It's not about salience itself, but WHO it's salient to. Epstein is salient to the Right. It's salient to the Right because the GOP and its propaganda outlets made it salient to the Right. The mainstream media take their cues from the Right. The media will care about it so long as the Right does.

Probably at least partially bc Americans can’t process “complex” concepts like obvious threats to democracy but can obsessively follow sex scandals.

January 6 was simple enough for public consumption. Attacking cops, shitting in the halls of the Capitol, and the President saying “we love you.” You don’t have to be a policy wonk to be intrigued

I just feel like Americans are more interested in sordid sex scandals than protecting their own democracy. I probably didn’t think that five years ago.

The human mind prefers gossip above almost everything else

Genuinely I think something (maybe the main thing) that makes this one different is it's easy and lucrative for influencers to hold the anti-pedophile line Whereas for the 2020 election results you got a lot more clicks if you said democrats stole it and followed the conspiracies

And more broadly, it's a class thing. People are sick of the ultra wealthy, billionaire classes. So your average person sees creepy rich guy and his creepy rich friends having sex with kids on an island and the subsequent cover-up. It's a scandal perfect for the wealth inequality we have

Trump really isn't giving the influencers a compelling counternarrative to grab onto and nothing gets attention like "there's a pedophile coverup!!!" and their whole livelihood and business runs on what gets the most clicks

Time was you could have both, a real win win