Another summer for Sumner’s surfer flats under demolition threat

I am going to type something you are not going to like, folks, but it’s for our own good, so here goes: We are never going to see the Epstein files. I know, I know, there I go, harshing your mellow again, but I am done playing these silly, tiresome games where our corporate media spends 278 consecutive news cycles chasing the crumbs Donald Trump and his lawless Department of Justice tosses them about Jeffrey Epstein, until all of a sudden everybody wakes up one day and have completely lost the thread, which is this: The man has had one of the single-worst years of any president in history. More than that? He knows it. Even more than that? The voters know it. Prices are rising, and jobs are evaporating. The rich are getting richer, and everybody else is getting poorer. Americans are sick and tired, at a time their health-care premiums are going through the roof. There is a complete chaos in Washington, where the only thing Trump has accomplished of note is bulldozing our White House into one of his tasteless, cheap, and failing golden casinos, just five years removed from his destructive alterations to our Capitol Building after losing the 2020 election by more than 7 million votes. He is a professional arsonist and ripoff artist who has assembled a submissive, appalling cabinet whose single job is to bow in unison to their king, while keeping the matches and gasoline coming. Through all the blood and smoke, Left-leaning voters have taken to the streets, kept their tired eyes on the prize, and just two weeks ago, elected Democratic candidates to office at a stunning 2-to-1 clip. If this keeps up (and it will if we stay focused) Democrats might just flip the Senate next year, in addition to taking the House with a sizable margin. Look, I am not saying everything and anything associated with Epstein isn’t important, but I am saying it can’t become the thing. I am saying we believe the women, who were victimized by these monsters. I am saying we keep calling for the release of everything to do with Epstein, and we keep asking the woman-abusing Trump one question, and one question only, as it pertains to this abominable affair:“Why won’t you, Mr. Trump, use all this power you relentlessly remind us you have to release the Epstein Files RIGHT NOW?”Because if Trump really wanted the Epstein Files in the general vicinity of the public he could make that happen with a single snap of his fat little fingers. But he’s not going to do that. Ever. Anybody who thinks Trump is going to allow the Epstein Files or even a semi-close approximation of them to come out is completely delusional and has been in a blissful slumber the past 12 years. Trump didn’t surround himself with that corrupt cabinet, and build a lawless Supreme Court in his revolting image just so he can turn around and detonate a bomb that could blow him to smithereens. Instead, he’s going to do that special thing he did Sunday night, when he assaulted his nuclear-powered cell phone with those fat, little fingers and took to his state-run social media account to type out this low-grade slop:“House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party.”The Epstein files will be the blunt object Trump uses to beat on the Democrats and the press. This is all sport to him. Dangle whatever is left of the files out there as the shiny object that distracts us from the complete mess he has created since he stomped back into office 10 months ago, then play the victim of all of it.“It’s another hoax a witch hunt! Everybody is so, so mean to me .”What it is, is a cover-up and that’s the only word that should be used going forward. Sunday night, King Trump grudgingly gave his Republican congressional serfs the cover they need to tell their voters that they voted to release the files. Now they can wash their hands of the whole thing, before dirtying them again as they try to fend off Democratic challengers who are coming for their jobs next year. Meantime, Trump can do what he does best, and spin our corporate media like a top. He can play that pathetic victim card, while he gaslights, deflects, and offends. As I was researching this piece, I came across a clip in which Trump tells the press, “All of Epstein’s friends were Democrats.”That is called a lie, but like so many of the tens of thousands of lies before it, went unchallenged, and was barely a part of the record. Trump’s too good at telling lies, and our media is too bad at exposing them and giving them the heft they deserve. Worse, they have become far too accepting of the abuse this ill-bred yacht club bully and convicted felon directs at them on an hourly basis. As a career journalist it has become almost impossible to watch. On Air Force One on Friday, Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey asked Trump about the Epstein case. He shoved his chubby finger in her face, and snarled: “Quiet, quiet piggy!”Lovely, eh? By Tuesday he was brushing off the brutal murder of Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Seated cozily next to Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, whose dirty regime ordered the killing, the dead-eyed Trump said, “Things happen.”There’s no newsroom guidance I’m aware of anywhere that says journalists have to just sit there and take it when a slob, and convicted felon calls them “piggy” and shrugs off the brutal killing of one of their colleagues by simply saying, “Things happen.”It is very hard to respect a press corp which won’t respect itself. Trump works for their readers, viewers, and listeners, and I’m not sure when exactly they forgot that. For now, I will continue to fervently hope that in addition to pressing for an answer to the one and only question about the Epstein Files that truly matters, Democrats take this far more important question to the nation as a whole as we head toward the midterms:“Are you better off now than you were two years ago?”The answer to that will go a long way toward determining the balance of power in America, and just how much more crap we will all have to take from this lying, orange, abusive loudmouth.