TRUMP v. MURDOCH: We all win.
Scared of Epstein revelations, the big mad bozo bites the hand that feeds.
President Donald Trump has accused Rupert Murdoch, Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, and others of libel and sued for $10 billion for publishing the bombshell: Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was from Donald Trump. I will enjoy watching these parties hurt each other. May they both lose!
According to the WSJ, found among the possessions of Mr. Trump’s former “closest friend,” pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, was:
“[A] letter bearing Trump’s name which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album.”
Mr. Trump’s suit alleges that WSJ “concocted this story to malign President Trump’s character and integrity and deceptively portray him in a false light,” but the newspaper states that the letter was “was reviewed by the Journal.” So, the Journal asserts they did not “concoct” anything—they call their reporting “waterproof,”—and in fact put eyes on this letter or a reproduction thereof.
From that, we can infer: (1) a letter exists, and it was written by Mr. Trump, (2) a letter exists, and it was written partly by Mr. Trump, (3) a letter exists, but was fabricated or forged, or (4) there is no letter, and the Journal’s writers, editors, owners, and lawyers have all conspired to outright lie.
“[The letter] contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker.”
Mr. Trump claimed on TruthSocial that he has never “wrote a drawing in his life.” This has been refuted; he doodled prolifically enough that more of his drawings have gone to auction than the average art major’s.
NYT: Trump Says He Doesn’t ‘Draw Pictures.’ But Many of His Sketches Sold at Auction.
“A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair… Inside the outline of the naked woman was a typewritten note styled as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein, written in the third person.”
I enjoy many close friendships and correspondences, but this is the weirdest letter I have ever seen a man write another man. I would die of embarrassment before I drew a drinking buddy a naked woman or wrote a sappy pseudo-screenplay about our friendship. If the two did not bond over their sexual perversion—did they share ephebophilia as a hobby?— I wonder if they were unusually intimate. Something sketchy seems likely, based on Mr. Trump’s panicked denials.
“Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything.
Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.
Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.
Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?”
“Enigma” here may take its conventional meaning, “mystery,” but “people are saying” it might be a sly anagram of “gamine,” a word for boyish young girls.[1]
This letter was written in 2003, ten years after the release of Dazed and Confused. It is doubtful that sex offenders could read or write “never age” without chortling about Matthew McConaughey’s character, Wooderson: “That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.”
“Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.
Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
What “wonderful secrets” could one share with Mr. Epstein that would not be damning? When the authenticity of this letter is verified, Mr. Trump will need to explain what the hell this is supposed to mean.
Some apologists have speculated that if the naked woman was drawn and signed by Mr. Trump (who else so consistently misuses a Sharpie?), the typewritten portion might have been added later by Ghislaine Maxwell or someone more literate than the president. That seems plausible, but unfortunately, Mr. Trump has already denied that, thus exempting himself from the most forgivable version of events.
Mr. Trump has lamely insisted that these “Epstein files” were created by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, probably Rosie O’Donnell and Kirsten Stewart, too, and anybody else he has a grudge against, in order to make him look bad. If this were a forgery designed to ruin his reputation by associating him with his former friend, it seems odd it was not brought to light when it could have stopped his election.
But even then—would the writing be so damn odd? If I were to have manufactured such a scandalous calligram, it would instead say: “People ask me, with tears in their eyes, sir, there must be more to life than having everything. There is, but we won’t tell them what it is, right, Jeffrey? You and I have certain things in common, my pal, and they never age. Happy Birthday—may every day be another wonderful secret! Your dearest friend and partner in crime, Donald Trump.” That it is so poorly written necessarily suggests the letter’s legitimacy. Any artful blackmailer would have put more effort into the craft.
I mentioned before the friendship between Messrs. Trump and Epstein appears “unusually intimate.” I mean “unusually” with emphasis. The New York Times reported that, in 1992, “Mr. Trump hosted a party at Mar-a-Lago for young women in a so-called calendar girl competition[.] Mr. Epstein was the only other guest.” Now, if he invited ten other men to such a bacchanal, it would be a bit too “stag” for my tastes, but I could understand. But just one buddy and a dozen girls? This was a gross special present for a gross special friend.
The Times went on: “Trump later told associates he had another reason for breaking from Mr. Epstein around [late 2004]. His longtime friend… acted inappropriately to the daughter of a member of Mar-a-Lago, and Mr. Trump felt compelled to bar him from the club.” In other words: “Mr. Epstein was comfortable acting inappropriately with teenagers at Mar-a-Lago but got caught.” Perhaps that assumed permissiveness was derived from other sexually charged evenings with Mr. Trump.
Speaking of parties, in 1999 Mr. Trump bragged to Maureen Dowd that he was “very popular with the black populace, and “[w]hen Puff Daddy has a party, when Russell Simmons has a party, I’m the person they call.” Perhaps we will soon discover that he also hosted movie auditions with Harvey Weinstein, too..
While I think this letter is real, or half-real, or at least someone has seen a letter, I do not assume anything NewsCorp publishes is honest because Fox News hosts are liars. Mr. Murdoch lost $787.5 million settling with Dominion Voting Systems over Mr. Trump’s election denial and testified that some of their network’s anchors knowingly convinced their viewers of bullshit. I am sure the media mogul hates the president for making it so hard to carry his water, but I doubt Mr. Murdoch would risk more billions of dollars to hit’em with a cheap smear. To quote Omar Little from HBO’s The Wire, if Murdoch were going to “come at the king,” he would have been tried his “best [to] not miss.”
Mr. Trump has publicly attacked Mr. Murdoch whenever Fox, WSJ, The New York Post, or other NewsCorp properties were insufficiently sycophantic. While skulking outside of the White House Press Correspondent’s Dinner to find an open bar, your boy Hex presciently warned this April: “Fox… offered no solidarity [to the rest of the press] while Mr. Trump gave favor to sycophantic media and punished journalists whose coverage offended him.... This is short-sighted of Rupert Murdoch—Mr. Trump has called him a ‘piece of shit,’ so it takes little imagination to understand the same cudgel will eventually swing his way. Fox reporters ought to be more loyal to their guild companions, not their ideological ones, or else they will fare as poorly.” Predictably, Mr. Murdoch is now getting fucked.
If Mr. Trump embroils NewsCorp in prolonged litigation, I pray it is expensive, onerous, and that discovery is an embarrassing bitch. The orange dotard may have finally lost even his animal cunning—did he forget who “butters his bread?” Fox tirelessly works to minimize his scandals, castigate his enemies, and supply him with employees—23 television personalities now staff the administration, including Secretary of Defense and DUI Hire Pete Hegseth, Jeanine Pirro, Sean Duffy, et cetera. But Fox cannot spin this for him without accusing their owner of libel. And while they may have two masters, only one pays them. Will Messrs. Hegseth, Duffy, or other former Fox hosts inside the administration now call their old colleagues liars?
Libel—now there is a fearful thought! The president taking the press and critics to court, to extract from them millions of dollars for “emotional damages.” In a world where NBC, CBS, ABC, Facebook and others have had to pay off the administration, where legendary comedian Stephen Colbert was forced from the airwaves to appease the president, Mr. Trump is intent on subjugating anyone talking shit.
My “wishcast” is that Mr. Murdoch is ready to defend his newspaper’s reporting. Mr. Trump asked the NewsCorp Chairman Emeritus to kill the story directly and was rebuffed. (Incidentally, would it not have been more prudent to talk to the actual NewsCorp chairman, Lachlan Murdoch? Or have we ceased entirely to pretend that old Rupert is going anywhere?) If Mr. Murdoch’s servitude for Mr. Trump is in fact done, then perhaps, for once, America will get to read the truth in a Rupert Murdoch paper. How strange to have to put hopes in the men who helped build these monsters.
[1] From Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita:
“Although I told myself I was looking merely for a soothing presence, a glorified pot-au-feu, an animated merkin, what really attracted me to Valeria was the imitation she gave of a little girl. She gave it not because she had divined something about me; it was just her style--and I fell for it. Actually, she was at least in her late twenties (I never established her exact age for even her passport lied) and had mislaid her virginity under circumstances that changed with her reminiscent moods. I, on my part, was as naive as only a pervert can be. She looked fluffy and frolicsome, dressed a la gamine, showed a generous amount of smooth leg, knew how to stress the white of a bare instep by the black of a velvet slipper, and pouted, and dimpled, and romped, and dirndled, and shook her short curly blond hair in the cutest and tritest fashion imaginable.”