Why did President Trump instruct House Republicans to vote to release the Epstein files last night? Because they were going to do it, no matter what he said.
Trump had a choice between (1) trying to wage a war of retribution against dozens (scores?) of Republican defections, or (2) pretending that they were doing what he wanted.
That he felt he couldn’t do retribution is a sign of weakness. The old man has lost a step.
Why? Lots of reasons:
- He has tanked the economy, so his public support is near lowest-low.
- The government shutdown hurt his standing, too.
- The election results were so much worse than expected that Republicans are nervously looking at the exit and hoping that Trump will declare he’s not running in 2028 and release them from service before 2026.
But the biggest reason Trump had to retreat was that he found himself on the wrong side of a conspiracy theory.
Conspiracy theories are loyalty tests. The people who believe the conspiracy are on the outside, insisting that that the Others, on the inside, are hiding some truth. The political dynamic of a conspiracy theory is not like a policy fight. In a policy disagreement, one side says that Policy X is good, the other side says it’s bad. Policy fights are judgment fights.
When people fight over a conspiracy theory, it’s about identity and belonging. Marjorie Taylor Greene is sitting on the outside; she says there’s a hidden, secret truth to the Epstein files. Donald Trump is inside the story insisting that there’s nothing to see and everything is perfectly normal. Which makes him both part of the conspiracy and part of the establishment.
I’m not sure the MAGA movement can accept that position. Even from their god-king.
I’m not sure either but I’m skeptical that it signals a real break. The biggest influencers have all been pushing hard to “get over it” and concentrate of destroying “the left.” So far, it hasn’t worked but maybe Trump’s transparent gambit will do the trick.