President Donald Trump is struggling to grasp why the latest sex scandal has his MAGA base so furious — when they were so quick to shrug off ones he'd been involved with in the past, a columnist wrote Tuesday.
Donald Trump's panicked Saturday meltdown over the Jeffrey Epstein files revealed a president desperately trying to wave off his MAGA base from a growing clamor that threatens to expose embarrassing or incriminating evidence about his relationship with the dead sex trafficker, Amanda Marcotte wrote for Salon.
But his base's refusal to let it pass has him baffled, she wrote.
"Let's keep it that way, and not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about," Trump pleaded with supporters, insisting the furor is being driven by "selfish people" trying to hurt him. He claimed claims that there are client files incriminating those associated with disgraced pedophile Epstein — files that his own administration has said exist — must be fabricated "by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration."
But MAGA isn't buying it. At the Turning Point USA conference, right-wing pundit Megyn Kelly commanded the crowd to "make some noise if you care about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal," leading to thunderous cheers. Co-host Charlie Kirk crowed that "every hand of 7,000 people" went up when asked if they cared. Attendees accused Trump of "covering for pedophiles."
"MAGA voters have made it abundantly clear that they do not care about sexual abuse," Marcotte wrote. "They didn’t care when a tape of Trump bragging about sexual assault was released in 2016. They didn’t care when he was found liable for sexual assault by a civil jury in 2023. They don’t mind that Trump goes out of his way to associate with men accused of sex crimes, from Epstein to Vince McMahon to Pete Hegseth to Matt Gaetz and numerous others.
"For Trump, this has to be bewildering. His supporters do not treat sexual violence like it’s a bad thing. So why do they care about Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, or the identities of his alleged co-conspirators?"
The answer lies in MAGA's desperate need for moral absolution, she wrote.
Unlike Trump's adult victims, Epstein abused underage girls. In that narrow space between misogynist violence and pedophilia, MAGA masses have found their salvation.
"Despite their acceptance of misogynist violence, they still get to be the 'good guys' because they draw the line at raping minors<' the columnist wrote.
"By being very loudly against pedophilia, they can recast themselves as the heroes, ignoring all the other villainous behavior, including their love of a man who boasted about how he grabs unsuspecting women by their genitals."
Marcotte went on, "This is, no doubt, hard for Trump to grasp. He has never shown any sign of having a conscience, and he likely can’t imagine how his supporters might be suppressing feelings of guilt for their complicity in backing a sexual predator.
"The Epstein conspiracy theory serves as a coping mechanism for cognitive dissonance. Yes, Trump assaulted E. Jean Carroll—but if Bill Clinton is on a mythical "Epstein client list," Democrats are worse. Yes, Trump's cabinet undermines children's safety—but fantasizing about Bill Gates as a child molester lets them pretend they're protecting kids."