The Epstein files are a who’s who of Trump’s inner circle

With puffy eyes and a bruised right hand hidden under his left, Donald Trump sat hunched over on his leather chair behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. Behind him stood Pam Bondi, Dr. Oz, RFK Jr., and a few others from his inner circle of elite enablers, all poised to give a false sense of power, control, and normalcy. Instead, it just showed how dazed and detached he was. At one point, he turned and locked eyes with Dr. Oz, with a gaze that looked like the lights had just gone out, as if something inside him had snapped and he was experiencing a cognitive or physical medical crisis. The woman next to Oz leaned in and smiled at him, not kindly but patronizingly, the way you smile at a child who was lost and didn’t know where they were, as they desperately scanned for a safe person to help them.

At that moment, something had shifted. Trump gave what looked like a subtle cue, maybe it was a motion or just the lost look in his eyes, but his team took it seriously and jumped into action. Trump mumbled something incoherent, followed by, “Thank you, please,” in a strange, flat tone. And suddenly, the press was being ushered out of the room at a speed we haven’t seen before. He didn’t take a single question, which is rare for him. Everyone moved fast, ushering out the press. As they grabbed their equipment in a scramble, Trump just sat there staring into space. His eyes sank back; he was mouth-breathing and nothing else. The others stood behind him, silent and stiff, awkward and unsure of what to do.

Just moments before, Trump had gone through a whole range of mental states. He seemed alert one minute, reading, interacting, aware, and then suddenly drifted off, falling asleep during remarks by Katherine Burgum, the wife of his own Interior Secretary. It made it even clearer that what we were witnessing in the Oval Office wasn’t an isolated moment, but part of a visible and worsening pattern.

This was not normal. And they all knew it, standing there with him.

It wasn’t the only sign that something was wrong. European leaders are openly saying what American officials won’t. Politico reported that Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who’s actually been one of Trump’s closest allies in the EU, told other European heads of state that his recent meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago left him deeply alarmed. While at the summit in Brussels, he described Trump’s “psychological state” as “dangerous,” according to multiple diplomats who were in the room. Fico didn’t say that lightly. He’s backed Trump’s nationalist agenda for years. But after seeing him in person on January 17, he brought his concerns to other EU leaders during an emergency summit that next week. The meeting had been called in response to Trump’s threat to seize Greenland and his sudden attempt to impose new tariffs on Europe. But it allegedly turned into a quiet, private conversation among world leaders trying to process how to proceed when the President of the United States is unwell, unstable, and capable of pushing the world into chaos at the slightest whim. Fico offered the following response on X: “I STRONGLY REJECT THE LIES OF THE HATEFUL, PRO-BRUSSELS LIBERAL PORTAL POLITICO.” But the truth was already out.

Our potential adversaries are not just watching his decline. They’re worried about it. Because this is the man who controls our nuclear arsenal. He could drag the world into war at any moment. And that isn’t good for our former allies or our enemies. It’s not just about withdrawal from agreements or undermining partnerships; it’s about the instability of his actions.

And still, no one in his circle moves to intervene. No one invokes the 25th. They just clear the room and keep pretending everything is fine when he starts to decompensate, because they can’t let the theatrical performance end. Because when it does, so does their grip on power and their pipeline to financial gain.

But maybe it goes even deeper than that. Maybe it’s also because they know they’re involved in the biggest cover-up of our lifetimes. Full of blackmail, trafficking rings, and crimes so horrendous we don’t even have the full language for them yet.

Because it’s getting harder to deny that every insult, every cover story, every threat, lie, and manufactured crisis always seem to orbit around one gravitational center: the Epstein files. That is what we’ve seen since the moment he took office again.

And what we keep learning with every release of the files that comes to us is that Epstein didn’t just run a trafficking ring. He ran a blackmail operation. He invited the rich and powerful to his island, his house, his jet, then recorded them and kept records that he could use to control them if he ever needed to. He made sure they couldn’t turn on him without risking their own exposure. And it’s not hard to imagine that there was some sort of pyramid scheme that went with this. Maybe he gave extra favors to those who built the pipeline under them? Because the more people we learn about with ties to this network, the more they are all connected.

In a disturbing detail released by Trump’s former personal defense attorney, Todd Blanche, who is now the current Deputy Attorney General, and who oversaw the Department of Justice’s Epstein file release, any images that show “death, physical abuse, or injury” were redacted and purposely not included.

In a case like this, where victims were trafficked and abused, those are the very materials investigators need to see to understand the full scale of the crimes. The public doesn’t need to see the images themselves. No one is asking for that. There’s a responsibility to protect the victims and survivors, and that should always come first. But that’s not what’s happening here. What they excluded were images showing death, physical abuse, or injury. That phrasing alone is alarming. Death, what kind of death? A victim? A child? Was it one person or many? And if these materials were excluded, why haven’t we been given at least a clear description of what was depicted in each image? Why isn’t there a summary of the potential crimes that the images showed? If you’re removing that level of evidence, the public has a right to know what you’re protecting us from. And more importantly, who you’re protecting by doing it.

And so many of us are beginning to wonder if this is just too big to contain. What if the truth in these files could take down half the government, or more? Because the names we’re seeing aren’t random. They’re deeply tied to the most powerful men in our country, including the man currently leading it. And yes, we can acknowledge that just because someone’s name appears in these documents doesn’t automatically mean they’re guilty of trafficking or abuse. No one is saying that. But we also have to be honest about what we’re seeing. Our government appears to be enabling, protecting, and even run by people tied to systems of exploitation and abuse. So the real question becomes: how much of our leadership is compromised? And to what extent are we being controlled, manipulated, or silenced so that they don’t lose power? These are some of the names in the files to show just how deep this goes:

Peter Thiel, billionaire tech investor, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, and major Republican donor. Thiel is one of the most influential power brokers on the right and has funded multiple far-right candidates, including Blake Masters and J.D. Vance. And the AI-driven Palantir software is fueling ICE and government surveillance. He greatly benefits financially with Trump in office.

Howard Lutnick, Trump’s current Commerce Secretary and the former CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald. In a recent interview, Lutnick claimed he cut ties with Epstein after one early meeting in the early 2000s. But travel records reportedly show he had plans to visit Epstein’s island in 2012.

Steve Bannon, former White House Chief Strategist and campaign manager, had direct email correspondence with Epstein, including discussions reportedly centered on Europe and Israel.

Steve Tisch, co-owner of the New York Giants and a powerful film producer, also showed up in Epstein’s contact lists and correspondence.

Brett Ratner, a disgraced Hollywood director accused of multiple counts of sexual misconduct, who also produced a documentary on Melania Trump that Amazon paid $40 million for.

Peter Attia, celebrity physician, podcast host, and longevity specialist. His name is in the files over 1,700 times, with Attia joking with Epstein and even voicing concern for his legal well-being after serious allegations against Epstein came out. In another email, dated June of 2015, Attia boasted in an email to Epstein that the “worst” part about being his friend is that “the life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul.”

Kevin Warsh, Trump’s reported pick to replace Jerome Powell as Chair of the Federal Reserve, also appears in Epstein’s files.

These are the people Trump surrounds himself with. And every time someone in the files gets too close to the fire, he moves them into his inner circle, where the law can’t touch them. This is not just about who went to the island. It’s about who benefited. And who still is.

And when the latest batch of Epstein documents dropped, containing some of the most horrifying allegations yet, including ones that name Trump directly, he didn’t even seem to grasp what was in them. Making his first public comments about the release tonight on a flight to Florida aboard Air Force One, Trump called it a vindication.

He said, “I didn’t see it myself, but I was told by some very important people that not only does it absolve me, it’s the opposite of what people were hoping, you know, the radical left.”

He wasn’t even speaking from personal knowledge. He hadn’t read the files, supposedly. He was repeating what he’d been told. That line alone, “I didn’t see it myself but I was told…”, should raise every alarm we have. Because it means he is either unwilling or unable to understand the scale of what’s unfolding. And he’s relying on people who may be implicated themselves to feed him the version of reality he then shares with the public. This is a puppet show. And it shows how deep the rot has gone.

Because this regime isn’t just blackmailing people into silence. It’s rewarding them for staying quiet. These people don’t just fear exposure. They’re addicted to the perks that come with complicity.

That’s why you’re seeing Trump propped up like Weekend at Bernie’s. That’s why there are no challengers. That’s why Democrats are silent too. And yes, we need to start asking: are they being blackmailed in other ways? Or are they just benefiting in quieter ways? We have to ask that out loud now. Because at this point, silence is participation.

So what do we do now that we have very real concerns about the president’s ability to perform the duties he was elected to carry out, given such seemingly serious decompensation? And what if the government is being run by the very same people who abused, attacked, trafficked, and potentially caused the deaths of what we can only imagine were children, women, or other captive human beings?

We slow it down. We make everything they want harder. We cut off funding to ICE. We defund DHS. We turn off the faucet of cruelty. We make them work for every inch. And while they scramble, we take Congress back at the midterms.

This isn’t about immigration policy. It’s about stopping violence. ICE has become a lawless agency with a well-documented pattern of abuse, corruption, and cruelty. Defunding it doesn’t mean erasing national security; it means restoring accountability. It means making sure federal dollars aren’t used for lawless raids, wrongful detentions, or shady contracts with private prison companies run by Trump’s allies, who profit from human suffering. Nobody is saying we shouldn’t enforce lawful immigration. But it must be done humanely, with clear rules, transparency, and a path forward for people already here, people who are contributing, working, raising families, and part of our communities. Then we need a fair, modern, and functional system for new immigrants who want to come here. This country was built on the backs of immigrants. They are not a threat. They are what have always made America great.

This government has gone rogue. There is no other way to say it. We have been taken over by the worst of the worst. And if we can’t stop them yet, we must focus on jamming the gears using every method we can think of. The Trump Regime long ago stopped playing by the old rules of politics, and we need to do the same. This is the battle for our country and for the future that we want our descendants to inherit.

And we are not alone in recognizing where we are as a country. Even the MAGA influencers, like Andrew Schulz, are starting to pull back. The same voices who helped brainwash an entire generation of young men into thinking Trump was some kind of hero and helped him get elected are walking it back. They’re calling it out. I don’t know if this change of heart will last, but it’s a crack in the wall, and we need to exploit it. We must call that out and make sure as many of Trump’s loyalists see that they are on a sinking ship.

And we need to welcome them to the resistance. We must accept them if they’re willing to stand up and say, enough. Because if someone comes forward, really comes forward, and says this is wrong, this is a win for the resistance. We don’t need to forgive or forget. But we must stand next to them if they’re standing against this. Because this isn’t about politics anymore. This is about survival, truth, and justice for our country.

I know things are dark. I know it feels like we’re up against an insurmountable mountain. But here’s what else I know: we are not alone. There are millions of us. Millions who see what’s happening, and many more waking up every day, ready to speak, act, vote, and rebuild.

That’s why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.