The MAGA civil war over the Trump administration's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case now has President Donald Trump taking aim at his own.
"Weaklings!" he called them in an especially lengthy Truth Social rant. "I don’t want their support anymore!"
Wah, wah, wah.
As my colleague Julianne McShane noted today, Trump's frustration comes as more Republicans, even House Speaker Mike Johnson, call for him to release more information about what they know about the disgraced financier.
So what's actually going on here? Politico has a good explainer with three possible situations: Trump and his allies promoted a conspiracy theory, and this is now a crisis of their own making; Trump is listed somewhere in the file and is now engaged in a spectacular coverup; or Trump genuinely believed the conspiracy theories he pushed, but the evidence truly did not back them.
My hunch is that it's a combination of the first two. That he pushed a terrible conspiracy theory for his political benefit, and his name was uncovered somewhere in the documents. I mean, don't you remember this incredibly creepy video of Trump partying with Epstein? No? Well, it's unfortunately been seared into my memory.
Then again, what do I know!
—Inae Oh
