President Donald Trump made a sudden reversal over the weekend and threw his support behind a procedural vote to force the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, and CNN's Harry Enten found a simple explanation for his shift.
The president was unable to stop Republican lawmakers from voting on a House measure to compel the Justice Department to release evidence of Epstein's sex trafficking network, and the data analyst told to "CNN News Central" that polling shows why Trump was unable to make the scandal go away.
"You know, usually Donald Trump has his pulse on the Republican base, but he did not on this issue," Enten said. "We're used to seeing approval of Trump among Republicans being 85 [percent], 90 [percent], but when it came to the Epstein fuss, look at this: Just 44 percent, south of 50 percent of Republicans, actually approved of Donald Trump when it came to the Epstein files. Compare that to this: What was the percentage of Republicans that wanted all of the Epstein files released? Sixty-seven percent, so what we were dealing with is simple mathematics."
"The Republican base was against Donald Trump on the Epstein files, they were with the idea of releasing them," he added. "The Republican representatives saw that and therefore were not afraid to go against Donald Trump, because this was the rare instance in which the Republican base was not with Donald Trump. They were actually with the idea of being against Donald Trump and releasing the Epstein files."
There was a strong push to release the files back in July, after the Department of Justice and FBI announced that no new evidence about Epstein and his network would be forthcoming, but Enten said interest appears even stronger now.
"You know, back in July, there was this idea, there was this push, right, to release the Epstein files, and [House Speaker] Mike Johnson said, you know what? I'm sending the house home – adios, amigos, goodbye. There was interest in it, but not to the degree that we're seeing right now. Okay, Google searches for Jeffrey Epstein versus a week ago up nearly 1,200 percent. That we have seen more searches over the last five-day period for Jeffrey Epstein than any five-day period this entire year – much more so than we saw even in July, and more than that, the top associated search topic with Jeffrey Epstein was Donald Trump."
"This problem, simply put, was not going away," Enten added. "So what you were dealing with was many Republicans unhappy with how Trump was dealing with Epstein files. Many Republicans wanting those Epstein files released, and more than that, it was climbing in the interest levels, so it wasn't going away. So all of a sudden, the Republican representatives are saying jailbreak time – adios, amigos, we're going to leave Donald Trump. We are going to vote to release those files long before Donald Trump even said, you know what? You should release them all."
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