The MAGA backlash over Epstein isn't dying down

The Verge

a day ago

On July 12th, the political world experienced an unprecedented phenomenon: President Donald Trump got ratioed on his own social media platform, and it was on a post about Jeffrey Epstein — someone who, according to Trump, 'nobody cares about.'
Clearly, his followers on Truth Social disagreed. As of today, this post has 43.2k likes, 13.7k ReTruths, and 48K comments, nearly all of which express fury about the information — or lack thereof — that the Trump administration has provided about the well-connected billionaire, who died in prison shortly after being arrested for alleged sex trafficking of minors. Last week, after months of promises to release more information about the Epstein investigation, the Department of Justice and FBI released a joint memo, stating that there was no list of high-powered 'clients' who joined Epstein in his activities, no evidence that Epstein blackmailed anybody, and that Epstein did actually die by suicide.
Even though Trump's Truth Social post was trying to address the attacks on Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was partly responsible for publishing the Epstein memo (and, according to conspiracy theorists, the reason why the supposed client list isn't being made public), his followers didn't care. 'We want the ELITE PEDOS exposed! You promised us that,' one user responded, in a post with 19.6K likes. 'Pam promised us that. Kash [Patel, FBI Director] promised us that. Now it's OUR fault bc we want that promise fulfilled and call Pam out every time she lies? What else has she lied to us about?'
The like-to-comment ratio shows how thoroughly the Epstein files have jeopardized the MAGA base's relationship with Trump. Over the past several months, the administration has had mixed success in keeping the populist base in its corner, due to things like Trump's tariffs and the 'big, beautiful bill,' to the point that the possibility of a 'MAGA civil war' keeps emerging in the news cycle. Most times, those brewing fights get extinguished before they go further. But the backlash to the Epstein files is unusually fierce and may not be extinguished as easily, if at all.
The source of the conflagration: the world of MAGA influencers, whose audiences implicitly trust them to carry out the 'America First' agenda. Their status and functions vary wildly: media moguls like Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, and Steve Bannon; solo talents like Laura Loomer, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes; political organizers like Charlie Kirk; content creators like Cattturd; and hundreds of others who've established lucrative careers by attacking the globalist elite online. They're normally pro-Trump, and many of them now have access to the White House. Some of them even brag about having Trump's cell phone number. But now they won't stop talking about how angry they are about the flimsiness of the Epstein files, which means their followers won't let go of it either.
'The real question is not 'was Jeffrey Epstein a weirdo who was abusing girls?' The real question is why was he doing this, on whose behalf, and where did the money come from,' Carlson said during a keynote speech at a Turning Point USA summit on July 11th. He then insinuated that Epstein was running a blackmail operation on behalf of a foreign government — possibly Israel, though he caveated with 'there's nothing antisemitic about saying that' and that 'every single person in Washington, DC,' suspected that Epstein was a Mossad asset. Bannon agreed with him at the same conference, while Loomer, who once got three members of the National Security Council fired, called for Bondi to be fired, accusing her of 'harming Trump's administration [and] embarrassing all of his staff and advisors.'
Even the influencers that wield direct government power are starting to revolt. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene demanded that the administration reveal the truth about Epstein 'and the rich powerful elites in his circle.' And last week, several mainstream outlets reported that Dan Bongino, a right-wing podcaster who was appointed to serve as deputy director of the FBI, had threatened to resign unless Bondi was fired. According to Axios, Bongino was so upset about the rollout of the Epstein evidence — including a video taken of Epstein's cell phone on the day of his death, which had a full minute missing from it, fueling even more conspiracy theories — that he screamed at her in front of Trump and his senior advisors, and then took a day off from work.
Trump's 10-year relationship with the MAGA base has been an endless cycle of breaking and making up: Trump does something that infuriates the base, they revolt, Trump smooths things over, and the base goes back to loving the president. In every case, he's always assisted by a network of online MAGA influencers who are effectively his proxies — enforcing message discipline when interacting with their audiences, amplifying his talking points, defending him from his haters, and making sure the base sticks with him no matter what.
But the strength of an influencer, especially a MAGA influencer, is that they don't have to rely on elite-controlled media — cable and broadcast news, print journalism, etc. — to build their massive followings. In fact, they could use their internet platforms to hold those powerful elites accountable, touting themselves as 'independent' content creators, which works exceedingly well when they can present themselves as outsiders deliberately shut out of the system and therefore need subscribers to pay a monthly fee to support their mission. Unfortunately, they now have unprecedented access to the president, which makes them insiders with power — and their followers sure would love for them to use it to get to the bottom of things.
It doesn't help that there's no 'deep state' to hide behind this time, and it may be the reason why QAnon — another powerful conspiracy theory that involved pedophile elites in Washington — hasn't revived itself. Trump could easily attack the career agents at the FBI and DOJ for investigating him during his first term, but upon his reelection, he purged those agencies and immediately chose MAGA influencer loyalists to run them. (Prior to becoming FBI director, Patel had a podcast, wrote a children's book about 'King Donald,' and opened his own merch store.)
The Epstein files have scrambled MAGA influencers, who now have to decide what is more important to them: access and loyalty to Trump or maintaining their brand
It's no wonder why the Epstein files have scrambled MAGA influencers, who now have to decide what is more important to them: access and loyalty to Trump or maintaining their brand. If they want to stay loyal to their followers and their brand reputation, they should be trying to get to the truth of Epstein's death. But if they were trying to do that — or at least, convincing their insatiable audience that they were working on it — it would jeopardize their relationship with the Trump administration, or worse, Trump himself.
The cullings are already underway, if Alex Jones is to be believed. On July 13th, he alleged that Trumpworld surrogates had started reaching out to 'talk show hosts and journalists and influencers,' threatening to cut off their access if they kept going on about Epstein. 'You'll never be invited to a Trump event again. You'll never be invited to the White House. You'll never be any other stuff. You're not getting any conservative sponsorship, no campaign contribution, ads running next cycle if you do this. That's been going on,' Jones claimed. 'That, A, is not very moral, that's how the Democrats try to censor and control, and then B, it's gonna create a mega-Streisand effect, as I said seven, eight days ago. And that is exactly what all of this has done.'
A few of the influencers, however, are circling the wagons again. 'Honestly, I'm done talking about Epstein for the time being. I'm going to trust my friends in the administration. I'm going to trust my friends in the government to do what needs to be done,' Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said on his podcast yesterday, reiterating that he would support whatever the Trump administration concluded on the matter.
Kirk, a key player in Trump's political machine, also distanced himself from Carlson's Epstein conspiracies, which were made at his youth group's conference. 'I think that there was plenty of, let's say, speeches that were directed towards this topic this last weekend. So we don't need to spend our valuable time on this program relitigating it,' Kirk said.
Around that time, other influencers began attempting to deflect the Epstein flack
Around that time, other influencers began attempting to deflect the Epstein flack: promising that the government was about to start a real investigation soon (Benny Johnson), attacking Carlson as 'not trustworthy' and 'obsessed [with] making everything about Jews' (Loomer), suggesting that maybe 'demons' were at work and not the government (Mike Cernovich), or hyping up a new discovery about Lee Harvey Oswald and the CIA (Rep. Anna Paulina Luna).
But a growing faction of influencers are going the other way with Carlson, Greene, and Jones: Candace Owens, who's attacking the former Israeli prime minster about the Mossad; Matt Walsh, who wants the 'evildoers [to] be dragged in front of us, weeping and begging for mercy'; white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who accused TPUSA world of 'appeasing' a base that wanted 'authentic opposition to organized Jewish influence'; and Tim Pool, who pointed out the strange new messaging coming out of the White House influencer pool, 'After speaking with my friends in government and also private island equity holdings I have decided that no one cares about Epstein anyway. I mean, like who? Lol who's Epstein amirite?'