THE SCANDAL THAT'S DIVIDING MAGA

 They stood by him when he insulted John McCain's war record.  When the Access Hollywood tape came out.  When he pledged to build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it, and then only built a fraction of that wall without a dime from Mexico.  They stood by him when he bungled the response to the pandemic, going back and forth on masks and suggesting people inject bleach.  They even stood by him after he sparked a riot at the nation's capitol  on January the sixth. But now, really for the first time in the  ten years that he has dominated the Republican party, President Donald Trump's hardest hard core followers may finally be turning on him.  

Yes, the hard core conservative belief that convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein had a secret list of powerful people who knowingly had  sex with underage girls on his private island, a list  that they assume will contain names like Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, is a very strong one in the MAGA universe.  And now they believe that the government is holding onto that list to shield those powerful people from criminal convictions.  The brass ring, the thing that conservative media has longed for years, is the mass trail and jailing of numerous prominent progressives for horrible crimes, proving that their longtime hatred of the Clintons, the Obamas and the Bidens, among others, was always well founded.

It's interesting to note that far right conservative conspiracies seem to focus on one document or source of information, that, if released to the American public, could  blow a conspiracy carried out by progressives  wide open; back in the Obama years, a majority of Republican voters thought that then president Barack Obama was secretly a Kenyan, and that the release of his long form birth certificate would prove it.  It got so bad that Obama did eventually release it, although many of them (including Trump) claimed that it was fake.  And then during the Biden years, there was an obsession about finding the then president's  son Hunter's s lap top, and again there was a sense that this one item would reveal not just Hunter's criminal activity, but also the crimes of the whole "Biden crime family."  

Those two conspiracies were absurd (although to be fair, Hunter Biden did commit crimes, but there's no proof that his father was involved in any of them), but the Epstein list conspiracy does have some  basis in fact.  (It's certainly a lot more plausible than the QAnon conspiracy, which thankfully seems to have died down).  The most important fact is that Epstein was indeed a convicted child sex trafficker who groomed and raped hundreds of teenage girls, assisted by Ghislaine Maxwell, who was found guilty of child trafficking and other charges in 2021 and is still in prison.  The other important fact is that Epstein did indeed have connections with powerful people like Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew.  Epstein died while in prison in 2019 from an apparent suicide.

And in 2024 the Trump campaign rode the Epstein conspiracy hard, with Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance saying that the Epstein files should be released and Trump MAGA media supporters like then pod caster Dan Bongino fanning the flames, promising the hard core faithful Trump supporters that putting Trump back in the White House would see the release of the list, and that trail of  those progressive pedophiles could begin.  So imagine the disappointment of the MAGA voters when the Trump administration recently announced that there would be no more investigation of the Epstein matter, that there was no client list.  Even  Bongino himself,  now a member of the FBI, threw cold water on the conspiracy, contending that Epstein's death was definitely a suicide.

While I'm not someone who tends to  believes in conspiracy theories, I will admit that there are some strange things in this story.  First of all, Epstein's suicide certainly seems suspicious, given that he was already on a suicide watch, and the release of the video from the prison on the night of his murder which shows no one entering his cell, is missing a minute.  (Could killers have rushed into his cell and killed him in a way that looked like a suicide by hanging in under a minute?  Seems far fetched to me.). Secondly, Epstein's first conviction in Florida in 2005, in which he plea bargained to avoid serious jail time, appears to be  only a slap on the wrist given the severity of his crimes.  There's also some question about how he  became a billionaire in the first place.

But the most suspicious part of the story is the relationship that Epstein had with Trump; it's been common knowledge for years that they were indeed friends for around 15 years. The two of them can be seen partying together in photos and videos in the earlier 00's, and  in 2002 in New York Magazine, Trump described him this way “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it,  Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”  Although the two men would eventually have a falling out over a property purchase, Trump's connection to him is undeniable.  Which makes the MAGA people's shock over his failure to release all the files amusing to the rest of us who have seen what kind of horrible person Trump is for over a decade now.  Putting it simply, if Trump did indeed have sex with underage girls on Epstein's private island, it really wouldn't be shocking given that this is a man who's been accused of sexual assault or rape by 28 different women.  And who was found guilty of making illegal payments to cover up an illicit affair.  And who was found liable in a defamation case brought by  writer E Jean Carrol in which the judge ruled that the jury believed her story of him sexually assaulting her. And who has been caught on video making leering comments towards teen girls ("In ten years I'll be dating you!") and having sexual thoughts towards his own daughter.  So now MAGA finally is seeing Trump for the sexual predator he always seemed to be?  Welcome to reality. 

That said, there is no proof that Trump ever did anything illegal in regards to Epstein, and I for one do not believe that the infamous list actually exists, no matter whose name is on it.  Yes, there is a criminal file regarding Epstein, and yes, Trump's and other famous people's names are in it, but being mentioned in a criminal case file as an acquaintance of a criminal and actually being guilty of a crime are two very separate things. I think the logical answer is that Epstein hid his crimes from almost everyone, like a serial killer, and that his famous friends had no knowledge of his monstrous behavior.

Whatever the truth is,  Trump clearly can't seem to make this story go away.  His supporters have dug into this for too long to suddenly buy his assertion that there's nothing to any of it.  Many right wing media figures, like Tucker Carlson, refuse to let it go. And breaking news of a possible lewd (but not necessary criminal) letter sent by Trump to Epstein years ago will only fan the flames.  Perhaps now, finally, Trump's life long despicable treatment of women will finally hurt him politically.

A DISASTEROUS BUDGET BILL

 

In a sad moment of bitter irony, President Donald Trump's budget bill, which is one of the worst pieces of legislation in American history, is going to be signed by him on the fourth of July.  The mind truly reels at this.

This budget bill is, quite simply, a terrible example of everything wrong with America.  It will make permanent  tax cuts that Trump  passed in his first term, which are heavily slanted towards reducing taxes for the rich.  And to help offset the loss of revenue these cuts will bring, Medicaid and food assistance for the poor are being sliced by billions of dollars.  It's estimated that millions of Americans will soon lose their healthcare because of these cuts.  How could it get any worse?  Well, the non partisan Congressional Budget Office has foreseen that, even with those spending cuts, this budget will eventually add over three trillion dollars to our national debt.

So to put it bluntly, this bill will hurt millions of poor Americans to help pay for a tax cut for the rich, continuing the obsession that the Republican Party has been pursuing since Ronald Reagan first introduced so called Supply Side Economics back in the 80's.  (He also left behind big deficits).  And, in an example of just how cynical this whole enterprise is, the tax cuts will take place immediately, while the Medicaid and food cuts won't really start kicking in until 2028, showing that the Republican bill writers consciously moved these unpopular cuts past the mid term elections, knowing how angry they will make voters.

So, while Trump has often seemed like a different kind of Republican, at the end of the day he still has the same awful budget priorities of Reagan and George W Bush.  The fact that he's breaking a campaign promise to not cut Medicaid and reduce the deficit is, of course, hardly surprising given how much he has always lied .  Remember how he promised to build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it back in 2016?  Or how about how he was going to jail Hillary Clinton?  So I can't say that I'm disappointed by a man who's always gone back on his word, but I am upset about how quickly the rest of his party gave in.

As the bill was being debated in congress, there did seem to be a few Republican congress people from swing states who had moral objections to it, and it polled terribly with voters, who liked it less and less the more they heard about it.  But, sadly, those few principled Republicans who either objected to the Medicaid cuts (like Josh Hawley) or deficit increase (like Rand Paul) eventually folded like umbrellas given just how strong Trump's support is with the base of the Republican party who continue in their cult like devotion towards him. 

It should be noted that along with tax cuts and budget cuts, the bill also contains 100 billion dollars in spending for the Immigration and Custom Enforcement office, which triples their budget.  (To put that in proper perspective, as the magazine Newsweek points out, ICE now has a higher budget than the entire military spending of many other countries).  And, of course, it eliminates all spending on green energy and tax rebates for electric vehicles, because a brutal crackdown on undocumented immigrants and ignoring climate change as the world swelters is just par for the course from our narcissistic, psychopathic president.   

The cruelty of this bill lies not only in the lie Trump repeated often on the campaign trail about not defunding Medicaid, it's also a stab in the back to the working class of this country who will be hurt the most, even as they have turned to the Republican party more and more in recent years.  Sadly, Trump's stand on immigration, trans rights and other social issues have fooled tens of millions of Americans to vote against their own economic benefit.  But then, the Republican party has been using social issues to do that for decades now.  Trump is just pushing it further than past presidents.