Over the years, I’ve briefed several elected officials and their staff about the false QAnon conspiracy theory. It’s always surreal to explain to a member of Congress that QAnon followers believe that the Democratic Party is part of a broader satanist cabal of pedophiles, and then face the inevitable follow-up question: Wait, do these folks think I’m a satanist pedophile? I haven’t done one of these briefings in a few years, at least partly because QAnon followers have since been elected to Congress, and presumably any member of the Democratic Caucus who has questions can now go straight to the source.
QAnon conspiracies and the ideology that drive them have been absorbed almost wholly into the MAGA coalition, fully integrated into the MAGA Cinematic Universe. Media Matters senior researcher Alex Kaplan has doggedly tracked every instance of Donald Trump’s signaling to QAnon, as recently as this week. Pandering to the MAGA base on the campaign trail meant throwing red meat about conspiracy theories, and the promise that if reelected, Trump would expose all of the pedophiles once and for all. Starting with Jeffrey Epstein.
In making these promises, Trump has painted himself into a corner. The specter of Jeffrey Epstein is an albatross around Trump’s neck and one of few things that consistently derails his administration. The constant drip of information about Trump’s relationship with Epstein that the public has learned since his DOJ attempted to bury the release of the Epstein files has been stomach-turning. We don’t know what’s in the complete Epstein files yet, but we know that Donald Trump is doing everything he can to ensure the public never finds out. He’s clearly desperate to keep that Pandora’s box permanently closed.
That’s created a wedge in the MAGA coalition that Trump hasn’t been able to repair. This week, the Republican-controlled Congress will almost certainly force the release of the Epstein files, despite aggressive efforts from Trump and Republican leadership to prevent it. GOP leadership expects “mass defections” from members who would normally abide by Trump’s wishes. Trump continues to pressure Republican members of Congress, even summoning Rep. Lauren Boebert to the White House Situation Room to try and change her vote. But his efforts continue to fail.
The vast majority of Americans want the complete Epstein files released. It’s the one thing we can all agree on, an issue that might even allow some of us to find common ground with our MAGA relatives at the Thanksgiving table this year. It’s also the only thing I can think of where MAGA hasn’t fallen in line or let Trump off the hook. Sure, they might start creating a new narrative fiction about Trump the minute they get ahold of the Epstein files, but they want to see what’s contained in those files for themselves.
I expect the news cycle to go completely bonkers once the files are released. We got a taste of it this week when the US House Oversight Committee released a trove of 20,000 Epstein-related documents it had access to. If you want to dive in, my COURIER colleague Camaron Stevenson has created a searchable database to make these files more accessible to the public. What we learned from this dump alone about Trump’s relationship with Epstein – and about Epstein’s emails in general – was enough to make my skin crawl. It will only get worse for him from here. The only question is precisely how much worse?
The more I learn about Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and the network of powerful elites in their orbit, the more I think about QAnon. Proponents of the false QAnon conspiracy theory have caused significant harm, but they’ve also been remarkably consistent about Epstein. More than I would have expected after years of tracking their conspiracy theories and how those theories evolve when they meet up with reality.
In the original QAnon conspiracy theory, Trump was the hero who had come to power to bring about “the storm,” a day of reckoning where Trump’s takeover would be complete and the pedophiles in government would finally be punished. A day of reckoning is almost certainly upon us, and Trump will be at the center of it. But most likely as a villain, not the hero.
This is an excerpt from Ctrl Alt-Right Delete, a newsletter produced in partnership with COURIER — a civic media company. It was republished with the author’s permission. Subscribe HERE.
