The elite protect each other across party lines
Corbin Trent, cofounder of Justice Democrats and former communications director for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has advice I can get behind.
Trump is in panic mode. He’s throwing every last bit of spaghetti on his high chair against the wall to get his MAGA base to look away from the Epstein case. This is one of those times when Democrats who claim the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time should show us all how it’s done by not letting them.
But that’s not what’s happening. Democrats have a chance to return fire to effect but are doing too little. Only five of 215 House Democrats, Trent complains, have cosponsored a discharge petition to vote on releasing the Epstein files. They have “an opportunity to show the American people that they’re not afraid of truth, that they’re not afraid of daylight being the greatest disinfectant.” But they are failing, Trent argues.
Donald Trump’s Epstein panic is a political moment Democrats ought not squander. Or they could just snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, as is their habit:
Blood is in the water. Trump’s own base is fracturing over this. This is when Democratic leadership should be going for the kill. Hakeem Jeffries should be on every show demanding full transparency. Chuck Schumer should be calling press conferences. Nancy Pelosi should stop calling it a “distraction” and start calling it what it is—a cover-up at the highest levels of power. This is how Republicans would play it if the roles were reversed. They’d be ruthless. They’d smell weakness and go in for the kill.
Instead, Democratic leadership is nowhere to be found. Where are the coordinated attacks? Where are the daily press conferences demanding answers? Where’s the political operation that treats this like the gift it is?
If Democrats don’t pounce on this—what I would call not just a political opportunity, but a political necessity—then we lose. If this moment isn’t captured and repeated, just like Republicans would be doing if the roles were reversed, and if everyone in this country hasn’t heard Democratic leadership on every network, in every interview, demanding the release of every document, every email, every text message related to Jeffrey Epstein, then we’re missing a massive opportunity.
I agree. No one wants to vote for weenies. They rather vote strong and wrong than weak and right.
The Epstein story isn’t a left versus right scandal. It’s a top versus bottom scandal. It’s about power, about how the elite protect each other across party lines.
The American people deserve to know the full scope of the Epstein network. They deserve transparency from their government. And they deserve a Democratic Party that’s willing to fight for that transparency, even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it might implicate people on both sides.
Will that work? I don’t know. But as a friend’s British mother used to say, “We’ll do domething even if it’s wrong.”
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