This 'perfect wedge issue' can drive Trump and MAGA apart

All right, I confess. When people began talking about how the Epstein scandal was going to break MAGA from the inside out, I was skeptical.

After all, we are talking about supporters who have been willing to believe pretty much anything that Donald Trump tells them to believe, including that Haitians “are eating the dogs” and “eating the cats.” These self-same supporters have never blamed him, even when policies enacted by his regime have led to their personal ruination.

So when Trump told them to shut up about the attorney general closing the case on the disgraced financier and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, there’s nothing in our experience to suggest they wouldn’t. They have been so faithful, in fact, it would be more reasonable to question the sanity of liberals pining for “civil war.”

And yet, despite all that, we are now into the second week of this scandal, more than six months into a presidency whose autocratic rule has otherwise rendered extinct the very concept of scandals. And thanks to Trump’s obsessiveness, there seems to be no end in sight.

“Let those weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats’ work,” he wrote of Republicans and MAGA media figures who have publicly broken from him. “Don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore.”

Beyond Trump himself, why is the Epstein scandal at the fore?

First, it isn’t because the MAGA faithful have suddenly realized that the president was bosom buddies with Epstein or that he was almost certainly a client. Some liberals and moderate pundits have suggested as much, but that’s a misreading of the MAGA mindset, especially the central role played in it by conspiracy theory, in particular QAnon.

Remember QAnon? That’s the “completely unfounded” belief that Trump “is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping pedophiles in government, business and the media,” according to a helpful explainer published by the BBC after the J6 insurrection.

The BBC went on: “QAnon believers have speculated that this fight will lead to a day of reckoning where prominent people such as former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will be arrested and executed.”

QAnon is a 21st-century update on the old “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which was an antisemitic smear alleging a Jewish conspiracy for global domination. Jeffrey Epstein was Jewish. He became a symbol of the “elite Satan-worshipping pedophiles” who secretly run the world. About a fifth of the MAGA base is diamond-hard QAnon. After Trump won the election, they expected their savior to fulfill the prophecy.

So you can see that the consequences of closing the case of Epstein are far greater than a broken promise to a loyal base. All presidents break promises. Most of them are forgiven in time. How do you forgive a hero whom you believe was chosen by heavenly decree to be the world’s savior? You don’t. In failing to defeat evil, he has become it.

This almost theological facet of the story is why the award-winning documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist Lindsay Beyerstein believes there has been a “qualitative conceptual shift” that virtually everyone, including yours truly, has so far missed.

“It has become conceivable to some of his most loyal supporters that he's not just wrong but evil,” she says. “That can't be unthought, even if it can be repressed.”

JS: House Speaker Mike Johnson publicly broke with Trump on the Epstein issue. I never thought I'd see that happen. What's going on?

LB: Donald Trump promised to “drain the swamp” and expose “the deep state.” Epstein isn't a true-crime story for the base or even a metaphor for how billionaires screw us all. He is proof that QAnon is true.

Now that Trump is back in power, he's under immense pressure to expose the pedo-cabal. Now he won’t deliver and the base is furious. Some are even starting to wonder if Trump's in on the conspiracy.

When Trump says there's nothing to see with the Epstein files, no rich co-conspirators, no nothing, he's effectively saying that QAnon is fake.

The base can't take that, so we're seeing a bunch of House Republicans like Mike Johnson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tim Burchett, who are at least pretending to take the side of the base against Trump.

Johnson broke, but all the House Republicans voted Tuesday against a resolution on a vote to release the "Epstein files." There may be cracks in the MAGA base, but they aren’t that big. How do you see it?

I think this is an irreconcilable conflict that's only going to become more agonizing for the GOP. I don't expect the Republican electeds to break with Trump over anything, but every time they vacillate, that's another news cycle about how Republicans are hypocrites covering for pedophiles, which is exactly what Trump wants to avoid. It's another reminder that the GOP is playing the conspiracist base for suckers.

Republicans (elected and media) are breaking trust with their own audiences. Charlie Kirk literally came out and said that he was going to stop talking about Epstein against his better judgement, because his friends in the White House told him to. This is less than 72 hours after everyone at his 7,000-person conference raised their hand to say they were upset at Trump over his handling of the Epstein issue.

Conspiracists' ears perk up when they hear that someone has to shut up because powerful people ordered them to.

This is a perfect wedge issue.

They can't appease Trump without further inflaming the base.

At the very least, it does seem like self-interest among MAGA media personalities will keep this going. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino signed off on the Epstein memo that closed the case, but appears to have chickened out on realizing how bad it was playing with his audience. He now has incentive to break with Trump, perhaps even lump him in with the evil space-laser Jews who run the universe.

Bongino came back to work on Monday, but I suspect his days at the bureau are numbered. He was saying how much he hated the job even before he ended up at loggerheads with the AG and lost this huge public fight. My hope is that he will quit and become the delusional avenging angel of the Epstein files, leading the charge against Bondi from the outside. That would be terrific. He's a credible messenger to keep this story in the news and deepen the split within MAGA.

Before I get to the electoral effects, let me express skepticism. The Trump base has believed him before they believed their own lying eyes. They will suffer due to his decisions. It seems to me that they can be made to believe anything. Why is this so different?

That's what I would have predicted, but the evidence of revolt is undeniable. You've got Sarah Longwell's focus group that found that, among 2024 Trump voters who are upset about his handling of the Epstein case, they overwhelmingly suspect that Trump is in on the conspiracy. That's an unthinkable reaction given how unwilling MAGA has been to entertain that Donald Trump is ever wrong, let alone evil.

You've got Trump getting ratioed on his very own platform for the first time when he trotted out the claim that the Epstein files were forged by [former CIA Director John] Brennan and Hillary Clinton. You've got thousands of attendees at Turning Point and every speaker on the program demanding transparency, which Trump desperately doesn't want to provide. And there's nobody he can fire to make this go away. If he gets rid of Bondi, the next AG will face the same problem.

This is the first time I've seen large numbers of MAGA's willing to suspect the worst of Trump personally. It's a sea change.

Even if he manages to tamp down this scandal in the short-term, there has been a qualitative conceptual shift. It has become conceivable to some of his most loyal supporters that he's not just wrong but evil.

That can't be unthought, even if it can be repressed.

Steve Bannon said the Republicans could lose 40 House seats on this issue. He said that as a warning if this does not go away. If so, that would mean even some GOP senators could be in serious trouble. That would make 2026 like 2010 in reverse. Is this really possible?

Bannon's argument is compelling. About 20 percent of the Republican coalition is hardcore QAnon. If half those people get too disillusioned to vote, it's going to be an electoral bloodbath for the GOP.

Trump's superpower is mobilizing people who are disengaged from electoral politics. He got them to vote by promising to expose the deep state and the pedo-cabal. If they don't feel like he's delivering on those promises, they're going to disengage again, with dire consequences.

They don't have to become Democrats. They can just stay home. It's hard to get this kind of voter out at the midterms at the best of times and this kind of disappointment will only further depress turnout.

Epstein is also serving as a permission structure to be mad at Donald Trump in a MAGA-coded way. Lashing out against the tariffs or the massive cuts to Medicaid makes you a RINO or “woke” in their eyes. But lashing out at Donald Trump in the name of Jeffrey Epstein's child victims and the war on the deep state makes you a better, purer MAGA.