Why Trump can't make the Epstein scandal go away
His ordinary scandal management techniques are not working.
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Just two days after the “Access Hollywood” story broke in October 2016, showing Donald Trump bragging about his ability to sexually assault women with impunity, Trump and Hillary Clinton met for their final debate. But Trump was ready, and earlier that day he held a press conference with four women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct, revisiting their accusations against the former president. Trump then brought them as his guests to the debate.
How that was supposed to exonerate Trump, or even communicate something negative about Hillary Clinton? Anyone who asked that question was missing the point. The message wasn’t that Trump was innocent, it was that everyone is guilty. It was neither the first nor the last time Trump would make that argument.
Everyone assaults women, everyone cheats on their taxes, everyone uses public office for private gain. Propriety, upholding established norms, following the rules? That stuff is for suckers. In a world of grift and graft, the most corrupt man should be king.
This has been the heart of Trump’s message about all kinds of corruption and malfeasance for the past decade. It’s the one he’s still using as the Jeffrey Epstein scandal consumes his administration. But this time, it’s not working.
Up until now, however, it has worked pretty well — at least in keeping his base satisfied and his party behind him. Ask a Republican why it’s acceptable for Trump to order the attorney general to investigate and prosecute his critics, and they’ll probably answer that Trump was prosecuted when Joe Biden was president. They can’t claim commitment to the abstract principle that it’s bad for any president to weaponize the justice system against his enemies, so they accept that it’s just how things work. It’s bad when Democrats do it, but it’s good when he does it.
But Trump may have found the limit of the everybody-does-it strategy in his association with the most notorious sex-trafficking pedophile (or, if like Megyn Kelly you want to get technical, ephebophile) in American history. This scandal is simply not like the others, since for so many years the MAGA base was told not only that Epstein was the key to exposing a horrifying world of abuse and moral corruption that encompassed much of the power elite, but that they should be genuinely, sincerely angry about it.
If that’s what you’ve come to believe — and millions clearly did — then it doesn’t sit right to be told that the Epstein scandal is a “hoax” (as Trump now says), right at the moment when all the heretofore-hidden details stand to be made public. So significant portions of the MAGA base — perhaps represented best by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has become Trump’s sworn enemy — refuse to believe what Trump is saying.
The contradictory scandal strategy
Trump’s latest move in his shambolic scandal management was to order Attorney General Pam Bondi to open an investigation into Democrats — and only Democrats — who were involved with Epstein. She promptly announced that she would do just that. This is right out of the everybody-does-it playbook. The point is not to prove Trump’s innocence but to establish somebody else’s guilt.
Imagine that with her crackerjack investigative skills, Bondi uncovers that the already-known relationships between Epstein and some prominent Democrats (for instance, the repugnant Larry Summers) included some criminal activity by those Democrats. That would not exonerate Trump, any more than his long history of (alleged) sexual abuse is wiped away by accusations against Bill Clinton.
The other problem is Trump is all over the Epstein case; he’s mentioned in 2,300 separate email threads in the cache that was already released. We don’t know what might be contained in the files that the Justice Department has in its possession (the ones that the House will soon vote to force into the public eye), but Trump probably features prominently, given his long friendship with Epstein. In July, we learned that the FBI detailed hundreds of agents to scour the Epstein files and flag any mention of Trump’s name. What we haven’t learned is what they found.
There is little remaining doubt that Trump knew full well that Epstein was abusing and trafficking underage girls when they were friends, as so many people did. There’s the infamous quote he gave about Epstein to New York Magazine: “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Then there’s the repulsive birthday card Trump sent Epstein, with the outline of what looks like a pubescent girl and a message full of skeevy innuendo, including “Happy birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret” (Trump unconvincingly denies that he made the card).
Trump’s descriptions of the various facets of his relationship with Epstein, furthermore, range from the implausible to the self-incriminating. For instance, while it has been reported that their friendship soured over a real estate purchase they competed for, Trump insists that it was because Epstein “stole” young women who worked for him, including Virginia Giuffre, the best-known of Epstein’s victims. Even if that were true, what did Trump think Epstein was “stealing” these girls for? Epstein did not own a resort hotel. The answer is that he was recruiting them for his sex trafficking operation. The idea that Trump would have had any uncertainty on that point is absurd.
None of that shows that Trump was involved in the abuse; maybe he wasn’t. Yet at the same time, Trump is doing what so many politicians do when they get caught in a scandal: Acting like he has something to hide.
Trump may not be guilty, but he’s sure acting like it
Trump is hardly the first president to argue that a mounting scandal is a molehill that should be ignored. But he has been particularly vigorous about it. Just look at how determinedly Trump and his administration have fought against the attempt in the House to effectuate the release of the DoJ files. (Trump on Sunday evening suddenly encouraged House Republicans to vote in favor of releasing the files, but given that the vote was going to succeed anyway, his flip-flop is a face-saving exercise.)
Speaker of the House and committed Trump lackey Mike Johnson has resisted every effort to hold a vote on the matter, leading Democrats and a few Republicans to file a discharge petition, in which a majority of the House can overrule the speaker and force a vote. When it looked like the petition was about to succeed, the White House summoned Rep. Lauren Boebert to a meeting in the Situation Room with Bondi and Patel so they could try to convince her not to support the petition (they failed).
Then there’s the matter of Epstein’s co-trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, whom the administration has treated like a human timebomb. After she told the Deputy Attorney General (in a highly unorthodox meeting) that she didn’t see Trump commit any crimes, she was transferred to a minimum-security prison, where she reportedly receives special treatment including custom meals, private family visits, and a puppy to play with (seriously). Whenever he is asked about whether he will give Maxwell a pardon, he holds out the possibility that he might — which is just what he’d do if he wanted to ensure her continued silence.
And now Trump is lashing out at anyone who wants more information on Epstein released.
Put it together and he is pursuing a contradictory strategy: On one hand, implicitly arguing that his connections to Epstein are no big deal since lots of people are connected to Epstein, and on the other hand, engaging in what looks a lot like a coverup.
This is particularly galling to Trump’s base, given how they were fed for years on conspiracy theories, none more tantalizing than the one around Epstein. While many of those theories were loopy (are airplane contrails controlling the weather and releasing mind-control drugs?), the theories around Epstein are grounded in facts. He really did abuse untold numbers of children. He really did have close relationships with powerful people across many American and foreign institutions. He really did die in mysterious circumstances. Even if you weren’t dumb enough to believe that Hillary Clinton was kidnapping children to drink their blood, cut off their faces and wear them like masks (yes, that’s an actual thing many QAnon people believed), this looked like a real conspiracy, as people like JD Vance said:
When the MAGA base was told — including by people now in high positions in the administration — that the Epstein files contain earth-shattering revelations and had to be made public, they believed it. Yet now they’re told that there’s no reason to release the files — which as every conspiracy theorist knows, is exactly what the conspirators would say.
So now that base is confronting a new kind of cognitive dissonance. How can Trump be the great crusader against the perverted elite when he looks like he’s covering up the scandal of the worst pervert of them all? There’s no good answer for them, and none of Trump’s spin is persuasive.
Trump may have convinced them not to care about his constant lying, his history of business scams, his shameless self-dealing, or his abuse of grown women. But this is something they can’t stomach, which is why this scandal is only getting worse.
That’s it for today
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I do not believe Trump is innocent. In fact, I have looked at his behavior with his daughter as him revealing a truth about himself and girls. He is the man who said there is no use for women over 35. It seemed to rankle Melania at the time, she has since gotten over it.
I also don't think he is innocent because he would assume he could spin anything else than actual contact. I assume he has been assured that is all redacted. What about videos? Will not be released as national security threats. I see not releasing the videos as a national security threat if they include anyone who is in the government, because this is Kompromot on them. If there dirty deeds are released then no one can blackmale them on them. However, they may find themselves in a criminal trial. That is not unsafe for us, as it is to keep people on who can be blackmailed for their illegal activities.
Exactly… it’s going to be an interesting week… Thank you, Public Notice.