'The order to cover it up came from Trump. I asked him why. And he gave me this long, very emotional explanation that this was all a plot against him, like Russiagate.'

Tucker Carlson: the directive to throttle the release of the Epstein Files came directly from Trump himself. {Daily Mail 16 September}

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16136233/Tucker-Carlsons-stunning-claim-order-cover-Epstein-files-came-Trump-directly.html

Guilty as sin. —

FTA: President Donald Trump directly ordered the cover-up of the government's Jeffrey Epstein files, ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed in a stunning interview. 

Speaking with Vanity Fair, Carlson, 57, said that he warned the president about the political ramifications of withholding the files in the summer of 2025 when Trump was facing overwhelming scrutiny for his administration's handling of the late pedophile's files. 

'My position from the beginning with Trump, I said it to Trump, was, 'I don't understand why you would ever keep any of this stuff secret.' And I got like a bunch of different answers,' Carlson told the outlet. 

'I don't feel any need to cover for Epstein,' the pundit and podcaster said, recounting his conversation with the president. 'So I said, 'You shouldn't either.' In the end, it came from Trump directly.'

Though a deluge of reports has detailed the West Wing's reaction to the Epstein fallout, including meetings on the topic in the Situation Room, Carlson is the first to claim the order to throttle the release of the files came from Trump.   

'The order to cover it up came from Trump,' the former Fox News host said. 'I asked him why. And he gave me this long, very emotional explanation that this was all a plot against him, like Russiagate.'

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🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.

Trump’s appointment of his personal lawyer as Attorney General is an old trick drawn from the timeworn playbook of tyrants

image generated via ChatGPT

Ruth Ben-Ghiat — Todd Blanche, the latest tool: how autocrats use personal lawyers. {Lucid 11 August}

https://lucid.substack.com/p/todd-blanche-the-latest-tool-how

It required millions of enablers, distributed across nearly every sector of society, and an unprecedented mass brainwashing campaign, to make it happen: the now-former United States of America hath come to revolve entirely around the ego and ambitions of a single individual. Somehow, all of this hath been largely normalised, such that any earnest endeavour to correct course shall be met with violent resistance from a terrifyingly substantial — and heavily armed — segment of the general populace.

FTA: The appointment of President Donald Trump’s personal criminal lawyer, Todd Blanche, as Attorney General, is the latest sign that America is experiencing a form of personalist rule. This is a form of autocracy which organizes governance around the self-preservation of a leader whose private interests prevail over national ones in shaping domestic and foreign policy.

While it is more common in established regimes, personalist rule can emerge in degraded democracies, such as Italy under Silvio Berlusconi, and in countries in transition from democracy to autocracy, which is the case with today’s America.

Personalist leaders have no interest in public welfare or serving the people. Holding public office is a vehicle of private enrichment for them, their families, and their allies, and a means of finally solving their abundant legal, financial, and other problems once and for all.

Having the right custodian of justice, who real job is freeing the autocrat from the obligations and burden of obeying the law, is key to success.

‘Personalist rule’. Now, remember fellow #Muricans, you are deranged (afflicted with ‘TDS’), a Communist, and hate Jesus Himself if you perceive anything whatsoever amiss with the USA becoming Trumpistan. God bless President Trump — we would be unable to wipe our own asses absent his divine guidance and providential wisdom. Sarcasm aside, there hath not been a single day in the past ten years — including throughout the four years of his exile, during which we remained subjected to him in the media cycle around the clock nonetheless — upon which I have not shaken my head in disbelief and disgust. Revulsion partially towards Donald Trump himself, and even greater anger at all the people around us who have forced us to undergo this ordeal. And disbelief, always — for this extreme state of affairs is absurd to the nth degree, and all efforts to normalise it must be vehemently rejected.

Yet, it is only getting worse. Trump himself grows worse; the #MAGA rank-and-file grow worse; and the country is in the throes of a dystopian nightmare. Whilst an exceedingly modest number of his followers and enablers have latterly turned away — in certain of these instances, precisely because Trump hath not gone as far (yet) in the direction of totalitarianism as they would like, or because he is too cosy with Israel for their Jew-hating sensibilities — the vast majority are standing by their man, and the GOP is goosestepping in unison. We are not waking up from this nightmare anytime soon; and do not count on it being over by 20 January 2029, for the groundwork is being laid, quite unmistakably, to establish him as President-for-life.

What y’all voted for, #Murica. And I know, ‘y’all’ remain thoroughly pleased with yourselves. In due course, however, karma will come for thee.

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🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.

Accountability on one side of the Atlantic, whilst America hath become a republic without consequences for its reprobate leader

EPA

Starmer to step down as Prime Minister; Andy Burnham sworn in as MP, likely to become next Labour leader and PM. {The Guardian 22 June}

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/22/keir-starmer-resigns-as-prime-minister

Sir Keir Starmer had more than his share of political problems on his plate, but make no mistake: the controversy over the appointment of the former Lord Mandelson as ambassador to the former United States was his undoing.

One of the world’s most powerful men — perhaps, in the void left by America in the age of Trump, the de facto leader of the free world — has been brought down by the Epstein fallout. Meanwhile, Trump continues to sit in office, despite everybody knowing that he and Epstein were best friends prior to their falling out,  yet there remains virtual silence from the American people. Whether it is being a  likely paedophile, or fashioning a coup attempt, or betraying our allies in the world, or implementing nation-killing economic policies, or starting unwinnable wars, Americans just do not care when it comes to this man; they will never forsake him. Our country hath been reduced to a glorified personality cult.

I know not whether Sir Keir deserved such a harsh fate, for from where I am sitting — in the aforementioned Trumpistan — he seemed quite a competent and capable leader; certainly a step up from his two immediate predecessors of the dying Conservative Party. Perhaps he really did not fully consider just how deeply tied Mandelson was to Jeffrey Epstein. I certainly cannot believe, had he full understanding of the Mandelson-Epstein relationship, that he would deliberately risk political capital by appointing someone with so many skeletons in the cupboard to such an important diplomatic post. In the UK, there are still consequences for poor decision making, and there are no Donald Trumps being held above the law and worshipped as a god by an embarrassingly large percentage of society. 

Ask Britons about anything, of course, and they shall say the sky is falling most every time. From afar, I would suggest otherwise: the United Kingdom has some very serious and pressing issues, but at least its political leaders are still held accountable. 

On some levels, I would say that this is a sign of a reasonably healthy, functioning democratic society. And I cannot help but be a little envious of my ancestral homeland for that. Life is not much fun on this side of the Atlantic these days, and getting worse by the day.

linktr.ee/arthurnewhook

🪐💔 #QueSeraSera 𓅨 🕈

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.

Grand Old Pedophile-enablers: Only eight of the twenty-six Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are willing to go on the record over any prospect of leniency for Ghislaine Maxwell

NYT

{Forbes 25 April} ‘Only 8 Of 26 GOP Committee Members Say Ghislaine Maxwell Shouldn’t Be Pardoned’

As ever, these Republicans live in sheer terror of alienating Trump’s acolytes amongst the masses, and they know that the American people, in general, are giving the convicted felon a pass for his multitude crimes (Epstein, collusion with Russia, the attempt to overturn legitimate election results, January 6, the criminal mishandling of the COVID pandemic, betraying our allies, and so much more). We know that the likes of Representative Thomas Massie are risking their careers — and far more besides — in trying to do the right thing in the face of mass indifference and, in many quarters, outright hostility from the public. Remember, Maxwell made it known some weeks ago that she would speak only if Trump granted her a full pardon. And she is going to receive one, I stand by that. 

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.

The DOJ hath released a tranche of the Epstein files, though (predictably) ‘significant portions’ remain obscured beneath thick bars of redaction

image generated via ChatGPT

{The Guardian 19 December} ‘US justice department releases heavily redacted cache of Jeffrey Epstein files’

And against this darkling backdrop, the Trump regime continues its brazen campaign of gaslighting the American public: assuring citizens that prices have fallen when every household ledger says otherwise; indulging in puerile vandalism of official presidential plaques within the White House gallery; and conducting itself with a vindictive frivolity that a majority of Americans either greet with indifference or, worse, applaud as tokens of strength and leadership.

Given such moral torpor, why wouldn’t Trump and his inner coterie presume they can obfuscate even the gravest allegations—those touching upon the exploitation of children? And why wouldn’t vast swathes of the populace respond with a bored ‘eh’, or an enraged cry of ‘fake news’, as though this Pavlovian refrain were a sufficient answer to every horror?

The relative few who persist in clinging to reason and decency are now shouted down with ever-greater fury, perpetually accused of suffering from the fantastical malady dubbed ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’. The truth is far simpler and far darker: most of America has no appetite whatsoever for resisting Donald J. Trump or the grotesquely contorted creature the ruling Republican Party hath become. Much like the common Germans who, though not always votaries of the creed, nevertheless shrank from opposing the Nazi dictatorship, so do today’s Americans avert their gaze, either desiring only to be left untroubled or to take this golden opportunity to gleefully hurt—even kill—other human beings.

Thus standeth a nation of some 330 million souls, too cowed, too exhausted, and/or too compromised to confront the appalling likelihood that their president may be implicated in crimes of the most abhorrent nature. It is, in every sense of the word, pathetic. And, evil.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook.

No depravity too great: Donald Trump, the American people, and the caprice of human adulation

A caveat is in order: the above image derives from a Facebook screenshot, and not every utterance cast in meme form can be presumed accurate. The dates and figures may well be awry—I know not. Yet what hath been rendered unmistakable is this: Trump will recoil from no species of moral abomination in his relentless endeavour to escape both justice and judgement. Moreover, it ought by now to be recognised as a self-evident truth that if an individual is endowed with charm, charisma, and the insidious gift to enthral, others will forgive them anything they would condemn in any other. Were the pop singer Michael Jackson—though long since gone to dust—merely an eccentric black man afflicted with a peculiar dermatological malady and an unseemly fascination with children, rather than an entertainer idolised the world over, he would, in all likelihood, have been cast into a prison or institution ere the age of thirty. Such is the caprice, the whimsical tyranny, of human adulation.

These abominations—these ‘alleged’ vile depredations upon the innocent—might be captured in full upon film and displayed before the entire world, and still the greater part of the #MAGA cult would persist in their denials. Some, indeed, would strain to contrive a justification; this is already occurring to a considerable extent, amongst those deluded souls who maintain that Trump was some covert operative pursuing Jeffrey Epstein—good grief, the mind fairly reels.

No power is stirring to stop him; the time for that came and went. Our solitary hope resides in his age and failing health; and perhaps, when at last he shuffles off this mortal coil, a few of the dullards inhabiting this benighted nation may descend from their fevered delusions and, with any luck, abandon politics altogether. —Arthur Newhook 31 October 2025.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook.

Damned near futile to care any longer, but no matter...

Rick Wilson poses the million-dollar question—and I rather think we all know where the smart money rests with that wretched lot.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook.  DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED on Cash App ($ANewhook).

PACT OF FORGETTING: WHY THE #MAGA BASE, AND THE PEOPLE AND INSTITUTIONS OF THE FORMER UNITED STATES IN GENERAL, WILL NEVER ALLOW TRUMP AND ASSOCIATES TO FACE JUSTICE FOR (IN ALL LIKELIHOOD) VISITING EPSTEIN’S PAEDOPHILE ISLAND

Getty Images

Whilst some of them are grumbling, waiting for the #MAGA faithful to break permanently with their cult leader is a fool’s errand. I submit unequivocally: even if there were incontrovertible, undoctored video evidence of Trump sexually assaulting minors, 90% or more of his constituency would maintain their allegiance, provided he continues to sanction their licence to hate fellow Americans.

If disclosures of Russian electoral manipulation on his behalf in 2016 failed to unseat him, if his lamentable handling of this century’s gravest public health crisis proved insufficient, if his mendacious claims of electoral fraud and the January 6 insurrection they incited could not bring him down—then this matter certainly will not. ‘Teflon Don’ has never been a truer moniker.

Close enough to half of the populace in the former United States—the ruling plurality holding roughly 85% to 90% of the guns, and most of the political power—has declared this man infallible, and they will cling to that belief until the bitter end (and beyond, if any of us remain by then). Yes, humans really are this depraved. The past decade has proven we must grow up and confront this reality. The sooner we do, the sooner we might begin fixing this infernal mess. Or maybe not.

Expecting Congress to act on this in earnest—barring a few rogue figures—is as naïve as believing the American public will demand accountability. Given that countless such miscreants, alongside elites across commerce, religion, entertainment, sports, and media, likely frequented Little Saint James, exposing Trump would force them to expose themselves—and the fallout could theoretically collapse the entire system, obliterating everything Americans thought they knew.

Yet even if the full client list were made public, I doubt the American public could bear the sheer scale of it—the revelation that so many idolised figures were complicit in these horrors. Most would retreat into denial, attack the evidence, then ultimately demand their own Pact of Forgetting, much like Spain’s after Franco’s death and the collapse of Fascist rule in the mid-1970s.

Yes, it is that grave. Many are now too jaded to feel shock, having lost all faith in humanity (your correspondent leans decidedly this way, in case it wasn't obvious). The world's horrors come so thick and fast they've become a blur.

Democratic societies, when faced with truths too monstrous to bear, typically choose collective amnesia over painful moral reckoning. Here, it would simply occur on an unprecedented scale. Justice shall not be served—abandon all hope.  —Arthur Newhook, 17 July 2025.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X-TWITTER, and at the same handle on FACEBOOK. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/r/StopTheIdiocracy/new/. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.