It’s safe to say a lot of Donald Trump‘s strange behavior over the last week just came into focus. Even by Trump standards, this has been a curious few days as the president performed a screeching U-turn on all things Jeffrey Epstein.
Not too long ago, he was promising his supporters that he and Attorney General Pam Bondi were on the cusp of exposing Epstein’s secrets. His fabled “client list” containing the names of his sex crime collaborators was on Bondi’s desk, and their going public seemed imminent.
Then, with a squeal of tyres, that client list didn’t actually exist, Trump said anyone who wanted to know the truth about Epstein was an idiot, and the client list (that doesn’t exist) was a Democrat plot to bring Trump down. This flailing left Trump looking like he had something to hide regarding Epstein, and let’s just say we now have an idea of what that was.
As you’ve probably read, The Wall Street Journal just dropped a Trump/Epstein bombshell in the form of a private note from Trump to Epstein to celebrate his 50th birthday. Included with a drawing of a naked woman in which Trump’s signature forms her pubic hair is a bizarre message that hints that “we have certain things in common”, that “enigmas never age”, and teases that “may every day be another wonderful secret”.
As per The Wall Street Journal story, their journalists gave Trump advance notice of this story two days ago, i.e., around the time he started making those extremely eyebrow-raising pronouncements on Truth Social that only an idiot would still be interested in Epstein’s secrets. Judging by that reaction, we can assume his response to the story was utter panic, as he knows exactly how this creepy message will be interpreted.
The Trump controversy response playbook
But, for Trump, he has a playbook for this exact kind of situation, founded on the old maxim that attack is the best form of defense. First, dismiss whatever evidence is against you as fake news, then start making threats against whoever’s going to publish, then say it’s all a sinister Democrat scheme, and then, finally, sic the lawyers on them.
Trump followed this plan to the letter, confident it had worked out for him before. But this time? Who knows? Trump is in the middle of a perfect storm that even he might not wriggle out of: the Epstein drama isn’t going away (and may yet get worse), his MAGA base is turning on him after he insulted them, and we now know he’s suffering fairly serious circulatory trouble.
They say life comes at you fast. Trump’s now finding out what that means and maybe, just maybe, this is the one time consequences will actually catch up with this most slippery of customers!
