With The Epstein Doc Drop Context is Key, Doing Half As Well As We Used to Be & Trump’s Ballot Access - Top 3 Takeaways – January 5th, 2024
- Context is key. David Copperfield's magic tricks. Bill Clinton liking them young. Stephen Hawking’s “underage orgy”. These were all references made in the docs that have so far dropped from the unsealed court documents naming names and associates of Jeffrey Epstein and company. And yes, the name Trump came up too as most in news media have been quick to prove. But as I first mentioned yesterday...context is key. Many have taken to the tabloid approach of throwing a bunch of names out there and letting what will stick, stick – knowing that few will ever read the actual documents. The reported narrative has commonly been, for example...Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew were all named in the initial document drop. However, the context with which each of the three of them appear in the documents is exceedingly different. Starting with Donald Trump...The context with which he came up in the docs – at one point, well prior to any of the allegations against Epstein having come public, it’s stated that on a trip to Atlantic City: Jeffrey said, ‘Great, we’ll call up Trump and we’ll go to -- I don’t recall the name of the casino, but -- we’ll go to the casino. That’s it. That’s all that was mentioned. That’s as benign as it gets. Epstein was visiting Atlantic City and wanted to go with Trump to one of his casinos. For that matter we don’t even know if that even happened. As for Bill Clinton...his context comes up quite differently and far more pervasively. While Donald Trump’s name came up on only that one occasion in the context that was presented, the other former president was mentioned more pervasively and far more salaciously. In total Bill Clinton is referenced 73 times with the context including everything from the benign to the instantly infamous quote from Jeffrey Epstein that Bill Clinton “likes them young”. And that takes us to Prince Andrew who was exceedingly well connected to this story through what we’d already seen, let alone what the docs would show. Prince Andrew’s name came up a total of 76 times and in terms of his context – well, the 2001 picture of him with an underage victim of Epstein & Co. in Maxwell’s London home has long spoken for itself...along with the $16 million settlement he reached with said victim just two years ago. It’s notable that Trump’s name comes up once in passing in a context that isn’t in anyway related to pedophilia. It’s notable that Bill Clinton’s name comes up only three fewer times than a royal who’s settled over the matter and, at times in a salacious context. What isn’t in the docs to date is anything that proves guilt or innocence...or frankly much of anything new. But there is an effort to present names in a list that largely lacks context. And aside from context with which each is presented within the doc drop there’s another important context with which I view any names associated with Jeffrey Epstein & Co. Those who were acquaintances before his conviction and those who remained acquaintances after he plead guilty to paying a 14-year-old girl for sex in Palm Beach. Not only had Donald Trump disassociated with Jeffrey Epstein prior to Epstein’s conviction. He'd previously banned him from Mar-a-Lago as well. Bill Clinton also didn’t have anything to do with Epstein after his conviction. Bill Gates, for example, did however and his name didn’t come up in the doc drop at all (though some wonder if his name was among those redacted). And that’s part of the broader point here. The document hasn’t proven anything new. However, when evaluating who’s in it and who isn’t, context is key.
- Half as well as we used to be. Bidenomics has been a lot of things but mostly, with only 37% of Americans approving of President Biden’s handling of the economy, it’s been bad. There are a lot of ways one can measure the impact of historically high inflation. But one way that’s seldom discussed is what’s left for us at the end of a day. The savings rate is one of the least discussed but most instructive ways to understand how well the average family is doing in any economy. Florida’s most recent savings rate, reflecting how much, or how little as the case may be, that we’ve been able to put away tells the story. In 2019, the most recent pre-COVID year – which was also during excellent economic times under Trumponomics, the average Florida family was able to save 7.9% of personal income after paying the bills. How are we doing today? We’re only saving about half of that. Most recently Floridians have been able to save only 4.1% of their income, a 48% reduction in savings rate which tells the story about as well as anything. This helps to illustrate the disconnect with a president who recently told a reporter who asked about the economy that it was “All good” and to “Start reporting it the right way”. As though the only problem with the economy is and has been the way that it’s been reported. Regardless of how one chooses to report on the economy, as always there are two sides to stories and one side to facts. The fact of the matter is that the average Floridian, or the American for that matter, is only about half as well as they used to be economically.
- Trump will be on Colorado’s ballot. For reasons that can only be explained through a lack of due diligence, which is common is news reporting, I’ve heard it said over the previous day that if the Supreme Court didn’t rule on the Colorado Ballot access case by today that Donald Trump wouldn’t be on Colorado’s primary ballot because the ballot deadline is today. That is false. As I first reported while filling in during the holidays for Mark Levin, and earlier this week right here... The Colorado Supreme Court decision to strike Trump from the ballot was immediately stayed pending the appeal to the United States Supreme Court. What that means is that by the Supreme Court not ruling by today Trump will be on Colorado’s ballot. It would still be useful for the Supreme Court to make a ruling sooner than later that would end the attempted drama over ballot access in individual states, but their inaction to this point has had zero impact on Trump’s access to ballots in Colorado, or elsewhere.