Serial pedophile, sex offender, hobnobber of the stars, and supposed key to bringing down all the corrupt elites in American government, finance, and culture apparently really did kill himself, and there is no list.
At least that’s what AG Pam Bondi is telling us now.
How long ago was it when Bondi bounded before the cameras and told us that she had the list on her desk?
She released a bunch of documents in February, but this anticlimactic revelation did not amount to much, since others had already leaked those documents.
Now, there’s no list.
Sure …
And there is widespread outrage throughout the MAGA world, the general public, and just about anyone who has been following this sordid, horrid case.
What are we to make of all this?
Yes, conservative commentators and populist pundits have shared their cant or profundity on the cause. Let’s sift through their minds on the matter, and let’s see if we can make sense of it all.
Ben Shapiro, one of President Trump’s biggest initial detractors, has gone out of his way to defend his stake in the case. I respect his take, since there’s nothing to justify believing that Trump and his new cabinet are part of the very cabal that tried to stop him from getting elected.
More importantly, President Trump shared in 2024 that he was willing to release the Epstein files, BUT … there was a lot of phony stuff, in his words, and there is too much opportunity to unjustly impugn others simply because they had lunch with the creep. Bill O’Reilly confirmed this notion, sharing that he had spoken with Trump about the whole thing. This reasoning has merit. The last thing we need is more cancel culture due to guilt by association.
And yet, that does not resolve the surface-level dishonesty of Pam Bondi and team. She said that she had the files on her desk, did she not?
Conservative historian Larry Schweikart’s take on this problem is also worth considering. Referencing the 2008 Batman blockbuster “The Dark Knight,” Schweikart suggested that the Criminal Justice Avengers—Bondi, Patel, and Bongino—are staging a head-fake of sorts, stating to the public that there is no “there there” regarding Jeffrey Epstein, the list, the high-profile human traffickers, etc.
It’s all about throwing off the bad guys so they can keep catching the bad guys. I find this suggestion plausible. Over the last six months, the Trump Administration has ramped up its efforts to catch predators of all sorts across the country. Human trafficking is at an all-time low, not just at the border but around the country, and more of the bad guys preparing and peddling kiddie porn and child molestation are getting rounded up off our streets.
How else could Team Trump 2.0 accomplish these great feats except that they are making use of all the data from Epstein’s networks, lists, and other evidence? If the Trump enforcement team starts going public with everything, more of the bad guys could escape justice. As long as Team Trump gives the impression that they have finished with the Epstein evidentiary efforts, they can give the criminal targets a false sense of security, then sweep down on them.
It’s more important to catch the bad guys, stop the abuse, and make America safe again. If Bondi and company have to risk looking like bad guys for a while in order to catch the real bad guys, then so be it.
However, this line of thinking has not allayed the outrage on the online right or among MAGA populist commentators. Steve Bannon fears that the Republicans will not just lose their House majority. Charlie Kirk and Matt Walsh are losing their patience about this, and they see this move to push aside the Epstein exposure as a major fail.
What really bothers me, though, is that many of Trump’s most die-hard supporters throughout the campaign season are ready to throw him under the bus over this one issue. I suspect that many influencers, who have established their brand and base talking up the disturbing conspiracies and the major failures of our institutions, are intent on bringing as much heat as they can on this issue because that’s their meal ticket. If they move on, people will stop watching and listening to them. That kind of motivation does not inspire respect or courage, and we need to stop allowing such motives to drive our main focus.
Don’t get me wrong: child exploitation of any kind is evil, and every malefactor connected to its persistence in our country must be brought to justice. But if they care so much about stopping the abuse and exploitation of children, they should be applauding the president and his leadership team for their unprecedented level of immigration enforcement. Illegal aliens around the country are not just getting rounded up and deported, but the human chattel slavery running across our once-porous border has all but ended now. In a recent ICE operation in Ventura County, immigration enforcement not only rounded up illegal aliens working on a marijuana farm, but they also rescued alien minors exploited on that farm, and one of the illegals captured was a convicted sex offender!
On top of these ongoing enforcement accomplishments, Trump has enacted broad economic reforms and taken on the cultural rot of American education, starting with the woke corruption in America’s universities, and he’s taking on the public school systems across the country, where child abuse has been institutionalized in the vile, explicit sex-ed curricula pushing LGBT indoctrination and the new spate of teen books and graphic novels filled with pornography and moral degradation.
We should not let the Epstein issue go away without waiting for more information and insight. At the same time, we shouldn’t disparage the ongoing successes. The Trump Administration is putting out multiple fires and fighting to restore many great things that have fallen into disrepair or disrepute in this country. Let’s give him a chance and let things work themselves out.