Birds of a Feather

 Birds of a Feather

By most observable criteria, Donald Trump has had a rather nefarious relationship with the opposite sex. In the “birds of a feather” category we find his acceptance and comfort levels with others with similar disregard to the privacy and rights of members of the opposite sex, suspicious if not damning.

His appointment of Pete Hegseth to become the Secretary of Defense is one such example. To summarize, Hegseth sexually assaulted a woman, she filed charges, and he paid her $50,000 in damages. He did this while married to his second wife and during a period when his later to be third wife, had just given birth to his child. That’s three women, that we know of involved with Mr. Hegseth at the same time. He calls himself a Christian Nationalist.

Donald Trump also professes to be a Christian and you have to have lived under a rock to not know his past un-Christian-like behavior. Actually, if you lived under a rock you might have heard about all this from other “under-rock dwellers.” I know it is Christian to forgive the repentant, but this long established pattern of behavior belies the whole premise. There are only so many times you can utter the famous Jimmy Swaggart line, “I have sinned” with any sense of contrition.

Now, that big lump in the carpet happens to be the Epstein files and the MAGA faithful in the Trump administration are telling us, “There’s nothing to see here, time to move along.” While Trump has his staff holding down the edges of that carpet telling us that big lump is a bunch of nothing, we do know one of the things now hidden there.

It seems that the Biden administration allowed Finance Committee investigators to look at portions of the Epstein file in person over at the Treasury building. Treasury’s Epstein file details 4,725 wire transfers adding up to nearly $1.1 billion flowing in and out of just ONE of Epstein’s bank accounts. The file shows Epstein used multiple Russian banks, which are now under sanctions, to process payments related to sex trafficking. A lot of the women and girls he targeted came from Russia, Belarus, Turkey and Turkmenistan. Could any of this explain the Putin-Trump bromance?

It is important to note that none of the Treasury reviewed Epstein files mentioned Trump (contrary to some false reports) but Treasury did not gain access to the complete record. Once more into the belly of the “Birds of a Feather” analogy. While Trump wasn’t mentioned in the reports reviewed by Treasury, cofounder of Apollo Global Management Leon Black was on the record for sending Epstein $158 million. Mr. Black has ties to Trump and was part of trip to Moscow in 1996. Two other Trump friends were reportedly on this junket as well, Matthew Calamari (Trump bodyguard) and Howard Lorber.

So, we just have a bunch of people with ties to Trump, ties to Russia, ties to Vladimir Putin, ties Jeffery Epstein who traveled and partied together but nothing happened. Is anyone this naive?

There are pictures of Trump with Mr. Black who testified that they “might have gone to a Russian strip club” during this tour “around town.” Mr. Black has also met with Vladimir Putin and “knows” Oleg Deripaska. Mr. Black also testified that he has had dealings with Steve Bannon and has a relationship with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. He is a potential witness in the Jeffrey Epstein case if the main figure in this matter ever becomes more than another $158 million lump in the carpet. For now, Trump's role will remain a mystery because as we see, there is nothing to see.