What happens when prophecies fail? What becomes of the cult?
In the last ten days, President Donald Trump has been running a real-time psychology experiment on these questions, with his entire political foundation on the line.
It…has not gone well.
As most people who even casually follow the news probably know by now, the issue of whether to release the Depart of Justice’s files on the case of Jeffrey Epstein—the wealthy financier who for years committed multiple counts of sexual abuse of young girls, and who also had close ties to many powerful political figures, including President Donald Trump—has ripped the MAGA cult apart.
Since Epstein's crimes came to light, the MAGA right’s most notable figures have been screaming about a massive government coverup.
To them, the Epstein case was just a piece of the larger puzzle they had constructed in their own minds: an overlapping fun-house mirror palimpsest that included the QAnon conspiracy, 9/11, and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s space lasers, with a heavy infusion of the world’s original conspiracy theory—the blood libel against Jews.
For years, Trump has encouraged this kind of thinking, fueled it, nurtured it. It has not only built the savior-worship mentality that he feeds on, but has also become his emergency outlet. In case of fire, break glass on the conspiracy locker: when the very real conspiracy of Russian intelligence interfering in our elections emerged, Trump leveraged the cult goodwill he had amassed with the paranoid right to accomplish the political alchemy of turning Russian lead into MAGA gold. The “Russia hoax” line worked. It saved him.
But now, his attempt go to that same well again, to shut down any further look into the Epstein files through his Attorney General Pam Bondi, and transmogrify the Epstein files into yet another construction of evil forces out to get him has tested the limits of the faithful, because it asks them not only to invert everything they’ve been instructed to believe, but also forces them through a logic maze wonderfully summarized by
:It is putting out fire with gasoline.
So what happens to the cult when prophesies fail?
To explore all of this, my livestream guest yesterday was Matt McNeil, a midwest radio star on air in Chicago, Minnesota, and Seattle. You can watch the full video above or catch the slightly edited podcast video/audio here:
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