The White House of Horrors

When I saw the news yesterday morning about British law officials arresting former Prince Andrew, my immediate thought (and I’m sure that of many others) was not about England.  It was how horrified the Trump administration will likely be by this story, since it will focus massive attention on how the British not only are dropping top officials from the government from their involvement with Jeffrey Epstein – and may even bring down the Prime Minister who has no connection at all to Epstein, but appointed people who did – but just arrested a member of the royal family, in fact the brother of the King of England, the first time that has happened since 1649.
 
It will also shine the brightest possible klieg light on the fact, as well, that a former U.S. President has agreed to testify under oath about Epstein, will his wife (who has never met Epstein and has no connection to him) – yet neither the current president, who is mentioned over a million times in the Epstein files, and about whom Epstein himself said was his best friend, nor the president’s wife who knew Epstein personally are testifying.
 
And indeed, the story of the arrest of the brother of the King of England did indeed overwhelm the news yesterday, drawing attention of this all to Trump and his wife and all those members in Trump’s cabinet and Trump’s longtime adviser Steve Bannon who had ties to Epstein, some of them very close ties.
 
It must have been a hellish day of horror for Trump. 
 
And made more hellish by Trump’s response to the arrest being that it was “A very sad thing.”  It’s a shame there were no follow-up questions like, “Really?? Why???  For whom?”
 
By the way, while it might seem like his answer might be “For his family” (though, being Trump, he might also say “For Andrew,” throwing his sympathy towards a presumed sexual predator of minors, much like he said he wished sexual predator Ghislaine Maxwell well after her conviction), I think more likely what Trump would mean – though would never say -- is “For me,” knowing the hell all this attention will rain down on him.
 
The thing though, what Trump probably doesn’t realize is that Andrew’s arrest was, in at least one way – and a huge way it is – actually a great thing for him.  That’s because it kept a major story off the TV.  The story did get a little coverage in print media, and a bit online, but Andrew’s arrest overwhelmed TV, and I didn’t see this other story even mentioned.  (In fairness, it may have been, but I just didn’t see it.)  And even if it did get mentioned, it didn’t get the major headline coverage it should have.
 
And what was that big story that got lost and buried?
 
The former president of South Korea was convicted of his part in inciting an insurrection and sentenced to life in prison.
 
No, really.
 
Here’s the headline from the New York Times​

​Here’s the opening of the article that explains it all very well --

​Former President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea was sentenced to life imprisonment on Thursday after being found guilty of masterminding an insurrection when he declared martial law in 2024, a move that plunged the country into a constitutional crisis.

Prosecutors had demanded a death sentence for Mr. Yoon, 65, who has been on trial since April on a series of criminal charges stemming from that short-lived martial law declaration. The judges at the Seoul Central District Court on Thursday ruled on the most serious of them: being the ringleader of an insurrection.
​
It was the most momentous criminal trial in South Korea since the former military dictator Chun Doo-hwan was sentenced to death nearly 30 years ago on the same charge.

While sentencing Yoon to life imprisonment, presiding Judge Ji Gwi-yeon​ said that Mr. Yoon had “flouted legal procedures and resorted to violent means to try to incapacitate the National Assembly and undermine democratic norms.”

There's a lot more.  You can read the details here.

In some ways, this might be an even more horrifying story for Trump.  Not just the incredible overlap with his own incitement of the January 6 insurrection, and the sentence being life in prison (!!) – but that a military dictator 30 years earlier in South Korea had been sentenced…on the same charge…to death.
 
And while, on the one hand, former president Yoon was given a more lenient sentence than death because of his age – and Yoon being 65 is younger than Trump months away from being 80 – the other issue for leniency was that Yoon had not used lethal force.  Given that Trump asked during his first term about shooting protestors at a Washington, D.C., protest – and that his agents just killed two innocent citizens in Minneapolis – Trump might not have skated by on the leniency gambit, were he in South Korea.
 
Though he may have gotten a pass for having dementia, which is degenerative.
 
Of course, in the end, whether Trump would have been more horrified by a story about the former president of South Korea being convicted and sentenced to life in prison for inciting an insurrection – or in a state of greater horror by the brother of the King of England being arrested for his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, I can’t answer that.  I’ve long said that trying to understand Trump’s mind is a fool’s errand.
 
What I do know is that Trump is lucky that the story of the former president of South Korea being convicted and sentenced to life in prison for inciting an insurrection happened at the same time as the brother of the King of England being arrested for his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein. 
 
And it’s a shame that the TV news media couldn’t figure out a way to cover the story as the major news it is.  Or perhaps cover it at all.

One other thing stands out: it seems that other countries take sex trafficking of minors and insurrection to overthrow the government more seriously than the current U.S. administration -- and MAGOPs who support and enable him.  Go figure.