MAGA is Dumping Trump Because of the Epstein Files, Says Maggie Haberman [Update with Polling]

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I’m seeing a lot of complaints here and elsewhere that the Epstein Files have dropped off the political radar, and that we owe it to the victims, the survivors, to keep the files front and center in the public eye. Well, we do. But it also seems that the files have done a lot of damage to trump even while hidden – or, rather, that trump, as he so often does, has done the damage himself by hiding them.

Back in 2024, Trump suggest[ed] he’ll release Jeffrey Epstein ‘client list’ if elected: ‘I’d have no problem with it’. MAGA took him at his word. Then he got elected, and he learned (if he didn’t already know) just how much and how many times he was in those files. Oops. He tried every which way to stall, to hide, to deny, to deflect. But then members of the House started a discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the Epstein Files.Four Republicans – Massie, Norman, Mace, and Fitzpatrick –joined all Democrats to reach the magic 218 number that forced Johnson’s hand. (Actually, they had to do this twice; seeherefor a timeline covering February to November 2025.) After near-unanimous votes from both Houses, trump signed the bill into law and “promised” the DOJ would follow the law.

And of course DOJ dragged its feet, and continues to this day to drag its feet, all while trump keeps saying over and over that there’s nothing to see, it’s all a Democratic hoax.

The thing is, though, it doesn’t seem like MAGA sees it that way. I went into a bit of the history of the Epstein Files just now (and there is a LOT more!) because MAGA saw all this. They have been watching and waiting, and they don’t like what they see. Maggie Haberman describes what this has done to MAGA’s feelings about trump, per HuffPost:Maggie Haberman Spots Exactly When MAGA Broke With Trump: ‘That Was The Moment’:

New York TimesreporterMaggie Habermansaid on Friday that the first big rift between PresidentDonald Trumpand hisMAGAbase occurred last year, when he lobbied against the release of Justice Department files on late sex offenderJeffrey Epstein—his former acquaintance.

Haberman made her case during a discussion at theTexas TribuneFestival in Austin, saying Trump lost an enormous amount of trust by promising votershe would expose corruptionin Washington, D.C., only todismiss their interestin his past ties to Epstein.

“And that was the moment, by the way, last year, with how Trump handled Epstein and the files,”Haberman said Friday. “That was when, according to his own top allies and advisers, that was when they could start seeing his own base stop believing him quite as much.”

There are many reasons for trump’s deepening unpopularity – the Iran war, the spike in gas and diesel, the cost of basic living essentials, the rise in measles and other diseases, trump’s denouncing Democrats as communists one day and the next day fawning over the leader of the most powerful communist country in the world (and one of the few remaining). Not to mention (OK, let’s mention) his grandiose building projects from the East Wing to the triumphal arch / sniper’s nest to the Reflecting Pool to threatening to tear down the Kennedy Center if he can’t put his name on it. But to hear Haberman tell it, it started when trump promised to release the Epstein Files and then refused to do so.

MAGA may not have minded the grift. They certainly liked it when trump bullied anyone they didn’t like. They may have smiled when he claimed Greenland, cheered when he captured Maduro, praised his name when he went after Blacks and women in the military, beamed when he rounded up and threw in concentration camps anyone who didn’t look like their idea of an “American.” They may well have been fine with all that. But they don’t much like grown men who rape little girls.

They believed trump when he promised to expose the rapists in Epstein’s books. They believed him whenhe said he wasn’t one of them. But not any more, it looks like.

We the country owe it to the victims to get the truth – and we have a law ordering the trump administration to give it to us. We will only get it by voting Republicans out and Democrats in, so Congress can conduct a real investigation.

That’s the message Democrats need to start putting out: trump promised to release the Epstein Filesand he broke his word. Why is he hiding? Is it because he knew what Epstein was doing? Or that he was also doing it, and the Epstein Files have the truth? He’s been accused many times of all this; if he is innocent, he would want the files released so as to clear his name. Why hasn’t he done so?

Elect Democrats and we’ll get some real answers.

——————– Update 1650 PDT ——————