Epstein's Legacy: Trump to Vance, Poilievre to Jivani?
Donald Trump may reach his untimely political end over some of the emasculating relevations still to come in the Epstein files, but the dictatorship he has created is not about to follow suit, and there are serious implications for Canada.
It has been widely known since the first time he ran that he is a serial sexual abuser — he admitted it himself on tape. But it is not the numerous substantiated rape and pedophilia allegations that will finally take him down — it is the mere innuendo that he may have touched another man. That is the crime his base cannot accept.
The now-famous email chain between Jeffrey Epstein and his brother Mark in which Mark says: “Ask him if Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba?” has the Internet abuzz. Bubba is a known nickname of former President Bill Clinton.
Whether Trump and Clinton have ever actually been in any such position is irrelevant. Mark denies that Bubba in this email chain refers to Clinton, though he doesn’t deny the existence of photos or specify who Bubba might otherwise be. The point is that people think it could be him.
When it comes to the obvious evidence of sexual abuse of young girls across the Epstein files, Trump’s defenders try to justify it. MAGA influencer Megyn Kelly, in her podcast earlier this week, tried to rationalise it by saying the kids weren’t under 10 years old (see this video starting around the 12:20 mark for the following two minutes):
Trump built a big part of his base around the QAnon conspiracy theory that said the United States was operated by a circle of child molesters who controlled the “deep state” and that Donald Trump was secretly trying to take it down. The reaction of his base since the increasingly obvious revelations that he is everything they hated have been, to say the least, bizarre. Justifying, rationalising, explaining, but never accepting that they have been tricked.
With the Bubba story, though, he has committed the cardinal sin: he has been linked, whether or not there is any truth to it, to homosexual activity. And that — unlike sexually abusing children, sending minorities to concentration camps, or lawlessly killing unnamed foreigners in their fishing boats — they cannot defend.
The White House has reacted with an almost comical effort to portray Trump and Melania as being in a happy straight relationship, after years of rather strong evidence to the contrary.
Trump, realising he has suddenly lost his own Republicans on the Epstein case after this revelation, of course suddenly announced that he wants the vote to pass and the Epstein files to be released, which it did by a margin of 427-to-1 last night. This after months of active obstruction, down to having his loyal Speaker refuse to swear in a newly elected congresswoman who’se arrival would cause the vote. Don’t get too excited though — this vote is to force Trump to release the files. He could order the release of the files without a vote, so this is just another means of obfuscation.
If this is what finally breaks the Trump presidency, it does not end the MAGA machine or the American descent into totalitarian dictatorship. If he resigns, dies, or cabinet invokes the 25th amendment, all three outcomes have the same result: JD Vance becomes president. Vance is vastly smarter than Trump and, at 41, is barely half Trump’s age. He is also not evident in the Epstein files.
He will quickly position himself as having rid the United States of the problems caused by Trump with himself as the solution, and continue the aggressive attacks on the country’s democratic institutions. Where Trump is starting to get pushback from congress and the courts, Vance is gambling that he can direct all of that against Trump’s legacy and not his own governance.
Trump is at his lowest popularity since he started his first campaign nearly a decade ago, with a net favourability rating of -18. Pierre Poilievre’s refusal to give up on Trump’s style is tying him to Trump’s sinking ship as well — his net rating is at a whopping -26. With Mark Carney governing like a grown-up and offering Canada a future on an outlook that is, for once, longer than just to the next election, Poilievre’s whiny, obviously dishonest, approach to politics is turning Canadians off in droves.
Ekos’s latest numbers but the Liberals ahead in every province in Canada, including Alberta (41 LPC to 35 CPC). This spells an obvious end to Poilievre’s leadership in January’s Conservative leadership review. This won’t leave the party headless: there is a keener who is ramping up his profile in an effort to capitalise on this failure: Bowmanville—Oshawa North MP Jamil Jivani, who replaced Erin O’Toole in a 2024 byelection. Canada’s Conservative media is getting behind him in a big way, with the National Post giving him a full-page spread on page 1 of this past Saturday’s paper.
Why that matters at this moment in time is that Jivani went to school with Vance, attended his vice presidential inauguration, and has been bragging for the past year about being close friends with the American vice president.
When Vance takes over the presidency and the authoritarian machinery that comes with it, his old friend Jivani will become his Canadian tool. Where better for him than as the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada?
Right now Jivani is trying to be the Canadian Charlie Kirk, going to post secondary institutions and doing the "prove me wrong" thing, which is promoted as a debate, but isn't. He is the next step up in nasty from Poilievre and Canada does not need him, but if the Conservatives choose him as leader, it will guarantee at least a Liberal majority in the next parliament and possibly one or two after that.
I wish this culture wasn't so fixated on individuals, and instead looked more closely at systems (policies, ideologies, worldviews, institutions, etc).
I was very confused when I first noticed this in the 1990's around Mike Harris who was Ontario Premier from 1995 to 2002. There was so much focus on an individual, as if this individual stepping down from politics would change anything. Of course, there are policies that were put in place at that time that are still in place, having not changed decades later by the various governments (different parties, different leaders, blah, blah, blah).
Donald Trump isn't all that relevant, and yet so many are fixated on that individual.
Same with Pierre Poilievre who is merely a more honest mirror of the more raw grievance politics Reform movement than the coalition-building that was seen with Stephen Harper. A few leadership races since (2017, 2020), and it was obvious by 2022 that the corporate membership wasn't interested in a "leader" wanting to build a coalition across all branches of conservatism.
This fixation on individuals makes what passes for “not Conservative” politics (I don’t know if liberal or progressive even apply) under Canada and the USA to be pretty much useless.
A future majority Conservative government still seems inevitable to me -- not because of "leadership", but because of a lack of relevant thought and messaging from alternatives who also remain fixated on ad hominem logical fallacies.