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When was the last time you felt like you could trust your government?
More specifically, when was the last time you felt you might be able to trust a particular politician?
I’d been on a long run of deep cynicism about all of it after the 2020 election. I neither believed that Joe Biden (who barely campaigned and clearly was suffering from the early stages of dementia) won the most votes in history, nor that the Trump camp’s bleating about a stolen election had anything substantial to back it up. I was caught in a web of improbability and lies, and becoming far too cynical to care. I was going through my own personal crisis of faith, and identity, and career, and the last thing I could get myself to care about was politics.
Although everyone’s experiences were different, I know many other Americans felt deeply jaded after the debacle of the 2020 election, the confusing narratives around January 6, and the promise of a “Kraken” that never materialized.
But for many of us, something changed in a very unexpected fashion on July 13, 2024, when Donald Trump, who felt like an at best dark horse comeback candidate at the time, narrowly missed an assassin’s bullet through an uncannily coincidental — some say miraculous — turn of the head.
Rather than be cowed by the ongoing gunfire and chaos, he struggled to his feet, and in one of the most iconic moments ever photographed in world history, raised his fist, and yelled, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
And like countless others, as I watched the events of that day, I felt a patriotic sentiment arise in me that I had not experienced in many years.
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There has been a distinctive energetic shift in the past 24 hours, and it comes as the result of something that has been building for a while, catalyzed in an instant as a series of shots rang out at a Trump Rally in a small Pennsylvania town about an hour north of Pittsburgh.
I’m not sure I believe in the “many worlds” theory — the quantum physics hypothesis that posits any number of variated parallel worlds or universes that exist parallel to our own — but if it were real, an incredibly prolific bifurcation would have happened yesterday.
In one version, the shooter would have aimed an inch to the right and Donald Trump would be in a morgue today, with the civic unrest that would follow.
In another, the Secret Service would have done their job and there would not have been an unsecured roof with line of sight on the presidential podium just 150 yards away.
In a third, Trump would have been injured by the bullet, but cowed with fear and confusion, would have succumbed to the ministrations of the Secret Service and never gotten up to reassure the crowd, thus looking feckless and weak, providing photographic evidence of cowardice that would be used to diminish his standing as the campaign season dragged on.
But in the world we live in, the only one we know is real, something very different unfolded. Donald Trump, whose true character is often an enigma even to his admirers, had the insight, grit, and determination to recognize a turning point in history in real time, and to maximize the opportunity it presented to him.
He shrugged off the agents trying to keep his head down, blood streaming down his face from a damaged ear, raised his fist with pure defiance in his eyes, and started a chant: “Fight, fight, fight…”
And the people gathered in that crowd, which had just been fired upon by a cold-blooded killer, rose to their feet and took up the chant.
People on both sides of the political spectrum reacted immediately to that moment.
“Trump just won the election.”
It was a comment I saw again and again. Stated with certainty, and without qualification, just a naked acknowledgement of gut-level fact.
We all remember. It was captivating. It was a pivotal moment in American politics, and in world history. No less significant in its own right, perhaps, than Washington crossing the Delaware.
Repeatedly, as the campaign steamrolled on from that unforgettable afternoon in Butler, Pennsylvania, there was the sense that something destined was coming into focus. A coalition grew. Rallies were energized. Fear did not prevail. Trump pulled ahead in the polls and never looked back.
And when he won, as all the commentators predicted he would a year ago last Sunday, it was a decisive, resounding victory.
But the shine has worn off the mythos of that day, and the reality has not lived up to the hype. I’ve already written about how the administration lost me when they were willing to shred the due process clause of the Constitution to send illegal immigrants suspected (but not proven) to be in criminal gangs to life imprisonment in a foreign nation without a trial or even being charged with a crime. Whatever new revelations were made about Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s activities in the months that followed, the fact remains that he did not have his day in court before being shipped off, and was not presumed innocent until proven guilty — something the American Constitution states is a fundamental inalienable right of all persons, not just citizens. (Roughly 270 other men sent to CECOT in El Salvador were imprisoned under the same lack of due process, and the American taxpayers paid for their incarceration.)
But then, after months of promises about the release of the Epstein files, and even longer campaigns from individuals who are now key players in the administration, Trump isn’t just stonewalling on releasing the list — he’s excommunicating any supporter who still expects transparency as promised.
Here’s what he said this week on Truth Social:
Transcript:
The Radical Left Democrats have hit pay dirt, again! Just like with the FAKE and fully discredited Steele Dossier, the lying 51 “Intelligence” Agents, the Laptop from Hell, which the Dems swore had come from Russia (No, it came from Hunter Biden’s bathroom!), and even the Russia, Russia, Russia Scam itself, a totally fake and made up story used in order to hide Crooked Hillary Clinton’s big loss in the 2016 Presidential Election, these Scams and Hoaxes are all the Democrats are good at – It’s all they have – They are no good at governing, no good at policy, and no good at picking winning candidates. Also, unlike Republicans, they stick together like glue. Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this “bullshit,” hook, line, and sinker. They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years. I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country’s history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax. Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore! Thank you for your attention to this matter.
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
But compare this to what was being said recently by Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino — and even Trump himself:
Vance:
Patel, Bongino, Trump, Bondi:
What is Going on Here?
It’s true that Trump himself has never been very aggressive in his pursuit of declassification of the Epstein files. You can see that in his interview clip above. He says he’ll do it, but that he’s worried about phony stuff. Likely at least partially because Epstein told author Michael Wolff that he “was Donald’s closest friend for 10 years.”
But Vance, Patel, Bongino, and Bondi haven’t minced words on this. So to suddenly flip the script and act like the files don’t exist, and that there’s nothing to see here, is truly a mind-boggling turn of events. And it’s only made worse by Trump’s own aggressive and angry response on this. The Truth Social post above is not his only such statement. See this recent press conference:
Bondi even told reporters at the White House that the FBI is reviewing “tens of thousands of videos” of Epstein “with children or child porn.”
No rational person can look at this sudden change in response after everything that’s been said and think, “Oh, I guess it was nothing. Moving on…”
It raises so many questions.
Why the about face? Why the outrage? Why are the individuals who were clamoring for this before they took power suddenly silent?
It’s impossible not to ask whether the intelligence community is doing everything they can to keep this buried.
The synopsis, apparently written by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, is this:
A 'Manchurian Candidate' is an unwitting assassin brainwashed and programmed to kill. In this book, former State Department officer John Marks tells the explosive story of the CIA's highly secret program of experiments in mind control. His curiosity first aroused by information on a puzzling suicide. Marks worked from thousands of pages of newly released documents as well as interviews and behavioral science studies, producing a book that 'accomplished what two Senate committees could not'
The book tells the story of unscrupulous and often illegal drug trials, sensory deprivation experiments, electroshock therapy, and other attempts to mind control individuals for intelligence gathering and other purposes, including the work of Project MKUltra. It leaves little doubt that America’s premiere intelligence agency had few moral scruples about obtaining its ends, by whatever means necessary.
The CIA has released bombshell new documents that reveal Lee Harvey Oswald was on their radar months before he assassinated former President John F. Kennedy.
For the first time since JFK’s 1963 assassination, newly released files reveal that a surveillance officer ran a group that had contact with Oswald before the killing – something the agency had long denied.
The disclosure was buried in a batch of 40 documents, which were unearthed by the House Oversight Committee’s “federal secrets” task force earlier this month. It’s the latest revelation that undermines the CIA’s longstanding claims and lends new weight to theories of a broader cover-up.
The release confirmed that CIA officer George Joannides had led U.S. efforts to infiltrate anti-communist Cuban student groups opposed to Fidel Castro in the months before JFK was shot dead riding in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, in November 1963.
If “Epstein Island” and the so-called “Lolita Express” was a honeypot operation to obtain kompromat on powerful and wealthy individuals for the purposes of blackmail, it may well explain any Agency attempts to keep this story buried. Can you imagine the effect it would have on the waning trust of the American populace in federal government if it were revealed that they (or their counterparts in Mossad) were willing to use underaged sex slaves in such an operation?
To say nothing of what those who were compromised by the operation might know and reveal if they were exposed?
Interestingly, this topic came up briefly in the Marks’ book, albeit decades ago, when some members of the Agency still seemed capable of drawing a moral line in the sand:
In the best tradition of Mata Hari, the CIA did use sex as a clandestine weapon, although apparently not so frequently as the Russians. While many in the Agency believed that it simply did not work very well, others like CIA operators in Berlin during the mid-1960s felt prostitutes could be a prime source of intelligence. Agency men in that city used a network of hookers to good advantage — or so they told visitors from headquarters. Yet, with its high proportion of Catholics and Mormons — not to mention the Protestant ethic of many of its top leaders — the Agency definitely had limits beyond which prudery took over. For instance, a TSS veteran says that a good number of case officers wanted no part of homosexual entrapment operations. And to go a step further, he recalls one senior KGB man who told too many sexual jokes about young boys. "It didn't take too long to recognize that he was more than a little fascinated by youths," says the source. "I took the trouble to point out he was probably too good, too well-trained, to be either entrapped or to give away secrets. But he would have been tempted toward a compromising position by a preteen. I mentioned this, and they said, 'As a psychological observer, you're probably quite right. But what the hell are we going to do about it? Where are we going to get a twelve-year-old boy?' " The source believes that if the Russian had had a taste for older men, U.S. intelligence might have mounted an operation, "but the idea of a twelve-year-old boy was just more than anyone could stomach.
That it was being discussed as a psychologically viable approach 60 years ago makes me wonder how much further they may have taken the idea over time.
The prostitutes, by the way, were kept very much “off the books.” Marks writes of the unscrupulous George White, a CIA observer of narcotics experiments for the Agency who started a sanctioned intelligence agency prostitution operation out of a San Francisco safehouse:
White normally paid the women $100 in Agency funds for their night's work, and Gottlieb's prose reached new bureaucratic heights as he explained why the prostitutes did not sign for the money: "Due to the highly unorthodox nature of these activities and the considerable risk incurred by these individuals, it is impossible to require that they provide a receipt for these payments or that they indicate the precise manner in which the funds were spent." The CIA's auditors had to settle for canceled checks which White cashed himself and marked either "Stormy" or, just as appropriately, "Undercover Agent." The program was also referred to as "Operation Midnight Climax."
Writing at Public, journalist Michael Shellenberger adds more weight to this notion:
[W]hile there may be no specific “client list,” relevant unreleased documents do appear to be in the FBI’s possession. Miami Herald reported in 2019 that “FBI agents found a cache of thick black binders — all labeled with names — that contain hundreds of naked or semi-naked photographs on CDs that Epstein stored in various places inside his 40-room Manhattan townhouse.” The labels were redacted during Maxwell’s trial because, prosecutors said, they were names of “third parties.” The FBI also found computer hard drives that were already marked with FBI evidence tape, suggesting they had been previously seized and catalogued in an earlier search, and a safe “containing more binders of CDs, cash, computer hard drives, diamonds, and passports.” The contents of the safe were removed before the FBI could obtain a warrant for it, but were supposedly returned by one of Epstein’s lawyers.
Contrary to the president’s suggestion that the files are just another Democrat hoax, several prominent Democrats and their allies have been implicated. Former President Bill Clinton, for instance, traveled on Epstein’s private plane to Africa in the early 2000s, and Clinton has been named in multiple court files.
Another factor driving MAGA’s focus on Epstein is the fact that, as we and others have reported, there is compelling evidence that Epstein and Maxwell had ties to intelligence agencies. Epstein’s calendar shows that he had many meetings with wealthy and well-connected individuals for years after he became a convicted sex offender. William Burns, Biden’s CIA director, scheduled three unexplained meetings with Epstein in 2014 when Burns was the deputy secretary of state.
In 2019, investigative reporter Vicky Ward wrote in the Daily Beast that Alex Acosta, the US Attorney for South Florida when Epstein received a 2007 sweetheart deal, had “been told” to back off because Epstein “belonged to intelligence.” Ward did not hear this directly but attributed the claim to a senior White House official. Multiple witnesses allege that Epstein’s properties were wired with hidden cameras and that he monitored these feeds. Maxwell reportedly called the recordings an “insurance policy.” Epstein’s intelligence ties may go back to the 1970s and his early job teaching at the Dalton School in New York City, where Donald Barr, an officer at the precursor to the CIA, hired him. Epstein’s friend said in 2019 that he had characterized himself as a “high-level bounty hunter” who sometimes “worked for governments.”
The use of sex blackmail and honeypots by the intelligence community is not an unfounded conspiracy theory. It has a long history, as journalist Whitney Webb documents in her two-volume book One Nation Under Blackmail. The Washington Post reported in 1975 that the CIA had “operated love traps in New York City and San Francisco, where foreign diplomats were lured by prostitutes in the pay of the CIA,” using “one-way mirrors” to film “the sexual adventures and later tried to blackmail the victims into becoming informants.” According to Webb, these techniques were pioneered by the mob.
If the problem with the Epstein Files is that they compromise national security in some way, there’s no reason that some version of this can’t be said by the administration. “We had every intention to release the full text of the Epstein files, but in the course of our investigation we discovered aspects of this case that could impact national security. Therefore, in the best interests of the country, we will not be releasing them at this time.”
But you can’t run on a promise then pretend you forgot. Or worse, turn on the people who expected you to deliver as though they are the enemy.
This administration was elected to expose and break up the deep state and entrenched corruption in Washington and to fix our broken policies and enforce our neglected laws. The Epstein case is one of the most potent national symbols of these problems. If there’s a deep state, could it get deeper or darker than willing to exploit the bodies of young girls to obtain blackmail on powerful public officials and titans of industry?
It doesn’t matter what opinions people hold on what Epstein did, what he didn’t, whether he killed himself, whether he didn’t, what matters is the good faith, no-holds-barred effort to get to the truth, and ensure that the guilty do not go free simply because they’re powerful and untouchable.
When that all seems to be on track but suddenly stops, for no explicable reason, that sure looks like some other, hidden power intervened.
The “I know your secrets so you’d better keep mine” game of mutually assured destruction that is played by the intelligence community is designed to create an unassailable detente. Everyone in the game refuses to be the first domino to fall, because of the chain reaction that will follow. These are the kinds of power games that can destabilize nations and completely destroy what’s left of public trust. And organizations like the CIA and Mossad have proven that they will stop at nothing to protect their secrets and maintain power and control and operational efficiency.
I can’t say for certain that they are behind this, but doesn’t it seem probable? If they regularly use the leverage of blackmail and threats to maintain control and manipulate the levers of power, and they risk being directly implicated here in a way that could curtail their influence, doesn’t it seem likely that they’ve found a way to shut down the administration’s attempts to expose this, likely by pressure applied directly to the president?
Milo Yiannapolous, ever the provocateur, was uncharacteristically somber in his reaction to this situation earlier this week:
I am one of the founding figures of MAGA, one of the President’s earliest, most effective supporters. I’ve thought hard. I’ve prayed. I can’t accept his answer on Epstein. The Epstein case and the issues it raises go to the heart of why 2016 even happened. We must have answers.
Epstein is the grand unifying theory behind the last ten years. Its consequences, corollaries, and cast of characters. It is shorthand and litmus test for believers. The origin story. It’s what makes it all worth it. It’s why we drew a line in the sand. Epstein is everything.
If there’s nothing to report here, we need an explanation as to how we know that, and why so many now-high-ranking members of this administration said there unquestionably was until just about week ago. You can’t go from that level of moral certainty to total dismissal without explaining how you got there.
Blaming this on a Democrat hoax will not suffice.
If there’s something to report here, even if it cannot be revealed, we need to know that it is being dealt with by the competent officials, and that even if secrets must remain for reasons of national security or other matters of state, that we are at least told as much.
What is wholly insufficient is pretending that nothing happened at all. That’s exactly the kind of thing that will turn many Americans away from hope, and back towards cynicism and malaise about the true power of their vote.
I will leave you with this brilliant, funny, piercing bit of parody of the situation, offered by singer Jesse Welles, whom I have never heard of before and know nothing about, except that the song itself is genius:
Postscript: I finished this draft just hours before President Trump publicly requested that Attorney General Pam Bondi “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury Testimony, subject to Court approval.”
There’s a big caveat in that statement. “Court approval” may very well be withheld if the kind of things we’re all suspicious about are the reason behind the sudden reluctance to expose this. But it’s an interesting development, and worth watching.
It has pushed me to the conclusion that democracy just doesn’t work. The success of the early years of Liberal democracy seems to me to be based in the fact that few people had the vote, and the governments never felt it owed an explanation outside of a few classes of people. In the age of universal suffrage, it just doesn’t work. Too many cross purposes and too many with little knowledge or skin in the game get vocal. It encourages the government to lie. Now they’ve lied so long, no one can tell fact from fictions. It’s propped up by so many lies that a large percentage of our politicians are ignorant of our founding documents, are open about the fact and dare you care. Bring it all down. My replacement? A constitutional monarchy with restricted voting rights along with a state church. Yeah, I know it’s not going to happen, but could it really be any worse?
It has pushed me to the conclusion that democracy just doesn’t work. The success of the early years of Liberal democracy seems to me to be based in the fact that few people had the vote, and the governments never felt it owed an explanation outside of a few classes of people. In the age of universal suffrage, it just doesn’t work. Too many cross purposes and too many with little knowledge or skin in the game get vocal. It encourages the government to lie. Now they’ve lied so long, no one can tell fact from fictions. It’s propped up by so many lies that a large percentage of our politicians are ignorant of our founding documents, are open about the fact and dare you care. Bring it all down. My replacement? A constitutional monarchy with restricted voting rights along with a state church. Yeah, I know it’s not going to happen, but could it really be any worse?