President Donald Trump really doesn’t want to talk about the Epstein files.
Well, he’s made repeated efforts to avoid discussing the millions of documents that have been released from the court case of deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, anyway. Files which mention Trump’s name directly over 38,000 times, as well as the names of his current and former advisors.
Largely, he’s resorted to downplaying the severity of what was done to Epstein’s victims, as have his supporters. But when pressed about it by members of the press – women journalists, in particular – he’s taken to name-calling and outright disrespect.
This week brought a new example of this, when CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins asked Trump about the files while in the Oval Office. He began his response by once again dismissing it as a non-story, before calling her “the worst reporter,” and claiming that her network’s ratings are falling because of her mere presence.
He then continued: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile. I’ve known you for 10 years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile on your face. You know why you’re not smiling? Because you know you’re not telling the truth.”
Vice President JD Vance backed his play during a subsequent interview with Megyn Kelly. “There was a moment in the Oval Office … [where], but Trump was talking to Kaitlan Collins. Trump says, ‘Why don’t you ever smile?’ And it’s actually, like, so perceptive. Have some fun.”
It’s not the first time Trump and his team have employed this tactic of degrading and dehumanizing those who ask about his relationship with Epstein, and his presence in the case files. Last November, Trump himself made headlines for calling one journalist “piggy,” and another “a terrible person and a terrible reporter,” after they questioned him on the subject.
The tool he used in his attempt to silence Collins, though, is far older than that. Indeed, telling women to smile has been a sexist refrain for decades.
Its intent is to make us feel simultaneously scrutinized and poorly received – in service of contorting us to fit into quiet, pleasing packages that delight men (and of course, never challenge them). Men who say this to women don’t want to know about our displeasure, our frustration, our fatigue. They don’t want to know about our humanity, and the fact that our being human comes with negative experiences, just like theirs.
They want us to smile because they want us docile.
This isn’t just my female hysteria flaring up. Research on the subject points to smiling as a social cue among mammals, human or otherwise, that is designed to mitigate threats – and communicate submission to that which is threatening.
Trump employing this silencing method becomes even more galling when you consider what these files – the ones he’s so reluctant to discuss – have told us about what Epstein’s victims endured. – There are details of massages and much more, all coerced from unconsenting, underaged victims for the sexual pleasure of older, powerful men who appeared to glean as much satisfaction from victimizing these girls as they did from the physical acts they forced them into.
A person with a sense of empathy for how traumatizing those moments would be to live through – and then to live with, if they’re able to – would want the victims to know justice, or at least some measure of closure. Especially as they’re forced to relive their abuse on an international stage, amid a sharing of files that also failed to adequately protect their photos and identities.
Trump, instead, tells the women journalists who press the subject to smile. His sycophants then tell these reporters to “have some fun.”
Only, women journalists aren’t going to smile about what was done to Epstein’s victims – even if the president tells us to. And we’re not going to shut up about it, either. ◼️
