MAGA Epstein fury shows even Trumpers have a line they will not cross

As Republicans continue their journey backwards in time to a dark place before science, vaccines, critical thinking, diplomacy, and decency, it is important the rest of us understand that it is what is still ahead that really matters — hard as that can be right now.

While I was crashing through my newspapers on Sunday morning, reading about all the Republican blood and gore flowing down off Capitol Hill, I decided to settle my stomach, and try something else.

So I poured another cup of coffee, rubbed my tired eyes, and googled: “ACTUARIAL LIFE TABLE OBESE 79-YEAR-OLD WHITE MAN.”

The answer is roughly 86, maybe even less because all these tables I looked at wouldn't factor in the “obese” part of my hasty query.

You already know whose life expectancy I was looking into …

Donald Trump is a very sick old man, and cult leader, who doesn’t have much longer.

This is a real relief to those of us from the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut area who have been sick and tired of this sick and tired guy for going on 50 years. We’ve always known he was a loudmouth, bigot, cheater, and liar, but we didn’t know until 2016 how many of us also thought this loudmouth, bigot, cheater and liar should be president.

That one’s admittedly been a tragic eye-opener for me, and many of my old friends might as well be dead and gone, because I want nothing to do with them.

Other people outside the tri-state area, stumbled onto the guy when he was in debt to seemingly everybody, and was bailed out by landing a starring role as a ruthless businessman on some stupid reality TV show that has contributed to the dumbing-down of America.

By 2015, the mass media decided everybody else needed to be introduced to the career loudmouth, bigot, cheater and liar, and after he descended in the direction of hell on that escalator, they shoved him down our throats in a steady stream.

Thus began the beginning of the end ...

That was 10 years ago now, and easily the longest century in American politics.

He should be in jail for his attack on America, but I’ve written that column before, and would rather focus this one on his end date, which we know for sure is taking up all his time these days.

The ghastly Trump is the most self-involved man on the planet. How else to explain the hours and hours he spends in front of the mirror taping stringy, hyena-colored hair strands to his head and puffing them up just so, while slathering gooey, rust-orange paste to his face.

He looks completely ridiculous, of course, but makes sure to surround himself with a steady collection of ass-kissers, who would never dare tell him the truth.

Billions around the world know, though ...

And it’s when he gets out of his protective, choreographed bubble these days where he really starts running into trouble.

Four weeks ago, I wrote a piece, Stick a Fork Him, because I didn’t (and still don’t) believe that with a chilling 1,430 days left in his grotesque presidency that he has the stamina or the ability to make it to the end.

He is crashing.

I wrote that piece in the wake of his sudden surrender to world leaders at the G7 Summit in Canada. The haggard Trump was out of his tiny element, and in a faraway place.

Mostly he was lost, and outclassed by the younger, smarter leaders who know for sure that time is on their side, and Trump is best when he’s left in his protective, million-gallon Tupperware container.

The diminishing orange man couldn’t even fake a 3rd-grader’s understanding of world affairs, so he did what any outclassed and failing person would do: He just wandered away. He left the meetings early because of “What’s going on in the Middle East” but really because the “dog-ate-my-homework” excuse had finally reached its shelf life.

The world leaders who remained at the summit no doubt let out a deep sigh of relief, and went on with their business professionally and in peace and quiet.

Canada’s savvy new leader, Mark Carney, seated a young, up-and-comer named Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had energetically traveled 5,000 miles just to be there, in Trump’s empty chair.

I still don’t think that this first-class shade and 1,000-watt signaling got enough attention, so let’s do something about that:

That’s the bearded Zelenskyy seated to Carney's left in the chair that had been occupied by the low-energy Trump, who abandoned the meetings to update the color of his face after his long nap home.

Four weeks later, things have only gotten worse for the failing Trump — much worse.

He is literally abandoning the world and isolating himself in his safe, golden cocoon. Each day he is becoming tinier and cheaper as his old attention-grabbing schtick now dribbles off his chapped lips and onto his stained bib.

He is the old man screaming at people he can no longer see to stay off his lawn.

The world doesn’t much care. They are moving on, forming new alliances, because they, too, know how to read an actuarial table.

This weekend the Fox Sewer System released 40-minutes of propaganda from their dear leader as he took a series of scathing questions from his daughter-in-law.

Read that again: HIS DAUGHTER-IN-LAW.

So I’ll bite: What would have been the reaction in the press if Joe Biden had done this?

Even parts of Trump’s odious base are peeling away from him. Not because he is taking their health care away, or because he would rather see them drown than get help from catastrophic flooding that is overrunning so many of their towns, but because pedophilia is a line-crosser even for them.

Rather than releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files as he campaigned on, to expose the “abuse of children by the elites,” Trump is just trying to make the whole thing go away.

Wait’ll these MAGAs find out that Trump referred o Epstein as a “fun and terrific guy who likes beautiful women as much as (he does), and many of them are on the younger side …"

They are promising this isn’t going away, but Trump is …

Regular readers will know I don’t see the end of Trump as the end of all our problems, but I do see it as a helluva hopeful start. He has re-exposed a dark underbelly of America that is only skin-deep. Nobody in my lifetime has been as effective at exploiting race and gender to his political advantage as this sickly old man.

As every hour and day ticks by we are moving closer to his end. That day is coming as sure as I am typing this. Not even a professional, lowlife grifter like Trump can cheat death.

One day, hard as it is to imagine right now, he will be extinct, and it will be our jobs to make sure as much of his gruesome legacy as possible dies with him.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)