Why Epstein has Trump crashing out
The hole gets deeper every time he opens his mouth.
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Jeffrey Epstein has proven an unshakeable anchor for Donald Trump’s presidency, and if this proves to be the one jam Trump can’t successfully wriggle out of, he’ll have no one but himself to blame.
While in Scotland on Monday, Trump was pressed about the infamous Epstein files. One of his responses was particularly revealing.
“You know, it’s a hoax that’s been built up way beyond proportion. I can say this: Those files were run by the worst scum on Earth,” Trump told reporters. “They were run by Comey. They were run by Garland. They were run by Biden. If they had something, they would have released them. Now, they can easily put something in the files that’s a phony.”
Note how Trump projects his criminality onto others. He has weaponized the Department of Justice under Pam Bondi — his personal consigliere posing as attorney general — and he can’t comprehend why his political opponents wouldn’t have done the same, especially when it was in their political interest.
Former President Joe Biden was underwater in the polls for months. If he had damaging information against Trump, especially after that disastrous June presidential debate, why wouldn’t he have ordered Garland to release the files immediately? Obviously, any fair-minded observer would point out that’s not how Biden and especially the norms-obsessed Attorney General Merrick Garland operated, but Trump, who claims that every criminal case against him was a political hit job, can’t fathom that his foes have actual scruples.
Trump simultaneously insists that his name isn’t in the Epstein files, but if his name is in the files, bad actors must’ve somehow “doctored” them, then failed to release the damaging info during the actual campaign when it would’ve made sense for them to do so. That wacky Democratic “scum” just left the “doctored” files as a weird “gag gift” for his administration to find. Does your head hurt yet?
The logic makes zero sense, but it reflects how frazzled Trump is after he reportedly learned in May that he appears multiple times in the investigate files related to the deceased sexual predator. The news must’ve genuinely unsettled the president based on his increasingly desperate behavior as he tries and fails to make the story go away.
Who cares about Jeffrey Epstein, anyway?
In July of last year, the Washington Post published a piece headlined, “Trump and Jeffrey Epstein: No links shown in latest documents,” which claimed that Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu and liberal social media posts had mischaracterized Trump’s relationship with Epstein. It looked as if Trump had dodged another political bullet, and in the fall Trump went as far as to suggest he’d release Epstein investigatory documents if he won the election.
While Trump failed to deliver on his campaign promises to instantly lower grocery prices and end Russia’s war in Ukraine, releasing the Epstein list and exposing those involved seemed like an easy slam dunk — at least assuming the new president wasn’t worried about implicating himself. He must’ve felt some sense of security based on how his picks for attorney general and FBI director initially spoke about the issue.
During his Senate confirmation hearing in January, FBI Director Kash Patel told Sen. Marsha Blackburn, "Child sex trafficking has no place in the United States of America. And I will do everything, if confirmed as FBI director, to make sure the American public knows the full weight of what happened in the past and how we are going to counterman missing children and exploited children going forward.”
Blackburn accused former Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin and former FBI Director Christopher Wray of stonewalling her efforts to “get those records of who flew on Epstein's plane and who helped him build this international human trafficking sex trafficking ring.” Blackburn is a thoughtless MAGA stooge, and it’s unlikely she would’ve pushed for the public release of information that she believed might compromise Trump.
On February 21, during a now-infamous Fox News interview, Pam Bondi said Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review. That’s been a directive by President Trump.” But that directive changed abruptly in May.
Not long after Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche reportedly told Trump privately that his name was mentioned “multiple” times in the Epstein files, Bondi issued a memo stating that there was no “client list” and Epstein’s death was a suicide — “case closed,” nothing to see here, kindly forget you ever heard the name “Jeffrey Epstein.”
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The MAGA cult, however, didn’t buy it, and there was significant backlash. Right-wing groups attacked Bondi and claimed Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino were “hostages of the deep state” because of how they handled the case.
As the agita mounted, Trump defended Bondi in a rambling Truth Social post on July 12:
What’s going on with my “boys” and, in some cases, “gals?” They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and “selfish people” are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein. For years, it’s Epstein, over and over again.
That unhinged post is where Trump first suggested that the Epstein files were written by everyone he’s ever hated (emphasis ours):
Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration, who conned the World with the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, 51 “Intelligence” Agents, “THE LAPTOP FROM HELL,” and more? They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called “friends” are playing right into their hands. Why didn’t these Radical Left Lunatics release the Epstein Files? If there was ANYTHING in there that could have hurt the MAGA Movement, why didn’t they use it?
That gambit backfired spectacularly, as Google searches for Epstein only increased after Trump demanded that everyone shut up about him. A significant number of comments to Trump’s post expressed frustration and disappointment with their mad king: “This statement breaks my heart, Mr. President,” one commenter wrote. And another demanded, “We want the ELITE PEDOS exposed!”
An attendee at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit told Steve Bannon, “In 2016, we trusted the plan with Trump, but now Trump has become the deep state …What is more deep state than covering up for pedophiles?”
A few days later, Trump told reporters the Epstein files were “boring,” like he was reviewing one of those streaming TV series set in regency England. And he feigned shock over the ongoing “fascination” with the case.
“He’s dead for a long time. He was never a big factor in terms of life. I don’t understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody,” he said. “It's pretty boring stuff. It's sordid, but it's boring, and I don't understand why it keeps going. I think really only pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going.”
Of course, Trump himself kept this going for years. He fueled conspiracy theories about Epstein dating back to his first term. Back in 2019, he retweeted a post from conservative actor and comedian Terrence K. Williams that stated, “#JefferyEpstein had information on Bill Clinton & now he’s dead.” He also shared a post from a random user who claimed recently unsealed documents had revealed that Bill Clinton “took private trips to Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘pedophilia island.’”
Trump can’t put Epstein back in the box
Trump acts as if his supporters will just forget about Epstein because he said so, but that’s incredibly naive. He doesn’t fully appreciate the monster he created. Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump, blasted him last week for not releasing the files and accused the administration of “gaslighting.”
"This one's a line in the sand because this is one where there's a lot of stuff about, you know, when we thought Trump was going to come in and a lot of things are going to be resolved," Rogan said.
You’ll notice that Rogan’s stated expectations for Trump are consistent with the QAnon conspiracy theory, which contends that Trump himself is destined to defeat a “Satanic cabal” of high-profile pedophiles that included Epstein.
Trump himself spent years spreading QAnon nonsense online. Media Matters reported last year that Trump reposted or promoted QAnon-affiliated accounts on Truth Social more than 800 times since his social media site launched. QAnon imagines Trump as their white knight against sex abuse. It was always weird casting for the man caught on tape boasting about grabbing women by the genitals and saying, “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
Trump continues to find reasons to avoid releasing the likely damning files, all while digging a giant hole for himself. Lately, he can’t even seem to discuss his past relationship with Epstein without sounding like a total freak.
Monday, he told reporters, “I never went to the island. And Bill Clinton went there, supposedly, 28 times ... I never had the privilege of going to his island.”
Late night talk show hosts immediately leaped on Trump’s use of the world “privilege” to describe invitations to an island where Epstein and his equally sick friends abused young girls.
Most bizarre was Trump’s explanation for why he finally banished Epstein from Mar-a-Lago more than 20 years ago.
“That’s such old history, very easy to explain, but I don’t want to waste your time by explaining it,” Trump said. “But for years, I wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein. I wouldn’t talk because he did something that was inappropriate.”
Shockingly, Trump doesn’t mean all the sex trafficking and child rape. No, what he considers “inappropriate” and truly unforgivable is that Epstein “stole” employees from him.
“I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again,” Trump complained. That’s when Epstein became “persona non grata” in Trump’s view. “I threw him out, and that was it. I’m glad I did, if you want to know the truth.”
This is like saying you cut ties with Jeffery Dahmer because he never returned a cook book you loaned him. However, it is consistent with Trump’s narcissistic megalomania. He only really cares about perceived offenses against himself.
Even worse is the revelation that the employees Epstein “stole” were in fact underage girls, including then 16-year-old Virginia Giuffre, who said she was “passed around like a platter of fruit” to wealthy and powerful sex predators. She died by suicide in April.
“I don’t know,” Trump said when a reporter pressed him further about Giuffre. “I think she worked in the spa, I think so. I think that was one of the people — yeah, he stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know. None whatsoever.”
This revelation alone would be a presidency-ending scandal in a normal administration. Ghislaine Maxwell — the convicted sex offender Trump is considering pardoning — recruited and groomed Giuffre for Epstein’s sex trafficking ring at Trump’s own residence. Trump was aware enough of what was going on to hold a grudge against Epstein for “stealing” what he considered his property, but he remained silent. And to distract from this, Trump and his Republican enablers have spent the past two weeks concocting conspiracy theories about Barack Obama that are so outlandish they’re impossible to take seriously unless you have brainworms.
At this point, Trump might as well release all the files. They can’t do any more damage than he does himself whenever he opens his mouth on the subject.
That’s it for today
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The timing of his falling-out with Epstein doesn't match the "he stole my people..." story, either. Maxwell supposedly recruited Virginia Roberts (her maiden name) in or around 2000. Trump was still an intimate enough friend with Epstein in 2003 to write a very suggestive birthday letter for his buddy's bound birthday album, celebrating their mutual "wonderful secret" (ick. gag.).
I think the pronouncement by Epstein that he and Trump fell out over a Palm Beach oceanfront mansion that was up for auction was, in fact, the real reason. Both Trump and Epstein bid on it and somehow, Trump won. Epstein claimed "he stabbed me in the back--he's a crook" rather bitterly....Trump has always had more real feeling and emotion over money than anything else--such a betrayal over real estate is right up Trump's alley.
As always, it’s not the crime - which is unforgivable - but the coverup.