How’s this for a vibe check: A Quinnipiac University poll yesterday found that a whopping 63 percent of voters disapprove of how the Trump administration is handling the Epstein-files controversy, with a scant 17 percent approving. Happy Thursday.

What Would William of Ockham Say?

by William Kristol

When we need help understanding what Donald Trump’s up to—when we have trouble cutting through all the turmoil, the distractions he creates, the smoke he sends up to obscure the truth—to whom can we turn?

How about the medieval Franciscan friar, William of Ockham? He’s the character who famously laid out the principle, Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem: Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity. It’s known as Occam’s razor. If you’re trying to solve a problem or to understand a phenomenon, consider the simplest or most straightforward explanation.

What’s the simplest explanation for Trump’s refusal to release any information about the Epstein files? What’s the most straightforward explanation for Trump’s far-fetched attempts at deflection? What’s the most likely explanation for his lashing out at supporters who aren’t obeying his instructions to shut up?

It’s that there’s information in those files that Trump doesn’t want to see the light of day.

We don’t know just what that information is. We do know Trump is insisting on not releasing it, and that he’s not even bothering to advance plausible reasons for not releasing it. And in doing so, he’s paying a price in antagonizing some of his MAGA supporters.

Which takes us from the 14th century thinker William of Ockham to the 20th century thinker Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind. MAGA is the closing of the American mind on steroids. It’s not close-mindedness due to mere ignorance or complacency or a bad education. It’s a radical closing of the mind to evidence due to a full-fledged embrace of conspiracism.

MAGA is all about conspiracies. QAnon, with its account of elite Satanist pedophiles running the government and much else, has been perhaps the central one of those conspiracies. And the Epstein case has been an important part of the QAnon narrative.

As John Stoehr points out in his latest Editorial Board newsletter, Trump is now in a position of looking as if he’s eager to cover up this conspiracy, rather than to expose it. Indeed he’s become part of the conspiracy. This has created a crisis of faith for MAGA believers.

In his newsletter, Stoehr has a very interesting interview with the investigative journalist Lindsay Beyerstein. Beyerstein points out that “When Trump says there’s nothing to see with the Epstein files, no rich co-conspirators, no nothing, he’s effectively saying that QAnon is fake.” That is a blow to the heart of MAGA.

Beyerstein continues:

Charlie Kirk literally came out and said that he was going to stop talking about Epstein against his better judgment, because his friends in the White House told him to. This is less than 72 hours after everyone at his 7,000-person conference raised their hand to say they were upset at Trump over his handling of the Epstein issue.

Conspiracists’ ears perk up when they hear that someone has to shut up because powerful people ordered them to.

And so MAGA is in serious revolt. As Beyerstein goes on to explain:

You’ve got Sarah Longwell’s focus group that found that, among 2024 Trump voters who are upset about his handling of the Epstein case, they overwhelmingly suspect that Trump is in on the conspiracy. That’s an unthinkable reaction given how unwilling MAGA has been to entertain that Donald Trump is ever wrong, let alone evil.

This is the first time I’ve seen large numbers of MAGAs willing to suspect the worst of Trump personally. It’s a sea change.

That can’t be unthought, even if it can be repressed.

I’d add this: It’s one thing for Trump to fall short of his supporters’ expectations. It’s one thing not to make certain documents available. Supporters might be able ultimately to rationalize that in various ways.

But when Trump derided the Epstein matter as the “Jeffrey Epstein Hoax,” that was a bridge too far.

That could mean only one of two things: Either Trump’s gone over to the other side and is now a part of the coverup. Or Trump is now telling the truth. But if it really was a hoax all along—well, were all the conspiracies hoaxes? Was Trump insincere in promoting them? Were his supporters deceived? Was his son deceived? Was his vice president deceived? Is MAGA itself just a hoax?

This is why, politically, Epstein matters. We are witnessing a crisis of MAGA faith. We could even be witnessing the beginning of the opening of the MAGA mind.