World War Epstein

“Flooding the zone” with military.

People pass near a poster of (L-R) late Cuban leader Fidel Castro, former president Raul Castro and President Miguel Diaz Canel, in Havana, on May 20, 2026.

Why, you might wonder, is Trump sabre-rattling over Cuba?

Apart from starving to death for energy amid the Hormuz oil blockade, how has Cuba suddenly leapt from irrelevance into the MAGA Empire conversation? Two answers:

2. In Trump’s miswired, preschooler mind, “Marxist state” = Democrats = subhuman = mortal enemy = red meat to the slobbering base. How better to wage a culture war than with an actual war machine?

1. Same as everything else. Same as Greenland. Same as “51st state” Canada. Same as humiliating Ukraine. Same as demonizing NATO. Same as attacking Venezuela and Iran. Same as occupying Memphis, Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland and Washington, DC. It’s the Wag the Dog shit: Trump squandering American blood, treasure and any minimal lingering global goodwill to distract from his own haunting felonies past and present. Gifted presidential immunity by the reactionary Roberts Supreme Court, it’s why he ran for reelection to begin with: to escape his own civilian humiliation, especially a bald, bronzer-free, Big Mac-less, golfless, pussyless death behind bars.

In short, Trump is sowing havoc and human suffering to wage conflicts here, there and everywhere with the strategic objective only of mass distraction. Call it World War Epstein.

That’s not some novel lib theory; it’s the recurring manifestation of Steve Bannon’s explicit scheme, as spoken aloud to writer Michael Lewis in 2018, to overwhelm the media — and therefore the electorate — with so much chaos and outrageous conduct as to paralyze them into an accountability war on too many fronts. The result: insufficient resources, divided attention, constant changing of the subject, lack of focus and, soon, apathy.

“The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon told Lewis. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

That’s why the second term began with 35 (mostly repudiated by courts as unconstitutional) executive orders in 50 days. That’s why DOGE. That’s why the unleashing of the Gestapo ICE. The repurposing of DOJ as the Department of Retribution. And the dismantling of the East Wing, federal regulation, DEI and voting rights.

That’s why the Goon Squad of incompetent extremists in the cabinet. The Jesusification of government. The mass roundups, deportation and internment of the earth-toned population. The arbitrary and economically devastating illegal tariffs. The War of Playground Words against all rivals or truth tellers, including the free press and the judiciary. The murder of petty drug traffickers and/or innocent boaters on the high seas.

The dismantling of foreign aid and withdrawal from global bodies like the World Health Organization. The demented climate-denier Don J. Quixote tilting at literal, not literary, windmills. And that’s why the obscene spectacle of the Trump family nakedly pocketing dark money, foreign money, cheesy merch money, taxpayer money and insider-traded investment money.

The captive Injustice Department certainly will take no action; its perverse new role is to conceal and endorse his crimes. The goon cabinet is similarly all aboard. Likewise the craven MAGA-infested Congress. As Bannon well understands, the flood overwhelms not just the media but the electorate. It’s like a merry-go-round circling so fast there’s no time for anyone on the ground to grab hold. Or, as I usually analogize, it’s like standing in the surf buffeted by a wave, no sooner getting to your feet than being slammed again, and again.

Try focusing public outrage at a wave that has already bubbled into the wet sand. First every day, then every week, then maybe once a month saw an Epstein wave cresting, ominous and powerful. Then it vanished — derivative and impotent — just sucked into nothingness. Pay no attention. Look, just over there in the shit zone:

War.