Isaac Saul (18:36)
All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying. Which brings us to my take. Let me start with just one overarching thought through all the nonsense that we're going to talk about here today. I think it's worth just saying not to forget about the victims here. Despite the conspiracy theories, there are real girls who were trafficked and abused and their lives were stolen from them by people like Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell and whatever abusers actually participated in their schemes. And on days like today, their stories are regularly moved to the background while lasting repercussions for their abusers seem evasive and delayed. For that, I think we should all feel a sense of shame and injustice and we should do what we can to keep the focus on their suffering and what they went through. I'm going to talk a lot today about the politics of this case, so I'm a little guilty of this as well, but it feels important to just kind of start there. Now, I hate the expression conspiracy theory, and I've been advocating against its casual use for a couple of years now. I especially object to how commonly people use the term to slander popular beliefs that go against institutional statements but are highly credible. We've learned that many quote unquote conspiracy theories have ended up being true. But today I'm going to use the expression to refer to things that I'd define like this a belief or a set of beliefs which connect unrelated observations together based on a set of fundamentally false assumptions. As the Internet has proliferated unsubstantiated assumptions, conspiracies have become more abundant. The Internet has also incentivized politicians, political influencers and pundits to constantly battle for attention. Attention means influence, which translates to votes, fundraising, clicks, subscriptions and or money, depending on what you are looking for of course. And easy ways to get attention include stoking conspiracies, evoking fear, and providing shock value. For about a decade now, the war for conservative attention has been dominated by some of the most conspiratorial thinkers. In simple terms, conspiracy theories have become central to right wing discourse. Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, Candace Owens, and yes, Donald Trump are some of the most popular promoters. Each of them has elevated a handful of deranged theories about how the world Works that are incredibly conspiratorial. Which again to me means based on false assumptions from the 2020 stolen election to Paul Pelosi being with a gay prostitute when he was nearly beaten to death, to Democratic pedophilia rings and the Obama birther conspiracy. To be clear, I'm not saying conservatives have a monopoly on conspiracies. The left traffics in a great many of its own conspiracy theories. But I am saying that liberal discourse is much less dominated by overt loyalty to conspiratorial thinking. The conservative writer Richard Hanania has broken this phenomenon down in convincing terms, and I find this excerpt from something he wrote particularly memorable. Quote, democrats may have flaws, but if tomorrow Ivanka Trump got into a car accident, I promise you that you would not have rampant speculation by Chuck Schumer, Rachel Maddow and Barack Obama that she was actually buying crack or driving to get an abortion at the time. Some left wing influencers might suggest things like this, but they wouldn't have the status of Trump, Ted Cruz, Tucker Carlson and members of Congress. Republican conspiracy theories are at the center of conservative discourse and messaging. Conspiracy theories on the left, in contrast, are usually marginalized, end quote. For several years now, I've been warning about what will come after all the intricate threading of these conspiracies falls apart. In 2021, for example, Donald Trump Jr. Tried to urge Americans storming the Capitol building to back off. Many of his followers responded to his request by telling him to stand down and that this was now bigger than him. As I said at the time, Trump Jr. Had lost control of the train that he had built. He spent months convincing people of their belief that the election was stolen, then got nervous when his followers did the rational thing that followed that belief, fight for democracy. Similarly, in February, when a set of conservative influencers, quote, unquote, received the Epstein files, which ended up being a bunch of publicly available nothing burger. I warned that those influencers had lost control of the train. Their followers were pissed, suspecting the influencers themselves might now be in on the conspiracies they themselves cultivated. And that phenomenon just got supercharged. This week. The Justice Department's decision to announce Jeffrey Epstein had no incriminating client list, that he did in fact kill himself, and that they would keep the files related to his case sealed, spurred, understandable, outrageous. It was the rational response to beliefs the administration encouraged. Since the campaign Team Trump has been promising the goods. JD Vance in October of 2024 said this about what he would do when in office. Quote, seriously, we need to release the Epstein list, that is an important thing, end quote. Attorney General Pam Bondi in February of 2025 on the Epstein list said, quote, it is sitting on my desk right now to review. Alina Haba, counseled to the President in February 2025 on releasing the client list, said, absolutely, I think it would be negligent for us not to. You have to hold individuals who are indeed rapists accountable. We have to have them tried, in my opinion. Pam Bondi again in March said, a truckload of evidence arrived. It is now in the possession of the FBI. FBI Director Kash Patel is going to get me and himself, really a detailed report as to why all these documents and evidence had been withheld. FBI Director Kash Patel in June on the concealment of evidence and the existence of damning videos. You're going to get all that information, he said, like, that's literally what we're putting together and we're going to give you every single thing we can. And that's the whole point. Now we're figuring out how to put it out, end quote. Popular right wing influencers went even further on social media, declaring in no uncertain terms that they saw the leaked Epstein files and warned people to get ready for the world to change. Of course, don't forget President Donald Trump, who repeatedly amplified conspiracy theories that the Clintons were responsible for Epstein's death while he was in federal custody. This was always, always nonsense. Epstein killed himself and no evidence of any kind has suggested otherwise, only pure speculation. There is no Epstein client list and never has been. Journalists covering this story closely have repeatedly tried to communicate this to the public for years, but with little success. And the idea that Trump, a public official whose relationship to Epstein was closer and more intimate than any other I can think of, was going to be the person to blow the lid off this whole thing was always farcical. Remember, Trump and Epstein each describe one another as close friends. Trump regularly traveled in Epstein's private plane. And Trump personally knew Epstein's longtime fixer, Ghislaine Maxwell. That's more than you can say about most of the people. Conspiratorialists associate with Epstein. Yet for some reason, Trump has largely avoided scrutiny. To call this dynamic mind boggling doesn't really do it justice. What's more, Bondi was the Florida Attorney General when Epstein's plane records became public and she resisted calls to aggressively pursue more serious charges against Epstein. And Epstein had yet to be investigated because Alexander Acosta, who worked in the first Trump administration, oversaw a sweetheart plea deal. Florida gave Epstein in 2008 one so egregious that a federal judge blocked it, ruling that Acosta had violated the Crime Victims Rights act by keeping the deal from Epstein's victims. This is the administration that has for months promised they would blow the top off this case. Yet Trump remains largely unimplicated. It is shocking really to watch as many of Trump's most loyal followers blame Bondi or Patel or Bongino, as if these people haven't pledged total allegiance to Trump and don't serve at his point. Pleasure Bondi is by all accounts an extension of the Trump administration. As disheartening as it is that the lines between the Attorney General's office and the presidency are being absolutely erased, to believe that she is closing this case down without Trump's green light or explicit encouragement is simply absurd. There are really only two options. Trump, Bondi, Patel and Bongino are now telling the truth, which is what I think, or they are covering something up to protect more powerful parties, which would logically have to include Trump were at the very least his close allies. I have to admit to a certain amount of catharsis about this, like when the stolen election conspiracies fell apart. Dan Bongino and Cash Patel, two people I've warned were partisan hacks unfit for the FBI, are now being devoured by the online monster that they created. In reality, I think they are now finally telling the truth. They got inside, they looked for the goods and they realized they had nothing to offer their misled followers. It's hard to spare any empathy for them. However, I'm also unsettled about whatever comes next. First, people like Trump, Bondi, Patel and Bongino convinced people that Epstein was killed because he had a list of powerful people who were actually child molesters. Then, after rising to power in part on promises to expose that list and seek justice, they got access to the files and declared there is actually nothing to see here. Now their followers are breaking from them, refusing to believe everything that they've been told is a lie, and insisting that Trump et al are now of the COVID up. What comes next? If storming the Capitol was the rational response to the 2020 stolen election conspiracy, what is the rational response to this? We'll be right back after this quick break.