I’m not so sure. After years of ignoring every other sign, what would it take for them to believe? His suggestive comments about his own daughter on multiple occasions, his opinion of 12-year old Paris Hilton, his mentioning 12 years old as a limit with Howard Stern[1], turning up in beauty pageant changing rooms, the “grab em by the p*ssy” tape, the swerving between Epstein case is a hoax to frame him vs. it’s real but only implicates Democrats.
I think of JD Vance, when Trump’s Epstein birthday card had been described but not released, he scoffed they didn’t provide an image. Weeks later, we had an image released by Congress, so then JD Vance tweaked his arguments a bit but still denies basically everything. The evidence he requested did not change his mind anyway. Trump’s supporters, for the most part, will say it’s AI, faked images, paid liars, mentally ill accusers, Trump haters, fake news, Trump was only there to inform on Democrats, it’s not what it looks like, the media is lying about girls’ birthdates, etc etc before they’ll ever admit he’s a sick man. If they wanted to believe that, the evidence is already there.
Personally I have a fair amount of doubt that he has committed a crime against a minor, but he is obviously lecherous and well below the supposed moral sexual standards of many of his supporters. It should not matter to them whether a 60+ year old married man only peeks and banters about young girls or if he has actually touched them. If they’re still around, it will take a lot to snap them out of it.
[1] I know he didn’t actually say that 13 is okay or whatever, but what kind of pervert or fool jumps all the way down to 12 when asked? Way below the lowest age of consent in the States. This should be disqualifying on the grounds of horrendously bad judgment to phrase it that way in public, let alone what it may or may not reveal about his criminality.
I agree many Trump supporters will be able to spin -- even if just to themselves -- any damning news no matter what (especially in this age of easily spoofed photos and videos) but still, puzzlingly enough, his voting fanbase actually made the Epstein files a thing, so much that he publicly lashed against them when they wouldn't let go. It was the one crack in his armor, the only (mild) falling out with them he's ever had. Do you remember this?
I think Trump made the Epstein conspiracy such a thing, it's now hard to disentangle from the minds of his MAGA supporters. All it takes is for some of his political rivals (from within the party) to fan the flames.
I'm not sure about what Trump actually did, and we have no solid proof. I can only guess, judging from how the man behaves, and his general attitudes toward lying and women.
It does seem like the most significant schism he’s had, with Massie, MTG, and some podcasters etc defecting over this. I may be out-of-date. But I don’t think it’s gone very far though, considering some of these defections are considered to be career suicides, and that he got away with reneging on one of the party’s big bogeymen that just happened to be his former best friend. If this was a big weakness, there would be screams for impeachment and ditching him.
Agreed on the general principle of building your movement on conspiracy theories of the elite and then becoming elite. The situation is even worse for him; he was already friends with the subject of the conspiracy theory long before the public at large even knew about it, and then by some combination of bad luck and hubris he let the party chase the conspiracy. We’ll see if there’s anything bad for him in there that sees the light of day, and what his opposition makes of it.
This is pretty easy to summarize from my point of view.
1) There is 0 non circumstantial evidence that Trump had a sexual encounter with a minor. There is 0 evidence (circumstantial or not) that there is any prepubescent children involved.
2) Calling anyone who voted (past tense) for Trump a "pedophile supporter".
Combining these two things togtheter seems pretty obvious why Maga supporters dismiss most of what the public outrage, in fact they will dig their heels in even harder since the "other side" is just attacking them personally.
Agreed. I would add to the mix, however, that MAGA and adjacent groups made the Epstein scandal a big deal. Remember among them you can count QAnon, the Pizzagate, the people who believe the elections were "stolen", the Capitol stormers, etc. Some of them are conspiracy-oriented people, fueled to rage by conspiracy oriented alt-right influencers. So they are very eager to call others cannibals, traffickers and pedophiles wihout a shred of evidence. It's just when someone they respect is in the eye of the storm that they reel and engage the reality distortion field.
Remember that even less than "circumstantial evidence" is what fuels 90% of Trump's bold assertions. And they lap it up. Even now they are trying to make this about Bill Clinton! (Can you imagine what would have happened if Clinton was Epstein's friend but Trump wasn't? Or if Hillary was in some photos? I can guarantee there'd be no redactions at all).
So now MAGA voters cannot complain when Trump is the target of unconfirmed rumors.
And indeed, even a portion of MAGA is susceptible to this particular scandal: Epstein. They had a minor falling out with their leader over this!
I do agree attacking all of MAGA is a counterproductive tactic though, because it puts them on the defensive. Mounting evidence against Trump without attacking his voters is more sensible.
>> nothing has ever been proved by the standards of the criminal justice system
This flabbergasted me at first. Admittedly I had to refresh my memory that he died in jail awaiting trial, but he was still convicted once before that! The fact it was pre-MeToo should make it more damning, per his logic. I guess he’s saying there were no convictions after he became infamous, but there’s a caveat that he died awaiting trial, and that plus the prior conviction just makes this statement seem disingenuous or sloppy at best.
Ok then, I look forward to my tax breaks and refunds enabled by cutting this program. I’m sure it’s in the mail with all the other dividends for citizens that Trump mentions every few months.
Again, this would be the Legislative branch. Your right to vote has not decreased, and you can absolutely contact your senator to introduce a bill for what you stated. I mean, you have a representative. Absolutely use them if you dislike something.
However, disagreeing with the Legislative or Executive branch in no way erodes your democratic rights.
Well, your democratic right would be to vote. However, as you said we are in a democratic republic where we don’t vote to make the laws but rather vote for representatives.
> Only if that connection object doesn’t support move — we’re 12 years of C++ standards past the arrival of move, and it still leaves its source in an indeterminate state.
I haven’t watched the streams he referred to, but… I am fairly certain the language itself says no such thing. You may be thinking of the standard library, which states that certain classes of moved-from objects have unspecified state. If you’re writing your own DB connection class, you can define moves to leave the object in whatever state you prefer, or disallow moves.
Admittedly it’s still a weird example IMO, because external factors can sever the connection while the object is in scope.
There is literally no correct way to handle move in an RAII context that doesn’t either (a) behave unexpectedly if you try to use the moved-from object or (b) permit a null value of the object. This isn’t a library problem — it’s a language problem.
What if the moved-from DB object lazily opens a new connection, if someone uses it again? Maybe that’s a null object, but at least the nullness isn’t really observable to the API user. Even the extra latency or possibility of failing to connect must be expected at any time from query() etc. so it changes little.
Also, I would say nothing is “unexpected” behavior if you document it and implement accordingly. And at least for this DB case, handling it is not onerous or stretching the idea of class invariants beyond usability.
I’m probably like what GP said, “high on the feeling of having finally grokked C++, which is no small feat.” But I either want to understand better why move is broken, or we can agree that things like move require too much skill to get right and there are better alternative languages.
> What if the moved-from DB object lazily opens a new connection, if someone uses it again?
Great, so now the stateful settings on my database connection change depending on whether I move from it.
Database connections are kind of a bad example — having a connection drop is not really unexpected behavior, and a program that uses a database should be prepared for a connection to drop, so there’s kind of an invalid state on a connection anyway. But things like file handles or mutex guards aren’t like this — it’s reasonable to expect that, on a functioning system, a file handle won’t go away. And if I’m using a type-safe language that supports RAII, I would like the compiler to ensure that I can’t use an object that isn’t in a valid state.
Rust can do this, as can lots of languages that support “affine” types (that name is absurd). GC languages can kind of do this too, as long as cloning the reference is considered valid. Languages with “linear” types can even statically guarantee that I don’t forget to close my object.
C++ can ensure that an object is valid if it’s in scope, but only if that object is not movable, so “consume” operations are not possible in a type-safe way.
Those “other genocides” aren’t funded by the US Congress, and the other countries aren’t US allies. It makes perfect sense for US students to focus on the Gaza war and Israel right now, as something that they could actually change by getting US politicians etc to listen. You seem to agree it’s a genocide, but you’re effectively defending it by acting like only shills want it to stop.
Maybe those investments are cause for concern, but it seems a stretch to say they are funding protests. And if Qatar is going to corrupt US democracy, I’d be a lot more worried about their recent “investments” with top US officials.
IMO the most egregious reason is the July 2025 memo from DOJ/FBI saying there was nobody else to investigate, after months of public interest and official statements they were working on it. If they now flop back to claiming they can’t release because of investigations, then that’s unequivocally a false reason.
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