Trump and Epstein: It Only Matters if It Takes Him Down

The Jeffrey Epstein email revelations should be the breaking point between the MAGA cult and Donald Trump, argues Heidi Siegmund Cuda

Protestor Bill Christeson outside the US Capitol on Wednesday 12 November 2025. Photo: Tom Williams/AP Images/Alamy

It was always so strange that Donald Trump’s base was forged on conjured stories of Democrats engaging in child sexual abuse and trafficking. These lies were spun from Clinton campaign emails hacked by the Russians in 2016, and because Americans have no information warfare inoculation, the lies grew deep roots. They became the foundation for such conspiracies as Pizzagate and QAnon, and tragically, the belief that Democrats were engaging in harms to children became a foundational tenet of the MAGA Cult.

They wanted Trump to save the children. Only, the evidence pointed in the other direction. It was those in Trump’s orbit who were accused and convicted of sex crimes. On November 6, 2016, I wrote about the charges filed against both Jeffrey Epstein — a convicted child sexual assaulter — and Donald Trump. The charges alleged both men had raped a 13-year-old girl. I dug up an October 2002 article in New York Magazine where Trump, who had a history of sexual comments directed at teenage girls, praised Epstein by saying he “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it.”

There have been so many explosive moments that should have ended his political career before it even started — “grab ‘em by the p***y”, anyone? But it’s quite clear, the release of Jeffrey Epstein emails by House Democrats on Wednesday remains the most direct way to break Trump’s base.