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Protest art representing U.S. President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein is seen outside the entrance to a restaurant in Washington, on Nov. 13.Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press
U.S. President Donald Trump has tested the loyalty of his MAGA base for more than a decade.
He’s been wrong over and over again. Wrong on trying to stop terrorism with a ban on travel from an arbitrary list of countries. Wrong on the supposed illegitimacy of the 2020 election. Wrong on the U.S. economy’s resilience to his global tariff scheme (which he recently rolled back).
He’s been cruel: on family separations at the border, on immigration raids and deportations, on billions of dollars of cuts to foreign aid (which is as strategically myopic as it is heartless).
He’s been corrupt: protecting his friends and prosecuting his enemies, enriching himself and his family using the pulpit of the presidency, wielding his country’s power for his own personal benefit.
Mr. Trump has turned conservative orthodoxy on its head, expanding the power of the state while attempting to shrink the scope of individual rights and freedoms. He’s pursued protectionism over free markets, and partnerships with America’s enemies over its friends.
Mr. Trump has been indicted four times. Twice impeached. He’s been lazy, reckless, secretive and embarrassing. Yet his supporters have dutifully donned their red hats all the while; “conservatives” who are suddenly for Russia, for tariffs and in favour of cancel culture.
But there’s one vulnerability Mr. Trump has never shown: fear. Not perceptibly, anyway. Not the way he’s showing it now.
Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and sex trafficker who killed himself in his jail cell in 2019, has revealed in Mr. Trump a weakness that is starting to fracture his base. He is making Mr. Trump look scared. MAGA has never seen that side of the President before.
Mr. Trump was happy to propagate rumours about the powerful men in Mr. Epstein’s orbit as long as his name was not implicated on any list. He suggested former president Bill Clinton was a frequent visitor to the private island that was allegedly the site of many of Mr. Epstein’s crimes. “The question you have to ask is, did Bill Clinton go to the island? Because Epstein had an island. That was not a good place, as I understand it, and I was never there,” Mr. Trump told reporters in 2019.
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers steps back from public roles after Epstein e-mails
But as he got closer to the presidency, he began to demur; when asked during the campaign if he would release the so-called “Epstein files,” he said yes, but with an asterisk: “You don’t want to affect people’s lives if there’s phoney stuff in there, because there’s a lot of phoney stuff with that whole world,” he said.
In February, 2025, Mr. Trump’s pick for Attorney-General, Pam Bondi, said she had the Epstein “client list” sitting on her desk. But when the so-called “Phase 1” binders were released to a select group of influencers about a week later, there was no new information inside. Under continued pressure from Republicans and their constituents, Mr. Trump ordered a new Department of Justice probe into Mr. Epstein’s acquaintances. Yet months later, when the DOJ issued its findings, it said there was no client list, and that further disclosure on the matter was unwarranted. Mr. Trump urged his followers to move on, writing on Truth Social that Americans should “not waste time and energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”
Last week, the Democrats released e-mails in which Mr. Epstein wrote that Mr. Trump “spent hours at my house” and “knew about the girls.” Around the same time, the White House was arranging private meetings with prominent Republican lawmakers, including Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace, to get them to withdraw their support for a petition to support a vote in the House on a bill to release the Epstein files. When it was clear they would not relent, Mr. Trump made an abrupt, public about-face, and urged House Republicans to vote to release the files. “We have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat hoax,” he wrote. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former Trump ally and the loudest voice among Republicans pushing for the release of the Epstein files, said the issue “has ripped MAGA apart.”
U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday urged his fellow Republicans in Congress to vote for the release of files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, reversing his earlier resistance to such a move.
Reuters
This is the first time Mr. Trump has lost control of MAGA Republicans, who have stood by through every previous loyalty test. Perhaps Mr. Trump would have maintained their support if he was as defiant and shameless on the Epstein matter from the get-go as he is on everything else, i.e.: Yes, I went to that guy’s island, but I didn’t see the disgusting things that were happening there. Anyone who says I did is a liar. In fact, they’re sick people for even thinking it.
But Mr. Trump didn’t do that. He ducked. He covered up. He tried to pressure fellow Republicans to leave the issue alone, and when it didn’t work, he changed his position to try to save face. The man who defiantly pumped his fist in the air moments after nearly being assassinated is hiding under his desk now. The MAGA movement will back nearly anything Mr. Trump does, but only if he looks strong doing it. What they won’t support – or at least not some of them – is a weak, scared man.
