By Jane Lewis | Tuesday, September 09, 2025 | 6 min read
The Republican Party’s “family values” costume has finally slipped off, and what’s underneath is uglier than anyone dared admit. Pam Bondi and Trump are the faces of that collapse. Once paraded as a champion of morality, Pam Bondi now props up a system that protects predators, silences victims, and launders the sins of the powerful. If Bondi has any shred of decency left, she should leave the Department of Justice immediately. Instead, she’s serving as a shield for a man whose name just surfaced again in one of the most grotesque artifacts of Jeffrey Epstein’s empire—the so-called birthday book.
Let’s not mince words: Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were monsters. They ran a trafficking ring that groomed girls, raped them, and traded them like property. Their cruelty stretched across continents, their victims numbering in the dozens, maybe hundreds. These weren’t crimes in the shadows. They were systemic, organized, and shielded by power. The “birthday book,” given to Epstein for his 50th, was meant to be a glossy scrapbook of his circle of influence. Instead, it reads like a confession.
Inside its pages sits a letter bearing Donald Trump’s name—written within the crude silhouette of a naked woman. The text plays out like an imaginary dialogue with Epstein, ending with the line, “May every day be another wonderful secret.” This isn’t locker-room banter. This isn’t harmless nostalgia. It’s a chilling wink between two men who thrived on secrecy, power, and women treated as disposable.
But it doesn’t stop there. Among the book’s disturbing entries is a so-called “joke” about Epstein selling a girl to Trump, accompanied by a check that crudely depicts her as “less valuable.” Imagine being one of Epstein’s victims, hearing members of Congress read that aloud, women breaking into tears, panic attacks in the halls of power—because that’s the level of depravity staring back at them from the pages. That isn’t just tasteless humor. It is evidence of a culture that treated girls as commodities and made cruelty into a punchline.
And where is the Republican Party in all this? Hiding. Pam Bondi, in particular, has become a symbol of this cowardice. Rather than using her position to demand accountability, she’s part of an administration that coddled Ghislaine Maxwell, moving her to better facilities as though she were some misunderstood figure deserving comfort. What message does that send to survivors? That the system is built to protect the predators, not the prey. That family values was always a sales pitch, never a principle.
Bondi should resign. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Today. Because every day she stays in that office is another insult to the survivors whose lives were shattered by Epstein and Maxwell. Every day she remains is another reminder that the GOP’s moral compass is not broken—it was sold, long ago, for access, donations, and loyalty to Trump.
Democrats, to their credit, have refused to let this story vanish into the fog. It was the persistence of Rep. Ro Khanna, armed with a lead from attorney Bradley Edwards, that secured the subpoena for the birthday book. Congress now has in its possession the very artifact Trump swore under oath did not exist. He called it the “non-existent letter,” tried to sue the Wall Street Journal for reporting on it, and bet on the public never seeing it. Well, here it is. And it looks exactly as described—grotesque, crude, and signed “Donald.”
This isn’t just a paper trail. It’s a credibility test, and Trump has failed it. He lied under oath. He raged about defamation. He spun a fantasy that is now collapsing in real time. The so-called party of truth and family values is left holding the bag for a man caught, once again, in his own lies.
The fallout has been bipartisan. Even lawmakers who usually defend Trump or avoid touching this subject have been visibly shaken. Nancy Mace left a survivor meeting in tears. Marjorie Taylor Greene, hardly known for empathy, embraced colleagues after hearing testimony. Lauren Boebert and Thomas Massie were shaken as well. When even Trump’s allies can’t hold the line, you know something fundamental has cracked. This isn’t left versus right. This is human versus inhuman.
And yet, through it all, Trump’s defenders cling to their roles. Taylor Budowich, his deputy chief of staff, immediately went on social media to scream about “fake signatures” and “defamation,” as if the world’s eyes weren’t already staring at the document itself. The White House strategy is as transparent as it is tired: distract with military action abroad, as seen in the sudden strike that killed eleven Venezuelans just before the book’s release, and scream “hoax” at home. The Department of War—or more accurately, the Department of Epstein Distraction—is alive and well.
But no distraction can cover this up anymore. Survivors have chosen sunlight. They’ve demanded the release of every Epstein file, every connection, every name. And Congress, finally, is catching up. The mask of the GOP has slipped. This is not the party of family values. This is the party of power at any cost, even if the cost is silence in the face of trafficking, rape, and the degradation of children.
Pam Bondi cannot call herself a protector of justice while standing shoulder to shoulder with Trump as this evidence piles up. Every day she stays in her role is a reminder that the GOP’s so-called values were never about family. They were about control, power, and image. The check written as a “joke” about buying a girl is the real ledger of Republican morality. The laughter that once hid behind closed doors is now public record.
The family values act is dead. And Pam Bondi is dancing on its grave.
