Trump’s Housing Con, Games Being Played With the Epstein Files

This episode talks about two important stories happening right now.

One centers on housing and promises that are being sold as reform.

The other revolves around documents that keep surfacing at the most convenient moments.

Together they reveal a system that survives by delaying accountability.

I break down what’s being claimed about housing affordability and what’s quietly left out of the conversation.

The language sounds ambitious, but the substance underneath feels hollow.

For anyone renting, buying, or watching the market drift further out of reach, this story cuts closer than the headlines suggest.

I then turn to the Epstein files and the sudden discovery of more than a million additional documents.

I walk through what the Justice Department is saying, what remains unanswered, and why the circumstances demand skepticism.

Transparency is promised again while patience is expected once more.

This episode is about patterns.About delay being framed as responsibility.About press statements standing in for action.

And about why accountability always seems just out of reach for the same people, every single time.

If you’re tired of political theater replacing real answers and spin being sold as progress, this episode is for you. I’m not here to reassure or distract.

I’m here to connect the dots and say what too many people avoid saying out loud.

And in a few weeks, I will be making several major announcements about the continuation or not of my podcast.

AWorldGoneMadPodcast@gmail.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Cold Open And Milestones
• 0:45 Why A Different Format Today
• 1:08 Housing Market Outlook For 2026
• 3:30 Prices, Inventory, And Rate Reality
• 6:20 Rents, Demand, And The Squeeze
• 7:09 Policy Promises And Affordability Spin
• 9:15 Epstein Files: A Million More Documents
• 15:40 Closing Notes And Upcoming Announcements

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

This is a world on man. This is a worldbone man.

SPEAKER_00: 0:09

I'm Jeff Fallen Wolf, and this is a World God Man. Now, due to health issues, I did not give you this past Friday's episode with the news from the Edge of Sanity segment. Also, because it's the holidays, I'm going to do something entirely different for this Monday episode. Now, come January 2026, I will have done this podcast for two years, and I'm starting my third year. And only nine more episodes, and I will reach episode 300. That's very rare in the podcasting world. So whether one person is listening, or a thousand people, I'm still showing up. At least until the end of the year. And whether I hear back from anyone or not, I'll still bring you, the Wolfpack listeners, what's happening in our country and the world. With that being said, let's talk news. Here we go. Trump has promised aggressive housing reform next year. So let's talk about housing in 2026, because apparently next year is being pitched as a turning point for a market that spent the last several years frozen solid. High borrowing costs, soaring prices, millions of people locked out of home ownership. And now economists are telling us things may finally start to shift. Not heal, not fix themselves, shift. A lot of economists are suddenly optimistic, which should always make you just a little nervous. The big hope is that incomes will finally start to outpace home prices, making homes feel more affordable. Not affordable, feel more affordable. That's where we are now. We're celebrating feelings. Real estate companies are already slapping dramatic names on it. RedFit is calling 2026 the great housing reset. Compass is calling it the start of a new era, which is bold language for a market that's mostly been people staring at listings they can't afford and quietly closing their laptop or iPhone browser. But even a small increase in activity would be a change after years of historically low sales. And that's where this gets interesting. The Trump administration has signaled it wants to prioritize housing affordability in 2026. Details are thin, very thin, but the messaging is solid. Mike Simon Simonson, the chief economist at COMPASS, summed up the last few years pretty bluntly. The last few years the housing market has felt stuck, he said. Homes weren't selling, but prices just kept climbing anyway. And Simonson thinks that may finally change. In the next era, we'll have sufficient inventory on the market across the country, allowing sales to increase, he said, predicting that home sales will finally tick higher in 2026. Now that shift probably isn't coming from government reform. It's coming from homeowners giving up on the fantasy that 3% point mortgage rates are coming back. For years, sellers refused to list because they didn't want to give up ultra low rates. They locked in. But as people adjust to rates above 6%, more may finally sell, adding inventory and easing price pressure. Now don't get carried away, everyone. Prices aren't about to fall off a cliff. Home prices exploded after the pandemic because demand crushed supply. Between early 2020 and the third quarter of 2025, prices jumped nearly 55% nationwide, according to the National Association of Home Builders. That's not a blip. That's damage. Yes, there were glimmers of relief in 2025. States like Florida, Texas, California saw average prices come down from their peaks. But nationally, Simonson says don't expect a big drop. We're forecasting a half a percentage increase in home prices next year, which is essentially flat, he said. So flat is now the dream scenario. Even with that, a lot of buyers will still feel priced out. And Simonson has been very clear about the real solution. Build more homes. And on that front, he says, we are behind. That's it. Just behind, deeply structurally behind. Mortgage rates are the other big question. They've trended lower in the second half of this year. Recently, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 6.18%, down from nearly 7% earlier in 2025. Better. Still painful. Simonson expects rates to stay above 6% next year, unless something gives. A weakening labor market or falling inflation could push the Federal Reserve to cut rates more than expected. Now, mortgage rates don't follow the Fed directly, but they do track the 10-year treasury yield, which reacts fast to any Fed moves. Confidence matters too. Jason Wow, president of Coldwell Banker Affiliates, put it plainly. For the majority of folks, buying a house is a 15-year or a 30-year commitment, he said. If you're not confident in your income stream or your income potential, you may pause and not take on larger commitment. Translation: People don't sign decades of debt when everything feels unstable. Renters caught a small break in 2025 after rents exploded in many cities earlier in the decade. Bank of America says rents were flat year over year in October for the first time in three and a half years. That was real relief. It also may not last. With many Americans still locked out of home ownership by high down payments and expensive monthly payments, Redfin expects rental demand to stay elevated even as fewer new apartments or homes come online. Rents are projected to rise about 2-3% by the end of 2026. Not catastrophic, just another squeeze. Now let's get to the political performance, shall we? Because this is where the word affordability suddenly shows up wearing a costume. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump teased what he called the most aggressive housing reform plans in U.S. history. You can hear his voice, right? Framing it all as part of an affordability push, which is impressive, considering this is the same man who has repeatedly treated the word affordability like it's either a hoax, an inconvenience, or something poor people complain about. Now the White House hasn't offered many details, but National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett suggested the focus would be on regulations. There are a lot of things that we can do in regulations to try to help get stuff approved quicker, he said on Fox Business. And we can also do things like reward states that make it easier for people to build a new home. So apparently Wolfpack listeners, affordability apparently now means paperwork moves faster. In a statement to CNN White House spokesperson Cush Desai said homeownership was a top priority for President Trump's affordability agenda. The American people can count on more to come. Stay tuned, he added, which is fascinating, because when affordability itself has been dismissed as nonsense in other contexts, suddenly it's back, polished up, and doing press appearances. The administration has also floated ideas like 50-year mortgages and portable mortgages. Because when homes are too expensive, the solution is apparently to stay in debt longer and take it with you. Analysts aren't convinced any of this becomes real next year. We believe there are limits on what the president can do in 2026 to boost housing, wrote Jarrett Seisberg, a housing policy analyst for TD Cowan. So what does it all mean for everyone? If you're looking to buy, move, or improve your rental situation, don't expect a miracle in 2026. Prices aren't collapsing, rates aren't magically falling, rents aren't retreating. But the market might finally stop tightening the screws. And after years of paralysis, that's what passes for progress. Let's be honest about what's really being sold here, listeners. Not affordability, not relief, not some bold rescue of a broken system. What's being sold is patience, more waiting, more tuning in, more press releases, more promises that always seem to arrive right before an election cycle midterms, and somehow vanish right after. So if 2026 turns out to be the year the housing market finally resets, don't confuse that with justice or fairness. It just means that chaos slowed down enough for politicians to claim credit for surviving it. And apparently in America now, that's what passes for leadership. Next up in a world gone mad, the DOJ says it has found over a million additional documents potentially related to Epstein. The Justice Department last week said it has uncovered over a million more documents potentially related to the Jeffrey Epstein case and may need a few more weeks to review and release them to the public. The department made the revelation in a post on X saying the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the FBI had informed the department of the new documents. Now the DOJ has received these documents from SDNY and the FBI to review them for release in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, existing statutes and judicial orders, the Post said. We have lawyers working around the clock to review and make the legally required redactions to protect victims. And we will release the documents as soon as possible. Due to the mass volume of material, this process may take a few more weeks. The department will continue to fully comply with federal law and President Trump's direction to release the files, the Post continued. It was not immediately clear how the new documents were discovered or what might be in them. Media has reached out to the Justice Department for comment. Now the announcement comes after a week of intermittent releases as required by the new transparency law that Congress passed last month. The department already had been facing criticism for not releasing everything as required on December 19th, though officials insisted they needed time to redact information to protect victims and alleviate other possible legal concerns. Even before the revelation last week of more possible documents, the Justice Department had been scrambling to get out everything in its possession. CNN reported that Justice Department leadership had asked for volunteers in a prosecutor's office in South Florida to help with redactions. The Justice Department first posted a massive trove of documents required to be released under the new law on the Friday, uh December 19 deadline. That was followed up with another drop earlier Saturday and another major release on Tuesday, which contained several notable references to Donald Trump. A bipartisan array of lawmakers and a growing number of survivors of Epstein's abuse have criticized the Trump administration's rollout of the documents. Some have raised questions about the heavy-handed and seemingly haphazard redactions that shielded Epstein's associates from scrutiny. Others have expressed anger over under-redacted materials that exposed victims' information. After the department's revelation Wednesday, Democratic Representative Rokana, who alongside GOP Representative Thomas Massey, had pushed for the bipartisan bill that compelled the Justice Department to make public the Epstein files, said that the two of them would continue to keep the pressure on. After we said we are bringing contempt, the DOJ is now finding millions more documents to release, the California Democrat posted on X, adding, the Epstein class must go. Massey, meanwhile, reposted a video of Attorney General Pam Bondi telling reporters that when she appeared to claim in February an Epstein clientless was sitting on her desk, she was actually just referring to an Epstein file. So let me get this straight, Wolfpack listeners. After years of nothing to see here, the Department of Justice suddenly wakes up and goes, oh, by the way, we just found over a million additional documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. A million. Just lying around. Amazing timing, right? Almost like it had nothing to do with bipartisan members of Congress openly talking about contempt of court, and suddenly the DOJ discovering an entire new warehouse of paperwork behind a filing cabinet marked oops. According to the DOJ's own post on X, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the FBI just informed them these documents exist. Just inform them at the end of December 2025. What a cool system. There it is, a few more weeks. Translation, redact the shit out of it, scrub anything inconvenient, and call it transparency. So yes, one million new Epstein documents, perfect timing, a few more weeks, and somehow we're supposed to believe this is what transparency looks like. Wow. That's a world gone mad. Wolfpack listeners, I will be making several major announcements about my podcast and a few other things in the next week or two. I'm Jeff Allen Wolf for a World Gone Mad. I will be back Wednesday, yes, New Year's Eve. Until then, Wolfpack listeners, remain skeptical. Keep focused. But most of all, stay hopeful.

SPEAKER_01: 16:23

There is chaos in the world. Can't you see? And we need to stand up and preserve our democracy. This is a world con. This is a world conversation.