Back in 2003, when the world was embroiled in war anew, this time in the far-off Middle East where soldiers were out of sight, out of mind, publications in America were still concerned with appearances — you can’t make a wartime President look bad, you can’t talk about the homeless, and you can’t upset the applecart on the “job creators” that keep the nation afloat through their magnanimous trickle-down generosity.
That was the new term for the obscenely wealthy, coined in response to public outcry over the Bush tax cuts for the exceedingly rich that to this day make up more than a quarter of our national debt. And among those “job creators” were the movers and shakers of the financial industry: Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, and yes, Jeffrey Epstein and even Donald Trump. In fact, if you asked either of those two latter American financial dignitaries, they might revel in such a title, and fire off all of the sectors in which they stimulated the American workforce — housekeeping, waitstaff, drivers, caddies.
Maybe the fear of some sort of divine retribution from the Masters of Industry turned Vanity Fair publisher Graydon Carter’s heart against allowing journalist Vicky Ward to run the profile of Epstein in 2003 exactly the way she wrote it, but when that exposé finally did run, it was missing some key information that Ward had plenty of proof of in the form of three women willing to go on the record: Allegations that he had attempted to coerce young sisters into sex with him, eventually raping one of them, who was 16 at the time.
Ward’s piece, after careful editing, treated Epstein’s transgressions as those of a womanizing bachelor, rather than the sexual predator he is now known as. But it did, in passing, mention Donald Trump, noting that he regularly dined at Epstein’s home.
Even that, however, was a far cry from what could have made it into the piece — and what did make it into reporting from the New York Times on Monday:
In 2000, a porter who worked next door to Epstein’s Manhattan home told a British newspaper, admiringly, ‘I often see Donald Trump and there are loads of models coming and going, mostly at night. It’s amazing.'”
“Loads of models” are perhaps the norm for dining guests at the homes of job creators like Epstein and Donald Trump.
Featured image via Twitter
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