Trump's Epstein debacle could implode MAGA — if Democrats push for it

It's about class and trust

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Even before Donald Trump officially signed the recent budget reconciliation bill, the conventional wisdom was that the GOP’s decision to strip 17 million Americans of their health insurance was going to be a political catastrophe for Republicans. And indeed, one week since the bill’s signing, the White House finds itself in the throes of an unprecedented crisis, under fire from supporters and throwing out increasingly absurd red meat distractions to no avail — but it’s got nothing to do with slashing the social safety net or anything else in the reconciliation bill.

Instead, it’s the Department of Justice’s sudden proclamation that Jeffrey Epstein never actually had a mythical client list of ultra-wealthy pedophiles that is triggering wave after wave of recriminations and backlash from even Trump’s most loyal foot soldiers and supporters.

The most powerful conservative voices influencers are incredulous, and in the case of Tucker Carlson, not just because their faces look that way naturally.

Benny Johnson, a cackling sicko and the avatar of Reaganism’s full evolution to white nationalism, has been hosting live streams with every unhinged has-been he can find to talk about the conspiracy. That includes Roseanne Barr, whose value to the conservative movement is tied directly to her vague allegations that the world is run by is a protection racket for powerful pedophiles.

The Trump administration is well aware of the incandescent rage that is consuming not just the far-right, but also “mainstream” conservatives, in as much as they exist these days. Even Fox News, which has more or less shed any voices critical of Trump over the past few years, is all over the story, recapping the anger in listicle form for the famously attentive president.

The headline says it all: “10 reasons the DOJ and FBI face backlash over Epstein files flop.”

The argument is pretty compelling: for years, Republicans have insisted that Epstein had a massive list of ultra-wealthy powerbrokers who flew to his infamous island to rape underage women who’d been lured by his longtime partner, Ghislaine Maxwell. Republican politicians have made campaign promises to get to the bottom of the conspiracy, far-right influencers have parlayed supposed evidence of the list into top-tier jobs in the Trump administration, and even self-serious conservatives like JD Vance have stoked the flames for political gain.

Here’s what current FBI director Kash Patel said in 2023:

“You don't think that Bill Gates is lobbying Congress night and day to prevent the disclosure of that list? Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are. We have an election coming up and we need to adjudicate this matter at the polls.”

Last September, Dan Bongino, the former Secret Service agent who spent more than a decade as a conservative talk show host before being named deputy director of the FBI, made this promise to listeners:

"The reason the Epstein client list being revealed is so important is because I want you to understand that there is a class of bekightened folks … who are not subjected to the same rules you are… Folks, you’re going to see a lot of names on that list. … It’s going to rock the political world. There’s a reason they’re hiding it."

Just a few months ago, Attorney General Pam Bondi was insisting that the FBI had handed the DOJ a “truckload” of evidence implicating a brigade of wealthy pedophiles, evidence that she promised would eventually be make public. She also attempted to score points by handing a conga line of clownish far-right influencers binders of old news from the various Epstein investigations, which led to a serious backlash from online conservatives. That dismay was further stoked by administration sources who claimed that Bondi had invited many of Trump’s favorite influencers over to the White House for the binder release party without informing the president.

That Bondi is the one who formally announced that there’s actually nothing to see here has once again made her the target of far-right animus and political backstabbing. And this time, it’s an all-out pile-on, with even establishment figures like Kellyanne Conway (who also hates Superman) calling for Bondi’s head.

Administration figures are also clearly trying to make Bondi the fall guy: The news that Bongino and Bondi had a blow-out fight that led to his calling out of work on Friday to consider his future was broken by an assortment of right-wing media figures (everyone from Daily Wire correspondents to tragic Trump barnacle Laura Loomer claimed some version of the scoop) before it made it to the pages of the New York Times and other mainstream outlets.

But here’s the problem with constantly peddling fantasy: at some point, reality intercedes. Bongino, according to the Wall Street Journal, was entirely fine with Bondi’s memo and on board with its release, and only threw a fit and stormed out when he saw the backlash.

Hence, posts like this:

Why Trump is in real trouble

This isn’t just a matter of hurt feelings from a base stung by a broken campaign promise. Epstein’s fabled little black book of billionaire pervert clients is the holy grail of the modern far-right, the skeleton key that they’ve been told will unlock the secrets of a pedophile cabal that has controlled the world for all of modern human history.

This is the central thesis of their entire movement, the conspiracy theory that has given rise to every other sick fantasy that bubbles up from the sludge of the far-right swamp. QAnon was based on the idea that international elites — including, importantly, the Clintons — were running child sex trafficking rings and that Donald Trump alone is capable of taking them down (hence why those elites “stole” the 2020 election). Hit movies like Sound of Freedom have tapped into this obsession, which manages to also implicate big Latin American cartels, another big bad of the modern far-right movement.

It’s also a key part of their very selective hatred of the ultra-wealthy “globalist” set, which I’ll discuss further in a moment.

Now, Trump could just fire Bondi and release the supposed client list to satisfy the base, right? Well, what’s also becoming clear is that the most impulsive president in history is being very careful around this issue.

He’s tried admonishing journalists who have asked him questions about the DOJ’s announcement, calling the Epstein case old news that pales in importance compared to the deadly Texas floods (also not a good subject for his administration!). Having utterly failed in shifting the conversation away from sex trafficking, Trump and his advisors pivoted to proving their anti-pedophile bonafides by invoking something even scarier to the base: immigrant child sex traffickers.

I’m genuinely unsure what he’s talking about here, and there’s every chance that Trump had a pretty shaky grasp of whatever conspiracy he was referencing, too.

Later in the day, the administration played up the news that an ICE raid in California found child workers on a marijuana farm in California. While that’s exactly the sort of thing that Republicans have promoted by loosening child labor laws in recent years, chief White House race scientist Stephen Miller used the moment to project his ultimate fantasy, claiming that ICE rescued “13-, 14-, 15-year-old children who are raped on a daily basis because the Biden administration, because the Democrat Party chose to traffic them into this country.”

The Fox News host played along, as you can see above, but her heart just wasn’t in it.

The Trump administration is now facing the consequences of its shameless weaponization of the Epstein scandal, with no good way out. You can viscerally sense the desperation of a man who has spent his entire adult life dictating the media narrative and now suddenly can’t control what’s being written and spoken about:

There are no good options here.

If there really wasn’t anything resembling a client list, the White House has to find a way to not only force its people to accept the truth but also forgive the many people in Trump’s orbit — as well as the big guy himself — for years of false promises and emotional manipulation. The hardcore MAGA maniacs will forgive most policy failures because they don’t really care about policy, but Trump tacitly admitting that he manipulated their fundamental worldview for a full decade? It’s actually unlikely that they’d ever accept that reality.

On the other hand, it may be that the White House is trying to bury this story because the client list not only exists, but also includes lots of allies and perhaps even Trump himself. Wired reported yesterday that a video produced by the DOJ as evidence was purposely manipulated, while some Republican lawmakers have already suggested that the book could have been destroyed at some point, which would be quite the convenient out for the administration.

Why would they have stoked conspiracies and speculation for years if that were the case? Fair question, but that’s giving Trump credit for more foresight than he’s ever shown in his entire life.

So where do we go from here?

No, this isn’t a distraction

It’s appalling that child rape gets thrown around and weaponized with such casual ease by these people, and in a better world, karma would punish them for even stooping that low in the first place. But that’s not what’s happening here. Instead, their manipulations are catching up to them not due to some higher force of justice, but instead as the result of a confluence of political events and conditions that have given Democrats a rare and precious opportunity, if they want to take it.

Many Democrats’ first instinct is to brush away this clusterfuck as a “distraction” from the issues that polls and messaging gurus tell them to hammer. They did it during the Abrego Garcia saga and now numbskulls like Ritchie Torres are doing it again, displaying a fundamental misunderstanding of American politics. (Though Torres, a transparent hack, was smart enough to change tact tonight.)

The news is constantly filled with stories of unfathomably terrible people doing unfathomably terrible things, but most of them tend to come and go without additional attention. The Jeffrey Epstein story captured the world’s imagination because of everything that surrounded it: outrageous wealth and the world‘s most powerful people.

There were decades worth of photos of Epstein and Maxwell posing with familiar billionaires and politicians, reports of eminent statesmen on the plane to pervert island. In a time of constantly compounding income inequality, of economic immobility and middle class dreams deferred, it was taken as a confirmation that the world really is rigged against them. Yes, the specifics — that there’s a global cabal of pedophiles who traffic children for sex and that Donald Trump of all people is the chosen one who will end it — are fanciful, but the innate understanding of a society run by unaccountable elites is pretty dead-on.

For the past decade, Democrats have been portrayed as the party of those elites, and unfortunately, that’s been absolutely correct. It’s good to be the party of sane people and truth-tellers, but too often, that’s veered into full-throated institutionalism and defense of the rich and powerful. Changing that reality is an ongoing project, but now is the moment to weaponize Trump’s screw up and begin to shift the public perception.

Fortunately, some Democrats realize this. Philly District Attorney Larry Krasner has put out a public call for any information about Epstein-related crimes that may have occurred in his jurisdiction. Sen. Jon Ossoff, at a rally earlier today, laid into the White House for the Bondi report: “Did anybody really think the sexual predator president who used to party with Jeffrey Epstein was going to release the Epstein files?

This isn’t about taking advantage of a tragedy or milking the suffering of exploited women; Democrats shouldn’t be focused on the specifics of the case or dwell on the ugly details of what happened on that island. Instead, they should be thinking like Rep. Jamie Raskin, who has called for the release of the Epstein files so that the public can finally ascertain whether there really is a global cabal of powerful pedophiles or Trump just used the popular notion for political gain.

Raskin, as the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, is focused on process, but other Democrats should be focused on class and trustworthiness. Suddenly, Republicans find themselves (finally) accused of carrying water for elite creeps at the expense of both working people and the faith of their voter base. It’s time to seize the moment. Demand answers.

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