"A party actively engaged in shaping opinion can make the public blame the president for an oil disaster he had nothing to do with; a party that shirks these obligations can inadvertently help a dishonest president brush off a credible allegation of child rape."
This on stilts on acid from Hell. Dems have to stop asking the public how it feels and reacting in response to that. They should TELL the public how THEY feel (and, by implication, how the public should feel), and offer leadership to respond accordingly. It's not complicated or subtle. And fa chrissakes, we're talking about child rape. If that, with regard to a POTUS (or anyone else), isn't "salient," what is? Or do they need more than forty years of Republican bad faith and mendacity to finally really get mad?
To me this seems even worse than child rape. Ever hear of sex magic? Those people drew power from the life force of young girls to power their other manipulative shenanigans. It was always about power and control. Basically - black magic. The vastness and depth of the web of people involved in this thing is huge and while I'm not an internet sleuth, there are more than a few independent journalists (including Roger Sollenberger) and citizen journalists who have found far more than just the one story cited in this piece.
Article after article (rightly) talks about how most Dems need to work much harder at shaping public opinion but doesn’t really answer the question of how we get them to internalize this.
It appears to me too many remain too scared of offending some random voters to factually and clearly state what’s going on with this regime and the GOP, and not just as it pertains to Epstein.
The so called MSM isn’t going to do the heavy lifting for Dems the way they do for the GOP, Democrats are going to need to force them to report on it.
The MSM could be maneuvered into putting gimlet attention on the corruption and perfidy of the administration (and its acolytes) were a Congressional Democrat, or a group of them, J’accuse the degradation of the EPA and public infrastructure that results in the pollution of the Potomac (MAPA), the flagrantly dishonest assertion that the Epstein Files contain no evidence of wrongdoing by Trump**, and the rampant public grift by the president and his family. Say it loudly and factually again and again and again.
Khanna and Massie et al did all the stuff to get us where we are and now have the whale harpooned. So now they’re going to tiptoe around? Let’s hope not.
If Democrats cannot find a way to harness and ride the horses of the apocalypse this president and his party have placed into their hands, they have failed at such a fundamental level that they should be barred from public life.
"Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall
For me, the chief error Trump made re Epstein was campaigning on the issue. This worked since the Clinton era through the 2024 election, because too many voters assumed that the Democrat-liberal-hippie-feminist-gay blob was the sole source of “sexual immorality” in the body politic. This has never been true and, increasingly, this has been recognized, but Dems must not let it peter out. So I agree with Brian Beutler here.
But we need to look a little at our side of this. Trump was nominally a Democrat when he palled around with Epstein. One of our side’s most iconic grassroots orgs, MoveOn, was literally named out of a desire to “move on” from the Lewinsky scandal and “get back to the ‘real issues’”. I remember thinking during the Lewinsky scandal, why can’t he just keep it in his pants? But Dems did not for the most part go that way. Moving On didn’t work.
I think the “Epstein Class” meme is the right meme for our time. And it’s also true.
Suspect Trump fears a Democratic Congress most because of it's potential power to drive the narrative and command attention (salience) with investigations, hearings, and 'message' legislation. After all, he's got a good idea about how he would use it, he's the expert, even among Republicans.
The Biden Administration was extremely frustrating in this respect. Biden isn't Trump, who only thinks of commanding attention, but did more of this than he's now given credit for, notably walking a UAW picket line and having its president, Shawn Fain, as a guest at the next SOTU. He did attend a lot of groundbreakings, as he promised Republicans he would. None of it achieved "salience", in part because MSM was, let's face it, mostly actively hostile, but also because he got little to no help from other Democrats.
The biggest messaging failure was on "inflation", which should have been made "greedflation" from the spring of 2022 on, when there was strong evidence both that that's what it was, and that a majority believed that's what it was . But there were no hearings then featuring Katie Porter and her whiteboard, leading to legislation that the House could pass, and Senate Republicans filibuster, thereby taking ownership of this decisive issue. Harris' proposal for anti gouging law for groceries (remember?) was too little,,way too late. Who's to blame isn't clear, too many Democrats still have excessive deference to "markets", but their inability to grasp this opportunity to shape public perception is likely the major reason. After all, sometimes the truth didn't actually matter, does it? Republicans peove that all the time. In this case, Economic Policy Institute found 51% price rises were going to increased profits in spring of 2022, but a Democratic legislator didn't have to accept that to see and seize on the political opportunity. Grave and cinsequential malpractice.not to.
Can you send this to all the Democrats that have the loudest voices for the people, maybe a refresher on what started this greed oh high prices and who benefited.
This. It ALL boils down to this here sentence you wrote.
THIS
👇🏻
“The mere fact that we can’t be certain he didn’t do this is unsettling in itself.”
We cannot rule out that Trump engaged in sex with an underage female. Sex with a GIRL. Sexually assaulting a MINOR. We all know the man couldn’t keep his pants zipped back in the day. His adultery is well documented. His affairs are well documented, Trump himself promoted them to the press. His fanning around just barely legal females at Mar-a-Lago, and leering at teen girls is well documented. His sexual assaults are well documented.
He is also a convicted rapist. And he was Epstein’s Wing Man in Palm Beach and NYC.
Brian, I know you said Jule Brown doesn't buy the William Sasha Riley interviews, but have you listened to them? (At least listen and draw your own conclusion). I did, and I believe him for several reasons: 1) he was not rehearsed 2) he was really searching his memory, and if he didn't remember anything, he didn't remember it 3 )he specifically named names that were in the Epstein files BEFORE they were released, which to me offers additional credibility. 4) What he says he did to Trump, definitely explains why he needs to wear diapers, and I can't imagine anyone making that up, either. At least listen to them. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNBQenti5B4CRp4eJ-WIsf5it4HLZ4Ugg
I do Not understand how Cheeto's involvement w/ Epstein is not a line in the sand for anyone, esp the Repubs. I Not understand why Dems don't seem to be doing anything abt impeachment (Are they working behind the scenes? Are they building a stronger case than last time [god knows, they have more than enough to impeach, convict, & remove his smelly self]?) Thank goodness the courts have held up (mostly), but it's hard to see any progress against this bloated, soul-sucking, money grabbing, king of crime. I know the media has now been taken over by the "Dark Side", so it's not reliable - but for once, I'd like to see more than Al Green out there yelling & hollering abt the orange fool. Btw, why does Substack carry more reliable news information than all of the major media??? I feel like I'm screaming into the void &/or preaching to the choir, but there's not even an echo back. No wonder we're all depressed. Sometimes it takes Christina talks or Naughty Nana Doez on YouTube to pull me out (these 2 women YouTubers have no idea how many people they've helped to see clearly & laugh at the absurdity - nope, I'm not in advertising 😂, they are truly wonderful).
Call Todd Blanche to testify. Did he discuss it with Maxwell in his interview with her as DAG? Tough call if he did: perjure or try to make a laugh-test claim of attorney client privilege?
"A party actively engaged in shaping opinion can make the public blame the president for an oil disaster he had nothing to do with; a party that shirks these obligations can inadvertently help a dishonest president brush off a credible allegation of child rape."
This on stilts on acid from Hell. Dems have to stop asking the public how it feels and reacting in response to that. They should TELL the public how THEY feel (and, by implication, how the public should feel), and offer leadership to respond accordingly. It's not complicated or subtle. And fa chrissakes, we're talking about child rape. If that, with regard to a POTUS (or anyone else), isn't "salient," what is? Or do they need more than forty years of Republican bad faith and mendacity to finally really get mad?
To me this seems even worse than child rape. Ever hear of sex magic? Those people drew power from the life force of young girls to power their other manipulative shenanigans. It was always about power and control. Basically - black magic. The vastness and depth of the web of people involved in this thing is huge and while I'm not an internet sleuth, there are more than a few independent journalists (including Roger Sollenberger) and citizen journalists who have found far more than just the one story cited in this piece.
Article after article (rightly) talks about how most Dems need to work much harder at shaping public opinion but doesn’t really answer the question of how we get them to internalize this.
It appears to me too many remain too scared of offending some random voters to factually and clearly state what’s going on with this regime and the GOP, and not just as it pertains to Epstein.
The so called MSM isn’t going to do the heavy lifting for Dems the way they do for the GOP, Democrats are going to need to force them to report on it.
The MSM could be maneuvered into putting gimlet attention on the corruption and perfidy of the administration (and its acolytes) were a Congressional Democrat, or a group of them, J’accuse the degradation of the EPA and public infrastructure that results in the pollution of the Potomac (MAPA), the flagrantly dishonest assertion that the Epstein Files contain no evidence of wrongdoing by Trump**, and the rampant public grift by the president and his family. Say it loudly and factually again and again and again.
Khanna and Massie et al did all the stuff to get us where we are and now have the whale harpooned. So now they’re going to tiptoe around? Let’s hope not.
Also this reminds me of the 2000 election, when the implications were too enormous for the media to grapple with.
If Democrats cannot find a way to harness and ride the horses of the apocalypse this president and his party have placed into their hands, they have failed at such a fundamental level that they should be barred from public life.
"Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin'...."
For me, the chief error Trump made re Epstein was campaigning on the issue. This worked since the Clinton era through the 2024 election, because too many voters assumed that the Democrat-liberal-hippie-feminist-gay blob was the sole source of “sexual immorality” in the body politic. This has never been true and, increasingly, this has been recognized, but Dems must not let it peter out. So I agree with Brian Beutler here.
But we need to look a little at our side of this. Trump was nominally a Democrat when he palled around with Epstein. One of our side’s most iconic grassroots orgs, MoveOn, was literally named out of a desire to “move on” from the Lewinsky scandal and “get back to the ‘real issues’”. I remember thinking during the Lewinsky scandal, why can’t he just keep it in his pants? But Dems did not for the most part go that way. Moving On didn’t work.
I think the “Epstein Class” meme is the right meme for our time. And it’s also true.
Suspect Trump fears a Democratic Congress most because of it's potential power to drive the narrative and command attention (salience) with investigations, hearings, and 'message' legislation. After all, he's got a good idea about how he would use it, he's the expert, even among Republicans.
The Biden Administration was extremely frustrating in this respect. Biden isn't Trump, who only thinks of commanding attention, but did more of this than he's now given credit for, notably walking a UAW picket line and having its president, Shawn Fain, as a guest at the next SOTU. He did attend a lot of groundbreakings, as he promised Republicans he would. None of it achieved "salience", in part because MSM was, let's face it, mostly actively hostile, but also because he got little to no help from other Democrats.
The biggest messaging failure was on "inflation", which should have been made "greedflation" from the spring of 2022 on, when there was strong evidence both that that's what it was, and that a majority believed that's what it was . But there were no hearings then featuring Katie Porter and her whiteboard, leading to legislation that the House could pass, and Senate Republicans filibuster, thereby taking ownership of this decisive issue. Harris' proposal for anti gouging law for groceries (remember?) was too little,,way too late. Who's to blame isn't clear, too many Democrats still have excessive deference to "markets", but their inability to grasp this opportunity to shape public perception is likely the major reason. After all, sometimes the truth didn't actually matter, does it? Republicans peove that all the time. In this case, Economic Policy Institute found 51% price rises were going to increased profits in spring of 2022, but a Democratic legislator didn't have to accept that to see and seize on the political opportunity. Grave and cinsequential malpractice.not to.
Can you send this to all the Democrats that have the loudest voices for the people, maybe a refresher on what started this greed oh high prices and who benefited.
Trump inncocent. No allegations of wrongdoing.
D'oh, they got this all screwed up.
Trump inncocent? No! Allegations of wrongdoing.
This. It ALL boils down to this here sentence you wrote.
THIS
👇🏻
“The mere fact that we can’t be certain he didn’t do this is unsettling in itself.”
We cannot rule out that Trump engaged in sex with an underage female. Sex with a GIRL. Sexually assaulting a MINOR. We all know the man couldn’t keep his pants zipped back in the day. His adultery is well documented. His affairs are well documented, Trump himself promoted them to the press. His fanning around just barely legal females at Mar-a-Lago, and leering at teen girls is well documented. His sexual assaults are well documented.
He is also a convicted rapist. And he was Epstein’s Wing Man in Palm Beach and NYC.
Brian, I know you said Jule Brown doesn't buy the William Sasha Riley interviews, but have you listened to them? (At least listen and draw your own conclusion). I did, and I believe him for several reasons: 1) he was not rehearsed 2) he was really searching his memory, and if he didn't remember anything, he didn't remember it 3 )he specifically named names that were in the Epstein files BEFORE they were released, which to me offers additional credibility. 4) What he says he did to Trump, definitely explains why he needs to wear diapers, and I can't imagine anyone making that up, either. At least listen to them. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNBQenti5B4CRp4eJ-WIsf5it4HLZ4Ugg
I do Not understand how Cheeto's involvement w/ Epstein is not a line in the sand for anyone, esp the Repubs. I Not understand why Dems don't seem to be doing anything abt impeachment (Are they working behind the scenes? Are they building a stronger case than last time [god knows, they have more than enough to impeach, convict, & remove his smelly self]?) Thank goodness the courts have held up (mostly), but it's hard to see any progress against this bloated, soul-sucking, money grabbing, king of crime. I know the media has now been taken over by the "Dark Side", so it's not reliable - but for once, I'd like to see more than Al Green out there yelling & hollering abt the orange fool. Btw, why does Substack carry more reliable news information than all of the major media??? I feel like I'm screaming into the void &/or preaching to the choir, but there's not even an echo back. No wonder we're all depressed. Sometimes it takes Christina talks or Naughty Nana Doez on YouTube to pull me out (these 2 women YouTubers have no idea how many people they've helped to see clearly & laugh at the absurdity - nope, I'm not in advertising 😂, they are truly wonderful).
What don't you understand
Superb!
Giving “someday we’ll show America that it’s no better than us”
Call Todd Blanche to testify. Did he discuss it with Maxwell in his interview with her as DAG? Tough call if he did: perjure or try to make a laugh-test claim of attorney client privilege?
If Dems take the house they should definitely call Merrick Garland to testify as well. What did he know and when did he know it?
Good idea.