On Douthat and Epstein – Douthat himself in NYT:

‘In which case the ultimate truth could be squalid (powerful men getting hand jobs from masseuses whom they thought were over 18) without being a Grand Guignol conspiracy (powerful men knowingly trafficking minors to facilitate some kind of “Eyes Wide Shut” scenario). And something similar could be the case with the intelligence-world questions: There’s evidence that Epstein used his connections to assist Israel intelligence on various projects, but nothing indicating that he was running a sex-and-blackmail operation on its behalf.

But then the great question remains: Why doesn’t Trump want more disclosure? It’s possible that he just doesn’t like the embarrassment of having everyone reminded that he was one of the rich creeps in the Epstein circle. Or it’s possible that there’s something truly sensitive related to Epstein and intelligence that has yet to be revealed.
Or it’s possible that there is some thread remaining here, and not necessarily the obvious one, that the president really, really doesn’t want to see get pulled.’

Read the column here.

Dabbling in conspiracy theories, without much evidence.

Sure enough, the material is much better than Eyes Wide Shut. In other words, great questions indeed. A great president with great questions. What else do we want?

But for some really spicy I miss a few names. Putin. One of the popes, dead or alive. The Daila Lama. Macron. Come on, without Macron the whole thing is less fun. Blair. Tarantino. Ronaldo and Messi. The entire M5.