The Great Epstein Flip-Flop

Jeffrey Epstein and our strategic outrage

Davidoff Studios / Getty Images

One of the ways that I try to approach political writing is by sharing perspectives that I haven’t already seen explored. When new stories and controversies break out, it’s easy to fall in line with the million other journalists and commentators going over the same set of facts. I could talk about the specifics of Trump’s involvement with Epstein, or just how badly the president has bungled every interview he’s given on the subject. And I could talk about what it would mean for his supporters to turn their back on a crime as grave as child sex trafficking.

But most of these conversations are already hackneyed. For me, one of the most striking aspects about this political moment is how diametrically opposite it feels to the one we knew just a few months ago. Unfortunately, in driving home some of my argument, I fear that I’ve incidentally diminished the weight of the crimes being discussed. That’s not my intention.

My aim is to speak to our shifting political climate, selective engagement, and how even the most righteous cause can be twisted and reduced to campaign fodder.

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I’m going to go out on a limb and admit something that I expect is secretly true for many others as well: I don’t actually care about the Epstein files. Not in the way that many are pretending to, anyway. No more than I lose sleep over the cult of Jim Jones.

That’s not to say I’m indifferent to the victims or that people shouldn’t still face accountability for their crimes. They should. But the truth is, my only interest in the Epstein files is that what they reveal could lead to Trump’s downfall. And I can’t help but see something manufactured in the way that my party has suddenly adopted the “Release the Epstein files!” rallying cry as though it’s been their moral crusade all along.

It’s just another example of how people take up pet causes before putting them back down again. People “stand with” Ukraine and flaunt their advocacy with Amazon-purchased lawn signs. Months later, the weathered signals of virtue are removed from front yards when neighbors aren’t looking. It doesn’t mean the war is over or that the suffering has ended, only that our focus has been diverted.

The gestures matter even when our commitment fades. But there’s something telling about the routine way that people in this country glom onto new issues. Tables turn with passing election cycles and there’s a pendulous inevitability to the kinds of shifts in thinking we’re now seeing.

A year ago, I could comfortably presume anybody still raving about the Epstein files was in the QAnon camp. I never doubted that Epstein was a criminal or that the allegations against him were true. The evidence of his crimes is as copious as it is disturbing. But the amount of time that I devoted to the case before it resurfaced in our news cycle last month was next to non-existent. I know I’m not alone.

During the pandemic, I watched a documentary on the deceased sex offender’s crimes, shook my head in disbelief at some of the details divulged, and, if I’m being honest, moved on with my life afterward. That was about the level of attention I gave it. I felt sympathy for the victims before moving onto whatever morose Netflix documentary enticed me next, or whatever heinous tragedy flitted across my social media feed. I subconsciously accepted that, as with so many of Planet Earth’s injustices, there’s not a lot I can do to solve them besides write about them, pester politicians, and donate to causes that support those who are affected.

I can only pay so much mind to the tragedies of the world each time they occur. Our spirits can only stomach so much misery before they begin to unravel.

Of course, desensitization is nothing to take pride in or aim for. But I shouldn’t feel like a salmon swimming upstream when I admit that my senses are frayed and I stopped worrying about this litigation a long time ago. It’s okay to confess that we each choose hills to die on and holes to bury our heads in.

There’s no primal part of me that yearns for the resolution of this decade-old case. There’s nothing that tugs at the fiber of my being for this list of sex criminals to be released to the public. Nothing can convince me that it’s worth more coverage than our collapsing biodiversity.

In so many of the Democrats who’ve adopted the Epstein file issue as their own, I can’t help but see something performative. If most of us are honest, our sudden interest in this ongoing pedophilia case owes almost entirely to what we expect it to prove. We want the felon in the White House to face accountability.

In many ways, it seems that this case may have greater ramifications for Trump than it ever did for Epstein. The president’s culpability in those sex crimes could alter the future of American politics. It’s the rare scandal from throughout his tenure in the limelight to exhibit staying power.

Recent weeks have been an interesting test for both parties as we’ve weighed how we should respond to this developing story. Many MAGA loyalists are doing what was anticipated and abandoning a core tenet of their platform in order to remain aligned with Trump.

But a significant faction of the Republican party is beginning to defect from their leader. For them, there was nothing performative at all about their hunt for the world’s pedophiles. The notion that the elites belong to an insidious, child-trafficking sex cabal is an integral part of their ideology. It was their co-opting of the “justice for pedophiles” cause that pushed the movement to the fringes and made the charge harder to support for voters like myself. And Trump’s about-face on the issue may really be their breaking point.

Inversely, Democrats have taken on this facade of moral superiority as we pretend to have been the party that cared about the Epstein list all along. And there’s a certain theatricality in how central it’s become to commentators’ moral outrage.

If we’re true to ourselves, I think the only real justice that we hope to see come from this case is that Trump can — somewhere in the not-so-distant future — finally face accountability for his crimes. It’s a noble pursuit in itself. But it looks dishonest to pretend that it’s something other than what it is.

Maybe a little cunning is necessary here. As time has gone on, I’ve had less and less faith in the “When they go low, we go high” approach that Michelle Obama championed. Maybe the decision to seek the moral high ground on this issue is strictly strategic; the Epstein case is Trump’s Achilles heel and we need to take advantage of the current momentum against him.

This situation also reminds me of the discourse around Trump paying off Stormy Daniels. It isn’t because we were so offended at the action itself that Trump was charged with multiple felonies for it; it was because his guilt could easily be proven. Al Capone went to prison for tax evasion, after all.

And yet, the decision to charge Trump and brand him as a felon may have done more harm than good. His mugshot was framed as a call to action by many of his supporters. Even voters on the fence largely considered his 34 separate felonies as evidence of a weaponized justice system rather than flagrant proof of his indecency.

I can’t help but see a subtle gaslighting baked into the left wing media’s recent coverage of the Epstein case. (That’s not to say the right wing has addressed the issue with any more integrity.)

There’s a wink-wink, nod-nod mentality that shades our conversation around it, as if we’re all in on some unspoken agreement to act as though we’ve cared this deeply about the Epstein files all along. It looks like the very same kind of flip-flop that we claim to oppose.

If we’re going to latch onto this case, let’s at least be honest about why and stop being the party of “politically correct.” Let’s admit that many of us are preoccupied with this issue, not out of some long-burning desire to expose every last predator, but because this particular scandal might finally bring down the man we see as democracy’s most persistent threat. That doesn’t make our motives impure. Only as jaded and deliberate as the moment demands.

When the stakes are this dire, I’d rather pursue an honest strategy with open eyes than pretend I’m driven by some unwavering sense of moral clarity. It’s that kind of holier-than-thou politics that cost Harris the swing vote in 2024. We won’t win it back by continuing to insult those same voters’ intelligence.

Moral clarity isn’t a costume to be worn whenever it suits our narrative, and we can’t conveniently discard it as soon as the spotlight shifts. Republicans don’t buy that our outrage here is principled. Just as many on the right have shied away from their once-central crusade against pedophiles, we’re reflexively scrambling to fill the same positions they just abandoned. Tribalism and double standards abound on both sides.

If we want to reclaim the trust of disillusioned voters, we need to stop pretending we’re above the games we’re so clearly playing.

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