Epstein fallout poses a loyalty test: Trump — or MAGA?
CNN
In the days since the Trump administration released a memo on Jeffrey Epstein directly at odds with conspiracy theories pushed by the president and some of his top lieutenants, Donald Trump’s movement and most ardent supporters are in revolt.
It’s President Donald Trump versus MAGA. In the days since the Trump administration released a memo about Jeffrey Epstein directly at odds with conspiracy theories pushed by the president and some of his top lieutenants, Trump’s movement and most ardent supporters are in revolt. The Justice Department and the FBI released a memo last week concluding there was no evidence that Epstein had a list of powerful men who participated in his alleged underworld of sex trafficking and pedophilia. It also said the disgraced former financier died by suicide and was not murdered and died by suicide in his New York jail cell. Yet after years of big promises to the president’s base, the memo failed to produce a smoking gun, undercutting Trump and his team’s own words. And MAGA world isn’t happy, pitting the president’s closest allies against one another. With Trump defending the findings, the situation has set up an unprecedented loyalty test between the president and the movement he created. While Trump has long held significant sway over his base, the situation marks one of the first times his movement is not taking cues from its leader — perhaps offering an early blueprint into how MAGA will evolve in a post-Trump era. Infighting between the DOJ and the FBI came to a head Wednesday at an explosive meeting where FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, were confronted about whether they were behind a story that said the FBI wanted more information on Epstein released but was ultimately stymied by the Department of Justice.
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