“The kooks have the power” in the White House now, but they’re failing to satiate their old audience, says Bulwark Senior Reporter Will Sommer.
Over the weekend, Sommer notes FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino appeared on Fox News and asked their MAGA faithful to “stop expecting Hillary Clinton to be arrested for murdering Jeffrey Epstein.”
“They have a right to their opinion, but as someone who has worked as a public defender, as a prosecutor who has been in that prison system, who has been in the metropolitan detention center, who’s been in segregated housing, you know a suicide when you see one and that’s what that was,” Patel told Fox News entertainer Maria Bartiromo.
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“He killed himself,” added Bongino. “You want me to get—I’ve seen the whole file. He killed himself.”
But Bongino is a right-wing podcaster who spent nearly a decade raking the FBI before President Donald Trump appointed him second in command over the agency. Since then, Sommer says Bongino’s been among the most senior officials willing to engage MAGA conspiracists who insist “the world is controlled by a powerful human-trafficking cabal, and that sinister forces within the government conspired to undermine the first Trump administration by concocting the Russia probe.”
Bongino and Patel may claim to be working behind the scenes for answers but Sommer says their results aren’t pleasing their old fans, particularly regarding cases like the theory that Trump’s assassination attempts were attempted kills by members of the Deep State.
“In some of these cases, the ‘there’ you’re looking for is not there,” Bongino said about that.
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“To some extent, Bongino himself is to blame for his predicament,” says Sommer “That it is an article of faith for the right that Trump’s assassination attempts were part of a nefarious plot or that Epstein was murdered—presumably by Democrats—is owed in part to people like Kash Patel and Dan Bongino suggesting as much prior to joining the administration.”
But instead of accepting him on the basis of his MAGA credibility, conspiracists appear to be treating Bongino as a kind of repurposed “deep state traitor” for dismissing “wild theories he used to preach and they still collectively believe in aren’t true.”
“It’s a plight facing the broader administration, and really, the whole country,” Sommer adds.
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Read the full report at The Bulwark.