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Unless this breaks some obvious threshold where I need to notice I am likely going to ignore anything on Trump. I 100% believe he banged Stormy Daniels for money but none of his ex-wives fit the pedophilia bro type. I do not think there is a huge overlap in guys who bang Daniel’s (big breast) and into underage girls.
For the reason perhaps I should give other people with accusations the benefit of the doubt. Bill Gates though does have pedophile vibes. Even DiCaprio vibes like a guy who would probably go younger if he was allowed to. Trump just seems to have always gone for a different body type.
“He knows a lot of people” It’s weird how a quote from a movie will stick with, but in the movie never been kissed the one baseball player friend of hers who also went back to High School said something like, “If one person says your cool then everyone will go with it”. My view is if you have one famous person vouche for you and then you meet 5 more and handle it well then it’s easy to know 500 famous rich people. You are in the club. It’s much harder to find the first famous friend than number 100.
It's not about Trump actually having sex with 16 or 17 year olds, it's about spreading the message of guilt by association. He and Epstein were best buds. Epstein arranged underage sex slaves for his rich friends and contacts. Lurid claims of "I was raped by both of them when I was thirteen" just help that along. Nobody (except the dwindling number of people who do care about distinctions like "underage means under 18, not 12 years old" and "did this really happen?") cares if it's true or not, it's just convenient mud to throw.
He's a racist. He's a transphobe. He's a sexist. He's a rapist. He's a paedophile. He's a Nazi. He's a convicted felon (36 FELONIES!!!)
"Knew Epstein was a pedophile and still palled around with him" is pretty bad in and of itself, making him an accessory through inaction. Conversely, "somehow missed all the red flags about Epstein being a pedophile despite palling around with him" would be pretty damning for Trump's intelligence even if it's ethically exculpatory. So if you establish a sufficient degree of regular association between the two that it has to be one of the two, you have a pretty tight case for Trump either being complicit, or incredibly dumb. Your only way out is to argue that Epstein was so good at covering up his sins that an intelligent man could genuinely hang out with him repeatedly without ever suspecting a thing; and does anyone seriously believe that?
No, that is not how being an accessory works in the slightest.
Not in the legal sense, but absolutely in the reputational sense.
Only if you accept the basic guilt-by-contagion premise of the left side of the Culture War.
I disagree. Knowing that an acquaintance of yours is a pederast (or "merely" an ephebophile) and refusing to report him or cut ties with him reflects badly on you, even if it's not legally actionable, and this social convention long predates wokeness.
What crimes does this extend to? There are crimes of a whole range of severity. At what point does it become severe enough that you are obliged to cut ties or report? And what if you have less than 100% confidence that he committed the bad deed?
I haven't thought about this in a systemic way, but if I knew for a fact that a friend of mine had done one of the below (without having been punished), I think I would have no choice but to cut ties with him:
I'm sure there are others that one might add to the list, those are just the first few that come to mind. If I knew for a fact that a friend of mine had stolen someone's wallet or defrauded someone out of a significant amount of money, I would probably cut ties with them as well (although in that case it would be more out of concern that he might do the same to me).
What if I don't know for sure? I think if my friend has been publicly accused of one of these serious crimes, but I personally think he's innocent, then I don't think I have no obligation to cut ties with him (indeed, probably the worst thing about #MeToo was the number of men who lost their livelihoods and entire social circles on the basis of allegations which were implausible on their face). If he hasn't been publicly accused, but rumours are starting to circulate, then I think one ought to do one's due diligence, investigate if the rumours sound credible, and escalate if so.
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