In 2025, Epstein showed MAGA who they really are

While most Americans spent Christmas relaxing with family and eating too much pie, Donald Trump was having a social media meltdown. Whatever is wrong with the 79-year-old president, no one can look at his Truth Social tirades on a day he allegedly holds so dear and think he is well.

The ugliness kicked off on Christmas Eve, when Trump unleashed an angry rant about the “Radical Left Scum” that fails to appreciate his supposed accomplishments. He kept posting until the wee hours of Christmas morning, leaving over 100 posts in a flurry of rage focused on his usual tired obsessions: how bitter he is over the 2020 election, how he hates Democrats and people of color, and how unfair it is that people keep talking about Jeffrey Epstein, the dead sex offender who apparently called himself “Don’s best friend” for almost two decades, beginning in the late 1980s.

Trump has been deteriorating before our eyes for the past year, so no one can know for certain what’s got him riled up. But the safest bet is Epstein, the man he once reportedly called his “pal” with whom he had “certain things in common.”

The president has spent most of his first year in office engaged in an increasingly frantic but unsuccessful effort to block the release of the infamous Epstein files, the nickname given to the million-plus documents the Justice Department has on the investigation into the wealthy financial manager, who died by suicide in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking minors. Under Attorney General Pam Bondi, the DOJ has been stalling the release of the files, which were supposed to made available to the public on Dec. 19.

If Bondi thought she could quiet the clamor for the Epstein files by releasing only a small percentage of heavily redacted documents, the move backfired. The heavy-handed redactions, including fully blacking out 500 pages, only prompted more questions about why Trump is so afraid of the release of these documents. A New York Times investigation published on Dec. 18 provided a window into exactly why Trump is so worried. The report — based on interviews with Epstein’s victims, friends and former employees — showed the intimacy of Trump and Epstein’s association, raising questions about what the president knew about the financier’s activities. Trump has denied knowledge of Epstein’s actions. But as the article pointed out, in emails released in November, Epstein indicated the president was fully aware. He allegedly brought his victims around Trump regularly. One victim says she was raped by multiple guests at Trump’s house.

To people who didn’t vote for Trump, his sweaty panic over this situation is perplexing. The president’s enthusiasm for sexual violence is no secret. It’s been nine years since the release of the “Access Hollywood” video, in which he bragged about how he liked to “grab them by” the genitals. In 2023 and 2024, two civil juries found that journalist E. Jean Carroll told the truth when she said Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s. The president has also made it a habit to reward men facing credible accusations of sexual abuse, such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with plum jobs.

But Trump’s most loyal voters, the MAGA base, have developed elaborate mythologies to deny the truth about the president. In their imaginations, he’s not a pathetic genital-grabbing predator but a knightly hero, sent by God to wage war on pedophiles and rapists. Not the real ones, of course, who Trump is more likely to defend; MAGA prefers to fear imaginary pedophiles and rapists. They project their own sins onto innocent people — often LGBTQ+ people or Democratic figures — and avoid thinking too hard about their lavish support for a man whose vile predilections haven’t been hidden.

There’s many variations of these bizarre fantasy. At the most extreme end is QAnon, an elaborate conspiracy theory that holds that Democrats and liberal Hollywood stars are part of a secret cult of child-killing pedophiles, and that Trump has a secret plan to destroy them all. Equally wrong, but slightly easier for GOP leaders and influencers to embrace, is the “groomer” myth that LGBTQ+ people are a sexual threat to children that can only be contained by pushing queer people out of public spaces and employment. In recent years, the MAGA base has become attached to the theory that the Epstein files contain the evidence of a vast, Democratic pedophile ring, and that Trump can release the documents and all their enemies will go to prison. Trump and his allies encouraged that fantasy during the 2024 election, but now that he’s in office, it’s clearly dawning on him that those files might blow apart the already dwindling hopes among the MAGA base that Trump is a hero instead of a villain.

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Sign up for her free newsletter, Standing Room Only, now also on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

This fantasy is a particularly odious form of the chivalry myth, which holds that wealthy white men’s power and privilege over others is justified because they use it benevolently to “protect” women and children from sexualized violence. The Epstein files reveal the truth MAGA is trying to avoid: In reality, men’s privilege puts women and children in danger, because it makes it so easy for men to abuse without consequence.

The MAGA base convinced themselves the Epstein files would expose their opponents. But Trump knows that the Epstein files are a mirror that reflects what his supporters actually voted for: a world where men like Trump and his friends can get away with decades of sexual violence.

Trump’s voters don’t want to face this dark truth about Trump — and about themselves and what they support. They’ve lied to themselves for this long, so why wouldn’t they be able to keep doing so, even in the face of an onslaught of documents showing that Trump really did function as Epstein’s closest friend. This includes flight logs showing the president’s trips aboard Epstein’s private plane, the Lolita Express, and photos showing the two men constantly together, often surrounded by young women they were leering at. Trump fans ignore Carroll and “close to 20 women,” according to the Times, who have accused Trump of sexual harassment or assault, including one woman who says she was passed to Trump by Epstein.

For whatever reason, though, Trump seems to sense that this time could be different. This would explain his erratic behavior — desperately grasping for any distraction he can throw at his base, leading to the pathetic blitz of “look over there!”-style Truth Social posts. One is left to wonder if this could even be affecting presidential decisions such as his bombing of Muslims in Nigeria, where he claims Christians are being persecuted. Experts say this isn’t true, and that violence in the region is being driven by other factors. But Trump wants his base to imagine he’s their “protector,” and stories about the persecution of Christians, no matter how false, shore up that fantasy.

The president’s fear is likely rooted in the growing restlessness of his coalition, which is starting to realize he’s a lame duck in apparent poor health, who has driven the economy into a ditch from which he has no plan to pull us out. It’s one thing for the MAGA base to make excuses to protect a strong leader of their movement. But he likely worries, for good reason, they won’t continue to embarrass themselves by denying every round of Epstein stories being released about him. Bondi’s efforts to cover this up have only guaranteed that the documents are trickling out a little at a time, meaning the story isn’t going away any time soon. Trump’s love of hiring incompent-but-loyal toadies is backfiring, and all he’s got left are increasingly grasping efforts to distract people from the ugly truth that he was neck deep in Epstein’s world.