CNN Reporter Marvels at Trump Giving His ‘Most Ardent Supporters’ a ‘Slap in the Face’
CNN correspondent Kristen Holmes marveled at President Donald Trump’s attacks on his own supporters on Tuesday after the president doubled down on condemning those in his base still focused on the so-called “Epstein Files” during a White House Q&A on Wednesday.
Holmes joined anchor Dana Bash to discuss Trump’s Wednesday statements, which she called a “slap in the face to some of his most ardent supporters.”
“Yeah, Dana, I mean, you took the words right out of my mouth,” Holmes said after Bash too expressed shock at Trump jabbing his MAGA base.
“Just because President Trump himself wasn’t the biggest proponent or perpetuator of these Epstein conspiracy theories, he did put three of the most vocal people who had said that they wanted to release this list into top jobs within his administration—of course, being Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, and FBI Director Kash Patel. Now you see him completely backing away from this and also really doing it with a slap in the face to some of his most ardent supporters, people who have been waiting for the release of this list,” Holmes continued, adding:
I just want to read you what he posted this morning because this is what really set it off. You can see how much angrier he’s getting by the minute over this Epstein coverage. He said, “My past supporters have bought into this quote bullshit hit hook, line, and sinker. They haven’t learned their lesson and probably never will, even after being conned by the lunatic left for eight long years. Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats’ work. Don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success because I don’t want their support anymore. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Okay. A couple of things to note here. This isn’t just some fringe part of his base. There is a huge part of this base that believes that there are Epstein files that need to be released. We saw that when Charlie Kirk held his seminar over the weekend in Florida and there were thousands upon thousands of people there cheering to release the files, cheering for Dan Bongino. You are seeing a real break here in the MAGA movement. Now the question is, as you said, do they fall in line eventually? And we just simply don’t know the answer to that right now.
But I just want to read you a couple of the things he said in that meeting, because some of these are just so deeply insulting to the people who put him in office. He said at one point that foolish Republicans have fallen into the net of this Democratic, as he called it, Epstein hoax. He said, “At one time I have lost a lot of faith in certain people” who he said had pushed the Epstein, quote, hoax—this is what he’s calling it. He said Republicans got duped by Democrats at one point and he said stupid Republicans and stupid people are focused on this. He also noted that if there was anything credible left to release that the attorney general should release it, any kind of documents, and he praised Pam Bondi’s handling of all of this.
But if you listen to those words there and you go back and you watch the tape of who exactly it was who was helping propel this messaging around Epstein—those are the people who got him elected, Dana. Those are people who were out there every day on their podcasts, on various different shows, reaching out to parts of the country that were usually untapped for voters. Those are those people. And they reached those people and they got them out to the polls and they had an unprecedented win with certain voting blocks. And now you hear President Trump saying that these are stupid people who were duped. And that is clearly not going to sit well, despite where this ends, because obviously we can’t, again, predict where this goes, but that is not the message that these people who helped him get elected want to hear.
“He’s telling off his own supporters, just to put it bluntly. That is what he is doing,” Bash agreed.
Watch the full clip above.
