No. of Recommendations: 13
I wonder why.
I understand that it's politically useful, and probably satisfying, to imagine that the files contain a lot of damning information about Trump being involved with Epstein to a greater degree than is already known. We like to imagine our political opponents possibly being undone by some grand reveal, especially political opponents that we already believe are awful people that we believe have done awful things.
Put me in the other camp that thinks that's unlikely. If the government had documents that were really damaging to Trump in that way, they would have been released during the last administration.
Instead, I think the reason why they're not being released is far more boring. There's nothing there. The government doesn't have any information pointing to anyone else being complicit in Epstein's horrible crimes. There isn't a client list. There aren't more revelations to be had. There isn't some grand conspiracy of government covering up for elites. And I think Trump is politically savvy enough to know that might actually be more damaging to him than if he were in "the Epstein files" in some capacity.
How could that be, you ask? I think we here on the "normie" side of the political fence (and I include everyone on this board including our conservative posters) tend to underestimate how important it is to MAGA (and the former QAnon portion of MAGA in particular) that there exists a high-powered pedophilia ring that's being concealed by The Powers That Be. Right-wing populism is generally founded on a belief that the nation's Corrupt Elites have rigged the system against the Good Common Folk - that's universal to right-wing populist movements everywhere. But our right-wing populism was always deeply energized by the firm belief that one of the main ways that the Corrupt Elites were protecting themselves (and vulnerable to exposure) was by covering up their frequent pedophilia. This was PizzaGate, this was all the Qanon folks harassing Chrissy Teigen, this was CometPingPong, this was the horrible truth that would be exposed in the Storm that QAnon was expecting - all of which pre-dated Epstein, and then got supercharged and bound up with Epstein.
This is important to a sizable chunk of the President's base. The reason they're so emotionally invested in MAGA, so invested in him, is because they genuinely believe that the Corrupt Elite are not merely greedy and selfish but are actual monsters preying on children. Trump being elected was supposed to be their retribution. Finally someone from outside of the In Group had been elected - someone who was actually hated and despised by the In Group for being coarse and crass and having non-Establishment beliefs. This was the person who could actually expose the Horrible Truth that was being concealed.
That didn't happen in his first term, but they could persuade themselves that Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr were half in the pocket of the Corrupt Elite and Trump was in such a precarious that he couldn't expose them. But that fig leaf is gone now. Bondi's his pick, no one forced him to choose her, there's no reason at all that she can't expose all the Horrible Horrible People Who Hurt All Those Kids.
So the terrible part for Trump is that they can't expose the HHPWHATK - because they don't really have anything, and there isn't a conspiracy of HHPWHATK being protected by the Corrupt Elite. Trump can't give them what they want. And they want that thing a lot more than they want tariffs and tax cuts and shrinking Medicaid and all the things that Trump is now telling them they should be super-stoked about. This is the thing that they were emotionally invested in, the proxy for why the Democrats and Establishment Republicans deserved to be thrown out, the reason that the fight was worth it.
If Bondi opens up the kimono and there's nothing there, they will either be: i) super mad they were deceived before; or ii) convinced that Bondi's trying to deceive them now. Both are really, really bad for Trump.
