The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between March 13th and 16th of a nationwide sample of 1,595 adults (including 1,429 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.3 points for adults and 3.2 points for registered voters.
On Thursday, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) called attention to another factor in play. In a speech to the Senate, Whitehouse noted that throughout his second term, Trump has advanced policies that help Russia, pausing weapons shipments to Ukraine, easing sanctions on Russia, and pushing a peace deal favorable to Russia. Last summer, he welcomed Putin to American soil, and administration officials have parroted Russian propaganda. Russian state media gloated when Trump “installed Russia apologist Tulsi Gabbard as his director of national intelligence,” and Attorney General Pam Bondi upon taking office stopped the anti-kleptocracy work that had targeted Russian oligarchs.
Trump’s new national security policy threw traditional U.S. allies overboard and favored policies that Russian government officials praised as “largely consistent” with their own.
“If Trump were purposefully doing Russia’s bidding,” Whitehouse said, “it is hard to see what he would be doing differently. The United States is the most powerful nation in the world. Russia is a weak, corrupt regime. My old friend Senator John McCain used to say that Russia is a gas station, run by gangsters, with an army. It doesn’t make sense that the President of the United States, who insists—insists—on being dominant in essentially every relationship, is so submissive to one person and that one person is Russia’s dictator, Vladimir Putin.”
Whitehouse suggested that the answer “could…have something to do with Trump’s close friendship with the deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.” He noted that the Epstein files, riddled as they are with references to Trump, are also riddled with references to Russian girls and women, Russian operatives, and Russian president Vladimir Putin. . . .
Whitehouse suggested the possibility that Epstein might have been working with Russian operatives, but emphasized that we don’t know. “Epstein was an inveterate liar and a criminal who often sought to exaggerate his power and influence, and the Epstein files need to be viewed through that lens,” he said. “What we do know is that a significant number of powerful men—our current President, some of his cabinet secretaries, tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and others—were very mixed up with Epstein at different times. And Epstein seems to have been very mixed up with Russia.”
“We also know that there is a cover-up afoot at the Department of Justice,” he continued, where officials are “trying to shield Trump from something in the Epstein files.”
“One of the great forces that Washington runs on is normalcy bias,” he said, but he suggested looking past that bias to note that “we have links with Russia, girls from Russia, money from Russia, people from Russia, deals and transactions with Russia, contacts with people with Russian intelligence, news reports exploring contacts with Russia, and an official investigation from the government of Poland into an Epstein-Russia connection.”
The Epstein files continue to wreak havoc among America’s (and the United Kingdom’s) wealthy elites — this week resulting in even more resignations (and, in the U.K., arrests).
The havoc seems to be getting closer to Trump. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the files fail to include key materials about a woman who in 2019 accused both Epstein and Trump of sexual assault when she was a minor. The FBI conducted four interviews in connection with her claims and wrote summaries of each, but the Justice Department released only the one describing her accusations against Epstein. The other three are missing, as are interview notes, although the department released notes of FBI interviews with other potential witnesses and victims.
This is eerily similar to Watergate. As a friend put it, the dam is leaking more every day, the shingles are dropping off the roof one by one, and there are even (gasp!) members of the president’s own party who want more disclosure. Somebody — like the fall guy who wrote the letter to Judge Sirica, or Alexander Butterfield, who told about the tapes, after saying, “Oh, I wish you hadn’t asked that question!” — is going to blow the deadly whistle. Maybe it’s the woman who accused Trump in 2019. When Trump says, “It’s time to move on from the Epstein files,” you gotta feel the ghost of Richard Nixon in the room.
Is the Epstein scandal finally about to destroy Trump?
The following thought-provoking post is just part of one by Thom Hartmann at The Hartmann Report:
The Watergate scandal that brought Nixon down began in June of 1972, but Nixon didn’t resigned until August, 1974. It crossed over his re-election in November, 1972, and was barely a factor, just like Epstein was only a footnote to Trump’s election in 2024. For over two years, most Americans thought Watergate was overblown. . . .
The Nixon administration — and his Department of Justice and its leader, Attorney General John Mitchell — ridiculed both politicians and media folks who expressed concern that Watergate represented an actual threat to our constitutional system of government.
What changed when the tapes were finally released (analogous to the release of 3 million documents by the DOJ and Bondi’s evasive testimony) was that Americans finally realized that the president was, in fact, “a crook” and that the institutions of the federal government — particularly the DOJ — had been covering up for him.
We’re damn close to that moment now.
The recent DOJ release included reference to a report that a 13-15-year old girl reported to the FBI that Donald Trump beat her up when she bit his penis as he forced her to perform oral sex; this week reporter Roger Sollenberger found that she was interviewed at least 4 times by the FBI and those more in-depth interviews (case number 3501.045) have mysteriously gone entirely missing from the documents released by Patel and Bondi.
The story made a headline on the conservative news site Drudge Report, among others; this mirrors the period immediately before Nixon resigned when rightwing sites and elected Republicans stopped publicly defending him.
Nixon fell when institutional America and the GOP stopped speaking out in his defense. It wasn’t just the break-in or the hush money he paid the burglars that broke the dam; it was when the elite consensus turned on him.
Late in the evening on August 7th, 1974, three Republican leaders — Barry Goldwater, Hugh Scott, and John Rhodes — walked over to the White House and told President Nixon that the evidence against him had accumulated beyond spin, loyalty, and even partisan defense. The center of gravity had shifted, and two days later he was gone.
I’m not suggesting Trump is losing his presidency this week or next; after all, Watergate took over two years and Nixon didn’t have Fox “News” or 1,500 rightwing radio stations or Vladimir Putin and Elon Musk churning social media on his behalf. Trump has a much more powerful firewall than Nixon ever dreamed of. It may sustain him for months or even another year.
And, as president, he has a lot of tools at his disposal to keep changing the subject, which is where these revelations about Trump could become “world changing” if he comes sufficiently desperate.
A war with Iran appears to be his latest gambit. During Watergate, Nixon’s aides developed what they called a “modified limited hangout,” a strategy not of disproving the scandal but of suffocating it in the media by overwhelming the public with competing announcements, threats, events, and crises.
Nonetheless, while Americans will tolerate misconduct, abuse of office to escape accountability is an entirely different animal. And raping children is a much bigger deal than breaking into the DNC; Nixon didn’t even participate, he just gave the orders and supervised the cover-up. Trump, on the other hand, appears to be right in the middle of Epstein’s operation, perhaps even including his teen modeling agency and Miss Teen USA pageant.
It’s a cliché that “the coverup is worse than the crime,” but they keep doing it.
And now it’s metastasizing beyond Epstein.
Bondi and Patel insisting the Epstein investigation is now closed. Kristi Noem and Kash Patel refusing to give Minnesota police evidence in the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. ICE defying over 4,400 court orders and refusing members of Congress or the press entrance to their brutal concentration camps. Trump going after the FBI agents who uncovered Putin’s efforts to make him president in 2016. He and his family making $4 billion off his presidency in less than a year. Trump sucking up to Putin.
Trump’s level of criminality and corruption exceeds Nixon’s by orders of magnitude.
The coverups were why Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell went to prison, as did his Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, his Assistant for Domestic Affairs John Ehrlichman, his Special Counsel Charles Colson, and his White House Counsel John Dean (who’s since been a frequent guest on my radio/TV program).
That has to be waking Pam Bondi and others around Trump up at night. And it should be giving pause to every elected Republican facing the November midterms.
Every Watergate moment looks impossible right up until the hour it becomes inevitable. And when that hour arrives, it never feels sudden to those who carefully read history; only to the people who insisted, until the very end, that it could never happen here.
Here’s how Kentucky Republican Congressman Thomas Massie responded on Sunday, during ABC’s “This Week,” to a question about the Trump regime’s handling of the Epstein files:
“This is about the Epstein class …. They’re billionaires who were friends with these people, and that’s what I’m up against in Washington, D.C. Donald Trump told us that even though he had dinner with these kinds of people, in New York City and West Palm Beach, that he would be transparent. But he’s not. He's still in with the Epstein class. This is the Epstein administration. And they’re attacking me for trying to get these files released.”
The Epstein Class. Not just the people who cavorted with Jeffrey Epstein or the subset who abused young girls. It’s an interconnected world of hugely rich, prominent, entitled, smug, powerful, self-important (mostly) men. Trump is honorary chairman.
Trump appears 1,433 times in the Epstein files so far. His billionaire backers are also members. Elon Musk appears 1,122 times. Howard Lutnick is a member. So is Trump-backer Peter Thiel (2,710 times), and Leslie Wexner (565 times). As is Steven Witkoff, now Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, and Steve Bannon, Trump’s consigliere (1,855 times).
The Epstein Class isn’t limited to Trump donors. Bill Clinton is a member (1,192 times), as is Larry Summers (5,621 times). So are LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman (3,769times), Prince Andrew (1,821 times), Bill Gates (6,385 times), and Steve Tisch, co-owner of the New York Giants (429 times).
If not politics, what connects the members of the Epstein Class? It’s not just riches. Some members are not particularly wealthy, but they’re richly connected. They trade on their prominence, on whom they know and who will return their phone calls.
They exchange inside tips on stocks, on the movements of currencies, on IPOs, on new tax-avoidance mechanisms. On getting into exclusive clubs, reservations at chic restaurants, lush hotels, exotic travel.
They entertain one another, stay at each other’s guest houses and villas. Some exchange tips on how to procure certain drugs or kinky sex or valuable works of art. And, of course, how to accumulate more wealth.
Most members of the Epstein Class have seceded into their own small, self-contained, squalid world. They are disconnected from the rest of society. Most don’t particularly believe in democracy; Peter Thiel (recall, he appears 2,710 times in the Epstein files) has said he “no longer believes that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
Many are putting their fortunes into electing people who will do their bidding. Hence, they are politically dangerous.
The Epstein Class is the by-product of an economy that emerged over the last two decades, from which this new elite has siphoned off vast amounts of wealth.
It’s an economy that bears almost no resemblance to that of mid-20th-century America.
The most valuable companies in this new economy have few workers because they don’t make stuff. They design it. They create ideas. They sell concepts. They move money.
The value of businesses in this new economy isn’t in factories, buildings, or machines. It’s in algorithms, operating systems, standards, brands, and vast, self-reinforcing user networks.
I remember when IBM was the nation’s most valuable company and among its largest employers, with a payroll in the 1980s of nearly 400,000. Today, Nvidia is nearly 20 times as valuable as IBM was then and five times as profitable (adjusted for inflation), but it employs just over 40,000. Nvidia, unlike the old IBM, designs but doesn’t make its products.
Over the past three years, Google parent Alphabet’s revenue has grown 43 percent while its payroll has remained flat. Amazon’s revenue has soared, but it’s eliminating jobs.
Members of the Epstein Class are paid in shares of stock. As corporate profits have soared, the stock market has roared. As the stock market has roared, the compensation of the Epstein Class has reached the stratosphere.
Meanwhile, most Americans are trapped in an old economy where they depend on shrinking paychecks and a diminishing number of jobs. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York just reported that mortgage delinquency rates for lower-income households are surging.
Affordable housing isn’t a problem that occurs to the Epstein Class. Nor is income inequality. Nor the loss of our democracy. Nor the deleterious effects of social media on young people and children.
When Silicon Valley’s biggest tech proponent in Congress — Rep. Ro Khanna — recently announced his support for a tax on California billionaires, to help fill the void created by Trump’s cuts in Medicare (which, in turn, made way for Trump’s second huge tax cut for the rich), the Epstein Class had a fit.
Vinod Khosla, one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture capitalists, with a net worth estimated at more than $13 billion (and who’s mentioned a mere 182 times in the Epstein files but is no friend of Trump), called Khanna a “commie comrade.”
Khosla, by the way, is best known by the public for having purchased 89 acres of California beachfront property in in 2008 for $32.5 million, then trying to block public access to the ocean with a locked gate and signs. Despite losing multiple court rulings, including a 2018 Supreme Court appeal, he carries on with the dispute.
Not classy, but, shall we say, a typical Epstein Class move.
The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between February 6th and 9th of a nationwide sample of 1,730 adults (including 1,551 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.1 points for adults and 3 points for registered voters.
The charts above reflect the results of the Yahoo / YouGov Poll -- done between November 21st and 24th of a nationwide sample of 1,684 adults. The margin of error is 3 points.
The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between November 15th and 17th of a nationwide sample of 1,549 adults (including 1,382 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.5 points for adults and 3.2 points for registered voters.
Last week, Donald Trump was calling Republican House members who had signed the discharge petition (requiring a vote on release of the Epstein files) and trying to pressure them to remove their names from the petition. It was his desperate last ditch effort to block the vote, and made it perfectly clear that he did not want the entirety of those files released. Why? Most likely because it would embarrass him.
He failed. And it became clear that not only would a vote happen, but many Republicans would vote for the petition making it easily pass.
That would have been humiliating for Trump. So, to avoid that humiliation, he flip-flopped on the issue. He told Republicans they should vote for the petition. Then he went further and said he would sign it into law once it reached his desk (as it became clear the Senate would also likely pass it).
Trump is now trying to pose as a champion of releasing the files (after years of opposing their release). Don't believe it. Trump is still opposed to releasing all of the Epstein files. He just knows he can't stop the petition from passing - and he doesn't want to be the person who vetoes it (since most of his MAGA supporter want them released).
But don't be fooled. Donald Trump will NEVER release ALL of the Epstein files. If he wanted the files released, he already has the power to do that. All he has to do is tell AG Bondi to release them.
But he doesn't want that. How will he avoid doing it once the release petition becomes law?
You must realize that Trump doesn't care about the law. He has been a lawbreaker most of his adult life, and doing it one more time will not bother him in the least.
He will release a lot of the files. And he will claim that is all of them - but it won't be. Anything in those files that make him look bad will be withheld. And his sycophants (Bondi and Patel) will lie for him and claim everything was released. And the remaining DOJ and FBI employees, knowing they would be instantly fired if they even hint at the truth will keep their mouths shut.
Trump will never release all the files - and the public is unlikely to know that until his presidency is over (if ever).
The Tuesday vote in the House was nothing more than an interesting bit of political theater to make the Republicans look better. But it does not mean all of the files will be released. Trump does what he want - whether it is legal or not.
