Ever since the Epstein files became prominent, MAGA’s response, echoing Trump’s, has been “It’s all a hoax. Fake news.” That wall is starting to crack.
With the release of 3 million out of a total of 6 million pages of documents, MAGA cultists must be realizing that the hoaxsters wouldn’t print 6 million fake pages. Furthermore, why would they then go and redact most of the fake stories they had invented? Seeing the redacted pages on TV forces the MAGA cultists to admit that maybe they are real.
Moreover, more and more CEOs, royalty, celebrities, and politicians around the world are resigning because their names have been linked to Epstein. They wouldn’t be resigning if it was all a hoax, would they?
I have seen a few recent Facebook posts from MAGA cultists, who are now saying, “Yes, the files are real and some famous people were doing some really bad things. But our hero Trump would never do anything like that.” Pam Bondi declared, under oath, that there is no credible evidence that Trump committed any crimes.
At her infamous hearing, she was shown dozens of testimonies from victims implicating Trump himself. The DOJ response to these horrific accusations is that the FBI (Patel) or the DOJ (Bondi herself) had received the complaints and judged that they were of no merit. Therefore, they do not constitute credible evidence against Trump.
Every article I read on this subject contains an obligatory disclaimer about Trump, something hilarious like “Jane Doe reported to the FBI that Trump had raped her three times, but this does not constitute any suggestion that Trump did anything wrong.” Without that ridiculous disclaimer, Trump would sue the writers of the article.
That seems to be MAGA’s fall-back position: that Trump was friends with a lot of those evil people, including Epstein, but never did anything wrong himself. Those flight manifests from Epstein’s private plane may be real, but they don’t prove that Trump did anything wrong.
MAGA cultists may admit that Epstein and Trump threw parties,
but Trump did nothing illegal there.
I think it was clever of DOJ to release 38,000 mentions of Trump in the files – the least damaging ones they could find. They couldn’t possibly be believed if they redacted ALL mentions of Trump. MAGA can now say, “Nothing to see here.” However, it’s now widely accepted that his name appears over a million times, so that the other 962,000 have been redacted. Those must be the really juicy ones.
It will be hard to dislodge the MAGA cultists from their latest fall-back position. What could force them to change their minds?
The next big step may be the release of unredacted files by European governments. Not only will Trump’s most horrible misdeeds come to light, but there will be corroborating testimonies supporting these stories that will cross-check. How will MAGA react to that?
Another development will be that some of the guilty villains will be perhaps arrested, or if not, at least forced to testify. These important people will carry far more credibility than the women victims, especially if their testimony supports that of the victims. They may be important people whom MAGA can believe.
For example, the former Prince Andrew has already been identified and has lost heavily. What more would he have to lose by testifying against Trump or others? And how about Howard Lutnick, whose story about just visiting Epstein’s island for lunch with his family has absolutely no credibility? If he becomes too much of a laughingstock or liability, he may be forced out and might then testify against Trump and other cabinet members.
I think that the final position of the MAGA cultists will be, “Well, maybe Trump did some bad things when he was younger, but he’s straightened out after realizing that America is broken, and he is doing his best to fix the country, as only he can.”