“The Epstein files are a distraction.”
It’s a popular response from your MAGA-loving friends who spent the last five years convinced that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a scandal bigger than Watergate. It’s a popular response from the White House, where a guy who’s most definitely in those files, has spent the better part of the last three months trying everything imaginable to keep those files hidden from the public.
(He very strangely started encouraging House Republicans on Sunday to vote for their release, which means he’s either been assured by the Republicans in the Senate that they’ll block their release or that his attorney general who helped him cover up fraud previously has found a way to prevent the release of the files in which he’s named.)
Yes, yes, a great big distraction—that’s what the Epstein files are. Although, that’s probably not how his thousand or so victims would see them. Nor is it how most Americans see them.
But let’s say for a moment that Donald Trump and his Republican enablers are right. That the files are meaningless. That they’re nothing more than a shiny object that the Democrats are using to distract the American people.
Um … distracting them from what, exactly?
I don’t know if y’all have looked around at America since Jan 20, 2025, but America is a mess. And it is a special kind of mess if you’re poor or working class.
That’s a big deal, since it was the poor and working class, specifically, who Trump promised to help in the last election. In fact, in early January, after he was elected, Trump stated publicly that American consumers could very quickly expect to “see some pretty drastic price reductions.”
But the opposite has been true. The rich have gotten richer. The poor have gotten poorer.
Every marker imaginable tells us this is true. Fortune last week reported that wage growth in 2025 among America’s lowest earners is at its lowest in more than a decade (after climbing under Biden). More than half of all spending this year has come from the top 10 percent of earners, according to Moody’s. And CEOs from America’s top companies are now openly discussing the bifurcated economy with shareholders.
Trump’s policies have only exacerbated the problem. And seemingly intentionally.
For God’s sakes, while stripping health care away from 4 million people and cutting food stamps to veterans, the guy’s signature spending bill gave rich people a full tax write-off for their private jets. That’s a real thing, and somehow some of y’all think he’s on your side still.
He’s not. And honest to God, I don’t know what it’s going to take for many of you to see this. I can’t watch a ballgame without 10 ads from do-nothing, paper-thin politicians proclaiming to be a “Trump Republican,” and for the life of me, I can’t understand how that’s a positive attribute that winds up in a campaign ad.
I get that a lot of this can be traced back to the team aspect of politics—where actions matter far less than party affiliation—but what does a guy on your team need to do to you before you start placing your allegiances elsewhere?
What if he, for example, sides with the crooks at airlines who overbook your flights and leave you stranded, with no recourse? Or what if he sided with major credit card companies who used shady tricks to charge exorbitant fees that you could never challenge?
Only a real jackass would do that, right?
Probably. Since Trump did.
Last week, the Trump administration began efforts to roll back a Biden-era consumer protections that required airlines to give customers cash, food and lodging in instances where flights were significantly delayed or cancelled due to the airlines’ negligence.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration also removed the Biden-era cap on credit card late fees, which required large credit card companies to prove that their costs required consumers to pay more than a $8 late fee. They couldn’t prove it, of course, so they got the new president—you know, the one who is supposed to be looking out for the little guy—to end it for them.
Trump did the same thing with overdraft fees—removing a Biden cap that limited the fees to $5.
He did the same thing to the IRS direct filing program, which allowed some Americans to file their taxes for free. Gone.
He did the same for protections from “buy now, pay later” services, which under Biden’s rules would have been required to adhere to regulations like traditional credit lenders. Now, we’re back to the shady old practices of the past.
Do you see the pattern here?
There’s a reason that income inequality and the wage gap both shrank during the Biden years, and there’s a reason why in less than a year, those gaps have started to grow again. It’s not by accident. And as you can see from the difference in policies, it’s certainly not because of Biden.
Everything Trump has done in his very short span in office a second time—from the tariffs to the tax breaks to the criminal acts against Hispanic people to his annihilation of fairly basic consumer protections—has all been catered to the rich at the expense of the poor and working class. And you know it.
So, you know what, maybe the Epstein files are a distraction.
A distraction from how truly awful Trump has been for 90 percent of this country.
