I feel more sympathy for 1,500 tarantulas than for a Maga-assailed Trump

Rightwing American conspiracy theories often circle the drain of lurid abuse stories. So it was quite a twist this week to see the chickens of this particular rancid online conspiracy culture come home to roost in the form of Maga faithfuls turning on Trump for what the US president now refers to as the "Jeffrey Epstein hoax".

- Emma Brockes

Monday

Epstein - a convicted sex offender - committed suicide in prison while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in 2019, and Trump's conspiracy-hungry supporters are now accusing the president of a cover-up.

Specifically enraging to the Trump faithful is his decision to tread water on releasing the so-called "Epstein files". These secret FBI documents supposedly contain the names of Epstein's "client list", and last month Elon Musk suggested they might feature Trump himself.

Until very recently, the Trump administration had been happy to throw meat to the lions by suggesting it would release the files. But now the president has dropped that promise and instead recommended that everyone "move on". Meanwhile the FBI issued a memo last week saying it didn't have evidence to justify interrogating further suspects.

Well. Can you imagine? All across America, the deep-state-is-lying to us klaxons went off like tornado warnings. Maga militant Laura Loomer called for the attorney general, Pam Bondi's resignation; Trump ally Steve Bannon demanded the dissolution of federal law enforcement; and Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, called the FBI memo a "cover up".