Is Venezuela Really About Epstein?
Jan. 10th, 2026 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerAs people discuss competing ideas for why the US invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its sitting president last weekend, and even President Donald Trump and his various surrogates offer rotating justifications for it, I keep coming back to one sickening possibility that struck me when I first heard news of the invasion/abduction a week ago:
Trump did it to flush discussion of Jeffrey Epstein out of the news cycle.
It's clear that Trump has getting hit hard by Epstein news up until a week ago. After campaigning on the issue for many months as a candidate, he and his seemingly crooked Attorney General, Pam Bondi, clammed up on releasing the files once they took office. Bondi went from saying, "The folders are on my desk," to saying that no folders ever existed. The controversy stayed in the news, as some of Trump's own supporters began wondering if he was hiding personal involvement with the now-deceased child sex trafficker. Enough Republicans in Congress crossed over to join Democrats in voting on a bill last month to compel the DOJ to release the files. Trump, always wanting to portray himself as the winner in any fight, suddenly switched from suppressing the files to signing Congress's bill into law.
But Trump has an even more powerful media play than switching sides at the last moment to align himself with the winning side. When he's getting too much negative coverage in the media he does something outrageous to flush it out of the news cycle.
Anyone who's earnestly watched Trump for the past 10 years has seen him do this countless times and knows it's true. But for those who are unconvinced by my saying it, the idea behind it was memorably articulated by Trump's first chief strategist and propagandist, Steve Bannon:
Flooding the zone takes two forms. One, Trump and his surrogates spin an issue in favorable terms. They outright lie about what actually happened. That's the "shit" part. The media will try to fact-check the lies, but if lies are repeated and added to frequently enough, it overwhelms the fact-checking and all the media can do is repeat it. That's the "flood" part. We're seeing a textbook example of this right now with the ICE shooting of an unarmed American citizen in Minneapolis.
Two, a new issue can be used to flood an older issue right off the page. News focuses on what's new. They'll stick with one issue, like the Epstein files, until something new and pressing demands attention. Trump has shown himself to be a master of media manipulation at flooding unwanted stories out of the news cycle by saying or doing something provocative. He's been doing this for 10 years as a candidate and president. And it seems like that's exactly what's going on here.
Trump did it to flush discussion of Jeffrey Epstein out of the news cycle.
It's clear that Trump has getting hit hard by Epstein news up until a week ago. After campaigning on the issue for many months as a candidate, he and his seemingly crooked Attorney General, Pam Bondi, clammed up on releasing the files once they took office. Bondi went from saying, "The folders are on my desk," to saying that no folders ever existed. The controversy stayed in the news, as some of Trump's own supporters began wondering if he was hiding personal involvement with the now-deceased child sex trafficker. Enough Republicans in Congress crossed over to join Democrats in voting on a bill last month to compel the DOJ to release the files. Trump, always wanting to portray himself as the winner in any fight, suddenly switched from suppressing the files to signing Congress's bill into law.
But Trump has an even more powerful media play than switching sides at the last moment to align himself with the winning side. When he's getting too much negative coverage in the media he does something outrageous to flush it out of the news cycle.
Anyone who's earnestly watched Trump for the past 10 years has seen him do this countless times and knows it's true. But for those who are unconvinced by my saying it, the idea behind it was memorably articulated by Trump's first chief strategist and propagandist, Steve Bannon:
"The Democrats don't matter... The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."
Flooding the zone takes two forms. One, Trump and his surrogates spin an issue in favorable terms. They outright lie about what actually happened. That's the "shit" part. The media will try to fact-check the lies, but if lies are repeated and added to frequently enough, it overwhelms the fact-checking and all the media can do is repeat it. That's the "flood" part. We're seeing a textbook example of this right now with the ICE shooting of an unarmed American citizen in Minneapolis.
Two, a new issue can be used to flood an older issue right off the page. News focuses on what's new. They'll stick with one issue, like the Epstein files, until something new and pressing demands attention. Trump has shown himself to be a master of media manipulation at flooding unwanted stories out of the news cycle by saying or doing something provocative. He's been doing this for 10 years as a candidate and president. And it seems like that's exactly what's going on here.
Comments will be screened because I don't care to deal with drive-by insults from internet randos.
Yes ...
Date: 2026-01-11 08:29 am (UTC)