In the high-stakes arena of modern politics, where narratives are weaponized and truth is often the first casualty, a familiar and pernicious tactic has once again reared its head. A recent incident involving Congressman Jasmine Crocket (D-TX) serves as a textbook case of the left’s preferred strategy: the political smear built on a foundation of hasty assumptions and guilt by association. As reported by Robby Soave, Crocket attempted to connect Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin to the notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. There was only one, rather significant, problem: she had the wrong Jeffrey Epstein.
This was not a minor clerical error. It was a deliberate, public attempt to tarnish a political opponent by linking him to the most heinous of criminals, an effort that collapsed under the slightest scrutiny. The incident is far more than a simple gaffe; it is a microcosm of the progressive left’s entire approach to political discourse. When you cannot win on the strength of your ideas, when your policies have failed and your leadership is found wanting, the fallback is always the same: destroy the character of your opponent with baseless insinuation and hope the mud sticks long enough to sway the uninformed.
The facts of the case are clear and damning for Congresswoman Crocket. In her zeal to attack Lee Zeldin, she cited a campaign donation from a “Jeffrey Epstein.” This Jeffrey Epstein, however, was a 70-year-old man from Santa Monica, California, with no connection to the deceased financier and convicted sex offender. The two individuals share nothing but a common name. This is the digital age equivalent of blaming every John Smith for the actions of a single criminal who shares his name. It is a reckless abandonment of due diligence, a failure of basic journalistic and congressional responsibility that would be unforgivable in any other context. Yet, in today’s political climate, it is a standard operating procedure for the left.
This episode is not an isolated incident. It is part of a well-funded, media-amplified ecosystem dedicated to smearing conservatives. We saw it with the debunked Steele Dossier, a piece of opposition research laundered through the FBI and the media to falsely allege collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. We see it in the constant, lazy attempts to label every conservative policy—from voter ID laws to border security—as inherently racist. The goal is never to engage in good-faith debate on the merits of school choice, energy independence, or economic deregulation. The goal is to short-circuit the debate entirely by branding one’s opponents as morally monstrous. By linking Lee Zeldin, even erroneously, to Jeffrey Epstein, the intended message was not about policy; it was to paint him as corrupt, depraved, and unfit for public office. It is character assassination, plain and simple.
This tactic is particularly grotesque given the very real and bipartisan connections between the *actual* Jeffrey Epstein and powerful figures, many of whom reside in liberal circles. The flight logs, the well-documented friendships with figures like Bill Clinton, the curious donations and associations—these are matters of public record that deserve intense scrutiny. Yet, the same media figures and politicians who fell over themselves to amplify Congresswoman Crocket’s error often display a curious lack of interest in pursuing these leads with the same vigor. The unspoken rule is clear: connections to elites on the left are downplayed or ignored, while any potential—or in this case, fabricated—connection to a conservative is amplified into a scandal of existential proportions.
This double standard is the engine of the smear campaign. It relies on a compliant media class that functions not as an impartial Fourth Estate, but as the public relations arm of the Democratic Party. A conservative’s misstatement is a “lie” that dominates the news cycle for days; a progressive’s factual error about a matter as serious as linking someone to a sex trafficker is dismissed as a simple mistake, a “nothingburger,” or is quickly memory-holed. The initial smear is blasted across headlines and social media, achieving the desired effect of poisoning the public well. The subsequent correction, if it comes at all, is buried on page A17. This creates an asymmetrical information war where conservatives are perpetually playing defense, forced to clear their names from baseless accusations while their accusers face zero accountability.
The conservative philosophy stands in stark opposition to this toxic model. It is a philosophy built on principles of individual responsibility, due process, and the rule of law. We believe that a person should be judged by their own character and actions, not by the actions of someone who shares their name, their ethnicity, or their political party. We believe in the foundational legal principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty, a concept that the modern left has utterly abandoned in the court of public opinion. The rush to judgment, the trial by Twitter, the destruction of reputations based on anonymous allegations—these are the tools of a mob, not a society dedicated to ordered liberty.
For the Republican Party and the conservative movement, the response to such smears must be twofold. First, we must continue to call them out with speed, force, and clarity. We cannot allow falsehoods to metastasize unchallenged. The work of journalists like Robby Soave in immediately fact-checking this claim is vital, and conservatives must amplify these corrections relentlessly. We must demand accountability and apologies, though they will rarely be offered.
Second, and more importantly, we must refuse to be drawn into the left’s game. Our focus must remain on articulating a positive, hopeful vision for America’s future. We must talk about the issues that truly matter to American families: an economy freed from the shackles of inflation and regulation, an education system that empowers parents and teaches children how to think—not what to think, a nation with secure borders and safe streets, and a foreign policy that projects strength and deters aggression. We win by offering a compelling alternative to the failure and cynicism of the progressive project, not by slinging mud in return.
The attempt to connect Lee Zeldin to the wrong Jeffrey Epstein is a small story in the grand scheme of things, but it is a telling one. It reveals the intellectual bankruptcy and moral vacuity of a political movement that has run out of ideas. It shows us that for our opponents, politics is not a battle of philosophies; it is a blood sport where truth is irrelevant and destruction is the goal. Conservatives must be better. We must fight back against the smears, but we must never become what we oppose. Our mission is to restore a nation where character counts, truth matters, and individuals are judged by their deeds, not by the malicious fictions of their political enemies.
