Trump Beats Conventional Wisdom

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse makes a worthwhile, though not a stunnningly insightful, point:

[W]hen AI was launched on the various platforms being used by the larger public, the inputs which frame the AI results are controlled by the same people who built the AI systems. When you engage with AI, you are engaging with a system that only has “approved information” behind it to deliver the outputs.

In other words, if you ask any public AI platform a question about any current topic, you're going to get an answer based on a pre-digested body of conventional wisdom, pretty much the same thing you'd get going to Real Clear Politics. I use Chrome AI mode, which I don't have to pay for, and the answers are worth what I pay for them. ChatGPT and Grok are overpriced and ought to charge nothing. But given public AI's limitations, you can at least get a good take on conventional wisdom. I asked Chrome AI mode, "What was last week's conventional wisdom about Trump's position on the Epstein files?" It answered,

Last week's conventional wisdom regarding Donald Trump's position on the Jeffrey Epstein files was that he was privately attempting to block their release, while publicly calling the entire issue a "Democratic hoax". This was seen as a major point of political vulnerability and a source of tension within his own party.

Key elements of this conventional wisdom included:

• Opposition to Transparency: Trump and his administration were perceived as actively resisting efforts to make the files public, despite his campaign promises to support transparency.
• "Hoax" Narrative: The prevailing White House strategy was to dismiss the entire affair as a politically motivated distraction.
• Political Pressure: There was significant bipartisan pressure, including from some Republicans like Rep. Thomas Massie, for the White House to stop blocking the release.
• Impending Reversal: By the end of last week (around November 16, 2025), it became clear that a House vote to compel the release of the files was inevitable.

The conventional wisdom changed dramatically over the weekend as Trump abruptly reversed his stance and publicly called for House Republicans to vote for the release, a move widely interpreted as an attempt to save face and control the political narrative once it was clear the bill would pass anyway.

But what really happened, independent of any abrupt reversal on Trump's part, was that a tranche of releases from the House Oversight Committee last week, completely unrelated to the files in question in Tuesday's House vote, had already begun to damage Democrats.

The first case was Stacey Plaskett, Democrat House delegate from the US Virgin Islands:

In November 2025, newly released documents showed that during Michael Cohen's February 2019 testimony to the House Oversight Committee, Plaskett received and responded to text messages from Epstein before, during, and after her questions. Epstein directed her to question Cohen on Trump's executive assistant, Rhona Graff, and messaged her "Good work" after her questioning concluded.

Although a Republican move to censure her for this failed, it did reinforce the idea that the Epstein files were a net Democrat liability.

The next Epstein victim was former Clinton Treasury Secratary and Harvard president Larry Summers:

Larry Summers said Monday night that he was “deeply ashamed” about his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, telling CNN that he would pause all public engagements as he works to “rebuild trust and repair relationships” — but the Harvard University professor added that he will continue teaching as some call for the university to sever ties with him.

. . . New details of Summers’ relationship with Epstein emerged last week when a House committee released emails showing years of personal correspondence between the two men, including Summers making sexist comments and seeking Epstein’s romantic advice.

The romantic advice concerned his attempts to arrange a romantic weekend with a woman who wasn't his wife, which appears now to have threatened that marriage. The situation in turn has caused Harvard to launch additional new investigations:

The investigation will also examine the roles of other people associated with the university who are implicated in the tens of thousands of pages released by the House Oversight Committee – including Summers’ wife, a professor emerita of American literature at Harvard, and nearly a dozen current and former Harvard affiliates, the paper said.

As of last night, new revelations emerged concerning House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries:

The materials, disclosed by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, included a 2013 email to the disgraced financier—who died by suicide in a New York City jail cell six years later—promoting Jeffries as a rising figure in the party, calling him "Brooklyn's Barack." Comer seized on the outreach in a floor speech and on social media, arguing that the communication amounted to an effort to draw Epstein into Democratic fundraising circles.

. . . The Washington Times first reported on the email exchange Tuesday, emphasizing that Epstein had already been convicted as a sex offender in 2008 and was facing mounting lawsuits by 2013. The documents do not show evidence of Jeffries meeting Epstein or of Epstein donating in response to the solicitation. It is also unclear if Epstein responded to the email.

Meanwhile, the Clintons, who had previously delayed scheduled depositions concerning Epstein with the House Oversight Committee, now appear to be refusing to cooperate at all:

🚨🇺🇸 REP. LUNA ACCUSES CLINTONS OF REFUSING EPSTEIN DEPOSITIONS

“Bill and Hillary Clinton are refusing to appear before House Oversight for their depositions regarding Jeffrey Epstein.

Notice how House Democrats suddenly have nothing to say about it.”

Source: @RepLuna https://t.co/Si4XEaDpW2 pic.twitter.com/Fqzvm7x5Yw

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) November 17, 2025

At the start of the YouTube video embedded at the top of this post, Mark Halperin points out,

So, the Democrats are convinced that this is a scandal about Donald Trump, that this is gonna finally destroy Donald Trump, that his failure to be for disclosure up until the last minute reflects the fact that he's worried about his relationship with Epstein. . . . Back in 2015, ten years ago, I was covering Donald Trump speaking in Washington to the annual CPAC meeting, and he did an event onstage with Sean Hannity, and in that event, again, think about 2015 where he's thinking about running for president the next year, he knows that Hillary Clinton is likely to run, and . . . he's likely to face her in the general election. In that event, he brings up Jeffrey Epstein and his relationship to Bill Clinton. Ten years ago.

Halperin goes on to outline his own brief exposure to Epstein during that time, noting that Epstein could be found at pretty much any gathering of the rich and connected in New York -- but he seems to forget that if Epstein was rich and connected, that would always apply even more to Trump. Tidbits are now dropping in releases from the files that I've got to think Trump already knew about ten, a dozen, 15 years ago, whispered to him first hand. Trump must have been aware of what would drop about Summers, the Clintons, Staley, Gates, likely plenty of others, from the time the events took place.

So why did he resist releasing the documents? On one hand, he likely felt that the various tidbits weren't all that important -- the Summers business would mostly threaten Summers's marriage, something Trump probably felt wasn't worth the trouble. Anything about Clinton might potentially be of use, but it would be about Bill, not Hillary, and he wound up not using it.

On balance, it's pretty clear that Trump thought Epstein stuff didn't affect him, that it would hurt other people unnecessarily, and it was a distraction from his overall success. But if the Democrats and never-Trumpers want it so badly, hey, let them have it. It's not as though any of it affects him -- and nobody can now accuse him of ordering its release in any case.

It's a major error to underestimate Trump. I've sometimes pointed out here concerning Trump that it's better to be lucky than good -- but that doesn't mean Trump isn't often just good.