What did Donald Trump do today?

He continued his meltdown over the latest Epstein revelations.

For someone who is absolutely desperate for people to stop talking about his connections to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, Trump couldn't seem to stop doing it himself today. 

He began by demanding, in a social media post, that his Attorney General and former defense lawyer Pam Bondi investigate Bill Clinton's connection to Epstein, as well as certain other prominent political enemies of his. Bondi immediately agreed, also via social media. (Attorneys general have gone to prison for this kind of thing.) 

This isn't the first time that Trump has tried to deflect from his own sex-related scandals by bringing up Clinton. But embarrassing the former president (who did indeed know Epstein, but didn't regard Epstein as his "closest friend") may not be the real aim here. Having an "investigation" into Clinton or anyone else would give Trump the tissue-thin excuse that he could not release the DOJ's files because they were being used in an active investigation.

Later, he posted a rant on social media "un-endorsing" Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Targeting Taylor Greene is shocking as a political matter: the far-right conspiracy theorist was one of Trump's most devoted surrogates and is very much aligned with the core of the MAGA base. Trump's rant, which was emotional even by his standards, didn't explicitly mention Epstein, but Taylor Greene spelled it out in her response:

 

The 26,000 Epstein documents that the House Oversight Committee released haven't been fully analyzed yet, but two things are clear. One is that Donald Trump's name appears far more often than any other person's. The other is that Epstein was saying as early as 2011, in private conversations with his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, that he knew Trump knew about his criminal activities. 

In fact, Epstein seemed to believe that Trump was the person who had informed law enforcement and gotten him arrested for the first round of criminal charges in 2008. (Epstein was free in 2011 because the local District Attorney at the time, Alex Acosta, gave Epstein an almost unbelievably lenient plea deal. Trump later appointed Acosta as Secretary of Labor during his first term.) 

In other words, Epstein was so sure that Trump knew and could give details about his sexual predation on children that he was "75 percent" sure that Trump had been the one to turn him in. But, of course, Trump wasn't the informant—or he'd have mentioned it and provided proof by now to escape the scandal altogether. 

Finally, Trump was asked once again about Ghislaine Maxwell, who is enjoying a much more comfortable prison experience at a resort-style minimum security camp after teasing that she would testify on Trump's behalf. He once again refused to rule out a pardon for her, something that is almost completely inexplicable given what she was convicted of, unless she has some degree of leverage. In fact, leverage over then-candidate Trump is exactly what Epstein believed he and Maxwell had in a 2016 e-mail exchange with journalist Michael Wolff that was also released this week.

Why does this matter?

• There is absolutely no way to square any of this behavior with Trump not being involved in some way that would at least cost him his presidency. 

• Even if Trump were entirely innocent of any wrongdoing with respect to Epstein's child sex trafficking operation, the President of the United States can't be melting down every day over these kinds of things. 

• Using law enforcement as a weapon against your enemies and a shield for yourself is what a dictator does.