On Saturday, Donald Trump tried to wave the MAGA base off the growing clamor to release the full case file of infamous sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, a close friend of Trump’s who evaded trial in 2019 by killing himself in jail. The president’s intervention seemed to reveal that he’s deeply worried there’s embarrassing or incriminating evidence about him in the Justice Department’s files. The furor, he insisted, is being driven by “selfish people” who are trying to hurt him. He said the files must be fabricated “by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration.” Trump’s tirade made it impossible to escape the conclusion that he’s trying to dissuade his voters from believing any damning evidence that may come out.
What was also telling in this defensive screed is how perplexed Trump is over his base’s fixation on this case. He begs them to move on to other conspiracy theories, offering a full menu of alternatives, like JFK’s assassination, Hunter Biden’s laptop and, his personal favorite, the “Rigged and Stolen Election of 2020.” “Let’s keep it that way, and not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about,” he pleaded with his supporters, as if saying that no one cares about Epstein will somehow make it true.
MAGA continues to care very much about Epstein. At the Turning Point USA conference over the weekend, right-wing pundit Megyn Kelly commanded the crowd to “make some noise if you care about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal,” leading a crescendo of cheers. Co-host Charlie Kirk crowed that “every hand of 7,000 people” went up after he asked the crowd if they cared. Attendees insisted that Trump is “covering for pedophiles.”
For Trump, this has to be bewildering. His supporters do not treat sexual violence like it’s a bad thing. So why do they care about Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, or the identities of his alleged co-conspirators?
The president’s confusion over why this matters to his base is understandable. MAGA voters have made it abundantly clear that they do not care about sexual abuse. They didn’t care when a tape of Trump bragging about sexual assault was released in 2016. They didn’t care when he was found liable for sexual assault by a civil jury in 2023. They don’t mind that Trump goes out of his way to associate with men accused of sex crimes, from Epstein to Vince McMahon to Pete Hegseth to Matt Gaetz and numerous others. For Trump, this has to be bewildering. His supporters do not treat sexual violence like it’s a bad thing. So why do they care about Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, or the identities of his alleged co-conspirators?
The one difference between most of these other allegations and what Epstein did is the age of the victims. Alleged or otherwise, the victims of Trump and most of his buddies were adult women. (The one exception is Gaetz, who was accused of abusing a 17-year-old, and is the rare example of an alleged perpetrator that Trump cut loose.) Epstein, however, abused underage girls. In that narrow space between abuse of adults and pedophilia, the MAGA masses have found their moral absolution. Despite their acceptance of misogynist violence, they still get to be the “good guys” because they draw the line at raping minors. By being very loudly against pedophilia, they can recast themselves as the heroes, ignoring all the other villainous behavior, including their love of a man who boasted about how he grabs unsuspecting women by their genitals.
This is, no doubt, hard for Trump to grasp. He has never shown any sign of having a conscience, and he likely can’t imagine how his supporters might be suppressing feelings of guilt for their complicity in backing a sexual predator. This notion may be a little surprising to some liberals as well. Most of the pundits and politicians we see leading the MAGA movement are shameless people who lie constantly and think nothing of covering up for heinous crimes. But the millions of everyday Trump voters out there aren’t blessed with the deep psychological damage that allows their leaders to carry on with daily acts of depravity. Most likely resort to garden-variety self-delusion to maintain their support.
The Esptein conspiracy theory is a coping mechanism for people enduring this cognitive dissonance. Yes, a civil jury found that Trump assaulted journalist E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room. But if Trump voters tell each other Bill Clinton is on the mythical “Epstein client list” and is about to be arrested for pedophilia, they can believe Democrats are worse. Yes, Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy keeps promoting anti-vaccine conspiracies that lead to children dying of preventable diseases. But the fantasy that Bill Gates is a child molester allows them to say they’re the ones who are protecting kids. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem undermined efforts to help after a flood wiped out a Texas summer camp, but by clamoring for the “Epstein files,” MAGA can pretend they’re the champions of young girls.
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To be clear, not everything about Epstein is a conspiracy theory. He really was a sex trafficker who abused an unfathomable number of girls. There is significant evidence he provided trafficked women and girls to associates, though it’s likely most of the people registered on his private plane’s jet logs were not involved. The Justice Department probably has unreleased files, videos and other documents that implicate people who haven’t been charged with crimes, likely because federal prosecutors didn’t have enough evidence to secure a conviction. Epstein conspiracists go way beyond this, however, insisting there’s a “client list” Epstein kept with detailed notes about who he was blackmailing and for what. There is no evidence that such a list exists. (Nor does it make much sense that Epstein would make life so easy for prosecutors.) He was probably not murdered in jail. And until Trump started flipping out and falsely claiming that the “Epstein files” are a forgery, there was no evidence of a White House cover-up.
Trump isn’t the only one who is struggling to understand the emotional needs that the Epstein conspiracy fulfills for his base. David French of the New York Times suggested that MAGA’s obsession with Epstein is merely an expression of “their indictment of America’s so-called ruling class.” The Wall Street Journal editorial board chalked it up to the addiction the MAGA base has to conspiracy theories.
These theories, though, don’t adequately explain why there’s a preoccupation with Epstein and pedophilia in particular. If all the base needs is some exciting conspiracy theories to justify a paranoid worldview, then they should be happy to accept one of the alternatives being offered by Trump and his allies: JFK, chemtrails, Hunter Biden’s laptop and COVID-19 conspiracies, to name just a few.
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But no, MAGA needs Epstein conspiracies, and the movement will accept no substitute. This craving for moral absolution is why. One of the most defining features of the Trump era has been the culture war over sexual abuse. Republicans have excused a staggering number of allegations against Trump and his allies, which are so numerous that one could write multiple books cataloging all the credible accusations. There was the concurrent #MeToo movement, which helped expose countless predators, including many associated with Trump — and which arguably helped resuscitate the case against Epstein. There has been the backlash to #MeToo, which often paints aggressors as victims of “cancel culture” and the victims as the true bad guys.
In all this back-and-forth, most MAGA voters are on the wrong side of history. They side with the rapists and harassers, and denounce the feminists who are trying to bring perpetrators to justice. Even as more stories of Trump’s abusive behavior toward women come to light, they keep voting for him. They’re invested in preserving sexist systems of power.
But you can’t be a warrior for rape culture day in and day out without starting to ask yourself, “Am I the baddie?” That’s where Epstein and his imaginary client list come in. By hating on Epstein and fantasizing about political enemies being on the “list,” MAGA gets to play at being the heroes for once. Better yet, they can do so without the risk of bringing actual predators to justice, a precedent they don’t want to establish lest it come for their leaders. After all, Epstein is dead, and his “list” only existed in their fevered imaginations.
Or least, that felt true until Trump started visibly panicking about the Epstein files. But giving up on the Epstein case now that Trump is drenched in flop sweat would amount to MAGA admitting they never cared about pedophiles or justice for victims — that it was always just a fairy tale they told to conceal the ugly truth about themselves, even to themselves.
Trump thought nothing would get in the way of his base’s loyalty to him. But it may be that the one thing that will rattle their faith is this stark reminder that he’s always been the villain, and they are his accomplices.
