It is always interesting to see who the American left claims are the leaders of the American right.
There was a time during President Trump’s first term when Steve Bannon fit the role – and relished playing it. Back then most days brought another media profile of the dark genius of the MAGA movement. The Guardian, New York Times and others were obsessed. Vanity Fair would send reporters to follow Bannon as he conquered America and, er, Europe. Documentary crews were perennially in tow. Indeed one documentary following Bannon around included a scene in which they followed him to the showing of another documentary about him from a crew who had similarly followed him around. At which point you felt that we might fall into some kind of vortex.
The point is that Bannon was useful for the left. And he in turn found the left useful.
Around the same time there was a less savory figure called Richard Spencer. The self-professed white nationalist was portrayed as being close to the center of power on the right. After he led a motley band of supporters in a farcical “Hail Trump” session, the left became especially obsessed. But Spencer was never important on the American right, let alone anywhere close to power. It merely suited a section of the media to present him as a bigger presence than he was.
In the recent furore over the avowedly racist and Holocaust-denying podcaster Nick Fuentes, a similar process seems to be taking place. Fuentes does in fact have some purchase on parts of the young American right – mainly, it seems, because of his delight in never seeing a taboo he does not wish to trample on. Still, it was striking that when the New York Times ran a piece about him earlier this month, it led with a black and white photograph that made him look positively James Dean-esque. Needless to say, Fuentes does not in any way resemble the late film heartthrob. But for some reason the Times decided to portray him in this light. While the American right is fighting to keep Fuentes out of their ranks, the Times seems keen on slipping him right in there.
The latest person to enjoy a similar transmogrification is Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Until recently you would have been hard-pushed to find a kind word said on the American left about the blonde MAGA Congresswoman. Even most of the American right found her an embarrassment for her behavior on committees and on the floor of the House, as well as for some of her outlandish past social media posts. The kindest thing I ever heard a MAGA figure say about her was that she had a tendency “to get a little too far over her skis.”
Now she is suddenly acceptable. She is on all the left-wing talk shows. CNN has interviewed MTG (as she is sometimes known) sympathetically, and listened with sincerity as she has decried the use of “toxic” rhetoric in politics. The fact that “toxic” was practically MTG’s only brand until yesterday would ordinarily lead to an outburst of skepticism on the US left. But MTG has become “acceptable” because of one thing and one thing alone – which is that the American left sees that she might just have become useful in their war to bring down President Trump.
MTG has recently turned against Trump and the two have traded barbs. Which is quite the turnaround for MTG, who had previously been one of those MAGA loyalists who seemed to discern no clear water between Trump and their Lord and Savior.
The apparent cause of MTG’s turn on the President is the Jeffrey Epstein case. Far be it from me to accuse MTG of being conspiracy-minded, but she is one of those people who believe that absent the release of every file and email that has ever existed relating to Epstein, we are all being lied to about some very major scandals.
The whole Epstein thing is murky as hell, but it is a scandal which promises to deliver more than it actually does. The problem at the moment is that the controversy has once again focused on Trump. The President’s own friendship with Epstein pretty clearly ended some 20 years ago – long before Epstein’s criminal activity became fully known about. They mixed in the same circles, not least because Epstein mixed in just about every circle of the rich and famous.
But ever since Trump returned to office a portion of the left and some Trump-haters on the right seem to have decided that Epstein is the most viable tool to take out the President. You might say that Epstein is for Trump’s second term what fake claims of Russian collusion were to his first.
Yet in order to believe that the Epstein Files contain some smoking gun against the President, you have to believe a number of things. Not least that the Biden administration sat on the Epstein files for four years but didn’t bother to search the material for compromising material on Trump, or that they did search them, found compromising material and chose not to use it – none of which sounds remotely plausible.
Facing a backlash from Greene and others, Trump has now turned from dismissing the whole Epstein furor as a “hoax” to urging Republicans to get behind calls for full transparency. Which they duly did: on Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted 427-1 to compel the Justice Department to release the Epstein files. Trump must be pretty confident that there is nothing especially compromising about him, and that other people will come out of the information worse.
To some extent that is already happening. The latest release of emails include a number between Epstein and the Trump-hating author Michael Wolff. In the run-up to the 2016 election (years after Epstein’s conviction), Wolff offered Epstein PR advice and seemed to be trying to collude with him to take down Trump. Not that Wolff has faced much censure for this. It seems it is OK to offer PR advice to a convicted sex offender so long as the cause is a noble, anti-Trump one.
