Trump said this year he was aware that Epstein was “taking” young women from the spa at Mar-a-Lago in the 2000s. The president never said he knew why Epstein was “taking” the women, only that he told Epstein “we don’t want you taking our people”, and when Epstein did it again, he was banned.
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But it’s not just about Epstein’s sex-trafficking of underage girls. Other emails released on Wednesday suggest Epstein took a dim view of some of Trump’s dealings and had knowledge of his activities.
In a 2018 exchange about the Stormy Daniels hush money case – over which Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen had just pled guilty – Epstein said: “you see, i know how dirty donald is. my guess is that non lawyers ny business people have no idea. what it means to have your fixer flip.”
Democrats timed this bombshell beautifully, releasing it just as the US government shutdown ends – a good news story for Trump, especially with the Democrats in disarray over their own handling of the freeze and whether they achieved anything.
It prompted Republicans to flood the zone with some 20,000 pages of new Epstein material, clearly an attempt to dilute the impact of the Trump-related emails hand-picked by the Dems.
In this, both sides are hypocritical. They clamour for transparency, but the Democrats are drip-feeding selective emails when it’s politically expedient, and the Republicans sat on the files until it suited them. No one seems to have the victims at heart, as they claim.
The bigger picture is that the Epstein saga isn’t going away. There may be more attempts and opportunities to push it aside for a while, but it is an albatross around Trump’s neck.
“This is the beginning of the end,” Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell posted on X.
That’s wishful thinking. Some Republicans in Congress are twitchy, but if Democrats think the MAGA world is going to turn on Trump over this, they might want to note the reactions of Laura Loomer and Nancy Mace.
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Mace, a firebrand Republican representative who signed the petition, spent the day defending Trump, shaming Democrats for their cynical timing and accusing them of making the story about the president, not the victims.
Loomer, the conspiratorial right-wing activist with 1.8 million followers (and the president’s ear), was once a leading voice demanding the Epstein files be released. But on Wednesday, she simply said anyone outraged about the Epstein saga should also be outraged about having Muslims in the US Congress.
There may be signs of panic, but this is a White House that is well practised at denying reality and moving the conversation along – and it has plenty of help.
The danger for Democrats is the more they tighten the screws on Trump, the more Republicans will feel they have to defend him at all costs.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732)
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