I had not realized that Jeffrey Epstein had become so central to the MAGA fantasy universe. Apparently this really is blowing up MAGA. Trump is even being slammed by his followers on Truth Social. This is turning into a big deal.
The best thing I’ve read so far is by David French, MAGA Is Tearing Itself Apart Over Jeffrey Epstein. This looks beyond just the current roiling of MAGA to the probable eventual breakup of MAGA and what this will do to the Republican party. Just read it. And let me know what you think.
[Update: Steve M is skeptical that MAGA is going to break up. It may not just yet. But there’s been one nativist right-wing movement after another in the U.S. for about as long as there has been a U.S. In the antebellum period there were Know-Nothings, and after the Civil War came the Ku Klux Klan. And then in the early 20th century the Klan flared up again. After World War II came McCarthyism and the pseudo-conservatives that Richard Hofstadter wrote about in the 1950s and 1960s. More recently there was the Tea Party. These movements are not identical and didn’t focus on exactly the same issues, but in many ways it’s all one pathology, complete with nutty conspiracy theories. MAGA is just the newest version. If the past is our guide, MAGA will collapse eventually, and then after some period of time it will reform as something else around some other personality or issue.]
And see also Dave Weigel, Why MAGA can’t move on from the ‘Epstein files’. (Note that Weigel has left WaPo and is now writing for Semafor. WaPo has lost nearly all of its best editorial writers, IMO. Way to go, Jeff Bezos.)
As far as I can tell, the MAGA faithful are still refusing to consider that the coverup is about protecting Trump. Mehdi Hasan put together a video documenting how close Trump and Epstein were for many years. They had a falling out a few years ago, but not over Epstein’s well-documented vices.
And see also MAGA cares more about Jeffrey Epstein than dying without Medicaid, which explains everything by Will Bunch.
I wasn’t initially planning to write about Epstein because in a moment of unAmerican raids on immigrants by masked secret police and GOP boasting about its new concentration camps, a sex scandal — even one that touches Trump — didn’t feel so important. But watching the MAGA implosion in recent days has made me realize I was wrong — as are the parade of Democratic elected officials who go on MSNBC to declare that any story not about Medicaid cuts is “just a distraction.”
In other news: The Miami Herald is reporting that Hundreds at Alligator Alcatraz have no criminal charges, Miami Herald learns. No surprise, but habeas corpus has not lawfully been suspended. This means those hundreds of incarcerations are unlawful.
In more other news: See Trump Is Gutting Weather Science and Reducing Disaster Response in the New York Times. As I wrote in the last post, Trump seems to think natural disasters just don’t ever happen, and if they do happen it’s something no one could have seen coming. This act is going to get real old if people stop getting timely warnings about hurricanes and the other major storms that do happen every year. Trump doesn’t seem to grasp he’s setting up his own administration to fail at something that can kill him politically.
Seems to me that the common theme here is that the Republicans have spent the last 50 years trying to prove that "government does not work" and is useless in relation to the magic of aggregated individual decisions (by rich folks). Their gambit is that any success by government or collective action is a target to destroy and "prove" that government does not work. And the circle continues with the Affair d' Epstein. It makes sense for the to destroy the science-based NOAA… the entire environmental/scientific movement of the past 50+ years is one of the greatest human and government success stories (n)ever told… we don't have burning rivers, have reduced the heck out of cancer-clusters, and hunting, fishing and recreation on public lands is awesome. Florida concentration camps? Of course the guv is incompetently cruel, so stuff happens, the Magas think, a little crime against humanity is fine as long as it is not them and it makes good tee vee.
Your friend the orange man will be just fine and the god-king will eventually pull a distracting rabbit out of his hat and the Affair d' Epstein will be turned into a victory against big bad pedophile government… because DADDY is home and its time to own the libs and their incompetent FBI and Justice Department stupid, stupid laws. The Maga faithful will fall in line, there is always another shiny new success story to panic about and destroy. They would rather feeeeeeeeel good than look at facts and just say that their "truths" are more fac-ty. Easy-peasy.
I'm not sure he's going to be able to wiggle out of this one so easily. The only other time I can think of that MAGA disapproved of him is over the Covid vaccines. He stopped bragging about the vaccines pretty fast when he realized his followers thought the vaccines were Big Government Oppression. All he had to do was stop talking about the vaccines, and all was okay. This one's a lot more complicated. He has already let it be known, several times, that he wants everyone to stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein. No luck. He's claimed the client list was fake, fabricated by "Crooked Hillary," Obama, and Biden. Nobody seems to be buying that one. Epstein's client list is cemented at the very center of MAGA mythology, and they aren't likely to drop it just because Trump says so. He's going to have to come up with something that validates their beliefs about the list, and I can't imagine what that would be.
Yes, I admit I talk out of my rear end a lot, but on this, we will see. He might lose a couple of percentage points on the polls, but when I talk to the Magas out here, they have too much sunk cost to give up on the orange man who freed them from shame. Additionally, the recent shift I see out here is that there is a new vigor and a doubling down on hating Democrats and panicking about commies wanting to kill them. Regardless if they decide to wear a red hat or not, the Nazi runs too deep for a deescalation in my lifetime.
Not really a counter point, but an interesting sideways view of the situation:
https://www.the-sentinel-intelligence.com/p/elon-musk-for-president-2028
Don't worry, non-insane person who posted this, so non-toxic but scary.
Let's look at WHY Epstein is important to MAGA. Among other pathologies, MAGA men are sexually insecure. They're desperately afraid of exhibiting any behaviour that their peers might consider abnormal. Normal = 100% male creatures dominating 100% female creatures. Human sexuality runs a delightful and occasionally appalling spectrum. (I consider the exploitation of children just wrong. I consider the subjugation of women almost as deviant.)
MAGA men are afraid they might harbor some gay feelings. They're afraid their female lover might allow intimate relations with another female for the pleasure he does not provide. To be honest, I *get* the drive to appear normal – I was raised Catholic, twelve years of Catholic school, nuns, Altar Boy, the whole nine yards. I was well into my 20s before I even began, slightly. to break free from 'normal.' I was considerably older before I met a gay couple through Wicca who I realized were trustworthy in every way. My sexual education in terms of knowing and accepting "alternate" lifestyles didn't happen for me til mid-life. My daughter, now finishing college, was emotionally accepting of alternative lifestyles by the end of HS.
MAGA wants to believe their sexual bigotry is normal and everybody with a different bend is evil. They were and are eager to define Democrats and anyone inclined to defend a non-traditional relationship as perverted. Sexual predators are at the lowest rung, so they built up the myth, the pizza parlor pedophile chain, some really sick accusations about HRC and her predatory practices. They believe it because they need to. They need to because they are not sure about their own sexual identity.
So they were frothing at the mouth about the Epstein list because he was a real live example of pedophilia AND he had an island and a plane and prominent Democrats (Bill Clinton) had ties to Epstein. The chain of objective facts was one link short of proving that Democrats are pedophiles. (They ignore Trump's association – that he'd deliver the death blow was proof he's sent by God.) So being told that 1) there is nothing and 2) nothing will be released… upends their entire world view.
So they are in chaos. They will not become sane as a result. If Trump is failing as a "saviour", they will seek a new messiah.
I've read (sorry no links) that the Epstein flap is big, because Trump has lost control of the narrative. A great explanation can be found at Lucian Truscott's substack (again, sorry no link). I expect there are copies of the client list, and they're going to start to leak out.
Would not his partner, in jail, be able to provide "a list"? Although obvious, would she should be able to engineer a "pardon"?
Here's the link:
https://luciantruscott.substack.com/p/the-epstein-story-is-a-big-big-deal
See also his latest: Put a double prison guard on Ghislaine Maxwell. She knows more than anyone about Epstein and Trump, and he knows it.
Maxwell has expressed her willingness to testify before congress. Somehow I believe that won't be happening any time soon….
I know the magats are for the most part a dim-witted lot but how they couldn't think that given all the pics and video of Stump and Epstein together and their well documented friendship which Stump himself has admitted that the "Epstein Files" wouldn’t somehow tarnish their dear leader is beyond me? All of this stuff has been out there for years. I understand that maga media never talked about any of that but they must have had some inkling of the relationship, are they really that dim?
The democrats are coming to stumps rescue, they are now calling for the release of the Epstien files. I quess they never heard the saying: when your enemies are destroying each other don't interrupt them!
How is calling for the release of the Epstein files "rescuing" Trump?
"when your enemies are destroying each other don't interrupt them"
I don't think MTG and the magats are going to want to be on the same side as the democrats? The DOJ isn't going to release anything because of what democrats in congress say, if anything it gives them cover so what is the point?
You're overthinking this stuff, I believe.
Maybe? Seems sort of obvious to me. Here is what Stump posted today:
"“Scams and Hoaxes are all the Democrats are good at – It’s all they have – They are no good at governing, no good at policy, and no good at picking winning candidates,” Trump said. He added, “Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker. They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years.” "
Let's face it, there are some questions which cannot be answered related to the Epstein matter. Take just the first name of Jeffery's sidekick mostly referred to as Maxwell because the broadcasters avoid trying to say her first name. G. Maxwell does have a first name but there is no correct way to pronounce it. Its spelling is French but only French speaking people can pronounce it. English speakers pronounce it somewhat differently and recognize a different pronunciation. For certain audiences this pronunciation is recommended. It is like the pronunciation of Vincent van Gogh the artist. Do not even try to pronounce his name like the Dutch do. You will not communicate with an American audience and a Dutch audience will contend you are not saying it right. Gyro is a word like that. What is Greek to you is not Greek to the Greeks. Just point at a picture of the Gyro or the item on the menu. I sometimes just use my battery of mispronunciations until they seem to understand one or the other of them. They usually say something close to one of them and I nod and voice agreement. It usually works but it is awkward.
David French made good points on Epstein.
and he continues:
This gets at the heart of the paranoid delusional state of the republican party as a whole and the MAGA cult in particular. The party is quite bifurcated, but the cult gets to think it always gets its way. Right now, fearless leader is trying to get the cult on hold for the time being on the Epstein thing. Get it on the back burner. And no one even think of saying Benghazi.
Even Epstein knew he was a dead man. One way or another he was gone. G. Maxwell knows she is dead too if she even tries to start talking. The fix is in, and it will stay in one way or another. This is not paranoid thinking when the fix is really in. It may really be in on this one, as Epstein ran in quite the wrong kind of right circles in a big way. Too much red meat. Too rich of a diet. Best keep them a bit hungry and dangerous for now at least.
It does make one wonder if the Elongated One and his Doge and Pony show got a copy of the file when they had all the keys to the Empire. That would be quite a hole card. Just thinking he might have it may be good enough. Sometimes all one needs is a good bluff, and Elon is quite the player.
It has been years since I picked up and opened a copy of the National Enquirer, but I did just yesterday. The headlines and photos made me do it. That classic Tabloid lure from eye level at the checkout stand. Epstein was the feature, with a promise of a jailhouse confession story from his lawyer just 8 days before his demise. I even leafed through the insides a bit until a rush of potential disappointment overwhelmed me and I jammed it back on the rack. Never, and I mean never, has the story inside matched the con job on the cover. For a number of years that con job was aimed at the foes of our present fearless leader. The news here was this issue took aim at fearless leader himself. You did not need to spend more time nor any money to get that news. The worm has taken a turn. The rag had spoken.