Trump Is Right — MAGA’s Civil War Over Epstein Is Exposing the GOP’s ‘Stupid’ Wing

Two things can be — and, as a matter of fact, are — true about the ongoing MAGA civil war over the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case.

ONE: It’s been a complete and utter disaster. For years, indeed, right up until last week, the men and women Donald Trump has appointed to the most senior positions at the Department of Justice fanned the flames of the most scandalous possible theories about Epstein, the gist of which was this: He was the organizer behind a sexual criminal enterprise in which many of the most powerful, famous people on Earth participated, and was murdered in jail to stop him from blabbing. Tantalizing, right?

Then, last Sunday, the DOJ handed a roughly one and one-quarter page memo over to Axios articulating the administration’s finding that Epstein killed himself in jail, that he had no incriminating “client list,” and that there was not enough evidence to suggest that he “blackmailed prominent individuals,” or begin an “investigation against uncharged third parties.”

“It is the determination of the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted,” concluded the memo.

That might have been fine, were it not for the administration’s promise of transparency, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s prior claim that she had Epstein’s client list sitting on her desk, and the untold man hours previously poured into stoking the conspiracy theories that many are now demanding be substantiated.

Because of these unique circumstances, the administration owes the public more. Either all of the material pertaining to the investigation — excepting that which runs afoul of the law or would cause further harm to victims — ought to be released, or Bondi must explain the incongruence between her past statements and her department’s finding.

Trump himself can deem the Epstein affair a Democratic “hoax” and insult unsatisfied supporters all he wants, but he’s only extending this dismal news cycle and causing more problems for himself.

Many Americans still have reasonable questions, and the administration owes them answers.

That being said…

TWO: Trump is absolutely, incontrovertibly right that some of the loudest voices on the Epstein-obsessed Right are “stupid Republicans” who are peddling “bullshit.”

Take, for instance, Alex Jones, the professional conspiracy theorist once ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion to a first responder to, as well as the families of victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting.

Jones broke down in tears in a roadside video of himself on the way to his office last Monday.

“I just got to the office, I’m going to go throw up actually. And this only happens every few years when something really, really bad happens or something. I mean, I’m physically gonna puke, probably right now. My mouth is watering right now because I have integrity. I just really need the Trump administration to succeed, and to save this country, and they’re doing so much good. And then for them to do something like this, tears my guts out,” said the distraught Jones.

Then, in the next breath:

You know, the Left, they’re all complicit. They’re openly promoting pedophilia. We know they’re pure evil. And they’ll think it’s all funny, “Oh, look, Alex is sad. MAGA’s tearing himself apart.” Your globalist masters literally want you to eat bugs and live in a 5G, 200 square foot coffin apartment. You look at the Left, look at them all posing with their Pfizer shots, looking like dead zombies. I mean, come on, you guys are sick. And so you shouldn’t look at those of us that have a soul still and have integrity in pain over this and celebrate you dumb pieces of fucking shit.

You’re going against your own self-preservation serving this evil globalist system of Blackrock, and the New World Order, and Hakeem Jeffries, and all the rest of it.

Maybe no political movement should indulge Alex Jones or his ilk. Maybe doing so only feeds their appetite for crazy, and brings them back demanding more of the same.

Maybe.

There’s also Tucker Carlson, who, fresh off his embarrassingly inaccurate prediction that American involvement in Israel’s conflict with Iran would lead to untold death and destruction, is now stating rather definitively that Epstein was working for Israel.

“It’s extremely obvious to anyone who watches, that this guy had direct connections to a foreign government. Now, no one’s allowed to say that the foreign government is Israel because we have been somehow cowed into thinking that’s naughty. There is nothing wrong with saying that. There is nothing hateful about saying that. There’s nothing anti-Semitic about saying that,” declared Carlson at a Turning Point USA conference last weekend.

Megyn Kelly — who called Carlson a “force for good” after he praised the World War II and Holocaust revisionist Darryl Cooper as “the best and most honest popular historian” in the country last year — has also picked up and run with this theory, though she admitted she has no evidence for it.

Carlson has been a bad actor in this space for years. He’s hurled staggeringly unfair accusations at Jewish-American commentators such as Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin, treated people like Cooper, Candace Owens, Douglas MacGregor and Munther Isaac to fawning interviews, suggested that Israel is persecuting Christians, and expressed a special hatred for Ukraine’s “sweaty and rat-like” Jewish leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he also characterized as “a persecutor of Christians.”

There is no hard proof whatsoever to suggest Epstein was a Mossad agent. The only tenuous ties anyone can point at to connect the foreign intelligence agency and the notorious sex criminal is that his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell’s father may or may not have worked with the Israelis, and Epstein’s well-publicized personal relationship with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. But Epstein had well-publicized personal relationships with other world leaders, including Trump and Bill Clinton — and hobnobbing with Barak would appear to be an egregious breach of cover if he was, as Carlson has alleged, running a sexual blackmail operation on behalf of the Israeli government. Indeed, Barak’s relationship with Epstein became an issue that current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu capitalized during the September 2019 Israeli legislative election.

No one outside of those who have reviewed all of the evidence that is, in this writer’s view, wrongly being withheld from the public — and perhaps not even those who have — knows everything there is to know about Epstein and his sordid business.

But in the absence of evidence suggesting Epstein was operating on behalf of the world’s only Jewish-majority state, it is perhaps unwise to take Tucker Carlson’s accusations to that end as gospel.

Trump may not be in the right when it comes to the Epstein imbroglio, but he’s over the target in calling out the “stupid” wing of the Republican Party on the march.

Jones fits squarely into that bracket, while the by-all-accounts brilliant Carlson would appear to be running a long, lucrative, but ultimately demeaning moneymaking con without regard for those he hurts.

Kelly’s more difficult to sort, but if she still believes — or was only ever pretending to believe —  that Carlson is a force for good, Trump’s instincts to cut her, too, out of his coalition are exactly right.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.