| Last week, I explained that the far right is at war with itself over whether Trump administration officials lied about the existence of a secret list of powerful people who allegedly paid financier Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse teenage girls. “Are people still talking about this guy?” President Donald Trump said. But over the weekend, the war escalated to the point where some of the anger was directed at Trump — in what could be the first major fracturing of his movement. “There has to be some explanation,” said “Fox & Friends” host Charles Hurt on Sunday’s show, urging the White House to share why some officials said there were secret files and then said there weren’t. “There’s two things that President Trump lied about: One was that the Epstein files would come out, and they’re not out yet. They need to come out,” Trump supporter Taylor Sharp told CNN at a conservative conference aimed at young people in Florida this weekend. “The second thing is that we’re not tired of winning. He said that we’d be tired of winning. We’re not tired of winning.” “What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’” Trump posted on social media Saturday. He defended his attorney general at the heart of all this, Pam Bondi, and urged his supporters to move on from a nearly decade-old unsubstantiated theory. “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.” But Epstein is important to a vocal section of Trump’s base Baseless theories about those in power have fueled the political right in recent years, and to some, Epstein’s story was finally their chance to bring down a global elite. Epstein was a wealthy socialite and child sex offender who died in jail in 2019. Since then, unproven claims about who he associated with — from princes to presidents (including Trump) — and how he died have thrived. Trump’s allies believed the government was protecting the powerful elite by allegedly hiding Epstein files, and they were counting on the Trump administration to speak truth to power and share them. Last week, the Trump administration said there was nothing to share. “When people voted for President Trump, releasing the Epstein files was something that was promised to the base,” right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer told Politico’s “Playbook.” Conspiracy theories are also hard to undo “These theories thrive on ambiguity and they feed off lack of information, so even when new facts emerge, the original story can take on a life of its own and adapt to the new circumstances,” Cynthia Wang, who studies the issue as head of Kellogg’s Dispute Resolution and Research Center at Northwestern University, which focuses on conflict management, told me last week. “My research says it’s really hard to break these beliefs.” Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has theorized that the government won’t release the alleged files because members of the intelligence services are in them. Democrats have asked if the government is protecting Trump’s reputation. There is also an entire conservative media ecosystem built off talking about this, keeping people glued to podcasts and YouTube shows, points out CNN media analyst Brian Stelter. Trump helped fuel this. He used conservative media to build a name for himself in national politics, when he alleged President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. When he got to the White House for his first term, he tacitly breathed life into QAnon, whose adherents composed a growing part of his base. Now, he has placed people who trafficked misinformation and unsubstantiated claims at the highest levels of government. Trump’s government frequently launches investigations into easily disproven claims when it suits him, notes The Washington Post’s Naftali Bendavid. Bondi, his attorney general, said Epstein files were “sitting on my desk” shortly after she got into office. Wang says all of this undermines public trust in fact-based information and, ultimately, a democratic society. “It’s almost like we’re talking two different languages,” she said. “It’s hard to have any type of dialogue if even the basic facts are being viewed very differently.” It’s also made it harder for Trump to control members of his base. Disbelief over Epstein comes as the right questions some of Trump’s other moves Trump and Republicans in Congress just passed major legislation that will cut taxes modestly for most Americans. Yet The Post’s Natalie Allison has been reporting on how Trump’s base spent much of last week instead criticizing him for not deporting farm workers, for launching missile strikes at Iran, for sending weapons to Ukraine — and for what it said about Epstein files. It’s not just right-wing pundits. Polls suggest Republican voters are split on how they view Trump since he took office. Half say their opinion of the president has improved, while half say it has stayed the same or worsened, a new YouGov survey finds. His major policies don’t appear that popular with his party either. Just 49 percent of Republicans said they think his tax legislation would directly help them and their family, according to an Economist/YouGov poll taken as the bill passed Congress earlier this month. And as he starts to supercharge mass deportations, just 48 percent of Republicans say immigration in America should decrease, a Gallup poll conducted in June found. | 
