The Big, Beautiful Distraction is Missing
Trump is looking pretty damn weak.
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Over his long public life, whenever Donald Trump gets in hot water or just finds the current news cycle mildly inconvenient, he’s always been capable of finding some shiny keys to flash and the press and the public—mostly the press—take the bait every time.
The news cycle changes, the national discourse follows with it, and whatever Trump wanted behind him reliably fades from view.
But suddenly and without warning—in a moment when he needs it most—his bag of shiny keys is coming up empty. Over the past few weeks, ever since Pam Bondi threw cold water on the MAGA fervor over the Epstein files and the backlash from his base ramped up, all of Trump’s attempted distractions have been flops.
Nothing he throws out there seems to sufficiently catch, and he’s been wildly pitching to his base like Dollar Store Don Draper on cocaine — anything to get them to stop whining about the conspiracy blue balls they’re experiencing over his refusal to release the Epstein files.
Because that’s what the last few weeks have really been: a very public negotiation between Trump and his supporters. He’s trying to offer up enough to his hardcore fans to make them conveniently forget he’s covering up a massive sex trafficking operation that’s been at the heart of MAGA’s obsession with taking down the “Deep State” for many years.
He announced he’s “seriously considering” revoking the U.S. citizenship of Rosie O’Donnell, but no one really seemed to care that much, least of all Ms. O’Donnell, who’s currently minding her own business as a permanent resident of Ireland.
He announced he’s been talking to Coca-Cola about using “cane sugar” in their flagship fizzy drink instead of high-fructose corn syrup, but no one really seemed to care because this hasn’t been a point of outrage since Reagan was in the White House.
He demanded the Washington Commanders (the NFL team in D.C.) and the Cleveland Guardians (one of Ohio’s two MLB teams) revert their names back to the old racist mascots that were changed in recent years, but his base mostly greeted it with tepid applause because it isn’t quite fun enough in the racist vein.
He very uncharacteristically had Karoline Leavitt announce from the podium—in great detail—his recent medical complications, probably in a bid for MAGA sympathy and distraction from Epstein and probably a little bit as the start of a contingency plan if things truly go south for him.
He likely thought the FBI’s new release of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination files that he ordered earlier this year would provide some temporary relief, but MAGA didn’t find them especially intriguing (nor did MLK experts, for that matter).
This week, he shared an AI-generated video of Pres. Obama being arrested and absurdly accused him of “treason” for entirely false allegations of wrongdoing in the 2016 election and said “it’s time to go after other people,” but all it really did is make MAGA question even more why the Epstein files aren’t being released.
He’s tried attacking various other political opponents—notably Sen. Adam Schiff of California—but his baseless accusations just weren’t that sexy and Mr. Schiff is too calm and likable to be sufficient as a sacrificial lamb to the MAGA faithful.
On several occasions, he’s announced his various, empty “nominations” for the Nobel Peace Prize—including one from Netanyahu—but his base doesn’t find it alluring because they’ve seen that play many times before and get that there’s no way in hell the Norwegians would go for such nonsense.
The closest we’ve gotten to MAGA being distracted was Mr. Colbert’s late show being canceled by CBS, likely as part of the bribery deal Trump made with Paramount, but the Trump zombies have treated the incident like a bread basket to hold them over until the main course is delivered.
All of this in the past two weeks or so.
Nothing is working because it pales in comparison, by several magnitudes, to what Trump supporters have long desired: the Democratic politicians they hate most, the Hollywood types they despise, the liberal celebrities they constantly meme, the feminists and the queers and the supposed commies — all of them marched into prison after Trump proves that they’re evil people.
MAGA doesn’t just want a pound of flesh. They want a truckload of it. They want juicy accusations. They want mugshots. They want showy trials. They want sobbing confessions. They want long prison sentences. They want unprecedented humiliation and pain. They want violent spectacle. They want lives destroyed.
And they want it all right now.
Because they voted for that. Because Trump specifically campaigned on that. He promised them that he would take down the “Deep State” and “Drain the Swamp” and offer up on a golden platter enough schadenfreude to satiate their appetites for a lifetime.
But Trump is instead offering up Rosie O’Donnell’s moot citizenship and Old Coke and racist team names. He promised historic retribution to his most loyal supporters but he’s now delivering Temu Tabloids with the worst kind of stale, boomer energy.
He needs that big, beautiful distraction to keep the Epstein files out of sight and out of mind, but he’s quickly running out of quasi-anodyne options.
And this afternoon, things really took a turn when the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump was briefed by Pam Bondi back in May that his name is, in fact, in the Epstein files despite Trump claiming just eight days ago that Bondi never briefed him with that information.
So, Trump supporters are probably thinking: well, if your name is in the Epstein files but you’ve committed no wrongdoing, isn’t the cat out of the bag anyway and you should just release them, regardless?
We’re all now in a 24/7 watch to see what he comes up with next. How much will he up the ante? What is the next distraction card Trump will try to deal from the bottom of the deck in his cringy plea to be spared from the monster he alone created?
Are we, like, six hours away from Trump announcing that the U.S. government has made contact with aliens or some shit? Are we due for the false promise of an unreleased angle of the Kennedy assassination? Are we about to find out definitively who killed Biggie and Tupac?
It’s anyone’s guess at this point. I don’t think even Trump knows what the next 24 hours will bring us.
All we know is that this serial sexual predator will do everything in his power to keep the Epstein files away from public view.
Don’t let him distract you from that.
This is fascinating....it's clear that the Bloated Yam has flipped out from the Epstein pressure and is just hurling nonsense in all directions to deflect from his crisis....and his dementia.
He is so stupid that he doesn’t realize that all of the distractions, especially the lawsuit against the WSJ and Rupert Murdoch are just that, distractions, and everyone knows it.