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Robert Delaney

We may be witnessing Donald Trump’s downfall.
For most of the US president’s critics, the Jeffrey Epstein saga that has dominated the domestic news cycle for the past week or so seems like a gift that keeps on giving. Many of Trump’s supporters – who had lapped up the right-wing media ecosystem’s insistence that America’s “deep state” was hiding evidence of a paedophilia ring orchestrated by the billionaire financier – turned on their leader. They demanded a full accounting of Epstein’s alleged “client list” and lurid activities.
With a farcical nothing-to-see-here defence that was camera-ready for juxtaposition against his earlier comments, Trump turned this anger right back against the “Make America Great Again” (Maga) furious.
“Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!” Trump wrote on social media, in an unforced error that may trigger his downfall.
Trump later authorised the Justice Department to seek the release of grand jury testimony from the prosecution of Epstein. How much the episode will drag Trump’s declining approval rating lower is anyone’s guess. We may never know how involved he was in Epstein’s underworld; the US leader has a reptilian survival instinct that has only grown stronger since his first administration. Without evidence proving that he was engaged in illegal behaviour involving minors, he will not be deterred from his apparent mission to turn every branch of his government into weapons aimed at anyone who has ever crossed him.
Some in his party may be happier about the scandal than they are letting on, at least those who understand the extent of the harm that they are doing outside the orbit of criminal billionaires. The scandal is a monumental distraction from what Americans should be railing against, and what threatens the entire Republican Party.

Let’s start with the detention camps to be funded by billions of dollars under Trump’s fiscal policy mega bill, which cuts federal spending on Medicaid, national parks and other popular programmes.
There’s a reason that lawmakers – including Marco Rubio, now the US Secretary of State – boosted their profiles on criticism of Beijing’s treatment of Uygur Muslims. Ascendant as the American far right has been in recent years, the idea that those not convicted of a crime are involuntarily corralled remains unsettling to many people, as Trump should be learning.
With all of the political capital he expended to get these jails built, Trump cannot afford to alter course, and this is where he may have badly miscalculated. Many Americans who gave Trump high marks on immigration during last year’s election campaign are now uncomfortable with how heavy-handed the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s operations have become.
Trump’s public approval rating on immigration has fallen to 41 per cent – the lowest since his return to the White House in January. This number will fall further when the inevitable reports about mistreatment, sickness and death in the camps start to leak out.


There’s another front on which Trump and the Republican Party are undermining America’s well-being, and which was brought into sudden focus this month.
Texas, the party’s most important electoral stronghold, is still grappling with the devastating floods that have killed at least 135 people. Anyone who has absorbed what scientists have been warning us about for decades knows that the devastation is our new climate crisis reality.
Republicans tend to offer excuses as bizarre as secret government manipulation and God’s will to explain some weather-related disasters in recent years. But it’s doubtful that their flocks will accept that the man upstairs hates Christians so much that he sent torrents through Camp Mystic. As climate science has predicted all along, the world’s temperature continues to rise, so unless Republicans manage to destroy every last thermometer, they will move further into the wrong side of the debate.

Americans’ interest in the Epstein case is legitimate, but it is frustrating for those among us who feel increasingly helpless about where global governance is headed that it takes a sex scandal to make the Maga camp think more critically about whether Trump is working for its interests. How much protection does the rank and file have compared to billionaires like Epstein, who have the means to move away from disasters?
Trump’s energy tsar Chris Wright made the administration’s priorities clear in his commentary in The Economist last week. “We will treat climate change as what it is: not an existential crisis but a real, physical phenomenon that is a by-product of progress,” he said.
In other words, the profits of America’s fossil fuel companies are more important than efforts to stop the crisis that threatens to sweep us all away.
Those among Trump’s supporters who see his obfuscation on Epstein as a sign of a leader who cares little for their interests may soon begin to question the administration’s entire agenda.


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Epstein saga may be the downfall of Donald Trump

A message calling on US President Donald Trump to release all files related to Jeffrey Epstein is projected onto the US Chamber of Commerce building across from the White House in Washington, DC, on July 18. Photo: AFP

A person holds a sign with a photo of US Attorney General Pam Bondi and featuring a quote in reference to the Epstein files during a protest as part of the “Good Trouble Lives On” national day of action against the administration of US President Donald Trump in Los Angeles on July 17. Photo: AFP

Campers’ belongings sit outside one of Camp Mystic’s cabins near the Guadalupe River after a flash flood swept through the camp on July 7, in Hunt, Texas. At least 27 girls and staff died. Photo: AP 

Trump seeks release of Epstein grand jury documents, blasts birthday letter story

The US far-right has long latched onto the Epstein scandal, claiming the existence of a still-secret client list and that he was murdered in his cell as part of a cover-up. File photo: AFP

Jeffrey Epstein. File photo: New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services via Reuters

In February, the US government released documents related to Jeffrey Epstein – but they had largely been circulating in the public domain for years. File photo: AFP

A person holds a sign with a photo of US Attorney General Pam Bondi that features a quote in reference to the Epstein files. Photo: AFP

Trump sues Rupert Murdoch, WSJ for US$10 billion over Epstein report

US President Donald Trump points toward reporters as he arrives at the White House on Sunday. Photo: dpa

Media magnate Rupert Murdoch speaks at an event in Laguna Beach, California, in October 2015. Photo: AFP

Jeffrey Epstein (right) with British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell. Photo: US District Court for the Southern District of New York/AFP

Maxwell’s family says ‘government misconduct’ could overturn Epstein sex trafficking conviction

This undated trial evidence image obtained from the US District Court for the Southern District of New York shows British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and US financier Jeffrey Epstein. Photo: US District Court for the Southern District of New York/AFP

British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and US financier Jeffrey Epstein at Queen Elizabeth’s log cabin at Balmoral. Photo: US District Court for the Southern District of New York/AFP

Donald Trump was previously affiliated with Jeffrey Epstein. Photo: Instagram/violent.subversive

Trump’s crusade against the Fed turning US into an emerging market

US President Donald Trump, left, leaves the Rose Garden with Jerome Powell, his nominee to become chairman of the US Federal Reserve, at the White House in Washington on November 2, 2017. Photo: Reuters

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, left, declines a reporter’s questions as he walks outside the White House in Washington on July 10. Photo: EPA

People shop at a Manhattan retail store in New York on July 15. As the impacts of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs slowly begin to show, annual inflation rose to 2.7 per cent in June, up from 2.4 per cent in May. Photo: AFP

Opinion

World Opinion

News

The US president may have to pay a high price for turning on his own supporters for their dogged interest in the late billionaire’s activities


The US president may have to pay a high price for turning on his own supporters for their dogged interest in the late billionaire’s activities.


US Politics

Sexual harassment and assault

United States

China

Jeffrey Epstein

Republican Party

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Column

On Balance

Epstein saga may be the downfall of Donald Trump

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The US president may have to pay a high price for turning on his own supporters for their dogged interest in the late billionaire’s activities

The US president may have to pay a high price for turning on his own supporters for their dogged interest in the late billionaire’s activities