President Donald Trump is running out of tricks—and out of enemies. Now, he can’t escape Epstein’s shadow without a scapegoat.
That’s the view of journalist Alex Shephard, who says Trump is “flailing” as the heat grows over his ties to the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Shephard, writing in The New Republic, says Trump is desperate to shift the spotlight, but this time, his usual blame game isn’t working.
“He’s caught in a web that he and his allies helped spin,” Shephard wrote. “The fact that it is a thinly disguised attempt to distract from the Epstein story only damages its credibility further.”
For years, Trump has pointed fingers at Democrats to deflect attention. He’s accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of everything from corruption to child trafficking. He’s said Barack Obama should be arrested. Lately, he’s called the Epstein revelations a “witch hunt” and a “hoax.”
But nothing is sticking.
The reason? These demands for answers about Epstein aren’t coming from Democrats. They’re coming from Trump’s own base, from inside right-wing circles that once cheered him on.
Shephard points out that much of the conspiracy chatter around Epstein started on the far right—like the QAnon crowd that pushed the twisted idea of elites drinking children’s blood. But while that idea is false, the Epstein part isn’t. Powerful men did use Epstein to get access to underage girls. And the public wants to know who they were.
With pressure mounting, Trump has tried to turn the focus back on old enemies. But it’s falling flat.
Obama is still very popular. Hillary Clinton rarely appears in public. Bill Clinton is almost 80. Joe Biden, meanwhile, is dealing with a serious illness, described by Shephard as being “in exile” while battling stage-four cancer.
Even Trump’s old claim that Biden is too senile to function undermines any new effort to paint him as the mastermind of some Epstein cover-up.
Shephard says Trump is now facing a new kind of crisis: he has no one left to blame.
“Put another way, the Democrats’ utter lack of leadership is redounding to their benefit in this rare instance,” Shephard wrote. “Trump simply doesn’t have a prominent Democratic foil to redirect attention to, so he’s playing old hits that a diminishing number of Americans want to hear.”
And with no internal resistance in today’s Republican Party—no more generals or Cabinet members pushing back—Trump can’t blame the “deep state” anymore either.
“The party is clearly and unmistakably marching in lockstep behind him,” Shephard wrote. “Trump’s Cabinet is stacked with arch loyalists… you won’t find anyone fitting the profile of, say, Rex Tillerson or Jim Mattis.”
With no one left to fight but himself, Trump appears cornered—grasping at enemies who no longer exist, while the Epstein shadow grows.
