How did Donald Trump lose control of Epstein’s spin cycle?

Almost for one Over the past decade, US President Donald Trump has managed to control the conspiracy theory swirl around notorious financier and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Conspiracy theories were in his favor. They were one of the factors that attracted him to the position. It’s only been in the past few weeks — with the release of new Epstein documents and the public defection of Republican lawmakers — that the tangled web of misinformation has spiraled out of Trump’s control.

It all started with QAnon. It was no exaggeration when Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green posted about it in November 2017 when she posted a video praising Cave as a “patriot.”

The movement was led by “Q,” who claimed to be a government insider and released what they claimed was top secret information in posts known as “drops” on the anonymous message board 4chan. Cave proposed a wild and false conspiracy theory that a group of Democratic and Hollywood elites were behind a global sex-trafficking ring.

Jeffrey Epstein used to be one of the key figures in the QAnon world.

Epstein was first mentioned just two weeks after QAnon started in late October 2017, and has been referenced dozens of times in the nearly 5,000 posts Q has written over the next three years. Like all good conspiracy theories, this one contained a kernel of truth: the fact that Epstein had pleaded guilty to solicitation charges in 2008 meant that QAnon supporters were emboldened to believe every wild claim Q made.

I became aware of QAnon in early 2018 but didn’t write about it until September of that year. At the time Greene began promoting it, years before he was elected to Congress, the conspiracy was in its infancy with a handful of devoted followers.

Trump was quickly cast as the hero of this narrative, working against the “deep state” to expose these demons and create a “storm” that would see the cabal unmasked and everyone from Epstein to the Clintons face public execution. (No, really) Trump, who has claimed that his relationship with Epstein ended around 2004, used the QAnon community to his advantage. Trump praised his followers ahead of the 2020 election and endorsed Green’s congressional campaign after she won the primary.

Epstein had become sort of shorthand for those in QAnon trying to explain it to outsiders. Cave repeatedly returned to the subject of Epstein, claiming that the disgraced tycoon had a dungeon (under the temple) on his island, complete with “sex and torture chambers.”