News Break
NextDraft will be off for the rest of July, so you’ll have to moan without me. I’m just taking a quick Summer break to allow my family to interact with me when I’m not curled around my Macbook Air in the fetal positon. Of course, I’ll likely publish an occasional special edition if anything monumentally unexpected happens such as worldwide thermonuclear war or someone in the administration telling the truth. Something tells me you’ll get plenty of coverage of the top story currently obsessing the internet, and mainstream and alternate media sources: Epstein, Epstein, and more Epstein. While it may provide a modicum of pleasure to see some of his most ardent supporters throwing Schadenfreude at Trump, the broader aspects of this story are nothing to celebrate. The MAGA rage against the Trump machine is rooted in the belief in wild conspiracies that Trump helped spread, and that have taken hold in America. As Heather Cox Richardson points out “Trump owes his 2024 victory to QAnon followers, who believe a cabal of Democratic lawmakers, rich elites, and Hollywood film stars are sex trafficking—and even eating—children. PRRI, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that researches religion, culture, and politics, estimated that in 2024, about 19% of Americans believed in QAnon. CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten noted yesterday that QAnon supporters preferred Trump to Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 by 61 points.” The anger at Trump is rooted in conspiracy theories about the government, not over some ethical concern that Trump himself may be on a list. Julie K. Brown is a reporter who has been covering the Epstein saga longer than almost anyone. As she explains in this very interesting interview, the current debate has been muddied by false beliefs and outright lies: “We have the forces of truth and facts, versus the forces of conspiracy that want to fan theories in order to further some kind of agenda, whether that’s a political agenda or—there’s a million agendas. Some of these influencers, their agenda is to get more viewers or more listeners. So there’s these competing forces here with journalism today, and it’s not just with the Epstein story, but with almost everything.” So while this is a story of a strongman trying to extinguish the flames of a fire he’s been pouring gasoline on for years, it’s also the continuation of another, broader story: Our shared reality going up in flames.
+ “If Trump and the MAGA media ecosystem can successfully spin the Epstein debacle into a conspiracy theory that helps them, or if they can make the story stop, it would suggest once again that his grip on the party and its base is total: an impenetrable force field no bit of reality can puncture. What if they fail? Maybe this is what it looks like when Trump loses his vise grip on his supporters.” Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Nobody (Not Even Trump) Can Control the Epstein Story.
+ Attorney General Pam Bondi has made her latest move to fend off the pressure to release additional Epstein files. She fired Maurene Comey (daughter of James Comey) who was the prosecutor in the Epstein case. Comey warns her former colleagues: ‘Fear is the tool of the tyrant.’
+ We don’t know what justice will look like in this situation. But we do know that the actual victims of Epstein’s crimes didn’t get much of it. As Julie K Brown reminds us: “Jeffrey Epstein abused probably at least 200 young girls, some of them reportedly as young as 12 years old, over a span of decades … This was just not Epstein having sex in his mansion with a couple of underage girls. This was a whole operation. And I think people sometimes lose sight of the fact that he was able to continue doing that because our federal government and our criminal-justice system failed these victims, and never really pursued this case with the seriousness and intensity that they should have from the very beginning.” And what of future victims? Well, as TNR explains, the State Department just chose a wild time to cut its human trafficking office. (In retrospect, I should have started my news break yesterday…)
