Thomas Massie’s defeat brings the Epstein Era to a – Latest News
Rep. Thomas Massie’s defeat at the fingers of a Republican major challenger backed by President Trump marked the merciful finish of the wretched Epstein Era.
The Kentucky congressman’s involuntary retirement represents not simply a notch in the belt of the MAGA political machine forward of November’s high-stakes midterm elections, however a huge step out of the fever swamp for the nation as a entire.
By giving the conspiracy theorists bipartisan cowl, Massie bears a lot accountability for holding their circus on the highway.
Jeffrey Epstein was an execrable man who used his money, fame and energy to commit horrible crimes.
But in the years since his death, scores of equally execrable actors have dedicated horrible sins of their own beneath the guise of pursuing justice for Epstein victims.
Chief amongst them was Massie, the gadfly who, alongside Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), championed the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Loads of good that’s completed: Their grandstanding and circumvention of a legal course of designed to shield innocents resulted in the amplification of smears towards numerous people, from Trump to the 4 personal residents falsely accused of wrongdoing after Massie and Khanna reviewed unredacted Justice Department information.
Khanna mourned his partner-in-opportunism’s loss on Tuesday, declaring that Massie sacrificed his profession for having “the guts to take on the Epstein class.”
If that’s a euphemism for “the temerity to use others’ pain and righteous outrage into a blunt, poorly wielded political weapon,” then proper on, Ro.
The Epstein drama took on new life final yr as Trump started his second time period.
The president’s reflexive enemies in each events noticed his previous relationship with Epstein — which ended someday in the early-to-mid 2000s — as an likelihood to lastly carry collectively the ever-closing partitions round him.
But there was by no means any “there” there, so that they had to accept innuendo, soiled jokes and defamation.
The victims of this ethical panic are legion — not even the Dalai Lama escaped unscathed.
And it’s no surprise why, what with social arsonists like Massie insisting that Epstein masterminded a “global sex trafficking scheme,” and that till “there are rich men in handcuffs being perp-walked to the jail . . . this is still a cover-up.”
So a lot for Massie’s “principled libertarian” schtick — or the idea of “innocent until proven guilty.”
His entire construction offers up the recreation: If authorities haven’t found enough proof to lock up wrongdoers, that to Massie is proof of a conspiracy.
This con, typically paired with an insidious barrage of antisemitic nonsense, turned the centerpiece of Massie’s reelection marketing campaign.
Despite the indisputable fact that his principal antagonist was Trump himself, and his opponent was funded by American residents, Massie repeatedly claimed that Israel was “trying to buy an election.”
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Without ever presenting a shred of proof to help it, he spent months advancing the conspiracy principle that Epstein was working with Israeli intelligence providers, and “that’s why there’s so much effort in trying to stop this.”
Massie himself invited noxious bigot and fellow Epstein obsessive Marjorie Taylor Greene to a fundraiser to make textual content of the subtext by railing towards “Jewish billionaires.”
And during a latest sit-down with nonetheless one other Jew-baiter, he nodded alongside as Tucker Carlson — with all the grace of a drunk panda — implied that Trump had murdered the late intercourse legal.
“These are the people who are also funding my opponent . . . , the people who are changing, dominating our foreign policy decisions,” Massie replied, keen as ever to think about a web of shadowy villains out to undermine him.
“They’re the billionaires, and these are also the same people who are in the Epstein files,” he declared.
The Epstein circus is merely a symptom of a bigger illness that’s contaminated American political life.
Among the others: slothful gullibility, crippling pessimism and all-consuming paranoia.
Bad actors have found myriad methods to capitalize on the unfold of this illness.
Carlson is hawking a regular stream of juvenile junk merch (his newest triumph is the “FAGA” hat, a less-than-clever slur equating help for the president with homosexuality).
Candace Owens has grow to be a mega-star by terrorizing Charlie Kirk’s grieving widow.
And Greene has spent the final six months basking in the left’s unusual new respect.
In the market, the place these non-entities need solely a small quantity of devoted followers to revenue, the conspiracy-theory grift — i.e. mendacity — has hit pay grime.
But in politics, their antics have confirmed much less than amusing to voters who need to hear actual options to America’s issues, not some tortured clarification about why the Jews or the “Epstein class” are accountable for them.
Trump has correctly excommunicated these “losers” and “nut jobs” from his motion.
And on Tuesday Massie’s longtime constituents concurred, making a loser out of their own resident nut job.
Isaac Schorr is a senior editor at Mediaite.
