|
 |
If you enjoy this preview, I hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription, for access to everything we do.
Alternatively, if you don’t have or want a Substack account, you can keep Off Message going with a donation. All support is appreciated, but donations of $75 or larger come with a comped annual subscription—all content unlocked and emailed to the address provided.
You make Off Message possible. Thanks again.
You Don't, Under Any Circumstances, Have To Play Into Donald Trump's Hands
He has a terrible poker face, and keeps telling us what he believes his greatest vulnerabilities are.
|
| |||||||||||||||
 |
The right-wing New York Times columnist Ross Douthat recently observed that the ongoing Trump administration coverup of the Jeffrey Epstein case file doesn’t bear the hallmarks of state secrecy, so much as the desperation of guilty men and their accomplices.
“Recent Epstein leaks and stories have weakened (via the strong Acosta denials) the intelligence asset theory but strengthened (via both Prince Andrew and Leon Black correspondence) the Epstein-as-panderer case.”
Douthat frequently seems both caught off guard and pained by the depravities of his coalition partners—in denial until some dark truth is revealed, at which point he acquiesces, and moves on to the next. The Epstein matter may be next.
What he omitted, or hasn’t pieced together, is that the biggest, most revelatory twist in the Epstein saga is ongoing: Republicans have effectively dissolved the U.S. House of Representatives. They have simultaneously refused to seat the newly elected Democratic congresswoman from Arizona for a month, because they know her first official act would be to add her decisive signature to an official petition requiring a House vote to compel the Justice Department to release the Epstein files.
Republican leaders seem to recognize that this vote would not be particularly close, and would (thus) draw their divided congressional party into open hostilities with Donald Trump. So determined are they to bury these files that they’ve chosen an indefinite holding pattern in which every single House Republican—save for Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Nancy Mace—is singularly responsible for the Epstein coverup. Any individual frontline Republican could resolve the impasse, and maybe even shake the files loose, by adding their own name to the petition.
But none of them will do it.
This pattern of behavior doesn’t merely suggest that Epstein procured teenagers for his friends, but that Donald Trump was among them—and that many Republicans in Washington know or suspect as much.
FACTIONS ARE STUBBORN THINGS
For a slightly more generous interpretation, we might lay off the strong Trump-Epstein inference, and simply observe that controlling information—particularly information that reflects well or poorly on himself and his political opposition—is an incredibly high priority for Donald Trump. We might further reason that this is a tell...
Subscribe to Off Message to unlock the rest.
Become a paying subscriber of Off Message to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content.
A subscription gets you:
 | Subscriber-only posts and full archive |