President Donald Trump sent a blunt message to supporters after MAGAworld spent another day furiously clamoring for the release of the Epstein files.
While speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews on Tuesday, Trump was asked to weigh in on MAGA’s keen interest in the controversy surrounding disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The president then raged at his own base and claimed “only pretty bad people” were still interested in the case.
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“I don’t understand why they would be so interested. He’s dead for a long time. He was never a big factor in terms of life. I don’t understand what the interest or what the fascination is,” he said.
“I don’t understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody. It’s pretty boring stuff. It’s sordid but it’s boring, and I don’t understand why it keeps going,” he added. “I think really only pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going.”
The president then vowed that he was happy for “credible information to be released despite Republicans voting down efforts to release the files this week.
“Credible information, let them give it, any thing that’s credible, I would say, let them have it,” Trump said.
The MAGA base’s sustained interest in the Epstein files could be explained in part by Trump’s own vow on the campaign trail to release them if he were elected.
In a September 2024 interview on The Lex Fridman Podcast, Trump said he would be willing to release the Epstein files along with thousands of classified documents on the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy, which were publicized in March.
“I’d be inclined to do the Epstein,” Trump said at the time. “I’d have no problem with it.”
Some of the president’s appointees to key positions in his administration also have a long history of demanding the release of the Epstein files.
Kash Patel, a longtime conspiracy theorist turned FBI director, told House Republicans in a 2023 interview to “put on your big boy pants, and let us know who the pedophiles are.” His deputy director, podcaster Dan Bongino, suspects “there’s a reason they’re hiding” the client list, which many believe includes prominent politicians and businessmen.
Attorney General Pam Bondi raised expectations in February when she told Fox News that the Epstein files were “sitting” on her desk. Earlier this month, however, the MAGA faithful erupted in outrage after the Justice Department and the FBI said there was no client list and Epstein was not murdered, contrary to many conspiracy theories.
Trump sought to quell the furor but ended up making it worse when he penned a lengthy Truth Social post asking his supporters to let the scandal go: “We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening.”
But the MAGA loyalists are showing no signs of standing down. Far-right pundit Alex Jones was quick to issue a scathing response to Trump’s questions about why the Epstein case would interest anyone.
“Why would anybody want to know about that? You made it a major campaign issue, and your surrogates did, to bring all this out. That’s why,” he said.
