Trump’s base now is upset with him, with his attorney general, Pam Bondi, and with his FBI director, Kash Patel. The president’s followers are angry because Bondi and Patel—presumably at Trump’s orders—have declared that all the speculation and conspiracy theories surrounding the life and death of child sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein turned out to be nothing more than a banquet of nothing burgers.
Bondi, after earlier indicating otherwise on Fox News, said that there was no Epstein client list filled with the names of prominent people—including, perhaps, Trump. Patel confirmed that Epstein’s 2019 death in a jail cell was a suicide.
Then, when a conservative reporter tried to ask a question about the twin pronouncements at a media availability, Trump snapped. He barked that he didn’t understand why people still were talking about Epstein, calling the dead sex offender “a creep.”
Epstein definitely was that and more, but Trump has no one but himself to blame for keeping the speculation alive.
The president has peddled more outlandish conspiracy theories than fast food joints have sold hamburgers. Along the way, he’s attacked, undermined and blackened the reputations of every American institution—law enforcement, the courts, journalism and higher education—dedicated to upholding standards of truth and evidence.
Trump thrived the most in fact-free zones, places where assertions repeated often and with vehemence could be given the same respect and credibility that statements with proof standing behind them received.
Until now, that is.
Part of the reason the president wants to put the Epstein episode to rest is that erstwhile ally and now active political enemy Elon Musk has been using his huge social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to accuse Trump and Trump allies of being on the alleged Epstein list.
Musk, the world’s richest man, has no proof that these accusations are true, but Trump knows, better than anyone, that proof is beside the point in these sorts of hissing matches. The guy who shouts the loudest or has the biggest microphone generally wins.
In breaking with Musk, Trump picked a fight with a guy who has a big, big, big microphone.
Worse for the president, Musk also is talking about spending billions to form a new political party, one dedicated to shattering the coalition that put Trump back in the White House.
Given that the shift of 200,000 votes in three states would have made Kamala Harris president rather than Trump in 2024, Trump doesn’t have a huge margin for error. Every vote Musk siphons off from the president is a damaging blow.
And Musk seems to understand that Epstein is a fault line in the MAGA landscape.
That’s why he’s cracking and widening it.
I’ve always been dubious there was anything of significance, other than its tremendous moral turpitude, to the Epstein episode.
The child predator killed himself when Trump was a little more than halfway through his first term as president.
If investigators had turned up anything embarrassing or damaging about Trump’s political adversaries, the president would have released it with great fanfare.
Similarly, when Democrat Joe Biden became president in January 2021, if there had been any evidence linking Trump to Epstein in anything other than the ways already known, that evidence would have been used to derail Trump’s campaign to return to the Oval Office.
I also never had any trouble believing Epstein committed suicide.
The man was 66 when he hanged himself. He faced overwhelming evidence that he’d committed crimes that would force him to spend the rest of his life locked up in a prison environment in which child molesters often receive gruesome treatment.
Killing himself while he awaited trial may have made more sense to him than staying alive to be given the same treatment he gave his victims.
So, on balance, I think there actually is a decent chance that Trump, Bondi and Patel are telling the truth about Epstein, his files and his earthly end.
But because the president and his many allies have waged war on the very idea of truth for so long, most people—including many who were among the most dedicated Trump supporters—don’t believe them.
So, even the truth can’t set them free.
Yes, folks, that is what’s known as irony.
