The “Bubba email” saga involving Trump and Epstein reveals how easily viral culture becomes a shield for avoiding the real crimes.
Andra Watkins pushes the deeper truth: Christian nationalism turns misogyny into doctrine and calls it virtue.
The Epstein files fight shows a government bending itself around one man’s fear of exposure.
At this point, you might wonder if anything can shock you, but then comes the now-infamous 2018 email chain (during Trump’s first term) between the Epstein brothers with this 10-word question: “Ask him if Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba?”
That’s led to an explosion of speculation and denials, but also some pretty spectacular memes. Here are some of the cleaner ones:
But if this salacious story brings attention to Epstein survivors and their families, who have been waiting for justice for decades, that’s a positive, notes Lincoln Square Executive Editor Susan J. Demas. Here’s their powerful PSA that came out this weekend:
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Susan, Sam Osterhout, and guest Andra Watkins name the forces that keep resurfacing in every one of these stories: a political movement that treats women’s bodies as blame receptacles, a media ecosystem that elevates humiliation over harm, and a culture still shaped by an origin myth that casts girls as weakness incarnate. It’s impossible to look at the Epstein panic, the child-marriage defenses, or the weaponized purity politics Andra unpacks without seeing the same architecture of control—one built to keep young women silent, disbelieved, or conveniently culpable. What cuts through here is the reminder that generational trauma isn’t an abstraction; it’s the raw material these ideologies rely on, reproduced through shame, ignorance, and enforced innocence. Demanding the release of the Epstein files isn’t just a procedural ask—it’s a refusal to let that machinery keep operating in the dark.
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