鬼百合
Let It Burn!
How Jeffrey Epstein could finish Trump from beyond the grave
For the first time, the Maga base is not buying what Trump is selling. Or to put it another way, someone who died six years ago is posing the greatest challenge to the president’s authority since he returned to the White House in January, writes Jon Sopel
Who owns Maga? I mean, not literally, of course. Maga is an idea rather than a thing. It is not a shop or a book. There are no bricks and mortar – although if I could have had 10 per cent from every red Make America Great Again cap sold, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this article.
The reason I pose the question is that when there was a rumbling disquiet over sending bombers to target Iran’s nuclear facilities, the president swatted his Trumpland critics who said this wasn’t true to the core principles of Maga and America First.
He more or less said, “I invented Maga, so Maga is what I say it is.” It worked. His detractors huffed and puffed a bit, but then they went quiet. The Maga coalition fell into line behind their hero.
But over Jeffrey Epstein – the disgraced millionaire and paedophile who died in custody awaiting trial – it’s all rather different. Here, the Trumpland critics are getting noisier, and their numbers are swelling. For the first time, the base is not buying what Donald Trump is selling. Or to put it another way, someone who died six years ago is posing the greatest challenge to the president’s authority since he returned to the White House in January.
It is replete with irony. Let’s face it, over the years, it has felt that Trump has been a one-man conspiracy theory generator, most famously of all, his “birther” theory: that Barack Obama was not born in the US, he was born in Kenya and was therefore ineligible to be US president.
The Obama White House initially tried to laugh it off, but the conspiracy theory just wouldn’t go away. So, eventually, they produced his birth certificate, which states quite clearly that Obama was born in Hawaii. But then those who bought into the theory said this was the summary birth certificate and not the full thing. And so it went on.
The lesson that Obama’s inner circle drew from this is that while you may be able to shrink a conspiracy theory by peeling off rational, fair-minded citizens, and while you may be able to get people to look away and focus on something else, you can never kill off a conspiracy theory completely. It’s like Japanese knotweed – or moths in your wardrobe.
And if anyone should know that, it’s Trump. He’s getting increasingly tetchy and cross that the American public – and his supporters in particular – won’t accept the findings of his attorney general, Pam Bondi, that with the Epstein conspiracy theory, there is nothing to it. Please move on. Nothing to see here.
Because, of course, the conspiracy theory was originally generated in Trumpland. It’s been talked up by the vice-president, JD Vance, and by the president’s son, Don Jr. And it roughly goes like this: Epstein had a client list of all the sleazy millionaires and politicians he’d entertained on his island of horrors where underage girls were forced to perform sexual acts for these powerful men – some of them supposedly prominent Democrats.
When he was found dead in his New York prison cell in 2019, it wasn’t suicide – as the post-mortem found. It was murder, they claimed. According to conspiracy lore, he had died because those powerful forces, whose names were in his little black book, wanted him dead before he could take the stand at a trial and implicate them.
Even Bondi is on record with her past promises of releasing a “truckload” of bombshell FBI documents on Epstein. She told Fox News in late February that she literally had possession of the convicted sex offender’s supposed black book of prominent figures who engaged in illegal sexual activities. “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review,” the attorney general told Fox News anchor John Roberts at the time. “That’s been a directive by President Trump.”
Pam Bondi has claimed she’s in possession of Epstein’s so-called ‘black book’ (Getty)
Compare this to the Department of Justice and FBI’s two-page unsigned memo released last week, concluding that the agencies had found no evidence that Epstein was murdered in his jail cell while awaiting trial in 2019. Additionally, they were unable to find any list of powerful clients that Epstein was attempting to blackmail for having sex with underage girls.
The conspiracy theories had also been advanced relentlessly by the likes of Kash Patel – now head of the FBI, and his deputy (the former right-wing podcast host) Dan Bongino – and millions of Maga supporters bought into it with gusto. It was another slam-dunk, deep state cover-up if ever there was one.
All of which has left the attorney general and president looking as though they are isolated and swimming against the tide when they keep insisting the Epstein file is a great big nothingburger. Rumours have swirled that Bongino could resign his post over it.
The Epstein court documents are held by the federal judiciary — a branch exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. Trump’s reluctance to release them is making him appear increasingly out of kilter with his base – something that just doesn’t happen.
He’s calling the Epstein story “boring” and said it was only being advanced by “bad people”. It’s a hoax. On his Truth Social platform, he called the Epstein conspiracy theory ‘bulls***’ – and referred to those who bought into it as his “PAST supporters” (His capitals, not mine) – as if there would be a process of excommunication for these apostates to the Maga faith.
Even the most pliant and obsequious lapdogs are growling and showing their teeth. Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House – who it sometimes feels was put on God’s earth purely to make Trump happy – is demanding the justice department publish everything it has on Epstein’s death. Republican congressmen are openly saying they don’t believe or trust what the administration is telling them.
There was a rally hosted by the former Fox TV presenter Megyn Kelly and right-wing radio host Charlie Kirk – two very prominent influencers – where they asked the 7,000-strong audience whether they buy the “nothing to see here” explanation. The hall is unanimous. They don’t. They believe there’s been a cover-up.
There is one other danger for Trump. And that is it generates a conspiracy theory in the opposite direction: that it is the president who has something to hide and is creating a cover-up to protect himself; that Epstein did have a list – and Trump’s name was on it. After all, that was the allegation made by Elon Musk when they had their Semtex-rich falling out a few weeks back. I should add that there is no evidence of that, although Epstein and Trump knew each other and have been photographed together.
It’s not quite Dr Frankenstein losing control of the monster he created, but if you live by the conspiracy theory – as Trump has done – you can die by it too.
