Democrats are continuing to pressure Donald Trump over his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case—a matter that has shaken his typically loyal base. “It’s a clear case of Trump once again siding with the elites, because he’s one of them,” says Arizona senator Ruben Gallego, who introduced a resolution last week seeking the release of the Epstein files. “The American public deserves to know the truth, and I’m going to continue fighting to put Republicans on the record on this so that voters know where they stand.”
Democrats—who have struggled to find their footing in Trump’s second term—have spent more than a week hammering the president over both the documents and his past friendship with the late sexual predator, whose prison death in 2019 has been a galvanizing issue for the MAGA movement.
On Monday, House Republicans scrapped a Rules Committee meeting where Democrats had planned to force a vote to release Epstein-related materials, with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise telling reporters the committee was “unlikely” to reconvene before the break. Then, on Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced he would send lawmakers home early for August recess to avoid votes on releasing the Epstein files, accusing Democrats of trying to “politicize the Epstein investigation”: “We’re not going to play political games with this,” he said.
That comes after California Democrat Ro Khanna last week tried to add an amendment to a Trump-backed cryptocurrency bill that would have compelled the release of the Epstein files; it was blocked by Republicans in a Rules Committee vote. Another congressional Democrat—Marc Veasey of Texas—also introduced a resolution demanding the release of files related to Epstein and convicted fixer Ghislaine Maxwell. In the upper chamber, meanwhile, Gallego’s resolution was shot down Thursday when Republican senator Markwayne Mullin objected, describing the measure as “pure theater.”
But Democrats aren’t letting the issue go, seeking to fold scrutiny of Trump’s approach to Epstein into their broader critique of the administration: “There seems to be a prevailing theme,” as Veasey put it to me last week, “that Trump looks out for really rich people.”
The issue has fractured Trump’s base. Though most elected Republicans have closed ranks around him, a few members—including Thomas Massie, who has joined with Khanna in pushing for the release of Epstein documents—have been more critical. “We all deserve to know what’s in the Epstein files, who’s implicated, and how deep this corruption goes,” Massie wrote last week. “Americans were promised justice and transparency.”And indeed, some sects of MAGA world—which saw the circumstances around Epstein’s death as emblematic of the “deep state” corruption Trump said he’d root out—remain frustrated at the president and his administration for saying the well-connected multimillionaire did not keep a client list and that no further documents would be released.
Trump—who has fiercely denied wrongdoing and downplayed his well-documented previous friendship with Epstein—lashed out at those critics last week, accusing them of doing Democrats’ bidding and telling them he no longer wanted their support. “My PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’” the president wrote in a social media post, “hook, line, and sinker.” But that may have engendered more bitterness among some in his base: “I just can’t accept being blatantly gaslit by people in power, even if they’re people I otherwise support,” the conservative commentator Matt Walsh said on his program last week. “The number one way to guarantee I keep talking about something is to yell at me to stop talking about it.”
For Democrats, that has meant not only a fresh line of attack against Trump, but, they hope, an opportunity to pierce the MAGA bubble that has insulated him the past decade. “While he has been doing everything he can to make the wealthy wealthier and to please the well-connected who helped finance his campaign, he’s also apparently tried to protect those same elites by refusing to release the Epstein files,” Representative Hank Johnson told me. Last week, Johnson posted a song on social media crooning that Trump should “release the Epstein files soon.” (“We’ve gone along with what we’ve been told / You’ve had plenty of time, you’re in control / But now you say you will withhold the Epstein files.”)
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