Those of you who receive my newsletter, Center and Margins , will likely at the beginning of October receive an essay (on the 'Center' side) that overlaps with the material below. But the overlap is not repetition, and may indeed be a sort of parallax. ---------------------------- On the Epstein matter in general, Trump is simply saying what he deems he has to say. Politically, this is a toughy for him. After all, perhaps even more than immigration/border issues, revulsion about pedophilia and elite conspiracy are what has gotten him where he is. During his first campaign, in 2016, the emails of John Podesta, a Clinton family advisor, were leaked to the public (through Russian efforts) and one circle of theorists decided they were all written in a secret code that when decoded detailed Podesta’s involvement with a child-abuse ring. There is no evidence of this, the ‘code’ was something the theorists made up. This soon led to a bizarre story about the basement of a Washingto...