer to say that Black women have brains that process more slowly than any... And nobody challenges that.

Nobody- - Charlie Kirk.

- Right, comes to the aid of Black women in that moment.

So I think the recklessness that this moment invites is making visible what has been invisible or under acknowledged for a long time.

And they're giving us the answer that they want us to internalize, which is the women are the problem, the Black women are the problem, et cetera.

- You've talked a little bit about sort of Christian nationalism, white supremacy inside some Christian churches.

What about the Black church?

What about sort of the role of religion generally in this, Naomi?

- Christianity in general does have patriarchy embedded.

- Has a patriarchy problem?

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So readings of the Christian scriptures are necessarily dipped in patriarchy.

And I think the same thing is true for majority-minority Christian congregations, Latinx congregations, Black congregations, right?

There's patriarchy there as well.

And so one of the things I'm grappling with with faith communities right now who are waking up to this authoritarian problem is you got to root out the manifestations of authoritarianism in your own congregation, within these four walls before you're ready to really make an argument, outside of these walls with integrity.

So churches are having to play that inside, outside game, right?

What can we do inside to confess the ways in which we have participated in and promoted this very evil inside our own four walls?

And then what is our responsibility, given that our tradition has, again, sanctified much of this, to be a public witness, to counter the Christian nationalist narrative?

- Nina, you've also written about why some of this stuff works, specifically on some of the women that kind of go along, and Melania is just one of them.

Why does this stuff resonate, even with some women?

Lots of them.

White women have voted majority for this guy twice.

- They love to talk about how feminist or progressive women are miserable.

They hate motherhood.

They hate children.

And yet they are actually, massively beneficiaries of the second wave of feminism.

I mean, at one level what resonates is it's transactional.

I mean, you know, the Melania thing is a transactional, but everything that Trump is and Trumpism is transactional.

- They're all making money.

- If you are not cheating on your taxes when you can get away with it, you are a chump leaving money on the table.

And that's the mentality that goes with it that these women, they have attached themselves to.

Now, is it good for them?

You know, is this going to be a long-term win?

I mean, you know, one of the things that's so fascinating is the Mar-a-Lago face.

You know, the Betty Boop femininity thing.

- I have got to turn to, what do we do about all this?

Because I'm just feeling buried in what a big mountain we have to climb.

But Annie, coming back to you for a second.

You also write powerfully, as do others with PRA, about why authoritarians fear feminism, and women's organizing, and femmes.

- Well, research shows that across history, when women and feminist-led fronts are out in front of a pro-democracy coalition, we win.

And, you know, the Trump regime and authoritarians around the world, they know that.

And so we often see when authoritarians begin to take power, often, as they have in this particular wave of autocracy, through elections and through the democratic process itself, we often see that women's rights and LGBTQ rights are some of the first to go.

And that is certainly what we're seeing in the United States with waves of attacks at the legislative level against trans rights, with the fall of Roe v. Wade, which is a much longer term strategy, right?

So we're seeing this pattern unfold in the United States.

And what we also see is that authoritarians often attack feminist movements because they are fully aware of the immense power that they have.

And we see this pattern over and over again.

So to turn this into sort of a positive, we have models to look at.

So I look a lot to the experience of feminist movements in Poland, in Argentina, in Mexico, all across Latin America where I've done a lot of my own research.

In Poland, a feminist-led movement inspired a lot by young feminists and young women out in the streets, was able to reverse the authoritarian turn that they took there.

I think we can look to the streets of Minneapolis, and what is happening, and to an anti-authoritarian resistance that is happening right here in our streets, and our homes, and our communities that is often also led unsurprisingly by women and trans and queer people.

- You've written about that, Naomi, caregiving being mutual aid.

I saw a story the other day about women in Minneapolis donating breast milk for babies whose mothers had been seized.

It is extraordinary, and there is clearly a counter narrative.

How are you telling it?

- Care, first of all, is, I think, a political act, the idea that we belong to each other, right?

Which is often seeded by the women and femmes in any community, right?

And so that's another reason that women and femmes are dangerous because we tend to, and, throughout history, have been able to embody and practice care in ways that subvert the political establishment.

The other thing that I've been trying to work on with partners of PRA and other parts of the kind of progressive pro-democracy movement is on what we would call a pillars strategy.

So in a nutshell, and this is what we've been saying, this whole conversation, the authoritarian essentially only has the power that we give it, right?

So for example, the Christian tradition has lent its power, its spiritual authority, its human resources, its material resources to the authoritarian regime.

And the regime is then able to use that as a source of its own power, right?

So what we want to do is get people to understand that the authoritarian is much weaker than they purport to be, and we have much more power than we think we have, right?

So it's about getting folk to shift their loyalties, get out of the pillar that's literally holding up authoritarianism by resourcing it with power.

Why don't you withdraw your cooperation from that pillar, right?

What if Christian communities around the country withdrew their support, implicit and explicit support, for this regime?

Then, the regime can no longer use the power of Christianity, the texts of Christianity, the rituals of Christianity to resource its own agenda.

- And the religious pillar is just one.

You have also the pillars of the media and you have the pillars of social services and caregiving.

I mean, you name it.

- Absolutely.

- The challenge that I've been facing, and I'd love all of your help with this really, is I want to take the Epstein story seriously.

Every time I look at it, it is beyond blood-curdling and serious and has implications in all the areas that you've described, Nina.

At the same time, it is so disempowering to hear about this kind of business as usual amongst this whole cabal of guys that spreads into every sector of our rich and wealthy influential world.

How do you maintain your spirit?

Especially you, Nina.

Your writings are hysterically funny as well as sharp and angry, and yet I think a lot of journalists are just kind of, "Well, I can't handle that, so I'm just not going to try to integrate that into this story that I'm writing about fascism."

- I disagree actually, that it's like not having an effect.

The head of Paul Weiss has resigned.

I mean the guy who first bent the knee to the disgusting attack on the law firms.

He had to quit.

All these guys in Europe who thought Epstein was so great who walk around, these metrosexual Scandinavians who run Europe, they're his buddies, they're quitting left and right.

These people are being exposed.

It matters that they're being exposed.

They're still running things.

Larry Summers... And you know what?

People looking at that, men who might be inclined are like, "This is bigger than the Me Too.

This is like, oh, you lose your job.

You know, and you don't do that.

You don't hang with sex traffickers."

It's depressing because it's exposing this, and it's also exposing stuff that's happened before.

And it's receding in the rear view mirror as we careen into this chaotic fascist situation.

But I think that it's exposing things.

And I mean obviously it's exposing things, but I think it matters.

And that's how I would answer that.

I don't love writing about it.

And, you know, I have an assistant who spends more time eyeballing it because my eyes literally cannot go through those files.

But I think that in the end there's going to be credit due that they actually opened all this and showed people like, this is how it works, man.

They did it dragging their heels.

But thanks to MTG and the Republican from Kentucky, who I totally disagree with on everything, they actually were pressing for it.

It was ridiculous that they used this as their juice, their conspiracy theory juice, and the QAnon juice.

And it's disgusting that they managed to take what Epstein, and Trump, and their cabal were doing with women and literally turn that with that QAnon.

It's like one of the great psyops in human history.

And turn that so that millions of people think, oh, Hillary and Podesta were eating babies and having sex with children.

It's incredible.

That is a massive operation.

That's a psyop.

That was something that they cooked up.

- So coming to you, Annie.

A message to reporters who are covering what is happening right now in our lives.

How would you urge them, apart from going to PRA, which has been there for what?

45 years doing excellent opposition research among other things.

Has an incredible archive of material.

And all hail to Jean Hardisty.

Apart from consulting with you all, what's your advice to them about how to tell this story of now?

- To return to the question about Epstein, and the Epstein files, and this scandal of sexual violence that we're seeing, I think one of the things that this tells us is that, you know, sexual violence and sexism is really naturalized and taken for granted in our broader culture.

And that is something that has to change.

And so we have many examples both in our own history as well as around the world to look to.

We need to tell more of those stories.

There are many stories of action that are happening, of organizing that is both effective and moving.

And, again, I want to return to the streets of Minneapolis and also just to the streets of Chicago where we also, before Minneapolis, witnessed a militarized, masculinist force of immigration agents on our streets engaging in brutal force, right, and being met with an immense and loving resistance that, again, is led by women, queer, and trans people.

And those are inspiring stories of standing up to authoritarianism, that I think that journalists can tell.

There is so much incredible organizing going on and the building of lasting, enduring networks, that is what is going to help us be able to reverse this authoritarian breakthrough and consolidation, that I think we need to be telling those stories.

- This whole conversation, I've been thinking a lot about what festering wounds reap, right?

What Nina and Annie have been saying is that this is a moment, this is an apocalyptic moment.

The truest sense of the word apocalypse is revelation, right?

These political moments reveal the extent to which we have wounds that we did not tend to that have not fully healed.

- Naomi, Nina, and Annie, I really appreciate you being with us here today.

Thanks for your time and for your thinking on this.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

(cymbal crash) - There's a reason we talk more about power on this program than individual people.

Take Jeffrey Epstein.

The man is dead, but the power problem lives on.

The files not only revealed a whole lot of individual predators, but also an entire ecosystem of money, and power, and abuse, and protection by bankers, and billionaires, and politicians, and protectors, many of whom continue to wield enormous power at the very height of our society today.

Put that creepy picture next to another, one of a sprawling network of secretive detention centers and camps where tens of thousands of people, including women and girls, are hidden away in far off places and moved from camp to camp and state to state and cage to cage without documents or phones or anyone to hear their calls.

We do not come to this moment uninformed.

We know about women abused in detention.

We know about children disappeared for years.

We know about trans people supposedly put in solitary for their own protection, but abused.

And we know that misogynists don't come wearing clan hoods or slave patrol badges, but look like anyone raised in our sexist, hierarchical society who believes they can get away with being cruel.

So if Congress fails to prosecute the powerful and tear down this system today, they are not only failing to prevent the next Jeffrey Epstein from coming around, they are using federal policy to build and maintain his trafficking machine.

You can find my full uncut conversation with today's guests through subscribing to our free podcast, or my Substack, or our newsletter.

All the information's at the website.

We have some changes coming.

You'll want to be in touch and stay up to date with us.

Till the next time, stay kind, stay curious.

For "Laura Flanders and Friends," I'm Laura.

Thanks for joining me.

(upbeat music) For more on this episode and other forward-thinking content, subscribe to our free newsletter for updates, my commentaries, and our full, uncut conversations.

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