The Trump administration has been desperate to find a way to distract its own base from its demand for a full release of the Epstein files. But instead of distracting the base, Vice President JD Vance’s new attempted “whataboutism” diversion tactic will likely attract more attention to the issue. It’s a hilarious own goal that seems guaranteed to keep the issue top of mind for activists.
“I laugh at the Democrats who are now all of a sudden so interested in the Epstein files,” Vance said in an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. “For four years, Joe Biden and the Democrats did absolutely nothing about this story. We know that Jeffrey Epstein had a lot of connections with left-wing politicians and left-wing billionaires. And now President Trump has demanded full transparency from this, and yet somehow the Democrats are attacking him, and not the Biden administration, which did nothing for four years.”
Vance is only making the case for releasing the Epstein files stronger.
Trump has of course not been demanding “full transparency.” His administration has instead flipped its position on releasing all the Epstein-related documents it once claimed it had. On top of that, Vance’s timeline is off. Epstein died by suicide in 2019 — when Trump was president. Trump, not Biden, had the first opportunity to obtain and share new information about Epstein’s death and his social circles. And it was Trump’s Department of Justice that gave Epstein a so-called “sweetheart deal.”
But on top of that, Vance is only making the case for releasing the Epstein files stronger. He’s saying Democrats have more to fear because Epstein had well-documented social connections to liberals, including former President Bill Clinton. Well, that’s precisely why so many Trump supporters want to see the files.
The allure of the Epstein files, for those most interested in them, is the conviction that Epstein’s social scene reveals a secret world of elite exploitation and impunity that spans the political spectrum. And insofar as the rumors about Epstein track with the (preposterous) QAnon conspiracy theory, its proponents believe that politicians and plutocrats on the left side of the spectrum stand to lose the most. Vance’s suggestion that the files could contain juicy stuff on Democrats, therefore, isn’t going to mollify those demanding their release. They already believe that. And so Vance’s remarks may only intensify their demands for their release.
The Trump administration’s deflections and denials might be effective if criticism of its handling of this matter were only a Democratic line of attack. But a huge segment of Republicans care about the issue. A Reuters-Ipsos poll from mid-July found that about a third of Republicans disapproved of Trump’s handling of the issue and that 62% believed that the government was hiding information on Epstein’s client list. That poll also found that 82% of Democrats disapproved of Trump’s handling of the issue, and that the same percentage believed the government was hiding information on Epstein’s client list. Trump’s “nothing to see here” narrative isn’t helped by the slow drip of reporting illuminating the depth of Trump’s relationship with Epstein. The Wall Street Journal, citing senior administration officials, reported in July that Trump’s name appears in the Department of Justice’s files on Epstein multiple times. Even if Trump were implicated in some way by a full release of files, it’s not clear how much, if any, of his diehard base would leave his side. But his desperation to change the topic is easy to observe. As I’ve noted earlier, the Democratic attacks on Trump are not the same as MAGA’s. Their argument is not that the Epstein files contain some obvious smoking gun that will benefit them politically. They’re calling out Trump his allies out for promising to release the Epstein files and boasting that the Epstein client list was allegedly sitting on the attorney general’s desk, and then saying there was no list. The more desperate the excuses from Trump, the more it looks like he — not Democrats — has something to hide.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. Previously, he worked at Vox, HuffPost and Politico, and he has also been published in, among other places, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The Intercept. You can sign up for his free politics newsletter by clicking the link at the top of this bio. 
