Talk Is Trump's Crime Scene, His Own Worst Witness

The Art Of The Self Own

In a piece about well-known Israeli writer Etgar Keret, David Remnick quoted him on an otherwise unrelated matter: “The genius of Trump is that he has internalized social media and how it works. He knows that saying something is no different than doing something, that it’s just one damn thing after another and nothing matters. Trump realized you don’t have to do things. You just need to say things and then it’s all wrapped in one big burrito of dream and fantasy.” Señor TACO, the postmodern octogenarian, has been turning politics into spectacle, and spectacle into consequence-free chaos. His true innovation was more aesthetic than political per se. He weaponized social media’s emptiness as he was replacing governance with performance, fact with feeling and action with assertion. In the age of algorithms, in a world addicted dopamine and distraction, he sensed, as Keret said, that attention is power, and that outrage, not outcomes, drives engagement. For him, truth is whatever gets the most retweets. He speaks not to inform or persuade, but to provoke, confuse and dominate the feed. He turned politics into a rage cult and governance into improv theater, where cruelty is the applause line and the chaos is the message. More than a mere president, he’s a content creator in a collapsing empire, selling delusion like it’s merch. And the scariest part? Millions bought in— because the fantasy was easier than facing the wreckage of their own miserable empty lives. By dissolving the line between statement and act, between dream and reality, he created a spectacle in which nothing is real and, as Dostoevsky wrote in Brothers K, everything is permitted. In this landscape, lies aren’t flaws— they’re features.n Never forget, he operates in a moral vacuum Roy Cohn taught him how to create.

The new YouGov poll for The Economist asked if people think that Trump was involved in the actual crimes that Epstein committed. In other words, did they think Trump was doing stuff, not just aware of stuff— and a plurality of Americans said, yes, he was. Trump, who once said he draws the line at 14 year old girls, was certainly have sex with minors. Less than a third of Americans think otherwise.

And yet, Trump just can’t keep himself from talking about the Epstein scandal, as though he wants it foremost in the collective consciousness. As one of his protagonists, William Kristol, wrote yesterday: Don’t Stop Now! You’re Doing Great!. Trump, he wrote, has “become rich because of his skills as a con man. He became president because of his talent as a demagogue. And what makes a con man and a demagogue successful is the ability to talk persuasively— even if untruthfully. He has confidence in his ability to talk his way to money and power— and he has confidence in his ability to talk his way out of a jam. He’s done it often enough. He now thinks that he can do it again. So he talks about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal virtually every day… [A]s Trump has talked and talked over the last few weeks, these facts have become clearer: Trump knew what Epstein was up to; he didn’t care about what Epstein was doing; and he still doesn’t care about Epstein’s victims.”

We know that Trump does care about himself. And it’s obvious that he cares a lot about keeping the files under wraps. What’s in them that’s more damning than what we already know? Trump presumably knows. He talks and talks, but he doesn’t want us to find that out.

Still, the files remain a silent but looming presence. They are the ghost who might tell the truth at Trump’s banquet. Trump fears those files. But he has confidence in his ability to talk. His fear and confidence combine to lead him to keep on talking.

Some of his staff must be worrying that the president doth talk about Epstein too much. To which all I have to say is this: Mr. President, don’t listen to them. Keep on talking!

“Yes, he knew,” is what the media seems enthralled with. How long before they start reporting about the actual young girls he raped? Let's never forget that he’s not just digging his own grave; he’s live-streaming it. He can’t shut up because the performance is all he has left, even if it buries him. He’s so addicted to the sound of his own voice, so convinced he can talk reality into submission, that he doesn’t realize he’s leaving a trail of breadcrumbs soaked in gasoline. The truth is coming, and he’s the one lighting the match. Let him rant. Let him improvise his way straight into the fire. We'll all have front row seats.

"The Epstein Curse" by Nancy Ohanian