In his Epstein fallout panic, Trump returns to his classic culture-war stomping grounds
Donald Trump’s efforts to shift his base’s focus away from the so-called Epstein Files fallout continued over the weekend as the president dove headfirst back into the culture war and leaned into his own favorite topic: the supposed Deep State’s efforts to persecute him.
Ahead of a trip to Scotland this week, Trump is desperate to move the news cycle off of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and a declaration by the Justice Department that a list of the convicted pedophile’s co-conspirators did not exist within the files of the DOJ’s investigation — despite his dutiful Attorney General Pam Bondi having said she had such files “sitting on my desk.”
What happened next was a wildfire that engulfed the president’s online MAGA base and even spread into the broader podcasting “manosphere.”
As explanations from his supporters ranged from confusion to outright accusations of a cover-up, the president fumed privately and in a since-deleted Truth Social post that his “PAST” supporters refused to move on from the issue.
Epstein was known to cultivate relationships with powerful men and institutions, and speculation has swirled online for years around whether any of those men (including Trump, former President Bill Clinton and Britain’s Prince Andrew) knew of his crimes or participated themselves during excursions to his private island or other properties.
No public evidence exists definitively linking anyone besides Epstein and his society-girl lover Ghislaine Maxwell to the crimes, though evidence of his close friendships with Trump and others is extensive.
Epstein’s death was ruled a suicide after he was found in a New York City jail cell on Aug. 10, 2019, sparking further cries in MAGA circles of a mass conspiracy.
On Thursday, the picture of that relationship between the president and a man who would later be found hanged in his jail cell awaiting trial for sex trafficking of minors and women changed considerably.
The Wall Street Journal, a Rupert Murdoch-owned publication, published an article revealing the stomach-churning contents of a supposed 50th birthday card Maxwell curated for her boyfriend in 2003.
The card included messages from friends of Epstein including, according to the WSJ, Donald Trump. The paper reports that Maxwell “collected” a letter from Trump for the card, which alluded to a hidden “secret” shared by the two men, concluding with Trump allegedly wishing Epstein a happy birthday — all done on top of a marker-drawn bawdy image of a naked woman.
The White House and the president directly denied all parts of the Journal’s report, including the authenticity of the note. But the president also redoubled his efforts at misdirection, and launched a slew of new efforts to that aim.
First came the lawsuit against Murdoch and the Journal — as well as other independent reporters who circulated the story. This was unquestionably where the president saw the most success in the immediate term: turning the issue into a Trump vs. the media fight provides a unifying bogeyman for the right.
Supporters including Steve Bannon dialed back their calls for Trump to provide transparency as the reaction to the Journal’s reporting clarified that Democrats and Trump’s critics see the issue as a political opportunity.
Second was the resumption of Trump’s war with Barack Obama, who more than any other Democrat has long held the president’s political focus.
His entrance into national politics during the Obama era began with a racist campaign aimed at questioning the birthplace of the nation’s first Black president, and after his first election victory in 2016 Trump accused his predecessor of directing the FBI to spy on his campaign.
Trump reignited those accusations this week, with the aid of Tulsi Gabbard, his director of national intelligence.
Gabbard published a memo accusing the Obama administration of changing intelligence assessments to support political conclusions, but the crux of her own declaration was centered around a false conflation of the intelligence community’s (IC) conclusion that Russia had not attempted to hack directly into voting systems with what the IC actually did conclude: that Russia used bot farms and other means including materials stolen during the verified hack of the Democratic National Committee’s servers to influence public opinion.
Not satisfied with picking one old fight, Trump picked two others.
On Sunday, the president declared on Truth Social that he may attempt to gum up the approval process for the Washington Commanders stadium in the nation’s capital if the team did not return to its old name, abandoned for its racist connotations about Native Americans in 2020.
He likely does not have any power to actually carry out that threat, given that federal funding isn’t involved in the stadium deal.
The same could be said about his resumption of hostilities with another nemesis: comedian Rosie O’Donnell. Trump threatened in a separate Truth Social post to strip her citizenship, something the president legally cannot do.
All of this is to say: Trump is throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks in a very obvious manner. On Monday, there were signs that many on the right were still unconvinced by the bluster.
“So…the Democrats left all the files implicating themselves in Russia Gate but destroyed all the Epstein Files?” one conservative influencer, Kelly McCarty, snidely asked on X.
A number of Democrats have rallied behind a resolution with bipartisan support aimed at forcing the release of the DOJ’s entire investigation into Epstein.
Those members were undeterred on Friday when Attorney General Pam Bondi moved to ask a court to unseal grand jury testimony regarding Maxwell and Epstein, which they note is just a small part of the evidence collected by federal law enforcement.
It also remains the case that much of the uproar was fueled by the Trump White House itself.
MAGA supporters and others in the chorus of voices calling for evidence including the “client list” to be released point to how right-wing influencers were summoned to the White House to receive “phase 1” of “The Epstein Files” in February.
Vice President JD Vance, before that, fueled the speculation in repeated appearances on Theo Von’s podcast, including during the 2024 election.
Months later, no one else has faced accountability for associations with Epstein and the extent of his crimes remains unknown to the public.
