General Discussion

Just not by the corporate (Trump) friendly media.

We have an echo chamber effect here. Traditional corporate media is dying: its influence on the Internet is and has been fading for a long time, but that media still has an outsized influence in Washington, DC.

The corporate media is an odd beast. It doesn't necessarily reflect reality. Its audience is and always has been a core cadre of influential power movers and shakers. Those who follow that media of course want to be part of that cadre, but generally aren't. This is what many people, even many Democrats, don't really understand - such media really don't care about anyone unless they are in the group they want to influence.

At the same time, when the influential become uncomfortable (even worried) about how they themselves are being perceived, the media mogul faces a problem - do they curry favor with the autocrat if it reduces its influence on its core group, or do they become more adversarial.

This is why the Epstein case is such a big deal. Pedophilia is condemned because as a society we are (theoretically) protective of our children. It's a very dark stain on one's reputation precisely because of that condemnation, and while these people may be morally bankrupt, the image that they want to project about themselves falls apart when they are seen to support such heinous activity. Moreover, this is an absolute case of guilt by association: if you are as associate of a leader who is believed to be a pedophile, does this mean that you are a pedophile also? Whether or not they actually are is irrelevant, it is the belief that is important here, and it is a belief that is remarkably difficult to dispel once established.

The rube farmer in the MAGA hat is a frequent target on DU, but he or she is also a distraction. The real danger comes from the corporate executives and eight+ figure investors who quietly backed Trump in order to gain fiscal and power advantages of their own, who don't really care about his morals, but do care about the perception of their own by their own backers. Right now, they are weathering the storm, hoping that something will come along to get the issue out of the news cycle, but Trump's past IS catching up to him, and the more that others get splattered with his s**t, the more THEY will call for his removal.

Ironically, this is a vicious cycle, because those calls of course amplify Trump's many failings, which only increases the blowback on his moneyed supporters. They are now wondering whether it is time that Trump be fired and replaced with someone who doesn't have all of the man's baggage. Trump's attitude is to cow the corporate media, but that only works for so long before fear of Trump becomes replaced by fear of a loss of reputation in that media's core constituency because of Trump.