Trump Fails To Stop People From Talking About Epstein, Again

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Like the proverbial bull in the china shop, US President Donald Trump spent his first year back in office the way any twice-impeached, convicted felon would — namely, trying to distract public attention away from his relationship with the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. However, nothing seems to stick. Demolishing the entire East Wing of the White House didn’t work. Halting five offshore wind projects in mid-construction didn’t work. Slapping “Trump” onto the facade of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts didn’t work. And kidnapping the President of Venezuela won’t work, either.

As for what will finally get people to stop talking about the Epstein files, perhaps former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino can shed some light on the subject….

Break Out The Popcorn, Here Comes Dan Bongino (Again)

Dan Bongino factors into the mix because he was among the legion of high-profile, right-wing media personalities incessantly braying (that’s braying, not praying) for the release of the files amassed by the FBI on Jeffrey Epstein and everyone in his sprawling circle of affairs. “Release the files” was the war cry while former President Joe Biden was in office, presumably because the documents would finally reveal hard evidence of bad behavior by a shadowy elite corps of “deep state” actors affiliated with the Democratic Party, up to and including responsibility for Epstein’s death in 2019 (for the record, the official finding was suicide while in federal custody, and that was while Trump was president).

“As a podcaster, Bongino openly questioned official reports that Epstein, who was arrested for a series of sexual crimes with underaged girls, died by suicide,” Texas Public Radio reminded everyone last May.

Specifically, TPR cited a 2023 broadcast in which Bongino stated, “Listen, that Jeffrey Epstein story is a big deal, please do not let that story go. Keep your eye on this.”

Well, that was then. In his role as Trump’s Deputy Director of the FBI last year, Bongino himself tried to let that story go. However, it is not going, at least not quietly. Though Bongino publicly affirmed that Epstein was just another jailhouse suicide, the story refuses to die.

For that matter, as 2025 drew to a close, Bongino also admitted that his other conspiracy theories don’t hold water, either.

“I was paid in the past for my opinions,” he told Fox News in December, referring to another “inside job” conspiracy theory he promoted for years, that being the identity of the Washington, DC, pipe bomber.

“One day I will be back in that space but that’s not what I’m paid for now,” Bongino emphasized in December. That day has come. Last week, Bongino resigned his position at the FBI with the aim of heading back to podcast-land, where he will be paid once again to make stuff up.

It’s The Economy, Stupid — Oh, Wait, It’s Epstein

The question is, what stuff will Bongino make up now that Trump himself factors into one Epstein document dump after another. The case for a deep state conspiracy led by a cabal of leftists, so passionately believed by so many in MAGA for so long, has sprouted more holes than a worm farm at harvest time. In the meantime, the fallout from the Trump economy is falling squarely on the shoulders of right-wing podcast audiences and non-audiences alike. Blaming Democrats for Epstein, or the economy, or both, will wear mighty thin as Trump enters his second year in office and the economy continues to circle the drain.

That doesn’t leave much wiggle room for Trump-supporting media personalities like Bongino. Indeed, Bongino’s fellow right-wing podcaster Joe Rogan has already begun incorporating zingers against Trump into his act even as his audience begins to wilt, and Rogan is not the only right-wing competitor scrambling for audience share as pressure mounts on the Trump administration to release the full files, and the Epstein estate drops a few documents of its own, and articulate, determined women continue to push for full transparency.

Against this backdrop, the Venezuela operation has nothing to offer. Nobody in the Trump administration can even articulate how Venezuelan oil will benefit Joe Public. Instead, Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have simply trotted out a hodgepodge of the familiar old themes — drug trafficking, communism, and/or national security — regularly invoked by every Republican president since the 1980s to justify sending US troops overseas, including Ronald Reagan (Grenada, 1983), George Herbert Walker Bush (Panama, 1989 and Gulf War, 1991), and George W. Bush (Afghanistan and Iraq).

It’s All About The Oil … No, Really!

That leaves the matter of justifying the kidnapping of Maduro up to President Trump himself. Somewhat ironically, he did manage to rise to the occasion. Trump is the only one in his administration to express a unified theory of intervention in Venezuela: It’s all about the oil.

No, don’t laugh! Much like his obsession with — and total misunderstanding of — the way tariffs work, Trump’s cockamamie obsession with control over Venezuela’s oil reserves has been years in the making. It sounds simple enough, except when the intricacies of a globally organized, geopolitical industry with a multiplicity of moving parts are factored in. On top of that, the ongoing oil glut is another complicating factor, as is the heavy, difficult-to-refine crude that characterizes Venezuela’s reserves, placing it at a disadvantage against other oil producers in a market that is trending inevitably towards peak demand and eventual decline.

Further underscoring the ridiculousness of the oil gambit, Trump wrapped up his first year in office by taking credit for pushing down the cost of gasoline in the US, an assertion that pulls the rug right out from under the Venezuelan enterprise. After all, why do US drivers need more oil when gas is already cheap and plentiful?

So much for Venezuela. Meanwhile, the slow drip, drip, drip of the Epstein files keeps adding fresh fodder to the conspiracy mill, only not in the way Trump and his supporters envisioned. “During the 2024 election, President Trump promised to release the Epstein files as part of a campaign message arguing the government was run by powerful people hiding the truth from Americans,” NPR noted on January 2, even as the White House set plans in motion to bomb Caracas.

“At the start of 2026, many people agree — and believe that he is now one of the powerful few keeping the public in the dark,” NPR emphasized, by way of reminding everyone why Trump and his Republican allies in Congress pulled back federal funding for the nation’s public broadcasting network.

“There could be well over a million files still unreleased, along with potentially terabytes-worth of data seized from Epstein’s devices and estate, according to 2020 emails between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York included in the most recent batch of files,” NPR summarized.

As if on cue, Bongino welcomed himself back to his fans in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on January 4, to be met with a torrent of replies asking, begging, and demanding him to spill everything he knows about the Epstein files … you know, the real inside story.

Image: Trump makes a grab for Venezuela’s oil reserves, fails to keep people from talking about Jeffrey Epstein (cropped document via DropBox courtesy of House Committe on Oversight).