Yesterday’s explosive House Judiciary Committee Democrats report should have been above-the-fold, front-page news. The 50-page report details Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and includes a new allegation of sexual assault. It details the “growing body of evidence” that Donald Trump was an active participant in Epstein’s systemic exploitation and abuse of young women and girls.
And yet it wasn’t front-page news. I don’t think I saw a single outlet run it above the fold, and some didn’t even have a story below the fold. Initially, I was surprised by that. Especially so close to Election Day. It’s an October surprise, something political media coverage is usually quite thirsty for. Why wasn’t it making much of a dent?
Then it hit me: everyone already knows Donald Trump is a predator, and considering how much effort Trump has put into burying the Epstein files, we all already assumed he was more involved in the abuse. There might be a new allegation of assault, but Trump has been credibly accused of sexual assault multiple times already. Even for those of us who follow the story closely, the report’s new information doesn’t feel new.
MAGA Republicans are the party of predators. Because they are predators, they stand in solidarity with predators, or they aspire to be predators one day. The GOP that once tried to convince us Todd Akin was an outlier, not representative of its values, has been fully exposed. They no longer feel the need to offer even pretend apologies.
It’s been fascinating to watch the Epstein saga break the brains of various Trump supporters over the last two years, especially figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose belief in conspiracies such as QAnon fueled her politics from the start. These folks had no trouble believing that there was a cabal of powerful people running a global sex trafficking ring, and fully expected Trump to be the hero of the story. Only to find out he was the villain all along. While I think this election is mostly about the current economy, I also think MAGA won’t ever recover from Trump and Epstein. Enough people whose number one concern was supposedly sex trafficking now see Trump for who he really is. And it broke them.
Predators, as it turns out, are also terrible at running things. They don’t care about the people they’re supposed to serve, only how they can exploit us. The economy is worse than it was two years ago precisely because America put corrupt predators in charge. If they serve anyone at all, it’s the tech oligarchs who fund their campaigns and are predators themselves. At least when it comes to preying on American workers and our economy.
Here’s the good news. In one week, we can vote the predators and their enablers out. Provided we win a majority in the House, the Judiciary Committee can do more than issue a report. They’ll have the resources and subpoena power to force a real investigation into all things Epstein. And I have no doubt what they find will absolutely be above-the-fold, front-page news.
I’ve been tracking the MAGA right for more than a decade, and I’ll be watching on November 3 and through whatever investigations come after. Help keep CARD free for everyone who needs it.
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Probably there was too much not really news on the news last night. Now if we could properly play things like spinning down the way Trump says things then we'd be ahead.