<....The fifth and most likely option is a version of what is already playing out, to limited success: trying to find another scandal that will appeal to—and distract—the MAGA base. Since the Epstein scandal broke, Trump officials have promised to criminally investigate former CIA director John Brennan and former FBI director James Comey. More recently, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has started promoting a contorted scandal accusing the Obama administration of criminal conduct. Right-wing and conspiracy outlets like Infowars have tried to play along, touting headlines that President Obama will soon be charged with “treasonous conspiracy.” Thus far, though, there’s very little sign that the broader MAGA base is excited—or distracted—by these announcements.

As these many and chaotic possibilities continue to unfold, Trump officials are struggling to keep the positive attention and loyalty of their base. Chief among them is Bongino, who announced in a cryptic tweet this week that shocking things are taking place behind the scenes—a promise that he and other administration officials have made multiple times.

“During my tenure here as the Deputy Director of the FBI, I have repeatedly relayed to you that things are happening that might not be immediately visible, but they are happening,” Bongino tweeted, in a statement that might have occasioned deja vu for his readers. “The Director and I are committed to stamping out public corruption and the political weaponization of both law enforcement and intelligence operations. It is a priority for us. But what I have learned in the course of our properly predicated and necessary investigations into these aforementioned matters, has shocked me down to my core. We cannot run a Republic like this. I’ll never be the same after learning what I’ve learned.”

Bongino’s promise of new revelations at some unspecified future point seemed designed to reassure his impatient followers. While that may have worked before, it’s less clear that it’ll have its intended effect this time—leaving Trump and his administration, again, desperately looking for a new way out.>

<Texas Republicans are betting big on their recent gains with Latino voters, releasing new congressional maps that heavily favor the GOP and create four red, majority-Hispanic districts in the process.

Wednesday’s issuance of the redrawn lines is touching off a fierce partisan battle over the ethics of mid-decade redistricting, forcing Democrats to respond to President Donald Trump’s aggressive action in Texas. It’s also exposing the importance each party is placing on one of the most coveted demographics in the country as they fight for control over the House next year.

The GOP’s maps indicate the party is bullish on Latino voters continuing their rightward political shift even without Trump atop the ballot. It’s a move that doubles down on a strategy Republicans were already implementing across the country, targeting heavily-Hispanic House districts as they seek to capitalize on their recent gains with a group of voters who have the power to carry them to a majority come 2026. In 2024, 48 percent of Hispanic voters cast their ballots for Trump, compared to 36 percent in 2020, according to Pew Research.

“Hispanic communities are sick and tired of radical Democrats turning their backs on them time and again,” said National Republican Congressional Committee Hispanic press secretary Christian Martinez.

The strategy comes with a lot of risk.

Despite shifting toward Trump last year, Latino voters — in Texas and elsewhere — were more likely to split their tickets and back downballot Democrats. And polls show voters have soured on Trump’s handling of the economy, after inflation under former President Joe Biden drove Latino support for Trump last year.

“Trump had the shortest honeymoon ever with these voters,” said Republican strategist Mike Madrid, who published a book last year on Latino voters. “It lasted a couple of months, but the day he started talking about tariffs and started rattling financial markets and everything that Latinos were voting for him on, which was overwhelming affordability and economic issues, they moved away from him just as rapidly as they moved away from Joe Biden for the exact same reasons.”

Six of the 13 congressional districts that went for Trump and a House Democrat in 2024 were at least 40 percent Latino, including two in Texas represented by Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar. Texas Republicans redrew those two districts in the proposed overhaul, replacing them with ones that have a slightly-higher Trump bend.

Trump outperformed Republicans among Latino voters throughout Texas last year. Across counties that were at least 75 percent Hispanic, Trump ran 8.6 points ahead of Sen. Ted Cruz, indicating Latino voters were more likely to cast their ballots for both Cruz’s Democratic rival, Colin Allred, and Trump.

If Latino voters show similar openness to downballot Democrats candidates without Trump on the ballot next year, it could spell trouble for Republicans. The redrawn 28th and 34th districts, which are 90 percent and 77 percent Latino respectively, backed Trump by more than 10 points last year. But Allred came within 0.2 points in the 28th and 2 points in the 34th. (In his 2022 gubernatorial bid, Beto O’Rourke would have won the 28th and lost the 34th by 1 point.)

The new 35th district, which includes part of Bexar County along with solidly-Republican areas east of San Antonio, is 53 percent Latino and supported Trump by 10 points and Cruz by just under 4 points.

The pending map, drawn by Republicans at the urging of Trump and GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, could be changed before Aug. 19, when the state Legislature is expected to recess for the remainder of the summer.

Democratic strategists are warning that Republicans erred by basing their designs on Trump voters.

“[Republicans] are confusing the gains that Trump the individual made with support for the Republican Party,” said Matt Barreto, who polled Latino voters for the Biden-Harris campaign and testified during a Texas redistricting hearing. “There is a Trump effect that is not transferable to Republicans.”....>

<....Polling shows some Latinos have soured on Trump, especially his handling of the economy, which ranked as a leading issue for voters last year.

“In Texas in particular, Hispanic voters are more loyal to their paychecks and Texas than they are to a party,” said Dan Sena, a former executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “That’s part of the appeal of Trump. But when he’s not on the ticket, some of that support erodes.”

The proposed seats do not present easy pickup opportunities for Democrats, either. Madrid, the Republican strategist, said Democrats should work on their own message after several consecutive elections of losing ground.

“Where Democrats failed in the past is not having an aspirational, uplifting economic agenda,” he said. “Latinos don’t believe that Democrats deliver to working class people. They have to get back to a working class economic message that’s not just about government spending.”

J.C. Polanco, an attorney and independent political analyst based in New York City, said that Latino’s shifts to Trump are a reflection of Democrats’ moving to the left. “We’re going to see a lot of that as Republicans realize Latinos have a disdain for socialism,” Polanco said.

GOP vote share among Hispanics has steadily increased in recent years, going from 29 percent in 2018 to 43 percent in 2024, according to Catalist data. Republicans point to that data as reason to think that even without Trump on the ballot, Latinos will still vote for the party.

Even as some of Trump’s support among the population erodes, Democrats are yet to win them back, as the party continues to face low favorability across the board.

It will be up to both parties to make a convincing pitch ahead of next year’s midterms.

“Everything we know about Latino voters tells us that they are highly persuadable and have in the last few election cycles made decisions based on who they believe will address their economic concerns and priorities,” said Melissa Morales, president of Somos Votantes, a Democratic-aligned group that focuses on Latino voters.>

<Donald Trump took a day off yesterday from digging himself deeper into a hole on the matter of Jeffrey Epstein. But you’ll be glad to hear that one of his top aides as well as the speaker of the House stepped up to the plate.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, sought to assure us that Trump’s relationship to Epstein should give us no cause for concern: “The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club for being a creep to his female employees.”

Actually, the fact remains that Donald Trump remained a great “pal” of Jeffrey Epstein for years after Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein took a then-16-year-old Virginia Giuffre from his club, and—as Trump acknowledged Tuesday—other girls, as well.

Leavitt described Epstein’s behavior as “being a creep to [Trump’s] female employees.” That seems generous. Working in the Trump White House, Karoline Leavitt surely knows plenty of “creeps.” Epstein wasn’t a creep. He was a criminal sociopath.

But Leavitt’s description of Epstein is revealing. The fact is that deep down—and not so deep down—neither Trump nor his lackeys describe Epstein’s crimes with the severity they deserve. That’s because the thing they take seriously is the threat Trump’s previous relationship with Epstein—and his current coverup of that relationship—poses to his political well-being.

The Epstein coverup also poses a threat to Trump’s supporters. And so, yesterday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told Jake Tapper the following:

I want everything to come out about the Epstein evils. . . . I’m pushing aggressively for the full release of everything that is possible, and, by the way, so is the president. We’re using every mechanism within our power to do that, and to do it as quickly as possible.

This is Orwellian. Two weeks ago, Speaker Johnson recessed the House in order to avoid a floor vote on a resolution calling for the release of the files. On July 17, the Rules Committee passed with bipartisan support House Resolution 589, “Providing for the release of certain documents, records, and communications related to the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein.” Johnson panicked and sent the House home early for summer recess. That hardly qualifies as “quickly as possible.”

And how’s that recess going for Mike Johnson? Well, earlier this week, a state representative from Johnson’s own 4th district of Louisiana, a fellow Republican, took the extraordinary step of issuing a statement condemning Johnson.

State Rep. Danny McCormick of Oil City pointed out that Johnson “shut down Congress early to dodge the vote.” He went on: “It’s one thing to be silent. It’s another to actively stand in the way of truth and justice. That raises serious questions about who he’s really protecting.”

Whoa.

The White House spin notwithstanding, Epstein wasn’t just a creep. The Speaker’s spin notwithstanding, so far Republicans in Congress have been part of the coverup.

And the issue isn’t going away. The August recess should be interesting.>

<This isn’t an investment letter and I’m not an investment advisor. But I want to warn you. The financial economy — stocks, bonds, and their derivatives — is in for a big reality check, and I think it will happen soon.

The real economy is showing worrisome signs. Yesterday’s Commerce Department report about the U.S. economy’s performance in the second quarter — April to June — revealed serious strains.

Although consumer spending is up from the first quarter, the 1.4 percent rate of growth in the second is nothing to write home about. It’s slower than the growth rate throughout most of the Biden administration.

Also worrisome is that U.S. exports fell during the second quarter, particularly in the auto sector.

And real final sales to private domestic purchasers — which reflect consumer spending and private investment — increased just 1.2 percent in the second quarter. That’s down from the first three months of the year.

And remember: Trump’s big tariffs haven’t hit yet. They go into effect tomorrow. That will cause prices to rise and consumers to pull back. Trump has set a 50 percent tariff on semi-finished copper imports. He has also imposed a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian goods, following through with his threat to punish the country over several political disputes. Canada will see tariffs on many of its exports to the United States increased to 35 percent from 25 percent.

Yet despite all this worrisome news, investors are going nuts buying up super-risky assets.

The financial economy is immersed in the kind of wild gambling we saw leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. We’re seeing it all over again — this time with cryptocurrency tokens, meme stocks, junk bonds, shares of Meta and Microsoft, and the reemergence of blank-check entities (better known as SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies).

I attribute all the high-risk gambling to the high-risk gambling of the gambler-in-chief who sits in the Oval Office. He’s into crypto and meme stocks, and has done well with his own blank-check entity. Plus, he’s a conman’s conman.

Investors figure he must know what he’s doing — and even if he doesn’t, he’s shown no compunctions about using every lever of government power to keep the party going. So investors are following him, although more and more of these investments look like pyramid schemes — whose return depends on recruiting ever more people into buying and selling them, until some schnooks are left holding the bag.

Meanwhile, investors are pouring money into AI, without knowing what it is or which if any corporation will come out on top. Meta’s revenue jumped 22 percent year over year to $47.5 billion and beat Wall Street’s targets by the widest margin in more than four years. Microsoft has also made huge investments in AI.

The AI gold rush started three years ago with the launch of ChatGPT, and most of the financial rewards so far have gone to Nvidia — whose revenue has jumped 10-fold since ChatGPT’s launch, with its market cap crossing the $4 trillion mark earlier this month.

This does feel like a gold rush. And it’s taking place on top of the most blatant corruption this country has witnessed since the first Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century.

As Trump and his family make hundreds of millions of dollars off of crypto, Trump is pushing crypto and changing the laws to encourage more use of it. In a landmark report issued yesterday, the Trump regime laid out a series of recommendations aimed at further promoting cryptocurrency markets....>

<....Senator Elizabeth Warren and two Democratic colleagues questioned the nation’s new stablecoin regulator, newly confirmed Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould, over how he’ll respond to pressure from Trump as the agency begins overseeing the stablecoin market — where the Trump family business is now a player with its own stablecoin.

Gould is in the early stages of implementing the new stablecoin regulatory regime created under the GENIUS Act, which Trump signed into law earlier this month. The legislation gives the Comptroller expanded oversight of nonbank stablecoin issuers.

It’s starting to feel as if the financial economy is no longer moored to the real one. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went so far yesterday as to characterize the new “Trump accounts” — tax-deferred investment accounts created in Trump’s sweeping Big Ugly tax law earlier this month — as a “transformative tool” for building long-term wealth and a “backdoor for privatizing Social Security.”

Hello? So the Trump regime wants us to give up on Social Security and become gamblers in the stock and bond markets? At the very time when the finance is becoming so frothy that such gambling is exceptionally risky?

Well, you know the outcome: The little guys will get hurt and the biggest gamblers will get away with it because they’ll get out just in time or they’ll get the government to bail them out. That was the story of 2008. It’s likely to be the story again.

So, my friends, please beware. I’m not suggesting you cash in your stocks and bonds, but if I were you I wouldn’t follow the crowd into more risky investments. Again, I’m not an investment advisor, but there’s so much wild gambling going on right now that I fear we’re soon in for another financial crisis.>

<Poor Josh Hawley! Missouri’s senior senator is a simple man: All he wants is to pass populist-posturing America First laws taking aim at our dastardly elites. That’s what Republicans are into these days, right?

Take congressional stock trading. Republican influencers have long shaken their fists (and not without reason) at lawmakers’ penchant for remarkably canny stock trades. So when Josh Hawley drew up a bill banning the practice, he surely thought he was hitting on both a policy and PR win. He even named it the PELOSI Act as a red-meat coup de grâce!

What he certainly didn’t expect was the Truth Social response he got from Donald Trump. Apparently outraged that Hawley’s bill would also ban future presidents from trading stocks beginning in 2029, the president decried Hawley as a “second-tier senator” who was “playing right into the dirty hands of the Democrats.”

“I don’t think real Republicans want to see their President, who has had unprecedented success, TARGETED,” Trump wrote.

It was a remarkable outburst against a guy who has spent more time than most sniffing Trump’s throne. But it also tells us something bigger about the current moment. The MAGA populism that both Trump and Hawley claim to embody has yet to crystallize around a shared policy vision. And the breakdown is not just about whether presidents should be scrutinized for the stocks that they trade.

Take two other bills that Hawley is backing. One of them he introduced this week. It would give a $600 “rebate” to most Americans, supposedly tied to the massive wealth being generated—in both Hawley’s telling and Trump’s—by the administration’s tariffs.

“Americans deserve a tax rebate after four years of Biden policies that have devastated families’ savings and livelihoods,” Hawley said in a statement. “Like President Trump proposed, my legislation would allow hardworking Americans to benefit from the wealth that Trump’s tariffs are returning to this country.”

On the surface, this is a straightforward piece of propaganda, designed to give the impression that Trump’s tariffs are doing what the president insanely claims they do: generate incredible sums of free-lunch revenue for the U.S. at the expense of other countries, no drawbacks, no tradeoffs. In that way, it’s a lot like the “DOGE dividends” Elon Musk was floating earlier this year. The fact that such a DOGE rebate would have cost many times more than DOGE ever saved was irrelevant: the point was to give the impression that DOGE had saved enormous sums of money.

But below the surface, the bill tells a potentially different story. Hawley recognizes that there are costs to real consumers—in this case, the working class voters he wants to court—that come with the tariffs Trump is implementing. Pay no attention to the enormous costs of our new protectionist regime, he is suggesting. Please do not notice that you are actively paying higher prices. Instead, look over here at this pile of your money I’m preparing to hand BACK!

The other notable bill from Hawley came two weeks ago. It was, in the words of his office, to “invest in rural hospitals and prevent any future cuts to Medicaid hospital funding.” Those are certainly pursuits that fall under the banner of the new MAGA populist movement. But they also are in direct contrast to the “big beautiful bill” Trump pushed and congressional Republicans passed earlier this summer. Hawley voted for that bill, which makes dramatic cuts to Medicaid. But unlike the president, he’s not spending the subsequent weeks insisting it’s the world’s finest piece of legislation. He’s actively trying to undo the damage he has done.

Is this why Trump lashed out at Hawley yesterday? The White House didn’t respond to my request for comment.

But it’s hard to imagine that it didn’t factor into the president’s decision to go nuclear. You would think Trump would maybe admire Hawley’s bill to send tariff-generated rebates to voters. You could even make the case that, intellectually, Trump would support a bill to protect rural hospitals, too. At a minimum, you’d imagine that Trump might appreciate the years of servitude that Hawley has shown.

But the president’s outburst was a good reminder that if you’re a Republican lawmaker, you can’t ever stockpile a reservoir of goodwill with the guy. You can be a world-historical toady all your life, and Trump’s still going to nuke you from orbit if he decides your version of MAGA populism doesn’t align with his.>

<Even though he's term-limited, President Donald Trump is still raising large sums of money and amassing a significant war chest ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, when the opposition party typically makes big gains.

That's according to a Friday article in the Wall Street Journal, which reported that Trump and his aligned political action committees (PACs) have so far brought in more than $1.4 billion in financial commitments, which is approximately what Trump, his super PACs and the Republican Party raised cumulatively in 2024.

The Journal's sources said Trump's "aggressive" fundraising was meant to give Republicans the ammo necessary to compete effectively in next year's congressional elections.

Trump's fundraising haul comes partially from $1 million per-person fundraisers at both his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida and his Bedminster, New Jersey golf course. And another significant source of funds is small-dollar donations from his supporters via online solicitation campaigns. The emails typically come with gimmicks, like offering a White House badge to anyone donating at least $35, and a separate July fundraising email promised donors would be designated as a "Trump White House Advisor" after sending money and completing a poll.

The blitz of email solicitations comes at about five per day, for more than 700 donation asks since Trump began his second term in January. Donors are frequently offered campaign-style merch as a thank-you gift, which in June included a t-shirt with Trump's face and the word "DADDY" for donors who gave at least $35. David Axelrod — who was a senior advisor to former President Barack Obama — told the Journal that Trump's rapid-pace fundraising efforts signify that he is hoping to avoid a repeat of the 2018 "Blue Wave" midterms which saw Democrats retake the House of Representatives.

“He understands the odds are not with him, and I expect he will go at it with full fury and desperation,” Axelrod said. “The question is can he change history here?”

Currently, Trump's web of PACs and fundraising committees have roughly $350 million in cash on hand as of the end of June. And not all of that money is going toward 2026 general election efforts. According to the Journal, some of Trump's aligned PACs have already been spending money to run ads in Kentucky's 4th Congressional District, which is represented by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). Trump singled Massie out after he voted against his multitrillion-dollar tax and spending legislation.

Earlier this week, Politico reported that three Trump-aligned billionaires — hedge fund magnates John Paulson and Paul Singer and Dallas Mavericks owner Miriam Adelson — have so far put up $2 million to oust Massie.

However, the Kentucky Republican also has a large war chest of his own, with $1.7 million in his campaign account as of last month.>

<President Donald Trump's recent snap decision to fire the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) could end up blowing up in his face, according to one analyst.

In a Friday essay for the Atlantic, columnist Jonathan Chait wrote that Trump's sacking of BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer over a less-than-flattering jobs report gives Americans a distinct window into how the second Trump administration governs. Chait wrote that Trump's firing of McEntarfer was an emotionally driven "lizard brain" decision after the July 2025 jobs report showed not only sluggish job growth of just 73,000 new jobs added, but a downward revision of previous jobs numbers by 258,000 — the worst period of job growth since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Chait wrote that Trump's reasoning that bureaucrats were scheming to undermine falls apart upon closer inspection.

"Revisions of past numbers are a normal part of BLS methodology. Every monthly report is a projection based on limited information, so the Bureau continues to update its findings," he explained. "Last August, the BLS revised previous months’ job numbers downward. This was obviously a bad thing for the Biden administration, but Republicans decided that it was in fact evidence that the BLS had been cooking the books to make the economy look good."

According to Chait, McEntarfer's sudden firing can also shed light on Trump's ongoing feud with Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell over Powell's refusal to lower interest rates. He argued that, similar to how Trump lacks an understanding of how the BLS routinely adjusts data, he also fails to grasp why interest rates are lowered in the first place.

The Atlantic columnist pointed out that the Fed typically only lowers interest rates when the economy is struggling, in order to stimulate more economic activity. And when the economy is strong, the Fed keeps interest rates higher as a means of preventing the economy from overheating and causing inflation to spike. After breaking that down, he likened Trump's frustration with Powell as claiming that the economy is stronger than it actually is, while pushing Powell to do things that suggest the economy is weaker than it actually is.

"He is obsessed with propaganda, and has had phenomenal success manipulating the media and bullying his party into repeating even his most fantastical lies," Chait wrote. "But, as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris learned the hard way, voters don’t judge the economy on the basis of jobs reports. They judge it on the basis of how they and their community are doing. You can’t fool the public into thinking the economy is better than it is with fake numbers. All fake numbers can do is make it harder for policy makers to steer the economy."

"The president’s mad rush to subject the macroeconomic policy makers to the same partisan discipline he has imposed on the power ministries is less of a coup than a temper tantrum," he added. "He thinks he wants loyalists and hacks running those functions. He might not like what happens when he gets his way.">

<Top Pairs Are The Kings of Small and Medium-Sized Pots

The goal when you flop this type of hand is to keep the pot small to medium-sized. Once either you or your opponent starts driving the pot toward a larger size, your hand’s equity and playability begin to deteriorate.

Even if we strip away the exploitative or psychological layers and focus purely on the math, the principle still holds. Let’s break it down into two perspectives—two sides of the same coin:

1. You’re the one pushing the action

By betting and raising, you’re filtering your opponent’s range toward stronger hands. This is a natural consequence of how poker works: your opponent only needs to defend with a specific portion of their range to avoid being exploited. As the pot grows, weaker hands—like top pairs with weak kickers—start to fall behind the increasingly strong hands that continue.

2. You’re the one facing the heat

Now you’re on the defensive. When your opponent applies pressure, you’re no longer obligated to continue with the bottom portion of your range. As the pot gets larger—especially on certain runouts and against specific sizing—top pairs with weak kickers often fall into that bottom tier of your range, meaning they become more frequent folds.

Examples From Top Pros

The following examples are taken from the World Cash Game Championship on CoinPoker, and they demonstrate that even top players apply this same framework.

Hand #1 – Riggeddeck vs KevinPaque

Riggeddeck open-raises from the Button with Ad 9d, and KevinPaque calls from the Big Blind.

The flop comes Ah 8c 7s. KevinPaque checks, and Riggeddeck checks back.

Quick Analysis:

This is a strong hand on the flop, but the connected nature of the board means straight draws are live and likely to complete on later streets. That makes top pair with a weak kicker more of a bluff-catcher as the hand progresses. Checking back to pot control—or betting small to deny equity—is completely reasonable here.

The turn is the 8h.

KevinPaque checks again, Riggeddeck bets around 25% pot, and KevinPaque makes the call.

Quick Analysis:

The turn pairing slightly weakens Riggeddeck’s hand, but it’s still strong enough to value-bet—especially at a small size. Many of Kevin’s strongest hands would have led out (probed) on the turn, so his checking range is slightly capped. That said, checking back is also a solid option, as Kevin has plenty of hands that are drawing thin or dead, which may either bluff the river or improve into worse value hands that can bet or check-call.

The river is the Qh.

KevinPaque checks, and Riggeddeck fires a 75% pot bet. KevinPaque folds.

Quick Analysis:

The river completes the backdoor flush draw—a hand class well represented in the Big Blind’s range through suited 7x and some Kx of hearts. It also reduces the relative value of Ad 9d, since it now chops with nearly all of Kevin’s Ax. While the hand is likely still ahead, the 75% pot bet is arguably a slight overplay in theory, given the runout and limited ability to get called by worse.

Hand #2 – Enlight vs Riggeddeck

Enlight open-raises from the Button with Kd 9s, and Riggeddeck calls from the Big Blind with Jc 9d.

The flop comes Jh 6h 3d.

Riggeddeck checks, and Enlight checks back.

Quick Analysis:

Riggeddeck shouldn’t donk into this flop—Enlight holds the range and nut advantage as the preflop raiser. From Enlight’s perspective, this is a standard c-bet candidate, but checking back is also part of a balanced GTO strategy. While it feels great for Riggeddeck to flop top pair, this isn’t a hand that wants to face big bets; he’s mostly hoping Enlight either checks back or bets small....>

<....The turn is the 4h. Riggeddeck checks, and Enlight checks back.

Quick Analysis:

Riggeddeck’s top pair is still worth a bet or two—depending on sizing plans and the river card. The turn completes both a flush and a straight, which slightly weakens the value of Jc 9d.

However, since it’s a low card, it’s less likely Enlight improved. That’s because most of his flush draws and hands like 7h 5h would typically c-bet the flop. A small bet or a check are both reasonable here.

The river is the Ad. Riggeddeck checks, and Enlight checks back.

Quick Analysis:

The river significantly devalues Riggeddeck’s top pair. Its equity drops from around 75% to closer to 50%. This is no longer a hand you can value-bet. The best play is to check and aim to reach showdown as cheaply as possible.

Wrapping Up

As you can see, top pros understand that the value of top pair–weak kicker hands lies in keeping pots small to medium-sized. They often choose pot control lines or opt for small bets to manage risk and protect equity.

While it may seem like elite players are constantly making ultra-thin value bets or wild bluffs, the reality is more grounded. The best players are simply excellent at calibrating their strategy to match their hand’s equity and structural strength. In other words, they make fewer mistakes than their opponents—consistently. There are deeper patterns at play, of course, but that’s a topic for another time.

By applying the framework shared in this article, you’ll already be ahead of 95% of your opponents.>

<It’s all anyone wants to talk about.

At a time of unprecedented media fragmentation - where there are fewer and fewer shared cultural moments, because we’re all consuming content in deeper and deeper silos - the Coldplay affair has united us all.

Last Wednesday night, a man named Andy Byron was standing in the audience of a Coldplay concert in Boston. The band was playing “The Jumbotron Song” while a kisscam roamed around the stadium, landing on members of the audience and streaming their live reactions to 55,000 people.

There’s a sense of anonymity in a crowd of that size. I remember being a child at a basketball game and being terrified of the camera finding me. I didn’t want to see myself on the big screen, to have strangers watch as my cheeks went red and my mouth made the shape of an uncomfortable smile. I still have that reaction as an adult. <Please don’t land on me. Please don’t land on me>.

Andy Byron was probably thinking the same thing, albeit for slightly different reasons. But the camera did land on him. He happened to have his arms wrapped around a blonde woman, both of them staring adoringly at the stage. The moment they caught themselves on the giant screen, with the entire stadium’s attention on them, they jumped apart. Andy Byron ducked out of the frame, and the woman he was with - Kristin Cabot - turned around to hide her face. Coldplay’s lead singer, Chris Martin, commentated from behind his microphone. “Whoa, look at those two,” he said. “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy. I hope we didn’t do something bad.”

It turns out, Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot <were> doing something bad. They were indeed having an affair, as pieced together by some of the millions of viewers who watched the video when it was posted to social media. It was quite easy to figure out who this man was, and from there, quite easy to discover that the woman he was with was not his wife and the mother of his two children. Then came all the other things you can find out about a person from their online footprint. Byron was the CEO at Astronomer, a New York-based company that provides software solutions for data management. A company that, according to a trending post on LinkedIn, has a severe lack of gender diversity. His educational history suggests he might be Catholic (THE IRONY!), his social media shows he has two sons (WHAT A ROLE MODEL!), The Economic Times estimated his net worth to be between USD20 million and USD70 million as of 2025 (THE PRIVILEGE!), and his career trajectory paints a picture of someone with a reputation for aggressive growth and profitability (PSYCHOPATH!).

Of course, when a story goes viral, anyone who knows anything about content wants to find a way to be a part of it. I saw a video from a man who said he worked with Andy Byron years ago, and claimed Byron left young, naive people out of pocket when a business venture failed. Then there’s the fake apologies from people pretending to be Andy Byron, fake statements from his workplace, fake videos from his ‘daughter’. There’s power, now, in having something to say about this man. In being able to tear him down in a new way, a way that makes you part of the narrative.

It’s classic schadenfreude - pleasure in another person’s misfortune. But in the internet age, it’s also more than that. We’ve collectively decided that Andy Byron - a white man with lots of money who had the audacity to cheat on his wife in a stadium full of people - is a bad person. It’s astoundingly simple. Because he’s a bad person, there’s no limit to what we expect him to withstand. The memes and the commentary and the AI-generated statements, his photo plastered on the front-page of news sites around the world. He had no reasonable expectation of privacy at that concert, lawyers say (yes, lawyers are now weighing in). The further we dig, the worse this man becomes. Byron wasn’t only cheating, but cheating with the Head of HR. There was a rumour (which turned out to be a lie) that a woman standing beside them on the kisscam was also an employee at Astronomer, and had received a promotion very recently. Was he abusing his power to hide his affair? I mean, he’s the kind of man who cheats on his wife, so… probably!>

<....But what does this public shaming, this outrage, this witch hunt, actually achieve? Who are we doing it for?

I suppose Andy Byron’s wife now knows she’s being cheated on, although I don’t think we can pretend this entire spectacle is for her benefit. Her name, too, is being published. Her photos trawled through, her life unpacked. We might think we’re restoring the moral order by deriding him, expressing a tacit solidarity with her, but I’d imagine she a) wishes this isn’t the way she discovered her partner’s infidelity (if that’s even what happened), and b) is far more concerned with the very real threats to her family’s privacy than a stranger’s virtual (rather patronising) pat on the back.

Are we doing it for women, broadly? Is this justice/vengeance/symbolic power for every wife and mother who cared for their family at home while their husband cheated on them in public?

Is this about wealth? Privilege? The level of unrestrained confidence it must take to assume that you can do s**tty, unethical things and never have to face the consequences?

I think it’s about all of those things. Andy Byron is a Rorschach test, and we’re all projecting onto him the qualities of an ‘Andy Byron’ we’ve encountered in our own lives. The philanderer, the absent dad, the immoral boss. We’re also projecting onto him the full extent of the social ills he represents. He is the deep gender inequality that allows a father-of-two to cheat with a woman at work. He is the unjust system of capitalism that means some people get to be multi-millionaires while others are homeless. He <is> arrogance. He <is> privilege. He <is> misogyny.

But therein lies the problem.

Because as convenient as that reality would be, Andy Byron is none of those things.

Andy Byron is just a person. Flesh and blood. Like you or me.

He might be really, really generous. Laugh-out-loud funny. Perhaps he cared for his sick mother, or mentored a group of disadvantaged youth. Maybe he struggles with his mental health. He clearly quite likes Coldplay. I also like Coldplay. Most of us like Coldplay.

If this were a novel, Andy Byron would be a character who never wanted to be the CEO of some confusing company. He’d be a guy who always dreamed of being a musician. Someone whose life doesn’t look the way he wishes it did. In the story, that misery would keep him awake at night, because he’s grown, now, and he’s made his decisions, and he’s not sure he has the time left to throw it all away and start again. At 2am, the weight of it all would hit this version of Andy Byron. He would lie awake for hours, contemplating the fact that he feels like a @#$%* terrible person, a liar, a fraud. Over hundreds of pages, though, a reader would discover the qualities that redeem him. The parts of this man that connect him to us all.

Novels, of course, compel us towards empathy in a way 30-second clips on Instagram do not.

Maybe Andy Byron is none of these things. Maybe he’s one of those few people you come across in life who are, simply, awful. But maybe he isn’t. We don’t actually know.

Because there is so much the internet cannot tell you about a person. It flattens us and dehumanises us, and it demands we see each other as effigies - crude ideological symbols deserving of being burnt in protest.

The challenge of being human is that we are all more complicated than that. Including, as inconvenient as it is, cheating dirtbags like Andy Byron.>

“In particular, the reviewers applied two FOIA exemptions to justify their redactions. The first, Exemption 6, protects individuals against ‘a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.’ The Supreme Court has said the exemption protects ‘individuals from the injury and embarrassment’ that would result from the disclosure of personal information in possession of the government. … The second, Exemption 7(C), protects personal information contained in law enforcement records, the disclosure of which ‘could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.’”....>

<....You and me and everyone we know are entitled to privacy protections, because without them, we are more or less powerless. The president is not powerless, nor is entitled to such protections. He is the president.

The public has a right to know whether Trump was part of Epstein’s pedophile ring; whether he covered up his involvement; and whether he has induced government agents to pervert privacy laws in the furtherance of an ongoing conspiracy to hide his sexual crimes.

Trump could waive his rights to privacy and order the release of the Epstein files, with his name appearing through them “multiple times.” He could let the chips fall where they may, but he’s never done that. There’s too much at stake and, evidently, there’s too much to hide.

“Smacks of a coverup”

In addition to the government scrubbing Trump’s name from the Epstein files, it moved Epstein’s accomplice from a maximum-security prison to a cushy one in Texas. Ghislaine Maxwell was transferred after being interviewed by the second in command at the Department of Justice. Journalist Michael Wolff has said that was an effort to ascertain whether she has more incriminating evidence on Trump.

The family of Maxwell’s best-known victim, Virginia Giuffre, said the news is an offense to her memory (she killed herself in April) and “smacks of a coverup.” In a statement, the family said: “Without any notification to the Maxwell victims, the government overnight has moved Maxwell to a minimum-security luxury prison in Texas. This is the justice system failing victims right before our eyes.

“The American public should be enraged by the preferential treatment being given to a pedophile and a criminally charged child sex offender. The Trump administration should not credit a word Maxwell says, as the government itself sought charges against Maxwell for being a serial liar. This move smacks of a cover up. The victims deserve better.”

Indeed, the deep state is real and it works for Donald Trump.>

<President Donald Trump had a Saturday night meltdown as Democratic leader in the Senate Chuck Schumer threatened to bring negotiations to approve nominees for multiple administration positions to a screeching halt.

As the Senate Republicans rush to push through Trump’s choices before heading out for a month-long summer vacation, Schumer is throwing out multiple conditions for Democratic support.

They include unfreezing federal funds for programs such as foreign aid and the National Institutes of Health that were shut down in the administration's purge on spending.

The demands were reportedly rejected by Trump, bring the negotiations to a standstill.

In a rage and insult-filled Truth Social post, Trump demanded that Republicans in the Senate not back down.

“Senator Cryin’ Chuck Schumer is demanding over One Billion Dollars in order to approve a small number of our highly qualified nominees, who should right now be helping to run our Country,” he wrote.

“This demand is egregious and unprecedented, and would be embarrassing to the Republican Party if it were accepted. It is political extortion, by any other name. Tell Schumer, who is under tremendous political pressure from within his own party, the Radical Left Lunatics, to GO TO HELL!

“Do not accept the offer, go home and explain to your constituents what bad people the Democrats are, and what a great job the Republicans are doing, and have done, for our Country. Have a great RECESS and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”>

Of all people, <taco> should grasp the concept of 'extortion', given his love of strongarm.

<Nearly 70% of Americans now believe that the Trump administration is concealing information about the notorious sex trafficker and child rapist, Jeffrey Epstein. But still, among my progressive circles, a fair proportion of people are still dismissing this possibility—and, with it, the idea that Trump actually abused teen girls at Epstein’s “parties”—as a baseless conspiracy theory. To be sure, much of MAGA’s conviction that Trump is hiding something personal have dubious origins in the wild and pernicious lies perpetuated in QAnon, the cult that spread the belief that a cabal of elite child cannibals and molesters have been trafficking toddlers. But you can, of course, believe the right thing for the wrong reasons. And, given the solid evidence to hand about Trump’s misconduct—some of it new, much of it old—the real conspiracy theory at this point has a radically different basis. Nobody in the mainstream media has yet named it, and it desperately needs acknowledgement.

The real conspiracy theory around Trump and Epstein is that multiple apparently unconnected women lied, and continue to lie, about Trump’s behavior. This with nothing to gain, and much to lose, by speaking out about his misdeeds.

Let’s start with Katie Johnson, the pseudonym adopted by the woman who I wrote about here last time. Her story, if we take her word for it, goes like this: for decades, she was silent, after Trump allegedly raped her at the age of thirteen, at the home of Jeffrey Epstein, in 1994. She also alleges that Trump sexually abused her there on three prior occasions. Katie never planned to speak about this publicly until 2016, when Trump was running for president. Katie met a TV producer at a party who offered to tell her story: Norm Lubow, who adopted the pseudonym Al Taylor. He shopped around her video testimony to multiple media outlets, who found—upon vetting him—that he had once been a producer on the Jerry Springer show and that he had an anti-Trump agenda, among other red flags. The story fizzled out and Katie was assumed to be a liar who Lubow had coached or scripted. At the same time, her lawsuit in California was filed incompetently, and her lawsuit in New York (filed by a respectable attorney, who met and video conferenced with Katie) was dropped, after she received threats, including death threats. For the same reason, she cancelled her planned press conference in LA a few days before the presidential election, where she had planned to warn America about the kind of man they were on the verge of electing.

Again, that’s all if we take Katie’s word for it. Another possibility, of course, is that Lubow did coach or script Katie’s lengthy video testimony. A few points, however: that testimony is compelling, at least in my view. It was widely dismissed when it surfaced in 2016 partly because what Katie was saying was judged just too incredible when it came to Epstein’s sex trafficking of teen girls. Remember, the full story about his crimes didn’t emerge until late in 2018, thanks to Julie K. Brown’s trenchant and prize-winning reporting in The Miami Herald. We now know that what Katie said about Epstein was not only plausible but completely true. Moreover, Katie wouldn’t be the first woman to mistakenly rely on an unscrupulous huckster in order to tell her story: the same is true, notoriously, of the former sex worker Stormy Daniels. People initially dismissed Daniels’s account because she was represented by the huckster lawyer, Michael Avenatti. But Daniels was clearly telling the truth about Trump’s hiring her in 2006 and then, a decade later, paying her hush money. To cite the fact that her lawyer was shonky was, intentionally or not, dismissing Daniels via guilt by association. Many people may have made the same mistake vis-à-vis Katie Johnson. After all, as we’ll consider shortly, numerous women have testified in ways that corroborate her story....>

<....Katie’s lawsuits and video testimony have long stuck in my mind. Back in 2016, and even 2024—when they briefly resurfaced on Twitter—I didn’t know quite what to make of them. But now, I suggest, we should at least listen to Katie. Here is one especially relevant part of the video transcript, which I did myself (it simply isn’t out there). I am making it available to you now in full (at the end of this post) partly because the video has—interestingly enough—disappeared from one common source, on X, and also because no journalist has seemingly ever bothered to write down her words. This despite the video providing the clearest and fullest account of what Americans are now clamoring for: a sense of Trump’s alleged entanglement with Epstein. When women speak, and tell us of rich and powerful white men’s misdeeds, we not only don’t believe them; we often don’t even bother to listen in the first place. One hopes that now, in the wake of 2017’s #MeToo moment, we are at least slightly savvier about the importance of hearing even imperfect victims (or, rather, those who had deeply imperfect initial representation). Here’s Katie, on her final encounter with Trump at Epstein’s mansion, where she alleges she was tied to the bed for an orchestrated rape “fantasy.” (“It was a rape fantasy to him, but I wasn’t playing,” as she put it.)

[Trump] ripped off all my clothes and he started to basically have sex with me and I was screaming. I’d never had sex before, it was my first time and [Epstein’s handler] Tiffany was yelling at him too. She was saying I was a virgin and he told us to just shut the f*** up and just basically took my virginity while I was crying and telling him to stop and basically begging for him to just stop...

[Afterward] I was crying and Tiffany was consoling me and she was apologizing. She told me that she would never put me in that situation again. But he comes over mad because I was crying and he said that I should be thankful that someone like Donald Trump took my virginity. Well, he didn’t say took my virginity. He said, I should be glad that someone like Donald Trump popped my cherry and not some pimply little 14 year old. And I just was like, “What if I get pregnant?” Not even talking to him. I didn’t want to talk to him. I was talking to Tiffany and he said, “Well you’ll get an abortion then, bitch.”

I find Katie’s story believable, not only because it is obviously truthful with respect to Epstein, as we know now: it is also plausible regarding Trump’s own behavior. Some telling details, which emerge below, include Trump’s germophobia (he would only allow his penis to be touched with a glove or a condom); his well-documented sexual proclivity for his own daughter, Ivanka (he allegedly enjoyed her likeness to Katie when she donned a blonde wig); Trump’s racism and Islamophobia and anti-immigrant vitriol (including in one abusive “fantasy” Katie details involving a Hispanic “maid” who Trump threatened to call immigration on); his domineering speech; the sheer tone of it, even. And, just as importantly, Katie’s testimony squares with that of several apparently independent witnesses and victims. Namely:

Tiffany Doe, the handler referred to above in the transcript, in the 2016 court cases, who corroborated each key element of Katie’s account in a sworn affidavit. (Joan Doe, a friend of Katie’s, also provided corroboration that Katie had told her about the incident with Trump and Epstein during the 1994-1995 school year.)

Maria Farmer, who recently testified that, when she was working for Epstein in 1995, he brought her to Trump’s office late one night. After Trump leered at her legs, Epstein corrected him: “No, no, she’s not here for you.” The seeming implication being, other girls were or would be. Farmer overheard Trump remarking that he thought she looked about sixteen, though she was actually in her twenties. (Farmer originally accused Epstein of sexual assault in 1996, when she brought the matter to the FBI. Farmer said then that Trump was also worthy of their attention. She repeated both claims a decade later when she was re-interviewed.)

Stacey Williams, who testified last October that, in the 1990s, when she was a model in her twenties dating Epstein, he took her to Trump’s office at Trump tower. Williams alleges that Trump groped her, she froze, and then Epstein got mad at Williams. (Yes, Williams.) “They were not mere acquaintances,” Williams told The Bulwark’s Tim Miller in an interview this morning. (She also testified that Epstein took a non-consensual video of Williams undressing at his residence.)....>

<....None of the women testifying to Trump’s misdeeds apparently had or have much, if anything, to gain by coming forward. On the contrary, they had or have a lot to lose, and risk being discredited as well as shamed and blamed for their victimhood or act of witnessing. This can ruin women’s lives—or even end them. Virginia Giuffre, an important advocate for justice for sex trafficking victims, died tragically by suicide in April. She, notably, was working as a spa attendant at Trump’s resort, Mar-a-Lago, in 2000, when Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her to be part of Epstein’s entourage at the age of 17. (Guiffre was instrumental in the court case against Epstein in 2008 that ended with him getting a sweetheart non-prosecution agreement, as well as the second criminal case against Epstein in 2019. Guiffre also obtained a $16 million settlement from Prince Andrew, an alleged Epstein client.)

Then there are the following puzzle pieces regarding Trump’s history of sexual misconduct in general, and involvement with Epstein in particular:

Five Miss Teen USA contestants, aged as young as 15, testify that Trump walked in on them while changing in 1997—something Trump actually boasted about to Howard Stern in 2005. Trump also hosted a “calendar girls” competition at Mar-a-Lago in 1993. The only other guest? Jeffrey Epstein.

The “bawdy” letter Trump wrote to Epstein for his 50th birthday, in 2003, as reported by The Wall Street Journal last week. The letter said: “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey” and “Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?” Then: “Happy Birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret,” and a doodle of a naked woman with the signature “Donald” rendered as a squiggle over her pubic area.

Trump also told New York Magazine in 2002 that he’d known Epstein for fifteen years, and called him a “terrific guy.” “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life,” he told the reporter. He flew on Epstein’s private jet four times in 1993, as well as once in 1994, 1995 and 1997. Epstein later described Trump as his closest friend in an interview.

Ivana Trump testified, to the Trump biographer Harry Hurt III, that her then husband raped her in 1989. (She subsequently recanted, under pressure from Trump’s lawyers, as I detail in Down Girl in the introduction, “Eating her Words.”)

Trump is a legally adjudicated rapist in the case of E. Jean Carroll, who brought a civil suit against him in 2023 for raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. Carroll was initially awarded $5 million in damages. She was then awarded over $80 million in a second lawsuit—as she details in her recent New York Times bestselling book, Not My Type. (The book’s title is a reference to Trump’s chief defense against these allegations in the media: Carroll was “not his type;” ergo, he didn’t rape her.)

Obviously, and notoriously, Trump boasted about non-consensually kissing and grabbing women “by the pussy” to Billy Bush in 2005—hot mic footage of which emerged in the run-up to the 2016 election, producing a brief public outcry.

Trump has also been accused by dozens of other women of sexually assaulting them—predominantly by alleged non-consensual kissing and/or groping—as meticulously documented in the book, All the President’s Women.

This past Wednesday, the news broke that Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump during the Spring that he is named, in some capacity, in the Epstein files.

So when it comes to the idea that Katie was a TV producer’s plant, and that the women testifying in congruent ways—many of which jibe with established facts about Trump’s behavior—all happen to be lying, I have to say: sounds like a conspiracy theory. And simply implausible.

Consider all of the above points, and then consider Katie’s testimony—which I reproduce in full below (save for brief edits for length and clarity). Does it constitute an open and shut case that Trump did what she said he did and raped her at the age of thirteen? Of course not. But “beyond reasonable doubt”—and, for that matter, “innocent until proven guilty”—are legal standards, not moral or epistemic ones. The question that concerns me now, and that I pose to you here, in light of the foregoing, is whether Katie’s story is credible and plausible. Should we, as concerned citizens, deign to believe her?>

<....I say yes. Her story is all too believable. And we have buried and ignored it to our national peril.

I came to this interview of my free will. No, there was nothing promised to me for doing this interview. Yes, everything that I say in this interview will be the truth.

I met Donald Trump at some parties that I was working for Mr. Jeffrey Epstein. There were about three or four times that I had encounters with Donald Trump. I was 13. The first time that I met Donald Trump was at a party at Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion. There was an orgy going on and he was kind of watching off in the distance.

He basically asked if I could come over and give him a hand job. At first I wasn’t very comfortable with it. This was my first party and I didn’t think that that was my responsibility. But my recruiter told me that I needed to do it. So I agreed to it and then he, you know, I began to—sorry this is a little difficult. But before I gave him a hand job he kind of slapped my hand away and said, “You need to use a glove.” The recruiter ran over and handed me a glove and said, “No one touches Mr. Trump’s penis without a glove.” So I needed to use a glove. I gave him a hand job and then immediately after he had an orgasm he left and I didn’t see him again at that party…

I originally came to New York trying to be a model and in my travels I met a girl named Tiffany there who was very interested in me and said that that’s what she did is that she helped girls, you know, get what they wanted. She could help me get into modeling, that she knew a lot of people that were higher-ups and that it would be no problem. And so that’s why, you know, I would just basically have to come model at a couple of events and meet some people, there would be no sweat. So of course I went, you know, that sounded like no big deal. And she was recruiting the girls to come to these parties and they all looked, I mean most of them were my age. There were maybe a couple girls that were maybe 14 or 15 but it seemed to me like we were all very young.

Jeffrey Epstein knew that I was 13 years old. When he interviewed me, he asked me to get down to my bra and just my panties and I thought that was weird but, I mean, modeling. Maybe it was something about my figure. He asked me to give him a massage. He asked me my age, I told him that I was thirteen, I told him why I was there, and he basically said, “Well, you’ll do, you know, I’m sure that you’ll fit pretty nicely here.” And then he tried to basically slip himself inside of me. And I pushed him away and I said, you know, I’m—because at that point in time I still believed that there were models and then there was the girls that did that. Like I thought there was a separation. So I told him that I wasn’t interested in that but he said that I would do.

And as far as Donald Trump, he knew that I was 13, and I believe that Tiffany told him. He seemed to take a liking to me because I was so young and I was also a virgin. So, I don’t know, he seemed like he wasn’t really into having girls that were liked by the other guys. The whole glove thing—he kind of liked things to be his first, you know, for lack of a better term. He was the one who wanted to get to a girl before everyone else did.

Donald Trump knew that I was 13 because the first night that I was there, Tiffany actually suggested that and she had a whole bunch of different wigs and I expressed interest in them and I always told her that I would love to walk around with blue hair. And so I tried some on and there was a blonde wig that she said that looked great on me. So, I wore that wig and Donald Trump had specifically asked about me because I remind him of his daughter and she said, “Well, she’s 13 as well.” So, he knew the first time that he saw me. He took a liking to me because I looked like his daughter.

The reason I’m coming out now is—when it happened originally, I just wanted to forget about the whole incident. And when I saw that he was running for president, I felt that it was my responsibility to come out and tell our country what kind of man this person is. I don’t think that he should even be the dog catcher, let alone running the greatest country in the world…

The first time that I met Jeffrey Epstein, he did try to force himself inside of me without getting the go-ahead or anything. And then it was probably about the third or fourth party is when he basically forced—it was another massage and it was basically like, it wasn’t sex, but it was, there was penetration. And I told him that I didn’t want that, but he kind of got a little irritated. So, I don’t know, there was something about him that, I guess I kind of held a lot of resentment towards him. By the time that that happened, I already started catching on that maybe I wasn’t there for modeling and maybe I was just getting used for things and I kind of held him responsible....>

<....I did receive money to go to these parties. After every party, I was paid by Mr. Epstein. There wasn’t, out of all the girls that were there with me, most of them were 13, 14. I think the oldest one might have been 16, but just turned 16 and she’d been there for a while…

Second time that I saw Mr. Trump was, same scenario, he was an onlooker at an orgy and Tiffany came over to me and said that Donald Trump had requested that I perform oral sex on him. And never, I’d never done something like that with anybody, so I was a little nervous. So, I walked up to him and he was sitting there very proud-like and I just kind of moved in that direction and he kind of slapped me away and said, “What are you doing? You need to put a condom on.” Like I was some dirty filth or something. Tiffany ran over and handed me a condom and apologized profusely and said that would never happen again. And she looked at me and scolded me basically like a child and said that, “That’s not how: Donald Trump always, anytime anyone touches his penis it needs to have a condom on or a glove. Especially when it comes to performing oral sex.”

So, I apologized and then I performed oral sex on him. And once again, once he was done, he hopped up and that’s the last I saw of him at that party. It’s like once he’s done, he’s out. Some of the things that I noticed that were weird with him: sometimes before the parties he would come over and Jeffrey Epstein and himself would kind of banter back and forth and he was very, Donald Trump was very racist. He said a lot of racist things. There was a lot of comments towards Mr. Epstein about being Jewish and he called him a Jew bastard, said that he was cheap and there were some words I didn’t even understand.

Something about his, you know, the shape of his penis being directly related to his mole or, I mean, I’m not too familiar with the Jewish tradition—but I’m pretty sure that whatever he was saying wasn’t very nice. He also referred to, you know, people of Hispanic origin, he called them Spicks. That was around the first time that the World Trade Center had gotten bombed in the 90s. And he was talking about the towel heads and how we would just be better off if we didn’t let them in and basically got rid of everyone, every single one that was already here. And it made me really uncomfortable, really, really uncomfortable.

He also loved to call Black people n----- and Arabic people he called sand n-----. The only time that he tried to give me some money was our last encounter together, where he acted out a rape fantasy. I was forced to give that money back because Jeffrey Epstein paid us after the party. I don’t even know why he gave it to me, maybe to make me feel more cheap. It was a rape fantasy to him, but I wasn’t playing.

The next thing that Tiffany approached me with was that he had a fantasy where he walked in on his maids, maids basically making out and it was some type of fantasy for him. At that point, I was like, “I don’t want to be involved with anything that has to do with him.” But she’s like, “You are just basically the other one. So, there’s nothing that you will have to do. Just—he’s requesting you to be involved.” So, I reluctantly—I mean, I felt like I didn’t have a choice there, but it was basically, he’s walking in on his two maids, I was one of the maids, I was the white maid. And there was a Spanish girl, Maria, who was the Hispanic maid. And we were making out and he walks in and he gets really angry and threatens to call immigration on Maria if she doesn’t come over and make things right and give him a blow job.

So, while she is over there giving him a blow job, I am supposed to look scared like, “Oh, oh no,” cleaning up things and pretending like I’m trying to go back to my job as a maid. And then he’s being so rude to Maria. I felt so bad for her. It just didn’t seem like a fantasy. It’s the weirdest fantasy as far as that goes. He was threatening, he was threatening to call immigration on her. She wasn’t even near going down to give him, perform oral sex on him before he slapped her away and said, “What are you doing? You know you need to put a condom on.” And she’s trying to say “I’m so sorry.” And he’s like, “You can’t even, I can’t even understand what you’re saying. Just speak English!” He called her derogatory comments. And then he’s like, “You know what, you don’t know what you’re doing. Have her come over and show you how it’s done.” And so I, again, I said that I didn’t—I had to go over there or else he was going to call immigration on Maria. I didn’t know if it was true or not, but he said that if I didn’t show her how to perform oral sex on him, then he was going to call immigration on her and then get rid of us both....>

<....Anything that was in relation to him getting off or being satisfied or happy had to do with him being in power, extreme power. And it was always intimidating when he was like that. You didn’t really know if it was true. If you refused to play along, would he really call immigration on Maria? Would he really get rid of us both? And I didn’t even want to know what that meant. It wasn’t a game.

The one night that I had the blonde wig on, he mentioned that I reminded him of his daughter. And actually the maid’s fantasy, I didn’t have a blonde wig on. I was trying to stay away from blonde wigs at the time. But he actually requested, told Tiffany that that’s what he wanted me to wear. Like he wanted it, and anytime I put it on, anytime I had it on and he’d see me, he would say, “Oh man, you look—” and it wasn’t like a, “Oh, you remind me of my daughter.” It was this sick, evil “You remind me of my daughter.” It was just this weird pleasure, sick smile. Like I don’t even want to know what he was thinking about. I could imagine what he was thinking about.

After the parties would end, we were to report to Mr. Epstein and basically tell him everything that happened, with who, what they liked, what they disliked, if there was any requests, if there was any talk about anything. That’s what we told Mr. Epstein—everything. And then he paid us, and then we got to go home.

The fact that Trump has a chance to be the next president makes me feel disgusting inside. I’ve always been proud to be an American. I think we live in a beautiful country. But I just see him ruining everything. He’s horrible, what he portrays on the outside isn’t even that great, but people don’t even know the half of how evil, how sick and twisted that man is. I have a friend that’s been my friend ever since the school year that I stopped going, the eighth grade. I confided in her, and she knows all about it. She knows everything…

I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to save the country that I believe that we have. I know what he does behind closed doors. I’m willing to sacrifice my life to put our country back in the right—like, going maybe in some type of positive direction. Not even, there’s no right or wrong, but a positive direction. This guy’s not going to take us anywhere positive.

You know, as far as my life changing by coming out with this information, I’ve thought long and hard about whether or not I should. And I’ve gone back and forth. But I think that the American people need to know what kind of man this person is. And if my life changes because of that, then so be it. But the American people need to know what they’re dealing with. If I had the chance to talk to Donald Trump, I would run the other way. I’m scared of him like I’ve never been scared of anything else in my entire life. I can’t explain it to you, but the fear of him even being in a next room, I have a panic attack....>

<....The last encounter that I had with Donald Trump, Tiffany approached me about a rape scene that was supposed to be played out. And I didn’t like the sound of that at all. But Tiffany promised, assured me that it wasn’t going to be—if it was anything I wasn’t comfortable with, we could stop. That she would be right there and that it wouldn’t get out of hand. And that it was just a fantasy, like it wasn’t really going to happen. And so I told her that I would. I mean Tiffany was always nice to me. I trusted her, or else I wouldn’t have always done what she asked me to.

But she was there and he came in and I was basically tied to a bed with pantyhose. And they were so tight it hurt to even lay there. And I tried to say something and he was just “Shut up! Shut up, bitch!” He was being really, really rough.

It just didn’t seem like a fantasy. And I started to get scared and he was basically like ripping my clothes off. And I got freaked out. I told him that I didn’t want to do this. I screamed over for Tiffany and she was like, “Mr. Trump, she’s only, she’s not—this is scaring her.” And he’s like, “Oh you shut up too.” He just turned into this animal. It was like a completely different, completely different person. It was like everyone in the room was scared of him. And I couldn’t do anything about it.

He ripped off all my clothes and he started to basically have sex with me and I was screaming. I’d never had sex before, it was my first time and Tiffany was yelling at him too. She was saying I was a virgin and he told us to just shut the @#$% up and just basically took my virginity while I was crying and telling him to stop and basically begging for him to just stop. And Tiffany didn’t know what else to do either. No one was there to help us, or me. And so, after the fact, he basically finishes. It didn’t take that long at all. But it felt like it was like five and a half hours. It felt like it was an eternity.

I was crying and Tiffany was consoling me and she was apologizing. She told me that she would never put me in that situation again. But he comes over mad because I was crying and he said that I should be thankful that someone like Donald Trump took my virginity. Well, he didn’t say took my virginity. He said, I should be glad that someone like Donald Trump popped my cherry and not some pimply little 14 year old. And I just was like, “What if I get pregnant?” Not even talking to him. I didn’t want to talk to him. I was talking to Tiffany and he said, “Well you’ll get an abortion then, bitch.” And then just walked away. And I told Tiffany I needed to go home. I never went back again.

I guess it’s for you to decide. I don’t have any kids myself because I’m afraid to have kids because who knows what kind of damage they can get into, but if you have a 13-year-old daughter, would you be okay with the person who’s running our country doing that to your little girl? And I just, I don’t know. I just want people to know. I think that I have a faith in our society that we’ll make the right choice. He seemed to be taking great pleasure in dominance and control and the more I screamed, the more I got scared, the more he was enraged with power and it was like he was just charged with it. It was scary.>

<Democrats must not let Jeffrey Epstein die.

They must highlight how this saga exposes the president for who he has always been.

In the decade Teflon Don has spent on the national stage, no scandal has stuck to and haunted him quite so viscerally as the Epstein affair. He’s never before appeared so flustered, forced to answer question after question about the women and girls whose lives were destroyed by his former “best friend”.

The world may never know what is inside the so-called “Epstein files.” What is clear is that the contents are damaging enough for the president and his human flak jackets to call the whole affair a “hoax”, recess Congress to prevent a vote on releasing the materials and send the deputy attorney general to visit Tallahassee, Florida, to speak to the convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, who was subsequently moved to a “cushy”, celebrity-riddled minimum security prison in Bryan, Texas.

As the conservative pundit Bill Kristol noted over the weekend: “[Richard Nixon] said of Watergate, ‘I gave them a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish.’ Trump may have given us a sword. We should use it.” Kristol is right, to a point. Liberals, progressives and never-Trump Republicans must not let voters forget Trump’s festering, open wound without neglecting the kitchen table, cost-of-living matters that hurt them last fall.

In 2007, a far sharper and far more spry Joe Biden delivered a quip so clever and cutting that it ended another man’s entire political career. Rudy Giuliani was never able to recover after Biden observed how it seemed “there’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb, and 9/11”. The line was funny because it was true; it was lethal because it exposed the emptiness behind the former New York City mayor’s tragedy-fueled candidacy.

This is the challenge for Democrats: how do they maintain a spotlight on a scandal that reveals Trump for who he is in a way that finally resonates with his base without appearing to exploit a tragedy, à la Giuliani? They must ground the abstract conspiracy in everyday terms relatable to the average American.

It goes like this: Trump protects elites.

Say it in every stump speech, vent about it in vertical videos and keep it alive as a dominant narrative in the zeitgeist. Do not back away. The modern media environment rewards repetition and omnipresence, so Hakeem Jeffries should promise an Epstein select committee, Chuck Schumer should make Republicans release the Epstein files in return for votes to fund the government, and every leftwing activist in the country should be burying Pam Bondi’s justice department in a blizzard of Freedom of Information Act requests.

In doing so, recognize that the response to the scandal is an encapsulation of a deeper truth that voters already feel. The president and the GOP protect the elite at the expense of ordinary Americans.

Savvier Democrats get this. Some of the party’s best communicators have already been grasping for a message along these lines, as seen in the focus on Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders’s nationwide Fighting Oligarchy tour. But while those efforts have paid some political dividends, they have not come close to capturing the public imagination to the degree the Epstein files have.

For at least some portion of the Maga movement, the past three weeks have finally managed to expose Trump for the hobnobbing, name-dropping, pompous ass that he’s always been. Why is this one particular story so effective – especially as most voters have known Trump to be a plutocratic wannabe for decades? Maggie Haberman’s hypothesis is noteworthy: New York high society operates in two concentric circles. The Big Apple has a glittering “elite” with status at the center of a broader ring that wields power.

Trump has always tried to straddle those rings, painting himself as the renegade billionaire. The Epstein affair shatters that mythos. It casts him not as a brash, bull-in-a-china-shop outsider but as the ultimate insider, rubbing shoulders with the very aristocracy his campaign rhetoric promised to upend.

Democrats must lead with Epstein. Then they need to connect it to the president’s myriad failures. Why did Trump cut taxes for the richest Americans while cutting Medicaid in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act? For the same reason he is protecting Epstein and his buddies. Why is Trump risking union jobs in auto manufacturing so he can have a trade spat with Mexico and Canada? For the same reason he is protecting Epstein and his buddies. Why is Donald Trump talking about firing the head of the Fed? For the same reason he is protecting Epstein and his buddies....>

<....Mallory McMorrow of Michigan, a Democratic Senate candidate, is already reading from this script. In recent weeks, she has demonstrated mastery in pairing Epstein with broader anti‑elite rhetoric. In one vertical video, she emphatically declared:

This is exactly why there’s eroding trust in our institutions, because until we confront the rot that exists in our institutions, until we hold everyone, everyone accountable under the same set of rules and laws, we will keep living in a country where there are two systems of justice, one for the rich and powerful, and one for everybody else. We deserve better. Release the files now.

Trump’s friendship with Epstein is a proof point for elite favoritism and all of us who oppose the orange god king must use it to condemn inequality and unaccountable power within the GOP ecosystem.

The Epstein scandal has captured our attention not just because it’s a lurid horror story, but because it confirms a truth people already believe: the rich view them as objects for exploitation. And if there’s one thing Trump has successfully messaged to all Americans, it’s that he’s very, very rich.

Epstein is the story. But he is also a stand-in for every closed maternity ward in a rural county, for every mom choosing between insulin and groceries and for every veteran battling the Department of Veterans Affairs while Silicon Valley billionaires buy senators. Democrats’ message is simple enough, actually: “Trump and the GOP protect the elite. They abandon you.”

Think this messaging can be overdone? Look no further than Benghazi, a truly made-up scandal, which Republicans turned into a true political liability with Hillary Clinton’s emails. That story stuck because of repetition and omnipresence, but also because it struck a chord with something Americans already believed: that the Clinton family viewed themselves as above accountability.

Even Trump’s own supporters are asking hard questions. Where are the files? Why is there a two-tiered system of justice? Why is Trump more interested in protecting his friends than releasing the truth? The Democratic response should be a noun, a verb and Jeffrey Epstein, and then the rot at the core of the American system. Deployed effectively, it can be as impactful and as memorable as Trump’s cruel but devastating 2024 attack line: “Kamala is for they / them, President Trump is for you.”

Trump protects elites.

That’s why Trump is protecting Epstein’s circle.

But who’s protecting you?>