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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025

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Welp, turns out more Epstein files are finally getting released!

Apparently there will be a vote coming out to release even more, but the docs released so far have been negative for Trump's claims to be innocent of the whole matter.

This, combined with the ruckus over Trump arguing we need foreign talent, has caused a massive cratering amongst online confidence in MAGA. From my perspective, confidence in MAGA at least online is the lowest it has ever been. Many feel betrayed by Trump when it comes to his America First promises.

Add in the storm over Fuentes and Israel, and I feel I'm seeing the conservative coalition fall apart in real time, extremely quickly.

Is this inevitable, the narcissism of small differences? Or is it just Trump not being a very principled man?

...the docs released so far have been negative for Trump's claims to be innocent of the whole matter.

Do you have some example in mind, here? Everything I've seen from this latest release appears to simply confirm what has long been known: that Trump and Epstein were substantially birds of a feather, but Trump kicked Epstein to the curb for stealing his girls. Since that time, Epstein has occasionally ranted about having some kind of dirt on Trump, which for some reason he never actually used and of which there is (still!) apparently no plausible evidence.

I would stop well short of describing Trump as "innocent" of anything and yet the plainly intended implication of all these reports--Trump had sex with underage girls on Epstein island or at least with Epstein's knowledge or assistance--appears to still remain purely in the realm of the undemonstrated, indeed, in most contexts the unstated. Nobody wants to get sued for defamation, and they all know Trump will happily sue them for defamation, so they are just continuing to parrot vague claims while winking and nodding in the direction of Prince Andrew, producing many guns but none smoking, nor even bearing fingerprints.

Trump has spent his adult life a man of wealth and fame, albeit also the butt of many jokes. I would honestly be surprised to learn he hadn't had more than a little bit of illicit sexual contact in his life; I would in that case need to revise my priors on the nature of rich, powerful men. But it seems like there are a lot of people out there who are utterly convinced of the details on this, who keep telling me that some bombshell or other is going to drop (including Pam Bondi!), only for those bombshells to never actually manifest. It was the same with the whole "Russian watersports" thing ten years ago. If Trump were guilty of 1% of the weird, crazy, illegal things he's accused of doing, I would expect at some point for someone to be able to produce hard, non-circumstantial evidence of something. Instead we get lawfare on novel legal theories and this recurrent "this time, we've got him!" nonsense from breathless (and brainless) journalists.

I'm open to evidence! I would not be at all surprised to see it! But again, it seems, no such thing is on offer.

Is there any clarification on "by underage we mean 17" or "we mean 13"? Because I've seen plenty of online 'it's true he's a pedo he raped 13 year old sex slaves' stuff but nothing concrete (the Katie Johnson case seems to be smoke and I have no idea what exactly Virginia Giuffre was claiming happened. If I go by Wikipedia, she was allegedly 17 when Maxwell and Epstein approached her, which is not at all the same as 13 year old).

In one way, I think the very murkiness of the term "underage girls" works for those who want to get Trump; it's easier to convey an impression that this means "13 or 14" and not "17 or just under 18 or even that legally a minor is under 21 in some states". See The Onion; yes this is satire, but they're making it satire on "fucking a 13 year old" and not "fucking a 16 year old":

“Epstein was no friend of mine, and I never drew us becoming knights and competing at a joust for the virginity of a 13-year-old Eleanor of Aquitaine,” Trump said when asked about Time Pedophiles by a reporter, suggesting that someone else could have written, inked, and lettered the series before falsely signing his name. “Anyone who knows me knows I wouldn’t draw myself in a covered wagon picking up minors on the Oregon Trail, nor would I write a story arc about going back into prehistory, long before humans invented the age of consent, to hit on Cro-Magnon girls. Sorry to disappoint, but the fact is, I don’t draw cavemen.”

...The storylines in the series are largely driven by the reliance of Epstein’s time machine on Enigmium, a mysterious substance that “never ages” and can only be obtained via sexual encounters with girls between the ages of 12 and 17.

I have no idea what exactly Virginia Giuffre was claiming happened

Nothing. She claimed nothing happened.

It's all tangled up, though, with Prince Andrew (who is losing everything over allegations that he may have had legal-in-Britain sex with her) and the overall media presentation that Epstein was providing 13 year olds for his rich and famous clients to fuck on his private island. "Okay I said I was a teen sex slave for Epstein, but that particular client nothing happened" is too fine a distinction for the current meat-grinder to make (particularly since Giuffre is now dead so we can't get her version of what did or didn't happen, or if she would change her mind and suddenly remember 'oh hold on, yeah I blocked it out because it was too traumatic but now I remember that Trump did rape me' like E. Jean Carroll).

As an American, I have to say I don't give fuck about British royals. We knew they were degenerate retards in 1776, and a couple of popular Queens notwithstanding, why should we believe that has changed, or care?

The only Trump-related thing in the current meatgrinder is years-old nothingburger. Giuffre had a job at Mar-a-Lago; she was one of the girls that Epstein poached. She's talked about a lot of people, including Trump -- and said nothing bad about Trump. If the Democrats were trying to make some hay involving ex-Prince Andrew, they would have used her name. Instead they redacted it so some people wouldn't realize it was her they were talking about.

If you're going to hypothesize that she would have accused Trump if she were still alive, this is just making shit up out of whole cloth. Maybe Jimmy Hoffa would accuse Trump of putting out the hit on him if he were still alive too.

At this point, Nybbler, I think all the waters are sufficiently muddied that we'll never know who actually did what (apart from Epstein and the previous underage sex charges brought against him, which were explained in a previous comment on a different thread).

Giuffre and what she might or might not have said - her book is out now and a lot of media commentary on it was dragging in Trump's name. I could well believe she might be coaxed into dropping hints about Trump and Epstein in order to sell the book, were she still alive; it seems she did exactly this (changed her statements) about her husband:

Giuffre also talks about her husband, Robert Giuffre, extensively. In the main body of the book, she generally portrays him in a positive light, describing him as a supportive partner and the person who "rescued her from Epstein and Maxwell's clutches". However, this positive portrayal became a point of contention after her death. In the weeks before her suicide in April 2025, Giuffre made public accusations that her husband had physically abused her during their 22-year marriage, and she expressed a desire to revise the book to reflect this. The book's co-author, Amy Wallace, addresses this conflict in a foreword, explaining the situation and the reasons why Giuffre might have initially chosen to remain silent about the domestic abuse in the manuscript itself. The published book therefore contains her original, more loving descriptions of her husband, alongside the foreword and other editorial notes that acknowledge the later abuse allegations.

So when there's money to be made, victimhood status, and pressure to 'name names' on someone probably not very mentally stable, I am ruling nothing out.

At this point, Nybbler, I think all the waters are sufficiently muddied that we'll never know who actually did what

After entertaining various noxious allegations and then finding they are unsupported, it is at the very least discourteous to then fall back on invincible ignorance.