What does this even mean aside from a thinly veiled accusation that such efforts are being pushed by a shadowy cabal of pedophiles elites? I'm sure you can find some overlap between people who want to push age verification laws and people who went to the island, but what about everyone else pushing for the law but who didn't go?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Amendment_(Socia...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-09/government-abandons-p...
...because they're pushing age verification legislation? Did I miss some massive Labor pedophile scandal? If not, this just feels like a tautology. Labor is only pushing age verification because they're pedophiles, and they're pedophiles because they're pushing age verification.
Moreover even if we ignore that, what does that mean for the rest of their platform items? If Labor is pro net-zero, is it fair to characterize the situation as "the people pushing for net-zero are pedophiles"?
State | Effective Date | Legislature Control
------------------+----------------+----------------------
Alabama | Oct 1, 2024 | Republican
Arizona | Sep 26, 2025 | Republican
Arkansas | Jul 31, 2023 | Republican
California | Jan 1, 2027 | Democratic
Florida | Jan 1, 2025 | Republican
Georgia | Jul 1, 2025 | Republican
Idaho | Jul 1, 2024 | Republican
Indiana | Aug 16, 2024 | Republican
Kansas | Jul 1, 2024 | Republican
Kentucky | Jul 15, 2024 | Republican
Louisiana | Jan 1, 2023 | Republican
Mississippi | Jul 1, 2023 | Republican
Missouri | Nov 30, 2025 | Republican
Montana | Jan 1, 2024 | Republican
Nebraska | Jul 18, 2024 | Nonpartisan (unicameral)
North Carolina | Jan 1, 2024 | Republican
North Dakota | Aug 1, 2025 | Republican
Ohio | Sep 30, 2025 | Republican
Oklahoma | Nov 1, 2024 | Republican
South Carolina | Jan 1, 2025 | Republican
South Dakota | Jul 1, 2025 | Republican
Tennessee | Jan 13, 2025 | Republican
Texas | Sep 19, 2023 | Republican
Utah | May 3, 2023 | Republican
Virginia | Jul 1, 2023 | Divided
Wyoming | Jul 1, 2025 | Republicanhttps://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb25-201
Looks like the CA bill went through though.
https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB1043/id/3269704
I updated the list. Still looks rather tilted to me!
Its a shame that this used to just be a conspiracy theory one could mostly ignore, but we simply can't pretend that there isn't rampant CSA by those in power, because we've had proof of it despite their best efforts. Without wanting to get into politics, the leader of the United States right now was friends with the supposed ring-leader...
> but what about everyone else pushing for the law but who didn't go?
Useful idiots, perhaps? Wanting to protect their own power and gain more?
It's certainly not actually about protecting children. Never has been.
The overall idea that far too many of those in power politically and economically are involved in CSA isn't though, it seems.
* In 2024, they had a choice between pedophiles and not pedophiles and chose the pedophiles.
* In 2020, they had a choice between pedophiles and not pedophiles and chose the pedophiles.
* In 2016, they had a choice between pedophiles and not pedophiles and chose the pedophiles.
There was plenty of evidence of this association in 2016 (bragging about creeping into Ms Teen USA dressing rooms, bragging about being Epstein's best friend in the same sentence as acknowledging he's a pedo, victim testimony under oath that he diddled kids, etc etc), so "I didn't know" isn't an excuse if they cared one iota about the children at any step of the way.
It should be good news that the powerful pedophiles are largely (but not exclusively) concentrated in one party, but those who put them in power will do anything to avoid admitting culpability.
Keep in mind Epstein died in 2017. We had two GOP terms and one Democrat term from then to now.
With what we know from the files that have been released thus far (and how obviously the worst if it has either been shredded or will never see the light of day), the fact they refused to release/prosecute those implicated tells you all you need to know.
What's "rampant"? The news coverage provides no shortage of people, but ringing off 100 (or whatever) people that are in the files doesn't say much, even if we make the questionable assumption that inclusion in files implies guilt. I'm sure that everyone would prefer the amount of pedophiles that are in power to 0, but if it's the same rate as the general population that can hardly be considered "rampant", or a "conspiracy". Given some neutral inclusion criteria (eg. members of legislative bodies), is there any evidence they have disproportionate amount of pedophiles?
>the leader of the United States right now was friends with the supposed ring-leader...
You conveniently omit the fact that they broke up 5 years before he was first convicted. From wikipedia:
"Trump had a falling out with Epstein around 2004 and ceased contact. After Epstein was said to have sexually harassed a teenage daughter of another Mar-a-Lago member in 2007, Trump banned him from the club. "
>Useful idiots, perhaps?
So basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness?
> Wanting to protect their own power and gain more?
How does adding age verification help in that? Are they blackmailed by the shadowy cabal? Are they just doing what the voters/lobbyists want? If so, what makes invocation of this reasoning more suitable than for any other political issue? Is everything from tax policy to noise ordinances just something pushed by pedophile elites, helped by useful idiots and people who want to "protect their own power and gain more"?
And? It doesn’t change the reality of the original statement.
The president of the United States was friends with the alleged ring leader of a large pedophile network.
You're making some leaps logic here here. If someone's outed as a pedophile, everyone who's friends with him should be assumed to be a pedophile? Surely not, given that pedophilia is considered taboo, we'd expect them to hide it, and therefore at least some friends might not be in the know. That's not to say there's no conspirators, but "he was friends with a pedophile therefore he's a pedophile too" is just guilt by association. What you need to prove is that he knew, or ought to have known that his friend was a pedophile. A conviction works decently for this, because it's presumably public knowledge, although even that's questionable because most people don't do a background check on people they met. In the case of Epstien he also hired reputation management firms to suppress his conviction from showing up in the results, which weakens the case even more.
No, you’re just shifting the goalposts.
The original claim was “The president of the United States was friends with the supposed leader of a pedophile ring.”
Your response to that was to imply that over time, they had a falling out. To which my point was, so what? It doesn’t materially change the original claim you challenged.
A falling out in NO way changes that the original statement was correct, the current president of the United States, Donald J Trump, was good friends with the alleged leader of a large scale pedophile network.
> If someone's outed as a pedophile, everyone who's friends with him should be assumed to be a pedophile?
If a given friend had their own history of acting like a creepy sex pest when it comes to young women, had a known and close relationship with the alleged leader of a pedophile network AND knew about “the girls”, would I assume them also to be a pedophile? At a minimum, I may in fact conclude that the odds they are also a pedophile are significantly higher than that of the average individual. Birds of a feather and all…
It’s not to say they are of course and it may in fact be as simple as they are nothing more than a creepy sex pest with a bad taste in friends, but NOT a pedophile. I gotta be honest but, me personally, I’d rather be neither.
It changes the claim in the same way that "he ran over a kid" isn't "materially changed" by the addition of the detail that the kid jumped in front of the car and he had no time to stop. The original statement is still technically true, but it's a massive omission to leave the latter part out. That's doubly true if you're invoking that fact in the context of trying to imply the person did other crimes.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/see-the-alleged-tr...
1. "alleged"
2. I'm not sure what you're trying to refute. I specifically quoted a passage saying that they broke up in 2004, which implies they were together prior to that.
3. For the specific claim that Trump's a pedophile, a "drawing of a curvaceous woman" is hardly proof. At best it's a proof that he's a womanizer, but we hardly need proof of that given the "grab her by the pussy" quote.
I agree this makes him look suspect, but it's hardly conclusive. Moreover Democrats did a similar U-turn a few years before. The only difference is that they weren't bombastically pushing the conspiracy theory during the election campaign, which made it easier for them to backtrack later.
>When Maxwell was charged in 2020, Democrats continued to push for transparency. [...] After Biden took office in 2021, Democrats appeared to dial back their public calls for Epstein records’ release.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/6/fact-check-did-democ...
Another explanation could be the democrats' AIPAC handlers told them to back off because it wasn't the precise time to leverage the material yet.
What claim about Trump? That's he's a pedophile? Based on the rest of your comment it seems like the goalposts are subtly getting moved from "Trump raped kids" to "Trump committed sexual crimes".
Who exactly is influential & organized enough across many western countries to push legislation that no one is asking for? Notice that epstein said he worked for [withheld] in some of his emails.
The anti-social media sentiment has been brewing for a while now, not least due to books like The Anxious Generation (2024). It's also reflected in opinion polls and media coverage. Unless you want to imply there's some massive conspiracy by The Elites™ (ie. not just a few lobbyists Meta hired, but those in academia and media as well), it's probably organic.