For nearly 10 months this year, President Donald Trump’s every wish was the command of Republicans in Washington as he oversaw a furious reshaping of the federal government and beyond. Few, if any, in his party dared to say “no.”
But the president now finds himself in a weakened position: polls show his lowest approval ratings since returning to office; some in his political base are calling for more to be done to ease a continued affordability crisis; and now, House Republicans have dared to buck his directives on an issue that advisers say has exasperated him.
The House of Representatives on Tuesday will vote to release additional investigation files related to the deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein — a measure Trump has long tried to thwart, including personally whipping votes against the effort in both private and public, according to two people familiar with the effort who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations.
Trump and White House lieutenants for months tried to convince congressional Republicans to back away from the Epstein probe. But the president on Sunday evening announced he had changed his position altogether, saying he now supported the House approving release of the files as it became clear he would lose when the vote came to the House floor.
It marks not only a moment of personal frustration for Trump, according to advisers, but has raised alarms among some Republican operatives about the party’s strength moving into the midterms. Trump’s base in recent weeks has divided over a host of issues, including the United States’ relationship with Israel, antisemitism in the GOP, extending immigration visas to Chinese students and farmworkers, and whether Trump has been too focused on foreign policy issues at the expense of providing economic relief and addressing other domestic issues.
“Trump is without question still the titular head of the Republican Party and leader of the America First and MAGA movement. But after a decade, there are new faces giving voice to the element that wants Trump to focus more on domestic issues,” said Dennis Lennox, a Michigan-based Republican strategist who cited a “growing split” among factions of the conservative movement “on a multitude of issues.”
Still, White House officials remain confident Trump can withstand the criticism of the moment, with one long-time Trump official saying his political team has “been in far worse moments.”
“While the outside world is panicking, everybody internally knows we will do what we’ve always done when challenges come — you pull yourself up from your bootstraps, you huddle together, you devise a plan, and you execute on that plan,” the official continued. The person listed both personal and political storms Trump has weathered in the years since he left office the first time, including being shot in an assassination attempt; dozens of criminal indictments; and his political exile after a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Moments before boarding Air Force One Sunday night, to return Washington from his weekend in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump chastised reporters for “bringing it up to deflect from the tremendous success of the Trump administration,” and said he “(didn’t) want to talk about it.”
While Fox News and Sunday Night Football played on in-flight screens, Trump discussed the Epstein issue and upcoming vote with aides, while also ticking through other tasks, including reviewing the guest list for Tuesday’s black-tie dinner with the Saudi crown prince, according to a person with knowledge of his activities aboard the flight home. Sixteen minutes after landing in Washington, Trump announced in a lengthy post on Truth Social that he was no longer opposing the House measure.
Trump told aides he would no longer oppose the files’ release because “you’re not going to find anything new about me, because if it existed, it definitely would have come out before the election,” a senior White House official told The Washington Post, saying Trump eventually accepted it was “an inevitable reality” the measure would pass. Trump maintains that the issue “doesn’t matter to voters,” the person added, but decided the best way to “move on” to other issues was to stop opposing the upcoming vote.
The president has said that he knew Epstein socially in Palm Beach, and that they had a falling-out in the mid-2000s. Trump’s name appears repeatedly in previously released documents from Epstein’s estate, but Trump has maintained that he had “no idea” about Epstein’s criminal behavior, and the documents have produced no evidence of wrongdoing by Trump.
Trump “has been consistently calling for transparency related to the Epstein files,” including instructing the Department of Justice last week to investigate prominent Democrats associated with Epstein, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “The Democrats knew about Epstein and his victims for years and did nothing to help them until they thought they could weaponize the files against the President.”
A July Washington Post poll found an overwhelming majority of the public supports releasing all files from the Epstein case, while fewer than 2 in 10 Americans approved of the way Trump was handling issues related to the Epstein files.
And while a slew of Republicans were expected to support the Epstein vote Tuesday before Trump announced his change of posture, many still say Trump’s influence remains strong on his party — even if not on this issue.
“He still carries a big stick,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee) told The Post.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) has not said whether the Senate will take up the Epstein bill if it passes the House. It would need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. The Senate voted on similar legislation to force disclosure of the Epstein files in September after Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) surprised Republicans by filing it in an amendment on an unrelated bill. Senators voted 51-49 to dispose of the amendment.
The White House official speculated that the growing mass of House Republicans supporting the Epstein measure felt the need to “appease” a small but vocal minority of constituents on an issue “10 percent of the base cares deeply about.”
Trump has also shown frustration over the ongoing controversy.
“All I want is I want for people to recognize a great job that I’ve done on pricing, on affordability … on energy, on ending eight wars and another one coming pretty soon,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday as he referred to the Epstein investigation as a “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax as it pertains to Republicans.”
Aware of the difficult position Trump finds himself in as he seeks to help Republicans keep control of the House during the midterm elections, White House advisers have been working on a roadmap to change the narrative, according to the official. In West Wing meetings over the past week, officials have begun a plan for Trump to engage supporters who are less likely to vote in a midterm election when he is not on the ballot. That includes plans for Trump to travel the country touting his domestic agenda and working to keep the Republican Party “more unified on messaging.” Those campaign-style events could begin before the end of the year, one adviser said.
A Washington Post average of national polls since the start of October shows 40 percent of Americans approving of Trump, while 57 percent disapprove — slightly worse than a 42 percent-56 percent margin in September, and his worst margin since returning to office.
Trump himself has poured fuel on the fires of Republican discord, publicly disavowing his onetime close ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) over the weekend after she continued to speak out in support of releasing Epstein files — and as she has criticized Trump over other policy decisions. No private efforts are underway by Trump or White House officials to repair the relationship with Greene, the White House official said, despite Greene saying she was open to doing so.
But even as Trump vowed to support a Republican primary challenger to Greene, and as the northwest Georgia congresswoman said she faced threats to her safety as a result of Trump’s comments calling her a “traitor,” Greene has received support from local GOP and other grassroots conservative activists in her district, a sign of her close relationship with the voters who make up the core of Trump’s MAGA base.
“The Whitfield County Republican Party stands with our America First Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene,” one such county party wrote in a statement over the weekend.
“It’s interesting to see the sort of 180 on social media, with local party leaders, especially in the 14th district, just really hitting Trump hard and supporting Marjorie Taylor Greene,” said Jason Shepherd, the former chair of the Cobb County Republican Party in Georgia. “And that’s not necessarily what I would expect.”
Still, Dave Carney, a New Hampshire-based Republican strategist who worked in George H.W. Bush’s White House, downplayed the media attention on Epstein, dismissing it as “a political shiny object that everyone with a 202 area code focuses on.” And he said the low poll numbers represent but a moment in time.
“Every president has these ups or downs,” Carney said. “It is the economics that drives whether they’re serious troughs and valleys you can’t get out of.”
Kadia Goba and Theodoric Meyer contributed to this report.
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