President Donald Trump is very angry at Republicans over the Jeffrey Epstein fiasco. Politico reports that he believes Democrats “outplayed” the GOP, resulting in the fiasco that’s about to unfold, in which the House is expected to vote to release the Epstein files with the support of most or all Republicans. In this telling, Trump—who called on the GOP to support release after opposing it for months—only had to reverse himself because his party botched the politics of this battle.
This is a monumentally absurd reading: Trump’s own longtime opposition to releasing the files is what created the—correct—impression of a cover-up, building pressure for disclosure and leaving him no option but to climb aboard. At any point during this saga Trump could have backed release of the files and not gotten forced into it. Heck, he could have ordered this himself. He—and he alone—is the author of this mess. But that aside, we suspect Trump is enraged for another reason entirely: His aura of mastery over the GOP has now been shattered.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene offered an extraordinary takedown of Trump on Tuesday morning that lays all these dynamics bare. Watch this whole clip, courtesy of Aaron Rupar:
As Greene notes, Trump depicted her as a “traitor” for supporting the discharge petition compelling a House vote on release of the files, i.e., the trove of investigative materials gathered in the Justice Department’s investigations of Epstein’s sex trafficking. That’s a reference to Trump’s explosion of fury at Greene earlier this week, in which he angrily declared that he no longer supports her due to her Epstein apostasy.
What Trump understands better than anyone alive is that it’s the perception of his mastery over fellow Republicans that matters above all to the success of his project. Trump’s eruption at Greene was a last-ditch effort to warn other Republicans that if they dare join her, they’d face his wrath. Earlier, the White House had privately pressured Lauren Boebert—another GOP representative who’d joined the petition, along with Thomas Massie—to pull her name, a retreat that would cement Trump’s aura of control. She refused.
Indeed, if you think about it, even Trump’s sudden about-face, at bottom, is really about maintaining that perception of mastery. Faced with certain defections, what Trump feared most was the spectacle of Republicans not doing his express bidding. In calling for release himself, Trump was not primarily concerned with appearing transparent; rather, he was making an eleventh-hour effort to create the impression that he—and he alone—is dictating this GOP outcome.
It’s a key tell that the most determined of pro-Trump propagandists are suddenly pushing that line, that Trump is the one responsible for the vote to release the files. Look at this insane exchange between a New York Times reporter and MAGA Congressman Troy Nehls, in which Nehls struggles to explain why he’s been calling the files a “hoax” but will now vote to release them:
“It is a hoax by the Democrats against Trump,” Mr. Nehls said, lighting a cigar on the steps of the Capitol.
So then why support it?
“Why not?” he replied. “Trump said just release the damn files. He said do it—release the damn files.”
Get it now? Trump wants us to do this, and that’s why it’s happening. Mark this down: It won’t be long until Trump’s propagandists start pushing the line that by ordering the files released, Trump totally owned the Democrats. Oh, wait: As Matt Gertz shows, MAGA media has already started saying this.
What is surely most galling to Trump in the above video is Greene’s straightforward declaration that Trump was unable to control the course of events. Not by calling her a “traitor.” Not by privately pressuring Republicans. Not by raging on Truth Social that the Epstein files are a “Democrat hoax.” His control over what information enters and exits the ears and minds of MAGA voters turns out not to be absolute, after all.
Indeed, Greene’s speech is kryptonite to the cult of Trump primarily because of her delineation of the real reasons Congress—including most or all Republicans—will vote to rebuke him. The culprits are: sustained organizing, the power of the victims’ stories, the untenability of the elite cover-up suppressing the files, and—yes—the willingness of a few Republicans like Greene to take on the president and all the hate and rage and death threats that come along with it.
Obviously, Trump’s grip on the Republican Party is still quite formidable. But that grip is plainly loosening on many fronts. Trump has failed to bully Indiana Republicans into joining his corrupt gerrymandering scheme. More than once, a handful of GOP senators have joined Democrats to vote to undo some of his tariffs. Trump’s prosecutions of Democratic enemies are running aground precisely because Justice Department officials appointed by him or picked by his attorney general won’t go along. And as Kyle Cheney notes, Trump has failed to get Republicans to nix the filibuster or end the power of GOP senators to block home-state appointments.
To be sure, we still don’t know whether the files will ultimately be released in full. David Kurtz explains how the administration is already using weaselly language to try to give itself an out. And of course the Senate may still vote to keep them under wraps.
But how much longer can that dynamic hold? In purely political terms, the longer Trump does keep the files suppressed, the worse it is for him and the GOP. In this regard, it’s worth noting an amusing irony: Now that Republicans are going all in with the fiction that the files are getting released because Trump wants it so—now that they must maintain the propagandistic illusion that Trump couldn’t care less if the files are released—it’ll be even harder to spin right around and defend future efforts to keep them buried nonetheless.
What we’re now learning, above all, is that Trump appears to wield absolute mastery over the GOP … until he doesn’t, and can no longer sustain that illusion. And when the illusion has been shattered, reality quickly follows suit.
