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Passages

(3,256 posts)
Tue Jul 15, 2025, 09:43 AM Tuesday

Jeffrey Epstein Is a Policy Issue

It’s about elite impunity, the defining issue in America for more than two decades.

by David Dayen July 15, 2025

Donald Trump always demands public adulation, and he probably feels that it should be peaking now. He’s realized such longtime conservative dreams as damaging America’s social safety net and cementing a grossly unequal tax code. He’s bombed Iran with no immediate repercussions, even if it was more of a glancing blow to that country’s nuclear ambitions. He’s dropped border crossings significantly. He’s benefiting from a Supreme Court catering to his every wish. He’s even announced an investment in, and advance market commitment for, a rare earth minerals mining company that the Biden administration’s industrial-policy leaders would have gladly implemented.

And yet he’s losing his MAGA base over Attorney General Pam Bondi’s abrupt closure of the Jeffrey Epstein case. After leading his followers along that his administration would investigate and release information about the man who purportedly committed suicide in prison while awaiting prosecution for sex trafficking, Trump has tried to shut it all down and yelled at anyone focusing on what he termed old news. His base feels angry and betrayed, condemning Trump on his own social media site. Even inside the administration, figures from the podcast world like Dan Bongino are furious.


Democrats, who have mostly ignored Epstein for the past several years, are finally starting to raise the litany of Epstein-Trump connections in speeches. But it feels like their now-standard second-term tactic of using whatever’s available to get under Trump’s skin, without really grappling with the underlying policy issue.

Yes, I said policy issue.
There’s an incorrect belief that the Epstein case is somehow separate from the real concerns facing America, a conspiracist concoction untethered to reality. But it’s actually about the policy issue I’ve probably spent more time writing on than any other in my career in journalism: the two-tiered system of justice and accountability in America, and the impunity we afford the nation’s elites.

https://prospect.org/justice/2025-07-15-jeffrey-epstein-is-policy-issue/

Indeed.
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thucythucy

(8,926 posts)
1. Conceding that the Epstein files no doubt contain incriminating material on Trump,
Tue Jul 15, 2025, 10:18 AM
Tuesday

I'm left to wonder why Democrats neglected this issue during the campaign.

In fact, I wonder why the material wasn't made public sometime during the Biden presidency.

Was it an unwillingness to "sink to their level?" Or was there some serous legal obstacle to pursuing this? If only the former, in my humble opinion this constitutes a mistake of the highest order. Perhaps there was a feeling that Trump's base wouldn't care--since it didn't care about so much other damning information--or that it would be seen--and dismissed--as "partisan."

But given Trump's sensitivity about this, and the response of MAGA, it seems to me that an enormous opportunity to derail the MAGA train was missed.

Imagine what LBJ would have done with something like this,

Passages

(3,256 posts)
2. Yes. The leadership in our party has approached corrupt pols like GW Bush and Wall Street
Tue Jul 15, 2025, 10:28 AM
Tuesday

in an unfortunate manner....my most polite characterization.

LBJ would have moved political mountains with the info, IMO.

usonian

(19,138 posts)
3. No doubt the sexcapades of the rich and famous (and not so famous) include some folks the party wants to protect.
Tue Jul 15, 2025, 11:06 AM
Tuesday

Because it's all about the moolah. Money makes you a God.



Money and the rich are the Gods of the oligarchs, politicians, and Mevangelicals who fly around in private jets.

And they get people fighting senseless culture wars



to protect their droit du seigneur (1)



It's all a giant blackmail and protection racket.
Ideology has nothing to do with it.

Soon, the "Twilight of the Gods" as in Wagner's Ring Cycle.



Valhalla, the palace of the Gods (2) burns up, for their greed for gold and lust.

(1) The right to fuck any subject at a whim.
(2) More commonly, the reward for elite fallen warriors,
https://www.lifeinnorway.net/valhalla-explained/

Fortunately, in Valhalla, all your wounds are healed every night and you can begin the day fighting fresh.
If you’re thinking they must get hungry then you’re right. They get utterly ravenous. And thankfully it doesn’t take a herd of wild animals to keep them fed. Instead, the huge boar Saehrimnir is big enough to feed all of the men and luckily it too regenerates at night. ... and so on.

FakeNoose

(37,900 posts)
5. Chump cannot in any way mischaracterize this as "presidential immunity"
Tue Jul 15, 2025, 11:17 AM
Tuesday

That's the beauty of this Epstein issue. Chump has gotten away with so MUCH, for so LONG ... and it's finally coming to an end.
There's nothing presidential about molesting children.

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