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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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We interrupt your regularly scheduled Iran posts with more Epstein posts.

Melania Trump says rumors linking her to Epstein need to stop

I never been friends with Epstein. Donald and I were invited to the same parties as Epstein from time to time since overlapping in social circles is common in New York City and Palm Beach. To be clear, I never had a relationship with Epstein or his accomplice Maxwell. My email reply to Maxwell cannot be categorized as anything more than casual correspondence. My polite reply to her email doesn't amount to anything more than a trial [?] note. I am not Epstein's victim. Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump. I met my husband by chance at a New York City party in 1998. This initial encounter with my husband is documented in a detail in my book Melania. The first time I crossed paths with Epstein was in the year 2000 at an event Donald and I attended together.

For reference: This document, a proffer by one of Epstein's assistants, claims that Epstein introduced Melania to Donald; the assistant also worked for Paolo Zampolli, the man who hosted the party at which Trump and Melania met. Another piece of correspondence by a redacted author to Epstein claims that "I remember flying back with Donald on his plane the first weekend I went to visit you in Florida was the weekend he met Melania and he kept on coming out of the bedroom saying 'wow what a hot piece of ass'". So at the least, her claim that "My name has never appeared in court documents, depositions, victim statements, or FBI interviews surrounding the Epstein matter" is incorrect.

Michael Wolff, who become a sort of Epstein confidant while researching Trump, said Epstein claimed that the first time Trump and Melania banged was on the infamous Lolita Express.

This appears to be the referenced correspondence with Maxwell. Seems a little bit friendlier than "casual".

Allegations about Melania were printed in the Daily Mail and subsequently retracted in early 2017, with the newspaper agreeing to a $3m settlement.

As for the Epstein thing referenced here, my opinion is that I think most of what he was reported to have said by the Daily Beast is probably true, but it doesn’t implicate him in anything illegal. He’s a serial philanderer (publicly known). He cheated on Melania (publicly known). He fucked his friends wives after an elaborate, somewhat camp showmanship scheme that involved sending them recordings of their husbands admitting to cheating on them? Yeah, that’s believable.

But it tells you something that it is, while the “pee tape” isn’t really. Not because Trump wouldn’t have sex with an escort in a Russian hotel room, but because wanting to be peed on is a weird fetish thing, and for the kind of person who whose idea of good sex is fucking his friends’ wives to get off on being ‘the man’, that is the fetish, the woman and what you do with or to her or what she does to you aren’t, except in the most perfunctory way to say that you did. Okay, I’m explaining this badly, but I mean that this is someone for whom sex is about what it means, about power, about who and whom. What simply isn’t important to that kind of thing.

Not because Trump wouldn’t have sex with an escort in a Russian hotel room, but because wanting to be peed on is a weird fetish thing, and for the kind of person who whose idea of good sex is fucking his friends’ wives to get off on being ‘the man’, that is the fetish, the woman and what you do with or to her or what she does to you aren’t, except in the most perfunctory way to say that you did. Okay, I’m explaining this badly, but I mean that this is someone for whom sex is about what it means, about power, about who and whom. What simply isn’t important to that kind of thing.

While I agree with you that the pee tape stuff is almost certainly fake, I don't think your argument here actually does a good job dismissing it.

Five minutes on the right part of Deviant Art will show that many seemingly unrelated fetishes can all be enjoyed by the same person. Sure, most people gravitate to just one or two, but some "lucky" people seem to be interested in a wide variety of fetishes. Cucking other guys, and watersports can all be enjoyed by the same person.

The better argument is just that the "pee tape" was salacious nonsense from the Steele Dossier, and people have always loved salacious rumors about the rich and powerful, from Justinian and his wife, to Elagabalus, Nero or Caligula. Some of those rumors might have actually been true, but the fact that humanity seems to love such rumors so much they made it into the historical record should make us highly suspicious of whether they are true or false whenever we hear a new claim in that style.

The real argument against the pee tape is that we actually know where it came from - 4chan's /pol/ board. One of the more prominent Nevertrump conservatives, Rick Wilson, was relentlessly bullied over his son's memoirs which detailed his watersports fetish. Somebody on 4chan made up a bunch of salacious stories and sent them to Rick Wilson, because he wanted to see how desperate they were for dirt on Trump - and then he saw that information showing up in the dossier.

to be fair this is 4chan and twitter users so they could just be pursuing stolen valor. but the claim that 4chan users made the claim definitely checks out: https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/4chan-pranksters-we-trolled-cia-by-making-trump-golden-shower-story-1600501

Weren't most of those rumours probably true? Theodora really was a prostitute, Nero and Caligula's shenanigans probably actually happened, Elegabalus actually was something faggy and weird.

Eh, Theodora was an actress, which was synonymous with "prostitute" back then, but:

For she had an especially quick and biting wit, and soon became a star feature of the show. There was no shame at all in her, and no one ever saw her embarrassed. She would provide shameful services without the slightest hesitation and was of such a sort that if someone slapped her or even punched her full in the face she would crack a joke about it and then burst out laughing.

This is from Procopius, who hated Justinian and Theodora. Does that not seem just a wee bit over the top?

It strikes me as much like Pliny's story of Messalina (Claudius's wife) having a fucking contest with the city's prostitutes (which she won, naturally).

The Romans definitely got up to some shit, but the hit jobs written by their political enemies should be taken with the same grain of salt as stories about Trump's pee tapes and Melania being introduced to him by Epstein.