CNN’s resident data guru has some new numbers for Donald Trump on the furore around his administration’s handling of Jeffrey Epstein—and it’s not looking good for the president.
“Donald Trump is begging, asking his supporters to drop it,” Harry Enten told network viewers Sunday. “He is not getting his way. His supporters are not dropping it. Interest in this story is at basically an all-time high.”
Enten delivered his assessment with a graphic showing that Google searches for Jeffrey Epstein had surged by more than 1,900 percent over the past seven days, adding that “it is currently the top term, topic being searched alongside ‘Donald Trump.’”
A far cry, then, from the president’s assertion in a virulent Truth Social post Saturday that the late financier is “somebody that nobody cares about.”
For years, the president, himself a former Epstein associate, had wooed far-right influencers and conspiracy theorists who believe the investor and convicted pedophile was merely one player in a global sex trafficking ring, and that the official story surrounding his death is a cover-up.
That courtship backfired spectacularly just over a week ago when the Justice Department and FBI released a memo saying the financier had almost certainly died by suicide, and that they found no evidence he ever kept a “client list” of elite co-conspirators.
That memo has now sparked a gathering political firestorm, with leading MAGA influencers like Laura Loomer calling for Attorney General Pam Bondi’s head to roll, and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, formerly a prominent figure in the conspiratorial world of conservative podcasting, reportedly considering resigning over the DOJ’s perceived mishandling of the case.
Trump’s efforts to quell the chaos have been to little avail. After losing his cool during a televised cabinet session Tuesday to rail against “people still talking about […] this creep,” he later lamented in his Saturday Truth Social post that “we’re on one team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening,” urging his supporters to “LET PAM BONDI DO HER JOB—SHE’S GREAT!”
As even Fox News warns, this “ticking time bomb” is unlikely to go away any time soon, Enten nevertheless said during his Sunday appearance that betting markets have put the odds of the president releasing further information on Epstein’s crimes at barely above 20 percent.
“And that, of course, is a problem for Donald Trump, given what we’ve seen from the MAGA base over the past 24, 48, and 72 hours,” he added.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
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