A Ghost Unravels Trump in Real Time, Threatening the King
Hundreds of millions of dollars are being stripped from critical aid programs putting millions of lives at risk here and abroad, trump officials continue to deny climate change while they eviscerate the nation’s environmental laws and dictator in waiting continues his cruel plan to deport millions of hard-working Americans to some of the most dangerous countries on earth.
At the same time, trump is methodically destroying institutions that took generations to build while he dismantles the constitution in his crusade to have him enthroned as king. And Gaza still is being bombed to smithereens and the trump Netanyahu bromance seems irrelevant.
With such an apocalyptic backdrop, it is difficult to understand the latest continuing mountain of interest over trump’s possible links with a powerful, notorious, contemptible, craven pedophile who lured innocent young girls. His name is Jeffrey Epstein and release of the complete facts about his life and death could be the most important development and the final straw to penetrating trump’s Teflon tenure. We can only hope.
Trump is now being viciously attacked by the very MAGA people that trump empowered through his years of crude innuendo. Trump built his MAGA empire on claims that he would give voice to those who feel defeated. He has convinced his disciples that Americans are being led by an evil, secret world, a deep state that is mired in sexual deviation, all by Democrats. Trump promised to expose it all and lead the country back to a time of Puritan greatness.
Trump tested the power of innuendo in 2011, before his first race for the White House, when he claimed without proof that President Barack Obama was not a U.S. citizen and was not entitled to be president. Seeing the success in dealing in such deceit, trump began to repeat and give credence to many of the conspiracies as promulgated by the dank QAnon world. Key to the QAnon code is the corrupt deep state and trump became an instant hero when he intoned, “I alone can fix it.” By becoming the darling of QAnon, trump was deified by many and was able to resist attacks on himself.
Trump’s MAGA support has been unwavering, through his incendiary lies about Hillary Clinton’s abuse of a private cell phone, to supporting QAnon’s absurd claims that have gained a semblance of general acceptance among MAGA. Unfounded and refuted allegations include that a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor was a front for a Democratic pedophile sex ring; and that COVID-19 and climate change were “hoaxes” perpetrated by the deep throat and malicious Democratic who support the evil LGBTQ+ community.
And finally, his lemmings were ready for the great plunge into the abyss when they gathered on Jan. 6, 2021, and attacked the Capitol because trump told them he had lost the 2020 presidential race because of non-existent voter fraud and the pernicious deep state cabal.
Trump continued to ride his orgy of conspiracies all the way to his reelection and his followers were all in.
Throughout his first tenure and in various statements trump has claimed that the deep state has concealed the names and were protecting powerful figures who were served and blackmailed by Epstein. Trump also intimated that the deep state had Epstein murdered and that he did not commit suicide while in custody in 2019.
In April 2020 trump first publicly commented on QAnon and said that followers of the movement “love our country.” Trump said he didn’t know much about the conspiracy theory movement but that many adherents support him. Trump has posted many memes that include QAnon signs and the watchdog Media Matters found trump amplified bizarre QAnon claims on his Truth Social page more than 1,000 times since 2022.
Turnaround Fair Play
Then a curious thing happened. When trump returned to office, pressure grew for him to release all of the government’s files on Epstein to allay suspicions that the government was hiding the truth. Recently, even House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said the complete files should be made public. Other loyal Republicans calling for greater sunlight on the Epstein case include die hard trumpers like daughter-in-law Lara Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C. and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer.
Trump is unable to control his comments on his Truth Social site and is apparently not familiar with the Streisand effect, the phenomenon of inadvertently drawing more attention to an issue by trying to make it go away. The expression was coined in 2003 after Barbara Streisand filed a lawsuit to suppress a photo of her Malibu home taken as part of a project documenting coastal erosion. Before her legal action, the photo was downloaded six times; after her lawsuit was filed, the photo had 400,000 views within a month. The more trump complains about Epstein, the greater the questions and public hunger for answers.
Trump has weathered many storms that would have doomed any other politician. His reputation reached a nadir in 2016 after dozens of GOP leader backed off supporting trump after the release of a video showing him speaking of women in vulgar sexual terms. But trump survived.
Trump and Epstein were friends for nearly 15 years, hosting fancy dinners at Epstein’s New York City mansion and wild parties with cheerleaders and models at trump’s Mar-a-Lago palace. And there were many trips by trump to and from Florida to New York on Epstein’s jets. Trump has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with the Epstein case and has said he had “no idea” that Epstein was abusing young women.
One young woman said Epstein groomed and abused a girl who worked as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago. Epstein was trying to recruit the girl for sexual activities. Another accuser said trump eyed a woman in Epstein’s office but that Epstein told trump that “she’s not for you.”
Trump is hardly beyond reproach despite his constant claims of innocence regarding anything Epstein. Since the 1970s, at least 25 women have publicly accused trump of rape, kissing and groping without consent; looking under women’s skirts; and walking in on naked teenage pageant contestants. Trump has denied all of the allegations. He has a history of insulting and belittling women when speaking to the media and on social media and has made lewd comments about women, disparaged their physical appearance, and referred to them using derogatory epithets.
Conspiracy Mongers
Trump laid the basis for his own trap when he named two notorious conspiracists to his administration, including FBI Director Kash Patel and FBI Assistant Director Dan Bongino. Patel and Bongino had made millions off their far-right podcasts, continually hammering on the deep state’s alleged refusal to provide all of the facts about Epstein. Many in MAGA thought that Patel and Bongino would use their new-found authority to blow the lid off the Epstein scandal.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has been in the eye of the hurricane, providing willing cover for trump to fend off any claims that he was either involved with the convicted child sex criminal or had ordered the Epstein files kept secret.
Bowing to pressure, Bondi said in February that she had Epstein’s client list “sitting on her desk.” To much fanfare, Bondi released the Epstein files to reporters, but they included no list of clients. The report included heavily redacted documents that had been previously reported as part of a defamation lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s imprisoned associate. They included names of Epstein’s acquaintances and associates, including Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton and trump, a long with flight logs, a contact book and a list of Epstein’s masseuses. But there was no list of Epstein’s clients.
The Department of Justice and FBI also revealed in a joint statement that they found no evidence of a client list, and no evidence of Epstein blackmailing any high-powered figures. The joint statement ended with the declaration that there would be “no further disclosure” on the case.
The report included newly-released CCTV footage that the Justice Department claims proves that Epstein was not murdered, further confirming the New York Medical Examiner’s report that he committed suicide in his prison cell.
Diehard MAGA loyalists and a number of GOP lawmakers were unconvinced and have demanded that Bondi resign after she reneged on her claim of having a client list. Trump, on the defensive, called his MAGA critics “boys and girls” and that they should not “waste time and energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”
And of course, he blames the controversy on the Democrats and fake news.
Trump has tried to assuage the MAGA followers by asking Bondi to produce “any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval.” However, the testimony will likely not be made public because of judicial concerns over divulging information and compromising the safety of people who secretly testified. It is yet another Shakespearean twist that trump is turning to a branch of government, the judiciary, that he has criticized at every turn when he disagreed with rulings.
In great Shakespearean style, Trump was about to be hoisted by his own petard as many questions over Epstein remain.
Epstein’s legal troubles began in 2006 when an FBI investigation found at least 40 potential minor victims. In 2008, Epstein’s lawyers cut a deal and he was tried and convicted of one count of prostitution and was sentenced to 18 months in state prison. As part of the plea deal, Epstein was allowed to leave prison for up to 12 hours a day, six days a week for work release. Epstein could have been jailed for up to 45 years on charges that he ran a sex-trafficking ring in the early 2000s that included girls as young as 14.
The plea deal was approved by then-U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta, who later was labor secretary under trump from 2017 to 2019. Costa later said he agreed to the plea deal after he had been told by unnamed sources to “leave it alone” as Epstein “belonged to intelligence,” and that the matter was “above his pay grade.” The secret plea agreement, conducted without consulting the victims, was later ruled illegal by a federal judge for violating the Crime Victims’ Rights Act. Acosta later faced strong criticism for his role in the plea deal, and he resigned as labor secretary on July 19, 2019.
Bondi was the Florida attorney general from 2011 to 2019. She could have reopened the Epstein case but did not. In 2020, Bondi was one of trump’s defense lawyers during his first impeachment trial. By 2024, she led the legal arm of the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute. On November 21, 2024, president-elect trump announced he would nominate Bondi for attorney general to replace former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who withdrew from consideration amid investigation for alleged sex trafficking and having sex with a minor.
Lawmakers and MAGA supporters have called on trump to name a politically neutral special prosecutor to credibly and independently investigate the Epstein affair.
In the past, trump has demanded special prosecutors investigate various activities of trump opponents. He has called for a special prosecutor to investigate former President Joe Biden and debunked claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential race. He also said special prosecutors should look into his 2016 presidential nemesis, Hillary Clinton and Jack Smith, who led the probe into trump’s actions regarding Jan. 6 and other events.
“A Special Prosecutor must be appointed. This cannot be allowed to happen again in the United States of America! Let the work begin!” he wrote last month on Truth Social.
But there will be no special prosecutor for Epstein, because, trump said, “I have nothing to do with it.”
“We’re on one Team, MAGA,” trump wrote on TruthSocial over the weekend, “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.”
In addition to the Streisand effect, trump might want to refer to a line from the play “Hamlet” by Shakespeare.
Queen Gertrude made the comment about her insincere overacting of a character in the play within a play. Prince Hamlet had questioned his mother, the queen, to elicit evidence of his uncle’s guilt in the murder of his father, the King of Denmark.
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” was the line spoken by the queen.