The Washington Post reports the Trump administration “has largely succeeded in pushing the president’s core supporters to back off their online obsession with billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.”
Analysis of far-right internet activity appears to show that while the topic is still hot in many corners of the internet, the administration’s tactic of distracting its own followers with alternative headlines appears to work.
“Nobody changes the subject better than Trump,” said Alex Conant, a Republican former communications director for Marco Rubio and founder of Firehouse Strategies. He told the Washington Post that Trump also benefited from the congressional recess.
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As Epstein anger increased, Trump and his allies labored to divert attention to other topics, including allegations that officials in former president Barack Obama’s administration engaged in a “treasonous conspiracy” to tie the 2016 Trump campaign to Russian election interference.
“The Post’s analysis found that effort was largely successful: Soon after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released declassified information that she said buttressed claims of an Obama administration conspiracy on July 18, Epstein-related outrage among the president’s most ardent followers subsided,” the Post reports.
Trump and some of his most prominent supporters “stoked conspiracy theories about Epstein,” the Post reports, by claiming the federal investigation into the politically connected multimillionaire had uncovered evidence of a corrupt system that trafficked young girls powerful men.
After Trump took office, his attorney general, Pam Bondi, announced her intent to release Epstein’s client list. But when she later refused and claimed the client list was just an Epstein file, she ignited a furor among MAGA followers. The Post’s analysis found about 1 in 10 right-wing posts about Epstein were explicitly critical of the administration in June. Epstein talk “peaked” on July 18, with nearly 1,000 posts mentioned Epstein or Maxwell.
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But after July 18, when Gabbard launched her Obama claim, posts about Obama soared.
“On July 19, about twice as many posts mentioned Obama as mentioned Epstein or Maxwell; by July 23, Obama was mentioned in more than 1 in 10 posts or podcasts on the right, nearly three times as frequently as Epstein was mentioned,” The Post reports.
Read the full Washington Post reports at this link.