DESPERATELY SEEKING THE BEST: Has Blue America followed the instincts...

MONDAY, JULY 14, 2025

...of its wisest people? In fairness, anyone can make a clumsy statement, especially when they're talking.

According to Attorney General Pam Bondi, that's what happened to Attorney General Pam Bondi back on February 21.

Bondi was asked a fairly straightforward question during a Fox News interview. When John Roberts asked, Bondi gave what seemed to be a fairly straightforward answer. 

ROBERTS (2/21/25): I saw your appearance at CPAC with Bannon and with Ted Cruz, and one of the things that you alluded to, and this is something Donald Trump has talked about--

The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients? Will that really happen?

BONDI: It’s sitting on my desk right now to review. That’s been a directive by President Trump. I’m reviewing that.

She seemed to have said that the aforementioned client list was "sitting on [her] desk!"

By now, we've been told that no such client list exists. Jost last week, the attorney general explained:

BONDI (7/8/25):  In February, I did an interview on Fox, and it's been getting a lot of attention because I was asked a question about the client list, and my response was, "It's sitting on my desk to be reviewed"—meaning the file, along with the JFK, MLK files as well. That's what I meant by that. 

According to Bondi, that's what she meant by what she said on that earlier fateful day. We can't swear that her explanation is bogus. On the other hand, this:

That's what Bondi says she meant on February 21. On February 27, she may have seemed to stage a bit of a gong show, as reported that day by CBS News:

Right-wing influencers get binders labeled "The Epstein Files," but downplay revelations

A group of 15 right-wing influencers visited the White House on Thursday and emerged with binders labeled "The Epstein Files: Phase 1" that they obtained from Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has vowed to release information held by the Justice Department about the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

But some of those who received the binder said there was little new information in the files. Bondi later released a statement with links to the documents, and said, "The first phase of declassified files largely contains documents that have been previously leaked but never released in a formal capacity by the U.S. Government."

Torn away from the work they love, the influencers had been flown to D.C., only to get a bunch of material everyone already had!

Some were peeved at their inclusion in the weird event. Aa of today, David French reports the ongoing fallout from this rolling mess in his new column for the New York Times:

MAGA Is Tearing Itself Apart Over Jeffrey Epstein

Last week President Trump’s Department of Justice delivered a blow to one of the foundational beliefs of the MAGA movement, one that helped carry him back to the White House.

In an unsigned memorandum, the department declared that there was no evidence that Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced deceased convicted sexual predator, maintained a client list or that he blackmailed prominent individuals for various misdeeds. The memorandum also declared that Epstein committed suicide.

Most Americans saw this news (if they saw it at all) and barely raised an eyebrow. The Epstein story was part of the past; he died in 2019. But it detonated like a bomb in the MAGA universe. Pro-Trump influencers with vast audiences couldn’t believe what they were reading.

[...]

The Epstein story mattered so much in MAGA circles because it was a key element in their indictment of America’s so-called ruling class. Trump’s appeal to the Republican base isn’t just rooted in his supporters’ extraordinary affection for the man; it’s also rooted in their almost indescribably dark view of the American government.

On the farthest fringes of this movement, that "almost indescribably dark view of the American government" has included the belief that—well, you've heard it all before, but this is the way the leading authority starts: 

QAnon

QAnon is a far-right American political conspiracy theory and political movement that originated in 2017. QAnon centers on fabricated claims made by an anonymous individual or individuals known as "Q". Those claims have been relayed and developed by online communities and influencers. Their core belief is that a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic child molesters in league with the deep state is operating a global child sex trafficking ring and that Donald Trump is secretly leading the fight against them. 

And so on from there. "QAnon has direct roots in Pizzagate," the authority sadly reports.

So it goes as we the people continue to learn about the types of claims we humans may be inclined to believe, even with great fervor. All in all, sometimes we're "the rational animal," but a lot of the time it looks like we just aren't!

At any rate, turmoil has erupted in the wake of official reports according to which Jeffrey Epstein didn't leave a client list and actually wasn't murdered. That seems to mean that he wasn't even murdered by Hillary Clinton! 

(On the Fox News Channel's Gutfeld! show, the program's deeply peculiar host keeps implying, night after night, that Hillary Clinton really is a person who goes around killing people. So it goes as the American experiment flirts with reaching its end, thanks in large part to the endless misconduct produced on this gruesome channel.)

In these post-"democratization of media" days, this is the way corporate messaging is now delivered to those who may be inclined to be influenced. In the case of the Gutfeld! program, the Fox News Channel assembles an ever-shifting panel of flyweights to drive its mountains of messaging forward, even as Blue America's mainstream media agree to avert their gaze.

Bondi has now explained what she says she meant. Still, a large part of the pro-Trump base is in a very large fury. Meanwhile, the president has returned to the threat of imposing very large tariffs on countries which displease him—and he says he has somehow discovered a fact about Vladimir Putin which everyone else had somehow managed to know all along.

All in all, the American discourse is a rapidly rolling clown car. It has been for some time. 

This flies in the face of what we've long been told about our status as "the rational animal." But the clown show will roll along without anyone making a major attempt to rethink or recast that ancient delusion.

In one of his latest furious posts, President Trump has said he can't understand why his followers are upset with Bondi. Last Tuesday, he said he can't understand why reporters still want to talk about Jeffrey Epstein, ignoring the way his own top aides have been promoting the topic for years.

This is the shape of American discourse in The Summer of 25. Long ago and far away, in a famous skit on Saturday Night Live, Jon Lovitz, cast as a bewildered Michael Dukakis, made a bewildered statement whose spirit lives on today:

I can't believe I'm losing to this guy!

The Dukakis character made that statement about Candidate George H. W. Bush, who was in fact on his way to a win in the 1988 White House campaign. At the time, the bewilderment seemed funny and instructive. 

Carried into the present day, Blue America might ask ourselves a related question. That said, the whole framework probably doesn't seem especially funny now.

Last November, for the second time, we Blues (narrowly) lost the White House to the candidate who sits at the head of the movement encompassing QAnon and the Epstein client list. 

There's also concern about chemtrails, or possibly contrails. Mediaite reports:

Trump EPA Honcho Comes to Defense of Americans With ‘Questions’ About Chemtrails

President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin launched two new resources to deliver “total transparency” for Americans curious about “geoengineering and contrails,” whom he said had been unfairly “vilified” for years for questions asked in “good faith.”

[...]

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other agencies, contrails are produced by a combination of water vapor in aircraft engine exhaust ejected at low ambient temperatures....

The “chemtrails” conspiracy theory posits that the white condensation trails left by airplanes are toxic chemical or biological sprays spread by nefarious actors. Followers of the idea speculate on a range of reasons, including population manipulation and weather control.

Zeldin’s announcement drew immediate backlash from Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), who is co-chair of Caucus On Climate and called the proposal to investigate “genuinely insane.”

For better or worse, Rep. Beyer dropped the I-bomb on the head of Zeldin's proposal. With respect to the current endless turmoil, we would mainly recommend this:

For those of us in Blue America, it's long been easy to mock the part of the MAGA base which may be drawn to somewhat exotic beliefs and concerns. We Blues have shown little interest in exploring a related question:

How is it possible that we have managed to lose to these guys two times? 

There's more than one way to answer that question. This week, we'll start to explore this possibility:

Is it possible that we Blues have somehow done certain things unwisely?

In what ways might we Blues have gone wrong? Is it possible that we Blues have shown imperfect political judgment down through the many failed years?

It's long past time for us to seek the answer to such questions. This week, the surprising name of a new podcast will provide the starting point for our exploration.

No people are uninteresting, Yevtushenko said. We've recommended the spirit of that point of view down through these dangerous years.

Tomorrow: No people are uninteresting, Yevtushenko said