By Don Terry | Monday, August 04, 2025 | 5 min read
There are few constants in American culture more reliable than our obsession with scandal. But even among the usual suspects, something strange is happening. Somehow, some way, Epstein and Ghislaine are weirdly more popular than Trump—commanding more attention, intrigue, and morbid curiosity than the president himself. It’s not that people admire them—they don’t. But the sheer amount of speculation and fascination they generate has become, in its own right, a form of cultural dominance. And you just know Trump’s somewhere, arms crossed, lips pursed, seething at the thought of being upstaged.
Because make no mistake: Trump likes attention the way toddlers like sugar—excessively, messily, and without regard for consequences. For years, he’s had a near-monopoly on headlines. He’s been the sun around which cable news, social media rants, and late-night jokes have orbited. Indictments? Ratings gold. Rallies? Red-meat spectacles. But lately, the formula is wearing thin. The bombast feels recycled, the outrage predictable. It’s hard to stay shocked when the script never changes.
Meanwhile, Epstein’s legacy has only grown in the shadows. Despite being dead for years, his name continues to haunt the internet like a ghost that refuses to be exorcised. Memes, documentaries, TikTok conspiracy spirals, Reddit deep-dives—you name it. His life, crimes, and associates have become an endless buffet of scandal porn. No matter how many times the media says “case closed,” the public keeps asking: who was really involved? Who’s on the list? What don’t we know yet?
And then there’s Ghislaine. Maxwell has emerged as a kind of anti-celebrity—neither villainous enough to be caricatured like Cruella de Vil, nor obscure enough to be forgotten. She’s become this strange, silent cipher in the middle of a saga that just won’t go away. Even as she serves out her sentence, she carries the weight of secrets no one else seems able—or willing—to expose. That silence alone keeps people hooked. She’s not writing books, giving interviews, or even leaking cryptic quotes. She just sits there, unreadable, like a locked drawer full of dirt on the powerful. In a world addicted to oversharing, mystery is magnetic.
Now imagine how this all looks from Trump’s perspective. The man lives for applause and feeds on outrage. Yet lately, his usual stunts barely ripple the waters. Another lawsuit? We’ve heard it before. More unhinged caps-lock Truth Social posts? Yawn. The MAGA faithful may still chant, but the rest of the country has largely tuned him out. And for someone who used to be the loudest voice in every room, being background noise is a fate worse than indictment.
What really burns is that he once shared airspace with Epstein. They moved in the same circles, smiled for the same photos, showed up at the same velvet-rope parties. That history has been downplayed, of course. Trump insists he was never close to Epstein, that he banned him from Mar-a-Lago after some “incident.” But the internet has a long memory, and those old photos don’t lie. The association exists, and now it’s a bitter irony. While Trump fights to stay relevant, Epstein’s ghost—both figuratively and algorithmically—still commands attention.
It’s a strange commentary on how fame and infamy blur. Trump built his brand on being brash and loud, on saying what others wouldn’t. But when everyone expects the chaos, it’s no longer thrilling. It becomes static. The Epstein saga, by contrast, remains slippery and unresolved. There’s always some new rumor, some unreleased document, some shadowy name on a redacted flight log. It has the shape of a thriller, the tone of a true crime drama, and the cast of a global elite soap opera. In that sense, it has legs. Trump’s scandals, by comparison, feel more like reruns.
And here’s where it gets almost funny. Trump, the man who once claimed he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose voters, now finds himself eclipsed by a dead man and a felon. Not politically, of course—he’s still the president. But in the realm of cultural curiosity, where virality is currency, he’s slipping. You won’t find Epstein or Ghislaine trending because of campaign speeches or policy proposals. They trend because the story keeps unfolding, the details remain murky, and the speculation never ends.
That has to sting. For someone so pathologically obsessed with ratings, polls, and media coverage, the idea that people might be more fascinated by Epstein’s private island than another Trump golf course press conference is borderline existential.
This isn’t to say we should glorify Epstein or Maxwell—far from it. They are, rightly, reviled. But revulsion and relevance often go hand in hand. The darker the scandal, the deeper the obsession. And in the cruel logic of cultural memory, unresolved crimes hold more power than public tantrums.
Trump, for all his bombast, is now a known quantity. We’ve seen the show. We know the lines. What was once shocking is now just noisy. Epstein and Ghislaine, on the other hand, remain riddles wrapped in privilege, power, and unanswered questions. That mystery is irresistible—even to people who despise them.
So as Trump stews in legal battles and rails against the dying of the spotlight, it must drive him mad to know that, somehow, Epstein’s ghost and Ghislaine’s silence are still stealing the show. He wanted to be unforgettable. But in the end, it may be the people he once rubbed shoulders with—those he now insists he barely knew—who leave the longer-lasting impression.
And if that’s not the most Trumpian twist of all, what is?
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