THE EPSTEIN REVERSAL

In the file-release bill, Trump confronts losing his grip on the movement he started

- BY PHILIP ELLIOTT

DONALD TRUMP READ HIS SITUATION WITH a clear eye, and pivoted. As autumn deepened, he was hemorrhaging support among Republicans over his obstinance on releasing all the files the Department of Justice had swept up in its investigations of disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The President's efforts to deflect were being met with equal parts outrage and ridicule.

Trump faced a choice: shift his stance to align with those he had spent a decade nurturing, or stay defiant and pledge to veto a disclosure bill if it ever got to his desk. This was not a fight he could win through simple bravado.

So, in response to pushback from his own base, Trump blinked. The House on Nov. 17 passed the release-it-all bill with only one no vote, and the Senate followed unanimously hours later—and Trump didn't take long to sign it into law. It may be a sign that the Make America Great Again movement is outgrowing the man who built it into a dominant political force. Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who forced the issue over the wishes of GOP leadership, cast the win as one for the forgotten man who made Trump's comeback possible.

For years, MAGA was whatever Trump said it was. His followers shifted their positions, sometimes repeatedly, on issues like trade, foreign conflicts, and who counted as a political enemy, based on what Trump said was MAGA orthodoxy.