Caffeinated Politics

It was a staggering moment in American politics when Donald Trump went on national television Sunday to state I’m– I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody. And then state, I’m not a pedophile. The need to make such a statement speaks for itself. For the past nine weeks, many commentators and citizens have come to the conclusion that what is taking place with the unnecessary and reckless war against Iran has everything to do with the White House’s desire to remove the Trump-Epstein Files from the nation’s headlines. The war, as we have witnessed, does not carry the policy goals that are purported to be the cause of the billion-dollar-a-day loss of our nation’s resources. So, then, why the war?

History has a way of repeating itself, and Trump is proof of that fact.

President James Buchanan aimed for the same art of deception and deflection that Trump is employing today. In 1857, he sent federal troops to Utah, with many historians finding that his primary motive was to take the eyes off the growing and ever-volatile abolitionist movement in wide swaths of the nation. Buchanan never said that, of course, no more than Trump speaks as the cause of the Iran War to be those infamous sex files. The need for Trump to speak about rape and pedophilia takes the current story many miles away from what the 15th president contemplated for his explanation of using the military in a Western state.

Buchanan’s decision to send the military into a Mormon area was driven mainly by inflammatory and often inaccurate reports that Utah was in dire rebellion. The political calculation is more accurate in that he wanted to assert federal authority early in his presidency. giving him the aura of appearing strong without confronting the far more explosive issue of slavery. Chalk this all up to a complex mix of political miscalculation, misinformation, and sectional pressures.

We know from credible reports from news operations here and abroad that the Epstein release was quickly eclipsed by this White House escalating tensions with Iran. Trump saw this manufactured foreign‑policy ‘crisis’ as politically advantageous because it redirected media attention. There is no need for me to write what followed the first missile landing in Iran, which swallowed the news cycle at the exact moment the Epstein files were drawing public scrutiny. I am not sure how to create a dot-to-dot graph, but it is clear to my readers that the Iran War was designed to benefit the White House politically. We can be grateful that reality intervened. Or should I say the lack of preparation, rationale, and planning from Trump and his sycophants upended a seriously dangerous idea?

For weeks, this war has been a dominating story, pushing nearly everything else off the front page. But there is a pesky fact that remains. The Trump-Epstein Files are still a smoldering bag of poo around this White House’s neck.

As a citizen, I am deeply concerned with the outright subterfuge by this administration regarding the nation’s belligerent involvement in Iran. We are being asked to consent to state-sponsored violence to keep Trump’s alleged sexual crimes in the Trump-Epstein files out of the headlines. I argue that there needs to be an exacting reckoning of whether you and I were being asked to fall for yet another example of mendacity from this lawless and corrupt administration.