Month: July 2025

Donald Trump is reportedly in the Epstein files.

To anyone paying attention, it’s less a revelation than a grim confirmation. And now — the big question: is this the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s political career?

It all started after Attorney General Pam Bondi came up empty-handed following the long-hyped release of the Epstein files, the promised reckoning fell flat. For all the buildup, the documents were scant. The smoking gun absent. And the ensuing reaction had all the hallmarks of a terminally splintering movement.

The podcast bros in the manosphere turned sour.

Photographs and video footage of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein standing and laughing together looped on TV like it was the moon landing.

And all Trump could manage, in the initial phase of the scandal, was the feeblest and most suspect of responses: “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years … Are people still talking about this guy?”

They were. In fact, it was all anyone in the MAGA world could talk about.

And who could blame them? Not only was their movement engulfed in the moral contradiction of President Trump, but their entire belief system had been turned inside out. Because the man they sent to fix the rot at the heart of American democracy was seated beneath it the whole time.

Given this moral whiplash and cognitive dissonance, people believed it was the death knell.

They were incorrect.

Don’t get me wrong — Trump is thoroughly bruised from this. But he is far from beaten.

There’s no question this scandal and the lurid facts still buried in the Epstein files, will continue to dog him. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s committed a crime, but it is certainly an unmitigated political disaster, if true.

But the more important takeaway — the one that will shape how this all plays out — has less to do with the scandal itself and everything to do with the nature of Trump’s response. It underscores a deeper truth about the MAGA political machine: it isn’t vulnerable to conspiracy — it is built on it. And therefore, Trump is always playing with a loaded deck.

When the Wall Street Journal reported last week that Trump had sent Epstein a birthday letter allegedly featuring a “bawdy” sketch of a naked woman, Trump didn’t go quiet. He went nuclear — suing the Journal for $10 billion.

It was textbook Trump: when under siege, go on the attack. Distract. Flood the zone. And so, his response followed a familiar pattern — reframe damning news not as fact, but as partisan sabotage. It energizes the base. It forces a test of loyalty: “Believe me, or believe them.”

The result? Legal peril becomes persecution. Indictments become proof he’s feared by the elite and therefore generate political capital. And even criticism from ideological allies becomes ammunition in his insurgent identity.

Trump knows how to alchemize scandal into grievance — and grievance into power.

But those are just the tactics. The more revealing question is: why do they work?

The answer is that conspiracy is no longer a fringe impulse in American politics — it’s foundational. According to polling, over 50 per cent of American adults believe in at least one conspiracy theory. And Trump understands that better than anyone.

The most durable trait of conspiracy thinking is its elasticity. It adapts. It never stops moving. The target shifts. The logic recalibrates.

If the messiah doesn’t show up in a spacecraft on the day of the rapture, it’s not because the prophecy was false. It’s because she changed her mind at the last minute.

Trump doesn’t just exploit this tendency — he embodies it. He is its avatar.

And so, if you believed there was a deep-state cabal orchestrated by Epstein, or that the CIA was gathering kompromat on the powerful, it’s not a stretch to believe Trump’s association with Epstein could be nothing more than a frame job. That he was the dupe. Or even the decoy.

Because the belief isn’t just in a conspiracy — it’s in conspiracy itself. An omnipresent, unknowable force is always working in shadows. And within that framework, Trump isn’t a hypocrite. He’s a martyr.

Even his latest attack at President Obama — amplifying a debunked claim about a coup in the wake of the 2016 campaign — points to the same playbook: inject doubt, deepen paranoia, expand the conspiracy.

Distraction is the game. Division is the strategy. And Trump is still playing from the same old loaded deck.

It wasn’t so long ago that Canada perennially cashed in on its so-called “peace dividend.” The logic went like this: while our tanks might rust, the salaries of our Armed Forces members stagnate, and our ammunition stockpiles dwindle, the government could reallocate military spending toward areas of more immediate concern — entitlement programs, infrastructure and other “flavours of the day.”

Point to whichever geopolitical disaster from recent history you like, one thing is painfully clear: the dividend has been spent. But the problem isn’t just that our leaders have been slow to acknowledge this new reality — it’s that they’ve been even slower to act on its implications. Because the inverse logic now applies: in a more volatile world, there is a crisis fee to pay. A big one.

At last, we appear to have a government willing to foot the bill. In real terms: a staggering $150 billion annually on defence within the decade — amounting to five per cent of our GDP.

Unsurprisingly, there’s no shortage of speculation on how to raise this money. Perhaps we bring back victory bonds. Hike the GST. Cut spending in other federal programs and redirect to military funding. Tax more efficiently. Find lost revenue.

Everything is on the table because the current fiscal status quo doesn’t come remotely close to covering the new defence spend. A recent C.D. Howe report estimates the federal government would run a $311-billion cumulative deficit over four years if it follows through on its promise without raising the money.

But while solving the “how” is essential to pulling our weight globally, it’s overshadowed by a deeper political question. What’s missing in all of these proposals is an honest reckoning with who will bear the cost. Because one way or another, Canadians will — whether through higher taxes, reduced services, or both.

And that’s why this moment is so fraught.

There’s a reason past governments punted this issue: defence costs don’t show up for the public at the gas pump or grocery store. And asking Canadians to pay more while they are barely hanging on is a hard sell.

Which brings us to the defining challenge of this early era of the Carney government: not how much financial capital the government needs to fund its ambitions, but how much political capital it is willing to spend — and when — to make that happen. In this sense, the defence spending debate is not just a policy test, it’s the canary in the coal mine for Mark Carney’s entire premiership.

It’s hackneyed to say a politician is a product of their timing. Everyone is. But some politicians make that truth more visible than others, and Carney’s political fortunes are a monument to the importance of timing.

It’s no exaggeration to say the prime minister rode into office on a wave of ideal campaign conditions: a new Donald Trump presidency, a reawakening of Canadian nationalism in response, a country newly hungry for experienced global leadership.

And now, good timing has rolled into even better timing. Instead of a baptism by fire in the House of Commons or daily media maulings, Carney gets a summer to plan, build, and breathe. His chief opponent doesn’t even have a seat. The honeymoon isn’t just intact — it’s enchanted.

But all that only underlines that Carney’s biggest opponent isn’t a rival party, but two dangerous instincts.

First, to rest. After two hard fought campaigns (first a leadership, then a general election) the Carney camp could be forgiven for thinking this is the time for a well-deserved break. Second, and more consequentially, the advice — especially from unpracticed strategists — to hoard political capital rather than spend it, to not exhaust one unnecessary dime in order to maintain popularity.

Both sentiments are dead wrong. Not simply because of the truism that honeymoons eventually expire and that the warm, fuzzy feelings of unity will fade. It’s the more enduring political truth: you must make the hard choices early, while the wind is at your back, before moving on to anything more aspirational.

And there is no choice more consequential — or more defining — than deciding how much political capital to spend and when.

Because this isn’t just a question of budgets or trade-offs. It’s a question of leadership. Whether Carney will be remembered as a product of fortunate timing — or as a prime minister who recognized that when fortune came knocking, he didn’t wait — he moved.

Now is that moment. The moment to spend political capital boldly, and to speak plainly with Canadians about how we will pay for our national defence. Before fair winds give way to storms.