HINDSIGHT - WRITE SOMETHING WORTH READING ABOUT OR DO SOMETHING WORTH WRITING ABOUT
Monday, December 29, 2025
Trump thinks he’s going to get away with this
Trump thinks he’s going to get away with this
The Epstein files were legally required to be released, but Trump is burying them anyway.
After years of promises about transparency, the Trump administration believes it has successfully buried the Epstein files. And based on what we have seen over the last several months, it is not hard to understand why they think they can get away with it.
This month’s so-called release of the Epstein files was anything but transparency. It was a performance.
Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required disclosure with only narrow, clearly defined redactions. The names of minors, victims, and individuals actively under investigation were to be protected. That was it.
Instead, the public received pages of documents so heavily blacked out that they were not only functionally useless but at times laughable. Entire pages blacked out and redacted.
Then something even more alarming happened. Files began disappearing from the Department of Justice website entirely. There was no announcement, just Poof! Missing files.
That is evidence control.
What the Law Required Versus What We Got
The law did not make disclosure optional.
The order was explicit: Documents were to be released with limited redactions and made publicly available.
What we got was the opposite. Over-redaction where the law did not allow or call for it. Documents are being withheld without justification while files are being quietly removed after publication.
At the same time, the White House was doing something else that matters just as much: actively seeding misleading material into the public conversation.
The deputy press secretary posted an image implying that Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, and Diana Ross were pictured with Epstein victims. The photo was not what it was presented as. It was a publicly available fundraiser image showing Jackson’s and Ross’s own children. They tried to paint these people as predators by manipulating photos with their very own children. Insanity.
That was narrative manipulation.
How This Strategy Works
On one side, legally mandated documents are being hidden, redacted beyond what the law allows, or removed altogether. On the other side, misleading and outright false material is being amplified to redirect attention toward political opponents.
That combination is a deeply unsettling strategy.
There is a saying about not attributing to malice what can be explained by incompetence. In this case, incompetence does not explain what we are seeing; the coordination is too precise and the outcomes are too convenient.
This is about controlling the story while violating the law quietly enough that most people do not notice.
The Trump Redaction Problem
Here is a detail that matters:
Donald Trump is not a victim in these files and should have no reason for redactions. He is not a minor, and according to what we have been told, he is not under active investigation.
And yet his name is redacted in places where other names are not.
Meanwhile, figures that Trump wants the public to focus on remain visible through photos, names highlighted in briefings, and more. Selective disclosure becomes narrative laundering.
Trump is betting on what he always bets on: exhaustion, distraction and confusion. He wants the public arguing about personalities instead of process.
He signed the law and his own Department of Justice is now violating it. He is betting on the idea that most people will not stick with the story long enough to connect those dots.
Why a Leak May Be the Only Way
If the full Epstein files were ever going to be released through official channels, we would already have them.
History tells us how this usually ends. The Pentagon Papers did not surface because the government suddenly chose honesty and NSA surveillance was not exposed because officials embraced transparency.
Those stories came out because someone inside decided the cover-up was worse than the exposure.
At this point, a leak may be the only way the full truth comes out. Trump is betting that no one will do it because he believes the files are buried deeply enough that they will stay buried.
What Is Actually at Stake
This is not just about Epstein.
If a president can be legally required to release documents, sign that requirement into law, and then still suppress the information through redactions, removals, and misinformation, then accountability becomes optional.
Once accountability is optional, the rule of law becomes merely a suggestion.
We will continue examining individual documents, missing files, and altered postings. The details matter, and they will continue to matter, but the big picture is already clear.
Trump believes he has gotten away with this.
And if the public allows that belief to become reality, the damage goes far beyond this one set of files.
Every vestige of Trump must be torn down
Why every vestige of Trump must be torn down
He's trying to create a physical legacy. The moment he's out of power, it has to be smashed to bits.
Donald Trump has always loved slapping his name on things. It reflects a desperate desire for acknowledgement, a yearning to be seen and known by others, a cry of “I exist, and I am important!” shouted to the universe.
Now, with the power of the federal government in his hands, he’s doing more of it than ever — much more than in his first term.
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It goes beyond an exercise in branding. Trump is seeking a physical legacy, a collection of signs and structures that will pay eternal tribute to his greatness. Which is why it is so important — and why it will be so rewarding — for the next Democratic president to tear it all down and smash it to bits.
This isn’t just about petty revenge, even if there is undoubtedly some of that going on here. Emerging from this dark period in our history will require a sweeping, comprehensive strategy of repudiation and repair, one that encompasses the substantive, the procedural, and the symbolic. Fortunately, removing the physical remnants of Trumpism will be much simpler than reconstituting the federal workforce or rebuilding our security alliances.
The totems of Trumpism are multiplying
In just the last few months, Trump has embarked on a frenzy of construction and renaming that is proceeding so quickly it can be hard to keep track of. It’s almost as if he suddenly realized — after doing almost none of this in his first term — that amidst all the other laws, rules, and norms he so enjoys breaking, there was one he had overlooked: We don’t name things after sitting presidents, often not even after living ones.
In the past, a president had to merely hope that if he achieved greatness, the nation would one day express its thanks to him by erecting statues and putting his name on elementary schools. To hell with that, Trump said.
So the US Mint is going to create a commemorative $1 coin with his face on both sides. The US Institute of Peace has been renamed the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. The Kennedy Center has been (illegally) renamed The Trump Kennedy Center.
This is literally one of the most pathetic things I’ve ever seen, anywhere.
Fri, 19 Dec 2025 20:55:30 GMT
View on BlueskyTrump tore down the East Wing of the White House so it could be replaced with a monument to his sleaze, a ballroom he’ll probably end up naming after himself (though for now he claims “I don’t have any plan to call it after myself”).
He wants to build a gigantic triumphal arch. He recently announced plans for a “Golden Fleet” of new battleships, named the Trump Class, and explained that he’d be working on the design because “I’m a very aesthetic person.”
Trump: "The US Navy will lead the design of these ships along with me, because I'm a very aesthetic person"
Mon, 22 Dec 2025 22:19:37 GMT
View on BlueskyAnd that’s after Trump Rx (a web site for comparing drug prices), Trump Accounts (a version of baby bonds), and the Trump Gold Card, a way for rich foreign jagoffs to buy their way into permanent US residency.
Lutnick on the $1 million Trump Gold Card: "It's a gift to the United States of America to help America be great again under Donald Trump."
Wed, 10 Dec 2025 20:09:20 GMT
View on BlueskySome of these are programs and websites, but the ones that are most important to the president — the ballroom, the ships, the signage on buildings, the arch — are the ones that have physical form.
What’s going on here? Narcissism, insecurity, self-aggrandizement, the mania of the cult leader — sure. But there’s something else at work.
Trump is haunted by mortality.
How to live forever
Trump has been thinking about his own death lately, which is not too surprising for a 79-year-old man in questionable health.
The subject creeps in from time to time when he’s in a contemplative mood, talking about a subject that would seem to have nothing to do with his inevitable descent into the void.
“I wanna try and get to heaven if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well,” he told Fox News in August when discussing his attempts to end the war in Ukraine, uncharacteristically dropping his boastfulness just for a moment. “I am really at the bottom of the totem pole. But if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.”
Then in October, Fox’s Steve Doocy asked him about it, and Trump replied, “I don’t think there’s anything gonna get me into heaven.”
Maybe not. But here on Earth, Trump very much wants to live forever. And unlike the Silicon Valley tech oligarchs pouring money into longevity research in the hopes that the secret of eternal life can be found (naturally, they’ll be first in line for the treatment), Trump is taking a somewhat more traditional path to immortality.
The fear of death has been a human obsession since we emerged from the caves and got smart enough to consider our place in an unfeeling universe. It’s why every religion promises some form of immortality, and why men of power seem inevitably to search for eternal life. If you can’t live forever in your body, and you may or may not have a soul that will endure, you can at least achieve immortality through fame. This is an ancient conception of heroism: Commit great deeds on the battlefield, and people will repeat your name forever, making you immortal. Or as Irene Cara said, “Fame! I’m gonna live forever!”
Trump will not disappear from people’s memories for many centuries, of that we can be sure. But he wants something more: physical manifestations of himself for people to gaze upon as they speak his name. His increasingly decrepit body may wither away, but the ballroom and the arch and the battleships will remain.
But here’s the good news: They don’t have to. Some of it will never happen (don’t hold your breath waiting for the Golden Fleet), and what does can be renamed, reconfigured, or just torn down the moment he is out of power. Best of all, unless he drops dead in the next few years, Trump will be around to watch the legacy he dreamed of reduced to dust.
The destruction must begin without delay
In the first hours and days of the next president’s term, there must be a concerted effort to utterly expunge the name “Donald Trump” from every federal building, outpost, sign, website, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse, and doghouse, except where necessary for historical accuracy.
And not just the name, but every vulgar trace of him: Chisel off the letters, take down the photos, melt down the stupid coins, tear out his patio and replant the Rose Garden, strip all the chintzy gold appliques from the walls of the Oval Office. Maybe even demolish the ballroom, but at the very least remodel it so it doesn’t look so much like an obscene mashup of the Winter Palace and Saddam Hussein’s bathroom, then rename it for someone he hates. The Obama Ballroom has a nice ring to it.
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This is vital: Do it all in a way that is public, planned, and staged in order to create imagery that will live on.
The symbolism matters; every American should see video and photographs of Trump’s legacy being wiped clean as a vivid embodiment of a new beginning for the government and the nation. The images of Trump’s erasure should live on for years, reproduced and memeified, until they become as familiar as Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon or the sailor kissing the nurse on V-J Day in Times Square. In the end, the visual memory of Trumpism should have two parts: His repulsive desecration of our nation’s capital, leading to the restorative and redemptive eradication of every trace of him.
When it happens, Republicans will object (and you can only imagine the meltdown Trump himself will have on Truth Social). The answer Democrats give to them should be simple: Too bad. We have the power now. A strong message must be sent to the country and future generations that Trump will not be honored or celebrated.
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After that project is done, Trump will live out his remaining days the way he started, as a two-bit grifter on an endless quest for marks, admired only by the saddest among us. He’ll keep putting his name on crappy goods he’ll hawk to gullible suckers on TV, just as he has for decades. The truly devoted will open their wallets to buy lifetime supplies of Trump Bronzer for Men, Trump Blast Energy Drink, and Trump Adult Diapers.
But his name should not adorn anything official, anything that represents our country and its government. Trump will live forever, but only as a cautionary tale, one we tell successive generations to demonstrate that sustaining a democracy against the corrupt and the malevolent requires vigilance and determination. That cleansing purge must be thorough and complete, and to do it right, we should start planning now.
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