Transcript:
I’ve been warning for, well, a year or so now that the Republican fascist plan detailed in Project 2025 was to purposely overwhelm Americans with so much bad news that the average person just gives up. And to me, that just means that we as individuals should acknowledge that we can’t necessarily keep up with everything, or give everything as much energy as we might want, and to focus on ways that we can protect ourselves and our loved ones.
Unfortunately, a lot of other people take a different path and declare that every new “scandal” or administrative overreach is a “distraction.” Like, threatening to revoke Rosie O’Donnel’s citizenship was a distraction from the Epstein files, which was a distraction from the failed trade deals, which was a distraction from banning transgender people from the military, which was a distraction from shipping people to El Salvador. Here’s the thing: none of it is a “distraction,” which implies it’s something that 1) isn’t that bad and 2) they’re only doing to divert your attention from something that IS really bad. It’s not! It’s all bad, yes even the Rosie O’Donnel shit, and it’s all stuff they really want to do, and perhaps most importantly, they do not give a shit if you are paying attention or not. They are saying the quiet part, loud!
It’s bad enough to see that kind of nonsense on social media, but it’s now appearing in reputable mainstream media, like this stupid piece in Mother Jones: “Stop Taking the Epstein Bait, Dems – Democrats don’t need conspiracy theories. There are more than enough real Trump scandals.” In the piece, senior reporter Dan Friedman argues that not only is it a “distraction” for people on the left to highlight Trump’s failure to fulfil his promise to release the Epstein documents, but that it’s also an unfounded “conspiracy theory” that Trump is withholding the documents because he is implicated in them. Both of those arguments are complete bullshit.
If you’re new here, let me just say up front that I do not hold back from criticizing conspiracy theories when they come from Democrats or those further left: no, Trump did not fake an assassination attempt; no, there’s no evidence that Trump won the 2024 election through massive vote rigging; no, federal workers aren’t communicating in code on social media; and no, there’s still no evidence that Trump won the 2024 election through massive vote rigging.
So I’m not dismissing anything because it contradicts my political beliefs or desires. And there definitely are some silly beliefs concerning Jeffrey Epstein–just after his suicide, people suspected he was actually murdered, and even after the investigation found no evidence for that a lot of people continued joking that the Clintons killed him to stop him from implicating Bill, and a lot of people weren’t joking. And I get why! This is the most famous sexual predator of our time, who spent a lot of time cozying up to wealthy and influential people and without a doubt trafficked underage girls to some of them. Yet he first got a sweetheart deal in Florida and even now the only person who has actually suffered any consequences is the one woman who was involved. Who, to be clear, absolutely deserves punishment, but there is no question that there are powerful men out there who breathed a little easier once Epstein was dead. I think it’s rational to say, “Well, sure, maybe someone is covering up a murder, here.” And when the Trump Administration is finally forced to release SOMETHING, and they release the video of Epstein killing himself but they’ve obviously edited it and there’s a minute of footage missing, yeah, I can see the logic in wondering why they did that.
And that’s for a “conspiracy theory” that is almost certainly not true. The “conspiracy theory” that Donald Trump is hiding evidence that he is implicated in the Epstein files? That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s a rational conclusion to come to based upon all currently known evidence, which includes the fact that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein have been very public good friends going back to the 1980s, that Epstein is on tape saying that for ten years he was Trump’s “closest friend” and that Trump first had sex with Melania on Epstein’s jet plane. Teen girls said Trump walked in on them while they were changing their clothes. Many women have accused Trump of sexual assault and he was found by a civil court to have raped at least one. Another one was a girlfriend of Epstein who said that Trump groped her in front of Epstein. At least one of Epstein’s victims was trafficked from Mar-a-Lago. Previously released documents show that Trump rode in Epstein’s jet frequently. And of course, Elon Musk has stated that Trump is implicated in the files.
All of that has been well publicized, so it was kind of grimly funny to watch MAGA fall over themselves to brag that Trump would finally release the Epstein files to punish the Democrats, despite the fact that he has been trying to pump the brakes on that actual conspiracy theory for years, with this interview probably being the clearest example of Trump trying to gently signal that actually no, he would prefer to maybe not release those files thank you very much.
And so, anyone with functioning neurons was unsurprised that the Trump administration has announced that there IS no “client list” (which, again, no one with functioning neurons ever thought there was one tidy list of names sitting in a folder somewhere), Epstein definitely died by suicide, and they will NOT be releasing the rest of the documents after all.
Does all the smoke mean there’s a fire? Not necessarily. I can think of some other reasons why Trump wouldn’t want to release the last of the files: perhaps they implicate someone else close to Trump, or someone who Trump owes a favor to. Perhaps Trump’s brains are pudding and he THINKS he’s implicated even though he isn’t. Perhaps…actually those are literally the only other hypotheses I can come up with.
So no, I don’t think it’s a crazy “conspiracy theory” for people to ask what’s going on. And this is possibly the worst incident to handwave away as a “distraction” because for the very first time, MAGA morons are reconsidering their membership in the cult and it’s driving Trump even more insane than he already was. Like, did you see this Truth Social post? “What’s going on with my “boys” and, in some cases, “gals?” “gals?” They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and “selfish people” are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein. For years, it’s Epstein, over and over again. Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration, who conned the World with the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, 51 “Intelligence” Agents, “THE LAPTOP FROM HELL,” and more? They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called “friends” are playing right into their hands.”
Like, that is a BONKERS thing to post even for Trump: he says that the “Epstein files” DO exist and they DO implicate him but only because they were written by Barack Obama. Sure, Jan.
He then goes on to say “Why didn’t these Radical Left Lunatics release the Epstein Files? If there was ANYTHING in there that could have hurt the MAGA Movement, why didn’t they use it?” Funny enough, that’s the same thing argued by Friedman in his piece for Mother Jones: “it’s unclear why the Biden administration—which controlled the DOJ for four years—would have participated in this supposed cover up.” Really? Is it unclear? We can’t think of a single reason why the Biden administration would have been just as reticent as Trump to release fully unredacted documents of an investigation into which rich and powerful people were raping kids with Jeffrey Epstein? Come on.
So, I’m in no way insisting that everyone assume Donald Trump, an adjudicated rapist who for a decade was best friends with a pedophile running a multinational child sex trafficking ring, engaged in the rape of any trafficked children. And I’m not even saying you have to believe that he did that AND that the administration has evidence of it. But even if you sincerely think that the evidence doesn’t convince you, then at the very least I hope you can accept two things: one, that it’s understandable if other people ARE convinced by the existing evidence, and two, that at least keeping the KNOWN facts in the news cycle is driving Trump insane and fracturing MAGA in a way that no other “scandal” has. Those known facts do not require any conspiracy theory: many voters elected Trump because they believed that he would release these documents and Trump has just announced he will not. Even if you are absolutely positive that Trump is not implicated in Epstein’s crimes, you can keep your intellectual purity while still pointing out that very obvious contradiction.
