U.S. President Donald Trump walks at the White House after arriving on Marine One in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 16, 2025. REUTERS/Aaron Schwartz
The "world turned upside down for Republicans" when President Donald Trump was forced by his own party "to retreat" as Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) pushed through the release of files related to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, writes Ben Jacobs in New York Magazine.
"For years, Trump never allowed Republicans to distance themselves from him and even celebrated the defeat of moderates in 2018 who were squishy on him. This week, facing scores of Republicans voting against him, he yielded," he writes.
This latest blow, Jacobs writes, is evidence that Trump "showed weakness within his party for the first time since his reelection, putting himself in conflict with the MAGA base."
What began as what Jacobs calls "a small Republican rebellion in the face of Trump's determined opposition" as Massie was joined by Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO), ended in a mortal blow to the president.
Trump's "ferocious fight" to prevent the vote on the petition to force the release of the Epstein files "didn't work," Jacobs writes, and ended up being "the biggest rebuke by his own party in Congress that Trump has ever suffered, and he failed to hold together normally loyal Republicans."
"Republican strategists were befuddled that Trump had committed so much effort to the fight in the first place," Jacobs writes.
"One pointed out that the president 'directly contradicted the base,' noting that Epstein had been used as a cudgel by MAGA personalities for years and that it was a stretch too far even for Trump to tell his loyalists that Epstein was a nonissue," he adds.
Jacobs says that although the Epstein saga will "eventually fade away," as "even Democrats concede voters care more about affordability than the late sex trafficker," major damage has been done to Trump and his brand.
"But in a year that started with Trump jamming through Mike Johnson as Speaker over objections within the GOP and that featured the president steamrolling hardline conservatives into supporting the Republican spending megabill that became his signature legislation, this was an unmistakable loss. For a president who appeared to be invincible within his own party, even a small wound shows that he is mortal," he says.