The Not-So-Fantastic Four
Answering Your Questions About Epsteingate
Like I suggested in one of my last posts, Epsteingate is merely the caboose at the end of the Trump Scandal Train.
You could look at Trump’s role in helping El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele cover up his government’s deals with MS-13. Or you could look at the luxury jet at the heart of Qatargate. Or Trump’s shady bitcoin deals.
Having written about all the other ones before, I wanted to take the opportunity now to help people see Donald Trump for who he really is. So, after listening to talk radio—and the latest both on cable and online—I wanted to try to answer some of your latest questions on Epsteingate:
I am not a member of the MAGA base. Why should I care?
I understand. After all, we have got the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Bill to worry about, haven’t we? Yet let me try to explain why the MAGA base cares about Epsteingate, and we can go from there.
Why does MAGA support Trump? Because they trust Trump. Why? Because, to them, he is a blunt, outspoken man who—though he may have flaws and though he may tweet too much—speaks out against “the Swamp,” the corrupt group of people who “really run America.” The globalists, Hollyweird, the “crazy Democrats,” the “communists,” the “Marxists,” the leaders of “the Democrat pedophile ring.” Fill in the blank here.
What the base is figuring out is that Trump is not fighting the Swamp; he is the Swamp. He is not taking on “the system”; he is the shining symbol of “the system.” He is the man who was Jeffrey Epstein’s closest friend. Who once called Jeffrey Epstein a “terrific guy.”
Who once got in trouble with Epstein for bringing girls under 21 into his famous casinos. Who once said that Epstein likes girls “on the younger side.”
Pretty damning in itself, if you ask me—at least if you think Donald Trump is going to be fighting and exposing this same shady group of people.
That hard truth does have consequences for the daily life of the MAGA base. If Trump is “the Swamp,” then maybe the Big Beautiful Bill wasn’t such a beautiful deal for the people. If Trump is “the Swamp,” then maybe Trump really doesn’t care about them at all. Maybe he only cares about himself and about power.
You get the picture now, don’t you? It all circles back to the kitchen table issues.
Why do you think that there is at least something that makes Donald Trump look pretty bad in the so-called Epstein Files?
At first, I was much more cautious. I admit it.
Now, do I know if there is really a client list, even now? No. However, let’s set aside the question of whether there was a client list for a second. I’ll get to that later.
If you remember, during the Musk-Trump brawl, Musk said that “@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein Files. That is the real reason that they have not been made public.”
Okay, why didn’t Trump sue Elon for defamation? We’ve seen how lawsuit-happy he has been lately—with Paramount, with the former Des Moines Register pollster, and with many others.
Despite all this, he didn’t sue Elon for making an allegation like that?
Strange. Then there was the teasing of a bombshell release by everyone from Pam Bondi to Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, only for the big reveal of no reveal. Either they hyped up something they knew was nothing or they came across something unexpected that might hurt Trump’s political standing. Or maybe there is a little mix of both at play.
But I digress. In this case, Donald Trump is his own worst advocate. His public statements on the subject have been extremely defensive and absolutely unhinged. He has called his own supporters “weaklings” and “stupid.”
Besides insulting his own base, he has called the conspiracy that he and his own allies have pushed for 8 years as a Democrat-created “hoax.” The whiny baby doth protest too much, methinks. He devoted some of the longest Truth Social paragraphs of his political career to stopping the political bleeding from this odd MAGA rebellion. Doesn’t that make you think there’s at least something of some kind there?
Moreover, Trump has recently fired Maurene Comey, the assistant U.S. attorney in charge of the Epstein cases. Whatever you think of her father, James Comey, her work has received the praise of Epstein sleuths like Barry Levine.
When you want to know who’s fighting on the side of the victims, look at the people who are actually working hard to get to the truth and to get justice for those victims. And then look at what Trump is doing to them.
If the Epstein Files or whatever were so bad for Trump, why didn’t Democrats release them right before the election or something?
Three possible scenarios, as far as I can tell. And MAGA, make of them what you will:
One—and this is still possible in theory—the Files just contain highly embarrassing material on Trump, and Alan Dershowitz is right that “you would be shocked how few names are there that already haven’t been disclosed.” If that is true, the previous Administration may not have released them because they—unlike Trump—respect the legal process and do not want rush out a File and victims just to score political points. Take note, Trump.
Two, the Files contain some potentially incriminating material on Trump. In spite of that, the Biden Administration—again, unlike Trump—did not want to look like it was leaking confidential information to interfere with an election.
Three, the Epstein Files suggest criminal activity on the part of Trump and on the part of Democratic politicians like Bill Clinton. We do know that Trump, Clinton, and Epstein were all close friends with sexual scandals. If this is the case, the Biden Administration had extra reason to not rush out the so-called Epstein File.
(By the way, if Clinton was in the Files, that would not exactly completely surprise me or break my heart. My brother and I have made our own opinions about the Clintons relatively clear. So, if they are on it or not, good riddance to them!).
Yeah, maybe the initial rollout of the Files was bad, but everything’s okay now. Trump is thinking of putting in a special counsel to clear up this mess.
If anything, a special counsel would actually be Trump’s attempt at an off-ramp here. First, the MAGA base really wants the Administration to release what it already has. A special counsel merely delays that release and that demand for transparency.
In fact, if Trump goes this route, it’s almost a sure sign he is trying to slowly bury the story over time. Besides, the special counsel would be investigating something different than what MAGA wants. The special counsel, per Trump, would be investigating the “Jeffrey Epstein Democratic HOAX.”
Gaslighting at its finest, my friends.
How did the Epstein conspiracy theories not center around Trump sooner?
Very good question. After all, Epstein died in jail during Trump’s first term in 2019. Then, in 2020, when asked about Ghislaine Maxwell, Trump answered that he “wished her well.”
On a related note, Pam Bondi was the Attorney General of Florida from 2011 to 2019, right around the time that Jeffrey Epstein “was running his child sex ring in Florida.”
On another related note, Trump’s first-term Labor Secretary, Alexander Acosta, had to resign during Trump’s first term because he negotiated a widely criticized plea deal in 2008 with Epstein “that allowed him to plead guilty to lesser state charges” (emphasis mine).
Furthermore, if you remember, before the Epstein scandal fully broke, Acosta was in the running to become Trump’s Attorney General in late 2018, after Trump booted former Attorney General Jeff Sessions for not being loyal enough to him.
If you are the type that generally believes in conspiracy theories, isn’t a Trump Epstein cover-up story more compelling than the version where Donald Trump is the hero? Especially given all that I have written above? Doesn’t it seem that, in one way or another, all roads lead to the Trumpster? Again, why does the MAGA conspiracy make Trump the good guy?
He’s not the good guy, no matter what kind of mental gymnastics you may or may not try to engage in. Trump is, as Jeffrey Epstein himself put it about two years before his 2019 arrest, a man with “no moral compass.”
And that Epstein statement alone tells you all you need to know about Donald Trump. Forget the Files. The more important answer is staring you right in the face.
Perhaps it's even more simple than we imagine, and Bondi mistakenly ASSUMED Trump would approve of her any action that kept his base interested and engaged, and we libs "owned". (She has done that without hesitation, and enough to perhaps destroy any future she may have had in law should Trump's destruction of America ultimately fail.)
But that does not necessarily explain why Trump has (so far) supported her so completely. Has his taste in women changed as he has aged, and he has to worry about his "love" interests seeing him in a diaper? That's a pretty strong bond of trust between two people incapable of trust in either direction.
Perhaps it goes all the way back to the $25K bribe she received for Florida to not join the Trump University lawsuit, or something such as a conversation or meeting held at that time which might now prove damaging.
Perhaps we'll never know it all, but I suspect we'll know something...such as what the goods are that Bondi has over him. I can't imagine he has ANY remaining mental stability, let alone enough for these questions to be answered honestly by him. We'll likely see a few more "trial balloons" floated, and no doubt they will seem as logical to Trump as any of his madness, but not to people that have seen it all and want something new. The old "What have you done for me lately?" from people who want new hate and destruction from the only man guaranteed to provide it. (Yesterday I was wearing a "Stop Killing Black People" t-shirt at Walmart (which I have done with progressive messages EVERY DAY since some time prior to the 2020 election) when an old racist accosted me. How long until I can't even legally wear clothing that offends a Trump supporter? It's well within the category of actions that "snowflake" other white folks.)
Living >60 years in the rural Deep South, it's easy to see that Trump's base has generally been fully satisfied by his every victimization of people of color. But I suppose there are plenty of people for which even watching repeated lynchings is never enough.
Thank you, David. You offer a very valuable perspective.
Agree. Too little attention has been paid to Epstein's original Floridal plea deal. Ties and deals among Trump - Acosta - Bondi have been obscured. Also if Trump and Epstein were close friends, it's safe to assume Melania and Ghislaine were as well. The puzzle is why would Trump repeatedly pledge to release the files and then do such an abrupt and complete turn about?