A perverted man from the grave is haunting Donald Trump. While it’s just the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein, he is in a very real sense Jacob Marley to Trump’s Ebenezer Scrooge. I guess Christmas in July is a real thing.
This week, the Justice Department’s failure to release the Epstein files, as many pundits have gleefully noted, has led to the largest division yet in Trump’s MAGA minions. In a Wednesday morning Truth Social post, Trump admitted as much and declared those who are concerned about the “Jeffrey Epstein Hoax,” are his “PAST” supporters and “I don’t want their support anymore!” Maybe he isn’t running for a third term after all.
Trump called those who still wanted to know what happened to the sex offender “weaklings,” and he echoed a post earlier in the week in which he encouraged his lackeys to forget Epstein. Trump told them he not only didn’t understand why anyone would be interested in him, but there’s nothing to see anyway, so move along.
If all this wasn’t enough, the Washington Post reported late Wednesday evening that federal prosecutor Maurene Comey, who worked on the criminal cases of Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, was fired by the Justice Department, according to two people familiar with the matter.
He stressed [Bondi’s] credibility, but he sounded as if he were stringing together random sentences culled from private briefings, without any concern or knowledge that they made sense.
In a rare appearance on the White House’s South Lawn on Tuesday, Trump issued a rambling statement in an attempt to defend Attorney General Pam Bondi’s lack of action on the Epstein files. He stressed her credibility, but he sounded as if he were stringing together random sentences culled from private briefings, without any concern or knowledge that they made sense.
The more Trump said to look somewhere else, the more people didn’t. Last year, while campaigning for president, he signaled he would release the Epstein files. Last week, Bondi was asked once again about the files she had steadfastly said, since February, were on her desk and ready for inspection. This time, she claimed they didn’t exist, only to have Trump contradict her in a Truth Social post afterward that declared the files were a work of fiction made possible by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, perhaps the Easter Bunny and two dangerous immigrant felons to be named later.
“You don’t have to be a genius to see something isn’t adding up here,” former Trump administration staffer Miles Taylor explained to me. “He’s not making this go away by his denials. Not this time.”
Bondi is protecting Trump, even though both could, in theory, face prosecution for their actions — but of course since Trump is President and she runs the DOJ, neither will. Though he has been convicted of 34 felonies, Trump has never faced serious consequences for any of his illegal actions. Bondi has made a career of poor decisions, questionable actions and unbridled avarice that makes Cruella de Vil look like Barbie. Naturally, she has a long relationship with Trump.
They apparently met in 2013 when Bondi, as Florida’s attorney general, received at least 22 fraud complaints against the now-defunct Trump University. Her office announced she would consider joining a lawsuit initiated by the attorney general of New York involving potential tax fraud charges against Trump. Four days later, And Justice for All, a political action committee established by Bondi to support her re-election, received a $25,000 donation from Trump. Bondi subsequently declined to join the lawsuit. Both Bondi and Trump have defended the propriety of the donation.
It’s not that Trump bought Bondi, but it’s just damn funny as to how cheap the price tag was. Trump apparently bought her for the equivalent of $480 a week, or roughly $12 an hour, for a year — you know, what the average food delivery driver earns annually. This makes Bondi the DoorDash Woman of the Year for Donald Trump. You get what you pay for.
But then again, any factual criticism of Trump’s empty drawer of a cabinet often quickly degenerates into descriptions resembling those of cartoon henchmen. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is a square-jawed former television anchor with juvenile body-art, and a look that makes you think he has had bad plastic surgery and at least one mini-stroke during the last five years. He’s Ted Baxter on Adderall, legendary Houston anchor and reporter Marvin Zindler with a better toupée and, after Trump himself, he probably spends more money on makeup than anyone else in the administration.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the empty shell of a hero who might have been. The son of an American prince, he could have had it all. But, to quote Pink Floyd, “No matter how he tried, he could not break free and the worms ate into his brain,” causing total dysfunction and delusion. If he were a character in a “Star Wars” prequel, he’d be the guy “huffing” chemtrails.
Finally, in this cabinet of incapability, there’s Mad Man Marco Rubio. The wearer of a thousand hats. More powerful than most, his ability to sell himself out gives him the superpower to leap over large piles of Trump’s political fecal remains in a single bound. He once called the president a con artist and he now bows before Trump as the king, hopeful he can take control of the Resolute desk following the 2028 presidential election. Imagine the aneurysm Rubio will get when he finally realizes Trump still wants to run in 2028.
Then there’s J.D. Vance — the man nobody but Peter Thiel wanted. In his shrewdest move as president, Trump picked a man that guarantees he will never be convicted of impeachment. For this, Vance will go down as the man who brought unity to America for the first time in decades.
Actually, in a very real sense, Jeffrey Epstein — a man as perverse in politics as he was in his sexual and personal life — could be the spark that brings American voters back together. Everyone wants to see Epstein’s files and for the same reason: Accountability.
But accountable is the one thing Trump has never been. He runs chaos in a blender and he’s not as sharp now as he was in his first administration — a fact that is even more frightening considering how little he accomplished and how incompetent he was then.
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Still, Trump in his first term was better for two reasons: He was more cogent and never left the house without a properly-worn necktie. Today, he can barely get out a sentence without babbling. Consider his recent explanation about a deal in which our NATO allies will supply Ukraine with Patriot missiles and other weapons.
“It’s everything. It’s Patriots. It’s all of them. It’s a full complement, with the [missile] batteries,” Trump said in a July 14 meeting with the NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the White House. “A couple of the countries that have the Patriots are going to swap over, and we’ll replace the Patriots with the ones they have. We have one country that has 17 Patriots getting ready to be shipped. They’re not going to need them…So we’re going to work a deal where the 17 will go, or a big portion of the 17 will go to the war site.”
I’m still not sure what “war site” is. As for the rest of it, even members of his staff couldn’t explain that gibberish.
“People, people I gotta tell you, I see a lot of glum, glum faces now. Please don’t be disconsolate. This is — this is politics at its finest,” we were told in the movie “Wag the Dog.” That’s also what we’re often told about the new Trump administration by the administration. If Trump’s first term was a Mike Judge movie – “Idiocracy” — then the current reality show Trump is orchestrating in the White House is much more like Barry Levison’s “Wag the Dog.”
I would not be surprised if Stephen Miller had viewed both films as training material. It could also be Trump himself, since he doesn’t read and has adapted plot lines from both movies in his current administration, including a UFC match at the White House for the next Fourth of July, an event straight out of “Idiocracy.” But the essence of Trump is summed up best by Dustin Hoffman as Stanley Motss in “Wag the Dog”: “Look at that. That is a complete f**king fraud, and it looks a hundred percent real. It’s the best work I’ve ever done in my life, because it’s so honest.”
His entire life is one colossal reality show production of near biblical and fictional proportions. Trump is not only the producer, but also the star. He constantly demands to be the center of attention in his own production, on stage as well as off. But the recent pictures of swollen ankles — as well as his poor posture, bad gait, unexplained anger, extreme lethargy and deepening addiction to gibberish — are causing the show to falter.
These are symptoms exhibited by traumatized shooting victims and are, I am told by several doctors, exacerbated by Trump’s age. If you believe Biden slid into senility during his tenure in office, then Trump has plunged into it. During a Wednesday gaggle in the Oval Office, Trump said he was surprised Jerome Powell was appointed as chair of the Federal Reserve — apparently unaware that he had nominated Powell in 2017.
This noticeable decline is part of what is causing his own supporters to now call his actions into question. When he spoke about the Epstein files on Wednesday in the Oval Office, he said, “It’s all been a big hoax perpetrated by the Democrats . . . Some stupid, foolish Republicans have fallen into the net. They try to do the Democrats’ work. The Democrats are good for nothing other than these hoaxes.”
But Trump supporters, especially the young ones who legitimately want transparency in government, remember what the president said in the past about the files. The world wants them released so we can decide for ourselves the amount of damage that a rich sexual predator caused. The more Trump pushes back, the more suspicious the entire nation becomes.
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As this gets darker, it also gets more dangerous. On October 23, 1983, in a disaster that deeply embarrassed President Ronald Reagan on the world stage, 241 U.S. service personnel died in their barracks in an explosion on a military base in Beirut, Lebanon. On October 25, 1983, Reagan invaded Grenada, a British Commonwealth island, infuriating his great ally British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Coincidence? Maybe. But the fact remains that the invasion took the Lebanon bombing off the front page.
That is the central plot point of “Wag the Dog.” A president who is alleged to have been involved with a very young girl concocts a fake war to bury the accusations against him. As Robert De Niro’s character said in the movie, “What difference does it make if it’s true? If it’s a story and it breaks, they’re gonna run with it.”
So far, the only place Trump has deployed American troops is in American cities. But as the Epstein scandal widens and the stakes become higher, it isn’t beyond consideration that Trump would concoct something to hide the stain of his past actions from the American public.
“I don’t doubt that at all,” Miles Taylor told me of such an event. “With Trump there is a very high likelihood of him creating a false scenario to hide his treachery.”
“Look, don’t worry about it,” De Niro said in the film. “It’s nothing new. During Reagan’s administration, 240 Marines killed in Beirut — 24 hours later, we invade Grenada. That was their M.O. Change the story, change the lead. It’s not a new concept.”
It isn’t new, but it is definitely dangerous. And if the MAGA split continues or widens, threatening an aging president’s power and status, the danger will increase. Since Epstein’s ghost is already rattling his chains and howling at Don, the next reality show in Trump’s production will probably be “A Christmas Carol.” But I doubt if Trump will get the message.
