# What am I missing about the Epstein files?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Tags:** trump
**Created:** [December 18, 2025, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811 "2025-12-18T04:57:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/1 "2025-12-18T04:57:46Z")
Follow along with me. I know I’m most often the one whose head doesn’t make sense to people, but I’m going to do my best here.
He’s quite often told us all that he’s like this, that he’s a sex creep, that he doesn’t like women but likes exploiting them for sex, and that he likes the power-over component.
So, wait, what? … now y’all are all horrified that he’d bring that attitude into his interaction with underage girls???
I don’t get it! He told you he likes power over, that he doesn’t care about these female people… I mean, speaking as a male, I don’t think he likes anybody very much, he just envies a few and wants to acquire whatever they’ve got. But he’s got a really nasty fucking attitude towards women and girls.
What part of _of course he was gonna go there_ didn’t you understand from back when?
He likes to hurt people. He likes vulnerability. He likes to coerce. Nod your head if you’d long since had that evaluation of him too, ok? Even you assholes who worship him, that’s what you like about him, and you want to emulate that.
So this is a good place to draw the line, yeah.
But back to the way this issue is hurting him, which I’m fine if it does, of course, …who ARE the people who didn’t see all along that this personality characteristic would manifest with these behaviors? Did you miss fifth grade? Didn’t you have to cope with these people as you grew up?
I don’t get it, why would you EVER want one of them to be in charge of stuff?
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/2 "2025-12-18T05:08:23Z")
> [@AHunter3](#):
>
> who ARE the people who didn’t see all along that this personality characteristic would manifest with these behaviors?
I have a Trump cultist Facebook friend. (Step cousin of a high school friend… who has since gone over to the dark side.) She absolutely, unequivocally believes that her Messiah is _ **not** _ involved in any way with Epstein, and that he is _ **not** _ in the Epstein files in spite of photographic evidence. Trump is perfect in every way, and anyone who says otherwise is deluded, lying, a victim of FAKE NEWSm etc. She is completely convinced that the _only_ perpetrators in the Epstein files are Democrats.
Thirty percent of the U.S. population either believes the same thing, or they don’t care because Liberals want to destroy the United States and Democrats are evil.
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### Author:  [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/3 "2025-12-18T05:10:55Z")
Kinda makes a person reevaluate their opinion of our species, frighteningly enough.
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### Author:  [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/4 "2025-12-18T05:20:52Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#):
>
> Thirty percent of the U.S. population either believes the same thing, or they don’t care because Liberals want to destroy the United States and Democrats are evil.
Or they’re fine with it.
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### Author:  [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/5 "2025-12-18T06:04:07Z")
To borrow and twist a metaphor: there’s plenty of people who are OK with a face-eating leopard whose eating habits suggest it would probably eat baby faces given the opportunity. They can always kid themselves the face-eating leopard probably wouldn’t actually eat a baby’s face while there is no specific evidence of it having done so.
But actually being confronted by evidence that their leopard ate baby faces is quite another thing. Especially for people who have long white knighted themselves as crusaders against baby face eating.
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### Author:  [@Al128](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Al128)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/6 "2025-12-18T10:34:54Z")
Deleted
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### Author:  [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/7 "2025-12-18T11:08:22Z")
> [@AHunter3](#):
>
> …he’s like this … he’s a sex creep … he likes the power-over component… he’s got a really nasty fucking attitude towards women and girls. … He likes to hurt people. …
Just for clarification,“he” is Trump, right? Only you don’t actually say.
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/8 "2025-12-18T11:25:19Z")
I suspect that part of the issue is that since Trump is proudly evil in so many ways, him acting so afraid of the files being released makes it look like there must be something _really_ awful in there. Trump _acts_ like there’s something astonishingly bad in those files.
Mind, my personal suspicion is that what he’s so afraid being revealed is embarrassing rather than illegal, or possibly even immoral. Because he’s a malignant narcissist, not a moralist. He’d prefer being filmed indulging in cannibalism over being revealed to have done something perfectly moral that he considers embarrassing.
But regardless of that, he _acts_ guilty which is bad optics.
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### Author:  [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/9 "2025-12-18T12:53:12Z")
I’m still unclear as to whether the OP is talking about Epstein or Trump.
There are no names in the post, and the only name in the title is Epstein.
mmm
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### Author:  [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/10 "2025-12-18T13:21:11Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#):
>
> Mind, my personal suspicion is that what he’s so afraid being revealed is embarrassing rather than illegal, or possibly even immoral. Because he’s a malignant narcissist, not a moralist.
Indeed. When that birthday book came out - for all the hysteria - it was (largely) a nothingburger yet Trump had to deny his involvement even though it was ridiculously obvious. Yeah its embarrassing to be a buddy of a pedo but there was nothing in that book was evidence of anything. But he just had to deny, like a five year old caught with his hand in the cookie jar and crumbs round his mouth.
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### Author:  [@Al128](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Al128)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/11 "2025-12-18T13:51:22Z")
it might be the fear of being exposed as having inadequately small anatomy, …
like his hands (_cough cough)_
jokes aside: one “diffuse” concern of me is - if there is anything of substance in the E-files - the russians will have had it for a long time already - and might have let him know that fact… (which would also explain a certain behaviour of him)
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### Author:  [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/12 "2025-12-18T14:48:53Z")
I think there is also the idea that MAGA thought that Trump, when he became president, was going to expose all those horrible Democrat pedos that were in the files. But now that he is president, he’s just sitting on that stuff. I’m sure there are plenty of MAGA who don’t think that Trump is in the files, but still feel betrayed because he’s not going after the pedo Democrats like he said he would.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/13 "2025-12-18T14:51:33Z")
> [@Shoeless](#):
>
> I’m sure there are plenty of MAGA who don’t think that Trump is in the files, but still feel betrayed because he’s not going after the pedo Democrats like he said he would.
I ask, ‘If your Messiah isn’t in the Epstein files, why doesn’t He release them? Why is He protecting Clinton?’
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/14 "2025-12-18T14:53:24Z")
> [@Al128](#):
>
> jokes aside: one “diffuse” concern of me is - if there is anything of substance in the E-files - the russians will have had it for a long time already - and might have let him know that fact… (which would also explain a certain behaviour of him)
Between that and the amount of Russian investment in trump stuff, there’s zero doubt he’s just a Russian stooge now. And has been since before he entered politics. I don’t see any reason for anyone to be coy about it.
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### Author:  [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/15 "2025-12-18T15:08:55Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#):
>
> Just for clarification,“he” is Trump, right? Only you don’t actually say.
Yes, sorry. I meant Trump.
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### Author:  [@ThisOneGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThisOneGuy)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/16 "2025-12-18T16:35:55Z")
For the conspiracy theory types there has long been the belief that the rich and powerful are full of pedophiles who get away with it due to the wealth/power. Remember Pizzagate? More partisan ones think “its only D/Rs who do it” but many seem to think it is both of them. Epstein is pretty much that theory, but in real life.
Such believers are a big part of Trump’s core support. Publishing the files was an important campaign promise. Then once elected he instead blocks the release. Watching an MTG interview the other day, that seems like a bigger betrayal for her than being personally insulted/called a traitor, etc.
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### Author:  [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/17 "2025-12-18T16:41:13Z")
What I am missing, is, why haven’t the files been released already? What in fuck’s name are they waiting for?
And, does anyone believe the files (whatever they are) are in any way still genuine? After this long, can we trust what they will say?
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/18 "2025-12-18T16:50:51Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#):
>
> What in fuck’s name are they waiting for?
Friday. They’re waiting for Friday.
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### Author:  [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/19 "2025-12-18T17:04:56Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#):
>
> Friday. They’re waiting for Friday.
Why? Why Friday? Why not weeks ago, Nov 19, to be precise?
It’s just more foot dragging. They’ll find some reason to delay.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2025, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-am-i-missing-about-the-epstein-files/1025811/20 "2025-12-18T17:12:20Z")
Of course they will.
If by some miracle the files were uncensored and released whole, it’s kind a major crapshoot what might happen. Who knows who among the rich and famous are implicated. Idjit trump himself cares for nothing but his personal reputation. But a lot of other people who have influence care about themselves too.
And at least strategically minded folks in both parties some about how a full release might “play in Peoria” as they used to say.
My bet is there’s stuff showing trump doing very submissive stuff and / or that he’s anatomically damaged. Neither of which his ego could stand. And pretty much anyone else with their hands on the levers of the release process are afraid of the consequences if they leak.
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