Trump and The Epstein Files

By Marvin Kalb

President Donald Trump, a master of media manipulation, seems suddenly stumped by the explosive “Epstein file.” What’s happening?

When faced with a problem since his return to the White House, the president has usually resorted to the strategies of “flood the zone” or “distract and deflect,” and up until now, that has worked, to an alarming degree. The problem, whatever it be, has quickly vanished in a swirl of officially stimulated confusion.

Now, with the daily eruption of stories about the Epstein files, this once-successful PR strategy has lost its power, leaving the president in a mess of trouble, unlike any he has faced in his second term. His MAGA base—his essential political support—is unhappy, dissatisfied, demanding answers, receiving evasions, and in different ways is displaying its disenchantment with the Trump White House.

Proof can be found in recent polls. Most startling is a Gallup poll citing that Trump’s popularity with the public has now dropped to 37 percent. He’s usually been in the low to mid-40’s. Among pivotal independent voters, who put him over the top in the last election, his popularity has collapsed from 46 to 29 percent. A Fox News poll, which must surely have caught Trump’s eye, confirmed his recent loss of popular esteem, notably among Republicans. It turns out that 60% of his GOP base do not believe his administration has been “transparent” in its handling of the Epstein story. An equal percentage of independent voters agree. Democrats have routinely questioned Trump—that is par for the course—but not this number of Republicans, nor independents.

Another Republican leader who checked the polls was Mike Johnson. The House majority leader, facing an uproar of dissent from angry colleagues, abruptly decided to end Congressional deliberations about the nation’s mounting problems, sending everyone on their summer holidays earlier than was scheduled. Johnson was apparently frantic that Republicans were about to join Democrats in demanding open hearings on the Epstein story. With this decision, Johnson might only have postponed Congressional hearings on the Epstein files until September, when Congress reconvenes. Like Trump, he might have hoped that the Epstein story would go just away, sidelined by more pressing national issues, but that now appears to be unlikely.

The Trump administration, which has been in nonstop warfare with “woke” liberals and establishment lawyers, Harvard, Columbia and other institutions of higher education, ABC, CBS, and (surprisingly) the Wall Street Journal, is now desperately searching for a way of turning the public’s attention from the Epstein files to such cockeyed claims as former President Barack Obama’s “treasonous conspiracy” with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign. Using the White House as a pulpit for political propaganda, Trump has himself accused Obama of “treason” and Hillary Clinton of sinister crimes worthy of imprisonment.

Trump is showing other clear signs of desperation. He has dispatched his Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, once his personal attorney, to Miami to interrogate Ghislaine Maxwell, currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking during her longtime collaboration with Epstein. Why this unexpected negotiation? Is Trump hoping for a deal? Maxwell would love to win a shorter sentence or a pardon from Trump, which is not out of the question. She may have much yet to disclose. What does Blanche want? A promise Maxwell would never tie Trump to Epstein’s sex scandal?

Trump has tried other distractions, too, with little to no success. He has jumped into the old argument about naming major league teams after Native Americans. He likes the prior name of Washington’s football team, the Redskins, but many other Americans strenuously objected to the name. After years of agonizing debate, the name was changed to Commanders, and is likely to stick, Trump notwithstanding. But his intrusion into the Redskin/Commander name switch did occupy the front page for a few days. He might have thought, better than the alternative.

It is no secret that Trump and Epstein were good friends in the 1980’s and 90’s, even as recently as 2004—“terrific guy,” Trump once said. But then they reportedly disagreed about the terms of a possible real estate deal in Florida; and with Trump shouting Epstein was a “creep,” their friendship ended and they had little to do with each other. If that is indeed the case, why does Trump remain so evidently worried about the Epstein story?

During his last presidential campaign, Trump often promised that, if elected, he would release the files. Many of his followers, absorbed with conspiracies about pedophiles, imagined that they would be filled with juicy tidbits about famous Democrats and powerful families. After Trump returned to the White House, his Department of Justice reviewed the files, and AG Pam Bondi told reporters there were “truckloads” of information about Epstein’s sex trafficking, including the notorious “list” of people linked to his operations. It was sitting on her desk, she claimed, suggesting she might soon release it to the public. In May, she privately informed Trump that his name was on the list, but that did not mean he had done anything wrong. Nevertheless, rather than fulfill his promise to release the Epstein files, Trump decided against it, creating the immediate effect of disappointing and even infuriating his many followers, who had trusted that he would be the one to reveal the controversial details held within. This unpopular decision may one day prove to be Trump’s biggest blunder.

It is possible, given Trump’s track record of sidestepping major calamities, that Johnson was right, and that once Congress reconvenes, the Epstein files will have slipped into the flooded zone of unanswered questions and pathological scandal. But if the polls are accurate, and if GOP disappointment in Trump holds or continues to grow, the president might be facing his biggest political crisis. We’ll have a better sense of our common destiny after the summer.

Marvin Kalb, Murrow professor emeritus at Harvard, former network correspondent and author of 18 books, most recently “A DIFFERENT RUSSIA: Khrushchev and Kennedy on a Collision Course.