Trump’s Spinning Plates
They're not just entertainment for his cultists. They're distractions intended to lure our attention away from the Epstein files.
Donald Trump loves to boast about how much work he does. Donald Trump’s children love to brag about how much work their father does. Donald Trump’s cabinet members love to suck up to Donald Trump by fawning over him for how much work he does — so much so, in fact, that their sycophancy is entirely indistinguishable from South Park’s satirical versions of themselves.
There’s certainly plenty of activity in the White House. But does Donald Trump really do so much work? It’s no coincidence that that activity, masquerading as work, has increased in both volume and visibility in the weeks since the Epstein scandal has re-emerged.
Trump is a master media manipulator, and he has been for many years. It’s one of his few actual skills. Manipulating the media is also his go-to move whenever there’s something he doesn’t want the American people to pay attention to. In his entire political life, there has never been anything he has wanted to distract from more than the Epstein files. The stakes are extremely high, so his response is extreme as well.
The most recent Epstein-adjacent firestorm began with Elon Musk’s ketamine-fueled tweet claiming that Trump is among those named in the Epstein files. For a few weeks after that, Trump and his team tried desperately to control the story, the way he has done in the past — spinning utterly implausible or occasionally barely plausible excuses.
When it became evident that all of his theories of alternate realities around Epstein were not going to be enough to kill the Epstein firestorm the way he used the National Enquirer to “catch and kill” unflattering stories about himself, he kicked into overdrive with Plan B.
Plan B consisted of flooding the zone with other outrageous acts so the media would focus on other things, thereby displacing the pesky Epstein story in the public’s consciousness. Perhaps the master media manipulator believed this would be enough to put the whole thing to bed, once and for all.
Here’s a partial list of all the shit-stirring he’s done in the last several weeks.
He welcomed Vladimir Putin onto U.S. soil and enabled Putin to pretend he had an interest in ending the Ukraine war, all while Putin never agreed to a cease fire. (Trump had backtracked on his previous statements that a ceasefire was a prerequisite, and Putin has drastically escalated his attacks on Ukraine in the time since Putin’s visit.)
The recent FBI raid on the home and office John Bolton’s house, Trump’s own National Security Advisor during his first term in the White House, is a symptom of a much larger retribution effort by this administration.
His administration released and then re-imprisoned Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, threatening to deport him to Uganda until the courts stepped in.
His ICE goons have continued immigrant raids in various parts of the country, tearing families apart and disrupting entire industries and business segments.
He has continued his threats against Jerome Powell as Fed Chair and has fired his deputy, Lisa Cook. (So far, both Powell and Cook have pushed back, refusing to step aside.)
He has sent the National Guard to Washington, DC under the pretense of reducing crime and he has threatened to do the same with other Democratic-led cities, starting with Chicago and Oakland.
He’s announced a series of new concentration camps modeled after Alligator Alcatraz (although, perhaps, without the alligators) all over the country. He’s using Fort Bliss, a facility previously used as an internment center for Japanese Americans during World War II, as an ICE detention center.
Trump has continued changing tariff rates, seemingly on a whim, without notice, further damaging our international trade and alienating our allies, all while needlessly destabilizing the world economy.
He announced that he would host this year’s Kennedy Center Honors and he revealed his roster of Z-list honorees.
He coerced Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to proceed with the plan to redistrict his state in an attempt to gain five more seats in the House of Representative, triggering a nationwide race to redistrict.
He has interfered with the content and programming of the Smithsonian Institute in one more attempt to rewrite the history of the nation in order to fit his political agenda.
He initiated a renovation of the White House to include a ballroom at an estimated cost of $200 million.
In his most illogical and self-serving distraction, he sent Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to “interview” Ghislaine Maxwell and then selectively released the transcripts. This was faux transparency at its finest. It provided virtually no new information and was intended to bamboozle the gullible, including many in the mainstream media.
This list barely scratches the surface. It’s not that those things aren’t real or don’t have consequences of their own. But underlying the rapid fire implementation of them is driven by a a desire to redirect attention away from his own involvement with Jeffrey Epstein.
Here’s where the fun begins. The House of Representatives reconvenes this week. Speaker Mike Johnson’s tactic of adjourning the House early to avoid a vote on releasing the Epstein files only delayed the vote. It didn’t prevent it.
In the meantime, it gave Democrats five weeks to strategize. Democratic House members have scheduled a press conference about the Epstein files on the steps of the Capitol. They reportedly will host several victims who have never spoken publicly before. The bill that Democrats proposed and that some Republicans had signed onto, previously prevented from coming to a vote because of Johnson’s hasty recess, has a good chance of coming to a vote when the House reconvenes and a healthy chance of passing if it does.
What Trump and the Republicans who march in lockstep don’t seem to realize is that the more Trump tries to obfuscate what’s in the Epstein files, the greater the focus that he himself is placing on the files.
Trump’s poll numbers are underwater in virtually every category. The things he’s doing to divert attention away from Epstein not only don’t make us forget Epstein, they make his polling numbers worse or at least don’t do anything to improve them.
Trump is hoping the furor around the Epstein files will die down, in much the same way that the insurrection died down. The way the outcry around Russian interference in the elections has died down. The way the furor around his 34 felony convictions has died down. The way the scandals surrounding his sexual assault charges and rape allegations have died down.
But there’s a catch. The Epstein files are not just an issue that the Democrats are trying to use against him. Opening up the Epstein files was one of his primary talking points on the campaign trail in 2024. He lured in his true believers; he magnified and legitimized their sometimes misplaced grievances about child predators for his own political advantage. It was the motivating factor in the 2024 election for a lot of voters.
Backtracking on that issue in such short order is taken by many of his voters as a complete betrayal. His 180º pivot on this issue was as head-spinning for the MAGA crowd as if he had suddenly advocated for abortions for all.
All the plate spinning that Donald Trump has been doing to distract from the Epstein files has a time limit on it. His health is clearly suffering. His lies are becoming more unhinged. His mental acuity is noticeably failing. Those plates are starting to fall. The courts have ruled against him many more times than they have ruled in his favor.
We don’t know what the outcome of this week will be. In fact, we barely have a roadmap. But it’s pretty safe to say that Epstein will be on the agenda and on the front pages of newspapers once again. We also know that it’ll be a week worth paying attention to, no matter what the outcome because, on some level, we’ll have a better idea if we’re continuing to move deeper into autocracy or if we stand a better chance of resisting it.
In the circus, acts like plate spinning are relatively static. They take place in a single ring. They keep the audience engaged while the other more complicated acts are getting ready to go on. I shudder to think what Trump’s main attraction is going to be.