Photos: House.gov\YouTube Screenshots
Late yesterday, in an act of total, complete, and highly uncharacteristic surrender, Donald Trump announced on social media that he would bend to overwhelming, bipartisan political pressure and finally, at long last, call on his Justice Department to disclose the information it has related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“I HAVE JUST SIGNED THE BILL TO RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES,” Cheeto Benito bellowed – yes, in all caps – with laughably faux confidence. “As everyone knows, I asked Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, to pass this Bill in the House and Senate, respectively. Because of this request, the votes were almost unanimous in favor of passage.”
Make no mistake, this week represents possibly the single greatest humiliation Donald Trump has experienced not just this year… but this decade, the entirety of the Trump era, since he descended from that ghastly, gaudy, golden escalator in 2015.
The House approved the Epstein bill with a 427-1 vote, despite unprecedented carrot and nuclear stick tactics deployed to whip lawmakers like Reps. Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace. Obviously, they failed.
One might imagine Democrats would be seizing upon this moment in every way conceivable. FINALLY, the party is united. FINALLY, the Bad Orange Man is folding like a Temu-ordered suit, FINALLY – yeah, you’re wrong. Sorry! And I’m truly apologetic because I worship the rule of three.
After succeeding in properly wounding Trump for the first time in a decade, wounding him to such an extent that ALL BUT ONE member of the House GOP voted against releasing the Epstein files, Dems are… Jesus Christ… yes, they are indeed in disarray.
Because instead of riding this wave, instead of letting Trump’s humiliation marinate in the public consciousness, the Dems promptly catapulted themselves face-f*cking-first into two entirely avoidable dumpster fires.
Let’s start with how they decided to defend the indefensible: putting a Captain America shield over ostensibly either a moronic or morally suspect member of their caucus.
In the generally Trump-centric nuclear waste dump that was the Epstein files, the country learned that Democratic Rep. Stacey Plaskett literally received talking points from the *AT THE TIME* **KNOWN** sex pest during a congressional hearing. That is to say… Plaskett was LITERALLY being fed questions from an infamous predator.
Now, in my ideal version of the Democratic Party, a lawmaker who cozies up with pedophiles should be shot straight to the 95th moon of Jupiter. But in my just-clears-the-bar version of the Democratic Party, that lawmaker would at least be called out by her fellow members after said pedophile becomes America’s most famous pedophile. In the actually-exists version of the Democrat Party, we have normally highly principled Rep. Jamie Raskin proclaiming that Plaskett just “took a phone call from one of her constituents.” What. The. Actual… You know the rest… Is that how Raskin would defend a Chicago lawmaker texting with Al Capone? What the heck are we doing here?
If all of this was not enough, Democrats are now rallying around… undermining democracy. Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is under IMMENSE fire for calling for a vote condemning Rep. Chuy Garcia for resigning and telling nobody but his chief of staff in time for candidates to register for the primary.
What’s more, per Axios, some progressive caucus members are discussing a retaliatory measure or two against Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez for her efforts to rebuke García.
Now, here’s what’s tough… Garcia has a stellar progressive record – and he’s been EXTREMELY clear-eyed about the genocide in Gaza. Gluesenkamp Perez has not. What’s more, her voting record leaves a lot, A LOT, to be desired.
But here is where I present my hot take: election integrity is important. You know, the take Democrats argued 23 seconds ago?
This seems like common sense!
And yet, we have nominally progressive – and often very compelling – Congressman Greg Casar claiming that “The only resolution about Congressman Chuy García that should be considered by Congress is one to honor and thank him for his many years of excellent public service.”
Ummm…no.
Casar and his team should be utterly ashamed of that statement.
García has done many years of excellent public service, but we should be open in condemning him for saying voters in Illinois don’t matter at the same time as we are trying to argue voters across the country must be protected from Trump’s fascist attempts to gerrymander and undermine democracy.
The issue at hand is not that Democrats are, for once, failing to stand up for what is right. The issue, this week, is that they are harming themselves politically in order to stand up for what is wrong.
And doing so the very week that Donald Trump is finally being hung by his own conspiratorial petard via the Epstein files is the very textbook definition of political malpractice.
