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Notes -
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:
It’s funny to me that in real life, many a man will cop to being friends with various kinds of scumbags with the “yeah, I wouldn’t want him to marry my sister, but he never did anything to me” reasoning, but somehow when it comes to celebrity I’m expected to be scandalized that people stayed friends with Epstein even though he had a thing for 16 year old girls (whom they may well have believed were 18 anyway).
Even a thousand Epsteins wouldn’t be as bad as, say, the Rotherham scandal where 12 year olds were being sexually tortured and pimped to hundreds or thousands of strangers, sometimes dozens a day. Yes, what Epstein did (paying 16 year olds for sex and having them recruit their school friends for the same purpose) was cruel and wrong - and he deserved jail for it - but in the grand scheme of all sexual crimes it was far, far from the worst.
Good point for sure re: far from the worst. At face value, I believe this story is totally overdone, paying 16 year olds for sex is bad, he deserved jail, but they did “consent” and it’s not like they were 10 or even 12. Majorly different classes to that sort of crime IMO.
BUT, I think there’s much deeper undercurrents here. Trumps base absolutely fucking hates that he’s “covering up” and trying to bury this story (or blame it on a dem hoax which just doesn’t make sense). He is the conspiracy candidate and he went hard on this in the campaign trail. It’s more about the fact that “releasing the Epstein tapes” means “exposing and prosecuting the Washington swamp” rather than anything specific to do with child porn/prostitution.
It also seems like Epstein had plausible connections to intelligence and Israeli intelligence specifically. Tucker Carlson is doing a huge expose on this today (yesterday?) and that’s a big deal. Tucker is the #2 pod behind Rogan AND he just spoke at the RNC like a few months ago??
While the actual facts of the story is kinda meh, this is going to be a massive problem for Trump. I wish the first major scandal was something else, like not stopping any of these wars he promised to, but ofc this is what catches on with normies & his base…
Epstein was raping 11 year olds (allegedly): https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/1/15/lawsuit-alleges-epstein-trafficked-girls-as-young-as-11
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