Trump is the Dog That Keeps Catching the Car
With the Epstein files drama, his supporters may finally have had enough
History has a way of turning yesterday’s liberators into today’s chew toys. Ask Michael Collins, the Irish revolutionary who helped free most of his island from British rule in 1921 - only to be felled a year later by former allies who thought “most” wasn’t good enough.
Which brings us to Donald Trump, who has built a career on promising the moon and delivering a Moon Pie. For years, his voters shrugged off the bait‑and‑switch, applauding the flourish and ignoring the empty box. But now he’s finally found the one plank his base actually measures with a ruler: the Jeffrey Epstein files.
In January, he vowed to release every scrap the government holds about Epstein’s island of misdeeds. MAGA Nation cheered: finally, someone will name names. In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi invited a group of right-wing influencers to the White House, including one of the most prominent proponents of the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, and handed them some folders that allegedly included “Phase 1” of the Epstein files. But anger ensued when the influencers realized they had been duped - most of the information they happily waved over their heads while exiting the White House had already been made public.
Then word leaked that Trump’s own name allegedly appears in the documents, and - faster than you can say “Ghislaine Maxwell” - the promise to release the entire tranche of files vanished. The vault remains shut, and the base that once treated Trump like a golden calf is starting to eye the barbecue sauce.
It isn’t his first sleight‑of‑hand. Trump’s greatest hits include a boast that he could end Russia’s invasion “on day one,” presumably with the same magic wand that can rescind Rosie O’Donnell’s American citizenship. Eighteen months later, shells still fall on Kyiv, and Trump can’t decide whether Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Churchill with Instagram filters or a grifter stealing catalytic converters.
Or consider Trump’s “tariffs to riches” plans. Punitive tariffs, he said, would strong‑arm Beijing and Berlin into begging for trade deals. Instead, he imposed new taxes, rescinded them, re‑imposed them, and delayed them - creating the economic equivalent of a flashing “Exit” sign every CEO could see from space. Prices climbed, factories paused investments, and the only thing definitively “negotiated” was the size of the hole in our wallets.
Oh, and remember DOGE? Elon Musk’s vanity department that said it was going to cut $2 trillion in spending but ended up canceling a few billion dollars' worth of contracts while Trump signed a bill jacking up the national debt by $3.4 trillion over the next decade? But hey, at least the Defense Department deleted its photos of the Enola Gay because of the B-29 bomber’s salacious name. (Rumor has it the plane was fond of watching RuPaul’s Drag Race.)
Perhaps Trump’s biggest broken promise involves his dedication to “deportation theater.” He pledged to deport “the worst of the worst,” but when tattoo‑faced cartel members proved scarce, ICE started loitering outside Home Depot like pencil-necked hall monitors. Families who’d paid taxes for decades suddenly faced a one‑way trip to a country their children barely remembered, while genuine felons slipped through the dragnet like greased otters.
Oh, and how’s that border wall coming along?
When results fail to appear, Trump does what every small‑town magician does: he waves a bigger hand. Hunter Biden’s laptop! Barack Obama the traitor! Hillary Clinton in cuffs! Each new outrage is designed to make supporters forget the last unfulfilled promise. It’s a multilevel marketing scheme for rhetorical bovine fertilizer.
The Epstein stumble is different because conspiracy‑minded voters - the QAnon faithful who believe Tom Hanks runs a subterranean nursery of vampiric toddlers - care about little else. They were promised a Biblical unmasking of elites; instead, they got the political version of “just wait two weeks to cash this check.” If Trump is indeed tangled in the same sordid story he vowed to expose, his faithful may treat him the way an angry mob treats Frankenstein.
None of this was inevitable. Trump could have surfed four years of incumbency into a respectable legacy: criminal‑justice reform, Middle East accords, a pre‑COVID economy spicier than a microwave burrito. But governing bored him, so he outsourced it to Congress and spent afternoons mainlining cable news. When the pandemic hit, the only curve he flattened was his own approval rating.
In 2016, Republicans chose the stand‑up comic over the policy wonk; they can hardly complain the jokes kept coming while the homework went missing. Yet even the most forgiving audience eventually wants a punch line. After a decade of pyrotechnics and reruns, Trump’s act looks like Gallagher smashing the same watermelon for the 19th time—messier, louder, and weirdly damp.
But the poetic justice hath arrived. By elevating conspiracy theories to civic religion, Trump harnessed a volatile energy he thought he could steer. Now that energy is circling back like a carnival ride whose bolts weren’t tightened. Spend years insisting your enemies are satanic, pedophilic puppet masters, and your followers naturally wonder why your own fingers smell of strings.
Trump may soon learn that movements built on grievance eventually turn the spotlight on their director. He is the dog who caught the car and wound up under the tire. If the Epstein files never see daylight because they incriminate him, the backlash will be as deserved as it is predictable.
Promise‑making is easy; promise‑keeping is hard; and promising to expose a child‑sex ring when you might be on the guest list is downright impossible. The base that once cheered every boast is beginning to do the math. And the math, unlike Trump’s promises, always adds up.
ALSO: POSTMORTEM OUTING
I’ve been reading Ron Chernow’s biography of Mark Twain (I’m sure you’ll hear plenty about it when I’m done), and there’s a particular aspect of it that had me questioning some things.
Chernow notes something I had not known - that Twain’s daughter, Susy, was most likely a lesbian, or at least bisexual. In some portions of the book, Chernow reprints some of the lurid letters Susy Clemens had written to her college “friend,” Louise Brownell, and they are no doubt saucy. (Word has it Twain and his wife Livy learned of the relationship and pulled Susy out of Bryn Mawr to save her from the love that dare not speak its name.)
Obviously, the role of historians is to describe the world as it was, not as the people of the time wanted it to be. But it seems a little controversial to “out” people a century after the fact. What if Louise Brownell’s family had no idea? What if she had spent her entire life concealing her true feelings, only to have all that work spoiled by a historian in 2025? Doesn’t that show a lack of respect for the dead?
I have spoken to a historian friend of mine who has assured me I am being silly. Historians don’t get to pick facts to report because they would have offended someone centuries ago.
And I get that. But it seems untoward that some of Brownell’s family members are going to learn from Ron Chernow that great-grandma was a lesbian. Sure, nobody in the 21st century cares, and we can all recognize the sadness in the couple needing to keep their relationship secret in the mid-1800s. (Brownell later married a man named A.P. Saunders, a professor of chemistry at Hamilton College.)
As a general rule, it seems best to let people tell you who they are on their schedule. And if their time runs out, their wishes should be obeyed unless there’s a damn good reason to put their business out on the street.
ALSO:
A few of my National Review pieces from the past few weeks:
Republicans Fumbled the Ball on Social Security
Like Government? Hug a Billionaire
FINALLY:
The late 1990s and early 2000s saw a resurgence of 1960s-era “chamber pop” (see: Belle and Sebastian, Camera Obscura and others), but the craze soon disappated. Yet the New Jersey band Lightheaded is bringing it all back - check out their new album “Thinking, Dreaming, Scheming!” on Slumberland Records.