Globally loathed pedophile and accused child sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has been dead almost six years, but his abominable ghost haunted West Pittston on Wednesday.
“Absolutely,” Lesli VanZandbergen said when I asked if her message to JD Vance was sincere. The vice president was in town for an emergency makeover of MAGA Republican Congressman Rob Bresnahan’s self-defaced public image and Trump’s hideous One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The 66-year-old freelance photographer from Susquehanna County and her husband, Kirk, 68, drove 70 miles to protest cuts to Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and other essential benefits, but also to throw shade on Trump’s manic meltdown over the “Epstein files.”
In jet-black letters on a bone-white background, VanZandbergen’s sign shouted, “YOUR BOSS IS A PEDO.”
“There are bigger problems,” she said. “But if this is what finally sends him over the edge, let’s do it.”
Vance cast the tiebreaking vote to make the OBBB Act law, so it was perversely fitting that he be the one to bail out Bresnahan in his hour of need. Protestors said Vance’s transparent “phoniness” and avoidance of critical audiences made him a “perfect fit” for Bresnahan.
Plus, Vance is “just plain weird,” said D.J. Rothenbecker. The burly, bearded 40-year-old graphic designer from Bear Creek made a sign that read, “JD VANCE EATS CORN THE LONG WAY.”
I had to ask what that meant.
“Think of the weirdest things that you could imagine a person doing,” Rothenbecker said. “We all understand the concept of eating corn, but imagine if somebody was to eat it the long way and how weird that would be. Everything he does seems forced or unnatural. He’s weird.”
At Don’s Machine Shop less than a mile away, Vance touted the alleged benefits of the OBBB Act to a friendly crowd of about 300. The vice president said nothing about $1.2 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, the reason Bresnahan needed an emergency makeover. Bresnahan vowed he would never vote for such cuts, then fell in line for Trump.
Bresnahan’s defense against backlash over the cuts is to deny they are cuts. Vance showed the political novice a more “economic” dodge — just don’t talk about the cuts. It worked with the folks at Don’s, but in front of less fawning audiences, this cynical shell game won’t work any better than Trump’s flaccid demand that outraged Americans “STOP TALKING ABOUT JEFFREY EPSTEIN!!!”
Protestors gleefully defied Trump’s unhinged edict, mocking his desperate attempts to change the subject. The consensus on Exeter Avenue on Wednesday was that Trump seems oblivious to the fact that every time he commands the public to “STOP TALKING ABOUT JEFFREY EPSTEIN!!!,” HE IS TALKING ABOUT JEFFREY EPSTEIN!!!
Through his pathetic campaign to dismiss the Epstein scandal as a “hoax,” Trump has clumsily united MAGA cultists and conspiracy cranks with centrist Democrats and leftist progressives. Decent Americans of all political and social stripes won’t abide a government that covers up sex crimes against children, or a president who implicates himself as a potential accomplice (or worse) every time he opens his mouth.
No innocent person gets this shaken under scrutiny. Anyone who’s watched an episode of “Law & Order” knows that. Dun-dun!
Jeffrey Epstein’s specter was also sighted on Courthouse Square in Scranton on Thursday evening. A smattering of signs referenced the scandal, but protestors were overwhelmingly focused on celebrating the indomitable spirit of civil rights icon and 17-term Democratic U.S. Rep. John Lewis.
Before his death in 2020 and throughout a lifetime of speaking truth to power at risk of life and limb, Lewis challenged his fellow Americans to “Speak up, speak out, get in the way. Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”
Thursday marked the fifth anniversary of Lewis’ death. Indivisible, the 50501 Movement and other pro-democracy groups organized “Good Trouble Lives On” protests in cities and small towns across the nation to honor the congressman’s message and meet his challenge.
When Sandy Sharpe learned no “Good Trouble” event was scheduled in Scranton, she volunteered to organize one. The retired travel agent and wedding planner moved to the city three years ago after googling, “affordable, safe place to retire.”
I am not making that up.
“I’ve never spoken in public before, so bear with me,” Sharpe said to a crowd of more than 100. “My name is Sandy, and I was actually born in Washington, D.C., so my whole childhood, my whole life, my parents raised me to understand that getting involved in politics is our civic duty.”
Sharpe said her mother took her to see the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech live and recalled JFK’s funeral as “the first time I saw my father cry.” She is physically diminutive, but Sharpe stood tall in her call to follow John Lewis’ eternal example.
“The message from him was, ‘Don’t be mean, be good,’” she said. “‘Cause good trouble and you can get things done.’ And he said, ‘If you’re not at the front of the line, and you’re in the back, make it (good trouble) until you do get to the front of the line.’”
For Americans of good conscience, the choice is clear. With the soul of the nation under siege, we can emulate the indomitable spirit of John Lewis or capitulate to the abominable ghost of Jeffrey Epstein and the ghouls who want us to pardon his unidentified accomplices and abandon the victims he left behind.
Pick a line, and stand on it.
CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, eats corn the American way — side to side. Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook.