Sometimes the biggest news story of the day is the one all mainstream news outlets are completely ignoring. It is interesting how often such instances involve the state of Israel.
Epstein mugshot. (Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department, 2006/ Wikimedia Commons)
By Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter
One of the craziest things happening right now is how there’s been report after report confirming that Jeffrey Epstein really was an Israeli intelligence operative, based on publicly available documents, and yet it’s had no measurable impact on mainstream media or politics.
Over the last month and a half, Drop Site News has published four reports about Epstein’s intelligence ties under the headlines
“Jeffrey Epstein Helped Broker Israeli Security Agreement With Mongolia”,
“Jeffrey Epstein Helped Israel Sell a Surveillance State to Côte d’Ivoire”,
“Israeli Spy Stayed for Weeks at a Time With Jeffrey Epstein in Manhattan”.
In the latest article, Drop Site’s Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussein write,
“We’re left wondering why the rest of the media, which has demonstrated no lack of excitement when it comes to the saga of Jeffrey Epstein, has all of a sudden lost its reporting capacity, in the face of reams of publicly available newsworthy documents.”
A question for editors reading this newsletter: What are you doing? From a place of competition, we’re glad the media are sitting on their collective hands and we’re proud to have broken this series of stories, which give us a glimpse of a world that is often hidden from public view. But it’s also a topic that would benefit from the collective attention of our national media. Here’s hoping some will join in.”
Sometimes the biggest news story of the day is the fact that all mainstream news outlets are completely ignoring a major news story. It is interesting how often such instances involve the state of Israel.
Focus Only on Trump
Best Friends Forever statue, protest art put up anonymously in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 23, 2025, and removed days later by the U.S. Parks Department. (Joe Flood /Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 4.0)
The way the press have been covering Epstein’s ties to Donald Trump while completely ignoring far more significant revelations of Epstein’s ties to Israeli intelligence is such a perfect example of how western media ignore anything that doesn’t fit neatly into the two-party worldview.
If there’s not some kind of partisan angle to it that Democrats can use to attack Republicans or Republicans can use to attack Democrats, it tends to get conspicuously overlooked.
Which just so happens to align nicely with the objectives of the U.S. empire.
The empire doesn’t want people looking too closely at the evil things the U.S. and Israel have been doing together regardless of who is in office, so the western press tend to ignore these things wherever possible.
The empire doesn’t want people keeping track of what countries the U.S. war machine is bombing from administration to administration, so the western press keep this information so silent that every few months I’ll see a viral tweet from some American going “Wait a second we’ve been bombing Somalia this whole time?” or “We’ve got troops in KENYA??”
The overwhelming majority of the empire’s abuses remain in place regardless of which political party happens to be in power or what the current U.S. president’s campaign platform was. War. Genocide. Militarism. Imperialist extraction. Ecocidal capitalism. Soaring inequality. Poverty. Homelessness. Police militarization. The ever-expanding surveillance network. Censorship. Propaganda. Government lies and opacity. The crimes of the imperial intelligence alliance.
All of the worst things about our dystopian civilization here in the globe-spanning power structure that is loosely centralized around the United States keep marching forward completely uninterrupted from presidency to presidency, while the mass media ignore them and keep the public fixated on irrelevant feuding between America’s two mainstream political factions.
This is because the mass media of the western world do not exist to report on the major news stories of our day. They exist to indoctrinate, distract, and manipulate. They are not news services, they are propaganda services.
Adding a few more details of Trump’s already well–documented Epstein ties to the information ecosystem will drum up a lot of interest and attention and monopolize political discourse for a day or two, but it won’t change anything.
The American public developing a universal revulsion toward Israel and its involvement in their own country’s affairs, however, would have far-reaching consequences that could change the face of the world. Which is why the propaganda services of the empire are focusing on the former rather than the latter.
Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.
This article is from Caitlin’s Newsletter and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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Reading Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here” during the Gilded Age of Donald I is very interesting. The man was a very good writer. One can quickly see in the early pages why he was a successful best-selling author in his day. He has a light tone that makes one want to laugh, so I may have to go back and read some of his books that poked fun at middle class hypocrisies during the Gilded Age of Coolidge. But, not till I’ve finished this one, because “It Can’t Happen Here” has me hooked by page 10.
Allow me to go out on a limb.
Awhile back was the question of “Who’s The Fed” during the “Tucker vs Fuentes” revival hour .
Has that been resolved ?’
We had the dynamic of the maga group hollering for release of the epstone files prior to election not too long ago up until until they didn’t .
A rocking boat , boot bailing , adventure of sorts .
They try to cover for the boss stating he was an Asset / CI until that boat didn’t row.
Now enter MTG , flips stance , points finger , ex respected bossy points back through X stabbing a tiny , Marco inspired shadow puppet finger trigger lofter pose in return , the fued and relationship devolves .
Maybe MTG was/is now the the real “Fed McCoy” all along .
The barn may be outta the horse soon ?
Are they behind the scene friends , masquerading . The act ?
Who will rock your vote or sway your boat ?
Any takers ? Any lakers ?
Back in the era of B. Clinton, I remember someone made an independent documentary on white supremacists. It was almost funny the outlandish theories those people used to support their bigotry. They hated everything and everyone, including rival supremacists. At some point, they railed about the need to fight the ZOG. (Zionist Occupation Government) I laughed at this, asking, “how do these people’s brains get there?” Their mention of the USS Liberty was the first I ever heard of it. Slowly over the years I became aware of the plight of the Palestinian people, and Zionist apartheid in Palestine. But ZOG? That’s a stretch. I saw Palestine only as a religious conflict, I knew nothing about 1948. As time progressed, I could not bear the violence I saw inflicted on Palestinians, and the support that violence got from the West. Still, But ZOG?
Some years later, a friend worked booking performances in state elementary and middle schools for a traveling Flamenco dance troop. About 2010, new contracts included signing a statement declaring the troop and dancers did not support BDS or boycott Israel. The dance program would be dropped otherwise. WTF! Flamenco dancers could not perform for nine-year-olds in Alabama unless they pledged support for Israel? It was at that moment that ZOG comment from that 90’s documentary came back to me. I remember saying to my friend, “it is things like this that give the bigots ‘proof’ of the ZOG, and will increase real antisemitism.” Here we are in 2025, watching the eradication of a people with support of that genocide the only bipartisan policy. Schumer, Fetterman, Biden, Clinton, et al.
The supremacists in that documentary are still repellant humans, (probably working for ICE today) and it showed them as buffoons. But, I do believe, every crazy conspiracy theory starts with a kernel of truth. In this case, that kernel was seeded in 1948, and it has grown to become a master of mass death and corruption.
A quick glance at the ownership and board members of the U.S. msm companies will go miles in identifying why this is “a story without legs.”
All the usual western intelligence agencies are likely complicit in using compromising tactics to keep all leaders on a perk control leash like the Bobby Baker scandal but now international is scope. Regular sex scandals are too tame these days they just roll off like water once a nominations is scored anyway. It is more like whale fishing than regular fishing expeditions now.
Epstein victims are victims of Israeli terrorism ; bring a massive case against Israel and as you say Caitlin, ‘help American public develop a universal revulsion toward Israel’ as Ehud Barak takes the stand in US court.
Simplicius (16 July 2025), Trump’s Epstein Finale Puts Country at Critical Crossroads, Simplicius’s Garden of Knowledge. Available at: hXXps://simplicius76.substack.com/p/trumps-epstein-finale-puts-country (Accessed: August 16, 2025).
We are at a point where our government might expose and break free from Israeli control of our foreign policy. But only if the shadow cabal is flushed into the spotlight.
Never under-estimate the influence of religious fanaticism in the USA, Israel is speeding up the Second Coming of Jesus, and the Apocalypse. Nothing else matters, to many Americans!
I picked up on this several days ago and wrote about it on my social media . The algorithm ensured that only a couple of people reacted . Caitlin , I am so glad you picked up on Zionists hiding in plain sight. The stories of Epstein’s depravity themselves become the distraction from the core story – that he was funded and directed by Zionist billionaires . @tonykevin Tony Kevin .
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero
The big elephant in the room that no one dare to talk about .When you start hearing in Western media who was actually behind the nine eleven event ,you will know that the elephant will finally be named.
Zionists certainly knew about it and would not hesitate to facilitate it.
Look closer to home . Organizations like PNAC and the Heritage Foundation come to mind.
Another great article.
It’s also a mystery why the MSM never reports that ISIS never attacks Israel. Why’s that ?
And, the story of the CIA running the drugs trade to fund their black Ops …
And, Israel blatently attacking the USS Liberty and killing many Americans …
Dear Caitlin, What a provocative article…with so few words. You are CN’s Hemingway! So accurate…so deadly. I am dying peacefully…a victim of your truth. BTW do you know where I can get a “Best Friends Forever” tee shirt?
The E. Files certainly bother Trump because he’s starting a war in the Caribbean to deflect our attention (while greasing his friends’ war machine). Varoufakis, the x-economic Greek Minister, said he thinks we, the U.S. will go to war rather than accept the decline of our Empire. We encourage Israel’s bellicosity en route. And that war will eventually be nuclear, of course, so our course is clear : support peace.
Drop Site News is doing a really great job with this story!