Donald Trump’s love letter to Jeffrey Epstein on his 50th birthday has only one subject: the secrets they shared. The reason Trump is freaked out over its publication is that he thought Epstein had taken their secrets to the grave. He is so panicked that his secrets didn’t die with Epstein that he filed a $20 billion—that’s billion with a “B”—lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch, the Wall Street Journal, and the two reporters who wrote the story.
The lawsuit is a Trumpian classic. Seven of its twenty pages are taken up by screenshots and links showing how the Journal “amplified” the libel of Trump. The lawsuit alleged that “All the above-referenced articles, posts, and false statements have resulted in overwhelming financial and reputational damages to President Trump, expected to be in the billions of dollars, due to the direct and implicit defamatory statements paraded throughout the Article.”
You betcha, with that “expected to be” business. How could damage to Trump’s reputation cost him so much when his salary as president, $400,000 per annum, is guaranteed for the next four years? Why, the man has so many plans to monetize his time in the White House that you can’t possibly keep up with them! He’s got Trump MAGA merch, Trump branded meme-coins, a Trump crypto exchange, a Bitcoin with his name on it, and who knows how many Trump-branded golf courses, condos and hotels planned around the world. The Wall Street Journal is threatening to curtail the greatest crime-spree ever concocted and run out of the Oval Office.
Do you want to know what’s really got him going? It’s not the so-called “MAGA split” that’s being bandied all over the digital airwaves. Trump is so blatant about his crimes that he blabs evidence of his scams out loud to the media every time he walks across the White House lawn to his helicopter, Marine One.
Every time one of his secrets looks like it’s close to being revealed, he goes into an all-consuming mode of all out denial. He was scared to death that Special Counsel Robert Mueller would come up with a piece of paper or audio tape or video that would blow up the Russian involvement in his 2016 election. He has successfully kept the facts of his close connection to Vladimir Putin from being revealed for nearly two decades. All his phone calls with Putin, what happened during Trump’s trip to Moscow to put on his low-rent beauty pageant—only Trump and Putin know what has gone on between him and Russia’s dictator over the years.
The other big secret in his life has been what’s behind his connection to Jeffrey Epstein. But now we have evidence that there is a secret, because he used the word in his silly-bro birthday wishes. “There must be more to life than having everything,” the note begins. Imagined dialogue from both Trump and Epstein follows, with each man echoing their shared secret: “Yes there is, but I won’t tell you what it is,” is in Trump’s voice, followed by “Nor will I, since I also know what it is.” “Happy birthday,” he wishes Epstein, “And may every day be another wonderful secret.”
He just cannot contain himself, throwing in “wonderful” to describe their secret.
It’s all in code, but of course speech about a crime such as child sexual abuse would have to be coded, wouldn’t it? See, the thing about secrets is that they are powerful only if they are shared among a select few, in this case, between Trump and one other man, his pimp, Epstein. There has been a growing chorus of “expert” analysis over the last few days that if the secret that Epstein took to his grave comes out, it will not be game over for Trump. The “killing someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue” thing is alive and well, the pundits tell us.
Maybe so. The MAGA base would no doubt scream that it was generated by AI if a video were to emerge of Trump and an underage girl in flagrante delicto. His political life would survive.
Why then does he constantly demand loyalty from others? The man doesn’t really care if someone “betrays” him. He has betrayed so many people over his lifetime in business and politics that he knows it’s the cost of doing business, so he expects it. His loyalty obsession is just part of the wall any narcissist builds around himself. Trump has been alone in the world for his entire life. He has never had what any of us would call a real friend. Epstein wasn’t a friend. He was Trump’s pimp. Their relationship, like all of Trump’s relationships, was entirely transactional. You keep my secret, and I’ll keep yours. It is the ur-text of Trump’s birthday card.
Trump’s panic is based on a single fact. His secret about his illegal sexual life was safe because he knew Epstein’s secret. When Epstein died, that protection died with him. Trump is now afraid that his secret is still out there somewhere, somehow, in some manner, and he has no one he can control by keeping an equivalent secret, as he kept Epstein’s.
Remember how Trump kept asking, “Where is my Roy Cohn?” when he felt unprotected during his first term? Well, got what he thinks are Roy Cohns all over the place in his government this time. But yes-men and yes-women are not enough. Here he is, as unprotected as he’s ever been, and he doesn’t have a Roy Cohn or even a Jeffrey Epstein to protect him now.
Donald Trump, as ever, is all alone. There is no one to protect him now, from himself or anyone else.
Lucian K. Truscott IV
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
You can read Lucian Truscott's daily articles at luciantruscott.substack.com. We encourage our readers to get a subscription.
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