Opinion
These MAGA women call out an alleged GOP sexual predator. It’s not who you hope it is
As part of my endless pursuit of the truth, I continue to try to annoy Mace enough that she’ll finally give me a real answer as to why she won’t say that Trump is in the Epstein Files. I emailed her comms director twice this week. Since they don’t like my questions, I got the same answer twice:
It irritates me that these people think I’m as stupid as they are.
This is Russian Propaganda 101: Keep repeating the lie until everyone believes it. But consider the Epstein bombshells that have detonated just this week, prominently including an allegation, apparently deemed credible enough to have been investigated, that Trump committed a crime against a child, as part of the Epstein-Maxwell sex trafficking ring.
So if these Republican women are capable of seeing that Rep. Gonzales is alleged to have done terrible things involving a grown woman who then killed herself — allegations he denies — why can’t the same women hold Trump to the same sort of standards, especially since the terrible things he is alleged to have done involved a child?
Along those lines, why didn’t any Republicans travel with Democrats for the billionaire Les Wexner’s Epstein deposition, but then all managed to clear their schedules to be in the room where Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton gave their sworn testimonies?
I know, we KNOW why. I just want them to admit it.
When it comes to Head Case Mace, I’m guessing she’s holding back because she doesn’t want to lose Trump’s endorsement for her flailing gubernatorial campaign in South Carolina. There’s a reason she hasn’t resigned her House seat. She has to keep playing the favorite now that Marjorie Taylor Greene has been banished from MAGAville forever.
I sent the same emails to the comms directors for Anna Paulina Luna-tic and Grandmother of the Year Lauren Boebert, but neither responded. It’s a frustrating endeavor to try to get anyone to say anything truthful about Trump, because they’re scared of retribution. But again, he blocked me on Twitter more than a decade ago and I’m fine, so I really don’t understand why anyone is afraid of such a thin-skinned, lying Friend of Jeffrey.
What makes it more difficult to comprehend is watching Republican men hold Trump accountable, instead of GOP women. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) has been in full lockstep with a Democratic colleague, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), when it comes to Epstein. If Massie can do it, why can’t the rest of the party? I’m not a big fan of Massie in general, particularly regarding January 6th, but he’s on the correct side of history when it comes to the Epstein Files.
I also reached out to Massie’s office. The guy who answers his DC office phone and I shared a little chuckle over the “exonerated” line being parroted by those women and the rest of the MAGA cult. There was no reply from Massie’s comms guy by press time, but that’s okay. I got a corker of a quote from someone else who knows a thing or two about the Epstein Files, because he’s been investigating the financials for years: my home-state senator, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR).
As the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Wyden (or, as I like to call him, “Senator Chutzpah,” a reference to his latest book) has been looking into the Russian and American banks that financed the international sex trafficking ring run by Epstein and Maxwell. He always stresses that the key to nailing Trump is to follow the money, which is why I keep this screenshot on my phone. It’s of a Twitter thread Sen. Wyden wrote in July last year as a handy way to clap back at the MAGA trolls who still try to false equivalence their way out of every Trump-Epstein accusation.
Feel free to save it to your device. There’s always room for the truth next to those cute cat pics and whatever you ate last night.
Anyway, the Senate Finance Committee is hitting the same wall as House Oversight: Treasury Secretary Scott “What Epstein Files?” Bessent won’t allow them full access to his department’s own Epstein Files, which too many people don’t know exist. I don’t know why — or indeed why Bessent doesn’t care that Trump thinks Bessent’s marriage to a man isn’t real — because Bessent won’t respond to me, just like he won’t respond to my senator. It’s good company to be in, at least.
I got to spend a few moments on Friday with Senator Chutzpah, after his press conference at Portland Coffee Roasters to highlight the impact of Trump’s tariffs on small businesses. I asked what he would say to the MAGA cult about the lies they’re being fed about Trump being “exonerated.”
“Some of these people have as much interest in justice as Bonnie and Clyde,” he said, tipping me a wink.
Great line — but unfortunately, it might just make Nancy Mace show up to work on Monday cosplaying as a gun moll, instead of Hester Prynne.
- Tara Dublin is a political writer/commentator based in Portland, OR, who has been blocked by Donald Trump on Twitter since August 2015 and can occasionally be heard as a fill-in host on SiriusXM Progress. She is also the author of The Sound of Settling, a rock ‘n’ roll love story available at taradublinrocks.com
This Trump cover-up is appalling — and may have met its match
Also, a federal judge held a lawyer for the Justice Department in contempt of court — for the first time during Trump’s second term. The New York Times found at least 34 other instances in which federal judges issued orders requiring the government to explain why it “should not be similarly punished for violating court orders.”
Even so, a different recent decision caught my eye.
Since last fall, I have been tracking the Trump administration’s brazen attempts to change what visitors learn at places managed by the National Park Service. A nationwide review of national park signage signaled that some of these displays, posters, signs and exhibits would be eliminated.
At the time, I wondered who would have leverage to prevent these acts of civic censorship. Even more, I couldn’t imagine who would have sufficient legal standing to sue — let alone win. Who could sue to prevent the whitewashing of national parks, if it happened?
As if in response to my question, I heard the bad news … and the good news this week.
The bad news came in the form of brutish attempts by the National Park Service to alter the history of George Washington by removing references to his enslavement of people at his home in Philadelphia, a location that is now a national monument. The changes — to the President’s House Site — happened in January, but headlines reemerged this week.
An informational panel at the President's House Site in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Picture: Kreuz und quer/Wiki Commons
Those headlines trumpeted the good news: a federal judge, appointed by George W. Bush, ordered that the history be restored to tell the truth about Washington. Indeed, our first president was not only a slave owner, but he also strategically moved enslaved people from state to state so they would never gain freedom.
In Washington’s time, an enslaved person was considered free after spending six months in Pennsylvania. The website for Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, explains that to “evade the statute, Washington sent the enslaved cook, waiters, and maids out of state every six months, instructing his secretary to move the slaves ‘in a way that will deceive both them and the public.’ ”
It seems perverse to be grateful that Mount Vernon isn’t a National Park — but in this case, it likely shields the site from censorship.
In her opinion about Washington’s home in Philadelphia, Judge Cynthia Rufe blasted the whitewashing of presidential and national history by invoking the altered history created by the omnipotent government in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
She wrote: “Each person who visits the President’s House and does not learn of the realities of founding-era slavery, receives a false account of this country’s history.”
(It’s easy to imagine a censorship case about one of the national parks in Kansas arriving in a nearby courtroom, if history is erased at one of the six sites. Let’s hope that the three Kansans nominated last week to the U.S. District Court will show similar mettle as Rufe, if they decide such a case.)
We are rightfully concerned about histories that are changed and erased because of the impact on what we learn about the past.
With gratitude to Rufe, I want to take her argument further.
By editing the embarrassing, amoral and ignorant acts of the past, our federal government provides cover for a broad spectrum of today’s misdeeds.
How does the administration’s historical whitewashing affect the actions of Trump’s emissaries today? His appointees, including Doug Burgum, who has overseen the national parks censorship, have created a shameful resume of thuggery that could guide future generations.
For instance, deleting the truth about climate change from a plaque emboldens a government worker to further shred environmental protections. Forgiving a past president for his subjugation of slaves signals acceptance of racism. Waving away the 1940s internment of Japanese Americans provides psychic cover for suburban Kansas City warehouses to be converted into immigration detainment centers.
The administration’s censorship of history has become a dog whistle — if not a rallying cry — to Trump’s acolytes.
You have our permission, they hear the dog whistle chirp. Your moral failings will likely be forgotten, just like those of President Washington! Future generations will never know our cruelty.
Overlay the administration’s stated policy goals with the content being censored at national parks and you can see uncomfortable overlap. Save Our Signs, a guerrilla effort to document park signs before they vanish, provides a growing spreadsheet of alterations reported in the press.
(Note that 12 of the 16 items have appeared since the start of 2026.)
The administration’s hostility toward climate change happens by dismantling the power of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — but also through the signage at Muir Woods National Monument and Glacier National Park. Removing signage that references “women’s rights and liberty” at the Gateway National Recreation Area aligns conveniently with the scaling back of affirmative action and diversity, equity and inclusion programs that benefited women.
Changing the available history of Native Americans at national parks tracks with last year’s cuts to grant funding that helped tribes. Eliminating the pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument extends Trump’s animosity toward folks in the LGBTQ+ community.
Seen like this, the administration’s animus — rhetorical, historical, political and administrative — appears comprehensive.
If Rufe’s order doesn’t seem like enough to reverse this tide, have faith. Citizens have rhetorical and political power too: power to tell our true histories.
We can each counter the whitewashed history of national parks as we tell more complete accounts in our homes, our classrooms or our faith communities.
Even more urgent is accurately describing what is happening around us each day remaining in the Trump administration — writing the first draft of history as completely and courageously as we can.
This does not mean that citizens should shovel out overheated rhetoric that blindly brands every federal action as racist, sexist, violent or corrupt. This degrades history as effectively as Trump’s efforts, just from the opposite extreme. Avoid being polemic simply for the sake of scoring points.
Instead, each one of us has a role to play by describing the administration’s actions as they are, remaining rooted in facts.
After all, that’s what we expect from our history: a full recounting, regardless of its inconvenient truths.
- Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.