Monday's Final Word

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Tabby days and Mondays always get me down ...

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"Because of my lived experience an afro-Latina, I'm able to look at this world with a different prism and I'm able to tell this country and tell this audience and tell my fellow co-hosts some uncomfortable truths. This is a country based on racism and slavery and founded in it. There is systemic racism. And misogyny."

She claims Trump running against and beat Kamala in an election proves America is racist and sexist: "I never met any that raises their hand and says, I'm racist. However, there are people that seem to be able to look the other way when it comes to racism. So you have a president who traffics in misogyny, who traffics in xenophobia, who traffics in sexism. And won against a black woman."

Ed: So no one is supposed to be allowed to run against a black woman? That sounds a lot more like bigotry than simply having access to the competition in the first place. This exposes the paternalism and condescension of the entire DEI/woke project. 

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Washington Post: The newly released documents from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate show that the convicted sex offender texted with a Democratic member of Congress, Del. Stacey Plaskett of the U.S. Virgin Islands, during a congressional hearing with Michael Cohen, and that those text messages may have influenced the congresswoman’s questions of Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer.

In the texts, Epstein appeared to be watching the February 2019 hearing in real time and at one point informed Plaskett — whose name is redacted from the documents — that Cohen had brought up former Trump executive assistant Rhona Graff in his testimony. At the time, Cohen was testifying before the House Oversight Committee against his former boss, alleging that Trump was racist, manipulated financial records and directed hush money payments to cover up his extramarital affairs — allegations Trump denied. The president said on social media that Cohen was “lying” before testimony began. ...

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The copies of the text messages were included in a trove of thousands of pages of documents containing Epstein’s emails and other communications released Wednesday by the House Oversight Committee. 

Ed: By 2019, Epstein was the target of federal prosecutors, and known to be so. Democrats not only kept engaging with him, they worked with Epstein to target Trump. That makes their recent attempts to make the Epstein files about Trump's supposed corruption a hypocritical absurdity. 

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Ed: Yeah, that's an unforced error on Khanna's part. He's not the only Democrat stepping in it these days, either. 

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Matt Taibbi: Democratic Party hysteria over this issue is obviously absurd because “all of the Epstein files” could have been released over the last four years. There must be reasons why the last administration didn’t take that step, and there should be scandal in MAGA-world if those reasons overlap at all with the Trump administration’s. Between Epstein’s own hysterical rants about Trump in the newly released documents (he sounds like Kathy Griffin in some of the emails) and the blue party’s seeming entanglement with Epstein from the Clintons to Larry Summers to Reid Hoffman, it’s hard to imagine where that overlap might be, unless it involves major corporate names and/or overseas relationships. Some of that is suggested in Plaskett’s story.

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Plaskett was a listed recipient of campaign contributions from Epstein, and briefly also a defendant in a lawsuit filed by five alleged Jane Doe victims of Epstein. The action against Plaskett was voluntarily dismissed after her lawyers filed a motion to be removed from the suit, but the original complaint remains ugly public record. It accuses Plaskett and a long list of other figures of having “facilitated Epstein in his ongoing sex trafficking operation” by ensuring he “received preferential treatment and unfettered, unmonitored freedom” while in U.S. Virgin Islands.

Financial records of “substantial payments” to some of those defendants do appear in the exhibits of another damning lawsuit, U.S. Virgin Islands v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, to the point where it’s clear government officials in the Virgin Islands and significant Wall Street players were deeply compromised when it came to the operation of Epstein’s empire. 

Ed: Be sure to read it all. Democrats may already regret pushing this issue as far as they have. 

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“Whether it's skipping the primary process when Biden stepped down to things like Biden pardoning his son. Stop acting like y'all are the pure party and Republicans aren't!”

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Ed: This certainly applies to the Epstein Files. In fact, the Epstein Files are perhaps the purest example of this ... and of the consequences that follow from it. 

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Jerusalem Post: In an email between Mark and Jeffrey Epstein, dated March 2018, Jeffrey Epstein was told to ask Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, “If Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba.” ...

“Bubba”, a Southern American term of endearment, is also a known nickname of former President Clinton. However, Mark Epstein has released a statement claiming that this is not who the emails refer to.

“For the avoidance of doubt, the reference to ‘Bubba’ in this correspondence is not, in any way, a reference to former President Bill Clinton.”

In the statement, Epstein claims people are misinterpreting the conversation, calling it “part of a humorous private exchange between two brothers.” 

His spokesperson claimed that Bubba is “a private individual who is not a public figure.”

Ed: Sure, Jan. In fairness, there are a lot of Bubbas in the South. However, the number of people in the Bubba Universe who would be known in common between the Epstein brothers and Stephen Bannon would be exceedingly small, no?

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Ed: Left-wing celebrity pontificators inevitably either claim ignorance or display it. Sometimes both. 

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Robert P. George at NRO: I have resigned from the board of the Heritage Foundation. I could not remain without a full retraction of the video released by Kevin Roberts, speaking for and in the name of Heritage, on October 30th. Although Kevin publicly apologized for some of what he said in the video, he could not offer a full retraction of its content. So, we reached an impasse.

Kevin is a good man. He made what he acknowledged was a serious mistake. Being human myself, I have plenty of experience in making mistakes. What divided us was a difference of opinion about what was required to rectify the mistake.

Ed: This is a body blow to the credibility of Heritage's board. My open letter can be found here, as well as the polite but unresponsive reply to it, which was mostly a non-sequitur to the concerns I raised. How much longer will Heritage Foundation's board refuse to address the real issues in play?

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WSJ: President Trump said his administration may hold talks with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as the U.S. military buildup near the South American country grows.

“We may be having some discussions with Maduro and we’ll see how that turns out,” Trump told reporters Sunday evening. “They would like to talk.”

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Ed: I don't doubt that Maduro wants to talk. The real question would be what he has to offer, other than his resignation. He is implacably oriented against the US, operates a narco-state and supports the cartels, and has utterly impoverished a nation with the continuation of Chavista socialism. Maduro might offer some concessions to get the US Navy out of his backyard, but Trump is playing a larger geopolitical game against Iran and China especially. Unless Maduro plans some kind of Moammar Qaddafi-like flip, 'discussions' would be pretty limited. 

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Ed: Well ... that would motivate me to have 'discussions' too. The Iranians learned that lesson the hard way in June. 

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Ed: I agree with the Holy Father, but only to a certain point. First off, the issue in many cases IS the communal experience. People don't know how to behave in a theater, especially in the age of the smartphone. More fundamentally, though, it requires having content worth watching. 

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