Trump’s Toddler Response to the Epstein Saga
In a perplexing turn of events, President Donald Trump has recently endorsed a Congressional bill calling for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, yet he remains unwilling to actually disclose them. This contradiction raises questions about Trump’s motives and strategy, particularly since he previously expressed a willingness to release the files himself. Trump’s reluctance has left his advisers scrambling for explanations, with some suggesting he is acting out of a desire to resist being told what to do, akin to a child with oppositional defiant disorder. Critics, including the Wall Street Journal and commentator Megyn Kelly, have labeled this behavior as a “self-inflicted wound,” indicating that Trump’s refusal to release the files only fuels speculation about his potential involvement or knowledge regarding Epstein’s connections with powerful figures.
During a recent press interaction, Trump displayed a hostile demeanor when questioned about the Epstein files, dismissing inquiries with derogatory remarks towards female reporters and refusing to provide a clear rationale for his inaction. This behavior has drawn parallels to a narrative trope where a seemingly charming character reveals their true, unappealing nature under pressure. Trump’s responses have been criticized as lacking substance, especially as the Department of Justice and FBI have stated that their extensive review of the Epstein files did not uncover evidence warranting further investigation into uncharged individuals. Despite this, Trump continues to assert that he will demand investigations into various political figures associated with Epstein, suggesting a complicated relationship with the facts and a potential strategy to leverage the Epstein case for political gain.
As the situation unfolds, the Trump administration appears to be caught in a paradox: while Epstein is described as “boring” by Trump, he simultaneously presents the case as a potent weapon against Democrats, threatening retribution against those who challenge him. This duality leaves the Epstein investigation in a state of limbo, akin to Schrödinger’s cat—both alive and dead, with the files remaining sealed and the implications of their contents shrouded in uncertainty. The ongoing demands from Democrats for the release of these files suggest that the political ramifications of this saga are far from over, and the tension surrounding the Epstein case continues to loom large over Trump’s presidency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQrAlwYP_J8
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A bill in
Congress demanding the release of the Epstein files now has the official, albeit reluctant, endorsement of the president himself. And so the question naturally arises: If Donald Trump supports the bill calling on the president (i.e., him) to release the files, why not simply … release them?
Trump reportedly hasn’t given his advisers or allies a rationale for why he won’t do so, leaving them to invent reasons of their own. The answer they’ve come up with is that Trump is innocent and is acting guilty for no reason whatsoever. “He looks like he has something to hide even if he doesn’t,”
asserts
the
Wall Street Journal
editorial page. “This is a self-inflicted wound,” complains Megyn Kelly.
But why has Trump chosen to inflict this wound upon himself? A Trump ally suggests to
Politico
that the president, like many young children, is expressing what some might call oppositional defiant disorder: “POTUS doesn’t like to be told what to do or give Dems a win, so he’s been fighting it.” This theory might make more sense if releasing the Epstein files hadn’t been
Trump’s own idea
before he abruptly reversed course earlier this year.
Trump’s own responses to this very question are even less reassuring.
Asked on Air Force One last Friday why he won’t just release the files, Trump
snapped
at a female reporter, “Quiet, piggy.” As a longtime married man, I have seen enough rom-coms to recognize the trope where Mr. Wrong, after having maintained a thin veneer of suitability for 90 percent of the movie while misbehaving just enough to make the audience root against him, suddenly rips off the mask and delivers a crass or entitled speech that makes the heroine snap out of her infatuation. A set piece in which the bad guy, under suspicion of misogynistic conduct and consorting with a trafficker of teenage girls, launches a sexist attack on an inquisitive female journalist would be too ham-handed even for the writers at the Hallmark Channel.
[
Isabel Fattal: Trump told a woman, ‘Quiet, piggy,’ when she asked him about Epstein
]
Trump apparently concluded that this scenery-chewing performance was too subtle and conciliatory. So when an ABC reporter
asked
the same question at the White House yesterday, he promptly assailed the reporter’s “attitude,” called the question “insubordinate and just a terrible question,” accused the journalist of being “a terrible person and a terrible reporter,” threatened to take away ABC’s broadcast license, and again did not answer the question.
Trump’s bellicose replies are so substantively vacant that it is difficult to discern the administration’s actual position. Having helped whip up paranoia that the “deep state” was burying the Jeffrey Epstein case to protect the elite, Trump pledged to release these files as president. But Trump seems to have forgotten these promises, and the Justice Department and the FBI announced over the summer that, after an “
exhaustive
review” of these files, “we did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
Perhaps the DOJ didn’t share its findings with Trump, given that he wrote on
Truth Social
last week, “I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him.”
So maybe there
is
evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties? Apparently so, because Bondi immediately accepted the assignment,
explaining this morning
that new information had driven her decision, which only coincidentally came after Trump ordered her to look into various political enemies.
[
David A. Graham: Trump’s Epstein-files punt
]
In place of any explanation as to why Trump is withholding the files, his staff has taken to threatening retribution. “The Democrats are going to come to regret this,” a White House official
told
Politico
. “Let’s start with Stacey Plaskett. You think we’re not going to make a scene of this?”
Plaskett is a nonvoting Democratic delegate from the Virgin Islands who exchanged texts with Epstein during a 2019 congressional hearing. If the revenge campaign is going to
start
with her, one wonders where it will end: A state legislative aide? An assistant sewage commissioner in Omaha?
I suspect that the threat of making Plaskett’s career collateral damage will not deter Democrats from continuing to demand the release of the files.
Trump is now left simultaneously insisting that Epstein is too tedious to merit discussion—“pretty boring stuff”—and also is the nuclear bomb that will destroy the entire Democratic Party, or at least an obscure elected official or two. In this way, the Epstein investigation exists in a state of uncertainty, both alive and dead, like Schrödinger’s cat—trapped in a box that, like the ones holding the Epstein files, cannot be opened.
