Trump-Jeffrey Epstein Talking Points Won't Save Us
The limits of "There's a list and Trump is on it!" messaging
First, happy news: welcome to a slew of new Spin Class subscribers! I’m so glad you’re here. I started Spin Class because I wanted a place that talked about comms and media as most of us actually experience them today: through a flood of channels but still in bubbles, curated by both powerful humans and algorithms (with their own agendas), and refusing to stay squarely in any one vertical or topic.
Spin Class asks why we’re seeing what we’re seeing, what’s the backstory, how are people in power are advancing an agenda or selling you something. Some of our greatest hits to date:
Why Trump’s State Department cuts are a massive national security own goal
Crisis and policy comms lessons from the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni saga
Why the foreign policy world is so bad at the influencer game (and how we catch up)
Welcome! Also, arrrr.
Ok. Trump and Epstein.
Like me, you’ve probably also been exposed to a ton of media and content about the MAGA-world crack-up over Jeffrey Epstein over the past week. There’s plenty of polling to indicate that the DOJ’s handling of the Epstein case is a problem for Republicans, especially for the MAGA base, and isn’t going away. Others have described this sordid history and current fracas out well, so I won’t rehash it all here.
I get it. It feels good to have something to interrupt what’s felt like unceasing momentum of Trump 2.0. It’s satisfying when terrible people turn on each other. And the ways in which they’re terrible are so cartoonishly indefensible that the average person feels absolved from any instinct to examine their own role or culpability in this mess. After all, what could we as ordinary individuals possibly have to do with the literal millionaire child molesters who ran international sex trafficking rings?
That we get to activate our own moral and intellectual outrage centers - there are so many pictures of Trump and Epstein together over the years! Of COURSE if there are DOJ files then Trump is in there! - while watching this unfold is just the extra frosting swirls on the whole overstuffed, sagging cake.
But I’ll be honest: I’m struggling with this round of Trump-Epstein messaging.
One: as Dan Pfeiffer points out, this is a conversation organically happening in MAGA world. It doesn’t need non-MAGA voices amplifying it. In fact, trying to hurt Trump politically could easily backfire and re-unite MAGA world against Dems overplaying their hand.1
I do think it’s good to keep the pressure on right-wing media, and talk about things like the Trump White House ordering FOX to not cover the Epstein fracas - and FOX meekly following those orders. And I think it’s smart to prebut bad-faith takes and whataboutism, like Charlotte has done. Those are credible messengers, talking to audiences who trust them. Stories like this are fodder for the Dem base, not MAGA world.
More broadly, the current Epstein news cycle shows the limits of political communications as a tool to fixing the underlying cracks in our democratic and civic foundations. The actual Epstein legal case raises important things we need to deal with: how a pedophile and trafficker operated with impunity for years, how the people who failed to hold him accountable still rose to power, and how we fix our institutions to keep these abuses of power from happening again.2
But the cultural narrative around Epstein exposes deeper rifts that can’t be fixed with legislation, document dumps, or talking points. And attacking Trump by publicly trying to activate his base against him doesn’t get to any of those deeper issues.
Spin Class Question: what are we not talking about that we should talking about?
The Victims. My friend
pointed out over drinks last night that very little of what we’re seeing this week is centering Epstein’s victims, or asking what they want. She’s 100% right, and I was chagrined that I hadn’t clocked this earlier.The current message frame I’m seeing from lots of folks is “how the Trumps’s hypocrisy re: Epstein harms him politically” and not “how can we prevent future Epstein-style abuses and help support survivors of trafficking and sexual abuse?” If we don’t center the survivors and what they need, then we’re just another group of people exploiting their pain. No wonder this feels gross.
Hard Truths About Conspiracy Theories. Any time we’re talking about a conspiracy theory, we need to embrace two uncomfortable truths:
The stickiest conspiracy theories have a nugget of reality in them.
Conspiracy theorists get something they need from being conspiracy theorists that they can’t or aren’t getting elsewhere.
Point One is self-explanatory. The leap to conspiracy theories around the Epstein Files makes a certain logical sense - we’re literally talking about a millionaire who set up an international sex trafficking ring in plain sight while hobnobbing with America’s ruling class for years.
I’d personally love to see more out there on what people promoting these conspiracy theories are actually getting out of it - both those with the proverbial microphones, and those who regularly tune in to listen.
For the loudest voices, there’s a clear financial imperative to keep the conspiracy theories alive. Their whole business model is predicted on the conspiracy going on forever, and requires them to keep manufacturing ever-more outrageous characters, scenarios, and what-ifs.
Most of these folks are straight-up grifters and probably know better on some level. You can’t have a logical debate or win an argument with someone whose public identity and business model is predicated on conspiracy theories, and there’s no point in trying. There’s no financial reward for someone pushing a conspiracy theory to say “I’ve learned more and I see how I was wrong. Here’s how I’ll do better next time.” If anything, that would only activate their conspiratorially-minded audiences to turn on them. They’re trapped by the very fires they’ve been stoking.
You can advance your own brand by fighting with them, if that’s your speed. The fight can get you eyeballs, attention, ad revenue. But arguably, that just makes you a different kind of grifter and profiteer.
The way to tackle the purveyors is to talk about the business of it all. I’d love to see more on this topic: how the money flows, who the advertisers are, what the business model is, how the algorithms and platforms amplify this all. How conspiracy grifters make money, exert influence, etc. Make the profiteers a character, not brave truth-tellers.
But I’m also interested in the average conspiracy theorist. What does someone get from engaging in a conspiracy theory, even one that’s been disproven? A lot, actually. Entertainment: ever spent time on a Reddit thread? It’s FUN, even when the subject matter is insane (especially when the subject matter is insane).3 Validation: there are elite conspiracies, and children being hurt by them! I’m right to be suspicious and angry about what my leaders aren’t telling me and how the powerful abuse the weak! A sense of being part of something bigger than yourself, of identifying with a movement that gives you purpose and meaning, and imposes order on a messy, upsetting world.
These are all real, important human needs. If we want to fight the lure of conspiracy theories and the people who profit from them, we need to do a better job of understanding what people get out of the experience of engaging with them - what voids is it filling, and how/why?
So much of what I’m seeing this week is about encouraging peoples’ worst impulses - dogpiling and paranoid thinking, especially - redirected at Trump and his inner circle. And depending on the audience, I’m not even sure that’s the wrong tactic to use. But I do know it’s not without costs. Not just the political backfiring that Dan warns about, but the doubling down on the very modes of thinking and processing information that helped get us to our troubled present.
The jury’s still out on what, if any, long-term damage this will do to Trump’s support from his MAGA base. But I know now that encouraging hostile, conspiratorial thinking doesn’t make us a stronger or more resilient body politic. It’s not about developing critical thinking skills, supporting legit journalism, or doing the hard work to rebuild trust and the sense that we’re in this together. Pointing out where Trump and Republicans are failing does not rebuild trust in Democrats, or the institutions that Dems are trying to shore up. That’s a whole separate, much harder line of effort.
Which leads us to:
What Actually Feeds Our Souls and Helps Us Move Forward. The Epstein case is a full-on media and entertainment feeding frenzy. There are documentaries, books, influencers. The thinkpieces, dear God.4
When does demanding accountability become rubbernecking tragedy? Probably around the second podcast.
Very little in the Epstein Media Industrial Complex offers us a better way forward. There’s nothing in this discourse about how to build better systems that help sexual assault survivors, or funding the (expensive) investigative journalism that exposes people who abuse power. For every piece of good-faith reporting that rigorously lays out facts, there’s tons of info-tainment slop stuffed with lurid details that stoke diffuse, directionless outrage. That slop leaves its the audience with the unsettling feeling that everyone is tainted, nothing will change, and there can never be resolution. And so trust further crumbles.
Attacking Trump and AG Bondi for refusing to release what else they know about Epstein may be the right thing to do. It doesn’t answer the bigger question about how our institutions and power structures failed to check Epstein’s crimes for long and where we all go from here. It’s where political communication reaches its limits: it’s necessary, but insufficient. And, especially because the subject matter is so upsetting, these attacks risks tarnishing anyone who talks about them even a smidge too much.
So, where do we go from here? For one, I grant Official Spin Class Permission™ to simply not engage with Epstein content or any other narrative that doesn’t feel good to you, even if the polling tells you it’s a clear messaging win. I’m personally at a saturation point with this whole saga and don’t intend to write or think about it for a long time after this piece.
Beyond that, there’s no silver bullet. We keep the pressure on our elected leaders not by watching Hulu documentaries, but by calling their offices, demonstrating, and showing up in person to their events (or shadow events if they’re too scared to face their constituents). We expose the structures that profit from survivors’ pain, and make smart choices about how to spend our time and attention.
We get offline and keep building community, because a world where we feel close to anonymous strangers but don’t know our neighbor’s names is part of how we got here. We subscribe to good media outlets and journalists, and pay them for their work. We listen to survivors, ask what they need, and understand that healing from sexual assault is rarely a neat, linear process. We try to understand what gaps conspiracy theories fill for some people, and be creative and open-minded about else might meet those needs.
We keep at the hard work of building and sustaining our democracy. We find what brings us genuine joy - not the mean, schadenfreude smirk of watching terrible people flail - and spend more time there. We take care of ourselves and each other, and take breaks when we need them. And we try new things out, because clearly a lot of the old ones weren’t working.
In the (very) short term, it may be smart political messaging to hold Trump’s feet to the fire over Jeffrey Epstein with some key audiences. Maybe it’s like I told my son the other day after he heard RFK Jr. say on NPR that all sugar is poison: “That guy wants to scare people about ordinary things so that he can make them afraid and be more powerful. A little bit of sugar, like a little bit of most things, is usually ok. But too much of anything is bad for you.”
So, the Spin Class takeaways: Too much of anything is bad for you. Don’t confuse a tactic with a strategy. Don’t lose sight of how talking about all this stuff makes you feel. Know who the audience is, and what they care about/who they trust. And if that’s not you, then your time is probably better spent elsewhere.
I am confident Dems will find a way to overplay their hand here.
And also what even is the point of the Pulitzer Prize if Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie K. Brown didn’t win for blowing the lid of the whole thing in 2018?
I’ve had a draft sitting for weeks about how Reddit has changed TV writing post-Lost and how writers’ rooms engage with/react to conspiratorial thinking as their shows grow. Should I finish reporting this out? It feels hard to focus on when [gestures at world] but germane to how we got here.
(Hangs head in shame)