Fox News is reporting there are at least 26 flights reported on flight logs. I tried to find a source that might be considered less biased, or biased the opposite way but, tbh, I have no idea what the political leanings are of the various news sites I found so I just went with Fox because they're at least a major news outlet.

seems p cold of Epstein to fly Clinton places but not take him back

26 flights over four round trips = 3.25 stops, for the differently mathabled. According to Google, Epstein's private jet is a 727 which has a maximum range of 5000 km. That is not a very long range. Any flight to Europe, for example, will add at least one stop to refuel (probably in Canada). Each leg on such a trip would be considered a flight.

It is not remotely unbelievable that both claims are true.

bill is a warlock

Interesting. Well, at least we can all agree that it's a good thing Clinton's never been quoted saying Epstein likes 'em young!

and its fine if Donald Trump joined in with Epstein, because Donald Trump was a Democrat until he decided to run for president so it's basically like Bill Clinton was doing it anyway.

An editorial partnership between the Republican Party and one of the largest media companies on the planet.

Republicans: "they're at least a major news outlet"

Bill Clinton answers an e-mail

Republicans: "more lies from the Clinton MACHINE"

40 years from now, Bill Clinton will be long dead and America's retirement homes will be filled with 90 million arguably less-demented Republicans, still droning about how Bill Clinton's gonna take away the guns their kids already sold after their first "episode".

How do Shepard Smith and Chris Wallace get away with doing real journalism on the Fox News opinion shows? Is it part of a ruse to seemingly adhere to "Fair and Balanced" (even though that slogan was dropped after Roger Ailes' departure)?

Fox keeps them around as a counterpoint to anybody criticizing them that they're shills for the oligarchs. They're aired well out of prime time, and Fox viewers know to ignore them.

I actually haven't followed the Epstein thing much but the only references I keep hearing about Trump and Epstein is the comment about how he likes them young and kicking Epstein out of one of his resorts. On the other hand, the only thing I've heard about Clinton is he liked to fly on Epstein's plane and may have been misleading about how many of those flights were with Secret Service personnel. I am actually really surprised that any of you feel defensive about Clinton. He's probably one of the few celebrities that actually has an arguably worse record of sexual transgressions than Trump has.

Shep Smith's best reporting was in Volcano.

^ see? Fox really doesn't need to worry about hosting professional journalists.

yup good ol conservative backbone there, "oh I don't know or care about 'the Epstein thing', but boy its sure weird how you care so much about the Clinton MACHINE refuting allegations I vividly recall from conservative talk radio 17 years ago".

Leave the concern trolling to Fox News.

Only following this discussion vaguely (hah...), but the "I'm not following such and such closely" is so weak. People hardly ever follow something "closely" in most cases, but they don't normally backpedal with this kind of excuse. It comes across as shying away from topics to avoid losing face whenever the facts seem to point that way....

Sounds like how I imagined it. I didn't know the pair was buried in such time slots, though, as I only watch clips on YouTube, but it does make sense.



Yeah. I find Wookie's disposition highly misguided if understandable. I mean, the other opinion shows on the network keep churning out obvious lies, and I repeatedly see those two debunking said lies. Smith is more blatant about it, while Wallace tries to view things through a more apparently conservative lens, but he also can't help but get detectably flustered and frustrated when addressing a bunch of stuff said on his own network.

Ooph. I think I'm with Wookie on this one, in that I'm more suspicious of the connections between Epstein and Clinton (rather than Epstein's connections to Trump). But in either case, it doesn't seem like there's a terribly large amount of incriminating evidence connecting Epstein and Trump or Epstein and Clinton. It seems that most of their publicly documented interactions were in the early 2000s, and that the evidence we have doesn't suggest anything illicit. (Unlike, for example, the case of Alan Dershowitz, where there seem to be credible allegations that he was involved in sex trafficking). The fact that Epstein had Clinton's phone number or that he hung out at Mar-A-Lago a few times and was caught on camera with Trump/Clinton doesn't say as much about their relationships with each other as many are claiming it does.

Nobody as far as I can tell cares about the Clintons, what we care about is the incessant need for people to bring them up.

My view is that while Wallace and Smith are probably good journalists (Wallace is the son of a well regarded journalist, IIRC), their apparently contradictory role is as much about entertainment (i.e., they are there to boost ratings) as it is about deflection. I mean, what's more exciting than having your hosts disagree on something. Just guessing though since I'll be damned if you catch me watching that ****.

Huh.

Hey guys, let's say that Clinton and Trump have both been ****ing underaged girls at Jeffrey Epstein's premises. I don't think that's what happened, and I don't suppose that's what the detractors of either President are saying. But let's say that's what happened.

In this hypothetical, there would currently be a child-****er in the White House, occupying the highest political seat in the country and indeed the whole world. I mean, Clinton is a former occupant of that seat, and his child-****ing ways would certainly merit a huge scandal of his own. But shouldn't Trump be the priority here? Why should we deflect from that priority in such a way as to keep equating the two whenever mention is made of Trump's dealings with the financier?

Who's prioritizing Clinton over Trump? Despite whatever's happening in this conversation on massassi.net, Fox (I assume) is pushing the Clinton angle and on MSNBC they're pushing the Trump angle. In Israel, they're pushing the Ehud Barak angle -- nobody really cares about that in the US. Individuals are seeing it through whatever framework is relevant and politically expedient to them, but I don't know if you can say that in aggregate there's any one narrative that's dominant.

I mean, all things considered equal - a sitting president is a bit relevant than a former. Both look bad, but there's a tad more justification for caring about Trump. Also, you know, the damning quotes about him vs. the scant non-evidence against Clinton..

but the Clinton MACHINE??

Wookie06 hates Bill Clinton because he hiked the top marginal rate from 28% to 39.6% and supported a 10% luxury tax on yachts passed by his Democratic congress. Wookie06 doesn't think that's why he hates Bill Clinton, but it is.

So far Donald Trump's only hiked taxes on working people, so Wookie06 isn't as worried about him as a president who hasn't been in office for 20 years. If Donald Trump ever did something similar, though, I imagine Wookie06 would dedicate the next 20 years fretting over the Trump MACHINE, too.

Did conservatives throw up the same kind of resistance when Rob Ford's crack smoking became public knowledge?

Toronto is so far away from where I live it might as well be on another planet.

This is definitely a fair point. I was examining the topic through how it filtered into this conversation, so by both of those angles appearing in concert. I didn't really even consider that I was doing this. Overall there are certainly those who will focus on Trump and Epstein in these current circumstances, and those who will try to muddy the water with whataboutism.

Then again, even wrt Trump and Epstein, I'm no fan of implying guilt by association. It feels like a cheap trick not fit for hard journalism. I saw some of MSNBC's coverage on this and thought they didn't have a very strong case for running the story at this point. This, to me, will stand unless something more incriminating is uncovered.



From what I know, Wooks is decidedly middle class. I suppose you're presupposing the known cognitive delusion that enables people to vote against their own interests without batting an eye, though.

Middle class in the US is way away into six figures. He’s “middle” class (all Americans are “middle” class). Real middle class means you only have a few employees. I don’t think Wookie06 even has more than two.

But that doesn’t matter anyway, because his personal circumstances don’t affect how he votes. There’ve been studies. Studies polling on candidate preferences and political opinions show there is basically no relationship between the policies people want and the platforms they vote for. Buddy got Republican hard-wired before turning 25 and it’s the only thing he knows (this probably happened while Clinton was president, weird huh). He will be a Republican voter until the day he dies, unless the party dissolves or a stroke knocks some of the mud out of the gears.

I’m not sure if this is what you’re talking about or not. I wouldn’t characterize it as a “delusion” if you are, because I don’t think these people have any delusion that they will actually benefit from the policies proposed by their chosen candidates. Most people are just too lazy to even get that far.

Aside: Note that other studies (e.g. on deliberative polling) have found that people are generally eager to learn and change their minds when challenged to do so. The problem isn’t that people are too stupid to vote, it’s that our model of democracy lets people get away with intellectual sloth.

Which, really, is the only reason right-liberal parties like the Democrats and Republicans continue to exist anywhere.

Trump called him a “terrific guy” when he was interviewed about him for a vanity magazine article in 2002. If you go back to the article itself, the context is hardly incriminating, unless you’re already suspicious and have already made up your mind about it’s significance. In context, the quote is entirely consistent with the idea that Trump was exaggerating his closeness to Epstein to make himself look more important, when Epstein was the focus of a magazine article about the “who’s who” of NYC socialites. Furthermore, I don’t see why Trump saying Epstein likes women “on the younger side” incriminates Trump. It obviously incriminates Epstein, and the remark is also consistent with Trump mentioning the behavior in order to specifically distance himself from it.

But also don’t forget: that quote was from a magazine article published in 2002. A magazine article. From 2002. 17 years ago. For what’s its worth (very little), the original NYMag article goes into much more length about Clinton and Epstein’s relationship, however.

But there is also significantly more than “scant” evidence associating Epstein and Clinton. By your own lights, if what you’re citing as evidence against Trump is “incriminating,” you should think the public info about Clinton is much, much worse. (But if it's not clear, I don't think it's very substantive in either Trump or Clinton's case.)

Why does it need to be an either/or, anyway?

I haven’t watched a ton of MSNBC but what I’ve seen was pretty irresponsible. Like, they showed a video clip of Epstein and Trump at Mar-A-Lago and claimed it indicated that they were close friends. It’s preposterous. I have a photograph of me with Robin Williams taken in the 90s. I can assure you, it doesn’t mean we were close friends. Despite the fact that it’s video so it seems to expose because of the immediate and lifelike aesthetic of video, it requires context and explanation to be understood.

By "known cognitive delusion" ("cognitive" was pretty redundant now that I think about it, but it was a remnant of my intuition to go with "cognitive dissonance" before I realized that was not what I wanted to say) I was thinking of people voting ideologically without realizing that they are voting for candidates whose policies will make their lives worse. Or that they're voting against their own interests because they subscribe to the story that anyone may ascend into the ranks of the wealthy and powerful, which they believe could be just around the corner for them. By "known" I was alluding to the fact that (as I remembered reading, maybe here originally) this has been found in studies.

I didn't know that the reason was less of a delusion and more a result of intellectual laziness, as you pointed out. That's also new information to me about the accurate definition of the American middle class, so thank you for clearing that up.

Well, that's interesting but it doesn't make any sense to try to make Epstein a Trump scandal when it is actually far more a Clinton scandal. When Spook brought up Epstein I didn't remember anything about him. My point with the old law enforcement radio show I heard was only to note that Clinton's connection with Epstein is something that has been known about for a very long time. I'm guessing it was poo pooed back then as a conspiracy theory like virtually all of his other proven misdeeds.

This conversation has reminded me that it might be a good idea to explain a thought process I had during our last presidential primary and race. Among the many reasons I could not support Donald Trump for president was his scumbaggedness. If anyone preceded Clinton on the cover of all the tabloids for their morally bankrupt behavior it would be Trump. I think of him as the Tabloid Don. A plurality of my party, however, did not feel the same way. As far as I was concerned the issue of his prior behavior was settled though. I decided that I would judge Trump's ability and merit to serve as president by his record of serving as president, in other word I would not support or vote for him in the last election but I did not rule out the possibility that I might in the future depending on his performance. The nation had vetted Donald Trump and decided that his prior bad acts shouldn't preclude his election.

Now, my opinion is that most of the recent allegations made about Trump are about as credible as anything AOC claimed about her trip to the border. I really find it odd, although I know Jon's hobby is trolling, that anyone would seriously take a platitude that Trump said about Epstein and somehow give that more weight than a known sexual predator like Clinton jet setting around on the Lolita Express. And are you so blinded by hatred that you wouldn't gleefully hope that if either of them is proven to be a sexual predator that engaged in, at best, statutory rape that they aren't taken down in the harshest possible way?

It seems like what really matters isn't whether Clinton or Trump might've been involved in sex trafficking or statutory rape. There's no evidence that they were (is it a surprise that we're already being promised that there's a revelation right around the corner? Sounds an awful lot like Russiagate, doesn't it? That should raise some suspicions. You shouldn't forget about the media's incentives to find a riveting scandal that'll keep people glued to their screens.)

But regardless of whatever we might learn with the passing of time, what we know already is the elite social network has as a node a pedophile sex trafficker -- a node with direct connections to two people at the very pinnacle of American power. That already tells us something about how rotten our elite class is.

And it's shockingly unsurprising as well. That's not meant as a a defense but rather commentary on just how terribly low our expectations are of those people.

If you think what Epstein did to those girls is messed up, wait until you find out what his friends did to the working class and the environment.

I read somewhere ages ago that one way to define a rich person’s behaviour is the absolute freedom to satisfy neuroses. Occasionally it is benevolent, like Myhrvold's test kitchen. More often it is the ever-more depraved exploitation of the vulnerable, which should be expected since that’s why most of them are rich to begin with.

Some day we’ll have to find out what all of those billionaires are doing with all of that megayacht square footage. Bring gloves.

Make sure to bring nitrile, some are allergic to latex.

I agree ultimately with what you're saying. The quote is what one would call 'circumstantial evidence' - it's no condemnation in itself, but it's a statement which tends to point towards incrimination versus away. Circumstantial evidence, by definition, permits alternative explanations. But if we took the kind of logic you're offering literally, far fewer murders would be solved. Circumstantial evidence guides suspicions, as it should and couldn't be any other way.

Maybe you're on Twitter alot and wackadoodles there are insisting Trump is a pedophile based on that alone. They're wrong. There's not enough evidence to make that assertion with any confidence. But denying that it generally points to incrimination is not correct I think. Though you're also right that the circumstantial evidence is very thin and shouldn't amount to much in people's minds.



How?



All I know about with Bill Clinton are the sexual misconduct allegations against him. I don't doubt they may be true, and they're not a conspiracy theory. I'm not sure if you're referring to anything else because I wouldn't know it.



These paragraphs highlight exactly what I've been referring to. You say Trump has morally bankrupt behavior worthy of tabloids, but insist on anchoring that criticism to Clinton. Why? Then you say Trump is not credible, but anchor that credibility to AOC. Why? Why must any mention of Trump be undercut by partisan B.S.? It just reminds me of the 2016 election all over again.

To think though the Clinton family is somehow 'extra' scandalous relatively is really misguided. But the right-wing propaganda machine just won't let up. It's always 'Clinton! Clinton! Stop looking at Republicans, look at Clinton!' with 95% manufactured non-scandals designed to pull your attention away. And again, it's not that I give a flipping **** about the Clintons, it's just annoying to see this whole process take place. Can't you see the Clintons are actually not really that big a deal? Because they really aren't but you can't let go.

Yeah, the only reason I’m jokingly trying to make this about Trump is because internet conservatives are pulling double shifts trying to make this about Clinton. I don’t see why accused rapist and Epstein friend Clinton is any less credible than accused rapist and Epstein friend Trump, other than the fact that Trump could afford his own private jet and wouldn’t have needed to fly on the Lolita express.

Joking aside, the only real Trump scandal anywhere near this is Acosta, but that has more to do with what Eversor said than anything about Trump specifically. This is an Epstein criminal trial. Not a Trump scandal, and not a Clinton scandal.