 And a Memo to the Press: Step Up or Step Aside
When
my daughter was three, she committed a felony against drywall. I
walked into the room and found one entire wall absolutely annihilated by a
Sharpie. Thick, black marker lines looped, slashed, doubled back, spiraled
outward like chaos had been handed a marker and five uninterrupted minutes.
There were rage scribbles, hesitation scribbles, and a few calm, chillingly
deliberate strokes that suggested intent. It looked like a hurricane path
redrawn by someone who expected the wall to cooperate. The
wall didn’t look decorated. It
looked like it needed a lawyer. Standing
beneath this crime scene was my daughter, three feet tall, with bouncing
Shirley Temple curls, enormous dark brown eyes, and cheeks soft and cherubic.
The physical embodiment of innocence. A child who should have been holding a
juice box, not the smoking gun of a domestic catastrophe.
Abbie at 3 I
asked her if she did it. She
tilted her head and, in the tiniest, sweetest baby voice imaginable, said, “I
don’t know.” Not
flustered. Not
nervous. Just
calm. Serene. Delivered with the confidence of someone who believed that
sentence alone might end the conversation. I
asked if she knew who did do it. “I
don’t know.” I
asked if it might have been her. “I
don’t know.” I
held up the Sharpie, the still-uncapped, ink-glossy instrument of chaos, and
asked if she used this Sharpie. She studied it solemnly, like it was cursed. “I
don’t know.” She
was three years old and already fluent in the most useless excuse in the
English language. And
let’s be clear: it doesn’t work when you’re three. It doesn’t work in
kindergarten. That shit doesn’t fly when you’re a teenager either. Try
telling a teacher, a cop, or your parents “I don’t know” while standing next
to the front porch you drove your car into and insisting it came out of
nowhere, and see how that goes. But
somehow, if you’re a seventy-nine-year-old man who brags about having aced
multiple dementia screenings like they’re Mensa admissions, it becomes
sacred. Untouchable. A full conversational dead end. The room closes around
it like wet cement, setting hard before anyone thinks to pull their foot out. Yesterday,
a reporter asked him about the photographs. The
kind pulled straight out of Jeffrey Epstein’s personal archive, excavated
like evidence from a landfill of power, proximity, and predation. The kind
where you’re standing there, smiling, leaning in, arm around a man who is now
one of the most infamous child sex traffickers in American history. The kind
where no one dragged you into the frame. The kind where you showed up, posed,
and looked comfortable enough to say hey bud, how’s it going, like this was
just another night and not a future true-crime montage. And
he said he didn’t know anything about that. About
his own fucking face. His
unmistakable skull. His
arm slung around a young woman. Him
grinning, surrounded by young women like it’s spring break at a yacht club
for predators.
Photographs
pulled straight out of Epstein’s personal files. Not fan shots. Not paparazzi
ambushes. Posed, relaxed, comfortable little keepsakes of a man who knew
exactly where he was and who he was with. Pictures of him with Epstein.
Pictures of him with young women. Pictures of condoms with his face on them,
for fuck’s sake. And
when asked about them, he didn’t know anything. So
he reached for the add-on. The minimization. The shrug disguised as
context—that a lot of people were friends with Jeffrey Epstein. As if the
argument is sure, I was friends with a pedophile, but so were lots of other
people, which is not a defense. It’s a fucking indictment buffet. And
that was it. No explanation. No denial. No distance. Just nothing. A blank
space where accountability is supposed to live. And
the room lets it go. No one says that’s you. No one says those came from
Epstein’s files. No one says you’re legally required to release more of them
in under two weeks. They just move on, like “I don’t know” is a safe word
that makes facts stop mid-sentence and back quietly out of the room. How
many times have we seen this same dumb fucking escape hatch over the last
decade? Because
it’s the same tired magic trick they’re pulling right now with his weird-ass
black hands—hands smeared and darkened and wrapped, caked in makeup and
bandages like a corpse being prepped for an open-casket viewing by someone
who hates him. Hands that look like they’ve been shaking hands with a rabid
gibbon, Edward Scissorhands, and a piece of industrial equipment that should
have been taken out back years ago. Hands that don’t match the rest of him
and don’t belong in public without an explanation. One
reporter asked about it. One. The
answer was that it was from shaking hands too much. Shaking. Fucking. Hands. With
what? A belt sander? The
press pool nodded like yeah, okay, that tracks. Never asked again. Same
script with the “preventative MRI.” Preventative. MRI. As if that’s a real
medical category and not something he made up like a kid inventing a science
fair project out of dryer lint. No “preventing what?” No curiosity. Just
mad-libs medicine accepted without a blink. Hands.
Shaking hands too much. MRI.
Preventative. Photographs
with a pedophile. Doesn’t know anything about that. Okay.
Great. Because
this is his signature move. The whole presidency is basically a one-man
community theater production called Oops! All Amnesia! Ask
him about Epstein photos. Doesn’t know. Ask
him about strikes. Doesn’t know. Ask
him who he’s pardoning. Doesn’t know. Ask
him about plans—military plans, policy plans, retaliation plans—and suddenly
he doesn’t know who briefed him, doesn’t know what was discussed, doesn’t
know who decided, doesn’t know what they decided, doesn’t even know if there
was a plan, except for the part where something already happened. Decisions
just occur around him. Wars
bloom spontaneously. Pardons
manifest. Ask
him about anything that requires responsibility, memory, or cause and effect,
and he’s suddenly a man wandering the halls of his own skull, knocking on
doors, finding nothing inside. Which
raises the fucking inevitable question: who the fuck is running the country
if the president doesn’t know anything about anything? Honestly,
give the keys to Britney Spears dancing with butcher knives. She has a
comparatively better fucking grasp on reality than the man who doesn’t know
shit about fuck.
Because
this man claims total ignorance about war, money, justice, medicine,
photographs of his own face, and the visible condition of his own hands—yet
we’re expected to believe he’s personally steering the ship of state with a
clear mind. It’s
not plausible. It’s
not leadership. It’s
not even a competent lie. It’s
a rehearsed routine, run on muscle memory and rewarded with silence. This
mythology didn’t just happen. It was engineered, reinforced, and maintained
because silence was easier than accountability. It didn’t happen by accident.
It happened because everyone in the room decided it was safer to let bullshit
slide than to do the fucking job they’re paid to do. So
here’s the fucking deal, because apparently this still needs to be said out
loud. This
is not a spectator sport. This is not access journalism. This is not a group
project where no one wants to be the asshole. This
is one of the last rooms where truth is supposed to be dragged out by the
ankles and made to talk—not gagged in the hallway while everyone inside
chooses access over honesty. Ask
the question. When
he dodges it, ask it again. When
he sneers, ask it louder. When
he attacks one of you, the rest of you should pick up that same question and
throw it back at him. Same words. Same facts. Over and over. Make him sit in
it. Because
refusing to answer is the answer. And
if all you bring is nods, notes, and safer questions, you’re not doing
journalism. You’re laundering silence until it looks like legitimacy. This
job fucking matters. Democracies don’t die because of one pathological liar.
They die because everyone else decides it’s safer to play furniture than to
push back. So
do the job. Do it like it matters. Do it like you understand the stakes. And
if you can’t—if you won’t—if losing access scares you more than losing the
plot entirely—then get the fuck out of the way and let someone else do it.
There are plenty of people who would kill to be in that room and wouldn’t
accept “I don’t know” as the end of a goddamn sentence. |
