Normally I scoff at Birthers, sneer at QAnoners, and laugh in the face of Pizzagaters. Although, between the Epstein saga and the Catholic Church’s endless scandals, the laughter about that last one has gradually turned from uproarious to more like uncomfortable throat-clearing.

Today, though? Today this mind is open for business on conspiracy theories. That’s how dubious Epstein’s death is. Gimme your best shot: Clinton-backed assassination? Trump-backed assassination? Coordinated hit by a cabal of international jetset pedos? The Saudis? Mossad?

Me before Epstein’s death: Conspiracy theories are facile misdirections favored by people who crave simplistic explanations to soothe their own feelings of powerlessness.

Me now: The Illuminati whacked Epstein.

Everything’s on the table. If that guy with the crazy hair from “Ancient Aliens” wants to pitch me on something involving ET, I’ll listen to that too. There’s only one no-go zone:

A guy who had information that would have destroyed rich and powerful men’s lives ends up dead in his jail cell. How predictably…Russian. — Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) August 10, 2019

I just can’t. I can’t do another years-long MSNBC-driven cycle involving Russians hiding under the bed. Shoot me anything else and we’ll talk.

I mean, really:

Jeffrey Epstein told prison guards and fellow inmates that he believed someone had tried to kill him weeks before his death, a source has revealed to DailyMail.com The insider, who had seen the billionaire on several occasions during his incarceration at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, also claims that the normally reserved Epstein seemed to be in good spirits. ‘There was no indication that he might try to take his own life,’ the source told DailyMail.com ‘From what I saw, he was finally starting to adjust to prison. I think he was comforted by the rigidity of his new life’.

It’s a good thing public faith in institutions was already in the toilet or this episode really might have shaken it.

According to the Times, the most famous defendant in the federal prison system outside of Supermax, who tried to kill himself — or survived a murder attempt — just three weeks ago, was placed on suicide watch for all of … one week. It began on July 23 and ended on July 29, never mind the tremendous public and prosecutorial interest in keeping Epstein alive in hopes of him eventually telling all about his activities with rich men and underaged girls. A different NYT piece explains just how difficult it is to commit suicide when you’re on suicide watch:

Inmates on suicide watch are generally placed in a special observation cell, surrounded with windows, with a bolted down bed and no bedclothes. A correction officer — or sometimes a fellow inmate trained to be a “suicide companion” — is typically assigned to sit in an adjacent office and monitor the inmate constantly. Robert Gangi, an expert on prisons and the former executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, said guards also generally take shoelaces and belts away from people on suicide watch. “If he’s on suicide watch, it’s virtually impossible to kill yourself,” Mr. Gangi said.

You can’t be removed from suicide watch until the chief psychologist decides that you’re no longer a risk to self-harm. Somehow, it seems, Jeffrey Epstein convinced MCC officials that he’d regained the will to live in the course of seven days. “For them to pull him off suicide watch is shocking,” said a former federal warden to NBC. “For someone this high-profile, with these allegations and this many victims, who has had a suicide attempt in the last few weeks, you can take absolutely no chances. You leave him on suicide watch until he’s out of there.”

Presumably the feds’ defense will be, “No, really, people in our custody die all the time.”

I’m not onboard with the Clinton theory, I must say. In fact, I’d encourage Bill and Hillary to put out this statement: “If we wanted to take him out, we would have gotten him on the first try.” I’m not onboard with the Trump/cabal/Saudi/Mossad theory either. My preferred insane explanation is that Epstein isn’t really dead. Remember, he’s a supervillain with his own island lair who wanted to seed the world with his DNA. If you know anything about movies, you know dudes like that are never dead the first time you think they are. Right now, I expect, the FBI is prying open the door of Epstein’s Rape Temple and discovering elaborate high-tech equipment labeled “CLONE MACHINE.” He’ll reemerge eventually in some global TV transmission demanding a trillion dollars or else he’ll blow up the sun or whatever.

And if he doesn’t, rest assured that there’ll soon be an Internet cottage industry of “Epstein is alive!!1!” videos/photos taken on the street from far away of men who bear a vague resemblance to him.

Trump hasn’t said anything yet as of 4 p.m. ET but I figure that’s because Kellyanne Conway is busy trying to explain to him why it’d be wrong for the president to start tweeting conspiracy theories about a prisoner who died in federal custody. Even so, the odds that POTUS ends up tweeting out #ClintonBodyCount sometime tonight can’t be worse than 50/50. While we’re waiting for his reaction, House and Senate should be sending out subpoenas for MCC administrators demanding answers on how Epstein managed to pull this off — unless Congress would rather see the Epstein matter go away, of course. If they do hold hearings, I want someone to ask how common it is for prisoners to be taken off suicide watch after a week and how often prisoners die when they’re a known suicide risk to the staff.

Oh, and like all you, of course I want to know if there’s surveillance video of Epstein’s cell last night. If this really was a suicide, it should be easy to prove.

There’s one other terrifying explanation for Epstein’s mysterious death that we haven’t considered yet. What if … federal prison officials really are so callous and incompetent as to have not kept special watch over him?

I get it. Epstein is one of the most famous and controversial prisoners in the world, a focus of immense media/political attention, and recently may have attempted suicide.

Therefore, you think, it is extremely implausible that jail officials would allow him to kill himself./1 — WhatFreshHellIsThisHat (@Popehat) August 10, 2019

/3 You find it implausible because you think jailers would have to be freakishly incompetent to allow it to happen, and surely they aren’t. But they often are. You find it implausible because they would have to be wantonly indifferent to human life, and surely they aren’t. Dude. — WhatFreshHellIsThisHat (@Popehat) August 10, 2019

/5 In short, you find it implausible because you’ve accepted the fairy tale version of the criminal justice system, one utterly divorced from the reality. And you’ve managed to convince yourself that your view is “sophisticated” and that thinking this could happen is “naive.” — WhatFreshHellIsThisHat (@Popehat) August 10, 2019

/7 But if your belief is “it has to be murder, because nobody is this incompetent or indifferent,” you’re a willfully blind fool, a useful idiot for a despicable system. /endhttps://t.co/rzAnlNuknJ — WhatFreshHellIsThisHat (@Popehat) August 10, 2019

Exit question: Will the DOJ honor Epstein’s wishes to have his dong frozen postmortem?