The Epstein Files Will Continue To Hurt Trump

They won’t destroy him. He can’t escape them either.

Much of the discussion of the political fallout of the Epstein files that I see on social media presents them as leading to one of two outcomes for Trump. Either they are released in full and destroy him. Or else he manages to censor them, or only release certain materials, or stall them, and he emerges unscathed and escapes accountability.

I think this is the wrong way to understand the possible outcomes here. Almost certainly, the Epstein files are not going to end Trump; he’s president, and is likely to remain so, given the very high bar for impeachment and removal. But he also doesn’t have any way to neutralize the Epstein files as an issue—which is why he’s become more and more vile, enraged, and bullying in his interactions with reporters who ask about them (which in turn raises more questions.)

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The confusion about the Epstein files is a subset around the misunderstanding of Trump’s popularity in general. Trump constantly does things that violate norms of political discourse, not to mention norms of common decency. This week he suggested that Washington Post reporter Jamaal Kashoggi deserved to be murdered by the Saudis. A lot of people react to that by saying something like, “Any other president who did this would be finished.”

The thing is, though, no other president has done this sort of thing so regularly. We don’t actually know what consequences they’d face. In a highly polarized political landscape, if they had control of the House and the Senate would they be quickly impeached and removed? I’m skeptical—especially since anyone who would act like this would have no compunction about trying to use their power to destroy the party which turned on them.

Now, would another president who did this suffer in terms of their popularity? Probably—and that’s exactly what’s happened to Trump. He’s consistently the least popular president who has ever served since the polling era began; his only rival is himself, from his first term.

All the things that you think should damage Trump? They’ve all damaged him! That’s why he’s incredibly unpopular! It just turns out that even a very damaged president is extremely difficult to remove from office—or, as Republicans found in the 2024 nomination contest, from the head of the party— in a highly partisan era.

That doesn’t mean that Trump suffers no consequences. His unpopularity hurts him in a lot of ways. His party got crushed in off year elections earlier this month. He keeps losing nomination fights in the Senate. Indiana Republicans refused his pressure to redistrict for the midterms. Republicans defied him when he called for the Senate to end the filibuster. He had to capitulate on the release of the Epstein files, withdrawing his opposition lest he be embarrassed when Republicans in the House and then Senate voted against him.

And on and on. Trump seems invulnerable because the presidency is very powerful and it’s extremely difficult to hold a rogue president accountable. But in fact, Trump loses all the time, and in embarrassing ways, even as he retains his seat and continues to be unbelievably horrible.

This is the context in which we should see the conflict over the Epstein files. The chances of the GOP deciding en masse to fight Trump and the 25-30% of the base that will follow him anywhere is low, to put it mildly. There is almost certainly nothing in the files that would end Trump’s presidency—remember, he’s already been held liable for sexual assault!

But that doesn’t mean the material can’t hurt him. He is all over the emails released last week from the Epstein estate; we know Trump and Epstein were longtime associates; we know that the Justice Department said Trump was in the files. And those files are likely to paint him in a very unflattering light, at the very least.

Nor does Trump have some magical way to defuse this material. Since we know he’s in the files, if he refuses to release any material mentioning him, that will be very obvious. If he stonewalls (by saying there’s an ongoing investigation targeting Democrats, for example) there will be an outcry and continued pressure to release the material. If the files are released and he insists he’s exonerated…well, some of his hard core followers will parrot that, but a lot of people will be skeptical, and journalists will have a lot of leads to investigate.

So yes, Trump is going to still be president after the release of the files. But if you recognize that that was always going to be the case, then you also have to recognize that he has no super master sneaky maneuver that will allow him to avoid serious consequences. He is, in fact, already suffering those consequences. He’s alienated key allies in a narrowly divided House; he’s been forced to knuckle under to a formerly subservient Congress; he’s 39 points underwater on his handling of the Epstein files. And this is even before the files themselves come out.

Fighting Trump and fighting fascism is a long, miserable slog. There’s no one button we can push to end this nightmare. It’s important, therefore, not to judge every battle on the basis of whether it is a magic button that ends this nightmare. It looks much more likely that the files will be released than it did even a month ago; that’s good for survivors. And Trump’s long relationship with Epstein and his adjudicated and alleged history of sexual violence seem likely to continue to damage his presidency for a long time. These are wins; we shouldn’t ignore or downplay them, even as we should also recognize that they are not the win.