Whatabout a Pedophile?
February 26, 2020
Trump supporters have an odd understanding of how guilt works. (Or they pretend to not understand reality when it suits them.) I say this because whenever Trump’s ties to Epstein come up, Trump fans immediately bring up Clinton’s ties to Epstein in a bizarre whataboutism attempt to excuse/absolve Trump—as if there’s some kind of either/or. Most liberals don’t argue that Clinton’s sleazy ties to the deceased predatory pedophile should be dismissed outright, regardless of Trump’s similar ties. But Trump supporters weirdly seem to think that “But Clinton!” is an appropriate and unquestionable retort to any mention of Trump and Epstein’s long friendship.
To break it down:
Both Clinton and Trump were friends with Epstein at the time when he was openly having sex with girls who were obviously underage, and when he was forcing those girls to have sex with his friends.
Neither Clinton nor Trump stepped in to alert authorities that their friend was preying on vulnerable children.
It can be assumed that neither Clinton nor Trump was appalled enough to tell Epstein that they would report him to the authorities unless he stopped using children as sex slaves. I mean, he didn’t stop, did he?
Only Trump bragged about being friends with a “terrific” pedophile to New York Magazine in 2002. “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Wink, wink/nudge, nudge. Can’t you just hear him oozing with pride at being part of an elite group of men so wealthy and privileged that the laws against having sex with children presumably didn’t apply to them? (This is similar to the way he oozed with pride when he bragged to Billy Bush about his status as a C-list reality TV celebrity presumably giving him the right to sexually assault adult women.) Whether or not Trump himself had sex with any of the young girls his good friend Epstein procured for his good friends during this time period, Trump obviously deemed sex with vulnerable children to be a highly amusing and well-deserved perk of immense wealth and power. Wink, wink. (And if you honestly convince yourself that Trump’s quote about Epstein refers to women over 18 years old, I suppose I could interest you in investing your life savings in a fine education at Trump University?)
Out of Clinton and Trump, only Trump was named by one of Epstein’s victims as her alleged rapist. Unfortunately, the validity of her claim was never able to be examined because she understandably decided not to pursue charges after receiving death threats from Trump’s online army of MAGA trolls.
We don’t know the truth about what happened with this particular victim, but we do know that Trump has openly lusted after his daughter Ivanka since she was just a young teenager. (While disgusting and perverse, it’s not really surprising that a malignant narcissist’s ultimate turn-on would be a younger female version of himself.) But I imagine that Trump probably would’ve perceived that, as his daughter, Ivanka was too valuable of an asset to damage too much in that way. But if Epstein put a 15-year-old Ivanka lookalike in front of him? A girl who didn’t have any powerful relatives to protect her? I can very easily imagine Trump sating his daughter-lust with a vulnerable young girl, someone whose physical and emotional scars would be considered to be of no consequence to him. This is in sync with the thought pattern of a malignant narcissist in general, and it matches everything we know about Trump in particular in terms of his lifelong contempt of presumably disposable “losers” who weren’t born wealthy.
Only Trump promoted the man who was responsible for giving Epstein a sickeningly lenient jail sentence for his crimes, Alexander Acosta, to a plum position as Secretary of Labor in his administration.
Only Trump hired two attorneys who represented Epstein and helped him sidestep justice and accountability—Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz—to his impeachment defense team. Alan Dershowitz, in particular, has also been credibly accused by one of Epstein’s victims, and also notably wrote an op-ed in which he argued that the age of consent for sex should be lowered to 14 or 15.
Only Trump and his partisan lapdog Bill Barr were in a position to protect Epstein while he was under their watch in federal custody. Even if a conspiracy-minded Trumpist believes that Epstein was killed by a group of ninja assassins hired by Bill and Hillary to scale the walls and break into the federal correction facility, chloroform the guards, and commit murder, the fact remains that Trump and Barr were in a position to provide the security and surveillance to stop this from happening. They didn’t. It’s especially suspicious that Trump/Barr neglected to provide this protection even after Epstein’s first unsuccessful suicide (or “suicide”) attempt. If Epstein could’ve implicated Clinton while exonerating Trump, it would stand to reason that Trump/Barr would’ve done whatever was in their power to keep Epstein alive. And it WAS in their power. It’s also notable that there doesn’t seem to be much of an investigation into what went wrong that led to Epstein’s death in federal custody. Trump and Barr seem to be happy to let their online conspiracy-minded trolls blame the Deep State/Clintons, while not pursuing any serious investigations themselves.
Again, I’m listing all of these things not to exonerate Clinton. See items 1 to 3. With all of the time Clinton spent with Epstein on the “Lolita Express,” I can’t imagine that he wasn’t at least aware of what his friend was doing. If one (or more) of Epstein’s victims were to come forward and name Clinton, I wouldn’t automatically assume that it was a partisan hit-job—I would think that a thorough and fair investigation would be warranted. (Although Barr would have to totally recuse himself from leading the charge due to conflict of interest.)
My question to Trump supporters then is, why do you believe that any guilt on Clinton’s side somehow makes Trump innocent by default? That’s not actually how criminal guilt works. Both men, at a minimum, failed to step up and help vulnerable children. Do you really believe that the rape of young girls by wealthy men should be swept under the rug as long as the person who, at a minimum, allowed that crime to happen, is someone you happen to like/relate to? Do you agree with Trump that sex with vulnerable young girls should be something that wealthy old men should be entitled to do?
