It's Not Just Epstein: What America's Pedophile Obsession Means

First, you put the women in their place. Then you seize power.

This post will be fast and rough - a bit like Donald Trump, from all available reports.

In the absence of the American public caring about democracy, the economy, or free speech, what is the national obsession? Raping young girls.

First, let’s get real. The information now being circulated about Donald Trump’s boorish, rapey behavior was known before 2016, and it was even more widely available before voters elected him in 2020. I went back to old emails and I saw that in 2019 my friend Susan was bombarding me with messages telling me to get off my editorial ass and look for Katie Johnson.

In case you’ve been on a sailboat crossing the Atlantic and mercifully bereft of internet access, Johnson is one of the many women who have credibly accused your president and mine of sexual assault. The difference is that Johnson was 13 in 1994 when the rapes - more than one - allegedly occurred.

In 2016 Johnson’s case was taken on by Lisa Bloom, the daughter of Gloria Allred, the country’s most famous legal champion of women’s rights. Johnson was preparing to sue Trump when she abruptly dropped her case.

At the time, Bloom said Trump’s accuser had received threats and was too frightened to show up.

She disappeared.

Johnson’s last reported address happened to be in a California desert town near where I live. When Susan noticed and began urging me to find her, I protested that I didn’t do that kind of reporting anymore. I’m a policy wonk. An editor. But Susan is nothing if not persistent. And she had a point. If I found Katie, it would be a hell of a story.

The short version? I didn’t. I went to dodgy neighborhood where she was supposed to have lived. The house was boarded up. Mustering my courage, I knocked at a neighbor’s door, where a woman answered, looking suspicious. “They’re gone,” she said. It appeared to have been a meth house, or I got that impression. Legally, the house had been listed as a foreclosure, unoccupied for a year, and the owner deceased.

Those facts cast doubt on Johnson but mostly I wondered if those early experiences had damaged her beyond repair, hence meth addiction. According to the account “Katie Johnson” (this may not be her real name) delivered on video, she had arrived in New York in hopes of a modeling career and in a short time, after being recruited by a woman named “Tiffany,” found herself in a maid’s uniform having sex with another girl the same age, then, er, servicing Trump. What made her account sound plausible to me was the comment that she reported that Trump made after the scene: “Well, we could have done better.” This was so New York, as if a meal in a highly touted restaurant turned out to be less than perfect.

There are more details, but you can find them all over the place so I don’t need to belabor it. I did, of course, wonder what a 13-year-old was doing alone in the city. Perhaps there was a family situation that set Johnson up, made her vulnerable.

She was, as the photos show, very pretty. Innocent-looking. She also said that she was a virgin and Trump took her virginity. And, yes, Ivanka was the same age in 1994, and according to “Katie” Trump told her she reminded him of his daughter. I don’t need to point out the difference between the photo below right (assuming it’s Katie) and the woman above. Life. This is what it does to you.

Johnson also alleged that Trump told her she reminded him of his daughter Ivanka, who was the same age: 13.

Abrupt segue here, but it’s Substack and I’m about to catch a train (not a metaphor). This is important.

Snopes published a long research piece on whether Katie Johnson’s claims are devalued by the fact that a sleazy producer who once worked for the Jerry Springer show was involved in her original case filing. Julie Brown, the Miami Herald reporter who broke the Epstein story, wrote on X that she had spent a lot of time trying to track down Johnson - no doubt far more than I did.

The woman just wouldn't talk, and her lawyer would not confirm she was even legit. Her first two lawyers were patent lawyers. They wouldn't talk either. The address she gave on her first lawsuit was false. She was linked to political operatives at one point. Could her story be true? Yes. As we speak, there are probably some powerful men associated with Epstein who have hired lawyers to pay off women. There are probably NDA's attached. Sometimes, even reporters can't get the information you wish we could. It's not always because we "missed it" or ignored it. It's because our legal system allows out of court settlements and victims of sexual assault, especially young victims, would rather settle than subject themselves to public scrutiny.

Brown’s comment is even more germane as we watch Trump’s transparent attempt to quash the Epstein story, abetted by Speaker and faux Christian Mike Johnson shutting Congress for the summer to avoid the question of the Epstein files, Trump attorney, now Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche descending upon the jailed Ghislaine Maxwell to shut her up.

Recall for a moment Blanche’s previous clients: Rudy Giuliani’s “associate” Igor Fruman and Paul Manafort. Yet Blanche once worked for the Southern District of New York as a prosecutor. A registered Democrat until 2023; in 2024 he moved to Palm Beach and registered Republican. Whatever provoked the change, the guy has chops. What’s stunning is a blatant coverup happening in real time before America’s eyes, and still Trump’s approval rating is higher than Biden’s. Are Americans the stupidest people on earth? No wonder Hunter Biden is furious.

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Julie Brown’s recognition of the playbook for sexual assault cases acknowledges a deeper truth about power. Murray Bookchin was a wild-haired social ecologist and political philosopher who hammered home the point that men’s oppression of nature and oppression of women were inextricably linked. Gerontocracy is involved, too, Bookchin wrote, harking back to Ancient Greece:

“In its classical form, patriarchy implied male gerontocracy, not only the rule of the males over females,” Bookchin wrote in his best-known book The Ecology of Freedom.

Mitch McConnell, anyone? And, yeah, Democrats are not immune.

Jeffrey Epstein’s exploitation of young girls is a sick caricature of the hierarchy that any sentient woman will recognize. Rape is not about sex; it’s about power, as psychologists have reiterated ad infinitum, ad nauseam. I’m not going to pander to political correctness here: Generally speaking, the younger you are, the more beautiful you are, male or female. Your skin is perfect. There is no sun damage, no cellulite.

Sure, there are other forms of beauty but youth requires no thought, discrimination, or taste. (And if we know anything for sure, we know that Trump has no taste. Or, rather, execrable taste.) In terms of the real world, if you’re young, you’re an easy mark. And you’re in demand.

What more dramatic way of illustrating a power differential than a rich man raping a beautiful child-like girl?

There’s another aspect to the use of women to prove or consolidate power. When I was in my twenties, just starting out in my so-called career, the top editor at the newspaper where I worked was aging and increasingly out of touch. My advocate at the paper was a smart, talented younger male editor. Divorced, he cut a swath through the available breeding age females (not me, however) at the paper. The old guy finally retired, whether nudged or under his own steam. My editor ran the place for the next 20 years or so. Coincidence? I think not. Primal.

First it’s the women. Then you run the place.

Trump’s presidency is this phenomenon writ large and for your consideration: my theory of primate behavior (see above) is why the Access Hollywood tape was not a dealbreaker. This primal scenario is why so many women support Trump.

I get the desire to have a man take control, which does feel kind of primal (until it goes over the line and makes you feel powerless and weak) but this man? Ugh. It often feels as though Trump has now raped the entire country.

I can only tell you what this American woman felt after the 2016 election: I had been put in my place.

It wasn’t just Trump, of course. He was riding a wave. Since the 1990s, fundamentalist Christians had been working overtime to bring back what normal people think of as oppressive 1950s gender roles.

What’s striking is this: At the same time, girls were being increasingly sexualized in American culture.

Haven’t we gotten beyond that Madonna/Whore dichotomy? Apparently not, and some of the blame (sorry) is Madonna’s. She influenced a generation of young girls to dress like hookers, and if you recall “Like a Virgin” was her first big hit.

Note: Katie Johnson mentioned that she was a virgin at 13, and the notoriously germaphobic Trump preferred a victim that way.

Did Katie lie? Is “Katie” herself a lie? Or is she telling a truth that will bring down a president and perhaps, in the process, save the county, JD Vance notwithstanding. Only a court case would tell us, presumably, although a recently uncovered letter from Trump to Epstein alluding to “secrets” may be the first shoe to drop

Here’s the real question: Does the Katie Johnson story make sense metaphorically?

Hell, yeah.

For the record, this is a song about drugs. We wish Katie the best. We all need to recover from things that happened to us.