Alan Zendell, July 23, 2025

We see things like this all the time – a desperate criminal on the run, surrounded by law enforcement with no place to go, a terrified child caught in one lie too many, a cornered rat. What they all have in common is that their actions are completely unfiltered, emotionally driven, violent, and impulsive. They lash out in every direction, attempting to hurt as many of their perceived persecutors as possible. They’ll say anything about anyone, having long passed the point where truth or facts have meaning.

What’s most interesting about that behavior is that it does nothing to address its root cause. It teaches the child nothing about lying, it teaches the criminal nothing except, possibly, how to not get caught next time. And rats will always behave like rats.

Our president, Donald Trump, who spent his entire life ignoring rules, violating laws, and living like an immoral glutton, isn’t about to change as he approaches eighty. He spends most of his time juggling problems, most of which are of his own making. His stock in trade is creating chaos and obfuscating truth. And his most predictable behavior is accusing everyone else of all the things he’s guilty of. Nothing seems to stop him, not even nearly a hundred felony convictions.

But sometimes, people like Trump go too far, and they drown in their own swamp. The absurd situation surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex criminal who died in his prison cell, and who managed to draw countless celebrities into his schemes, makes this point like nothing else. The idea that with two wars that Trump said he would end the day he took office still raging more violently than ever, the nation is focused on the possibility of another salacious sex scandal, ought to make it clear how much trouble our country is in.

Vladimir Putin is determined to take advantage of the fifty days of grace Trump graciously offered him to destroy as much of Ukraine as he can. Benjamin Netanyahu continues to escalate the destruction of Gaza and its two million civilians. Trump’s personal Gestapo, formerly known as ICE, is steadily ramping up its campaign of terror, mostly against legal U. S. residents, citizens, and green card workers, simply because they’re Hispanic. Only in Trump’s universe would anything related to scum like Epstein trump all that in importance.

Trump’s friendships with people you wouldn’t want within a mile of your wife, sister, or daughter are well documented. He hung out with organized crime figures, prostitutes, and porn stars, and new photos of him and Jeffrey Epstein together show up every day. Undoubtedly, many of the celebrities Epstein solicited were Democrats, and Trump decided that exposing them would help him both win re-election and solidify his grip on power.

But as we’ve seen with Trump, it doesn’t matter whether the things he says are true or they ever come to pass. The chaos and noise he produces completely occupy the news cycles, which effectively silences everyone else’s voice. The only thing that puzzles me and a lot of other people is why he demanded the Epstein files be released when they were as likely to be damaging to Trump as to his enemies.

The answer is that Trump doesn’t think like a normal person. His narcissism causes him to believe he’s invincible, that things that bring down other men can’t touch him. When he ordered the release of the Epstein files, he knew his lapdog Attorney General, Pam Bondi, would attempt to redact anything that might be embarrassing to him before the records were released, and based on what we’ve seen lately, she’d likely get away with it except that it’s Trump’s most rabid supporters who are demanding to see them.

Last week, when Trump and Bondi caved in to pressure from the extreme right faction of MAGA supporters, and ordered grand jury testimony released, they only did it to cool rising tempers that might have hurt Trump. But a Federal judge in Florida denied the request, today. Could it possibly get any crazier? Trump, who is desperate to hide the details of his relationship with Epstein, realized his only play was to order the files released, but that backfired, adding even more fuel to the scandal.

To complete this absurd picture, House Speaker Mike Johnson, under orders from Trump to scuttle any attempt by the House to pass a bill demanding the release of the Epstein files, declared the House to be in recess until after Labor Day.

So – Trump thought he could discredit Democrats by associating them with Epstein, but it turned out that it would all likely splash back on him. As a result, our government is in total stasis, people are being killed by the thousands in Ukraine and Gaza, and hundreds of innocent lives are being destroyed by ICE, every day, while Trump flails ineffectually, resorting to accusing Barack Obama of treason to distract attention.

We used to ask when this kind of thing would ever stop. It won’t until someone knocks Trump off his pedestal.