Epstein Files Are Tearing MAGA Apart

Trump, Epstein, and the maga. According to the Times, Donald Trump's battles with two hard right Republicans. That's right, hard right Republicans over the Epstein files exposed a growing fracture inside the MAGA movement. Trump attacked Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene for backing a House vote to force the Justice Department to release Epstein related documents. As GOP defections mounted and it became clear that many Republicans would ignore him, he he abruptly reversed his position and urged them to vote yes. Columnist Michelle Goldberg, a great column today. I'd recommend you check it out in the Times. She argues this episode reveals deeper disillusionment on the right. Longtime supporters frustrated by a shaky economy, allegations of corruption, and Trump's habit of turning on his own ally are finally showing signs of breaking away. Some right wing influencers even posted burning MAGA hats recently. Goldberg says the longstanding aura that Trump completely controls his movement is starting to fade. So what's the real message? If you put your ear to the ground and feel the ground, it does feel like the earth is shaking. The ground is actually moving away from Donald Trump right now. He had an iron grip on the MAGA base and finally they're realizing, wait a minute, we thought there was a big global conspiracy of powerful men are running pedophile rings and making our lives worse. And it turns out we were right. And this guy's running it. He's not cleaning it up. He was the gang leader. We've had enough. So let's dig a little bit deeper here. I'm not suggesting that Trump is going to have his approval ratings go from his abysmal ratings now, which are about 37% down to 0 or 5 or 10 or even 20. But he's already on such shaky ground that it doesn't take much for him to lose his base in the House and the Senate. I don't mean his, the elections next year. I mean, right now they're going to start standing up because they have been so afraid of his wrath because of his popularity in the Republican Party and the MAGA base. Now they're saying maybe we can stand up to him because it came very obvious to Trump that he was going to lose this vote that's scheduled for the House to demand release of the Epson file. When two of his staunchest supporters, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, said, sorry, we're with you 100%. We do anything for you, but we won't do that. Then he kind of threw in the towel because he didn't want to look like a loser. He didn't want to say I lost and they won. Because that is frankly the only thing that would ever give Donald Trump shame, having to admit he lost something. So he just changed courses and now is acting like, well, of course I want to release the Epstein files and let it all out. Now the whole thing is an absurdity because you don't need a congressional vote to demand the Department of Justice release the Epstein files. They work for Donald Trump. And what we know more than anything in this last six months or so is the Department of Justice will do anything Donald Trump tells them. It doesn't matter if it's legal, doesn't matter if it's patently unconstitutional, doesn't matter if it's something that most lawyers would be afraid to do for fear of losing their law license. They'll do whatever he asks. So if Donald Trump wanted the Epstein files to be released, they would be released. So we're all sort of going through this charade that, well, he's on board now with congressional vote to release the Epstein file. So, oh, now he's on the good guy. Well, now it's again, they could be out right now. So why is this issue resonating? Why do people like me, and I'm not normally into conspiracy theories, talk about this? One of the theories that's gaining circulation is that this is so devastating to Trump because he really has two main appeals to his base. And his base is largely people in smaller towns, rural areas, towns that have been forgotten, towns that have not done well economically in the last decade or two. Trump did not do well in San Francisco or Chicago or New York City or Boston. Big cities where people are actually making stuff, have successful startups, have good paying jobs in tech companies. They didn't vote for Trump. His support came from smaller towns, the Akron, Ohio's of the world, towns that felt left behind by globalization. And towns where an awful lot of people feel like there is this global elite, billionaires, and they have carved out our economy, taken away our jobs, globalized our job, made it so that our own children can't stay in our communities. They've made us all poorer and they're so callous when they're not destroying the economy, making themselves richer and taking from small towns and rural areas. When they're not doing that, they are a part of this cabal that can do anything they want, including molesting our daughters, molesting children and their pedophiles. I'm not saying this theory is accurate, but clearly that is a sentiment that many MAGA supporters have so There was really two main appeals of Donald Trump. He was going to be the guy to say no to globalization. We're going to bring back these economies, small and mid sized towns and rural areas. He was going to be the guy to do that, number one. Number two, he's the guy and he ran on this in the campaign that he would be the guy to release all the Epstein files. So now what does the typical MAGA supporter see when they're looking at news of the last week, the last month, the last six months? Trump is the guy saying, no, I'm not going to release the Epstein files. And according to the Wall Street Journal, his name is in them not once or twice or five times or ten times or a hundred times or a thousand. His name is in the Epstein files, according to the Wall Street Journal, 1700 times. And he's the guy who was supposed to be on the side of the little guy, the small town America, the traditional values person to release it. And it now it seems like he is, is the biggest actor in this other than Jeffrey Epstein. Again, I'm not alleging there's proof of any criminality yet, but as far as the intertwinedness between Trump and Epstein, the ties are very strong. And when you have more and more emails coming out from Epstein saying Trump knew about the girls, Trump is the dog that didn't bark, I've got enough to bring down Trump, it starts to make a lot of these MAGA supporters say, why were we supporting for that? And then they're asking, okay, there's at least the other issue. He's going to be the guy to help us economically, the cost of living, help us get our jobs back. And so they look around at their economies in the almost year that Trump has been in office and what they realize is life isn't any better for them. Their cost of living is higher. Trump has consistently taxed them because unfortunately, that's what a tariff is. And shame on every single Democratic politician who doesn't constantly refer to it as a tariff tax, because that's what a tariff is. So a lot of people in small towns in America who've seen their lifestyle go from middle class to lower middle class to poor are saying, okay, Trump's been in office for a while. He's supposed to be the big businessman to fix things. He was going to be the guy to stand up to these billionaires ruining our economy and globalizing everything. He's going to do something. So they look in their pocket and say, how much extra cash do I have now? That he's been in office for a year and the answer is none. My wallet is lighter than ever before. That is their own independent analysis and there's no spin around it. So Trump's supporters are suddenly coming to the conclusion that he's not going to help them economically. He hasn't brought back a single job according to how most MAGA supporters feel. Are you enjoying all those high paying coal mining jobs that have come back to West Virginia? I didn't think so. It didn't come. So you had two main pillars of support Trump, that he was going to fix the economy, make things more affordable, better jobs for people in small towns, rural America, and he was going to be the guy go after this global cabal of elites and a pedophile ring headed up by Jeffrey Epstein. He hasn't delivered on either one of those. In fact, he looks now to many MAGA supporters to be the biggest part of the problem. Not only is he not the solution, he's a part of the problem. And in some areas he looks like he's the number one part of the problem with respect to what's going on in Epstein, because, hey, these members of Congress would love to release these Epstein files. The only reason they didn't is they didn't want to incur the wrath of Trump because until his big switch Sunday on saying, okay, release the files. As recently as 24 hours earlier, he, he essentially divorced Marjorie Taylor Greene, saying, because you are in favor of releasing the Epstein files, I'm excommunicating you from the Church of maga and I could take your crazy ideas about space, lasers and Jews and all sorts of other nonsense, but because you want to do what you campaigned on and what Trump campaigned on, because you want to do that, release the files now I'm going to hate you now. I'm going to ban you from the whites. Now I'm going to try to get someone to run against you. And that's just striking a lot of his own supporters as insane. That's why, as I mentioned at the beginning of this segment, it just feels like the ground is shaking and cracking apart underneath Trump. And one of his biggest supporters, Tim Dillon, the comedian podcaster, who I happen to think is hilarious, is saying this is essentially the end of Trump. I don't know if I'm ready to go that far, but Tim Dillon is saying this now is officially making him a lame duck and his vice like grip over Republican members of Congress is over.