MAGA is coming for Trump over lost Epstein files. Bondi may pay the price.
But the president has a problem ‒ MAGA influencers can't let go of this particular conspiracy theory, which has been driven for years by Trump's camp, until he cut off that fuel recently.
Those MAGA influencers also have a problem ‒ they can't let go of Trump, adored by their audiences as he fuels content, which they convert into profits.
Advantage Trump here.
Will MAGA actually turn on Donald Trump?
Trump is, in all things, transactional. But he also has an extensively documented history, from long before he entered politics, of not honoring his side of a transaction. Stiffed vendors on construction projects. Unpaid loans from big banks. Jilted wives. Trump just walks away when he no longer needs them.
So MAGA can't really turn on Trump here. But those influencers can exact a price ‒ or a prize ‒ from the president.
They can demand a sacrifice in the name of thwarted conspiracy theories: the firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi. That's a big ask. Trump, who fired plenty of people during his first term, is now reluctant to hold anyone in his Cabinet accountable because it would equal an admission that he should not have appointed them.
But as much as Trump wants the MAGA influencers to move on, they're standing firm on this. For now.
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The fabled Epstein list could be the straw that broke MAGA's back
The source of this controversial conundrum, wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein, has been dead for six years come this Aug. 10. That's no help to Trump. Epstein's 2019 death by suicide, during Trump's first term, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, is a subject of debate among the MAGA influencers who question if he was killed in a "deep-state" cover-up.
Epstein, who used to pal around with Trump, had already won a cotton-candy conviction in Florida in 2008 by pleading guilty to soliciting minors for sex. His punishment, it's fair to say, was not so punishing. That adds more fuel to the conspiracy. Why did a MAGA boogeyman get such a sweet deal?
This has been brewing for a long time. And MAGA finally lost it on July 7 when Bondi's department issued a memo refuting two key points in the conspiracy theory: Epstein really did kill himself and did not leave behind a "client list" of wealthy, powerful perverts he had blackmailed.
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Trump tried to tamp down the furor in a July 8 Cabinet meeting, with Bondi hanging on every word, both of them clearly frustrated that the Epstein conspiracy would not fade away. That only made things worse.
Conservative commentator Megyn Kelly, who has come full circle from Trump critic to Trump sycophant, declared Bondi's "days are numbered as a member of the Trump administration."
Steve Bannon, a top aide in Trump's first term and now a MAGA broadcaster, cast the Epstein controversy as a "deep state" threat against America.
Charlie Kirk, founder of MAGA-aligned Turning Point USA, complained that he was "profoundly confused" by the Trump administration's treatment of the Epstein files.
Heck, even Roseanne Barr ‒ remember her? ‒ told Trump to "read the damn room" when it comes to Epstein.
Trump has a history of using movements and then dropping them
Trump has always enjoyed peddling conspiracy theories for political gain. He is not accustomed to being held accountable for that. And this is a guy who hates being held accountable for anything.
He spent five years, from 2011 to 2016, circulating the ludicrous smear that Barack Obama, America's first Black president, was not really born in America. That appealed to racists in his MAGA base. So Trump stuck to that story until he didn't need it anymore.
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But Trump didn't take responsibility for any of that when he acknowledged two months before the 2016 presidential election that Obama was born in America. Instead, he tried to blame Hillary Clinton for his smear and then tried to take credit for Obama releasing his birth certificate back in 2011, after Trump first started circulating his lies.
It gets even weirder with QAnon, the grotesque cult that adhered to anonymous internet preaching that Democrats operated a secret satanic organization for pedophiles and cannibals. Trump openly flirted in 2020, from the White House, with that cult's belief that he was saving the world from all that.
After losing the 2020 election, Trump used his social media website Truth Social to post and promote QAnon-affiliated material more than 800 times while seeking another term as president. And when QAnon was no longer useful? Trump dropped the conspiracy theory like a hot rock.
All eyes are on Pam Bondi and her job security
Does Bondi survive this? Or does MAGA take her down? With Trump as erratic as ever, who knows?
He's been all over the place on his website, Truth Social. In a July 7 post, the day after Bondi's Epstein memo dropped and infuriated MAGA, Trump lavished praise on FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino but didn't mention her.
Then came a flurry of weekend stories about Bongino thinking about quitting if Bondi didn't get fired.
Trump on July 12 posted a 398-word screed that rehashed just about every conspiracy theory he's ever flogged, mentioning Bondi twice while insisting she's "doing a fantastic job." Trump was clearly talking to the MAGA pitchforks-and-torches crowd screaming for her head.
"We're on one team, MAGA, and I don't like what's happening," Trump wrote in the post, which also mentioned Patel once but did not include Bongino's name.
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Trump, who appointed Patel and Bongino, knows that they spent the years between his first and second term pushing the Epstein conspiracy theory on every platform they could find. But, after only a few months on the job, both now say Epstein really did kill himself.
Boxed in by his own history of courting conspiracy and appointing people who debunk those theories, Trump did exactly what you might expect during this weekend's MAGA turmoil. He desperately tried to distract his followers by trying to pick a fake fight with an old foe, Rosie O'Donnell, calling her a "threat to humanity" while ludicrously threatening to strip her of her American citizenship.
Here, he found consensus — social media scoffed at his pathetic attempt to change the subject.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.
You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Lost Epstein list has MAGA fuming at Trump. Will he react? | Opinion
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