IT’S HARD TO imagine a worse moment for Donald Trump to be caught in the Epstein dragnet than at the tail end of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, with food benefits rattled, “affordability” on everyone’s minds, and his own voters starting to wonder if the guy in the red tie is actually on their side.
On the same day Trump finally signed a bill to reopen the government after 43 days of chaos, a coalition of House Democrats and Republicans dropped a tranche of Jeffrey Epstein emails that punches holes straight through the president’s carefully curated story about a distant, long-ago acquaintance, with Epstein alleging Trump “knew about the girls” and “spent hours at my house” with one of the victims.
While the messages don’t show criminal conduct by Trump, they landed at a moment when Americans are already furious with his handling of Epstein’s files, the shutdown, and the basic question of whether their government works for the powerful or for everyone else. Together, they form a pincer around a president who keeps promising transparency and law and order, then flinching the second those promises threaten him personally.
It’s funny that people still think his base is going to turn on him.
Latinos already turned. They were literally lied to during the election. The translations were not accurate.
A cult turning on its leader is not zero sum but instead manifested by the base becoming more devout and, as a cause, shrinking.
MAGA has gotten crazier not because they grip their beliefs more firmly, but because those with “looser” grips have fallen.
Having said that, his voter base has gotten larger and larger with each election. My rebuttal to this is that the vast majority of swing voters vote with the following logic: “Do I like how things are”
If yes, vote same party, otherwise vote opposition.
The early 2020s were better under Biden than they would have been under Trump, but they still generally sucked for first time home buyers, people beginning their career, etc.
I’m sure that they will turn against him, much like the face-eaten crowd, right up until the next election when they will miraculously forget and yet again vote GOP no matter what. Only Democrats vote against their politicians for perceived or real infractions.