President Trump now faces a revolt from the MAGA media.

The conspiracy-soaked culture that propelled President Donald Trump to political power is now coming for him. The online outrage highlights a vulnerability for Trump and an unfortunate reality about the incentive structure of this social media era. It is that conspiracy theories keep people watching, sharing and playing along, even about a topic as lurid as sex trafficking. So, it makes sense that many people are insisting on further disclosures about Epstein and his connections to powerful people.

Right-wing TV networks and social media platforms have long rewarded hyperbolic rhetoric and reckless speculation. Algorithms don’t necessarily want answers; they want engagement, and asking questions about an alleged government coverup definitely stokes engagement. The professed details vary from influencer from influencer, but the general idea is always that a cabal of liberal elites are both evil and beyond the reach of any accountability.

It’s a stunning turn of events since conspiracy-theorizing has historically helped Trump enormously. His “birther” lie arguably birthed his political career and directly boosted his popularity with Republican voters. Conspiratorial claims about immigration and crime also helped him win the election the first time around.

According to the Public Religion Research Institute, which has tracked the conspiracy theory’s popularity, some QAnon adherents believe that “the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping paedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation”.

While the Epstein-related theories are an extension of that conspiratorial worldview, just as QAnon picked up where “Pizzagate” left off. (In 2016, the false theory about Hillary Clinton leading a child-sex ring in the basement of a Washington, DC, pizza shop led a North Carolina man to show up with a gun. He discovered that the restaurant didn’t even have a basement). Trump is now increasingly the target of his base’s conspiratorial thinking — the same position he put Barack Obama in by baselessly questioning Obama’s birthplace more than a decade ago. Over the weekend, Trump even tried to shift blame back to Obama and other Democrats, but with little success.

Researchers like to point out that conspiracy theories are self-sealing, meaning they’re impervious to scrutiny because evidence that contradicts the theory can be turned around and viewed as part of the conspiracy itself. The irate reactions to FBI director Kash Patel’s tweet on Saturday — “the conspiracy theories just aren’t true, never have been” — reaffirmed this.

In 2023, when Patel was a frequent guest on pro-Trump podcasts, he told Glenn Beck that the FBI had possession of Epstein’s black book. “That’s under direct control of the director of the FBI,” Patel said. Such conjecture about a supposed Epstein “client list” lit up MAGA chat rooms and forums for years. Online guessing games about “the list” were an endless source of MAGA media content.

It was Donald Trump Junior who had reiterated on his X-Handle in the year 2024, that, “I keep hearing about some of the Jeffrey Epstein client’s names being released today, but I’d be willing to bet that something happens between now and then that prevents those names from ever coming out”.

The implication of his post was that a massive cover-up was underway. Now, though, his father is the head of the government and the one catching heat for an alleged lack of transparency. Some journalists have portrayed it as a profound betrayal.

What exploits the sense that something is broken in the society. But rather than focussing on delving these social fractures and healing them, some instead fixates on the pursuit of enemies and villains described in such extreme terms that any action — either by adherents or by identified champions like President Trump — becomes justifiable.

Team Maverick