Watching our national political dumpster fires (the longest government shutdown in history, the nearly eight-week shutdown of the House of Representatives), one really has to wonder: What the heck was that?
The shutdown came because Democratic senators withheld their votes on a resolution that would continue funding the government. Because? They wanted to reverse the Medicaid cuts and expand the tax credits that make health insurance possible for millions of low-income Americans. Republicans, who would prefer to give tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, insisted they would address the health insurance issue separately, at a later date. (Insert eye roll here.) For 43 painful days, Democrats stood their ground. And then they gave in.
Six Democrats and one independent joined all Republicans in a vote to end the shutdown. I find it difficult to see what the Americans got in return.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, in a rare effort to prevent a vote on the measure that could lead to the government's release of Epstein files, sent his colleagues home to two monthsand refused to swear in a newly elected Democratic representative, all to prevent such a vote. And then he gave in.
Johnson finally swore in Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva on Wednesday, immediately becoming the 218th and final signature on the recall petition that will force the House to vote on releasing the Justice Department's files on the country's most notorious sex trafficker. The bill is expected to pass and will likely then die in the Senate or on President Trump's desk.
So what exactly was the point of closing the House? Was Johnson trying to protect Trump from “incriminating” information in Epstein's files? Or simply curry favor with an increasingly erratic president by doing his bidding?
Trying to shield Trump from the stench of Epstein, who was found dead in his cell in 2019, makes about as much sense as believing Republicans will offer a good-faith solution to skyrocketing health insurance premiums. The Republican Party has failed miserably for 15 years to find an alternative to Obamacare. With that kind of track record, they simply cannot be trusted to address the issue of health insurance in a meaningful way. And you can't protect Trump from Epstein because we already know so much about their relationship. After all, Epstein described himself on the tape as “Donald's closest friend for 10 years.”
Trump can call the Epstein scandal a “hoax” all he wants now. But while campaigning in 2024, Trump said he would release the files, pleasing his conspiracy-minded MAGA supporters.
“It's not that they care personally about Epstein,” explained Jack Posobiec, the right-wing firebrand who promoted a conspiracy theory about a child sex ring led by Hillary Clinton in the nonexistent basement of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria that led to an actual shooting in 2016. “It's that they care that there is this optic that Epstein was somehow involved with a shadowy system that actually has control over our government, control over our institutions, control over our lives, and really is a ruler. power over us.”
Posobiec was partly right.
The “dark system” turns out to be the elite, billionaire class that flies on private planes to private islands, abuses underage girls, and gets away with it. The high-ranking officials, technicians, scientists, academics and other men who took advantage of Epstein's revolving door of sexual gratification never thought they would be caught. And so far, with the glaring exception of a member of the British royal family, none of the defendants have paid a price.
When he died, the sleazy Epstein left many receipts, which are now coming to light with the publication this week of 23,000 pages of documents, obtained by the Chamber from his estate.
Epstein mused with journalist and Trump foe Michael Wolff about how it could damage the president's political career. “I am the one who can defeat him,” Epstein wrote to a friend in 2018. And while coaching former Harvard president Larry Summers on how to approach a woman he was pursuing in 2017, Epstein told Summers: “I've met some very bad people… none as bad as Trump. Not a single decent cell in his body… so yeah, dangerous.”
Certainly, Trump is a civilly prosecuted sex offender who has bragged about grabbing women's genitals and falsifying business records to pay for the silence of a porn star he was accused of having sex with while his wife was home with a newborn. But Epstein's emails do not implicate him in the criminal sexual abuse of minors.
And yes, Epstein had a low opinion of his former friend, comparing Trump in emails to a mafia boss and referring to him as “dirty,” “fucking crazy,” “bordering on crazy,” and “dangerous.”
But while Epstein wrote that Trump “knew about the girls,” he also wrote that Trump “never got a massage.”
Why, then, is Trump so desperate to change the subject on Epstein?
Perhaps the simplest explanation is the best.
As political commentator Bakari Sellers said the other day on CNN: “Everyone knows that Donald Trump was friends with Jeffrey Epstein. No one tried to hide it, so you have to wear it around your neck that you were friends with one of the most notorious pedophiles in the country's history.”
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