When it comes to Epstein, changing the subject isn’t working

Opinion

It might fairly be argued that the depth of a person’s desperation can be measured by the pettiness of the distractions they employ to divert attention from the problems they cannot solve.

Take, for instance, the current plight of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has been unable to quell the outrage among his MAGA base over his administration’s failure and/or refusal to release information related to disgraced financier and accused pedophile/sexual trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who is alleged to have died by suicide in 2019 while in pretrial custody in New York.

Factions of the MAGA movement have long been obsessed with the so-called “Epstein files,” particularly the rumoured client list purported to include the names of high-profile individuals who consorted and travelled with Epstein and participated in illicit sexual activities organized by him at various locations.

MAGA agitators have demanded release of the list (assuming one actually exists), claiming it’s essential to expose those who were party to Epstein’s perversions. Prior to Trump’s re-election as president in November 2024, several noteworthy Republicans — including now-FBI director Kash Patel, now-deputy FBI director Dan Bongino, now-Vice-President JD Vance and even Donald Trump Jr. — demanded its release and accused the Biden administration of covering it up to protect pedophiles.

Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi was asked by a Fox News reporter whether the Justice Department would publish “the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients.” She responded that it was sitting on her desk for review. When that “review” resulted in a declaration that there is no new information — list or otherwise — worthy of public release, the MAGA world erupted.

The problem in all of this, of course, is that any close examination of Epstein’s circle of associates is necessarily going to include Trump, who is known to have spent a lot of time with the financier, was photographed alongside him on numerous occasions and was referred to by Epstein as one of his closest friends.

And the sudden reluctance to release the Epstein files has caused the first real fracture between the president and his once blindly loyal base. Unable to convince his followers that there’s no “there” there, Trump has pivoted to another strategy that has worked in the past: change the subject, divert the attention, redirect the rage.

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The release last week by the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal of what is purported to be a lewd 50th-birthday greeting/drawing from Trump to Epstein seems to have accelerated the divert/distract effort; in short order, the administration released a trove of documents related to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and “new” information regarding Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

While neither of those largely meaningless gestures is likely to dampen the current MAGA unrest, the president added a layer of absurdity by abruptly demanding that two professional sports teams — football’s Washington franchise and baseball’s Cleveland side — revert back to the names that had been abandoned because of their racist overtones.

There’s only one reason Trump would attempt to re-ignite debate over the long-settled question of discriminatory sports-team names: because it fuels a dormant corner of the rage that drives the MAGA world’s various ongoing grievances and passions.

The problem, however, is this: while this strategic slide into unprecedented pettiness will surely add to his acolytes’ anger, there is absolutely no chance compounding the outrage in this tangential manner will make MAGA suddenly let go of an issue it has so determinedly stoked as one of its tentpole conspiracy theories.

Try as he might, Trump cannot make Epstein go away.