Democrats are experiencing a devilish glee as MAGA World clashes over the Trump administration’s push to defuse conspiracy theories surrounding the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
In cable news interviews, social media posts and formal calls to release more Epstein files, Democrats are highlighting the administration’s handling of the case in hopes of exacerbating the unusual tensions between President Trump and a conservative base that’s stood firmly behind the president on virtually every issue he tackles.
Democrats are also exploiting the divisions to advance another unfounded theory: that Trump won’t release the files because he’s featured within them.
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And they are not veiling their sense of schadenfreude.
“This is like me dunking on my 8-year-old and his friends on the short hoops at school,” Democratic strategist Eddie Vale told The Hill. “They set themselves up for it with their MAGA base, and now the pedo chickens are coming home to roost.”
A large and vocal contingent of Trump’s most loyal supporters has long promoted baseless theories that the government has covered up the details of Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking of minors, including a supposed “client list” of powerful figures from the world of business and government alike. Trump, on the campaign trail, said he was “inclined” to declassify the entire file.
On Monday, however, an unsigned memo from Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) discredited those claims, saying there’s no evidence that Epstein maintained any such client roster or attempted to blackmail elites who might have engaged in illegal sexual activities.
“We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,” the memo reads.
The DOJ also released 11 hours of video from outside of Epstein’s Manhattan prison cell in an effort to dispel rumors of foul play surrounding his death there — officially, by his own hand — following his arrest in 2019.
“He committed suicide,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters Tuesday at the White House.
Bondi’s embrace of the official government account surrounding Epstein’s actions and death was particularly striking, because it directly contradicts a claim she made earlier in the year: that she was in possession of Epstein’s “client list” and was ready to release it.
“It is sitting on my desk right now to review,” she told Fox News in February, shortly after becoming attorney general.
Other Trump-loyalists-turned-administration-officials have also flip-flopped on the question of what Epstein documents the government possesses and whether they should be released for public consumption.
For years, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino had stoked conspiracies that the government was concealing an Epstein roster of fellow pedophiles to protect some of the world’s most wealthy and powerful people. But both Patel, who’s now director of the FBI, and Bongino, who serves as Patel’s chief deputy at the agency, now say there’s no conspiracy to report.
The shift has infuriated many of Trump’s most ardent backers, many of whom bashed the law enforcement officials as sellouts. Some say the officials have become a part of the scandal they once decried.
“As trusted voices like @FBIDDBongino, @FBIDirectorKash, and @AGPamBondi align with the official story, many are asking: Who’s still willing to demand real answers?” LindellTV, the account of Trump ally Mike Lindell on the social platform X, posted this week. “Why are so many high-profile names never mentioned? Why seal everything if there’s nothing to hide?”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) joined the critics, saying the DOJ “has more explaining to do.”
“This is Jeffrey Epstein. This is the most famous pedophile in modern-day history, and people are absolutely not going to accept just a memo that was written that says there is no client list,” Greene said Wednesday in an interview on the Real America’s Voice network.
The eruption from Trump’s staunchest allies has delighted the president’s Democratic rivals, who are savoring the internal sniping among the MAGA faithful — and highlighting it to put salt in the wound.
“Watching these clowns crash out because they put all their chips on Trump releasing the Epstein list, to only find out the real reason he’s not releasing it…it’s just too good,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) posted on X.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have gone a long step further. In a July 8 letter to Bondi, the Democrats noted that Patel, at his Senate confirmation hearing, had pledged to release all available Epstein files in the name of government transparency, only to reverse course this week.
“This raises the question of whether the White House has moved to prevent the declassification and public release of the full Epstein files because they implicate President Trump, and whether these massive redaction efforts and the withholding of the files were intended to shield your boss from embarrassing revelations within those files,” reads the letter, which was spearheaded by Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.).
Fueling the MAGA dispute has been Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur and onetime Trump ally who has more recently feuded with the president over the Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” and launched a third party to compete with the GOP. As the power pair traded barbs on social media, Musk asserted that Trump would never release the Epstein files because he was named within them.
After the DOJ’s memo was unveiled this week, Musk took another shot at the president.
“What’s the time? Oh look, it’s no-one-has-been-arrested-o’clock again,” Musk posted on X, beside a graphic of “the official Jeffrey Epstein Pedophile Arrest Counter.”
Trump, for his part, appears frustrated by the intense focus on the Epstein saga. On Tuesday, when Bondi was pressed on the issue, Trump stepped in and lashed out at the reporter who asked the question.
“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years,” Trump said. “Are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable. Do you want to waste the time?”
Democrats are hardly sympathetic.
Joel Payne, a Democratic strategist, said the MAGA clash has a karmic quality to it, since many of the same figures who kindled the Epstein conspiracy theories are now taking the heaviest fire from the Trump faithful who became convinced of a cover-up.
“You reap what you sow,” Payne said. “They’ve played footsie in bad faith with conspiracy theorists for years.
“Good luck managing the monster you created.”