Latest news with #Pizzagate
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
MAGA Influencers Don't Understand What Journalism Is
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Defending mainstream journalism these days is about as appealing as doing PR for syphilis. Nonetheless, here I am. Back in February, Attorney General Pam Bondi invited a group of MAGA influencers to the White House to receive what was billed as 'Phase 1' of the government's files on Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy sex offender who died in jail in 2019. The 15 handpicked newshounds included Jack Posobiec, promoter of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory; Chaya Raichik, whose Libs of TikTok social-media account itemizes every single American schoolteacher with blue hair and wacky pronouns; and the comedian Chad Prather, performer of the parody song 'Beat That Ass,' about the secret to good parenting. Also present was DC_Draino, whose name is a promise to unclog the sewers of the nation's capital. The chosen ones duly emerged bearing ring binders and smug expressions—only to discover that most of the information that the government had fed them had already been made public. Several of the influencers have since complained that the Trump administration had given them recycled information. They couldn't seem to understand why White House officials treated them like idiots. I can help with this one. That's because they think you are idiots. [Read: Trump's Epstein answers are getting worse] The harsh but simple truth is that powerful people, including President Donald Trump, do not freely hand out information that will make them look bad. If a politician, PR flak, or government official is telling you something, assume that they're lying to you or spinning or—at best—coincidentally telling you the truth because it will damage their enemies. 'We were told that more was coming,' Posobiec complained, but professional commentators should be embarrassed about waiting for the authorities to bless them with scoops. That's not how things work. You have to go and find things out. Reporters do not content themselves with 'just asking questions'—the internet conspiracist's favored formulation. They gather evidence, check facts, and then decide what they are confident is true. They don't just blast out everything that lands on their desk, in a 'kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out' kind of way. That's because some conspiracy theories turn out to involve actual conspiracies, and the skill is separating the imagined schemes from the real ones. Cover-ups do happen. In Britain, where I live, the public has recently learned for certain that a military source accidentally leaked an email list of hundreds of Afghans who cooperated with Western forces, possibly exposing them to blackmail or reprisals. The leak prompted our government to start spending billions to secretly relocate some of the affected Afghans and their families. All the while, British media outlets—which are subject to far greater legal restrictions on publication than their American counterparts—were barred from reporting not only the contents of the leaked list, but its very existence. Several news organizations expended significant time and money getting that judgment overturned in court. Earlier this month, the government released a memo declaring that the Department of Justice and the FBI had determined that 'no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted' in the Epstein case. Since then, Trump-friendly influencers have struggled to supply their audience's demands for more Epstein content while preserving their continued access to the White House, which wants them to stop talking about the story altogether. Because these commentators define themselves through skepticism of 'approved narratives' and decry their enemies as 'regime mouthpieces,' their newfound trust in the establishment has been heartwarming to see. Some of the same people who used to cast doubts about the government's handling of the Epstein case are now running that government. 'If you're a journalist and you're not asking questions about this case you should be ashamed of yourself,' J. D. Vance tweeted in December 2021. 'What purpose do you even serve?' I would be intrigued to hear a response to that challenge from Dinesh D'Souza, who said on July 15 that 'even though there are unanswered questions about Epstein, it is in fact time to move on.' Or from Charlie Kirk, who said a day earlier: 'I'm done talking about Epstein for the time being. I'm gonna trust my friends in the administration. I'm gonna trust my friends in the government.' Or from Scott Adams, the Dilbert creator, who wrote: 'Must be some juicy and dangerous stuff in those files. But I don't feel the need to be a backseat driver on this topic. Four leaders I trust said it's time to let it go.' (For what it's worth, some influencers, such as Tucker Carlson, have refused to accept the Trump administration's official line that there's nothing to see here. I'm not alone in thinking this reflects a desire to outflank anyone tainted by, you know, actual government experience when competing for the affections of the MAGA base in 2028.) For all right-wing influencers' claims of an establishment cover-up, most of the publicly known facts about the Epstein case come from major news outlets. In the late 2000s, when few people were paying attention, The New York Times faithfully chronicled Epstein's suspiciously lenient plea deal—in which multiple accusations of sexual assault on teenage girls were reduced to lesser prostitution charges—under classically dull headlines such as 'Questions of Preferential Treatment Are Raised in Florida Sex Case' and 'Amid Lurid Accusations, Fund Manager Is Unruffled.' After Epstein's second arrest, the paper reported on how successfully he had been able to rehabilitate himself from his first brush with the law, prompting awkward questions for Bill Gates, Prince Andrew, and other famous faces. Epstein's second arrest might not have happened at all without the work of Julie Brown of the Miami Herald. She doggedly reported on how Trump's first-term labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, had overseen the plea deal when he was a U.S. attorney in Florida. She found 80 alleged victims—she now thinks there might have been 200—and persuaded four to speak on the record. Around the time that Epstein was wrapping up a light prison sentence in 2009, newsroom cuts at the Herald had forced Brown to take a 15 percent pay reduction. Sometimes she paid her own reporting expenses. [Listen: The razor-thin line between conspiracy theory and actual conspiracy] Over the past two decades, the decline of classified advertising, along with the rise of social media, has left America with far fewer Julie Browns and far more DC_Drainos. This does not feel like progress. The shoe-leather reporters of traditional newspapers and broadcasters have largely given way to a class of influencers who are about as useful as a marzipan hammer in the boring job of establishing facts. In May, Trump's press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, scheduled a series of special influencers-only briefings, and I watched them all—surely reducing my future time in purgatory. None of the questions generated a single interesting news story. In recent days, while MAGA influencers have muttered online about the release of camera footage from outside Epstein's cell on the night of his death, Wired magazine found experts to review the video's metadata, establishing that it had been edited, and a section had been removed. Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal—whose conservative opinion pages make its news reporting harder for the right to dismiss—published details of a 50th-birthday message to Epstein allegedly signed by Trump in 2003. The future president reportedly included a hand-drawn picture of a naked woman and told the financier, 'May every day be another wonderful secret.' (Trump has described this as a 'fake story,' adding: 'I never wrote a picture in my life.' In fact, Trump has donated a number of his drawings to charity auctions.) Legacy news outlets sometimes report things that turn out not to be true: Saddam Hussein's imaginary WMDs, the University of Virginia rape story. But that's because they do reporting. It's easier not to fail when you don't even try. We now have a ridiculous situation where influencers who bang on about the mainstream media are reduced to relying on these outlets for things to talk about. Worse, because no issue can ever be settled as a factual matter, the alternative media is a perpetual-motion machine of speculation. MAGA influencers want the truth, but ignore the means of discovering it. At the heart of the Epstein story is a real conspiracy, as squalid and mundane as real life usually is. The staff members who enabled Epstein; the powerful friends who ignored his crimes; and the prosecutors who downgraded the charges back in the late '00s. If the Epstein scandal teaches us anything, it is that America needs a dedicated and decently funded group of people whose job is not just to ask questions, but to find answers. Let's call them journalists. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Hindustan Times
3 days ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
The Epstein files and Donald Trump
YOU ARE a rational person. When someone says the moon landings were faked, or that 9/11 was an inside job, you do not conclude that they must be in the know. Why, then, should you pay any attention to Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theories, which have been swirling around since the last year of George W. Bush's presidency, when Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to procuring a child for prostitution. When everyone in America's infotainment ecosystem is competing for attention, Epstein content generates more Epstein content until something else comes along to displace it. Ignoring this stuff seems wise. Yet there are reasons why a rational sceptic should spend a few minutes thinking conspiratorially. Dumb as they are, some conspiracy theories are consequential. There have been at least 1,200 cases of measles in America this year because lots of people believe that the side-effects of the measles vaccine have been covered up. One of those people is the president of the United States (who has taken every position on vaccines). Another is the Secretary of Health who, when not injecting or slathering himself with testosterone, uses his position to replace health advice grounded in scientific research with health advice based on something he heard from a guy. Or take the QAnon conspiracy, according to which the 2020 election was a war waged by Donald Trump to save America from an elite clique of cannibalistic paedophiles. Among those who actually believed this stuff were some of the people who broke into the Capitol on January 6th 2021. The Epstein case is not a pure conspiracy theory in the way QAnon, Pizzagate and other fantasies melding power and child abuse are. There was a real man called Jeffrey Epstein who became rich by managing money for private clients. He was acquainted with many powerful people, including the current president of the United States (who, the Wall Street Journal scooped, sent him a 50th-birthday card that read: 'A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.') Epstein was initially treated leniently by prosecutors. He hanged himself in prison in 2019. Rather than kill off the conspiracy theory, Epstein's death prolonged it. Was he murdered to prevent the truth getting out? Maybe the answer was in the missing minutes of CCTV tape from his cell? Probably not. Anyone who thinks the government is capable of this kind of cover-up has not seen bureaucracy up close. And none of this is relevant to why the Epstein conspiracy theory has resurfaced right now. It was given new life because some of the most influential MAGA influencers, including Mr Trump himself and J.D. Vance, built up an expectation that once their people were in place they would release secret files that would blow the whole thing open. Pam Bondi, the attorney-general, invited some prominent conspiracists into the White House, promising a big reveal. Now people like Ms Bondi and Kash Patel at the FBI have failed to produce the goods, the only plausible explanation for the conspiratorially minded is: what if Mr Trump was in on it, too? The result is that more than 80% of Democrats think the government is covering up evidence about Epstein, which is perhaps to be expected given that lots of them also believed the president was a Russian mole. More surprising is that, according to polling by YouGov for The Economist, half of Republicans agree. Nobody knows the power of 'some people are saying' better than Mr Trump himself. He almost singlehandedly started two of the most widely believed American conspiracy theories this century: that Barack Obama was born abroad and that the 2020 election was stolen. He has remixed some old fairy tales too—remember how Ted Cruz's dad was suddenly involved in JFK's assassination when the senator was competing with Mr Trump in the 2016 primary? Even the Epstein story has its own Trump chapter. 'You have to ask: Did Bill Clinton go to the island? That's the question. If you find that out, you're going to know a lot,' Mr Trump said in 2019 after Epstein killed himself. He suggested that the suicide was murder and promised to release the files. For America's leading conspiracy theorist to become the target of a conspiracy theory himself is delicious, but is it also consequential? Not in the obvious way. Perhaps this time is different, but the first law of Trumpodynamics is that his approval rating is impervious to news. His control over elected Republicans looks secure. Still, the Epstein story does reveal something about the limits of his power. One of Mr Trump's special talents is his ability to change what people are talking about at will, as if he were surfing cable TV. An incomplete list of subjects given his treatment since his inauguration in January would include: the possibility of grabbing Greenland or the Panama Canal; Liberation Day tariffs; sacking Jerome Powell; humiliating Volodymyr Zelensky; humiliating Cyril Ramaphosa; letting Elon Musk loose on the bureaucracy; falling out with Elon Musk; rehabilitating Volodymyr Zelensky; rendering people to prison in El Salvador; sending troops to LA and bombing Iran. Over the past few days Google searches for Epstein have rivalled those for inflation, immigration or Iran (see chart). This is partly thanks to Elon Musk, who on the way out of the White House posted that the reason the Epstein files had not been released was that Mr Trump was in them. Since the spike in unwelcome attention, Mr Trump has tried to get people talking about anything else. Normally he embraces support wherever it comes from. The white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville in 2017 were 'very fine people'. Nick Fuentes, who denies the Holocaust happened, was invited to dinner at Mar-a-Lago. This is the first time Mr Trump has disowned support, calling Republican voters who keep mentioning Epstein 'weaklings'. When that didn't work, he promised more disclosures, which sounds like a very short-term fix. 'Now you see why I didn't vote in 2024,' Mr Fuentes posted a couple of days ago. Having acquired a taste for criticising the president and finding they can get away with it, some of his supporters may find it is habit-forming. Why does any of this matter? Mr Trump is a rich, powerful man leading a movement which contains people who believe that rich, powerful men cover up crimes for each other. The Trump movement includes free-traders and protectionists, pro-Ukraine people and pro-Russia people, those who want mass deportations and those who would spare hotel and farm workers. Mr Trump has kept them mostly happy by taking all these positions simultaneously. No other politician in America can do that. The Epstein story hints at what would happen were this ability to desert him. So it is also a preview of what could happen when someone without Mr Trump's talents tries to lead his movement.
Atlantic
3 days ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
‘Just Asking Questions' Got No Answers About Epstein
Defending mainstream journalism these days is about as appealing as doing PR for syphilis. Nonetheless, here I am. Back in February, Attorney General Pam Bondi invited a group of MAGA influencers to the White House to receive what was billed as 'Phase 1' of the government's files on Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy sex offender who died in jail in 2019. The 15 handpicked newshounds included Jack Posobiec, promoter of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory; Chaya Raichik, whose Libs of TikTok social-media account itemizes every single American schoolteacher with blue hair and wacky pronouns; and the comedian Chad Prather, performer of the parody song ' Beat That Ass,' about the secret to good parenting. Also present was DC_Draino, whose name is a promise to unclog the sewers of the nation's capital. The chosen ones duly emerged bearing ring binders and smug expressions—only to discover that most of the information that the government had fed them had already been made public. Several of the influencers have since complained that the Trump administration had given them recycled information. They couldn't seem to understand why White House officials treated them like idiots. I can help with this one. That's because they think you are idiots. The harsh but simple truth is that powerful people, including President Donald Trump, do not freely hand out information that will make them look bad. If a politician, PR flak, or government official is telling you something, assume that they're lying to you or spinning or—at best—coincidentally telling you the truth because it will damage their enemies. 'We were told that more was coming,' Posobiec complained, but professional commentators should be embarrassed about waiting for the authorities to bless them with scoops. That's not how things work. You have to go and find things out. Reporters do not content themselves with 'just asking questions'—the internet conspiracist's favored formulation. They gather evidence, check facts, and then decide what they are confident is true. They don't just blast out everything that lands on their desk, in a 'kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out' kind of way. That's because some conspiracy theories turn out to involve actual conspiracies, and the skill is separating the imagined schemes from the real ones. Cover-ups do happen. In Britain, where I live, the public has recently learned for certain that a military source accidentally leaked an email list of hundreds of Afghans who cooperated with Western forces, possibly exposing them to blackmail or reprisals. The leak prompted our government to start spending billions secretly relocating some of the affected Afghans and their families. All the while, British media outlets—which are subject to far greater legal restrictions on publication than their American counterparts—were barred from reporting not only the contents of the leaked list, but its very existence. Several news organizations expended significant time and money getting that judgment overturned in court. Earlier this month, the government released a memo declaring that the Department of Justice and the FBI had determined that 'no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted' in the Epstein case. Since then, Trump-friendly influencers have struggled to supply their audience's demands for more Epstein content while preserving their continued access to the White House, which wants them to stop talking about the story altogether. Because these commentators define themselves through skepticism of 'approved narratives' and decry their enemies as 'regime mouthpieces,' their newfound trust in the establishment has been heartwarming to see. Some of the same people who used to cast doubts about the government's handling of the Epstein case are now running that government. 'If you're a journalist and you're not asking questions about this case you should be ashamed of yourself,' J. D. Vance tweeted in December 2021. 'What purpose do you even serve?' I would be intrigued to hear a response to that challenge from Dinesh D'Souza, who said on July 15 that 'even though there are unanswered questions about Epstein, it is in fact time to move on.' Or from Charlie Kirk, who said a day earlier: 'I'm done talking about Epstein for the time being. I'm gonna trust my friends in the administration. I'm gonna trust my friends in the government.' Or from Scott Adams, the Dilbert creator, who wrote: 'Must be some juicy and dangerous stuff in those files. But I don't feel the need to be a backseat driver on this topic. Four leaders I trust said it's time to let it go.' (For what it's worth, some influencers, such as Tucker Carlson, have refused to accept the Trump administration's official line that there's nothing to see here. I'm not alone in thinking this reflects a desire to outflank anyone tainted by, you know, actual government experience when competing for the affections of the MAGA base in 2028.) For all right-wing influencers' claims of an establishment cover-up, most of the publicly known facts about the Epstein case come from major news outlets. In the late 2000s, when few people were paying attention, The New York Times faithfully chronicled Epstein's suspiciously lenient plea deal—in which multiple accusations of sexual assault on teenage girls were reduced to lesser prostitution charges—under classically dull headlines such as 'Questions of Preferential Treatment Are Raised in Florida Sex Case' and 'Amid Lurid Accusations, Fund Manager Is Unruffled.' After Epstein's second arrest, the paper reported on how successfully he had been able to rehabilitate himself from his first brush with the law, prompting awkward questions for Bill Gates, Prince Andrew, and other famous faces. Epstein's second arrest might not have happened at all without the work of Julie Brown of the Miami Herald. She doggedly reported on how Trump's first-term labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, had overseen the plea deal when he was a U.S. attorney in Florida. She found 80 alleged victims—she now thinks there might have been 200—and persuaded four to speak on the record. Around the time that Epstein was wrapping up a light prison sentence in 2009, newsroom cuts at the Herald had forced Brown to take a 15 percent pay reduction. Sometimes she paid her own reporting expenses. Listen: The razor-thin line between conspiracy theory and actual conspiracy Over the past two decades, the decline of classified advertising, along with the rise of social media, has left America with far fewer Julie Browns and far more DC_Drainos. This does not feel like progress. The shoe-leather reporters of traditional newspapers and broadcasters have largely given way to a class of influencers who are about as useful as a marzipan hammer in the boring job of establishing facts. In May, Trump's press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, scheduled a series of special influencers-only briefings, and I watched them all—surely reducing my future time in purgatory. None of the questions generated a single interesting news story. In recent days, while MAGA influencers have muttered online about the release of camera footage from outside Epstein's cell on the night of his death, Wired magazine found experts to review the video's metadata, establishing that it had been edited, and a section had been removed. Today, The Wall Street Journal —whose conservative opinion pages make its news reporting harder for the right to dismiss— published details of a 50th-birthday message to Epstein allegedly signed by Trump in 2003. The future president reportedly included a hand-drawn picture of a naked woman and told the financier, 'May every day be another wonderful secret.' (Trump has described this as a 'fake story,' adding: 'I never wrote a picture in my life.' In fact, Trump has donated a number of his drawings to charity auctions.) Legacy news outlets sometimes report things that turn out not to be true: Saddam Hussein's imaginary WMDs, the University of Virginia rape story. But that's because they do reporting. It's easier not to fail when you don't even try. We now have a ridiculous situation where influencers who bang on about the mainstream media are reduced to relying on these outlets for things to talk about. Worse, because no issue can ever be settled as a factual matter, the alternative media is a perpetual-motion machine of speculation. MAGA influencers want the truth, but ignore the means of discovering it. At the heart of the Epstein story is a real conspiracy, as squalid and mundane as real life usually is. The staff members who enabled Epstein; the powerful friends who ignored his crimes; and the prosecutors who downgraded the charges back in the late '00s. If the Epstein scandal teaches us anything, it is that America needs a dedicated and decently funded group of people whose job is not just to ask questions, but to find answers. Let's call them journalists.
The Journal
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Journal
Debunked: Meme image of Hillary Clinton calling Conor McGregor ‘future president' is a spoof
AN IMAGE OF a tweet that appears to depict Hillary Clinton calling Conor McGregor a future president has duped people into thinking it is real, despite being an edited image likely meant as a joke. The image is an alteration of an actual tweet , published by Clinton in 2016, in which she posted a photo of herself alongside the words 'Happy birthday to this future president.' The original tweet gained further traction after Clinton's defeat in the 2016 US presidential election the following month; it had not aged well. However, while the tweet may have been known to many American users in 2016, it is unlikely to be so familiar now to an Irish audience. Which is why it may have been confusing when, on 15 July, the day after McGregor's birthday, he shared on his social media a screenshot that showed a variation of 'Happy birthday to this future president' tweet by Clinton. The childhood image of her was replaced with a photo of McGregor as a young boy. 'Thank you @HillaryClinton,' McGregor wrote. It is unclear if McGregor believed it was a real image, or had shared it in jest. He had also replied on Instagram to a Happy Birthday post by a fan blogger with the account name 'OurLadyMelania' with the words 'Thank you FLOTUS', referring to the First Lady of the United States. Advertisement The post plays on McGregor's previous suggestions that he would run for president. However, it had seemed unlikely he would get the nominations needed to run, even before dramatic court hearings earlier this appeal against a civil finding that he was liable of the 2018 sexual assault of Dublin woman led to the Court of Appeal making a referral to the DPP about supposed fresh evidence that McGregor initially wanted to submit but dropped at the 11th hour. In either case, the 'Clinton post' appears to have fooled some people. 'Please tell me this not real?!' one Facebook user wrote. 'He definitely tweeted thank you Hilary,' another responded. Interestingly, many of the commenters who think Clinton's message to McGregor is real seem to imply that this reflects badly on McGregor. 'The woman behind Pizzagate crawling up another useful idiot's ass,' one user put it. (Pizzagate is the name of a baseless conspiracy theory that often featured Hillary Clinton as a villainous mastermind). 'So we know that he's definitely been compromised,' another user wrote. The image of McGregor was not the only part of Clinton's post that was altered. The date was changed to 15 July 2025. No such post was published on that date by Hillary Clinton's account on X (formerly Twitter). Want to be your own fact-checker? Visit our brand-new FactCheck Knowledge Bank for guides and toolkits The Journal's FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network's Code of Principles. You can read it here . For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader's Guide here . You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here . Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... It is vital that we surface facts from noise. Articles like this one brings you clarity, transparency and balance so you can make well-informed decisions. We set up FactCheck in 2016 to proactively expose false or misleading information, but to continue to deliver on this mission we need your support. Over 5,000 readers like you support us. If you can, please consider setting up a monthly payment or making a once-off donation to keep news free to everyone. Learn More Support The Journal
Newsweek
3 days ago
- Politics
- Newsweek
The MAGA Meltdown Over Trump's Jeffrey Epstein Scandal
Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the interpretation of facts and data. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The most striking feature of the Jeffrey Epstein drama playing out across the Trump administration is MAGA followers' shock at learning that Donald Trump was a longtime associate of Epstein's. Some even begin to wonder whether the president's name might appear in any documentation that may still exist about Epstein's alleged abuse of underage girls. The MAGA movement is no stranger to sex abuse scandals—for years, it's invented ever-more salacious ones to pin on its political enemies rather than admit Trump's proven misdeeds. Edgar Maddison Welch shot up the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C., on December 4, 2016, just weeks after Trump had been elected president for the first time. As Q-Anon emerged in early 2017, "Pizzagate" became one of the central tenants of the cult. By 2020, the theory had gone beyond merely claiming that Democrats and financial elites like Bill Gates were running pedophile rings, and turned into a full-blown delusion that they were torturing children to jack up their hormones and then draining them of their blood to extract psychoactive, life-extending substances. As Right Wing Watch documents, uber-Trump cultist and Q-Anon theorist Liz Crokin explains in one of her videos: Adrenochrome is a drug that the elites love. It comes from children. The drug is extracted from the pituitary gland of tortured children. It's sold on the black market. It's the drug of the elites. It's their favorite drug. It is beyond evil. It's demonic. It is so sick. When then-OMB Director Mick Mulvaney used the word "pizza" in a televised cabinet meeting, Crokin and other Trump cultists took the remark as confirmation of the "reality" of children being being tortured and having their adrenochrome "harvested" at a pizza restaurant in a D.C. suburb. "President Trump and his staffers are constantly trolling the deep state," Crokin said of Mulvaney's reference. "That's President Trump's way of letting you know Pizzagate is real and it's not fake. They're—he's constantly using their words against them and throwing it in their face and God bless him, it's amazing." Much of this served to distract from a real sex scandal Republicans would rather not discuss: Trump's years-long and reportedly close association with Jeffrey Epstein, and the young women—one who claimed, but later retracted, that she was 13 at the time—who have accused Trump of sexual assault. WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 15: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he departs the White House on July 15, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump is traveling to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to speak at... WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 15: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he departs the White House on July 15, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump is traveling to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to speak at an artificial intelligence and energy summit. MoreNow, the old proverb about the dangers of "riding the tiger" is haunting Trump. Whataboutisms like, "But what about the Clintons?" and "What about Biden's laptop?" aren't working this time. People of all political stripes aren't willing to overlook the alleged abuse of youngsters. Many Trump supporters have spent years emotionally and socially invested in a mythos that depicts the president as a brilliant, competent, and upstanding man with the best interests of the working class at heart. They've merged their own sense of self with the persona of Trump they've seen, heard, and internalized from within the carefully controlled right-wing information bubble. Admitting betrayal or deception requires admitting they were wrong, which comes with deep psychological costs—thus the anguish and conflict we're seeing among the Trump base. As MAGA icon Candace Owens offered this week in a wounded voice, "What is happening now is it seems like you think your base is stupid. That's how I feel. I feel like Trump thinks his base is stupid." The big question now is whether the swamp of right-wing media can process the news in a way that will turn it into simply another passing-and-soon-forgotten Trump scandal, like his abuse of E. Jean Carroll, the Access Hollywood tape, or the 34 felony convictions arising from his payoffs to Stormy Daniels for their extramarital tryst. Trump's ability to survive the Epstein saga will also depend on whether his administration can release anything that his base may consider credible. Original videotapes or photos that are not clearly doctored, first-person testimony by Ghislaine Maxwell should she ever be allowed to speak with the press or Congress (Republicans just blocked the latter), or more former teenage victims going on the record could spell doom for his relationship with his base. On the other hand, Trump's efforts to squelch the conversation, strong-arm the press, and threaten reporters who ask Epstein questions may work. More concerning, if cornered Trump may decide to do something truly risky—something that could crash the economy or lead the nation to war—to change the subject. If there's anything we know about Donald J. Trump, it's that he's a survivor. His tenacity and thirst for revenge are legendary, and if he makes it through this there will be hell to pay, at least in some quarters. Hopefully it won't be our entire nation—or world peace—that has to suffer the consequences. Thom Hartmann is a four‐time winner of the Project Censored Award, a New York Times bestselling author of over thirty books, and America's #1 progressive talk radio show host for more than a decade. His latest book is The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
