Epstein, Trump, and the King of England
I’m embarrassed to say what I do late at night. Half of it is watching videos of lionesses and water buffalo (or alligators and pythons, or adorable baby monkeys), and the other half is the Royal Family of England. I try to resist, but the pull is too powerful. I know what Elizabeth ate for lunch, and her grandmother’s habit of robbing her fellow royals when she came to visit their country estates.
It’s not that I’m a fan. I find royal privilege appalling. The idea that people like Charles and Camilla will continue to eat at public expense and spend the rest of their lives dedicating playgrounds and snack shops is a mind-blowing commentary on the nature of royalty, especially in an age of (threatened) democracy. At the same time, I’ve got a taste for soap opera. On top of that, I’m a former English major. You can take the boy out of Milton and Spencer, but you can’t take Milton and Spencer out of the boy.
But maybe I’m a little bit of a fan after all. Last week came the news that Prince Andrew is dead, or as close to dead as a living person can be. At the very least, he is no longer a prince, against the grain of British royal standards. The evidence has been accumulating for years: pictures and messages that point to his relationship with the reptilian Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Were Epstein and Maxwell privilege pimps? Did Andrew have predatory sex with minors? We may never know in a prove-it-in-court way, but I believe Virginia Guiffre, who killed herself this year under the weight of her own victimization.
Enter Charles III, who could abide it no more. Taking his cues from his dead mother, Elizabeth, he has now stripped his younger brother of all of his titles, including his unstrippable status as a “prince.” That one is supposed to stick forever, a function of the fact that he is the son of a monarch. But Charles made a clean and immaculate show of it. When you are credibly accused of rapacious sex with a minor and then settle out of court for an “undisclosed sum,” you can no longer be counted as a member of the family. The same for Andrew’s wife, Sarah ”Weight Watchers” Ferguson, who flattered Jeffrey Epstein in the hope that he would not spill the beans. There seems to be quite a thing going with the dead Jeffrey Epstein and Andrew and Sarah of the Mountbatten-Windsors.
Compare all of this to the House of Trump. Our reptilian president is clearly sitting on a story that implicates him big time in the sleaze of Jeffrey Epstein. The hemming-and-hawing has only gotten him so far. My guess—everyone’s guess—is that there is a trove of salacious documents and pictures about the size of the Library of Congress that points to unsavory encounters between Donald Trump and Virgina Guiffre and the entire decimated tribe of women pimped and manipulated by Ghislaine Maxwell. The President has tried his best to suppress all of the evidence by mobilizing Pam Bondi to bury the documents and moving Maxwell to a country club prison.
On top of that he has closed down the government so that it cannot seat a U.S. Representative who would tip the balance and force the release of a new trove of evidence. Imagine that. He actually wants his poodle, Speaker Mike “I’ll Do Anything” Johnson to keep the Republican team out of Washington, even if it means no food for children and extortionate health premiums for the very people who voted for him. We have a President and Co. who will literally do anything, including killing a citizen in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue, if it helps Donald Trump remain in power. Do you doubt that he will use the American military to undermine the election of a Democratic successor? I am beginning to think it’s already in the bag.
Whatever you may think of Charles III, the House of Windsor has acted virtuously, certainly in comparison with the House of Trump. There is a kind of ruthlessness in kneecapping your own brother, but he went on to install him and his former wife in the plush accommodations of yet another royal estate. This one is owned by Charles, himself. Not exactly a condo in suburban Phoenix. But at least Charles III has made a statment. He has expressed solidarity with the victims of Epstein and Maxwell. For Donald Trump, that would be unthinkable.