I can’t believe I’m writing these words, but it now appears that the only Trump administration figure who acted with anything resembling a conscience in the matter of the “Epstein files” disclosure fiasco was Dan Bongino. According to the new book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency, by New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, it was Bongino—and Bongino alone—who repeatedly told the White House they were fumbling the Epstein scandal with their continual obfuscations, half-measures, and broken promises.
At one point, Haberman and Swan write that he yelled at Chief of Staff Susie Wiles during one of the frequent White House meetings called to perform damage control on the Epstein story: “I warned you guys about this the whole time, and you ignored me. And exactly what I said was going to happen happened. And now you’re pretending I was in on this.”
A few months later, Bongino resigned.
What the New York Times excerpts from the book demonstrate is a remarkable lack of a coherent strategy regarding the “Epstein files,” combined with an even more remarkable lack of curiosity regarding the veracity of the claims therein against Trump. And despite what the President of the United States wants you to believe, there are allegations against Trump. One, as the excerpt recounts, involves painful nipple play: “One official would later describe it as a ‘surreal’ experience to be discussing nipples in the White House Situation Room.”
The fact is, I have no idea if Trump had sex with women—or, indeed, underage girls—trafficked or ensnared by Epstein. (The president, of course, has repeatedly denied any and all such allegations. ”I have nothing to hide. I have been exonerated. I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein," Trump claimed during a press gaggle on Air Force One in February.)
What I do know, however, is that there are allegations that he did so, a fact that never seems to even enter the conversation among those Trump flunkies huddled together in a room designed to facilitate crisis communications during national emergencies. In this case, the emergency they were discussing wasn’t the administration’s illegal tariffs, illegal war in Iran, or illegal deportation agenda, but the one involving their boss’s close relationship with the world’s most notorious pedophile.
Nobody bothered to ask whether the claims were true.
Nobody expressed any discomfort with the accusations.
Nobody questioned whether they ought to be working so hard to save the skin of a man already found criminally liable for raping E. Jean Carroll.
Nobody brought up the fact that 27 other women have charged the president with rape, sexual assault, and groping. (Trump has also repeatedly denied all these women’s allegations. “I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody… I’m not a pedophile,” Trump said in an April 26 interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Norah O’Donnell.)
Nobody questioned why Trump grew irate when the subject came up.
Nobody—not even Bongino—looked at the “Epstein files,” compared them to the broader facts of Trump’s life and said, “You know, I think there might be a pattern here?”
Of course, the Trump people will argue that he has never been charged with wrongdoing regarding the “Epstein files.” That is true. But we also know that he lied about his relationship with Epstein, claiming, for example, that he never flew on Epstein’s plane. We now know that was a lie. He flew on the plane at least eight times. Trump also denied sending that grotesque 50th birthday greeting to Epstein. He said he cut off all ties with Epstein following their split in 2004. Just this week, however, Epstein’s personal secretary, Lesley Groff, testified to Congress that she arranged calls between Trump and Epstein shortly before Trump assumed the presidency.
In short, Trump has done nothing but lie about his relationship with his “best friend” of 15 years. Yet nobody in Trump’s inner circle bothered to ask themselves whether they ought to be working so hard to defend such a man. They didn’t ask because they’d already determined the answer.
We’ve blown right past asking the quaint Clinton-era question of whether character matters. We’re not even asking if criminality matters. The only question still on the table regarding this criminal presidency is whether past crimes currently matter. And among those whose salary/influence/prestige is tied to Trump’s fortunes, they do not.
I remember a March 2025 interview with Megyn Kelly in which she explicitly stated, “I don’t give a s--t about Trump getting handsy with someone twenty years ago.” Of course, only a year later, once she’d found herself back on Trump’s ‘enemies list,’ Kelly had no trouble finding fault with the president’s behavior. “He’s not a moral man,” she told the famously moral Russell Brand in one interview. “He’s cheated on every wife he’s ever had,” she said during another.
Do you get the game now? Morality only matters when it can be used as a cudgel. Otherwise, as Kelly said, the MAGA faithful are happy to “overlook” certain negative aspects of his personality. She didn’t get into too much detail about specifically which aspects she meant, so I’m just going to go ahead and assume she meant “all of them.”
To be clear, Democrats aren’t immune to this moral grappling. Maine Senatorial candidate Graham Platner, for example, has his own baggage—I mean, if you consider a Nazi tattoo and alleged sexual advances towards staff a (suit)case study in political pitfalls—but the difference here is one of scale. Platner is one man on a short leash. Trump is the entire executive branch of the federal government. Should he win, Platner will be one of a hundred. Trump is one of one.
And what the Epstein saga has taught us is that his people Do. Not. Care. Because not caring earns them a new pair of Florsheims from the Boss. Or an ambassadorship. A crypto slush fund.
So, really then, there are no heroes in this story. Except for Virginia Giuffre. Maria Farmer. Sarah Ransome. Teala Davies. Chauntae Davis. Lisa Phillips. Jennifer Araoz. Juliette Bryant. And all the other Epstein accusers who went public with their stories and who have been repeatedly re-victimized by the grimy fartknots plotting their boss’s salvation—and in doing so, damning themselves—in the f—ing White House Situation Room.
The most revealing thing in these excerpts isn’t what Trump may or may not have done. It’s that the people closest to him stopped caring. These men and women, among the most powerful in the country, are nothing more than cowards hopelessly devoted to a philanderer, liar, and crook. May their names be forever tied to his.
