How stupid do they think everyone is?
I’ll state the obvious, then make one observation.
The Obvious Epstein was an intelligence operation, probably US intelligence and Mossad working together. Every room had cameras, and everyone who partook can be blackmailed.
Observation: The great temptation with the Epstein files isn’t to release them or destroy them, the great temptation is to use them, because they represent a vast amount of power.
Anyway, British and American elites have a predilection for under-age sex and various sexual pecadillos. A taste for being spanked and buggery, in particular, are endemic in the English ruling class due to what goes on in a lot of boys boarding schools. This is so much the case that enjoying being beaten used to be called “the English vice”. We pretend it was just a Victorian thing, but it continues.
Being part of the ruling class traditionally comes with the ability to ignore conventional mores, but members of that class didn’t (and still don’t seem to) fully understand what the changes is surveillance technology mean. Every time some idiot is outed because they filmed their own sexual perversions I laugh, but, simply put, if one must be depraved, keep it in house, don’t film it, you moron, and don’t trust anyone. (This isn’t exactly advice, but a powerful person being blackmailed is even worse than a powerful person with a private vice.)
Trump’s has so far been able to push his program thru, but his approval ratings are underwater and important goals, like the end of birthright citizens immunity to revocation of citizenship are still to come. Trump needs leverage. I suspect he’s decided to use the leverage on hand.
If you’ve read this far, and you read a lot of this site’s articles, you might wish to Subscribe or donate. The site has over over 3,500 posts, and the site, and Ian, take money to run.
mago
Desperate people make desperate moves thinking the marks won’t notice.
This dementia clown has shot his feeble wad down his leg, and he’s not pulling anyone else’s.
Eric Anderson
“And, you.
You behind the bench there.
STAND STILL LADDY”!
Roger understood.
different clue
Here’s an article titled: ” Donald Trump in Panic as Ghislaine Maxwell Threatens to Expose Secrets About Epstein Parties “.
Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Full_news/comments/1luybnz/donald_trump_in_panic_as_ghislaine_maxwell/
Comments in the comment thread range from ” she’ll be suicided soon” to ” she’s extorting a pardon and will get one”. Normally I would think she would be suicided for just making such a threat. But then I wonder why she wasn’t suicided like Epstein to begin with, before a trial could happen. What forcefield of protection did/does she have that Epstein did not have?
Maybe her spy-guy father taught her some survival-craft. Maybe she long-ago placed copies of enough evidence to matter in some very secret very trusted hands with standing instructions to release it all if anything happened to her. And made sure all the authorities knew about this in general. If she did that, then she could still be “dead-man’s pedal” safe from getting suicided now that she is making demands and threats.
Oakchair
How stupid do they think everyone is?
—–
Functionally, what is the difference between stupid, don’t care, and too powerless to do anything about it?
Everyone knows the spy/military complex killed JFK, RFK, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. Has anything been done? Nope.
Everyone knows Epstein was killed to silence him. Has anything been done? Nope.
Everyone knows autism and chronic illnesses are skyrocketing. Has anything been done? Nope.
Everyone knows a genocide is being committed. Has anything been done? Nope.
We could go on and on and on and on…
This is what a dystopia feels like. Watching as the ruling class commits atrocity after atrocity. Suffering while they maim and poison you and everyone you know. They flaunt it because what everyone actually understands completely and fully is that no one will be held to account.
Jessica
I am curious how the MAGA base will handle this. Cleaning up deep state secrets was one Trump’s key promises to them.
If they let him get away with this, then he is the Obama of the Right. Promise them anything, but give them war and goodies for the richest.
Ian, you are absolutely right. The Epstein files are most powerful held back, kept as a Sword of Damocles hanging over many at the top.
Like & Subscribe
Being part of the ruling class traditionally comes with the ability to ignore conventional mores.
A not unsubtle edit.
I’m not sure I understand what you are proposing here in regard to Trump. From my vantage, he’s thick in the middle of it and Musk is not lying. The tragedy is, it doesn’t matter. Trump has proven he cannot be blackmailed. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, sticks to Trump. He truly is the Teflon Don — Gotti was an imposter as was proven.
Seriously, Trump could be on the Epstein tapes shown raping an infant and it wouldn’t make a difference to MAGA or the wealthy elite. His support would not wane and in fact, at this point, Trump couldn’t give a hoot about that support. He and his handlers, if you can call that cabal his handlers considering no one can handle Trump the slimy slippery eel, are proceeding as though no law can contain him/them and that is because no law can and will contain him/them.
What this means, unfortunately, is that the Epstein file at this juncture, and maybe always, id at best a juicy diversion. Q Anon is right about this one but so too is a broken cuckoo clock right twice a day.
Greg T
Yes, Trump is in a tough position. His MAGA coalition is wavering and he faces the prospect of a midterm loss of Congress. If he looses Congress, there is a real chance he’ll be impeached with intent to remove him from office. Stashing the Epstein files is impeachment insurance.
Like & Subscribe
Is MAGA a cult or not? I firmly believe it IS a cult and as such, MAGA will never turn on Trump despite wishful thinking on the part of the Dems who are trying to make the most of Trump’s unkept promises related to the Epstein file.
It’s times like this, if it wasn’t already obvious, its transparent as to whom the mainstream media is beholden and no, it’s not Trump. All of the mainstream media without fail hews to the narrative that there is no there there with Epstein — that he was just a rich perv who traveled in high circles who got caught. QAnon hewing to the narrative that there is a there there muddies the waters and poisons any intelligent peeps who know there is there there when it comes to Epstein.
Trump will not be impeached even IF there are mid-term elections and IF the Dems control Congress. The Dems need trump. They want Trump. Biden and Garland could have prevented a Trump 2nd term but instead they slow-walked his prosecution for treason. The best explanation for that is that they wanted Trump right where he is. Yes, I truly believe they are ALL this sick. I know I will never vote again. EVER. That is a promise I will keep forever more. Voting is a joke at this juncture.
Revelo
I have some doubts whether blackmail is even possible any more. There is such monstrous hypocrisy and scandal nowadays in the news headlines that long ago sex with 13yo probably wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. Trannies have finally (and thankfully) disappeared from the media agenda but back when they were still in the news, people had stopped meeting shocked, and no one cares that Thiel, Bessent, etc are homosexual. Whereas 50 years ago, outing a homosexual was a big deal. Unless Trump killed a girl or had sex with pre-teens, I don’t think he or the other Epstein crew have anything to worry about. Trump era prosecutors choose who and what to prosecute based on who is in power, not based on the seriousness of the offense. Plus any evidence can be dismissed as AI deep fake. Or just send out assassins kill anyone in the press or social media who makes a big issue of the revealed evidence. Nobody cares about murder that is not related to sex: Gaza is proof of that.
Feral Finster
1. Of course MAGA is a cult. There is literally nothing Trump could do that would cause the true believers to give up the faith. Live little bois, dead little girls, their own children, his own children, farm animals, whatever.
To be fair, much of the anti-trump forces are similarly cultish. Witness the Russiagate conspiracy theory.
2. If there really were no Epstein File, nothing to see, why didn’t they tell us this in 2017 but dangle out disclosure for the better part of a decade?
The reason, of course, is that:
a. Israeli intelligence does not want its sources and methods made public, nor do they want to lose their leverage over important people; and
b. Trump himself is named in the (nonexistent, of course) Epstein Files, as are prominent politicians from both legacy parties, etc.. You may recall that former First Buddy Elon Musk made mention of this a few weeks ago.
Soredemos
I actually have real doubts about it being a blackmail operation. This is a thing everyone assumes, that everyone ‘knows’. It makes sense. But the evidence is flimsy for that actually being the case.
What would actually be the point? The Israel lobby runs very openly. Not just AIPAC but dozens of other groups. They openly bribe politicians (often for surprisingly small amounts of money). It’s actually entirely possible for the slavish devotion of US politicians to this tiny parasite state to be fundamentally mundane in nature. The idea that there also is blackmail and everyone is a sexual deviant is exciting, but may be more of a righteous moralizing argument than anything based in reality.
Purple Library Guy
@Soredemos I don’t see why, just because Israel has one useful tool, AIPAC and direct use of money, they would deprive themselves of another useful tool, blackmail by intelligence services. Sometimes money will work on people it’s hard to blackmail, sometimes blackmail will work on people with other sources of money. Just because something sounds lurid is not a genuine reason to believe it’s fake–look at the whole Trump administration, which is unfortunately real.
bruce wilder
much of the anti-trump forces are similarly cultish. Witness the Russiagate conspiracy theory.
referring to tropes like “MAGA world” and the like as if “they” inhabit a fantasy world and “we” don’t has become the furnishing of an echo chamber, where people can prattle about a lack of accountability while taking no responsibility for the consequences of their own recent misused loyalties and unfortunate alignments
our political discourse takes place in an information vacuum induced by narrative overpressure. It really should not surprise anyone that the vacuum — no doubt intended only to disable effective democratic outbursts by preventing alliances and agreements from emerging from common awareness of facts — is beginning to induce psychosis and hallucinations. That is what psychological sensory deprivation and gaslighting do. Make people nuts. Not wrong, just nuts. Also, not wise.
This is politically very dangerous.
Elite incompetence obscured by a dust storm of obscuring narrative gambits just seems like a formula for seeding thunderstorms of revelation. Revelation that may have no more basis than an engineered plausibility. Fear, uncertainty and doubt are inserted into so much news and commentary on every topic that people do not know how to orient themselves or feel any basic assurance of living in a stable “world”.
It is a political condition that seems likely to call forth authoritarian responses, but it does seem to me that elites — with their surveillance state at the ready are more eager to generate those authoritarian responses than the general population, including MAGA, are to receive them. Are the readers of The Atlantic or the New York Times any less delusional and inclined to censorious repression than Marjorie Taylor Greene?
elkern
I wouldn’t be too surprised to learn that Epstein had VCR tapes of Trump, but there is solid public info that Trump is more into MILFs than Teens, so those particular tapes might not provide much leverage. Also, Trump is likely shrewd enough to have avoided Epstein’s bedrooms; Roy Cohn may have warned him about that kind of thing.
IMO, the real bombshell in the Epstein Files (and in Ghislaine Maxwell’s head) is not about Trump or other elected officials, but more likely about a large number of judges and DOJ personnel – especially in the Southern District of New York. If I’m right, release of those tapes would permanently destroy the comfortable illusion that the USA has a ‘Justice System’.
bruce wilder
“I actually have real doubts about it being a blackmail operation.”
I was trying to think about historically confirmed cases of politically motivated sexual blackmail and scandal and the dynamics they exhibited. There was a long period of time from Oscar Wilde onwards when male homosexuality provided opportunities for periodic sensational scandals and moral panics. It was long before “Y.M.C.A.” was a campaign song needless to say.
Some of the scandals were local politics and involved networks of businessmen and prostitutes, rather like Oscar’s own scandal. Others picked off important Presidential advisors. LBJ lost a key aide to a men’s restroom and FDR lost an Undersecretary of State to a well-endowed Pullman porter. The whole McCarthy-era Red Scare was just as much about fear of homosexuality as communism and resulted in purging homosexuals specifically from government employment. There was a fear that homosexuality made government officials uniquely vulnerable to blackmail, a fear that never made much sense logically but was confirmed in imagination (and fiction — Smiley) by the slow drip of revelations about the activities of the Cambridge Five during WWII and the subsequent flight of some of their number to the Soviet Union. None of the Five was ever prosecuted and the public only learned of the fifth in 1990 even though the first revelations had come in 1951!
The current Prime Minister may be enveloped somehow in quite a dark tale of his own — it remains to be seen if the cord gets pulled on that one.
In the U.S., gay liberation seemed to remove the effective threat of blackmail and scandal or at least reduce it to misdemeanor status. The last headline scandal of “a gay prostitution blackmail ring” in the New York Times came in 1967 and featured in a “ripped from the headlines” tv episode shortly thereafter. Attitudes having shifted, the blackmailers were prosecuted, which kind of undermined the premise of blackmail as criminal extortion if the blackmailed could simply call the police.
Shifting public attitudes also evaporated a weird kind of denial and histories of abuse, especially in the Catholic Church, emerged into public awareness. That, it seems to me, has provided some kind of predicate to the Epstein Lolita Express.
Hiero
The List
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYbb_e6NHWU
Z
Bribery and blackmail … carrot and stick … make you a multimillionaire or humiliate you … strongly aligns Western politicians’ personal interests with Jewish Zionists’.
What’s the point of blackmail? Why not just bribery?
If you just bribe them, you may have to negotiate for every little thing you want done. It’s a sellers’ market and it’s time consuming … and potentially expensive … to get everybody … or enough of them … aligned. Maybe some of them even develop a conscience … especially after they are plenty full enough from getting fat on so many carrots … and balk at what you want them to do at any price. Maybe you get outbid by a competing interest. Maybe a politician develops a grassroots platform and then actually follows through on it once they are elected. Maybe then you get an actual democracy that doesn’t favor Jewish Zionists’ interests over the vast majority of the public’s.
Use bribery and blackmail though and they jump on your train before you are even ready to leave the station because the fear of the blackmail makes them jumpy. You don’t have to negotiate anything.
Now look at how fast and how reflexive Western politicians back anything the Zionists want … w/o even negotiating the terms for their support … and you realize that the juicy carrot is offered with one hand and the other holds a heavy, hard stick over Western politicians’ heads.
–
What they also do now is compromise Western politicians before they even run them for office. And when you control who gets on the ballot … and the extremely anti-democratic DNC, in particular, is owned and run by Jewish Zionists … you can do that.
Z
NR
I don’t know. On the one hand, I don’t have any trouble believing that Mossad or some other intelligence service would run a honey trap to collect blackmail material on rich and powerful people. But on the other hand, I also don’t have any trouble believing that rich people would indulge their perverse predilections on their own without any outside prompting. So… not sure what to think here. Except it is obvious that the DOJ is lying about their not being a list.
mago
Sorry Soredemos, but there’s too much documented evidence and personal testimony out there to make it anything more than a blackmail op.
That blackmail thing has been in the political tool chest of the players who play that way since who knows when.
The pervs had their fun, not caring, knowing they’d get away with it as they did and do with everything else. Probably even got off on being filmed. Glorified perversion. The attitude being whatcha gonna do about it? Write a comment?
Well there’s death, but happens everyday. . .
Seattle Resident
Like & Subscribe
It was a combination of the FL judge who would not prosecute Trump on the documents case, and ultimately, the Roberts conservative majority who twisted themselves into a knot to give Trump Immunity more than Garland, Smith and Biden.
That’s why Trump rolls like teflon.
Eric Anderson
Obviously no connection at all to the recent Netanyahu visit.
different clue
I have wondered why Epstein ever came back to America. Didn’t he even consider the risks of dying before trial? Did he totally forget his station and his place? Did he forget that he had become merely an inconvenient loose end which had to be tied and disposed of if back in America?
Why did he do it? Why did he come back? And clearly without the forcefield of protection that Ghislaine had apparently built for herself.
Mark Level
Many very good points made, in later posts I see Z, Mago & Eric Anderson made good points. Although the pretense “There is no list, never was” just blew up at this time ‘coz Trump made another of dozens of promises he would never fulfill: Ending the Russia-Ukraine war before he came in, or “in 24 hours”, deporting MOAR brown-skinned people than Biden or the Deporter-In-Chief Obama did by bypassing any trial or due process. The latter also blew up in his face and at this time he has deported far fewer than his predecessors. Also, he used the dead people, including children at a camp in Texas to distract in a foreseeable flood due to the Elon/Doge budget cuts, when a reporter brought up the Epstein Files which are very central to his actual base, to divert away from the issue.
L&S is wrong again, predictably. QAnon (which is hardly prominent anymore) was laser-focused on “globalist pedophiles,” there is some there there, maybe not as much as they thought, and it is, like the looting and the wars, a bipartisan project of the political and financial Elites. Yes, MAGA is “a cult” by nearly every metric.
That said, many feel betrayed and are enraged. And unlike the Dimmiecrats and the DC crowd, the CHUDs actually expect their selected pols to throw them some Red Meat. They do not take obvious lies about “We tried but failed,” or we pretended to try but failed, like the Dimmie Surrender Monkeys Blue Maga do.
Dan Bongino while on Fox was raving about needing to bring these predators to “justice” while pretending not to know which “Middle Eastern Country” Epstein was working for. Alex Jones is pretending that Trump is secretly blackmailing the blackmailers to trick the base they will get something. Trump is a Deep State Swamp critter, nothing more. Kash Patel raved that he would bring the perverts to justice and now he whines, “Nothing to see here.”
He has betrayed his base nearly 100% of the time. Due Dissidence covered this clearly in 3-4 segments, there is widespread rage and some (not sure about many) will walk away. Bigger betrayals and kicks in the teeth are coming for the poor CHUDs, when Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security are gutted after the midterms and their family members die early, or they become homeless. This man will be hated beyond even the 22% popularity Bush Jr. had on leaving office, assuming he serves a full 4-year term. He’s just accelerating the inner divisions and rot, perhaps setting things up for a full-on Civil War. When the Ukraine defeat becomes clear in probably 18 months if not left, the Dimmies will be gleeful to blame him. (Interesting that they’re not all over the Epstein stuff, but obvious why– rapist Crime Bill Clinton, many of their own honeypotted.)
Due Dissidence link is here, 57:30 in, on the Epstein stuff for anyone interested– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtYtEQYzqow&list=PL8RPLQX-IDX_czfperwWind2jRn3MU7jb
Mark Level
if not LESS
Mark Level
Here’s a good profile of the Trump Fan Boy response– ZeroHedge is far right, Bannonite essentially, and they are unhappy. Tucker Carlson, Glen Beck (still around!) and the well-named Anna Paulina Luna(tic) are going off, very angry, there will be dozens more–
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-investigative-journalist-explains-why-epstein-case-will-never-progress
Some of the Trump Media will not make a peep– I see nothing at Breitbart News for instance. But the Base will be stirred up.
Z
You see Spain start to take action against Israel’s attack on the humanitarian mission to Gaza. You see the brave Italian woman in the UN, Francesca Albanese … a person of principles who would never in a million years have gotten placed in that position by the US government, or by almost any other Western government … condemn Israel’s brutality of the Palestinians.
What are the commonalities: a very low Jewish population and therefore an inability for the Jewish Zionists to infest and corrupt those Western countries’ politics.
Z
Z
Having a very low Jewish population is also a reason why, I suspect, that when countries like Portugal and Greece get financially bailed out by the EU and the IMF the terms for it are so onerous.
Z
elkern
A Honey Pot ring like Epstein’s works both for extortion AND bribery.
Once the ‘pimp’ has tapes, they can both threaten the ‘John’ with exposure AND offer him continued access to more (and more exotic?), uh, toys. This becomes doubly attractive, as the new toys come with minimal increase in danger of exposure (the pimp already has pix; going elsewhere means some other pimp gets a handle on you).
Z
Can you imagine the IMF imposing strict austerity on Israel?
Not that it would ever come to that because the US and the rest of the West would just print up and hand money over to Israel in one way or another to bail them out before it ever did. Cause they’re our super special ally!
Z
Like & Subscribe
Tucker Carlson’s indignation is feigned and I think he’s reflective of all of them — their indignation is not genuine in the least.
Here’s Carlson and Enjeti discussing it. Carlson vouches for Trump’s admirable, stellar character — he knows Trump is not the type to feast on and rape teenage girls. I guess the takeaway from that assessment is that Trump prefers to rape women who are of legal age therefore he is moral compared to Epstein.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCCQzXmSk8w
As for QAnon, yes, it may be diminished in explicit presence but its effect is as prominent as ever and let’s face it, its deleterious effect is what matters.
If you conduct a quick search you can find dozens of interviews with wannabe comedians visiting Trump rallies and public events. The latest I saw was Trump’s birthday military day parade. QAnon, or rather its effect, is as strong as ever. These people are so far gone it is impossible to rehabilitate them. My brother-in-law, for example, not only doesn’t believe Epstein committed suicide, but his QAnon sources, I have no idea what those sources are and don’t want to know but it’s obviously QAnon in form sentiment and effect, claim Epstein was whisked away in the dead of night and he is alive being held somewhere. I didn’t inquire any further about where he is being held. I had to get out before I laughed out loud.
shagggz
The thinness of the pretence can be read as indicating how stupid they think we are, but can just as easily be read as indicating how desperately lacking in alternatives they are.
The great temptation with blackmail is to use it without using it up, much like nukes. Carefully managed threat display. Thanatophilic edging.
elkern: “This becomes doubly attractive…” – A multipurpose carrot, if you will.
Like & Subscribe: ” I have no idea what those sources are and don’t want to know…” – Maybe some curiosity would do you good here, shed some light on how the foibles you mock have elements that hit close to home, what the term “blue anon” gets at.
mago
Epstein the movie has visiting rights with Jizzeila in her jail cell.
I have it on good authority.
different clue
@ Like & Subscribe,
I don’t believe Epstein was whisked away to some secret place and replaced in his cell with a sacrificial body double.
But I don’t believe Epstein committed suicide, either.
I believe Epstein was suicided by professional suicide engineers.
Like & Subscribe
Q Anon is alive and well, meaning its effects continue to expand and perpetuate as I type.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYUQGVb0Jps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiPIK8uY0Y8
That last link is for you, shagggz. Have at it, curious one. I watched two minutes of it to know all I need to know but I have no doubt you will watch it in its entirety, grand inquisitor that you are.
I concede there is a Blue Anon afoot. On a spectrum, it’s much more benign than QAnon but it exists. It claims Trump is a Russian agent, which is ludicrous. It claims Russia has Kompromat on Trump and that is how he is controlled. Hogwash. Bollocks. As I have said many times now, Trump cannot be blackmailed. He is not a Russian agent. Did Russia meddle in the 2016 election and every election since? Hell yeah it did just as many other foreign nations meddle in America’s elections and America in there elections. Blue Anon would have us believe it’s just Russia whilst ignoring the most massive meddler of all — Israel.
different clue, that’s plausible for sure. I wouldn’t rule it out. My brother-in-law also believes that there is a tunnel from the Vatican to Israel that is used to transport gold. This same brother-in-law has been in the hospital for the past three weeks in intensive care incapacitated and on a vent suffering from meningitus and alcohol withdrawal amongst other things. The bill for this healthcare whether he survives or not will be in the millions at this point. At one point he awoke from his sedation and one of the first things he asked was whether or not the BBB passed. I kid you not. He supports it as he supports Trump no matter what Trump ever says or does. This healthcare sponge and his loved ones fail to see the irony. This is not his first rodeo with the healthcare establishment. He’s also had knee replacement and cutting-edge back surgery. He has received much more than he has ever put into the healthcare pot. That’s socialism. He’s an unwitting socialist and has benefitted from socialism but he is incapable of seeing it and understanding it from this correct perspective. Foibles, indeed.
shagggz
Like & Subscribe, thank you for the link to the charming gentleman and his pontifications. Makes me wanna break out my washboard and hootin’ jug! And thank you for the clarifications on Blue Anon vis a vis where you stand; I agree with your bullet points. All the best to your ailing brother-in-law.