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The WSJ has a new article (archive link) out detailing a certain incident where Trump was composing fanfic of himself and Jeffrey Epstein bonding over their shared secret interest in the same kinds of women, and then signing his name to it. This was sent as a gift for Epstein's 50th birthday.
I personally don't think it's that bad, but I've been heavily radicalized against conspiracy theories over the past few years. I highly doubt Epstein was blackmailing huge swathes of wealthy/influential people with pedophilia. However, if I was given towards conspiratorial thinking this probably wouldn't be a great look for Trump.
EDIT: Trump has responded, and he's furious. It appears he desperately tried to have Rupert Murdoch crush the story, but that Murdoch apparently wasn't able to do so. Now he's promising to sue. Also, Hillary.
It also looks like he might cave and actually publicize it? I don't know if the grand jury stuff is all that people are interested in or what:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Of course Trump is in the Epstein files. It was deniable 2 weeks ago ("two more weeks" guys finally get a win), but there is really only one reason everyone in the administration would suddenly get cold feet and display the same suspicious nothing-to-see-here attitude at exactly the same time. They didn't just want this quietly ignored, they wanted this GONE.
That seems quite possible, I'll admit. But I have wondered if this (and several similar brouhahas) could happen because the government has other reasons to not reveal the files that are known to the higher-ups on both sides of the aisle (classified, for example), but it's politically useful to hammer the party in power because it looks suspicious and there is little they can do about it.
For example, if the public were instead clamoring about child sexual abuse at Area 51, it'd be politically convenient to always blame those in power while neither side wants to "reveal the files" to prove that it's actually
alienswhatever they do there, not child abuse.In this case I don't doubt that Epstein was molesting children, but the supposed intelligence connections could be embarrassing for rather unrelated reasons ("reveals methods").
But the direct involvement of powerful figures sure is a juicy idea. Maybe it's even true.
I kind of assume that if there is evidence of crimes by wealthy, powerful individuals at the presumed level of Epstein clientele, it won't see a DAs office. Instead, a 3 letter agency will have presented it to said individual with a "welcome to being our bitch" speech.
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Sources and methods is a very obvious issue. It would be embarrassing to admit that the NSA had tapped Prince Andrew's phone, and compromising to say how they did it. It would be even more embarrassing to admit that the CIA and Mossad are spying on each other like they are in MAD magazine.
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Yes, and?
If it's just some token mentions then they've essentially created this problem by being furtive. Just bite the bullet. He was rich, famous and living in NY. Of course people like Epstein ran into him or tried to collect him.
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Yes and that's bad/extremely embarrassing/suck it red team
The point is that it's not new. The "revelation" that Trump is knew Epstein and indeed even traveled on Epstein's plane has been out there for a long time. Constantly forgetting and presenting it as a new revelation every time the Epstein story comes up doesn't make it new and shocking information.
Ohhhh, yeah
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I find it impossible to believe that if there were some hint of damning evidence about Trump in Epstein's files that it wouldn't have gotten leaked during either of the last two elections. There is just no conceivable value that the Dem establishment would have held high enough to cause them to refrain.
Much more believable that the juicy parts of the relevant hard drives and data were "accidentally" thrown into an incinerator in 2019.
The list consists of Boomer men who either were wealthy New York Jews or hung out with wealthy New York Jews (like Clinton and Trump), so it is going to be 70+% Democrats. While the Democratic Party was led by Boomers, releasing the whole list hurts them more than Republicans. With most of the Clinton-Pelosi generation of Democrats retired, releasing the whole list mostly hurts Trump personally.
This implies adequate compartmentalization of intel, and we know that doesn't happen. Were there something substantive that indicted Trump and also indicted a bunch of boomer dems, one of the dozens of bright-eyed young socialists in all those retinues would have seen it and said "Fuckin' two birds" and dumped it to the press.
Even the righty wet dream scenario where the DNC itself would cease to exist from >90% of its major personnel being indicted still demands an answer to the question of why a radical in the lower ranks doesn't release it. They aren't all ruthless realpolitikers, plenty are true believers in socialism as a winning platform and that the DNC only loses elections because they aren't radical enough. That's means and motive.
The last challenge point was the election. That nothing was released after November 6 is proof nothing substantive exists.
Consider an alternative possibility, which we've seen demonstrated in public numerous times: The Democratic party lacks balls, has always lacked balls, lacks balls at every level from top to bottom. The strain of trying to pretend to have balls and be a Democrat eventually gave Fetterman a stroke and now he's a blithering retard.
Okay, come on, this is just pure reddit-tier boo-outgroup.
You are better than this.
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I've seen this excuse used approximately a thousand times, and look: what if your priors just are wrong here? What if the Democratic party and its surrounding establishment just aren't the all-powerful, almighty band of operators that this theory presumes that they are? What if genuinely is information that they haven't obtained, at least in usable form, until it comes out?
The theory presumes nothing of the sort. But they had control of the executive branch. If Trump has info that he could be hiding for personal reasons, there is no reason to think Biden's people wouldn't have had it too. If anything, the Dems ought to have a much stronger prior for having access because so much of the IC and deep state was supporting them. What possible chain of events could have taken place to make some killshot link between Trump and Epstein available to the Trump admin now, but not to the Biden admin any time in the last four years?
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They dont need to be all powerful, they were in power. While in power they used every bullet they could, and even fabricated evidence to use against Trump and invented novel legal theories to try and nail him. All that tilting at windmills could have been avoided if they had a video of him having sex with a 15 year old prostitute.
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What about Epstein's links to Mossad? Supporting Israel is a rare example of US bipartisanship, opening this can of worms would have serious consequences for relations with Israel. There would be MAD as Trump and Republicans name all the Democrats they know of with Epstein connections. Very damaging for both parties and govt legitimacy generally, it only strengthens outsiders and populists (see how Musk has been using this issue).
Plus it'd be a funding nightmare given how much Jewish patronage they get. The Republicans are propped up by Adelson money and now Yass, while the Democrats get lots of money from Soros and some of the other liberal Jewish donors. If you go through the biggest donors for each party, about 50% of them are Jews, more on the Democrat side. A bunch of Jewish billionaires (many of them strong Israel supporters) are unlikely to want lots of investigation into the corrupt connections of a Jewish billionaire with Mossad connections. They certainly don't want any more anti-Semitism in America, there's already lots of complaints and nervousness on that front.
From my post about 2020, I'm assuming it hasn't changed that much since then:
Mildly amusing, fictional, Thick of It video (Malcolm Tucker: NOBODY brings up dodgy donors because it makes EVERYBODY look bad!): https://youtube.com/watch?v=uaydTJqZoIM
There's a frequently expressed desire by the public to 'get money out of politics', might this money be a good place to start?
At least in the Anglosphere, the public support State funding of political parties (which is the alternative) even less. In the past, you could probably have reduced the cost of politics by restricting the ability of FCC-regulated broadcast media to accept paid political ads (this is how the UK kept the cost of politics down) but that is increasingly irrelevant in the modern media landscape.
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Yes. The whole point of democracy and a nation-state generally is that it's supposed to be for the people, not some market product to be bought and sold among scheming elites.
No good having '1 man 1 vote' but having the guy you elect serve some foggy mess of donors, lobbyists and media instead of you.
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Obligatory SSC:
Personally, I do not think that Jewish money is any worse than gentile money, and you would require significantly higher levels of antisemitism in the US before "I may be funded by billionaires, but not Jewish billionaires" becomes a selling point in US politics.
Even if billionaire money is a problem in politics (and it can be argued that it is -- look at the maximum marginal income tax and how it has evolved since 1950, not that I expect billionaires to pay even that), this is a coordination problem. Almost all of the present politicians are where they are because they are cozy with rich donors, cutting down on campaign funding would really disadvantage them over competitors. And unilateral rejection of funding would hurt your own side.
It is like going to medieval Europe and saying "if we all coordinated to disallow metal weapons and armor, wars would be a lot less bloody which would be better for everyone". Even if all the nobles could coordinate to accomplish that, no knight wants to be beaten to death by a peasant with a stick, so they would still not do it.
Also, there is this guy whose shtick is that he does not accept big campaign donations, but for some reason I think few of the "Jewish money ruins everything" demographic are going to vote for Bernie.
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This is because the public, by and large, doesn't have much money to spend on politics. They're trying to kneecap anybody with a competitive advantage. If it's not money, it's exclusive access. If it's not exclusive access, it'll be something else.
It's bottom-half people complaining they're not winning. And unless you have a strategy to profit off of the long tail, they're not worth listening to.
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I think that Trump's involvement is the more peripheral "lot of smoke, no fire" kind of thing. The Democrats wouldn't release it because it would have just been brushed off as such and made it look like they were grasping at straws, just like the various prosecutions. If there was nothing they could prosecute, it would just be another smear that everyone forgot about in a week.
I don't know if they planned it this way, but it was good ammunition to have in the event that Trump won the election. Now that the pressure to release it is coming from his base, and he at least alluded to releasing it, but he has cold feet for some reason, it makes matters worse. It's like with his tax returns; it's unlikely that they would reveal any criminal activity, but there's something personally embarrassing that he doesn't want revealed. Now that he's been intransigent despite the pressure, anything that is in there that's unfavorable is going to have a much bigger impact.
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If there's one thing we learned about the Democratic establishment in 2024, its that they love themselves more than they hate Trump. Very possible that those in charge decided that the hit to Trump wasn't worth the risk to themselves or their friends from bringing additional scrutiny upon the Epstein story.
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Or the Epstein files have been destroyed and they don't want to admit it.
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My Trump-voting mother has been saying "of course Trump's in the Epstein files too" for like, years now? Quite a while at any rate. At least some segment of his base just took it to be common knowledge and wouldn't view it as a big revelation even if it was "confirmed".
FWIW, as a 2/3 Trump voter (albeit in a red state, so I knew my vote didn't matter and just thought it would be funny if he won the popular vote) I'm generally bored with the Epstein stuff and wouldn't be surprised if he was in it or if he was covering for others in his circle.
I mean, he's more Ross Perot and Bill Clinton than he is Pat Buchanan (so the immigration restrictionists should be expect to be betrayed), even if he was clever enough to ape the latter for politics' sake.
I get what you are saying, but I think that a not-insignificant part of the MAGA base is into the QAnon stuff.
In literature (in the widest sense), making a character a rapist or child molester is often done to drive home that they are a baddie. It is a bit crude, but it works. So when create a myth of a smoke-filled room where sinister figures decide the fate of the world, to exclude the possibility of someone saying "but what if this is actually a good thing?", you add "and after business was concluded, they relaxed by injecting adrenochrome harvested from children and also raping a few kids".
Epstein is the closest real-life thing to that trope. Sure, it does not match the trope perfectly, nobody is alleging that the fate of the world was decided on his island, and calling it "pedophile island" seems a bit of a misnomer when most of the victims (from what I heard) were female minors who had already hit puberty, but polite society is really big into age of consent (and for good reasons), so it still generates sufficient moral outrage (and for good reasons, again). I think the underage aspect was probably meant to celebrate that the participants were rich and powerful and beyond the morals and legal restrictions of ordinary people (and also, blackmail obviously, but Epstein could hardly tell his guests that).
Pretty much nobody ever believed that Donald "grab them by the pussy" Trump was into consent very much. I do not think he is into violent rape, but groping someone he has power over (e.g. some beauty pageant contestant) in a way which would upset the HR ladies seems very in character for him.
I can not imagine that his reaction to Epstein was "hanging out with (supposedly) powerful, rich people and illicit, transactional sex with Problematic consent are my two least favorite favorite things in the world, I will pass". I do not think he was really that much into the underage aspect of it (I think that few people really are -- but of course any sexual taboo is a also a kink, if the Aborigine had pornhub I think "Kumbo on Kapota" would be in the top ten categories).
In a way, I think one thing the QAnon crowd is disappointed about is that they saw Trump as an outsider who would clean up the corrupt and immoral DC elites. Who cares how many models he fucked, at least he is not part of the supposed sex and power shadow council which rules DC and the world. Except that they now find that to the very limited degree that their fever dreams were something real, he was in the fucking middle of it, much more than Biden or 'crooked' Hillary ever were.
Again, this should come as a surprise to nobody, Trump was already part of the elite the moment he was born, and his defection from the DC swamp was always kayfabe at least till J6. But it does surprise the QAnon voters.
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