In the wake of Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide, a thousand conspiracy theories have bloomed. And then there’s the one that was retweeted by Donald Trump. Trump, obviously, is Team The Clintons Did It. Sure, Epstein was left without a cellmate and went for hours without a check-in from guards, when, as a person recently off of suicide watch, he should have been checked on every 30 minutes. But there is no scenario too outlandish for Trump to try to wedge the Clintons into.
It’s true that the most obvious Epstein conspiracy theory is one that Trump was never going to embrace: The guy died in a federal prison. It probably makes more sense to look at the guy at the top of the federal government than at the guy who was at the top of the federal government 20 years ago. And, in addition to the fact that Trump was looking to distract from #TrumpBodyCount, Occam’s Razor doesn’t typically apply to conspiracy theories.
Still, Trump had another option besides choosing which conspiracy theory to tweet out. After Charlottesville’s white supremacist violence, he claimed, “Before I make a statement, I need the facts.” A sensible statement that was ridiculous at the time as a thing for Trump to claim to be doing, but it’s never too late to start.
What about Trump’s aides? “I think we're beyond the point of trying to control these things,” a senior White House official told Axios of Trump’s conspiracy theory retweet. We knew they’d never been able to control these things, but beyond the point of even trying? That’s pathetic.
There are questions about Epstein’s death that need to be answered. But the jump to conspiracy theory by the person who was ultimately responsible for the prison in which Epstein was housed is outrageous, and it’s Donald Trump all over.
