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I don’t like this narrative. I think he would still be overreaching federal powers even without Epstein.
It is both. Use a thing you wanted to do anyway to distract from a crisis. It's just an optimization, really: if you are going to have to do something as a distraction it may as well be something that you intended for all along rather than something that you don't want to do because it is a more effective distraction. If it weren't it would be easier to see that it was in fact a distraction and now you have one more thing you wanted anyway.
I'm with you, it's almost like that has become another distraction where they know in the end, it won't matter. Meanwhile I can barely keep up with the wild executive orders based on outdated laws. Someone is just pulling the strings.
Miller, Bannon, Vought and Thiel would be my top four puppet masters. Trump only believes in himself, and they make use of that to pursue their agendas.
it can easily be and quite likely is both at the same time.
Trump's voting base don't care about overreaching federal powers, they care about epstein. You are not going to turn any new demographic to your side with this nuanced civil liberties narrative, which has been cried many times before.

"Epstein didn't kill himself" is the perfect meme to destroy confidence in trump.

The latest polling disagrees. The ministry of truth has been hard at work and 47% of conservatives now say they would still support Trump if he was found to be a part of Epstein's minor sex trafficking. 26% "don't know" what they would think (i.e. would still support him).

So... The window has been moved completely off of the house. Raping children is actually acceptable among the MAGA base and Epstein is no longer a concern for them. Woops.

To be fair, polling bias applies. Probably not that high, but still. Even among die-hard, that's bad.

Um…Is any one of note in public still talking about that? Way way out of the news cycle now.
Really? I saw news about it just today.

It's never dropped of my news, from him moving Maxwell to a minimum security prison, to questions about whether he'll pardon her, to the signed letter with illustrations he wrote for Epstein's birthday.

I don't think the world will ever forget, certainly my social circles and social media are still buzzing with it.

In many ways it's more damning than watergate, though people are debating whether to call it Epsteingate or Pedogate.

Yeah it's been hard for it to leave the news cycle when there are new developments still happening all the time. Latest one being a federal judge denying the request to unseal the transcripts for cases relating to Ghislaine Maxwell. And at least going by Ground News, seems to have been widely covered by outlets today.

https://ground.news/article/judge-rejects-unsealing-ghislain...

Meh. DC federal takeover and Trump/Putin Alaska are the dominant news stories on both CNN and MSNBC. There was one story above the fold on MSNBC homepage regarding Trump and Epstein on MSNBC and that story was more about how Vance’s downplaying comments could be read as supportive of more disclosure. Another story well below the fold on Epstein which is more about his victims than Trump.

CNN has one story way below the fold on their homepage mentioning Epstein *for subscribers only.

The story is effectively dead. Whatever legs people thought this had are effectively gone except for the rabid progressives who just want anything they can to damage Trump…or the Qanon crowds. In my opinion, those two folks belong together and can enjoy their alignment, two ends of the horseshoe.

Yes. Based on talking to people like you IRL, I don't think democrats understand how big the epstein situation is.

Revealing the epstein docs/list was a major selling point for the q-anon/conspiracy voters during the election. This is the first major controversy that puts trump against a sizable majority of his supporters, which are becoming disillusioned.

We are reaching a nixon-esque turning point where the cover up is worse than the crime.

It pairs well with being convicted in NY state by a jury of his peers for other sexual crimes.
Did that happen in the same universe as the Sinbad “Shazam” movie?

I keep getting all these multiverses mixed up. Here I thought in this universe he was only found liable in a civil suit about sexual harassment, not convicted in a criminal court for a sexual crime.

> This is the first major controversy that puts trump against a sizable majority of his supporters, which are becoming disillusioned

Which means exactly what? What political alternative do the whackado Qanon/ultraMAGAs have? Certainly not the democrats—they are so far out of alignment with MAGA that any Epstein disappointment looks mild in comparison. Sure…UltraMAGA may frustrated with Trump but they will never get a chance to vote for him again to express that disappointment. So they will be faced with a choice of a GOP candidate who will run on much of Trumps politics (but won’t be him) and a democrat party that appears now to be tacking further left in to the socialism waters as its new bearing.