Why the Epstein scandal undermines MAGA’s entire case for backing Trump: conservative

Veteran journalist, opinion columnist and author Mona Charen, now 68, spent much of her writing career attacking liberals and progressives. But these days, Charen — who worked in the Reagan White House as a speechwriter for First Lady Nancy Reagan during the 1980s — is a Never Trump conservative, a blistering critic of the MAGA movement and an unlikely ally of Democrats.

In a scathing article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on September 10, Charen argues that President Donald Trump and his allies' handling of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal demolishes MAGA's entire case for sticking with Trump.

"At the heart of the case for Trump has always been the notion that, sure, he's rough around the edges, but we have to put aside our piddling character concerns and just be glad that he is so strong, because the left presents such an existential threat to America that we cannot survive without Trump," Charen explains. "It was always the Flight 93 election. When you are drowning, you don't question whether the man throwing you a life preserver is a decent person or not — you're just grateful he's there."

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Trump and his allies, including White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, continue to insist that Democrats and Never Trump conservatives are promoting a "hoax" when they call for the release of the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) files on the late billionaire financier and convicted sex offender Epstein. And that dismissive attitude, Charen emphasizes, is totally at odds with pro-MAGA arguments.

"They knew Trump was a louse," Charen says of MAGA apologists. "They knew he lied, betrayed his business partners and his wives, spread false rumors, played dirty, and did it all without a flicker of conscience. When Trump's character was raised as an issue by opponents, the knee-jerk MAGA response was not to defend him, not really, but to stress the enormity of the Democrats. This carried them through Trump's escalation of offenses — from bullying and lying to inciting a rebellion, to standing by while a murderous mob hunted his opponents, including his vice president, to the machine-gun fire he's now spraying at our institutions. We need a tough guy, they say, because the Democrats are so dangerous."

Charen continues, "But now, they find themselves defending Trump against the one sin that has given their movement its chief moral stature: child abuse. It was QAnon, Pizzagate, and other iterations of the vast child abuse conspiracy that reassured MAGA that no matter what Trump did, the other side was always worse — thus the obsessive focus on Jeffrey Epstein."

Although political comedian and "Real Time" host Bill Maher is a vehement critic of Trump, he sometimes explains the reasoning of Republicans who are often frustrated with Trump but continue to support him anyway because of their frustration with the excesses of the "woke" movement. Charen tackles that line of Republican thought in her Bulwark article, stressing that the excesses of the left are not a valid reason for sticking with Trump.

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"For a decade," Charen writes, "MAGA and most of the GOP has excused every Trump outrage on the grounds that America needed him to counter a widespread Democratic conspiracy to victimize innocent children. But the only powerful figure to be tainted by the Epstein revelations is Trump himself. No claims of 'we need a tough guy' or whataboutism can square this circle."

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Mona Charen's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.