I lean more towards #1 but want to believe in #2

The Trump Presidency 2.0
 

2 allows the industrial grift to keep going so many (most) involved in the commerce around it actually want it to keep being hidden.

A smaller set of people that actually can pay attention regularly (see my post about why most of middle America can’t pay attention to important policy decisions when voting) may want to see a list come out but only when reading a headline, or seeing a post, or hearing something about it but until that prompt hit them, they’re too busy trying to figure out the grocery list, how to get Susie to cheer tonight, and somehow fit in a shower.


If they could fully pay attention they’d be outraged that the president just threatened to strip a citizen of their citizenship because she’s outspoken.

Even though inconvenient, I’m going to have to find time between Susie’s cheer, a shower, and work, to get myself to DC to secure my Austrian passport which will allow me and the family to flee if the concentration camp in the Everglades gets more horrific and supported then it already is.

My brother has been pretty alarmist this whole time (he lives in Toronto) but when you step back and start seeing the correlation between what’s being done here and the slow creep towards a future that JimGa applauds, it’s hard to argue that a night of broken glass is so fantastical that it couldn’t happen here when we have camps, we have violence being used to deport those that look different and aren’t criminals, we have a president threatening to strip citizenship at his whim, we have a royalty/courts willing to allow anything to happen, we have a congress that are so cowtowed to the fuhrer that they support anything, we have an ideology that allows for cult-like adoration of a figurehead leader, etc etc that mirrors Germany on its run up to the Reich, that it seems pretty stupid not to be get prepared to leave if one has the opportunity because one thing that occurs on this potential transition to autocracy is they make it impossible for you to get your money out and they make it impossible to leave.

Scary times


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There is an option three though.

They said whatever they said to get elected and/or to rally their base while believing that there are not too many people willing to stop supporting them over something like a list.

I have no doubt that there is evidence that can and should be released that would put them back in the good graces of the supporters that are mad at them right now..

It's the Daily Mail so grain of salt, but they're claiming Maxwell wants to testify before Congress about what she knows.

Jeffrey Epstein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell is ready to reveal 'truth' of the pedophile client list, say insiders. So, why are Republicans blocking her? | Daily Mail Online

You can't make this shit up. Trump said "Putin fooled a lot of people, but he didnt fool me".

I'm pretty sure you're the only person he did fool.

I don't really know how relevant making the change is but I like it. A "small concession" (?) to the world?

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/15/trum...-football.html

But heck, if he's going to do that, it would be fantastic if he converted us 100% to the metric system. I know it'll take years, but let's just try again.

re: Epstein, interesting interview with Alan Dershowitz, one of his key attorneys. He answers most/all of the questions we've been tossing around here.

Access to this page has been denied

(1) The "list"

(2) Videotapes

(3) Mossad & CIA

(4) Suicide

So, client of Epstein and friend of Trump says there's no there there.

How racist is the Trump admin?

So racist they are going to incinerate 500 tons of calorie dense food rather than distribute it to starving people in third world countries.

Trump gonna start raging about interest rates and Jerome Powell again after the latest consumer price data came out suggesting inflation is on the rise.

He said he wore a towel while getting a massage from the child sex slave.

So Obama and Comey and Biden wrote the Epstein files,

which do not exist.

The Washington state republican party's official platform is that we should no longer be a democracy and we need to repeal the 17th ammendment.

Trump is apparently going to nuclear option to shift through narrative away from Epstein. He told GOP lawmakers hes going to fire Powell.

Eh, no better place to put this.

@michaelhobbes.bsky.social on Bluesky

"Our people know..."

(This is from Bari Weiss's -- that bastion of practical centrism! -- wife. Who...graduated from Columbia, using Mamdani as an example. Mamdani, who...did not get into Columbia.)

He didn't get in to Columbia, nor did he mark he was black on the application. He marked "African American" because he is a naturalized citizen who was born in Uganda. She has to add something blatantly not true to make it spicy.

Trump says Coke has promised to go back to cane sugar in its products. It is interesting that he wants US Coke to be Mexican Coke, but more than that, there is a lot of pretty big consequences to a change like that. First, how are all those corn states that are bright, bright red going to like him taking away a HUGE amount of their demand? Second. we don't grow enough cane sugar to meet demand now. We are going to have to greatly increase imports, which includes a large tariff now. Coke prices already insanely high going up even higher, while trade deficits continue to climb. I thought he wanted the US to not import as much?

The guy seems to be in deep mental decline so my guess is it'll just be Coke Throwback or something like every other soda has done over the years. I highly doubt they're going to change their formula now.

He's so gone at this point. Talking about how his uncle, who died in 1985, taught Ted Kaczynski and that he used to ask him about how he was as a student.

He also forgot he nominated Jerome Powell.

Stephen Miller seems to be President right now and they're letting Trump distract himself by letting him rant about tariffs. It's the equivalent of how they used to give his dad meaningless documents to sign to keep him busy when his mind was gone.

I'll just offer the comment that I've already made on my socials earlier. It'll likely cover my official position on the subject more than adquately.



Unless we jack up the sodium to match, these aren't going to magically taste like "Mexican Cokes" and I can't imagine Euell Gibbons Jr ... I mean RFK ... would ever go for that.

The Trump Presidency 2.0
 

The way Trumps talking tonight it looks like he’s trying you get ahead of the election results… I mean Epstein files since he knows he might lose.


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I feel like the current system is doing this by putting tariffs on sugar and giving massive subsidies to farmers to grow corn. Can't be bothered to look up why it's that way but my guess is the fact that primaries used to start in Iowa played a role.

Regardless, Coca-Cola came out and said it's fabricated, so it's not really an issue. Would have been an interesting experiment though if they ditched the handout and tariffs on sugar and see which companies made the switch and which companies stuck with what works. I know that when I've tried the sugar version of Mountain Dew, I didn't like it as much.

Everything is too far gone now and I know they're doing it for partisan reasons but I've always been down to repeal the 17th. We need more elitism and checks and balances now that the populists are winning.

Might have to scroll down to see the story. White House says Trump has Chronic Venous Insufficency after people noticed bruising on his hands and swelling in his ankles. Good thing we have real doctors still because the first story they went with was it was from shaking hands so much and a reaction to taking aspirin every day:


https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...source=bluesky

It sounds like the WSJ has a pretty big story coming out on Epstein and Trump which is why he's losing his mind the past few days. Rumor mill saying it involves a birthday card he sent to Epstein with a note that is pretty bad.

Just a moment...

None of that matters. His cult will never turn on him.

Good lord....

Inside the outline of the naked woman was a typewritten note styled as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein, written in the third person: https://t.co/2svwoBnEy3 pic.twitter.com/vx4W8swaar

— Politics & Poll Tracker �� (@PollTracker2024) July 17, 2025

I actually buy that he didn't write that. I'm sure he paid someone to do it for him.

They just announced that they are canceling Stephen Colbert's show. The highest rated late night show is being canceled to appease the orange man.

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A Murdoch company isn't running with this if it isn't legit. I doubt he personally wrote it so he's trying to get by on a technicality.

The biggest disconnect with MAGA on the Epstein stuff is that these people believe Trump is some ultra-smart guy that's 2-3 moves ahead of everyone while a the same time doubting that a guy that was close enough to Epstein to be called a best friend knew what was going on. This is despite the fact that he openly hinted at it multiple times.

I'm sure it's his signature. Sounds likely that he did the drawing. Maybe he wrote the lines, but paying someone else is his MO. I'm 100% sure it isn't the fake he says it is.

It won’t make a damn bit of a difference.

It will be an innocent joke between friends, a Biden/FBI plant, not real, or just will be explained away based on whatever technicality fits best and replaced by another outrage tomorrow.

Y’all really don’t listen. As long as he hurts the right people, nothing he does matters and he’s hurting more people they want to see hurt than anybody in history. It’s red meat for the people who don’t vote for him anyway and are sure “insert next thing here” will finally be the thing that makes the heathens see the light.

I don't know why people think someone else wrote it. That sounds just like pre-politics Trump. He was much different before Obama broke his brain. And he was well known for being a doodler.

Can't imagine a Murdoch publication would put this out if they weren't absolutely sure it was real.

They'll always be a cult, but he's very unpopular right now. He's not immune from public opinion.

Nate Silver has his approval at 43.8, which is quite a bit higher than Biden was and also his low point in his first term. He's more and more unpopular with people who don't like him and didn't vote for him and a relatively small number who did, but it's not going to make a damn bit of difference to anything. That number would get him elected again if the election was tomorrow with the same parameters.

We had protests that liberal news and social media feted as gamechangers and everyone couldn't believe the numbers that turned out in places they didn't expect and OMG things are changing. And 3 weeks later, it's like they never even happened. While he's got the Senate and the House and a Supreme Court that is very friendly to him and he might not even live to the next election, he's absolutely immune from public opinion.

There's a few things at play here. First, media still hasn't learned how to handle Trump. They get caught up trying to find little "gotcha" moments that really aren't very important. Those "gotchas" would have damaged previous presidents, but Trump is different. He isn't afraid to blatantly lie or change his story to make the media look bad to his supporters, who eat up anything he says. It happens so often that i find myself rolling my eyes at what they try to turn into a big story.

Because of the above, not enough time and attention is spent on the bigger picture stuff. Epstein can definitely do serious damage to him if the media and everyone doesn't get sidetracked and distracted by the next mistake he makes, lie he tells, or threat he makes. Enough information is already out there but right wing media won't report it so everyone else has to keep beating the drum on it. They can't treat it like a normal news cycle because Trump thrives on shifting that news cycle.

It's ironic you posted that on the day the highest rated talk host in the US got cancelled because the parent company is scared of getting their ass handed to them again for the slightest show of disloyalty.

Where is this mythical media that is going to handle Trump you speak of? At least any media that makes it into the homes of the 43 or so percent of Americans who don't have a negative opinion of him already.

Don't forget they also gave him like a $15 million bribe a little while back to help secure their merger.

Plus, for the GOP in general (going all the way back to Reagan) and MAGA in specific, the ends justify the means.

So when do they haul in Trump's doctor for lying about his health?

Wait, so he's not the same height and weight as Joe Burrow?

The Epstein stuff must be stinging bad because it's the first time I think he ever revealed something negative about his health.

But it also gives people something different to talk about. I assume he'll continue his "flood the timeline with distractions" bit with this as well.

Someone is getting tarriffed or bombed.

I'm not losing my mind on this one.

August 22 I get the Austrian passport which will be the gateway for the family to be able to leave if need be…

See Tulsi Gabbard comments today about prosecutions for treason among past government officials.

If some of the stuff were happening in other countries we’d be speaking about it differently.

Not planning to leave but if preparations are available then it would be stupid not to take them


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So now that Trump is suing him for 10 billion, any chance fox news drifts at all away from being the Trump Propoganda Network?

Absolutely not. Remember what happened when they correctly called Arizona for Biden? They still know being pro Trump is a ratings cow. The only way Fox ever stops being trumps cuck is when he dies and his kids take over. Or if someone buys the network.

This won't (or can't) happen if for no other reason than it's only older people who still watch cable news shows. CNN veered into Trump worship without being sued because of their ratings.

So I'm not up on my Murdoch family history-aren't his kids already battling over who will get Fox when Rupert finally dies? Any chance a more neutral/less conservative Murdoch owner takes over and makes changes?

Correct

Already gaslighting and calling out his supporters again but painting them as democrats because they’ll continue to cash for all of the raw data versus the administrations scrubbed releases on the Epstein topic.

I’m not sure how it ends but it certainly ends with the release of all of the information right and then a discounting of it by the administration as being a liberal hoax.

Will the adherents buy it?

I think he will try to make money off it before he releases it-for $99 you too can have the Epstein Files!

Poor Murkowski got played and Trump is canceling a lot of her deal to vote for the budget. When will people learn that he can't be rusted?

Thoughts and prayers

Epstein has Trump so rattled we're back to Hillary's emails. Bondi is releasing those files.

Nothing has ever rattled him this much. They're throwing everything at the media to try to shift the news cycle. So far they've tried Obama led a years long coup, numerous Biden stories, Trump's health, more tariffs, floating the idea of firing Powell, and killing the Washington Commanders new stadium. Probably some other stuff I've forgotten about.

EDIT: Forgot about the MLK files

They're adjourning Congress early to avoid having to vote on the Massie bill this sessiob. Good lord just how bad are those files.

Maybe if the pressure builds up they'll release stuff on aliens or something cool.

Sounds like the Dems should simply run on releasing the Epstein Files as their main agenda item for the 2026 election cycle and then actually follow through on it....which they won't lol

Always should have but it was more important to protect the Clinton name than win elections.

So the new thing is they fired the prosecutor on the case and will have Trump's personal attorney interview Maxwell. Not sure what Maxwell has to gain outside of a commutation or pardon which definitely seems in play.

I think the Maxwell family tradition would be to "fall off a boat".

It's the same play as they tried with Zelensky during Trump's first term.

Something I just can’t wrap my brain around.

If there is damning evidence against Trump in these files, why weren’t they released in the run up to the 2024 election?

Twenty years ago everyone freaked out about a GOP plan to redistrict in between censuses. Now it's just normal business for them to take as many seats as they can get away with.

I really don't see how our democracy returns to normal now that so many things are acceptable.

Isn't the prevailing thought that there are some big time democrats in there too?

Democrats can do the same thing. It was done in Illinois. New York and California refuse. Lot of Democrats just don't care about winning elections.

Bill Clinton Speaks at 2024 Democratic National Convention

There definitely was/is. More, there a large donors to both parties in there. Even the people that aren't directly in the file have interest in not shutting off the money tap from some of those guys.

Yeah, it is not just Clinton.

It's the rich/politico version of the Catholic priest scandal. We'll never see the real list.

Yeah, I mean most of Congress is bought by AIPAC.

Ok, so I guess dumb question 2.

If they know lots of Dems or Dem donors are there, why are they acting all outraged that the list isn’t being released? Do they think the public is dumb enough to not see through this?

Well, yeah.

So the foundation for this being such a strong issue with MAGA goes back to pizzagate and QANON. Many on the right believe politicians and celebrities on the left are pedophiles and child traffickers. They may think there could be a small number of right leaning people on any Epstein list, but this is mostly about outing dems. Bondi and Patel were all on board for releasing everything to do with Epstein until they actually got their hands on those files. With reports out there that the FBI was told to flag any mentions of Trump in the files, his past relationship with Epstein, things he's publicly said, etc, it's pretty clear why.

The left largely stayed out of it but they're speaking up now simply because they see it as a weakness for Trump and something that's splitting, or has the potential to, split his base. The dem establishment has seemingly given up on beating the GOP with ideas so now it's about attacking a very real Trump weakness, but they can't even get on the same page there. Hell, Pelosi said the President possibly being involved in one of the largest child trafficking operations in modern US history is a distraction from tariffs and other failed Trump policies.

I think there is a divide among the Democrats based on the new and old guard. You're seeing a lot of the newer, younger folks calling for the release because they don't have ties to the Clintons or some of the prominent figures from that time. Then you have the Pelosi faction which has sort of fought against it.

But at the end of the day, it's not going to be released. Not anything related to wealthy donors or powerful figures. Especially not his ties to foreign or domestic intelligence. Maybe they'll toss some useless scraps out to appease the masses. So it's a risk-free way of taking a shot at Trump and Republicans.

That Medhi Hasan Jubilee episode is incredibly frustrating and depressing. Where did they find these renobs?

Here's why Biden and Trump cannot just release the files:


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...mp/ar-AA1IRx1B

This is cute. Our King/Presidents can do whatever they want.

Totally not a problem going in to hurricane season.

nytimes.com

People that get lost in a storm needs to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

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Boatstraps?

What's crazy is apparently some of the people that debated him said shit so vile and racist the footage couldn't be used. One guy's entire time debating Hasan was cut. That's wild considering one guy was proudly a Nazi.

What's crazy is this isn't new, Conservatives have just embraced shame as a virtue and are fine saying this out loud now.

And there you have it. WSJ has a source somewhere deep in DOJ.

wsj.com

Paywall free:

archive.is

I mean, I don't know how even the deepest of all MAGA cultists can't see how obvious it is that he is doing all he can to prevent the full files from being revealed.

The far worst part is how complicit the GOP as a whole are in helping him cover it up.

Insert the "They would be mad if they could read" gif.

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Doesn't this just pertain to court records? That makes sense since many of those cases are civil and Maxwell is still appealing.

The FBI has mountains of evidence from the Epstein case that can be released. There is no reason why they can't release who was "funding" him. We know that there were tons of financial transactions between him and others. No reason why they can't explain what he did with his money which is a mystery to everyone on Wall Street. And no reason why they can't tell us his association with foreign intelligence, we out spies all the time.

Then of course, explain why there are no other arrests. We know that there were massive payouts to child victims by not only Epstein but banks who facilitated it. People knew. Why is Leon Black not under arrest? The guy gave Epstein almost $200 million for something.

Lutnick said today that the TikTok sale will be a direct purchase by the government. That's one way to kill it.

So on today's episode if you can't make this shit up, it looks like Trump's unabomber story was plagiarized from a story Epstein used to tell.

All indications are they are about to either pardon or commute the sentence of Ghislaine Maxwell. They are pushing out a "victim" narrative for her, and every expectation she is going to be released and say it was all a prominent Democrat set up. And of course the cult of lemmings will eat ot up.

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This was obvious once Trump couldn't manage the narrative.

It's the exact same play as the one Zelensky refused to do.

People should really look at what happened during the Maxwell trial. She wasn't just some accomplice, she openly participated in the rapes and groomed the children. She's just as bad as Epstein.

Trump is appointing a loyalty monitor for CBS. Who needs the first amendment?


FCC to Appoint a Babysitter to Make Sure CBS Isn't Anti-Trump

The rapist, pedophile felon is going to visit a golf course in Scotland

This is hilarious seeing how Faux News ADMITTED in court to lying and making things up and presenting it as “news”

Don't read while eating cookies.

Attention Required! | Cloudflare

This could backfire in a big way, since the pardon isn't reversible. He has nothing on her if she doesn't hold to the deal.

It's a Politico article on a WSJ poll so can't see entire results. But basically, not good news for Dems.

Just a moment...

But a hopeful sign


I'd like to get some semblance of balance and have Dems control at least House or Senate in 2026. Best bet will be if Trump crashes the economy & markets on tariffs but that's no sure thing. So, although I can see Dems winning net seats, the lack of unity on platform/messaging, old/new guard, focusing on less important stuff etc. is going to be problematic.

****

The article didn't say anything about illegal immigration. But found this blurb in NYP on same poll ...

Democrats' approval rating craters to 35-year low: WSJ poll

This seems contradictory to other polls that showed greater negative views on how Trump is handling illegal immigrants. It's probably the wording of the question.