Why the Epstein files could spell the beginning of the end for Maga and Trump
The release of the Epstein files might not be the end for Trump or even the beginning of the end but, just maybe, the end of the beginning.
The decision by US president Donald Trump to acquiesce in the release of government files pertaining to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein might seem a surprising one. That Trump was an associate of Epstein is beyond dispute. That Trump is mentioned repeatedly in the tranches of Epstein’s correspondence that have been made public is equally incontrovertible. That Trump might have sat this long on an Epstein email that reads along the lines of, “Just to be clear, though, Donald Trump is a saint among men who stoutly resisted every tacky blandishment with which I ever tried to tempt him,” seems unlikely.
There are two principal reasons why Trump might have agreed, after months of obstruction and deflection, to go along with this. One is that he has realised that he simply didn’t have the numbers to stop it, even among his usually obedient Republican colleagues in Congress, and is therefore observing the old rule of politics that if you can’t change the direction the parade is heading, get out in front of it. The other is that he has calculated that however gruesome any further revelations might be, his supplicant voters and media outriders will largely not believe them or simply not care. After all, they haven’t yet, through uncountable scandals, uproars and crimes.
Trump might be right about this. The already established and altogether irrefutable public record of Trump and Epstein’s association would – and should – have ended the careers of any other similarly lofty figure. In a few instances, it has. The recent release of correspondence with Epstein has cost the UK’s ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, his job. Prince Andrew is now plain Mr Mountbatten-Windsor. Larry Summers, former US treasury secretary under president Bill Clinton and former president of Harvard University, was revealed to have been soliciting Epstein’s counsel on how to hit on his students up until the day before Epstein’s arrest in 2019. He has announced a penitent slink into the shadows.
Trump has grounds for worry. One of the animating passions of his base has long been a morbid obsession with the idea that a cabal of powerful people furtively operates a child-trafficking racket. This is one of the key tenets of the QAnon cult and the associated Pizzagate conspiracy theory, towards both of which Trump has nodded and winked repeatedly. In recent weeks, Trump has tried to call back to this by suggesting that Epstein was a better friend to various Democrats than he ever was to Trump. But certain of his hitherto most reliable acolytes have been notably disinclined to fall in behind him.
We have, as a world, proceeded a distance through the looking glass where we are regarding Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene as a voice of reason and pillar of decency. She has giddily amplified and endorsed any number of absurd, paranoid, pernicious and/or downright racist manias and been one of Trump’s most indefatigable cheerleaders. She has deserted him over the Epstein matter and he has reciprocated: Trump called her a traitor and has begun encouraging a primary challenge in her seat, Georgia’s 14th district, in 2026. Many of the glassier-eyed Maga faithful will regard this as akin to a parental separation. That feeling was compounded yesterday when, in another unexpected turn, Greene announced her resignation from Congress.
Given Greene’s record, any assertion that she knows what she’s doing would be a bold one. Given Trump’s, we all know better than to confidently call any impropriety, however bizarre or grotesque, the beginning of the end. But Greene – and a few others – might have divined sufficient Epstein-related unease among the Maga tendency to perceive a first mover advantage in being among the earlier rats off the sinking ship.
