Today, more than a hundred survivors of abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and others, gathered in support of a discharge petition—a procedural hammer to force Mike Johnson to hold a vote against Trump’s wishes—to release the 99% of the Epstein files being withheld by Trump’s Justice Department.
As I reported they would, mid-press conference, a White House flyover of fighter jets tore across the sky—twice—forcing survivors to pause mid-sentence.
Malignant Airshow
About a mile from the White House, as part of an event the survivors had planned well in advance, Anouska De Georgiou was drowned out by the flyover as she spoke about one of her abusers, convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell:
“This woman abused children. [PAUSE FOR AIRCRAFT] I was abused by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell for over 10 years. Ghislaine Maxwell was present for some of my abuse at the hand of Jeffrey Epstein. She was present, she was complicit, she was enabling and it is appalling and disgusting. And it's one of my worst nightmares that she not only be transferred but the possibility that's very much going around that she might be pardoned. This is not okay guys, this is not okay.“
A few seconds later, Chauntae Davies was trying to answer a question about Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump:
“My first trip to the Palm Beach residence, I drove there from the airport with Ghislaine Maxwell. And Jeffrey and Ghislaine were always very boastful about their friends, their famous or powerful friends. And his biggest brag, forever, was that he was very good friends with Donald Trump. He had an eight by ten framed picture of him on his desk with the two of them. Like they were very close.”
As the jets roared over Washington, White House Deputy Communications Director Kaelan Dorr, who fashions himself as an online edgelord, posted on his official account: ‘Freedom. Freedom is happening, Karen.’ He paired it with a neighborhood alert noting ‘fighter jets flying over Falls Church.’
While survivors had to pause mid-testimony, the government’s response was to laugh and call it freedom. By itself, this represents a powerful and clear example of a government decompensating along with its leader:
The Department of Defense closed the airspace around DC, deployed expensive assets, and risked American pilots to threaten victims of child sexual abuse.
It’s not just Trump and the White House that are falling apart over Epstein—it’s the entire government. The instinct to project, deflect, and gaslight is not just personal, it’s institutional.
A few minutes after his malignant airshow, in his gilded Oval Office, Donald Trump pounced on a question about the discharge petition:
“So this is a Democrat hoax that never ends.”
Trump’s response is a textbook display of two important concepts: a Dark Tetrad personality type in collapse, and DARVO.
Dark Tetrad
The Dark Tetrad is a model of four “malevolent” personality traits, used to predict aggression, exploitation, and unethical behavior: narcissism, machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism. Here is how Trump’s answer displays all four:
Narcissism (grandiosity + fragility)
Grandiosity: “Most successful eight months of any president ever,” “ended seven wars.” These are inflated, unverifiable self-claims.
Fragility: Just the question about Epstein triggers a reactionary diatribe—not a calm rebuttal, but immediate recourse to “hoax” and conspiracy theories.
Machiavellianism (manipulation + instrumental deceit)
Deflection: He reframes the question as process (“thousands of pages,” “subpoenas”) instead of substance.
Hijacking of agenda: Inserts unrelated boasts (“safe zone” DC, ending wars) to minimize the importance of the Epstein files.
Calculated conspiracy theory: Invoking “the Kennedy situation” is not random—it’s a dogwhistle to MAGA/QAnon to send them down a fruitless rabbithole.
Psychopathy (callousness + lack of guilt)
Callous dismissal: Describes the evidence of mass child sexual abuse as a “hoax” and “totally irrelevant.”
Shallow affect: No acknowledgment of victims; their pain is erased in favor of boasting about “safe zones.”
Rule-breaking posture: Positions compliance with subpoenas not as legal duty, but as personal persecution—classic psychopathic contempt for norms.
Sadism (pleasure in others’ pain)
Context matters: Minutes after a flyover over an Epstein survivors’ press conference, he calls their cause a hoax. That juxtaposition weaponizes humiliation.
Enjoyment of dominance: “Two people in this room” is a sadistic move—forcing people, with cameras rolling, to echo his invented reality.
Narrative cruelty: Casting survivors’ pursuit of truth as harassment of him, then boasting of “safe zones,” is an deliberate inversion of the power dynamic.
The Dark Tetrad personality type is among the most dangerous because by definition it wants to cause trauma in others to increase its own narcissistic supply—and personal power. But it is also clever and patient enough to plan out its cruelty and manipulate innocent bystanders to get what it wants.
DARVO
Psychologist Jennifer Freyd (Center for Institutional Courage) coined the term DARVO—Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender to describe a well-known strategy of abusers. [Archive of original 1999 paper]
“I have observed that actual abusers threaten, bully and make a nightmare for anyone who holds them accountable or asks them to change their abusive behavior. This attack, intended to chill and terrify, typically includes threats of law suits, overt and covert attacks on the whistle-blower's credibility, and so on.”
“The offender rapidly creates the impression that the abuser is the wronged one, while the victim or concerned observer is the offender.”
This process exploits a number of psychological processes to shield the abuser from their own malevolent behavior. The more it’s repeated, the more the brain rewires to accommodate it.
Deny uses the tendency to overweight the first thing a listener hears, the primacy effect, to confuse the listener about who’s at fault. It exploits uncertainty, and doubt is often enough to sway or paralyze decisions.
Attack shifts focus from the abuser to something else, often the victim, and shifts the frame from the abuse to the motive.
Reverse Victim and Offender flips the moral polarity of the narrative in the mind of the listener and creates cognitive dissonance. Both stories can’t be true at once, so the mind tries to resolve it—or becomes too confused and ignores it.
Trump’s reaction to the Epstein question is pure DARVO:
Deny: “This is a Democrat hoax that never ends.” Victims are never mentioned.
Attack/Deflect: Dismisses press questions as political; attacks cities “run by Democrats.” Repeats “hoax” and “Democrats” like a mantra, implicitly attacking the victims as liars.
Reverse: Casts himself and the regime as victims of harassment (“like the Kennedy situation”), then canonizes himself—“most successful eight months of any president ever.”
As I wrote last month, the entire siege and takeover of DC, and soon the rest of the country, is symptomatic of a collapsing, petrified narcissist projecting his own mental disintegration onto the government and the country—just to protect his own ego. We’re now watching this process deepen and darken as he expands his war plans both at home and abroad.
Two-Edged Redpill
One of the more interesting parts of this story psychologically and politically is the fact that it is a bipartisan bill, pushed by Ro Khanna and co-signed by 130 Democrats—but also led by two of the most extreme members of the GOP House Caucus, Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor-Greene.
While it is always risky to judge someone’s sincerity, I have seen many appearances by these political performance artists, and my strong reaction was, surprisingly, that they were telling the truth—and even more strangely to my ear at least, they seemed sincere. For politicians habituated to delivering propaganda for a living, once they came face-to-face with real victims telling undeniable truths, Massie and MTG seemed to act, dare I say it, like human beings—however briefly.
We are in a fascinating moment where certain Republicans, led by Massie and MTG, and a significant number of MAGA/QAnon believers, think Donald Trump is not guilty of any abuse but that his friends and donors are. They think they are actually helping Trump in the long term. That’s how they justify acting against the supreme leader’s wishes.
On any other subject but child abuse and trafficking, Massie and MTG would never get crossways with Trump. MTG has described Trump on numerous occasions as nothing short of the Second Coming. And it is part of the core narrative that built Donald Trump’s cult that he is the one who will “Save the Children.”
Trump has deliberately leaned into this theme, and consistently validated QAnon, which Marjorie Taylor-Greene has believed in from very early on. It seems clear that she thinks this is all part of trusting the plan.
While I don’t know what’s in the Epstein files, it is well-reported that Donald Trump is in them. How people like Marjorie Taylor-Greene react to any evidence of abuse on his part, should that happen, will be a major test of the system of control Trump has built—perhaps even more devastating to his psychological hold on his followers than his own death would be. It would turn their entire world inside-out.
Defiance Is Contagious
As someone who watches liars far too much, out of necessity, I was particularly moved by the testimony of the survivors. These are human beings who were so harmed by Epstein and Maxwell that they exposed themselves to a national audience a mile away from Donald Trump, listened to cruel questions from corrupt press, voluntarily told retraumatizing stories, and were threatened by a formation of fighter jets.
Nevertheless, they persisted.
As a final message to anyone who thinks they’re going to be intimidated, the survivors announced that they have agreed to work together to create their own Epstein list, from personal experience. By pooling their knowledge and releasing the list through others they avoid direct accusations and defamation claims from litigious abusers. MTG, for her part says she’s on board.
“If they want to give me a list, I will walk in that Capitol on the House floor and I'll say every damn name that abused these women"
The question, of course, is: What if Donald Trump’s name is on it? What then?
Regardless, the survivors had a very clear message:
“This is not a hoax. We are not going away.”
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Your description of what Trump’s personality type would likely do when presented with the situation he finds himself is pretty spot on from others I have observed with similar personalities - but much, much, much less power and therefore ability to damage fewer human beings
Trump is one sick MoFo! 🤬