President Donald Trump walked into a "massive unforced error" by failing to deliver the salacious details his MAGA supporters believed he had promised about the Jeffrey Epstein case.
The Department of Justice and FBI issued memos this week stating they had found no evidence that the notorious sex trafficker and longtime Trump friend had kept a "client list," which many of the president's followers believed would expose his opponents, but CNN's Harry Enten said the move had backfired badly by angering his base and firing up interest in the late financier's crimes.
"What a massive unforced error by the Trump administration," Enten told "CNN News Central." "Donald Trump would love this story to go away, but, in fact, interest is climbing higher and higher, to quote [soul singer] Jackie Wilson. Look at this: Google searches for Epstein [are] up 1,200 percent this week versus last and, get this, it is currently the top topic search with Trump on Google, alongside his presidency. So Donald Trump normally, you know, leans in, leans in to stories in which there's controversy, like tariffs, for example. This is a story in which he's trying to get away from, basically saying, 'Why is anyone still interested in this story?'"
"But the bottom line is, people are very interested in this story, to historic degrees, at least this week," Enten added.
Epstein's name has been searched on Google at 1.4 times the rate of Trump's tariffs and 2.5 times more than Elon Musk's "Grok" artificial intelligence chatbot posting antisemitic content and calling itself "Mecha Hitler," according to Enten.
"The bottom line is, this is a story in which there's a lot of interest, and it's one of the few stories in which both Steve Bannon and Elon Musk are going after Trump," Enten said. "At least the Trump administration has managed to bring together two parts of the administration that are two parts of the fan base that have normally been against each other."
"This is all a self-inflicted error by Trump and the Trump administration," he added.