Commentary by Jerry Lanson

Donald Trump often can twist, shred and shed the truth as readily as Harry Houdini twisted and shed padlocked chains.

Throughout his life he’s used lies and deflection to wriggle out from under political pressure and legal charges, large and small, just as Houdini mesmerized audiences with his skill at wriggling out of shackles.

In his act, Trump has profited from disengaged and alienated voters alike, often distracting them by accusing those investigating him with precisely the same kinds of misconduct he’s alleged to have committed.

And for most of his life, through two impeachments, through a lost election he still insists he won, and through investigations and indictments surrounding the January 6, 2020 riots at the US capitol, these maneuvers have worked.

But now, as he passes the six-month mark of a second presidency that has turned this country and its values upside down, Trump’s lies seem to be growing so extreme and his behavior so erratic that even some ardent MAGA supporters are beginning to question him.

For two weeks, Trump has tried relentlessly, even desperately, to turn the page on Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and former friend who hung himself in jail awaiting trial on charges of trafficking teen-age girls for sex. The president’s about-face has shocked Trump supporters who for years have drunk at the trough of rightwing conspiracy theorists who have told them the “Deep State” suppressed evidence of Epstein’s ties to rich and famous Democrats.

The Trump Administration just weeks ago was promising to reveal Epstein’s secrets once and for all. Then, abruptly on July 10, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the Epstein case was closed, that there was nothing more to be said about it. The investigation, she said, had turned up nothing worth releasing, a line Trump repeated multiple times in the days that followed, as he’s strained to change the subject. He’s tried many things.

•Over the weekend, for example, he sent out a scree of social media posts that The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel called “alarming, even by his [Trump’s] standards.” Among his 33 Sunday posts was an AI generated video of former President Barack Obama being arrested in the Oval Office and video snippets of wild scenes such as a woman catching a charging cobra with her bare hands.

•On Tuesday, two weeks after signing legislation that will slash 10 million people from Medicaid roles in the next decade, he vowed he would reduce drug prices to a tenth or less of their current costs, Mediate reported in an article reposted on Politicalwire.com. This would be lower than the cost of manufacturing them.

•And at a Tuesday reception with Congressmen, Trump reportedly claimed that the Epstein scandal, which he called a “made up hoax,” had led to a remarkable boost in his polling numbers, giving him “the best numbers I’ve ever had,” Mediate reported.

For all his bravado, however, the master at mendacity seems to be struggling in his effort to shed the story. Trump’s real poll numbers appear to be declining at a steady and possibly an accelerating pace. And, as Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson raced to get out of town for summer recess to quell growing Congressional dissent about Epstein, a subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight Wednesday cast an 8-2 bipartisan vote to subpoena the Department of Justice for its files on Epstein’s sex trafficking investigation, the AP reported.

Trump’s biggest gambit to change the narrative could well come following the Thursday-Friday meeting between Justice Department officials and convicted Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell in Tallahassee, Florida, ostensibly to hear “new evidence,” the New York Post reports. It most assuredly won’t be about the president.

But just what this all means remains really murky. Epstein died six years ago, his death in jail ruled a suicide. Though The Wall Street Journal Wednesday reported that Bondi’s Justice Department had informed Trump that his name appeared “multiple times” in the Epstein investigation file, that news does not explain why Trump has labored so persistently and awkwardly to shut the story down. He’s long been known to be Epstein’s former friend and associate.

What is clear is that Trump’s polling numbers are falling.

Most remarkable have been two polls released this week reporting a seismic shift in young voters’ perceptions. Prior to the election, Trump was making significant inroads with this group.

Now a recent YouGov poll shows Trump’s net approval among Gen Z voters has dropped from roughly even to -40 percentage points, according to a tweet reposted on Politicalwire.

A CBS News poll that appeared on the site Tuesday showed an even bigger drop in support among voters between 18 and 29. It said that while Trump had a 10% favorable rating among these voters in February, the same age group now disapproves of him 72% to 28% – well over two to one.

Polls of all voters show increasing disenchantment with Trump’s performance on all issues, including those that fueled his campaign, such as immigration and inflation. His aggregate poll numbers are now lower than at any point in his second term.

Still, it is too early to know whether Trump will once again wriggle out of his problems.

In fact, it’s not entirely possible to rule out that the media and political frenzy over Epstein wasn’t hatched as one more diversion from the real pain Trump and his henchmen have inflicted with cuts in Medicaid, education, and science and health research, and with his administration’s vicious crackdown on immigrants.

Groups actively resisting the administration, such as Indivisible, are urging supporters to be ever-vigilant of Trump’s growing disregard of the Constitution and the rule of law. They’re encouraging members to reach out to neighbors and acquaintances to expand their ranks and grow their peaceful protests. 

Their concern is well-founded. A cornered Donald Trump often gets wilder. In the past week alone, he’s called for criminal investigations of Obama and his administration; of Schiff, who led the first impeachment hearing; of former FBI Director Jim Comey and of others.

Trump’s rapidly growing ICE army continues to spread chaos through workplaces, farms and immigrant communities, typically hauling in those with no criminal record. A headline in the Boston Globe Magazine this week reads, “’I want daddy.’ As ICE detains parents, children are left behind.”

Ultimately, however, the fate of Trump’s presidency may not lie with the resistance but with Trump’s success or failure in either deflecting attention from the Jeffrey Epstein files or making those files stick to someone else.

Though six years have passed since Epstein died in prison, something about the case, for whatever reason, clearly makes Trump uncomfortable. And that’s led the news media, Democrats and growing numbers of Republicans to talk about little else.

This column first appeared on Lanson’s Substack, From the Grassroots.