Will the Epstein Story Hurt Trump in MAGA-Land? Wake Up—It Already Has

So, Kash Patel told us over the weekend that the Jeffrey Epstein “conspiracy theories just aren’t true” and “never have been.” If you’re thinking, “Hey, wait a second; isn’t that the same Kash Patel who spent years promoting those exact conspiracy theories—and who told Glenn Beck in late 2023 that Epstein’s alleged ‘black book’ is ‘under direct control of the director of the FBI?”—then you might well be wondering why Patel, who of course now heads that very same FBI, has done such an abrupt about-face.

The likely real-Earth answer is that Patel was just making shit up back then to get attention and clicks. Now that he has actual power and access to the files he spent all that time fulminating about, the jig is up: He is stuck with the probable reality, which is that there is no file of names of Epstein clients. But real-Earth answers don’t satisfy conspiracy theorists. Indeed, real-Earth answers merely prove to conspiracy theorists that the conspiracy is even more vast and intricate and iniquitous than they’d dared imagine.

We’ll circle back to that, but right now, let’s cut to the chase. Will this MAGA-world rift do real damage to Donald Trump? What do I mean “will”? It already has. Trump can lie all day long about the economy, the world, Medicaid cuts, immigrants, Democrats, Rosie O’Donnell; lies on these and other topics, his base eats up. They only deepen the bond.

But seeming to link arms with the deep state in burying the Epstein story? That is evidence of a corruption that upends the very moral order of MAGA world.

Yet that’s exactly what Trump has done. Over the weekend, he posted a long and typically semi-literate rant of his own, defending Attorney General Pam Bondi (“doing a FANTASTIC JOB!”—I wonder if she felt disappointed by the fact that Trump included only one exclamation point) and imploring followers not to waste upper-case “Time and Energy” on Epstein.

Over at EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler argues that Trump’s post, and his buttinski remarks to similar effect at a press conference last week (“are you still talkin’ about Jeffrey Epstein?” he snapped at a reporter), have “disrupted Trump’s normal superpower ability to command and direct attention” among his followers. Trump’s “bid to shut down this line of questioning” made him look weak, Wheeler wrote, and “raised questions rather than silencing them.”

That’s true, but I think the problem runs even deeper. Think about it. During his political career, Trump has promoted or endorsed every single nutso right-wing conspiracy theory he’s commented on. He’s even started a few of them. (Remember how Obama was spying on his campaign?) No conspiracy was too out there for him. This is a guy who thinks, or says he thinks, the 2020 election was stolen.

On top of that, he fed the Epstein conspiracists enough table scraps to keep that story humming along, too. He said on the campaign trail that he’d be inclined to make all related government files public. Right-wingers have been hungry to see these alleged files, partly out of genuine rage that men who committed unspeakable crimes are getting away with it; but also, of course, because they all swear that Bill Clinton’s name will be in them in some kind of sickening or possibly illegal context, and a more general conviction that the client list will expose and bring down various corrupt institutions.

But just as this elaborate story came to the big moment of reveal, with a reelected Trump seemingly in position to finally pull back the curtain, he’s shut it all down instead. How could this be? Why would he do such a thing?

I don’t want to become a conspiracy theorist myself; If anything, I am in general a coincidence theorist. However, in this case, you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist at all to entertain one rather obvious suspicion, which Joe Conason wrote about in his column Sunday.

Conason discussed an appearance Michael Wolff made recently on a podcast hosted by Sid Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz. Wolff, who has closely chronicled the lives both Trump and Epstein, told his hosts that Epstein once showed him some photographs of Trump with girls “of an uncertain age” at Epstein’s Palm Beach house. Two showed topless girls sitting on Trump’s lap, and one showed girls pointing and laughing at a visible stain on 45-47’s pants.

There may well be no “client list” per se. But there is almost assuredly a trove of evidence that was seized by the FBI when they raided Epstein’s estate. Are those photos in the FBI’s possession? Are others? What additional information might the bureau be sitting on pertaining to Epstein and Trump?

Maybe nothing. I have no idea. But certainly, far from being a piece of conspiratorial conjecture, the notion that Trump’s name appears unflatteringly in those files would serve as the Occam’s Razor explanation as to why he is now eager to kill the Epstein story.

Here’s a reality check: We’ll probably never know the whole truth about what went on behind Epstein’s closed doors—although Democrats, if they retake the House in November, will obviously have it in their power to launch an investigation. But for now, it’s satisfying enough to know that Trump has committed his first MAGA-world unforced error.

Some Republicans have split from Trump on certain policy questions—Putin and Russia, tariffs, Medicaid cuts. But policy questions are the bland, odorless vegetables of politics, especially in a party that shows far more contempt for policy than interest in it. On the other hand, scandals and pseudo-scandals and conspiracy theories—these are the red meat matters, the things that get people’s blood boiling. Trump, MAGA, and the whole right-wing ecosphere have never not been on the same page here—from Hillary and Russia to Wikileaks to the Biden Crime Family to 60 Minutes being in bed with Kamala. There’s never been an inch of daylight between them.

Now there is. Will all of MAGA-land desert Trump? Of course not. Will they rally to his side the next time he really locks horns with the deep state? Sure. But there’s a leak in the dike now. MAGA elements are feeling a little bit of the mistrust that those of us in the real world have long harbored about Trump.

What’s more, they’re learning that one can oppose the king, and it can feel okay. And remember—this story is a long, long way from over.