As President Donald Trump continues to find himself in the middle of an unprecedented uproar among his MAGA base over his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, he appears to be leaning into the strategy that has gotten him out of difficult positions so many times before: diversion.
In a matter of days, the president has threatened a stadium deal for the Washington Commanders if they don’t change their name back to the Redskins, suggested that Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff should go to prison, and filed a $20 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over a story related to his relationship with sex offender Mr. Epstein. His director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, released 230,000 pages of files on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. She also says she has turned over documents to the Department of Justice for criminal referral that show the Obama administration was part of a “treasonous conspiracy” to subvert the 2016 presidential election. The “Russia hoax” about foreign interference during that election was the “THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY!,” Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social, along with another post of an AI-generated video of former President Barack Obama getting arrested in the Oval Office.
At a news conference with the president of the Philippines on Tuesday, Mr. Trump was repeatedly asked about Mr. Epstein. He responded by pivoting to allegations against Mr. Obama and Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, saying “that’s the witch hunt you should be talking about.”
Why We Wrote This
As President Donald Trump tries to quell an uproar within his base over his handling of the Epstein files, he’s using a tactic – diversion – that has bailed him out of difficult spots before. But this time, he may be promising revelations he can’t or won’t deliver on.
But so far, nothing is sticking. The attention – both in Washington and among his strongest supporters – remains on the Epstein story. And instead of distracting from the issue, Mr. Trump may actually be following the same pattern that got him into the current Epstein debacle in the first place, by promising dramatic revelations on other issues he can’t or won’t deliver on.
Allison Bailey/NurPhoto/Reuters
“One of the reasons why so many people are upset about the Epstein case is because of the oversell,” said conservative commentator Ben Shapiro on his podcast Monday. “They’re upset because the thing they were led to believe about the Epstein case, by many of the same people who are currently in power, it turns out that thing may not have been justified based on the evidence. … All I’m saying is, don’t do that again.”
During the 2024 election, Mr. Trump campaigned on a promise to release revelatory documents on Mr. Epstein, the disgraced money manager and convicted sex offender who has been the subject of conspiracy theories since he died by suicide in 2019 while in jail on federal charges of sex trafficking of minors. And once in office, Mr. Trump directed some of his top administration officials to make the Epstein files, including a “client list” of powerful people involved in Mr. Epstein’s crimes, public, to the cheers of his supporters.
Since the Department of Justice released a two-page memo on July 7 stating that no client list exists, the president has urged his supporters to move on from Mr. Epstein. But they haven’t. And the pushback has been too loud for Washington to ignore.
House Speaker Mike Johnson canceled the last day of voting and dismissed the House for August recess early on Tuesday, to avoid a vote on a bipartisan measure that would call on the Department of Justice to release all of its Epstein-related material. Mr. Johnson said he was giving the Trump administration “the space” to handle the issue, but in punting to September, he prevented a difficult vote for his caucus that would have made them go on the record against the White House or against their constituents’ demand for more information.
Brian Seitchik, a national Republican strategist who worked on the 2016 and 2020 Trump campaigns, told the Monitor that the Epstein case is a “short-term distraction.” But Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who co-authored the measure and has since been the subject of the president’s attacks online, suggests the delay won’t work.
“Over the August recess, I think momentum will build for transparency,” Mr. Massie told reporters. “I don’t think this is going to go away.”
The White House has shown signs this week that they may agree with that assessment. Late last week, at the behest of Mr. Trump, the Department of Justice requested the unsealing of grand jury records in the case of Mr. Epstein and his convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. The judge responded Tuesday that he needs more information in order to do so.
On Tuesday morning, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Ms. Maxwell’s lawyer announced in an online back-and-forth on the platform X that they were discussing possible testimony from Ms. Maxwell. Hours later, the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee voted to subpoena Ms. Maxwell.
And while some of Mr. Trump’s supporters are frustrated with the president’s under-delivering on the Epstein case, others are exasperated by his focus on seemingly tangential issues.
“Why is that being brought back up?” asks Trump voter Heather Connors, regarding Russia and the 2016 election. Ms. Connors, who works in special education in Virginia Beach, Virginia, says, “Let’s just move on. I’m more worried about my electric bill.”
As the criticism continues, the only reprieve for Mr. Trump came over the weekend. On Friday, he sued The Wall Street Journal and its conservative media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, in a federal Miami court on two defamation counts for $10 billion apiece. In their court filing, the president’s team cited how quickly the Journal’s story about an alleged birthday letter to Mr. Epstein from Mr. Trump spread to millions of readers online. Conservative pundits and politicians who had previously been critical of Mr. Trump’s handling of the issue came to the president’s defense. Legal experts, however, say Mr. Trump’s case is weak.
“The [lawsuit] is a tactic to use to buy some time,” says Mitchel Sollenberger, a political science professor at the University of Michigan, Dearborn. “This is pretty much a modus operandi for Trump when it comes to his tactics for dealing with difficult stories. … He goes on the attack, and I think that’s what you’re seeing here.”
Another modus operandi for Mr. Trump is leaning on past grievances popular with his base when faced with a difficult political moment.
According to Mr. Trump and his allies, Democrats launched an investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 campaign in an effort to discredit Mr. Trump’s win – a theory they refer to as the “Russia hoax.” In her memo released on Friday, Ms. Gabbard claims to have evidence that Mr. Obama and his intelligence officials knew that Russia never altered vote tallies and then suppressed related internal communications confirming so. But these officials never claimed that Russia hacked election equipment. Former special counsel Robert Mueller and the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee, which was chaired by Mr. Trump’s now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio, both found that Russia interfered in the U.S. election seeking to help Mr. Trump win through social media and hacking Democratic Party emails.
If Mr. Obama or someone in his administration did something wrong, “then let’s charge them,” said Sean Spicer, a former press secretary during Mr. Trump’s first administration, on the video platform 2Way. “But I just think our side continues to get people spun up on crap and then doesn’t do anything.”
Monitor staff writer Caitlin Babcock contributed to this story.
