Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
While I understand the inclination, the beliefs and motivation you've assigned to me here are not accurate. (do we even have a single Trump-deranged person on themotte? how would they not go crazy and burn out immediately?) I am neither a Trump obsessive nor an Epstein obsessive, and that "70%" is not a strongly held immovable belief.
My (again loosely-held and not deeply researched) model was that Trump knew or kinda knew about Epstein's proclivities during the 80s and 90s, he didn't really care (considered and treated it as within the jocular class of "cocaine and affairs"), he thought he should get credit for his later hostility to Epstein (hence his comfort attacking others for Epstein-connections, drawing massive attention to it, until like 2019 -- not the behavior of a man who fucked kids with Epstein), but did not fully appreciate that he would be held little less guilty even by his base for not immediately turning him in until more recent rounds.
I took another look at the card and found it would be more implicating if real than I'd remembered, which does not fit that model as well, so I withdraw my tossed-off small-questions-thread-grade take for further review.
That may be plausible, Trump is not exactly a saint himself, and being in business, you have to deal with all kinds of sleazy people, so until it didn't affect him personally, he might have at least heard the rumors and didn't care much while it stayed on the level of vague sleaziness. When Epstein started to mess with Trump's own grounds, he was promptly banned. It's unlikely Trump ever was involved in Epstein's shady business (as far as I understand, he didn't need anybody's help in that aspect of life anyway) but it's not unlikely he had some common dealings early on. But the note implies the level of intimacy that Trump has never demonstrated to anybody, and frankly is a harsh mismatch with anything he has ever done and how he behaved in public. It's something Hunter might do (I don't say he did, but his character - artistic pretense, etc. - would fit much better) but Trump wouldn't. If the allegation were he knew Epstein - nothing do deny, he did. Even that they for a while were friendly is true - so if somebody implied Trump sent a congratulatory note to Epstein on one of his birthdays, nothing to deny here either, he very well might have. But not this particular note, it's just not him.
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