During his Tuesday, July 15 appearances on MSNBC — first on "Way Too Early," later on "Morning Joe" — Never Trump conservative Matt Lewis argued that with the controversy over the alleged Jeffrey Epstein files, President Donald Trump finally has a real crisis within MAGA World. Trump's hardcore MAGA base, Lewis argued, were willing to overlook a variety of controversies in the past — from evangelicals dismissing the Stormy Daniels controversy to veterans overlooking his insulting comments about the late Sen. John McCain's (R-Arizona) military service. But the Epstein files controversy, Lewis said, is fueling genuinely angry infighting among MAGA Republicans.

Journalist Will Sommer addresses this MAGA infighting in a listicle published by the conservative website The Bulwark on July 14, citing five different responses to the Epstein files controversy.

Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino is accusing U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi of a cover-up with the alleged Epstein files, threatening to resign from his position if Bondi doesn't resign from hers. Trump, meanwhile, is defending Bondi and wants to put Epstein in the past; similarly, Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk declared, "I'm done talking about Jeffrey Epstein."

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"Trump World fell into chaos just before the weekend, as the shock from the Justice Department's Jeffrey Epstein memo continued to reverberate," Sommer explains. "Donald Trump's initial response — a long Saturday-afternoon post that urged everyone to just get over it — earned the president a rare hostile 'ratio' on Truth Social, his own social media platform. Even right-wing media figures who would normally fall in line behind the president took issue with his long, meandering, often self-contradictory statement, apparently unwilling to alienate their Epstein-crazed audiences…. Everyone, it seems, now hates everyone else."

Sommer goes on to list "five distinct Epstein factions within the MAGA movement": (1) "The get-over-it crowd," (2) "Epstein dead-enders," (3) "the show-trial compromisers," (4) "The cabal accommodationists," and (5) "the oblivious."

Sommer cites veteran GOP operative Roger Stone as an example of "the oblivious," noting that the Epstein files controversy simply doesn't interest him — while Trump's "get over it" message is that "he's not reopening the Epstein investigation and folks should give it up."

The "cabal accommodationists," according to Sommer, are QAnon types who believes that an evil conspiracy is taking place but have faith that Trump will prevail over "the cabal." Sommer stresses, however, that the "Epstein dead-enders," including former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, have no desire to "get over it."

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"It's not so easy for everyone to move on from Epstein," Sommer observes. "That’s because, for Trump supporters, the Epstein case has come to symbolize something that goes far beyond the mysterious rich sex criminal and his circle of friends. They see it instead as the most notorious example of a permanent theme in American society: the elites getting one over on the common man. For this part of Trump World, Epstein has come to stand for everyone and everything that screws the little guy: mass immigration to depress wages, housing unaffordability, and much more. If the elites can keep abusing girls with impunity, what else can they get away with?"

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Will Sommer's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.


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