I'll add one possibility:
- Trump largely doesn't know any specific details of the Epstein crimes and delegated it to Bondi, Patel, and Bongino, who are telling him (or are at least publicly stating) that there's nothing to investigate, so he just goes with what he's being told because he's more occupied with immigration, tariffs, the economy, and Israel's wars.
Which, to be clear, is still a failure of leadership on his part. People who fail at their delegated tasks shouldn't be protected, they should be fired. But I don't think he probably personally dug into the Epstein stuff himself very closely because it's not his area of expertise.
When re-watching that press conference where he jumped in to excoriate the reporter for asking about Epstein, I'm actually thinking he was blindsided by the question. I don't think Bondi or the DOJ told him, "oh, by the way, we're forgetting about all the Epstein stuff and dropping the investigation." (Particularly because they tried to sneak it out by leaking it to a hack publication over a weekend and was limited to an unsigned memo from the DOJ a couple days later). So he's there to talk about the disasters going on with flooding and wars and shit, and out of the blue comes a question about Epstein. You can almost see a look in Bondi's face like, "oh shit, we're found out" slowly give way to relief as Trump gives her cover to come back with an indignant, nonsensical response.
We know that the swamp hates him and will happily set him up to fail. We know that Bondi is one of the swampier, self-promoting creatures in the cabinet. We know that they would see a MAGA split and a Democrat win in the midterms followed by endless stonewalling and impeachment as a wonderful development.
I'll add one possibility:
- Trump largely doesn't know any specific details of the Epstein crimes and delegated it to Bondi, Patel, and Bongino, who are telling him (or are at least publicly stating) that there's nothing to investigate, so he just goes with what he's being told because he's more occupied with immigration, tariffs, the economy, and Israel's wars.
Which, to be clear, is still a failure of leadership on his part. People who fail at their delegated tasks shouldn't be protected, they should be fired. But I don't think he probably personally dug into the Epstein stuff himself very closely because it's not his area of expertise.
When re-watching that press conference where he jumped in to excoriate the reporter for asking about Epstein, I'm actually thinking he was blindsided by the question. I don't think Bondi or the DOJ told him, "oh, by the way, we're forgetting about all the Epstein stuff and dropping the investigation." (Particularly because they tried to sneak it out by leaking it to a hack publication over a weekend and was limited to an unsigned memo from the DOJ a couple days later). So he's there to talk about the disasters going on with flooding and wars and shit, and out of the blue comes a question about Epstein.
We know that the swamp hates him and will happily set him up to fail. We know that Bondi is one of the swampier, self-promoting creatures in the cabinet. We know that they would see a MAGA split and a Democrat win in the midterms followed by endless stonewalling and impeachment as a wonderful development.