Will the conspiracists cultivated by Trump turn on him over Epstein?

WASHINGTON - After years spent spreading spidery conspiracy theories for his own political gain, US President Donald Trump has found himself wrapped up in the stickiest one of them all.

For more than a week, the political movement he created has been convulsing with righteous fury over things he and his Attorney-General Pam Bondi have been saying and doing – or rather, not doing – as it relates to the

life and death of Jeffrey Epstein

.

Mr Trump keeps

commanding his supporters to move on

from their fixations over the disgraced financier and registered sex offender.

But many of his supporters simply cannot swallow the anti-climactic conclusion that the US Department of Justice put forth a week ago when it basically said there was nothing to see here, folks.

By the week’s end, a rabble of conspiracists who have been hand-fed for years by Mr Trump broke into open revolt against him.

The fallout is testing the power the President holds over his most loyal followers, the ones who have trusted him all along and who believed they would learn a whole lot more about the Epstein saga if they returned Mr Trump to office.

It is entirely too soon to know what the revolt will mean or if and when it might sputter out, but the nature of it was stunning to behold.

It was like a Mobius strip of paranoia and distrust: a political movement that galvanised and exploded around a conspiracy theory – lies about former US president Barack Obama’s birthplace were central to Mr Trump’s political rise – cannibalising itself over the mother of all modern conspiracy theories.

And, in a twist, Mr Trump’s usual playbook for getting himself out of trouble seemed not to be working this time – in fact, it was only making his predicament worse.

In a social media post on July 12, he tried to cast the blame for any unresolved Epstein mysteries on Mr Obama, Mrs Hillary Clinton and his predecessor Joe Biden.

But his base was not buying it.

“People are really upset at the outright dismissal of it,” said Ms Natalie Winters, a right-wing political correspondent and protege of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, with whom she co-hosts the War Room podcast.

“I have a good pulse on these people,” the 24-year-old said of Mr Trump’s base. “I have never seen such sustained wavering.”

Asked about the backlash on July 14, White House spokesman Harrison Fields did not comment on specifics, but said that Mr Trump was focused on “protecting civil rights, safeguarding communities, holding criminals accountable and defending victims”.

Still, there is a feeling among some long-time supporters of the President that their shared journey has reached the terra incognita.

“Trump’s persuasive power over his base, especially during his first term, was almost magical,” Mr Mike Cernovich, a prolific pro-Trump social media commentator, wrote in a post on social media platform X on July 13. “The reaction on Epstein should thus be startling to him. No one is buying it. No one is dropping it.”

Inside the White House, there is a kind of battle-hardened sangfroid among staff members, who see this outrage as just another controversy that will blow itself out like all the others.

One person close to Mr Trump conceded that even by July 13 the President had yet to fully grasp how deep and wide the discontent was because he does not spend much time on the internet, where the Epstein conspiracy-mongering plays out.

Despite his social media presence, Mr Trump is a 79-year-old man whose media diet consists primarily of cable news and print newspapers.

But by July 14, news networks like CNN were devoting much more airtime to the uproar.

This is not the first time his base has been upset with him. There was much disillusionment after he encouraged Americans to take Covid-19 vaccines, and there has been outcry over his hawkish foreign policy moves, such as when he ordered the US strike that killed Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, or, more recently,

dropped bombs on Iranian nuclear facilities

.

But the conjecture around Epstein’s crimes and death is a many-layered mania that can not really be compared to anything else.

The shadowy concepts that undergird the whole thing go to the “very foundation of Maga (Make America Great Again)”, as Ms Winters put it, because, in her view and the view of people like her, “it gets to the heart of who is in control of the country”.

She summed up the movement’s sense of betrayal this way: “I just think it’s frankly very grifty to have spent your entire career promoting, even if it weren’t the Epstein thing directly, but the idea that there is this deep state, the idea that there’s this unelected class of, you know, bankers, corporation, countries, intel agencies, blah, blah, blah.

“And then finally, you have the power to expose it, and either you’re not, because there’s nothing there, in which case it makes you a liar – and I don’t believe that – or you’re ineffective, or you’re compromised.”

This twisted tale has raised fundamental questions about the limits of Mr Trump’s abilities to control the conspiratorial forces he has plied in his pursuit of the presidency.

He sprang to power at a time of deep mistrust in the United States following two wars and a financial crisis, selling himself as the only one who could be trusted to tell the truth about a corrupt uniparty cabal that sold out the country.

One phrase he repeated constantly during that first run for president was “believe me”.

He said it about all sorts of situations and subjects. Believe me. Believe me. Believe me. He was the one who would expose the hidden hand squeezing them all.

But now that he is the one in control of the government, he is telling his supporters to move on from all of that. It has left many of them mystified.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” Ms Winters said when asked why she thought Mr Trump posted what he did on July 12. “It’s bizarre. I just don’t know.” NYTIMES