Tea at Trianon: Trump Exonerated on Epstein

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

Sunday, February 15, 2026

Trump Exonerated on Epstein

If Trump were implicated in the Epstein Files, surely the Biden administration would have made it known. From Tierney's Real News:

“The Miami Herald, the first to report on the document, reported that the local Palm Beach Police launched the first investigation into Epstein’s network in 2005.
The police chief’s name -- Michael Reiter -- is redacted from the document on the Department of Justice’s website, but the information in the FBI statement tracks with previously public information about Reiter’s role in the investigation that began in 2005.
A Palm Beach woman reported that her 14-year-old stepdaughter had been recruited to give Epstein a massage and was assaulted.
Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter eventually assembled a roster of 40 underage victims. When the local district attorney refused to prosecute the case, Chief Reiter went to the FBI, triggering a federal investigation that ultimately led to Epstein’s disappointing first conviction —formally, a “non-prosecution agreement”— in 2009.
The newly released DOJ files included the transcript of a 2019 FBI interview with Chief Reiter when Epstein was prosecuted under President Trump. At one point, Reiter mentioned Trump. Chief Reiter told the FBI that in 2006, Trump was one of the first people to call his office after Epstein’s charge became public record. “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this,” Trump told Reiter. (Read more.)