Welcome back to The Red Letter.
First, thank you to everyone who joined my LIVE this morning on Substack or YouTube. My guest didn’t show up, so I ended up carrying on solo, on not the best sleep of my life. I’d landed in Newark late last night after a quick trip to California.
If you spotted me at Newark Airport at 10 p.m., you might have noticed some tears in my eyes. My YouTube channel, which I only really launched in earnest back in January, just hit 100,000 subscribers. And because there was no Wi-Fi on the flight, I landed to a flood of Slack messages from my team.
sent me an “LFG” which I only learned this week means Let’s F**ing Go!* That’s why she’s been dubbed our CCO: Chief Cool Officer.But truly, I couldn’t have gotten here without all of you, supporting my work at The Red Letter on Substack and The Tara Palmeri Show on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I’m constantly reminded that I took a big risk leaving a great job—a risk the New York Times even profiled me for—but I’ve kept screenshots to mark the milestones along the way. They are quiet validators that people are hungry for honest, raw dialogue, and reporting that others would struggle to publish in the mainstream media.
Here’s one of my first videos with just two views, and my first dollar!
I believe with the right intent and team, the support of a community, and relentless hard work, you can achieve anything. And that’s why I’m so thankful to all of you. This journey has changed my life. It’s allowed me to pursue the stories I believe need to be told, without bureaucratic filters or second-guessing which story sells. I’ve never felt closer to my readers and listeners, and I feel like we’re creating something built to last. Your feedback means everything.
Thank you for giving this first-generation American, the first person in my family to graduate from a University, the chance to live her version of the American dream: holding truth to power, for all of us.
Okay, I’m crying again.
Back to work.
I’ll be on Nicolle Wallace’s show on MSNBC today at 4 p.m. to talk about the latest on Jeffrey Epstein: Trump’s inner circle—Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, Peter Thiel—showing up in the pedophile’s schedule; House Republicans stalling the swearing-in of Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, the key vote needed to force the release of the Epstein files; and, of course, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik finally saying out loud what I’ve been reporting all along: Jeffrey Epstein was the “greatest blackmailer ever.”
