‘The Dog Catches the Car’ – Trump Fans Irate as He Debunks Conspiracies

US President Donald Trump rode into the White House this year aboard a wave of support from a crowd of populists fond of his conspiracy theories and of his red campaign hats emblazoned with “Make America Great Again”, or MAGA.

Now those red hats are turning against his administration after the Department of Justice publicly rebuked one of their favorite perfidious plots involving the infamous financier and convicted sex trafficker of minors, Jeffrey Epstein. The administration claimed over the weekend that Epstein did not, in fact, keep a list of his clients as the government once suggested.

It is the latest sign that the American right-wing base, fervently against arms for Ukraine which Trump says he now supports, are slowly souring on their pick for president.

In a Fox News interview in February, Attorney General Pam Bondi said that she had an FBI file on her desk supposedly containing an Epstein “client list”. She also claimed any delay in releasing documents about his case was due to “tens of thousands” of videos showing potential pornography of minors.

However, a memo released on Sunday by her Department of Justice (DOJ) said that, after reviewing all the material, they found no evidence that Epstein had kept such a list.

After Epstein’s death in 2019 at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City was ruled a suicide, conspiratorial MAGA types were having none of that, either, suggesting he was killed, perhaps to silence him from providing more details.

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The DOJ also dismissed the claim that Epstein was murdered and said they would not be releasing any more information on the subject.

These theories were, after all, one promoted by spin doctors within Trump’s own inner circle, whom he subsequently hired, notably some of the FBI’s top officials. Aside from Bondi, also in the red hats’ crosshairs were FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, both formerly MAGA icons.

The backlash from Trump’s loyal base was quick this week.

Perhaps this was yet another cover-up? Who knows if some liberal Hollywood types or other Democrats might have turned up on that list? After all, another popular belief among the hardcore MAGA crowd, adherents to the QAnon conspiracies, was that former president Joe Biden’s “deep state” was full of “pedophiles” who “ate babies” and that Trump was the political messiah who would bring them to justice.

One of the MAGA movement’s loudest mouthpieces, “Info Wars” host Alex Jones, led the charge on social media this week.

“Next the DOJ will say “Actually, Jeffrey Epstein never even existed,” Jones tweeted. “This is over the top sickening.”

Another right-wing online influencer, Laura Loomer, posted: “President Trump should fire (Bondi) for lying to his base and creating a liability for his administration.”

“She is an embarrassment and she doesn’t do anything to help Trump,” Loomer wrote.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the administration this week, saying that Bondi was actually talking about Epstein-related paperwork as a whole.

“This is what happens when the dog catches the car,” CNN analyst Chris Cillizza wrote. “Or, to put a finer point on it, when you and the people around you become the very “Deep State” you have spent years attacking.”

Former Trump adviser, billionaire Elon Musk, said during their very public spat that the president was on Epstein’s client list.

Trump, who was convicted last year of covering up the finances of hush money he paid to a porn star, also has denied visiting the US Virgin Islands home where prosecutors say Epstein sex trafficked underage girls.

In video interviews, Epstein had repeatedly referred to Trump as “a good friend.”

On Tuesday, when a reporter asked Bondi about the discrepancies in her accounts about Epstein’s client lists, Trump leanded in and said, “Mind if I interrupt for a second?”

Turning to the reporter, the president said, “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?... Are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable,” Trump said.