The Epstein case

(The Guardian; Peščanik.net)

Every successful recipe eventually boils down to mechanical repetition. After scaring ABC and CBS with baseless lawsuits, Donald Trump sued Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal over the story of his vulgar birthday message to Jeffrey Epstein. But unlike the pointless lawsuits against major TV networks, this one is about an easily verifiable fact: the authentic letter either exists or it doesn't, and a lot more can come out in the investigation. Trump's tried-and-true method - no matter what happens, counterattack - will probably only increase the attention he wants to avoid. The other ingredients of his recipe - denial, blame, distraction - work only if journalists and Democrats give in to him. So it's their reactions that should be monitored now, not those of Trump's most loyal supporters.

We still debate whether Trumpism is an ideology or not, while leaving aside the undeniable fact that Trumpism is a set of tactics to exploit weaknesses in the American political, legal, and media systems. Some of these tactics Trump inherited from his mentor Roy Cohn, and many are now being adopted by his followers: never admit fault, always fight back, and never accept defeat or cover it up (as in the case of the recently dismissed lawsuit against Bob Woodward and his publisher).

But there is also a less obvious element at play, which has to do with controlling the flow of political time (indeed, it is a challenge for all politicians). Politics is not just about taking advantage of an opportunity or an opponent’s weakness. It is also about the art of speeding up or slowing down the flow of events to your advantage. Look at how we are used to Trump doing and saying things that would have shortened the terms of any of his predecessors (okay, previous presidents didn’t pass around AI images of themselves as kings or popes, but still).

It used to be normal for administrations that experienced one or two major scandals in four years to never recover from them. But a government that produces three major scandals a day seems to have no reason to worry, because no one can follow it up anymore. It is difficult to maintain attention on one story, because the next scandal is much more difficult (today it seems that the Qatar plane scandal happened many years ago). Of course, not all scandals are created intentionally, but there is no doubt that Trump's release of an AI video showing the arrest of Barack Obama in the White House, along with the description of Obama as a ringleader in election fraud, was intended to divert attention from himself, which does not mean that it is not sufficient reason for Trump's impeachment.

While the frequency of scandals serves to speed up the news cycle, the legal system is used to slow things down. The release of Epstein's grand jury testimony could take a long time, unless the courts reject the request (as has already happened in Florida). Even if the transcripts are released, it is unlikely that they will contain anything about Trump. It is estimated that even that will be forgotten in a few weeks.

This is not to say that Trump is a Machiavellian mastermind manipulating Americans (or at least only his supporters) at will. His approach works in part because the institutional and cultural contexts are fundamentally different today: news cycles are shorter, as are attention spans. Trump’s behavior has been normalized—and generalized: the shamelessness that was once typical of him is now a mandatory part of the Republican Party’s code of conduct (think of the blatant lies about Medicaid). Most importantly, a free media that relentlessly follows scandals and is immune to intimidation is no longer taken for granted. Broadcasters are now much more susceptible to the influence of their profit-oriented parent companies. Democrats are avoiding the Epstein case because they don’t want the public to get the impression that they are obsessed with the dirty details of the scandal. So they are tempted to focus on the lofty issues of everyday American life. They seem oblivious to the fact that Republicans are so scared that they would rather dissolve the House than deal with the scandal.

Is he right to panic? There is no doubt that Trump messed up when he asked his followers on social media to dismiss the story: it's like that psychological trick where they tell you "don't think about the elephant" and then you just think about it. At the same time, he further confirmed the so-called Streisand effect: censorship generates the very attention that should have been avoided. Trump's lobbying of Murdoch to cover up the Epstein affair will also raise doubts among those who still naively believe that Republicans protect free speech. It is now becoming pointless to publish only Epstein's testimony before the grand jury, because both Trump's loyal base and other uninformed voters have gained the lasting impression that there is some connection between Trump and Epstein or, at the very least, that chaos reigns in the Trump court. In his lawsuit against Murdoch, Trump must prove the existence of "actual malice" on the part of the media - a high hurdle. Unlike the investigation into Russian influence in the US election, here Trump himself is initiating a long process that will mark his term. While delay has served him well in many of the investigations conducted between his terms, time is no longer on his side. In fact, he will be happy if the court dismisses his lawsuit on a technicality - he appears to have violated a Florida law that requires defendants to be given notice of the lawsuit at least five days before filing.