Brian Tyler Cohen Picks Fruit So Low It Might as Well Be on the Ground: The Epstein File Spat and the Cracks in Putin’s Control
- john raymond
- Jul 9
- 3 min read
Brian Tyler Cohen’s analysis, like so many mainstream-liberal takes, fails not because it’s wrong, but because it’s beneath the level of urgency and strategic depth demanded by the moment.
Yes, Trump is a liar. Yes, Elon is opportunistic and morally hollow. And yes, neither of them give a damn about Epstein’s victims. But we’ve known all this for years.
The spectacle Cohen dissects isn’t revelatory—it’s camouflage. The real story isn’t the Epstein files. It’s why these two compromised figures are suddenly at odds again and what that tells us about the deeper state of fracture within the authoritarian entente.
This fracture comes on the heels of Operation Spiderweb, Ukraine’s audacious campaign of strategic decapitation strikes inside Russia. Spiderweb wasn’t just a military maneuver—it was a psychological and political shockwave.
It demonstrated that the myth of Kremlin invulnerability had been shattered. Suddenly, Russia’s elite no longer felt safe. Putin’s security guarantees, already strained by internal paranoia and external pressure, were exposed as fragile illusions. And so, what followed was inevitable: purges, panic, proxy moves.
Trump’s inability to rein in Elon—publicly or privately—is a signal. And it is the one we must try to decode.
These men are not merely aligned with Putin; they have moved in the same channels of influence, shared the same backers, benefitted from the same pipelines. But now those pipelines are sputtering.
Elon deleted his tweet suggesting Trump was named in the Epstein files... But now he’s basically resurfaced the claim, directly attacking Trump for withholding the list. This is not a shift in conscience. This is a rupture in command. It raises the following question: Can Putin no longer control the American flank of his asymmetric alliance with the same precision he once could?
Elon has long been suspicious. His early Tesla backing and Twitter deal came through conduits traceable to Russian-linked capital. His Starlink deployment in Ukraine was sabotaged by selective outages. His adoption of Kremlin propaganda lines—on Crimea, on “NATO aggression,” on peace deals that amount to surrender—has been too consistent to be accidental.
While we don’t have all the receipts, we have the rhythm. Elon may not be a classic asset in the Cold War sense, but he’s operating in harmony with Putin’s goals too often to write it off as coincidence.
So what changed?
Possibility One: Putin’s blackmail or leverage on Elon is no longer effective. This may be due to a hardening of Elon’s internal security apparatus or a breakdown in Russian operational capacity post-Spiderweb. Perhaps the operatives who held the kompromat are dead. Perhaps someone else took control of it and is now using it to a different end.
Possibility Two: Elon is maneuvering for power in a post-Putin world. If Spiderweb marked the beginning of Putin’s end, Elon—like many oligarchs, would-be kingmakers, and techno-feudal barons—may be repositioning. Trump is damaged, and if Elon believes Putin is weakened, attacking Trump now becomes a way of carving out distance, even dominance, in the next phase of the entente.
Possibility Three: This is a psyop by Putin himself. It’s still possible that the spat is orchestrated, a performance meant to lend false independence to Elon, confuse observers, or bait other factions into revealing loyalties. But that possibility is weakening with every chaotic misstep in Moscow.
For context, there’s Pam Bondi. Her verbal contortions and backtracking—from claiming she had the Epstein list to now disavowing it—place her squarely in the same category of tool and misdirection artist. Like Elon, she’s serving something, but whether that’s Trump directly or the broader authoritarian project is hard to say.
In the end, for these men, the Epstein files themselves are just a bone. A symbolic object used by them to exert leverage over each other.
The real story lies in the failure of coordination between them. Trump can’t discipline Elon. Putin can’t control the narrative. So is the command hierarchy faltering? Are the tendrils of control fraying?
That’s what we should be watching. And not just the content of the Epstein list—but who’s no longer following orders to suppress or deploy it.
That seems to be the crack. And through it, we might just see a system decaying...
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