Why Epstein Matters to MAGA

It’s the Great Whatabout, Charlie Brown

Yes, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. My hammer is the belief that the MAGA movement is entirely about race and gender, that the other “issues” are just stories that white people and men tell themselves they care about so that they can vote their genes.

Over the past seventy years, it has grown harder and harder to enjoy the perks of being white or male. Loss of privilege has electoral consequences. Donald Trump is one consequence. Trump’s voters support him because, unlike the Democrats, Trump tells them that it’s OK to be them. The importance of that boost to their self-esteem cannot be overestimated; it can, however, be — and is — badly underestimated.

People don’t like to believe they support a guy merely because he promotes their race or sex. They are not racists and sexists — at least, they don’t see themselves as such. They just need a “good reason” to vote for the guy who will protect their unfair advantages so they can avoid reckoning with the real reason. Jeffrey Epstein offers up that good reason — moral outrage, a powerful antidote to the shame MAGA voters must otherwise suppress. The brouhaha over the Epstein case is so convulsing to MAGA because Trump’s behavior in the matter rips off that fig leaf of indignation.

To MAGA voters, Epstein was the Great Whatabout, proof of the evils of the “elites” and the “Deep State,” a reason to vote for a lying, vindictive grifter like Donald Trump…