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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:
We're gonna have to see if Trump actually goes through with the lawsuit and what happens over it, but given WSJ and Murdoch decided to go through with the article knowing his plans (they even state in the article that's the comments they got when reaching out to the admin) I'm expecting they might be storing more in the barrel still and baiting.
As a North Carolinian, I saw a similar story play out with Mark Robinson where he claims it's fake, starts a lawsuit and then quietly dropped it after things were no longer relevant. Especially funny cause he kept using the username in question too.
Still whether or not this particular letter is real is mostly a distraction from the Case of the Missing Epstein Files we kept getting promised only to end up not existing and things like the altered video. Probably why this is the first time JD Vance suddenly has some thoughts to share, of course none about the Epstein situation, it's so sad how we just don't talk about it anymore in favor of random drama of the day.
Anyway funniest conclusion will be a real letter but not by Trump or associates, but by Epstein and associates faking it and putting people's signatures on things for some weird fantasy.
I'm not sure they the WSJ cares about the truth of it, presuming they want to help the Democrats right now, anything that keeps Epstein in the news cycle, including a lawsuit from Trump, is productive. That might be very well the trap here; they know Trump's ego wouldn't allow letting this be heard unchallenged, but challenging it is guaranteeing it stays in the news cycle for months.
The WSJ wanting to help the democrats? The party trying to chase them out of NYC?
The paper owned by Rupert Murdoch, a known hive of TurboLibs.
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The WSJ is not too partisan usually, but I would not be surprised if they felt that the Democrats would be less willing to throw in with socialists if they had better chances in the midterms.
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