Let's Stop Beating Around The Bush, Part II
We shouldn't fear the truth, or the word impeachment. Even on a generous read, the Epstein scandal proves Trump is unfit.
Friday afternoon I wrote and published this special edition of the newsletter.
As it turns out, I could have held it until Monday, lightened my load a bit this week, but as the news that day unfolded, I started thinking time was of the essence.
A day earlier Donald Trump had taken the conspicuous and improper step of sending his deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, currently imprisoned for orchestrating Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation. Blanche interviewed her again Friday. Amid all this unusual activity, Trump implied he might pardon Maxwell—in his mob-like way, he simply refused to forswear a pardon for a child predator, averring only that he could do it if he so desired.
Pieces were falling into place. Blanche was trying to collect false or dubious testimony from Maxwell, clearing Trump of speculation that he participated in child-sex crimes with her or Epstein or both. Trump was tempting her with the possibility of escaping a decades-long prison sentence. It seemed possible, if not likely, that they might make moves in this direction over the weekend.
So I argued Democrats should take the next logical step in pressing the Epstein matter. Instead of remaining fixed on the question of who was lying when, they should make the obvious inference that Donald Trump and the GOP are engaged in a coverup. And since the coverup is underway in plain sight, they should start making the case that there should be consequences for whatever behavior he’s trying to conceal, as well as for the fact that he’s trying to conceal it.
I suspect one reason the Epstein discourse hasn’t inched in this direction is that Democrats are terrified of the “i” word. The proper remedy for a president who grants clemency to a child-sex criminal to bury a political scandal is impeachment. If it turns out Trump really was mixed up with Epstein and Maxwell as they trafficked teenage girls, the remedy is also impeachment. But Democrats don’t want to get caught within earshot of that word, so they can’t really say what they think the consequences for all this should be.
But another is that it’s difficult for people in media and political leadership to openly discuss the implications of what we seem to be witnessing. Saying it out loud is genuinely unsettling. We’re talking about the possibility that the president of the United States raped children. The mere fact that we can’t be certain he didn’t do this is unsettling in itself. But we should stop tiptoeing around what we’re really trying to discover—we’re much less likely to get answers to the questions that really need answering if we’re too squeamish to ask them.
Imagine the Epstein case file were to leak, or Trump’s DOJ felt compelled to release it. Then imagine that after careful review, it turns out multiple Justice Departments were right not to charge anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell—not because the files don’t describe incredible depravity, but because most of it’s hearsay. No videos. No confessions. Just rumors and unprovable accusations. Taken altogether, though, the evidence highly suggestive of the likelihood that Epstein pimped young women and maybe even children to at least some of his closest “friends,” maybe including Trump.
If this is what Trump is covering up, what does it tell us? I think it points to the possibility that Trump himself might not know exactly what he did, when, where, or with whom. That he hewed to an understanding that it was best not to ask too many questions, and, through Epstein, had sex with very young women without ever asking them or Epstein or anyone else how old they were. If all the facts—names, dates, and encounters—could be pieced back together, maybe it would turn out that Trump never violated the law. But even Trump himself can’t say for certain.
This, somehow, is a generous set of assumptions.
And yet it is utterly disqualifying for the presidency.
I am quite confident that Joe Biden could assert with complete confidence that as an adult he never had sex with a teenage girl. Same Barack Obama. Same George W. Bush. Bill Clinton, less so, but he’s at least denied it!
“I had always thought Epstein was odd but had no inkling of the crimes he was committing,” Clinton wrote in a post-presidency memoir.
As far as I can tell, Trump has never said anything like this—he’s instead called it a hoax, accusing Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of forging the Epstein files. He said Epstein “was never a big factor in terms of life,” and that he “never had the privilege” of visiting Epstein’s island bordello.
Trump has told at least three tales about why his friendship with Epstein ended. He has suggested it was because Epstein was a creep, but also that they fell out over real estate, alighting finally this week on the story that Epstein “stole people that worked for me.”
And of course, Trump has no compunction about lying. Even if he offered an airtight denial, who could sincerely credit it at this point?
That ought to be enough. “Is absolutely dead certain he’s never raped a child” should really be a bare-minimum qualification for public service. It’s only been a few months since Matt Gaetz was driven from Congress under suspicion of trafficking and having sex with a teenager. Trump tellingly nominated him to be attorney general, before Senate Republicans shot the idea down.
This fear of the “i” word paralyzed Democratic oversight efforts in 2019 and 2020.
Democrats were quite clear about this before they took power. In 2018 Adam Schiff primed the anti-Trump majority for disappointment with a New York Times op-ed called Democrats: Don’t Take the Bait on Impeachment.
“[I]f impeachment is seen by a substantial part of the country as merely an effort to nullify an election by other means, there will be no impeachment, no matter how high the crime or serious the misdemeanor,” he wrote. “Democrats should not take the bait. Let President Trump arouse his voters as he will, while Democrats continue to focus on the economy, family and a return to basic decency.”
Democratic leaders anticipated Republicans would veto conviction at an impeachment trial, so they argued the party should relinquish many tools of accountability. After all, with their misgivings about impeachment so front of mind, how could they have vigorously investigated Trump’s spree of high crimes and misdemeanors? Wouldn’t that just obligate them to do the very thing they’d hoped to avoid?
Now, though, a scandal is unfolding long before the midterms. Democrats lack the power to begin impeachment proceedings. The best they can do is force the House to vote on an impeachment resolution—and I believe they should. More importantly, though, they have the power to articulate standards, and force Republicans to explain why their standards are so much lower: If Trump can’t be certain that his turpitude didn’t lead him into Jeffrey Epstein’s web of criminality, he should resign from office. If he doesn’t resign, Republicans should impeach him. If he grants clemency to Maxwell, they should impeach him. If they won’t, they are morally complicit.
It’s a freebie. It should be easy to say because it is correct, and creates no hard choices. It’s also obvious once you say out loud what the word “coverup” in this case refers to. Let’s start there.
This is (forgive my geekishness) the "Ash Move": in "Alien," when the infant creature bursts from John Hurt's chest and a few of the crew pick up weapons, Ash — the "science officer" who's actually a company plant working to preserve the specimen — shouts "Don't touch it! Don't touch it!" and the crew instinctively withdraw at the sound of his authoritative voice, so the tiny creature runs away and soon they're all dead except for a single survivor.
Every time MAGA is vulnerable or Trump is vulnerable, we're told not to attack. Nancy "Impeachment is off the table" Pelosi says "We want a strong Republican party" or "this is a distraction." Our MAGA relatives must never be made to feel shame or remorse; we must protect their feelings by not insulting them. Trump should not be crudely mocked on "South Park" because we "shouldn't lower the discourse to their level." The Epstein scandal really means that Democrats should "focus on kitchen table issues."
They're not actually androids put there by "the company" to protect the villains, but they might as well be.
The logic of Democrats about impeachment only makes sense in Washington. "If the public views impeachment as overturning the election, then we cannot do it." Or, here's a thought, Democrats. Be leaders in the common understanding of every day people. If the public has a misguided or incomplete understanding of impeachment, then undertake to change the public's mind. That would be leadership. Democrats' failure to engage based on some sort of procedural checkmate mindset, perhaps derived from too many years, in Washington is killing this country.
This weird aversion Democrats have to mixing it up in the political arena by forcefully and righteously making a case that the American people will hear and understand is probably the main reason the Party has lower approval ratings than Donald Trump. People respect the man in the arena because of his integrity and courage. He gets in there and throws some punches even if he is overmatched.
Democrats look like they are coming to the voters and saying, no we can't step into the arena because Republicans will hit us. Yes, Democrats they will. But y'all can and should hit back.