The Epstein Heat Is Rising So Trump Reached For His Culture War Flamethrower

Nothing Says Presidential Like Calling A Crown Prince A King, Then Repeatedly Demeaning Your Predecessor

Trump met with the crown prince of Bahrain yesterday— or as he mistakenly called him, “the king.” It was supposed to be a routine diplomatic event, but when Trump started taking questions afterward, it quickly became something else entirely. This wasn’t a press conference. As the prince looked on stoically, if uncomfortably, it turned into a deflection exercise aimed directly at the MAGA faithful who have grown increasingly disconcerted with Trump’s lies about the Epstein scandal— a scandal that just keeps heating up the more Trump lies about it. 

For nearly twenty minutes, Trump fielded questions not about foreign policy, but about Epstein most of which he used to attack Joe Biden, unloading a torrent of bile aimed squarely at his predecessor. He mocked Biden’s age and mental health, accused him of destroying the economy, being soft on China, opening the borders and even suggested he should be prosecuted and jailed. He went so far as to call Biden “a national threat” and “a puppet for foreign powers.” The rhetoric was extreme, even by Trump’s standards. I mean he threatened to arrest two political opponents, explicitly naming President Biden and another unnamed official. He said they “need to be prosecuted” and that “revenge is justice,” accusing Biden of “destroying NATO,” mishandling Ukraine aid, and being “owned by China,” echoing old conspiracy claims that may be bonkers but will sound comfortably familiar to the QAnon and MAGA lunatics most bought into the Epstein saga. 

The length, pettiness and intensity of the attacks on Biden were more like what you’d expect from a campaign rally, not a presidential presser. And this wasn’t a campaign stop. This was the President of the United States, sitting next to a foreign dignitary, spewing conspiracy theories and vengeance fantasies as if it were a MAGA rally. No modern president has done anything remotely like this. Even bitter political rivals like Nixon and Kennedy, Bush and Clinton, Obama and Trump himself, at least pretended to respect the office once the campaign was over. Not Trump. The cameras were on, so the circus rolled out, even veering into unrelated personal grievances, bringing up past impeachment trials, the 2020 election and the Department of Justice’s treatment of Hunter Biden.

He even took a bizarre detour to praise Elon Musk as a “true American,” only to “joke” about deporting him before saying Musk “loves this country more than Biden ever did.” (Meanwhile, Musk, stirring the QAnon pot, reminded his followers that “not a single Epstein client has been prosecuted. Not even one.”) Trump's are not the words you'd expect to hear from a sane leader— they’re the deflections of a man panicking under pressure. The Epstein files have made their way back into the news, and his team has botched the way it’s being handled… and Trump senses how dangerous the story could be, especially now that congressional Democrats are nudging it along. So he gave his base what they always crave: rage, spectacle and a boogie man to focus on. Anything to keep their eyes off the headlines he’s most afraid of.