We may be witnessing Donald Trump’s downfall.
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For most of the US president’s critics, the Jeffrey Epstein saga that has dominated the domestic news cycle for the past week or so seems like a gift that keeps on giving. Many of Trump’s supporters – who had lapped up the right-wing media ecosystem’s insistence that America’s “deep state” was hiding evidence of a paedophilia ring orchestrated by the billionaire financier – turned on their leader. They demanded a full accounting of Epstein’s alleged “client list” and lurid activities.
With a farcical nothing-to-see-here defence that was camera-ready for juxtaposition against his earlier comments, Trump turned this anger right back against the “Make America Great Again” (Maga) furious.
“Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!” Trump wrote on social media, in an unforced error that may trigger his downfall.
Trump later authorised the Justice Department to seek the release of grand jury testimony from the prosecution of Epstein. How much the episode will drag Trump’s declining approval rating lower is anyone’s guess. We may never know how involved he was in Epstein’s underworld; the US leader has a reptilian survival instinct that has only grown stronger since his first administration. Without evidence proving that he was engaged in illegal behaviour involving minors, he will not be deterred from his apparent mission to turn every branch of his government into weapons aimed at anyone who has ever crossed him.
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Some in his party may be happier about the scandal than they are letting on, at least those who understand the extent of the harm that they are doing outside the orbit of criminal billionaires. The scandal is a monumental distraction from what Americans should be railing against, and what threatens the entire Republican Party.