'Failed attempt': Conservative says Trump's drive to please MAGA shows he's at their mercy

In an article for the New York Times published Tuesday, conservative opinion writer Ross Douthat examined President Donald Trump’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, saying that the president's “failed attempt to simply make it go away” is a dramatic misstep.

According to Doutthat, his effort was “an example of pulling against the MAGA tether and being yanked back, unusually hard.” That backlash, he noted, has prompted Trump’s team to shift tactics: unsealing grand jury transcripts, re‑igniting talk of “Russiagate,” and even staging television interviews with Ghislaine Maxwell.

These moves, Douthat argued, represent not so much a pivot as a search for a win — a “victory, some success to satisfy MAGA’s demand for a win over the Deep State.”

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Douthat warned, however, that this dynamic extends well beyond Trump alone, arguing that the more significant force is the recognition within the MAGA movement that it will outlast Trump’s presidency.

And, crucially, it won’t be maintained by any directive from above. Instead, its future will be shaped “by interactions between populism’s would‑be leaders and the demands and expectations of their voters," he wrote.

As Trump continues to oscillate between deflection and defensive countermoves, Douthat suggested the real question is what form MAGA will take post‑Trump, and who will define its next chapter.

"And so the crucial action on the right, as the second term winds on, will involve contested explorations of that great undiscovered country: MAGA after Trump," Douthat wrote.

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