TFG: Ross Douthat on Epstein
I really didn't want to write about Epstein and the release of a tranche or emails with some juicy drops by Comer-fudd, but then Ross Douthat had to open his face-anus, and try to play the "nothing burger" card, and "be careful what you wish for"
Resident NY Times Conservative rad-trad Catholic Trump Spooge mop, Ross Douthat deigned to open his pie hole and to utter some of his usual bullshit.
I was in Australia, eating breakfast at my hotel (their pastries were out-fuckin-dtanding) I saw the news that: a) Adelita Grijalva was signed in and added her name to the discharge petition, b) that committee Democrats had released three (redacted) emails from a trove that was supplied by the Epstein estate after a subpoena was issued.
(this was before the brain-donor James Comer[1] decided to release more than 20,000 other emails from Epstein (also supplied by the estate) as a way to flood the zone)
In these emails we learned that Trump knew about the girls, that Trump spent several hours with one of them (the committee did say that this was Virginia Giufre but I would want to see some confirmation), and an email between Epstein and (cough) journalist (cough) Michael Wolff strategizing how to handle it if Trump brought up Epstein during the 2016 debates.
Pretty icky stuff, but the attempt by Comer-Fudd to bury it didn't go over so well. Lots of other incriminating shit was released. And clearly, all attempts at damage control by Trump are futile. Sure, there are literal terabytes of video from Epstein's island, and his Manhattan mansion that the DOJ and the FBI are sitting on (and probabl spanking to), and tranches of documents and other evidence from the raids.
Pretty nasty stuff.
But that is a long prelude before I dive into the blathering from Ross Douthat[2].
Titled The Outstanding Question About Epstein and Trump (gifted link, but why would you want to read this?) he posits that apart from the dueling dumps that will get it all out in the open, that he surmises that Trump's involvement is a "nothing burger" (my word).
In his dribble of diarrhea from his facial anus, he sprays:
For those of us with a sincere, nonpartisan interest (I swear) in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, it was a good week: First the Democrats, with an eye to hammering Donald Trump, released a few redacted Epstein emails in which the president’s name featured prominently; then Republicans, presumably with an eye to burying the Democratic leak, released thousands more Epstein documents. With this kind of tag-team effort, we’ll have the whole story out in the open by Christmas!
Implying that he is taking a non-partisan point of view on this, and that gets my facepal, so high that I need to observe concussion protocols.
Regardless, his take is some hokum that Epstein was surfing in the "centrist" space, and among the neoliberals (or some such shit, read for yourself)
A word of caution, though, for those liberals who are relative newcomers to the Epstein saga, for so long a mostly conservative fixation. There is a dark conspiratorial thrill that comes with encountering the reality, amply displayed in the latest round of disclosures, that so many American elites were perfectly comfortable being buddy-buddy with a trafficker of teenage girls. And because both right and left have pivoted away from the Bill Clinton-era neoliberal center, the fact that Epstein had (to quote the left-wing writer Jeet Heer) “very banal centrist politics with the same gestalt as 90 percent of U.S. elite since 1990s” makes him an ideal symbol of elite perfidy for both progressives and populists alike.
His hot take is that the far left and the far right (he calls them "populists") will be disappointed because this is so banal.
What I think he's getting at is that there will be plenty of liberal icons (Bill Clinton probably, but Larry Summers certainly) who will be tainted by this, assuming that the liberal interest in this is just to tarnish conservatives.
But what Ross is mis-reading (or, more likely deliberately obfuscating) is that unlike MAGA, and the Q-Anon twats, all the left of center and liberal people I know are "fine, if all the favorite sons of the left are entangled in Epstein's morass, then let them fry".
There's some things (ok, LOTS of things) are non-negotiable, and hanging out with a kiddie diddler, and partaking in the forbidden fun is one of them.
There are several paragraphs of the usual Ross blather, and his pathetic, yet normal attempt to split the baby, but then he closes with this:
In which case the ultimate truth could be squalid (powerful men getting hand jobs from masseuses whom they thought were over 18) without being a Grand Guignol conspiracy (powerful men knowingly trafficking minors to facilitate some kind of “Eyes Wide Shut” scenario). And something similar could be the case with the intelligence-world questions: There’s evidence that Epstein used his connections to assist Israel intelligence on various projects, but nothing indicating that he was running a sex-and-blackmail operation on its behalf.
He's hoping really hard that what has come out is the worst of it, and he's workshopping how to spin this so MAGA and his precious Catholic sensibilities are able to sweep this under the rug as the clergy has so effectively done with their epidemic of paedophile priests.
Oh wait, that explains it all. Ross thinks this will be like the Catholic church, where the blankets of obfuscation will ultimately protect his cheeto colored idol.
Ross Douthat really is a NY Times DEI hire.
1 - Seriously, James Comer-"Fudd" is one of the dumbest fuckers in Congress. He makes Tommy Tuberville seem like an Einstein level genius)
2 - Douthat, pronounced "doosh-hat"
