Full Disclosure

How much damage will the Trump admin's mishandling of the Epstein files really do?

Last Thursday, President Trump instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to unseal grand-jury documents related to Jeffrey Epstein’s conviction for sex crimes and to release “pertinent” information from them to the public.

Obviously, this is nothing like a “full release” of the Epstein files, and it’s unclear at this point whether Trump’s late concession will be enough to put out the flames that are engulfing the MAGA base.

In actual fact, we just don’t know how angry Trump’s strongest supporters really are. The impression, certainly, from social media, is that there’s significant anger, enough to make even the truest MAGA stalwart call Trump “Donny Diddler,” as one influencer did this week.

If Trump won’t release the videos, that means he’s in them, right? Raping trafficked kids in that blue-and-white-striped temple to Moloch on Pedophile Island!

Donny Diddler—until proven otherwise.

But Twitter isn’t real life—thank God—and it’s easy to get carried away with choreographed proclamations made innawoods by bearded middle-aged men on TRT. These videos are supposed to be dramatic: They’re optimized for clicks and views.

Trump’s opponents sense blood, of course, and they’re really going for it. I opened my midweek copy of The New York Times and saw the odious Michelle Goldberg musing on “why Trump’s base can’t let go of Epstein.” She expressed her surprise, after a “squalid decade” of seemingly nothing coming between the man and his disciples—“They’ve been largely unfazed by boasts of sexual assault and porn star payoffs, an attempted coup and obscenely self-enriching crypto schemes. They cheered wildly at his promises to build a wall paid for by Mexico, then shrugged when it didn’t happen”—that now, finally, something has got in the way.

By the end of the piece, though, Goldberg concluded that even this, too would pass, because that’s how cognitive dissonance works—and that’s exactly what the Epstein fascination is. At base, the whole thing is an attempt to rationalise Trump as a “warrior against sex trafficking” to disguise his own “obvious personal degeneracy.” “To believe that they are on the side of light while championing a man of such low character, Trump’s acolytes have had to conjure an enemy of vast and titanic evil, and invent a version of Trump that never existed.”

Goldberg claims most Trump supporters will “maintain or redouble” their commitment to him, rather than allowing the whole structure to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. That’s what UFO cultists did in the 1950s when the little green men didn’t arrive on earth and declare, “We come in peace.” The concept of “cognitive dissonance” was created by Leo Festinger precisely to explain why.

Others have embraced the idea of an imminent MAGA collapse with completely gay abandon. CNN, for example, which suddenly decided Nick Fuentes was newsworthy because of an expletive-laden rant in which he said “fuck you” to Trump, called him fat and a loser, and said MAGA would be remembered as the “biggest scam of all time.”

Fuentes here is conveniently playing the role of the most diehard of Trump diehards. If even little Nick is giving Trump the middle finger and calling him a failure and a fraud, imagine what Average Joe MAGAhat must think!?

Conveniently forgotten—or hidden—is the fact Fuentes said only last year, during the election, that Kamala was “brat,” had “big MILF energy,” and he would not be voting for Trump. He even threatened a new “Groyper War” to deprive Trump of thousands of votes in key swing states.

Polling does suggest widespread dissatisfaction, or at least distrust of the Trump administration for its actions on Epstein so far. Reuters/Ipsos polling says 69% of Americans think the Trump administration is hiding information about Epstein’s clients; 60% think details about his death are being hidden; and just 17% of Americans, and 35% of Republicans, approve of Trump’s handling of the matter.

Of course, this polling tells us precisely nothing about how these sentiments translate to broader support or voting intentions in the crucial midterms, next year.