For those who listened to the remainder of the media — each mainstream and social media — you’ll suppose Donald Trump was on the skids, that MAGA was finally turning on the president over the so-called Epstein Recordsdata.
However nothing may very well be farther from the reality, in accordance with polling the president crowed about over the weekend and, additionally, in accordance with historical past. Each single time his enemies rely him out, Trump roars again with a vengeance.
The most recent effort final week to attempt to smear him as a sexual deviant and injury his marriage by tying him to baby intercourse predator Jeffrey Epstein is a working example.
The Wall Road Journal story Thursday was tame by comparability to the lurid rumors and wishful pondering that ripped by means of Washington, DC, and newly anti-Trump Elon Musk’s X all week. The story claimed Trump had contributed a letter to a leather-bound guide created for Epstein’s fiftieth birthday in 2003 by the pervert financier’s gal pal Ghislaine Maxwell.
The typewritten letter reportedly concerned an imaginary dialog between Trump and Epstein that included the strains “Enigmas by no means age” and “Completely satisfied Birthday — and will on daily basis be one other fantastic secret.”
In its description of the letter, which it didn’t publish, the WSJ mentioned there was additionally a doodle of a unadorned girl and Trump’s signature. Trump denied writing the letter or drawing the image, calling it “FAKE,” earlier than launching a $10 billion libel motion.
Trump mentioned: “These usually are not my phrases, not the way in which I speak.”
Ditched ‘creep’ way back
I can’t categorical my very own views concerning the deserves or in any other case of the story for authorized causes since The Publish and the WSJ share the identical guardian firm.
However I can say it’s a nothing burger. So what if Trump wrote the letter, or not? The date is 2003, 5 years earlier than Epstein was convicted of prostituting a toddler and was registered as a intercourse offender, earlier than the world discovered what a monster he actually was.
It’s no secret that Trump was chummy with Epstein in his heyday in Manhattan and Palm Seashore, when the late pervert was a social-climbing financier throwing star-studded events. Epstein was a fixture of elite East Coast social circles within the Nineteen Nineties. It will be unusual if Trump didn’t know him.
However the saga reveals Trump in a great mild as a result of, years earlier than Epstein’s 2008 arrest and sweetheart plea deal, Trump banned him from his Mar-a-Lago membership “for being a creep,” says White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
In response to authorized filings and a 2020 guide by lawyer Bradley Edwards, who represented a number of Epstein victims, Trump threw out Epstein round 2004, for sexually assaulting the daughter of a good friend and Mar-a-Lago member.
The New York Occasions claims Trump and Epstein additionally fell out over enterprise across the identical time once they competed to purchase a home in Palm Seashore, forcing up the worth and annoying Trump.
Both method, there is no such thing as a dispute that Trump reduce ties with Epstein greater than 20 years in the past, which distinguishes him from different high-flying Epstein friends, similar to Prince Andrew, former financial institution CEO Jes Staley and Invoice Gates, who saved up the affiliation even after Epstein was convicted.
It was throughout Trump’s first presidency that federal prosecutors got here after Epstein once more, charging him in July 2019 with intercourse trafficking and conspiracy to visitors minors for intercourse. One of many fundamental prosecutors was none aside from Maurene Comey, the daughter of infamous FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump had sacked two years earlier. James Comey is now within the crosshairs of the FBI, together with former CIA Director John Brennan, after present CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred them for legal investigation two weeks in the past over freshly declassified proof that highlights their roles within the Russia collusion hoax.
Maurene Comey was fired Wednesday, sooner or later earlier than the WSJ story was printed, and sooner or later after the White Home was alerted to the story. She informed colleagues in an electronic mail that her ouster was “sudden” and unexplained.
Comey was additionally the lead prosecutor of Ghislaine Maxwell in 2021 over her position in Epstein’s intercourse trafficking. In response to the WSJ, the “birthday guide” Maxwell compiled was within the recordsdata examined by the DOJ in the course of the investigations of Epstein and Maxwell.
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There isn’t a indication of something greater than a circumstantial hyperlink between Comey’s ouster and the WSJ story, however the timing is intriguing.
Like all the things else with Epstein, individuals are inclined to see hyperlinks the place there are none.
After the WSJ story broke Thursday, Trump requested Lawyer Basic Pam Bondi to launch “any and all pertinent grand jury testimony, topic to courtroom approval” that was gathered by New York federal prosecutors in 2019.
However simply because folks related to Epstein doesn’t make them complicit in his crimes. The DOJ and FBI have mentioned there is no such thing as a “Epstein shopper record,” as in an inventory of males to whom he pimped out underage ladies.
What does exist is Epstein’s “little black guide,” bulging with 1,971 names, uncovered in 2009 when his butler tried to promote it. It has been the topic of intense reporting, however you’ll be able to’t choose the names responsible simply because Epstein had their quantity.
“There are quite a lot of names related to Epstein that had nothing to do with Epstein’s conduct,” broadcaster Invoice O’Reilly mentioned final week, quoting Trump. “They possibly had lunch with him or possibly had some correspondence.
“If that identify will get out, these individuals are destroyed — as a result of there’s not going to be any context. The media doesn’t care about context — so you’ll be able to’t try this.”
Most of the now-adult victims of Epstein had been cheated of their probability to confront their tormentor in courtroom as a result of he died in pretrial detention. However the choose allowed them to testify within the Manhattan federal courtroom the place Epstein would have been tried, to inform the world what his sexual depravity meant.
I used to be in that courtroom in August 2019 to witness this show of female braveness as 17 younger ladies lined up at a microphone, heads held excessive, to put their struggling on the file. Six others had their attorneys learn out letters.
Via tears and shaky voices, they informed their tales so we might perceive the toll of damaged belief. “I used to be nothing greater than a teenage prostitute. I used to be his slave,” mentioned one sufferer who was a 16-year-old virgin when she says Epstein raped her.
Essentially the most outspoken sufferer, Virginia Giuffre, who reportedly dedicated suicide three months in the past, informed the courtroom: “Epstein didn’t act alone.”
Giuffre, who fell prey to Epstein at 16, alleged she was “handed round like a platter of fruit” to “highly effective males,” together with Prince Andrew, who settled out of courtroom after she sued him for sexual abuse.
She accused different highly effective males, however by no means Trump. Actually, in her 2015 memoir, she explicitly dominated out Trump.
As a lot because the liberal media is salivating on the prospect of one other Get-Trump pile-on, there’s simply nothing there.
‘X is not actuality’
In the meantime, the identical media is ignoring the newest bombshell revelation within the Russiagate scandal unveiled final week by Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the place the proof of wrongdoing by President Barack Obama and his henchmen exists and is compelling.
Trump is having the final snicker, anyway, as CNN pollster Harry Enten identified final week.
“If something Donald Trump’s approval score has gone up since this complete Epstein saga began,” Enten mentioned. “He’s on the apex or near it when it comes to his recognition [with Republicans], Epstein Recordsdata complaints or not. Who knew Twitter and X usually are not actuality.”
It simply goes to show the noisiest loudmouths who declare to characterize MAGA simply characterize themselves.
