I & I Editorial BoardTwo impeachments didn’t do it. A phony Russian hoax didn’t do it. A dubious election loss didn’t do it. Relentlessly negative coverage didn’t do it. Civil and criminal judgments and massive fines didn’t do it. Two assassination attempts didn’t do it.
Maybe Jeffrey Epstein’s ghost will finally bring Donald Trump down. That seems to be the hope, anyway.
Epstein, who hobnobbed with the rich and famous, had been under investigation since 2005 for sex trafficking and pedophilia, and died in prison six years ago, has been responsible for conspiracy theories for years.
As NPR wrote in 2022:
One clear reason for the staying power of conspiracy theories involving Epstein is his frequent socializing with the world’s rich and famous. He hobnobbed with Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and Donald Trump. Britain’s Prince Andrew lost his royal privileges over sexual assault allegations involving Epstein. Those relationships are potent examples for conspiracists to cast nearly all political events as driven by hidden, sex-fueled abuses and coverups.
In 2023, ABC News reported that “Hundreds of sealed court filings pertaining to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are set to be made public this week, and several prominent names – including Britain’s Prince Andrew and former President Bill Clinton – are expected to appear in the documents.”
These stories all came and went. Until now.
Today’s Epstein coverage gives new meaning to “flooding the zone.” Take a look at a recent front page of left-leaning news aggregator site Memeorandum. In all our years covering politics, we’ve rarely seen anything like it.
True, there is news. Attorney General Pam Bondi badly fumbled the issue of the Epstein client list. Trump has bashed supporters for fixating on Epstein. He’s suing the Wall Street Journal for reporting on a supposed birthday card sent to Epstein way back in 2003 (which was two years before the Palm Beach police started investigating a parent’s claim that Epstein had sex with her 14-year-old daughter).
But Trump’s enemies think they’ve finally, after a decade of searching, found a way to take him down. You can practically hear the glee in the headlines and the desire to turn this into a Watergate-level scandal:
- FBI personnel were told to flag Epstein files mentioning Trump, Senate Democrat says
- Trump DOJ order on Jeffrey Epstein could create legal and ethical challenges
- Ex-Casino Boss Claims Trump and ‘Best Friend’ Jeffrey Epstein Were Once Caught Bringing Underage Girls to Casino Floor
- Trump once hosted party for ‘young women’ where Epstein was the only guest, says report
- Trump’s approval hits new low as Epstein pressure mounts
- Consumed by Epstein, Trump has lost ground on the economy and immigration
From the mainstream media’s perspective, not only does this story have the virtue of hobbling the Trump administration, it gives them an excuse to ignore the many recent successes Trump has been racking up (see the headline immediately above).
But let’s be honest, if there were any actual evidence that Trump had been involved with Epstein’s sex trafficking – other than a tweet from Elon Musk claiming he’d see Trump’s name on “the list” – it would have been leaked to the press years ago.
And it looks like this story will go the way of all the other Trump-ending bombshells. Last week, the Washington Post’s fact checker, Glenn Kessler, who is no fan of Trump’s, reported that “No credible allegation has emerged to connect Trump to any of Epstein’s crimes. If the full file is ever released, we are confident that no connection would be found.” He, too, admits that “if Trump were prominently mentioned, it would have been leaked by now.”
No. The real mystery isn’t why Democrats and the press are suddenly fixated on Epstein. It’s why some Trump supporters are fanning the flames.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
The mystery is not the President and Epstein. It is Epstein and all the others Epstein has been involved with. Including Intelligence agencies. The President fanned the flames on this one with his \’hoax\’ talk.
This issue is hardly new, and if getting to the bottom of it was only and all about getting Trump (as the title laughingly claims) then so many of his mostly loyal supporters would not be passionate about it.
No, it’s not about “getting Trump”. It’s about finding out who in Washington is compromised by the dirt that it was obviously Epstein’s job to collect, and which agencies (CIA? Mossad?) set him up to do it.
We wouldn’t expect Democrats to reveal this sort of thing, but Trump promised us he would. Then Bondi said it was all on her desk, but now they want to bury it? That’s not acceptable.
sudden? this was a campaign promise…c’mon!
“No. The real mystery isn’t why Democrats and the press are suddenly fixated on Epstein. It’s why some Trump supporters are fanning the flames.”
Actually, the reason this doesn’t feel right to us ‘Trump supporters’ is that it appears to be more of the same from the Government.
Trump has so many supporters because he keeps his promises and do what he says he’ll do. But this whole Epstein thing smells like the deep state is still calling the shots.
Trump should at least tell the truth about what caused him to change his mind about being totally transparent. He was going to ‘drain the swamp’ not join.
You are dead wrong. The biggest group demanding transparency are Trump supporters…people who still support the man himself, just not his decision.
And the new Drudge/Whatfinger/msn TDS democRat/Rino propaganda media outfit fell for it hook line and sinker.
Message to Democrats: you have spent the last 10 years trying to destroy Trump and failed with egg all over you, head to toe, and much of the treasonous lies you all fabricated out of thin air, are coming back all over you.
Blowing up the Epstein files, whatever the facts are, is what number, 250?, of your “lies and scandals” these past 10 years? We all remember the lack of facts in the Obama Russian Hoax, and the obsequious, boldfaced lies from Shallow-Man himself, Adam Schiff, as he lies about everything, and the lack of constitutional basis other than Pelosi’s oft exhibited, petulant and vicious middle-school-girl vitriol which fueled her two illegal impeachments and her abusive Third World J6 Committee. (Why is she not in prison for abuse of The Speaker’s Office, abuse of our Constitution and for treason?)
Here is a sensible strategy for Democrats instead: President Trump has only this term to finish; support his policies that are beneficial for the country and for Democrats, which, if you are fair minded, there are many; take the ones you do not like on your chin, being responsible for them due to your unconstitutional change of presidential candidate to your wholly incoherent, Saturday Night Live host, gobbledygook candidate against Trump.
Otherwise, the Epstein sideshow will sink you even lower, like the other 250.
It’s about justice. If Trump is guilty, so be it. If he’s not he should be willing to get it all out, as many of those who went after him are probably involved with this sick behavior as well. What good is it having Trump as POTUS if he’s also one of these sicko’s and compromised by his wicked behavior?
If both the Democrats and Republicans were involved with Epstein and his girls on the island and on the locally Express who’s going to be there to release the story and bring down both the Republicans and the Democrats. If Epstein knew that he was protected by the Democrats and the Republicans, they would have been no reason for him to take his own life. This whole mess will be covered up until we get people who were not involved with Epsrein running the country
IT’S NOT ABOUT GETTING TRUMP, it is about all the children that are trafficked, r8ped, murdered and sacrificed by these demonic people. WE WANT THEM PROSECUTED and TRUMP IS COVERING IT UP!
If Trump is involved in this, he should go down. Sorry, these are children.
As usual people miss the real bottom line. First of all the deep state and globalists are in charge of the epstein list. Let’s get that off the table right now. The Democrats nor the Republicans are allowed to do anything like releasing that kind of information without permission first. That’s why Trump got so angry when he got his hand smacked by the globalists and told the list will not be released.
The democrats just spent years trying to create false narratives to put Trump in prison but they couldn’t doctor the Epstein list to include Trump. Do people exercise critical thinking anymore? This s all staged theater. Trump is nothing but a speed bump to the globalist agenda. People need to grasp that before it’s too late although it’s already too late. This Country is finished.
The list obviously exists. You can’t run a multi-million dollar sex trafficking ring without keeping records. Trump is lying and lashing out now at his own supporters because he was told the list will not be released and that’s the end of it. Trump, like he did after creating and empowering the government to run the pandemic on us, just wants to put it behind him and pretend it didn’t happen.
meanwhile the Democrats and most of the republicans as we speak are already planning the next pandemic where they will further strip what is left of our civil rights. And we will comply so don’t waste my time with the phony virtue signaling about how people aren’t going to comply. Shutting everything down will give the Democrats the 2 or 3 days they will need to undo everything Trump has done. That’s all it will take since the congress refuses to actually pass laws to support his agenda.