Watching our nationwide political dumpster fires — the longest authorities shutdown in historical past, the practically eight-week shuttering of the Home of Representatives — one actually has to surprise: What the hell was that?
The shutdown occurred as a result of Democratic senators withheld their votes on a decision that might proceed to fund the federal government. Why? They wished to reverse Medicaid cuts and lengthen the tax credit that make medical insurance attainable for hundreds of thousands of low-income Individuals. Republicans, who would reasonably give tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, insisted they’d take care of the medical insurance difficulty individually, at a later date. (Insert eye roll right here.) For 43 painful days, Democrats held agency. After which they caved.
Six Democrats and one Impartial joined each Republican in a vote to finish the shutdown. I’m onerous pressed to see what Individuals bought in return.
Home Speaker Mike Johnson, in a weird effort to stop a vote on the measure that would result in the federal government’s launch of the Epstein recordsdata, despatched his colleagues dwelling for two months, and refused to swear in a newly elected Democratic consultant, all to forestall such a vote. After which he caved.
Johnson lastly swore in Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva on Wednesday, whereupon she instantly grew to become the 218th and ultimate signature on the discharge petition that may pressure the Home to vote on whether or not to launch the Justice Division’s recordsdata on the nation’s most infamous intercourse trafficker. The invoice is anticipated to cross, and can most likely then die within the Senate or on President Trump’s desk.
So, what, precisely, was the purpose of shuttering the Home? Was Johnson attempting to guard Trump from “incriminating” data within the Epstein recordsdata? Or just currying favor with an more and more erratic president by doing his bidding?
Making an attempt to guard Trump from the stench of Epstein, who was discovered useless in his jail cell in 2019, makes as a lot sense as believing that Republicans will supply a very good religion answer to skyrocketing medical insurance premiums. The GOP has totally failed for 15 years to provide you with a substitute for Obamacare. With that type of monitor file, they merely can’t be trusted to handle medical insurance in any significant method. And Trump can’t be shielded from Epstein as a result of we already know a lot about their relationship. Epstein did, in spite of everything, describe himself on tape as “Donald’s closest pal for 10 years.”
Trump can name the Epstein scandal a “hoax” all he desires now. However whereas campaigning in 2024, Trump mentioned he would launch the recordsdata, pleasing his conspiracy-minded MAGA supporters.
“It’s not that they care about Epstein personally,” defined Jack Posobiec, the right-wing agitator who promoted a conspiracy idea a couple of Hillary Clinton-led little one intercourse ring within the nonexistent basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor that led to an precise capturing in 2016. “It’s that they care that there’s this optic that Epstein was in some way concerned with a shadowy system that really has management over our authorities, management over our establishments, management of our lives, and actually is a ruling energy over us.”
Posobiec was half proper.
The “shadowy system” seems to be the elite and billionaire class that flies on personal jets to non-public islands, abuses underage ladies, and will get away with it. The high-ranking officers, techies, scientists, teachers and different males who availed themselves of Epstein’s revolving door of sexual gratification by no means thought they’d be caught. And up to now, with the obtrusive exception of 1 member of the British royal household, not one of the accused has paid a value.
In demise, the sleazy Epstein left many receipts, now coming to mild with this week’s launch of 23,000 pages of paperwork, obtained by the Home from his property.
Epstein mused with the journalist and Trump nemesis Michael Wolff about how he may harm the president’s political profession. “I’m the one capable of take him down,” Epstein wrote to a pal in 2018. And whereas he coached former Harvard President Larry Summers on methods to method a lady he was pursuing in 2017, Epstein informed Summers, “I’ve met some very dangerous folks ,, none as dangerous as trump. not one respectable cell in his physique.. so yes- harmful.”
Definitely, Trump is a civilly adjudicated sexual abuser who has boasted of grabbing girls’s genitals and falsified enterprise information to pay hush cash to a porn star with whom he was accused of getting intercourse whereas his spouse was dwelling with a new child. However the Epstein emails don’t implicate him within the legal sexual abuse of minors.
And sure, Epstein had a low opinion of his onetime pal, evaluating Trump in emails to a mafia don, and variously referring to him as “soiled,” “F—ing loopy,” “borderline insane” and “harmful.”
However whereas Epstein wrote that Trump “knew concerning the ladies,” he additionally wrote that Trump “by no means bought a therapeutic massage.”
Why, then, is Trump so determined to vary the topic from Epstein?
Perhaps the best rationalization is the most effective.
Because the political commentator Bakari Sellers put it the opposite day on CNN, “All people is aware of that Donald Trump was mates with Jeffrey Epstein. No one tried to cover that, and so you need to put on round your neck that you just have been mates with one of the crucial infamous pedophiles within the historical past of the nation.”
Bluesky: @rabcarian
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