Why All The Distraction With 'Distractions'?
A kitchen table discussion
Donald Trump is everything terrible everywhere all at once, but people who still believe in an ordered universe insist that there’s a method to the mad king’s actions. Trump has publicly fantasized about prosecuting his political enemies and posted an AI-generated image of the FBI arresting Barack Obama in the Oval Office while he looked on with glee. The same weekend, Trump demanded that the Washington Commanders and Cleveland Guardians re-adopt their former racist team names. Monday, the Trump administration released thousands of FBI records on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, despite his family’s objections. This is all consistently racist behavior from a racist, yet many Democrats and liberal pundits have argued that it’s all a “distraction” from Trump’s involvement with dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Like any other rabid animal, Trump is dangerous when cornered. It’s not really a distraction when a rabid dog mauls someone. It’s all part of the same bloody tapestry.
However, Nancy Pelosi, who boasts the title “Speaker Emerita,” as if she’s the Queen Mother or something, told MSNBC’s Chris Jansing last week that she thinks the Epstein scandal itself is a “distraction.” (Watch below.)
The Speaker Emerita of Congress and the San Francisco Dominions said, “We have major issues right here with the things we’re voting on today in the Congress, again, in terms of the rescission that the president and the Senate have sent back over us to cut all of these resources out of helping poor people throughout the world to be — America play its leadership role in soft power to keep us safe and to keep us healthy, so that we — viruses know no boundary. And, instead, we’re talking about him, about this thing … and his own base has its own views of what the president should do. I will leave it up to them to talk it out. But, again, whether it’s Jeffrey Epstein or Alcatraz, it's all off the subject of what they’re doing with this budget that is harmful to the kitchen table, meeting the kitchen table needs of the American people.”
Sorry, I dozed off there for a moment, but anyway, Pelosi’s point is that we should stay laser-focused on the harmful legislation that Trump and Republicans are passing and Democrats are seemingly helpless to stop. Maybe it’s me, but I’m very open to “distractions” when I’m getting my ass kicked. Democrats should start every interview with “Donald Trump pals around with pedophiles.”
When Democrats talk about “kitchen table” issues, there is a clear value judgement about what they believe is relevant for the normal people they don’t know personally.
During a CNN interview in 2023, Pelosi was confronted with a new poll showing that 58 percent of Americans believed President Joe Biden had made economic conditions worse. Later, she posted on social media, “Joe Biden is a great President — on par with LBJ or FDR in delivering for America's kitchen table.”
That same month, Pelosi raved on Facebook, “Joe Biden and Democrats focused on the kitchen table needs of working families, delivering 14 million jobs, lower costs and expanded health care.”
She told Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe, “Bidenomics are very kitchen table issues.” She added on social media, “The kitchen table is America's most important table — not the boardroom table or cabinet room table.”
Pelosi has a very nice kitchen, so it makes sense she’d hammer the point about “kitchen table” issues. The problem is that 2024 voters didn’t agree that Democrats cared sufficiently about their own “kitchen tables.”
Swing voters broke for Donald Trump 52 percent versus 38 percent for Kamala Harris. These voters, who proved decisive, claimed that Democrats were “too focused on identity politics” (67 percent) and “not doing enough to address crime” (68 percent). Now, we can argue that these voters too easily absorbed right-wing talking points or at just flat-out bigots (although the latter wouldn’t need to lie about why they voted for Trump nor would they have made their choice so late.) The harsh reality though is the Democratic messaging simply didn’t break through to these key voters.
Republicans ran bigoted ads that painted Democrats as caring more about the undesirable “them” than “us” (or “you,” as I’m probably not included in the politically desirable “us” group). Democrats didn’t respond in force — either out of fear or the rigid belief that such tactics were another “distraction.”
Unfortunately, what Democrats don’t understand is that trust is more important than policy. If voters trust you, they will forgive any number of policy lapses. If they don’t trust you, they don’t care about your “kitchen table” issues. My kid likes ice cream but he knows not to accept free ice cream from a creepy stranger in a van. Republicans aren’t interested in selling policy. They just want to convince voters that Democrats are untrustworthy. Republicans actively smear Democrats as creepy van dwellers and we think we can solve that problem by offering more ice cream flavors.
Democrats should put their kitchen tables on Facebook’s Buy Nothing and seize any opportunity to make voters distrust Trump and his Republican lackeys.
The Epstein scandal is an area where Democrats can stoke division within the MAGA cult. The Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal ran a story revealing that Trump sent creepy van letters to Epstein for his 50th birthday, and Trump predictably freaked out and sued the WSJ for libel. The newspaper stands by its story, so Murdoch shockingly has more journalistic integrity or at least more “fuck you” money than Paramount or ABC News.
Vice President JD Vance, waiting patiently in the wings, absurdly asked the MAGA faithful if the gross details in the WSJ article “sounded like Donald Trump,” a known sexual predator. The WSJ called Trump’s bluff and ran an article this week revealing that Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump a few months ago that his name was featured in the Epstein files, and probably not as the designated non-pedophile driver.
This is the kitchen table conversation we want voters to have in GOP-held swing districts. Trump actually enjoys rambling nonsensically about tariffs or lying about Medicare recipients. He clearly hates talking about Jeffrey Epstein. Democrats should keep poking that wound — if for no better reason than it makes him miserable.
TACO's only strategy at any given moment in time is to do whatever is best for TACO, or what he thinks is best for him at that moment in time. If in the next moment, he realizes that another strategy is better, he will use that, even if it contradicts the previous one. He's been a master at controlling the narrative, but Epstein seems to have broken that spell. Dems should hammer him with it, to break the trust that any voters have in TACO. Why any ever trusted him, I don't know, even with the media behind him, but clearly they did, and some still do. It may not be the strategy you want to use, but it's the best one to break TACO.
Well we can't have an ordered universe.
I am of the opinion that some people say this though because the pricktator (as the representative of the unreconstructed) is insulated from consequences. That's the entire point of having Frau Pam in there, to keep him out of legal exposure. And then there's the backup of his captive Taney Court 2.0.
Even WITH 34 felony convictions (imagine a Black man with a rap sheet like that being elected President) he was reelected. A lot of people love dancing around the point; he was elected because of his ethnic cleansing plans. The torture and concentration camps are here *because a lot of Americans voted (or non-voted) for that.* That means your electorate has to upgrade and not wish to get rid of the minorities they hate.