What I REALLY want to know about the news-behind-the-news is, why is Melania suddenly holding press conferences to say that she didn't know nothin' about Jeffrey Epstein and *especially* wasn't having a relationship with him?
I mean, with the right it's ALWAYS projection, right? So if she runs true to form for a conservative this probably means she had an affair with Ghislaine Maxwell.
@cstross - She's certainly throwing her husband under the bus here, both by bringing up this dreaded topic at all and second by never saying *he* was innocent of anything. And Trump claims he hadn't known she was going to make this announcement. Even if he's lying, as the report here suggests, that's a weird thing to say.
Current speculation is that due to legal discovery in her Michael Wolff lawsuit, embarrassing new evidence has come to light and she has been instructed to get in front of it.
@cstross I suspect this is part of her exit plan -- get Donnie so worked up and frothing he has a heart attack and kicks it. This was her absolutely and intentionally knifing him, metaphorically at least, and while she's horrible people she's also ruthless people and clever people.
I rather look forward to the infighting which I'm sure has already commenced.
Here is a quick primer on the developing Melania Trump drama. Today, Melania called a press conference to deny association with Jeffrey Epstein, blast stories linking her to Epstein, deny that she was his victim or that Epstein introduced her to Trump, and to call for public hearings for Epstein victims. These comments were ostensibly out of the blue and unlinked to any specific development. Stories linking Melania to Epstein have circulated for years. Why deny them now? ⬇️
@i_give_u_worms @mathowie @cstross And a little more background which is interesting.
oh if that's the reason for Melania's surprise presser, that makes everything so much more delicious. She really doesn't care one iota for her orange husband. I mean we all kinda knew, and he's someone worth throwing under the bus, but her complete self-obsessed protection is definitely throwing hubs under the bus.
Oh, the poor WH cleaning staff, so much ketchup to clean off the walls. Maybe those gold painted Home Depot detail motifs can be thrown in the wash?
Here is a quick primer on the developing Melania Trump drama. Today, Melania called a press conference to deny association with Jeffrey Epstein, blast stories linking her to Epstein, deny that she was his victim or that Epstein introduced her to Trump, and to call for public hearings for Epstein victims. These comments were ostensibly out of the blue and unlinked to any specific development. Stories linking Melania to Epstein have circulated for years. Why deny them now? ⬇️
@cstross Or she had in fact nothing to do with the sexual abuse, but _was_ having the corpses rendered down for otherwise unobtainable sourced-from-human-tissue anti-aging cosmetics. And she wants people to know that of course she would never be so déclassé as to ask about where the young pretty corpses were coming from.
If it isn't something somehow specifically excruciatingly embarrassing to the surviving principals, it's something your editor would never let you keep in the text.
48.7K Posts, 1.64K Following, 28.2K Followers · Scottish resident SF/F author (he/him/they/them). Three times Hugo Award winner, 30+ novels in print. Does not play well with Nazis. Abolish the monarchy! Born in a world with 320ppm atmospheric CO2, 3.3 billion people. @cstross.bsky.social on Bluesky blog at: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/ FOLLOW REQUESTS: don't expect a reciprocal follow. And I will reject requests from folks with no profile and/or no tooting history.
Huh. Looka that.
Of course, I always suspect them of antisemitism at some level, conscious or unconscious. That's just the Correct Default Position for guessing what most right-wingers think.
But I hadn't seen the structural, point-for-point analogy to blood libel.
It's... both disgusting and... *unoriginal*.
They can't even make up their own conspiracies!
@passenger In a patriarchal context, feminine power consists of who you are able to refuse.
The idea of not being able to refuse Jeffery Epstein despite a decades-long marriage to Trump (and all the personal and emotional costs that implies) would rankle; it's putting her back in the context of disposable prettiness which can be rendered down for cosmetics and no one cares. All this suffering has to be worth something.
Especially if in fact she couldn't and now everyone will know.
Her asshole husband Zampoli got her deported and was palling it up with Vance in Hungary this week too.
Possibly she doesn't want to be turned into golf course fertiliser as described here:
Redacted
@cstross She may be trying to get ahead of news that's going to come out about Donald Trump and his connection with Epstein.
Or it may be she was deeper in than we know. She may have known details of Epstein's trafficking. She may even have helped lure other girls into his net.
Anyway, I'm off to make popcorn...
Nixon: "I am not a crook."
Melania: "I have never been legally accused or convicted of a crime in connection with Epstein’s sex trafficking, abuse of minors, and other repulsive behavior."
She probably wants to head off any accusations so that she doesn't get in trouble with SVR's HR department for dating a co-worker.
My guess is that some Epstein victims are soon going to come out and accuse Melania of having recruited them as maids or some such, only to sell them later as sexual slaves to Epstein and company.
She had a terrible personal poll come out just before that apparently. I think she's oblivious AF and comes by it genuinely, just realized she was tanking...
>She's not running for office.
No, but I did see a blurb on that existing.
That makes sense. Wolff really gets under their skin. Good for him. So, she obviously had way more of a relationship with Epstein/Maxwell than previously realized. Like you say, projection. I bet she's way more implicated in assisting trafficking and that's one of the reasons Donnie is so darn prickly on the subject.
Good Lord, insanely accurate
With so many zombies wandering around above ground, there's a few you could charge with that.
Maybe what she fears is people becoming aware that his husband was used to go to Epstein to get women, she is a woman, and his husband got her, so maybe it was a match made through Epstein Women Catalog for Gentlemen.
Just saying.
@cstross 2 theories:
1. She's trying to give her husband a heart attack by bringing up the #EpsteinFiles so she can just get her inheritance already and stop having to pretend to like him
2. She's been taking PR advice from Barbara Streisand
@cstross
I'm told there is a reason offered here
https://www.threads.com/@lavishtantrums/post/DW711k2jFie
One of her model friends has been deported, and need no longer stay quiet.
Here is a quick primer on the developing Melania Trump drama. Today, Melania called a press conference to deny association with Jeffrey Epstein, blast stories linking her to Epstein, deny that she was his victim or that Epstein introduced her to Trump, and to call for public hearings for Epstein victims. These comments were ostensibly out of the blue and unlinked to any specific development. Stories linking Melania to Epstein have circulated for years. Why deny them now? ⬇️
I have an alternative hypothesis.
I suspect she wants all of DT's money.
If he dies -- and he will, soon, obviously -- the money gets split up according to his will, which probably doesn't do much for her.
If she divorces him, the prenup controls. Again, not so much.
But if he goes to prison, she can almost certainly have the pre-nup broken, and in New York and Florida, business interests are generally considered part of an equitable settlement.
So it is to her advantage, I think, to get him imprisoned and divorced, in that order, ASAP.
I wonder if she has a clever lawyer who doesn't report to DT?
@dashdsrdash @cstross No chance of getting him imprisoned, sadly. The Supreme Court have pretty much said in so many words that he's above the law.
Maybe the will isn't too mean to her?
@statsguy @dashdsrdash @cstross Or she found a way to get him to rewrite it favorably? He is a couple of bits short of a byte, after all.
Or maybe she's in cahoots with the lawyer that drafted the agreements. Who knows.
I knew someone who was convinced to move from Florida to California and then understood, after the fact, that the real motivation lay in the fine points of divorce law. Something or other to do with joint property I believe.
(Also the basis of that particular relationship, in the beginning, was their lack of a common language.)
@dashdsrdash @cstross
Truely, she has internalised the values of America. I think she is just protecting herself against ICE deportation under President Vance. (He needs a nickname, BTW. How about "Peter Thiel"? Vance-pyre?)
I mean, she's going to get detained - too well-tanned. But such a true American - no deportation.
Write the script! I might go to THAT movie.
Finding a lawyer who isn't "dirty" would be a problem.
There's a story out today about a former friend whose ex-husband was their photographer back in the day. The couple were involved in a custody battle and he got ICE involved to deport her, with Melania's help maybe. The woman's been posting threats to Mel from Brazil about "spilling things."
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