Donald Trump does not want to talk about Jeffrey Epstein. Asked on Tuesday about his administration’s refusal to release files related to the dead financier who allegedly sex-trafficked underage girls—and about Epstein’s significant ties to powerful people, including Trump himself—the president lashed out. “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years,” a visibly frustrated Trump said during a Cabinet meeting. “You’re asking—we have [the deadly floods in] Texas, we have this, we have all of the things, and are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable.”
Unfortunately for Trump, many of his staunchest backers very much want to talk about Epstein—and they’re furious with him and his administration for what they see as not just a broken promise but participation in a massive cover-up. MAGA world has been in full revolt since the Department of Justice announced on July 6 that Epstein’s long-rumored “client list” did not exist and that Epstein died by suicide in jail (i.e., he was not murdered at the behest of one or more of his wealthy and powerful clients). And their fury reveals that one of the deepest roots of Trump’s political appeal—as a sort of traitorous elite who would bring the true elites to heel—may be rotting.
Laura Loomer, the far-right troll who is generally loathed even in the White House but has one very important friend there, called for the firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi, who had claimed in a Fox News interview in February to have the supposed Epstein files on her “desk”—ready for release. Tucker Carlson implied Trump himself might be named in Epstein’s client list. The estranged Elon Musk, sensing Trump’s vulnerability and eager to land blows against his former boss, has gleefully posted multiple times about the president’s failure to release the files. (Musk had earlier also said that Trump was named in the files but appeared to back down by deleting the claim.) The result is not only just deserts—Trump and his allies getting what they deserve for cozying up to conspiracy theorists like QAnon—but a potent metaphor for Trump’s second term, in which populist promises have fallen by the wayside in favor of corruption and plutocracy.
There’s a simple reason why many of Trump’s prominent far-right backers and, it seems, a portion of his base are furious: Many of his closest allies, including Bondi, Vice President JD Vance, and FBI Director Kash Patel, have pushed the conspiracy theory that the federal government was sitting on explosive allegations that would show many prominent figures, like former President Bill Clinton, had sex with underage girls and may have even been filmed doing it. This conspiracy theory, though not pushed by Trump himself, is central to the MAGA movement because it takes Trump’s core argument—that elites of both parties are deeply corrupt—and supercharges it: Not only are these elites self-interested, they are immoral degenerates who must be purged from public life. Trump’s return to office was supposed to purge this depraved aristocracy and replace them with MAGA-blooded public servants—like Bondi and Patel. The failure to release the much-hyped “files” is being seen as proof of the administration’s failure to fulfill its core promise, of its co-option by elites, and, perhaps, of Trump’s own complicity in horrible crimes.
For anyone of an anti-Trump persuasion who has followed the Epstein saga, it is hard not to feel enormous schadenfreude. MAGA leaders—very much including Trump himself, who has heavily courted its proponents—have for years exploited the conspiracy theory to win favor with the far right, apparently assuming that doing so carried little political risk. But by promising to deliver something that doesn’t exist (the client list) or that likely contains little new, explosive information (the “files”), these leaders are now facing their flock’s wrath. In fact, it’s worse than that: They’re now being implicated in the very conspiracy that they helped foment.
Because MAGA’s leading lights led them to believe that a conspiracy existed—the possibility of there being no conspiracy at all was never entertained—the MAGA faithful now have no choice but to consider the possibility that Trump himself is refusing to release the files because he is named in them. Democrats have wisely seized on this, with several members in the House calling for an investigation into Bondi’s failure to release the files and Trump’s suspected presence in them. (Trump was previously friendly with Epstein and flew on his plane with his family several times between Palm Beach and New York City, though he apparently severed the relationship in the early 2000s. While in jail, Epstein told the journalist Michael Wolff that he was for a time Trump’s “closest friend,” but the claim is dubious.)
Trump rose to political power a decade ago in part by promising to lay waste to elite society (the other key part being his promise to restore white supremacy, of course). But the fact that he too was a successful elite was central to his argument: His insider knowledge of the system meant he knew how to reform the corrupt political and economic order to benefit regular people instead. But the conclusion of the Epstein files saga undercuts that argument, suggesting that he’s really just another elite, out for himself (which you, reader, already knew). As if further proof of this were needed, the Department of Justice’s announcement came roughly 48 hours after Trump signed his “big, beautiful bill,” the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in recorded history. The bill provides huge permanent tax cuts to wealthy people like Trump and guts Medicaid to pay for it. Talk about an elite conspiracy—and this one’s actually real.
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