Whose Elite Is It, Anyway?
Reality is chipping away at a pretty big lie
I’m taking a few days off to recharge, and while I’m away I’m going to republish articles that I think continue to have relevance months after they were first posted. This piece originally ran behind a paywall on August 1. It looks at the explosive potential of the Epstein scandal and addresses Trump’s troubled relationship with reality (which, as you will see, is a big theme of the posts I republish). Although Epstein has taken a back seat to the government shutdown and Trump’s escalating militarization of the country, it is an issue of such concern to Republicans that they are refusing to seat the Democrat who won a special election two weeks ago and will provide the final signature on a discharge petition to force a House vote on releasing the Epstein files.
Chris will continue to post as usual, and I’ll be back next Wednesday.
Trump rose to power by vocalizing the anger of those who feel displaced and enraged by economic and cultural change. He heard their cries and opportunistically rallied them behind the promise to lift them up at the expense of those perceived to be tearing them down.
Trump sees only enemies. Immigrants. People of color. Anyone not born white, straight or Christian. But central to his appeal is the idea that a cultural elite is responsible for advancing the interests of these enemies, wrecking America in the process.
Doing battle with that elite is a big part of his answer to their grievances. So he denigrates progressives, people from the East and West coasts, intellectuals, Hollywood liberals, Bill and Hillary Clinton—anyone who can be characterized as looking down on “regular” Americans.
Take them down and America will be great again. That’s the promise.
It’s also a key reason why he cannot get out from underneath the Epstein story.
The tale Trump sold his followers is that Epstein, the convicted sex offender who is alleged to have trafficked in underage children, was being shielded by a “deep state” determined to protect the liberal elites who were his clients. Trump, who implied that Bill Clinton could be at the center of the scandal, has long stoked conspiracy flames that animate his MAGA base.
Trump was being truthful when he claimed the people who had access to Epstein’s world were an elite.
His problem is they are an elite that counts Trump as a member.
While we don’t yet know the details of Trump’s involvement with Epstein, we do know the two had a long relationship. Evidence that they were close at one time is already part of the conversation.
Trump recently found himself trying to explain away that relationship with tales of how they had a falling out years ago. But his response only raised more questions.
In his telling, Trump parted ways with Epstein after a dispute over Mar-a-Lago employees:
“[Epstein] stole people that worked for me. I said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ He did it again, and I threw him out of the place, persona non-grata. I threw him out, and that was it.”
But, as CNN noted (italics in original), that was hardly it:
Trump casting Epstein as merely having stolen employees—even young women from the spa—would be a pretty shocking way to characterize recruiting someone into a sex-trafficking ring.
The whole thing certainly adds to questions about what Trump knew and when about Epstein’s activities.
Releasing the Epstein files would answer these questions. But they would also document the entanglement between the two men, putting the lie to one of the more salient conspiracy stories Trump has been using to rile his base and use their anger for his political benefit. How can he be the savior in this story if he is a participant?
The cost of exposing the lie at the heart of Trump’s claims is enormous. That may be why he has tried to rebrand the Epstein affair as a hoax cooked up by those same elite liberals who supposedly were being protected by the “deep state” in the first place.
Seriously.
As ABC News explained, Trump is demanding that MAGA accept the Epstein affair as a liberal concoction designed to make him look bad:
“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘b------,’ hook, line, and sinker,” Trump wrote on his own conservative social media platform.
“Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats [sic] work, don't even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don't want their support anymore!” Trump added.
I struggle with the logic here. Maybe: the nefarious liberals whose identities I promised to reveal when I returned to power were actually the ones perpetrating a hoax by creating fake files that would embarrass me if I revealed them?
Or something.
Trump essentially commanded his base to stop believing everything he had been telling them about Epstein for years and accept this newly invented story as their forever reality.
It has a certain 1984 vibe to it. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
One thing that’s undeniable is Trump’s recalcitrance is making him look bad, to MAGA in part but certainly to the rest of the country.
The longer he goes without releasing the files, the more guilty he seems. But he can’t avoid the damage that will befall him if he does the easy and obvious thing without the truth blowing up the conspiracy at the heart of his success.
How do you tell your supporters that the people around Epstein should be the target of their wrath when you in fact are one of them?