Of course not.
And therein lies their tragedy, and ours.
A newly released document in the so-called Epstein files reveals that Donald Trump, far from being an eager participant in Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking in and exploitation of young women, was one of the first to alert authorities that Epstein was involved in illegal activities. As the New York Times reports today,
“…one of the first calls the Palm Beach police received was from Donald J. Trump, the local police chief at the time told the F.B.I. more than a decade later.
“Mr. Trump reportedly told the chief, Michael Reiter, ‘Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this,’ according to a document recounting their conversation that is part of the tranche of Epstein files released by the Justice Department.
“Mr. Trump said it was known in New York circles that Mr. Epstein was disgusting and suggested that the police also focus their investigation on Mr. Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell, according to the memo. ‘She is evil,’ Mr. Trump reportedly said.”
“Mr. Trump also told the police chief that he was around Mr. Epstein once when teenagers were present and that he ‘got the hell out of there,’ according to Mr. Reiter’s account.” The former chief described his conversation with Mr. Trump to the F.B.I. in October 2019, two months after Mr. Epstein was found dead in his jail cell while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges, the memo shows. Mr. Reiter told The Miami Herald, which reported on the document earlier, that the call with Mr. Trump occurred in July 2006.”
That’s years before Epstein’s first conviction.
Ethics Alarms 
“The President was one of the good guys, and the Trump Deranged can’t handle it, won’t admit it, and don’t have the character to retract their accusations.”
You are absolutely right, my friend. It won’t matter.
The document is from 2019 when Trump was in his first administration. The so-called Resistance will argue that Trump had the documents altered, that the officer lied, that there’s been a cover-up or, as you’ve seen, will spin to make him look as bad as possible.
The President is owed an apology, but he won’t get it. The only reason the Democrats care about the Epstein documents is how they can be used to hurt Trump.
My thoughts exactly, AM.
“The sheriff was bought off by Trump! Trump was in the White House in 2019. I’m sure he had some dirt on the Sheriff and used it as leverage!”
The Trump deranged won’t back off a millimeter. They’ll just double down, as well as bring up the next thing. They’re nuts and they are incorrigible.
Still…watching their flaccidly enfeebled flailing will be damned BOX OFFICE!
PWS
The Epstein files is the new chemtrails, or 9/11 theory. Rational thought will not be had.
“Be Humble In Victory And Gracious In Defeat“
I’ve never had a problem observing the former…it wouldn’t be hard to make an exception.
PWS
This Epstein saga is getting tiring. The guy was clearly a weirdo extraordinaire. He was obviously sexually obsessed with girls under eighteen. It’s never been explained where he got his money from, other than (ironically) handling the money of the Victoria’s Secret owner. But he clearly had a thing about luring in and compromising lots and lots of big-time people. Idiots. But bottom line, the guy was just a sleazebag involved in really sleazy stuff in which he involved some of his “friends.” Enough already. This has turned into people slowing down to see the results of a car wreck.
I’m reminded of a rumor that went around in my boys high school. One of the guys’ mother was reportedly “entertaining” any number of guys. Similarly, the Epstein stuff is just pretty much beyond the pale. He’s dead. His sole accomplice is in jail. All the girl/victims are no longer at risk. They were failed decades ago.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but the entire affair Epstein is just something that can’t go on forever, therefore, it has to end.
The crucial question of “where did Epstein get his money?” got a partial answer with the report that Peter Mandelson, former UK Ambassor to the US, lost his job not just for sexual adventures with the Epstein team, but for leaking financially significant insider information. I speculate that THAT is the big prize Epstein was working on: compromise people who have tradable information, and make the trades. The sex angle is click-bait, but the financial angle hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. Insider trading leaves no obvious victims because the cost is spread over all of us. Person-to-person payments (e.g., “hush money”) leave a paper trail of receipts. Insider trading doesn’t. Some guys just have all the luck.
The whole narrative may be about to blow up in their faces. There is growing public evidence that Epstein did not run a teenage sex trafficking ring for others rich men. The entire trafficking narrative was based on one victim who claimed she was “lent out” amongst other billionaires, but no other victims known to the FBI claimed as much. (A few underage victims said they had multiple abusers, but the FBI could not find enough evidence for federal charges, and the article is not clear if the other abusers were connected to Epstein).
It appears Epstein was a serial abuser, hiring numerous underage women, and only Ghislaine Maxwell and a few other personal assistants had any direct role in the matter. Its possible Epstein had some other pervert friends, but the AP article does not clearly indicate that. The idea that his private island was an underage brothel looks untenable.
https://apnews.com/article/jeffrey-epstein-client-list-sex-trafficking-049c96080a2ca2c12c84ac506437e50b
Theeeeeeeeeere went Johnny!
The Epstein files never had any value or Biden would have released them in the last few years, especially if they had anything that could knock Trump out of the running last year. They are becoming the Valerie Plame of the Trump administration, the issue that the opposition whips out whenever things are slow or their latest attack fails, even though it has no value.
Epstein was definitely a pervert. However, there is no evidence that he was some kind of pimp of underage girls to the rich and famous. Even if he work, Trump was one of the first people to report him as doing some wrong things.
I’ve already seen a bunch of posts where the usual lefty whiners have added “if you believe it’s time to move on from the Epstein files” to their reasons for getting off their page. No online relationship is so important that someone else gets to dictate everyone’s thinking. These are the kind of people that my dad and grandfather would remind “you’re not that important.”
The other posters here are correct. Certain conspiracy theories or other theories just will never go away no matter what. Honestly, there is no value in buying into or advocating for a conspiracy theory of any kind, unless the value is to yourself, and being able to tell yourself that you know something everyone else doesn’t and they’re just too stupid to listen to you. That’s why 57 years after the fact we are still hearing about how the moon landing was faked. That’s why 25 years after the fact we are still hearing that 9/11 was an inside job. There is no value to saying either of these things, but the people who say them believe that somehow they are smarter than everyone else and know something other folks don’t.
“The Epstein files never had any value or Biden would have released them in the last few years, especially if they had anything that could knock Trump out of the running last year.”
Precisely. After that terrible debate performance by Biden? Nothing. After the assassination attempt on Trump? Nothing. Fundraising like mad and paying Oprah and Beyonce a gazillion dollars to support them? Nothing.
If there’d been any evidence Trump had been involved in Epstein’s shenanigans, they would have released it certainly in October.
But that won’t matter to the Trump Deranged. In spite of all of this, I’m still seeing inane comments about how Trump said Epstein was a terrific guy in 2002, some four years before he reported what he knew. Apparently, to the Deranged, if you think someone is terrific, it is always so and never changes. This is in keeping with Leftist strategy – a conservative/Republican never changes his mind when learning new information and is always a terrible person for having once supported something or someone terrible.
The President has been setting the Left/Democrats up on the Jeffrey Epstein matter for years. There is much to dislike about Trump, but he owns the Left and plays them incessantly…from the time they’re starting out in the morning until they fall asleep in the sweet moonlight.
My response to the Epstein accusations from the deranged is now singular (…and I think it originated from someone on these pages): I think President Trump was a Democrat back when he was friends with Mr. Epstein…wasn’t he?
…which usually gets the other person to move to the “Trump is a Nazi” trope.
It’s an entertainment extravaganza.
“My response to the Epstein accusations from the deranged is now singular (…and I think it originated from someone on these pages): I think President Trump was a Democrat back when he was friends with Mr. Epstein…wasn’t he?”
C’mon Joel, is it (heh!) nice to toy with children?
“It’s an entertainment extravaganza.”
I must confess to enjoying this a little too much; that make me a bad person…?
PWS
They always forget that little part, don’t they? Of course, he ran as a Republican, just as traditional Democrat Andrew Johnson ran on Lincoln’s ticket as a “Union Party” candidate (read: Republican-But-We-Want-To-Emphasize-the-Union-Above-Everything Else-Right-Now strategy). Whether Trump still is a Democrat or has left that behind is one of the mysteries of 21st century politics. And it is probably unwise to draw any comparisons between Trump and Johnson; otherwise, the Deranged – should they have any idea who Johnson was and what his administration did at all – will infer all the wrong conclusions and deliberately so.
Lincoln’s Republicans were the Abolition Party, and Johnson was anti-slavery, having been a virtual slave himself. Today’s Democratic Party is no longer the Democratic Party: liberals of 20 years ago would be Republicans today. So would Bill Clinton. If he had any integrity, he’d say so and really shake things up. JFK would be considered a center-left Republican today. The Democratic label is no longer useful in 2026 politics.
Whew! That’s stunning. But accurate.
Of course, the narrative of the Left these days is that the conservative Democrats of the 19th through the mid-20th centuries turned into the Republicans of today. While there certainly was a realignment in some cases, one party didn’t turn into another. Republicans have never supported slavery and do not do so now.
There have been about 6-8 “Party Realignments” over the course of our Republic. These realignments have NEVER been “flip flops” as if it makes any sociological sense for one party to adopt the stances of their opposition while the opposition adopts the stances that were once their own.
That’s completely bonkers.
What parties have done, is reacted to “completed conversations”. Our country, in it’s 250 year time frame has gone from one “conversation” to another. Sometimes quick conversations, sometimes generations-long conversations, and always multiple conversations at once.
Modern democrats have desperately tried to push a “great party flip flop” narrative that somehow magically occured in the 50s and 60s around attitudes towards african americans as a desperate ploy to pretend like they weren’t the party of slavery and of segregation.
This party flip flop *did not happen* (and I’m pulling my hair out trying to find the EA post from years ago that I wrong demonstrating this). What happened is that racial politics (one of America’s conversations that was coming to an end – and thankfully one that the Democrats had lost) was rapidly diminishing in the rear-view mirror and an entire region for whom race based politics had been important was now up for grabs on an ENTIRELY different set of political issues and Republicans made a play for that region.
There has never been a super consistent strain through history of what makes a Republican a Republican nor what makes a Democrat a Democrat. Nor was there ever a time where the two labels suddenly switched value sets.
The closest I have been able to come to defining a consistent narrative of each party (and it even has hiccups in consistency through history) is that Republicans hold to what they believe is a “typical American” and to what they believe are “typical American value sets”. And while Democrats do not hold to a direct opposite such as they promote “atypical Americans” or “typical non-Americans” – they rather hold to what they think represents “those left out of what Republicans defend as typical American value sets”. Republicans build coalitions around this and Democrats build coalitions around those they think are “left out”.
Whether or not there is a real “those left out of” or not, that’s what it seems like.
Starting even at slavery – Democrats built coalitions around slave owners (a minority in American politics), those who benefited from a slave economy (also a minority in American politics), and enough disparate other groups to pull off electoral wins – while Republicans began early on to extol the idea that being anti-slavery (which most Americans were) actually comported to “typical American values”.
I’ll have to clean this up. It’s very incomplete and I can see I wasn’t clear enough but hopefully got the gist across.
Also knowing that the anti American modern left has really broken the Democrat role in my characterization.
Found it: https://ethicsalarms.com/2016/02/26/at-least-this-made-me-laugh-and-thats-not-easy-these-days-life-imitates-blazing-saddles-on-the-campaign-trail/#comment-381921
What does registration have to do with this?
The Southern Strategy and Race based Party Realignment is a myth. Voting patterns in the south were gradually changing since the mid 1920s. Though electoral results were still solidly Democrat through the South, the trends were Purple-ing everywhere in the South. See, the Democrat Party, like the Republican party was a loose coalition, the Democrats had solidly relied on racial issues and racism to lock the Southern White vote, but by the 60s when the so-called “racism based realignment” occured, race was a rapidly diminishing issue. One reason the CRA passed – it had support from both parties…because race was becoming a thing of the past.
When the “realignment” finalized…that is to say, the trends that began in the mid-20s finally tipped the South…most of the old school Democrats who could rely on drumming up some racist support, did switch parties. But not because of race. Because of other values, that the new political coalitions forming around. Those who switched parties, did so out of self-preservative pragmatism…a pragmatism that also led to the realization that racism based policy was a thing of the past…and that party switch was generally, and ultimate accompanied by a dropping of racist rhetoric, if not sentiment, as a general rule. What is often ignored in the “racist party realignment” myth, is that plenty of Democrat party members stayed Democrat and ALSO dropped the racist rhetoric.
It’s about this time you also saw the Klan as an actual well-organized machine begin its disintegration into what we see now: pockets of yokels with little influence and no coordination. Resulting in a generally apolitical attitude or an attitude that you’d find a cross-section of political beliefs. That is to say: I’d bet there’s just as many self-styled Klansmen who are loyal democrats as there are republicans…and many more that quit caring about politics altogether.
The real story of the “southern realignment” is far more nuanced that national level electoral results, and is a much more intricate story of a mix of ideologies and values leading to complex coalition building — which change over time.
http://www.redstate.com/dan_mclaughlin/2012/07/11/the-southern-strategy-myth-and-the-lost-majority/
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/09/misunderstanding_the_southern_realignment_107084.html
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/12/07/landrieu-and-the-myth-of-the-southern-realignment/
The truth is, the “race realignment myth” is perpetuated by Leftists because racism issues do not divide the parties anymore, but the Left desperately needs to push that narrative, in what ought to be a futile attempt to pose as great crusaders on behalf of the oppressed. It obviously isn’t futile, as they’ve managed to divide the nation hazardously on many lines in their objective to pit the nation against itself in order to be the “saviors”.