President Donald Trump spent the weekend appealing to his followers to let go one of the most lurid conspiracies that he himself helped stoke over the years, signaling that his own supporters have him feeling a little boxed in. In a string of Truth Social posts, he implored his MAGA base to stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier and convicted child sex abuser. Trump railed against the “selfish people” among them for their attacks on Attorney General Pam Bondi and others over a topic that “nobody cares about.”
As of Monday, Trump’s appeals have largely fallen on deaf ears as the outrage over his administration’s handling of the so-called Epstein files has continued to burn unabated. Ironically enough, the catalyst for this schism on the far-right was a rare example of the administration telling the truth in the face of conspiracy theories. Instead, it’s blown up in their faces, leaving few credible options to stem the anger at Bondi and calls to deliver a purported “client list” that almost certainly doesn’t exist.
Ironically enough, the catalyst for this schism on the far-right was a rare example of the administration telling the truth in the face of conspiracy theories.
The Justice Department and the FBI released a joint memo last week in which the agencies declared that a “systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list’” and that there was “no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions.” The unsigned memo further confirmed that Epstein died via suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on multiple child trafficking charges. A link to 10 hours of raw and enhanced footage from outside his cell was provided for the masses to review, and the memo also stated that there would be no additional files released to protect the “over one thousand victims” of Epstein’s abuses.
It’s easy to see though why Trump’s base was unprepared to accept the memo’s contents as true, given they’d been constantly told the opposite for months. Bondi claimed in a February interview with Fox News that Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review.” (The White House claimed last week that Bondi was referring to “the entirety of all of the paperwork — all of the paper in relation to Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes.”) When her office then provided a set of far-right influencers with a dossier filled with previously released materials, rather than any new incriminating evidence, the backlash that ensued should have given her pause.
Instead, Bondi doubled down, first in March when doing little to dissuade Fox News host Mark Levin’s suggestion that there was an effort from Democrats to “protect a lot of names and individuals.” She then claimed on hidden camera in late April that there were “tens of thousands of videos” of Epstein “with children or child porn” under review that could eventually be released. Bondi repeated that assessment to reporters at the White House days later, potentially to get ahead of the video’s release and setting the stage for the most recent round of this overall debacle.
The fallout has led to an internal struggle within the Justice Department, with Bondi on one side and the FBI on the other. Former MAGA-influencer-turned-FBI-official Dan Bongino reportedly has been particularly upset with his boss’ handling of this burgeoning scandal. According to NBC News, he confronted Bondi at a meeting over the matter over a “missing minute” in the video that was included in the memo. According to Axios, Bongino was blamed internally for overlooking the gap, which fueled more claims of a cover-up, before the video’s release.
Trump’s appeals to the masses via Truth Social to move on from Epstein have done little to dim the furor against Bondi — nor did his attempted jujitsu to place the blame on Democrats in a post suggesting that previous administrations had engineered the scandal. On the contrary, as my colleague Steve Benen noted Monday, this only further confused the matter: “What started with (1) the ‘Epstein Files’ are real and important, transformed into (2) the ‘Epstein Files’ don’t actually exist so everyone should just move on, has now evolved into (3) the ‘Epstein Files’ do exist, but they’re fake.”
In many ways, Trump now finds himself backed into a corner as he struggles to contain the fallout. In theory, he could give the crowd the blood they crave and fire Bondi. He could also potentially accept Bongino’s resignation, as he reportedly was considering last Friday. Neither option is appealing. Bondi’s firing would lose him a key ally atop the justice system and an eager mouthpiece on Fox News and other conservative media outlets. On the other hand, turning Bongino loose could provide the distance the deputy FBI director would need to flip again and try to claim that he was undercut from revealing the supposed real truth.
What Trump is left with is simply hoping the mess will go away, a wish shared by a child refusing to clean their room.
Moreover, whomever replaced them would still be forced to figure out how to appease the angry masses. The reaction toward Bongino and Bondi, both of whom have sterling conservative credentials, shows that there is not a MAGA equivalent of President Richard Nixon’s 1974 visit to China forthcoming. Nixon’s anti-Communist credentials gave him the political space to open formal relations with Beijing in a way that would have left a Democratic president under attack from the right. There doesn’t appear to be a similar figure in the MAGA world who would be able to deliver the message that there is no cover-up without being immediately suspected of “deep state” corruption.
Even the least scrupulous of potential solutions would require the administration digging itself into a deeper hole. Releasing a fabricated “client list” stacked with the names of prominent Democrats or other anti-Trump figures would be the most direct solution — but even that would only be temporary. The demands from MAGA adherents would then shift to arrests and trials, at which point the whole charade would fall apart under judicial scrutiny.
What Trump is left with is simply hoping the mess will go away, a wish shared by a child refusing to clean their room. He’s had some successes on that front, as Fox News barely mentioned the uproar on Monday morning and conservative activist Charlie Kirk tried to tamp down the outrage on his podcast. But there are still plenty of far-right influencers and conspiracy theory true believers who will happily keep hammering away on this issue.
For years, the MAGA faithful have been willing to blame the people Trump hired for any failings, an impression that the president has been eager to support. But simply telling his acolytes to move on without a scapegoat to focus on leaves Trump increasingly vulnerable to becoming their next target.
