Like all great epics, the Jeffrey Epstein saga needs to be divided into three.
First, what’s happening.
Second, what’s actually happening.
Third, what the hell is really happening?
Let’s begin by unpacking the week when Donald Trump faced the first proper crisis of his presidency. You can forget about Ukraine and Iran which he treated more like useful distractions in his ongoing media strategy of bait and switch: stop the media obsessing over one outrage by providing them with another. This week, something happened that spoke directly to the place where Trump lives as a retail politician.
Some parts of his base started to burn their red MAGA hats. There hasn’t been a release of so much Chinese-sourced chemical into the atmosphere since one of their fireworks factories exploded in Hunan province, last month…