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It was supposed to have been a typical political town hall meeting. Instead, it turned into a two-hour group therapy session for frustrated Democrats.
Still seething after former vice president Kamala Harris’ loss to Donald Trump – and their failure to reclaim either house of Congress last fall – Democrats have watched with impotent fury as their arch-nemesis took a chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy (including effectively emasculating the Department of Education), made the 2017 tax cuts they loathe permanent, and — most recently — passed spending cuts to programs dear to their heart such as foreign aid and federal funding for public broadcasting.
In short, they have witnessed their worst-case scenario come to life. And the Democrats gathered in the Goose Creek High auditorium wanted to know what those at the top of their party would do about it.
That was when Ro Khanna, the California congressman and potential 2028 presidential candidate, let the proverbial cat out of the bag.
“We have tried everything with Donald Trump,” Khanna said, according to The (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier. “We called him everything in the book. There’s not a single person in this country who doesn’t have an opinion on Donald Trump. So, how are we going to change it? We’ve got to get his voters to break.”
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With that last sentence, Khanna said the quiet part out loud. Democrats believe they’ve finally found the secret sauce for driving a wedge between Trump and his MAGA base: the White House’s badly bungled handled of the Jeffrey Epstein matter.
The opposition party is now pushing the Epstein scandal as hard as it can. But will it turn out to be the silver bullet they’ve been looking for?
One GOP strategist in South Carolina shrugged it off as “just their latest Hail Mary pass, that’s all.”
Maybe. Or maybe not.
“The calendar isn’t doing Trump any favors,” a veteran Republican pollster in Washington pointed out. “Congress is getting ready to go home for a month. And when they leave town, there’s suddenly a huge news vacuum in DC. Editors and television producers have to fill it with something. And here’s the Epstein documents, right on cue, to fill it.”
Trump has relied on an army of MAGA social influencers to push back against mainstream media propaganda, but when it comes to the Epstein files – his MAGA base is badly divided.
There’s not a lot of meaningful polling available yet to show what impact the emerging scandal is (or isn’t) having on Trump’s job approval. But many Republicans are privately concerned.
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Some have even publicly broken with Trump over what he insists is a “hoax.” Longtime Trump dissenter Thomas Massie and fervent MAGA acolyte Marjorie Taylor Greene have sided with progressive Khanna and countless other Democrats in urging that all Epstein documents be made public.
For his part, Trump is doing everything he can to divert attention from the festering problem. On his Truth Social platform Saturday night, he called on majority leader John Thune to keep the Senate in session in August to confirm the backlog of 136 presidential appointees still awaiting confirmation. Trump even suggested senators put in long weekends to tackle it. But given the cherished place the summer recess holds in Capitol Hill’s heart, that’s unlikely to happen.
Trump’s recent bid to focus MAGA ire on the origins of the ‘Russia-gate‘ scandal also seems to be an exercise in deflection from Epstein.
While Trump continues to scramble, the very D.C. nature of the embryonic scandal makes some people skeptical of its potential for longevity.
“This is a vintage inside the Beltway BS,” the aforementioned GOP strategist said. “Nobody in real America gives a shit about it.”
Perhaps. But it’s worth remembering that some 50 years ago, another White House tried to dismiss the break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s offices inside the Watergate complex as a “third-rate burglary.” It, too, was initially viewed as a strictly Washington affair.
And we all know how that turned out.
BANNER VIA: GETTY IMAGES
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
J. Mark Powell is an award-winning former TV journalist, government communications veteran, and a political consultant. He is also an author and an avid Civil War enthusiast. Got a tip or a story idea for Mark? Email him at mark@fitsnews.com.
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3 comments
“Longtime Trump dissenter Thomas Massie and fervent MAGA acolyte Marjorie Taylor Greene have sided with progressive Khanna and countless other Democrats in urging that all Epstein documents be made public.”
As usual in the topsy turvy world of fizznews this is backwards. MAGA are the ones who have been obsesed with Epstein for years. They are not all of sudden siding with Democrats. They are coming to the realization that their hero is in the midst of a panic stricken coverup of something that is the prime issue for a lot of them. Democrats are only calling the bluff on Patel and Bongobingo who have been yapping about this crap for years.
Republicans: We should release the Epstein files.
*time passes*
Democrats: We should release the Epstein files.
Republicans: No we shouldn’t!
The WSJ is reporting that Trump was told months ago that his name was in the Epstein files along with a number of other prominent parties. At that time it was decided that the files would not be released. Trump and the GOP have been fighting the release ever since to the point of leaving Washington to avoid voting on the release.
Family Values.