By Bob Gaydos

 It’s all about connecting the dots. That’s what I eventually figured out early in my 23 years of writing daily editorials for The Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y. Six times a week with a break on Saturday. What’s the issue, who’s involved, how does it affect readers and what, if anything, can they do about it. After a while, it became second nature.

     Long retired and, unfortunately, writing about two Trump administrations on my own deadlines, connecting the dots has been challenging. It’s more like following the ball in a pinball machine. Haphazard, slambang, unpredictable, without the fun. All followed by more of the same.

     But I think I’m starting to see some dots.

     Let’s start with Laura Loomer, Trump’s favorite and most avid crackpot fan. Responding to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s announcement that Qatar will be allowed to operate an Air Force Base in Idaho, Loomer said, “There isn’t a single Trump supporter who supports allowing Qatar to have a military base on U.S. soil. I don’t know who told President Trump this was a good idea, but it has made people not want to vote. … No foreign country should have a military base on US soil. Especially Islamic countries. … I don’t think I’ll be voting in 2026.” Loomer had previously disagreed with Trump’s accepting a $400 million airplane from Qatar as a gift.

       Next dot, Tucker Carlson. Trump’s favorite Fox News host, now an independent podcaster, took issue with comments made by Attorney General Pam Bondi following the killing of Charlie Kirk, a MAGA hero. In the aftermath of Kirk’s killing, there was a flurry of commentary about him, much favorable (from MAGAs), but also a considerable amount that was critical of him. Bondi threatened that the Justice Department would “target” the critical ones, describing it as “hate speech.”

     Carlson, probably recognizing that his entire career depends on freedom of speech, said, “You hope that a year from now, the turmoil we’re seeing in the aftermath of [Kirk’s] murder won’t be leveraged to bring hate speech laws to this country. And trust me, if it is, if that does happen, there is never a more justified moment for civil disobedience than that, ever. Because if they can tell you what to say, they’re telling you what to think … There is nothing they can’t do to you because they don’t consider you human.”

        Dot number three (and probably the most unexpected), Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Republican congresswoman, part of an outspoken group that has driven a couple of speakers out of their jobs in the House of Representatives for not being loyal enough to Trump, has taken sharp issue with Trump, Bondi and House Speaker Mike Johnson over their refusal to release the Jeffrey Epstein files to Congress. Greene has gone so far as to volunteer to read any list of perpetrators’ names provided by Epstein victims on the floor of the House, since the law protects members of Congress from legal action for any comments made on the floor of Congress during debate.

       Greene also has criticized Johnson for keeping the House in recess while the government is shut down and refusing to swear in a newly elected congresswoman from Arizona, who would be the deciding vote requiring release of the Epstein files to Congress. Discarding the Republican talking points that the shutdown is the fault of Democrats, Greene also points to the fact that the budget presented by Republicans will cause millions of Americans to lose their health insurance and sharply raise the insurance rates for millions of others, including, as she points out, her own children.

      More dots: Trump mysteriously went to the Walter Reed Medical Center for his “annual“ check up, even though he had one In April, but no detailed report on his health was released. Just the usual, he’s OK, while rumors persist that he’s not and his daily public utterances are a word salad of self-praise and misinformation and obvious declining mental acuity. Other Republicans in the House, hearing complaints from their districts about losing health insurance, are privately grumbling over Johnson’s refusal to negotiate with Democrats on a budget. And Johnson, going straight from the Republican playbook, has taken to describing the coming No Kings protest as a “hate America rally.”

    Fear, panic, over-reaching and ignoring your supporters just to feather your nest and protect your own hide. The Trump playbook, but very poorly done. It was not a good week for Trump or MAGA. What would make it even worse, dear readers, would be for the No Kings protest to be the biggest pro-America rally ever.

    Dots all for now.

By Bob Gaydos

Epstein survivors speak out in front of the U.S. Capitol.

I believe the women. All of them. Why shouldn’t I?

What would they have to gain, especially at this point, with lying? And why would anyone, also especially at this point, want to keep the information in the Epstein files secret if there was no truth to the information?

Besides, it is long past time for victims of sexual assault to have their allegations believed, by people in positions of power to do something about it as well as by the public in general.

The overwhelming number of complaints of sexual abuse have over time been found to be true. That’s a fact. Unfortunately, until a few years ago, an overwhelming number of such complaints were treated as lies, efforts to harm some prominent male figure or too risky to pursue because of the persons involved. The Epstein files would seem to fall into the later category.

But no more. With nine women standing on the steps of the U.S. Capitol all saying they were victims, yes, but also survivors of a Jeffrey Epstein-run sex-trafficking operation involving wealthy, powerful men and teenaged girls, some well below the age of consent, it is impossible for anyone of reasonable intelligence and a normal moral compass not to believe.

Even Marjorie Taylor Green believes. The Republican congresswoman, an outspoken Trump/MAGA supporter, said if the victims provide a list of Epstein associates, as they suggested they could and would if the White House did not release one from the Epstein files, she would personally read it on the House floor if asked. She supports a bill to require release of the remaining files

Of course, Donald Trump claims the list is a “hoax” and says he was never a good friend of Epstein. A well-documented history of photos and news articles and statements from the victims says otherwise. Trump’s well-known inability to tell the truth clinches the deal. Because, obviously, why else wouldn’t he release the files that haven’t already been made public?

The defection of some Republicans from the “Trump is right no matter what he says or does” camp is another significant step in the “Start By Believing” campaign.

The “Start by Believing” initiative was launched in April of 2011 by End Violence Against Women International. It now has sponsors around the world. The public awareness and action campaign was created to:

• End the cycle of silence around sexual assault. Silence by victims, families, friends, society.
• Change the way society in general responds to survivors. To be more accepting, supportive and less judgmental.
• Encourage people to respond with belief and support, rather than doubt or blame, when someone discloses sexual assault. This manifests in efforts by local nonprofit groups reaching out to police, educators and anyone in a position to receive complaints of sexual assault of some sort to simply start by believing the woman making the accusation and follow through on it. Significantly, many police departments have signed on to the initiative.

For the longest time, forever it seemed to some, complaints of sexual harassment or abuse of women simply died of silence and avoidance. Shame. Epstein fed on that and added the elements of power and wealth to the equation. He had plenty of enablers.

Add his dubious “suicide” in a New York City prison while facing serious felony charges and the interest by Trump in making sure Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s recruiter, was sent to a country club prison after being convicted for her part in the trafficking operation, and the arrow inevitably points back at Trump, no matter how he spins it.

And now some of the victims have come forward to make sure people believe it.

… Or, when I realized that my suspicion that The New York Times was not going to do anything to help save democracy in America was correct.

                                ***

“To say that the threats of democracy are so great that the media is going to abandon its central role as a source of impartial information to help people vote — that’s essentially saying that the news media should become a propaganda arm for a single candidate, because we prefer that candidate’s agenda.”

— Joe Kahn, editor NY Times,

May 5 in an interview with Semafor

                         ***

  “On this particular day, I looked to see what the great gray lady, The New York Times, had to say about the Trump trial. Its editorial went into great detail, carefully explaining all the nuances of the justice system and why everything was being done the way it was being done, etc. It was not until the end of what the paper itself described as “a seven-minute read,” that the editorial referred to Trump’s “disregard for the rule of law and his willingness to demean American justice when it suits his interests.”

   It continued, “Those actions render him manifestly unfit for office and would pose unique dangers to the United States during a second term. The greatest of those dangers, and the one that Americans should be most attuned to, is the damage that a second Trump presidency would inflict on the rule of law.”

      Well, no you-know-what Sherlock. Did no one at the Times ever explain to the editorial writer that “don’t bury the lead“ applies to editorials as well as news stories. Seven minutes to tell people don’t ever put this lunatic in office again? He’s too dangerous?! “Manifestly unfit!”

    Give me a break! Tell them at the top, tell them why and tell them again at the bottom. Tell them every damn day while you’ve still got a press! Geez, people, this is no time to be gentle.”

— Me, April 18, in a column on Substack and zestoforange.com

                         ***

— The time, spring, 2034. The scene: A New York Times editor is watching the news on Government Channel 1 with his 10 year-old daughter.

Daughter: “Daddy, what were you doing when our great Orange Leader, who sadly just died, was saying he had to be made president for life, so that he could save the country from all the evil people trying to sneak into it and send them all back where they came from, and that he had to release all of those people who were wrongly put in jail for trying to kill the vice president, who was actually a traitor, and free the Capitol from a Congress that wasn’t following the Constitution and that he needed to punish all those people who were telling all those lies about him and stop Congress from sending money to Ukraine for weapons to fight Russia because Czar Putin was a good man and that we really needed instead to focus on saving the world from windmills? And he did! Do you remember what you were doing when he was saying all that?”

Daddy: “Well, yes, honey, I was a reporter at The Times and my job was writing about whether Marjorie Taylor Greene, an influential member of Congress at the time and now Secretary of State, thought the plans of our aging president, Joe Biden, for example to make life more affordable for everyone and to let people actually make their own decisions about their own lives, made any sense.

Daughter. Oh. Cool.

— Bob Gaydos