All this stress Donald Trump is under appears to have caused him to confuse his old friend, Jeffrey Epstein, with his uncle. It’s a weird mistake. Epstein was a convicted sex offender and accused pedophilic sex trafficker whose efforts at pretending to be intellectual were embarrassing. John G. Trump, however, was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who did genuinely good work fighting Nazis. The only thing the two men have in common is that Trump admired them both, though in the only way he can admire someone, by talking about how their greatness — or, with Epstein, a “wonderful secret” — reflects well on him. However, it appears that the 79-year-old president mixed up the two men when telling one of his digressive stories, this time about Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber.
During a roundtable in Pittsburgh last week, Trump claimed his uncle taught Kaczynski at MIT and that his uncle said the future terrorist was a “seriously good” student. This is not true. John Trump died in 1985, 11 years before Kaczynski was outed as the Unabomber. Plus, Kaczynski attended Harvard, not MIT. Trump’s story sounds an awful lot like a fake story that Epstein used to tell, according to Stuart Pivar, another old friend of Epstein’s who gave an interview to Mother Jones in 2019. “Jeffrey told me that he studied math at UCLA with the Unabomber, who was a math teacher,” Pivar said. This is also not true — Epstein didn’t go to UCLA and Kaczynski didn’t teach there. Trump no doubt has been thinking a lot about his 15 years of close friendship with the deceased sex offender. Some B.S. story he likely heard from his old friend bubbled into his brain, and he mixed it up with other B.S. stories he tells about his uncle.
Despite the elaborate combover, heavy orange bronzer and poorly-applied makeup to cover his old man hand bruises, Trump’s advanced age is getting harder for even his most loyal sycophants to ignore.
Despite the elaborate combover, heavy orange bronzer and poorly-applied makeup to cover his old man hand bruises, Trump’s advanced age is getting harder for even his most loyal sycophants to ignore. His legs swelled so much recently that the White House even admitted the self-described “perfect physical specimen” has been diagnosed with a vein condition. But there’s also the visible general decline. Though he’s as loud-mouthed as always, Trump speaks more slowly, and his already tiny vocabulary has shrunk to the point where, in denying the provenance of a naked woman doodle he reportedly sent to his pal Epstein, Trump said, “I never wrote a picture in my life.” (This, too, is a lie.)
For MAGA influencers, the pressing knowledge that Trump won’t be around forever must be frightening. It’s not unusual for fascist movements to be incoherent in their ideology or goals. But with MAGA, it’s especially pronounced because Trump so thoroughly dominates and defines them through a cult of personality. If the movement is to survive, however, they need something other than Trump worship as a central organizing force. The best that most MAGA influencers have come up with is conspiracism. Spinning non-stop lies about secret cabals conspiring against red America keeps their audiences hooked, and it also isolates them from reality-based society. That combination of nuttiness and alienation is their best bet for continuing the MAGA cult after the leader dies or ages out of his capacity to control them.
This is one reason the MAGA movement has been struggling to obey Trump’s increasingly panicked orders to stop demanding the Epstein case files. Even as major MAGA figureheads reassure audiences they don’t believe Trump is in the files, many of them surely understand that fear is exactly why Trump is so desperate to make this story go away. If they were certain Trump would live for another 20 years, it might be easier for them to let go of the Epstein case. But they can’t imagine he’ll be around long, and building their media empires for the post-Trump era means talking a lot about Epstein now, because that’s what audiences want.
The tug-of-war between Trump and his base over releasing the Epstein files illustrates this larger tension, which is often buried in the showy declarations of absolute devotion to their leader from most of MAGA. On one hand, influencers like Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens need to show nothing but fealty to Trump, their untouchable godhead whose power is the only reason most of them even have a career. On the other hand, they need something to sell their audiences once he’s gone. Epstein conspiracizing is a linchpin, both because it’s like printing money and it’s a well they can draw from long after Trump has departed to the great big underage beauty contest in the sky.
In recent days, the entire GOP has devoted itself to walking this impossible tightrope between keeping Trump happy and keeping the Epstein case alive enough to satisfy those MAGA influencers who profit handsomely from the conspiracy theories. The strategy has been to create the appearance that the Epstein files release is imminent while doing everything in their power to bury the documents. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson leads the pack in shameless liars. He told reporters he’s eager for “maximum transparency” and called for the release of all “credible files.” In reality, Johnson’s stonewalling has been so extreme that, on Tuesday, he adjourned the House a day earlier than expected before its month-long recess to stop yet another effort by Democrats to bring forward a bill that would force the FBI to release the files.
Republicans are playing similar games with the testimony of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend, who was convicted of child sex trafficking because of her years procuring minor victims for him to allegedly rape. House Republicans are making a big show out of how they want to subpoena her testimony, while Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who served as Trump’s criminal attorney, is setting up an “interview” with her. As they well know, Maxwell has every incentive to cover for Trump, especially if she feels a pardon is on the table. The department’s Maxwell gambit is about feeding the MAGA media’s content mill without giving up anything — such as the reams of collected evidence in its possession — more substantive. Trump’s promise to release grand jury transcripts is more of the same. All experts believe there will be no new information in there, especially after all the names are redacted.
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These efforts to throw a few crumbs at MAGA and call it a meal have shown mixed results so far. In the past few days, Kirk and other major MAGA media figures have dutifully shut up about Epstein, pretending to believe Trump’s claims that full transparency is coming down the road. But there still seems to be a steady drumbeat of anger from everyday MAGA folks. They’ve spent years of their lives invested in the lie that Trump was going to release their fantasy version of the Epstein files, which they hope will put away everyone they hate, from Bill Clinton to Beyoncé. On Tuesday, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and podcast host Tim Dillon were right back at it, saying the White House’s “nothing to see here” story “doesn’t make any sense.” The clip immediately went viral, underscoring the economic incentives these influencers have to keep up the Epstein chatter.
Trump is feeling the heat, demonstrated by his futile efforts to get his supporters to talk about anything but Epstein. MSNBC compiled a helpful list of all the nonsense Trump has put out to distract his followers. False suggestions that he’s going to arrest a bunch of Democrats, including former President Barack Obama. Threats to strip comedian Rosie O’Donnell of her citizenship. Demands that major sports franchises revert to old, racist names. He even tried to gin up a different “release the files” controversy involving Idaho murderer Bryan Kohberger by falsely implying the judge in the case is engaging in a cover-up by letting the admitted killer plead guilty.
But one of the most telling Trump distraction gambits was to release the classified documents about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The King family objected because they believe there’s a lot of embarrassing information, some of which is likely untrue, in the files.
The King documents are certainly important to one person: Charlie Kirk, who has a massive audience. Kirk has been publicly reluctant to let the Epstein story go, even as he’s admitted he wants to do so to please Trump. At 31, Kirk has positioned himself as the face of MAGA’s future, holding numerous conferences for Republican youth across the country each year with his organization Turning Point USA. More than anyone, Kirk has to have his eye on what life after Trump looks like. A big part of his vision has been conspiracy theories, which he uses to bolster a more ideologically grounded argument for fascism built on overt racism and traditional gender roles.
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Kirk has floated the idea of rewriting the history of King to discredit the larger civil rights movement. He’s not subtle about this either, boldly declaring, “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.” In recent years, Kirk has argued that King was “not a good person” and was “awful.” The strategy to demonize King is to dig up “dirt” about his personal life, including poorly-sourced and likely untrue stories that King engaged in sexual violence. Kirk was ecstatic about Trump’s release of the classified files, probably hoping he could trawl them for more “dirt” on King, true or not, that he can use for his propaganda.
No doubt Trump and his allies hope this will be enough to satisfy Kirk’s need for conspiracy content as the wave him off the Epstein files. But there’s good reason to be skeptical. Even the racist Turning Point USA audience likely has a limited appetite for speculation about King’s sexual habits, much less convincing themselves to believe the third-hand reports of crimes from an organization led by J. Edgar Hoover, who had a well-documented antipathy toward the civil rights leader. King is old news, especially for Kirk’s younger audience, for whom the 1960s might as well be the 19th century. The Epstein case is more recent, and most of the people involved are still alive. Like all these influencers, Kirk may love Trump, but he also wants traffic to this site. And Epstein drives that far more than King.
Trump’s sweaty panic is no doubt mostly about memories of his time with Epstein and concerns about how much of that made it into the FBI’s document collection. But there’s an existential aspect to this that he, not being especially bright or reflexive, probably doesn’t understand.
This is also a story about his mortality. Every day, Trump gets older in ways his base can’t completely ignore. If they want their movement to continue after him, MAGA leaders and influencers need to build brands and power separate from the president and what serves his interests. The right-wing media mill needs content, and speculating about what’s in the Epstein files provides it. Giving that up is going to be hard for MAGA — especially as they look at the aging Trump and realize he won’t be around forever.
