Epstein Shark Week

A story of political stupidity

It took less than a week for the Jeffrey Epstein ‘files’ to boomerang on the enemies of Donald Trump exactly as I had predicted. Democrats had these same ‘files’ for four years and never weaponized them against Trump until now, so it was always unlikely they contained anything incriminating about him with anyone underage. I never bought it. For all his faults, Trump has always preferred the company of adult women. Porn star Stormy Daniels was 27 at the time of their encounter. Nancy O’Dell, the woman Trump told Billy Bush he had tried to “fu*k” in 2005, was 39 when the Hollywood Access tape was recorded in 2005. Arianne Aucker, the woman who made Trump boast and beam in that recording, was 31. Trump likes women, not girls.

After the 20,000 documents were dumped into a searchable database, the first attempts to weaponize mentions of Trump in them backfired. Placed in context, they showed that Epstein was hardly Trump’s friend during the last decade of his life, and had in fact descended to telling demonstrable lies in a pitiful bid for relevance. It made for a noisy weekend, but now everyone sees that the attempt to tie Trump to Epstein this way is a nothingburger with extra sleaze.

“The president has not been accused of any crimes or wrongdoing as it relates to Jeffrey Epstein or these files even with these emails being released. That’s one thing we need to make clear.” CNN said that on Monday — and nothing has changed for Trump by Friday, the tenth day of the ‘Epstein files’ dump by a congressional committee. Instead of bringing down Trump, the Epstein ‘files’ have brought new focus on his enemies. It was so predictable. My notes on Epstein Shark Week follow for premium subscribers.