Trump just made a big mistake — and he has no one to blame but himself

The Epstein scandal is the best thing to happen to the cause of freedom and democracy in a very long time. I don’t remember the last occasion when liberals could hope to break the grip that Donald Trump has had, not only on the Republicans but on the Washington press corps. With this story, there’s finally daylight between him and his base. MAGA is facing a crisis of faith and with that, there’s hope.

Which is why I was genuinely stunned yesterday to see former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismiss the Epstein scandal as just another distraction. “Whether it’s Jeffrey Epstein or Alcatraz, it’s all off the subject of what they’re doing with this budget that’s harmful to meeting the kitchen-table needs of the American people,” she said.

MSNBC’s James Downie put it well: “The public is pissed about Epstein in no small part because he was a rich guy who got away with heinous crimes, because he deliberately cultivated rich friends,” he said. “That's an inequality story. The only way it could be closer to ‘kitchen-table issues’ is if the files were tucked in a goddamn pocketbook!”

Aside from that, she’s missing the bigger picture. The Epstein scandal has grown so fast that Trump now risks forfeiting the one thing that made him invincible in the eyes of many – that made it possible for him to credibly claim that he could shoot someone and never lose a supporter. That one thing is him being the exception to the rule.

In this case, the except to the rule of Epstein.

Fact is, the president was intimately involved with the disgraced financier and child-sex trafficker. (You can read about their history in today’s Times.) But the MAGA faithful never believed it, or if they did, they didn’t believe Trump deserved the same level of scrutiny. Why?

Because the cult of MAGA is animated by a conspiracy theory, one that holds that Trump was sent by God to fulfill a prophecy, as a hero who saves America from a secret cabal of powerful (Jewish) pedophiles who traffic young girls for sex to untouchable elites. In MAGA lore, Epstein came to represent this shadowy, malevolent confederacy. The idea was that Trump would get reelected in 2024 and bring them all to justice.

So even if there was concern about old pictures and videos of Trump palling around with Epstein, Trump couldn’t be that bad, because QAnon – the conspiracy theory’s name – said that Trump was MAGA’s champion. Enemies like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and George Soros were guilty and deserving of death, but Trump? He was the exception to that rule, the exception that would make America great again.

As long as MAGA believed in him as their savior, there was little he could do to lose their trust. He could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue. He could lead a paramilitary takeover of the US government. He could literally betray some supporters with the understanding that their sacrifice was for the greater good of saving little girls from monsters.

But then Trump made a mistake. He took MAGA’s faith for granted. He and US Attorney General Pam Bondi believed they would go wherever he told them to, even if the US Department of Justice concluded that there was no list of Epstein clients and there was no blackmail ring. They pulled back the curtain to reveal that Trump is not only a mere man, but a con man. And if MAGA believed him, well, that’s on them.

Up to that point, it really didn’t matter how much reporting there was about the actual relationship between Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, because MAGA could explain away those facts as part of the QAnon prophecy. The (Jewish) media is part of the evil conspiracy against America, so naturally they are going to try to bring its savior down. Now that Trump has triggered a crisis of faith, things are different.

You can see the difference in Trump’s reaction to the latest by the Wall Street Journal. It reported Thursday that he gave Epstein a “bawdy” note on his 50th birthday in which he drew the outline of a naked woman. He signed his name at the bottom as if the signature were her public hair. He included imaginary dialogue in which Trump says, “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.” Trump concluded with saying: “Happy birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

If you’re willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, which is what MAGA has been doing for the last decade, there’s nothing to see here. But if you’re unwilling – if, in fact, you feel betrayed by a leader who said he’d reveal the secrets of America’s enemies but instead chose to protect those secrets – this might look like what it seems to be: Two grown men joking about their fondness for sex with underage girls.

It used to be that Trump could gut it out knowing that the rightwing media apparatus was behind him all the way. They could altogether shout down legitimate mainstream reporting. But the rightwing media apparatus – which includes men like Steven Bannon, Tim Pool, Tucker Carlson and Benny Johnson – made itself as powerful as it is by advancing Trump, in one way or another, as the leader of the cult of MAGA. In their view, he was never supposed to put himself in league with the Jewish conspiracy, yet that’s what he did, and now that he’s done so, these rightwing media personalities can’t accept it.

Therefore, Trump is in a position he has never been in. He must earn back trust from the MAGA faithful, trust that he used to safely assume was his. That’s why he ordered the attorney general to seek the release of grand jury testimony in the Jeffrey Epstein case. But in doing so, he opened space for more questions by the press corps, more demands by the rightwing media personalities, and more opportunities for his most loyal supporters to second-guess the purity of his intentions.

That’s not a distraction. That’s the whole ball game. Fortunately, many Democrats are taking advantage of it. They’re calling for the release of more documents, raising awareness of Trump’s hypocrisy and in general, they’re sewing doubt by hyping the idea that he’s hiding something. Nothing else has cracked Teflon Trump, but this might.

Pelosi ought to know better.

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