By Sid Schwab / Herald Columnist
Now what? For months, calling it a hoax, his word for facts, Trump did everything he could to prevent release of the Epstein files. Yet suddenly he asked Congress to vote to release them, which it did, 427-1. The Senate did, too, unanimously. Realizing it was going to happen regardless, was he trying to make it look like his idea? Have they been redacted to his satisfaction, parts mysteriously missing?
The Platonic ideal of kind-heartedness, Trump is thinking only of innocents whose names might be found there. That’s why he ordered his Attorney Private, Pam of the dangerous diamond (Daily Beast: tinyurl.com/2badring), to investigate Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, and others. To clear their names, reconfirming previous FBI investigations that found no chargeable offenses. Not adding himself to the target list was the unintentional omission of a busy man. He has history and buildings to remake and arches to build, bitcoin and watches to sell.
Previous attorneys general, the rank when deserved, would have demurred, saying, “I demur.” But that’s the stuff pipes dream of. For Trump, his word is his Bondi. Unlike Jim Jordan’s and James Comer’s accusations against President Joe Biden (they just forgot to bring charges for the ghastly crimes they uncovered), rumors of Trump’s weaponization are meritless. If you see it, your eyes are lying. “You got it, Boss,” said Pam. “Also, sorry about that ring thing.”
I’m not one for conspiracy theories. I doubt Hillary Clinton operated a child sex trafficking operation in the basement of a pizza joint that didn’t have a basement, even though Q said so. I’m pretty sure Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, although, admittedly, I wasn’t there. I try to reject theories presented without evidence, which is why I suspect nothing nefarious in the timing of Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide in prison. Not even after reading his words: “I am the one who can take him down.” Or reading his brother’s statement that Brother Jeff “had the dirt” on Trump.
Notice I didn’t put the s-word in quotation marks. That wouldn’t be right. Reading those emails and texts from Mr. Epstein and contemplating his subsequent “suicide” triggers no alarms, not even learning that it occurred while two guards happened to be on break and that three minutes of the security tapes from that time are missing. Just one of those things. Innocent coincidence. Stiff happens (Wired: tinyurl.com/bye2three).
Likewise, I harbor no suspicion about Ivana, Trump’s first of several wives, falling down stairs to her death right before her scheduled testimony about his finances (tinyurl.com/stairs4u). I get it. She was nervous. It makes a person clumsy. Same with the suicide of Virginia Giuffre, who, as stated in recently released emails, spent hours at Chez Epstein with Trump. Nothing to do with her testimony about seeing Trump, or not, with Mister E, doing things, or not (ABC News: tinyurl.com/guiffre4u). Conspiracies aren’t me. I went to medical school. You’ll never catch me impugning a “president’s” integrity or honesty.
There. I was trying out niceness, as suggested ever so gently by certain readers. If Trump participated in Epstein’s pedophilia, would it matter? Not to them. After all, his amorality and sociopathy, the rape charges, his scams and cheating workers and alleged money laundering for Mafiosi were well-known before his first election. Before the second, his incompetent management of the pandemic, his self-dealing and racism and divisive nastiness, his pathological lust for vengeance for perceived wrongs, were unambiguous. MAGA didn’t care. It can’t be ignored, so it must be those things that earned their votes. Holy Mike Johnson, on a first-name basis with God, said it’s a hoax, that questioning Trump’s morality is just Democrats’ nasty politics.
Houses are burning, fire is spreading, about to destroy the whole village. Awoke people bang on neighbors’ doors, trying to rouse the occupants. From their windows, a few old men shout, “Hey, we’re trying to sleep here. Stop banging. Sing us a lullaby.”
It’s a brilliant analogy, right? Trumpists accuse truth-tellers of derangement-based, unwarranted alarmism. Smelling smoke, seeing their clothes smoldering, they don them anyway. Apt or not, the point is that, even in this exceptionally enlightened corner of our variably-hued country, there are people who are unconstitutionally unable to acknowledge the corruption, the anti-American implications of the Trump regime, even as it incinerates the parchment on which we were founded. It worries me. Doors will require banging for decades, as occupants refuse to awaken.
Email Sid Schwab at columnsid@gmail.com.
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