President Donald Trump is furious that lawmakers and influencers aren't showing the loyalty that he believes he's owed as he struggles to contain the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, according to MSNBC's "Morning Joe" panelists.
The president has been unable to change the subject away from his relationship with the late sex offender, despite ordering his followers to stop asking questions about the matter and accusing his political rivals of crimes. The "Morning Joe" commentators were astonished by his attempted denials.
"Kind of just mad libs there – autopen, hoax, scum," said co-host Willie Geist, quoting the president's claims. "The president also reiterated he has the ability to pardon convicted Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell if he wants to. Meanwhile, the Trump administration seems to believe the president's base will move on from the Epstein files. It has not, but podcaster Joe Rogan disagrees, calling out the administration for gaslighting its supporters."
Rogan and other Trump-adjacent influencers have kept the issue at the forefront, even as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) sent lawmakers home for an early recess to escape the topic. But host Joe Scarborough said they'll likely face questions on the topic from constituents.
"The bigger problem for the president, it seems to me, is that his base for years has singularly obsessed, it seems, on this conspiracy theory and the belief that Democrats were pedophiles, that they had this massive, widespread, you know, Hollywood stars had this massive, widespread pedophile ring that Jeffrey Epstein was at the center of, and so, you know, Tom Winters and other NBC News reporters can say there's no list there, there's no there there, [but] they're just not going to listen to that."
"What's going to be most interesting is that, you know, Mike Johnson broke, you know, the House into recess to get away from this story, which is just absolutely horrible," Scarborough added. "And if you're a Democrat, you're talking about that across the district. Did they stop the people's business just to get us out of town, so the Republicans would stop talking about this? The problem is, when you get home in your district, if you're a Republican now and you're holding town hall meetings, people are going to be asking about Jeffrey Epstein because that's what they've been obsessing about for years, and I just don't think it goes away in their mind."
The purported Epstein list has been an animating conspiracy theory for the MAGA movement from the very beginning, and various Trump officials had promised it would be revealed until the Department of Justice abruptly announced that no list existed and no further information about the case would be released.
"President Trump himself, he only fanned the flames occasionally," said co-host Jonathan Lemire. "He was not a major driver of it, but plenty of people around him did, including many of whom have very high-profile positions in the government right now and I've reported for this show and for The Atlantic just how angry President Trump is that a lot of these people, lawmakers, but also podcasters, media influencers, people he believes he created, they're making money off of him.
"He has told people around him are openly defying him that he can't get this to stop, and it's not going to go away. Those lawmakers are going to go home over this month after Johnson sent them away from from here in D.C., and they're going to get an earful from constituents."
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