The Jeffrey Epstein matter has prompted more backlash than just about any other scandal in Donald Trump's second presidency, and the White House isn't sure how to turn the page.
The president directed his followers to stop discussing the notorious sex trafficker in a Truth Social post over the weekend, but MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire said on the show "Morning Joe" that his demands were met with anger, confusion and derision — and the MAGA base has turned on some key Trump officials.
"For years, less Trump himself, but certainly people around Trump, have been talking about this [Epstein client] list and that it was going to implicate powerful people, powerful institutions, largely on the left – the Clintons, the Obamas, others, and they would all go down for it, and now we have seen since president Trump took office, again, a backing away from that," Lemire said.
"There was a statement a month back or so from the FBI, you mentioned it, and now from the Department of Justice and Pam Bondi, the attorney general this past week, saying, well, there's there's no list, even though we have heard from her earlier this term there was a list."
"We've heard from Kash Patel, we've heard from Dan Bongino there was a list – they had access to it, they'd release it," Lemire added. "There was that much ballyhooed stunt earlier this year where they gave a bunch of MAGA influencers some Epstein documents, and that turned out to be sort of a bust, all just publicly available material, and that that kicked up some backlash on the right, and now a real fury here in the last few days, and this is what's interesting about this. Do we know what the actual Epstein list is, or even if there is a list?
"No, we do not, but what we do know is this is a rare moment, a very rare moment where there is a real fracture in the president's base and some of his most ardent supporters, ... but there are other social media influencers, like Benny Johnson and the like, who took to Twitter over the weekend, really trashing President Trump, which we never see before, accusing him of hiding things, accusing him of not being honest about this list and Trump's efforts to try to quell this storm."
Trump's lengthy post Saturday on Truth Social in which he tried to control the backlash seems to have backfired, Lemire said.
"His Truth Social post, nearly a thousand words, over the weekend did exactly the opposite," he said. "I mean, Truth Social, let's remember this is a Donald Trump-created and owned platform. This is the first time I've ever seen him be ratioed, meaning he got more comments, in this case all overwhelmingly negative comments, than he got likes and stamps of approval for that post. There's real, real anger here.
" ... He was talking out of both sides of his mouth, and I'm told, back to you guys here, there's some real panic in the White House right now," Lemire added. "A lot of people have gone quiet, a lot of people have gone dark, but they recognize those that are talking, recognize right now this is a problem. It's the first time they've had a problem like this, and they don't think it's going to go away anytime soon."
Watch the video below or at this link.