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Notes -
New poll on Trump and Epstein:
This, along with Operation Warp Speed, is the only time they are willing to break with Trump. The heart and soul of the thing seems to be conspiracy beliefs.
Trump said:
Maybe the reason Trump doesn't understand why it keeps going is because he doesn't have an inferiority complex about class that drives him into fantasy about elite pedophile rings.
I'm struggling to wrap my head around this. Not the fact that this is the thing that seemingly broke his base, but that so many people, including liberals, are shocked that this broke his base.
"He lies all the time, why should this be the thing that makes them change their minds?"
Are they this bad at modeling the other side? I'm not on that side and I can model it.
The old chestnut about the American right vs left is that they hate each other because the left thinks the right is stupid. Team Red is used to taking those sneers from the overeducated professional class, and let's face it, certain ideas from the wonk class tend to disproportionately negatively affect Team Red anyway. Then along comes Trump, with his "poor man's idea of what a rich man should be", telling them literally everything they already believed - that they were getting fucked, that they were getting a raw deal, that the wonks sold them out and they're corrupt. Of course he got elected. They tried to kill him!
The excuses made around the Epstein mess are whoppers of such tremendous scale that they signal Trump, and by extension, his administration, think the population of America, including his base, are so dumb that they struggle with object permanence. What did you think his base was going to do? They're used to being called stupid by the people who hate them. What they didn't expect was being treated as stupid by the guy they helped put in office as an act of revenge against the people who hate them.
I'm gobsmacked at it myself. An even halfway competent liar would have made some excuses about it being useful as international blackmail (something the more realpolitik-minded would respect if the concessions were good enough). Alternatively, release doctored files that are not obviously doctored; if they could edit Epstein's jail camera footage in an act of blatant gamesmanship and have it not be revealed as obvious until recently it would be trivial to placate a majority of people who aren't so deep in the conspiracy hole they're halfway to Australia. Never in a million years would I have expected a response like "the evidence doesn't exist, Pam is doing a great job, why are we still talking about this?"
There's a Calvin and Hobbes comic where Calvin tells his mother that aliens have landed and that she needs to go out to confront them while he guards the cookies in the kitchen. Her response is perfect: "Calvin, just how stupid do you think I am?" Hardcore salt-of-the-earth dirt and potatoes Red Tribers pride themselves on seeing the world as it is, unlike the idealistic Ivy Leaguers/Tech-utopian Tribe who see the world as they wish it to be. 'Don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining' applies; the same thinking can be applied to the disaster over immigration and almost every other cultural flashpoint.
This reminds me a lot of the Korea Park Geun-hye scandal. What killed Park in politics wasn't the fact that she was corrupt, or that she was giving political and pork barrel kickbacks to people she was in cahoots with. What killed her was the reveal that she was in thrall to literal cultists and possibly of unsound mind. The Trump base doesn't care too much that he's corrupt, or lying. He could even have been named in the Epstein files repeatedly. He could even have released them and nobody would have cared as long as what was in there was sufficiently incendiary that it took down half of Capitol Hill! But to lie so comically badly that it reveals that Trump thinks you're stupid, just like all those Blue Tribe assholes... what the fuck did people think was going to happen, that this would become another case of Teflon Don?
Of course, I could be totally wrong and the last few credulous people in America that totally believe Trump when he says there's no evidence and take him at face value can only come to the even worse conclusion that the DOJ filled with people he handpicked is completely incompetent, and man hung himself/a woman is serving two decades of jailtime on charges that weren't real.
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I question whether a reasonable person can read about the Epstein case and conclude that it doesn’t demand additional investigation. It wasn’t normal that Epstein’s activities were secretly funded by America’s most important pro-Israel lobbyist. It wasn’t normal that he rigged his rooms with videographic equipment. It wasn’t normal that he went to visit Israeli military bases in 2008 while on trial. It wasn’t normal that Ehud Barak, the former PM of Israel and former head of Israeli military intelligence, visited him 36 times. It’s not normal for former Mossad agent Ari Ben-Menashe to tell journalists that he was told Epstein was military intelligence. It’s not normal that Epstein’s assistant was the daughter of a Mossad spy.
If we’re incapable of protecting the country from this kind of threat then we should just surrender to China. The Chinese will be more a little more reasonable about this thing. They would have already executed dozens of people.
Quite apart from the crimes, it seems that Epstein was himself a pervert. Getting sex tapes of celebs seems exactly like something he'd do. And then we factor in the blackmail angle, which every pimp and madam (it seems) uses as insurance policy, save for the very few who maintain discretion even after arrest. Isn't this what the entire furore over the "Epstein list" and whether it exists or not is about?
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I’m one who at this point doesn’t care much. Unless you’re really going to perp-walk whatever celebrities are on the list as well as anyone who provided the girls or the money — which isn’t going to happen— the list is academic. It’s pointless to waste mental bandwidth on guessing who is on the list, what they did, who paid for it, and what they’re getting out of it when none of it will change anything. Game of Thrones happens all through the political systems of every country that has ever existed or ever will exist. Stuff like this is what elites do.
As far a China — I’ve no doubt that most elites or potential elites are on very similar lists.
The celebrities aren’t the big deal to me. If a foreign country was involved in using Epstein to gather intelligence and to blackmail, then the public should know that. If the foreign country is so influential that they can do that without ever facing repercussions, then the public should definitely know that so they can change their priorities accordingly.
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I’ve wondered about that. I think blackmail schemes might have less value in unfree countries when you can just have your enemies executed for “corruption” or mysteriously fall out a window.
I mean, not everyone is at the top; you could easily have mid level bureaucrats in the party blackmailing other mid level bureaucrats, or someone higher level (but not at the “throw your enemies out the window” high).
A lot of the time, the blackmail is the excuse you use to remove someone - you keep them around and use the blackmail to make them publicly support you, then (when they know too much, or are making noises about possibly not being 100% on your side, or are simply embarrassing now that you’ve used their support to climb higher) you reveal it to have a public excuse to remove them.
Hell, you could argue they’re more effective in totalitarian countries - if you are exposed in the US, you are definitely not getting the death penalty (you probably won’t even serve jail time if you were powerful). If China discovers you are acting against the party, you may just disappear.
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Along those lines, it's not normal that evidence went missing from Epstein's apartment after the FBI's first search but prior to subsequent searches.
Wait, you're telling me a criminal destroyed evidence?
Sounds pretty normal actually.
Not quite. His attorney got ahold of the items somehow, but then turned them over to the FBI when asked for them. You can rest assured that they were the same items the FBI initially found, and speculating otherwise is being a conspiracy theorist.
Also, during that search:
Nothing suspicious about that.
At the very least, an itemized list of images found on those hard drives and CDs would constitute "the Epstein files" that could be released.
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My take on the whole Epstein thing:
I've posted here on several occasions arguing that anyone who knows anything at all about prisons would know that most of the Epstein murder conspiracies would be impossible without cooperation from practically the entire Department of Corrections. I'm disinclined to make those arguments in detail again, so suffice it to say that I think Epstein's death was clearly a suicide. One other reason for this is that it makes sense: He lived a life of wealth and privilege and was about to spend the rest of his life in prison. He achieved a notoriety that would make it difficult for him to lead a normal life even if eventually released. He had already been on suicide watch. His life was already over, and he finished the job. Even if he had dirt on people it would be pointless to use. No prosecutor could have offered him a reduced sentence for it at that point, and in any event, that's not the way ratting people out works. Epstein was the ringleader; no DA is giving a mob boss a deal to rat out soldiers whom he ordered to murder people, and no US Attorney is pleading down a sex trafficking charge in exchange for uncorroborated information about a rape that happened decades ago, especially considering the source of that information.
That out of the way, it also seems unlikely that Epstein was actively pimping out the girls the way it's has been implied in the media. Over 100 girls have come forward, and only a few have claimed they had sex with anyone other than Epstein. You'd think that with how often Bill Clinton's name has been thrown around at least one person would name him, but no one has. You'd think with how close Trump is to the whole thing someone would have made a credible accusation, but all we have is a Jane Doe lawsuit that nobody took seriously, even in a media environment that would use almost anything as ammunition against Trump. The allegations are so incredible, it's not clear that a real person is behind the anonym. What seems likely is that Epstein was using his wealth to attract underprivileged girls and runaways, and keeping them as a sort of personal harem. It doesn't seem likely that he was running a brothel to hold wild sex parties for the rich and famous.
The upshot is that I think Trump is actually being honest about this. There are no Epstein Files, at least not the kinds of files that the conspiracy theorists assume exist, i.e. unequivocal records of certain powerful people engaging in sex acts with trafficked minors. I do, however, think it's likely that there are some records that don't mean anything that could be seized on by conspiracy theorists as "evidence". Stuff like evidence that Trump visited Epstein's island, or that one of Epstein's girls had appeared in a Trump-related beauty pageant, or something like that that doesn't really mean anything but doesn't require too much of an imagination to lead to the conclusion that Trump was either partaking in sex with Epstein's girls or complicit in some kind of business arrangement. If nothing else, it seems likely that Trump's name came up often enough in the investigation that it will turn into a lot of smoke Trump doesn't want to have to deal with.
So that's my take. The question I have, though, is why Trump proceeded the way he did. He had to have known that either no "Epstein files" existed, or that if they did exist his name was likely to come up a little more often than he'd be comfortable with. I know politicians make campaign promises they can't possibly keep all the time, but why even talk about this? Especially, why talk about it after you've been elected and Epstein is out of the news? Is Pam Bondi really stupid enough that she'd go out on a limb like this before she'd spoken to the president about it and before she had reviewed the files herself? It seems that if a journalist asked about the Epstein files it would be easy for her to say that it wasn't an active investigation and she accordingly didn't know anything about it, or that they'd start looking into it when DOJ priorities allowed, or whatever. Not that that really mattered, because nobody cared at the time. Even after Elon said something about it, it disappeared from the news within days.
The Trump administration could have just let this one die, but instead they had to make the unforced error of issuing an official statement that the files didn't exist. What the hell were they thinking? And now all the boneheaded statements made in the past implying its existence come back to bite them. And Trump keeps making matters worse by making fun of the people who are calling for their release, and saying he may release some of them (i.e. the ones that don't implicate him), and going back to denying their existence. And now Republicans aren't even sure how to handle it.
The other day, Ro Khanna (possibly the slickest Democrat in the House) tried to slip an amendment into the crypto bill calling for a House vote on the release of the files. It was blocked, with only one Republican on the Rules Committee voting for it, but the die is cast. You can bet your bottom dollar that an Epstein Files amendment is going into every piece of GOP-sponsored legislation from now until the end of the term. This is going to keep coming up, at least until the Republicans break ranks from Trump. It's a win-win for Democrats. This is much better than if Biden had just released the files himself. If Trump were in them and Biden released them during the election season, it would have been seen by the Trump base as fake news and more lawfare the Dmocrats are throwing out there to rescue a dying campaign. Now that the onus is on Trump, it looks different. Going into the midterms, every GOP rep in a competitive district is going to have to wonder whether they get primaried for defying Trump or primaried for caving on the Epstein thing. They're going to be getting a lot of calls.
Having had time to think about this, I'm leaning towards nothing existing at all. Even if Trump was somehow implicated, it's hard to see how it could do him real damage considering how eager his base is to buy his explanations. He'd just say that he released it because it didn't implicate him, and that would be it. The story would blow over in a week. But if there's nothing to release, that's a problem. He can't possibly deliver, and all the while it will look like he's hiding something. I don't know how this ends, since we're in uncharted waters here, but I suspect it will be entertaining.
I've started to read up on this whole Epstein thing, and your take in your first 3 paragraphs seems much more realistic than the crazy conspiracies. WAY too much of this whole affair is sourced from Virginia Giuffre, a serial accuser and known liar.
A mix of incompetence and disinterest. Trump only has an implicit, gut-feeling on his base which is good enough for him in most ways, but has limitations. That's why he messed up on H1-Bs in December, and it's why he messed up now. He probably didn't really think this whole Epstein thing was that important so he let his lieutenants (Bondi and Patel, among others) hype up promises they couldn't keep, and now its blown up in his face. He's trying to backpedal like a malfunctioning ChatGPT doing a slurry of outgroup hate that usually works -- mentioning the Steele Dossier, Hillary, Obama, Biden, Russia investigation, Comey, etc, etc. I don't think this will actually do much to dent the Trump coalition in the long term -- there will be a few defections and disillusionments, but not a critical mass since the human brain is quite adept at rationalizing away cognitive dissonance. However, it's sure been good pickings for hilarious blatant hypocrisy, e.g. example 1, example 2, example 3, example 4, example 5.
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One of the parties implicated in this affair recently blew the dicks, assholes, and/or parinea clean off 3,000 people in multiple countries with devices the targets willingly put on their own bodies.
Given that display of competence and coordination, it feels like your assessment of what is or is not possible in this case may be overly conservative.
Was Mossad actually implicated in this? Or is it just that Epstein was Jewish and had friends who were Zionist Jews (a viewpoint shared by the majority of Jews in the world)?
I haven't actually seen anything beyond Epstein himself bragging about it (while also being a pathological liar) and being tangentially connected to people who may have been but were not confirmed to be connected with the intelligence community. All second and third-order connections.
It's all second and third order connections, but it's a suspiciously large number of second and third order connections.
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Why would we rule this out? Prison guards are notorious for accepting bribes and the typical theory names the Clintons, who have rather more connections than the average person. Ditto for the royal family, the mossad, and other commonly-pointed-to culprits.
The prison system is not very invested in enforcing the formal 'rules' of the system when it involves protecting criminals.
Consider, for a moment, the mechanics of what you're suggesting. Suppose you're a normal guy working a normal job and you don't know anyone particularly important or noteworthy. And then one day I show up at your door wearing a suit accompanied by two guys with the build of John Fetterman and I tell you that you need to commit a high-profile murder for a certain amount of money, possibly with the veiled (or not so veiled) threat that if you don't comply you or your family will be harmed. Do you say "Yes sir" and do it, not knowing if it will work or you'll end up spending the rest of your life in prison? Not knowing if I'm even going to pay the money you're offered? Will you believe me when I tell you that the Department will have your back and make sure the whole thing is covered up? Will you believe that I actually represent Bill Clinton or Mossad or whoever? Or will you go straight to the police, or your supervisor, or the media about how someone you could identify if necessary offered you money to kill Jeffrey Epstein? Now multiply this across the dozens of people necessary to carry this out, from the COs, to the technicians, to the prison staff, to the investigators with the Inspector General, to the medical examiner, to Bill Barr, to the US Marshalls, and practically every other link in the chain. Do you really think that none of these people would say anything? You don't think that anyone would have simply refused to participate, and at least come forward after Epstein's death? For what it's worth, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas don't seem to be living the high life these days. both were prosecuted for falsifying records and fired from the department, and Noel was working as a medical assistant in a care home the last time she was in the news.
But beyond that, what exactly did Epstein's death accomplish? Why go through all of that trouble? The worst case scenario here would be that Epstein makes public statements accusing everyone from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump to The Man in the Moon of bangin underage girls on his private island. But as I mentioned earlier, there would be no motive for him to do so at that point other than spite. If the Powers That Be were so influential as to have corrupted the entire DOJ, they could have easily written off any accusations as the uncorroborated ramblings of a condemned man with an axe to grind, and said they weren't sufficient to be used as evidence in any criminal prosecution, and they would have been right. The only thing he could have offered would have been context and authentication of other evidence. If the goal was just to embarrass these people, then he doesn't need to provide the kind of evidence that can hold up in court, hence it doesn't matter whether he's alive or dead. He could have sworn affidavits and videotaped interviews where he lays out everything in detail. He was meeting with his attorneys nearly every day after he was arrested, yet the assassins didn't plan for this possibility? Why go after Epstein and not go after other target who would be much easier to get to, like:
These people are so powerful that they can make the entire DOJ come to heel, running the gantlet of risk that comes when any one of dozens of links could blow their cover at any time, yet they don't bump off any of the other people who could be gotten rid of more cleanly, or who could have made the story go away with little fanfare?
Being harmed by revelations isn't an all or nothing thing. Fingering well-connected people probably would have some effect, even though since they are well-connected they won't be harmed as much as people who aren't well connected.
My point is that it would have been of no tangible benefit to Epstein. The prosecutor wasn't in a position to cut any deals, regardless of what information was provided.
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It's confusing, because it makes more sense if this is a foreign relations thing... but then why not just say that and only release the names of U.S. citizens and their role in the files? All the people want isto know who to send to the guillotines. We aren't supposed to be the world police according to Trump, so just leave the foreigners out of it. If that is impossible (I highly doubt, given the descriptions of the physical media involved), that would be ... troubling.
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Or maybe the inferior people just want to know what the frick is going on up there and is there any chance anybody there is listening and any consequences are going to happen even for the most vilest shit imaginable. And Trump isn't very interested in it because he's already up there, and figuring out what was going on when he wasn't is much less interesting than using the time he is for whatever he wants to. You can call it "inferiority complex" but there was a time when it was called "representative democracy". A long time ago, in a place far, far away... Of course, a lot of people - it looks like including you - think that only some people deserve to be represented, smart, reasonable, decent people that agree with you. And all those other people certainly shouldn't get anywhere near it. They are too dumb and wrong for that.
People will not be punished for imaginary crimes.
First of all, people are punished for imaginary crimes all the frickin time. Starting with the sitting president, who has been punished (or there was an attempt to punish him) for imaginary crimes at least half-dozen times, maybe more. And downstream from that, down to declaring parents who want to know not even what happens in the upper regions of the system, but in their own local school - domestic terrorists, and making a task force to find some imaginary crimes they can be prosecuted for. This is part of the deal too - while the patricians virtually never get prosecuted for anything - unless they cross another, more important, patrician - the plebeians are getting prosecuted left and right for utter bullshit.
But second of all, the crimes of Epstein are not "imaginary". He was known as a convicted criminal since 2008, and the exact nature of his conviction was also known since then. Moreover, the materials of his and Maxwell criminal cases strongly suggest that his operation was not uniquely tailored to satisfy one single person, but was wider. And also common sense suggests that at least some people who associated with known criminal who did not exactly hide his proclivities used his criminal services. One can not claim, obviously, just having any business with Epstein means they were part of the criminal business too, but at least it is plausible that there is more than one person that consumed those services. And there are witnesses that claim they know for a fact such persons exist.
And if it is plausible, the inferior people would like the people who claim they are there to protect them (or at least The Law), and given enormous powers to do so, will actually do at least a proper investigation on the matter. We know they can do that - this happens in drug cases, this happens in terrorist cases, this happened on Jan 6 where the FBI deployed immense resources to find every last grandma in Alabama who were in the vicinity of the Capitol on that day, and put her into jail. They have the powers. They are not using them. The inferior people are wondering - why? What is happening here? You answer is "you are just a bunch of dumb idiots and nobody is going to explain you anything because you are dumb". This answer is not very satisfactory.
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'Elites' are more likely to be punished for imaginary crimes (like fucking 16 and 17-year-olds) than real ones.
To a point, they have qualified/sovereign immunity from prosecution when they commit the real crimes, that's why you have to get them hard on the public morals stuff.
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Scott Greer has a good article on this:
CPT apropos Epstein is the easiest way for frothing antisemites, e.g.; Andrew Torba, to cloak their animus in something ostensibly reasonable. Torba is clear about what he thinks, it's his motivations he gets to hide. Today he's playing panican on X. He isn't mad because he believes in a general sexmonster conspiracy being swept under the rug, he's mad because he believes jews orchestrated that sexmonster conspiracy (as if American politicians were famously free of deviancy before) and if unmasked we could finally begin expunging their influence and usher in a new American golden age.
I think Epstein was an op, just one that equally implicates multiple nations. Pizzagate was something entirely separate, but the righties have their wires crossed thinking these were all one thing. Epstein's Island involved 16/17 year old girls, and rarely 16/17 year old boys, being paid to have sex with various wealthy and powerful men. Pizzagate involved high-power dems and DC figures, among others, raping children who were then probably quite often murdered. One involves an activity legal in all of Europe where the problem they would have is that money changed hands. It is a simple taboo that we should punish as it functions as a critical test for good socialization, I just can't pretend there's anything actually unusual about a man wanting to have sex with a 17 year old girl. The other, as we all know and as Greer notes here, is a problem universally agreed upon as solved by woodchippers. They're not on the same planet of severity.
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Seething about people having an inferiority complex. That's the kind of irony I come to the motte for.
Yeah I'm not happy about the damage these people are doing to my country.
I know Alex. Everyone knows Alex. There are uncontacted tribes in the Amazon rainforest who know that you are unhappy with the 'low-iq' people, Alex. That's why you are seething, not just complaining. One difference between seething and complaining is that complaining isn't obsessive. Another is the impetus - if you actually felt superior to those people but incapable of engaging them (which is how you would improve things, as I have told you already) you would be more afraid than annoyed. And yet you seethe. Never worry. Just constant pissy attempts to smear your enemies with whatever is at hand no matter how weak or tangential. Of course even when you hit on an interesting topic of discussion, you still pissily use it to mock the lower classes, who you openly regard as inferior, for having an inferiority complex.
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This is funny because Trump's own VP's explanation for birtherism (and I suppose it applies even more to the demands to see his university transcripts) was a class-driven inferiority complex.
So, at the very least, Trump should know his audience at this point.
Have a link to this?
It's from Hillbilly Elegy:
It's actually a bit harsher than I remember. I wonder if he still stands by the exact words.
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I'm strongly suspect that Obama claimed to be foreign born in his application to Columbia, and I would guess he was accepted in part because of that status. I'm quite certain that Liz Warren got significant advantages in her school and early career because of her claimed native heritage, and we know Mondani claimed African heritage in his own school career.
For me burtherism was making the people who cheated the system eat the consequences of their claimed advantages from being anything other than their actual heritage to disqualify them from anything later. I'd still like to see all the fruit of their lies taken away.
Ridiculous. US-born blacks who can keep up with Ivy League-level classes are harder to find than overseas blacks who can, and therefore more valuable to Ivy League admissions offices.
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Trump knows his audience better than most, but even he has trouble sometimes.
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The only reason Trump, the ridiculous candidate, became a political titan is because he alone was willing to take the side of the people who think the system is rigged, and they were willing to shoot him at "Killary" out of pure spite. The subsequent decade was only a confirmation of this dynamic. We've been living in the 2016 election since then.
Trump doing a heel turn into just another corrupt elite nullifies half of his appeal. All that remains is him being economically right wing.
Where there is smoke, smoldering ruins and dozens of firefighters still shooting water, there's fire.
Before Trump himself started to act in this extremely and transparently suspicious manner I was under the impression that the Epstein case would ruin the lives of a few connected celebrities and rich donors and add one scandal to the CIA's list. Now I don't know what to believe.
Errrr...which Trump? Tariff Trump? Giant deficit-exploding OBBB Trump? Like, I could be convinced these things are "right wing" - OBBB does roll back some Medicaid expansion, and insofar as the extra spend is to lock-in the 2017 tax cuts and pay for a lot more ICE, I could see it. But the definition of what constitutes "right wing economics" is pretty flexible right now.
It's relative. Supporting the NEP was right wing in its time too despite being literally a Lenin proposal. Mao once called himself a right winger when he disavowed the Cultural Revolution. Politics moves and shifts.
Not wanting to tax unrealized gains, destroy crypto or engage in literal price fixing makes Trump the right wing option. I don't make the rules of hellworld, I just live in it.
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I suspect the blackmail networks are extensive enough that the United States is effectively not a republic anymore, and hasn’t been for decades. The primaries and appointments have been gatekept so that the Presidency and most of the higher level legislative judicial and executive branch positions only go to people that have kompromat on them. That would be too big to reveal and definitely not just another scandal. Trump could very well be on the list, or just scared of accidentally sparking a revolution.
I sometimes feel like I'm getting too far out there for thinking along these lines, but then I remember this scandal:
State supreme court justice resigns over pornographic email scandal
2nd Pennsylvania justice to resign over porn email scandal
I remember initial reporting indicating the emails might have had images far beyond simple pornography, but now I can't find sources. Kane also made allegations that US attorneys were involved, but I can't find that charges were ever filed or anyone resigned.
Reading the link, it looks like McCaffery wasn't dinged just over the inappropriate emails, but there were accusations of corruption as well. Maybe they couldn't prove the corruption stuff, so the emails were their version of "Al Capone was convicted for tax evasion".
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I clicked through and found:
That's really all. Just like leftists have to invent hate hoaxes because of the shortage of real violent white supremacists, there's a shortage of real elite pedophiles, so they have to make a scandal over some adult men emailing legal porn to other adult men. It's why they're always circling back to Epstein, the kernel of truth they use to support their worldview, even as he recedes further and further into the past.
When you're a government worker, you are not supposed to use work email for anything other than work. Even if the porn was legal, doing it at work, during work hours, and using work email, is a firing offence. Even outside of government work, grounds for dismissal include "gross misconduct" and that covers "bringing the organisation into disrepute":
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Sorry to break the news, but Eyes Wide Shut was a documentary... except toned down.
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There's people telling you there's no fire, which you interpret as evidence the fire is being covered up.
Yeah sure, the firefighters say there wasn't a fire. Also they said to me there was a huge inferno five minutes ago. Be it Trump or the DOJ itself.
I'm not stepping in the gaslight chamber. There are four lights.
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If the guys telling me there's no fire smells light gasoline and has ash on his shoes, yeah I won't believe him.
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There is a small but substantial fraction of Trump voters who are willing to break with him on foreign interventions and military support of foreign countries.
There is also a small but substantial fraction of Trump voters who are willing to break with him about carve-outs for immigration enforcement.
There is also a small but substantial fraction of Trump voters who are not into his approach on tariffs.
So it's not just conspiracy theories.
Strong disagree here. Foreign affairs consistently ranks as one of the issues voters are most likely to "trust their leaders" on, i.e. be sheep about. MAGA quite vehemently wanted no more interventions in the Middle East... until Trump started bombing Iran, then they switched to being more or less OK with it. He even threatened full regime change and the response from MAGA was lukewarm at worst. Much of MAGA was unequivocal in how much they wanted Trump to dump Ukraine and "not give another dollar to Zelenskyy", right up until Trump promised to arm Ukraine a few days ago, when most of MAGA flipped to saying it was OK due to the minerals deal (or something like that).
Likewise, voters DGAF about tariffs, but might be more concerned if they manifest as inflation later on.
Things like immigration and to some degree the Epstein files are less likely to evoke sheep-like responses from the right.
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