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.
That’s exactly the point, but I think you forgot the conclusion. Many talk show hosts and voters actually did believe the conspiracy was real. Then the natural timing for releasing all of the information on Epstein is a couple of months after the president takes power, which brings us to where we are today. Claims were made, promises were made, and people are waiting for that information to be properly published.
I think this is one of those interesting issues because Trump lies all the time but many of his lies have to do with things that are slightly obscure from 6 years ago, that if you weren’t paying attention or you didn’t go back and look at the history books or the video, you could be forgiven if you forgot. He might say some law was passed by Obama but actually he’s the one who signed it, for example, but if you didn’t know much about that law in the first place, it’s not going to be fresh in your brain that he’s lying to you. But the Epstein scandal, that talk continued until a few months ago, and it’s very easy to understand what the claims are and how a transparent investigation would occur.