Donald Trump at a party with Jeffrey Epstein. (Photo: Epstein Estate/House Oversight and Reform Committee)
Donald Trump's MAGA movement is directing its rage over the Epstein files at a wide range of targets, but according to a new breakdown from Wired, they seem to be exempting Trump from that anger.
Trump has long refuted claims that he was involved in Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking crimes during their years-long friendship, and while he has attempted to claim that the files released so far have exonerated him, the truth is far from that simple. While the files lack any concrete evidence that Trump committed any crimes, he is nevertheless mentioned in them thousands of times, and reports have alleged that key files related to abuse allegations against him have seemingly been excluded from the files.
Over the weekend, 21-year-old Austin Tucker Martin was shot and killed by Secret Service agents after attempting to enter Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort with a shotgun, having reportedly become enraged by the Epstein files revelations, despite his support for Trump. As Wired noted, however, his actions were an outlier among the MAGA movement, which has directed its rage, by and large, at other targets, like Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
Wired's breakdown of this trend cited numerous comments from pro-MAGA forums and online message boards, like "The Donald."
"In the game of justice he’s been unable to score a single point, 0 arrests for Epstein … He’s scum," one user on The Donald wrote of Patel, following the release of a video where he could be seen celebrating with the U.S. Men's Olympic Hockey team.
"There’s arguably never been a point in history where an FBI director had more on his plate than right now, yet the American people see no results, just some guy partying in a place he shouldn’t be," a pro-Trump user wrote on X.
Some of these comments have come from prominent influencers with the far-right and MAGA movements, including the likes Nick Fuentes and Ben Shapiro.
“The Trump administration engaged in a failed cover-up of the Epstein files,” Fuentes said during a recent episode of his show. “Pam Bondi needs to be impeached.”
“Steve Bannon has now been totally exposed in the Epstein files,” Shapiro said on his podcast.
Benny Johnson, another notable MAGA pundit, said that revelations of Bannon's relationship with Epstein were "not a good look."
"Despite all of this backlash, Trump himself has, so far, largely managed to avoid the anger of his MAGA base," Wired's piece observed in the face of all that outcry about other figures involved in the Epstein fallout.
The outlet attributed this seeming dissonance to the lack of coverage about the situation within right-wing media, where many of these MAGA supporters exclusively get their news and information. Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at the Media Matters watchdog group, said that prominent voices in the movement are likely to avoid talking about Trump because they take their marching orders from him.
"MAGA media is a personality cult that revolves around the president’s whims, and the closer a right-wing commentator is to power, the more likely they are to follow Trump’s directives and talk about anything else," Gertz told Wired. "Unless what they’re saying is that he’s been ‘exonerated.'"