It’s a political base problem few are willing to admit.
Republicans are imploding over Jeffrey Epstein, and the evidence is hard to miss. The panic among GOP lawmakers is unlike anything I’ve seen in a decade of reporting on Congress.
Republicans can’t keep their heads down and trust that the base will keep holding them up, because the Republican base is what’s causing the current panic.
Far-right lawmakers are anxiously trying to navigate around the Scylla of Trump and congressional leadership pushing them to hold off on the Epstein issue, and the Charybdis of the hot-headed multitudes who lifted them into office after getting them to promise to reveal every dark secret of the Epstein case.
In all previous instances, the agents of the ruling class were totally in control of the media landscape. Mainstream media has finally ceded enough to the internet, and the influencers they rely on to deliver a single message are all off their leashes, with fully half of them unwilling to get back in line.
I’ll concede that it’s probably still wishful thinking on my part, but the current situation is significantly different that what has happened before.