United States President Donald Trump continues to feud with supporters disappointed by his handling of information about deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, calling them “weaklings” and labelling the controversy a “hoax” concocted by his political enemies.
In a social media post on Wednesday, Trump accused Democrats of attempting to capitalise on growing anger over his administration’s efforts to distance itself from conspiracies that many on the US right, including Trump and his allies, have fuelled for years.
“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘b*******,’ hook, line, and sinker,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
“Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!” he added.
The post underscores growing schisms within the US right over the Trump administration’s insistence that there was nothing untoward about Epstein’s death by suicide in prison, and that the disgraced financier never had a “client list” of powerful figures tied to child sex abuse.
“I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country’s history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax,” Trump said.
Speculation about Epstein’s connections to political and economic elites, and the possibility of an “Epstein List” of clients subject to blackmail, is not exclusive to the US right, and has become a symbol of wider popular belief that powerful people who commit abuses are unlikely to face consequences.
After Epstein died by suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex abuse charges, the circumstances around his death immediately drew scepticism and became a source of widespread conspiracies.
But those conspiracies have become a matter of particular obsession for the US right, who have used them to advance a dark vision of corrupt and venal elites who need to be rooted out and brought to justice, and were often fused with wider calls for extrajudicial actions against their perceived political enemies, especially prominent Democrats.
Trump administration officials such as FBI Director Kash Patel, Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, former proponents of such theories, teased action and new revelations when they first entered the administration.
Asked about the Epstein files during a TV interview in February, Bondi said they were “sitting on my desk right now to review”.
The administration made an about-face when the Department of Justice released a memo last week concluding that Epstein’s death was a suicide and he never had a “client list”. In the time since, Trump has expressed increasing annoyance towards those on the US right who have continued to question those details, including some who have said that Trump’s own relationship with Epstein may explain the reversal.
“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” Trump snapped at a reporter last week. “This guy’s been talked about for years.”
But Trump’s insistence that his supporters stop talking about Epstein may in fact be pushing many to double down.
