It’s beginning to appear that Donald Trump’s reign as king of America has peaked, and an unstoppable downslide has begun.
Even before Jeffrey Epstein returned to the nation’s headlines, Trump was in trouble with the public. Elections across the country earlier this month proved that as Democrats clobbered Republicans at every turn, and new polls are adding an exclamation point. A new New York Times poll put his support at 33 percent, which pretty much coincides with the results of most other major polls. That rating is among the lowest rating, if not the lowest rating, any modern president has faced at this point in their reigns.
Furthermore, although it’s been flying under the radar, in the year since Trump won the election, nearly 75,000 people have signed up to run for local or state office through Run for Something, a grassroots political group that recruits young progressives to run in down-ballot races across all 50 states.
But so much more is going wrong for Trump right now. January is nearing, and in January state legislatures, city councils, county councils — governments across the country and at every level — will begin deliberating how to respond to the damage Trump’s agenda has done to their states and communities: higher prices, slower economy, loss of jobs, assault on our health care system, harm to all of us but especially small businesses and farmers due to the tariffs, impending cuts to and weakening of SNAP, out of control DHS/ICE, worker shortages due to mass deportation, higher electricity prices, downsizing of FEMA, and more.
And then, with all that going wrong for Trump, Epstein suddenly burst back onto the front pages, and that’s been nothing but bad news for Trump.
First, House Speaker Mike Johnson was forced, finally, to swear into office Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who immediately provided the last necessary signature on a bipartisan petition to force a floor vote on whether Congress should demand the Justice Department release its files on Epstein, files that Trump is moving heaven and earth to keep secret.
And then Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released files it had subpoenaed from the Department of Justice that suggest that Trump and Epstein were closer friends than Trump has admitted during the period Epstein was seducing underage girls. They also suggest he knew far more about Epstein’s sex trafficking than he previously acknowledged and did nothing to stop it, and may have even participated in it.
The files prove nothing, and most of them had been made public earlier. But they do provide strong new credence to the possibility – probability? — that Trump wants them to remain secret because he knows what’s in them, and that increases the public’s thirst to know. Republicans on the House Oversight Committee then released 33,295 more pages of documents that contain court documents, flight records, videos and law enforcement interviews with victims detailing their experiences. Those pages were jumbled, so journalists and politicians will be burning midnight candles for several days until they know what’s in them.
But regardless of what is in them, they are not the files that Democrats and a lot of MAGA Republicans want to see. Those files, which the Department of Justice is keeping under lock and key and which Trump is turning heaven and earth to keep secret, are thought to contain proof, or at the very least strong evidence, that Trump was into pedophilia deeper than is known.
Which, of course, would be why Trump is trying so hard to keep them secret even though he promised during his campaign last year that he would release them. He didn’t know what was in them then, but he does now. Remember how Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi first said the files were on her desk, then said they don’t exist, then informed Trump that not only do they exist but that they contain his name “multiple times.” She also told him that many other high-profile individuals were named in the files; one official familiar with the documents told The Wall Street Journal the files contain hundreds of names. That’s when Trump commanded that the files be kept secret.
Okay, point made. It’s been a bad time for Donald Trump. But what now?
It appears the bad news for Trump will continue and get worse. This Epstein thing is just getting started and almost certainly will dominate the front pages in the coming days – unless, of course, Trump does something crazy, like attacking Venezuela, to push the Epstein saga into the background. If Trump can’t do that, Epstein’s ghost will haunt him forever.
Politicians who once groveled at his feet to get his endorsement will shy away from him. After all, what politician in his right mind would want the endorsement of a president who is hugely unpopular with the people, whose ratings are sinking further every day, and who suddenly who will be widely associated with pedophilia and believed by many to be a pedophile.
Politicians will see him as an albatross around their necks, not an asset. When the moment comes for them to vote on whether to force the Justice Department to release its Epstein files, how could they vote otherwise than yes? They’d be hard-pressed to go home and explain to their constituents why they voted to protect pedophiles. The only reasons why they would do that that I can think of are that they know or suspect their names are in the files, they are being pressured by someone (Trump?) whose names are in the files, or they are just scared of Trump.
Bottom line: Politicians will begin to distance themselves from Trump and then drop him like a hot coal. We’ll get the files; even if Congress passes a bill to force it and Trump vetoes it, he’ll be overridden. Trump will be toast, probably impeached and drummed out of the White House before the 2026 midterm election and certainly after them.
Dream for a moment. If We the People bear down on what we’re doing, and not give up, and vote, Democrats will take over both houses of Congress and Trump will be impeached and drummed out of government. Whoever takes his place – JD Vance is next in line, then Mike Johnson – will have nothing like Trump’s dictatorial powers. MAGA will be steamrolled, democratic Democrats will take over Congress, the United States will begin re-taking its rightful place in the world, Congress will add enough democracy-loving justices to the Supreme Court to undo the present court’s corruption, and soon we’ll be singing, “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
That’s my hope and dream, anyway, and my belief. We can make it happen. We can, we must, and we will.
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