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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.
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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