The fault for Trump’s precipitous decline is his alone. It is Trump who ordered masked thugs into American cities and towns to hunt for any undocumented immigrant they could lay their hands on. It was Trump who forced Johnson to push through a flawed, deeply damaging bill that will have a catastrophic impact on health care and the economy. It was Trump whose moronic belief in the power of tariffs is currently causing the dollar to collapse and prices to skyrocket. And it was Trump who forced Johnson to shut down Congress so that Republicans wouldn’t have to vote on any more Democratic amendments that put them on the spot about releasing the Epstein files...
There’s no way out for Trump now that he has declared the story a “hoax” and a witch hunt on par with “Russiagate.” He can continue to stonewall the release of the files, making himself look guiltier by the second—which is the approach that he has taken. Or he can release the files and cross his fingers. Even if the files reveal the bare minimum—i.e., what we already know, which is that Trump had a decade-plus friendship with Epstein, which included the period of time that Epstein was allegedly trafficking and raping dozens of young girls—there would be questions that Trump has refused to answer. Most importantly: What did he know about his good friend’s activities? The result is a cancer of a scandal, one that will continue to metastasize throughout his administration, the Republican Congress, and even his MAGA base.
It is also a gift to the Democrats, who are powerless in the minority and abject at messaging. They have thus far struggled to harness popular anger over the administration’s immigration policies, ruinous legislation, gutting of the federal government, and more. But the party has effectively weaponized Epstein, aided by popular interest and the fact that, well, the president certainly seems to be up to something shady.
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