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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

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New poll on Trump and Epstein:

Republicans are split with 40 percent approving of the way the Trump administration is handling the Jeffrey Epstein files, 36 percent disapproving and 24 percent not offering an opinion.

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:

“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," Trump told reporters after being asked about frustration from his supporters over handling of the case.

"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. But credible information? Let them give it — anything that's credible, I would say, let them have it," Trump added.

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.

  • -20

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.

It wasn’t normal that he rigged his rooms with videographic equipment.

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?

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.

As far a China — I’ve no doubt that most elites or potential elites are on very similar lists.

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.

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.

  • -10

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:

On the first floor, agents also found a plastic bin tucked under a bookshelf in an office. The bin was filled with hard drives.

The hard drives all had tamper-proof "evidence" tape on them when the FBI found them, Maguire testified.

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.