Epstein is the one issue that keeps splitting Trump from his base

Washington: The “Make America Great Again” base has had little trouble looking the other way when it comes to Donald Trump’s trampling of norms and ethical standards: the coarseness; the indictments; the retribution against his enemies; the self-enrichment while in office; the unprecedented claims of executive power.

His administration’s handling of information regarding the horrific crimes of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is different. Bringing to light what lies within the Justice Department’s so-called Epstein files is the most persistent issue to have driven a deep wedge into the US president’s base – to the point where some who embrace the MAGA label have even been willing to make common cause with Democrats.

Epstein – who once travelled among the world’s elite and counted Trump as a friend – hanged himself in a prison cell in 2019 after being arrested and charged with sexually abusing and exploiting dozens of girls, some as young as 14 years old.

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in 1992.Credit: Screengrab

The specifics of what Epstein is alleged to have done also reinforced a larger narrative that fuelled Trump’s rise and the construction of his political movement, Democratic congressman Ro Khanna said in a recent interview.

“Many people in MAGA feel that the government has been corrupted, and is not looking out for ordinary Americans,” Khanna said. “One of the reasons they supported Trump, even though he was imperfect, [was that] he said, ‘I’m going to expose it all. I’m going to tear it all down. I’m going to go after this corrupt elite that has shafted you and that has really killed the American Dream’.”

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In that sense, releasing the Epstein files “was core to Trump’s promise”, Khanna said. “It was not some incidental issue or tangential issue. It was his central theme that the American corrupt elite had betrayed forgotten Americans.”

Khanna and Republican congressman Thomas Massie have led the effort in the House for a discharge petition that would force a vote on the full release of the files. With Wednesday’s belated swearing-in of Democratic congresswoman Adelita Grijalva, who won a September 23 special election to take the seat vacated by the death of her father, they have gathered the necessary 218 signatures to do so.

Trump was stoking conspiracy theories about Epstein at least as far back as the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2015. Asked for his opinion of former president Bill Clinton, Trump replied, “Nice guy”. Then he added: “Got a lot of problems coming up in my opinion with the famous island. With Jeffrey Epstein.”

But earlier this year, after indicating that Epstein’s “client list” was on her desk awaiting review, Attorney-General Pam Bondi disappointed many in MAGA world by announcing no such list was in evidence.

On his Truth Social media platform, Trump lashed out at his own supporters. “What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’”

“We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening,” he added and urged them to “not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about”.

Democrats have alleged that one reason House Speaker Mike Johnson kept the chamber out of formal session during the government shutdown was to leave Grijalva’s status in limbo and prevent a vote on the discharge petition.

With Trump, the ultimate question may be not what he did, but what he knew. Just hours before Grijalva officially became a member of Congress on Wednesday, Washington time (Thursday AEDT), Democrats on the House oversight committee released emails from Epstein’s estate in which the disgraced financier suggested Trump was aware of Epstein’s activities with underage girls.

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In one, written in 2011 to Ghislaine Maxwell – Epstein’s partner later convicted of sex trafficking – Epstein claimed Trump had “spent hours at my house” with one of Epstein’s victims and described Trump as a “dog that hasn’t barked” in the spreading investigation. In another, dated in early 2019, Epstein wrote to author Michael Wolff that “of course” Trump “knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop” – an apparent reference to reports that Maxwell was recruiting victims from among the employees at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida.

In July, during two days of interviews with Deputy Attorney-General Todd Blanche, Maxwell said the president “was never inappropriate with anybody in the times that I was with him. He was a gentleman in all respects”.

She has since been moved from a federal detention centre in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas. And more recently, House Democrats, citing an unnamed whistleblower, have reported that Maxwell has been preparing to formally ask Trump to commute her 20-year federal sentence.

Trump has branded the furore over Epstein as “a hoax”. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a statement on Wednesday, Washington time, in which she claimed: “These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”

It will probably be weeks before the vote on the discharge petition reaches the House floor. Only four Republicans have signed it, and no doubt Trump and his allies will put intense pressure on Republicans to vote against releasing the files.

But Khanna predicted it would have the support of more than 50 Republicans. And if anything even close to that happens, he added, it would mark “the single biggest repudiation of Trump since he walked down the escalator” a decade ago and launched the political movement now known as MAGA.

Or if the vote goes the other way, it may only confirm what MAGA has believed all along: the elite get to play by a different set of rules.

Washington Post

Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) or the Men’s Referral Service on 1300 766 491.

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