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AS POLITICAL U-TURNS go, this was a pretty spectacular one. President Donald Trump, having long resisted the release of files pertaining to the late disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and having demanded that the Republican congressional leadership back him to the hilt, abruptly decided that it was time to let go.
Notably, during his third campaign for the White House, he had pledged to make public all these documents and won plaudits from many on the hard right of the GOP for transparency, yet at some stage, for some reason, he reneged. The newly-elected president adopted a “nothing to see here” attitude and urged the conservative faithful to move on.
Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Mike Johnson, having bent the knee to the man who has commanded absolute loyalty from office-holding Republicans for a decade, quickly reversed course. The matter was put to the House and the Senate. There was a single dissenting member in the US Congress.
The president has now signed the bill and the documents will soon be available for dissection. Those anticipating or hoping for a “smoking gun” that will engender the ruin of Trump will probably be disappointed. It is hard to imagine that, if there were anything devastating, it would not have emerged previously. There is also wiggle room that could aid Attorney General Pam Bondi in protecting her boss.
It was a sense that the tide was turning against him that precipitated Trump’s change of heart. His inner circle became fully aware that Republicans were increasingly getting it in the neck from constituents. They were furious that those who they placed their sacred trust in would countenance shielding the elites who they are sure will be implicated in the Epstein files. Notwithstanding the pressure they were feeling from the top, lots of them intended to vote for the enabling legislation sponsored by four of their party colleagues.
In short, Trump had no choice other than to relent.
It is significant that among the vocal champions of those who survived the abuse perpetrated by Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful associates has been Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, the ultraconservative conspiracy theorist who was, until recently, one of Trump’s staunchest allies. No matter what anyone makes of her other words and deeds, she deserves credit for standing by and giving voice to the women who tragically became entangled in Epstein’s evil web.
But it is truly remarkable that this is the first occasion since he entered politics and took over the Republican Party that Donald Trump has had to give an inch. He vigorously battled what morphed into a groundswell to the bitter end; his post on the Truth Social platform in July suggest he was not blind to events on Capitol Hill, though.
He wrote: “What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’…We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein.”
Indeed, Trump and his most articulate advocate in the media, CNN’s Scott Jennings, are currently attributing the defection of Taylor Greene to her own stalled political career, citing polls showing that her ambitions to win a seat in the US Senate were going nowhere and his consequent refusal to encourage or endorse the candidacy she had hoped to mount. As is his wont, Trump didn’t stop there. He has referred to her as “wacky” and a “ranting lunatic.”
And Marjorie Taylor Greene is not the only high-profile woman who Trump has attacked viciously as of late. In response to a question posed by Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey, he seethed “quiet, piggy.” At an Oval Office meeting with Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in which the president disgraced his country and the memory of the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, he called Mary Bruce of ABC News a “terrible journalist” and a “terrible person” for having the temerity to ask him about the Epstein files.
When a reporter on Air Force One asked President Donald Trump a question about Epstein's recently revealed emails, Trump snapped at her, responding with the phrase “Quiet, piggy.” pic.twitter.com/qpiFOOTeiG
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 18, 2025
There was something different about these two outbursts as compared to the nasty things Trump has said about those he perceives to be his enemies in the media in the past. They were not the half-jocular, half-mean taunts of an arrogant, fearless schoolyard bully to which the world is accustomed.
These slurs were uttered in a tone of rage that reflects the inner tension of a man who prizes being in charge and feels as if he is losing control.
Congressional Republicans have defied him once. They are unlikely to experience negative repercussions. That will make it easier for them to decline to take orders from here on and they may be followed by their colleagues at state and local levels. President Trump is facing into two harsh realities: first, he mightn’t even be a year into his second term, but the window is slowly closing; second, politicians are, above all, self-interested and will do whatever is necessary to win re-election next year. The latter may no longer require unwavering fidelity to the man at the top.
What’s more, whether he admits it or not, Trump has to know that he has not solved the biggest conundrum in America: the sky-high price of nearly everything and the attendant cost-of-living crisis. Anger at his predecessor on this front made him president again; failure to ameliorate the problem could be his and his party’s undoing.
The Democrats, while still generally unpopular and not ideally situated to prevail in the places they will need to, have stumbled into a political winner in the “affordability agenda,” which resonates across the country. In addition, Democrats are benefitting because the Trump administration has gone too far on many things for the small cohort of floating voters who determine election results. As an example, opinion surveys reveal they are not pleased with the roguish activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in rounding up alleged undocumented immigrants.
All of that said, it would be very foolish and premature to proffer that Donald Trump is finished.
Earlier predictions of his demise have proven wrong and he has demonstrated an extraordinary resilience. A massive swathe of grassroots conservatives, who the putative “coup plotters” depend on for support, are personally loyal to their president, first and foremost. There is plenty of life left in the figure who continues to dominate global discourse.
Yet we are seeing the first chinks in seemingly impenetrable armour. Expect an abundance of long-read pieces in the coming weeks and months assessing the post-Trump future of the Republican Party, including here. I will expand upon my thinking when I address it, but to me, the GOP’s formula for political success boils down to Trumpism without Trump.
Larry Donnelly is a Boston lawyer, a law lecturer at the University of Galway and a political columnist with The Journal.
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