What is the Epstein scandal? And who was this guy?

Jeffery Epstein was a wealthy financial trader who used his relationships with other wealthy and influential people to get information. He then used this info to make profitable financial trades. He was at heart a grifter, cheating people out of their money, but being so disarming at it that he got away with it. At the same time, he abused young women by treating them as sex slaves, and owned a private island where his wealthy celebrity friends were invited to join him in abusive and illegal activities. He was arrested for this activity, eventually committing suicide in a New York City jail while awaiting trial. Donald Trump was one of the people close to him when he was committing all this illegal activity.

It is a soap opera of giant proportions, with money, sex, criminals, families, celebrities, islands, private jets, attractive rich people, and secrets. Exactly the sort of gossip and scandal that gets people excited, including hints that our current President participated. Every detail is titillating. Let’s get some perspective.

So, what else is President Trump up to that might be more important than this?

Kidnapping Americans. While claiming to take criminals off the streets, the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) at Trump’s direction is pulling people off the streets because their skin is not white enough, and sending them to abusive prisons. These prisons are sometimes in other countries where the victims have no connection and no recourse for the remainder of their lives. When these kidnappings occur, the victims are not allowed to present their residency or citizenship status to an immigration judge for an impartial hearing, which is a clear violation of the law. The scale of this is enormous; DHS has set a quota of 3,000 detentions per day, a number so high that there is no way to provide hearings for the victims, as required by law. Independent journalists have confirmed that very few of the kidnap victims have criminal records.

This is bad because, well, it could be you or someone close to you. Once the practice of illegally kidnapping and abusing Americans becomes accepted, it could be anyone.

Undermining Journalism. By constantly lying about anything and everything, Trump’s followers have been led to believe that you can’t trust what anyone in authority says. The harm here is not his disregard for objective truth, which everyone sees, but in nurturing a population that does not believe anyone in authority is telling the truth. Autocratic rulers have understood this policy; Soviet leader Stalin, for example, was Orwell’s model for the Ministry of Truth in ‘1984.’ Trump has created a media environment where his followers only hear what he says, and other sources are not covered. The followers don’t refer to other sources of news because they deem them not credible.

The Government can consequently do things that are illegal, hurtful, or both, and officials won’t be held accountable because the people won’t know – or won’t believe – that these things have really happened.

Changing the tax code to further enrich the wealthy, at the expense of most Americans. By pointing out small and misleading bits of his big beautiful tax bill , such as removing the tax on tips, or partially removing the tax on social security payments, Trump was able to pass a bill that took money from Americans who were struggling to make ends meet – and who voted for him – and give it to wealthy individuals and corporations. He listens to his wealthy donors and has incorporated their requests into our national laws. Doing this has required the cooperation of the Republicans in Congress, who have enabled him at every turn. 

The part of it that has been in the news recently is his refusal to renew the Affordable Care Act (ACA) provisions that fund rural hospitals and provide health insurance for millions. In exchange for withholding health care from millions of Americans, Trump is able to provide generous tax breaks to the already wealthy. To do this, the beautiful tax bill significantly increases the national debt, putting an increased financial burden on ordinary Americans.

Starting a trade war over tariffs. One of the things that helped him get elected was telling his voters that tariffs levied by the US government were paid for by other countries. This was not true. Trump’s tariffs were nominally based on the balance of trade with each country, plus a minimum import tax on goods from all countries we trade with. He claimed, falsely, that a negative balance of trade meant that the other country was taking advantage of us.

Other countries have responded by imposing their own tariffs on things that Americans want to sell to them, causing many Americans to lose income. Soybean farmers, for example, have had the bottom drop out of much of their income as a result of China retaliating. This hurts all of us, because Trump is giving farmers what amounts to Federal welfare checks to partially compensate the farmers. We taxpayers are writing the checks.

A reading of the Constitution would make his tariffs illegal, as the President is not given the authority to levy taxes – only Congress.

The result of the trade war is that the price of nearly everything is going up for all Americans, hitting middle and low income residents the hardest.

Gutting the Federal workforce, replacing civil servants with loyalists. This one is trickier, because the Federal Government workforce is huge and hardly anyone really knows what it does on a day to day basis. Including me. 

The big picture is that for the last 250 years, the country has developed a system of Federal workers who, according to law, are promoted based on how well they do their jobs. The vast majority of these employees are working hard to do what is right for the American people, in accordance with the laws passed by Congress. Are some of these laws wasteful? Yes, certainly. Hence the trickiness about reform.

The State Department is an illustrative case in point. Trump has effectively eliminated most of the work done by the State Department, replacing it with his model of transactional relationships with other heads of state. Overall State’s mission is to promote peaceful relationships with other countries, including facilitating peaceful solutions to conflicts, and building bridges to our allies so that we get help when we need it. Like what happened in WWII. By and large, this is what they were doing before Trump undermined the mission and fired the people who worked there.

Trump’s approach to foreign relations is to encourage other heads of state to provide him and his family with business opportunities that would put money in Trump family pockets, not caring whether these ‘deals’ are good for most Americans.

I don’t want to get too carried away with this one example. The Trump approach to the Federal workforce is generally to replace competence with loyalty. Just to cite another one: the Trump CDC is advocating health policies that are bringing about a resurgence of crippling diseases, like measles and polio. Every Federal department has become infected with the loyalist virus.

Valuing loyalty over competence leads to corruption and kleptocracy, which has impoverished the citizens of other countries where this tactic has been put into effect. It is also bad because incompetent loyalists will do stupid things that cause harm to all of us.

Cancelling Science Research. Under the guise of eliminating the ‘DEI hoax,’ the Trump administration has curtailed basic research in virtually all areas of science. Science research projects funded by the National Institutes for Health and the National Science Foundation are being screened for conformance to ‘state policy approval’. One such area is research into curing diseases, which has been significantly curtailed. The Federal Government’s support for science and technology, especially since the end of WWII, has made us the world leader in innovation and applications that benefited everyone. The effects of this policy will not be felt for 10 – 30 years, as basic research pays off in the long term, not this year or next.

Basic science research benefits all Americans, not just the privileged few, or the DEI-tagged minorities. Should we look for a cure for cancer? A cure for dementia? Cheaper sources of energy? Or would we prefer that people suffer and die from diseases that could be prevented in the future?

Co-opting the US Congress. Trump has used threats of removal from office to co-opt members of Congress, mostly Republicans, to pass or to kill whatever legislation he wants. This is not how our Constitution is written. The framers thought that Congress represented the people and were the key to fair and representative government; the President, unlike King George, was in office primarily to implement the laws that were passed by the Congress. This one seems abstract and not tangible to many Americans, but it has great consequences to all of us. Congress is not providing the check on the executive that it was designed for, so it is an enabler of other activities. 

It results in the appointment of unqualified people to cabinet positions who then do things that Americans don’t want and that are hurtful. Like the kidnapping mentioned above, the elimination of support for energy infrastructure build-out, promotion of disease, and so forth, which could not happen without a compliant Congress. Immigration reform was on the table until a compliant Congress in 2024 killed proposed legislation at Trump’s request. A compliant Congress passed the Big Beautiful Bill at Trump’s request. A compliant Senate confirmed members of the Federal judiciary who have become subservient to Trump. A compliant Congress is allowing Trump to start military conflicts that are not in the interest of the country. A compliant Congress killed local energy generation projects, causing my electric bill to go up.

Co-opting the Justice system. Trump has replaced many Federal judges with loyalists who rule to please the President instead of ruling fairly based on the law. This one has not yet hit the majority of Americans, but we are all vulnerable to judges who favor Trump donors and Trump supporters instead of applying the actual laws of the country.

For example, Judge Eileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed the Mar-A-Lago obstruction of justice documents case in a way that flew in the face of the law. After the case was closed, Trump then used the justice department to unethically prosecute the attorney who brought the obstruction case against him, as punishment.

By nominating loyalists to the Supreme Court instead of fair judges, he has gotten Federal Court rulings that he likes. The most egregious example in my mind is the Supreme Court ruling that exempts the President from being accountable to criminal law. This ruling allows President Trump to have the Army assassinate his political opponents – without consequence. Does that seem right?

Conclusion: Let’s not get so worked up about the Epstein thing. Although it gets your attention because of sex, wealth, child abuse, corrupted evil politicians, celebrities, private jets, and more, there are other more significant actions being done by our current President that are more consequential to all Americans. These are some of them.