What The Epstein Feud Reveals About MAGA

Written By Leeja Miller

Sources:


Transcript:

Last week, Trump’s DOJ and FBI released a joint memo stating that they conducted an “exhaustive review of investigative holdings relating to Jeffrey Epstein” and found over 300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence. The memo concludes, quote “This systemic review revealed no incriminating “client List.” There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.” It goes on to confirm quote “After a thorough investigation, FBI investigators concluded that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City on August 10, 2019.” The memo links to both raw and enhanced video of the surveillance footage captured outside his cell over the course of 10 hours, which shows no one entered or exited his cell the night he killed himself. While most of the world shrugged this off as old news, it is not an overstatement to say the MAGA world erupted.

[montage of backlash]

Lies and all the heinous cruelty in the world at the hands of Trump is one thing, but denying the existence of an Epstein client list? Well that’s a bridge too far! Today, we’re talking about what the fuck is going on here and delving into the more important discussion about what this MAGA-world controversy reveals about Trump and the cult of MAGA.

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Okay, brief refresher on Jeffrey Epstein, he was an incredibly rich high school drop out who lied his way into becoming a finance bro, befriended some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world including, notably, his good friend of many years Donald J Trump, and, along with his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell who is currently serving 20 years in prison, sexually abused hundreds of girls, most of them minors, over the course of two decades. While incarcerated awaiting trial for his crimes, Jeffrey Epstein died in his cell on August 10, 2019, from an apparent suicide. Since then, conspiracy theorists have had a field day attempting to uncover “the truth” about his death. They have latched onto supposed “evidence” such as that the official autopsy revealed that the broken bones in his neck could have been caused by hanging OR by strangulation. Authorities were also unable, in the days after his death, to account for why his cellmate had been moved the day before he died, who found Epstein’s body, and where the two guards were who were supposed to be watching him. Weird it’s almost like our prisons aren’t properly run. Strange. But despite a photo of the bedsheet he allegedly used to end his life, an apparent suicide note, and subsequent TROVES of publicly released evidence, including timelines, hundreds of documents, and an internal investigation by the DOJ’s inspector general that concluded in a scathing 130-page report meticulously detailing all the ways the DOJ DID mishandle the case, especially in relation to his suicide while in custody, despite ALL of this, conspiracy theorists online maintain that the true cause of his death was murder because he had a black book, a client list, that he was holding on to for blackmail purposes, plus troves of at-home security footage he could whip out at a moment’s notice to control the richest and most powerful people on the planet who he had assisted with committing heinous crimes. They believe the client list is still out there, and that the deep state has kept it under wraps to protect the cabal of liberal elites operating a child sex ring while also I guess controlling the government and hurting the people by keeping secrets from us? I’m still unclear what the actual harm that MAGA cares about so deeply is, because they claim it’s protecting children but we all know they don’t give two shits about the actual wellbeing of children, or providing services to children who have been deeply traumatized, or to adults who were deeply traumatized as children, or taking any actions to protect children from some of the biggest culprits of child abuse, like the church, but instead use protecting children as an excuse to be openly hateful and bigoted, towards trans women in bathrooms, towards trans kids in sports, towards drag queens, towards librarians who carry books they don’t agree with. But I digress. The point is, the Epstein conspiracy is so pervasive because a large community of people, mostly chronically online haven’t touched grass since at least 2019, have been convinced that uncovering the Epstein client list is the key to unraveling the entire deep state. If these people could be pedos, they could also have created the Russian hoax in 2016 and stolen the election in 2020, it’s the final piece of the puzzle and once it’s revealed we can all step back and see the deep state liberal machine for all that it is.

And Trump and many others in his circle have fanned the flames of that conspiracy over the years, including Trump himself, JD, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino. And we’re not talking about comments made years ago. We’re talking about comments made LAST YEAR and, in some cases, comments made a couple MONTHS ago. Specifically, back in February in what amounted to nothing more than a publicity stunt, a number of right wing influencers went to the white house and received their own binders with a cover titled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1”. The binders contained copies of documents that had already been previously made public. That was less than 5 months ago. That same month, Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared on Fox News and when asked specifically about the Epstein client list, confirmed that she had a copy of it on her desk that she was actively reviewing. [insert clip] This week both Bondi and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt walked back the statement, claiming that Pam just meant she had various files relating to Epstein generally on her desk she was going to review. Because what was fun about the Epstein conspiracy theory is that it was mainly lobbed against Democrats like Hilary Clinton, and it helped Trump and his cronies keep the MAGA base riled up and focused on “rooting out” the deep state, convinced that Trump was definitely going to drain the swamp this time. The lack of information on Epstein’s death, the lack of a clear list of who participated in his crimes with him, that is the kind of shit that conspiracy theorists really grasp onto. When something feels unfinished, and when there are conflicting pieces of evidence that may indicate something is amiss, that’s what gets the people going. That’s why the murder of JonBenet Ramsey is still deeply discussed across the internet and JonBenet continues to be a household name despite the fact that she died literally 30 years ago and that unfortunately thousands of little girls have been murdered since then. So remaining relevant by getting his followers to continue talking about Epstein and the greater liberal cabal conspiracy served Trump well. Until it didn’t. Until someone with enough attention on him pointed out the thing that weirdly a lot of Trump supporting Epstein conspiracy theorists are willing to overlook: the fact that Trump had a long friendship with Epstein. During the lovers spat between Elon and Trump in June, Elon tweeted quote “Time to drop the really big bomb: Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.” Petty. Catty. You love to see it. Elon doubled down saying “Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.” and “I will apologize profusely as soon as there is a full dump of the Epstein files.” Does Elon know something we all don’t know? Probably not. More likely he was pissed about the Big Beautiful Bill moving forward and threatening the bottom line on his electric vehicle projects, had been screaming about it and wanted more attention, and knew that calling forth the Epstein freaks was a great way to get the attention he was craving. He later apologized for “going too far” only to double down this past weekend, demanding Trump “just release the files as promised.”

But when the richest man on earth accuses you of being a member of a child trafficking ring, one that your ardent followers feel incredibly passionate about, that’s gonna get your attention. So I have no doubt that Trump threw a fit and demanded that something be released to confirm that he is not on any Epstein list. And because he has selected people for this second administration for their specific inability to stand up to him, they all caved on their long-held conspiracy theories, releasing this memo last week to confirm there is no client list, there is no conspiracy and cover up, move on and forget about it. Trump has made it clear he is annoyed with the ongoing Epstein discussions, including in an unhinged rant on truth social that started with “What’s going on with my “boys” and, in some cases, “gals?” Which is just an insane opening line. He then goes on to say Pam Bondi is doing a fantastic job, people trying to pull down MAGA are being selfish, the Epstein files were written by Obama, Hillary, the Biden Administration oh and Comey and Brennan for good measure, the two he has been attacking from his own previous administration. Then he reminded everyone of the Russia hoax and that the 2020 election was rigged, begging people to stop wasting time and energy on Jeffrey Epstein. He’s begged reporters to stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein. And alas to no avail! MAGA influencers including Charlie Kirk and Laura Loomer have been giving the issue wall to wall coverage, and die hard MAGA supporters are questioning their support of the administration. This was apparently the final straw!!!

The feud is ongoing, with influencers like Loomer lamenting that the administration needs to just come clean on the Epstein question so that it doesn’t distract from larger issues like immigration ahead of the midterm elections and hurt the Republicans running for re-election. Given the fact that the conspiracy theories have swirled long after the death of Epstein and the prosecution of Ghislaine Maxwell, something tells me they aren’t going to be lulled into complacent acceptance about this issue the way they are about issues like human rights abuses and abductions of immigrants, a woman’s decaying corpse being used as a forced baby incubator, or any number of other atrocities actually being committed by the Trump regime.

But at first I didn’t even want to make an episode about this latest Epstein controversy because it feels like a big distraction from the other horrific shit that is happening in this country. As I looked into it, though, this felt like an important moment to take a step back and discuss what this right wing obsession with this particular conspiracy theory reveals about MAGA as a whole.

Maga leadership has exploited the difficulty of proving something doesn’t exist–they built the entire 2020 stolen election conspiracy off the fact that it is really hard to prove a negative–how do you show that something did not happen? There is never going to be a smoking gun proving no election fraud happened, and it’s easy to poke holes in a report that says “we found no evidence of fraud.” But now MAGA leadership has to contend with that difficulty, how do you prove that something doesn’t exist? That a client list doesn’t exist? That a conspiracy to murder Epstein to cover up what he knows didn’t happen? MAGA leadership also has to contend with the consequences of years of egging conspiracy theorists on, across the internet, which they have done with gleeful abandon for over a decade. Conspiracy theories keep people engaged, it grabs their attention, it exploits their confirmation biases, and it has allowed Trump, up until now, to command more attention by playing off those conspiracies and positioning himself as the answer to the problem, the revealer of truth, the drainer of swamps. And in the eyes of his supporters, the Epstein issue is the ultimate test of Trump’s ability to drain said swamps and stop the deep state.

Epstein is an indictment of the liberal ruling class, of the deep state, like I said that client list and his murder are the keys to unraveling all of it, in the minds of Epstein conspiracy theorists. And these conspiracy theorists have been obsessed and furious about what they think is a major, global cover-up, for YEARS. All the while the ruling class literally steals their money out from under them in broad daylight. Another benefit of playing up major conspiracy theories is that it distracts from what’s actually happening, often without the need to cover anything up at all.

All major reputable analyses of the big beautiful bill that Trump just signed into law confirms that the bottom half of income earners in this country will likely be worse off because of the bill’s tax cuts and cuts to essential services like Medicaid and SNAP, while the richest people in the country benefit from continued tax cuts. At the same time, reports are coming in that Trump’s tariffs are successfully raising revenue by upwards of 3 billion dollars over the next decade, enough to offset the cost of that big beautiful bill. And so in broad daylight and before our very eyes, Trump has effectively minimized income taxes and established a broad sales tax, because every single economist with any credibility has confirmed that tariffs are paid for by US business and, ultimately, by consumers, because the cost of the increased tariffs get passed down to increased cost of goods. It is only the rich and powerful that benefit from a shift away from income taxes and towards sales taxes. To illustrate this, let’s take two people and compare. Let’s say person A makes $100,000 per year and person B makes $1 million per year. In a graduated income tax scheme, person B is going to pay more in taxes. Under the tax brackets that Trump initiated in his first term and that the big beautiful bill made permanent, the millionaire is paying 37% tax on everything they earn over $600,000. If Trump hadn’t lowered the tax brackets, that would have been closer to 40%. Up until 1980 that would have been a 70% tax but thanks to the tax cuts that Ronald Reagan kicked off in the 80s, the richest people in America have seen drastic cuts to how much they pay in taxes over the last 50 years, from 70% to 37% in the highest bracket. Meanwhile the bottom tax bracket has seen a change from 14% in 1980 to 10% today, a total of 4% less in taxes. Compared to a 33% cut to the highest tax bracket.

But okay back to present day. Our millionaire is paying 37% tax on everything over $600,000, but when you balance it out across all the income taxes they pay across the brackets, they have an effective tax rate of around 33%. Person A who makes $100k per year pays an effective tax rate of 13%. At the end of the year, after taxes, Person A takes home $87,000, and Person B takes home $670,000. So even though Person B is paying much more in taxes, some 330,000 per year, they still have $670,000 every year. More than enough to live incredibly comfortably. I’ve seen many people whining in my comments section that it’s not fair that someone should have to pay so much into taxes, to which I say isn’t it unfair that some people get to make a million dollars while others can’t afford to feed or house themselves? That capitalism is predicated on inequality, requires inequality to survive? That someone making a million dollars a year is likely doing so by exploiting the labor of others–by taking the profits their labor has earned and only giving them a tiny fraction? Like let’s at least pretend to try to exercise our critical thinking skills to go beyond the numbers. Person B did not work 10 times harder than Person A over the course of a year yet they earned 10 times more. Okay I don’t think “fairness” is the argument you think it is here.

And it’s important to dissect the fairness argument because that is the precise argument used to justify getting rid of income taxes in favor of sales tax. It’s a flat rate across the board, it’s fair for everyone! Again for those of you struggling with the critical thinking, tariffs are effectively a sales tax because it has been studied and proven time and time again that the cost of increased tariffs gets passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices, always. The CEO isn’t taking a pay cut to make up for lost profits due to tariffs, ya know? The consumer is paying. So, for the sake of simplicity, if everything across the board becomes 10% more expensive because of tariffs, or a blanket sales tax, then both person A and person B are paying 10% more on the things they’re buying. And sure perhaps our millionaire is spending more money and therefore paying more sales tax because a new $80,000 car is going to carry an additional $8000 in taxes in this made up scenario. But again I know it’s hard but I’m going to ask you to stretch your critical thinking skills again. Because when you look at the basics to live, you cannot conscionably argue that a blanket sales tax is fair. Because if Person A who earns $100,000 is paying 10% more for groceries each month, say they usually spend $500 and now they’re spending $550, that $50 extra dollars each month, or $600 per year, is a significantly larger portion of their overall take home pay than an extra 10% on groceries for someone who makes $1,000,000 per year. When the basics for sustaining life, like food, become more expensive, it is only the poorest people who suffer from that, while higher earners literally don’t notice. “It’s one banana michael how much could it cost $10” is funny because it’s true. The top 1% don’t typically even do their own grocery shopping, let alone notice when the price of eggs goes from $3 to $5. And the money the highest earners are saving on taxes is going straight into the stock market, where it will grow and they will continue to accumulate wealth off the backs of workers who can’t afford food. And so what Trump and his acolytes in Congress have done, in broad daylight, right in front of our eyes, no conspiracy theories needed, is expand tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans in the Big Beautiful Bill while slapping extra costs on goods across the board through universal tariffs, further entrenching already unconscionable income inequality and all solely for the benefit of the wealthiest people in America, most of whom you’ve never heard of who own companies you’ve never heard of and who get to spend money on lobbyists and super PACs that you’ll never know about, that’s it that’s the fucking conspiracy. And now JD Vance is involved in a lawsuit headed for the Supreme Court next term that is requesting even FEWER restrictions on campaign financing, opening the doors ever wider for the wealthiest people to exercise complete control over our politicians and our elections. That’s it!! THAT’S THE CONSPIRACY.

But instead of using their time and energy to go down rabbit holes about horrific abuses of power that actually exist, the MAGA world has spent over half a decade fanning the flames of the unknown aspects of the heinous crimes of one man, convinced that they are on the verge of discovering the key that will finally uncover the sex trafficking cabal of liberal elites that will fully unravel the deep state and be the ultimate own the libs moment in all of history. And it is this deep paranoia, either caused by becoming part of the MAGA cult or perhaps a pre-condition of being attracted to the MAGA cult, perhaps a bit of both, that has Trump followers so desperate for some person they can believe will save them from impending doom at all sides that they’re willing to latch on to Trump, ignore every misdeed he’s ever done, every lie he’s ever told, in the hopes that he will carry them into freedom from the deep state interfering in their ability to live their lives. And they are so self serving and so paranoid that abducting people off the street is fine, so long as you say they were criminals, putting children in cages is fine, so long as you say their parents were criminals and they were probably going to become criminals, supporting a genocide in Gaza is fine, so long as you say they are terrorists, starting trade wars is fine, so long as you say that it will bring back jobs. They have no interest in unpacking any of that, going down a rabbit hole to learn what a tariff actually is, sifting through the hundreds of names of people in ICE detention and confirming whether they actually have criminal records, whether or not they actually used legal pathways to enter here. No no, we’ll take your word on that. Because it confirms our worldview that everyone is out to get us, nothing is safe, and no one can be trusted. But though Trump has capitalized on conspiracy theorists and paranoia about things that cannot be proven, like the stolen 2020 election, to prop himself up and incite his followers into not only voting but literally attempting a coup, it was bound to eventually come back and bite him in the ass. Because now he and his people are contradicting the deep state conspiracy theories that fit into his followers' world view. And even if they are telling the truth, that there is no Epstein list, that there was no murder and subsequent cover up, it doesn’t matter. The truth doesn’t matter if it doesn’t reinforce a specific worldview. And it is fucking rich to watch it unfold for a man that has achieved his power using the same premise: that the truth doesn’t matter. Usually he’s able to lie away any fact checking, but when facts themselves become debatable, it’s harder to convince the people that there’s nothing to see here.

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And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from last week about how ICE agents are about to be everywhere!

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