The key thing about Donald Trump’s presidency, when you examine it alongside the history of every other Oval Office occupant, is that to understand what drives him day-to-day, you have to have a handle on his psychology—all those twisted urges and impulses that twitch through his brain. This is because so much of what he does is by pure instinct—id unchecked by superego; animal urge unmitigated by conscience. That, plus the fact that all he really cares about is how he looks on TV (more specifically, Fox News and Newsmax). Who can doubt that part of what he loves about bombing those boats in the Caribbean is that he loves seeing them go boom on a big screen?

So, when we analyze this administration, we have to look for the psychological "tells" in a way we simply didn’t with any other president, because the other presidents, no matter their politics, weren’t emotional 5-year-olds who lived in an impenetrable image bubble created and maintained by their staffs and their propagandists with press passes. And the psychological tell of the week? Hauling Representative Lauren Boebert into the White House Situation Room to try to break her down and make her change her vote on the Jeffrey Epstein discharge petition.

Think about this purely as a presidential decision. We don’t know whether this was his idea or if an aide hatched this plan and he liked it, but it amounts to the same thing. Yeah, we can picture Trump thinking: the Situation Room; secret, private, all those fancy screens and maps—that’ll intimidate her.

When LBJ had a recalcitrant member of Congress to win over, he invited him up to the Truman Balcony for a bourbon. Trump locked Boebert in the room that’s supposed to be used to monitor military operations. It’s where Barack Obama watched Seal Team Six take out bin Laden. It’s unclear whether Trump was there. One assumes he was. But willing hacks Pam Bondi and Kash Patel showed up. Wait, what? What was their presence meant to imply? Why did the attorney general and the FBI director need to be present on a legislative matter? Was the idea to hint to Boebert that she could face some sort of legal consequences if she didn’t capitulate? On a congressional vote?

Boebert laughed it all off, but she didn’t cave. In fact, the strong-arming apparently left her all the more convinced Trump may be hiding something. Hard to imagine I’d ever be saying this, but: good for her. And for her colleague Nancy Mace, whom Trump simply called, in the old-fashioned way. But both stood their ground, and next week, the House will vote to compel Bondi’s Justice Department to release the files, with possibly up to 100 Republicans voting to do so.

Trump is clearly in a dead panic about this. We saw this week the reason why. Many of the Epstein emails released this week were—at least in the court of public opinion—incriminating to one degree or another; none more so than the one Epstein wrote to an unnamed acquaintance in December 2018, in which he announced: "i am the one able to take him down." Also: "I know how dirty donald is." (He was too lazy to hit the shift key, apparently.)

Trump, as always, says it’s all a lie and he did nothing wrong. And a few of the released emails can be read to support this claim. But just stop and think: We are sitting here, in November 2025, in the middle (or the beginning-middle) of a credible investigation into whether the president of the United States engaged in sex acts with underage girls. (And when media allies such as Megyn Kelly publicly try to finesse the differences between having sex with a 5-year-old and having sex with a 15-year-old, that’s not a good sign.)

There’s still plenty of reason to think we’ll never get a satisfactory answer about Trump’s place in Epstein’s grotesque constellation of decadent elites. Trump still has a number of roadblocks to put in the way of getting to the point of the files being released. First and foremost, there’s the Senate. Because once the House votes to release the files, then the Senate has to. I haven’t seen much handicapping on this yet. But it would have to clear the 60-vote cloture hurdle, meaning that 13 Republicans would have to vote with the Democrats to bring the matter to final passage.

Then, of course, even if it does pass the Senate, Trump can veto it. At that point, two-thirds of each House would be required to override the veto. And even then, if all that happens, there’s still Bondi. She could just say, No, I’m not going to do it. Yes, that would be defying an act of Congress. Do you really have trouble picturing her doing that?

Of course, if this gets to that point, we’ll have a major national scandal on our hands, for one simple reason that will be crystal clear to a comfortable majority of the American people: If Trump and his goons are going to those lengths to keep these files from being made public, then he must obviously have something bad to hide.

That’s what makes this different from every other Trumpian contest of wills. In his battles with Democrats, with woke universities, with liberal law firms, with people he doesn’t like being in America, he’s always had a position that some percentage of Americans found compelling, for whatever reason. That’s why they cheer his bullying and don’t care about his lies.

This, however, is different. He’s not defending anything that could remotely be called a principle, and he’s not slaying any America-hating dragons. He’s just covering up his own potential monstrous crimes. Given the way we’ve already seen this issue divide MAGA land, even some percentage of Trump’s hard-shell base will surely see the difference.

Last week’s quiz: "O death, won’t you spare me over til another year …" A quiz about Appalachia in history and culture.

1. About how old are the Appalachian Mountains?

A. 90 million years

B. 270 million years

C. 480 million years

D. 1.1 billion years

Answer: D, 1.1 billion years. Read this, for example. How long ago is that? Well, it’s 900 million years before Pangaea even split apart! 

2. In 1965, the federal government created the Appalachian Regional Commission, consisting of all or part of 13 states. What is the northernmost state in the ARC?

A. Pennsylvania

B. New York

C. Vermont

D. Maine

Answer: B, New York. Specifically, a good chunk of the western tier. You can see a map here. 

3. Those famously feuding families, the Hatfields and McCoys, lived along the West Virginia–Kentucky border. Which family lived in which state?

Answer: Hatfields = West Virginia, McCoys = Kentucky. You might have gotten this by remembering that Sid Hatfield was the sheriff of Matewan, West Virginia, during the coalfield wars of the 1910s and ’20s, as memorably portrayed by David Straithairn in John Sayles’s Matewan. 

4. In Appalachian English, what does the adverb plumb mean?

A. Luckily

B. Funnily

C. Completely

D. Unexpectedly

Answer: C, completely. Ever heard the phrase "plumb tuckered out"? Well, that means "completely tired." I once interviewed a young working-class couple in Arkansas. They were living in a cancer-ridden area. They wanted to move, I remember him telling me, "plumb away from here" to the other side of the county. "Clean" has a similar meaning in Appalachia. A batter might knock a pitch "clean outta the ballpark."

5. There are three UNESCO World Heritage sites in Appalachia: Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Mammoth Cave National Park, and:

A. Site of the former Homestead Steel Works, Pittsburgh

B. Hawksbill Crag, Arkansas

C. Okefenokee Swamp, Georgia

D. Monticello, Virginia

Answer: D, Monticello. Although in my view they should consider A.

6. Which of these 1960s TV locales was not in Appalachia?

A. Jed Clampett’s hometown (The Beverly Hillbillies)

B. Andy Griffith’s hometown (The Andy Griffith Show)

C. Hooterville (Green Acres and Petticoat Junction)

D. Gomer Pyle’s hometown (The Gomer Pyle Show)

Answer: C, Hooterville, which was evidently imagined to be in Missouri somewhere. Jed Clampett’s hometown was Bugtussle, Tennessee (there is a real Bugtussle, but it’s in Kentucky, a stone’s throw from the Tennessee state line). Andy and Gomer both came from Mayberry, North Carolina, which was based on Andy’s real hometown of Mount Airy. And for those who really care, Aunt Bee, we learned in an episode that starred Jerry Van Dyke as an itinerant musician, was from my dear old Morgantown.

This week’s quiz: "There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow …" A quiz on the history of the world’s fair.

1. The first world’s fair was held in 1851 in London. What was the famous venue where it was held?

A. Kew Palace and Gardens, Richmond

B. Hampton Court Palace, Surrey

C. Crystal Palace, Hyde Park

D. Lambeth Palace, Lambeth

2. What is the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 probably best known for today?

A. The first-ever Ferris wheel

B. Enrico Caruso’s first live American performance

C. The unveiling of the first-ever motorcar

D. The grisly legacy of mass murderer Herman Mudgett, who molested and murdered a series of young women there

3. What world’s fair saw the introduction of the electric streetcar—which presumably did not go clang, clang, clang?

A. Prague, 1891

B. Brussels, 1887

C. Paris, 1900

D. St. Louis, 1904

4. What were the names of the two iconic structures at the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair?

A. The Crylon and Unisphere

B. The Trylon and Perisphere

C. The Pylon and Globosphere

D. The Propylaea and Odeon

5. Which of the following 1960s sitcom families visited the 1964–65 World’s Fair in one episode?

A. The Jetsons

B. The Flintstones

C. The Douglasses (My Three Sons)

D. The Robinsons (Lost in Space)

6. What baseball team got its name from a world’s fair?

A. The New York Mets

B. The Montreal Expos

C. The Seattle Pilots

D. The Houston Astros

I went to the ’64 fair. Twice. It was an amazing experience for a little kid. The Swiss Sky Ride. Sitting behind the wheel at the Ford Pavilion. Seeing all that cool, Space Age architecture. Anyway. Answers next week. Feedback to fightingwords@tnr.com.

—Michael Tomasky, editor 

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