Not Me!!!!
President Trump just announced that the Justice Department will be “probing” the relationship between deceased billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and a host of Democrats. They include former President Bill Clinton, former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, billionaire venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, and banking giant JP Morgan Chase. Hoffman helped fund E Jean Carroll’s successful defamation and battery suit against Trump. And JP Morgan facilitated Epstein’s finances even after his child exploitation conviction in Florida.
My mother used to have an expression: “That’s the pot calling the kettle black”. It’s not a racial commentary. In her childhood in England the main fuel supply for both heating and cooking was coal. Pots on the stove were constantly covered with a black coating of coal soot. Therefore, both the pot and the kettle were black – coated with the same soot.
Emails released from the trove given to the House Oversight Committee by the Epstein estate, revealed that Epstein was both in communication with Trump in the last years of his life, and also making a living off of advising others how to manipulate Trump. He wasn’t the only one; former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen early on in the Trump Presidency advertised that he could reach the President, for a fee. But these “new” emails directly counter the White House narrative that, while Trump knew Epstein in the 1980’s and 1990’s, their relationship was severed in the 2007. That’s when Trump claims to have “kicked Epstein out” of membership in his Mar-A-Lago club.
Under the Gallows
Donald Trump, to use another old English phrase, is “twisting in the wind”. The origin of that came from the English use of the gallows to execute criminals. Once they fell through the trap door, the body was left at the end of the rope, subject to the whims of the winds – “twisting”. It now is used to describe someone who is fate is out of their control, at the “whim of the winds”.
For years, the Trump “team” tried to master the Epstein issue. Trump’s re-election to the Presidency gave him ample power to gain control of the narrative. However, Trump also used the Epstein situation, including conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death in the Manhattan Federal Correctional Facility during Trump’s first term as President, to attack Democrats. He made a campaign promise, to get to “the bottom” of the EPSTEIN FILES. And he implied that the Biden Administration was afraid to investigate because of involvement by high level Democrats, including Bill Clinton.
Both Trump’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and more notably FBI Director, Kash Patel, committed over and over again to open up and release the EPSTEIN FILES. Bondi even claimed to “be going through” the FILES in a Congressional hearing. But both became strangely quiet, likely when they read what actually was in the record. Now, they deny that there ever were “FILES”, and are using the Obi Won Kenobi defense: “Nothing to see here, move along, move along”.
Transparency Act
America isn’t accepting that. Even some of the most avid MAGA members of Congress, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace, are standing against the President and demanding that the (now non-existent?) EPSTEIN FILES be released. The House is preparing to pass the EPSTEIN FILES TRANSPARENCY ACT, calling for the Justice Department to release all of the information.
Now, getting past the House will only be the first hurdle for such a law. The Senate will need to pass it, by a 60-40 filibuster-avoiding margin. And then the President would have to sign it. Or, the House would need to pass it again by a two-thirds majority, and the Senate by two-thirds as well. All of that is highly unlikely to happen.
But what Congressional action on the act will do, is pressure whoever is “next” in line to vote for it, or explain why not. The President would ultimately face the same choice, one that would go completely against his own campaign promises.
And meanwhile, the White House is doing everything in their power to obfuscate the situation. After a record setting government closure, (that bought forty-six days) the issue is right back up. It’s front and center for Congress, the President, and the American people. Now the US Navy, the largest warship in the world the USS Gerald Ford is off the coast of Venezuela. The aircraft carrier, and all of the other ships part of the “Carrier Group”, threaten a neighboring country. There are multiple issues between Venezuela and the United States, (less so with Columbia). But none of them seem to rise to this warlike setting.
Wagging the Dog
So here’s one more expression, this from my more recent adulthood: “Wag the Dog”. It was a movie in the 1990’s when the President of the United States invented a war in southeastern Europe, in order to distract from a personal sex scandal with a Girl Scout selling cookies in the Oval Office.
The pot is just as black as the kettle.
The Presidential strategy on Epstein is absolutely twisting in the wind.
And, we seem to be on the verge of a war with neighboring South American countries.
I hope Trump’s not just “wagging the dog”, one more attempt to avoid accountability for his actions with Jeffrey Epstein.
There’s certainly something to see here.
