Note: this article was written before the murder of Charlie Kirk but published afterwards
I took a little break from posting over the Spring. Since none of my readers are paid subscribers, I didn’t think they’d mind (or even notice). I will admit that simply scanning the headlines to see if something major happened, but not really paying attention to all the other noise was a welcome respite. But posts I was seeing on LinkedIn of all places sucked me back into the game of politics, at least temporarily.
It seems that when Elon Musk’s and Donald Trump’s bromance ended in June and Musk posted that he was certain that Donald Trump’s name would be listed on Jeffrey Epstein’s client list, he opened the door for an entirely new narrative that anti-Trumpers would immediately latch onto. To add fuel to the fire, the Department of Justice announced just a few weeks after Musk’s bombshell that their investigation was over. There is no client list. Epstein did commit suicide. Case closed, right?
Hardly. The sudden and mysterious nature of the end of the investigation, and especially its timing, only made matters worse for the administration. They had lost control of the news cycle – something Trump rarely does. So the administration did what every administration in the modern era has done to change the narrative – they released news of their own. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced that she had new information that proved that the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign had conspired to manufacture information that suggested that Russia interfered with the 2016 election and that Putin favored Trump over Clinton and perhaps even “had something on him.” Gabbard went so far as to suggest that Obama himself, along with many others, deserve to be prosecuted and go to prison over their actions.
How does someone who tries to follow More Spock’s philosophy of not allowing emotion to impact one’s analysis interpret these events?
With regard to Trump and Epstein, it seems logical that candidate Trump would not have pushed to release the files if he knew his name was in them. According to the Wall Street Journal, he found out in May that it was. MAGA supporters will point to this as evidence that Trump wasn’t a participant in the pedophilia, etc. But the obvious coverup keeps the narrative alive. I suspect that like JFK and Roswell and so many other government-related conspiracy narratives, the Epstein files will live on for decades.
With regard to Obama, et al. Dirty politics is as American as apple pie. In the first truly contested Presidential election in 1796, John Adams’ Federalists published pieces that said Thomas Jefferson was an atheist and should he win, churches would be destroyed and morality erode. Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans responded by saying that Adams desired to be the king of America and secretly was negotiating with England to make that happen.
In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes faced Samuel Tilden. Hayes was known as a tee-totaler – didn’t drink alcohol at all. Yet Tilden’s camp released the bombshell that Hayes had gotten drunk and shot his own mother. The Hayes camp responded by announcing that Tilden, a bachelor, had contracted an STD from a prostitute.
Thomas Jefferson’s hatchet man, James Callendar, actually went to jail for his lies about Adams. Should Obama likewise go to jail for his dirty tricks? Absolutely not! It seems that we crossed a line during and after the first Trump administration where both sides are much more amenable to prosecuting their political enemies rather than simply persecuting them. At least a dozen Trump associates have been convicted of crimes while only one (General David Petraeus) of Obama’s inner circle was ever convicted. This is not to suggest that none of Trump’s people deserved to be convicted, nor that more of Obama’s should have been. My concern is more about the seemingly increasing desire to see people on the opposite side of the aisle go to prison while defending the people on our side even when their actions are indefensible.
Trump’s revenge against the Clinton/Obama machine was winning again in 2024. That should have been enough. Democrats revenge against the MAGA movement should be focused on winning the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidency. That should be enough. Just as More Spock doesn’t believe outlawing abortion is the “win” for the pro-life side, and outlawing guns is not the “win” for the gun control crowd, imprisoning political opponents is not the “win” in a true democratic republic.