Class conflict in America has been primarily framed either in economic terms favored by the left or in cultural terms favored by the right. The Epstein files could be presented from either perspective, but their most potent impact has been the cultural division they expose between an elite class and Trump’s populist base.
The Epstein Files describe a ring of men who exploited young women for sexual encounters. The media has focused on the struggle to fully release all the information about who was involved with the most-covered pedophile in American history, Brian Epstein. He was found dead in 2019 in a New York jail cell while being held on charges that he operated a sex-trafficking ring that preyed on young women and underage girls.
Since then, the public’s curiosity has been piqued by revelations about celebrities in Epstein's orbit, as they anxiously await further exposure. So far, those caught on camera with Epstein have included President Bill Clinton, President Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, Noam Chomsky, and Trump’s former White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon.
Collectively, they represent a broad political spectrum. But they share one significant trait: they are the most visible of the rich and powerful men, who are statistically in the upper 1% in wealth and, literally, in political power. They are the personification of the Elite Class.
Trump, perhaps inadvertently, reinforced that image when he complained that releasing all the Epstein Files would expose, like “you know, highly respected bankers and lawyers and others." Interesting note: both Epstein and Bannon were former investment bank officers at big-name New York firms.
One could respond, “So what? Every nation has an elite.” That is true. The global market research firm IPSOS reported in a February 2024 survey on how citizens in 28 countries viewed their elites. The elites were defined as the people who exercise power or influence in politics, business, the media, technology, science, and academia. The first question asked those surveyed whether such a group existed, to the extent that these elites were “a closely connected group of people.” The average country response was a notch above 60%, including America.
That belief doesn’t align with America as a land of equal opportunity in a unique democratic republic that offers an equal chance for all to succeed. To question this commonly held belief, propagated by public education, has been labeled by President Donald Trump as “hating America.” We probably have high expectations because of the individual freedoms we possess, but frustration with not experiencing equal opportunities may account for the IPSOS survey showing distrust of our country’s elite.
Americans believe that our political and economic elite don't care about hard-working people more than in most other surveyed countries and significantly more than our Canadian next-door neighbors believe about their government. But the most significant difference is that a higher percentage of our citizens believe that our “elite” make decisions based on their own interests rather than the needs of the rest of us. That is, they just don’t care about our needs or the laws that govern all of us.
Epstein files exposed this attitude by the apparent toleration of pedophilia among those in Epstein's company. There is no greater infraction of our moral laws than pedophilia. No polls on public attitudes are needed to assess toleration of it. Pedophilia is fundamentally a cultural issue because it undermines the values that protect the sanctity of the family.
The Epstein files, aside from any illegal activities, record how this elite group repudiated the safety of childhood for its own gratification. That desecration goes beyond economic exploitation. It speaks directly to the reason MAGA and other Republicans have demanded the full release of all the Epstein files. It is a cultural war between their values and those of the elites.
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In campaigning for president, Trump led a movement against a decadent elite that ran the government and harmed family values by tolerating deviant behavior. Surprise! The Epstein files revealed Donald Trump to be comfortably embedded in Epstein’s escapade of using very young or underage women to entertain the elite class of older men of power and prestige. That is, Trump is part of that decadent elite he promised to expel from government.
In campaigning for president, Trump led a movement against a decadent elite that ran the government and harmed family values by tolerating deviant behavior. Surprise! The Epstein files revealed Donald Trump to be comfortably embedded in Epstein’s escapade of using very young or underage women to entertain the elite class of older men of power and prestige. That is, Trump is part of that decadent elite he promised to expel from government.
The mindsets of Democrats and Republicans can be distinguished by how they perceive class. Democrats, inheriting the tradition of American social gospel preachers and European socialist philosophers, view class conflict in economic terms: it’s the rich class versus the rest of us, who are in the working class. Republicans see class conflict through a cultural prism, in which religious teachings and tight-knit family values oppose government officials who tolerate socially deviant behavior that can undermine those beliefs and family safety.
The administrations of Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump in handling the Epstein files exemplify these differences. They also illustrate why the Epstein files pose a greater danger to Trump than they ever did to Biden.
In Trump’s first presidential campaign, he supported right-wing conspiracies that Democrats and their liberal friends were tolerating deviant sexual behavior. Hillary Clinton and a number of Democrats were tied to the Pizza Shop pedophilia conspiracy advocated by QAnon. Trump gained their vocal support and presumably their votes to help him win his election.
Trump continued to promote the conspiracy theory that Democratic leaders were involved in sex trafficking when he left his first term in office. Liz Crokin, a prominent adherent of the QAnon and "Pizzagate" conspiracy theories, spoke at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser in support of a "documentary" on sex trafficking in 2022. The film included multiple falsehoods and claims of mass sex trafficking in Hollywood, and was "Banned by YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and PayPal." Crokin and Trump gave this effort a thumbs-up for a photo-op.
Trump was still highlighting a cultural divide between his conservative, religious, family-oriented MAGA followers and liberal Democrats as he ran for a second term in 2024. Since liberal icons Bill Clinton and Bill Gates had both been photographed with Epstein, Trump could push that narrative further by declaring that if he was elected in 2024, he would immediately release the Epstein files that his MAGA supporters had been demanding. He dismissed his appearance in photos with Epstein as nothing.
Trump even appointed Kash Patel as FBI director, who had pushed for the public release of Epstein’s client list. Before becoming director, Patel said the FBI controlled Epstein’s “black book” and that President Trump should make it public on “day one” of his administration.
However, his supporters seemed to have forgotten that during Trump’s first term, he did not disclose Epstein’s investigative records to the public after federal prosecutors revived the case against Epstein in 2019, leading to his arrest and subsequent suicide in jail that same year. The only information released came through court proceedings and Freedom of Information Act requests during that period.
After Trump won his reelection by stoking MAGA expectations that the liberals of the deep state would finally be exposed as child abusers through the full release of the Epstein files, he reneged on his promise. He simply declared that releasing all the files was a "distraction" and a "hoax" pushed by the Democrats to deflect from Republican successes.
Trump defended his failure to release the files by saying Biden, as president, didn’t. He ignored that Biden refused to do so because the Epstein investigation was active, and investigative materials are normally kept confidential under U.S. law unless a court orders disclosure. Trump used the same logic to withhold Epstein investigative reports during his first term. But that case ended with Epstein’s partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, being convicted and now serving time in jail, before Trump’s second term.
The unintended result of his refusal to release the files, initially unforeseen by Trump and the Democrats, was that the cultural war that MAGA had directed against the liberal establishment now included Trump and his administration for protecting this elite group of perverts.
Despite Trump finally releasing thousands of pages of files, most had already been made public, and others were heavily redacted. Consequently, the wave of protests continued, with major MAGA leader Representative Marjorie Taylor Green and a handful of other Republican Representatives uniting with Democrats to pass a discharge petition. That rule allowed a floor House vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act. It could be devastating to Trump because it explicitly required the Department of Justice to publish all unclassified Epstein-related records. Green said, "He (Trump) called me a traitor for standing with these women (who claimed to be abused by Epstein’s practices) and refusing to take my name off this discharge petition."
On the day of the discharge vote, Trump met at the White House with two Republicans to urge them not to sign the discharge paper. They refused. When it became clear the House was going to pass the Act, Trump folded and called for the Republicans to pass it without informing the House Speaker, Mike Johnson, beforehand. It passed with only one dissenting House vote, while it passed the Senate unanimously.
Trump knew then that he had not quelled the right wing of his party into submission. Their revolt against the elite will continue, with Trump now firmly identified with it. The folders released contain many tantalizing tidbits to fuel conspiracies and investigative reports on who was involved in Epstein’s circle of friends who exploited young women.
One of the first items of interest will be Epstein’s infamous black book, which lists his friends. Both Forbes and Mother Jones reported that Epstein’s “little black book” of 1,571 personal contacts spanned 97 pages of names, numbers, and addresses of Epstein’s associates. Thirty-eight high-powered figures, including Trump, had their names circled.
And then there is the issue of the FBI’s prosecutors during Trump’s first presidential term seeking to investigate and potentially charge upwards of 10 possible co-conspirators who helped Epstein in his deeds. It was dropped into a black box without any evidence that it was pursued. Biden’s DOJ and Democratic congressional members didn’t even follow up on it.
These and other Epstein discoveries could identify those in the elite class who considered themselves above the law. The challenge for Trump is to redirect the attention of his aggrieved MAGA supporters and the 67% of registered Republican voters who, according to an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, supported releasing all Epstein documents.
That tactic involves distracting the public by engaging in one outrageous act after another. I described how his sending National Guard troops into Democratic-controlled cities helped him move the media away from fixating on the Epstein files before (The Art of Deflection, Look at Soldiers in Cities – Forget the Epstein Files). This time, he invaded Venezuela and kidnapped their corrupt leader, Nicolas Maduro, to bring him to America as a drug dealer. It worked. The media, Democrats, and Republicans began a frenzied debate over the legality, morality, and logic of Trump’s actions, obliterating coverage of the Epstein files.
However, Trump knows that a core of the MAGA movement is determined to uncover the truth about how members of the elite class have defiled our youth. They will not be deterred, even by the most imperial president we have had to date. Consequently, Trump will continue this tactic by threatening or actually invading Greenland or Iran in some manner.
In the meantime, Trump is trying to delay the release of the Epstein files. DOJ Secretary Pam Bondi is deliberately proceeding slowly in releasing all of the files. According to a court filing, Bondi had released less than 1% two weeks after the deadline required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
When they are released, entire pages have been redacted. Plus, he is employing a strategy of burying research in a mountain of minor or useless material to jam up the search for relevant findings. Hence, the DOJ now says it has over 2 million pages still to be released.
Trump is refusing to lose this cultural class war. He is probably confident that the Democrats will remain distracted by his actions because those actions pose serious threats to the stability of our nation. While the Democrats cannot ignore those threats, they must pursue their temporary alliance with MAGA and Republican leaders to release and analyze the Epstein files.
Democrats must not be concerned about who is named as an Epstein co-conspirator. If they are not committed to uncovering all the facts, they will be seen as just another enabler of an elitist class that ignores the law and our societal norms. That is a losing strategy politically for them, for our society’s well-being, and for our government’s accountability, which is already deeply discounted.
Fighting to release all the files is an opportunity for the Democrats to lead an authentic and principled cultural war.
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Nick Licata is the author of Becoming A Citizen Activist and Student Power, Democracy and Revolution in the Sixties. He is the founding board chair of Local Progress, a national network of over 1,300 progressive municipal officials.
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