Tea at Trianon: The Epstein Emails That Clear Trump, Not Implicate Him

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, November 15, 2025

The Epstein Emails That Clear Trump, Not Implicate Him

From Amuse on X:

The latest batch of Epstein related emails released by congressional Democrats is being marketed as a revelation, yet the material reveals something quite different. What emerges is a portrait of Jeffrey Epstein as a man who feared Donald Trump because Trump understood what was happening long before Epstein’s public fall. This is not conjecture. Epstein himself admitted it in exchanges with the journalist Michael Wolff, whose role turns out to be much deeper than previously understood. Wolff was not simply profiling Epstein, he was working with him, thinking strategically about how to manage political narratives, calibrate public messaging, and use Trump as a kind of political instrument. This reframes the meaning of the disclosures. They do not implicate Trump. They exonerate him, and they shed light on the curious fact that figures like Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, who spent far more time with Epstein and enjoyed far more intimate access to his private world, never alerted authorities and in some cases actively insulated him. A puzzled reader may pause here. How can emails released by Trump’s political opponents help Trump? By considering the structure of the evidence. First, Epstein believed Trump knew about his criminal operations. Second, Epstein believed Trump went to authorities with his suspicions after expelling Epstein from Mar a Lago in 2004. Third, Epstein and Wolff repeatedly discuss Trump in a way that presupposes Trump’s distance from Epstein’s crimes. None of these points fit the narrative Democrats hoped to advance. (Read more.)