Will the Epstein Story Hurt Trump in MAGA-Land? Wake Up—It Already Has

So, Kash Patel told us over the weekend that the Jeffrey Epstein “conspiracy theories just aren’t true” and “never have been.” If you’re thinking, “Hey, wait a second; isn’t that the same Kash Patel who spent years promoting those exact conspiracy theories—and who told Glenn Beck in late 2023 that Epstein’s alleged ‘black book’ is ‘under direct control of the director of the FBI?”—then you might well be wondering why Patel, who of course now heads that very same FBI, has done such an abrupt about-face.

The likely real-Earth answer is that Patel was just making shit up back then to get attention and clicks. Now that he has actual power and access to the files he spent all that time fulminating about, the jig is up: He is stuck with the probable reality, which is that there is no file of names of Epstein clients. But real-Earth answers don’t satisfy conspiracy theorists. Indeed, real-Earth answers merely prove to conspiracy theorists that the conspiracy is even more vast and intricate and iniquitous than they’d dared imagine.

We’ll circle back to that, but right now, let’s cut to the chase. Will this MAGA-world rift do real damage to Donald Trump? What do I mean “will”? It already has. Trump can lie all day long about the economy, the world, Medicaid cuts, immigrants, Democrats, Rosie O’Donnell; lies on these and other topics, his base eats up. They only deepen the bond.

But seeming to link arms with the deep state in burying the Epstein story? That is evidence of a corruption that upends the very moral order of MAGA world.

Yet that’s exactly what Trump has done. Over the weekend, he posted a long and typically semi-literate rant of his own, defending Attorney General Pam Bondi (“doing a FANTASTIC JOB!”—I wonder if she felt disappointed by the fact that Trump included only one exclamation point) and imploring followers not to waste upper-case “Time and Energy” on Epstein.