The Donald Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks

The freedom and license offered by corruptors relieved you of the burden of your moral conscience.

This image was generated and edited with AI, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator.

For anyone who has ever asked “What is it going to take?” to get some of Trump’s own followers to break with him after his many moral outrages, it appears the answer may be “Jeffrey Epstein.”

Part of what’s been so shocking and demoralizing about Trump’s second term is that, is that in addition to he his gleefully vindictive and cruel policies, is that he has succeeded in corrupting so many who willing to go along, or stay silent.

The turning point was when Elon Musk was fired, and in a fit of pique blasted out on Twitter that Trump was in the Epstein files.

Perhaps for the first time, Trump was rocked by Musk’s claim. It couldn’t be more obvious that Trump is desperate to change the channel, and that he is demanding of his officials and media allies to get them to play down the story.

Like everything Trump does, it’s childishly bad. Childish in the sense of being immature, undeveloped and not functioning at the level of reasoning or responsibility that we usually demand of adults.

However, every single moment since then, Trump has been acting like a man with something very big to hide. Even when he has the capacity to launch distractions that are global in nature - tariffs, wars - there is still the sense that he is acting to distract from Epstein.

The New York Times’ The Daily Podcast recently put out an odd episode that didn’t even mention Musk’s allegations, which is what blew the entire issue back up again. The issue was treated as if the whole Epstein conspiracy was merely a cynical ploy on the part of Kash Patel, Dan Bongino and Pam Bondi, and that it’s something that has now turned around to bite them.

“on Monday, they tried to slam the door on an investigation they themselves had opened. The Justice Department, in a pretty detailed memo, confirmed what a bunch of other investigations had already shown. There was no client list of shadowy Jeffrey Epstein clients that conspired to murder him. And they released a bunch of videotapes that showed what had already been revealed in other investigations — that he died by suicide.

The problem with all this is that most of the people involved in running these investigations — the attorney general, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel at the FBI, Dan Bongino, his deputy, had over the years suggested that there was something nefarious that was being covered up by the Biden administration and that they were the ones who were going to get to the bottom of this.

Treating it as mere political theatre with Epstein is really a kind of moral disengagement about how government, as opposed to politics, are supposed to work. The prevailing and cynical idea is that everything is a scheme, and no one ever really says what they mean, which is characteristic of our age.

An issue of this kind is white hot, but not just because of conspiracy theories. Epstein was a monster. He was an incredibly well-connected billionare and serial rapist and abuser of women and underage girls. There is unquestioned proof of depraved and immoral behaviour, and the coercion and disgusting exploitation of women and children. The Trump administration’s own statements suggest that Epstein had over 1,000 victims.

Trump was close to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as to other members of the Trump administration. Reporter Michael Wolff, who interviewed Epstein extensively, as well as other Trump administration figures, says that Epstein and Trump were the closest of friends - “joined at the hip” - for a decade or more.

What makes the scandal even more dangerous for Trump is that is is incredibly easy to understand: Epstein was a pedophile and rapist who traded in underage women. It’s a real-life, true-crime mystery suspense thriller involving taboo sex crimes, a tropical island, billionaires, celebrities and some of the most powerful people in the world.

That’s makes blanket denials are just impossible, but that’s what’s been happening.

The decision to announce that there are no Epstein files, is flatly contradicted by countless specific statements and documents.

This spring, Lawyer Alan Dershowitz was on a podcast with former Trump administration press secretary Sean Spicer. Dershowitz said he had been accused, though his accuser later recanted, and stated in no uncertain terms that he had seen the Epstein files - all of them - and that they incriminated a number of specific of powerful people, who were being protected by the files being kept secret.

The DOJ and the FBI denied there was anyone else to charge, while acknowledging there are thousands of videos and images that are explicit and involve sex crimes.

With Dershowitz and others asserting as a matter of fact that there are files that incriminate people, the communications from the White House amount to saying “Who are you going to be believe? Donald Trump, or all the evidence of your eyes, ears, your best judgment and your faculties of reason?”

The White House Press Conference with Pam Bondi, Marco Rubio and Trump is insane. When a question was asked about Epstein, Trump barged in, feigning amazement that anyone would want to ask about it, while Rubio tried to put on the worst poker face of all time, doing his best impression of a ventriloquist dummy who’s been left in his case.

Trump says, in part:

“[I]f I, could I just interrupt for one second? Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein. This guy's been talked about for years.

You're asking, we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things that. And are people still talking about this guy, this creep?

That is unbelievable. Do you want to waste the time and you feel like answering. I, I don't mind answering for. I mean, I can't believe you're asking a question on Epstein at a time like this where we're having some of the greatest success and and also tragedy. With what happened in Texas. It just seems, uh, like a desecration, but you go ahead.

Trump looks and sounds like he’s channelling Martin Short’s Saturday Night Charactaer, Nathan Thurm.

He’s not the one being defensive. You’re the one being defensive.

More recently, Trump posted this rant to Truth Social, where he blames his political opponents and asks why they didn’t ever release the files, when Epstein was arrested during his first presidency. It’s a reiteration of Trump’s official version of reality to which we are all expected to hew.

What’s going on with my “boys” and, in some cases, “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. 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? They haven’t even given up on the John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr. Files. No matter how much success we have had, securing the Border, deporting Criminals, fixing the Economy, Energy Dominance, a Safer World where Iran will not have Nuclear Weapons, it’s never enough for some people. We are about to achieve more in 6 months than any other Administration has achieved in over 100 years, and we have so much more to do. We are saving our Country and, MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, which will continue to be our complete PRIORITY. The Left is imploding! Kash Patel, and the FBI, must be focused on investigating Voter Fraud, Political Corruption, ActBlue, The Rigged and Stolen Election of 2020, and arresting Thugs and Criminals, instead of spending month after month looking at nothing but the same old, Radical Left inspired Documents on Jeffrey Epstein. LET PAM BONDI DO HER JOB — SHE’S GREAT! The 2020 Election was Rigged and Stolen, and they tried to do the same thing in 2024 — That’s what she is looking into as AG, and much more. One year ago our Country was DEAD, now it’s the “HOTTEST” Country anywhere in the World. Let’s keep it that way, and not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

I’ve already written about how the National Enquirer has rushed - too soon - to get the word out in Trump’s defense.

Much about the current lunacy is explained if we remind ourselves the only thing Donald Trump has ever been good at is watching TV. Donald Trump’s idea of running the government is to do it as a reality show, where he dominates all the media all the time.

So that is what we are living in.

Donald Trump’s vision of America as a reality TV show. The stupid names, the insane ideas. The mind-bogglingly stupid and corrupt cast of characters. People so inept and disconnected from reality that it is difficult to understand how they could ever hold down any job, much less have some of the most important jobs in the world, making decisions that affect billions of people. These people are killer clowns and supervillains, which is fitting because they have a comic book understanding of the world.

Epstein is spoiling that coverage.

Some of the ideas around evidence being sought are being tied to the conspiracy theory elements of the case, namely that Epstein was a secret agent, world-class pimp or blackmailer, and not what he actually was: he made a fortune by helping Les Wexner, a billionaire bra salesman from Cleveland, move his money around. In the 1980s, as malls were opening across the U.S., Wexner was using information technology to source offshore production that allowed him to make dollars on the penny.

The DOJ/FBI letter said that “This systematic review revealed no incriminating “client list.” There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

It’s hard to understand how two people - Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell - together had over 1,000 victims without anyone else being complicit, the idea that Epstein had a “client list” or was blackmailing people are more conspiratorial.

I’ll use the example of another billionaire serial rapist, Canadian Peter Nygard, to make the point that some of the attempts to tie Epstein to Israel has more than a whiff of anti-semitic conspiracy theory.

Nygard had a database with over 5,000 women and girls in it, and lived on a tropical island where he exerted incredible control over the government. He also had many celebrity visitors at his compound, including some of the same people as Epstein. No one suggests that Peter Nygard was acting on behalf of anyone but himself.

Believing that Epstein was working for the Mossad diminishes his personal responsibility, and imagines that his crimes were committed on behalf of or at the direction of the Jewish state. For many conspiracy theorists, blaming the Jews for everything is well-trodden and very bloody ground.

Karl Popper once said - and I paraphrase - that “Conspiracy theorists are people who once would have blamed everything on God, and now blame it on the CIA.”

There is a difference between real conspiracies, and conspiracy theorists, which is that conspiracy theorists appear to desperately crave certainty. They are struggling to integrate information they find so unsettling about the horrors and randomness of life into a rigid framework. It is perversely reassuring that somewhere above the chaos, evil puppet masters are in total control.

So what Epstein cultists are expecting, based on their theories is either logs or transactions with Epstein clients. It’s been suggested there is no such list of “clients,” because Epstein’s relationship with the people he pandered for may not have involved blackmail, or espionage, or kompromat.

It is has been openly and repeatedly stated that there is evidence that incriminates a number of people who have escaped justice up to this point.

The grimmer reality is that Nygard and Epstein are modern incarnations of the Marquis de Sade. De Sade’s criminal exploits and writing have been rehabilitated by casting his criminal abuse as “transgressive” - the idea that he was somehow being punished for standing up against an oppressive moral order, when he was a criminal predator who derived pleasure from asserting total dominance over women who had been robbed of any control, agency, or humanity. Andrea Dworkin wrote a fascinating and incredibly grim piece about de Sade,

Dworkin writes:

[De Sade’s] work and legend have survived nearly two centuries because literary, artistic, and intellectual men adore him and political thinkers on the Left claim him as an avatar of freedom. Sainte-Beuve named Sade and Byron as the two most significant sources of inspiration for the original and great male writers who followed them. Baudelaire, Flaubert, Swinburne, Lautreamont, Dostoevski, Cocteau, and Apollinaire among others found in Sade what Paul Tillich, another devotee of pornography, might have called “the courage to be.” Simone de Beauvoir published a long apologia for Sade. Camus, who unlike Sade had an aversion to murder, romanticized Sade as one who had mounted "the great offensive against a hostile heaven" and was possibly "the first theoretician of absolute rebellion." Roland Barthes wallowed in the tiniest details of Sade's crimes, those committed in life as well as on paper.

As a French artistocrat related to the King at the time of the French revolution, De Sade was a protected oligarch and serial rapist of his day. He was being held prisoner in the Bastille just before it was stormed. On July 2, 1789, he shouted to passersby that he guards were attacking prisoners, and he was relocated to an insane asylum. On July 14, when the Bastille was stormed, he still had items in cell, which was looted by rioters. De Sade also denied that he ever did anything wrong.

There’s a saying that “to understand all is forgive all,” which fails spectacularly when it comes to the actions of people who commit atrocities. Any attempt at explanation may be seen as rationalizing, justifying or sympathizing with the behaviour of people who are seen as inhuman monsters beyond understanding.

Nowadays especially, we think of people as types, where they are defined by some kind of essential and unchanging identity. They may be psychological types, like psychopaths or sociopaths, or some other diagnosis that essentially suggest that people are somehow fixed in their moral qualities - that people are either good or bad.

Corruption is not just a state of being. It is a process of becoming corrupted. These particular powerful people are not just corrupt: they are corruptors. They offer two kinds of corrupting temptation, which are false promises of freedom.

The first corrupting temptation is to be freed to do whatever they want to others. This is a promise of total power over others, without consequence.

The second corrupting temptation is to free people of their moral conscience - any sense of shame or guilt over what they have done.

That’s how power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. People who are caring or upstanding may be tempted, duped or coerced into corruption.

The temptation and powerful corruption that is passed off as “freedom” or a struggle for liberty is that these criminal predators enjoy and encourage their own total control and power over a people who are powerless, while releasing them from the burden of their moral conscience.

This corruption is the opposite of freedom, because the total freedom of the corrupt depends upon others losing all of theirs. The freedom from consequence and moral conscience comes at the expense of justice, and entrenches the corruption as a function of the system.

There is another saying, that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. This is why. It also explains a remark attributed to G. Gordon Liddy, a Nixon Loyalist, FBI Agent and Convicted felon. He held his hand over the flame of a lighter, to the point that it burned his flesh. Someone asked him “What’s the trick?” assuming that he was avoiding the pain. “The trick is not caring.”

This is the corruption that is so deadly: it strips people of their moral feeling, and it that moral feeling, not just their intellect, that acts as a brake on indulging their worst impulses.

I think this provides part of the context for Dietrich Bonhoffer’s writing on “stupidity” - the fact that in times of crisis like today, people will not accept reason, when what has happened is that they have lost their moral bearings. Bonhoffer was a Christian pastor, a spy and was executed on April 9, 1945 for his complicity in a plot to assassinate Hitler.

Bonhoffer writes that “Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless… it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law… In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like, that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being.”

The term “stupidity” here can be unrelated to intelligence: what is happening, as Bonhoffer writes, is something that is contagious. It spreads through deprivation and fear. By official decree and propaganda, these sentiments are discouraged.

Just as people can be corrupted, they can experience moral reawakening, both collective and personal. The challenge for our present moment is that, as Charles MacKay wrote in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”

-30-