Trump’s Reaction to the Epstein Victims’ Rally Is Quite Telling

Sign up for the Slatest^[1] to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

There’s a notable irony hanging over one of the biggest stories in politics right now: As the women victimized by sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein gathered on Capitol Hill this week to demand the release of the files related to the case and full transparency from the various law enforcement officials who have prosecuted it, the political debates over the matter are still mostly being driven by men.

Some of those men are using the case as leverage to demonstrate their opponents’ hypocrisy. Others are trying to avoid it, in an effort to protect other, more powerful men. A few are breaking party ranks, apparently just as scared of their lunatic base as their lunatic leader. But it’s all a telling spectacle: dogged women determined to tell the world the truth about a serial predator, surrounded by exploitative men using those women’s stories for their own political purposes.

More depressing still is that the men at the forefront of the push to release the Epstein files are, in this context, the good guys. They’re up against a group of even more politically ambitious, exploitative, and craven men, who are hypocrites to boot: Those who trumpeted on about the Epstein files when it helped their campaigns, and are now trying to bury the story because Donald Trump doesn’t want it told.

To their enormous credit, many of the women who say Epstein abused them are refusing to be intimidated into silence. Nearly a dozen^[2] of them took to the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, insisting on telling their stories and demanding that the Epstein documents—which the Trump administration long promised to disclose—be released in full. As the women gathered, Trump gave remarks of his own from the White House. The whole Epstein matter, he said^[3], was a “Democratic hoax,” a way of distracting from how amazing his time in office has been. “What they’re trying to do with the Epstein hoax is get people to talk about that,” he said^[4]. “We’re having the most successful eight months of any president ever, and that’s what I want to talk about.”

The women outside weren’t buying it.

“I cordially invite you to the Capitol to meet me in person so you can understand this is not a hoax,” one, Haley Robson, said^[5] in response. “We are real human beings. This is real trauma.”

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky have co-sponsored a bill, called a discharge petition, requiring the Department of Justice to release whatever information they have on their investigation into Epstein, with some redactions for victim privacy. Given that the release of the Epstein files was such an enormous rallying cry among Trump supporters during his election, one would imagine that Republicans and the president alike would be on board. The president, though, doesn’t want the files released. And in today’s GOP—which more closely resembles a fascist cult of personality than a party in a democracy—whatever the president wants, rank-and-file Republicans get for him.

Mostly, anyway. A tiny number of Republicans are breaking ranks, including Massie. Just three others have co-sponsored the Epstein bill, and they are among the most famous and least reputable members of the GOP—although they are, notably, all female: reality-eschewing conspiracymonger Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, gun-toting controversymonger Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, and pathologically narcissistic attentionmonger Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida has indicated she would be “happy^[6]” to sign onto the discharge petition if it comes to that, but seems convinced against all evidence that Trump will release the Epstein files sometime soon. The Republicans stonewalling—Trump, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson—are the party’s most prominent men. And they seem poised to win this particular showdown.

The three right-wing women who demand the release of the documents are doing the bare minimum, which is at least something compared to their cowardly male compatriots, who were happy to use the pain of sexually abused women in order to win office, but now use their power to protect a man who’s been found liable of sexual abuse^[7]. And even the women are not aggressively taking on the men standing in the way of the truth—particularly the man at the top. Instead, they seem to have convinced even themselves that the president is on their side, and simply doesn’t fully understand their cause. “I look forward to talking with President Trump about these women that I’ve met,” Greene told^[8] CNN. “I also encouraged him, already this morning, that he should have these women in the Oval Office. They deserve to be there.”

Trump did not meet with the women. Instead, a White House official said that any Republican signing the discharge petition was committing a “very hostile act^[9]” against his administration.

Greene still insisted she could have it both ways, being a Trump loyalist and an Epstein truther. “Everyone knows I’ve fought harder for President Trump for years now, and that person has their job because I fought so hard to help him get elected. And this isn’t a hostile act towards the administration,” Greene said^[10]. “The hostile act has been against these women for so many years now.”

Democrats are behaving differently. Every single one of them is expected to support the Epstein bill.

Greene, at least, seems to be a true believer in the cause, and she seems to genuinely want the Epstein files released. Democrats are more transparently using the case as a cudgel—and honestly, good for them. Suspicion about Epstein and what does look an awful lot like a cover-up has been a hugely animating issue for the pedophilia-obsessed MAGA right. Having failed to unearth pedophiles in pizza-parlor basements or sex trafficking victims in Wayfair armoires, conservative conspiracy theorists finally found a real child sexual abuser in Epstein‍—and he wound up dead, as did several^[11] of his victims^[12]. Why Epstein got such a sweetheart deal^[13] when he was charged with very serious crimes in Florida, how he died despite being on suicide watch, why some footage of his cell was initially missing^[14], and why there has been such intense resistance to releasing the full investigative files—all of it makes for prime conspiracy theorizing, including for many of us who are very far from QAnon followers but find something just a little too convenient about this whole story.

Democrats should agitate for the release of the files, both because it’s what the victims are demanding and because it highlights the rank hypocrisy on the right. But the fact that the two people leading the charge are a Republican man and a Democratic man makes for something of an uncomfortable spectacle. That the people telling them “no” are ever more Republican men only makes it worse: Women’s stories, again, are being used as pawns in a series of male power plays.

Maybe there really are such powerful men named in the case that the entire Republican establishment has rallied around them. Maybe Epstein had intelligence ties and this is a national security issue. Whatever the reason, the Trump administration has somehow managed to actually insult their own voters’ intelligence (tough to do) by repeatedly releasing already-released files^[20] and claiming that they contain new information. One would hope that this ruse would backfire. Instead, Epstein fatigue is setting in. Momentum is slowing. The full Epstein files seem unlikely to be released. The cult of Donald Trump seems stronger, even, than MAGA’s most captivating (and credible) conspiracy theory.

The movement to disclose the full universe of information on Epstein, a powerful man who used his network of powerful friends to behave with impunity for decades, is failing because powerful men seem to have decided that shining some sunlight into this particular dark corner is not in their interests. Why? Epstein accuser Anouska De Georgiou offered one theory: “The only motive for opposing this bill would be to conceal wrongdoing,” she said, even though “accountability is what makes a society civilized.”^[21]

Sign up for Slate’s evening newsletter.