Eating Epstein
"Qu'ils mangent de la brioche"
I like a little brioche now and then. But when a King or Queen tells me that this is what I get to eat instead of a fair shake, I start to feel all revolutionary. Don’t you?
Some of the more astute thinkers in political messaging, including Khanna, Ossoff, and Pfeiffer (The Message Box), have put their collective finger on the idea that the Epstein files are not a distraction from Project 2025, the occupation of Minnesota by a masked army of goonish thugs is not a distraction from the Epstein files, and we suffer when we (and by “we” I mainly mean Democrats) feel like we must choose a single issue to message on, at the expense of all others.
There are several reasons picking The One Perfect Issue is a bad idea. The fact that there is not a single issue of greatest importance is one of them, and has the added virtue of being basically true. Another is the obvious risk of picking the wrong issue. But the biggest risk in deciding to develop messaging around affordability or occupation or the Epstein files or this-weeks-rabbit-hole is this: They are all connected, and together they make a narrative that is more powerful in its interconnectedness than any one of the individual issues could ever be. Indeed, the totality is more powerful than the sum of the individual parts.
Epstein is important because it ties all the other issues together in a powerful way. All of them. Epstein is a story involving the most depraved activities carried out by the most privileged elite, without consequences. While we hope for and even demand consequences, we get our health care taken away, our neighbors shot to death and kidnapped, the culture and society of our cities destroyed destroyed by jackbooted thugs, and our democracy turned to shit. We are being held accountable by MAGA for striving for a moral and empathetic democracy, a thing they would do anything to destroy, because they are worse than any Bond villain. At least the Bond villains had nice powerpoints to show before effecting their evile plans.
Even more important, possibly, is the fact that messages sometimes have a way of forming and promulgating themselves, and Epstein is a prime example of this. Per Dan Pfieffer:
This is the dominant story in American politics. It has broken through the political media bubble. As a party, we struggle to get voters’ attention. We don’t have a media apparatus as powerful as the Right’s, nor do we have many politicians with the skill and stature to grab people’s attention. When a political issue is this dominant, it would be political malpractice to ignore it, even if the polls said affordability was “more important.”
There are other class-based tie-ins that work with the Epstein Class narrative. The Big Beautiful Bill stole from the poor (and all suffering middle class, don’t worry, we won’t forget you, relax) and gave to the rich. There are the pardons of the rich and powerful, there is the fact that wealthy individuals, corporations, and nations can get what they want from the former United States by paying off Dear Leader with enough cashola. It is all pretty obvious.
The only thing really new that anyone is saying here is this: Stop singling out issues and worshiping them, and stop making priority lists with the one big thing on top. Tie it all together. Make it about class, and the economy, and elite power brokers and attacks on elections, and rapists and child abusers who happen to be rich and powerful getting away with their crimes, and the occupation of our communities by a neo-Nazi Gestapo.
In messaging and communication we learn this One Neat Trick: When you are compelled to say, “Or …” don’t. Just zip it and think for a second, and find a way to say “And….” You can make the same point, but without the isolation of your audience. Be the AND.
There are so many receipts on the issues that show that the administration, not just Trump, is corrupt to the core. I think that the investigations from other countries with officials who are caught bare-assed by the Epstein revelations will be impossible for Republicans to ignore as the Administration continues to try to shove it aside. There are so many other signs of corruption that we can also point out, such as the cases that the DOJ has simply thrown out once the defendants hire Brad Bondi's investigation firm. He boasts about it on LinkedIn.