And he was a teacher!
After finishing your post, I appreciate your thoughts. I think the one thing most of us agree about this is something stinks and an investigation is warranted. People who disagree with that are either retards or in the files themselves.
I try to remain impartial on everything and anything. I think the concluding notch is one position higher in its intensity than the actual events. Trump
knew or Trump
lied are more substantiated than with the evidence presented than Trump outright diddling kids. The main point of contention where a window where such could've occured were:
(1) Plane ride
(2) Some nebulous period of interaction in the years of contact they maintained.
I think there's a scale from most to least probable (even if "probable" still implies the possibility of said thing occurring):
Most likely: Trump lied about how long he maintained personal ties to Epstein in order to sanitise his image in the lead-up to the 2020 election.
Neutral: Trump knew exactly the extent of the sex trafficking and criminal activity of Epstein and associates, knowingly allowing his own staff to be manipulated into becoming employed and thus abused by Epstein, but did nothing.
Less likely: Trump himself participated in the sex trafficking or shared in the "fruits" of sex trafficking by knowingly taking part in sexual acts involving minors.
I think ]most likely] is a lock-in, with [neutral] being true with the caveat he didn't know any of the nitty gritty of what went down on Epstein's island. [Less likely] is a possibility just purely as a result of Trump having some association with Epstein, hence why he tried to smother the idea of the two being connected at all. This also applies to everybody and anybody who had ties to Epstein though. You're correct in the assessment regarding the need of an investigation to prove this, but there's a few problems:
(1) We don't know whether such an investigation has already taken place:
Operation Leap Year, the FBI investigation that resulted in Epstein's 2007 conviction, only came to be known publicly as the result of a plea deal being taken in 2007 which prematurely cancelled the investigation.
A similar investigation which had vindicated Michael Jackson of any wrongdoing ran from 1992 to 2004 and similarly only came to light as having occurred at all during the 2005 trial. If the FBI
had investigated Trump in the interim period from 2007 to 2016, 2011 to 2016, or from 2020 to 2025, and had found enough to substantiate a conviction, then it's probable such evidence would've already come to light during a state-level prosecution.
Of course this is heavily reliant on said investigation having ever took place at all, but the position I'm arguing is that such an investigation could be happening or could have happened, and we wouldn't know about it unless the state levelled charges on him for a federal felony at which point an investigation could potentially come to light. You can also make the argument that Trump would've shut this shit down, but it begs the question of why nothing was levelled against him prior to his election run or the Biden presidency. The "why" and "why nots" provoke a ton of slap fighting and accusations of "cope" but you see why this a problem.
(2) It would be viewed as a political attack more so than a legitimate attempt to achieve justice.
This would lead to obstruction, denial, hyperbole, and could even conclude in nothing happening as people have already written off any potential investigation. The worry I suppose is such an investigation only being accepted after the fact, at which point it becomes only about justice, but there are people that prove this problem is a problem since the apathy will kick in as soon as he's out of office.
Tying into the point problem above: if Trump has been vindicated behind the scenes then revealing indisputable evidence of such would basically not be accepted by anybody who doesn't like him given they see that the FBI is effectively under his control now, and it would give his base a twofold argument of: (1) "Why wasn't this released earlier?" (2) "Trump is innocent!" Where the latter could answer the former and doubly make the evidence of such incredulous to anyone not already in Trump's camp; an investigation can be argued for but there's pretty much no way to identify whether you want it for a legitimate pursual of justice or just to smear a politician through a mud and hopefully oust him via resignation or impeachment.
This isn't an attack on you personally but you can already see how it can get used, since disagreement with the sentiment is also taken as disagreement with the intent. It pretty much shuts down any rebuke because it's a pretty ironclad demand (Disagree with investigating someone with Epstein connections? Pedo or pedo apologist.) but the bluntness of it coupled with the political climate is precisely why "pedo" will get added to the list of Trump-supporter insults but effectively
kills the inertia of any attempted investigation.
Look at the P Diddy thing. People love to see someone get their comeuppance, but if the reason why is rooted in achieving political aims it's pretty much fucked. The Trump-supporting equivalent of this precedent is the Hunter Biden laptop shit. It's apples and oranges with sex trafficking and paedophilia but it demonstrates how if achieving political wins takes primacy over justice, you kill the latter to achieve the former.
For curiosity's take, if Trump
knew, and was charged with aiding and abetting the trafficking of a minor, the sentence is 14 years minimum to life.
