This is the first time I have written about Epstein, I think, but I want to share a couple of interesting things I saw in the electoral-vote.com mailbag this morning.
This caught my eye, and perhaps it explains some things that have been inexplicable to me:
A wise man once said that high minds talk about philosophy (like what type of government we should have), average minds talk about politics (like immigration or economic policy), and small minds talk about people (like Jeffrey Epstein).
Could that explain why Epstein of all things seems to be the crack in the MAGA ship? That they can only understand talking about things at the people level and cannot think in terms or concepts or ideas?
C.K. in Jacksonville, FL, writes: A wise man once said that high minds talk about philosophy (like what type of government we should have), average minds talk about politics (like immigration or economic policy), and small minds talk about people (like Jeffrey Epstein).
Those QAnon folks have long believed that Epstein is the key to saving the world from the Satanic cabal, because they can only understand talking about people. The 1/6 insurrection and its impact on this country don’t even compute for them, but Epstein does. Who knew that Epstein would be the key to making a crack in the MAGA movement? In hindsight, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) should have launched investigations into Epstein instead of Jan 6.
I do not believe that the QAnon folks will ever vote Democratic, because that would mean they were wrong. But perhaps they can be persuaded that they have been fooled because the Republicans are in the Satanic cabal, too. Trump, of course, is Satan’s chosen one and, like Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars, has played both sides to advance Satan’s agenda. I’m sure that QAnon folks love Star Wars and can understand that—Epstein bad, Palpatine bad, Trump bad. If those MAGA voters understand the Satanic “truth”, then voting either Democrat or Republican is a vote for Satan. Then all those QAnon people will stop voting. That is a huge part of MAGA’s electorate and good riddance.
⭐︎
This also gave me a bit of hope, in an odd sort of way.
Please let it be so that the orange monster is losing his base.
J.D. in Concord, NH, writes: The New Hampshire State Capitol, located in downtown Concord, hosts protests of all kinds. “Nazis” are not an uncommon sight. These wannabe Nazis are always obnoxious and usually carry a large provocative sign of some sort. This week, the “Nazi” sign said “TRUMP LOVES EPSTEIN”:
He’s definitely losing his base…
What do you think? Can that explain why Epstein seems to be the only thing that seems to make it through the MAGA bubble?
Open thread.
Lamh’s Sister Needs Our Help!
Time Travelin'
When you’ve lost the Nazis… something something
bbleh
Well, one thing that comes immediately to mind is that Epstein was already IN the MAGA bubble. Consider the sad case of Dan Bongino, longtime conspiracy theorist and MAGA rabble-rouser who arguably made his whole career on Epstein, Comet Ping-Pong, ee-leetist adrenochrome parties and the like, was brought in to be #2 at the FBI (?!?), and now is reported to be on the outs with the Inner Circle. He’s been pumping that stuff into their veins for years, and he’s certainly not alone. They’ve been marinating in it for so long they CAN’T let it go — which btw is why I don’t think it’s done, even though the MSM have temporarily lost interest.
It’s a bit like Trump The Business Genius. It was fed to them for years on TV, so they believe it, all the evidence of their eyes and ears to the contrary. And in the case of Epstein, they actually WERE longtime good buddies.
Gotta make more popcorn.
And yes indeed, I DO think it’s a reasonable hope that SOME of them will get so disgusted with the whole mess that they just stay home — a pox on both their houses — especially as the economy starts to really get soft. Were I a Dem operative, I’d be stirring up as much Epstein trouble as I could.
WaterGirl
@Time Travelin’:
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M. Bouffant
Heard it before, this way: Smart minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss things, & small minds discuss people.
bbleh
Small minds listen to talk-radio, average minds read facebook, smart minds comment on top-10,000 politics blogs.
suzanne
i think that the way the Epstein conspiracy theory grew…. it was basically a grab-bag. Something in it for every MAGA! It had Deep State! It had Democrats are Pedos! it had Q! It had Big Daddy Trump! Truly, something that every delusional nutcase could enjoy. So, now it’s agony to give up something that has been such a uniting force.
Also, and this is less amusing…. I think it is likely that a ton of the people who are really into it, the ones who genuinely believe….. were sexually abused as children, or someone close to them was abused. And they have formed a great deal of their self-concept now, years later, on “saving the children” because no one saved them. So they cannot simply release the grip on this. It will be very difficult for many people in this mindset to accept even to themselves that FFOTUS is a perpetrator, or more likely, knew all this stuff was going down and did not care. Y’all know that I am first in line for schadenfreude. Cake! Popcorn! I will admit that it makes me feel some degree of hesitance when I consider how likely it is that there is significant trauma response at play.
Baud
Sounds like conspiracy theorists and Nazis are gettable. Are you listening, Democrats?
@M. Bouffant:
I like talking about dogs.
lollipopguild
For alot of the MAGA types the initial attraction was getting dirt on the Clintons, the Royal family and a lot of important people to be named later, Trump never entered their minds because the right wing outlets were not pushing him. The rest of us who actually paid attention knew Trump was in the thick of it with Epstein.
Michael Bersin
On Saturday we attended the Lafayette County Democrats annual dinner and pie auction in Higginsville, Missouri. This is a popular event, with several hundred people in attendance. There’s dinner (no dessert), speechifying, and a pie auction. There were close to fifty pies in the auction – they went from a high of $600 to a low of $125. I started a few bids at $25 and even made one $50 bid. After that it was too rich for me. We had ice cream when we got home.
The speechifying was great.
“….What I’m gonna tell you is the truth. This is, I promise you, this is not an exaggeration. A thousand years from now people are going to look back at this moment and they’re going to look to see what happened. Did he roll over the country, keep the House illegally, stay an extra term, another term, smash everything that’s sacred to all of us? Or did we stand up and fight?….
….Well I say, maximum resistance everywhere all the time. We have to fight them everywhere. [cheers, applause] Everywhere. The library. The beaches. The stores. The rallies.
Friends, it’s gonna take all of us, right….” – Missouri State Representative David Tyson-Smith (D)
Rep. David Tyson-Smith – Lafayette County Democrats – Higginsville, Missouri – August 9, 2025
Scout211
I guess the QAnon/sexual exploitation factor is a hook, but it’s just one of thousands of off the wall Trump promises he makes that sets himself up as a savior and his opponents as creeps and criminals. Add to that the horrible technique of smearing your opponent by accusing them of perversions or crimes that you yourself are guilty of and you have a huge crisis when your tribe suddenly feels betrayed by you.
It’s his betrayal of the members of the tribe that seems to be causing fractures in the MAGA world. He and his minions are obviously covering up crimes and he and his minions promised them those crimes would be exposed.
And Trump cannot just “fake news” this. He keeps trying and it doesn’t work anymore because there are files, there are photos and videos and there is Ghislane Maxwell relaxing in “club fed” for women.
Moondoggus
It’s a good explanation, however I think MAGA is able to talk about politics, but in a very elementary fashion. Build the Wall, for example. Deport criminals. They can understand those kinds of absolutes but any kind of nuance escapes them. They don’t get that to only deport criminals means you have to go through the hard work of actually convicting them. Much easier to trust Trump to know who the bad guys are. That’s why it’s so important to keep highlighting fact most of the people Trump deports aren’t criminals, and to try to get MAGA to see them as people instead of some vaguely defined other.
Personally I think MAGA is exploited by Trump. He doesn’t lead. He does have a very good way of figuring out what MAGA wants and them saying that back to them.
MAGA existed before Trump, and one of their key organizing ideas is the Epstein conspiracy. They will turn on Trump if he’s involved in any meaningful way, and when I say turn on him I mean they’ll want him in jail. Or executed.
I think Bongino has seen the evidence, and it’s really bad. Right now he’s trying to figure out who he can trust ( it’s not Kash Patel ), and how he can go public with this.
Patel, in turn, is firing a lot of FBI agents trying to intimidate those who saw the evidence when The Idiot Bondi had a thousand people combing through the Epstein files.
way too many people have seen how much Trump was involved. The principals met last night with Vance to discuss releasing the files and how they will handle the fallout, up to and including trying to get Trump removed from office.
they have the tax cuts. They don’t need him anymore.
piratedan
there’s a lot that bothers me about all of this… #1, most of the Q folks have an emotional commitment about this but I liken them to the anti-abortion crowd, it’s only a shallow patina finish. They no more care about the trafficking of children than the others do about newborns….
and while Epstein may be small, nothing that DJT is involved with seems petty, like who WAS Epstein working with and for? Is there a Russian angle (as everything surrounding DJT curiously appears to have), were there more than one group of well heeled supporters (Saudis? Evangelicals?) that were sating illicit desires?
I feel just as weird espousing and thinking about every damn thing being a conspiracy, but when it comes to these villains, is it wrong to keep digging and find out where all of the threads go?
I feel like we’re at the beginning of our own generational Watergate, where the initial Grand Jury findings stopped short of the inner circle of the WH and stopped at the burglers and the guys who planned it, but as rocks keep being kicked over, more crap is exposed to the light.
I also have some reservations that as a whole, we forget the actual fucking victims who were used against their will… as opposed to be just collateral damage of sorts.
lowtechcyclist
@M. Bouffant:
Either way, I have a problem with that notion. It’s people that matter. Things and ideas matter to the extent that they affect people’s lives. But it’s people that matter.
Archon
Right now Trump supporters are mostly confused and angry that he seems to be covering up for liberal pedophiles. I don’t think it has fully hit them yet that he’s covering it up because Trump is deeply implicated in those files.
To go from “the Epstein files will destroy Democrats” to “Trump is a co-conspirator and likely pedophile” is a twist thats gonna take a new level of cognitive dissonance to deal with.
JoyceH
From my understanding, not all MAGA are Q-Anon. But a significant part is. When it started Q-Anon was separate from the Trump team, they were a thing all on their own and somewhat apart from politics. But Trump said some vaguely positive things about them, and that was the first time any politician said anything nice about them, and so they adopted him as the savior. So the more they supported Trump, the more he adopted their cause. Humorous that their Chosen One spent over a decade closely connected to the leader of a pedophile ring, and potentially part of the ring himself. But these are guys who can get whipped up to go shoot up a pizza parlor to save the kids in the basement without first checking to see if the place even had a basement, so they’re not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier.
But a lot of MAGA that wasn’t Q-Anon was friendly and supportive of them. Adopted their slogans WWGOWGA etc. And think what an earthquake this must be for them. This time there really IS a pedophile ring. There really are victims (coincidentally all pretty young white girls) and rich and powerful men whose power lets them skate away from accountability. The government IS covering up for them, and this time the government is headed by their savior! No wonder it’s a deal breaker!
bbleh
@Moondoggus: they have the tax cuts. They don’t need him anymore.
I think there’s a lot to this. They have those, they have Vought and his minions dug in like ticks at OMB and a hundred other agencies, and they will continue to have a Congress that at least will block anything Dems try to do, even if the Reps lose ground in ’26.
I don’t think they’ll try to push Trump out, because he’s still useful as a figurehead and because pushing him out would be more trouble than it would be worth. But he’s getting more feeble almost by the day, which makes him easier to distract and sideline.
The problem I think they’ll have to deal with is, who’s gonna set the agenda? I expect some knives are already coming out (eg in re Bongino), and it’s only gonna get worse.
Martin
@lowtechcyclist: It’s not about people not mattering, it’s about what you are talking about. Trump’s voters aren’t discussing the shape of the economy, a lot of them are just discussing him.
When you discuss people, you are focused on one person. When you discuss policy you are focused on some subset of the people. When you discuss philosophy, you are focused on all people.
The philosopher says all the people matter, not just this one.
MattF
@bbleh: Yeah, apparently Bongino is a real threat to Trump in that world. The cynical view is that Bongino is upset because losing your grift is the absolutely worst thing that can happen… the alternative view is that Bongino (et. al.) really believe all the bullshit. I’m not remotely qualified to figure this one out. The cards will fall where ever they may.
Time Travelin
@WaterGirl: Ah! Thank you. It only started recently. It worked fine before.
lowtechcyclist
@Martin:
Exactly what I was saying: policy and philosophy matter only insofar as they affect the lives of living, breathing people.
And trust me, plenty of people discuss both of those simply as abstract things.
catclub
@suzanne:
I haz my doubts. Did they worry about saving the children when the Catholic church was covering up abuse? How about all the evangelical churches?
bbleh
@suzanne: @catclub: ima guess both. There doubtless are some who have a personal reaction, perhaps because they were abused or a sibling was abused, or they witnessed abuse elsewhere eg at school or in a club or camp or church or something. And I’m pretty sure there are others for whom it’s simply a convenient pose of morality and holiness, like the ones who are quick to trot out Pauline condemnations of gay men but are oddly forgetful about those about adultery, not to mention Jesus’s admonitions about feeding the hungry etc.
catclub
@Moondoggus:
haha
There are only three ways Trump leaves office before Jan 2029.
1. He dies.
2. He is impeached.
3. He resigns.
Who thinks there is a 0.1% or larger chance he resigns? Once every thousand terms. Do you remember how desperately he had to get back in office to avoid criminal convictions?
How about impeachment? The Republican House sends an impeachment to the Senate?
Moondoggus
@lowtechcyclist:
nothing gets done without the people
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@M. Bouffant: I have read this quote attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt. My mother used to quote it (just before gossiping about someone LOL)
Moondoggus
@catclub:
They could pull a Nixon and have Vance pardon him ( for what I don’t know ) and then rely on his tame SCOTUS to rule that pardoning former presidents also works for any state charges.
but only former presidents, if they were Republicans.
rk
Because they’re morons. You cannot hope to understand how the moron brain works. Out of all the horrors this is the one they care about. The only thing to do is to exploit it, sow dissent and work towards the destruction of the movement. Even the cult leader doesn’t get it.
WaterGirl
@Time Travelin: Did you try to fix it with the link I sent you, or are you just giving up the apostrophe? Looks like the latter!
Jay
QAnon will do what ever they parse from the next cryptic Q Drop.
Anybody know the last time a “Q” did a cryptic Q Drop?
From what I understand it’s been a bit more than a while.
Keep in mind that research has shown that 25% of online QAnon accounts are Bots.
JetsamPool
I agree that most of MAGA opposes the idea of pedophilia because it is the worst thing you can accuse someone of. They get to feel better about themselves, and people they don’t like (like Democrats) must be pedophiles because they are bad people. People they do like and respect can’t possibly be pedophiles, so they must be confused why the files can’t be released. I’m just hoping all the public outcry and interest is enough to overcome the MSM’s deference to FFOTUS.
Time Travelin
@WaterGirl: I just removed the apostrophe. I wasn’t too attached to it anyway. Its interesting as I’ve probably had this nym since Cole was a Republican and only noticed it happening yesterday. Granted, I spend 97.38% of my time here as a lurker, so who knows.
Jay
@JetsamPool:
kutv.com/news/politics/utah-senate-leader-denies-influencing-law-for-family-amid-resignation-calls
kalakal
I’m begining to think that as the cracks expand he’ll rapidly switch from Saviour to Satan in their ‘minds’.
He’s the Saviour, the Golden One who’s clearing up the swamp, that international cabal that is ruining their lives, trafficking children, looting all the money, etc. etc.
He could get away with being a ‘successful’ businessman, living a gilded lifestyle, because he was fighting to save them against the elite, he deserves his rewards for his courage and work on their behalf*
Once he’s seen as protecting the elite the conspicuous consumption comes back to bite him.
‘He just got his own 747″, “Billions in Crypto!” “Always bragging about golfing” etc
Meanwhile their prices are going up, their health care is vanishing. All local, all personal while the Pedo’s Pal ( or worse) far from clearing up the swamp, is sitting surrounded by gold, chatting to Bezos & Musk. He could switch very rapidly to being the Evil One, the Father of Lies, the Kingpin of the International Elite in their eyes
JaneE
I don’t know the causality, but the rise of what are now the MAGA seems to coincide with the drop in conversations about issues and policy. Or even policy and implementation. Conversations or arguments over what form of government was better stopped as soon as I left college. I think the last serious conversation I had on the merits of any governmental action was around the turn of the century.
Martin
@suzanne: I think it’s much more basic – the trajectory of the country hasn’t been great for quite a while (not to say people aren’t doing fine, but US hasn’t really continued with the kind of greatness we saw with moon landings, inventing the semiconductor, ending Polio, etc.) and people want some explanation for that and we don’t have one inside our accepted rules for how the US should work, so either we’re being sabotaged from within (which both sides engage in to some degree) or those accepted rules are wrong (which both sides engage in to some degree).
Some people have a harder time giving up on certain accepted rules than others. I don’t think that they were sexually abused, but conservatism has baked into it that society has to have a sacrificial class, so they’re pre-wired to just toss people into that bucket as needed.
David Collier-Brown
By happenstance, I just bought “On Being Certain, Believing You’re Right Even When You’re Not”, by Robert A Burton. kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/on-being-certain-1?sId=3e40b7e0-9d2f-4f35-8cb0-6eb2782f23b6
Alas I just bought it, so I’ll give you a book report, after I read it.
Martin
@JaneE: That’s sort of a byproduct of my theory – if we accept the clockwork theory of markets, which operates with increasingly complicated tweaks like quantitative easing that only PhD economists understand, then what role does everyone else have to play in policy and implementation – those are either above your understanding or delegated to the market to work out for themselves. Both Democrats and Republicans agreed on the form of government and both agreed that government action was undesirable and should be done as sparingly as possible. What was there to argue about? So we got fights over the top marginal rate and marginal regulation and occasionally something more substantive like the ACA which was just regulation beyond the margins, but no fundamental disruption to the underlying philosophy that markets should dictate. That’s been off limits for decades and we gatekeep those who would challenge it from the left VERY hard.
Jackie
@Jay: I saw that report a couple of days ago. SURE changing the laws had nothing to do with your adult relative diddling underaged girls…
David Collier-Brown
@lowtechcyclist:
I think it is a venn diagram. The smart think about ideas, things and people. Middling minds think about things and people. Dullards? people.
Of course, any of the three can get the people part wrong. Most likely with the dumbest folks (:-))
ColoradoGuy
I don’t think it’s a big jump to say that Trump is The Deep State. Why did he skate from 50 years of crime? Who was protecting him, the whole time?
Another Scott
Isn’t it pretty much always, and only, a sex scandal that brings RWNJs down? Sometimes bringing them down in history, after they’re out of office.
Swaggart, Bakker, Hastert, Foley, Gaetz, Falwell Jr., etc., etc. Even the monstrous things that Hoover did hardly raise an eyebrow, but stories about him dressing up probably reveal more about the continued power of sexual rumors and innuendo.
Just like Jesus said, sure, preach greed and have a 17,000 square foot home, but don’t be letting people find out about you having fun with your genitals in unapproved ways. It’s right there in the Bible, probably.
It would be surprising if the MAGA disillusionment didn’t involve sex.
My $0.02, FWIW.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
JoyceH
@kalakal:
This is something that really grates on me, because the mainstream media never seems to understand it, and always wonders how MAGA can be against the elites and yet support Trump the New York billionaire who lives in a gilded penthouse. They never understand that when MAGA and conservatives complain about the elite, they mean something entirely different. The “elites” that they’re against are the scientists, the college professors, the doctors, all the people who are highly educated, who tell them they’re wrong and make them feel stupid. They don’t support Trump despite his wealth, they love that he’s rich! He doesn’t make them feel stupid, he’s a moron too! And he’s putting those damn elites in their place every single day. When he goes after Harvard, when research budgets are axed, when a ranting loon is put in charge of health care, Trump is playing right to his base and they love him for it. Those bastards who told them to wear masks and not kill people? Kick ’em out!
David Collier-Brown
@kalakal: “True Believers” can snap 180 degrees if they hit a big enough contradiction. In at least one case they killed the cult-leader
kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/the-true-believer?sId=116b2c41-d0e6-484f-bdf7-5e2b5eb44667
ColoradoGuy
Which opens up a broader conversation how the billionaire and entertainer class are not so much above the law, but effectively outside it. Trump is simply the most dramatic example, but look at what happens inside Fox News and to Hollywood executives. Problems just magically melt away, decade after decade.
Betty
Trump is losing his base. A protest in Manheim, Lancaster County, PA, disrupted an ICE recruitment effort. It doesn’t get much redder than that area.
In other ICE news, someone mentioned in the last post that ICE raided two Mexican restaurants in the Pittsburgh area. They didn’t just raid them and take away employees, they destroyed the restaurants. This is criminal.
Sister Golden Bear
@JetsamPool:
More to the point, accusations of their opponents being pedophiles isn’t a conspiracy, it’s a justification for unleashing unfettered “righteous punishment” on their enemies. Because if pedophiles are the worst people in the world, you can—and should—use any means necessary to stop them, punish them, and eliminate them. With extreme prejudice.
Which is precisely why their accusations that gays and lesbians, and now trans people, are pedophioles has been their go-to attack for decades.
Another Scott
@catclub: This subset topic may be another example of “all generalizations are false”. I’m sure many abused people really do want the Epstein people and everyone associated with the taken down. But I’m also sure that many abused people can rationalize whatever their tribe says – it’s always always always the fault of someone outside the tribe.
Another thing that I think we should keep in mind is, there are always factions battling inside powerful institutions. There’s always someone waiting to move up. To become the new leader. To run things “correctly”. And they know that there are risks in attacking too early, but they are pretty much guaranteed to fail if they wait too long. The internal anti-47 faction isn’t there yet, but one has to wonder if JV being on vacation so much is so that he can scheme while away from the orange guy, and have (quasi-)plausible deniability for the MAGA rubes when the time comes…
Lots of possibilities!
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
hueyplong
I really look forward to the point at which we’re arguing the finer points of how it actually happened instead of how it might happen.
Jay
@Betty:
bsky.app/profile/iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social/post/3lw2okcpwq22a
They aren’t just kidnapping staff, they are trashing the fronts, trashing the kitchen, overturning stoves and prep stations, stealing the food and booze.
On the bright side, the Girl Guides of Canada have banned all Girl Guides travel and events, by Brownies, Guides and Explorers to the US, because ICE might mistake them for Dora the Explorer.
pajaro
I admit I find the Epstein freak-out by some of the far right at this time to be inexplicable. I know they are obsessed with child sexual abuse, but the victims in Epstein were not children. The basic facts about the favorable treatment he got have been known for years. Same with the fact that Trump, Clinton and a lot of other powerful people were friends of his. His original favorable plea deal got almost no press at all. He either silenced himself, or was silenced by a government plot, with almost 18 months to go in Trump’s first term, yet there was no general outcry about a cover-up by DOJ at the time, nor was one ginned up against Biden by Republicans when they had a chance. . Really, if anyone can tell me why this is happening now, I’d love to know.
Because this makes so little sense to me, my guess is that the Q Anon folks will soon have some other shiny object to chase; I’ll be shocked if this does lasting damage to Trump, but I’ll listen to any and all theories about why I’m wrong because I would love, love to be wrong about this.
Another Scott
@JoyceH: Ooof. I think you’re on to something there.
is President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho next??
:-(
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Jay
@pajaro:
11 years of age is a child.
hueyplong
@pajaro: Agreement with your prediction (the emergence of a new shiny object) is precisely what drove Johnson to send Congress out on recess.
We await whether that, or a slow drip of mendacious “investigation” of Dem-adjacent people only, gets the job done. I’ve given up on thinking I have a clue as to what does and does not work with people I’ll never understand.
JoyceH
@Jay:
And they’re on video just totally looting the place and hauling stuff away! This needs to be a big deal and I suspect it’s not the only instance. This is what happens when you let ‘law enforcement’ wear masks.
Jay
@JoyceH:
Not the first time LEO’s are just common criminals, won’t be the last.
David Collier-Brown
@Betty: Its sounds contra-intuitive, but call the cops. Even if they might want to side with ICE, if their cameras are turned on, they have to at least pay lip-service to the law, and arrest icicles for destruction of property. And if they don’t like ice? Off to the judge!
(I’m in Canada: our police can be as biased as anyone, but they also have been polite their whole lives)
rk
@pajaro:
It will go away only if there is some explanation ( however dumb) which satisfies them.
Trump has to come up with something halfway plausible. If he could go after only Democrats he and the Republicans would have done so already. They went after the Clintons relentlessly, but never a peep about Epstein even though Clinton knew and flew with Epstein. This fact is actually a gift to the Republicans! Yet, not a peep out of them against Clinton.
There is some really bad stuff in those documents which is preventing them from pinning it all on Democrats.
I think it’s Trump’s beauty pageant which was probably the recruiting ground for Epstein. It’s all tangled up with Trump
Also, the youngest victim was 10. Trump was accused by a woman who said she was 14 when Trump molested her. She withdrew her case.
Suzanne
@Jay: I posted about this (didn’t name the restaurant, though) on Friday. I live not far from one of their locations and I go there on occasion. ICE apparently absolutely trashed two of their locations, in addition to kidnapping people.
Timill
@rk: Remember that Epstein’s accountant testified that the Epstein model agency was patterned after Trump’s. So it’s probably not a stretch to suppose that Trump was also transporting gulls across staid lions for immortal porpoises…
Jay
@rk:
Epstein had all 14 of Trump and Trump related phone numbers including his driver and security guard.
Jay
@Suzanne:
There was that case several months ago, where ICE “raided” the wrong house, (single Mom and kids, all US Citizens), stole all their money, ID’s and electronics.
Bill Arnold
@David Collier-Brown:
This is, IMO, Mr. Trump’s greatest vulnerability.
His support among evangelicals is particularly grating, and perhaps vulnerable. The “annointed one”? Really? A vile person with no redeeming attributes, who ticks many boxes as (at least) cosplaying the antichrist? The understudy of the Prince of Lies?
WaterGirl
@Time Travelin: So strange. WordPress has thrown all nyms with apostrophes into moderation since we updated the site in 2019.
I wonder if maybe you had the “looks like an apostrophe but isn’t an apostrophe” for all that time, and then somehow you had to type it back in again and you used the regular apostrophe?
Who knows? But now at least your posts show up right away. :-)
WaterGirl
@Timill:
Being funny? Or you dictated your comment and this is what it came up with?
Martin
See SGBs comment above. They believe that all the things wrong with the country are the fault of a group of rich and powerful people undermining us (deep state) and that one of their vices is pedophilia and that Epstein is the key that unlocks the door to holding them accountable. They don’t care about child sex abuse or any of the victims, apart from their ability to punish their perceived enemies. They’re just a means to an end.
Epstein’s arrest in 2019 mostly got overshadowed by Covid, and by a general sense on the right that Trump was surrounded by people installed by the old guard and were not loyal to him (Barr was considered to be part of the deep state). But this time Trump clearly has loyal people, so there’s simply no excuse to him not coming through on this.
Denali5
It was only when the Democratic Congress Representatives investigated the January 6th uprising that the facts came out. And still the Republicans followed the CF. I surely hope the damaging information in the Epstein files comes out; people really must being be in a cult to stay tied to a child molester.
Jay
@Bill Arnold:
It’s not that strange. I.E. Catholic’s support for the Church and Priests, Evangelicals support for Pedo Ministers. Ditto Mormon’s, Jehova’s, etc.
Martin
@JoyceH: This is how authoritarianism works. ICE agents know they aren’t going to be held accountable. More than just deport the administration wants people terrorized, so this just serves that goal. Feature not bug. Plus, it makes it easier for the leader who doesn’t need to build the infrastructure for rules to follow or inspectors general or whatever – vibes works just fine.
JetsamPool
@Sister Golden Bear: Exactly. Their logic makes my head hurt, with their eagerness for cruelty and punishment.
rk
@Timill:
It’s hard to wrap our heads around the fact that there are at least a thousand victims, if not more. The whole operation was run like a business. JP Morgan Chase and Deutch bank settled with the victims. There is something really ugly they’re hiding. And it involves both Republicans, Democrats and rich powerful men. You don’t have to be a MAGA lunatic to believe it. The lack of public disclosure is evidence in and of itself.
MazeDancer
BBC News is reporting that the entire Al Jazeera news team in Gaza City has been killed. 4 people.
The two latest threads aren’t open, so putting this here.
Suzanne
@Jay: I was going to go there over the weekend to support them. Plans changed due to kid activities, so I didn’t make it over there this weekend, but I’m going to go get some dinner next weekend and flip them some extra money. I am horrified. The neighborhood I live in is historically Italian, but there is a growing Mexican community here. ICE has been spotted on our primary commercial corridors a number of times.
Another Scott
@Martin: ?
NPR.org – Epstein crimes timeline:
Covid didn’t blow up in the USA until January 2020 and the “lockdowns” didn’t happen until mid-March 2020.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
sab
@pajaro: 13 and 14 year olds are children.
Martin
@JetsamPool: I’m not sure how eager they are for cruelty as much as they don’t understand why the country is in decline, and have simply concluded that it’s sabotage from within, so yeah, they want punishment for sabotaging the US.
Martin
@Another Scott: And throughout 2019 information was being released. In August all the attention shifted to whether Epstein was murdered. This tied up matters in the courts for a while, and then people started to get restless, started to blame Barr/DOJ for killing Epstein to cover up, and Trump was off the hook – the deep state was in the house and pulling the strings. A lot of the momentum for that should have carried into the election, but Covid shifted everyone’s attention.
You’re expecting a group of conspiracists to behave rationally. Covid gave them entirely new categories of conspiracy to also deal with. There were conspiracies that Covid was unleashed to distract from Epstein. But the point was that Trump was insulated from accountability due to the conspiracies.
He’s not getting that now because it’s clear he has the loyalists he wants, and because he signaled clearly to the base that he had the list, Bondi had the list, they were going to release everything. He said that. He committed to it and there are no excuses left.
RevRick
@WaterGirl: @Scout211: The reactionary mind is hyper focused on the intimate sphere, because purity of blood is at the heart of their beliefs. It’s the key to understanding their attitudes towards:
1). Immigration; 2). Abortion; 3). Sexual morals; 4). Family dynamics; 5). Race; 6). Homosexuality and transgender rights.
Perceived violations of purity are met with disgust and horror… and fear. They taint the “goodness “ and “virtue” of the community.
The Epstein narrative plays into all those things. To reactionaries he is the embodiment of the moral decay “liberals” are supposedly foisting on their country. He is impurity at its most disgusting level, preying upon children.
In their minds, conservative “values” are all that stand between a well-ordered society and chaos. In their minds, liberalism brings a world where anything goes. So of course, Epstein’s collaborators must be liberals. That conservatism generates more degenerates is unpossible in their worldview. That Trump associated with Epstein for so long has to be for other reasons. Like he was running a secret undercover operation!
So, that Trump and his underlings are spewing out so many contradictory explanations is for them unsettling.
Steve Paradis
@pajaro:
I worked in a high school. Hormone central. We had some serious young people there with their eyes on the ball. But most of them were little better than children with a shotgun between their legs.
You only need look at the runaway alerts, and the dregs of manhood they are found living with. Those kids need as much or more protection than “children”.
Tehanu
@lowtechcyclist:
Lois McMaster Bujold, in one of her Vorkosigan books, similarly says that people — human souls — are more important than principles. And we all know the famous E.M. Forster quote: “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friends, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.”
Jay
@Martin:
The Canadian MAGgot’s I know fall into 3 categories.
“Working Class”, (Employee’s) who know nothing of economics, nothing of politics, history and swim in propaganda. They don’t understand why they don’t have a house, why their jobs are just jerbs and not careers, why they don’t have a pension, their RRSP’s suck, why UI is now EI, they can’t get ahead, and when you try to explain FINCEN or politics their eyes glaze over if it’s longer than 10 words. They are looking for a “one trick” to solve all their problems. A single simple solution to a vast array of complex problems. They often swim in CT and “do their own research”. This is the largest group. This is the largest group.
The next group in size are the bigots, racists, authoritarians, etc and are upper middle class or professionals.
The smallest group are the olds. Most olds know the roots of the problems but a small number are just consumed with anger.
prostratedragon
@Betty:
ICE has done similar in Burbank:
prostratedragon
Lord.
Shalimar
@piratedan: google “Robert Maxwell Mossad” for info on Ghislaine Maxwell’s father. The most logical explanation for who Epstein was working for is that he took over the Maxwell role with Mossad with Ghislaine’s help after Robert committed suicide or was killed. There was also a lot of speculation that Robert was a double or triple agent working for multiple sides, which is how the Russians got involved.
prostratedragon
@prostratedragon:
RSA
This is a better take, I think. But it’s not a progression. I’ve argued with small-government libertarian dullards, for example, who are in love with things and ideas (property and property rights!) but seem not to be acquainted with people.
kindness
The MAGA & Teabagger folk are basically simple folk. They really believed that Hillary & George Soros and every top Democrat in office and all the stars and donors that gave money were all a bunch of pedophiles. Read what Q said. They thought Trump 1.0 would march them all off to jail and they’d live a blessed life without Democrats & liberals. But…. there’s always a but. For the most part (not saying all mind you) Democrats aren’t pedophiles and consenting adults means no kids. And as Trump well knew with Jeffrey Epstein, Trump and many, many conservative & Republican men did like children that way. Trump1.0 buried the whole thing and acted like it never happened.
Now those same simple folk are still wondering why all the Democrats haven’t been carted off to jail and they expect an answer this time. Trump is doing every misdirection he can. I suspect the next Democratic president will release the real Epstein files. I won’t believe anything Trump releases is real.
WaterGirl
I just put up an open thread.
JaySinWa
@RSA: In the great words of Linus Van Pelt “I love mankind, it’s people I can’t stand”
I think using people is making the quote about ideas, policy and people fail. I think it works better if you substitute the word individuals for people. Small minded people are interested in individuals, the abstract “people” get pigeon holed with stereotypes and caricatures. They can focus on individuals a bit better and see them more clearly.
Gvg
@JaneE: the Cold War ended and the former communist countries turned capitalist, some without saying so such as China. Democracies don’t always elect nice, even before this. I am not sure what there is to discus about what form of government to have. Even effective dictatorships generally go with fixed elections.
we do discuss electoral college reform, gerrymandering, and balancing the interests of capital versus labor. That is a kind of form of government discussion.
Mike in Pasadena
Although this thread died five hours ago, I’ll ask anyway — I don’t see any Epstein news anymore. Is it still a hot topic in right wing world?
Kayla Rudbek
@Another Scott: and a sex scandal was what brought the Klan down in the 1920s as well if I recall correctly.
Another Scott
@Mike in Pasadena: (Though he’s not a MAGAt, apparently, Drudge is still RW, AFAIK-)
drudgereport.com/ has a bunch of Epstein / Maxwell stuff.
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
rikyrah
@Betty:
And STOLE FROM THE RESTAURANTS
Pictures of them taking things from the restaurant.
Still haven’t forgot about that family in Oklahoma who had all their money taken from ICE IN AN INCORRECT RAID