Regarding Le Affaire Epstein…

Some folks have asked for my opinions and while not being shy about sharing them, I wanted to take a little longer than usual to come to grips with what I feel versus what I think might be the result.

First impression: Damn. Just damn.

Self-inflicted wound.

I heard something this morning while me and Murph were getting in a pre-dawn workout, and it made sense to me.

I was listening to yesterday’s Megyn Kelly interview with Liz Wheeler, one of the podcasters/conservative influencers who were invited to the White House and received the infamous “Phase 1” binders. I’ve followed Wheeler, now at Glenn Beck’s Blaze Media, for years and have never known her to be clickbait crazy or a clout chaser, so I tend to believe what she said.

Wheeler painted a picture of sort of media sleight of hand, where a poorly thought-out PR attempt by Bondi to promote President Trump – and herself – just got away from her. There was a series of unrelated events that combined to create a series of unfortunate events.

Wheeler said they were not invited to get Epstein docs, they were to meet with VP J.D. Vance and had no notice the Epstein thing was happening until it did. She said that the whole thing came apart when Trump showed up and spent a lot of quality time with the attendees – then was notified they were running late to meet with a British delegation and the podcasters were herded out the back door where a press cadre was waiting on the White House grass to capture news from the Brits meet-up with Trump.

Caused by Trump’s turn to the independent media, the mainstream media’s bruised ego combined with a little schadenfreude from the podcasters to produce a media event over the binders, binders that Wheeler said that Bondi clearly said were filled with stuff already known, but that she was trying to be fully transparent by sharing – the real story was that the Southern District of New York was holding back information on Epstein that they were denying even to Bondi.

The mainstream media was more than happy to hype the story to hurt the independent media and their partnership with the Trump administration.

Pamela Bondi got way out over her skis from the jump on this one. I don’t know why, she might have been trying to please her new boss, she might be an attention addict, or she didn’t know she didn’t really have the goods – or the one I don’t want to think about – she was told to bag it because there are famous and influential people on the list who need to be protected.

It was a perfect storm of dumbass that didn’t have to happen.

I don’t think any of this was intended, and that is part of my issue. Nobody in the administration gamed this out or even considered the potential consequences, unintended or not. No matter the causal factors, I am disappointed we are where we are with this – because Trump’s attempt to quash this as an issue just made it more of an issue for friend and enemy alike.

The Epstein “list” thing, whether he was a Mossad asset, whether Prince Andrew was involved or if Epstein had information that would lead to Hillary committing Arkencide, was never a big deal for me, to be honest. My assumption was – and still is – that the truth will come out and people will be prosecuted. I never expected that a “list” or any videos would be officially released, not because of any desire to protect anyone, but because the release would create thousands of opportunities for defense lawyers to protect their scumbag clients by claiming overwhelming bias. I would hope it stays quiet and Patel and Bongino just go after the bad actors. I’d much rather have convictions than publicity.

Will that happen?

No idea.

But what I do know is that this Epstein thing isn’t going away and is now positioned to be a Trump problem rather than a Biden or Democrat problem. It is the same play as the Democrats are using in their attacks on immigration enforcement. They ignore the fact that their leadership enabled millions of illegal aliens to enter and stay – many for decades – by ignoring long-standing laws against illegal immigration and are now turning the fire on the only president in my lifetime who has big enough gonads to close the border and enforce the law.

The “journalists” – like Jake Tapper – are now telling the public they were punked and are pushing to get information released after sitting on their asses before, during, and after Epstein expired. No curiosity at all – but now that it can be blamed on Trump, Jake is filled with righteous indignation.

This is my issue – the painting of Trump as lacking transparency – which it certainly he appears to be. It’s not fair, but as I noted, it is a self-inflicted wound with Pam Bondi holding the spear. It is a potent political weapon to use because the left hates him, and a segment of his supporters are angry the Epstein world wasn’t split open from stem to stern and all the dirty bits spilled out.

This simply destroys credibility – and that is one advantage Trump has built with his extraordinarily high say/do ratio over the first six months of Trump 2.0.