Inside Trump’s Angry, Desperate Push to Silence MAGA on Epstein Fiasco
As Trump rages wildly over his inability to get MAGA to shut up about the Jeffrey Epstein mess, Asawin Suebsaeng takes us inside his effort to get this under control—and explains why it’s failing.
President Trump is in a rage over his inability to get MAGA to stop talking about the Jeffrey Epstein files. He unleashed a furious Truth Social tirade on it, and then rambled bizarrely about it to reporters for a minute straight. Meanwhile, striking new polls from Quinnipiac and from CNN show wide public dissatisfaction with the whole fiasco—and both show large chunks of Republicans are also unhappy about it, suggesting his shutdown efforts aren’t working. Rolling Stone writer Asawin Suebsaeng has a new piece entitled: “Inside Trump’s Frantic, Failing Mission to Crush the Epstein ‘MAGA Rebellion.’” It details how efforts by Trump and his lieutenants to get this under control involve all kinds of fraught and complicated intrigues inside the Court of MAGA. So we talked to Suebsaeng about what’s really going on here, why it’s failing, what’s next, and how it all reveals Trump’s contempt for his own voters with uncommon clarity. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.
Trump built his image on brazen, unapologetic masculinity—even boasting on national television that fame gave him license to grope women. So it’s ironic, almost absurd, that he’s now scrambling to suppress Epstein-related revelations that suggest he was unfaithful to his wives with barely legal women. For someone whose political appeal rests in part on shamelessness, this sudden anxiety about perception is telling. It’s less about morals than control—and the fear of losing it.