Donald Trump called up the late conservative gadfly Charlie Kirk last July and berated him for letting one of his Turning Point rallies spiral into anger and conspiracy rumors about the Jeffrey Epstein files, reports the New York Times.
According to reporting from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, from their forthcoming book, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” at the same time that Trump was trying to take heat off of Attorney General Pam Bondi for her handling of the Epstein Files, Kirk was on the road holding rallies that were roiled by the revelations trickling out of the FBI.
The confrontation reflected deepening fractures within Trump's coalition as the Epstein controversy spiraled beyond the administration's control, Haberman and Swan wrote before adding that, while Trump was doing damage control on Truth Social, Kirk was holding court at his rallies where the Epstein Files were becoming a primary focus.
Central to the fury was former Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino's war with Bondi over the files. Bongino reportedly told White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles: "She was the one on TV saying over and over they had all this stuff. There was never anything. We were always clear about that. But now everyone thinks we did something wrong. And I gave up everything."
Bongino described the personal costs of the debacle. He had walked away from his high-rated podcast and millions of dollars, "and now it's all disappeared, because people think we screwed something up with Epstein."
"This is going to be President Trump's Iran-contra," he reportedly lamented at the time.
On July 12, Trump took to Truth Social to defend Bondi and urge his supporters to stop wasting "Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about." The post was a transparent attempt to quash the controversy—and it failed.
Trump told aides he was furious with some of his most influential supporters, including Kirk, and former Fox News personalities Tucker Carlso and Megyn Kelly, all of whom were publicly demanding the administration "come clean on the files."
Kirk's Turning Point USA event the day before had turned into an Epstein "grievance session," the Times is reporting, with speaker after speaker attacking Bondi's handling of the situation. Trump called Kirk directly and "scolded him."
According to the Times, Kirk was "more attuned to the younger MAGA base" than perhaps anyone in Trump's orbit, and recognized that the Epstein cover-up—as it was now widely viewed—was capturing alarm among his constituency to a dangerous degree.
Donald Trump Jr. and Vice President JD Vance, both deeply embedded in the hyper-online younger faction of the base through their X activity, shared Kirk's concerns. They urged the White House to reverse course and pressure the Justice Department to release more Epstein files, Haberman and Swan are reporting.
