Could Trump not releasing the Epstein files finally turn his base against him? Of all the things he’s done, of all the endless lies he’s told, could this finally do it? I still remember his first campaign when he was caught on tape bragging about groping women, I thought that would be it. It would have caused anyone else to drop out of the race, but not him. His conservative, christian base just shrugged it off with “boys will be boys”. Now his promise to release the files seems to have struck a nerve. He harped on it so much and promised repeatedly to have them released in full, now he wants everyone to just move on and stop talking about it. Even his adoring, boot licking base seems to have had enough. I’m afraid he’ll weasel out of it somehow though, or do something truly awful to distract everyone.
I think Trump is a sociopath, and I think it will take a lot more than the Epstein files to oust him.
I can always hope. People are fickle. There’s a long list of famous/successful people brought down to size. Joseph McCarthy’s power ended with a lawyer standing up to him. Mussolini went from cheered to hung and mutilated by a mob. Richard Nixon finally went over a line most wouldn’t cross. Who could have imagined the end of the careers of Kevin Spacey, Ellen Degeneres, or Bill Cosby? Hope springs eternal 
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MAGAts seem to combine rationalization with extremely short memory when it comes to the latest terrible Orange thing.
All Donnie needs to do, therefore, is work with his Press Secretary’s office to play the shell game of devising a somewhat less horrible thing to do or say, and show.
Throw in some fear tactics and misplaced blame and he has a system of manipulation rivaling Hitler’s.
People who used to be in TrumpWorld and now oppose him (Michael Cohen, Lev Parnas) say based on the contacts they have in the regime that this is dividing MAGAs like nothing else. The question is whether it will last. Because if they oppose Trump they lose their influence and the chance to own the libs. And they have demonstrated a willingness to constantly remanufacture a new reality as needed.
That’s the trouble. His base is terminally delusional, and will listen to the music of the spheres of the orange diarrhoea until it kills them - literally.
Take the recent Texas floods. One commentator on FB described it thus:
“MAGA took a machete to advanced weather forecasting, because they thought it would own the libs, not drown their kids”.
They’re stupid enough to think that “owning the libs” is a win, even when it kills their kids. They’re driven by hate to such an extent that they’re totally divorced from reality.
We’re not dealing with normal functioning human beings here.
My guess is: there never was a client list stuffed with politicians names. It was a conspirity theory the wack-a-doos made up. And now that the wack-a-doos are in charge, they find themselves in a tough spot. They promised to release a document that doesn’t exist, and it is going to be tough to claim the opposition is stopping them, the opposition is dead.
Alternatively, it would be hilarious if the list did actually exist, but that it was in a vault in Switzerland (along with a fork lift truck load of interesting financial documents), and all the names on it were reich whinge MAGA heroes.
If I was going to engage in sleazy operations with a bunch of crooks, and decided to make a secret list of said crooks as an insurance policy, I wouldn’t leave it where it was easy to seize. I’d pick a storage location that the crooks wouldn’t even knew existed, and leave a codicil in my will to the effect that all documents stored there were, upon my death, to be handed to the editors of Der Spiegel or some similar whistleblowing outfit.
Let’s face it, anyone stupid enough to try and implicate Hillary Clinton as a participant an a sex scandal, as opposed to being a bystander in her husband’s infidelity, is smoking fentanyl. She’s been driven all her life by ideology, not the tingly feeling in her clitoris. Her marriage was a good old fashioned political institution, with the usual bedroom stuff thrown in as an incidental.
At this point, whether a list actually exists or not is superfluous. That the cult members in Congress and who voted for him didn’t consider his adjudicated as a rapist to be a deal breaker, absolutely nothing will ever sway them.
There’s a difference. McCarthy and Nixon didn’t have literal cults behind them like Trump does. Cults tend to be immune to the wrongdoing of their leaders, and in Trump’s case, his cult just dismisses any evidence of his crimes as misinformation and “fake news”. The Epstein Files stuff may have caused a temporary disturbance in the MAGAt universe, but I predict it’ll dissipate quickly.
Yeah, Nixon quit when he was informed by his own party that they were going to vote for his impeachment, and for his conviction in the Senate. He resigned a few hours later instead.
Wired magazine has a piece out today that basically says there’s a sort of death-by-a-thousand cuts thing going on in MAGA world. It’s not just Epstein, it’s various conspiracy theorists like the geoengineering / chemtrails folks who believed Trump would expose “the truth” about that; the conspiracy theories about “Democrat pedophile rings” generally, and on and on.
They see a tipping point coming eventually where the online influencers, in order to continue to profit off all this horseshit, will find it expedient to abandon the regime. But they conclude that “we are nowhere near there” – yet.
I think the basic thought was that while Trump’s capital seems endless, it IS finite and he IS squandering it. It’s just hard to predict where the point of collapse is.
I think it’ll happen when the economy finally succumbs to Trump’s machinations. He’s been itching to fire and replace Jerome Powell since forever, and when that finally happens, the stooge he appoints as a replacement will tank the economy. I’ve seen predictions that a 35% inflation rate could be possible.
If that happens, and MAGAts are hit hard, I think they’ll abandon ship like the rats that they are.
More likely that the swivel eyed MAGA hordes will use massive inflation as an excuse to go on a killing spree in progressive neighbourhoods. It was massive inflation that launched Hitler in Germany.
I’m afraid I have to agree. The whole point of this is to produce collapse, chaos and panic and then they have a nice big menu of scapegoats to direct people towards.
It will always be easier to think the libs/Dems/woke folks caused anything bad.
Trump is a quasi-deity who only gets credit for perceived good, with perceived bad accruing to the Satan-figure of the moment.
Now I’m intrigued, what the heck are in those files that Trump is so frantically trying to deflect from them? There must be something very explicit and damning. Still, what could be in them that they couldn’t hide while still releasing enough to satisfy his base? He’s so blatantly throwing things out there trying to get something to stick and distract people. A disturbing theme is the racial undertones of so much of it. Releasing the MLK files (against the wishes of the family), insisting a NFL team return to calling themselves a racial slur, and the scariest of all, an AI generated video of O’bama being arrested as Trump looks on. I’m afraid for the man. I’d never realized how powerful the president has. I thought there were checks on his power, but he just does what he wants. His attacks on the media and his attempted silencing of opposing voices seem all too effective.
There are, but the folks who can wield them haven’t the will to do so.
And should there be something on him, can we imagine the living nightmare he would make anyone’s life who may, or may potentially, bring suit against him?
Trump is slowly morphing into everything he said that he despises about the swamp/deep state. Whether that’s intentional or just a natural, unavoidable effect of being involved with Washington for so long is anyone’s guess.
The Epstein thing is big now, but I feel that it will eventually fade into the background, as many of his promises have in the past. At one point the MAGA base was convinced that Clinton and Obama would be tried and sent to prison. Nothing of the sort has happened. I won’t lie. Back in 2016 I had a glimmer of hope that Trump would bring something different to politics, but it was all for nothing. He’s becoming the politician he always said he hated. There will always be blind, devout followers of his movement. He could say the sun is actually made of water and many of his followers will grab their swimming trunks and ask where to buy plane tickets.
The United States needs a complete overhaul of politics. (Some text removed by Mod.)