The Daily Populous Wednesday September 10th, 2025 night edition
Authored by thebulwark.com and submitted by OkayButFoRealz

Caution: I’m going to avoid euphemism and reproduce images from the Epstein birthday book because I want everyone to see Jeffrey Epstein through the eyes of the people who knew him best.

Also: You’re getting a bonus Secret pod today. Probably around 1:30.

Everyone exists in shorthand. If I asked your closest friends to describe you, I’m sure they’d settle on a couple traits that they saw as definitional. For a normal person, shorthand might be: Jerry has a great sense of humor and loves the Mets. Or, Sally is forgetful in a charming way and is devoted to her kids.

When you read the book compiled by Jeffrey Epstein’s friends for his fiftieth birthday, they have a clear shorthand understanding of the man:

He likes having sex with very young girls.

Those are the two themes that show up over and over again. Let me give you some examples. Here is a drawing in the book from one of his friends, celebrating his life’s progress from 30-year-old man with ratty jeans handing young girls balloons and lollipops to the owner of the Lolita Express being serviced by young women on a tropical island.

Here is a photo collage from the book. (The blacked-out redactions were in the version provided by the committee.) Note the continuity of subject.

In this entry an anonymous Epstein friend reminisces about the time Jeffrey sold a “fully depreciated” girl to their mutual friend Donald Trump for $22,500.

You decide what “fully depreciated” means.

Also included in the book is a tribute from an unidentified woman who says that “Before Jeffrey, I was a 22 year old divorcee working as a hostess in a hotel” but “after Jeffrey” she went on to live a glamorous life. She lists various exotic locales she visited because of Epstein and then names a dozen famous people she met because of him, including Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, the Sultan of Brunei, Kevin Spacey, and Michael Jackson. Oh, and Donald Trump.

In hindsight, that list seems suggestive of something other than celebrity.

Then there are the various pictures of animal penises and and animals having sex, alongside remembrances from pals of the times they saw Epstein having sex, or participated in sex with Epstein and multiple girls.

These are not the descriptions of a normal, well-adjusted 50-year-old man. They are the descriptions of a sociopath. A predator.

His friends—including Donald Trump—did not treat this fact as a foible. Neither did they attempt to gloss over it, as one might try to avoid an old chum’s uncomfortable or self-destructive habits.

No. It is clear from the entries in this book that Epstein’s friends knew he was a predator, saw his sociopathy as one of his two defining features, and celebrated it. At absolute best, they stood around this monster and cheered on his sociopathy. At worst? Well, we know that at least one of these people actively participated in his criminality.

At the end of the day, here is what the Epstein birthday book makes undeniable:

Everyone in Jeffrey Epstein’s circle knew. They knew that Epstein was a predator. They believed that his pathology defined him. And they joked about it, encouraged it, and egged him on.

Donald Trump knew all about Jeffrey Epstein. He was at least complicit in Epstein’s criminality. And eventually, we will know if he was more than complicit.

Trump and MAGA have decided to brazen out this story by insisting that Trump’s contribution to the Epstein birthday book—the one-page poem and sketch and signature—is a fake. Let’s take that claim seriously for a moment.

mishap1 on September 9th, 2025 at 18:25 UTC »

This article seems to make a mistake:

> progress from 30-year-old man with ratty jeans handing young girls balloons and lollipops to the owner of the Lolita Express being serviced by young women on a tropical island.

The building in the background looks nothing like Epstein's houses in Little St. James or West Palm Beach. It does bear more than a passing resemblance to Mar-A-Lago complete with the archways and red roof of a Mediterranean villa.

Hobbes604 on September 9th, 2025 at 17:57 UTC »

There’s no plausible deniability any more. There’s also nobody who can directly question him the way Congress might once have. He should be impeached and convicted for lying about this. If Clinton can be impeached but not convicted for his sexual conduct lies, surely Trump’s lies and behavior warrant it more by several orders of magnitude.

Smithy2232 on September 9th, 2025 at 17:29 UTC »

There is no question that these two guys were pretty tight at one time.