Editor’s note: The following is a transcript of actor Mehcad Brooks speaking in a video posted on social media HERE about the Congressional hearing with United States Attorney General Pam Bondi about Epstein.
“Acknowledging how far we’ve come by refusing to look down at those the system was built to crush has to stop. We have to name it. We have to name the connection. Because if we keep celebrating the climb while ignoring the backs who bear it, we remain complicit in the oldest American sin and we cannot heal. We cannot move forward.”
You guys know who Pam Bondi is? The United States Attorney General. It was the first time I saw her in action yesterday. I knew who she was. But I didn’t know how she was. And she got questioned yesterday about releasing the names of the trafficker that violated former children whose innocence was currency for power, but not releasing the names of co-conspirators while survivors sat behind her waiting for the truth.
These women, these powerful women, these brave women, they picked up the pieces of their own tragedies and stood united in a show of moral courage, that no one in this administration has attempted to match yet.
And Bondi, instead of answering questions, attacked Congressional members personally. And then she turned to the stock market. “The DOW is over 50,000 points. The S&P’s nearing 7,000, NASDAQ is smashing records. That’s what we should be talking about.” It was a deflection so abrupt it felt like a confession.
Members of Congress asked, and a lot of us, I think ask, what does the stock market have to do with anything, right? And, as you saw, Bondi scoffed and mirrored the question and said, “Are you kidding me?” And people, I believe incorrectly, called it a dodge. A non sequitur. I don’t think it was. I think it was a glimpse of the plainest truth slipping through. A momentary removal of the veil of decency, because in her calculus, and in the eyes of those who command her, the economy’s triumph outweighs the cries of the exploited every single fucking time. Hear me out.
You see, the stock market was born in the same cradle of empire that tracked human beings as cargo. As long as the numbers climb, the moral cost is background noise. That’s it. And this is no accident of history. It’s the actual architecture of American ascent. We rose to power, refusing to see certain bodies as fully human.
Now, I know a lot of you guys know what the Transatlantic Slave trade is, but it rose to power, it ignited in the 1500’s, right? And the companies that were responsible for scaling it into an intercontinental enterprise became so vast, so profitable, they had to do something that no other companies in human history had ever done. They went public. First companies to ever do that. The private company was literally… actually, it was… here’s the crazy thing, it was called ‘the company’ because it was the biggest company in the world. So people just called it ‘the company. Think about that. And it was too profitable to remain private, so the Dutch West India Company went public in 1621 to fund its empire of extraction and kidnapping.
Like today, investors speculated on success. Those who bought shares rooted for the company’s victories, even though victory at that time, meant more raids, more chains, more kidnapping, more children in dungeons. Inhumanity was not a byproduct. It was the cause, it was the purpose. It was the engine of the machine. Profit required indifference to suffering. And one third of people who were trafficked were under the age of 15. Commodified as labor, property, and yes, sex slaves.
In the sugar fields of Barbados, the life expectancy for the enslaved person was 25 years old. Burned out by years of relentless toiling and labor and starvation and brutality, and the system just demanded replacement, endless replacement. “Lets go, let’s go, let’s keep moving, let’s keep moving. Don’t keep them alive, it doesn’t matter. Just rape them and work them to death.” There’s plenty of humans in Africa, or, as they would say, “plenty of niggers in Africa,” that we can continue to do this to, and exploit the precious gifts of God’s breath instilled into their souls and usurp them for financial gain. Humans, reduced to fractions of profit shares.
And that’s the genius of the market, right? Turning flesh into fungible assets. To be bought, divided, traded, worked to death, and raped. And so now we move on to contemporary child sex trafficking, and it’s the same machinery refined. Epstein’s network operated in the shadows of that original American capitalistic bargain, and Bondi’s slip wasn’t a slip. I think it was the mask slipping off. And in the praising of the market amid cries for justice, she’s revealing the Faustian heart of rapacious capitalism. It’s rotten to the core. Endless growth demanding endless sacrifice.
Back then, it was chains. Now it’s hidden rooms. Then it was slave ships. Now it’s private jets. And yet, we live in the illusion that these are separate stories, one of wealth, one of horror, one of the past, one of present. And they’re not. They’re not. They’re the same story told in different eras. They’re entwined. One, sustaining the other since the first stocks funded the first slavers. And today, the same indifference endures.
Traffic women, children, people of color, the poor, they remain disposable. Epstein’s network is no aberration. It was a contemporary echo, where elite power trades in silence and innocent bodies. Bondi revealed that bargain. Growth above all. The markets rise absolves the rot on which it is built.
But to confront this, that’s to face ourselves. Not just our past. Not just our present. Also our future. Acknowledging how far we’ve come by refusing to look down at those the system was built to crush has to stop. We have to name it. We have to name the connection. Because if we keep celebrating the climb while ignoring the backs who bear it, we remain complicit in the oldest American sin and we cannot heal. We cannot move forward. The past is not prologue when ignored. It is merely prolonging pain.
So, to anyone in this administration with a heart, this is your moment. Step away from the ledger of power, and return to the simple human truth, a moral compass does not bend for a fucking boss. Come home to humanity. Be the first domino to fall for justice. If you do, you’re a hero. And we, the ones on the right side of history, will embrace you as a witness to evil. And if you don’t, history will name you something else. Something else entirely. The choice is yours, and I hope you choose light.
Mehcad Brooks is an American actor known for his roles in television series and films, a producer and a fashion model.
