How a coalition of Esptein truthers could shepherd in a bipartisan political ‘realignment’

The New Yorker’s Jay Caspian Kang says that life after President Donald Trump may not be what people expect, as an “abrupt realignment” in politics may emerge from, of all places, the scandal surrounding deceased convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.Kang describes the situation surrounding the scandal as “Planet Epstein.””That planet is an information ecosystem where all major global events are connected to the sex-trafficking conspiracy that supposedly rules the world,” Kang explains, adding that “in the past few months, I have been trying to gauge how much of the American public is now convinced that a cabal of pedophiles runs the world.”While polls have shown that most Americans do believe the government is hiding information about Epstein and his cohorts, Kang notes that “there is a difference between suspecting a coverup and going full Pizzagate-conspiracy mode, drawing connections among [former U.S. Treasury Secretary and Harvard University president Larry] Summers, Epstein, Trump, Bill Clinton, [Israeli national intelligence agency] Mossad, and the sudden rise of the A.I. industry, which now seems to be propping up a large part of the world economy — and then concluding that some shadowy group of oligarchs rules us all.”Following the votes to release the Epstein files and the defection of former Trump acolyte Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) from the House, Kang argues “we are in the middle of a quietly revolutionary moment in this country, which began with the pandemic and the protests stemming from the murder of George Floyd by a police officer.””The subsequent unrest has taken on a variety of forms, including a continued and drastic decline in trust of the traditional news media and attacks on universities from both the left and the right,” he adds. That unrest, he writes, “was also channeled into Trump’s 2024 campaign, which was less about any one issue than it was about a renewed and utterly hollow promise to drain the swamp all over again.”The Epstein scandal has provided “a single theory of the world” that didn’t rely on partisan leanings to feed that “insurrectionary energy,” Kang writes.”Epstein has provided that. Lest we forget, Epstein died more than six years ago now, and although the story certainly had not been forgotten by the public, it had at least been moved to a low-heat back burner when Greene; Thomas Massie, a U.S. representative from Kentucky; and a handful of other politicians began to talk about the Epstein files again,” he says.Kang says that a little over a month ago, he wrote that “on Planet Epstein, everything that happens — the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the war in Gaza, the suppression of speech by the Trump Administration — serves as proof that the country is run by blackmail, pedophilia and fealty to Israel.””I do not think very many Americans buy into every part of that story, and I imagine that a great number would be rightfully appalled by the implicit and explicit antisemitism in this view of the world,” he added.Now, Kang says, “In hindsight, I fear that I might have undersold the number of Americans who do believe all those things.”Rising from the “Epstein mess,” Kang writes, is Greene, whose “sudden resignation only adds another chapter to the conspiracy narrative on Planet Epstein.””America loves righteous defectors, and her turn away from Trump — along with her newly measured tone when speaking in big-time media interviews or, last week, in front of the Capitol, flanked with Epstein survivors — turned someone who was an embarrassment into one of the more formidable members of the House of Representatives,” Kang notes.And while Kang doubts that “Greene, freed from Congress, and in spite of her past nuttiness and humiliations,” will “become the magnet who pulls together the populist right and the populist,” he does expect her to run for president with “someone from the insurrectionary left as her running mate.””Such a campaign would certainly feature a lot of talk about Epstein and Israel, and would likely call for a new vision of the country that did away with what Greene called traitors who serve “foreign countries and themselves,” Kang muses.As for how such a ticket would fare against more mainstream politicians on either side, Kang says not very well, probably, because “political inertia and the two-party system are still powerful forces, despite the Epstein revolution that’s taking place on every smartphone in the country.”Whatever does ensue, Kang writes, he is certain that “political life after Trump will be defined by odd ideological pairings that do not follow the political lines of the past twenty years. An abrupt realignment now feels more probable than endless polarization.””Some of the surprises that result from this realignment, such as [NYC mayor elect Zohran] Mamdani’s unlikely victory, will surely cause both hope and fear, as people grapple with the unexpected. But I do not think that we can fully predict the alliances to come, nor the new order they will bring,” he concludes.

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