Republicans did not care how much people suffered during the Trump government shutdown. But ahhhh! The Epstein Files!

Republicans and Donald Trump's misplaced priorities: Children going without SNAP supplemental nurtriont❓ Republicans did not blink. Air traffic controllers working without pay❓ No problem.

But the Epstein Files has their attention. #WWWTP❓

To the editor of the Los Angeles Times: When the American flag flies, the red and the blue share the same fabric. 

One does not overpower the other. Yet the leaders who represent it refuse to focus on anything beyond landing punches on their political opponents.

The MAGA clan can bark at Democrats over the Republican❗ shutdown all they want, but reports consistently signal something far more troubling than gossip. The more than 20,000 pages of additional documents from Jeffrey Epstein’s private estate released this week make that clear (“Trump ‘knew about the girls,’ Jeffrey Epstein claimed in emails as Democrats, GOP release trove of records,” Nov. 12). Then President Trump reveals just how quick he is to turn on his own, claiming “only a very bad, or stupid, Republican” would question him.

This obsession with playing “big stick” only distracts from accountability, and leaves figures like the late Virginia Giuffre reduced to convenient props.

Unfortunately, right now, our American flag stands for little more than the colors that divide us. But one thing remains certain: The Epstein victims embody the perseverance and valor the flag is supposed to symbolize better than a MAGA party line ever could. And that can’t be written off as a hoax.

From Samantha Hoffman, in Conover, North Carolina

To the editor of the Los Angeles Times: So, I wonder why the MAGA Republicans want to see the files❓ If they show that Trump participated in illegal activity and sexual assault, would they care? They knew he was a convicted felon and an adjudicated sexual offender last November, but they voted for him anyway.

Since criminal convictions and sexual assault don’t seem to matter to the MAGA base, perhaps they’re upset about something else: Trump lied to them 🤥when he promised to release the files. But his well-documented, proven, chronic lies never upset them before, so why now❓

From Jay Lynch in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania