Analysis: This week's big questions: Can Trump finally quell the Epstein storm — and is it hurting his presidency?

CNN

7 days ago

Even President Donald Trump doesn't seem to think his angry and chaotic efforts to end the renewed storm over convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein will work.
He warned in a weekend social media post that 'nothing will be good enough' to satisfy what he claims are leftists and troublemakers fanning the uproar.
In reality, however, the controversy was heightened by Trump's defensive outbursts following his aides' clumsy efforts to quell conspiracies they fueled before the 2024 election over Epstein's death in prison and a supposed celebrity client list.
But Trump's Truth Social post raises important questions.
Will the intrigue, which differs from most of his political tangles since it set the president against his own base, be accelerated by new revelations, including curiosity over Trump's past ties to Epstein, an accused sex trafficker?
Or, after two weeks of internal recriminations, will the MAGA movement unite to protect its patron following a Wall Street Journal report Thursday on Trump and Epstein, which the president used to set up his trademark assault on 'fake news'?
Trump did everything he could to ignite new political fires Sunday to distract attention from the Epstein saga. He demanded that the NFL's Washington Commanders play again as the Redskins and blasted Obama administration officials over intelligence findings that Russia meddled in the 2016 election to help him.
But the Epstein matter has so far created its own momentum and defied his efforts to quiet it. It's rather curious in this sense, since it seems less pertinent to the lives of millions of Americans than the impact of Trump's radical policy moves and power grabs, which have repeatedly tested the Constitution and risked harming the economy.
But scandals that boil away and don't fade are always a dangerous sign for White Houses, even when the president has a Teflon hide as thick as Trump's.
One reason this controversy has legs is that its foundations are part of the MAGA philosophy — the idea that hidden elites in the intelligence agencies and government are running an American 'deep state' that hides the truth about issues like child sex trafficking. Declarations by Trump officials who fomented the conspiracy that there is nothing to it seemed only to validate the concerns of committed conspiracists in the movement.
The uproar showed no sign of passing at the weekend, frustrating Trump's efforts to highlight the success of his first six months in power, which he has used to gut parts of the federal government and to send a jolt of social change through American life.
Democrats launched a new push to discomfit Trump, parroting demands by some MAGA activists for total transparency over the Epstein case as they try to finally find some traction against a president who has obliterated opposition in Washington.
'The president blaming Democrats for this disaster … is like that CEO that got caught on camera blaming Coldplay,' Sen Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, told CNN's Jake Tapper on 'State of the Union' on Sunday.
'This is his making: He was president when Epstein got indicted for these charges and went to prison. He was president back then. So all of us would believe they know what's in these documents. They know what's there. They have been claiming forever that they should be released.'
The administration's missteps might give Democrats an opening, especially since Trump's approval ratings are now in the low 40s and there is growing public concern over his signature hardline deportation policies. A new CNN/SSRS poll Sunday showed that 55% of Americans think Trump has gone too far with his deportations.
But despite fierce internal bickering in the MAGA movement, it's doubtful Epstein is a deal-breaker for most of the president's supporters. A CBS News poll Sunday showed GOP voters evenly split over the Trump administration's handling of the matter. A majority of MAGA Republicans said they were satisfied; only 36% of all voters and 11% of Republicans said the issue matters 'a lot' when evaluating Trump's presidency.
But if the public feels this way, why won't the storm abate?
GOP officeholders are still having a tough time navigating Epstein questions, a sign perhaps that the political impact might be greater than initially expected. Closing ranks around Trump, they are now trying to create a classic GOP vs. Democrats fight that might further confuse and polarize the public.
Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett recalled that Democrats had blocked GOP attempts to release all information on the case when they held power in the Senate. 'Where the heck was she the last four years?' Burchett asked, also on 'State of the Union,' in a reference to Klobuchar.
Trump's hopes of dampening the furor may depend partly on matters out of his control. But if he simply stopped talking about it, it might help. His frequent outbursts and claims that nobody cares about Epstein could be just Trump being Trump. But they also offered an opening for critics to suggest he's got something to hide.
And the weekend brought several media accounts detailing the past relationship between Trump and Epstein — two tabloid fixtures in New York whose association was no secret early in the 21st century.
No law enforcement authorities have ever accused Trump of wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. But more revelations of their past contacts could enliven public interest and frustrate the president's attempts to change the subject. That does not mean that Trump necessarily did anything wrong, or that anything occurred that could hurt him politically now. It's still not clear whether this is a controversy that could impose a real cost on a presidency or something that could blow over in a couple of weeks.
Still, a Wall Street Journal report last week about a collection of letters gifted to Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003, including a note bearing Trump's name and an outline of a naked woman, is reverberating.
CNN has not independently confirmed the report, and the president and his lawyers said the letter supposedly sent by Trump was a fake. Trump has filed a $20 billion libel suit against the paper. But the spectacle of a court battle between the president and The Journal's owner, Rupert Murdoch — a clash between two of the most influential and powerful titans of the conservative movement — is guaranteed to electrify public attention over the Epstein case.
But comments by MAGA influencers such as Steve Bannon suggested that a fight between Trump and a paper seen as a pillar of the old right-wing establishment could heal splits in the movement. And Trump is an expert at weaponizing attacks against him to galvanize supporters. Consider how he turned his four criminal indictments into the most famous political comeback in history.
There are other aspects of the uproar that make an accurate assessment of its long-term impact impossible.
Outsiders can't know for sure whether the Trump Justice Department and FBI leadership are being truthful about the findings of their review of the Epstein case. In a memo that dismayed much of the MAGA media machine, both agencies said there was no incriminating client list, nor evidence that the accused blackmailed prominent individuals. They stood by findings that Epstein died by suicide in jail in 2019.
Most Washington scandals explode because of a cover-up or political malpractice. There's no public evidence at this stage of the former. But there's plenty to support the idea that this is a political disaster the administration brought upon itself.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, for instance, implied earlier this year that she had details of Epstein's client list on her desk, raising expectations among activist MAGA members of bombshell disclosures.
Bondi has proved herself a valuable Trump lieutenant, notably in showing the kind of ultimate loyalty to the president and his political cause that many modern attorneys general have preferred to avoid in the interests of the fair administration of justice.
But her handling of the Epstein case has been accident-prone and exposed Trump to political risks. If he comes looking for a culprit, her political foundation could quickly erode.
As an example of her eagerness to please Trump, Bondi and her team sprang into action quickly last week when the president demanded the release of grand jury testimony from the Epstein prosecution. But even if the judge quickly allows this — which seems unlikely — there's no guarantee it would satisfy the demands for more transparency from Trump's base, and much material would remain under seal.
The MAGA meltdown has also presented other members of the administration with tricky political considerations. Vice President JD Vance spent years calling for more transparency on the Epstein files before becoming Trump's running mate. But he was quick to blast the Wall Street Journal report with a profanity on X last week. For now, Vance's political fate rests in Trump's hands. But no Republican who wants to run for president in future can risk being seen as a member of the Beltway 'deep state.'
Trump made multiple attempts to change the subject over the weekend. He repeatedly highlighted another conspiracy theory — given life by his director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard — that the Obama administration committed treasonous acts when the spy agencies warned of a Russian attempt to influence the 2016 election.
Later Sunday, Trump shared an apparent AI-generated video depicting former President Barack Obama being arrested by FBI agents and jailed in an orange jumpsuit, overlaid to a soundtrack of Trump's campaign anthem 'Y.M.C.A.'
And the president warned that he'd thwart a plan for the Commanders to return to the District of Columbia in a new stadium unless they changed their team name. The franchise decided in 2022 after years of pressure from Native American groups to rebrand amid concerns their original name was offensive.
Trump also called for baseball's Cleveland Guardians to reclaim their identity as the 'Cleveland Indians' in a characteristic attempt to stoke culture-war controversy to fire up his base and steal oxygen from other issues.
This might work for him again. But the fact he's delving into his classic tricks of political distraction is a telling sign he still doesn't know how to end the Epstein morass.