Members of his coalition are devouring one another while the man at the top is playing a very risky game.
Of all the disruptions and infighting that has come to the MAGA realm in the past year, the clash over Jeffrey Epstein may prove to be the most immediately harmful to Donald Trump. For many years, Trump encouraged his frothing base, suggesting the Clintons had a role in Epstein’s death and promising he would release all the supposed truths about the case.
Instead, Trump’s loyalists have come up empty. An unsigned report, released jointly by the FBI and the Department of Justice, found no evidence of a “client list” or wider blackmail ring surrounding Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 and socialized with numerous powerful men, including Trump and Bill Clinton. The Trump administration’s findings run counter to the dominant theory of the online right — that Epstein had a list of public officials and celebrities he passed off underage victims to, that the purpose was to gather kompromat on some of the world’s most powerful people, and that Epstein himself was murdered as a part of a wider (Democratic) government conspiracy.
The MAGA base still firmly believes in this conspiracy and actively disbelieves the Trump administration’s findings. They think they are being lied to, and they don’t like it. Remarkably, Trump has turned on his own supporters with fury, making demands that they drop Epstein chatter altogether and claiming, without evidence, that it’s all a Democratic hoax. This hasn’t happened over the past decade. It is highly unusual, and introduces a new, unpredictable variable to the affair: How hard can Trump clamp down on MAGA?
The big question now is whether Trump himself will ever bear the brunt of MAGA’s wrath. They’ve already come for Attorney General Pam Bondi, a fierce loyalist the president has defended, and FBI Director Kash Patel, a noted Epstein conspiracy theorist. Laura Loomer, a MAGA activist tight with Trump’s inner circle, is demanding an appointed special counsel to perform an independent investigation. Right-wing influencer Benny Johnson decried the “Epstein memo crisis,” demanding Trump hold additional press conferences and “drag in” Clinton for questioning.
