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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

he heart and soul of the thing seems to be conspiracy beliefs.

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.

fantasy

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.

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.

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

McCaffery is at least the fifth public employee – and the highest ranking – to lose his job over the email scandal, which grew out of an internal review by the attorney general’s office into how it handled the Jerry Sandusky child molestation investigation. The others, who all resigned, were the secretary of environmental protection, a lawyer in that agency, a state parole board member and a county prosecutor.

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.

I clicked through and found:

The main issue cited by the court in its decision was that McCaffery exchanged “hundreds” of pornographic emails with lawyers in the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office during the years that Tom Corbett, now the governor, was attorney general.

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.

a scandal over some adult men emailing legal porn to other adult men

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":

1 Misconduct
Misconduct is conduct that is considered to be unacceptable or inappropriate in the workplace. It is behaviour that falls below acceptable standards, but which is not considered to be serious misconduct. Misconduct can be a single act, or a series of acts. What constitutes misconduct may vary depending on the particular circumstances of the Department/Office and the work that the civil servant is carrying out.

Misconduct can include inappropriate behaviour outside the workplace which has an impact or could reasonably be likely to have an impact within the workplace.

2 Serious Misconduct
Serious misconduct is misconduct which is sufficiently serious to warrant dismissal or other serious sanction. It is a serious breach of the Civil Service rules and procedures, or of recognised and accepted standards and behaviour which results in a breakdown of the relationship of trust and confidence between the Department or Office and the civil servant.

Serious misconduct can also include inappropriate behaviour outside the workplace which has an impact or could reasonably be likely to have an impact within the workplace.