The Epstein Sideshow: Political Theater While Crises Mount

November 18, 2025

The legislation to release the Epstein files is political theater—a carefully orchestrated distraction by the current administration designed to divert public attention from pressing economic failures and escalating foreign policy crises, including U.S. warships deployed in the Caribbean and armed confrontations with drug cartels. Major news outlets like CNN, Reuters, CBS, and NBC have predictably taken the bait, focusing obsessively on the Epstein spectacle while ignoring substantive issues.

Speaker Johnson's opposition reveals the charade. He argues that releasing unredacted files would expose victims and innocent individuals—a reasonable concern on its surface. But then he introduces a more telling objection: that the files may contain "national security" information and reveal intelligence "sources and methods."

This raises an obvious question: How could files about a private financier's criminal activities possibly contain classified intelligence information? Epstein was not a government agent or contractor providing official services. The implication is deeply troubling.

Johnson's proposed solution—revising the legislation to redact victims' names along with anything related to "national security sources and methods"—provides convenient cover for concealing the names of powerful figures. One can easily predict that Trump's name will be redacted under these broad criteria, along with those of other prominent national and international figures.

Meanwhile, the American public is left grappling with the real crises that continue unaddressed: persistent inflation, an unsustainable national debt, threats of government shutdowns, cyber warfare, international terrorism, border security and immigration chaos, the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict, and China's growing military dominance in the Taiwan region.

The joke, as always, is on the American people.