Show notes
It was a story that moved like wildfire and showed no signs of slowing down. The more Hillary Clinton denied it, downplayed it, and attempted to pivot away from it, the more it was just too salacious to leave alone. And so it will go with the Epstein Files. The Epstein Files are giving me flashbacks. I find myself, as a former “vote blue no matter who” Democrat, wanting to say, Are you all insane? Chasing this non-story when Trump’s presidency is at an all-time high? Don’t you know what this will do? Don’t you know how long the Democrats have been waiting for something like this to finally end MAGA and destroy Trump?The Democrats have been given a gift. They didn’t have to lift a finger. MAGA did it all on their own. Trump is stuck in an impossible situation. He can release the so-called “files,” which probably amount to a lot of names, perhaps some being blackmailed, but no crimes, no convictions, just an angry mob with pitchforks and a story that will never die.In the post-Me Too America, it is once accused, forever guilty. There is no such thing as due process or the presumption of innocence. Releasing those names with no real crimes attached will ruin their lives. This is class warfare via social media mobs. It’s the heads of the wealthy elites they want. They care less about how they get them. On the one hand, no president should talk to the people or his supporters like that. After all, his own son, Don Jr. was out there just as caught up in The Epstein Files as everyone else. But Trump wasn’t. He didn’t campaign on it and never talked about it at rallies. On the other hand, Trump deserved some credit for his monumental last couple of weeks, not to mention having been shot in the head just one year ago. How many of his supporters actually care about this if he never campaigned on it?The Democrats aren’t quite celebrating but I can tell, as a former Democrat, that they know a good thing when they see it, just as the Trump side knew the Hillary Clinton email story was a winner to eat up oxygen, drive the media narrative even if, in the end, it came to nothing more than salacious gossip. “But her Emails” was meant to convey the ironic message that the email story was more important than our impending climate apocalypse. For me, that was the crisis, and thus, everything else had to be put aside.I find myself now looking at “Gender Affirming Care” and feeling like this is the crisis that demands everyone put everything aside for, even if I know it won’t play out like that because I remember how nothing could slow down the email story and nothing could help Hillary Clinton win, no amount of fear or threats could change people’s minds about their vote.Trump isn’t heading into an election, but the Democrats want their power back, and they don’t think they should have to do anything for it except attack Trump. And attack they will. MSNBC posting on TikTok from Turning Point:Nothing will slow it down because influencers on the Right are less invested in electing candidates and stopping them, and more invested in being the anti-establishment voices that draw the clicks and views.Now that they sloppily affixed the whole scandal to Israel, they have the “Free Palestine” crowd driving up their traffic and making them money. Why would they stop now? Burn it all down, who cares? They are Watergating themselves.Years ago, when I was a Democrat making this same argument about Bernie Sanders and his challenge to the Clinton presidency, I would say they’re ratf*cking themselves. They are doing what the opposition would do to fracture and break up a coalition, thereby guaranteeing Hillary’s loss, which is partly how I won $100 by predicting Trump would win.However, I later felt bad about that. That’s not Democracy. Let Bernie run, let him build a movement, let the chips fall where they may, and I still believe that. But man, it’s hard to watch this go down and not think, Are you seriously going to throw it all away on this? But this isn’t the first time these so-called MAGA influencers have been busting up the coalition. From the Tariffs to the bombing of Iran to the One Big Beautiful Bill, it seems not a week goes by that I’m not out there on X sounding like Han Solo in Star Wars begging the Millennium Falcon, “Can you hear me, baby, hold together?”I understand MAGA is not a cult. I learned that when I watched them boo Trump for asking them to take the vaccine. No self-respecting cult leader would allow for that. Do you think Jim Jones would have allowed any one of his members to say, “That’s okay - I don’t need to drink the Flavor-Aid, I’m good.” I also know that the Epstein story runs deep within the movement and that they all believed Trump would release the files and the truth would come out. But the truth was something they had already decided before it was found in evidence, and now they’re left feeling angry and betrayed. To make matters worse, Trump’s messaging seems to indicate that something is in that file that would be damaging to him; otherwise, he would not keep saying it’s a hoax by the same people who cooked up Russiagate, etc.Michael Wolff is out there talking about seeing photos of Trump with Epstein:Here is Victor Davis Hanson telling Glenn Beck he thinks Epstein was blackmailing influential people with photos just like that, which would then force them to invest in his properties, making him very rich. You don’t have to be a genius here to put two and two together.Meanwhile, Alan Dershowitz notes that the Democrats are weaponizing the story, as they would, of course. Turnabout is fair play.A Legacy Press that Became PropagandaI understand why journalists like Megyn Kelly and others don’t want to be CNN for Trump 2.0 and thus, will chase the story regardless of their own personal preference for political leadership. I get that. They have to be a trusted voice because once they lose that, they’re done. She has never backed off of a story, no matter who it might hurt politically. It should not have been the media's job to pivot away from the email story to help one candidate win the election, but that was the message they took from 2016. They felt overwhelming guilt for helping to elect a “fascist,” and from then on, would never hold a single Democrat to account for anything. That decision would doom the Democrats to an even greater fate, nothing less than the rise and fall of a once-mighty empire.MAGA isn’t an empire, but it is the rare grassroots populist movement that, for once, put the working class at the front of the line and, for once, beat the administrative state and the deep pockets of the lobbyists. Winning was practically a miracle. The whole thing seemed to be held together by duct tape, glue, and a lot of hard-working people who wanted to make change and did so by organizing, with their small donations and, yes, with Trump—a once-in-a-generation political talent who could withstand almost anything.Almost anything.So you can understand Trump’s frustration now that he’s just seen the best two weeks of his or any presidency in my lifetime, and those who are now fueling another “But her emails” story aren’t the legacy media at all, but his own base.But if it’s a pedophile ring they’re waiting to see exposed, they will be disappointed. For one thing, none of the alleged thousands of child victims have come forward in this, the era of Me Too, where they could be famous and rich overnight for doing so?They could be hugely popular on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, telling their story, blowing the case wide open. They would be all over social media by now. But all we really have are women, some of them underage at the time, suing for massive payouts. All this will do ultimately is put power back in the hands of the worst people imaginable, people who don’t think children can consent to sex crimes but have no problem talking them into slicing off body parts and sterilizing them.It will be power back to the people who want to open the border and who think booing JD Vance at Disneyland is the right thing to do. The Left used to be the side that didn’t care about married men cavorting on an island with barely legal sex workers. How could we, with Bill Clinton ogling Monica Lewinsky while she snapped her thong in front of him? No, we had no choice but to excuse his peccadillos. We wanted to win, hold power, and change the world. That mattered so much more than who Bill Clinton was having sex with this week. But the Right, they’ve been consistent where infidelity and sex were concerned. They were Me Too before we were Me Too. That’s why they defended those who accused Bill Clinton of rape and harassment. They traded all of that for a chance to win with Trump, too. The Epstein case, however, because it looms so large in their collective imaginations, might be what the Democrats hope for: that moment when Trump’s whole coalition implodes. It runs so deep with so many of them that it defines everything they are and everything they believe. You might as well ask them to give up religion. Who knows, maybe they’ll get lucky and the whole thing will magically appear. Bill Gates, Bill Clinton - all of those rich and powerful elites caught as part of a massive pedophile ring that leaves Pizzagate in the dust. Or not. The thing about conspiracy theories, as everyone knows, is that the more people you have to add to them, the less likely they are to be true. Dr Grande explains how the very thing that made Trump popular might be the very thing that brings him down.No, this is only the beginning, and everyone knows it. The Left knows it most of all, and if you can’t see that now, someday you will. Someday, you will be saying, “But the Epstein Files.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe