Alex Jones Calls Out Trump “Cult” as MAGA’s Epstein Fury Grows

Trump’s dismissal of the Jeffrey Epstein case is giving some of his most ardent supporters—like Alex Jones—a bit of an identity crisis.

“Trump, we’ve believed in you, we’ve seen you do great work, we’ve seen the bad guys, the worst certified people on earth come after you,” Jones said in a video on Wednesday, staring directly into the camera. He then accurately detailed the Trump administration’s history of contradictory policy on the Epstein files. “And now we’ve seen you uncharacteristically flip flop on your promises back and forth. ‘There was no Epstein case, there’s nothing to see here. Ok, we’re gonna investigate it, we’re gonna put it in a special counsel, no there’s nothing there, anybody investigating it is fake news and is a traitor.’ Your most loyal supporters and good people are the ones pointing this out.”

Jones captioned the video “why is Trump destroying MAGA in real time?”

If I was a QAnon-adjacent, Epstein-obsessed MAGA conspiracy theorist, I would be feeling dejected, angry, and confused right now too. Donald Trump and his inner circle made this issue central to their campaign, making promises upon promises to reveal every secret regarding the Epstein files. Now they’re saying there’s nothing there, and that anyone who ever thought so is a complete idiot. It’s been brutally amusing to watch in real time.

“To say ‘you either agree with everything I do or you’re not in our club, I don’t want you,’ well, that sounds kind of like a thorough-bred cult to me,” he said in another video where he compared MAGA to a cult. “When somebody starts saying don’t question things or you can’t be in our club, yeah that’s a cult.”

“I have to say at this point, if you look at the scales here, whether it happened a year ago or six months ago or a month ago, stuff really started to change when Elon [Musk] left, with what he discovered,” he added. “And I think it has a lot of credibility what he said. Trump’s implicated here. I’m not saying sex abuse or kids but definitely somehow, somebody close to him … you are compromised. And If you go with the deep state and continue down this road … the coverup is even worse than whatever would have come out. So I’m loyal to the truth.”

While some MAGA loyalists have scapegoated Attorney General Pam Bondi for various reasons—like her lying about the client list being on her desk, or claims that she is a nefarious deep state operative who strong-armed FBI director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Bongino on the Epstein memo—but few have had the gall to make the connection Jones did here. Perhaps Trump wants everyone to forget about Epstein because he or his friends would be implicated. Either way, the hardcore wing of the MAGA movement is in shambles over this. And as we approach week three of the fallout, it’s unclear if they’ll ever fully recover. There may be more tears from Jones in the near future.

Elected representatives say they aren’t interested if their constituents are detained by federal immigration officials.

On Capitol Hill Wednesday, South Carolina Representative Ralph Norman, Texas Representative Troy Nehls, and Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville brushed off reports that American citizens were being targeted by ICE agents in overzealous raids.

“Congressman, do you care if U.S. citizens accidentally get detained in ICE raids?” Migrant Insider’s Pablo Manríquez asked each of them.

“No, I’m not concerned about that,” confessed Norman, underscoring that he was “so appreciative” of border czar Tom Homan’s actions to force undocumented immigrants out of the country en masse.

“I’m concerned about law and order in America. If you’re an illegal, you don’t need to be here,” Norman said, apparently forgetting that ICE has no authority to arrest, detain, or deport U.S. citizens.

“But what if you’re a citizen?... It just seems to be happening a lot,” pressed Manríquez.

But Norman said he doesn’t “believe that,” highlighting concerns about alleged undocumented gang members in the country when Manríquez cited reports that U.S. veterans are getting dragged into ICE’s deportation machine.

At least one veteran has so far been detained by the aggressive agency: George Retes, a 25-year-old disabled veteran, was detained on July 10 while at work on a California farm. He was held for three days by ICE officials without access to legal representation and without any charges against him, according to Representative Pramila Jayapal’s office.

Jayapal introduced legislation Wednesday—the “Stop ICE from Kidnapping US Citizens Act”—to make ICE’s illegal actions even more blatant. The measure would prevent ICE from detaining and deporting U.S. citizens following reports that the agency had been harassing the country’s Latino population, requesting on-demand proof of citizenship.

But Norman isn’t the only lawmaker to disregard the alarming cases. Nehls attempted to undermine the traumatizing nature of detention when asked if he cared about the arrested citizens, telling Manríquez that the media shouldn’t “spin” detention for “more than it really is.”

“Are you detained for more than three days?” Nehls asked rhetorically, waving his cigar.

“In some cases, yeah,” responded Manríquez.

“Well, maybe people can’t prove that they’re American citizens, either, have the documentation,” Nehls said, apparently at a loss for words, though he did mention that he believed Homan was doing a “hell of a job.”

“It’s not a big problem. It really, really isn’t,” Nehls added.

Tuberville’s sensitive advice to Americans concerned about being illegally detained by plainclothed undercover ICE agents was simple: “First of all, don’t put yourself in a situation where that happens.”

“I’m sure with the illegals we have in this country, some mistakes happen, that always—that’s gone happen,” Tuberville said, before directing Americans to disengage from undocumented communities. “But if you are gonna be hanging around people who are not citizens of this country, some things like that are going to probably happen.”

“Don’t hang around illegals,” he warned.

Tuberville had no advice for mixed-status families.

President Trump once again raised questions surrounding his mental acuity after he seemed to forget that he was the person who appointed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, while he was in the middle of admonishing Powell for not capitulating to his economic plan.

“He’s a terrible, he’s a terrible fed chair,” Trump said of Powell on Wednesday. “I’m surprised he was appointed, I was surprised frankly that Biden put him in and extended him.” 

It was in fact Trump, not Biden, who put Powell “in.” The president nominated Powell for Fed chair in November of 2017, to replace Janet Yellen. 

The incident came just after multiple reports revealed that Trump has a secret letter firing Powell, and he has been asking Republican lawmakers whether he should send it.

This is also a major slip-up from Trump, the result of both his strong inclination to blame anything he doesn’t like on the previous administration and genuine mental decline. This is not the first time Trump’s mental fog has shown itself, even as he is just barely halfway through the first year of his second term. He went on an unrelated tangent about his summer vacation plans earlier this month when he was asked a very basic question about how long detainees would be kept in the Alligator Alcatraz detention camp, and famously confused Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley up at a campaign event last year. These are just one of many examples. Who knows what Trump’s mind will look like at the end of this term.  

The Department of Homeland Security used a painting to evoke themes of xenophobia, white supremacy, and a glorification of Manifest Destiny—all without seeking the approval of Morgan Weistling, the artist who painted it. 

On Monday, the DHS posted Weistling’s painting with an incorrect title, calling it “New Life in a New Land,” rather than the original “A Prayer for New Life.” 

Weistling made himself and his grievances known shortly thereafter. 

“Attention!  I DID NOT give the DHS permission to use my painting in their recent postings on their official web platforms,” he wrote on his website. “They used a painting I did 5 years ago and re-titled it and posted it without my permission. It is a violation of my copyright on the painting.  It was a surprise to me and I am trying to gather how this happen and what to do next. Thank you for those of you that let me know about it.” Weistling posted similar statements on Facebook and Instagram, adding that the news ruined his family vacation.

The DHS post is troubling for a few reasons. What made them change the title of the painting to a much more land-centered, migration-centered message? Did they just think that Weistling would have no issue with having his painting used without permission and compensation? But most troubling in all this is the timing, as the incendiary, thinly-veiled white supremacist language comes as the Trump administration is in the midst of a massive immigration crackdown in which ICE has effectively opened a concentration camp, set wild new arrest quotas, and openly admitted to racial profiling Latinos. 

“I am amazed that they thought they could randomly post an artist’s painting without permission,” Weistling said in his Instagram post. “They even re-titled it.”

The president would apparently rather disparage his base than release the case files pertaining to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaking with reporters at the White House Wednesday, Trump said that he had “lost a lot of faith” in his supporters, calling the controversy surrounding Epstein a “hoax” and accusing some conservatives of being “duped” by Democrats.

“You mentioned ‘past’ supporters when you were talking about the Epstein issue. Does that mean you are effectively disowning any supporters?” asked one reporter, referring to a lengthy rant Trump posted on Truth Social earlier in the day.

“Well, I lost a lot of faith in certain people, yeah,” Trump said. “Because they got duped by the Democrats. The Democrats are good for nothing. They almost destroyed our country.”

But that wasn’t the only insult Trump threw around.

“It is a hoax started by Democrats, it’s been run by Democrats for four years. You had Christopher Wray and Comey before him. It’s a bad group,” Trump said, likening his administration’s home-brewed fiasco to the Trump-Russia dossier. “Some stupid Republicans and foolish Republicans fall into the net. And so they try to do the Democrats’ work.”

That last comment actually also applies to several MAGA politicos in leadership positions, including Vice President JD Vance and Trump himself, who jointly campaigned on repeat promises to release the Epstein files.

Much to Trump’s chagrin, the botched rollout of the Epstein files has continued to plague his administration. A Morning Consult poll conducted earlier this month found that Trump’s popularity had tanked by six points since the Justice Department contradicted Attorney General Pam Bondi on the existence of Epstein’s so-called “client list.”

The fallout has been so substantial that the president directed Fox News and some commentators such as Charlie Kirk to stop discussing the topic altogether, though that hasn’t played well with some of the mouthier personalities on the far-right.

“Yelling at me to stop talking about a subject is the number one way to make sure that I keep talking about the subject,” Matt Walsh posted on X Wednesday.

And last month, Elon Musk accused Trump of being mentioned by name in the Epstein files, claiming that Trump’s alleged attachment to the disgraced financier was the real reason why the details of the case had not yet been made public.

But Republicans have unquestioningly fallen in line behind their leader: on Tuesday, the party blocked a Democrat-led effort to release the Epstein files. The final vote was 211 to 210—just one dissenting Republican would have tipped the scales.

QAnon believers—who turned out at the polls in November to re-elect Trump—have believed for years that the 79-year-old billionaire politician would rid the world of Satan-worshiping, liberal-minded pedophiles who run the government and media. But Trump’s sudden refusal to offer up what he has promised his conspiratorial followers has cast his messiah-like status with the group into doubt.

A reminder that prior to his death, Epstein described himself as one of Trump’s “closest friends.” The socialites were named and photographed together, and Trump reportedly slept with his now-wife Melania for the first time aboard Epstein’s plane, nicknamed the “Lolita Express.”

But Trump also has a terrible track record with how he treats women outside of Epstein’s world: the current president was found liable by a jury for sexually abusing Elle columnist E. Jean Carrol last year, was convicted as a felon for crimes relating to his affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, and famously boasted on a hot mic before his ascent to America’s political vanguard that he grabs women “by the pussy.”

Another ex-NYPD official has filed a lawsuit accusing Mayor Eric Adams of overseeing a “coordinated criminal conspiracy” at the nation’s largest police department.

Former Police Commissioner Thomas G. Donlon, whose tenure lasted mere weeks in the fall of 2024, says the NYPD, under the watch of Adams, “functions as a racketeering enterprise in violation of Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).”

Donlon went on to state that he “uncovered systemic corruption and criminal conduct being perpetrated by the NYPD’s leadership,” and that Adams “condoned the misconduct.”

The 251-page lawsuit details wire, mail, and honest services fraud, retaliation against whistleblowers, and obstruction of justice, all from the top down. Top police officials allegedly blocked disciplinary referrals for officers, and even forged Donlon’s official department stamp on important documents. These experiences have led to Donlon throwing weighty RICO allegations against his former NYPD colleagues.

“Specifically, Donlon informed Defendant ADAMS of fabricated promotions, systemic fraud, retaliatory policing, and the obstruction of internal investigations by high-ranking officials—most notably Defendant [Tarik] Sheppard, who had a documented history of unlawful violence, including the tasering and false arrest of protestors, resulting in civil rights lawsuits and monetary settlements,” the lawsuit stated. “Defendant ADAMS took no action in response. Instead, he condoned the misconduct and allowed the NYPD to function as a criminal enterprise. As a direct result of Defendant ADAMS’s failure and unwillingness to manage the NYPD, Defendant Sheppard fraudulently orchestrated his own promotion—granting himself greater authority and a higher salary.”

Donlon said he was completely frozen out by NYPD leadership after confronting Sheppard about his promotion scam, and they allegedly even carried out an unlawful arrest of Donlon’s wife as retaliation.

“[Donlon’s] professional reputation—built over decades of federal and state law enforcement and intelligence service—was deliberately destroyed. The emotional toll of the retaliation against his entire family was and is incalculable,” the lawsuit read. “These were precisely the kinds of injuries RICO was designed to remedy, and this Complaint seeks redress for Donlon, whose unwavering aspiration from the beginning was to protect and serve the NYPD’s Finest.”

The Adams administration remains indignant.

“These are baseless accusations from a disgruntled former employee who — when given the opportunity to lead the greatest police department in the world — proved himself to be ineffective,” spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak Altus said on the mayor’s behalf. “This suit is nothing more than an attempt to seek compensation at the taxpayer’s expense after Mr. Donlon was rightfully removed from the role of interim police commissioner.”

This is the fifth lawsuit filed against Adams’s NYPD in just two weeks. Four former senior NYPD officers filed separate lawsuits against Adams, also accusing him of corruption, cronyism, and whistleblower intimidation. This all comes as the mayor is preparing to run as an independent against Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, who has zeroed in mercilessly on the mayor’s misconduct.

Adams would very likely be under federal investigation by the Justice Department if they hadn’t (rather controversially) dismissed his federal corruption charges in exchange for loyalty and aid in Trump’s brutal immigration crackdown. Corruption has followed Adams for the entirety of his tenure. We can only wait until November to see if voters give him another.

Donald Trump was spotted sporting a poorly concealed bruise on his hand, and the White House has the weirdest excuse for why that is the case.

While speaking to reporters outside the White House Tuesday evening before boarding Marine One, a cameraperson zoomed in on the president’s hand. A large patch of makeup that did not match Trump’s skin tone was clearly evident on the back of his hand.

No one asked Trump about it in the moment, but when asked later, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Daily Beast that Trump was covering up a bruise from too much handshaking.

“President Trump is a man of the people, and he meets more Americans and shakes their hands on a daily basis than any other president in history,” Leavitt told the Beast. “His commitment is unwavering and he proves that every single day.”

This is neither the first time Trump has had a large bruise on the back of his right hand, nor the first time Leavitt has made this bizarre excuse. The bruise first appeared in spring 2024, and appears to pop back up every few months. Since taking office, Trump has been spotted with the bruise in at least February, April, and June.

Trump was also spotted with scabbed red marks on the palm and fingers of his right hand in January 2024, sparking concerns that he had syphilis.

Leavitt made her initial claim about too much gladhanding after the February bruise appearance, when Trump tried to cover the blemish with makeup approximately the color of wet brown cardboard.

Dr. Neal Patel, a primary care physician at Providence St. Joseph Hospital in California, told the Daily Mail in February that handshaking on its own was unlikely to have caused the bruising.

“I see a lot of patients who are businessmen, and I’ve never really seen them getting bruising from too much handshaking,” he said. “I guess it’s possible, but that would really not be on my list of ideas of what causes it.”

Patel and Dr. Stuart Fischer, an internal medicine physician in New York, both said that Trump’s advanced age was the likelier cause of bruising. As people age, it causes their blood vessels to become more “brittle,” Fischer explained to the Mail. That makes bruising more likely—and more intense when it does happen.

If Leavitt isn’t going to provide Trump with a decent excuse for the bruise, the least she (or literally anyone else at the White House) could do is find him some makeup that better matches his skin tone.

Sephora was hit with calls for a boycott shortly after the 2024 election when a series of social media posts alleging the makeup retail giant had donated to Trump’s campaign. Sephora has since said it “does not make corporate donations to political candidates.” Brendan Glavin, deputy research director at campaign finance watchdog group OpenSecrets, explained to CBS in November that any lump donations from “Sephora” (or any company) were likely an “aggregation of all the money that employees of the organization gave to the candidate.”

That means that there’s at least one Sephora employee who would happily color-match Trump’s skin tone. Maybe they can help him with his foundation and bronzer next.

Donald Trump’s Cabinet officials are not keeping track of America’s air traffic controllers amid a historic shortage.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was shockingly quiet when asked about the number of air traffic controllers remaining in the United States while testifying before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Wednesday, refusing to provide concrete details on America’s air infrastructure.

“Can you tell this committee how many air traffic controllers have left the FAA since January 20, 2025?” asked Democratic Georgia Representative Hank Johnson Jr.

“I don’t—,” Duffy started, before Johnson interjected: “Please don’t tell me you don’t know.”

“I don’t know that,” Duffy insisted.

“This is an important job,” Johnson said. “Are you trying to tell us you don’t know how many air traffic controllers are in the building?”

“They’re not in a building, they’re in towers,” Duffy responded.

“Well I’m just speaking figuratively,” Johnson said.

Industry professionals are not so ignorant: there are currently 10,800 certified controllers working in America, according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. Union President Nick Daniels has said that 41 percent of those air traffic controllers are working six days a week, 10 hours a day to meet the demands required of a full staff, which is estimated to be more than 14,600 workers.

The shortage of air traffic controllers is nothing new: it’s been an unmitigated problem decades in the making. A large bulk of the country’s controllers retired over the last 10 years—a coincidence made possible due to the fact that the majority were onboarded simultaneously as replacements for the 11,350 controllers fired by President Ronald Reagan in 1982.

In 2015, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association told Congress that the situation had reached a “crisis” level and that, at the time, the Federal Aviation Administration had missed hiring targets five years in a row.

The Biden administration attempted to step up the pace of hiring in 2024, onboarding 2,000 qualified applicants. But they barely replaced the outbound workforce: 1,100 controllers left their jobs last year.

For years, the federal government has failed to properly incentivize younger generations to view the famously high-stress, high-education, and relatively antisocial job as desirable—and similar to other industries, the growing lapse between the aging workforce and the stalling youth is contributing to a brain drain which will deplete experience across the board. (To address this, Duffy also said that the FAA would change retirement limits, advising the union that air traffic controllers will be allowed to work past the age of 56.)

The massive shortage has forced controllers to do double duty, tasked (at some airports) with juggling both the flight paths of commercial airplanes and helicopters—work typically done by two separate controllers.

But the industry has faced new struggles since Trump took office. There have been critical failures at airports across the country, including a mid-air collision at Reagan National Airport in Washington that resulted in the deaths of 67 people in January, as well as rolling blackouts at Newark International Airport. These crises have sparked a new wave of retirements due to heightened stress on the already overtaxed controllers.

In February, the administration erased 400 FAA roles, including positions that supported air safety. Duffy confirmed the cuts that time, though he attempted to minimize them by highlighting the overall staffing of the agency, which Duffy claimed employs some 45,000 workers.

Duffy has promised to “supercharge” air traffic controller hiring, hoping to shave four months off the typically arduous onboarding process. But even at an expedited rate, that likely wouldn’t make a dent in America’s air traffic staff anytime soon: it currently takes about four years to become a certified air traffic controller. Instead, NATCA’s Daniels has estimated that it could take as long as nine years to reach full staffing.

The president is gung-ho about gerrymandering ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

Speaking with reporters on the tarmac of Joint Base Andrews Tuesday evening, Donald Trump said there’s “about four” states besides Texas that he would like to redraw their congressional lines.

“In three cases, it’s one. And in one case, it’s two or three. And Texas would be five,” Trump said as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick nodded enthusiastically beside him. Trump had previously suggested that Texas could give Republicans five more House seats by flipping a handful of blue districts in the Lone Star State next year via “a very simple redrawing.”

But suggestions that California—the largest liberal contingent in the country—could do the same did not sit well with the MAGA leader.

“Are you concerned California will turn around and do the same thing?” asked a reporter.

“Well we’ll fight them,” Trump said. “You know they’re so corrupt in California, you never know what’s going to happen. But we’ve done pretty well in the courts in California, you see. We’re batting about 1,000, ultimately.”

Trump has made a volatile enemy out of Governor Gavin Newsom. California sued the federal government last month after Trump deployed thousands of National Guard members to manhandle Los Angeles’s anti-ICE protests. An appeals court later blocked a court decision that would have handed the authority of the National Guard back to Newsom.

Now, the vengeful governor is threatening to shift the state’s redistricting policy if Texas follows Trump’s orders. In an interview with The Tennessee Holler last week, Newsom accused Republicans of “playing by a totally different set of rules,” and warned that California’s liberally dominant legislature could “gerrymander like no other state.”

“We’ve been playing fair, but I saw what he just did, and it made me question that entire program,” Newsom said.

Congressional maps are typically redrawn every 10 years, after new census data is released. But Texas’s decision to do so in the middle of the decade—at Trump’s direction—has raised alarms, with Democrats in the state labelling the effort a threat to democracy.

“The scheme of the Republicans has consistently been to make sure that they mute our voices so that they can go ahead and have an oversized say in this,” Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett said at a news conference Tuesday. “So I fully anticipate that’s exactly where they’re going with this map.”

Last year, the ideologically conservative majority on the Supreme Court made gerrymandering that much easier, ruling in Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP that alleged racial gerrymandering in South Carolina (which is theoretically still illegal) was really just partisan gerrymandering, an apparently precious part of America’s democratic system.

New Hampshire Republican Governor Kelly Ayotte on Tuesday struck down seven separate right-wing bills in an open rebuke of her party’s MAGA arm.

Ayotte vetoed House Bill 324, which gave parents greater power to remove any classroom content they felt was obscene, placing a target on LGBTQ+ literature and themes.

“Current state law appears to provide a mechanism for parents through their local school district to exercise their rights to ensure their children are not exposed to inappropriate materials,” Ayotte said. “Therefore, I do not believe the State of New Hampshire needs to, nor should it, engage in the role of addressing questions of literary value and appropriateness, particularly where the system created by House Bill 324 calls for monetary penalties based on subjective standards.”

There was also House Bill 148, which would have allowed stores, jails, and workspaces to ignore gender identity and categorize people based on their assigned gender at birth.

“I believe there are important and legitimate privacy and safety concerns raised by biological males using places such as female locker rooms and being placed in female correctional facilities,” Ayotte wrote in her veto of the bill. “At the same time, I see that House Bill 148 is overly broad and impractical to enforce, potentially creating an exclusionary environment for some of our citizens.”

She killed House Bill 358, which would have streamlined the “religious exemption” process for parents who don’t want to vaccinate their children; House Bill 446, which would have required schools to receive parental permission to conduct non-academic surveys; and House Bill 667, an anti-abortion bill that would have forced students to view “a high quality computer generated animation or ultrasound video that shows the development of the heart, brain, and other vital organs in early fetal development,” according to The New Hampshire Bulletin.

There was also House Bill 475 and House Bill 115, both budget-centered bills that Ayotte deemed unnecessary.

Ayotte’s vetoes are a rejection of her party’s attempt to assert cultural control throughout the state, and the country. Lawmakers would need a two-thirds majority in both the state House and Senate to overturn Ayotte’s vetoes, which will be a very tall task given that Republicans don’t have those numbers.