Never assume Trump's downfall
If 10 years of damning revelations about the president haven't done him in, there's no reason to believe the Epstein scandal will.
It’s said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. Whenever a negative story about Donald Trump comes out or he says or does something that would have ended the career of any mere mortal politician, we quickly hear declarations that Trump’s political demise is now imminent. And yet it never happens.
I’m not necessarily suggesting that these Cassandras in the political world are insane. A more likely explanation is that many so desperately desire Trump’s political downfall that they are willing to jump at anything, predicting that this is it. In reality, it is more a manifestation of wishful thinking or desperation than anything else. For my money, if the release of the Billy Bush Access Hollywood tapes a month before the 2016 presidential election didn’t do him in, I am skeptical that anything will.
We are told that this time, Trump is at odds with his MAGA base, and that makes it different. But are there really many MAGA devotees so consumed by l’affaire d’Jeffrey Epstein that they would turn on Trump, the man whom they were prepared to put on Mount Rushmore? Maybe people are paying too much attention to “influencers” and professional rabble-rousers whose livelihoods are built on maintaining a heightened state of agita? Do they have lives? Some folks need to take a deep breath, or perhaps cut back on their caffeine.
My issue with many journalists and the polls they cite is that there is no attempt to distinguish on the one hand between respondents who have an opinion they’re willing to offer, and on the other those who feel so strongly on this subject that they’re willing to vote for the other party. For that matter, how many of those live in one of the 40 or so hotly contested congressional districts, or the half-dozen, at most, Senate battleground states, that will determine control of those chambers?
What do they mean when they refer to Epstein's "client list," anyway? Is it akin to the "D.C. madam’s" list? From what I can tell, very few people would have had the wealth to be one of his clients. At most there might be a list, or one could be compiled, of people who had flown on Epstein’s jet or partied at his Upper East Side townhouse, his Palm Beach mansion, his New Mexico ranch, his apartment in Paris, or his private island in the Caribbean. I suspect those folks have been nervous ever since Epstein was first charged in Palm Beach County. But that was 20 years ago, and so far Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are the only people to be charged.
More seriously, among the 70 percent of Republicans who identify with the MAGA movement, which would constitute something over a third of the overall electorate, their commitment to Trump is quite something. Some of it is simply the tribalistic nature of partisans today. In Gallup polling, during the entire period Trump has been president his approval rating among Republicans has never fallen below 77 percent; his peak was 95 percent. For that matter, during President Biden’s four years in the White House, his approval rating among Democrats never dropped below 75 percent; his peak was 98 percent. In Biden’s case, those figures include the period after his disastrous debate performance against Trump last summer.
When Biden and his allies argue that he never dropped far behind Trump, even after the debate, they are technically accurate. During the 2023-2024 campaign, the RealClearPolitics averages of Biden-Trump national ballot tests showed Biden never trailed Trump by more than 4.3 points, nor did he ever lead by more than 2.8 points. These are the high floors and low ceilings that make our polling swings less volatile than they once were. Given the nature of our partisanship today, being a sitting president with total name recognition and complete familiarity with voters who finds himself 4 points behind is like lying on the floor of your basement. It really doesn’t get any lower than that, even if the ceiling isn’t particularly high.
But beyond the hyperpartisanship, there is something else about Trump’s unique hold on his supporters, Epstein client list or no. There's a feeling some voters have that “the people he hates are the people I hate, too; the people who look down on him look down on me, too.” Even if they have little in common in many ways, what they share is their adversaries. That is the bond that connects Trump with his backers, which I don’t think will ever go away.
It’s also what will make the battle for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination so interesting. Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio appear to be Trump’s anointed successors, but does that convey, like the refrigerator or stove when you buy a house? Can either Vance or Rubio even remotely create the bond and kinship with the MAGA world that Trump has? I'm not so sure.