The president is attempting to keep calm in front of the cameras, but behind the scenes he’s fuming.

Donald Trump is reportedly getting more and more fed up with his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein drama that has consumed headlines for weeks.

Trump is frustrated that the scandal has overshadowed his agenda and dominated the news, two people familiar with his thinking told The Washington Post in a Sunday report.

Nearly a dozen sources close to the situation spoke to the Post about the issue, painting a picture of an administration adrift, lacking a clear strategy and blindsided by the intensity of the backlash—particularly from Trump’s own base. Many officials had reportedly hoped that Americans would move on from the unreleased Epstein files, underestimating the sustained outrage.

  • Gates9@sh.itjust.works
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    15 days ago

    Guys, this is bullshit. He may be slightly annoyed, but he is totally protected, he and his administration have zero concerns about any consequences. They are untouchable. Particularly so due to the fact that both parties and their wealthy benefactors are implicated.

      • Mcdolan@lemmy.world
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        15 days ago

        To add, I think opposition to raping children is a pillar propping up mega as a movement.

    • ddh@lemmy.sdf.org
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      15 days ago

      His political protection has cracked and faded slightly over this, and he’s upset that if it keeps up he will become exposed.

            • ddh@lemmy.sdf.org
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              14 days ago

              He isn’t worried about reelection but GOP members of congress are. If he loses their support, he’s toast. This the only issue on which they have ever wavered, because exposing an elite pedophile cabal is a foundational belief of some of their base.

              But like you say, we’ve been in similar situations before and Teflon Don has so far always slipped between the fingers of justice. We’ll see.

                • ddh@lemmy.sdf.org
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                  14 days ago

                  It means congressional Democrats would find it easier to flip Republican votes against his appointees and against him personally with impeachment and removal from office, amongst other things.

          • Gates9@sh.itjust.works
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            15 days ago

            You think the most embarrassing man on earth, this guy:

            You think he’s afraid of embarrassment?

            • ddh@lemmy.sdf.org
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              14 days ago

              Absolutely. He hates being booed or, worse, laughed at. He does this dance in front of adoring fans who love him no matter how cringe he looks to others.

                • ddh@lemmy.sdf.org
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                  14 days ago

                  No, agreed. However, this issue is bad optics for him and he hasn’t so far been able to distract the media like before (partly because some of them have finally wised up to such tactics). He doesn’t like the situation and the media know it, so they are keeping the pressure up to see what happens.

    • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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      14 days ago

      Wouldn’t that be great? Though I don’t think Vance would be any better.

  • Quacksalber@sh.itjust.works
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    15 days ago

    What I don’t get is why Trump even cares. Clearly his “Grab 'em by the pussy” remark is telling you all you need to know about him and just as clearly, MAGA doesn’t care.

    Maybe it just really is the fact that his supporters have hyped up all those who are on that list not just as rapists, which they seem to have no problem with, but as the demonspawn in flesh. So Trump isn’t concerned that he may be labeled as rapist, as that label didn’t stick before, but as incomprehensible evil, or Clinton for short.

    • anon6789@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      This is my concern once it officially comes out. Like every other silver bullet we’ve had, people will think this is what finally takes him down, but once he says “She told me she was 18!” they’ll be all “That happens to me all the time too! Damn lying women!” and that will be the last we hear about it unless they use it against Democrats. I can’t honestly believe anyone would be shocked his name was on the list.

      • tea@lemmy.today
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        14 days ago

        This is a good point. It’s almost better that it hasn’t been released since the MAGA revolt appears to be from the idiot section that buys into conspiracy theories, not as much the conscious soul-selling for power section (i.e. the people who were to dumb to already know he was a creep vs the people who 100% knew and just didn’t care so they could win).

        • anon6789@lemmy.world
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          14 days ago

          I want those people who were hurt by Epstein to get justice, but with the current situation basically being the president is protected from anything, having it come out now seems the worst outcome. Having the unknown eat away at them is likely the best realistic thing right now, unfortunately.

          If this comes out and just “goes away” after a couple days, I’m worried what that could do to the present handling of similar crimes. If society at large decides trafficking is no biggie, I think that could be really bad.

          • tea@lemmy.today
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            13 days ago

            Considering what happened with J6, the Mueller Report, and the dozens of other red lines that have been crossed and just shrugged off in a few news cycles, this would just be adding to the list of things that our society has tacitly played😭. Hope for justice and accountability, but I have doubts now.

      • MagicShel@lemmy.zip
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        15 days ago

        “That happens to me all the time too! Damn lying women!”

        — 43-year-old man still living at home

          • P00ptart@lemmy.world
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            15 days ago

            Honestly the creepiest stories I’ve ever heard are those where someone has been living in someone’s house without them knowing.

            • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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              15 days ago

              So every time you leave your house, do you no longer live there? Do you always live exactly where you are at that moment? Like if you are traveling and someone asks you where do you live, you say “right here.”

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
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      14 days ago

      “Demonspawn in the flesh” is definitely the case for some of them.

      It’s not that they’re just molesting kids, there are theories that they’re “[harvesting adrenachrome[(https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/pseudoscience/qanons-adrenochrome-quackery)” from them.

      The stage was now set for QAnon’s perverse fabricated tale that a pedophile ring of Democratic politicians and Hollywood celebrities is engaged in satanic sacrifices culminating in slurping the blood of massacred children.

      There’s a joke that was going around a while ago about a conspiracy theorist who (somehow) made it to heaven:

      When he arrives at the Pearly Gates, God is there to receive him. “Welcome. You are permitted to ask me one question, which I will answer truthfully.”

      Without hesitating, the conspiracy theorist asks, “Who really shot Kennedy?”

      God replies, “Lee Harvey Oswald shot him from sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. There were no accomplices. He acted alone”

      The conspiracy theorist pauses, thinks to himself, then says “Shit! This goes higher up than I thought…”

      See, the thing is that these conspiracy theorists will never believe the truth, whatever the truth is. They’ll always think the conspiracy goes even deeper.

      So, even if maybe he could survive being linked to having sex with teens, the problem is that his base believes that the “sex with teens” is just a cover for something much worse. All he’d be doing by admitting to sex with teens is to admit he was part of the satanist cabal. So, his only solution is to deny and deflect. But, denials just make it seem like he’s hiding something. And, while deflecting normally works for him, this is a foundational conspiracy of the MAGA base. This isn’t just some odd side-conspiracy like Obama conspiring against Trump, or Twitter suppressing news about Hunter Biden’s laptop. If there is any one central conspiracy uniting the right, it’s the child sex trafficking stuff.

  • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    it was so avoidable, all he had to do is not rape children.

    it isn’t so hard, I never raped children and I aint even trying to avoid it. it’s crazy how easy it is not to rape children.

    • smokestack@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      I’ve coincidentally also never raped children, but seeing a child rapist become so incredibly successful, why wouldn’t these MAGA retards start raping children? Maybe that’s why they’re not billionaires, because they don’t rape children. It raises some interesting questions.

      • pyre@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        i mean there’s some correlation. not every child rapist becomes a billionaire, but if you’re a billionaire chances are pretty high that you’re a child rapist because good people don’t become billionaires. the amount of lying, cheating, stealing and exploiting you need to do to become so rich that millionaires are poor by comparison, does make it likely that you’re the kind of person who would rape a child.

  • Montreal_Metro@lemmy.ca
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    14 days ago

    At this point I doubt MAGA crowd will draw the line at paedophilia. The only thing consistent in their belief is idol worship.

      • Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        TBH it’s kind of fucked up that it’s taken this long for them to get riled up and for the media to really dig into this. I suspect some prominent republicans and donors are trying to engineer this as a means of replacing trump. I mean, we’ve known for a while now about Epstein’s crimes. We’ve known about the girls who were trafficked, and for some time authorities have had the list of names. Obviously anyone who committed crimes against children should be prosecuted regardless of their political affiliation. This seems to be being used as a weapon against trump - fine, the fucker has it coming. It’s still political skulduggery tho.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    painting a picture of an administration adrift, lacking a clear strategy and blindsided by the intensity of the backlash

    I read this same thing - almost word for word - at least a dozen times in Trumpworld I. It all still ended up with a coup attempt, corporate news still at the service of republiQans, and half the voters still complete fucking morons.

  • Inucune@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    Can’t broadcast his FUD agendas when people are asking real questions in the media. Keep it up.

  • D_C@sh.itjust.works
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    15 days ago

    If he didn’t want to be called out on all the raping of women and kids then he shouldn’t have raped all those women and kids.

  • megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    13 days ago

    I think that in a lot of ways, it’s less about the Epstein files, and more about how deeply complicit in the elite culture that he claimed to be in opposition against.

    Epstein is just an acceptable outlet among his base to air their uncertainty and unease they’re feeling. Because his ties with Epstein have been well publicized and well known about for a while, but from a right wing populist perspective, that was kind of written off and discredited because it didn’t fit the feeling, the “vibe”, that he was upsetting and visibly angering elites and thus he must be acting against their interests in some meaningful way, now though, it’s very clear he’s cosying up to the tech elite and taking huge obvious bribes from other elite groups and actually gutting social programs they use everyday, rather than that just being a threat made by the “woke” media they don’t trust.

    So suddenly the Epstein being associated with him is believable to right wing populists because of how visibly elite aligned he’s being from their perspective.