Trump Trips over Own Feet Hastening Parallel Retreats
It is official conventional wisdom.
Trump is retreating on Jeffrey Epstein.
Or rather, Democrats led by Ro Khanna, survivors, and a handful of Republicans who could not give a fuck, starting with Tom Massie, forced Trump to retreat.
Retreat. RETREAT!! Bill Kristol wrote.
And they’re laughing at the position it puts Mike Johnson in. (Well, not CNN. CNN pretends Johnson had a “strategy” on Epstein.)
President Trump’s stunning reversal on the “Epstein files” discharge petition has undercut months of work by Speaker Mike Johnson.
Why it matters: The Epstein issue has plagued the House since the summer. Now the speaker is about to suffer a clear defeat over Reps. Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna’s (D-Calif.) discharge petition.
- Johnson cut the week short before the August recess after Democrats forced multiple votes on releasing the files. He then kept the House out of session for nearly two months — a move that, intentionally or not, delayed the discharge petition from reaching the floor.
- “What I am opposed to is the reckless disregard that was used in drafting this discharge petition,” Johnson told reporters on Wednesday.
But on Sunday, Trump reversed months of calls to block an Epstein vote, saying Republicans should vote for it. On Monday, he said he’d sign the bill.
- Tuesday’s vote is expected to pick up significant GOP support, including from Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), the highest-ranking woman in the House GOP leadership.
Zoom in: Johnson’s posture about the legislation hasn’t changed, a source familiar with his thinking told Axios.
- But after months of railing against it, he opened the door Monday to supporting it.
The focus here is on Mike Johnson. Not the way Democrats chased Johnson out of DC a week early this summer, literally stealing him of the power of his gavel, then forced his members to stay home (and Adelita Grijalva to wait to be serve her constituents) for two months while Americans suffered the costs of the shutdown.
It doesn’t consider that by undercutting Johnson, Trump risks destroying the way he set Johnson up as his functionary. Trump and Johnson are both treated as the agents here.
Both NYT and CNN view this as a rare retreat from Trump.
For the first 10 months of his presidency, Mr. Trump has steered the narrative and bullied Congress into doing whatever he wanted with almost no pushback. But as Republicans gear up for midterm elections and some begin to plot a future after Mr. Trump, the Epstein episode is a rare instance in which he has lost control.
For months, House Republicans had dreaded the prospect of a vote on releasing the Epstein files. Such a moment would leave them torn between pressure from a fervent base demanding that they support the release of the files and a vengeful president who was demanding the opposite.
Mr. Trump’s about-face was a bow to the inevitable that came after it had become clear that many, if not most, Republicans were planning to support the measure, wary of appearing to aid in a coverup for a sex offender.
Kyle Cheney is one of the only people noting that this is not coming in isolation, citing these six (he says seven) signs that Trump is losing his grip.
- Republicans refuse to back down on Epstein vote
- Indiana GOP lawmakers don’t bite on redistricting
- Warning signs appear for tariffs at the Supreme Court
- No luck on the filibuster or the blue slip, either
- Trump gets a one-two punch after pardoning 2020 allies
- MAGA rebukes Trump on 50-year mortgages, H1B visas
He included seventh on social media: 7) Voters overwhelmingly rejects Rs in off-year elections.
I’d add to this list: Trump’s coalition is also unraveling over whether they should be enthusiastic champions or opponents to Nazism, both a squalid fight played out in real life, and potentially useful given revelations that one of his House Nazis, Paul Ingrassia, also interceded to help accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate.
If we use it right, we can use the anti-Nazi backlash as a way to offer an exit ramp to Republicans fleeing the ship, one JD Vance, at least, intends to go down with.
But the Epstein retreat comes amid another important retreat, one only partly captured by Cheney’s list. Last week, the reality that American can’t grow (much) bananas or coffee caught up to Trump and after he single-handedly spiked the price of key breakfast goods, Trump started to retreat — like the Epstein vote — before his partners-in-crime, this time the Supreme Court, abandoned him.
Trump is trying to do with tariffs what he is also trying to do with Epstein, squeeze some victory out of his defeat, float rebates as a way to avoid explaining to voters that Trump single-handedly made Barbie unaffordable for Christmas and, depending on how SCOTUS rules, the possibility he created an enormous hole in his budget and the onerous process of paying back importers.
Both of these may be (attempted) tactical retreats. Pam Bondi may attempt to bottle up the Epstein files at DOJ. Some of Trump’s stupid tariffs were lawfully enacted, and also stupid.
But it’s important to note that these retreats are happening in parallel, not least because tariffs are one area where Republicans have always agreed with Democrats, even while hoping someone else would make the problem go away.
The cynic in me suggests that Trump has retreated in relation to the House vote, not in relation to the release of the files. I expect he will obstruct the release of anything that implicates him, while setting the DOJ on the likes of Larry Summers. Will it work? I hope not.
He will switch again when this bill gets to the Senate, where he only has to strong arm 2 or 3 members. He’s already switched a couple of times and once more won’t bother him. It’s whatever he needs to get where he wants to go in the moment.
In any event, he won’t ever sign it.
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Too late. My phone just buzzed and told me “Senate approves Epstein Bill”.
It turns out that Senate Republicans wanted to duck the issue and the Democrats had no reason to force a recorded vote because they already got one on September 10. So the Senators agreed unanimously to deem the bill passed as soon as it was received from the House.
September 10th vote: https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1191/vote_119_1_00512.htm
I’ll agree, because the matter will be ‘under investigation’ by Bondi / Patel / Martin / etc. to snare Democrats and finish the redactions about Convict-1. No one buys it, any more than the fact we still haven’t seen Convict-1’s taxes that have been ‘under audit’ for over a decade. Just saying….
For the record, the site was down in Germany at least, for several hours due to the Cloudburst thing (or whatever it’s called.)
Came back around 15:45 here. (Cloudfare?)
Same here in the Northeast US.
northwest, too
It was also down here (CT) for a bit this morning. Same message.
Same Cloudflare error here in New Mexico this AM.
Worldwide. Cloudflare had some kind of problem.
https://apnews.com/article/cloudflare-outage-x-openai-9335e8e0da2a0027d1fbac5eb97d11ae
[Curious: Why is it not Verrücktes Pferd?]
Weil ich den S bei erstes mal vergessen habe, und kann ich nicht mehr verändern.
But isnt it also true that Trump could just order the DoJ to comply with the original request for documents, if he really wanted to release the documents.
Going unsaid in much reporting is that this discharge petition is only necessary because Trump’s DOJ is fighting against the release.
If he really intended to expedite the release he could do so, by tweet, from any golf course in the world.
Almost in a snap of his fingers.
But that would mean that Trump owned it…And Trump never wants to take responsibility for anything that can actually be observed and/or measured. Dodging responsibility and OPM (Other Peoples’ Money) are two of the most consistent Trump identifiers.
The gaslighting often buries the obvious: Trump knows exactly what horrible things he did with Epstein.
Re-documents in MAL speaking on Fox News’ “Hannity”, ““There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it,” Trump said. “You’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified, even by thinking about it.”
Pressed further, Trump insisted he had declassified the documents in question when he left the White House, again without pointing to proof of such.
“In other words, when I left the White House, they were declassified,” Trump said.”
If that’s the case “would you declassify the Epstein files?
Yeh, yeh, I would, I guess I would, less so…”
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZJorAVgHy7Y
Trump is developing a new book : The Art Of Angering Core Factions”.
His erratic tariff policies are harming small and mid-size businesses, farmers, and consumers. His storm trooper ICE brigade is angering the immigrant community, in general, but especially Latinos who don’t want huge influxes of migrants but don’t like the storm trooper tactics. The Tech Bros, Big Banks and Big Businesses are still with him but, at some point, will get tired of paying the bribes. His handling of the Epstein Files has upset the QAnon faction. His handling of the Israeli-Gaza conflict has angered the anti-imperialist faction and the Neo-Nazi faction. His sympathy for the Neo-nazis has angered the pro-Israel faction.
He has weathered storms in the past. But he is 79 years old. His handling of the Epstein Files has been inept. Is it age or hubris or both?
His handling of Covid was massively, lethally inept, with the exception of the vaccine that he now disavows. Trump has never handled anything with comprehension or skill because he’s never cared; he’s always been in this for himself–his ego, his enrichment, his revenge.
He has “weathered storms” because he’s a cult leader who benefits from distorted information systems. Age and hubris should have caught up with him years ago. The Epstein story obviously involves him closely. He believed he could dictate reality–because he could, with the help of Fox News and others. He has perhaps reached the limits of that power.
His skill has been PR. His handling of Covid was awful. Turning that mess into a way of pitting MAGA against science and public health officials was a PR victory for him because it deflected from his mismanagement. Of course he has been massively aided by the right wing spin machine.
I’m expecting him to devolve into a rampant paranoiac state. He’s halfway there, in fact. To wit: “piggy.”
Polling shows support for ICE is below 50%.
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/53394-majorities-of-americans-disapprove-of-ice
The opposition to ICE/CBP at the ground level often has to do with the ripple effect of having the landscaper, the construction worker, the clerk, restaurant personnel, etc.. here yesterday and disappeared today.
Count me as someone who thinks Trump is putting together forces only answerable to him.
Thank you for that handy list! It was a pleasure to read.
re tariffs I’m sure we can expect him to update his “$18 trillion” claim any minute now….
The rebate proposal, if he does not let it fade, will bite him, because if he pursues it, at some point he will have to — or Congress will have to — acknowledge the real yield of the tariffs.
According to a source used by Bloomberg Radio (which I did not catch), the IEEPA yield (which I guess excludes regular tariffs) was $89 billion through the end of October.
This paltry sum also explains why tariffs have not had the effects on the overall economy that Democrats were expecting.
Perhaps he really does believe what he says about tariffs.
Well, he did update it. Not by lowering it but by increasing it to $21 trillion. Silly me for thinking cutting tariffs would reduce it. As a bonus he a) threw in some insults at ABC’s reporter and b) bragged about how unselfish he is.
https://youtu.be/UIK1gSDw25w?t=2114
If he has imagined his tariffs are up to $21 trillion now; he must also imagine that he is up to at least 12 “solved” wars. Mostly due to his tariffs.
By golly, you’d think the effect would be more noticeable in a $30 trillion economy.
I jest, but I also do detect a new, desperate quality to trump’s habitual lying. Hitlerian comparisons are so easy but I think they are pretty well grounded. Like Hitler in his Berlin bunker ordering imaginary battalions into action, trump amasses imaginary hoards of gold which he will use to bribe the masses to be quiet.
Tom Massie suggested yesterday that Trump’s announced investigation into “the Democrats” in the Epstein files is simply a way to lock up a lot of them in litigation: “We can’t release files that are relevant to an ongoing investigation.” But as Bill Kristol (and Laurence O’Donell, on many occasions) say – if the worst were already out there, Trump would be able to say, “Release the files.” He hasn’t, leading to the suspicion that more and worse is in the files.
When it comes to Trump’s options for distractions, I’m watching Venezuela and Central America.
You don’t put the USS Gerald Ford in the Caribbean Sea on a whim. I am really curious about how the career leadership at the DOD, and especially within the Navy, are reacting to this. Given how the head of Southern Command, Admiral Alvin Holsey suddenly announced his plans to retire early — with no public explanation either from him or Pete Hegseth — it sure looks as if the DOD is preparing for using the Ford and its supporting vessels in a major way, and subordinate commanders are being told to obey or get the hell out.
Paul Pillar has a sobering piece at Responsible Statecraft with the disturbing title “Dick Cheney’s ghost has a playbook for war in Venezuela.” Here are the opening three grafs:
I didn’t like the first version of this movie produced by Cheney and directed by Rumsfeld. I have no desire to see a sequel produced by Trump and directed by Hegseth.
I think Trump will overplay his hand on Venezuela, to an extent that will lead to calls for his impeachment from some surprising places.
Iraq was a huge mistake, but it was a huge mistake which did have a fair amount of legal legitimacy, under the 2002 AUMF and various UN resolutions. The US did not act alone, it had international partners.
In the case of Venezuela, there is no Congressional authorisation, no credible international law justification, no UN backing, no involvement of allies, just a rogue President and Defense Secretary Ken doll. It was interesting that in the tariffs case before SCOTUS, conservative justices seemed to go out of their way to express skepticism that Congress could offload its War Powers to the President.
In addition, the MAGA base is opposed to foreign wars, let alone unlawful foreign wars launched to distract from the Epstein cover-up.
Don’t be shocked if you see MTG leading the impeachment charge this time around.
good points…
One other problem to consider is the significant risk that the other Latin American nations will back Maduro if for no other reason than the ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’ concept. Only Milei will back Convict-1 (due to the bailout) and only as long as his population lets him. Given all of the actions done by Convict-1 and his minions, there is a lot of anger and the realization that deals with the current WH are completely worthless.
I don’t think a war with Venezuela is winnable if the rest of Latin America joins them. I think SoCom understands this.
Also, Venezuela doesn’t produce fentanyl and doesn’t traffic much drugs to the US. That’s Mexico…
The fact that Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction did not prevent Cheney and Rumsfeld from invading them.
In the Trump administration, reality is what Trump says it is, no matter how hard some pesky facts try to claim otherwise. Anyone who has a problem with that is resigned, is fired, or is indicted.
I quit being surprised several Presidential cycles ago.
“Iraq was a huge mistake… ”
indeed, a catastrophic one with never ending ramifications. however, it was not a huge mistake for Cheney/Bush and their following. it was a massive transfer of national wealth into their pockets. they made out like bandits. ever since, the rest of the country has become more and more immiserated. for which we can in part thank the rise of the magats.
This. Cheney knew what type of Americans he was going to be funding for generations – right wing socialists. Increasing the budgets of the military industrial intelligence complex enhanced the fortunes of those that took advantage of the ask, while the budgets of those things that benefited the “better angels” of our nature to rot. I have watched and felt the shift in the people and budget priorities in real time.
Trump/Vought? looked at that model and doubled down by slashing science as well as those agencies that actually do work for good, while pushing more funding for those departments that will attract right wing socialists that have far more jack booted thug tendencies. Think ICE.
Isn’t it true that Venezuela has more proven fossil fuel reserves than Saudi Arabia?
Isn’t that the main point of this criminal cabal?
A war with Venezuela would make a distraction if the Epstein files case goes off the rails. Trump is so greedy he doesn’t know when to quit and just doesn’t appear to care about the law. A war with Venezuela will cost a great deal of money and it might be brought home to Americans. A war in Venezuela is going to make things a tad messy for Cuba and other countries in S.A. If Trump tries to invade Venezuela other countries may decide to assist Venezuela out of concern Trump may turn on them also. That of course might cause unhappiness amongst the drug lords and they may decide to send Americans a message. Its not like they don’t have experience killing politicians.
I Trump goes to war with Venezuela I’d bet money China will be sending them weapons if not free with a big discount. It would be a great chance for China to put the U.S.A. under more strain than Trump would expect.
Group,
In a nod to my peace church roots, I’ve called my three federal representatives. I said “in 2016 our current president said “I could stand of 5th avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t loose any voters, okay?” Now he’s putting those musings to the test by murdering people in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.
Do you think our fellow citizens joined the military so they could kill someone every time Steven Miller needed to get a hard on? As a (Sen/Rep) you have a modicum of power. With that power you have a modicum of responsibility. When St. Peter asks you “What did you do when our country was being wrecked and sold for scrap?” Will you say “I sat on my hands.”?”
I added to my message a happy addendum. One of my Senators (Tod Young) released a message (and vote) on the war powers act. I Thanked him for that, saying I agreed with several of his points. I called the attention of the others to their fellow legislator’s stance.
It seems to me that starting a war is exactly the type of “double down” that has been so attractive to DJT through his whole (misbegotten) public life.
datnotdat
If trump goes to war, bet he gets himself a really nice uniform with even more gold. Not only is he incompetent and nasty but he has terrible taste. Yikes.
I might actually cite an 8th reason Donny’s losing his grip, which is also a callback to a past Marcy post: he cannot control (read: misdirect) the media as he did in years past. and I further wonder if that hold over media was more tenuous than we actually thought, given how relatively easy it’s been for the Epstein saga to break through. (in fairness, the conduct is repugnant and widely understood to be so.) also lays bare the inherent conceit of maga cult, particularly of the Bondis and Patels, who joined Donny’s “maga crusade” in misusing federal agencies, assuming their leader would remain unscathed.
Trump made sure he’d have absolute power over the government in his second term — just in time for his dementia to really start kicking in. He was always bad in a crisis, but now his misfiring brain, his refusal to listen to good advice (because he truly believes he’s the smartest man on earth) and his sociopathic criminality (which prevents anyone competent or with a moral compass supporting him) have led to this desperate thrashing to maintain his dominance. And none of it is going to get any better.
I want to start the call for Trump’s resignation.
Will you join me?
Try contacting Indivisible and asking them to get behind this effort. A better tack may be getting a groundswell of voters to contact their GOP representatives and demand impeachment for abuses of his office. Pressure the GOP enough and Trump will cave even further on more issues.
But realistically I don’t think Trump will resign unless he has been assured of complete immunity and he can’t be since he has liability for state charges.
What? God does not resign.
We’ve all internalized the many double standards used on Democrats to benefit Republicans. One of them is the idea that Democrats care what people think, while Republicans do whatever they want. For this reason, we are told there is no reason to pressure someone like Trump: he will not yield to public opinion, and certainly not to ours. Thus, we have been obeying in advance for years.
It isn’t true. It also isn’t true that calling for Trump to resign is a separate strategy from impeaching him. We can do both! I think that the statement “God does not resign” is dumb. It’s supposed to look cool and smart and cynical while reinforcing the double standard. TACO is a better slogan.
Trump just lost the support of 271 Republicans in Congress. The hundreds of FBI agents that he forced to watch his videos and view the pictures of his crimes will not all stay loyal. If he resigns, we will close this chapter more quickly and more easily. If he fights instead, his whole estate, including the new billions in bribes and embezzled funds, could be more easily taken away by his and Epstein’s victims.
Trump must resign.
Knock yourself out, exercise your First Amendment right.
However I’m not going to waste my time on such an ill-prepared demand which fails to take into consideration the target’s oppositional defiance, his (and his team’s) ability to weaponize demands against him, fails to plan for subsequent blowback, let alone the failure to develop sufficient consensus to create social pressure en masse.
The loss of support by 271 Republicans didn’t happen overnight; it’s taken a growing effort begun before the 2024 election, and it’s taken the organized effort of members of Congress as well as groups outside Congress, from Epstein’s victims to Indivisible. You want this badly enough? Work smarter and harder.
When Trump leaves the White House this time, it will be feet first. Can’t happen soon enough.
[Moderator’s note: This had better be intended as a reference to natural cause mortality because references to violence will be removed. /~Rayne]
It is. I renounce violence, but I wake each day hoping he has finally stroked out. One day, it will be true.
To quote Clarence Darrow: “I don’t wish harm to any man. But I have read some obituaries with satisfaction.”
Every elected Congressional Dem should have “Impeachment” on a flashing sign across their backs. Bills of Impeachment should abound on the Blue side right now. The MAGAmachine tried to scare voters prior to the last batch of elections that the Dems, if they regain the House and Senate, will move to Impeach Trump. That was an indication of their worst fears, just as they recently had a “this is not a theocracy we’re doing” session with Vance on the Kirk platform, meaning that attacking them from that angle is a soft spot.
“Impeach the most corrupt and feckless politician in US history,” with a dozen or more Articles being presented by teams of Dem Congresspeeps, should be the fusillade for the next year — and then it becomes a Congressional project, right out the gate in ’27. And if the economy (or part of it) collapses, as it well might in the next several months, the “Impeachment” thought is well in the public mind, possibly having the non-Jim-Jones-remnant of the GOP to join in to save civilization.
You just reminded me:
On this Day in History: (From Wikipedia)
The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, better known by its informal name “Jonestown”, was a remote settlement in Guyana established by the Peoples Temple, an American religious movement under the leadership of Jim Jones. Jonestown became internationally infamous when, on November 18, 1978, a total of 918 people died at the settlement; at the nearby airstrip in Port Kaituma; and at a Temple-run building in Georgetown, Guyana’s capital city.
Sadly, the entirety of Trump 2.0 has been like a really bad Bond Film (I’ve seen quite a few and the villians of this admin are totally on par with Ian Fleming’s constructs) but where is Bond, James Bond, when you really need him?
We may be sure that J.D. is keeping a close eye on DJT’s condition.
Sometime soon, we may see an Address to the Nation about having invoked the 25th Amendment, but how, despite that sad necessity, everyone will continue to MAGA.
What are Bondi’s prospects on bottling up the Epstein files “pending re-opening the investigation” or a similar cover-up?
I’d be extremely surprised if they didn’t. However, I don’t think we are done with the Epstein estate releases and that’s not something Convict-1 can stop so easily. Likewise now that the victims are putting out PSAs on MNF, the pressure will continue to build.
Bondi is saying today that she will answer no more questions because the Epstein case is back under investigation, so that appears to be the new firewall for Convict-1. How can this one be breached?
TPM: Trump Gives Himself an Enormous Out on the Epstein Files
Damn good point. I made the point above that Impeachment should be on the lips of every Dem at this point. One of the many reasons for that is that if and when the eventuality that TPM describes goes down (as I mentioned above, regarding an economic collapse), Impeachment will already be in the public mind as an escape hatch for civil society.
OT but significant. Just saw this headline at SF Chronicle:
“Federal court blocks Texas’ gerrymandered House maps that prompted California’s Prop 50“
Implications?
Here’s some info on that from The Downballot:
https://bsky.app/profile/the-downballot.com/post/3m5wdiui4kk27
November 18, 2025 at 1:09 PM
Insubordinate Piggy Hat [Ken White] with some info:
https://bsky.app/profile/kenwhite.bsky.social/post/3m5wkmrz5pc2l
November 18, 2025 at 3:17 PM
This is an interesting twist. If it holds up.
I wasn’t thrilled to have to vote for Prop 50, and I’d even be OK with hypothetically rescinding the result of TX redistricting was unequivocally shot down by the SC . (believe that when I see it).
But otherwise. in terms of raw political power shift (L for the Rs, W for the Dems), heck yeah!
David Cay Johnston suspects that Trmp may use the “contraband” label to hide at least some of the Epstein files, something that Mike Johnson has intimated in his speech in [limited] favor of the vote today. You can read Johnston’s piece at https://www.dcreport.org/2025/11/17/what-may-be-missing-from-epstein-files-release/
Release all the “credible” Epstein files
Release the “credible” job data
Count all the “valid” ballots
john paul jones wrote:
“… if the worst were already out there, Trump would be able to say, “Release the files.” He hasn’t, leading to the suspicion that more and worse is in the files.”
Which is exactly why Lawrence O’Donnell and Ari Melber would do well to continue clarifying why and how the victims could receive justice if the ‘Epstein’ (Maxwell) materials that DOJ holds are not prematurely released.
Afterall, according to current conventional wisdom, Maxwell will get a pardon or commutation because Trump is in fact, and most importantly, himself a victim of ‘Epstein’ and Maxwell’s suspected ongoing crime; more troubling categories of crime that as yet, she has not been prosecuted for; ‘boring’ white collar crime that the ‘sex’ and violence of child rape and trafficking is ancillary to.
As Trump himself said, in his Hannity interview (the edited out then leaked clip that Chris Hayes played the other day), ”because there’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world.”
He should know, and had reason to know before Maxwell’s conviction, if only because someone he knows was on TV years ago (Michael Caputo? Around 2016-17, CNN or MSNBC) describing how Trump was known to have bragged about ‘seducing’ women by having them listen through intercom to him (and at least two other Someones) in another room attempt to engage his ‘friends’ —their husbands, in ‘locker room talk,’ and offer them females.
My first thought when I heard that was Roger Stone. Easier to believe Stone would humor Trump with that ‘seduction’ line, than to believe Trump really thinks that was what was going on. Yes, Stone would exploit his handicaps & assets in order to create kompromat (which includes phony stuff), for extortion in another project to which the ‘seduction’ was ancillary. It could have started out as assistance in extorting ‘generous’ alimony for a damsel in distress; but in exchange for what besides tossing off the flattery of ‘seduction’? That was before I ever even heard of David Pecker, or Maxwell & Epstein.
When Comey described what Trump said and how he said it when privately briefed on the ‘pee tape,’ I was reminded of that story. My first thought was man did that go right over Comey’s head. Is he —really— that naive? That vain? Perhaps not.
Massie also said, at the selective victims press conference this morning, that this (the DOJ matériels on ‘Epstein’) “incriminates” our intelligence agencies (IC). Does he mean to subpoena DNI Tulsi Gabbard?
Journalists would also do well to continue clarifying the distinction between law enforcement and national security investigations, and between respective end purposes, when they are covering the upcoming redactions, thinking in terms of potential national security classifications of redactions and of Massie’s suggestion of swaths of materials not included in DOJ criminal division ‘Epstein’ release —or that shouldn’t be.
Trump is not “in retreat”, he doesn’t do retreat. it is the Republican party finding limits on what they will support and protect. This is the first indication there were any, and given what they supported and protected included a violent attempt to overthrow a duly elected government, kidnapping of legal residents, and murder of apparantly random people on boats in international waters, that’s saying something. Once cracked, the divisions in the Republican party can only get deeper., Trump also doean’t do compromise.
Ed Kilgore at New York Magazine:
Unless the Epstein estate and/or someone other than DOJ has the receipts.
“Gotcha” moments await…
Miss Maxwell certainly has some receipts. They must be stored where the crime family running the government can’t find them.
No other child molesting sex trafficker gets moved to such a comfortable taxpayer paid environment.
What about this list compiled by John Fugelsang a while back? Not all of them are associated with Jeffrey Epstein. But they might have connections to Trump. And not on this list is Andrew Tate. But he’s recently been in the news.
Here’s the Fugelsang list:
“Pedophiles? You mean like
Ali Alexander?
George Nader?
John Casablancas?
Anton Lazzaro?
Roy Moore?
Scott Baio?
Ghislaine Maxwell?
Tevfik Arif?
Ted Nugent?
Bc I don’t think those guys are Dems”
https://x.com/JohnFugelsang/status/1702027728243802365
Hosed
Scrub-a-dub-dub,
The tools for the rub,
Mark Epstein says they might be,
(For dodger, for faker,
For scandal shtick maker)
In Winchester, Virginny.
“Mark Epstein alleges an FBI cover-up”
“There’s a facility in Winchester, Virginia, where they’re scrubbing the files to take Republican names out of it. That’s what I was told by a pretty good source,” he added.
https://www.newsnationnow.com/cuomo-show/mark-epstein-jeffrey-epstein-dirt-trump/
Maxwell home for Christmas? If she didn’t have much leverage before… she sure does now. But does anyone really care? Today, obviously it is top of mind. But for how long? It doesn’t even have to be as crass as “wag the dog”… just let the Wurlitzer spin for a few cycles. Send Maxwell off to Europe, Limited hangout on what Don knew, bury the files, and let the algorithms take over and distract people as they are designed to do. Have the trolls talk about Cinton and Summers in the meantime. That is his way out.
If tfg pardoned Maxwell doesn’t that mean he no longer has the keys to her freedom, and control over her?Couldn’t she then sell him out?
Trump has been incompetent in almost everything he has undertaken in his adult life except reality TV and politics. Read “Lucky Loser” by Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner for more details.
Speaking of tariffs, there is a new “America First Dividend” in the works. If you would like to receive your dividend, all you need to do is activate your eligibility by donating to RPAC, the Realtors Political Action Committee.
I have no idea how this is legal.
Fundraising emails: https://politicalemails.org/messages/1999517
RPAC official site: https://web.archive.org/web/20251119152520/https://www.nar.realtor/rpac
Link to Winred: https://archive.is/A9B3R
RPAC bills itself as nonpartisan and lists their beneficiary candidates in the 2023-2024 cycle, a roughly even split of Democrats and Republicans.
Message in recent emails to right wingers:
“This is money collected from foreign countries now being returned to you.”
“Returning” to us what they say was taken from someone else. Hmm.
Something seems fishy about giving these people bank routing and account numbers.
Retreats are usually organized and done in a manner which exacts a price on the pursuers. I see more of a disorganized skedaddle directed by a desperate leader who tries to distract his enemy by sending inexperienced officers on ill-planned forays. As the country he passes through on his way back to safety turns increasingly hostile, he commits more atrocities along the way.