The Epstein Hoax And MAGA's Humiliation

It Would Be Fun To Watch Them Get Conned, If It Wasn't Also So Sad And Dangerous

“You look so dumb right now.”

The opening line from Rihanna’s 2008 ballad "Take A Bow” kept playing over and over in my head since the Trump Administration revealed earlier this week that there is, in fact, no “Epstein Client List.”

After months of teasing that there was a list and files containing in-depth information about a child sex trafficking ring surrounding late financier and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel both admitted this week - it’s nothing.

The reaction among MAGA has ranged from resignation to blind outrage. I admit, I’ve been relishing in MAGA voters realizing what the rest of us have known all along: that they were conned. There was no society-wide conspiracy here, and Ghislane Maxwell, Epstein’s former paramour, is in prison merely for helping Epstein traffic underage girls for sex only with him, and perhaps a handful of other figures friendly to him. We all paid attention to the investigation that landed Epstein in the jail cell where he committed suicide in 2019 - something Bondi admitted this week was true after all - and saw for ourselves the evidence that the ring was primarily centered on Maxwell, allegedly grooming underage girls for sex with Epstein himself.

The conspiracy theory that Epstein was at the center of a pedophile ring that would snare prominent liberal politicians and the Hollywood and business elite, had become central to the MAGA existence ever since QAnon - a political movement that believes Donald Trump is leading a fight against child sex trafficking and a cabal of cannablist satan-worshippers - became mainstream during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic. QAnon, which I wrote about almost being sucked into in 2020, attracted many former Democratic voters and supporters and helped Trump and the GOP gain support since 2020 in some socially conservative working class communities Democrats still held onto. It also led to the elections of far-right politicians like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who is a QAnon adherent.

But it was all a lie, one that has delivered catastrophic consequences.