President Trump is a 79-year-old lame-duck president, approaching a difficult midterm in which he is likely to lose his Republican House majority.

To add to that is the hardball political reality behind his failing effort to hush the scandal surrounding the decased sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein: The right-wing talking heads with the biggest audiences are starting to turn on him.

Perhaps they are having pangs of conscience. Perhaps they are starting to think about their paychecks, their influence and their future livelihoods once Trump exits the stage.

Whatever their motives, those top voices in the Trump media echo chamber deserve credit for keeping their spotlight on the Epstein case. And it is a good-faith effort, because the central truth is that countless young women were abused.

It is deeply troubling that the justice system failed those young women. The plea deal given to Epstein in 2008, which allowed him to plead guilty to prostitution and not more serious charges of sex-trafficking, can only be politely described as "suspicious." Even Epstein’s death by suicide prompted reasonable doubt and questions about possible foul play.

Huge payments to Epstein by several of the nation’s richest men remain unexplained to this day. And both Trump and former President Bill Clinton had close personal ties to Epstein.

Since World War II, the U.S. media has had to fight the government to learn the truth about the Kennedy assassination, President Nixon’s role in the Watergate scandal and bogus claims that weapons of mass destruction were secretly held in Iraq.

Americans searching for hidden truths kept digging while most big newspapers and broadcast networks played the whole thing down as a kooky preoccupation for weirdos. Without strong........

© The Hill