As President Trump’s first year back in office drew to a close, his enemies had high hopes they’d hit on a scandal that could do to his second term what the “Russian collusion” story had done to his first. Donald Trump didn’t have to be found guilty of any wrongdoing tied to Jeffrey Epstein’s sleaze. All that was necessary was to stain his reputation indelibly and distract his administration from its work.
The Epstein weapon even had an advantage over the Russia allegations of yesteryear – it resonated with much of Trump’s own MAGA base. Trump campaigned in 2024 on releasing the Epstein files, and many in MAGA considered it a betrayal when he resisted doing so once back in the White House. Republicans Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene were among the loudest voices in Congress demanding the files’ release.
Trump relented and signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law on November 19. The ensuing releases were indeed career-ending – not for Trump but for Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard who continued to teach there and cut an imposing figure on campus until his correspondence with Epstein was made public.
The files have embarrassed other academics and Epstein sycophants, too. But have they done any damage to Trump?
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released the day before Trump signed the disclosure legislation found his approval ratings dipping to 38 percent, with only 20 percent of those surveyed – including 44 percent of Republicans – approving of his handling of the Epstein issue. As for rifts within MAGA, Trump’s feud with Massie still simmers, while Greene has chosen to retire.
Much more than Epstein is putting the Trump administration in an awkward place as it begins its second year. While Trump’s tariffs have not brought about the Götterdämmerung conventional economists prophesied, anemic employment numbers and elevated supermarket prices have given Americans cause for discontent. To allay their fears, Trump floated the idea of creating 50-year mortgages – with, hopefully, low monthly payments – and mailing out stimulus checks paid for by tariff revenue (which is booming). Neither idea has found much favor with the public or experts.
While Epstein has been a drag on the President’s popularity, the late and unlamented sex-trafficking financier doesn’t seem to pose the kind of long-term problem the Russia investigations did for Trump’s first term. The liberal hype machine that turned baseless accusations of collaborating with Putin into an unending ordeal for Trump the last time around hasn’t been able to do the same with Epstein-related insinuations.
That shouldn’t be a surprise – if Trump had anything to fear, why would he have campaigned on releasing the files? He may have been embarrassed to discover his name was in them, once he was in a position to authorize release. But there’s never been any reason to think Trump would be inculpated. Now that the files are out, the conspiracy theories about what they might contain are left deflated by what they actually reveal. None of the grand scenarios about what Epstein was really up to finds much support in what’s been made public. Epstein’s ties to former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and others are documented, but they fall short of exposing him as an agent of foreign intelligence – not that the new revelations will dampen speculation. Evidence of a sexual blackmail scheme targeting politicians and other powerful people is also lacking.
What’s abundantly attested instead is the eagerness of journalists, scientists, political fixers and institutions such as Harvard University to pander to a rich man who was himself engaged in literal pandering involving underage girls. That should be scandal enough to justify coverage, and outrage, on the scale of the Russia nonsense from eight years ago, but because the truth about Epstein is damning for America’s elite and not for Trump, don’t expect the legacy media’s interest to last long.
In some quarters, the Epstein files are being touted as an outright acquittal of the political establishment and its friends in exalted places. Since these files don’t attest to a pedophile ring operating at the highest reaches of power, any suspicion that such depravity is possible should be dismissed as a kooky conspiracy theory. Such theories abound – recall “Pizzagate,” the legend that a Washington, DC pizza parlor connected to prominent Democrats was the secret center of a pedophile cult. A 28-year-old gunman took the tale seriously enough that he went and shot up the place, though mercifully no one was hurt or killed. No one wants the Epstein files to inspire another Pizzagate. Yet that shouldn’t make anyone complacent about sexual abuse in elite circles. Ten years ago, the former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, went to prison for a financial crime related to paying off a blackmailer who as a boy had been sexually abused by the politician.
Hastert became speaker after the GOP’s first choice to succeed Newt Gingrich in 1998, Bob Livingston, was discredited by a sex scandal uncovered by the pornographer Larry Flynt, who had offered a reward for any dirt on Republicans’ sex lives after the GOP impeached Bill Clinton. Hastert’s speakership ended after Republicans lost the 2006 midterms, in which the biggest issues were the Iraq War – and a sex scandal involving inappropriate conduct by more than one Republican member toward teenage boys who’d served as congressional pages.
There were rumors about Hastert’s sex life, albeit not involving minors, during his speakership. Was he just lucky Flynt hadn’t heard anything earlier? Was it a coincidence he presided over a House in which colleagues were bothering pageboys? Jeffrey Epstein may be dead, but what he represents isn’t buried.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 22, 2025 World edition.
