What vital national interest is being served by a trip to Trump owned golf courses in Scotland? Secret Service, Air Force One, a coterie of aides and makeup people all going too, food and lodging for them but we can’t afford Medicaid for children. Taxpayers demand answers
Clearly the Felon's vital national interest of getting him out of the DC Press spotlight for a while. That could also explain why Frau Goebbels (aka Leavitt or Miss Pravda) did not allow the WSJ on the flight.
The Republicans can see that Trump is doing everything he can to move passed the Epstein files. His denials are becoming more extreme which makes it seem that Musk was correct, and that Trump falls into the lowest of the low form of criminal activity: pedophilia. It is the extreme example of how out of control, impulsive, and totally immoral Trump is. It is also a clear example that the Republicans have no bottom. They will allow Trump to rant and rage even if it ruins the country and destroys the economy of the world. I don’t know if it’s fear, greed, or just their total feeling of impotence, but that’s who they all are and Epstein should be sued against them in every district.
They’re dependent on Trump and his voters: without them they have nothing. I suspect they are as surprised as anyone do find him and themselves back in power. They certainly don’t know what to do without and can’t govern — I certainly wouldn’t call wha they’ve been doing as governing.
Scotland is as close as he's permitted to get to England, being a felon and all. It's just a convenient coincidence he has golf properties there. cough, cough.
As an avid golfer, it was schadenfreude when one of the Scottish courses he owns was removed from the British Open rotation a few years back! The UK is right there with Canadians as far as their hatred for Trumpster.
The lie was always the same, they were the truth-tellers, the light-bringers, the last defense against a shadow government that hid everything from us. That was the origin story. The sacred rot that birthed the Red Hat cult.
Epstein was their north star. Their prophecy. The holy grail of the conspiracy, the proof that all their rage, their bile, their suspicion was justified.
"When the files come out, you'll see. When the names drop, it’ll all burn down."
Well. The vault is open. Their messiah has the keys, and what’s he doing?
He’s sealing it tighter.
Mocking the victims. Suing the press. Flagging his own name in the files before shoving them back into the dark. The very institutions they swore were hiding the truth, the DOJ, the FBI, now kneel at his feet, and the moment he seizes control of the secret they’ve spent a decade clawing for?
He buries it.
If the Red Hats don’t scatter now, if they don’t recoil from this with horror, then it’s time we stop pretending they ever will.
This isn’t hypocrisy. Hypocrisy requires shame. This is the full disintegration of the moral lie. Epstein doesn’t expose the fringe of MAGA, he exposes the *core*. Because it was never about justice. Never about protecting kids. It was about building a religion around a predator who made their cruelty feel holy.
They watched him seal the vault. Watched him smother the very list they once swore was sitting on Bondi’s desk. The man who promised to drain the swamp is the swamp, and always was. Now, as he steals the thing they held most sacred, their 'precious,' their holy grievance... they don’t rise up.
They clap.
If they can watch the truth being buried by the very hands they trusted to reveal it, and still fall in line, then it’s time we stop waiting for a reckoning.
They have no line. No compass. No bottom.
Only hunger.
When millions of people decide the only truth that matters is whatever keeps their rage intact, you get a death cult. One that doesn’t blink when the real horrors begin.
Anyone still wearing that red hat after the noose was raised, after the mob stormed the Capitol with blood in their eyes, made it clear to me that they have no moral floor.
This Epstein cover-up is something else. This was their holy grail. Their sacred obsession. Held to the light, shattered. If they can watch him bury the truth they spent years demanding, and still applaud?
Then redemption isn’t coming.
I’m not waiting for their clarity, I’m waiting for ours.
Because this isn’t just another scandal. It’s the clearest Rubicon we’ve ever been offered. A moment that forces us to decide: Who are we, and what we will tolerate?
America is run by these people now. People without lines. People without shame.That makes this country, not just unstable, but a threat. To its citizens, and to the world.
That is why we need to help them, by keeping up the pressure, the light, and the heat. Even if we only chip away 10% of the borderline supporters (there have to be some), it will be worth it in 2026 and 2028 (if the Felon's diet allows him to last that long).
I hear you, David, and I used to believe that too.
Before the election, I spent hours, dozens and dozens of hours, on the phone with them. Not yelling, not shaming. Just talking. Listening. Trying. I poured everything I had into reason, into facts, into quiet, human truth.
And I’ll tell you this: If you still believe these people can be reached with logic, with decency, with reality, you probably haven’t tried having those conversations.
This isn’t about bad information. It’s about chosen delusion. About the ecstasy of belonging to something that justifies cruelty.
You can chip away at the fringes, maybe. The vaguely attached. But the core? The true believers?
You’re not dealing with voters anymore. You’re dealing with a death cult.
Patrick, I certainly do not have your experience dealing with what-counts-as-a-brain-washed people, but we both agree that chipping away at the fringes is possible, which is all I was positing. The polls (for what they are worth) are definitely showing a loss of support among those who have supported him in the past, for whatever inane reason. We have to keep up the pressure.
I appreciate your heart in this, and if you believe you can flake the fringes, I wholly and fully support your effort. Truly.
My concern isn’t with the few you might reach. It’s with the millions you won’t.
Because I’ve gone in. I’ve done the work. I came in with compassion, with patience, with everything I had to give.
What I found there changed me.
There’s a threshold you cross when you realize you're not dealing with confused citizens anymore, but with people who’ve shed their moral skin. They know what he is. They like it. They’re not sleepwalking. They’re marching, eyes wide, fists clenched, toward something vile they mistake for purpose.
I’m not saying abandon hope. I’m saying brace for impact.
Because a nation with millions of people who have no moral or ethical compass is a nation sitting on a powder keg, and once you see that up close, once you feel it, you can’t unsee it.
Keep applying pressure if that feels right, but never forget that what we’re standing next to isn’t a political movement, It’s a live wire.
Saw a small snippet of the Mehdi Hassan "debate" and it was quite eye opening. They call themselves fascists happily. I had the same experience as you. They tie themselves up into knots justifying everything and anything he does. It's like the bottom of the ocean where no light penetrates. Total darkness.
But hold on to the fact that there are millions more of us, the sane who still live on Earth 1. It will be ugly for a long time, but if we can reach out and stick together, we can overcome them. It won't change them, but it will change Washington and our lives for the better.
Patrick, I hear you, but, from my viewpoint, we have no choice but to "fight" back regardless of with whom we have to "do battle". And those who go into battle expecting to lose are seldom disabused of that notion.
Your comment thread here, Patrick, reminds me of a thought experiment I did on myself during Trump One, when we were being prompted to “understand” the MAGAs. I only knew a few and they were just acquaintances, not friends. I tried to imagine them personally ending my life, over my lack of fealty to their movement. And I could. It was shockingly easy to picture them lighting the match, or flicking the switch. It was odd because the “results” were not what I expected.
JF, Yes! I’ve done that same thought experiment as a gut-check. A moral inventory. Could I really see them doing it? Turning on neighbors, friends, even family?
And like you, the answer came fast.
Yes.
Not all of them. But enough. More than enough, and not in some far-off dystopia, but here, now, with flags waving and music blaring. Not in secret, but with cameras rolling and crowds cheering.
That realization comes from listening, closely, repeatedly, to what they say. To what they celebrate. To what they’re willing to excuse.
You can’t reason with people who’ve romanticized your destruction.
It changes you, once you let yourself really see it. As always, thank you for being you.
The '24 election confirmed my worst fear, that "swing voters" are no better than Trump worshippers, in that they vote on emotion, not reason. Other issues are important too, but a convicted felon who commanded, not just "incited," an insurrection, stole classified documents and obstructed their return, surrounded not by "guardrails" but by protectors who don't even pretend to put the interest of the country ahead of that of their cult leader. If that's not an absolute deal-breaker, nothing is.
Every election has its Judas goats, wide-eyed “undecideds” shuffling toward the slaughterhouse, swearing they’re guided by principle while the stench of panic curls under their nostrils. I completely agree with you 2024 tore away even that thin pretense.
“Independents” were given a choice between the most qualified woman in modern political history and a felon, a rapist, a man who vowed to jail his opponents, openly committed fraud, and called for terminating the Constitution after attempting to overthrow the previous election.
They chose the latter.
If that’s what passes for independence, I wouldn’t bet democracy’s survival on their moral compass.
It is simple really. About 95 % of Republicans will never vote for Democrat. ( because of the demonization of Dems over a long time) The only way for Dems to win in a presidential election is to sway Independents. From now on a Presidential election where Dems win 54 to 46 would be total blowout. Trumpism and MAGA are well on the way to make that happen.
Sure, Dave. I'm glad you see a simple solution, but what you might be missing is the forest from the trees.
This was never about Trump.
Trump is a vessel. A loud, broken, pathetic vessel, but a vessel nonetheless. He didn’t invent authoritarianism. He didn’t even execute it well. He just found the machinery already built, already oiled by decades of bipartisan overreach, and he started yanking levers like a toddler in a cockpit.
Yes, maybe he’ll lose. Maybe you get your 54–46 dreamland. But what exactly do you think that changes?
Because the machine Trump used isn’t going back in the box. The emergency powers, the mass surveillance, the weaponized judiciary, the public’s appetite for cruelty, for vengeance, for domination dressed up as patriotism, all of that is still in place. It doesn’t disappear when a Democrat wins an election. In fact, it becomes more dangerous, because you start believing things are fine again.
That is precisely how democracies die. With standing ovations for the candidate who promises a return to normalcy, all while holding the same unchecked powers that just nearly broke the republic.
You say MAGA is on its way to a blowout loss? Maybe. But even if Trump is flushed out of the system, the system itself, the one that lets one man turn the Department of Justice into a personal vendetta engine, the one that lets political tribes criminalize dissent, remains. Intact. Humming. Waiting.
You don’t need Trump to lose. You need the American public to focus, uninterrupted, for forty years, on closing the doors that have been flung open.
If you think the American public is built for that level of discipline, then you have more faith in this nation than I do.
We are not waiting for a savior to fall. We are waiting for a more competent tyrant to rise.
When they do, it won’t matter if the independents swung blue for a cycle or two. Because the machine is already built. The vault is already sealed.
The next hand that reaches for the lever will not be one of the least capable humans on the planet.
So your premise is that someone who has made a choice, realizes it was not good, is nonetheless frozen into that choice for eternity, unable to make another one. If so, again we seem to disagree.
David, your reply misrepresents the claim and rests on a flawed logical mechanism, one worth unpacking.
You’re constructing what’s known as a Straw Man fallacy. Its actually a very common MAGA tactic. Mischaracterizing my statement as arguing that those who made a poor choice are “frozen into that choice for eternity,” when I said no such thing. The point wasn’t that individuals are incapable of change. The point was that, as a bloc, the so-called “independent” voter class revealed their priorities through action, and that data set is relevant when assessing present-day political reliability.
This isn’t about metaphysical permanence. It’s about probabilistic trust.
More importantly, your rebuttal leans on an appeal to exception, the idea that because some individuals may shift over time, we should presume fluidity across the whole. That isn’t strategy. That’s wishcasting.
In politics, we don’t build theory on what people could do. We build it on what they did do, and what that signals about their values under pressure.
If your argument requires recasting a critique of statistical behavior into a claim about eternal psychological stasis, it’s worth reconsidering the strength of your position.
My assessment stands. A bloc that sided with sedition over service, with spectacle over substance, is not where I’d anchor the future of democracy.
Not because change is impossible.
But because betting on it., instead of planning around its absence, is how democracies die.
Of course if you prefer you can stick with the "when all else fails, misquote and moralize." tactic if that serves you better.
Agree, David. It's tempting (less work, as you get to be lazy) to think other people are so rigid, they can't change. The CBS news poll above (at end, in footnotes area) agrees with David's optimism. It proves a huge drop in Trump support April to just recently, across all three age groups polled. Keeping the focus on MULTIPLE mis-deeds as been working.
Wish they'd show the change in the percent calling themselves Indep vs Repub. Expect Indep has gone up at the same time admitting one is a Repub has gone down.
Jerry, the mistake here is thinking this is about Trump.
Trump is not some Machiavellian mastermind whose grip is weakening. He is, in all seriousness, the least capable man ever to hold the presidency. A walking symptom, not the disease. His rise wasn’t due to his cunning—but to our rot. To a culture so numbed by grievance and spectacle it willingly handed the launch codes to a game show host with a persecution complex.
He didn’t kick down the doors to atrocity. He stumbled through them, blabbering nonsense, and revealed how many were already off their hinges.
Someone sharper is coming.
Someone who knows how to spell “constitution” before he tries to shred it. Someone who doesn’t tweet confessions at 2 a.m., but works quietly, systemically, with legal polish and institutional camouflage.
You’re pointing to a chart that shows a dip in Trump’s support, as if that’s proof of civic awakening. Closing the doors that Trump has opened is a 40+ year project. Not just undoing policy, but rebuilding civic trust, institutional guardrails, democratic literacy.
If you believe the American public, this public, has the stamina, memory, and attention span to sustain that kind of long-term moral discipline, then you have more faith than I do.
Patrick, I worry about you. If your thinking is as negative as you say, then you could be knocking on the door of suicide. If you want to live, try to look for rays of hope. The more you repeat this stuff to other people, the more you risk dragging yourself further down. It is not enlightenment you are expressing. It is despair. The poetry in your words does not change that.
What you wrote is the kind of hollow display someone makes when they want to be seen as thoughtful without doing the work of actually thinking.
You don’t see despair. You see someone refusing to lie, and that makes you uncomfortable.
There’s no insight in what you said. No substance. Just the tired reflex of someone who’s mistaken emotional laziness for balance, and imagines that hope must be loud, bright, and false to count.
There’s no courage in clinging to delusion. There’s no virtue in policing someone else’s clarity because it makes your comfort squirm.
What a truly exposing comment, what a truly garbage comment. I appreciate you letting the world see you, for who you are.
No, history mostly shows that they go until something causes the fever to break and then they set to work pretending that they never believed in the first place. This usually comes when people stop taking it seriously and start laughing at them, as with the Millerites. Some at the Bulwark say we should be understanding of people who are Trump-curious, but history suggests that laughing at the leaders every chance we get for being suckers is more likely to dissuade people from following them.
I predict a serious national security breach on the scale of 9/11. Nobody is minding the store. We are sitting ducks for an attack, whether physical or cyber. It’s coming. And I suspect it will not be a unifying event, as 9/11 was. More like Covid when people were attacked for wearing protective masks, as it quickly became a test of political loyalty. Actually, 9/11 was the same; we followed like lemmings into a disastrous war.
It would be a mercy if history worked that way, if mass delusion simply ran its course and then collapsed beneath the weight of its own absurdity.
But that isn’t what the record shows. Fever doesn’t break on its own. It burns until it consumes everything or is forcibly contained.
Look to Reconstruction, when the fever of white supremacy didn’t “break” after the Civil War, it reconstituted itself in law, in policy, in mob violence, in myth. The Lost Cause wasn’t laughed out of history. It was taught in textbooks. It shaped generations.
Or to the fall of the Soviet Union, when the fever of authoritarian nationalism didn’t vanish with glasnost. It hardened. It waited. It reemerged under Putin cloaked in nostalgia, grievance, and control.
Even the collapse of Nazi Germany, the supposed gold standard for fascism’s defeat, came not through public shame or collective laughter, but through catastrophic military loss, occupation, and tribunals. Even then, the fever didn’t die. It just went underground. It changed costumes. It taught itself to smile in public and wait for history to forget.
That’s the truth we the people keep refusing: These movements don’t vanish. They adapt, like viruses. They build think tanks and school boards. They put on suits and run for office. They stop marching with torches and start wielding gavels. They learn to frame hatred as heritage, cruelty as courage, and fascism as freedom.
Because we cannot imagine that our neighbors, our uncles, our old high school classmates could be fascists, we do nothing. We hope the fever will break. That the spell will lift. That one morning they’ll wake up and say, “My God, what have I done?”
I agree though I would say the fever broke in Germany after the war — not completely and there were still some hardcore committed Nazis, but they were the minority. The end of the war provided a reset button and most Germans by 1945 were worn out and wanted to move on. How they felt privately about that period was probably more mixed, but they essentially shut that portion of their lives off and moved on for what, in West Germany, was a much freer and more prosperous life than they’d had previously. They also produced a highly successful democracy after the failures of the Weimar Republic. I’d be cautious about attributing the AFD to the Germany of the ‘30’s or that it is a revival of what went underground in 1945. Unfortunately, 80 years after the end of WW2 fascism has become au courant and the populace is trying on old garments as if new, and not something that’s been molding in the unwanted barrel all these years.
The fever doesn’t have to completely break, but we will need MAGA to either wear out and move on or some sort of reset before we can escape the disaster of electing Trump a 2nd time.
And yet people stayed on with the Millerite message and just reinterpreted the prophesy. I can say this because my background is from a religious group that are direct descendants of the Millerite movement and still see him as a prominent religious leader — he may have gotten the details wrong, but overall on the right track and a good person.
I don’t know what breaks it. I keep coming back to what broke fascism the first time around and that was losing the WW2. Suddenly there were no Nazis left in Germany and no on wanted to be associated with them. There is Spain where Franco just sort of petered out and faded away, but that never had the fervor of MAGA.
“ This isn’t hypocrisy. Hypocrisy requires shame. This is the full disintegration of the moral lie.” Yes. Exactly. To be a Republican under Trump, you must first buy into the big lie. And at that point you have lost your soul. The blank stare of Marco Rubio.
Rubio does look like a perpetual deer in headlights, the visage of someone who recognizes that deep down he's now compromising the personal integrity he's spent a lifetime building.
Complying with the shuttering of USAID, the destruction of high-energy food intended to feed malnourished children.
That's quite a legact that Rubio is building for himself.
And let's stop with comparisons with the Third Reich. America has its own shame. Try looking up postcards of black men lynched with grinning white men and women in the foreground.
Videos of white women screaming like harpies at small black children entering schools.
I can't stop reading what you've wrote here, and how well you've elucidated your thoughts. Deep down, I know what you're saying is true, and today's one of those days, we're I've let the bad thoughts creep in where I'm left terrified. I don't see how this ends soon or peaceful. Some days, I find a glimmer of hope, avoid the news for a few days, and realize things may turn out OK. Though, I know I'm creating a temporarily parallel universe in my mind. All your words on this thread are sobering. I find myself isolated from like-mind people who seem to think we'll be OK, or coming elections with change this. Even many on my/our side still don't see the dark forces that are working in the shadows. I'm so very worried.
One wonders if part of Trump’s palpable fear of more leaks isn’t JUST the sex part. I think that would be politically survivable. It’s the OTHER men, very likely of ALL political persuasions, with whom he would be linked through Epstein.
Perhaps, but ultimately Trump is a selfish jackass, so maybe he wouldn't care? He's blowing chaff like a bad 1980s fighter jet pursued by a heat seeking missile. There's something else here.
I had the same thought, but I can't imagine what it might be. He's always been proud of his "conquests." He has no shame. I don't get the sense he cares about what other people think his legacy is. He's already determined his legacy is having been the greatest President in the history of Presidents.
It was some years after Felon Trump and Jeffrey Epstein split, when Epstein was arrested in Florida. That was covered up, no Federal case, only state and a slap on the wrist sentence, with one of his prosecutors being given a plumb job in DonOld’s administration. There were names of many movers and shakers, the rich and powerful who had to be protected. Too bad for the underage girls, they were expendable. Now it’s back, and should not be allowed to fade away. We have to demand the truth be told for all those girls, whose lives were shattered.
And to think that quite a few years ago Gary Hart's political career was sunk by a photo of someone, not his wife, sitting on his lap at an event. I have no idea of the occasion or who she was, but the photo itself tanked him. Now we have a president who, before his first presidency, is on take making a vulgar comment about women; and it's only gotten worse from there. However, it appears not to matter any more. I guess we're a country that now cheers for this kind of awfulness.
Completely agree- but I lean more towards the opinion that such issues are ‘DEI’, ‘woke’ and ‘divisive’ - therefore they must be destroyed because such ideals are ruining our beloved country.
It is absolutely a "follow the money" story. Epstein had way too many connections and way too much money to be a simple schoolteacher turned investment advisor. I get that he likely had insider trading tips from his connections after teaching, but it still doesn't explain a billionaire lifestyle.
There's no one else in the world that Trump would be desperately concerned about protecting - unless he would personally be disadvantaged if he didn't protect them.
As I read the section about Hunter Biden, they’re playing clips of him on Morning Joe. Hunter Biden needs to go away for ever. It’d be great if I never had to see or hear him again.
I listened to a few minutes of the interview and that was more than enough. He sounded like an incoherent old man with an ax to grind, spitting out the f word at least twice in every sentence. Disgraceful.
You're both right actually, and the fact that he said a lot of true things about a lot of other people who refuse to accept how they bear responsibility for the catastrophe we find ourselves in makes it harder to simply tell him to shut up and go away. Yeah he's mad, yeah he is lacking some self awareness and is simply wrong about his father's chances had he stayed in the race, but screw George Clooney, screw David Axelrod, Pod Saves America, and many other former Obama staffers, screw Anita Dunn, and especially screw Jake Tapper.
I would very much like to see Hunter Biden go away for ever, but many of the people out there saying as much or demanding he hold himself accountable have their own accountability problems they refuse to deal with, hence why Hunter Biden is angry and feels this need to let them know it.
As a family member Hunter Biden is too close to the situation. I get that he's angry and protective of his father, but the country would have benefited from Joe bowing out much earlier.
BTW, if Joe Biden was prescribed Ambien, that medication can affect memory.
I have experience with Ambien and stopped taking it because it did cause memory problems. Knowing that people's bodies metabolize drugs differently as they age is something that Joe Biden's doctors ought to have known.
That friggin' guy. Please just go away. It's as bad or worse than if Billy Carter and/or Roger Clinton had become crusaders for their brothers' legacies. The family should have locked Hunter in the velvet prison of a Malibu rehab in 2021. We'd be all be better off if he were still doing group sessions and tai chi on the cliffs.
Our political/cultural identity still gravitates towards family dynasties. Adams, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Bishop, Clinton, Trump. We seem unable to shake our flirtations with the concept of royalty.
And that’s exactly why I didn’t list them. But the family members are lured towards unearned importance just the same as if it were a dynasty in their minds.
I was never in favor of pardoning Hunter to begin with, but now I kind of wish he was actually behind bars. Him going out on TV and ranting is helpful to absolutely no one in the Democratic party. Just go back to your painting and get off the media circuit.
Impulse control has been a problem for the guy. It’s part of why he ended up in trouble. What I don understand is why media gave him the platform to flap his jaws on. Click bait, I suppose. It doesn’t serve any public interest and should be ignored.
American news media isn't journalism. Its entertainment. Giving Hunter Biden a platform to flap his jaws on is entertainment that drives views and engagement. It is a no brainer for them.
So true. Men like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley (Chet and Dave) would be beyond embarrassed, appalled even, to be associated with the likes of this generation of newscast anchor people, particularly the Fox brand of fakirs.
Honestly, Walter Cronkite would probably be beyond embarrassed and appalled to be associated with his own network CBS and what it has become, nevermind the propaganda mills like Fox.
It was a You Tube interview, not media. Did you see the clown sitting across from Hunter? Hunter, himself a clown, craves attention. The fact that he was ever allowed anywhere near the Oval tells us as much about his father's competency and judgement as the debate debacle. Hunter should be behind bars.
What was the purpose of the publisher in creating that video? To entertain. It doesn't matter if they are a bunch of clowns. It doesn't matter why Hunter is doing that or what is said. The purpose is not to inform or educate. Its to entertain. That is the problem with all modern media. That wasn't the ghost of Walter Conkrite or any other legitimate broadcast newsman anymore than Jake Tapper could be called one.
Hunter would never have survived a prison sentence under the looming Trump administration. When that first occurred to me, it was Epstein I was using as a model. Biden acted to save his son from death.
I know a lot of Democrats. After the debate some of them believed what Hunter believed. The others believed it was impossible for Joe to be asking for an additional 4 years and to win the election after his performance. This group believed this without any input from anyone else. This split (50-50?) was the reality for the Democratic Party after the debate.
It will take months to go through all the MLK documents, but what's immediately clear is that FBI was surveilling Dr. King for years and Trump is on the Epstein list.
It would seem that my attempt to mimic a recent meme has failed. Here's the text from said meme:
"Chronic venous insufficiency is a condition where the veins in the legs have difficulty drawing attention from the fact that the Epstein Files still haven't been released."
J. Edgar Hoover detested MLK, and it would be odd if Trump’s name were NOT somewhere in the Epstein Files since they were pals for so many years, until Jeffrey beat him out in a real estate deal.
Interesting take last night on cable news by Steve Scaramucci, who predicted that the whole Epstein saga would blow over in White House coverage within about three weeks. On one hand I can see that happening, as the current President seems to get away with everything, most people have an incredibly short span of attention anymore, and they get bored with hearing the same topic over and over. I often wonder if the American public would have enough patience anymore to sit through a Watergate saga for a year and a half until it reached its necessary conclusion. I'm not convinced we have it in us collectively to let such a significant process run its course.
On the other hand, this scandal feels different. Each day a little more the whiff of coverup seems to grow into a stench, and anything related to child abuse and pedophilia is an electrified third rail, regardless of which political party is under scrutiny. People rightly want to know not only if their chief executive is a pervert, but also if he might have been a co-conspirator or worse with a known sexual abuser of underage and/or unwilling females. He already is on tape talking about grabbing women by their genitalia. He is a convicted sex offender. As a rule people do not change their character when there are no consequences. We do not want to be told that where there clearly has been smoke, there can be no fire.
Yes, the House shutting down to prevent votes, definitely says, "move along nothing to see here." They could only wish. It's gasoline on the fire.
It ONLY makes them look worse and the cover up is beginning to stink.
At first I thought this would blow over like all the rest, but you are correct, it's different. Vacating town for more than a month so you don't have to vote on releasing the information—that just leaves a media vacuum. They are counting on people not paying attention because summer. Vacations. And if they are lucky (from their viewpoint), some natural disaster to divert attention. But this one has SEX—dirty, manipulative sex with underage girls. And if one things sells in America, it's sex.
"If one things sells in America, it's sex." Hammer hits nail on the head. And it is guaranteed to hold people's attention as long as there is a gossip column character to it all. You'd think he would know that by now.
As far as the House getting out of Dodge early, fine. This keeps the Epstein saga going longer. And now House members will hear about it back home and have to defend doing nothing. Nice message Mike Johnson! :)
If Trump gets away with hiding this wide ranging Epstein criminality ring, I think it will be due to a certain amount of envy on the part of other men, that Trump had the illicit experience and pulled off a cover up.
I share your skepticism. I think, to borrow from Nixon, the grand jury files is a “modified, limited hangout”. Stonewalling isn’t the effective firewall Trump hoped it would be. Things eventually unraveled for Nixon, too.
We can help to keep the scandal in the forefront by phoning our GOP members of Congress about this everyday. I keep calling to demand transparency and Bondi’s sworn testimony in Congressional hearings about whether she was lying before or is lying now about the existence of the Epstein List.
Shame on us if tRumpy manages to slither out of this one by wearing down public attention.
I agree with it not going away for a couple of reasons: 1) Trump's lawsuit will keep it in the news until he drops it...and he will drop it. 2) This whole FBI thing where they flagged the Trump mentions. That smells like a coverup...ESPECIALLY...that they did that and THEN decided to release the "nothing to see here" unsigned memo...on a Friday night....
He will drop it before he is deposed in discovery. We could always luck out if Trumpster has the vanity that he can talk his way out. It has happened before.
Americans have very twisted patience and memories. Republicans still parrot how Obamacare was “crammed down our throats without discussion” even though in reality it involved over a year of hearings for legislation to actually help Americans. Now the slimy-named BBB really was crammed down our throats and . . . Crickets about that, as BBB destroys our institutions and way of life, nevermind blowing up their precious deficit. We need a new word to jack up basic hypocrisy to this level of obscenity.
I know. For all the words in the English language, all the words we borrow from other languages you'd think we'd hit on the perfect word or hybridization to encapsulate our current nightmare plight.
It is fairly possible that Trumpster can outlast this. One thing he won't outlast; dropping poll numbers. (39-42%) And he is polling worst on issues that are deemed his best. (immigration and economy). And as results from what he is doing start to trickle in, Trumpism will drop more. As far as I'm concerned, the longer Republicans keep following him without question, the more it hurts them in the long run.( and better for all of us) As for the Mucci, there has never been a camera he didn't like.
Oh. My bad; I lost the plot on this short thread. I was thinking Ghislaine Maxwell. My brain skipped right over Maureen Corey’s name. Yes, I think Ms. Comey is fairly well protected (too high profile now) and definitely has a journal (as her father likely does also). And may well spill some truth when the time is right.
Why isn’t Trump’s extremely superior DNA on the market, like Musk’s? After all, Trump’s uncle’s intelligence is a gift that keeps giving, disregarding the Unabomber’s inexplicable proximity that ended badly.
Glad the kiddos have grown up regarding Donald Trump; may he create a generation of lifelong Democrats. W made one out of me. It would have been ideal if they'd wised up before November 5, but I'll take solace in the thought that it's unlikely many of them voted, since they never do.
The Monday Morning quarterbacking from Hunter is not the best punditry I've seen. Considering his father has recently been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, it's probably a bit foolish to continue arguing that the Dems should have stuck with Biden when ultimately it was his age, demeanor, and lack of coherence that led to the switch.
As far as the coverup, it seems kind of impossible that they'll be able to pull this off. Honestly, with the number of people who know things, the hundreds of victims, the loads of clients, the investigators, I don't know know how this thing didn't spill out into the open a long time ago. You can't keep the lid on a conspiracy that involves hundreds or thousands of people, the math doesn't work.
The main reason Hunter needs to STFU is he is merely providing a distraction for trump, and we absolutely don't want ANY distraction from what is happening to trump. Oh and can't resist from the leading light of the senate Tommy T, it was we leftist radicals that made trump sick.
He does legally have the right to talk. But his entrance into the conversation ignites a Republican diversion into the “Laptop From Hell”. Trump is currently being hoisted on the Epstein Files petard of his own making. We don’t need Hunter creating a rhetorical fork in the road for it.
Nothing, realistically, prevents files from being destroyed, redacted or 'disappeared.' Maxwell, if she retained incriminating information (which she likely did--she's anything but stupid) must now be in a panic. She could so easily experience 'suicide' in her cell, with the TV cameras mysteriously turned off. Inside, or out, her life is in extreme danger. Her paranoia, and ours, is justified.
Put nothing, absolutely nothing, past the evil of the orange narcissist-felon's regime/cult. The regime has shown, and is continuing to show, no restraint whatsoever in the attainment of its authoritarian goals. Distract, delay, deny, appeal.
If she has evidence, and she is smart, that evidence is secure unless something happens to her. Her way of protecting her from all these unknown men in her life. And they know it!
I'd like to think you're right, Katherine. But I fear that every conceivable location at which she could have secured the evidence has been scoured by what we now know, into our bones, as the forces of evil. This does not in any way condone what she did. But she had to have known exactly what she was doing.
It took a while to hunt her down remember, and she has experience both as Epstein's partner in crime and love interest, as well as everything that happened with her father, Robert Maxwell. I'm sure (if she's smart—and no one has called he stupid) she has an "if anything happens to me" envelope/flash drive with multiple sources just in case.
I read about a psychological short-hand for narcissists when they are attacked: DARVO. Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim Offender. Sound like anyone we have had around us for wa-y-y too long?
Three things: (1) Who exactly will defeat the coverup when Trump toadies control everything? A leaker in the DOJ or FBI? That's what it would take, and that person would be risking everything they have to do it. I'm not optimistic. (2) Everyone named Biden: shut the fuck up. (3) Regarding all of those 18-29 year olds: what, exactly, were you thinking last November? Not a rhetorical question.
What set us on our fatal timeline is not Biden. It is the Republicans. Never, ever forget that. The could have impeached & convicted him in the Senate- they did not do that. They let him run around the country for four years lying about the 2020 election and then they chose him as their nominee.
The authoritarian path the GOP set us on started generations ago. Nixon's only crime was that he wanted the authoritarian power for himself and wasn't willing to play the GOP's long game. The path wound through the Reagan years, the Tea Party era, etc.
You folks at The Bulwark keep pounding away on rump and Epstein! Louder! Keep shouting and screaming until they have released EVERYTHING. Don’t let ANYTHING push you off this issue. Every day it gets weirder and weirder. Keep up the pressure, all of you on Substack. Keep it front and center. What’s good for the goose is good for the Trumpstein! (Hillary’s emails and Benghazi indeed) pasha!
OK, but I can carry a protest sign. Who carries the Platform and where? I do my protesting at the US Consulate in Frankfurt where I can be engaged in chats with people who express an interest in my signs (two-sided, different "messages").
You’re funny and I think I like you. Thank you for carrying your two faced sign in Germany. We can use all the sign carrying help we can get. Of course, seriously, this will take more than signs and protests to fix the mess the fat orange $hi¥ has gotten us into, but every little sign helps. 😐
Thank you. 🥂 One of my motivating factors in starting with my sign carrying in February 2017 was that I did not want Germans to think that all Americans were bat-shit crazy. I have had numerous interactions with people during my "Consular Walks", and in down-town Frankfurt when I carried signs (all in English) for other protests, against Right Wingnuts here, or for a No Kings Day protest, 99.999% of them positive and supportive and many grateful (in words) for my protesting. The two negative ones were early on, 2017, possibly 2018, and amounted to nothing.
Another aspect of the dialogue in Trump's birthday message to Epstein is the Trump and Epstein "characters" promising not to spill the beans--like renewing wedding vows, in a way.
One thing the Dems have to realize that the youth votes are never reliable and if they show up to vote, they may not be in their favor. Same with minority votes these days, aside from African Americans. So their consultants all need to be replaced.
A lot of Black male voters went with trump. You need to hold them accountable, along with the other minorities that stupidly voted against their own best interests.
I recognize that. The sad part is besides black women, every demo trended towards Trump last year after he staged a coup and convicted for 34 counts in NY. 77 million people were responsible for what we are seeing today.
Yes, but that was before DOGE and the gutting of the federal govt and workforce. Before Project 2025 (they were warned how many times?). Before the mass deporattions to gulags and worn torn countries. Before "Alligator Alcatraz" which will eventually become a death camp—inmates are sure to die. Before the Epstein fiasco. Before the likes of K$H Patel, Homan, SS Barbie, Cruela d'Tulsi, and worm brain. Before cutting cancer research, SNAP, and Medicaid, with threats to Medicare. Before the selling off of precious public lands.
Sometimes is takes the stove getting hot for some people to to notice the heat and that it can burn.
Let's not exaggerate. 21% of Black men voted for Trump in 2024. That's only 2% more than the 19% of Black men to voted for Trump in 2020. Most of the 2% increase are probably due to young Black men, consistent with Trump's high support among all young men.
Compare those numbers to White men, 61% in 2020 and 60% in 2024.
The biggest demographic shift was Latino men, 36% in 2020 to 54% in 2024. But that's still less than the 60% for White men.
I take issue with White people blaming minorities for the destruction of America, when the overwhelming majority of White people is responsible for Trump. (I give permission to put Latino men in that stupidity bucket though.)
What vital national interest is being served by a trip to Trump owned golf courses in Scotland? Secret Service, Air Force One, a coterie of aides and makeup people all going too, food and lodging for them but we can’t afford Medicaid for children. Taxpayers demand answers
Clearly the Felon's vital national interest of getting him out of the DC Press spotlight for a while. That could also explain why Frau Goebbels (aka Leavitt or Miss Pravda) did not allow the WSJ on the flight.
The Republicans can see that Trump is doing everything he can to move passed the Epstein files. His denials are becoming more extreme which makes it seem that Musk was correct, and that Trump falls into the lowest of the low form of criminal activity: pedophilia. It is the extreme example of how out of control, impulsive, and totally immoral Trump is. It is also a clear example that the Republicans have no bottom. They will allow Trump to rant and rage even if it ruins the country and destroys the economy of the world. I don’t know if it’s fear, greed, or just their total feeling of impotence, but that’s who they all are and Epstein should be sued against them in every district.
I think they also have realized that now they're in too deep. They either ride this pony to the end or wind up in prison for treason.
They’re dependent on Trump and his voters: without them they have nothing. I suspect they are as surprised as anyone do find him and themselves back in power. They certainly don’t know what to do without and can’t govern — I certainly wouldn’t call wha they’ve been doing as governing.
Typo alert: I think you mean "used", not "sued", although if there were a legal mechanism for the latter, I would be in favor of using it.
Scotland is as close as he's permitted to get to England, being a felon and all. It's just a convenient coincidence he has golf properties there. cough, cough.
I’m just happy to get him out of THIS country, even for a moment. Somehow the air seems cleaner.
smells better too
The UK 's hatred of Trumpster is second only to Canada's. (our two best allies)
Well dear old mother did come from Scotland so there are family ties — if you can really call them that in the Trump family.
Make Donald Drumf again
Bagdad Karoline: Sweat Karoline, Good times never seem so good. :) With apologies to Neil Diamond
No Country for Young Children
<snark>Let them doge golf balls!<snark>
Well worded, Don [ no snark ;-) ].
and drink sugar cane Coke
As an avid golfer, it was schadenfreude when one of the Scottish courses he owns was removed from the British Open rotation a few years back! The UK is right there with Canadians as far as their hatred for Trumpster.
House Plans to End Session Early Over Epstein Pressure
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/07/22/us/trump-news
The lie was always the same, they were the truth-tellers, the light-bringers, the last defense against a shadow government that hid everything from us. That was the origin story. The sacred rot that birthed the Red Hat cult.
Epstein was their north star. Their prophecy. The holy grail of the conspiracy, the proof that all their rage, their bile, their suspicion was justified.
"When the files come out, you'll see. When the names drop, it’ll all burn down."
Well. The vault is open. Their messiah has the keys, and what’s he doing?
He’s sealing it tighter.
Mocking the victims. Suing the press. Flagging his own name in the files before shoving them back into the dark. The very institutions they swore were hiding the truth, the DOJ, the FBI, now kneel at his feet, and the moment he seizes control of the secret they’ve spent a decade clawing for?
He buries it.
If the Red Hats don’t scatter now, if they don’t recoil from this with horror, then it’s time we stop pretending they ever will.
This isn’t hypocrisy. Hypocrisy requires shame. This is the full disintegration of the moral lie. Epstein doesn’t expose the fringe of MAGA, he exposes the *core*. Because it was never about justice. Never about protecting kids. It was about building a religion around a predator who made their cruelty feel holy.
They watched him seal the vault. Watched him smother the very list they once swore was sitting on Bondi’s desk. The man who promised to drain the swamp is the swamp, and always was. Now, as he steals the thing they held most sacred, their 'precious,' their holy grievance... they don’t rise up.
They clap.
If they can watch the truth being buried by the very hands they trusted to reveal it, and still fall in line, then it’s time we stop waiting for a reckoning.
They have no line. No compass. No bottom.
Only hunger.
When millions of people decide the only truth that matters is whatever keeps their rage intact, you get a death cult. One that doesn’t blink when the real horrors begin.
One that will smile.
One that will ask for more.
Doesn't history prove that cultists would literally rather die than admit they've been fooled?
I'm not holding my breath that they turn on him.
I stopped holding my breath after January 6th.
Anyone still wearing that red hat after the noose was raised, after the mob stormed the Capitol with blood in their eyes, made it clear to me that they have no moral floor.
This Epstein cover-up is something else. This was their holy grail. Their sacred obsession. Held to the light, shattered. If they can watch him bury the truth they spent years demanding, and still applaud?
Then redemption isn’t coming.
I’m not waiting for their clarity, I’m waiting for ours.
Because this isn’t just another scandal. It’s the clearest Rubicon we’ve ever been offered. A moment that forces us to decide: Who are we, and what we will tolerate?
America is run by these people now. People without lines. People without shame.That makes this country, not just unstable, but a threat. To its citizens, and to the world.
That is why we need to help them, by keeping up the pressure, the light, and the heat. Even if we only chip away 10% of the borderline supporters (there have to be some), it will be worth it in 2026 and 2028 (if the Felon's diet allows him to last that long).
I hear you, David, and I used to believe that too.
Before the election, I spent hours, dozens and dozens of hours, on the phone with them. Not yelling, not shaming. Just talking. Listening. Trying. I poured everything I had into reason, into facts, into quiet, human truth.
And I’ll tell you this: If you still believe these people can be reached with logic, with decency, with reality, you probably haven’t tried having those conversations.
This isn’t about bad information. It’s about chosen delusion. About the ecstasy of belonging to something that justifies cruelty.
You can chip away at the fringes, maybe. The vaguely attached. But the core? The true believers?
You’re not dealing with voters anymore. You’re dealing with a death cult.
Patrick, I certainly do not have your experience dealing with what-counts-as-a-brain-washed people, but we both agree that chipping away at the fringes is possible, which is all I was positing. The polls (for what they are worth) are definitely showing a loss of support among those who have supported him in the past, for whatever inane reason. We have to keep up the pressure.
I appreciate your heart in this, and if you believe you can flake the fringes, I wholly and fully support your effort. Truly.
My concern isn’t with the few you might reach. It’s with the millions you won’t.
Because I’ve gone in. I’ve done the work. I came in with compassion, with patience, with everything I had to give.
What I found there changed me.
There’s a threshold you cross when you realize you're not dealing with confused citizens anymore, but with people who’ve shed their moral skin. They know what he is. They like it. They’re not sleepwalking. They’re marching, eyes wide, fists clenched, toward something vile they mistake for purpose.
I’m not saying abandon hope. I’m saying brace for impact.
Because a nation with millions of people who have no moral or ethical compass is a nation sitting on a powder keg, and once you see that up close, once you feel it, you can’t unsee it.
Keep applying pressure if that feels right, but never forget that what we’re standing next to isn’t a political movement, It’s a live wire.
Saw a small snippet of the Mehdi Hassan "debate" and it was quite eye opening. They call themselves fascists happily. I had the same experience as you. They tie themselves up into knots justifying everything and anything he does. It's like the bottom of the ocean where no light penetrates. Total darkness.
But hold on to the fact that there are millions more of us, the sane who still live on Earth 1. It will be ugly for a long time, but if we can reach out and stick together, we can overcome them. It won't change them, but it will change Washington and our lives for the better.
Patrick, I hear you, but, from my viewpoint, we have no choice but to "fight" back regardless of with whom we have to "do battle". And those who go into battle expecting to lose are seldom disabused of that notion.
Your comment thread here, Patrick, reminds me of a thought experiment I did on myself during Trump One, when we were being prompted to “understand” the MAGAs. I only knew a few and they were just acquaintances, not friends. I tried to imagine them personally ending my life, over my lack of fealty to their movement. And I could. It was shockingly easy to picture them lighting the match, or flicking the switch. It was odd because the “results” were not what I expected.
JF, Yes! I’ve done that same thought experiment as a gut-check. A moral inventory. Could I really see them doing it? Turning on neighbors, friends, even family?
And like you, the answer came fast.
Yes.
Not all of them. But enough. More than enough, and not in some far-off dystopia, but here, now, with flags waving and music blaring. Not in secret, but with cameras rolling and crowds cheering.
That realization comes from listening, closely, repeatedly, to what they say. To what they celebrate. To what they’re willing to excuse.
You can’t reason with people who’ve romanticized your destruction.
It changes you, once you let yourself really see it. As always, thank you for being you.
Agree the core are unreachable. But he isn’t leading by much. Getting even few noncore to flip could make all the difference.
I’m honestly not sure what you mean by “he isn’t leading by much.”
Leading what, exactly?
He won the election by a small amount. To defeat MAGA, you don’t try to convert the hardcore, just peel off a few doubters.
The '24 election confirmed my worst fear, that "swing voters" are no better than Trump worshippers, in that they vote on emotion, not reason. Other issues are important too, but a convicted felon who commanded, not just "incited," an insurrection, stole classified documents and obstructed their return, surrounded not by "guardrails" but by protectors who don't even pretend to put the interest of the country ahead of that of their cult leader. If that's not an absolute deal-breaker, nothing is.
Every election has its Judas goats, wide-eyed “undecideds” shuffling toward the slaughterhouse, swearing they’re guided by principle while the stench of panic curls under their nostrils. I completely agree with you 2024 tore away even that thin pretense.
The base MAGA means nothing. It is the Independents to matter and will sway elections.
“Independents” were given a choice between the most qualified woman in modern political history and a felon, a rapist, a man who vowed to jail his opponents, openly committed fraud, and called for terminating the Constitution after attempting to overthrow the previous election.
They chose the latter.
If that’s what passes for independence, I wouldn’t bet democracy’s survival on their moral compass.
It is simple really. About 95 % of Republicans will never vote for Democrat. ( because of the demonization of Dems over a long time) The only way for Dems to win in a presidential election is to sway Independents. From now on a Presidential election where Dems win 54 to 46 would be total blowout. Trumpism and MAGA are well on the way to make that happen.
Sure, Dave. I'm glad you see a simple solution, but what you might be missing is the forest from the trees.
This was never about Trump.
Trump is a vessel. A loud, broken, pathetic vessel, but a vessel nonetheless. He didn’t invent authoritarianism. He didn’t even execute it well. He just found the machinery already built, already oiled by decades of bipartisan overreach, and he started yanking levers like a toddler in a cockpit.
Yes, maybe he’ll lose. Maybe you get your 54–46 dreamland. But what exactly do you think that changes?
Because the machine Trump used isn’t going back in the box. The emergency powers, the mass surveillance, the weaponized judiciary, the public’s appetite for cruelty, for vengeance, for domination dressed up as patriotism, all of that is still in place. It doesn’t disappear when a Democrat wins an election. In fact, it becomes more dangerous, because you start believing things are fine again.
That is precisely how democracies die. With standing ovations for the candidate who promises a return to normalcy, all while holding the same unchecked powers that just nearly broke the republic.
You say MAGA is on its way to a blowout loss? Maybe. But even if Trump is flushed out of the system, the system itself, the one that lets one man turn the Department of Justice into a personal vendetta engine, the one that lets political tribes criminalize dissent, remains. Intact. Humming. Waiting.
You don’t need Trump to lose. You need the American public to focus, uninterrupted, for forty years, on closing the doors that have been flung open.
If you think the American public is built for that level of discipline, then you have more faith in this nation than I do.
We are not waiting for a savior to fall. We are waiting for a more competent tyrant to rise.
When they do, it won’t matter if the independents swung blue for a cycle or two. Because the machine is already built. The vault is already sealed.
The next hand that reaches for the lever will not be one of the least capable humans on the planet.
So your premise is that someone who has made a choice, realizes it was not good, is nonetheless frozen into that choice for eternity, unable to make another one. If so, again we seem to disagree.
David, your reply misrepresents the claim and rests on a flawed logical mechanism, one worth unpacking.
You’re constructing what’s known as a Straw Man fallacy. Its actually a very common MAGA tactic. Mischaracterizing my statement as arguing that those who made a poor choice are “frozen into that choice for eternity,” when I said no such thing. The point wasn’t that individuals are incapable of change. The point was that, as a bloc, the so-called “independent” voter class revealed their priorities through action, and that data set is relevant when assessing present-day political reliability.
This isn’t about metaphysical permanence. It’s about probabilistic trust.
More importantly, your rebuttal leans on an appeal to exception, the idea that because some individuals may shift over time, we should presume fluidity across the whole. That isn’t strategy. That’s wishcasting.
In politics, we don’t build theory on what people could do. We build it on what they did do, and what that signals about their values under pressure.
If your argument requires recasting a critique of statistical behavior into a claim about eternal psychological stasis, it’s worth reconsidering the strength of your position.
My assessment stands. A bloc that sided with sedition over service, with spectacle over substance, is not where I’d anchor the future of democracy.
Not because change is impossible.
But because betting on it., instead of planning around its absence, is how democracies die.
Of course if you prefer you can stick with the "when all else fails, misquote and moralize." tactic if that serves you better.
A few will peel off over this and his edge is small. Every bit helps.
Agree, David. It's tempting (less work, as you get to be lazy) to think other people are so rigid, they can't change. The CBS news poll above (at end, in footnotes area) agrees with David's optimism. It proves a huge drop in Trump support April to just recently, across all three age groups polled. Keeping the focus on MULTIPLE mis-deeds as been working.
Wish they'd show the change in the percent calling themselves Indep vs Repub. Expect Indep has gone up at the same time admitting one is a Repub has gone down.
Jerry, the mistake here is thinking this is about Trump.
Trump is not some Machiavellian mastermind whose grip is weakening. He is, in all seriousness, the least capable man ever to hold the presidency. A walking symptom, not the disease. His rise wasn’t due to his cunning—but to our rot. To a culture so numbed by grievance and spectacle it willingly handed the launch codes to a game show host with a persecution complex.
He didn’t kick down the doors to atrocity. He stumbled through them, blabbering nonsense, and revealed how many were already off their hinges.
Someone sharper is coming.
Someone who knows how to spell “constitution” before he tries to shred it. Someone who doesn’t tweet confessions at 2 a.m., but works quietly, systemically, with legal polish and institutional camouflage.
You’re pointing to a chart that shows a dip in Trump’s support, as if that’s proof of civic awakening. Closing the doors that Trump has opened is a 40+ year project. Not just undoing policy, but rebuilding civic trust, institutional guardrails, democratic literacy.
If you believe the American public, this public, has the stamina, memory, and attention span to sustain that kind of long-term moral discipline, then you have more faith than I do.
Patrick, I worry about you. If your thinking is as negative as you say, then you could be knocking on the door of suicide. If you want to live, try to look for rays of hope. The more you repeat this stuff to other people, the more you risk dragging yourself further down. It is not enlightenment you are expressing. It is despair. The poetry in your words does not change that.
What you wrote is the kind of hollow display someone makes when they want to be seen as thoughtful without doing the work of actually thinking.
You don’t see despair. You see someone refusing to lie, and that makes you uncomfortable.
There’s no insight in what you said. No substance. Just the tired reflex of someone who’s mistaken emotional laziness for balance, and imagines that hope must be loud, bright, and false to count.
There’s no courage in clinging to delusion. There’s no virtue in policing someone else’s clarity because it makes your comfort squirm.
What a truly exposing comment, what a truly garbage comment. I appreciate you letting the world see you, for who you are.
No, history mostly shows that they go until something causes the fever to break and then they set to work pretending that they never believed in the first place. This usually comes when people stop taking it seriously and start laughing at them, as with the Millerites. Some at the Bulwark say we should be understanding of people who are Trump-curious, but history suggests that laughing at the leaders every chance we get for being suckers is more likely to dissuade people from following them.
I predict a serious national security breach on the scale of 9/11. Nobody is minding the store. We are sitting ducks for an attack, whether physical or cyber. It’s coming. And I suspect it will not be a unifying event, as 9/11 was. More like Covid when people were attacked for wearing protective masks, as it quickly became a test of political loyalty. Actually, 9/11 was the same; we followed like lemmings into a disastrous war.
It would be a mercy if history worked that way, if mass delusion simply ran its course and then collapsed beneath the weight of its own absurdity.
But that isn’t what the record shows. Fever doesn’t break on its own. It burns until it consumes everything or is forcibly contained.
Look to Reconstruction, when the fever of white supremacy didn’t “break” after the Civil War, it reconstituted itself in law, in policy, in mob violence, in myth. The Lost Cause wasn’t laughed out of history. It was taught in textbooks. It shaped generations.
Or to the fall of the Soviet Union, when the fever of authoritarian nationalism didn’t vanish with glasnost. It hardened. It waited. It reemerged under Putin cloaked in nostalgia, grievance, and control.
Even the collapse of Nazi Germany, the supposed gold standard for fascism’s defeat, came not through public shame or collective laughter, but through catastrophic military loss, occupation, and tribunals. Even then, the fever didn’t die. It just went underground. It changed costumes. It taught itself to smile in public and wait for history to forget.
That’s the truth we the people keep refusing: These movements don’t vanish. They adapt, like viruses. They build think tanks and school boards. They put on suits and run for office. They stop marching with torches and start wielding gavels. They learn to frame hatred as heritage, cruelty as courage, and fascism as freedom.
Because we cannot imagine that our neighbors, our uncles, our old high school classmates could be fascists, we do nothing. We hope the fever will break. That the spell will lift. That one morning they’ll wake up and say, “My God, what have I done?”
They won’t.
They never do.
I agree though I would say the fever broke in Germany after the war — not completely and there were still some hardcore committed Nazis, but they were the minority. The end of the war provided a reset button and most Germans by 1945 were worn out and wanted to move on. How they felt privately about that period was probably more mixed, but they essentially shut that portion of their lives off and moved on for what, in West Germany, was a much freer and more prosperous life than they’d had previously. They also produced a highly successful democracy after the failures of the Weimar Republic. I’d be cautious about attributing the AFD to the Germany of the ‘30’s or that it is a revival of what went underground in 1945. Unfortunately, 80 years after the end of WW2 fascism has become au courant and the populace is trying on old garments as if new, and not something that’s been molding in the unwanted barrel all these years.
The fever doesn’t have to completely break, but we will need MAGA to either wear out and move on or some sort of reset before we can escape the disaster of electing Trump a 2nd time.
And yet people stayed on with the Millerite message and just reinterpreted the prophesy. I can say this because my background is from a religious group that are direct descendants of the Millerite movement and still see him as a prominent religious leader — he may have gotten the details wrong, but overall on the right track and a good person.
I don’t know what breaks it. I keep coming back to what broke fascism the first time around and that was losing the WW2. Suddenly there were no Nazis left in Germany and no on wanted to be associated with them. There is Spain where Franco just sort of petered out and faded away, but that never had the fervor of MAGA.
I’ve read that Nazi sympathy didn’t disappear after WW2, just became socially unacceptable. Went underground.
I’d be fine if the same thing happened to MAGA.
Cultists will even sacrifice their children to their beliefs. Human sacrifice isn’t just for the ancient cultures.
They’ll even sacrifice themselves. See Jonestown.
The red hats won’t scatter now. Some of them initially came for the Epstein Files but stayed for the mass deportations.
Anything that hurts others. That’s their North Star.
Absolutely. 💯
“ This isn’t hypocrisy. Hypocrisy requires shame. This is the full disintegration of the moral lie.” Yes. Exactly. To be a Republican under Trump, you must first buy into the big lie. And at that point you have lost your soul. The blank stare of Marco Rubio.
Rubio does look like a perpetual deer in headlights, the visage of someone who recognizes that deep down he's now compromising the personal integrity he's spent a lifetime building.
Complying with the shuttering of USAID, the destruction of high-energy food intended to feed malnourished children.
That's quite a legact that Rubio is building for himself.
And let's stop with comparisons with the Third Reich. America has its own shame. Try looking up postcards of black men lynched with grinning white men and women in the foreground.
Videos of white women screaming like harpies at small black children entering schools.
The rot has always been present.
Nicely written. Thanks.
I can't stop reading what you've wrote here, and how well you've elucidated your thoughts. Deep down, I know what you're saying is true, and today's one of those days, we're I've let the bad thoughts creep in where I'm left terrified. I don't see how this ends soon or peaceful. Some days, I find a glimmer of hope, avoid the news for a few days, and realize things may turn out OK. Though, I know I'm creating a temporarily parallel universe in my mind. All your words on this thread are sobering. I find myself isolated from like-mind people who seem to think we'll be OK, or coming elections with change this. Even many on my/our side still don't see the dark forces that are working in the shadows. I'm so very worried.
One wonders if part of Trump’s palpable fear of more leaks isn’t JUST the sex part. I think that would be politically survivable. It’s the OTHER men, very likely of ALL political persuasions, with whom he would be linked through Epstein.
The “Uniparty”.
I suspect a lot of rich donors are in there, people who paid a premium for silence and are very worried.
Bingo
Perhaps, but ultimately Trump is a selfish jackass, so maybe he wouldn't care? He's blowing chaff like a bad 1980s fighter jet pursued by a heat seeking missile. There's something else here.
I had the same thought, but I can't imagine what it might be. He's always been proud of his "conquests." He has no shame. I don't get the sense he cares about what other people think his legacy is. He's already determined his legacy is having been the greatest President in the history of Presidents.
So what could it be...?
It was some years after Felon Trump and Jeffrey Epstein split, when Epstein was arrested in Florida. That was covered up, no Federal case, only state and a slap on the wrist sentence, with one of his prosecutors being given a plumb job in DonOld’s administration. There were names of many movers and shakers, the rich and powerful who had to be protected. Too bad for the underage girls, they were expendable. Now it’s back, and should not be allowed to fade away. We have to demand the truth be told for all those girls, whose lives were shattered.
And to think that quite a few years ago Gary Hart's political career was sunk by a photo of someone, not his wife, sitting on his lap at an event. I have no idea of the occasion or who she was, but the photo itself tanked him. Now we have a president who, before his first presidency, is on take making a vulgar comment about women; and it's only gotten worse from there. However, it appears not to matter any more. I guess we're a country that now cheers for this kind of awfulness.
Yeah, it was the "Monkey Business" and Donna Rice that sank Hart's presidential flotilla.
Completely agree- but I lean more towards the opinion that such issues are ‘DEI’, ‘woke’ and ‘divisive’ - therefore they must be destroyed because such ideals are ruining our beloved country.
Knowing Trump, I wouldn't be surprised if he was somehow making money off the Epstein escort service.
wasn’t there Trump Models?
I wouldn't doubt that was a recruitment tool for Epstein.
There's testimony from some of the victims supporting that assertion.
I think this is a follow the money story.
How did Epstein get his wealth? Did he help trump with funding his business at a time when he couldn't get a loan, except from Russia.
Senator Ron Wyden has been following Epstein's money.
From the US Senate/Finance website https://www.finance.senate.gov/ranking-members-news/as-trump-downplays-epstein-wyden-unveils-details-of-treasurys-undisclosed-epstein-file
Thanks for the link. Trump’s always been very opaque when it comes to his finances and funding. It probably has more to do with that than the sex.
It’s all of a piece. Politics>Money>Corruption>Sex. A story as old as time. We are not “exceptional” except for self-delusion.
Perhaps he provided a letter of referral and recommendation to his Russian financial representatives. It may have read just like the birthday letter…
It is absolutely a "follow the money" story. Epstein had way too many connections and way too much money to be a simple schoolteacher turned investment advisor. I get that he likely had insider trading tips from his connections after teaching, but it still doesn't explain a billionaire lifestyle.
There's no one else in the world that Trump would be desperately concerned about protecting - unless he would personally be disadvantaged if he didn't protect them.
As I read the section about Hunter Biden, they’re playing clips of him on Morning Joe. Hunter Biden needs to go away for ever. It’d be great if I never had to see or hear him again.
I listened to a few minutes of the interview and that was more than enough. He sounded like an incoherent old man with an ax to grind, spitting out the f word at least twice in every sentence. Disgraceful.
No, he was spot on accurate.
You're both right actually, and the fact that he said a lot of true things about a lot of other people who refuse to accept how they bear responsibility for the catastrophe we find ourselves in makes it harder to simply tell him to shut up and go away. Yeah he's mad, yeah he is lacking some self awareness and is simply wrong about his father's chances had he stayed in the race, but screw George Clooney, screw David Axelrod, Pod Saves America, and many other former Obama staffers, screw Anita Dunn, and especially screw Jake Tapper.
I would very much like to see Hunter Biden go away for ever, but many of the people out there saying as much or demanding he hold himself accountable have their own accountability problems they refuse to deal with, hence why Hunter Biden is angry and feels this need to let them know it.
As a family member Hunter Biden is too close to the situation. I get that he's angry and protective of his father, but the country would have benefited from Joe bowing out much earlier.
BTW, if Joe Biden was prescribed Ambien, that medication can affect memory.
I have experience with Ambien and stopped taking it because it did cause memory problems. Knowing that people's bodies metabolize drugs differently as they age is something that Joe Biden's doctors ought to have known.
Yes, yes, and yes.
Haha
https://bsky.app/profile/joshuaerlich.bsky.social/post/3luiplmxwxk22
That friggin' guy. Please just go away. It's as bad or worse than if Billy Carter and/or Roger Clinton had become crusaders for their brothers' legacies. The family should have locked Hunter in the velvet prison of a Malibu rehab in 2021. We'd be all be better off if he were still doing group sessions and tai chi on the cliffs.
Our political/cultural identity still gravitates towards family dynasties. Adams, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Bishop, Clinton, Trump. We seem unable to shake our flirtations with the concept of royalty.
Sorry, but no one in the Biden family besides Joe is in politics. So no dynasty,
And that’s exactly why I didn’t list them. But the family members are lured towards unearned importance just the same as if it were a dynasty in their minds.
I was never in favor of pardoning Hunter to begin with, but now I kind of wish he was actually behind bars. Him going out on TV and ranting is helpful to absolutely no one in the Democratic party. Just go back to your painting and get off the media circuit.
Impulse control has been a problem for the guy. It’s part of why he ended up in trouble. What I don understand is why media gave him the platform to flap his jaws on. Click bait, I suppose. It doesn’t serve any public interest and should be ignored.
American news media isn't journalism. Its entertainment. Giving Hunter Biden a platform to flap his jaws on is entertainment that drives views and engagement. It is a no brainer for them.
So true. Men like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley (Chet and Dave) would be beyond embarrassed, appalled even, to be associated with the likes of this generation of newscast anchor people, particularly the Fox brand of fakirs.
Honestly, Walter Cronkite would probably be beyond embarrassed and appalled to be associated with his own network CBS and what it has become, nevermind the propaganda mills like Fox.
It was a You Tube interview, not media. Did you see the clown sitting across from Hunter? Hunter, himself a clown, craves attention. The fact that he was ever allowed anywhere near the Oval tells us as much about his father's competency and judgement as the debate debacle. Hunter should be behind bars.
YouTube is new media and is clearly an example of media as entertainment...
Wait....was that the ghost of Walter Conkrite wearing that baseball cap? Define media in any way you like.
What was the purpose of the publisher in creating that video? To entertain. It doesn't matter if they are a bunch of clowns. It doesn't matter why Hunter is doing that or what is said. The purpose is not to inform or educate. Its to entertain. That is the problem with all modern media. That wasn't the ghost of Walter Conkrite or any other legitimate broadcast newsman anymore than Jake Tapper could be called one.
Hunter would never have survived a prison sentence under the looming Trump administration. When that first occurred to me, it was Epstein I was using as a model. Biden acted to save his son from death.
I think Hunter's comments are great. He spoke the truth.
I know a lot of Democrats. After the debate some of them believed what Hunter believed. The others believed it was impossible for Joe to be asking for an additional 4 years and to win the election after his performance. This group believed this without any input from anyone else. This split (50-50?) was the reality for the Democratic Party after the debate.
And how many of those against Joe didn't want him in 20 and voted for him reluctantly because he was the Dem nominee?
Hunter is not too bright, and has a lifetime of not the best choices (as generously as that can be said).
Fox is featuring him too!
It will take months to go through all the MLK documents, but what's immediately clear is that FBI was surveilling Dr. King for years and Trump is on the Epstein list.
Both have been clear for a while, just not visible.
It would seem that my attempt to mimic a recent meme has failed. Here's the text from said meme:
"Chronic venous insufficiency is a condition where the veins in the legs have difficulty drawing attention from the fact that the Epstein Files still haven't been released."
J. Edgar Hoover detested MLK, and it would be odd if Trump’s name were NOT somewhere in the Epstein Files since they were pals for so many years, until Jeffrey beat him out in a real estate deal.
Yes, that was well known. Hoover's FBI was awful.
Interesting take last night on cable news by Steve Scaramucci, who predicted that the whole Epstein saga would blow over in White House coverage within about three weeks. On one hand I can see that happening, as the current President seems to get away with everything, most people have an incredibly short span of attention anymore, and they get bored with hearing the same topic over and over. I often wonder if the American public would have enough patience anymore to sit through a Watergate saga for a year and a half until it reached its necessary conclusion. I'm not convinced we have it in us collectively to let such a significant process run its course.
On the other hand, this scandal feels different. Each day a little more the whiff of coverup seems to grow into a stench, and anything related to child abuse and pedophilia is an electrified third rail, regardless of which political party is under scrutiny. People rightly want to know not only if their chief executive is a pervert, but also if he might have been a co-conspirator or worse with a known sexual abuser of underage and/or unwilling females. He already is on tape talking about grabbing women by their genitalia. He is a convicted sex offender. As a rule people do not change their character when there are no consequences. We do not want to be told that where there clearly has been smoke, there can be no fire.
Yes, the House shutting down to prevent votes, definitely says, "move along nothing to see here." They could only wish. It's gasoline on the fire.
It ONLY makes them look worse and the cover up is beginning to stink.
At first I thought this would blow over like all the rest, but you are correct, it's different. Vacating town for more than a month so you don't have to vote on releasing the information—that just leaves a media vacuum. They are counting on people not paying attention because summer. Vacations. And if they are lucky (from their viewpoint), some natural disaster to divert attention. But this one has SEX—dirty, manipulative sex with underage girls. And if one things sells in America, it's sex.
"If one things sells in America, it's sex." Hammer hits nail on the head. And it is guaranteed to hold people's attention as long as there is a gossip column character to it all. You'd think he would know that by now.
Trumpster?
As far as the House getting out of Dodge early, fine. This keeps the Epstein saga going longer. And now House members will hear about it back home and have to defend doing nothing. Nice message Mike Johnson! :)
If Trump gets away with hiding this wide ranging Epstein criminality ring, I think it will be due to a certain amount of envy on the part of other men, that Trump had the illicit experience and pulled off a cover up.
I share your skepticism. I think, to borrow from Nixon, the grand jury files is a “modified, limited hangout”. Stonewalling isn’t the effective firewall Trump hoped it would be. Things eventually unraveled for Nixon, too.
I listened to Tara Palmeri who covered Epstein. What a horrible indictment of the legal system. (at least in Florida)
We can help to keep the scandal in the forefront by phoning our GOP members of Congress about this everyday. I keep calling to demand transparency and Bondi’s sworn testimony in Congressional hearings about whether she was lying before or is lying now about the existence of the Epstein List.
Shame on us if tRumpy manages to slither out of this one by wearing down public attention.
I have written McCormick several times. With lots of words in all caps, short sentences, exclamations points, poor grammar. It's been fun.
I agree with it not going away for a couple of reasons: 1) Trump's lawsuit will keep it in the news until he drops it...and he will drop it. 2) This whole FBI thing where they flagged the Trump mentions. That smells like a coverup...ESPECIALLY...that they did that and THEN decided to release the "nothing to see here" unsigned memo...on a Friday night....
He will drop it before he is deposed in discovery. We could always luck out if Trumpster has the vanity that he can talk his way out. It has happened before.
Americans have very twisted patience and memories. Republicans still parrot how Obamacare was “crammed down our throats without discussion” even though in reality it involved over a year of hearings for legislation to actually help Americans. Now the slimy-named BBB really was crammed down our throats and . . . Crickets about that, as BBB destroys our institutions and way of life, nevermind blowing up their precious deficit. We need a new word to jack up basic hypocrisy to this level of obscenity.
Hyposcenity?
I know. For all the words in the English language, all the words we borrow from other languages you'd think we'd hit on the perfect word or hybridization to encapsulate our current nightmare plight.
Haha! I like it.
It is fairly possible that Trumpster can outlast this. One thing he won't outlast; dropping poll numbers. (39-42%) And he is polling worst on issues that are deemed his best. (immigration and economy). And as results from what he is doing start to trickle in, Trumpism will drop more. As far as I'm concerned, the longer Republicans keep following him without question, the more it hurts them in the long run.( and better for all of us) As for the Mucci, there has never been a camera he didn't like.
We must keep this in the news
You know who knows every. thing. that's in the Epstein files?
Maureen Comey.
I understand that she likely can't legally spill the beans but maybe she should start getting a little rowdy and mouthy.
At the very least she should keep a failsafe journal of what she knows.
Ah, we all know who has a copy of the journal (and the files) in *his* safe.
A perk of being a corrupt president?
Oh, sorry to be so vague. I meant her "failsafe journal" would be in her father's safe. (At least I hope it would!)
Oh. My bad; I lost the plot on this short thread. I was thinking Ghislaine Maxwell. My brain skipped right over Maureen Corey’s name. Yes, I think Ms. Comey is fairly well protected (too high profile now) and definitely has a journal (as her father likely does also). And may well spill some truth when the time is right.
It's remarkable that Hunter thinks "my dad was 81 years old and tired and taking ambien" is a defense.
Not to worry, the President's health won't be an issue for the next 3.5 years!
Why isn’t Trump’s extremely superior DNA on the market, like Musk’s? After all, Trump’s uncle’s intelligence is a gift that keeps giving, disregarding the Unabomber’s inexplicable proximity that ended badly.
Glad the kiddos have grown up regarding Donald Trump; may he create a generation of lifelong Democrats. W made one out of me. It would have been ideal if they'd wised up before November 5, but I'll take solace in the thought that it's unlikely many of them voted, since they never do.
The Monday Morning quarterbacking from Hunter is not the best punditry I've seen. Considering his father has recently been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, it's probably a bit foolish to continue arguing that the Dems should have stuck with Biden when ultimately it was his age, demeanor, and lack of coherence that led to the switch.
As far as the coverup, it seems kind of impossible that they'll be able to pull this off. Honestly, with the number of people who know things, the hundreds of victims, the loads of clients, the investigators, I don't know know how this thing didn't spill out into the open a long time ago. You can't keep the lid on a conspiracy that involves hundreds or thousands of people, the math doesn't work.
The kiddos will be nostalgic for their brief opportunity to actually vote. And their role in that demise will cause cognitive dissonance.
The main reason Hunter needs to STFU is he is merely providing a distraction for trump, and we absolutely don't want ANY distraction from what is happening to trump. Oh and can't resist from the leading light of the senate Tommy T, it was we leftist radicals that made trump sick.
Really. That he never defrauded anyone but the owner of Bursima is hardly an acquittal in the court of public opinion.
Hunter has every right to talk. He isn't the distraction but merely a punching bag for whiny never trumpers and some Dem pundits who want clickbait.
He does legally have the right to talk. But his entrance into the conversation ignites a Republican diversion into the “Laptop From Hell”. Trump is currently being hoisted on the Epstein Files petard of his own making. We don’t need Hunter creating a rhetorical fork in the road for it.
Then why does places like the Bulwark amplify his interview?
Comments here care more about Hunter than Epstein.
Nothing, realistically, prevents files from being destroyed, redacted or 'disappeared.' Maxwell, if she retained incriminating information (which she likely did--she's anything but stupid) must now be in a panic. She could so easily experience 'suicide' in her cell, with the TV cameras mysteriously turned off. Inside, or out, her life is in extreme danger. Her paranoia, and ours, is justified.
Put nothing, absolutely nothing, past the evil of the orange narcissist-felon's regime/cult. The regime has shown, and is continuing to show, no restraint whatsoever in the attainment of its authoritarian goals. Distract, delay, deny, appeal.
If she has evidence, and she is smart, that evidence is secure unless something happens to her. Her way of protecting her from all these unknown men in her life. And they know it!
I'd like to think you're right, Katherine. But I fear that every conceivable location at which she could have secured the evidence has been scoured by what we now know, into our bones, as the forces of evil. This does not in any way condone what she did. But she had to have known exactly what she was doing.
Swiss vaults are impregnable. That’s what I would have done if I were in her shoes John.
With the appropriate 'revenge button' if anything happens to her? This is a labyrinth of dreadful proportions.
Files on the cloud can be hard to track down.
Especially if they're not all together.
It took a while to hunt her down remember, and she has experience both as Epstein's partner in crime and love interest, as well as everything that happened with her father, Robert Maxwell. I'm sure (if she's smart—and no one has called he stupid) she has an "if anything happens to me" envelope/flash drive with multiple sources just in case.
I read about a psychological short-hand for narcissists when they are attacked: DARVO. Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim Offender. Sound like anyone we have had around us for wa-y-y too long?
The MAGAs are very much “snowflakes” now. Playing their victim card.
Three things: (1) Who exactly will defeat the coverup when Trump toadies control everything? A leaker in the DOJ or FBI? That's what it would take, and that person would be risking everything they have to do it. I'm not optimistic. (2) Everyone named Biden: shut the fuck up. (3) Regarding all of those 18-29 year olds: what, exactly, were you thinking last November? Not a rhetorical question.
They weren't thinking. At all.
Exactly!
The Flagging: 1,000 Agents, 24 Hours, 18 Days. https://bsky.app/profile/opsan.bsky.social/post/3lukxncdtxk23
.. 1000 agents means 1,000 possibilities for leaks
What set us on our fatal timeline is not Biden. It is the Republicans. Never, ever forget that. The could have impeached & convicted him in the Senate- they did not do that. They let him run around the country for four years lying about the 2020 election and then they chose him as their nominee.
The authoritarian path the GOP set us on started generations ago. Nixon's only crime was that he wanted the authoritarian power for himself and wasn't willing to play the GOP's long game. The path wound through the Reagan years, the Tea Party era, etc.
You folks at The Bulwark keep pounding away on rump and Epstein! Louder! Keep shouting and screaming until they have released EVERYTHING. Don’t let ANYTHING push you off this issue. Every day it gets weirder and weirder. Keep up the pressure, all of you on Substack. Keep it front and center. What’s good for the goose is good for the Trumpstein! (Hillary’s emails and Benghazi indeed) pasha!
You mean like protest signs:
NIXON TRIED TO
COVER-UP WATERGATE
TRUMP IS TRYING TO
COVER-UP EPSTEIN
"TRICKY DICK" QUIT
"SICKY DON" SHOULD TOO
Nice one, but I was sorta thinking bigger. Like Substack PLATFORM!
OK, but I can carry a protest sign. Who carries the Platform and where? I do my protesting at the US Consulate in Frankfurt where I can be engaged in chats with people who express an interest in my signs (two-sided, different "messages").
You’re funny and I think I like you. Thank you for carrying your two faced sign in Germany. We can use all the sign carrying help we can get. Of course, seriously, this will take more than signs and protests to fix the mess the fat orange $hi¥ has gotten us into, but every little sign helps. 😐
Thank you. 🥂 One of my motivating factors in starting with my sign carrying in February 2017 was that I did not want Germans to think that all Americans were bat-shit crazy. I have had numerous interactions with people during my "Consular Walks", and in down-town Frankfurt when I carried signs (all in English) for other protests, against Right Wingnuts here, or for a No Kings Day protest, 99.999% of them positive and supportive and many grateful (in words) for my protesting. The two negative ones were early on, 2017, possibly 2018, and amounted to nothing.
Keep signing and marching. Wish you were here but it’s probably for the best you’re not. We’ve become rather smelly here. Keep up your good trouble!
Another aspect of the dialogue in Trump's birthday message to Epstein is the Trump and Epstein "characters" promising not to spill the beans--like renewing wedding vows, in a way.
One thing the Dems have to realize that the youth votes are never reliable and if they show up to vote, they may not be in their favor. Same with minority votes these days, aside from African Americans. So their consultants all need to be replaced.
A lot of Black male voters went with trump. You need to hold them accountable, along with the other minorities that stupidly voted against their own best interests.
I recognize that. The sad part is besides black women, every demo trended towards Trump last year after he staged a coup and convicted for 34 counts in NY. 77 million people were responsible for what we are seeing today.
Yes, but that was before DOGE and the gutting of the federal govt and workforce. Before Project 2025 (they were warned how many times?). Before the mass deporattions to gulags and worn torn countries. Before "Alligator Alcatraz" which will eventually become a death camp—inmates are sure to die. Before the Epstein fiasco. Before the likes of K$H Patel, Homan, SS Barbie, Cruela d'Tulsi, and worm brain. Before cutting cancer research, SNAP, and Medicaid, with threats to Medicare. Before the selling off of precious public lands.
Sometimes is takes the stove getting hot for some people to to notice the heat and that it can burn.
Let's not exaggerate. 21% of Black men voted for Trump in 2024. That's only 2% more than the 19% of Black men to voted for Trump in 2020. Most of the 2% increase are probably due to young Black men, consistent with Trump's high support among all young men.
Compare those numbers to White men, 61% in 2020 and 60% in 2024.
The biggest demographic shift was Latino men, 36% in 2020 to 54% in 2024. But that's still less than the 60% for White men.
I take issue with White people blaming minorities for the destruction of America, when the overwhelming majority of White people is responsible for Trump. (I give permission to put Latino men in that stupidity bucket though.)