Your Morning Shots correspondents aren’t big South Park heads. (Maybe a generational thing?) But we’ve got to hand it to them—how many goofy cartoons have gotten deep enough under a president’s skin to provoke a seething White House response?

“The Left’s hypocrisy truly has no end—for years they have come after South Park for what they labeled as ‘offense’ content¹, but now they are praising the show,” White House Assistant Press Secretary Taylor Rogers told Deadline yesterday, after the show’s season premiere painted Trump as a lawsuit-happy, Satan-snuggling maniac with an impressively tiny penis. “Just like the creators of South Park, the Left has no authentic or original content, which is why their popularity continues to hit record lows. This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention.”

The show’s creators signed a deal with Paramount this week valuing the show’s streaming rights at $1.5 billion over five years—not bad for a show that is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas.

A programing note: Will Sommer will be hosting a members-only “AMA” this afternoon at 1:30 pm ET, for a deep dive on the Free Ghislaine movement and how MAGA is coping with the Trump administration’s bungling of the Epstein files. If you’re not a member, join now and tune in:

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Happy Friday.

Don’t Call It a Coverup

by William Kristol

On June 6, 2025, Donald Trump’s FBI Director, Kash Patel, discussed the Jeffrey Epstein files with podcaster Joe Rogan. “We’ve reviewed all the information,” Patel stressed, “and the American public is going to get as much as we can release.”

One month later, on July 6, a joint, unsigned statement from the FBI and the Department of Justice announced that nothing would be released—except for a prison video. The video turned out not to be, in fact, the “raw” video the statement promised. But it was in any case an attempt at misdirection—an effort to get people to focus on the question of Epstein’s death, rather than on the crimes he committed when alive.

For that is where the danger to Trump lies. And, naturally, that is what is now being covered up.

As a story in yesterday’s New York Times makes clear, the documents about Epstein’s crimes were pretty much ready for release three months ago. The FBI and Justice Department had conducted extensive reviews and re-reviews of the files. They had considered what should and shouldn’t be released due to legal and privacy concerns.

The Times explains:

After the F.B.I. finished its review of the files, the materials were handed over to a team of dozens of Justice Department lawyers who were given the job of double-checking the bureau’s redactions to ensure that neither too much nor too little information was disclosed, according to a person familiar with the process. The lawyers, drawn from multiple divisions from within the department, sat at their desks beginning in late March or early April reviewing documents for the better part of two weeks, the person said. . . . By mid-April, the department’s review had been largely completed.

So in mid-April, the Trump administration was, it seems, very close to being ready to go with the oft-promised release of the bulk of the Epstein files.

But then, in May, Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche briefed President Trump on the files. According to the Times, they told the president his name appeared multiple times.

Two months later, a decision: No files would be released.

The July 6 joint FBI-DOJ statement makes it seem as if this were a decision arrived at jointly by Bondi and Patel:

To that end, while we have labored to provide the public with maximum information regarding Epstein and ensured examination of any evidence in the government’s possession, it is the determination of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.

But it is the safest of safe bets that Bondi and Patel didn’t simply sit and reflect and deliberate and come to a judicious determination not to release the files. We know Trump had been briefed on the files. We don’t know what subsequent conversations he had about them, or with whom. But we can safely conclude that the Justice Department and the FBI don’t make joint determinations on matters of great interest to the president without consulting him—indeed, without taking direction from him.

It is also the safest of safe bets that it was Trump’s determination that no further disclosure would be “appropriate or warranted.” And it is the safest of safe bets that Trump made that determination because he knew that no further disclosure would be in his interest. At this juncture, it’s impossible, indeed irresponsible, not to note that both Bondi and Blanche served as personal lawyers for Trump prior to taking on their government roles.