Epstein saga unties MAGA from the mast

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Sing to me of the man, says MAGA

Approached in a charitable mood, it’s easy to see the appeal of the far-right’s favored conspiracy theories.

“Why doesn’t pop culture speak to my values?” they ask. “Why do I work so hard and have so little?” These men who walk the Earth didn’t know who to blame, but they had their suspicions.

In an ultra-atomized and financialized world, where responsible parties are in short supply and intentionally hard to pin down, a pedophile cabal made up of the rich and powerful (Democrats) and their (Democratic) supporters in Hollywood provides a satisfying answer to troubling questions, a pretty solid “them” to define an “us” against. QAnon, with a messianic Trump at the center, gave form to chaos.

Trump’s winning coalition in 2024 was a ragtag bunch of conservative cranks, libertarian tax avoiders and outright white supremacists, rowing along on a seemingly endless campaign to return to the sunny Ithaca of 1950s Kenmore ads. The captain of the ship, who provided the boundless energy to push MAGA forward, wasn’t some wonk named Stephen. It was a Sun Belt retiree wearing a pileus made of tin foil.

While they did manage to get a Republican back to the White House, America is still not great. The odyssey of American conservatives continues. They’re stuck in the straits off Aeaea, the sweet, siren song of an elite sex trafficking ring at the center of all the world’s ills calling to them. And it’s getting harder to resist.

Trump and his campaign cooed about saving children and retribution, raining down righteous fury on the wrong kind of rich people, the ones with their fingerprints all over compromising videotapes and elementary school curricula. Trump is in office now, throwing out intriguing new statements about his history with Jeffrey Epstein every single day, adding on another verse to a song that’s already driven MAGA’s red-string brigade to wriggle loose of their ropes.

As Pete Buttigieg has noted in recent interviews with podcast hosts, drive-time radio shows and NPR, Trump’s Q-oriented base feels “insulted” by the about-face from Trump and Republicans in Congress. They’ve found that they weren’t necessarily dedicated to Trump, but to what he said he would do.

With Democrats becoming the loudest advocates for the release of the Epstein files, and the beeswax melting from the ears of even the hardest-rowing, red-blooded American oarsmen, Trump’s staunchest supporters are poised to dash the whole Republican project on the rocks.

What do you think? Can Trump get his die-hards to go one and all again? Has conservatism seen worse sights than this? Sound off in the comments.

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Before you go …

Trump and the GOP don’t care for health caregivers

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