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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMAGA's Reaction to the Epstein Files Reveals Total Moral Collapse
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/epstein-maga-trump-morals/No paywall link
https://archive.ph/boBCI
Im not sure were terrified enough about the American rights scrapping even its own scant moral boundaries.
Every segment of the Trump-backing right wingAmerica First nationalists, Trump loyalists and rank-and-file MAGA activistshas unsubscribed from the idea that there is any such thing as right and wrong, much less that wrongdoing should result in consequences. In effect, there is no behavior Trumps GOP sees as too wrong to vote for. In late July 2025, almost half of Republicans said they would keep voting for Trump even if he were officially implicated in Jeffrey Epsteins sex trafficking activities. Crime is legal, where right-wingers are concerned, however heinous the crime is.
At least, for themselves. The right still has morals for days when it comes to Black folks, immigrants and trans people. Its moral code has always been selective and conditional; rigorously enforced and mercilessly punitive toward outsiders and others, but generally indifferent to even the worst acts by those on the right side of whiteness and power. Wilhoits Lawcoined by music composer Frank Wilhoit in a now-famous 2018 comment on a political science blogneatly captures this truth. Conservatism consists of exactly one propositionthere must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. Now its ditching even its in-group protections.
The rights reaction to the Epstein files disclosures is the clearest evidence of this. For the better part of a decade, conservatives lurched from one pedophile-focused moral panic to the next, proclaiming themselves the true saviors of children. They didnt mean all children, of course; these are the same people who gifted a white woman with $750,000 just for calling a 5-year-old autistic Black boy the N-word. Their concern was always reserved for the white children they saw as fully human. They insisted pedophiles were hiding in pizza parlor basements; obsessed over Q drops and waved signs calling us to #SavetheChildren and Stop Child Trafficking; and pushed anti-LGBT groomer hysteria alongside anti-drag bills. Roughly half of Trump voters said they believed elected Democrats were running child sex rings in surveys from 2020 and 2022; a majority of 2020 Trump voters told pollsters that Trump was actively working to take down an elite child sex trafficking ring involving top Democrats. White lives mattered to conservatives, especially the youngest white lives. At least in theory.
And at least as long as they thought their political opponents were responsible. But the more we know about Epstein, the less they care. The nearly half of Republicans who said the Epstein files mattered at least a little to how they assess Trumps presidency in July 2025 dropped to just 36 percent by November. (That figure is 64 percent for Democrats.) Faced with at least one allegation in the files that Trump sexually assaulted an underage girl and well-documented associations between their leader and Epsteinas well as other alleged sexual predatorsthe right isnt just overlooking the implications; theyre abandoning the principles. The right has gradually de-emphasized the Epstein issue, CNN writes, choosing to largely move on. It was all political calculation.
*snip*
underpants
(195,787 posts)The only thing they really hear about it is 3rd string Watters saying Epstein wasnt really that bad AND Trump saying he was totally exonerated.
B.See
(8,152 posts)Judgment reserved for US, not them.
They were ALWAYS capable of ANYTHING.
Nice to know the world is finally waking up to that fact.
msongs
(73,365 posts)SWBTATTReg
(26,174 posts)of spoiled brats when they don't get their way. Just like tRUMP. These people need to be aware that one day, all of this will be gone and then we'll be there instead.
And this time, whoever is representing the democratic leadership in the WH and Congress, the Senate, had better not nominate someone like Garland. He was so worried about doing governance the correct way, but I hope that he's looking at all of the illegal ways tRUMP is putting governance in play illegally now. Garland is now forever on my list of worthless doers, never to appear on any of my fave democratic leaders.
PatSeg
(52,750 posts)and extremely violent. They're looking for a fight and any fight will do. What's the point of all those guns if you're not going to use them?
I would love to see all these armed assholes, dropped into a war zone, and see how they handle opposition that shoots back, instead of picking on kids and women all the time.........and only then when they have a 10-20 to 1 advantage......
PatSeg
(52,750 posts)They certainly don't want to fight anyone equal or superior to them.
Efilroft Sul
(4,386 posts)Their fantasy extermination scenarios don't factor in when they have to step out of the house to drive the kids to school, shop for groceries, mail letters, get gas, mow the lawn, etc. But if they want to live in that kind of world, the same people on their extinction agenda can also reach out and touch them and their families, too, at any old time. And then take their arsenals.
Be careful of what you want, MAGA. Nemesis smiles upon you all.
PatSeg
(52,750 posts)often living as if they are in an action movie or a video game. Reality doesn't quite fit into their fantasy world.
Efilroft Sul
(4,386 posts)Along with a little visit from everybody sick of their shit.
DSandra
(1,719 posts)A handful of states have the deciding factor in a presidential election and gerrymandering gives them outsized influence in those states in the house. They naturally had an advantage in the senate as well. They get the power because our federal government gives them it.
Voter turnout is lower overall because many people know that their state wont have a say in determining the election (although it has a say in whether the president gets a mandate for their agenda), but the ones that sit out in battleground states are super guilty in essence because silence = a vote for the opposition party.
popsdenver
(2,010 posts)and esp true in the U.S. Senate where many a piss ant state with 500K has the same two Senators, as a state with 40+Million.....
Hieronymus Phact
(733 posts)If "piss ant" Rhode Island wasn't equal in the senate to i guess "not piss ant" California, than it's no different than the House is it?
Why would we need another house of representatives? The senate gives voice to the minority and insulates from the heat of the moment, explicitly the opposite of the House.
Its a checks and balances thing.Don't like it, the answer is to win elections.
IronLionZion
(51,057 posts)creon
(2,040 posts)When the RW accuses Liberals of something, the RW is admiiting to it.
CanonRay
(16,062 posts)If they do it, it's right. if we do it, it's wrong.
angrychair
(12,013 posts)It's Republicans. All Republicans. Every. Single. Republican.
That is why I continue to beg our party to stop drifting to the right. Stop trying to bring these disgusting people into our tent.
I don't want Liz Cheney at the Democratic National Convention.
I didn't want Adam Kinzinger on the Democratic campaign trial.
I don't want to hang out with Thomas Massie.
They are the absolute worst version of humanity. The most vile, ignorant, cruel and disgusting people on Earth.
Republicans are beyond redemption. Beyond pity. Beyond hope.
popsdenver
(2,010 posts)Mueller held back.......He knew if he released everything, it would have been the end of his beloved Republican Party.......
IronLionZion
(51,057 posts)but they believe there are child victims hidden in a basement of a pizza shop that has no basement.
jmowreader
(53,029 posts)IOKIYAR. It means "it's OK if you're a Republican."
What we're not really considering here is the absoluteness of that phrase: remember, Mr. Trump famously said he could kill someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and still draw votes. Name the crime and Republicans either have done it themselves or have paid other people to, and they still get elected. It makes no sense to me but I'm not of the mindset that a good leader is one that hurts as many people as possible.
markodochartaigh
(5,309 posts)In fact he did the presidential equivalent of shooting someone on 5th Avenue. He ramped up federal executions in the last months of his first term in order to gin up support among his base.
ChicagoTeamster
(680 posts)Now that they know its Trump and many of his associates along with other rich people who he probably already extorted money from, they dont care. The young girls never mattered.
Trump doesnt want people to say he blackmailed them and they already paid when they get charged so he was protecting his kompromat.
Joinfortmill
(20,694 posts)markodochartaigh
(5,309 posts)it is less about the crime committed and more about who committed the crime. Wealthy White teenager gets drunk, takes his parents' vehicle and gets into a wreck killing several people? Affluenza. Poor Black teenager steals a sandwich from a convenience store? Maximum penalty.
Convicted Republican felon tears down the East Wing? Crickets. Black Democratic president wears a brown suit? Disgusting.