Ben Shapiro: “It's kind of shocking to me that Bannon basically was doing PR rehab on Jeffrey Epstein and continues to go out there and be one of the main progenitors of the sort of Epstein scandal”
Shapiro: “Dude, you should know better than anyone. You hung out with the guy.”
Published
Citation
From the February 2, 2026, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show
BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): Here's the stuff that seems to be true. Again, Epstein connected with famous rich people who knew he was a pedophilic convict and continued to hang out with him. In some cases, continued to try to burnish his reputation in getting good with him.
That would include Steve Bannon. Two hours of tape between Bannon and Epstein were released from interviews that happened some years ago. And this was in the part of Steve Bannon's career where he saw Epstein as a powerful connection and a person, presumably, he was going to try to rehab. There are apparently 13 hours more of that that has not yet been released.
It's kind of shocking to me that Bannon basically was doing PR rehab on Jeffrey Epstein and continues to go out there and be one of the main progenitors of the sort of Epstein scandal. Dude, you should know better than anyone. You hung out with the guy. It's pretty impressive.
OK. Two, Epstein connected some of these people with prostitutes. I think that that's quite likely. Meaning, you assume that the parties he was holding on Epstein island did include women, which is presumably why so many people -- again, like Diddy White parties -- why they wanted to go there. Now is there evidence that he trafficked underage girls to them? That's the part where the DOJ has yet to substantiate because the conviction of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell was on the basis of him trafficking underage girls to himself and Ghislaine Maxwell obtaining underage girls for him. And then there is the corollary of that, which that Epstein was supposedly blackmailing these people. Again, we have yet to see any hard evidence of blackmail of these people. And that evidence has not emerged. Maybe it's true and maybe it's not, but there's no evidence of it in a hard way at this point. There just isn't.