Are we really so cooked?
It’s almost cute, in a dazed and drooling sort of way, how some people still cling to the bizzaro world bedtime story where Trump is some sort of secret crusading operator, dismantling elite trafficking rings with divine precision and the masterful wielding of power. One unnamed staffer, a few cherry-picked dates, and suddenly he’s some holy warrior with a golf handicap. But tug on that thread for more than five seconds and the whole thing unravels like a cheap suit in a rainstorm.
Trump and Epstein were well-acquainted for years. Trump publicly praised him in 2002, calling him a terrific guy and noting his fondness for young women. There is no verified record of Trump banning Epstein from Mar-a-Lago in 2005. That claim rests on the word of an anonymous staffer, repeated years later with no supporting evidence.
Trump did not initiate Epstein’s 2019 arrest. That was the work of independent prosecutors at the Southern District of New York. What Trump did do was appoint Alexander Acosta, the same man who handed Epstein his original sweetheart deal in 2008, which let a serial child rapist walk free with a wink and a weekend pass.
Epstein wasn’t just a sick piece of vile excrement. He was a systematic predator who trafficked and abused children across state lines and international borders. He should have been dragged out behind the chemical sheds and beaten to death with a two-foot length of rubber hose. Instead, he was shielded and protected by the rich, the powerful, and the cowardly. The network he built is still largely intact, and the silence surrounding it is not a mystery. It is complicity.
Trump has had every chance to go after the rest of them. He has done nothing. No unsealed files. No further prosecutions. No names named. Just noise, posturing, and a parade of glassy-eyed followers insisting that the absence of action is actually proof of a master plan too advanced for ordinary minds to grasp.
It goes without saying that Epstein is/was a abhorrent, reprehensible monster. But casting Trump as his longtime nemesis doesn’t survive contact with reality. Trump is no more a savior than Biden is. It still amazes me how many people remain convinced he’s playing four-dimensional chess, when in fact it’s more like a petulant child making up the rules to chess on the spot, because he only kind of knows how to play checkers, while loudly insisting he can’t be doing it wrong if nobody else knows what he’s doing.
This isn’t justice. It isn’t strategy. It’s a cult of personality stapled to a stack of wishful thinking.
Frankly shocking to me how many otherwise very intelligent people have been hoodwinked into this particular vertical of group thinkiness…