Suddenly, Donald Trump is in trouble
Once the president seemed immune to the pressures of the 'Panicans'. He humiliated those wailing about an Iranian nuclear strike on Boston by ending the Iran-Israel war in 12 days with zero American casualties. When Elon Musk started up another bout of late night posting against the One Big Beautiful Bill, Trump told him to take a hike. This is a guy who built his reputation in business and politics on bouncing back from apparent disaster. He's made of sterner stuff than you or I.
But there appear to be limits, even for him. An explosive Wall Street Journal article published last night, revealing a 'bawdy' letter purportedly from Trump to Jeffrey Epstein (the president denies the letter in question is from him), has sent shock waves through Maga-world.
Tensions have been building since the department of justice and the FBI announced that they would not release any more files related to Epstein, the disgraced financier and sex trafficker. But the president's initial instinct – to rage against supporters who had fallen 'hook, line, and sinker' for conspiracy theories – could not hold. He has now asked Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to 'produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval'.
Clearly, the administration thinks it cannot treat the Epstein conspiracy theorists as just another group of soon-to-be-embarrassed Panicans. The base doesn't care if America drops a couple of bombs on the Ayatollah or calls Musk a weirdo. But Trump and senior figures in his administration helped spread the idea that there was more to the Epstein scandal than we were being told.
The dynamics of the online media ecosystem now turning against the president are also worth examining, as they portend poorly to the future of the American Right.
For all the progressive teasing about the Fox-News-on-crack aesthetics of Maga, Trump's movement has always been one that is supremely comfortable with the online sphere. His first campaign was defined by 'meme magic', arcane internet imageboards and Pepe the Frog.
The same people ironically (and then sincerely) amplifying Trump didn't fit easily into the mental image of the left-behind white Americans that supposedly made up the Republican candidate's base: they were young, media-savvy, and deeply paranoid. Perhaps it was inevitable that the man who popularised Birtherism would attract the guys who shouted about Pizzagate – the lurid conspiracy theory that falsely claimed a paedophile ring was being run out of a Washington DC pizza restaurant.
A new generation of influencers rose from the imageboards and chatrooms and came out into the open. They were edgier than Joe Rogan, but like him had interests outside of the purely political. You can see the evolution of their thinking clearly: Maga wasn't just the project of a single extraordinary man, but a brand, a broad church where you could shill supplements and drone into your podcast mic – as long as you stuck by your president.
Then again, the 47th president wasn't paying you. That was your audience, and they craved intrigue even after the election campaign was over. A belief that these influencers brought the president to power in the first place (just don't ask them what they said about Ron DeSantis back in 2022) made them think they could make demands. Trump needed them, they thought, not the other way around.
If you want a glimpse at what Maga without the president looks like, take a look at Laura Loomer. She's been at the centre of internet bloodsports for more than a decade now, and created a space for herself within Maga by acting as a regime pitbull. She's spent the last few days making veiled threats about the damage this Epstein crisis could cause Trump. Loomer is not representative of the base, but she is representative of an online influencer class that is one of the administration's main vectors for getting out news. If they turn Panican, ignoring them isn't an option: they need to be smacked down, and fast.
The president and his allies played with fire in letting the conspiracy-obsessives grow their power for so long. The stakes are high: without Trump, the political project of Maga dies. In its place will be a dangerous fantasy woven by those who make a living frightening people into impotence.
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