The Lincoln Logue | Scrapbooks, Airstrikes, and Martyrs: A Week in MAGA Country
The week’s stories weren’t connected by subject but by strategy. Denials, drones, and martyrdom are all tools of the same performance.
Congress turned a scrapbook into a national spectacle this week, releasing Jeffrey Epstein’s “birthday book” complete with a crude sketch and a letter allegedly signed by Trump. The White House rushed to call it defamation, threatening lawsuits, while Republicans dumped tens of thousands of documents in a bid to drown one page under paperwork. Survivors and advocates saw the move for what it was: another act in a long-running play where outrage is theater and denial is the punchline. Washington has learned to fight over signatures while justice slips further away. And once again, what should have been clarity dissolved into performance art with real consequences.
From there, the world stage erupted in chaos. Israel bombed Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar — a U.S. ally and host to America’s largest base in the Middle East — leaving civilians dead and mediators fuming. Trump said he was “very unhappy” but praised the “worthy goal” of killing Hamas, a diplomatic shrug that managed to alienate everyone at once. Putin added his own act to the week’s farce, sending drones into Poland days after his Alaska summit with Trump, a mocking rebuttal to any notion of peace. And while Europe braced, Black students at HBCUs across the South were sheltering in place, targeted once again by waves of threats that may have been hoaxes but carried the same terror all the same.
By week’s end, the killing of Charlie Kirk became fuel for a martyrdom campaign on the right, with calls for martial law and civil war bouncing through MAGA’s online echo chambers. The connective tissue across these stories isn’t policy — it’s performance dressed up as governance, with spectacle substituting for strategy. A scrapbook, an airstrike, a drone barrage, campus lockdowns, and a funeral vigil all became props in a show of chaos. And every scene carried the same message: institutions aren’t here to protect you, they’re here to exhaust you.
Welcome back to The Lincoln Logue. Let’s get into it.
Monday, September 8 — The Birthday Book Bombshell (Part Two)
▌The sketch may be crude, but the coverup is laughable.
Congress doesn’t usually traffic in scrapbooks, but Epstein’s “birthday book” was never just a keepsake — it was a rogues’ gallery. Democrats released a 2003 letter allegedly signed by Trump that called Epstein a “pal” and wished him “another wonderful secret,” all nestled inside the silhouette of a naked female. The White House exploded, denouncing it as defamation and threatening to sue anyone who said otherwise. Republicans countered with 33,000 pages of unrelated Epstein files, an avalanche designed to bury a single page under bureaucratic rubble. Yet somehow, the sketch and the scrawl became the only things anyone could talk about.
The denials are almost funnier than the letter itself. Trump insists the signature isn’t his, aides call it fake news, and loyalists point to lawsuits as proof the whole thing is a setup. But if the letter is a hoax, why unleash a paper tsunami instead of a simple forensic test? Survivors and advocates are left screaming into the void while politicians argue about penmanship. And every new denial only fuels suspicion that someone has more to hide than ink stains.
The broader lesson isn’t about cursive; it’s about power that believes it’s untouchable. Epstein collected influence the way others collect stamps, and the book proves the elite were happy to lick the glue. The 2007 plea deal already showed how money buys immunity, but Congress keeps replaying the scandal as bad political theater. Historians will note that denial has become the governing strategy: call it a hoax, bury it in documents, and wait for fatigue to do the rest. If a scrapbook can shake Washington this hard, imagine what accountability might do.
This comes just days after House Speaker Mike Johnson said (and then walked back) that Donald Trump was an FBI informant tasked with taking down Epstein.
Source: Reuters