America, Democrats are playing you. But it’s not just the Democrats. The corporate state media are playing you. And the Deep State. It’s playing you, too. The Trump-Epstein hoax is the latest moral panic on the menu. The recent release of select emails from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate has served its purpose: reigniting scrutiny of Donald Trump’s past association with a convicted sex offender. But the disclosures recycle long-known details from court records, depositions, and prior reporting. There’s nothing new here (see (The Epstein Obsession: Conspiracy, Control, and Credibility). If it sounds new, it’s because you’ve already been played. And it’s probably not the first time. Russian collusion, Pussy Hats, COVID, George Floyd, January 6—millions of people have fallen for one or more of the Establishment’s engineered panics.
Not everybody is easily panicked. There are different qualities of mind, and those who are careful, open, patient, and rational are less susceptible to manipulation. Unfortunately, many are victims of a mental quality that predisposes them to panic. Manhattan-based psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert told Fox News on Friday that what is often labeled “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (TDS) resembles a genuine psychological condition he has observed in his practice. According to Alpert, roughly three-quarters of his patients display forms of cognitive or emotional distress tied to their anger, fears, or preoccupation with President Donald Trump.
In an interview on “The Faulkner Focus,” Alpert described patients who arrive overwhelmed by intrusive thoughts about Trump, reporting symptoms such as heightened anxiety, restlessness, and sleeplessness. Some, he said, are “triggered” simply by seeing Trump’s image in the news or on their devices, to the point that it disrupts daily functioning. He emphasized that being so intensely fixated on a single public figure is “simply not healthy.” Indeed. It is the same quality of mind that feeds leftwing politics. It is already present in the afflicted. It is just a matter of the propaganda apparatus selecting the panic and flipping the switch.
Alpert expanded on these observations in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, arguing that the phenomenon aligns with characteristics of anxiety and obsessive disorders. They suffer from intrusive ideations, emotional dysregulation, and impaired functioning. Patients he sees report compulsive news checking, emotional volatility, physical agitation, and an inability to stop thinking about Trump even when attempting to disengage. He describes the pattern as “obsessive political preoccupation”—a form of obsessive-compulsive spectrum behavior in which a political figure becomes the constant focus of intrusive thoughts and compulsive monitoring.
Initially, Alpert believed his patients’ reactions were merely ideological responses to a polarizing political figure. Over time, however, he concluded that many cases had taken on “a more clinical shape,” with fixation replacing ordinary political disagreement. “What once looked like outrage now presents as a distortion in perception that consumes attention,” he wrote.
Democrats work from the understanding that a significant proportion of the American population suffers from TDS, which depends on decades of embedding in mass consciousness inverted background assumptions, which progressives accomplish by control over our knowledge and sense-making institutions (see my August essay What Explains Trump Derangement Syndrome? Ignorance of Background Assumptions in Worldview). More than this, they know that some who glommed onto Trump are Eric Hoffer’s “true believer” types who can be flipped from one extremism to the next (see Understanding Antifa: Eric Hoffer, the True Believer, and the Footsoldiers of the Authoritarian Left). All it took from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee was to unveil three messages on Wednesday of this week—just days after caving on a government funding bill to end the shutdown they had engineered—timing the release of the emails for political diversion. Millions of Americans took the bait hook, line, and sinker. The social media platform X is teaming with lost-faith MAGA.
Why weren’t the records released by the Biden Administration? They had them the whole time. Because the Epistein story wasn’t optimally useful to them then. They thought lawfare would stop the return of Trump to power by sending him to prison for the balance of his natural life. (See The Unprecedented Resort to Lawfare—Is it Desperation or Provocation? Lawfare is Inexcusable. So is Not Understanding Basic Legal Principles and Processes.)
Yet the broader context, including over 20,000 additional pages of documents released by Republicans the same day, reveals no evidence tying Trump to Epstein’s crimes. The Democrat narrative thus hinges on innuendo and Epstein’s own cryptic suggestions of Trump’s awareness of his activities, which are directly contradicted by the testimony of Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the “victim” referenced in the emails.
“VICTIM.” That’s how the media redacts Giuffre’s name. Why redact the name of a corpse? Giuffre committed suicide in April 2025. There is no living identity to protect. The redaction is not protective but strategic: to imply that Trump was with a minor at Epstein’s estate. But the email concerned a 2002 meeting between Trump and Giuffre. Giuffre was 19 years old at the time.
The deception Democrats and the corporate state media are weaving depends not only on TDS but also on a type of memory-holing: perception control via the selective forgetting of key parts of an already established narrative prompted by the re-presentation of those elements as novel and revelatory (see Why People Resist Reason: Understanding Belief, Bias, and Self-Deception and embedded links to related essays). There is nothing new learned from the emails. The emails—and the documents released by Republicans—confirm what we already knew. More than this, they further vindicate Trump’s claims of innocence.
Deft propaganda work requires more work to be performed to recover the memory-holed elements of the narrative. This is for the sake of minor cases of TDS. Who has the time to do the research to clarify associations and timelines? Who has the research skills to accomplish such a thing? Told that there is a scandal to pay attention to, citizens turn on CNN to get the latest on it. There and elsewhere, naively assuming these outlets are simply reporting the news, they are spoonfed propaganda. It therefore falls to researchers like me to tell the whole story, and to do so in a digestible way. Therefore, to fully grasp the situation, it’s essential to revisit the timeline of Trump’s ties to Epstein, Giuffre’s recruitment, and Trump and Epstein’s eventual fallout. It is also imperative to show that this is part of a larger program to undermine the Trump presidency and the will of the people who returned him to Washington in a landslide victory in November 2024.
Trump and Epstein, both fixtures in New York’s elite social scene during the 1990s and early 2000s, mingled at parties, flew on Epstein’s private jet multiple times, and shared mutual acquaintances. Trump once described Epstein in a 2002 New York Magazine profile as a “terrific guy” who liked women “on the younger side.” But their relationship soured amid growing suspicions of Epstein’s predatory behavior.
Giuffre’s story provides the pivotal link. A 16-year-old runaway in 2000, she was reunited with her estranged father, Sky Roberts, a maintenance worker at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. Roberts secured Giuffre a job there as a spa and locker room attendant.
It was during her brief employment at Mar-a-Lago that Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime associate, approached her. Maxwell, who would later be convicted in 2021 and sentenced to 20 years for her role in Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation, lured Giuffre with promises of a better life, pulling her into Epstein’s orbit. By late 2000, Giuffre had become ensnared in the network, enduring years of exploitation by Epstein, Maxwell, and their high-profile associates (a list that includes former President Bill Clinton, a known womanizer) before escaping in 2002 at age 19.
Giuffre repeatedly stated that her interactions with Trump were innocuous and limited. In her 2015 defamation lawsuit against Maxwell and subsequent depositions, Giuffre described encountering Trump only once or twice at Mar-a-Lago and Epstein’s nearby Palm Beach estate, where their 2002 conversation occurred. Giuffre recalled Trump as polite and friendly, with no involvement in misconduct.
“President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever and ‘couldn’t have been friendlier’ to her in their limited interactions,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt reiterated in a statement on Thursday. Leavitt is not relying on the President’s recollection of these interactions. These accounts appear in Giuffre’s posthumously published memoir, Nobody’s Girl, released in October 2025, where she details the horrors of her trafficking while explicitly clearing Trump of impropriety. It is beyond the Democrats to acknowledge the testimony of one of Epstein’s victims when obsessively focused on getting Trump. Had Giuffre said the right thing, that would be another matter.
That 2002 exchange marked the beginning of Trump’s deliberate distancing from Epstein. Trump has long maintained that rumors of Epstein’s misconduct—specifically, his aggressive recruitment of young women from Mar-a-Lago—prompted him to act. Epstein had poached other employees for his own operations, as well, which Trump viewed as a breach of trust. Their rift deepened around 2004 over a bidding war for a bankrupt Palm Beach mansion (which Trump won). But the decisive break came in 2007, when Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago entirely. According to reporting from the Miami Herald and Wall Street Journal, the final straw was Epstein’s inappropriate advances toward the teenage daughter of a club member.
Trump confirmed this timeline in public remarks in July 2025, while at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland, stating that Epstein had seduced young women from the spa, including Giuffre. “I said, listen, we don’t want you taking our people,” Trump explained. “And then not too long after that, he did it again.” Trump elaborated that Epstein became “persona non grata” at the club after that. By the time Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges of soliciting prostitution from a minor—serving 13 months in a lenient jail arrangement—he and Trump had been estranged for at least a year.
Did Trump do more than distance himself from Epstein? Did he rat out his former friend? There is a notable passage in journalist Michael Wolff’s 2018 book Fire and Fury, where Epstein allegedly believed Trump had known some of his secrets and might have leaked details to the police. Wolff reiterated this speculation in a July 2025 Instagram video, suggesting Epstein suspected Trump of tipping off authorities.
Indeed, Epstein’s private correspondence, portions of which resurfaced in the 2025 releases, reveals a distinct bitterness over their fallout. In an April 2011 email to Maxwell, Epstein wrote: “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump. [VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.” Then, cryptically: “police chief. etc. im 75 % there.” A more pointed January 2019 email from Epstein to Wolff stated: “Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever. . of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”
Epstein’s bitterness was also apparent in a report by the Washington Post yesterday. Stacey Plaskett, a Democratic non-voting delegate representing the US Virgin Islands, exchanged text messages with Jeffrey Epstein during a 2019 congressional hearing interrogating Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former attorney. WaPo reviewed and analyzed the messages, comparing them with footage of the hearing, and determined that Plaskett was texting Epstein in real time. At the time of the exchange, Epstein had already been convicted on two state prostitution charges and had served 13 months. Only a few months later, he would be charged with sex trafficking minors.
According to the Post’s reporting, it appears that Epstein was watching the hearing. His messages influenced the direction of Plaskett’s questioning of Cohen. In one exchange, Epstein wrote to Plaskett, “Cohen brought up RONA – keeper of the secrets,” referring to—and misspelling the name of—Rhona Graff, Trump’s longtime assistant. Plaskett replied, “RONA??” and followed moments later with, “Quick I’m up next is that an acronym.” Epstein clarified: “Thats his assistant.” At 2:28 p.m., Plaskett began questioning Cohen and asked about Graff and other Trump associates he had mentioned, consistent with the timing of a message Epstein had just sent. After she wrapped up her questions, Epstein texted her again at 2:34 p.m., saying, “Good work,” just one minute after her segment concluded.
As Scott Jennings put it, Epstein was programming Democrats in real-time.
These email messages, suggestively presented by Democrats, fuel speculation without proof. They clash with Trump’s consistent denials of involvement, and they ignore Giuffre’s insistence that Trump never harmed her. Epstein admits that Trump told Ghislaine to stop recruiting girls from Mar-a-Lago, consistent with Trump’s recollections. Moreover, a third email, from 2015, six months after Trump announced his candidacy for President, shows how Epstein viewed his association with Trump as politically useful in multiple ways. This explains why Epstein would not hesitate to contact Plaskett to assist in interrogating Trump’s attorney before Congress.
At the point of the 2019 email, Epstein was nearing his end. Giuffre’s 2015 suit against Maxwell had unearthed additional files, and the Miami Herald’s 2018 “Perversion of Justice” series prompted federal prosecutors to reopen the case against Epstein. Trump reiterated in July 2019, shortly after Epstein’s federal arrest on sex-trafficking charges, that he hadn’t spoken to Epstein in 15 years and had cut ties “a long time ago” due to the Mar-a-Lago incidents.
Epstein’s death by suicide in August 2019, two months after his July arrest, halted further revelations on his part. But Giuffre’s public advocacy kept the pressure on officials to determine the full extent of Epstein’s crimes, to go after the prominent figures who had exploited teenage girls. Yet, in her final writings, she underscored Trump’s noninvolvement, undercutting the emails’ implications.
It looks like Giuffre will get her wish. Yesterday, the Justice Department confirmed that it will investigate Epstein’s alleged links to major banks and several prominent Democrats, including former President Clinton. AG Bondi said the department “will pursue this with urgency and integrity.”
Knowing the timeline, seeing progressives so sure that Trump was part of a pedophile ring, while predictable, is troubling not only because it expresses the witch-hunt mentality that marks history’s darkest periods, but also for this reason: it testifies to the power of propaganda and the mass presence of cultivated deep-seated pathologies that make individuals vulnerable to manipulation. Trump derangement is real.
In truth, the November 2025 dump of information is a re-presentation of already known facts, a rewrapped news package for Debord’s La Société du Spectacle. Democrats spotlight Epstein’s innuendos to imply complicity, while ignoring Giuffre’s exonerations and the absence of any evidence implicating Trump in crimes. The power elite is asking the public to see something that’s not there. And too many of them are.
As suggested at the outset, the Epstein hoax is just part of the ongoing effort to remove Trump from power or at least delegitimize him. No doubt readers have heard the accusation that Trump is going after his “political opponents.” Recent investigations of prominent officials are framed as authoritarian acts of “retribution”—acts that “threaten democracy.” The two most high-profile cases are James Comey, former FBI Director, and John Brennan, former CIA Director, both serving under President Barack Obama during his second term (Comey overlapped with Trump for a few months). I now turn my attention to them and the Russian collusion hoax (see The Russia Fake News Narrative).
Comey and Brennan played central roles in initiating and shaping the investigations into alleged Russian interference and potential Trump ties. In launching Crossfire Hurricane, Comey approved the FBI’s July 2016 full investigation into potential Trump-Russia links. Later, Special Counsel John Durham stated in a report that there was no actual evidence of collusion at the outset, and that the investigation was driven by confirmation bias. That is a charitable way of putting it. Much more than confirmation bias was at work.
Under Comey’s direction, the FBI used the Steele dossier, which contained unverified allegations of Trump-Russia ties, to obtain FISA warrants on Carter Page, a Trump adviser. The Justice Department Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz’s 2019 report found 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in these applications. Durham echoed this in his report, noting the FBI failed to corroborate dossier claims despite warnings that it was disinformation.
The dossier was an orchestrated disinformation project arranged by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Fusion GPS, a private intelligence firm based in Washington, DC, specializing in opposition research, had commissioned the dossier. Fusion GPS had been hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign through their third law firm, Perkins Coie, explicitly to conduct opposition research on Trump.
Brennan oversaw the rushed production of the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), which concluded with “high confidence” that Putin aimed to help Trump win. In July 2016, Brennan received CIA intelligence alleging that Clinton approved a plan to tie Trump to Russia as a distraction from her email scandal. He briefed Obama, Biden, Comey, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper, and AG Loretta Lynch on August 3, 2016. Durham’s report noted this intel was forwarded to Comey and FBI agent Peter Strzok, but the FBI did not pursue it as a Clinton-led hoax, instead prioritizing Trump links. Durham suggested this reflected bias. Again, charitable interpretation. It reflected the extent of coordination in the Crossfire Hurricane scheme. A 2025 CIA review accused Brennan of lying to Congress about dossier inclusion, leading to a criminal referral by Ratcliffe to the FBI for possible false statements.
It is not that Russia didn’t interfere in the 2016 election. Russian intelligence services interfere in elections, not just in the United States, just as US intelligence services interfere in the domestic politics of other nations. It’s what intelligence services do. The crime here is that the CIA and FBI under Obama attempted to tie Russian interference to the Trump campaign, thereby not merely serving as assets for the Democratic Party, but to prevent the ascension to power of a man whom the Deep State views as antithetical to its transnational goal of establishing a global corporate state. The Democratic Party is the party of globalization. A Hillary Clinton presidency would have allowed the project to continue, overthrowing foreign governments and projecting US military power around the world.
Brennan is at the center of a lot of things. He’s the man, you will recall, who, in 2020, engineered the disinformation campaign to divert attention away from the contents of a laptop owned by then-candidate for President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter (see New York Post Drops a Bombshell on the Biden Campaign; Hunter Biden’s Laptop, the Cult Mentality, and the Spirit of Free Thinking). The contents exposed the Biden international crime syndicate (to cover up the family’s crimes, President Biden would pardon his son and five other family members). This is what the first Trump impeachment was about. Trump was accused of withholding military aid as a means of pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to pursue investigations of the Biden family. The public was asked to ignore (or never know) the fact that the President is the Chief Magistrate of the United States government, and that such actions are well within the scope of authority (see For the Record: The President is the Chief Magistrate).
Brennan, along with several other intelligence officials, penned an open letter assessing the laptop to be a Russian disinformation campaign. It is highly unlikely that Brennan did not know the laptop was real. The FBI became aware of it in October 2019 and took possession of it in December of that same year. Under the information-sharing scheme of the Department of Homeland Security, Brennan, still enjoying the highest levels of security clearance, with all his connections in the intelligence world, would have known this.
How many Americans know that Comey operationalized the FBI probe, while Brennan shaped the intelligence narrative to derail Trump and those who voted for him? If they did, they would have difficulty swallowing the propaganda that recent 2025 investigations under Trump’s second term amount to retribution. The Trump Administration is holding those accountable who sought to thwart the general will. This is a rule of law matter—and nobody is above the law.
These are the pieces of a successful coup removing Trump from office in 2020. There are many other pieces, including a pandemic and a color revolution. And the coup was followed by a comprehensive project to prevent Trump from returning to office. After he was ousted, Trump was impeached again for insurrection because he objected to a rigged and fraudulent election. This was followed by four years of lawfare. (See The Conspiracy to Overthrow an American President; I Told You Joe Biden is Corrupt and Compromised.)
Of course, this wasn’t the Establishment’s first rodeo. Using different means, the Deep State removed John Kennedy from office and prevented his brother Bobby from ascending to the post by assassination. The move against Trump is more reminiscent of the way the Establishment waged lawfare against Richard Nixon, except that there were two attempts on Trump’s life. In all these cases, the end is the same: removal of a President who defied the National Security State. With Trump, the Establishment is using everything at its disposal. The nickname given to Ronald Reagan during his presidency, the “Teflon President,” is better suited to the current occupant of the White House.
Taken together, Alpert’s observations noted at the outset of this essay suggest that what is often dismissed as mere political hostility is, for many, a deeper psychological vulnerability—one that leaves them unusually responsive to fear, fixation, and manufactured outrage. The pattern he describes reveals not just disagreement with a controversial figure, but a predisposition toward anxiety, distorted perception, and obsession that can be activated and amplified by political narratives. In this sense, the panic surrounding Trump is less a reaction to events than a reflection of an underlying mental quality—one that propaganda readily exploits (see Industrial Strength Gaslighting; The Lies of the Corporate State Are Functional to Its Ends; The Deep State and Cognitive and Emotional Manipulation).
Recognizing this dynamic is essential to understanding why some remain levelheaded while others are swept into emotional frenzy, and why certain segments of the public are so easily manipulated into cycles of alarm and obsession. It falls to the levelheaded among us to be steady hands at the helm of reason amid the maelstrom whipped up by those who endeavor to steal from us our beloved republic.
freedom and reason 