Will The GOP Choose Predators Over Children?

While Epstein’s victims beg for justice on Capitol Hill, Trump calls their trauma a hoax and Speaker Mike Johnson buries the truth to protect predators in power.

Guest article by Michael Cohen. Follow him on Substack for more by clicking here.

Seriously, when did we devolve to the point where the rape and trafficking of children became a partisan issue? I don’t ask that rhetorically. I ask it because right now, in the United States of America, the Speaker of the House, MAGA Mike Johnson, is working to block a floor vote to release Jeffrey Epstein’s files, while Trump, the president of this country, calls the entire thing “a Democrat hoax.” Let that sink in: victims—survivors of sex trafficking, rape, and exploitation—were on Capitol Hill pouring out their trauma, reliving their hell in front of cameras, lawmakers, and strangers, and the president dismisses them as actors in some partisan scam. That’s not just politics as usual. That’s moral rot.

The split screen in Washington this week was almost too much to bear. On one side, Trump sat in the Oval Office with the Polish president, smirking as he waved off Epstein’s crimes as no different than JFK conspiracy theories. On the other side, survivors stood on the Capitol steps, flanked by lawmakers from both parties—yes, even some of Trump’s most loyal foot soldiers—pleading for transparency, pleading for justice, pleading not to be erased. The women made it clear: this is not a hoax, not a distraction, not something that can be bullied into silence. They were raped as children. They were trafficked as commodities for powerful men. And now they’re being victimized again—this time by their own government.

The depravity here is not subtle. Trump and his allies have managed to turn the abuse of minors into a political loyalty test. Are you with the president, or are you with the truth? That’s the question hanging over the House GOP. Johnson has already made his choice. He’s working overtime to bottle up a discharge petition—led by Republican Thomas Massie, of all people, and Democrat Ro Khanna—that would force a vote to release the full Epstein file. The petition is just two Republican signatures short of success. Two. That’s how close we are to exposing the names, the documents, the trail of complicity that Epstein left behind. And the White House is threatening any Republican who dares to break ranks. The message is crystal clear: protecting Trump’s narrative comes before protecting children. An anonymous White House spokesperson called the bipartisan effort a "very hostile act to the administration."

This, my Substack community, is the dystopia we’re living in. Nancy Mace, a Republican congresswoman and survivor of sexual violence herself, left a hearing in tears this week—triggered by the testimony of Epstein victims. She later said the testimony caused a panic attack. Read that again. A sitting member of Congress collapsed under the weight of what she heard because the stories were that horrific. And the president’s response? “It’s irrelevant.” “It’s a hoax.” Imagine being one of those survivors and hearing that. One of them, Haley Robson, a registered Republican, said it felt like being “gutted from the inside out.” She begged Trump to meet her face-to-face. Her words: “We are real human beings. This is real trauma.”

And yet, Johnson parrots Trump’s line that victims are being “misled.” Misled? These women aren’t political pawns; they’re survivors of industrial-scale child rape. To accuse them of being confused or manipulated is not only insulting, it’s an act of violence in itself. Johnson’s so-called “alternative”—kicking the matter back to Oversight Committee subpoenas—amounts to a placebo, a stall tactic. Less than 1% of the files have been released. The rest remain locked away while survivors scream into the void for justice.

Here’s the thing Trump doesn’t understand—or maybe he understands it all too well: the Epstein story isn’t going away. It’s not fading from headlines, it’s not being bullied out of the conversation. Because the survivors won’t allow it. They are done being silenced. And the cracks in Trump’s MAGA wall are beginning to show. Marjorie Taylor Greene—yes, that Marjorie Taylor Greene—called the cover-up “the real hostile act.” She even threatened to use House privilege to name names from the Epstein list on the floor of Congress, where she’d be immune from defamation suits. That’s not nothing. When Trump’s allies start sounding more humane than the president, you know the ground is shifting.

And the shift matters. For years, Trump’s iron grip on the GOP has been absolute. Fear kept everyone in line. But fear doesn’t erase rape. Fear doesn’t erase child trafficking. Fear doesn’t erase the pain etched into the faces of survivors who show up in Washington demanding to be seen. The more Trump calls them liars, the more grotesque he looks, and the more obvious the moral bankruptcy of his presidency becomes.

Which brings me back to my first question: when did we devolve to this point? At what point did we decide that exposing child sex trafficking depends on which team you root for? When did covering for predators become a litmus test of party loyalty? If you need to ask what’s broken in America, this is it.

Ro Khanna said it best: “We’re here not as partisans, we’re here as patriots.” Because a nation that allows the rich and powerful to traffic and abuse girls without consequence is a nation that has lost its moral and spiritual core. That’s where we are. And if Mike Johnson and Donald Trump get their way, that’s where we’ll stay: silent, complicit, and rotting from the inside.

But the survivors aren’t going away. The files exist. The truth exists. And eventually, the dam will break. When it does, history won’t remember who protected Trump. History will remember who protected the predators.

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