Aside From Pissing Off Half His Base
The strange, bizarre, complete 180 on the long-promised, pending revelations in the Epstein Files has a lot of people pissed off. Taken at face value, a human trafficking operation likely coordinated between US and Israeli Intelligence through Jeffrey Epstein (and a handful of wealthy connected persons of interest) to honey-trap everyone they could implicate remains secret.
We know it happened. We know that disgusting, compromising evidence of child sex trafficking exists. The list(s) exist, material was suppressed, and world-shattering tipping point details are being kept from the public; as a result, victims may not receive justice via a mad document dump and the doxxing that follows.
So, what is Trump getting out of not releasing anything and pretending it doesn’t exist?
Donald Trump is, before all else, a deal maker. I know people like this. The deal is the only thing that matters, and while the best possible deal is ideal, almost any deal that gets you “points on your scoreboard” is a rush. Despite the mishandling of the escape-from-Epstein-transparency exit strategy, at the bottom of the outlandish and unbelievable denials lies a deal. Maybe a lot of them.
Trump doesn’t give things away like that.
Jeff Childers pondered it last week, listing several potential explanations, one of which was this.
Trump may have found himself in possession of a treasure trove of global leverage. Not just over domestic swamp creatures, but royals, technocrats, intel assets, bankers, and foreign politicians. You can imagine the advice he’d have gotten.
Imagine what you might do with all that power.
Maybe Epstein’s death wasn’t about hiding secrets. Maybe it was about ending the operation permanently— like Old West justice in a designer prison jumpsuit. A clear message to anyone thinking about reviving the network.
In this scenario, Trump Always Wins isn’t just a meme. Maybe Trump isn’t always winning because he plays 4-D chess better than his deep state enemies. Maybe he’s successfully draining the Swamp and corralling the European Union because he holds all the trump cards. And maybe this memo release is part of a grand chess move in the bigger Epstein game. Maybe he made some kind of massive deal, and his part of the bargain was to publicly end any further investigation.
That was my first impulse, and I said as much—Trump’s no dummy. The guy is the Energizer Bunny with an eye for strategy and a mind for layers of possibility. This didn’t just happen because the same Intelligence Community Deep State that has tried to smear him, impeach him, wage lawfare, and assassinate him said, “No, you can’t share that.”
We do not know, nor may we ever know what, if any deals were made to protect the scumbags at CIA and Mossad and everything in between, but in the wake of the horrible, terrible, outrageous, impossible to believe backtracking (a massive distraction which is also worth considering) is this new narrative from the president.
“Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, [Former FBI Director James] Comey, [former CIA Director John] Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration. … They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called ‘friends’ are playing right into their hands.”
This puts a sharper edge on what Trump said in a 2024 interview, expressing reservations about releasing the Epstein files because “you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world.” In the updated spin, it’s not passively “phony stuff,” but “Radical Left inspired Documents.”
Three problems. First, he’s not wrong. Second, he’s admitting that the files exist, but when they say there’s nothing to release, he means nothing they can or will release. Third, a lot of MAGA folks are talking about walking away. It’s a bridge too far, one straw too many. They are unwilling to wait and see if there is a game and how it plays out. It’s too much to ask, and I get that. No amount of economic improvement, jobs, manufacturing, border security, ending DEI or the rest will prevent it. This was their hill to die on, and if it means the sacking of Trump and America in 2026 and 2028…
I know. That was cruel, but it’s my go-to response when encountering single-issue assisted political suicide. I’m against abortion. I believe life starts at conception. I also know that in New Hampshire, a six or fifteen-week ban is not an issue we can run on and win, at least not yet. We’ve a six-month ban, with exceptions for the life of the mother. That’s what Roe established. This is a place that is comfortable for most Americans, especially those who’d rather not think about it. It is the same in many Blue states and countries. And while many have stricter oversight and limitations, where we are right now, that’s not possible, and pushing too hard will cost us everything else.
The Left didn’t march through the institutions overnight, and we won’t march them back as quickly as we’d like. Some are lost forever and will need to be starved until they die on their own. However, we can do a lot of good, but we need to keep Democrats out of power for at least a few more federal election cycles.
We also have to ask how Trump could do almost anything and build the base, but this is the thing that’s being sold as killing it. It just feels like there’s something down the road that will make up for it, and I’d love to know what that is.
