Listen up, weaklings: there’s no Epstein client list – and definitely no cover-up. Yours, Donald J Trump | Marina Hyde

You have to feel for Donald Trump’s Maga base. The one huge secret they didn’t want disclosed was that he actually really hates them. All populists despise their people, obviously – but please, Mr President, respect the playbook! You’re supposed to do it quietly. Regrettably, no one could accuse Trump of hiding his spite under a bushel after a week in which he described those of his supporters who want him to simply do what he repeatedly promised, and release the so-called Epstein files, as “weaklings” and “stupid people”. This is quite the (public) volte face from the guy who originally swept to office declaring “I love the poorly educated”.

Most of you are unlikely to need a recap at this stage, but Jeffrey Epstein is the sex-trafficking financier and socialite, who conveniently died in jail while awaiting trial, apparently by suicide. A woman, Ghislaine Maxwell, was convicted of conspiring with him to sexually abuse minors, and is currently serving 20 years in a low-security Florida prison. But no big-hitting or even small-hitting male associate in the US has so much as been arrested for participating in what I believe the dead paedophile would have encouraged us to call his “lifestyle”. This second Trump administration didn’t just sweep to power while repeatedly screaming about the “cover-up” of this story, but it spent a good portion of its early months assuring its ravenous base that Epstein’s supposed “client list” was on a desk waiting for release approval. Yet now, Trump and his associates say there is no list. Nope. Never even was a list. Where did these weakling idiots get that idea? To summarise his administration’s position: “We took a look at the deep state and it turns out to be very shallow. Seriously, I’m standing in it right now and it doesn’t even come up to my knees.”

Understandably, a significant proportion of the Maga crowd are not taking this well at all. One of the key takeouts of Trump’s rise has been that as long as you tell people that up is down or black is white in an engaging or sufficiently discombobulating fashion, truth is an extremely low-status commodity in contemporary politics. But, contrary to perceived trends, it seems that there do still exist some subjects on which you can only push even your own people so far. Maybe the ancient political adage still holds true: live by the paedo conspiracy, die by the paedo conspiracy.

Late on Thursday, as footage of people burning Maga hats spread online, a palpably frustrated Trump announced that he was instructing the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to seek release of the Epstein grand jury testimony, “based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein”. Though you’ll note the president failed to add the two key words: “by me”. Still, it’s good to hear Trump characterising what’s currently happening as “publicity”, confirming that he sees even the desire to see justice served on a suspected paedophile sex-trafficker and his associates as a form of limelight – which, like all limelight, should by rights be his.

It feels harder to sustain the idea that there is nothing to see here, especially when leading wingnuts such as the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, far-right activist Laura Loomer, Fox host Laura Ingraham, talkshow queen Megyn Kelly, Maga whisperer Steve Bannon and even the US House speaker, Mike Johnson, are out there pushing the base conviction that, actually, there might well be something to see here. “It’s definitely a full reversal on what was all said beforehand,” observed Marjorie in a once-in-a-career alignment with fact, “and people are just not willing to accept it.”

We have to take our laughs where we can, meanwhile, so do please consider the cavalcade of podcasters and Maga influencers who got jobs like “director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation” and “deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation” and are now discovering that life comes at you fast. FBI chief Kash Patel spent the election campaign pushing Epstein conspiracies, and is now believed to be hiding under his big important desk wetting his pants. “Listen,” his deputy, Dan Bongino, used to instruct his podcast listeners. “That Jeffrey Epstein story is a big deal, please do not let that story go. Keep your eye on this.” Will do, Dan. Incidentally, a lot of people spent the weekend speculating feverishly that Bongino would sensationally quit his job – but in the end, he just came into work a bit late on Monday. What a tough guy. Make America Deep State Again!

Other developments? That are perhaps not unrelated? The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump had served as a contributor to some kind of cursed 50th birthday scrapbook for Epstein, compiled by Maxwell, for which he’d sent a “bawdy” letter. This missive was reportedly typed inside a drawing of a naked woman’s silhouette, in which the famous Trump signature served as a kind of scribble of pubic hair. So far, so FDR. Unfortunately, particularly in the circumstances, the letter itself is said to conclude: “Happy birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

Alas, the current president is not thrilled by this report, denying it completely, adding that he has never in his life “wrote a picture”. (It goes without saying that all Donald Trump statements, always, are very much [sic].) Much more promisingly, Trump is furious with the WSJ owner, Rupert Murdoch, and threatening to “sue his ass off”. Oh please don’t, Mr President! His ass is 94 years old and incredibly wrinkled. Also, half of Britain’s political class still lives up it. Then again, perhaps Trump v Murdoch is very much the desiccated-dick-waving contest the world … wants? Needs? Will have to endure? Unclear which of those applies at this stage, but let’s hold out for the possibility that both men are wholly – and indeed literally – consumed by it.

Angles-wise, however, there are already signs that the Wall Street Journal might just be the common enemy the Magas need as an off-ramp for their civil war, allowing people who are obsessed with paedophiles to find common cause both with people who don’t care about paedophiles, and also with people who may actually have been close personal friends with paedophiles. There’ll probably only be one casualty, and it’ll probably be Pam Bondi. Women are great at taking these falls. Furthermore, the whole conflagration would once more pit a billionaire president against one of his billionaire buddies – exactly the kind of better world his supporters voted for, and a true testament to how truly, truly deeply he values them.

• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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