Over 40% of his voters are pissed at the way he’s handling the Epstein files. I honestly can’t think when he’s pissed his base off on a subject this much.
Then again, while they remain in Team MAGA partisan denial, they are still aware (in parts of their brains that they are not allowed to access) of friends and family losing their jobs - or seeing their businesses fail/suffer because of tariffs. I think the Epstein issue allows them to transfer some of the unhappiness that they are not allowed to express about Trump‘s overall presidency in a way where they can be critical - yet still be seen as legit MAGA/Qanon and not viewed by neighbors and peers as anti-Trump.
Remember the TTom J6 screed. In his deranged brain vomit post he focused very much on QAnon pedo issues. Trump was fighting with generals from his bunker - and when he won they were going to arrest all the Democrats and send them to Gitmo for trial and execution. I mean, it was really the thing he cared most about.
And on this one issue, Trump not being transparent results in the drip, drip, drip Chinese water torture of multiple new revelations - like the honeypot sting and the billionaire GOP backer being on the list. By not releasing everything at once he is insuring that the story will not go away.
And as QAnon and MAGA were the biggest champions of the Epstein story, and the biggest champions of a deep state cover-up, Trump telling his base that this was all invented by Democrats essentially lumps his believer base in with woke libtards.