The Swamp has devoured Donald Trump so completely that the man has been reduced to a skulking shadow of the fighting warrior he once promised to be. The Epstein denial is the final nail in the coffin. Whatever we thought Trump might be, he clearly is not. “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein!?” Trump replied incredulously when New York Post reporter Steven Nelson questioned the abrupt about-turn from an administration that promised answers and failed to deliver in the most spectacular and disrespectful way imaginable.
FBI Director Kash Patel was supposed to be a difference-maker in Trump 2.0. He spent years telling anyone who would listen about the big, dark pedophilic secrets that could break the uniparty federal government. As recently as December 2023, Patel told the freak-right podcaster Benny Johnson that Congress was blocking the release of the Epstein Files “because of who’s on that list.” Patel accused the Microsoft founder Bill Gates, a much-maligned figure and easy target on the MAGA Right, of “lobbying Congress day and night” to block release of the list. And then Patel condemned House Republicans, imploring them to “put on your big-boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are.”
Patel’s bombastic statements in Johnson’s safe space for MAGA grifters are a far, far cry from what we’ve received since Patel was hired to make good on his wild promises. Speaking with Fox News in May, Patel unleashed a bombshell revelation of the Deep State variety, claiming FBI officials were suddenly in possession of unearthed video from inside a federal jail in Manhattan that would once and for all prove Epstein did, in fact, “kill himself.” Whoopsie!
If Patel’s aim was to disappoint the schizo-crazed conspiracy base that lifted Trump and the likes of Patel to power, then he was just getting started. In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan in June, Patel essentially said there was “no there there” with Epstein and appeared ready to wash his hands clean of the whole fiasco.
“If there was a video of some guy or gal committing felonies on an island and I’m in charge, don’t you think you’d see it?” Patel pleaded with Rogan. Everyone who watched the interaction could see it for what it was: a cover-up.
When video from inside the federal jail that housed Epstein was finally released earlier this week as part of a joint DOJ/FBI memo, it only fueled further speculation. For example, why was there a minute missing from the hours of newly-released footage? Attorney General Pam Bondi said the missing minute was typical because the Bureau of Prisons resets the video “every night” causing one minute of missing footage. But for anyone who has followed the twists and turns of the Epstein case these last few months, the words of Bondi do little to ease concerns. It was Bondi, after all, who, when asked by a Fox News reporter in February whether the Epstein Files would be released soon, replied buoyantly that they were “sitting on my desk right now for review.” Bondi now claims that was a misunderstanding, that she clearly meant “files” in a general way and had been talking more about information related to President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
And so that was the end of it, or so the Trump administration thought. As Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he would be nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize during the pair’s red-carpet meeting in Washington on Wednesday, Trump’s online base was spiraling. Alex Jones was reduced to tears and said he was going to throw up. Steve Bannon questioned the transparency of the administration. The Hodgetwins, who sport 3.3 million followers on Twitter, called for Bondi to be fired. Mike Cernovich, who was part of a star-studded MAGA group that were given binders full of information related to Epstein during a high-profile White House visit in February, went right for the jugular, stating that “no one is believing the Epstein coverup” and predicting it will hurt Trump’s legacy. And that’s all after Elon Musk, who was recently best friends with Trump, previously stated on Twitter that Trump “is in the Epstein Files.”
“It’s not about just a pedophile ring,” Bannon warned on Friday. “It’s about who governs us and that’s why Epstein’s not going away. For this to go away, you’re going to lose 10 percent of MAGA. If we lose 10 percent, we’re going to lose 40 seats, the presidency because they’ve disheartened the hardest-core populists.”
Perhaps the most high-profile example of fracturing among Trump’s team in response to the Epstein memo came from FBI deputy director Dan Bongino who “took the day off” from work Friday after reportedly clashing with Bondi according to reporting by Laura Loomer that was verified by Axios. Deputy AG Todd Blanche denied reports that there is a rift between the FBI and the DOJ. More concerning, however, is a Friday afternoon report by Semafor which claims that Bongino is “effectively gone” unless Trump fires Bondi.
It’s not just Trump’s most sycophantic followers who aren’t buying what Patel, Bondi, and Trump are selling. Google searches for Epstein are up 1,200 percent this week, and interest in the subject easily outpaced queries about Elon’s AI going full Nazi and Trump’s latest battery of tariffs on Canada and Brazil. This all makes sense when you consider the fact that much of the drive behind Trump the politician was his promises to overturn the wicked, shadowy cabal in American politics and high society who were using their stature to satiate devilish desires. That Trump feigned surprise when asked about his administration’s official line that everything the Deep State once said about Epstein is true, and that the sex trafficker might not have even possessed information on what is believed to be hundreds if not thousands of clients, is an open admission that the Trump we were promised is not the Trump we got.
While we’re on the topic of Epstein, what happens to Ghislaine Maxwell, the former socialite who rubbed shoulders with Trump at night and acted as Epstein’s underage-sex broker during the day? She’s currently sitting in a federal prison for the next 20 years, essentially a death sentence given her age. When Trump was asked about Maxwell during a White House COVID briefing in July of 2020, Trump said of Maxwell: “I just wish her well, frankly.” Speaking on the Daily Beast podcast this week, Trump biographer Michael Wolff said Trump considered pardoning Maxwell (not Assange) at the end of his first term: “What could she say? What would she say?” Those were the pressing concerns of Trump as he left the presidential office a wreck in early 2021.
It explains why Trump, a man who has fueled Epstein conspiracy theories over the last decade, often claiming the left had engineered a mass coverup to protect its political, academic, and celebrity classes, was so bothered by questions about his relationship with the disgraced sex-trafficker. Nelson was right to probe the situation. In 2002, Trump, who was photographed multiple times with Epstein, told the Associated Press that Epstein was a “terrific guy” who is “a lot of fun to be with.” Speaking openly about what everyone knew then and now, Trump said Epstein likes “beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
And so it was quite apparent why the Epstein Files mattered and why the case-closed mentality of Trump’s administration didn’t sit right with the millions of voters who elevated Trump and his merry band of Deep State–slayers to the nation’s highest political offices with the explicit expectation they’d reveal something, anything, about the very weird, illicit, unelected shadow state that appears to be pulling the strings of our puppet Oval Office and Congress. Of course we didn’t get any answers.
It’s not just Trump embroiled in this scandal. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr admitted he flew with his family and Epstein to a “fossil-hunting” trip in South Dakota. When the truth threatens to unravel the uniparty machine, the one that Trump is swimming comfortably with throughout his second administration, the truth is memory holed. That’s what Trump was doing when he emotionally lashed out at Nelson. He was attempting to push the unsavory situation into the deep past regardless of what anyone thinks.
If it was just the Epstein fiasco dogging the second Trump administration, perhaps the disappointment wouldn’t feel as severe. But it’s not just Epstein. On the wars, on immigration, and on crypto, Trump 2.0 is definable by its brash corruption and deeply cynical failures.
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We were promised no more “forever wars,” but Trump couldn’t help but play marionette to Netanyahu’s terror dreams, bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities “into oblivion” when called upon. We were promised an America that would no longer be treated as an economic zone where cheap, illegal labor would be prioritized over American workers so the big farms and big hoteliers and big restaurants could make big money at the expense of American cultural harmony. When it came to deporting hundreds of thousands if not millions of illegal workers, Trump proposed that farmers would be “responsible” for looking after their illegal farmhands, a bastardized version of indentured servitude that benefits big business, not American workers.
We were promised a transparent government that would focus on resetting the deep-seated bureaucracy that has used Washington as a private investment vehicle for decades. But within a month of Trump’s second administration, his family and associates were already profiting off a set of useless crypto tokens that enriched Trump on paper while making a mockery of the office. After years of bashing Democrats for failing to genuinely reach the hollowed-out, struggling American core, Trump showed himself no different than the politicians before as he repeatedly posted about the Trump memecoin, one of the most brazen pump-and-dumps in the history of crypto. The coin soared on Trump’s initial posts calling it “the Greatest of them all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” but has done nothing but sell off in the months after, a sinister reality that has harmed his most ardent supporters who will buy anything associated with Trump.
The Swamp. The Deep State. Permanent Washington. Whatever you want to call it, it’s Trump’s now. The unnamed figures who pull the real levers of power have soundly defeated the resounding cries of Trump’s populist base. The man who promised a jackhammer appears barely able to lift a feather. No amount of cope can change the stark truth. It’s now The Trump Swamp.
