If Joe Rogan is any indication, February 2026 may go down as the month that the Epstein files saga cemented itself as a lasting political liability for President Donald Trump and Republicans. The podcaster has spent the last week discussing the disjointed release of files by the Department of Justice, analyzing emails and redactions, and concluding that a myriad of conspiracies might actually be true.
And what is he saying? That the slow-walked and highly censored presentation of information by the Trump administration is “the gaslightiest gaslighting shit I’ve ever heard in my life,” that “none of this is good for this administration,” and that “this is not a hoax…if you’re not protecting victims…then who are you protecting?”
Rogan is representative of a large swath of voters who delivered Trump his 2024 victory: distrustful, low-propensity, and anti-system voters. And what he and other spokespeople for this suspicious segment of America — Tim Dillon, Shawn Ryan, Andrew Schulz — are saying matters: it suggests that these anti-system voters, who were once thought to be a permanent part of the new GOP coalition, are nothing of the sort.
Those voters tend to skew politically moderate, independent, and, perhaps most importantly, young. They don’t tend to follow the news or know too much about Trump or politics. They get informed through nontraditional avenues like podcasts and social media, and aren’t wed to a political party or identity.
In 2024, all of this created an opportunity for the Trump campaign — to promise to release the so-called Epstein files. But what these Americans are hearing and thinking now is very different. They feel like they are being lied to again, being gaslit, and seeing another cover-up happen in real time.
I will hold my tongue about the extreme naivete of these people. If they are having their minds opened by Trump and the GOP’s obvious cover-up, that’s all to the good. The fact that most of them (not Rogan who’s almost 60!) have only vaguely paid attention to politics before mitigates in their favor. Gotta live and learn. Hopefully this lesson will stick.