What Donald Trump Can Learn from Barack ObamaConspiracy theories like those surrounding Jeffrey Epstein can’t be extinguished, they can only be managed. Just look at what Trump did with birtherism fourteen years ago.
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Eternal Sunshine of the Crackpot Mindby Andrew Egger During the heyday of the 2008 campaign and the early years of the administration, staff for Barack Obama got a remarkable lesson in the unsquashability of the conspiracy-addled mind. As the “birther” theory that Obama had actually been born in Kenya was taking root—first on email listservs, then around the broader internet—those staffers initially hoped to treat it as beneath notice. But the theory soon spread broadly enough that they felt obliged to respond—only to watch in amazement as the various proofs they offered, from his Hawaii birth certificate to state records to contemporaneous newspaper announcements, failed to squash the conspiracy. Instead, the conspiracists took each proof in turn as further evidence of a still-grander coverup. “This lingered out there over the course of years,” Ben LaBolt, Obama’s spokesman during the campaign and in the White House, told The Bulwark. “Not only did we have to produce the actual birth certificates but once it was produced, they were like, ‘That’s not the actual birth certificate. It’s not the long form one!’” The lesson, LaBolt and others learned, was deeply sobering: It’s damn near impossible to convince a conspiracy theorist that they’re living in lunacy. The only real remedy is to try and change the subject or to shrink down the conspiracy to a less politically damaging size. “It is just incredibly hard to produce documentation that will dissuade people because they are primed for disbelief,” said LaBolt. “If you satisfy the vast majority of rational people then you need to take that as a win.” This week, one of the most infamous proponents of the birther conspiracy theory—an individual who LaBolt and company never did manage to satisfy—is having some conspiracy-theory problems of his own. And it’s not clear that Donald Trump will be content with satisfying “the vast majority of rational people” in his response. There are two ways you can look at Team Trump’s on-a-dime pivot on the Jeffrey Epstein matter. One possibility is that the government is sitting on information that really does make Trump himself look bad. This is not exactly implausible: Trump palled around with Epstein for years and was perhaps the last guy on earth defending Ghislaine Maxwell. The other possibility is simply that, after years of cultivating the Epstein-conspiracy beast for political gain, the White House has suddenly realized to its horror that it is incapable now of cooking up a meal that can satisfy the monster’s hunger. When Trump promised on the campaign trail to release the Epstein files, hardcore Epstein truthers, who overlap substantially with other Trump-focused conspiracy movements, didn’t take him merely to be saying he’d open up the books so everyone could kick the tires and satisfy their curiosity. They took him to be endorsing their maximalist reading of the case—that the government was sitting on a massive trove of smoking-gun evidence that would lead to the downfall of a vast cabal of satanist pedophile Democrats and other diabolical elites. That the White House had underestimated their thirst for this outcome was obvious when Attorney General Pam Bondi, to much fanfare, released binders of “Epstein files” to a clutch of goofball MAGA influencers. It was slop for the piggies; there was nothing new in the files. When the hardcore conspiracists discovered this, they weren’t thrilled. Okay, but when do we get the televised execution of Oprah? In his lizard-brain way, Trump gets the conspiratorial mind better than most; he senses that conspiracies cannot really be debunked, they can only be redirected. This might be why, in his personal attempt to end the story with a Truth Social post over the weekend, he tried to supplant the Epstein conspiracy with a brand-new, even grander conspiracy: that “Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration” had created the Epstein files to hurt him and that “now my so-called ‘friends’ are playing right into their hands.” It echoes, in a way, his response to Obama releasing his birth certificate, in which he took credit for the disclosure and suggested it might not be real—and then, a year later, declared he’d make a $5 million donation to charity if Obama produced his college application and passport records. It’s a transparent attempt to keep the conspiracy growing. But it’s also pretty weak tea compared to the conspiracy the Epstein maximalists already think they’re onto. Trump, so good over the years at whipping his people into greater and greater delusional frenzies, may be learning it’s much harder to command his base not to care about this one. Sam Stein contributed to this reporting. Will Trump’s Epstein Coverup Succeed?by William Kristol On March 22, 1973, President Richard Nixon held a meeting in the Oval Office on the burgeoning Watergate scandal. He had a simple message for his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman; his White House counsel, John Dean; his domestic policy advisor, John Ehrlichman; and his former attorney general, John Mitchell: “I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up or anything else.” The Watergate coverup failed. Half-a-century later, will Donald Trump’s attempted Jeffrey Epstein coverup meet the same fate? It’s clear Trump has decided to go into full coverup mode on Epstein. We shouldn’t be surprised. As the full tape of a June 2024 Trump interview on Fox News with Rachel Campos-Duffy makes clear, Trump was always nervous about throwing the Epstein case into the mix of his larger assault on the so-called Deep State. Trump was hesitant about demanding the release of information on Epstein, his long-time friend. In this instance, Trump showed an unaccustomed concern for not besmirching people’s reputations, “because you don’t know, you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff. . .” And so, the Justice Department and FBI review of the Epstein matter, started soon after the Trump administration took office, resulted in a predictable conclusion just over a week ago, that nothing new should be released about Donald’s friend Jeffrey. It was a conclusion reached presumably at President Trump’s direction. There was an immediate outcry from his supporters. The Epstein coverup had been a staple of the MAGA diet. Trump tried to quell the furor. At a cabinet meeting last Tuesday, he intercepted a question directed at Attorney General Pam Bondi to snap, “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years. . . . That is unbelievable. I mean, I can’t believe you’re asking a question on Epstein.” But MAGA world wasn’t satisfied. Nor was it impressed by Kash Patel’s assertion in a post early Saturday afternoon there was nothing to see in the Epstein files he and his fellow MAGA celebrities had been hyping for years. So Trump had to take charge of the coverup personally. He did this in his lengthy and now infamous “What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’” post on Saturday, which wildly asserted that the Epstein files were “written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration.” This particular conspiracy theory—that Democrats in D.C. concocted the Epstein files—had never been suggested by anyone. It is, to say the least, beyond implausible. But the point was not to convince anyone, it was to make clear to his supporters that the playbook was to stonewall. Will his supporters pick it up? It’s been a mixed bag. As Will Sommer explained in an excellent newsletter yesterday, MAGA world now finds itself in at least temporary disarray. Many are still refusing to echo Trump’s ‘move on’ mantra. But some important institutions do seem to be falling in line. Matt Gertz of Media Matters reported that as of 4 p.m. yesterday, Fox News had mentioned Joe Biden 85 times that day while Jeffrey Epstein had not been mentioned once. Trump may succeed in damping down the spontaneous combustion from within MAGA world enough to prevent lasting damage. He’s pretty good at getting his supporters in line. It’s a benefit of being a leader of a cult-like authoritarian movement, rather than of a normal, rowdy political party in a democracy. But perhaps others who are not part of the cult can step up to help? There is some movement in this direction. Last night, Democrats on the House Rules Committee forced a vote on an amendment requiring the Justice Department to make the Epstein files public. Republicans rallied to defeat the amendment, while awkwardly assuring their supporters that at the right time the president might release more information. The odds are that MAGA world and Republicans will retreat into sullen silence—unless the pressure is kept on from outside. The Watergate cover up fell apart partly because of defections from Nixon’s camp. But those only happened under intense pressure from Democrats, the media, and the courts—and, in that case, from an independent Justice Department. Could something like this happen again? Can Democrats keep up the pressure to make GOP defections and discomfort more likely? And can they not only fan some MAGA flames but explain to the broader public that there is an authentic scandal here? This last point is key. Nothing is likely to happen if Democrats only attack the Trump administration rather than the overall handling of the Epstein matter for almost two decades. In 1973, Nixon’s critics succeeded because Watergate really was a scandal. The kid gloves treatment of Epstein over twenty years really is a scandal. Critics of the Trump administration need to remind people about how grotesque Epstein’s crimes were, and they need to make the truthful case that there’s been a shameful, bipartisan-elite coverup from the beginning. Trump’s behavior is particularly hypocritical, but it’s also just the latest example of corrupt elites taking care of themselves. This argument has the advantage of being true. But making it will mean Democrats have to be willing to be not just anti-Epstein but anti-establishment. If this means, for example, criticizing the Biden administration for being unwilling to seek further indictments after the successful prosecution of Ghislaine Maxwell, so be it. What this also means is that the public needs to hear this argument not just from the predictable lefties who are always anti-establishment. This argument needs to be made by more moderate and responsible “governing” Democrats with lots of friends and supporters in the establishment. In fact, this moment is a huge opportunity for some ambitious but not-normally-rabble-rousing Democrat to show that one can combine a commitment to responsible governance with a willingness to take on sometimes corrupt and self-serving elites. So, Josh Shapiro, or Pete Buttigieg, or Abigail Spanberger, or Mikie Sherrill: The ball’s in your court. AROUND THE BULWARK
Quick HitsWE DO A LITTLE TROLLING: As Team Trump sweats over its inability to deliver juicy revelations about Jeffrey Epstein’s supposed associates to their thirsty base, Democrats are starting to try to twist the knife. Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Tex.) introduced a resolution yesterday calling on the White House to immediately release all unclassified files related to Epstein and requesting “a full report on any delays, suppression, or destruction of evidence related to Epstein’s operation” from the Department of Justice and the FBI. The content of the resolution was serious. But Veasey’s tweet announcing it indulged in a little trolling. “I just introduced a resolution in Congress demanding @RealDonaldTrump and @AGPamBondi release all the Epstein files. NO Republican signed on to cosponsor,” he wrote. “Thank you for your attention to this matter.” RIP DOE: After months of legal limbo, the White House is moving forward with its plan to lay off nearly 1,400 employees of the Department of Education after the Supreme Court cleared the way yesterday. The Court’s conservative majority held together to overturn a lower-court injunction blocking the layoffs, which U.S. District Judge Myong Joun had ruled would “likely cripple the department.” The three liberal justices dissented. On Truth Social, Trump exulted that the Court had “handed a Major Victory to Parents and Students across the Country” by freeing him to “proceed on returning the functions of the Department of Education BACK TO THE STATES.” Soon, he pledged, “America’s Students will be the best, brightest, and most Highly Educated anywhere in the World.” So that’s something to look forward to. Elon Musk may be gone, and DOGE may have been mostly a dud, but Trump’s campaign against the administrative state continues apace. The decision comes on the heels of a major wave of firings at the State Department last week, where more than 1,300 employees lost their jobs. A LEGAL EXODUS: It’s a rough job, being one of the attorneys who has to defend this White House’s policies against legal challenges in court. Which might help explain the jaw-dropping number of lawyers quitting the Justice Department’s Federal Programs Branch. Reuters reported yesterday that nearly two-thirds of the unit—69 of roughly 110 lawyers—“have voluntarily left the unit since President Donald Trump’s election in November or have announced plans to leave.” “Many of these people came to work at Federal Programs to defend aspects of our constitutional system,” one departed lawyer told Reuters. “How could they participate in the project of tearing it down?” The Justice Department has scrambled to fill the gaps, exempting the Federal Programs Branch from the general federal hiring freeze and bringing in political appointees to help defend an unusually high number of civil cases. There’s certainly lots of work to go around. The administration’s ‘do things now, figure out if they’re constitutional later’ approach has prompted a massive number of lawsuits. Cheap ShotsHe’s baaaaack:
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What Donald Trump Can Learn from Barack Obama
July 15, 2025
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