With the Epstein Files Fallout, Trump Is Now Confronting the MAGA Mediaverse He Created

On July 6, a bombshell dropped on the MAGAverse. Axios reported via leaked Department of Justice documents that the government investigation found no mystery in the death by suicide of disgraced society pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and that he kept no client list.

An empty bombshell, then, but the news of no news threw President Trump’s base into turmoil, because conspiracy theories around a Democratic “deep state” cover-up of the Epstein files were for years stoked by some of Trump’s most prominent deputies. MAGA online influencers, stung by betrayal, led nonstop viral coverage of the fallout on all platforms. Trump was brutally ratioed by his followers on his own social media platform, Truth Social, for suggesting that their obsession with the Epstein files was misplaced. One of his posts—“We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein”—generated more than forty-eight thousand replies, many of them angry or confused.