An ABC News panel blamed President Donald Trump after part of the MAGA base turned on him for dropping the case against Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged co-conspirators.
During a Sunday discussion, This Week host Jonathan Karl wondered if the “boys and gals of Team MAGA” would let the Epstein matter drop.
“Well, look, what Donald Trump is learning is when you start the fire, sometimes you can’t put it out,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said. “Now, he started this Epstein fire during the campaign and prior to that by alleging that this was all some, you know, Democratic plot, that he was perhaps murdered by former Democratic officeholder, that there were a lot of Democrats who had been down to Jeffrey Epstein’s island and all the rest.”
“He used that to fire up his own base, and he was going to get to the bottom of it, and he was going to release it because he’s absolutely in favor of transparency,” he continued. “And let’s be clear about this. Pam Bondi, there’s no chance, in my opinion, that Pam Bondi made this decision on her own. No chance.”
Christie argued that the decision not to release additional Epstein files came directly from Trump.
“And now he’s at cross purposes, though,” he explained. “Because when you bring in people like Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, who are true believers, in what Trump was saying prior to getting elected, they’re saying, wait a second, we came here to do the transparency thing.”
“We cannot let the president off that easily,” Christie added. “He benefited directly from it. He fueled it. He encouraged it. And he certainly didn’t stop it. So part of what bothers me in this context is that Donald Trump gets a pass.”
Former DOJ spokesperson Sarah Isgur pointed out that many people in Trump’s hardcore MAGA base were “really big on this stuff though, JFK, Epstein, the moon landing, chemtrails.”
“So this actually does have a real potential to influence whether Donald Trump has that protection between him and his base, those translators,” she stated. “Where did Epstein’s money come from? Where did the money now go?”
