Wall Street Journal published pedo-prez Donald Trump's birthday message to Jeffrey Epstein

 Release ALL the Epstein papers NOW!

We know Bobby Jr. is nuts, but is he also a pedo?

Pedopheil

Priorities again

 

If Democrats got off their asses, here’s what they’d be doing now

Nine critical steps NOW

Robert Reich

We have endured more than six months of the most despotic regime in American history.

Republican members of Congress have disgraced themselves and the nation by enabling it. They are traitors to the Constitution, the rule of law, and American democracy.

What of the Democrats? Individually, some have shown real heroism. But as a party they are disunited, ineffective, seemingly afraid of their shadows. “Epsteingate” offers a chance for Dems to derail Trump for a time, but it is not a strategy.

What would that strategy look like if the Democrats were bold and united? Here are nine critical steps (adding to those from someone named Pru Lee):

1. Don’t let Trump get away with his lies.

Have a truth squad that responds immediately with the facts and cites sources.

When Trump claims that Washington, D.C., is rife with crime, for example, get the truth out: that its crime rate is actually the lowest it’s been in 30 years. That Republicans have literally defunded the police in D.C. by stealing more than a billion dollars from the city. That Trump is dismantling the FBI and putting corrupt, unqualified jerks at the top of our federal law enforcement.

Point out that red states have higher murder rates than blue ones.

Make sure the truth gets out by repeating it over and over. If it’s not reported in the media, find out why.

2. Plan and announce ways to catch up with what we’ve lost on the environment, human rights, voting rights, labor rights, and safety nets.

Even when the orange Caligula on the Potomac is history and his lackeys are out of power, America will have a huge amount to repair, rebuild, and catch up on.

Tell the nation how you’d make up for the time and momentum we’ve lost. What sacrifices will be entailed. Explain what we must do to get back on track toward a just society, a strong democracy, and an environment that isn’t collapsing around us.

Tell us how you’ll rebuild the government that Trump and his Republican sycophants have decimated. How we’ll get back the talent we’ve lost — in science, health, the environment, worker safety, the foreign service. How we’ll build back morale.

3. Lay out a vision for the future.

Don’t stop there. Give us a vision of the future. Tell us where we could and should be, and how we can get there.

Medicare for all. Affordable child care and elder care. Affordable homes. Universal Basic Income. Paid for by higher taxes on the wealthy (including wealth tax), a tax on polluters, and a smaller military.

Also: All fossil fuels replaced by wind, solar, nuclear, conservation. Profit-sharing with employees. Living wage. Strict regulation of Wall Street including crypto, so we never again have to suffer a financial crisis and bail out the Street.

Challenge us. Tell us the truth. Demand much from us.

4. Tell us what you’d do to prevent this catastrophe from ever happening again.

Publicly lay out the laws and amendments you’ll pass to ensure this never happens again, the systems you’ll tear down, the safeguards you’ll enshrine, the plan to hold perpetrators of human atrocities accountable, the urgent commitment to immediately bring home those “disappeared” into prisons in El Salvador and other countries.

Set out the electoral reforms you’ll fight for to prevent a dictatorship from ever again forming under our very noses. Voting rights. Civil rights. Tell us how you’ll get big money out of our politics, even if it takes a constitutional amendment.

5. Mount an independent investigation.

Hold public hearings based on an independent, civilian-powered investigative coalition. Build a real-time archive of corruption, overreach, and executive abuse. Use experts, veterans, whistleblowers, journalists, watchdog organizations.

When the people now hurling us into fascist hell are held accountable, we’ll need every name, every signature, every illegal order, every act of silence — documented.

You’re not just preserving truth. You’re preparing evidence for prosecution. The more they disappear people and weaponize data, the more we need truth in the sunlight.

Investigate every author of Project 2025, every aide who defies court orders, every communications director repeating lies, every policy writer enabling cruelty.

6. Join the International Criminal Court.

You cannot control what the other side does, but you can control your own integrity. So call their bluff. Prove that the Democratic Party is still grounded in law, human rights, and ethical leadership. Join the International Criminal Court. If you’ve got nothing to hide — join.

Show the world who’s hiding bodies, bribes, and buried bank accounts. Force the GOP to explain why they’d rather protect a war criminal than sign a treaty, why they’re setting up detention facilities in an alligator-infested swamp.

And while you’re at it, publicly invite ICC observers into the United States. Make this administration explain — on camera — why they’re terrified of international law and oversight.

7. Create a digital safe haven for whistleblowers and defectors.

Not everyone inside this regime is a traitor to America. Some are scared. Some want out. Build channels for them to defect — encrypted, anonymous, and protected. Make it easy for the cracks in the system to become gaping holes.

Stop ostracizing MAGA defectors. Don’t push them back into the crowd. We don’t need purity. We need numbers. We need people willing to burn their red hats and testify against the machine they helped build.

8. Aim at the real culprits.

Don’t let Trump Republicans blame stagnant incomes and insecure jobs on immigrants, the “deep state,” transgender people, socialists, or communists.

Tell Americans the real reason why they’re working harder and getting nowhere: because big corporations are monopolizing the economy and they, and the super-rich, have amassed enough political power to rig the game for their own benefit.

Your corporate, Wall Street, and fat-cat donors won’t like you saying this, but you know something? You’ll do far better in elections by telling Americans the truth and stressing the importance of getting big money out of politics. You’ll get more small-donor support, too. And you’ll help stop Trump Republican fear-mongering and scapegoating.

9. Take back Congress in 2026.

Don’t just talk about it. Have a plan, a strategy. Mobilize us to focus our attention and resources on districts and states we have a chance of taking back. Set out measurable goals. Give us progress reports.

Stop Trump and his Republican stooge governors from super-gerrymandering their states to squeeze out even more Republican votes: have Democratic governors credibly counter-balance whatever they do — matching seat for seat, as California is attempting to do.

Recruit people to run who aren’t corporate Democrats or Wall Street Democrats but who know the economic stresses most Americans are facing, who respect working people, who speak their language, who know how to connect with voters. Tell us who you’re considering and why. Ask us for names.

Stop AIPAC and the crypto crowd from spending money on Democratic primaries. They have no business there. Put resources where they’re most needed.

Then win!

**

Unless Democrats begin to take steps like these now, the nation’s peril will only deepen.

Trump's great poll numbers

No comment

Is Trump taking us back to "kids in cages?"

Immigrant Kids Detained in ‘Unsafe and Unsanitary’ Sites as Trump Team Seeks To End Protections

Sandy West

A child developed a rash after he was prevented from changing his underwear for four days. A little boy, bored and overcome with despair, began hitting himself in the head. A child with autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder was forced to go without his medication, despite his mother’s pleas.

“I heard one officer say about us ‘they smell like shit,’” one detained person recounted in a federal court filing. “And another officer responded, ‘They are shit.’”

Epstein client list, via Sharpie

 

Trump's bungled Epstein coverup demonstrates that he's past his prime.

The cult leader's hold weakens

David R. Lurie

Donald Trump’s clumsy attempt to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein has driven a wedge through his base. But his flailing is a symptom of a deeper problem: the cult leader has begun to lose control of the flock.

America’s would-be dictator won’t fall because he’s acting like the mastermind of the “deep state” conspiracy he’s coached his fervid followers to believe. But the cracks in the Trump regime — which have been growing since he reentered the White House six months ago — are all but certain to widen into dangerous crevasses.

Trump has never been a broadly popular politician, and is by far the least popular person to be inaugurated as president twice. His political resilience derives from his power within the Republican Party — strength grounded in his singular grip on MAGA, which finds its only parallel in charismatic dictatorships like those of Putin and Mussolini.

A decade out from Trump’s hostile takeover of the GOP, today’s Republican “leaders” know nothing other than surrender. But his bungled, increasingly desperate Epstein coverup indicates that his skills as a cult leader are declining.

Cats know

"He stole my young girls!"

To clarify...

 

What did he know, and when did he know it?

Trump learns nothing from history: it's the coverup that gets you

Robert Reich

Here are the two contradictions lying at the heart of the contretemps over Trump and Jeffrey Epstein:

1. As early as May, Trump knew his name was in the Epstein files. Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy informed Trump at a meeting in the White House that his name appeared “multiple times.”

But on July 15, when a journalist asked Trump, “Did [Bondi] tell you at all that your name appeared in the files?” Trump responded, “No, no.”

2. Bondi said in February that Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review.”

But on July 7, the Justice Department stated that a thorough review had turned up no list of Epstein’s clients.

Neither of these is evidence that Trump was involved in Epstein’s activities with underage girls. But together they suggest a cover-up — which can kill a presidency.

Exhibit A: Nixon. Of Tricky Dick the oft-repeated question was “What did he know, and when did he know it?” That’s being asked of Trump now.

Like Nixon, Trump is trying to cover up his cover-up. One day after The Wall Street Journal revealed that a letter bearing Trump’s name that was included in a 2003 birthday album for Epstein, Trump sued the Journal, calling the letter “nonexistent” and claiming the article defamed him.

Trump’s problem is that so many Americans — including most of his MAGA base — believed that, once back in the Oval Office, he’d expose a powerful global elite centered on pedophilia. But what if Trump is part of that elite?

Some of Trump’s senior staff — such as Dan Bongino, deputy director of the FBI — built their reputations on exposing that supposed elite. Bongino now says the decision not to release the Epstein files has eroded his credibility among his supporters.

Poor fellow. Bongino became a successful podcaster and media personality precisely because he fueled conspiracy theories linking pedophilia, Epstein, and the global elite.

Another of the deepening ironies here is that Trump’s effort to target his enemies has blurred the line between the White House and the Justice Department — making it harder for Trump to distance himself from the Department’s sudden reversal on releasing the Epstein files, thereby adding to the specter of a cover-up.

The appearance of a cover-up gets even worse now that the House of Representatives has left for its August recess a day earlier than expected because Speaker Mike Johnson — a close ally of Trump — wanted to stop a bipartisan discharge petition that would have forced a vote on the release of the Epstein files.

Senate Republicans may be more open to a bipartisan investigation. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says, “Whatever the bottom line is, I’m in favor of releasing it.” Hawley also suggests a joint committee made up of House members and senators to get to the bottom of the growing issue.

Recall that Nixon faced a joint committee of Congress that sought to “get to the bottom” of Watergate.

Epsteingate won’t end because members of Congress go home for August recess. Just the opposite. Because it remains unresolved, more stories will emerge suggesting a cover-up. Republican town halls will be filled with such charges.

Trump hasn’t learned the essential lesson of Watergate: When the public senses a cover-up, you have no choice but to expose everything. Otherwise, the cover-up metastasizes into a “cancer on the White House,” in John Dean’s infamous phrase.

Trump really loves his daughter Ivanka

Pedo in chief

Trump now says his "breakup" with Jeffrey Epstein was because Epstein "stole" teenage girls who were working for Trump's Mar-A-Lago spa

WTF? How could Trump possibly think this helps him with his child sex problem?

Judd Legum

On Tuesday, President Trump offered a detailed new explanation for his rift with child sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein. 

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said that he had a falling out with Epstein because he "stole" a 16-year-old girl, Virginia Giuffre, from Trump's Mar-a-Lago spa. 

Giuffre, who committed suicide this April, was one of Epstein's most prominent victims.

This is the key exchange:

Q: Mr. President, Epstein has a certain reputation, obviously, but just curious, were some of the workers that were taken from you, were some of them young women?…

TRUMP: Well, I don't want to say, but everyone knows the people that were taken, and it was the concept of taking people that work for me is bad, but that story has been pretty well out there, and the answer is yes, they were. Yeah.

Q: Yes, they were young women? What did they do? Like, what were their jobs?

TRUMP: In the spa.

Q: In the spa?

Here is Virginia Giuffre, 17, a year after Jeffrey Epstein
recruited her from Trump's Mar-A-Lago spa. 
Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell (shown, right) pimped her
out to Prince Andrew leading to his ouster from the Royal
Family. (Photo courtesy of Giuffre via Courthouse News)

TRUMP: Yeah, people that work in the spa. I have a great spa, one of the best spas in the world at Mar-a-Lago, and people were taken out of the spa, hired by him. In other words, gone. 

And other people would come and complain this guy is taking people from the spa. I didn't know that. And then when I heard about it, I told him, I said, "Listen, we don't want you taking our people."

Whether it was spa or not spa, I don't want them taking people, and he was fine, and then not too long after that, he did it again, and I said, out of here.

Q: Mr. President, did one of those stolen persons, did that include Virginia Giuffre?

TRUMP: I don't know. I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people. Yeah. He stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know, none whatsoever.

Giuffre was sexually trafficked and abused by Epstein over a two-year period from 2000 to 2002. During that period, she frequently traveled with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. It was Maxwell, Epstein's former girlfriend, who was also convicted of sex trafficking, who personally recruited Giuffre. In 2002, after attending a massage school in Thailand, Giuffre escaped.

So if it was Epstein's poaching of Giuffre that prompted the end of Trump's relationship with Epstein (or someone else “not too long after that”), the rift would have occurred around 2000.

This timeline is inconsistent with previous public statements made by Trump and his representatives.

In an October 2002 New York Magazine profile, Trump called Jeffrey Epstein "a terrific guy" who is "a lot of fun to be with." 

Trump added that Epstein "likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." Trump would have made these comments about two years after Epstein allegedly "stole" Giuffre from the Mar-a-Lago spa.

In 2003, according to a Wall Street Journal report, Trump wrote Epstein a birthday message calling him his "pal" and concluded, "may every day be another wonderful secret."

Message pads obtained by investigators from Epstein's Palm Beach mansion and published by Vice News in 2016 indicate that Trump called Epstein at least twice in November 2004. 

That month, four years after Giuffre's recruitment, they squared off against each other to purchase a Palm Beach mansion, The Maison de l’Amitie. Trump secured the property with a bid of $41.35 million.

In July 2019, after Epstein was charged a second time, Trump said he "had a falling out" with Epstein and "haven’t spoken to him in 15 years." At the time, Trump Organization attorney Alan Garten told the Washington Post that Trump did not ban Epstein from Mar-a-Lago until 2007. 

According to the Washington Post, Garten said the ban was "a reaction to criminal charges that had been filed against Epstein" in July 2006. According to a 2020 book, The Grifter’s Club, Epstein was a member of Mar-a-Lago until October 2007. Neither Garten nor Trump mentioned any issues concerning Epstein's hiring of Mar-a-Lago staff.

Trump did not raise the issue of Epstein poaching his staff at a Monday press conference. He added the information about Giuffre's involvement on Tuesday. Earlier this month, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago for "being a creep."

The contradictory accounts raise a number of important questions: What occurred at the Mar-a-Lago spa, and what did Trump know about it? What actions did Trump actually take after learning Epstein had "stolen" underage girls from his club? Why has Trump offered several inconsistent accounts of his relationship with Epstein? What information might Maxwell, who Trump may pardon, have about all of these topics?

Epstein, Epstein, Epstein

Sherlock Trump solves another mystery

Sexual abuse of children is built in to the Republican brand

Behind MAGA's noise over the "Epstein List" is a history of support for laws and policies that protect child abusers and punish children

Jesse Mackinnon for Common Dreams

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a long article, far longer than the usual we run. However, it is well worth reading. MacKinnon offers an extraordinary historical picture of laws and practices promoted by Republican politicians that essentially legalize child rape, force raped children to carry babies to term, protects child abusers and guts support systems for rape victims. In gripping fashion, MacKinnon puts the Epstein list into a context that, in my opinion, warrants your attention.   - Will Collette

By the time the U.S. Justice Department released its memo in July 2025, the faithful were already starting to turn. There was no “client list,” no smoking gun, no perverted cabal of global elites laid bare for public vengeance.

What they got instead was a cold government document and a half-mumbled shrug from Donald Trump, who barely remembered the man everyone else had turned into a folk demon. “Are people still talking about this guy, this creep?” he asked, blinking like he’d just wandered out of a golf simulator.

The betrayal was almost elegant. For years, Trump’s people had promised the black book. Attorney General Pam Bondi said it was on her desk. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel practically branded his political future with it. Counselor to the President of the United Staes Alina Habba promised flight logs and names.

And then the punchline: nothing. Or rather, a truckload of documents scrubbed clean and a memo telling the public to move on. The frenzy turned inward. MAGA loyalists melted down on camera. Laura Loomer called for a special counsel. Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino stopped showing up for work. Right-wing media turned on itself like rats in a pressure cooker.

But the Epstein file was never the point. The real story was not buried in a locked safe or hidden by the FBI. It was out in the open. It is still out in the open. The political movement that once pledged to drain the swamp has spent its second tour of duty building a legal and bureaucratic fortress around some of the oldest crimes in the book. Modern conservatism has come to rely not just on outrage but on inertia, and nowhere is that more visible than in its handling of child sexual abuse.

We are not talking about a secret ring or coded pizza menus. We are talking about a system that tolerates child marriage in over half the states. A system that forces raped minors to carry pregnancies to term. A system that slashes funding for shelters and trauma counseling. A system that lets rape kits pile up in warehouse back rooms while politicians pose in front of billboards about protecting kids.

This is not a moral failure or a bureaucratic oversight. It is an architecture. It is built from votes, funded by budgets, signed into law by men who say they fear God but fear losing donors more. The Epstein affair may have collapsed in a cloud of whimpering and spin, but what it revealed is far more corrosive than any one man’s crimes. The question is not why they hid the list. The question is why they need it at all when the ledger is already written in their laws.

Legalized Child Marriage as Institutional Abuse

As of mid-2025, child marriage remains legal in 37 U.S. states. In most of these jurisdictions, statutory exceptions allow minors to marry with parental consent or judicial approval. Some states permit marriage for individuals as young as 15. Others lack any explicit minimum age when certain conditions are met. These legal frameworks persist despite growing evidence of their links to coercion, abuse, and lifelong harm.

Missouri serves as a prominent example. Until recently, it permitted minors aged 15 to marry with parental consent. Testimony from survivors has revealed how this legal permission facilitated predatory relationships cloaked in legitimacy. In one case, a girl was married off to a man nearly a decade older, and the marriage became a vehicle for sustained sexual and psychological abuse. Former child brides in Missouri have since called for a statutory minimum age of 18 with no exceptions. Legislative efforts to enact such reforms have repeatedly stalled.

Tennessee offers a more recent and pointed illustration. In 2022, Republican lawmakers introduced legislation that would have created a new category of marriage not subject to age restrictions. The bill failed under public pressure, but it signaled a continued willingness by some conservative legislators to bypass modern child protection norms. Even when confronted with documentation of exploitation, physical violence, and long-term trauma, these lawmakers often frame the issue around religious liberty and parental authority.

The prevailing rhetoric in these debates centers on traditional family values. Proponents argue that restricting child marriage infringes on the rights of families to make decisions without state interference. 

In some cases, advocates for maintaining the status quo invoke Christian theological justifications or present marriage as a preferable alternative to state custody. These arguments shift the legal focus away from the vulnerability of the minor and toward the autonomy of adults, particularly parents and religious leaders.

This legal tolerance undermines the enforcement of statutory rape laws. When marriage can be used as a legal shield, older adults who would otherwise face criminal prosecution gain immunity by securing parental consent or exploiting permissive judicial channels.

In practice, the marriage license functions as retroactive permission for sexual contact with a minor. Law enforcement agencies are often reluctant to investigate allegations within a legally recognized marriage, even when age discrepancies raise clear concerns.

The persistence of child marriage statutes in conservative-controlled states is not simply a relic of outdated law. It reflects a policy choice. The choice is to preserve adult control over minors, particularly in contexts that reinforce patriarchal and religious hierarchies.

In doing so, the state becomes an active participant in the erasure of consent. Legal recognition of these unions confers legitimacy on relationships that, in other contexts, would be subject to prosecution. The result is a bifurcated legal system where a child’s age and rights are contingent on the adult interests surrounding her.