Trump’s armor finally cracking — and not for the reason you think: analysis

President Donald Trump reacts next to Melania Trump during a rally at Madison Square Garden, in New York, U.S., October 27, 2024.

No matter how much conservative Nick Catoggio dislikes President Donald Trump, he is always quick to admit Trump’s Teflon superpower is impressive. But on Tuesday, Catoggio said he was surprised to have to confess that Trump’s Teflon armor regarding Jeffrey Epstein appears to be cracking.

Trump’s name appears generously throughout the investigative files on convicted sex trafficker Epstein, but Catoggio predicted back in 2025 that Trump’s voters would obediently back off when Trump ordered them to. This, he now says, does not appear to be the case.

After damning news of Trump allegedly sending Epstein a lewd birthday message in 2003 alluding to ‘certain things in common’ that the two men shared, Trump warned in a post on Truth Social that no true fan of his would be suckered by the Jeffrey Epstein “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats and the liberal press. He even blasted right-wingers who remained suspicious of him.

“Surely his followers would obey his commands. Don’t they always?” demanded Catoggio at the time. “The Journal’s bombshell is effectively, and ironically, the end of the scandal as a political threat to Trump rather than the start. MAGA simply lacks the civic integrity to keep pursuing the truth about Epstein now that it’s been transformed, stupidly and cynically, into a referendum on the media.”

“[But] was I wrong?” Catoggio now asks, pointing to a poll finding public credulity about an Epstein cover-up to be widespread and bipartisan. Among Republicans, 57 percent said they suspect the government is keeping information about the sex trafficker secret, and 17 percent said they believe the cover-up is aimed at concealing “significant” material in the files about Trump.

“Forget Republicans, though,” said Catoggio. “Among independents, a group whom Trump came within 3 points of winning in 2024, opinion on Epstein is radioactive. Fully 81 percent think the government is hiding things about him, and 66 percent(!) suspect that ‘significant’ information about the president has something to do with the reason why.”

In an America with no war in the Middle East and inflation at 2 percent, none of that would matter in November, said Catoggio, adding that only “the most committed cranks” would vote against the ruling party at a moment when things are going well economically and overseas because they’re mad that Trump didn’t open the Epstein files. But in an nation trapped in a “forever war” with diesel at $6.50 per gallon, the Epstein issue may be “just the trick" granting "disaffected Trumpy populists psychological ‘permission’ to break with him without feeling like traitors by doing so,” said Catoggio.

Perhaps his supporters would have stuck with Trump on Iran and refused to betray him to the hated left. But the fact that he “crossed them on Epstein last year” may have “given them a face-saving way to express their broader disenchantment with his presidency,” said Catoggio. "It was he who betrayed them by not eagerly exposing America’s pedophile class, a supreme populist priority, and so now they’re free to oppose him on anything they like. Including the war.”

Additionally, Catoggio said a record-high share of the public now believes that the government is corrupt. And this same opinion among Republicans has barely budged.

“Trump’s supporters know he’s corrupt, in other words, and they know it well enough that they can’t be bothered to pretend otherwise even when talking to pollsters,” Catoggio said. “… The swamp won because Trump wanted it to win, those supporters might conclude — on war, on influence peddling, and on Jeffrey Epstein. If any meaningful part of the right ends up entertaining that possibility in November, the president and his party are cooked.”

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