The political drama around Jeffrey Epstein is just about wrapped up. Not because of anything the White House has done. It’s over because few things last forever in an era of frantic news cycles — and because Democrats and their friends in the media have dramatically overplayed their hands.
For weeks on end, the national news and D.C.’s political press were all about Epstein. We were promised that this was the moment the MAGA coalition would finally implode and that President Donald Trump was in for it this time.
More and more, the swirl of ‘Stop distracting from the files!’ sounds more like ‘Stop winning! We want to talk about the other thing instead!’
The coverage was always more about giddy Democrat wishcasting than reality, and with some slight course correction, the White House got ahead of the mini-tempest.
On Monday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) started receiving Department of Justice files he’d subpoenaed on the case and former Attorney General Bill Barr testified in a closed-door session that the president had never been implicated by anything in the case. Alternative media reported the story but didn’t dwell upon it. The right’s focus had shifted.
Democrats, however, have not moved on. Epstein was the first body blow they landed on the president essentially since the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, so it makes sense that they’d cling desperately to it. By now, though, it sounds desperate.
More and more, the swirl of “Stop distracting from the files!” sounds more like “Stop winning! We want to talk about the other thing instead!”
The first laugh-out-loud moment might have been when a writer for New York magazine’s Intelligencer vertical suggested that one reason the president might have been spotted on the roof the first week of August was “to distract us” from the files. The tongue-in-cheek (one hopes) deep dive on theories only rested on the idea that he was touring the building with East Wing reconstruction architect James McCrery (who was with him) as part of that project. Who’d have guessed?
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), clad in black tee and sport coat, somehow went farther on CNN Saturday, suggesting that the president meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to work on a Ukraine peace deal was actually “entirely about Donald Trump refusing to release the Epstein files and putting forward this scripted counterprogramming to that.” Truly amazing stuff.
So who is he even preaching to? Certainly not independent or undecided voters. As with so many Democrat narratives since Trump’s comeback victory, he’s talking to the white liberal women with Jack Smith bumper stickers and “In this house we believe …” signs in their front yards.
Granted, guys like Swalwell represent deep-blue California. Races in less friendly states and districts are coming in less than 15 months, though, so Democrats better think of a new act — and soon. Voters just aren’t buying tickets to the Epstein Show any longer.
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