MAGA at 'the breaking point' as Trump-Epstein scandal continues to rock White House

The end of the historic government shutdown Wednesday night was overshadowed by late convicted Jeffrey Epstein, whose explosive emails mentioning President Donald Trump rocked the Republican Party as the votes to release the Epstein files were seemingly secured.

Despite alleged pleas from the president for at least two of the four Republicans who signed on to the discharge petition effort to force a vote on a bill to release the files to drop their support, the 218th vote needed was confirmed when Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) was sworn in after a 50-day delay caused by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson's refusal to swear her in.

The Trump administration actively lobbied Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) to withdraw their signatures, with officials even holding a meeting with Boebert in the White House Situation Room to discuss her concerns about the files.

Both Boebert and Mace refused to remove their signatures.

“I signed the discharge petition. I was one of four Republicans to do so. I stand with all survivors,” Mace wrote on X. “When it seems like the world is against you. When the press hates your guts. When your friends desert you.Your pain is my pain. Your fight is my fight. Your justice is our justice.”

“God bless all those who never had a fighting chance. The Epstein vote will be for you too.”

Boebert said she felt "no pressure" to remove her name, according to the New York Post.

“I want to thank White House officials for meeting with me today,” Boebert wrote on X. “Together, we remain committed to ensuring transparency for the American people.”

Johnson said that rather wait for members to force the vote on the petition in December, he is, according to The Hill, "opting to bring the Epstein Files Transparency Act to a vote next week — essentially ripping the band-aid off the vote."

Next Tuesday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who led the discharge petition effort, will join Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), in a press conference with Epstein victims, The Hill reports.

Trump took to Truth Social Wednesday to rail at the news, writing, "The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects. Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap,” he wrote.

“There should be no deflections [sic] to Epstein or anything else.”

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee retorted, telling reporters, "The obsession right now at the Trump White House in trying to stop the vote, and trying to get Republicans off the petition — he’s personally making phone calls. Why? He doesn’t want the files released. So then the question we have to ask is, ‘Why? What does he know?’”

In a January 2019 email to author Michael Wolff, Epstein wrote that Trump "knew about the girls." A 2011 email from Epstein to his confidante and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell referenced a victim, later identified as Virginia Giuffre, who "spent hours at my house with [Trump]," adding "that dog that hasn't barked is Trump."

In another email, Epstein also called Trump "borderline insane," claiming to have "gave" his 20-year-old girlfriend to Trump in the 1990s and stated, "I know how dirty Donald is" in a 2018 email.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to spin the Epstein emails in favor of her boss, saying, "These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong. And what President Trump has always said is that he was from Palm Beach, and so was Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein was a member at Mar-a-Lago until President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out, because he was a pedophile and he was a creep."

Nicole Hemmer, author of books about the right-wing, tells The New Republic's Greg Sargent that these emails "seem to show that Trump understood who Epstein was" and he was "adjacent to, if not involved in those crimes," committed by Epstein and Maxwell.

Hemmer says that even Republicans are now aware "that there must be something in those files that is damning and I think these emails continue to point us in that direction."

Hemmer also notes that Leavitt's Orwellian spin saying that Trump's Epstein coverup is now "transparency," has imploded among many, despite the fact that some MAGA may latch on to the "conspiracy narrative."

"It is not going to work with the folks who are very clear that there is a coverup or something happening around the Epstein files," she says, "and that is the split you are seeing in MAGA."

“I don’t think that it’s consuming his presidency because he’s guilty, but I think that the Epstein files is the next Russia collusion hoax,” far right MAGA influencer Laura Loomer said in July.

One Trump ally tells Politico that this latest Epstein explosion has taken “things that are already complicated for the president and brings them to the surface.”

“It’s like adding salt to a dish — the flavors are already there, it just accentuates all of them,” said the person who requested anonymity.

Insiders say it's just another day in the Trump White House.

“I definitely would not say it’s been brutal,” a senior White House official tells Politico.

“We are used to waking up every day and not knowing what that day will bring. That’s the nature of working in this job, and nobody tackles these things better than President Trump … We worked for a president who was indicted and almost killed, so almost nothing surprises anybody around here anymore.”

Hemmer disagrees, saying the MAGA split is only going to continue to widen as far right figures such as Nick Fuentes continues to push for the Epstein files and Trump struggles to unify his base.

"Trump is holding together not particularly well at the moment this MAGA contingent, and what we're seeing play out in this so-called Civil War is already we're seeing people try to vie for leadership of the MAGA movement in a post Trump era. That fight is happening now," she says.

"And the Epstein issue is such a potent one, because while Donald Trump is willing to play both sides and lie, and wish wash whenver he feels he's getting out of line, with a particular part of the MAGA base, he's willing to do that on a lot of issues, but with Epstein, he's never been willing to do this. This has been the one place where his self interest has gotten in the way of that political instinct, and that's why this is the breaking point for so many people."