Trump's Maxwell gambit is a poor endgame for MAGA

Charlie Kirk, seated across from Benny Johnson

The Bulwark's Will Sommer sounded a bit down this morning, beginning with the subhead to his piece: "Is perpetrating heinous crimes against children too big a hurdle for a political alliance of convenience? Maybe not."

You know the backstory, so I'll skip ahead in the post and go right to the cause of Sommer's seeming depression: "Right-wing media figures are starting to prepare their fans for the possibility that Trump—the guy they expected to arrest the pedophiles—could soon strike a deal with one of them."

Such a Ghislaine Maxwell deal would perforce include Trump's suborning perjury and witness tampering. But that's no problem for a man who has everything, including the former U.S. Department of Justice. At any rate, it's the other guys who pass for big minds among MAGA's crackpot consumers, which is to say, every last one of them. So Mr. Sommer indeed has cause for being a trifle dispirited by the prep in play.

He noted that some clown at Newsmax "implied that Maxwell may have been unjustly prosecuted." Or in the clown's words (via Media Matters), "She’s in jail right now for, like" — let's double it, always good for the proper effect — "forty years or something crazy.... Not a very popular thing, but we’ll take a look." I've not a clue as to the clown's meaning of "not a very popular thing"; on the other hand, I do know the Platonic Ideal of Incontrovertibility is that "we" millions of MAGA clowns will "take a look" translates into a reseating of the O.J. Simpson jury.

Sommer didn't mention "influencer" Benny Johnson, but I will. This morning he was all in with diversionary tactics, such as quoting Scripture, "Fight the good fight of faith," sayeth 1 Timothy 6:12, and promoting his YouTube channel by interviewing the righteous likes of congressboy-on-boy Jim Jordan. And Benny's "pinned" post, a leftover from yesterday (the wheels of his anguished mind were still ƃuıuɹnʇ), was a touching effort to swell the ranks of the Hitler Youth by promoting "fatherhood" as "the GREATEST thing" ever: "anyone telling you otherwise "is [trying] to castrate you." I rechecked about noontime. It remained his top post.

Trump BFF Charlie Kirk, on the other hand, said yesterday on his television abomination that The Wall Street Journal's impressively sourced report revealed only that "there might very well be uncredible information" in the files — planted, of course, by hostile intelligence or FBI chiefs of Democratic yore. "Not even [Trump's] current critics are believing that Wall Street Journal piece," added Kirk. Who are these Trump critics of incredible disbelief? Kirk named one: Elon Musk; the others, "people."

Also cited in Sommer's post is MAGA's ever-popular white supremacist and Pizzagate theorist Jack Posobiec, who pondered deeply this Maxwell pickle and concluded that she must open up about "absolutely everything." Turned out, though, the word absolutely isn't quite an absolute. Trump? "He’s been falsely accused of illicit behavior with Epstein time and time again," said Posobiec. "That’s already been litigated." So he's out. In is anyone "else out there." And he kids you not.

The columnist recapped his worry. "As calls for the Epstein files to be released have grown, Trump has begun insisting that evidence in the investigation has been irrevocably tainted by assorted villains," that being Charlie Kirk's dutiful dump of bullshit. "Not everyone on the right is warming up to the Maxwell rehabilitation," continued Sommer. "Still, the idea of making a deal with Maxwell is winning support in key corners."

In fact it's been nearly two weeks since Trump first vomited on Truth Social that the "Files [were] written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration"; that "they created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me."

That tops whatever Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche, with the least of all possible prosecutorial efforts, might squeeze out of a desperate Ghislaine Maxwell yearning to be free. Yet Trump's "right-wing media figures" are even more desperate than Epstein's criminal procurer. Each has a ton of scam income and loads of free, self-promotional publicity riding on their benefactor's soft landing. And each is terrified, precisely because the justice-for-Maxwell-slash-"assorted-villains" gambit is the only conceivable play. Indeed, the only possible play.

Except for resigning the game. Which is what a professional would do.

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