The ‘Epstein files' implosion bleeds into foreign policy

The Verge

2 days ago

While the summer doldrums have hit Washington, the MAGA influencers can never truly go on vacation, especially if they've spent their careers promising to reveal the truth about Jeffrey Epstein. Although their politicians are now in power, they're getting stonewalled, and in the absence of juicy 'Epstein files' to feed to their audiences, a new maelstrom of discontent is brewing, one that implicates much more than allegations about a pedophile's sex trafficking ring. The complex rift around Donald Trump's loyalists and the diehard Epstein truthers can no longer be separated from the issue of Israel, and as days pass, vocal criticism of the Israeli government is becoming louder and louder inside the American right wing — something that was once unthinkable.
It should be emphasized that some of the most anti-Israel voices on the right are simply open antisemites, and that's using the word in the narrowest possible sense. (For example, white nationalist Nick Fuentes has espoused Holocaust denial and praised Hitler.) It is also true, however, that Israel is currently engaged in an internationally unpopular asymmetric war in Gaza, and that there is an outstanding arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare.
For the hardened antisemite, the mere fact that Epstein was Jewish establishes a connection between the so-called Epstein files and Israel; elsewhere in the MAGAverse, major figures (like Tucker Carlson) advance the theory that the billionaire sex offender was a Mossad asset. (This theory is bolstered in part by long-standing rumors that Ghislaine Maxwell's father was a Mossad agent.)
The faction highlighting both Epstein and Israel is either nonideological (such as Theo Von, who pressed JD Vance on the Epstein files and has questioned 'why we [America] support Israel'), deeply populist and/or conspiratorial, and sometimes a combination of these categories. Tucker Carlson's two most recent podcasts, for instance, were deep dives into Epstein's history and heavy criticism of Israeli military strikes on Christian churches in Gaza — just weeks after he referenced the Epstein Mossad theory at the TPUSA conference. Alex Jones has run nonstop coverage of Epstein developments this week and on Wednesday hosted a debate with Fuentes wherein he called the Trump administration an 'absolute failure.'
But shockingly, the faction that's attempted to support Trump while placating their audience has pivoted as well: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a MAGA megastar who somehow balances her support of Trump with her frequent antisemitism, went even further and called Netanyahu's actions a 'genocide.' Both Matt Gaetz and Steve Bannon, whose Epstein messaging waxes and wanes, recently called the situation in Gaza a political liability for Trump.
As a news event, it's impossible to ignore Netanyahu's occupation of Gaza and the subsequent humanitarian crisis, and how it's chipped away at Americans' sentiment toward the state of Israel, now at historic lows. Trump himself notably broke with Netanyahu on Monday, telling reporters that he did not believe the prime minister's claims that children were not starving in Gaza. 'Based on television … those children look very hungry,' Trump said, adding later: 'I see it, and you can't fake that.' While unclear if they would have begun criticizing Israel if Trump hadn't done it first, the influencers' pivot was inevitable if one looks at the shifting attitudes of the podcast-listening demographic.
A Pew poll published last year found that only half of young Republican men between 18 and 34 were sympathetic to Israel's actions, while the other half were either opposed or unsure — a shocking statistic compared to older Republicans, who overwhelmingly supported Israel. It hasn't gotten better since: a Gallup poll released this Tuesday found that while a majority of self-identified Republicans continued to support Israel's actions in Gaza, 51 percent of men, 54 percent of white people, and a staggering 82 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 34 did not.
Maintaining a good relationship with MAGA influencers is a rather different dynamic than maintaining their alliance with Fox News
For the Trump team and the Republican Party as a whole, it's becoming clearer that maintaining a good relationship with MAGA influencers is a rather different dynamic than maintaining their alliance with Fox News. A single influencer is held accountable to their audience and the comments section, whereas if a Fox talking head goes rogue, the White House can call Rupert Murdoch — whose media empire, and particularly Fox, needs access to the White House — and wrangle them back into line. (Incidentally, over the past week, according to a Media Matters analysis published Thursday, Fox News spent a cumulative three minutes talking about Epstein, and 85 minutes talking about Sydney Sweeney's denim controversy.)
Even if the Trump administration establishes a symbiotic relationship with some influencers, with the expectation that they parrot Trump's line about Epstein (or Israel), they may find that their power to persuade only goes so far. A recent example from the manosphere demonstrates the limit of an influencer to, well, influence: earlier this month, the Nelk Boys, two Canadian right-wing bro podcasters, posted an interview with Netanyahu, whose government (and, by extension, Israel) has become increasingly unpopular with younger Americans due to his actions in Gaza. It backfired completely: their audience immediately began accusing the two of platforming a genocidal Zionist, going ballistic when the hosts admitted that the Israeli government fed them questions, and drew criticism from leftist streamer Hasan Piker and Nick Fuentes during the same livestream. Their YouTube channel has lost over 20,000 subscribers since posting the interview, according to Social Blade.
But being on the White House's good side does have its benefits even if one loses followers: Laura Loomer, one of the loudest voices calling for Epstein documents, has recently dialed down her trutherism and instead clung harder to the White House's official continued support on Israel: In a post criticizing Zohran Mamdani, the current Democrat nominee in the New York City mayoral race, she announced that she would never 'feel safe with Muslims holding office in America' and that she didn't care about who she offended. 'This is why I will never care about Gaza,' she added. Unconditional loyalty, however, does have its benefits: Loomer's been credited with convincing Trump to fire over a dozen officials for perceived MAGA disloyalty.
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