The Epstein Files have turned Washington against Trump
Eight hours before Congress voted for a bill to release the Epstein files, Congresswoman Majorie Taylor Greene kept nodding her head. It was a drab, cold morning. She was stood to the side at a press conference outside the Capitol where Epstein’s victims were vaguely lamenting American justice. “This is not a hoax,” one woman said. Nod. Another said she was a Republican, like Greene, “but [Trump’s] behaviour on this issue has been an embarrassment”. Regretful nod. Congressman Thomas Massie predicted the party leadership would let the bill pass because they wanted “to save face”. Pensive nod. “It’s true,” Greene whispered with a wistful smile.
Majorie Taylor Greene is living a new truth. She bounced into celebrity as a hollering defender of Donald Trump. Her belief in putting America First was once inseparable from Trump’s idea of what Make America Great Again meant. The two are now becoming distinct camps on the right. Trump’s brand of Maga is crashing into the America First instincts of his base. His adventures abroad don’t sit well with those who want America to turn its attention inward. His lavish parties have made him look out of touch as inflation spikes. But no issue has outed Trump as a conniving member of the elite – the very group he was first elected to vanquish almost a decade ago – than the Epstein scandal. Greene has called for the files to be released and Trump has banished his old ally as a “traitor”. Hence the nods.
But she has found some new allies. Beside her at the press conference was Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna, and the Republican Thomas Massie. The two men have made a habit of working together. They co-sponsored a bill to force Trump to get Congressional approval before he bombed Iran. They have had more success sponsoring the bill to release the files.
The thread tying these three seemingly disparate politicians together is their puckish independence from party leadership. Khanna was an early Bernie Sanders backer, and has now called for his party’s Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, to stand down for throwing in the towel on the shutdown. Massie has long weathered threats of primary challenges from the president in his quixotic quest to cut the self-aggrandising federal budget.
That this bill has passed through Congress marks a victory for this new generation of anti-establishment politicians. The Epstein saga is about a moneyed elite – the “Epstein class”, in Khanna’s well-attuned phrase for – which has gorged itself on the power afforded by insider status. The files released so far are full of Epstein’s friends sending him grammarless petitions, last night’s gossip from Manhattan cocktail parties and self-satisfied innuendo. Epstein would reply with nonchalant one-liners finished off with a creepy smiley face. You will find many liberals, such as former Harvard President Larry Summers, in these files.
Once the vote passed in the House of Representatives, some Democrats looked up to Epstein’s victims in the public gallery and arched their fingers into the shape of a heart. It felt like an insipid exhibition of social media sentimentality. Indeed, most of the party has opportunistically jumped on the Epstein bandwagon in recent months. Where was the clamour for transparency when Joe Biden was in office?
Treat yourself or a friend this Christmas to a New Statesman subscription from £1 per month
Though there were some Democratic moves for accountability during Trump’s first term, the real pressure this time round has come from a Maga base long obsessed with conspiracy theories about paedophiles. The difference now is that those theories have, to a small degree, for there is no current evidence of a so-called paedophile ring, collided with reality.
This is why the vote is so crucial in the story of Trump’s once-omnipotent presidency. Part of his base is angry at his failure to live up to the expectation that he would unlock the state vault. That pressure has led to Congress regaining a semblance of independence from the White House. And once dissent begins to fester, it’s hard to enforce discipline.
In the chamber that afternoon, Massie heralded the vote as the triumph of “justice” over “politics”. Khanna hit similar notes. “We grew up, we went to barbecue, we went to Little League games. We went to church or temple. We didn’t fly around in private jets and go to a rape island. We didn’t buy off politicians and tell them to keep quiet. We didn’t think that it was normal to abuse or rape young girls,” Khanna said. “These rich, greedy men abused American values. They abused what’s sacred about this country.”
Khanna is reading the mood of the country well. For a nation which feels cheated of the full facts on everything from JFK’s assassination to the moon landing, here was a chance to force the government to release what it knows. For four months, the President has tried to swat away this bill. But the pressure became too much. He relented after it became clear that Greene and her fellow Republican rebels would ignore his pleas to block the legislation. Trump has said he will sign the bill, setting up a situation where the Department of Justice, under Trump’s ever-present guidance, will probably try to redact as many of the files as possible. Cue further outrage.
The funny thing for a man so conscious of how he is perceived is that, as Congress was slipping from his grasp, Trump was hosting the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in the Oval Office. He didn’t want to talk about Epstein. He was busy in his giddy appreciation for the Saudi leader. He kept grabbing his hand and arm in acclamation. Trump was a lot more effusive than when Keir Starmer visited the White House. He wanted to talk about how MBS must come back once the ballroom was finished. The President keeps treating the White House like a franchise of Trump Hotel. All the while, a mob is slowly gathering at the gates.
[Further reading: Is Trump losing interest in American politics?]
Content from our partners
Related
