MAGA media's conspiracy theories put Trump in power — and now they're coming back to bite him

CNN

8 hours ago

The conspiracy-soaked culture that propelled President Donald Trump to political power is now coming for him.
Some of the most influential voices in right-wing media are rejecting Trump's call to stop wasting 'time and energy on Jeffrey Epstein.'
Trump said 'nobody cares about' the late convicted sex offender, but the incensed replies to his Truth Social post showed otherwise.
The online outrage highlights a vulnerability for Trump and an unfortunate reality about the incentive structure of this social media era.
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Sign up here to receive Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter in your inbox. In short, it's that conspiracy theories keep people watching, sharing and playing along, even about a topic as lurid as sex trafficking. So it makes sense that many people are insisting on further disclosures about Epstein and his connections to powerful people.
Right-wing TV networks and social media platforms have long rewarded hyperbolic rhetoric and reckless speculation. Algorithms don't necessarily want answers; they want engagement, and asking questions about an alleged government coverup definitely stokes engagement.
Conservative host Steve Deace said over the weekend that he sensed the social media incentives at work. 'It's very clear the algorithm wants some Epstein answers every bit as much as many of us do,' he wrote on X.
Epstein's last name has become shorthand for a much bigger conspiracy theory. His crimes, and his 2019 suicide while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges, are just a piece of an imagined plot to abuse children at an industrial scale.
The professed details vary from influencer from influencer, but the general idea is always that a cabal of liberal elites are both evil and beyond the reach of any accountability.
'The Epstein story mattered so much in MAGA circles because it was a key element in their indictment of America's so-called ruling class,' New York Times opinion columnist David French wrote Monday.
That is why last week's joint memo from the FBI and Justice Department denying the existence of an Epstein 'list' and discouraging 'unfounded' speculation was so disturbing to pro-Trump influencers.
Attorney General Pam Bondi handed out binders to social media influencers in February misleadingly labeled 'The Epstein Files: Phase 1.' Most of the records were already public, and evidently there will be no 'Phase 2.'
Thus, some MAGA media power players now claim the Trump administration is trying to bury the truth.
It's a stunning turn of events since conspiracy-theorizing has historically helped Trump enormously. His 'birther' lie arguably birthed his political career and directly boosted his popularity with Republican voters. Conspiratorial claims about immigration and crime also helped him win the election the first time around.
Then 'QAnon' emerged. The movement, which has been likened to a virtual cult, imagined that Trump was secretly fighting a cabal of Democrat child abusers.
According to the Public Religion Research Institute, which has tracked the conspiracy theory's popularity, some QAnon adherents believe that 'the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.'
Epstein-related theories are an extension of that conspiratorial worldview, just as QAnon picked up where 'Pizzagate' left off. (In 2016, the false theory about Hillary Clinton leading a child-sex ring in the basement of a Washington, DC, pizza shop led a North Carolina man to show up with a gun. He discovered that the restaurant didn't even have a basement.)
Epstein is a complicated matter for Trump since the two men were described as friends decades ago. 'I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,' Trump told New York magazine in 2002. 'He's a lot of fun to be with.' Trump later denounced Epstein and said he 'threw him out' of Mar-a-Lago.
Trump is now increasingly the target of his base's conspiratorial thinking — the same position he put Barack Obama in by baselessly questioning Obama's birthplace more than a decade ago.
Over the weekend, Trump even tried to shift blame back to Obama and other Democrats, but with little success.
Mike Davis, a former legal adviser to Trump with close ties to the administration, wrote on X that the sex-ring evidence many right-wing media stars have demanded to see simply does not exist.
'Here's the problem with the Epstein mess: The FBI doesn't have the evidence many thought it did. There are not tapes with powerful men raping kids. There is not a list,' Davis wrote.
Judging from some of the replies to Davis, this attempt to deflate the conspiracy-mongering has inflated it even more.
Researchers like to point out that conspiracy theories are self-sealing, meaning they're impervious to scrutiny because evidence that contradicts the theory can be turned around and viewed as part of the conspiracy itself.
The irate reactions to FBI director Kash Patel's tweet on Saturday — 'the conspiracy theories just aren't true, never have been' — reaffirmed this.
In 2023, when Patel was a frequent guest on pro-Trump podcasts, he told Glenn Beck that the FBI had possession of Epstein's 'black book.'
'That's under direct control of the director of the FBI,' Patel said.
Such conjecture about a supposed Epstein 'client list' lit up MAGA chat rooms and forums for years. Online guessing games about 'the list' were an endless source of MAGA media content. Some Fox News hosts and Trump family members played along.
'I keep hearing about some of the Jeffrey Epstein clients names being released today,' Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X in January 2024, 'but I'd be willing to bet that something happens between now and then that prevents those names from ever coming out.'
The implication of his post was that a massive cover-up was underway. Now, though, his father is the head of the government and the one catching heat for an alleged lack of transparency.
Some commentators have portrayed it as a profound betrayal. Writing on X, podcast host Matt Walsh cast Epstein as a symbol of how 'the corrupt and the powerful are never held accountable.'
'We want these evil doers to be punished. We want the innocent to be vindicated and defended. We want justice,' he wrote.
On Sunday, the InfoWars host Alex Jones called on Trump to 'release everything' and warned, 'This is not going away. It's only blowing up ten times bigger. It's out of control.'
Mike Cernovich, one of the social media personalities who received an 'Epstein Files' binder back in February, wrote that 'Trump's persuasive power over his base, especially during his first term, was almost magical… The reaction on Epstein should thus be startling to him. No one is buying it. No one is dropping it.'
Perhaps some people have been so hooked on the speculation that they don't want answers at all.
Salacious QAnon-style theories about powerful people preying on kids are an 'addictive alternative reality' for participants, disinformation researcher Molly McKew told CNN in 2020.
'It exploits the sense that something is broken in our society,' McKew said. 'But rather than focus on understanding these social fractures and healing them, QAnon instead fixates on the pursuit of enemies and villains described in such extreme terms that any action — either by adherents or by identified champions like President Trump — becomes justifiable.'