This is an excerpt from Heather Cox Richardson’s latest dispatch. The beginning, which I skipped, is about other countries’ holding important men accountable: former Prince Andrew, for his association with Jeffrey Epstein; and the former President of South Korea, who was sentenced to life in prison, for leading an insurrection to take control of the government.

There’s an implicit lesson here about accountability and lack thereof. None of the powerful men who are named in the Epstein Files have been prosecuted in this country. The Department of Justice redacted many or most of their names to be sure they would not be held to account. Those who led the insurrection of 2021 were never held accountable. Its foot soldiers were tried and convicted, but have since been pardoned by the leader of the insurrection.

The part that I thought you would find interesting are the latest examples of Trump’s vaingloriouness.

She writes:

Today Trump’s Commission of Fine Arts swore in two new members, including Chamberlain Harris, Trump’s 26-year-old executive assistant, who has no experience in the arts. Then the commission, now entirely made up of Trump appointees, approved Trump’s plans for a ballroom where the East Wing of the White House used to stand, although the chair did note that public comments about the project were over 99% negative.

According to CNN’s Sunlen Serfaty, Harris said the White House is the “greatest house in [the] world. We want this to be the greatest ballroom in the world.” Trump says the ballroom is being funded by private donations through the Trust for the National Mall, which is not required to disclose its donors.

Today workers hung a banner with a giant portrait of Trump on the Department of Justice building.

On Air Force One as Trump traveled to Georgia this afternoon for a speech on the economy, Peter Doocy of the Fox News Channel asked Trump about the arrest of Mountbatten-Windsor. “Do you think people in this country at some point, associates of Jeffrey Epstein, will wind up in handcuffs, too?”

Trump answered: “Well, you know I’m the expert in a way, because I’ve been totally exonerated. It’s very nice, I can actually speak about it very nicely. I think it’s a shame. I think it’s very sad. I think it’s so bad for the royal family. It’s very, very sad to me. It’s a very sad thing. When I see that, it’s a very sad thing. To see it, and to see what’s going on with his brother, who’s obviously coming to our country very soon and he’s a fantastic man. King. So I think it’s a very sad thing. It’s really interesting ‘cause nobody used to speak about Epstein when he was alive, but now they speak. But I’m the one that can talk about it because I’ve been totally exonerated. I did nothing. In fact, the opposite—he was against me. He was fighting me in the election, which I just found out from the last three million pages of documents.”

In fact, Trump has not been exonerated.

When he got to Georgia, Trump’s economic message was that “I’ve won affordability.” More to the point was his focus on his Big Lie that he won the 2020 election and that Congress must pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act to secure elections. In fact, in solving a nonexistent problem, the law dramatically restricts voting. Republicans in the House have already passed it. If the Senate passes it, Trump told an audience in Rome, Georgia, “We’ll never lose a race. For 50 years, we won’t lose a race.”

Why did she say he was not exonerated? She may have been referring to this case or to the many photos of Epstein and Trump together, in some photos with young girls.