No one in America — not even the most deranged, spike-faced, pink-haired transtifas — believes the latest Epstein story as played out by Mr. Trump and AG Bondi in this week's cabinet parlay: nuthin to see, just a bunch of pointless child porn, fuggeddabowdit. . .

But stay! Much is moving, flowing unseen. The world is yugely in flux, large events in human affairs are in motion, many things are breaking, rotating, dissolving and re-forming, while others wind into giant hairballs. . . so many players acting as though they live in one great hall of mirrors, and treachery abides at every turn. Nobody seems to be actually managing any of it, though there is plenty of pretense, jockeying, staging. The public's anger and anxiety rise in tandem.

One thing about Epstein is likely certain: it was an intel operation. And one thing is probable: it was a joint operation between the CIA, Israel's Mossad, and the UK's MI6. The object: to get as many political poohbahs on-the-hook for disgraceful behavior of the lowest kind and blackmail-able. Under the thumb. Theories and suppositions abound.

If Mr. Trump was in on the Epstein sex shenanigans, as Elon blurted this week, why did the Democratic Party not go after him for it in three election campaigns (and all the many months in between)? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, Elon appears to be losing his shit. His CEO at "X" bailed on him this week. His A-I app, Grok, started spouting Hitler gags, and his empire of world-beating genius is tottering on a broken business model.

You can write all that Elon stuff off as a sideshow for now — wildly grotesque as it may be. But what is actually going on in the three rings of this circus? Flux in the Middle East is one. Whatever else the "Twelve Day War" was about, it's the end of Israel threatening to bomb Iran's nuke program out of existence. We've done that favor for them, or pretended to, as some are saying, kabukied it out. So, Israel, shut up about that for now . . . is the policy.

One story is that the actual Epstein material, whatever still exists, that is, which might reside in multiple locations, is so destructive to the architecture of global leadership that it must be squelched for the sake of majorly realigning forces, tensions, and polities across the Middle East, namely, the Abraham Accords. Getting all that lined up is more important to Mr. Trump for the moment than defenestrating the various perverts-in-office around Western Civ. It just is. . . so. . . gotta lump it.

Let's surmise that the president has learned a lot about the intel hall of mirrors over the past decade, but especially lately, in his second term, from DNI Tulsi Gabbard, who has access to every document in the bottomless pit of the intel archives. The President knows he is not exactly in control of his intel "community." And he aims to do something about it. You could make the case that the so-called "community" is just a giant criminal syndicate engaged in the most nefarious activities ongoing in this world of sin: human trafficking, drugs, money-laundering, weapons, every off-the-book turpitude you could imagine. Nor is John Ratcliffe exactly in control of his own agency, though he can utilize some of its services. . . but more about that later.