Vance made clear to colleagues that he feared losing some of the so-called low-propensity voters, the young men who were not traditional Republicans but who had voted for the Trump-Vance ticket in 2024. This was an audience tuned in to the “manosphere” podcasters like Joe Rogan, and it was worrisome that the podcast hosts themselves were now rebelling.
But there was one major obstacle in the path of a solution: The president himself still had no interest in transparency. He wanted the whole Epstein issue buried, and he was snapping at anyone who mentioned it. His staff largely avoided the subject in their conversations with him, forced to worry among themselves.
Finally, on July 16, in an exasperated Truth Social post, seemingly desperate to make his case in language that might resonate with his base, Trump somewhat nonsensically called the Epstein case a “hoax” by Democrats and then proceeded to heap abuse on members of his party and his base, disavowing their support, calling them “PAST supporters” and “weaklings” who had “bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker.”
As the president was trying to redirect everyone away from Epstein on social media, members of both parties began to push the other way. Many Democrats embraced the growing Epstein scandal as a top focus in their messaging and as a weapon against Trump. They were joined by a few renegade Republicans, which added to the political pressure on the president’s team. Representatives Thomas Massie, a Republican, and Ro Khanna, a Democrat, filed H.R. 4405, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, in the House, and although they did not yet have the votes for the bill, it would become the next battleground as the president dug in against releasing information.
Word reached the White House in late July, meanwhile, that a subpoena would soon be coming from the House Oversight Committee, led by James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky. It had been pushed by committee Democrats, with the help of some Republicans, and it compelled the release of files the Justice Department had on Epstein.
