Trump Just Screwed Himself on the Epstein Fiasco—with Don Jr.’s Help

Time will tell whether the big bombshell from The Wall Street Journal is true. The New Republic’s Michael Tomasky has the rundown on what it means: Supposedly Trump drew a sexually explicit drawing and penned a suggestive note in Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday album in 2003.

Trump angrily denies it. We can’t know for the time being who’s right, but here’s what we can say right now: The Journal story forced Trump to take an action that may well blow up in his face later.

In addition to threatening to sue the Journal, Trump also reacted by calling for the release of “any and all pertinent” grand jury testimony related to the Epstein matter, “subject to court approval.” That’s laughable. As many pointed out, the files on Epstein, a sex offender who died in prison in 2019, contain all sorts of other materials, like videos, recordings, FBI witness interviews, and more that could incriminate Trump (or others) if he’s in there.

Now look at how Donald Trump Jr. responded to his father’s announcement:

????????????LFG!!!!! pic.twitter.com/O5Uq0nkruY

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 18, 2025

“LFG,” of course, means “let’s fucking go.” Don Jr. is jiu-jitsuing this announcement by inventing a new narrative: It is now Trump who is bravely demanding transparency on the Epstein files. He’s even calling the bluff of Democrats who (are pretending to) want the files’ release.

Also note that JD Vance retweeted Don Jr. on this, and MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk instantly echoed Don Jr., calling this a “major move.” The new story is being manufactured before our eyes: Trump is for full disclosure, and his demand is Totally Owning Democrats (in Trump’s new mythology, Democrats created the files to manufacture a fake story against Trump). If the grand jury testimony doesn’t incriminate Trump (which it likely won’t), he will have been proven right.

The whole thing is shockingly dumb. It’s MAGA influencers who spent years hyping the idea that the Epstein files contained explosive revelations of pedophilia and other perfidy by elite Democrats. This included Kash Patel and Dan Bongino as former MAGA influencers. They are now director and deputy director of the FBI. They looked at the files and found…nothing that would sate MAGA’s conspiracy theories. MAGA created The Epstein Files storyline.

Underscoring the idiocy here, Trump just tweeted this:

If there was a “smoking gun” on Epstein, why didn’t the Dems, who controlled the “files” for four years, and had Garland and Comey in charge, use it? BECAUSE THEY HAD NOTHING!!!

This wrecks Trump’s own line about the “Epstein hoax.” The fact that Democrats didn’t “use” the files because they contained “nothing” shows that Democrats aren’t responsible for creating the files to “get” Trump, because if they had created them and seeded them with information damaging to him, they would have…used them, as Trump admits. Also, if they are a Dem hoax and contain nothing, why wouldn’t Trump and House Republicans seek full release, which the latter voted against this week?

As far as I can tell, Trump's story on the "Epstein hoax" is now basically this: pic.twitter.com/HRAhvj0GOx

— Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) July 18, 2025

None of it makes sense. But beyond all this, now that Trump wants the grand jury testimony, why won’t this only whet MAGA’s appetite more? Recall that the administration’s initial release of Epstein materials, which contained mostly publicly known stuff, only fueled more MAGA screams of a cover up.

But now Trump, by urging release of the grand jury testimony, has planted himself on the side of transparency even more firmly. If the testimony comes out and paints an unsatisfyingly incomplete picture, why wouldn’t the same anger erupt inside MAGA-world, perhaps more forcefully? What does Trump say at that point?

The logic of conspiracism invariably dictates that new material always of necessity reinforces the original conspiracy theory. It’s easy to see MAGA influencers seizing on snippets inside the grand jury testimony and turning them into clues of ever more buried revelations. It’s unclear whether the testimony will ultimately be released, but a partial release (or no release at all) will also fuel the conspiracism.

True, if Don Jr., Vance and Kirk lean hard enough on MAGA influencers, they might be able to persuade the MAGA faithful to accept that testimony as proof that Trump was right all along, in the manner of cultists who finally surrender in ecstasy to the revelation the cult leader has been brainwashing them into having. But MAGA influencers are also in a cutthroat competition for attention, so some might see opportunities to stand out by fueling the conspiracism.

And even if MAGA does get cowed into line on this, polls show widespread public dissatisfaction with Trump’s handling of it. Releasing the testimony means more media attention, more aggressive reporting, and possibly more revelations.

Something real is at stake here involving the MAGA movement’s conception of elites and Trump’s anti-elite political mystique. In a smart piece, Vox’s Zack Beauchamp notes that for MAGA, Epstein represents the corrupted, compromised and treacherous elites of their fever dreams. When Trump tells MAGA to abandon this obsession, he’s telling them, in effect, that they should prioritize his personal success over their own desire for full elite accountability. That exposes the Trump phenomenon as “personalist,” not “populist.”

I would add this: Trump’s political mystique from 2015 onwards hasn’t just been that he’ll take on elites. It’s also that he himself is a card-carrying member of the elite class with deep inside knowledge of how elite self-dealing, globalist scheming, and criminal manipulation of the system really works. He is putting that knowledge to use to clean out the corrupt elites and avenge their victims, i.e., “the people,” narrowly defined.

The Epstein saga really messes with that story. Though it very well may prove false in the specifics, the Journal report seems somewhat credible if only atmospherically. It captures that world of the global superrich’s sex-and-drug-fueled parties, including the treatment of young women as sexual toys who are used and discarded as wantonly as one might throw away a rolled up piece of takeout menu after using it to snort coke.

There is lots of evidence that Trump did travel in tandem with Epstein in that jet-setting, hard-partying world. This whole story threatens to expose Trump as a full and active participant in some of the most wretched elite perfidy imaginable. He’s supposed to be a Traitor To That Class. Now he’s helping that class hide its wickedness.

Trump’s only way out of this is to seek full release of the Epstein files. But he won’t. And he can’t explain why he won’t. The more he calls for meaningless “releases” that don’t provide real transparency, the more he will stoke conspiracism—and the more he’ll appear in on the elite coverup.