← The Epstein Chronicles
The Epstein Chronicles
War, Distraction and the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal (6/18/26)
00:20:20
David Rothkopf argues that Donald Trump’s military confrontations with Venezuela and Iran were not primarily driven by national-security concerns, but by a political need to divert attention from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. The opinion column...
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What's up everybody?
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What's up, everyone? And welcome to another episode of the Epstein Chronicles. Ever since the announcement of the Epstein files and the scandal reigniting, we have seen the Trump administration do everything in their power to get the conversation to move somewhere, anywhere else. And some people even think that the wars that are being fought or have been fought throughout the last year or so are nothing more than a diversion from the Epstein files. And now people are calling them the Epstein Wars. And when you start looking at what we gained from what happened over in Iran, you gotta ask yourself, what was the point? Now they'll tell you. Well, the Strait of Hormuz is open, but it was open before we attacked Iran, so that's a moot point. Well, they're not going to have nuclear weapons. Sure they're not. Oh, and by the way, they're getting $300 billion. For what? No civilian infrastructure was attacked, only military outposts and military facilities. So why are we giving them $300 billion? Especially after all that talk about the pallets of cash that were being shipped to The Iranians during Obama's tenure. I'm old enough to remember that. But now, all of a sudden, we're going to put 300 billion into Iran. And for what? Now, look, if we would have destroyed Tehran, you know, rubbled it, then, yeah, that would be our responsibility, no doubt about it. But that didn't happen. So what's the motivation for ponying up 300 billion? How about we get 300 billion for our infrastructure here in America? That might be a good idea, but God forbid our lives are made easier or better. It's always about, you know, the boogeyman somewhere else. Meanwhile, we have plenty of problems right here at home. So the question is, were all these wars, all these military operations, a diversion? Or were they legitimate campaigns that furthered American interests around the world? And if that was their goal, they failed miserably because the United States has never been on shakier footing around the world. And according to David Rothkoff, the author of this article, every single one of these military engagements is nothing more than a distraction. Today's article was published by the Daily Beast, and the headline, strongman Trump's Forever wars all come back to Jeffrey Epstein. This article was authored by David Rothkopf. Once we had wars of choice. Today we have wars of distraction. Call the catastrophically misguided war in Iran and the blink, and you missed it, war with Venezuela, the Epstein wars. Look, is he wrong at this point? I kind of agree. Like, we gain nothing with Iran. Like, if we would have had some kind of tangible gains as a society, as a nation, and we weren't dealing with somebody like Trump, I would laugh this article away. But after all we've learned, all we know. Do you really put it past the Trump administration to start these military operations as a distraction? I don't. These were not wars fought to defend US national security. They were not wars fought to advance as our national interest. They were wars conjured up not by generals or seasoned foreign policy advisors, but by a frightened old man and his public relations team to distract from a scandal he fears will be his undoing. And, look, I don't doubt for a minute that Trump is very fearful of the Epstein story. Look at his reaction. He's never reacted like this to anything else, including Russia. So when you have somebody acting out the way Donald Trump is, is acting out, usually that means there's some there there. Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that there's evidence that Donald Trump was partaking in the abuse. We don't have any smoking gun Evidence of that. Now, people have said some pretty disturbing things about Donald Trump's behavior, but we don't have that smoking gun. What I think we do have, though, is an obvious coverup. And I think that all you have to do is follow along from the beginning here. And at every step of the way, the COVID up has been ongoing and the COVID up has been growing. There are massive human, economic and geopolitical costs being undertaken to serve the narrow self interests of not a nation, but that man, the President of the United States. Now, look, we also have to take everything that we hear from the Delhi beast with a grain of salt. They certainly don't like Donald Trump. Right? So that is something that kind of shades the way they report this. But that said, does that take away from the truth of the matter? Does that take away from the fact that these wars gained us nothing? Now, I guess you can make the case. Down in Venezuela, they got Madero, and it was a pretty bloodless type of situation. Right? Okay, cool. Madero, not a great guy, but is he this criminal that they're making him out to be? He's the worst world leader we have. I mean, come on, where does it end? So Venezuela, at least they have some kind of footing, right? All right, we charged Madero, we went and swooped him up. Now we're going to try him in court. But Iran, what do we got going on here? What are they doing? What's the goal? What's the end game? Well, the end game started out as no nuclear weapons. The endgame started out as well. We're gonna get rid of the regime. Now all of a sudden, we see Trump capitulating to Iran 300 billion to help rebuild the country. So geopolitically speaking, we gain nothing. Now, that doesn't mean that the United States military didn't blast these dudes to kingdom come. They. They did, but that's not enough to get it done. There's never been regime change from the air. If you want to change the regime, you have to have boots on the ground. And we know that Trump's never going to do that. So at the end of the day, who exactly did this operation serve? Not the American people. Well, the one person that's standing to gain the most, certainly Donald Trump. And now, of course, you have people out here talking about the great victory. I mean, really, the great victory. This is capitulation. This is basically Donald Trump bending the knee to the irgc. That's basically what happened here. All because he didn't want to deal with the Epstein matter, by the way, the Epstein matter is not going away. I've told you that from the beginning. And they can throw out all the wars they want, all the alien invasions they want, whatever. We're not going to be distracted at this point. We've come too far. And like I've told you, the boats have been burned on the shore. There is no going back. The facts of what has unfolded to date in these wars makes this clear. Trump and his team could not coherently express a rationale for entering into either military operation. They offered many possibilities and spouted many blatant lies, but shifted between them carelessly, as if they did not matter, because, well, they did not matter. And look, I think now that we have, you know, a few miles put between us and the start of all of this, it becomes more and more apparent. And, you know, I always tell you, I don't like to jump to conclusions. I like to wait and get as much information as we can. But it's not looking good for the Trump administration when it comes to the war in Iran and the war in Venezuela. And to me, and look, this is my personal opinion, it looks like a distraction. The leaders of Venezuela were corrupt, criminal even, but they were not terrorists. They are not terrorists. They posed no direct threat to the people or territory of the United States. And that's true, too. Now, you can make the case that Venezuela was moving drugs, and they were, but not fentanyl. Venezuela was a gigantic hub for cocaine. And what would happen is you would have the cartels bring the cocaine of Venezuela, and once they cross the Venezuelan border, the Venezuelan military would offer them protection and then they'd get pieced off. So once the load got into Venezuela, it was protected by the government, they'd bring it to port and then they ship it to America or they ship it to Europe, whatever. Now, look, I'm not going to tell you that cocaine is great. It's not. But it's certainly not fentanyl. And if you were looking to go after somebody, you should have been going after the cartels. Iran was nowhere near acquiring a nuclear weapon. Well, I don't know about that. I mean, honestly, I have no idea. They could have been. Let's not act like Iran is some kind of great administration, great, you know, group of people who don't have any designs on being mad men. They most certainly do. So don't take this as me saying that Iran are the good guys here. I don't believe that. I think Iran and the IRGC should be decimated. But that was never the goal. Unfortunately, that was never the goal. And the people of Iran, they're the ones that are going to suffer. Now the hornet's nest has been kicked. And now Trump's retreating and leaving the Iranian people to their own fate. And then you wonder why people hate Americans. It had no ability to deliver such a weapon. There was no imminent threat. And indeed, to the degree to which Iran had moved closer to gaining the ability to manufacture a weapon, it was in large part due to actions taken by the President during his first term, when he tore up the effective, successful nuclear agreement struck during the Obama administration. Bullshit. That wasn't working either. Okay, stop. Don't try the revisionist history. That deal that Obama made. Not good. Wasn't a good deal. If anybody thinks that Iran wasn't still working towards building a bomb, they're crazy. They were. That's their goal. Do you know why? Because they see what's going on in North Korea. They see that Kim Jong Un's crazy ass got himself a bomb and now he can pretty much do whatever the fuck he wants, right? Nobody's messing with them. So Iran sees that and they want to do the same thing. So let's not sugarcoat that and act like Iran doesn't have designs on having a bomb. The operation in Venezuela began with the murder on the high seas of occupants of small craft the US Alleged were trafficking in drugs. We attacked them with no evidence of these alleged crimes. We administered the death penalty to the occupants of the boats without due process. In some cases, we did so consistent with orders that were in violation of international law and the military code of justice. Well, international law really means nothing. Let's be real, okay? There's nobody in the world that's going to press the case against the United States. So just cut the bullshit now. Against military code of justice. I'm not too sure. I have no clue what that is, so I won't make pretend. I know. But what I will say is this. If people are trafficking drugs and they're bringing in loads of cocaine, and you know that they have loads of cocaine, well, you should arrest them, right? I don't know why you're blowing the boat up. What's the point of that? Now, if you're going to incapacitate the boat, great. But why not just arrest these people? When we snatch the leader of Venezuela, on a thin legal pretext, we then allowed his regime to remain in place if they would direct some of their oil revenue to us or the interests identified by the President as beneficiaries it is still unclear who was making the money produced by these sales, but the nature of the US Operation is crystal clear. It, too was a crime. It was a foreign policy as the Mafia would conduct it. A shakedown, an extortion racket. I mean, is he wrong? We left the regime in place. I thought they were all bad people. So was just Maduro doing all of it? The attacks on Iran were undertaken under false pretenses, contrary to the Constitution and the letter of the War Powers Act. Civilians and civilian targets were victims in clear violation of international law. I have my doubts about that. Okay. I don't really believe the propaganda coming from the ground, just like I don't believe the propaganda coming from the United States. The fog of war is real and all these different people making these accusations, I just don't know what's true and what's not. But targeting of civilian infrastructure, that's definitely not happening. We've seen the pictures, we've seen the video. So you can say that that happened and sure, I'm sure that civilians did get killed. But to say that they were targeted in a malicious manner, I don't think I buy that. Now, with that said, I don't think it really matters if you're on the ground and a bomb comes through your roof. Right. Doesn't matter one bit. In other words, the President chose to unleash a series of illegal wars to distract from the possible crimes that might be revealed as part of the Epstein investigation. Clearly, he's petrified of what the facts of that case will reveal. He's devoted the full resources of the Department of Justice to bury the truth about Epstein. He had the Deputy Attorney General cut a deal with Epstein's sex trafficking co conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, and ignored the law passed by Congress demanding all files be turned over to congressional investigators. Well, that's true. There's no doubt there's a cover up underway here in America. Now, if you want to believe that the wars are part of it, as a distraction, I think there's some evidence that points in that direction. He apparently ordered the serial obstruction of justice, and then he appeared to reward that dutiful DOJ number two, Todd Blanche, with a nomination to be top dog at the agency. Why go to that trouble if there was nothing to hide? Why take the risk? What could be so grave that it warranted such behavior? Well, we know, we know. The question is just how deep Trump's involved. That's the real question, right? How deep are the ties and how much did he know or was he involved in when it comes to his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein And I think that's the investigation that has to take place.
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Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. The President's behavior has only simulated interest in the case. Allegations against him made under oath suggested that he had committed terrible crimes. The public and members of his own party were turning against him, angered that he did not release the full truth about the Epstein case as he once promised to do. Clearly trying to bury the case was not working. So he tried something else. Anything else. Instead. The first of the Epstein wars may well have been the ones he launched against American cities. Sending in troops to combat illusory threats, killing US citizens in the process, spending millions depleting the resources that should have been used for our defense, achieving nothing but mayhem and more serial violations of the law. The second Epstein War was Venezuela. Epstein War three is this war that Trump is now desperately trying to wind down in Iran that once, like the invasion of our cities, had backfired. He had sent the global economy into a tailspin, drove up inflation, weakened our alliances, spent tens of billions of dollars, produced devastation that led to the deaths of more than a dozen U.S. troops. We're not sure of how many. Plus thousands of Iranians and Lebanese citizens, most of them innocent victims. Well, I don't know. Okay, we don't have an accounting. What are we going to go on? What Iran has to say? I don't believe them either. When are people going to get hip to the fact that there are no good guys here? None of these people are good. None of them care about you. None of them care about Lebanon. None of them care about Iran. They care about their own bank accounts. None of the objectives the US alleged were the reasons for the war were achieved. If there was regime change, it was to replace a bad regime with a worse, more hardline one. Iran's nuclear capability was not obliterated as promised. Neither were Iran's missiles or drone capabilities, nor the effectiveness of its proxy network throughout the Middle East. Rather than weakening Iran, it's emerged with more leverage over the Strait of Hormuz and thereby the global economy, our alliances are weaker, Iran's are stronger. And look, I hate to admit it, but it's true. Trump got dog walked. And that mou. Absolutely embarrassing talk about a capitulation. And to these people of all people, absolutely devastating, geopolitically speaking. And now the US seems to be suing for peace, desperate to get out of the war, proposing to pay off Iran in exchange for just talking with us. Indeed, in France this week, Trump actually said that perhaps it was not even worth negotiating about the fate of Iran's enriched uranium stockpiles. In his view, now that they have promised not to seek nuclear weapons, the rest of it is irrelevant. Except you see, Iran first promised never to seek nuclear weapons in 1966. It repeated that promise in writing in the 2015 accord. Trump tore up. Indeed, no one has done more to open the door to and motivate Iranian progress toward the ability to produce such a weapon than Trump. Perhaps someday Iron will be made a hero of the Iranian revolution for his efforts. While he loves that part of the world. Has this dude ever met an oil baron he wasn't in love with? Has he ever met somebody over in the Middle east that he hasn't wanted to be friends with? Seems like his type of people. All of this begs the question. If the war was actually important for national security reasons, why accept such a humiliating defeat? Why give up and walk away? Why reward Iran in the process with cash and a stronger position in order to help make it go away? Good questions, all of them. The only conclusion one can draw is that none of the usual reasons we decide whether to fight or withdraw matter. This time. The war was useful if it distracted from Jeffrey Epstein and not useful when it became a problem rivaling the Epstein problem. Trump wants to turn the page. Indications, however, are that his goals remain the same. His next moves may well be the next Epstein War. Cuba has been suggested by the President as a likely next target. Greenland remains a possibility. Even Panama could end up on the President's hit list. None of these conflicts are in the US interest. All are in service of Trump's PR agenda. And, and from time to time, if it can be arranged, his ever present search for grift, this man who literally wraps himself in the flag and who along with his aides regularly touts their love of the military, views the entire massive US defense apparatus as a prop, a personal plaything, an entity that exists not to defend the country, but rather to defend the President himself. Whatever the cost, whatever the lasting damage done. Doesn't matter as long as people do not find out any more of the dark truth about who Donald Trump is, what he has done in his past, and why our worst fears about him may not go far enough in detailing his depravity and contempt for the law and human decency. Now look, there's a lot to unpack with that article, right? But I think that the gist of it is valid. And when you talk about distractions, what better distractions than wars? So what do you folks think? Do you think that these wars are nothing more than part of the COVID up? Or do you think that the author here is getting a bit ahead of themselves? Shoot me some emails and let me know. All the information that goes with this episode can be found in the description box.
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