Karoline Leavitt Accidentally Whips MAGA Into Frenzy Over Epstein

MAGA supporters want the White House to know they are not happy with Donald Trump.

In an attempt to fend off concerns that the president’s support was slipping, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X Thursday that Trump’s reputation was that of a “rare promise keeper,” citing a report from the conservative Washington Examiner. But his base did not agree.

“Why is the Trump administration protecting pedophiles?” asked one user who self-identified as a Christian Nationalist.

“You say with a straight face after the lies about Epstein? Complete bogus,” responded the official account for the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania.

Against the expertise of individuals who had worked on the case for decades, Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested in January that Jeffrey Epstein had maintained a “client list,” supercharging ideas and theories about which high-powered individuals could have been involved in the pedophilic sex trafficker’s crimes.

The administration’s language changed abruptly on Monday, when the Justice Department posted a memo announcing that no such “incriminating client list” existed. That spurred accusations that at least one section of the government, either Bondi or the DOJ, had lied, and sparked anger amongst some members of Trump’s base who had voted for him based on his repeated promises to unearth the details of the prolific pedophile ring.

But Trump has seemingly lost his gusto to make the details public: on Tuesday, the president said it was “unbelievable” that Americans were still talking about Epstein, and urged the public to move on, brushing off the case altogether. Trump’s response only made QAnon—a large conspiracy network that so strongly believed Trump would uproot a global pedophile ring that they offered him messianic status—more irate. 

His comments also turned some of the president’s most ardent and fanatical supporters against him, including Laura Loomer and Alex Jones. Conservative comedian Roseanne Barr—who twice supported Trump’s political ambitions—asked the president via social media if there is “a time to not care about child sex trafficking.”

But Epstein wasn’t the only source of frustration in Leavitt’s replies.

“Yeah.. and gas is $2 a gallon. Stop gaslighting us!” wrote far-right political activist Lauren Witzke.

“He’s sending more money to Ukraine and failing to provide justice to Epstein’s victims, while continuing to simp for war criminal Netanyahu.  This is not what I voted for,” wrote one user with a QAnon slogan in their bio. 

Donald Trump said that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s disastrous response to the deadly flooding in Texas was good, actually, because she had been quick to get in front of a camera.

During an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker, Trump defended Noem over reports that FEMA’s response was delayed by a policy she instituted requiring her to personally sign off on all DHS expenditures exceeding $100,000. FEMA officials, who were unaware of the new rule, didn’t receive Noem’s go-ahead until Monday, at which point floodwaters had been raging for more than 72 hours.

“I don’t know anything about it. We were right on time. We were there,” Trump said. “In fact, she was the first one I saw on television. She was there right from the beginning, and she would not have needed anything. She had the right to do it, but she was literally the first person I saw on television.”

“That morning, when we all woke up and saw this tragedy that took place during the evening. And she was right on the ball. She’s done a great job,” Trump added.

In Trump’s world, it only matters how something looks, not how it actually is. And despite Noem’s sweeping powers, her primary job has always been simply to appear on television with that tremendous blowout.

On Sunday, as rescue teams sprung into action and FEMA scrambled to assemble aid, Noem posted on Instagram asking her followers to vote for their favorite portrait of her to be used as her official governor’s portrait. (It’s worth remembering that as governor of South Dakota, Noem was banned from 20 percent of the land by the state’s nine federally recognized Indigenous tribes.)

The next day, Noem finally got around to signing for Texas’s requests for aerial imagery to help with search and rescue efforts. But oh gee, what portrait did she pick?

Governor Greg Abbott is trying to further gerrymander Texas while his state recovers from some of the deadliest flooding in its history.

On Wednesday, Abbott told state lawmakers to begin the redistricting process as he positions Republicans to maintain control of the House in 2026. This directive has come straight from President Trump, who is desperately urging states to find ways to create more Republican seats under the guise that the current maps are “unconstitutional.”

Abbott’s directive has drawn the ire of leaders across the state—as well as nationally.

“While Texans battle tragic and deadly flooding, Governor Abbott and House Republicans are plotting a mid-decade gerrymander,” Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote Wednesday on X. “They should be modernizing emergency response—not rigging maps.”

Democratic state Representative Gina Hinojosa described the move as a “blatant partisan power grab.”

“I’ve been disappointed in this governor before. But I’ve never been so thoroughly disgusted,” Hinojosa said. “The governor is so heartless as to do this right now?”

At least 120 people have been confirmed dead in the flash flooding, and at least 170 are still missing at the time of this writing. And while Republicans across the country chide Democrats, calling their legitimate questions around emergency response an attempt to “politicize” the situation, the governor himself is more concerned with politics as usual.

Joe Rogan, podcaster and prominent supporter of Donald Trump’s presidential bid, is souring on the administration’s immigration agenda.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Rogan, who dined with the president on June 30, “has discussed immigration policy with Trump and pushed him to back off deporting workers who have not committed crimes.”

In a podcast episode that aired three days after their dinner, Rogan expressed a sense of betrayal, saying, “We were told there would be no—well, there’s two things that are insane. One is the targeting of migrant workers. Not cartel members, not gang members, not drug dealers. Just construction workers showing up in construction sites and raiding them. Gardeners. Like, really?”

Rogan agreed too when his guest, Replit CEO Amjad Masad, denounced Trump’s targeting of pro-Palestinian students.

The podcaster has criticized Trump’s immigration policy since at least March, when he publicly decried the deportation of Andry José Hernández Romero, a Venezuelan makeup artist who sought asylum in the U.S. to avoid persecution for being gay, and whom the Trump administration spuriously accused of being a gang member. Romero was sent to the maximum-security CECOT prison in El Salvador.

“That’s bad for the cause,” Rogan said at the time. “The cause is, ‘Let’s get the gang members out,’ everybody agrees. But let’s not let innocent gay hairdressers get lumped up with the gangs.”

In a June podcast episode, Rogan expressed further frustration with Trump’s targeting of noncriminals, telling his guest that Trump would not have been elected if he’d announced, “We’re gonna go to Home Depot, and we’re going to arrest all the people at Home Depot. We’re going to go to construction sites, and we’re going to just, like, tackle people at construction sites.”

MAGA in recent days has been forced to reckon with the worrisome implications of Trump’s promised mass deportations, which the president touts as a means to root out violent criminals, while undocumented immigrants who haven’t committed crimes have faced the brunt of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s increasingly aggressive operations.

Then there’s the fact that mass deportations would spell disaster for the U.S. economy and food supply—which led Trump to propose a carve-out for undocumented immigrant farmworkers. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, however, promised there’d be “no amnesty,” instead floating the fatuous idea that nonworking Medicaid recipients could replace deported farmworkers.

Many hard-liners want to throw civil liberties, not to mention the economy, to the wind, to allow deportations to proceed full speed ahead. Others, like Rogan, are growing wary.

Senator John Fetterman has once again turned his back on undocumented immigrants with the rubber stamp from Donald Trump.

“ICE performs an important job for our country,” Fetterman wrote on X Thursday. “Any calls to abolish ICE are 💯 inappropriate and outrageous.”

But “Abolish ICE” has long been a slogan used by the exact kind of progressives who first got Fetterman elected to the Senate in 2022. Since then, the so-called Democrat has betrayed his own voter base time and time again by supporting Trump’s efforts to target and deport undocumented immigrants (even though his own wife, Gisele, was undocumented). But now, Fetterman appears to have been emboldened by the president’s support.

On Wednesday, Fetterman defended ICE officers following an allegedly coordinated attack on an ICE facility in Texas.

“Absolutely unacceptable. Terrible. Awful,” Fetterman said. “ICE agents are just doing their job and I fully support that. For me and people in my party, you know, to abolish it or treat them as criminals or anything, that’s inappropriate and outrageous. ICE performs an important, an important job for our nation.”

During a meeting at the White House with African leaders Wednesday, Trump openly agreed with the Democrat. “The new John Fetterman is exactly what you said—he’s right, he’s right,” Trump said. “And we have to protect our police officers, and we will, and we have been.”

Fetterman told the Daily Mail the following day that the president’s comments “made [his] parents proud.”

“They’re big Fox News viewers,” Fetterman continued. “My whole family is Republican.”

A few hours later, he posted on X reiterating his statement and condemning calls to abolish ICE.

But not everyone was feeling pride. Annie Wu Henry, who ran the Fetterman campaign’s social media, responded to Fetterman’s latest post on X by sharing a campaign video where the Democrat took the opposite view when discussing his own family.

“Ya know, I was asked, ‘Your wife’s family broke the law, what do you think of that?’ And I said, ‘Well I’m so grateful that they did because if they didn’t have the courage to take that step I wouldn’t have the three beautiful children that I have today,’” Fetterman said in the voiceover.

Texas State Senator Angela Paxton has filed for divorce from her husband, Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has long faced accusations of infidelity and corruption. Senator Paxton blamed the split squarely on her husband’s cheating, while the attorney general blamed the split on “the pressures of countless political attacks.”

“Today, after 38 years of marriage, I filed for divorce on biblical grounds. I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation. But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage,” Senator Paxton wrote on X. “I move forward with complete confidence that God is always working everything together for the good of those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose.”

Those “recent discoveries” were the adultery that the senator accused her husband of in her divorce petition. The petition also noted the two had stopped living together in June 2024.

The attorney general made it seem like it was the stress of political office rather than his sleeping with other people that caused Senator Paxton to file for divorce.

“After facing the pressures of countless political attacks and public scrutiny, Angela and I have decided to start a new chapter in our lives,” he wrote on X. “I could not be any more proud or grateful for the incredible family that God has blessed us with, and I remain committed to supporting our amazing children and grandchildren. I ask for your prayers and privacy at this time.”

This is extremely avoidant language from the attorney general, who just two years ago was impeached by the Texas state Assembly for allegedly securing a job for the woman he was having an affair with. He was eventually acquitted. Attorney General Paxton is currently campaigning for the Senate himself against John Cornyn.

Harvard just quietly dismantled its undergraduate school’s offices for diversity, equity, and inclusion amid the university’s ongoing battle with Donald Trump’s administration.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which houses Harvard College, announced internally Wednesday that it would shutter its diversity office and replace it with the “Office for Academic Culture and Community,” according to The Harvard Crimson.

The sudden concession came the same day that Trump’s departments of Education and Health and Human Services went to Harvard University’s accreditor claiming that there was “strong evidence to suggest the school may no longer meet” accreditation standards. If the accreditor agreed, that would mean the school would lose access to federal student aid.

At the same time, several webpages for the university’s affinity organizations were removed, including the Harvard College Women’s Center, Office for BGLTQ Student Life, and Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations.

The sites now link to an empty page for the Office of Academic Culture and Community with a milquetoast statement boasting the importance of “community values.”

“Exposure to and learning from different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences leads to intellectual and personal growth, and the betterment of the University,” said the statement.

These changes represent a sizable victory in the president’s culture war against the elite university over the presence of pro-Palestinian protesters on its campus. In April, Harvard renamed its Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging to the “Community and Campus Life” office.

Last month, the Department of Justice task force to combat antisemitism formally accused Harvard of violating Title IV, and threatened to revoke all federal funding to the university. The notice came amid ongoing negotiations in a bitter legal battle between Harvard and the Trump administration over allegations of antisemitism.

Mahmoud Khalil is suing the Trump administration for $20 million. The 30-year-old Columbia University graduate and green card holder, whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement took as a political prisoner in March, gained his freedom just last month.

On March 8, plainclothes agents ripped Khalil from his Manhattan apartment and his wife, who was then eight months pregnant, and sent him to an ICE detention center in Louisiana.

Khalil remained there for over three months. All the while, the Trump administration taunted and baselessly smeared him as “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, [and] anti-American,” while admitting outright that it was seeking to deport him solely for his beliefs. Still, the Trump administration continues its vendetta, alleging that Khalil improperly filled out his green card application, a claim his attorneys challenge and are seeking to dismiss.

Having returned to his wife and newborn son, Khalil is seeking damages for the ordeal the Trump administration subjected him to. Khalil’s attorneys on Thursday filed a claim for $20 million that names the departments of State and Homeland Security and ICE.

According to the Associated Press, the filing takes the administration to task for its campaign to “terrorize him and his family,” including having “effectively kidnapped him,” before sending him to a remote prison “deliberately concealed” from his family and lawyers, where he endured harsh conditions, was denied his medication, and lost 15 pounds due to being fed “nearly inedible” food.

Regarding the possibility of a settlement, Khalil said he would share the money with other pro-Palestinian advocates Trump is attempting to silence, but would also accept an apology from his administration and a change to its deportation policy.

In light of the news, the Trump administration remains steadfast in its harassment campaign against Khalil, telling the AP that his claim is “absurd” and accusing him of “hateful behavior and rhetoric.”

Former Washington Post writer Joe Davidson made sure to make his disdain for Post owner Jeff Bezos known in a scathing resignation letter.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Davidson stated that he was stepping down from his position as the “Federal Insider” columnist, a position he held since 2008, because the paper had pulled one of his columns for being too critical of Donald Trump.

“For me, the cost became too great when a Federal Insider column I wrote was killed because it was deemed too opinionated under an unwritten and inconsistently enforced policy, which I had not heard of previously,” Davidson wrote.

“Blocking my column because it was too opinionated was a shock. I’ve authored many pieces over my 17 years writing the Federal Diary (renamed the Federal Insider in 2016), that were at least if not more opinionated as the now dead one. In that piece, I argued that ‘one hallmark of President Donald Trump’s first three, turbulent months in office is his widespread, ominous attack on thought, belief and speech.’ The piece contained specific examples, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s alarming memo supporting deportation of Columbia University pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil. Rubio said Khalil could be expelled for ‘expected beliefs … that are otherwise lawful.’ What immigrants might believe in the future now can make them federal law enforcement targets.”

Davidson went on to mention that his article covered the DHS kidnapping of Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk for writing a pro-Palestinian op-ed, a “terrifying sight” reminiscent of “George Orwell’s dystopian and cautionary tale against totalitarianism and thought police in [his] novel ‘1984.’”

“Killing that column was a death blow to my life as a Washington Post columnist. But I wrote two more articles to see if I could cope with the restrictions. That’s when I learned just how severe the policy is. In my next piece, I was not allowed to describe a potential pay raise for federal employees as ‘well-deserved’ because of Post policy,” Davidson continued.

“As a columnist, I can’t live with that level of constraint. A column without commentary made me a columnist without a column. I also was troubled by significant inconsistencies in the implementation of the policy. During this period, The Post allowed stronger, opinionated language by other staffers, including the words ‘viciousness,’ ‘cruelty’ and ‘meanness’ to describe Trump’s actions.”

There has been an alarming amount of capitulation to Trump from the media in this first year of his second term. Earlier this month, CBS settled with Trump for $16 million in a defamation lawsuit.

“I’m gone from The Post, but only as a journalist. Many people understandably have canceled subscriptions to protest Bezos’s actions that have damaged the news organization’s integrity,” Davidson wrote. “I still subscribe, and read and support the enduring fine work of Post journalists in the newspaper and digitally.”

A new report from The Atlantic’s Nick Miroff finds morale at Immigration and Customs Enforcement is suffering as the agency, under the direction of President Trump and Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller, targets undocumented immigrants who haven’t committed crimes.

While the Trump administration may claim its deportation campaign prioritizes violent criminals and gang members, in reality, it has focused on arresting noncriminals, evidently to hit quotas passed down by Trump and Miller.

And while the administration may claim ICE agents are happier than ever, Miroff’s report—based on conversations with 12 current and former ICE personnel—shows that the change is frustrating many agents and officers.

One ICE veteran finds the job so “infuriating” that the agent is considering quitting. “No drug cases, no human trafficking, no child exploitation,” said the agent, who complained about having to focus instead on “arresting gardeners.”

A former agent told Miroff that “morale is in the crapper,” and “even those that are gung ho about the mission aren’t happy with how they are asking to execute it—the quotas and the shift to the low-hanging fruit to make the numbers.”

Another former ICE official suggested that this shift is vindicating criticisms the agency has faced in the past, observing, “What we’re seeing now is what, for many years, we were accused of being, and could always safely say, ‘We don’t do that.’”

One of Miroff’s interviewees was Adam Boyd, a young attorney who resigned from the agency’s legal department because it’s no longer focused on “protecting the homeland from threats.” Instead, he said, “It became a contest of how many deportations could be reported to Stephen Miller by December.”

Boyd told Miroff: “We still need good attorneys at ICE. There are drug traffickers and national-security threats and human-rights violators in our country who need to be dealt with. But we are now focusing on numbers over all else.”

One former ICE official said that there are now “national-security and public-safety threats that are not being addressed,” as the agency moves staff from its Homeland Security Investigations division, focused largely on transnational crime, to its Enforcement and Removal Operations division—a move that many perceive as retaliation for HSI in recent years distancing itself from the agency’s deportation arm.

When Miller issued his demand for 3,000 arrests per day, he reportedly steamrolled any veteran officials who dared to speak up about its impracticality, which has led many to keep silent since then for fear of drawing his ire, Miroff writes. This means that “no one is saying, ‘This is not obtainable,’” an ICE official told him. “The answer is just to keep banging the [ICE rank-and-file] and tell [them] they suck. It’s just not a good atmosphere.”