1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

He’s baaaaaack…Jeffrey Epstein is back in the news as NYT White House reporters this week detailed how desperately worried the WH was last summer over the Epstein files. How they searched desperately for a way to look as if they were being transparent to appease the MAGA base. While also making sure the files stayed hidden. Here’s a good image from that read…in 2025 Trump’s top officials filed into the White House Situation Room. The same secure room where President Obama, VP Biden, Secretary of State Clinton and the president’s national security team, watched the raid that took out Osama bin Laden. A secure bunker where classified and high-stakes national security matters are discussed and decided. But in 2025, Trump’s most senior advisers had gathered — without him — to figure out how to regain some control over a pedophile scandal possibly involving the President. Veep Vance was so panicked he said release anything and everything. Which was an appropriate response for an administration touting their transparency. And innocence of anything untoward. But as we all know, his response had little to do with justice. And all to do with perceived political fallout from not releasing the files. Vance also floated a PR attempt to have Tucker Carlson interview Ghislaine Maxwell. In prison. The thought being that it might help the president if Maxwell was willing to state that Trump had not been part of any wrongdoing with Epstein. Judging from the various knee-jerk, reactionary, transparently stupid spitballing that went on, crisis management of a scandal involving a major pedophile turns out to not be so easy. But despite all the early panicking, the simple solution so far for any real accountability for Epstein co-conspirators is simply to just say no by ignoring lawful demands to release all the files. And it turns out this simple strategy works for most everything in the Trump administration. But just in case, Trump just said he would nominate Walter Joseph “Jay” Clayton, the US attorney for the SDNY to become the next director of national intelligence. He too lacks national security experience. But he has another metric more important to Trump: he has been part of the slow-walking of the release of the Epstein files. Other stuff this week. Another promise of end to Iran war. We the people snort. Wall Street celebrates. Iran says not so fast. Blah blah blah. Rinse. Repeat. Lastly, when asked how his constituents feel about Trump’s slush fund for 1/6/21 insurgents a MA Rep replied: “They think Trump is a corrupt son of a bitch who doesn't give a shit about them.” Any of you share that thought?