FRIDAY, JANUARY 2, 2026
Last summer, he went with another: There's an iceberg-adjacent quality to the moral and intellectual squalor we're describing as "Squalor Red."
On the day Jeffrey Epstein died—way back in August 2019—it was easy to spot the part of the berg which sat above the surface. As we noted earlier in the week, the squalor was open to view at that time—for example, in this real-time news report by the Washington Post:
Trump retweets conspiracy theory tying the Clintons to Epstein’s death
President Trump used his Twitter account Saturday to spread a baseless conspiracy theory about the death of Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy and politically connected financier who had been facing multiple charges of sex trafficking involving underage girls.
Trump’s Justice Department announced that Epstein, who was being held in a federal corrections facility, died by “apparent suicide.”
But Trump appeared to disregard his administration’s statement, instead retweeting a message from conservative actor and comedian Terrence K. Williams, who suggested that Epstein’s death might be tied to former president Bill Clinton...
The claim is completely unsubstantiated...
He hadn't waited even a day! Also, the claim he advanced was "completely unsubstantiated," the Post report correctly said.
Starting with four years of ridiculous claims about the place of Barack Obama's birth, that sitting president has been a highly visible source of "the problem we all [currently] live with." In the case of this latest "theory," the president later acknowledged that he had "no idea" if the "theory was true, but he had rushed out to message it anyway.
All in all, what else is new? For whatever reason, that sitting president has been a key part of Squalor Red since at least 2011, when he started pimping his birtherism on the Fox News Channel. And with that, we offer a spoiler alert:
Ever since he started doing that, Squalor Blue has involved the refusal of Blue America's journalistic elites to come to terms with this president's squalid behavior—with the failure of those elites to direct a journalistic focus on this highly destructive behavior.
On and on the squalid behavior has gone, with Blue eyes averting their gaze.
Tomorrow, we'll offer more on the failure to serve which constitutes a major part of Squalor Blue. For today, let's return to the squalid behavior which has been driving Squalor Red over the past fifteen years.
In August 2019, the sitting president had instantly spread a poisonous message—Bill and Hillary Clinton were somehow involved in Jeffrey Epstein's death! This summer, but also just in the past few weeks, he engaged in a related burst of messaging about former president Clinton.
This new messaging involved a claim which would seem to be clownishly false—a claim that the former president had taken dozens to trips to Epstein's private island in the Caribbean. On August 1, 2025, FactCheck.org reported on this latest poisonous conduct. With apologies for the length of our excerpt—no, you can't fit this on a bumper sticker!—we show you how that report stated:
Trump Offers No Evidence for Claim About Bill Clinton and Epstein Island
Former President Bill Clinton flew multiple times on airplanes belonging to the late Jeffrey Epstein. But there is no evidence that Clinton visited the convicted sex offender’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands “28 times,” as President Donald Trump has claimed.
In a 2019 statement posted on social media, a spokesman for Clinton acknowledged that he traveled on Epstein’s planes during several international trips in 2002 and 2003, when he was no longer president. However, the statement said that Clinton never went to the Caribbean island that was Epstein’s primary residence.
But in recent interviews, Trump—who has been under public pressure to release files related to Epstein’s crimes—invoked Clinton’s connection to Epstein as Trump responded to questions from reporters about his own past friendship with the disgraced financier who was arrested on charges of sex trafficking of minors in July 2019 and died in prison a month later...
“And by the way, I never went to the island, and Bill Clinton went there, supposedly, 28 times,” Trump said when answering questions about Epstein while in Scotland on July 28.
Days earlier, during a July 25 press gaggle outside the White House, Trump made the same claim about Clinton when a reporter asked Trump if he was considering pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell...
“Well, I don’t want to talk about that,” Trump said to the reporter who asked. “You ought to be speaking about Bill Clinton, who went to the island 28 times. I never went to the island.”
There the sitting president had gone again! He'd made another baseless but poisonous claim directed at Bill Clinton!
One key point should be noted here--there has never been any evidence showing that President Trump ever visited Epstein's island. As far as we know, his claim that he himself never went there remains presumptively true.
"I never went to the island," President said last July. We assume that statement is accurate—but that's when the egregious misconduct starts.
Even as he made that denial, the president directed his latest fact-challenged accusation at former president Clinton. Bill Clinton went there 28 times, he now said.
(In one instance, he added the weasel word "supposedly," presumably as a way to keep his statement "technically accurate.")
It was a second poisonous charge, joined to the earlier claim in which the Clintons had somehow played a role in Jeffrey Epstein's death. To its credit, FactCheck.org offered a lengthy, detailed report about this latest accusation--but in the latest manifestation of the conduct we regard as a major part of Squalor Blue, major news orgs in Blue America largely averted their gaze from this latest squalid conduct.
In its August 1 report, FactCheck.org offered this familiar statement about President Trump's latest round of astounding misbehavior:
"We asked the White House for the source of Trump’s recent claim about Clinton, but we have not received an answer."
What a shock! Once again, the White House hadn't bothered to explain this latest poisonous conduct. Meanwhile, the bulk of Blue American org, including the New York Times, did what they've done for the past fifteen years, including in the matter of the original "birther" claims:
There our big orgs went again! Knees knocking, crippled by fear—perhaps not especially sharp to begin with—the major orgs of Blue America averted their gaze once again. As with so many other bizarre behaviors, they refused to build a journalistic focus around this squalid conduct.
They normalize this astounding behavior. As the poet Frost once said:
"Something we were withholding made us weak."
Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he never went to Epstein's island. That said, Bill Clinton has also said that he never went there, as FactCheck.org duly noted.
Why then was President Trump making this latest bout of poisonous claims? With a bit of regret for ever tackling this complex topic, we'll explore that matter in more detail tomorrow—and we'll paint a clearer picture of the second major squalor we're all living with today.
We refer to the refusal to come to terms with the endless squalor of Squalor Red. It's that basic flight from journalistic duty we refer to as Squalor Blue.
For fifteen years, Squalor Red has been sitting right there on the surface. Down below, submerged by a frigid sea, Squalor Blue has proven to be much harder for us in Blue Nation to spot.
Tomorrow: Nothing to look at! Look over here! (Squalor Blue keeps averting its gaze.)
