Trump Just Screwed Himself on the Epstein Fiasco—with Don Jr.’s Help

The whole thing is shockingly dumb. It’s MAGA influencers who spent years hyping the idea that the Epstein files contained explosive revelations of pedophilia and other perfidy by elite Democrats. This included Kash Patel and Dan Bongino as former MAGA influencers. They are now director and deputy director of the FBI. They looked at the files and found…nothing that would sate MAGA’s conspiracy theories. MAGA created The Epstein Files storyline.

Underscoring the idiocy here, Trump just tweeted this:

If there was a “smoking gun” on Epstein, why didn’t the Dems, who controlled the “files” for four years, and had Garland and Comey in charge, use it? BECAUSE THEY HAD NOTHING!!!

This wrecks Trump’s own line about the “Epstein hoax.” The fact that Democrats didn’t “use” the files because they contained “nothing” shows that Democrats aren’t responsible for creating the files to “get” Trump, because if they had created them and seeded them with information damaging to him, they would have…used them, as Trump admits. Also, if they are a Dem hoax and contain nothing, why wouldn’t Trump and House Republicans seek full release, which the latter voted against this week?

None of it makes sense. But beyond all this, now that Trump wants the grand jury testimony, why won’t this only whet MAGA’s appetite more? Recall that the administration’s initial release of Epstein materials, which contained mostly publicly known stuff, only fueled more MAGA screams of a cover up.

But now Trump, by urging release of the grand jury testimony, has planted himself on the side of transparency even more firmly. If the testimony comes out and paints an unsatisfyingly incomplete picture, why wouldn’t the same anger erupt inside MAGA-world, perhaps more forcefully? What does Trump say at that point?