XPost: alt.politics.republicans, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, sac.politics
XPost: talk.politics.misc, law.court.federal

Trump’s otherwise terrific sixth all-hands Cabinet meeting yesterday was eclipsed by the shadow of a dead pervert. Mid-day, Michelle texted me the
short clip, saying only, “I don’t like this.” She meant she didn’t like
how President Trump handled the Epstein question. I’ll give you my
lawyer’s take.

First of all, it is already a dramatic improvement that a reporter was
freely allowed to ask the unscripted question at all; under Biden, there wouldn’t have been any questions. I give Trump partial credit for jumping
in and commenting.

Though the reporter’s delivery was awkwardly circuitous, he clearly asked
Pam Bondi two critical questions: (1) Was Jeffrey Epstein an asset of any
U.S. intelligence agency? (2) Why is a minute missing from the prison
video outside Epstein’s cell? Neither question suggested any wrongdoing,
cast blame, or even expressed skepticism.

Trump, with a quick apology to Bondi, immediately interrupted. Here’s his
full answer, delivered with the kind of incredulous exasperation of a mom answering a curious child’s 100th repetitive question about how the Sun
works right before saying, “from now on, ask your father”:

“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy has been talked
about for years. You are asking … we have taxes, this, and all of the
things, and are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable. (To Bondi:) Do you want to waste the time? You feel like answering? (To reporter:) I cannot believe you are asking a question on
Epstein on a time like this when we are having some of the greatest
success, and also tragedy, with what happened in Texas. It just seems like
a desecration. (To Bondi:) You go ahead.”

Trump’s unexpectedly aggressive response rubbed Michelle the wrong way.
And if you watch the clip, you’ll see what she meant when she said she
didn’t like it. Trump comes off as uncharacteristically defensive; his
delivery wildly overshot the mark. By labeling the two most often-asked questions on conservative social media “a desecration” unfairly implied
that the questions themselves were transgressive— but desecration of what? Epstein’s sacred memory? It was a misstep.

Trump’s answer sounded too much like Hillary’s infamous response to the Benghazi disaster. At this point, what does it matter? Let’s move on.

My take is simpler. Trump wasn’t deflecting; he was protecting Pam Bondi, buying her a little time, and giving her an out. In other words, he made
it possible for her to say, “I don’t want to waste time on that question.”
His aggressive defense suggests that none of this was Pam’s idea. To Pam’s credit, she insisted on answering.

Bondi, leaning forward in her chair (me: she wants to get this over with), first answered a question the reporter hadn’t asked, explaining about how, months ago, Fox had ‘misunderstood’ her answer about having the Epstein
client list on her desk. (me: he didn’t ask that question, but she’d
rehearsed the answer; she wanted to tell it; delivering the rehearsed
answer bought her some time and was self-soothing.)

She next answered another question the reporter didn’t ask, by explaining
that the ‘tens of thousands of videos’ she’d said DOJ had were “disgusting child porn” that would never be released under any circumstances. (me:
again, she’d practiced for this question and wanted to tell that answer.)

The two unprompted answers also felt defensive.

Only then, after answering two questions nobody had asked, Bondi got
around to the reporter’s first question, and didn’t answer:

“As for him (Epstein) being an agent, I have no knowledge of that, and we
can get back to you on that.”

I’ll bet you all my Bitcoin that nobody ever gets back to him on that, no matter how many times he emails Pam’s office. (Don’t plan for any
expensive vacations if you win; I missed the Bitcoin bus.)

Here’s my lawyer’s take on Pam’s non-answer: it actually showed she was
trying to be as honest as she could. It’s unreasonably unlikely that she
didn’t know about Epstein’s intelligence connections. She allegedly
reviewed the whole file; it was on her desk for Pete’s sake. By
deflecting, she was trying to avoid lying much. She could’ve just flatly
said no. Furthermore, if Epstein’s employment is classified (likely), then she’s legally prohibited from answering. She’s allowed to lie, but she
can’t betray any hint of the truth.

This, to me, was the tell. This was the question she hadn’t anticipated.
To her credit, Pam did directly address both questions, and didn’t
obfuscate by offering a rambling, incomprehensible story about her dead
uncle or her oil cancer.

But she did not deny that Jeffrey Epstein was a U.S. intelligence asset.

She wrapped by directly answering the reporter’s second question about the missing minute:

“And the minute missing from the video, we’re going to re-release the
video showing definitively that the video was not conclusive. However, the evidence prior to it was showing that he committed suicide. There was a
minute that was missing from the counter. What we learned from the prisons
is that every night they redo that video. It’s like from 1999. Every
night, the video is reset. And every night should have the same minute
missing, so we’re looking for that video to release that as well to show
the minute missing.”

Sounds reasonable. Let’s wait and see. And none of this changes a thing
from yesterday’s breakdown— except maybe to reinforce it.

Trump’s comments notwithstanding, the Epstein story is not meekly going to
go away. Yesterday, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino broke his post-memo
silence and posted this overly optimistic tweet:

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!j9- S!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsu bstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fae6fcc33-9bca-4497- 8b97-7a6cdbff4e28_1392x229.png

Oh, boy. Here are the top responses from the MAGA fire brigades:

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!pA3o!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto :good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post- media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F959a7cbe-78a5-46a4-8d5e- 5698c088b905_1443x1508.png

The angst in the comments was universal (as far as I had time to scroll),
but the anti-DOJ angst is not completely universal. Bongino’s tweet got
60K likes. And firebrand Matt Gaetz has so far ignored the story. Feisty Marjorie Taylor Greene did respond, but lamely, with only two muted tweets
—one polling whether folks think the Epstein evidence still exists,
another asking about Ghislaine’s little black book— and that’s it. House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan’s Twitter/X feed has not mentioned Epstein at
all.

I lacked time to check them all. But so far, it looks like the GOP is
standing down. Grok said, “there is no direct evidence from the provided sources or recent web searches that Congressional Republicans have
specifically called for hearings or investigations challenging the
Department of Justice’s (DOJ) memo on Jeffrey Epstein.” If you find one,
post it in the comments.

While not even close to all, an astonishing number of conservative
influencers —such as Charlie Kirk, Matt Walsh (on vacation, but still),
and Ben Shapiro— remained silent. On the other hand, Elon is having a
field day; but he has his own new problems, as you’ll see in a minute.

Altogether, it continues to be a very strange story.

https://floppingaces.net/most-wanted/the-question-that-made-trump-flinch- was-epstein-a-spy-and-whos-still-protecting-him/

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