The Epstein Presidency

Have you been receiving what seems like a tsunami of phone calls from people who want to talk about Trump, lately? A lot of these seem to be coming from his own organization. I don’t talk to these people, so I’m not sure, but this seems to be a sign of worry.

Today at TGP there’s an interesting quote from Mark Mitchell, of Rasmussen polling:

Rasmussen Reports chief pollster Mark Mitchell joined Steve Bannon on The War Room on Tuesday.

During his discussion with host Steve Bannon, Mitchell warned that President Trump’s approval rating is one point away from his lowest net approval ever. This all has to do with the Epstein gaslighting. The American public is NOT buying it.

Mark Mitchell: I just want to start at a high level and say Donald Trump came in with really great approval numbers. He’s brought a lot of foreign investment back to the United States. He just signed his signature legislation less than two weeks ago, and it’s the summer. The Democrats are imploding. He took out the Iranian nuclear weapons program, which was insanely popular.

Where his approval rating should be right now is soaring. It’s not, it’s plunging. It’s one point away from the lowest net approval rating that he’s had this entire cycle. The last time he had a rating, it was negative five, was back in April. That was when the market imploded 15%.

I remember that. I was getting anguished comments from people who feared losing their savings and their livelihood.

So people are trying to say this (Epstein files) isn’t a big deal. People are trying to say nobody wants this Epstein information out. It’s an absolute misdirection.

This is horrifying. If it isn’t corrected, it threatens derailing Trump’s agenda, getting rid of his political capital. If this isn’t fixed, this might hang over Trump’s administration. It could be his Afghanistan going into the fall with Democrats still pounding away. How come you flip-flops on Epstein? And, in my opinion, there are some very easy fixes.

Here’s the thing. Or maybe a thing or two.

The danger here for Trump is that the whole Epstein gaslighting is undermining trust in Trump, including among his hardcore MAGA followers. But a president doesn’t govern just from his base—he needs support and trust among all those independents who elected him. Trust lost is difficult to revive. Even worse, once trust is lost—and that’s what this is ALL about—those new skeptics may begin to question more than just the issue that triggered them in the first place. That’s really bad. A lot of people were clinging to Trump as the one guy in politics they could trust—we know all about Congressional ratings. This could have important consequences for Midterm turnout. It’s not too early to start worrying about that.

Another concern is the effect this could have on foreign policy. It’s not outlandish to suspect that Trump’s outrageous threats directed at most of the world are intended to 1) distract from the Epstein gaslighting backfire, and 2) project an image of strength and patriotism. The great problem with that strategy is that, in a complicated world, trust among foreign leaders is key to a successful foreign policy. These ploys directed at propping up domestic standing are almost certainly going to increase distrust abroad and backfire on Trump’s foreign policy—which is always what a president’s administration ends up being all about.