Smearing Obama Won’t Make Epstein Go Away

Smearing Obama Won’t Make Epstein Go Away

 

Frantically scrambling to distract the public from a damaging Jeffrey Epstein firestorm of his own making, President Trump baselessly accused Barack Obama of treason last week, saying the former president should be put on trial. 

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The fig leaf Mr. Trump used to make this transparently reckless and absurd charge was a misleading document released at the president’s request by Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, claiming that the Obama national security team “manufactured and politicized intelligence” to back up its conclusion that Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump. Various fact-checkers quickly debunked what The Washington Post referred to as Gabbard’s “paper-thin findings.”

 

“Gabbard’s claim relies heavily on an alleged contradiction between a Jan. 6, 2017, intelligence assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an “influence campaign” in an attempt to help elect Donald Trump and earlier intelligence assessments that concluded Russia did not successfully use cyberattacks on election infrastructure in the 2016 election. But those two assessments are not in contradiction,” wrote factcheck.org. “No one ever claimed Russia altered votes, but everyone claims that Russia tried to interfere on Trump’s behalf,” Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a video message. posted on X on July 21.”

 

Through a spokesperson, Mr. Obama amplified the same point: “These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction,” wrote Patrick Rodenbush, an Obama spokesperson. “Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes, These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.” (Rubio of course now serves as Trump’s secretary of state.)

 

By attacking Mr. Obama--a favorite right-wing punching bag--with an explosive attention-getting charge, President Trump was hoping to rally the MAGA faithful and the right-wing media--some of whom have been critical of his administration’s handling of the Epstein matter--back to his side.  Mr. Trump remembers that his embrace of birtherism in which he falsely accused then-President Obama of not being born in this nation fueled his initial political rise.

 

Predictably, some portion of the right-wing media echo chamber, including the Fox News prime time hosts, were all too willing to echo Mr. Trump’s new attack on Obama.  This, however, is not making his Epstein problem go away because it is an article of faith in MAGA-world that there is a yet-to-be-revealed broader conspiracy and cover-up.

 

For years, President Trump, MAGA affiliated podcasters and influencers, and right-wing media figures championed an evidence-free conspiracy theory that this convicted sex offender who committed hundreds of acts of pedophilia did not commit suicide in prison; he was murdered to prevent him from revealing the names of prominent elites, mainly Democrats in this fanciful scenario, who participated along with him.  This notion of a pedophile ring of Democratic politicians and other elites was also central to other fact-free conspiracies advanced on the right, including Qanon and pizzagate.  After being bombarded about these false conspiracies for years from sources they trusted, a significant portion of the core MAGA base became believers.

 

This belief and sense of expectation that ‘’all that had been hidden” would come out was heightened when, in February, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News she had the so-called Epstein client list on her desk to review and intimated it would be released in short order. (Bondi now says she meant the overall Epstein files, not a specific list.) 

 

Not surprisingly, when the attorney general, joined by FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino--all Epstein conspiracy champions before joining the Trump administration---announced their conclusion that Epstein did in fact commit suicide, that there were no client list, and that there was no evidence that anyone else committed crimes, it was met with disbelief and a sense of betrayal by a portion of the MAGA faithful.

 

In the 20 days or so since the “there really is nothing to see here after all” announcement, Donald Trump has compounded the problem through an overall churlish defensiveness that makes it seem as if he has something to hide, as well as a series of specific missteps. These include: 1) publicly telling his media allies to stop talking about it, which they haven’t; 2) calling the Epstein matter a Democratic hoax, which the people he needs to persuade know is not true; and 3) denying that he was briefed by Pam Bondi that he was in the files in advance of the public announcement on Epstein, when sources in his own administration confirm it.

 

The public relations strategy called for in this situation is a straightforward acknowledgement that President Trump and his administration thought there was a large underlying conspiracy regarding Epstein, but a thorough review of the files revealed that wasn’t the case.  This should be accompanied by a broader release of the files after redacting victims’ names and unconfirmed allegations against specific individuals.  This will not satisfy the most hardened conspiracy believers but would give the topic no more oxygen.  Unfortunately, owning up to mistakes and simply outlining the facts with no embellishment are methods of communication to which Mr. Trump is allergic.

 
This is arguably the first time President Trump is paying a significant political price for trafficking in conspiracy theories and outright falsehoods.  Given that his response to this problem of his own making is to offer one more absurd and patently false conspiracy theory about President Obama, however, it is difficult to hold out much hope that the president is learning any real lessons and will start telling the American people the truth for a change.