Super Bowl recap, AI shakes Wall Street, Trump's Obama video, Epstein fallout & Winter Olympics | Ep. 56

Conner Jones: [00:00:06] Hi, I'm Conner Jones.

Micah Tomasella: [00:00:07] I'm Micah Tomasella.

Conner Jones: [00:00:09] And this is Culture Brief, a Denson Forum podcast where we navigate the constant stream of top stories and news, politics, sports, pop culture, technology, and so much more. We do it all from a Christian perspective. And Micah, the Seattle Seahawks are the Super Bowl champions. You kind of predicted it a few weeks ago. What do you know?

Micah Tomasella: [00:00:26] Well, I I said the Patriots were going to win, right? But I did say the Super Bowl. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. I did, I did pick the Patriots, but I did say in the Super Bowl before the playoffs started that it was going to be the Seahawks and the Patriots. Um, and I think the only reason why I was rooting for the Patriots was because I picked the Patriots to win and I could come on the podcast and gloat that I got it correct. But alas, I got it pretty close. Yeah, so Connor, we've got quite a few things to talk about. You and I are going to just give everybody kind of a cultural roundup. There's so many big stories and so we want to make sure that we're covering all of them. We're going to talk about the Super Bowl. Um, there was a lot less talk about the actual game and the commercials and a lot more talk about the halftime show. We're going to spend some time on that, but not too much time, I promise. Uh, we're going to talk about AI, some shifting in the market the last week and kind of some of the in fighting amongst the AI CEOs and even some of the shots taken at certain AI companies from other certain AI companies. We're going to talk about the, um, the Trump AI video that was tweeted out from his account, uh, that has to do with the Obamas. We're going to talk about more Epstein fallout as more of these, again, they released millions of documents on a single day. So it's going to take some time for this thing to, you know, for this to actually be combed through. And then we're going to talk a little bit about the Winter Olympics and what's going on for the US over there in Italy and so much more. So let's jump into the brief.

Conner Jones: [00:01:53] The brief.

Micah Tomasella: [00:01:58] All right, so let's talk about the Super Bowl. Let's talk about the game, the halftime. So it was a dominant defensive performance that carried the Seattle Seahawks to a 29 to 13 win over the New England Patriots. 98% of the country was rooting for the Seahawks, um, because the Patriots have just been so dominant, um, in this century. And it was not a very good game. In fact, I struggled to even want to watch it after halftime.

Conner Jones: [00:02:25] I watched. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you texted me in the third quarter and said you turned the game off. Is that right?

Micah Tomasella: [00:02:30] I did. I did for a little while. I switched it over. My wife wanted to watch something else. I was like, honestly, this is these commercials aren't that great and I've already seen the halftime show and I already know how the game's going to go based off what I saw in the first half. It's going to be a defensive dominating game and it was just, uh, I was like, man, uh, I don't care if either of these teams win. And so I just turned it off for a little bit, but then I turned it off, turned it back on at the end to see the Seahawks seal it and win it.

Conner Jones: [00:02:58] Yeah, they did. What about you? What was your experience like? I'm not, I'm not necessarily complaining. I mean, it's a, it's an American pastime and holiday. I do love the Super Bowl, but this one just felt, I don't know, just a little bit different.

Micah Tomasella: [00:03:08] This one felt very meh, uh, all around. The game, I personally, and I know we're going to talk about the halftime show, I didn't like love the halftime show. I felt that was kind of meh. And then I felt like the commercials were very meh. Like I just all around a stinker in my opinion. This happens every now and then. Uh, sometimes you get a stinker of a game. Sometimes you get a game that goes to overtime. So it just that was like two years ago, right? When we had the Chiefs and you got Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift in the audience, like that changes the the dynamics of the game. So I think a lot of people knew this was going to be a defensive game with these two teams and I think everybody knew the Patriots might have been a fraud of a team with an easy schedule that beat a backup quarterback in a blizzard two weeks ago and made their way to the Super Bowl and they were always going to get dominated. It just good for the Seahawks though. I mean, you know, they pulled it off. They did have a dominant defense. You cannot deny that. They won. Sam Darnold, redemption story, guy who was pretty much written off a few years ago and now he just quarterbacked.

Conner Jones: [00:04:00] Yeah, he played for the Jets. So it can't get any worse than that. You know, he played for the Jets.

Micah Tomasella: [00:04:07] Truly. I mean, just a death wish in the career.

Conner Jones: [00:04:09] You know, I think, I think, um, I think it was less about the Patriots not being for real and more about how for real the Seahawks were. I think, um, gone are the days it seems like now that the now that sorry, the the Chiefs dynasty seems to kind of be over. We'll see. Um, when you have Patrick Mahomes, you always have a chance. But at the same time, Sam Darnold, most people even after this probably would not rate him as a top 10 quarterback in the NFL. And so it's really all about complimentary football. All three phases, offense, defense, and then your special teams, all doing their jobs, all feeding into each other, and then you just holistically can dominate a team on every side of the ball. And that's exactly what happened.

Micah Tomasella: [00:04:58] Yeah, even special teams. The Seahawks kicker, five field goals. That's the most ever in Super Bowl history. So everybody came out and did their job. And I know Kenneth Walker III, he got the Super Bowl MVP, which is great. Um, he played pretty well. There was nobody that really stood out. I guess it was him. Um, but he's a good guy, good player as well. Had 135 yards on 27 carries. So good for him. Uh, but Micah, as you said, it's it definitely felt like most of the country was talking about the halftime show, either just about Bad Bunny in general or the split with the Kid Rock show and the online discourse was pretty, uh, pretty active during the halftime show if you were on any social media, you saw people posting who they were watching, why they were watching it and making their opinions loud and clear, but all around, what were your thoughts there?

Conner Jones: [00:05:46] I mean, I just didn't like it because I think it kind of steals the joy. It kind of stole some of the joy and brought way more politics into the Super Bowl than I would ever want. And the discussion wasn't about the teams that persevered and got there. It wasn't even about the commercials that like there were some funny commercials in there. Like we didn't really get to talk about that, you know, it just felt like, I mean, we didn't host a Super Bowl party this year. We didn't go to a Super Bowl party. It was kind of nice to just relax and watch it. Um, but I don't think I would have wanted to wanted to go to a Super Bowl party this year because it was just there was so much dogma surrounding it. And I think that you can kind of blame both sides for that because here's what's happened is like, if you're watching the Turning Point USA show, you're this. If you're watching the actual halftime show, you're this. Like it automatically means you're this. And I just think it overall, it's somewhat of a trivial thing to argue about. I just think that there's um more things that we can unite on and coales around than if we like a halftime show or not. And here's all I'll say. I have seen so many worse halftime shows than that one. I mean, we have not had a great halftime show in a while. And I think this one wasn't bad. I think it told a story, somewhat interesting, you know. Um, even though I I didn't understand like a word that he was saying, like it had a good beat and I thought it was like a good vibe. I think is kind of like what's like coming out of it. I didn't have a overall huge issue with it. Um, I also thought there was a chance that he could have been more divisive there and he he wasn't. Like I I didn't really have a huge issue with much of it. You know, and there's there's people who are going to come back and be upset that I said that. But uh, I just think it wasn't that bad and in terms of halftime shows that we've seen over the years, that actually means it was probably okay. It was probably good, you know?

Micah Tomasella: [00:07:45] Just how I felt about it. Yeah, I agree. It's he actually reiterated the statement he said at the Grammy's the weekend before, the the previous Sunday. At the end, it showed on all the screens and I think it said it on the football that he was holding. Uh, the only thing more powerful than hate is love and together we are America. That was kind of the primary message of his thing. And I actually think that was in a way a great thing to say. Like he had this opportunity. A lot of people thought he was going to make it divisive, make it political, and he didn't. Um, I I I'm right there with you. There was a story, it was a party vibe. He had a bunch of cameos from big time Latin celebrities and the music was not for me. Like I think it sounds better in my headphones probably too coming then coming through the TV speakers. Like that's just different. Um, I did not personally enjoy watching that. In fact, my wife and I were both like, this just doesn't sound great. That's not exactly his fault. It's also daytime in California during the Super Bowl, which just felt wrong. And so this is like a daytime halftime show. Like the sun's still up. It felt weird.

Conner Jones: [00:08:36] Yeah, I just kind of liked that it was almost kind of like a musical. It was almost kind of like like it took you through all these different sets and I think the unique nature of it of why I was like, okay, like this isn't half bad because it was taking you through a story from start to finish of like being in Puerto Rico and a family and like all of these different things and it there's this wedding ceremony. Um, I just thought it was I thought it was like really unique, but I mean, overall, we're sitting here and we're talking about this the entire time. I have felt like and I think we've said this like the last two weeks. Guys, there's bigger things to worry about than Super Bowl halftime shows. Um and this has felt like a trivial matter to me. Like it like, you know, if you're thinking about, oh, hey guys, are you news or you commentary? Well, I mean, overall, we're covering the news every week and then we're giving our commentary, we're giving a biblical application of it. But if you really look back and you look at all of the stories that we've talked about, there's been so much emotion and vitriol all around this story that I wish there was more more uh emotion towards some of these other stories that we've talked about, um that's actually more like life or death type stuff, you know? Uh actual geopolitical, you know, uh consequences type stuff. So it just the whole time I've just been like, why are we so mad right now? But I think it's just kind of a it's just an example of like where where our culture is and just kind of where the divide is right now. It's just sad.

Micah Tomasella: [00:09:56] No, you're exactly right. Um, I think it is fair to say that the Turning Point USA show did get a decent audience as well. Yeah. And from I I watched clips of that one. I watched the Bad Bunny one live. I was watching clips and kind of on Twitter as that was going on live and it was clear that Kid Rock was definitely lip sinking. His words did not match up at all. So I thought that was kind of funny. But at the end, he did pay tribute to Charlie Kirk and added a verse to one of his songs about the gospel and saying, you know, you need Jesus before you don't have the opportunity to to to accept him essentially, which I think is pretty cool. Um, that said, it it was a very small audience in compared to uh what NBC got over there. And it I I think it was like 128 million total is who watched the Super Bowl this year. It's a little bit less than last year, which was the record breaker.

Conner Jones: [00:10:39] But uh year before it was 133. I just read it. 133 a year before, 125 this year, I believe.

Micah Tomasella: [00:10:48] Okay. Well, I'll I'll find the numbers and post a link in the in the show notes so we can get the exact numbers right. Either way, massive audience there and that's the way the Super Bowl goes. I did want to point out something that Jackson Smith and Jigba said. Now, this is the guy who won offensive rookie of the I'm sorry, offensive player of the year. Best wide receiver in the league this year by far. He's on the Seahawks. He's now a Super Bowl champion. And this guy, if you just listen to him talk, it's really cool. He talks about his faith, he talks about growing up, his dad helping him get on the right path with football and everything.

Conner Jones: [00:11:17] And from a young age. He's a DFW guy. He's from Rockwall, Texas.

Micah Tomasella: [00:11:20] Yeah, let's go. He's a Texas boy. And Christian Gonzalez, who was the best defender on the on the um field the other night is from the Colony, Texas too. He was on the Patriots. So

Conner Jones: [00:11:29] The most the the most players playing in the Super Bowl like from any state like was Texas. Like from Texas it was like um 15 players in the Super Bowl were from Texas and the second one was California with 13. Isn't that crazy?

Micah Tomasella: [00:11:43] It's it's it's crazy, but that's just Texas man. Two totally opposite coast teams, you know? Yeah, for sure. Uh, well, anyways, Jackson Smith and Jigba after he won the offensive player of the year, he posted a video and he just he said, I give all the glory to God and my faith comes first. That's what I stand on. That's who I am. Everything else is everything else. I am a follower of Christ. I'm a son, I'm a brother, and then I'm a football player. But Jesus for me is everything. This is who I do it for. I'm here to serve him and to serve others. Man, that is the mentality to have. And I know a lot of players have that mentality. I saw sports spectrum was going around asking these Super Bowl players about their faith and so many of them kind of reiterated the same thing. And it's just like at the end of the day, we can talk about halftime shows, we can talk about all the divisiveness, all the what's commercial, blah blah blah blah blah all this, but at the end of the day, man, when Jesus is glorified, it's so cool. And these guys glorifying Jesus in the moment where they could be as prideful as they want to be and the world would be okay with it. They're pushing the glory to God. That's what's amazing.

Conner Jones: [00:12:35] Well, Connor, thanks for pointing that out because this is what he said there is not going to go viral. It's not going to grab all the headlines. It's not sensational. It doesn't arouse fear or an extreme emotion in you. But this is the type of thing that we should be talking about, especially on our podcast. Somebody giving all glory to God at the absolute pinnacle, taking glory away from themselves and giving it to God, the author, the creator, the one who gifted him and placed him there. So that's a beautiful thing. All right, Connor, let's talk AI.

Micah Tomasella: [00:13:08] AI. Yeah, and it's interesting. Let's I I want to bring this up because one of the things that happened during the Super Bowl was if you were watching the commercials, you could not miss the AI ads. They were just every three or four ads was

Conner Jones: [00:13:20] And they were they were compelling. They were compelling.

Micah Tomasella: [00:13:22] Some of them were compelling. Uh especially Anthropic, which is one that has, as you mentioned earlier, there's been some like in fighting between the CEOs of these companies. Anthropic, whose model is called Claude, we use that here at Denson Ministries actually for some of our developing on our website ends. It helps us out with coding. That's kind of its been its expertise, but they launched a new model last week uh that's getting more wide release and more people are learning about Anthropic and all that. Well, they had a commercial that kind of was a dig at Open AI because Open AI recently announced in chat GPT, they are going to have advertising. If you saw their ad, it was kind of digging at that and saying, you know, you're soon going to be engaging with AI that's going to drop in a promo code to buy a pair of shoes, you know, things like that trying to suggest algorithmic purchases and all that. That was a dig and Sam Altman was not happy about that. He posted on Twitter a big like, this is a wrong way to, you know, understand how we're going to do ads and all that. He was not very happy. But all that to say, yeah, man, the ads were everywhere. In fact, they made up a quarter, almost a quarter. I think 23% of the ads during the Super Bowl were from AI companies or like Microsoft showing their and Google showing their AI models. It's here, man, and it's not going away and they are spending big bucks to make sure we know it's here.

Conner Jones: [00:14:32] Yep.

Micah Tomasella: [00:14:33] That said, it's also really affecting the markets and we've talked a lot about how AI is going to upend the workplace and white collar jobs and all kinds of different things and productivity down the road. But last week, man, the markets really reacted because of Anthropic's new model, Chat GPT released a new model that kind of showed they've got more coding capabilities than we've known and they are kind of working to replace software companies. So that that really tanked companies like Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe, they all lost big time in the stock market last week. It's kind of come back up this week as people have started to realize maybe there was a panic sell there. Um, but these new workplace assistant tools, they're really kind of adapted for specific white collar industries, specifically legal and data software, which is what those companies specialize in. If you look at Salesforce and stuff, their whole thing is data, helping companies improve their data, uh, software as a service companies. And so a lot of people were calling this like the sauce apocalypse because these

Conner Jones: [00:15:31] It sounds SaaS apocalypse. Is it SaaS or sauce? I never know. I always read it and I I just don't even know.

Micah Tomasella: [00:15:35] I think it's SaaS. Um, sauce apocalypse sounds like something to do with some various sauces, ranch and Alfredo sauce, barbecue sauce, just is gone. Barbecue, honey mustard, ketchup. I keep going. Like the condiment aisle is just empty. Yeah, that's on me. I probably said that wrong.

Conner Jones: [00:15:53] All that to say, some of those stocks started recovering this. So you really took me off on a train, the rabbit trail. Uh, some of the stocks started recovering this week though and investors are starting to, you know, to figure out was that a panic or not. These companies are trying to say, don't worry, we are still going to be around. AI is not going to take our jobs. We're going to actually use AI to improve our capabilities. But it might be true, man. If AI can build software faster than a human coder can, why would people, why would companies not use that as a service?

Micah Tomasella: [00:16:20] Totally. Right. Totally.

Conner Jones: [00:16:22] But yeah, man, they they spent a lot of money on these Super Bowls ads. That's not new. We saw this in 2000 with the .com companies, you know, like pets.com and epidemic.com, lifeminders.com, all bought Super Bowl ads and then a few months later the .com bubble burst and they were all not even existing anymore. We saw it with uh the crypto bowl in 2022 where all those crypto companies bought ads as well and then a few months later FTX was in a fraud scandal and crypto.com was struggling and Coinbase, their shares tanked. So AI is kind of doing what those companies did. Buy up a lot of things, bring up awareness, but will they stick around? I don't know, man. We'll see.

Micah Tomasella: [00:16:57] We'll see.

Conner Jones: [00:16:58] All that to say, AI is here. We're going to have to learn how to adapt and as Christians, we're going to keep talking about that. Uh we just released an article this week on Denson Forum about churches using AI. So go read that. I'll link that in the show notes as well. But oh yeah. Yeah, Micah, what are you any last thoughts on this AI kind of just weird market last week?

Micah Tomasella: [00:17:18] I don't know. This might just be like more of a personal anecdote. Um, none of this surprises me. More importantly, none of this surprises God. So let's all take a deep breath when we see some of this stuff. But secondly, if you haven't used any kind of AI tool yet, give it a shot. Start to ask it questions, start to learn it. Uh oddly enough, it starts to learn you. You got to kind of get more comfortable with that, right? Um, but it's it's actually a really helpful tool. And so I just I don't think the answer is to be like, oh, I'm never going to touch that stuff. I mean, maybe if you're like, you're done with your career or whatever and you've already retired. Yeah, you know what? You don't got to learn something new. That's fine. Like I get that, right? But why not? Give it a shot. Get Grock or chat GPT or Claude or something, just get a free version and just start asking it questions. It's actually pretty cool.

Conner Jones: [00:18:07] Yeah, I mean, I've I've I've definitely been asking it questions to try to learn how these things answer, try to learn how it can help productivity, even things around the house, like just asking like, how does this thing work? Chat GPT, explain to me how to fix this electronic item that I'm struggling with, you know, all that stuff. So and it's it's quick with it, man. It really does respond pretty fast.

Micah Tomasella: [00:18:25] I will literally like take a photo of just like a bunch of random ingredients that like I have in my pantry like the day before grocery shopping. I'm like, what can I make with all of this? And it it gives me something good. I mean, it's just it's just fun. Okay. All right. Well, let's talk about um Trump's video, AI video that uh he reposted that was on his Truth Social account for 12 hours. Um so this week brought brought one of the most talked about viral political moments so far in 2026. A video shared on President Trump uh on his social media included an AI generated imagery at the end depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as primates. Um this is a racist kind of trope, uh thought with with a long and painful history. The clip was a part of a longer election fraud related video that Trump was posting and this was just kind of thrown in at the very end. It it seemed somewhat random. Um but the the primate imagery posted during Black History month sparked universal across both aisles immediate condemnation from public figures across the political spectrum. The White House initially defended it, um and they said that it was a meme and then they blamed a staffer for the upload, which is still the story. But ultimately deleted it roughly 12 hours later. I'll tell you what the straw was that broke the camel's back. The backlash wasn't just partisan as I said, the only um black Republican senator is Tim Scott and he called it, he tweeted it out and he said, this is the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House. Well, other Republicans urged an apology. Democrats and civil rights leaders described the imagery as dehumanizing, offensive, everything everybody was pretty much on the same page about that. Uh President Trump did not issue a formal apology saying he'd not watched the full video before it was posted and that while he condemned the racist portion, he did not believe he had to personally apologize because he had not done anything wrong. The incident has renewed wider conversations around like AI generated media and video and its usefulness and how it's being used in politics and to take people down and what it has to do with race and is there accountability in this? How do we create accountability in this and how quickly online stuff like this can escalate into um how like a 60-second AI video can become the biggest story just like that, right? Um you can just give AI software three words and it can start to create an entire video. I mean, it's just it's just unbelievable. But I digress on that part. Connor, what was your reaction to all that?

Conner Jones: [00:21:11] Well, first off to what you're saying, you're right about the power of AI videos, which is maybe why the president of the United States should not be engaging with AI videos at all. Um and this is not the first time. I mean, he's been posting videos created by AI for over a year. Anyways, uh, yeah, man, I found that video and that image that went around from that kind of one second split second in the in the video to be terrible. I could not even believe it. And I found out about it because I was I saw Tim Scott's the the senator you just mentioned, his tweet about it. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. If Tim Scott's saying something then this is legit. And I I looked at it and I was like, oh my gosh. And then it started to blow up.

Micah Tomasella: [00:21:49] He's a close, close, close ally of Trump.

Conner Jones: [00:21:51] Tim Scott was a vice presidential contender. I mean, like with JD Vance and Marco Rubio was being considered to be Trump's vice president. They are they are very close. And for him to come out and and just condemn the White House like that and say this is the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House is pretty bad. And man, the image is terrible. Uh and we obviously stand strongly against racism and I was very disappointed by this post and disappointed to to see it, man. It it stunk.

Micah Tomasella: [00:22:16] Yeah, we're going to link, um, I actually got a lot of my information for this, uh, from a Denson Forum article that Dr. Jim Denson wrote and produced on Sunday, um, this past Sunday. So we're going to link the link to that article that just kind of broke it down, the history of that type of, um, imagery. Yeah. What would be the right word? He kind of breaks that down and just talks about how, you know, there's nothing wrong with apologizing. It's probably the right thing to do, you know, things like that. So

Conner Jones: [00:22:50] Yeah, but Trump's pride, it's not going to let him apologize.

Micah Tomasella: [00:22:52] Yeah, there's just, um, there's just no defense for it. Like there's a lot of issues that you can kind of go back and forth like pros and cons and you and I try to do a really good job so that we can show both sides to whatever the story is. There, I mean, it's it's just indefensible.

Conner Jones: [00:23:08] Yeah. So it really is. The only thing you could say and what the White House is saying is, yeah, this was a staffer and it was just it was at the end of the video and President Trump didn't see it, which who knows if that's true or not. The part of the problem is the president is on his phone in the middle of the night posting. So, uh, yeah, I don't know. And the video that it was about was actually about the Georgia election fraud and a whole thing with that, which is a whole another story we won't even get into right now. But yeah, it was disappointing, man. Um, sad to see it. I I I would wish we'd get better from the leader of the free world and of our country. But alas, we're all fallen and so is President Trump and so there will be moments of extreme weakness there and we'll talk a bit more about that here in a minute. I also want to hit on all the Epstein fallout this week, Micah, because like you said at the beginning, man, 3 million documents, people are still parsing through this. And when I say people, I mean like every day people, you got the journalists doing it too, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, they've got entire teams dedicated to parsing through all these documents, but there's a lot of just citizen journalists out on social media that are like going through them and pointing out things that they're finding in these documents and trying to alert congressmen when they find something really egregious and dude, if I could say one thing, it's just that there are some really dark, horrid things in some of these communications between Epstein and his friends. And his friends are these people in power all over the world. And we've talked about this a million times. I mean, there there are just there are Middle East leaders, there are British leaders, there are Hollywood stars, there are people on Wall Street and politics, everything. This man was in the middle of the most elite circles in the world and he was a shadow to the rest of us forever until this all started to come out in 2019, but everybody else seemed to know who he was. And if your name is just tied to it at all or anywhere in these files, it's not great. Uh, as Politico put in their Tuesday morning newsletter that much of DC reads, they said, 10 days on from the DOJ's mass dump of Epstein files data, the revelations keep on coming. The files thus far have largely exposed a murky world of conspiring elites with questionable moral standards. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. I mean, these these people, even if they did not do anything illegal, a lot of the ways that they're talking about, um, young women or other people, it's just nasty and it's all getting exposed. Like it it shows a weakness of, um, standards, of morality, of just anything of decency with the way that a lot of them are talking. I'm not even going to say any of the things they're saying. If you are interested to find out, you can go look at some of the stuff that's out there on social media, but it's pretty bad. Um, and people who are well respected.

Micah Tomasella: [00:25:39] It's not lighthearted stuff.

Conner Jones: [00:25:41] No, it's absolutely not. So, um, and some of the other things more specifically that have been found, let's talk about some of the the the reactions that have happened, uh, and some of the things that are coming out of this new file dump. One of the things is from 2006, uh, there was a phone call with, uh, an FBI interviewer who was talking to the former Palm Beach police chief. Palm Beach is where Epstein had one of his houses. Um, he was talking to police chief Michael Ryder. And in the interview, Ryder recalls a phone call that he said he received from Donald Trump himself in 2006 when the first investigation on Epstein was actually underway. Uh, he recalled Trump saying, thank goodness you're stopping him. Everyone has known he's been doing this. And then Trump said Ghislaine Maxwell, which is Epstein's like right-hand person, who a lot of you will know who that is. He said, she is evil and recommended that they focus on her. Trump also told Ryder that he was around Epstein once when teenagers were present and that Trump got the expletive out of there for the uh FBI report.

Micah Tomasella: [00:26:38] That was from an interview in 2006 he gave.

Conner Jones: [00:26:40] The FBI interviewed this police chief in 2019. He's recalling a 2006 phone call where Donald Trump was trying to put him on Epstein and say, hey, this guy's doing bad stuff. Uh as Trump found out that they were starting to investigate there back in 2006. This the reason this is important is because it kind of directly contradicts Trump's public statements in 2019 that he had known nothing about Epstein's activities where now it seems like maybe he did actually know about that and he was trying to tell the police about it. Uh but it also corroborates the fact that Trump has long said he had a fallout with Epstein and that they did not talk anymore and he kicked him out of Maralago and stuff.

Micah Tomasella: [00:27:15] Well, there was that whole story where he kicked him out of his country club, um, in the early 2000s because he was doing stuff. So it it it just kind of seemed like, here's the problem. This is cover-up culture. It happens in the church too. There's a lot of controversy happening in like the charismatic church movement right now too with this stuff, but it's like all of these people, they either participated in it or they knew about it and they were disgusted by it, but then they did nothing about it. They were completely silent about it. They in essence covered it up by not doing anything about it. Right. Um and so in a way, that implicates everyone involved that knew Jeffrey Epstein because it kind of seems like especially towards the end, everybody knew what this guy was doing and what he was about. Like it was it's it's hard to say many people were ignorant if they were close with him at all to what was going on.

Conner Jones: [00:28:03] It's very reminiscent of Harvey Weinstein, the the Hollywood mogul who was the Me too movement started with him. Everybody in Hollywood knew what that guy was doing and so they were in a way complicit uh by not bringing it up and just keep keeping a cover up going for so long, right? Um, also, on Monday, Ghislaine Maxwell, who I mentioned a minute ago, actually appeared before the House oversight committee, but she pled the fifth the entire time. She would not answer any questions, but her legal team did argue that she could clear both Trump and Bill Clinton's name in exchange for clemency from the president to end that 20-year sentence that she's currently serving in prison. So she's trying to get out of prison. She's saying she can clear their name. Who knows if she actually can?

Micah Tomasella: [00:28:45] But if it's just her word, how does that because that's just her doing whatever she can to get out of it. I'm I'm not implying the current president or former president for sure did something. I'm just saying like, wouldn't she have to bring evidence of some sort?

Conner Jones: [00:28:59] Man, you would think so. I I maybe she's got something somewhere that she could bring out. I don't know. I I really don't. But I imagine this is the card she's been holding this whole time and she's got this way to to clear their names and in the hopes that she could get out of prison. Um, anyways, there's also a small bipartisan group of congressmen who on Monday were able to finally go see the unredacted versions. So all the 3 million documents have redactions in them. They're supposed to be redacting the names of potential victims, but there's a lot of redactions that are very clearly email correspondence that's like, whoa, Epstein's talking to somebody there that is not a victim. He's he's saying some terrible things. This is clearly not going to be a victim. And so these congressmen went in and they were able to see these unredacted versions on some laptops and they're saying that they found six more names of very powerful, influential men who they are willing to release the names if the DOJ does not go back and fix the unredactions. That does potentially include Les Wexner, who a lot of people have always tied back to Epstein. Les Wexner is the founder and owner of Victoria's Secret. Everybody knows that his money is likely where Epstein actually got financing from, uh, back in even the 80s and 90s when Les Wexner, man, he's been able to kind of hide out all these years, but now they're saying the congressmen are saying they're potentially going to bring him to the House oversight uh committee to to testify before Congress next week. He's in his late 80s now, I believe. Um, but it's been well known for a long time that he might be tied, but they're saying he might be a co-conspirator in the trafficking. So we will see if he will come and testify before Congress next week and answer some pretty hard questions. Additionally, the pressure is on Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, also one of the best friends of Donald Trump. He was neighbors with Epstein up in New York. He was also a billionaire and claimed that they did not have connections after 2005 on a podcast live last year. And now it's been very clear through these emails that man, he he was he was not just um talking to Epstein, but he did go to the island in like I can't remember what year, 2010 or something like that. Um, yeah, not great. He said that he wasn't communicating with him after 2005 and that's not exactly the truth. And then more specifically, we're going to potentially see the UK Prime Minister lose his job over this whole thing and he's not even in the files. But Kier Starmer did appoint a guy, his name is Peter Mandelson to be the ambassador to the United States last year, even though he knew Mandelson had connections to Epstein and these documents have revealed that Mandelson did not just have connections, man, he was like best friends with Epstein and very very slimy in a lot of his communications and he was leaking information to Epstein about the uh UK's tax just policy, which is not great. Um and so Starmer is under a lot of heat for that and may be forced to step down.

Micah Tomasella: [00:31:39] Yeah, there there are a lot of implications to this and we're going to do our best to keep you all in the loop. It is widely available, the redacted versions for people to go and look. Um, again, not suggesting you go do that, but if you're curious and if you want to, it's out there and it is publicly released.

Conner Jones: [00:31:59] Uh one more thing, Micah, we had a we had a great article this week on Denson Forum about how to talk to your kids about Epstein's stuff. Um so we'll link that as well. Specifically more so teenagers because your teens are probably if you have teenagers, they're probably talking about this stuff at school or they're seeing it on social media. So how can you engage them in a conversation about what this all is and what it means? Yeah, we'll link that as well.

Micah Tomasella: [00:32:18] Love it. Great plug. Okay, well let's let's wrap up here with talking a little bit about the Winter Olympics that are currently happening right now.

Conner Jones: [00:32:28] The 2026 Winter Olympics are underway right now in Milan and Cortina. It's the first time the winter games have officially split hosting duties between two cities. I thought that that was kind of interesting. Like that's why it's called Milan Cortina is because the figure skating and the hockey and all that stuff, like the arena type things, that's in Milan and the snow sports are in the Alps of Italy. Italy has crazy climate differences from north to south, right? But the northern part of Italy is closer to Switzerland and so they're in the Alps and so that's where you're seeing like um all the snow sports, skiing, uh snowboarding, stuff like that. So from a US standpoint, the big story lines have been strong uh showings in things like snowboarding, Alpine skiing, curling, women's hockey with a mix of veterans and first-time Olympians. The overall vibe for American fans has been upbeat as more medal events roll into the final stretch and I just think like that's just more of what we need. Like we just need Americans cheering on Americans who are at the height of their uh athletic and mental prowess. They've worked their entire life for this. Let's all let's all watch the Olympics and cheer on our fellow Americans to victory. I think that that would be a positive thing for us to all do. But for US viewers, just FYI, if you haven't watched anything yet, NBC and all of its partner networks are carrying the main broadcast while Peacock, like if you have the app, has essentially every event live or on replay that you would ever want to watch. There's also something certain cable networks and streaming networks have something called the gold zone. So anytime that there is like something's about to be awarded or it's kind of at the it's kind of like the Olympic version of like Olympic Red zone. Sorry. So it's like the NFL Red zone but like the Olympic Red zone called the gold zone where it's like this is a competition for the gold medal. This is a medal round, whatever it might be and it'll do like four different boxes. It'll quad box it for you and show you four different events at the same time. I have really been enjoying watching the Olympics so far. What about you?

Micah Tomasella: [00:34:26] Dude, me too. Today I was on my I was kind of like eating lunch and in the background I had the curling on and I got on pins and needles, dude, because it was the it was the end of the US versus Sweden and we ended up getting we didn't we didn't win that match, but the US team got a silver medal, which is still amazing and you just see the I love seeing Olympians and I saw a Luger do it at the same time because I was watching Gold Zone. They had a split screen out. This Luger won the gold medal and the way that they just the celebrate because this has been their life's achievement. They have done so much. It's beautiful. Whether it's curling or skiing, anything, hockey, it's just incredible. I love the Olympics. I'm really excited for snowboard halfpipe to get going. Uh that is my favorite sport to watch. It's always fun. Uh Sean White made that so popular back in the day and I just I I think these people are the most impressive athletes in the world, specifically when figure skaters do backflips and land on one leg. I can't even imagine how you pull that off. It's just incredible. Yeah, he's insane. The achievements these people achieve are just insane. Yeah, I've been enjoying it and I I was also I just want to say I'm sorry to see the end of Lindsey Vonn's career in the way that it did with that crash, but she did try to go out there on a torn ACL, which was risky and also insane. I don't even know how you perform on a torn ACL, but she did for about 13 seconds before she crashed and then broke her leg, which was unfortunate. But hey, she was out there. And I'm mentioning Lindsey Vonn uh because Dr. Jim Denson had a great article this week about Lindsey Vonn uh and kind of the idea of success and failure and what that means. Um and you know, Micah, this week we've seen immense successes and brutal failures both in the highs of the Super Bowl and winning gold medals, even AI has had successes this week and prompting more innovation. But man, we've also seen failures. We have seen the evils of racism and sexual exploitation and the killing of jobs because of AI, right? Like there's highs and lows and as Dr. Jim Denson talked about with Lindsey Vonn, she posted um after the crash, which ended her career essentially because she's 41 years old. This is probably the end of the line for her skiing career. She said the only failure in life is not trying. Uh but then Dr. Denson quoted Francis Chan, a great pastor. And he uh the quote said, our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter. And Dr. Yeah, interesting, right? Kind of a kind of flips everything on its head. Yeah. Uh Dr. Denson then points out that if we do choose faith in the Lord, Satan wants us to do so not because it is true, but because he would rather we manipulate our faith for nefarious ends such as clergy sexual abuse scandals or racism or greed or any other sin that just leaves a stain on our faith. Satan wants to twist our faith to make us look hypocritical, to make Christianity look bad, right? He he loves to see Christians who are on a pedestal fall down and fail. It it just makes Christianity look like a terrible uh faith, like a bad religion when when people say that they have a faith but they don't exemplify it whatsoever. In fact, they do things that make it look really bad. Um that's why Paul prayed in Ephesians 3 that God would grant us as Christians to be strengthened with the power through his spirit in our inner being, that we might have the strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge that you and I may be filled with all the fullness of God. So, Micah, I just, you know, these stories, some of them are really tough to comprehend, some of them are are great and we can celebrate um the Seahawks winning the Super Bowl and these Olympians achieving such amazing goals and successes. But as we think about successes and failures in not just that, but in politics and sports and tech and everything in our culture, we should also examine our own lives, our own hearts and remember that in the biblical context, the only failure in life for us is not trying to do God's will in God's power for God's glory. That's what we're supposed to be doing. That's our success is living out God's will, glorifying his name. And Jackson Smith and Jigba did that. He's been talented and blessed by God with his just incredible wide receiver talents and he glorified God when he talked about winning offensive player of the year, this massive award and then won the Super Bowl. Yet it's God who's been glorified. We talked about this with for uh Fernando Mendoza with the Indiana football team recently too, doing the same thing. That is what is success, man. When we are living out God's will and I it gets me fired up, man, to think about how God can use so many Christians when we accept that as the true success in life. Um, yeah, so just just remember that there are always beautiful things happening even in a dark world and in a dark culture and dark moments, there's just amazing things we can look to as well.

Micah Tomasella: [00:39:14] Love it. Thank you, Connor. Great job of taking all these stories and wrapping it up in a nice little bow for something that we can apply to our lives and how we are continuing to just invite God into our news consumption and the way that we live in this world and consume current events, um, and try to be a part of the redemption of all of it. That's great. Okay, well, let's, let's, uh, talk about the mailbag here for a minute.

Conner Jones: [00:39:41] I want, we want to continue to hear from each and every one of you. Please send us your questions, your thoughts, your topics, your frustrations, your complaints, things that you love, things that you don't like. It's fine. We're tough. We can take it. Send it to Culture Brief.

Micah Tomasella: [00:39:56] Send your complaint, send your complaints to Micah. I'll I'll take all the good stuff.

Conner Jones: [00:39:58] Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Send them to [email protected] and follow us at Culture Brief Podcast on Instagram. You guys, again, we say it every week. We're just so thankful for the audience engagement and everybody who's taking this journey with us. Um, and so we just invite you to keep doing it. Thank you.

Micah Tomasella: [00:40:20] All right, let's check in on a few things here. Uh, just it'll be real fast because there's not really a whole lot that we're looking forward towards. I mean, we got the Olympics still going on that we'll definitely continue to tune into. But one thing we are watching is the Savannah and Nancy Guthrie, just this Nancy Guthrie being kidnapped from her home and potentially held for ransom. That is what everybody is reporting and Savannah Guthrie obviously from the today show. This has just captivated the nation. This kind of like weird dynamic of like everybody is so caring, but also there's true crime and there's internet sleuths trying to figure it out and the government is trying to, you know, we got the FBI down there. Cash Patel is down in Tucson, Arizona trying to find uh Nancy Guthrie and it's really sad. This is an 84-year-old woman with health issues and who is in the golden years of her life who should be able to live freely and retire well and be surrounded by her family and her grandkids and everything and this has happened and I I as of right now, we are recording on Tuesday night. She has not been found. They do not know where she is. I did just see before we came on here that SWAT vehicles were sent out potentially to a destination where they may have a lead, but I don't know right now. Hopefully by the time you're listening to this, she has been found and found alive. But man, we're watching this with you guys and hopefully you guys have all had the same thought as us, which is hit our knees and pray and pray for a good solution here, um, and that justice is held and that, uh, ultimately God can redeem any situation and that he would redeem this situation as well. Micah, I mean, any just thoughts there? You've been watching anything specific on this?

Conner Jones: [00:41:46] I mean, it's just it's very it has very much captivated the nation. Uh, it's like a movie in all the the worst ways. You know, kind of that kidnapping for ransom, was this a random home invasion? Is are there other actors trying to come in and bad actors trying to come in and claim ransom money and there's all these ransom notes and uh it's it's been it's been tough to decipher. I just I hope that she's alive and she can be brought home safe and ultimately peace can be brought to the family.

Micah Tomasella: [00:42:16] Yeah, and every time the word that keeps coming up, uh Savannah Guthrie keeps posting every time on Instagram, she says, nightmare. This is just a big nightmare and I think that's exactly accurate. She's supposed to be in Milan at the Olympics right now, helping host the Olympic games for NBC and she she's dealing with this. So very sad. Also, we are watching Iran. Trump did threaten to send a second uh aircraft carrier group to the Middle East to sit off the coast of Iran. So that is very much a potential. There are talks apparently going on. It's been kind of hush hush here, a little bit of talk here. Iran says maybe they'll let go of nuclear options here. I don't know. Trump keeps putting the pressure on. Some think that they are the US is just stalling so they can continue to build up the defensive mechanisms on US bases around the Middle East until we are ready for a full on strike to topple the regime in Iran. That's a possibility too. As we know, Trump is uh able to determine what he wants to do and will call a strike without anybody else in America knowing besides the people who are on a need to know basis and we will find out um if something happens. If not, ideally, talks happen that a regime topples without any violence needed or American lives risked, uh but the people in Iran want freedom and we know that and we've seen that in the protest. So we are continuing to pray for a good solution there. Guys, thank you all for joining us on this week's episode of Culture Brief, a Denson Forum podcast. As always, all articles and videos mentioned will be linked in the show notes. If you enjoyed today's episode, please like, subscribe, and rate or review the show and share with a friend and we'll see you next Thursday.