One of the advantages of being very grown up (I don’t care for the word “old”) is that I have been around long enough to see history rhyming. The difference is that the Watergate Scandal took place in an America that had three fully functioning branches of government, a respected and truth-driven fourth estate, and a public that did not appreciate being lied to. That all seems so quaint now.
Here we are over a half-century later, and President Donald Trump, who makes President Richard Nixon look like an Eagle Scout, is bungling through attempts to cover up of his exploits with Jeffery Epstein’s sex trafficking of young girls. Compounding the horrific nature of this Epstein scandal is that virtually every Congressional Republican, the attorney general and the director and deputy director of the FBI are at least tangentially hiding something but refuse to acknowledge and investigate it, or worse, give a damn.
What is in those estimated 300 gigabytes (about 60,000 books of 500 pages each) of data, paper, video, photographs, and audio that live within the FBI’s main electronic case management system, “Sentinel?” We already know that Trump manipulates facts, obfuscates, and generally miscommunicates and masticates the English language. We can rest assured, however, that these dozens of under-aged girls did not consider their experiences with Epstein and Maxwell a “hoax.”
Donald John Trump has been, and continues to be, a man who sees himself as being above the laws of us mere mortals and functions without scruples. Stir into that mixture a monstrous dose of righteous vindictiveness, who has been allowed to surround himself with incompetent and spineless toadies, and we have an antisocial personality disordered president.
Just as a reminder:
“Preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States?”
On top of this consequential scandal, President Trump is implementing a set of policies and actions (fully spelled out in Project 2025) that “destroy, abandon, and disregard the Constitution of the United States.” This authoritarian design goes by the name of the unitary executive theory.
Just like with Watergate, the loyalist surrounding Trump (the only people he listens to) have circled the wagons and are going out of their way to demonstrate their fealty. Attorney General Pam Bondi has become a human pretzel, and FBI Director Kash Patel and FBI Deputy Director-Dan Bongino are desperate to cover-up this cat-box of information-feces.
It may well turn out that Jeffery Epstein proves from the grave that his old buddy, Donald Trump, is the head of the deep state, as well as a fellow child-fornicator. Then, by airing this filthy laundry, Americans start shoveling out from under an avalanche of additional crimes his co-conspirators are inflicting upon our intentionally polarized citizenry. Who knows, maybe some Trumpublicans might realize what a lying crook he is; although I won’t hold my breath on this one.
Eventually, just like drowning rats exiting the ship-of-crimes the Congress is currently turning a blind eye to, this exposed Epstein cover-up could build the momentum necessary for their political survival instincts kick in. Then the kowtowing legacy media types might just miraculously rediscover their responsibility as truth tellers. Heck, I bet even the bought and paid for Supreme Court just might show some judicial balls.
I just want to live long enough to see this, or I want to die before the America I was born into disappears into the Trumpian dystopia we are heading toward.
NOTES
Epstein files: What we know about the records | CNN Politics
The rise of the QAnon conspiracy and why the Epstein files matter | The Independent
Dan Bongino, an Emotional Wreck, Throws QAnon a Bone
Antisocial personality disorder - Symptoms and causes - Mayo Clinic
Always a prescient and thoughtful commentary. I think we’re about the same age, and I think we’re not going to see in what time is left to us any meaningful changes in the media or it’s audience, in the Supreme Court and it’s corruption, the Congress and it’s craven impotence due to billionaire’s money. Try as I might not deny it, I think we’re fukt. But I’m not ready to stop fighting, irregardless (which is not a word but whatever)
What hath Trump wrought? I hope the USA will recover from his presidential destruction.