'Absolute clown show': GOP strategist slams Trump for becoming 'the swamp' he once condemned

2016 wasn't Donald Trump's first presidential campaign. Trump first ran for president with the Reform Party in 2000, and longtime ally Roger Stone served as his campaign director. The campaign never really caught fire, however, and Trump dropped out of the race by February of that year.

It was in 2016, however, that Trump first attracted a huge audience as a presidential candidate, igniting the MAGA movement with his promise to "drain the swamp" and liberate the United States from "the deep state." That messaging really resonated with his hardcore MAGA base, and he revisited it during his 2020 and 2024 campaigns.

But GOP strategist Matt Wylie, in an op-ed published by The State on July 18, argues that with the Jeffrey Epstein controversy, President Trump has "become the swamp" he once condemned.

READ MORE: 'People are going to be shocked': Backlash predicted for GOP as disaster looms

"For years," Wylie writes, "J.D. Vance, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino and an army of MAGA influencers pounded a conspiracy drum about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in jail awaiting trial.... They rallied MAGA's base around a foundational belief that America is ruled by a corrupt elite, and only Donald Trump could expose and destroy it. After all the hype, the Justice Department dropped a two-page memo on Sunday, July 6, claiming there's no Epstein 'client list' and no credible blackmail evidence, and officially ruled Epstein's death a suicide. This wasn't transparency. It was a calculated political maneuver."

Wylie continues, "There was no deadline forcing the release, and the Trump Administration knew it was sitting on political dynamite. You don't pick a Sunday evening on a holiday weekend, when the nation is focused on devastating flooding in Texas, unless you're deliberately trying to bury a story and blunt the fallout."

The Trump Administration, Wylie laments, "completely miscalculated" and "failed to grasp just how upset and unrelenting a betrayed MAGA base can be."

"What an absolute clown show," Wylie laments. "Now, Trump is visibly flailing. The president looks uncomfortable as he cycles through desperate, contradictory defenses: calling the Epstein files a hoax, blaming Democrats for the controversy, even calling his supporters stupid and telling those focused on Epstein he doesn't want their support…. But one thing is crystal clear: Trump isn't draining the swamp anymore. Trump has now become the swamp."

READ MORE: This jaw-dropping truth about the Supreme Court will make you furious

Matt Wylie's full op-ed for The State is available at this link (subscription required).