{"id":104156,"date":"2025-09-03T13:03:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T17:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=104156"},"modified":"2025-11-18T16:50:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T21:50:07","slug":"opinion-tim-kenyon-discusses-how-the-epstein-files-are-angering-trumps-base","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2025\/09\/opinion-tim-kenyon-discusses-how-the-epstein-files-are-angering-trumps-base\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Tim Kenyon discusses how the Epstein files are angering Trump’s base"},"content":{"rendered":"

This piece written by Tim Kenyon, Professor in Brock\u2019s Faculty of Humanities, originally appeared in The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

In July 2025, the connection between United States President Donald Trump and his base of supporters was fractured by\u00a0the announcement\u00a0from the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI that no \u201cEpstein list\u201d exists.<\/p>\n

That is, they say, there is no list of clients or participants identified by convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein prior to his death by apparent suicide in 2019.\u00a0No further documents\u00a0related to the Epstein case would be released.<\/p>\n

This announcement angered and confused many among Trump\u2019s core constituency, including prominent loyalists and influencers. Weeks later,\u00a0alienation among his base continues.<\/p>\n

This is puzzling. But in part, it\u2019s unsurprising. Trump\u2019s support base includes the\u00a0conspiracist \u201cQAnon\u201d believers\u00a0who are convinced that Democratic Party politicians and donors run a hidden global ring of child sex abuse.<\/p>\n

In QAnon circles, it has been practically an article of faith that the Epstein files would validate these accusations against liberal elites. Trump\u2019s release of the files was keenly anticipated. Naturally they\u2019re upset that he and his appointees have changed their tune.<\/p>\n

Longtime friendship<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet their dismay is surprising nonetheless. Trump\u2019s extensive relationship with Epstein has been well known for years. His\u00a0repeated\u00a0well wishes\u00a0for Epstein\u2019s longtime associate, convicted collaborator Ghislaine Maxwell, were widely reported following her sentencing on child sexual trafficking charges.<\/p>\n

His comments about \u201cgetting away with\u201d walking into beauty pageants\u2019 backstage areas among young women and underage girls wearing \u201cno clothes\u201d were made prominently, on the\u00a0Howard Stern Show. His base somehow managed to believe Trump was a secret champion of minors against sexual exploitation in the face of his own boasts.<\/p>\n

The role of bullshit<\/strong><\/p>\n

How could this new development somehow be worse for Trump than his own confessions?<\/p>\n

One partial explanation centres on Trump\u2019s use of what\u2019s known as\u00a0bullshit rhetoric\u00a0as a weapon against political enemies. Bullshit in this context is a quasi-technical notion meaning, roughly, an indifference to truth or to the audience\u2019s right to truth.<\/p>\n

Even most liars respect the truth enough to try and deceive people about it, but the bullshitter doesn\u2019t much care either way. As my colleague Jennifer Saul and I have argued in our research,\u00a0Trump\u2019s brand of authoritarian speech is deliberate and explicit in its bullshit. It advertises its status in order to show contempt for one audience, typically as part of a performance of strength for another audience.<\/p>\n

This helps explain why Trump\u2019s\u00a0relentless bullshitting\u00a0never harmed his standing with his base in the past, and has even buoyed it. His supporters know he\u2019s a bullshitter, but they recognize he isn\u2019t bullshitting them. They are in on the joke, enjoying the spectacle as Trump performs his power over mutual enemies, including political opposition, news media and state institutions.<\/p>\n

The new tension over the Epstein files reflects the extent to which some among Trump\u2019s base perceive, perhaps for the first time, that they are now targets of his weaponized political bullshit rather than amused witnesses to it. And they don\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n

Trump responds with more bullshit<\/strong><\/p>\n

In one striking example, news media have reported that, before the FBI\/Department of Justice announcement, Trump was informed by Attorney General Pam Bondi that\u00a0his name occurs repeatedly in the unreleased documents.<\/p>\n

The significance or context of those occurrences is of course not known; other people who deny wrongdoing are also named in them. But after the existence of a list was denied, Trump responded to questioning about whether his name appears in the documents by claiming that the files were\u00a0made up by former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden\u00a0and former FBI Director James Comey.<\/p>\n

The assertion that the Epstein files are merely hoax documents cooked up by Obama, Biden and Comey is so outrageously false that it can\u2019t be meant even as a serious deception. That makes Trump\u2019s claim a bald-faced lie to many people.<\/p>\n

Bald-faced lies count as bullshit, Saul and I argue, because they lack the deceptive intent of other lies. They are a kind of unconcealed bullshit that advertises the speaker\u2019s impunity. For Trump, this sort of overt bullshit has been reserved for liberals and news reporters. This time his own supporters are in the line of fire.<\/p>\n

Strongman politics<\/strong><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s base can\u2019t be truly dismayed by the facts about his relationship with Epstein because they should have been upset long before now in terms of his own past confessions and well-known association with Epstein.<\/p>\n

Instead, they seem to be irked they\u2019ve been lumped in with their enemies in being recipients of Trump\u2019s bullshit rather than onlookers to it. And if we focus on polarization and\u00a0strongman politics, we can better understand Trump\u2019s responses\u00a0to the criticism from his base.<\/p>\n

After all, Trump didn\u2019t say these angry supporters have misunderstood the evidence. He said they were \u201cpretty bad people,\u201d likened them to \u201cfake news\u201d and said\u00a0he didn\u2019t want their support. He didn\u2019t call them mistaken; he\u00a0called them weaklings.<\/p>\n

To some this might sound absurd or childish. To supporters of an authoritarian figure, being called weak is more serious than being accused of being wrong.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tim Kenyon, Professor in Brock\u2019s Faculty of Humanities, recently published a piece in The Conversation about how the Epstein files have created division between Trump and his supporters. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":104160,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[5512,5624],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104156"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104156"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104162,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104156\/revisions\/104162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}