Donald Trump's latest verbal fumble has revealed more than just his declining mental state—it's exposed a growing tension within MAGA about life after their aging leader, a columnist wrote Wednesday,
The president’s desperate—and so far unsuccessful—scramble to kill the Jeffrey Epstein story—has brought into sharp focus that MAGA is very aware that he can’t be around for long, Amanda Marcotte wrote for Salon.
And it’s refusing to give up on a core conspiracy that fuels its base just to let their aging figurehead off the hook.
“This is also a story about his mortality,” Marcotte wrote.
“Every day, Trump gets older in ways his base can’t completely ignore. If they want their movement to continue after him, MAGA leaders and influencers need to build brands and power separate from the president and what serves his interests.
“The right-wing media mill needs content, and speculating about what’s in the Epstein files provides it. Giving that up is going to be hard for MAGA — especially as they look at the aging Trump and realize he won’t be around forever.”
During a Pittsburgh roundtable, the 79-year-old president bizarrely confused Jeffrey Epstein with his uncle John Trump, spinning a false tale about the Unabomber,” Marcotte wrote.
“Trump claimed his MIT professor uncle taught Ted Kaczynski and called him a "seriously good" student. The problem? John Trump died in 1985, eleven years before Kaczynski was identified as the Unabomber, and Kaczynski attended Harvard, not MIT.
The story bears striking resemblance to a fabricated tale Epstein used to tell. According to Stuart Pivar, an Epstein acquaintance who spoke to Mother Jones in 2019, "Jeffrey told me that he studied math at UCLA with the Unabomber." That story was also false—Epstein never attended UCLA.
Trump's physical decline is becoming impossible to ignore. Despite his "elaborate combover, heavy orange bronzer and poorly-applied makeup," his advanced age shows, Marcotte wrote.
The White House recently admitted Trump has been diagnosed with a vein condition after his legs visibly swelled. His vocabulary has shrunk dramatically—when denying he sent a nude doodle to Epstein, Trump said, "I never wrote a picture in my life."
This deterioration terrifies MAGA influencers who've built empires around Trump worship, Marcotte wrote.
Figures like Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens face an impossible balancing act: maintaining absolute loyalty while preparing for a post-Trump future. Their solution? Conspiracy theories, particularly around Epstein.
The Epstein files controversy perfectly illustrates this tension, the columnist wrote. While Trump desperately wants the story buried, MAGA media needs the content to survive without him.
Trump's panic is evident in his frantic distraction attempts—threatening to arrest Obama, strip Rosie O'Donnell's citizenship, and demanding sports teams revert to racist names, Marcotte wrote.
Trump's "sweaty panic" isn't just about potential embarrassment—it's about his mortality and MAGA's existential crisis as they confront a future without their aging godhead, Marcotte finished.