One of President Donald Trump's biographers warned on Saturday that the president's MAGA base could become violent if Trump is implicated in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Michael Wolff, who has authored four books on Trump, made the comments on The Daily Beast's eponymous podcast. The comments come at a time when the Trump administration is seeking a way to control the Epstein narrative, which has consumed the presidency for more than two weeks.
"Michael, if it turns out that Ghislaine Maxwell does have compromising material on the president and Todd Blance advises Donald Trump to give her a pardon or commute her sentence in some way, what is the MAGA base reaction?" host Joanna Coles, The Daily Beast's chief content officer, asked Wolff.
"Violent," the author said solemnly. "That's going to be a major issue. He has a choice whether to protect himself or deal with the base."
"Somehow he has to bring those two together," Wolff continued. "He has to get the base to realize that without him, there is no MAGA."
The MAGA base's response to the Epstein scandal has been fractured from the start. About half of the base wants Trump to release the files, as he promised to do on the campaign trail. The other half have taken to defending the president against claims of wrongdoing.
"This is a really complicated trick. Can he pull that off? I'm not sure," Wolff said.
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