Tulsi Gabbard’s failure to distract from Epstein saga is no flop

Only one week after Tulsi Gabbard, in her role as director of national intelligence, attempted to please her boss with the unprecedented demand that former President Barack Obama “must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Donald Trump all but deflated Gabbard’s obvious diversionary ploy. He admitted to the press on Friday that, due to a Supreme Court case he himself brought, Obama “has immunity, and it probably helps him a lot.” 

It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for Tulsi Gabbard — except there is scant evidence anyone in the media took her claims seriously in the first place. 

“[P]eople should really focus on how well the country’s doing, or they should focus on the fact that Barack Hussein Obama led a coup,” Trump virtually begged the press, who peppered him with questions on Friday about the case of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein before the president left the White House for Scotland. For weeks now, Trump has been unusually unable to shake the stench of a bad news story. He’s tried rebranding, a Trump specialty, to no avail. He’s tried playing along, ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi to “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony” on the matter, and even sending Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who formerly served as Trump’s criminal attorney, down to Florida this week for two days of interviews with Epstein’s jailed accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. 

But this has all only served to draw more attention to the scandal. “The story Republicans hoped would quietly fade is growing louder by the hour,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., noted on the Senate floor this week.

The scandal all kicked off in early June, when a scorned Elon Musk, who had recently resigned as head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, took to his X platform to air out Trump’s dirty laundry with the now-deleted claim that the president was “in the Epstein files.” After weeks of MAGA outrage, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., sent lawmakers home early this week for a month-long break after some Republicans joined with Democrats to vote for the public release of the Epstein files. Then, days after Trump filed a lawsuit against the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal for its reporting on the president’s alleged involvement with Epstein, the paper continued undeterred. This week, the Journal reported that Trump was informed by Bondi in May that his name appeared “multiple times” in the Epstein documents. The scandal’s torrent of media coverage has proved too much for Gabbard’s big reveal — which turned out to be little more than rewarmed files of a previously reported 2020 House investigation into election meddling by Russia — to compete. 

Presumably, the “embattled” Gabbard, whose “​​standing has been weakened” in Trump’s White House, according to the New York Times, is eager to get back in the notoriously thin-skinned president’s good graces. So, at first blush, it makes sense that she is now baselessly alleging Obama conspired to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s 2016 election. After all, the former president is certainly nothing if not red meat for Donald Trump. 

But Pam Bondi, who has found herself similarly in Trump’s — and congressional Republicans’ — hot seat for her inept handling of the Epstein files, already directed the FBI several weeks ago to open a “grand conspiracy” case related to the investigation into Russian interference in an election held nearly a decade ago. Her move leaves this obvious attempt to rehash “Russiagate” too stale for even Fox News to hype. 

“Americans should beware of Gabbard’s ‘dangerous distraction’ with revisionist history of 2016 election,” read an op-ed published by FoxNews.com on July 23 — the same day Gabbard appeared in the White House briefing room to promote her declassification of a report prepared by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence back in 2020. While her claims failed to gain top billing on any of Fox News’ programming, Gabbard appeared on at least two Fox shows on Wednesday to tout  her claims. She said on “Jesse Watters Primetime” that “deep state obstacles” worked to ensure her findings did not “see the light of day.”

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But it doesn’t seem the media is buying it. There have been two investigations ordered by Republicans, each resulting in no convictions. Even Secretary of State Marco Rubio, while serving as a Florida senator and member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, “We have found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.”

“Gabbard’s claims of an anti-Trump conspiracy are not supported by declassified documents,” an Associated Press headline read. The Wall Street Journal, continuing its streak of reporting facts that undercut the Trump administration’s recent claims, quoted Susan Miller, the CIA’s director of counterintelligence in 2016, who said, “There was absolutely no pressure on my team by the White House, or by our director, in favor of a particular outcome.” CNN’s Kaitlin Collins directly confronted Gabbard about her motivations. The director batted away the question with a non-answer: “The evidence and the intelligence that has been declassified and released is irrefutable.”

Still, Gabbard’s boss appears to be pleased.

“She’s, like, hotter than everybody. She’s the hottest one in the room right now,” Trump publicly praised Gabbard, before later undermining her work. “We’re very proud of you, Tulsi.”

Trump’s apparent satisfaction with Gabbard, despite no evidence that she’s helped push Epstein off the front pages, is a sign her diversionary tactics may be working in a less apparent way. Consider that House Republicans this week introduced a bill that would designate workers who use any discretion in their job function as independent contractors, effectively making millions of workers vulnerable to being stripped of basic labor protections. Or that the president signed an executive order making it easier to force homeless Americans into institutions. Or that there is forward movement on the Trump-led effort in red states to redistrict congressional maps in favor of Republicans.

None of these actions received the attention — and scrutiny — they deserve. For Trump and his radical agenda, that’s a win.

The Epstein genie is out of the bottle. Rupert Murdoch and his reporters are making sure that the scandal doesn’t drop from the front pages, with scoop after scoop at the Wall Street Journal. But that doesn’t mean Tulsi Gabbard’s distraction game has been a flop.