Epstein story has become a ‘nothingburger,' data expert says

Independent

2 days ago

Weeks after being flabbergasted over the amount of interest the American public was showing in Jeffrey Epstein and the Trump administration's botched handling of the investigation into the deceased sex offender, CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten now claims the issue is 'quickly becoming something of a nothingburger.'
Vice President JD Vance unwittingly sparked a new wave of calls to release the so-called 'Epstein Files' when he attempted to mock Democrats 'who are now all of a sudden so interested' in the case during a Sunday interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo.
'For four years, Joe Biden and the Democrats did absolutely nothing about this story. We know that Jeffrey Epstein had a lot of connections with left-wing politicians and left-wing billionaires,' Vance declared. 'And now President Trump has demanded full transparency from this. And yet somehow the Democrats are attacking him and not the Biden administration, which did nothing for four years.'
Vance's suggestion that Democrats are complicit in Epstein's crimes prompted a number of pundits to say this is precisely why more documents should be made public. On CNN Monday morning, Enten was asked to weigh in on what he's 'seeing in the numbers' about the Epstein saga.
'I would say that this is, from at least a political point of view, quickly turning into a dud of a story,' Enten said on CNN News Central, causing anchor Kate Bolduan to remark how 'wild' it was that interest had fallen off.
'Take a look here. Google searches for Epstein down 89 percent versus just three weeks ago. Falling through the floor,' an animated Ented exclaimed. 'It is no longer the top term searched alongside Donald Trump's name – that's been trading off between tariffs and Vladimir Putin, with obviously the meeting coming up later this week.'
He added: 'But at this particular point, the American people's interest in this story – it's quickly becoming something of a nothingburger!'
Bolduan then asked Enten about the president's polling and if it had taken a hit following uproar over the Justice Department's conclusion last month that Epstein died by suicide and had 'no client list' that incriminated other prominent figures, which resulted in public criticism from high-profile MAGA supporters.
'Trump's approval rating in July of 2025, it was 45 percent. It's still well within that margin of error here at 44 percent,' Enten stated, referencing his own aggregate of pollsters. 'And you compare that to where he was in his first term at this point. He was at 37 percent. So he's seven points higher. Very much in a different political universe now, significantly higher in terms of his overall approval rating than he was at this point in his first term.'
Noting that the president's approval among Republican voters remains around 90 percent, Enten said that despite the initial MAGA furor over the Epstein case, the president 'hasn't lost any of that base.' Therefore, in the CNN data expert's opinion, Trump's poll numbers appear to be riding high, at least comparatively speaking.
'And when it comes to that center of the electorate, he's basically holding on there. And his overall approval rating of 44 percent is pretty gosh darn good for him, considering where he was at this point in term number one,' Enten asserted. (CNN's 'poll of polls,' meanwhile, has Trump at 42 percent.)
Turning to the most recent CNN survey, Enten then observed that when asked to name the nation's top issue, only a single respondent said it was the Epstein case, suggesting that it was further proof that the story itself had petered out.
'So yes, there used to be a lot of interest in this story,' he said. 'But the bottom line is that even amongst those who had a high interest in this story, it wasn't something that they thought was all that important. And as I said at the beginning, the interest in this story has fallen off the table.'
Bolduan, meanwhile, called it 'incongruous' that the public no longer seemed to care about the Epstein files after the amount of attention the issue had received from both Capitol Hill and the president's supporters, leading Enten to heap praise on Trump.
'I would just say this. Donald Trump has some of the best political instincts of any politician I've seen,' he concluded. 'And on this particular issue, you see it full well and clear because he has been saying, 'You know what? This is not an issue.' And it turns out that a lot of the American public actually seem to agree with him.'
After the meltdown among conservatives over the DOJ's Epstein memo, which came on the heels of Attorney General Pam Bondi insinuating that she was in possession of the so-called 'client list' and promising to release more documents in the case, Trump ordered his supporters to ignore the issue and claimed it was a 'hoax.'
While pro-Trump networks like Fox News quickly followed suit and downplayed the Epstein story, the issue still remained front and center despite the administration's attempts to distract the public with wild allegations about the Obama administration committing treason with the 2016 Russia election interference investigation.
In the weeks following the DOJ memo, the Wall Street Journal published a bombshell story about Trump sending Epstein, his onetime friend, a 'bawdy' birthday sketch in 2003 which reportedly read: 'Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.' The president denied creating the card, and filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the WSJ and its owner Rupert Murdoch.
The WSJ's report gave MAGA the opportunity to reunite in its shared hatred of the mainstream media, and right-wing fury over the lack of transparency in the Epstein case began to subside, despite subsequent reporting that Trump was informed by Bondi in May that his name appeared in the Epstein files, along with many other high-profile people.
Last month Trump denied Bondi had told him that he appears in the Epstein files. The president has never been formally accused or charged with a crime in connection with Epstein.
Meanwhile, the conservative media ecosphere has been on a two-week-long outrage cycle over Hollywood star Sydney Sweeney's 'good jeans' American Eagle ad, which has seen Fox News devote hours more coverage to the supposed liberal anger over the commercial than to the Epstein drama.
As for Enten, he has seen his stock rise with the commander-in-chief in recent weeks, perhaps because he said earlier this month that he couldn't 'think of a more influential president during this century' than Trump.
While butchering the CNN data guru's name during an interview with CNBC, Trump pushed back on comments about his slumping poll numbers by urging the hosts to check out Enten's analysis. 'If you check out CNN tomorrow, watch Harry Emden and you'll see about the numbers,' Trump exclaimed, falsely claiming recent surveys placed him at 71 percent approval.
To his credit, Enten reacted to the unexpected presidential name-check by debunking Trump's claims about his polling and explaining that the president's approval numbers are at near-historic lows for a second-term president.