The Brooklyn Rail

John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 after hearing Lincoln’s speech promoting voting rights for African Americans on April 11. Charles J. Guiteau assassinated James A. Garfield on July 2, 1881 because Garfield didn’t appoint him Ambassador to France. Leon Czolgosz assassinated William McKinley on September 6, 1901 for unknown reasons. And Lee Harvey Oswald apparently assassinated John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, also for unknown reasons.

John Hinckley Jr. tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981, to impress Jodie Foster, and John Schrank tried to assassinate Teddy Roosevelt after he was no longer president because William McKinley came to him in a dream and told him to do it.

And various levels of assassination plots and attempts were also made on Andrew Jackson, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, FDR, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.

Trump was right when he said, just after the incident in the Washington Hilton Hotel on April 25, that being president is a dangerous job, but wrong when he said that only the most productive and “impactful” presidents are targeted for assassination.

When CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell interviewed Trump for 60 Minutes on Sunday, April 26, about the gunman who tried to break into the White House Correspondents Dinner, and read a portion of the gunman’s “manifesto,” which Trump himself had referenced earlier, Trump lashed out at O’Donnell for saying those words out loud.

O’Donnell said, “The so-called manifesto is a stunning thing to read, Mr. President. He appears to reference a motive in it. He writes this quote, ‘Administration officials, they are targets.’ And he also wrote this: ‘I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.’ What’s your reaction to that?”

Trump’s entire demeanor changed in that moment, and he snarled, “I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would, because you’re horrible people. Horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody.”

O’Donnell then asked, “Oh, you think—do you think he was referring to you?” but Trump continued without acknowledging her disingenuous query: “Excuse me, excuse me!” he barked. “I’m not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person. I got associated with stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated. Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with, let’s say, Epstein or other things. But I said to myself, ‘You know, I’ll do this interview and they’ll probably. . .’ I read the manifesto. You know, he’s a sick person. But you should be ashamed of yourself for reading that, because I’m not any of those things.”

O’Donnell tried to remind him of the source—“Mr. President, these are the gunman’s words”—but her clarification had no effect on the President.

“You shouldn’t be reading that on 60 Minutes,” said Trump. “You’re a disgrace.”

This agitation by Trump was deeply revealing. Even though Trump had referred to the gunman’s manifesto himself, when O’Donnell quoted from it to him, in his mind she became the aggressor, just by repeating the words. O’Donnell immediately became just another nasty woman attacking him. She needed to be stopped. They all need to be stopped.

This was the outburst of a guilty person who cannot keep from exposing his guilt in public. It shows how wide-open Trump is to the rape and pedophilia charges and how consequently terrified he is of them.

On April 24^th, in advance of the White House Correspondents Dinner, images and documents from the Trump–Epstein Files were projected onto the Washington Hilton hotel by the British activist group Led By Donkeys,¹ who were also responsible for projecting images of Trump and Epstein onto Windsor Castle during Trump’s state visit to London last September.

The two-minute video projected onto the Hilton had a spoken script which begins in this way: “Dear President Trump, This building is the Washington Hilton Hotel. You’ll soon be arriving here as the guest of honor at the White House Correspondents Dinner. But the fact is you, the President of the United States, are right now engaged in a massive cover-up of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes. To date, your administration has only released about half the Epstein files. Of those that have been published, hundreds of pages have been blacked out entirely and the names of many powerful men have been redacted . . . .” And it ends, “The fact is, Mr. President, you knew. Release the files. End the cover-up now.”²

The Brits have been ahead of us in terms of accountability concerning the Trump–Epstein files, and they were ahead of us here, in advance of King Charles III’s state visit to Washington, including extensive meetings with President Trump and an address to a joint meeting of Congress. In advance of that Congressional address, a number of survivors of sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein spoke at the Capitol, calling for legislation to protect victims of sex trafficking. The brother of the late Virginia Giuffre pointed out that survivors of Epstein were “still fighting to be heard, still pushing for real accountability, while many of the powerful connected to these systems remain just out of reach, unable to acknowledge survivors face to face.” The survivors wanted to meet with King Charles, whose brother Andrew was arrested earlier this year for his abuse of Virginia Giuffre, orchestrated by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, but King Charles declined to do so.³

And so the seemingly impermeable wall of distraction that has made Trumpism possible so far continues to crumble under the drip, drip, drip of the Trump–Epstein Files.