By Wayne Allensworth
I’ve written previously on the Trump administration and the Epstein files here. Some more thoughts follow. I urge readers to watch the two embedded videos which are quite informative.
Many years ago, I was in a Moscow hotel bar having a drink with a Russian source who worked in the mayor’s office. He was a well-known pundit and political strategist. After a few drinks — he liked cognac, and I was buying — he loosened up a bit and told me the story of how he had come to work for Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. My source — call him Sasha — was in an expansive, even confessional, mood. Yes, he said, he knew all about Luzhkov’s ties to organized crime, including the notorious Chechen mobster whose hotel we were visiting. Following the Soviet collapse, institutions like the police and government agencies had been seriously weakened. Those who could stepped in and filled the vacuum. Organized crime stepped in and ran businesses, used the police for its own ends, and in certain neighborhoods or towns, took over utilities and basic services.Some of the gangsters were quite popular with people who suffered from the post-Soviet chaos. Think of the opening sequence of The Godfather, in which Don Corleone, like a medieval Lord, hears the petitions of the common folk on his daughter’s wedding day. Moscow, my source asserted, was one of the most gangsterized cities in the world. To get anything done, Luzhkov had to deal with the mob, even form a sort of partnership. Yes, he benefitted hugely financially and politically. But Moscow was functioning again. Gangland killings were kept to a certain level. And Luzhkov didn’t let his cronies steal everything. He was quite popular with the voters, who at the same time had no illusions about him or his associations. They were realistic. Sasha had made his choice. He would work for Luzhkov as the best possible alternative in a time of crisis.
I heard a similar story from Russians who came to be great supporters of Vladimir Putin. In retrospect, I understand even more clearly now than I did then. Under Putin, the “oligarchs” were put in their place, Russia began to revive itself, crime was under control, and political assassinations were more or less a thing of the past. Institutions were functioning much better than previously, and because of a rise in oil prices and natural gas sales, Russia was financially stable. Sure, everybody knew Putin’s cronies were enriched. They expected that. They didn’t mind that pro-Western political agitators were suppressed. They all worked for the CIA and MI-6, anyway. Life expectancy began to rise and alcoholism, the bane of Russian society, was somewhat curtailed. And Putin did not allow the bureaucrats and his cronies to steal everything. People were better off, Russia was respected again. Putin was the best possible leader for Russia under the circumstances.
I understood. Now I understand even better. Donald Trump was the only figure who could have put together the commonsense coalition that decisively defeated the Democrats. He was the right man at the right time to lead such a coalition. He fit the bill culturally, too, as a social media savvy bull-in-a China closet who was simply not afraid of the establishment. The crowd cheered every time he insulted a corrupt, snobbish, and sanctimonious establishment. And he has moved rapidly, making some serious preliminary steps to defeat globalism. I support him, but I will not become an uncritical cheerleader for his administration. And, as I explained in my last article, he might not be the leader to finish the job. Rome wasn’t built in a day, as they say, and breaking the deeply embedded system isn’t going to happen today or tomorrow, if it ever does. What’s more, in a certain sense, Trump is a “systemic” leader. He and his base buy a certain post-war version of American Greatness based on superpower status that is every bit as abstract as the globalists’ One World-Universal Nation vision. And in one regard, his close alignment with Israel, he too is enmeshed in a web of global interests that have turned the American Empire on its head. Those interests invade the institutions of the host and direct it through its political nervous system the same way that some truly ghastly parasites take over the bodies and direct the actions of their hosts.
Nobody is buying the Justice Department’s latest claims that the Jeffery Epstein scandal is much ado about nothing. Nobody, that is, outside of uber Zionists such as Ben Shapiro and some “I-trust-the-president-and-don’t-want-to-know” MAGA supporters. Just take a gander at Tucker Carlson’s interview with investigative journalist Saagar Enjeti, who knows all the ins and outs of Epstein’s checkered past. It was quite evident that Epstein and his girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, were pimping young women and underage girls to an international elite and evidently videorecording of the proceedings. Maxwell’s father Robert was likely a Mossad asset. Epstein was a close associate of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barack, and in the 1990s, Epstein rapidly rose up the social and economic ladder, establishing close relationships with elites and the big rich across the board, including Leslie Wexner. During the 2008 Florida — are you listening, Pam Bondi? — court proceedings against Epstein for sex trafficking, the court signed on to a “sweetheart deal” that more-or-less let Epstein off the hook. And one of the prosecutors involved in the deal, Alex Acosta, who subsequently served in Trump’s cabinet, publicly said that Epstein was let off because of his connections to intelligence agencies. Which ones?
After the release of a sex tape meant to discredit journalist Glenn Greenwald, a frequent critic of Israel, I concluded that it seemed likely, as Greenwald had long contended, that Epstein was connected to intelligence agencies — the Mossad and the CIA, perhaps — that were gathering compromising material on elites to control them.
The Trump administration has been just as inept, just as clumsy, and just as opaque regarding Epstein as the Biden administration it derides with such gusto. Who was running the country when a decrepit Biden was officially the president. Well, Pam Bondi, Dan Bongino, Kash Patel, and Donald Trump, who was running the country when the decision was made to cover up the Epstein affair? Releasing a video tape taken at his jail cell that doesn’t really show us anything, with an at least one-minute gap, to boot, won’t cut it. Recall that at the time we were told that video of his cell was destroyed. But whether Epstein committed suicide might itself distract from the larger questions of his employer(s), what his employer(s) did with the material, and the identity of his clients. If we should just move along and forget the “creep” Epstein, as Trump in his usual audacious style has demanded, then why is Ghislaine Maxwell still in jail? Trump wants us to cheer his “wins,” but not question him about his failures. No. That’s not happening.
I’m realistic enough to understand that Trump is either being told or has concluded for himself that the material Epstein gathered is so explosive that it could blow apart his coalition if it implicates “our most reliable ally” in a dirty blackmail game. Yet his refusal to make all the Epstein material public could have the same effect, as Rasmussen pollster Mark Mitchell has observed. Trump’s poll numbers are taking a hit, and rightfully so. What’s more, Mitchell says, 52 percent of his respondents believe Epstein was murdered. Trump might believe that so many Washington insiders are implicated that a full release of the material might precipitate a political crisis he couldn’t control. Trump might also believe that a lot of people who associated with Epstein but did not partake of his services — like Trump himself, in my view — might be damaged by a full release. It stinks. Trump was supposed to be the deadly enemy of the establishment, of foreign entanglements, and to represent ordinary Americans who had long been treated with contempt by elites who were no longer loyal to their own country. Trump has boasted endlessly, sometimes with justification, about his administration’s transparency. Politics is a dirty business, and Trump has made a political calculation to play the game. The big shots are going to get away with it again.
Trump was supposed to restore trust in our system, to be someone who would “Drain the Swamp.” The disappointment — the letdown — is palpable. Elites always run things. That’s not going to change. Untangling the web of corruption will take a lot of time and effort. If that happens, eventually it will be replaced by another web of corruption and our progeny will have to fight against that. For now, Donald Trump remains the best possible alternative in a crisis situation. But for our own sake, let’s not harbor any illusions about what’s going on.
Chronicles contributor Wayne Allensworth is the author of The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia, and a novel, Field of Blood.
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