"I'm not controversial, so I like it that way." - President Donald Trump

By James Howard Kunstler - November 17, 2025

Isn’t it obvious what’s at the heart of this Jeffrey Epstein psychodrama? The country is sick unto near-death with official secrecy, cover-ups, black ops, stonewalling, and never-ending games of political hide-the-salami — especially when those salamis are directed up the Republic’s own rear end. The worst victim of sexual abuse is America herself. Can’t somebody please make it stop?

And so, over the weekend, psychodrama devolved to soap opera as President Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green acted-out their lovers’ quarrel on every public channel of news and gossip until, finally, Mr. Trump pulled one of his trademark ju-jitsu moves and yielded to all that implacable forward motion to release the Epstein files.

What the public really wants is to find out which celebrities, politicians and otherwise, were having sex with underage girls so said celebrities can be frog-marched out of public life. It’s hard to not sympathize with that wish. It’s kind of fundamental that perverts and degenerates are not deserving of public trust. The people in this land who are not perverts and degenerates yearn for the reestablishment of decent behavior, and sexual indecency is only the most garish sort depravity. Beyond that lies the shadowland of grift, racketeering, sedition, and treason at issue in the ongoing decline-of-empire tragedy that’s played out for a decade. And the non-depraved long to get to the bottom of that, too.

Only tertiarily do they care that Jeffrey Epstein was some kind of agent or go-between for the US / UK / Israeli spy services, though it helps to color between the lines of all this other sketchy stuff. He brokered lots of shenanigans as far back as the Iran-Contra operation in the 1980s — big arms deals and such — and for a while was the world champion money launderer for intel gangs of every flag. All the trafficking in girls was apparently part of the package. But intel agencies always dangle women as bait (and sometimes boys, too) and Epstein’s pimpery was just an additional standard service. Whether he tasted his own product is kind of beside the point.

Anyway, everything known in the matter so far suggests that Donald Trump did not submit himself to sexual blackmail and that, long before he entered politics, it’s likely he cooperated with law enforcement to put Jeffrey Epstein in jail the first time around. Of course, it was during Mr. Trump’s first term, in 2019, that Epstein was back behind bars where, as far as the public has been told, he decided to end-it-all.

Jeffrey Epstein’s afterlife has had an impressively long run right here on planet earth, where he enjoys more attention these days than even Sidney Sweeney. He’s more alive to us than any incarnation of Dracula conjured out of Hollywood and he’s draining the blood out of what’s left of a once-workable political system. What has prevented all that hoarded evidence of Epstein’s depredations from getting released? Did Christopher Wray stuff it down the memory hole? Were there hidden cameras in his various lodgings or not? How is possible no video recordings survived?

We are still mystified by the Pam Bondi bait-and-switch dodge back in February when she handed out files of old Epstein news clippings to select reporters instead of anything fresh and substantial from the FBI vaults. And since then, the DOJ’s resistance has only hardened. There’s chatter lately that the president’s Chief-of-staff, Susie Wiles, has acted to block full disclosure on Epstein. Whatever’s going on has been the opposite of Mr. Trump’s promised “transparency,” and all the maneuvering around that broken promise has mounted to a serious political liability.

On Sunday night, Mr. Trump stepped out of the way in one of his customary Truth Social blurts. Wouldn’t it be better if he just went on-the-air with an Oval Office speech to level with the American people, telling all he knows and what the people need to know about this drawn-out Epstein business? Why wait for all the sorting through new files (if there are any)? Mr. Trump has had many years to familiarize himself with the salient details of Epstein. He must know exactly what this guy was up to, and who he catered to as a global finance figure and a trafficker of girls to the political elite. What could possibly shock anyone at this point?

Mr. Trump should . . .

[SNIP]