Trump’s ‘Please Stop Asking About Epstein’ Moment Is the Most Bizarre Plot Twist Yet

In what can only be described as the strangest rhetorical judo flip since “I alone can fix it,” President Donald Trump has decreed that it’s long past time for his MAGA faithful to move on from Jeffrey Epstein. Yes — that Jeffrey Epstein. The convicted sex offender whose mysterious death in federal custody has been one of the foundational conspiracy theories of the pro-Trump digital underground.

In a wild, typo-strewn Truth Social post sent Saturday evening — after a spate of loyal heavy-hitting media surrogates took shots at his administration during the TPUSA conference — Trump did what no one saw coming: he tried to convince his followers to stop obsessing over Epstein. Not only that, but he bizarrely suggested that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the Biden administration were somehow behind the release of the Epstein court files — not to expose wrongdoing, but to undermine the MAGA movement.

You read that right. According to Trump, the now-public Epstein documents — widely believed by conspiracy theorists to contain a seemingly mythical “client list” implicating elites across politics, media, and finance — are nothing more than a deep-state psy-op created by “Crooked Hillary,” James Comey, and the ghost of the Steele Dossier.

Let’s be clear: Trump isn’t just distancing himself from Epstein. He’s suggesting that Epstein is being used against him, as a political cudgel by the very people his base believes Epstein worked with.

Trump wants to keep the Epstein files as a conspiracy theory — about the left — while insisting it’s a DEAD issue otherwise? Huh. He’s retrofitting the conspiracy theory, which is a neat trick if you can pull it off, but it doesn’t look likely he can.

It’s a funhouse of mirrors, competing conspiracies, designed not just to confuse and bewilder, but to undermine what people see with their own eyes — and therefore trust.

This rhetorical 180 comes after a week of MAGA infighting fueled by the revelation that prominent right-wing media allies like Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and Dan Bongino all signed off on a now infamous FBI memo that stated there was no evidence Epstein was murdered, no client list, and nothing in the files that should concern MAGA Nation. Bongino, a former Secret Service agent turned podcast firebrand, was reportedly so disturbed by the backlash that he threatened to quit entirely — a stunning reversal from his usual ride-or-die posture.

So now Trump is stuck trying to repair the damage, and in doing so, he’s begging his followers — many of whom believe Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell facilitated a vast underage sex trafficking operation for the world’s elite — to please stop paying attention to Epstein.

Good luck with that. It’s bound to be as effective as a little brother growing increasingly frustrated by a sibling who takes joy in how easily their trolling gets under his skin.

Trump’s post is laced with the usual hits: “Russia, Russia, Russia,” “The Laptop From Hell,” “Radical Left Lunatics.” But the core message — that the Epstein files are a left-wing hoax and that the real focus should be on the 2020 election being “stolen” — is a jaw-dropper. It’s an attempt to replace one conspiracy theory with another, and it exposes a deep fracture in the MAGA worldview.

For years, Epstein has been the go-to boogeyman for Trump allies looking to smear Democrats, especially Bill Clinton. QAnon, the sprawling and often disturbing conspiracy movement born in Trump’s shadow, is entirely predicated on the idea of a global child sex trafficking ring run by elites. Epstein isn’t a side note — he’s the inciting incident. Telling this base to “let it go” is like telling a Metallica fan to forget Enter Sandman. It’s not just who they are, but its what made them famous.

But Trump, ever the dealmaker, is trying anyway. He insists that the embattled Pam Bondi— who’s been taking it on the chin by MAGA stalwarts like Megyn Kelly — is doing a “FANTASTIC JOB” and should be allowed to focus on the “stolen” 2020 election instead of wasting “Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”

Nobody cares? Tell that to the hundreds of MAGA influencers who built entire online followings around Epstein theories (like FBI’s Deputy Director Bongino, who is notably absent from the Trump missive) or the millions of views racked up on TikToks and Telegram posts detailing the “real story” behind his death. Trump may be ready to walk away from Epstein, but his base isn’t.

This episode reveals something essential — and deeply ironic — about Trump’s hold on the movement he created. He lit the match that fueled years of conspiratorial thinking, but now that the fire has spread to inconvenient places, he’s scrambling to contain it. He wants to control which narratives get traction and which get buried.

But MAGA, like any populist movement, no longer belongs to its creator. Just like the Frankenstein metaphor I wrote about earlier this week about this story, the monster Trump created is now terrorizing his own village.

If you spend years teaching your supporters to see hidden hands behind every curtain, don’t be surprised when they look behind your curtain too.

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