PARANOIA PARADE

After convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein killed himself in a New York City jail cell, President Donald Trump retweeted right-wing comic Terrence K. Williams’s suggestion that Epstein’s death might have been a hit, ordered by a former president no less: “#JefferyEpstein had information on Bill Clinton & now he’s dead.” (Williams’s tweet contained hashtags #ClintonBodyCount and #ClintonCrimeFamily.) The radioactive tweet presumed that Clinton, an acquaintance of Epstein’s, had silenced him to avoid being ratted out as a participant in the financier’s abuse of underage girls.

After lighting this fuse, Trump backed away, commenting “I have no idea” when a reporter asked if the president thought Williams’s charge might be true.

Trump had—on him. At the end of the day, however, special counsel Robert Mueller wrote that he “did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government…”