Whatever happens next will be a defining moment for Trump.

However strange it seems to measure the Epstein conspiracy theory against, say, the president’s approach to tariffs or his bombing of Iran, this is the stuff Trump’s mythology is based on. Trump has positioned himself as an outsider who shares enemies with his base—namely, elites. It hasn’t mattered to his supporters that Trump is an elite himself; the appeal, and the narrative, is that Trump wants to punish the same people his supporters loathe.

In appearing to bury the Epstein list—which, again, may or may not exist—by calling it a “hoax” and pinning it to his “PAST supporters,” Trump is pushing up against the limits of this narrative—as well as his ability to command attention and use it to bend the world to his whims. If Trump and the MAGA media ecosystem can successfully spin the Epstein debacle into a conspiracy theory that helps them, or if they can make the story stop, it would suggest once again that his grip on the party and its base is total: an impenetrable force field no bit of reality can puncture.

What if they fail?

Maybe this is what it looks like when Trump loses his vise grip on his supporters. But this is late-stage conspiracism: a noxious mix of real events and twisted theories egged on by shameless attention merchants and fed into an insatiable internet until it spins out of control, transcending fact and fiction and becoming unstoppable.

What if the desire for answers isn’t about justice, truth, or even politics at all? What if the Epstein dead-enders could never be satisfied, even by the publication of a client list? What if they would continue to allege further cover-ups, that the conspiracy was still alive?

All the anger may just be the result of an addiction to an information ecosystem that has conditioned people to expect a right to “evidence” that justifies any belief they might hold.

To believe such a thing would suggest that the epistemic rot, reality decay, and culture of conspiracism are not by-products of a specific politician or political movement, but something deeper—something intrinsic to the platforms, culture, and systems that define our lives.

It would suggest that the fever will never break.

— Charlie Warzel