Dear Leader is just another deep state operative
It is very tempting to assume that the rapidly escalating right wing meltdown over the Trump Department of Justice’s dismissal of the Epstein Files affair is a fatal blow to the MAGA cult, but it’s probably best to resist it, at least for the moment. There have been so many moments which felt as if they had to be the beginning of the end that ended up being duds from which the country moved on and Trump only grew stronger. Still, this one has a characteristic that we haven’t seen before: the calls are coming from inside the house.
I don’t imagine that anyone is unfamiliar with the scandal, but to briefly recap just in case, wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice, the socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, were extremely well-connected criminals who engaged in a decades long sex-trafficking of minors operation that has been shrouded in mystery and intrigue for many years. The suspicion is that because of their associations with very powerful people in politics, business and finance they were protected, either because of blackmail or friendship, and the government actively covered it up. Epstein was found dead in his jail cell, presumably by suicide, as he awaited trial while Maxwell is currently serving a 20 year sentence for conspiring with Epstein.
Obviously the devil is in the details but that’s the gist of the facts of the case. Oddly enough, considering all the documentary evidence, including public video and quotes from Donald Trump himself, the conspiracy theories around this case have become a MAGA obsession and the campaign’s promise to thoroughly investigate the case was believed by his base to be one of the most important he made.
Trump himself never seemed that eager to talk about it, however:
He had been president during the federal case that landed Epstein in jail and led to his presumed suicide so he may very well have had inside information at that point that he wouldn’t want to see exposed. (I think we can be fairly sure that if that information implicated his political enemies he would have pledged to do it with relish.) That should have set off alarm bells to his flock but as with so much else, they didn’t even notice, seeing what they wanted to see and listening more to his fervent MAGA influencers for assurance that he was going to get to the bottom of this vast conspiracy.
They had been primed for this for years by the QAnon conspiracy theory that had so dominated Trumps first term. That had a lot of tentacles but at its center was this notion that the world is run by a secret cabal of wealthy and powerful pedophiles who pull all the strings of the Deep State actors in the US Government and beyond. They are predictably said to be kidnapping and trafficking vast numbers of children to feed their depraved appetites. You’ll recall that the Pizzagate pedophile conspiracy theory pushed by some of today’s White House insiders even led one lone believer to assault a Washington DC pizza joint in order to rescue children he believed were being held captive in the basement. There were no children. There wasn’t even a basement.
You can imagine how excited they all became when Epstein was exposed back in 2018 with the publication of a three-part series in the Miami Herald revisiting his 2008 conviction for sex-trafficking that had been swept under the rug and subsequently ignored by some very powerful people who continued to associate with him. The intrepid reporter who investigated and wrote that story, Julie Brown, was motivated to look into it when President Donald Trump nominated Alex Acosta the U.S. Attorney who had given Epsten a very favorable sweetheart deal in that case to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Here was a real life, elite, pedophile sex trafficker with many, many friends in high places. Q was right! They were ecstatic when Trump’s Justice Department took up the case and arrested Epstein in 2019. Soon the world would know the whole truth. Except Jeffrey Epstein, the most high profile prisoner in the country, friend of presidents and billionaires, was somehow able to commit suicide in his cell. For an awful lot of people that didn’t pass the smell test, igniting a whole new set of conspiracy mongering.
Nonetheless, as usual, they didn’t hold Trump responsible. They didn’t even blink an eye when Trump gave well-wishes to Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell when she was arrested:
They blamed “the deep state” specifically the Department of Justice and the FBI which they already blamed for “The Russia Hoax” and alleged cover-up of crimes by Hillary Clinton. Among the most vociferous critics were the current FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino.
I think it was the appointment of those two, along with Attorney General Pam Bondi who jumped into the scandal with both feet, courting right wing influencers and promising that she was personally overseeing the investigation, that made MAGA true believers believe that they were about to get their hands on the Holy Grail or as right wing pundit Glenn Beck said last week, “the Rosetta Stone of public trust.” These new appointees were the very people who had been chasing this scandal for years and they were now in a position to blow the lid off of the whole thing and all those who mocked the MAGA movement as kooks would be proven fools.
When the DOJ released the letter over the July 4th holiday saying there’s no there there, it was a slap in the face to the MAGA faithful. They were stunned. And when Trump rudely dismissed their concerns in a cabinet meeting and then admonished them on Truth Social in a long rant blaming Obama and Clinton, demanding that they focus on the scandals he wants them to focus on, the crushing betrayal was personal. Never before has a Trump post received such a massive negative response on his own platform.
Even Fox News is hostile as are his most loyal influencers:
Trumps loyal base has taken all that heat for so long, defending Trump through everything, and now it appears that their Dear Leader is just another Deep State operative covering up the crimes of his accomplices — and possibly his own. They are confused and angry and inconsolable.
I don’t know if this will stick. Have they had a mass epiphany and collectively awakened to the fundamental dishonesty and corruption of the man they worshipped for the past ten years? It’s hard to believe.
Maybe it will all dissipate like so many other Trump scandals. But we’ve never seen one like this before. This Judas kiss went straight to the heart of their deepest convictions and shattered it into little pieces. Will they be able to forgive and move on?
Update —
I’d forgotten about this one. I think the cult needs a little reminder, don’t you?
Salon