The anti-corruption anger is stirring in the streets. And Washington has no idea what’s coming.
Yesterday in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a line formed on the sidewalk outside a converted taco truck the minute we opened at noon, and it was still there hours later. By the time our team closed up, 437 people had climbed the steps of that truck to read the evidence Donald Trump has been desperate to bury.
I need to tell you about what’s been happening out there. I’ve spent most of my adult life in and around D.C., and honestly, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
Back in May, we helped our partners at the Institute for Primary Facts open the Trump-Epstein Memorial Reading Room in New York City. The idea was simple. They printed and bound all 3.5 million Epstein Files the Trump administration was forced to release, put them in one place, laid out the decades-long relationship between Trump and Jeffrey Epstein on a single timeline, and let people see it with their own eyes. About 15,000 people showed up.
So we decided to put the files on the road.
Since early September, the Reading Room and our Bookmobile (the taco truck-turned-museum) have been crisscrossing the country on separate but coordinated tours. We’ve taken them to Dallas, Omaha, Des Moines, Chicago, Kalamazoo, Ann Arbor, Parma, and Harrisburg, and today the truck rolls into Levittown.
The response has blown me away. It’s not like we’re advertising on billboards before we get there. We just show up. We post across our various social media accounts, try to give the local press in the next city a heads up, and sometimes the exact parking spot isn’t locked in until the day we get there. But people come anyway. In Kalamazoo, hundreds of people showed up on a Friday. In Ann Arbor, dozens were already there waiting for us, before we officially opened. In Harrisburg, our group chat lit up with updates from the little metal hand clicker the team was using to track visitors to the truck. It went from 120 to 175… then 367… then 437… in the middle of a workday!
And that’s just the tiny Bookmobile. The larger Reading Room has been getting thousands and thousands of visitors everywhere it goes. Most days we’re reaching capacity, selling out the space as people walk the files, read the jumbo timeline, pause for a moment of silence in front of the 1,400 candles (representing the women and girls who were abused as part of Epstein’s sprawling sex-trafficking network), and then take the time afterwards to call the Justice Department — at the phone booths we have set up — to demand that the investigation Trump shut down be reopened.
The visitors span the political spectrum. Earlier this week, a woman walking through the Bookmobile made clear she was a registered Republican and she’d had enough. People like her are furious that Congress fled town the other week because they were scared to vote on a new Epstein transparency bill. It would have forced Trump to release more of the files. Instead, Republicans cut the voting week short and scurried home.
Federal, state, and local leaders are dropping by, too, like Rep. Debbie Dingell in Ann Arbor and Rep. Jasmine Crockett in Dallas. State senators and mayors have come out in Iowa and Michigan and Ohio. Candidates like James Talarico have held press conferences with the survivors.
Then there’s the road itself. Our driver has been steering the truck down interstates across the Midwest, where we worried angry MAGA folks might be rude. Instead, people are honking and waving. They snap pictures and yell enthusiastic (and mostly unprintable) cheers about delivering justice to the criminals and those who covered it up. In Parma, a woman walked up and shook the hand of every person on our crew and thanked them. In all those miles, we’ve yet to see a middle finger.
But what gets me most are the notes. At every stop, the team sets out blank cards and markers so visitors can write directly to the survivors of Epstein’s abuse, and we pin them up for everyone to see. There are thousands and thousands of them now. Some are short and simple, like “I believe you” and “Your bravery feeds my hope” and “Justice has no tiers.” One visitor in Ohio wrote, “Dear survivors, I believe you! I will fight for you!”
Others are furious or heartbroken. One card says the system failed them. Another calls for abolishing the statute of limitations on child abuse cases nationwide. Someone drew a butterfly and wrote survivors’ names across its wings. In Des Moines, our team sent pictures of all the cards in different languages, including one in Spanish that read “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido.” The people united will never be defeated.
The survivors read those notes. They’ve been at every stop. Virginia Giuffre’s brother and sister-in-law, Sky and Amanda Roberts, did a fireside conversation to a sold-out crowd… Epstein survivor Sharlene Rochard has been making speeches that would send any criminal in earshot on the run. People are sick of lying politicians. But they’ll stand shoulder-to-shoulder to listen to real people whose government has failed them.
Now compare all of this with the man at the center of the coverup. When we launched the tour in Dallas, we timed it to Trump’s big midterm convention across town. The empty seats ended up dominating the coverage, and one reporter estimated 5,000 empty seats in the upper deck alone less than an hour before Trump spoke. Trump kept insisting the arena was packed. Back on the Fourth of July, videos of his speech on the National Mall showed rows of empty seats, and insiders said he was livid when he saw the gaps in an aerial photo.
The President of the United States can’t fill the seats his own party hands him, while ordinary Americans are lining up in parking lots to read about his friendship with a convicted sex offender.
I think something real is happening in this country. There’s a grassroots groundswell against corruption, one that was palpable to our team members in the parking lot in Kalamazoo and on the sidewalk in Harrisburg. People are really tired of being told to look away. They’re tired of a government that protects the powerful and makes victims wait. So they’re showing up, in red counties and blue ones, by the thousands to say so.
Most of the politicians I know in Washington are still staring at polls and think that a better ad — or a clever podcast appearance — might fix their fortunes. They have no idea what’s coming. They aren’t standing in these lines. I have a feeling they’ll get the message after November 3. (We’ll be in West Palm Beach on Election Day, a short drive from Mar-a-Lago).
In the meantime, the Bookmobile is in Levittown today, Allentown tomorrow, and Scranton on Sunday. If you’re nearby, come see it for yourself, bring a friend, and leave a note for the survivors. Check out the tour schedule and RSVP HERE. And keep your eyes peeled next week. We’ll hold a press conference in New York City on Monday alongside survivors, national leaders, and some faces you’ll recognize. I can’t share more yet, but you’ll want to watch.
Trump tried very hard to censor the victims. What a fool. By doing that, he put them in the spotlight. So we proudly handed them a bullhorn.
Your friend, in defiance,
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