The Epstein Files, a rickroll and clownish GOP staffers: Any adults left in the room? | Opinion
If you’ve never heard of a “rickroll”: God bless you, and I’m sorry.
For those spared until two seconds ago, it’s a meme — the viral, recycled jokes that compose and evolve the language of online rhetoric — where instead of providing information you suggest or outright tell your reader they’ll receive, you instead link to the music video “Never Gonna Give You Up” by ‘80s one-hit-wonder Rick Astley.
The video itself is entirely composed of the kind of earnest, unaware sincerity from the early days of MTV, and in this case, a perfect match for the song, harmless while browsing kitchenware at Bed Bath & Beyond. But the meme is grating and lifeless and the online equivalent of a 10th-grader asking you why the chicken crossed the road. It’s the joke equivalent of peeing on someone’s leg and telling them it’s rain.
Now, if you know what a rickroll is, you have certainly heard of Jeffrey Epstein, the New York financier known for luring, trafficking and sexually assaulting young girls, as well as his moneyed ties to celebrities, entrepreneurs and politicians irrespective of ideology. On Thursday, the GOP side of the House Judiciary Committee — on which five Texas representatives sit — have forever wedded the most serious of crimes and the most unserious of jokes, promising a reveal of the documents only to reveal the caliber of people who find the serial rape of children a worthy part of the punchline.
The people who make our laws employ staffers incapable of discussing a serial child rapist without chuckling in the back of the class, or saving that, reading the room.
Speaking of which, I reached out to that room in search of an adult. I already knew House Judiciary chairman Jim Jordan, a former Ohio State wrestling coach, wasn’t the grownup his students needed when he ignored decades of sexual abuse allegations. A functioning political party would have heard his former wrestlers, one by one, say their former coach failed to act and ended his career on sight. House Republicans chose him to lead one of the most important committees in Congress.
But what about the five Texas Republican members of the House Judiciary? Could Brandon Gill of Flower Mound, Chip Roy of Austin, Lance Gooden of Terrell, Troy Nehls of Sugar Land or Wesley Hunt of Houston let us know that Congress shouldn’t dupe its constituents into thinking they would learn something about a serial sex trafficker?
As of this writing, none of them responded. (Though because the person writing this is an adult, I’ll let you know if that changes.)
I can’t say I know why they didn’t respond. Maybe some were too busy poring through the 200 pages of black bars and old information? I can say that Hunt and Nehls — a former sheriff you might naively hope would have a specific interest in properly addressing major sex crimes — instead spent their evening doing what they do best: tweeting.
But understand this: These five men in our state weren’t an aberration, nor was their sex scandal prank. Their immaturity, cowardice and cruelty was entirely consistent with the party-wide rollout.
When Attorney General Pam Bondi promised the upcoming release of The Epstein Files to the public, she positioned it as a new day for transparency in governance. But, the release they bragged on so hard was largely redacted, the rest: a vaporous PDF with redundant information from past legal filings. The likely thousands of pages of actually unseen details about Epstein continue to wilt inside a Department of Justice filing cabinet. Some of the Epstein flight logs in the release were published a decade ago!
If anything, Bondi’s Epstein release was little more than a photo op for conservative content creators and Republican lawmakers, two roles with a vanishing amount of daylight between them, to pose with an empty binder. Neither the influencers or lawmakers appear particularly happy about getting punked.
My conclusion may feel as predictable as a rickroll, but, these are not the actions of a functional or compassionate government that cares about sexual assault.
Democrats are no strangers to selectively wielding concern about sexual misconduct. but as the ruling party will happily remind you, the Dems are no longer in charge. But Pete Hegseth is. So is Donald Trump. As are their backbenchers, who know how to troll their constituents — some of whom happen to be the one in six Texan high school girls who report being sexually abused — instead of responding compassionately to their pain.
I’m not sure how they should expect any of us to believe this White House cares about sexual misconduct when the call is coming inside the Oval Office and validated by the civil courts. I don’t know what they expect us to believe about their commitment to keeping girls safe, parading around a paper tiger about Epstein’s notorious flights, while, on the same day at the same time, lifting a travel ban against Andrew Tate, a right-wing influencer charged in Romania with, you guessed it — a conspiracy to traffick and rape women.
Tate and his brother, who was also charged, flew on a private jet into Florida. That’s the flight log you should be worried about. Gov. Ron DeSantis says he wasn’t pleased, but the Tampa Bay Young Republicans can’t wait to learn from their once-exiled leaders.
I don’t expect much to change after this debacle. I expect violence against women to be little more than a chance to scapegoat immigrants and trans women. Maybe sprinkle some wokeness in there. Any bets on a George Soros tie-in? Same gameplan, same jokes from the same staffers incapable of doing anything without some ironic remove. Same waste of our time.
But now, at least you know what a rickroll is. Good. Now that you’ve seen the ruling party’s bait and switch, you don’t have to fall for their pranks anymore.
This story was originally published February 28, 2025 at 1:21 PM with the headline "The Epstein Files, a rickroll and clownish GOP staffers: Any adults left in the room? | Opinion."
