Trump 2.0

[bolo]

He hates to lose, so now that it's clear Congress will vote to release the files, he's going to claim he was for that all along.

What comes next is a separate problem.

[IvanV]

I'm assuming they've concluded it isn't going away and the increasingly lurid speculation about what's not being revealed will be more harmful in the midterm elections than such damage as results from releasing the files and dealing with the fallout now.

I think his attitude might be coloured by the drip-drip of releases we have been getting, that keeps it on the news. If it, or much of it, is going to get released anyway by that drip-drip, maybe better for him to have it done in one go. Though some of the more interesting things that have been coming out recently in dribs and drabs have been files from the Epstein estate, rather than files held by public authorities.

One issue that might affect Trump's comfort with a release of "the Epstein files" is what particular set of files he means by that, and then whether those particular set of files are even allowed to be released. Initially Trump tried to pretend that "the Epstein files" meant just the grand jury files, a very small subset of what most people meant by "the Epstein files". It was very easy and very safe for him to be in favour of releasing those, not least because they were unlikely to say anything much about Trump, and even better because they couldn't be released anyway, whoever demanded it. So what actually is the scope and releasability of this particular "Epstein files" he is now happy to have released?

[jimbob]

The most salacious email is quite amusing, but equally it is also damning.

Forget for a moment the identity of "Bubba" .

The email confirns the link between Bannon and Putin and that Bannon knows at least some of the kompromat that Putin has on Trump, and that Epstein's brother was aware of compromising photos of Trump that Bannon also knew of.

Which raises the question, why ask Bannon about those photos unless he's the one sending them to Russia?