Is this the beginning of the end for Trump and MAGA?

Despite being named in newly released emails from the convicted paedophile, Trump insists he has no case to answer – and that is starting to fracture his base, says Sean O’Grady

What do the latest releases from the Epstein files tell us about Donald Trump?

The text of one email, as released, sent in April 2011 by Jeffrey Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell, alleges: “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump. [Name redacted] spent hours at my house with him”. The name, according to the White House, is Virginia Giuffre Roberts, who of course can no longer speak for herself.

In another, Epstein alleges that “of course [Trump] knew about the girls”, perhaps meaning those procured by Epstein and/or Maxwell for sexual purposes – but with no great sense of direct and detailed knowledge.

The White House says: “These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.” On a narrow reading, in that the texts as presented aren’t a “smoking gun”, that’s probably correct. They don’t, however, “prove” Trump did nothing wrong at all, ever, because we don’t know what the rest of the relevant evidence, if any, looks like.

The White House says Epstein’s emails about the president ‘prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong’ (Getty)

But that’s the problem for the president of the United States. These are just three more emails (ie relating to Trump) and we know that there are thousands more files – emails, images, documents of all kinds – that are not yet in the public domain and which might well implicate all sorts of people in all sorts of ways. Including Donald J Trump.

So far as Maga is concerned – or rather a certain section of the “Make America Great Again” Trumpian movement – the answer to the question “What do the latest releases from the Epstein files tell us about Donald Trump?” is “not enough”. According to both current and former allies from the Maga wing, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson and even Steve Bannon, the president should release all of the files.

Crucially, four Republican members of Congress – Greene, plus representatives Thomas Massie, Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert (the gun rights activist who has occasionally adhered to the QAnon conspiracy theory and campaigned for a fourth term in the US House by pledging to pursue “the truth about UFOs”) have signed a petition and will vote with Democrats on a vote to release all of the files.

This is further clear evidence that Trump’s hold on his party – and it’s a highly proprietorial affair – is weakening, and the pressure on him from within his fan base to release the files will grow.

So, too, will the conspiracy theories that Trump did so much to encourage when he campaigned on a pledge to throw all the stuff into the public domain, supposedly because it contained explosive revelations about top Democrats.

He has excited people’s curiosity. Yet now his own people are asking aloud what it is that he, Trump, has to hide, and why he is reneging on a key promise.

Maga, like nature, abhors a vacuum, and into the void left by the unpublished Epstein stuff will flood the wildest of conspiracies. Like Area 51, the assassination of JFK, the moon landings, the VIP “Pizzagate” paedophile ring supposedly run out of a Washington pizza parlour, QAnon and the shootings of Trump and of Charlie Kirk, the wilder the claim, the more traffic it will generate online.

Indeed, there are already some rich ones circulating about Epstein’s death, or “suicide” if you prefer, and Maxwell’s interviews with the justice department and her prospective presidential pardon. The reality of whatever Trump himself might have got up to, however serious – and he denies any such notions – will almost certainly be tamer than what the collective imagination of Maga will come up with.

Trump is now in a painful dilemma, and of his own making. He could very easily stonewall the whole process. Even if the Senate, maybe after the mid-term elections in November next year, agrees that the files should be released, Trump could still veto it. History tells us that a Supreme Court decision could force the issue, as famously happened in 1973 when the justices dismissed “executive privilege” and forced Richard Nixon to hand the Watergate tape recordings over to Congress.

But this Supreme Court has pre-emptively related and strengthened “executive privilege” and granted Trump immunity so far as his official duties are concerned. On the face of it, Trump can count on them to endorse his veto. Unless a Democratic Congress and president are elected in 2028 and decide to publish (as Joe Biden did not), the mysteries will remain and fester.

So it’s not that simple, even in Trump’s America. Public opinion matters, and so does Maga. The movement, by nature disputatious and permanently paranoid, is fracturing on the issue, even if American voters have more pressing problems on their minds.

As Trump approaches an involuntary retirement (whatever he says, he cannot run for a third term), the Republican Party itself will find itself increasingly debilitated by the ghost of Epstein and Trump’s fall from grace. One thing is now very apparent: it is not a “Democrat hoax” that can be safely ignored. Many of Trump’s disciples will feel that their idol has feet of clay and is lying to them (even if he hasn’t), and the wrath of a cult betrayed will be mighty indeed. As Trump might say, the Maga anger towards him will be like nothing anyone’s ever seen before. Not even close.