A civic bedtime story from the White House— it could be any White House—in which everyone is innocent and the emails are to blame.
I HAVE DISCOVERED a new architectural marvel of American life: every notorious mansion has a Good Wing. It’s right next to the Naughty Annex, shares a minibar, and yet—miracle of miracles—no one in the Good Wing ever knows what’s happening down the hall. The Good Wing is where powerful men pose for tasteful photos, exchange wholesome canapés, and later inform us they “hardly knew the host,” despite writing their names in the guestbook in block letters with tiny hearts for dots.
This week the tour brochures arrived in the form of a fresh dump of Jeffrey Epstein emails—Washington’s favorite genre of literature after expense reports and indictments. Somewhere in that ragbag of correspondence are lines that will be debated until the Potomac freezes: who knew what, who didn’t, who “knew-Adjacent,” and who bravely told someone to “stop,” which is a command that covers everything from “stop the crimes” to “stop hogging the mirror.”
Permit a public service announcement. When a politician says, “I hardly knew the man,” translate it into plain English: “We have met often, spoken rarely, and photographed constantly.” If they add, “I had no knowledge,” that’s Washington yoga—an advanced posture where one folds the past into a pleasing shape and calls it hindsight.
Now, a fairness clause, because my editor insists on vegetables: allegations are not proof; denials are not absolution; and nothing I’m about to say convicts anyone of anything—except, perhaps, of living too long in the Good Wing.
The dance went as it always does. Democrats found three emails and yelled, “Behold!” Republicans replied with twenty thousand pages—which is not so much a rebuttal as a Costco sample of context. If there’s nothing to see, why are we renting forklifts for the truth? We’ve reached a procedural era where “transparency” means avalanche, and if you still can’t find the pepper in this mine of salt, well, that’s on you, citizen.
The former Playboy cameo artist at the center of our tale, Mr. Trump, has perfected the art of Plausible Denial Karaoke—you sing the chorus you like, and the crowd fills in the verses. He says he didn’t know about the worst of it; some emails say he “knew”; another suggests he told someone to “stop”; defenders assure us he only visited during boring hours; and the photographs, like obedient pets, sit when told and refuse to fetch context. If Mark Twain were here, he’d squint at the whole spectacle and say, “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a public statement. But I repeat myself.”
Meanwhile, the White House (whichever party is currently renting it) declares any unfavorable document “selective and misleading.” “Selective” is Washington for “you read the part we didn’t rehearse.” “Misleading” means “it led you somewhere we didn’t intend.” They remind us there are “real issues,” which there are, though none so real as the issue currently whacking them with a rolled-up newspaper.
Allow me a modest proposal in the spirit of Buchwald: since the nation is already reading other people’s emails like horoscopes, let’s make a civic holiday of it. Inbox Day. Everyone who ever shook hands with a predator must spend one afternoon on C-SPAN reading their own correspondence aloud, in chronological order, with a polite xylophone underlay. Every time someone says “out of context,” a clerk releases five more pages of context and a small, nonvenomous snake. This would do wonders for literacy.
We might also require new warning labels for common phrases:
“We’ve said from the beginning” — We located the beginning this morning.
“We welcome transparency” — We welcome the parts we laminated.
“This is a distraction” — Please stop looking at the thing you’re looking at.
“I hardly knew him” — See page 47 for the photo of us on a yacht.
But let us not be beastly to Mr. Trump alone. The Good Wing has hosted many of the Great and the Very Busy. Our ruling class keeps mistaking proximity for innocence and memory loss for character growth. The rest of us are instructed to applaud their amnesia while paying the valet.
What the emails actually “prove” will be litigated by people who bill by the quarter hour. My job is to report on atmosphere, and reader, the air quality is Particulate Spin with a Chance of Lawsuit. We’ve reached a moment when the national pastime is not baseball but reputation management, and the scoreboard is operated by interns with PDFs and carpal tunnel.
There is, however, a human footnote in all this: real victims exist, and they are not props in a pageant of alibis. Every time the news cycles through another “revelation,” a famous person acquires a new talking point, and some woman somewhere loses an afternoon to memory she did not order. If we must have Inbox Day, route the ad money to their therapists.
As for the former president’s political fortunes, never underestimate the Teflon Arts. Trump can eat scandal like a goat eats a tin can—loudly, without table manners, and to the bafflement of every zookeeper. Perhaps these emails bounce off his hide like pennies off a casino. Perhaps not. He has the rare talent of turning disgrace into souvenir sales. I suspect he already sells a T-shirt that reads I WAS IN THE GOOD WING.
We, meanwhile, are left to choose between two comforting fictions: that everyone we like is pure, and everyone we dislike is doomed. The truth, annoying as a hotel service charge, is that powerful people often wander into morally lousy rooms and then insist the furniture was innocent. If you want a republic that behaves better, stop building so many Good Wings and start putting doors on the Naughty Annex that lock from the outside.
Until then, remember the Twain Rule: when you find yourself on the side of a man who never recalls anything inconvenient, it is time to pause and recollect. And the Buchwald Corollary: Washington will do the right thing—after trying everything else, issuing three statements, and releasing a PDF that crashes your browser.
Sleep well, dear reader. Bolt your inbox. And should you receive an invitation to a very large house with very small explanations, bring a friend, a lawyer, and a map. The Good Wing has a way of turning into a cul-de-sac.
TONY CASTRO, the former award-winning Los Angeles columnist and author, is a writer-at-large and the national political writer for LAMonthly. org. He is the author of the forthcoming novel The Book of Marilyn. He can be reached at tony@tonycastro.com.