If every accusation from Donald Trump and the MAGA movement is a confession, then every outlandish statement or stunt they produce can be read as a distraction from the Epstein Files. Despite Trump's own promise to release the files if he won the 2024 election, he has done everything in his power to keep them from seeing the light of day. From the initial claims of a "Democratic hoax" to Pam Bondi asserting there was "no Epstein Client List" — after previously saying it was sitting on her desk — the self-described "most transparent administration in history" has been anything but. Recall the White House photo op featuring multiple MAGA influencers holding binders full of redacted pages — an event in late 2024 that was billed as the files' public release but instead showcased heavily blacked-out documents.

Now that Bondi has been replaced by Todd Blanche, who has joined forces with Speaker Mike Johnson, the prospects of further disclosures from this administration appear bleak. Johnson has already announced that the House will be sent home for the last two weeks of September — a move some say is designed to avoid a floor vote on the Epstein Files. House members are already scheduled to be in their districts in October, keeping them away from Washington right up to the midterms, now just over a year out. With the exception of Rep. Thomas Massie, it is glaringly obvious that all House Republicans are participating in the Epstein cover-up, and Senate Republicans can be assumed to be as well — though at least they are not taking weeks off at a time (except Mitch McConnell, who is reportedly returning "soon").

House Democrats could use that recess time not only to focus on winning the midterms and boosting downballot candidates, but also to create a Democratic press secretary position — a cause this column will keep raising, just as it will never stop talking about the Epstein Files.

In the meantime, the administration sent Vice President JD Vance out to handle a press conference on Thursday, and it went about as well as might be expected. Vance refused to call the Iran war a war, then made disparaging remarks about the upcoming memorial honoring the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks and joked about looking forward to hanging out with former President Joe Biden at the ceremony. He conveniently sidestepped the fact that he is only attending because Trump was denied the chance to deliver a speech and is staying home.

Republicans are in disarray at the moment, but they cannot let that show, so they are pulling focus in a million different directions. Beyond the Iran war itself, Trump's upcoming two-day "Midterm RNC" event looks poised to be a disaster. Expect poor optics from an "Epstein Filesmobile" parked out front. Most invited Republicans are declining to attend, meaning Trump will end up speaking to a mostly empty audience — after which he will declare it a roaring success, and continue offering a different daily take on Iran depending on whom he last spoke with.

The cringe factor has now exceeded anything previously seen from either political party. The GOP keeps looking the other way every time Trump embarrasses the country, still pretending everything he does is fine even as he remains a major national security concern.

They are currently treating it as perfectly normal for Trump to arbitrarily rename Lake Ontario as "Lake America," with Apple and Google falling in line. The push traces back to a post earlier this year in which Trump declared the U.S.-Canada lake should bear its new name, and the swap appeared in Apple Maps and Google Maps once federal sources adopted it. But someone at MapQuest not only declined to adopt the "Lake America" name — the company created a meme generator letting people invent their own names for the lake. The episode echoes the earlier, officially sanctioned renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America," which drew both compliance from some platforms and pushback — including legal action from the Associated Press — over how the new name would be applied.

Meanwhile, Trump loyalists are celebrating plans to build him an arch. Gas prices remain astronomical (with diesel hitting an all-time high), whatever food is not contaminated or recalled is extremely expensive, measles has made a comeback, and other hardships keep piling up — but Trump is getting his arch. It is unclear why Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is so enthusiastic about something no one asked for and no one needs. Washington, D.C. does not belong to Trump, any more than the White House does. Trump has said the arch is being built to "honor himself" — with taxpayer dollars. The same Republicans who once objected to Michelle Obama planting a vegetable garden at the White House are now pretending all of this is normal, presumably because they fear what Trump might reveal about them.

And there is always more distraction from the Epstein Files. The White House website has introduced a new online video game in which players pretend to be ICE agents who "deport illegals." Pairing recklessness with hostility in this way risks spawning genuinely harmful offline incidents — a concern that has followed the administration's immigration messaging as enforcement operations have expanded nationwide. Meanwhile, MAGA influencers — already paid to promote Trump — are now praising Flock surveillance cameras and data centers, regardless of privacy concerns or reports of people being issued tickets for traffic violations they did not commit. Flock's license-plate readers are already widely deployed by police departments across the country, and civil-liberties groups have warned for years about the surveillance networks they enable. Questions about clean drinking water, farmable land, and breathable air are being set aside as data centers replace workers and further enrich billionaires — an AI-driven construction boom whose water and power demands have already strained communities in several states.

All of this, compounded by GOP threats to interfere with midterm votes, makes clear how much dysfunction now occupies the highest offices in the land. Don't get distracted.

Source: Raw Story