We live in a political world where Dan Bongino and Laura Loomer are key supporting actors to their respective main characters, and as a headline writer, it is difficult to figure out the degree of internet brain poisoning our readers have, and whether a name like Dan Bongino immediately registers to them. If it definitely does, you have either already seen this report or seen it coming over this Jeffrey Epstein-themed week. If the name sounds faintly familiar, you may think “That deranged podcaster who replaced The Rush Limbaugh Show? What does he have to do with the FBI Deputy Director? Did he get arrested by them?”
No, dear friend. That echo of ludicrous right-wing media you feel twinging in the recesses of your brain is the FBI Deputy Director. Bongino and the rest of team Trump have talked a very big game on the Jeffrey Epstein documents, as they promised a “client list” earlier this year. Now Trump’s Department of Justice and FBI have concluded that there is no “client list” and nothing sinister happened and Trump himself said he would like everyone to stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein forever.
Mike Cernovich, Bongino’s right-wing media buddy, shared Trump saying that and wrote “we’re not going to stop talking about Epstein.” Laura Loomer, one of Trump’s right-wing media White House liaisons and an open white nationalist, posted on the MechaHitler site this morning that she had a “SCOOP.” Loomer claimed that both FBI Director Kash Patel and Bongino are “LIVID with [Attorney General] Pam Bondi” and that “Dan Bongino is taking the day off today from his job as Deputy Director of the FBI, and there’s now speculation on whether or not he will return to his job at the FBI over his disgust with Blondi’s [sic] lack of transparency and handling of the Epstein files.”
This “SCOOP” was later confirmed by Axios, confirming to the rest of us that we live in a shambolically depressing world where a woman who once chained herself to just one door at the Twitter offices, blocking no one from exiting or entering, is now close enough to the Deputy Director of the FBI that Axios can get four sources confirming what she heard (Splinter’s Katherine Kruger went down to see Loomer’s two-hour, one-door protest for herself in 2018, asking why she didn’t fully commit to the bit, and Loomer said that chaining both doors shut would be a fire hazard). Axios did not portray this Bongino situation at the FBI as dire as Loomer did and they also did not depict Patel in the same light, but it wouldn’t be surprising if one of their sources was her source, as Axios wrote that “A source close to Bongino, though, said, ‘he ain’t coming back.’”
There are more life-threatening stories in politics right now between climate breakdown, ICE, and RFK Jr.’s attempt to kill as many people as possible, but as far as issues that resonate across the broadest swath of America, this is the budding biggest story in politics in my book. Epstein is an untouchable political rail for a Beltway run by two parties defined by presidents who flew on Epstein’s plane. Epstein’s connections to every lever of power in our imperial core lead a lot of people currently around those levers to clam up, which adds to the mystique around a sex trafficking pedophile connected to presidents, one of the richest men in the world and literal royalty. If no one wants to talk about it, many are then led to assume that there must be something worth talking about–especially since Epstein died while in state custody, with the conspiracy goosed by the Trump administration itself releasing a video of the night he died that seemingly is missing a minute. As an anecdotal observation, when I play golf on the weekends and tell people what I do, Epstein is the most common question that gets brought up.
A lot of people across the political spectrum, especially in Trump’s tenuous low trust 2024 coalition, truly care about the Jeffrey Epstein story. The lack of drumbeat media coverage over it helps enhance the mysterious haze around it, further suggesting to everyone of every ideological stripe that there must be some powerful interests being covered up. We have been able to peer into a sex trafficking pedophile’s life through the courts and unwavering journalism done by outlets like Gawker and The Miami Herald, but we don’t have the full picture. What we know is extremely disturbing, and it’s not hard to see how an elite blackmail network could emerge around the confirmed abuse of a shocking number of young women and girls. There are many crazier theories in politics other than the one asked of Trump’s AG the other day, querying if Jeffrey Epstein is allegedly connected to intelligence operations.
What we don’t know is who all was in that network. We have some good ideas tracing all the way up to the Oval Office, one of whom would really like his supporters to stop talking about this “waste of time.” This rift is causing so much strife in MAGA land that they’re libbing out and taking mental health days off work. Is Dan Bongino going to knit himself an Epstein quilt today? Maybe he’ll try to take RFK Jr. with him on a somatic healing retreat. Or perhaps he will stay in town and do some rage yoga and treat himself with a boba tea on his way home. The world can be stressful when everyone in your life knows that you are completely full of shit.
The central question of this horrific period in American history is how do we stop the horrors? This is where much of my coverage flows to, as it is important to give people something tangible to hold on to in a world where no one knows what’s around the corner. A few months ago, no one had a genuine MAGA revolt against Trump on their bingo card, but here I am working on National Dan Bongino Mental Health Awareness Day. The bond market has had just one day of down movement for interest rates since the GOP passed their big, beautiful deficit exploding murder bill, and even Trump admits that Stephen Miller’s mass deportation agenda harms the economy that is slowing down because of his trade war. Just because Trump wants to be the singular force behind everything that happens in this world doesn’t mean he will be. There are trapdoors where things have the potential to spiral out of control to his extreme detriment everywhere you look. Even if you believe that democracy is dead and elections are part of a bygone era in American politics, authoritarians still need popular support to enact their authoritarianism.
And now, a genuine revolt from Trump’s most die-hard supporters going all the way to the top the FB-freakin-I is brewing, entirely in response to breaking all his Jeffrey Epstein promises. There is hope out there in this ugly world, and one lesson of Trumpism 2.0 so far is that the nerve endings in America’s fingers still work, and 2025’s stove-touching season has led to all-time highs in support for immigration while exposing Trump as such a galling hypocrite that even his most cynical MAGA operatives can’t shield their eyes from it anymore.
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