When the Cult Leader Renounces His Own Dogma

How Trump’s Response to the Epstein Scandal Produced MAGA’s Crisis of Faith

The conspiracy story surrounding the “Epstein Files” might be as fictional as those on The X Files, but the facts of the case have only partially mattered to the Trump base. Like the stolen election big lie, climate denial, and the myth of predatory immigrant invaders, the belief in an Epstein-funded international cabal of liberal cannibalistic pedophiles is key to MAGA catechism. They are stories so saturated with group identity that denying them risks being expelled from the tribe. For Trump to now repudiate such a foundational tale has generated shock and horror among the faithful. He might as well have announced he was transitioning to “Donna,” donating his fortune to Planned Parenthood, and campaigning to place the visage of Barack Obama on Mt. Rushmore. But before we can understand the impact of this shocking renunciation, we have to disentangle reality from fantasy, even when they might overlap.

There are two Epstein stories. The real-world one features an accused pedophile, his various enablers like Ghislaine Maxwell, friends who may have participated in his crimes, and a coterie of hangers-on. Epstein was charged with multiple crimes but ultimately received a sweetheart deal from a prosecutor, Alex Acosta. He would later become Trump’s Secretary of Labor. Acosta was eventually pressured to resign once his legal coddling of Epstein was exposed. Epstein’s putative suicide under conditions of a 24-hour watch, along with a highly edited and truncated videotape that doesn’t even show all the entrances to his cell, has not earned public confidence in the official account of his death. These suspicious details have generated considerable fodder for conspiratorial speculation, some of which may one day be confirmed.

Then there is the MAGA/Q-Anon conspiracy narrative version, heavily promoted by Trump. The central characters in that story, beyond Epstein and Maxwell, include a global cabal of pedophilic Democratic politicians, Hollywood liberals, and bankers who, in addition to sexually exploiting their young victims, harvest and ingest their blood for its immortality-promoting constituents. Some readers will recognize this as an updated iteration of the medieval antisemitic fantasy of Jews stealing the blood of Christian children to use in matzo bread.

In that MAGA version, somewhere in the Justice Department documents, there is a list of all the deep-state members of the Epstein cabal, the proverbial “client list,” which he kept as blackmail material to ensure he would never be prosecuted. According to Q believers, Trump was anointed by God to bring that cabal of left-wing predators to justice, possibly through mass public executions. This would usher in a glorious golden age where diseases are magically cured, and righteousness prevails on Earth. The “myth” of climate change will be dispelled, and the natural disasters attributed to it will cease because the liberal elite will no longer be able to manipulate the weather.

Remarkably, in the real world outside the conspiracy story, MAGA/Q-Anon cult members have seemed mostly unfazed by Donald Trump’s long history of sexual predation, his conviction for sexual abuse, lecherous comments he made about his own daughter, and his proud boast about being able to grope women without consequences. His long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein was never a secret. Epstein himself said, “I was Donald’s closest friend for 10 years.” Trump even acknowledged that he and his friend shared a preference for women “on the younger side.” If any member of the ruling elite were being protected by the government’s handling of Epstein’s crimes and his soft-ball prosecution, it would be Donald Trump. However, in the MAGA/Q-Anon conspiracy version of the Epstein story, all of that is overlooked, rationalized, or mostly denied. Instead, Trump is portrayed as the hero working behind the scenes in a kind of conspiracy of virtue to bring the sexual predators and child molesters in Epstein’s world to justice.

Like other right-wing myths, belief in the Epstein conspiracy has been key to membership in the Trump cult. As the high priest of his tribe, Trump is revered. Seen as infallible, all-powerful, and all-knowing, his words are treated as absolute truth. Until now, no amount of evidence contradicting him could shake his followers' faith. Like all cults, believing in the leader’s claims is more about group loyalty than facts. There are policy views, such as those on tariffs, taxes, national debt, or foreign interventions. Then, some beliefs are deeply tied to group identity. Psychologist Dan Kahan refers to such ideas as 'identity-protective cognitions.”

Rejecting those beliefs can lead to exile from the tribe. Therefore, it is crucial to embrace them even if they defy all logic and contradict available facts. And it is not entirely irrational to do so. Evolution has programmed us to value our place in the group above all other considerations. For most of human history, our survival depended on it. That is what makes social proof so persuasive when it comes to consumer choices, voting preferences, and opinions on issues. It explains why product and political advertisers constantly endeavor to show “people like us” endorsing a medication, breakfast cereal, movie, or congressional candidate. It’s also why polls shape as well as measure public opinion. This is the driver behind the relentless pursuit of reviews for nearly everything we buy or use, as well as our trust in their veracity. For many people, especially conservatives, it can seem like a small step from being an outlier to becoming an outsider.

The Epstein Conspiracy Story and the MAGA Mind

We need to understand the Epstein conspiracy theory and others circulating among Trump supporters within the larger psychological context of MAGA. In this world, the most convincing stories are those that cannot be verified or disproven with evidence. Hidden plots involving malicious actors operating behind the scenes generate the most excitement and fear among the base. This relies on humans’ well-known “negativity bias,” a trait some researchers have found to be more pronounced in conservatives.

Our ancestors were more likely to pass on their genes if they assumed danger rather than safety in uncertain situations. And unseen threats provoke more fear than visible ones. We are primed to worry more about covert threats than overt ones. We can’t protect ourselves against what might emerge from the shadows. So, it is best to maintain constant vigilance and share news of danger with others. Perceiving threat in the face of ambiguity is motivated by a need to keep us from being sucker punched by reality. Whatever usefulness this may have had for early humans, the persistence of this tendency can lead us to a state of debilitating paranoia.

Another feature of the right-wing mindset that supports MAGA’s conspiracy stories is rigid black-and-white thinking. To reduce ambiguity, this may come from the same threat management need as the negativity bias. Right-wing stories tend to feature purely bad perpetrators and entirely good victims. They are ready-made narratives that MAGA supporters are conditioned to understand, accept, and share. This kind of thinking also makes people more receptive to metaphors of infection. So, when Trump or Stephen Miller says our pure white culture is being contaminated by the dirty other, or that immigrants are “poisoning the blood,” little explanation is needed. Eliminating the infection is seen as the key to making America great again.

If those malevolent conspiracies can never be proven false, they serve as a dependable tool of fear that can be used whenever the regime needs to boost loyalty. More importantly, if the truth can never be fully uncovered and is unknowable, it allows Trump the freedom to shape reality for his followers. The obvious Orwellian irony of his social media site, Truth Social, is that it is made up almost entirely of falsehoods that reflect what Trump wants his base to believe.

His compulsive lying and his hatred of evidence are well known. It may include fabrications about communicable diseases, weather, economic data, legal judgments against him, or science in general. The truth is whatever Trump says it is. He insists that nothing be known or believed beyond what he proclaims. We could call him an epistemological autocrat. It is no wonder that he despises experts of all kinds, appoints feckless incompetents to nearly every role in his administration, and declared after his 2016 victory, “I love the poorly educated.”

After years of pushing the Epstein conspiracy theory, along with his allies in Congress and right-wing media, the base’s demand to release the “client list,” which may or may not exist and could or could not expose Trump, has caused a frantic reversal by the president and his closest aides. There is no list, nothing to see here, so please move on. In many past scandals and issues, denial, projection of responsibility, and his demand for blind trust kept the base calm. But that might not work this time.

The core of the MAGA crisis is the cognitive dissonance it causes. Since Trump is the cult’s high priest, if not its ruling deity, and the Epstein conspiracy theory is part of its essential gospel, how do followers reconcile the contradiction when the priest rejects the gospel? I cannot predict how this will unfold. Will the identity-protective belief be retained, possibly leading to Trump’s dethronement? Or, as in many past cases, will identity-protective reverence for him cause followers to lose interest in the scandal or find an expendable scapegoat, such as Pam Bondi, to blame for the betrayal? Will Trump succeed in offering up a diverting piece of red-meat grievance to distract the base? Contemplating more wishful scenarios, perhaps the formerly faithful will recognize the fraudulent nature of both his conspiracy stories and his persona. If that happens, this episode might finally enable his followers to see the little man behind the curtain.