It’s been a week and a half since President Donald Trump complained on Truth Social that his many, many accomplishments were being overshadowed, “all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein.” There is a kind of truth in Trump’s lament: Six years after his death in a Manhattan jail cell, Epstein lives on — and he has Republicans in something approaching panic. It’s gotten so bad that House Republicans apparently decided to shut the chamber down early before leaving town.
Things fell apart for the GOP in the House Rules Committee, which determines which legislation reaches the House floor. Knowing how much GOP leaders would like this issue to just go away, Democrats attempted to force the House to vote on releasing all the information the government has on Epstein. “To avoid embarrassing votes on Epstein,” NBC News reported, “Republicans decided to recess the committee and not attempt to pass a rule for bills this week. Without a rule, Republicans would be left with nothing to vote on after Wednesday.” Instead, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., began the chamber’s five-week summer recess early, apparently in hopes that by the time the members return in the fall, the affair will all have blown over.
The whole episode recalls the famous line from “All the President’s Men”: “The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of control.”
Elected Republicans see a conspiracy theory as something like a bucking horse.
There are a few Republicans in Congress who believe the wildest conspiracy theories that grip some of their voters: that there are mind-control contrails in the sky or that wildfires are caused by space lasers. But for the most part, elected Republicans see such a conspiracy theory as something like a bucking horse. If they’re careful, they can ride it where they want to go, but there’s always the danger it will toss them off and trample them underfoot.
If members of the party’s base turn out to vote because they think Democrats might be trying to steal a presidential election, that’s great. If they are motivated by the belief that a Democratic presidential nominee literally kidnapped and murdered children? Terrific. The key is that the conspiracy theories don’t implicate Republicans — especially not Donald Trump.
But unfortunately for the president and his party, the public interest and the political debate around Epstein concerns real life, including his relationship with Trump. Epstein really was a fabulously wealthy and well-connected pedophile and sex trafficker. He really did die in jail, awaiting trial on sex trafficking and conspiracy charges. Both Trump and Vice President JD Vance really did encourage speculation that Epstein did not commit suicide. There really are a huge number of documents from the government’s investigation of Epstein that have not been made public.
And before the pair had a “falling-out” (in the president’s words) in the mid-2000s, Epstein really was good friends with Donald Trump. “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump said in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
After reiterating that Epstein’s death was a suicide and the case was closed, the administration faced a revolt from right-wing influencers who had been telling their audiences for years that the new Trump administration would blow the lid off everything Epstein was involved in. Then Trump begged people to talk about something, anything else, though his pleadings are falling on deaf ears. And on Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that — at Attorney General Pam Bondi’s request — he intends to talk to Ghislaine Maxwell, currently serving a 20-year sentence for conspiring to aid Epstein in sex trafficking. The idea that Bondi and Blanche — both Trump loyalists who previously served among the president’s personal lawyers — are suddenly interested in Maxwell for solely apolitical reasons strains credulity, to say the least. To succeed in today’s GOP, a politician must be highly attuned to the shifting weather patterns on the right. Where does this leave Republicans in Congress? To succeed in today’s GOP, a politician must be highly attuned to the shifting weather patterns on the right so you know what your constituents are hearing and thinking. Watching Fox News is important, but not nearly enough. You also have to know what’s happening on conservative podcasts — including those that are only partly about politics — and on X and in the various second-rate right-wing social media platforms. The widely distributed, unruly character of that ecosystem is among its greatest strengths, but it can also get out of hand. That’s what’s happening right now; when GOP members monitor that roiling cauldron of opinion, they hear callers to right-wing shows saying they feel betrayed, while podcasters like Joe Rogan and Andrew Schultz accuse the administration of mounting a cover-up. So it’s no wonder that, faced with that kind of uprising, most Republican members of Congress would prefer to just get out of town and hope that by the time they return the storm will have subsided. Perhaps that will be the case, though public interest in Epstein never truly subsided in the six years since in his death. For all the misdeeds of the first six months of Trump’s second term — the shocking money grabs, the evisceration of government, the assault on the Constitution — the most politically threatening scandal so far may involve a guy who died during his first term.
Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture. 
