French: MAGA’s internal war over Epstein offers a peek into its future collapse

Last week President Donald Trump s Department of Justice delivered a blow to one of the foundational beliefs of the MAGA movement one that helped carry him back to the White House In an unsigned memorandum the department declared that there was no evidence that Jeffrey Epstein the disgraced deceased convicted sexual predator maintained a client list or that he blackmailed prominent individuals for various misdeeds The memorandum also declared that Epstein committed suicide Majority Americans saw this news if they saw it at all and barely raised an eyebrow The Epstein story was part of the past he died in But it detonated like a bomb in the MAGA universe Pro-Trump influencers with vast audiences couldn t believe what they were reading Related Articles MAGA are furious over Epstein occurrence What to know FBI director Dan Bongino reportedly eyeing resignation As MAGA fumes about Epstein Trump defends AG Bondi Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide and there s no client list Justice Department says Mystery surrounds the Jeffrey Epstein files after Bondi declares tens of thousands of videos After all they d been stated for years that there was an Epstein client list Pam Bondi Trump s attorney general reported Fox News in February that the client list was sitting on my desk right now to review She later claimed that she was referring to the Epstein occurrence file not a specific client list In October JD Vance then a candidate for vice president stated Seriously we need to release the Epstein list That is an vital thing Before he was Trump s director of the FBI Kash Patel reported Glenn Beck a right-wing radio host that the FBI had Epstein s black book and that it was under direct control of the director of the FBI In Patel advised Benny Johnson a MAGA podcaster that members of Congress should put on your big-boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are In September Dan Bongino now the deputy director of the FBI stated his listeners Folks the Epstein client list is a huge deal that would rock the Democrat Party These quotations are a small fraction of the right-wing discourse about Epstein During the Trump era references to Epstein have been ubiquitous in MAGA circles And the comment Epstein didn t kill himself was so popular that it leaked out into the wider American custom Rooted deeply darkly The Epstein story mattered so much in MAGA circles because it was a key element in their indictment of America s so-called ruling class Trump s appeal to the Republican base isn t just rooted in his supporters extraordinary affection for the man it s also rooted in their almost indescribably dark view of the American leadership Why are they so keen to burn it all down Well if you believe your governing body is populated by people so depraved that they d participate in and cover up the systematic sexual abuse of children then you wouldn t just want them out of office you d want them prosecuted imprisoned and maybe even executed And you d want all the power you d need to make that happen And if you believe that the ruling elites would abuse children then they d certainly be the kind of people who d gin up a Russia hoax or try to steal an polling in People who are that terrible are capable of anything And if you wonder why MAGA turned on the FBI and the Department of Justice well it s not just about the Russia review or the FBI search of Trump s home in Mar-a-Lago MAGA America also assumed the FBI was protecting pedophiles to preserve the status quo On the right the Epstein story became the thinking man s version of the QAnon conspiracy theory the idea that American society was led by a gang of cannibalistic pedophiles Whereas QAnon was rooted in the imaginary revelations of a shadowy figure who claimed Q protection clearance at least the Epstein story was rooted in selected very grim very real facts Epstein was a monstrous and grotesque sexual predator Along with his convicted confederate Ghislaine Maxwell he systematically groomed and sexually abused and enabled the sexual abuse of hundreds and hundreds of young women and girls He was also one of the bulk well-connected people in the world A host of powerful people attended his parties and rode on his jet Oddly enough considering MAGA s obsession with Epstein one of his largest part powerful friends was Trump They flew together they partied together and in Trump stated New York magazine I ve known Jeff for years Terrific guy But Trump also made this ominous observation It is even commented that he likes beautiful women as much as I do and multiple of them are on the younger side After Maxwell s arrest Trump stated I haven t really been following it too much I just wish her well frankly This was the man that MAGA trusted to fully expose Epstein and all his misdeeds MAGA is mad Make no mistake MAGA is very angry After the Department of Justice circulated its memo MAGA influencers exploded Tucker Carlson was furious The whole thing that this tape shows that he didn t kill himself is like a joke but worse than that it s a joke that we all get he declared I feel like we re at a dangerous point now Alex Jones declared the Trump administration was now part of the cover-up On the social platform X Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote RELEASE THE EPSTEIN CLIENT LIST This moment is major for another reason It allows us to peer into the future of MAGA and see its possible crackup After Trump is gone this movement could tear itself apart Its very existence is premised on a series of fantastical assertions about America and American regime This means that MAGA influencers are constantly deceiving themselves one another and the right-wing populace It s an ecosystem that operates in a constant state of emergency and grievance and MAGA supporters are so convinced that the worst attainable stories are real that they ll turn on anyone not named Donald Trump who dares to tell them the truth or who deviates in the slightest bit from the stories they tell themselves Once Trump leaves office there will be no one left to end the internal arguments and direct everyone to fall in line If the Democrats have a challenge of too multiple purity tests Republicans will soon experience the consequences of putting together a coalition that may have too scarce In red America you can believe anything so long as you assistance Trump Remove that man and only the grievances remain and a large number of of MAGA s grievances are against other Republicans The GOP coalition contains pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine factions internationalists and isolationists normie Republicans and wild conspiracy theorists Constant conflict society Republican ideological diversity is its temporary strength It could build a tent big enough to win very close to a majority of the popular vote But by pulling a critical mass of disgruntled Americans into one party Republicans have created a way of life of constant conflict and those conflicts are often rooted in thoroughly false beliefs about American life Those internal conflicts are fully underway CNN s Kaitlan Collins stated Friday that it s hard to overstate the infighting in MAGA over the Epstein incident Also on Friday Axios communicated that Bongino took the day off work after clashing with Bondi at the White House and CNN is reporting that he s considering resigning from the FBI In fact we can see a consensus hardening against Bondi She s the culprit She s the one who pulled the bait and switch She advised us that the list was on her desk Trump himself isn t immune from attack As part of his divorce from the MAGA movement Elon Musk has claimed that Trump and his longtime ally Steve Bannon are in the Epstein files How Musk posted Tuesday can people be expected to have faith in Trump if he won t release the Epstein files The Epstein incident remains a bit of a black box to largest part Americans We still don t know all the details of Epstein s relationships with the rich and powerful and in the absence of knowledge wild accusations spread unhindered by hard facts This much we do know Various of MAGA s largest part trusted voices including Patel Bondi Bongino and Trump himself are suddenly telling their movement Move along there s nothing to see here But MAGA does not want to hear what they have to say David French is a New York Times columnist